LIVING ZEN REMINDFULLY

Living Zen Remindfully begins with this quotation, by Jonathan Livingstone Seagull: "The only true law is that which leads to freedom. There is no other."

This book is remarkable because every word in it is directed towards an understanding of Zen freedom. As you read, you become aware that James Austin is no longer a neurologist struggling with the problems of neurology, but has become a true Zen Master, showing a depth of understanding which only comes through the freedom of Zen.

He begins by asking whether meditation can enhance creative problem solving skills. Not surprisingly, meditation greatly enhances creativity, and the data show that divergent styles of creative performance draw on certain parts of both hemispheres, with the highly creative group showing greater connectivity. James goes on to discuss the two games practised widely in Japan, GO and Shogi. A paper from the Riken Brain Sciences Institute (where I worked for a number of years) shows that the caudate nucleus, the major motor nucleus, was involved in intuition and planning.

So is it possible that the completely thought-free intervals that arise in long-term meditation practitioners could be a major factor in increasing the potential for creativity? James reviews the data, but concludes that more research is needed. We shall just have to wait and see.

He goes on to ask another fundamental question. What does it mean to be enlightened? He initially answers this with a quotation from Koun Yamada-Roshi, "Enlightenment means to directly see the essential world through one's experience. To bring the enlightened eye to complete clarity requires a long period of continued practice." James goes on to look at the factors which may facilitate awakening, including the fact that it is frequently precipitated by an auditory stimulus. To achieve enlightenment the path of Zen must be followed, and this Yamada-Roshi defines as "the perfection of character." The guidelines for this practice come from the living Buddhist philosophy, generosity of spirit in all matters, disciplined restraint of the passions, patience and tolerance, resolutely applied energy, meditative practices that dissolve the intrusive site, the ripening of authentic insight wisdom. But as James points out, awakening is not a final destination. Enlightenment is a work in progress.

After reminding us about the Self/Other concept, he brings us up to date with a study on long-term Vipassana meditators, showing that a diminution in the self is accompanied by reductions in beta and gamma frequencies. Thus less self means less gamma in the left hemisphere, those networks which underpin self-verbalisation, i.e. talking to oneself. He points out that disturbances of ventral (temporal) information processing – concerning detailed object representation - lead to allocentric (other) impairment, while disorders of the fronto-parietal processing stream, dealing with spatial information, cause egocentric deficit. These concepts are now well advanced and evidence suggests that millisecond decisions are made on spatial allocation within the brain.

Remindfulness, the title of the book, lies at its core. James defines it as the quality of recollecting the most appropriate thing at the right time, starting with the simple example of following the breath. Soon, the mind wanderse defines it as the quality of recollecting the most appropriate thing at the right moment and then, from short-term memory, into the mind unbidden comes the fact that you should be following the breath, and you return to this. He also mentions the important example of Prince Siddhartha who, while a child, experienced blissful states of consciousness while meditating under a tree. He left the palace and wandered for many years on his spiritual quest. One day, when he felt he could not go on, this distant memory came into his mind. Note – it retrieved itself. For this crucial recollection led him to seek out a tree under which he could meditate. This tree, as we know, was the Bodhi tree, and after struggling for some time, conquering his demons, just before dawn he gained selfless insight to the full glory of the universe.

