Month: November 2015 Page 2 of 3

Mindfulness with the Body

On November 20, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Meditation, Mindfulness, Practices

“For [Zen master] Dogen’s part, his Zen shifts attention from the simple interior state of mind to all the realities of the self and universe – the anthropo-cosmic totality – that are precisely what he means by the “body-mind.” In other words, meditation is not so much a retreat from the external world as it is an opening up of the body-mind to the mystery of the inner and outer world and beyond.” Hee Jin-Kim,- Dogen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen

Most people think that their mind is more valuable than their body. This accompanies a bias in us; that is, that we are a mind (a consciousness or a soul) in a body. And, giving preference to what we think is more valuable, we create cultures dedicated to the mind’s future and to the superiority of mind over the body. But, who says the mind is different to the body, and who says that mind is more important? Mind, of course.

We are locked into a view create by mind, and have no way of assessing this claim while it is mind that sets the criteria for the inquiry. It limits the discovery of what intelligence the body has. Meditation, then, gets to be all about ‘mind,’ and the body is just what you put on the cushion, before you get on with mind cultivation. Ironically, meditation is then made into a very slow process of disabusing oneself of that very duality, and its displacement of value.

But, if we consider the words ‘body’ and ‘mind’ (and ‘self’) as being conventions indicating viewpoints on ‘This,’ then they needn’t by ‘symbolic’ of something that you think is ‘real.’ What if we approach speaking (and thinking) as how ‘This’ communicates itself in us (in speaking) and to us (in listening)?

Can you sense how this changes what I am wriiting? ‘This’ – with its implicit fullness, and all its possibilities – is finding a way of carrying itself forward through these words. Their meaning is in how they change me and you – me in the writing of them, and you in the reading of them. The meaning of these words, right here, is in our sentient process, not in the dictionary.

Practice 01: When next having a significant conversation with someone, reserve between 5-10% of your attention for tracking how what you are saying and what you are hearing changes you and the other person. If you notice that, give the changes an opportunity to make their way into the conversation. How does this change the relationship? Does it change your sense of possibilities?

Practice 02: For a few days, in all your conversations, reverse your bias (make a mark on your hand, to remind yourself) by participating in all conversations as though it really were true that language is something that bodies do. How does this re-orientation change the quality of your communication? What does it do to your normal identifications?

With such experiments we are opening ourselves up to an inconceivable dimension of our life, the ‘This’ of my previous sentences. A dimension of utter openness may present itself. Don’t be worried if it feels a little spooky – that is usually because mind has gotten used to dictating the terms on which you can be you, world can be world, and even ‘This’ can be ‘This.’ Mind has decided that ‘body’ is what mind says it is; and, in particular, that body is the house for the mind.

“Somehow we need to awaken to the urgency of our situation. Each day and each hour we are confirming limits that exist only because we confirm them. We are stepping into the same prison cell, refusing to pick up the key that could unlock the prison gates.” – Tarthang Tulku, Visions of Knowledge

Body as Combodiment

By admin

On November 19, 2015

In Body, Focusing, Mindfulness, Positivity

In order to reflect further on death and ethics – that is, before I consider the ethical body, and the striking proposition that ‘Mindfulness cures death’ – I would like to define an important distinction about the body. You might have noticed that I freely use the term ‘combodiment.’ I take it from the work of Japanese Focusing-oriented psychotherapist, clinical psychologist, and doctor of medicine Akira Ikemi. In a paper (found on the Focusing Institute’s website, here) Dr. Ikemi writes:

“The English word ’embodiment’ may have a dualistic connotation originating in Western culture. An exact Japanese translation of this word does not exist. The word may have come from a cultural background where the spirit was assumed to be incarnated or ’embodied’, encapsulated in our physical bodies. The prefix ’em-‘ denotes a ‘putting into’. Thus far, this paper has described a sort of ‘com-bodiment’, where the body points beyond itself ‘altogether with’ (com-) the universe. The body is seen as a processing-generating itself with the whole universe at every moment of its living. This view of the body will be referred to as ‘combodying’.”

He “…advocates seeing bodily living as generating its own living together with the universe, and emphasizes the person’s reflexive awareness with which one can make sense of, and change one’s combodied living.”

