Month: December 2015 Page 2 of 4

The Arahant (Part 1)

On December 22, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Meditation, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

Now, while he was in seclusion, Bark-clothed Bāhiya had this thought: “Among those who are arahants, or who have entered the way of the arahant, I am one of them.”

Since the time of the historical Buddha, the ‘arahant’ (some translate this as ‘saint’) has been held as an ideal person, bringing inspiration, faith and guidance to a significant portion of humankind. To the Buddha of the Nikāyas the arahant possesses the highest understanding of freedom. I’d like to look more closely at this:

“Instantly, in response to this concise instruction on the part of the flourishing one, Bāhiya’s mind was without support, freed from the mental-emotional biases.”

Firstly, I’d like to say that this level of freedom was not exclusive to the mendicants, or to men. The attainment (as portrayed in the Nikāyas) was available to lay-people and to women.

It appears that there were lay teachers at the time of the historical Buddha (according to Lawrence Khantipalo, in a personal communication in 2007); and according to Rune Johansson (The Psychology of Nirvana,1969), there were at least twenty-one lay arahants. And, the Poems of the Bhikkhunis attests to the power of women’s realisation experiences. However, there is not much evidence of the kind of arahant that lay practice produces.

In the Pāli Nikāyas, we frequently hear the ideal model presented as a celibate male, but given that the Nikāyas were created and preserved by male celibates, we have clearly received a limited image of the ‘arahant.’

So, what kind of consciousness does an arahant have? One notable feature of an arahant, presented in the Digha Nikāya is that she or he has perfect development of the self (atta-samma-panidhi). The Nikāya descriptions emphasise the arahant’s destruction, in herself, of greed, hatred, and delusion; her establishment in love, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity. She is an independent person, living in accordance with her own conscience. There is the implication, throughout, that the arahant (such as Bāhiya) has awakened as a result of discarding what is not true in their person.

It may be a helpful concept – that the ‘true person’ or ‘person of truth’ (sappurisadhamma) can be uncovered, because we are deeper than our culture; and the distortions of our luminous mind are seen to be ‘adventitious’ – that is, they are visitors. However, Buddhist practice doesn’t merely uncover some kind of pre-existing pristine humanity. It’s also the case that Buddhist practice itself cultures the kind of person that an arahant is.

In part, an ‘arahant’ is the kind of person cultivated in dependence upon Theravadan monasticism. A Dzogchen kind of awakened person is a different style of human being, cultivated in dependence upon the Nyingma and/or Bon cultures. Zen masters are again, present specific styles of awakened person. Just the same, the essence of freedom is the same for them all: freedom from the ‘mental-emotional biases’ (āsavas, often translated ‘intoxicants’) – i.e. freedom from sense-desires; from the craving to become; from speculations; and from ignorance.

An arahant is especially free from the personality-fiction, the fiction of a separate, non-interdependent selfhood. She dwells in peace, without dualistic, conceptual world-making (papañca: ‘manifold-making’) A synonym for nibbāna is ‘nippapañca’ – that is, ‘no manifold making.’ They have relatively quiet minds, then.

To be without fictions about oneself and the world is to no longer live in the skin-encapsulated ego (Alan Watts), isolated from others. It is to be, instead, free from the conceit of ‘I am.’ We can put this in a paradox: the arahant is more authentically herself, because she has seen that she is “nobody going nowhere.” (Khema, 1987) Which is a freedom, not a bondage (such as it is in a person who is ‘depersonalised.’)

The ‘view’ at the heart of the arahant is the freedom of non-identification (with phenomena), an absence of clinging to representations. The ordinary person lives by the unconscious process of identifying with their ‘constructions,’ whereas the Nikāya Buddha says:

“Monks, whatsoever in the world with its gods, Māras and Brahmas among the progeny consisting of recluses and brahmins, gods and men, …… – that have I fully understood; all that is known to the Tathāgata, but the Tathāgata has not taken his stand upon it.” (Kālakārāma Sutta, trans. Nanananda, Bhikkhu)

Not taking a stand on anything releases consciousness from being supported by the inherently unstable senses and intellect. The arahant knows what they know, supported by an ‘unsupported consciousness.’ The Nikāya Buddha:

And having no basis to land, consciousness is released. One recognizes, ‘Consciousness, thus unestablished, is released.’ Owing to its staying firm, the heart is contented. (Samyutta Nikāya 12.53, trans. Ajahn Amaro: Attending to the Deathless)

You will not be ‘by it’

By admin

On December 21, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

It would be good to write a little bit on that famous text in the Bāhiya sutta. I will give you Ñāṇananda’s translation:

“Then, Bāhiya, you will not be by it. And when, Bāhiya, you are not by it, then, Bāhiya, you are not in it. And when, Bāhiya, you are not in it, then, Bāhiya, you are neither here nor there nor in between. This, itself, is the end of suffering.”

