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Thursday, June 7, 2018

Relaxation and Enlightenment



Contents

Introduction
How I Practice Buddhism
Further Reading
Try it Yourself


Introduction

On an internet forum I participate in, someone asked "Can Enlightenment be taught?". My thoughts on this subject are influenced by my understanding of Buddhism and my own experiences meditating. In Buddhism, the term in the language of the sutras is better translated as "awakening" than enlightenment. There are stages of awakening and the final goal of spiritual practice is to end suffering for the practitioner. (In Buddhism, pain is considered different from suffering. Pain is a physical sensation, suffering is mental anguish. When I write about suffering here I am referring to mental anguish, ie unpleasant emotions.)

My own meditation practice has evolved over time and it has become something very different from what is typically taught by Buddhist teachers. So much so that I posted on the Dharma Overground, a forum for Buddhist practitioners, and asked if what I was doing was even Buddhism. I found out that what I was doing is Buddhism but Buddhist practice is not typically explained in the way I did. It seems to me that my approach is easier to learn and to practice than the traditional methods of teaching. It doesn't involve any abstruse philosophical concepts, the practices are easy to do, they don't require intense concentration, and there are a huge variety that you can choose from.

Buddhist practice centers around learning to let go of attachments and aversion because these mental constructs are the source of mental anguish which constitutes suffering. The key question of Buddhist practice is: How does one learn to let go of attachments and aversions? Different schools offer different solutions. They are based on traditional methods and often involve abstruse philosophical concepts.

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How I Practice Buddhism

My answer to the question uses modern knowledge of how the nervous system works. To understand this, consider what it would be like to not experience suffering. Nothing could cause you mental anguish. Anything could happen, and you would be serene and relaxed.

The term for "suffering" in the language of the sutras is "dukkha" and if you google "dukkha = stress", you will find that stress is sometimes used as a translation for dukkha. So one way to understand Buddhism is that the end result of the practice is to end stress. If you look carefully within when you experience any type of unpleasant emotion you will see that it is a form of stress. If you can relax deeply, the emotion, the mental anguish, will dissipate. Maybe you have noticed that sometimes when you wake up from sleep you feel good and it takes a few seconds to remember a big problem you are in the middle of and then you feel unhappy or stressed again? That is because deep relaxation causes unpleasant emotions to dissipate. When you are having a big problem do you ever just want to lie down in bed? That is because when you are deeply relaxed, on the edge of sleep, you don't feel unpleasant emotions as strongly.

So if you could understand how the body switches from "stress" to "relaxation" and learn how to control that switch, you could develop a system where you could cultivate your ability to turn the switch to "relaxation" and keep it there even when you are in normal waking consciousness.

Because of this, I would say that yes, enlightenment can be taught, because people can learn to control the neurological switch between stress and relaxation. In modern society people experience a lot of stress. The nervous system becomes better at what it does more often, so people become unbalanced, they become stressed very easily and find it hard to relax. This process can be reversed. By practicing meditation and other relaxation techniques, a person can learn to relax very easily and over time become more and more resistant to stress.

However, I don't really think the terms "enlightenment" or "awakening" are useful or helpful. I use these words here because other people use them and if I want to communicate I have to use the terms they do. But in Buddhism, the end goal is the end of suffering (nirvana), awakening is a description of some of the states that precede it. My opinion is that recognizing enlightenment in a system of development is counterproductive because people become distracted by and it interferes with the practice. So I don't use the term in my own system of practice. Each person can tell if they are stressed or suffering and they understand their own ability to relax and stay relaxed.

The advantage of looking at Buddhist practice from the perspective of relaxation is that it is easy to understand. There are no complicated philosophical concepts like non-self, dependent origination, non-symbolic consciousness, or Buddha nature. And it is easy to measure your progress, you know at anytime if you are feeling stress. You can tell if a practice is helping you immediately. You don't have to hope that something mystical will happen years in the future. And you can use many different relaxation techniques developed by other traditions or modern doctors and scientists. You can use the techniques that work best for you.

(It is also important to understand that sometimes emotions are produced by biological processes. For example, in some cases depression or anxiety is caused by abnormal brain chemistry and a purely mental technique will not cure it. However, any secondary emotional reactions like anger at being depressed, can be helped by relaxation.)

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Further Reading

I have several articles on my blog and web site that describe the practices I have found to be helpful:

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Try it Yourself

If you want to try this type of practice, start meditating or doing relaxation exercises. The articles above offer many techniques to choose from. Find the ones that work best for you. Some may work best when you are highly stressed, other may be best when you are only slightly stressed.

The key to this practice is to experience how relaxing makes you feel better. Notice your emotional state after you do the relaxation exercises. Once you see that relaxing reduces unpleasant emotions and makes you feel better, you will naturally turn to relaxation when you are suffering. It doesn't take will power any more than taking aspirin for a headache does. You do it because you know from experience that it offers relief.

Develop the habit of meditating or doing some type of relaxation exercise every day. It doesn't have to be the same technique every time. Just lean how to relax, get to know what it feels like to be relaxed, see if you can stay relaxed. Noticing what causes you to stop being relaxed will help you learn how to stay relaxed. In time your ability to relax and stay relaxed will improve. You will experience fewer unpleasant emotions, less mental anguish, and less suffering.

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