Nowness
Cuca Kosen Montecel. Roshi
The global pandemic seems to highlight the uncertainty of our lives. Will we be okay? Will our children and our loved ones be okay? Will vaccines finally allow us to live somewhat normally. When? How? Many questions, few answers.
The Covid pandemic has infected over 200 million people across the globe, and has killed over four million persons of all ages and genders and colors and nationalities, and the stark inequalities of race and of class continue to be manifested in lives lost. The severity and high transmission rates of the Covid Delta variant have upended the plans that folk were making for a wishful return to normalcy. Positions about mass mandates and vaccine mandates continue to divide, especially the United States. Covid infections are now affecting more and more of the young and the unvaccinated. The only certainty seems to be uncertainty. How does our Zen practice support us in moving beyond being onlookers of our own uncertain lives? How might we practice Zen in these times of extreme uncertainty?
I think one way to practice under this kind of uncertainty is to start precisely where you are and gently get rid of the story line. Move into the experience and stay in the present moment. In a wonderful book titled Comfortable with Uncertainty, the Tibetan nun Pema Chodron shares the following in a segment which she calls Nowness.
There once was a lady who was arrogant and proud, determined to attain enlightenment. She asked all the authorities how to go about it. She was told, “If you climb to the top of this very high mountain, you will find a cave there. Sitting inside that cave is a wise old woman. She will tell you.” The lady endured great hardships and found the cave. Sure enough sitting there was a gentle spiritual old woman in white clothing who smiled beatifically. Overcome with awe and respect the lady prostrated herself at her feet and said, “I want enlightenment, show me how.” The wise woman looked at her and asked sweetly, “Are you sure you want to attain enlightenment?” The woman said, “Of course I’m sure.” Whereupon the smiling woman turned into a demon, stood up brandishing a big stick and chased her saying, “Now, now, now.” Forever after, that lady could never escape the demon always saying “Now.”
Be careful what you wish for, huh? So that’s the key to being enlightened, now. That’s the key for being comfortable with uncertainty, now. Zazen intends us to be awake and alive and fully curious about now. Fully engaged. The inbreath is now. The outbreath is now. Letting go of our fantasies is now. Letting go of our thoughts is now. Even our fantasies and thoughts are now. Sitting shikantaza is now. Sitting with koans is now. Whatever you are doing, sitting, walking, standing or lying down you are doing it now.
One other thing. The opposite of uncertainty is not certainty. Stephen Batchelor reminds us that the problem with certainty is that it is static, it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Does that mean we should want uncertainty? I don’t think so. While uncertainty is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks, my sense is that what we seek is beyond opposites, beyond good and bad, beyond happy and sad, beyond dualities into wholeness and unity. We need not want or not want uncertainty. Uncertainty is. Kind of like suffering. Suffering exists and the Buddha tells us there is a way out of it. Beyond certainty or uncertainty, I believe what unfolds is a radical acceptance. Our Zen, our life, our practice becomes a yes to life as it is. Not as we think it is. Not as we want it to be, if people or our partner or our children would only be better and kinder. Our Zen, our life, our practice becomes a yes to life as it is, not as it will be when things become more certain. Not as it will be when we are more mature or wiser or more compassionate or more serene or more anything. Yes to life as it is. Radical acceptance beyond certainty and uncertainty, now.
Zen Master Seng-Ts’An, the third patriarch of Zen, lived in the seventh century and taught that the true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection. Master Seng-Ts’An left us the priceless Hsin Hsin Ming which we sometimes chant, Affirming Faith in Mind. It ends:
One thing is all, all things are one—
Know this and all’s whole and complete.When faith and mind are not separate
and not separate are mind and faith
this is beyond all words, all thoughts.For here there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.1
Roshi Cuca Kosen Montecel, Ph.D., passed from this life last year, 2025. She was the founder and guiding teacher at Living Water Zen. She is Mexican American and received dharma transmission in 2015 from Roshi Kennedy and inka in December 2020. Roshi Cuca was President Emerita of the Intercultural Development Research Association. She had a doctorate in urban education and worked to assure educational opportunity for all children. She lived in San Antonio, Texas.
Before she died, she recorded a conversation with her son Xavier about what Zen meant to her. It can be found here.
1 T’san, S.; Blyth, R.H. (trans.) (1960). Hsin Hsin Ming. Zen and Zen Classics, vol. 1. Japan: Hokuseido Press