Notes on an event in a 50+ year attempt to learn and benefit from spiritual practices….

For some years now, I have been trying various meditation techniques from many world traditions, particularly techniques which meditation teacher Shinzen Young has modified in various ways to make more sense to and be more doable by modern people.  A month ago, I was participating in one of Shinzen's monthly telephone retreats.  For these, 20 to 50 people telephone  into a conference call number and Shinzen leads us in some guided meditation for 2 to 4 hours.  There's time for reports and questions at the end, and often individual phone consultation with him during a break in the middle of the period.  These "mini-retreats" are a very useful way to stay connected to intensive meditation practice, and much more convenient, inexpensive and practical than flying off to some residential retreat site.

On this particular day, I was participating in a two-hour guided meditation session on a technique Shinzen calls "Do Nothing" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ6cdIaUZCA).  The basic instruction here is that you don't attempt to do anything in particular, to have any kind of particular meditation experience, or to "correct" or guide what happens in your mind during the meditation.  Indeed, the instruction is that if you sense that you intend to change something, relax that intention.  You're not actively looking for such intentions – that would be doing – but, if intentions are noticed, you drop them, relax them.

This is a technique I have not tried much and which I find rather difficult.  But I also find it quite interesting, as I think becoming aware of intentions, especially subtle intentions, as they first well up my mind, is an important factor for my spiritual growth.

Fairly far along in meditation, after a little period of quiet, Shinzen instructed us that the search was over, we didn't have to do anything, we didn't have to try to make anything happen or not happen.  As he said that, a deep feeling of sadness suddenly welled up in me and tears came to my eyes.  I realized that I have never stopped trying! My entire life, from childhood on, has been spent trying to do the "right thing" at practically every moment!  Even though I appear to be a relaxed and easy-going person, even though I think I'm actually quite relaxed compared to people in general, in the background I'm always trying to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do it.  Not that this was and is a "bad" thing to do, but I just suddenly realized how very, very tired of trying I was!  I hoped that someday I would be able to stop for a while and get some rest.  But it was a very faint hope, I was always, always trying, why would anything change?

After a few moments the feeling passed, the tears dried, and I went back to the do nothing practice.  At the end of this telephone meditation retreat I didn't think anything special about it, other than that this insight about how tired I was of always trying, had happened.

Rancho Palos Verdes Retreat – Flow

Two weeks later, my wife Judy and I are at a Catholic nunnery and retreat Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, for a 12 day retreat with Shinzen.  While I know he will present a variety of techniques for people to try, with the aim of finding what works well for you or simply making your mind more flexible, I've already decided that I'm going to concentrate on meditation procedures for sensing "flow."  That is, whatever sensory channel I'm paying attention to, input from the five classical senses or the actions of my mind (visual imagery or internal talk), I'm going to try to be aware, with concentration, clarity, and equanimity, not only of the particulars of the content at any moment, but of the way it changes from moment to moment, its flow.  Flow is Shinzen's modern term, which he thinks covers most, if not all, understandings of the crucial concept of "impermanence" in Buddhism.

If I happen to be meditating with my eyes closed, for example, observing visual imagery on my inner mental screen, I might notice that it's relatively restful at this moment, mainly black-and-white or faintly colored dots flickering on and off, like looking at static, "snow" on a TV set tuned to a channel which has no broadcast on it.  But the flickering on and off of these dots can actually be seen as flow, one momentary pattern changing into another.  Indeed, more specific imagery will almost certainly appear as I continue to pay attention, and one image will morph, will flow into another and another and other.  A brief image of a car driving along a highway, e.g., morphs into a forest, which morphs into clouds in the sky, which morphs into a wall, etc., etc.  Keeping aware of these changes, with equanimity, concentration, and clarity, is what Shinzen describes as meditating on flow or impermanence.

Peace – Resting in the "Nature of Mind?"  Or?

To my surprise – except I didn't really feel surprised at the time – I had five or six experiences, each 5 to 20 min. or so long, that were, from their own internal perspective, nothing special, but, from the perspective of my ordinary mind activity, were extraordinary!  I didn't do anything that had the intention of bringing these specific experience or states on, or to maintain them, or to prolong them.

While there is much formal meditating in the zendo (meditation hall) during Shinzen's retreats, one can attend these or not, as one wishes, and I often skip a number of these formal sessions in order to meditate outside in nature.  The retreat center is very pleasant that way, located in the hills above Los Angeles, and having a relatively undeveloped area off the parking lot with bushes, pine trees, etc. as well as more formal gardens and lawns.  In these "extraordinary but nothing special experiences," I would be sitting in a chair, looking off into the distance or at nearby pine trees or bushes, and practicing the previously described observation of flow meditation.  With my eyes open there was always flow in the sensory world: the movement of tree branches in the wind, occasional people walking at a distance, changing automobile noises from cars passing on a nearby road, etc.  With my eyes closed there was always plenty of flow in terms of morphing body sensations, morphing internal visual imagery and morphing internal talking.

Then I would notice, usually when my eyes were open, that I was "at peace."  That phrase doesn't quite describe it accurately, but I'm at something of a loss for words here – which is unusual for me, a champion talker.  I would be just sitting there, looking at the pine trees, for example, and find I was just contentedly sitting there looking at the pine trees.  I was awake and alert, but no longer doing any kind of technique, I was not wishing for anything in particular to happen or not happen.  I wouldn't say I was practicing the "Do-Nothing" technique, rather I wasn't striving to do or not do anything at all, I was just here, and now.  There was no effort, no striving involved in maintaining this feeling of peace, of calm presence.

I'm tempted to describe this as an experience of Peace, capital P, but from the inside it simply wasn't any big deal.  It's only from my ordinary perspective of knowing how incredibly rare an experience like this is in my life, especially one lasting more than a few seconds, that I realize how extra-ordinary it was.

I think I have experienced something like this only once before in my life.  Several summers ago my wife and I were on a Dzogchen retreat with lama  Tsoknyi  Rinpoche at his country center, Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, in northern  California.  After one of the teaching sessions one afternoon, we found ourselves just sitting on the hillside, watching the clouds move, feeling the wind blow, and the touch of the sun on our skins.  It was just so very peaceful and natural.  Again I make that statement as if this were very special, a retrospective judgment, but at the time it was just natural to simply be there for a few minutes, enjoying the sun, the wind, and the sights.

Although Shinzen's was a silent retreat, I did have my little pocket voice recorder with me, and since I was far enough away from others to not disturb their silence, I dictated occasional notes, trying to capture something of the essence of the experience.  Here's one dictated after several previous occurrences of this sort.

A moment outside that I think of as a Dzogchen moment.  I'm relaxed and enjoying the touch of the sun on my skin, the warm temperature.  The sound of a chain saw being used nearby is just the sound of a chainsaw, I'm not taking it as annoying, "What a horrible noise spoiling this peaceful place!"  My mind is spacious.  I'm not particularly trying to improve things.  I wouldn't say I'm Here and Now in any profound sense, I'm just here and now, quietly enjoying sitting or walking around.  I didn't do anything in particular to bring it on, except perhaps expected it, as it's happened several times already on this retreat.  I was doing a meditation, mainly on flow, a few minutes ago.

Rigpa, or Resting in the Nature of Mind?

