Living Zen Remindfully: Retraining Subconscious Awareness

by James H. Austin

A seasoned Zen practitioner and neurologist looks more deeply at mindfulness, connecting it to our subconscious and to memory and creativity. This is a book for readers who want to probe more deeply into mindfulness. It goes beyond the casual, once-in-awhile meditation in popular culture, grounding mindfulness in daily practice, Zen teachings, and recent research in neuroscience. In Living Zen Remindfully , James Austin, author of the groundbreaking Zen and the Brain , describes authentic Zen training—the commitment to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice . This training process enables us to unlearn unfruitful habits, develop more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life. Austin shows that mindfulness can mean more than our being conscious of the immediate “now.” It can extend into the subconscious, where most of our brain's activities take place, invisibly. Austin suggests ways that long-term meditative training helps cultivate the hidden, affirmative resource of our unconscious memory. Remindfulness , as Austin terms it, can help us to adapt more effectively and to live more authentic lives. Austin discusses different types of meditation, meditation and problem-solving, and the meaning of enlightenment. He addresses egocentrism (self-centeredness) and allocentrism (other-centeredness), and the blending of focal and global attention. He explains the remarkable processes that encode, store, and retrieve our memories, focusing on the covert, helpful remindful processes incubating at subconscious levels. And he considers the illuminating confluence of Zen, clinical neurology, and neuroscience. Finally, he describes an everyday life of “living Zen,” drawing on the poetry of Basho, the seventeenth-century haiku master.

Genres: Buddhism

308 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Teo · Rating 3 out of 5]

2018.03.18–2018.03.22

Contents

Austin JH (2016) (08:07) Living Zen Remindfully - Retraining Subconscious Awareness

Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Acknowledgments
By Way of a Personal Introduction

Part I: On the Path of Meditation

01. Can Meditation Enhance Creative Problem-Solving Skills? A Progress Report
• Creative Problem Solving Using Matchsticks
• Divergent Approaches to Creativity
• Oriental Gamesmanship
• Commentary
• Does Meditation Enhance Creative Problem-Solving Skills?
• Table 1.1 Types of Meditation
• Short-Term Meditation
• Recent Experiments in Ordinary Problem Solving: Contrasts between Ordinary Insight and a More Analytical Approach
• In Conclusion
• Notes

02. In Zen, What Does It Mean “To Be Enlightened”?
• Notes

03. Developing Traits of Character on the Way to Altruism
• Cultural Estimates of Character, East and West
• What Can Zen Buddhism Offer Today?
• Native Capacities
• Altruism
• Recent Interviews with Contemporary Buddhist Teachers in the West
• Notes

Part II: Implications of a Self–Other Continuum

04. The Self: A Primer
• The Semantics of Self
• Where Is the Self?
• Recent Studies of Our Normal Autobiographical Self: A Progress Report
• Studies Suggesting That a Diminution of Self-Referential Activity Is Related to Certain Later Phases of Meditation
• Notes

05. Emerging Concepts in Self–Other Relationships
• Emerging Notions about the “Self” in Normal Human Subjects
• The Two Large Medial Cortical Regions
• A Model of Medial Parietal-Temporal Processing
• Cortical Functions Referable to Regions over the Outside of the Brain
• Ego and Allo Studies in Patients Who Show a Neglect of Visual Space
• Recent Studies of Normal Subjects
• Comment
• Notes

06. Early Distinctions between Self and Other, Focal and Global, Are Coded in the Medial Temporal Lobe
• Head Direction Cells
• Which Direction? Whose Head Is Facing What? What Is a Compass “Heading?”
• Commentary
• Grid Cells
• The Medial and Lateral Entorhinal Cortex
• Figure 6.1 A hippocampal crossroad and the limbic circuitry.
• Figure 6.2 Two pathways from the parahippocampus into the hippocampus via the perirhinal and entorhinal cortex: A schematic overview.
• Some Potential Implications of the Medial and Lateral Pathways in Figure 6.2
• High Resolution fMRI Studies of the Entorhinal Cortex in Humans
• Hippocampal Outflow Systems
• Comment: A Grounding in the Actual Daily Life Events of Human Subjects
• Notes

Part III: Aspects of Memory

07. Remindfulness
• Being Mindful of Sati
• Starting Small: Just Following the Breath Mindfully
• Standard Tests of the Working Memory Network
• What Is a Potential Role for the Hippocampus in Normal People Who are More “Mindful” and in Long-Term Meditators?
• Insights
• Long-Term Remindfulness: A Momentous Historical Example
• Remindfulness
• Silent, Spontaneous Modes of Implicit Processing
• Recent Studies of Implicit Processing
• Can Problem Solving Involve Parts of Our Brain That Are Relatively Far “Out of the Loops” of Language?
• Notes

08. A Remindful Route through the Nucleus Reuniens
• A Background of Functional Anatomy
• The Reuniens
• Who Needs a Midline Thalamic Nucleus? For What?
• Notes

