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Super-Slow: Hyatt Carter During World War II, after his capture by the Japanese, an Australian artillery sergeant was marched off with a number of his comrades to the infamous Changi prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore. Sydney Piddinton was nineteen, the year was 1942, and his captors had allowed him to bring only a small knapsack of personal possessions. Among those possessions was one item that would be the key to his survival in the camp: a book by Lin Yutang called The Importance of Living. The book itself was significant, but it was the way he approached it that was to prove decisive. For it was during his first few days at Changi that Piddington, as he put it, “began a reading habit that was to keep me sane for the next three and a half years.” With only one book, and no idea when, or if, he would be liberated, he decided to savor the book, slowly—very slowly. He began by taking ample time to just gaze at the cover, the binding, and the illustrations inside the front cover. Then he dedicated three leisurely sessions to the preface, and two whole evenings to the table of contents: chapter headings and subtitles. Page one of the text still lay ahead of him, but Piddington was in no hurry. He reveals how the process began to unfold: “I had started with the practical object of making my book last. But by the end of the second week, still only on page ten, I began to realize how much I was getting from super-slow reading itself. Sometimes just a particular phrase caught my attention, sometimes a sentence. I would read it slowly, analyze it, read it again—perhaps changing down into an even lower gear—and then sit for 20 minutes thinking about it before moving on. I was like a pianist studying a piece of music, phrase by phrase, rehearsing it, trying to discover and recreate exactly what the composer was trying to convey.” It took Piddington more than two months to read The Importance of Living. After that, by a stroke of good fortune, other books began to find their way into the prison camp. But even with many books now available, he decided to stay with the super-slow method as he read biographies, philosophy—even a dictionary. In his crowded cell at night, lying on a concrete floor, he began to read Deep Water and Shoal, William Robinson’s true story of his seafaring adventures: “I felt myself dropping off to sleep in a warm cabin, the boat pitching under me. Next day, I’d be on deck again, in a storm, gripping the helm, with the roar of the wind in my ears, my hair thick with salt. The realization dawned on me that, although my body was captive, my mind was free to roam the world.” Of the books he read while at Changi, his favorite was The Summing Up by William Somerset Maugham: “I was no longer on a rough prison woodpile, wasting away from hunger; I was in an elegant drawing room on the French Riviera, a decanter of old port at hand, listening to a great writer talking just to me about his journey through life, passing on the wisdom he had gained.” While a speed-reader might easily zip through Maugham’s book in less than an hour, Piddington devoted nine weeks to reading it. He continues, “I handled The Summing Up so much that it fell to pieces in the tropical heat. Then I carefully rebound it with dried banana leaves and rubber gum. I still have it, the most treasured volume in my bookcase.” After his release from Changi, Piddington continued to benefit from super-slow reading: “Beyond giving me the will to survive in Changi, slow reading helps me today. Of course, super-slow reading is not for the man dealing with the Niagara of paper flowing across his desk. I can skim an inter-office memo as fast as the next person. But when faced with a real problem, to clear my mind of everyday clutter I will sit down quietly at home and slowly read myself into another world.” The Slow Movement In this age of the quick fix, fast food, fast everything—even the 30-second orgasm—a survey reveals a sad statistic: when their cell phone rings, twenty percent of the people say they stop sex to take the call. A refrain runs through one section of T. S. Eliot’s monumental poem, “The Waste Land,” in capital letters, no less: HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME As a balance to the hectic pace of modern life, super-slow reading resonates well with what is known as “The Slow Movement,” which began as a protest to the opening of a MacDonald’s restaurant in Rome. The idea of Slow Food followed, the first in a whole subculture with variations on this theme: Slow Travel, Slow Shopping, Slow Retail, Slow Planet, and organizations such as Slow Down Now and The World Institute of Slowness. This is all part of a robust and expanding global community. Slow Food, for example, has many members in countries all over the world, organized into local chapters called convivia. They have adopted a logo that should come as no surprise: the snail! There are more than 170 convivia in Slow Food USA, with local chapters in virtually every state. As explained on their website: “Convivium comes from the Latin word convivere—to live with, hence to feast with—because conviviality is an essential ingredient of Slow Food.” Carl Honoré, author of the best-selling book, In Praise of Slowness, describes how the idea is gaining momentum: “The Slow Movement is gathering steam, with more and more people around the world finding ways to put on the brakes. That word ‘slow’ is popping up everywhere as shorthand for a new approach to time and pace. Think slow money, slow football, slow art, slow leadership, slow research. Or slow email. These days, even technophiles are warming to the idea of speed limits on the information superhighway.” When asked why he stopped using email years ago, a Computer Science professor at Stanford said, “Email exists to stay on top of things; I am much more interested in getting to the bottom of things.” Honoré, who describes himself as a recovering “speedaholic” who used to speed-read “The Cat in the Hat” to his son, experienced illumination after hearing about a book of one-minute bedtime stories. Intrigued by the idea, his first reaction was, “Yes!