“You will have learned how to begin, at any rate, the task of keeping yourself undivided, for it is thinking of something other than the matter at hand that separates us from reality and dissipates our energies.”

How should we meditate, if indeed we want to meditate? Many attempt a rigorous focus on their breathing, or on some mantra. Though this isn’t bad, in The Path of Zen Aitken argues it’s problematic. True meditation, he suggests, is not just about focus: that implies there are two things involved, you and the thing you are focusing on. Instead, he believes meditation is about becoming one with something, a feeling of unity with your breathing comparable to reading a great book where you lose all track of time or space. Posture, hand positions, how to count; these are useful tools to achieve meditation, but are not the point.

If this sounds a lot like the modern concept of Flow, I’d agree completely, and actually there’s a lot in this book, one of the classic introductory books on Zen, that are echoed by modern themes. The idea of requiring deliberate practice to get good at something, for example, Aitken lists as one of the three concerns of the Zen student: the other two are that being alive is an important responsibility, and that we have little time to fulfill that responsibility. Even Obama’s self-imposed routine and restriction to only blue or gray suits has a Zen correspondence, as Aitken suggests minimizing the decisions you make in life in order to maximize the energy and self you can put in any given activity.

Zen can often be portrayed as an abstract, gnomic art, filled with riddles. To some extent this is fair; students are often expected to interpret the Koans, brief parables that demonstrate some fundamental principle but often seem enigmatic or trivial at first. At heart, however, Zen focuses on meditation, which it calls Zazen, as a way to focus the mind and achieve self-mastery. Aitken’s book, meant to capture the first few weeks of a retreat at a monastery for a new student, does an admirable job presenting the information accessibly and appealingly. It won’t turn you into a Zen master, but it might help you put a foot on the path.

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