Buddha on the Brain

Steve Paulson did an interview with B. Alan Wallace. It's from November 2006, but who cares. Here's a snip:

Is that what Buddhism offers -- a rigorous methodology?

Yes. I'm not saying we should fuse religion with science. Rather, we should select very specific methodologies from Buddhism and other contemplative traditions where the ability to monitor the mind has been honed over thousands of years -- beginning with the training of attention and then using sophisticated methods for investigating the nature of the mind, feelings and the very nature of consciousness itself during the waking state, the dream state, even during deep sleep. Now, because of the great advances in transportation and communications, we have easy access to the Taoist tradition of China, the Sufi tradition of the Near East, the Buddhist tradition of Tibet and Southeast Asia. I'm convinced this would add much greater depth and breadth to the types of questions that are raised in modern cognitive science.

In science, you have a hypothesis that's tested, and it can be disproved. Does that happen in Buddhism?

On its home turf, frequently not. But I'm also waiting for a neuroscientist to tell me how the hypothesis that mental states are nothing more than neural states will be repudiated. I don't see that as a testable hypothesis. So there's a fair amount of dogma, not in science per se but in the minds of scientists. Likewise, there's plenty of dogma in the minds of Buddhists. But Buddhism at its best -- and we go right back to the teachings of the Buddha himself -- encourages a spirit of skepticism. He said, "Do not take my statements to be true simply out of reverence for me. But rather, put them to the test." Well, if you do that, you should be able to repudiate them as well as confirm them.

Well, let me ask you about that. I know there is a tradition, particularly among advanced contemplatives, that you have your meditative experience, and then you talk about it, you analyze it, and your peers critique it. Does that really happen? When someone comes out of meditation, would someone else say, "Sorry. You didn't do it right"?

Absolutely. You know, Buddhism, like any other tradition, is subject to degeneration. So if you and I headed off to India or Nepal or Tibet, we'd find plenty of Buddhist meditators who are simply going through rote ritual, who are just trying to come up with the right answers at the end of the book. But when Buddhism is really thriving, it's exactly what you described. You go into a three-year retreat, where you are meditating eight to 12 hours a day. You're training the mind. You're investigating the nature of the mind. But you're probably not doing that in entire isolation. You're in consultation with a mentor who's going to review your experience and help you deepen your experience. You'll be questioning your insights. So [your] relationship with your mentor is analogous to working on your Ph.D. with a mentor. If at any point your research becomes flaky or not up to snuff, the mentor is there to say, "No, that's a dead end. This is not good research." This happens frequently in the Buddhist contemplative tradition when it's really robust and healthy.

Read the whole interview at Salon.

Alan Wallace on the Paula Gordon Show

A revolution is upon us, says B. Alan Wallace, founder of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. We could all be extraordinary people with extraordinary hearts, minds and states of consciousness, as well as talents and skills.

The revolution's source? The exploration of consciousness and the mind, using direct, immediate, first-hand observation -- meditation. This is the serious meditation in the Sanskrit sense of "cultivation" -- not meditation's cute or trivial impersonators -- and the world's many wisdom cultures offer a wide variety.

What's between us and extraordinary? Being stuck in the modern, Dr. Wallace says, specifically modernity's obsession with all things external and our "imagination deficit disorder." That and our overwhelming lack of balance.

With this revolution comes, Dr. Wallace hopes, a new Renaissance. He sees enormous possibilities for an unprecedented fusion of the East and the West. How? Maintain the strengths, beauty, depth and acuity of modernity while tapping into the deep wisdom cultures of the world.

Read the rest of intro, and listen to an hour of audio (format Real Audio) divided in six conversations.

On Just Sitting

Another cross-post from Dharma Overground. The thread entitled "Fundamental Non-discrimination" was opened with the following remark:

I've been lurking on this forum for a while now. I thought I would see what you guys thought about the method of no method found in Chan (Zen), Dzogchen, MahaMudra and Taoism. Just sitting in Fundamental Non-discrimination. Just relaxed, still awareness of what is. Do you guys feel, assuming one is capable of actually achieving it, one can practice this alone and skip structured shamatha and vipassana practice? Do you guys think "just sitting" can take one all the way to enlightenment - the realisation of one's fundamental nature as it is here and now?

These are interesting and challenging questions, of course, and throughout history the dispute remains strong between proponents of gradual cultivation and direct realization, and simultaneously between those who emphasize a combination of methods vs. those who prefer the simplicity of a non-method. Some of my reflections, taken from that thread--

The method [of just sitting, or simple awareness] is practiced in conjunction with View, which is differently formulated in [various] traditions, but the method is essentially identical, even when instructions differ. In Theravada, this is practiced as "choiceless awareness". This "non-method" (a tricky term itself pointing to the innate cognizance at the root of experience, instead of something introduced through cultivation) also proceeds through stages of unfolding in practitioners' capacity to maintain natural, uncontrived attention. This process may be used to explore the conventional nature of mind (e.g. what is mind), but only rarely will it result in spontaneous recognition of mind's nature, without specific investigation being undertaken. The first is equivalent to shamatha, and the second to vipashyana. "One method" is a slippery notion. Still, it's quite impossible to reach higher stages of realization WITHOUT recourse to non-meditation. It's not a panacea, however.

Speaking of practical application, naked awareness can give one an initial taste of the nature of mind, especially through pointing out instructions of a qualified teacher. To stabilize this flash of recognition more than one technique is needed, even if it's the non-technique. Thus, the suitability of naked awareness to cover the early and middle stages is rather limited to individuals with a rare predilection. Even for them, though, it will not be sufficient for a mature, integrated wisdom. Combining structured and unstructured approaches seems the way to go.

