Why questions?

The biggest question maybe is why there is questions at all, Burt has an beautiful view over this issue:

Let us get to basics first – what is a question? The word ‘question’ means a quest, seeking, searching and needing. It is life’s way to help us evolve in consciousness. And, it is consciousness itself asking the questions according to the level of our awareness growth.

The questions that are unconscious inside you are the causes of your stress and negative reactions. In fact, all unresolved questions are our suffering. Initially our questions center on our ego and that is as it should be. They often consist of ‘why’ and also ‘how.’ The word ‘why’ is the first indication that the questioner doesn’t really want the truth but an escape from it. For instance if someone asks, “why am I suffering?” are looking for sympathy and someone who canb enable their victim-mentality. A fully matured question would be more like, “What is suffering?”

The nature of a question is the recognition that we do not know. There’s an old Zen saying that affirms, “If you think you know, then it’s clear you don’t know. If you admit you don’t know then you know.” This most basic of understandings is also the most powerful. The knowledge that trumps all other knowledge is the understanding that we have no certainty. A fact that frightens us is that the ego can NEVER be certain (nor secure or safe).

The moment we start getting to know this fact and accept it, it is at that moment we start becoming unstuck. We really don’t know except words from hearsay and books. This ‘not-knowing’ allows an investigation into life that is unobstructed by our conditioning, uncluttered by our information. Just remember this fact…It is the absence of knowing That allows the discovery of the new.

Why do we get stuck? It is because nobody ever told us that there is nothing to know for the mind except information. Information cannot help you anymore than black dots on a white page can. We fit what is new into what is old by seeking answers thinking we now know. This thinking we know simply repeats the same old patterns, old thinking and old questions.

When it comes to the Truth there is nothing to know and the only way to break free is to stop trying to know something thus open yourself to what is already in you and about you and really start looking in a fresh new way.

How do we come to know beyond intellectual knowing? -- by looking deeply into our natural questioning nature. This whole journey on earth is an evolution of consciousness. This evolution of consciousness has one single drive – to know itself! And, how does it get to know itself? -- Through the process of questioning.

Our every step in our consciousness ‘climb’ is a question understood (not answered).

Burt Harding

Namaste

Roshi