Most of us know what the expression, "I made up my mind," means or "I haven't made up my mind." When I say that I have made up my mind to study Zen I have made a particular decision. The intensity and commitment behind such a decision can't be, completely, judged externally. It could be just a matter of curiosity to study Zen. Maybe buy a book or visit a Zen center and learn to do zazen. In other matters, when I say I have my mind made up it might be in regard to my belief that Buddhism denies the Hindu Ātman or the Buddha really didn't teach reincarnation; it wasn't part of his original teaching.
Most Buddhists I have met these days have pretty much made up their minds that the Buddha denied the Hindu Ātman, in fact, the Buddha taught against it who taught, in addition, that we suffer because of our belief in ātman. My question to such an inflexible position is, "What was your mind like before you made it up?" I might also wonder, "What did it take for you to make up your mind?" From these two questions my concern is why make up your mind? What does the term an "open mind" mean? It surely cannot mean to have a mind that is made up, especially, in light of the fact that the person has not read and studied the Buddha's discourses.
In this day and age, we are prone to act on impulse and that includes making up our minds. Living moment to moment, that is, living impulsively, also means we make up our minds without forethought and careful consideration in the example of ātman in Buddhism. We don't spend hundreds of hours reading the discourses of the Buddha with a mind that is open. It is more often that we read an opinion by a partisan monk or teacher as to what the Buddha taught who have closed, made up minds, which means our mind is starting to close and become made up following their lead.
In this sorry state, my question is what does it take to open a made up mind—reverse it? My hunch is that it will take a lot of work which is almost not worth it. The best that can be done is to make such people uneasy; to show them that their position doesn't have a lot of evidence supporting it. Still, you are dealing with someone who is inflexible; who ain't gonna budge. They will even permit you to lead them to the water, but you can't bend their heads down to make them drink. Worth mentioning at this point, another name for a dogmatist is someone who has an inflexible mental attitude. They will not drink of the water. The worst dogmatist are those in academia who have invested much of their academic careers in a particular theory. They will go to their grave with their minds made up even though the evidence is not persuasive enough to get beyond an assumption (e.g., Max Planck's assumption that Kirchhoff’s Law was valid when it was not).
It some matters it is okay to make up your mind. In other situations it is not. There are many examples I could give in which we rush to judgment with our minds made up, firmly, in the example of O.J. Simpson, when all the evidence, even DNA evidence, pointed to his 24-year-old son Jason. Never heard of this? Well, it's not surprising. It is too easy to make up our minds when we shouldn't. It is better to have an open, unmade up mind.
Another usage of the phrase "to make up", means to fabricate or to lie. Perhaps from this perspective, when we make up our mind, we are also in a sense frabricating our mind, causing to arise a mind which is not our authentic pure mind.
Posted by: Gary Braddick | September 23, 2015 at 10:58 AM