Ten Zen Questions

Exploring the Mind from Within

Susan Blackmore is a British psychologist, writer and broadcaster, and author of The Meme Machine and Conversations on Consciousness. See full bio

June 22, 2009, Spirituality

Comments on "Asking the Zen Questions"

Asking the Zen Questions

By Susan Blackmore on June 22, 2009 in Ten Zen Questions

How do you deal with the big questions "Who am I?", "What's it all about?", "What am I doing and why?". In my book Ten Zen Questions I describe my own attempts - here we begin the journey with how I set about asking the questions. Read More

Empty mind versus Introspection

Submitted by John Rood on June 23, 2009 - 9:41am.

What is the difference between the mind resting in tranquillity and the mind moving in thought? -- quote from your blog entry

As a sometime practitioner of meditation, it seems to me that one of the key issues is the question of what it means to have a "clear mind". This Zen koan seems to me to be about that question.

My experience over some years has been that, in the early days when I started meditating, my mind would often be filled with thoughts, which if I meditated long enough would become fewer and fewer in number. The stream of consciousness became sort of thinned out, if you will.

Eventually (after years of sporadic practice) I would sometimes find that my mind was "empty" of thought for at least short periods of time. One way of phrasing this might be to say that the stream of consciousness had nothing in it for short periods of time.

It dawned on me one day that this "emptiness" of the stream of consciousness must be what it means to have an "empty" or "clear" mind. I began to concentrate on attaining and maintaining this state of mind (or the stream, if you will). I have never been able to stay in this state without thoughts arising somehow or other for very long periods of time, although it seems credible to me that "masters" of meditation might be able to do this.

At any rate, it seems to me that having a clear mind simply means not having thoughts in your mind. I would take this to be "the mind resting in tranquility". I would NOT say that the mind is UNconscious when it is empty in this manner.

Then "the mind moving in thought" would be the opposite of this, which I take to be the normal state of the stream of consciousness.

Indeed in Zen one is often reminded that "thought is the enemy" and in general all kinds of thinking are discouraged. -- quote from your blog entry

It seems to me that there are two different possible "goals" (possibly a heretical word here) in the practice of meditation. One is to clear the mind of all thought. This is a sort of version of seeking good mental health or mental balance, imho. As I mentioned above, I think it is difficult to achieve this goal over long periods of time.

The other possible goal is "insight" into ones stream of consciousness. I believe that in the tradition of Western philosophy this would normally be termed "introspection". In this case one is not so much attempting to achieve the cessation of thought as to observe it.

This goal is also difficult in its own way, imho. Your book Consciousness A Very Short Introduction leads naturally to undertaking meditation from this point of view.

Does this seem at all right to you? Comments on what I have claimed?

This is KW5

Submitted by John Rood on November 20, 2009 - 3:26pm.

This (the above post) was the first post of John Rood to Sue's blog.

meditation

Submitted by Sue Blackmore on June 25, 2009 - 7:45am.

Thanks very much for your comments. Yes, this does seem right but perhaps we need to go a little deeper.
A mind clear of all thought may be a clear mind, but this is not the whole point. On one hand it is possible to have thoughts within deep clarity (though they feel rather different from normal): On the other it is possible for someone to obliterate all thought by force and determination, at least temporarily, without really having a calm and clear mind. I think clarity and calm are obvious when they arise.
Another tricky point is this whole idea of the "stream of consciousness". If you want to think in terms of the stream (as most people do) then an empty stream is clear, but I think that through my struggles I learned that there really is no stream of consciousness. Perhaps we tie experiences up into a stream and a self who is experiencing it but this is an illusion and can be let go - but we'll get to that soon!

Gaps in the stream of consciousness?

Submitted by John Rood on June 25, 2009 - 5:45pm.

Thank you for your answer to my posting.

With regard to the stream of consciousness so-called, I don't see this as being anything more than a metaphor which allows communication. There is a specific reason that I say this, a specific objection to the metaphor of a stream that I have. Namely, it appears to me, from my self-observation (introspection) that the "stream" has (short) GAPS in it. I first started noticing this when I was a teenager, but over the years (decades) I have become more and more aware of these gaps. In fact these days it appears to me that the gaps often have things IN them, which I would say were unconscious to my former younger self.