Although I've been a student of lama Sogyal Rinpoche for many years, primarily trying to understand and practice his Dzogchen teachings about rigpa, the ultimate nature of mind, I've always had trouble, though, understanding what "rigpa" means, what "resting in the nature of mind" means.  Sometimes I think I basically understand it, sometimes I'm not at all sure that I understand any aspect of it.  The last few years I've felt that any intellectual attempt of mine to evaluate whether a particular experience is indeed "rigpa" or "resting in the nature of mind" always has the answer, "No."  If I'm trying to intellectually pin it down, I am in an ordinary intellectual state, not in rigpa.

As Sogyal Rinpoche's translation of a Tibetan prayer, Dudjom Rinpoche's Calling the Lama from Afar puts it,

Buddhahood is not attained by fabricated Dharmas;

Meditation made by the mind, fabricated by the intellect, is the deceiving enemy.

During these periods of peace, I felt that this was it, or at least a small manifestation of resting in the nature of mind…..

Because I hadn't done anything specifically aimed at bringing these episodes on, one of my notes concluded:

So an important part of "resting in the nature of mind" is not wanting it to be anything in particular.

Thoughts

As I understand it at this time, one of the clearest understandings Buddhism has is that our thoughts often run wild and both delude us and create all sorts of unnecessary suffering.  In my experience, though, this insight is linked to other teachings in many sources about thoughts that make it sound like a state with no thoughts at all is the ideal one.  I know intellectually this is an extreme I think is wrong, for as Sogyal Rinpoche has often taught it's not the arising of thoughts that's a problem, it's the "running after them," getting identified with them and tangled up in them in maladaptive and crazy ways that's the problem.

As I noted during one of these episodes at the retreat,

It's not like I don't have any thoughts.  Thoughts come occasionally, but not steadily, not all the time.  They're not terribly "loud," they don't automatically dominate my mind.  I still maintain some touch with the world around me, and can easily let the thoughts go.

Physical Pain

One of the reasons I had decided to focus on meditation on flow on this retreat was that I thought developing more skill at it would be helpful in dealing with my chronic, daily headaches.  If I could focus on various aspects of pain with concentration, clarity, and equanimity, and then see how these characteristics continually changed, either slowly or rapidly, I think the physical pain would create less suffering.  And indeed, I have found this to be true to some extent, although I'm not that good yet at meditating on flow.  The suffering is definitely reduced during a headache while I concentrate on observing flow.  Unfortunately, as soon as I stop doing the formal meditation technique, the headache comes back with its previous intensity, but Shinzen agrees with me that there will probably eventually be carryover from developing skill in meditating on flow that will reduce headache pain.  Here's a note I made on this during one of these peace episodes.

As I sit here, mainly just being present, looking out at the trees and grounds, I feel a headache coming on.  I can feel that the pain that kind of "squeezes," contracts my head is also kind of "squeezing," contracting my consciousness, reducing its clarity and scope.  I don't know whether it's "squeezing" it directly, or just triggering worries that the pain will get worse, so I worry that I should hurry to take some medication.  But it will be interesting to see if I can stay in this nature of mind – dare I use that phrase?  …..   Wow, the pain still builds some…

It's a few seconds later and I'd say yes, I can stay in this "nature of mind," at least temporarily.  I say that because it's easier to just relax, to just let go of a train of thought and come back to the present moment.

Comparison of Peace and Self-Remembering

This is not like Gurdjieffian self-remembering, sensing looking and listening (SLL) usually is for me.  SLL involves a deliberate distribution of attention, a small part of my attention keeping track of body sensations (usually those of the arms and legs), more devoted to listening to the qualities of whatever sounds occur, and, since vision is our dominant sense, most devoted to attentive looking at sight qualities.  For SLL, there is a small effortful quality to it, you have to do it, and when you stop doing it, it's effects (usually but not always aliveness and sensory clarity) stop.  These peace experiences, though, were spontaneous.  I didn't "start" them, I didn't "end" them.

What's amazing to me now is how it (this state) just goes on relatively continuously, rather than being (when I make deliberate attempts to rest in the nature of mind at other times) just sort of a second or so long, being rather undefined, being hard to see whether I've made any change as a result of my making an effort to turn my mind inward.  I guess I'm blest!

Dzogchen teachings, as I understand them, typically say that when you are resting in the nature of mind, there's no need to do anything else, no need to apply some specific meditative technique, but that if you do engage in such a technique, it is more effective than if you are in your ordinary state of consciousness.  I recalled this during one of these peace states, and decided to try a specific technique.

I just did the hundred syllable mantra, intending it as a blessing on the world, while I was resting in this nature of mind.  It's different than when I do it normally, it just flows more naturally, without being such a big deal.  Yet it takes away from the resting in the nature of mind to some degree to try to do it deliberately, to do a directed practice like this.  Perhaps it would get easier with practice, with "getting used to."  There's that wonderful phrase that Sogyal Rinpoche uses all the time, "getting used to."

Cessation of the Experience of Peace

Anything that starts also ends, and so

I'm now feeling, maybe half an hour after this clarity began, that it's starting to fade.  It doesn't particularly matter to me, it's just change….

But given how satisfying these experiences were, wouldn't I very much want them to continue?

One of the curious things about my experiences of peace is that I'm not particularly attached to them.  I sort of hope they will occur once in a while again, but it's no big deal!  It's nice to know I can be like that.  I don't think I'd want to be like that all the time, though, I don't think it would be very good for doing my primary work on bridging science and spirituality, writing, and so forth.  Curious that I'm not feeling attached.

Knowing With Words and Intellect, Deeper Knowing

Finally I should note how intellectual knowledge can long precede direct knowledge.  That's not bad, but it's not the same thing at all.  

Many years ago, intellectually I had the understanding that it was good to develop an "observer" separate from the ongoing content of experience, as it increased your freedom, but that this observer could indeed ossify and turn into something rigid itself, which prevented freedom, so you later had to break loose from this.  Perhaps I'm now ready to see it on a deeper level than just intellectually

And So……

All this reminds me of Gurdjieff's admonition to work as if everything depends on work, pray as if everything depends on prayer.  Do what I can and do it well, and be open to "gifts."  My intellectual mind that likes to understand things (on its own terms!) can't see a clear reason why these peace experiences happened.  Oh a vague one, yes, all these years of a variety of psychological clearing and spiritual development practices laid the groundwork, but that's not at all specific.  So perhaps I should just relax and accept that, in some deep sense, this was a gift?  And while I want to continue my work of bringing science and spirituality closer, knowing that it's possible to be at peace like this sometimes is indeed a great gift…..

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One of the first ways this became clear to me was when I began training in the Japanese martial art of Aikido back in the 1970s.  I had been impressed with a demonstration of the art, and invited a black belt instructor, Alan Grow, to come to UC Davis twice a week to give instructions.  I started a student club, of which I was faculty adviser, to justify getting space on the mats in the gymnasium for this.

To my surprise and consternation, I could immediately "explain" Aikido far better than my black belt instructor.  As I would later put it, I had a "Black Belt in Talking" by the time I was twelve!  That's an amusing way of saying I was very glib.  But while I could verbally explain Aikido better than my instructor, I couldn't do anything, whereas he could toss me across the mat with what seemed a flick of his wrist.  It took me several years to learn how to learn in a different way.  What was required for Aikido was body-instinctive intelligence, not intellectual, verbal intelligence.  Eventually I learn to pay attention from my body, as it were, and actually begin to really grasp what Aikido is about.

