The Learning Commons

Zen and the Art of Academia

The following provides perspectives on the writing process and academic life in general. The material here is inspired by passages from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, and Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel and by our experiences in the The Learning Commons. We hope you'll find what you read here as helpful and thought-provoking as we do.

A supersaturated solution is one in which the saturation point, at which no more material will dissolve, has been exceeded. This can occur because the saturation point becomes higher as the temperature of the solution is increased. When you dissolve the material at a high temperature and then cool the solution, the material sometimes doesn't crystallize out because the molecules don't know how. They require something to get them started, a seed crystal, or a grain of dust or even a sudden scratch or tap on the surrounding glass.

He walked to the water tap to cool the solution but never got there. Before his eyes, as he walked, he saw a star of crystalline material in the solution appear and then grow suddenly and radiantly until it filled the entire vessel. He saw it grow. Where before there was only clear liquid there was now a mass so solid he could turn the vessel upside down and nothing would come out.

Writing needs a seed crystal (often lots of seed crystals), but it can be hard to recognize that crystal at first. When you're stuck for ideas to write about, when you're at that place where you don't know how to crystallize out, try freewriting on a computer. Close your eyes or black out the computer screen so you can't see what you write as you write it. Don't worry if what you're writing is "important," or "smart enough" or even particularly relevant.

Do this for as long as you can--15 or 20 minutes--then save your material. Go do something else for a while. Come back to it with a fresh mind and see if there are any seed crystals in what you've written. Pick out a few items, then start writing about those, repeating the whole process. Keep this up, and pretty soon your seeds will have crystallized before your eyes.

This was the old slap-on-the-fingers-if-your-modifiers-were-caught-dangling stuff. Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of itsy-bitsy rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about.

If you're simultaneously creating and editing your text, you're probably not going to be able to do either task very well...if you can do it at all. Writer's block often stems from trying be a creator and editor at once. So why not try leaving this editing stuff--spelling, punctuation, grammar for the end of the writing process? Or, at least, don't worry about it in the first stages, when you're freewriting or working on a first draft. Wait till you've created something, then edit it, then go create some more....

If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an 'artless art' growing out of the Unconscious.

Mastering the art of writing is much more than mastering technical knowledge. It doesn't follow that if you know all the ins and outs of grammar that you must also be an expert writer. Writing takes practice, lots of it. Doing some informal writing on your own could improve your writing in unexpected ways. For instance, keeping a personal journal every day gets you into the habit of writing and all the things that go along with it: observing, analyzing, reflecting, questioning, creating. Or try jotting down thoughts, questions, and observations about a text as you read: your notes could provide you with some seed crystals when it's time to get started on a paper later on.

In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects...but are one reality. The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye....

This is much the same for writing. Often, you may be writing about a novel, a chemical reaction, an historical event, or a theory of economics which may seem to have nothing to do with who you are or what goes on in your life. But what you write is part of you, even if you are not writing directly about yourself or your experiences. Try not to think of yourself ("the hitter") and your paper ("the hit") as two opposing objects, but rather as one reality. Your voice is in everything you write, it's just a matter of being able to recognize it. (Of course, that's easy to say, but doing is a different story....)

Zen is the 'everyday mind,' as was proclaimed by Baso (Ma-tsu, died 788); this 'everyday mind' is no more than 'sleeping when tired, eating when hungry.'

Most of the time, academic work has to be completed within the time frame of a semester--15 weeks--and so it seems quite antithetical to the practice of Zen. Many students glide through their semesters, not thinking about the end, waiting to start projects until the last moment, just before the panic sets in.

But if we start early and think often about our ultimate end-of-the-semester projects, we can certainly connect with our work and almost accidentally produce satisfying results. The trick is to be Zen about academia, focusing our intentions early in the semester, while we're not constrained by time, while we can digress, meditate, frolic, and generally transform our work into a daily, second-nature hobby. The trick is to have an academic "everyday mind." Be one with your classes, so they don't win one over on you.

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