¡°Like a baby who is yet unable to smile,¡± said the ancient Chinese sage Lao-tsu of himself. ¡°Forlorn... ignorant... drifting... alone....¡± The book he wrote, the Tao Te Ching, circa the sixth century B.C., is Zen¡¯s remotest ancestor. His self-description is not self-denigrating but self-idealizing, or self-realizing, or perhaps ¡ª and perhaps it comes to the same thing ¡ª self-annihilating.
Self? What self? There is no self. What is it, then, that is ¡°ignorant¡± and ¡°drifting,¡± ¡°forlorn¡± and ¡°alone¡±? ¡°No-mind.¡± What is ¡°no-mind¡±? ¡°In Buddhist phraseology,¡± explains Zen priest D.T. Suzuki in ¡°Zen and Japanese Culture¡± (1959), ¡°it means going beyond the dualism of all forms of life and death, good and evil, being and non-being.¡± Is that clear? He clarifies: ¡°Mushin (no-mind) is the mind negating itself, letting go itself from itself, a solidly frozen mind allowing itself to relax into a state of perfect unguardedness.¡± Does that help? He elaborates: ¡°To reach the bedrock of one¡¯s being means to have one¡¯s Unconscious entirely cleansed of egoism. ... The ¡®Cosmic Unconscious¡¯ must be made to reveal itself unreservedly. This is why Zen so emphasizes the significance of ¡®no-mind¡¯ and ¡®no-thought,¡¯ where we find infinite treasures well preserved.¡±
Zen, in all its vast incomprehensibility, pervades Japanese culture. Lao-tsu has Japanese heirs well into the 20th century ¡ª in dwindling numbers to be sure; modern treasure tends to be sought elsewhere. Babies ¡°yet unable to smile¡± get short shrift.
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