The Consciousness Of No Mind

Zen is what makes the religious feeling run through its legitimate channel and what gives life to the intellect. Zen does this by giving one a new point of view of looking at things, a new way of appreciating the truth and beauty of life and the world, by discovering a new source of energy in the inmost recesses of consciousness and by bestowing on one a feeling of completeness and sufficiency.

That is to say, Zen works miracles by overhauling the whole system of one’s inner life and opening up a world hitherto entirely undreamt of. This may be called a resurrection. And Zen tends to emphasize the speculative element, though confessedly it opposes this more than anything else in the whole process of spiritual revolution, and in this respect Zen makes use of phraseology belonging to the sciences of speculative philosophy.

D.T. Suzuki in his book, Practical Methods of Zen Instruction is explaining Zen in terms we Westerners can understand. The word Zen is used to describe all sorts of acts, things and situations these days, but most of us don’t really understand what Zen really is or how it works. Suzuki spent his lifetime teaching Buddhist philosophy, and is still regarded as the 20th century's most knowledgeable professors of Zen Doctrine. He called his some of his work "The Doctrine of No Mind.”

We all have Zen and the qualities that display its energy. In fact, Zen is creative energy. The Western word for Zen is consciousness or in religious terms, the soul. Consciousness encompasses all things, so Zen is in all things. When we allow the ego to blend with our subjective consciousness, we are in the state of Zen. However, Zen is not a state; it is the awareness of being one with all things.

The dilemma we face is how do we achieve the blending of our ego and our subjective consciousness or soul? Mediation has been used for centuries to achieve this euphoric awareness, but meditation is not the only way to sense the wholeness of Zen. The main way we can be in the zone of wholeness is to allow consciousness to express itself through the ego.

Our consciousness is energy, and it is always expanding. Zen is the creative action of the soul. There is no mind and no ego in Zen; we do without doing. Do without doing means, there is only the energy of creative oneness in our physical actions.