Also, such practice is not designed to specifically address different obstacles and imbalances that will arise for most if not all. So, in all traditions mentioned, we find many other methods along with the non-method. And, again, the View is crucial for less structured (not entirely unstructured) forms of meditative cultivation, as in other cases...

As far as awakening to the ever-present nature of our mind is concerned, that is, as far as liberating insight in itself is concerned, [the non-method] may very well be all you need (if that's the path you choose, of course, in the context of those teachings that indeed offer this option). But then, there are several additional dimensions you may want to explore both before and after such an awakening or, more precisely and more probably, series of several awakenings.

These several dimensions have everything to do with how one would interpret and integrate the realization, even when dealing with the self-confirming and unquestionable clarity of full awakening. The first that comes to mind is conceptual understanding (and I have emphasized that before as View) which not only provides a map of the path, but also the basis for a balanced interpretation of that which arises during and after meditation. Everyone has a view, whether or not they work on it, and the view they have can do real damage to an otherwise fine contemplative effort. The ridiculous taboo of intellectual sophistication present among certain practitioners of meditation is so baseless. Of course, when on cushion, shut up and practice.:-) But every single school makes good use of intellectual training, including Zen, Dzogchen and Mahamudra, about which thousands of books have been written through the centuries, most by accomplished practitioners.

The second is development of compassion. Pre-awakening as actual heart-based discipline of opening and embracing, and post-awakening as integration of the liberated awareness into everything one does and feels and thinks and says, so to thoroughly dismantle the dichotomy of sacred and mundane in action.

And the third is developing experience of fullness along with insight into emptiness, without which one may develop a very lopsided awakening. Along with traditional methods, as found in tantric practice, one may also think of complementary methods, such as qigong and other forms of physical exercise that engage subtle energies. Further on, speaking of fullness, awakening does develop through centuries, at least in the relative domain. And so one will want to have the fullest available expression of this inner awakening not just in an intellect that can coherently express the core of what has been discovered without undue gross distortion, plus broad and flexible enough to accomodate and share that expression with people of different inclinations and levels of sophistication, but also in a body that serves as a vehicle for both pre-awakening and post-awakening activity in accordance with real enlightened motives and not some medieval idea of purity and sainthood. To round up the fullness issue, one would not want to miss the shadow aspects in psychological unraveling (unmapped in traditional teachings), since these tend to become fixed forever when one uses spiritual realization to bypass psychological quirks.

However, going back to [the] original question: can one really reach awakening by choiceless awareness (by whatever name) alone? Yes, most possibly yes, but with quite unpredictable results, though some may find it preposterous to think awakening can be an unpredictable result, but there you are. The process called awakening (i.e. bodhi) is usually pursued in several steps, ordered in a dialectic fashion, so that what's good at one stage is contraindicative before or after. Also, while awakening may be reduced to bare essence as a liberation of awareness from false self-identification, in fact it's a complex process in which we do our best to emancipate the whole potential as far as that doesn't interfere with the path of awakening itself, since those additional dimensions are indeed ornaments of the awakened mind, ultimately inseparable from it. Does this help?

On Mindfulness and Effort

I wrote this for a recent thread at Dharma Overground --

Great conversation! I'm strongly in agreement with the argument Vince has made on the importance of mindfulness as the one factor that one never has too much of. It's the meta-capacity in both seven factors and five faculties/powers. One could even go as far as seeing all other items as functions of mindfulness itself. For those not into qualia conducing to awakening, here's a link for a basic intro:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Enlightenment

Anyway, it seems crucial to have a useful understanding of mindfulness, because only such mindfulness, when applied consistently, will produce right effort. To be precise: (1) mindfulness always goes along with introspective clarity, so that sometimes they're listed as a composite term (smrtisamprajanya / satisampajanna), and basically it makes not much sense being mindful while confused about what's going on in your awareness in phenomenological terms, and (2) mindfulness equally embraces what is going on, what was going on, and what will be going on, since there's no way to make sense of your present-moment practice without reference points of past results and future aims, so it's not a flat present one's aware of. Meditation is, in large part, a process of learning from one's mistakes, and the continuity mentioned by Vince arises from a willingness to accept that. An ability to reconstruct the whole cushion time minute-per-minute (or even second-per-second) immediately after coming out of meditation can also be taken as a measure of mindfulness, and of the general quality of one's sessions. An ability to remember instructions you received and decisions you made in the past is also a measure of mindfulness etc. Remembering something at the time you need it is crucial for any endeavor.

The question of maintaining effort arises as part of shamatha training, where - after conquering the more gross obstacles - one is required to learn the subtle balance of effort, i.e. applying when necessary, and not applying when the mind is balanced. What this results in goes beyond intentional effort to maintain mindfulness, otherwise the sheer intentionality would cumulatively intensify whatever gestalt was there to begin with, including the not so obvious imbalances in one's psyche. In other words, while risking to over-simplify, the sheer intentionality itself would become an obstruction to the expense of our mind's natural capacity of becoming and remaining aware and alert when obstacles to it are removed. So in this context training is a matter of restoring mind's innate capacities.

Now, a solution to this is definitely not to cultivate non-mindfulness. Non-mindfulness is always there anyway, in reference to everything outside the scope of mindfulness. To cultivate mindfulness (and introspective clarity) is to recognize such a quality as already existing and then learn to remove obstacles to its optimal functioning. It's not that we actually generate mindfulness out of nothing. Secondly, one ought to make space for a relaxed, natural flow of awareness in mid-sessions and after-sessions. According to my experience, in these periods, awareness is checked very gently, almost without deliberation. At more advanced stages, a deliberation is necessary only at a beginning of a certain formal period (including after-sessions), after which one is largely immersed in whatever one is doing without necessity for a self-conscious point of reference. But at a more basic level, people tend to slack or overdo, and the only way to learn this balance is by trying.

