10] Zen and the Transformation of Emotional and Physical Stress into Well-Being
Sarita Tamayo-Moraga and Darlene Cohen Roshi
A fierce and terrifying band of samurai was riding through the countryside, bringing fear and harm wherever they went. As they were approaching one particular town, all the monks in the town’s monastery fled, except for the abbot. When the band of warriors entered the monastery, they found the abbot sitting at the front of the shrine room in perfect posture. The fierce leader took out his sword and said, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know that I’m the sort of person who could run you through with my sword without batting an eye?” The Zen master responded, “And I, sir, am the sort of man who could be run through by a sword without batting an eye.”1
In Zen lore, there are many stories about Zen masters who face disaster and hardship without blinking an eye. Sylvia Boorstein, cofounding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California, recounts this classic Zen story, “Without Fear” in a talk on fearlessness. Zen masters such as the one in the story have reached an equilibrium that could be described as happiness that is not dependent on external circumstances. This ease is based on fearlessness and a total acceptance of the present moment in which the practitioner is released from attach- ment to wanting reality to be different from how it is. This deep kind of release means one is less and less controlled by external circumstances. What is unique to Zen is the fact that for Zen, this kind of equilibrium
is achieved not by rejecting the world, but instead by completely accept- ing the world. This complete acceptance of the world is intimately related to how one perceives the world.
This stance is not negative or passive. Instead, it is dynamic and results in emotional well-being that translates into increased physical well-being although it is absolutely not a wonder drug. Zen masters and students get cancer, go through divorces, lose children, etc. They are still human, but the difference is that they accept that reality rather than reject it. Therefore, the way Zen practice transforms suffering and results in well-being is different from what one might accept. It is not a magic wand for getting what you want. Instead, Zen practice slowly wears down the ego and cultivates stability, wisdom, and com- passion. The Zen practitioner is less and less controlled by external circumstances.
The medical world has turned its attention to many forms of medita- tion because of their seeming power to improve mental and physical health. Mindfulness in particular has received increased attention because of its capacity to aid those with mental and physical ailments and enrich lives.2 Scientific research is now documenting the physiologi- cal changes that result from meditation in general and Zen in particular.3 Neurobiology in particular is the area in which increasing research is being done on how meditation changes the brain. In effect, preliminary research suggests that Zen seems to rewire the brain and the nervous system.4 Where science, psychology, and Zen seem to be meeting is the changing how one perceives transforms the mind and body. For Zen and psychology what transforms is suffering and for science what transforms is the brain and nervous system.
THE ALLURE OF ZEN “SERENITY”
Zen is now used to sell things. One can buy a “Zen” phone, have a “Zen” spa day, or even buy “Zen” perfume. President Obama is some- times described as “very Zen” in articles about his calm, unruffled demeanor in the midst of conflict.5 The power of Zen’s promise of tranquility, coolness, and serenity seems to have captured the minds of marketers, advertisers, and journalists. What marketers have tapped into is actually an ancient concept—the Brahma Vihara of upeksha or “boundless equanimity.”6 The Brahma Viharas are the different faces of love in Buddhism. The literal translation of Brahma Vihara is bound- less abode. The other three are maitri or “boundless kindliness,” karuna
or “boundless compassion,” and mudita or “sympathetic joy,” which means happiness for others in their happiness.7 Zen Master Robert Aitken describes the Brahma Vihara of boundless equanimity as a “broad, serene acceptance of self and others” that accepts even their and our own faults.8 This “broad, serene acceptance” is what people want but cannot figure out how to get. Furthermore, it is at the heart of how and why Zen practice in its ancient and modern manifestations has the potential to transform the suffering of emotional and physical stress into peace, joy, and liberation. The problem is that this equanim- ity does not look the way people think it should because it is about let- ting go of how you want things to be in order to make room for what is actually in front of you, your own direct experience of the present moment.
The Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh describes equanim- ity in the following way in his book, Teachings on Love: “The fourth element of true love is upeksha, which means equanimity, nonattach- ment, nondiscrimination, even-mindedness, or letting go.”9 Thich Nhat Hanh’s interpretation of this fourth Brahma Vihara expands on Aitken Roshi’s understanding because Hanh emphasizes letting go as part of the equanimity. This letting go is incredibly difficult and is why zazen, or Zen sitting meditation, is at the heart of Zen practice and the foundation of all the transformation attributed to Zen. Why is that? Because when you sit zazen, you notice, accept, and let go of everything that arises, no matter what. Shining the light of awareness on more and more of one’s life gently transforms you and your life. Off the cushion, the practitioner manifests this process as mindfulness and letting go. Such an approach leads to a life of radical acceptance and oneness with life circumstances. She or he learns how to include more and more of her or his experience. Soto Zen also emphasizes ways in which to get knocked out of concepts into direct experience. Dualistic thinking traps us into rigidity and keeps us from seeing real- ity as it is. Thus, this kind of practice emphasizes a nondual way of living that is fluid in which concepts are tools rather than prison bars. This fluidity increases the ability to respond instead of react.