09. A Disorder Called Transient Global Amnesia
• On the Varieties of Normal Memory
• The Disorder Called Transient Global Amnesia
• Recent Neuroimaging Research
• Comment
• Words Don’t Accurately Describe Coded Dynamic Functions
• Notes

10. Remindful Zen: An Auditory “Altar Ego”?
• Single, Soft, Bell Rings
• First Episode: A New Kind of Bell with Two Novel Reminders
• Commentary
• Second Episode: “By the Light” … A Syncopated Refrain
• Commentary
• Third Episode: Two Flute Notes after a Previous Indoor and Outdoor Prelude
• Background Information: Normally, What Kinds of Internal Sounds Do People Usually Hear?
• Lowly Listening
• Disclaimer
• Provisional Nomenclature, Scientific and Vernacular
• Notes

11. Following an Auditory Stimulus, Then “Seeing the Light”
• Commentary
• Neural Networks for the Attentive Processing of Sounds
• Recent Research on Auditory Stimuli at Different Distances
• “Hearing with One’s Whole Being”
• The Color of the Light in Subject E.G.
• External and Internal Triggering Stimuli
• Notes

12. Turning
• Turning in Zen
• Standing Up
• Turning Preferences in a Virtual Simulated Tunnel
• Intriguing Responses of the Brain When Normal People Turn to the Right
• Commentary
• Notes

13. Revisiting Kensho, March 1982
• Tracking, Turning, and Looking Up
• Looking Up, Out There
• The Novel Setting
• The Arctic Coolness of the Loss of Self in Kensho
• Notes

Part IV: Neurologizing

14. A Mondo in Clinical Neurology
• Background for the Paradox
• The Superior Colliculus
• Notes

15. Two Key Gyri, a Notable Sulcus, and the Wandering Cranial Nerve
• The Angular Gyrus (BA 39)
• The Parahippocampal Gyrus
• Figure 15.1 A basal view of the left hemisphere, emphasizing the temporal lobe.
• The Superior Temporal Sulcus
• The Wandering Cranial Nerve
• Notes

16. Paradox: The Maple Leaf Way Up in Ambient Space
• The Lapse of Memory
• Notes

17. The Nitric Oxide Connection
• The Synthesizing Systems That Generate NO•
• NO• in the Hippocampus
• Comment
• Notes

18. “Pop-Out”
• Letting It Happen
• Sensitive Areas versus “Clinging” Areas
• Notes

19. Keeping Your Eye on the Ball
• About Shawn Green
• Commentary
• Notes

Part V: Living Zen

20. What Is Living Zen?
• Notes

21. Sometimes, Zen Is “For the Birds”
• Another “Avian Zen” Story
• Commentary
• Notes

22. Basho, the Haiku Poet
• Poets as Literary Revolutionaries
• Reginald Horace Blyth Examines Haiku and Their Relation to the Practice of Zen
• Comment
• Robert Aitken Examines the Question: Was Basho’s Maturation as a Person Expressed in His Poetry?
• Can a Sensory Stimulus Precipitate Kensho-Satori? Remote Historical Evidence
• Did a Triggering Sound Stimulus Actually Precipitate a State of Awakening in Basho? More Recent Sources of Information
• Basho’s Ongoing Quests: A Traveler on Both an Interior and Exterior Journey
• To Summarize
• Notes

23. Basho’s States of Consciousness
• An Illuminating Event in the Next Summer, 1687
• Later Events at Inkyoji Temple in Autumn 1687; The First Haiku (Number 316)
• Supporting Details: Wet Leaves and Raindrops at Inkyogi Temple in Autumn 1687; The Second Haiku (Number 317)
• Full Moonlight Glistening off Wet Tree Leaves
• The Sounds of Raindrops
• Notes

24. Zen and the Daily-Life Incremental Training of Basho’s Attention
• Table 24.1 Bird Citations in Basho’s Haiku
• Lightness in Basho’s Haiku and Its Relation to Zen
• Can One or More Deep States of Awakening Enhance the Maturation of Affirmative Behavioral Traits?
• The Final Days; Autumn 1694
• In Conclusion
• Notes

25. A Story about Wild Birds, Transformed Attitudes, and a Supervisory Self
• Commentary
• About Silent Speech (Word Thoughts)
• Notes

In Closing
• Notes

Appendix A: Back to Nature: Pausing in Awe
• Notes

Appendix B: Reminders: The Crucial Role of Inhibitory Neurons and Messenger Molecules in Attentional Processing
• Notes

Appendix C: Magnetoencephalography
• Notes

Appendix D: Diffusion-Weighted Imaging
• Studies of Emotion
• A Notable Nucleus
• Notes

Appendix E: Some Newer Methods of fMRI Analysis
• Notes

Appendix F: The Enso on This Cover
• The Enso
• The Enso on This Cover
• Notes

Appendix G: Word Problems
• Object
• BuzzWords
• Content/Context
• Transcendental
• Notes

Index