Last night I got to reading Ray Bradbury’s article from 1973 titled “Zen in the Art of Writing”.
There’s many a gem in this piece and not only for the writer. It’s really a meditation on any kind of skilled craftsmanship which demands focus, dedication, practice, and mastery. Which covers most things that are worth doing in life.
If you’ve got any kind of hobby or sport or craft where you trance out and get lost in your work, you’ll find yourself nodding along as you read.
I used a lot of the basic ideas, by indirect inspiration, when I practiced and preached Squat Every Day. They remain key parts of my tool-kit.
Of the three “action steps” recommended in the article — which aren’t actions at all — the one that sticks out most is
Don’t Think!
What could Ray Bradbury mean by this?
Telling people not to think is a modern-day heresy for a society that is obsessed with possessing facts and information.
What you, you want people to be stupid idiots??
Aren’t we thoughtless enough?
Was Ray Bradbury some kind of madman?
Possibly. Which makes his words all the more worthwhile.
Thinking, which means calculating with facts and logic, can be copied by a machine without a soul or a heart-beat.
It takes a real fool to stop thinking and understand.
In the Zen traditions, that voice you hear chattering away in your mind, the same voice that is always hungry, angry, aroused, distracted, greedy, and moody, is a self-deception.
The conscious part of ourselves digs in to our consciousness like an Alabama tick and makes itself at home by weaving a web of falsehoods and deceptions.
You think you are “you”, meaning, the ego’s web of falsehoods. You experience your life, your world, and yourself through this false personality.
But it’s all an illusion. The real Self experiences these thoughts, beliefs, desires, and the whirling flood of experiences, but it is not identical with any of them.
Zen teachings aim to first recognize the illusions, and then leave them behind by acknowledging the greater Self behind the illusions.
Western traditions dating back to the ancient Greek mystery schools and the early centuries of Christianity had their own versions of the Zen teaching. You probably don’t know about that because religion and spirituality in the West have become the butt of a joke over the last 200 some years of I <3 Science fanaticism. But the ideas and tools are there for anyone willing to look.
Anyway, whether you’re of Eastern or Western temper:
A good deal of what we believe to be true and what we experience as The Way Things Are does not depend on what is actually true in the world.
What we believe and experience depends on how things are inside ourselves.
This is what lead me to figure out a long time ago that feeling discomfort, or tiredness, or exhaustion, didn’t mean that I was really tired or exhausted or unable to continue.
The feeling is just an experience. The reality is something else.
You can take this insight and run a very long way with it. I’ve known of it since at least 2009 and as recently as this year I’m still extending and deepening my understanding of where you can go. I’ve only begun exploring the possibilities.
Which brings me back to Ray Bradbury.
Don’t think?
Yes. Don’t think.
Thinking is the ego’s way of cutting, slicing, chopping, separating, and dividing up reality for its own purposes.
The ego’s purposes are self-interested, greedy, and narcissistic.
Thinking weaves illusions out of vanity.
So what do you do if you don’t spend your days obsessing over “the facts” and “information” and thinking about what to do?
I won’t give the game away.
Instead, here’s a hint from Ray Bradbury himself:
“Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come.”
Here’s a challenge for you. What do you think he meant by that?
My email subscribers can send me your best guess.
There may be a secret prize for anyone that gets the answer.
Matt Perryman