He is presenting the body as an ongoing process of life generating life. This is lovely. I agree with his effort to move away from the implications of ’em-‘ in our word ’embody.’ (He says, by the way, there is no Japanese equivalent of ’embody,’ to use in translation).

To me, a vision of the body as being of the same intelligence that generates the planet (and exceeds even this), not only inspires me, but – more importantly – can contribute to correcting our relationship to the natural world, and can be readily confirmed in the practices of Focusing, mindfulness and meditation.

In this article he alludes to Eugene Gendlin’s assertion that the body is before perception and concept, and is already situated in and interacting with the world and the universe. In another paper Ikemi says: “I agree with Gendlin that the body is already relating to the world before perception and that starting the study of intentionality from perception greatly limits the intricate relating of the body.”

Do you see how radical this understanding of the body is? It questions two commonly held views of the body, found in most people’s talk and thoughts.

One is the idea of the body being some ‘thing,’ inside which, a mind and/or a soul ‘resides.’ The real stuff is on the non-body plane. Even if this is stated poetically – for example, “the body as a temple in which the soul is guest” – this is still a dualistic way of thinking, and hence produces stress (dukkha).

Equally, Ikemi is not suggesting that other kind of ‘thing,’ the medical, materialist body: where the body is ‘physical stuff’ only – physical stuff which gives rise to a mere appearance called ‘mind.’ In this view, the so-called physical stuff is taken as real and is the cause of the ‘hurrah’ we call ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness.’ ‘Mind’ in this neuro-biological model is known as an ‘epiphenomenon.’

The word comes from the art of rhetoric, and it refers to the flourish at the end of a speech. The fact that neuro-biologists put forward this word shows what little value they give to consciousness. To them, the real stuff of mind is in the sense organs, the nervous system – especially the brain – and the hormonal and other systems in the medically defined body. Consciousness or mind is more or less an illusion.

Now, I’m suggesting that we should use these terms – body and mind (or soul, or consciousness) – for experiences in situations, and not to establish ultimate realities – physical or mental. They are useful words (and we don’t want to throw away the medical uses, either), but we needn’t mistake the word for the reality; any more than you would mistake the pointing finger for the thing pointed at.

And, what is it that is being pointed at, with the words ‘body’ or ‘mind’? Some kind of experience. In terms of actual living experience, the body which Gendlin offers us has more power to support freedom of consciousness; so, in that context, Dr. Ikemi’s word ‘combody’ is very useful. If you are interested in a life of authentic relationship, as a base from which to contribute to the welfare of the world, I suggest that a combodying process is the more helpful way to think of a body.

Often the body is conceived as something static, but in this vision, the body is living forward freshly and creatively. Ikemi: “Combodying incorporates the past and the whole present situation, and yet it newly lives forward.”

Practices: Would your body breathe without air? If you pay attention to your breath – where does your breath and ‘the world outside’ begin and end? Putting aside perception, ideas, thought, concepts, and so on, directly come into the breath. Live the breath. Can the world ‘outside’ be separated from the breath ‘inside’? Where does the air become ‘my breath,’ and where does it cease to be ‘my breath’? If you conceive of such a place (for example, at your nose), take your attention inside that space to find where ‘my air’ ends and the ‘world’s air’ begins.

And, is ‘air’ a necessary part of the definition of ‘breath’ and ‘breathing’?

After this, what do you think of Gendlin’s statement (in A Process Model) that: “In breathing, oxygen enters the bloodstream-environment and goes all the way into the cells. The body is in the environment but the environment is also in the body, and is the body.”

A Bull of a Man

By admin

On November 17, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Practices

“Around four billion years stand between our time and that distant aeon of life’s emergence. A number of that magnitude is hard for the human mind to comprehend. Its vastness seems to diminish the force of pointing to our common ancestry with all the living things on Earth. Closer to home are the one hundred billion nerve cells or neurons that make up the human brain. All are the progeny of a small fold of cells that emerged when we were embryos of about four weeks. Inside each one of them, in its protein and DNA, we can find a family resemblance to the genes and enzymes of all the other living cells on Earth. We harbor the past everywhere within our bodies. To the cells inside us the chemical composition of the somatic environment plays a role reminiscent of the ocean environment where the earliest cells resided. Three billion years ago bacteria swam in the warm shallows of the Earth’s primeval seas. Among their descendants today are the bacteria dwelling within our bodies, without which we could not live, while other remnants of their progeny, such as mitochondria and mobile cilia, exist inside our modern cells.”
– Evan Thompson, Mind in Life. p.91

Not everything in the Nikāyas is wise today, though it may been so, in the time of the historical Buddha. There are things said there that don’t support a healthy human attitude today. I’m thinking specifically of the body-hating tendency. We can’t know with any certainty, what the historical Buddha’s view of the body was, but if the Nikāyas are any indication, his attitude it not to be recommended for a modern person (lay or monastic, I believe.) His attitude to the body is extreme, and violent, and ill-informed from our present, scientific point of view.

