Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
In Tibetan buddhism here are lineages that are mostly about study
(Gelug)and lineages that emphasize practice (Nyigma and Kagyu) but most
would agree that the buddhist path requires both practice and study.
Study, debate, and "philosophizing" to provoke, challenge and examine
our assumptions about the way we create the world, and our stories
about our mind. And practice so we actually have a few gaps of space in
which to experience something beyond what we usually tell ourselves.
without the practice, the study is pretty airy-fairy (and you see that
in most commentary about buddhism by non-practitioners). Without study
it's hard to progress.

>>"Just sitting" has never appealed to me, but I think I get a lot of
the same benefits from doing Tai Chi....<<

There are many ways to synchronize mind and body. Tai Chi is
wonderful, and it does confer all kinds of benefits.  But.  In the
context of a path of mindfulness/awareness meditation it would be
considered a "post meditation" exercise. (where "post meditation" is
anything that happens before or after meditation.

The Buddha taught forms of meditation standing, sitting, walking and
lying down. And someone taught Shakyamuni how to meditate.  (and there
are more kinds of meditation than mindfulness awareness practice). 

The practice does more than confer benefits. It makes us familiar with
 our minds and our stuff. And to do that it needs to be somewhat more
boring than Tai Chi.
  

    
Two excellent posts.

And I think, Paul, that you have come up with the great new
advertising slogan for meditation: "Somewhat more boring than Tai Chi."
  

    
That is a great observation, Paul.  We finally become so bored with
our own blah blah blah that the truth breaks through.
  

    
It feels to me that the core of practice is noticing the boredom and
coming back to it.
  

    
Turning away from it is also called "daydreaming" or "sleeping,"
something most of us spend hundreds of hours resorting to.
  

    
It's interesting that philosophy proper has little use for concepts that
can't be described and analyzed in words, yet much in life appears to fall
into that category. 

Words fail us, and I think this drove Bertrand Russell bonkers.
  

    
Chogyam Trungpa said somewhere that once you're really bored, you're
getting somewhere.
  

    
He identified two kinds of boredom: Hot boredom and Cool boredom.

Hot boredom is that boredom that you encounter right off the bat (and
at many other times thereafter). It's the result of the mind mightily
resisting settling. It's fidgety, distracted, and a kind of torment.
People who think they can't meditate often feel that way because of how
awful hot boredom feels. But in fact this means that meditation is a
good thing for you to do.  This is hot boredom and the tools to apply
are gentleness, and friendliness to oneself.  

And then there's what happens after you settle. The body feels more
stable, more connected to the earth. There's more of an experience of
spaciousness. It's not hard to rest the mind on the breath. There's a
feeling of phyisical and mental relaxation and a feeling of being
present. Now. And still, nothing is happening. Nothing much continues
to happen. For a long time. Nothing much is ever going to happen. From
time to time something arises - you touch it and taste its energy and
let it go and carry on.  This is cool boredom. And the tool to apply is
fearlessness.
  

    
I can't tell you how valuable I'm finding this discussion.

The part about knowledge vs. practice really strikes home for me. I'm
currently studying two very different disciplines: Tai Chi and
classical piano. Different and not at all different. I keep finding
stuff in one that I can apply in the other. And both of them are more
about doing it than learning about it.
  

    
Makes me think of my aikido instruction. Aikido is full of specific
techniques, each with maybe a dozen basic instructions about where to
place your body, which way to turn your hand at each moment, how to
shift your weight. By the time you are preparing for your black belt,
you know probably several hundred combinations of a given attack with
various options for defense. But at the black belt level they attack
really hard, none of this practice stuff. It forces you to learn the
hardest thing, which is to drop all instruction in the actual moment of
combat. Your practice is still in some way informed by all that
knowing and the thousands of hours you put in getting it just right.
But if it comes to consciousness, you're doomed. 
  