Understanding the ‘by it’ phrase is crucial for understanding this whole thing about the kind of relationship which the Nikāya Buddha says we should have with the senses.

In this blog, back on 23 September, I told a story which I think illustrates this in a personal manner. It was about an experience I had thirteen years ago, of: “in the seen, just the seen.”

In a Buddhist library, I’m sitting here against this wall, and there are shelves of books are on the other side of the room. I’m physically looking at them – or so it would appear to any outside observer. (There were a dozen people watching, actually.)

However, in my experience, everything had stopped. The mind was clear and bright; and, while I could see the shelves, I was not adding to that seeing by conceiving of anything there. No name, no attribution of intrinsic form to the seen. Nor did I have any image or feeling of being a seer of the shelves. There was no here, nor there, nor in-between. The mind was silent and still, yet aware. There was just complete calm. Then, the mind shifted a little, and the bookcase gently formed – but only partially.

In my post of 23 September, here’s what I said to you: “I could see the bookcase on the other side of the room. There was an invitation by the thinking-mind to measure a ‘here,’ a ‘there,’ and an ‘in-between,’ based on that contact.

The root of the English word ‘mind’ is an ancient European root meaning ‘think, remember, intend.’ And, that’s what I experienced: that the thinking mind started up again, ignoring the beauty of the silence, and setting old intentions into train. And, I just said, “No, thanks.” I turned away from ‘world-making,’ and rested the mind, trusting the emptiness.”

Then, it was back to ‘in the seen, just the seen.’ It was a simple wholeness.

If I think about that moment, I could think of it as: The bookshelves invited me to attach to them, in such a manner that I would go back into the world of duality. However, that’s not what happened. It was my mind which invited me.

That’s what the Nikaya Buddha means by Māra. Māra is not some force ‘out there,’ some a kind of external being; nor is he a force in the universe like the gravitational field. “We are Māra to ourselves,” scholar Sue Hamilton nicely says, in “Early Buddhism: A New Approach – The I of the Beholder.” It is up to us to oppose the seducer Māra.

Imagine that Bāhiya had attached himself to the Buddha’s words – taken them up as something to be believed now,and acted on at a future time. That is, what if his mind had invited him to attach to the Nikāya Buddha’s words, and he had accepted the invitation?

Then, he would have the support of this image (of himself and the teacher), and he’d be propped up by his feelings generated by the thought of all that, and so on: “This is great. Now I will be able to become a fully awakened one, too! Cool!” As a result, he wouldn’t have suddenly found his mind without support, freed from the mental-emotional biases.

No, instead he was totally listening with the same kind of awareness that was speaking to him. He didn’t grasp. To be without such support of the dualistic structures of the ego-system was, for him, exactly the ending of dukkha. No doubt, it was exactly the cooling, the calming which he had been seeking, when he took up the way of the Brahma-faring.

Bāhiya Sutta

By admin

On December 20, 2015

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Meditation, Mindfulness, Radiant Citta

Bāhiya (Ud 1.10)

Translated by Christopher J. Ash

Thus have I heard. Once, the flourishing one was staying at Sāvatthi, at Jeta’s Grove, Anathapindika’s Park. At that time, Bark-clothed Bāhiya was dwelling at Supparika on the coast. He was respected there, held in reverence, honoured and esteemed, and received the requisites of a mendicant – robes, lodging, medicine (if he needed it), and alms.

Now, while he was in seclusion, Bark-clothed Bāhiya had this thought: “Among those who are awakened, or who have entered the way of awakening, I am one of them.”

Now a certain deva, a former blood-relation of Bark-clothed Bāhiya, who felt compassion on for and wished him well, having read this thought of Bāhiya’s mind, went to where he was, and drawing near to him, said, “Bāhiya, you are neither awakened, nor have you entered the path of awakening.”

“Then who, these days, in this world with its gods, is an awakened one, or has entered the path of awakening?”

“In the north, Bāhiya, there is the city of Sāvatthi. At present, a flourishing one, a fully awakened one, is staying there. That flourishing one, that awakened one, he gives the teaching of awakening.”

And, Bāhiya, inspired by this deva, departed Supparika, and eventually arrived at Anathapindika’s Park, where the flourishing one was staying. Many mendicants were doing walking meditation in the open there, so Bāhiya went up to them, and having approached them, he said, “Sirs, where is the Blessed One now – the awakened one, the fully awakened one? I am longing to see an awakened one, a fully awakened one.”

