A joke: A person exits a bar and sees an other frantically looking for something under the streetlight. They offer help, saying, “What did you lose?”. The increasingly desperate person says, “My keys!” “Where did you lose them?” “Over there, in the dark!” “Why are you looking here?” “Because the light is better.”
No one comes to Zen because life is perfect. Those who come are looking for some thing, seeking. Seeking relief from loss or trauma, seeking relief from existential ennui, from the suffering of dis-ease. Buddha was a great healer who offered medicine for dis-ease. One of Zen Buddhism’s medicines is meeting and speaking, and records of past meeting and speaking, the koans. This joke can be a Zen koan.
A bar is a “public house”, a location of mutual intoxication. After one or two drinks one may feel contentment or elation, relief from dis-ease. A few more and relief turns into agitation. A few more and unconsciousness ensues. The public house is the realm of the mind of comparison. The intoxicant served is the mind of wanting and getting, not wanting and avoiding. The coin paying for all this is our life of suffering.
The seeker is one who is sick of the mind of comparison’s toxic intoxication. One for whom the cost of life in a world habitually and incessantly bounded by ‘this and that’ is too high. Stepping, stumbling, falling out of the public house, the seeker enters the light. Finding someone already in the light, they meet and speak. The other is a kalyanmitra, a “good friend on the Way”.
In the light it is easy to search, but hard to find. In the light we enter the Buddha-way finding teachers and kalyanamitra. We find the Buddha-dharma spoken, written and recorded. We find locations dedicated to seeking in the light. All seekers begin the search in the light, it is what can be seen. Even after decades of practice we never completely abandon the light, it has so much to offer. But if we dwell there…we get burnt.
The dark is dark, unknown. A location free of desire borne of comparison. Dark is ‘not knowing is most intimate’. Dark is where the keys are, where ‘it’ is. But there, ‘it’ is not known. ‘It’ is only knowable in the light, which is not where ‘it’ is. Dogen Zenji says, “Don’t expect Buddhas to know they are Buddhas.” Why not? Because Buddhas are in the dark. But if we dwell in the dark…we get hit by the bus.
What is being sought in this koan? The keys which unlock the door of dis-ease, ‘it’. ‘It’ that was never lost and can never be found. ‘It’ neither near nor far. ‘It’ freely using the mind of comparison without dwelling in the results. ‘It’ is right here, right now. Intangibly, unintelligibly, immanently present. Not things as they were, should, or could be…things-as-it-is.
Freely moving in light and dark, ‘it’ is just…here.