The Unconditioned Mind

[Mujin]

What specifically is the unconditioned mind, and how does one obtain it? Is that the godless goal of Zazen?

Gassho,

Mujin

SatTodayLAH

[spinnylights]

In what context? Is there a specific source you're thinking of? I haven't encountered the term "unconditioned mind" before and I'm hesitant to speculate.

Dogen calls zazen "the front gate to the Dharma", but also says that if you embrace any desire to have or not have anything in zazen, you'll end up utterly confused. Kodo Sawaki is well-known as saying "zazen is good for nothing", which, although it can be taken a variety of ways, I always think of whenever the idea of zazen having a goal comes up. I think that if you sit zazen aiming to gain an "unconditioned mind", or try to avoid aiming at that, you may go off-track for reasons like these.

[Hoshuku]

I don’t think it’s a goal but that it emerges when we sit or at any other time we are practicing some other way but once the thought occurs to you, it’s already gone.

Bows
Hoshuku
Satlah

[Bion]

What specifically is the unconditioned mind, and how does one obtain it? Is that the godless goal of Zazen?

Gassho,

Mujin

SatTodayLAH

This is a tricky question, and we can really split hairs here. The mind is conditioned, since for it to exist it requires consciousness, a physical brain, external stimuli, and so on. The mind also shows up in different ways: the thinking mind, the mind before thinking, the mind beyond thinking, etc. These are all concepts we apply to a single underlying reality.

We can also talk about what is usually called the unconditioned, or nirvana. Even that, however, is debated; not everyone agrees that it is truly unconditioned.

For me, a helpful way of approaching this topic is not in terms of gaining or attaining something, but in terms of removing, or a kind of “lack of.” What remains when judgment, separation, division, and conceptualization are dropped is not something directly fabricated. I wouldn’t call it “unconditioned,” since the condition for it is this dropping away, but it is also not something we actively produce. I don’t even want to go into whether it is “always there” or not. For me, it’s enough to experience “just this,” in the present moment. That might sound a bit fancy or vague, and this may not even be what you were asking about.

May I ask where you encountered the term? Was it in Krishnamurti’s teachings?


gassho
sat lah

[Mujin]

I have never read his work. I came across it from a video, and also Huang Po.

[Bion]

I have never read his work. I came across it from a video, and also Huang Po.

Ok, got ya! Then, I believe my original reply sort of matches the concept. In zazen, the goal is zazen. Whatever lies beyond the thinking mind, whatever is found when discrimination, the self, and the concepts melt away, is to be experienced, not analyzed with thought. That's what we offer this body-mind to in zazen.

gassho
sat lah

[Houzan]

What specifically is the unconditioned mind, and how does one obtain it? Is that the godless goal of Zazen?

Gassho,

Mujin

SatTodayLAH

Hi Mujin

Bion and Hoshuku put this in better words but I need practice, so here goes:

The unconditioned mind is what you express in your zazen, sitting right here now with radical equanimity. Yes, this is the goalless goal. It’s nothing you can obtain as you already have it. But to say “you already have it” is too much as it suggest something fixed. When there is no fixed you and nothing fixed to be had, how can you already have it? Likewise, how can you obtain it?

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[Maro]

Oh what a wonderful and timely, for me, question!

Can I show you some words that I am reflecting on for some time now because I find that they point to that unconditioned (or the now or the deathless)?

"The space between things that goes completely unnoticed because the interest lies in the conditions which have qualities and that can cause some kind of emotional reaction in consciousness"

Or put it a bit differently: "good heart transcends time and events".

Gassho
Maro
satlah

[Shui_Di]

Hi Mujin,

Let me give some answer from my limited experience.

The answer is, to realize that even the conditioned mind is also unconditioned.

How to realize it? Just stop to look for it. Just sit.

Gassho, Mujo
Stlah

[Chikyou]

I don’t think it’s a goal but that it emerges when we sit or at any other time we are practicing some other way but once the thought occurs to you, it’s already gone.

Bows
Hoshuku
Satlah

This is how I see it. It’s not a goal, it’s something that you can expect to experience at some point, if you practice long enough. You don’t attain it, like winning a medal. It’s simply a natural consequence of continued practice, just like growth is natural result of planting a seed and continuing to give it water and sun.

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō

[Shonin Risa Bear]

When my oxygen drops to 80% and pulse to 40, I sense causes-and-conditions have reduced my "mental" acuity. Yet the walls around me, and the singing birds outside, don't seem to share my anxiety about these things. As it is all one, I conclude the anxiety is the bit that's superfluous. Lying there, I can take note of diminishment yet know that the universe is not made one whit lighter in weight thereby. "Enjoying the moment as it is" may then unfold, without its needing to be sought out as a goal.

gassho, sat and lah today, shonin

[Jundo]

I am a simpleton on this.

The "unconditioned mind" is simply the light and clarity which naturally shines through Zazen in its dropping of judgements, names, differences, opinions, analyzing, and such.

