The abandonment of religious virtue has left this culture aggressively antagonistic to the pursuit of the unknown, the unknowable, to the mystical realms of reality. The original enthusiasm for Zen in the United States was not just for personal discovery, but for the possibility of developing an appreciation for the unknown in an excessively cluttered society-it was an effort to break ground for new possibilities. What we need to know cannot arise from what we know now; our liberation from personal and collective suffering must derive from what we cannot envision, what is beyond our imagination, even beyond our dreams of what is possible.
One day an American student asked a Japanese Zen master, "Is enlightenment really possible?"He answered, "If you're willing to allow for it."
James: This goes to show that we are our own worst enemy. We trip ourselves up and tighten up when we feel we are letting go too much because we want to control our life and are afraid of the "unknown." However, when we fully let go and float into the unknown--it is then and there that we find true freedom and the doorway to enlightenment opened wide. And we realize that the door was open all along.
--Helen Tworkov
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