by Zen Teacher Daiju Zenji
https://daiju.com.au/
Frans Stiene asked if I would share some insight on the the topic of ‘Nen’ (念) for his website. I am happy to oblige because understanding Nen is an essential part in our journey to the heart of Zen.
If we look at the Zen tradition, especially through the Sutras and through the works of the great Masters, we see that it springs from a deep theoretical base. For many of us Westerners this can be a steep hill to climb. Going right back to Zen’s Indian roots, when Mahākāśyapa smiled at Buddha during the Flower Sermon, this same familiarity with philosophical, intellectual, ethical and emotional concepts informed countless generations of aspiring practitioners.
On the other hand, whether we follow the Christian faith or not, the majority of us Westerners have a core set of beliefs that are built around Christian philosophy and ethics. Some of this is faith-based, some of this is ethical, some is emotional – all of it has informed our world- view since we were children. Many of these concepts do not work hand-in-hand with Zen concepts.
When I teach Zazen I take time “to enter the weeds” and explain some of the philosophical concepts that drive the WHY.
One of these concepts is ‘Nen’ Much of this is an excerpt from the chapter “Why We Sit Zazen” in my book A Guided Course in Zen Meditation.
1 NEN, 2 NEN, 3 NEN
To the Japanese the ‘Nen’ (念) is the smallest unit of time. It literally means a “moment of awareness”.
We are so used to processing vast amounts of information that we never really understand how the human mind works. We see, think and do so much all at the same time that we feel we can multitask almost anything. However, the mind does not work like this. The mind can really only do one thing at a time, it is just that it does it so fast that we have the illusion we are multitasking.
If you were to look at the streets in Sydney (especially if you were born in a less chaotic city or in the country) it seems that everyone is trying to shove as many cars as possible down
roads that were not designed for this. When I used to drive to work in the morning I would find my main road of 3 lanes became a main road of 2 lanes and then finally a main road of 1 lane. As the roads became narrower drivers became more and more stressed since the number of cars had not changed, just the space to fit them! This is exactly how stress in the mind works too.
When we work and live at a rate we are accustomed to it is like a well-designed traffic system. Everything flows smoothly and things are resolved at a comfortable pace. When we are overwhelmed with demands of either an external or internal nature we are like those drivers who are trying to eat breakfast and navigate the car through hostile traffic whilst talking to the kids who are screaming the back seat. No wonder people (and drivers) snap… crying for it all to slow down for a moment – we are overwhelmed and just want a breather.
The question is: How do we become overwhelmed in the first place? The Japanese word ‘nen’ illustrates the smallest unit of time available to us. It is a moment of thought or awareness. It is that instant where we see, hear, touch, taste or smell something. It is pure and unadulterated awareness before we can think about what we see, before we can conceptualise it. We cannot even describe it because it is pre-thought and thus pre-speech. We actually live like this all the time; this is the reality of the mind at work. 1 nen, a sound enters our awareness; next nen we smell something; next nen we see something.
However well pure awareness might serve the poet and artist it is no good if we cannot share it with another. To do this we have to name what we have experienced. Thus we hear a sound (1st nen) and then we name that “bird song” (2nd nen). We experience vision (1st nen) and then we name that which we see “tree” (2nd nen), and so on. To name the objects of our awareness we have had to make a sacrifice though, we sacrifice one nen of awareness to allow that time to be used for the naming of the first object, thus instead of two moments of raw experience we have one experience and one name for that experience. Again, wandering through the world collecting experiences and naming them might be fascinating for some people but it is not going to be of much practical use for getting a report on your boss’s desk by 9am. This is why we use at least another nen to conceptualise further. It goes something like this: I see an object (1st nen) which I recognise is a “dog” (2nd nen) then a thought, a memory or an idea is born from this: “I was bitten by a dog” (3rd nen). We have used up another moment of raw experience to categorise and intellectualise that first moment of awareness from the name we have given it. 1 nen, 2 nen, 3 nen. Instead of 3 experiences we have a single experience and a line of thought; though usually we will go on and on embellishing it further with ideas about the dog’s pedigree and colour then our mind ambles off to think about the dog we wanted but could never have etc, etc… We are suddenly in a day-dream all starting from a single experience and time flows by as we become lost in our thoughts. Over the day these thoughts multiply. We take less and less in as our mind is overstocked and overfilled, our stress levels rise and we wonder why. When we practice Zen meditation we are paring our experiences back down towards the 1st nen by training the mind. We have the awareness of our breath entering our hara (1st nen) and then we give it a name “one” (2nd nen). There is nothing else to think about, there can be no 3rd nen possible because we catch our mind wandering and we bring it right back to the breath and “one”. We keep this going for the length of our sit; experiencing the breath fully and then letting that experience go. There is no comparison of breaths (“wow, that one was almost as good as the one I had 10 breaths ago”) and no holding onto the experience wanting it to be bigger and better. We experience fully, give it a name and do it over and over again.
When we stand up from our meditation we suddenly discover that we feel calm and centred again. Sure we might still have to write that report or drive through the mad streets but we have allowed the mind to go back to what it does best, just experiencing. We have ‘done nothing’ but are now clear, calm and centred. We are ready to do the work that seemed so daunting just 30 minutes before.
Commentary by Frans Stiene:
Within Okuden Reiki II we have the phrase: 本者是正念 hon sha ze sho nen – my original nature is right mind/awareness. This means that Mikao Usui was pointing out that we have to stay within the 1st “nen” and not interpret everything we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Because if we interpret then we move into the 2nd, 3rd etc… “nen”. When we keep following our thoughts we get distracted, we make up a story and our “present” moment, the 1st “nen” is not fresh anymore. Thus the more we interpret what we feel in a hands-on healing session, during our meditation, and of course in our daily life, today, the less we follow Mikao Usui’s teachings and the harder life will be. Which means that we start to get more angry and worried, instead of less. But when we keep that 1st “nen” fresh then we have more gratitude, we will be more true to our way and our being and we start to develop a compassion for ourselves and others which does not change according to circumstances.
Daiju Zenji’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Guided-Course-Zen-Meditation-ebook/dp/B0D4QX9JD8
