In this blog spot we'll explore how using Zen meditation can help understand the mind. I've been practicing for decades, but now I hope that others will join in and tell me, and each other, what they find. Are we all learning something similar in meditation or are all minds different?
I have come to this by a curious route - having had a dramatic out-of-body experience as a student, I decided to become a parapsychologist and try to prove the existence of spirits, telepathy and other worlds. My PhD work, and long years of research, completely changed my mind, as I explain in my autobiography In Search of the Light.
These popular paranormal ideas are false, don't fit the evidence and we have to look elsewhere for understanding. I studied neuroscience and psychology, wrote several books on consciousness, and came to see how difficult it is to understand the mind even as we know more and more about the brain.
So where does my meditation fit in? I stumbled across Zen nearly thirty years ago and somehow have kept on practicing - not as a Buddhist, but as a scientist with a great dislike of religions and dogma. Fortunately Zen lends itself to deep inquiry and a rejection of orthodoxy and so I managed not to rebel but to learn from its traditional techniques of calming the mind and looking into the stream of experience.
Finally I realised that my scientific inquiries into consciousness and my Zen practice were really asking the same questions but using totally different methods. Could they help each other? I decided to tackle some of these questions deeply and try to find out. The results was my book Ten Zen Questions, to be published next month.
Here I bring together my scientific training with my Zen practice to delve into ten great questions. Among them are "Who is asking the question?" and "Am I conscious now" as well as some traditional Zen koans. The aim of the book is to see whether personal experience can help penetrate the scientific mystery of consciousness. Many neuroscientists and philosophers working on consciousness believe that a first person approach should be able to do so, but few have attempted to bridge the gulf between science and personal practice.
The book begins with two introductory chapters; Falling into Zen describe my own practice and how I set about tackling the questions, and The problem of consciousness outlines the scientific and philosophical issues at stake. There are then ten chapters devoted to the questions, a very brief conclusion and, finally, a critical commentary from my own Zen teacher. If you want to know more visit the Ten Zen Questions website, or read some of the chapters.
I found struggling with these questions an enormous challenge. The idea of writing about them is not to provide final answers but to show how intellectual inquiry and meditational inquiry can be brought together to tackle some questions that are, at the moment, real mysteries for science. The point of this blog is to share my findings and to provide a space where others can share theirs.
What does happen when you throw yourself deeply into your own silent mind? Join in and let us know.
