Maku Mou Zou 莫妄想

I’m curious what these kids playing soccer are thinking about. My guess though is that they aren’t thinking about anything. With everything going on in the world these days… how nice that sounds.

In utero and for the first few months after birth, we still are at one with the universe—nothing exists other than our relationship with our mother. We don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to think. Around three months, we begin to differentiate and go on our journey of unique selfness. This exploration eventually and inevitably leads back to oneness, either in life or in death. That journey of separation, however, is largely what defines us as individuals and is a necessary one in order to experience embodied existence.

As we go through life’s trials, we gradually step away from the state that we begin life in where we are just floating along with the cosmos. Moments such as the boys playing soccer above can become more and more rare as we leave behind that way of being in which we are essentially carried by nature’s currents of energy. We are told as children to “think before we act” or to “use our heads”. Not that either of these are bad ideas, but they can become pathological when we, invariably, overthink it.

Maku mou zou (莫妄想) means to stop overthinking it and just be here now. I use it as a mantra to live life by and encourage all my patients to do the same. Overthinking is, in my humble opinion, the real epidemic of our time. So next time you’re caught up in some modern conundrum, maku mou zou it out.

See you at your next appointment.

—Jaime