Differences - Inside & Outside

@ Chris:

Well, I think that's right as far as it goes Chris. It seems worth stressing again and again in this context that others may perceive my behavior in myriad ways depending on their filters. So I guess there are two kinds of "outside' changes, at least. ONE: physiological changes in the brain and body. These can be in principle objectively verified and linked to experiential and behavioral factors. TWO: how another individual perceives my intentions and judges the morality or unmorality of my actions, which is in principle forever unverifiable I think. At best, a community who shares a certain set of conventions can judge me as conforming to or deviating from those conventions.

On the other hand, from my own point of view, I feel like I have gained a deeper trust in my already congenitally decent capacity to evaluate whether others have good or ill intentions, or are acting skillfully or not, and I wouldn't be surprised if such increased clarity in perceiving others' intentions and ill or good will is a common experience of practitioners (if only because, IMO, such clarity is generally our default state and only obscured by socialization, and practice tends to peel back those layers of the onion revealing more intuitive, less filtered modes of perception). And I've already said that, for me right now, the basis of morality (such as it is... don't like the implications of that word...) is simply whether there is an intent and skillful actualization of the intent to benefit (or at least, not harm) others. So in light of that, I grant that a community of modestly and/or exceptionally accomplished practitioners would probably be able to offer quasi-objective appraisals of behavior change in other practitioners, if they agreed to the... convention... that I do.

Tricky stuff!!!!

I'll just mention again that I think, in light of observable changes, it's interesting to me that in a Maha and Vajrayana context, liberation from (first the belief in and ultimately the experience of) a solid separate definite continuous "self" is just the beginning of the Path! And specifically, of the twofold benefit of self-and-others, it is said to accomplish the benefit of self primarily in that the liberated practitioner enjoys the benefit of liberation, which it seems to me is what we're talking about here and in the pragmatic dharma scene generally. That's not to say that liberation doesn't benefit others as well; of course it does, I think that's clear. However, from a Maha or Vajra perspective, there is much more that a liberated practitioner can become in terms of their qualities and capacities in order to really influence those with whom they interact in beneficial ways that are a lot more dramatic than being able to teach liberation practices or to simply be less of a bother, a bit more easy going, a bit less judgmental, and so on.

... That's not to say that liberation doesn't benefit others as well; of course it does, I think that's clear. However, from a Maha or Vajra perspective, there is much more that a liberated practitioner can become in terms of their qualities and capacities in order to really influence those with whom they interact in beneficial ways that are a lot more dramatic than being able to teach liberation practices or to simply be less of a bother, a bit more easy going, a bit less judgmental, and so on.



-jake

In light of our Cocktail Conversation Policy (which requires we feel free to take threads in any direction that offers itself) I recently asked a couple of Buddhist priests *why* everyone says "may the merit of my practice benefit all sentient beings" and by what means that is supposed to take effect, given that everyone (even rank beginners) is saying it.

One of them said that:

a) by practicing we are gradually liberating ourselves, and thus taking ourselves out of the pool of sentient beings needing the intervention of bodhisattvas to save them (lightening the load) and

b) by practicing we are developing into people who no longer contribute as much suffering to the general pool of suffering in the world, because we become more compassionate and so on.

Yeah, I was talking about this with some Gelugpa monks recently. (The Gelugpa school is a Tibetan sect, it is headed by the Dalai Lama, and generally it is considered the most conservative sect of Tibetan Buddhism, the name meaning "The Virtuous Ones", and they have been traditionally opposed to most of the wild stuff Vajrayana is known for). They said pretty similar stuff, very humble, very simple--- very conservative Mahayana !

They also said something about merit that has been dedicated being in a metaphorical vault, it can't be destroyed by bad actions (in traditional Asian Mahayana, it is said that one act of anger can erase a thousand lifetimes of accumulated merit, for whatever that's worth... now that I have my gin and tonic, I suppose we can loosen this up a bit

Nevertheless, I've had some amazing interactions with people who were accomplished Vajrayana and Dzogchen and Mahamudra masters who exhibeted not only laid back and easy going and nonviolent like these Gelugpa monks but who also demonstrated qualities and capacities that were way way way way beyond that, magical even...

"also demonstrated qualities and capacities that were way way way way beyond that, magical even..."

Of course! That's half the fun.

And that was part of what I was gently prying about when I asked the priest about the dedication of merit. Because I know full well every thought, word and intention manifests, and by saying these things (and every other thing we say in a service, ritual or our own prayers and daily life) we are impacting the world at every level in a way that can easily be called magical. The priest didn't go there with his answer (he tends not to go there when speaking to the sangha), but I know it's true and if I pressed him on it privately he would admit it.