The cavity of the head is filled with the brain; but the fool, because of his ignorance, regards it as a fine thing; (199)
When the body lies dead, swollen and livid, cast away in the cemetery, the relatives do not care for it. (200)
Dogs, jackals, wolves, worms, crows and vultures and other living creatures eat it. (201)
In the world, the monk who is wise, listening to the Buddha’s word, fully comprehends the body and sees it in its true perspective. (202)
– The Sutta-Nipata: A New Translation. Translated by Saddhatissa

In the Vakkali Sutta which I quoted from yesterday, the body is referred to as a “corrupt,” or as ‘foetid’ (pūti). I looked in the Pali-English Dictionary for a word reflecting a more balanced attitude, but there was none. If I had to translate that passage, I’d have to say something like ‘decaying,’ to even get in the ballpark of ‘balanced’; but a critic would rightly say I was playing down the dismissal of the body as ‘putrid.’ The Nikāya Buddha says, “Enough, Vakkali, what is there for you to see in this putrid body?”

I wouldn’t hang around with a teacher like this, in these times. Not only because of his distorted view of the body, but because he has missed the point underneath the sick Vakkali’s wish to come and see him: “For quite some time, dear Sir, I have wanted to set eyes on the flourishing one.” – “Enough, Vakkali, what is there for you to see in this putrid body?” In modern terms, in this incident the Nikāya Buddha doesn’t hold the transference very well.

But such comparisons are odious, as the English poets say. Instead of the usual holding of the Nikāya Buddha as infallible, I would be now using modern standards to judge this figure of the past, one who could not have had our modern consciousness, for the obvious reason that such consciousness as we have now had not developed at that stage. He has the imperfections of his time – how could it be otherwise? Just as we have the short-comings of our own time; which will be known hence, no doubt.

There is, on the other hand, much wisdom, in the approach to the body in the Nikāyas, which we can use to our benefit. For instance, the recognition that the body has its down-side; that whatever we think it is – beautiful, for example – it is otherwise, merely because no dependently-arisen appearance can have only one dimension. For instance, a person sees another who they think is beautiful, handsome, desirable, attractive, and so on. However, that body is also vulnerable to change unto sickness, ageing and death.

The admirer, also, knows nothing about the immediate bodily health of the other. They may have a cancer which they themselves know nothing about! The mind’s-eye of the beholder (unless they have trained themselves in dispassion), when it sees the beautiful one, does not take into account the reality of the vulnerabilities of bodies. To the untrained eye, there is just physical beauty. We can take that warning on board.

To go deeply into our relationship with the body, we have to somehow hold both these things. Both statements can stand: a body may be seen to be beautiful – from a perspective. And, at the same time, that same body can be seen to be not-beautiful – from a perspective. So, my point – without going further into a very deep topic – is that extreme, body-hating views are no more enlightened that the views of the infatuated, untrained mind.

Thankfully, I don’t need the Buddha of the Nikāyas to be a perfect hero. I think that is an ideal – one that humans seem devoted to, but from which we suffer. Indeed, one of my awakenings into more freedom in the study of these suttas, came when I recognised that the Buddha of the Nikāyas was portrayed as a patriarchal, warrior stud. He’s a ‘bull of a man.’ (See John Powers. A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism). Furthermore, in their attempt to make him superhuman, the compilers of the Nikāyas gave us physical descriptions which are ridiculous, even grotesque. As he is described in the Discourse on the Physical Characteristics (Digha-Nikāya, II1-144-145), he is said to have:

“…flat feet; a thousand-spoked wheel pattern (cakra) on the soles of his feet and palms of his hands; hands that reached down to his knees without him bending over; webbed fingers and toes; soft and tender hands and feet; skin so smooth and delicate that no dust or dirt could settle on it; golden-colored skin; a prominent cranial lump on top of his head (usnisa); a curl of white hair in the middle of his forehead that when unwound reached to his elbows (urna); a straight torso; legs like an antelope’s; a torso and jaw like a lion’s; eyelashes like a cow’s; hairs that grew one to each pore and curled to the right; a long and wide tongue; and a penis hidden by a sheath.”
– John Powers. A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism (p. 9).