“The enlightened one has gone into the main city for alms-round,” they told him.

Bāhiya hurriedly left Jeta’s Grove, and went into the main city, and there he saw the master walking on alms-round – lovely to behold, inspiring confidence, senses calmed and mind tranquil; one accomplished, restrained, with his senses guarded – a great one (nāga). And when Bāhiya saw him, he went forward, approached him, and prostrating himself with his head at the feet of the flourishing one, said: “Teach me, Blessed One. Teach me the dhamma, Well-Gone One – such as will be to my benefit and happiness for a long time.”

When Bāhiya had finished saying this, the flourishing one said to him, “It’s not the right time, Bāhiya. I am here for alms-round.”

For a second time, Bark-clothed Bāhiya spoke to the flourishing one, saying, “It is difficult to know, Sir, to whom death will come first – to the Blessed One or me. Teach me, Blessed One. Teach me the dhamma, Well-Gone One – such as will be to my benefit and happiness for a long time.”

A second time, the flourishing one said, “It’s not the right time, Bāhiya. I am here for alms-round.”

A third time, Bark-clothed Bāhiya spoke to the flourishing one, saying again: “It is difficult to know, Sir, to whom death will come first – to the Blessed One or me. Teach me, Blessed One. Teach me the dhamma, Well-Gone One – such as will be to my benefit and happiness for a long time.”

“Okay, Bāhiya, here’s how you should practice: “In the seen, just the seen occurs; in the heard, just the heard occurs; in what is sensed in other ways, just the sensed occurs; and in the recognised, just the recognised occurs. Just practice this way, Bāhiya.

“When, for you, there is: In the seen, just the seen occurring; in the heard, just the heard occurring; in the sensed, just the sensed occurring; and in the recognised, just the recognised occurring, then, Bāhiya, you will not be (organized) via it, and when you are not (organized) via it, you will not be ‘locatable.’ And then, Bāhiya, when you are not ‘locatable,’ you are neither here, nor there, nor in between both. Just this is the end of dukkha.”

Instantly, in response to this concise instruction on the part of the flourishing one, Bāhiya’s mind was without support, freed from the mental-emotional biases.

After the flourishing one had made this known so concisely to him, Bark-clothed Bāhiya went away. Then, immediately after he left the flourishing one, Bāhiya was knocked down by a cow and killed.

The flourishing one completed his alms-round, then finished his meal for the day, and left the city with a large company of mendicants. It was then that they found Bark-clothed Bāhiya lying dead.

So, the flourishing one told the mendicants “Take the body of Bark-clothed Bāhiya place it on a stretcher, and carry it away from here. Cremate it, and afterward raise a memorial over the remains. For, this is a fellow practitioner of the holy life who has died.”

“We’ll do that, Sir,” they assented. So, they took the body of Bark-clothed Bāhiya, put it on a stretcher, carried it away, and cremated it. Then, they erected a memorial over the remains. Afterward, they went to the flourishing one, approached him, and after greeting him, sat down respectfully to the side. At a timely moment they reported, “The body of Bāhiya has been cremated, Sir; and a memorial has been erected. Where has he gone, Sir? What will be his future state?”

“Practitioners, Bāhiya was a sage. He practiced dhamma according to dhamma; he didn’t vex me about the dhamma. Bark-clothed Bāhiya was fully quelled at heart.”

Then, for that occasion, the fortunate one uttered this inspired verse:

“Where water, earth,
fire and air don’t stand firm;
where no star, nor sun shines,
and the moon doesn’t glow –
no darkness is found there.
When, by their own experience,
in silence, the subtle person knows this,
then from form and formlessness,
from joy and pain, they are released.

Melissa Turns to ‘This’ (Part 3)

By admin

On December 19, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

If one recounts many teachings,
but, being mindless, doesn’t apply them, then,
like a cowherd counting other’s cows,
one doesn’t experience the blessings of the spiritual life.

– Dhammapada, verse 19. Translated by Christopher J. Ash

Christopher and Melissa continue the enquiry into the limit of thought, with Kent listening in…

Melissa: So, the only category we can have for the wholeness of life is that it is in the category called ‘uncategorizable.’ And, what you’re saying is that because through its implicit functioning it ‘allows’ this enquiry…

Christopher: … participates in this enquiry… responds to it, so to speak…

M: … so then, we know it’s bigger than, and includes, this process of living in our kinds of experiences? There’s the human openness, necessary for the zig-zag. But the big implicit life is ‘open’ differently, because…?

C: It keeps allowing, or it keeps refreshing itself, in these versionings of our life process. It’s creative.

