Category: Memoir Page 2 of 3

Ending the War

On February 26, 2016

In Death, Enquiry, Memoir, Mindfulness, Practices, Time, Space, & Knowledge

If I imagine (as my present practice asks me to) that I will die in a few days’ time, I think I can say farewell without great remorse. No human being has no regrets, I suspect, if they are honest with themselves. “Non, je ne regrette rien,” is a defiant cry, not an intimate one, I suspect. Nevertheless, have I finished my war with myself?

Lately, I’ve been thinking frequently about the effect on my development of choosing, during the Vietnam War, to oppose that war. I registered as a conscientious objector. I am glad I made that commitment. And, today, the My Lai massacre is on my mind. I don’t think it’s just because Donald Trump is doing well in the polls.

In a couple of weeks, it’s the forty-eighth anniversary of that unspeakable crime against humanity – the My Lai massacre. To the U.S.’s unending shame, only one of the twenty-odd murderers was convicted, and he, William Calley, spend a paltry few years confined to a military base for his crime. “Bad boy. Shame that you got caught.”

No, there are some things I regret, but aligning with the cause of non-violence is not one of them. The Buddhadharma has symbolised that for me. Some years ago, I quit a certain spiritual path, because I felt that it’s demands were becoming too cult-like, and that it threatened my allegiance to Buddhism. Yet, it’s fair to ask what would make me so dedicated to the Buddhadharma?

One clear answer has emerged, because I have understood in my own mind the root of the human violence. Seeing that is inestimable. And, I know of no major spiritual path whose commitment to non-violence is so pointedly clear. The founder’s words are unequivocal.

They can be distorted and abused, of course, by any culture. We’ve seen that historically, in the approach of the samurai – the bushido approach to Buddhism. A distortion. And, presently we’re seeing it in Burma, where corrupt (or fake) Buddhist monks are inciting Burmese villagers to persecute the Rohinga.

Humans have such a propensity to harm other groups of humans. I was thinking today, about the Milgrim famous obedience experiments, which showed that under certain conditions the ordinary Jo or Joe, like you or me, will cause harm to others if ordered by an authority.

Reading about the My Lai massacre today, I came across an angry U.S. officer’s statement, a year after the atrocity: “[Calley] is a good man. He was obeying orders.” (Which it has been established that he wasn’t; and that he went way beyond orders. Was he ordered to murder women and children, even babies? Decent people know a hate crime when they see it.)

Of course, for those of us who cultivate non-violence, we hear in this U.S. officer’s statement, a defence what would please Adolph Eichmann unconditionally. Eichmann was, in his own eyes, a good citizen who was following orders. (Or, at least, that’s how he portrayed himself.)

It was, when I joined the opposition to the Vietnam War, my conviction that a culture of non-violence was necessary; and to that end, I took up a way of life. What I didn’t know then… (Well, I was nineteen. I became a Buddhist in the same month that Time magazine ran the story of My Lai, starting the exposé.)

What I didn’t know was that I would have to become intimate with my own violence, to find in myself the seeds of war. I hadn’t heard Thich Nhat Hanh, at that point. He had been in the West for just three years, then; having been exiled by both sides of the war in Vietnam. A peace-maker is hated by both antagonists. However, this is his message: that the seeds of war are in our own minds.

We must stop the war in in ourselves, if the human world is to know peace. I began the journey, not knowing that I wouldn’t be the same idealistic young man at the end of the process. . Mindfulness, Focusing, meditation, and a culture of enquiry brings transformation. I don’t regret becoming someone I couldn’t have imagined I’d be.

Before I die, though, let me tell another story. Milgrim’s experiments didn’t only show that 60% of the average college kids, in his experiments, would obey orders to cause others unreasonable pain. (The experiment demonstrated that the subjects would be willing to give a shock of 450 volts to a person.) That’s only the frightening and well-known result.

He showed something else. If others around you are willing to oppose injustice, it strengthens you to listen to your conscience. This is the power of a practice community, a sangha. As the American Psychological Association says it:

“In one of Milgram’s conditions the naïve subject was one of a 3-person teaching team. The other two were actually confederates who-one after another-refused to continue shocking the victim. Their defiance had a liberating influence on the subjects, so that only 10% of them ended up giving the maximum shock.”

If this experiment could be re-done (which, nowadays, it can’t), I would predict that if another group of experimental subjects were trained in mindfulness and in Focusing, a comparable figure (10%) would be realised. These practical disciplines support moral development. They don’t cause it; but they support it, with thousands of volts worth of energy.

Three men that day, in 1968 in My Lai, tried to stop the carnage – literal carnage. The corrupt President Richard Nixon and his vile administration tried to skewer these men, to protect the so-called reputation of the US. Army; but they eventually were acknowledged as the heroes of the day. They were the crew of a helicopter – the Hiller OH-23 Raven crew, led by a brave man Hugh Thompson. We have this in us, too. It needs protecting and nurturing, like a green plant. These men are remembered, too, every year on March 16.

I wonder: Has any journalist thought to ask Donald Trump for his candid opinion of his fellow Republican, Richard Nixon?

Practice When Sick or Dying

By admin

On February 7, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Meditation, Memoir, Positivity, Practices, Time, Space, & Knowledge

There are several suttas in the Nikāyas where the recommended practice for one who is ill is to rest in, trust, or make contact with the awakened qualities of the mind. Nothing much more than that (which is sure a big ask). For example, when, on separate occasions, Mahā Kassapa, Mahā Moggalāna, Mahā Cunda, were each gravely ill from disease, the Nikāya Buddha visited them. (All reported in the Samyutta Nikāya.) On finding that, for each, their pains were not subsiding, but indeed increasing, he reminded them of the qualities of awakening (bojjhanga).

He recommended these qualities because they support perfect understanding and the perfect peace of nibbāna – even while ill, even while dying. His advice to these senior disciples was that they use the opportunity well. From the healing point of view, it makes perfect sense, of course, that we will be better able to tolerate our illness, and we will have a better chance of recovery, if we are positive. (Traditionally they are given as seven, but of course there are more than these seven.)

All the qualities of awakening are positive. They support intimacy with our condition, whatever it is. In the cases of illness and dying these qualities (of being awake to one’s situation) support not turning away from suffering, and not turning one’s illness or death into an occasion for egoism (“Woe is me!” “This shouldn’t be happening!”) They support peace and enquiry, calm and healthy attitude. And, they reveal a dimension of life called ‘unailing,’ and ‘undying.’ These qualities are mindfulness, grounded enquiry, perseverance, joy, calm, contemplative presence, and equanimity.

(I’m smiling. I am remembering my discovery in my twenties that mindfulness and peace could be fully present in vomiting!)

All three of the disciples – despite their physical pain – are said to have affirmed the teaching, saying: “Most assuredly, Blessed One, Well-Gone One, these are qualities of awakening!” When you see these qualities in extreme situations is indeed inspiring. May all beings everywhere find their way to the realization of these qualities in themselves, finding grace in sickness and death.

The Word ‘Experience’

By admin

On January 13, 2016

In Enquiry, Focusing, Memoir, Positivity, Practices

Why have I chosen the word ‘experiencing’ as my most fundamental touchstone for my enquiry? Firstly, I have looked for language that is experience-near for my own practice. That is, I have needed to be very concrete in understanding my experience. So, I decided in the mid-seventies that if I was going to examine my experience in the light of the Buddhist teachings, I wanted language that was precise and which resonated with my life.

Then, for communicating, I’ve looked for ways to find language that non-philosophers can relate to, to dialogue about our everyday experiences; non-jargon is preferable, where possible. The word ‘experience’ suits.

And, this word has a special role in the work of Eugene Gendlin. So, as a ‘focuser’ it suited.

Then, I was moved by Sue Hamilton-Blyth’s understanding of the teachings, in Early Buddhism: A New Approach: The I of the Beholder, when she said that the focus of the teachings is on an indisputable feature of human existence: “that we all have our own perception of the world of experience, or, more simply, our own experience.”

That resonated with me. Everyone has experiencing going on, whatever the differences between us. And, the focus of the teachings is to understand human experiencing, so that dukkha is dealt with appropriately. We need to understand how we function. Inappropriate handling of dukkha is root of all the violence we have in the world. That’s how I saw it.

Her understanding of the Nikāya Buddha’s quest echoed the question which had bothered me since childhood (having grown up in a violent culture), and which became particularly cogent during the years of the Vietnam War when I was in danger of being drafted to participate in that wrongful war: “Why is human experience as it is, and how can I contribute to the change?” The answer is, of course, to firstly change myself. And, understanding is the way forward in that.

The thing that I particularly love about the word ‘experience’ – despite the philosophical problems it can raise – is that it is fundamental. It carries the sense that some basic all-covering kind of knowing is present; by which I mean, knowing is present in and relevant to every possible aspect of yourself and your world. My use of ‘experiencing’ is meant to point to something prior to the subject-object, self-other, and inside-outside distinctions. As such, it is also not yet a ‘thing.’

Some might say that if experiencing is not a thing, then it is ‘process,’ and I’m okay with that provisionally. One good thing about the ‘process’ approach is that we can suggest that process can go either way: awake in process (wisdom), or asleep in process (non-wisdom).

The other useful thing about the word ‘experience’ is that, in most contexts ‘experience’ is synonymous with ‘know.’ It is in misunderstanding the ‘knowing’ quality of our experience that the hardened, dualistic divisions which limit us arise.

The knowing goes astray with the introduction of a fictional entity, the false, thought-based experiencer. “The one inside me that’s in charge of the show,” I heard someone say recently, when explaining what they meant by the word ‘self.’

“In being a process, rather than a static entity, knowledge is always in danger of becoming divided against itself by taking its intentional operations concretely and – even before it glides off into the rigidity of a subject-‘here’ and an object-‘there’ – setting up a counterfeit image of itself which actually is the source of any duality.”

– Tarthang Tulku. Time, Space & Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality

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.

Tending One’s Field (Part 1)

By admin

On December 9, 2015

In Death, Memoir, Mindfulness, Radiant Citta

Whoever dwells contemplating the pleasant, sense faculties unguarded,
not understanding food, inactive and making little effort,
they will be overpowered by Māra, like a weak tree in the wind.
– Dhammapada, verse 7. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

I was looking a sutta today with friends. Our group will go into it in more depth, next month. For my part, one central concept in the sutta stood out as needing more appraisal, and I’d like to begin to think it through with you. I sense that it ties in with my as-yet-unexplored blog theme of ‘authenticity.’

To summarise, the Nikāya Buddha says to his students, something like, “Do not wander out of your natural field (gocara). If you do, Māra (the King of Death) will get a toehold in. And what is your natural field? The four placements of mindfulness – body, feeling-tones, mind-states, and the internal dynamics of your experiencing – these are your natural field. Death will not gain access to a person who remains in their natural field.” And, the corresponding situation is stated: “Death will gain access to a person who wanders outside their natural field.” (Gocara, by the way, is literally ‘a cow’s grazing.’ It can be translated as pasture, but ‘field’ or ‘sphere’ are correct, too.)

Thus far, it makes sense, but what interests me is this sentence: “Now, what is not your field; what is outside of your field? It is the five strands of sensual pleasure. Which five? Forms perceptible to the eye, sounds perceptible to the ear, smells perceptible to the nose, tastes perceptible to the tongue, and objects of touch perceptible to the body – all of which are wished for, desirable, lovable, agreeable, connected with lust, and enticing. This is not your field; it is outside of your field.”

What can this mean? Aren’t the senses included in one’s ‘natural field’? I will come back to it. I want to first talk about knowing one’s present-moment experiencing. I think this detour into how we know what we know, might give a clue to the question. Perhaps, we will find some understanding of ‘This,’ the big going-on, through the mediation of the senses?

When I was young, my subjectivity – the experience from the inside, so to speak – was not at all lucid. It was very confused. I couldn’t understand what ‘This’ was – this big going-on which includes me. I have striven, therefore, to make the world of experiencing intelligible.

This couldn’t be done by studying the so-called ‘physical’ world, because that study left me still asking, ‘But what knows this physical world, from in here.” Neither has the study of the brain given me anything but merely ‘physical correlates’ to match up against how I experience it. It still begs the question of what it is to be conscious. Science has no explanatory power when it comes to the raw experience of nowness.

And, Buddhadharma was meant to make the world intelligible; but it has done so by pointing back to my own experience, for its own answers. That’s as it should be. Deep bows to the awakened for pointing. But, I’m thrown back on my own raw, personal experiencing – subjectivity.

The view that I have come to, in striving for an intelligible subjectivity, then, goes like this: Neither ‘inner’ nor ‘outer’ experience can be established as ultimately real, mainly because the only way I can know the inner, or the outer (or the reality of that very inner-outer distinction) is through my own awareness. I can’t get outside my awareness to verify my experience. (Of course, I can talk to you about your experience, and we can make comparisons, but the process is still mediated by consciousness.)

We can say: experiencing is verified by experiencing. The reality of experiencing is dependent on the very sensory and mental organs, and capacities, which give the experiencing in the first place. And so, nothing can be established to exist in the way it is presented. “Things are not as they appear to be.” (Lankavatara Sutra)

However, at the limit of knowledge, I can know that there is a big life process, of which I am; yet, which is not conceivable. I’m going to come back to this, again and again, over the last months of this blog-life – to say it in different ways. I have recently found a new way to talk about that space at the edge of knowledge, a way which I am finding touches my friends and students – so I look forward to sharing it, at some point soon.

But for today, let’s say that I have come to trust that we experience the world (both inner and outer) because the bigger process actually is going on, even though I’m not seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching it directly; and, that the ‘field’ of my experiencing is my body’s take on that inconceivable big life process – the inconceivable going-on. Without it, I would not have things as they appear to be. Our experiencing is a shadow, an echo (remember Echo) of that. And, this echo is not my own. It belongs to the implicit big ‘This’ process. “Things are not as they appear to be; neither are they otherwise.” (Lankavatara Sutra)

It has taken a dispassionate will, to come to this – a ‘hands-off’ approach to experiencing, so that experiencing could just be what it is, free and uncontrived. Only when the person relinquishes ownership of experiencing, can the non-clinging, non-grasping awareness intuit the inconceivable aspect of reality.

Whoever dwells not contemplating the pleasant, sense faculties guarded,
understanding food, confident and diligent,
truly, Mara will not overpower them, like the wind [against] a mountain.

– Dhammapada, verse 8. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

By admin

On November 7, 2015

In Body, Death, Memoir, Mindfulness

And I been lookin’ all around looked everywhere
Well, I built and climbed a mountain
But it wasn’t there.
It isn’t there, dum ta dum
It isn’t here, it isn’t there, nor anywhere.
– Melanie Safka, Someday I’ll Be a Farmer.

Remember in yesterday’s post, I mark in the faces I meet, marks of people “lost in thought”? That afternoon, I took the bus back to the coast, to where I’m staying with friends, and thought I’d pick up some groceries at the ‘local’ shops. The shops are at sea level, and my friends live at the top of a high hill hard by the coast. Very high.

So, I leave the shops with three bags of groceries, and can’t see any taxis. There’s no bus to the top, I’m sure; and I believe that my friends are not available, at this stage, to pick me up – they’re working. So, in the hot sun, and no hat, I head off.

I check Google Maps on my tablet, before I start, and its doing something weird. To get a picture of this, just imagine that the map was a glass plate, and imagine that you’re reading it from the other side of the glass. I’d never seen Google Maps do anything like that. The street names are all in reverse. If I try to move the map left, it goes right. Not right.

Oh, well. I can adjust. I figure – by guessing at the map – if I walk down the street this way, I’ll come to a street that will lead to the top of the hill. It’ll be a big ask for a body with a chronic illness, but… what choice? Off I go. Mindful of breath, mindful of walking, walking, walking.

After a while, I am still going along in the sun, with my three bags of groceries, one computer, and a packed shoulder bag; and no street ascending the hill. I reset my tablet, and get a Google Maps with correct orientation – and, lo and behold, I should have walked the other way, from the shops! Now, I’m further than ever from that fabled street.

I decide that I’ll take the next turn – a cul de sac – and go up through the reserve that appears on the map, conquering the hill via the bush. I find it, and there are some old fire trails, and on I climb, and climb, and climb. I stop several times, trying to catch my breath. It reminds me of when I climbed a mountain to meet my first Buddhist teacher – truly, I climbed a long way to get there – thirty-nine years ago. That, too, took a lot of patient mindful steps, back then, with a big pack on my back. But I was twenty-six, and hadn’t yet been struck by the viruses that brought me down.

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
– Time, Pink Floyd

I keep going. One of the difficulties with my own version of CFS is a heart that beats too strongly, sometimes without any particular provocation (unless it be the battle that is raging in my immune system); and, here, I’ve provoked it hugely! I’m having trouble. I sit down, in the sun. Half way up, I’m remembering the doctor’s recent advice about gentle exercise. I’m thinking, “Hey, this is not good. If I die here, no-one will find me for days. The brush-turkey over there is the only one walks this old fire trail!” He was beautiful, with his red head and yellow neck. Even so, I’m not Ryokan, and this is not collecting mushrooms.

Heart thumps, thumps, thumps. I wonder about the ticks hereabouts. Heard in the supermarket about so-and-so having a bad reaction to a tick. Pick up the bags and continue. I’m amused by this stage, seeing the irony of having been writing about lost people, and here I am trying to see whether there is, indeed, a track to the top of this hill.

If there is, it can’t be much further. I hear cars not far away. I do make it.

I’m relieved to arrive alive at the top, of course, and sit under a fragrant pink frangipani – you know, those with the flame-orange centres – while I breathe, and look out on the Tasman ocean; then lie down and look into the blue sky. I think, “This is a good place to die, because they’ll find me, here.” The heart still pounding.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life.
– Landslide, Stevie Nicks.

And, I do ruminate on the fact that we don’t get the life we want, the life we expect, or the one we plan. There’s no Google Maps to show us the way. This life is definitely the precarious one you are, while you’re walking it.

Acceptance and Impulse

By admin

On September 2, 2015

In Memoir, Mindfulness, Practices, Time, Space, & Knowledge

In respect of the opposites, when a subtle person has gone beyond,
Then all restraints dissolve for that realised one.

– Dhammapada, verse 384. Translated Christopher J. Ash

In my own development, and with my interest in human change processes, I’ve found it really helpful to clarify the uses of the word ‘acceptance.’ For a long time it wasn’t clear to me what the relationship was between acceptance and the necessary actions which change our lives. You’ve witnessed in these pages, how careful I am to note that total acceptance of reality, doesn’t mean being inactive in changing your life for the better.

It was particularly necessary for me, as a Westerner, to understand this, because two of my trusted Buddhist traditions – Zen and Dzogchen – recommend non-interference as the highest spiritual practice.

The verses of the Zen text called On Believing in Mind used to frustrate me intensely, when our group recited them, on retreat. It was written by Seng-ts’an, the third patriarch of (Chinese) Ch’an, who died 606 CE. The opening verses will give you a taste of what frustrated me, perhaps. This translation is by D.T. Suzuki, and the full text of this long and profound poem, is here:

The Perfect Way knows no difficulties
Except that it refuses to make preferences;
Only when freed from hate and love,
It reveals itself fully and without disguise;
A tenth of an inch’s difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart;
If you wish to see it before your own eyes,
Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.

To set up what you like against what you dislike
This is the disease of the mind:
When the deep meaning [of the Way] is not understood
Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose.

[The Way is] perfect like unto vast space,
With nothing wanting, nothing superfluous:
It is indeed due to making choice
That its suchness is lost sight of.

Pursue not the outer entanglements,
Dwell not in the inner void;
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And [dualism] vanishes by itself.

Of course, we have here the same themes as we find in my many quotes from the Nikāya Buddha. On Believing in Mind, is in the same lineage, despite being written roughly eleven hundred years later in a far away country, and despite its Taoist flavour.

My difficulty, in those days, was the same as any intelligent Westerner’s would be. I thought: “I have to make choices in my life – as a householder, a parent, a teacher, a citizen in a democracy, and so on. And, as a person concerned about the ecologicial viability of human activity, there are things that matter to me, things I feel strongly about. It’s not good enough, to say (as I have heard a Zen Buddhist say) that Deep Ecologists don’t understand emptiness, if they protest the destruction of whales.”

And, I’m certainly not about to say that it’s fine to hand control of the U.S. military juggernaut over to just any fool (to wit, Donald Trump). So, what kind of ‘disease of the mind’ is it, to choose to discern and oppose ratbags? There must be a way to reconcile this, I thought; because, Buddhism, I reasoned, is a tradition that is supposed to help us end such ignorance, and my own aggression toward fools. So, how can a doctrine of radical acceptance help the ordinary person like me?

Eventually, I began to think that the poem was referring to different dimensions of mind. I reasoned that there had to be an understanding that took care of both the ‘outer’ layers of becoming, those layers of awareness involved in choosing; and, which also took care of the inner of the inner – Being itself – where surrender made more sense. It began to feel like heaven and earth could possibly be reconciled, after all. The doubt was resolved for me, when I pondered the second case of the Japanese Zen Mumonkan (which I’ll explain later). However, I also found a concept which helped, in an article by the French psychoanalyst, and interpreter of Zen, Hubert Benoit. And, it’s this I’d like to share with you today. (The article has been published in a few forms, but my copy was published in Parabola, volume XV, No.2 1990, Summer 1990.)

