1. ignorance of un-awareness (mindlessness of something that can be known)
2. ignorance by choice (a conscious decision to ignore that which cannot be known)
Which type of ignorance is bliss and which is existential loss?
Let's see if we can briefly sort this out.
You've heard this: the past has already happened, therefore it doesn't exist; the future hasn't happened, therefore it doesn't yet exist; thus, here's nothing but Now...
So, here we stand, sandwiched between the Past that's already gone and doesn't exist, and the Future that hasn't yet happened and therefore doesn't exist, in the proverbial and pre-verbal here-and-now. This is all there is!
To ignore this "Now" (the only "thing" that exists) would be the ignorance of un-awareness. Mindlessness (lack of awareness of the present moment) is an existential loss.
To ignore what's outside of this "Now" (i.e. to ignore what cannot be known) would be the ignorance of bliss... Can this kind of bliss be available on demand? Sure. How? Through mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a commitment to what is (i.e. to this Now), accompanied by a conscious choice to ignore whatever isn't (i.e. what cannot be known such as the future or what no longer exists, such as the past). Mindfulness is a form of ignorance on demand, i.e. a form of bliss on demand.
Pledge allegiance to the Present! Ignore the rest.
Not always, of course. Can't live in the now 100% (got to reminisce a bit, dwell a bit, plan a bit, worry a bit - that's all natural mind-stuff). But whenever you feel like it. On demand, that is.
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“Allow?!!! If I could allow myself to relax, if it was that simple, then why in the world would I allow myself to be stressed in the first place?!”
Allowing yourself to relax – strange notion, indeed… It certainly presumes a degree of responsibility over stress that many of us are hesitant to admit! What a skillfully inoffensive pointing of the fingers!
“Allow yourself to relax” – if stripped of its velvet-glove new-age sleaziness – means nothing other than this: “Relax!”
“Relax?!!! If I could relax, if it was really up to me, then why in the world would I stress myself out in the first place?!”
Relaxing yourself – strange notion, indeed… To relax yourself, there would have to be two Selves – the one that is stressed out and the one that relaxes the stressed out one. “So, what are you driving it, Relaxation Guru? That there are two of me or, worse yet, that I am split in half?” What a skillful contraband of Duality! What a schizophrenic notion of split-minded Self-care!!
“So, how do I allow me? How do I get me out of my own way?”
By allowing yourself… to be stressed!
“Allowing yourself to relax” is a form of making yourself, a form of forcing yourself, a form of doing, however tactfully presented, it is a form changing yourself (from “what is” into “what is not”). That’s how “we” stand in our own way. This notion of “allowing ourselves to relax” – in my self-searching opinion – is the misguided duality of relaxation. Relaxation – once again in nothing more than just my opinion – is about reducing the duality of our experience, about reducing the split-mindedness of our moment-to-moment being. Yet the language of “allowing ourselves to relax” seems to only reinforce this split as it creates an unfortunate juxtaposition between the state of mind that is allowed (relaxation) and the state of mind that is to be banned (stress).
“Are we one or are we two?” I don’t know. But what does seem to be the case – once again, on the basis of my own relaxation experiences and readings – is that we function “split” but to heal (to relax) we have to become one with our own experience.
With this in mind, I recognize that the alternative suggestion that you “allow yourself to be stressed” is too a duality – but its vector is aimed at Authenticity of Being (in which nothing is disowned, not stress, not even pain).
Allow yourself to allow – to see if you can get out of your own way!
Aim your “I-me” Duality at Oneness!
Pavel G. Somov, Ph.D., author of EATING THE MOMENT: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time (New Harbinger, 2008)
Copyright, 2008
]]>Let me clarify...
