Category: Positivity Page 3 of 15

The Revolutionary Pause

On July 14, 2016

In Enquiry, General, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

The title of this piece comes from a talk by Mary Hendricks-Gendlin. I give a link to a transcription of that talk, at the end of this post. You might want, too, to re-read yesterday’s post, about the Mindfulness Attitude, as I have rewritten it.

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The mindfulness attitude to life values openness, and the heart of openness is a pause in our habitual patterns. This kind of stopping allows a big mind to show up, which has room for the extraordinarily full present. We have this freedom available.

One of the most vital skills we can develop is the ability to pause the momentum of discursive mind and experience our world—both inner and outer—directly through our senses.

– David Rome, Your Body Knows the Answer: Using Your Felt Sense to Solve Problems, Effect Change, and Liberate Creativity

“It’s okay to pause. I can slow my pace. It’s okay to pause this headlong rush onto the next thing. I can contact my breathing, no matter what the world says. It’s okay not to know what is next.”

It’s okay at any time of the day. When we do pause, new perspectives are possible. This is particularly important in everyday life, because we can become despondent at the state of the world, our nation, our community, our family – and fall into harmful compensatory patterns in reaction. Drinking more, or just ‘zoning out’ in front of screens.

Terrible things are always happening in the world. Some ‘religious’ fanatic kills people in the name of his ‘God.’ Yet another young black teen’s life is taken by a crazed policeman in the U.S. Some insane dictator, protected by a military power, executes one of his generals on a whim. Species extinctions accelerate alarmingly.

We get depressed at what’s going on in the world, feel helpless and powerless. Perhaps, we fear for the children about us – not only for their lives now, but for the fact that they will inherit this violent human society. Stress builds up in us.

And, then, there are our own big questions, the resolution of which would clarify whether our lives have any meaning at all. We turn away, again and again.

However, with ‘the pause,’ we stop turning away. We have an opportunity to say hello to our actual condition – our fear, helplessness and powerless, and begin to transform them.

We are not condemned to feel only debilitation. Positive responses are possible, which can be empowering. We can act to contribute to a better world.

“Self-possession is the heartwood of understanding. When a person is hasty and careless, his discernment and learning don’t flourish.” – The Nikāya Buddha, Kimsila Sutta

For this we need to find space in our minds, space for the much-needed clarity. Even if it’s only space to trust that there will certainly be a next step. With this contactful way to be – being in touch with ourselves – we can know that our actions aren’t just more of the same for the world, no re-actions.

When the traffic is bumper to bumper I vow with all beings
to move when the world starts moving and rest when it pauses again.

– Robert Aitken Roshi. The Dragon Who Never Sleeps: Verses for Zen Buddhist Practice

With the mindfulness attitude (a part of which is remembering our spiritual practice) we turn toward our feelings – even the very difficult ones – with openness, with curiosity, and with compassion. This not only makes us a more helpful human being – able to contribute constructively to the world culture – but puts us in touch with more of who we are.

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Focusing as a Force for Peace: the Revolutionary Pause – Mary Hendricks-Gendlin, Ph.D

