Life in B Flat(Science and Spirituality)

Monday, March 17, 2025

A Simpler Explanation

Here is a simpler explanation of some of the topics I have written about in recent posts...

Most people have a self-image that is like a character in a story. Thoughts, including thoughts about the self, arise into consciousness from unconscious processes that we don't have much control over. Thoughts appear fully formed without us knowing how they were constructed. Often this character, our self-image, has traits that are idealized or that are not our own ideas but the ideas of other people.

Although the self-image is like a story that comes to us from somewhere beyond our control, we assume it is an accurate reflection of our self. But in reality, a person is not a character in a story. A person is a biological organism with flaws and limitations living in an imperfect world. The reality of what, where, and who we are is not the same as the character we think we should be or would like to be.

If you examine what happens when you have unpleasant emotions that arise as a reaction to situations that occur in life, you will see that most of the time the ego is involved. Your ego gets triggered because reality is not consistent with your self-image. You may notice that at first it seems like the situation is the problem, but later you realize that it is actually your reaction to the situation that is the problem. If the situation makes you angry, or anxious, or ashamed, it is those feelings that are the problem. You might try "accepting the situation" but that doesn't work. What works is accepting your emotions.

Part of accepting your emotions is recognizing you don't control them. If we could control them, we might think, "This emotion is not the one I want, I will have a different emotion." But that is not how it works, just like thoughts, emotions come to us from unconscious processes we don't control. When we resist our emotions, it just makes the unpleasantness worse. Accepting your emotions, in part, is recognizing they are not yours; you didn't choose them, you don't control them. Resisting makes things worse, the best option is not to resist them which means you allow yourself to feel them.

Allowing yourself to feel your emotions doesn't mean you wallow in them. When you accept you have feelings such as anger, or anxiety, or shame, when you accept the emotions are not "yours", when you accept that in reality you are not as perfect as you would like your self-image to be. The emotions seem more like a physical sensation than a cloud over reality, and they fade much faster than before. Then the situation causes you much less suffering.

When this happens, you can deal with the situation using compassion and reason instead of through selfish emotions.

If you can see how your self-image is not realistic, and you can see how the ego causes suffering, and you are willing to let go of your self-image and your sense of self-importance and accept reality, it will prevent a great amount of suffering. If you can experience or remember a situation where letting go stopped you from suffering, you can try to cultivate that attitude and develop your ability to let go by keeping mindful in daily life of what that attitude is like. There are also various meditation and mindfulness practices that can help you develop that attitude.

Sunday, February 23, 2025

Letting Go of Egoic Attachments

Giving up belief in identity-view is the key to stream-entry (the first stage of awakening). It is equivalent to realizing anatta.

Giving up belief in identity-view is equivalent to letting go of egoic attachments.

Egoic attachments are identified by observing the mind and body and noticing when unpleasant emotions and cravings arise in response to events or thoughts and noticing if/how the ego is involved. Learning to notice the sensations in the body that accompany emotions help one to notice when unpleasant emotions and cravings arise.

It is possible to learn to let go of egoic attachments by practicing relaxing meditation which helps you to cultivate samatha.

Cultivating vipassana helps you learn to notice egoic attachments, and cultivating samatha helps you learn to let go of egoic attachments. When you let go of egoic attachments you are not affected by identity-view and you suffer much less.

Friday, February 14, 2025

There isn't an entity separate from the aggregates.

There isn't any entity separate from the aggregates*. When something upsets us we are thinking of an entity ("me") that needs to be defended from insult or injury. While there is a body that is made up of various tissues, a brain that has different regions with different functions, a mind with different ways or producing thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, sense of self or no-self, there isn't actually an entity ("me") separate from those various different things. Yet we think "I have a body, I have a mind, those thoughts emotions impulses are mine". There isn't any actual unified entity, "I", or "me", that has those things only the separate parts. Our attachments to self are based on an idea of a "me" that does not exist, when the basis for the attachments is understood to be an illusion, the attachments diminish.

When you understand from observing the mind in action that there isn't any entity separate from those different parts, that there is no one that needs to be protected from insult or injury, then attachments and suffering diminish. But reading these words alone may not allow you to understand this. The way to understand it is to quiet the mind with relaxing meditation, then watch the activity of the mind:

Notice the arising and fading of thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and the sense of self or no-self.
Notice thoughts, emotions, impulses etc. pop into awareness fully formed from who-knows-where. You don't see how they are formed, created, or chosen. When you try to concentrate you get distracted by stray thoughts. You have unwanted emotions - you don't choose your emotions. You have impulses that are often unhelpful. Sensory perceptions and sensations appear in consciousness and you can't stop them. People have conflicting desires that work at cross purposes such as craving food when trying to lose weight. You don't control your thoughts, emotions, impulses etc., so you don't control your mind. If you don't control you mind, you don't control your body either.
Notice that stream of consciousness is a sequence of cause and effect where one thought or emotion or impulse triggers the next due to a memory, an association, an experience, or logic, without any actual entity controlling it.
Notice automaticity. Notice that when you do something, to a large extent it happens automatically. When you walk, you don't think about balance or having to move your feet a certain way, you just do it. Sometimes when you drive you find yourself on a section of road, but you don't remember getting there.
Notice the feeling of agency (free will) comes from having impulses before you actually do something, but the impulse and the decision to follow it or reject it arises from unconscious processes that you don't have control over, they just pop into awareness like all other thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and senses of self or no-self.
Notice the idea or feeling of being an observer of thoughts, emotions, impulses etc. is dependent on something to observe, and it comes and goes depending on intensity of attention, and it is no different from any other thought or feeling that arises from unconscious processes.
Notice that when you are upset, the ego is usually involved and that you have an idea of a being, an entity "I" or "me" that needs to be protected from insult or injury, and that entity doesn't physically exist - what really exists are just the various separate parts, the body and tissues, the brain and its various regions, and the mind made up of different sources for thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and senses of self and no-self.

Most people have already noticed much of this without doing any formal meditation or mindfulness practices. What they haven't done is recognized the implications.

Another helpful practice is mindfulness. When you are mindful, in meditation or daily life, you are aware of what is happening or what you are doing in the present moment. You are not thinking about the past or the future or trying to solve a problem. You are just observing in the present moment. When you are mindful, when you mind is not wandering, when you are observing in the present moment, you are not thinking of a "me" that is separate from the aggregates.

The belief that there is an entity separate from the aggregates is called identity-view (sakkaya-ditthi), it is one of the ten fetters that are lost when one is fully awakened. Losing identity-view is the main component of the first stage of awakening, stream-entry.

* The Stream Entry of Ajahn Chah - By Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero

...
You can describe to yourself your experience as a whole, which can be called ‘the five aggregates’. If something is external to it – you realise ‘how could I even think of that? How could I think of something external to my thinking?’ That is a complete contradiction in terms.
...

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Look for Nirvana in the Present Moment

Many people think of enlightenment as something they might attain in the future.

But it is a mistake to look for it in the future.

One should look for nirvana in the present moment, not in the future.

Consider all the things you want or fear in the future, or regret about the past, or things that you want, or like, or don't like now - let go of all that, let go of whatever is separating you from nirvana now, and look for nirvana right now in the present moment. (Letting go doesn't necessarily mean you don't have emotions, it can mean you let go of your attachments or aversions to emotions.)

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whatever is happening, that's where you should look for nirvana. Look for it with a calm mind.

Saturday, June 15, 2024

Equanimity

Having equanimity doesn't mean that you don't have emotions or that you don't feel emotions.

