Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Regarding "regular person" and "practitioner" --- for me there is no
distinction whatsoever. That is partly perhaps because the style of my
teacher is both extremely exacting and precise, yet at the same time even
more spare in terms of ritual and so forth than Japanese Zen. But life
literally is my practice --- when I go on retreat is perhaps the closest I
get to a "distinction", because obviously being on retreat is quite
different from ordinary life, on the surface. However --- I've always made
life the center of my practice, and the distinction between my life and my
practice has steadily diminished over the years to the point where today it
is pretty much nonexistent.
  

    
Jane, yes, maybe you're right about Theravada being a sort of "hidden"
tradition. I attended a conference a few months ago in Silicon Valley
called "Wisdom 2.0" and found myself all alone during an elevator ride
with John Kabat-Zinn. I complimented him on what he had just said at
the conference and as a frequent speaker myself asked him how he
prepared, planned what he would say to the audience. And to my
not-so-surprise he described a process I like to use: he doesn't
prepare. He listens to the speakers before him and simply attunes what
he knows to their themes.

I've never read any of his work and don't know all that much about him
but he was very aware (if you know what I mean) and completely open -
but maybe those are the same thing  ;-)

Thanks!
  

    
The one time I heard John Kabat-Zinn, which was quite a few years ago,
he gave the same meditation instructions that I heard in a Vipassana
class.  Practically word for word.  But when it's called "mindfulness"
it can be a lot more palatable than "meditation."  He's done a lot of
good, I think. 
  

    
I've always thought of "mindfulness" as a not-quite-serious meditation
technique, mainly because I don't think that's what it is but I may
just be prejudiced in an unfounded way about this. I know mindfulness
is gaining popularity in the medical community and among psychologists
because I have few friends who use it. But it's focused on somewhat
shallower objectives, like stress relief, reducing anxiety and being
calm, than a deeper practice that is aimed at what I'd describe as the
nature of mind and its relationship to our experience. Kabat-Zinn has
sort of lead the charge in the mindfulness area, right?
  

    
Pretty much, yes.

The depth of 'mindfulness' depends on so much... the teacher's depth
of practice, their instructions, the students' motivations... it can be
quite superficial or very deep, depending.
  

    
Pardon the formal tone of this post, but I've just woke and haven't
had any tea or breakfast and am still semi-unconscious.

Throughout history, the large boat of Dharma has adapted its wonderful
contents to the particular culture of whatever shore it has docked. 
In Tibet, for example, it retained indigenous Bon deities as 'dharma
protectors.' In China, the initial translations were often done in
terms of Tao, the Way.  In Japan, it mixed with samurai culture; Korea,
shamanism; and so on.

In the West, and particularly America, as the seeds take hold in the
blessèd mystery of darkness, we don't know yet what will blossom (
takes time ), but we have clearly been seeing interchange with
psychology for some time. Insight meditation (vipassana) has been the
most adaptive to change of the various schools (Zen, Pureland,
Vajrayana, etc), and becoming the most linked with psychology.  Jon
Kabat Zin [sic] has, likewise, brought Dharma into the realm of the
hospital, mainstream medicine, with all its corporate culture of
insurance and medication industries.  Had he called it southeastAsian
Vipassana (as he'd encountered it himself) straight-laced insurance
companies would never pay out on his grand experiment -- but
"mindfulness," no problem. This is indeed a good thing, having brought
healing and transformation to thousands of people.  

My two caveats, where I'm hanging fire, and watching, and waiting (one
obvious, one less so) :

1)  How much is omitted when the teachings are denatured from the
original soil, or changed (like kids playing dress-up in their
grandparents clothes in the attic, while still wearing their street
clothes? ... what's a better analogy ?)

2)  How much are the teachings debased when melded with a science that
is, in and of itself, at its core, deeply flawed?  This, however,
might actually be transforming Western science ... and rectifying the
yucky Newtonian swamp we've been stuck in.  (I wonder how much HH the
Dalai Lama's wager might have had such a transformative intention: he'd
said he'd revise anything in Vajrayana that doesn't conform to
science, but he might well be most wise to how the reverse has been
true; he no doubt read Tao of Physics when it came out ... hmmmm .... )

I'm also looking at three other ways in which the Buddha is
acclimating to Western culture:

1) Shambhala publications is a for-profit business so as to engage in
the culture of capitalism (unlike, say, their magazine, which is part
of the Foundation). As such, it's been a great success, having won
support of Random House, and proving viable in the highly competitive
arena of the book publishing marketplace.

