UnMind 49. Trusting Mind Quartet 1: Trusting Your Mind

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A novel idea!
What if it’s untrustworthy?
Then what will you do?

In this next series of four UnMind podcasts, we will take a look at certain selected Chinese ancestors of Zen. In Japanese pronunciation, their names are Kanchi Sosan, Sekito Kisen, and Tozan Ryokai. One reason for focusing on these three is that written teachings attributed to them are featured as chants in the liturgy of Soto Zen. They lived about 100 years apart from each other, covering periods roughly in the 600s, 700s, and 800s, CE. I am fairly familiar with these works, having chanted them repeatedly and set them to music. And, of course, the lineage in China is so replete with monsters of Zen, such as Huineng, or Eno, Baso, Rinzai, et cetera, that we could never do them justice.

This quartet will complete the first year’s worth of 52 weekly podcasts, opening the door to focus on more timely and topical subjects. If you have any suggestions for talks on topics you would like to hear, please let us know.

Beginning with Sosan’s Hsinhsinming — “Faith…” or “Trust in Mind” — the longest of the three liturgical poems, we hear resonances of Taoism toward the end, one of the formative influences on the evolution of Zen, as it made its way east through China. The poem begins simply enough:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

A brief note on translation may be appropriate here. These are from the Japanese Soto-shu consensus publications, and are attributed to the original translators. I have noticed that in the two editions I have seen over the years, some of the English sources were changed. I suggest that you compare various translations in order to gain a more well-rounded idea of what the verses are pointing at, but we will not have time or space to consider more than one in this podcast. We will have to content ourselves with a brief commentary, in order to unpack Hsinshinming over two segments, this and the next.

The first line above seems simple and self-explanatory enough. Depending on what is meant by “preferences.” I suspect that the great sage does not mean choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The mention of both love and hate gives us a clue, but are unfortunately emotion-laden terms in our vernacular. Attachment and aversion may be the more neutral choice. So the smallest distinction setting heaven and earth apart, is akin to the fall from grace, eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Good and evil of course may be realistic judgments of the intentions and behavior of some human beings, and even applicable to our own actions in our weaker moments. But beyond the human species, it is problematic to attribute such traits to Nature. Our ignorance is the root cause of most, or all, of the trouble in the world. Even the most tragic natural disaster is exacerbated by human judgment calls based on love and hate, greed, anger and delusion, and the rest.

If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

You may have noted that I have segmented the text into sections that seem coherent, to me. I am sure the author did the same, but it may have been lost in translation, or in laying out the printed page. Sometimes there seems no logical connection flowing from one to the next. This, the second stanza, sets up seeing the truth, in distinction to Master Dogen’s hearing the true Dharma, in his famous Vow. Seeing, here, is not limited to the visual realm but grasping the truth, as in “I see what you mean.” Hearing is traditionally considered the more intuitive way of knowing, seeing the more rational. “Seeing with the ears” and “hearing with the eyes” is a traditional way of expressing Zen’s pointing at the merging of the senses in non-duality. Zen is sometimes defined as the pursuit of the understanding of meaning. The original mind is at peace with that.

The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

Space in these days was considered one of the fundamental elements, along with the fab four, as well as consciousness. Perfection here is not a human judgment but a take-it-or-leave-it declaration of the absolute balance of forces in the universe and in nature. Human judgment, interpreting things from the perspective of self-striving, distorts our view, as is the reflection of the moon in roiling waters. Oneness here is not meant to oppose duality, but to encompass it in a greater unity. Later we will see that the great sage warns us against reifying oneness.

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other, you will never know Oneness. Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity assertion and denial.

Here is the catch-22 of practice. Doing anything may seem to get in the way of non-doing. If we try to empty the mind of thoughts, that too is thinking. Again, oneness is not to be conceived as something, but the absence of preferences and opposing activity to passivity. The two are mutually defining. The natural vacillation of the mind swings from one to the other, like a pendulum that may break its mount. We are all bipolar. The apparent conflict between activity and passivity becomes mental when it leaks over into expression, as assertion and/or denial. Here there is no break in flow to the next stanza.

To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it
the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

So both denying and asserting our concept of dualistic reality versus nondual emptiness is in error. This leaks out, like water from a leaky bucket, when we try to talk our way to understanding. Not that some exchange of dharma dialog is not useful. The ancients, here present as Kanchi Sosan, were real talkers. If we listen not to their words, but to what they are pointing at, we will not be confused.

