![]() In our western relationship with time, in which we compulsively pick over the past in order to learn lessons from it, and then project into a hypothetical future in which those lessons can be applied, the present moment has been compressed to a tiny sliver on the clock face between a vast past and an infinite future. The emphasis on the present moment is perhaps zen's most distinctive characteristic. We are each expressions of the world, not strangers in a strange land, flukes of consciousness in a blind, stupid universe, as evolutionary science teaches us. We are not just separate egos locked in bags of skin. There is just one event, with multiple aspects, unfolding. Furthermore, there is not a multiplicity of events. This too, accords with modern scientific knowledge. Look at anything closely enough – even a rock or a table – and you will see that it is an event, not a thing. In this view, there is no stuff, no difference between matter and energy. ![]() This is the basis of zen itself – that all life and existence is based on a kind of dynamic emptiness (a view now supported by modern science, which sees phenomena at a sub-atomic level popping in and out of existence in a quantum froth). ![]() The word "zen" is a Japanese way of pronouncing "chan", which is the Chinese way of pronouncing the Indian Sanskrit "dhyana" or "sunya", meaning emptiness or void. Life was, in zen parlance, yugen – a kind of elevated purposelessness. The Meaning of Happiness (published in 1940) and The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951) are striking primers to his work, and they underlined what Rowe was already teaching me: that life had no intrinsic meaning, any more than a piece of music had an intrinsic point. I wasn't interested in the Four Noble Truths, or the Eightfold Path, and I certainly didn't believe in karma or reincarnation.Īll the same, I read a couple of Watts's books. ![]() I was suspicious at first, perceiving Zen Buddhism to be a religion rather than a philosophy. But through Watts and his writing, I was exposed directly to the ideas of Zen Buddhism. His name evoked the image of a paper goods sales rep on a small regional industrial estate. Through Rowe's writing I first came across Alan Watts, and he sounded like an unlikely philosopher. While I was researching it, I read the work of psychologist Dorothy Rowe, a quiet, almost secret, follower of Buddhist philosophy. The consequence of this was my first book, a memoir called The Scent of Dried Roses. Which is perhaps why I fell into an acute depression at the age of 27, and didn't recover for several years. A sense of encroaching mental chaos was always skulking at the edges of my life. “And that’s as it should be, because if you are waiting to find yourself atop a cliff-side or in a white, sparsely furnished room in order to feel like you can meditate, you’re only going to meditate sporadically, and you’re going to mistakenly conclude that what little benefit you are able to derive from your practically is magically linked to your serene environment - which couldn’t be further from the truth,” he added.I have never been able to support either strategy. “Real people living busy lives can meditate successfully on their seven-year-old couch, in bed alone or next to their snoring partner, in the passenger seat of their car, at work, at the kitchen table, in the backseat during a road trip, on a park bench, or in a bus or plane seat,” Watkins told NBC News BETTER. You would be surprised how rarely we take deep breaths, and it is a powerful tool to ground you in the present momentĪccording to Light Watkins, meditation expert and author of " Bliss More: How to Succeed in Meditation," all you really need to meditate is a place to sit with some semblance of back support.
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