Three Ways to Become a Deeper Thinker

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What is the sound applaud with one hand?

Perhaps you have ever encountered this mysterious question. This is a koan, or riddle, created by an 18th century Zen Buddhist master. Hakuin Ekaku. Such paradoxical questions have been used for centuries to train young monks, who are taught to think and discuss them. It was supposed to be tedious work that would cause maddening frustration, but there was a method to it too. The novices were not expected to give clear answers; they had to, through mental struggle, gain a deeper understanding of the matter itself – for this was the path to enlightenment.

You don’t have to train to become a Buddhist monk to realize the value of asking difficult questions without clear answers. Fighting with your own koan, for example Why am I alive? or What would I give my life for?— can be a way to improve your emotional health and grow as a person. You may resist this because the fundamental mysteries of life are uncomfortable to contemplate, and the world gives you every opportunity to avoid them. But when you enter the mysterious world of unanswered questions, you are sure to grow as a person and change for the better.

Read: Why so many Americans are turning to Buddhism

The asks questions those who matter most to us are the ones least likely to get clear answers. If you ask me, “Why do you love your wife?” I will try to answer convincingly. I know it is, but the reasons seem impossible to articulate. Whatever I say (“Because she’s nice to me”) will completely miss the point and trivialize the relationship. Indeed, the fact that fairly trivial questions are easy and clear to answer is no coincidence. (“How do I get to the supermarket?” Two turns right, then left.) The famous psychotherapist Carl Jung considered this simple answer test a way to understand what is most important. “All of life’s greatest and most important problems are fundamentally insoluble,” he said. wrote in 1931.

We could call life’s unanswerable mysteries “right-brain questions.” Neuroscientists interested in the lateralization of the brain’s hemispheres (that is, how each side performs different functions) have received shown that when people use deep insight and intuition, rather than an analytical method, to understand problems, a burst of high-frequency, or gamma-band, activity appears in the right temporal lobe, corresponding to a change in blood flow in the right temporal lobe. right anterior superior temporal gyrus. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis of British neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, who argued that people primarily use the right hemisphere of the brain when thinking about questions about the life process. meaning.

We typically resist the work associated with this kind of right-brain insight because confronting large, intractable problems is inconvenient. As some studies show showLife’s complex questions without clear answers can cause a gloomy mood without any clear biological explanation. This can be especially difficult for teenagerspondering for the first time the big questions about fate and death, emptiness and meaninglessness, guilt and condemnation.

You may come to the conclusion that for the sake of your well-being, you should avoid such thoughts. But you will be wrong, much like you would be wrong if you avoid exercise because exercise involves bodily discomfort. To begin with, discussing issues of life, death, and love requires us to acknowledge the limits of our understanding—to say, “I don’t know.” Researchers have demonstrated Experiments have shown that people are extremely averse to giving this reaction, but it is a sign of cognitive health. It seems reasonable to assume that making this admission easier could be a good way to improve your cognitive health.

Even answering “I don’t know” can lead to deeper, albeit unexpressed, understanding—with important benefits. For example, in 2012, two psychologists asked a sample of young people how often they thought about questions such as “Do you ever think about your purpose in life?” and “Have you ever thought about the human spirit or what happens to life after death?” They found that people who spent more time on these questions tended to score higher than their peers on a range of measures measured as spiritual intelligence, critical existential thinking, sense of meaning in life, curiosity and well-being. To me it definitely looks like cognitive health.

From the June 1963 issue: “The Riddle” by Albert Camus.

Tobtaining evidence Overall, I would propose the hypothesis that we as a society have become spiritually flabby and mentally out of shape because we are not grappling with difficult existential questions. How much research has there been documentedThe United States has seen a sharp rise in anxiety and depression, especially among young people. I believe it’s not because we think too many about the complex issues of life, but also small. Like me discussed earlierwe spend hours and days mesmerized by the little things brought into our lives through our technological devices, and are less inclined to delve into deeper issues. I believe that increased levels of sadness and fear are, at least in part, a result of our philosophically sedentary lifestyles. Similar to the benefits of strenuous exercise, the short-term discomfort of big questions is necessary to avoid the long-term ill health that comes from avoiding those questions.

To solve this problem, I would like to see a revolution in existential thinking, a passion for pondering the mysteries of life. Social entrepreneurs could open reading rooms and discussion clubs in every city. Philosophers can become as popular as the most popular fitness influencers. In any case, this is my fantasy. But until that becomes a reality, I can suggest a daily routine that you can follow.

1. Schedule a mental workout.
If you go to the gym, you probably do it at a scheduled time using specific exercises. And there are certain things you don’t do during a workout: don’t eat pizza and don’t sleep. You can use similar principles for your mental preparation. Each day, choose a period of time (say 30 minutes) that you can devote to weighing the difficult and truly important issues. First, ban all devices and allow no distractions; then figure out in advance what existential or spiritual issues you plan to address. You can use a paragraph or two of philosophy or scripture to focus your attention on a specific issue, break it down into parts, and improve your understanding.

In Tibetan Buddhism this method is called analytical meditationand similar practices exist in other traditions. As you may find in your first weeks at the gym, the exercises feel difficult at first and you want to give up. But with discipline, the habit becomes easier, then enjoyable, and then irreplaceable. Over the years, I have actually combined these two practices: Immediately after an hour in the morning at the gym, I spend the next half hour (usually 6:30–7 a.m.) in meditation. At this point, I can’t imagine starting my day any other way.

2. Go for a long walk.
For some people, a good alternative is to go for a long walk alone, without devices, to give space to the right-brain issues. Philosophers have long advocated this method—Immanuel Kant was reputedly such a regular walker, which contributed to his deep thinking, that neighbors synchronized their watches at his passing. Research has shown that walking naturally stimulates creative thinking and facilitates the ability to concentrate without distractions. I like to prescribe this practice—again, ideally early in the morning—to my students, especially if they are experiencing feelings of meaninglessness.

3. Induce boredom.
One of the consequences of our screen-centric culture is that we are never truly bored. This may sound great, like an improvement in quality of life. But that’s not true. The experience of boredom is critical for abstract thinking and comprehension because it helps stimulate the default mode network—a set of brain regions that become active when the outside world does not interfere with our attention. Neuroscientists have shown that such activities are vital to accessing high-level meaning. For this reason, creating periods of boredom in our lives is really important because they no longer happen spontaneously. A good way to do this is to run errands and take short trips without taking your phone with you. At first, you will still feel the reflex of reaching for it every few seconds. But pretty quickly, you’ll start to feel your default mode network being activated again, perhaps for the first time in a long time. In a deep cognitive sense boredom is productive.

Arthur Brooks: To get out of your head, get out of the house.

A a decade agoAfter a long trip to India, I took a series of long walks to ponder unanswerable questions. Among other things, I considered the question posed in the koan that opens this essay: What does clapping with one hand sound like? I sought not to find an answer, but to better understand a question that I hoped would help explain other mysteries in my life.

Over the course of a few weeks, I realized that the sound of clapping hands is illusion. The hand movement simulates clapping, but the only way to make the illusion a reality is to add a second hand. You can imagine the sound of one hand clapping, but the clapping does not exist until the other hand is present. Realizing this, I realized the koan question as a way to understand the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness (Shunyawada in Sanskrit), which says that no single thing or person has an internal existence, but exists only relatively, dependent on everything else. The idea of ​​individual nature as clapping hands is an illusion.

Upon further reflection, this illuminated to me another untold secret that I mentioned earlier: why I love my wife. By myself I clap with one hand, an illusion of man. I only become a complete person when I am completed by the presence of my partner. She is for me the other hand that creates the sound that is our life.