Tag: space

Clear as the Sky

On July 19, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Poetry, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

“Fully knowing the arising and fading of the five sentient processes,
one finds happiness and joy. For those who are discerning, this is the deathless.”
– The Dhammapda, verse 374. Translated by Christopher J. Ash

The usual understanding of death and rebirth misses the point, so grossly. Rebirth theory is related to the experience of a constructed ‘self’ (atta) and, hence, to intentions (karma). Both of these are concepts for which we can find experience-near meanings. If we can be mindful and directly experience how karma moves, then we can understand the issues of death and rebirth at a more everyday, realistic level.

I wrote about the ‘pause’ as a part of the mindfulness attitude; the slowing down of experience, so that we can sense more of what is actually going on in and around us. The more we appreciate the present, then the more it responds by revealing its intricacy.

One afternoon, I was sitting on the veranda of my home, in a reverie of appreciation for the textures of the forest – mostly of the eucalypts and the ti-tree. And, there was a currawong sitting on a branch, close by. I wasn’t exactly watching the bird. I gazed, I suppose; which is a mode of vision that includes much more, by not naming.

This pause in the default human mode of ‘mind’ led to including in my ‘gaze’ (or awareness) my sensations, my thoughts, and the felt presence of my whole situation. Including all of these in what I was aware of, at that moment, without losing my relationship to the currawong, gave rise to holistic sense of space – a kind of space that is throughout the field of experience, not just outside the skin.

It’s a fact that by including the observer in the observing, one loosens the hold and even dissolves the sense of separation to all things. So, the concepts of ‘self’ and ‘world,’ in that state, were distinctions not needed at that moment. The still, silent quality of knowing didn’t support the kind of space where I would create any ‘thing’ (a ‘me’) to be separate, or to be separate from.

“The mind is always thinking of things in the past and of what it is going to do in the future. It rarely settles in the moment. If it did, it would become quiet. When you settle into the moment, you realize that there is not much happening—a few things here and there. The primary awareness is of the immediacy of the moment. This is because presence—being in the now—is characterized by beingness, simply being here now. In contrast, our familiar self is based on doing, going, making things happen.” The Unfolding Now, p. 160

The bird and I were together in every particle of being. To reflect on language, here: if I was to say ‘currawong,’ in that situation, I would be to point (with this linguistic gesture) to this living, dynamic relationship; a relationship which far exceeds, in its implicit intricacy, what the word ‘currawong’ can say. The public or dictionary meaning of that word is nothing. It’s certainly laughable in that moment to think that ‘currawong’ means a ‘something’ – an isolated, permanent, independent object in space-time. Poetry says it best:

Snow in withered field, nothing to touch.
Sparrow’s head clear as sky
– From the poem ‘Sparrow in Withered Field.’ In Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi. (Translated by Lucien Stryk).

Granted, this is not a perception readily accessible to some people, because we are mostly unfamiliar with experiential space and the ungraspability of the ground reality. But, familiarity grows with the practice of mindfulness. Then, it is possible to name a ‘groundless ground’; which the Nikāya Buddha indicates by referring to the ‘un-’ nature: unborn, undying, unailing; and ‘unmanifest consciousness,’ for instance. The odd thing is that moments like this occur all day, but we don’t notice them, until mindfulness reveals them. My spiritual grandfather Buddhadasa called them ‘little nirvanas.’

In default, trance mode of consciousness, if we notice such an empty moment – empty of ‘thing’-ing and constructing – we are afraid of its silence, its formlessness, and the unnameable quality of everything. Why do we fear? Primarily because our constructed ‘me’ has dropped away. There’s now no locatable someone behind the eyes doing the knowing. Yet, right there is the end of birth and death; and, ironically, right here is freedom and independence as individuals.