Emotions were even more difficult, as, like most people, when an emotion arose it tended to hijack all of my consciousness, and then make all my perceptions and thoughts centered around and reinforcing that emotion.  If something had aroused a fear response in me, for example, I saw things as more threatening than they probably were, I had thoughts about other times I was afraid, and, of course, my body sensations reinforced the fear.  A fearful stimulus that may have lasted only a few seconds produced a self-reinforcing reaction that could go on for minutes or hours.

I engaged in many personal growth activities in the 70s, 80s and 90s, aspects of the Humanistic Psychology movement as well as a spiritual quest, and gradually learn more about what my emotions were and to be accepting of them.

I would not claim to have become particularly emotionally intelligent, but at least I was no longer really dumb and neurotic about emotions, and, similarly, because of Aikido training and meditation training later, I became more aware of what my body-instinctive intelligence was telling me at a particular time.

This morning I had a particularly clear example of how emotions ought to work when they are reasonably intelligent, rather than undeveloped or neurotic.  My wife Judy and I were having a silly quarrel on a topic we've had silly quarrels about many times over the years, and she mentioned that if she died before I did, I wouldn't have to do the things she expected me to do.  I responded, from an intellectual stance, that this was indeed true, but, on balance, the gains from this would be nothing compared to the loss of her.  To my astonishment, before I could finish that sentence I was all choked up and crying!  And a few seconds later, it was all over!  My emotional intelligence had risen and taken over my consciousness, reminded me of what was really important in my life, and, having perceived that I got the message, had then become quiet again.

This is my understanding of what Gurdjieff had to say about the intelligent way for emotions to function.  Emotions give you a different perspective on situations than intellect or body-instinctual intelligence, they come on powerfully to make sure you notice that perspective, and then, if you've got it, they quickly cease.  On the other hand, undeveloped emotions not only force a message on you, they kick off associations to all sorts of things that have ever felt like this, and you could easily have what I've called in the title of this note, "emotional seizures."  That is, instead of you getting the message right away, so you can act more appropriately, you go on and on with the emotion kicking off thoughts which reinforce the emotion which generate appropriate body sensations which kickoff more related thoughts which reinforce the emotion, on and on and on.  Your mind is seized!  Modern neurological research about emotions talk about how the emotional part of the brain "hijacks" the thinking part.

This is not to say that there are no long-lasting emotions which are useful, necessary and realistic.  Some aspects of life require long consideration, emotionally as well as intellectually and bodily-instinctively.  But most ordinary emotions, when they become intelligent, can indeed, from Gurdjieff's perspective, only last a few seconds, just long enough for you to get that message clearly.

It amazed me that in less the second I became so deeply emotional and was crying, and that it was all over a few seconds later.  But I'm glad to have had this very clear example to share some of my understanding about the nature of personal and spiritual growth, and hope this might be useful to others someday.

These ideas will seem quite sensible and have practical implications when you are in a calm state, and probably be forgotten when a strong emotion takes over: it happens to me that way a lot.  A strong emotion screams "This is the Truth, you feel it, it's Real!!!"  When that happens I try to note what the actual message of the emotion is and also remember about emotional hijack.  It's like a very loud alarm siren is shrieking and it's hard to think, but don't feel too bad about yourself during that alarm….

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When I become the Czar of Worldwide Words, I'm going to abolish the word "meditation."

Isn't that an odd way to start a blog on meditation?  Gets your attention, though.

I will write mainly from my role as a scientist, as a psychologist, as one of the founders of a relatively new branch of psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, although as a student of meditation and spiritual paths all my life, my perspective is "inside" and well as "outside."

As a field, mainstream psychology pretty much accepts the materialistic assumptions that dominate in most fields of science today, that only what is material is real, matter and physical energy.  The physical matter and electrical and chemical processes of your brain are real, consciousness is nothing but a secondary derivative of those physical processes.  From this perspective, all those things called "meditation" are indirect ways of controlling your physical brain's functioning, and so someday you won't have to spend all those (too often boring) hours sitting, because science will develop a pill that directly puts the brain in the best "meditative" state.  "Spirit" or "spirituality," from the materialistic perspective, is simply old fashioned nonsense, superstition, and best dispensed with, as it interferes with our rational functioning.

There certainly is a lot of nonsense associated with the spiritual, as there is with all fields of life, but in Transpersonal Psychology we think, to use that powerful old image, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.  We believe that there is something real to the spiritual, and that its recognition and development are vital to individual and societal welfare.  Denying this hurts people.  If we totally accept materialism, there is no inherent meaning to life, and the only "sensible" thing to do is get as much of riches and resources for yourself as you can to maximize your pleasure and minimize your pain.  Then we all die anyway, and it means nothing.  (See my recent The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together for elaboration and evidence about this, and why genuine science actually shows the spiritual has reality to it.)  Where is culture going, when greed is a primary motive and nothing really means anything?  If we are really some sort of spiritual beings, though, and mystical experiences of, say, our inherent unity, the power of love, etc. are about realities, our relations to our fellow beings are quite different.  As just one example, what hurts you hurts me in some real sense, and cooperation and kindness are natural things to do, not some "should" imposed from outside.

Transpersonal Psychology is not a religion which thinks it knows the answers to all of this, but believes that applying the tools of (a more enlightened) science and scholarship to the spiritual can result not only in a better understanding of what's real and what's not, and how we can evolve, but in more effective ways to help people have genuine spiritual experiences and integrate them into their lives in a healthy way.  Yes, this is a noble goal, and yes, my life has been and is dedicated to promoting it.  Too, in contrast to a common belief in some spiritual systems that we were once much more spiritually evolved, I believe in and try to promote progress: we can evolve forward, not just hope to go back to what it was like in some more enlightened past time.  Who knows, perhaps there are even more spiritually evolved states than "old-time enlightenment?"

So what does all this have to do with my opening statement that I'd like to abolish the word "meditation?"

One of the questions I like to ask my friends and colleagues in various religions and spiritual traditions – and I must admit there's a certain impish quality behind it – is "Has there been any progress in spirituality in the last couple of centuries?"  There's been enormous progress in the various sciences.  In areas like physics, chemistry, medicine, we know enormously more, and can do enormously more than we could a couple of centuries ago.  So, are more people who enter a particular spiritual path today getting "enlightened," "saved," or whatever?  There is usually an embarrassed silence in reaction to my question.

One of the primary ways that has allowed scientific pursuits to progress so much has been clear communication.  In chemistry, biology or physics, for example, whenever the word "water" is used, it is quite clear that what is specifically meant is a molecular compound made up of two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen, which is liquid in a certain temperature range, vaporous in another temperature range, turns to ice in  another temperature range etc.  Nobody confuses coffee, tea, battery fluid, brandy, or anything else with water simply because they are liquids.  But, when somebody uses the word "meditation," what do they mean?

Within the particular teachings of the Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Buddhist Rigpa organization, for example, there will be a relatively specific meaning attached to words like "meditation," "consciousness," "attention," "mindfulness," "awareness," etc.  But as soon as you go outside that particular teaching, all these words may carry different explicit and implicit meanings.  Now if we knew that all the time, it would not be too much of a problem – "Ah, we are talking about type 3 attention now as a basis for type 5 meditation" – but most of the time people are not too sensitive to the different meanings of the same word within different traditions.  But we think we know what is meant because the words are familiar.

