The Distinction Between Logical Reasoning and Zen Meditation

Logical reasoning is inferential cognition, while direct perception is straightforward and immediate, requiring no further comparison or analysis. Both "logic" and "reasoning" involve comparative analysis; the character "辑" (jí) originally meant arranging boxes of varying sizes and lengths reasonably on a cart, thus necessitating analysis and comparison of the cart's dimensions with the boxes.

Investigating Chan involves no language or words. When doubt reaches its peak, encountering a condition or touching upon a state, sudden resonance and enlightenment occur—a slap on the thigh, "This is it!"—thus one finds the "birth mother." If one instead uses logical reasoning: "Ten years ago my mother was forty, so now she should be fifty. This person looks about my mother's age, so it must be her," one ends up recognizing a stepmother. At life's end, regret arises, but it is too late. Logical reasoning is entirely an activity of the conceptual mind; what the conceptual mind alone recognizes is always a stepmother. Only what is recognized through the manas-indriya is the birth mother.

The conceptual mind, whether settled or unsettled, can engage in logical reasoning, resulting in understanding a principle. However, attaining fruition and realizing the mind both require possessing access concentration, enabling single-minded investigation that leads to sudden enlightenment. Logical reasoning requires little meditative stability—merely brief mental focus suffices, demanding minimal concentration. Thus, the wisdom of logical reasoning is inferior and weak, incapable of attaining fruition or realizing the mind. When meditative concentration deepens, the conceptual mind's activities become restricted and cannot proceed normally. When doubt grows intensely heavy, the conceptual mind's activities also weaken. The stronger the concentration, the weaker the function of the conceptual mind, and the stronger the function of the manas-indriya, resulting in deeper and subtler direct perception wisdom.