The levels of awkwardness and introspective incompetence we bring to the meditation cushion are fantastic. That is, the degree to which we can estrange ourselves from our own natural capacity to be simply alert and reflective of what is happening is amazing. It doesn't mean, however, that we should allow this prevailing state to define or seriously limit the way we envision the nature of this learning process or even the simple skill of being present. So from this vantage point, the weight lifting metaphor is definitely not so useful, though I still like the way it sounds.:-)

See the whole thread here.

What is Yoga?

Herbert Günther wrote in his "What is that which is called Yoga?":

"The Indic word yoga has become a household word in any Western language where, as in its original Indian cultural context, it has become a cover term for a variety of disciplines and techniques, each claiming to be the last word. Given this state of affairs the question "What is that which is called Yoga" is still pertinent and must be dealt with in its historical context."

Read the whole article.

Change and the Changeless

An utterly delightful talk from Father Thomas Keating, entitled "Oneness and the Heart of the world", found at GlobalOneness. Time 35 minutes. Enjoy!



Thanks to Vincent Horn for heads up. Here's the link to the original video, available in high and low res, and also for download in .mp4 format.

1-click Shift

One minute shift with teacher Adyashanti. Also, some cool stuff at the Cafe Dharma section of his website. Enjoy!



Thanks to WH for heads up.

Shamatha Project

Introductory remarks by Alan Wallace (profile at SBI, profile at Integral Naked) at the beginning of the Shamatha Project, arguably "the most sophisticated scientific study" of this type.



If you're interested in learning more, please listen to this series of podcasts on the Shamatha Project, giving a preliminary report of the findings.

Ordinary mind

Patrick Sweeney on tamal gyi shepa, ordinary mind. Time 09:48 Enjoy!

One goose, many geese

Kanjuro Shibata sensei on ele:vision, hosted by Waylon Lewis. Enjoy this extremely fun video, time just under 17 minutes. (sorry, embedding of this video disabled at youtube)

LINK TO VIDEO

I had great fortune of meeting Sensei last year at his home and dojo in Boulder, Colorado, when visiting with Buddhist teacher Patrick Sweeney. I also got instruction on breath, posture, and intention - there and then - while collecting arrows and sitting next to Sensei, watching Mr Sweeney and Mrs Carolyn Kanjuro practice. Shibata Sensei is a genuine gentleman, a gentle warrior, and I'm very grateful for that opportunity.

: : :

In the early 1980's Shibata Kanjuro XX Sensei composed three vows to serve as the foundation for kyudo practice and to further a mutual vision of creating an enlightened society.

Hitotsu. Rei gi o tadashiku subeshi
We vow to uphold genuine good manners.

Hitotsu. Shin gi o omonzubeshi
We vow to be honourable.

Hitotsu. Chusetsu o toutobubeshi
We vow to be loyal.

On Centering Prayer

In this short video, Fr. Thomas Keating introduces the method of Centering Prayer by going through simple guidelines. Time just under 8 minutes. Enjoy!



The Guidelines offered are as follows:

One
Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God's presence and action within you.

Two
Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God's presence and action within.

Three
When engaged with your thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.

Contemplative Science

This is from 2003 All in the Mind hosted by Natasha Mitchell. An excerpt from transcript:

Natasha Mitchell: Richard Davidson, let's come to some of the work that you've been doing which really is an extension of your many years of work looking at our expression of emotions and the role that emotions have in our well being and in our essential nature as humans. You have actually been putting monks and meditators under brain scans.

Richard Davidson: Yes, we've been doing two kinds of research on meditation, one is work with individuals who in fact are naïve to meditation, where we train them with a short term program of meditation based on certain Buddhist meditation practices and then look at changes that occur over a relatively short period of time, just over the course of several months. What's actually remarkable is that we find any changes over such a short period of time, but in fact, we've recently published an article showing significant changes in certain measures of both brain and immune function that were produced by this very short-term course of mindfulness meditation.

The second kind of work we've done is work with experts, people who have spent many years in contemplative practice who have really very finely honed their skills in these practices, and that work is still very much ongoing. And it really represents I think a radical experiment in cross cultural and trans-disciplinary science because here the Buddhist practitioner becomes not a subject but a collaborator, given their expertise in contemplative science in helping us to understand the nature of the data that we're collecting, helping us to design appropriate experiments to capture some of the specific qualities of mind that maybe produced. One particular domain of work that has I think been extremely influential is work on plasticity of the brain, which indicates that the brain really is the organ that is built to change in response to experience. That gives a solid foundation for asking how meditation might change the brain in ways that maybe helpful.

Natasha Mitchell: Let's come to some of your results with people that you trained up over a period of time in mindfulness meditation and part of that process will also be tapping into some of the incredible observations you've been making over the years about how emotions reside in the brain, and how there's a variation in how emotions work in the brain across the two hemispheres of the brain.

Richard Davidson: That's right, and so one of the questions that we were interested in examining at the outset was whether meditation might change a specific pattern of activation in the pre-frontal cortex which we have previously associated with different emotional dispositions.

We have evidence to suggest that individuals who exhibit at base line - just in their resting state so to speak - greater activation in certain regions of the left pre-frontal cortex, those individuals have a more positive dispositional mood, that is they are happier people and there's a whole constellation of characteristics that we've discovered which is associated with that pattern.

And what we wanted to see is whether a short intervention of meditation, in this case it was two month course, whether individuals would show a change over that period of time in this direction compared to a control group of people that were not engaged in this meditation.

Natasha Mitchell: And what did you find?

Richard Davidson: And what we found is that individuals who participated showed a significant increase in activation in left pre-frontal regions of their brain. That was associated with a reduction in the amount of anxiety that they reported. And we also found remarkably that there was a change in the immune system in these individuals, compared to individuals who were in our control group. We found that to be particularly remarkable.

