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Zen and the Art of Insight

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Length:: 2:56 Mins

Walter Lippmann famously said, "First we look, then we name, and only then do we see." This is an accurate description of the ordinary condition of human perception: what we see is limited by the names we have for things, by the categories of language. But language, even the language of science, is to reality as a map is to geography, and as useful as maps are, they don't come close to exhausting the infinite detail of reality.

Cleary's Zen and the Art of Insight is about learning to appreciate the reality beyond words, and in doing so, to put the world as we conceptualize it into perspective. We are so habitually immersed in language that we don't see how it restricts our thinking and perception, and this book is about getting outside language in order to see those restrictions. As long as we are unaware that there is a greater world beyond the walls of our prison, we are unaware that we are, in fact, imprisoned.

Once we see beyond the walls, we are free to come and go as we please--the prison is only a prison because of ignorance. With insight, conceptual thinking becomes a useful tool instead of a rigid enclosure.

Cleary translates classical teachings on the art of insight and then comments on his translations, describing various exercises "intended to effect a shift of attention from the conceptual to the intuitive mode."(p. xi-xii) These exercises include contemplation of impermanence, interdependence, emptiness, nonoccurrence, ungraspability, and the three natures of things; which lead to nonattachment, noninvolvement, and nongrasping. (This listing may not be exhaustive.) Further insights result:

"The ordinary perceptions and notions of things on which we act are conditioned by thought, imagination, mental pictures, and mental talk. All of these inner activities that influence our perception and behavior are also conditioned by other factors, both inherited and acquired. Therefore a temporary cessation of the stream of conditioned thought, imagination, envisioning, and description is employed to give the mind room to perceive things more directly. Terms such as gone and vanished refer to this practice of halting or stopping the flow of habit; they do not mean to suggest that insightful people can no longer think, imagine, envision, or speak."(p.22)

In "Afterword; Warnings on the Label," Cleary advises that these teachings are not for everyone:

"...the list of contraindications--people with mentalities for which the teachings are not recommended--also provides a framework for preliminary self-examination, through which one may approach insight by way of psychological housecleaning."(p. 150)

Most of the Afterword is included in "Look Inside!" so you can check to see if your particular mentality is among those for whom this book is not recommended.

(The video is illustrative of ideas found in the book, rather than a direct commentary.)