    
Another interesting tension in Buddhism, aside from study vs practice, is
"allowing" versus "establishing". That is to say, one way of thinking about
practice is, don't indulge the wandering mind, come back to the breath,
presence, right now. Another way, however, is to recognize that everything,
without exception, is already included in the Dharmakaya, and it's equally
important to realize that the struggle to tame the mind is itself something
that we ultimately need to relax. Suzuki-roshi talked about both of these
points, using the phrase "no gaining idea" to discuss the crucial fact that
even while we try to work with and calm the mind, we shouldn't try to use
that very same "gaining idea" mind to do this. It's a very tricky paradox.

So, for instance, if the daydreaming mind comes up, we could say that's a
deviation from presence, but another approach is to allow it to come up and
check again, see it more deeply. Rather than trying to stop it, we can
simply avoid "buying into" it --- the thoughts can arise, but we don't have
to "believe" everything, or "run with it" as my teacher says. Interestingly,
practice in this fashion can ultimately lead to an ability to literally
relax the wandering mind, even though it begins with an "allowing" maneuver.

We can see this contrast in many debates within Buddhism; between, for
instance the Theravada which emphasize very specific practices and outcomes,
to Dzogchen, which stress the "already complete" nature of mind and reality
even before one begins to practice, to the tension between the slightly
more "active" Rinzai Zen and the slightly more "passive" Soto Zen.
  

    
As an athiest, I don't really have any sort of useful opinion on
religion, but I do have a new one on a person's state of mind.

I won't go into a lot of public detail on this but I had a severe
concussion last fall and two weeks "vacation" in the hospital followed
by two months not working and staying at home.  During the first week
I was convinced that various untrue things were true -- that I was
married to someone in another state instead of the wife sitting next
to my bed.  They ended up knocking me under for a few days and when I
came back I knew who I was but had trouble with simple tasks like
feeding myself.  Two months later I was driving and things were kinda
back to normal.

If you're interested in how the mind works and have an open mind to
science, crack open some college texts on things like brain trauma or
the treating of professional athletes who have had multiple
concussions.

Our perceptions are changed without our consent or direction in
something as simple as a fall that ends with your head hitting
concrete.

How someone who willingly does this sort of exercise, be it through
meditation with monks or practicing martial arts changes their view of
the world is a really interesting question to me these days.

Here's why -- I still think the flavor of iced tea changed while I was
in the hospital and that I speak way too slowly.  Around me, my
friends say that nothing has changed, I'm acting as normal as I ever
did, unfortunately.
  

    
Hey there zuikoenji -- if I may say this in an inkwell discussion, I hope 
you come visit the Buddhism conference one of these days.
  

    
Norman Fischer sat with flies walking across his face. He appeared
content and/or serene and/or stoic as hell.

My knee hurt and I moved. 

Norman had asked us to sit with eyes open, which is not my usual
practice, and I took a long time to find the beauty and utility of
that. This time, a first time, I watched him, sitting with flies.

Later we talked, and I asked him about ignoring flies and shifting
away from pain. He said it was fine to shift away, but might be more
instructive to sit with it for a few moments first and really
experience it as a part of the whole of the moment. 

That’s not what he said, It’s the best I can remember. What he said
was simple and profound and has changed the way I deal with reality. He
said to move toward a thing before you move away. 
  

    
I'm sorry - was that just totally off topic? I'm so enjoying this
discussion and the talk about hot and cold boredom rang a bell and the
above is what came when the ringing stopped. But I kinda forgot about
the manners of entering a conversation .. 

palms together / hello.
  

    
Actually, Carol, that's not off topic at all. The story of sitting with
flies (or pain, or anything else of that nature) actually fits perfectly
with this tension between practice as a means to an end (establishing) and
practice as a form of acceptance (allowing). The "superpower" one cultivates
via the "allowing" approach is very similar to what you described in terms
of sitting with flies on your face, or in pain, or with noises in the room,
or even with daydreams and thoughts... one finds that samadhi can be
something that you don't have to "maintain" but rather it just IS, in a way
which is beyond conditions.

However, the funny thing is, inevitably both approaches end up having
reflections inside the other. Anyone following a "means to an end" approach
ultimately has to let go of the striving mind as part of that progression.
The whole point of breaking past notions of the self also has to include the
idea of the self "progressing" in time, because notions of progressing
include the self you're trying to "progress" away from.

