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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 16, 2015 - 05:10pm PT
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Love, you may edit my 'wisdom crap' to 'concentration states crap' as you need to. For language, as we've recently realized, is an imperfect thing.
And spare us the trite 'impoverished Western versus enlightened Eastern' thing. Really? You had the guru thing going so strong for a while.
Western culture (which is what, exactly?) is simply different. It has its own meditative and exploratory traditions. Is Tibetan chanting somehow superior or more evolved than Gregorian? If so - let's hear exactly why, and good luck with that. And what of Native American traditions? Did they fall through the crack, or do we include them with Eastern because they're simply not Western? What of the Islamic world? Where do they fit in? Are Eastern traditions devoid of BS? Bravo!
I would posit the incredibly rich culture of the West speaks volumes about its depth, but it's not an Us verses Them thing anyway.
After all, such a simplistic bifurcation wouldn't be very enlightened, wouldn't it?
What's been going on is cultural blending. "Easterners" are listening to Tom Waits and buying nukes and "Westerners" are practicing Buddhism and outsourcing their middle class jobs to "Easterners". It's what we humans do. We take novelty where we can find it.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Mar 16, 2015 - 05:26pm PT
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Jhanas; I accidently entered into Jhana states during a retreat about 12 years ago and it was an amazing ride. the levels of concentration were where you didn't have to make any effort to be amazingly concentrated. It works in waves where you enter a level of super concentrated being and then this wave of bliss would wash through and then a level of rapture followed by equinimity and then it would go through another cycle but at a more subtle level and so forth.
The problem with it was it was very addictive. The feelings were so pleasurable that I found myself chasing after the jhanas . This is why some Theravadan schools don't teach them or they are reserved for only advanced students with careful guidance. I encountered them with no guidance and not even knowing what they were; it was like eating pot brownies without knowing there was pot in them. I had to do research to figure out what was happening everytime I would do a sitting session.
Anyway the Jhanas have become less intense and I have realized that you can't take them with you and to obsess about an experience in the past is a distraction from the moment. I have glimpses of them during retreats but I make an effort to not spend time trying to get them. If they arrive at least i know what they are now.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 16, 2015 - 05:27pm PT
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Tvash: I think you folks should get together and figure out which idea you're going to go with, . . .
A common complaint in any area of study. Schools, sects, and so-called religions all have a great many controversies, disagreements, and exhibit almost endless nit-picking errata invariably. Buddhism is no different, even reading between a guru and his or her student after they’ve achieved some understanding.
Of course this comment fully applies to all scientific study areas.
So what’s one to make of that? That we’re confused? That we don’t know what we are talking about? That we can’t know what we’re talking about? That we can’t talk about what we experience or don’t experience?
If you are not a full-blown skeptic, you should be. If you don’t learn to look at and through you’re own experience rather than listen and follow others, you might give it a whirl.
Lovegas:
I’ll disagree that with Ingram that Dzogchen is another form of insight practice. I’d say it should be neither.
Secondly, it’s my understanding that there is nothing that one can do to cause or that will lead to liberation. If and when it happens, then it happens.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 16, 2015 - 05:34pm PT
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Truly, there is no stable entity called ‘the mind’ which can be found!
How about 'the personality'? I would have little trouble guessing the authors of the posts on this thread if the names were removed.
In childhood we learn how to recognize and how to react to events around us. Behavior settles into stable patterns partly because of regularities in our environment and partly because of inborn tendencies.
We can identify people we know by the way they behave; their habits and mannerisms. These often persist for a lifetime.
If we look to biology we take behavior to be produced by the nervous system, and that is where 'the mind' would be found. The mind has many parts that do different jobs and that interact with each other, but so does a car.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 16, 2015 - 06:10pm PT
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What western (European) meditative traditions, contemplation and insight, are now making a strong impact in the East?
Where can 'the East' be found?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Mar 16, 2015 - 06:22pm PT
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"What western (European) meditative traditions, contemplation and insight, are now making a strong impact in the East?"
