Reclusland

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests. The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is to understand himself. He is his loneliness, his emptiness; and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself; he will be in illusion and endless conflict. When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness, have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant, then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; then the experiencer is the experience, which alone brings freedom from fear.

(from here)

Krishnamurti starts off putting Chogyam to the test, essentially asking him “Why bother meditating?” I love it.  Krishnamurti’s having a great time; he’s almost smirking. And Chogyam, I have to admit, looks a bit nervous (at least until he finally gets to start talking halfway through the second video).

Just for reference, this takes place in San Diego, California, on 15th Feb. 1972.  Over 40 years after Krishnamurti broke with the The Order of the Star, and 5 years after Chogyam Trungpa had opened the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West.

(part 1)

(part 2)

(part 3)

(part 4)

(part 5)

“We pass our time and our lives in contemplating what we have already contemplated, and by this we are most insidiously imprisoned. This redundancy constructs our habitat, we construct by analogy and by resemblance, it is our architecture. Those who perceive, or build differently, or elsewhere, are our hereditary enemies.”

- from Negative Horizon (translated by M. Degener)

(via fuckyeahphilosophy)

“One cannot go contrary to nature. Nature is stronger than the strongest man. It is to our own interest to be on good terms with her.”

(via clothedinsky)

“In both study and meditation we confront our views. This is one thing about study and scholarship which often seems to be misunderstood. The scholar is not seeking certainty, not trying to fix things in words. Indeed the scholar is often intensely aware of the limitations of words, and especially in professional scholarship one’s thoughts are subject to constant criticism by one’s peers. The scholar is trying to expand knowledge, to make clear what is opaque, to observe new things. If there were nothing new to see and hear, then scholarship would have died centuries ago, but there are always fresh insights that need to be communicated, always unnoticed subtleties to explore.”

"Relax into your intrinsic nature with neither abandon nor control - Mind with no objective is Mahamudra"

(via clothedinsky)

In actual fact, words, armed with their abstract function, originally put in their appearance as a working of the logos designed to bring order to the chaos of the world of concrete objects, and expression was an attempt to turn the abstract functioning back on itself and, like an electric current that flows in reverse, summon up a world of phenomenon with the aid of words alone.  It was in accordance with this idea that I suggested earlier that all works of literature were a kind of beautiful transformation of language.  “Expression” by its very function means the recreation of a world of concrete objects using language alone.

How many lazy men’s truths have been admitted in the name of imagination! How often has the term imagination been used to prettify the unhealthy tendency of the soul to soar off in a boundless quest after truth, leaving the body where it always was!  How often have men escaped from the pains of their own bodies with the aid of that sentimental aspect of the imagination that feels the ills of others’ flesh as their own!  And how often has the imagination unquestioningly exalted spiritual sufferings whose relative value was in fact excessively difficult to gauge!  And when this type of arrogance of the imagination links together the artist’s act of expression and its accomplices, there comes into existence a kind of fictional “thing” – the work of art – and it is this interference from a large number of such “things” that has steadily perverted and altered reality.  As a result, men end up coming to contact only with shadows and lose the courage to make themselves at home with the tribulations of their own flesh.

- from Sun and Steel

I danced in the morning when the world was begun
I danced in the Moon & the Stars & the Sun
I came down from Heaven & I danced on Earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth:

Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He!

I danced for the scribe & the pharisee
But they would not dance & they wouldn’t follow me
I danced for fishermen, for James & John
They came with me & the Dance went on:

Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He!

I danced on the Sabbath & I cured the lame
The holy people said it was a shame!
They whipped & they stripped & they hung me high
And they left me there on a cross to die!

Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He!

I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back
They buried my body & they thought I’d gone
But I am the Dance & I still go on!

Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He!

They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the Life that’ll never, never die!
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in Me -
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!

Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He!

For all you and yours.

That’s it for me, until after the 25th.  The holidays are a busy time, and when I’m not busy, I will be taking the opportunity to relax away from the computer for a bit.

But I want to leave you with something good, so check out the last two posts, and the one about the past crystalizing out of the future as well.

And ponder this: What is it to know yourself as the point where both the quantumly uncertain future and the classically physical past exist simultaneously, where the analogue and the digital meet?

• A key challenge in observing quantum behavior in a small mechanical system is suppressing interactions between the system and its noisy environment — i.e., the surrounding material supporting the system or any other external contact. The random thermal vibrations of the system’s surroundings, for example, can be transferred to the mechanical object and destroy its fragile quantum properties.

• To address this issue, a number of groups worldwide have begun to use cryogenic setups in which the immediate environment is cooled down to a very low temperature to reduce the magnitude of these random vibrations.

