Have you ever found your practice being boring?

Don't think that haven't written anything in my blog recently because I've run out of topics and ideas - not at all. The matter is that I'm going to make some changes in my life, and I won't write anything serious until things got sorted (hopefully it won't take long). Even so, one exception I'll probably make: I want to comment on Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.

All the same, for now, to keep the ball rolling and to cheer you up I'm going to give you practical advice. Have you ever found your practice being boring: that sometimes it was boring for you to concentrate on the present? I bet you have, and that was because you did it wrong. If you practise correctly (ie as I recommend 😉👍), you'll never get bored, even when you're staring at a wall!

The trick is that focusing on something, you have to anticipate the future. It's this anticipation that makes your practice interesting, intriguing, and spiritual. Spiritual, because eventually you start to feel that there's some hidden mystery behind all this you're watching that you must solve.

Zen Intuition: The Ability to Anticipate the Future

 See also Zen Intuition and Zen Intuition: The Ability to Perceive a Situation as a Whole

Zen intuition in particular manifests itself as the ability to anticipate the future (usually it's limited to what concerns you), and in this cese it enables you to understand a situation without thinking: you begin to understand what is happening around when you see what will happen next. But very often stupidity is the inability to see what will happen in the long run, which is not the case for Zen mind: in fact, Zen intuition, that is, mu, is also the understanding of what you should do in the long term although often you cannot predict what exactly in the long term will happen; it also entails an exciting and rather extravagant way of living - if you have nothing against this, Zen practice will make you a wise fool: you'll know exactly what to do though without knowing why* - you're not a prophet - but on the other hand, you'll also know what determines the expediency of your actions.**

The ability to anticipate the future is also directly related to creativity. You cannot create anything

Zen Intuition: The Ability to Anticipate the Future

 See also Zen Intuition and Zen Intuition: The Ability to Perceive a Situation as a Whole

Zen intuition in particular manifests itself as the ability to anticipate the future (usually it's limited to what concerns you), and in this cese it enables you to understand a situation without thinking: you begin to understand what is happening around when you see what will happen next. But very often stupidity is the inability to see what will happen in the long run, which is not the case for Zen mind: in fact, Zen intuition, that is, mu, is also the understanding of what you should do in the long term although often you cannot predict what exactly in the long term will happen; it also entails an exciting and rather extravagant way of living - if you have nothing against this, Zen practice will make you a wise fool: you'll know exactly what to do though without knowing why* - you're not a prophet - but on the other hand, you'll also know what determines the expediency of your actions.**

The ability to anticipate the future is also directly related to creativity. You cannot create anything

We believe we begin to think when we start to reflect on an object or concept; but in fact, when we start to do this we just say to ourselves what we already know, or let's say potentially know, and this potential knowledge is a real mystery.
So in the end, being exhausted by thinking, we have to interrupt our thoughts and return to reality to re-charge the potential. The real mystery, therefore, occurs when we interrupt our thoughts (that's why the word 'intellectual' for me is rather dirty.)

Zen Intuition

At the beginning of Zen training, you tried to be just rational - this was necessary to ensure objective perception - but after that, this sense of reality you acquired during the practice, mu, became your new intuition. 

Zen intuition can be considered twofold: first, it's the ability to perceive a situation as a whole; and, secondly, the ability to anticipate the future. In fact, these are two sides of the same coin: if you're perceiving a situation as a whole, every present moment is coming for you from the future, and vice versa. The practice described in this blog just such a perception develops.

The ability to perceive a situation as a whole, first of all, allows you to highlight the essence of the information you're receiving; it also gives you acumen and the ability to distinguish any attempt to manipulate you.

The Perception of Time during Zazen

If you're perceiving a situation as a whole (while doing zazen, for example), you have a different from the usual perception of time: then each present moment is coming from the future - I'm not discovering anything new: this has already been described in Zen literature. And sometimes, by the way, you can use this perception as a gimmick to achieve the desired mental state when doing zazen: just be a receiver of what is coming from the future.

Some may argue that all we see is the past: for light it takes some time to pass from the object you're looking at to the eyes. This is true, but during zazen, you experience the real anticipation of the future. And this anticipation is exactly the reason why you begin to understand what you see without thinking: you begin to understand what's happening around when you see what will happen next.* Practising just sitting zazen, such a change in time perception is difficult to notice; but if you're doing the Walking Zazen (when you're moving, or changing, in other words, the whole situation with the legs), it becomes obvious.

From Einstein's point of view, past, present, and future are equally real and all exist simultaneously; there is no real difference between them, so there should be no difference for you where the present comes from - from the past, or the future - your destiny is already defined. But in fact, there is such a difference, and this can only be possible if there are different future scenarios, that is, if the future can be changed - that's why it makes sense to think of the future as of the Potential.

At some point of your practice, you may find that having a choice sets you free from your past (since your present is no longer determined by it.) However, it should be noted that the past can also be changed in the sense that you can change your attitude to it so for you it will have a different meaning.

The result of your practice may be the feeling that there are two opposing time's arrows, and the present moment is their intersection; sometimes the present is determined by the past, sometimes by the future (actually, if there is the oppositely directed time's arrow that manifests itself only on a large scale 'from the top', it cannot be detected empirically 'from the bottom'.) This doesn't mean that the goal of your practice should be about trying to predict the future, but somehow you'll learn to anticipate it intuitively. Particularly don't try to predict playing cards or dice: this will just drain you mentally. And, by the way, the weather and women's intentions are two things that I never could guess.

At some stage, your practice will go beyond the present moment and become mainly about understanding, which is the feeling of the future, present, and past at the same time. Therefore, in the long run, you should not discard anything, neither the past nor future, but just integrate everything you have properly: by denying it. Otherwise, without practising understanding, the result of your practice won't differ from the result of brain damage (due to a stroke, for example) although it may well give you a feeling of happiness: for the record, many Buddhists are satisfied with just turning off the left hemisphere.
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*Usually we control a situation by controlling several key objects which, we believe, determine the situation. But while perceiving a situation as a whole, you don't control any particular object but just intuitively feel how the overall situation is going to change - for example, then you observe not what your opponent is going to do but what is going to happen as a result - you anticipate the future.