The immovable mind

Ken: Today we turn to the matter of action. In case any of you have been following the progression of this retreat, it’s basically going from stillness to action. Certainly in the Taoist and the Buddhist traditions, the view is that action arises from stillness or, if you want to be mystical about it, action is stillness in motion. That’s probably not too bad. So we’ve been talking about placing the mind nowhere, and the mind that doesn’t stop. The result of this … let’s back up a second.

One of the five jhana Buddhas is called in Sanskrit Akshobya, which is variously translated as unperturbable, unshakable, it could also be translated as immovable. Now when we hear those words, we generally think of something very solid, massive; you can’t move it, can’t shake it. This is a fairly serious misunderstanding, because if we take that attitude into our practice, the tendency will be to become very rigid. We will try to be immovable by resisting things.

After the first three year retreat, I went to London. We had two months, and I went to England to get a bunch of medical work done, because my relatives in England were all doctors and dentists, very convenient. But it so happened that I arrived in London at exactly the same time that His Holiness the 16th Karmapa was there. So I got all embroiled in that circus, a whole bunch of stuff that goes on with that. But it gave me the occasion to meet a woman, who has since died, but who’s a very, very good translator at a center in England.

And since I was among the first group of Westerners to complete a three-year retreat, there was some curiosity. And this was a person who had studied the Buddhist texts very thoroughly, knew her stuff inside out. So she’d quiz me on “what’s buddha nature actually like?” little trivial questions like that. And at one point I said, not that my experience was particularly deep or profound or anything, but I answered as best I could, “clear, open and dynamic.” And she immediately shot back, “that can’t be right. It says in the text it’s peaceful.” And I was sufficiently shocked by this reply that I didn’t have any words. Oh, I guess I really screwed up.

As time went on, I came to understand that the problem was that the meaning that we draw from words is dependent on our associations, and that in turn is dependent on our experience. When you look at mind, there’s nothing there. So there’s nothing to move yet there is movement. Dogen came across two monks who are arguing about a flag flapping in the wind. One was saying it’s the flag that moves, and the other was saying it was the wind that moves. This is a typical philosopher’s argument. Dogen said, “You’re both wrong. It’s the mind that moves.” But when this was reported to another Zen teacher, he said, why is Dogen misleading them that way? Because the fact is, nothing moves, yet there is movement.

It’s really important, not to understand that, because you can’t understand it, but you can know it. That’s a little important. So Takuan writes about immovable wisdom, and he talks about a statue of Fudo Myo-o—whom I think, and I’m not positive about this—is maybe the Japanese form of Vajrapani. But oh no, I think it’s Achala, a very similar figure.

He bares his teeth and his eyes flash with anger. His form stands firmly, ready to defeat the evil spirits that would obstruct the Buddhist Law. This is not hidden in any country anywhere. His form is made in the shape of a protector of Buddhism, while his embodiment is that of immovable wisdom. This is what is shown to living things.

Seeing this form, the ordinary man becomes afraid and has no thoughts of becoming an enemy of Buddhism. The man who is close to enlightenment understands that this manifests immovable wisdom and clears away all delusion. For the man who can make his immovable wisdom apparent and who is able to physically practice this mental dharma as well as Fudo Myōōo, the evil spirits will no longer proliferate.

What is called Fudo Myōō (or Achala, or immovable wisdom) is said to be one’s unmoving mind and an unvacillating body. (Unvacillating means not being detained by anything).

Glancing at something and not stopping the mind is called immovable. This is because when the mind stops at something, as the breast is filled with various judgments, there are various movements within it. (I think we all know that one.) When its movements cease, the stopping mind moves, but does not move at all.

The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho, p. 20


So immovable wisdom is the mind which never stops. Yesterday I talked about integrity: open to the whole, note where the imbalance is, and address it. Now some of you know how this works in your practice. When you know the imbalance, how long does it take to address it? The expression that Takuan uses: “The gap into which even a hair cannot enter.” This is the unfettered mind.