M: Evolution is carrying forward through us.

C: Yes, and if it was finished, or limited, or conceivable – if it didn’t exceed our conceptualizing process – then the fresh thinking couldn’t happen.

M: Wow! Give me a moment to feel that.

C: Sure. (Pause)

And, now, because I’m noticing something is happening in your body, would it be okay if I suggested something, in terms of your practice of mindfulness, right now?

M: Okay…

C: I’m noticing that you are more relaxed, and you seem to be feeling more spacious.

M: Yes. Oh, yes.

C: So, it would be good to take in the good. Just by turning your bodily appreciation to experiencing this space-element more deeply, or.. more… intimately. We can return to the talk in a while.

M: (Sighs a peaceful sigh.)

C: What’s happening next?

M: There’s several things, but they all seem to be together, not separated. There’s the relaxation. There’s the sense of space pervading everywhere. With that… there’s the sense that my mind – whatever that is – is located everywhere, too, at the moment.

C: What do you mean by ‘mind’ there?

M: Good question. Ah–mm. it’s not thinking – that seems to just be like a vapour, a wispy rustle of leaves in a breeze. Oh, that’s where the peace comes from! I’m not identified with my thinking.

C: And, the ‘mind’? What did you mean by that?

M: It’s more like… Wow! Like a luminous glow of knowingness everywhere.

C: That’s pleasant, in the present context, right?

M: Yes. Kind of weird, though. My body is less like ‘mine’; but what is truly mine is more like space than anything. It’s not locatable.

C: Even so, let your body have it, enjoy that. And, at the same time, rest in the luminous quality. Will you be able to have that hereafter, while we have our conversation?

M: Possibly. It feels likely, yes.

C: So, what were you saying?

M: Let’s see… Oh, yes…

Kent: May I?

M: Sure.

K: We were talking about the inconceivable aspect of what is going on here…

M: Oh, yeah. Ah—mm. And, I saw that it is like an allowing space for the free functioning of our thinking.

C: I think so, yes.

M: I see what you mean.

C: Usually my habitual thinking puts the inconceivable as being ‘in space’ relative to… I don’t know… let’s say, relative to a knower. The observer position applying itself to the inconceivable dimension.

M: We treat it as a thing that can only be known as ‘separate.’ It’s so nice to let all that go!

C: We live as though the only kind of knowing is the spatial kind.

M: We want it separate so that it can be locatable. It’s ‘out there,’ or ‘it’s possibly somewhere.’ But, if we look at how it works in our experience, if we can know it that way, then it becomes… (I don’t know… it changes… it becomes ‘primordial.’ And more mysteriously present.

C: Intimately present. I know just what you mean. That’s why it’s called different names in different traditions… it’s said to be ‘primordial,’ or ‘foundational.’ Or it’s a ‘ground’ or ‘source.’

(Though, in fact, space and time don’t apply. Nevertheless, we can use these words well, if we remember that they aren’t bringing in ‘space,’ or anything measureable. Instead, we are using them to point toward an experience.)

Kent: So, the only way you can know the inconceivable is by approaching how it functions in your bodily experience. Even those words will give us problems, won’t they – I can see the problems, as I say it.

C: Yes, the public meanings bring problems because they are disconnected from personal experience, from what you want those words to mean in the context of your actually having it there in your body.

You can, of course, conceptualise it, provisionally, to help you talk about it – like I said, call it the ‘inconceivable’ or the ‘uncategorizable’ – and that changes you, and it; but you have to allow the unfinished nature of the process – the excessive nature of it.

Kent: So, I want to check: Because one can’t ‘kind’ (think a ‘kind’ for) the whole which allows the ‘kind-making,’ the whole transcends the kind-making one, the person?

M: And that acknowledgment allows you to feel it’s working in your process, and its next step.

C: You’ve got it. ‘Dwelling in voidness’ is our tradition’s way of putting it.

M: (Pauses). Oh, sweet Jesus! This’ stunning!

C: What’s that?

M: I’m alive! I can really feel the fact of my aliveness! I mean, I’m more alive than I can say!

C: Oh, how lovely! I am so happy for you. Welcome to our little blue planet! (Laughs.)

K: I want some of that.

Melissa Turns to ‘This’ (Part 2)

By admin

On December 18, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Mindfulness, Practices

Kent has joined Melissa and I in our inquiry.

Kent: Thanks for letting me come in at this point.

Melissa: Okay by me.

C: Melissa, any further thoughts on what we’ve said, so far?

M: I only want to check: It seems one implication of what we’ve been discussing is that we, and all phenomenal life, imply a larger dimension.

