Zen In Action: A Behaviorist's Perspective on Zen Meditation Practices

Raymond Reed Hardy

Shaping Zazen Behavior

In the summer of 1969, just prior to the beginning of my graduate career at West Virginia University in the spring of 1970, I returned to my neighborhood immediately following a year in Vietnam courtesy of the U.S. Army. I was able and willing to explore almost any cultural alternative to the one that had put me and my Army buddies in Vietnam, but I was aware of the complexity of the issues, and anxious not to destroy my own opportunity for a decent life. My first direct exposure to Eastern practices had come when my infantry company encountered a Vietnamese monk sitting in zazen in a small (approximately 1 meter square) raised bamboo hut (formally called a “zendo” in the middle of a “free fire” war zone. Two things impressed me: first, the man never moved. He gave no sign that he was aware we were there. Second, we did everything in our power to avoid disturbing this man's religious practices. I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. We entered the open field from the West in such a way that each soldier, by turns, was immediately confronted with the little zendo where the monk sat eyes cast down, directly in front of him. As we entered the field we turned right and skirted around the outer edge of the field, walking as quietly as possible to the point where we exited the field directly opposite our entry point. The image of that monk, and the reverence with which my infantry company treated him in the midst of a terrible conflict, remain vivid for me today. What must the monk have experienced? As you might expect, this monk was a popular topic of conversation for several days. The young men in my platoon seemed most impressed with his stillness in the face of what to them would have been great anxiety stress. I was most impressed with the fact that our leaders respected his display of courage and devotion sufficiently to spare his life. As an adult male he was a legitimate military target. Had he attempted to flee, he would not have survived. Had Buddha saved him? Had our own religious beliefs saved him? Was he just “faking” it? Would it be possible to “fake” it? All of these questions reverberated as we all, young recruits and seasoned professionals as well, tried to make sense of this experience.

This experience with the meditator in Vietnam reminded me of my very first exposure to Zen. On June 16th, in the summer of 1963, just after my graduation from high school, I saw a news broadcast with complete video footage of the self immolation of a Buddhist monk named Quang Duc. Duc had set himself on fire in front of the U.S. Embassy and the Federal Capital Building in Saigon, as a political/social protest (this incident is described in Fitzgerald, 1972, p. 74). The fact that this man was able to keep himself in an erect sitting posture as he burned to death had a great impact on me. My first conclusion was that here was a man who had tremendous commitment to his beliefs. My second conclusion was that something in this man's background or development gave him tremendous self control; self control that, until then, I would have bet was impossible for any human being.

In the early days of my graduate training I was working hard learning about the entire field of psychology in a graduate program that placed special emphasis on behavior analysis (Dwight Harshbarger, B. Kent Parker, James N. Shafer, Hayne Reese, and K. Andy Lattal were among my mentors). Even though I was swamped with reading assignments for my courses, I found time to pour over a few books on Eastern practices. Among these were Remember Be Here Now, by Ram Dass (1971), and works by other authors like D.T. Suzuki's Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1964), and Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1971). As I write I am reminded that these were difficult times for me. I was under a great deal of stress. The idea of a mystical panacea was very appealing. Could these practices actually help me cope?

My two exposures to Buddhist practices, combined with the information I was gathering, convinced me that the key was in the practices, not the religious beliefs espoused by the various Eastern religions. Then, when I was given an opportunity to explore Eastern practices as a graduate student at West Virginia University, I leaped at the chance to attend the free University sponsored evening Hatha Yoga classes which were taught by one of the Psychology Program's graduate students, David Glazer. During these two hour yoga sessions the participants learned to do several "asanas" (movement patterns), and we began to develop what I have since concluded is the most important single skill that one may acquire in a lifetime of such practices; we began to learn to bring the wandering mind into focus on the present moment. We learned to leave all of the day's concerns, worries, desires and pains on the floor by to the door with our shoes and socks.