Now, of course, it’s easy to make fun of this. I am honouring that these texts are repositories of cultures long-gone, at the same time as conveying some very powerful concepts which can carry our experience forward.

And, there are incidents that show the Nikāya Buddha as very human. The picture of his last days, for instance, are realistic. The Nikāya Buddha of my mythos probably died, not from a poison meal, as the story has it, but from a mesenteric ischemia, leading to an infarction. That is, his guts gave up on him, purely out of old age. How human is that! (There’s a readable paper on the likelihood, here.)

There really needn’t be an issue for a mature practitioner, though; because, if we look at the kind of approach toward experience that is recommended in, and cultivated through, the Nikāyas – the actual practice of meditation, mindfulness, compassion and inquiry – in that, there is no room for body-hating. Did the body-hating monks introduce that stuff later? Maybe. I suggest that we might never know, unless textual analysis proves it so, in decades to come. On the other hand, maybe the historical Buddha was anti-body in some contexts, but neutral in others. (Remember ‘lines of development’?) However, he is positive about the role of the body in mindfulness – that we can be certain of.

The core thing is: What parts of this body of wisdom texts resonate with you? What, in these teachings, can carry you forward in your life? Paying attention to how they live in your body, and whether or not your life goes deeper according to your deepest values – that’s a guide.

But, as for an ideal human to believe in, that’d be a stretch, to find her or him anywhere. Personally, I think we have an ethical duty to all, to not fool ourselves, where possible.

And We Are All Together

By admin

On November 16, 2015

In Body, Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta

Hunger is the worst affliction.
Fabrications are the worst suffering.
Knowing this just as it is,
the cooling of the fires is the foremost well-being.
– Dhammapada, verse 203. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

I am not well today. Nevertheless, as weak as I am, I want to say something. I have been thinking how important in my own life vows have been. Since the day that I first began making a practice of the Bodhisattva vows, the thought of the welfare of all others has been a source of kindness, strength and inspiration.

From time to time in my groups, I do a little kinesiology muscle testing to demonstrate that person has more strength when they do their inner work for all beings than if they do it for themselves alone.

When talk gets too philosophical I vow together with all beings
to recall the challenge of the Buddha: ‘What is life? What is death? What is this?’

There are several outcomes of saying a gatha such as this one from Robert Aitken Roshi’s The Dragon Who Never Sleeps: firstly, it is a mindfulness practice, and so it ensures that I am directing my heart to present-moment recollection. Secondly, such gathas remind me of the depth and universality of the purpose of this practice. And, it recollects interdependence.

The four Bodhisattva vows themselves are reminders that the universe is not logical. They are aspirations of the Flesh which exceeds the flesh:

The many beings are numberless – I vow to save them.
Greed, hatred and ignorance rise endlessly – I vow to abandon them.
Dharma gates are countless – I vow to wake to them.
The Buddha’s way is unsurpassed – I vow to combody it fully.

Thinking about this last one first, I am very grateful to Akira Ikemi for his concept of combodiment. It directly says the truth of everything in everything timelessly – that is, of interdependence. The Buddha’s way and our very human body are not two.

Due to this lack of separation, to directly realise interdependence is to save all beings. (And, taking a conventional serial-time view at the same time, I vow to give my energy to the collective 2000-year project of bringing peace to our planet.).

Abandoning greed, hatred and ignorance endlessly is nothing but mindfulness.

There is no event anywhere that is not reflecting the sacred dance. The smallest flea on my friend’s carpet is a Dharma gate. This illness, today, is a Dharma gate. One who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma. (Majjhima Nikāya 28) The NIkāya Buddha says:

“He who sees Dhamma, Vakkali, sees me; he who sees me sees Dhamma. Truly seeing Dhamma, one sees me; seeing me one sees Dhamma.”
– Vakkali Sutta. Translated by Maurice O’Connell Walshe,

Wonderful thing about these vows is that they catapult one outside of logic and into intimate connection with the measureless beauty of ‘This,’ the greatest peace.’

