Meditating on paradoxes to evade bonds of conceptual limitation
By Rahayu Ratnaningsih
JAKARTA (JP): An Australian once contacted me and asked for advice on meditation. He made it clear that he wasn't interested in the spiritual aspect of it since he was a "rational" person. He only needed it for the practical purpose of improving his concentration. To my ears, it was like someone asking for iced tea but not wanting it cold.
Some people, especially those brought up in the Western tradition of Greek philosophy which is essentially static and largely based on "nonrelativistic" geometrical considerations, insist that since they are rational and logical people, they can't accept anything they perceive as nonexistent or "scientifically" unverifiable. Anything that is intangible and not palpable or doesn't follow the unchanging rule of deductive reasoning does not exist, hence they are only the figment of imagination, hence they are against common sense, hence they are nonsense. Things like the soul, spirituality, emotion, intuition, sixth sense, psychic experience and premonition are irrational. Rational people do not subscribe to such "mumbo jumbo".
However, who can dispute that life is full of paradoxes? Psychiatrists will tell us that understanding and accepting paradoxes is a prerequisite to mental health. On the most practical level, check these conflicting notions that we are so accustomed to:
* Look before you leap vs He who hesitates is lost
* Two heads are better than one vs If you want something done right, do it yourself
* Nothing ventured, nothing gained vs Better safe than sorry
* Out of sight, out of mind vs Absence makes the heart grow fonder
* You can't judge a book by its cover vs Clothes maketh the man
* Many hands make light work vs Too many cooks spoil the broth
* You can't teach an old dog new tricks vs It's never too late to learn
* Don't sweat the small stuff vs God is in the details
If life can be approached rationally 100 percent of the time, as certain people would like to think, why are there paradoxes? The answer is because, like it or not, there are limits to rational thinking and whenever we bump into the limits of our self-imposed cognitive reality, the result is always a paradox.
So where does "nonsense" fit into the scene? The more clearly we experience something as "nonsense", the more clearly we are experiencing the boundaries of our own self-imposed cognitive structure. "Nonsense" is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality. True artists and true physicists know that nonsense is only that which, viewed from our present point of view, is unintelligible. Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.
A Zen story tells of Nan-In, a Japanese master during the Meiji era who received a university professor. The professor came to inquire about Zen. Nan-In served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full of tea, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself.
"It is overflowing. No more will go in."
"Like this cup," Nan-In said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
Our cup usually is filled to the brim with "the obvious", "common sense" and "the self-evident."
Perhaps you will say, the above notion is simply a lame excuse for those emotional and irrational people out there. Well, actually not. In fact this notion has been firmly adhered to by great physicists, the kind of people who spend all their professional lives thinking along well-established lines of thought. By the time quantum mechanics had reached its current stage, these people had been dumbfounded many times and frustrated by the inconsistencies of their findings with "common sense." Remember the wave-particle duality we discussed in previous articles? Another brilliant example led to Einstein's earthshaking theory of relativity. From the point of view of classical mechanics, the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light makes no sense at all. In fact, it conflicts violently with common sense. Before Einstein, the totalitarian grasp of "common sense" held the constancy of the speed of light to the status of a paradox. However, Einstein with his Zen mind (a Zen mind is a beginner's mind: empty, free from preconceptions, ready to accept, to doubt and open up to all possibilities) boldly stated that if what is, is (the constancy of the velocity of light), then common sense must be wrong.
Einstein's beginner's mind told him that since we cannot argue with what is (the experimental evidence), then our common sense must be wrong. With this revolutionary decision to disregard common sense he boldly stepped into the unknown, in fact, into the unimaginable. He proceeded to explore the uncharted territory where nobody had ever gone before.
How could it be that to every observer the speed of light is the same regardless of their state of motion? Einstein later theorized that this "nonsense" occurred because the rods (the rulers) and clocks measuring it varied from one frame of reference to another, depending upon their motion.
Hence, modern physics has confirmed most dramatically one of the basic ideas of Eastern mysticism; that all the concepts we use to describe nature or reality are limited, that they are not features of reality, as we tend to believe, but creations of the mind; parts of the map, not the territory. Any notion, dictum, hypothesis or theory to describe reality really doesn't talk about reality at all. It only talks around it. Whenever we expand the realm of our experience, the limitations of our rational mind become apparent and we have to modify, or even abandon, some of our concepts. Tao Teh Ching beautifully summarizes it: The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way. The name that can be named is not the constant name.
So what has meditation got to do with it? Meditation is when we stop thinking and reasoning to start feeling and observing things as they really are. Without doubt there is a time and place for rational thought, however, on a subtler level of existence rational thought, with its preconceived notions of right or wrong, logical or illogical, could only stifle correct and thorough understanding of universal phenomena. There is no better school to learn the paradoxes of life other than Zen. One of the most famous Zen jokes is the light bulb joke: How many Zen Buddhists does it take to change a light bulb? Two, one to change it and one not to change it. In fact, Zen Buddhists have a developed a technique called the koan which, along with meditation, produces changes in our perceptions and understanding. A koan is a puzzle which cannot be answered in ordinary ways because it is paradoxical. One typical example is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Zen students are told to think unceasingly about a particular koan until they know the answer. There is no single correct answer to a koan. It depends upon the psychological state of the student.
When we meditate on koans, we shall see that distinctions we make upon everything in life, such as good-bad, beautiful-ugly and birth-death are simply false. They are mental structures which we have created. These self-made and self-maintained illusions are the sole cause of paradoxes. To escape the confines of symbols and bonds of conceptual limitation is to hear the sound of one hand clapping.
-- The writer is the director of the Satori Foundation, a center for study and development of human excellence through mind programming and meditation techniques.