One knows such when one experiences such.

In Shikantaza, such is not our goal, but naturally shines through in the radical equanimity and disentangling from thoughts and judgements.

Then, rising from the cushion, this unconditioned may reside in the bones even as we get back to our lives amid this world of the conditioned, names, judgements, goals and jobs to do, etc. Then, we hopefully discover that the "unconditioned" and "conditioned" are not two, like two sides of a no sided coin. Master Dogen cautioned against believing that the point of this practice was simply to realize some "unconditioned" and stay there.

No need to make it complicated.

"Unconditioned" is a common enough term in Zen, the Mahayana and general Buddhism. For example, in "Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors," Master Dogen comments on a poem by Dongpo, "Valley sounds are the long, broad tongue [of Buddha]. Mountain colors are no other than the unconditioned body. ... " Dogen described a Buddha this way: "A buddha enters forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, and objects of mind and is not confused by them. Thus, a buddha masters the six-sense objects, which are all marked with emptiness. A buddha is free of conditions. Even having a body of five skandhas accompanied by desire, a buddha does not depend on anything. " There are several terms that are translated that way, but a common one is 無爲 [mui]. Skt. asamskrita, (LINK). I would say that "unconditioned mind" is simply realizing the clear and boundless mind, like a mirror, free of conditions. However, recall that the conditions and things that manifest in the mirror -are- the mirror too!

Gassho, J
stlah

[Mujin]

I am a simpleton on this.

The "unconditioned mind" is simply the light and clarity which naturally shines through Zazen in its dropping of judgements, names, differences, opinions, analyzing, and such.

One knows such when one experiences such.

In Shikantaza, such is not our goal, but naturally shines through in the radical equanimity and disentangling from thoughts and judgements.

Then, rising from the cushion, this unconditioned may reside in the bones even as we get back to our lives amid this world of the conditioned, names, judgements, goals and jobs to do, etc. Then, we hopefully discover that the "unconditioned" and "conditioned" are not two, like two sides of a no sided coin. Master Dogen cautioned against believing that the point of this practice was simply to realize some "unconditioned" and stay there.

No need to make it complicated.

"Unconditioned" is a common enough term in Zen, the Mahayana and general Buddhism. For example, in "Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors," Master Dogen comments on a poem by Dongpo, "Valley sounds are the long, broad tongue [of Buddha]. Mountain colors are no other than the unconditioned body. ... " Dogen described a Buddha this way: "A buddha enters forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, and objects of mind and is not confused by them. Thus, a buddha masters the six-sense objects, which are all marked with emptiness. A buddha is free of conditions. Even having a body of five skandhas accompanied by desire, a buddha does not depend on anything. " There are several terms that are translated that way, but a common one is 無爲 [mui]. Skt. asamskrita, (LINK). I would say that "unconditioned mind" is simply realizing the clear and boundless mind, like a mirror, free of conditions. However, recall that the conditions and things that manifest in the mirror -are- the mirror too!

Gassho, J
stlah

YES! This, Teacher, these very ideas Zazen showed me this morning!

Free, at ease, the state of being
Coming and going
Stillness is moving, both together complete
No longer tangled in that which tangles
The extraordinary within the ordinary

Gassho,

Mujin

SatTodayLAH

[Jundo]

[Shui_Di]

I am a simpleton on this.

The "unconditioned mind" is simply the light and clarity which naturally shines through Zazen in its dropping of judgements, names, differences, opinions, analyzing, and such.

One knows such when one experiences such.

In Shikantaza, such is not our goal, but naturally shines through in the radical equanimity and disentangling from thoughts and judgements.

Then, rising from the cushion, this unconditioned may reside in the bones even as we get back to our lives amid this world of the conditioned, names, judgements, goals and jobs to do, etc. Then, we hopefully discover that the "unconditioned" and "conditioned" are not two, like two sides of a no sided coin. Master Dogen cautioned against believing that the point of this practice was simply to realize some "unconditioned" and stay there.

No need to make it complicated.

"Unconditioned" is a common enough term in Zen, the Mahayana and general Buddhism. For example, in "Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors," Master Dogen comments on a poem by Dongpo, "Valley sounds are the long, broad tongue [of Buddha]. Mountain colors are no other than the unconditioned body. ... " Dogen described a Buddha this way: "A buddha enters forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, and objects of mind and is not confused by them. Thus, a buddha masters the six-sense objects, which are all marked with emptiness. A buddha is free of conditions. Even having a body of five skandhas accompanied by desire, a buddha does not depend on anything. " There are several terms that are translated that way, but a common one is 無爲 [mui]. Skt. asamskrita, (LINK). I would say that "unconditioned mind" is simply realizing the clear and boundless mind, like a mirror, free of conditions. However, recall that the conditions and things that manifest in the mirror -are- the mirror too!

Gassho, J
stlah

Very clearly said Jundo. Thank you so much.

Deep Gassho, Mujo
Stlah