Now if you want to practice that, there’s a very simple word game you can use. You do this in pairs; we’re not going to do it, but I’ll mention it. Somebody says a word. As soon as that word has left the lips, the other person says a word. It goes back and forth until somebody stops, mind’s been caught. It’s quite interesting. You find very quickly, just as you’re doing this exercise, which is a variation of wax on, wax off, [karate reference] that you find very quickly where your mind stops. You can go bang, bang, bang, and somebody says something, and [finger snap] your mind just stops. So when we’re present, present means that we are present in the activity, in the movement. So there is no gap.

Another way of understanding the gap, into which even a hair cannot enter, is to clap your hands and shout at the same time. [Hand clap] The only way you can do this, in traditional Buddhist terminology, is to be completely empty. In the vocabulary that we’re using here, it is the mind that is detained by nothing that nothing detains.

The unfettered mind: grasped by nothing

Ken: Now people often think of attachment or freedom from attachment as a kind of detachment. When people say, “I’m working on my attachment to such-and-such or so-and-so,” most of the time they’re working on detaching, separating. But that’s just another form, another way of placing the mind, stopping the mind. And people often confuse attachment and liking. But attachment is both about liking and disliking.

A story is told of a man who loved his mother and hated his father. Even as a young child, he had always fought very, very hard with his father. And when he grew into adulthood, his feelings were no less virulent. When his mother died, he was grief-stricken. It was a great loss for him, and he went through a period of mourning, then went on with his life. But when his father died, he was devastated. He never got over it and he couldn’t go forward in his life. So, what attachment means, it’s where the mind stops. And it could be with someone or something that we like; and it could be something or someone that we don’t like just as much. It’s where the mind stops. Or to put it differently, it’s what we can’t let go of. And that makes it very easy to see the connection with the unfettered mind. The unfettered mind is a mind that nothing detains, that can be grasped by nothing.

Now one may possibly feel that, or conclude that, that means we don’t care about anything. But that would also be a mistake. There is the heart which opens and loves, but that in no way contradicts a sense of unfettered mind, because I think most of us know the difference between love which seeks to own, and love which is just given. And I think most of us know the difference between trying to get love, and being able to receive it. Now I go into this in some detail, because in connection with love, for instance, the love that seeks to own, and the love that is freely given, give rise to two very, very different expressions in action.

There are many old tales about the destructive effects of love that seeks to own. The love that is freely given, this puts us in the realm of loving-kindness. The immeasurable loving-kindness has a very, very different effect because the love that is freely given transforms, and it transforms because there is no attachment, because there is complete freedom in movement. And most of you know the line from Shakespeare: “The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that giveth and him that receives.”

So the free expression of love—compassion, joy, the unfettered expression that doesn’t seek to cling, to own, control, manipulate, compete—that’s really quite wonderful. I go into this in a little detail because, wherever the mind stops, immediately an imbalance is created. Remember when we were starting meditation, we tried to hold our attention on the breath, and how everything became very, very unbalanced? And the more we tried to hold it, the more unbalanced things became. We’d really try and hold it, some of us did anyway, and ignore the body and everything else, just gonna do it. But after a while, it just couldn’t go on. And for some people it may take a matter of minutes or days. For other people, it may take a matter of months or years.

You discover that letting the mind rest, rather than trying to hold it, concentrate, allows a very, very different quality to arise. And while in the beginning it doesn’t feel as stable as that initial just holding onto it, one finds that over time, that resting is sustainable. And a very different kind of knowing presence arises, something which we may not have even considered in our imagination before, may not even known as possible. So wherever the mind stops, imbalance is created. And that imbalance, if it’s acted upon, results in an imbalance in action or effort, and whenever there is imbalance in action or effort, there is necessarily an imbalance in result.

This is, in different words, how karma operates, and why karma is self-propagating. Because the imbalance and result feeds back to create an imbalance in mind, and around we go again. If you look at it from a systems point of view, these imbalances create self-perpetuating loops of feedback, in which energy is stored, which eventually crystallizes into structures in our mind and heart and personality. But it’s all screwed up because it’s all imbalanced, or unbalanced.

