Living Zen Remindfully by James H. Austin

Author:James H. Austin
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2016-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

13

Revisiting Kensho, March 1982

It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently. It is as though the spatial act of seeing were changed by a new dimension.

Carl Jung (1875–1961)1

It was 9 a.m. that March morning in 1982. Back then, I was in London, en route to the second morning of the two-day retreat. Suddenly, the spatial act of seeing entered an extraordinary new dimension. [ZB: 536–544] For more than three decades, I’ve been seeking to clarify which basic mechanisms could account for the huge shift into this new dimension.

As this millennium began, a new model suggested itself: if some triggering stimulus were to capture attention, a deep subcortical shift in the thalamus could transform the brain from its overconditioned Self-referential mode into an other-referential context.2 But this problem remained: No single big stimulus had suddenly captured my attention that morning. My memory was very clear about that.

My incidental memory was also crystal clear about many other events during those few minutes leading up to 9 a.m.3 For example, I did remember sitting by the window on the right side of the train as it traveled to this station. The scenery that had rushed past this train window on the right side could have contributed to some preliminary asymmetry of optico-kinetic stimulation in my two cerebral hemispheres. I also remembered descending from the train on that same right side, then turning slowly to the left and walking several steps.

And in recent years I began to search more carefully for links in the next sequences of remembered events. This inventory of items takes the following outline:

Standing there on that unfamiliar platform, watching the train move away, following it as it curved to the right, became smaller, and then slowly disappeared down into that long tunnel

Hearing the diminuendo of its clattering along the tracks, as this clackety-clack also followed that same route, and faded off into the distance

Standing there now in the quiet of an empty platform, gazing at the dingy interior of this unfamiliar station

Next, turning casually, 45 degrees to the right, to look up, beyond some grimy buildings

Seeing, way up there, a bit of open blue sky

Instantly, the shifting of this entire ordinary scene into a totally transformed novel dimension [ZB: 536–539; ZBR: 407–410, 414–432]

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