Insights From Advanced Zen Meditation Practice – The Mind is Useless

Summary: In this part of the insights from advanced Zen Meditation practice the futility with regard to trying solve the problem of desire with the instrument of the mind is discussed.  The mind and logic have inherent short comings which essentially render them useless when it comes to the question of freedom and enlightenment.

This series is the insights that take place during the practice of advanced Insight or Zen Meditation, or my version of this type of meditation, which is the Silent Mind Meditation Technique.  In part 1 of this series Insights From Advanced Zen Meditation Practice – The Fact of Greed I gave some background regarding this practice and you can head over there to read about it.  Briefly, I am providing the unedited and raw insights that I write into my meditation journal at the end of my Silent Mind Meditation sessions.  Here is another one of those quotes which I think you might find interesting and useful.

Quote – The Mind is Useless

“Your meddling ways will have to mend.  Logic will eventually fail you, as the nature of our mind is to assert everything in the positive, in other words, everything is subject to the machinery of desire.  Thus anything you do, including the attempt to do nothing, is the extension of the current direction – effort.

The opposites are fictitious.  There is no non-greed, non-effort, non-desire, non-meddling, non-trying, non-thinking, non-hope, non-activity, non-should, there is just the cunning mind, filled with ambition trying to achieve something.  So, take it easy – there is nothing good you can do.  You can only make things worse or, at best, keep them the same.”

Commentary on The Mind is Useless

This quote is along the lines of the idea of good and bad put forth by J. Krishnamurti.  You will find that idea discussed in the article Jiddu Krishnamurti on the Flowering of Goodness.  The essence of what I am trying to say is that the mind cannot help you with regard to your current state of endless seeking and dissatisfaction.  It, being caught in this trap of desire, only ends up asserting another goal, which then becomes the object of further desire.  This is regardless of weather the goal is framed by logic as a negative or not (desirelessness, efortlessness, selflessness etc).  All become objects to pursue, thus propagating exactly that which they are looking to negate (i.e. chasing desirelessness is just another desire).

Observe this fact keenly in real time, that is meditation, that is intelligence and that will bring about its own action.