My Zen
For quite awhile now, I have been using the word "Zen" to characterize my world view. It best sums up where I am "coming from" but can be confusing, both to the vast majority of folks who have no idea what Zen is as well as folks who do.
The lack of a term for a follower of Zen makes for some confusion. Of course the term "Christian" can mean almost anything, so the term serves to muddy the waters more than clarify. There is no Zen equivalent to words like "Christian" or "Muslim". Zen is not based on belief so there is no such thing as a "Zennist". It is similar to the term "Yoga". We don't speak of people who practice yoga as "Yoggists" - Yoga (or "physio") is just a "healthy" practice. Zen is Yoga for the mind. It purports to be the cultivation of a mental outlook that deals most efficiently with the human situation. It has deep roots in Buddhism and Taoism, but the "ism" has been dropped and Zen has it's own thousand-year history of independent development.
In theory, Zen doesn't preach or proselytize. In theory, it has no theory. The emphasis is on practice and personal experience. The idea is that Zen will make sense to you if and only if you live it. However, in practice, Zen comes perilously close to being a religion. There is a vast body of literature given special authoritative status and a long list of "masters" who are quoted as if they have a special insight to reality -- not to be questioned or analyzed. I have discussed this aspect of zen in another post.
At present, I rely heavily (but not at all exclusively) on teaching material by Ronald D. Siegel and associates. I don't think of Siegal as a "master" or "guru". His approach is akin to a professor of physics. He's popping with interesting and useful information, but never makes the slightest claim to personal authority. It's just an interesting and useful subject. Siegel and company call their outlook "Mindfulness" and consider it to be research-based and "Scientific". In my opinion, this is not without foundation. Mindfulness does seem to have very wide acceptance among professionals as a real and useful "thing". For example, my hematologist knew exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned the "mindful" way to combat the yuk factor of daily injections. In short, "Mindfulness" actually means something and more or less the same thing to people who study it. Of course people who do not study it simply consider themselves to be "Mindful" and feel no need for further education.
Especially to the outsider, mindfulness seems to be a mental trick, like self-hypnosis. This is understandable but you need to go further: Mindfulness appears to use self-hypnosis to achieve a very specific and well-tested suite of changes in the way we experience reality. But It is a mistake to think that Mindfulness is just about self-hypnosis. In face, the core "meditation" practice of Zen -- zazan or "sitting" relies on the lack of focus. And there is a lot more to Mindfulness (as outlined by Siegel and others) than zazen. There are dozens of types of Zen "meditation" and we are encouraged to invent more -- in fact the goal is to connect our entire experience to reality "as it is". In Zen, the fundamental predicament of mankind is our "hard wired" inability to see past the jumble of our own thoughts. We are pathologically disconnected from the real experience of the present moment.
Mindfulness lays the foundation for a research-based theory of wisdom and ethics. formerly the exclusive territory of religion. In the West, religious apologists have tried to keep Science out of religious discussion by claiming that Science can tell us what is real but not what we should do. This only makes sense from a "faith based" perspective where belief is specifically grounded on things that cannot be seen or verified. In Zen and its parent traditions (Taoism and Buddhism), not such boundaries are recognized. Buddhism especially fully embraces "Science" and places a heavy emphasis on experience. The Dalai Lama has famously stated that if there is a conflict between Buddhism and Science, Buddhism will need to change.
Siegel tends to soft-peddle this aspect of Mindfulness but he explains it very well without actually calling it "Buddhism" or "Zen". But to my mind Siegel's version of Mindfulness is Zen by another name. If I referred to my world view as "Mindfulness", I would fail to properly reference the deep philosophy that lies behind Zen as a life style and world view. To me, Zen is not a religion - it is a replacement for religion or perhaps an antidote to it.
Seigel's "take" on Mindfulness is laid out in his book "The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems"- the Kindle edition is $10 - the best $10 you are likely every to spend if the idea of Mindfulness appeals to you. From this book ....
In the "West", many people are trapped by the way they cast "religion" as a matter of "belief", especially belief in God. So they divide themselves into "believers" and atheists or people who believe that what the "believers" believe is false. The distinction is arbitrary and false. For one thing, the true distinction is between people who believe anything without evidence or, more importantly, take mere belief as something that tells us something important about the real world. This is a common source of error -- confusion of the feeling of certainty with the truth of the belief. In fact, it turns out that the more wrong we are, the more certain we feel.
Zen draws the line differently. Zen is about experience. Thoughts and feelings are just another kind of experience with no special status with regard to "evidence" about what is really going on in the real world. To a follower of Zen, hanging on to any kind of belief is just another form of attachment, inevitably leading to suffering.
I have tended to draw my borders the Zen way rather than the "Western/Christian" way since I was a little child, so it's quite natural for me to feel at home in Zen. Raised in a nominally "Christian" culture, I naturally accepted the "Western" battle lines between "believers" and those who believe what the believers believe is false. At various times I as an agnostic, an atheist or even a "Christian" even though my fundamental mind-set never changed. It took me many years to shake out of the false distinctions and start to tackle questions that really mattered with a mental framework based on forms that more closely fitted the real world. Most particularly, I came to understand that the forms were not reality but were just limitations of the way the human mind works. I have been delighted to find that I am far from alone in that realization.
The lack of a term for a follower of Zen makes for some confusion. Of course the term "Christian" can mean almost anything, so the term serves to muddy the waters more than clarify. There is no Zen equivalent to words like "Christian" or "Muslim". Zen is not based on belief so there is no such thing as a "Zennist". It is similar to the term "Yoga". We don't speak of people who practice yoga as "Yoggists" - Yoga (or "physio") is just a "healthy" practice. Zen is Yoga for the mind. It purports to be the cultivation of a mental outlook that deals most efficiently with the human situation. It has deep roots in Buddhism and Taoism, but the "ism" has been dropped and Zen has it's own thousand-year history of independent development.
