At night, deep in the mountains, I sit in meditation.
The affairs of men never reach me here: everything is quiet and empty,
all the incense has been swallowed up by the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.
Unable to sleep I walk out into the woods
--suddenly, above the highest peak, the full moon appears.
(Ryokan)
Monday, July 30, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
making quagmires of their brain
You'll find plenty question masters
making quagmires of their brain
The man said 'there are no answers'
They said 'you are insane'
For the audio version click HERE
Sunday, July 22, 2012
unexamined
The meditator notices that ‘I’ am not in control of the flood. It is rooted in the unconscious where ongoing and immediate inputs from the sense organs are churned with memories to generate thoughts, moods and emotions that generate patterns of behaviour that ensure survival on a daily basis and thus the chance of being a successful breeder in the longer term.
BUT – if ‘I’ do not control the generation of mental proliferations – who or what does? They are constantly changing. Can the mind (conscious or unconscious) turn in upon itself and be the agent of its own transformation? This begs the question of who or what controls the agent and who or what controls the controller.
Some meditators appreciate the idea of mindfulness. It is possible to notice the flood of thoughts, moods and emotions and to step back from it; to observe it from a safe distance. How long does a thought, mood or emotion last? Where was it before it appeared in the attention centre and where does it go to once it has passed through?
I tend to be intellectual. My world view embraces the expanding horizon from quantum to cosmos that stretches back to the Big Bang and forward to the death of our sun and its Universe. BUT the mind is not engaged with those things all the time. Other more detailed and fleeting thoughts, moods and emotions appear. There can be micro mindfulness.
The sense of smell kicks in to remind me of the burned toast at breakfast time; the sense of hearing kicks in to notice traffic passing in the street and birds singing in the garden; the kinaesthetic sense kicks in to raise awareness of slumping in the chair, and of an itch on the lower left leg. And then the memory sense kicks in with tax forms, the dishes that need washing, and the grass that needs mowing.
Conscious attention cannot be focussed on all the details all of the time. There are filters (how are they calibrated?) that cut the level of multi-tasking to manageable proportions. (Do people really multi-task or are they just good at rapid channel hopping in single-task mode?)
How long is a thought moment? How variable is a person’s attention span? The media people design their products on the assumption that the attention span is very short. Think of advertising and soap operas. Slogans and soundbites. Anything that demands focussed attention for more than a few seconds is ruthlessly cut back.
As an intellectual I specialise in holding on to complex thoughts for extended periods. As an absent minded professor I can easily lose track of space, time and my self for a couple of hours. It could be thought of as a pleasurable mind state but only in retrospect. There has to be an ‘I’ to experience pleasure. It is the same basic process for athletes in the zone and musicians in the groove. No self, no problem.
For a meditator the goal is to focus attention on the breathing and to have it stay there. If mental proliferation kicks in then this is noticed and attention is gently returned to the breath. Again and again. The path is made by walking. Be still and know. Then you are in a better position to examine your life and make it worth living?
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Against the Stream
Tricycle Daily Dharma July 18, 2012
Against the Stream
The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit.
The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected—precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.
- Stephen Batchelor, "Foundations of Mindfulness"
Monday, June 25, 2012
be peaceful and then do
There are two things: to be and to do. Don’t think too much about to do—to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. To be happiness. And then to do joy, to do happiness—on the basis of being.
So first you have to focus on the practice of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being attentive. Being generous. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice.
It’s like if the other person is sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
Monday, June 18, 2012
alfie again
Alfie again
16 June 2012 – response
to an email from Heike concerning an email I sent
Heike <<< What about
thoughts and feelings that do not belong to the category of "most of them
are rooted in temporary structures ..." What about those "few"
as opposed to "most"? What do you think? Are those (few) archetypical,
highly individual, logical (deriving from "reason"?) >>>
Fair cop governor – I was using waffle words – most, some, a
few. I will unpack some of the stuff in the relevant paragraph from my last
rant. It is quoted below.
{{{ Thoughts and feelings … come
and go. Most of them are rooted in temporary ‘structures’ in the unconscious
and some of them enter the attention centre and thus become conscious. But they
do not last long. A few milliseconds or maybe a few minutes. There are causes
and conditions for both conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings and
their sources are nature, nurture and serendipity. The past and the future
exist only in the present. }}}
{{{ Thoughts and feelings … come and go. }}}
This is indisputable from my subjective point of view and I
assume (why?[1])
that it is indisputable from the point of view of other people.
Where do thoughts and feelings come from? Presumably from
the brain. They will have had their causes and conditions in recent inputs
through the sense organs. And these would have been ‘mixed’ with memories of
earlier inputs and of their subsequent relevance/utility/value (eg hints, signs
and suggestions about lions on the prowl on the savanna). Nature (your genes)
will have created the generalised container, and nurture (your enculturation)
will have filled in enough detail to enable you to survive and reproduce.
Where do thoughts and feelings go to? Presumably back into
the unconscious where the new stuff will get processed and integrated into the
‘memory circuits’ which are in a state of ongoing, vital churn.
(Note that this can be poetically viewed as the same
ongoing, vital churn that is creating and destroying the stars and galaxies and
thus the cosmos itself[2].
There is only the Oneness which is everything.)
{{{ Most of them (thoughts and feelings) are rooted in
temporary ‘structures’ in the unconscious and some of them enter the attention
centre and thus become conscious. }}}
Image - an iceberg. Consciousness is the little bit sticking
out of the surface and the unconscious is the vast bit below the surface.
Beware the waffle words little and vast. There is no obvious
way to measure it but my gut feeling[4]
is that less than 1% of brain activity is conscious. Probably much less.
