Double cross: Tony D’Souza explores big mind and shallow mind

‘One day, if you ever have a mind like Jesus, you might allow yourself to get angry like him.’

The novice monk had been in the Zen monastery for three years before he discovered a translation of the New Testament in the library. He read the book from cover to cover with mixed feelings. Sometimes he was amazed, sometimes alarmed. When he had finished, he approached the elderly abbot of the monastery with a question.

‘Sir, I have read the Gospels of Jesus Christ and there is a part which describes how he drove the money lenders out of the temple. You have always told me that anger is a grievous fault which I must control. And here is this man, Jesus, clearly a great spiritual being, getting angry and throwing people out of the temple. I just don’t understand how that can be.’

‘I understand your question, my son,’ said the abbot. ‘Come with me.’

He led the young monk into the spacious and beautiful walled garden and pointed to a large boulder in a flower bed.

‘Pick that up and follow me,’ said the abbot.

The young monk struggled to extract the boulder from the flower bed. Staggering along, he was barely able to walk behind the old man. They arrived in the middle of a small patch of gravel path.

‘Now raise the boulder above your head, and hurl it at the ground as hard as you can,’ said the abbot.

The young monk did as he was told and hurled the boulder to the ground. Surprisingly, it bounced, rolled a couple of times, then stopped.

The abbot pointed to the dent in the ground made by the impact of the boulder.

‘Do you see that dent in the ground?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said the young monk.

‘Come to this spot every day and look at it. Come and see me again about this question when the dent in the ground has completely disappeared.’

‘OK,’ said the young monk.

Time moved very slowly. Every day he came to inspect the dent in the ground and every day it looked hardly any different from the day before. It took years for the dent in the path to disappear. Three and a half years to be exact – that is, three rainy seasons, three dry seasons and three winters. Finally, after all that time the dent was hardly noticeable. The young monk went and fetched the abbot.

‘The dent in the ground has gone,’ he said.

The abbot went and crouched down over the spot. ‘Yes, it looks like it has,’ he said. ‘Now pick up the boulder again and come with me.’

The young monk picked up the boulder again and staggered behind the old man. They went out on to the middle of a footbridge that stretched across an ornamental lake. It looked like the painting by Monet.

When they got to the middle of the bridge, the abbot said ‘Now, hold the boulder above your head and hurl it into the water as hard as you can.’

The young monk did as he was told and hurled the boulder into the water with all his might. A huge plume of water erupted out of the lake. The ducks fled, quacking loudly and frantically beating their wings as they took flight. A huge tidal wave rolled out from where the boulder had entered the water and lapped about two feet up the sides of the lake.

The two men stood in silence in the middle of the bridge. After a few minutes there was nothing but a few ripples on the surface of the lake. Then the lilies resumed their place and the ducks came back skidding across the surface, flapping their wings and shaking themselves as they landed. After a few more minutes, everything was completely still again.

‘There,’ said the abbot, ‘that is the difference between big mind and shallow mind. Anger is a great fault and you must control it. One day, if you ever have a mind like Jesus, you might allow yourself to get angry like him.’

Shallow mind is just about the only form of mind today because nearly everyone has learned to identify with their thought processes. This identification creates a self (the ego) which is easy prey to constantly-changing emotions. As if that was not bad enough, this self, created from mind, senses its own fragility and is consequently very defensive. It takes everything personally and holds a grudge easily. Shallow mind can obsess about a slight to its self-esteem for years – sometimes it spends years plotting revenge.

Big mind gets over things quickly. It is able to do this because it has learned the impermanence of all things, including thought, and has freed itself from identification with mind. How can we achieve that freedom? Quite simply. All we have to do is sit and observe thoughts as they arise. Nothing more than that. When we first begin to do this the mind wanders, so it helps to have a point of focus to which to return (such as returning attention to the breath). That is all it takes to begin to de-identify with thought processes.

In the Zen tradition, there are three inescapable conditions of all created things. They are anicca (impermanence), anatta (not self), and dukkha (suffering). These conditions apply to everything, including emotions and thought, which is responsible for creating emotions. Take anger, for example. Anger can arise very quickly, and we can have little or no control over it. However, it eventually passes because it cannot last forever. Now, let’s say a day later, is it possible to reproduce the same anger, the exact same emotion? No, it is not. We might be able to produce a similar state of anger, but it will not be the same anger because that moment has passed. This proves that the anger is impermanent (anicca). And if it is impermanent, it is equally true that it cannot be part of our true nature (anatta – not self). If it is not part of our true nature, why indulge it? (Incidentally, anger is also suffering (dukkha), because it causes suffering to both the person who gets angry and to the object of the anger.)

When we cultivate the ability to observe our thoughts, we can also observe how we compulsively identify with them. Awareness of the thought before we identify with it allows us to break the process of causation. Imagine a guard dog on a chain. The dog runs out to the extent of the chain and barks at every little noise. Even if a child, on a tricycle with a squeaky wheel, passes the gate, the dog still runs out and barks. When we can catch and observe this moment, when we see how quickly we run out after every little thought, we can begin to stop doing it. If it’s not part of our true nature, why indulge it? We can gradually learn to let the guard dog sleep in the kennel when the child on the squeaky tricycle goes by. That is the difference between shallow mind and big mind – between the boulder hitting the ground or the boulder hitting the water.

---

Comments

Excellent article which has been shared at the right time. I was not happy
to see in our Epistle a pledge to be a ” gentle, angry ” people.
Anger being an emotional response and not a good place to remain in. In such an emotional place we become stupid and have to control ourselves so not to do something we regret. In a state of arousal such as when we are angry the amygdala turns of our frontal cortex ( the thinking part of the brain ) which explains why we become stupid.
I won’t pledge to be “gentle and Stupid”.

By Kevin Ceney on 20th August 2021 - 14:39

---

Please login to add a comment