Who We Are (Intellctually Unknowable)

There are two routes to discovering who we truly are. One of these is introspection.

The so-called skandhas in Buddhism are meant to comprise all the activity that takes place within a human being. Normally we assume that all of this activity is who we are. The kind of introspection that is useful in discovering who we are (or really are) is to ask about any of this activity, did we ask it to come about, do we control it?

For example, when you remove a cup of heated coffee from the microwave, did you think beforehand about removing it? It’s possible that you did, but commonly simple actions like this are done without forethought. So there’s no control here in removing the cup. When you walk, do you think about taking each step? Usually not. If you dislike someone, did you tell yourself to dislike him or her? Probably not. If you hear a bird sing, did you ask to hear it? No. If a thought comes into your mind, did you ask for it to come there? Not at all. Your being conscious of all this activity, if you are awake, can you stop it? No, if you’re not asleep, you are conscious, and that’s that.  

Usually it takes a long time for such introspection to convince us that we do not control any internal activity and, therefore, that it is not us. At this point, the intellect is in a sense stunned, and the intuitive knowledge of who we really are can come home. However, we find that we can’t say anything about it.

Zazen practitioners find the same. When they are undistractedly focused on breathing, they do know who they are. They sit right in the middle of it. Can they say who they are? If they try to move the knowledge into consciousness, it disappears. So absolutely nothing can be said about it, or said in a way that would transmit it to anyone. Paradoxically, it is unknowable knowledge.

So both routes to the truth of who we really are lead to unknowable knowledge. Of course the routes can be combined. Combined or separately, though, they both lead to what I have always heard or read in Zen, that ultimate truth is not intellectually knowable. It escapes comprehension. It is purely intuitive, and the intellect has to be put aside in order to know it.