The Dance of a Deeper Explanation: Notions and Particulars
Why Enlightenment Requires Letting Go of Certainty
What if I told you that almost everything you believe—every explanation you casually carry around in your head—is a notion and not a truth? And what if I added that the moment you promote one of those notions into a particular—into something you’re convinced is absolutely and indisputably true—you’ve already stepped outside the boundaries of Buddhist teaching?
That may sound dramatic. But Zen has always been dramatic in its own understated way.
Let’s begin lightly.
A notion is the mind’s sketch: a quick outline, a provisional explanation, a helpful gesture toward understanding. Notions behave like mental Post-it notes. “This probably makes sense… for now.” They’re flexible. Tentative. Humble. And most importantly—they’re inevitable. The mind produces notions the way a tree produces leaves: spontaneously, seasonally, and without asking for permission.
In other words, there is nothing wrong with having notions. You can’t not have them.
But particulars? Particulars are different.
A particular arises when the mind draws a line in the sand and says, “Yes. This explanation isn’t just helpful—it’s true. It’s solid. It’s final.” And that moment—right there—is where trouble begins.
Because in Zen, solidity is the ultimate illusion.
To believe in particulars is to accidentally introduce a metaphysics that Buddhism has spent 2,500 years patiently dissolving. Particulars depend on the idea that objects possess intrinsic characteristics—an essence, a core, an enduring nature that supports a permanent truth about them. If you believe that explanation X is the truth, you’re implicitly believing that the objects involved in explanation X are stable enough to justify that finality.
And Buddhism says: No they’re not.
Nothing has intrinsic nature. Nothing has a permanent core. Everything arises dependently, moment by moment, like ripples on water or patterns in wind. Declare a particular, and you’ve frozen the unfrozen. You’ve mistaken a swirl of conditions for a solid thing. You’ve turned a dance into a statue.
Zen calls this the fundamental error.
And it is precisely here that the deeper explanation begins to reveal itself: enlightenment is not about arriving at the right explanation. It is not about discovering the ultimate particular. Enlightenment is the recognition that notions are inevitable… and particulars are impossible.
Take a moment with that.
Notions arise because the mind is active, curious, interpretive. They are hypotheses, approximations, sketches—mental activities that help us move through the world. As long as we recognize them as notions, they do no harm. They simply reflect the mind’s natural talent for making sense of experience.
But particulars are what happen when the mind refuses impermanence. When it clings to one explanation as absolute. When it insists, “This circumstance has a final cause—and I know it.” In that instant, we fall back into believing in enduring objects, enduring selves, enduring essences.
And Zen gently places a hand on our shoulder and whispers, “Not so fast.”
The world is not built of particulars. It is built of conditions. And conditions do not explain reality—they are reality. Explanations are merely footprints on the path, marks left by our interpretive steps. They point, but they are never the territory.
So what, then, is enlightenment?
Enlightenment is the felt recognition that our explanations will always be notional—helpful, skillful, clarifying… but never final, never fixed, never particular. Enlightenment is seeing that the mind’s explanations are activities rather than truths. Movements rather than essences. Dynamic gestures rather than static structures.
In other words: enlightenment is what remains when the need for particulars disappears.
It is the clarity that arises when you stop trying to turn the dance into a diagram. When you stop insisting that your explanations capture reality instead of simply pointing toward it. When you allow notions to be what they are—provisional, fleeting, functional—and refuse to promote them into anything more.
The dance of a deeper explanation is not the dance that leads to certainty.
It’s the dance that leads to freedom.
And the moment you recognize this, the dance has already begun.