Healthy Mindfulness Attitudes

By admin

On July 13, 2016

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity

“As inquiry brings awareness, observation, and intelligence into play, we can see what attitudes support effective knowing.” – Tarthang Tulku. Knowledge of Time & Space: An Inquiry into Knowledge, Self & Reality
What attitudes support a person who is developing insight? What attitudes empower mindfulness? To sketch a preliminary answer, I’m not going to give an academic summary. That’s not necessary here. Instead, I’m sharing what I have learnt.
The Person
Firstly, the mindfulness practitioner values being a person. It’s important in mindful awareness to acknowledge that there is a particular being present. We must be careful of misapplying the teaching of no ‘self.’ The surest way to get confused around concepts of ‘self’ – I’ve seen some very dissociated Buddhists – is to apply this at the wrong level of experiencing; and so to make it difficult to have grounded contact with the body.
In the mindfulness approach it is better to remember the body. As it says in the Mindfulness Sutta: “There is this body.” Maintain contact with the body (which is the earth element), no matter how subtly you are experiencing ‘matter.’ The presence of a body is integral to appreciating the truth of being the unique person you are.
The Mindfulness Attitude
With this phrase, I am referring to several attitudes (states of mind) crucial to effective mindfulness. I use the phrase in the way that focusers speak of ‘the focusing attitude.’ As focuser and meditation teacher David Rome says:
“The key to success in this practice is something called “the Focusing attitude.” It is a capacity for gentle and brave self-caring, and it can be cultivated. Also known in Focusing circles as “caring-feeling-presence” or “self-empathy,” it is akin to the Buddhist virtue called maitri — loving kindness or friendliness directed toward oneself. It is a potent, poignant and at times quite magical way of making friends with oneself.” – Searching for the Truth that Is Far Below the Search, printed in Shambhala Sun, September 2004.
This warmth is a quality of mindful-awareness. But, here, I’ll comment on why we meditate or are mindful, at all; and, why we focus (or, ‘explicate felt meanings’). I do this to ward off any impression that I am suggesting that our meditation should be a kind of Focusing process.
In meditation, we are interested in knowing/appreciating the luminous and creative nature of the ground of mind. We are loving that luminous nature in itself – the nature of ‘experiential space’ and its ‘source.’
Focusing, though, is on this side of the door to the source. We spend some time being intimate with some kind of experience, ‘sitting next to’ it, sensing the ‘more’ that lies beneath the patterns, and usually naming it with carefully-chosen language – to be clear about what we are experiencing. I’ll say more later, but this is broadly the difference between the two areas of human functioning.
Balancing Peace and Investigation
However, in both cases we need a relaxed, warm attitude toward experiencing; a non-judgemental, accepting attitude. Being at ease with whatever comes brings peaceful stability (samatha) to the mind, which turbo-charges our capacity to looking deep into experiencing (vipassanā). (One without the other is imbalanced.)
We’re developing the attitude of confidence like the Nikāya Buddha on the night of his awakening, when he touches the earth, calling it to witness his right to be here, dwelling in truth.
Harmlessness, Positivity and Non-Judging
“Established in peace, gentleness and presence of mind, they have reached the essence of discernment and learning.” – Nikāya Buddha, in Kimsila Sutta.
Mindfulness is a non-violent, insight-oriented approach to your experiencing. The Nikāya Buddha is very positive, and asks that we be positive toward our inner work. For instance, always establishing joy as a quality of the awakened mind. Or, another instance: in the early stages of Mindfulness of Breathing In and Out Sutta (Ānāpānasati), we invite gladness and joy, before looking more deeply.
He has the attitude of welcoming experience, no matter what it is. He tells his son Rahula to meditate in imitation of earth, water, fire, and space; which all openly accept what comes. We are taking an attitude of non-harm – friendly (Pāli: metta; Sanskrit: maitri) and being non-judgmental toward experiencing.
Make your mindfulness about knowing that you are alive. Being empathic with one’s experience is possible. This means respecting the feelings and points of view of the false-‘I’ system, with its ‘blocking processes’ (traditionally called ‘hindrances.’) Respecting isn’t the same as ‘following,’ of course.
We don’t disconnect from present-moment awareness and from contact with our breathing body. We don’t collapse, in the face of our negativity. We keep our the vigilance (another ‘mindfulness attitude). So, what I mean by ‘non-judgmental’ is that we don’t take sides in the arguments that go on in our thoughts.
Hence, toward everything we maintain our attitudes of kindness, compassion, love of inquiry, and the love of truth – because these protect us from losing perspective on why we are here. “You should remember and explore: the spiritual life…” (Kimsila Sutta)
Intimacy and Feeling as Knowing
I always think, here, of the advice in the Mindfulness Sutta: to know the body, the feeling-tones, the mind-states and so on in the body. I take it to mean from inside the experience, and not at an intellectual distance. In the Mindfulness of Breathing In and Out Sutta (Ānāpānasati), for instance, an important word patisaṃvedī, usually translated as ‘knowing’ or ‘experiencing,’ means primarily, ‘to feel.’ Hence, this means to know something intimately, directly, and as felt in the body. It is to know something from inside it. This, too, is part of the mindfulness attitude.
Loving the Truth
“You need to love the truth. Delighting in truth, devoted to the truth, standing in the truth, with awareness of how to investigate the truth.” – Nikāya Buddha, in Kimsila Sutta
In the spirit of curiosity and inquiry, we put ourselves under truth. It doesn’t work to approach truth with conceit, ambition, or grasping. Mindfulness is a process of awakening appreciative intelligence. So there is an attitude of openness and of learning. Often, in the meditative and contemplative literature, this the where the experience of ‘not knowing’ is praised.
“One should go about free of conceit, self-possessed.” (Kimsila Sutta)
Respecting Concepts
Many meditators make thought into an enemy; but, it’s important to value words in our awakening process. Again, in the Kimsila Sutta we read:
• “Value the opportunity when a dharma-talk is happening, and listen carefully to well-chosen words.”
• “Understanding is the heartwood of apt words. Self-possession is the heartwood of understanding. When a person is hasty and careless, his discernment and learning don’t flourish.”
• “Don’t misuse the truth. Use true, beautiful words to guide yourself.”
• “You should remember and explore: the spiritual life, the teachings and their meaning, and self-discipline.”
My recommendation is that after each thing you say to yourself in meditation and mindfulness practice, refer to the middle of your body. The body knows the difference between words of the ‘false self’ and the words of the person you are sitting in meditation. Investigate this difference.

