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As for sports or chess, perhaps you've never had any first hand experience in these activities, or perhaps you've never experienced the feeling of being "in the zone". You really aren't thinking in a linear, logical fashion; but that doesn't mean your brain isn't active and processing information in other ways.

I played football, baseball, and basketball in high school. I know how much practice it takes before you can be "in the zone." I know the feeling. And that feeling comes from thoroughly knowing your sport and developing your skills to the point where you have automated complex mental and physical actions. It doesn't come from "turning off the logical part of your brain." It comes from seriously developing the logical part of your brain to the point where it functions seemingly automatically (in regard to sports), with minimal effort on your part. It comes from thinking and practicing so much that when you observe a situation during a game, you know automatically what to do and you do it instantly, because you have automated the knowledge and the behavior.

You ain't going to hit a baseball or catch a football, if you turn off your logical mind. In fact, you won't even get to the practice field, because you will be banging your head against your locker, wondering why mere wishing won't put your cleats on your feet.

You're making the error of equating full awareness with Buddhist enlightenment.

You're making the error of equating logical thinking with partial or zero awareness. Logic is not an obstacle to awareness. It is the full expression of it.

Edited by MisterSwig
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Moebius, There are many times when one cannot function unless on relies on one's subconscious. A baby learns to walk in a very conscious manner, with trial and error teaching it how to balance itself. Finally, with more and more practice, it can walk without giving walking a second thought. Nothing in Objectivism says that one should hold each and every automated function in full conscious awareness.

There are many times when one acts, and where a moment to moment self-critique would be a distraction. However, this only works if one is actions in the situation where one has laid the groundwork through conscious thinking and practice.

Earlier, you said that it depends on how one defines Zen. However, if one defines Zen as merely this method of programming one's subconcious and practicing so that one can act effortlessly when the time comes, then Zen is not a philosophy at all.

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I played football, baseball, and basketball in high school. I know how much practice it takes before you can be "in the zone." I know the feeling. And that feeling comes from thoroughly knowing your sport and developing your skills to the point where you have automated complex mental and physical actions. It doesn't come from "turning off the logical part of your brain." It comes from seriously developing the logical part of your brain to the point where it functions seemingly automatically (in regard to sports), with minimal effort on your part. It comes from thinking and practicing so much that when you observe a situation during a game, you know automatically what to do and you do it instantly, because you have automated the knowledge and the behavior.

You ain't going to hit a baseball or catch a football, if you turn off your logical mind. In fact, you won't even get to the practice field, because you will be banging your head against your locker, wondering why mere wishing won't put your cleats on your feet.

You're making the error of equating logical thinking with partial or zero awareness. Logic is not an obstacle to awareness. It is the full expression of it.

I never said that being "in the zone" doesn't require experience and practice. It does.

And you're right in that I chose my words poorly, particularly in regards to "logic" and "awareness". Although I did say that I wasn't sure if those were the right words in this context. I apologize for causing this confusion. Here's is an article I found on Flow, which is basically the concept of "being in the zone" in psychology. Of the components of flow, this is closer to what I was talking about when I said "turning off your logical mind":

3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).

9. When in the flow state, people become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975. p.72).

Many Zen practices are centered around achieving that state of mind, in particular the "loss of the feeling of self-consciousness" and "action awareness merging". But with practice you expand your focus onto not just a particular task, but everyday living, while in that state of mind. This paragraph from the same article explains it better than I can:

For millennia, practitioners of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism have honed the discipline of overcoming the duality of self and object as a central feature of spiritual development. Eastern spiritual practitioners have developed a very thorough and holistic set of theories around overcoming duality of self and object, tested and refined through spiritual practice instead of the systematic rigor and controls of modern science.

The phrase "being at one with things" is a metaphor of Csikszentmihalyi's Flow concept. Practitioners of the varied schools of Zen Buddhism apply concepts similar to Flow to aid their mastery of art forms, including, in the case of Japanese Zen Buddhism, Kendo and Ikebana.