Actually it is the opposite. In asia most people don't meditate they do buddhism similar to the way christians follow the commandments and pray for things; they typically leave the meditating for the monks and nuns.
The westerners have developed a lay person's meditation practice that is starting to spread back to asia where the lay people are getting more interested in meditation.
not sure where my source is for this but this what I have heard through the grape vine.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Mar 16, 2015 - 08:16pm PT
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thanks Love, that was a very nice answer:)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 16, 2015 - 08:55pm PT
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However, jhana-junkies still abound, and many have no idea that this is what they have become. I have a good friend who has been lost in the formless realms for over 20 years, attaining them again and again . . . rationalizing that the last two formless realms are emptiness, and rationalizing that he is enlightened. It is a true dharma tragedy…
It sounds like "form is emptiness and emptiness is form" and "no-thingness" and "no physical extent" may be traps for the unwary meditator, even with years of practice. Puzzling to the uninitiated.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 16, 2015 - 09:16pm PT
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A better word would be "shifted." And "energy" here is used to denote the increasing capacity of your awareness to abide in itself, as opposed to being dragged off and fused with the various forms, sensations and impulses that spring up into your Q field. It's also instructive to see where Ed ois stuck - that is, note how he was quick to quality this as merely a "subjective experience."
Largo, why are you trying to misunderstand me?
first off a better word than "energy" could have been used, as you expand above.
And I did not use the word "merely," that is a part of your own knee-jerk reaction to my writing. By "subjective experience" I was using the phrase as you do your "first person experience," it is the definition of "subjective." There is no "objective experience," but the comparison of many "subjective experiences" may reveal what parts are solely first person, and which parts are shared, which is the usual definition of "objective."
I don't think I'm hung up on this, but maybe you want me to be... so you can be a teacher and show me what you think the "error of my way of thinking" might be...
I am blue-green color blind... not badly, but it is definitely a perceptual defect (I seem to see blue and green just fine). That is a part of my "subjective experience." When I get together with someone else and compare notes on what is blue and green, we disagree... I am somewhat incredulous.
For instance, I once had a blue VW bug that I registered as green. It was that faded finish of a 20 year old vehicle. Debbie shook her head when I argued with her, after all, it was her perception vs. mine. Driving down the NY State Throughway one Sunday evening on my way back from climbing in the 'Gunks, a state trooper was checking me out, could have been the faded "registration extension" slip taped to the windshield. I commented to Bill, my climbing partner that day that the trooper was going to pull me over. He hardly finished saying "don't be paranoid" when I get lit up.
The trooper comes over, "what have you been doing?" and "rock climbing" was answered, with a gaze pointing at the pile of gear in the back seat.
"Can I see your registration", which I show him, he looks at the car and says "green?"
I immediately recognize I'm having an "objective experience," that is, both the trooper and Debbie see the car a different color than I do, my "subjective experience" absolutely true to me, is not what everyone else (or most everyone else) perceives. "Officer, I'm blue green color blind."
He asked why I hadn't finished getting it registered and I made up a story about having trouble getting parts. He implores me to get it done, and sends us on our way without a citation, but he has weighed in on my "subjective experience."
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Mar 16, 2015 - 09:48pm PT
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nice write Ed!
i don't know though, if evolution is correct can there really be anything else besides objective experience??
does an acorn have subjective experience? Or the mighty oak tree?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 16, 2015 - 10:02pm PT
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THAT's a GREAT story, Ed! I love it.
Lovegas: What western (European) meditative traditions, contemplation and insight, are now making a strong impact in the East?
Business? Capitalism? Individualism? (I know you have to stretch the "meditative" part of it, but would you consider "nonmeditative" as some traditions do?)
Enlightenment comes in many different guises, I'd opine. The idea, as I barely understand it, is to go beyond (and in its negation) what dogma is. When you feel as though you don’t know what’s really going on, then you are on to something.