• The Caltech team suggests a fundamentally different approach: using the forces imparted by intense beams of light to “levitate” the entire mechanical object, thereby freeing it from external contact and material supports. This approach, the researchers show, can dramatically reduce environmental noise, to the point where diverse manifestations of quantum behavior should be observable even when the environment is at room temperature.

• The system proposed by the Caltech team consists of a small sphere made out of a highly transparent material such as fused silica. When the sphere comes into contact with a laser beam, optical forces naturally push the sphere toward the point where the intensity of light is greatest, trapping the sphere at that point. The sphere typically spans about 100 nm in diameter, or roughly a thousandth the width of a human hair. Because of its small size, the sphere’s remaining interactions with the environment — any that don’t involve direct contact with another material, because the sphere is levitating — are sufficiently weak that quantum behavior should easily emerge.

• For such behavior to appear, however, the sphere must also be placed inside an optical cavity, which is formed by two mirrors located on either side of the trapped sphere. The light that bounces back and forth between the mirrors both senses the motion of the sphere and is used to manipulate that motion at a quantum-mechanical level.

• The researchers describe how this interaction can be used to remove energy from, or cool, the mechanical motion until it reaches its quantum ground state — the lowest energy allowable by quantum mechanics.

• The proposed scheme consists of sending a pair of initially entangled beams of light into two separate cavities, each containing a levitated sphere. Through a process known as quantum-state transfer, all of the properties of the light —in particular, the entanglement and its associated correlations — can be mapped onto the motion of the two spheres.

Just finished reading a great post over at “Imagining the 10th Dimension”: Consciousness in Frames per Second.

In it, Rob Bryanton discusses the “frame rate” of human consciousness.  He explains that it likely varies person-to-person but is “in that magic range somewhere between 20 and 40 cycles per second, (where) we do indeed seem to have just such an experience, where things start to blend together into a seamless stream.”

Go and read the article.  In fact, subscribe to the blog and check out the animation as well.  Rob’s work has done a lot to help create my current conceptual framework.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Where this leads me though, is back towards meditation and enlightenment, perennial topics at Reclusland.  Here’s a recent post over at dharmaoverground that gives a good explanation of where I’m coming from.

Jarrod posts:
“The guided portion (of the meditation) ended and I felt compelled to continue my sit, but started to just note sensations (rising, falling, sitting, etc.) Pretty quickly the noting went into auto-pilot and picked up pace significantly. I just let it go and tried not to get in the way. At the same time a distinct pulsing sound/sensation began that was acting like a metronome to the noting. The whole process fell into a nice rhythm with probably 2-3 pulses per second and 3-4 notes per pulse. Each breath was noted by “rise, rise, rise, rise” “fall, fall, fall, fall” in this distinct rhythm plus additional notes between the breaths.”

Then Jackson ellucidates:
It sounds as though your shift in to “auto-pilot” noting was a shift from 1st ñana (Mind & Body) to 2nd ñana (Cause & Effect). First, one comes to know directly that both physical and mental phenomena are “objects”. Then, one notices not only that intention precedes action (and that both arise on their own), but also that noticing occurs automatically as well, and only when there’s an object to notice. Things start to speed up, just as you described.

A more in depth analysis of the 1st and 2nd ñanas can, I’m sure, be found in Daniel Ingram’s book.  I haven’t had a chance to start it yet, but it is online here for those who don’t mind reading the entire thing off a screen.

Anyway, the point being that somewhere along the meditative path, assuming that you are working with a practice of “noting” (that is, watching the rising and falling the breath in the abdomen, or naming/labeling  all sensations as they arise, or any other practice where the focus in on change, I believe), the process apparently speeds up, and the practitioner must let go and simply allow the rising and passing away of sensations as they occur on their own.  This seems to happen as we try to bring our focus onto more and more distinct “things”, deliberately creating “frames” within our experience, while at the same time, pulling our awareness back from the thing thus framed.  As Rene Daumal says in Le Contre-Ciel: “I am that which thinks, not that which is thought.”

And now back to the 10th Dimension post, where Rob says: “some humans operate at a more accelerated “frame rate” than others, and that our frames per second experience of time is directly related to our state of mind and our health.” This, to me, points to a connection between the Buddhist conception of equanimity and our ability to actively notice smaller and smaller “frames” of consciousness.  That what truly makes us unhappy are the things which we miss happening, things that fall between the cracks of our awareness.  Places where the radio station fuzzes out, and we miss a few bars of that song that’s always playing, regardless of whether we listen to it or not.

