trust.

Why the hell not?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about trust. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as ‘firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.’

I think ‘belief’ is the operative word in that definition. Linguistically, ‘trust’ performs that most interesting transitive conversion — anthemeria — across the membrane between noun to verb, and belief is the catalyst that transforms trust alchemically from idea to action. Belief is what makes trust real.

What then, is the action of trust?

In point of fact, I have no real knowledge of what’s about to happen to me or around me; what the people I’m in relationship with might or might not do. I only know what I think might happen, or might not happen — what I expect to happen, or not.

The next moment is purely unknown to me. By definition, then, it’s the roll of a dice. I can’t know: it hasn’t happened yet. Science fiction in the purest sense.

Embracing that not knowing, then: when I trust, what am I believing in?

It isn’t trust if I somehow know the outcome — the dice aren’t weighted. It’s trust stepping into the unknown-stepping forward knowing things may not — will not — go the way I expect, or hope, or believe they should.

Trust in relationships, in situations, is stepping forward, embracing another person, embracing every situation, every breath, knowing only one thing with certainty: my trust may be broken.

I take that step, embrace that person, inhale that breath — in the full and complete knowledge that I am taking a risk. My heart may be broken. My life may crack apart and break open. After all, my certainties, the rock I think my life is founded on, isn’t really solid at all; everything is contingent and changeable. Radically fluid.

My universe might shatter around me. I step forward anyway — what choice do I have? This is, after all, the only life I have. Might as well live it fully.

What is it I’m risking by acting in trust? Only that living might drill home in some unpleasant — or surprisingly pleasant — way, its provisionality.

Zen Practice — at least for me, urgently — is the practice of waking up to life, embracing it unreservedly as it is right now: incomplete, flawed, damaged, difficult. Also joyful, exuberant, stunningly beautiful and deeply nuanced. Deeply risky: anything can happen. That, of course, doesn’t mean it’s an easy path. But it’s the path I have no choice but to walk.

Anything will happen. There is no right moment for practice except this moment. With all its imperfections. With all its risks. Trust in that. In awareness.

Trusting that my body will know which way to go; that my body will write the path as I walk it. Not having any idea where it leads, embracing this moment as what it is: my life itself. Stepping forward believing in this life, this awareness. This acceptance of the risk of trusting the moment. Falling, awake and aware, into the wisdom of now. Converting the idea — the noun – of trust, into the verb — the action — of trusting.

Ultimately, trust is a choice. The only choice worth making. Settling into that not knowing.

What is on the other side of Not Knowing? Infinite possibility. Infinite outcomes. In the certainty that sometimes, there will be pain and bitter disappointment, sometimes unexpected joy and boundless appreciation. If I have no boundaries on my experience, literally anything is possible. If I don’t cling to an outcome, I have an infinity of choices in just not knowing.

Zazen is cleanly and crisply waking up to simply that. In every cell of my body embracing the awareness that I have no control, no agency, over outcomes. I step forward anyway, knowing I very simply do. Not. Know.

Catalyzing idea into action. The agency I do have is trust.

Exploring the neatness, the molecular elegance, of trusting my embodied, physical, wisdom — embracing the risk of just this moment. Practice itself. Purely. Just, simply, this awareness of having no. fucking. idea.

Yes, sure — my heart may be broken. Will be broken. There are cracks in my universe — and there’s light pouring through the cracks. As Leonard Cohen, no stranger to faith, and the shifting sands of trust and risk, said: ‘that’s how the light gets in.’

I choose to trust. I believe in trust.

Anything is possible. So I’m choosing to be awake. Don’t want to miss anything, right?

Your comments are always welcomed and encouraged. We’d love to hear from you.

One more thing.

As a zen priest I’m a student of Tenshin Fletcher Roshi at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center. For more info on Yokoji, please visit www.zmc.org.

I’m also the caretaker of Warwick Zendo, a small in-person and online sangha based in the lower Hudson Valley of New York. if you’d like to check out our practice community, we’re at www.warwickzen.org.

If this post feels relevant to, or speaks to you, please feel free to share it.

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