The entire point of Zen practice in particular and Buddhist practice
in general is to transform suffering into peace, joy, and liberation. Thus, each section on Zen practice and the Buddhist concepts that are at the basis of this practice will aim to explain how it is supposed to transform suffering by changing how one perceives and relates to the world, others, and oneself, how this process of transformation is linked to alleviating stress, and finally, how this transformation
actually changes the body itself, in particular the nervous system and the brain. Finally, since both authors are priests in the Soto Zen tradi- tion, and Darlene Cohen is in addition a Roshi or Master in the Soto Zen tradition, the authors will primarily concentrate on Soto Zen when discussing the practice of Zen, rather than its venerable sister tradition, Rinzai Zen.10
TRANSFORMING STRESS BY CHANGING HOW ONE PERCEIVES THE WORLD
There are many teachings and practices in Zen that relate directly to changing one’s perception and how that change results in skillful means, or effective action that transforms suffering. These include not-knowing mind, karma, oneness with one’s experience, continuous practice, impermanence, and direct experience. All of these can be summarized as seeing things as they are—just this. Therefore, percep- tion is everything in Zen. Buddhism teaches that how we see the world directly affects how much we suffer. Modern mind-body medicine emphasizes the same point. In this section, we will interweave the work of mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zin and ancient Zen Buddhist practices in order to explain how and why this kind of transformation eases suffering in general and the suffering from stress in particular.
Jon Kabat Zin, the scientist who is a pioneer in the use of mindful- ness meditation and practices in health care, defines stress in the following way:
The popular name for the full catastrophe nowadays is stress ... It unifies a vast array of human responses into a single concept with which people strongly identify. stress occurs on a multiplicity
of levels and originates from many different sources Stress can
be thought of as acting on different levels, including the physio- logical level, the psychological level, and the social level In the
vast middle range of stressors, where exposure is neither immedi- ately lethal, like bullets or high-level radiation or poison, nor basi- cally benign, like gravity, the general rule for those causing psychological stress is that how you see things and how you handle them makes all the difference in terms of how much stress you will experience.11
Thus, we see immediately that perception plays a vital role in mini- mizing reactivity to stressors and in fact in reducing the number of things we might see as stressors. Thus, perception itself can either
increase or decrease our level of stress. Since Zen is all about changing one’s perception in such a way as to transform suffering, right away we can see the link between Zen and stress reduction.
Kabat-Zin further describes the link between stress and changes in perception in the following way:
So it can be particularly helpful to keep in mind from moment to moment that it is not so much the stressors in our lives but how we see them and what we do with them that determines how much we are at their mercy. If we can change the way we see, we can change the way we respond.12
This process of changing the way we see, which then results in changing the way we respond, summarizes Zen practice. The primary activity for this process is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the bridge between Zen, psychology, and science. In Zen, mindfulness is simply noticing what one is actually doing, thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving, etc., without trying to change it. Because this task is far more difficult than it appears, Zen practitioners meditate as the core of their practice. Literally, they are learning how to return to the present moment, how to notice what is in the present moment, thus increasing their capacity to notice more and more of their experience, and cultivating the ability to tolerate what they notice without changing it, judging it, pushing it away, or clinging to it. This has the potential to result in a soft, flexible mind that is clear, forgiving, compassionate, and wise.
This retraining of perception that is fundamental to Zen practice intersects with psychology and neurobiology because how we see our circumstances affect our mental and physical health. Kabat-Zin’s work on mindfulness and stress relief demonstrates that stress can just as easily arise from a misperception or thought instead of from what is actually there or happening. He describes this process as follows:
As we have seen, even our thoughts and feelings can act as major stressors if they tax or exceed our ability to respond effectively. This is true even if the thought or feeling has no correspondence with “reality.” For example, the mere thought that you have a fatal disease can be the cause of considerable stress and could become disabling, even though it may not be true.13
Thus, even if one is healthy and well with no sign of disease, the mere thought that one might actually be ill, which is not reality at that time, can cause stress.
This example demonstrates how not seeing what’s actually there (health) but instead fearing what might be there (sickness) leads to suffering. One perceives what one imagines instead of what is actually happening and even though it is not happening, one suffers all the same.
