Random Dharma

every3rdthought wrote:

Tom Otvos wrote: "you alone are, the changeless among the changeful"

Really?

Depends whether you're a Buddhist or a Vedantin

Or Yoda.

This truly is a random find:

www.gq.com/story/stephen-colbert-gq-cover-story

"I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.

I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

Thanks Kate! Wow. My wife knows, he is such my man crush. I'm going to read the entire interview.

That reminds me of something I thought of posting a while ago... Here's a youtube clip of Colbert. It's dharma for only one reason... at about 13:30 Eminem (the rap artist) mentions, in an amazing confession to me, that he is into meditation. (I need to google that to see if there is more details about his practice, but the way he says it, I believe it.) But really, it's more just a funny video where Colbert's improve and Eminem's normally stoic persona is taking both of them into a wierd domain where both are playing the straight man and neither understands what is going on. The whole premise for the scene is kinda already weird: This video is from a cable access show near my wife's home down in farm country, where Colbert substituted as host while he was unemployed, waiting for his new job being the replacement for David Letterman on the "Late Night" show. For context, the town of Monroe Michigan has a population of 20,000 people.

Enjoy the wierdness:




edit: oh, the colbert interview Kate linked to begins with an explanation of the cable access show...

It struck me, reading it, that GQ was the last place I'd have expected wisdom. And that I was being silly-- because, why not?

Ken McLeod:

When I am not clear inside - when I don't know or cannot feel what is vitally important to me - different emotional reactions reach for the microphone. The conflict between them often creates so much noise that I cannot sense what is important to me in the situation at hand.

In virtually all cases, the emotional reactions are based in one of three concerns: survival, emotional needs or identity. Even so, I don't find analysis particularly helpful, as it can lead only to a conceptual understanding and that kind of understanding insulates me from my actual emotional reactions. Analysis may lead me to a course of action in the particular situation, but the internal confusion is still there and will arise when I encounter a similar situation in the future.

Instead, whenever possible, I sit in the actual experience of the emotional reactions and experience their physical expressions in my body, their emotional expressions in the range of feelings they evoke and their cognitive expressions in the stories they conjure up. The seemingly endless stories are primarily about identity, how I want to be seen, whether by myself or by others. It is quite amazing how we always seem to end up as the hero (or anti-hero) of these stories. That tendency, in itself, shows that the stories are untrustworthy. As for the emotional reactions, they interact in all kinds of ways. For instance, one emotional reaction may operate as a cover, as a way of dissipating attention, so that another layer never comes into awareness. Anger, for instance, is often a cover for hurt or fear. Guilt can be a cover for pride, and so can shame.

When I am not in touch with what is vitally important, the stories tend to take over and I lose touch with my body. I now take that disconnection as a sign that I've fallen into confusion and come back to my body, again and again. In doing so, I am repeatedly plunged into the actual experience of my confusion. It's not much fun, but it is often fascinating, particularly now that I take it less seriously than I used to - that is, I know it is just my confusion.

When I experience that one or more emotional reactions (and their corresponding stories) are pitted against each other, instead of flipping from one argument to the other or trying to mediate between the two and find a "happy" compromise, I take a page from my mahamudra and dzogchen training: I rest in the awareness of the whole mess and just let the conflict take its course. I don't act on any of it. I just experience it all, as completely as possible.

I do this not with any hope or intention that this will help to resolve the conflict within me. Such a hope or intention is a form of unwillingness on my part, an unwillingness to engage my confusion in all its complexity. Instead, I sit and let the various emotional reactions shout and cry, bully and cower, push and pull, seek allies, reach for justifications, tear each other apart and come back together. In all of this coming and going, up and down, back and forth, there is an awareness - not the awareness of the detached observer, but an awareness present in each moment of experience. To the extent that I can, I just recognize that awareness and rest right there, experiencing whatever is right there. In doing so, a deeper knowing, a natural clarity, has a chance to emerge. That clarity naturally embraces all aspects of the situation and knows, without relying on conceptual formulations, what is vitally important and where the balance is. When you touch it, you can feel it vibrating at every level of your being, like the gong of a great bell with all its harmonics and overtones.

