Science has shown that the human body shows signs of having become domesticated. As animals have become domesticated for human consumption so to have humans become more domesticated. This I guess is partly needed due to the size of the human population, yet seems also to do with the elite controlling the masses for their benefits which has been happening for 1000's of years now. We have rules. roles and societally acceptable behavior. This I feel is part of what I call the Pink Floyd syndrome( comfortably numb).
This same intentionality I fell gets brought into the development of meditation, the desire to be comfortably numb, to not have to feel and be with the wild chaos that life is. When I have heard from teachers, friends the legends of great Dhamma teachers there is a wildness to them. Great stillness yet an ability to manifest not limited by the social constraints and shame that society, religions, cultures put upon us.
I notice in myself that as I grow I also feel more wild, fearless. Will express myself and sometimes that may shock others, not to say I should not question my behavior if it is felt to be extreme, but sometimes I use language that people think is coarse or rude. My use of language is used to express the feeling tone /emotion that is being expressed. What I noticed in my upbringing and watching myself with my kids, and observing parents out and about. The desire to control our kids because they are to wild for our sensory processing. They may be too loud, to into others space/your space. There can be a sense of overwhelm that come with identifying their behavior with oneself then how we imagine others thinking of them/me. I find my own wildness being allowed and allowing my children to be themselves is interconnected.
What stops me being alive, vital and wild. To me, this is an attachment to rights and rituals. The belief if I act, speak in a certain way I will be rewarded with love and acceptance. I learn to suppress those parts of me which are likely to prevent this, this is a natural survival mechanism when we are young and need the protection of the mother/family. A side effect of this is developing negative attention when like myself I felt that trying to fit in just meant I felt like I did not get notice so I begin to do the things that don't fit in with what the family, society like and so get attention in a different way. When I was a monk and consciously holding a monastic training in mind it showed these polarities, the goody-goody and rebellious ( in it negative form, I feel that awakening to life as it is the most rebellious process one can undertake). These beliefs about how we should be are what fuels the hindrances(sensory desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor, restlessness/worry, and doubt).
So as we meet our experience with gentleness/care and permission, the stories which have been created about our self's we become familiar with these relationships between the experience arising now, the stories created in the past arising now dependent on being triggered by the familiarity of the sensory experience. As we become familiar with our stories and the reactivity within them to our environments past/present and future we may sense a kind of freedom. This freedom does not always mean that we don't act out of our conditioning, as we see it more as conditioning we are less likely to shame ourselves in relation to our behavior. This lack of shame helps us to see and reflect on the conditioning process, our self-story. In this way, we become more ethical, and we suppress ourselves less, yet with a wise perspective, we can learn to manage certain behaviors which may lead to harm. Mindfulness being the experience of allowing the arising of the present sensory experience, the reactivity to that, which allows a response to arising from being aware of that. What we often mistake is the idea that we can be aware of something before it arises. Conditions arise, we become aware and claim the experience of knowing that which has arisen. So we are always playing catch-up. Mature mindfulness has been built upon the seeds of gently with care catching up with our experience. This maturation of mindfulness built upon the Brahma vihara's( gentleness/care, compassion/permission, Joy in experiencing, and equanimity) leads us gently into the deep rest of mature Samadhi, a calm and attunement to life.
Mature Samadhi = wild joy/stillness.
Sunday 23 April 2017
Tuesday 18 April 2017
Stablising the four elements
In Buddhism, we sometimes talk about practice in regards to the four elements earth, water, fire and air and occasionally we speak of space and consciousness elements.
Earth is the element of density, thoughts, and feeling that feels heavy, depression could be thought of as having been affected by the earth element. The weight of the body and bones is an obvious earth experience, we are often directed to the body to help ground us so we don't get carried away with certain thoughts and feelings. The Buddha asked the earth to witness and aid him seeing clearly the effects of Mara.
Water gives shape to things, as again with the bodily shapes are very much dependent on the fluids held inside by the skin. The shape of the body changes as the fluids drain away and dry up. Thoughts can be fluid in their ability to constantly change form, moving from one theme to another.
Fire gives us warmth and coolness, we can experience this by observing our body temperature and the bodies contact with the weather. We may notice in thoughts of anger, rage or aversion.
Air is movement, the flow of blood, the vibration of the breath, the movement of the body, the chatter of our thoughts.
Depending on how we pay attention to things depends on how in balance these elements are. This is how samadhi matures. As we gently pay attention to our experience the sense of gentleness/care and permission allows the elements to find balance. As the elements begin to settle we begin to become aware of the element of space and consciousness. Now that space is emerging it gives consciousness the ability to develop insight into the dynamics of the four elements earth, water, fire, and air. As space becomes more dominant we begin to feel equanimous not so caught up in the play and drama of earth, water, fire, and air.
