Life in B Flat
(Science and Spirituality)

I was deep in meditation. I asked, "Is there a plan for my life? What is the plan!?" I heard a voice say "It's in the key of B", and I saw the symbol for a flat in musical notation. The plan for my life is in the key of B flat! I understood this immediately. I have a record of Pete Fountain playing the clarinet. It's a clarinet tuned to the key of B flat. I like to improvise on my guitar along with the record. The plan for my life is: "We're improvising!".

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

When you can't find Tranquility

Sometimes it is hard to concentrate during meditation, or reach a state of pleasant abiding through meditation, even if you prepare for meditation by doing relaxation exercises first. If something is on your mind and it keeps going round and round and you can't focus in meditation, or if you are feeling a persistent unpleasant emotion, it can help to use the following method described by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. He uses anger as an example but it can be used with any emotion.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/concmind.html

The Path of Concentration & Mindfulness
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
...
One technique I like to use — when anger is present and you're in a situation where you don't immediately have to react to people — is simply to ask yourself in a good-natured way, "Okay, why are you angry?" Listen to what the mind has to say. Then pursue the matter: "But why are you angry at that? " "Of course, I'm angry. After all..." "Well, why are you angry at that?" If you keep this up, the mind will eventually admit to something stupid, like the assumption that people shouldn't be that way — even though they blatantly are that way — or that people should act in line with your standards, or whatever the mind is so embarrassed about that it tries to hide from you. But finally, if you keep probing, it'll fess up. You gain a lot of understanding of the anger that way, and this can really weaken its power over you.

It is often very helpful to keep digging this way because often the things you are not thinking about and are not conscious of are the real trouble makers.

This has some important implications for awakening. Letting go of attachments and aversions results in less suffering. And while it seems obvious that we might have a hard time letting go of attachments to those aspects of self we like and or want to protect: the body, our opinions, social status, possessions, people and groups we care about, what is less obvious is that to let go of the sense of self, we have to be conscious of it, and often those aspects of our sense of self that we don't like, our faults, failures, and unpleasant past experiences etc. sometimes get pushed away out of the forefront consciousness. So some of the big aversions we need to let go of, the things we need to surrender to, are hidden or pushed to the side unless we really go looking for them. This hidden aspect of the sense of self is one of the things that makes awakening such a difficult undertaking, and facing the emotional pain of acknowledging our faults, failures and unpleasant past experiences is one of the things that causes dark nights, and difficulty in maintaining a consistent and continuous meditation practice.

Sunday, September 13, 2020

Self and Not-self. How to Suffer Less

Introduction

Suffering (mental anguish) is to a large extent caused by our attitude toward "self". By changing your attitude, you can gradually reduce the suffering you experience. This gradual change will be in proportion to the effort you put in, but you don't need to wait for "enlightenment" or some type of a "BIG CHANGE" to experience the benefits in your life.

We are intolerant of what is not "me" and "mine".

When someone you dislike does something annoying, it could cause you to feel anger.

But if someone you love does the same thing, it might not bother you at all.

And if you did it yourself, you might not even notice it as a potentially annoying act.

We are tolerant of people we love because we think of them as "ours". Our friend, our child, our parent, our spouse.

We are very tolerant of "me" and "mine": our-self and things that belong to our-self.

We are less tolerant of things that are not "me" or "mine" of things that are not-self.

We worry about "me" and "mine"

If you learned of property damage in some far away country or even if you heard about the death of a person you never met, It might not bother you much.

But if a friend or loved one was harmed, or if your car was damaged, or if you yourself suffered some physical harm, you would probably be upset.

We worry more about "me" and "mine".

How to Reduce Suffering

This is how our ideas about self can cause us suffering: We are tolerant of self ("me" and "mine") and intolerant of not-self. We worry about self and are much less concerned about not-self.

The way to reduce suffering is to reduce your attachment to self, to reduce your attachment to "me" and "mine".

When you become less attached to self, you become less averse to not-self. The distinction between self and not-self is diminished. You become less concerned with personal loss and you become more tolerant of other people. You suffer less.

Some people may have a philosophical aversion to diminishing the attachment to self. That is their right. But others may want to try diminishing their attachment to self because they want to benefit from reduced suffering.

What can you do to change your ideas about self and not-self, what can you do to reduce your attachment to self?

There are several things you can do.

