Self Awareness

So in what contexts does this breakdown in communication occur, and what problem does it create? In other words, if my awakening doesn't fit the definitions of some lama because they have a different way of talking about it, who cares? If high priest so and so won't speak at Buddhist Geeks because he doesn't think anyone there is speaking about the same kind of awakening he understands, so what?

You can create a new technical and accurate vocabulary, but there are still numerous traditions that don't want to talk openly about attainments, and there are others who love to do the "there's no one here to be enlightened" game... they don't care what words you use. Who is the target of this project?

One possible "target for this project" are those who are "stuck" in some way, which includes just about everyone; myself included. Bad maps are horrible traps. Really, if only we could let go of our maps long enough to find another way, we'd all be better off.

Personally, I have a hard time getting behind a grand mapping project, because I know too much about the slippery nature of language, meaning, contexts, etc. I don't think inner experience is able to be classified the way physics classifies particles, and it would take me a while to explain why I think this. That'a not to say that Ingram's vision wouldn't bear good fruit. It's just that, like all fruit, it will eventually spoil.

My beef with language and the way it gets us stuck is grounded more in my interactions with others. Not everyone gets hung up on the same points, so we all require adjustments in view, tailored to our personal context. If one isn't stuck, or isn't unhappy with their stuckness, intervening an be pointless. Nevertheless, when I notice ways that others might be limiting themselves due to unhelpful views, I like to point them out, come what will.

On a more topic-related note, I just read the following tweet:

@ryderjaphy: "The goal of practice is to become aware of awareness."

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche #buddhism

I thought you'd like that one, Chris

[quote="Chris Marti" post=Some folks want, expect really, their practice to change their personality, end their bad habits and fix their relationships. I don't think a practice alone will do that. What it will do is make you aware of your personality traits, your bad habits and the nasty stuff you might be doing to other people.

.[/quote]
Ram Dass used to say that when he advanced in his practice he found he still had all his bad habits but now he was able to sit down and have a comfortable tea with them. With that said, I think there is a danger in definning all spiritual progress by mental... (I can't find the right word here-tricks, gyrations, exercises?) alone such as running up and down the jhanas or nanas. That seems to be an underlying thread on Kenneth and Daniel's lists by some people. I have heard people on these lists make fun of the Dalai Lama's saying spiritual progress is slowly become comfortable in your own skin and kinder toward other people. I guess I don't believe Wilber's horizontal and vertical attainments don't impact each other.

I'm not saying running up and down the jhanas or nanas isn't worthwhile. Don't know.

My take on techniques is that the techniques are supposed to be tools or exercises that help give you opportunities to pay attention and see in fresh ways. You can get sidetracked into thinking that being an expert in a technique means you are very highly realized, or that your inability to do a technique very well means you can't wake up. Both are not true.

I know. I was responding to @Jackhat

Chris, I do agree that setting expectations for progress and for a meditation session is harmful.

What do you and ona mean by self-awareness? Is how it manifests important? Can a self aware person be an a**hole?

jack

The way I'm using it is simply to mean that a person recognizes their own patterns of behavior and reaction, their needs, fears, doubts, likes and dislikes, etc. in an honest way.

So that in a context where one is feeling vulnerable, for example, one might say to the person one is with (or to oneself) "Wow, this is a context in which I feel really vulnerable" rather than just being angry or mean to other people as a reactionary way to feel safer (which is often what we do when we feel threatened but don't recognize or feel safe with the feeling of being vulnerable). Or being able to recognize that your physical discomfort is because you are very tired, and simply say "I'm really tired" instead of shouting at your kids to shut up and your husband to help with dinner, as if it's their fault you are not feeling comfortable.

So much of our behavior is "kick the dog" - something makes you deeply uncomfortable, you don't even know why, and so you kick the dog, who had nothing to do with anything, as a way of releasing tension and anger. See for example any screaming driver on the freeway, self-righteous judgemental condemnations of your neighbors or fellow citizens, and bizillions of other misery-inducing behaviors.

I don't know if Chris is thinking of some other meaning, but I'm sure he'll explain.

Chris Marti wrote: A self-aware person can certainly be an asshole.

Agreed. Self-awareness is one of many capacities that can be cultivated (or uncovered, depending on your favorite root metaphor) through practice. It can be very useful for behavior change, in that it allows for the possibility of 'standing-back' and observing one's reactions, rather than being carried away by them.

I think not being an asshole requires more than self-awareness. We also need a good idea of what it means to be an asshole, as well as what it means to not be one; both require the consideration of others over (or at least instead of only) ourselves. I can think of some ways that someone could use self-awareness for harm, rather than good. Sad, but true.

So a couple of thoughts/questions:

Do you think a person who does have self-awareness has a greater responsibility or obligation NOT to be an asshole? (For example we often allow children a wider range of "bad" behavior than adults, on the assumption that adults "know better" - but people who are not self-aware don't really "know better" do they? Or, they might be able to state the rules but can't actually integrate them, just as a kid can say "yes, hitting is bad" and at the same time hit their sibling, being sorry only because they hope to avoid punishment rather than because they have any real understanding. ??