Buddhism, in its strategic (long-term) rather than tactical (short-term) mandate, is not a "feel-good" endeavor, it's a "feel-nothing" endeavor: "According to Buddhism, the pleasure/pain mechanism keeps people locked into a self-perpetuating cycle of conditioned existence <...>. Any teaching, or medical or therapeutic intervention intended simply to improve the lived quality of people's lives cannot move beyond the pleasure/pain mechanism, because such tools are themselves conditioned responses designed to make people "feel better." in order to break out of the cycle of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, and achieve a state of supraliminal equanimity, an entirely different type of medicine is required, a transcendental one. <...> Dharma leads to a state beyond the very possibility of suffering" (Fenner, p. 2).
That is to mean: beyond the possibility of feeling! Not beyond the possibility of sensing, but beyond the possibility of identification with the sensation. Beyond the possibility of the emotional involvement with the sensation (whether it's of pain or pleasure). In other words, beyond the posibility of feeling the sensation!
Read on...
According to the doctrine of Anatman (the doctrine of No-Self), "a human is composed of five components <which are> physical form, feeling, perception, drives and impulses, and consciousness. Even the most cherished and seemingly distinctive features of our humanity - affection, loyalty, memory, talent, aesthetic discernment - resolve into the interplay of these five components. Since each of these components is impermanent and lacking in any defining characteristic, it inevitably follows that the whole that they compose must share those characteristics - it must, in other words, be anatman, ‘no self.' <...> This realization progressively frees the meditator from pain and suffering as he or she realizes that there is no self to suffer . Ultimately, the meditator ceases to exist as an independent entity. His or her conditioned experience transforms into an experience of unconditioned freedom, transcending all notions of time, space, and existence" (Fenner, p. 15).
Bottom-line: Buddhist psychology takes no Self hostage.
"Through repeated meditations over thousands and thousands of hours, they (meditators) thoroughly eliminate all traces of the belief that they are unique and self-existent " (Fenner, p. 33).
In a manner of speaking, the nine digit social security number of your self-other distinctions is reduced to just one number: One.
And in this phenomenological enmeshment you stand to gain the true social security of being One with All.
The King/Queen of Self disrobes the layers of its acquired informational-biographical distinctions in an identity striptease...
So, it seems that the idea behind this type of suffering-reduction and pain management is to basically put you out of the misery of suffering through a kind of phenomenological lobotomy which is accomplished by doing away with the very notion of the suffering Self and/or by erasing the duality of pain and pleasure in the first place...
Is it a mercy killing of individuality and subjectivity or a form of transcendence? You decide.
With this in mind, it seems that in the West, the Buddhist psychology - as a school of therapy - is mostly utilized at a tactical, short-term plane, without the strategic buy-in. Mindfulness meditation is clinicaly taught as a tactic of pain/distress management with the goal of getting rid of Suffering, and not in its strategic sense of getting rid of the Sufferer.
As we (clinicians and clients) fool around with various tools of Buddhist psychology, we often fail to appreciate that these surgical "diamond cutters" in our hands are designed to "grind away the false belief that we have an autonomous and independent existence" as stand-alone and localized Selves (Fenner, p. 30).
The goal of Buddhist psychology is not Self-Growth, but Self-Reduction!
Take the case of Zazen, the "just sitting" meditation.
Here's a description of the purpose of zazen by Peter Fenner: "There seem to be two ways to stimulate an intense observation the ego. One way is to remove all structure and meaning from living , so that the there is neither reason for doing what we are doing, nor any way of determining whether we are on or off track in terms of our spiritual aspirations. In this situation, the ego constantly searches for grounding and reference by creating its own systems of meaning in order to have a purpose and to track its performance and progress. The other way to stimulate the ego's defenses is to impose a severe level of constancy and uniformity on one's physical uniqueness and independence against a background imposed from outside" (p. 39-40).
So, zazen is designed to "stimulate the ego's defenses," a kind of psychological tickle, if not a squirm... Not exactly water-boarding, but clearly a mandate of distress inoculation...
A look into the Nietzschean abyss of emptiness for those of us who keep climbing the ladder rungs of self-growth without having yet worked through our fear of existential heights...
A reality check into our own non-reality...