Observe in your own life how your ideas of self and not-self cause you to suffer. Most people should be able to do this: notice how you are less tolerant of people you don't like, and how you worry more about yourself. When you are conscious of this, you start to recognize how your ideas of self and not-self are making you suffer. When you experience loss or when someone does something annoying, you recognize it is your ideas of self and not-self that are causing you to suffer. If you maintain consciousness of this over time, this understanding, reinforced by repeated observation, will cause you to become disillusioned with your attachment to self because you are constantly reminded of how it causes suffering for you. This disillusionment will tend to encourage you to begin to let go of your attachment to self.
Relaxation - Relaxation exercises (actually a kind of meditation) can help you relax and relieve stress. When you are relaxed, your stress levels go to zero. When you are stressed you are focused on yourself. Stress hormones cause us to be fixated on the source of the stress, we become fixated on "our" problem. When you are relaxed you are much less irritable, less self-centered. You are less attached to self.
Quieting the mind - Meditation quiets the turbulent mind. Thoughts of self and not-self are less frequent and less intense when the mind is tranquil. If we think less about self and not-self, our attachment to self is reduced.
Spiritual feelings. Certain meditation techniques can produce spiritual feelings such as compassion, forgiveness, goodwill, humility, equanimity, serenity, surrender, contentedness, joy, and connectedness. When we have these feelings we are much less attached to self. When you experience these emotions, either from meditation or in the course of ordinary life, you see how true it is that when you love others and aren't focused so much on yourself, you suffer much less. Annoying people don't bother you as much, and feelings of disappointment and loss are diminished. You understand the way to reduce your own suffering is to love others and let go of your own sense of self-importance. It might sound contradictory and impossible, but loving the people you "don't like" and stopping worrying about yourself reduces the suffering you experience. When you see this from your own experience, you will likely want to do it for your own benefit, letting go is a natural reaction. (Sometimes people think this means you should ignore your own needs or ignore that harm others may be doing - that is not what this means).
And these spiritual feelings are pleasant, we like to have them. When we notice what causes these feelings to dissipate (unpleasant emotions caused by attachment to self) we also become disillusioned with our attachment to self and begin to let go of it. In addition to the meditation linked above, samatha meditation and metta meditation can have a similar effect and are somewhat easier for many people to do.
Goodwill. If you can produce feelings of goodwill through relaxation exercises , samatha meditation, or metta meditation (.mp3), and extend feelings of good will to people who are not "yours" and to people doing things you don't like, you bring those people into self, they stop being "other" and become "yours". Extending metta in this way increases your freedom from identity view.
Meditation can also allow you to understanding how the mind creates the separation between self and not-self. This distinction happens when your mind is aware of sensations (sight, sound, smell, etc) and it recognizes the objects they represent. The moment when that recognition occurs is when the mind makes the distinction of self and not-self. This happens so rapidly and so often that, just as the frames of a movie create the illusion of motion. it creates the illusion of a continuous self that becomes ingrained in our world view and is taken for granted. But when you see directly it is an illusion, the attachment to self becomes diminished.

Conclusion

It is rare for anyone to completely eliminate their attachment to self (to "me"and "mine"), but most people if they want to, can reduce the suffering they experience by reducing their attachment to self. This will not automatically make someone a better person or a nicer person if they don't want it to. But if you do want to experience those kinds of changes, reducing your attachment to self can help.

Friday, September 11, 2020

A Practical Exercise for Eroding Identity View

This article describes a practical exercise that will help you put into practice the ideas I discussed in two previous articles: Experiencing Anatta and Varieties of Non-Self and Non-Dual Experiences. The purpose of the exercise is to help you to suffer less from some types of unpleasant emotions. You will get more out of this exercise if you meditate first to quiet your mind which willl make it easier to notice all that is happening within it.

For the purpose of an experiment, suppose you are not in control of your thoughts, emotions, impulses etc. Suppose they just arise in your mind from unconscious processes. And suppose sense perceptions: sight, sound, smell, etc. are the like that too, you don't try to hear you just hear when there are sounds. Suppose if you are not in control of your thoughts and impulses then when you go about your daily tasks, say washing the dishes, there is no conscious control over your movements, they just happen because of unconscious processes. And there is no conscious control over your use of reason when you try to solve a problem. Even when you seem to be trying to do something, the sense of intention is just an illusion, it comes from unconscious processes too and just appears in your mind. It might seem like you are an observer but even the idea or feeling of being an observer is just something that comes from the unconscious and anyway it is absurd because if you sense there is an observer then you are observing it so who is observing the observer?

