Ten Zen Questions

Sue,
Reading what you said towards the end of your article reminded me of a story Paul Breer told about the ex-Catholic nun Bernadette Roberts in his article "Enlightenment: Myth and Reality":

"Bernadette Roberts, the ex-Catholic nun who reports her experience in The Path of No-Self, says that with her own "enlightenment" (she wouldn't call it that) she lost all interest in music and art in general, delights which had formerly played a major part in her life. She adds that prior to her awakening she spent many enjoyable minutes at her kitchen window looking out onto a yard dominated by a beautifully proportioned oak tree. As her consciousness was transformed, the tree began to lose its palpability; it appeared to be on the edge of dissolving into emptiness even as she looked at it. Needless to say she spent fewer and fewer minutes at the window. In time she left her home and family altogether and took up residence in a forest hut equipped with nothing but the bare essentials for cooking and eating."

Is it possible to be too much in the present moment, too accepting of things as they are, so that the desire to live and move forward, to seek and do new things, is absent? Going by Bernadette Roberts' experience and those of others who have experienced the same kind of neural patterning we call 'enlightenment' where the sense of self is absent, it would very much seem so.

BTW, the article containing the above quote can be found at

http://www.naturalism.org/enlightenment.htm

Stan
Melbourne, Australia

Yes, I think it is.
Unfortunately we are not told, in Paul Breer's account of this story, whether she was in good mental health or not. There are certainly other cases where people with tumours or other kinds of brain damage have been mistaken for enlightened beings!
As for my own experiences, in Ten Zen Questions I write about my own struggles with mindfulness and how, in the end, I came to think that "being in the prsent moment" does not capture it at all well, because the present moment cannot, itself, be found.

According to my understanding "mindfulness" or, as you say, being in the present moment, is a fundamental concept in the teachings of Buddhism. I have been reading your book Consciousness A Very Short Introduction, and find in this book on p. 27 the following sentence, "Perhaps we all know that vivid feeling of suddenly becoming acutely conscious, as though we had been dreaming or submerged in thought." If I understand your meaning here correctly, this sudden experience is that of the TRANSITION TO mindfulness. I wish to propose a neologism to name this transition. I wish to propose to refer to this transition, which seems to me to be an important concept in its own right, by using the word "cown". So cown is the experience of "coming down" from the stated of "distractedness" to the state of being in the present moment.

I wish to mention that I have been using this word for several decades in conversation with some of my close friends and family.

Hello Susan,

I enjoyed your thoughts on mindfulness and have a feeling that the practice can enrich one's life. But with what I have problems is the fact that there are so different views on what it's like to be mindful respectively how to establish a mindful life or some mindful moments throughout the day.

In your book "Ten Zen Questions" you write that mindfulness means being in the present moment. So it's not dwelling in the past or the future. I take a rest and look at myself in this moment. But even the daydreaming and my thoughts on past events or sorrows on future events are part of my brain state at the moment.

I've come to the provisional conclusion that the thoughts on past and future events are part of the present moment. But when I try to be conscious, I have the thoughts instead of the thoughts that have me under control. I can work with them and perhaps return to the action I´m doing in that moment to let go of them and don´t walk to far in my thoughts.

I would like to hear your thoughts on what to do with past and future thinking when wanting to establish mindfulness.

Matthias

Hi Sue,

I know you're busy. I'm sorry about that, but am glad to wait patiently until you have some time.

But, reading this particular entry in your blog (which I believe I have actually read reasonably carefully before?) it somehow CONNECTED with me this time more than it did in the past.

Somehow I realize that this is a "crucial" story from your (pretty distant?) past. And somehow, seeing it that way, it makes more sense to me (seems more important to me) than it did last time I read it.

Quite possibly something in my own situation atm is also somehow tied up with my connecting here. I have been using meditation to attempt to combat that "meaningless" you describe, which has sometimes recently been threatening to creep into my life.

So, in sum, I appreciate this blog entry ... .

You are right. This was a crucial story from my distant past. It took place in 1986 when I was living in Germany and my children were small.
You say you are trying to “combat that meaninglessness” but I would rather welcome it. I think the true state of affairs is that we live in an ultimately meaningless universe – a pointless universe. Any meaning or any purposes there are, are ones that we invent for ourselves and for others.
So my own approach, always, is to accept that. This doesn’t stop me inventing purposes – like writing books, trying to be a better person, trying to keep up with the email 
And I guess that meditation is not really a form of combat is it?

Maybe I missed it; who is "John's?" (Assume a Biblical reference to John the Baptist?)

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I relate to this author. I found myself saying, as I read, "yes, that's me. I very much relate." I feel that mindfulness is indeed worth it. Even when I don't conscientiously choose to be mindful, I can "catch" my unconscious self being mindful and then be happy in the moment that I caught myself. So, it is an enjoyable state but I have found that being mindful 24/7 is unrealistic and unhealthy. There are other states, such as anxiety, worry, and all those "yucky" feelings, that are good too. Being mindful and nonjudgmental, working side by side, is the real key. Being in the moment is one thing, but I can be in the moment and feel yucky and then be good with the yuckiness. When I am unconscious or conscious of myself, I can at least choose to be ok with whatever state. Mindless, mindful, absent minded, mindboggling, mind altering....states.

That's just something I wanted to add to the conversation.

Thanks for joining in.
I think mindfulness 24/7 is possible, though very difficult. About 20 years ago I practiced intensively for about 7 weeks, not during all of sleep, but during all waking. I also wouldn't recommend it for all one's life but I learned a lot and now, like you, I practice but not all the time. I find that year by year I learn more and the whole notion of what mindfulness is keeps shifting.