Thus when someone tells me, for example, "I meditate each day," I really have almost no idea of what they actually do or mean.  At a minimum, it probably means that it is something they consider different from their ordinary life activities, but that's about it.

As a transpersonal psychologist and scientist, looking at how "meditation" is taught and practiced across many traditions, there are many, many definitions of what it means, and often no clear definition at all of what it means.  Further, the actual techniques for particular forms of meditation may be described in certain words, but any practice is learned within a context, and the subtle hints and cues and expectations in that context may greatly change the meaning of the particular words for a learner.  So the same set of instructions in terms of words, in different contexts, may mean people do entirely different things.

Another of the main reasons science progresses is that it looks at data about things from a wide variety of perspectives, then looks for essential commonalities to get at the essence of things.  But if you look at "meditation" to try to find such commonalities, you may find a few – sitting still, e.g. is quite common – but probably almost none that are universal -some "meditations" involve standing and movement – and many that have concepts and practices that are contradictory to other traditions.  You can't, to go back to our example, make a lot of progress in understanding the chemistry of water if some people who report the results of their study of "water" are using battery fluid, others are using coffee, and others are using brandy.

Now, fortunately for the world, I will never be appointed as czar of anything!  That's good, giving me too much authority tends to go to my ego, and I use authority badly.  Practically, I have gone on what I call "semantic crusades" several times in my career, trying to introduce more precise terms in psychology and parapsychology, and only occasionally been successful.  So I know that, realistically, nobody's going to stop using the word "meditation."  And usually using it to mean what they want it to mean!  So what I'm advocating, is that if you want to learn something about meditation in a particular tradition, try to get clear what's meant by the terms within that particular tradition, and try to put that meaning aside when you study in a different tradition.

The situation is further complicated because meditation is often defined in terms of words like "attention," "mindfulness," "concentration," etc., yet while these words are in common use, they often mean different things to different people.

If this is starting to make your head hurt to think about how complex this gets, I'm with you!  The important thing is not the words per se but learning how to direct your attention in specific ways, and what you see as a result of that, but, as in so many areas of life, words can help us begin to use our attention in the desired way.

The things these words refer to are important and vital realities, and it helps us if we can have clear definitions of what we're doing or trying to do, but I suspect with some of these very basic things like "mindfulness," are never going to be able to totally defined in logical and grammatical terms.  The old Zen saying, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the Moon," is so true!  But the finger pointing at the moon may be helpful.  If the moon is in the west and we're looking toward the east, the finger pointing toward the west may get us turn around, and that certainly increases our chances of seeing the moon.  Or we may stare at the finger……

Here's an example where I have particular problems with words.  This problem may be more acute with me because, as a transpersonal psychologist, I have to look at a lot of different spiritual traditions and techniques, but many people may have a similar problem.

Sogyal Rinpoche teaches about three components of meditation.  The terms he uses are "mindfulness," "awareness," and "remaining spaciously."  He's talking about three aspects of your mental functioning in trying to do the Rigpa system of meditation.  He is giving them specific definitions in terms of the Rigpa process of meditation, which is very good.  But I get "mindfulness" and "awareness" confused all the time unless I make a special effort to get them straight, because I hear these same words used with different meanings in other contexts.  Indeed, unless I go back to my notes, I may make a mistake in the next sentence about what he means by "mindfulness" or "awareness."  But one of them means "What is the meditation object that is focused on?"  That might be an external object, such as a picture of a spiritual master, or an internal visualization, but it's the focus point you try to keep in mind.  In my own mind I translate it as the "focus point."  Another part of your mental process, which may be what he calls "awareness," is a monitoring of the process:  "How am I doing?  Am I actually paying attention to the focus point, or has my mind wandered off on something else?  Am I successful in bringing it back to the focus point, or do I have to do it again?"  Rinpoche speaks of about 25% of your attention being on process monitoring, about 25% on the focus point, and the balance restfully remaining open.

I had been trying to meditate in various ways for many years before hearing this particular way of describing how to meditate, and I find it very helpful, and use it when I teach basic meditation.  But, as I said, given my background, I have to translate the terms he uses into "process awareness" and "focus point" in order for them to make sense for me, and to not get confused by the many other meanings of these words in both ordinary and psychological use.

So perhaps the moral of this post is as you begin to read any particular post or article or book about "meditation," figure out as soon as possible what the author means by key terms like "meditation," and it's probably a good idea to write those definitions down right away and keep them in front of you as you read on.  This won't guarantee that you become extremely good meditator, but will certainly avoid a lot of wasted time brought about simply through unnecessary confusion.

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 5 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now once in a while, the transpersonal does get through to us. So one way to grow is to hope to have an overwhelming transpersonal experience that will force a new way of looking at reality on you, that’s going to be such a revelation that – wham! – it’s got your attention, and you feel a need to try to center your life around it, to live in accordance with that.

Probably the most certain way to induce that – more certain than all the usual mystical paths – is to have a near-death experience (NDE). Most people who have a near-death experience find their life tremendously changed. They’ve been talking with God for a while. Even the atheists. They have an especially hard time when they’ve been talking with God in terms of reconciling what they are experiencing with their belief system…..

The trouble is, the near- part is very tricky! So it’s not a method I recommend at all.

(Laughter)

Most people who get that close to death don’t tell you about a fantastic transpersonal experience. They get buried. So you don’t want to go that way. If life pushes you that way – okay. C’est la vie. But the more gradual spiritual paths are attempts to induce transpersonal experiences that can break through. That’s one of the routes.

The other route is what you might call the noise reduction route. The quieting down of the cocktail party so there’s going on in your head to give you chance to “hear” those higher kinds of things, and that’s what the mindfulness techniques do. That’s what certain kinds of psychotherapy do. They try to produce space between your thoughts and feelings and images, so that you can hear more subtle kinds of things

That’s the thing we’ve been focusing on. None of the stuff I teach in the mindfulness course really has anything to do with directly trying to induce transpersonal experiences, per se. It has an indirect effect of making it more likely that such an experience might happen because it cuts that noise level way down. That’s where we’re focusing. But if the higher experiences come, learn from them.

Student: I was wondering if your concept of noise here is analogous to Gurdjieff’s concept of the number of forces that are acting in a particular plane, or realm. He advocates cutting the number of forces by half, making the material world less dense. I’m looking for the connection to that thought.

CTT: You can make that connection if you want. It's interesting, but I didn’t make it.

Student: Okay.

CTT: Gurdjieff’s idea of the number of laws acting at various levels and all that – that always struck me as intellectually interesting, but something I would have no idea of how to find out whether it was true or false.

I mean, it’s true in a general, psychological sense. The more neurotic you are, the more restrictions there are on your experience and behavior. The more laws you’re limited by, in a sense. But whether these are specific laws – you know, whether there’s a book somewhere that states what these particular laws are and that they divide strictly by halves or – I don’t know, and I don’t know how to figure it out.

So if you find that sort of stuff useful to help you move along, great. But I don’t know what to make of it. Sometimes I think Gurdjieff made it all up to get Ouspensky, who was so compulsively intellectual, off his back!

