The Meeting of Light and Darkness

Please excuse that I have been unable to participate in the discussion of this Koan until now. But, all things come to fruition in their own time.

First, to help us understand this Koan a little better, some history: There once was a famous Zen Master. He was successful at transmitting the dharma, motivating his students, and helping many to glimpse the Truth and more. He was no phony either. He really did have a genuine and lasting Awakening. And this helped to give his speech and manner a convincing and powerful force. However, in truth, he was a man who lacked education to a great degree. His was Zen by the “gut”, intuition not knowledge. After he died, he was of course revered and honored, for he had made a lasting and positive impression on many.

Nevertheless, when he looked back upon his life, after his death, he saw that this life alone had left him somewhat imbalanced. In a way, he was very dissatisfied that he had so little education. He would have liked to be an intelligent proponent of the dharma, able to use brains as well as raw instinct in his work. But, also he saw more deeply that while his teachings were strong and convincing, he lacked a great deal of intellectual knowledge about the very things he was inspiring others to. He was, he thought, quite a lopsided Master. Therefore, he decided to take on another life in order to rectify this imbalance.

In this new life, he chose to give himself a personality with a great deal of intelligence and a thirst for education. This would insure that he would acquire the missing knowledge of the other lifetime. And of course he would have a deep interest in the dharma, because that would be the whole point of it. Also, the deep abiding sense of the truth would be present in this new personality, but not as clearly as it had been in the other life (it would have made it too easy to fall into the same “faults”, of not needing an education, but just teaching from the “gut”). So, he would have to have a few deep experiences, but then be forced to study, study, study, every word he could get his hands on to help him learn about the inner truth he’d discovered.

Happily, the education part of his current life has been very successful. He has studied ancient civilizations and their philosophers, has soaked up modern thought and ideation like a sponge; absorbing and assimilating many and diverse important strains of wisdom, theories, and models. Needless to say his interest in the written tradition of Buddhism has led to many long hours in study of the sutras.

Now, unfortunately, the vision he had earlier in this life, his experience of Highest Truth, has become, as we say, gilded by time. It was very convincing, although again, not as overwhelmingly clear and sustained as his previous life’s experiences. And, learning, opinion, conclusion has crept in where the domain of ineffable Truth once ruled.

Secondly, and also unfortunately, the great intellect that he has achieved has given him a sense of superiority compared to those not as excelled. And, he wishes for an intellectual champion like himself with whom he can exercise his great knowledge against. Finding no such accomplished persons who would care to duel with him, he finds himself further isolated. And sadly, as the bitterness of old age has crept upon him, it has given this isolation an incompassionate, cursing face.

It is important, at this point, to realize that when a life is over, it is not judged by the Self to be a success, depending on whether or not that life had a happy ending. A lifetime may very well be a success that ends in “sadness” (as some paths will lead to dead ends), because it is part of the learning process that a personality undertakes in order to know why a path is a dead end. In other words, by learning a great deal through the medium of a “failure”, why another path in the long run is more beneficial. The school of hard knocks.

The situation that he finds himself in, however, is not desirable. Because, while it has accomplished its mission in the education process, it is failing to reach into the hearts and sanctity of those to whom he feels that he would like to benefit. Therefore, he is trying to find a way out of his mistaken convictions and the corner that his knowledge has painted himself into, without betraying the inner core of his knowledge’s validity.

In other words, he doesn’t want to think that all of the learning that he acquired was for naught, and it was in truth not invaluable. But, he needs to be able to peer beyond the confines of the limitations of his “knowledge” into the underlying preeminence of Truth (from which “knowledge” springs into reality). Undertaking this movement is not at all an easy task for any man, and yet for him it is all the more essential, so that his higher “spirit” is able to carry on the work that it is here to accomplish. And that is to enable others to a greater awareness of the Highest Truth and its transcendent power.

Or course, as long as he is isolated and ridiculed for his imbalances, the more strongly he clings to them, as they are the raft that he has built for himself, intentionally, in this lifetime. Assuaging this presumption of the raft’s eminence, would ease his troubles. But, it is more likely that in desperation, he will eventually come to realize the emptiness of the structure that he has built his fortifications upon. And, in that great and terrible loss of faith, he will then be able to reevaluate the conflicts, assumptions, and motives for his work. Only after a long time of suffering thus, will he be open to seeing that his “learning” has value in its own right. But, that the greatest of the work is lost in the transcendence of the Highest Truth, as it abounds with all that can never be wrought into the dimension of the human entanglements that we call life.