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 Sitting quietly, doing nothing. In both life and art, the cultures of the Far East
 appreciate nothing more highly than spontaneity or naturalness.
 Tzu Chan. This is the unmistakable tone of sincerity marking the action which is not
 studied and contrived. For a man rings like a cracked bell when he thinks and
 acts with a split mind, one part standing aside to interfere with the other, to
 control, to condemn, or to admire. But the mind, or the true nature of man, cannot
 actually be split. According to a Zen Rin poem, it is "like a sword that cuts but
 cannot cut itself, like an eye that sees but cannot see itself."
 The illusion of the split comes from the mind's attempt to be both itself and its
 idea of itself, from a fatal confusion of fact with symbol. To make an end of the
 illusion, the mind must stop trying to act upon itself, upon its stream of
 experiences, from the standpoint of the idea of itself, which we call the ego.
 This is expressed in another Zen Rin poem as "sitting quietly, doing nothing,
 spring comes and the grass grows by itself." This "by itself" is the mind's and
 the world's natural way of action, as when the eyes see by themselves, and the
 ears hear by themselves, and the mouth opens by itself without having to be
 forced apart by the fingers. As the Zen Rin says again, "The blue mountains are of
 themselves blue mountains, the white clouds are of themselves white clouds."
 In its stress upon naturalness, Zen is obviously the inheritor of Taoism and its
 view of spontaneous action as marvellous activity, "miao yong," which is precisely
 what the Taoists meant by the word "tei," virtue, with an overtone of magical power.
 But neither in Taoism nor in Zen does it have anything to do with magic in the
 merely sensational sense of performing superhuman miracles. The magical or
 marvellous quality of spontaneous action is on the contrary that it is perfectly
 human, and yet shows no sign of being contrived. Perhaps the clue lies in the
 saying of Jung Men, "In walking, just walk; in sitting, just sit; above all, don't
 wobble." For the essential quality of naturalness is the sincerity of the
 undivided mind which does not dither between alternatives. But it would be
 quite wrong to suppose that this natural sincerity comes about by observing such a
 platitude as, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might."
 This is to overlay, not to discover the original mind. Thus to try to be natural
 is an affectation. To try not to be natural is also an affectation. Obviously,
 the mistake arises in the attempt to split the mind against itself. But to
 understand this clearly, we have to enter more deeply into the cybernetics of the
 mind, the basic pattern of its self-correcting action. Feedback enables a
 machine to be informed of the effects of its own action in such a way as to be
 able to correct its action. Perhaps the most familiar example is the electrical
 thermostat, which regulates the heating of a house. The furnace is adjusted by
 the feedback system, but this system in turn needs adjustment. To make a system
 more and more automatic will require the use of a series of feedback systems, a
 second to correct the first, a third to correct the second, and so on. But there
 are obvious limits to such a series. In other words, one cannot correct one's
 means of self-correction indefinitely. There must soon be a source of
 information at the end of the line which is the final authority. Failure to trust
 its authority will make it impossible to act, and the system will be paralyzed.
 The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a
 margin of lag or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate, that is
 to say, if we bring the upper and lower limits of temperature very close together
 in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70 degrees, the whole system
 will break down. When the furnace responds too closely to the thermostat, it
 cannot go ahead without also trying to stop, or stop without also trying to go
 ahead. This is just what happens to the human being, to the mind, when the desire
 for certainty and security prompts identification between the mind and its
 own image of itself. It cannot let go of itself. It feels that it should not do
 what it is doing, and that it should do what it is not doing. It feels that it
 should not be what it is, and be what it isn't. Furthermore, the effort to remain
 always good or happy is like trying to hold the thermostat at a constant 70
 degrees by making the lower limit the same as the upper. In walking, just walk.
 In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble. In other words, the mind cannot
 act without giving up the impossible attempt to control itself beyond a certain
 point. It must let go of itself both in the sense of trusting its own memory and
 reflection, and in the sense of acting spontaneously, on its own, into the
 unknown. This is why Zen often seems to take the side of action as against
 reflection, and why it describes itself as "no mind" (wu-shin) or "no thought"
 (wu-nyen), and why the masters demonstrate Zen by giving instantaneous and
 unpremeditated answers to questions.


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