![Living Zen Remindfully: Retraining Subconscious Awareness](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
![Living Zen Remindfully: Retraining Subconscious Awareness](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
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.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780262336468 |
---|---|
Publisher: | MIT Press |
Publication date: | 10/28/2016 |
Series: | The MIT Press |
Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 328 |
File size: | 1 MB |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Chapters Containing Testable Hypotheses x
List of Figures and Tables xi
Preface xii
Acknowledgments xv
By Way of a Personal Introduction xvi
Part I On the Path of Meditation 1
1 Can Meditation Enhance Creative Problem-Solving Skills? A Progress Report 3
2 In Zen, What Does It Mean "To Be Enlightened"? 18
3 Developing Traits of Character on the Way to Altruism 21
Part II Implications of a Self-Other Continuum 31
4 The Self: A Primer 33
5 Emerging Concepts in Self-Other Relationships 39
6 Early Distinctions between Self and Other, Focal and Global, Are Coded in the Medial Temporal Lobe 54
Part III Aspects of Memory 69
7 Remindfulness 71
8 A Remindful Route through the Nucleus Reuniens 83
9 A Disorder Called Transient Global Amnesia 88
10 Remindful Zen: An Auditory "Altar Ego"? 94
11 Following an Auditory Stimlus, Then "Seeing the Light" 109
12 Turning 116
13 Revisiting Kensho, March 1982 122
Part IV Neurologizing 127
14 A Mondo in Clinical Neurology 129
15 Two Key Gyri, a Notable Sulcus, and the Wandering Cranial Nerve 134
16 Paradox: The Maple Leaf Way Up in Ambient Space 145
17 The Nitric Oxide Connection 147
18 "Pop-Out" 151
19 Keeping Your Eye on the Ball 155
Part V Living Zen 159
20 What Is Living Zen? 161
21 Sometimes, Zen Is "Tor the Birds" 164
22 Basho, the Haiku Poet 168
23 Basho's States of Consciousness 184
24 Zen and the Daily-Life Incremental Training of Basho's Attention 195
25 A Story about Wild Birds, Transformed Attitudes, and a Supervisory Self 205
In Closing 213
Appendix A Back to Nature: Pausing in Awe 214
Appendix B Reminders: The Crucial Role of Inhibitory Neurons and Messenger Molecules in Attentional Processing 216
Appendix C Magnetoencephalography 221
Appendix D Diffusion-Weighted Imaging 225
Appendix E Some Newer Methods of fMRJ Analysis 232
Appendix F The Enso on This Cover 234
Appendix G Word Problems 236
Notes 241
Index 291
What People are Saying About This
James Austin's unique combination of qualities make himwithout doubt the most knowledgeable Zen practitioner. He is a neurologist, a student of Zen who has achieved kensho, and a scientist of outstanding quality and intelligence. Living Zen Remindfully, the latest in a series of six books on neuroscience and Zen meditation,is the jewel in the crown of this important series, and should be on the bookshelf of every Zen practitioner andof any scientist who wantsto understand the fundamental processes which are involved in meditation.
James Austin's unique combination of qualities make himwithout doubt the most knowledgeable Zen practitioner. He is a neurologist, a student of Zen who has achieved kensho, and a scientist of outstanding quality and intelligence. Living Zen Remindfully, the latest in a series of six books on neuroscience and Zen meditation,is the jewel in the crown of this important series, and should be on the bookshelf of every Zen practitioner andof any scientist who wantsto understand the fundamental processes which are involved in meditation.Peter Fenwick, MB BChir (cantab), DPM FRCPsych
Dr. James Austin's unique and rich perspectives on the brain, mind, and Zen enrich and astound.
Roshi Joan Halifax, Abbot, Upaya Zen CenterIn this enlightening book neurologist and Zen practitioner James Austin further explores the brain mechanisms that mediate Zen states, updated by the latest discoveries in neuroscience. He also offers an enjoyable mix of interesting insights: the miracle of birds triggering awakening, training the unconscious mind, functions of underappreciated brain areas, lessons from Zen masters, and haiku.
Eberhard Fetz, Professor, Department of Physiology & Biophysics, University of WashingtonJames Austin's unique combination of qualities make him without doubt the most knowledgeable Zen practitioner. He is a neurologist, a student of Zen who has achieved kensho, and a scientist of outstanding quality and intelligence. Living Zen Remindfully, the latest in a series of six books on neuroscience and Zen meditation, is the jewel in the crown of this important series, and should be on the bookshelf of every Zen practitioner and of any scientist who wants to understand the fundamental processes which are involved in meditation.
Peter Fenwick, MB BChir (cantab), DPM FRCPsychDr. James Austin's unique and rich perspectives on the brain, mind, and Zen enrich and astound.
In this enlightening book neurologist and Zen practitioner James Austin further explores the brain mechanisms that mediate Zen states, updated by the latest discoveries in neuroscience.He also offers an enjoyable mix of interesting insights: the miracle of birds triggering awakening, training the unconscious mind, functions of underappreciated brain areas, lessons from Zen masters, and haiku.