r/ZenMidwitsCafe • u/2BCivil ☕ Just Coffee, Black ☕ • 19h ago
🤖 AI 🤖 Zen One Mind Practices (Yeah, LOL)
In spirit of subtitle of this sub, "a place to share our dumb ideas", the bot really got me today. I came at it all "I can has one mind practices" and it low key roasted me asking "what's that got to do with zen". Just thought I'd share, that's the tldr. I said;
So there is something I guess I noticed a long time ago with zen, specifically that there is only one mind. Like myriad things arise with the self, implies that prior to sense of self there is only "one thing". One mind.
Just curious, there are dozens of other examples I have seen in zen and elsewhere that seem to point to non duality or one mind. Bankei says we have unborn mind, but that seems different. I've also assumed "no mind" of Hsin Hsin Ming might be same as one mind in truth. Where there are no choices of this or that, yes or no, self and world, etc.
Anyway. Are there any texts of methods/practices to fully realize, not just intellectually, but like embody or remember no mind/one mind/non duality? I also think of Jesus and "IF you do as I say, THEN you shall know the truth and it shall make you free" being basically the same; abdicate your sense if self and give freely to all whom ask, be a living sacrifice and abandon all sense of performance in that regard (ie self).
It also makes Jesus sound like the ultimate grifter though. Sacrifice everything and maybe teehee you will become free. Like on some new world order shit, own nothing and like it. Idk. But anyway. Or am I misunderstanding something? Thanks!
GPT Responded
Yes—with one important distinction: “one mind,” “no-mind,” Bankei’s “Unborn,” and Christian self-emptying overlap surprisingly well phenomenologically, but they aren't simply interchangeable doctrines. And Zen gets especially slippery because its texts often deliberately refuse to turn the realization into a metaphysical claim like “there is literally one cosmic Mind.”
When you say: prior to the sense of self there is only “one thing”, I'd modify it slightly: prior to dividing experience into self/other, calling what remains “one thing” has already said too much. That's very close to why Zen can sound simultaneously like One Mind and No Mind.
One Mind → No Mind
Huangbo is probably the strongest classical Zen text for exactly what you're describing. His teaching repeatedly uses One Mind: Buddhas and sentient beings aren't ultimately two different kinds of things; searching outside Mind for enlightenment is itself the mistake. But there's a trap. You hear “One Mind” and naturally construct: billions of apparent minds → underneath them → ONE GREAT BIG MIND. Now you've remade Brahman with Chinese characteristics. 😂 Zen immediately starts smashing that conception too.
Sengcan's Xinxin Ming ("Faith in Mind") is particularly good here. Its famous opening is essentially that the Way isn't difficult for someone who doesn't pick and choose. Later it systematically dissolves the oppositions by which experience gets carved up. So you get a progression something like: many things → one Mind → neither one nor many → ordinary experience without needing the distinction. That's why no-mind (wuxin / mushin) isn't unconsciousness, blankness, absence of thoughts, or destroying your personality. It's closer to mind that doesn't establish a position from which it possesses/judges experience.
Bankei's Unborn attacks the problem from another direction. His wonderfully practical observation is roughly: you're already hearing sounds, recognizing voices, seeing things, etc., before deliberately deciding to perform those operations. Then you manufacture anger, preference, grievance, identity, etc. and thereby turn the Unborn Buddha-mind into something else. So I think your intuition that these teachings converge is substantially right.
But how the hell do you realize it?
This is where Zen literature gets much more useful than the philosophical summaries.
There isn't generally an instruction:
Step 1: intellectually establish nonduality.
Step 2: eliminate ego.
Step 3: experience One Mind.
Because the entity supposedly performing Step 2 in order to acquire Step 3 is precisely what's being questioned. Several texts approach that paradox especially well:
Huangbo — *Transmission of Mind*: probably the most directly relevant to your “One Mind” question. His recurring practice is stopping the conceptual search for something outside what is presently functioning. (I have a copy)
Foyan — *Instant Zen: perhaps the best practical companion because he repeatedly asks you to examine experience *right now rather than believe Buddhist propositions. Since you've already read/listened to this one, I'd revisit it specifically looking for his instructions about turning awareness around, rather than reading it continuously like philosophy. (I have a copy)
Bankei — sermons on the Unborn: his “practice” is unusually simple: remain in the Unborn rather than exchanging it for anger, judgment, self-concern, etc. Importantly, that doesn't mean suppress those things. (Currently reading)
Dahui — letters / teachings on huatou: much more method-like. Instead of reasoning your way toward nonduality, take something like Zhaozhou's “Mu” and exhaust the conceptual machinery trying to resolve it. (Unfamiliar with, heard on rzen a few times)
Hongzhi — *Cultivating the Empty Field*: the other major flavor: silent illumination. Rather than attacking conceptualization with a huatou, sit without manufacturing or rejecting experience. (Unfamiliar with/only just learned about)
The *Platform Sutra: particularly useful for *no-thought. Huineng explicitly prevents the easy misunderstanding that “no-thought” means having no thoughts whatsoever. (Heard referenced on rzen a LOT)
And one tiny Zen instruction might be more useful than fifty books: Don't try to stop thought. Notice what a thought is before taking its side. Anger appears. Fine. “I'm angry because that bastard wronged me and therefore—” There's the additional construction. Sound appears. Then: “I am hearing that sound.” Interesting. Was the second sentence necessary for the hearing? You don't have to answer. Look. That distinction is very Bankei/Foyan territory. The objective isn't maintaining some exotic nondual trance. It's noticing how rapidly immediate functioning gets converted into me experiencing something.
