bubbles and bardos

Kate mentioned this very interesting article the other day:

http://www.aroencyclopaedia.org/shared/text/n/nine_bardos_ar_eng.php

The article is long and a bit technical for me, who doesn't know so much about Tibetan Buddhism.

But I was fascinated by these descriptions of finding the bubbles of moments of time that we can break the day into:

"I get into the car. I drive. I get out of the car. I get on to the train. I sit
down. I come to this place. I get out. I walk to my job. I go in the door. I climb the stairs. I
enter the elevator. Whatever I do… each segment can become smaller… until…
one… is.
… continually popping out of nothing. " and "one has to be totally, fully, exactly where one is"

It's an interesting game to play.

It can be really interesting to play with disorientation; it's not for everyone at all times, of course. There are times where being disoriented is quite distressing.

A somewhat similar practice is the final portion of 'dream practice', where having been lucid in dream, one is awake and inquires, 'Is this experience a dream?' periodically.

Maybe both practices are a kind of directed observation that can pry you loose from your habitual story about what you and your experience 'are' and 'mean.' And thus permit a more free and unexpected dimension to appear.

Huh?

Isn't the quote from the article posted by Ona just regular, normal dharma practice? -- not a game or a way to get disoriented.

I find that the smaller the segment I can get into in my awareness, the less distoriented I am and the more clear it is what is really going on and what to do next.

And, I don't see anything described in the article that seems more "Tibetan Budhhist." The practice and the resultant effects would fall easily into vipassana or zen. Pay attention, SEE things arise and pass; arise and pass.

It's freaking beautiful.

I think the difference you point to, Mike, is just a nuance of approach. For myself, and maybe for Ona, the less formulaic and prescribed I feel a practice is, the more a personal discovery that I can light-heartedly explore-- the more engaged I am, and the more useful I find it.

The reason it's presented as a 'Tibetan Buddhist' practice is that it is a kind of 'bardo practice'; most people think that 'bardo' refers ONLY to the after-death bardo, and that the only bardo practices have to do with death and dying. So this teaching is pointing out that our lives are composed of innumerable bardos-- discrete moments of experience-- and that noticing this can have interesting effects.

I get so confused





You do see how this practice described in the article is about as basic as it gets, right?

My description of it as a "game" came from that personal approach, Kate, in which these kind of practices feel like different ways of exploring reality.

Yes, Mike, I think there is a basic-ness to that bringing the attention to this-very-moment, but each type of teaching uses different stories to describe it, which makes each one fun to explore. Like reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries - they all kind of end up with the same basic plot, but it's fun to play along and enjoy the story by reading them all anyway.

There seem to be some methods that say "start noticing big things, now smaller things, now smaller, now smaller" and others that say "notice the ends of things" and others that say "notice what's in between the things" and others that say "just be here now and don't notice anything" and so on. None of those ways of talking about practice is right or wrong imo, just a better fit for a given student at a given point in practice, perhaps, or typical of one style of teaching over another?

I'm just starting to get a sense of the more subtle differences in vipassana and, let's say, zen basic approaches. But, it seems like in vipassana there are a myriad of different teachings used at different times that instuct the students to notice different things in different ways (beginnings, ends, different elements, etc. etc.) while zen is so much more vague and indirect -- just general instructions to pay close attention to things.

Lately I'm having the interesting experience of attending both local soto zen and vipassana groups led by official priests (in the zen group) and a Spirit Rock trained teacher (vipassana) and it is fascinating to see how each specific approach is presented by these leaders.

I haven't gone to either enough to have a real detailed opinion/description but clearly the soto zen approach is general, philosophical, vague, etc. while the vipassana is detailed, nuts and bolts practical.

"I haven't gone to either enough to have a real detailed
opinion/description but clearly the soto zen approach is general,
philosophical, vague, etc. while the vipassana is detailed, nuts and
bolts practical."

I am not deeply educated in either method myself, but that's also been my impression.

"I find that the smaller the segment I can get into in my awareness, the
less distoriented I am and the more clear it is what is really going on
and what to do next."

Re: disorientation, the extreme example might be that woman Suzanne Segal, who had a rather bizarre and sudden breakdown of the sense of self that became a well known book.

