Readers of this blog and of my books tell me they like to hear about my personal psychological processes, how they affect my spiritual and scientific work, rather than only “Professor Tart’s” reasoned conclusions about such things. It’s easy for me to write in the latter style, that’s what gets rewarded in science. This apparent lack of the personal helps us, writers and scientists alike, keep up the illusion that we scientists are superior beings, Objective in our Search for Truth, not ignorant or biased like ordinary folks! Not that there’s any monopoly in fields like science on trying to cover up our human shortcomings and to feel better about ourselves!! But over the years, as, among other things, I continue my life-long research project, “Who is Charley Tart and why does his mind work the way it does?” I’ve found it actually communicates more effectively to occasionally be more personal and revealing, even while keeping progress toward more objective understandings as my goal. So here’s an ongoing exploration, stimulated by a recent book.
Usually when I review a book, it’s a somewhat technical review: assuming I know a reasonable amount about the subject matter, is the book accurate? And, of course, is it readable? I would rarely recommend a book that had useful info in it but you had to work too hard to pull it out. But I’ve never reviewed or recommended a book before where I’m “worried” because I think the book is too clear, that it makes too much sense to me!
I’m three quarters of the way through lama Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s Open Heart, Open Mind: Awakening the Power of Essence Love, and delighted with it. And a little suspicious of my delight…..
Spirituality and Science:
Two major passions/loves of my life, since I was a teenager some 60 years ago, have been spirituality and science. Spirituality in the sense of a deep interest, personal and heartfelt as well as intellectual, in the meaning(s) life can have, the ideas and practices that can take us beyond (without denigrating or invalidating) ordinary animal/material interests, toward the deeper meanings of life. Not so much religion, that socially organized outcome of spirituality that too often loses too much of the real and deep knowledge of spirit – religion is intellectually interesting, but not personally important to me, although as societies, as groups of people, we need healthy forms of it. Science, in the sense of basic, wide-ranging curiosity, wanting to create, to learn, to better understand all aspects of reality and experience while being willing to discipline ourselves in that search so our understanding keeps touch with actual reality, not just emotionally and intellectually attached to appealing intellectual concepts. For me, science is an integral and deep part of my spiritual quest; along the lines of that apocryphal saying “There is no God but reality. To seek Him elsewhere is the action of the Fall.” My best understanding at this time is that a truer and more useful spirituality always comes back to checking itself against what can be experienced, observed, created, not just ideas or feelings becoming dogmas, all of this interacting with love, humility and compassion.
I’ve studied some of the world’s great spiritual traditions over my lifetime, with particular interest in Buddhism as a spiritual system because it is psychologically based and fundamentally compatible with essential science – at least the kinds of Buddhism that most interest me. Now I have to add a disclaimer I usually make – I’m not a Buddhist scholar or a lineage holder, I speak from my particular experience of various teachers and teachings, but I know human movements labeled “Buddhism” come in such varieties that anything I can say on the order of “Buddhism is A but not B” can be contradicted by the teachings and activities of some group that considers itself “Buddhist.” So when I talk about “Buddhism” or “Buddhist teachings,” I mean most simply my (hopefully evolving) understanding, that there was a person, Gautama Buddha, who lived about 2500 years ago and who I think of as one of the world’s first psychologists. He had a lot of brilliant insights into the ways the human mind can and does function, especially in the ways that decrease or increase our own and others’ suffering. One of his teachings, the Sutta to the Kalamas (some tribal group of his time) has always inspired me as showing his approach can be basically compatible with the essence of science. Here’s a translation of that Sutta:
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
(from Gates, 1989).
This is (or at least can be interpreted to be) a basically scientific approach, as it emphasizes the importance of direct observation, direct experience, over belief and theory, and keeping reasoning in accord with observation. I’ve often described Essential Science as to be curious, to observe things as clearly as you can, to think about what that might mean, and to extend your thinking to predict new events, while sharing all steps of this process with peers. If the new events occur under the predicted conditions, your theory is doing well. If the events don’t occur, it's time to reject or modify your theory, your reasoning and/or make clearer observations. If your belief and theories don’t fit with what you and others actually can experience, too bad for your beliefs, back to the drawing board! No matter how “elegant,” “intuitive,” “sensible,” or “fashionable” your theories were. Of course just as real science is practiced by human beings who get attached to particular beliefs, the same thing can happen in Buddhism or any spiritual paths, but we’re talking ideals here.
Science and Buddhism Practiced by Humans:
These are basics for me, but, of course, in 2500 years human beings have worked extensively with Gautama Buddha’s basic teachings and methods. Some of these workers have been learned, intellectual types, with “learned” meaning ranging from people who had memorized much of the early teachings and continued them as a kind of dogma, Truths to be preserved, awkwardness to be pushed away, to more philosophical types who elaborated ideas, to more yogic types, to intensive meditators, who supposedly reached the same kind of understanding in meditatively-induced ASCs (Altered States of Consciousness) that the Buddha himself had attained. In this latter case, Buddhists talk about an unbroken line of succession, a lineage, where the essential truths of Buddhism are with us because of living masters who draw directly on these experiences, where earlier masters certify which of their own students have authentically gotten enlightened, not simply possessing scholarly knowledge but inspired by direct experience.
Beginning with books and a little personal contact with Lama Anarika Govinda, a highly learned German who became a Tibetan Buddhist decades ago, I have studied off and on with a number of Buddhist teachers. I wouldn’t call this my “lineage” in any traditional sense, as that would imply approval by these teachers of my understandings, whereas in reality many of the would not recognize my name and probably most, if they remembered me at all, would think of me as that psychologist/scientist who asked too many questions instead of being a devoted student…. 
Today my primary Buddhist teachers, in alphabetical order, are Shinzen Young, Sogyal Rinpoche, and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and I have done a number of meditation retreats with all of them. I have learned a lot – whether I have learned the “right” thing…..who knows? I list them as “teachers” in the Western sense of the term, brilliant people I am learning a lot from, but not in the Eastern sense that I am a “disciple” of any of them, accepting whatever they teach without questions. Questions, basic curiosity, are an integral part of my nature and essential to being a scientist – although I recognize how easily curiosity is perverted into a psychological defense mechanism, for me as well as people in general.
My Understanding of Buddhism/Dzogchen:
Tibetan Buddhism has been an especially rich source of stimulation and inspiration for me. I like the Tibetans I’ve met, their tradition is very rich, and they strike me as happy people. And challenging! Sometimes I hear a brief teaching or read something and my reaction is on the order of “Yes, that makes sense, that’s how my mind often works,” or “I don’t fully understand that but it points in a direction that may make sense for me after I have certain experiences or the like.” And other times my reaction could be best expressed as “Huh?”
This applies especially to Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, the forms emphasized by Sogyal Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Dzogchen is touted as the highest form of Tibetan Buddhism – a statement I like, shouldn’t a smart person like me be studying with the best and highest? But I don’t pay much attention to this kind of statement, really, as all forms of the spiritual path I’ve explored claimed to be the best and highest…. I hope it’s all true!