In theory, Zen doesn't preach or proselytize. In theory, it has no theory. The emphasis is on practice and personal experience. The idea is that Zen will make sense to you if and only if you live it. However, in practice, Zen comes perilously close to being a religion. There is a vast body of literature given special authoritative status and a long list of "masters" who are quoted as if they have a special insight to reality -- not to be questioned or analyzed. I have discussed this aspect of zen in another post.
At present, I rely heavily (but not at all exclusively) on teaching material by Ronald D. Siegel and associates. I don't think of Siegal as a "master" or "guru". His approach is akin to a professor of physics. He's popping with interesting and useful information, but never makes the slightest claim to personal authority. It's just an interesting and useful subject. Siegel and company call their outlook "Mindfulness" and consider it to be research-based and "Scientific". In my opinion, this is not without foundation. Mindfulness does seem to have very wide acceptance among professionals as a real and useful "thing". For example, my hematologist knew exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned the "mindful" way to combat the yuk factor of daily injections. In short, "Mindfulness" actually means something and more or less the same thing to people who study it. Of course people who do not study it simply consider themselves to be "Mindful" and feel no need for further education.
Especially to the outsider, mindfulness seems to be a mental trick, like self-hypnosis. This is understandable but you need to go further: Mindfulness appears to use self-hypnosis to achieve a very specific and well-tested suite of changes in the way we experience reality. But It is a mistake to think that Mindfulness is just about self-hypnosis. In face, the core "meditation" practice of Zen -- zazan or "sitting" relies on the lack of focus. And there is a lot more to Mindfulness (as outlined by Siegel and others) than zazen. There are dozens of types of Zen "meditation" and we are encouraged to invent more -- in fact the goal is to connect our entire experience to reality "as it is". In Zen, the fundamental predicament of mankind is our "hard wired" inability to see past the jumble of our own thoughts. We are pathologically disconnected from the real experience of the present moment.
Mindfulness lays the foundation for a research-based theory of wisdom and ethics. formerly the exclusive territory of religion. In the West, religious apologists have tried to keep Science out of religious discussion by claiming that Science can tell us what is real but not what we should do. This only makes sense from a "faith based" perspective where belief is specifically grounded on things that cannot be seen or verified. In Zen and its parent traditions (Taoism and Buddhism), not such boundaries are recognized. Buddhism especially fully embraces "Science" and places a heavy emphasis on experience. The Dalai Lama has famously stated that if there is a conflict between Buddhism and Science, Buddhism will need to change.
Siegel tends to soft-peddle this aspect of Mindfulness but he explains it very well without actually calling it "Buddhism" or "Zen". But to my mind Siegel's version of Mindfulness is Zen by another name. If I referred to my world view as "Mindfulness", I would fail to properly reference the deep philosophy that lies behind Zen as a life style and world view. To me, Zen is not a religion - it is a replacement for religion or perhaps an antidote to it.
Seigel's "take" on Mindfulness is laid out in his book "The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems"- the Kindle edition is $10 - the best $10 you are likely every to spend if the idea of Mindfulness appeals to you. From this book ....
"What exactly did the prince [Buddha] do under that tree? Mindfulness is often said to be an English translation of a Pali term, sati, which connotes awareness, attention, and remembering (Pali is the language in which the stories and teachings of the Buddha were originally recorded). The words awareness and attention are used in this definition pretty much the way we normally use them in English—to know that something is happening and to attend to it. The “remembering” part is different, however—it’s not so much about recalling past events, but rather about continually remembering to be aware and pay attention.
[Wouldn't this apply to a ..] sniper poised on the top of a building aiming a high powered rifle at an innocent victim. The sniper would be very aware and attentive, and each time his mind wandered, he’d remember to return his attention to watching his victim through the telescopic gun sight. This kind of focus, while useful for tasks such as shooting people at a distance, is not really the attitude of mind that will help most of us deal with life’s challenges
What is missing for the sniper is acceptance, or non-judgment. This adds warmth, friendliness, and compassion to the attitude."
In the "West", many people are trapped by the way they cast "religion" as a matter of "belief", especially belief in God. So they divide themselves into "believers" and atheists or people who believe that what the "believers" believe is false. The distinction is arbitrary and false. For one thing, the true distinction is between people who believe anything without evidence or, more importantly, take mere belief as something that tells us something important about the real world. This is a common source of error -- confusion of the feeling of certainty with the truth of the belief. In fact, it turns out that the more wrong we are, the more certain we feel.
Zen draws the line differently. Zen is about experience. Thoughts and feelings are just another kind of experience with no special status with regard to "evidence" about what is really going on in the real world. To a follower of Zen, hanging on to any kind of belief is just another form of attachment, inevitably leading to suffering.
I have tended to draw my borders the Zen way rather than the "Western/Christian" way since I was a little child, so it's quite natural for me to feel at home in Zen. Raised in a nominally "Christian" culture, I naturally accepted the "Western" battle lines between "believers" and those who believe what the believers believe is false. At various times I as an agnostic, an atheist or even a "Christian" even though my fundamental mind-set never changed. It took me many years to shake out of the false distinctions and start to tackle questions that really mattered with a mental framework based on forms that more closely fitted the real world. Most particularly, I came to understand that the forms were not reality but were just limitations of the way the human mind works. I have been delighted to find that I am far from alone in that realization.
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