(Laughter)

You know, Ouspensky was such an intellectual. Oh, he wanted everything explained in precise intellectual terms, and sometimes I think this laws and forces stuff was a sop Gurdjieff threw to Ouspensky…..but probably not. Probably he thought this was the real stuff……. and maybe it is.

Student: My impression in reading it is that he was creating a symbolic representation of an individual, just like you alluded to in answering my question.

CTT: Yeah. It’s certainly true psychologically, that the more neurotic and conditioned you are, the more laws restrict your behavior, even if they’re nonspecific. Well, they’re specific for you. You may be conditioned in a certain, specific way that, say, closed doors make you nervous. That puts a restriction on your ability to use rooms in an efficient, comfortable kind of fashion. When you have some therapeutic insight into what’s behind that, and kind of let go of that mechanism, it’s like you gained another degree of freedom, because now closed doors don’t bother you.

Student: Whew. Thank God he opened that!

(Laughter)

So that’s the little review I wanted to give you. Okay? We’ve been working with the three boxes in the left and upper part. The fourth one is there. We hear more about the fourth one in other kinds of courses. If any of you take the altered states course next quarter, we’ll be talking some about altered states that have some things to do with these higher sorts of things, but I’m functioning as a “noise reducer teacher” in this particular class.

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One of these paths, centered around the vipassana-type meditations I've learned from Shinzen Young, is about exploring the deeper nature of my mind.  On it, typically I'm sitting still with my eyes closed, observing some set of internal reactions.  If I'm paying attention to external sensations, like sound, still, my primary interest is in the internal reactions that are created, and in learning how to observe them with concentration, clarity and equanimity.  On this path, I learned a lot about how my mind works, either in response to sensory stimuli, or how it functions when it's not being driven by external stimuli, not being engaged in coping with the external world, but running on its own.  For example, I've learned how difficult it is for me to follow the simple instruction to simply pay equanimous attention to the qualities of sensation X, without getting lost in acceptance or rejection, or trying to change X, or trying to prolong or shorten it.  One of the most insightful things I see, even after years of practice, is that there are usually subtle biases to try to make my experience be of such-and-such quality, rather than simply observing it as it is.

I feel like this exploration of the inner workings of my mind gives me a deeper understanding of myself, and I have some faith that, as Shinzen says, paying equanimous and clear attention to these internal processes eventually clears out a lot of junk in the way the mind functions.  It also trains the skills of concentration and clarity.

The other main line is centered around my Dzogchen practice with Sogyal Rinpoche.  Now I should qualify what I'm going to say by noting that I consider myself a "poor" student in terms of what I think is the standard model of a "good" Vajrayana student.  I don't do the various sadhana, mantra-type practices, simply because I have no real faith that they will somehow make me acquire a lot of merit which will automatically up the quality of my spiritual life.  It would take a lot of time and energy to do 100,000 of this, that, or the other practice, and I think that, for me, that time is better spent in my work advancing knowledge as a transpersonal psychologist.  These kind of practices undoubtedly work for other people, but they just don't appeal to or resonate with me.  At times I worry that this means that I'm never going to make much spiritual progress because I am a "bad" student and I'm not following the basic instructions.  At other times I remember, because of course I'm motivated to remember this, that Sogyal Rinpoche says he offers a lot of practices, and while he recommends them all, he also strongly recommends that you find the practices that inspire you and work for you, and concentrate on them.

I should also add my usual qualification that my feeling of whether I understand the basic Dzogchen approach varies wildly, ranging from "I think I basically understand the main practice" to "I have no idea what they are talking about!"  So I need to occasionally evaluate what I think I do or don't know, but not get too attached to such evaluations…..

The Dzogchen practice which is of most concern to me is that of suddenly turning the mind inward, instead of being lost in the ongoing contents of mind, lost in one's "story."  This is based on the traditional teaching that samsara is mind turned outward, lost in its projections, nirvana is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  When I take a moment to turn the mind inward, there is usually a brief moment to a few seconds in which the ongoing stories and reactions I was having to various content before, my "story," dies back down, and I'm simply here, now.  The vast majority of the time, my experience is that it's nothing "special."  I'm just here, now.

This is, in one way, a great disappointment to me in terms of my expectation that Dzogchen, touted as a fast path to enlightenment, would produce all sorts of wonderful spiritual experiences that would reassure me that I was on The Path and doing the right thing.  But I've decided that, in general, I'm not the kind of person who has extraordinary experiences, but I am a sensible, grounded person, able to be somewhat helpful to others.  Whether this is a rationalization for my inability to practice in a way that produces "spiritual" experiences, or whether it's the truth, I don't know.  Again a concept that is useful in some ways, but which I had better not got too attached to…..

On the other hand, since my usual state is to be lost in my thoughts and reactions to external situations, samsara, these occasional moments of simply being calmly here and now are rather extraordinary, extra-ordinary, outside or beyond the ordinary.

I'm seeing my current spiritual practice, then, as following these two main paths.  Usually I sit for 20 minutes or so each day to do eyes closed, vipassana-type meditation, and sometimes when doing this I learn something new about the nature of my mind.  Usually it's just a calming, restful period of time.  As to its long-term "purification" effects, I'm not sure, I hope that's what's happening, as Shinzen believes.  The Dzogchen practice of turning the mind inward, on the other hand, I find useful primarily in the midst of ordinary life.

Although it would probably be a mistake to totally equate them, I find this Dzogchen turning inward practice ("resting in the nature of mind" or "rigpa") to be like Gurdjieffian self-remembering practice.  In both cases I deliberately use my attention and intention to stop being caught up in the ongoing, unceasing story of reactions of my mind and come to the present.  As I've written elsewhere, when I first began doing this Gurdjieffian practice, for many years the immediate effect was a feeling of not only being here-and-now but of being much more alive, much more in contact with my environment and with myself.  Now it seldom seems that special, it's just here-and-now, but that's still quite good!

Okay, this is all very nice, but I must remember that the primary point is learning to be in the present, here-and-now, accurately perceiving what's happening outside and inside, rather than coming up with more and more clever sets of words and concepts about what's going on!

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I knew this to be true from modern psychological studies.  Our common sense model is that perception is accurate, seeing, e.g., is like taking a picture with a camera, whatever is actually in front of your eyes registers on the film, and we think a picture never lies.  "Seeing is believing."  Of course with modern digital cameras and software to edit photos, we now know a finished photo may be very different from what was actually in front of the camera.  Similarly psychological research in the last century has shown over and over that perception is seldom a simple registration of what's actually there, it's much more a form of high-speed (you think it's instant), automatized thinking, a construction that's a guess as to what's there.  But presented as an obviously real perception, with no "best guess" label attached.  For us digital types, it's better to see the eyes, e.g., as a digital camera and there's Photoshop type processing automatically going on before we perceive the picture.  How this biological Photoshop alters the picture has a lot to do with our emotions, our personality, and our cultural conditioning.  Believing is seeing, or at least has a lot to do with what you perceive.

I notice this once in a while in myself.  Sometimes I look out my bedroom window at night, e.g., and notice a tree in a neighbor's yard is underlit by a floodlight, it's very pretty.  Except as I look more closely I realize I'm seeing a patch of partly lit night sky through the trees, not an underlit tree.  I've seen this many times, but still often at first see the illusion, then suddenly it switches – my biological Photoshop changes its functioning – and it's a patch of dim night sky.  I can almost never switch it back, but next time it may happen again.

