By: Lewis Richmond
In the last few years neurologists have been wiring up Zen meditators, and they’ve been discovering that the electrical patterns of the meditating brain look different than those of the normal waking mind. We might say that zazen is a different way to be awake. This difference may rest not so much in the cortex—the part that does thinking and logical tasks—but in the older parts of the brain, those having to do with emotion, spatial perception, and the faculty that defines the boundary of self and other.
This emerging neurological understanding may help us understand “think not-thinking” as a state where the higher brain functions are all operative and alert, but not purposefully active. We don’t shut down ordinary consciousness, as we would in states of deep concentration or trance. But we don’t apply our mind to anything in particular, either. Instead, we just rest in awareness itself, consciousness itself.