I
began studying Zen and practicing Zazen
(seated Zen meditation) at around eight years of age. The principle point of
Zen, the central and guiding theme is to be capable of facing the human
condition without illusions, particularly without the kind of illusions that
cause harm either to oneself or to others. Zen is all about seeing past those
illusions that distort our understanding of reality – a task much harder to accomplish
than you might think largely because the very reason we often cling on to those
illusions is to avoid dealing with reality in the first place! Nevertheless, the
Zen perspective became a standpoint engrained in my mind, one that has served
as a guiding principle throughout a life lived with great intensity and
extensity. It is a standpoint that is very much reflected in all my works and
particularly, in the broadest framework possible – what it means to be human – in the text you have before you today.
That makes this book, in a rather paradoxical manner, a Zen book: its purpose is to guide the reader towards facing the
illusions consistent with many traditional Western cultural beliefs by leading
the reader to face the harmful nature inherent to many of them.
In
order to assist their disciples towards achieving satori – Zen enlightenment –
Zen masters often resorted to drastic measures to shock their students
into giving up the illusory standpoint from which emerged their perspectives
and expectations concerning reality. In that context, I am reminded of a famous
Zen parable that teaches what is known in Zen as shoshin or “the beginners’
mind.” The parable, known to virtually all readers, consists of a
university professor who went to visit a Zen master in order to enquire about
the nature of Zen. The professor arrived and immediately wished to get to the
point. The Zen master, however, insisted on first having a cup of tea. While
being served by the Zen master, the professor observed how the cup filled and
filled and filled, until it overflowed. “Stop!
Can’t you see it’s full already? No more can fit!” exclaimed the professor.
“This is you,” stated the Zen master,
“how can I teach you Zen when you are
already filled with your own ideas?”
As
is the case with the professor in the Zen parable, readers are often filled
with expectations even before they begin reading a book – expectations about
the nature of reality, about right and wrong, about life and death, about
politics, about religion, and so on. With “Broken
Arrow” you must empty your cup and set aside those expectations. This is a
book which introduces and applies a new theory of the human condition – a Biopsychocultural
Theory. It is a theory which not only cuts
across more than a dozen conventional disciplines but which does not respect
the traditional “textbook” formats – or “traditions” themselves for that matter.
Hence, unless you wish to be like the professor of the parable, start emptying
the cup of your expectations and open your mind to learning. As far as “who is the implied reader?” this is ironically
both an excellent as well as a ridiculous question. Keep in mind that this book
presents a revolutionary theory about
the “human condition” itself, about what it even means to be human, only to
then apply that theory to critically evaluate several of the dominant cultures,
religions and sociopolitical ideologies of the Western world. Hence, the answer
to the question, “who is the implied
reader?” is quite frankly “any human
being” – any human being, that is, with sufficient curiosity to care about his
condition as such, and sufficiently educated to act upon that curiosity; in
other words, a functionally literate
reader. The difficulties of the text are not to be found in the complexity of
the ideas presented – I don’t think – but rather in the manner in which those
ideas force the reader to question and challenge those illusions upon which he has
constructed his perception of reality all of his life.
That said, read, then read again, and
when you think it all makes sense and you have figured it all out, forget
everything you think you learned, and start all over. That is the way of shoshin – the Zen beginner’s mind.
Shodai Sennin J.A. Overton-Guerra