Beginning with Sogyal Rinpoche’s retreats back in the 1970s, Dzogchen has been my focus. Sogyal Rinpoche teaches Vajrayana Buddhism, the Diamond Vehicle, too, but it’s not my style, so even though many fellow students regularly practice these exercises, I seldom do more than a few minutes of any of them (mantra chanting or praying, e.g.) as a way of stimulating my devotion and caring. It’s the mindfulness emphasis of Dzogchen I care about, and I have written three books about mindfulness that have, I’m told, been helpful to people (Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential. Boston: New Science Library, 1986; Living the Mindful Life. Boston: Shambhala, 1994; and Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People. Novato, California: Wisdom Editions, 2001, and I will teach the first of several online workshops on core mindfulness training and meditation starting this August (GlideWing).
So what is Dzogchen (remember, just my opinion to date, no authoritative answers)? On some days, I think I understand, both intellectually and experientially, that’s it’s like what G. I. Gurdjieff called waking up, it’s a focus on clearly perceiving what’s actually happening at the moment with concentration, clarity and equanimity, a focus on sensations and initial internal reactions in the here-and-now, rather than being lost in our reactions to our reactions to our reactions. Ordinary mental functioning, samsara, illusion, means confusing reactions with actual realities of the moment. To illustrate….
- Right now I hear some yard work being done next door, a gasoline powered string trimmer running – so far so good, I think this is an accurate perception of what’s actually going on at this moment
– which bothers me, as I’m trying to think and write this material, not be annoyed by that darn trimmer going off and on – I'm leaving simple sensory reality now, the focus is on my consciousness now, on me being annoyed and reasons (rationalizations?) for being annoyed. My potential conscious control of my mind is slipping too as annoyance takes over guidance.
- Spreading into a generalized annoyance, why do there have to be so many damned distractions when I’m trying to say something? And all the damned distractions I’ve had to put up with the past few weeks! – examples from memory popping into my mind for moments, another replacing it, etc., etc. Alas, poor me!
Hmmm. A minute ago I was a relatively awake mind, focused on a writing task which I thought could be of benefit to others, now I’m drifting into self-pity….poor poor me…..
So again, what is Dzogchen (remember, just my opinion to date, no authoritative answers)? It’s about a small but real intention or effort to stay close to what’s happening in the present moment, and, as one result, not having my “stories” and neuroses and hopes and fears running my mind so strongly. When I'm being closer to reality I’m usually happier, more intelligent (perceiving what’s relevant, rather than going off into stories and the past or future), more effective in terms of actions being based more on reality and less on fantasy, my samsara, my stories.
So again, what is Dzogchen (remember, just my opinion to date)? There are those many other moments and days when the answer is indeed “Huh?” What are they talking about? There are lots of Big, vital terms in Dzogchen. Pure perception? When is my perception pure enough to qualify? And if I’m asking that question, aren’t I doing what’s called fabricating in Dzogchen, pushing my experience into an (arbitrary) form rather than really paying attention to the reality of the moment? Rigpa, the nature of mind, the essence of Dzogchen being resting in the nature of mind? Right now my mind is churning a lot of words around, trying to see what best describes my actual experience – but this could hardly be the nature of, the essence of mind? Word churning is me – so true, it would make a nice bumper sticker! Emptiness? Another one of those key Buddhist terms that sometimes I think I understand, too many other times I can’t make any sense of it in the contexts I hear it in…..
The Book: Open Heart, Open Mind: Awakening the Power of Essence Love
Which finally gets us back to Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s Open Heart, Open Mind: Awakening the Power of Essence Love. With everything else I’ve read on Dzogchen, the many teachings I’ve heard, I constantly bounce back and forth between “I basically understand this and have a little skill at practicing it” and “What are they talking about?”
But just about everything I’ve read in Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s book so far – and I’m almost done – makes immediate, obvious sense to me, intellectually and experientially. How can that be? What’s my problem? Is there a problem?
My best guess is that I’m so habitually concerned about using words correctly, about not misleading others or not being misled by thinking I understand when I really don’t, is that Rinpoche has hardly used any of the big, important Tibetan buzz terms at all in the book, he’s stayed with straightforward English – so I haven’t been trapped into worrying about what I do and don’t know! Clever!
Now it’s a mixed “blessing” to be as concerned with proper word use as I am. On the one hand, it’s been one of the keys to my success as a writer and teacher. People often write me and thank me for being so clear and specific about what I mean, and contrast that with the ambiguity common in so much spiritual writing and teaching. Such ambiguity often can’t be helped in many cases, of course, the terms are fuzzy, used in different ways by different writers or even in different senses by the same writer without it being made clear that meaning has changed. Or the words may point in a useful direction, but what’s being talked about can’t be adequately caught in words anyway. Have you ever seen a satisfactory definition of the taste of “vanilla ice cream” that would fully convey the experience to someone who had never tasted it?
I often tease people that when I become World Tsar of Word Usage, I’m going to outlaw the use of “meditation.” There are so many contradictory and confusing uses that it’s too likely to confuse rather than educate or communicate. Don’t say “I meditated,” e.g., get very specific, say something like: “Given certain background expectations and conditions (spell out), I tried to follow this specific mental practice (C-CAPs, Consciously Controlled Attention Practice is the term I’m trying to introduce, but I don’t expect much success in the real world), and “succeeded” or “failed” in such-and-such specific ways and experienced so-and-so, perhaps as a specific results of this C-CAP).”
So one conclusion I can draw about this book is that its author has succeeded masterfully in introducing the basics of the Dzogchen approach for mindfulness and liberation to English-speaking beginners, without trapping them in special Tibetan terms. I might need to modify this conclusion though – perhaps all my years of struggling with Tibetan terminology and practice has given me a preparation for following this English version. The words are excellent, but perhaps not that excellent if you don’t have enough prior Tibetan background? I don’t know, and we will see from the reactions of newcomers reading the book. And/or perhaps I can just say this is a great English-language review of the essentials (again, as I understand them so far) of Dzogchen….And perhaps if you are an experience student of Tibetan Buddhism and you find this book too “elementary” you might wonder if you are somewhat attached to being “special,” an “advanced student?” I think this book gets quite deep into the core aspects of the teachings….
I also noted at the beginning of this essay that “I’ve found it actually communicates better to be more personal and revealing, even while keeping more objective understandings as my goal.” Tsoknyi Rinpoche takes a similar tack in his book, relating many personal incidents. Not to show he’s a special kind of person, but rather to share his humanity. After all, if he is too different, how can we really take his advice too seriously?
I remember Shinzen Young talking about coming back from many years of meditation study in the East, coming back as an ordained monk and beginning to teach in Los Angeles. He noticed something, though. Because he was a monk, he got lots of respect from students, but at some level they didn't take his teaching to seriously, after all he was a monk, he was special. So he changed it. He let his hair grow back in, ditched the monastic robes for blue jeans, and got a girlfriend, now he wasn't so different and people felt closer to him and his teachings….