The idea of overcoming duality of self and object is a key theme of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig (1974). "When you're not dominated by feelings of separateness from what you're working on, then you can be said to 'care' about what you're doing. That is what caring really is: 'a feeling of identification with what one's doing.' When one has this feeling then you also see the inverse side of caring, quality itself." (page 290)

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Earlier, you said that it depends on how one defines Zen. However, if one defines Zen as merely this method of programming one's subconcious and practicing so that one can act effortlessly when the time comes, then Zen is not a philosophy at all.

You're right it IS a method of programming one's mind, although I'm not sure if it's the "subconscious" as it is referred to in psychology. When you're in a Zen state of mind you're fully conscious, although not self-conscious.

As for whether it's a philosophy, that's debatable. Here I'm just talking about the particular practices of Zen, although to many people Zen could mean a way of life, a particular outlook, or a particular world view. In that sense I suppose it could be considered a philosophy, although it would certainly be an incomplete one.

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I'm glad to hear that MisterSwig does not have the "woe is me" attitude. I'll take his word that he's enlightened and in this case he would be wasting his time reading zen books. There's actually an old zen story about how one should abandon the raft after getting to the other side of the river. The raft being the method of enlightenment and the river is the obstacle one passes through.

Meditation, emptying the mind (whatever that means), and various other popular methods are just optional window dressing. There is no one right path to enlightenment, whether you get there by reading the Fountainhead or practicing yoga, the important thing is that you get there.

Zen has been greatly misunderstood, just like Ayn Rand has been misquoted, misinterpreted, & taken out of context. How many times have you tried to defend the concept of selfishness? Even within Objectivists, there's an ongoing feud between different factions as to what is or isn't part of the canon.

As to "inventing whatever absurdity he wishes and claim it to be enlightenment", the only thing I claim was that it was mainly about getting rid of the woe is me attitude. I don't see how that's absurd. Now if I were to claim that Zen gave me supernatural powers, that would be silly.

And yes MisterSwig is right again when he says that "he who argues against enlightenment is not enlightened." It's like saying he who argues against the concept of love doesn't understand the first thing about it.

He said it with a cynical, condescending tone as if by simply anticipating my response he would render my point moot. But perhaps he didn't realize how right he was and that I'm not his enemy.

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Ultimately it comes down to the fact that you brain simply can't be "reasoning" and "conscious" at the same time. I wish I knew how to better explain this, since I feel like my command of words isn't really sufficient to describe what I'm trying to say.

I am not very familiar with Zen in particular, but pieces of it are used in martial arts frequently. One I am familiar with is mushin no shin, "mind of no mind". On the surface it sounds offensive to objectivist sensibilities, but in context it is very helpful. The idea is, that you quiet your mind and do not focus on any particulars. Eliminate expectatons and respond to the movements of your opponents intuitively. Obviously a great deal of training and conscious thought precedes this "mindlessness" but in the moment its all feel and almost no thought.

Nuerologically, I suspect that mushin is in effect, turning over control to your right hemisphere and bypassing the language on the left. Words require identification and identification is far too slow to be effective in fighting. The right sight deals better with spatial recognition.

Based on my(limited) experience with eastern concepts, I think the translation is often poor and the attack on the misinterpretation of it is really just an attack on a strawman.

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You're right it IS a method of programming one's mind, although I'm not sure if it's the "subconscious" as it is referred to in psychology. When you're in a Zen state of mind you're fully conscious, although not self-conscious.
"Subconscious" is different from "unconscious". One can be very alert and focused while using it. For instance, a writer could be totally absorbed in writing a story, with the subconscious providing him with material and a feeling that the story is just flowing onto the page.

As for whether it's a philosophy, that's debatable. Here I'm just talking about the particular practices of Zen, although to many people Zen could mean a way of life, a particular outlook, or a particular world view. In that sense I suppose it could be considered a philosophy, although it would certainly be an incomplete one.
All I'm saying is that what you describe is a single practice (and not controversial to an Objectivist). That's to say, it is not a metaphysics, or epistemology, or ethics, etc.

If someone uses Zen to mean some type of philosophy, they must mean something more than what you say. For instance, they might be propounding an epistemological idea. Perhaps, they might mean not just that one has to learn and practice to reach a stage where "things flow", but they might also be implying that we get knowledge by reaching within ourselves. At that point, Zen would be moving from psychological technique to epistemology, and it would be wrong. I'm guessing that the vast majority of people who are into Zen see it as a philosophy, with ideas such as that one example.