No wonder that "just sitting" and "doing nothing" stirs up such a panic in the prototypical Western mind that's always on the run from its own emptiness...
As such, zazen, in its strategic mandate, along with the rest of the Buddhist self-deconstruction tool-kit , is not intended as a relaxing moment of respite.
Strategically, zazen is just another way to jog your mind into a state of categorical weightlessness, to shake up the pseudo-gravity of our assumptions about our existence, to knock the mind of its quick-sand ground of illusionary permanence.
Tactically, however, "just sitting" might be a nice moment of contemplative respite during a busy day... And - paradoxically - a way to get grounded.
Where do you go from here? Do you want to use Buddhist psychology on a "feel-good" basis or do you want to try to go all the way into the Nirvanic never-land of No-Suffering?
It's your existential choice.
In the meantime, here's a "feel-good," existence-affirming (rather than existence-disconfirming) take on zazen. Read the following "primer" and try "just sitting."
Zazen: "just sitting."
Such a simple set of instructions...
But so hard to follow!
It is...
It is, indeed, hard to follow a set of instructions that leads a chronically goal-oriented mind into a Nowhere of Purposelessness...
That's right: just sitting is just that: just sitting...
without any attempt to meditate or not-meditate,
without either trying to think or trying to not think...
Sitting is sitting...
Nothing else to it...
It's neither a meditation, nor a non-meditation...
Just a practice of just being...
without any pragmatic just -ifications...
Just being...
Just being in time...
Rather than doing time...
An affirmation of existence for its own sake...
Copyright 2008-09
Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of "Eating the Moment:141 Mindful Practices toOvercome Overeating One Meal at a Time"(New Harbinger, 2008)
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This morning, as I was heading out to take my dog for a walk to the park, I took the journal with me. I've read and re-read it many a time and wasn't quite sure why I really took it. I had a feeling there was a "blog post" in it somewhere... And there was...
But first, let me tell you a little story from my childhood... It won't take but a minute.
As a kid, growing up in Moscow, I attended a "sports school" (a peculiar Soviet secondary education institution designed to both educate scholastically and to also cultivate the "olympic reserves") with a "specialty" in water polo. I was an okay swimmer and did okay on the "water" field. With the last name (Somov) that approximately translates from Russian as "son-of-a-catfish," I was a natural water-born. What I couldn't, however do, is a backflip from the side of a pool.
Here's how I went about learning it. First, I gathered information from my more acrobatic friends. Struggling for words and relying primarily on gestures and body language, they shared their know-how with me. Armed with this information, I tried doing a backflip and hurt myself a few times before I got it right. In retrospect, I realize that the information I gathered had essentially no value; as I tried to do a backflip, I was following no one's blueprint but enacting a kind of intuitive kinesthetic visualization that I had in my mind long before I consulted my friends. Having materialized that kinesthetic vision, I had acquired experiential awareness of how a backflip is done, my own know-how of the backflip that cannot be adequately expressed in words.
Informational awareness (such as the one I acquired about the kinesthetics of a backflip) is a vital precursor of change. Without having the illusory comfort of knowledge about how to do a backflip, I would have probably never attempted it. But informational awareness is nearly not enough: there has to be a leap of faith with a subsequent trial-and-error fine-tuning...
With this auto-biographical detour aside, let me get back to the business of East-West synthesis and the matters of meditation.
So, here I flip through the pages of the "Crystal Mirror" - watching my dog tear up a stick - and I stumble upon the following words by Tarthang Tulku, instructing on meditation:
"When you are trying to understand conceptual instructions, at that time, yes, listen and try to be aware. But once you enter into this process (of meditation) , accept everything as fine and beautiful, just as it is" (p. 147).
And: "Once you are within the meditation, do not try to find some better experience, or try to be more "aware." This only creates fixations about what meditation is and what it should be" (p. 147).