C: Yes, a ‘more’ that we are, and which in the human body presents as an intricacy which can be felt. Yes. And, this implying is in our actual occurring; it’s not the logical ‘imply.’ That’s important, for the experiential enquiry.

Or, we could start with interaction, with the movement of life called, in the Buddhadharma, interdependence. That bigger process always exceeds the individual, and the individual couldn’t be here without that bigger immeasurable life. Is that what you mean?

M: Let’s see… (Melissa feels into the middle of her body, to see if that what I said ‘lands’ there.)

It’ll do for now. So, somehow, our actual process of thinking and speaking has to take the big immeasurable process into account – not as a theory, or as a mere concept – but as the living; intricacy-felt inwardly.

C: Lovely. The bigger process (which I refer to usually as ‘This’), it exceeds my concepts, but if I feel into its presence, then my concepts can carry my life forward freshly. I don’t mean carry the poem forward – that’s a tiny part of what happens – but, I mean carry the poet forward in his process. That we can experience ourselves doing this is one way we know the implicit wholeness is actual. (I pause) And, again, this ‘actual’ openness has to be felt as one’s life, yes.

M: That’s good. Let me stay with that for a while – that thing about, if I am intimate with how I am functioning, I will experience that there is a ‘more’ (which, across the planet, we call all kinds of names).

C: Yes.

M: I can feel the importance of that. And, I feel a trust that the bigger order (the ‘whatever-it-is’) can work in me, can come through with something, when I include it.

C: Whatever ‘it’ is, it is different than our conceptual categories. ‘It’ is in our ‘kinds’ of experience (which our concepts help draw forth). Fundamentally, that bigger life-process is different than language.

M: And gives birth to language – even now, not just historically.

This is the knowing I’ve been feeling into – that whatever ‘that’ is, experientially – it is different than our concepts. It’s more than our concepts. I feel it sometimes in conversation with my friend.

C: That’s a good place. Other trusted people can bring it to the fore.

M: So, you’re saying, that the ‘responsive order’ is a big allowing for concepts, and by allowing it in our process, we can see this quality which we are calling ‘allowing.’

C: Nicely put. Yes.

So, right here, in this conversation. We don’t know what we’re going to say next, or where these words come from, but we trust the process, and by tending our mindful bodies, our present situation is carried forward. We can know the ‘This’ by participating, as we go, with recollective present-moment awareness.

Kent: Mindfulness, and Focusing.

C: ‘Sati’ and clear comprehension; or wisdom. So, we’re continuously shaping it, as we know it.

M: Maybe ‘sati’ is natural reflexive awareness.

C: Interesting thought.

M: So, it’s not a problem (as some meditators think), to have concepts. ‘Concepts’ aren’t the bad guys of evolution. Instead, we can say that our thinking happens, at its best, when it interacts with this vaguely felt bigger order.

C: If we take the emphasis away from the content and see the process, then we can see it’s no problem to have concepts. They are empowered by being connected with the whole; and the whole is carried forward by connecting them.

Cognition can then include and depend on the dynamic, unbounded wholeness. We know it’s here, because it’s doing us. I’ve learned this by studying Gendlin. (Though, I have to say, I don’t know if I’m representing him properly. I only take responsibility for the way I’m saying it.)

M: So, the big inconceivable reality conceives in us?

C: Alan Watts asked that question back in the sixties: ‘Do you do it, or does It do you?’ Of course, that’s okay, to say that. However, if we went into it, we’d see that ‘This’ is not limited by thinking in terms of I/It. It is more than ‘I do It,’ or ‘It does me,’ or both, or neither.

M: Even saying ‘This,’ that limits it.

C: Yes, unless we’ve seen it together. Remember I’m communicating. ‘This’ can open it up in us, said at just the right moment.

This implicit ‘whatever-it-is’ – the going-on – is different than our categories, though – our kinds, our concepts – because it is something that can’t be made into a known category itself. It is a continuously, inexhaustibly fecund, un-kindable presence. We can’t kind/conceptualize/categorize the whole big ‘This’ that is going on here. It’s out of reach of our concepts.

K: Fecund?

C: Prolifically fertile. It gives birth heaps.

M: Very much. I get that.

Part 3 to come…

Melissa Turns to ‘This’ (Part 1)

By admin

On December 17, 2015

In Body, Focusing, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices

A fictional conversation:

Melissa: I’ve been reading the Bāhiya sutta. And, I love where the Buddha says: “So, Bāhiya, here’s how you should practice. In the seen, heard, (intimately) sensed, and cognized, there must be only the seen, heard, sensed, and cognized. Just practice this, Bāhiya.”

