Ask the horse

Ask the horse

There is a Zen story about a man riding a horse which is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, yells at him, “Where are you going?” and the man on the horse yells back, “I don’t know. Ask the horse.”

If you make some time to sit quietly you very quickly realise that your mind has a mind of its own. Your attention is captured by the fleeting and mostly flimsy thoughts and feelings that flow through up-front consciousness. But you will also sense that the upfront stuff is but the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your unconscious: and the unconscious is in a state of vital churn and constant flux while it (a) processes information coming in from the sense organs against the information that has previously been planted in memory by nature and by nurture and (b) decides how to react or respond. 

You have a monumental choice.  You can either let yourself be mindlessly tossed around by the flux or you can be a mindful witness to what is going on. In the first case you are merely conscious and not much more than a robot; in the second case you are conscious of your consciousness and to some extent of the unconscious – and this plants you firmly in the foothills of the mountain that the mystics climb.

Mystic's Mountain

Thich Nhat Hahn’s Order of Interbeing invites people to climb the mystic’s mountain. The Order has fourteen precepts the first of which is: “Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.”

This is an impossible task for a merely conscious robot and is extremely challenging for a mindful witness. But we are what we think. If we can think different we can be different.

The ancient Chinese Tao teh Ching notes that “the reality that can be described is not the real reality”. It also notes that “those who know do not speak” and rather cheekily that “those who speak do not know”.

I have spoken a lot – often in writing. Recently the rate of thinking and writing has accelerated. There has been energy, intention and joy associated with a mental state where the unconscious throws up ideas whose ‘sense’ does not become apparent till afterwards.  A long term purpose or sense of direction can be imputed from reading my last series of articles in chronological order. The mind has a mind of its own.

Where is all this going?

My ‘I’ doesn’t know.

Who or what is the agent?

Ask the Horse!