—one-minute bedtime stories. My next thought was, whoa, has it really come to this? That was really when a light bulb went off in my head.” That’s when he decided to find a way to address the issue and this eventuated in the writing and publication of his book. This does not mean that he became completely anti-speed, for, as he puts it, “I love technology. I love speed. You need some things to be fast—ice hockey, squash, a fast Internet connection. But my passion for speed had become an addiction. I was doing everything faster.” There are certain tasks and occasions that require speed, true enough. It is a question of balance. If, metaphorically speaking, we find ourselves speeding through the slow zones, if the journey of life has become a hundred-yard dash . . . then we need to find ways to slow down and, as Carl Honoré puts it . . . find our inner tortoise. Language Samadhi Last, but by far not least—Katsuki Sekida, a lifelong student and an innovative teacher of Zen, shows how the way of slow reading, or what he calls language samadhi, can have even transcendental effects. Here are some quotes from his excellent book, Zen Training: We may take as a first example the following: “Thinking neither of good nor of evil, at this very moment, what is your Original Nature?” To tackle this topic by resorting to ideas or concepts you have learned from books and philosophies is of no avail. What you have learned is borrowed from others and does not originate in your own experience. Your true understanding must be based on your own experience. Then how are we to work on this koan? Recite it, exerting all your mind, in one exhalation, using the bamboo method of breathing. “Think-ing nei-ther of good nor of e-vil at this ver-y mo-ment what is my O-rig-i-nal Na-ture?” Take it syllable by syllable, word by word, and say it with all your attention, dwelling at length upon each word. At each change of sound, give a new stress to the respiratory muscles of the abdomen. When a word or phrase is kept in the mind for a certain length of time, without being mixed with other ingredients, it seems to infiltrate every part of the brain. Quick as the transmission of nerve impulses in the brain may be, they will take a certain period of time to spread through and infiltrate the brain, with repeated feedbacks. In Zen the term nen, which may be translated as “thought impulse,” is very important. The infiltration of a nen-thought throughout the brain produces a wonderful effect. At our ordinary reading speed no such infiltration normally occurs. But it does sometimes happen when you read the work of a poet you particularly admire, or sacred scripture, dwelling on every word and taking ample time over it. On such an occasion you may be reading word by word, carefully and with deep appreciation, and suddenly the passage will seem charged with infinite meaning, seeming almost to come as a revelation from heaven. We call this sort of reading “language samadhi,” and it is this that we must achieve when reciting a Zen koan. The nen-thought does not stop working when it has infiltrated throughout the brain. Even though it may leave the focus of consciousness for a while, its underground activity persists and produces a certain effect. When the time comes, this effect will burst onto the plane of consciousness and occupy the focus of attention. So-called inspiration is an example of this happening. It does not really come from outside but is the product of the fermented nen-thought. When you recite, as described above, “What is my O-rig-i-nal Na-ture?” suddenly, sometime, the Original Self will spring up and stand before you, displaying itself in all its magnificence. Original Nature is pure existence, which was already realized within you as your samadhi deepened, and now it has sprung into the focus of consciousness. But it presents itself as if it came from outside. * * * To work on a koan in zazen is called kanna. Kan means “viewing”; na means “topic.” The meaning of the term is therefore “seeing into the topic.” In actual practice we recite each word with our utmost attention, holding onto it as tenaciously as possible. This constitutes language samadhi. “The eastern hill keeps running on the water.” This may be recited as follows: “The east-ern hill keeps run-ning on the wa-ter.” Let each word infiltrate your head, taking time in reciting it. Then this enigmatic saying will become wonderful and lead you to a certain understanding of reality, which is in a constant state of flux. Katsuki Sekida, Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy, 98-100, 105.
Notes
念
三昧
看話禪
不思善不思惡正當恁麼時。那箇是上座本來面目。
僧問雲門、如何是諸佛出身處。門曰、東山水上行。
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