James H. Austin - Living Zen Remindfully: Retraining Subconscious Awareness

Also by James H. Austin

Zen-Brain Horizons (2014)

Meditating Selflessly (2011)

Selfless Insight (2009)

Zen-Brain Reflections (2006)

Chance, Chase, and Creativity (2003)

Zen and the Brain (1998)

James H. Austin, M.D.

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Palatino and Frutiger by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Austin, James H., 1925 author.

Title: Living Zen remindfully : retraining subconscious awareness / James H. Austin, M.D.

Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016015015 | ISBN 9780262035088 (hardcover : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262336451

Subjects: LCSH: MeditationZen Buddhism. | AwarenessReligious aspectsZen Buddhism. | ConsciousnessReligious aspectsZen Buddhism. | Zen BuddhismPsychology.

Classification: LCC BQ9288 .A935 2016 | DDC 294.3/4435dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015015

ePub Version 1.0

In memory of Scott Whiting Austin (19532014)

To my early teachers Nanrei Kobori-Roshi, Myokyo-ni, and Robert Aitken-Roshi for their inspiration; and to countless others whose contributions to Zen, to Buddhism, and to the brain sciences are reviewed in these pages

The Zen Way is a demanding way, but it

leads to the depths, to the light of clearly

seeing what is when the veil is rent, and

to the warmth of the heart that touches and engenders growth.

Myokyo-ni (19212007)

The only true law is that which

leads to freedom. There is no other.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I. Schloegl. The Zen Way (London: Sheldon Press, 1977), 16. R. Bach. Jonathan Livingston Seagull (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 83. The Zen Buddhist Path also has ethical guidelines (shila).

To some persons nowadays, mindfulness might seem to be just another short course. After auditing it for only a few weeks, they could thereafter meditate casually, whenever

This isnt where Living Zen Remindfully is coming from. Authentic Zen training means committing oneself to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice. This preparation enables one to unlearn old unfruitful habits, retrain more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life.

Currently, mindfulness usually means that one is consciously aware of events in the immediate Now, in the present moment. Then why will the word, subconscious appear so often in these pages? A short answer here leads us back to Sigmund Freud. (A longer explanation is presented elsewhere.) Freud considered that our minds conscious compartment was only the small visible tip of a large iceberg. Barely one-seventh of its bulk could be seen floating above water. Therefore, most of our brains activitiesthose other six-seventhswere submerged, out of sight. Similar comparisons captured public attention after an iceberg sank the Titanic in 1912. Then, eight-ninths or even nine-tenths became common estimates for how much lurked in our subconscious mind. There, its hidden potentials often seemed readier to access our worst behavior, not our best.

This book extends some original implications of mindfulness. It explores the many positive, helpful subconscious aspects of remindfulness. It suggests ways that long-term meditative retraining can help cultivate hidden, affirmative resources of our subconscious memories. Accessing these subtle processes of transformation can enable us to adapt more effectively and to live more authentic lives.

To these goals, part I reviews different types of meditation and briefly discusses what enlightenment means. It then considers how long-term meditative retraining influences creativity and sponsors the development of character.

Part II addresses the fundamental biological distinction: Self/other. Were reminded that certain nerve cells in the medial temporal lobe are already sensitive not only to such contrasts as being Self-centered (egocentric) or being other-centered (allocentric) but also to the different ways we blend our focal and global attention.

Part III reviews the remarkable processes that first encode our memories, then store them, and later retrieve them. It focuses more on those covert, helpful remindful processes that have been incubating problems at subconscious levels, less on situations that we remain all too Self-consciously aware of.

Part IV takes off from there. It considers why ancient aspects of Zen, thorny issues in clinical neurology, and concepts at the cusp of neuroscience research have already become topics that are mutually illuminating.

Part V illustrates what Living Zen means in the everyday life of any human being. This person could be communing with Nature outdoors, meditating indoors on a cushion, living an active or quiet life anywhere. One example of this creative principle in the daily life of a Zen practitioner will be that of Basho, the seventeenth-century master of haiku poetry.

Dont be surprised when you encounter the different topics in parts IV set next to each other in unconventional ways. The short essays in the appendices also provide brief updates on related issues.

For the readers convenience, bracketed references in the text indicate specific pages in earlier books in this series. For example, when you see [ZB], the numbers refer to useful background information in Zen and the Brain. [ZBR] refers to Zen-Brain Reflections; [SI] to Selfless Insight; [MS] to Meditating Selflessly; and [ZBH] to Zen-Brain Horizons.

Chapters and appendices that contain testable hypotheses are listed on page xii.

J. Austin. Zen and the Brain. Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 278281, 284286, 307. J. Austin. Six Points to Ponder. Journal of Consciousness Studies 1999; 6(23): 213216. J. Austin. Selfless Insight. Zen and the Meditative Transformations of Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 2829, 155. J. Austin. Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 1314, 43, 94, 99, 155, 157, 171, 224. J. Austin. Zen-Brain Horizons. Toward a Living Zen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), xx, 77, 79, 84, 8996, 160, 191. In neurology, the word unconscious has a pathological connotation. It tends to imply major brain dysfunction. As used herein, subconscious refers to the many normal psychophysiological processes going on just below, or far below, our threshold of consciousness. Sometimes, like submarines, these rise up and surface. When they do, we finally become aware that they exist. Chapters 10, 11, and 25 remind us that they have different levels of origin and degrees of access.

Im indebted to Philip Laughlin at the MIT Press for appreciating the need to bring this volume to the attention of the wider meditating and neuroscience communities. Again, my sincere thanks go out to Katherine Arnoldi Almeida for her skilled editorial assistance and to Yasuyo Iguchi for her artistic skill in designing the cover, icons, and figures.

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