The calming and de-stressing benefits of practicing Zen have long been known, but now scientists are also considering its huge potential to influence our ability to understand and experience consciousness. However, until now few scientists would publicly admit this because of the taboo surrounding the supposed conflict between scientific and 'spiritual' practices, a taboo that was responsible for the medical profession's previous dismissal of successful alternative therapies such as acupuncture. Susan Blackmore is about to change all that: she’s a world expert in brain science who has also been practising Zen for over twenty-five years. In Ten Zen Questions, she doesn’t push any religious or spiritual agenda but simply presents the methods used in Zen, such as meditation, as an aid to help us all think about things in a deeper and clearer way. Each chapter takes as its starting point one of Zen’s - and science's - most intriguing questions such as, "Am I conscious now?" and "How does thought arise?" Dr Susan Blackmore is a writer and broadcaster. She lives in Bristol, UK.
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"I do recommend this book both to Susan Blackmore's many admirers and her detractors." --Journal of Consciousness Studies
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"It should be compulsory reaeding for anyone in consciousness studies and certainly on every psychology course."
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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful
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Susan Blackmore's Ten Zen Questions is extraordinary. I say this even though she is not a Buddhist, hasn't joined any Buddhist orders, hasn't adopted any religious beliefs, nor taken any formal vows. Zen meditation appealed to her, beginning in the 1970's, because "Zen does not demand that you believe anything or have blind faith". She eventually realized that Zen meditation was compatible with her being a psychologist, and would be an aid to her primary study, consciousness, because, "like science, Zen demands that you ask questions, and overthrow any ideas that don't fit with what you find out". (pg3)
Blackmore gives a direct personal account of her exploration of Ten "Zen" Questions; Am I conscious now?, What was I conscious of a moment ago?, Who is asking the question?, Where is this?, How does thought arise?, There is no time. What is memory?, When are you?, Are you here now?, What am I doing?, and, What happens next? Now, quite frankly, I don't know if her word by word report would be tedious to someone who hasn't tried to meditate, or who hasn't formerly asked these types of questions, but I was thoroughly fascinated. (And, this is not the whole of the book. Her transition from her story to exact descriptions, is...effortless).
Susan has a perfect blend between an account of "Zen", and what consciousness is from a psychological perspective. No one should be scared away by Zen in the title. She shares times alone meditating in her own garden as well as week long retreats with her Zen teacher and other students over many years. We see her progress, from her own understanding as well as acknowledgment, in certain respects, from her teacher. One of the most courageous parts of the book is her enclosure, at the end, of a letter written by her Zen teacher of over 20 years after his having read her manuscript, twice. Courageous and vulnerable, a true student.
Susan's book compelled me to write, this, my first review. I've read dozens of books on Zen over the last 35 years (as well as other branches of Buddhism). Susan gives an inner glimpse of a subject which sometimes seems mystifyingly obscure. If you wish to know yourself better, what self is, highly recommended (as well as her other books).
Her conclusions, if that's the right word (not in the sense of being at journey's end, I hope), are in alignment with both Zen and neuroscience. .......And I can forgive her enthusiasm for the philosopher Daniel Dennett :-).
Blackmore gives a direct personal account of her exploration of Ten "Zen" Questions; Am I conscious now?, What was I conscious of a moment ago?, Who is asking the question?, Where is this?, How does thought arise?, There is no time. What is memory?, When are you?, Are you here now?, What am I doing?, and, What happens next? Now, quite frankly, I don't know if her word by word report would be tedious to someone who hasn't tried to meditate, or who hasn't formerly asked these types of questions, but I was thoroughly fascinated. (And, this is not the whole of the book. Her transition from her story to exact descriptions, is...effortless).
Susan has a perfect blend between an account of "Zen", and what consciousness is from a psychological perspective. No one should be scared away by Zen in the title. She shares times alone meditating in her own garden as well as week long retreats with her Zen teacher and other students over many years. We see her progress, from her own understanding as well as acknowledgment, in certain respects, from her teacher. One of the most courageous parts of the book is her enclosure, at the end, of a letter written by her Zen teacher of over 20 years after his having read her manuscript, twice. Courageous and vulnerable, a true student.
Susan's book compelled me to write, this, my first review. I've read dozens of books on Zen over the last 35 years (as well as other branches of Buddhism). Susan gives an inner glimpse of a subject which sometimes seems mystifyingly obscure. If you wish to know yourself better, what self is, highly recommended (as well as her other books).
Her conclusions, if that's the right word (not in the sense of being at journey's end, I hope), are in alignment with both Zen and neuroscience. .......And I can forgive her enthusiasm for the philosopher Daniel Dennett :-).
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
This book is about the problem of consciousness and how the practice of Zen Buddhism as experienced by Dr. Blackmore relates to that problem. She is a UK-based psychologist and author of, most notably, The Meme Machine (1999) in which she lends considerable support to Richard Dawkins' notion of the meme as a Darwinian mechanism of culture.