As I look back I realize that the most difficult thing for we Americans who are interested in exploring Eastern mystical practices is simply understanding what the practices are, and what effects they are intended to produce. Had my background of related experiences and interests not provided significant motivation to explore, I may never have translated that initial interest into meaningful behavior. There are many different Eastern practices. We Americans typically have absolutely no knowledge about the practice or its intended effects. As I read the works mentioned above I found myself being drawn to the simplicity of Shunryu Suzuki's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, (1971). Suzuki's main message about how to do zazen (sitting meditation) seemed almost too simple. To paraphrase Suzuki, “You need only sit, in a chair, or preferably, in a full- or half-lotus posture, back straight, head slightly tilted forward, eyes slightly open, and focus your attention on your breathing. Do this for 20 minutes, twice a day, and you will rediscover beginner's mind.” Simple enough, I thought, I'll give it a try.

Buddhist Practices, Behavioral Insights

Perhaps I was, and am, more open to zazen because of its behavioral simplicity. What I did not know then was that this simplicity itself is what zazen is all about. While much of what is written about Zen and zazen seems to stress cognitive and/or philosophical interpretations of meditation, the bare bones fact is that ZAZEN IS NOT A COGNITIVE ACTIVITY. IN FACT, IT IS AN ANTIDOTE FOR AN OVER ABUNDANCE THEREOF! The fundamental truth is that the inner discursive dialog that most of us consider “cognitive activity” is mostly just a distraction from the important events of our lives. When we bring our awareness to the present moment we are more able to experience the immediate flow of stimuli, behavior, and consequences that most appropriately guide our actions and fulfill our needs.

Zazen Compared with Common Covert Behavior Techniques

A simple comparison of zazen with such techniques as covert sensitization and systematic desensitization (introduced in Cautella, 1966) will help you see the parallels between zazen and these other covert emotion-regulating practices. In covert sensitization the person imagines severe negative consequences following an action as a way to begin to undermine the normal environmental reinforcers that are maintaining a bad habit like smoking, drinking, or eating unhealthy foods. I used this technique to help me quit smoking cigarettes. Each time I had an urge to smoke, I exhaled all of the air from my lungs, then held my breath as long as I could. After that, if I still had an urge to smoke, I went right ahead with it. This served to focus my awareness on my damaged lungs. I soon quit smoking, only to resume a year or so later. As with any behavior, quitting smoking requires practice. I later quit again, and have now been smoke free for several years.

In systematic desensitization the person who is having emotional difficulties surrounding a specific situation like traveling by plane, or riding in elevators, creates an ordered list (a hierarchy) of anxiety arousing events that lead up to the event that is the apparent source of the fear. The hierarchy is created by listing all of these events on note or index cards, one event per card, and ordering them so that the least anxiety arousing events appear first. The individual then practices muscle relaxation exercises as he/she flips through the hierarchy of events on the note cards. As each card is read, the practitioner relaxes until all anxiety associated with the actions described on the card has been dissipated (extinguished), then the next card is viewed. The goal of the process is to reach the point where all of the cards can be viewed without any sign of anxiety. This procedure may take many sessions. Even after these practice sessions, when the desensitized individual finds him-/her-self actually engaged in the feared behavior, the resurgence of anxiety is often dramatic but manageable. While it is true that the systematic desensitization procedure did much to reduce and shorten this effect, the key is the actual experience of engaging in the behavior without the feared consequences. Only that real world experience can completely extinguish the fear.

Zazen is a lot like these covert approaches except for one very important difference. Instead of helping the practitioner recuperate from an emotional or behavioral problem, zazen helps the practitioner become a more fully functional human being by undercutting a wide variety of bad mental and behavioral habits. Among the most important elements of zazen for people in our culture is sitting through your suffering. By this I do not mean that zazen will cause the suffering, although, if you sit long enough you will suffer cramps, numbness, and pain in your muscles and joints. Sitting through that kind of suffering is important too, but that is not what I am referring to above. It is the practice of sitting through the normal episodes of mental/emotional anguish that naturally occur in any human life that is so very important. Such a practice forms a behavioral foundation for calmly and effectively coping with life's emergencies. The key is that zazen provides a way for the individual to practice concentrating on the situation at hand; and practice makes perfect.

While the practice of zazen may seem to involve a kind of passive inaction (thus the source of the pun in my title above), what it actually does is build a behavioral foundation for focusing our attention on the events of the moment. To be able to bring all of your mental and physical resources into focus on whatever problem or issue has arisen in the moment is a very powerful ability. We all need this skill, yet few of us know how to practice it. Zazen is as pure and effective a way to practice present-centeredness as has ever been invented.