Until we train ourselves to pause, slow down, and stay for such moments of ‘empty contact’ –through the contemplative disciplines – then, we don’t appreciate the luminous wonder of the world and other people. We are in a pure land with radiant beings, and don’t see it.

the night’s downpour;
in this alley,
this half-eaten peach.

– Christopher Ash.

The Revolutionary Pause

By admin

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.

_____________

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.

________________

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

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.

Encountering Vastness

By admin

On August 12, 2015

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

“These practices will reconnect you to a bigger perspective of space and timelessness, so you can see everything with the eyes of the one who knows life’s vastness and mystery.” – Jack Kornfield, A Lamp in the Darkness.

I’ll share a passage from that life review, about one experience that I had while ‘tripping.’ It had to do with an experience of gazing at the Milky Way. This experience, along with what I was developing in meditation at the time, gave me a sense of the possibility of developing spacious awareness.

One time, I was staying with friends on a country farm, and it was a clear night. The Milky Way was streaming across the vast, pitch-black sky. After taking the LSD, I went out into a paddock. I stood in the open, awed by quiet of the countryside, with the huge, arching expanse of the night sky. I felt my whole experience of happiness at being in that place, in that moment.

Then, as I gazed upward, I noticed the crisp and silent clarity of my awareness of it all. Awareness itself was a part of the experience. It wasn’t stars ‘out there,’ to be grasped by a ‘me in here.’ There was an interaction, which had the qualities of space, and clarity. In this meeting with the night sky, I had momentarily looked backward into the ‘knowing’ itself, and suddenly an enormous sense of boundlessness opened up. Further, the knowing and the space had no locale. It couldn’t be found, if we use the ordinary, knower-known meaning of ‘find.’

When I included my silent awareness in the totality of what I was experiencing, a felt quality of boundless unity arose, unified with that knowing. Remarkably, the non-locateable aspect of awareness wasn’t too disconcerting, this time. It had been on other non-drug, meditative occasions. Instead, it was accompanied by sufficient peace to give me a chance to reflect on the experience while it was happening.

This was a space of clarity and silent awareness that had no inside or outside. It was a sense of unity with, and inside, everything – a sense of spaciousness which included all the marvellous, living natural world. The cricket chirrups were as sharp as the stars, and they too were not in the usual time-space. They were non-locatable.

When I tried to find a concept for my felt sense of the whole experience, the only word that made any sense of what I was experiencing was: ‘One.’ “There is only the ‘One’”, I thought. And that ‘One’ included me. This was awesome, and, at the same time, in came a tiny bit of consternation. At that time, I still hadn’t come to peace with my personality, and much of my activities were (unwittingly) about escaping myself, not about accepting myself; and, certainly not about accepting that I am a natural event, a natural expression of the universe. So, it was natural that I should have some misgivings.

However, in the paddock under the Milky Way, the possibility of an integration with all that is, was, or ever would be, was palpable. It was both disconcerting and, at the same time, a wonderful experience. It was so simple, so natural (while, of course, unnaturally induced). It was natural because it was of awareness.

I was moving, at that stage of my life, into a phase of realising that meditation brings this integration much more wholesomely, stably, and even deeply. Meditation trains a stable, pliable, heart – a mind of love, with a sharp capacity for inquiry in the midst of the experience. Nevertheless, all my years of drug-free spacious mind-states, have only confirmed the essential insights of that precious blessing in the paddock.

I now know from experience that, for many of us, the loss of a locatable self is naturally disconcerting, and moreover – it can feel like one is dying. I also know from practice that we can train ourselves to stay for that ego-death. Bodily death itself will mean dissolution of any locatable self. Location of a self is dependent on constructions centred around a body, and in death, the sense of body dissolves in the early stages. Meditation training titrates the experience, until one can enter it deeply.

After I’d gone completely clean, free of drugs, I was in the company one day of a Tibetan teacher, when someone asked him about drug experiences. He said (something like), “Oh, that has some good effects. It can introduce people to the ‘inside’ life. But, you have to give it up, sooner or later, and find the inside naturally.”