Having equanimity means that when you experience unpleasant emotions and cravings, you let yourself feel them without trying to stop them and without judging them: without thinking they are bad, and not thinking you shouldn't feel them. You don't create secondary emotions such as: "I don't like this feeling." "I shouldn't feel like this." "It's bad to feel like this." "This feeling means I failed." etc. Judging and secondary emotions can be very subtle so you may have to make an effort to notice if they are present.

And having equanimity also means just observing emotions and not getting drawn in by emotions: not getting lost in thought or carried away by emotions (trying to solve the problem or planning a reaction or thinking about how it is unfair etc. etc.).

When you just observe without rejecting, judging, or getting drawn in, the emotions seem like they are not yours, your ego is disengaged, you suffer much less.

Having equanimity doesn't mean you don't react to situations; it means you respond with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.

In summary, having equanimity means you feel the emotion, you don't try to stop it, you don't judge it, you don't get caught up in it, you just observe it.

Judging and secondary emotions can be subtle so you might need to make an effort to notice if they are present.
If you feel tense you can try to relax.
If your mind wanders you can bring it back to feeling the emotion.
Remember, the situation is not causing you to suffer, your reaction to the situation is causing you to suffer.

It is easier to have equanimity if you are relaxed and your mind is calm.

Friday, May 24, 2024

Disengaging the Ego

Unpleasant emotions can be hard to let go of. If you examine unpleasant emotions, you may notice that there is usually some involvement of the ego. You might feel that if you could somehow disengage your ego then you could let go of the emotion and you would suffer a lot less.

There is a way to disengage the ego. It is easier to learn to do it while meditating, but the disengagement persists for a time after a meditation session, so it can be helpful in daily life. And with practice, disengaging the ego becomes easier to do.

This is one way to disengage the ego:

Relax and meditate to quiet the mind.
Then notice an unpleasant emotion, let yourself feel it.
Try to see clearly how the ego is involved - so that you understand disengaging the ego, letting go, would eliminate the emotion. But at this point you probably feel stuck, you can't let go.
Then try to relax. That probably that won't change much, you still feel stuck, until the next step:
Add an extra ingredient.
I don't know exactly what to call this extra ingredient, probably the best way to describe it that will get someone close enough to figure it out for themselves is to call it metta. But it is not exactly metta, it is metta/humility/forgiveness/tranquil-happiness/freedom/compassion. It is the feeling of letting go, the feeling of letting go of your ego, the feeling of having your ego disengaged.
When you do this correctly, the ego disengages, you let go of the emotion.
I think many people who meditate will recognize this feeling, but you might not think of it as ego disengagement. I know this feeling very well, it's what I mean when I say, "When I am fully relaxed, nothing bothers me". But I had to experience it in the right context to see that is ego disengagement. If you follow the link and master that practice, you will understand what this "extra ingredient" is. When you do that practice, first your body starts to feel numb or tingling, then that feeling becomes more intense, then you feel like you are floating, and that becomes more intense, then you experience a transition (your ego becomes disengaged) and nothing is bothering you. If you experience that transition while focusing your attention on an unpleasant emotion, you will see that your ego has been disengaged.

I don't know how easy or hard this will be for any particular person to figure this out, but once you see how to do it, you can practice it and get better at it. The disengagement persists so you have to wait until it fades before you can try to produce it again.

In Buddhism, the first stage of awakening is called stream-entry. The main ingredient in stream-entry is the loss of identity view. Identity view is the belief that the self is a thing. When you are able to disengage the ego, you implicitly recognize that the ego is something that can be turned on and off or engaged and disengaged. The ego is not a thing, it is not a permanent entity, it is some type of process - it is one of the various unconscious processes that produce mental activity ie. thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and also the sense of self (the ego). When you can disengage the ego, it is loss of identity view.

Loss of identity view doesn't mean you don't have emotions, it means you don't identify with them. When the ego is disengaged, you can let go of emotions more easily, and you can stay mindful more easily. When you are mindful of emotions, you don't react to emotions by pushing them away or judging them or suppressing them and you also don't get lost in thought or carried away by emotions in response to them.

The other factors in stream entry are loss of doubt about the teachings and loss of attachment to rites and rituals. Loss of attachment to rites and rituals is interperted to mean that you stop looking at meditation as some type of magic process because you see how it really works. So, learning to disengage the ego also involves loss of these other two factors, you understand how meditation helps you end suffering, and you have no doubt that it really works. Therefore, learning to disengage the ego is one way to attain stream-entry.

The process of learning to disengage the ego more easily over time so that you can keep the ego disengaged for longer and longer periods of time in daily life is part of attaining higher stages of awakening. In order to keep the ego disengaged in daily life, it is necessary to be mindful in daily life so that you can stay relaxed and notice when the ego becomes engaged and then disengage it.

Another part of attaining higher stages of awakening is letting go of attachments and aversions. Disengaging the ego allows you to let go but it doesn't automatically rid you of attachments and aversions. It doesn't eliminate your habitual reactions that have been reinforced over a lifetime. You still have to observe the activity of your mind to recognize attachments and aversions, and you have to decide to let go. Letting go means learning to relax and accept your emotions rather than reacting to them with in unmindful ways - you don't push emotions away or get carried away by them. Letting go may feel like letting down your barriers and expanding your borders. It may feel like your self is dissolving.

It can be hard to figure out how to accept emotions. It becomes easier if you understand that an unpleasant emotion is resistance to a fact of reality that we don't like. It's a lot easier to accept a fact we don't like than an emotion because if we understand a fact is the truth, then there is really no alternative but to believe it, ie. to accept it as truth. If we understand an unpleasant emotion is simply our resistance to an unpleasant fact, then if we can accept the fact as a truth, then when we accept the fact, there is no more resistance to it. It can be helpful, when you experience an unpleasant emotion, to identify the fact of reality that you are resisting, and remind yourself that what is really the problem is your resistance to the fact that, "reality is not the way I want it to be".

In Buddhism, those at the highest stage of awakening are said to experience nirvana with remainder. Nirvana is the absence of suffering. That there is remainder means it is not complete absence of suffering. This is because a complete elimination of suffering is not possible due to the limitations imposed by being a biological organism.

Related Reading

Despite the common perception that awakening is a sudden and mystical experience, for many people, maybe the majority of people, awakening is not sudden and not mystical.

Man on Cloud Mountain - Shodo Harada Roshi-Segment

Often enlightenment or kensho or satori is considered to be some kind of unusual experience or something external or some kind of special phenomenon. But it’s not like that. There may be some kind of sudden revelation or some kind of sudden perception, but its not something that is that unusual or that strange or foreign that we come upon or that comes upon us. What it is, is the ability to see without any interruption of the ego, without any filtering of the ego. And since we are all walking around seeing things through our ego filter almost all the time, to suddenly be able to see without that filter is a surprise. But it is nothing that we have ever not had.

On Enlightenment – An Interview with Shinzen Young

When it happens suddenly and dramatically you’re in seventh heaven. It’s like after the first experience of love, you’ll never be the same. However, for most people who’ve studied with me it doesn’t happen that way. What does happen is that the person gradually works through the things that get in the way of enlightenment, but so gradually that they might not notice. What typically happens is that over a period of years, and indeed decades, within that person the craving, aversion, and unconsciousness—the mula kleshas (the fundamental “impurities”), get worked through. But because all this is happening gradually they’re acclimatizing as it’s occurring and they may not realize how far they’ve come. That’s why I like telling the story about the samurai...