And the effect of lack of balance is that it requires increasingly greater efforts to hold the whole thing together, which usually results in what we know as midlife crisis. Or if you’re unfortunate, you arrive at it earlier with a nervous breakdown. And if you don’t experience either of those two, then you die with regret. So you can take your choice. How do you know imbalance? Well, this goes back to something I mentioned in chapter 10 of Wake Up To Your Life. What you don’t notice, what you don’t question, what you don’t laugh at, those all indicate areas where your mind stops.

Many years ago I organized a retreat for a visiting teacher. And the retreat went very well, except that at that point I was very fixed on the idea that everything should be done in English, not in Tibetan. One person asked the visiting teacher what he thought, and being Tibetan, of course, he said, “Things should be done in Tibetan.” And I completely lost it. It was a very vivid reminder; I couldn’t say reminder at that point; it was a very vivid learning. I’ve had reminders since then that any fixed position is problematic, and the reason is that nothing is fixed in this world.

Knowing the whole

Ken: So whenever we fix our position, we’re necessarily going to take a side. And once we take a side, we tend to ignore, and at the very least become estranged from, the other. And the consequence of that is that we become incapable of knowing the whole. Now, please don’t conclude from this what many people do, that is say, “Well, everything is relative and nothing really matters.” This is a postmodern perspective, and it’s somewhat cynical because the view is that since there is nothing that is real, truth is simply a function of power. Those in power determine what is true, etc. This is an extremely destructive world view and arguably is responsible for some of the wars and a lot of the devastation we see in people’s lives and elsewhere.

To go back to what I was talking about yesterday: in knowing the whole, you know where the imbalances are, and then action is simply addressing the imbalance. One can call it, it’s a somewhat clumsy term, but radical situational ethics. But it differs from the usual view of situational ethics, that’s why I include the term radical in it. It’s radical because it not based on a sense of self. It is based on awareness of the whole, so it produces very different results.

So how do you guard against one-sidedness? Keep including. Whenever you find yourself taking one position, include the other in your awareness. Now, most people don’t like to do that because they find it confusing. Well, different for us, we like confusion. You know why we like confusion? Because it shows us where we’re not aware. So we include the other side, we find ourselves in confusion and we go straight into the confusion. We experience it, the conflict, the mess, we bring attention into it. And what happens is, when we do that—when we include both sides or multiple sides or we include the whole—in the beginning yeah, it’s very confusing.

But when we’re in it, we find—and as we practice this becomes more possible—a clarity and an ease in the mess. Then we can act. In order to act, we have to train in both principle and in technique. And in this, it’s always good to keep Yogi Berra’s dictum in mind: “In theory, there’s no difference between practice and theory. In practice there is. In theory, there’s no difference between practice and theory. In practice there is.”

Because the mind is stained and stopped by things, we are warned against letting it run, and urged to seek after it, and return it to ourselves. This is the very first stage of training.

The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho, p. 39


And it’s what Mencius means when he says, “Seek the lost mind.” Incidentally, that’s exactly what the parable of the prodigal son is actually about: seeking the lost mind.

This is the very first stage of training. We should be like the lotus, which is unstained by the mud from which it arises. Even though the mud exists, we are not to be distressed by this.

p. 39

And in what I was just saying a moment ago, there’s the mess and we find clarity and ease in the mess. It’s like the lotus rising from the mud. What I find again and again, is that people seek to develop clarity and/or ease and/or equanimity and then apply it to the situation: never works because of the inherent separation. You’re bringing something to it. In the approach we take here, you enter into the experience and you find clarity and ease in the experience. You don’t bring them to it.