(Be aware that none of the above or any of what follows necessarily has to be logical or true. This is not a mathematical proof. It is an attempt to communicate a feeling using words. Feelings are not logical.)

This is all very interesting as a thought experiment, but to make it real, to use it to erode the fetter of identity view, you have to put it into practice.

To do that, go ahead and make all those suppositions, even supposing there is no observer or that the feeling of being an observer is an illusion. Then do something like washing the dishes and just let one thing happen after the next. Notice how thoughts and emotions arise and pass away. Notice how you see, feel, hear, etc. and those sensation arise and pass away also. Notice how your hands and body move while you wash the dishes, but you don't feel in control. Notice that behind every intention to carry out an action was a decision that was made by unconscious processes. Noticing these things gives you a sense that you are not responsible for anything.

The feeling that you are not in control, that you are not responsible, gives you a feeling of being liberated. You are freed from responsibility. It is like a huge weight being lifted from your shoulders. You become more resistant to emotional pain because you are not in control, you are not responsible. Emotions may come and go but you don't get carried away by them. This freedom does not make you callous or nihilistic or irresponsible. It makes you more compassionate and considerate because you don't need to be as protective of yourself as you were before, you can think of others more than you used to.

After a while practicing this way, noticing what is happening in your mind and body and noticing sense perceptions, you don't have to make any suppositions, you just experience reality that way.

Actually, if you meditate to quiet the mind, to slow it down so that you can see what is doing, and then observe the activity of the mind, you will see that all those suppositions are true. It sounds disconcerting but the actual experience of it is very nice. It's nirvana. (Although perfecting it can take some time.)

Thursday, September 10, 2020

When Seeing Just See, When Hearing Just Hear

If you can observe it, it is not you.

When you look at an object and recognize what it is, in that instant of recognition something of great significance happens.

When the mind understands what an object is, it recognizes it as not-self. (If you can observe it, it is not you.)

And when the mind creates not-self, that by necessity implies self. You can't have not-self without self.

That is how the mind creates the sense of self. Moment after moment, perception after perception, recognizing objects it sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, etc. which imply a self because of the recognition of objects that are not-self. Like the frames of a movie, each recognition is distinct but because they happen so fast one after another, they blur together to create the illusion of continuity, the illusion of the continuity of self.

Try looking around at objects when your mind is made quiet by meditation and try to experience what consciousness is like without making that recognition. Try to experience what consciousness is like before it makes self and not-self. Just look at things. Let your quiet mind be quiet, not thinking about what it is seeing, but just seeing.

A Zen master called this "The before thinking mind".

It won't necessarily be a huge realization the first time you try it. You might just get an inkling of a feeling of experiencing reality in a different way. But if you can get a glimmer, then with practice you can grow the experience.

First try this with one object at a time. Then try to do it with your whole visual field.

And don't just practice with seeing. Practice with all the senses: hearing, taste, smell, bodily sensations etc.

You can do this while sitting and meditating, or standing in the kitchen washing dishes, and at other times.

The same Zen master said, "When seeing just see. When hearing just hear."

Try doing that.

Monday, September 7, 2020

Neutral Meditation

UPDATE: I have written a newer article which I recommend instead of this one. There is a lot more information in the newer article. It's okay to read this article too, but I am concerned that this article could encourage readers to suppress emotions including the pleasant feelings that relaxing meditation can produce and that was never my intention in writing this article.

In this article, I describe a form of meditation I call "neutral meditation" that may be best for people who want to try meditation but don't want to experience the intense effects produced by the method of meditation described in the main article on meditation on my web site. Neutral meditation is good for relieving stress and producing a tranquil mind and spiritual well-being. It also helps you learn to avoid bad moods by teaching you to let go of unpleasant emotions before they become entrenched.

Most forms of meditation are intended to quiet or slow down the mind so it produces fewer thoughts and impulses. Focusing the mind on the object of meditation and returning to the object of meditation when the mind wanders quiets thoughts. Sitting still quiets impulses. Neutral meditation additionally reduces the arising of various attitudes (which can lead to emotions) within the mind, so it produces a even quieter mind. Quieting the mind is beneficial because a quiet mind produces fewer unpleasant thoughts and emotions, and when the mind is quiet you are better able to see what is happening within it which make understanding the nature of your own consciousness easier.

