It has never been easy for me to talk about kensho, the big “I’ve Got It,” the direct experience of the oneness of life without at least smiling, remembering Get Smart and the bumbling secret agent who proclaims, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I don’t got it.” I laugh too when I recall my favorite Suzuki Roshi story. According to the story, Suzuki was asked once during Q&A why he never talked about kensho. Roshi was beginning his answer when his wife called out from the back of the room, “Because he’s never had kensho.” Maybe that was my story too. I came to Zen practice in search of inner peace and found it. Was it possible to find inner peace without kensho?
I didn’t think so. Despite Mrs. Suzuki’s humor. Bernie did talk about kensho. During his ZCLA days, Bernie had been a kensho fanatic. Students working on Mu, the first koan – the monk asks Chao Chou if a dog has Buddha nature, and Chao Chou answers “Mu,” something like “no,” a signifier of negation – were assigned during sesshin to the “Mu room” where they could Mu out loud without disturbing others. I heard the story many times, how Bernie’s kensho was confirmed by Koryu Roshi – I think that’s who it was – who declared it the most profound kensho of any westerner, something like that. I felt very inadequate, but by the time I got to Bernie in Yonkers, he’d left the Mu room behind. Too many students had settled for their Mu experience and never done the post-kensho work. In Zen, Hakuin is famous for his emphasis on post-kensho practice. Bernie had his own way of putting it. If all you want is the experience of the oneness of life – and Bernie wasn’t sneezing at that experience; he talked about it often – try LSD: get the oneness of life experience more easily and more quickly through the miracle of modern chemistry. It was what you did after kensho that mattered most to Bernie as it did to Hakuin.
Bernie never said anything to me about my kensho or lack of kensho. He told me something he’d heard from Maezumi: sometimes the experience of kensho is like being caught in a cloudburst. The skies suddenly open and before you know it, you are thoroughly drenched. Sometimes, it is like a long walk in a heavy fog. I picture low tide at the Bay Fundy. Deep in the fog, I walked for hours along the beach, with the sound of surf and without sight of water, walking through the fog a very long way before realizing that I was soaked to the bone.
Maezumi was talking to me. Have I had kensho, that magic moment? In my mind, I hear the Drifters. I don’t know. I’ve certainly not had one of those big moments that some Zen people have experienced, the famous laughing-and-crying-at-the-same-time jags. I’ve had smaller moments – not during sesshins -- although I had an amazing aha once in dokusan with Bob while pecking at the eggshell. Doing psychotherapy, for instance, I’ve had moments when all self-consciousness, all my I-am-a-therapist awareness fell away, the experience of no separation. There have been other moments in what Michael Jordan called, “the zone.” Were those moments small kenshos? Or have I just been walking for a long time in the fog?
I never asked Bernie about my kensho. Was I afraid of his answer? Was his action enough? Bernie gave me transmission and later Inka, his final seal of approval. Would he have done that if he felt that I hadn’t experienced the oneness of life and gone beyond?
I am still sitting with my doubts, still learning, and still going deeper. Recently, my fiction writing practice gave me fresh insight into kensho. Writing my first novel was certainly an “I’ve Got It.” It wasn’t something I thought I could do, but when the Universe added time travel to a short story I was writing, I saw novel potential. Stephen King gave me my fiction writing Mu room: Just write 2000 words a day and in three months you’ll have a first draft. I compromised – I was retired: writing five days a week was enough – and much to my surprise, the Mu trick worked. I had my novel. Well, I had my kensho analog. I had a first draft. I shared it with some close friends and was encouraged. I stepped from a 100-foot pole and sent inquiry letters to ten agents. I envisioned my novel on the bookstore shelf. One agent had asked for the first 50 pages: most had asked only for 10. Did any of them even read through the first ten pages? Only one agent bothered to tell me that she wasn’t interested. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I don’t got it.”
What do you do after writing the first draft of a novel? I found myself going back to Bernie’s imagery. If I don’t revise, I might as well have taken LSD. Jishu always said, “Go deeper.” Deeper wasn’t an easy place to get to. It was easier to be angry at the agents who didn’t read at least the first 100 pages. Morri pointed out to me that it wasn’t just agents; it’s the way we buy books. We browse, we pick an interesting looking book off the shelf, and we begin to read. If we’re grabbed by the first paragraph or the first few pages, we buy it. If not, we put it back on the shelf and try another book.
Inspired by Francine Prose to change up the narrative framework, I began experimenting. When I’d written four versions of the first chapter, one grabbed me. I was rewriting and excited by my new narrative structure. I was learning new things about my characters and their stories. I was a hundred pages into my rewrite when my friend, Shelly Blackman, offered to read the new first chapter. I sent it to him expecting encouragement. I bombed again. Shelly was confused. I’d introduced too many characters too quickly. Although I’d suspected as much, I was still disappointed. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I don’t got it,” always hurts.
There was an aha-moment then: this was “post-kensho” practice, the realization that I don’t have “it,” whatever “it” is.
This feels better. Hakuin and Bernie were onto something. “Don’t got it” – the bumbling clown’s version of “Don’t know” – is a better place to be than “Got it.” The joy of endless practice trumps the conclusion that I’ve mastered it all. “Don’t got it” is not always a happy place. I’ve begun a third version of the novel, I’m fifty pages in: is it better than the second version? Don’t know. Should I set the novel aside again and work on something else? We’ll see. The path to “deeper” is never obvious, but always takes me somewhere unexpected. The joy is there, in “Don’t got it.”
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