zen

I have been drawn to Zen several times, and at all times, for some reason, perhaps silly, have withdrawn from it. I am reminded of my early dating days where some women commanded my attention, and then, they dropped off my radar for reasons as silly as a bad breath, or a gaudy lipstick.

My first foray into Zen was reading Shunryu Suzuki's classic, Zen mind, Beginner's mind. It was at best, a ramble and the only thing I plucked out of it, was the gem that one should look into everything with a child like awe and curiosity. This was followed by a book of koans, which did a great job of putting my mental faculties into a quandary, and even brought out my best snoring performances.

Then came, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which so far managed only to lie in digital form on my cavernous hard drive.

I chased other spiritual disciplines like Advaita and Taoism. These too failed to answer my questions to my satisfaction. The theories were too complex or rather, I could not draw any simplicity, the Aha sort, out of them.

All the while, I had been listening to Alan Watts, the brilliant, humorous British theologian, philosopher, and he somehow seemed to appeal to my sensibilities. Well, after I listened to a whole audiobook of his, I decided to find out what he had to say about Zen. To my delight, I discovered that Zen has no set doctrines, no spiritual texts to follow and even no preconceived definition of God. I liked that. So now I decided to eat, when hungry, sleep, when tired and more so, blog when agitated...