I especially resonated with Tsoknyi Rinpoche's many recollections that he was a happy child, a typical boy, having a lot of fun, and how much he had to suppress himself in order to be a tulku once he was so designated, a reincarnation of the previous Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and so having enormous responsibilities to preserve Tibetan Buddhism and his lineage. He suffered a lot – I wish he hadn’t had to! There are still lots of times I’d prefer to be my childhood self, Teddy Tart, and just have some fun, instead of Professor Tart, authority on consciousness, – and the demands on Professor Tart are a lot easier than on Rinpoche Tsoknyi Rinpoche!
Whichever of my understandings is correct, this is an excellent book and I highly recommend it, whether you’re a Buddhist student or simply curious about the workings of your own mind…..
Tags: Anarika Govinda, ASCs, attention, awareness, belief, Buddhism, C-CAPs, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, clarity, confusion, Dzogchen, emotions, emptiness, enlightenment, Gautama Buddha, glidewing, Great Perfection, Gurdjieff, gurus, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, intention, ITP, Kalamas, karma, lamas, lineage, Living the Mindful Life, materialism, meditation, mind science, mindfulness, objectivity, open heart, open mind, ordinary mind, perception, rigpa, science, scientism, Shinzen Young, Sogyal Rinpoche, spiritual teachers, supernature, Sutta to the Kalamas, Tibetan Buddhism, Transpersonal, Truth, vipassana, waking up
As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago(April 9, 2012), I went back to lovely Asheville, NC for a week of video lecturing at the invitation of GlideWing.com, a company that produces online workshops on various spiritual, psychic and psychological topics. Having watched a workshop they'd done with Tibetan Lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, I was intrigued with this online workshop medium. It's more and more expensive and time consuming for people to fly in from all over the material world for in-person workshops, even if that may be the best possible format for teaching and learning many things, especially subtle things, but how much could be done, accessible to so many more, with an online workshop? A relatively repeatable workshop?
The work went very well. I want to introduce people to the core things I have learned about mindfulness (in life) and meditation, both as a foundation for possible spiritual development (but you don't have to be "spiritual") and/or as a practical skill for living a more intelligent and effective life. Foundational, but setting directions for advance, of course, there's only so much that can be done in a 3-week online workshop format, but those core practices can be very useful.
I want to say "it's in the can," but the phrase will date me to the days of film movies when completed reels of developed film went into metal cans, but "it's in the chips" sounds kind of silly.
Basically, it went very well and I think it's going to be an excellent course. GlideWing has a brief introduction video up now describing the workshop (go to www.glidewing.com, click the Online Workshops tab, then scroll down to my photo and click Learn More.) If you click my photo at the top of the first entry page, you'll just get a general video about my last book, The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together, which is nice to introduce me in my scientist role, but not helpful to show anything of my mindfulness teacher role.
Which brings me to my central theme this morning: what exactly is my role in this workshop?
Mindfulness teacher? That's quite accurate. Over the decades, I've learned a fair amount about both being more mindful in ordinary life, where we really need to be more mindful, and more mindful in various formal kinds of "meditations," where we observe and learn more about the inner workings of our minds. I've done both a prolonged group process (see my Waking Up book for more detail) and many shorter in-person workshops about this kind of thing, as well as teaching it to graduate psychology students at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology for more than a decade and at pre-conference workshops at the premier "Tucson Toward A Science of Consciousness" conferences several times (see my Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People book, or my Waking Up book or my Living the Mindful Life book), so I know how to do this.
Here's where it starts feeling a little sticky for me though. Many people traditionally think of anyone who teaches meditation and the like as a "spiritual teacher," and this is a role I actively reject. OK, realistically I know a little about spirituality, it's central in my life and I've devoted much of my career trying to create bridges between genuine spirituality and genuine science, but when people hear "spiritual teacher" they project all sorts of ideas about enlightenment, perfection, knowing everything, etc. on to the teacher – and that isn't me! I'm a nice fellow, I know a lot, there's much more I don't know and, worst of all, there's a lot I don't know that I don't know I don't know, but I'm tempted to keep talking anyway and mislead people. Knowing when to keep quiet becomes a major part of my personal path then!
Which moves me to my scientist role, a deep part of myself, because it's honest and I'm comfortable there. As a scientist, I have to sharply distinguish what I (and others) know and don't know – know in the sense of having good intellectual theories that seem to make good sense of stuff and/or are practicable - versus what I believe or hope to be true, but don't really have much observable or experienceable data to hang my beliefs on. Sometimes I tease some of my "spiritual leader" friends by saying what an advantage I have over them, as a scientist I can say "I don't know," but as representatives of a spiritual tradition, they and their tradition are expected to know everything of importance. It's an all too human condition to tend to go along with those expectations, perhaps giving answers that don't really help….
Scientist melds nicely into the Professor role for me. Most people have fairly realistic perceptions of professors. "He or she knows a lot about X, Y and Z, but is biased about D, E and F and has certain personal shortcomings. I can learn a lot of useful stuff by selectively listening and evaluating, but I don't have to buy the whole package (except maybe to pass the final) and then I'm done with this professor!"
That's the role I've taken with students for these many years. " I'm pretty smart about A, B and C, not so sure about lots of other things. Take what I teach as stimulation, something to think about, but don't just passively accept it. If it's important to you, test it for yourself."
That's what I've done in preparing the videos for the GlideWing online workshop.
"Here's the best of what I know to introduce you to core formal meditation practices and mindfulness in life. Here's some core practices you can do. Here's a method of formal, concentrative meditation. Here's a method of insight meditation. Here's a method to become more awake, more mindful in life. Check them out! Ask me questions on the discussion forum during the course when you need to, discuss stuff with your other classmates. If some of this really resonates with you, here's some suggestions for where to go for more advanced instruction with people who know more than me. If it doesn't resonate that much, fine, let it sit, some will be useful now, some you may find useful later on."
This is moving into a relatively new medium for me, and I'm very interested in how well it is going to work. When I first started teaching at ITP, e.g., eighteen years ago, I considered teaching mindfulness to the students there as an interesting experiment that might or might not work. Why? Because the vast majority of the students were what are called "intuitive" types in the Jungian sense, living in rather abstract mental spaces: would I have much luck in teaching them to learn how to also exist in the here-and-now? (Not that we should always be in the here-and-now, but it's a vital place to be able to tune into!) I was very happy with how well it's worked all these years, students reaching and loving this extra dimension to existence, so I'm looking forward to these online workshop results.
I expect to give the workshop once in late summer (Aug 4-26, 2012), maybe again a couple of times or so next year. Registration and other practical info is on the www.Glidewing.com site.
So I as "Professor Tart" will be having a limited engagement where you may learn useful stuff about meditation and mindfulness. He won't pretend to be a spiritual teacher, and you're done with him as Professor after a few weeks.
I'll post occasional updates as we go along.