Space begins to give a sense of being infinite, vast, everything seems to be within you. With this the sense of consciousness to seems to become infinite and vast, as a sense of being the one who knows arises. This arises with taking the elemental experience personally, as mine. When this sense of self-falls away when consciousness rests into itself, knowing nothing, unaware of itself. With the reappearing of selfing process after this, the ability to perceive the perception of nothingness, this is in relation to the loss of self and is dependent upon consciousness having rested into its self, as we become familiar with this perception it opens up into the sense of neither perceiving or not perceiving. A deep sense of not knowing balanced with equanimity, this aids release of subtle views.
When the elemental play is cleaned of the ignorance of self-ing the experience, it flows as it is:)
Earth is the element of density, thoughts, and feeling that feels heavy, depression could be thought of as having been affected by the earth element. The weight of the body and bones is an obvious earth experience, we are often directed to the body to help ground us so we don't get carried away with certain thoughts and feelings. The Buddha asked the earth to witness and aid him seeing clearly the effects of Mara.
Water gives shape to things, as again with the bodily shapes are very much dependent on the fluids held inside by the skin. The shape of the body changes as the fluids drain away and dry up. Thoughts can be fluid in their ability to constantly change form, moving from one theme to another.
Fire gives us warmth and coolness, we can experience this by observing our body temperature and the bodies contact with the weather. We may notice in thoughts of anger, rage or aversion.
Air is movement, the flow of blood, the vibration of the breath, the movement of the body, the chatter of our thoughts.
Depending on how we pay attention to things depends on how in balance these elements are. This is how samadhi matures. As we gently pay attention to our experience the sense of gentleness/care and permission allows the elements to find balance. As the elements begin to settle we begin to become aware of the element of space and consciousness. Now that space is emerging it gives consciousness the ability to develop insight into the dynamics of the four elements earth, water, fire, and air. As space becomes more dominant we begin to feel equanimous not so caught up in the play and drama of earth, water, fire, and air.
Space begins to give a sense of being infinite, vast, everything seems to be within you. With this the sense of consciousness to seems to become infinite and vast, as a sense of being the one who knows arises. This arises with taking the elemental experience personally, as mine. When this sense of self-falls away when consciousness rests into itself, knowing nothing, unaware of itself. With the reappearing of selfing process after this, the ability to perceive the perception of nothingness, this is in relation to the loss of self and is dependent upon consciousness having rested into its self, as we become familiar with this perception it opens up into the sense of neither perceiving or not perceiving. A deep sense of not knowing balanced with equanimity, this aids release of subtle views.
When the elemental play is cleaned of the ignorance of self-ing the experience, it flows as it is:)
Monday 3 April 2017
Foundations for a better world
In meditation, we often hear about the 5 hindrances. These are the reactivities to what is arising in our experience. These are traditionally called sensory desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry and doubt. These are relational quality's that engage the objects arising in what we like to think of as our awareness. Sensory desire is the desire for particular sensory objects, ill will is an aversion or hatred towards certain sensory experience, sloth and torpor is a lack of engagement with what is happening, restlessness and worry is an over-engagement with what is happening and doubt is the sense of not knowing how to be with a certain sensory experience. So these probably sound quite familiar as these do not just arise in meditation these are the aspects of our ability to relate that tend to lead towards dysfunction in any relationship be it meditation or family, intimate relationships, friends, etc.
The process of meditation is the getting to know these intimately, understand their triggers. Rather than engaging the hindrances with the hindrances which are often how we go about trying to correct these relational issues we intend to be gentle, caring and give them permission to be. It is the process of being your own therapist in that you gently allow what is arising. Whatever is arising has already arisen, we notice it and then judge its value after it has already arisen. These hindrances are very much tied to how we have been taught to relate to ourselves from our family/cultural and religious environment. We have the ego which is our basic organizational app and then there is the organizational app of our family/cultural and religious environment, the superego. In meditation, we are taking the time to become very familiar with this dynamic of ego/superego. Taking the time to gently digest it, taste its textures. We become aware of the many levels that we have got ourselves tangled up in the views and opinions, how we try to defend our sense of value either by going along with the views or opinions of the environment or rebelling if they are not satisfying or fitting to our values.