Based on my(limited) experience with eastern concepts, I think the translation is often poor and the attack on the misinterpretation of it is really just an attack on a strawman.
I don't think so, even though I agree with what you said about the effectiveness in practice. I think that the effective technique is backed by a mystical epistemology. It is as though some philospher focused on this aspect of thought which is so effective, and made a false generalization that all knowledge simply came from pure observation and by letting reality imprint itself on one. Edited by softwareNerd
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I wasn't the one who brought up Alan Watts-ian Zen, but it seems I'm the only one who is going to quote (or deal with) his actual beliefs:

So it is Zen that, if I may put it metaphorically, *Jon-Jo said 'the perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing. It receives but does not keep.' And another poem says of wild geese flying over a lake, 'The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection, and the water has no mind to retain their image.' In other words this is to be--to put it very strictly into our modern idiom--this is to live without hang-ups, the word 'hang- up' being an almost exact translation of the Japanese _bono_ and the Sanskrit _klesa_, ordinarily translated 'worldly attachment,' though that sounds a little bit--you know what I mean--it sounds pious, and in Zen, things that sound pious are said to stink of Zen, but to have no hang-ups, that is to say, to be able to drift like a cloud and flow like water, seeing that all life is a magnificent illusion, a plane of energy, and that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Earlier I quoted Watts saying that "Zen . . . is not possible to embrace in any concept whatsoever . . . There's nothing you're supposed to believe in." And now I have quoted Watts saying that "All life is a magnificent illusion . . . there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of." All quotes from one lecture.

I have read several books on Buddhism and Taoism. And now I have read a lecture on Zen by Alan Watts. And my view is that Watts has a serious problem deciding whether there is something to believe in. First he says that Zen is not understandable in concepts, but then he explains to us (in concepts) how life is an illusion, the perfect man grasps nothing and refuses nothing, blah, blah, blah.

I wonder if the advocates of Zen on this message board are willing to defend the idea that "all life is a magnificent illusion?" And why should "the perfect man" use his mind in such a manner so that he "grasps nothing, and refuses nothing?" How do those ideas integrate with the previously discussed belief that we first need to learn how to play sports and chess, and automate related knowledge and behaviors, before we can be "in the zone" while engaged in such activities?

On another note, I think it is strange that apparently I am the only one here actually quoting from a recognized authority on Zen. Maybe the Zen-people are taking their religion too seriously, and when they read a book or article on Zen, their mind is truly like a mirror, grasping nothing.

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More nonsense from the great Alan Watts, for those who care:

There are two great theories in astronomy going on right now about the origination of the universe. One is called the explosion theory, and the other is called the steady state theory. The steady state people say there never was a time when the world began, it's always expanding, yes, but as a result of free hydrogen in space, the free hydrogen coagulates and makes new galaxies. But the other people say there was a primoridial explosion, an enormous bang billions of years ago which flung all the galazies into space. Well let's take that just for the sake of argument and say that was the way it happened.

It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it.

And so what I would call a basic problem we've got to go through first, is to understand that there are no such things as things. That is to say separate things, or separate events. That that is only a way of talking. If you can understand this, you're going to have no further problems. I once asked a group of high school children 'What do you mean by a thing?' First of all, they gave me all sorts of synonyms. They said 'It's an object,' which is simply another word for a thing; it doesn't tell you anything about what you mean by a thing. Finally, a very smart girl from Italy, who was in the group, said a thing is a noun. And she was quite right. A noun isn't a part of nature, it's a part of speech. There are no nouns in the physical world. There are no separate things in the physical world, either. The physical world is wiggly. Clouds, mountains, trees, people, are all wiggly. And only when human beings get to working on things--they build buildings in straight lines, and try to make out that the world isn't really wiggly. But here we are, sitting in this room all built out of straight lines, but each one of us is as wiggly as all get-out.