Needless to say, this approach is often not that helpful in the pressures of an actual situation, but if you practice this way regularly, you will find that that deeper (some would say more intuitive) knowing becomes more accessible to you. You develop an increasing ability to drop into what is vitally important to you, even if you cannot always put it into words.

(What is interesting to me is how high-level practice is so similar to working with a good teacher/therapist. Basically, this approach can be done solo, or with someone who will guide you through the same steps. But the key ingredient for the approach is the meditator's/patient's willingness to experience the uncomfortable body sensations that go along with difficult thoughts and emotions. Thinking "about it" will never put you in contact with the real information which is in the sensations themselves.)

Thanks for sharing this shargrol. Enjoyed it!

I do this not with any hope or intention that this will help to resolve the conflict within me. Such a hope or intention is a form of unwillingness on my part, an unwillingness to engage my confusion in all its complexity.

- Ken McLeod

Key, but difficult to execute in my experience. Maybe a helpful approach if someone (like me) finds it difficult to bring awareness to thoughts and emotions without trying to change them is to bring awareness to the "need to change experience" itself. This seems to be another thought-feeling that can be made conscious. Also, I find self-inquiry helpful here too. When the need to change experience arises, I ask "Who has this feeling?" or "Who wants to change experience?" That can really open up the field of awareness. __/\__

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TULUKU URGYEN

Recognising and Not Recognising.

"The statement that ‘not recognising is samsara’ means that the moment you link your mind up with some object of experience, the immediate reaction is one of the three poisons. Either you like something, or you don’t like it, or you remain indifferent. Caught up in these three emotions, people might still claim, ‘I create no negative karma.’ But how can there be any negative karma besides the three poisons? The three poisons are exactly what creates the three realms of samsara. Attachment creates the realms of desire. Aversion creates the realms of form. Indifference creates the realms of formlessness.
Not recognising one’s own essence and being caught up in the three poisons perpetuates nothing other than the three realms of samsara. It is unavoidable.

If you simply recognise your essence, you are immediately face to face with the three kayas. It is so simple that it’s actually incredibly easy. There is no way you could miss it. The problem, in fact, is that it’s too easy! It’s too close to oneself. Some great masters have said the fault lies in not that it is complicated, but that it is too simple. People don’t trust it. They think, ‘This is just my present state of being awake, so what use is it? It’s not very special. I want something astounding, something totally different. Something that is far superior to this pres­ent state of wakefulness. Something with amazing lights and great splendour.’ And they ignore their present natural state of mind and hope that something extraordinary will happen, maybe coming down from above. They are right: this present state is not that special. But by sitting and hoping like that, they turn their backs to the innate three kayas. If you recognise your own mind, on the other hand, in the mo­ment of seeing, there is freedom. You are liberated from any thought involvement at that time. That itself is the essence of nirvana. If, however, we ignore that fact and chase after something else—some kind of altered state we believe to be superior to the present nature of mind—it is going to very difficult to ever find the buddha mind.

Right now, the difference between samsara and nirvana lies in recognising or not recognising mind essence; that should be clear. The moment you recognise mind essence, the present thought involvement dissolves, vanishes without leaving a trace. You are left with the intrin­sic three kayas. It is not that we need to create the three kayas or achieve them. You are recognising what is already there. On the other hand, if you are caught up in what is thought of, samsara goes on end­lessly. In the moment of thinking, recognise the identity of that which thinks, and the thought dissolves. That is so easy!

