What Came Here?
No one except a few would make a fuss about your answer to the question “where do you come from?” when you simply answer the name of the country or town you were born. But a very few, rare people will dare to further question, or complain about any of the answer you make. This blog post will proceed to tell about one of those kind of people – Eno, the sixth patriarch of Zen.
The story goes like this: one day, Eno asked a newbie monk where he came from. As most people would normally do, the monk answered the name of the place he came from, but Eno seems to have been unsatisfied with the reply, and went on to ask the next question: “What came here?”
This threw the monk into a state of total confusion, which led him to pursue the answer for many years to come. Then, after a long period of struggle, he had a certain realization that brought him to a definite answer expressed as follows: “Once you talk about it, it is already missed.” His realization appears to imply something more than simply saying that “it can’t be described in words.”
When you talk about something, right at that moment, you objectify that “something”, be it the most profound wisdom or the most mundane gossip. If we dig deeper, we’ll even find that, when things are perceived as being out there, there is always division between the subject and the object. That also implies a slight time difference between the moment something is “subjectively” perceived, that is, perceived without the above kind of objectification, and the moment it is perceived as an object (we may have to refer to Benjamin Libet’s “Mind Time” for more details on this).
So, spacewise, we are always making a boundary line between “here” and “there,” and timewise, one between “now” and “then.” But we have to be careful that Zen always aims at “here” that is neither here nor there, and “now” that is neither now nor then. And that “here and now,” as lots of Zen-men expound, IS, already, in its completeness, while being utterly ungraspable. To add, the sheer contradiction is that they recommend that we grasp the ungraspable.
This can be approached in a negative way: spend time exclusively for being in the above mode of perception, one without any kind of division. In fact, we normally and with ease live that way anyway, as long as we don’t interrupt with it by referring to our thoughts. Begin by attending to bodily sensations without having any opinions about them: hold judgments. Ask them “what came here?” or simply “what is this?” When answers come to mind, also attend to them, but not to their contents but their “textures,” or how they are felt. Try alternating between the question and the sensations, and observe each thought as mentioned above.
The gist of all this is to really see who you are. That will answer Eno’s question “"What came here?” I hope someone who is serious enough will try it and verify the words of Zen masters for themselves.