Right now: I have my door open so I can have a cool breeze. Other
than that, I'm a bit tired from staying up late last night watching
TV, happy to getting some things squared away with my writing tonight,
and impressed by how difficult your simple zen question is to answer.
Well, inevitably things will be left out in my description -- even if
I was to sit here attempting to index all of the phenomena I'm
experiencing (which are of course changing as I write this). Mainly
though, I'm feeling well!
One of the things that occurred to me when reading your letter is that
many of the basic issues with mathematics take place when reading or
writing anything. Even if I don't write any of my thoughts down, they
appear in connection with reading a text. These are "creative
thoughts": not in the original text, rather, some synthesis of the
text and the rest of my environment, really the rest of my experience
as you've used that term.
In math, this has something to do with standards for proof, for
example. A kid has no problem "seeing" that even added to odd is odd.
A logic student must present a rather different looking proof encoding
the "same" fact. And of course "newness" in either event is (at least
typically) relative only to the person coming up with or learning the
proof.
One of my questions about math is what the difference is between
"coming up with" and "learning". Obviously professional research
mathematicians have to "come up with" new stuff sometimes, but they
have to do a lot of learning too. A math student certainly has to do
some fancy footwork to balance learning existing facts against coming
up with solutions to given problems.
One of the parallels between math and zen that I've observed is
potential for use of "expedients" -- and I think that math could be
made much easier to learn if the existing facts were better organized.
This is the "project" I'm working on -- so I'm glad if I can leave Lin
Chi's words aside and work on it.
Certainly, on both large and small scales, this a very "zen-like"
activity -- one might draw parallels between sorting over and
connecting up preexisting pieces of knowledge and sorting and
preparing rice, for example. This is good enough as a basis; I don't
see why I would want (indeed I don't want) to "just sit in the temple
doing nothing".
Certainly, I do not want to dedicate myself to make zen my mode of
life it it just means sitting in temples doing nothing... however, if
the definition can accommodate working the project I've described,
then, yes, that is something I am trying to figure out how to do
professionally.
All in all, I am probably making it sound like Lin Chi has really
discomfited me. Actually I very much like what he said about "just
act normal", which was illustrated for example in his comment on the
use of tea by an "exceptional" monk. What I took away from that is
that "normal" may be quite subject-dependent!
There are so many zen parables and styles that I completely
misunderstood when I was younger, and I think I ran myself ragged on
account of things like "chop wood, carry water" or even "when you're
hungry, eat; when you're tired, sleep", since given my knowledge of
the "ironic" fact that zen monks will eat gruel and put in very long
hours, possibly getting whacked if they drift off in the meditation
hall, I pretty much turned that saying upside down (at least as
regards sleeping... I don't think I ever let it effect my diet!). Net
result was to work harder in my studies -- but of course, working
harder is not the same as working smarter.
I'm still not sure how to reconcile all of that "Then so-and-so became
enlightened..." stuff I read when I was younger with what seems to me
to be much closer to the real spirit of zen: "there is no
`enlightenment' to seek"? (E.g. Bodhidharma came pretty close to
saying this, although he actually said something far more interesting;
some contemporary writers seem take a completely literal view of the
statement.) Maybe I was just too impressionable as a youngster.
On a more pragmatic level: how to reconcile the current (and
long-standing... or should I say, long-sitting) special place of
za-zen with other kinds of zen practice? Now and again I will sit and
do nothing, but that's really only when I have nothing else worthwhile
to do! Yes, sitting down is relaxing, but it doesn't seem any more
important to me than how I wash the dishes or how I don't clear up the
papers on my countertop or how I write an email or anything else.
I'm sorry if these tangents are taxing. Really what I wanted to come
around to was a parallel between a notion of enlightenment as
"understanding the nature of mind", and the study of heuristics. Not
just formal heuristics, but human heuristics -- ideas of how to act,
and so on. Which I assume takes as one of its vital starting points
the way people do already think and act -- insofar as this is known --
but also, it seems to me, needs to account for what people wish. What
do you think? Is this far from the mark?
0 comments:
Post a Comment