Night 7 · Looking back, looking ahead

What We Found When We Looked

我们找到了什么

觅心了不可得。

I have looked for my mind, and I cannot find it.

Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, Book 3

02 Tonight

A week has gone by. Maybe you slept a little better, maybe not. Both are normal. Tonight there's no new story. We'll look back at the road so far.

03 How the ancients saw it

Seven nights ago we started with Huike. As the Chan records tell it, he stood in the snow all night and asked Bodhidharma to put his mind at rest. Bodhidharma told him to bring it. He went looking and couldn't find it.

This week we went looking a few times ourselves.

On the second night, Master Ziqi showed us that the voice that won't stop talking is only one part of “me,” and that someone quieter sits beside it, listening.

On the third night, Zhuangzi said moods grow like mushrooms from steam, out of conditions. A what-if at midnight says more about tonight than about tomorrow.

On the fourth night, Wang Yangming wrote from a military campaign that bandits in the mountains are easy to defeat and bandits in the heart are hard. Putting yourself on trial at midnight means you're in the hard fight, and hard fights go slowly.

On the fifth night, Wang Yangming again: medicine according to the illness. Notice which kind of night it is before choosing what to do.

On the sixth night, Confucius, the Duke of Zhou, and Wang Fu. A dream is a packing list of what we carried through the day.

Looking back, each time we went searching for the restless mind, we found no fixed thing. We found a voice, a crop of mushrooms, a judge, a symptom, a dream. They all come, and they all go. That is one way to read Huike's “I cannot find it.”

You don't need to keep all of this week's images. Snow, banked ash, mushrooms, grass over an old camp, a cup of warm water, a traveler's bundle. Keep whichever one loosened something, and put the rest down.

No need to reply. If one image stayed with you and you feel like sending a single word, you can answer this email. Every reply is read, though we can't answer each one.

Next week: Zhuangzi falls asleep and dreams he is a butterfly, flitting about, perfectly happy. When he wakes, he can't tell whether he is Zhuangzi who dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming of being Zhuangzi. Wang Yangming will be back too. He visits most weeks.

04 One line for the pillow

Of this week's images, keep one. That's enough.

05 A quiet image to end on

Back at the cave. The snow has stopped. Outside the entrance it lies smooth and unbroken, without a single footprint. The path is still there, somewhere underneath.

Words of the night