The don’t know mind
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
A friend suggested I take a look at this after I posted the Socrates quote “the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing”. There is a certain irony in attempting to fill up the nothing with more knowledge, but the Zen approach to the don’t-know mind means that after you reach that state of mind, you might see something.
The don’t know mind is actually a state of stopping, because you have reached a point where the mind has given up. It can happen that you acknowledge that you have done everything possible to get a glimpse of enlightenment and your mind and knowledge have failed you. Then for a moment the mind ‘does not know’ how to proceed.
Of course there are things that can stand in the way, pride for one, or an unwillingness to be honest with oneself. The moment can be lost, like so many. But any moment can be an entry point to Zen.
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I’ll join!
Dunno where to start, finish or hang out?
https://www.treeleaf.org/
...Sergeant Shultz was a very wise man...
Don't know how to solve this conundrum.
The Zen Buddha
I think there is a lot of truth in that. Games are a good answer to that, it’s an endless sequence of little non-stressful conundrums to be solved and acted out. But even if you go beyond that the mind has a certain restlessness, which means that you cannot just do nothing. For me the answer has been to read, which provides just enough busy-ness for the mind to not go crazy.
The don't know mind has caught my attention since I very first stepped onto the spiritual path. The first book I read upon taking some Tai Chi classes was from an Aikido teacher and talked about the value of an open, don't know mind.
More recently my framework has been more of a western one around the idea of intellectual humility. The simple idea that its possible you may not have it all completely figured out. That's not hard to understand intellectually, but I think what many of us do is think our perspective is correct and we just need to gather more information that affirms that point of view.
Its not so much that most perspectives are invalid, its that they are limited and the world is complex. Like my avatar here, things appear different depending on your point of view. To truly understand what it is you're looking at you need some sort of discourse, collaborative or not, between those who see the circle and those who see the square to gain the knowledge of the cylindrical world.
On another note, there's the Einstein quote, that I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson improved upon.
Basically, the more we know, the more we realize we do not know.
Edit:
Another thought, the mind is uncomfortable with uncertainty. I remember a conversation I had with my nephew about the universe. He asked where it came from, what was there before the big bang. I said we don't really know, he didn't seem very satisfied with that answer so I listed a couple possibilities people have proposed. He latched onto the idea of a continually expanding and contracting universe and said, "I think that's what it is."
Sometimes uncertainty can run the other way too. Throughout history, and in my own beliefs, there has been a way of understanding the world that is taken as the way things are only to have something come along and change our understanding. Not that long ago we thought that gravity would eventually slow the expansion of the universe, but then it was discovered that in fact the expansion was speeding up. However, that's not to say that we should just accept any new information coming in in an effort to be open minded. Most new ideas are untested and experimental. They're wrong turns, imperfect or incomplete. We should have some level of skepticism. It seems some sort of balance between naive acceptance and stubborn close mindedness needs to be struck. An open minded skepticism?
No wonder it is said that restlessness is one of the last fetters that one removes before full enlightenment or arahantship.
ah ha! No rest for the goodly, wikid...
I am off to sit on a fencing. This side of the far shore, that side for sure...
decisions, decisions...
Only the Smokey Bear Sutra can save me... or maybe not...
https://sacred-texts.com/bud/bear.htm
I'm guessing this is something of a rebuttal to the idea of attempting to take a wider view on certain subjects?
Not really sure where you're coming from exactly so I may misunderstand. I'd say that broadening your view doesn't remove the view of the circle or the square. Its additive, only seeing the circle might mean implementing strategies that do harm because you just weren't properly aware of the square aspects.
A lot of insight on this thread.
The "don't know mind" puts the fun back into the journey when we've gotten too caught up in having the proper or "Right" view. Perhaps ironically, a big part of Right view is not clinging to views. This can be like a weight lifted off of our chest. For those that love to search it makes sense to keep it alive and that's a big value in cultivating the don't know mind.