We had a funny interaction the other day when in front of the sangha, speaking about Shinto. In answer to a question about ancestor spirits he dismissed the idea that people talk to spirits in a literal way, as if they might hear voices in their heads. Afterwards I went up to him and said "You know darn well we do too hear the spirits talk when we talk to them!" He said, "Of course, but that would be too startling for these (rather secular) students to think about without a whole lot of discussion and explanation." He tends to save the more mysterious teachings for the priests-in-training, not the public teachings. I think there's something to be said for that, though it's not always my own choice.

@ Ona:

Yes, I definitely had that feeling from the Monks, whom I liked very much. There are different degrees of being out or in with that stuff, for sure.

In my sides out your other you not me no yes . . .

YES

Ha ha!!

Knock knock
Who's there?

Pththththth

Mom, Mike is making fun of me![image]

-cmarti

Was NOT.

My comment this morning -- there is no self and no other. No inside, no outside (I introduced a sneaky duality here, didn't I?) Implication -- we are all reflections of what just IS, so we act on all beings at the same time.



-cmarti

Some days all this stuff is just so irrelevant I can't even make myself thing about it. It's like an elastic pull that prevents stepping back and analyzing experience. It's not about there being or not being an inside/outside, it's just completely not applicable. Does that distinction make sense to anyone?

"It's not about there being or not being an inside/outside, it's just completely not applicable. Does that distinction make sense to anyone?" ~Ona

No. Though, using inside/outside language serves a very functional purpose. Aside from that, my experience is not one where the inside/outside duality can be truly supported.

The nature of concepts and constructs is such that they can be outgrown. Or rather, that they are not self-sustainable. They break down.

BUT -- and this is something I've had a hard time articulating -- it is the impermanent nature of concepts that allows them to arise in the first place.

This fact hit me hard the other day during class. My professor was talking about Ayn Rand, and he mentioned her rigid objectivist stance that "A is necessarily A, and that's just the way it is." In response, I wrote the following in my notebook:

"It is because 'A' is not necessarily 'A' that allows 'A' to be 'A'. What allows 'A' to be 'A' at all is due to its not necessarily being 'A'."

In other words, the arising of anything depends upon the impermanence of everything - including this concept. Turtles all the way down.

The immediacy of experience when conceptuality is dismantled is beyond explanation.

"The immediacy of experience when conceptuality is dismantled is beyond explanation."

This. ^^ Is what I was getting at with "inapplicable" I think. At least it feels like that's what I was getting at.

But I really like your clarification about the impermanence of concepts. Thanks for that.

You're welcome.



And I had a feeling that's what you were getting at. My reply was simply an affirmation of what you said, put into my own words. I think I'm at a place in my practice where using my own words feel important, as though any other way feels like counterfeiting. Know what I mean?



I freaking love this forum.

I can't get over the fact that an actual college professor was taking Ayn Rand seriously enough to mention in a college classroom. It's a big world.

"I can't get over the fact that an actual college professor was taking Ayn Rand seriously enough to mention in a college classroom. It's a big world."

My professor isn't a fan of Rand by any means, just to clear that up Though, his 13-year old son is reportedly a big fan of the book Atlas Shrugged. Smarty pants.

Actually, I think the inside/outside distinction is very useful, and I'm not sure how abstract it actually is. To me it points to the irreducibility of "perspective", and the inescapable fact that there are other perspectives besides my own. I'm not sure that this is only known in a representational, conceptual way. I see there is an immediate way in which this is grokked as well as a conceptual way that this is understood, developmentally. I think what concerns me about effacing this difference is that solipsism not take its place-- the sense that there is "just this experience" in direct knowledge, i.e., just MY perspective, and my knowledge of other perspectives-- other sentient beings, thus-- is indirect and conceptual. Actually, I'm pretty sure that such a view is epistemologically naive (not that I'm sure anyone here is suggesting this... I can't tell where to draw the line between serious discussion and joking around in the recent posts on this thread ).

I would say there is a big difference between difference and separateness, and the phenomenological evidence that there are other perspectives does not mean you and I are separate-- just different. To reiterate, I think that the multiplicity of perspectives is irreducible and immediately known, and not ONLY a conceptual imposition, inference, or deduction. It's not something we know by representing it to ourselves, as a hypotheses we develop at concrete operations for instance that there are other minds. There is a direct irreducible actuality of mutuality and otherness that is the basis for developmental representations of "other minds". (But maybe I'm totally missing what you guys were just talking about).