One makes his mind like the well-polished crystal which remains unstained even if put in the mud. He lets it go where it wishes. The effect of tightening up on the mind is to make it unfree. Bringing the mind under control is a thing done only in the beginning. If one remains this way all through life, in the end he will never reach the highest level. In fact, he will not rise above the lowest. When one is in training, it is good to keep Mencius’ saying, “Seek the lost mind,” in mind. The ultimate, however, is within Shao K’ang-chieh’s, “It is essential to lose the mind.”

p. 39

Or if you want it a little more enigmatically: be in possession of a mind that’s been let go of. So when we train, in the beginning stages, we train to develop attention. And with that attention, we seek the lost mind. Once you find it, you let it go. There’s a very old story, which might have something to do with this.

A Sufi story

Ken: A man has worked hard but never found any peace or happiness in his life. He’s been forever restless, and he’s tired and weary of it, but he cannot find any place inside or outside to lie down and rest. No happiness despite the rewards that his energies have brought him. So, he seeks out a sage and asks for advice. And the sage says to him, “This is not such a difficult problem. Find the happiest man in the world, and put his shirt on. Everything will be fine.”

So, the man starts asking around and he’s pointed in one direction and another. And whenever he finds a person that he’s been referred to, he asks, “Are you the happiest man in the world?” And he says, “No, I’m pretty happy. But so-and-so over there, he’s happier than I am.” So, he journeys over to that person, finds him and he says, “Well yeah, I’m pretty happy, but the person you want to see is that one over there.”

So, for years and years, he journeys all over the world being referred to one person, to another, to another. And finally he’s directed to a vast forest where there’s rumor of a hermit who is indeed the happiest man in the world. And he enters the forest and there’s something different about this forest. There’s a lightness in the air, almost a tangible joy. And as he walks deeper and deeper into the forest, even though the forest is very rich, deep, there’s still that almost tangible sense of happiness and joy. And when he hears the birds singing, there seems to be a very special quality in their song. And even in the rustle of the leaves and the wind and the flow of water in the streams. And eventually he hears this chuckling, which is punctuated by periods of laughter, and just hearing that moves him in some way. And he comes upon a clearing in the forest and there’s a man happily working at cutting wood and doing all kinds of chores. And the whole time he’s just laughing and chuckling, and around him are animals, and they all seem to be having a good time. And even the flowers look happy in this garden.

He comes up and there’s this hermit sitting with a turban on his head, and somewhat ragged so it’s hanging down. You can’t see his face very clearly. But there he is. And he says, “Are you the happiest man in the world?” And the hermit looks at him through the tatters of the turban. He says, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” And the man says, “Well, I’m really glad to have found you.” And he explains how the sage that he’d met many, many years ago had said that he needed to find the happiest man in the world and ask him for a shirt, and wear the shirt. And when he says this, the hermit just starts to laugh and laugh and laugh, and there’s a real joy in the laughter. He says, “What are you laughing at?” The sage says, “Look at me. I don’t have a shirt.” [The Happiest Man in the World, Idries Shah]

[Laughter] I’ll let you ponder that one.

Integrity in action

Ken: We talked about integrity. Today we talk about action. What does integrity look like in action? Takaun uses the word right-mindedness when he writes, is what we were talking about yesterday. When you know integrity, it’s like there’s a plumbline in your being: straight. And that straightness, that plumbline, is your guide to action. What does it look like?

This absolutely straight thing is the substance of right-mindedness.

Right-mindedness is a name added temporarily when it manifests itself in external affairs. It is also called human-heartedness. Benevolence is its function. When we indicate its substance, we say “human-heartedness”; benevolence is a designation we give it temporarily. Human-heartedness, right-mindedness, propriety, wisdom—the substance is the same, but the names are different. These things should be understood as the core of mind.

The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho, p. 54

It can also be called sincerity, sympathy.

If the core of the mind and right-mindedness are achieved, (or if the core of the mind and integrity are achieved) not one in 10,000 affairs will ever turn out poorly.

p. 55

So when we see things that aren’t going right, our tendency is to try to correct the manifestation. But this was rarely effective, as might be illustrated by this story.

One day a shepherd came across what looked like a cave. And when he peered into the cave, he saw that it was full of gold, chests and chests of gold. This frightened him greatly, and he started to run away from that place as fast as he could.

