Mind the Beginner

I’m currently reading Alan Watts’ The way of zen and in the preface I came across a very nice idea on the difference between zen and western thinking:

I can not represent myself as a scientifically objective academician, for – with respect to Zen – this seems like studying birdsong in a collection of stuffed nightingales.

Alan describes his attempt to study Zen in a Western way. In a very short version, Zen values direct experience over reading about something or other ways to try and understand. It’s a huge difference between Eastern and Western thinking. Whereas a Westerner will read about nightingales, watches videos of them, listen to recordings, study stuffed nightingales and look them up at the zoo in the hope they will sing and Easterner will more likely go directly too the zoo or -if possible- look nightingales up in the wild and just sit there enjoying their song. For he knows that reading will not make him experience birdsong.

This difference in thinking is everywhere. In Western thinking not being able to put an experience to words somehow seems a weakness. We use an abstract alphabet with which we make words (code) to describe things. The individual words don’t even look like what they want to describe. Chinese words (characters) in some way actually look like what they mean and in this way work more with images than total abstract code. A step closer to the real thing. But still, birdsong can not be written down correctly.

The more educated someone is the more he will try to capture experience in code, having fancier words to do so. The number of words an academic knows if after all far greater than someone who dropped out of highschool (in general). But it’s also harder for this academic to admit he can’t describe something accurately. He’s a master in the code but the code just doesn’t work for him. Frustrating.

There is a saying in Zen that explains this and at the same time explains why Zen is so vague to Westerners:

Those who know do not speak;

Those who speak do not know.

Zen “Masters” know this and so they don’t speak, what’s more, if they were to speak most of them just don’t have sufficient mastery over the code (English language) to express themselves. In fact, Zen isn’t all that hard at all and it’s certainly not vague. It’s just that the code is so limiting to them both in possibilities and in their mastery of it, and the Chinese (and Japanese) language work in a totally different way.

The obserant reader can now quickly say “Hey, you’re speaking… you do not know!” *points finger and laughs*

This is very true! I do not know about Zen. I’m a total novice in Zen and read just about anything I can get my hands on instead of direct experience. On the other hand I do sit in meditation every single evening and work on experiencing Being. Am I better than you? Most certainly not, truth be told you’d do better at meditating than I would for I’m hindered by everything I’ve read and now expect from meditation. I shot myself in the foot.

So here’s what you can take out of this blogpost: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by reading about what you should be experiencing. Get out there and listen to the birds.