Similarly, the "acceptance" approach ultimately has an element of progress;
one gets better at acceptance, as one lets go of habits, etc., inevitably
things change, shift, get "better" and so on even if or even because you're
not "trying" to attain some special state. My practice has been steadfastly
in this vein, yet I can enter samadhi, move in and out of various mind
states and so on if I choose to do so. I can sit with annoyances and
even daydreams... yet I can quiet them too. The quality of my sitting has
radically changed, and the quality of my moment to moment existence, yet
at no point was I trying to "attain" anything.
  

    
<jet>'s post made me think about how my relationship to my own
perceptions, interpretations, and interior thoughts have changed as I
grow older. I was confident in my memory and in the consistency of my
experience, but much has happened (some of it during zazen) to lead me
to question my confidence. I've seen instances where my memories were
demonstrably incorrect, for instance; same with my interpretations of
various experiences. Friends used to tell me I had a great memory, and
I've wondered if that was ever really true, or whether I just had great
confidence in memory that was actually quite imperfect. 

How do we know what we know? I no longer have confidence in "my
knowledge." This has been helpful in losing the "gaining idea" or the
"the idea of the self 'progressing' in time," it's undermined the idea
of measurable "progression." A gaining idea is balanced by a losing
idea, and any question of progress evaporates, perhaps the closest
thing being a sense of deepening.

I do wish I had your discipline, Mitsu.
  

    
Another host barging in on this fantastic discussion to say that if
you're not on the Well and would like to participate, you can send an
e-mail to inkwell@well.com and we'll patch you in. We won't publish
your e-mail address. 

Now to go alert a friend who's constantly thinking about this stuff. 
  

    
"How someone who willingly does this sort of exercise, be it through
meditation with monks or practicing martial arts changes their view of
the world is a really interesting question to me these days."

This is critical, I think, because the malleability of mind is a
deeply important realization that come from meditation. Things,
objects, are what Buddhists call "conditioned." Objects to some extent
what we decide them to be and our history with them, our memories and
the concepts we hold in our heads conspire to make objects what we
believe them to be. Seeing this in real time is possible. Buddhists
call the process of perception co-dependent origination, and it
describes how the mind works at the level of perception.

Of course, one of the objects that is malleable, ever changing, is the
concept of self. A core tenet of Buddhism is that nothing is
permanent, that everything changes. We live our lives assuming a core
of self that we believe to be permanent, that stays with us over time.
But as <jet> describes using the fallout form his head injury, that is
just not so.
  

    
This is turning out to be a great discussion! Thanks jonl!

The only time I've really sat for a long time, like 45 minutes to an hour 
(stop laughing, you vipassana-ites), was when I was studying with Ekai 
Korematsu, and the first couple of times I found it unbearably boring and 
just wanted to jump up and run from the room. Then I began to get that 
the boringness itself was a gift -- it was like a doorway into not 
thinking, or not being attached to thinking. Most of the time I'm all 
thinky-thinky so this was very nice, very freeing.
  

    
There was a time when practice for any amount over, say, 5 minutes, was
not exactly boring, but really uncomfortable, difficult. 20 minutes seemed
like an eternity, even if I entertained myself with thoughts. Somehow,
however, following my rather strict application of the "allowing" principle,
my relationship with time is quite different now, much less linear. So now,
sitting for 30 minutes, an hour, 90 minutes (the longest I've ever sat in
one go) seems pretty much the same as sitting for one second. I don't really
experience it as either boring or not boring; it's not even really that
different from life. In fact, for me, every moment of life is practice as
well, so I don't really feel a strong distinction between formal practice and
regular life. Nevertheless I still think formal practice is essential,
particularly retreats, where you can do intensive practice over a period of
time; somehow, it's much easier to see certain patterns that way.
  

    
From Will, an off-WELL reader:

I was invited to eavesdrop on this fascinating conversation about
Buddhism.  Like many of you I cut my teeth on Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki
and Suzuki-roshi, the Beat enthusiasts, and various Tibetans.  I took
instruction, went on retreats, belonged to a Zen-Vipassana sangha, and
meditated. I could complete the sentence "Buddhism is..." with
confidence.  
 
