Frederik Pferdt was first ever Chief Innovation Evangelist of Google. He has recently published a book .” What’s Next Is Now: How to Live Future Ready”.
According to him the book can help anyone to live a more meaningful life. Recommend the book highly. Especially the last point. “Spend time with yourself “.
The book emphases the importance of taking breaks on a regular basis, just to be with yourself. It is not about taking a vacation with family and friends. Rather taking time to be just with yourself. More frequently.
There is a famous quote by Kafka. ” “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” French Philosopher and Mathematician Pascal too wrote, ” “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Btw some 30 years back, in pregoogle times, I learnt computer programming, in Pascal and Turbo Pascal and Kafka was a great writer and philosopher. He is a data streaming tool now. 🙂
Pferdt says, “. Meditating every day helps to keep him open to new ideas and steer away from negativity.”
The word “MEDIT” literally means to focus one’s thoughts on : reflect on or ponder over.And the word “ACTION” means, the state of acting for a specific purpose. In this world, there are as many types of “Meditation”, as many types of human perspectives. And currently, “Mindfulness” seems to be the most used/overused/abused term, at least in the Corporate circles, especially since Zen reached the western shores during early 20th century.
For many in the western world, hardwired in their brain, with that dry logic of Aristotle, mindfulness and meditation are just means to meet some other ends. A de- stressor, productivity enhancer and some soothing balm for their tired nerves. But for an orientalist, who have grown up in the cradle of Patanjali, Buddha, Nagarjuna , Bodhidharma, Tao and Zen, journey is the destination. The Way is made by walking on it. And Salvation/self-realization is here and now. It lies at the meeting point of eternal and temporal, doing and do-nothing, action and nonaction and between breathing inspiration (inbreath) and expiration (outbreath). Aspiration, a strong desire to achieve something else , is not just a medical risk but an hindrance to a spiritual seeker as well.
I have been a student of spirituality and meditation for some 30 + years. And I did read quite a bit (in fact late Dr.Satish Inamdar, KFI Trustee and Director of The Valley School had said to me once, I will find my “way” when I stopped reading!) and did my quota of channel surfing and spiritual shopping in my life
Seeds of Zen was planted in my mind in the most unlikely of places. West Haven. During June 19998. That was my first visit to the land of Baseball and Basketball. Both Greek and Latin games for me as a spectator. In the NBA final. Chicago Bulls was playing against Utah Jazz. What got my eye and attention , was Chicago Bulls Coach. Phil Jackson. There was an article in NYTimes that he used to make players like Dennis Rodman , who was an out and out rebellious, rule breaking, toughie and Scottie Pippen and the larger than life Micheal Jordan were managed by the Zen Coach , Phil Jackson. I would have read and reread his book Sacred hoops more than once. He was deeply spiritual with Native Indian and Zen philosophy. In fact, Jackson spent a large part of his life studying Buddhism and its principles, from his mentor Shun Ryu Suzuki. Jackson written, “What appealed to me about Zen practice was its inherent simplicity. It didn’t involve chanting mantras or visualizing complex images, as had other practices I’d tried. Zen is pragmatic, down-to-earth, and open to exploration. It doesn’t require you to subscribe to a certain set of principles or take anything on faith.”
14 years later, In 2012, after my own experiments with truth and lies of spirituality, I did a hard landing into Bodhizendo and Zen and real spiritual seeking started.
AMA Samy and Bodhi Zendo were different. I would compare Bodhi Zendo a bit with Esalen ,of Big Sur, CA. One of the most beautiful place of learning I had visited. It was not as regimented as a Vipassana session. It did allow a good amount of personal space to oneself. Sometimes a good conversation, a good joke and laughter at the dining table along with some yummy food, is as good as anything else in this world towards one’s spiritual seeking. There are many who were/are real serous seekers. And then there were many others. Some had made it their very affordable summer resort more for getting away from the Pondy or Chennai summer. . They were so full to the brim with Aurobindo or many others, it was quite doubtful whether they have any space in their mind for Zen. Though Zen is about empty mind and nothingness and does not add anything more to us.
Secondly, AMA Samy had one of the best collection of books on Spirituality, philosophy , theology and psychology I have seen in my life. (AMA does seems to have read most of them. When I was a full time student of MA Education at APU Bangalore, I had to write a term paper on Phenomenology of Krishna murti’s teachings as an assignment for Dr. Kaustav Roy. I was searching for a book of Heidegger at the Zendo library one December afternoon. AMA walked in to keep some book and he asked me what I am reading. When I explained to him my struggle with that phenomenology paper, he spend 15 – 20 mins to sum it up for me like a precis. I ran back to my room, and jotted down in my note book, whatever I could remember. That assignment is one of the few for which I got an O grade. And getting it from Dr. Kaustav Roy was almost like a Fields medal.:-) )
Thirdly and most importantly, no one demanded that the camel got to pass through the eye of needle test of Faith first and salvation later. The Kalama sutta poster on the wall said it so succinctly , ““Don’t blindly believe what I say. Don’t believe me because others convince you of my words. Don’t believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts.” And AMA Samy did practice it to every dot in the I and j and crosses in the t. Though he had a tough and rough demeanour as a Zen master, there was an endearing quality of integrity and compassion about the man. He took his spirituality and teaching seriously, not himself. That was absolutely refreshing to my tired seeking mind.
Even then, it took me 3 years to seek to be accepted as AMA’s Zen student. As the saying goes, once bitten twice shy and the cat which falls into a hot water tub will stay even from a cold water one. Heidi, was a co-student of AMA in JAPAN with YAMADA Roshi and later was AMA’s student spoke to me and asked me to join Bodhi Sangha.
And I did decide to seek to be accepted as a student of AMA Samy, after reading this passage in one of the books written by him.
“The master cannot give you satori; she/ he is there to guide, to challenge, to test, to confirm. In truth, all the world is your teacher, the whole life of birth‑and‑death is the training field. The task of the Zen master is not to teach Self‑Being but to convey that it cannot be taught, that no methodology is capable of bringing it about. By forcing the student to look within her/himself, however, for that mode which (though unactualized) has been there all along, the Zen master may be said to be teaching. This teaching which is a non‑teaching is Zen’s most unique pedagogy. Rarely will a Zen master say what Zen is but will inexorably express what it is not. Zen, therefore, is a teaching by negation, negating everything that the student supposes Zen to be, hoping that the student will realize that by not being any particular thing, s/he is everything; and that by not being any particular self, s/he is selflessly all selves. Negation, thus, is an affirmation which is not acquired but which happens, which is awakened as naturally as ordinary consciousness, as though it had been there all along”.
Wont venture into a personal account of merits and demerits of all the other spiritual teacher and their “teaching”. Believe in the dictum , each their own. And my better half Thara has clearly taught me that , “What is good for goose, may not be good for the gander”. . In fact, if. Nithya Chaitanya Yati or Eknath Easwaran were alive, I would have sought them out.. Would have crossed a desert or swam across an ocean. At the same time, I stay away from a few, though I am living at walking distance from where they “teach”.
Have been a student of AMA Samy for some 9+ years now and since Jan 2023, almost every month I had made it a point to be there in Little Flower Zendo, Perumal Malai, Kodaikanal.
Commend and Recommend: Zen, AMA Samy and https://littleflowerzendo.in . That is the most Zen like reference one Zen student can offer to one’s dear and near.