Natasha Mitchell: It's extraordinary.

Richard Davidson: Given the brevity of the training, it suggests that meditation was producing systematic changes in both the brain and the body in directions that were positive.

Thanks to WH for heads up. Read the whole transcript.

The Science of Shamatha

An exquisite interview with B. Alan Wallace at Buddhist Geeks netcast. This is part 2 of the interview, for part 1 see here. This is a discussion

"...on the impact of the recently completed Shamatha Project. Dr. Wallace shares the astounding levels of concentration that were achieved during the 3-month retreats he led and tells us more about the achievement of shamatha. Find out how deep the students on this retreat went, and why nearly %20 of them decided to continue on with intensive retreat practice after it was over!

Dr. Wallace also discusses the potential impact that a study of this magnitude could have on the scientific community as well as the culture-at-large. Questions that the study aimed to answer included, "Is it possible to train attention?" & "Does meditation have an effect on ethics?". While the answers may be obvious to meditators, having them scientifically validated could have a major impact on the fields of education, mental health, and psychology."

Good stuff!

Buddhist Magic: What is possible

Have you ever considered what it would be like to cultivate, what in the Buddhist tradition are called the siddhis or magical powers? Buddhist magic is an endlessly fascinating topic, and in this episode we speak with Daniel Ingram, one of our favorite guests here on Buddhist Geeks, about the powers.

We cover their historical treatment by some of the major traditions, including the Zen, Tibetan, and Theravada. Daniel also gives us his first-hand experience having explored the powers, and considers the implications of doing public magic, and whether or not this kind of magic is "objectively real". We also discuss the ethical issues involved in using magic and issues of reproducibility.

Check this great discussion at Buddhist Geeks, and join the conversation.

Features of the Mystic Experience

"...it is necessary to explain five principal features of the mystic experience: (1) intense realness, (2) unusual sensations, (3) unity, (4) ineffability, and (5) trans-sensate phenomena. (...) It is assumed by those who have had a mystic experience, whether induced by years of meditation or by a single dose of LSD, that the truthfulness of the experience is attested to by its sense of realness. The criticism of skeptics is often met with the statement, "You have to experience it yourself and then you will understand." This means that if one has the actual experience he will be convinced by its intense feeling of reality. "I know it was real because it was more real than my talking to you now." But "realness" is not evidence. Indeed, there are many clinical examples of variability in the intensity of the feeling of realness that is not correlated with corresponding variability in the reality. A dream may be so "real" as to carry conviction into the waking state, although its content may be bizarre beyond correspondence to this world or to any other. Psychosis is often preceded or accompanied by a sense that the world is less real than normally, sometimes that it is more real, or has a different reality. The phenomenon of depersonalization demonstrates the potential for an alteration in the sense of the realness of one's own person, although one's evidential self undergoes no change whatsoever. However, in the case of depersonalization, or of de-realization, the distinction between what is external and what is internal is still clear. What changes is the quality of realness attached to those object representations. Thus it appears that (1) the feeling of realness represents a function distinct from that of reality judgment, although they usually operate in synchrony; (2) the feeling of realness is not inherent in sensations, per se; and (3) realness can be considered a quantity function capable of displacement and, therefore, of intensification, reduction, and transfer affecting all varieties of ideational and sensorial contents..."

See the whole paper "Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience" by Arthur J. Deikman. More useful articles to be found at the website.

Krishnamurti with Chogyam Trungpa

Here's the first youtube video in a series of five of Krishnamurti talking to Chogyam Trungpa on the practice and purpose of meditation and related topics. Thanks to Bruce Alderman for heads up. This part 9:40 minutes. Enjoy!



Links to parts: Two (9:12), Three (6:06), Four (7:03), and Five (5:51).

The uniting human challenge

"...There is no question that linguistic thought is indispensable for us. It is, in large part, what makes us human. It is the fabric of almost all culture and every social relationship. Needless to say, it is the basis of all science. And it is surely responsible for much rudimentary cognition—for integrating beliefs, planning, explicit learning, moral reasoning, and many other mental capacities. Even talking to oneself out loud may occasionally serve a useful function.

From the point of view of our contemplative traditions, however—to boil them all down to a cartoon version, that ignores the rather esoteric disputes among them—our habitual identification with discursive thought, our failure moment to moment to recognize thoughts as thoughts, is a primary source of human suffering. And when a person breaks this spell, an extraordinary kind of relief is available.

But the problem with a contemplative claim of this sort is that you can’t borrow someone else’s contemplative tools to test it. The problem is that to test such a claim—indeed, to even appreciate how distracted we tend to be in the first place, we have to build our own contemplative tools. Imagine where astronomy would be if everyone had to build his own telescope before he could even begin to see if astronomy was a legitimate enterprise. It wouldn’t make the sky any less worthy of investigation, but it would make it immensely more difficult for us to establish astronomy as a science.

To judge the empirical claims of contemplatives, you have to build your own telescope. Judging their metaphysical claims is another matter: many of these can be dismissed as bad science or bad philosophy by merely thinking about them. But to judge whether certain experiences are possible—and if possible, desirable—we have to be able to use our attention in the requisite ways. We have to be able to break our identification with discursive thought, if only for a few moments. This can take a tremendous amount of work. And it is not work that our culture knows much about.

One problem with atheism as a category of thought, is that it seems more or less synonymous with not being interested in what someone like the Buddha or Jesus may have actually experienced. In fact, many atheists reject such experiences out of hand, as either impossible, or if possible, not worth wanting. Another common mistake is to imagine that such experiences are necessarily equivalent to states of mind with which many of us are already familiar—the feeling of scientific awe, or ordinary states of aesthetic appreciation, artistic inspiration, etc.

