Mastering Demotivation: A Zen Approach

A Slip and a Fall into a New Project

Recently, I slipped on a water puddle and fell into a book writing project. Though I am a bibliophile and have idols such as O.V. Vijayan and Kamaladas above MS Dhoni, I did not want to belong to any “class” after I noticed that almost everyone out there on LinkedIn is either an author or an influencer, or both. I readily admit that I am neither.

The Allure of Nothingness

I did not change my mind as I was getting up, for two reasons.

Minor reason: One of the few things I really love in this world is to sit at my desk without really doing NOTHING. I want to reemphasize the word NOTHING. Then comes Zazen, a form of Zen meditation. Reading and writing come in a close third.” Mu (the concept of emptiness or nothingness in Zen Buddhism) transcends all categories and the limitations of the physical world.

A Serendipitous Collaboration

Major reason: The person with whom I am working on this project is really interesting. While he lets his achievements (religious, artistic, diplomatic, and social service-related) sit lightly on him, his amiable nature and humility weigh quite heavily and keep him grounded. We decided to write on what else, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Zen, demotivation and motivation, exploring the power of mindfulness for personal growth and self-improvement.

A New Project Takes Shape

I struggled as usual in Dante’s hell of indecision and made very little progress for the next 3 – 4 months. As I started living up to one of my lowest-scored traits as per the Harrison Assessment (the tendency to be eager and excited towards one’s own goals), a distant relative of mine who was a musician passed away. I’m not a fan of classical music and I’m tone-deaf. However, it triggered my memories about one of the best books I had read during the Christmas and New Year’s vacation of 1998. I was living in West Haven, Connecticut, and my workplace, Fairfield, was near Sandy Hook, the site of the notorious massacre.

A Musical Loss

The book, Music of Light, was about Hikari Oe. Hikari was the eldest son of Kenzaburo Oe, the Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author. He was literally a “monster baby” with more than half of his brain spilling out. The doctors advised Oe to let the newborn die. The complex operation to remove the protruding brain was risky and the baby’s chances of survival were slim. Even if he survived, he would face a difficult life. The post-war Japanese society’s negative attitudes towards disabled people made the future seem daunting.

The baby was still alive and kicking when Oe came back from a writing assignment in Hiroshima. The attitude of the atomic bomb victims, who had every reason to despair but bravely chose to live, shamed him. Oe demotivated himself from the thoughts of the passive death of his son, fear, self-doubt, and bondage, and decided on operation, life, and freedom. This decision showcased the power of resilience and a positive mindset in overcoming obstacles.

The Power of Resilience

The doctors removed the protruding brain, resulting in a 70% loss of vision and speech. In fact, Hikari seemed to be unaware of the world around him. The first voice the boy responded to was that of a chirping bird.
At the age of 6, Hikari spoke to his father while the two of them were in the woods. Let me quote from the book:

“That is a water rail,” said Hikari. When Oe reported the incident to the family physician, he told Oe that many retarded children were skilled mimics and could repeat complex sounds and messages without any understanding of what they were saying. Undaunted, Oe and his wife began to play music for Hikari. The results were astonishing. Not only could Hikari recognize individual compositions, but also he began to request favorite works. “Play Chopin!” he would say, or even, “Play the second movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony.” Hikari spent his days lying at his father’s feet, listening to classical music.

Lessons from Hikari Oe

Then, he began to draw lines on paper and tell his father that he was writing music. The doting father employed a tutor who taught Hikari the musical scale, and Hikari’s music began to resemble “real music.” Then, the inevitable happened. A musician took the boy’s music home and … played it! At the time Hikari attended a sheltered workshop where he assembled clothes pens. (He wasn’t very good at it.) Again, the verdict was predictable. Hikari was mimicking music that he had heard, said the doctors. Certainly, he was not … composing! But he was.

After countless evaluations, and at the urging of his musical friends, Oe decided to have a recording made of his son’s music. Concerned that the recording would be a financial disaster, Oe offered to buy 200 copies of the CD, “The Music of Hikari Oe.” However, upon the release of the CD, it immediately became a “best seller.” Till now, the CD has sold over 1 million copies and has now reached the United States. A second CD has been completed. The music is described as “pure, innocent, and painfully beautiful.”