2) For the past 2 years, Google has been testing a mindfulness program
on employees (for free), and is now ramping up to make it available to
other corporations and businesses.  To "mindfulness" is added
"emotional intelligence," plus some other phrases; yet it teaches such
things as TongLen.  I'm finishing the book by Meng, and have tried some
of the techniques (such as circuit training) in my practice group. 
Very interesting.   The name for the program, and the book,, btw, is a
kick: Search Inside Yourself.   (Url to follow -- gotta get out the
door to host a mindfulness half-day.) 

3) Education. I'm not just talking about universities such as Naropa,
University of the Wet, etc., but for kids, who are in such need today. 
Here in San Francisco, the Catholic school run by the Salesians
include a year of mindfulness. Susan Kaiser Greenland has a great
program, available online.  Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh has inaugurated a
worthy effort too : http://us.wkup.org    Besides the need of kids,
they could play meme-carrier, as they did for bringing recycling to a
nation as big as the USA.  I've heard tell of a family at a restaurant,
where the parents were getting angry about something not right with
what the waitress saying about what they read in the menu, and one of
the kids instructing the parents to go back to their breathing ... 
  

    
O yea, and there's now a congressman who has a book about mindfulness
for American politics ... 
  

    
I've been aware of and read some of Jon Kabat-Zinn for decades, but I
only met him when he and I were both part of the Being Human symposium
that happened earlier this year (supported by Peter Baumann and by the
Mind Life Institute) at the Palace of Fine Arts. What a sweetheart, and
what an alert sweetheart, he seemed. Yes, he led the 900 present
through a mindfulness meditation--and yes, it was one thing that had
been missing thus far in the day-long event. (Just as I chose to remind
of death in my round up at the end, because death and transience had
been so much left out of the conversation, and our awareness of
both--and how recognition of that awareness can draw us together in our
shared conditions-- seem to me rather essential parts of "being
human.")


Some of how we think about the question of mindfulness/meditation
instruction outside of Buddhist contexts might go to the thing I
mentioned earlier-- the distinction often drawn, whether consciously or
in subterranean ways, between 1) practice with the intention of a full
investigation of our own thoughts and feelings and relationship to the
fabric of "things as it is" and 2) practices that may not be called
"practice" but are used to lessen suffering (i.e., use of meditation to
lower blood pressure or depression, or to lessen workplace stress or
sharpen focus or foster more creative thinking at Google...).

Whether or not to consider that second group "shallower" forms of
practice kind of depends, I think, on the intention of the statement.
If it means, "Don't forget the real point here is to be able to step
outside of small mind in the most fundamental ways," then, maybe so. In
that case, to say "shallower" is to remind ourselves not to settle for
easy alleviation or better health as the point. But if it means, "Not
worthy, lesser, unimportant," I would probably not use that word,
because first, lessened suffering for all beings is at the core of
Buddhism, and second, we cannot know the ultimate effects of anything.
One breath taken with a different feeling in a hospital cardiac-unit
meditation training session could be the seed of something unknowable,
months, years later.

Two teachings come to mind here: one, the deep power of Seung Sahnim's
"don't know mind", which Suzuki-roshi also shared in his frequent
murmur, "maybe so" (which of course holds in its arms, "and maybe not,
let's perhaps just stay open to possibility here") and then, from a
sutra, I think the Lotus: "All the teachings are a branch of yellow
autumn leaves given a child to keep them from crying." The point of
that last I understand as, "Don't fixate on the forms of how the dharma
is presented, the form of it is not the point." It doesn't say you
don't need the branch of leaves--some form of transmission is
needed--it just says, the particular cup isn't the point, the water is.

Anything, however small, that turns any of us toward permeability and
interconnection and awareness, in this culture we find ourselves
in--isn't that part of the Great Matter, and the work of a bodhisattva?

Many fields, many crops. The cautions are useful, but so is the
broadcast of seed.
  

    
(ggg) <131> Thanks for that, just what I was wondering about.
  

    
Jane, I'm giving a rather large dharma talk in a couple of days, and
you are feeding me line after line.  First I copied out your seven
words, and now this "All the teachings are a branch of yellow
autumn leaves given a child to keep them from crying."

I can remember being dismissive of Kabat-Zinn's teaching of
mindfulness as watering down (or dumbing down) the dharma, but who's to
say.  Someone desperate for relief from anxiety who takes one of the
scillions of classes that have grown out of his teachings could get
hooked and end up as my next teacher.  Who the heck's to say.
  

    
>>Anything, however small, that turns any of us toward permeability
and
interconnection and awareness, in this culture we find ourselves
in--isn't that part of the Great Matter, and the work of a
bodhisattva?<<

Thank you for this reminder, Jane.  I tend to emphasize a "view" that
we don't need to *gain* anything and we don't need to *banish* any part
of us. that our intention in practice is to discover who we are.  But
of course so many people initially step onto the path exactly in order
to get something they feel is missing, or to rid themselves of
something they feel is is holding them back or tormenting them. 
  