Well, I wouldn't say you TOTALLY missed what we were saying, but...

I agree with you. Yes, there are other perspectives. For me that doesn't negate the fact that the inner/outer distinction isn't misguided. There's no "in here" that experiences something "out there" in any real sense. But that need not imply solipsism.

For me, it comes down to frames of reference. Any time we assume that there's a reference point beyond direct perception, we add something unncessary to experience. I really do think that seeing occurs in reference to seeing, and hearing in reference to hearing, etc. There doesn't need to be an "I" who hears or sees. And this doesn't negate the fact that other beings also experience seeing in reference to seeing, based on their organism-environment experience.

In fact, solipsism seems to imply that experience is somehow generated by a mind, somewhat like what is depicted in the moive The Matrix. Though, this has never been demonstrated in a laboratory. Sense experience is not something that has to be interpretted and then projected against some screen in one's mind. It happens in the environment, as it happens, quite directly. There is no mediator. And THAT'S what I'm getting at with the inner/outer delusion.

Does that make sense?

"I can't get over the fact that an actual college professor was taking Ayn Rand seriously enough to mention in a college classroom. It's a big world."My professor isn't a fan of Rand by any means, just to clear that up Though, his 13-year old son is reportedly a big fan of the book Atlas Shrugged. Smarty pants.

-awouldbehipster

I can't think of Rand without also remembering this bizarre movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRR0a0ONLI

Well, I wouldn't say you TOTALLY missed what we were saying, but...

-awouldbehipster

hahaha! okay

For me, it comes down to frames of reference. Any time we assume that there's a reference point beyond direct perception, we add something unncessary to experience. I really do think that seeing occurs in reference to seeing, and hearing in reference to hearing, etc. There doesn't need to be an "I" who hears or sees. And this doesn't negate the fact that other beings also experience seeing in reference to seeing, based on their organism-environment experience.
[...] Sense experience is not something that has to be interpretted and then projected against some screen in one's mind. It happens in the environment, as it happens, quite directly. There is no mediator. And THAT'S what I'm getting at with the inner/outer delusion.
Does that make sense?


-awouldbehipster

(emphasis mine)

Yes, the highlighted portions of the quote articulate what I'm getting at very well I think. That sense experience happens in the environment / the environment happens in sense experience, that this is a mysteriously nondual reality, is important. I just wanted to emphasize that direct sense experience isn't of disconnected qualities that we then somehow abstract from to construct a world of things and selves, but rather, things sentient and non are immediately sensible and intelligible in sense experience.

In ignorance, we do project a certain kind of 'existence' onto things and people which is false, as if there are substantial self-existing subjects and objects, but I'm gently insisting that "what is given" in direct sense experience isn't JUST colors, shapes and sounds and textures, but rather, various conditions within and around the sensing organism (including other sensing organisms), which are directly intelligible/sensible. This very distinction between sensible and intelligible, with the former pertaining to a "body" and the latter a 'mind', seems suspect to me as it's founded on a substantial view of mind-body dualism. Rather, I think that we sense immediately intelligible conditions within and around the body mind organism, AND we construct interpretations of these conditions in our minds according to developmentally unfolding paradigms of representations. But I don't believe there's a soup of "blooming, buzzing" sensate confusion that precedes the development of these paradigms, waiting to be shaped into something intelligible, and I think research in early childhood development points to this (that somehow, he have a very immediate "sense" of things like other minds, spatial relationships, and physical forces way prior to the Piageten developments that are supposed to be necessary for having these understandings. Perhaps Piaget was charting our capacity to articulate verbally and thus consciously reflect on these factors, rather than to be aware of them at all?).

Thoughts?

"But I don't believe there's a soup of "blooming, buzzing" sensate
confusion that precedes the development of these paradigms, waiting to
be shaped into something intelligible,"

by this do you mean you don't believe there is

a) raw sensory data
b) interpretation of the data by the mind based on learning/categorization at a very basic level
c) additional layering of interpretation based on experience

For example a person who has not been able to hear for many years, given a corrective device, will at first hear just a stream of noise and has to relearn how to interpret into voices, bird song, the sound of a plane, and so on.

When I see, at the most primary level there is just color, shape, movement - pixels in a way. Then I apply my learned experience to shape and name them: a pine tree with a turkey standing near it.

And then I apply additional information from memories, etc: my aunt always liked turkeys. I'm afraid of turkeys, I hope it doesn't bite me. (adrenaline rush, fear)

We may be talking about completely different things.