As someone who has made his own modest efforts in this area, let me assure you, that when a person goes into solitude and trains himself in meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing else—not talking, not reading, not writing—just making a sustained moment to moment effort to merely observe the contents of consciousness and to not get lost in thought, he experiences things that most scientists and artists are not likely to have experienced, unless they have made precisely the same efforts at introspection. And these experiences have a lot to say about the plasticity of the human mind and about the possibilities of human happiness.

So, apart from just commending these phenomena to your attention, I’d like to point out that, as atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents."

Also sprach Sam Harris, the whole lecture here. There's a video of Harris giving these and similar arguments (link).

Now, clearly there can be a contemporary mysticism that does distinguish between prerational and postrational views of mind and life. This same mysticism is able to explain its main tenets in broadly rational terms, and present the transrational insight in accessible philosophical language, aided by a judicious measure of paradox and pointing to direct experience attained to only through methodical application of a discipline such as meditation coupled with a study of perspectives on reality.

The problem seems not to be in theism (which is no warranty of anyone's prerationality), or in atheism (which is no warranty of anyone's rationality), but instead in theists' and atheists', in Harris' words, "not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important", because in that case indeed they become less wise than the craziest in the other party.

Theists and atheists, personalists and impersonalists, believers and skeptics, all are welcome to embrace what is their own full potential. Are they invited and actively encouraged to do so by their worldview? That seems to be the key issue, and the uniting human challenge.

The One Way

"According to the Buddha, no one can attain basic sanity and basic enlightenment without practicing meditation. You might be highly confused or you might be highly awakened and completely ready for the path. You might be emotionally disturbed and experiencing a sense of claustrophobia in relation to your world. Perhaps you are inspired by works of art you have done or the visual and audial aspects of works of art in general. You might be fat, thin, big, small, ntelligent, stupid -- whatever you are, there is only one way, unconditionally, and that is to begin with the practice of meditation. The practice of meditation is THE and ONLY way. Without that, there is no way out and no way in."

Chogyam Trungpa

Staying Power (4)

With the stage #4 called "close attention" we leave the domain of beginning meditative training and enter the more advanced phases of shamatha which involve the "acquired sign". There's broad agreement across Buddhist traditions that an acquired sign is necessary at this point, since further stages can only be achieved relying on a mental object, not a sensory impression, since now shamatha entails the cultivation of exceptional vividness of attention.

It takes five to ten thousand hours of training in a discipline of eight hours each day for fifty weeks in a year to acquire expertise in a high-level skill, and that is roughly the commitment required to progress along the entire path to the achievement of shamatha. It is vital to maintain a high degree of mindfulness (smrti) and introspection (samprajanya) throughout the day between formal sessions. There is a brief instant of raw perception before concepts and responses overlay it, and to notice that gap we need a high degree of vividness. This window is an opportunity to gain clearer access to the subtle continuum of mental consciousness out of which all forms of perception and conception emerge.

The transition from stage #4 to stage #5, from close attention to tamed attention, presents a great challenge, for now, free from coarse excitation, you must face the problem of coarse laxity. With laxity, your attention tends to disengage by becoming dull; instead of fading out, it fades in, leading to lethargy and sleep. The peace of laxity is often mistaken for quiescence and equipoise. In the fifth stage, you learn to overcome coarse laxity without losing stability by arousing attention and interest in the object of meditation. The emphasis of stage five is balanced vividness achieved through introspection, the ability to monitor the quality of attention.

According to Buddhagosa, "Mindfulness has the characteristic of remembering. Its function is not to forget; it manifests as quarding. Introspection has the characteristic of nonconfusion. Its function is to investigate; it manifests as scrutiny." According to Asanga, "Mindfulness and introspection are taught, for the first prevents the attention from straying from the meditative object, while the second recognizes that the attention is straying."

While most teachers encourage meditators determined to achieve shamatha to continue with one object, some masters have also proposed use of multiple objects, and there are merits to both views. It's easy to get bored, and repeatedly experimenting with different techniques can prevent serious progress in any of them. One option, proposed by Wallace in "The Attention Revolution", is to skip to a more advanced method after stabilizing the fourth stage of close attention. Here he proposes "settling the mind in its natural state" taught in mahamudra and dzogchen (comparable to the Theravadan method of "unfastened mindfulness" or to taza as taught in various Japanese lineages). This method is suited for people with minds prone to excitation and conceptualization, and it is also most suitable for high-strung people with unstable minds who may run into trouble by adopting visualization for developing shamatha. Of course, one can use this method throughout the stages to shamatha, but many people find it difficult at first. The "natural state" features bliss, luminosity, and nonconceptuality. The object of mindfulness in this practice is the space of the mind and whatever arises in that space. The object of introspection is the quality of attention.

Stage #6, called pacified attention or calming, is achieved by the power of introspection, while the resistance to training drops. Through further refinement of attention, you become free of middle excitation and gross laxity. Involuntary thoughts pass through your consciousness, while you're able to witness the entire course of thoughts arising, playing out, and dissolving. By persistently meeting these challenges through many sessions each day, you ascend to the stage #7, called fully pacified attention or thoroughly calming, achieved through the power of enthusiasm. Subtle excitation occurs from time to time, and having overcome medium laxity, subtle laxity remains: while the object appears vividly, yet attention is slightly slack. Wallace says, "No one but a highly advanced meditator is even capable of recognizing such a subtle degree of laxity. It is detected only in relation to the exceptionally high degree of vividness of which the trained mind is capable." When reaching the seventh stage, the sessions may last for two hours and more without major interruptions, and the practice involves less and less.

To be continued...