    
I used the word "shallower" in the sense that secular mindfulness is
not intended, at least as far as I know, to take one deep into the
nature of experience and self. I was not dissing secular mindfulness
practices. Yes, anything aimed at getting people to be less stressed,
more open and more aware is a good thing. In fact, it's a truly great
thing if done wisely, but it is not Buddhism. That is the distinction I
was ineptly attempting to draw.

So... if mindfulness in a secular setting is more suitable for more
people that makes me happy because I think this society and the people
in it desperately need to be more mindful.

For this particular fool, however, I have been drawn into Buddhism as
a deep dive - not to feel better but so that I can grok the nature of
things.
  

    
"... there's now a congressman..."

Tim Ryan, D - Ohio

I was fortunate enough to meet him at the same conference at which I
met Kabat-Zinn.
  

    
"Google has been testing a mindfulness program on employees (for
free), and is now ramping up to make it available to other corporations
and businesses."

Some Buddhist, both practitioners and teachers, are now engaged in
raising capital and finding investors with an eye toward engaging
insurance companies and other large corporations in mindfulness and
related practices. Companies will, indeed, pay for non-religious
"consulting" and coaching services. The Wisdom Conferences in Silicon
Valley are all about bringing wisdom to business. I've attended two of
these conferences this year and I think the reverse is also happening
-- business is coming to wisdom.

I'm also very curious to see how that evolves.
  

    
In <131> <ggg> mentioned Tonglen practice, anyone want to define and
expand? (Wikipedia has a good article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen)
  

    <scribbled by mitsu Sat 16 Jun 12 16:56>
  

    
My concern about "watering down" the Dharma isn't that I think there's
something bad or wrong about taking bits and pieces of the teaching and
using it outside a Buddhist context --- quite frankly I don't care really
about the Buddhist context per se, that is to say, despite the fact that I
have studied and practiced Buddhism seriously for 30 years, I don't really
care whether things are called "Buddhism" or not, or whether it's taught in
the context of a particular cultural tradition or style.

However, I DO care about the substance of the teachings, the depth, the
profound nature of what is at issue, and what I would worry about isn't that
something might leak out of Buddhism and not be called Buddhism anymore, but
whether the deepest teachings, insights, investigations, might be lost or
obscured over time. There's something very difficult to understand about the
most profound Buddhist teachings --- or the most profound teachings regardless
of whether you call them Buddhist or not: they require a massive degree of
suspension of disbelief, of careful investigation, because they really do
exist in a context which is radically different from anything we normally
think. What's at issue is literally inconceivable, and the best we can do is
point at it, give hints, reference it, but you can't say it directly.

So my concern about the psychologization, for instance, of Buddhism isn't that
I think Buddhism shouldn't be applied to psychology --- that's fine, to me.
But what is at issue is far, far beyond psychology, it goes into even the
nature of reality itself, the nature of space and time, existence, and so on,
and these things have tremendous implications for people in their lives,
if one cares to explore that deeply. There are so many levels of uncovering
which one can open up which really are possible only when you are willing to
consider quite radical alternatives to the usual way we think and operate,
to the very core of what we think of as reality itself. It starts simply,
of course, you just notice things in a straightforward way, but if you keep
going along that path, the possibilities are truly breathtaking. That's
something that I really hope doesn't get lost as Buddhism encounters the West.
I certainly would disagree with what some people have begun to imply, that
Buddhism is "just" psychology --- there are applications to psychology and
crossovers, but there's a lot more going on.
  

    
"There are so many levels of uncovering which one can open up which
really are possible only when you are willing to consider quite radical
alternatives to the usual way we think and operate, to the very core
of what we think of as reality itself. It starts simply, of course, you
just notice things in a straightforward way, but if you keep going
along that path, the possibilities are truly breathtaking."

Well said, <mitsu>, and thanks.
  

    
From what little I know of history, it seems that there was a lot of
bits and pieces and almosts in India when Shakyamunibwas practicing. It
may be that it's always hard to get at the profound simple truths and
that there is always likely to be some kind of halo or comet tail of
fragmentary practices, views and concepts no matter where or when we
are.
  

    
i wonder <paulbel> if you might elaborate a bit on <144>, please
  

    
A thought a little earlier caught my attention: nothing to gain,
nothing to banish. How to practice seriously without simply attempting
to cut off parts of the self along the way is one of the interesting
questions. 

