. As a Zenrin poem says: You cannot get it by taking thought; You cannot seek it by not taking thought.e But this absurdly complex and frustrating predicament arises from a simple and elementary mistake in the use of the mind. When this is understood, there is no paradox and no di@culty. Obviously, the mistake arises in the attempt to split the mind against itself, but to understand this clearly we have to enter more deeply into the “cybernetics” of the mind, the basic pattern of its self-correcting action. It is, of course, part of the very genius of the human mind that it can, as it were, stand aside from life and reAect upon it, that it can be aware of its own existence, and that it can criticize its own processes. For the mind has something resembling a “feed-back” system. This is a term used in communications engineering for one of the basic principles of “automation,” of enabling machines to control themselves. Feed-back enables a machine to be informed of the effects of its own action in such a way as to be able to correct its action. Perhaps the most familiar example is the electrical thermostat which regulates the heating of a house. By setting an upper and a lower limit of desired temperature, a thermometer is so connected that it will switch the furnace on when the lower limit is reached, and o? when the upper limit is reached. The temperature of the house is thus kept within the desired limits. The thermostat provides the furnace with a kind of sensitive organ–an extremely rudimentary analogy of hurnan self-consciousness.2 The proper adjustment of a feed-back system is always a complex mechanical problem. For the original machine, say, the furnace, is adjusted by the feed-back system, but this system in turn needs adjustment.Therefore to make a mechanical system more and more automatic will require the use of a series of feed-back systems–a automatic will require the use of a series of feed-back systems–a second to correct the >rst, a third to correct the second, and so on. But there are obvious limits to such a series, for beyond a certain point the mechanism will be “frustrated” by its own complexity. For example, it might take so long for the information to pass through the series of control systems that it would arrive at the original machine too late to be useful. Similarly, when human beings think too carefully and minutely about an action to be taken, they cannot make up their minds in time to act. In other words, one cannot correct one’s means of self-correction inde>nitely. There must soon be a source of information at the end of the line which is the >nal authority. Failure to trust its authority will make it impossible to act, and the system will be paralyzed. The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a margin of “lag” or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate–that is, if we bring the upper and lower limits of temperature very close together in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70 degrees–the whole system will break down. For to the extent that the upper and lower limits coincide, the signals for switching o? and switching on will coincide! If 70 degrees is both the lower and upper limit the “go” sign will also be the “stop” sign; “yes” will imply “no” and “no” will imply “yes.” Whereupon the mechanism will start “trembling,” going on and o?, on and o?, until it shakes itself to pieces. The system is too sensitive and shows symptoms which are startlingly like human anxiety. For when a human being is so self-conscious, so self-controlled that he cannot let go of himself, he dithers or wobbles between opposites. This is precisely what is meant in Zen by going round and round on “the wheel of birth-and-death,” for the Buddhist samsara is the prototype of all vicious circles.

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