I know many friends who don't find emptiness at all disturbing. Myself, I found it incredibly disturbing to hit that point of vanishing and dissolving, where nothing can be described at all. Howling terror, panic, etc. occurred at some points. I know I'm not the only one (because googling "fear of emptiness" does produce results!!), though it does seem to be a rather extreme reaction, based on a survey of acquaintances who meditate!

Then again, many acquaintances have a terror of nightmarish demonic visions, which I don't find very scary. To each their own obstacles, I guess.

I have a complete disconnect with the whole "fear of emptiness" idea.

To be truly attentive to moment to moment experience with continuity and momentum requires a significant lack of identification with what is being observed, a disembeddedness. When this is occuring, I don't see how fear can come into play. Stuff is happening -- bare sensations -- and these sensations are getting observed.



Now, I can imagine if the continuity is stopped and the person begins to think and reflect about what is happening, then fear can certainly come in. But, in the real applied mindfulness that I am talking about (which I guess I am calling "emptiness" and if my definition of emptiness is wrong then my whole argument here falls) there is also always equanimity, insight, wisdom which brings orientation and faith rather than fear -- in my experience.



What about this -- is my idea of "emptiness" different maybe, from what is going on with the people who have this "fear of emptiness" event?



While I certainly experience a lot of fear and anxiety in my daily life, it is only in and about the relative Mike Monson world of children and jobs and spouses and survival type issues, never when I am truly practicing, truly intimate with things -- which is what is so wonderful about practice, you know?

Wisdom, insight and equanimity = good things!

Fear = definitely based on desire, clinging, imagination and delusion, in this case imagining that somehow without a defined sense of self and boundaries around all the things in the world in a familiar way, the result must be that I might cease to exist entirely, ie die. Of course this is both true and false. Meditation never killed anyone in the physical sense that I am aware of, but it does eventually "kill" the ego, the boundaries of "this" vs "that", "me" vs "everything else" and the little boxes we put things in, like "good stuff" and "ugly stuff."

Being no buddhist scholar, I'll have to avoid pretending to any wise arguments about terminology (which may, for all I know, be used differently in different traditions). In the post above, I used "emptiness" to refer to personal experiences in which "I perceived" (somehow) a point/place/something (not any of those) where there are no boundaries, no self, no perceptions, no qualities, no words to describe.

Which is why I found the post I mentioned at the top of the thread interesting, because it talks about the the connection of this passing of incremental moments as a kind of dying.

From some stuff I clipped from the web, source forgotten:
"In this nothingness, in this emptiness... there is complete security and stability. You will be surprised to know about this — complete security and stability when you are not. All fears disappear… because what is the basic fear? The basic fear is the fear of death."

"Once you have known this inner emptiness then there is no fear, because death has already happened. In that emptiness it has happened. In that emptiness you have disappeared. How can you be afraid anymore? About what? About whom? And who can be afraid? In this emptiness all fear disappears because death has already happened. ... If you start living in the moment, fear disappears. Fear comes through desire. "

Those quotes were helpful to me when I was afraid.

Went to the full service of my local zen group last night.

Zazen - 25 min

Kinhin (walking) - 10 min

Zazen - 25 min

Chanting

Bowing

Chanting

Bowing

Chanting

Tea, food, chatting

Put chairs in circle

Sit

Chant

Lecture/discussion

Chant

Clean up, chatting

Two priests in robes. One guy, not a priest, who did all the gongs, bells, wood clapper clapping, Plus four other people including me. All of us relatively experienced with the whole thing (I was the only one at all uncertain at points) so the entire things just went very smoothly, mostly silently, just prompted by the claps and gongs and such. Up until the lecture it was quite lovely -- quiet, peaceful, a little of that "sacred" feeling at times. When the little circle of kinhin went around the room, whoever was walking in front of the buddha statue did a little bow.

The lecture was good. The priest (who is also a Ph.D. in German Modern Philosophy and a Professor at the local Cal State U) discussed a section of the book "Opening the Hand of Thought" by Uchiyama Roshi. Basically, he took one sentence (I'm paraphrasing) "zazen is the expression of our belief" and another: "zazen is the self doing the self." and just said a couple of things which prompted a pretty lively discussion of all the zennies. I kept my mouth shut the entire time which I felt was a significant accomplishment.