Do you think it's beneficial for the teaching of meditation to include teaching of ethical-type practices or exercises (such as metta), to help cultivate caring about others, or do you think that's something people need to figure out on their own or learn independently? Example being if a student came to you for instruction in meditation and also had very low self-awareness or high asshole-ness, would you think it important to include overt practices or teachings to try to address that?

It occurred to me on my recent trip how much time a lot of people spend "kicking the dog" - if anything bothers them they lash out at the next thing they encounter, whether that is yelling at someone on the street, kicking the family dog, hitting their sibling, cursing at a passing driver, snarling at a store clerk, bitching at their employees, etc etc. Ones own suffering (stress) seems, by nature, to spew around like an exploding pressure cooker. I think that's pretty shitty and a really sad waste of energy. The amount of snarling at strangers I saw in San Francisco was just horrid. God forbid anyone accidentally disrupt your line of travel, they were cursed to hell and back. Pedestrians cursing bicyclists and cars, cyclists cursing cars and pedestrians, besides the crazy homeless people just cursing randomly to the air... there was more danger from the vengeful reactions than from the minor missteps that sparked them which could have been addressed with a brief apology and giving way to help the other person cross, merge or get back into position in their lane.

It reminded me of a chat I had with a Buddhist abbot once, when I was asking about the Boddhisattva vow. In part of a longer conversation he pointed out that one of the great acts of compassion we can perform is to awaken, because in doing so we stop spewing our stress onto everyone else, thus lowering the overall misery level in the world.

It also occurs to me how in some circles any talk of ethics immediately goes into the "well, depends what you mean by..." or "there shouldn't be guilt-inducing lists of ethical behaviors, sins, etc" territory, which is often a way of saying "I want other people to be nice to me, but I don't want to feel any obligation to be nice to anyone else, because they don't deserve it and I want to prioritize my own concerns."

Ona Kiser wrote: Do you think a person who does have self-awareness has a greater responsibility or obligation NOT to be an asshole?...

Maybe so. There are lots of ways to look at this, huh? For one, we tend to correlate greater maturity/awareness with greater accountability for actions, and I don't think this is misguided. This ties in with the more traditional Buddhist teachings on karma, which are based on both intention AND result. Our intentions become more and more subtle as we become more aware and mature, so the liklihood for conscious, deliberate action increases.

Ona Kiser wrote: Do you think it's beneficial for the teaching of meditation to include teaching of ethical-type practices or exercises (such as metta), to help cultivate caring about others, or do you think that's something people need to figure out on their own or learn independently? Example being if a student came to you for instruction in meditation and also had very low self-awareness or high asshole-ness, would you think it important to include overt practices or teachings to try to address that?

Yes, I do think it's beneficial to include ethics. I haven't always felt as strongly about this, but lately it's been a focus of my practice. Without ethical considerations, it's too easy for one's view to slide into solipsism, which may seem like nonduality, but it isn't. I think it's possible for some people to realize the emptiness aspect of reality without cultivating much compassion. But to really undermine self-cherishing (the Big Delusion), we have to learn to put others before ourselves. I think it would be a disservice to the student if a teacher did not at least try to make this a part of the teaching. The student will do with it what they will.

Ona Kiser wrote: It occurred to me on my recent trip how much time a lot of people spend "kicking the dog"...

Yes! We tend to blame everyone else, and everything else, for our reactions, and then we lash out at them. One of my favorite instructions of the Seven Point Mind Training is, "Drive all blame into one." On this, Ken McLeod writes: "Reactive patterns bring about precisely what you try to avoid. When things go wrong in your life, blaming circumstances doesn't help. Look at the role your own patterns play in bringing about the problem." The next training is, "Be grateful to everyone." The point is that we experience suffering not because of others, but because of our own conditioning. We can be grateful for everyone because they bring our reactions into awareness, which we can then take as path.

I just finished reading a wonderful book of teachings by the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche called Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven-Point Mind Training . I highly recommend it.

Chris Marti wrote: I have been told by a number of psychiatrists and therapists that people with low or almost non-existent self-awareness do not respond well to therapy and treatment.

I've heard the same thing in my training. A lack of self-awareness is very common with the so-called Personality Disorders, which also tend to be highly rigid, inflexible, and resistent to change. The most important aspect of good therapy is therapeutic alliance (i.e. good rapport and cooperative relationship), which is even more crucial when working with folks with low self-awareness. In many cases, the therapist simply and gently reflects the client's own thoughts and feelings back to them, to act as a kind of mirror. This moves the client from being embedded in their experience to being able to see it more objectively, as reflected back by the therapist. It isn't always smooth sailing, because a lot of clients don't like what they see, even though what they see is, more or less, who they are.

