If Huang Po is right that learning Zen “verbally and collecting words” does not constitute an understanding of Zen, then what does? To answer this, and to read Zen with the aim of true understanding, we will need to consider what understanding is, and develop our understanding of it. What is understanding, if not the kind of knowledge criticized above by Huang Po? For the purposes of this chapter, let us take “understanding” to be different than knowing, something more basic to human life. In contrast to “knowing,” let us consider understanding to be something that we are always doing in and among all our other activities. No matter what we are doing – eating, working, or thinking – we are always understanding. Understanding what? All of the components and dimensions presupposed by that particular activity. Understanding, in this sense, is our most practical attunement to the world, the way we are embedded in the world, oriented to it, and engaged with it. Although the particular shape of understanding differs from person to person and from culture to culture, it is always there as the essential background out of which we live and work.

A simple example may help to show the universality and character of understanding so conceived.