Quite a puzzling title isn't it?1 I was puzzled as well when I was trying to figure out how I could express my thoughts on something which just existed as random clouds in my mind. This was something that I wanted to write in my blog almost three years back but then I hit upon a writer's block and only today I've dared to venture into this. I'm going to make liberal use of quotes from many books, almost all of which are my favorites, and start off by giving you hints on the topic that I am going to touch upon. Without further ado let me get started by giving words to my thoughts.
Instinct
Most of us have at least once, actually many times, in our lifetimes acted on instinct. By instinct I mean "behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level."2 Instinctively we catch a book that is falling off a table, or make a best move while we are involved playing our favorite sport. I'm not referring to reflex actions which happen when a stimulus triggers a nerve impulse making the body to respond within a second, all this still happening below the conscious level. What I am referring to is those actions which we perform spontaneously without involving our thinking.
A Story as the Reference Point to Start
It is best to proceed from simple to complex, so let me try to make this interesting with a simple story. I read this from one of my emails about four years back.3
A man, whose car broke down near a monastery, rests with the monks, hears a strange noise while almost falling asleep, asks the monks about it in the morning but isn't told the details of it as he is not a monk. Few years later he breaks down near the same monastery, hears the same sound during the night and isn't told the details again. Desperate to know the reason, the man takes up the impossible task assigned by the monks, counts grasses and pebbles around the world, returns back after about forty-five years later and says that the task is done. The monks say that he has now become a monk, take him to the way of the sound and give him key after key to open the many doors in the way. The man (now a monk) is amazed to find the source of the strange sound……
Now I cannot tell you what it is, because you are not a monk :D
It was a funny story that I couldn't forget. Many months later I had the chance to read the book, "Zen in the Art of Archery", where I found many similarities between this story and the experiences of the German philosopher Eugen Herrigel, who visits University of Tokyo as a professor of philosophy and takes up archery to quench his heartfelt longing to know more about Zen. He diligently spent not one or two but six arduous years as a student of one of Japan's great kyudo (archery) masters, struggled hard during the beginnings, gradually overcame his inhibitions and began to see his way toward new truths.
Zen and Archery
Why would someone wanting to know about Zen take up archery? The following is the cryptic answer to this question that D. T. Suzuki gives in the preface of the book.
One of the most significant features we notice in the practice of archery, and in fact of all the arts as they are studied in Japan and probably also in other Far Eastern countries, is that they are not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but are meant to train the mind; indeed, to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality.
Archery is, therefore, not practiced solely for hitting the target; the swordsman does not wield the sword just for the sake of outdoing his opponent; the dancer does not dance just to perform certain rhythmical movements of the body. The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an "artless art" growing out of the Unconscious. In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality. The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art.
Eugen, when he was seeking to know more about Zen in Japan, was informed that it would be quite hopeless for a European to attempt to penetrate into the realm of spiritual life unless he began by learning one of the Japanese arts associated with Zen. The thought of having to go through a kind of preparatory schooling did not deter him. He felt ready to go to any length if only there were some hope of getting a bit nearer to Zen, as determined as the man in the above story when he was assigned a task to qualify as a monk.
It is fascinating to see a striking similarity between D.T. Suzuki’s words and the verses in one of the ancient Indian scriptures.
Taking hold of the great weapon of the bow consisting of the theme of the Upanishads,
fixing the arrow which is rendered sharp through constant contemplation, drawing back the bow-string with the power of the conscious affirmation of that, O disciple, hit that mark, the Imperishable.4
And the scriptures also seem to point us to why the monks did not reveal the source of the sound to the man initially.
He who sees the Self is like a wonder. He who speaks of It and he who hears of It is indeed rare among many thousands. Therefore, the idea is that the Self is difficult to understand.5
Eugen’s Experiences and Similarities in Indian scriptures
For a year, Eugen was just practicing on how to draw the bow but he was well content with it. The Master then introduced him to a new and particularly difficult task of “loosing of the arrow”. Eugen went on practicing diligently and conscientiously according to the Master's instructions and yet all of his efforts were in vain. There were weeks and months of fruitless practice.
The Master then during the course of a conversation said, "The right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen."
This is quite similar to a verse from Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita,
Your right is for action alone, never for the results. Do not become the agent of the results of action. May you not have any inclination for inaction.
Whenever you have a hankering for the fruits of action, you will become the agent of acquiring the results of action.6
It was almost the fourth year of practice and it seemed to Eugen that it was almost impossible to progress further.
One day he asked his Master, "How can the shot be loosed if 'I' do not do it?"
"'It' shoots," the Master replied.
"I have heard you say that several times before, so let me put it another way: How can I wait self-obliviously for the shot if 'I' am no longer there?"
"'It' waits at the highest tension."
"And who or what is this 'It'?"