To do neutral meditation, meditate by noticing your breath. Try to be as neutral in your attitude and emotions and expectations as possible, while not pushing anything away or forcing anything anything into your mind. Do try to notice if you have an "attitude" that is extra that you don't really need to to have and let go of it. If you can have a neutral attitude without suppressing anything that is good. There are forms of meditation that produce intense bliss, but sometimes people unknowingly stumble on to a similar method that produces unpleasant emotions. The point of this meditation is avoid pushing any kind of mood, good or bad, on yourself when you meditate. During your meditation session, try to notice if any attitudes sneak back into your mind. This could happen because of distracting thoughts, events going on around you, or for other reasons. Asking yourself, "What emotion am I feeling?" can help you recognize if your attitude changes. If you notice any attitudes arising, try to return to a neutral frame of mind.

When you meditate this way you can sit in a chair they way you normally sit. It's good to relax, but don't try so hard to relax that you cause yourself stress. One of the differences between letting go of emotions and suppressing emotions is that letting go tends to involve relaxing and suppressing tends to involve tensing. When you take a neutral attitude and when you let go of emotions try to do it in a relaxing way not "resisting" or "fighting against" but relaxing.

Don't try to concentrate intensely just gently notice your breath in and out. If you notice you have become distracted and your mind is wandering, just go back to noticing your breath. Don't be upset if your mind wanders it is normal and to be expected. It can be useful to notice what topics you are thinking about when your mind wanders. At first the topics are likely to be things that are giving you the most stress, after a time those issues may settle down and the distracting thoughts will be about various of events of the day, and after that more random issues about your past or future may arise. Noticing this can help you recognize the progress you are making in calming your mind and help you recognize how much meditation you need to do.

If you have a lot of trouble concentrating, there are a couple of things you can try. Doing relaxation exercises before you meditate can help quiet your mind. It can also help you to stay focused when you meditate if you count your breaths to yourself up to ten and then start over at one. You can count inhalations, or exhalations, or both. The number doesn't have to be ten. It can be whatever feels right at the moment. Two, four, or five sometimes work well. Or you can say "in" and "out" as you inhale and exhale.

If your natural mode of breathing is relaxed, you can breath that way if you want to, or you can choose whatever depth and rate of breathing feels most comfortable. If your're not sure where to focus your attention, focusing on the air going in and out through your nose is okay, also focusing on your whole body or on a point slightly below the navel are also okay. Sometimes focusing on the diaphragm or the chest may be confusing and produce discomfort when breathing. If you like to focus on those areas it's okay to do so, just be aware if you have problems, try focusing on a different location. And if you feel short of breath while meditating, try exhaling slowly through pursed lips.

If you find meditating this way produces a pleasant mood, don't try to produce that mood, stick with neutral meditation and let the pleasant mood come by itself.

A beginner will need some guidance on how much meditation to do. My suggestion is 20 to 30 minutes once or twice a day. However, eventually I believe each person should decide for themselves how much meditation to do. I don't believe you should need willpower to mediate. You should meditate because you want to. There are a few reasons I believe it is worthwhile to meditate: 1) It helps relieve stress and produces tranquility. 2) It produces spiritual feelings that help you live according to your spiritual values. 3) It feels good - it produce a pleasant relaxed mood. Other people might have other reasons. I don't meditate because I expect to get some benefit in the future. I meditate each day for the benefits I get that day. After someone has been meditating for some time, I believe they should meditate as much as they feel is worthwhile in order to to relieve stress and or to produce the pleasant and spiritual feelings that they want to experience. And the amount they meditate could vary from day to day depending on the circumstances.

If you try to bring the mental habit of attitude neutrality into daily life, it may help you to recognize that many unpleasant emotions that arise during the day are easy to avoid if you notice them forming early but can seem to be "involuntary" if you don't pay attention and let them accumulate. For example, if you are reading the news and you read a disturbing article, you might be able to let go of the emotion easily if you notice it and make the effort. But if you read one news story, and another, and another and don't realize until later you are in a bad mood, at that point it can be hard to let go. I suspect part of the problem involves stress hormones. Once levels of stress hormones start going up, I believe, you need to physically relax before you can let go - either through natural relaxation (which can be infrequent in modern life), a moderate amount of meditation, or a shorter period of relaxation exercises. Neutral meditation develops a mental habit that can prevent "grumps" before they start. However it should be understood I am referring to emotions that have a cognitive basis (a basis in thinking), other types of emotions that might be due to genetic or developmental effects on brain chemistry might be a different matter. And you also have to be sensitive to emotions and avoid suppressing them which is not the same as letting go.