When people talk about war, I vow with all beings to raise my voice in the chorus and speak of original peace.
– Robert Aitken, The Dragon Who Never Sleeps: Verses For Zen Buddhist Practice.

Giving Birth to Virtue

By admin

On November 15, 2015

In Death, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

In The Symposium, Plato has Socrates report what his mentor in respect of love (Diotima) said to him:

“What do we think it would be like, she said, if someone should happen to see the beautiful itself, pure, clear, unmixed, and not contaminated with human flesh and color and a lot of other mortal silliness, but rather if he were able to look upon the divine, uniform beautiful itself?”
– Diotima, from The Symposium, in Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

When one is capable of seeing beauty and truth, then one can understand ethical living. And, this means seeing beauty internally as well as externally. A person who has not penetrated beyond his little ego-concerns (such delusions as: “I am right; you are wrong”) cannot consistently see true beauty in another. When it occurs, true seeing brings gentleness. No violence is possible in a mature spirituality.

He is constantly equanimous and mindful. He does not harm anyone anywhere. A recluse is one who has crossed over [to peace]. He is unconfused. He has no evil traits. Such a one is gentle: he has crossed the ocean [of suffering].
“He whose senses are cultivated in connection with the whole world, both internal and external; with penetrative understanding of this and the other world, the cultivated and restrained person awaits with equanimity the time of death.”
– The Sutta-Nipata, verse 515-516. Translated by Saddhatissa [I altered his parentheses, for general intelligibility.]

Perceiving permanence in what is changing,
perceiving well-being in what is ill-being,
perceiving self in what is without self,
and perceiving beauty in the unbeautiful,
beings falling into wrong views,
minds deranged, perception distorted.
– Vipallasa Sutta. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

Regarding the world’s violence, after we take into account matters of social justice, and the legacy of colonialism, the heartlessness of capitalism, and universal racism, we need also to consider that lost people commit violence out of delusion – particularly because they cannot trust their own minds. They cannot trust letting go of their views and opinions, to rest in a peace which has no inside or outside to confirm their ego-self. This is a root cause of violence. It’s a terrible thing, but if a deranged person doesn’t want to be forgotten by history, they are right in assuming that killing innocent strangers will bring them fame.

Socrates reporting Diotima: “Do you think, she continued, it would be a worthless life for a human being to look at [the Beautiful], to study it in the required way, and to be together with it? Aren’t you aware, she said, that only there with it, when a person sees the beautiful in the only way it can be seen, will he ever be able to give birth, not to imitations of beauty, since he would not be reaching out toward an imitation, but to true virtue, because he would be taking hold of what is true?”

Topsy-Turvy Perceptions

By admin

On November 14, 2015

In Meditation, Practices, Radiant Citta

These are the verses of the Vipallasa Sutta – Upside-Down Perceptions (AN IV.49)
Translated by Christopher J. Ash

Perceiving permanence in what is changing,
perceiving well-being in what is dukkha,
perceiving self in what is without self,
and perceiving beauty in the unbeautiful,
beings falling into wrong views,

minds deranged, perception distorted.
Bound by the yoke of Māra,
such people do not reach security.
They go on and on in saṃsāra,
experiencing birth and death.

But when awakened ones arise in the world,
bringing light, they make known this teaching
that leads to the quelling of dukkha.
Having heard it, people with wisdom
trust their own minds.

They perceive the changing as changing,
and perceive dukkha as dukkha,
they perceive what is without self as without self,
and perceive the non-beautiful as not beautiful.
By gaining appropriate vision, they pass by all dukkha.

Ethical Experiments in Consciousness

By admin

On November 13, 2015

In Death, Enquiry, Positivity, Practices

Dr. Edward W. Bastian: “Would you say more about some of the practices that support one in the dying process?”
Joan Halifax Roshi: “Well, ﬁrst there are the values that support us. Living an ethical and wholesome life supports one in the process. This is really hard if you are suddenly diagnosed with a severe illness. You know you are heading toward active dying, and you have made a whole mess of your life, you have got a long list of debts, so it is a lot to work with. But you can still start to think of others before yourself.”
– From Living Fully, Dying Well: Reflecting on Death to Find Your Life’s Meaning. By Edward W. Bastian and Tina L. Staley.