Christopher: This could also be translated positively, too, of course, as: “The seen (and so on) must be enough.” Be careful with this passage, though; it is easily misunderstood.

M: How so?

C: When I first studied this sutta, I used to put the emphasis on experiencing the senses as they really are, in themselves. A passage from the Kālakarāma sutta will help put it in perspective, though. There, the Nikāya Buddha says: “Practitioners, when seeing, a Tathāgata does not conceive of a seen; he does not conceive of an unseen; he does not conceive of a ‘possible-to-see’; and, he does not conceive of a seer.” And, likewise for the other five sense-modalities.

Therefore, what the Nikāya Buddha is saying, in the famous Bāhiya passage, is something like this (my words): “Beware of reifying. That is, don’t make ‘things‘ out of what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and cognize. They are interactional. So, be aware of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and cognizing, he says; but don’t attribute to the experience a fixed ‘something’ seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched, or cognized.”

“And, don’t go the other way,” he says, “and conceive of something not-experienced; nor think of something that it is possible to experience, in what you are seeing now. Don’t, also, conceive of an experiencer – a seer, hearer, smeller, taster, toucher, or thinker; nor its opposite, a something called ‘not-self.’ In short, don’t conceive the seer-seen distinction as anything more than a conventional means of speaking.”

M: I love it. It’s exciting.

C: However, he is not saying that there is a something there to be experienced free of our consciousness.

M: That’s the part that interests me. Can we have a pure sensory experience?

C: I heard someone say, “Drop down beneath your conceptualisations and experience the sound as it really is.” But, this is falling into exactly the practice that the Nikāya Buddha is suggests we not do; that is, when we think that there is a pure way to experience the sound, a way which gives us what is actually there, then this very aspiration is based on conceiving of a ‘heard.’ The Nikāya Buddha’s saying, give up such efforting.

M: What I’m having difficulty with is that: with your approach, it seems to me, I can’t, really, completely, get what’s life is, then. It seems we have to accept living in our conceptualised world. Like, if we are conscious of the whole of life, for example, then we are already – by the nature of being conscious – thinking the whole.

C: We are ‘kinding’ it, yes. Having a ‘kind’ of experience. We’re (almost) always ‘kinding.’ (I know there are some other states, but we’re talking about waking consciousness, right now.)

M: So, the mind’s concept of wholeness is imposing something. I know you agree, because that’s what you said, yesterday. I’ve been contemplating that.

C: I appreciate the difficulty. Although, ‘imposing’ isn’t something we need do. We can use concepts more fluidly, flexibly, like writing on water.

So, if there is a way to interact with the un-shaped kind of reality – what Gendlin calls the ‘big life process’ or ‘the responsive order’ – we do that by an appropriate kind of approach.

M: Appropriate process. In the zig-zag, between the big process and our concepts, right?

C: That’s right. So now, for a little while, let’s talk more precisely about how we experience that big life-process, in waking states – the big reality with which our concepts are interacting.

M: Which we experience through hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and cognizing.

C: Right. We can bring our concepts to the non-conceptual – as long as we don’t fixate, or grasp, or take our cognizing too seriously – we can then draw out from the implicit dynamic wholeness many kinds of experience, endlessly, in different ways.

M: But, they’ll all be the six, right?

C: Yes, but experienced differently.

M You see, I’m not yet deeply confident that there is an implicit wholeness, or non-conceptual something.

C: We’ll get there. We’re going into this. One thing pointing to the hidden wholeness is, when you write a line of poetry…

Say I have an experience, as I am out walking, that gives me these lines: “Wood-chopping nearby./Closing my collar to the wind…” but my poem is incomplete.

I re-invite the experience, in my body, and feel the whole pattern – a dynamic pattern of being – and, there’s a vague sense of something comes, as I hold the memory of that moment. I pay attention to the vague something, and soon the words come: “Red-wattle bird screech.”

But, no. That doesn’t fit the feel of this. So, I go back to the feel of the whole, and soon another sentence comes: “silence after the wattle-bird.” That’s closer, but not quite right. Continuing in this way, I end up with:

Silence after a wattle-bird:
wood-chopping nearby,
I close my collar to the wind.

Can you see how, in the writing, my body is participating in something much bigger than the concepts? This is the kind of thing that Gendlin points to.

Part 2 to come…

Before Speaking the Unspeakable

By admin

On December 16, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Memoir, Radiant Citta

It has been the guiding conviction of my life, since nineteen, that humankind will not see an end to violence until they have seen into and are free of the ego’s view of the universe. I felt this long before I read the many passages in the Nikāyas which say that human violence has such as this at its root. I call it a 2000-year project; and, and that’s how I can think of the tiny bit that I can do in my life, do for the common good. It’s quite touching for me, to know I am part of this movement, which includes a huge population of consciousness lovers across the planet from many, many fields. If I die today, tomorrow, or next year, or ten years hence, it’s the same project that I engage in, today.