Chris Marti wrote: I doubt people with low or non-existent self-awareness delve into meditation very often and if they do they don't stick with it for long.

If they do, they can only observe what they are not subject to (i.e. embedded in). Until one develops the capacity to look at their thoughts and feelings as objects of experience, meditation isn't very transformative; at least not in a beneficial way. For some, it can cause dissociation or even psychosis

Jackson said "The next training is, "Be grateful to everyone." The point is that we experience suffering not because of others, but because of our own conditioning. We can be grateful for everyone because they bring our reactions into awareness, which we can then take as path."

This is nice, Jackson, and reminds me of something I saw last week. I was visiting friends and accompanied one on her rounds teaching meditation to groups. One group was beginners - recovering addicts at a post-jail release facility. At one point in the guided meditation she suggested this sort of thing. That one try offering gratitude towards anything painful or difficult that came up. She said it might feel hard, but it's an interesting experiment, and worth giving a try, even if it feels strange or stupid. In the discussion after several of the participants said they were beginning to find they could take that perspective on their difficulties, and that seemed tied to taking responsibility for their lives as well as being able to face the crumbling of the walls that their addictions had helped keep in place, behind which they tried to hide from sorrow and fear. It was really neat to see.

That's good to hear! This kind of thing is helpful for addiction recovery, for sure. People with substance abuse issue often struggle with reactivity and impulsivity, in part due to using fast-acting substances to avoid emotional pain. The conditioning this creates is very powerful! Anything that helps one to undermine the need to participate in the direction of their reactions is another step toward recovery.

I believe that our basic nature is basically healthy, compassionate, altruistic, etc. My psychiatrist friend believes the opposite. I believe mental development which includes meditation as well as other techniques such as a psychological technique that I do called Focusing can unbind this healthy state. The key objective for me is not self-awareness but dis-embedding from phenomena. This might or might not be implied in other's definition of self-awareness. My experience in both meditation and Focusing is that when I get rid of internal crap,hindrances, blind spots, hang-ups through dis-embedding (which is far from a permanent state with me) I don’t act as an asshole. Unskillful at times but not being an asshole. So, my experience leads me to believe advanced spiritual practitioners (which I don’t claim to be) cannot be assholes.

jack

my wife will quite often tell me how wrong I am. My kids, my co-workers, my friends -- all of them have different perspectives on me than I have.

True dat. Maybe this is one of the most important functions of "sangha". Talking mirrors that won't put up with your crap:)

duane_eugene_miller wrote:

my wife will quite often tell me how wrong I am. My kids, my co-workers, my friends -- all of them have different perspectives on me than I have.

True dat. Maybe this is one of the most important functions of "sangha". Talking mirrors that won't put up with your crap:)

Sangha can (does) include all the people you are with day to day, I think. Not just your friends at the dharma center, but your partners, employees, kids, the bank teller, etc. There seems to me often a time in practice when we need to turn inward and work on seeing our stuff. But the test of it, and the integration of realizations and insights, comes through bringing that wisdom (or lack thereof) to daily life. Listening to others with open compassion, helping others who are struggling (to climb the stairs, to carry their groceries, to get themselves together, to express their frustration, whatever), being there with other people just as they are, not venting our crap or frustrations on friends and strangers... these things seem terribly important to me right now. Our "inner work" helps cultivate the ability to do those things more easily. When we are less anxious and afraid we aren't as afraid of other people's actions and troubles, when we don't spew our anxieties around we foist less suffering on others, when we are at peace with ourselves we can be with other people's suffering more compassionately.

Two cents, of course.

Ran into this (indepth) article on the origins of and use of the term "asshole (podcast and text transcript at link): - interesting I think: www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_...offrey_nunberg_.html

ona and anyone else, are you aware most of the time when your emotional buttons are being pushed. Also, are you aware when these emotional buttons are causing or have caused you to act as an asshole? My experience is that other people are a good indicator of this some of the time but not all the time. For example, my wife might say or do something that really sets me off internally. I notice this in myself and notice an urge to verbally strike back and act inappropriately. I don't physically act out of this negative emotional state (at least some of the timel). My wife doesn't notice any of this but I know that one of my buttons was pushed. In those cases when I strike back verbally, I usually know when it is inappropriate, at least later. Another example, politics can really set me off. Over the last few days I responded to several emails from people that are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. I recognize that I was very much an asshole in my first response back to them. Then in my second response yesterday I responded in a very careful way with a set of facts not interpretations. I knew I was still responding from a negative emotional state but not sure they did. I doubt I will get any negative response back from them. (I'm not saying in any of this that negative emotional states are bad just that they can cause me to act as an asshole.)

A long time ago I heard a Zen analogy that has stayed with me. Phenomena arising and passing away are like the wind. Most come up and pass through us without meeting an obstacle. But, some hit some hang-up, stick and cause problems. One goal in spiritual practice is to become transparent so that phenomena pass right through.

jack