Prajñā: The State Before Thinking

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This afternoon I want to talk about the meaning of prajñā. What is prajñā? Where does it come from? Many Buddhist groups that I know of chant the Maha Prajñā Paramita Sutra, which is known in Japanese as Hannya Shingyo. People like to chant it because it's not very long, and in Japanese it has a kind of rhythm to it. The Hannya Shingyo, or Maha Prajñā Paramita Sutra, is in praise of prajñā. Maha means great. Paramita practice sutra in English means the practice of the great prajñā, which people often translate as wisdom. But I wonder what wisdom means.

I think I've explained this before. If we look at the Sanskrit word prajñā, it's formed of the prefix pra and the participle jnana. Pra means before, and jnana means intellectual thinking. So prajñā means before intellectual thinking. It suggests something before we think, something like intuition. But what is intuition? Somebody wrote a sutra praising intuition: the Hannya Shingyo.

But if you read that sutra, it's actually talking about something to do with zazen. The sutra which we chant has the introduction missing, and the ending is missing. It's just the central part of what was written. But if you read the introduction, it describes a sesshin that Gautama Buddha held on Vulture Peak with lots of Buddhist people. The Buddha, Shariputra, and the... My brain is not working.

Roman: Avalokiteshvara?

Mike: Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara may be some kind of legendary person, sometimes seen as a Buddhist god. So it's a very ancient sutra. But anyway, they're at the sesshin, and they have just finished practicing something called the Prajñā Paramita, practice of wisdom. The Buddha and Shariputra and Avalokiteshvara have a conversation in which Avalokiteshvara asks Shariputra: How shall I explain the state in the practice of wisdom to young people who might want to practice it? And then Shariputra explains how he wants to describe the state.

That's where the sutra which we chant starts. The sutra seems to say that the state of prajñā paramita is without everything, a state in which eyes, ears, nose, mouth and so on all cease to exist. But actually, what he's trying to describe is a peaceful state in zazen, when we stop thinking about the world. When we stop thinking about the world, we stop discriminating. We stop using words and concepts in our brain to interpret the world. That's what is described in the Hannya Shingyo, and that state is called prajñā. So it seems that the practice of wisdom is the practice of zazen, or the practice of dhyāna, meditation.

But what is it that we get from zazen which we can call prajñā, or wisdom, or intuition? Are we making contact with some higher power that gives us special knowledge, or special information, or a special way of seeing? Or is it something in us? What is prajñā, or wisdom? What is this state before thinking? It's quite difficult to describe. In the modern world we would normally think that a state without any concepts is a stupid state, because our societies and our civilization are founded on intellectual knowledge, ideas and concepts, made real by human effort.

Our societies value concepts and ideas which we call principles. Principles are ideas that are so strong that we believe in them. We believe that these ideas are very, very important. They're worth dying for, worth living for. So we are taught to hold on to our principles. But a state before thinking doesn't contain principles. That sounds very dangerous. A state before thinking doesn't contain any ideas or concepts.

So what value does it have in a society or a civilization which is based on ideas, concepts and principles? What can a human being do, freed from ideas, concepts and principles? There would be no direction, no morals, no right and wrong, nothing to tell us which way to go. Wow. That's the same.

Roman: Well, we accept English expressions. We borrow expressions like wow.

Mike: Wow. Cool.

Roman: Yeah, we say cool.

Mike: Cool. Okay.

But this state is valued by Buddhism, praised by teachers of the past, and we don't know what it is, or how it can be valuable. In order to understand the value of the state of prajñā, we have to imagine what it's like not to have a mind separate from a body, not to have a body separate from the mind. We have to imagine it, because we can't think about it. What can it be? Normally we feel there's me, my mind, my consciousness, sitting in my body, controlling it: come here, go there. My consciousness is like some kind of control center, and my body is doing what I want it to do. Sounds good. Sometimes, though, our body does something we didn't tell it to. In modern artificial intelligence research, some researchers are noticing that the model of the human brain as some kind of control center, with the body like a machine following the controls, might not be true.

Roman: This research may not...

Mike: Not be true. Yeah. Because of some problems with how long it takes signals to travel in nerves. So they're searching for another model of the human being that is different from a mental control center controlling a physical body. Now, from ancient times Buddhist teachers have insisted that there is no control center separate from the body. There's no body separate from the control center. There's one whole body-mind. It's the central belief of Buddhist teaching. However, human beings have become very skilled at separating their mental faculties from their physical faculties, or rather, at believing that mental faculties and physical faculties are two different things.

So through the centuries there have been many theories about where the mind is. Does it exist in our body? Or does it exist around our body? Or somewhere else? The great religions have suggested that there is some kind of non-physical power which we make contact with, usually called God. If we make contact with God, we can get nice instructions to control our body. It's called prayer. Please, all-powerful, abstract God.

Unfortunately, sometimes something goes wrong in the communication, and the people who are trying to receive instructions do very terrible things, killing people or... not behaving properly. So to me this belief doesn't make any sense, that there is some spiritual force existing outside the world which will tell us what to do. This is called spiritualism or idealism. We base the way that we live on spiritual knowledge, or ideas or concepts or principles which are true.

Instead, I learned from Buddhist teachers that if I stop separating my mental from my spiritual, if I allow myself to become whole, then I can just do what is natural.

This is quite difficult to understand, because of our strong belief that we have to think before we do something. So it's difficult even to imagine a state where our thinking and our physical body are one. We're not thinking and then doing, we're thinking doing, or doing thinking, and what must that be like? The state of prajñā, before thinking, is just this state. It doesn't come from anywhere.

