The mind in Chinese is shin, and it isn't quite what we mean by mind.
 They locate it here, Japanese kokoro.
 We locate our mind here.
 But this mind here, the heart mind, is the psychic center.
 When you say, "I have no peace of mind," it doesn't mean you just got a headache.
 You may have a heartache, too.
 It's a more inclusive word.
 You might call it the center of psychic activity.
 The important point is that according to both Taoism and Zen, the center of the mind's activity
 is not in the conscious thinking process, not in the ego.
 When a man has learned to let his mind alone so that it functions in the integrated and
 spontaneous way that is natural to it, he begins to show the special kind of virtue
 or power called te.
 This is not virtue in the current sense of moral rectitude, but in the older sense of
 effectiveness, as when one speaks of the healing virtues of a plant.
 Te is furthermore unaffected or spontaneous virtue, which cannot be cultivated or imitated
 by any deliberate method.
 In sum, then, te is the unthinkable ingenuity and creative power of man's spontaneous and
 natural functioning, a power which is blocked when one tries to master it in terms of formal
 methods and techniques.
 It is like the centipede's skill in using a hundred legs at once.
 The centipede was happy, quite, until a toad in fun said, "Pray which leg goes after which."
 This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a ditch, considering how to
 run.
 Taoism is, then, the original Chinese way of liberation, which combined with Indian
 Mahayana Buddhism to produce Zen.
 It is a liberation from convention and of the creative power of day.
 Every attempt to describe and formulate it in words and one-at-a-time thought symbols
 must, of necessity, distort it.
 The qualities which distinguish Zen or Chan from other types of Buddhism are rather elusive
 when it comes to putting them in words, yet Zen has a definite and unmistakable flavor.
 Although the name Zen is jhana, or meditation, other schools of Buddhism emphasize meditation
 as much as, if not more than, Zen, and at times it seems as if the practice of formal
 meditation were not necessary to Zen at all.
 Nor is Zen peculiar in having nothing to say, in insisting that the truth cannot be put
 into words, for this is already present in the teachings of Lao Tzu.
 Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.
 Perhaps the special flavor of Zen is best described as a certain directness.
 In other schools of Buddhism, awakening seems remote and almost superhuman, something to
 be reached only after many lives of patient effort.
 But in Zen there is always the feeling that awakening is something quite natural, something
 startlingly obvious, which may occur at any moment.
 If it involves a difficulty, it is just that it is much too simple.
 Zen is also direct in its way of teaching, for it points directly and openly to the truth
 and does not trifle with symbolism.
 Direct pointing, qi qi, is the open demonstration of Zen by non-symbolic actions or words, which
 usually appear to the uninitiated as having to do with the most ordinary secular affairs
 or to be completely crazy.
 In answer to a question about Buddhism, the master makes a casual remark about the weather,
 or performs some simple action which seems to have nothing to do with philosophical or
 spiritual matters.
 Zen tradition maintains that immediate awakening is not communicated by the sutras, but has
 passed down directly from master to pupil.
 This does not necessarily imply anything so esoteric as an experience conveyed by telepathy,
 but something much less sensational.
 Thus, when Hindu pundits insist that wisdom is not to be gained from the scriptures but
 only from a teacher or guru, it means that the actual texts, such as the Yoga Sutra,
 contain only the headings of the doctrine and that its full explanation requires someone
 who has learned the oral tradition.
 To this it should hardly be necessary to add that since the tradition is primarily an experience,
 words can communicate it no more and no less than any other experience.


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