Enlightenments By Jack Kornfield

There is also what is called the “gateless gate.” One teacher describes it this way: “I would go for months of retreat training, and nothing spectacular would happen, no great experiences. Yet somehow everything changed. What most transformed me were the endless hours of mindfulness and compassion, giving a caring attention to what I was doing. I discovered how I automatically tighten and grasp, and with that realization I started to let go, to open to an appreciation of whatever was present. I found an ease. I gave up striving. I became less serious, less concerned with myself. My kindness deepened. I experienced a profound freedom, simply the fruit of being present over and over.” This was her gateless gate.

Uposatha Sutta - The Dharmafarers, themindingcenter.org

Even so, bhikshus, just as the great ocean slopes gradually, slides gradually, inclines gradually, not abruptly like a precipice — so, too, in this Dharma-Vinaya, penetration into final knowledge occurs by gradual training, not abruptly.1

Monday, May 20, 2024

Give Yourself Permission to Have Emotions

When something happens and you feel an unpleasant emotion or craving, you may react to that emotion with more unpleasant emotions. This creates a type of feedback loop. (For those who are interested in dependent origination, step 12 feeds back into step 6.)

For every time a situation triggers us, we trigger ourselves again and again, because we don't like having unpleasant emotions, (especially if we practice meditation because we want to become serene and we feel anything that is not serenity is a kind of failure). This is one reason it is so hard to let go. And it focuses our mind on the situation so we get more triggers from the situation.

But you can interrupt the feedback loop when you give yourself permission to feel bad (allow yourself to accept/welcome your feelings without rejecting them or pushing them away) and while also maintaining mindfulness (not judging, not getting drawn in: your thinking mind doesn't start wandering, and you are not carried away by emotions).

The suffering caused by negative reactions to emotions is usually what is causing the vast majority of our suffering. The resistance is really the problem not the actual emotion. When you accept your emotions with equanimity, you experience a great sense of relief. Unpleasant situations are much easier to endure when you stop making things worse by beating yourself up over how you react to them.

And it isn't just unpleasant emotions and cravings. There are often emotions that in themselves aren't unpleasant, but we might not like to have them for various reasons so we react to them in an unpleasant way. This often happens if we feel an emotion that doesn't reflect our values, for example if you think of yourself as a spiritual person but you feel excessive pride, or someone else's misfortune makes you happy, etc. These types of emotions can set up the same type of feedback loop, where one emotions results in other unpleasant emotions.

By giving yourself permission to feel all your emotions, by making it okay to let yourself feel what you feel, you can experience your emotions to their full depth, explore layers of emotions and associated reactions. You can get things out of your system (let go of them) by letting them express themselves.

Doing this, in a sense, is losing identity-view because we stop protecting the "self" from insult and injury. We stop reacting like the self-image is a physical thing when it is only an image projected by the unconscious processes that produce all of our thoughts, emotions, and impulses. When you give yourself permission to feel all your emotions, it is like removing the ego filter.

Developing the habit of observing the mind and learning to notice the sensations in your body that accompany emotions can help you learn to notice emotions more easily.

When you notice an emotion you don't like, it can help to say to yourself in a relaxed way:
"It's okay to feel _____".
Try not to push away or judge the emotion, also try to observe how it feels in your mind and body while staying mindful, ie. without getting lost in thought or carried away by emotions.

Saying "it's okay" is a way of saying, "I experience relief from struggling against a fact, by accepting a fact as a fact. Resisting the facts of reality just makes things worse than they have to be. It is much nicer to have equanimity than to be upset - being upset doesn't help."

Saying "it's okay" is not to be understood as giving yourself permission to do anything in response to a situation or emotion, and it is not to be understood as encouraging yourself to repeat anything in the future, it is to be understood only as a reminder to experience your emotions with equanimity and mindfulness. (Equanimity is not pushing away, not rejecting, not judging and mindfulness is not getting lost in thought, not getting carried away by emotions). When you react to situations with equanimity and mindfulness, you are just taking your ego out of the equation. This will allow you to formulate a response to a situation with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.

In addition to emotions, you can fill in the blank with physical sensations and situations as well as emotions. You can also include things that are pleasant but that you might react negatively to. Accept with equanimity anything that produces a negative reaction (disliking or craving). Accept the situation and your reactions with equanimity. Try to notice different aspects of the situation that might be upsetting you and accept all of them.

When you notice unpleasant emotions arising, if you look closely you can usually see that the ego is involved. There is almost always something that offends the ego or threatens the self-image that is responsible for the unpleasant emotions. By accepting situations and emotions, giving yourself permission to have unpleasant emotions, you are disengaging the ego. You are teaching yourself to turn off the ego filter, to look at things free from identity-view.

When you accept everything with equanimity, you experience a great sense of relief. Unpleasant situations are much easier to endure when you stop making things ten times worse by beating yourself up over how you react to them.

Friday, May 10, 2024

Observing the Three Characteristics

On an internet discussion forum, someone asked if it was okay to notice just the impermanence aspect of the the three characteristics. This is roughly how I replied:

If you just study for example your car rusting, you might not get much out of it. If you look deeper you might get some insight into how your egoistic attachment to your impermanent car leads to suffering. The three characteristics are interrelated and studying one usually involves all three. By just focusing on impermanence and not looking deeper, I think you would be missing something important.

If you are observing the three characteristics because 1) you want to gain insight into the cause of suffering and the end of suffering as explained in the four noble truths and the eightfold path, and 2) if you want to gain insight into anatta because the main ingredient in stream-entry is loss of identity-view, I recommend first calming the mind with some type of samatha practice so you can focus your mind, and then, in meditation and daily life, observe the activity of the mind (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and senses of self and no-self). If you do that you will see a lot of dukkha, impermanence, and anatta.

Knowing what to look for in particular can help so I will also suggest:

Notice dukkha arising and fading and notice how the ego or attachment to the self-image is involved in the arising of dukkha.

Notice how things pop into awareness by themselves, uninvited: thoughts distract you, you have unwanted emotions, and impulses are often unhelpful. Notice how the activity of the mind operates on cause and effect one bit of mental activity leading to another and another through associations, memories, and reasoning, until something sets it off on a new tangent - without any entity in control. Notice that different bits of mental activity sometimes work at cross purposes or undermine conscious goals, (for example people crave rich foods while hating to gain weight).

Notice how the sense of self, the feeling of being an observer, an experiencer, a doer, a sufferer is no different than any other thought or feeling. And notice how the sense of self changes in different situations and as your emotions change.

(Most people already know a lot of this and therefore most people already have a lot of insight into anatta. They just don't connect the dots. To connect the dots you have to see it operating in your own mind over and over along with the connection to dukkha arising. Then you get disenchantment and attachments begin to fade. Some people have a sudden insight, but for many people it happens gradually.)

If you do this you will be studying dukkha, impermanence, anatta, and dependent origination.

More here:
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/meditation.html

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Dimensions of Awakening

If you only read about Buddhist awakening on the internet you might think it is all about realizing no-self. However awakening is multidimensional. It has several facets and each of them can develop gradually. The order and rate which these facets develop will vary from person to person and will vary depending on the type of meditation and mindfulness practice used.

Some of the dimensions of awakening are:

Loss of identity-view that results in less suffering. One becomes less attached to the self image and the ego doesn't trigger unpleasant emotions as often or as strongly.
Less Suffering. And intervals of nirvana increase in length.
Increased Equanimity.
Increased Compassion.
Less Selfishness. This is a behavioral change.
Reduced attachment to material objects. This is related to loss of identity view - you don't need status symbols to bolster your ego or self-image.
Reduced attachment to pleasant experiences and sensations. It doesn't mean you don't enjoy life, it means you are non-attached. There is a difference.
More feelings of good will, fewer feelings of ill-will

Friday, April 26, 2024

How I Would Define of Buddhist Awakening

In this article I will discuss how I think Buddhist awakening should be defined.

