Enlightenment is not a silent mind,
but one that is unmoving
There is a widespread myth in some corners of spiritual
philosophy, that all that is needed to become awakened or enlightened, is a “silent
mind.” Usually, silent mind is not defined, therefore one assumes that “silent”
implies there is no evidence of internal “voices” or self-talk.
Other interpretations include having a mind that is void of
any cognitive activity at all, including imaging, hearing, thinking, planning,
speculating, analyzing, etc., but such a definition would not differentiate
between someone who is dead or asleep.
In fact, well-practiced meditators easily develop access to
what I call the void, or repeated experiences of complete emptiness, which is
the cessation of all active or passive mentation, which is experienced as a
wide-open expanse inside the head extending outward into the physical body and surrounding
environment. In this state there is no cognition we usually associate with the
brain at all, such as dreaming, thinking, analysis, etc. The center of
consciousness appears to drop from the brain area downwards into the body or
more specifically the gut or heart level.
This state which may be called a silent mind, is
characterized by what I would call an ultra-clarity of consciousness wherein
the senses seem to be performing at a heightened level but without the
distraction of any thoughts or cognitive ability that separates the meditator
from the phenomena being perceived. That is, it appears the meditator, although
he cannot say anything while this process is happening, that there is no longer
any separation between the meditator as subject, and what is experienced as
phenomena or objects. There is no longer an external objective world. There is
just one consciousness with no “inner” and no “outer” world. There is just
unity consciousness. But this thought would never cross the mind of someone in
that state. There is no room for words or summarization of what the state means
while one is in that state. It is only afterwards that you can speak about the
experience.
This is what I assume that Zen master Seung Sahn means by
keeping a clear mind, a mind with no thoughts, and by being dumb as a rock,
because in this state I speak of, thought processes are not possible, so in a
sense, you are very dumb, unable to formulate thoughts or deductions.
But this is a mistake. This type of silent mind is
temporary, and when ended, and the mind returns, the mind has just as much hold
over you as it had before you entered the special state. The state of crystal
clear mind, of emptiness, of the great void, is always temporary, and when the
mind returns, one has not changed at all. The personality has not changed, ways
of thinking have not changed, the only thing that seems to happen is become
addicted to having that crystal-clear silent mind.
I think a state described by several ancient Zen Masters by
the two words “Unmoving Mind” is closer to what these Zen masters and many
other spiritual teachers mean by awakening or enlightenment.
This state is characterized by a total indifference to what
the mind is doing or saying. That is, the individual goes about the tasks of
everyday life or whatever concerns him or her in what could be called a
mindless way. By that I mean the activities of the mind do not “catch” the
person’s attention. The mind keeps talking, planning, speculating, stating its
wants, needs, but the individual pays no attention to the internal passing show
of words, images, and even emotions. To him or her, they are meaningless
distractions, while the ordinary person is entirely captured by the mind’s
mentations.
Contrary to what many spiritual people think, emotions are
more fundamental to the individual than is thinking. Some spiritual teachers
say that all emotions are caused by thinking, by thoughts, such as judgments or
are triggered by memories. This is not my experience. My experience is that
emotions, or the experience of emotions, are centered deeper in the body and
thoughts which are almost universally perceived as being somewhere near the
head or inside the head. Emotions when carefully perceived are found to be
centered in the area of the heart.
When one is in a state of the Unmoving Mind, even emotions
can come and go without catching the individual’s attention, and can pass
easily as a thought out of the mind and one’s experience of their bodies.
However, it is my experience that becoming unattached to emotions is harder to
come by than becoming detached from thoughts and imaging.
In this Unmoving Mind, one is certainly not dead but totally
alive and pretty well focused on whatever tasks the person is doing without the
distraction of dozens or hundreds of thoughts or emotions. It is not like the
crystal-clear state of the silent mind, but has some of the same qualities of
emptiness to it, in the sense that one’s consciousness is more global and also
not distracted by thoughts one could say it does not move under the influence
of thoughts or emotions, yet one is not
dull or slow minded at all. It is just that one’s awareness is more expansive
and not razor focused on what the mind or heart is saying from moment to
moment. The individual, whoever that central executive may be, whether called
soul, Atman, Brahman, or I, if no longer considers the spinning mind or
emotions to be important enough to take note of. But that unknown self can
still actively use the mind and feel emotions when they become important to any
given task at hand. One can go from no minded nailing two boards together, to a
very thoughtful and careful reading of blueprints followed by careful
calculations as to what is to be done with the materials at hand to fulfill the
blueprint.
It is this Unmoving Mind that I believe is king, not the
silent mind of crystal clarity that is temporary. The Unmoving Mind eventually
becomes permanent after one sees through the futility of paying attention to
it. The endless self-talk judgments, the daydreaming, and all the other kind of
random mentation that takes place constantly, is seen to have no import, and
that mentation should only be used or followed when necessary to complete a
task or function.
This Unmoving Mind is not obtained as a result of meditation
at all, but rather by “seeing through” the meaningless fantasy process of
random mentation to the point that it is ignored. In this sense, the Unmoving
Mind is a result of wisdom, not of meditation, concentration or focusing.
It comes through a process by which you see that the mind is
useless, generating stories about what may be, what should be, or may have
been. These are all wild and random speculations we are always doing to no
avail because usually they are totally without merit or accuracy. The mind
spins and we think what it is saying is important. But it is not. The central
executive, Atman, realizes that speculations about the external world or one’s
own place in that world is utter fantasy, utterly useless, just a playing in
the sandbox while the real world goes by. That real world is the experience of
the world and ourselves that is constantly taking place underneath the realm of
thought and mentation.
Yet for centuries we see people trying to meditate and encountering
difficulties of quieting or stilling the mind. They struggle with the mind to
silence it. They feel frustrated and angry because they cannot seem to still
the mind, when stilling the mind only leads to that special clear mind state,
but not to the Unmoving Mind, which results from understanding that most of the
mind’s activities are merely a secondary useless game which the mind takes
seriously.