In the article, he speaks of: a temporal tendency, and an atemporal tendency toward being. He writes:

Thus I see that the two tendencies which are in me must have exactly opposite directions: the temporal tendency must naturally go toward constant modifying of my ordinary situation; the tendency toward “being” must go toward the total acceptance of this situation in each instant.

And, he notes that the problem for us is when our one hundred percent of our attention is given to the temporal tendency. The important thing to notice is that attention toward Being is in each instant; not hampered by time.

The tendency to modify my situation and the tendency to accept it would evidently be irreconcilable if they had to act on the same level. But this is not the case. The tendency to modify acts on the automatic level of my impulsive life; this happens first. The tendency to accept [however] acts on the level of conscious reflection, where I see myself, where I am subject for whom the impulses of my life are object. [My parenthesis.]

Different levels. I call them different perspectives on the unnameable, or different dimensions of the immeasurable. However, whatever we call them – this concept is very helpful. The point being that the tendency to being is dependent on releasing some of our attention (frontal cortex energy) for its purpose, for self-reflection on our total situation, our big situatedness. From that perspective, the life of impulse does not take up all of my attention.

So, my frustration was due to erroneous concepts, just as the Nikāya Buddha had taught Sakka. I had thought of acceptance as only opposite rejection; that is, that rejection could not be acceptance. On the surface level of experience, the impulse level, that makes sense. However, on the deep level of instantaneous awareness: Radical Acceptance does not hinder the life of the impulses, and its realm of temporal action. Pure reflection transcends and includes the life of impulse. (‘Transcend and include’ is an Wilberian ‘Integral’ concept.) So, it’s more like this (using a depth orientation):

And, so it is that some people have borne witness to feeling such a deep sense of complete joy while holding a dying loved one in their arms. Of course, on the level of impulse, there is the poignancy of loss, and in the depth of one’s being, found in combodiment, there is the joy of the whole life of Being.

Not The Angry Ape Driving

By admin

On August 16, 2015

In Body, Enquiry, Memoir, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta, Resisting Death

Irrigators channel water,
fletchers fashion arrows,
and carpenters shape wood.
Skilled practitioners tame the self. (145)

– Dhammapada, verse 145. (All today’s Dhammapada translations are mine).

I was driving home from Sydney, and, coming off the freeway, I ascended the hill near Lapstone. I stayed in my lane, but didn’t pull back my speed very much. As I drove up alongside a truck, I noticed that he was starting to pull over into my lane. He must have caught sight of me, because he suddenly swerved back into his lane. As I went on past him, he blasted me with his horn. That could only have been – given that the danger had passed – a protest. I immediately got angry. Seeing this, I brought attention to my breath, and restrained the impulse to any outwardly-directed reaction. It was clear to me that I had quickly disconnected from the peace of an open heart. If, in that frame of mind, I focused on his wrong-doing, I’d be fanning flames of a habitual, ‘me and mine’ style of interaction. No freedom in that, and plenty of road-rage.

If one focuses on other’s
deficiencies, always complaining,
one’s own toxic impulses grow;
one is far from their ending.

– Dhammapada, verse 253.

After recognising that I needed to calm my body – and knowing that to give free reign to my inner judge wouldn’t support my authenticity, even a tiny bit – I came to my breath.

I was sharing with friends in our poetry group recently that I’ve followed my breath in daily activities, unwearyingly, since the mid nineties. I blush to say that before that – despite reading book after book by Thich Nhat Hanh for the preceding decade – I thought that tracking the breath was too basic for me. All I had to do, I conceitedly thought, was rest in the nature of mind.

However, I’ve learned: the body is always in the present. If I’m aware that I’m breathing, then I have a sure connection to the present. I remember that around that time, my Zen teacher Subhana said to me, in interview, “You know what it is to be present.” I thought to myself, “I’m not sure I do.” It turned out that I was often living a dissociated state and thinking that it was wholesome – spacey, not spacious. So, now I make it a practice to be aware of my breathing all the time. (Except, obviously, in my dreams). I carry mala beads, so that when I’m under pressure, stressed, or I’m ill, or giving a public talk, I can use one bead for each out-breath. The great thing about this is that it helps me stay in touch with, and live from, my felt sense of situations, too.

It’s easy to mind the faults of others,
yet hard to grasp one’s own.
One sifts the faults of others in fine detail,
but one conceals one’s own,
as a crafty cheat conceals bad luck.

– Dhammapada, verse 252.

Next, I said “Hello” to the feelings. I use sub-personality work to dis-identify with fashioning-tendecies (sankharas). This fits super-well with the Buddhist theory of identity creation (‘the twelve nidānas’.) It enables me, too, to have mindfulness of the body in a broader sense than mere mindfulness of breathing. However, that’s not all it does. it allows me to release aspect of the luminous heart-mind, which are particular to situations. (I’ll write separately on this another time). I’ve found that one can focus in too close to the breath, losing the wider field of dynamics of consciousness (loka), and blocking the opportunity to discover aspects of the wisdom-mind particular to the needs of the moment.

The process of calming that rage on my part took me another half an hour. “What?” you say. As I said, I didn’t just want to calm it, and contact spacious mind again. I wanted to understand what kind of personality beliefs were under it, and what kind of wisdom-energy was concealed within the rage. On the way down deep, I was able to acknowledge that I had contributed to the traffic situation – namely, by travelling too fast.

I have ways of ‘delving’ (as the Nikāya Buddha calls it), derived from the sub-personality work which I’ve learned from various sources, and by using Focusing. I won’t go into the details of what I found in my psychology, but the exploration was worth it, because it came down to the root conceit: ‘I am my separateness.’ Underneath all the self-justifications was a threat to a fiction, and the fear of voidness.

I’ve seen this in myself and others, many times, that: in relationship situations (which even this incident was), the personality’s fear is that if one dwells in voidness – instead of in anger, lust, or some other kind of reactive state – then one won’t have what one needs to meet one’s situations. I am so grateful for my years in the Diamond Essence work for showing me that this isn’t the case. One has much more intelligence available, when it’s not squandered in reactivity – including strength, power, compassion, fearlessness, personal love, and many other dwelling-places of the gods.

As I stayed with the layers of feeling, every layer of discovery brought more space, more calm, more love, and eventually – by the time I got to Lawson – I had a spontaneous uprising of compassion for the truck driver. “It’s a habit,” I thought. He was just reacting in the normal way that people deal with their feelings. There’s no point in my giving away my treasure, by meeting him in kind. As the Nikāya Buddha says to a lay-follower:

This is of old, Atula, not just nowadays:
They disparage one who remains silent,
They disparage one who speaks a lot,
and they disparage one who speaks in measure.
There is no one not blamed.

– Dhammapada, verse 227.

I understood that he must have got a fright, and needed to gather his ‘separating resources’ together. Blaming me seemed a good way to go, no doubt, to keep him from humiliation or some other uncomfortable feelings. That’s a huge loss to him, packaged as a necessary life choice.

“In fact, most of the time people are really expressing their egos and superegos [inner judges] through their gait, their posture, their words, their emotions, their work, etc. Even the inhibition of certain emotions is an expression of the superego. Most people live and die expressing their egos and super egos, and rarely does the real person get expressed.”
– A.H. Almaas, Work on the Super-Ego, p. 16. [My parenthetic comment.]

(That’s a whole other story: the role that the superego – or, the inner judge, the inner critic – plays in fabricating our usual sense of separateness, our rejection of inter-being; and, therefore, our resistance to death).

For now, I share this story to give a little indication of how we can work with situations so that they transform into unfabricated qualities. By the time I got home, I was peaceful again, and didn’t bring any bad feeling home to my beloved partner. I may die, any moment. I wouldn’t want to drag along into the sacred space of death – a sacramental space – the resentments of the little, constructed self.

There’s no path in space;
there’s no contemplative outside [of space].
People indulge in separation.
There is no separation for
those who come and go in suchness.

– Dhammapada, verse 254.

Next time, I’ll talk about Torei Zenji’s Bodhisattva vow, which someone amusingly referred to as a “road rage abatement program.”

Nectar with Brahma

By admin

On August 13, 2015

In Body, Memoir, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

Those who thoroughly engage
in mindfulness of the body,
who don’t practice what shouldn’t be done,
and regularly practice what should be done,
conscious and clearly comprehending,
their toxic impulses fade away.