Staying power (3)

The only way to really understand the effects and benefits of meditation is through direct experience. According to the Tibetan oral tradition (*B. A. Wallace), among those who are well qualified to enter shamatha training, "those of sharpest faculties may be able to achieve all ten stages within three months; those with medium faculties may take six months; and those with dull faculties may require nine months". Of course, this assumes a contemplative environment and full-time devotion to training, while the "faculty" refers to the natural talent and ability in sustained attentional balance, ability in using mindfulness and intelligence. But even for a regular meditator, applying the simple, straightforward instructions is a time-tested method of developing the hightened ability of sustained attention.

*Body points. Posture adopted for training in calm abiding should allow three qualities of relaxation, rest, and vigilance. It may be either sitting posture, such as 7-point vairochana posture, or the comfortable supine position (I suggest alternating, to enhance one's skill in basics). Beginners should learn to relax in such a way as to enhance presence.

Stages 1-4
The beginning 4 stages of developing shamatha are as folows:

1. Directed attention or directing
2. Continuous attention or continuously directing
3. Resurgent attention or resetting
4. Close attention or staying closely

*Sanskrit terms for nine stages: 1 cittasthapana, 2 samsthapana, 3 cittapratiharana, 4 cittopasthapana, 5 cittadamana, 6 cittashamana, 7 cittavyupashamana, 8 cittaikotikarana, 9 samadhana.

The purpose of grouping the first four stages together is pragmatic, since they form a subcycle in developing calm abiding. Let's see what happens.

The sign of reaching the stage of directed attention is when you're able to place the mind on the intended object for at least a few seconds. Depending on the object, this may require several weeks, or it may be achieved at first attempt. At this stage we naturally notice how chaotic our minds are, and how little control we really exert. The lessons of this stage are to relax again and again into a sense of ease, to breathe naturally, to sustain and renew our effort while not trying too hard. The problem with this stage is lack of attentional continuity due to excitation. If exhaustion comes quickly, it's better to meditate in short sessions of ten minutes each. The emphasis of stage #1 is on relaxing.

In the second stage, one experiences short periods of staying or continuity, but mind is still mostly lost in thoughts and distractions. Now and again one remains centered and present, but then one again forgets completely the intended object. Since thinking remains unchecked at this stage, counting the breath or using other forms of connecting the thought to the object may help. The sessions may be 20-30 minutes. The second stage is reached when you're able to maintain staying for a minute or so. The emphasis of stage #2 is on stability.

If you're practicing only once or twice each day, it may prove difficult to move beyond the second stage. Further training will require some serious commitment, such as devoting 7 or 10 days to intensive training where you can have multiple sessions each day. By the time you reach third stage, resurgent attention or resetting, the mind is set on the object most of the time in every session, though it is still quite patchy. While you may increase the duration of the sessions, it's crucial that you keep working with the quality of attention through diligent application of mindfulness and intelligence, in order to maintain the balance of relaxation and vigilance both in posture and in minding the object. If you develop bad habits in sitting, these become harder and harder to break. Regular practice strenghtens whatever you're doing, so be sure you're maintaining good quality. Thoughts, images, sounds and appearances still emerge, though with less frequency and force, carrying you away less and less. Do not block them or force them out, simply let them go as soon as possible and refocus on your intended object. The emphasis of stage #3 is on vividness.

In previous three stages restlessness, effort and frustration may be the prevailing mode of experience. The next stage is close attention or staying closely. Due to enhanced mindfulness, you no longer forget the intended object, such as sensations of breath at your nostrils, or the visualized moondisk, or the open-space quality of the natural state. Sessions may last an hour or longer, and during each of them your attention cannot be drawn away from the indended object involuntarily. You are free of coarse excitation, while medium excitation and coarse laxity persist, but your mindfulness is now strong enough to begin functioning as basis for samadhi.

The achievement of stage #4 is significant. If you haven't gained a conceptual understanding of the entire shamatha path, you might think that you have reached its culmination, but this is only the first of three steps. What makes the stage of close attention significant is the emergence of the "acquired sign". When beginning shamatha training, practitioners attend the coarse qualities in the intended object, whether breath sensations, or visualized moondisk, or natural state of mind. With progress, however, these coarse qualities drop away and the more subtle qualities are attended to, until a shift occurs in the object, making it appear in a rather different fashion. Wallace: "To different people, acquired signs associated with the breath practice may appear like a star, a cluster of gems or pearls, a wreath of flowers, a puff of smoke, a cobweb, a cloud, a lotus flower, a wheel, or the moon or sun. The various appearances are related to mental dispositions of individual meditators." It is a special mental image resulting from sustained attention protected by the power of mindfulness. The acquired sign at first emerges sporadically, but eventually more steadily and regularly. Once the acquired sign appears, you shift your attention to it. This acquired object will serve you well along the rest of the stages leading to calm abiding.

*While a method such as visualized moondisk introduces an object placed within the awareness directly, the effort of visualization will strain the mind of those prone to excessive conceptualization - which is most people - causing exhaustion and stress over time, even when the sessions are kept shorter. Visualization for shamatha is best practiced in combination with mantra recitation (in its esoteric form), which reduces such negative effects. That's why, as taught in the early scriptures, the Buddha suggested mindfulness of breathing for practitioners prone to conceptual excess, as a method of developing the staying power based on ease and balance. On the other hand, a method such as setting the mind in the natural state also directly induces a special object, identical in form and aspect to the mind itself, but for most beginners this sort of object is easily lost before the stage of close attention, due to its subtle nature.

The duration of sessions is now increased for as long as you're able to maintain your attention free of laxity and excitation. The emphasis of stage #4 is on further enhancing vividness, now attending to the acquired sign. The lasting achievement of vividness depends on relaxation and stability, so guard them well.

To be continued...