Buddhism is explained at its most basic level by the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path which explain the cause of suffering and the end of suffering. So in Buddhism, awakening has to be about easing suffering. Most suffering is caused by attachment to the self-image and to diminish suffering those attachments have to be diminished. The fetter model of awakening in the Pali canon says that at stream-entry (the first stage of awakening) one loses identity-view. Exactly what losing identity-view means is subject to different interpretations. In my opinion, losing identity view should be understood to mean losing attachments to the self-image to the extent that there is a substantial reduction of suffering. I don't know if it is possible to lose those attachments 100% and I don't know that it is impossible either. But in my opinion:

Awakening should be measured by the loss of attachments to the self-image that result in lessened suffering.

Some people define awakening based on experiences that happen during meditation or by some type of non-dual or spiritual experience. There is no Pope in Buddhism and different people have different opinions. I can only say in my opinion:

Experiences only cause awakening if they also cause the loss of attachment to the self-image.

Just the experience by itself, without the loss of attachment to self-image, does not constitute awakening. The experiences by themselves are not necessary or in every case sufficient to cause awakening.

Since I would measure awakening by loss of attachment to the self-image and not by any particular experience, there is not a good way to identify a moment to call stream-entry. Actually, I would define stream entry as when you understand from examining your own mind that the self-image is just an image and not a thing. But that can happen without causing loss of attachments to the self image. So for these two reasons I would not encourage people to seek or view stream-entry as the first stage of awakening.

(The reason I use the term self-image instead of self is because all of our thoughts arise into consciousness from unconscious processes, we never see how thoughts are constructed they just pop into awareness, and any thought of self that rises from unconscious process is not the self it is the self-image, it is an image projected by unconscious processes into consciousness. We are not able to conceive of the self we only know the self image.)

I also hold the opinion that:

Enlightenment, for most people, is a gradual process independent of exceptional experiences.

Not every one has exceptional experiences and some people who have an exceptional experience don't lose attachment to self-image from it. Awakening is said to be gradual in the Pali canon. Shinzen Young says most of his students awaken gradually and I think that is true for the general population.

I also believe everyone, even non-meditators, have some level of insight into anatta and therefore some level of awakening.

Most people understand when they get distracted by stray thoughts that they don't control their thoughts.
Most people understand they don't control their emotions and they sometimes have impulses that are not helpful.
Most people realize that their egotistical tendencies can cause problems (suffering) for themselves and they would be better off if they were less egocentric.
People know that when they walk or do other tasks, they don't pay attention to every movement, our bodies operate by themselves to a large extent.

Some people understand this better than others but I think everyone has some glimmer of some part of the fact that our mental and physical life is largely controlled by unconscious processes, which in Buddhist terminology are called the Five Aggregates of Clinging. And whatever amount of enlightenment a person has, they can gradually increase it by practicing meditation and mindfulness and work through the mula kleshas and develop insight into the cause of suffering in their own mind and begin to lose their attachments to the self image.

Gradual Awakening Part III

This is my third article on gradual awakening. The first is here, the second here. In this article I am going to propose a theory to explain why some people have gradual awakenings.

Different people, for whatever reason, brain wiring, brain chemistry, etc, experience certain mental phenomena at different levels of intensity.

For example, some people have the empty house experience (see below) and think, "This is enlightenment, now I know what it is". And other people have the same experience but it is not very intense and they don't think it is really important, it is kind of fun, but they might never think it was awakening unless they read that web article.

And the same thing is true of cessation/fruition. Some people like Ron Crouch (see below) have an intense experience and recognize it as awakening. Other people have fruition and enjoy the afterglow but don't see anything about anatta in it. Other people don't even notice fruition, they just notice an afterglow sometimes after a particularly good meditation session. When it is not intense, people wonder why anyone would think that was awakening.

The people who don't experience these things intensely, keep meditating and over time they as Shinzen says (below) work through the mula kleshas and lose their attachment to their self-image gradually. This process also can happen for people who had an intense awakening experience as they deepen their enlightenment.

Here is the empty house experience:
https://theconversation.org/what-is-enlightenment-no-i-mean-really-like-what-is-it/

Imagine as clearly as you can that you enter a large house that you have never been in before. You feel strange and kind of scared, there is furniture and drapes but no people. You wander around feeling the creepiness of being alone in this big house. You go from room to room not knowing what you will find. You start to get nervous and a little fearful being alone in this big house. You wonder how long it has been empty like this. In time the sense of the bigness and emptiness of the house starts to weigh heavily on your nerves. Finally, when you can not stand it any longer a shocking realization occurs to you: you're not there either! only the experience exists.

Here is Ron Crouch's experience of fruition:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150315043206/http://alohadharma.com/2011/06/29/cessation/

Practitioners who have experienced the moment of Nirvana struggle to put it into words, because describing it can make it seem anticlimactic even though it is truly extraordinary. What it feels like is that there is “click”, “blip”, or “pop” that occurs for an instant. When it first happens it is so quick that the meditator could even miss it. However most people do stop and ask themselves “what was that?” It can be a bit baffling because it seems like nothing happened, and that is exactly right. For an instant absolutely nothing happened. There were no shining lights or angels, no pearly gates or choruses of joy, no transcendent experiences of unity with the cosmos or the divine. It is nothing like that at all. It may not be until you really think about it that you realize what an extraordinary thing that instant of absolute nothing really is.
As you reflect on it you see that there was something truly amazing about that moment. In that instant everything disappeared, including you. It was a moment of complete non-occurrence, the absolute opposite of everything that has ever happened in your life up to this moment, because it could not really be said to have happened to you. No doubt, it is a weird realization, but there it is. Following the experience of this absolute nothing is what my teacher aptly calls a “bliss wave.” For some time following this moment of alighting upon Nirvana you feel really relaxed and fresh. These two experiences, seeing that you disappeared and that you also feel great because of it, lead to a very important discovery that will shape how you view yourself from this point forward. You begin to understand in a very deep way that there really is something to this whole idea that the cravings of a “self” are the root of suffering. When it was gone, even for an instant, life suddenly got much better.

Here is how Shinzen Young describes gradual awakening:
https://www.lionsroar.com/on-enlightenment-an-interview-with-shinzen-young/

The sudden epiphany that’s described in many books about enlightenment, that has definitely happened to some of my students. And when it happens, it’s similar to what is described in those books. I don’t keep statistics, but maybe it happens a couple times a year. When someone comes to me after that’s happened I can smell it. They walk into the room and before they’ve even finished their first sentence I know what they’re going to say. You remember, right…? Your own case.
When it happens suddenly and dramatically you’re in seventh heaven. It’s like after the first experience of love, you’ll never be the same. However, for most people who’ve studied with me it doesn’t happen that way. What does happen is that the person gradually works through the things that get in the way of enlightenment, but so gradually that they might not notice. What typically happens is that over a period of years, and indeed decades, within that person the craving, aversion, and unconsciousness—the mula kleshas (the fundamental “impurities”), get worked through. But because all this is happening gradually they’re acclimatizing as it’s occurring and they may not realize how far they’ve come. That’s why I like telling the story about the samurai.

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Nirvana - How To

On another forum someone asked for opinions on the best way to experience nirvana. This (with a few modifications) is how I replied:

...

One thing I have found that is not commonly acknowledged in Buddhist practices is that physical relaxation - muscular relaxation - is necessary to fully let go of unpleasant emotions (suffering). The mind and body are interconnected. I understand "letting go" to mean relaxing mentally and physically. The relaxing meditation technique I use is described here:
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2020/08/preparing-for-meditation-with.html
When I am fully relaxed nothing bothers me. This is also how I prepare for vipassana.

