The book "The Life of Zen" helps us to answer the above questions with easy-to-understand language and easy-to-understand explanation. This book is a popular Zen reading by You Xuan Zongjiu, an outstanding Japanese Buddhist scholar and Akutagawa Prize winner. It is also an enlightening life guide book.
You Xuan Zongjiu is a Japanese novelist and a Zen monk of Lin Yizong. 1983 became a monk, and the novel Flowers in Yin Ruins 200 1 won the Akutagawa Prize for Literature on 20 125, and Zhuangzi and Youyou were published on 20 10.
In the author's world view, every day alive is worthy of gratitude and treasure. Zen attaches importance to complete freedom, so what exists outside itself, even if it is a noble image, is nothing more than bondage.
In this book, Zen is no longer a mysterious and distant thing, but a practical life technology. The author confirms various unique life attitudes such as "living in the present", "living with peace of mind" and "affirming the status quo in an all-round way" by means of "understanding Zen language, understanding Zen environment and understanding Zen thoughts, so as to help readers reach the carefree life realm of" every day is a good day ".
Zen world-born from the heart.
People often say that the situation changes at will.
Phase refers to the world in our eyes, and the heart here, in terms of cognition and neuroscience, refers to our brain's understanding of the world.
This sentence shows that the world in our eyes is not objective and unchangeable, it varies from person to person and will change constantly.
According to modern science, our brain has three layers:
The deepest part is reptile brain, also called lizard brain, which supports our body instinct, feeling and basic operation of the body.
The second layer is the animal brain, which is in charge of the feelings of mammals.
The third layer is the cerebral cortex, that is, the rational brain, which is divided into the left brain and the right brain responsible for language, logical thinking and other functions.
The process of our understanding of the world is a comprehensive process of three kinds of brains. The information absorbed by the five senses first becomes a feeling in the brain, then a feeling in the emotional brain, and then an image from the right brain. After catching them through our senses, we finally think in the left brain, and linguistically, we finally form our understanding of the world.
Feeling has the mechanism of feeling, perception also has its logic, and thinking has rational logic. In the process of understanding the world, we process sensory information to form judgments and reactions. After repetition, neural circuits with fixed travel in the brain gradually become fixed information paths, evolved into our perceptual logic and thinking logic, and gradually formed our personality.
Different people have formed different habits, such as optimism, positivity, extroversion, tolerance and meanness, because of innate genes, acquired environment and experience. Different people have different reactions to the same thing, and everyone sees the world differently.
The same person reacts differently to things when he is in a good mood and when he is in a bad mood. What happens in the environment will affect our mood. Emotion is the background of our cognition, and it will affect our judgment. People are happy when they are happy, and everything is pleasing to the eye. In the face of the stock market crash and unemployment, everything is gray.
Generally speaking, people don't use cognitive models because their physiology, emotions and brains are different. The world we know is our own subjective world, and it is our ideas that dye the world into different pictures.
What Zen pursues is to return to the truth of the world, and when it reaches the realm of no phase, there will be no persistence without phase, no mindfulness without persistence, and no tranquility without mindfulness.
Mark Twain said that what hurts us is not the world itself, but our misunderstanding of the world.
We should learn to examine our own cognitive picture, understand that the world in our eyes is not the real world, and be prepared to update it at any time, so as to gain a positive view and get close to the truth of the world.
What is Zen?
What is Zen? Simply put, it is to actively control brain activity with consciousness.
Our biology and experience construct our ideas and emotions, and we construct ourselves and the world through the interpretation of the world by ideas and emotions.
Our cognition always has different subjectivity, so we can say that our prejudice creates ourselves and our world.
What we call habits and experiences are exactly what Zen needs to overcome.
Zen is to eliminate our accumulated self-concepts and habits and to eliminate our separation from the world. Beyond likes and dislikes, we can find our unpolluted truth, that is, truth and true self, that is, our Buddha's heart, so that our heart is like a mirror and the world is unpolluted.
Zen Buddhism put down its inherent cognitive model and preconceived value judgments such as likes and dislikes, and completely felt and contacted the real world, returning to a world that was not contaminated by new emotions and prejudices.
Our habit is so powerful that it is like wearing a pair of colored eyes, which completely distorts our world. What's more, many times we don't know that we are wearing glasses and think we are seeing the real world. Our brains and emotions have always controlled us. We constantly identify the world with simplified labels, but forget their essence.
We define others by different roles. We will say that he is a cook, but forget that he is a complete person. The brain replaces things with abstract and simplified concepts and vivid life with past experience.
Meditation means that we use reason to correct and perfect our cognition there. It is to use our reason to influence and control our emotions, so that we can return to this world without prejudice and fully understand and feel this temporary new world. Meditation frees us from the bondage of ideas, memories and expectations to our consciousness, and allows us to feel and act more freely.
Through meditation, we can expand our boundaries, not be bound by old ideas, constantly revise and improve our ideas under new circumstances, and finish our creations again and again.
Third, every day is good and it will always be good.
We are used to the concept of brain time, so we always spend too much time in the past and the future.
Our memory and experience of the world constitute our inherent view of things, thus creating the illusion that life is continuous. In fact, all moments are temporary, and only the present can be grasped. There is no present, nothing, and neither the past nor the future exists. Vigilance shows that the world in our eyes is constantly changing, and the concept of existence destroys world things and affects our creativity.
Zen pays attention to mindfulness. Let us focus on the present and grasp the only real moment.
Living in the present is easier said than done. When we recall the past, worry about the future and look around, we always miss the present.
We let the past and the future influence the meaning of the present. We are always used to adding yesterday and tomorrow to today. We may be annoyed by yesterday's failure, or we may be absent-minded and miss today because of anxiety about the future.
We understand that yesterday and today are only illusions of our brains, and only now can we grasp them.
The key to meditation is to treat every moment, every day and everything as unique, independent and brand new.
Live completely in the present, accept everything, accept it gladly, swing freely, and be content.
Every day is a beautiful day. Treat every day as a brand-new day and devote yourself wholeheartedly.
summary
Zen can be mysterious or simple. Although most of us are far from enlightenment, some simple techniques in meditation are very helpful to our lives.
From the perspective of application, we will understand that we are all bound and bound by our own ideas and cannot be invisible, forming our boundaries and frameworks. We are always aware of the limitations of our ideas and experiences, aware of all kinds of ignorant constraints, and aware of the patterns and logical reasons behind self-behavior, and constantly optimize and adjust them to promote growth and goals.
Through the practice of mindfulness, we can focus on the present, relieve the anxiety and pressure of life, and let us face life every day better.
Sitting, lying, walking, treating people and things, if you can maintain mindfulness, are all Zen.
In a stressful modern society, a little Zen will make our life quieter.