That Is Not Your Mind!
Zen Reflections on the Surangama Sutr
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- ¥2,600
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- ¥2,600
Publisher Description
Viewed through the lens of psychology and neuroscience, a classic Zen sutra becomes a springboard for exploring sensory experiences and realizing freedom.
What does it mean to be liberated through one’s sensory life? In That Is Not Your Mind! Zen teacher Robert Rosenbaum explores this question by taking readers on a step-by-step journey through the Surangama Sutra. This Chinese Mahayana sutra is known for its emphasis on practicing with the senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and the Buddhist “sixth sense” of mind or cognition), as well as its teachings on the necessity of basic ethical commitments, like not killing or stealing, to support the development of one’s meditation practice and insight.
Rosenbaum interweaves passages from the sutra with contemporary insights from neuroscience and psychology, illustrating the usefulness of the text with anecdotes from his life and his forty years of teaching experience. In addition to learning about a sutra that played an important role in the creation of Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen Buddhism, readers are guided through meditations and other practices derived from the sutra’s teachings, such as hearing meditations (awareness of sound, awareness of silence, turning hearing inwards) and centering meditations (basic centering as well as centering on compassion).
"One of the most difficult aspects of Buddhist practice is wrapping our minds around how every moment is both a deceptive seeming and also a true gateway to awakening," writes Rosenbaum. "Nothing is hidden, but there is an infinite field we cannot see."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zen teacher Rosenbaum (What's Wrong with Mindfulness) delivers a thorough introduction to the Surangama Sutra, the Buddhist text in which the Buddha's attendant Ananda gets seduced by a courtesan and, horrified that he nearly broke his vow of chastity, requests instructions from the Buddha that comprise much of the rest of the sutra. Rosenbaum highlights the sutra's three key themes: everything is an illusion, liberation depends on seeing things as they are and not how they relate to the observer, and one's actions must conform to enlightened ideals. The author explores the Buddha's "five delusions of the mind," which include the false binary of pleasure and pain and the illusion that one can avoid a thought once it's in one's head. Rosenbaum adds to the sutra's instructions on mantra chanting and sound meditation with his own suggestions for deepening practice, recommending that readers pay attention to sounds and silences while meditating and place one's hands over one's heart to foster self-love. Rosenbaum does an admirable job of summarizing the sutra's teachings, respecting the source material and explaining its wisdom to readers with humanity and compassion. Buddhist practitioners should take note.