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

The Empathic Brain Network and Spiritual Development

In my previous post Natural Awakening Without Intense Meditation I discussed an article in which Buddhadasa Bhikkhu uses the term "spiritual well-being". I believe this state of spiritual well-being is referring to a state where the empathic network in the brain is active. Having the empathic network active will enhance any type of spiritual practice.

Research has shown that because of the structure of the brain, analytical thinking and empathic thinking are mutually exclusive.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252241.php

Scientists have discovered that the brain circuits we engage when we think about social matters, such as considering other people’s views, or moral issues, inhibit the circuits that we use when we think about inanimate, analytical things, such as working on a physics problem or making sure the numbers add up when we balance our budget. And they say, the same happens the other way around: the analytic brain network inhibits the social network. ... When not doing anything in particular, our brains switch between social and analytic networks. But, when working on a goal-directed task, healthy adults engage the appropriate neural pathways, say the researchers.

The analytical network has a tendency to produce callous thinking. This is believed to by why some economic and political policies fail because they ignore human realities. The policy makers were out of balance, thinking only analytically and not empathically.

When the empathic network is active, it can produce a spiritual feeling or a "pleasant relaxed mood", where feelings of compassion, forgiveness, goodwill, humility, equanimity, serenity, and connectedness are common and where the jhanas are easily accessible.

It is possible to learn to recognize when your empathic network is active and learn to activate it at will if it is not active. Just knowing about the two networks might help you understand your own experiences and allow you to activate the empathic network whenever you want to.

If you are not sure what it feels like to have the empathic network active, try metta mediation, or samatha meditation, or jhana meditation, or relaxation exercises. When your empathic network is active, you may experience a pleasant relaxed mood with feelings of compassion, forgiveness, goodwill, humility, equanimity, serenity, and connectedness.

Having the empathic network active will enhance any type of meditation practice.

I recommend meditating with the empathic network active. Analytical thinking is good for many things and I think both networks should be developed to be in balance. But I think it is more likely that the relief from suffering, the insights, and the realizations people are seeking from meditation are more likely to come from the empathic network than the analytical network. And having the empathic network active has a soothing, healing, influence on the mind.

It is often said that intellectual understanding alone is not enough to trigger awakening. Also, a lot of suffering comes from analytical thinking. We worry about the future, we over analyze things, we go over the past repeatedly, we obsess about status etc. This is all analytical thinking.

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He explains, using slightly different terminology for the brain networks, how having the wrong network active in the brain causes suffering.

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfulness/2010/10/living-as-if-it-mattered-an-interview-with-jon-kabat-zinn/

One pathway is a mid-line pathway, very akin to what is called a default mode, that seems to be functioning when nothing else is supposed to be happening — like being or mind wandering, or something like that, which is what they call the narrative network for self. So like what you tell yourself about who you are, where you’re going, how things are going, how stressed you are, how great it’s going to be in the future, how horrible it was in the past, or vice-versa, how wonderful it was in the past, or how horrible it is in the present. So it is a narrative ongoing story of me. And that occupies a certain kind of brain territory.

In a podcast, Dr Kabat-Zinn descrbes this kind of thinking as "the story of me."

But what if you could reassign neurons away from the network that produces suffering and "the story of me" and reassign them to producing feelings of compassion, forgiveness, goodwill, humility, equanimity, serenity, and connectedness? This is possible because of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to rewire itself, assigning neurons to pathways that are used more often and reassigning neurons away from pathways that are used less often.

That is exactly what Buddhadasa Bhikkhu is saying to do when he says:

".. we simply encourage (nirvana) to come about of its own accord, naturally, by developing, day and night, the joy that results from mental purity, until the qualities we have described gradually evolve. ...We do it just by making our own way of daily living so pure and honest that there arise in succession spiritual joy, calm, insight into the true nature of things, disenchantment, disentanglement, escape, purification from defilements, and finally peace, nirvana."

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu says you can do this without a meditation practice.

But you can also do it in conjunction with any meditation practice. Try to learn to recognize when you empathic network is active, and get a feel of how to activate it, and then live and meditate with your empathic network active.

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