His flight took him into an ambush, which had been set by three thieves, who hoped to rob travelers on that path. But they’re very puzzled to see the shepherd running as fast as he could, right into the ambush. So they stepped out of the ambush, caught him and said, “What’s the matter with you?”

He said, “I’ve seen the most fearful thing I can imagine.” The thieves’ curiosity was aroused. They tied him up, beat him until they made him take them to this place. And he showed them the cave on condition that he’d be let free. And as soon as he had shown the cave, they cut his bonds and he ran away.

The thieves meanwhile looked in the cave and they saw this gold. “Oh, this is wonderful.” But they were also a little hungry by this point. And none of them wanted to leave the gold there untended. So they had a long discussion, a somewhat rancorous discussion with each other, and it was elected that one of them would go to the market and get some food, bring it back while the other two tended to the gold.

Well on his way to the market, the first thief thought, “I’m going to go to the market. I’m going to have a really good meal myself. Then I’ll buy some food and I’ll buy a little poison too, put it in the food, give it to these guys. When they’re dead. I get all the gold. Works for me.”

Meanwhile, the other two thought, “One half is more than one third. So let’s wait till he comes back with the food and then jump on him and kill him.” They both agreed this was a good idea.

So the first thief returned from the market carrying bags of food. The other two immediately jumped on him and killed him, sat down and ate the food, but it was poisoned. So they died. And the gold remains there to this day.

So attacking the manifestation, this rarely solves the problem. And it’s why I mentioned earlier, an imbalance in result comes from an imbalance in effort. And an imbalance in effort comes from an imbalance in mind. So when you’re in situations, seek to know the whole. Don’t indulge in projection. That will never work. And it’s very difficult to actually know what is in another person’s mind. But you can know what is in your mind if you include the whole. And if your actions proceed from an awareness of the whole, then your actions will be in balance. And the results of your actions will address the imbalances in a way that doesn’t create further imbalances. And so the results will be in balance. Mulla Nasrudin understood this very well.

One day a calf got loose and trampled Nasrudin’s garden. He wasted no time, went straight up to the cow and started to yell and scream at her. The onlooker said, “Why are you yelling at the cow? It was the calf who trampled on the garden.”

“Yes, but the calf came from the the cow. So, I go to the source of things.”

Any questions? Randy?

Student questions

Randy: Can you define—

Ken: The answer is probably, “No.”

Randy: Or else you’ll turn around and say, “Can you?” Whenever beginning meditation is talked about, whenever the mind stops, an imbalance is created. And then in meditation, it’s letting the mind rest, which of course in the everyday street language rest is a lot different than movement. Can you define the word rest there?

Ken: Well, what happens when you try to focus attention on the breath?

Randy: Thoughts arise …

Ken: Yeah. Most of us get more tense, right? What happens when you rest in the experience of breathing?

Randy: Thoughts arise, but they just pass by.

Ken: Yes. Right. You can actually rest. And a certain strength or power, even a resiliency, develops because you aren’t tensing. You aren’t taking a position. You follow? And yet there is movement, right? There’s the movement of the breath. Does the movement of the breath disturb the resting?

Randy: No.

Ken: Does this answer your question?

Randy: Yes.

Ken: I’ve just talked about that in terms of meditation. It’s not easy and takes a lot of practice. You can actually approach your whole life that way. But it involves letting go of all the things which catch us. Okay? Other questions. Yes.

Student: I’m just a little hung up on the word stop. You said “when the mind stops.”

Ken: Yeah.

Student: You know what I’m going to say? “When the mind stops,” I think of stopping as the mind stops moving or stops thinking. So, it’s not the way you mean it.

Ken: No. You ever go window shopping?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Your mind ever stop on something?

Student: I think so.

Ken: I really like that [laughs].

Student: Your mind just gets stuck.

Ken: Yes. Somebody yells at you. What happens to your mind?

