Episode Thirteen - Learning from zazen: 'chattering mind' & Zen practice

In this episode I offer a few reflections on some of the things I have learnt from Zen practice and how it has come to be so central to my life. I suggest that zazen, Zen meditation, is an art that enables the practitioner to gain insights into the chattering and acquisitive self and to discover another way of being that draws on the boundless creative energy of the mind – Beginner’s Mind or Zen Mind. Anyone can learn this art and encounter the peace and unity that it can bring.

Transcript

I began to do zazen, Zen meditation, in 1965, and since then I have learnt many things from this simple, yet at times, challenging practice. I have come to understand a little better who I am, how I relate to the world and how I can realise peace and unity. Over the years I have found zazen to be a very creative, expansive and revitalising process that can transform one’s everyday life. When practicing zazen, the mind seems to open naturally to fresh understandings and shifts of perspective as if windows and doors open, allowing the cool breeze of thoughts, feelings and sensations to flow unhindered. For me this has been a lifelong process of awakening to the miracle and beauty of being here – the miracle of being alive, being aware and being connected to multitudes of other beings on planet earth.

For me, Zen practice is a form of contemplative enquiry. It is open-ended, exploratory and fluid. While I probably began doing zen meditation, zazen, with an innocent ambition to strive for enlightenment, though I had no idea what that might be, I soon realised that there is no goal or destination beyond the daily discovery of fresh pastures as well as treading anew well-worn trails. While I once hoped for solutions, I came to realise that seeing a problem clearly, inhabiting it, accepting it and seeing it in a balanced and caring way, is halfway to solving it. Realising that I do not have to identify with the problem, or the solution, leaves me free to experience it in less constricting or habitual ways. Solutions become openings and possibilities, rather than closings and endings.

To practice zazen, mindful meditation, is to learn and practice a skill or craft – like learning how to throw a pot on a potter’s wheel, or to ride a bike, or to swim or climb. It is an art, practiced for its own sake, rather than a task to be accomplished and put to one side. There is always the challenge and enjoyment of another pot to make, another ride to take, another stretch of water to swim in, another rockface to negotiate. Of course, sometimes we cycle just to get somewhere, but if we love cycling we enjoy the ride. Sometimes we have to fix a punctured tyre, but then we get back in the saddle and carry on our way. Sometimes we clean the bike and oil it. These are all aspects of the art of cycling, to be learnt and honed as we practice the art. So it is with Zen.

In the early years of doing zazen, despite what I had read about meditation being something that could be done anywhere, any time, I thought of it as a place of refuge, a quiet oasis in the turbulence of daily life. In one sense it still is that – an experience of homecoming and stability. But it has become much more. I find I can apply the mental and physical approach to zazen to many other activities and situations. When I am walking somewhere I try to focus on the walking – being mindful of my body and my surroundings. If I need to think about something, or think through a problem, I focus on that. I try to bring my whole awareness to the task in hand, as far as possible doing it for its own sake. When I am waiting, or queuing, I treat it as a period of zazen – being present to my breath, to bodily sensations and to the endless motion of the mind. I try to be at peace with whatever I am doing – maintaining focus and clarity of mind. In this way Zen practice is extended far beyond the formal sitting meditation and becomes a vital aspect of my everyday life. 

Even before I started Zen meditation, over half a century ago, I used to find it interesting to just sit quietly and to observe the chattering mind, to be attentive to what was going on in my whole field of consciousness. It seemed to me that it was an activity similar to bird-watching – but being alert to thoughts, sensations and feelings rather than to birds. I noticed how I often became so absorbed in the chattering, the spinning thoughts, the endless, somewhat pointless ruminating, that I lost touch with the world around me. I was so caught up in my own mind-wanderings and circular internal arguments that I was unaware of my surroundings, or I was no longer listening to what someone was saying. I would watch my friend speaking but I was not listening to them, instead I was listening to the thoughts going round and round in my mind. Too often I identified with my chattering mind and took it for granted that this was ‘who I am.’ I too easily forgot that when I observed this chattering activity - when I was being mindful - I must have been observing from a position outside the chattering. I must have been observing from a perspective that lies in the space around the chattering – the seemingly boundless space of the mind itself. Surely, I began to realise, if I am to identify with anything, it is this generative space in which thoughts, sensations, images and feelings appear and disappear?

Another thing I noticed was that there seemed to be a close association between this chattering, endlessly ruminating aspect of the mind, and the need I kept feeling to acquire things. As I observed my thoughts, perceptions and feelings, I noticed how I often wanted to hang on to them, or to possess them. The habitual chattering, commenting and evaluating seemed to generate needs for things, and by ‘things’ I mean feelings, ideas, opinions and imagined futures, as well as objects. Even as I read about the Buddha advising us to minimise suffering by not clinging too rigidly to ourselves, other people and beings, or to objects, ideas, beliefs and opinions – I nevertheless could see that this was what I was doing so much of the time. I began to understand that becoming aware of habits of desire, attachment and acquisitiveness, was the first step in learning how to cope with transience, dissatisfaction, pain and loss. 