But, as I became immersed in my path of choice, I became aware that there is division among Buddhists as to what the basic teachings mean. For instance, many think that dukkha is the bare fact that you can break a leg. The rest think that dukkha is the fact that you react to the broken leg (rather than respond). Some think that the cessation of rebirth is literal, and others think it’s a metaphor. Some say there’s an enlightenment to a non-conceptual reality which brings unparalleled peace; and others say that’s not possible, that the suggestion has been cooked up by people who came after the historical Buddha. These people say that enlightenment is realising your limitations and non-reactively accepting the facts of impermanence, non-substantiality in all things, and accepting the inherent tragedy of life. From this point of view, as I see it, the outcome is a kind of highly-skilled, caring, introspective management of life.

I was in a quandary. I had to understand, for myself, whether there was a fundamental, luminous nature to the mind, as it appeared to me; or, was this just a projection of my own wishful thinking. So, while still studying the Buddhist course in practical training, I looked around at other fields of consciousness work – read in the Christian mystics, the Hasidim, psychology, psychoanalysis, some psychiatry, other Eastern teachings, and studies of the human brain. And, I took up one other path in parallel to my main path: the body-oriented philosophy of Eugene T. Gendlin.

All along, the primary thing was to feel the answer with the whole of my being, with all of my life energy – not merely to think my way into a model. The grounding that I hoped to come upon or develop had to last me into death, so merely thinking out a model of human life wasn’t going to cut it, to cross that particular threshold.

At some point it felt settled for me, on the side of the ‘non-conceptual enlightenment’ folk. But, with a twist. So, how to convey it? I’m going to try, in the next series of posts, for those I love. It’s my ethical will, perhaps.

I had, from the late nineteen-sixties, and for a very, very long time, an idea – mistakenly interpreting my Zen readings – that I could somehow experience my mind free from concepts. Nowadays, I see that in each moment of my life, whatever I am experiencing, I am shaping, mostly unconsciously; and my shaping happens as a crossing with all the other relevant kinds of situations from my past (including the species past in me). There is no experience which is without past experiences being in it.

So, if I had anything any idea that I could contact directly something which would not be shaped, something that would be fresh and unshaped, well…. that’s not going to happen. With mindfulness and Focusing style awareness I can have the present experience freshly, but it’s still in the context of every relevant version of situations that have ever been.

(I did have several moments of cessation of feeling and perception, during my Zen practice years, but this is a special category of experience, and you can’t live an engaged life when there is no perception. Maybe I’ll return to those experiences another time, if relevant. Then, of course, the mind was free of concepts, but there was no experiencer to know that.)

So, I can, at best, shape freshly – find some fresh way (though body-based awareness) to have the continuous, human, shaping process – but I can’t have living situations without the past, here.

So, doesn’t this sound like the second group – the ‘life-management’ group? Doesn’t this sound like the constructivists, if we are continuously elaborating situations? Or, the Buddhist existentialists? Almost.

You see, there is an important experience to be had at the limit of this process of elaborating, when we turn toward that very process itself. And, this does validate an unthinkable kind of dimension. However, before I speak of it, I have to sound a warning. It took me almost four decades of practice, to understand that ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are mere conventions, which point back to felt experiencing. They have a gestural relationship toward reality, not a descriptive one. ‘Is’ and ‘is not’ (and all language polarities) shape experience, but they don’t establish any reality for us; and can’t point to reality.

So, whatever difficulties you have with what I say about the big life process, the ‘This’ – and with all my concepts – please run what you are thinking about this through the following filter, again and again. You may have no difficulty, but just in case, here’s how to see it:

“He is not claiming to establish any kind of reality based on ‘is’ and ‘is not.’ He sees language as only relevant to experiencing, not to establishing realities or establishing the absence of realities; whether they are ‘relative’ or ‘ultimate.’ This applies to everything. His descriptions don’t describe the substance of reality; nor the absence of any substance of reality.”

So, if you will use that filter, then I can say, something about ‘This.’ (He waves his hands in the ten directions, while not meaning to say that space or time exist; or don’t.)

“Whatever is seen, heard, sensed, or clung to,
is valued as ‘truth’ by other folk.
Amid those who are stuck in their views,
I hold nothing as true or false, being ‘such.’

“This snag I beheld, long before,
whereupon humankind is hooked, is impaled:
‘I know, I see, `tis truly so.’
No such clinging for Tathāgatas.”

