Sitting with Uncertainty

We humans have an addiction — to certainty.
We want answers. We want resolution. We want to know what’s coming next and that we’re doing it right.

When life throws us a curveball, the not-knowing can feel unbearable. That uneasy, chest-tightening panic that shows up when you don’t have the answer — that’s withdrawal from certainty. So we rush toward whatever gives us relief: quick conclusions, premature decisions, even bad explanations.

We crave certainty and control more than we crave truth. It’s not that we need to be right — it’s that we need to feel safe. Knowing, or at least thinking we know, gives the illusion of safety. Not knowing feels like free fall.

It’s why we get angry when someone cuts us off in traffic — our mind would rather invent a story about the other driver’s motives than sit with the ambiguity of I don’t know why that happened. But life rarely gives us neat reasons. The more we resist that, the smaller and more rigid we become.

The Practice of “Don’t-Know Mind”

There’s another way to live — one that doesn’t depend on having everything figured out.
Zen calls it beginner’s mind or don’t-know mind: a posture of openness, curiosity instead of control.

And this is where something ancient and surprisingly relevant enters — the tradition of Zen kōans.

Kōans aren’t riddles or moral parables with clever answers. They’re paradoxes meant to interrupt our usual way of thinking — to jam the gears of logic so another kind of knowing can surface, one that’s less intellectual and more direct, experiential, alive.

They train us to stay open inside confusion — to sit in the middle of uncertainty without trying to escape it.

The Story of Chiyono’s Pail

There’s an old Zen story about a nun named Chiyono, who studied under the Zen master Bukko. Despite years of dedicated practice, she felt no closer to awakening.

One night, she walked under the moonlight carrying water in an old bamboo pail. The bamboo strip holding it together finally gave way — the bottom fell out, the water spilled, and the reflection of the moon disappeared. In that moment, something shifted in her awareness.

-The Symbolism

The pail represents the fragile, impermanent nature of the self — the mental container we use to hold our thoughts, beliefs, and identity. The moon’s reflection symbolizes how we mistake perception for truth, seeing life through the distorted surface of our own mind. When the pail breaks, that illusion collapses; the ego lets go, and what’s real can finally be seen.

-The Message

Chiyono’s insight didn’t come from effort or mastery. It came from collapse — from the moment she stopped holding everything together. When the structure broke, the illusion shattered, and she saw things as they were.

Enlightenment, in this sense, isn’t about gaining something new. It’s about losing what keeps us from seeing what’s already there.

And in our own lives, clarity often comes only after something breaks — a plan, a belief, a sense of who we thought we were.

When the Bottom Falls Out

As some readers know, my own “bottom falls out” moment came about 6 years ago, when I was still working in law enforcement — and only one month sober after a fifteen-year battle with addiction. I went from being a respected police sergeant to being immediately demoted during an internal affairs investigation for alleged gross misconduct.

There was no due process, no way to defend myself, and every attempt to question or clarify the accusations only brought further discipline in my file. Almost overnight, I was reassigned to a humiliating post — driving the department’s oldest patrol car, parked at an intersection near a school and tasked with counting whether kids wore bicycle helmets.

Then came the public fallout: at least half a dozen newspaper articles, loosely based on fact but riddled with distortions, written to provoke outrage and capture attention. I had no way to respond or correct the record. My reputation and identity unraveled in full view of the community I had once served.

It all ended with a forced resignation. And with that, everything I had built — my career, my identity, my illusion of control collapsed. The ego that had run on discipline, image, and “do-it-myself-ism” had nothing left to stand on.

That was my bamboo-pail moment. The bottom had fallen out — fully sober, and feeling every bit of it.

What followed wasn’t enlightenment; it was disorientation, shame, and loss. But in that empty space, something unexpected began to take shape. The collapse became a kind of purification. I started rebuilding from the inside out, stripped of the armor I’d spent years constructing. That process — brutal, humbling, and slow — became the foundation of the work I now do in private practice, helping others navigate their own moments of groundlessness and reinvention.

Meaning, Faith, and Amor Fati

For many people, that’s where trust in a higher power begins to take shape — however they define it. Some call it God, others fate, the universe, or simply life itself.

For me, it’s amor fati — love of fate.
The belief that this moment, even this one, is exactly as it’s meant to be. Nothing is happening by mistake. I don’t always understand it at the time, but somewhere down the road, meaning usually comes into focus — often when I’m not expecting it. The answers seem to arrive when I stop searching for them and start simply being in the journey itself.

And if belief in a Higher Power doesn’t resonate for you, that’s okay too. Meaning doesn’t require theology. It can come from the willingness to stop resisting life as it is — to trust that you can stand inside the mystery without needing it to explain itself.

Practicing It in Daily Life

Next time you feel that tightening — the urge to fix, explain, or control — pause.
Name it: there’s that craving for certainty again.

Then stay with the question.
Let it confuse you.

Let it soften you.

See what happens when you stop fighting the not-knowing.

That’s the quiet training beneath every kōan and every broken pail:
learning to keep walking when you can’t see the path ahead.

No more water in the pail.
No more moon in the water.
And maybe, finally, something real begins.