Tags: attention, awareness, belief, Charles Tart, concentrative meditation, enlightenment, glidewing, glidewing.com, Gurdjieff, insight meditation, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, intention, ITP, Living the Mindful Life, meditation, mind science, mindfulness, mindfulness teacher, ordinary mind, perception, professor, projections, science, science and spirituality, spiritual teacher, spiritual teachers, tenzin wangyal rinpoche, vipassana, waking up
Ever since I was a child, dreams have fascinated me. Where did they come from? Good ones were marvelous. And flying! I had to slowly learn to fly over many dreams as a kid. First running and jumping, somehow slowing down the float back to earth. Then creating a little airplane around me – I remember it was red – that would go further. Finally learning that there was a certain thing I could do with my mind and I would just float up! And the puzzlement and disappointment after waking when I would stand in the middle of my bedroom and try to create that special levitation attitude – and it just wouldn't work here! And trying to figure out, was it a valid mental action that just didn't work on this level of reality, or couldn't I recall the mental attitude just right?
I've been too busy the last few decades to pay much attention to my dreams, so long time no fly. But I frequently slip into little dreams, dreamlets I call them, while practicing various kinds of meditation. There I am, trying to do some meditative practice, such as following the flow of the most prominent sensations in my body moment-by-moment, but then there's this intriguing flow of light and dark, muted colors, dimly perceived shapes inside my mind – my eyes are usually closed – my body sensations have faded. Maybe I'll come back to body sensation after a few seconds of this vague, amorphous light show, but often the forms get much more vivid and, without really being aware of the transition, I'm having a dreamlet. For a few seconds to a few minutes, I'm in a visual world, things are happening, characters are talking, I'm doing things, then suddenly I'm back in my body, realizing I've lost it, forgotten the meditation technique I was trying to do. At that point I can feel guilty that I'm bad and a failure, or just get back to the meditation technique.
Some years ago I was on a meditation retreat led by Shinzen Young in Arizona, complaining to him about my sleepiness in meditation, when he suggested that it might be interesting to reframe my experience. Instead of "I'm failing," how about "I'm exploring the bhavanga." The bhavanga? I didn't know what that was, but it sounded a lot better than failure!
Shinzen explained, and I've since done a little scholarly research on it, that bhavanga is a Sanskrit term. A typical definition is found at http://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/bhavanga/index.html :
Sometimes rendered life stream. In Theravada Buddhism, this is the underlying stratum of existence that is used to explain memory and other temporal phenomena such as moral accountability. It is described by Buddhaghosa and others as the natural condition of mind, bright and shining and free from impurity. Note that it is regarded as a conditioned phenomenon, not as a soul in the sense of Western religion. (The Sarvastivadin/Mahayana treatment of bhavanga is different.) See also alaya vijnana.
I don't know whether Shinzen intended for me to get so fascinated by it, it may be a side trip on the way to liberation, but I have gotten better and better at observing it during formal meditation. It's hard to remember specifics of it if you come back to full consciousness, I think the mind is designed to not bother to put this into long-term memory, but I find Shinzen's idea that by bringing more "light of consciousness" to the depths of the mind, it gradually makes you more conscious, less blocked.
It's as if below the surface of my conscious mind (and perhaps for everyone) there is a continuous process generating visual "thinking" possibilities. Sometimes they rise to consciousness, as in a nocturnal dream or flashes of hypnagogic imagery, my dreamlets, but almost all of it is not consciously noticed. I suspect it is doing a lot of background shaping of conscious experience, though.
In this brief article, I want to share a simple and practical technique for observing the bhavanga, for hovering on the threshold of the dream world. Hovering, being in a balanced state, is the key thing here. If you don't "slip down" toward the state, visual imagery is hard to observe, but if you "slip" too far down you get lost in the dreamlet and may simply go into prolonged sleep. I sometimes picture it as the Valley of the Bhavanga or the Valley of Hypnagogia. If you're back from the rim you can't see down into it at all, but if you climb down to far the walls get steeper and you're too liable to slip all the way down into sleep…..
The figure below, drawn for me courtesy of Diane Meyer, gives you the basics. Lie down comfortably on your back, eyes closed. A quiet, fairly dark room helps. You can let all of your body relax except for one forearm, which is held vertically upright, resting on its elbow. You'll quickly find tactile vertical as the position in which it takes almost no effort to keep your arm balanced there. The hand can also be kept balanced vertically too, but sometimes I find it easiest to just let my hand fall to some relaxed position. It's the forearm position that matters.
Forearm Balancing for Exploring the Borderlands of Sleep
Now you just calmly observe your mind as you continue to relax. If your forearm starts to tilt to the side, gently bring it back to vertical, to the minimal effort position. As you slide toward sleep, the imagery of the bhavanga, from vague, amorphous shapes and colors to full dreamlets, will manifest.
The skill you eventually learn is to keep a little attention on the forearm, such as by lightly checking on it every few seconds, and when it starts to tilt – this happens as you start sliding too far down into the bhavanga – gently make it balanced again. You now have a biofeedback device, your forearm, that enables you to hover on the threshold, far enough into the bhavanga or hypnagogic state to observe a lot, but which gives you gentle feedback if you sleep too far into the falling asleep zone, and which gives you even stronger feedback – the arm falling and hitting the bed – if you go all the way.
I came across this technique while still a teenager, reading old journals on psychical research and parapsychology. I can't find the exact reference, my journals don't go back that far, but I think it was a little article titled something like the "Four-eyes Technique" in an issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in the early 1900s. The author had figured this balancing technique out and was using it because he thought it would help ESP messages get through when they couldn't penetrate the everyday noise of his conscious mind. The four eyes referred to success in a telepathy experiment, if I recall correctly from that long ago, when he got an image of someone wearing glasses, which was the target being sent. I can remember "four eyes" being a slang term for people wearing glasses when I was a child.
At any rate, it's a practical way for exploring the bhavanga. I tend to especially use it on long meditation retreats when I'm very tired and just don't feel like sitting up in the zendo in a formal meditation posture. This way I go back to my room, lie comfortably on my bed, "activate my biofeedback instrument," and bring some consciousness to the depths while my body gets some physical rest. And if I'm very tired, of course, forget the forearm, I take a brief nap……
Tags: awareness, bhavangha, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, dreams, enlightenment, hypnagogia, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, intention, ITP, meditation, mindfulness, ordinary mind, Shinzen Young, Transpersonal, unusual experiences, vipassana
For all that I have heard various Buddhists teach about the unnecessary suffering that comes from getting overly attached to anything, I still get too attached to too many things. Like thinking I've got my life schedule in order and running well, and then reality comes along and disrupts things.
So I've really been in the swing of posting something interesting here every week for a couple of years or so now, and then between my teaching at ITP and my trip back to North Carolina for almost a week*, and getting ready for my wife and I to go off on our annual Spring camping vacation, regularity is gone! The choice left to me is how much I'll fret or not fret about it. I feel like you folks out there who regularly read this blog will be disappointed with more absences, but then again I believe you are a more serious group than folks who need constant diversion…..
And, although I hope I have a long life ahead of me, I know that at my age the end could be closer, but I still have so many findings and ideas I want to share with people.
And just to make the mixture more "fun," my desktop computer has gone kaput and really isn't worth repairing, so I'm reduced to the smaller resources of my laptop, which doesn't seem to have some of the material I've been using for some of my blog posts. Even worse, I have to go through the agony of choosing a new desktop computer to buy, and my first looks tell me I don't even know what some of the descriptive terms mean any more!
