This short extract introduces you to Sue Blackmore's new book in which she puzzles her way into certain serious Zen questions. You must read it to decide whether she has solved them or not but her discussion is characteristically lively and interesting; further more it is based in retreats at Maenllwyd. We place it here for your interest and information. Eds.
The idea for "Ten Zen Questions" 1 came to me one day when the scientific mystery of consciousness seemed particularly insoluble and I thought "I wish I could just sit still and think it all out". Then I realised that I should by now have the skill to do so. I first learned to meditate with John nearly thirty years ago, went on my first retreat at Maenllwyd in 1982, and have been practising ever since.
So the idea popped into my mind to use my Zen training in a completely unorthodox way. I would make writing a book the excuse to work hard at asking my favourite questions - Am I conscious now? What was I conscious of a moment ago? Who is asking the question? and so on. I did several solitary retreats of about a week each, some at Maenllwyd and some in my own garden shed at home. The book is a compilation of these, along with four chapters based on formal retreats led by John.
Here is an excerpt from one of those, John's first koan retreat in January 2002. On the first day he gave us a list of koans and huatous and asked us to choose one. I had no trouble, "There is no time, what is memory" simply leapt off the page and I was hooked.
There is no time. What is memory?
The first morning, when we'd all assembled under the bright stars of a frosty morning in the yard and dutifully copied John's assorted jumps and stretches, he gave us some steadying words for the day: "Patience, Application, Persistence".
I start work. The instruction sheet says that Western minds will first tackle the koan intellectually, but that this thinking will naturally wear itself out, so not to worry. Good. I don't have to prevent myself from thinking. What I have is simple: - here a statement; there a question. I don't need to rush. I have a whole week ahead. I decide to take the statement and sit with it in two different ways. First I'll agree with it, and then later I'll disagree with it.
I sit. I look. I look very hard. I sit and look at the carpet on the floor in front of me. But I haven't had enough sleep. That's the one thing I hate about these organised retreats. I start to hallucinate. The pattern of colours and squiggles on the carpet turns into big crabs that get up and crawl about over each other and make me blink and get cross. But I cannot see any time. OK then. The koan is right. There is no time. But if there is no time, what is memory?
I am out in the yard again, for slow walking meditation, looking down at the ground as I pace up and down. The frost has gone, and the mud and sheep droppings squelch under my feet. Of course there's time. The clouds are pouring up straight into the sky from behind the hills, moving fast. You can't have movement without time. The koan is wrong. There is time.
Hours of sitting pass. The crabs crawl and I blink to keep myself awake.
Hang on a minute. How can I tell the clouds have moved, or hear that noise as a cough, or see that John is walking? Because from one moment to the next I can remember what came before. Without memory they would be meaningless sights and sounds. And what is memory? Ha. This is a clever koan indeed. If I agree with it, then I become perplexed about memory - if I disagree with it I have to find out what time is. I begin to feel a curious respect for these seven simple words.
It's evening and we all sit in deep silence around a flickering log fire, the smell of the smoke hanging heavy in the slowly warming house. The flames are moving all the time. So is there time in these flames? Is there a now? I could grasp a moment with a camera but there is no camera, only my eyes, and what they see keeps changing. I can't grasp a moment from which to say that what has gone before is past and what is to come next is future.
I watch the tongues of red curling around the dried bark of a long-dead tree and try to imagine things from the flames' point of view. Without memory they cannot have a past, a now, and a present. I get the creepiest feeling that the whole of the universe is like this. Flames, and pieces of wood, and rocks and fireplaces, and matches, and hills - none of them has time. I sit and listen to the crackling.
An ant is crawling from the pile of wood on the floor. Is there time for an ant? The ant is different from stones and hills and I wonder whether this is what it means to be a sentient being, but I don't know. There is so much to investigate. A week seems nothing. But it's late. I wash, clean my teeth, and slip into my sleeping bag, still holding my koan steadily in mind.
This is how far I got with my koan the first day.
The morning boards are sounding and I'm instantly awake. The words are right here. "There is no time. What is memory?"
This koan is like a magic converter that flips everything in its path into mindfulness; and it does so without a jerk. I might meander off into thoughts like, "I remember when I was here last summer when the...", but before I can get lost in reminiscence up come the words, "What is memory?" So instead of being cross with myself and coming back to the present with a jolt, the memory of last summer becomes food for the koan. Almost every arising thought is like this, so I am still working on the koan. Or perhaps the koan is working on me.
This morning, in the yard, where we all stood shivering or gazing dumbstruck at the beauty of night in the mountains, John gave his advice for the day: "Perfect practice" (ha!), "Persistence" (again), and "Let the koan do it". It seems that it is.
It is the third day and we are each to have a formal interview in the library. We have been told to enter quietly, bow to a particular statue, sit down on the cushion facing John, and then, without him asking, explain how far we have got with our koan.
I have heard so many Zen stories of encounters between teachers and monks. They are always dramatic or insightful, and either teacher or pupil does something unexpected. At the end the monk is either chastised and told to keep practising, or instantly becomes enlightened. Of course, I want to become enlightened - to be hit with a stick and everything falls away and then ...... stop it. I want John to approve of me, to think I'm clever, that I'm getting on really well with my koan. I know all this from many retreats. It's just self-centred stuff that gets in the way. I know. I concentrate hard, waiting for my turn. There's a tap on my shoulder. I get up, bow, and walk mindfully to the library.