Jungian "shadow" theory comes into play here--if you simply decide
that the unwanted parts of the ego-self (by which I mean something like
basic human delusion) are "out," they do seem to come back in
disturbing ways quite often. Yet one of the ways to work with these
things is by removing the energy from them. How to do that is one of
the skillful means parts of Buddhist training. Do you do it by simply
putting all available attention elsewhere? Do you do it by mindfulness
techniques, in which you have ample chance to notice that it's all just
weather, and another level is there all along, underneath and around
it? "If you want to be a Buddha, act like a Buddha" is another strategy
too. As is immersion in the many kinds of meditation awareness until
basically the whole cloth of the self is soaked through.

Mitsu said earlier something about regular person and practitioner
being indistinguishable. If that was responding to what I'd said, I was
talking about talking with non-practitioners, when I said "regular
people," not myself. That's one reason I'm committed to lay practice
and teahouse practice--if the dharma cannot be present in all moments,
all activities, what would it be? We do need teachers, priests,
monastics, Dalai Lamas, scholars of dharma, translators, journalists. I
also like to think there are Buddhas who don't know they are Buddhas,
bodhisattvas who've never heard the concept, all around us. They embody
the way, and transmit the way, too.

I've always remembered the beat poet Philip Whalen, when he was shuso
(head monk) at Tassajara, asking his question during chosan ceremony
(when everyone asks a question of the abbot/roshi): "Why is everyone
and everything but me completely and perfectly enlightened?"  I should
add, in case it's needed, that this was not asked in self-pity.
  

    
Everything in the universe is a potential teacher but the most
effective teachers are the things I have an aversion to.
  

    
Yes, that was in response to you, Jane, I misinterpreted the question you
raised. One reason I'm interested in the confluence of art (in the West) and
Buddhism is because many of my friends who are artists, trained in the
contemporary tradition, seem to have a keen awareness of many issues
typically touched on in the Dharma, yet they may have no formal training or
introduction to it. My father is an artist, an abstract painter, and he has
had a very deep series of realizations which came via painting. Contemporary
art from the 20th Century forward I believe has developed its own profound
tradition of awareness, perhaps due to the fact that they have immersed
themselves in issues of perception, expression, the nature of meaning, and
so forth, in ways that ultimately end up touching on many of the same
questions addressed in Buddhist theory and practice.

I do find the question of how I talk with non-practitioners to be an
extremely difficult one. My own perception of the teachings has gotten
simpler and simpler over time; I could even summarize in simple phrases such
as "there is nothing that needs to be done" or "just this" and so on... but
of course I realize that such phrases really don't have any deep meaning
unless you have some direct experience/participation with it typically via
practice of some kind. That's the conundrum or frustration: the simpler the
teachings seem to me the more I feel it ought to be possible to share them
directly and simply; yet of course sharing the teachings is a problem that
people have been struggling with for millennia. It's so simple, yet it's
actually so simple that it's nearly impossible to convey or transmit. It's
as though we're all trained to engage in elaborate, complicated machinations
just to see, or breathe, or do anything, and seeing that we're doing all
that and we don't need to do most of it is very difficult to even point to
because, for the most part, all the extra maneuvers we engage in are totally
unconscious and automatic. Thus, describing in any detail what's at issue
actually becomes very complicated; you could write and people have written
gigantic tomes thousands of pages or more in length about all the ways in
which one can touch on these things, even though the basic principle is so
blindingly, beautifully simple.

So I wonder quite a bit about new ways of conveying the teachings --- again,
I'm drawn to contemporary art (I say "contemporary" because I don't mean
just "modern" art but art in a larger contemporary sense, including
postmodern, etc.) The strange thing is while I find it difficult to discuss
the Dharma with most lay people, it's often quite straightforward when
talkng with some (not all) artists.
  

    
¿ Might it be correct, <mitsu>, to acnowledge how much western art has
soaked up Eastern aesthetics, & Dharma rain ?  A roll call might
include ... uncentered composition & decentered self ...
nonintentionality, spontaneity ... paint as process not product ...
Naropa starting a Poetics Department where the Buddha meets the Bard
... John Cage, & sound as music, gesture as dance, in and of themselves
... absence of subject ... cultural markers as interconnected &
impermanent ... selfless humility ...  
  

    
I think so, but it has also borrowed heavily from Western existentialism and
now poststructuralism. Dada and so on. But I think starting with
impressionism and cubism and so forth, playing with perception, Western art
has developed its own investigation, somewhat independent of either Western
or Eastern philosophy, despite being certainly influenced by both. I think
any careful, contemplative investigation can uncover the same insights as
one finds in Buddhist realization, though exactly how it plays out,
typically, depends a great deal on concrete specifics.