The Buddhists speak of the "suffering of the god realms," which I take to mean that even those of us who live in California and have the modern miracles of computers and the web can suffer! Like when I'm camping and have no high-speed web access: dial-up takes so long!
May it be the worst of my suffering!
Anyway, I may manage to get a few interesting posts on in the next few weeks or maybe I'll be so happy to be out in nature that I don't even think of it!
Bless you all, see you later!
*Oh, the production of video for the online workshop on meditation and mindfulness that GlideWing will offer, scheduled for this August, went very well. Nice folks! They should have some descriptive material up on their GlideWing.com site within the week.
Tags: Buddhism, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, enlightenment, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, ITP, Living the Mindful Life, meditation, mindfulness, Transpersonal
I know it's been a while since I've had time to post anything – so busy back East creating the online workshop on mindfulness and meditation – news and mini-essays soon!
I try to put something interesting here each weekend. I know that's what most readers want, and it's good discipline for me to write regularly like this. [I'd like to have time to be able to respond more often to readers' comments too, but my time is generally all taken up with writing and teaching]
I may not put anything up next weekend, as I'm going to be back East doing a new kind of project for me, one that's going to be very interesting. One of my roles is as a teacher of mindfulness. I did that in a private group (AET, Awareness Enhancement Training) years ago, that's described in my Waking Up book, and I've done that as a one quarter course at ITP (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) for more than a dozen years now.
I was initially ambivalent about teaching anything like mindfulness, because while trying to be more mindful has definitely benefited me, I wasn't sure I was mindful enough to really teach it adequately to other people. But my mindfulness teacher at the time told me I was being sincerely humble, but in an unrealistic way. Yes, I was far from being able to be perfectly present and mindful, but compared to people who hadn't had any training or practice in it at all, I was an expert! Oh, yes, of course…..
This reminded me of a situation years before where I had talked to my Aikido instructor about whether one of his black belt students could come up to UC Davis a couple times a week to start teaching Aikido to students there. He said they were pretty busy, but why didn't I teach it?
I immediately said I couldn't possibly do it, I was only a brown belt, and I knew how little I really understood of the art of Aikido. But, as my mindfulness teacher did many years later, he said of course I was far from perfect in my Aikido, but compared to someone who had no training at all I was an expert, so why didn't I teach? I brooded on this for a while and then went ahead and taught Aikido for several years to students at UC Davis, and it was a very rewarding experience for me and, I believe, for the students.
So, at the invitation of a North Carolina company. GlideWing, I'm flying back East to teach mindfulness on videotape for several days, with an end result that this will be offered as a course people can take over the web, a webinar. They will pay a tuition charge for it, so the company can pay its bills, and each time the courses is taught, students will have the same basic lectures, but I will be available to answer student questions through text e-mails.
If this were an ordinary academic course, I would have no worries about how it will go. I've been teaching for 50 some years, and my students tell me I'm quite good at it. But I'm trying to teach basic meditation and mindfulness-in-life skills, and my style for teaching these is to try to model mindfulness in the course of teaching. That is, I don't just talk about how useful it could be to keep some attention focused in the here and now through various techniques, I try to actually do that while talking, rather than get carried away by my words.
This is something it took me a long time to learn, I'm the kind of person who gets hypnotized by my own clever words (there are lots like me!), and so I can say wonderful things, about being present, without actually being present. But I make a big effort, as I said, to actually be present while I teach this material. I am moderately successful at being present much of the time when I teach this, and I think some aspect of my students' minds/beings detects and responds to this, and it helps them understand what it means to be present. My experience has been that my students learn to be much more present. One of the best ways this manifests with my ITP students is when they reach a point of being present enough that they can spot when I've been carried away by my clever words, and call me on it. "Hey Charley, have you lost it? Are you still here?" That's a great joy when my students get that good!
So I'll spend several days teaching various aspects of mindfulness on camera, and trying to be mindful while I do it. I'll certainly have some idea of how successful I was at it, and I expect at least a moderate degree of success. The question is, will that mindfulness, which is more than just a set of words, be effectively conveyed to my students?
I won't have any external "props" to suggest mindfulness, such as an Eastern spiritual teacher would, like looking, for example, "spiritual" through wearing robes, or have various holy objects and symbols sitting on the table in front of me, but we shall see. The answer to my question of whether I can convey enough mindfulness in this manner to be of help to my students will eventually be known through the kinds of questions and comments they e-mail me. That is going to be very interesting! Will I have created a relatively permanent method of teaching mindfulness through these videotapes, or will it turn out to be a good idea that doesn't work that well in practice?
I'll put some comments on how it comes out later on this blog.
Tags: attention, awareness, Buddhism, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, emotions, enlightenment, Gurdjieff, gurus, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, intention, ITP, Living the Mindful Life, meditation, mind science, mindfulness, ordinary mind, perception, spiritual teachers, Transpersonal, vipassana, waking up
This is a qualification of future writings about Buddhism that I'll refer folks too, lest they take me as a traditional "authority" on the subject…..
[In this and subsequent postings, I'll be writing about Buddhism, but such writings of mine always need to be qualified. I'm not a Buddhist scholar, for example, nor am I at all "enlightened" and thus speaking from deep interior knowledge. Yet I am a sincere student of this particular path of spiritual development (as well as other paths I've been involved with in the past), and I am a scientist, someone who tries to write as clearly and truthfully as I can. I also know there is immense variation in Buddhism because of the many branches of it, so anything I say on the order of "Buddhists believe…" Or "Buddhists practice…" can undoubtedly be contradicted by the beliefs and practices of some branch of Buddhism. So all my comments should be considered as my current understanding, subject to change as my understanding gets better. I write them as a way of helping to clarify my understanding - while recognizing that much more than intellect is often involved in real understanding.
Readers and students tell me that my reflections on these sorts of things often stimulate them to think about them more deeply, or understand them more deeply, so I offer them in the spirit of stimulation. But don't take them as any final, authoritative understanding, they're just my best understanding at the time of writing.
I should probably repeat this qualification at the beginning of anything I write about Buddhism, but that would get pretty awkward, so I'll just hyperlink to these qualifications in the future articles.]
Tags: Buddhism, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, meditation, spiritual teachers, Tibetan Buddhism
[In this and subsequent postings, I'll be writing about Buddhism, but such writings of mine always need to be qualified. I'm not a Buddhist scholar, for example, nor am I at all "enlightened" and thus speaking from deep interior knowledge. Yet I am a sincere student of this particular path of spiritual development (as well as other paths I've been involved with in the past), and I am a scientist, someone who tries to write as clearly and truthfully as I can. I also know there is immense variation in Buddhism because of the many branches of it, so anything I say on the order of "Buddhists believe…" Or "Buddhists practice…" can undoubtedly be contradicted by the beliefs and practices of some branch of Buddhism. So all my comments should be considered as my current understanding, subject to change as my understanding gets better. Readers and students tell me that my reflections on these sorts of things often stimulate them to think about them more deeply, or understand them more deeply, so I offer them in the spirit of stimulation. But don't take them as any final, authoritative understanding, they're just my best understanding at the time of writing. I should probably repeat this qualification at the beginning of anything I write about Buddhism, but that would get pretty awkward, so I'll just hyperlink to these qualifications in the future articles.]
