August 17, 2023 marked two years since the last post on Hoalablog. The blog, I thought, had come to an end with the Ramblings I post. Ramblings II is somewhat lightweight but perhaps adds some insight. Although I have posted nothing since August 17, 2021, my spiritual journey continues, as it will, until time does in awareness. The blog has been kept alive and I have intentions of editing it, perhaps changing the order of posts trying for more coherence, and perhaps writing more, of which this might be a first installment. As is obvious to anyone who pokes around in this blog, the main impetus for writing has been my conviction that western thought badly needs a deep, absolute, underlying functional spirituality, atheistic and lacking any doctrines whatsoever. In many of the previous posts I have looked into Zen Buddhism as such and have pointed out that it could fulfill this role, silently informing all of Western thought and culture. Recently I have realized that I could do better in coming at what I’m proposing by adopting, as much as is possible, a “pure” Western point of view, ignoring as much as possible the Eastern ideas and traditions which lay behind Zen.  Of course, there is a question of what I really mean about a Western or an Eastern or a what-have-you point of view in these times where there is basically one vast world culture. This culture, does however, have different flavors, one of which may be labeled Western as the predominating and historic culture of Europe and the American continents.

This mainstream Western thought and culture is vast and intricate. It stretches from cosmology and mathematics, physics, chemistry and the practical sciences of engineering, medicine, psychology, sociology, philosophy and economics; to arts such as architecture, writing, painting, sculpture, music, and to various sports. However, beyond the local epiphanies that these might engender there is a spiritual vacuum. It seems that as we have discarded God and religion, we have also discredited the very idea of a deep spiritual underpinning. We have created an empty cathedral. However, when I posed the idea of a Zen flavoring for Western thought to my good friend Roger Shepard, he was appalled that I would entertain any such idea. Roger is with us no more but he is still a rather well-known experimental psychologist, formerly a professor at Stanford University. He was also a talented artist and musical composer. In his last years he became immersed in the puzzles of human consciousness and he pursued a mathematical understanding of quantum mechanics and its mysteries in order to understand if it might possibly throw some light on consciousness. (He was somewhat skeptical that I had made any progress whatever in Quantum Measurement theory). As a scientist Roger was hard-core and the very idea of any spirituality seemed to him a hark back to religious ideas inevitably akin to a mindless distraction. Such would, in his mind, be a regression having no place whatever in science, philosophy or serious Western thought. I bring up Roger and his attitude towards spirituality because I believe that this attitude is widely shared among those who I think of as an audience for this blog.

I share Roger’s attitude towards flaky ideas in science or elsewhere, but believe that meaningful spirituality can be a part of human reality. As a beginning to what I have to say I’d like to move beyond the dichotomy of God vs. Atheism with its excluded middle. This dichotomy inhabits a limited framework which deserves total shattering. Beyond the shattered shards is the great emptiness and I want to see all of us living beyond even the great emptiness in a realm suffused with meaning. This sense of meaning lacks any verbal or material expression. For such we turn to the cathedral itself hoping to find it filled as expressions of Western thought and culture connect to that great wordless glory beyond. Perhaps “glory” is not a good word to use. I’m reminded of the time while living in Alabama that our group of friends came into possession of a Christian fundamentalist document about religious experiences. The saying that stuck in my mind was, “I’m under the spout where the glory comes out.” We loved the Kitschy aspects of this saying; however, if one ignores the Kitsch, one notes that the “spout” can hardly be taken for the Deity and the saying must be regarded as meaningless metaphor: The “glory” flows out of nowhere. Nonetheless, on further consideration I think the word is probably tainted so I will avoid it as much as I’m able in referring to an ultimate experience.

 Roger Shepard’s convictions about spirituality remind me that there is an ongoing conflict between science and common culture. Many scientists fear that the entire basis of rationality and empirical thought will give way to a superstitious and feckless society which wanders into chaos and war. On the other side, many thoughtful people think that science, for all its progress and practicality, lacks a soul; that it fails to bring us comfort in the face of a mortality subject to the capricious flows of chance, ignorance and evil in our world. In a way I am wading into the center of this conflict and I am exposed to attack from both sides.  However, if I go, for a moment, into attack mode myself, I can point out that, on the one hand, there exists a superstition-free spirituality which poses no threat to rationality or science; and, on the other, science is deep and meaningful, that it demands creativity, which is always a struggle and that scientists, like artists, do better if they can slip into the “zone”, whether realized or not. Science is indeed, at least incipiently, spiritual, though many scientists would deny it.

