Zen TV — by Bernard McGrane"How many of you know how to watch television?" I asked my class one day. After a few bewildered and silent moments, slowly, one by one, everyone haltingly raised their hands. We soon acknowledged that we were all "experts," as Harold Garfinkle would say, in the practice of "watching television."
For an experiment, students were asked to watch TV consciously. Insofar as this is sort of "Zen and the Art of TV-watching," I said to them, "I want you to watch TV with acute awareness, mindfulness, and precision. This experiment is about observing television scientifically, with `Beginner's Mind,' rather than watching television passively with programmed mind. Ordinarily, if you are watching TV, you can't also observe and experience the experience of watching TV. When we watch TV, we rarely pay attention to the details of the event. In fact, we rarely pay attention." The purpose of our un-TV experiment is to provoke us into seeing television as opposed to merely looking, and to stop the world as the first step to seeing. Here we engage in stopping the world by stopping the television. 1) Watch any TV show for 15 minutes without turning on the sound. 2) Watch any news program for 15 minutes without turning on the sound. 3) Watch television set for one half-hour with out turning it on.
https://www.dailygood.org/story/1759/ze ... d-mcgrane/
