The Answer in the Question

Continuing my reading of Rob Nairn's Living, Dreaming, Dying, I come across yet another interesting observation about the role of reflection in formulating questions. Nairn writes:

When we start to reflect, the mind engages the problematic issue as soon as effort is made to formulate a question...The act of formulating the question requires the mind to sift out all irrelevant and extraneous issues. In doing this it gradually exposes the main issue or issues, and then a conclusion isn't far away (p.215)

This process leads Nairn to evoke Krishnamurti's statement, "the answer lies in the question" (ibid). But as I am reading this, I am wondering, is it the wording of the question that matters, or the sense of urgency that propels the question itself? There is simply no method here to determine whether or not we have arrived at the "right" question, save for a vague sense of certainty. However, perhaps the point of all of this questioning is not to find the "right" question at all, but rather to generate the sufficient urgency and "doubt" sensation to undo a lot of our assumptions that can underlie our questions.
  Two processes come to mind here as I am reading this. One is "Socratic" method, a method found in many Socratic dialogues that is designed to force the participants to question the very foundations of what they think they know. The second process is the huatou method in Chan Buddhism, a method of raising an impossible question (such as "What is nothingness?") which is used to generate a doubt sensation and cause the mind to shatter its dualistic notions of self and other, as well as go beyond discursive thinking or reasoning when answering an existential dilemma. Both methods are not necessarily about raising reasonable answers, but focus on the ways our minds get ensnared in pat answers that only reinforce dualistic thought.
  Nairn proposes a very interesting methodology for engaging the deeper questions that don't have easy, factual answers. He notes: "We are learning to open up to the profound wisdom within us, wisdom that is usually ignored. The route involves presenting ourselves at the door, handing over the question, then sitting down to wait. Patience is needed." (p.216, italics mine). I find this technique to be an excellent reminder of how the rational mind often tries to jump in quickly to answer its own question, rather than giving time and space for a deeper wisdom to set in and provide an answer from a much deeper, less intervening space.
  Nairn provides a more detailed exposition of the method of engaging the mind in deeper questions, including a useful guided meditation which can be found on pages 217-219 of his text. What I will say here is that one of the advantages of this methodology is the way it expresses letting go of the striving to answer a question rather than let the question 'go'. I find this insight interesting because it reverses my usual tendency to blame myself when my problems chronically reappear as well as try to fix the problem prematurely before the main issues have had a chance to surface. The second advantage is that it actually improves one's tolerance for not having a clear answer , as well a the joy of sifting through possibilities. In the rush to solve one's problems, there is often little room for exploration and ambiguity. But what if the real changes one wants to have in life are not coming from rational concrete answers but actually come from cultivating the joy of uncertainty and tolerating an unreciprocated frustration/desire in not-knowing.

Nairn, Rob (2004). Thinking, Dreaming, Dying: Practical Wisdom from  the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Boston: Shambhala.