:-)
I don’t mean to throw water on a spirited conversation. But it seems that a little dousing can be a expression of upaya.
I once had a conversation with a long-term practitioner who said a teacher suggested that Hitler could have been a Buddha . . . that his actions were to move human consciousness in another direction. At first, it was an outrageous idea, but afterwards, . . . I wondered. I mean, moving an entire species' consciousness seems utterly impossible. But, with “a rainbow body,” who knows?
("Rainbow body" is a technical term that references a fully enlightened being that has left visibly but not completely--with autonomy and power.)
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 16, 2015 - 11:50pm PT
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"What western (European) meditative traditions, contemplation and insight, are now making a strong impact in the East?"
Technology, whiskey, and rock and roll.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 16, 2015 - 11:59pm PT
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"Where would you point to as the best texts and resources regarding the sustained and systematic development, study, analysis, practice, and teaching of these disciplines in say pre-1930 European (Western) culture that you believe to be equal or superior in depth, breath, and clarity as the best Eastern sources?"
The English language.
Kind of says it all, really.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 17, 2015 - 12:30am PT
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Consider it a koan.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 17, 2015 - 12:44am PT
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Look, Eastern philosophical jingoists were a dime a dozen growing up in northern California during the 60s and 70s, but most of humanity has fortunately moved beyond such silly one-dimensional ranking and left it in the tired cliche bin.
Is the Tibetan Book of the Dead 'better' than Raymond Carver or Jimmy Hendrix? Is the practice of meditation in any form 'better' than swimming, playing guitar, or naked fly fishing?
Could Mighty Mouse beat Batman in a fair fight?
I think paddling is far more valuable than any form of meditation, personally. It's meditative, plus - you're going somewhere and you just may catch a fish to BBQ when you get there. Mainly, though, I paddle - so it must be better. For me, anyway.
That, in a nutshell, is the sum total of your thesis, Love. Sorry - but I've seen it too many times by now.
I really do understand where you're coming from after all.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 17, 2015 - 08:03am PT
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The superficial observer Tavash along with his complete relativistic ethics again shows he has no real clue about what he's talking about.
He's winging it, as just plain materialistic analysis dreamed up in his tiny brain.
Thus he projects his dreams onto the world outside of himself as reality.
Easily seen by all except for likes of HFCS's types who do the same ...........
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TWP
Trad climber
Mancos, CO & Bend, OR
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Mar 17, 2015 - 08:14am PT
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Tvash:
It's not "Jimmy" Hendrix. The rest of your post reflects a similar off-baseness and ignorance. Werner already administered the spanking you need. In your case, ignorance is not bliss; it is absolute. Begin by looking up Jimi Hendrix in Wikipedia and then expand your areas of learning in any direction. You need it all.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 17, 2015 - 08:19am PT
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Werner? I skip over him. Doesn't everyone?
Spelling police? Really? Get taken seriously much?
Here's a dollar.
You've been tossed in the Werner bin.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Mar 17, 2015 - 08:54am PT
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"If I understand you correctly..."
You do not.
My thesis? Different strokes.
The center of an aspirin is the same size as the center of a beach ball.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2015 - 08:56am PT
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Hitler did however appropriate the swastika. Unfortunately, he destroyed that as well.
It was refreshing to see the swastika in Nepal, in a Hindu and occasionally Buddhist context, where it didn't seem affected by Nazism.
why was it refreshing? does that symbol have anything at all to do with your personal cultural heritage? or are you just another modern seeking validation by appropriating ancient symbols (and belief systems)?
certainly you have no cultural context in which to place such a symbol except what you had learned.
what is the difference of one modern appropriation over another?
What is a Hindu or Buddhist context? and why would that matter to you? Perhaps you could explain the symbol (without resorting to mega cut-and-paste or references to Wikipedia) and what it means to you in any context that does not include 20th century Europe?
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