I flip through a few more pages: on the margins of the book I see the markings of a previous reader. Next to where Tulku writes "Starting to meditate is very simple..." - there is a circled 1. Next to where Tulku provides what could be conceptualized as step 2, there is a circled 2. I flip the page: there's a circled 3 right in tandem with Tulku's next point of instruction.
So, here's the evidence of a Western mind (that belonged to the former owner of the book) getting ready for a meditative backflip... and trying to arm itself with "conceptual instructions."
At the risk of being redundant, let me quote Tulku again: "When you are trying to understand conceptual instructions, at that time, yes , listen and try to be aware. But once you enter into this process , accept everything as fine and beautiful, just as it is" (p. 147).
What's my point? Well, be it meditation or a backflip - yes, we do need some illusion of a framework to even consider the endeavor. But ultimately - and there's no way around it - we have to take the plunge...
Here: I left for you a fresh towel...
Copyright, 2009
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
Never mind: let me make a couple of points and go back to sleep...
You've heard people say: there are many roads to Rome - meaning, many different means to the same end, many a path to get to one and the same destination. That's understood.
What's a bit more confusing, however, is when you've got one road that leads to quite a few different places. Take the mindfulness practice for example. Say, you sat down to watch the river of your experience, to listen to this babbling brook of your consciousness... What's it all about? Where's this investment of time going? What's the goal?
There is - as I understand - a fundamental difference between relaxation and meditation. While both may share the same road, the very same road seems to lead to rather different destinations.
Relaxation is fundamentally a self-regulatory pursuit. Its very goal is to change how you feel. Relaxation is, by definition, about relaxing a tension. Thus, in the case of relaxation, the agenda is quite clear - to relax, to feel better.
Therein lies the potential stress of relaxation - in its goal-oriented mandate, relaxation can be somewhat stressful. And, indeed, you carved out a ten minute break to do your "clinical homework" of "mental hygiene" that your therapist so emphatically encouraged you to "experiment with." What pressure! You have to relax, you think. After all, isn't that the goal of relaxation?!
Meditation is an entirely different matter. Meditation is literally an open-ended process of pondering, a free-wheeling contemplation. Unlike relaxation, meditation involves no destination: it's just a road to roam, not a road to Rome. Meditation is like shooting an arrow blind, without a target, with aimlessness being the only aim . As such, without even aspiring to, the meditation breathes with relaxation...
So, here's the "performance-anxiety" paradox so familiar to the ancients: try too hard and fail, let go and succeed.
When approaching stress-management as a matter of performance with clear-cut objectives and timelines ("ten minutes to reset my Autonomic Nervous System to its parasympathetic baseline"), we try too hard to relax and, thus, tense up instead.
What paradox! One and the same vehicle - but such different destinations. So, here you are, practicing mindfulness. This is the vehicle of the moment. If you are all gung ho to relax, to ease this anxiety of being, mindfulness turns into stressful hyperscanning where each sensation you notice rattles you up like parking lot speed-bumps. But, if you just take this vehicle of mindfulness for a top-down-Saturday-morning-no-destination spin, all of a sudden you find yourself on an open road to a relaxing nowhere.
This is the psychology of goal orientation. In expectation of the future relaxation ("expectation" from Latin ex-spectare, where ex - means "thoroughly" and spectare means "look"), we overlook the present; in waiting to get to the destination of the Rome, we miss out on the relaxing scenery of the journey.
So, as your and my minds finally wind down to the end of this open-ended rambling meditation on meditation, my suggestion is this: relax, it's just a meditation.
It's 5am. Another Sun Salutation misspent at the keyboard... The Sun's getting up. It's time to go to our waking sleep: the working zombies of the world unite!
Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of EATING THE MOMENT:141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time
Copyright 2009
]]>As a once "proud" owner of the turbo-charged Saab 9-5, I recall the great sigh of relief I'd experience, when -- after peeling off at the first hint of "green" at the streetlight -- I'd look back at the sluggish acceleration of the suspecting (and unsuspecting) contenders left in the dust of the street race...
Oh, the triumph of the turbo acceleration!
