LEAP FROM 100-FOOT POLE

There is a saying in Zen that after all your studying, reading, arguing and discussing, you must “leap off the top of the 100-foot pole.”

Break through the intellectual barriers.

While you may not know exactly will happen after you leap, you must trust that this is the Way,  and the Way works.

A student once wryly observed: “It wouldn’t be Zen if it wasn’t confusing.” How true, especially if you to try to “understand” what you’re reading. By using only your intellect, sentences and paragraphs will not make any sense; it is as if they are designed deliberately to confuse by going in circles or opposite directions.

The following is a prime example, taken from the Diamond Sutra, one of Zen’s important scriptures. Its many sections use example after example to say repeatedly: If it is, it isn’t; if it isn’t, it is.

What?!

Wrestling with the words is not enough. Serious Zen students and practitioners must go deeper than mere words and mere intellect because the ordinary point of view will not get you far. The meaning is not in the words or between the words. It is beyond the words  With the Zen perspective, which is the perspective of Emptiness, there is now a chance of realizing the true meaning of the Diamond Sutra and experiencing the truth of Zen.

How do you see from this point of view of Emptiness? It is not an easy path. You could go around in a never-ending process of negating everything in the universe one by one – including your own acts of negation. But, if instead you negate your ego, your Self, then everything disappears because now there is no one differentiating one thing from another.

That is Emptiness. Not the emptiness of a pitcher once filled with water. Instead, this is Emptiness in which there is no pitcher, no water – even as you lift the pitcher and drink the water.

What?! “It wouldn’t be Zen if it wasn’t confusing.”

Why would anyone aspire to undertake this journey of confusion and contradictions? Well, if you have a deep enough existential question about yourself, your life or your place in the Universe, then you have no choice but to contemplate, to wonder and to question.

There is no easy way. Imagine standing at the mouth of a dark cave: you have no idea how far the cave goes or even where it goes. Yet something compels you to enter.

Like the famous words by the Jedi Master Yoda, in the movie The Empire Strikes Back: "Do or do not. There is no try." Or, if you want a simpler quote, how about Nike’s, “Just do it”? Or, even more simply: “Just be!” 

The Zen journey is not about comprehension, it is about experience. So, after all the studying, reading, discussing and arguing, you just have to leap from that 100-foot pole. If and when you do, you will find the answer to your question was there all the time, right in front of you.