Lacking leadership, lacking conceptuality

The third and final part of the conversation between Vincent Thorn, Daniel Ingram, and yours truly is online! Listen to "Lacking leadership, lacking conceptuality" at Buddhistgeeks. Time 16:40

Monks in the lab

"Monks in the lab" is a story of human and scientific adventure. "Monks in the lab" enables viewers to explore the frontiers of scientific research, personal health and mind and spirit. Why is contemporary science interested in meditation? Why is meditation good for your health? Why are Buddhist monks allowing Western researchers to use technology to probe their brains and bodies?

Buddhists have been studying the human mind and spirit with no technological tools at all for 2500 years. They have developed meditation techniques that increase mindful attention and transform the emotions. But these techniques have been long unknown or ignored in the West.

But today’s scientific researchers have more and more to deal with the nagging and universal questions of the nature of the emotions and the mind. Buddhist experience and knowledge are of increasing interest. Just what are “emotions”? What do we mean by “mind”?

The scientists of the project “Mind and life” who are studying the meditative states are pioneers in their field. They try to understand the mechanisms by which the mind influences the body and explore the extraordinary plasticity of the brain.

Watch the video here. Time 53 minutes. Enjoy!

Script & director: Delphine Morel
camera: Jean-Jacques Mrejen
sound: Murielle Damain & Patrick Genet
editor: Variety Moszynski
with: Clifford Saron, René Feusi, Rabjam Rinpoché, Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoché, Matthieu Ricard, Monastère de Shechen, Nepal, Jonathan Cohen, Jason Chein, Brent Field, Leigh Nystrom, Paul Ekman, Erika Rosenberg, Margaret Kemeny, Alan Wallace, Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, Nancy Rawling, Yonten, Chokey Livingston, Gendrun Rinchen, Rigzin Samdrup, Tsultrin Tawa
co-production & commisioning editor: ARTE France, Hélène Coldefy & BOS: Babeth M. VanLoo
in cooperation with YLE 2

Staying power (2)

You've perhaps heard of dhyana (pali: jhana) or meditative absorption, traditionally divided into subtle form and formless, each in a set of four stages. The higher stages of absorption are not necessary for insight practice. However, a firm foundation in shamatha IS necessary to effectively practice insight. To cut a long story short, it's necessary to develop staying ability to the point of attaining actual shamatha, i.e. calm abiding. Depending on one's inclination, further stages of meditative absorption may be pursued, or the acquired ability may be used to penetrate the profound truth. The contrast made between calm and insight (shamatha vs. vipashyana) is often taken to extremes, and normally we find Western practitioners ignoring - or being quite ignorant of - effective shamatha practices. It seems necessary to emphasize that preliminaries and shamatha and vipashyana and enlightenment itself are being attained by people as we speak, typically in that order. Besides developing actual ability to stay undistracted with the unfolding immediate experience, the shamatha training provides a lot of insight into relative dynamics of mind's functioning and the manner of phenomena arising, that is crucial for subsequent probing into the ultimate nature of awareness-and-phenomena.

Irrespective of further details, it is essential to acquire correct understanding and good ability in staying with immediate experience. To that purpose, we can benefit from clear instruction and guidance in distinct stages of development. Thus, we will use the nine stages leading to shamatha, the 10th stage, codified by the great Indian master Arya Asanga in his works Shravakabhumi, Abhidharmasamuccaya and Mahayanasutralankara. Those more familiar with Theravada tradition, may find similar instructions in Vishudhimagga, the work of master-scholar Buddhagosa.

Previous to entering explicit shamatha training, one should abide by reasonable ethical standards, complete the preliminary training, receive-and-contemplate the teachings concerning the human birth, impermanence, and dependent arising, in order to develop a resolution to purify one's awareness and develop an ability to remain undistracted. *Various schools propose different preliminaries, but purifying the motivation and developing a deep yearning for awakening is common to all schools.

As to resolution, in Abhidharma we find a group of five determining factors, that function as ascertaining conditions, stabilizing the mind on its way to awakening. These are directly related to meditative cultivation: (1) interest or aspiration (skt. chanda), the wish to obtain a desired quality; (2) strong interest or determination (skt. adhimoksha), the conviction, confidence and certainty concerning the desired quality; (3) mindfulness or remembering (skt. smrti) which protects against forgetfulness and distraction; (4) strong concentration (skt. samadhi), the ability to establish and maintain attention to an intended object; and (5) wisdom (skt. prajna), the discerning of faults and virtues, and the dispelling of doubts regarding the nature of awareness-and-phenomena. The first three factors provide a basis for shamatha, identified here with the fourth factor, samadhi. (For the Abhidharma context, see "Mind and mental factors" by A. Berzin)

The nine stages leading to actual staying power can be subdivided in beginning stages (one to four), intermediate stages (five to seven), and advanced stages (eight to ten). As we move through them, we'll make reference to several methods and objects used in meditation, such as mindfulness of breathing, or moondisk visualization, or the natural state. While each of these methods may be pursued through the stages, because they are increasingly challenging, they may also be used in sequence - each one to upgrade the previous one. Some traditions employ dozens of exercises and techniques to develop good shamatha in the context of intensive training. For an urban practitioner, however, more than 3 or 4 methods might present a source of confusion and cause unfocused practice, as each method and object require some familiarization, and that requires effort and time. Let us, then, start with considering the four beginning stages.

(*If you need a modern, hands-on practical manual, please purchase "The Attention Revolution" by B. Alan Wallace, an excellent guide through the nine stages. If you're interested in further reading at this point, see "A Guide to Shamatha Meditation" by Thrangu Rinpoche.)

To be continued...

Staying power (1)

Sooner or later, one gets distracted. And then, one misses something - something quite significant. Hence, in order to really understand anything at all, developing the ability to remain undistracted is essential. In terms of 1st person awareness, such ability is taken to high levels of sophistication in the Buddhist training of shamatha, or calm abiding.