For the Very Best Outcome

By admin

On July 8, 2016

In Enquiry, Focusing, Mindfulness, Positivity

Kimsila Sutta
What Moral Character?
Kimsilasutta, Sn 324-330
Translated from the Pali by Christopher J. Ash, © 2016

“What kind of character, conduct and actions ensure a person will reach the very best outcome (in inner work)?”

“You need to value those who surpass you and not be envious. You must track when you need to see a teacher. Value the opportunity when a dharma-talk is happening, and listen carefully to well-chosen words.

“Go to see your teacher at the right time, humbly, without arrogance. You should remember and explore: the spiritual life, the teachings and their meaning, and self-discipline.

“Delighting in truth, devoted to the truth, standing in the truth, with awareness of how to investigate the truth, don’t misuse the truth. Use true, beautiful words to guide yourself.

“Dispense with longing, lamenting, hurtfulness, trickery, deceit, greed, pride, quarrelling, jesting, sarcasm, dissipation, and mindlessness. One should go about free of conceit, self-possessed.

“Understanding is the heartwood of apt words. Self-possession is the heartwood of understanding. When a person is hasty and careless, his discernment and learning don’t flourish.

“But those who are devoted to the teachings of the noble ones are peerless in action, speech, and mind. Established in peace, gentleness and presence of mind, they have perfected the essence of discernment and learning.”

A Stroll Through the Mindfulness Sutta – Part 1

By admin

On July 4, 2016

In Body, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices

The Opening of the Mindfulness Sutta (Satipaṭṭhāna)

It’s time to have a brief look at the awareness practices which can support us to face death. With these skilful means, we can activate our experiential inquiry into death; and, become familiar with the ‘King of Death.’

Let’s start with an introduction to a prominent text on mindfulness, called the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. (For those more familiar with this territory, I’m using the Majjhima Nikāya 10 version.)

This is a very famous text, and it has been the source of many later approaches to mindfulness. In all likelihood, it is a compilation of various instructions on mindfulness, and was put together in the years following the historical Buddha’s death.

However, we can take it at face value, in my approach – because we are dialoguing with the texts just as they are presented to us. It is presented to us as a talk given at a particular place to a particular audience.

“Thus have I heard: On one occasion the flourishing one was living in the Kuru country, at the Kuru town named Kammasadhamma. There he spoke to the mendicants.”

In the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta, the Nikāya Buddha says that by paying a certain kind of attention to our experience, we will find an exceptional degree of comprehension of human life, including deep insight into awareness itself.

“Practitioners, this is the direct way for the purification of individuals, for going beyond sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of mental disturbance and dejection, for learning the complete path, for experiencing nibbāna – namely, the way of the four placements of mindfulness.”

The four kinds of experiences that are suggested as present for our path of learning are:

1) our bodily form;
2) our feeling-tones (that is: pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensations);
3) the states of our psyche (mind-states); and
4) the dynamics of these three, seen in the light of certain principles.

“”What are the four? Here, Practitioners, a contemplative person… 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.”

