kentonwhitman.com

Spiritual Concepts Series, Part Two

Read the other articles in this series:

Spiritual Concepts Series, Part One — Karma

Spiritual Concepts Series, Part Three — Rebirth

Spiritual Concepts Series, Part Four — Maya

Mushin, Wu Wei, and Sahaja

Translation from language to language is never clean. Nuances, and sometimes complete meanings, can’t always be expressed from one language to another. This series of articles takes ‘spiritual’ terminology from various traditions and aids us in translating the concepts so that they help guide us toward Awakening. These translations are not intended to be more ‘correct’ than other translations — but they are designed to help us see how these ideas can guide us toward Awakening.

Mushin, Sahaja, and Wu Wei are all words used in an attempt to describe the sensation of being enlightened. As with all these ideas, they don’t describe an actual truth, but simply point toward something we can experience for ourselves. Like the idea of karma, their real value lies in helping us to realize what enlightenment is not.

Non-Doing

Did you know that you can do something without doing anything? That you could function perfectly well for the rest of your life without holding any concept of free will or purposeful intention?

Yes, it sounds weird. After all, it’s the most obvious truth in the world that if I want to pick up a chocolate bar and eat it, I have to will myself to do it. If I want to turn on my computer, or write an article, or go to a movie, I have to do it. I make a decision, I control my actions, and if anyone thinks otherwise, they are either brainwashed or they’re idiots!

This is the world of karma. We all live here, we know how it works, and it’s ridiculous to think that there could be any other way.

So what are the Zen or Taoist folks talking about when they speak of ‘mind-no-mind’ and ‘intention-less action’?

Sahaja, Mushin, and Wu Wei

These words all come from different traditions, but they all point toward the same thing – a mystical state of being where we act as naturally as a tree grows. This is the state of enlightenment, where there is no ‘me’ to perform any actions.

The idea is that we look inside, and discover that wherever we look, there is no ‘me’ to be found. Only the actions of our minds. The more we look, the more it becomes clear that most of what we take to be ‘real’ is just belief. Things like ‘me’ and ‘the world out there’ and ‘time’ and ‘cause and effect’ aren’t to be found anywhere in nature – only in our conceptual models of the world.

For those of us seeking Awakening, this can be very confusing. It’s what lies behind all the mysterious assertions of Zen masters that we should do ‘nothing at all’ when we meditate, or that ‘nobody can become enlightened’, or worse, that ‘we’re all enlightened already’!

These assertions might be good pointers for some people, but for many others they are merely confusing. The good news is that none of those assertions have anything whatsoever to do with enlightenment. But they do have quite a bit to tell us about how our minds usually work. If we just realize that there is ‘something’ called Sahaja, Mushin, or Wu Wei, we can get on with the business of looking for it. The discovery that there is no one to do the looking, and nothing to be found . . . well, those realizations will naturally emerge along your journey, so there’s no need to worry about them right now. Just wait and see what happens.

Describing Sahaja, Mushin, and Wu Wei

(From here on, we’ll be using these words interchangably to represent the same state of being.)

We can get really confused when we try to explain this state of being.

In our attempts to explain it, we can mislead people by mistaking some of our more unusual ‘everyday’ states of being as Mushin.

Zoning Out

The most obvious and glaring example is that of ‘zoning out’. I might be driving, for instance, and suddenly realize that I’ve negotiated three stoplights and two miles of curvy road, all without thinking about driving at all! In fact, I was singing a song the whole time!

This is an interesting state, but it is certainly not Wu-Wei. It’s simply a state of letting our mind get lost in thoughts, devoting just enough attention to the driving task to get us safely from point-A to point-B. It’s similar to watching television and drinking a glass of juice at the same time. You can identify this state by a distinct lack of clarity. It feels very ‘automatic’.

Conditioned Responses

The second example is more subtle, and spiritual teachers will sometimes use examples such as this to try to describe enlightenment.

Here we use actions like climbing stairs, speaking words, or tying your shoes. These are complex actions that most of us can perform in an apparent state of ‘no-mind’. When you are walking on stairs, you are performing a complicated (and potentially dangerous) action, and you hardly notice that you’re doing it. In effect, these things also happen ‘automatically’.

These things can seem like they match the description of ‘no-intention’, but they are actually nothing at all like Sahaja or Wu Wei. We might better describe these as ‘conditioned responses’.