It’s clear to me that our culture has the grounds for germinating a spirituality not simply in science (which indeed may be a hard nut to crack) but in our society at large and in many of the various strands of Western culture which I detailed above. The key, as I see it, is the idea and experience of “being in the zone”, a Western trope for various ineffable Zen like experiences. So far, the expression is mostly used in athletic endeavors such as football and surfing. In football it manifests in the competition between ends on offense and the secondary on defense. The seemingly impossible feats which occur when a quarterback throws a pass make the game worth watching in spite of incessant interruptions of commercials, timeouts, penalties, two-minute warnings and other breaks in the game, to say nothing about twinges of conscience which occur from knowing of its inevitable concussions and other life-shortening injuries it engenders.

The feats which occur in surfing are equally incredible. On Oahu’s North Shore a famous winter break is the Pipeline, originally called Bonsai Beach after the Japanese suicide charges of World War II. When I was growing up, I’d heard of it, but it had never been surfed. The reason it seemed impossible and dangerous was its perfect tube breaking with lethal force into three feet of water over a jumbled coral reef. First surfed in 1961, it was indeed the scene of many serious injuries and fatalities. Gerry Lopez, a young surfer born in 1948 in Honolulu, became the first master rider of the Pipeline, riding its tube with a relaxed nonchalance. He was known as Mr. Pipeline. In his book, Surf Is Where You Find It, he mentions that when surfing pipeline, it is a good idea to be in the zone before dropping in. Curiously enough, Gerry now lives in the town where I live and recently gave a talk promoting a new edition of his book. I, along with my wife and friends, were fortunate enough to attend. Gerry spoke about the importance of the Hawaiian aloha spirit and mentioned also that he had spent years in Yoga practice and meditation. Other surfers seldom speak of being in the zone, but are masters at riding waves three or four times as large as those at Pipeline. These waves don’t break on shallow coral reefs so are possibly not as dangerous as pipeline, but their sheer power, capable of snapping a femur like a matchstick, makes surfing them unthinkable for anyone who has experienced the power of smaller waves.

Besides sports I wonder whether or not the experience of being in the zone has spread to other activities which offer instances of seemingly superhuman performances. What comes to mind are the number of outstanding piano players, several of whom have grown up in China, Japan and Korea where one might expect a lurking tradition of transcendental Zen mastery. Among many whose incredible performances one finds on YouTube, I will mention two: Yuja Wang and Yunchan Lim. Yuja Wang (see Wikipedia), was born in Beijing in 1987. She studied piano in China starting at age 6. She came to the US at age 15 and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, graduating in 2008. Yuchan Lim was born and studied in South Korea, which has become a hotbed of Western classical music. In 2022, at age 18, he won the Van Cliburn Piano Competition, and since then has embarked on a sensational career. Both of these pianists have incredible technical abilities, but, in addition, have the ability to enter into the soul of whatever they play. Yunchan’s sensational playing of Liszt etudes and Rachmaninov’s 3^rd piano concerto was doubtless instrumental in his winning the Cliburn. However, it was his performance of Mozart’s piano concerto 22 which carried me away. Yuja Wang in concert flaunts her femininity as if to say, “Look here! It’s a beautiful woman who is giving this transcendental performance.”

I wonder if, in fact, “being in the zone” is more common in the West than one would suspect and that it indeed constitutes a slow tide filling the cathedral. I like the “zone” expression because it does not have a sharp meaning, but is, instead rather muddy to the point of meaninglessness. I’ll finish this post by pointing out the dangers of language in the context of (I almost said “spiritual” growth). In reading over this post, I notice that the words “spiritual” and “spirituality” frequently occur. In fact, these like “glory” are tainted words. I think that Roger Shepard has a point: the word “spiritual” inevitably suggests mystical ideas which can lead to concrete religious ideas which, in turn, inevitably lead to grasping and fanaticism.  What all of this means is that it is impossible to talk in conventional language about what I am proposing without using “tainted” words. I hope that people reading or rereading this post will keep in mind that it is meaningless unless they find their “zone”.

Add on: April 29, 2024

It is now, as I begin to write, 11:30 A.M. on an April Wednesday in the year 2024. At the moment I have nothing more to say about Zen, Western or otherwise, but I still want to continue writing in Hoalablog so I need a new, overarching, unifying theme, worthy of exploration, which theme might encompass anything I want to say, whether insightful or mundane. Actually, within the last month or two I’ve come up with such a theme and on our recent trip across the country to view the 2024 eclipse from a friend’s backyard in St. Albans, Vermont, I had plenty of time to ruminate on its suitability and to realize that it is seemingly what’s needed. This theme, phrased as a question, is:

What is the significance, if any, of being briefly alive and aware in the early twenty-first century?

Our present knowledge or speculation about the stretch of time our moment occupies is that it begins some 13.8 billion years ago with the creation of a ticking clock, so to speak; and continues indefinitely into an infinite future. Of course, the clock is simply a part of an entire universe in which happenings play out; one of which is the birth and growing up of each of us. Nevertheless I like the emphasis on the question being that of time. So, onto the next theme!