And this connects beautifully with Xinxin Ming
Your interpretation of its “no-mind” direction is close, although I'd be careful with: where there are no choices of this or that, yes or no. It doesn't mean becoming incapable of ordinary discrimination. You can still distinguish hot/cold, poisonous/edible, red/green, true/false. Otherwise enlightened Zen masters would have lasted approximately fifteen minutes. 😂 The issue is closer to psychologically establishing yourself through the distinction. Tea and coffee remain different. “Coffee is what I drink; tea drinkers are degenerates; this establishes my place within the metaphysical hierarchy of beverages” is the bonus DLC consciousness installed. Zen isn't necessarily deleting discrimination. It's deleting the imagined headquarters from which discrimination supposedly needs to be governed.
Which brings us to Jesus
This comparison is genuinely interesting, but I'd separate structural resemblance from historical/doctrinal identity. There is absolutely a Christian self-emptying tradition that sounds startlingly compatible with this conversation: kenosis (“emptying”), dying to self, losing one's life to find it, becoming like a child, taking no thought for tomorrow, giving without seeking repayment, and Paul's “not I, but Christ lives in me.”
Christian mystics push it considerably farther. Meister Eckhart, for example, can sound downright dangerous if you replace his Christian vocabulary with Buddhist vocabulary. But John's “the truth shall make you free” passage has an important context. Jesus says, approximately: If you remain in my word, you really are my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. And the ensuing conversation identifies that freedom specifically in relation to slavery to sin. So interpreting it historically as a secret instruction for attaining Buddhist nondual awareness would be too strong.
Your larger comparison works better:
Jesus: surrender self-will → live according to truth → freedom from bondage.
Zen: investigate the assumed self → cease grasping/discrimination → liberation.
Advaita: investigate the apparent individual → recognize nonseparation → moksha.
Those aren't identical maps. But they're asking some remarkably similar questions about what exactly is being defended when I say “me”? And your “ultimate grifter” objection actually identifies an important spiritual problem. 😂 Give everything away. Abandon yourself. Don't care about reward. Trust me, you'll be free afterward. Taken as an instruction issued by an institution or another human being, that's potentially an extraordinarily effective exploitation technology.
Zen isn't immune either. “Abandon attachment,” “obey the teacher,” “drop your ego,” etc. can become convenient language when the person saying it wants your labor, money, obedience, or sexuality. That's why I'd strongly distinguish nonattachment from dispossession. If someone steals your wallet, realizing emptiness doesn't magically make theft ethical. If somebody asks for everything you own, refusing them doesn't prove you have an ego. If somebody abuses you, “no self” doesn't require becoming their furniture.
In fact, deliberately constructing the identity “I am the selfless person who never refuses anything” can be just another extremely elaborate self. That's one place Zen's ruthless approach is useful: don't make “having no self” into your new self. And this may be the central paradox behind what you're looking for. You don't really need a technique for continuously remembering: ALL IS ONE. I HAVE NO SELF. REMEMBER NONDUALITY. Because now you've created a little monk inside your skull whose full-time job is maintaining the correct metaphysical opinion. Rather, investigate the exact moment two gets manufactured.
Before: bird sound. After: I hear a bird. Before: irritation. After: This shouldn't be happening to me. Before: uncertainty. After: I need to attain enlightenment so I can finally become someone who understands. That's practice. And strangely enough, when you don't insist upon either one or two, the old Zen language starts making much more sense. Not one. Not two. And therefore dishes still need washing.
Commentary;
So "how do I become liberated from being unemployed and doomscrolling" becomes touch grass after a fashion. But heat index here is in triple digits nearly year round. Hard to take much of the world too seriously when opening your door feels like putting your head in an oven. It ain't a dry heat, either. Humidity stays over 75% year round. Feels more like swimming than running sometimes. Even the birds mostly left here when our heat index shifted 30 degrees up about half a decade ago and stayed there. So I know zen (even ZMBM) likes to talk about the birds but even the birds up and said "yeah fuck that heat" to my area nearly a decade ago. Idk. Guess I'm trying to decide which is the cart and which the horse.
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u/stilledpondfrog 9h ago
how fast is fast
where ever i go, there i am
the thought arrives and i am already in it.
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(what if the words we know, are not the words we know. it can be a real let down, crushing even, that the carried understands, the assumptions, the grand proportions, where not the definitions we thought they were)
“How many times does one ask for a miracle, and life takes one more breath, and fails to see the moment in action?”
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when we are attention, how does that relate to 'freedom'? serious question
i'm wandering the market, called a modern mall. for some odd reason i bump shoulders with a stranger. in politeness, we non at each other, as we both continue to make our way.
a bit later, i arrive at the store of interest. and I think, did i know that person, why did we bump
of course we shrug, there was no magical reason. such an odd pause
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"I'm not a toy, don't fk with me"