Zen And The Art Of Being Amazed

I really like the philosophy of Zen. At least I think I do. Which might be the same thing. I used to read alot of Alan Watts. Watts was one of those guys who popularized Eastern Philosophy. He also advocated the judicious use of LSD and Marijuana (for spiritual enhancement). I still like Alan Watts, hell I still like the Grateful Dead, despite my misgivings about their advocacy of drug use. I really don't care if people use or don't use drugs. I don't use them anymore but I don't regret having used them in the past.

I tried a Zen meditation class once and it was just awful! I got absolutely nothing out of it. It was me and three overweight women in warm up suits walking in a circle chanting nonsense syllables that meant something in a language none of understood. If I had had the guts I would have stopped and screamed, "What the #%@&!! are we doing?! Are you all crazy?!" but I didn't. I went along with the whole thing while thinking how ridiculous the whole thing was.

Why do spiritual pursuits lead to so much goofiness? Why do people figure they are going to find enlightenment by taking drugs or by walking around in circles chanting nonsense? We must feel  like being enlightened involves some sort of special effects or some kind of magic spell. 

There is a Zen story about two apprentices bragging to each other about their teachers. One of them says his Master can sit on one side of a river and move his finger through the air and a paint brush on the other side will paint a picture on a tablet. The other apprentice says his Master is even more amazing than that explaining that his Master eats when he is hungry and drinks when he is thirsty!

The truth of course is that we are surrounded by miracles all the time. Occasionally something happens that wakes us up to this fact. Most of the time we ignore all the miracles that are happening all the time. Here we are a collection of simultaneous processes which we call a human being, walking around on a wet rock orbiting a thermonuclear furnace on the edge of a galaxy and we think life is dull a lot of the time.

Russell