– From Kālakarāma Sutta. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

Ignorance and Enlightenment

By admin

On December 15, 2015

In Death, Enquiry, Meditation, Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta

[Mara:]

“The things which are called ‘mine,’
And those who say, ‘mine’—
if your mind exists in these,
contemplative, you can’t escape me.”

[The Nikāya Buddha:]

“What they speak of is not mine.
I’m not one who speaks [that way.]
You should know this, Evil One:
you won’t even find a trace of me.”
– From the Kassaka Sutta, in the Mara Samyutta, in the Samyutta Nikāya. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

Why is it that elsewhere in the Kassaka Sutta the Nikāya Buddha says to Māra (in short), “The five sentient processes are yours, Evil One, but you can’t have access to that which has no such processes”? What does this mean? Is he saying he is no longer vulnerable to Māra because he knows some dimension other than the five sentient processes – the cognitive body, feeling-tones, perceptions, fashioning processes, and discernment? How can that be?

When the Buddha says he doesn’t own any of these processes (second verse above), he says this on the radical basis that he knows the dimension of reality where there are no sentient processes – no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind; no form, sound, smell, taste, touch, no object of mind; no seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, no cognizing. How could such a claim be made?

How is it that virtue, learning, dialogue, calm and insight can help the appropriate (or ‘right’) view to bring mind-release and emergence of wisdom? We might easily lack confidence that understanding could bring about freedom. What kind of understanding can do that?

And, if you practice the process of understanding, why is the mind more likely to be freed than not? Why isn’t it something that could go either way – this process of bondage and release? Why does the Nikāya Buddha say that it is a natural process, one that naturally leads forward in only one direction? “This is the direct way,” he says in the Mindfulness Sutta, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. How so?

I didn’t realise, when I began to look at the Māra myth, that I would find so much richness in it. To understand the value of Māra in the Nikāyas we have to address several other important issues – particularly: language-use, the use of negation (for instance, emptiness) in Buddhism, the nature of liberation, the luminous nature of the mind, and the nature of transcendence. These topics resolve the issue of how it is that we can defeat Māra and his army. I will come to a language we can use, to explore and stay steadily at the limit of conceptual knowledge.

“Ignorance is the negation of Enlightenment and not the reverse.” – D.T. Suzuki

Wishing You All Well

By admin

On December 14, 2015

In Body, Mindfulness, Positivity

I’ve been in Sydney teaching, and I have just arrived back home in the mountains. I probably won’t get time to write a blog entry today – especially, because what I intend to write next will take some concentration. Also, I have the ‘A Process Model’ study group, tonight.

I want to make a contemplative space, in the next day or two, to consider Māra as one way that the Nikāya Buddha has of articulating our relationship to death. I need to set aside time to give it special attention. And, the issue of authenticity will be woven into this subject, of Māra and death. Neither have I finished with the Hawk Killer sutta, in which mindfulness, ego’s compensatory pleasures, and harm and death are all linked to Māra. So, there are several threads which I intend to weave together, as soon as possible. I’ll be back tomorrow.

The best I can do, today, is give you a little haiku, which I wrote a couple of days ago.

Note: Prosimians are sweet little fellas who are among the very first in our family tree to have grasping fingers (and grasping toes; and binocular vision). The particular quirk of anatomy which allowed them to grasp things was what in primates is called the ‘opposable thumb and forefinger.’

How cool is that! The prosimians, tens of millions of years ago. never imagined their skills would be utilised by you or I, to pick up a button from the lounge-room floor, for instance, or to brush our teeth daily; or, to paint Mona Lisa.

I thought it was cool to prove (with genetic testing) that my ancestors – Haplogroup R1b – came out of Africa about 50,000 years ago. But to think that I owe my ability to fix my reading glasses to my prosimian ancestors – to pick up the tiny screw, place it in the barely visible hole, and manipulate the tiny screwdriver – frankly, that humbles me.

Typing my password deftly,
Butcher-bird climbing a branch.
I think of the prosimian grasp.

_________________________

The Synergy Sutta

By admin

On December 14, 2015

In Practices, Radiant Citta

Anuggahita Sutta: Synergy Sutta

Anguttara Nikaya 1.3.5

Translated by Christopher J. Ash

“Practitioners, when appropriate view is helped by five factors, it has mind-release as its fruit and reward; it has emergence of wisdom as its fruit and reward.

“Which five? Where virtue, learning, dialogue, calm, and insight, Practitioners, support appropriate view.

“When helped by these five factors, appropriate view has mind-release as its fruit and reward; it has emergence of wisdom as its fruit and reward.”