I do vipassana by watching the activity of my mind (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and sense of self) in meditation and daily life and notice when dukkha arises. I try to see how the ego is involved dukkha arising. I try to be relaxed and let go of dukkha (without suppressing anything). That simple practice covers observing the three characteristics and dependent origination.

To experience nirvana I would say the key is to learn to notice dukkha/suffering/clinging/unpleasant emotions as soon as they arise, and to recognize that you should not get carried away - not become immersed in them but remain a mindful observer and try to stay relaxed or get back to a relaxed state. When you observe the mind, you see thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory, experiences and sense of self are coming into the mind from unconscious processes that you really have little influence over and are sometimes contradictory and not necessarily trying to make you happy. You learn that you are happier if you don't take them too seriously. This explains more about how I practice vipassana:
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2023/05/observing-mind.html

The relaxing meditation teaches you how to be relaxed. The vipassana shows you why it it right to be relaxed instead of letting your mind make you suffer, and trains you to notice the instant dukkha begins to arise so you can let go before you get carried away by thoughts, emotions, impulses etc. (observing the physical sensations in your body that accompany emotions can help you learn to notice emotions as soon as they arise). Then when things go crazy and your mind/body is trying to make you suffer, you have the habit of rejecting that tendency and relaxing instead. It can be extremely hard to relax when you mind/body is trying to make you upset, you have to have conviction from direct observation that the upset perspective is not "truth", and you have to have very high level of skill in relaxation from repeated practice so that you can do it easily and automatically in adverse situations. When we are stressed we get focused on what is causing the stress (like if the brakes on you car fail) and we forget everything else (like the emergency brake will work if the brake pedal doesn't). So you have to train for emergencies and understand what to do when they happen (don't get carried away by the mind and be relaxed).

Monday, March 25, 2024

Paleontologist and museum curator explains why the fossil record supports intelligent design not natural selection.

Gunter Bechly was a curator at a museum in Germany. For the 200 year anniversary of Darwin's birth, he put together an exhibit that included a display to disprove intelligent design. He said:

I made one big mistake I read the books ... [on intelligent design] and what I recognized to my surprise is that the arguments I found in those books were totally different from what I heard either from colleagues or when you watch youtube videos where the discussion is around intelligent design versus neo-Darwinian evolution. And I had the impression on one side that those people are mistreated their position is misrepresented and on the other hand that these arguments are not really receiving an appropriate response and they they have merit. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ToSEAj2V0s)

In this video, Gunter Bechly explains how the fossil record differs from what evolution by natural selection would produce, and he explains how we know that enough fossils have been found to rule out incompleteness as an explanation for that deviation. He also explains why more scientists don't speak about the overwhelming evidence in favor of intelligent design - he lost his job because he spoke the truth.

From the video:

Differences between the fossil record and what evolution by natural selection would produce:

"Darwinism predicts slow changes but the fossil record shows rapid changes"

"The theory predicts gradual changes with small steps but the fossil record shows sudden changes with big steps"

"There is no evidence for gradations of one form of one species into another."

"The fossils are distributed mostly on the terminal branches of the phylogenetic trees but they lack mostly for the internal branches and for the nodes where they should be found according to the theory."

"Even though there are some transitional fossils what we lack is this plethora of transitional fossils that would be predicted by the theory where you would have thousands of small steps that show the transition from one form to another form."

"There is conflicting evidence between the fossil record and between the predictions from the theory. For example between molecular data molecular clock datings between the pattern of appearance that is predicted by the philogenetic reconstruction and the pattern of appearance in the stratigraphical column.

"There are often fossils that are out of place that are found at the wrong place and at the wrong time and conflicting evidence that does not support Darwin's theory can no longer be explained away as an artifact of undersampling or as caused by the incompleteness of the fossil record."

How we know the fossils that have been found represent an accurate portrayal of the history of life:

"Charles Darwin was quite aware that his theory does not agree with the fossil record and so he hoped that this can be explained away with the incompleteness of the fossil record with our insufficient knowledge of geology. And he hoped that over time the gaps would be filled and ultimately the theory would be confirmed by the fossil record but this didn't happen. Now we know a lot more than Darwin did and over time with growing knowledge about the fossil record the problem didn't disappear it even became more acute."

"Darwin's attempt to explain the evidence from the fossil record away as lack of knowledge about the fossil record and the incompleteness of the fossil record is no longer tenable. And here's why, let me first give a metaphor and this example was coined by my colleague Paul Nelson. Imagine you have a new hobby and you walk along the beach and you collect what the flood washes in. You collect starfish and shells and snails every day you find something new. But over time repetition sets in and ultimately you reach a day where you only find over and over again what you already found. And then you know that you have sampled enough to know what is out there."

"Exactly this method is applied in paleontology to statistically test the completeness of the fossil record and in paleontology it's called the collector's curve. In most groups of organisms we know that the fossil record is sufficiently complete to be sure that the gaps that we see and the discontinuities we see are not artifacts of undersampling or of an incomplete fossil record but actually data to be explained."

"But there is another reason why this phenomenon cannot be an artifact and that is if it would be an artifact we should expect that over time the gaps get smaller and the apparent non-gradual transitions become more gradual but what we actually find is that with growing knowledge of the fossil record the problems don't disappear but they get even bigger and bigger and this shows us that nature wants to tell us something."

"The phenomenon of sudden appearances in the fossil record is not just an exceptional case say as in the Cambrian explosion but actually is a pattern that is found everywhere. It is beginning with the very origin of life. It goes up to the origin of human culture. It is found in all periods of earth history. It is found in all geographical regions. And it's found over all taxonomical categories from plants and protists to invertebrate and vertebrate animals. So it's a clear pattern that cries out for an explanation."

"We have no transitional fossils for all the animal body plans and the Cambrian explosion. We have no or nearly no transitional fossils for the origin of the different insect orders, for the different mammal orders. And this for example includes bats. And imagine that the oldest fossil bats that we know are already totally modern hardly distinguishable from a modern bat with completely developed wings already with evidence in the ears for echolocation. They are just there and there's no fossil record showing the many steps that were necessary to build up these body plans by incremental changes."

"Douglas Ervin who is one of the world's foremost specialists on the Cambrian explosion and Douglas Ervin said that it looks like the great taxonomic categories, the classes, came first and that the lower taxonomic categories came later and that it doesn't look like that the large differences were built up by the smaller differences."

Rapid evolution cannot be explained by alteration of regulatory networks. Bechly says, "Recent studies have shown that this is not true every major transition in the history of life required new genes and new proteins."

And various environmental changes that might require rapid evolution do not explain the mechanism for producing new genes.

Microevolution (small changes in existing species) cannot be used to explain macroevolution (large changes resulting in new types of species) because, Bechly explains, it is known, based on the time it would take for a single mutation to become established in a population, that there is insufficient time for new types of species to have evolved by natural processes. Bechly says,

"The geologically established windows of time that are available for different transitions in the history of life are orders of magnitude too short to allow for the necessary genetic changes to arise and to spread in an ancestral population and this basically shows that Darwin's theory the neo-Darwinian mechanism is not mathematically feasible."

Bechly explains how it is known that there is insufficient time for new types of species to evolve by natural processes. He says the the time it takes for new species to appear in the fossil record is often similar to the average life span of a single species when there should be many intermediate species needed to produce, for example, a new organ or a new body plan.

