Not Knowing is Most Intimate

不知最親切 (fuchi mottomo shinsetsu): not knowing is most intimate. The exchange is in the life of the master Fayan (885–958), Hōgen in Japanese, in a Chan history of 1004. Sheltering from rain on pilgrimage, the young monk is asked by the master Dizang where he is going: on pilgrimage. And what is this pilgrimage business? I don't know. Not knowing is the closest of all, says Dizang, and at that the monk awakens. Hongzhi chose it as case 20 of his hundred koans in the twelfth century, and Wansong wrote the commentary around them in 1224, the book English calls the Book of Serenity. 親切 here carries its Chinese sense, close, intimate, right on the point, and Wansong's warning belongs beside the line: the not-knowing that is closest is the one reached by shedding everything, and a blank mind has missed it. The reading is fuchi mottomo shinsetsu, as every Japanese Zen text gives it.