If this mode of misperception remained only in the realm of psychology and did not affect the physical body, then perhaps it could be forgotten or dismissed. However, past and current research on the physiological impact of stress shows that this is not the case. The fol- lowing classic description from Kabat-Zin is that of the fight-or-flight response that occurs when a person perceives a threat to his or her well-being:
When we feel threatened, the fight-or flight reaction occurs almost instantly. The result is a state of physiological and psycho- logical hyperarousal, characterized by a great deal of muscle ten- sion and strong emotions, which may vary from terror, fright, or anxiety to rage and anger. The fight-or-flight reaction involves a very rapid cascade of nervous-system firings and release of stress hormones, the most well known of which is epinephrine (adrena- line), which are unleashed in response to an immediate, acute threat .. . The output of the heart jumps by a factor of four or five by increasing the heart rate and the strength of the heart-muscle contractions (and thereby the blood pressure) so that more blood and therefore more energy can be delivered to the large muscles of the arms and legs, which will be called upon if we are to fight or run.14
It does not matter whether there is an actual threat or not; all that is required for the mental and physical response of fight or flight is for the person to think there is a threat. Those who are overly stressed then enter a cycle of remaining stuck in this fight-or-flight cycle to the point that they see everything as a stressor and threat. Buddhism teaches that humans tend to categorize the world into that which they desire and that which they wish to avoid. Science and psychology teach us that humans can get stuck in this method of categorization to the point that they see more and more of their life circumstances, the people around them, etc., as a threat to their well-being, even if that is not the case.15 Thus, most of the suffering that arises from stress comes from getting stuck in a mode of perception that keeps inspiring the physiological fight or flight.
What is it about Zen that provides this mechanism of change in per- ception? One primary mechanisms is the not-knowing mind, as described by Mu Soeng:
The Zen tradition has tried to comprehend this wisdom through the now formalized teaching of not-knowing. Not-knowing is the intuitive wisdom where one understands information to be just that—mere information—and tries to penetrate to the heart of the mystery that language and information are trying to convey. All we have in, in normal human conditioning is second-, third-, or fourthhand information. In our ignorance, we treat these units of information as self-evident truths and fail to investigate our own experience directly. The not-knowing approach is not a philosophi- cal or intellectual entertainment; it is a doorway to liberation.16
Zen provides a way to see the world and oneself as only information. This neutral way of seeing removes the charge of seeing something as a threat or as a support to be chased and held onto. It circumvents the fight or flight reaction and thus the physiological cascade of events that stress initiates in the body.
How is this related to happiness that is not dependent on external circumstances? Because when one sees external circumstances just as information, then one is no longer controlled by them. The clarity that comes in the wake of not being controlled enhances one’s ability to respond instead of react. Thus, Zen and mindfulness actually change the body, especially the brain and the nervous system. These changes will be explicitly linked to neurobiological changes in a later section.
So how does Zen practice help us see things as information rather than something to run toward or away from? Zen teaches us that one can have a painful experience or loss without stress. One simply has the experience. Thus, Zen is not about getting rid of feelings of any kind, but is instead about living life in a way that leaves “no trace.” Thus, your feelings, thoughts, emotions, and perceptions come and go and you experience them, but when they are gone they leave no trace because you have fully experienced them, fully accepted them, and fully let them go.
The next Zen story is often used to exemplify how “no trace” or oneness with circumstances is about fully and completely having one’s experience. Francis Cook used this story in his commentary on Soto Zen’s founder Dogen’s essay on karma:
A young monk was disillusioned with Zen when he heard his revered master scream in pain and fear as he was being murdered by thieves. The young man contemplated leaving Zen training, feeling that if his old master screamed in the face of pain or death, Zen itself must be a fraud. However, before he was able to leave, another teacher taught him something of what Zen is all about and removed his misconceptions. “Fool!” exclaimed the teacher, “the object of Zen is not to kill all feelings and become anes- thetized to pain and fear. The object of Zen is to free us to scream loudly and fully when it is time to scream.”17
This extreme example of oneness with circumstances or one’s karma is supposed to wake us up to another facet of equanimity, which is that responding appropriately to circumstances is not about not feeling. Instead, as exemplified by the story, the point of Zen practice is to free us to laugh when we are supposed to laugh, scream when we are supposed to scream. Much of Zen practice is about getting kicked out of concepts and ideas into direct experience where everything is just information. Dwelling in direct experience frees one to respond appropriately. When one unites with the experience or rather just is the experience, then one is free no matter what the circumstances. Zen tends to use extremes to make important points about the transformation of suffering.
One of the reasons that everything does not flow, especially in the face of a crisis, is that instead of having a direct experience of our life, we want a theory about our life that will make our life the way we want it.18 Then when life does not turn out to match our theory, we suffer in subtle to gross ways. Having plans about what we want in our life and how we want it to be is not the problem. The problem is staying attached to the outcome and our expectations. Thus, believing that a theory about our life is the reality rather than our direct experience of our life sets us up for suffering. Staying stuck to the outcome we want does not enable us to see our life as it is. In fact, we are then con- trolled by our expectations and thus miss the opportunities that are not part of our plan. Thus, we exist like ghosts, neither here nor there.
