tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50098834183962103702024-03-13T16:38:46.283-07:00Whitebelt ZenLauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.comBlogger153125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-16579538165698577552020-04-18T08:18:00.001-07:002020-04-18T08:18:29.735-07:00Can I Create a Sentient Bean?<div>There is a Tibetan Monk who appeared for some reason in my FaceBook feed, Geshe Jamyang Tashi, and I friended him. Most of his posts I find inaccessible. Or, more truthfully, I often feel derisive towards them. But, for some reason, a post of his I read today on loving kindness hit home. Here it is. I preface by saying I don't like all of this. I am particularly sensitive to people who write as "we." Often they mean "you" but are too passive agressive to say it that way. I suppose I could launch into a long discorse on why.... but I should just stay on the track I started. Here is the post... </div><div>"<b>Identifying the nature of loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta</b> </div><div>When practicing meditation on equanimity we should remain impartial towards all sentient beings by eliminating attachment and aversion. </div><div>Once we have generated equanimity toward all sentient beings in our mind, we should meditate on loving kindness.</div><div><br></div><div>1}The mind of loving kindness has nature of wishing all sentient beings to have happiness and the cases of happiness.</div><div><br></div><div>Once that attitude has been developed, we meditate on compassion for all sentient beings, understanding that the beings of the three realms of existence are intensely tortured by the three types of sufferings.</div><div><br></div><div>2}The compassionate mind has the nature of wishing all suffering beings to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.</div><div><br></div><div>Once this attitude has been developed, we meditating on the awakening mind of Bodhichitta.</div><div><br></div><div>3}Bodhichitta is the cultivation of the initial thought that aspires to attain unsurpassable and perfect enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings.</div><div><br></div><div>If one investigate to find the supreme method for accomplishing the aims of oneself and others, it comes down to Bodhichitta alone. Generate such certainty and develop such a mind with joy. </div><div>Geshe Jamyang Tashi"</div><div><br></div><div>What caught my mind the most was the statement near the top "When practicing meditation on equanimity we should remain impartial towards all sentient beings by eliminating attachment and aversion. Once we have generated equanimity toward all sentient beings in our mind, we should meditate on loving kindness."</div><div><br></div><div>I started pondering the age old question, "What is a sentient being?" What I always stick on, are items which for me are inanimate. I've seen people assert on soto zen forums that even rocks and trees are sentient. I usually can't get there (as a mental place to be). But then I started considering that the animacy in these situations are a projection of the person so finding them. In otherwords a rock become annimate when I find it to be annimate. My thinking makes it so.</div><div><br></div><div>Those thoughts slipped a bit more to aversion and attachment. I wonder if it is aversion or attachment from or to something that preceedes the decision of its annimacy. For example, I usually feel quite neutral about grass. I enjoy grass. It's often quite pleseant to look at and walk on, but I wouldn't quite characterize that feeling as attachment. </div><div><br></div><div>Now, what about people for whom grass is the most important thing? Perhaps a grounds keeper at a world heritage archeological site who has to both keep the grass trim and beautiful for the curb appeal of the location, but also needs to watch the grass to keep it from encroaching distructively into the stones and walls, etc. Such a person might develop an aversion, or an attachment to grass and in lock step, they might begin to personify the grass. The grass become a sentient being that is either acting for the grounds keeper's benefit (attachment), or is in a battle against them (aversion).</div><div><br></div><div>To me this seems plausible, and such a person is basically 'projecting' thier feelings into the grass. I could argue with this person that the grass is not plotting against them (if the person has aversion to the grass), nor does the grass care for an love them (if the person had attachment to the grass). I could point out that the grass has no brain, no observable nervous system, it has not been proven to react in any way in any laboratory setting that would suggest it has any awareness of a person such as a grounds-keeper at all: - but it's likely such a person would pay me no mind at all. All that cold scientific fact would fall on deaf ears.</div><div><br></div><div>A person who is attached or averse has certain knowledge that the object is what it is, and, in a sense, animates that object. They project the object's sentiences, after a fashion. </div><div><br></div><div>So, the point of this blog is that I am wondering how that plays out in human interactions. Often when I see one person attached or averse to another they often project all sorts of feelings and motivations to the other with absolutely know real verification if they are correct. Phrases like "they are maniuplating me", or "she does it all for me" come out, without any interview of the object person in question that cooborates the data. <br></div><div><br></div><div>And this brings me to the fancy that our feelings of aversion and attachment bring sentience even to people. </div><div><br></div><div>But I guess here is very the fancy fails and the answer becomes clear... I think people are sentient regardless of whether I am averse or attached to them. </div><div><br></div><div>Oh well ------- </div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-34922516654316051962019-08-11T08:18:00.002-07:002019-08-11T08:18:14.109-07:00Peek-a-boo, I see You - The Flame of a Candle.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Probably the greatest mystery facing human kind is "where am I". Of course we can find the locus of our 'selves' rather easily. For most people, they understand it to be their body. I am quite certain for all people, it *is* thier body, but their are likely some who have a different experience.<br />
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But where do you understand "you "to be *in* your body? This is the great mystery which has given rise to, well, nearly every religious and physcological belief system.<br />
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It seems clear to me that this event I experience as myself is an elecrochemical event. Something about how neurons and neurotransmitters and other chemistries in my body, and in the untold other organisms that inhabit my body, and a certain extent the events going on in the physical world outside my body, give rise to me.... to my "I". All of these things that give rise to "me" are , as our theories go, physical, concrete things.<br />
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In saying this I include energies as a "physical concrete thing". What I mean is, for example, current theories on light have light acting as both a wave and a particle. It is exactly neither and both. There is an electromagnetic field and "perterbations" in that field are experienced as light. The same is true for mass (I'm pretty sure about this, although, honestly I can't walk down the explanation road as well as I can for light). Mass is some sort of interaction in the boson field. Protons and Neutrons are understood to be the interaction of a certain type of three quarks each, and how quarks interact is based on energies, or waves, also in certan fields.<br />
