A Private Study

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.—Blaise Pascal

This is a curious statement. If true, one would think that all that was required of a person who was seeking happiness was to retire to his or her study and close the door.

But Pascal knew better:

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.

He also knew that adolescent youth, in particular, have little interest in contemplation:

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?

But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

Pascal's insight is a window into our insane and absurd society. The frenetic hustling, the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, the mass spectacle, and the limitless diversions and distractions suggest that all men and women are desperately seeking to escape the existential vacuum within by filling their lives with noise and empty amusements.

Perhaps it is true as Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer that "we can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and that we run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves."

Of course, if we run, our prison runs with us.

If I had any recommendation for someone tired of the "endless treadmill," I would recommend that he follow Henry David Thoreau's advice and "Explore thyself."

So enter your study and close the door and invite the Truth back into your life.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.—Matthew 6:6

Great Expectations

Hope is the recognition of the truth that everything changes. Expectation is the delusion that we know what form that change will take.

True hope can give us strength to endure difficult circumstances. A false expectation can only lead to disillusionment and despair.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.--Eric Hoffer

The Purpose of Zen Practice

With the advent of electronic books, searching for a particular word or phrase has never been easier. Perhaps more importantly, making a connection between words and phrases within a book may lead to new insights.

In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki frequently refers to the true purpose of Zen practice. Although the underlying theme is the same, the many contexts in which the word appears allows us to view the approach to the awareness of this purpose from different angles.

And just as light that passes through a prism is refracted into a rainbow of colors, so too can the meaning of one word or phrase appear differently to the mind.

Therefore, I am undertaking a new project for my readers. I will present each instance of the word "purpose" in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind with a commentary intended to further elucidate what, after all, is the very foundation of the spiritual quest: the discovery of the ultimate meaning of our lives.

This purpose cannot be found in philosophy and only you can make the discovery. No one can tell you the true meaning of your life. In his talks, Suzuki encourages us to seek the answer in our daily lives through Zen practice.

Let us begin the journey, then, and see if we can gain new insight into the question of purpose.

The Plug-in Drug

All I know is that there is sufficiently general agreement, among men whose judgment I respect, that commercial television is degraded, meretricious and absurd. Certainly it would seem that TV could become a kind of unnatural surrogate for contemplation: a completely inert subjection to vulgar images, a descent to a sub-natural passivity rather than an ascent to a supremely active passivity in understanding and love. It would seem that television should be used with extreme care and discrimination by anyone who might hope to take the interior life seriously.—Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

I suspect that most of us do not realize how television has negatively impacted our lives. You are probably unaware of the connection between your behavior and the heavy conditioning that you endured as a child—a conditioning that had an ulterior motive which had nothing to do with ensuring your ultimate happiness as a human being.

This much I can tell you: You cannot be sincere about meditation if you spend most of your free time watching television.

This does not necessarily mean that you should never watch television. I understand that the programming can be entertaining or even, at times, educational. But just as you would never eat only cake and cookies if your intent was to maintain your physical health, you should seriously consider if a diet of constant television watching is conducive to moral and spiritual rejuvenation.

For those interested in knowing more about television's effect on the brain and neurological system, I recommend a short article by Wes Moore entitled Television: Opiate of the Masses.