When I was a kid, it was the beginning of the Space Age. Each rocket launch was televised live on all the TV networks, and the countdown would fill our hearts with an intoxicating mixture of joy and excitement. Perhaps—for the adults who were watching—there was some dread mixed in. They understood, however vaguely, that those rockets were basically bombs, inherently dangerous. Yet there was none of that for us kids. We were alive with the wonder of it all.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…”
The countdown never concluded with “zero,” but rather with the magic words “Liftoff!” The decoupling from earth and all its worries, liftoff was the entry into the vastness of space—all that glorious emptiness. That was what “zero”—a word left unspoken—really meant. Freedom. No boundaries. Beyond even the attachment of gravity.
It would be many years before I returned to the implicit magic of getting down to zero, launching into the unknown and the unknowable. And the experience would come not through rocket wizardry and space travel, but by sitting silently in place without moving.
“There’s just this moment, and all one needs to do is get used to it.”
Zero is the port of entry into Zen. This is demonstrated by the many metaphors, synonyms, stories, and paraphrases of zero that we find in Zen literature. Even the symbol of emptiness, the enso, looks like a zero.
In the Rinzai Zen lineage in which I was trained, monks are introduced to Zen by tackling a koan collection called The Gateless Gate. A funny title—one can almost hear its author, Mumon Ekai, laughing out loud: “Gate? What gate? No gate, no barrier. Nothing to keep you from it!”
The first koan in the collection, “Joshu’s Mu,” is short and direct: A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have buddhanature or not?” Joshu answered, “Mu (No).”
One of the foundational teachings of Buddhism is that all sentient beings have buddhanature, but Joshu cuts that all off. He might as well be saying, “No. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. None of your business.” And students bash their heads against the wall of that “mu” until they find the wall has disappeared along with all the blather about buddhanature.
In another branch of Rinzai Zen, koan study begins with Hakuin Ekaku’s famous “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Burrow all the way into this soundless sound and you cannot help but realize what “zero” means.
In the Soto Zen lineage, the experience of getting to zero is expressed in the beautiful, mysterious words of Dogen Kigen: “To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly express the ungraspable trace of realization.”
“To study the Buddha way” can mean many different things: reading books written by Buddhist teachers, talking to friends who are on the Buddhist path, performing acts of charity, working in the community (Buddhist or other). But in Zen, Dogen tells us, it means “to study the self.” And the principal method of studying the self, in the Zen tradition, is to do zazen, seated meditation.
Zazen has some similarities to the countdown preceding liftoff. In fact, the practice taught to most beginners, and used even by many advanced practitioners as the preferred method of settling the mind, is counting the breath. And although breath-counting usually goes from one to ten rather than ten to zero, the aim is the same: getting down to zero. In Zen, it’s a process of allowing thoughts of past and future, good and bad, and all other self-referential processes to wind down and fall away. This shedding of the mental habit of duality is by no means unique to Zen, though the degree to which it’s emphasized as the central activity of the path may be.
In the Christian tradition, the same process has been called kenosis, self-emptying. Once the countdown is complete, there’s no East or West, no doctrine or dogma, no past failures or future plans, no youth or old age, no black or white. There’s nothing to hold on to and no one to do the holding. Just the naked self, which is no self.
Of course, stripping down to “the naked self” is generally far more arduous than counting down from ten. For some people, the experience may be akin to “holding on for dear life,” and the dharma countdown from ten to zero takes not ten seconds but an indeterminate time dictated by our karma, which is the Buddhist way of saying our psychology and physiology, our conditions and circumstances. It may take ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten years, or ten lifetimes, during which we may find ourselves feeling lost and confused.
And yet, from the nonrelative, absolute point of view—the divine perspective—there’s nothing happening at all. There’s just this moment, and all one needs to do is get used to it. In fact, the Tibetan word for “practice,” ghom, sometimes translated as “to become familiar with the mind,” has also been translated as “getting used to it”—the “it” in this translation referring to the ultimate unity of the mind and that which is perceived by the mind. “Getting used to it” is a process marked by neither going forward nor going back, neither taking prisoners nor falling prisoner, neither holding on nor giving up. Just getting used to being the naked self. At that point, countdown, liftoff, and vast space are indistinguishable: They are all just “it.”
The arduous journey of “getting used to it” is illustrated by Case 41 of The Gateless Gate, which tells the story of how a monk named Eka Taiso had studied the dharma for many years, but without finding peace of mind. So, he sought out Bodhidharma, the founder of Chinese Zen, and cried out that his mind had no peace.
“Bring your mind here, and I will pacify it for you,” Bodhidharma told him.
“I’ve searched for my mind,” said Eka, “and I cannot take hold of it.”
With that, Bodhidharma concluded: “Now your mind is pacified.”
When we search for our mind and cannot take hold of it—when we’ve studied the self and can find no self—it’s a perilous moment, teetering between liberation and despair. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to call this the moment we realize we’re falling from an airplane without a parachute—the ultimate bad news. But he encouraged all of us fellow fallers to realize the ultimate good news: There’s no ground below. Just the freedom of falling, or flying, if you prefer. That’s the real meaning of Bodhidharma’s reply, “Now your mind is pacified.” In other words, “Your struggles are at an end, if you only allow them to be.” And at that moment, Eka realized the peace of no-self, the peace of no-mind.This is the meaning of getting down to zero: the body and mind of self and the body and mind of others drop off. From the conventional perspective, this might take a long time, requiring years of listening with all one’s heart and soul for the sound of one hand. However, from an absolute perspective, it happens right now—always right now. Zero is not even a breath away. It’s just this moment. And even to say “this moment” is too much. It’s just this. In the words of Eka’s heir, Sosan Ganchi: “The way is perfect, like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.… Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.”