This is a more personal book. It's a bit self-indulgent as Blackmore takes us to her garden and her meditation shed and back through her Zen retreat experiences in a kind of experiential way without really coming to any more than a series of purely personal insights. The book also suffers from a failure to clearly define "consciousness." Perhaps Blackmore has defined consciousness so many times before and has grown weary of doing so again, or perhaps she thinks we all know what consciousness means more or less. Or, more likely, she believes that the meaning of consciousness will emerge through a reading of this book, the idea being that by asking these ten Zen questions one will be lead to an understanding of consciousness--or at least to an understanding of why consciousness is such a conundrum.
Blackmore graciously lets her Zen master, John Crook, have the last word in the form of a letter to her after he read a draft copy of her book. His response comes under the heading of what I like to call "sometimes it is best to just quote them."
Some observations:
The Zen questions themselves, e.g., "Am I conscious now?"; "Who is asking the question?"; "How does thought arise?" etc., become Zen koans as Blackmore grapples with them. At one point when considering questions about the mind "abiding in tranquility" on the one hand and "moving in thought" on the other, Professor Blackmore observes, "The only point of these questions is to lure you into tranquility. The answers don't matter." (p. 86)
I believe this is correct and at any rate it is the same understanding that I came to many years ago in regard to Zen koans. The fact that Blackmore understands this demonstrates to me at least that she really does have some Zen.
As for whether John Crook has as much Zen is to my mind more in doubt. He writes that he found Blackmore's section on free-will "rather tedious." I found it exactly the opposite, instead very much to the point. What I found tedious were what seemed to be the atmosphere and regimen at Crook's Zen retreats. His apparent dismissal of Blackmore's understanding of consciousness with "What about enlightenment? Keep going!" (p. 173) I found egotistical. Furthermore, Crook's statement that "all this intellection is Not It" (p. 172) seemed to be another easy dismissal of Blackmore's work. The fact that he found all the ink she gave to her experiences at his various retreats "heart-warming, precise and truthful" (p. 167) probably gives us an insight into his primary concern.
I will give Crook credit for writing "I suspect the word ["consciousness"] needs deconstructing philosophically" because this really points to the problem with most books on consciousness, namely that the word is not adequately defined.
As the term is generally used, consciousness has three aspects:
One: awareness of the world (including awareness of our self and our processes, that is, self-awareness).
Two: self-identity. Notice that awareness of self is different from this identification with self.
Three: experience or sensation, the feelings we get when we experience the world. This is sometimes called "phenomenal consciousness." An example would be the subjective experience of the color red, or the taste of a strawberry.
The first aspect of consciousness, awareness, including self-awareness, is something that all (or nearly all) living things have. The range of awareness of course is large. A bacterium has awareness of the texture or feel of certain surfaces, an awareness of the molecules of certain substances in the air and perhaps heat as opposed to cold, and so on. It has a sense of self and not self to some primitive extent--I presume since it doesn't eat itself. Actually a bacterium is powerfully aware compared to a rock.
A primate has an awareness of so much that I won't attempt to reiterate.
The second aspect of consciousness, self-identity, is a psychological trick of the evolutionary process that works toward self-preservation.
The third aspect of consciousness, feelings or sensation, is what is most mysterious (and trivial, by the way, compared to the other two) and is what has had philosophers in a tizzy since time immemorial. Quite simply there is no way that such subjective experiences can ever become objective. The experience of the red that I see may or may not be the same as the experience you have; and there is no way that we can say for sure whether our experiences are the same or different. (from my book, The World Is Not as We Think It Is (2011) p. 82)
Failure to identify which aspect of consciousness one is considering at any given time leads to confusion. Blackmore is able at times to dispel this confusion by being specific about which aspect of consciousness she is talking about. For example on page 164 she refers separately to "awareness" and "self-awareness." Would that she were more circumspect throughout!
The problem of Cartesian dualism resulting in the ghost of a homunculus inside our heads doesn't arise if we ask, as Blackmore does, "Am I conscious now?" meaning "Am I aware of what is going on around me?" which is what she often seems to mean. Nor does it arise if she is asking, "Am I aware of what I am feeling?" However it arises massively when she asks who it is that is asking these questions!
Despite these misgivings there is a lot to admire in this book: Blackmore's grit and determination, her fairness, her often vivid prose, and her considerable knowledge of the subject. I also like the book because I tend to agree with her conclusions, most notably that free will is an illusion and that there is no continually existing self. I found her idea that "There is no now," (page 162) compelling but wonder if one could say that there is only the eternal now and nothing else and be saying much the same thing.