If you aren’t already familiar with these four placements of attention, stop and – while tracking your breathing, anywhere in your body (as a touchstone) – take just a few minutes to invoke awareness of the first two of these kinds of experiences, now. Feel into your posture. Can you feel the shape and relative position of your head, arms and legs? Can you feel that you are breathing? Can you sense that some of your sensations are pleasant, and some not?

If you haven’t done this before, you will, of course, have to do this in your own way. Give yourself permission to have a beginner’s mind, as Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi said. Just a few minutes would be enough to start. Just do it in your way.

At this stage, if you are a beginner, just directly contact the first two of these categories of experience. (If you haven’t done this before, don’t worry, for now, about the third or fourth ones yet. We’re taking small steps.)

In the opening passages of the text, notice, the Nikāya Buddha sets out the goal. He is saying that mindfulness, if pursued in the way described in this text, definitely will bring the experience of something called ‘nibbāna.’

Elsewhere in the Nikāyas, Nibbāna has many, many synonyms. From the following list, we can say that the attainment of nibbāna brings a high degree of clarity and peace. Mindfulness offers a direct path to this clarity, by supporting us to see and stay related to “things as they really are.” Notice that you can relate to the possibility of most of these pleasant states. (And, some of the others would need an introduction.)

“Practitioners, I will teach you the truth, and the path leading to the truth…. I will teach you the far shore … the subtle … the very difficult to see … the unaging … the stable … the undisintegrating … the unmanifest … the unproliferated … the peaceful … the deathless … the sublime … the auspicious … the secure …. the destruction of craving … the wonderful … the amazing … the unailing … the unailing state … Nibbāna … the unafflicted … dispassion … purity … freedom … the unadhesive … the island … the shelter … the asylum … the refuge …”

– The Taintless, from The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikāya. Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

Approaching the Unborn, the Deathless

By admin

On July 1, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity

The Nikāya Buddha’s quest was to understand the human struggle, and to see if there was an ending of the struggle. He initially puts this to himself like this (in my paraphrase):

“I saw that we are all subject to sickness, old age, and death. I saw that we try to deal with this, and to gain happiness, by chasing after things that are also subject to illness, old age, and death. And I wondered, is there an unborn, un-ageing, un-ailing, deathless, sorrow-less, undefiled, unexcelled rest from the burden: nibbāna?” (See the Ariyapariyesana Sutta: The Noble Search.)

Now death itself – the life-processes which we call death – is a part of life. I live by the principle that death, in itself, is not the kind of problem we make it out to be. Life is always transforming itself in one way or another, and we name some of those transformations ‘death.’ The kookaburra dives on a grub and swallows it. A moment before, the grub was carrying its own life forward. Next moment, it’s participating in the carrying forward of the life of the kookaburra. It’s obviously one life in various forms.

Our problem, our death-dukkha, comes from our resistance to the fact of such transformations – which goes with our conceiving of ourselves as quite separate entities, rather than as that same life process.

Hence, our death-dukkha has to do with ego-death, more than it is about physical death. We are afraid of the loss of the ‘me’ and of ‘my world.’ We are afraid of the concept of death. In the Nikāyas, it is Mara that deluder who brings death.

The Nikāya Buddha’s way of approaching death isn’t to train ourselves for what occurs after death, but to train ourselves to be present in life as it is. To do that he suggests we include the reality of death, in our regular contemplations.

Maranasati, the recollection of death, takes up a large portion of the Mindfulness Sutta (Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta) is devoted to developing a realistic relationship with death. (In those times, death was readily accessible, with bodies lying rotting on the surface of the earth, in charnel grounds).

But the context of this contemplation is not so much about dealing with death per se, but awakening from delusions about our life process – getting free of Mara’s grasp, and realising the deathless means being awake in life.

Is it possible to use the word ‘death’ in a practical, life-enhancing kind of way, without imagining that it refers to something ultimately existent or findable? What would this mean experientially?

To recollect death, then, is primarily a means to recognising the deathless. It is one of the Nikāya Buddha’s ways of helping us awaken to this quality in life. In the Nikāyas, the deathless is one of the qualities of the unexcelled rest from the burden, nibbāna. Buddhist teachings and practices not only speak of this freedom, but they contribute to its realization.

