I’ve been practicing zen meditation for 25 minutes a day since December 2020, and after a year of that I began training in memory sport, developing a 100 point major system and a 100 point PAO. I’m curious if anyone else participates in both pursuits and has noticed how they both feed off each other so naturally.
Zen is very difficult at first. Because we so rarely focus on doing or thinking absolutely nothing, when we try to implement a zen practice it can be one of the most strenuous things we could possibly do. Hopefully though, if you can discipline yourself enough to go through the motions regularly a breakthrough eventually occurs, seemingly out of nowhere. This leads you to say to yourself “Oh…that’s what zen is all about”. But once you’e had that thought, the effect is lost (remember you’re not supposed to be thinking anything at all).
D.T. Suzuki claimed that zen’s main contribution to buddhism was the use of koans. Examples of famous koans include sayings like “What does the sound of one hand clapping make?” or “What did my face look like before my grandfather was born?” But the introduction of koans into buddhism wasn’t without controversy. The fact that they pass from one generation to the next inevitably gives the impression that there is some wisdom contained within the content of the statement. This is a misunderstanding. Koans are meant to be seen more as a snapshot of one particular monk’s attainment of enlightenment. You get a better idea of its purpose from the story of the Flower Sermon. The original Buddha was going to give a sermon and a bunch of people came to hear him. But when he got there he didn’t say anything, he just held up a flower. Everyone was baffled, then one monk started clapping because he understood completely. See how much more time that story took to tell than one of the koans?
Koans undergo the same process of all ideas attractive enough to survive multiple generations. At first they enter collective consciousness because they’re so revolutionary. Once their embedded in collective consciousness their revolutionary fervor diminishes simply because they become so commonplace. They’re essentially reduced to platitudes that everyone can recite but nobody really thinks about.
When we use memory to aid the acquisition of knowledge, our success depends on our ability to model the data we see into predictable patterns. The more different types off models we’re able to apply in different ways, the more comfortably we’ll be able to live 99% of the time.
But the map is not the territory. Too much reliance on model thinking can lead so-called “overeducated” people to have an underdeveloped ability to regulate the sensory input constantly being received from the world as they physically experience it. This becomes a self-perpetuating problem as their lack in confidence for their sensory perceptions causes them to rely on their models ever more heavily. This leads to disaster when something unexpected happens that can’t be explained by one of their models.
During catastrophe, someone suffering this fate will often retreat ever more heavily into their models the more they’re proven to be unreliable. Unfortunately, the end result of this is that the pursuit of knowledge becomes branded as a pursuit reserved for cowards. Zen practitioners knew this so they developed a discipline to practice transcendence of model thinking. You won’t know the secret to the universe once you can properly imagine what one hand clapping sounds like. You’ll only achieve that enlightenment once you can properly imagine what one particular guy felt when he could actually imagine it.
I think that memory sport can not only achieve what koans are meant to achieve, it can do so more effectively. Admittedly, I have an extremely limited experience using a PAO or memory palaces. But when considering what it is that makes them so effective, my relationship with zen can’t help but influence my understanding. The images used for memorization are most successful when they go against the models I’m accustomed to seeing the world through. They’re superior to koans because while koans may have to be meditated to be understood, the irrational logic used to drill or compete can be summoned at will.
Zen practice is focused on disciplines that empty our consciousness of models. The rituals performed by monks and the koans they meditate upon are meant to replace those models with an irrational logic that can be sincerely believed in the moment and yet not relied upon in the future (because it’s irrational). If koans are passed to future generations, novices and the uninitiated will assume they can be relied on. But they can’t, because they’e irrational. This is why the introduction of koans into buddhism was controversial. Once a koan becomes known it loses all value.
Memorizing images for memory sport improves upon the practice because its like creating a limitless supply koans at warp speed and then immediately forgetting them. I feel this to be more congruent with what the spirit of the zen practitioners who first introduced the koan. I am new at zen and memory sport, but I feel that if a master practitioner of zen were introduced to memory sport by a competent teacher, he would see it as the next logical step in the evolution of his practice