I think Alan Watts was a little wiggly--in the mind. It is simply hilarious how he uses an Italian high schooler to support his view that "a thing is a noun," and since nouns don't actually exist in the physical world, then, voila, this means there are also no things in the physical world.

Who in their right mind is going to challenge the wisdom of "a very smart girl from Italy?" Certainly not me.

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I wonder if the advocates of Zen on this message board are willing to defend the idea that "all life is a magnificent illusion?" And why should "the perfect man" use his mind in such a manner so that he "grasps nothing, and refuses nothing?" How do those ideas integrate with the previously discussed belief that we first need to learn how to play sports and chess, and automate related knowledge and behaviors, before we can be "in the zone" while engaged in such activities?

To be clear, I'm not advocating Zen in its totality, particularly as it relates to Buddhist world views.

I'm merely talking about the mental exercise aspect of Zen as a great method for honing a particular mental state. Yet you keep trying to relate them together in a snide and obnoxious manner that makes all future discussion with you utterly distasteful.

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However,what you have written is different from the ideas of Alan Watts. The idea is to look at things with fresh perspective, not with the preconceived notions we tend to have, in other words, being able to look outside the box.

This is a dishonest representation of Alan Watts. What Watts was actually advocating was viewing the world without concepts. His primary argument was formatted as such: He would begin by discussing the dichotomy between spiratualists and materialists and then claiming that niether is correct because they rely on the concepts of a "material world" and a "spiritual world", while reality, he claimed, is not a concept and therefore cannot be labeled "spiritual" or "material"- these terms bieng conceptual in nature. The basis of his teachings in meditation were experiencing life without using concepts because these are a barrier between your mind and reality. What he evaded in this argument is that man is a conceptual animal- that concepts are man's means of experiencing reality, and that a life lived without concepts is not a human life at all. The Objectivist interpretation of Zen Buddhism was given by Ayn Rand herself in her brief mentions of Existentialism, and implicitly in the character of Ivy starnes in Atlas Shrugged. The term Ayn Rand coined (in a related, but much broader context) for the mentality that Buddhism treats as ideal is the "anti-conceptual mentality".

p.s. What "box"? Blank out. What "preconceived notions"? Blank out. Who's "we"? Blank out.

Edited by Andrew Joseph Sandberg
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I'm merely talking about the mental exercise aspect of Zen as a great method for honing a particular mental state. Yet you keep trying to relate them together in a snide and obnoxious manner that makes all future discussion with you utterly distasteful.

First of all, you're not "merely talking about the mental exercise aspect of Zen," you are attempting to undermine the usefulness of reason, as such.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that you brain simply can't be "reasoning" and "conscious" at the same time.

Now, that is not a fact. You asserted it as a "fact." It is your starting point. But this has nothing to do with Zen mental exercises. It has to do with your fundamentally flawed view of reason and consciousness. You hold a false, reason-consciousness dichotomy, which is a favorite dichotomy among eastern mystics, because it is of utmost importance to them that reason not be allowed to contradict their mystic insights. They must be allowed to continue believing their fantasies and acting upon their whims and still be considered moral . . . thus reason must be set aside, in a separate realm, disassociated from consciousness. Otherwise, reason would prove wrong their make-believe worldview.

Moebius, you can claim that you are not advocating Zen in its totality, but that doesn't change the fact that you are using the principles of Zen to support your advocacy of its practices. I have not treated you kindly because I think it is your goal here to misrepresent Objectivism as being somehow compatible with Zen, and I think you are doing it dishonestly and unseriously. A serious, honest person would at least provide some quotes from Ayn Rand and whatever actual Zen source material you have, to show how they are compatible. However, in true Zen fashion, you offer no hard evidence for anything you say, and you expect us to respect your whim-based assertion that Objectivism is compatible with some ill-defined, Eastern mumbo-jumbo.

I'm not a spiritual egalitarian. I'm not going to sit back and quietly and politely--and unjudgmentally--entertain your antagonistic, whim-based nonsense. I have a lot of respect and patience for people with honest questions and criticism of Objectivism. But you clearly understand next to nothing about Objectivism, and yet you are willing to stubbornly insist that Objectivism is compatible with Zen. Simply incredible.

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