Big mind/small mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J8dfex0bkU[/video]]
... big mind, small mind. That's a really big topic but what does it mean? You know that's a good question! What do people mean by big mind, small mind? You hear that bandied about in the Zen world. Well I don't think it's really much different from what I talk about here most days.
Big mind... people usually mean is a mind where all the divisions, separations, frictions that we create up here [in our head] is dropped. It's boundless, spacious... enough to contain all things in the universe without them bumping into each other.
Because, think what we do all day with our mind, small mind. We chop the world up into pieces: there's this and that, me and you and the other guy, things I like, things I don't like, things I have to do at work, people at work, people in my family, what I think about them, the political situation, all the countries on the map, all the wars that the countries are fighting, all the problems in the world, all the good things, all that bad things. Our mind is a wonderful chopping device
Now I don't want to get into a deep philosophical discussion about whether these things really exist or don't exist if we stop thinking about them, I just want to say that we can experience life dropping them all from mind into emptiness and then what do we experience?
It's all a great wholeness. No things, so no things bumping into each other. Everything is just at rest, and still and at peace. Because our mind is at rest, and still and at peace that's why we do Shikantaza you see. I think that's what people usually mean by big mind.
We even drop from mind all idea of big and small, that's another dividing. Things just flowing along and we don't even have the separation of "us" and the "it" that's flowing, so we're just flowing along. As a matter of fact I'll even say that better; just flowing, there's just flowing. OK that's big mind
Now getting back to small mind, some people think that the point of Buddhism is just to get to big mind and stay there There are some schools that may teach that, but we teach that we live with small mind. If you don't have small mind how do you put your shoes on? How do you get the car started? How do you get the kids off to school? How do you feed yourself? As long as you have a life, you need a small mind because a small mind dividing up the world is necessary to live.
So we don't think it's necessarily a bad thing - completely - if you also see it through big mind, together, because then all the divisions, the frictions, the likes and dislikes are just not what they were before
When you experience the big mind... well OK I'll say it, it's probably what people are talking about they say they get in touch with enlightenment, or kensho - when we drop away all divisions and just see the wholeness. But true enlightenment is not just to stay there, it's to bring it back down into the crazy, mixed-up world we live in Then all the frictions, all the divisions, they're still there but they're just not what they were before. OK? Just not what they were before. That to me is what big mind is, what small mind is - in words Let's stop talking about it and see if we can taste it. Shall we sit?