Zen and the Art of Everything Else

I try to avoid speaking on the subject of me unless it’s to achieve a certain point, but I’m breaking with tradition. I’ve so badly neglected this blog that its state of neglect has become a reason to avoid adding to it.  Perhaps because I haven’t been posting regularly, I feel like too much of a hypocrite to continue.  Or perhaps it’s the amount of things I know I should have put in that I haven’t done.  I have some kind of hang-up about it.  Well, whatever the case, it’s time to move on and post again.  One day at a time.  Today I post.  Maybe I’ll return to Not Posting again after this, but I can’t possibly get back to regular posting unless I break the ice with a post.

On the topic of hypocrites, I believe I had mentioned earlier on that despite the obvious title of my blog, I hadn’t actually read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Fortunately, I have now read it.  And now that I have, I am glad I named my blog for it.  I related to that book in a lot of ways, and it blew my mind in many new ways I’d never conceived of.  If you haven’t read it, I won’t spoil it for you, but you should absolutely read it. 

I spent a lot of time thinking in depth about abstract concepts like perception and truth and reality as a kid.  I got away from it as I got older (laziness, probably, or maybe I decided it was sorted).  For example, I used sit on the school bus as a child and think I was the only one wondering if the world as I saw it was the world as everyone else saw it.  I was frequently an outcast due to my unwillingness to conform to other people’s expectations, and found myself often wondering if perhaps I was mentally retarded and everyone was just playing along with me.  After all, people who are profoundly retarded aren’t truly aware of their deficits.  I knew I didn’t fit in, but how far did it go?  Obviously it didn’t go so far for me; I am a bright individual; albeit socially inept at times… But that was the first ponderings I ever had on the subject of perception, reality, and “normalcy”.  Pretty good for an eight year old on a school bus, I guess.

Another example from childhood is this fixation I had with form constancy.  I believe this was a mental incongruity born out of my religious upbringing.  After all, if there were angels all around us, maybe they were VISIBLE when you weren’t looking.  Maybe there were ghosts and angels and spirits and monsters everywhere in some form invisible to the seeking eye; but when we close our eyes or turn our heads, they become real.  I used to try to open my eyes very fast so I could try to catch them.  As I got older I reconciled this, telling myself that their existence in my mind was as real as their nonexistence when I looked away.  In other words, it didn’t matter if they were there.  No one could ever say for CERTAIN they were or weren’t but it was a crazy thought pattern that didn’t fit with our reality so it was dismissed.

I always felt the universe must be playing some silly joke on me like Peek-a-Boo.

Back to earth now.  That abstract reality I was trying to reconcile as a kid was dismissed until about a year ago.  I began to reconsider it.  The Infinite, the Unnamed, the Matrix, the Tao, Quality; whatever you like to call it.  I never knew what to call it.  I used to call it God, and then I tried to come up with another name for it because that one had lost all meaning due to its societal context.  I ended up with some mumbling I don’t recall, but in the greater worldview I have now, I understand why the Jews came up with a name for it designed specifically so it could not be named.  God is a concept, as Lennon said.  I digress… the point is, it was refreshing to realize that it is only a concept in our constructed reality which is totally unreal outside the Matrix. 

I’d like to discuss in coming posts the Zen-like state we all hope to inhabit and the ways in which we can practice practicing it.  I hope I haven’t been hopelessly abstract.  ‘Til next time…

The truth about zen is not that we may achieve a perfected state of centeredness, but that we are aware of it and consistently striving toward it.  Zen is an attempt, not an end result.  At least that’s how it turns out to be much of the time.  We all have times; days, weeks, when everything seems to be on the upswing and we know where we’re going and how to get there.  We are in flow.  But there is always a yin to that yang.  Sometimes we feel like we’ve slowed or gotten stuck in one place.  Life is distracting like that.

But if we continue with the “flow” analogy, we see that even the parts of a river that swirl in circles by a big rock or close to shore, are still part of that river and they will eventually break free and float downstream.  And when they’re stuck, they’re still no less a part of the great achievements of that river as it carves even the hardest of stone.

Personal antecdote/self reflection time!

I just completed an incredible cross country move on my own and I learned and grew and experienced so much.  But once I arrived, I got caught like a leaf in an eddy on that river of zen.  Everything stopped.  I got distracted.  I developed a poison ivy rash, and the treatments for it left me stupefied and sleepy for 3 days.  I felt like I was stuck and floundering.  I joined that climbing gym, but became intimidated and overwhelmed by the difficulty of the bouldering routes and the idea of having to find a climbing partner.  I lost my “Oomph” as my mom calls it.  So I wallowed in an itchy, sleepy hell for a few days.  I woke this morning with a change of heart.

I rose, made a breakfast, and began to plan my day.  I reflected on what I had been experiencing as I searched for spices for my potatoes.  I feel now as if I could begin fresh today.  The world is again mine for the taking and I can do as I please.

So don’t let the initial frustration of feeling Stuck bring you down.  It’s okay to swirl in those eddies.  They are a part of the journey.  Embrace them.  And you’ll find yourself even more grateful when you are back on the open river again.

I was talking with a new friend today about a book called 101 Experiments in Everyday Philosophy, which I have not read yet, but he gave me a thought and action provoking example.  Have you ever counted to a thousand?  I hadn’t.  The principle behind this exercise is to develop a grasp and appreciation for the size of One Thousand.  When we hear about events in the news, discussing Thousands of barrels of oil or casualties or dollars or cars or whatever else, our brains simply file the number away as “BIG”.  But counting to one thousand helps embed a sense of scope.  

So I was driving from Indianapolis to St. Louis, and I had time, so I tried it.  It took about 30 minutes.  And my voice got hoarse.  It was tedious, yet it put me in a zen-like meditative state.  It was a really fast 30 minutes.  So hopefully the next time I hear “Several thousand people died” it will have a much stronger effect.

It isn’t difficult.  I actually found it a more pleasant experience than I’d anticipated; perhaps you’ll find the same.