James H. Austin M. D.is an experimental neurologist who spent several sabbaticals in Japan doing things to cat brains and practicing Zen rather earnestly at the same time, and altogether probably spent 30 or so years sitting Zazen (not only in Japan but wherever he went), experiencing at least one odd physical event, one interesting internal absorption (trance-hallucination, maybe) and one lightning-strike of kensho or wisdom-insight. He does not seem to consider himself to have gotten as far as a state of on-going enlightenment, but he believes that such a state is the result of an accumulation of a series of such kensho experiences.
He says that he is not a dualist. But the interesting point is that his monism is purely materialistic. Perhaps not precisely "Matter alone is, nothing that is not matter is," but something more like "Physical states governed by physical laws alone are, nothing that is not subject to physical laws is." He is the classic man of science. And although he experienced and is describing what most would consider a spiritual insight, he seeks to explain it and value it in biological, physiological, neurological terms, as a rsult of predictable and understandable processes in the brain and nothing else. But his moment of kensho left him so awed that he was tempted to refer it to God. This temptation he overcomes.
The odd physical experience he had is recounted in chapter 94 (after a very long prelude!) He heads the chapter with famous lines by p'ang Chi-Shih:
How wonderous this, how mysterious!
I carry wood, I draw water.
And he has spent a lot of time explaining the Zen emphasis on the here and now. Then: One day after 25 minutes of Zazen, he goes in to shave. "Suddenly, for the first time ever, I really feel both hands. My tactile sensations are enormously enhanced. Perception increases dramatically on the right hand to the elbow; on the left hand not as strongly and only to the wrist. ONly the sense of touch is enhanced, as it is elicited by the towel in my hands....I still retain all the usual distinctions between myself as subject and towel as object...Astonishing, delicious perception! How much richer than ordinary feeling." After a few seconds, the change fades away. There follows pages of theorizing about what could have happened in the brain to cause such a sensation.
Later, an experience during a prolonged sitting in which "conscious drops out" although he remains erect and awake, and then conscious returns with a hallucinated red maple leaf as the only object in a place entirely black and silent, glistening black and infinitely silent. Then the leaf evaporates, and bliss overwhelms what he calls "the experient,' and all sense of space and bodily consciousness is erased temporarily.
Finally, 10 years later, a chapter called "A Taste of Kensho" :
"It strikes unexpectedly at 9 am on the surface platform of the London subway system. (Due to a mistake)...I wind up at a station where I have never been before....The view is the dingy interior of the station, some grimy buildings, a bit of open sky. Instantly the entire view aquires three qualities: Absolute Reality, Intrinsic Rightness, Ultimate Reflection. With no transition, it is all complete....Yes, there is the paradox of this extraordinary viewing. But there is no viewer. The scene is utterly empty, stripped of every last extension of an I-Me-Mine (his name for ego-self). Vanished in one split second is the familiar sensation that this person is viewing a city scene. The new viewing proceeds impersonally, not pausing to register the paradox that there is no human subject "doing" it. Three insights penetrate the experient, each conveying Total Understanding at depths far beyond simple knowledge: This is the eternal state of affiars. There is nothing more to do. There is nothing whatever to fear.
The result of this kensho is a rather deep re-ordering of the personality, and even some changes in the physical body (the absorption also made physiological changes, but did not re-order the personality much.)
His analysis of these events is that they are physiological, measurable states in the brain, and that they "etch" (his metaphor) the brain, destroying some brain cells and activating other ones, so that an enlightened person is actually a person whose brain has been changed by the physiological process of meditation (and sometimes by other processes, such as drug-induced or naturally occuring lesions of some sort), but meditative processes, though slower, are also more controlled and more likely to be beneficial.
His explanation is at odds both with Advaistic mysticism and with theistic dualistic mysticism. But it is also clear that he is describing the same experience that all mystics describe. Although his neurological explanations are novel, his process and product fit quite well in the Zen setting, which is non-theistic and also not particularly "spiritual."
HIs description of the ongoing state of enlightenment is that after emptying the brain of lots of clutter and junk, including the personal ego, one is able to "return to the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands." This fits with my understanding of Jesus and mystics as well--that having been set free, they now can act compassionately and freely.
And the place where enlightenment shows up is in ordinary daily life, which is now lived directly, "mindlessly" (meaning non-analytically).
Although Dr. Austin seem to be saying exact opposite things from most other mystics, they are somehow looking at the same exact elephant from two different sides and describing it differently while still talking about the same thing. My other thought is that what we think about "enlightenment" doesn't matter at all. It is a thing in itself, and it really doesn't matter what we say about it or what we think it means.
I enjoyed this book, though my brain kind of blurred over the technical neurology stuff.
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