Consider, for example, the concept of linear single-tasking
in the conscious mind and parallel multi-tasking in the unconscious (Think of
the ‘Aha’ experience when the solution to a problem suddenly emerges from the
unconscious).
Consider also the more recent work on visual consciousness[5]:
the eye is nothing like a pin hole camera – not even vaguely. The many
receptors in the eye are stimulated by a wide range of mini visual signals. The
receptors fire and create coded pulses in the nerves carrying the messages to
those parts of the brain that can decode them. The new inputs are then linked
to memory; and the importance of what is being ‘seen’ can thus be assimilated
into the overall functioning of the brain/mind and appropriate actions and
behaviours are thus generated.
{{{ temporary ‘structures’ in the unconscious }}}
We are back with the vital churn. Constant flux and
transformation (the yin yang principle). It would appear (to neurologists) that
particular parts of the brain perform particular functions; but there is a lot
of cross connection that helps to create cognitive consonance and thus the
subjective experience of discrete things and feelings. But – the subjective
experiences do not last long in either their conscious or unconscious
manifestations. As the Buddhist texts would have it, “Form is emptiness and
emptiness is form”. That which is subjectively experienced has no abiding
reality[6].
{{{ some of them (thoughts and feeling) enter the attention
centre and thus become conscious }}}
“You’re not paying attention,”
said the Hatter. If you don’t pay him, you know, he won’t perform.” (after
Lewis Carroll in Francis Crick (1994))
“Everyone knows what attention
is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one
out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought …
It implies withdrawal from some things in order the deal effectively with
others.” William James (1890)
Heike <<< What about
thoughts and feelings that do not belong to the category of "most of them
are rooted in temporary structures ..." What about those "few" as opposed to "most"?
What do you think? Are those archetypical, highly individual, logical (deriving
from "reason"?) >>>
It is possible to think about permanent ‘structures’ in the
brain (and nervous system). There are three main areas - the medulla,
cerebellum and cerebrum. And there are hundreds of sub-areas that have been
identified. But there is considerable underused capacity and plasticity. There
are many recorded cases of patients with brain damage being able to relocate
particular functions to unusual locations.
There is the notion of hardwiring. There is the classic tale
of a nesting species of bird that was raised in the lab for several generations
without nest building material. During the fourth generation nest building
materials were provided and the birds could build immaculately. They did not
need to go to school. The knowledge that they needed to survive was hard wired
into them by their genes.
Mammals are generally not so rigorously hard wired. Primates
generally depend on learning rather than instinct to build their repertoire of
knowledge and survival skills. And there is much debate on the extent to which
humans are hard wired - and this links to the determinism v free-will debate.
To cut a long story short – most reasonable people[7]
acknowledge that modern humans are genetically programmed (hard wired with
instincts) to learn a language but that the particular language that they learn
will depend on their cultural context. This leads to the concept of a universal
grammar[8].
The idea is that the various languages all point to the same ‘reality’ in the
same way and that thus they have equivalencies. How many colours in the
rainbow? How many types of snow? How many constellations in the night sky?
So the ‘permanent structures’ are genetically programmed and
manifest as hard wired instincts. The range and meaning of facial expressions
are the same in all cultures (is this true?) All cultures have myths dealing
with beginnings and endings and there is a widespread occurrence of what Joseph
Campbell labelled as the monomyth[9]
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive
victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the
power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
SO – back to most, some, a few. To what extent can human
thoughts and feelings be thought of as eternal verities and how many of them
are there? I am not aware of how a rational, evidence-based answer might be
given to that question. But, elsewhere, I have conceptually mapped the options[10]
-
“There are causes and conditions
for our nature and our nurture and in both cases these can be thought of as
good, neutral or bad. By plotting these options on a table we can generate nine
viewpoints.” …
SO – note what you are believing then go searching for facts
(evidence?) to suggest that your beliefs are rational and should thus be
cosmopolitan (global?).
You’ll find plenty
question masters
Making quagmires of their brain.
The man said, “There are no answers”,
They said, “You are insane”.
Making quagmires of their brain.
The man said, “There are no answers”,
They said, “You are insane”.
The reality which can
be described is not the real reality.
Those who know do not
speak (language is not up to the task).
[1] I
will skip over that issue for the moment
[2]
Carl Sagan has the cute notion of our being stardust
[3]
Another skip over for the moment.
[4]
Huh?
[5] Eg
Francis Crick (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis – The Scientific Search for the
Soul. ISBN 0671712950
[6]
There could be an aside about the limitations of language and the damage it can
do by way of reifying and concretising illusory manifestations of mind. But
that can wait for another rant.
[7] Be reasonable, do it my way!
Friday, June 08, 2012
Alfie
The only constant thing is change. At the quantum level
there are no ‘things’ but the no-thing-ness is in constant flux. At the cosmic
level universes come and go. And everything in between is churning. “Nothing
lasts forever baby.”
At the human level, every part of the body is replaced over
a seven year period. This is obvious with hair and nails but it is also true of
blood and bones. The pattern of interchangeable bits that is the physical ‘you’
evolves and ages. Where did the pattern come from before you were born and
where does it go when you die?
Thoughts and feelings also come and go. Most of them are rooted
in temporary ‘structures’ in the unconscious and some of them enter the
attention centre and thus become conscious. But they do not last long. A few
milliseconds or maybe a few minutes. There are causes and conditions for both
conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings and their sources are nature,
nurture and serendipity. The past and the future exist only in the present.
The modern evolutionary versions of psychology, sociology,
anthropology and ecology take a retrospective look at the way things have turned
out on the way from stardust to self consciousness. “What’s it all about Alfie?”
Why is who asking that question and what kind of answer would satisfy them?
Friday, May 25, 2012
Educational options
Some of my one-pagers from the Lesotho days might help with the conceptual mapping. Click Here
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