Introduction

The root of this learning experience began during my early college years, a time in which of course I was still finding my identity and still learning a great deal about myself as much as the wider world.  While I was always a very studious and dedicated individual to my schooling and academics, I also went through a period as a young adult of loneliness and emotional turmoil that has not repeated since, but upon which I reflect often to this day.  Granted, I have always been the classic introvert, meaning rather socially anxious and highly introspective, and one manifestation of this introspective, thinking nature is that I have long held a personal interest in religious and spiritual studies or thought, which eventually during college led to my ‘discovery’ of Buddhism and Zen Buddhism in particular.  Although I did eventually take college courses in these studies as well, I even went one step further and eventually found a student-led Zen Buddhist meditation group on campus.  It was a very small group – only about 5 to 6 people max attended in any given week – but most of them were the regular attendees who were almost always present and, in most cases, had been part of the group far longer when I joined them.  The reason this experience is so cherished now is because during that year or so that I attended the group, it had a tangible positive effect on some of the emotional turmoil I had been going through and I learned a good deal about myself and my own theories of mind in the process.

Skills and Insights Gained

The main activity of this group during our sessions, aside from the social gathering aspect, was an hour-long combined form of sitting and walking meditation, very Japanese in tradition, from what I gathered, and including some chanting.  The ritual of it all was on the surface highly structured and pre-determined, yet underneath was the heart of Zen Buddhism:  practicing calm, being present, breathing, non-judgmental observation of body and mental activity and, ultimately, not ‘holding on’ to the things that tether us mentally to this existence.  That last part I know sounds very esoteric, but ironically unlike all the other learning experiences I have examined in my essays thus far, the insights gained through this meditation and Zen study I find much simpler to vocalize because they are seemingly so direct and non-complicated at heart.  Practicing all these insights or mental-emotional skills in one’s daily life, however, is the much more difficult part:

• Stepping back from an emotional moment or point of difficulty to regain balance
• Being keenly aware of my own physical rhythms – ‘listening’ to my body-state
• Understanding how physical state changes affect my mental state of being, and vice versa
• Feeling connected with and grounded in my surroundings or present moment
• Approaching life with openness, non-judgment and lack of fear or ‘grasping’
• Finding my own spirituality in a way that felt true to myself and held deeper meaning

Lessons Learned

All the skills mentioned above are ones that have a particular trait in common, which is that they are very ‘meta-cognitive’ in my understanding, meaning they taught me how to better observe or parse out the thoughts, feelings, and emotions I was already having from a yet more objective viewpoint.  Of course, a person can ever only be so objective about their own thoughts and mental processes before they inevitably hit their ‘blind spots’, patterns and parts of our psyches we cannot easily view for ourselves where another person could.  However, the greatest lesson I learned from this meditation and the social aspects of the Zen group itself is that instead of trying so hard constantly to control my thoughts or emotions, rather I learned how to let them be, feel them without any judgement or ulterior motive and observe what happens next before invoking my ego or other more ‘logical’ faculties.  To my amazement, this often reduced my own stress and allowed me mental room to find myself beyond the momentary emotions or anxieties that arose, which then invoked more mental calm or peace.  This experience came at a time, as mentioned earlier, when my personal or academic life had become exceedingly confusing and anxiety-producing, a time when I felt my emotional self very out of balance and quite vulnerable.  However, what I learned of Buddhism and Zen and from my friends in the group helped me learn a new kind of balance and observant thinking that was invaluable in making it through such a rough period and knowing there are always other angles and approaches to a given situation.

Impact

Those lessons and skills, of course, have reached far beyond that original point of stress or anxiety in my life. Recently I began practicing yoga, for example.  At one point in a recent session, my yoga trainer commented on how well I was doing with my breathing during the entire session, even without any prompting on his part, and this immediately brought me back to my Zen meditation experience. Or, for example, even now in my life whenever I find myself being overcome with emotion more negative or unhelpful in nature, acting hastily or stubborn or too self-involved or just becoming overwhelmed with worry or stress, I know these are the signs that I must consciously tell myself to breathe, step back for even a moment, observe and not hold on to whatever is causing me to become so defensive, anxious or even perhaps fearful underneath it all, and thereby hopefully gain even just a glimmer of perspective that I had not realized was present and could lead to more productive outcomes. This is part psychology, part spirituality, part philosophy for me.  Yet the result is that there is a centeredness I have carried within me ever since my Zen meditation experience that has become a bedrock of stability and open mindedness in my actions all these years later.