We in the behavioral sciences tend to neglect our cognitive and emotional selves. This is likely to be due to their inaccessibility to use these dimensions of experience in our analysis of others' behavior. In such analyses, we are limited to considering only what we can actually see. It may also be due to our reaction against the clear over-use of explanatory fictions supposedly based on cognitive and emotional mechanisms that is the mainstay of pop psychology in our culture. Regardless of the reasons for our neglect of these important dimensions of our own experience, in zazen we have a behavior that provides a way for us to take charge of our own present moments as they pass by. In zazen we have what appears to be an inaction that is among the most profound of acts. An act analogous to the teacher's demand for SILENCE! in the classroom, or the SHHHHHHH one sometimes hears in theaters. In zazen we have a way of bringing silence to our experience of the moment, and in that silence we can truly see, and hear for the first time. In that silent seeing and hearing, we can act, free of conceptual errors and inappropriate emotions. In zazen we have an opportunity to cleans our actions of the cognitive and emotional baggage that too often interfere.

The Behavioral Effects

As is true of all behavioral shaping processes, the shapee must act in a variety of ways, and be as responsive as possible to the onset of reinforcement. In zazen this is all covert. Zazen calls for no physical, cognitive, or emotional action, other than the posture itself. What the student of zazen experiences varies a great deal depending upon the student, but the prescription is the same for all. “Oh, just sit...” (Chadwick, 1999). But, how can such a simple admonition help one become a better person? The answer is obvious to any behavior analyst; when one becomes able to be in the present moment free of expectations, fears, and other cognitive/emotional baggage, one's behavior may swiftly adjust to meet the real concerns of the moment. One becomes increasingly aware of the real behavioral options and the real consequences for each them. In short, one becomes a better adjusted individual. It is ironic that the best description of this state of affairs was provided by Abraham Maslow when he endeavored to describe “self actualization”. Self actualization simply means being all that you can be.

In addition to facilitating the development of your various talents, the practice of honing your ability to be aware of what is going on in the present, zazen, tends to enrich the practitioner's life in other ways. One becomes aware of one's own responses to various life events. In other words, one becomes aware of one's own values. As a result, one becomes able to fine tune one's actions to better resonate with those values. The irony is that this behavioral path leads one directly to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consonance. The goal of almost all of the non-behavioral therapies. Yet again, the behavioral approach shows its pragmatic colors to be surrounded by the golden glow of promise.

For more information about Zen Buddhism please visit my website. My book, Zen Master: Practical Zen for Americans by an American, is now available through The Wheatmark Bookstore online.

References

Cautela, J. R. (1966) Treatment of compulsive behavior by covert desensitization. Psychological Record, 16, 33-41.

Chadwick, D. (1999) Crooked Cucumber. New York : Broadway Books, p 199.

Dass, R. (1971) Be Here Now, Remember. San Cristobal, NM: Lama Foundation; New York: distributed by Crown Publishing.

Fitzgerald, H. (1972) Fire in the Lake. New York, Little Brown, p 74.

Hardy, R. R. (1999) Zen Master: Practical Zen for Americans by an American. St. Norbert College Printing: Green Bay, WI.

Suzuki, D. T. (1964) An Introduction to Zen Buddhism; with A Forward by C.G. Jung . New York : Grove Wiedenfeld.

Suzuki, S. (1971) Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Weatherhill: New York.

Notes

1 This was said by Shunryu Suzuki to one of his students when she explained that she was "having trouble focusing her mind on her breathing."

2 I damaged the cartilage in my right knee demonstrating the full lotus for some friends in 1980. I can now sit comfortably in the full lotus, but it took at least five years of limbering exercises before I could even adopt the posture safely.

Graphics were created by Scott Menzel, located on the web at www.artasm.com

Dr. Hardy is an Associate Professor of Psychology who obtained his Ph.D. in Psychology from West Virginia University in 1974. His special interests are applied learning theory (Behavior Analysis), human development, comparative/evolution psychology and personal development/personal growth. In addition to sharing responsibility for teaching General Psychology, Statistics, and Basic Principles of Psychological Research, Dr. Hardy teaches Lifespan Human Development, Early Childhood Activities,Conditioning and Learning, Comparative Behavior, and Personal Development: A Multicultural Perspective.

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