The problem for the Darwinian mechanism that is posed by the fact that for many transitions we only have time available that equals the lifespan of just one or two species that come successive after each other is the following: To make a major re-engineering you usually think you would require many successive species which are slightly different from each other and then ultimately after a long time and many different species you get a major new body plan or a new organ. But here you see that you would have to make a jump either with one or two species or even within a species to a totally new reconstruction and so even if common ancestry should be correct this shows that this cannot be explained with an unguided process there you need some kind of intelligence be infused from outside the system to make such a big jump within a single species

There should be many intermediate species between a quadrupedal swimming mammal and a whale, yet the transition happened in a third of the lifespan of a single vertebrate species.

"What we found is that to make the transition between the so-called protocetus which were still quadrupedal swimming animals which were propelling in the water with their hind legs to make this transition to fully marine fish-like whales which swim with reduced legs and driven by the tail fluke for this transition there's only one and a half million years of time available that is according to mainstream evolutionaries knowledge.
Just a third of the lifespan of a single vertebrate species to make this re-engineering from a land animal to a fish-like whale that's unbelievable and shows that there is a major theoretical problem for the unguided process postulated by Darwin.

Blechly goes on to explain that naturalistic alternatives to neo-Darwinism do not solve the problem of the origin of genetic information needed for those mechanism to evolve.

And he says intelligent design is the best explanation for the scientific evidence based on logical inference:

In my view the fossil evidence clearly points towards intelligent design because the observed changes happened much too quickly to be explained by an unguided naturalistic process. They have to be explained with an intelligent agent. And for me personally, really a light bulb went on when I discovered that this is not based on an argument from ignorance, not based on a kind of god of the gaps argument, but it's just based on a rational inference to the best explanation. We know that only intelligent causes can cause this effect we look at the evidence and we see that this evidence clearly points to this cause. So ignoring the evidence from the fossil record that points to intelligent design actually is some kind of science denial

At the end of the video Bechly explains that scientists are not free to express belief in intelligent design because doing so would end their careers and that there are probably many more scientists who believe in intelligent design than those who publicly acknowledge it.

At the natural history museum in Stuttgart as soon as I came out as an intelligent design proponent collaborations were stopped, I didn't get funding anymore, my website was deleted, I was removed as head of an exhibition that I had designed, and ultimately I was told that I was no longer welcome and that I was considered to be a risk for the credibility of the institution. So it's not a big surprise that many scientists even if they are secretly doubting Darwinism are not outspoken about it and stay undercover and after my coming out as an ID proponent I was contacted by two famous colleagues who are famous scientists and world-renowned experts in their fields and they told me very confidentially that they have come to doubt the neo-Darwinian process themselves so probably there are more out there than we think.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Stop Making the Story About Yourself

As you experience various situations in daily life, you will tend to think about how the situation affects you, and about how you relate to the situation. This creates a story about you, a story where you are the main character, the victim or the hero. Most people are constantly making stories about themselves. This perspective on reality is what causes suffering.

If you observe the activity of your mind, the stream of consciousness, during meditation and daily life, you will see this happening, you will see how you make yourself suffer by making everything about you. When you understand how you make yourself suffer, you will also understand how to stop it.

You will see that when you stop making the stories about you, when you stop taking everything personally, when you stop focusing on yourself, when you stop thinking "I don't like this", "I don't want that", "I want this", I like that", when you stop making yourself the central character in everything that happens, you stop making yourself suffer. But you need to experience it from inside your mind, you need to feel how one way of thinking is suffering and how a different way of thinking doesn't make you suffer.

Mindfulness can help people give up the habit of making themselves the main character in every story. When you are mindful, your mind is in the present moment, you are just aware of what you are doing as you are doing it. You are not imagining, your mind is not wandering, you are not carried away by thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, etc, you are not making stories about you that cause you to suffer. Then, when dukkha arises, you can see how you have caused it by making the story about yourself. But if you change the story, let go of that plot, think about the situation without yourself as the main character in the story, you don't suffer. This requires just a tiny change in perspective, a relaxation, a letting go, (not a lot of analytical thinking, not anything mystical, not anything non-dual), and you don't have to suppress anything - just notice the difference in how you feel. The point of mindfulness is not to concentrate the mind as a means of suppressing thoughts and emotions etc, the point is to provide a contrast where dukkha is absent so that when dukkha arises, the contrast is clear and when you return to mindfulness that contrast is also clear. Meditation that is relaxing can also help provide a quiet mind that helps you to maintain mindfulness and experience the contrast.

And then, when you are not making the story about you, you can respond to situations with compassion and reason instead of selfish emotions.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Do Buddhists believe in a soul?

On another forum, someone asked about Buddhist beliefs about the soul. Below is my brief reply, an expanded version follows.

In Buddhism consciousness is believed to continue after death, and can be reborn, and experiences karma (experiences the consequences of one's action) from previous lives. However consciousness flows/propagates as a sequence of cause and effect and is not a property of some constant separate unchanging thing. Like a wave that flows through water is not separate from the water. The first stage of awakening, stream-entry, occurs when you are freed from identity-view - the belief that the self is a thing.
If you watch the activity of your mind you will notice that thoughts, emotions, impulses arise fully formed into consciousness. We don't really see where they come from or how they are formed. Most people recognize emotions are beyond our control. If you try to meditate you will notice distracting thoughts so you don't control your thoughts either. Even if feel like you are using your mind to solve a problem, where did the impulse to do that come from?
And the sense of self, as an observer or experiencer or as a role in various situations like school (student), work (employee/supervisor), with family (parent/child/sibling), with friends, as a sports fan, a driver of a car, an owner of a house etc etc, or the characteristics we believe we have, smart/dumb, winner/loser, rich/poor, nice, mean, arrogant/humble or the sensations we experience form moment to moment, hot/cold, comfortable/uncomfortable, smells, bodily sensations etc - all these are constantly changing. And the feeling of self is no different from other thoughts or emotions that arise from unconscious processes.
And if you watch the activity of the mind you see that one thought or emotion or impulse leads to another by association, memory, or reason in a chain of cause and effect with no one in control until something distracts you onto a new tangent.
Without things to observe, to see, hear, smell, touch, (or thoughts, emotions and impulses to observe) there would be none of those sensations occurring. There would be no consciousness of them. Consciousness does not exist separately from the things it is aware of - like a wave in water is not separate from the water.
If you look closely you see there isn't a thing that is a self that you can find nor can you find anyone in control in your mind. These beliefs are formed not by religious dogma but by simple observation of the mind.

Here is an expanded version I wrote for this blog.