I push the curtain aside, find the right statue and bow to it, sit on the empty cushion, pause, and then bang twice on the floor.
"What separates these two bangs?" I ask, as John sits perfectly still. "Time of course. So the koan is wrong. There is time. But we only see the time when we remember one bang from the other. From here, you can begin to doubt all past things, and all future things too, because they are all built on memory. So, all that's left is "now". You can't doubt that - can you? But what is now? I am looking to see. That's how far I have got with my koan." I feel pleased with myself. I said it clearly and well.
John is impassive. "Fine", he says.
"Aren't you going to help me?" I ask..
He smiles and says "Continue."
I walk back to my place in the hall.
If I can't catch a "now" perhaps I can find what's happening now; one might say "the contents of now". I realise that this is the same concept as "the contents of consciousness" so familiar in neuroscience. Yes, this is my consciousness; it's my "now". I shall look into that.
I stare at the carpet crabs, and the unstable streaks of the wooden floor. I open my ears to the cracking of logs in the stove, to the shuffling of other people's uncomfortable knees, and the clearing of their throats. I feel a slight pain in my calves but the more I look the less substantial the feelings seem. The longer I watch, the less like sounds and sights and feelings they are. Yet, these are all the contents of "now". What is this? What is this?
I am surprised to realise that this is the very same question that drives my life; that motivates my research, and has done for decades: "what is consciousness?". This is all I want to do: to sit, quiet and steady, and ask this question. Surely I must be able to see if I look hard enough, mustn't I? I must keep looking, all the time, meditating or not meditating.
This is a magic koan. It gobbles up everything in its path. Even repeating the words "There is no time" requires memory. It is a self-gobbling koan. I am looking to see what is left after everything is gobbled up.
It's work period now, and I am to care for the twin-vault, urine-separating, composting toilets. I love them. I like the principle of dealing with waste without water, and the skilful job of tending them properly. I like working on my own in mindful silence, and getting the bathrooms sparkly clean. But the people drive me mad. They come and want to use the toilets during work time (why aren't they doing their own jobs?), or even to speak to me (don't they know what silence means?). But I persevere. I don't look at people on retreats - not at all. I look at feet. It is a long habit inspired by Master Sheng Yen who told us, many years ago, not to make eye contact or any facial expression, just to bow in acknowledgement and gratitude to others. So, I let the others be ghosts in shoes, and I mop the floor. Is this now?
Whether I try looking for the "now", or ask what is in the "now", I stumble into a kind of blindness or fog. It's as though out of the corner of my eye I'm convinced that something's there, but when I look straight at it I cannot see. Things somehow evaporate into insubstantiality whenever I am looking at them.
In one way, this is encouraging. I remember Sheng Yen once telling us that we had to become blind and deaf, and I had no idea what he meant. Indeed, I hated the idea because I desperately wanted to see more clearly - not less. But if he advocates blindness, then maybe I'm getting somewhere.
But it's horrible. I hate it! I keep staring into the blindness harder and harder. I don't know how to proceed. Keep looking - can't see. Keep looking - it runs away. Keep listening - can't hear. Look. Look. Pay attention!
I remember that the koan is meant to be doing it, not me, and I relax a little. This helps. It even seems that I am the koan as I walk through the refectory and sit at my place at table. I am the koan as food is silently eaten. I am the koan as legs walk back across the yard. In some way that I don't understand this seems to open up a little chink. The wretched carpet glows spaciously.
Something has changed. This is interesting (I allow myself a little academic speculation). Normally it seems as though I am conscious of some sounds or sights, and can switch my attention so that different ones come into consciousness. It's as though there's a me watching the things in a space called "my conscious mind". I know this doesn't correspond to anything inside the brain, and it implies an impossible inner space where a ghost in the machine observes its stream of private experiences. Yet, it has always seemed that way.
Now it doesn't. It seems as though everything I attend to has always been happening. There's no jump when my attention shifts. Everything is just as it is, even as it changes. I reflect that maybe experiences simply don't exist in time. There are brain processes going on but there is no me who experiences them, and no time at which they become conscious. How slow I am, but now I see that directly.
Thank goodness for the afternoon walks. The hill behind the house is steep and I'm breathing hard by the time I reach the edge of the moor with its heath, and sheep, and far views of the Welsh mountains. I plod along narrow sheep tracks, through the rough stalks of heather, walking steadily, staying mindful, asking my question as I go. The heather and rocks pass through me as I walk. I don't know who is walking, and I don't know who's moving, them or me.
Then I'm laughing and laughing and laughing. There are no "contents of consciousness"! Of course. It's so obvious. Experiences are scraps; they're not grounded; they are not in anything; they're not centred anywhere, either in time or space. The world we think we see or hear - is always a memory. And what is memory? Ha ha!
I am grateful to this amazing koan; to this transforming, self-gobbling meme, to these circumstances here in mid-Wales, to my parents, and to this little sturdy, willing body for which I suddenly feel much affection. My downfall is yet to come.
1 Ten Zen Questions is published by Oneworld, Oxford. 181 pp, £12.99 ISBN 978-1-85168-642-1
Find out more at http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Books/Tenzen/index.htm where you can read further extracts or join in the Ten Zen blogs.
