Zen and Taoism

[Ryumon]

You say that "Recent neurological research on mediators indicates that some or all of what is experienced during Zazen may be merely just various centres of the brain activating or quieting down". You go on to say, I think, that the experience is "real" anyway. Which I can see. But if this experience is simply what happens when certain functions of my brain quieten down, then all that is happening is that I am feeling "all of one piece" with my own sense perceptions. Which is scarcely surprising. What could I, or my conciousness, be but the sum of my own sense perceptions and thoughts? And if the thoughts quieten down, then, logically, I must then be the sum of my own sense perceptions. Which I would expect to experience as being "all of one piece" with my sense perceptions. And yes, that experience is "real", but does it have anything wider to say about "reality". I'm not at one with, or of one piece with, the universe, I'm at one with, or of one piece with, my own sense perceptions. And then, isn't the feeling that I get of "no self" and "no other" or "oneness" itself a delusion? "I" am" feeling" "at one with the universe" (though to put it in words doesn't capture the actual feeling, as there's no "I" to do the feeling) but isn't the "reality" that I am merely at one with my own sense perceptions, cut off from the universe and for ever imprisoned within my own sense perceptions? At this point I usually ask myself what the broader "reality", within which the statement that "I am merely at one with my own sense perceptions" applies, is, and my brain just shuts down altogether. Help, please.

If I may be so bold and toss in my unenlightened two cents...

What is real, to paraphrase William James, is what happens to us. Whether it is inside our outside, it is real. Even hallucinations are real, to the extent that our minds perceive them as real.

Everything we perceive depends on what our brains do. You are, indeed, the sum of your thoughts, feelings and perceptions. I think the difference when you quiet down is that your thoughts calm and another part of the mind can perceive things that are usually hidden by the noise. The idea of "being one with the universe" is a cliché, and one can think that is what happens, because one is led to believe that is what happens. What actually happens, as I understand it, is that you simple drop the barrier between yourself and what is around you; so in a way, you become the universe, but in another the universe and you merge. There is no "I" but there is still an "I" because there has to be for you to perceive. But when you get to that state, the "I" is so soft and receptive that it starts realizing that it isn't an "I" but a part of everything.

I think...

Kirk

[Martin]

Jundo, Kirk

Thank you both for your replies, which I have read several times.

At the end of the day, I suppose the craving "I want to be at one with the universe" is doomed to failure as it posits an "I" that is doing the "being one". Which is why it feels different in zazen when the boarders of the "I" soften a bit.

Gassho

Martin.