By Gwen Juvenal

Entering Silence and Not Knowing

As our silent retreat comes nearer, I have been considering what it means to sit in silence—what opportunity it offers, and what each of us may bring into it.

Silence does not always give us answers. Sometimes it brings us closer to what we do not know.
A well-known Zen encounter preserved as Case 20 in The Book of Serenity speaks directly to this.

Master Dizang asks Fayan, “Where are you going?”

Fayan says that he is on pilgrimage.

Dizang asks, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?”

Fayan replies, “I don’t know.”

Dizang says, “Not knowing is most intimate.”

Not knowing is most intimate.

Christopher Sensei explored this koan in a Dharma talk last year. He suggested that not knowing is not merely a gap in our understanding. It can be the place where we stop relating only to our explanations and begin meeting our life directly.

At times, not knowing does not feel like the loving intimacy these words seem to describe. Sometimes it feels like a crisis or an exposure.

Sometimes it begins with something we believed in, something we desired, or something we thought we understood—and then life does not happen in the way we expected.

When the Answer Does Not Come

My mother told me about one of her earliest experiences of this.

My grandmother loved Christmas. She created an abundant Christmas for her children, saving money throughout the year so they could ask for the things they wanted. From my mother’s perspective, Christmas was a time when her wishes could really come true.

My mother was very young—somewhere between four and six years old—when her mother asked what she wanted Santa to bring her for Christmas. My mother said she wanted a little brother or sister.

Her parents chuckled and tried to tell her that they were not sure Santa could bring that particular gift. But my mother had great faith. She believed that if she was very good, Santa would bring what she asked for.

Then Christmas morning came.

You can imagine the disappointment on my mother’s face when, instead of a little brother or sister under the Christmas tree, there was a baby doll in a stroller.

Her mother saw her disappointed face and asked what was wrong.

My mother told her that Santa was supposed to bring her a little brother or sister—and he had not done it.

She had believed what she had been told. If she was good and believed, she would receive what she asked for.

That disappointment did not resolve itself on Christmas morning. It sat within her for years.

At first, her question may have been very simple:

“Why didn’t Santa bring me what I asked for?”

But underneath it, other questions may already have been beginning:

“Can I trust what I have been told?”

“Does being good guarantee that life will give me what I long for?”

Sometimes the first question is not the deepest question. It may simply be the one closest to the surface.

Most of us are no longer waiting to see whether Santa will bring what we requested. But some adult questions may still carry a similar shape.

If I do the right things, will I be protected?

If I love well enough, will love arrive in the form I imagined?

If I practice sincerely, will suffering finally make sense?

What happens when life does not answer in the way hoped for?

Gathering facts, diagnosing ourselves or someone else, blaming, predicting, or trying to turn the experience immediately into a spiritual lesson are common responses. I have noticed that an answer can make me feel as though I have ground beneath me again.

A little over a year ago, there was a time when I wanted an answer. I wanted to understand why love had not arrived in the form I imagined, why certain paths seemed blocked, and why something that felt so alive had not unfolded as I hoped.

During a time of contemplation, the response I received was very simple:
“You don’t need an answer right now.”

That response offered me a different kind of gift. Instead of answering my first question, it invited me to remain open—to keep preparing, practicing, and staying true to the love I wanted to live from.
It did not mean that an answer would never come. It meant that I did not have to force one before I was ready to receive what the experience might reveal.

It also gave me the gift of being with what was beyond the question altogether. Underneath, I got to experience the fear, the grief, the anger, the longing, and the beliefs I had formed about what this experience meant about me. I could be with emotions that had not yet been allowed to be exactly as they were.

Beyond the Question

When a large emotion arises, the impulse may be to suppress it, solve it, explain it, or make it leave. Grasping for control can feel like a way of becoming safe.

This comes close to the first two Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth asks us to acknowledge dukkha: the suffering, strain, and unsatisfactoriness that are part of life. The Second points toward craving and grasping. There can be a demand that what is here become something else before peace is possible—or a grasping at what should remain unchanged, not allowing it to move and change as life naturally does.

Emotion itself is not necessarily suffering. The suffering is magnified when the body and mind tighten around an emotion, resist its movement, or insist that it should not be there.

The Alchemy of Compassion

This is where the image of alchemy comes to me.