Warning -- TMI and long-windedness ahead:

Just to go back to changes from practice for a bit --

Though at least in the "hard core dharma" movement insight is somehow supposed to be separated from basic mental health issues, I often wonder how much one's "baseline" mental health at the beginning of a dharma practice influences just how effective the subsequent practice is and how much effect it ultimately has on one's sense of well-being.

I know that my baseline was somewhat low. Looking back now, I can see that coming into adulthood I had two huge and interrelated problems -- extremely low self esteem (so much so that my personality often felt very fragmented and incomplete) and an uncanny inability to live in real life, I couldn't get it that I had to abide by the same basic common sense rules of life. From 1974 to 1989 I went to 11 colleges, had dozens of eventually dropped career aspirations, lived in at least 60 separate residences for varying lengths of time, had dozens and dozens of jobs, was jailed twice for failure to pay traffic tickets on time, and spend brief periods in mental hospitals and countless hours with countless mental health professionals. Though I had intermittent stability of jobs and residences, I always ended up having to have my parents, my brother or my sisters rescue me and put me up and/or give me money or vehicles to help me survive.

Though things got a little better from 1989 on and I certainly grew up a lot in that time -- having two kids for me at least kind of forced enough maturity to become more stable about jobs, money, career, housing.

Now from even before 1974 (when I was 18) I was off and on doing meditation practices. And, I am pretty sure I got SE in about 1983. But, clearly, just because I had some of those insights, I didn't become particularly wise or a particularly effective human. I was often treated for depression and anxiety, my long term marriage was tortuous (except for the parenting part which wonderful and an experience I am forever grateful for), I was socially awkward most of the time (I still didn't feel at all comfortable with myself) and I often engaged in damaging compulsive behaviors of many varieties.

It's like I was having two experiences: I'd often have wonderful insights and moments of clarity and unity and peace and then immediately do something dysfunctional or damaging, or find myself in a horrible state of sorrow or anxiety.

When I encountered "hard core dharma" in 2007 I think I really hoped I could find a way to deepen my insight while at the same time just having some actual comfort as a person on earth. I guess what I am reporting is that that actually has happened.

(Interesting that the last time I ever got mental health treatment and/or took anti-depressants was in 2006)

Anyway I do think that having such a consistent practice, along with an actual loving new marriage, a sense of accomplishment as a parent and as a worker, and keeping engaged with many of you in spite of often wanting to stop, has changed the average way I experience life.

I'm serious, most of my adult life was spent just feeling awful -- about everything. What I just did, what I didn't do, what I should do, what people did or didn't think about me, what an asshole I was, and on and on. Just miserable. Lots of pain, anxiety, confusion.

Now, really, my baseline is a sort of empty-readiness -- does that make sense? I've developed some good habits of being open and flexible and lacking in too many strident fixed agendas. I can feel joy. And love. Anxiety is rare (though it still comes) and I can mostly just let it arrive and go on it's own without turning it into a big drama that just makes it worse. Stuff like that.

Now, how much of this is just being 55? How much is somehow learning how to be a grown up through being a parent? How much of it is practice/insight/vipassana/samatha? How much from thinking? How much from just seeing?

I really dont' know. But I do like my life much much better now.

@ Mike: thanks for sharing, I'm pretty sympathetic with your perspective. I think it's possible to actually separate insight, concentration, and everyday life/ethics only on an abstract level for the purpose of showing how to cultivate those aspects of our experience optimally. But in reality, I think they are deeply interwoven. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in your post that I want to reflect on but I thought I'd just mention that!

@Ona: hmm, maybe we're putting too fine a point on this. I think what I said was as best articulated as I can make it right now and I'm willing to let it go for the time being. I understand what you're pointing at, but for instance in the case of the person with a hearing-corrective device, can we assume that their process is strictly analogous to that of a feutus/infant? I'm not sure we know enough about what the brain actually is, how it actually functions, and how it actually develops to be certain of that. Is it possible that an adult brain, accustomed to knowing things in a highly conceptualized way, may be the source of this phenomena? Might a Zen master in a similar position have a different experience? Might the physical structure of the implant and its interface have a leveling effect on ambient sounds which the natural ear does not have? I don't know...

@jake - I didn't mean to make it into such a physiological/neuroscience thing. I was just trying to understand what you were talking about overall, and I thought I kind of got that part, so that's what I responded to. But I clearly missed your point there, too. If you are up for it, can you try again, dumbed down a bit?