Specifically it appears to me that as the "stream of thoughts flows by" it frequently occurs that there arise faint visual impressions which I might describe as "subliminal" unless you become attuned to noticing them. These faint visual impressions often seem to me to be impressions of shapes or forms, sometimes of movements, and they often seem to me to relate in some meaningful but symbolic way to the "conscious" thoughts in the "stream" at the time of their occurrence.

Let me attempt to go a bit further into the kind of phenomenon I believe I have observed. By profession I am a mathematician, hence am trained in logic. I tend to communicate in a precise manner, as is natural in my field. But I (as well as many people, obviously) feel that there are ideas which do not easily yield to strictly logical communication. In such a case one may find it useful to communicate by metaphors. It has been my introspective experience that I sometimes have the aforementioned subliminal visual impressions just before I use a metaphor in conversation, almost as if the impression is a symbolic representation of the meaning of the metaphor (which precedes its use).

Let me elaborate one particular example from my past experience. I was in meeting to discuss the topic of whether a certain (large) piece of software should be rewritten. Doing so would incur a substantial investment of effort, hence time and money. On the other hand it would give the opportunity to redesign the software in a possibly better way. In the course of this meeting I advocated going ahead with the re-write. When I had the floor to present my point of view, as I was composing my sentences (ad hoc) one of these "subliminal visual impressions" flitted through my mind and I NOTICED it. It was a sort of vague shape of light on darkness of a kind of movement of something struggling to move upwards and failing to do so. My next sentence was: So I am worried that our software is like a plane trying to take off which has been gathering more and more ice on its wings. [endq] (There was an issue of accumulation of bugs in the existing software over time.) I then noticed that this sentence could be taken as an INTERPRETATION of the symbolic image I had just had. But in the context of its utterance the sentence was simply a metaphorical description of a concern about our software.

I later (after the meeting) had a lively discussion with my boss about the use of this metaphor in the meeting. At that time he shared with me an active interest in the topic of metaphor.

These days when I introspect my so-called stream of consciousness, I find many different kinds of "gaps" in the stream. For example I would say that my stream of consciousness routinely "breaks" momentarily when I transition from some sedentary intellectual activity to the performance of a behavior which involves complicated muscular operation. The initiation of getting up out of my seat to go to the bathroom after I have been reading for awhile, for example, seems to me to result in a brief gap in consciousness. These days for there to be a gap in consciousness in such a case seems to me like the natural way the mind functions as it transitions from thinking to acting.

Comments?

the stream illusion

Submitted by Sue Blackmore, Bristol on June 30, 2009 - 3:26am.

I enjoyed your comments on metaphor, and your own experiences. But I want to challenge the "stream" as an appropriate metaphor for consciousness at all. The very natural idea you talk about, that the "stream of thoughts flows by" is all part of the illusion. Yes, there are gaps - William James's "flights and perchings" to use another of his metaphors - but I challenge the idea of unity as well as continuity.
If there's a stream at all I would describe it like this. On the side of a hill countless little streams emerge from underground, flow for a bit, and then disappear into the ground again. Every so often a whole lot of them run together and, for a while, make up a big stream, but then they dissipate again.
On this analogy anyone experiencing a big stream thinks of themselves as a continuous self who must have been part of a big stream in the past and will continue to be in the future - but that's an illusion.
I don't think well in metaphors - not my style - so I'll put it another way. There is neither continuity nor unity of consciousness. Whenever we ask ourselves "Am I conscious now?" we seem to be, so we assume it's always that way. It is not.

Two levels of consciousness?

Submitted by John Rood on June 30, 2009 - 6:22pm.

Thank you for your kind comments about my previous post.

