Much Ado About Nothingness (Rev 2013 July 29)
"Zen is not a philosophy or mysticism. It is simply a practice of readjustment of nervous activity .. Here we encounter the purest form of existence. It is the hushed silence of the snow-clad Himalayas. Or it can be likened to the eternal silence of the fathomless depths of the sea"
"Guide to Zen"
OSHO
"Creativity"
You can also watch Osho for hours on you-tube. You can download all you have time to read in PDF form here.
SHUNRYU SUZUKI
"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"
JAMES H. AUSTIN
Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness
With great reluctance, I will steer clear of the easy jokes about the professors of nothingness like Osho and Sekida. While it's easy to get bogged down in the vague and pedantic style of Sekida or the endless chatter of Osho, there is certainly something real behind all the sales talk. Austin's book combines massive detail on mind/brain function from the point of view of a neurologist who also happens to be a Zen practitioner. See the You-Tube video for a taste ...
As a total amateur, it seems to me that we need to distinguish between "zazen" (Zen mediation) and "mindfulness". Zen has a lot to say about clearing the junk out of your mind but you don't need to sit and stare at a wall for 20 minutes a day to find it. Or so it seems.
Osho caught my attention by making a distinction between "activity" and "action". An activity is a habit or pastime that basically keeps you from being alone with yourself. He provides the very useful and relevant examples of smoking, snacking and chatter. This is where his advice to "shut the fuck up" comes in. Typically, he chatters on for a few pages of "Creativity" -- telling a person how to shut his mouth.
According to Osho, an "action" is meaningful and purposeful. Examples might be cooking a meal or planting a tree. Osho seems to be saying that we need to devote ourselves in a single-minded way to actions and clear our minds of "activity". This advice alone has made me a better and safer driver. You could almost say the advice is to pay attention (duh), but the Zen literature gives you a lot of tips on the how and why of simply paying attention.
Beyond paying single-minded attention to tasks and pushing out the clutter of thoughts that prevent us from doing so, Zen speaks of an additional step. If there is no task at hand and no need to pay attention, push out all thought: Do and say nothing. "Zazen" or Zen meditation takes this to the extreme (more on this below) but the idea seems to be useful in many common situations, especially those where the usual behaviour would be to fire up some kind of activity such as lighting up a cigarette, finding a snack, pouring a drink, turning on the TV, picking up a magazine or engaging in mindless chatter. Activity seems to be the remedy to boredom -- the state of affairs where you are left with nothing but your own company and a jumble of thoughts about wasting time, meaningless what is going on around you etc. Zen provides an alternative to boredom. Just shut down. Open up to sensation without judgement. Experience the moment. In a nutshell, just sit still and shut the fuck up. Chase out your own thoughts that are boring you. Just "be". In my brief experience of trying this strategy, nothingness does seem to be an alternative to boredom -- just a way to take an opportunity to rest the mind and enjoy the simple pleasure of mere existence. Of course, I need to take care to be sitting up straight or I'll drift off to sleep.
The idea of chasing out mental garbage is extremely useful. When driving, I imagine a rabbit running across the road. I mentally pin a thought to it's tail (like worry about finances, what I should have said or what I planned to say ...). The rabbit and the thought scamper out of sight and I have a moment to pay attention to driving before the next piece of mental garbage commands my attention. Things like the radio and chatter with the passenger are seen as "activities" to be avoided. Special, specific effort to pay attention was devoted to situations like parking, passing, busy intersections etc.
Of course the Zen "master" would point out that I need to also stop thinking of the rabbits or how clever the rabbit idea is or even how well I'm doing at paying attention. Ok ok ok. I get it!!
It turns out that more advanced Zen theory can improve on my rabbit habit. Sedika's advice is to breathing to settle the mind. Even though it's mainly intended for the serious meditator (sitting zazen), just counting 10 breaths in a row seems to be a pretty good way to settle the mind. Of course the Zen goal is to improve alertness and focus, but the technique of actively taking a broom to mental garbage also works in the opposite situation where the goal is to chase out distracting thoughts and go to sleep. The difference seems to involve mainly posture.
While Sedika teaches the "right" way to pursue Zen, Osho and Suzuki emphasize the importance of remaining open, de-emphasizing theory in favour of practice and, above all, creating your own individual version of Zen.
Austin's approach seems more palatable a "Western", Skeptical mind such as my own. All the chatter about "nothingness" is gone. The contempt for Science and things of the mind is replaced by massive quantities of information on everything from the history of Zen to the neurological study of "attention" . For me at least, it makes sense to know the facts before running off to create my own private version of "Zen".
It seems that we all need to know a lot more about nothing.
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