To return to the root is to find the meaning but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance.

Another nice pair of oppositions, appearances versus the root and source, where we find the meaning. This inflection point in our awareness is variously represented in somewhat descriptive language, such as “the moment of inner enlightenment.” Language itself is dualistic, so we have to take the “inner” with a grain of salt, as Zen recognizes no such separation of inner and outer. But we can quibble this to death. The important point is that the masters assure us there is a going beyond such seeming dichotomies. As Matsuoka Roshi used to say, there is no dichotomy in Zen. Which itself seems a dichotomy. The throwaway comment at the end is startling in its implications: Change is not real. How’s that for a dichotomy? What kind of ignorance sees change where fundamentally there is none?

Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.
Do not remain in the dualistic state;
avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace of this and that,
of right and wrong,
the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.

Fortunately the kind teacher relieves us of our burden: We can put down this futile search for the truth. When someone would make an assertion about the truth of Zen, while having tea with Matsuoka Roshi after the meditation service, he would lean over and say, “That’s just your opinion!” The “just” is the operative word here. Your opinion, even about your opinions, is just that — only an opinion. We endlessly pursue our own opinions down every blind alley, cul-de-sac, and rabbit-hole. This feverish activity is what disturbs the mind’s essential peace and results in terminal confusion.

Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One. When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way nothing in the world can offend; and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.

So now, Master Sosan begins backing us away from our attachment to the idea of oneness, or a fundamental unity that we like to feel is underlying all the duality. This is the New Age version of insight. All is one, right? Well, no. This represents yet another evasive maneuver, one aimed at dodging the sheer multiplicity and unpredictability of the many beings, often raising conflict in competing with each other. We are offended by our inability to comprehend this higher level of order, called chaos. But if and when we come to terms with it as it is, not as we might like it, the old man assures us that we see the existence of apparent conflict and dichotomies in a new way. Trust the old man. He is your mind.

When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes;
and when the mind vanishes objects vanish. Things are objects because there is a subject or mind and the mind is a subject because there are objects.

The “things” in question exist only in your mind, at least in the way you think they do. They may indeed exist, but not as you think. Even your so-called “mind” does not exist the way you may think it does. If and when we are able to give up our predilection to choose between our opinion and that of a master, for example, that very lack of self-centered discrimination opens the door to a new mind, which is really the same old, original mind we have had all along. Everything old is new again. Then Master Sosan launches into this incredibly incisive, frontal attack on your frontal lobe. Not to mention the parietals. The objects that you think exist, exist because you think they do. Thinking they exist results from the fact that they do exist, but not as you think they do. When you see through objects as self-existent entities, that they are really works-in-progress, then the subject that thinks it sees them is also seen as non-existent in the same way. Nothing actually vanishes; it was never there to begin with. When “mind and object merge and go beyond enlightenment” (thank you, Dogen), it occurs in stillness. In this stillness neither subject nor object has yet arisen. It’s your happy place. You want to go to there.

Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world.

So here is a mention of relativity from over 1,500 years ago. Don’t quibble with the math. Relativity in the modern sense also includes the observer. I live in my spacetime and you live in yours. Never the twain shall meet. To understand the relativity of these two fundamental functions of the mind is to understand the relativity of all so-called binaries. Subject begets object; object begets subject. Form implies emptiness; emptiness is innately form. Never the twain shall separate. In Buckminster Fuller-speak, they are “always and only co-existent.” From the overview of universal emptiness, subject and object are co-arisen, and thereby indistinguishable. There is no head on top of this head. The whole world is your whole world, but you cannot get mine and I cannot get yours.

If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine, you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion. To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult. But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute; the faster they hurry, the slower they go.

Now the wily old fox is turning our attention from the personal sphere of untrammeled experience to the dismal realm of social status. Coarse and fine, however, applies to direct awareness as well as to choices in the material world of hair shirts versus haute couture. Master Dogen speaks of entering the “fine or subtle mind of nirvana.” Prejudice and opinion are temptations, not destiny. They are limited views, based on self-referential and defensive survival mode. This is not your fault. It is lizard-brain stuff. But we do not have to live in the brain stem. We can resolutely climb up into the outer cortex. If we slow down enough, we can live in the present moment. It is really all the time we have. In it, the “eternal moment,” as Matsuoka Roshi defined it, we have all the time there is.