Intro
Anyone familiar with basics of Buddhism is aware that Buddhist training consists of ethics, meditation and wisdom, i.e. three modes of establishing oneself on the Middle Path (skt. madhyama-pratipad) common to each and every Buddhist lineage. A non-invasive form of following the Path is ethical discipline, coupled with mindfulness (standing here for meditation) and right view (standing here for wisdom). The shortest route to awakening is the Path of wisdom, direct introduction into Suchness, a top-down model of awakening, wherein the steps are pursued post-realization as a method (skt. upaya) of subsequent harmonizing and benefiting other beings. While the former path can be, and indeed should be pursued by everyone considering themselves practitioners of Buddhism in any form, the latter path is accessible only to especially gifted individuals under suitable conditions. Hence, the most effective method in terms of transformation and real-time progress is the Path of meditation. This path is actually an integration of all three aspects, being based on ethical observances plus intention/devotion and framed in right view/understading. In addition, meditation is an accessible form of training for anyone willing to do what's necessary, but general desiderata may be summed up as (1) sincere interest, and (2) relative health of bodymind.

The Path of meditation, so often equated with Buddhism in the West, consists again of three general stages: (1) preliminary training, (2) calm abiding, and (3) special insight. In this series, I will focus on calm abiding. The reason for this will hopefully become clear as we move along.

To be continued...

Get Unstuck!

Buddhistgeeks.com brings the second part of discussion with Vincent Horn, Daniel Ingram and yours truly as we "continue to explore the territory of meditation and psychology, discussing the mastery of meditation techniques, and touch on how people can get unstuck if they are lost in the content and stories of their minds." Also, first part is here.

Online at Buddhist Geeks

Daniel Ingram, Vincent Horn and yours truly have had a zippy chat on the subject of entrances and hindrances to the practice of meditation that can lead to actual results - liberation and awakening - as laid out in teachings of all major lineages. The first part is online: "Croatia, Alabama, and Colorado Collide!" Listen to the podcast and stay tuned at Buddhist Geeks, link here.

Marathon Monks

Excerpt from "The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei". Time 11:30




UPDATE [26july2008]: There's another video, time 19:48. Embedding is disabled so visit youtube here.

Hardcore Dharma

Good Daniel Ingram has made his book "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha", available in blog form ("blook") to make it searchable and perhaps easier to read. The book is also available in several static forms here for download and printout (300 pages). If you're seriously into meditation and realization, and not just hanging around Buddhist centers and teachers 'till the holy cows come home, you should be very interested in this material. It is not intended to make you more comfortable with yourself, nor to make you believe in the myths. Instead, it is a perspective of honest clarity, based on first-hand experience as well as the teachings of the Buddha and subsequent enlightened practitioners. I praise this offering and look forward for Daniel's posts in his recently activated blog.

A beautiful quote from MCTB, that is the last 37th chapter of the book, entitled "Conclusion and Best Wishes":

"I do hope that people will not settle for becoming lost in the dogma of this work, Buddhism, or of any mystical tradition. I hope that they learn to actually do the practices that lead to freedom and to the deep integration of that freedom into their lives. I hope that they have faith that mastery can be attained. I hope that they will learn to ask good questions that will help them to accomplish this. I hope that the culture of Buddhism and the world in general will become less sectarian instead of more. I hope that students of meditation will use spiritual conceptual frameworks as tools and not worship them as sacred dogma. I hope that the huge amount of magical and fantastic thinking that accompanies spiritual traditions will immediately vanish from this planet forever.

I hope that those on the path will learn to talk with each other in ways that are conducive to clear practice. I hope that any controversial points made in this little book will promote skillful debate and real inquiry rather than contraction into fear and dogma. I hope that people will work towards actual mastery of the path so that they will no longer need writings such as this one. I hope that people will not spend their lives lost in content but will also delve deeply into the liberating truth of the Three Characteristics. I hope that the level of expectation about what is possible will be raised in a way that is helpful, and that any jealousy or frustration that results from this will be skillfully channeled into precise practice and the joy that it can be done.

May all of this be for the benefit of all beings. Should you realize that you wish to awaken, know that it is within your capabilities and do so."

Sound of Silence

The Primordial gives rise to the formless, unbounded, unqualified Silence. From within this emptiness subtle archeforms are secreted, giving rise to time, space and all sorts of divisions, whence dreams rise with their silence and sounds, with their luminous spaciousness and configurations, all intimations of the prior abyss beyond word or thought or utterance. The Primordial having given birth to the Silent Rose, which in turn gave birth to silence and sounds, the dream then gives birth to the reticence and voice of this waking reality. Sound being meaningful only in relation to silence, sound rises from within silence and dissapears into silence. Voices are sounds of silence made audible. At each level, as we roam in forgetfulness, silence is a meaningful metaphor of the prior deeper level. Therefore, most disciplines in remembering are based on observing silence, making silence into a threshold to depth.

From sound into silence we all return, and then to prior silence to find the original unbounded Silence, the utterance of the Primordial, the everlasting ubiquitous moment of silence ever expressed as voice. The mantra of supreme reality expresses all this at once, quite obvious and plain, always already so.

Walsh on Ethics

Roger Walsh, author of "Essential Spirituality", explains the importance of ethical awareness and discipline in this video, duration 05:37, "laying the ground for an understanding of why ethics is so crucial, and why it's so powerfull, looking at it from a contemplative perspective". Enjoy!

Whirling and Turning

A beautiful recording of Dervish ceremony - music, singing and dance as meditation.

Retreat is a way to advance

Contemplative retreats are a fundamental mode of practice in all mystical traditions worldwide. Buddhist meditators in the West are also fond of this often misunderstood form of praxis. The good people at Buddhist Geeks have posted A Call for Advice: Tips and Suggestions for Retreats by Ryan Oelke. Keep an eye on how those tips develop. Or even better, share what you have learned for the benefit of one and all.