An Invitation to the Unknown

What is it that is not a thing, not the mind, not the Buddha? What is it? 

This is perhaps one of the most famous koans in Korean Zen traditions, at least in contemporary times. 

There was a very famous monk whose name was Seongcheol Sunim (1912–1993), and back in the ’70s and ’80s, many, many people visited him and asked for his guidance because they wanted to be awakened. Master Seongcheol Sunim would say, “OK, I can help you, but in order to receive my help, receive my koan, huato, you need to bow to Buddha 3,000 times.” So if you are really honest and really sincere, you really want to be awakened and really want to find your freedom, liberation to nirvana, then you would spend somewhere between eight and twelve hours bowing to the Buddha—3,000 times—and then the next day, they would go to his room. Then master Seongcheol Sunim would give this koan: What is it? That which is not a thing, not the mind, not the Buddha. What is it? 

This koan is not necessarily to solve the problem. Some people mistakenly imagine that a koan is some kind of riddle to solve. There is no concrete answer to it. Rather, it is an invitation to the state of mystery, the state before the subject-object split. It also has the quality of not knowing because we can know only that which is conditional. We cannot know unconditional things.

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So what is it that is not a thing, not the mind, not the Buddha? 

Because it’s not a thing, it means that it’s not an object. It’s not something that you can perceive and discover in this world, because an object can be seen—you can identify it—but this is not a thing. This is not an object. So whatever that has the shape or form, that’s not it. So anything you can know about, whether it’s a flower or the Buddha statue or trees or whatever, that’s not it. 

Then it says it’s not the mind. Because it’s not the mind, it is not any kind of conceptual thought, any kind of concept that you come up with. Even if you call it freedom, even if you call it pure awareness, that’s not it. 

Where this koan tries to take you is a place where you forget—even if it’s just momentarily—and arrive at an undefined experience, an experience of having no ground to set your foot on. 

The last one is the Buddha. A lot of Buddhist people, as they meditate and as they do many different types of practices, revere deeply and want to become like the Buddha. But oftentimes, they imagine Buddha having a certain kind of shape or form or some type of image. They imagine Buddha to be peaceful or blissful. Whatever that is, whatever your imagination of your enlightenment experience is, that’s not it. 

So then, what is it? What is it? Again, it is an invitation to the realm of the unknown.

Seungsahn Sunim (1927–2004), one of the most famous Korean Zen masters in the West, called it don’t know mind. So we are walking into don’t know mind, the mind of wonder, not knowing anything. Because only objects, only those things that have boundaries, we can know. We cannot know that which does not have a boundary. 

It is like trying to conceptualize or trying to capture the experience of seeing perfect blue sky, cloudless blue sky, right? The other day, I was walking to my neighborhood, and there was a big football field, and then when I looked up, it was just beautiful, cloudless, perfect blue sky. There was nothing to grasp, nothing to pay attention to. There was no object. 

In other words, you are walking into that space of freedom, that space of the unconditional, rather than relying on something you already know and trying to compare and conceptualize what that freedom would look like. 

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The mind always tries to find an answer. The mind does not like uncertainty. The mind wants to know. However, our life by nature is uncertain. And yet our mind wants to define it. So we try to ask questions and want to figure things out. 

The whole challenge in the practice of koan is struggling with this particular set of habits in our mind that is always wanting to know, always wanting to find the answers, always wanting to find some kind of stable ground. But that stable ground is man-made, artificial, conditional, impermanent. That’s not reality. 

The mind always tries to find an answer. The mind does not like uncertainty. The mind wants to know. However, our life by nature is uncertain.

What this koan is asking you to do is to find groundless freedom. 

Find yourself not as an object, not as the five skandas, not as defining yourself as just merely your body or your mind, the thoughts, or emotions, your volition, or your consciousness. There is something besides them. Or maybe there is nothing besides them. But whatever that is, I don’t know. Can we walk into that experience of not knowing without trying to figure things out, without bringing all kinds of preconceived ideas, especially about Buddhism, especially about Buddhist doctrine, philosophy, something that you already learn from different teachers? Can you try to see where this teaching fits in? Can you just stop all of that and walk into the mind of not knowing? Go beyond the concept, beyond the label, beyond our names, and identities, and whatever that is. There is our true nature. 

Even the phrase true nature is empty of its own inherent existence. So I don’t know what that is, but you ought to find out: What is it?

It is a call to realize your unconditional nature. Unconditional freedom.