I’m reminded of an inspiring story from a later Buddhist school. In the Ch’an (Zen) tradition, in Case 94 of the Book of Serenity, there is an interchange between a monk and his teacher. The teacher Dongshan is unwell. He is dying, The monk asked:

“You are sick, teacher, but is there one who does not get sick?”
Dongshan said, “There is.”
The monk said, “Does the one who is not sick look after you?”
Dongshan said, “This old man takes care of that one.”
‘How is it, then,” said the monk, “when you look after that one?”
“Then I don’t see any sickness.”

The dialogue could equally go like this:

“You are dying, Teacher, but is there one who does not die?”
“There is.”
“Does the one who does not die look after you?”
“This old man takes care of that one.”
“How is it then, when you look after that one?”
“Then I don’t see any death.”

How can this be? The realization of the deathless element is not a logical matter. Remember, logic is a process that this more-than-logical universe has come up with – not the other way round. So, the deathless is for experiencing, deep in oneself and out of reach of the social mind.

“…for something new to be born in us”

By admin

On June 30, 2016

In Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity

Joyce sent out a quote from Pema Chodron which fits well with my post today:

“The key to working with what is so deeply unwanted, is to let go of the ideas, the thoughts, about how we shouldn’t be sick and what will happen to us if we remain sick.
Somehow we have to respect the illness, welcome it, enter into it…we surrender and say, okay, what have you to teach me…about letting go of control, about slowing down…about tasting the full experience of a moment…the light, the sound, the quality of our mood, of our pain, the sight of dust or birds or nothing special…respecting all that. It’s a kind of death, this illness, the best kind of death if we’ll let it be. It’s the death of old stuck patterns and opinions and habits and it makes way for something new to be born in us. Really, you can trust that. Something new will be born if you’ll let the illness show you where to let go your grip…And please don’t scold yourself for failing, ever.”

~Pema Chodron

Getting the Problem Situation in Perspective

By admin

On June 30, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Focusing, Positivity, Practices

For the small child I was, the dukkha was in the lack of understanding, not in the bare fact of the encounter with death. The dukkha is in the fear. From a point of view, the encounter with death is inescapable. But, fear and bewilderment – they’re optional (at least for an adult.)

So, we’re talking about an unhelpful interpretation of dukkha. If we say that the bare fact of biological birth and death, and the illnesses that inevitably accompany human life, that these are dukkha – that is, that they are either representative of a universe out of whack, or are unsatisfactory in some way – then, either way, such a view only means we don’t like the universe as it is.

(And, more subtly, we are affirming death as existing as a ‘something’ and existing on its own side. We’re giving it ‘self-nature’ of a particular kind, and so getting caught in dualistic understanding. But this is a point I’ll take up later.)

Dukkha is not primarily about the way things are; but, it is mostly to do with our narcissistic reaction to ‘things as they are.’ (Ironically, our reactions are dependent on the fact that we have evolved enough to reflect on the way things are.)

Hence, we would mistake the level at which the remedy is to be applied. It needs to be applied at the level of our reaction to death, not on the literal or physical level of impermanence. It is this literalist reading – life stinks, and we need to not be reborn – that has led some in the West to think that the Nikāya Buddhism is life-denying and pessimistic. If we interpret the Nikāya Buddha’s message in this limited way, we trivialize his insistence that there is a way to end our egocentricity.

If the Nikāya texts are any sort of guide, we can see that the historical Buddha had insights at the level of interactional, bodily, experiential space that were exceptionally subtle. They are still powerful, today. The historical person was a human – Siddhartha Gotama – a person of such-and-such a name, and such-and-such a clan. He had ‘experiencing’ – his felt life – just like we do. Surely, it was this experiencing that he was interested in freeing from dukkha, transforming the ‘bad space’ of egocentric reactivity, into the peaceful non-resistance of the awakened heart.

However, Gotama’s interpretations of this experiences were inevitably framed within the concepts available in his time; even when he extended or refreshed that culture (as it appears that he did). Those concepts included the state of scientific knowledge of his time.

We humans have learnt much about our situation in two-and-a-half thousand years, and new perspectives from modern disciplines enrich our understanding. They can enrich the tradition, too. We can’t stop the process, anyway. I once read an ecologist saying that you can’t place an organism in an environment, without the environment getting into the organism.

