Wind move or flag move?

An Eternal Now SG

Question:

I’ve been puzzled by Hui-Neng saying that it is not the wind moving or the flag moving, but the mind moving. I presume you know this famous saying of his in the Platform Sutra.

The reason I find this saying a bit strange is that I had an experience ones sitting in the train and looking out of the window. I saw a flag moving in the wind and saw that it was moving and not moving at the same time. I saw this from an immovable vantage point.

I wonder if you could comment on this saying of Hui Neng. Perhaps it’s just a semantic matter. Thanks for your reply.

Greg:

Here’s the passage from the Platform Sutra in a bit more context:

“The day had come for [Hui Neng] to spread the Dharma, and he arrived at a monastery where the abbot, Master YinZong, was preaching the Parinirvana Sutra. Out in the courtyard, a flag was flapping in the wind, and two monks were arguing below. One said, “The wind is moving.” The other said, “No, the flag is moving.” They could not reach a conclusion. Hui Neng came forth and said, “Neither the wind nor the flag is moving. It is your minds that are moving.” The whole assembly was startled.”

Of course, Hui Neng didn’t really mean that the mind was moving either. It was merely a way to direct the monks’ attention to how they were projecting a real, external and independent attribute upon something they took to be actual and remote. Hui Neng brought it much closer to home – this is an “expedient teaching,” a pedagogical and rhetorical shift on Hui Neng’s part. If the monks truly believe in movement, then look inward to find it. They might even find that the mind isn’t moving any more than the wind or the flag. A clue is to take these words literally, and it can be seen that mind can’t move in the first place. But the mere fact that “the assembly was startled” showed that Hui Neng was tapping in to their intuitions.

Which brings us to your experience. Normally speaking, we’d say that if you’re sitting in a train watching a flag move in the wind, there ought to be a whole lot of movement going on. The train, the person on the train, the wind, the flag, the earth, etc.

But your experience was that you did not move at all. You are the unmoving clarity in which movement appears. This is a direct taste of yourself as witnessing awareness! It’s never our experience that we move. Going just by the visual evidence, if anything moves at all, it’s the colors that we say make up the flag. But you also had the impression that the flag didn’t move. This is very insightful.

The “movement” of the flag turns out to be no kind of movement at all. It is experienced as awareness only.

How is that possible? First, it’s clear from what you say above that it isn’t experienced as the movement of physical objects. If anything it is colors that appear to be moving. But now, are the colors really moving? No. In the direct experience right then and there, it is just clarity. There is no movement unless a later thought arises and claims “there was movement in that previous experience.”

So any “movement” would have to consist in nothing other than this later claim. This is what Hui Neng was saying by saying that “It is your minds that are moving.” There is no movement outside this claim or attribution of movement by another thought. But remember, Hui Neng wasn’t taking even this statement literally or seriously. It was a way to direct the monks’s attention in a helpful way.

So now let’s take a closer look. Is this later thought really making a claim? Well, what goes for movement also goes for claiming. The claiming thought, when it arises, is just an arising. It is not really making a claim until a later thought arises and says that “the earlier thought made a claim.”

That is, there is no movement or claiming at all outside of a thought that says so. And like memory, this thought is always making some attribution about a previous thought that is not present. The memory-thought or the attribution-thought is never co-present with the thought it seems to be pointing to. Verification and substantiation can never be had, because the pointing-thought and the pointed-to-thought are never together to be linked. When the first thought arose, the second thought was not yet on the scene. When the second thought arose, the first thought had already subsided back into awareness.

All the pointings by these thoughts never reach their mark. They never touch another thought. The only thing these thoughts touch is awareness itself. They arise as awareness, they abide as awareness, and they subside as awareness. This awareness is you. A thought is never distant from you, and never made out of anything other than you. And this is your open, loving and direct experience at all times.

Love,

Greg

Contact Greg thru www.heartofnow.com

2009novice SG

Hi Mod,

I read this story too.. but the summary explains that our views on the same thing varies from person to person. We got different views because of our perception and the circumstances.

But to me I would just treat it as the flag is moving... Usually people dont comment wind is moving right? Wind cannot be seen anyway...

Weychin SG

Hi Mod,

I read this story too.. but the summary explains that our views on the same thing varies from person to person. We got different views because of our perception and the circumstances.

But to me I would just treat it as the flag is moving... Usually people dont comment wind is moving right? Wind cannot be seen anyway...

Actually ,the Moderator had answered you, the answer is already in the second passage.

Let me ask you this question; as we are both talking about the flag, did we both really see any flag? Do the flag or the wind physically exist outside our conversation or the story?. So where do the flag or the wind, or in this instance, the moving of either flag or wind,exists?