Even later, I was to experiment a lot with Time, Space and Knowledge exercises, which suited me perfectly, because I had become so accustomed to resting into boundless, experiential space. On the other hand, true to human form, I got a bit too spacey, and had to learn to ground myself. I twigged to this one day, when a friend said, “Christopher, you’re in danger of getting attached to formlessness.” Vast space isn’t an escape from relationship – it accommodates, it is a ground for relationship.

“We have limitless possibilities to find fulfilment and satisfaction in our lives and in our relationships with one another. By learning to directly contact the essence of our being, we can discover an unbounded freedom which is not only a freedom from some external restraint, but is itself the dynamic expression of the meaning and value of being human.” – Tarthang Tulku, Time, Space and Knowledge

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

Living the Body from Inside Out

By admin

On August 1, 2015

In Body, Focusing, Mindfulness, Practices

“Many of us have difficulty seeing ourselves as a radiant and vital embodiment of beauty, capable of wonderful sensations, fine qualities, and inspiring thoughts.” – Tarthang Tulku, Joy of Being

Indeed. I was mindful as I was driving down to Sydney this morning, to facilitate a weekend workshop, and I asked myself, “What am I not accepting, these days? Am I holding anything away?”

There is a way of asking, so that this is not an intellectual question. Ask such a question, open-endedly, and then experience yourself living in the body from the inside out. Funny thing to say, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have to say it, if my culture didn’t have the habit of knowing the body through its image, a body welded to its representations. I interpret the Mindfulness Sutta – where it says, “a contemplative dwells contemplating the body in the body” – as meaning: know it intimately, know it non-conceptually.

So, we can learn to invite the whole of life, known and unknown, to show up in the gap after the question. This way language needn’t be stuck in the subject-object structures. It becomes a living interaction, rather than a repeating of old meanings.Language-ing can stay fresh, when its origin (the body) is included in its use. This naturally takes practice, and some shadow work:

“The senses are responsive, able to generate exquisitely beautiful feelings, but to receive their blessings, it is necessary to open pathways now constricted by confusion and stress and clogged by repressed anger and self-hatred.” – Tarthang Tulku, Joy of Being

So, there I am sweeping those beautiful curves of the highway descent near Linen, and I ask my question. And in response, my body dissolves into light. The driving is steady, and I have a whole-body answer to my question. Simultaneously present for driving and steadfast for the inquiry, i hear the whisper: ‘This radiance.’

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” – Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love.

Turning Toward the Deathless

By admin

On July 10, 2015

In Meditation, Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

Ch’an master Huang-po (died 850 CE) said: When you are suddenly facing the end of life, what will you use to fend off birth and death? Don’t wait till you are thirsty to dig the well. If you neglect to do the work, then when the end approaches your limbs will not be properly arranged, the road ahead will be vague and you will whirl about in confusion bumping into things. How painful. I urge you all to take advantage of the period when you are physically strong to seek and find clear insight. This key link is very easy. It is just that you must mobilize your will to the utmost to do it.

Practising dissolution of the elements this morning, I was aware, during the process of a feeling, just a tad, of claustrophobia. Dissolution of the elements, sometimes called dissolution of the body, is a practice of dying. It simulates the dying process, and naturally, I was going to find my options somewhat narrowed down, heh?

I haven’t suffered seriously from claustrophobia, but sometimes I feel a touch of it, when in movies I see cavers in a tight spot; or when I’ve had to stay put in an MRI – as I had to do last August, to explore my cxancer. At these times, I can feel a touch of suffocating feeling. I can’t imagine what full-on claustrophobia must be like. I’ve met people who can’t get in elevators, for example.

Anyhow, while I was practising dying – as I came to the part where the senses diminish in their acuity, and the body grows weaker, then I began to feel a little of that feeling, the MRI feeling. But I stayed there for it, included it. Why not? It’s just something that moves. And, it passed naturally. Because all things do pass.

