Getting Started

I have committed to do zazen regularly. On the pretext of “just sitting,” I have undertaken to investigate a complex of processes that together produce what we call awareness, perception, mind, and the self. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that the organism looks into its own workings. In any case, the field is vast—it is the whole sensory world, after all—and at any given moment I can be aware of just a small portion of it.

At first glance it would seem that I am in just the position of one of the blind men in the famous parable about the elephant, perfectly situated to draw the wrong conclusions. However, when that story is told it is seldom mentioned that even a blind man, with sufficient persistence, can form a rough idea of what an elephant is like, provided he is willing to come at it from lots of different angles, maintain prolonged contact, and think about what he has experienced.

There is another sense in which the analogy is misleading. Not only do I have all my senses and a fair measure of curiosity, I am able to adjust the focus and scope of awareness in a number of ways. For instance, the shifting of attention from one sensory realm to another, which happens spontaneously thousands of times every day, is something that I can do deliberately, too. I can also limit my attention to hearing alone, or sight, and I can process the information so obtained in various ways. I can home in on a particular bodily sensation and remain attentive to that small patch of sense-data as it changes. Then I can compare that experience with past events. In other words, any vantage point—any given space-time location—can yield multiple views.

Although the mindscape is virtually without boundaries, I am not much bothered by the question of where to begin. If the unknown authors of the Avatamsaka are right, and the universe (or multiverse) is holographic, then it will not be hard for me to navigate this topologically challenging landscape. Starting with whatever happens to be in front of me, I need only allow one thing to open into the next naturally. Sooner or later I will find myself back where I started.