I began to see from my own experience how insatiable desire fuelled dissatisfaction, restlessness, disturbance and conflict - how easily I chased after things, ideas and sensations, in the hope that each new thing would satisfy me. I realised that this is the mindset of the acquisitive self – a dimension of my mind that was closely related to the chattering and ruminating that occupied so much of my time. Gradually, I came to understand that acquisitions – of whatever kind - new things, experiences and ideas - only reinforced my desire for more. And this process of craving and acquiring, of wanting more, only took me further and further away from peace, equanimity and wellbeing. 

I remember when I first experienced the realisation that I do not have to identify with, or be bound by, the chattering or acquisitive self. It came as a revelation. Unbidden and unexpectedly a new perspective on who I am, and who I could be, opened up. It was like seeing myself and the world from a different place. As if I had been given a new pair of spectacles, enabling me to see everything more clearly and vividly. It was as if I could now see the chattering or linguistic self, as just one aspect of who I am – rather than as the main, or only, aspect of my identity.

This realisation of the ‘empty’ space within which thoughts, feelings and sensations arise and die away, came with a feeling of lightness, transparency and spaciousness – as if I no longer had a name and all the sensations were without labels or definite boundaries. Thoughts and feelings seemed less substantial, more transparent, with less power to overwhelm and bind me. Everything seemed crystal clear and distinct, yet unified and indissoluble. Somehow ineffable, yet tangible. Vivid, fluid, open and porous. I experienced a profound shift of perspective, from a tightly-contained self, to a feeling of boundlessness. From a sense of separation and division to a feeling of connection and unity. And I realised that we all share this open nameless dimension. We all have this deep, indefinable nature.

Peace of mind, for me, comes from not dwelling on the passing thoughts, sensation, feelings and cravings, that flow through my consciousness, but on a deep awareness of consciousness itself – the boundless space of the mind. Rather than identifying with the thoughts and feelings that arise in the embodied mind, we can identify with the mind itself – the source - the open creative space out of which, or within which, all thoughts, feelings and sensations emerge. It is like attending to the river itself, rather than the fish, bubbles and silt that are carried along by the river. A realisation that I am the river within which thoughts and feelings bob about in the eddies and currents of the mind. For me this is a very liberating experience – a shift from seeing the world from the position of my chattering ego or acquisitive self, to seeing the world from the perspective of an open, spacious, creative mind.

When reading many Christian mystics, I am struck by phrases like, ‘ocean of indeterminacy,’ ‘the cloud of unknowing’ and ‘ground of being,’ for these seem to resonate with what I occasionally experience as the open space of the mind itself – an unnameable, vibrant unity. As far as I can tell, this is what Zen teachers call ‘mushin’ or ‘no-mind,’ - Buddha-mind, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind – or anatta, non-self.

If we identify with the stream of thoughts, feelings, sensations and cravings that appear in the mind, we can come to believe that this is all that we are. I have come to realise that this is a delusion, and it is very limiting and divisive. It tends to make us feel very confined within our chattering ego and leads us to feel separate from the rest of reality. But thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories and cravings are only interwoven strands of experience within a much greater whole: the boundless mind. If we shift our mode of attention, or widen our focus, to include the space within which thoughts, sensations and cravings occur, we catch a glimpse of a very different potential identity. When we begin to identify with the spacious and boundless mind, rather than with the chattering, acquisitive self, we feel much freer, unburdened, open and creative.

Unfortunately, not only do individuals identify with the limited and habit-driven acquisitive self, but also communities, societies, cultures and states collectively identify with the dogmatic ideas, preconceptions and beliefs that are so often the product of the chattering, acquisitive self. This may be one of the reasons why there is so much conflict, anger and prejudice in the relationships between communities and states in different parts of the world. These conflicts are often rooted in extremes of identification with the chattering habit-driven acquisitive strands of our minds, rather than with the open and inclusive unified space of the mind itself.

Many of us feel, at times, trapped within the habit-driven confines of our chattering-mind, but we can learn the art of Zen, being mindful, and experience a very different mode of becoming. To step aside from the acquisitive self, even for a short time, is very liberating – like a breath of fresh air when we have spent a long time in a tunnel or a room with no windows.

At the heart of zen practice is the realisation that we have no name, no definition, no fixed essence. We are instead the open fluid unbounded mind. This is what ‘awakening’ means. It is not a world-shattering, supernatural event that happens to one or two ‘special’ individuals. It is instead a natural process that is open to everyone, including me (as I discovered), within our ordinary everyday life and work. I have found that to undertake any activity, untethered to the acquisitive chattering self, is liberating and enjoyable. Any activity, be it sitting, standing, walking, washing-up, cleaning, gardening, eating, listening or speaking, can be undertaken mindfully – with Zen mind. 

This is a very creative, beneficial approach to living and I have been very lucky as an artist and academic to be able to share what I have learnt from Zen practice with my colleagues and students. I have found that freeing myself from the demanding, burdensome, chattering self - even for short periods – has given me a taste of peace, unity and clarity of mind. In this way, I have come to feel a greater sense of wellbeing, forged a deeper understanding of myself and, by sharing what I have learnt, maybe helped a few fellow travellers to find ways to realise their own creativity and awakening. 

Thank you for listening and bye for now.