Ardour for ethical action can be sparked by cultivating, in the context of contemplative awareness, the thought of the certainty of death. People who approach death as an opportunity to become more conscious of their inner life naturally turn toward examining their ethical life. Becoming conscious brings more life, and more life in oneself brings more care for life. In fact, because “what ‘This’ is” and action are not two, ethical life is liberation. It’s not a matter of leading to a better life – it is immediately freeing (though, feeling free might lag behind the change).

We don’t often think of how the quality of ardour is, in our lives. We generate ardour for particular things, or for people. (The origin of the word is in the Latin ‘to burn.’) What are we on fire for? Are we on fire for truth, goodness and beauty, directly realised in our being? Of course, this is dangerous. Probably more dangerous than barracking for a football team. Socrates was on fire for the truth, and he was condemned to death by the Athenians as a result. Truth is still dangerous to political establishments everywhere, today.

The Mindfulness Sutta says that “a contemplative, ardent, mindful, having put away longing and distress regarding the world, in full understanding, dwells contemplating: the body in the body, feeling-tones in the feeling-tones, the psyche’s states in those same states; and, the dynamics of phenomena in the phenomena themselves.” (Translated by the author). Are we on fire to experience life as it actually is, rather than through knowing it through our filters? Maybe not. How, then, can we awaken this fire? Certainly, staring into the face of death can bring this energy.

Many of us have a love-hate relationship with moral codes. They long for integrity, especially in others, but they don’t want to be confined by ‘shoulds and shouldn’ts.’ Ken Wilber invented the term Boomeritis to describe the narcissism of Baby-boomers,
who have the attitude that “Nobody tells me what to do.” This kind of attitude makes it difficult to find out what a truly ethical consciousness is like. I don’t think it’s confined to Baby-boomers.

Certainly, approaching Buddhist ‘precepts’ as a mere ‘code of behaviour’ will not lead to purifying the heart. If they are approached as something that you have to do (to be a proper Buddhist, or to escape punishment at the end of your days), then you are bound to feel terrible about failing in them (which you inevitably will), and your learning will be slow. It’s dog-training, as someone said, and not the path of liberation.

Sooner or later, we have to give up attachment to rules, and live authentically. So, why not start from there, in the first place? Why not ask what we really care about, most of all? If it’s my football team, then at least I know that, and I am not kidding myself. From there I might at least feel what ardour feels like, and acknowledge its lack elsewhere. Or, will I take up the training to be the kind of person I want to see in the world. (I think Gandhi said that.)

We can explore our life, in terms of ethical intricacy, by remembering the five paths of learning, as experiments in consciousness. A reminder that the five Buddhist ethical experiments are:

1. I undertake the learning path of not causing the death of living beings.
2. I undertake the learning path of not taking what is not given.
3. I undertake the learning path of refraining from sexual misconduct.
4. I undertake the learning path of refraining from speech which betrays.
5. I undertake the learning path of refraining from intoxicants.

As vows they can be carried as transformative commitments to remember one’s life-force. I can, for instance, explore the correlation between my life-energy (deadness or vitality), and the moral or ethical tone of my life. For instance, as I become freer from speaking falsely, I might notice that I’m feeling more energetic and less fearful.

The five represent domains of behaviour where – with mindfulness – you can learn how your selfishness works. You cannot willingly cause the death of a living being, take what is not given, engage in course-minded sex, speak in a manner that destroys trust, or dull your consciousness, without certain bodily and mental events occurring. Doing anything in these broad categories teaches you – if you have a beginner’s mind – about how your five sentient processes are organised, and how they can change in the direction of peace, or in the direction of stress. In particular, a serious engagement with this kind of learning teaches one to distinguish between the false moral guardian – the inner judge – and authentic concern. We might even be able to study the deadening effect of our super-ego judgements.

It’s an Ethical Body

By admin

On November 12, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Mindfulness, Positivity

The process of ethical concern is usually associated with karma, and hence ‘merit’ and ‘demerit.’ It’s dangerous territory, because there are traps aplenty, here – especially zealotry. I can feel in my body, even now, the horror I have felt when hearing clients’ accounts of their childhood experience at the hands of their Catholic ‘teachers.’