Understanding the tradition is like that. It penetrates you, and it is itself changed by changing you. It is handed on by becoming the way you are, in body, speech and mind. So, it’s just the way of the universe, that if the Buddhadharma comes West, the West gets into it.

Nevertheless, the process is not arbitrary. If we grant that the Nikāya Buddha might be speaking from his non-conceptual knowledge, using old concepts freshly, and perhaps introducing some entirely new ones – and, that, in the process he is carrying forward the culture of his contemporaries – then we might see that the meaning of these texts needs to come to us in the same way. That is, it needs to be confirmed by our non-conceptual, experiential understanding. It needs to be re-affirmed and renewed in our bodies, and then explicated in idioms with which we can resonate.

Then, through a conversation with the tradition, we can verify individually, and contemplatively, that the Nikāya Buddha is talking about a distorted way of experiencing life, and hence distortions of our encounter with death. It’s this distortion which can cease.

The distortion is the result of unskilful thinking – thinking infected with patterns of error, with those of craving and grasping – which, as a result, give us the particular kind of sickness, old age, and death which is the subject of our fear and distaste. The Nikāya teachings say that the cessation of the delusional way of life is the cessation of that kind of death.

It is the task of this project to explicate how the distortions happen, and how they cease. And, to show how there can be both death and no death – without contradiction. That is, both these can be said without opposing each other. But, this will be a ‘process’ understanding – employing logic, but not founded in logic.

Attentiveness is the place of the deathless;
inattentiveness is the place of death.
The attentive do not die;
the inattentive are as though dead already.

– Dhammapada, verse 21. Translated by Christophe J. Ash

The Curious Question

By admin

On June 29, 2016

In Death, Enquiry, Memoir, Positivity

I can’t remember when I first realized that there was the event which we call death. When I was a child, I had to walk to school alone each day, and to cross the highway which ran through our town. There were no traffic lights. I vividly remember, a few occasions when I came to the highway, that there – with dried blood around its mouth and covered in flies – would be the corpse of a dog.

It bewildered me, that this stiff, foul-smelling, thing had been a warm animal earlier. Now it was this. It bothered me. How does a living thing become a not living thing? I couldn’t get my mind around not being.

When I was ten, I saw a little three-year-old killed at the local shops, not far from that same highway. I had seen him alive, playing in the dirt with his toy front-end loader. My friend and I had stopped and said hello to him; and then we walked on, to the general store (to collect the deposits on the bottles we’d scavenged along the side of the highway).

As we were leaving the store, there was a loud screech of tires, and a bang; and when I looked, there he was lying dead under a car. In this case, along with everything else, it was the suddenness that shocked me. ‘Out of the blue,’ as we say. The contrast between life and death was there in the time it took for a blink. And, it seemed to me at the time, that we didn’t know when any of us would die. The whole thing was incomprehensible, to me.

Why do we die, at all? The fact that, during the year before, I’d been taught that there was a God in the sky who would judge me some day, this only intensified the questions. So, there were some big incomprehensibles around, as I grew up – big impenetrable doubts looming over my world, .

As a even smaller child I asked questions like that. I asked at five years old, “Who am I?” and got no helpful answer. I wanted it to all make some sense, somehow. And, as my teenage years proceeded, relentlessly heading toward that frightening domain called adulthood, I became depressed by the big questions. “What is death? What’s the point of achieving anything, when you only die?” I didn’t realize that I was resisting this world, this life, that had death in it.

The resolution, though, is not in the direction of trying to answer the ‘What happens after death?’ question. So many of those kind of questions only lead to beliefs, and not to transformative insights.

Then, when I was nineteen I read in a book on Buddhism that such insights do occur; such insights as end the anguish of the search. I began to appreciate that the more important question is: “What happens before death?”

One day a student called Malunkyaputta confronts the Nikāya Buddha, and demands to be told the answers to several commonly debated philosophical questions of the time. They are questions like: What happens after death? Is there a permanent soul? And so on. He demands answers, and says he will leave the community, if he doesn’t get answers.

The Nikāya Buddha isn’t impressed. He says that he doesn’t answer such questions, because such questions are not beneficial – they don’t lead to the ending of dukkha. They don’t lead to peace, to nibbāna. On other occasions he says that these unanswerable questions inevitably lead to what he calls ‘a thicket of views.’

There is nothing more valuable in this work than an inexhaustible curiosity. We learn to foster questions in the right spirit, which lead deeper into present-moment experiencing. We ask questions which are forward-leading; for the change that curiosity itself brings, not for the accumulation of concepts, ideas, views, opinions.

“Answers are not the purpose of our questioning. When we learn how to ask fundamental questions in ways that are fresh and alive, we conduct into our lives an intelligence that applies directly to our own immediate circumstances. In activating this kind of inquiry, we can rely on the great masters and thinkers of the past for inspiration and guidance, but their answers cannot be our answers. We must each individually take up the challenge of knowledge for ourselves.”
– Tarthang Tulku. Visions of Knowledge: Liberation of Modern Mind

Framing the Escape from Dukkha

By admin

On June 25, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Positivity, Time, Space, & Knowledge

Conscious human experience includes sickness, old age, and death; and, obviously, none of them are particularly pleasant. However, there they are. These touch everyone, in some way.So, it is claimed by many Western Buddhist writers that the ‘First Noble Truth’ is: old age, sickness, and death are dukkha. The most common translation of ‘dukkha’ is ‘suffering’ The Buddhist path is about ending dukkha.

Again, and again, I’ve scratched my head, wrinkled my brow, and bent down to understand this. Are they really saying that the mere fact of the event which we call death, this event is unsatisfactory, in itself? Are these writers and speakers, then, saying ‘life sucks,’ for no other reason than nature is like that? (I have actually heard that, from some Buddhists.)

Does it mean, then, that ‘escape from dukkha’ – which the Nikāya Buddha definitely recommends – means that we, being nature ourselves, need to escape from nature? Again, some people do believe this. I kid you not. To them, the Buddhist path means: ‘no more human birth’. This is their answer to what they see as cruel nature. What is happening, here? They can’t mean that human life is a mistake, a disease?

As you can hear, I’m not impressed with this approach; and I don’t think that such an approach could give rise to twenty-five hundred years of cultural transmission, as has been the case. For me, how could the evolution of life-forms be something we must escape, rather than carry forward in a healthy way? That human life is afflicted with some myopic habits which thwart its carrying forward healthily – that I can get; but the view that ‘being born is an error’ has more, I imagine, to do with the cultural, political, and social circumstances of the people who hold that view. It’s not about the big life we have here.

So, this project is asking: What is the Nikāya Buddha’s approach to death, given that we avoid thinking about death, and yet we all must die? What does he mean by the ‘deathless.’ He says that seeking the experience of a ‘deathless element’ is a saner response to the fact of death, than seeking solace in changeable things, things subject to arising and ceasing. So, what does ‘deathless’ mean to him?

“Suppose that, being myself subject to birth, having understood the danger in what is subject to birth, I seek the unborn supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna. Suppose that, being myself subject to ageing, sickness, death, sorrow, and defilement, having understood the danger in what is subject to ageing, sickness, death, sorrow, and defilement, I seek the unageing, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, and undefiled supreme security from bondage, Nibbāna.”
– The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, translated by Bhikkhu Nānamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi.

However, if I’m genuine about dialoguing with the texts, I have to account for a crucial text oft-quoted by these writers.; particularly this one from the Samyutta Nikāya, which on first blush seems to support the notion that the Nikāya Buddha has an anti-nature view and that Nibbāna, is a cure for nature. A common translation of this text goes like this:

“Now this, practitioners, is the ennobling truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, ageing is dukkha, illness is dukkha, death is dukkha; being yoked with what is displeasing is dukkha; separation from what is pleasing is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in brief, the five sentient processes subject to clinging are dukkha.”

– From the Samyutta Nikāya. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

On the surface it does looks like he’s saying, ‘Nature is dukkha.’ This being so, escaping life would naturally be the outcome of ‘the ending of dukkha.’ However, it seems to me that this is a literalistic interpretation. And, a life-negating one at that. My approach does not assume that unpleasant experiences such as illness and death demonstrate some ultimate flaw in life processes; nor that they demonstrate, as is sometimes said, that life is tragic. These seem to me unprovable readouts. In this project, I will have to propose an experience-near, verifiable alternative understanding.

