When this No-Mind has been well developed, the mind does not stop with one thing nor does it lack any one thing. It appears appropriately when facing a time of need.
Interpretation
The No-Mind state allows for clear perception and appropriate action without distraction.
Takuan Soho's quote speaks to the concept of No-Mind, a mental state where one is free from distractions and can perceive situations clearly. In this state, the mind is flexible and responsive, enabling individuals to act appropriately in various circumstances without being burdened by overthinking or attachment.
In practice
This quote can be used during a meditation workshop to encourage participants to adopt a No-Mind approach.
When a person does not think, "Where shall I put it?" the mind will extend throughout the entire body and move to any place at all. . . . The effort not to stop the mind in just one place - this is discipline. Not stopping the mind is object and essence. Put it nowhere and it will be everywhere. Even in moving the mind outside the body, if it is sent in one direction, it will be lacking in nine others. If the mind is not restricted to just one direction, it will be in all ten.
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
With fools, there is no companionship. Rather than to live with men who are selfish, vain, quarrelsome, and obstinate, let a man walk alone.
It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.
We learn from here the humility of the Holy One, Blessed is He. Since man is in the likeness of the angels, and they would be jealous of him, for this reason, He consulted them.
There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.
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