No-mind

No-mind (Chinese: 無心, pinyin: wúxīn; Japanese: mushin; Sanskrit: acitta, acittika, acintya; nirvikalpa) is a mental state that is important in East Asian religions, Asian culture, and the arts. The idea is discussed in classic Chan/Zen Buddhist texts and has been described as "the experience of an instantaneous severing of thought that occurs in the course of a thoroughgoing pursuit of a Buddhist meditative exercise". It is not necessarily a total absence of thinking however, instead, it can refer to an absence of clinging, conceptual proliferation, or being stuck in thought. Chinese Buddhist texts also link this experience with Buddhist metaphysical concepts, like buddha-nature and Dharmakaya. The term is also found in Daoist literature, including the Zhuangzi. This idea eventually influenced other aspects of Asian culture and the arts. Thus, the effortless state of "no mind" is one which is cultivated by artists, poets, craftsmen, performers, and trained martial artists, who may or may not be associated with Buddhism or Daoism. In this context, the term may have no religious connotations (or it may retain it, depending on the artist's own context), and is used to mean "the state at which a master is so at one with his art that his body naturally and spontaneously responds to all challenges without thought". This has been compared to the psychological concept of flow and "being in the zone".