This quality of remindfulness, James reminds us, is extremely important, particularly when intuitive thinking is required. Intuitive thinking has been termed 'the unconscious thought effect' (UTE) and, is correlated with an enhanced memory, and more importantly, with the gist (the overall flavour) of the relevant attributes of a decision making process. He describes the neuroanatomy underpinning this effect and goes on to look at remindfulness in action. He notes its more frequent occurrence with intensive Zen meditation practice and describes one such episode from his own experience. A single soft note, one ring of the familiar doorbell which came unbidden into his consciousness, so persuasive that he got up to answer the door and found no one there. These single note rings were all recurrent auditory hallucinations, lateralised in physical space, off to his left. One morning in May, 2015, after he had been increasing his meditation and while still in a phase of light sleep, he heard a soft single resonant note, which turned into a phrase of syncopated music. He goes on to say that this when this phrase changed he asked himself why? No extra zen sitting had been carried out. He then remembered that the day before he had been walking for an hour in a wood of tall trees, and this was clearly what had triggered the inspiration. He quotes Master Yongmig e then quote He then qjuotesYanshou who said "Mountains and rivers, earth and grasses, trees and forests are always emanating their subtle and precious sound….It is right in front of our faces. Every one has this inconceivable capacity for great liberation."

Realising the significance of an ordinary stimulus such as sound led James to understand what happened that day when, standing on the London Transport Platform, the state of kensho descended on him. He describes the case of a 52-year-old man who, when he was 28, whilst in meditation, heard the sound of a jet plane moving overhead, and this was followed by a dramatic experience of seeing light. It was his attention to this auditory stimulus which triggered his experience of the light; an auditory cue activating his 'what and where' allocentric pathway.

Regarding his own experience of the dawning of his kensho, James notes that he was standing there on that unfamiliar platform watching the train move away and become smaller and smaller till it disappeared. He heard the diminuendo of its clattering along the track which faded into the distance. Then, turning casually 450 to the right, he looked up to see way up there a bit of open blue sky. This was sufficient to lead to the onset of kensho. Interestingly, Zen masters have long recognised that when you stand, there is an absence of 'self' thoughts. Turning to the right preferentially activates the right hemisphere and particularly the right hippocampus. There is thus a clear relationship between body movement and the sense of self, and in his case Kensho.

He analyses the signals that would have passed through his brain, the stimulus of the hippocampus leading to the alteration in his allocentric processing brain module realising that it was a very specific set of actions that triggered this dawning of expanded consciousness changing him forever. Thus James the Zen master who experienced Kensho merges with James the neurologist whose understanding and description of the neurological processes suggests a mechanism that released kensho.

The last part of the book is related to Basho, the Haiku poet. Here is James the Zen master, the intuitive poet, who now walks the stage of wider consciousness. He starts this section with a quote by Blyth "What makes Basho one of the greatest poets of the world is that he lived in the poetry he wrote and wrote the poetry he lived." This is a marker of James' own progress. James continues the idea illustrated by Basho's poetry and the significance of the auditory stimulus in triggering Zen states.

"An old pond, A frog jumps in, The sound of the water"

Did a sound stimulus, James asks, trigger, the state of awakening in Basho? He goes on to quote a number of sources.

The old pond, Ah! A frog jumps in: The waters sound!

In another translation:

Old pond, A frog jumps in, The sound of water.

In this wonderful chapter full of insight into the writing of Japanese poetry James, with his extensive understanding of Zen, brings the practice of Zen and the art of poetry together, illustrating the relationship between the development of Zen consciousness and the outflowing of rich and illuminating poetry. The Zen poet Ryokan in his final poem reminded us of the importance of the natural world. He says, "My legacy, what will it be? And he answers "The flowers of spring time, the cuckoo in the summer, the scarlet leaves of fall."

James in closing reminds us that: "Living Zen also enters subliminally through open eyes and ears into an open-hearted processing of whatever arises in this present moment. We bow in gratitude, remindful of the countless gifts that all other beings contribute to our living."

Will James write another book? He is 91, goes for a cardiac work-out three times a week, plays tennis, and keeps himself alive and alert. For someone like James, anything is possible. Has he said all that there is to be said regarding a scientific explanation of the practice of Zen and the brain's functional changes which go with silent Zen sitting and which may trigger and lead to wider states of consciousness? I have thought this before, and I have been wrong. Perhaps I will be right this time when I say that I expect James' next book will be just the flourish of the calligraphy pen as he rests in the immediacy of Zen.