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Product Description
This groundbreaking book sees acclaimed psychologist Susan Blackmore combining the latest scientific theories about mind, self, and consciousness, with a lifetime's practice of Zen. Prepared to step beyond the bounds of conventional investigation and scrutinise her own mind and experiences, she discovers that the time-honoured teachings of Zen provide dazzling insights into some of today's greatest scientific mysteries. (Please note: previously published as Ten Zen Questions.)
About the Author
Dr Susan Blackmore, psychologist and writer, has previously researched and written on consciousness, free will, memes, and anomalous experiences. She balances writing, blogging, broadcasting, and lecturing with regularly practising Zen. She is the acclaimed author of The Meme Machine.
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4 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
You Are Your Thoughts
1 July 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Let me start this review with a quote from the introduction: "I am not a Buddhist. I have not joined any Buddhist orders, adopted any religious beliefs, nor taken any formal vows. I say this now because I do not want anyone to think I am writing under false pretenses. Nothing I say here should be taken as the words of a Zen Buddhist...This book is an exploration of ten of my favourite questions and where they took me...This book describes my own attempt to combine science and personal practice in the investigation of consciousness." As someone with a passing interest in philosophy, Buddhism, and the study of consciousness, I found the book quite interesting. My only real complaint is that perhaps Ms. Blackmore could have included a bit more "science." To be fair though, there is brief mention of familiar folks like Antonio Damasio [Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain], Daniel Dennett, Benjamin Libet, Christof Koch, Alva Noe, and Richard Wiseman [59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute (Vintage)], to name of few. On the plus side, I found myself agreeing completely with her general opinions, which she derives by the end of the book, on what consciousness is: "There is nothing it is like to be me. I am not a persisting conscious entity. I do not consciously cause the actions of my body. Consciousness is not a stream of experiences. Seeing entails no vivid mental pictures or movie in the brain. There is no unity of consciousness either in a given moment or through time. Brain activity is neither conscious nor unconscious. There are no contents of consciousness. There is no now."
The ten questions that Ms. Blackmore asks are: 1) Am I Conscious Now? 2) What Was I Conscious Of A Moment Ago? 3) Who Is Asking the Question? 4) Where Is This? 5) How Does Thought Arise? 6) There Is No Time. What is Memory? 7) When Are You? 8) Are You Here Now? 9) What Am I Doing? 10) What Happens Next?
In sum, this book makes a great prelude to her newer book, Consciousness (A Brief Insight), and for an introduction to the study of consciousness, this pair can't be beat. Lastly, I would say that everything neuroscience is telling us now-a-days, [for example: Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, or The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human] was presaged in many Buddhist writings, which makes this particular line of attack on consciousness studies very unique indeed. Highly recommended.
The ten questions that Ms. Blackmore asks are: 1) Am I Conscious Now? 2) What Was I Conscious Of A Moment Ago? 3) Who Is Asking the Question? 4) Where Is This? 5) How Does Thought Arise? 6) There Is No Time. What is Memory? 7) When Are You? 8) Are You Here Now? 9) What Am I Doing? 10) What Happens Next?
In sum, this book makes a great prelude to her newer book, Consciousness (A Brief Insight), and for an introduction to the study of consciousness, this pair can't be beat. Lastly, I would say that everything neuroscience is telling us now-a-days, [for example: Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, or The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human] was presaged in many Buddhist writings, which makes this particular line of attack on consciousness studies very unique indeed. Highly recommended.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Interesting and useful
30 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
There are very few students who have given a detailed report of what it actually is like to practice zazen and to wrestle with all the distractions, idle thoughts, and false steps that arise. Good for Susan Blackmore for trying to give a brave and honest account of her experiences. I agree with her teacher that there was too much intellectualization and thinking going on-but that's who Ms. Blackmore is. (She's a scientist.) I'm wondering if the person who gave Ms. Blackmore's book one star even bothered to read it. Ms. Blackmore doesn't claim to be a Buddhist. Where is the compassion for a beginner?
This book is useful and fascinating, but I have a couple of questions. Did Ms. Blackmore take notes and transcribe her experiences later or is she reporting from memory? If she's doing it from memory, the account loses it's usefulness as she's reporting events that took place many years previously. If she took notes in the evening or wrote in a journal, wouldn't that have affected her practice during the day? It seems to me that this would add another level of complication to her practice. The temptation to rehearse for a reading audience or nail the right words to describe what was going on would be almost overwhelming. And wouldn't this be a barrier to having a full and immediate experience?
This book is useful and fascinating, but I have a couple of questions. Did Ms. Blackmore take notes and transcribe her experiences later or is she reporting from memory? If she's doing it from memory, the account loses it's usefulness as she's reporting events that took place many years previously. If she took notes in the evening or wrote in a journal, wouldn't that have affected her practice during the day? It seems to me that this would add another level of complication to her practice. The temptation to rehearse for a reading audience or nail the right words to describe what was going on would be almost overwhelming. And wouldn't this be a barrier to having a full and immediate experience?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Zen and the Art of Consciousness
7 Nov 2011
Format:Paperback
Susan Blackmore bravely reveals her own stream of consciousness that is continuously being interrupted by chance sense-data experiences. It is a journey of the conscious into the unconscious that tackles important issues that, in a materialistic world, many might prefer to deny altogether, rather than contemplate head on - issues such as memory, knowledge, thought, agency, responsibility and free will. She writes from the point of view of the retrospective observer who judges the performance in accordance with the rules of the game, rather than as the player who performs it. Unfortunately though, these rules are constructs of the conscious mind and are being altered by our sense-data experiences all the time. The Zen experience itself, however, goes some way towards dissolving them altogether. Perhaps we have spent too much time trying to define how we should play this game and too little trying to understand what made us want to bother in the first place. Reading this little book is an excellent therapeutic process that might help dissipate the `what it's like to be me' in the machine and find our answers in the questions instead.
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