Student: You get stuck on hitting them. [Laughter]

Ken: I think you understand this very well. [Laughter]

Student: Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

Ken: Most of us get stuck on being insulted, but you get stuck on hitting them. I kind of like that. [Laughter] Other questions? Is this clear? Marianne.

Marianne: When you say “know the whole,” to “know the whole” is … ? I mean, you say it as if we should know what that means. And that seems rather large also. So the process of knowing the whole, I’m imagining, it’s watching where the mind stops as we open to knowing it and then rest with that, bring awareness to that. That sounds like not easy …

Ken: Well, maybe it’s not easy. Maybe it’s not as difficult as it sounds. The whole consists of precisely, everything you’re experiencing right now. That help?

Marianne: Well, it would if I wasn’t so stuck in my runny nose.

Ken: Just include that. But you noticed your mind stops there. And when we have a runny nose or something like that, we usually want to get rid of that so we can experience everything else. We take it as an impediment, right? And that’s how we get into a fight. That’s where the imbalance comes from and everything goes downhill from there because it just gets harder and harder. Right? Well, when we have a cold and a runny nose, we experience things differently, don’t we? Kind of like through a fog, at least that’s how it’s for me. Okay. So be in the experience of experiencing things like a fog. That’s just how it is right now. When you have a runny nose or [in a voice with a stuffed nose] a runny nose [laughter]. Okay, that’s what you are experiencing right now. What happens when you do that?

Marianne: Well then there’s something else that I get stuck on right away.

Ken: And what’s that? Wanting it to be different?

Marianne: Yeah, definitely that. But even a discomfort in the body somehow. Including all of those, I think, sounds not really where I’m at yet.

Ken: [Laughs] Well, you’ve got the point. To include the whole, to open to the whole, we have to let go. That’s not quite right. We have to include what we like and dislike, because what we dislike is also part of the whole thing. But when you think about it, isn’t that where an awful lot of problems in our lives and many lives come from, is the attempt to exclude what we dislike? We actually just include what we dislike—and our disliking of it—we include the whole thing. Well, now we can find some rest. Now we know what to do. Of course there are those people who exclude what they like. That creates similar problems. There’s no mercy here, you know, no mercy [laughs]. Jeff?

Jeff: I think what I notice, for instance in the movement classes, is a desire to know the whole before you act, rather than understanding that you act on the whole you know now. And the whole changes, and you act on that whole. But you have to act.

Ken: Yes. And the point you make there is very important. The whole changes in each moment. And whatever you do is acting out of now. And the moment that you move into action, the whole changes. It’s affected by the action, as it were. So there’s a constant process of opening. And one way of understanding unfettered mind, it’s the mind that just keeps acting from the whole, in the way that there’s not even a gap into which a hair can enter.

This is an extraordinary way of living. I won’t pretend at all that it’s easy, but it is what our practice in Buddhism is aiming at, where there is no grasping at a sense of self or other. There is simply response, response, response, response, which is always based on knowing the whole, knowing the whole, knowing the whole. And it’s not even one or the other. Now this, then this. What’s being talked about here is action arising from the knowing in each moment.

It’s one of the reasons why I thought it would be helpful to have some movement connected with this, because in the right conditions you can get a sense of that physically. That’s really, really helpful for being able to get a sense of what it might mean to live that way: in how you speak, and how you act in all other areas of your life, when you have mind, emotions, body, everything, all at once. Okay? John.

John: But indeed, I’m the other. I don’t like the Bush administration, but I am.

Ken: Yes. Your point?

John: That I can’t escape.

Ken: Oh yes, you’re quite right. We can’t escape, but a lot of people like to pretend, don’t they? And it’s the pretending that causes the problems. If you actually include the whole, then we do things very differently.

John: It sounded a bit like some kind of avoidance going on, from what you saying before.

Ken: Well I’m not quite sure how I conveyed that.

John: That provocation is that we throw ourselves off balance in our just reading the newspaper or making a judgment on …

Ken: We can certainly do that. What I’m trying to point to is, whenever you find yourself taking a side, open to the other. So you have both, makes life interesting.