--Dennis Littrell, author of "Yoga: Sacred and Profane (Beyond Hatha Yoga)"
This is a more personal book. It's a bit self-indulgent as Blackmore takes us to her garden and her meditation shed and back through her Zen retreat experiences in a kind of experiential way without really coming to any more than a series of purely personal insights. The book also suffers from a failure to clearly define "consciousness." Perhaps Blackmore has defined consciousness so many times before and has grown weary of doing so again, or perhaps she thinks we all know what consciousness means more or less. Or, more likely, she believes that the meaning of consciousness will emerge through a reading of this book, the idea being that by asking these ten Zen questions one will be lead to an understanding of consciousness--or at least to an understanding of why consciousness is such a conundrum.
Blackmore graciously lets her Zen master, John Crook, have the last word in the form of a letter to her after he read a draft copy of her book. His response comes under the heading of what I like to call "sometimes it is best to just quote them."
Some observations:
The Zen questions themselves, e.g., "Am I conscious now?"; "Who is asking the question?"; "How does thought arise?" etc., become Zen koans as Blackmore grapples with them. At one point when considering questions about the mind "abiding in tranquility" on the one hand and "moving in thought" on the other, Professor Blackmore observes, "The only point of these questions is to lure you into tranquility. The answers don't matter." (p. 86)
I believe this is correct and at any rate it is the same understanding that I came to many years ago in regard to Zen koans. The fact that Blackmore understands this demonstrates to me at least that she really does have some Zen.
As for whether John Crook has as much Zen is to my mind more in doubt. He writes that he found Blackmore's section on free-will "rather tedious." I found it exactly the opposite, instead very much to the point. What I found tedious were what seemed to be the atmosphere and regimen at Crook's Zen retreats. His apparent dismissal of Blackmore's understanding of consciousness with "What about enlightenment? Keep going!" (p. 173) I found egotistical. Furthermore, Crook's statement that "all this intellection is Not It" (p. 172) seemed to be another easy dismissal of Blackmore's work. The fact that he found all the ink she gave to her experiences at his various retreats "heart-warming, precise and truthful" (p. 167) probably gives us an insight into his primary concern.
I will give Crook credit for writing "I suspect the word ["consciousness"] needs deconstructing philosophically" because this really points to the problem with most books on consciousness, namely that the word is not adequately defined.
As the term is generally used, consciousness has three aspects:
One: awareness of the world (including awareness of our self and our processes, that is, self-awareness).
Two: self-identity. Notice that awareness of self is different from this identification with self.
Three: experience or sensation, the feelings we get when we experience the world. This is sometimes called "phenomenal consciousness." An example would be the subjective experience of the color red, or the taste of a strawberry.
The first aspect of consciousness, awareness, including self-awareness, is something that all (or nearly all) living things have. The range of awareness of course is large. A bacterium has awareness of the texture or feel of certain surfaces, an awareness of the molecules of certain substances in the air and perhaps heat as opposed to cold, and so on. It has a sense of self and not self to some primitive extent--I presume since it doesn't eat itself. Actually a bacterium is powerfully aware compared to a rock.
A primate has an awareness of so much that I won't attempt to reiterate.
The second aspect of consciousness, self-identity, is a psychological trick of the evolutionary process that works toward self-preservation.
The third aspect of consciousness, feelings or sensation, is what is most mysterious (and trivial, by the way, compared to the other two) and is what has had philosophers in a tizzy since time immemorial. Quite simply there is no way that such subjective experiences can ever become objective. The experience of the red that I see may or may not be the same as the experience you have; and there is no way that we can say for sure whether our experiences are the same or different. (from my book, The World Is Not as We Think It Is (2011) p. 82)
Failure to identify which aspect of consciousness one is considering at any given time leads to confusion. Blackmore is able at times to dispel this confusion by being specific about which aspect of consciousness she is talking about. For example on page 164 she refers separately to "awareness" and "self-awareness." Would that she were more circumspect throughout!
The problem of Cartesian dualism resulting in the ghost of a homunculus inside our heads doesn't arise if we ask, as Blackmore does, "Am I conscious now?" meaning "Am I aware of what is going on around me?" which is what she often seems to mean. Nor does it arise if she is asking, "Am I aware of what I am feeling?" However it arises massively when she asks who it is that is asking these questions!
Despite these misgivings there is a lot to admire in this book: Blackmore's grit and determination, her fairness, her often vivid prose, and her considerable knowledge of the subject. I also like the book because I tend to agree with her conclusions, most notably that free will is an illusion and that there is no continually existing self. I found her idea that "There is no now," (page 162) compelling but wonder if one could say that there is only the eternal now and nothing else and be saying much the same thing.
--Dennis Littrell, author of "Yoga: Sacred and Profane (Beyond Hatha Yoga)"
7 of 47 people found the following review helpful
By Trong Nguyen
Zen has little connection to the author's speculative thoughts. One day, when the discursive fluctuations will cease...
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