Neuroscientifically speaking, this is likely related to what is know as our “working memory”.  This is the sort term memory that we use while performing tasks such as remembering a telephone number or a series of words in a sentence, similar to the RAM memory of your computer:

“working memory is a chalkboard on which we rapidly scrawl and erase information…..When we hear the phrase “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” a cluster of neurons fires during each word. When one cluster fires, it suppresses the others momentarily, preventing the sentence from coming out scrambled….As the neurons for “It,” “was,” “the,” and “best” fire in sequence, the brain creates pathways from one point, or brain state, to the next. The more powerfully each excited cluster can inhibit or suppress all others in the sequence from firing, the more solid these pathways….As a sentence or a string of numbers gets longer, it becomes exponentially harder for the excited cluster to suppress the others from firing, resulting in pathways that are weak or barely there. Recalling seven items requires about 15 times the suppression needed to recall three. Ten items requires inhibitory powers that are 50 times stronger and 20 or more items would require suppression hundreds of times stronger still. That is normally not biologically feasible. “Synapses can’t be stronger than that, the brain is a very complex biochemical machine.”…Mathematical models like these may seem removed from the gritty reality of gray matter and neural chemistry, but they provide a critical connection between what people actually experience and the hidden mechanisms inside the brain.”

Working memory is crucial for cognitive control of emotions: It allows us to consider information we have and reason quickly when deciding what to do as opposed to reacting automatically, without thinking, to something…mothers whose negativity was most strongly linked with their child’s challenging behaviors were those with the poorest working memory skills. The authors surmise that “for mothers with poorer working memory, their negativity is more reactive because they are less able to cognitively control their emotions and behaviors during their interactions with their children.”

Try not to get too caught up in the number 7 mentioned in that first link.  Instead, just keep in mind that the more things you hold in your working memory, the more those things must suppress the rest your mind in order to continue existing.  And the more suppression going on, the worse we are at controlling our emotions (and the further we drift from equanimity).

The practice of noting then, can be seen as a purposeful digitalization of something that is, at heart, an analogue process: the experience of being an awareness-within-reality.  The practitioner is attempting to break through the digitizing process, to fall-between-the-frames so to speak, and realize that, as Buddha said, “All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting.” thus coming into the direct experience of that which is non-digital, non-component.

Am I saying that we should all go watch high-frame-rate movies, and try to catch the individual frames?  Stare into the flickering light of the projector until we can catch the black space between the still images? No, not really.  That’s the wrong direction, entirely too mediated.  The point is not to train your mind with a movie camera and then to bring that trained mind back into real life with your newly developed “super powers”.  The point is that real life is already the ultimate tool for training your mind in this way.  You just have to pay close attention: closer, closer, fall between the cracks, identify as the space between the cracks, and bam! there it-you is-are.

But if you do want to watch a movie, here’s a good one. (I very much want to embed this, but it’s been disabled…)

“Judging, making up our minds what to think, is something for which we are, in principle, responsible – something we freely do, as opposed to something that merely happens in our lives. Of course, a belief is not always, or even typically, a result of our exercising this freedom to decide what to think. But even when a belief is not freely adopted, it is an actualisation of capacities of a kind, the conceptual, whose paradigmatic mode of actualisation is in the exercise of freedom that judging is. This freedom, exemplified in responsible acts of judging, is essentially a matter of being answerable to criticism in the light of rationally relevant considerations.”

- John McDowell: ‘Having the World in View: Lecture One’ (via fuckyeahphilosophy)

Free will or no free will?  Fuck that polarity.  Worry about the things you can consciously choose, choose them well, and the rest is not your concern.

When Cami Walker of Los Angeles learned three years ago that she had multiple sclerosis, her health and her spirits plummeted — until she got an unusual prescription from a holistic health educator.  Ms. Walker gave a gift a day for 29 days — things like making supportive phone calls or saving a piece of chocolate cake for her husband. The giving didn’t cure her multiple sclerosis, of course. But it seems to have had a startling effect on her ability to cope with it. She is more mobile and less dependent on pain medication. The flare-ups that routinely sent her to the emergency room have stopped, and scans show that her disease has stopped progressing.

“My first reaction was that I thought it was an insane idea,” Ms. Walker said. “But it has given me a more positive outlook on life. It’s about stepping outside of your own story long enough to make a connection with someone else.”

And science appears to back her up.

(from the NYTimes)

This is not the law of attraction, this is not about visualizing yourself into wealth and beauty.  This is about making conscious decisions to be a positive effect in the world.  The other's joy and happiness feeds you in a way that your own never would.  All it requires that you pay attention enough to choose, as best you can, what will actually be of help to someone.

The difference between the right word & the almost right word is the difference between lightning & the lightning bug. - Mark Twain

This made me laugh enough to want to share it with you all.  Sometimes, the oracles speak loud and clear.  :)

Q: Should I, in any direction, be pushing myself harder than I am?

A: The situation described here is that of one who, finding himself in an influential position in a time of progress, remains gentle and reserved. He might reproach himself for lack of energy in making the most of the propitiousness of the time and obtaining all possible advantage. However, this regret passes away. He must not take either loss or gain to heart; they are minor considerations. What matters much more is the fact that in this way he has assured himself of opportunities for successful and beneficent influence.

