Sengcan (purportedly) wrote, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose.” A lot going on here: “Great Way”, “not difficult”, “those who”. But for now, let’s pick and choose the phrase “pick and choose” to investigate. The mind of picking and choosing, a mind we all know. All the choices of daily life: getting out of bed or sleeping in, putting on this shirt or that one, having butter or jam on the toast…on and on throughout the day. The mind of picking and choosing is the ‘devil in the details’ of our daily lives. Or is it?
Sengcan also says, “Do not judge by any standard.”, pointing to a mind that arises before picking and choosing, a mind which compares. A mind which distinguishes this from that, and then compares. The mind of comparison. We can imagine this mind at work: two options, two ‘things’ appear in awareness; due to a mysterious and marvelous function, these two ‘things’ are instantaneously linked to prior experience of similar ‘things’. They are re-membered: prior thought-experience conjoined with current thought-experience. They are re-cognized: current thought-experience seen through the lens of prior thought-experience. The two things, remembered and recognized, are no longer “things-as-it-is”. They are ‘things-as-it-is + plus things-as-it-has been’…(and maybe even ‘things-as-it-is + things-as-it-will be’). Does the mind of comparison really precede the mind of picking and choosing? Who knows. Materialistic determinism (think karma) says that the order is reversed, the mind of comparison retroactively justifies our habitual picking and choosing. Buddhism considers this a heretical view. We consider it open for consideration.
So, it seems there is a mind which picks and chooses, and a preceding mind which compares. Is there a mind from which both arise? Is there a mind which simply rests in things-as-it-is, before comparison, before picking and choosing? An “original mind”? If there was a ‘Holy Grail’ in Zen, this would be it.
How to approach this mind of things-as-it-is, this original mind. We can begin by noticing. Before noticing picking and choosing notice comparing. Notice the emergence of patterns of mind. Notice how the mind of comparison shapes how we see ‘the world’. Notice the habit of mind which sees things in terms of ‘winners and losers’, ‘better or worse’. Viewed from the mind of things-as-it-is the world is not a ‘zero-sum game’. There are no winners or losers, there is no better or worse. A Zen Ancestor says, “High things are high, low things are low.” This is a mind which distinguishes high and low without comparing them, without picking a better choice. A mind seeing things-as-it-is. There is a Japanese word, hishiryo, literally “not-thinking-concerned”. Kazuaki Tanahashi translates hishiryo as “not thinking”, Zentatsu Baker Roshi as “noticing without thinking”. In this context we can say it is a mind of “noticing without comparing”.
Zen points to all these minds as present and necessary every moment, without abiding in any one of them. No gap, but also no lingering. Things-as-it-is. You choose.