While searching for information on just what is meant in Buddhism by the concept of coemergent ignorance, one of the first entries I came across was full of statements about something which has bothered and confused me for years. It so activated my old concerns that I never did get far enough down in the article to find what it said about coemergent ignorance – that's a task for later.
This thing that has disturbed and puzzled me for decades of trying to adequately understand – well enough to facilitate my practices – the Tibetan Buddhist worldview, is what I call a powerful anti-thought attitude. It basically seems to say that any kind of thought is inherently bad and must inevitably lead to suffering.
To illustrate this, consider the following quotes, picked out from this article I was perusing on Mahamudra and Dzogchen. It was originally published in the Shambhala Sun and is available on the web at (http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=166 0). It's by Lama Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, one of the most authoritative Dzogchen teachers, one of the sons of one of the most profound teachers I've ever read, Lama Tulku Orgyen. I'm picking just a few sentences here and there, but there are many saying the same thing I could pick from in the article.
"Thought is samsara. Being free of thought is liberation."
(Samsara, for any non-Buddhist readers, is the state of living in illusion, of being cut off from a clear perception of reality and consequently creating a lot of suffering that is not really necessary.)
" The bottom line is this: we need to know how to dissolve thoughts."
" Whenever there is thought, it follows that there is clinging. The attitude of clinging follows the tracks of the three poisons — passion, aggression and ignorance. Since the formation of thought involves the three poisons, that means that thinking causes samsara, the endless suffering of cyclic existence."
" We understand that thinking is delusion. However, to want to be free and at the same time to want to hang on to conceptual thinking is a contradiction in terms. It is something that will not happen. It is an impossible task."
"If you want to attain liberation and omniscient enlightenment, you need to be free of conceptual thinking." (Chökyi Nyima's italics to emphasize his point)
Now I find most things that Tibetan teachers say inspiring, and often I know from my own more direct experience that they are psychologically true. I've heard Lama Chökyi Nyima teach, for example, and have very high regard for him. I know from my personal observations that thought can spiral into obsessive thoughts about thoughts, which trigger emotions (often neurotic), which trigger more thoughts, which trigger more emotions, which trigger more thoughts, etc., etc., etc., which is indeed a primary mechanism of living in illusion, living in samsara. But when I hear these kind of absolute statements about how thought is inherently bad, I have a difficult time understanding it or buying it. What I often think is something like, "Would any of these Tibetan teachers like to fly here from Asia in an airplane that was designed by someone who did not have any thoughts?" Sustained, disciplined conceptual thought is what has made progress in science possible. I make my living from thinking, both creatively and with disciplined direction and refinement to shape ideas into forms useful for others. I am also often entertained by my thoughts. So I can see an enormous need to keep thought from spiraling out of control and/or trapping us in our neurotic and deluded stories, but I've never been able to see the value of this totally anti-thought attitude.
Countering this absolutely negative attitude toward thoughts, I have often heard Lama Sogyal Rinpoche teach that it's not thoughts that create problems, it's the pursuit of thoughts, the attachment or aversion to thoughts, the buildup of more and more attached thoughts or aversions and associated emotions that's the problem. Thoughts, per se, are not the problem.
Recently I listened to some dzogchen teachings by Lama Tsoknyi Rinpoche that struck me as making much more sense and being more complete than the common negative attitude toward thoughts. He noted that the emergence, the rising of thoughts and emotions is an inherent part of being alive, but the "attitude" (the best, but not adequate way I can express this) with which we immediately greet/react to these rising thoughts and emotions determines whether (1) they create negative karma or (2) are part of the process of liberation. His first emphasis was on whether they create negative karma, whether rising thoughts and emotions are appropriated immediately by the ego – I would say by the neurotic aspects of our self rather than "ego," but that's a different discussion for the future – and worked into reinforcing our delusions and negative habits and actions and consequent karma. On the other hand, if you are resting in the nature of mind, in rigpa, these risings are immediately liberated into a kind of energy, what I have heard Sogyal Rinpoche term "the radiance of rigpa." I believe this immediate and automatic liberation is also considered an aspect of purification, the transformation of negative attitudes and habits into the radiance of rigpa.
I believe Tsoknyi Rinpoche also noted that this distinction about what "state" or "attitude" thoughts and emotions rise in is often not at all clear in various teachings and writings. If you really understand (probably by having a perfect understanding of the subtleties of the Tibetan language), you can probably immediately grasp any distinction from the overall context, which effect of thoughts is being referred to. But, if you are a beginner like me or most students, you may not know there even is a distinction to be made and be confused, as I have been for years, about why there so often is such absolute negativity toward thoughts.
I know from personal experience that it's wonderful to be able to reduce or even turn off obsessive or negative thinking, even if only for a few seconds, to then rest in a calmer, clearer state, to be refreshed by calmness and clarity, and then to reenter active life, thinking from a calmer and clearer place and then usually having more reasonable and useful trains of thought.
I recently described (http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/archives/713 and http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/archives/730) some relatively prolonged – 20 minutes or so – periods of essentially no thought that I experienced while on retreat. I would be peacefully perceiving the world around me, a state that was "profoundly peaceful" and yet "no big deal," just peaceful. Occasionally a thought would arise, it might have two or three follow up thoughts, and then my mind was quiet again. I am very please to know that such states can occur for me – but even during these states I knew that my ordinary state of constant thinking was necessary for the work I do and I wouldn't want to lose that ability to have thoughts, to have them arise, to direct and shape them into useful forms.
So what's all this thought is inherently bad stuff?
Perhaps the underlying belief is that when you reach full Buddhahood you don't need to think and, indeed, ordinary thinking, by comparison, is an inefficient and misleading way of understanding compared to the immediate clairvoyant perception of the truth about everything?
Well I'll leave that open as a possibility, but not hold my breath waiting for it to happen. As I've discussed in my recent book, The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together, scientific research has shown that sometimes human beings acquire knowledge by telepathy (mind to mind communication), clairvoyance (direct perception of the physical state of the world), and precognition (psychic knowledge of the future). However these modes of knowing function only occasionally in ordinary people, and even the best psychics I know are wrong of good deal of the time. So we could postulate as an endpoint of development that a Buddha would have complete and comprehensive psychic ability for gathering knowledge, but is that possibility of any use to us ordinary people working to make basic progress on the path of meditation and spiritual development? Is it a good reason for being negative about thought? I don't think so, as it just makes me feel guilty when I think when I'm supposed to be meditating, and that attitude doesn't help me get anywhere at all.
