Ever since he can remember, brain scientist and Zen monk Carlos Valencia found himself constantly fascinated by many phenomena: Little insects with complex behaviors, religions, seed + water = plant??!!!, lightning and thunder, cultures, a vortex in the toilet, and the calm way cats eat. The world is weird.
Curious by nature and using the cultural tools at hand, he constantly tried to intellectually understand the world outside and inside himself. That’s why he did so well in school. He would try to understand everything! And since concepts where the way the world was revealed to him for a long time in this life, Carlos started a long path in the pursuit of objective knowledge.
He started with psychology school where he was interested in experimental behavior analysis, and later on in neuroscience. With international grants, he did a Master in neuroscience in Mexico and his neurobiology Ph.D. studies in Germany. Later on, he ended up working as a Post-doc researcher in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he officially lives. In his diving trip through levels of observation, he went from philosophy to anthropology, psychology, neurobiology, molecular biology, electrophysiology, and finally, consciousness. Yes, the holy grail of objective knowledge.
It was here, closing the intellectual circle and returning to more philosophical bases, where he found a couple of lines about Buddhism. These lines were emphatically rejected as a corruption of the free-thinking individual, and also because they poked the fear of ever getting close to a religion again. However, these lines would reappear again and again, until suddenly some of them caught his attention.
Many books and articles later, what he read about Buddhism managed to align many different perspectives and theories he had been chewing in his brain for years. But these readings were also spiced with the constant affirmation that truth and ultimate nature of reality is not something that can be intellectually grasped. They claimed there was a unique component needed: A practice.
Close to Amsterdam University, where he was working, he walked along a Zen center. Without knowing much about Buddhist lineages, he convinced his now wife, Patricia, to come along for an introductory session. He didn’t like it, he found it difficult and too charged with rituals, but kept going in the hope of engaging in philosophical discussions with other practitioners. To his disappointment, there was no discussion going around. The main thing was to shut up and sit down, still, in silence: Zazen. But every now and then there would be a glimpse into something weird while sitting in Zazen. A fatal slap in the face for the thinking mind. So he kept going.
After several years of practice, he received the monk ordination from his teacher. He took a break from science to do some subjective research and has been traveling around the world with his wife since 2013. This space provided a fertile ground for a slow and sustainable, flexible and mobile lifestyle where creativity and childhood projects started to grow.
Chuck the monk is a series of comic strips co-created with his friend Diego Otero since 2014. The first strip was published online in October 2015. Chuck is a hyperbolic version of Carlos, his spiritual teacher, his wife, friends, and family. The strips portrait life in and outside temples, the perks of the practice in western cultures and a feline quest of the Self. The book doesn’t pretend to teach the Dharma, especially not in an intellectual way, however since its content is strongly influenced by a solid spiritual practice, so the reader can find insightful and inspirational thoughts and emotions related to our daily life.
You can follow him on Facebook and Instagram or send him an email to carlitos@chuckthemonk.com