Now I am getting slightly confused by what we are talking about. If I understand it correctly, the Buddhist paradigm of mindfulness is about consciousness having two levels in some sense. The level of mindfulness is what you have earlier described in this blog as being "a bit like waking up", and I think the other level is often referred to as distractedness. I believe you also use the question "Am I conscious now?" (or, perhaps more accurately, "Was I conscious a moment ago?") to distinguish between these two levels. If the answer to the question is yes that means you are (were) mindful. If the answer to the question is no that means you are (were) "distracted", or perhaps "in a flight of fantasy" or "daydreaming" or something? You have pointed out that the question "Am I conscious now?" ITSELF may bring you from the state of distractedness to the state of mindfulness.

(In the terminology of my post responding to your entry in this blog for April 28 on "Being Mindful" I call this TRANSITION from distractedness to mindfulness by the neologism "cown". So the question "Am I conscious now?" causes a cown to occur on some occasions. Or, again, if you ask yourself the question, you cown. This can be useful if you want to attain the state of mindfulness for some reason. When I was younger I would sometimes think "Cown!" to myself and I would then cown. This can be quite useful in certain circumstances ...)

But how do these facts about consciousness fit with the metaphor / picture of consciousness as a stream, the way William James would have it? It is helpful for you to affirm for me that he allows the possibility of gaps in the stream. In my previous post in response to the current blog entry I interpret the "subliminal visual impressions" I think I observe in myself sometimes to occur on the level of distractedness in the Buddhist interpretation of consciousness as having two levels. They are very short-lived, normally on the order of fractions of seconds in my experience. One might be tempted to call them momentary fantasies. I reiterate that my experience is that they can sometimes play some role in the occurrence of metaphors in conversation.

So I see these subliminal visual impressions as being consistent with the Buddhist interpretation of consciousness. But I see them as presenting a problem for James' picture of consciousness.

I don't see the possibility of "two levels" of consciousness as being compatible with William James' metaphor of the stream of consciousness. I am wondering what to make of this quandary.
Am I taking my subliminal visual impressions too seriously?

I have a feeling this quandary still exists even if you just say that daydreams or fantasies exist on the level of distractedness. I take that to be the natural Buddhist interpretation of them, that they take you out of the here-and-now.

Can you help straighten out this tangle of concepts?

Perhaps it's time you read

Submitted by Sue Blackmore, Bristol on July 2, 2009 - 7:29am.

Perhaps it's time you read the book (or wait until I put some of it up here - I promise I will soon!). You will see that I am not seeking intellectual answers but trying to peer through the illusions to see how things are.
It's not that your levels are wrong but that - for me at least - placing labels on it all is premature.
I'm asking "Am I conscious now?" and I want to look and see.

I ordered a copy of Ten Zen Questions

Submitted by John Rood on October 7, 2009 - 5:29pm.

A few days ago I finally ordered a copy of the book this blog is based on. Amazon has shipped it. I should have it within a week.

I have been pleasantly surprised to find that what you are doing meshes so well with what I have spent a lot of my life doing.

There is much more still to do. We have really only seriously touched on a couple of the Zen questions so far.

getting on with the questions

Submitted by Susan Blackmore on October 15, 2009 - 6:56am.

Too true! I am so swamped with work that finding the time to devote to this is difficult and I can only apologise. But we will get to those questions soon - and they never go away do they !!

I received my copy of Ten Zen Questions.

Submitted by John Rood on October 9, 2009 - 10:14am.

The US Postal Service was faster than they promised.

The book is more substantial, in the sense of having more pages, than I expected. It is going to take some time to figure out how your experience relates to my experience.

I am surprised at what is happening on this blog. Quite frankly I have sometimes wondered if anyone would ever be able to relate seriously to some of my ideas.

Rome wasn't built in a day. I am very aware that what we are undertaking in this discussion is not so easy to achieve. Let us persevere.

From Wikipedia: ROME WASN'T BUILT IN A DAY -- "Invoked when a task is too big to be accomplished quickly, this familiar saying was originally a French proverb, 'Rome was not made all in one day,' which was recorded in 'Li Proverbe au Vilain' (c. 1190). The English version did not appear until three centuries later, when it was included first in Richard Taverner's translation of 'Erasmus' Adages' (1545) as 'Rome was not buylt in one day,' and then a year later in John Heywood's 'A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue' (1546) as 'Rome was not bylt on a daie (quoth he) & yet stood Tyll it was fynysht.' 'Rome was not built.' was subsequently quoted or adapted by." many others. From "Wise Words and Wives' Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New" by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993). Page 158.