Then, as the meditation progressed, at deeper levels where the sankharas diminish, that feeling came back again. How interesting! Sankharas (its Sanskrit, but this will be an English word some day) are mental factors that are constantly at play, fashioning our experience. In their unrefined mode, they are mostly motivated by orienting toward pleasant experiences, and away from neutral or negative ones. When I was in the MRI back in August, my meditative task in there – the mindfulness task – was to not follow those tendencies to dissociate; habitual tendencies to get away from the unpleasant features of the experience. In such circumstances, I usually invite space, so that the unpleasant can be accommodated.

Maybe this description is for another day, though. Right now, back to the Mediation on the Dissolution of the Elements. At the level of encountering the dissolution of the fashioning tendencies, then I began, again, to feel a touch of claustrophobia.

I sensed into the suffocating experience quite directly, including it in awareness. And, later, I was able to recall it, to investigate it further. I felt into it, knowing it from the inside. I could see what was happening with the loss at each level of the meditation: there was a dropping away of familiar behaviour possibilities. This means a loss of sense of a static self. (See this explanation here about the sense of self and behaviour possibilities, if you like.) The familiar sense of a permanent ’I’ constructed on the known behaviour possibilites, dissolves. This disappearance of behaviour possibilities is where the claustrophobia comes from. I’m reminded of something that John Tarrant Roshi said once, about Zen practice. (I’ve looked for the reference, but can’t find it; but it was something like:) In Zen practice, it’s like digging a well, and at some stage you find you have dug very deep, and you realize: there’s not much room in here!

This could be said about any honest self-inquiry, that it’s meant to humiliate my egoic pretension that I am the master of my reality. Actually, that pretension is just the sankharas talking, fashioning their version of mastery, which is false mastery. At this point, lest I give the wrong impression. Not all sankharas are so troublesome. The fashioning processes that were at work in shaping this meditation, and in maintaining my mindful attention during the process, these are healthy sankharas. They aid in the process of turning toward the deathless. Dying practice is good for finding this out. “You must mobilize your will to the utmost to do it.” Neither is all ‘sense of self’ false. (Read that other post.)

However, just now I’m helping us be familiar with the terrain of a mind getting used to its certain death. In the meditation, my thoughts went occasionally to unresolved things, between me and others, and also to some pleasant thoughts. But the fact that there is no room to move in dying, only showed how irrelevant these things were, and how irrelevant having small-minded thoughts will be at the time of death. Yet, isn’t this the habit that we daily foster, by following such thoughts? So, we’re daily, whether know it or not, are training wrongly for death. How so? I’m daily training my mind to follow any old fashioning tendency that arises, in response to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling-tones or experiences. If I don’t daily investigate the nature and condition of this mind, and if I don’t get to know its habits, then – though my digital gadgets, my books, my fave scarf, and even my loved ones can’t follow me into death – the result of my mental habits will accompany me into the dying process, diminishing my capacity for the marvellous discoveries to be made there.

I heard once of men on death row, who who after some mindfulness training, were quite amazed to find their minds were still plotting revenge, plans that were to be fulfilled when they got out! Such scenarios reduce one’s energy for the kind of presence needed, for peace and awakening, at the time of death. Because, regular dying practice is a help to utilise death as an opportunity for awakening.

As the process went to its end, there was the still, silent space of fundamental, boundless, luminous ground. Here exist and not-exist wouldn’t make any sense, if there was any sense of false self left to apply those labels. Because of the accumulation of habit tendencies (sankharas, again), this luminous space is traditionally said to flash by incredibly quickly for those who have not become acquainted with it during life, before the rebirth process occurs. I don’t know about the rebirth process, but if you train yourself in this process, I’m sure you will verify that bit about how quickly the space could pass, if your not familiar with the fundamental nature of the mind. Bounlessness is so intimate that it’s easy to miss. It’s said to be what water is to a fish.