In occasional discussions with some other people studying and practicing Buddhism, I've heard it said that language in Buddhism simply is very context dependent, and so the meaning of a particular word or concept will change depending on the context it's being taught in. That's probably true, but I don't regard it as an advantage. By contrast, consider various fields of science. Enormous progress has been made in many fields over the past century or two. Part of the reason for this progress is that you get very exacting, clear definitions for what is being talked about, whether that is a particular observation, an analytic technique, or an application. "Water" always means a substance composed of two hydrogen atoms fused with one oxygen atom, H2O. This is true whether you're just beginning to study chemistry or a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
A question I sometimes like to ask you my friends who are spiritual teachers is "Has there been any progress in spirituality in the past century or two?" That is, of those who want to get enlightened, are higher percentages getting enlightened, or are they getting there faster, or the like? The reaction to this question is usually puzzled silence. And yet various fields of science, various practical fields like medicine and engineering, have all made enormous progress over the last century. Could this lack of clarity, this misleading nature of definition of something as fundamental as thought, be contributing to the "lack of progress" in Buddhism, the empirical fact that many people start on the Buddhist path but we seldom hear of anyone actually getting enlightened?
For those who take Buddhism as a revealed religion, who take Gautama Buddha as a kind of god who knew everything, this question will seem highly disrespectful, if not heretical. But I am a modern person who has enormous respect for the Buddha, but doesn't assume anyone knows or knew everything, and assumes that there's progress to be made in just about all areas of life.
So, I wish this negative attitude to thoughts could be expunged from Buddhist teaching, or at least have qualifications put with it. When I teach my classes on altered states of consciousness, for example, I sometimes tell students that the phenomenon or concept I'm going to teach them about next is something that's very difficult to adequately put into words, or my own understanding of it is fuzzy, so they should just take my words as something to think about, not as any kind of final, authoritative pronouncement on the subject. Indeed, sometimes I tell them that the best I can do is "lie" to them about something because words are so inadequate, but it's the best I can do at this point in our knowledge. I consider my teaching most successful when students think about what I teach rather than just accepting it. Even better is when the think enough to see that it doesn't fit their previous knowledge and they can discuss or "argue" with me about stuff!
Gautama Buddha valued reason and urged us to think about and test ideas and beliefs, as well as live a moral life and meditate. Good advice! Too often, though, I get the impression that it has twisted into an orthodoxy, into a "Think about something until you come to the same conclusion the Buddha or some approved past master came to, then you can stop thinking…" This is another aspect of an anti-thought attitude….
Enough going on about why I've been bugged by this anti-thought attitude….May your thoughts be useful to you and all sentient beings, and if there's a better way or ways than useful thought, great, let's add them in too!
Tags: anti-thought attitude, attachment, aversion, Buddhism, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, Choknyi Nyima Rinpoche, clairvoyance, co-emergent ignorance, conceptual thinking, delusion, dissolving thought, emotions, enlightenment, freedom, Gautama Buddha, ignorance, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, intention, ITP, karma, liberation, materialism, meditation, mindfulness, peace, precognition, progress, psi, psychic abilities, purification, radiance of rigpa, rigpa, samsara, Shambhala Sun, Sogyal Rinpoche, spiritual teachers, spirituality, suffering, telepathy, thought, Tibetan Buddhism, Transpersonal, tsoknyi rinpoche, Tulku Orgyen, vipassana, waking up
Pain and Suffering:
Some years ago I came across and was very impressed by Shinzen Young's approximate algebraic formulation of the relationship of suffering to actual physical pain and psychological factors (see http://www.shinzen.org for relevant writings or his book, Break Through Pain: A Step-by-Step Mindfulness Meditation Program for Transforming Chronic and Acute Pain). Having a scientific and psychological mindset similar to his, I have been thinking about and conceptualizing variations and extensions of this for years. Young's formulation was
S = P * R
where
S is a psychological factor, experienced suffering,
P is a physical factor, pain, the actual physical magnitude of a painful sensation (or sensations), and
R is a psychological factor, resistance to experiencing the painful sensation(s).
The asterisk (*) is the computer-standard symbol for multiplication.
Simply put, his equation succinctly illustrated that the degree to which we suffer from any pain, physical or emotional, is not simply a matter of how strong that pain actually is, but our suffering is strongly (thus multiplication, *, rather than simply addition) affected by how we respond to the painful sensation. Assuming we had a useful way to measure P and R on 10 point scales, e.g., then a painful sensation of, say, magnitude 4 would be experienced as suffering at level 4 if our resistance was at level 1. If we strongly resisted (voluntarily or involuntarily) the pain, on the other hand, say at R = 4, then our suffering would be much greater, at level S = 16. On the other hand, if we had learned meditative skills of concentration, clarity and equanimity, which reduced our resistance to, say, a level of 1/4, then our suffering would only be a level 1 in spite of the pain being at level 4. Even more importantly, Young noted from his own experience, as well as that of his students, if our resistance was reduced to or close to zero, we would not experience suffering at all, even with intense pains, just sensations, not suffering. This is of immense practical importance to people who suffer from chronic pain that cannot be controlled by current medical interventions. Young describes a general vipassana meditative approach (developing concentration, clarity and equanimity) for doing this, as well as many more specific methods for enhancing the general vipassana approach.
Although I am not particularly skilled at meditation practices, my own experience with low to moderate levels of pain confirms this formulation. Lowering my resistance to a pain does indeed reduce my suffering, changing the experience of "suffering" to more one of "sensation."
Young recognized that the relationship might not be exactly a multiplicative one, but he wanted to emphasize the great importance of the attitude of resistance in affecting our experience of suffering, and a simple additive model, on the order of
S = P + R
was, in his experience, generally inadequate. I can imagine, but hopefully never personally experience, that where R is greater than one, much worse cases like
S = P * R2
could occur.
It is also clear to me that R may be a variable that is itself composed of several other, interacting variables, such as self-esteem, previous experiences with pain, confidence that you can make a difference, subconscious factors, etc., but I will not pursue that line of exploration here.
Expanding Relationships: Experience, Reality and Attitude:
In describing Young's work to various classes of mine at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (www.itp.edu) over the years, I have often expanded his basic equation to a more general form of
E = f(R, A)
where E is the psychological variable of Experience, which at any time is some kind of function of the Reality one is experiencing, interacting in various possible ways with the Attitude one takes toward the current state of Reality. Reality includes both the external physical situation of the moment and one's bodily state. The exact form of the functional relationship is to be determined by observation and experiment.
As an example almost everyone has probably experienced, your ordinary life may seem full of obstacles, unfairness, difficulties and disappointments, then you meet the right person and go on with that same life while in love. Then all those aspects of reality which seemed so negative and difficult before are hardly noticed as you float through in your state of love. Then, an example I hope far fewer people ever experience, your lover leaves you or betrays you, and those same negative aspects of life become enormous, leading to sadness and depression.
Adding in Sleep, Pain and Focus:
The specific factor that I want to add to my above equation came into my mind when I woke at 5am on a recent morning because my arthritic shoulder. It had been completely pain free for several days, but this morning it woke me with it's nagging pain and made it impossible to go back to sleep. This addition is an attentional factor, A, with at least two dimensions of specification at any time, viz. location, where one's attention is focused, and intensity, what percentage of your total attention is concentrated in any one location. I'll represent this additional factor as F for Focus, since A has already been used for Attitude. Thus I would expand the above general equation as follows:
E = f(R, A, F)
Thus the nature of Experience in general is a function of the Reality of the situation of the moment, both in terms of the external situation and your bodily state, of your Attitude toward your sensory and bodily sensations/perceptions, and Focus, where and how intensely your attention is focused.