– Dhammapada, Verse 293. Translated Christopher J. Ash

I practised inviting space continuously during my stay in hospital for the removal of my cancer, last year. When I returned home, a friend asked me how I practised mindfulness during my stay. I listed all kinds of upaya (skilful means), which I’ve learnt over decades. After talking with my friend, I reflected to myself that all of them awakened space. I had used every means possible to be in loving, spacious awareness.

Most of the time, mindfulness of the body was in union with resting in voidness. Each supported the other. To be conscious of what I was experiencing – whether it was needles entering my skin, sending love and gratitude to my condemned prostate (for its years of functioning), being wheeled on the gurney, receiving the anæsthetic gas, waking up in the recovery room, swallowing pills, making painful trips to the toilet with my catheter, or receiving the care of the attentive nurses – to be conscious and clearly comprehend the quality of my attitude, to dwell in a positive heart: all I needed to do was be present without any desire. It was space aware of space. It felt, most of the time, like a blessing, to be so present, and clear that I was present. And so peaceful. There was nothing for me to do, but to be there.

Until I wrote that – clear that I was present – I haven’t thought of the combination (mindful and clearly comprehending, satānaṃ sampajānānaṃ) as meaning quite that; but it feels right. That is, one can be mindful of, and clearly comprehend, your experiencing, your pasture: the body, the feeling-tones (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral), the states of mind or attitudes, and the dynamics of your whole felt world (loka). Comprehension can be, for example, about your being in the situation, and what there is to learn about the functioning of your mind in the situation, and so on. This is the field of your responsibility.

And, sometimes – and this is, for me, the most precious experience – sometimes you are just present, and you comprehend presence for the miracle it is. That is, mindful in the sense of awake without effort or purpose; and, intimate with wakefulness itself. You are completely resting in a pure, total, warm presence whose light leaves nothing in life out. Conscious and clearly comprehending from inside the conscious awareness. It’s like drinking this nectar with Brahma.

Introduction to a Story about Space (and LSD)

By admin

On August 11, 2015

In Body, Meditation, Memoir, Positivity, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

I have three themes in this and tomorrow’s post: life reviews, experiential space, and the value of an LSD experience. This post is by way of an introduction, and tomorrow I’ll share story about the LSD experience.

A life review can be approached from a number of angles. I’ve done several over the years. At some point, I did a life review examining how experiences of the subject-object division in perception had unfolded throughout my life. In that review I looked at the development (and the distortions) of my sense of what I call ‘experiential space,’ and how that interacted with my sense of ‘self.’

I included in that review the effect of taking LSD in my late teens, which produced a profound union of ‘experiential space,’ expansive experience of clarity, and the presence of blissful well-being.

I took LSD twice in the late sixties; or, as we said then, “dropped acid.” Only twice, because, as I was a greenhorn Buddhist meditator at the time, I was starting to take care of my body (after the alcohol abuse of my mid-to-late teens). I began a life of non-violence, in a society waging a vicious war in Vietnam; and so, I decided that non-violence included non-violence to my brain. (Despite the sweet experiences, LSD isn’t good for brains. I don’t recommend it, for health reasons.)

I basically have no remorse about taking LSD, though. Recently, I mentioned it in social conversation, when offering an instance of something relevant to our conversation, but the mention of LSD as a source of a positive experience threw my host momentarily off-centre. It seemed that my friend was confusing two things: the value of an experience, and the value of the means to the experience. That set me thinking about the value of that experience, and I went back to read the particular life review.

I’m sharing this, also, because it has been, for me, a life-long difficulty, to convey subtle-energy experiences without sounding merely intellectual. ‘Experiential space,’ for instance, isn’t something the average person has named for themselves. So, as a concrete instance of Bliss and Space (the basis of Deva-realms), and Death, I thought this anecdote would be useful.

At the same time, it’s a tale about confirming what the meditation masters have been saying for millennia, that the mind is like space. In fact, the ‘space’ element in the Nikayas is not about external space. It’s about experiential space – about proportion and interaction. (See Sue Hamilton, Early Buddhism: A New Approach)

Sue Hamilton writes: “One needs to bear in mind here that according to the early Buddhist texts, form is understood to range through a wide range of degrees of density and subtlety; it need not be visible.”

Tomorrow: A Story about the Mind as Non-Localised Space