This article describes how to extend somatic awareness in new directions, through an alternating series of theoretical models and self-reflexive exercises. I use the term somatic awareness to imply a first-person, here/now, sensory perception: how we feel, and know ourselves on a process level rather than on an image or object level, inferentially. One can summarize this theory using the form...
I INTEND IN THE FOLLOWING to make sense of Zen non-sense. Fundamental Zen terms like naturalness and emptiness and nothingness are used in disregard of the COIK principle: Clear Only If Known. For example, Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen master, said, It is absolutely necessary for everyone to believe in nothing. (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice. New York and...