ONENESS WITH CIRCUMSTANCES AS A WAY TO TRANSFORM SUFFERING AND STRESS
In Zen, everything is an opportunity for awakening. Therefore, every single event, experience, thought, feeling, etc. is valuable and
useful, including suffering. The operative classical teaching we will focus on in this section is oneness with circumstances (acceptance of karma) as a way to be free from circumstances. Directly related to this classical teaching is Kabat-Zin’s emphasis on turning toward one’s suffering rather than pushing it away or escaping from it. The irony is that one cannot release or transform what one denies or is not aware of. In a classic Zen poem, “Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi,”19 this process of witnessing without acting on aversion or desire is described as “Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire.”20 Not touching and not turning away in Zen focus on not chang- ing oneself or one’s experience, but instead witnessing it.
Again and again, Zen emphasizes that when you impose yourself on what is in front of you, you do not see it as it is. When you impose yourself on yourself, you do not see who you are. Thus, the act of imposing yourself impedes clear perception and encourages reactivity. How then can we allow things to be themselves? We can do this by being as completely present as we can. As we cultivate the ability to include more and more of our experience, we become less reactive and more responsive. This is the transformation that occurs through self-acceptance and letting go, which turns out to be a very effective strategy for dealing with stress.21 Things become what they are and you become who you are.
In the Genjo Koan, Dogen-Zenji, founder of Soto Zen, writes, “Yet
in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.”22 That to which we are attached we see as a flower and yet that flower still falls and decays. That to which we are averse appears to us as a weed and it seems to multiply despite our best efforts to kill it. The way one does not touch or turn away and how one loves one’s weeds is exemplified by the next koan (a puzzling question or story that is designed to knock people out of concepts into direct experience), which is exactly about how this activity is manifested as oneness with circumstances. We will see that the essential ingredient is a simultane- ous unity with circumstances and freedom from circumstances that stems from constantly returning to one’s direct experience. Returning to direct experience is what changes one’s perspective—not the other way around.
The following koan from Dogen’s essay “Spring and Fall” illustrates how direct experience can cut through categories and alleviate suffering:
A certain monk asked the great master Tung-shan, “When the cold or heat arrives, how can one avoid it?” The master answered,
“Why don’t you go to a place where there is no cold or heat?” “Where is this place where there is neither cold nor heat?” asked the monk. Said Tung-shan, “When it is cold, the cold kills the monk; when it is hot, the heat kills the monk.”23
So—what is the place where there is neither cold nor heat? Direct experience. Oneness with experience, regardless of what it is. This is simply being as present as possible to whatever is happening, both inside and outside oneself. This is not touching, not turning away. The mystery of Zen is that by doing this, one transforms suffering. The closest words that get to it is that by doing this, one stops strug- gling to force things to be different and stops struggling to maintain comfort and ideal circumstances. Dropping the struggle itself allows one to rest and creates the possibility of clarity because one’s personal agenda is finally, if not out of the way, at least not the dominant lens through which the world and self are seen.
But as we all know—it is much harder to get to that place than we think. And the kind of effort we think it takes is not that at all. It is actually zazen effort. So, we do not actually work to be free—we work to notice when we are not free—when we are free—and we sit zazen to practice not separating from our experience, no matter what it is. Dogen then continues—“when it is cold, be thoroughly cold, and when it is hot, be thoroughly hot.”24 By affirming one’s conditioned- ness, one becomes free from one’s conditionedness.25
So how does one affirm one’s very conditionedness? What does Zen teach about that and how does it happen? It happens because when you are present to what is in front of you and to yourself, you are actually affirming it. Being present to our direct experience, especially in zazen, teaches us that everything changes and that we have no con- tinuous self and that our perspective is limited. Thus, we can then see the world differently. Scientific research now teaches us that this shift in perception is also a physiological shift. In the section on Zen and science, we will see that there are actually pathways in the brain and nervous system that shift when one’s autobiography or personalized lens on the world drops and one sees what’s there without oneself in the way. The change is physiological because our lens on the world is actually a pattern in the brain and nervous system.
ZEN AND WELL-BEING FROM A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
Now that we have reviewed some ancient practices that Zen teaches and uses in order to achieve well-being, we will move to some current scientific understandings and hypotheses of what is actually changed in the brain and nervous system through these practices and others like them, primarily Zen and its practice of mindfulness. Really what we will be looking at is what could be described as a modern-day, scientific understanding of karma, namely behavioral, perceptual, and emotional patterns that are inscribed in the nervous system and brain from our up-bringing, our social, national, physical, monetary, familial, etc. context. What Zen seems to do is unwrite or at least fade this physically inscribed karma and rewrite a new physical karma that does not necessarily erase the old karmic pattern but instead bypasses it.
How does this relate to the alleviation of stress? Basically, stress responses can inscribe pathways in our brain and nervous system.26 And if we get stuck in stress reactivity, then the pathway becomes more and more entrenched and harder to change. Therefore, from a neurobiological perspective, Zen practice and mindfulness practices in general, because they are about rewiring us into well-being, can also be directly applied to stress pathways and responses if only because Zen provides a way to build an alternate pathway. The specific rewir- ing that seems to take place according to current research is that one moves from perceiving the world through one’s autobiography to instead perceiving the world through selflessness. This switch has a physiological component, which James Austin, MD, describes as mov- ing from egocentric perception to allocentric (other-centered or self- less) perception, which has literal correlates in the parts of the brain that perceive and then react to that perception.27 Therefore, in this section, we will focus on how Zen and mindfulness rewire the brain and nervous system in general, with a special focus on how this relates to stress in particular.