In Buddhism, consciousness is believed to continue after the death of the physical body and can be reborn and continue to experience karma (the consequences from one's actions) from previous births. However, consciousness flows or propagates as a sequence of cause and effect and is not a property of some constant separate thing. It is like the way a wave that flows through water is not separate from the water. The first stage of awakening, stream-entry, occurs when a person is free from identity-view - the belief that the self is a thing.
If you watch the activity of your mind, you will notice that thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences arise fully formed into consciousness. We don't really see where they come from or how they are formed. Most people recognize emotions are beyond their control. And when you try to meditate you will notice distracting thoughts arising which shows you don't control your thoughts either. Even if you feel like you are using your mind to solve a problem, where did the impulse to solve the problem come from? The activity of the mind arises from unconscious processes, in Buddhist terminology these processes are part of what is called "the aggregates of clinging".
It might seem like the unconscious mind, the source of thoughts, emotions, and impulses is the self. But this source is not unified, one part might be sending the impulse to meditate while another is sending out distracting thoughts. One part might be trying to accomplish a purpose to gratify the ego while another might be sabotaging it because of fear of the consequences of success. The unconscious mind is not a unified thing, it is an aggregate of different functions.
And the sense of self, as an observer or experiencer or as a role in various situations like school (student), work (employee/supervisor), with family (parent/child/sibling), with friends, as a sports fan, a driver of a car, an owner of a house etc, or the characteristics we believe we have, smart/dumb, winner/loser, rich/poor, nice, mean, arrogant/humble etc, or the sensations we experience from moment to moment, hot/cold, comfortable/uncomfortable, smells, pleasure/pain or bodily sensations etc, all these are constantly changing. The sense of self or the feeling of being is no different from other thoughts or emotions that arise from unconscious processes. All those selves, the student self, the worker self, the family member self, the sports fan self, the smart self, the nice self, the mean self, the happy self, the angry self, the hot self, the hungry self, come from the aggregates, the unconscious processes that generate other thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences.
When you experience how fleeting all these selves are, you see how unreal each is. Each movement of the mind creates a different self - which one is the real one? Your attachment to self diminishes and you suffer less when you experience this.
And if you watch the activity of the mind you see that one thought or emotion or impulse leads to another by association, memory, or reason in a chain of cause and effect with no one in control until something distracts you onto a new tangent.
Without things to observe, to see, hear, smell, touch, etc (or thoughts, or emotions or impulses to observe) there would be none of those sensations occurring. There would be no consciousness of them. Consciousness does not exist separately from the things it is aware of - like a wave in water is not separate from the water.
If you look closely you see there isn't a thing that is a self that you can find in your body or mind, nor can you find anyone in control in your mind.
Yet, the ego, our idea of the self, is the source of much of our suffering. If we are not shown proper respect, or if we lose a contest, or if we experience some misfortune that makes one seem to be a loser, we suffer because those events hurt our self image, our ego is hurt. If you watch your mind carefully, you will see that most suffering has the ego involved. Feeling successful in life depends on getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want.
But the ego is not a real solid material thing, it is an abstract concept. Yet we act as if it is a real thing that we have to defend from insult and injury. The ego is just a product of the same unconscious processes that produce any thought, emotion, or impulse. When someone can see this in their own mind, when they see how suffering is caused by their egoistic emotions and they recognize that those emotions are not chosen but arise from unconscious processes unasked for and uninvited, they understand that those emotions are not truth, those emotions are not an inevitable aspect of reality. Different people in the same situation might have different emotional reactions. Egoistic emotions are not inevitable like some laws of nature. When people realize that egoistic emotions are not reality, that the ego (the self) isn't a real thing, it becomes much easier for them to let go of egoistic emotions and they suffer much less. Recognizing "It is the ego coming from the aggregates" can end a lot of suffering.
The belief that the ego, the self, is not an actual thing is obtained not from religious dogma, but by simple observation of the mind.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Identity-view

https://mohitvalecha.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/stepping-on-a-frog/

Once there was a monk who specialized in the Buddhist precepts, and he kept to them all his life. Once when he was walking at night, he stepped on something. It made a squishing sound, and he imagined he had stepped on an egg-bearing frog.
This caused him no end of alarm and regret, in view of the Buddhist precept against taking life, and when he finally went to sleep that night he dreamed that hundreds of frogs came demanding his life.
The monk was terribly upset, but when morning came he looked and found that what he stepped on was an overripe eggplant. At that moment his feeling of uncertainty suddenly stopped, and for the first time he realised the meaning of the saying that “there is no objective world.” Then he finally knew how to practice Zen.

If you want to know what this story really means you can follow the link.

What I want to discuss here is that this story illustrates an important principle of how to let go of attachments and aversions, how to let go of unpleasant emotions.

The monk was upset when he thought he stepped on a frog, but when he found out it was an eggplant he wasn't upset any more.

When you are upset and it is due to a misunderstanding, if you clear up that misunderstanding, you can let go easily and you won't be upset any more.

When people are upset, usually it is their ego that is making them upset, but they don't notice it because it feels like a normal and unalterable fact of reality that they should be upset in that situation. That is the fundamental misunderstanding of most suffering, we think our emotions reflect reality when they are really produced by the ego, by egotistic and egocentric thinking (identity-view, Sakkaya-ditthi).

But if people examine their feelings and see their reaction is somehow due to egotistical or egocentric thinking, then they realize they are being silly, they don't have to be upset. And they can let go.

Sometimes it's hard to see how our ego is hurting us because these ways of thinking are so ingrained we don't even notice them, we just think "this is reality and it is not always nice."

But if you can examine your thinking and see how it is really your ego that is causing the trouble, you see it was just a misunderstanding (you thought it was an inevitable aspect of reality but then you realized it was just your ego), and you can let go. Then reality is a lot nicer.

It might be hard to understand how it can be so easy to let go of unpleasant emotions just by recognizing the involvement of ego in suffering, so I will provide an example.

One day I walked to the grocery store. Often when I would go out for a walk, I would walk in my neighborhood and it would be a pleasant walk. It was a residential neighborhood, there wasn't much traffic, there were birds singing, and cute rabbits in nicely landscaped yards. But that day I needed to go to the store and instead I had to walk on streets with a lot of noisy traffic, past storefronts on streets with litter. It wasn't very nice. I didn't like it. It was better to walk in the residential area than the business district. Then I recognized it was my ego that was upsetting me. This idea that it is better to walk by the houses rather than the busy streets is egoic thinking. The word "better" is saying something about winners and losers. If you have what is better, you are a winner, if you have something worse, you are a loser. I realized it was my ego that didn't like the walk to the store, my ego (the aggregates) wanted to do what was better and not what was worse. When I understood that, the feelings of better and worse disappeared. I (the aggregates) felt like the walk to the store was not better or worse, just different. It had it's own flavor of familiarity, there were people in the cars and stores, it enabled me to get the groceries I needed, etc. It wasn't all good, but it wasn't all bad ether. Really, it wasn't good or bad. The problem was my unconscious egoistic reaction.

This kind of thing can happen many times a day. We have ingrained in our thinking that if we get what we want and avoid what we don't want, we are successful, and if we don't get what we want and can't avoid what we don't want, it is a failure. If you are mindful, if you watch the activity of your mind in meditation and daily life, and can see how every little twinge of dukkha, every little craving or aversion, every little liking and disliking, wanting and not wanting, is your ego is making you suffer, you can let go each time. It sounds simple, but this kind of thinking is so ingrained, it seems like an aspect of reality rather than something you are doing to yourself. You have to be alert to how you feel and then examine your feelings and see what role the egoistic and egocentric thinking (identity-view) is playing. If you do it, you can remove a lot of gloom from reality.

https://inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/

As Ajahn Chah described them, meditative states are not important in themselves. Meditation is a way to quiet the mind so you can practice all day long wherever you are; see when there is grasping or aversion, clinging or suffering; and then let it go.

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Perceptual Shifts Caused by Meditation Ease Suffering

When you look at the image above, you might see it as the profile of duck facing toward the left or as the profile of a rabbit facing toward the right. When what you see changes from one to the other, you experience a perceptual shift. Once you see this shift, you can't unsee it.

There are a number of perceptual shifts produced by meditation and mindfulness that lessen suffering and cause changes in behavior. None of these perceptual shifts have anything mystical about them. They are easy to understand intellectually but they are not transformative unless one sees the truth of them in their own mind. For example:

Before you begin a meditation practice, you may see events as the cause of suffering. For example, if someone says something unkind, it might hurt your feelings and you would see the person and their words as the cause of your suffering. But after you begin a meditation practice, you may come to see that such events are not the cause of your suffering, the cause of suffering is your reaction to the event. This doesn't mean you ignore problems, it means you can respond to them with compassion and reason rather than out of control selfish emotions.