The old alchemists imagined lead being transformed into gold. Something heavy was placed inside a vessel and held through the heat of transformation. It was not pulled out every few moments and declared a failure because it had not become gold yet.

What if we ourselves are the vessel?

What if not knowing is the space within us where the process can occur?

What if compassion is the catalyst?

A catalyst allows transformation to take place without dictating what that transformation must become. Compassion does not necessarily remove what is difficult or deliver a final explanation. It changes the way fear, grief, uncertainty, and longing are held within us.

Within this alchemical process, even the question may begin to transform.

“Why has this not happened?” may slowly become, “Can I remain open to love without insisting on its right form?”

“What am I supposed to do next?” may open into, “Can I trust life when I cannot yet see the next shape it is taking?”

An answer may come through this process. But perhaps it comes less as a hard conclusion and more as compassion taking form in a life—as a new way of seeing, a response that becomes possible, or a next step quietly revealing itself.

The question may bring us into that space. But the process itself may open into a deeper trust that does not yet have words.

What I appreciate about this imagery is that the darkness does not have to be removed. Within the vessel of our own lives, compassion becomes the catalyst that allows darkness to become receptive—an opening in which something new may be revealed beyond our grasping, and we can learn to trust in timing and life itself to help reveal a new view.

Receptivity and Infinite Compassion

Rev. S. K. Kubose writes in Bright Dawn:

“The first step towards wisdom is to realize that one is ignorant. Thus, wisdom is not separate from ignorance. The two are intimately connected. Stars are seen because the night sky is dark. Not only that, but as the sky gets darker, even more stars can be seen.”

Illumination is often imagined as the elimination of darkness: gather enough information, reach enough certainty, turn on enough light, and then everything will be known.

But some things become visible precisely because the sky is dark.

This is one of the opportunities our silent retreat may offer. There will be time to open to the questions being carried and to what may be lying underneath them. An answer may arise, or it may not. Either way, the question can be held within compassion without requiring an immediate conclusion.

In the Pure Land way, Namu Amida Butsu is this invitation into compassion. The silence becomes receptive—an opening to something that could not be manufactured through effort alone.
In Dharma Breeze, Nobuo Haneda writes:

“The most important thing in Buddhism is not practices or efforts to perfect ourselves; it is the realization that something perfect—a wonderful Dharma tradition—is already given to us. We need only to receive it, to listen to it.”

To receive it. To listen to it.

In saying the Name, the Primal Vow of infinite compassion is acknowledged. There is no need to decide beforehand what compassion must look like. Infinite compassion can inform this moment and reveal a new way of seeing and experiencing life.

Within the vessel of our lives, compassion becomes the catalyst.

Within that compassion, familiar ways of remaining may be recognized again. It may be one breath—not to force calm, but to be present. It may be feeling the support beneath the body or naming what is here: “Fear is here.” “Grief is here.” “Anger is here.” It may be returning to a teaching, the sangha, the silence, or the Name.

These practices do not have to remove the emotion. They offer a way to remain without being completely governed by the first reaction. From that more spacious place, an answer or a way forward may become visible—not as the end of the process, but as compassion expressing itself within our lives.

In this sense, Namu Amida Butsu is not merely something said. It is something that can be inhabited through the vows that are chanted and through the way each ordinary moment is met.
Namu Amida Butsu does not always answer a question in the form I expect. Sometimes it does something more intimate. It gives me somewhere to place the question—and allows an answer, if it comes, to be received in a different way.

It reminds me that I do not have to solve myself in order to be received.

Acting Without Certainty

As we close, I would like to offer that not- knowing does not leave us powerless. A decision may still need to be made, a boundary set, a yes or no spoken. But after meeting what lies beneath the first reaction, there may be more freedom. Fear can be acknowledged without being required to choose the next step.

I am becoming more familiar with awakening not as a final explanation of life, but as intimacy itself with what is. And invite you to be with this not knowing, the most intimate.

Namu Amida Butsu.

Sources
The Book of Serenity, Case 20, “Dizang’s Nearness.”
Christopher Sensei, “Not Knowing Is the Most Intimate,” Dharma talk posted June 17, 2025.
Rev. S. K. Kubose, Bright Dawn, p. 27.
Nobuo Haneda, Dharma Breeze, p. 9.