I'll apply this specifically to my arthritic shoulder waking me and keeping me from going back to sleep, and I suspect it this application will apply to many other sources of pain that disrupt sleep.
I've noticed, every time I've scanned it while writing this essay, that my shoulder has been paining me with about the same intensity of pain that woke me that night – but the vast majority of the time I've been writing, I haven't noticed that this shoulder pain exists. My focus, F, has been on my writing, the keyboard and screen in front of me, and thinking about how to best express these ideas, and my level of concentration on these two foci has generally been good. The values one could put in the expanded equation are large for F, focus, and small for R, external and bodily reality. A, my attitude toward R, is consequently naturally small as I'm not consciously experiencing most of R, I'm not stimulated to develop an attitude about it. So this equation becomes a way of expressing, hopefully eventually leading to more precision in understanding, the oft observed fact that we can get involved in thoughts and tasks with a consequence of becoming less aware of events outside these focused tasks, including pain.
This formulation also makes clearer something that has puzzled me for years. The actual magnitude of my arthritic shoulder pain is usually small. On a 10-point scale for me, where 8 is the (largely forgotten, thank God!) agony I went through when I was passing a kidney stone years ago, zero is no perceptible pain, and one is the lowest level of sensation I would call pain, my shoulder pain, both night and day, varies between 0 and about 2 or 3. With my normal levels of focus, F, on various tasks during the day I have no trouble with the pain, I'm generally not even aware of it. But going to sleep, or trying to go back to sleep after waking at night is a different story.
My best, current scientific understanding of our ordinary state of consciousness (see my States of Consciousness book [not the same as my earlier Altered States of Consciousness book] plus updated journal articles which will be on my main web site, http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/ when the current server crash is fixed) is that it is a complex system of sub-functions interacting to produce the emergent property we call "ordinary consciousness." These interactions are generally so habituated and automated, so much in the background, that we don't notice they exist, but they maintain and stabilize our waking state. There are many habitual, automated foci of attention, Fs, configurations of consciousness that are our efficient coping mechanisms for dealing with life. How do we go to sleep, then, or, in general, go into any altered state of consciousness? (see Chapter 7 of States of Consciousness for a detailed discussion of the induction of altered states)
Besides factors like physically relaxing, cutting down external stimulation, being tired or sleepy, etc., I've noticed in myself that a crucial psychological factor is letting go of all foci, all F, of relaxing the idea that there is anything to accomplish, that it is important to think in certain, productive ways but not others. My thoughts are allowed, as best I can, to wander wherever, there is no goal they should serve. When I do this kind of "mental relaxation," visual imagery starts to arise as I slip into a hypnagogic state. The integrated structure of waking consciousness is breaking down. I may remain in the hypnagogic state for only a few moments or for long periods, but it shifts into full sleep. Put another way, "trying" to go to sleep for me is not like trying to do something while awake, it means to stop trying to accomplish anything in particular, let F go.
But if my arthritic shoulder is active, there is no focus factor to draw attention away from the pain, so I become much more aware of it than I usually am when awake and engaged in normal life. Indeed since I am relaxing F, the otherwise small magnitude pain can take involuntary control of ability to focus, keeping my attention focused on the pain. Thus the ability (I'm tempted to write "curse" rather than "ability!") of a pain easily ignored in waking disrupting sleep…….
But if I try to more actively focus somewhere else than the pain, as can be helpful in a fully awake state, this activation of the focus process inhibits going to sleep!
Mentioning this insight to my wife Judy this morning, she immediately suggested that what I need when my shoulder has taken over focusing this way is a passive distraction, something to absorb attention, create another focus location for F than my shoulder, but not require conscious effort on my part – like a pillow speaker under my head and a radio talk show playing. Not some show that's so interesting I want to stay awake so as not to miss anything that is being said, but attractive enough to focus my attention away from my shoulder pain…….
Sounds like a good idea to try. Now how do I find a middle of the night radio show that is not filled with doom and gloom (otherwise known as the "news"), as I'm not sure I want that stuff poured into my head, even if I'm not giving it much conscious attention…..
Something I have been trying, with only limited success so far, is to meditate on "flow," on "impermanence" when the shoulder pain occurs, as this reduces suffering, but finding the balance between being awake enough to my meditation is at least partially effective – which keeps me from going to sleep – and doing it so casually and relaxedly so as not to interfere with going to sleep – which means it may not be at all effective in reducing my suffering – is very tricky!
Tags: attention, awareness, Buddhism, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, experience, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, intention, ITP, meditation, mindfulness, out-of-body experiences, pain, Shinzen Young, sleep, suffering
I've described this experience earlier this year, but felt a need to put it into a less intellectual, more heart/poetic style, so….
"Meditating," after a fashion
Trying to relax with whatever arises,
To not change it, improve it, dismiss it as not good enough.
To "do" nothing.
The meditation guide reminds us,
"The search is over, nothing to find, nothing to do…."
Suddenly sadness, great sadness….
Tears.
I'm always doing, seventy four years of always doing,
Always trying, always wanting to do the right thing,
To discover the right thing to do
And do it…..
I'm so tired……
A few seconds of great sadness
It's gone
Tears dry up.
Of course it's been fine that I've always been trying
To do the right thing.
And to continue.
But down under, such tiredness…..
Sort of forget about it, get on with life,
But the knowledge is there, somewhere.
Two weeks later, meditation retreat.
No conscious memory of the tiredness, sadness.
I'm practicing meditating on Impermanence,
The flow, the changing, the morphing of
One thing into another into another into another….
Suddenly I'm at peace.
My talking mind want to call it Peace,
It's so much deeper than anything I've known,
But no need, that's gilding the lily,
It's just peace.
No big deal, nothing to do about it or with it.
I'm just at peace.
The air is pleasantly warm,
The sun touches my skin.
Nearby some men are trimming a tree
With a chain saw.
Noisy, that's the nature of chain saws.
No matter, the world is fine.
Talking mind isn't used to being so quiet,
So once in a while it asks,
"Is this rigpa?"
"Is this resting in the nature of mind?"
Well maybe sort of
Maybe not.
My words don't matter.
Thoughts like this occasionally come,
Say their thing
And fade away.
No big deal,
I'm at peace.
Five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour.
It just naturally lasts.
No effort to hold on to it.
Peace finally fades into the background,
That's all right.
Back to meditating on flow, change, impermanence,
Back to life.
It doesn't matter that almost all the time
I'm trying to find the right thing, do the right thing.
That's good.
Peace is good.
It happens a few times in a few days,
And goes.
I'd like it to happen once in a while,
But no need, no drive to push for it.
Life is good.
Tags: Buddhism, Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, emotions, enlightenment, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, ITP, meditation, mindfulness, nature of mind, peace, rigpa, Sogyal Rinpoche, Transpersonal