godot troubled by zen (intentionally lowercase)
Jaramillojp@kktv.com
Wed, 18 Mar 1998 00:48:36 -0700
I see Zen as the alternative to all
rational, conventional, logical everything.
My thinking used to be totally as yours. I was lost trying to make some
logical sense of something that completely seems free of reason. I mean
a Zen master would say we are already in touch with the answers we're
just bogged down in so much shit we can't see. Bare with me but to
meditate is to free yourself of all the trivialities of thought. Instead
of focusing in on abstract theories such as math or language or even
reason itself is to break away from the structure or
compartmentalization of reality. To link all the pieces. I know this is
reaching and I don't always get this about Zen study but to meditate is
to free your mind of thought itself. Don't get me wrong I know how dumb
this sounds but think of this. You cannot have a thought or a notion or
anything clear to our dumb western minds without using reason. I mean
it's important right, reason is the ultimate pragmatic tool or strategy
that we have. I mean what is the justification of reason itself is that
it works and it has worked for me for you for Aristotle for Descartes.
Even the idea of western thought vs. eastern thought or reason is
another compartment of our western type of thinking. We think in
language we think in patterns connections deductions inductions and all
that clouds what a Zen would say is true reality. Now the statement, I
think that reality, for me, on a basic and in its simplest terms without
faith or a dated written dogma is the flow of immediate experience
itself. So the moment of enlightenment we are trying or that anybody
meditating is trying to reach is a moment of not nothingness but
synthesis, a moment where the mind sees not boundries but in fact
connections and an organic oneness, this is the most important point,
not a mystical or fake moment but a moment of direct experience. Not
experience of nothingness or anything defeating like that but of higher
perspective in that one is experiencing true reality as an immediate
flow of experience.
So one should not think of meditation as for wackos or anything
illogical like that but as for people searching for hard fact evidence
in immediate awareness and experience.
Now what kind of answer is that well it can be very satisfying when you
think in terms of trying to reach a starting point in any kind of
epistemology or metaphysic. It can be satisfying because its as close to
an answer as any human can come or has come in the history of
philosophy. I've been studying for five years Zen and reason and logic
and all I can come up with as a true statement is that causality is
inductively true and not deductively true and is near an absolute as I
can find. And I personally take tons of satisfaction in that because it
isn't nothingness or nihilism or subjectivism or a goofy religion where
they make you shave your head and wear a red towel but it is reason it
is experience and most importantly pragmatism with all its limits and
faults. It can be a very solid and comfortable place and also a very
trustworthy place to stand in the cosmos. I mean for me the whole Zen
thing we've been talking about is just about blue prints versus reality.
And what makes the whole thing so tricky is that we use the blue prints
to define reality. My professor once explained it to me like this: the
universe doesn't read English. I mean in contact they said math was the
language of the universe. Now to a Zen that would be speaking in human
blue print terms. The universe or the cosmos or reality doesn't know
English Spanish or anything like that it just is and we do our best to
cut it up into little edible squares like math and language and reason.
But to contact true reality would be to step out of those boundries or
those bubbles. And it can be done right I mean we all thought the earth
was flat until we broke that boundary. We all thought the earth was the
center of the galaxy, we broke that boundary. I guess I'm trying to say
is that this thinking along a Zens frame of mind is as exciting and
clear as it is frustrating. Now for Salinger, he did a great job of
translating this thinking, (as well as Hinduism which he was really into
(Teddy) but I'm not so much into because it leaves the realm of science
or fact and leans toward illogical prayer and dogma) in that he made it
seeable or real if you will in the fictive space of his stories.
I hope this helps.
Suerte
John Paul