(changing 5th line)

“The scholars were interested in drunkenness because intoxication, as other social-science experiments have shown, doesn’t fuzz up judgment so much as cause the drinker to overly focus on the most prominent cue in his environment.” (from here.)

Really interesting, I had no idea.  Certainly matches my experience though…

I feel adequate to deal with whatever is happening because I am awareness and awareness can handle anything. Nothing can affect me and I know this for certain. Not because I am a person who knows that I am awareness, but because I am awareness. If it’s a person who knows that they are awareness, that’s a little different situation. You could call that self realization, or something. But there is still someone there who has a conviction that they are awareness. But at a certain point, that conviction dissolves into the hard and fast understanding that I am awareness and then there’s no more discussion about it at all. And then it’s just I AM.

(a little recommended reading for your Fridays/weekends)

Nearly 100 new species described by California Academy of Sciences in 2009

Wild chimps have near human understanding of fire, study says

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

Chimp’s stone throwing at zoo visitors was ‘premeditated’

What’s the secret to surviving during times of environmental change? Evolve…quickly.

Are humans evolving faster? Findings suggest we are becoming more different, not alike

Culture skews human evolution

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

Plants evolve quickly in response to climate change

Sex In The Caribbean: Environmental Change Drives Evolutionary Change

DNA Is Dynamic And Has High Energy; Not Stiff Or Static As First Envisioned

Dynamic changes in DNA linked to human diabetes

WHAT, YOU THOUGHT THIS SHIT HAD STOPPED?

(links to source)

“Nothing is now unconscious if your data-search commands are powerful enough.” – from Surfing Finnegans Wake

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favour of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get entangled in hatred and passion. Therefore it is important to begin at home, to be on guard in our own persons against the faults we have branded. In this way, finding no opponent, the sharp edges of the weapons of evil becomes dulled. For the same reasons we should not combat our own faults directly. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue victorious. Finally, the best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good.

- Kuai / Break-through (Resoluteness)

by Mr. J. H. Marshall

From here.

From an interview with on New York Times:

But the moment someone says the truth or God is an object or takes it as an object, that is already a mistake. God is neither object not subject. The moment you say any little thing about God, you’re already making an object of God and Buddhism cautions you about that. At that moment you’re making an idiot out of God, you’re making a fool out of God.

Buddhism is Shukyo, which doesn’t include the belief in a world-creating God. When the Buddha died, he didn’t say believe in God. He said make the dharma activity your teacher.

Get free, Liberta, free e’en as the Moon
From out the Dragon’s jaws sails clear on high.
Wipe off the debts that hinder thee, and so,
With heart at liberty, break thou thy fast.

- Buddha

(thanks mind deep)

image (purposefully small) from Jung’s Red Book

Found this today.  It’s good enough that I’m going to just cut and paste the whole thing.  Original is from Allspirit, to whom I owe many thanks.  If anyone is offended by my having this up, let me know and I’ll take it down immediately.

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.

When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect like vast space when nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things nor in inner feelings of emptiness.

Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity.

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.

To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.

At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.

The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance.

Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.

Do not remain in the dualistic state — avoid such pursuits carefully.

If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.

Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One.

When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend,
and when such a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.

When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind); the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).

Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.

In this emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world.

If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute;
the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging (attachment) cannot be limited;
even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.

Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going.

Obey the nature of things (your own nature), and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear,
and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.

What benefits can be derived from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the One Way do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.

Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true Enlightenment.

The wise man strives to no goals but the foolish man fetters himself.

There is one Dharma, not many; distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.

To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind is the greatest of all mistakes.

Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.

All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in air: foolish to try to grasp them.

Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease.

If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence.

To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements.

When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached.

No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.

Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, both movement and rest disappear.

When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist.

To this ultimate finality no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases.

Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible.

With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.

All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power.

Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self.

To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubt arises, ‘Not two.’

In this ‘not two’ nothing is separate, nothing is excluded.

No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.

And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space;
in it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.

Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen.

So too with Being and Non-Being.

Don’t waste time with doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction.

To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.

To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,
because the non-dual is one with trusting mind.

Words!

The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

What would happen if you swapped out the bank executives, the generals, the billionaires? Nothing. It doesn’t matter who you plug into the role of dog catcher — the dog catcher still has to catch dogs, and every role in a domination system must channel domination. Ultimately there is no boss. At the top of the pyramid sits the logic of the pyramid itself. And that logic is basically a big fire that consumes everything and finally burns out.

It is said that the elite want a global government. They would also like to fart strawberries. If you think the elite get everything they want, stop pretending to oppose them and admit that you worship them as gods.

- Ran Prieur