Turbo -- the way I understand it -- is a mechanical equivalent of a Power Breath. Invented by the Swiss engineer, Alfred Buchi, turbo compresses the ambient air and delivers it to the air intake manifold at higher than normal pressure. This forced air induction is superior to the naturally aspirated engines ultimately increases power and torque.
Turbo -- thus! -- is a deep breath.
Auto-mechanics aside and shifting gears to psychology and physiology of relaxation...
The Turbo effect of Relaxation -- contrary to the oft-heard advice of taking a deep breath -- is in the Exhalation, not in the Inhalation phase!
James Austin, M.D., a neuroscientist and Zen practitioner, poses and answers the following key question that any Aspirant of Relaxation ought to know: "What happens during breathing out?"
"Breathing out quiets down the activity of many nerve cells. Expiration slows the firing of nerve cells in the amygdala....Such slowings, taking place in the limbic system and elsewhere, may contribute to the basic calming effect." (p. 461-462).
Austin further explains this relationship between psyche and soma: as lungs expand (after you inhale), stretch receptors tighten up and signal the brain stem via vagus nerves to shut off the inhalation -- this initiates the exhalation phase which is driven by the elastic recoil of the chest and abdomen.
Austin elaborates: in addition to this hard-wired feedback mechanism, there is another factor that dampens inspiration -- the proprioceptive feedback from the lower abdomen muscles that we are typically not consciously aware of. This feedback from the lower abdomen muscles also ascends up the peripheral nervous system to down-regulate the medulla and to turn off the inhalation phase.
"Note what happens in zazen," writes Austin, "The meditator trains bare conscious attention to focus on these faint up-and-down breathing movements in the lower abdomen, the tanden" (p. 93).
Austin sums up: "chanting and other breathing techniques prolong exhalation" and "in this manner such practices may further increase the inhibitory tone of the vagus nerves," (p. 94) which correlates with the experience of relaxation.
Inspiration activates -- expiration relaxes. Take a deep breath and your pupils will dilate. Exhale -- and your pupils will slightly constrict. Fear -- according to Austin -- lengthens the phase of inspiration. Relaxation -- on the other hand -- is accompanied by more time spent in breathing out.
So, to turbo-charge your excitement -- inhale. To turbo-charge your relaxation -- exhale (and chant). Or hum...
Austin reports that "well trained meditators dampen their breathing" to as low as 4-6 breath cycles per minute by lengthening the reducing the overall volume of air they breathe, lengthening exhalation phase and increasing the extent of abdominal breathing (p. 94-95), with the overall time in inspiration falling down to a mere 25% of the overall breath cycle. Contrast this with the fact that normally we spend about 43% of the breath cycle in the inspiration phase (p. 95).
What's even more remarkable is that these "longer expirations had evolved naturally during zazen" without any apparent conscious training effort from zazen practitioners.
In addition to breathing out of tanden (lower abdomen), breathing through the nose appears to also play a role in facilitating relaxation. Austin writes: "The flow of air along the nasal passages also influences the brain, because air flow stimulates nasal nerve endings. These stimuli go on to induce a rhythmical 40 CPS (cycles per second) activity in the olfactory bulb, which is t he higher extension of the central nervous system overlying the nasal passages. When slow meditating breathing reduces the volume of air flow, it also reduces the discharges of nerve cells in the bulb. In summary, then, whenever we breathe more quietly and prolong the phase of exhalation, we are probably quieting the firing activity of many nerve cells, bon in the medulla and above " (p. 95).
The above " above " is of particular interest -- this notion that merely by prolonging our exhalation and breathing quietly through the nose we can down-regulate the activity in the "higher extension" of the central nervous system suggests that abdominal breathing, through the nose, with prolonged exhalation phase is a kind of Break Pedal that serves as a Relaxation Turbo...
Ready. Set. Exhale!
Ahh...
Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time (New Harbinger, 2008) www.eatingthemoment.com
copyright, 2009
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