And, even just to relax in the earlier stages of the death process – let alone talk about resting in boundlessness – it’s clear to me that one needs to be like space, at all times. Any identity founded in what comes and goes – that is, built on the five sentient processes (khandhas in Pāḷi) – any kind of identity goes at death.

So, the good news is: Sit out the claustrophobia, and space opens up. I could sense this morning, stronger than usual, in the meditating body, the space element corresponded with a point in the heart. That’s the good news.

A Mandala Experience

By admin

On July 5, 2015

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

AN INQUIRY PROCESS
In this exercise, I used the mindfulness of the five sentient processes (Pāli: khandha; see last post). I also used a form of mindfulness that I practice, related to the Buddha’s teaching on Loka (which I‘ll write about another day.) In this particular mindfulness practice, the experience of ‘time, space, and knowing,’ come into play, and also the distinctions ‘above, below, all around and in the middle,’ come into play. But I won’t speak about those things now. Instead, I‘ll speak of my use of Richard Moss’ Mandala of Being process.

THE ‘MANDALA OF BEING’ TOOL
I must admit, I didn’t know how this was going to go. I had an idea, based on Richard Moss’ work, and I just gave it a go. He sets up a space where you stand in the middle spot of a five point mandala; with the middle position being yourself as you truly are, in the Now. Here you are not limited by stories, by narratives. The other four points are the storied positions: ‘me/subject’ on the left; the ‘you/object’ on the right; ‘the past’ behind; and, ‘the future’ in the forward position. You start with experiencing yourself completely grounded in the Now. I found this picture* on the net which might help you to visualise the process:

I don’t want to try to represent Richard Moss’ process, because I know I wouldn’t do a very good job of that, because I have more to learn about how he uses that structure. However, I played with it, as a part of my ‘A Year to Live’ practice, when investigating how the issue of death inhabits me, how it shapes my habits of body, speech and mind. I started in the Now, and using Voice Dialogue, I invited “Pure and Total Presence.” (from Tibetan master Longchenpa). In the centre, I could touch that freedom, that love. That part is the uncomplicated bit.

As I say, I was curious about the other four points, and didn’t know exactly what I’d find. As it turned out, it was very beautiful, and very helpful. I’ll describe what it turned out to be, rather than describing the fishing around process that I went through to get there. What emerged was a schema representing the shock I got in 1975, when I realised that there was no ‘separate me’ to be found behind my eyes looking out.

HOW IT WENT
On the left I stood in the position of the one who believes that the ‘I’ has some existence, and will die. He’s fearful, and attached to the five sentient processes. Remember: I was able to step back over to the centre, and refresh the open awareness and the compassion which I needed to hold his contractions, his anxiety. As I explored the intricate dynamics of that position, it was clear that clinging to the idea of a self-existent ‘I’ was at play, here; and, with that flowed the fear of not existing. I thought, then, that something about ‘not existing’ must be in the ‘you’ position. But first, back to the centre one more time, before inviting the right position. It was full of power and peace, in the middle.

I didn’t exactly know what kind of ‘you’ I was going to find over on the right side of the wheel, but generally knew it had something to do with the opposite of the angst of existence and death, which I found over on the left.

I explored two sub personalities here, as it turns out: both of whom, I found, were zoning out, but each quite differently. One was kind of la-la. This one would happily get lost in imagination, stoned, or whatever, and never think of existence or non-existence. This one, I sensed, would be a master of strategies of pleasure. He was very young.

Exploring the second ‘right-side-of-the-wheel sub-personality’ was a more powerful experience, and I stayed with it longer, and it, too, turned out to be related to that 1975 experience. This one was in a daze – a kind of gaping stare – in a trance of believing that he didn’t exist.

