Mushin Meaning: Losing Yourself to Find Yourself

What is Mushin?

Mushin (Pronunciation: moo-sheen・Japanese: (無心) is a concept that you can find in many areas of life, as well as in spiritual practice. It means the relinquishing of your logical mind and your ego, so that you’re only left with your spirit without anything else getting in the way. 

As adults, we are taught to be logical in every aspect of our life. This is an important survival skill that allows us to show up to work on time, pay our taxes, and know not to touch a hot frying pan. But, it can also get in the way of finding inner peace and understanding the path that we truly want to take in our lives. When we become too logical, it’s hard to follow our dreams because there will always be a logical reason not to take that risk and do something that we truly care about.

Similarly, the ego functions as our emotional center. When an event in our lives makes us happy, sad, or angry, on some level this is because the outside world has affected our ego. It’s important to be in touch with our emotions and to be honest about what we’re really feeling at any given time, but emotions can also get in the way of finding inner peace and understanding what the best path forward is.

This is why trying to access a state of mushin is important, so that you can put your logic and emotions aside and focus on what you really want, what you really must do, or what is really going on in your life. 

Now, it would be unrealistic to want to constantly be in a state of mushin, since logic and emotions are both important. But, to be able to access this formless, intuitive state when necessary it is a good tool to have in your toolkit.

Mushin in Everyday Life

Combat

One of the places where the concept of mushin is most well known is in combat. Many professional fighters recount that when they’re in the ring, they turn their mind off and let their body make the decisions. This can also be attributed to “muscle memory”, but it’s more than just that. In the ring, our bodies are taken over by a survival instinct that intuitively tells us when to punch and when to dodge a blow. This can be considered mushin because if we were to take the time to think in the traditional sense while fighting, we would already have been knocked out. 

Art

Another important area where mushin takes control is in art. It is often artists who let go of the concept of what they logically “should do” in order to impress their viewers that create the best and most original art. When we let go of the traditional societal constraints of what “good” vs. “bad” art is, we make way for the spirit to speak through our work instead of the logical mind. 

This is how a lot of completely original art, whether paintings, sculptures, movies, or even books are made. While it would be easy to recreate a formula of something successful that’s already been done, a copy of it will never live up to the original thing. This is where mushin is required to create completely original art that comes from the spirit instead of the logical mind. 

工作

When working, it is often described that someone gets into a “flow state”, where they answer emails, build houses, or make lattes almost automatically without thinking. This happens when we are so used to the type of work that we’re doing that we let our body take over and our mind is able to wander to a different place. This might be closer to “muscle memory” than mushin but there is something to be said for letting your body be distracted so your mind can become calm.

Sometimes we have a lot of energy that we need to expend which is stressing us out. Sometimes, getting into the flow of working can distract our body with a motion so that our mind can finally be free of this need to move with no outlet to do so. This is also why exercise is so popular for clearing the mind. Because, often, it’s the body that’s restless, which translates to mental restlessness when it isn’t able to move.

Meditation

Perhaps the hardest way to achieve mushin is through meditation, since the body is not distracted by something else, and the eyes are usually closed. So, it’s almost like there is nothing in the room besides us and our distracting thoughts. This is why a lot of people (myself included) struggle to attain a clear mind through meditation. It takes a lot of practice to do this.

But, when you’re able to get there, it can be incredibly peaceful because you don’t need a physical or artistic task in order to achieve mushin. It’s simply you and your spirit floating in tandem.

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Benefits of Mushin

Mushin is a state of mind that offers a lot of benefits including decreased anxiety, an ability to see beyond the impediments of one’s ego, and to realize what one’s next step in life can be through clearing the mind of all its clutter. Of course, it’s not something that you can just turn on and off without practice, but even attempting to clear your mind of these things is a start, and everyone has to start somewhere.

Through achieving mushin, you start to realize that many of your desires, grudges, and convictions are due to deeper emotional wounds that need to be fixed in other ways than buying the next popular item or pinning your frustration solely on other people. Mushin is a great way to rest your mind so it can figure out what it really wants and needs.

Drawbacks of Mushin

Of course, you can’t function in the world using mushin alone. Mushin is a state of an empty mind that isn’t exactly practical for living day to day life. Human beings are meant to think, ponder, plan, feel, laugh, cry, etc. This will always be a part of the human spirit and an important one. So, aspiring to always have a clear mind can make one into someone who appears to never have anything going on in their head, never has anything to add to a conversation, and never has any brilliant new ideas. 

This is why mushin is usually considered a temporary meditative state that can be accessed when needed but is not meant to be the blueprint for living your entire life.

How Can Mushin Help You?

As I’ve touched on before, practicing mushin can help you clear your mind of cluttered thoughts so that you can focus on what you really want or need to do in life. It also acts as a defense mechanism if you’re in a fight or in real danger, when the body takes over and gets you where you need to go to stay safe, while the logical mind shuts down. 

Also, consciously trying to achieve mushin can help ease anxiety and create a habit of having a more peaceful mind in general. Since, through intentionally calming your mind multiple times a day, the brain creates new pathways so that its default state becomes closer to mushin.

How Can Mushin Help Others?

One of the main ways that mushin can help others is by letting go of your ego. Many good deeds that people do are often a little self-serving because the person does it to pat themselves on the back for doing it. But, at the same time, if a good deed is done, does it really matter why someone did it? In any case, achieving mushin in your mind is a great way to figure out what you can do to help others for the sake of helping them, and not just to help yourself.

Also, if you have some unconscious habits that you don’t notice are negatively affecting people, but others are noticing them, having a mushin mind may help you come to the realization that these habits are toxic. This is because mushin gives you the clarity of stepping away from your ego for long enough to know that you may be causing some harm.

Mushin Is Many Things

There are many ways to create a state of mushin in your mind. It can be through creative work, physical exertion, or meditation. In any case, mushin is a great way to ground yourself in reality and understand your true feelings and spiritual intentions. It’s also great for breaking out of the mold of societal constraints and discovering your true self by losing the “self” that the outer world has taught you to have in the first place.

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