Profound Connection in Letting Go of What We Expect
We often navigate our lives through a filter—of expectations, labels, and the ceaseless chatter of our minds. But what if the deepest truth of existence, and the most profound connection, lies in shedding those filters and meeting the world exactly as it arises?
Recently, during a time of deep retreat and introspection, a simple song lyric served as a profound anchor: “I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘how do you do.’ They’re really saying ‘I love you.’”
This isn’t just a sentimental thought; it’s a doorway into the heart of immediate experience. In a place of intimacy, a place where we touch into “don’t know mind,” where we meet our experience exactly as it arises, and we speak plainly. “How do you do” becomes a direct, unguarded declaration of love and presence.
The Naked Burst of Yellow Flowers
Walking through the rugged grounds here at Yokoji, I was struck by small bursts of yellow flowers. They pop out in groups of four, five, ten, amidst granite, holly, and oak. They were so happy looking, almost hilarious, pushing forth from the earth. My first impulse was the familiar, conditioned one: “I’ll take a picture, find their Latin name, and categorize them.”
But then, a moment of profound realization, thanks to the teachings I’ve been fortunate to receive. That impulse was an error.
These yellow flowers had burst forth from the cosmos completely naked, utterly themselves, totally fresh. My desire to name them, to understand them through a pre-existing label, was a desire to cut them down, plunge them into a bath of formaldehyde, dissect them, and put them in a museum called ‘Things I Know the Name Of’.
This “museum” is the conceptual mind, the place where we store labels and theories, often at the expense of direct experience. But this time, I caught myself.
“Franz,” I thought, “your Latin name for this flower is an insult. This flower has given herself utterly to you and is revealing the ever-fresh, completely now, totally precise arising of awareness. And it’s inviting you to do the same.”
These little yellow flowers became profound teachers, inviting me to simply stop, look, and breathe them in, without the mediation of thought or label.
Empty of Self, Full of Cosmos
This experience echoes an ancient teaching. In the Suttas, the Buddha encounters a sincere practitioner named Bahiyya. Bahiyya asks the Buddha for a brief teaching. After some prompting, the Buddha provides a complete teaching on emptiness:
“Bahiyya, train yourself thus: In the heard, let there only be what is heard. In the seen, only what is seen. In the smelled, only what is smelled. In the tasted, only what is tasted. In the felt, only what is felt. In the cognized, only what is cognized.”
And then the crucial part: If you practice this way, “you will not be there, you will not be here, and you will not be anywhere in between.”
When we hear “empty,” we often think “nothingness.” But that’s not what‘a on offer here: empty of self, and what belongs to a self means full of the universe. It’s not about rejecting the world, but about dropping the burden of self-centered perception.
The Buddha doesn’t say “what is heard doesn’t exist.” He invites us into an incredibly intimate way of being with the arising of phenomena: “Get out of the way! Let the entire cosmos interpenetrate you!”
The Power of “Immediate”
This brings us to a beautiful word: immediate. It means “not mediated.”
When I’m open and available, the “10,000 things” (the vastness of all experience) can come inside. There are no Latin names, no plans for taking clippings, no comparing one rock to another blocking the way. When I finally get out of the way, the entire cosmos reveals itself to be known.
And what happens then? The subject-object duality is gone. The yellow of the flower instantly interpenetrates my whole psychophysical being. It gets saved from the “museum” of my mind and gets to live in the eternal now—or perhaps, I get to save myself from that museum.
This is why we do “silly” things like eat a single raisin over ten minutes, sit with aching knees, or walk in circles. It’s why we gather in silent community. Because the whole cosmos is waiting to give itself, to invite us into this dance.
It’s a dance where the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night are simply there, asking nothing more than our full, unmediated presence. And when we truly meet it, we think to ourselves:
What a Wonderful World.
Where in your day—in an ordinary greeting, a familiar object, or a recurring thought—can you consciously pause and refuse the “museum” of your mind, choosing instead to let the immediate, unmediated presence of the cosmos rush in?
