Acting in the Zone of Zen

The problem is not just that we are egoistic or selfish. The problem is not just that we tend to care too much about ourselves and not enough about others. The problem is also that by losing our no-mind we also, figuratively and literally, trip over our own feet and, in the end, make ourselves ineffective and unproductive as well as lonely and miserable.

The Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu classic, also teaches us that our obsessive thoughts about the selfish outcomes of our actions get in the way of actually performing those actions successfully. It is by “renouncing the fruits of our actions,” teaches Krishna, that we can fully engage in the activity of the present. This is the teaching of “karma yoga” that Gandhi based his life on. Paradoxically, Krishna promises us that the fruits of our actions will be all the more plentiful if we stop obsessing over them.

This can be illustrated by the phenomenon of “choking” in sports. Why do soccer stars sometimes blow penalty kicks? Why do tennis champions sometimes double-fault on match point? Why is it that a basketball player who can sink nine out of ten free throws in practice, only makes one of two when the game is on the line? It is the same reason people get stage fright or fail to perform well on tests. They become self-conscious and fall out of “the zone.”

“Being in the zone” is indeed the closest expression we have for what Zen means by the state of no-mind. When tennis players are able to forget about everything else and just concentrate on the serve, when they can let go of fearing or fantasizing about the outcome and just “be the ball,” that’s when aces happen and tournaments are won.

As soon as the pianist starts thinking about her hands and the keys and the audience and especially about the potential success or failure of her performance, it becomes impossible to immerse herself in the performance of the piece and just—to paraphrase T. S. Eliot—be the music while the music lasts. I tell students that they need to study for a final exam or write a term paper like they dance at a good party. It is precisely worrying about the grade they are going to get that gets in the way of wholly immersing themselves in learning the material or letting the writing flow.

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philosophy student from Kyoto University once visited Zen master Yamada Mumon. The student asked, “What is the goal of life?” Yamada Rōshi replied straightaway, “To play.” Studying, working, driving, cooking, or any other activity, so long as it only aims to get somewhere else, to achieve something else, cannot be the goal of life. When we have achieved a goal, reached a destination, or resolved a problem and have some free time, what do we do? We play. Play is its own end. To be sure, even when we play we all too often remain distracted by unfinished business. But when we’re really enjoying ourselves, we just play for the sake of playing. In the best of times with our children, we laugh and play like children ourselves. In Zen, Yamada Rōshi tells us, this complete and joyful absorption in the activity at hand is called the “samadhi (or meditative state) of play.”

It is important to understand that Yamada Rōshi is not talking about playing as opposed to studying, working, and so on. He is talking about playing right in the midst of carrying out those tasks. He is teaching us that we should make every goal-oriented activity at the same time both a means and an end itself. The journey aims to reach a destination, but also, on a deeper level, the journey itself is the destination. 

Studying, working, driving, cooking, or any other activity, so long as it only aims to get somewhere else, to achieve something else, cannot be the goal of life.

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speaks of being in the zone in terms of what he calls “the flow experience,” and he argues that this experience is the key to human happiness. We tend to always defer happiness to a later point in time; we are always on the way to where we want to be. Every activity we do is for the sake of something else, rather than for the sake of itself. Rather than seeing the purpose—the end or telos—of our current activity as lying in the future, the flow experience of being in the zone happens when our actions are “autotelic”—in other words, when they are experienced as ends in themselves.

None of this means that we should stop thinking about the future or about the results of our actions. Planning and attending to causal connections can themselves be done either in or out of the Zone of Zen. Autotelic actions can, at the same time, be teleologically oriented. The flow experience can still be goal-oriented. In fact, it usually always is, and not just in sports like soccer where one is quite literally goal-oriented. The difference is that one remains fully in the present each step of the way as one charges toward the goal. After all, when you think about it, paradoxical as it may at first sound, nothing has ever happened in the past or in the future. Every action takes place in the present. And so the present is always where the action is, even when those actions aim at the future. That is why the true destination is in each step of the journey and not just at a certain point on a map or in time.

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This article was excerpted and adapted from Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism by Bret W. Davis. © Oxford University Press 2022.