Sorry, NOT Wikipedia, just a random Goggle find

Submitted by John Rood on October 9, 2009 - 10:16am.

Sorry for misidentifying the source of the cut-and-paste-quote!

How this blog works ... ?

Submitted by John Rood on October 9, 2009 - 2:04pm.

Hi Sue,

So most of the entries are what one might call (lightly?) edited (or revised?) versions of passages from the book Ten Zen Questions?

editing

Submitted by Susan Blackmore on October 15, 2009 - 7:05am.

Yes, they are. I wanted to be able to put the whole book up on line but my publisher would not allow it. There is much discussion between authors and editors and publishers about this issue. No one really knows yet how having an on-line version affects book sales. I don't mind whether it does, I'm more interested in sharing the ideas, but the publishers obviously do.
Anyway - what I am putting up here (apart from the retreat bit) is slightly abridged from the book. I have tried to take out enough to satisfy the publishers but not to spoil the gist. I hope it is working well enough.

On reading

Submitted by John Rood on July 2, 2009 - 11:44am.

Thank you for this comment. I will take it under advisement. I am currently reading your book Consciousness, A Very Short Introduction, which I am enjoying. (I think I mentioned this at some point, but maybe not.)

KW 7 -- Posts in response to this blog entry split here

Submitted by John Rood on November 26, 2009 - 5:50pm.

Basically my [John Rood's] posts to Sue's blog entry on asking the Ten Zen questions split into two series.

The first series, which ends with the post this is a reply to, were made in June and July (2009). The second series was made in October (and later). So, at some point (I think after what will become KW 8?) I came back to the issues under this blog entry with, as you might say, more confidence.

The Ten Zen Questions -- from Table of Contents of the book

Submitted by John Rood on October 19, 2009 - 12:17pm.

1.) Am I conscious now?
2.) What was I conscious of a moment ago?
3.) Who is asking the question?
4.) Where is this?
5.) How does thought arise?
6.) There is no time. What is memory?
7.) When are you?
8.) Are you here now?
9.) What am I doing?
10.) What happens next?

I trust I am not giving away too much by listing these here. I wish to be able to refer to the questions explicitly. I find this perspective on consciousness quite useful!

I presume your publisher will not object to publishing what is (most of) the Table of Contents of your book in effect. I might mention that this list is already available online in one of the Amazon reviews of the book.

By all means pls say so if this is a problem.

Relevance of the Heart Sutra

Submitted by John Rood on October 22, 2009 - 11:12am.

I wish to point out that one can view the Heart Sutra as a generalization of the statement: There is no time.

So this relates to question #6 above.

Submitted by Sue Blackmore on October 23, 2009 - 11:50pm.

This is not a problem at all. I asked my publisher long ago whether I could put the whole book on line, which I would have liked. They said no (and they have the right to do so) because they argued that unscrupulous people sometimes take the entire text, reproduce it into book form and sell the fake books. hmmmm. I'm not sure whether this is at all likely but I have therefore desisted. However, the Table of Contents and much of the rest of the book are available on Amazon, some of the text is available on my own site, and some in this and my other blog. So please don't worry about posting bits like this.

Small technicality

Submitted by John Rood on October 22, 2009 - 11:05am.

In the above replace "I hypothesize that the answer to J4 is NO." with "I conjecture that the answer to J4 is NO." The point here is that I am not sure I have anything as strong as a "hypothesis", but it is easy to make a "conjecture".

Another fundamental question

Submitted by John Rood on October 22, 2009 - 11:33am.

Hmmm. I should add this to the list of "J" questions:

J7.) How am I changed by asking these questions?
Remark: This has various possible rephrasings: How do I change by asking these questions? How does asking these questions affect me as I grow? What is the affect on my life over my lifetime of asking these questions? Ultimately I have in mind understanding the neurological affects of asking the Ten Zen (etc.) questions "from the inside" (meaning by introspection / insight meditation).