But for the last five years I've been living in Thailand and all of my
certainties about what it is, and even if it is an "it," have been
shattered (and this also goes for "religion").  Viewed from afar, your
knowledge and awareness of the 2,600-year tradition seems so limited
and parochial (forgive me for my judgments!).  I recommend David
McMahan's "The Making of Buddhist Modernism" for hearing the story of
how the West (with the assist of Asians) remade Buddhism in a more
palatable image.  The Buddhism most of you are discussing is a new
creation, a philosophy and a psychology refashioned in the 19th
century.  Even the idea that it is compatible with science is new.
 
There is nothing wrong in this, but it bares only a tangential
relationship to the living traditions followed by Asians.  "Sasana
Phut" in Thailand is an all-consuming worldview that involves
metaphysical power relations and transactions with spirits, good and
bad.  It is a religion in the most extreme way, requiring belief in
deities (most of them borrowed from India) as well as superstition and
rituals.  Some scholars think they can separate out "Buddhism" and
"Hinduism" from the indigenous animism, but others question this
dissection.  I think it amounts to throwing the baby out with the
bathwater.
 
Sadly, I can only appreciate the faith of my Thai wife as a
sympathetic cultural anthropologist.  It's been impossible to shed my
critical and cynical Western worldview.  But I can see the benefits
(and acknowledge the drawbacks) of the all-encompassing Thai "buddhist"
way of life.  I go through the motions, change flowers and liquid
refreshments for the images on our altar every Monk's Day, make merit
("taboon") at the temple with my wife on important holidays, and bow in
respect to Brahma and Ganesha in the numerous spirit houses when I
pass by.
 
You can claim from your studies of Buddhism that these are cultural
accretions and such cultural Buddhists in Thailand (as well as Japan
and Korea) do not share the pure and original Buddhism you "practice"
(an interesting word to avoid religious connotations).  But from their
perspective, your Western Buddhism is an intellectual construction and
your meditation is a fad, like various forms of exercise and health
foods, fated to fade away when the novelty loses its glimmer.  Western
Buddhism lacks cultural roots that have enabled Asian Buddhism to
endure.  How can you pass on a philosophy and a psychology to the next
generation?
  

    
Very interesting contribution, Will, and I hope you'll participate further
in this dialogue, as it's quite helpful to have a perspective from someone
living in Thailand.

What you're describing, however, is not Buddhism in "Asia" in general, but
more specifically Buddhism in Thailand. The contrast you speak of isn't
strictly a contrast between "Western" Buddhism and "Asian" Buddhism, but
more specifically Thai Buddhism and Buddhism in other countries. I daresay
Thai Buddhism is known for being among the more integrated with local
animist beliefs than nearly any other regional sect of Buddhism I'm aware
of.

In Japan, by contrast, the local animist practices are grouped under the
general rubric of Shinto, and have not, in general, been merged in with
Buddhism much, at all. (I happen to be Japanese-American, so I have a
particular interest in Japanese culture). Zen Buddhism as it is taught and
practiced in Japan is very similar in most respects to Zen as it is practiced
in the US --- although more strict, perhaps; but the biggest difference is
that in Japan most "Zen Buddhists" are laypeople who do not meditate, for
the most part; only monks and nuns formally practice, typically, there. Here,
however, virtually all American Zen Buddhists, lay or ordained, actually sit
zazen.  There are a number of other divergences, of course, but Zen as it is
practiced in America and in Japan is quite recognizable, up to and including
the general compatibility with science, the lack of superstition, and so
forth, something that has been the case through many centuries.

Buddhism has an extremely broad history with many schools, sects, approaches,
and so forth; perhaps the only country to have preserved nearly every
variation of it is Tibet, and Tibetan Buddhism has everything from the kind
of extremely superstitious and ritualistic forms you describe as prevalent
in Thailand to the very spare, philosophical, and non-dogmatic style of 
Buddhist teaching that one might characterize as being emblematic of Japanese
or Chinese Zen Buddhism. I think one can hardly criticize the Dalai Lama,
for instance, as being a promulgator of a "stripped-down" Western Buddhism;
yet he, too, subscribes to the view that Buddhism ought to be compatible with
science (he once famously remarked that if a traditional belief of Buddhism
was found to be incompatible with science, the traditional belief should be
discarded). Tibetan logic and debate is extremely strict, and doesn't
allow for notions such as simple dogmatic belief --- "believing in" things
simply by virtue of the authority of tradition is heretical to traditional
Tibetan Buddhism.

