The mind often acts like a child. It wants attention, to be the centre of attention and in our busy lives it’s easy to give in and let the mind have reigns.
And we’ve convinced ourselves that the mind is everything. Thinking is revered.
He’s a great thinker.
Our minds, our inventions, ideas and thoughts, our intelligence – they exist in our society as all important, the path to evolution and progress.
Only fools don’t think, yet in Zen it is the fools who are the masters.
The beginner in swordsmanship just parries the blow that is aimed at him. He does not think, and does not need to know. Nothing stops his flow of mind and its appropriate action. But as soon as he begins to know, he begins to think, and by the time he has thought what to do, his opponent’s sword has landed on his head, and neatly cut him in two. But when he knows all there is to know about the art of fencing, he will once more cease to think before acting, and be as “ignorant” as only the fool, the child and the truly spiritual man are satisfied to be.
In terms of the mind, “the ignorant have not yet awakened their intelligence and therefore they retain their naïveté. The wise have gone to the end of their intelligence, and therefore they no more resort to it. The two are in a way good neighbours. Only those of ‘half knowledge’ have their heads filled with discriminations.”
*Zen Buddhism Humphries
Zen musings 