What often happens is we notice our faulty expressions but our virtues can often go unnoticed. When we approach meditation from the place of meeting and becoming familiar rather than taking a position before we give ourselves the time and space to actually notice and be nourished by our virtues. We can think of our virtues simply as the opposite of the hindrances. Equanimity, gentleness and care, attentiveness, calm and composure and wisdom. So in this approach as taught by Jason Siff that I have been working with over these past 5years, and I express as my own understanding of this is how it has unfolded for me. The intention to meditate is the meditation, this intention is gentle and caring, the experience has permission to unfold as it wishes, if this becomes too much we are able to ground ourselves with the contact of our hands touching, the contact with the ground the breath etc. We may drift into habitual meditation patterns conditioned from previous practices, that is okay. By not intending to follow the practice we may become aware of the intentions that the practice was built upon. I know for myself my meditation practice had been built upon an aversion to my experience, to my sense of self, I was wanting to be other than this. As we slowly digest our internal relationships to ourselves and the world that we see, we begin to mature into a gentleness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. With this sense of maturing there is a natural understanding of ourselves as a story and our part in a larger story. This freedom of seeing the story, gives us the ability to build a new world built upon virtue, where we through compassion of how the structures of the different stories from the beginning of time when not seen clearly with awareness create conflict and judgment, the stories become positions we take and defend instead of being seen as conditioning blocks based upon ignorance of the conditioning process.
This new world built upon understanding there is suffering, and when suffering is not understood there is dysfunction. We intend to meet experience with gentleness and care, this intention matures as it grows to understand the conditioning process until it matures into equanimity. This gentleness and care becomes the ground for our relationship to ourselves and the environment that we live in, as we meet ourselves and the world with gentleness and care our experience become mindful, when this mindfulness is mature and able to allow experience it matures into a calm and composure with all that arises, this gives rise for the potential to notice when we are self-ing and not self-ing the experience. This can give rise to a deep peace and freedom. When this freedom matures self and not-self are seen as conditions. Position-less living unfolds.
This is a humbling path, as we take a close look at ourselves and accept our imperfections. May all beings mature and find freedom.
The process of meditation is the getting to know these intimately, understand their triggers. Rather than engaging the hindrances with the hindrances which are often how we go about trying to correct these relational issues we intend to be gentle, caring and give them permission to be. It is the process of being your own therapist in that you gently allow what is arising. Whatever is arising has already arisen, we notice it and then judge its value after it has already arisen. These hindrances are very much tied to how we have been taught to relate to ourselves from our family/cultural and religious environment. We have the ego which is our basic organizational app and then there is the organizational app of our family/cultural and religious environment, the superego. In meditation, we are taking the time to become very familiar with this dynamic of ego/superego. Taking the time to gently digest it, taste its textures. We become aware of the many levels that we have got ourselves tangled up in the views and opinions, how we try to defend our sense of value either by going along with the views or opinions of the environment or rebelling if they are not satisfying or fitting to our values.
What often happens is we notice our faulty expressions but our virtues can often go unnoticed. When we approach meditation from the place of meeting and becoming familiar rather than taking a position before we give ourselves the time and space to actually notice and be nourished by our virtues. We can think of our virtues simply as the opposite of the hindrances. Equanimity, gentleness and care, attentiveness, calm and composure and wisdom. So in this approach as taught by Jason Siff that I have been working with over these past 5years, and I express as my own understanding of this is how it has unfolded for me. The intention to meditate is the meditation, this intention is gentle and caring, the experience has permission to unfold as it wishes, if this becomes too much we are able to ground ourselves with the contact of our hands touching, the contact with the ground the breath etc. We may drift into habitual meditation patterns conditioned from previous practices, that is okay. By not intending to follow the practice we may become aware of the intentions that the practice was built upon. I know for myself my meditation practice had been built upon an aversion to my experience, to my sense of self, I was wanting to be other than this. As we slowly digest our internal relationships to ourselves and the world that we see, we begin to mature into a gentleness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. With this sense of maturing there is a natural understanding of ourselves as a story and our part in a larger story. This freedom of seeing the story, gives us the ability to build a new world built upon virtue, where we through compassion of how the structures of the different stories from the beginning of time when not seen clearly with awareness create conflict and judgment, the stories become positions we take and defend instead of being seen as conditioning blocks based upon ignorance of the conditioning process.
This new world built upon understanding there is suffering, and when suffering is not understood there is dysfunction. We intend to meet experience with gentleness and care, this intention matures as it grows to understand the conditioning process until it matures into equanimity. This gentleness and care becomes the ground for our relationship to ourselves and the environment that we live in, as we meet ourselves and the world with gentleness and care our experience become mindful, when this mindfulness is mature and able to allow experience it matures into a calm and composure with all that arises, this gives rise for the potential to notice when we are self-ing and not self-ing the experience. This can give rise to a deep peace and freedom. When this freedom matures self and not-self are seen as conditions. Position-less living unfolds.
This is a humbling path, as we take a close look at ourselves and accept our imperfections. May all beings mature and find freedom.
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