Bear with me for a minute.
Blogging is a form of expressing the mind, right? Taoists would argue that point. They might tell you that you are trying to express your inner experience with a medium that is far too limited to mirror the exact emotions and complex spirit of our mind. There are simply just not enough words.
Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame put it quite simply in Street Spirit:
“This machine will, will not communicate These thoughts and the strain I am under…”
To conquer this gap in understanding, Taoists invented these clever little allegories and verses named ‘Koans‘. The purpose of the Koan is to bamboozle a person into thinking far outside normal rational thought, possibly to make you forget the difficult question you just asked, or to confuse you into a state of awareness.
For instance, “Without anxious thought, doing comes from being.”
EH?!?! You might ask… well see, this means that when one’s mind is full of complicated irrelevant thought, one tends to take a long time assessing the actual situation and coming to a conclusion as to how to solve a problem. There is the risk that too many detailed steps will be taken in order to make that problem go away. If one meditates and is able to clear the mind, it is easier to find the right path, clear as day.
AHHH! You might say… well see, this is called Enlightenment. The ‘ping’ noise that a penny makes when it drops.
Or perhaps in more familiar terms, I might berate the Accidental Terrorist over being too irate with a playstation game.
“Why aren’t you enjoying the game?” I might ask.
“I’m trying to master it but it’s too fucking hard!” He would say.
“There exists a state in which you will not attempt to master the game, and the game will not attempt to master you.”
“What is this state?!” He might ask.
“Give me the game and I will show you.”
At which point I would jump up and down repeatedly on the playstation until it is smashed to bits, and the Accidental Terrorist becomes enlightened.
See? You get the gist. I’ll leave you with one more itty bitty thought:
Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: `The flag is moving.’The other said: `The wind is moving.’
The sixth patriach happened to be passing by. He told them: `Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving.’
