Zen and the art of flow

 This was triggered by a newsletter I received from ABC Classic (Australian radio station) with a link to a study done on ‘flow’, which is a term coined by physiologist, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, to describe a specific psychological experience that many (if not all) people have had when totally immersed in some activity that they not only enjoy but have developed some expertise in.
 
The study was performed by Dr John Kounios from Drexel University's Creative Research Lab in Philadelphia, who “examined the 'neural and psychological correlates of flow' in a sample of jazz guitarists.” The article was authored by Jennifer Mills from ABC Classic’s sister station, ABC Jazz. But the experience of ‘flow’ just doesn’t apply to mental or artistic activities, but also sporting activities like playing tennis or cricket. Mills heads her article with the claim that ‘New research helps unlock the secrets of flow, an important tool for creative and problem solving tasks’. She quotes Csikszentmihalyi to provide a working definition:
 
"A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it."
 
I believe I’ve experienced ‘flow’ in 2 quite disparate activities: writing fiction and driving a car. Just to clarify, some people think that experiencing flow while driving means that you daydream, whereas I’m talking about the exact opposite. I hardly ever daydream while driving, and if I find myself doing it, I bring myself back to the moment. Of course, cars are designed these days to insulate you from the experience of driving as much as possible, as we evolve towards self-driving cars. Thankfully, there are still cars available that are designed to involve you in the experience and not remove you from it.
 
I was struck by the fact that the study used jazz musicians, as I’ve often compared the ability to play jazz with the ability to write dialogue (even though I’m not a musician). They both require extemporisation. The article references Nat Bartsch, whom I’ve seen perform live and whose music is an unusual style of jazz in that it can be very contemplative. I saw her perform one of her albums with her quartet, augmented with a cello, which made it a one-off, unique performance. (This is a different concert performed in Sydney without the cellist.)
 
The study emphasised the point that the more experienced practitioners taking part were the ones more likely to experience ‘flow’. In other words, to experience ‘flow’ you need to reach a certain skill-level. In emphasising this point, the author quotes jazz legend, Charlie Parker:
 
"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practise, practise, practise. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."
 
I can totally identify with this, as when I started writing it was complete crap, to the extent that I wouldn’t show it to anyone. For some irrational reason, I had the self-belief – some might say, arrogance – that, with enough perseverance and practice, I could ‘break-through’ into the required skill-level. In fact, I now create characters and write dialogue with little conscious effort – it’s become a ‘delegated’ task, so I can concentrate on the more complex tasks of resolving plot points, developing moral dilemmas and formulating plot twists. Notice that these require a completely different set of skills that also had to be learned from scratch. But all this can come together, often in unexpected and surprising ways, when one is in the mental state of ‘flow’. I’ve described this as a feeling like you’re an observer, not the progenitor, so the process occurs as if you’re a medium and you just have to trust it.
 
Dr. Steffan Herff, leader of the Sydney Music, Mind and Body Lab at Sydney University, makes a point that supports this experience:
 
"One component that makes flow so interesting from a cognitive neuroscience and psychology perspective, is that it comes with a 'loss of self-consciousness'."
 
And this allows me to segue into Zen Buddhism. Many years ago, I read an excellent book by Daisetz Suzuki titled, Zen and Japanese Culture, where he traces the evolutionary development of Zen, starting with Buddhism in India, then being adopted in China, where it was influenced by Taoism, before reaching Japan, where it was assimilated into a sister-religion (for want of a better term) with Shintoism, which is an animistic religion.
 
Suzuki describes Zen as going inward rather than outward, while acknowledging that the two can’t be disconnected. But I think it’s the loss of ‘self’ that makes it relevant to the experience of flow. When Suzuki described the way Zen is practiced in Japan, he talked about being in the moment, whatever the activity, and for me, this is an ideal that we rarely attain. It was only much later that I realised that this is synonymous with flow as described by Csikszentmihalyi and currently being examined in the studies referenced above.
 
I’ve only once before written a post on Zen (not counting a post on Buddhism and Christianity), which arose from reading Douglas Hofstadter’s seminal tome, Godel Escher Bach (which is not about Zen, although it gets a mention), and it’s worth quoting this summation from myself:
 
My own take on this is that one’s ego is not involved yet one feels totally engaged. It requires one to be completely in the moment, and what I’ve found in this situation is that time disappears. Sportsmen call it being ‘in the zone’ and it’s something that most of us have experienced at some time or another.