Blogging on the met line back from Hampstead again. Tonight's revelation came in the BS session after the sitting. The topic of Big Mind came up and someone mentioned that the voice of "The Way" was a great embodiment of the entire teaching for him. The idea being that the phrase "I am the Way" is none other than full zen embodiment. Which was interesting, because I heard that phrase differently. In the Big Mind DVD Genpo Roshi leads the group through the dualistic Desire, The Seeking Mind, The Mind that Seeks the Way, and The Follower of the Way, and then to The Way. So to me, The Way was my entry to nondual, and the exit was the "Integrated Free-Functioning Human Being." But his point is just as valid, and indeed the phrase "I am the Way" can be heard as "I am nothing but the Way", but it can also be heard as "The Way is just me." It's like one of those Gestalt images where the faces turn into a vase or the other way round.
So then I mentioned that I had a disturbing reaction to The Master, and someone pointed out that it was intended to have the connotation of Zen Master. ie, Obi Wan Kenobi, not the guy with a whip, or the owner of the plantation, or some sort of supreme being, which is how I heard it. (Can we say shadow projection? Very good boys and girls.) Still... It's interesting to me that you can hear these things in different ways and they trigger entirely different experiences. Thus art to me is transcendent, but it could also be heard as the voice of delusion or deception. Hmmm....
Not really sure where this is going...
Do You Realize? by the Flaming Lips sounds very Zen to me tonight.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Art of Observation
It’s a cool midsummer evening in my back yard in Colorado. I’m 12 years old, staring into the telescope that my parents gave me for my birthday. I’m still scared of the dark and the fear hangs in the background adding a slightly acid tang to the night. The air has made my face and hands cold. I can smell the dew on the grass and the pages of the star atlas in my hands have become soft with the damp.
Through the eyepiece of my telescope I am looking at a faint fuzzy smudge called M13, a globular cluster in the constellation of Hercules. The books say that this object is a dense nest of tens of thousands of stars, but it is so far away that to me it’s just a faint patch of light. I wait and I stare. I can still hear the night around me and feel the cold and smell the air. I wait, and gradually the pupil in my eye relaxes and opens wide. The faint smudge becomes brighter and then, click! There it is! I can see them! The cloud resolves into thousands of tiny suns sprinkled like the finest salt on a black silk tablecloth. Mesmerized, I continue to stare, and after a while the yard and the cold and the damp are not there, I don’t really notice them any more. The telescope is not there, it’s just an extension of my eye. I am not there. There is just the majesty of ten-thousand suns hanging silently in space.
This is my opening.
I am 20 years old, an undergraduate at Caltech in Pasadena California. I came to school filled with (over)confidence and excitement, but physics has swiftly dealt with that. My ego is crushed by the weight of trying to take in 400 years of astonishing brilliance; the fruit of a great many minds, each of whom have walked this path with much greater clarity than I. I am learning humility and it hurts, but I have stepped onto the path.
It’s not a path that I really understand though. Not at the time. In retrospect, I can look back at this path and understand the where and the why, but at the time, it was lost in the flow. I had long since forgotten my 12-year-old self in the back yard with the Hercules cluster. On the path I was just driven by instinct and momentum. Such is the way I have lived this life and travelled this path.
Further along the path I have met my teacher. It’s a hot summer in New Hampshire and I am now a graduate student at Dartmouth College. I’ve come here to study cosmology. The big ideas and grand mystery of studying the evolution of the universe as a whole appeal to me, but this is not my fate. Instead, I fall into the study of exploding stars. I have come here intending to study the origins and beginnings of all things, and instead I find myself looking at endings. But of course in those endings, spectacular and terrible, are the seeds of new beginnings. Indeed the origin of our own flesh is in the ashes of these dying stars. We are the fruit of impermanence.
My teacher does not, primarily, fill my head with knowledge. Such book-learning is triviality. Instead, he instructs me in the practice of our art. There are the simple practices at first, learning to use our instruments. But there are other teachings too; the subtle skills of effort and patience; the art of coaxing insight from the chaos of noise balanced with the discerning wisdom to recognize delusion.
On a mountain top in Arizona he shows me the quiet art of observing. We live a strange monk-like existence, sleeping in the daylight and coming out at night to watch the sky. In a way we are cut off from the world. At night we listen to the radio broadcasts from the cities down below, but we don’t see or interact with that world. We are on an island between the world of man and the heavens. It is quiet and time is slow.
The universe is an enigma and our telescope the eye which we use to probe it. Our practice is a passive one: we cannot poke the universe with a stick and watch it move. It is out of our reach. Instead, we can only listen and watch. Every moment light from countless grand structures, which has travelled the depths of time and space for untold eons rains down upon our lives unnoticed. The grandeur that is our universe goes largely unmarked. M13 rains its majesty on my life every day, but I haven’t seen it for years. When we open our telescopes we record a tiny piece of that grandeur; a tiny fraction of that beauty is captured. It is transformed, of course. It is no longer the beautiful and weary light that crossed the void. That has been lost forever. But its journey has been noticed and lives frozen like a fly in the amber of our data.
We descend from the mountain to tell the story, but we are not the authors of this story. Our practice is not to tell the tale of our own desire. Rather our practice is to try and sweep all that away and simply to listen carefully. Our art is not the creative spark, but the way to make a space, an opening, where the quiet story of nature can be heard. Our earthly life is too loud and noisy to hear this story. We must leave that behind and travel to a distant mountain, or send our proxies out of the world entirely in order to find a quiet place to listen. And because the stories nature has to tell are alien to our human experience, we must be prepared to leave our expectation behind as well. We must also show patience. Often it is cloudy and we feel we are wasting our time, but we stay for those moments when the clouds break and the way is clear. This is the practice my teacher shows me.