There's no doubt that Western Buddhism is different, of course; I don't think
anyone would dispute this. But it's also the case that Western Buddhism hasn't
really diverged as much as you imagine from its roots in Asia --- yet.
It's certainly true that the local animist versions of Buddhism, such as
Thai Buddhism, haven't caught on in the West, and never will; but that isn't
to say the versions of Buddhism which have caught on are in some way
inauthentic, and more than Zen or Chan Buddhism, or Dzogchen, or many other
schools of Buddhism which have caught on are inauthentic. What has happened is
not so much a radical change in Buddhism as it is a selection process:
Westerners have taken to schools of Buddhism which are compatible with
science, and there not only are such schools but they're quite legitimate,
with thousands of years of history and teaching lineages.

I will say that while I started this discussion with a comment about my
personal scientific background, those who know me also know that I certainly
do not take a purely skeptical view of many more esoteric practices and
phenomena described in Buddhism. I actually practice a number of rather
esoteric Asian practices, and have had a number of experiences which many
Westerners might consider "impossible" given the prevailing world view in
at least some parts of Western scientific culture. I daresay many Western
Buddhists have had similar experiences. But while these experiences and
phenomena may seem fringe from a Western perspective, Buddhists in many
traditions both in Asia and here come at them from an empirical standpoint;
that is to say, they don't "believe" in them, they investigate them with
helpful hints from past practitioners.
  

    
Great post, Mitsu, thanks!

My understanding of Buddhism isn't as comprehensive or well-informed
as Mitsu's, but my strong impression from exposure to zen and Tibetan
forms through experience and study is of a fundamental, conceptually
(if not practically) simple set of basic teachings that originated with
the Buddha, and with which proponents of Buddhism in the east and west
are familiar. To my mind, those teachings don't depend on faith or
belief in a deity, and are not "religion" if religion depends on either
of those. 

I bring this up in response to Will's note about practice as "an
interesting word to avoid religious connotations." A broader definition
of religion: "cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that
relate humanity to spirituality."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion) If you define spirituality
(again Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality) as "an
ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a
person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the 'deepest values
and meanings by which people live,'" then connecting those two
definitions, Buddhism could be defined as a religion. It's a semantic
argument, really. Speaking just for myself, I think of Buddhism as a
practice and not a religion because I think of religions as
superstitions that depend on faith in something beyond human
experience, and I think Buddhism works within the realm of known human
experience, not depending on supernatural elements, at its core if not
in all the cultural variations.

Will asks "how can you pass on a philosophy and a psychology to the
next generation?" I think the point of direct transmission in Buddhism
was to confer the core or fundamental experience without the trappings
of a particular culture.
  

    
Will's post is interesting. My first thought in response is: Then
Buddhism is "living traditions followed by Asians"? I wonder about that
and intuitively think: No. In the same way Buddhism is not Western
Buddhism, whatever that may be.

Yesterday I read about the following about violence between Buddhists
and Muslims in a remote part of Myanmar:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/world/asia/state-of-emergency-declared-in-we
stern-myanmar.html

It just doesn't surprise me. The religion (or philosophy as it may be)
and its practitioners are not always of a piece. This is obviously not
to say that the Buddhists in the article above are representative of
Buddhists in general, either.

The other point I think is worth considering is that of humility.
Humility is not a one-way street, I think. I think it's not simply the
responsibility of the disciple or student to be humble, the master (and
the organization) should also be humble. It's a real danger to put
down other traditions, old or new, unless there is something unhealthy
going on in that other old or new tradition. (Witness the recent mess
with Michael Roach and his organization).

Ultimately, when talking about "Buddhism" (or any tradition) there's a
risk of pointing fingers. Such an exercise is fruitless, it yields no
useful information or knowledge. I know far less than all of the rest
of the participants here so I apologize for such a long post and any
mistakes I may have made in the post.