These states, again, are characterized by a lack of clarity. When you tie your shoe, you can be ‘absent’, and I don’t mean absent in the sense of having ‘no self present’. I mean absent in the sense of having a self whose mind is wandering off or only focused in a ‘blurry’ sort of way. When you tie your shoe, you’re probably not feeling the texture of the laces, the tightness as you tie the knot, or watching the pattern formed by your hands. You just tie the shoe, blurring out all the wonder and miracle present in the whole affair.

In fact, our daily lives are filled with these ‘blurry’ actions, and they are one of the greatest forces keeping us in a state of unawareness.

Awareness, if we are to characterize it, is marked by clarity, not by any feeling of actions being ‘automatic’. But as we’ll see below (in the Hyper-Awareness section), this clarity isn’t formed by trying to pay attention to all of the sensations around you, nor is this a clarity formed of trying to realize how miraculous life is. It’s a clarity that forms all by itself, when we cease all our efforts and let our Awareness do what it does best – be Aware.

The reason that some people feel that enlightenment or Wu Wei should feel ‘automatic’ is that they are trying to rationalize the idea of ‘no-self’. Our rational minds can only conceive of ‘having no self’ as meaning that no one is home – that things are sort of automatic and unguided. But no-self is not the absence of self. As is usual in non-dualism, it’s referring to something that can’t be rationalized, conceptualized or even described.

The Zone

Even more subtle and confusing than conditioned responses is ‘The Zone’. You might have heard of this lately in regards to athletics.

You can imagine a tennis player who is playing a game, and suddenly everything changes. They aren’t thinking about their moves any more – they are simply one with the racket, one with the court and the net. No conscious movement or decisions – just moving with the situation. Usually, they perform extremely well in this state.

Even ‘The Zone’, however, if we look with keen awareness, is lacking clarity. The tennis player might be ‘one’ with the game, but their focus has become narrowed, so that nothing else exists. In effect, this is a prolonged state of concentration, such as we learn when we are taught to ‘pay attention’ in school. Combine that attention with conditioned response, and you get The Zone. In this way, playing a game of tennis in The Zone is like swerving through a series of cars in an intersection – your reactions take over, and your body and mind seem to do what needs to be done. Except in the example of the tennis game, you’ve learned the game so well that this ‘reaction’ can last for minutes or even hours. You’ll notice that The Zone only happens for people who are pretty practiced at their ‘game’ – a clear indication that it’s more about conditioned response than a constant state of ‘enlightenment’.

Hyper-Awareness

Finally (and this happens often in my chosen ‘field’ of martial arts), Mushin is made into a state of hyper-awareness, where the aspirant is aware of everything around them all the time. This, too, ends up being just another version of our usual state, however. The key here is to learn to ‘unfocus’ your attention so that, for instance, you are aware of all the visual input in your entire field of visual focus. (Most of us only see what’s right in front of us, and ignore everything in our peripheral vision).

This state is certainly attainable, and if developed carefully enough, can lead to an almost psychic-seeming ability to be aware of your surroundings. But it’s still not Mushin or Wu-Wei.

What Is Wu Wei, Then?

As mentioned above, we can’t really describe Wu Wei. We’ve seen what it’s not, but pointing this out can sometimes just lead us to frustration. Like describing a color to a blind person, words can only give vague and often misleading hints of what ‘Mushin’ is. They can never actually deliver the sensation of ‘Mushin’. Only Mushin can do that.

The good news is that Sahaja, Mushin, or Wu Wei is readily accessible to you, right now.

So how do we find it?

Discovering Sahaja

Right now, you’re probably actively seeking Awakening, Mushin, or Wu Wei. That’s perfect, and you shouldn’t give too much attention to those telling you that you ‘shouldn’t seek’. If you’re going to apply your energies to seeking, start using them to examine your beliefs about the world. Consider what free will means to you, go looking for the Self when you meditate, explore the idea of karma, and take long walks and consider how, as the Bible says, the Lilies of the Field grow just so, without any effort at all. If they can function just fine without effort, why can’t you?

This site is full of articles to help you examine such things.

After enough examination, you’ll probably start to see that there’s a heck of a lot of stuff we’re doing in our heads that is not only pretty useless, but causes us a lot of problems, as well.

Out of this will emerge the realization that ‘no-effort’ produces the most active and wonderful results. Not a lazy sort of no-effort, but a right Now sort of no-effort, where you allow your awareness to function at its full, unfettered capacity.

This is when Sahaja can become real, and we suddenly understand what the word is referring to. Not to any special state of awareness characterized by any special sort of feeling.

Just Now, with nothing else attached.

Explore posts in the same categories: Spiritual Concepts Series

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Spiritual Concepts Series. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.