Know the Beginning

There is an extreme point to knowledge. Some embrace the idea that before the beginning there was nothing. This was the extreme point of their knowledge. Like the coming of summer, nothing could be added to it.

Some hold that before the beginning there were existences, considering life as a gradual perishing and death as a return to the original state. There they stopped making a distinction between life and death. Some hold that in the beginning there was nothing, after a while, there was life, after a time life was succeeded by death. They look at heaven and earth as a wheel constantly turning, the seasons revolving around it all.

The wise speak of that which is external to them. With all their wisdom they are always laying plans. They are not aware of the mystery. They multiply their likes and their dislikes. They try and get others to adopt them as their model. They consider their actions as a mark of their wisdom. They consider non-action as a mark of stupidity. In their wisdom, they fail to see it is only by taking substance as an emblem of the immaterial that an arrival at the resolution of non-action is reached.

I hold that we come forth without roots. We enter the world by no aperture. We have real existence but this has nothing to do with place, such as our relation to space. We have continuance but it has nothing to do with beginnings or ends, such as our relation to time. The door of the mystery is non-existence. All things come from non-existence.

Non-existence is the same as not existing.

This is the secret of the ages.

Many years ago I worked at a factory. We manufactured precision parts for automobiles. These parts were made from plastic, from what we called engineered resins. This resin was first heated and then injected into steel molds. Often times the molds that we used to manufacture these parts were heated as well to facilitate the flow of the plastic thereby eliminating voids in the plastic that might otherwise weaken the parts.

Though I was at that time in charge of the whole factory I had started working there as a technician, a person who oversaw the operation of a small group of machines. I developed a habit while I walked down the production line of putting my hand upon each mold to check if it was heating properly. Often times the mold heaters would stop operating and unless the technician caught it a whole shift full of faulty parts might be manufactured. By knowing the beginning the end is better achieved.

Most all the molds we used operated on water. They could only get so hot, perhaps a hundred fifty degrees. So my hand wasn’t burned but neither could I hold it there but for a split second. After I had gone up into the front office I still walked through the shop checking the molds for proper operating temperatures by touching them. More than once I discovered a mold not operating properly so I would soundly chastise the technician in charge. In those days I did not understand that to cage a person by anything other than what they enjoyed would only result in failure.

One day I reached out to touch a mold. It was so hot it literally burned the hair off the back of my fingers. My arm jerked away automatically without any thought on my part. It was only after I realized I was burned that I understood why my arm had jerked away. In the beginning, I had no realization why, only what I called a dim apprehension of I did not know what. The pain came later so it could not have been why I pulled my arm back so suddenly.

That particular mold, I learned later, was not heated with water but with oil; so its operating temperature was six hundred degrees instead of the temperature of hot water that I had expected. Of course, I knew we had such molds in operation but I had never touched one before nor did I realize how hot six hundred degrees actually felt.

That day I learned about the mystery that comes before experience. The experience of touching that extremely hot mold was pure and unadulterated. I realize now that before the experience is the mystery which I never think about it. Though it is there I do not feel it. I only feel it afterwards, when the pain comes and the oaths are formed.

I sense it is here but I cannot see it. The mystery has no form. When I listen there is no sound. The mystery is beyond hearing. I try to hold onto the mystery but my hand closes on nothing. These three are indefinable so they join with the one.

I look down on it but there is no light to see. From below it is not dark. Experience is an unbroken thread running from here to beyond description. It is the form of the formless, the image of nothingness. I call it indefinable, beyond insight, but it has no name.

When I stand before experience I can see no beginning.

When I follow it I can discern no end.

So I stay in the moment and move with the present.

Knowing the beginning is the essence of the mystery.