There is some topic we should eventually get to here about understanding neurological processes from the inside versus from the outside. It may turn out that observing them from the outside is as "chaotic" as attempting to predict the trajectory of a leaf blowing in the wind. Nevertheless this would still be possible that they may be predicted by observing them from the inside.

Trivial correction

Submitted by John Rood on October 22, 2009 - 4:03pm.

Obviously: What is the EFFECT on my life over my lifetime of asking these questions?

How does asking the Zen questions change me over my lifetime? (Compared to what ... ?)

Insdie and outside

Submitted by Sue Blackmore on October 24, 2009 - 12:24am.

This is exactly the query I am circling around. I don't know whether you've seen my textbook "Consciousness: An Introduction" but I write a lot about this there. Each of the 27 chapters (intended to be a lecture each on courses) has an exercise for students to do. We used to do these every week when I taught the course long ago. They include many of the Ten Zen Questions and I got a lot of inspiration from the students who struggled with them. I am currently working on a second edition of the book but it'll be a while before that's ready!

So I ordered a copy of this book

Submitted by John Rood on October 31, 2009 - 9:18am.

Again I ordered it from Amazon. This time they were advertising a used copy for $15, which I ordered. Including shipping the total was $18.99.

I go into this level of detail because there is a story here. Apparently the seller of the book is just starting out as a seller on Amazon (?). Somehow the charge against my bank account for the amount of the book has "disappeared" [so it failed to change status from being a "pending" charge to being finalized]. I am hoping this is not a bad sign about my receiving the book.

The story I am actually trying to get to is the following. On the day by which the charge was supposed to be finalized (or it disappears from my bank statement), I looked at my bank listing and noticed that indeed a charge for $18.99 had been finalized, and I was relieved about the book. UNFORTUNATELY, a bit later it occurred to me that I had not seen another charge (from the previous day) on my (online) bank statement, so I went back and re-examined the statement. It turned out that the charge for $18.99 was NOT for the Amazon purchase, but for my purchase from the previous day (at a local grocery store), which meant the Amazon charge had indeed disappeared. (As I say, this could be a "bad sign" ... .)

SO, what I am really trying to say here (in addition to the fact that I have ordered your book) is that a COINCIDENCE occurred, which I just barely detected. I almost failed to notice what had happened (as an oversight, so to speak).

There is a reason I want to make this small point in so much detail. Presumably the reader is familiar with what illiteracy means, but what about the relatively new concept of "innumeracy" [a k a "quantitative illiteracy"]? My version of the SOED gives this definition for innumerate: Unacquainted with the basic principles of mathematics and science; not numerate [end]

It is sometimes said that innumerate people tend to automatically associate a COINCIDENCE with a MIRACLE. However, I do not see the fact that the two numbers (both $18.99) in the story above are equal as implying something about the "fate" of ... anything. I simply note that this fact almost led me to make a mistake. But I do think it is useful to understand that the human mind has a tendency to "make something of" a coincidence. (And in this case I might be considered lucky not to fall into the possible mistake.)

Implicitly this post raised the topic of SUPERSTITIOUS BEHAVIOR, so-called by B. F. Skinner (and other behaviorists). This is a part of the topic of the "psychology of everyday life".

I hope my telling of this episode is clear enough to the reader. Of course if it becomes important to understand what happened here I can elaborate on this narration of the story.

(I am reminded of the topic Peeked attempted to raise, namely the topic of stories, under the topic of "Loud sirens and backwards consciousness".)

I ordered another copy of this book from a different seller

Submitted by John Rood on November 4, 2009 - 6:20pm.

It appears the copy I ordered is not going to "pan out". I am more confident of the second source I am ordering from. But this means I won't get the book as promptly as I had hoped.

Ah well, c'est la vie dans l'Internet. (From Wikipédia: L'Académie française recommande de dire « l'internet », comme on dit souvent « le web ».

I received my new (old) copy of your book today ... Wow!

Submitted by John Rood on November 9, 2009 - 11:33am.

I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph.

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.

I saw a film today oh boy
The English Army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had a look
Having read a book I'd like to turn you on...

THE LESSER NOWC RIFF

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.

Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream

THE GREATER NOWC RIFF

I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
I'd love to turn you on.

THE FINAL NOWC RIFF

Question #3 of the Ten Zen and Question J4

Submitted by John Rood on October 22, 2009 - 8:48pm.

I see these two questions as being deeply related. To put this as briefly as possible, I maintain that self-identity ("ego", "I", "the subject", "the self", etc.--in this connection these are all the same?) depends on culture which depends on the existence of a community.

The Classical Taboo Topics

Submitted by John Rood on October 24, 2009 - 4:53am.

Hi Sue, thank you very much for your reaction(s) to the J questions.

Thinking about this, I believe I have isolated one more, and it has a sort of anomalous status. The way I am going to present it, it will have four parts which I will denote by letters at the end of the "J number".

The point about these being anomalous is that, from the point of view of calming the mind, the normal Zen or more generally Buddhist point of view, these questions tend to be treated TACITLY--almost ignored, because they are "disturbing"--they tend to work in the opposite direction from calming.

I believe that what I am about to list will be, on reflection, somehow obvious. But from that perspective there is a sort of implication that this means we have to acknowledge these "classical taboo topics" if we are really to get to the bottom of things.

So here goes:

J8A: Death
J8B: Sex
Remark: These are the classical topics which above all else lead to strong (negative) emotions and are often shunned in conversation. Both topics normally have "interpretations" in any religion. I will tend to reject any such religious frameworks. On the other hand, from the point of view of science it is noteworthy that these topics both fall within the realm of BIOLOGY, and, in particular, play fundamental roles in the "theory" [fact] of Evolution.

There is also a famous pair of topics which the rules of etiquette deem to be in poor taste in "normal" conversation. I think we have to acknowledge these also. I refer to the rule of courtesy that it is impolite to bring up politics or religion in conversation (other, perhaps, than intimate conversation?). Here is my listing of these two:

J8C: Civilization
Remark: This is a very broad topic. Freud wrote about "Civilization and its Discontents". This topic includes many things. Among these is the sequence: War, Violence, Pain, Dukkha ["suffering"] [end] This topic also contains "culture"--or something like it somehow. (Again Freud: I scorn to distinguish between culture and civilization.) Therefore this topic also contains the sequence: Math, Science, Engineering, Technology [end] and hence the theory of memes and "the third replicator".

J8D: Religion
Remark: This is the great "debatable" topic of our time (after the fall of "the great ideologies", namely capitalism versus communism). Freud wrote, in this connection, about "The Future of an Illusion". It is difficult to know how to handle this topic properly. Of course the fundamental question of the (non-)existence of God falls within this topic. (In some sense this is very deeply related to zeese ... . I hope to get to this eventually. Again I raise the question: What part of speech [grammar, syntax] is zeese? NB, this same question can be applied to the word "God"!)

This entry is a bit hurried. I hope not to have too many "typos" in it. But I want to record it now without too much hesitation, after I have been thinking about it.

Comment on J6

Submitted by John Rood on October 25, 2009 - 10:01am.

This question is quite fundamental in the rise of Mathematical Logic (e.g. the so-called Frege-Hilbert Controversy), not to mention Theoretical Computer Science (after all, video games depend completely on projective geometry, for example).

And it is, imho, fundamentally a PSYCHOLOGICAL question. But this entails subsuming more or less all of math and logic under psychology, which is debatable (at the least) at the highest levels of math and logic, let alone psychology (which certainly doesn't have a "replacement" for math and logic at hand in any sense).

But, the greatest problem with this topic is that it is so "hedged around" with technical difficulties.

Since I feel this topic is of FUNDAMENTAL importance in understanding the mind, I WILL sometimes discuss it.

However, since I am aware of the difficulties of communication which are presented by such a technical subject, I will attempt to mitigate these when I do discuss it.

J questions

Submitted by Sue Blackmore on October 24, 2009 - 12:20am.

More questions and all in the spirit of my own inquiry:) I enjoy the way they all seem to cross that apparent inner-outer boundary. We struggle on our own and then struggle with neuroscience or maths or philosophy along with others.