James Austin, MD, has made how Zen changes the brain the focus of much of his career, specifically in the books Zen and the Brain, Zen-Brain Reflections, and Selfless Insights in addition to many papers
and other research. As a medical doctor, a Zen practitioner of many years, and a neurobiologist, he has a unique perspective from which to uncover much of what happens to the brain in zazen and mindful- ness practices. He writes,
A Zen perspective has been available for centuries. But until recent decades, the scientific community did not understand the message, or it chose to ignore it. How can Zen make its age-old contribution to the study of consciousness? By inviting us to ask the naı¨ve and seemingly incredible question: what is this world really like without our intrusive self-referent self in the picture? Putting it another way, let’s suppose a brain drops off all its sub- jective veils of self-consciousness. What, then, does the rest of its awareness—and its pure, objective consciousness, perceive?28
Where this links back to Zen and the brain is that Zen’s focus on bypassing one’s personal agenda in order to have a direct experience is just the kind of change that facilitates clear perception as docu- mented in James Austin’s books on Zen and the brain. One does not actually have to drop one’s personal agenda. Instead, all one has to do is cultivate the ability to return to one’s direct experience of the present moment over and over again. Such a cultivation also fosters the ability to include more and more of one’s experience. Eventually, one’s personal agenda is just one facet of how one perceives the world. How does this intersect with stress? As seen earlier in this article, stress is an emotional and psychological response to a stressor. How- ever, emotions are hard to change and often not subject to reason. Basically, by turning to the present moment over and over again, we are providing ourselves with an alternate focus while our brain is in tumult, until it calms and we develop new nerve pathways. Science shows us that this shift of focus to the breath and the present moment
actually calms the firing of maladaptive neural pathways.29
Zen teaches us, as we saw earlier, that the less we see our world just as information, the less effective we will be in it and the more con- trolled we will be by circumstances. However, what we see here is that we are controlled by external circumstances precisely because we are con- trolled by internal circumstances, NOT the other way around. Thus, if we can change these, we have more of a chance of not being controlled by external circumstances. These internal circumstances are encoded in our brain and nervous system. Since our brains and nervous system are wired to perceive the world in the way that we have been taught
and that we remember from past experiences, most of us walk around with a perceptual filter that does not see things as they are. This per- sonalized filter causes us to select and reject material based on our memories and conditioning in terms of what has helped most in the past, or simply what we have learned from our roles models and/or society and/or family. Thus, we’re already wired to walk around with a personalized filter. But, in addition to faulty perception, we are also wired emotionally by our own genetics, our environment, our upbringing, etc. This emotional wiring is intimately related to how we perceive. Thus, if what we perceive is already filtered by our wir- ing, then changing the way we respond or react depends on changing our perception. And yet, these seem to be locked in a mutual embrace calculated to keep us from doing just that. So how is this related to stress, and how is it related to Zen?
Basically, zazen, or sitting meditation, provides a format to watch ourselves react to our own thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and sensations, in a safe, closed loop. Because we are silent and still while we watch the cascade of reactions and thoughts, we eventually see how we are the source of our warped window on the world and that our window might not match what is in front of us, or even match our direct experience. From a neurobiological perspective, what this does is calm the firing of the neurons that access memories.30 Zen and its practices provide a way to bypass our internal circumstances because Zen practice is about just noticing those internal circum- stances and not changing them. It turns out that the very act of non- judgmental attention enables those internal circumstances to slowly stop dominating us if only because we finally realize we do not have to act on our thoughts and feelings and we will still survive.
According to Austin, the good news is that the brain is plastic and can change, and new nerve cells and nervous system pathways can be born and old ones can be changed or wither away.31 The bad news is that experientially, one needs to be able to withstand the pull of the old pathways and habits while building the new ones that are more fruitful and less maladaptive. This requires stability, which comes from regular meditation and mindfulness practices, which is strength- ened by sitting with a group and working with a teacher. However, Zen practice and other forms of mindfulness meditation provide a way to change these maladaptive pathways—remember back to earlier in the chapter when we discussed not-thinking and its role in seeing everything as simply information rather than seeing everything only
in terms of desire or aversion. It changes the overconditioning of the limbic system if only because we watch everything that pops up while silent and still and we begin to see the web of self and memory that we impose on what is in front of us. These changes happen indi- rectly in Zen practice.
In particular, preliminary research and speculation upon the research by Austin suggests that the very mechanisms by which Zen for centuries has relied on changing perception in order to transform suffering deac- tivate an overconditioned limbic system.32 The research in his three books is extensive, highly technical, and very specific. For that reason, we will be concentrating only on some key aspects that reflect how changes in perception change the brain and nervous system.
