ASK THE TEACHERS
REV. ANGEL KYODO WILLIAMS: Much is made of the Zen exhortations to not know, to not do, to take the approach of “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Therein lies the clever sleight of mind of Zen as not just a practice, but as Way.
The point of the seemingly endless practice of restraint of mind is to allow its most organic expression to arise. In this instance, some might use the word “natural,” but I think this is unfitting of the alchemical process that unfolds when “don’t know mind” meets “must do something.”
The fact is that our subjective, comparing mind has no idea what to do in situations it has never encountered before—and, conversely, sometimes has too many ideas despite having no true reference point. When confronted with the unknown, those of us who have not trained
