Lesson from a 4 Months with Zen monks: Cultivating Awareness

A I sit here trying to write about what I’ve learned after four months with Zen monks, I almost have to throw away the question.

A metaphor: If I heard you were training for a marathon running 5 miles per day and I asked you what you learned, what would you say?

It’s not so much learning as it is training or transformation. You are practicing in a way that is transforming your body and nervous system. I’m not sure how much I “learned” from sitting and staring at a wall for ~500 hours.

But like the body is transformed through training, the mind is transformed through meditation.

My awareness was heightened. I don’t mean for that to sound mystical or something. But my perception of color was more vivid - sort of like increasing my visual experience to “extra HD”. I got pulled deeper into sounds. And, most noticeable, my ability to taste and savor food went through the roof.

I admit I normally eat dog style – basically a couple chomps then inhale as fast as I can. I remember many evenings sitting in the dining hall enjoying my food for 30 or 40 minutes - tasting every single bite.

I’ve come to appreciate a different view of experience. We tend to think of happiness or pleasure in terms of the stimulus - e.g. the object of the experience. So if I want to get more enjoyment from a meal I need tastier food. If I want to have more fun we need to do something more exciting. But there’s really another half to the equation.

Experience = Stimulus + Sensitivity

It’s not just about what you experience - but how you experience it. How sensitive are you to the stimulus? Again using the food example, imagine if you just fasted for 24 hours or could take a pill that increased the activity levels of your tastebuds. You would get a heightened experience without actually changing what you experienced - just how you experienced.

I’ve come to see that when I slow down my pace of living. And spend a lot of time steadying the mind and training awareness through meditation - my experience of life is much richer. This is not about the what but the how. I can be totally immersed and enthralled with my bowl of rice and veggies or watching the treetops sway in the breeze.

Zen practice and Mindfulness practice are really, in my opinion, about cultivating this awareness.

In fact, I’ve read that the symbol for Zen can be read as “to become intimate with”. Jon Kabat-Zinn explains that the character for mindfulness is a combination of the symbols for “presence” and “heart”. Through the formal practice of cultivating awareness we become more intimate with our experience. We show up with heartfulness and presence.

Suzuki Roshi taught that for the moon there is the cloud and for the flower there is the wind. When you see the moon behind a cloud you see its full roundess. When you see a flower swaying in the breeze you see its full beauty.

So taking the time to sit and do nothing (eg meditation) is like the cloud or the breeze. It’s not so much about what happens on the cushion in the meditation hall - but how it deepens our lived experience.

Awareness can be cultivated. Can in doing so we bring out the fullest experience of life.