First, we will concentrate on the pathways in the brain that have been linked to overwhelming anxiety and fear that then lead to reactiv- ity without choice. The seat of these emotions in the brain seems to be the amygdala in the limbic brain, which is a “gateway” from the limbic brain to the neocortex and other parts of the brain. Austin describes its primary function in the following way:
It [the amygdala] codes for the potential emotional, social, and survival value of an arousing stimulus, then relays this informa- tion elsewhere where it can serve matching responses appropri- ately and be consolidated into potentially useful memories .. . The amygdala is not activated each time we consciously judge whether an ordinary stimulus is pleasant or unpleasant. However, emotional states of extreme anger or fear almost always activate the normal amgydala. The amygdala also becomes more acti- vated during the readiness to act, psychological conditioning, autonomic arousal, release of “stress” hormones, and when our attention is heightened.33
Austin goes on to describe a study in which participants were asked “to maintain their negative emotion after they viewed a disturbing ‘nega- tive’ picture.”34 Activity rose in their amygdala, and those who had reported having a negative worldview had the highest increase of activity in this part of the limbic brain.35 The amygdala has a strong influence on the neocortex and on our actions and on our responses to stressors. Austin suggests that Zen practice helps loosen the domi- nance of the amygdala on the neocortex and reactivity in general:
Unstated in Zen is a major premise of long-range meditative training: diminishing the unfruitful influences that the amygdala
has on other regions, higher and lower (part VII). Yet these per- sonal liberations usually evolve at a glacial pace, much too subtly to seem practical, recognized more in hindsight than at the time. On the background of such incremental change, could a deep crevasse open up suddenly, an event that cuts through every knot- ted problem in the psyche, from top to bottom?36
If Zen practice is to have an influence on an important seat of extreme fear and anxiety and instantaneous reactions to those overwhelming feelings, then the next place to look is at the phenomena of fearless- ness and awakening in Zen practice. Austin focuses on kensho, a “see- ing into the essence of things, insight-wisdom,”37 as an experience Zen practitioners have that can point to what happens in the brain. Satori is the term reserved for “a deeper, more advanced state of insight-wisdom.”38 Austin hypothesizes that kensho and satori result in a state in which perception is primarily allocentric and that the fear-based self through which we see the world drops away.39 If true, such experiences would reduce “the resonances of fear in the amygdala and other limbic and para-limbic regions.”40
He goes on to hypothesize further that repeated experiences of ken- sho and satori continue to change the brain. In the brain, there are “other-referential attentional and processing functions” and “pathways that are Self-referential.”41
Simply stated, his theories based on current research imply that Zen strengthens “other-referential” pathways, or Selfless pathways in the brain rather than “Self-referential” pathways in the brain. Thus, the problems alluded to earlier in the chapter about how to get around per- ceiving the world through memory and our autobiographical Self now have a tentative answer. He then goes on to explain how mindfulness and bare awareness contribute to a more clear perception of the world:
Unfortunately, our biases distort perception. They cause us to remember false information .. . the more directly we integrate our earliest perceptual messages—the simpler ones that first register seeing and hearing—with our medial temporal lobe memory func- tions, the more likely we are to record details accurately and remember an event in ways that consciousness might regard as valid, at least tentatively. Otherwise, greater degrees of uncertainty arise, and will persist.
The world is like a Rorschach ink blot test. We insert the imaginary projections of our subjective Self into everything we
see there. The simplest way to gather valid factual information is by learning to observe the world mindfully, unjudgmentally, clearly, using the other-referential ventral pathways that bypass the intrusive filters of Self.42
Returning one’s attention to the present moment seems to reinforce allocentric pathways in the brain while continuing to try to force the world to fit into one’s veil of memory and autobiography reinforces Self-oriented pathways in the brain. Austin is attempting to explain and understand from a neurobiological standpoint the kind of clarity of perception that was described earlier in this chapter as not-thinking. Although there is not yet a definitive answer from the scientific stand- point, he explains:
Meditation creates a series of complex psycho-physiological changes. To begin with a loose generalization, one might say that Zen meditation does involve a kind of not thinking, clearly. And it then proceeds to carry this clear awareness into everyday living
.. . Zen training is an agency of character change. It’s a program designed to point the whole personality in the direction of increasing selflessness and enhanced awareness.43
Thus, this ancient combination of Zen practices, which include zazen, mindfulness, and not-thinking (not being trapped by concepts), focused on cultivating awareness and dampening the ego in order to cultivate wisdom and compassion, gently nudges the brain toward the allocentric pathways and not the egocentric pathways.44
Another important aspect is the relationship between nuclei of the dorsal thalamus (a part of the limbic brain) and the neocortex. In addi- tion to the influence of the amygdala, these nuclei also send “impulses from the limbic system .. . to influence the emotional responses of the cortex.”45 These ripples between the thalamus and the neocortex could serve to reinforce egocentric pathways.46 Austin theorizes that kensho and satori have the potential to “decrease the functions of .. . the dorsal thalamus. These deactivations could cause a significant decrease in the maladaptive influences of the Self.”47
So how does this relate back to stress and Zen’s potential to reduce and alleviate the stress response? Basically, just as stress rewires the brain as mentioned earlier, so can zazen and mindfulness practices undo the harm that stress can cause in the body. In particular, current neurobiological research, hypotheses, and theories about how Zen
practice affects the brain imply that Zen practice provides a way to calm and bypass the tyranny of the limbic brain over the neocortex because it provides a way to encourage selflessness as a form of per- ception. Since the limbic brain is actively involved in the stress response and especially in hyperarousal and stress reactivity, the poten- tial of Zen to provide relief is then clear. And finally, since Kabat-Zin’s mindfulness-based stress reduction programs focus on changes in per- ception as the foundation of relief from stress and Zen is an ancient practice for changing perception and cultivating clarity, the potential for Zen to aid in that change in perception is present. Ultimately, the letting go and returning to the present moment of zazen turns out to be a form of control and a way to change one’s internal circum- stances enough so that one is no longer controlled by external circum- stances. This entire chapter has been an explanation of how the ancient concept of upeksha or equilibrium could be practiced and how and why it leads to happiness that is not dependent on external circumstances.