Values need to have a life-enhancing, energy-giving, forward-moving effect. If they push the person’s energy back, they are not being used in an experientially sound way. Spiritual terminology can be a form of oppression.

– Eugene T. Gendlin. Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method

We can’t ignore values, though, because, in the processes which we call ethical, we can be confident that intention underpins the dynamics. There is no consciousness without intention and attention. So, we cannot escape ethical life, as though it were merely a cultural addition to human bodies. Therefore, how we conduct consciousness matters, always, for both our own welfare and the welfare of others.

Before I explore the ethical heart some more, I want to restate my primary focus. While keeping the certainty of death in sight, I am exploring how ‘experience’ functions. What is the dynamic of ‘death’ in light of understanding how ‘experience’ works?

Next, as I’ve been saying in this blog, from various angles, ‘experience’ is not about ‘things.’ I’m using the word to mean something immediate and in process; and yet, something primordially undivided.

The contrast that I am affirming is one found in various Buddhist texts, of a dependently arisen world of objects, and a deeper level of originary experience (Dzogchen), which, perhaps it could be said, is the source of discriminative distinctions.

I raise this because there is a natural tension between the ‘life as it is’ process and the ethical dichotomies of ‘good/bad,’ ‘wholesome/unwholesome,’ ‘selfish/unselfish,’ and so on. Wisdom nevertheless affirms these distinctions. The greater order – the non-conceptual, undivided, ‘life as it is’ process – does not negate anything – least of all the natural process of thinking. (Or, saying ‘I.’)

So, how do we ground ethical life, when religious culture is prone to produce violence, as we see in our news media daily. Another distinction about ‘experiencing’ that is important for meeting life and death with integrity – and which comes to our rescue, here – is that experiencing is feeling in the body. For us humans, nothing is experienced without a body being involved. (That includes ‘out of the body’ and near-death experiences, and ‘enlightenment’ experiences.) Ethical life is bodily life, because values are felt; and, because bodily life is always connected to the collective. No person is an island. (You can see how important it is to know what is happening in your body – hence the importance of mindfulness training.)

Imagine that you are thinking of some value – something to do with love, or something to do with ‘the common good.’ When you think these things, your body undergoes (experiences) changes. If you are mindful, you can experience the shifts that occur with your thinking. These inherently ethical human bodies are developed upon their evolutionary history of being valuing bodies.

Can you see how: what is more important than a focus on specific value-content is the process whereby we have contact with our living, valuing body right there in its contexts, its living situations. We can see the universal in the process of our interactional living – our feeling-tones and felt-meanings in relationship. As Gendlin says about therapy:

No concept of a universal human nature can limit the wild and ever-increasing gamut of human possibilities. There is no universal human content. We can see the universal only in the fact that we can always understand any person’s steps of experiential differentiation, if we are permitted to accompany the person.

– Eugene T. Gendlin. Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method

A highly-developed ethical sense can empathically attune to the bodies of others, even when the others’ situation is unfamiliar to us; but most of us, when we know our own experiences deeply, can thereby know (albeit imperfectly) what others are experiencing.

There is the case where a monk remains focused internally on the body in & of itself — ardent, alert, & mindful — putting aside greed & distress with reference to the world. As he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, he becomes rightly concentrated there, and rightly clear. Rightly concentrated there and rightly clear, he gives rise to knowledge & vision externally of the bodies of others.

– From Digha Nikāya 18. Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The growth of ethical life begins with oneself. We need to guard ours hearts against self-blame, of course, but also from indulging in despair. It is no support for the growth of one’s heart to be negative about human nature. That’s one’s own self that is abandoned, when one dismisses the possibility of beauty in humans.

If you knew yourself to be dear, you would guard yourself thoroughly.
The wise person watches over herself, in any part of the night.
– Dhammapada, verse 157. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

On this basis compassion can grow:

All fear violence, life is dear for all.
Seeing oneself as like that, one should not kill or promote killing.
– Dhammapada, verse 130. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

The Groundless Ground of Ethical Life

By admin

On November 11, 2015

In Body, Focusing, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta

I am certain to die. Dying, to me, is about losing all semblance of control over experience. The reason death will be easy is that it does me. I won’t be doing my death; any more than I am doing my living.