Sometimes at night he tells me stories. Our practice, it seems, has an oral tradition as well. I listen to tales of the old masters, of their mistakes and their insights, of their human failings and their transcending wisdom. He tells me of his own teacher, and I discover that I am a part of a noble lineage. I begin to sense that the practice is alive, passed directly from teacher to student, and that I am becoming a part of that process. I am the latest vessel for the practice, and I’m being trained to be the embodiment of this art. Although I do not realize it at the time, my fate has led me to a good teacher, and he teaches me in that most effective of ways: by being the manifestation of his own teaching.
One day he shows a different kind of wisdom. No longer on our mountain, but back again in the noise of life on the ground he hands me a nugget of truth from outside our practice. Not a truth of the path of listening to the heavens, but a human truth about that path and how it lives in our world.
He tells me that this practice, this art, is rare. It is not practical. We serve no material goal, we further no political agenda, we make no patentable discoveries. We work solely to satisfy the whim of human curiosity. Our art exists only because human beings have a fascination with the universe they live in, but that fascination can only pay so many bills. The cold truth is that most of us who start on this path will leave it at some point, and often not out of a desire to do so, but because of the blunt hammer of pragmatism. To practice this art is a privilege, so we need to be grateful for it while it lasts, and let it go if it should leave us.
This has not been an easy lesson to embody, but it has been one I’ve tried to carry with me, bouncing from place to place as is the custom of young researchers in our practice. Walking this path does require its sacrifices, and not all of those are borne by me. Those costs are hard to count. How do you weigh the burden your path has placed on others? But these costs linger and it is not wise to ignore them. Blown by the winds of whim, luck, and fate it is not hard to see why one steps off of this path.
Now it seems that I may have found root. Soon I will be moving to Florida to join a colleague and build up a new community of practitioners. I have moved along the path and will soon become a teacher. I will have naive and brilliant and eager students and I will have to find the wisdom to show them our way. Hopefully I will have the wisdom to be grateful and enjoy it.
On the verge of this change, I find myself stepping onto another path. My karma has led me to a new practice, one which is at once wholly alien and yet also familiar. On the cusp of becoming a master, I find myself compelled to take up a new art. One that challenges me to drop it all and begin again; to find another way to clear away my expectations and make a space to listen quietly. I have only just set my foot on this path, my eye is just beginning to open. I am in the back yard again. The cold and fear are still present but this returning home has reminded me of the fascination that I forgot somewhere along the way. This new path will be hard, but this time I’m seeing it through two eyes. If all paths are one path then I have been here before and I remember it this time. The sense of return is palpable and the poetry of this moment is hard to ignore. I have some maps. I will find a teacher. I will be unmade and remade again and I will always be returning to that moment in the back yard again. That moment when the cold and the night and my self dropped away leaving just the glittering light of ten-thousand suns.
Through the eyepiece of my telescope I am looking at a faint fuzzy smudge called M13, a globular cluster in the constellation of Hercules. The books say that this object is a dense nest of tens of thousands of stars, but it is so far away that to me it’s just a faint patch of light. I wait and I stare. I can still hear the night around me and feel the cold and smell the air. I wait, and gradually the pupil in my eye relaxes and opens wide. The faint smudge becomes brighter and then, click! There it is! I can see them! The cloud resolves into thousands of tiny suns sprinkled like the finest salt on a black silk tablecloth. Mesmerized, I continue to stare, and after a while the yard and the cold and the damp are not there, I don’t really notice them any more. The telescope is not there, it’s just an extension of my eye. I am not there. There is just the majesty of ten-thousand suns hanging silently in space.
This is my opening.
I am 20 years old, an undergraduate at Caltech in Pasadena California. I came to school filled with (over)confidence and excitement, but physics has swiftly dealt with that. My ego is crushed by the weight of trying to take in 400 years of astonishing brilliance; the fruit of a great many minds, each of whom have walked this path with much greater clarity than I. I am learning humility and it hurts, but I have stepped onto the path.
It’s not a path that I really understand though. Not at the time. In retrospect, I can look back at this path and understand the where and the why, but at the time, it was lost in the flow. I had long since forgotten my 12-year-old self in the back yard with the Hercules cluster. On the path I was just driven by instinct and momentum. Such is the way I have lived this life and travelled this path.
Further along the path I have met my teacher. It’s a hot summer in New Hampshire and I am now a graduate student at Dartmouth College. I’ve come here to study cosmology. The big ideas and grand mystery of studying the evolution of the universe as a whole appeal to me, but this is not my fate. Instead, I fall into the study of exploding stars. I have come here intending to study the origins and beginnings of all things, and instead I find myself looking at endings. But of course in those endings, spectacular and terrible, are the seeds of new beginnings. Indeed the origin of our own flesh is in the ashes of these dying stars. We are the fruit of impermanence.
My teacher does not, primarily, fill my head with knowledge. Such book-learning is triviality. Instead, he instructs me in the practice of our art. There are the simple practices at first, learning to use our instruments. But there are other teachings too; the subtle skills of effort and patience; the art of coaxing insight from the chaos of noise balanced with the discerning wisdom to recognize delusion.
On a mountain top in Arizona he shows me the quiet art of observing. We live a strange monk-like existence, sleeping in the daylight and coming out at night to watch the sky. In a way we are cut off from the world. At night we listen to the radio broadcasts from the cities down below, but we don’t see or interact with that world. We are on an island between the world of man and the heavens. It is quiet and time is slow.
The universe is an enigma and our telescope the eye which we use to probe it. Our practice is a passive one: we cannot poke the universe with a stick and watch it move. It is out of our reach. Instead, we can only listen and watch. Every moment light from countless grand structures, which has travelled the depths of time and space for untold eons rains down upon our lives unnoticed. The grandeur that is our universe goes largely unmarked. M13 rains its majesty on my life every day, but I haven’t seen it for years. When we open our telescopes we record a tiny piece of that grandeur; a tiny fraction of that beauty is captured. It is transformed, of course. It is no longer the beautiful and weary light that crossed the void. That has been lost forever. But its journey has been noticed and lives frozen like a fly in the amber of our data.
We descend from the mountain to tell the story, but we are not the authors of this story. Our practice is not to tell the tale of our own desire. Rather our practice is to try and sweep all that away and simply to listen carefully. Our art is not the creative spark, but the way to make a space, an opening, where the quiet story of nature can be heard. Our earthly life is too loud and noisy to hear this story. We must leave that behind and travel to a distant mountain, or send our proxies out of the world entirely in order to find a quiet place to listen. And because the stories nature has to tell are alien to our human experience, we must be prepared to leave our expectation behind as well. We must also show patience. Often it is cloudy and we feel we are wasting our time, but we stay for those moments when the clouds break and the way is clear. This is the practice my teacher shows me.
Sometimes at night he tells me stories. Our practice, it seems, has an oral tradition as well. I listen to tales of the old masters, of their mistakes and their insights, of their human failings and their transcending wisdom. He tells me of his own teacher, and I discover that I am a part of a noble lineage. I begin to sense that the practice is alive, passed directly from teacher to student, and that I am becoming a part of that process. I am the latest vessel for the practice, and I’m being trained to be the embodiment of this art. Although I do not realize it at the time, my fate has led me to a good teacher, and he teaches me in that most effective of ways: by being the manifestation of his own teaching.
One day he shows a different kind of wisdom. No longer on our mountain, but back again in the noise of life on the ground he hands me a nugget of truth from outside our practice. Not a truth of the path of listening to the heavens, but a human truth about that path and how it lives in our world.
He tells me that this practice, this art, is rare. It is not practical. We serve no material goal, we further no political agenda, we make no patentable discoveries. We work solely to satisfy the whim of human curiosity. Our art exists only because human beings have a fascination with the universe they live in, but that fascination can only pay so many bills. The cold truth is that most of us who start on this path will leave it at some point, and often not out of a desire to do so, but because of the blunt hammer of pragmatism. To practice this art is a privilege, so we need to be grateful for it while it lasts, and let it go if it should leave us.
This has not been an easy lesson to embody, but it has been one I’ve tried to carry with me, bouncing from place to place as is the custom of young researchers in our practice. Walking this path does require its sacrifices, and not all of those are borne by me. Those costs are hard to count. How do you weigh the burden your path has placed on others? But these costs linger and it is not wise to ignore them. Blown by the winds of whim, luck, and fate it is not hard to see why one steps off of this path.
Now it seems that I may have found root. Soon I will be moving to Florida to join a colleague and build up a new community of practitioners. I have moved along the path and will soon become a teacher. I will have naive and brilliant and eager students and I will have to find the wisdom to show them our way. Hopefully I will have the wisdom to be grateful and enjoy it.
On the verge of this change, I find myself stepping onto another path. My karma has led me to a new practice, one which is at once wholly alien and yet also familiar. On the cusp of becoming a master, I find myself compelled to take up a new art. One that challenges me to drop it all and begin again; to find another way to clear away my expectations and make a space to listen quietly. I have only just set my foot on this path, my eye is just beginning to open. I am in the back yard again. The cold and fear are still present but this returning home has reminded me of the fascination that I forgot somewhere along the way. This new path will be hard, but this time I’m seeing it through two eyes. If all paths are one path then I have been here before and I remember it this time. The sense of return is palpable and the poetry of this moment is hard to ignore. I have some maps. I will find a teacher. I will be unmade and remade again and I will always be returning to that moment in the back yard again. That moment when the cold and the night and my self dropped away leaving just the glittering light of ten-thousand suns.
A Path to a Revelation
More catchup...
Two weeks ago at my Thursday night zazen sitting I was suddenly overcome with a dramatic sense of not knowing why I was there. What was I doing? Why? I've never really shown much interest in this sort of thing. I'm not really facing any deep existential crisis. What the heck is driving me to sitting on a cushion in someone else's living room?
But the interesting thing was that there was a sense of something compelling me to do it. I just didn't know what. I could come up with all sorts of reasons why meditation was a good thing, but they all seemed like justifications for something I already wanted to do, not the compelling reason in itself. And then it occurred to me that I didn't really know why I was compelled to do a lot of what I do. Particularly when it came to my job. What was it about my job that really drives me to drag my family all over the world spending resources I don't really have?
Interesting questions, but no real answers.
Then, last Thursday, the reading at the start of the second sitting started something like "How do you answer people when they ask you why you sit on a cushion?", which certainly got my attention. I don't really remember much about the rest of the reading though because I was distracted by a newly triggered idea. The reading kept touching on the idea of the importance of the 'practice' itself, something which was heavily discussed in the book I had also just finished (On Zen Practice by Taizan Maizumi Roshi).
The reason this set me off is that I had been interviewing students all day long as part of the grading process for lab. And these being typical undergraduates, they had terrible lab books. So I ended up trying to explain to them that what we were really trying to teach them in lab was not physics, but rather the much more subtle art of good experimental practice. I was stressing the art of good lab practice.
During the reading, this idea crashed headlong into the question from the previous week and sparks flew. First, there suddenly seemed like there was a strong similarity between Zen practice and my own scientific practice, and so maybe the mysterious reason behind those two compulsions were one and the same. Second, science is an art, and so is Zen. Third, I suddenly realized that I was strongly attracted to Zen as an art form, both Zen inspired art and just the beauty and simplicity of the practice itself. Zen is art. Science is art. Was that it?
So I tried an experiment. Using the Big Mind technique I've been playing with, I asked to speak to the voice of Art. Low and behold, Art answered, and wouldn't you know it, it answered in a way that is rather similar to Big Heart, or The Way, or Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. Holy crap! Art is, to me at least, a transcendent voice. And one that speaks strongly to me! I sit because it is beautiful to do so.
I talked about this in the 'open sharing' and when the discussion came around again, the guy to my right made the comment that he too felt a kinship between the practice of Zen and his practice as an artist. But the interesting thing was that he felt like in both cases the practice was a method of making an opening and clearing a space for inspiration to happen, but not a method for making the inspiration, which comes forth spontaneously. More sparks went off, because that is a brilliant way of describing the practice of observational astronomy (and at some level, experimental science in general).
All in all, a very interesting session, and at the end, Manu suggested that I should write something about Zen and Astronomy for their Zen magazine Hazy Moon. I thought about this all the way home on the train, and the result bubbled up spontaneously almost whole when I got home. It took a few days for me to get back to it and finish it, but the resulting essay will be my next post.
Two weeks ago at my Thursday night zazen sitting I was suddenly overcome with a dramatic sense of not knowing why I was there. What was I doing? Why? I've never really shown much interest in this sort of thing. I'm not really facing any deep existential crisis. What the heck is driving me to sitting on a cushion in someone else's living room?
But the interesting thing was that there was a sense of something compelling me to do it. I just didn't know what. I could come up with all sorts of reasons why meditation was a good thing, but they all seemed like justifications for something I already wanted to do, not the compelling reason in itself. And then it occurred to me that I didn't really know why I was compelled to do a lot of what I do. Particularly when it came to my job. What was it about my job that really drives me to drag my family all over the world spending resources I don't really have?
Interesting questions, but no real answers.
Then, last Thursday, the reading at the start of the second sitting started something like "How do you answer people when they ask you why you sit on a cushion?", which certainly got my attention. I don't really remember much about the rest of the reading though because I was distracted by a newly triggered idea. The reading kept touching on the idea of the importance of the 'practice' itself, something which was heavily discussed in the book I had also just finished (On Zen Practice by Taizan Maizumi Roshi).
The reason this set me off is that I had been interviewing students all day long as part of the grading process for lab. And these being typical undergraduates, they had terrible lab books. So I ended up trying to explain to them that what we were really trying to teach them in lab was not physics, but rather the much more subtle art of good experimental practice. I was stressing the art of good lab practice.
During the reading, this idea crashed headlong into the question from the previous week and sparks flew. First, there suddenly seemed like there was a strong similarity between Zen practice and my own scientific practice, and so maybe the mysterious reason behind those two compulsions were one and the same. Second, science is an art, and so is Zen. Third, I suddenly realized that I was strongly attracted to Zen as an art form, both Zen inspired art and just the beauty and simplicity of the practice itself. Zen is art. Science is art. Was that it?
So I tried an experiment. Using the Big Mind technique I've been playing with, I asked to speak to the voice of Art. Low and behold, Art answered, and wouldn't you know it, it answered in a way that is rather similar to Big Heart, or The Way, or Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. Holy crap! Art is, to me at least, a transcendent voice. And one that speaks strongly to me! I sit because it is beautiful to do so.
I talked about this in the 'open sharing' and when the discussion came around again, the guy to my right made the comment that he too felt a kinship between the practice of Zen and his practice as an artist. But the interesting thing was that he felt like in both cases the practice was a method of making an opening and clearing a space for inspiration to happen, but not a method for making the inspiration, which comes forth spontaneously. More sparks went off, because that is a brilliant way of describing the practice of observational astronomy (and at some level, experimental science in general).
All in all, a very interesting session, and at the end, Manu suggested that I should write something about Zen and Astronomy for their Zen magazine Hazy Moon. I thought about this all the way home on the train, and the result bubbled up spontaneously almost whole when I got home. It took a few days for me to get back to it and finish it, but the resulting essay will be my next post.
Sundry Catchup
To begin with, some catch up: First, it appears that we are headed to Tallahassee. They are making me an offer for the assistant professorship, and I am going to take it. Whoo hoo! I have joined the landed gentry. Hooray! And that reminds me, Doctor Who starts on Saturday. Hooray! And spring is here! The light is back! Hooray! Celebrations all round.
I've also (perhaps foolishly), waded into the bizarre waters of the Integral Institute forums. You may or may not be able to find my posts here and here. The article referred to in the first forum is in the second issue of AQAL Journal, which you may or may not be able to access here. Mostly, I think I've discovered that Wilberites irritate my shadow. This may or may not be interesting to watch.
I've also (perhaps foolishly), waded into the bizarre waters of the Integral Institute forums. You may or may not be able to find my posts here and here. The article referred to in the first forum is in the second issue of AQAL Journal, which you may or may not be able to access here. Mostly, I think I've discovered that Wilberites irritate my shadow. This may or may not be interesting to watch.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Back to Ground
The coin turns and the other face comes forward.
Started this entry on the Met line back to Harrow after an interesting sitting, but I left it overnight to simmer a bit. Much to ponder. I think I've learned something. Perhaps I already knew it, but the penny dropped last night. Manu and Sarita are not supposed to be teachers, and indeed they are not acting as mentors, but I do find their company very instructive. They are teachers simply by virtue of being living examples of what this practice looks like, and for that I am indeed grateful.
It's been an up and down week. After the second round of 'fireworks' last week, I think I let go of the surrender issue that was my early sticking point. What I found this week however, was the next sticking point, which (perhaps obviously) was expectation. Last week I was in the zone and everything was easy. Meditation was play and it was fun. However, over the weekend I took a break, (life stepped in) and come Monday I discovered there's a Monday Morning Effect in meditation as well. My skills were rusty. Worse, I discovered myself 'trying' for the first time. Arrgh! That's not good... stop it! etc...
So it's been fits and starts most of the week, though I was in the zone wednesday night for class with the crazy Kadampas. Tonight's sitting was hard though. Uncomfortable and constant adjustment. Just not clicking for the most part.
Except right at the beginning... Interesting bit that. When I started the first session, I was struck almost immediately with a strong resurrection of the emotional storm during that first week after Lazarus was born; one of the rawest times I can remember. Where this has been hiding for the last 14 months I have no idea, nor why it suddenly decided to surface last night, but there it was. Now perhaps the distance has helped to fade it, or perhaps it was the sitting, but I was able to, for the most part, just sit and observe this feeling. In a way, the stark openness and rawness of these emotions are quite beautiful, traumatic as they were to experience the first time around. In any event, it was an interesting experience to just sit with these feelings and not have to identify with them.
Manu says he is not interested in the nondual. Where he is at in his life, he just isn't interested in the absolute. He sits purely for the relative at the moment. hmmm.
This makes me wonder, what am I after? Why am I attracted to this practice? What am I trying to do this for? Is it the pure sensory experience? Probably not. That was perhaps the first hook that slipped it past my skeptic and suggested to me that there was something going on, but the weird sensory effects aren't that interesting.
Is it some sort of latent search for "spirituality?" (For lack of a better term.) I don't know. Perhaps. I've not really explored such issues much in the past, and indeed at certain points I've been somewhat antagonistic to the idea. Certainly there is (was?) some sort of shadow issue lurking given my rather asymmetric reaction to any sort of religious fundamentalism and to Christianity in particular. Perhaps the self doth protest too much? Is there, hidden in that shadow, a secret desire to surrender to such a belief? If so, then Zen is an interesting choice, seeing as it is a practice almost completely stripped of the trappings of religion. The surrender in Zen is not to a god, not to any particular metaphysical notion of reality (though these aspects can float about a bit in the background at times.) Really it's a surrender to the practice and a surrender of the need for notions. If you're looking for meaning, it seems to me that Zen is the last place you'll find it. To really sit zazen I think you need to leave that need for a reason at the door. The fact that Zen resonates with me leads me to suspect I'm not looking for The Meaning of Life.
I might be looking for a refuge from rationality. That idea does have some ring of truth to it. Why do I resonate so much more with Big Heart than with Big Mind? Perhaps I spend too much in mind already. There is certainly an aspect of my heart that yearns to break loose from the bonds of rationalism and pragmatism, and indulge in a sense of magic and wonder.
On the other hand, this is the aspect that most worries my skeptic, and that fear was the first sticking point that I had to navigate to even engage in the process in the first place. This is the still persistent, nagging kernel of doubt which digs at me. It's taken the better part of three years of reading the likes of Ken Wilber, and struggling with these ideas to get me to the point where I am now.
And I'm still not fully convinced. Far from it. Indeed, I waffle all over the map, but the arguments have been subtle and convincing enough that I can't dismiss them. The criticism that my 'rational' worldview is also based on metaphysical assumptions is troubling. Science doesn't do absolutes very well because, well frankly, you can't extrapolate. Any time you try to make a statement of ultimate truth, you are inherently extrapolating beyond the limits of your observations and nothing is really constrained. You can't just continue the curve off the edge of the page. If you do then you're so-called truth becomes a bridge that's only supported on one side. It will hold for a while, but it will never get you to the ultimate. The span is too large. (It's infinite after all).
So perhaps the Zen idea that ultimate truth is ungraspable is an appealing notion. It certainly ends lots of unpleasant arguments. Of course there is also the notion in Zen that one can actually be that ungraspable truth; in fact, one cannot NOT be that ungrapsable truth. Well... for the moment we will just file that under "food for the mind that seeks the way" and leave it at that. The nondual is an idea that teases my rational skeptic, but pleases my inner mage. Détente?
So, there is probably an element of seeking the nondual in my attraction to Zen. Still, if this was the only attraction I think my skeptic would be significantly more concerned. However, there is another reason which even my skeptic will pass whole-heartedly, and this is the reason that really came through last night. I'm finding that sitting is increasing my stability and emotional balance.
The Zen koan "be the immovable tree in a heavy wind" is speaking quite loudly to me now. This is an image that my heart leaps at like a desperate starved monkey. I've been an emotional tumbleweed for a long time. Perhaps a heavy tumbleweed at times, but a tumbleweed nontheless. Fifteen years ago I rooted myself to another tumbleweed, which has provided both some increased stability, but also some increased sensitivity to the wind. Now we are both tied to the lightest, most wayward of tumbleweeds. And for the last year and a half or so, the winds have been mighty gusty.
Sitting makes me heavy. It gives me a sense of balance and inertia. I'm still blown by the winds, but I feel like I'm rising less to the bait. It's as if, when I sit zazen, I'm literally rooting my ass to the ground. I'm beginning to feel a little bit more like a willow. Sarita read a short passage from a book by Taizan Maezumi Roshi last night which spoke of having faith in oneself. This is something I have difficulty with, but perhaps finding balance and ground will help.
Started this entry on the Met line back to Harrow after an interesting sitting, but I left it overnight to simmer a bit. Much to ponder. I think I've learned something. Perhaps I already knew it, but the penny dropped last night. Manu and Sarita are not supposed to be teachers, and indeed they are not acting as mentors, but I do find their company very instructive. They are teachers simply by virtue of being living examples of what this practice looks like, and for that I am indeed grateful.
It's been an up and down week. After the second round of 'fireworks' last week, I think I let go of the surrender issue that was my early sticking point. What I found this week however, was the next sticking point, which (perhaps obviously) was expectation. Last week I was in the zone and everything was easy. Meditation was play and it was fun. However, over the weekend I took a break, (life stepped in) and come Monday I discovered there's a Monday Morning Effect in meditation as well. My skills were rusty. Worse, I discovered myself 'trying' for the first time. Arrgh! That's not good... stop it! etc...
So it's been fits and starts most of the week, though I was in the zone wednesday night for class with the crazy Kadampas. Tonight's sitting was hard though. Uncomfortable and constant adjustment. Just not clicking for the most part.
Except right at the beginning... Interesting bit that. When I started the first session, I was struck almost immediately with a strong resurrection of the emotional storm during that first week after Lazarus was born; one of the rawest times I can remember. Where this has been hiding for the last 14 months I have no idea, nor why it suddenly decided to surface last night, but there it was. Now perhaps the distance has helped to fade it, or perhaps it was the sitting, but I was able to, for the most part, just sit and observe this feeling. In a way, the stark openness and rawness of these emotions are quite beautiful, traumatic as they were to experience the first time around. In any event, it was an interesting experience to just sit with these feelings and not have to identify with them.
Manu says he is not interested in the nondual. Where he is at in his life, he just isn't interested in the absolute. He sits purely for the relative at the moment. hmmm.
This makes me wonder, what am I after? Why am I attracted to this practice? What am I trying to do this for? Is it the pure sensory experience? Probably not. That was perhaps the first hook that slipped it past my skeptic and suggested to me that there was something going on, but the weird sensory effects aren't that interesting.
Is it some sort of latent search for "spirituality?" (For lack of a better term.) I don't know. Perhaps. I've not really explored such issues much in the past, and indeed at certain points I've been somewhat antagonistic to the idea. Certainly there is (was?) some sort of shadow issue lurking given my rather asymmetric reaction to any sort of religious fundamentalism and to Christianity in particular. Perhaps the self doth protest too much? Is there, hidden in that shadow, a secret desire to surrender to such a belief? If so, then Zen is an interesting choice, seeing as it is a practice almost completely stripped of the trappings of religion. The surrender in Zen is not to a god, not to any particular metaphysical notion of reality (though these aspects can float about a bit in the background at times.) Really it's a surrender to the practice and a surrender of the need for notions. If you're looking for meaning, it seems to me that Zen is the last place you'll find it. To really sit zazen I think you need to leave that need for a reason at the door. The fact that Zen resonates with me leads me to suspect I'm not looking for The Meaning of Life.
I might be looking for a refuge from rationality. That idea does have some ring of truth to it. Why do I resonate so much more with Big Heart than with Big Mind? Perhaps I spend too much in mind already. There is certainly an aspect of my heart that yearns to break loose from the bonds of rationalism and pragmatism, and indulge in a sense of magic and wonder.
On the other hand, this is the aspect that most worries my skeptic, and that fear was the first sticking point that I had to navigate to even engage in the process in the first place. This is the still persistent, nagging kernel of doubt which digs at me. It's taken the better part of three years of reading the likes of Ken Wilber, and struggling with these ideas to get me to the point where I am now.
And I'm still not fully convinced. Far from it. Indeed, I waffle all over the map, but the arguments have been subtle and convincing enough that I can't dismiss them. The criticism that my 'rational' worldview is also based on metaphysical assumptions is troubling. Science doesn't do absolutes very well because, well frankly, you can't extrapolate. Any time you try to make a statement of ultimate truth, you are inherently extrapolating beyond the limits of your observations and nothing is really constrained. You can't just continue the curve off the edge of the page. If you do then you're so-called truth becomes a bridge that's only supported on one side. It will hold for a while, but it will never get you to the ultimate. The span is too large. (It's infinite after all).
So perhaps the Zen idea that ultimate truth is ungraspable is an appealing notion. It certainly ends lots of unpleasant arguments. Of course there is also the notion in Zen that one can actually be that ungraspable truth; in fact, one cannot NOT be that ungrapsable truth. Well... for the moment we will just file that under "food for the mind that seeks the way" and leave it at that. The nondual is an idea that teases my rational skeptic, but pleases my inner mage. Détente?
So, there is probably an element of seeking the nondual in my attraction to Zen. Still, if this was the only attraction I think my skeptic would be significantly more concerned. However, there is another reason which even my skeptic will pass whole-heartedly, and this is the reason that really came through last night. I'm finding that sitting is increasing my stability and emotional balance.
The Zen koan "be the immovable tree in a heavy wind" is speaking quite loudly to me now. This is an image that my heart leaps at like a desperate starved monkey. I've been an emotional tumbleweed for a long time. Perhaps a heavy tumbleweed at times, but a tumbleweed nontheless. Fifteen years ago I rooted myself to another tumbleweed, which has provided both some increased stability, but also some increased sensitivity to the wind. Now we are both tied to the lightest, most wayward of tumbleweeds. And for the last year and a half or so, the winds have been mighty gusty.
Sitting makes me heavy. It gives me a sense of balance and inertia. I'm still blown by the winds, but I feel like I'm rising less to the bait. It's as if, when I sit zazen, I'm literally rooting my ass to the ground. I'm beginning to feel a little bit more like a willow. Sarita read a short passage from a book by Taizan Maezumi Roshi last night which spoke of having faith in oneself. This is something I have difficulty with, but perhaps finding balance and ground will help.
Friday, March 02, 2007
In the Garden of Mystic Lovers
Manifesting a bit of bliss-mind again on the way to work this morning (well afternoon technically). Still at it even. Not really sure what to make of that. I'm not sure I should try. If the zen advice is "when sitting just sit", etc., should I just go with the flow? When Blissing Just Bliss? Perhaps. There is a question that floats around in the background which wonders if there is a danger of nondual joy slipping into a more dangerous dualistic phenomenon, and how to tell the difference. But I'm just aware of this thought. I'm not really doing much about it. Part of me wonders if I'm being a bit reckless. I really don't know what I'm doing here. But then I'm also aware of the idea that that lack of training and lack of seeking is the key to why this is working for me in the first place. This seems awfully easy, and came on remarkably suddenly. It's not always there of course, but it has never been the titanic struggle that some texts suggest it should be. Then again, zen is the school of sudden realization isn't it?
Some other observations.
I have apparently become the kind of person who finds Live celebratory. Now why do I hesitate to use the word "inspirational?" Hello my Shadow. There you are. I see you. But I'm not going to do anything about it because you're fine just the way you are. When blissing just bliss.
The clouds outside my window look just like the opening of The Simpsons.
The life of my Self is very much in flux at the moment. It's been a rather eventful week. As Ferris Beuller said: "Life moves pretty fast". Well indeed that is the case at the moment. It's very much a present-in-flow and a future of possibilities rather than likelihoods, with all the thrilling anticipation and fear and buzz that goes along with it. Definitely surfing the rapids here. It's been a long year of samsaric bliss and terror and perhaps I'm primed for the detonations which have been coming with increasing regularity since December, and are now piling on top of one another. How many gestalt switches and plot twists can you pile on the head of a pin?
Back a bit more in this world now, but in a gentle way with a tendril still floating back to the nondual like an umbilical tether. Perhaps that the metaphor. This body is the space suit the nondual uses to walk in the dualistic world. The weird thing is that it comes back in waves. I can pull myself back into it sill if I try. The beginning of states turning into stages? Perhaps... I don't know, and it doesn't really matter does it? (Or does it? Hmm...)
Anyway, back to the flow. I've been here before, but it's been a while. A long while. Long enough for me to forget the feeling. No that's not right. I still remember the feeling because I know it now, but I had forgotten that I remembered it. There was a moment many years ago when the world was in flux and there was the thrill of being on the verge of something. The world was abundant and I was in love for the first time. Perhaps I can call this Toevening Mind. It's a voice I forgot I had. There is a thing I forgot about falling in love. We don't just fall in love with someone. When we truly fall for someone, we fall in love with the world as well. Everything is bliss. Even things that suck are wonderful, at least for a while.
Perhaps I'm falling for the world once again.
Some other observations.
I have apparently become the kind of person who finds Live celebratory. Now why do I hesitate to use the word "inspirational?" Hello my Shadow. There you are. I see you. But I'm not going to do anything about it because you're fine just the way you are. When blissing just bliss.
The clouds outside my window look just like the opening of The Simpsons.
The life of my Self is very much in flux at the moment. It's been a rather eventful week. As Ferris Beuller said: "Life moves pretty fast". Well indeed that is the case at the moment. It's very much a present-in-flow and a future of possibilities rather than likelihoods, with all the thrilling anticipation and fear and buzz that goes along with it. Definitely surfing the rapids here. It's been a long year of samsaric bliss and terror and perhaps I'm primed for the detonations which have been coming with increasing regularity since December, and are now piling on top of one another. How many gestalt switches and plot twists can you pile on the head of a pin?
Back a bit more in this world now, but in a gentle way with a tendril still floating back to the nondual like an umbilical tether. Perhaps that the metaphor. This body is the space suit the nondual uses to walk in the dualistic world. The weird thing is that it comes back in waves. I can pull myself back into it sill if I try. The beginning of states turning into stages? Perhaps... I don't know, and it doesn't really matter does it? (Or does it? Hmm...)
Anyway, back to the flow. I've been here before, but it's been a while. A long while. Long enough for me to forget the feeling. No that's not right. I still remember the feeling because I know it now, but I had forgotten that I remembered it. There was a moment many years ago when the world was in flux and there was the thrill of being on the verge of something. The world was abundant and I was in love for the first time. Perhaps I can call this Toevening Mind. It's a voice I forgot I had. There is a thing I forgot about falling in love. We don't just fall in love with someone. When we truly fall for someone, we fall in love with the world as well. Everything is bliss. Even things that suck are wonderful, at least for a while.
Perhaps I'm falling for the world once again.
She says I, We, You, She,
In the garden of mystic lovers these are not true distinctions.
-Francis Dunnery
Thursday, March 01, 2007
A Rhapsanghady of Zensations
I was pondering on that title all the way home, which entailed taking a bus, then the tube, then another bus! I'm sure there's an even better title to be had, but that will do I guess.
So I joined a zen sitting group tonight. Very small affair, run by a couple of students of the Kanzeon tradition out of their flat in North London. I had to be a little brave to actually go, but I stuck my neck out of my shell and took the plunge. This lovely couple invite people into their home every Thursday night for group sittings, and an "open sharing" after. No hiding here, this is intimate (5 people tonight... I guess sometimes it might be only three, or even just the two of them!)
Still, I was brave and showed up. There was a little awkwardness at the beginning, particularly as these people have had some proper Zen training and I'm sorta making it up as I go along with some guidance from whatever sources I can find. The kindest description of my practice is probably "freestyle". Though it's beginning to get a bit "enthusiastic" as well. At some point I would need to get some real teaching though, and indeed, I may try to seek it out when I get somewhere. Actually, there's a Sesshin in Liverpool at the end of the month which would probably be a lovely experience, but it's probably just not practical. Still... sigh. No. Really not practical.
Still, I do seem to find this Kanzeon tradition rather attractive. If we lived in Salt Lake City I could totally see myself jumping in with both feet.
Yikes... lot's of thoughts. Not much organization. They all want to bubble out at once and they've been bubbling under for hours now. Practice in a group is different. Hard to really describe, but the experience is more communal. I found the Big Heart voice was much stronger in the communal sitting than it is alone.
We did two 30 minute sittings with a short break in between. When we started I found myself a but nervous, which then blossomed into a brief flash of full on fear. Can I really do this? Will I embarrass myself? What if...? Thankfully, it was brief and I was able to quickly settle into the breath. Then I shifted to The Controller and asked for Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. This is probably the quietest of the nondual voices I've found so far. It's a bit hard to tell it's there sometimes actually, but it's probably the best for Shikantaza (as Genpo Roshi says, "Just Sit"). So since I'm just sitting and not judging (or trying not to) it's a little hard to tell if I'm there at the beginning, but the shift back to The Controller if VERY obvious. The contraction literally feels like a clamp or metal band closes around my head.
So back to just sitting, and this works quite well. Indeed I was actually quite on during the first sitting. I just sat for quite a while, noticing thoughts, sounds (bodies are loud!). The other people in the room start to fade in my peripheral vision, taking on a semi-transparent look. I have a spontaneous memory of sitting in the back yard alone when I was 12 and looking through my telescope at the Hercules globular cluster on a cool summer night and just staring at it for ages. I was still a bit afraid of the dark, but the sky was so quiet and peaceful. That combination of thrill and peace back again. The carpet starts to get a wobbly look like a piece of paper in a breeze. (My eyes aren't moving much, so these may be effects of retinal nerves getting bored.) Then I notice the body feels stiff like stone. Hey cool, I'm a Stone Buddha!
Then I tried some other voices. The Way. Big Mind. Big Heart.... Woah! There's the buzz! It's an electric feeling like putting your tongue on a 9-volt battery. Suddenly I love these 5 complete strangers in the room with me. 5 strangers? Yes: who is this person who's eyes I'm using to see? Doesn't matter, he's lovely, as are all these other people just sitting here in the room, with their tummy burbles and transparent bodies. Oh and the carpet is lovely. And that car driving by outside is nice too. I notice my mouth is moving of its own accord. It's turning into that mysterious little smile that you see on Buddha statues. You know, the one that sits on Mona Lisa's face. Wow. That is unexpected. I am Mona Lisa's Enigmatic Smile!
etc... etc... etc...
The sharing was again scary, I now have to talk and share... So I express gratitude and joyousness. And I also explain that I am beginning to see the benefits of surrender, which does not come easy to me. I don't usually let go.
I did once though. Again, like tonight, under the influence of too little sleep I let go and took that backward step into surrender. Early one morning, really early... about 4AM or so... in an open field on another cool summer night nearly 15 years ago I uncharacteristically let go of reason and Stepped Off. And my heart sings with gratitude that I did.
So I joined a zen sitting group tonight. Very small affair, run by a couple of students of the Kanzeon tradition out of their flat in North London. I had to be a little brave to actually go, but I stuck my neck out of my shell and took the plunge. This lovely couple invite people into their home every Thursday night for group sittings, and an "open sharing" after. No hiding here, this is intimate (5 people tonight... I guess sometimes it might be only three, or even just the two of them!)
Still, I was brave and showed up. There was a little awkwardness at the beginning, particularly as these people have had some proper Zen training and I'm sorta making it up as I go along with some guidance from whatever sources I can find. The kindest description of my practice is probably "freestyle". Though it's beginning to get a bit "enthusiastic" as well. At some point I would need to get some real teaching though, and indeed, I may try to seek it out when I get somewhere. Actually, there's a Sesshin in Liverpool at the end of the month which would probably be a lovely experience, but it's probably just not practical. Still... sigh. No. Really not practical.
Still, I do seem to find this Kanzeon tradition rather attractive. If we lived in Salt Lake City I could totally see myself jumping in with both feet.
Yikes... lot's of thoughts. Not much organization. They all want to bubble out at once and they've been bubbling under for hours now. Practice in a group is different. Hard to really describe, but the experience is more communal. I found the Big Heart voice was much stronger in the communal sitting than it is alone.
We did two 30 minute sittings with a short break in between. When we started I found myself a but nervous, which then blossomed into a brief flash of full on fear. Can I really do this? Will I embarrass myself? What if...? Thankfully, it was brief and I was able to quickly settle into the breath. Then I shifted to The Controller and asked for Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. This is probably the quietest of the nondual voices I've found so far. It's a bit hard to tell it's there sometimes actually, but it's probably the best for Shikantaza (as Genpo Roshi says, "Just Sit"). So since I'm just sitting and not judging (or trying not to) it's a little hard to tell if I'm there at the beginning, but the shift back to The Controller if VERY obvious. The contraction literally feels like a clamp or metal band closes around my head.
So back to just sitting, and this works quite well. Indeed I was actually quite on during the first sitting. I just sat for quite a while, noticing thoughts, sounds (bodies are loud!). The other people in the room start to fade in my peripheral vision, taking on a semi-transparent look. I have a spontaneous memory of sitting in the back yard alone when I was 12 and looking through my telescope at the Hercules globular cluster on a cool summer night and just staring at it for ages. I was still a bit afraid of the dark, but the sky was so quiet and peaceful. That combination of thrill and peace back again. The carpet starts to get a wobbly look like a piece of paper in a breeze. (My eyes aren't moving much, so these may be effects of retinal nerves getting bored.) Then I notice the body feels stiff like stone. Hey cool, I'm a Stone Buddha!
Then I tried some other voices. The Way. Big Mind. Big Heart.... Woah! There's the buzz! It's an electric feeling like putting your tongue on a 9-volt battery. Suddenly I love these 5 complete strangers in the room with me. 5 strangers? Yes: who is this person who's eyes I'm using to see? Doesn't matter, he's lovely, as are all these other people just sitting here in the room, with their tummy burbles and transparent bodies. Oh and the carpet is lovely. And that car driving by outside is nice too. I notice my mouth is moving of its own accord. It's turning into that mysterious little smile that you see on Buddha statues. You know, the one that sits on Mona Lisa's face. Wow. That is unexpected. I am Mona Lisa's Enigmatic Smile!
etc... etc... etc...
The sharing was again scary, I now have to talk and share... So I express gratitude and joyousness. And I also explain that I am beginning to see the benefits of surrender, which does not come easy to me. I don't usually let go.
I did once though. Again, like tonight, under the influence of too little sleep I let go and took that backward step into surrender. Early one morning, really early... about 4AM or so... in an open field on another cool summer night nearly 15 years ago I uncharacteristically let go of reason and Stepped Off. And my heart sings with gratitude that I did.
And I'm Free.... Free Fallin'
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