Imagine someone who thinks that they don’t exist, but are confronted with the fact that they are experiencing phenomena, experiencing life going on, anyway – and that this going-on includes a most perplexing phenomena: his own body. That was how it was for this one, and it describes how I was, for at least a year after that mid-seventies shock. I remember I used to sit staring at my hands, not understanding how there could be hands ‘there,‘ but no ‘me’ back here’ seeing those hands. How could that be?

It was a tough time, but in retrospect, a very valuable time, because I had no choice but to explore the whole thing of how the subject-object dualism happens. I was too far gone, to turn back to conventional reality.

For none of these positions – the angst-ing existence position, and two ‘zone-out’ positions – did I have to step back to the middle very much. Instead, I found myself holding the sentient process of each with a lot of love and awareness; not analysing, or trying to heal them away, or anything. It was more like: the middle came with me, to learn, heal, and love the delusions of each sub-personality.

I suppose that’s enough to give you an idea of what’s possible. I also explored the stories about the future and past, which come with this dichotomy of exist/not-exist. And, again, I regularly stepped back to the middle, to experience not being limited, caught or identified with those dualistic narratives.

NOT LIMITED BY DISTINCTIONS
In the centre, in pure and total presence, is the freedom of not being defined or limited by the concepts of inside/outside, exist/not-exist, or even up/down, or left-right. Again, this ‘up-down’ exploration reminded me of the 1975 experience, too, because at that time ‘up’ and ‘down’ were a big deal for me. The distinction made no sense, anymore. I couldn’t figure out how ‘up’ and ‘down’ couldn’t mean anything.

Now they are useful concepts, but I have come to understand that they are derived from pure and total presence. The resolution reminds me of a saying from the Lankavatara Sutra, which I often quote: “Things are not as they appear to be. Neither are they otherwise.”

I hope this is helpful to you, dear Reader. It has been for me, and I’ll continue to explore it – not here on the blog, perhaps, but by myself. Thank you for being a part of the occasion of this experiment. And, many thanks to Richard for this tool.
_____________________________
* It comes from http://howtosavetheworld.ca/

Space, Clarity and Love

By admin

On June 29, 2015

In Death, Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta, Resisting Death

I was sleeping one night, on retreat, nearly thirty years ago, when I had a very helpful experience. I wasn’t half asleep; just having a reverie of some kind. And, after it happened, I left my tent, and went outside, to breath the night air by the lake, and gaze at the sky, the Milky Way pouring across the inky darkness. It happened in the dead still of night.

It was brief, but it changed me: I suddenly found my awareness in an ascent, an ascent of increasing space, with increasing joy and love. I got frightened, though, because accompanying this increase in space and love, there was a corresponding dissolution of my ‘sense of self.’ At the point that fear arose, though, a mantra kicked in. The gentle repetition of the Benza Guru mantra stabilised my consciousness, and I came to normal waking consciousness with a beautiful feeling of peace.

(Over the succeeding years, the experience gave me a new understanding of the later Mahayana, and Zen teaching of ‘Consciousness-only,’ which I prefer to call ‘experiencing-only.’)

By habit, I felt I’d failed – I obviously wasn’t ready to let my consciousness become pure non-egoic awareness, without clinging. On the other hand, when I reported it to a more experienced spiritual friend, his response was very positive. He saw it as a sign of development. He was right, and it’s interesting how quickly I took a more judgemental view of it. We tend to interpret such things through our normal egoic lenses. Afraid to acknowledge our light, and inclined to take refuge in limitations.

Once someone dear to me said, “I want to die in my sleep, so that I won’t have to experience it.” I still chuckle at that idea. My reply a that time was based on this experience. I said, “When you die, you know you are dying, or have died, and sleep won’t protect you from knowing.” Dreams are an instance of this, because a knowing is definitely at play in dreams.

My subsequent experiences have only confirmed that one is alone at death. This is the background, I believe, to the suggestion on the part of the tantric lineages, that family, friends, wealth, social standing… nothing will support you at the time of death, but the results of your practice.