In spite of intellectual knowledge about "Believing is seeing," though, I seldom think that this is something that applies to me.  After all, I'm a scientist, I strive to perceive accurately and like to believe I'm good at that!

So I was somewhat startled, then pleasantly surprised when I had a strong personal demonstration that "believing is seeing" this morning.

Our neighbors are having their kitchen remodeled, and I looked out our living room window and noticed that a couple of workers were rolling a very heavy looking machine across the street toward the kitchen.  I wasn't quite sure what the machine was for, but I thought it was a tile cutting machine, something I know is heavy and massive.  A few minutes later I looked out our kitchen window, and could see their truck parked across the street, which I figured would give me a clue as to what kind of machine it was.  The distance was sufficient that it was somewhat difficult for me to see clearly, but I could make out a company name and, by squinting a little, underneath the company name it said "tile floors."  The figure below gives you an idea of the level of clarity I could see with from a distance.

I went and told my wife that it was now clear that our neighbors were installing a tile floor on their kitchen, and we would probably hear a fair amount of noise during the day as they cut tiles.

Imagine my surprise a few minutes later when my wife told me that our neighbors had had a hardwood floor put down yesterday, and the machine I had seen was a large floor sander!  I now went and looked at their truck from closer window and, as the figure below shows, the words below their company name clearly says "hardwood floors!"

I can't say there were any powerful emotions driving this, but what a clear example that "seeing is believing!"  I had decided a tile floor was going down, and under somewhat difficult seeing conditions, I saw my proof in the words on the side of the truck.  I think this is especially amazing, as the word "hardwood" is twice as long as the word "tile" would be.

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Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

Stopping once in a while, turning mind in

No big deal

Yet I don't add my crazies to my ongoing crazies for Big Crazies….

Less samsara in my day…..

Elaborating….

Samsara:  Buddhist term for ordinary consciousness, which is seen as a badly distorted form of consciousness.  Our perception of world and self is badly distorted by the three main driving forces of greed/attraction, aversion/rejection and ignorance (of reality and of one's true Buddha nature).

Sixth Consciousness:  Traditionally each of the main five senses is considered a kind of consciousness, and (ordinary) mind is considered the sixth kind of consciousness, a consciousness which takes the input of the senses at any one time and simply and objectively names their object and perhaps brings up some immediately relevant, objective information about them.  Right now, my sixth consciousness says "computer screen" as I look straight ahead, "coffee cup" as I look to my left, "bookcase" as I look to my right.

Seventh Consciousness: This is an almost completely conditioned, automatic elaboration of the simple perceptions of sixth consciousness into our personal "stories," our hopes, fears, etc.  So there is a feeling as I notice the computer screen in front of me of satisfaction, of pride, I'm a writer, I'm good at it, and an undercurrent of anxiety – this monitor has been acting a little flaky lately, suppose it breaks, it will be expensive to replace it…..That coffee cup, I need to take it to the kitchen and wash it, I'm so tired of washing out coffee cups, maybe it I just leave it out my wife will wash it for me, oh damn, how can I think that, I'm a lazy person, why can't I be more responsible?  Ah, the bookcase, look at all those books!  I'm so smart to read so many books, I'm happier thinking about how smart I am rather than how lazy I am…..

According to Buddhism, greatly supported by the discoveries of modern psychology, we almost never stay with simple sixth consciousness perception, automatic seventh consciousness reactions take over almost instantly and can be strong enough to effectively blot out or distort simple, objective perceptions.  I've used mild illustrations of this here, but the emotional dynamics and psychological defenses of our individual selves can have us dwelling in our "stories," our dramas, most of the time.

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

A perception, my like or dislike, which triggers associated likes and dislikes, which triggers more, on and on and on, the original sixth consciousness perception lost in the drama.  New events, new stimuli which are strong enough to get our attention are often almost instantly distorted by the seventh consciousness to fit right into our ongoing story…..And our illusory existence, samsara, continues and builds…..

Many brief moments: In Dzogchen turning the mind inward to notice what's there, in Gurdjieffian terms self-observation or self-remembering.  Succinctly expressed in Buddhism as samsara is the mind turned outward, lost in its projections.  Enlightenment is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  Rigpa is one of the names for the true nature of our minds, our Buddha nature.

So I'm in samsara, then I turn mind inward for a moment.  A sensory event, a stimulus comes along then and it's just sixth consciousness perception, it's just a bookcase, no activation of my personal "story" about how wonderful I am, how much I know.  I glance at the bookcase again, notice a book sticking out, close to falling off the shelf, I'll push it in next time I go over that way, back to the moment.  Here's my mind, here, now, nothing "special" about it, just calmly here – but that's pretty special compared to the usual ongoing, self-stimulating drama of ME!

Radiance of rigpa:  It's not that the goal of Buddhism is to stay forever in a state of mind that's absolutely calm, where nothing ever happens.  That's not our nature.  Our nature of mind, our rigpa, moves, thinks, creates, like the sun radiating light and heat.  But to have it stay close to sixth consciousness perception, not get twisted into my story…..that's something!

I called this a small song of small realization, question mark.  No big deal, yet very fundamental.  Coming back to the moment every once in a while during my day, I don't get so carried away, I don't have fantasy building on fantasy, amplifying samsara.  Perhaps not a big deal insight, but I like it….

So once again:

Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 4 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now one of the reasons that I’m reviewing this, is that it takes us to the fourth diagram in the lower right-hand corner of the handout, and that’s another way of looking at our topics, particularly from a mostly Gurdjieffian viewpoint, but I have the nerve to call it a “Tartian” viewpoint too, so this is what I think about things, it’s not straight Gurdjieff.

We ordinarily have input from the world, just like in these other diagrams. We have this, all this input processing that shapes these various kinds of perception, and Gurdjieff divides it into these three primary centers or “brains” – intellectual, emotional, and bodily/instinctual. I just labeled them as the dominant center and two secondary centers, and which center is dominant depends on the particular person. For most ITP people, I’d say it would probably be the intellectual center, or it could be the emotional center for a lot of people. Probably not too many body instinctive types; they don’t usually show up that often in institutions of higher education.

Each of those kinds of centers have their effect on the kind of automated processing of input that comes in. That’s why the information flow arrows go two ways; each takes in information to a particular center, which affects the way these automated processes vary and modulate what you think is actually out there in the world. And the final creation of all these things is your internal experiential processes – your story, your inner life, and things like that.

Now the interesting thing is that Gurdjieff said we actually have five centers, or “brains” or processes, not just three. I think he mainly called them brains. I think centers and processes is a better word for it than brains. There’s a higher intellectual center and a higher emotional center, and the interesting thing Gurdjieff taught about it was that while among our ordinary three centers, one of them is overdeveloped and the other two are generally greatly underdeveloped, the higher emotional and higher intellectual centers are already fully developed and fully functioning. There’s a higher intellectual center that already has enormous understanding of reality, and a higher emotional center that already has a higher, enormous understanding of value, and I’m deliberately stressing the word value in there.

