way-seeking mind

27 Feb 2026 - 27 Feb 2026

Ran across this phrase in Zen and the White Whale, not for the first time but today it struck me. For a moment I felt I knew what it meant, although that feeling quickly undermined itself.

Before I go reading up on this, here's what it means to me now – a certain inexorable yet also potentially universal quality of mind. A stance, a mode of self-awareness.

It's like the job we all have, sort of by definition or tautology. Assuming we are not just living for the moment*, we need to work at being ourselves. That sounds pretentious, but even the most clueless normie has to perform themselves, whether self-consciously or otherwise.

I am assuming that way-seeking mind has the nature of paradox, because it seeks what it already has found.

Shunryu Suzuki is saying something different: that it involves morality, that in some sense it is morality, an existential commitment to the good:

So “way it should be” is--means morality or religion. And “way as it is” is science.

And way-seeking mind-- what I'm going to talk just now is the problem of to choose one-- one of the two: good or bad. Refrainings from bad to take good is way-seeking mind, not from moral viewpoint but from religious viewpoint. When we take religious viewpoint, there is no alternative way. We should choose good. And we should refrain from bad. There is no alternative way. But if you have no way-seeking mind, or if you have no idea of religion, you will wonder which to choose.

But from the meaning of practice, actual practice, even though you lose it, the meaning of the practice is the same: to hit the mark or lose the mark is not different. That is our, you know, enlightenment...it is not only enlightenment that is valuable. The failure by true spirit is also valuable. It has same meaning...so that is why even though your zazen is not perfect, it has same meaning if you have way-seeking mind.

...this actual fact that we have good and bad, half and half, in human nature. We should—we should not try to improve this [laughs] actual fact. Even Buddha accepted this truth, and he started Buddhism based on this fact. He accepted this truth. If you try to change this truth, you are not Buddhist anymore.

That we can do something good means that we can do something bad. It is true. Don’t be bothered by it.