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS
What are some practical applications of Zen practice to help alleviate stress in daily life? In this last section, we will focus on two practices designed to encourage gently returning to the present moment until you can see clearly what is in front of you. Zazen, as described previ- ously, is the foundation of all of these practices. Other practices that have not been fully described in this chapter include cultivating “Right View.” one of the practices of the Eightfold Noble Path in Buddhism, creating and using a personal koan, and breath practice in everyday situations.
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests using the question “Am I sure?” when confronted with something that we think threatens us. Such a practice could be used when faced with a stressor. “Right View” is all about real- izing that our perceptions are not reality and in fact can never be reality. In his explanation of “Right View,” Thich Nhat Hanh points out that the Buddha said, “Where there is perception, there is deception.”48 According to Hanh, “most of our perceptions are erroneous” and erro- neous perceptions lead to suffering.49 This is similar to Kabat-Zin’s emphasis on how the stress response often arises in reaction to “per- ceived” threats, rather than actual threats. Thus, practicing asking “Am I sure?” or “What is this?” potentially buys you time and allows you to tolerate your reaction until perhaps it can become a response.
Therefore, if possible, keep asking the question until clarity arises. The ancient application of “Right View” through questions such as “Am I sure?” or “What is this?” encourages us to question our own percep- tions and regain our sanity.
Cultivating a personal koan is also a way to reappropriate the ancient Zen practice of using an unanswerable question to knock the Zen stu- dent out of concepts and into direct experience. When you are faced by a situation that you cannot resolve or that puzzles you, you could develop a question that might help you come up with an answer indi- rectly and spontaneously. For example, if you cannot tell the difference between a threat and a mild irritant at work, developing a question about that might help. Cohen Roshi describes this process of develop- ing a personal koan in detail in her book Turning Suffering Inside Out.
Creating your own personal koan then would involve reflecting on the seemingly intractable situation and finding a question that could neutrally give you information about the situation. For example, if friends complain that you never listen to them, you might use the question “How do I listen?” as a personal koan and see what happens. From the perspective of Zen practice, asking yourself the question at arbitrary times of day and potentially before speaking with a friend without expecting an answer is perhaps the most important part of the practice. Forcing change is not part of Zen practice. The question eventually drops the issue into your subconscious and eventually an answer that you did not develop intellectually might arise. Questions tailored to stressful situations could also be devised.
These are only a few of the practical applications of Zen. Many more exist and can be cultivated. These ancient practices have trans- formed suffering into peace, joy, and liberation for many over the cen- turies. Kabat-Zin modified Zen mindfulness practices for a general audience and his programs on mindfulness-based stress reduction have been transforming the suffering caused by stress now for decades. Now, with the advent of nascent neurobiological research on how meditation in general and Zen in particular change the brain, we can finally see that to transform our suffering is to transform our percep- tion, which in turn transforms our body.
NOTES
1. Boorstein, Sylvia (Fall 1999). “The Gesture of Fearlessness and the Armor of Loving-Kindness,” http://ecbuddhism.blogspot.com/
2009/04/fear-fearlessness-what-buddhists-teach.html (accessed October 30, 2009).
2. Epel, Elissa, Daubenmier, Jennifer, Moskowitz, Judith Tedlie, Folkman, Susan, & Blackburn, Elizabeth. (2009). “Can meditation slow the rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and telomeres,” Longevity, Regeneration, and Optimal Health, 1172, 34–53.
3. This article will be using primarily the works of James Austin, MD, in particular, Zen and the Brain, Zen-Brain Reflections, and Selfless Insight.
4. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, 138–140.
5. Herbert, Bob. (2009, August 21). “Voices of Anxiety.” The New York Times; Zeleny, Jeff. (2008, December 24). “Obama’s Zen State, Well It’s Hawaiian.” The New York Times.
6. Aitken, Original Dwelling Place, 47.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 48–49.
9. Hanh, Teachings on Love, 8.
10. A basic difference between Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen is that Rinzai Zen focuses on sudden enlightenment whereas Soto Zen focuses on gradual enlightenment.
11. Kabat-Zin, Full Catastrophe Living, 235–238. 12. Ibid., 241.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 251.
15. Jon Kabat Zin’s Full Catastrophe Living is one example of books on the subject. However, James Austin’s books Zen and the Brain, Zen-Brain Reflec- tions, and Selfless Insight are more recent texts on scientific investigation of the effects of Zen on the body and in particular on the brain.
16. Soeng, The Diamond Sutra, 63–64.
17. Cook, “Karma,” in How to Raise an Ox, 43.
18. Kwang, Dae (Fall 1999). “Mind Placebo,” http://www.kwanumzen.org/ pzc/newsletter/v11n04-1999-apr.html (accessed October 30, 2009).
19. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, 472. Samadhi means “an extraordinary alternate state of one-pointed absorption” or sometimes it also means merely a state.
20. http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/Texts/jewelmirror.shtml (accessed October 30, 2009).
21. Kabat-Zin, Full Catastrophe Living, 269–273.
22. Eihei Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop, 69.
23. Eihei Dogen, “Spring and Fall,” in How to Raise an Ox, 111.
24. Ibid.
25. Cook, 43.
26. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, 113–114.
27. Austin, Selfless Insight, 109.
28. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, xxv.
29. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, 59. 30. Ibid., 104.
31. Ibid., 141.
32. Austin, Selfless Insight, 92.
33. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, 86, 90.
34. Ibid., 93.
35. Ibid.
36. James Austin, Selfless Insight, 201. 37. Ibid., 271.
38. Ibid., 272.
39. Ibid., 93–94.
40. Ibid., 179–180.
41. Ibid., 187–188.
42. Ibid., 142–143.
43. Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections, xxv, xxxvi.
44. Austin, Selfless Insight, 188.
45. Ibid., 90.
46. Ibid., 92. 47. Ibid., 93–94.
48. Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, 53.
49. Ibid.
REFERENCES
Aitken, R. (1996). Original dwelling place: Zen Buddhist essays. Washington, DC: Counterpoint.
Austin, J. (2009). Selfless insight: Zen and the meditative transformations of consciousness. Boston: MIT Press.
Austin, J. (1999). Zen and the brain: Toward an understanding of meditation and consciousness. Boston: MIT Press.
Austin, J. (2006). Zen-brain reflections: Reviewing recent developments in medita- tion and states of consciousness. Boston: MIT Press.
Cohen, D. (2004a). The one who is not busy: Connecting with work in a deeply satisfying way. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith.
Cohen, D. (2004b). Turning suffering inside out: A Zen approach to living with physical and emotional pain. Boston: Shambhala.
Cook, F. (2002). How to raise an ox: Zen practice as taught in master Dogen’s shobogenzo. Boston: Wisdom.
Dogen, E. (1995). Moon in a dewdrop: Writings of Zen master Dogen.
K. Tanahashi (Ed.); R. Aitken, E. Brown, K. Tanahashi, et al. (Trans.). New York: North Point Press.
Epel, E., Daubenmier, J., Moskowitz, J. T., Folkman, S., & Blackburn, E. (2009). Can meditation slow the rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress,
mindfulness, and telomeres. Longevity, Regeneration, and Optimal Health, 1172, 34–53.
Hanh, T. N. (1999). The heart of the Buddha’s teaching. New York: Broadway Books.
Hanh, T. N. (1998). Teachings on love. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.
Kabat-Zin, J. (2009). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. New York: Bantam Dell.
Soeng, M. (2000). The diamond sutra: Transforming the way we perceive the world. Somerville, MA: Wisdom.
Suzuki, S. (2005). Zen mind, beginner’s mind. Trudy Dixon (Ed.). Boston: Weatherhill.
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PART THREE
CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES IN ACTION: APPLICATION
PREFACE TO PART THREE
Part Three, Contemplative Practices in Action: Application, examines vari- ous applications of spiritual and contemplative practices. Delbecq’s chapter shows that learning meditation—a well-researched and founda- tional contemplative practice—can have a powerful impact on business leaders. Next, Wachholtz and Pearce remind us that spiritual traditions contain rousing practices as well as quieting practices, and these arousing practices may be useful for treating chronic pain. Finally, Manuel and Stortz examine the spirituality, health, and solidarity-promotional value of three oft-forgotten practices from Christian tradition: lamentation, intercession, and pilgrimage.
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CHAPTER 11