However, this article is not about Hikari; it’s about demotivation and the journey towards emotional well-being. While Kenzaburo could demotivate the “manimal” (man + animal) attitude, the killer of Sandy Hook or that rapist in Kolkata Medical College could not. Neither could the “animals” of Kolkata. It is quite a misnomer to term cruel behavior we exhibit as animalistic and considerate ones as humane. T

he human race indeed started the race towards civilization and cultured behavior over a mere few thousand years, while animals have existed for millions of years. While animals instinctively fight for their food, lives, and territory, it is the thinking part of the brain of man that has made him brutal, cruel, and insensitive.

The Human Brain: A Complex Machine

Most of what we know about our brain has been learned over the research of the last couple of decades. It is important to understand that the age of your brain is much beyond your physical age. And it is not just created in 8-9 months in our mother’s womb. Each one of us inherits the evolution of the brain for thousands of years from the first human couple in Ethiopia, Africa. Or maybe even beyond them.

Many programs in our brain are kind of hardwired from nature. Through Nurture to some extent, we reprogram it. We are all born with a great list of endowments of traits. Also, not-so-great traits. The current model of the brain, the scientific world proposes is that of a modular brain. Neuroscientists seem to be moving away from the triune model of the brain. To put it in simplistic terms, many of the programs in our brain, which run us, map across different regions of the brain. It is very possible that two programs absolutely in conflict with each other are fighting it out to get through the command center of action, reaction, and response.

The Role of Mindfulness

It is also interesting to note that the new model is in tune with what Buddha had tried to teach us about our minds. The fact that thoughts think us and it is not the other way around is a humbling learning for our egos.
Probably all the gods, systems, and tools our ancestors have invented were for the demotivating part of our brain to slow down the process, so that we respond with some amount of agency and fit in this society and some amount of harmony exists.

The Power of Choice

When I joined as a student of the MA Education program at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, we had a maverick professor (in fact many of them!). The professor used to name his courses in such a way that the academic body of the University approved the course.

He would add a text written by R. D. Laing or Heidegger as one of the readings. But in class, the entire focus would be on Laing or Heidegger. So we ended up learning about the Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Psychology of R. D. Laing, etc. One such text was Laing’s “The Politics of Experience and the Birds of Paradise.” Laing was another maverick Scottish psychiatrist. Some of his quotes are so deeply etched in my mind, that I can recite them even in deep sleep.

The Importance of Meditation

Coming back to Laing and his famous quote, a good man is aware of the bad in him and able to demotivate and neutralize that part, while a bad man is not even aware of it. It is in demotivating and eliminating the bad that the good survives. He further elaborates in another quote, “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

This concept aligns closely with the practice of mindfulness and its role in personal growth.While the prescription comes from the “scientific” world of Laings, medicine is only available with the likes of Buddha, the venerated one. By the way, we Zenists venerate Buddha not because he is God, he is one of the ultimate teachers who ever lived.

The Wisdom of Buddha

While all other religious paths suggest worship and meditation, etc. as a way of salvation, Buddha just focuses on our everyday life on this earth. Moment to moment. He was conspicuously silent about the time before our birth or after our death. He was mostly concerned about how we live on this earth between those two milestones.

My limited readings suggest to me that he was not much into the metaphysics of it. Buddhist meditation practices in general focus on our mind and body. Vipassana, Zazen, Shikantaza, Kinhin, etc. train us to “notice when we fail to notice.” These Zen practices for stress relief can lead to a spiritual awakening and help in creating harmony in relationships.

The Path to Enlightenment: Mindfulness and Personal Growth

Almost everyone would have read Viktor Frankl’s quote (which became viral from Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits), “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power and freedom to choose our response. In those responses lie our freedom and happiness.”

Meditation is one of the ways, I know of, to create that space and find life balance. The benefits of compassion in daily life and developing empathy in a challenging world cannot be overstated.
While, as usual, citizens across India are demanding the harshest punishment for the perpetrator of the Kolkata incident, it is worthwhile to consider that we encourage our children, near and dear ones, and people in our circle to meditate.

While I am not advocating for a disregard of the legal system, I believe that mindfulness and meditation can offer a valuable tool for personal transformation. Even those who have committed heinous crimes might benefit from these practices. Building resilience through meditation and embracing change can lead to profound change.

It’s imperative that we promote mindfulness and meditation not only for individuals who have made mistakes but also for everyone in our communities. By encouraging these practices, we can encourage a culture of empathy, resilience, and positive change. We can try and make this world a more compassionate and harmonious world by committing to mindfulness and self-improvement.

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Like what you read? This is just the beginning! For more insights into mindfulness, motivation, and personal transformation, visit Vishy’s blog at KokoroZendo.life. He is always sharing new blogs to help you on your journey.