But for all practical purposes, most of the time these two centers might as well not exist. That’s why I’ve put “noise” there in the figure blocking the inputs from these two higher centers. These centers send their judgments and evaluations about reality to us and they kind of bounce right off. Our constant internal chatter creates a screen of noise that these higher centers can almost never get through.

Once in a while they get through, and people often talk about a “mystical experience” or a “revelatory” experience at that point. Those higher centers are up in what we might call the transpersonal level. The ordinary centers – the stuff we’ve been focusing on, are just down in the more ordinary, physical, material kind of realm.

But the two are related in the sense that as long as the noise level is very high, it’s very hard for the transpersonal realm to manifest. The analogy I often use is the transpersonal realm is like a couple of very wise people at a cocktail party trying to give you important messages, but it’s a cocktail party. You can’t hear them! The noise is going on. You want to dance and gossip, and these two funny-looking folks are whispering over in the corner.

(Laughter)

What have they got to say?

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My style of learning is generally to think about things, talk about them with others, get their feedback on what they think of my ideas, hear what their understanding is, etc.  It's probably a very Western way, as compared to that of many traditional cultures where you try to learn what the Masters have to say and put it into practice, with what often seems to me (I may be prejudiced here) an emphasis on rote learning rather than thinking about.

Recently some of us older students or Rinpoche have finally started having an email discussion about some aspects of what "enlightenment" or spiritual progress is from the Buddhist perspective and our own perspectives, and I thought it might be useful to share some of my comments on this here.  Perhaps this is an example of what a modern, Western, transpersonal psychologist thinks.

The discussion started around an idea in Buddhist teachings that our unenlightened, ordinary state involves being too much lost in infinite complexities of deluded, samsaric existence.  As a beautiful translation of a traditional Tibetan text by Sogyal Rinpoche puts it,

Ho!  Mesmerized by the sheer varieties of perception,

Which are like the reflections of the moon in water,

Beings wander endlessly astray in samsara's vicious cycle…..

My wife Judy noted that a reason for complexity is

>Why do we want to see what's beyond the "sheer variety"?  For me anyway, it's to answer those old questions – Where do we come from?  What's REALLY going on here?  How is it that I exist?<

I'm completely with her (makes for a good marriage).  Yes, I don't want me or other people to suffer, and clearly we can get distracted by all that complexity so we don't learn the Buddhist procedures that would reduce our suffering, but that's not enough for me.  I'm curious!  And I think my curiosity, my interest in knowing more, is one of my best features.

At my current level of (mis?)understanding, I know that many Buddhist practices will reduce my suffering, make me more effective at helping others, and also allow me much more innate contentment:  just happy being, not needing constant entertainment and distraction.  There's also, I think, a promise in the teachings that if I ever got really really enlightened I would, like the Buddha, know everything, like he supposedly did.  I know for sure the techniques and practices help a lot here-and-now, but I don't really know about this way-down-the-road promise.  I don't actively deny the possibility, but I put it on "hold," I know what results in ordinary life are, I don't know about this.

So I hope to keep up a sensible level – respect the relative, as ordinary existence is called – of interest in and curiosity about, and attempts to improve the ordinary, the relative, but hopefully my meditations and other practices keep me reminded that this isn't the absolute, the highest possible, stay open to the …. I was going to say "the More," but this sounds greedy, I don't know how to express the whatever is is/isn’t. But maybe some of you know what I mean.

Making this more concrete: the classic Buddhist teaching example of how our perception is distorted is about walking down a jungle path at twilight and mistaking a rope lying beside the path for a deadly snake.  It's a great illustration of how consciousness is constructed, biased, not just a high fidelity perception of what's really there.  The lesson, for me at least, being don't automatically take everything you see and experience as necessarily true, it may be a little or a lot illusory and distorted.  Learn to experience more of what's called the 6th consciousness, simple sensory perception, not be always stuck in 7th consciousness, the automatic, biased elaborations and story that substitute almost instantly for actual perceptions..

On the other hand, as a being incarnated in a vulnerable physical body, the world, especially hot places like India, is full of dangerous things like snakes.  I'm likely to survive much longer if my automatic processes (I think of this one as an ancient program hardwired into the human brain, human karma) scream "Snake, stop moving forward, jump back!!!," I stop, then I'll be happy to be embarrassed afterwards for being mistaken.  Embarrassment is much lighter suffering than snake bite and dead…..

Again, just my personal opinion, but Buddhist teachings in general often seem to put too much emphasis on getting on to the Absolute compared to practical teachings for getting along better in the Relative.  Not that there isn't a lot of practical advice in Buddhism as I know it, but the balance doesn't seem right to me.

Some of my friends, continuing our discussion, seemed to be a little embarrassed at wondering/speculating what more enlightenment would be like.  I understand the need for knowing what various teaching say if you're going to practice Buddhism, but I worry that too much humility, too much "Just quote what the Buddha or one of the enlightened Masters said" is not adaptive in our culture, so I wanted to encourage people to relax and think.  Thus:

Can I encourage you, my friends, to stop apologizing for thinking about the teachings and their application to life?  There is no problem with thinking, with "risings" per se, as I understand it (oh, oh, that's coming close to an apology….), it's the inappropriate and habitual attachments to thoughts that leads to problems.  I've heard Sogyal Rinpoche teach that, and it's certainly my own best understanding to date.  It's not thoughts (or feelings) that are a problem, it's the following after them, the way they automatically carry us away into our fantasies and stories.

When I/we discuss our understandings of the teachings, I try to remember that we are like first graders having a discussion about what you will learn in college or graduate school.  We probably have some little but correct  understandings, but may be way off on others.  So, in our Western intellectual culture at least, do we beat little kids when they think and talk about things they don't understand?

I know, there are some very repressive parents and sub-cultures that do, but I never did.  If I spoke up at all to kids I tried to encourage them to learn more things and think things through – and be prepared to learn more and think more as time went on, rather than think they had The Final Answer right now.

Gosh, as I write that I think I must have been an ideal parent—and I'm sure I was never that good, but that was my guiding ideal.  Same thing with students in my undergraduate and graduate classes nowadays – if they can repeat the "facts" I've taught them correctly, that's good, but if that's all they do, I'm sad.  I'm delighted when they think about and extend what they've been taught, when they don't childishly stay in a "They are children, I am the grown up who must be right" stance, but think about, explore things beyond my initial teaching and stimulation.

One of the things that really attracted me to the Buddha as a teacher is his Sutta to the Kalamas.  Here's a translation I have:

-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.

My personal understanding of this, fueled by ego and cultural conditioning, of course, as well as, hopefully, by common sense and genuine understanding, is don't freeze your ideas and ideals at any point, keep open to the moment, to learning.

But there are many strains of Buddhism, and while I'm not a Buddhist scholar, I've gotten the impression in looking at some teachings that this sutta has been interpreted (arising in much more authoritarian cultures than ours?) as think until you reach the same conclusion the Buddha is supposed to have reached about things, and then you can or should stop thinking…..Sadly this approach can reinforce the tribal mentality that is part of being human, so we feel threatened by people who don't fully conform to the approved interpretation and reject them (Me?  Now?  Sorry, I'm a thinker, even thought I try not to get too attached by my thoughts).

