As noted in an earlier Zennist blog, there is a natural antagonism in the human brain between the left and right hemispheres. Eventually, this natural antagonism externalizes itself in the public discourse as a sharp political divide between the political Left and the Right.
The left hemisphere of the brain creates a sort of self-reflexive virtual world (utopia) which only serves to bar reality and continue with its ideological fantasies which typifies the political Left, especially Marxism. It is the right hemisphere of the brain that enables us to wake up and leave this fantasy world of the left hemisphere and deal with reality: the way things really are.
This view I suspect is a bitter pill to swallow but it is supported by scientific research. Also, I hasten to add, there is a bias in the brain that favors the left hemisphere over the right hemisphere. This bias involves two proteins, namely, Fgf8 and Nodal. Their action ensures that when the antagonism develops, it usually favors the left hemisphere of the brain.
In Zen’s intuitive path this means the harder we try to awaken to our true nature, the more we employ the left-hemisphere, and the more difficulty we encounter. Paradoxically, once we stop forcing our self to awaken, satori comes to us spontaneously and unexpectedly, which Zen’s history reports. Nevertheless, getting to that point is no easy matter or an easy cakewalk. Satori is never easy. We are usually deluded by the left hemisphere with its penchant for fantasy. It is more at home with an unrealistic imagination which conjures up fake enlightenments.
The left hemisphere can only deal with what it already presupposes: the world that it has already made for itself. This is not helpful when we elect to explore what we do not know which we seek to know.
Zen naturally favors the right hemisphere of the brain, with its greater integrative and unifying power that is constantly allowing itself to enter the world of the unknown to find and to know ultimate meaning on its own terms.