Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Big Self, Zen style
The question has to be asked: why a Zen school? Or more fundamentally, is it a Zen school? The answer to the second question is: "No".
As far as the operations of the school are concerned, hour to hour, their is little to indicate a Zen orientation. We meditate in the morning and briefly in the afternoon. There are classes offered twice a year or so on meditation and basic Buddhist philosophy. We have an altar.
As a Catholic high school student at a Jesuit high school, I would say that the presence of the Church was more substantial than the presence of Zen at TAS. But perhaps there is something else going on. Perhaps it has to do with the nature of Zen practice. A few students have quietly taken on some interest and practice in the history and the techniques. All seem to be able to sit still when asked.
And most- except for the youngest students- seem to be able to reconcile their problems with others in terms of self-awareness and community well-being. These are things we should investigate more deeply.
There are many kinds of forgetting. Forgetting to do something, forgetting in order to forgive, forgetting for a moment all one's problems. And forgetting the self when deeply involved with something or someone. Learning is not necessarily the opposite of forgetting: one can learn to forget. That being said, learning and forgetting, that is, memory, go right to heart of who we are, what this self is. As a teacher, I am always playing with two strings: being aware of the self, and forgetting the self. In music, in psychology, in learning over all. So for me, TAS is a self-workshop, a way of getting a student's self-conception to play out over the whole of this small school. Accomplishments, relationships, ups and downs, quiet and noise. Moment to moment.
Insofar as what we do is the conscious cultivation of self-observation and letting go, then we are a Zen school. It also happens to be an excellent way to move through life.
As far as the operations of the school are concerned, hour to hour, their is little to indicate a Zen orientation. We meditate in the morning and briefly in the afternoon. There are classes offered twice a year or so on meditation and basic Buddhist philosophy. We have an altar.
As a Catholic high school student at a Jesuit high school, I would say that the presence of the Church was more substantial than the presence of Zen at TAS. But perhaps there is something else going on. Perhaps it has to do with the nature of Zen practice. A few students have quietly taken on some interest and practice in the history and the techniques. All seem to be able to sit still when asked.
And most- except for the youngest students- seem to be able to reconcile their problems with others in terms of self-awareness and community well-being. These are things we should investigate more deeply.
There are many kinds of forgetting. Forgetting to do something, forgetting in order to forgive, forgetting for a moment all one's problems. And forgetting the self when deeply involved with something or someone. Learning is not necessarily the opposite of forgetting: one can learn to forget. That being said, learning and forgetting, that is, memory, go right to heart of who we are, what this self is. As a teacher, I am always playing with two strings: being aware of the self, and forgetting the self. In music, in psychology, in learning over all. So for me, TAS is a self-workshop, a way of getting a student's self-conception to play out over the whole of this small school. Accomplishments, relationships, ups and downs, quiet and noise. Moment to moment.
Insofar as what we do is the conscious cultivation of self-observation and letting go, then we are a Zen school. It also happens to be an excellent way to move through life.
Your Morning Coffee
If you haven't wandered over to the New York Times, you might want to check this out:
Coffee linked to lower dementia risk. First of all, 3-5 cups is "moderate" consumption. To me, that is a lot of coffee. Second, they look at a link to diabetes, and how coffee seems to reduce risk of that disease. My guess, wholly uneducated, is that it is related to the effects of caffeine.
For instance, amphetamines administered after learning a task seems to reinforce that task. And in rats, it seems to stimulate recall of previous tasks. My thinking is that somehow mild caffeine use ramps up the affective involvement in what one is doing, coding it for longer term memory, and maintaining a healthy rate of neuronal growth in the hippocampus.
And that is very much a guess. To bad there are no neurologists out there to set me straight.
I am running out of time to get my sitting in. Links and references to be posted later...
Friday, January 23, 2009
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