There is only one time that it is essential to awaken. That time is now.

                                                                                    Buddha

What Is Zen and What Has It Got To Do with the SAT?

If you’ve heard the term Zen before, it might have been used in a phrase like, “You just have to be Zen about it,” which was offered as advice for getting through some unpleasant experience such as sitting at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. The implication is that Zen refers to an ability to endure through anything without much feeling – a way to zone out or just be mellow about everything. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Zen evolved over the last thousand years in Asia as a way to purify one’s life through meditation. More recently, people around the world have taken a strong interest in Zen. Many Americans, in particular, have found that the insights and practices of Japanese monks are effective antidotes to our stressed-out way of life.

Zen practice focuses on opening your mind to the present. Take a moment right now to hear all the sounds that are around you – traffic noise, birds, the hum of a refrigerator. Listening is a way to bring your attention into the present. Your mind rarely notices what you’re hearing. Most of us dwell instead on thoughts that have nothing to do with the present. What will she think about what I’m wearing? How will I ever get all my work done tonight? Why did my history teacher give me that grade? How can I get my parents to let me use the car?

Zen teaches us that the thoughts that preoccupy us are not reality. As they clank around in our heads, these thoughts in fact prevent us from experiencing reality. The goal of Zen practice is not so much to eliminate these thoughts as to become aware of their existence in our lives and to begin gently nudging them aside in order to give the present moment a larger place in our minds. When we let thoughts and worries about the past and future fall away, we become more aware of our existence in the moment, and we can concentrate on what’s right in front of us. We also become aware of ourselves as part of a unity that is the universe.

Reading this book will not teach you to become one with the universe (though you may feel inspired to move in that direction on your own). The focus here is on a less global aspect of Zen practice known as samadhi, which means “being one with an object.” In this case, the “object” we’re talking about is a test: the SAT.

Samadhi is the state of mind that allows athletes and musicians to perform extraordinary feats. It allows lawyers to draft elegant contracts and artists to paint or draw or sculpt. Samadhi refers to a person’s ability to bring total focus to a task through concentration. It is exactly the quality that the SAT demands.

A Critical Opportunity

How do you feel when you’re taking a test and get a question about something you don’t know? Your heart rate goes up. You might feel heat in your chest or your temples. If only you had read that chapter more carefully or memorized that formula – but now there’s nothing you can do. You make up some feeble nonsense in hopes of getting partial credit. Whether this happens to you all the time or almost never, it’s one of the worst feelings you can experience as a student.

It’s also something you can count on experiencing while taking the SAT. However, on the SAT, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It may even be a good thing.
            In Japanese, the word for crisis (kiki) also means critical opportunity. That’s because every crisis can be a turning point. How you handle a crisis can make the difference between disaster and triumph.

At some point on the SAT, you may face a crisis – the anxiety caused by a question you initially think you can’t answer. How you handle this crisis will determine how well you do. (And how you manage anxiety more generally will determine how well you do in lots of different things throughout life.) This book discusses the critical skills you need to do well on the SAT: reading, thinking, and managing anxiety. Reading and thinking are closely related on the test because many SAT questions can’t be easily understood. Your brain has to break them down the way your stomach breaks down a pizza with too many toppings. From quirky math questions to complicated reading passages and the twenty-five-minute timed writing exercise, the challenges on the SAT can initially seem tricky if not impossible. Yet the guidance and suggestions offered here will teach you how to handle the test.

It’s not enough on the SAT to know the material. To excel on the SAT you must be confident about your ability to read carefully and solve problems – even strange, inscrutable ones – under timed conditions. That’s what makes the SAT so intimidating. You can’t just memorize the material and then regurgitate it; you have to act in the moment. Sure there are some things you must know for the SAT. In fact, the new SAT is designed to include more content, like a school test. But the SAT will always demand less knowing than the tests you take at school and a lot more figuring out.

That’s where Zen comes in. Zen practice trains us to bring our entire attention to the present moment, while releasing the mind’s hold on fragments from the past and future – ideas, worries, fears, and phantoms that can generate an endless stream of anxiety and self-doubt. You can learn how to manage anxiety in order to cultivate and sustain the presence of mind that will yield right answers because you are able in the heat of the moment to figure out even the toughest SAT problems.

As you move through Zen in the Art of the SAT, you’ll first read about the nature of the test and discover how different the SAT is from the tests you are used to taking in school. Once you’re clear about the nature of the test, you’re ready to explore some of the primary obstacles many students face – issues connected with reading and anxiety – and how to overcome them. There are self-assessments that can help you gauge how well you read and how anxious you may be about the test. There is also information that can help you make a study plan, and there’s a section for and about parents. And, while the SAT is different from school tests and doesn’t require that you memorize lots of material, there are some things you do need to know (basic math, some rules of grammar and usage, and ways to approach timed essays). There’s a section that covers these basics.

For hundreds of years Zen practitioners have applied mental self-awareness techniques to everything from flower arranging to poetry. Now you’re going to apply similar ideas to the SAT. Since the test measures your ability to read, focus, and figure things out, sharpening your mental abilities can make a huge difference in your score and in how you feel about the test. Of course, the benefits of this work go beyond the test. (And the Life Lessons section illuminates how the best test preparation teaches valuable life lessons.) As you learn how to ace the SAT, you will gain a deeper understanding of yourself and build your self-esteem and confidence. Additionally, you will discover how you can manage anxiety and turn what initially seem like crises into opportunities. You will learn to do your best on the SAT not through any tricks or secret formulas, but rather by getting a firm handle on the workings of your own mind.