Recognising is not the problem. Anyone who is taught to recognise their own mind essence will see that it is ‘no thing’; they can identify mind essence. The problem lies in our habitual tendencies from innu­merable past lives. Just because we recognise once doesn’t mean that recognition stays. There is no stability there; it just slips away again. We have the bad habit or the negative pattern of always grasping towards objects. For so many lifetimes, life after life after life as well as in the bardos between, we have been reinforcing the habit of looking away from mind essence itself. We keep re-creating samsara, again and again. Every time you get caught up again, the training is therefore simply to recognise and dissolve the thought."

('Random' only in the sense that it popped up on my FB feed today-- and too excellent not to share!)

New research finds mindfulness makes us more susceptible to false memories: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/the-down-side-of-mindfulness

Here's the abstract from Psychological Science Journal (full text is behind a pay wall): http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/03/0956797615593705.abstract

Interesting though, what I get from the study is that mindfull folks were making similar associations when related words appeared in the list. So when they were wrong (they were only as wrong the same % as non-mindfull folks), the way they were wrong was influenced by a greater awareness of the words that appeared in the list.

Also, not that I necessarily care about being over-defensive of 'mindfulness' in these kinds of contexts but I have to wonder whether telling people to let their minds wander wherever, and then having them sit in silence, actually results in mindfulness of thinking

It seems to me the name of this article is misleading. This article is trash. What's to say the method of memory encouraged by mindfulness isn't a higher order method where the information is abstracted for more fluent comprehension, for instance.

Haven't there also been studies where memory is shown to be enhanced?

I've recently started reading a Christian mystical text called A Course In Miracles. Apparently it was pretty popular in the 80s, but I wasn't alive back then, so I guess I missed it. It's rather dense, but there are some beautiful passages.

There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep. Why should this be? Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the only choice. And you are in control of outcomes of your choosing. Thus you think, within the narrow band from birth to death, a little time is given you to use for you alone; a time when everyone conflicts with you, but you can choose which road will lead you out of conflict, and away from difficulties that concern you not. Yet they are your concern. How, then, can you escape from them by leaving them behind? What must go with you, you will take with you whatever road you choose to walk along.

"You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be! Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passer by. Bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply." (Nisargadatta Maharaj)

This has to be the oddest, and onlyest, yet strangely accurate comparison of awakening to cats pooping.

hardcorezen.info/enlightenment-and-cat-poop/3949

"Shouldn’t I [as a philosopher] confine myself to truth, or beauty, or knowledge, or why there is something rather than nothing (to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser answered: ‘If there was nothing you’d still be complaining’)?"

aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/if-youre-sur...guess-whos-the-jerk/

From David Chapman’s twitter feed:

On critics, typically traditional Buddhist, of secular mindfulness teachers that don’t teach ethics… “I want to find an coherent argument, but (as in the whole debate) the thinking appears associationistic. It operates at the level of sympathetic magic. Corporations and the military are ritually impure. We Buddhists have been contaminated by their impurity, transmitted to us by the secularists, so to purify ourselves we must perform public rituals of repentance.” (Earlier in the text he mentions how critics ”recite long lists of specific corporate and military wrong-doings, apparently to underline that those people are really, really, bad, as if we didn’t know… but there must be more motivation than that.”) “ It seems the secularists fail to realize how impure the demonic institutions are, so we’re reminding them forcefully. If they still refuse to take part in the purification ritual, they must be cast out as witches lest they continue to channel impurity to Buddhists.”

From David Chapman’s twitter feed:
On critics, typically traditional Buddhist, of secular mindfulness teachers that don’t teach ethics… “I want to find an coherent argument, but (as in the whole debate) the thinking appears associationistic. ...”

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"Shouldn’t I [as a philosopher] confine myself to truth, or beauty, or knowledge, or why there is something rather than nothing (to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser answered: ‘If there was nothing you’d still be complaining’)?"
aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/if-youre-sur...guess-whos-the-jerk/

It sure seems like the content of these two posts is somehow related, but I, for the life of me, cannot find the punch line.

It was a stochastic anomaly, but Andy you got me laughing!