It already exists before we train ourselves to think about how to do things, before we train ourselves to believe that we have to think about doing things and then do them. The state of prajñā is there. Maybe we can see it in babies. Maybe we can see it in animals. Maybe when we are near babies or animals, we can sense it: naturalness, a freedom to live our lives without thinking before we act. This is the meaning of prajñā.

It's not a spiritual force. It's not a physical force. It's the natural state of living beings when they don't separate their mental area from the physical area. When we sit in zazen, dropping off our mental thoughts, focusing on our body, we are in the state of prajñā, sometimes not for long, because our thoughts come back and we are thinking about what to do. But from time to time in zazen we enter a state of wholeness, a state without concepts, ideas or principles, without right or wrong, without good or bad. Just the state of being.

Maybe the state of a young baby. Maybe the state of a dog. This is the state that Buddhism reveres, because it has its own wisdom. But we find it so difficult to trust that our own behavior, our own actions, can be right. We spend much of our lives thinking about whether our action was wrong or right, deciding whether we should do this or that. Which is best? And so on.

The ancient teachings of Buddhism say: return to the state of prajñā, return to the original state, return to the state before our parents were born. Which is a strange expression. And then we can do what we want. It's very difficult to have confidence in that, very difficult. But sometimes, if a situation is very dangerous or very important or very urgent, we do it without noticing. Before we have time to think, we act.

And then afterwards we often think: Oh, did I do that? Because we're so used to having I in control. If I is not in control, we feel very, very vulnerable, we feel powerless, but this may be an illusion. Prajñā has no I. It doesn't mean the person disappears. So that's the state of prajñā: not a spiritual state, not a physical state, but a state where we are not separating, a state which Buddhist teachings revere, a state in which we are whole, and we can do what we want. Very difficult.

Roman: There is a sport, I think, which shows exactly this problem. I've noticed that in dynamic sports like skiing, swimming, cycling, maybe kayaking, sea kayaking, where people do something dynamically, kind of in a flow, they do it just at the level they can. So they do it naturally. If you are a good skier, you naturally ski well, and if you are even better, you ski better. I think in these dynamic sports we don't have time to think and we enjoy doing something, and because we enjoy it, we are just natural. But there is a sport called golf, which I have practiced a little bit...

Mike: A little bit, a little bit.

Roman: Just half a year.

Mike: There's a sport you have been obsessed with.

Roman: Yes, okay. What is interesting is that when you read about golf, there are lots of books, lots of literature, lots of videos, millions of instructions. And what is interesting is that maybe 99% of all golfers around the world, including the pros and the best golfers in the world, do not have such a big problem with playing golf, but they have a huge problem with the mind. And I think the reason is that, as you know, golf is standing and having lots of time to think and then doing something. What most people do is they feel fear: I'm not going to do it well, I'm not sure how to do it well. So we golfers think a lot, and they block the natural, so they separate mind and body. And then I... I don't know, I'm sure... especially if it's a very important shot. And when people watch you, for me, I have so little confidence in myself. But if you watch me play golf—

Mike: You have confidence in yourself now.

Roman: Not really. Which is... people are watching.

Mike: Cover up.

Roman: Anyway, because there are so many ideas: I'm going to blow it, I'm not going to do it well, it's going to be embarrassing. And I have seen people do the same thing, struggling, because we have time to think and then we have to do something with our body. So ideally, if all golfers in the world were completely stupid, if they had no idea how good they are at golf, everyone would play golf much, much better. All golfers know this, so they sometimes seek some kind of... There are golf psychologists who help you mentally to play golf, like Zen meditation for golf or something. So it's very difficult to relax when you play golf. So how much is such a golf psychology session? It's very expensive, I'll tell you.

Mike: But isn't it because golf is inherently competitive? You wouldn't go and play golf on your own, would you?

Roman: Yes, some people do. They compete with themselves. I play on my own most of the time, and I'm just like: wow, I'm not doing anything.

Mike: Because I think kayaking or mountaineering or whatever, other more natural, normal sports, are something that you do naturally, whereas golf is a competitive sport.

Roman: I don't want to speak too much, but I'll give you an example of what happened, the difference between not thinking before you do and thinking. When I try hard to do the shot, to swing well, I usually blow it. It's quite a ridiculous situation. Then when I just want to move my balls back to where I started, just to move them, I stop thinking about how to do it. I just need to move the balls, come on. And I'm always like: how come I did this? Because I don't know how to do this. Because I didn't care, I didn't think, I could swing naturally, so all the balls fly perfectly. It's because I don't try.

Mike: Golf is teaching you prajñā.

Roman: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike: That's good. So I'd like to repeat and insist that the teachings of Buddhism don't belong to Buddhism. The truths of Buddhism don't belong to Buddhists. This is very important. Most religions or teachings claim the teachings as their own, and this separates normal people from special people. But this is a mistake, or a delusion. The truths of Buddhism are everywhere. They can be discovered by somebody who never heard the word Buddha. They can be practiced by somebody who never heard about Buddhism.

But Buddhist teachings have put forward these understandings to help us live. If you practice zazen too much, you get problems with your body. If you practice golf too much, you get problems with your elbows.

Boris: If you know the state of prajñā, the space where you are moving is quite big sometimes. You said that you act before you think, but sometimes it's very strange: where are you going? Aren't you afraid of this sometimes?

Mike: Me? No, no.

Roman: Do you trust?

Mike: Trust. Yes. So that trust develops over years. For instance, everybody's character is different. When we're young, we often feel our character should be the same as other people's, so we need to change ourselves to fit in with other people. However, sometimes our character is too strong, and trying to fit in with society is very painful. So to find the confidence to be ourselves is quite difficult sometimes, because there's pressure to be the same as everybody else.

Finding ourselves needs confidence that what we really like is okay. Usually we feel that what we really, secretly like is not so okay.