"Once you have understood that, you will have no further need of me. And if I tried to give you a clue at the cost of your own experience, I would be the worst of teachers and would deserve to be sacked! So let's stop talking about it and go on practicing."
Weeks went by without Eugen advancing a step. One day the Master cried out the moment his shot was loosed: "It is there! Bow down to the goal!" When Eugen looked satisfied on hearing that the Master turned on to him fiercely, "What are you thinking of? You know already that you should not grieve over bad shots; learn now not to rejoice over the good ones. You must free yourself from the buffetings of pleasure and pain, and learn to rise above them in easy equanimity, to rejoice as though not you but another had shot well. This, too, you must practice unceasingly - you cannot conceive how important it is."
This is exactly the same thought reflected in the following verse:
Treating happiness and sorrow, gain and loss, and conquest and defeat with equanimity, then engage in battle.7
Needless to say, as time progressed, Eugen let ‘It’ flow freely, was successful in the archery test, earned the goodwill of his Master and found peace within himself.
What exactly is ‘It’?
In the book, "Zen in the Martial Arts", there happens a conversation between the great martial artist Bruce Lee and his friend Joe Hyams that throws more light into what 'It' exactly is. Joe asks Bruce how he would respond in a life-threatening situation. Bruce contemplates on the question for quite some time.
"I've thought about that often," he replies finally. "If it was a real fight, I'm certain I would hurt my assailant badly, perhaps kill him. If that happened and I was forced to stand trial, I would plead that I had no responsibility for my action. I had responded to his attack without conscious awareness. 'It' killed him, not me."
"What do you mean by 'It'?", asks Joe.
"'It' is when you act with unconscious awareness, you just act. Like when you throw a ball to me and, without thought, my hands go up and catch it. Or when a child or animal runs in front of your car, you automatically apply the brakes. When you throw a punch at me, I intercept and hit you back, but without thought. 'It' just happens."
"'It' is the state of mind the Japanese refer to as mushin, which literally means 'no-mind.' According to Zen masters, mushin is operating when the actor is separate from the act and no thoughts interfere with action because the unconscious act is the most free and uninhibited. When mushin functions, the mind moves from one activity to another, flowing like a stream of water and filling every space."
"And how does one attain this state of non-mindedness?" Joe asks.
"Only through practice and more practice, until you can do something without conscious effort. Then your reaction becomes automatic."
On one occasion, Joe’s teacher Jim Lau says to him, “When you think of showing off your skill or defeating an opponent, your self-consciousness will interfere with the performance and you will make mistakes. There must be the absence of the feeling that you are doing it. Self-consciousness must be subordinated to concentration. Your mind must move freely and respond to each situation immediately so there is no self involved.”
How does all of the above in any way concern us?
Let me give an example again to make this clear. Many years back when I was still a novice Perl programmer (not that I am an expert now), I was given the task of converting LaTeX documents to XML documents which followed a complex DTD. I was fairly new to LaTeX and was confronted with innumerous braces. I didn’t know balanced regexes existed at that time but I anyway numbered the matching braces and converted them to elements. In the heat of programming, I even used variable names as variables, but on the whole because of that programming experience I realized that if I trusted Logic and didn’t resort to shortcuts, Logic itself would lead me to solutions when I was perplexed with problems. It wasn’t easy, however, to get into that mindset. Every day I had to have the source file, the code and other documents in exactly the same way as it was the earlier day, execute the program few times, view the output and then slowly I could “get into the groove.” And when we get into the groove, we feel that the objects that we use are no longer separate from us but almost seem like extensions to our bodies, similar to how the trained archer feels about the bow, arrow and the target.
This extract from the book, “Perl Best Practices”, seems to be what Zen Masters describe as mushin at work.
When you're developing a particular code suite over a long period of time, you eventually find yourself "in the zone". In that state, you seem to have the design and the control flow and the data structures and the naming conventions and the modular decomposition and every other aspect of the program constantly at your mental fingertips. You understand the code in a profound way. It's easy to "see" problems directly and locate bugs quickly, sometimes without even quite knowing how you knew. You truly grok the source.8
Once we understand ‘It’, and let ‘It’ flow, I believe, what we do tends towards perfection.
References and Notes
1. Disclaimer: As I always mention in my articles, these are just my thoughts, this time on similarities between Zen and Indian philosophy, and how they might be useful in real life. I have deliberately avoided any "religious" concept from cropping up and I’ve picked only logically satisfying quotes from the religious and spiritual books. Actually I wrote this article for inclusion in the corporate magazine.
3. To read the full story in detail you would have to look into the previous blog posts.
Eugen says in his book that Buddhism originated in India, spread to Far East, transformed into Dhyana Buddhism and was known as Zen in Japan. The scriptures compared in the article are from Hinduism.
8. Damian Conway, Perl Best Practices, ISBN 0596001738
Suggested Reading
2. Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, ISBN 0375705090
3. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, ISBN 1570625190
