Mind Shifts
Change is something we experience every day, be it tiny or huge. Look above and pay attention to the sky, and the next time you see the same sky, say, five minutes later, you’ll notice the difference.
This is an ordinary sort of change, but what if someone said “mind changes” or “mind shifts?” Would you have any idea whatsoever about what that person meant? It sounds so conceptually advanced that you may well go out of your “mind.” Then you’ll most certainly start wondering, “What’s mind, first of all?”
Descartes’ dualistic view of body and mind seems to have become a norm to folks of our day, and as soon as we hear the word “mind”, the term “body” pops up in a quasi-automatic manner. But here it goes: “Mind shifts its shape according to myriad of situations; the change is indeed sublime.” To say the very least, “mind” here seems to be a bit different to what we think mind to be (this, by the way, I’ve quoted from a famous Zen saying).
The quote can readily be converted into a Koan: “"What is mind?” A lot of people may associate mind with thoughts, so let’s take a look at what thoughts are. Here’s another Zen phrase, which was coined by Dogen: “Think of no-thinking.” He included this phrase as an instruction for how to sit Zen meditation (zazen), relating it to thoughts that pop up during the sit.
How do you deal with, or examine thoughts? Just like how it is said in a typical mindfulness instruction, begin by observing the thoughts without any judgment on their contents. There is one additional tip for doing it: observe them as if they were the “sixth sense” (I’m not talking about that famous movie that starred a child prodigy), namely, as something being in the same category as sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
When you notice you haven’t been attentive, never mind; the moment you notice that, you’re already attentive. Resume your observation, and as you continue, something extraordinary is happening, where you aren’t observing the thoughts anymore, and there are only thoughts (“think of no thinking”). There is no subject observing it, which you can’t simply be aware, but rather notice a millisecond after that has already happened.
This is when thoughts are YOU, constantly appearing and disappearing, changing its form. Would this be what the Zen saying quoted at the beginning of this post is suggesting? This can be neither confirmed or negated unless we examine it ourselves, as many of the older posts in this blog already point out. But still, lots of testimonials by past Zen masters states that you will grasp it, however many lifetimes it would take, as long as you don’t give up. It’s up to you whether you give it a sincere try or not.