Right now, where you are – choose not to be conscious. Not possible, is it? So, you’re not doing your knowing – knowing simply is. Notice what that’s like to let your body have the feel of that fact. There is a death in this.

What has been a revelation for me, in the last couple of decades, is that there are three levels of ‘knowing.’ On the surface I know that I’m sitting writing this blog post to you. As you can imagine, I could describe all kinds of things about the experience. Let’s call this the phenomenal level. At this level, it’s reasonable to say ‘I’ am a person, a white, Anglo-Celtic, male, and so on. You know the kind of thing. This knowing is choiceless, while extremely transient.

However, when I look more intimately, experiencing the quality of knowing itself – the mere fact that I am experiencing anything at all – it gets trickier. Indeed, at the deepest level I don’t have the faintest sign of a knowing one. There is knowing, but it has no ground; that is, if ground means some location or signs, or anything that I can point to. I have no idea where knowing comes from (and suspect that that ‘comes from’ is not a relevant frame of reference). There are all kinds of wonders about the dark mystery encountered at this depth, but none of them establish any ‘something’ or ‘someone’ knowing.

However, between that mystery and the phenomenal level, there is another personal level of knowing. I can sense that I have a ‘ground’ of luminous, spacious, intelligence. It partakes of the mystery in one sense – because it is also non-locatable, and without form – but it is so palpably present as to have presence as one of its felt facets. It is luminous, in the sense of being an all-pervading knowingness.

(When my pain gets too strong to function very well, it can be helpful for me to meditate on this. I enter it from inside it, and explore its qualities as space and energy. At some point, I can say, “Yes, there is pain.” And, I can also say, “There is awareness of the pain.” Then, I can shift my attention to feeling into the awareness itself. And, I find that, doing so, and discovering the painless, spacious, luminous knowingness of awareness of the pain, then the pain is easier to be with. There have been occasions when the pain turns into love. That I cannot fathom.)

So, what, if anything does this have to do with ethics? Having discovered the deeper two layers of knowing has transformed my understanding of ethics. I used to think that ethics was about choosing the wholesome over the unwholesome. It looks like that when your value-programs are running on the surface (phenomenal), with no integration with the luminous knowing, and no sense of the fathomless, implicit mystery. However, with the introduction of this deepest beauty, the surface re-organises itself in alignment with the deep. Even though (being signless, remember) it cannot be said to be limited by opposites (wholesome or unwholesome, for example), the voidness element eliminates selfishness.

The selfishness manifested on the surface is a result of believing that there are only surfaces. (There are people who make a philosophical position out of ‘only surfaces.’ During one of my training modules, in my therapy training, a Brief Therapy trainer began his lectures with: “There is no such thing as depth.” This works in logic, but not in practice. Consider the ‘feel’ of ‘I’m feeling spacey’ and ‘I’m feeling spacious.’ Clearly, even experiential space has depth.)

I suggest that meditation introduces us to the felt experience of ‘depth,’ and with it comes a capacity to feel ethical values as qualities in your being, and to independently assess culturally transmitted values. This is a part of what the Nikāya Buddha meant, in the Mindfulness Sutta, by: “She is one who dwells independent, not clinging to anything in the world. This is how a contemplative dwells contemplating the body in the body.” The field of ethical action, then, comes intrinsically with wakefulness, and is not derived from culturally-imposed norms.

Not causing harm,
doing what is beneficial,
and purifying one’s mind –
this is the way of the awakened.

– Dhammapada, verse 183. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

A Path of Learning

By admin

On November 10, 2015

In Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta

I was asked a personal question, recently, about my ethical conduct throughout my life. In Buddhism there is a practice called ‘the five precepts.’ Like any serious Western Buddhist, I continually engage with these ethical inputs.

I’ll talk more about them tomorrow. I’ve been wanting to write about the power of living by vow, so this will provide a starting point. I give them below, for your consideration. Thich Nhat Hanh calls them the five mindfulness trainings.

The usual translation for ‘sikkhapada‘ is either ‘precept’ or ‘training rules.’ But even better, to my mind, is: ‘learning trail.’ ‘Sikkhati’ is to learn, or to train oneself. ‘Pada‘ has to do, generally speaking, with ‘feet’ – steps, trail, path, and so on. It has to do with walking, right? For example, ‘padasilā’ is a stone for stepping on.

My translations, then, of these transforming commitments are: