Revisiting Kensho, March 1982

This chapter re-examines some of the phenomena that occurred during an experience of kensho. Multiple novel circumstances converged. Among them, the act of looking up, out there into the distance, could have correlated with potential shifts into allocentric processing.

Zen and the Daily-Life Incremental Training of Basho’s Attention

This chapter examines the evidence in Basho’s poetry and journals that suggests his incremental growth in the practice of an Avian Zen. Basho’s poetic technique favored lightness (karumi).

Sometimes, Zen Is “For the Birds”

This chapter recounts the stories of Peter Coyote and Shoji Hamada. They illustrate how bird songs can capture attention in ways that can generate alternate states of consciousness. They illustrate the principles underlying Avian Zen.

“Pop-Out”

This chapter considers the mechanisms responsible for the pop-out phenomenon. The evidence from magnetoencephalography suggests that both dorsal and ventral attention systems participate, simultaneously, when one specific item so captures visual attention. Disengaging attention is also fundamental.

Emerging Concepts in Self–Other Relationships

This chapter emphasizes the other-referential kind of processing functions in the human brain. These proceed anonymously (allocentrically) instead of in a Self-centered manner. Even so, the Self is defined in space and time by its environment by a merger of Self/other functions.

A Story about Wild Birds, Transformed Attitudes, and a Supervisory Self

This chapter recounts the story of a non-meditating veterinarian who underwent a kind of transformation of attitudes after she emerged from a triggered alternate state experience. Six months later she also experienced a life-changing, auditory verbal hallucination. Inner word thoughts are common in the general population. White matter connectivities service “the Human Connectome.”

Basho, the Haiku Poet

This chapter examines the haiku poetry of Basho from the standpoint of its avian influences and from the perspectives of multiple literary authorities.

What Is Living Zen?

This chapter discusses Living Zen, during the direct experience of events in everyday life, as the expression of an earthy, flexible empiricism. Only repeated wholesome, daily-life practices generate the incremental brain changes that help develop one’s traits of character. A simpler, flexible, more humane being is the unannounced goal.

Remindful Zen: An Auditory “Altar Ego”?

This chapter recounts the evolution of the author’s benign auditory hypnopompic hallucinations over the past 12 years. They represent a memory retrieval function that can become more elaborate when meditation occurs more frequently.

A Disorder Called Transient Global Amnesia

This chapter reviews transient global amnesia as a neurological disorder that can be confirmed by the finding of delayed distinctive hyperintense lesions in the lateral sides of the hippocampus in diffusion-weighted imaging studies.