So in our culture, at least in my idealized understanding of it, we encourage our kids to think.  So keep thinking, kids, and don't apologize for it!  Share your thinking, and the thoughts you get from us other kids may help you correct misunderstandings or understand better.  And don't be mean to yourself or others because they are thinking!

And maybe some day when we're in graduate school and know so much much more, we'll look back fondly on our little kids selves….."They had some weird ideas, but they were good kids, had their hearts in the right places, and learned a lot…."

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 3 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

That takes us over to the upper right hand corner diagram of what can happen with Vipassana meditation, and two big things are happening in the way I draw that. Most of the squiggly things have been straightened out, and there’s a lot fewer of them. You can experience much more mental quiet; not necessarily an absolute, “I’m not having any experience,” but rather an awareness of being conscious. But it doesn’t have all those contents in it all the time, there’s more space between different aspects of experience, and things don’t automatically hook up. Things don’t automatically just trigger off more and more processes themselves. And I’ve also shown more input from those primary, simple perceptions by drawing a bigger arrow there.



[note drawing not reproducing just right, lower right says “Infuse with mindfulness and equanimity”]

How do you get there? In Vipassana, you basically infuse your perception of your ongoing experiences with mindfulness and equanimity. This is the big general picture now, rather than a specific technique. You basically infuse all of your experience with mindfulness. You’re looking. You’re listening. “What is it?” You’re curious. You’re open to it, and stay open to it with equanimity. You’re much more accepting of – you know, that hurts and I don’t need to freak out about it. It just hurts in a certain, particular kind of way, and things keep right on flowing. It’s that infusion of your experiential flow with mindfulness, curiosity, openness, equanimity that starts straightening out all those things so they don’t always jam up, that starts creating more space between things.

Judging from what some of you have said in class or written in your papers, I know some of you have had moments of a more spacious, clearer kind of flow of experience, even if it’s temporary.

I’ve crossed out all those defense mechanisms that were in the first panel of attraction, aversion, ignorance – defense mechanisms, conditioning, etc. They get reduced, ideally eventually eliminated.

If you jump to the lower left panel, I’ve also added, for the sake of completeness, that there are more ways to straighten out this flow than with just Vipassana meditation.

Vipassana meditation is a nice kind of technique. It’s very general. It’s been around for at least a couple of thousand years and whatnot, but we have learned some things since then. Things like psychotherapy can help straighten out those particular kinds of problems. Or learning particular kind of skills, or behavior modification techniques, or something like that – there’s a variety of growth methods now that essentially can straighten out many of the kinks in your own experience and let things flow better.

That doesn’t mean you end up in a state of no experiences at all; it simply means there’s less grasping, there’s less repulsion and attraction. Your experiences are experienced more cleanly. They don’t build up as an automatic reactive mass.

This has been where our work has been so far this quarter, to introduce you to controlled attention practices – CAPs – specifically concentrative meditation, Vipassana meditation, and self-remembering – that start to give you some training in exercising mindfulness and equanimity in a variety of ways to begin to “smooth out” experience.

Not that with the amount of training practice we can do in this course, that you’re going to come out of here “enlightened,” or something like that. But hopefully, you’re all going to come out of here with an ability to, at least at times, have a little more space between aspects of your experience, and do something about it.

(Student cell phone rings)

To be able to have your cell phone ring in an embarrassing manner in class and not have it be the end of the world, but perhaps to have it be just a minor annoyance!

Of course you have to know who it is.

Student: Mom!

(Laughter)

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 1 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Any kind of habit you can set up at the early learning stages of becoming more mindful is a good habit. Do watch for the point where it starts to become just a stimulus to trigger off the fantasy of being mindful, though, instead of actually doing it.

I don’t know how many times I remembered that I wanted to come to the present and be mindful, and so I thought about it, and fantasized about it, but I didn’t make the shift of attention to notice what was actually happening now. I got caught up in my thoughts about the now instead.

Ouspensky recommends changing “alarm clocks” when an alarm clock gets like that. Find something different that will trigger you off. So, for instance, you could set up a kind of conditioned response that every time you touch a doorknob, you’ll come to the present; and that might work for hours, days, maybe even weeks. But when you find yourself having fantasies about being mindful when you take a doorknob in your hand, it’s time to drop it because we don’t need to learn how to condition ourselves further. We’re already very good at that!

Now since I feel like you’re all being very mindful, I’m going to do a little review here at a conceptual level, but I ask that you try to keep some touch with the present while I get intellectual this way. You can do it by keeping some attention in your arms and legs; by looking around some, rather than staring fixedly at any one thing for too long a time; by noticing the quality of sounds as well as understanding the content of the particular words I’m saying; and in each of your individual cases, there may be some other particular kinds of sensations or actions which will help you be mindful, too. Experiment. What works for you?

The little sheet I’ve passed out – everybody got one? – has four drawings on it. If we were going to look at these, we’d say the order is upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right. I’m just going to review these. You’ve seen the first three before, and then I’ve added a new one that I created a couple of days ago when I sat down to do a formal meditation session.

My meditation went “poorly.” Instead of having any luck at all coming to the present, the goal of my meditation, I kept having the idea for this diagram that would help you guys understand something. So I decided that maybe my higher self is telling me the good outcome of this meditation will be a diagram. Or maybe it was just an excuse for not being able to concentrate….

The upper left corner diagram [figures presented separately here] – I told you this is my representation of one of the ways Shinzen Young talks about ordinary consciousness, or living in samsara, living in a state of illusion. You’ll remember I said that while some spiritual schools take an extreme position that the world really is an illusion, what the emphasis really is in most spiritual schools, as far as I can tell, is not that the world is illusory, unreal – that’s a metaphysical position, you can believe what you’d like to on that, but be careful about stepping out in front of cars! – but that the point is that we distort our perceptions of the world and ourselves so much that we effectively live in an illusion.

So on the left hand side here, you’ve got primary simple perception. Right now, for example, it’s bright. It’s warm. It’s quiet. You feel the chair pressing up against your butt and your back – very simple, primary sorts of things. Maybe the movement of your clothes against your skin as you move, the sensation of breathing – simple, primary sorts of things. What the Tibetans call Sixth Consciousness.

But we almost never spend much time in focusing on those simple, primary perceptions. When we do Vipassana meditation, we do something like that. But that’s not our ordinary way at all. Instead, we get into all sorts of processing of the perceptions that involves, on the one hand, elaboration of them into various thoughts and feelings and memories and hopes and fears and plans; and on the other hand, abstraction – that, insofar as you maintain some kind of contact with the world around you, it’s with higher level abstractions about the world where you “perceive” – quote, unquote around perceive – that we’re sitting here in a classroom. Classroom is an abstraction. It doesn’t begin to take in the details of this actual particular classroom at this particular point in time.

So we have an enormous amount of automatic processing. Generally, we have no control over whether it’s going to happen or not. We’ve been conditioned to have it happen. It happens. It runs automatically. And this automated process is working over your primary simple perceptions in both abstracting them and elaborating them.

One analogy we might use is that you’re the CEO of a major manufacturing company. You get some reports passed up to you, but you don’t keep track of every little widget, and where it is on the production line, and whether shipping has got so many boxed up and all that. You look at more abstract kinds of things like profits over the past month, or something like that. You have hopes and fears about growing the company, or avoiding a downturn. You don’t stay very much with the manifold actual details. That’s not a terribly good example, but it will do.

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