How will we investigate the matter of dukkha and the ending of dukkha? Of course, we can listen to the wise, and think logically; but, crucially, we must include and cultivate the grounding which our bodies provide, to know for ourselves the best way to approach this matter.

In a sense, I’m suggesting that we ground ourselves in nature; ask nature how it sees the matter of dukkha and the ending of dukkha. Such grounding carries our knowing forward in fresh and creative, and life-enhancing ways. Such knowing stays in relation to sickness, old age, and death. It doesn’t dissociate. This is wisdom.

Do you have a view on this? How would you ground your agreement or disagreement with my approach?

Being Aware and Purpose

By admin

On June 24, 2016

In Death, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta

Being Here with Purpose

What do we mean by ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge’? How do we know anything? Mindfulness, of course, is a kind of way to know. I’ve always been troubled by the feeling that there is more to mindfulness than ‘being fully present in the moment’; as though such present-moment awareness could be neutral with respect to accumulated knowledge.

For a start, the phrase ‘present moment’ points to time, and most people’s perceptions of ‘time’ start out by being shaped by their training (via their parents and their schooling). We bring those structures, and their further shaping activity to our mindfulness.

We are trained from very young to apply a particular temporal structure to experience; and, therefore to knowledge. This temporal structuring shapes our sense of reality. So, when we approach ‘the present moment’ we don’t do so without this unconscious shaping. This is something that mindfulness can, itself, reveal, of course.

In other words, one particularly illuminating thing about being mindful, if we stick to it, will be our failure – our failure within the present time structuring. The depth of ‘the present moment’ will involve an uncovering, by revealing our conditioned structuring of time, space and knowledge. If we are willing to experience a changed reality, then we can go deeper.

The secular mindfulness and meditation ‘movement,’ backed by cognitive science, psychotherapy, and a passion for independence from religions, frequently quotes Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness: “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.”

That ‘on purpose’ bit is important to note. Mindful attention is never without intention. Consciousness is always intentional, if by intentional I can mean: carrying-forward the life process of the organism, in some way. Attention is, by its nature, self-reflexive. Not even ‘pure’ awareness of our senses is without all the past moments of awareness carrying forward in this moment’s attention.

Consciousness is by its nature a kind of ‘kind-ing’ process. It is oriented to knowing ‘kinds’ of experience, and so consciousness ‘kinds’ everything it comes into contact with. Even something entirely new, something entirely out of the range of previous knowledge, is encountered as ‘that kind of thing’ – that is, it is of ‘an un-kinded kind of thing or process.’

That’s the nature of consciousness, and this is the reason why the Nikāya Buddha doesn’t see consciousness as providing completeness. So, if having a purpose is inescapable, we need to choose our purposes for mindfulness carefully.

If we think that there is some objective, un-kinded kind of way to have contact with a flower, a bird, a cloud, or another human, then that’s going to be an ideal that gets brought to each encounter. It seems to me that there’s no way around the fact that a flower is a flower precisely because it is in interaction with human consciousness. As Wordsworth meant, when he spoke of “all the mighty world/ Of eye, and ear,- – both what they half create,/ And what perceive…”

So, ‘on purpose’ gets to be important. What is the kind of motivation we have when we are ‘paying attention’? Are we mindful to improve our health and mental balance? That’s a positive motivation. Do I wish to go to the root of divisions in human society, by understanding the division-making in my own mind? That may have even more important ramifications, for the kind of society we create.

Do I practice mindfulness because I want to be true to human process, be a real human? Or, because I want to engage in purifying human knowledge processes and know the nature of mind?

To penetrate the depths of mindfulness, it won’t be enough to only cultivate relaxation, and less stress. These are good motivations in themselves, especially because they are aimed at a reduction of human suffering.

However, to know the roots of human freedom we need to go deeper. So, regarding ‘purpose’ – what kind of commitment will you cultivate? What commitment is needed to fulfil the species’ next step in human growth (remembering that you and I are its leading edge, because we are here now)?

Relaxation and stress reduction can help me to die more peacefully, and mindfulness in support of spiritual inquiry can turn death, the inevitable guest, into an opportunity to enter the deathless element, the unsurpassable host.