Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The mind and the way
The plurality of religious traditions and spiritual techniques can make the purpose of spiritual practice unclear. However, as one takes steps toward understanding, the single purpose of the spiritual life becomes clear: directing attention away from external things and toward the internal. More precisely, one stops fixating on the projected image and begins to turn attention toward the projector. Dogen called this "the backward step." Kierkegaard chronicled it extensively in his writings, emphasizing above all else the significance of the inward turning. He examined in detail the difference between the "knight of faith" who turns his attention inward and those who are focused on worldly laws and interests.
In a similar vein, Heidegger warned against losing awareness through immersion in "the They." This was not so much an injunction against social intercourse, but rather against letting one's subjective life be a passive, unexamined absorption in thoughts originating from others and general social consensus. Susan Blackmore or Richard Dawkins would refer to these as "memes." Interestingly, Susan Blackmore refers to sitting meditation, the practice of turning the light inward, as "meme weeding." For while it may be impossible, even with effort, to have a truly original thought (all thoughts are a pastiche of what has previously been learned), it is quite possible to loosen one's unquestioning acceptance of thoughts as one's own creations.
When beginning a meditation practice, it can seem that one is supposed to be "doing something." One may try to focus upon an object and concentrate on it, cultivate a particular inner state, or use techniques to interrupt or stop the thinking process. Such practices can lead to enjoyable results such as feelings of calm, love, or joy. Profound bliss states may arise in response to even the gentlest efforts. To be able to generate such sought-after feelings and states with such a simple practices is miraculous. If knowledge of such practices was more widespread, the world would be a better place and people would suffer less. Yet this is not really the point of the practice, any more than experiencing delicious tastes is the fundamental point of eating.
The point is to retrain oneself to look at the projector, not the projected, and to be able to realize that what one takes as reality is actually little more than a mental construction. Research has shown that most, if not all of our memories, are inaccurate, reshaped to accord with what we want to remember or what we have been primed to remember. Our thoughts and beliefs do not form the coherent world picture we believe they do; there are actually many holes in our patchwork world-picture, but we will only see them if we continue to look, and look, and look. For we are wired to believe in our stories, our systems of conceptual organization; it is how we make sense of the world and survive. And yet, the whole time we are drifting in and out of a phantasmagoric display, a Frankenstein clumsily stitched together by our apparati of perception and conception.
Susan Blackmore tackles the difficulty of verbalizing this with her statement, "there is no stream of consciousness." Our brain has a tendency to block out or minimize some pieces of sensory information while emphasizing others. It also regularly fills in missing or not fully processed sense data with best guesses or statistically likely information. I do not quite like referring to sensory information as "data," because this cold, technical word does not capture the richness of subjective experience. However, it helps to illustrate the way our brains construct what we experience as reality.
The significance of all this is not the construction of a nice theory or philosophy, but that this is how we wake up: take the backward step to unveil the light of consciousness, which is brighter than even the sun. This is the beginning and end of the spiritual journey. As Dogen said, "Practice is realization." We can only wake up if we know where to start looking, and keep looking, keep dropping the theories and assumptions we usually carry, until the man behind the curtain is revealed.
In a similar vein, Heidegger warned against losing awareness through immersion in "the They." This was not so much an injunction against social intercourse, but rather against letting one's subjective life be a passive, unexamined absorption in thoughts originating from others and general social consensus. Susan Blackmore or Richard Dawkins would refer to these as "memes." Interestingly, Susan Blackmore refers to sitting meditation, the practice of turning the light inward, as "meme weeding." For while it may be impossible, even with effort, to have a truly original thought (all thoughts are a pastiche of what has previously been learned), it is quite possible to loosen one's unquestioning acceptance of thoughts as one's own creations.
When beginning a meditation practice, it can seem that one is supposed to be "doing something." One may try to focus upon an object and concentrate on it, cultivate a particular inner state, or use techniques to interrupt or stop the thinking process. Such practices can lead to enjoyable results such as feelings of calm, love, or joy. Profound bliss states may arise in response to even the gentlest efforts. To be able to generate such sought-after feelings and states with such a simple practices is miraculous. If knowledge of such practices was more widespread, the world would be a better place and people would suffer less. Yet this is not really the point of the practice, any more than experiencing delicious tastes is the fundamental point of eating.
The point is to retrain oneself to look at the projector, not the projected, and to be able to realize that what one takes as reality is actually little more than a mental construction. Research has shown that most, if not all of our memories, are inaccurate, reshaped to accord with what we want to remember or what we have been primed to remember. Our thoughts and beliefs do not form the coherent world picture we believe they do; there are actually many holes in our patchwork world-picture, but we will only see them if we continue to look, and look, and look. For we are wired to believe in our stories, our systems of conceptual organization; it is how we make sense of the world and survive. And yet, the whole time we are drifting in and out of a phantasmagoric display, a Frankenstein clumsily stitched together by our apparati of perception and conception.
Susan Blackmore tackles the difficulty of verbalizing this with her statement, "there is no stream of consciousness." Our brain has a tendency to block out or minimize some pieces of sensory information while emphasizing others. It also regularly fills in missing or not fully processed sense data with best guesses or statistically likely information. I do not quite like referring to sensory information as "data," because this cold, technical word does not capture the richness of subjective experience. However, it helps to illustrate the way our brains construct what we experience as reality.
The significance of all this is not the construction of a nice theory or philosophy, but that this is how we wake up: take the backward step to unveil the light of consciousness, which is brighter than even the sun. This is the beginning and end of the spiritual journey. As Dogen said, "Practice is realization." We can only wake up if we know where to start looking, and keep looking, keep dropping the theories and assumptions we usually carry, until the man behind the curtain is revealed.
To turn in that direction
Even if I don't see it again -- nor ever feel it
I know it is -- and that if once it hailed me
it ever does --
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn't -- I was blinded like that -- and swam
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I'd die
from being loved like that.
Marie Howe, "Annunciation," 2008
I know it is -- and that if once it hailed me
it ever does --
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn't -- I was blinded like that -- and swam
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I'd die
from being loved like that.
Marie Howe, "Annunciation," 2008
Saturday, October 31, 2009
What inwardness signifies
In this book there is no dogmatizing, far from it; this was precisely what I had wished, since it was in my view the misfortune of the age to have too much knowledge, to have forgotten what it is to exist, and what inwardness is. Under such circumstances it is desirable that an author should know how to withdraw himself...
...My principal thought was that in our age, because of the great increase of knowledge, we had forgotten what it means to exist, and what inwardness signifies, and that the misunderstanding between speculative philosophy and [religion] was explicable on that ground.
-Soren Kierkegaard (Swenson and Lowrie, trans.), Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846
...My principal thought was that in our age, because of the great increase of knowledge, we had forgotten what it means to exist, and what inwardness signifies, and that the misunderstanding between speculative philosophy and [religion] was explicable on that ground.
-Soren Kierkegaard (Swenson and Lowrie, trans.), Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846
Take the backward step
The Way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? If there is even a hairsbreadth deviation it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you still are short of the vital path of emancipation.
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?
Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize your original face, begin your practice now.
-Eihei Dogen (Soto Zen Text Project, trans.), Fukanzazengi, 1227
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?
Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize your original face, begin your practice now.
-Eihei Dogen (Soto Zen Text Project, trans.), Fukanzazengi, 1227
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