There are many other types of perceptual shifts caused by meditation and mindfulness

At first you may notice that sometimes you are aware of emotions and other times you keep them bottled up inside yourself - suppressed. Later, when you observe the activity of the mind or when you cultivate metta or bliss, you notice there is something inside you like a switch or a valve or a gate that you can open to let emotions flow or close to suppress emotions. You notice that suppressing emotions makes you feel worse - the larger part of suffering comes from resisting emotions rather than the emotions themselves. So you try to keep the emotional gate open as much as possible, in daily life if you can, and when you are trying to concentrate in meditation or in mindfulness.
Opening the emotional gate doesn't mean obsessing over every unpleasant emotion you can think of or remember. It means that if a situation arises that upsets you, you relax and you look for the emotion being held in, and let it out, let it into consciousness so you are not suppressing anything, and the unpleasant feeling, the "I don't like" or "I don't want" aspect fades.
Unpleasant emotions and cravings at first seem involuntary. Later they seem to be more like habits that you engage in inadvertently and with attention and effort you can give up the habit and stop making yourself suffer by staying relaxed, staying mindful in the moment - neither suppressing thoughts, emotions and impulses nor getting carried away by them - not mistaking the stories they try to tell you about good and bad, right and wrong, winning and losing as having anything to do with reality.
At first you think emotions are about reality, for example: in such and such a situation it is right to get angry, later you realize those kinds of stories are not reality, they are just a dream about how to make yourself suffer.
At first you get upset over problems, you might dislike or get angry at people and events. Later you realize you cannot learn to stop suffering without actually suffering and so you stop judging people and events because they help you to make progress, and because you feel compassion for people who are themselves suffering.
At first it seems normal to be immersed in your thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences. Later, after practicing mindfulness in meditation and in daily life, you notice the distinction between mindfulness (observing your thoughts, emotions, impulses and sensory experiences - observing your environment, the sensations in your body, and the activity of your mind) versus being immersed. You see that being mindful, observing, creates a sense of detachment. You see that most suffering comes from immersion. Later the difference immersion and mindfulness becomes more like the difference between dreaming and being awake. Even later you see that the detachment leads to non-attachment, and mindfulness becomes the new default.
At first it seems like your mind is you, you think your thoughts, opinions, emotions, and impulses are yours. You think you are using your mind when you try to solve a problem. Later you see that thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and feelings of self arise from unconscious processes, they pop into awareness unasked for, uninvited. You don't see how they are formed or where they come from. Even when you are trying to solve a problem you don't know where the impulse to solve the problem came from. You realize thoughts, emotions, and impulses are not yours, you don't control them. You don't control your mind so your mind cannot be you.
Still later, when you observe the activity of the mind, you see that the moment to moment activity of the mind is a constantly changing sequence of cause and effect. An event or a thought may lead to another thought or invoke a memory that might cause an emotion that might produce an impulse etc. etc. You see there isn't anyone in control, all there is just cause and effect.
At this point you may feel like you are just an observer of mental activity without any agency, but later you realize observation creates the observer. Without anything to see, there would be no seeing, no observing of sight. This is true for the other senses, and it is also true for all mental activity. Without thoughts there would be no observing of thoughts etc. etc. So you see there is no observer separate from the process of perceiving, no experiencer separate from experiencing. The feeling of being an observer and the feeling of having no self both arise from the same unconscious processes from which all mental activity arises.
Another similar perceptual shift happens if you notice your sense of self, your feeling of being, you will notice that it changes from situation to situation. In school you think of yourself as a student. At work you think of yourself as an employee. When you are with your parents, your children, your friends, you have a different sense of self in each situation. When you think of different issues or topics that you often think about, you will notice you have a different sense of self with each of those. The same is true for emotions and emotional issues you experience. And if you keep observing you will see that the feeling of self is actually influenced moment to moment by every sensory experience, by everything you see, hear, and feel. You will see that every moment of experience produces a unique sense of self. This is another way of seeing that experience creates the experiencer. You see there isn't a separate continuous constant self apart from experiencing/observing.
Knowing that observing creates the observer you then notice, for example, when you see, if you just see and stay mindful, and you don't get carried away by thoughts, emotions, and impulses, you don't assume, because you see, that there is a seer, you just see without any observer necessary. When you are fully involved in experiencing, there is no experiencer.
Initially you think the ego is you, and is the good guy in all the mental stories the mind weaves, and who is someone who must be defended from insult and injury at all costs. Later you realize the ego is an opinion that is the main character in the plot to make yourself suffer. This disenchantment helps you to let go of selfish attachments and aversions arising from egocentrism and egotism.
Surrender, accepting emotions, not resisting emotions, is one level of non-attachment.
But another perceptual shift goes beyond surrender.
If you observe the activity of your mind, you may see that the stream of consciousness is simply a sequence of cause and effect. One thought or emotion, or impulse, or memory, leads to another until something sets you off on a new tangent. There isn't a unifying entity to be found in the various independent unconscious processes that produce the stream of consciousness (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, feelings of self and no self). And you may also see how the ego, (the idea of that entity which can't be found generated by those unconscious processes) is involved in most suffering - you understand how suffering arises in your mind - it arises from impersonal processes, you do not choose it or ask for it, it isn't you or yours, it isn't an objective truth. When you see it this way, there can be a perceptual shift, and you see there isn't anyone in a position of responsibility that could be identified to surrender, accept, or not resist.
After the perceptual shift, you don't feel like there is anything that needs to be accepted because it isn't on you. You no longer see yourself as the central figure in the story to which suffering is happening because the premises on which suffering is based are undermined.
You suffer less because you see that the old way of thinking, the thinking that produced the suffering, was based on a misunderstanding of the cause of suffering and on a misunderstanding of what the self is.
You realize you suffered because you felt some responsibility for something. But when you recognize that feeling was based on misunderstandings, you suffer less.

These perceptual shifts come from observing the activity of the mind, in meditation and in daily life, and observing how dukkha arises and fades and how the ego is involved in dukkha (this is equivalent to observing the three characteristics and dependent origination). These perceptual shifts result in less suffering and in changes in behavior. They change one's approach to dealing with problems, and reactions to problems involve less emotional lashing out. They allow people who want to be more rational and compassionate to be so, people who don't desire those qualities will not automatically gain them by making these perceptual shifts although some might change their attitude if they do make these perceptual shifts.

Summary

When you watch the activity of the mind you see that:

Emotions are not reality. You don't have to believe the story that says you should, for example, be angry.
The situation is not the problem, the problem is your reaction to the situation.
When you notice unpleasant emotions and cravings arising, you find you can relieve much suffering by opening your emotional gate - by accepting emotions rather than suppressing them.
Unpleasant emotions and cravings that at first seem involuntary later seem to be more like habits that you engage in inadvertently and with attention and effort you can give up the habit without suppressing them.
You cannot learn to stop suffering without actually suffering and so you stop judging people and events because they help you to make progress, and because you feel compassion for people who are themselves suffering.
Thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and feelings of self arise from unconscious processes, they are not yours, you don't control them. You don't control your mind so your mind is not you.
The moment to moment activity of the mind is a constantly changing sequence of cause and effect, there isn't anyone in control, all there is just cause and effect.

At this point you may feel like you are just an observer of mental activity without any agency,

But then you notice without anything to see, there would be no seeing, no observing of sight. Observation creates the observer.
Every moment of experience produces a unique sense of self. Experience creates the experiencer. There isn't a separate continuous constant self or apart from experiencing/observing.
When seeing just see. When you are fully involved in experiencing, there is no experiencer.
The ego is an opinion that is the main character in the plot to make yourself suffer. This disenchantment helps you to let go of selfish attachments and aversions arising from egocentrism and egotism.

Copyright © 2023 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

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