Awareness, Mentation and the Zen Doctrine of No Mind

Awareness is a passive state that seeks no affirmation of its existence or its contents. Mentation is an active state made inevitable by the existence of Awareness in exactly the same way as water will ripple in response to circumstance. In the absence of mentation Awareness in all creatures presents the same sense of being.

Mind is the behavior of Awareness made inevitable by the genetic imperatives of creature-hood. The existence of the unconscious mind as a template for behavior shapes our perceptions of the world and of ourselves being.

In meditation we cultivate Awareness: the "no mind" from which mind emerges.

The waves are the water.

Insouciant Anonymity

it is drizzling rain
and the sleek red squirrel weaves her way
the intense glow new-green floor growth her umbrella

stop

sniff

hop a bit and sniff again


dig a bit and up with last falls full acorn
sit and peel and eat

back to the hunt and with the next find undulate the nearest tree
stub-branch perch and eat
calmly in the warm spring rain


Her kits will find themselves well fed




wind

and rain
every drop real and alone

snow
every flake cold and unique

searing heat


care not for life or for death
joy or sorrow
for pain
for pleasure

for crushing servitude or leisure

every voice proceeds to flex the void
every cry of hope and despair un-echoed
spends its immeasurably tiny weight into the void

unmet unresisted unobserved
unanswered

but yes form

and form

shapes everything

the winking out of an instance of cognisant warmth
is dissolved in the fabric of nothingness from which it sprang
and nothing there-by is enriched
by everything


the voice of the universe



is the taste of being