Inka Speech — Colin Beavan
On April 9, 2022, Colin Beavan received inka at Providence Zen Center, USA
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Knowing how to live your life is not knowing how to live your life. Not knowing how to live your life is knowing how to live your life.
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
There is no knowing how to live your life. There is also no not knowing how to live your life.
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Knowing how to live your life is knowing how to live your life. Not knowing how to live your life is not knowing how to live your life.
Does anyone truly know how to live their life? Does anyone truly not know how to live their life?
KATZ!
Right now I am going to do some more talking. The polite thing for you to do is listen. The polite thing for me to do is keep it short.
Thank you: Zen Master Wu Kwang (Richard Shrobe), Paul Majchrzyk JDPSN, Zen Master Jok Um (Ken Kessel), Zen Master Soeng Hyang (Bobby Rhodes), Zen Master Bon Yeon (Jane Dobisz), Zen Master Hyon Ja (Alma Potter), and Barry Briggs JDPSN. Thank you to all the other teachers in the Kwan Um School of Zen.
Knowing how to live your life is not knowing how to live your life. Not knowing how to live your life is knowing how to live your life.
When I was in my late twenties, I had already been successful in two careers. I had been a researcher in electrical engineering and got a PhD. I had also run a boutique public relations firm for organizations with a social mission. Supposedly, I knew how to live. But I couldn’t understand it. What did any of it mean? How was it important? How would I feel about it all on my deathbed? What was a good life? Where should I live?
Though people thought I knew how to live, I really didn’t. I couldn’t understand. I remember being scared because I had had a terrible depression in my early twenties and I was scared that I would fall back into a new depression.
I remember distinctly people telling me to let go of my questions because I would drive myself mad. I remember being in a car in Israel in the dark and discussing all this with my father and watching the red glow of his cigarette.
I began to read about Buddhism and mystical Christianity but I was also suspicious of everything I read because I didn’t believe anyone else knew how to live either. I couldn’t believe any religious writers. This reminds me of something I read recently in a Kwan Um teaching email: Zen Master Seung Sahn held up a cup of orange juice. He said, “This is a cup of orange juice. You keep the orange juice if you have the cup. But if you have no cup, the orange juice has nowhere to stay.” Suffering is like that. If you have I-my-me then suffering has a place to stay. But if you are not attached to I-my-me then suffering has nowhere to stay.
These are lovely words, but what I like best is that Zen Master Seung Sahn then said “Merely understanding these words cannot help you. You have to attain something for yourself.”
Back in my late twenties, I was in a dark night of the soul. My knowing how to live had become not knowing how to live. No one else’s words could help me. I had to attain something for myself.
There is no knowing how to live your life. There is no not knowing how to live your life.
Around that time, I went to a 12-step meeting in Providence. Someone told me about this Korean Zen master who said “You must wash your mind with don’t-know soap.” I loved that. Not “I have something to say to you” but “Don’t know and lose all the things that have already been said to you.”
I started going to the Kwan Um sitting group on the Brown University campus. After a couple of years I moved to New York City and I went a few times to my home temple, the Chogye International Zen Center of New York. I didn’t like it. There were all these robes and chanting. I stopped going. But then Zen Master Seung Sahn came to me in a dream. That was the only time I met him. So I went back to the temple.
Before long, I went in for an interview and was given the kong-an “Hyang Eom’s Up a Tree.” It is only now that I realize how perfect that kong-an was for where I was at. Hyang Eom said “It is like a man hanging from a tree. He is holding on to a branch by his teeth. His hands and his legs are all tied, so he cannot grasp another branch, and he cannot grasp the trunk of the tree. The only thing that is keeping him alive is clinging by his teeth. Then just at that time somebody comes and asks him ‘Why did Bodhidharma come to China?’
He is a monk, and his vow is to teach, but if he opens his mouth to answer he will fall to his death. If he doesn’t answer, he betrays his nature, his fundamental vow to help all beings.
The question is: How does he stay alive?
The monk clung to life by his teeth. That was like me clinging to trying to figure out how to live. We are like this. We cling to the idea of getting what we want. But first we cling to the idea that we have to figure out what to want. I want something, I just don’t know what it is. This is all thinking.
Meanwhile, underneath all that is our fundamental nature. That nature and the nature of the rest of the universe are not two. Deep inside, we know that we want to be kind and we want to help all beings. We don’t want to betray that nature. But we get caught up in what we want and wishing we knew how to live. But knowing how to live appears not in each thought but in each situation.
When we are hungry, what? When someone else is hungry, what? When someone needs our teaching and we are all tied up and clinging, what?
Over the last couple of years, my family had a huge crisis. If we said we knew how to deal with it, we wouldn’t have been open to what was actually happening and we would have made huge mistakes. On the other hand, if we said we didn’t know how to live, we would have been paralyzed. At moments like these, there is neither knowing how to live nor not knowing how to live. Only correctly perceiving your situation and allowing correct function to arise.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche said “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”
Knowing how to live is knowing how to live. Not knowing how to live is not knowing how to live.
For whatever reason, as I was writing this speech about knowing how to live or not knowing how to live, I began to think about when my mother asked me how to die. When she was in hospice, she told the social worker that she was a Buddhist, which was news to me. The social worker asked if there was a Buddhist she wanted to talk to. She said “my son.” Yikes.
One day, I asked her if there was anything she wanted to discuss. Her eyes snapped open. “Yes,” she said. “I want you to tell me how to die.”
We talked a little and then she said, “You seem like you have it all together.”
She cried a bit. I said, “Are you crying because you wish you had it all together?” She said yes. She was falling from an infinite height to an infinite depth and she didn’t know how to live or how to die.
She cried some more. She said, “Do you? Do you have it all together?”
I said, “I don’t think that quite reflects my experience. I often wake with anxiety and worry about money. I feel lonely because I have no partner…” (I do now, though.) I said, “But I do have a certain peace with my humanity. I don’t fight the fact that I don’t have it all together. I think I am largely OK with not having it all together.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
I said, “I don’t think any of us completely ‘have it all together.’ We are all struggling with being human. If no one has it all together, in a certain way, that means all of us do have it all together. Not having it all together, if you are human, is in fact having it all together.”
She fell asleep then. Something I’d said had relaxed her. I think I gave her permission not to know how live, not to know how to die. I think telling her that that was the human condition made her feel she no longer had to fight.
We fight it, but it’s OK not to know. In fact, not knowing is our original condition. Stop fighting. Let go. There is nothing to fight. Everything is just like this. We can relax. We have arrived because we never left.
But merely understanding these words cannot help us. We must each attain something for ourselves.
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Zen Master Bon Haeng (Mark Houghton) once said to me, “Our practice is about becoming comfortable with not knowing.” Is that knowing how to live?
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Zen Master Soeng Hyang (Bobby Rhodes) once said to me, “Let me give you the best advice you’ll ever get. At the moment of your death ask, ‘How can I help?’” Is that knowing how to die?
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Not knowing, is that life or is that death?
KATZ!
Thank you for listening to me. I hope I didn’t go on too long. With any luck, those of us at Providence Zen Center will soon be eating cake! I hope cake appears for those of you on Zoom, too!