Bytemarks

Zengo Sai Dan is a short passage in the Fudochi Shimmyo Roku, a collection of writings by Takuan Soho a Zen master in the 1600’s. It basically means:

The state of mind should be after you cut and discard where the past and present meet. The principle is cutting between past and present and setting it free. This is the principle of not stopping the mind.

The character in the image is one of Fudo Myoo, a Buddhist protector seen holding a sword in one hand and a rope in the other. The sword is to cut way ignorance and delusion and the rope is to tied up those demons. So why am I talking about this stuff in an ancient Asian context? Because it has a lot of relevance to events happening today. I recently read a very good post by Robert Scoble about getting laid off. It seemed very timely as he wrote it with the workers from Yahoo in mind. The very next day it happened at Hawaiian Telcom. Robert outlines all the things you need to do to move on. What he doesn’t explicitly say but strongly implies is don’t look back. That is the idea of cutting and making the decisive move forward. Don’t let your mind get stuck in the past. I can speak from experience about a time when who I thought I was was directly tied to where I worked. Sometimes doors would open because the people opening those door did so because of who you represented or perhaps your status in the company. You might find that quickly disappears once you no longer have an employer with a recognizable corporate name. The doors might not open so easily. But that is okay. Don’t get stuck and don’t let it depress you. The quicker you recognize that who you truly are has nothing to do with where you work the quicker it will be for you to project the real you in a positive liberating way. Fudo Myoo represents that cutting away of delusion and Takuan says after you make that cut, move on and don’t dwell in the past. Good advice even 500 years later.