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 When one has learned to let one's mind alone,
 so that it functions in the integrated and spontaneous way that is natural to it,
 one begins to show the special kind of virtue or power called "dei".
 A profound regard for "dei" underlies the entire higher culture of the Far East,
 so much so that it has been made the basic principle of every kind of art and craft.
 While it is true that these arts employ what are to us highly difficult technical disciplines,
 it is always recognized that they are instrumental and secondary,
 and that the superior work has the quality of an accident.
 This is not merely a masterful mimicry of the accidental,
 an assumed spontaneity in which the careful planning does not show.
 It lies at a much deeper and more genuine level,
 for what the culture of Taoism and Zen proposes
 is that one might become the kind of person who, without intending it,
 is a source of marvelous accidents.
 One occasionally encounters a Zen practice
 which stresses the use of one's ordinary work as the means of meditation.
 This principle underlies the common use of such arts as tea ceremony,
 flute playing, brush drawing, archery, fencing, and jiu-jitsu,
 as ways of practicing Zen.
 One of the great applications of Zen was to the art of fencing.
 And when you learn fencing,
 you see, you have to learn to be spontaneous,
 because here of all places it is true that he who hesitates is lost.
 If you are engaged in combat, you see,
 and you stop to think what sort of a defense or attack you ought to make,
 the enemy has got you.
 So the way they teach people spontaneity in fencing is very interesting.
 When you start in to fencing school,
 you of course live with the teacher.
 He has a kind of ashram.
 But you are given a janitorial job.
 You clean up, you wash dishes, you put bedding away, and things like that.
 While you are going about your daily business,
 the master surprises you with a practice sword,
 which is made of four strips of bamboo,
 rather loosely tied together.
 And he hits you with this, surprisingly and suddenly, from nowhere.
 And you are expected to defend yourself with anything available,
 with the bedding, with the broom, with the pots and pans,
 with just anything, defend.
 But the poor student never knows when the attack is coming,
 or what direction it's coming from, and he begins to get tense.
 And he begins to go around everywhere on the sort of alert, you see,
 watching which direction it's coming from.
 And as he goes down a certain passage,
 feeling that the master is probably lurking around that corner,
 and he's all set to go for him,
 and he gets that practice sword,
 he suddenly gets hit from behind.
 So eventually, he gives up.
 There's absolutely no way of preparing for the attack.
 And so he just wanders around, feeling, well, if it hits, it's going to hit.
 And then he's ready to begin fencing.
 Because if you prepare for an attack from a specific direction,
 and it comes from some other direction,
 you have to withdraw from the direction in which you had expected it,
 and send your energy in another direction, and that takes time.
 So what you do is, you go around with a mind of no expectation.
 That is called "mushin" or "munen."
 This is a very important Zen expression.
 You could also call it "no heart,"
 because the character "shin" means both heart and mind,
 but it isn't quite the same as our word "heartless," as we use it,
 and it isn't the same as the word "mindless," as we use it, meaning stupid.
 To be in the state of "mushin" is to have a mind like a mirror.
 And of this, the Taoist sage Zhuangzi said,
 "The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror.
 It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing, it receives but does not keep."
 And when anything comes in front of a mirror, it reflects it instantly.
 The mirror doesn't wait to reflect it.
 This is also likened to a vessel of water, like a wooden barrel.
 When you make a hole in the barrel, the water instantly flows out of the hole,
 because the water is always available to come out.
 It doesn't have to choose.
 And so you could also say that "mushin" is what Krishnamurti calls "choicelessness."
 To be or not to be, that is the question.
 Well, there is no question about to be or not to be.
 See, because to be and not to be go together, as we saw, they arise mutually.


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