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So while we (i.e., the respected, peer reviewed, scientific community working on such thing, of which, I am not a member, but just an observer) understand all phenomina can be explained by particle/field theory - or concrete object/energy theory - noneone I've experienced has used that to explain my sense of "I", or anything I experience.<br />
An external observer can find my neurons, and analyze the soup they are sitting in, and mess with them so that my sense of self is messed with. They can induce me into unconsiousness, they can make me see more blue (e.g., colored glasses). They can blind my eye input and defen my ear input, but they cannot stick a probe into my "I". They cannot point to me amongs all this goo that gives rise to me.<br />
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In that sense, and with an analogy that fails on any close examination, I am a spark in my brain, or I am a flame on a candle, but in truth no-one can see the spark of flame glowing in the bed of my neurons, should they happen to open my brain.<br />
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So this "I" is a complete mystery.<br />
<br />
Every sentient being has it. In fact that is how I would define a sentient being - as a functional biological thingy that has an apparent sense of I (though I am not at all certain what the test could be for this, and whether there are organisms that have it but can't express it). I think sentient beings must needs be complex - that is to say what we percieve as independently function organisms with complex nervous systems. Casually, I would say plants are not sentient, but I am less certain about bugs and such.<br />
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Where is this I? It burns in, from, by body, but where can the flame be seen. Where does the spark exist? Maybe I is the the collected and constrained perturbations in all the fields of the mater that makes up my body. Maybe I exist in unique field that is only perturbed when other fields are arranged just so.<br />
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Yes, sounds like crazy talk, but lets back up again to the electron, for example. Most 'lay' people concieve of the electron as a thingy. A tiny tiny particle with a charge (what ever a charge is, don't ask them). But detailed analysis reveals that electrons are neither little particles nor 'waves of energy' but rather some sort of disturbance in what is call the electro-magnetic field. Oft repeated experiments can show electrons behaving as particles, and electrons behaving as waves of energy, and no-one yet has developed an robust explanation of why. Or rather, how the two characteristics of "particle" and "wave" can be explained by a theory of what the single electron thingy is.<br />
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It is from an interaction of electrons and protons and neutrons - all wierd thingies in their own right, that I am built. They are the candle and wick. They are the electrodes. I am the flame. I am the spark. But nobody can find me.<br />
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So, how is this related to buddhism? Well I think that Buddhism, more than any other school of though, has been devoted to understanding what this spark is. How is it dependent on physical realities. What makes it burn 'content' or 'suffering'. A huge portion of Buddhism is devoted to more derivative content such as psychology, but a fair portion focuses on what is the fundamental reality of I.<br />
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And from among the many Buddhist sects, I think Soto tries to demonstrate the flame. That, for me, is the beauty of Shikantaza (roughly "just sitting"). It is in this just sitting, very still, for a fair period of time, we can experience the flame of I, the spark of I. We can see I flickering and dancing in the candle of the body.<br />
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Many things can perturb the flame of I, cause it to flicker and sputter, but zazen, and studying the implications of the eight fold path can help us attain and maintain, help us realize, a more stable flame. A flame not blown by .... well the analogy does break down for me. I don't want to force it too much because I don't exactly think 'I' is a flame. But it is like a flame, burning in a place that no one can directly see. Burning in the wax of the body.<br />
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Peek a boo.... I think I see you.Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-71939437326728415462019-03-24T10:11:00.004-07:002019-03-24T10:11:28.817-07:00Ramblings on a Goo-blob and the Right Dharma 'I'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
In an interview I heard, W.Thomas Boyce M.D. (author of a very interesting book about the difference among sensitive and robust children called "The Orchid and the Dandelion") said something to the effect of "every child is born into a different family". Meaning that because of the impact of no or previous children on the dynamics of a family, or perhaps just natural change that goes on in a family over time, that family is substantially different by the time the next kid shows up.<br />
<br />
This got me thinking about people in general.<br />
<br />
But first, a diversion into biology.<br />
<br />
Open and close your eyes. With that event the picture you 'see' probably goes from full-of-content to black (or there abouts.... in fact really observe, and you will notice there is still content). This effect tends to give us the notion that the image that is falling on the retina of the eye is what we 'see'. Many people know that this is objectively not true, but few know it intuitively.<br />
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There are many demonstrations that show it is objectively not true. For example, if I highlight the nose portion one sees with one eye closed, and how it tends to 'disappear' with both eyes open. Or the fact that each eye has a blind spot on the retina, and yet only the very skilled (I'm guessing) can ever skrintch their minds up just so to see it. Or various optical illusions where the colors or motions we see change as the surrounding context changes. All of these show that what falls on the retina does not make it to perception unmolested.<br />
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But optical tricks do not quite invade our intuition. I think most people, if forced to describe it, would come up with the 'projector model' of vision. That somehow what falls on the retina is carried by the optic nerve into the brain where it shows up on a screen (sure with a little post processing to account for optical illusions and no-nose and the like) and a little person views that screen and that is what vision is.<br />
<br />
The interesting news is that there is no little person. The interesting news is that the image we see with eyes open (or closed) is just chemical stuff happening in the locus of our brain in the neurons, somehow associated with our consciousness. We are the little person watching, but of course, there is no little person. It is the activity of a blob of soggy neurons. The function of the eyes certainly contributes a large amount to what we imagine (and 'imagine' really is the best word for the process, because, in fact, we don't 'see' but we 'imagine an image' or we 'imagine a sound' etc...) we see, but we do not image only what the eye contributes. Other structures in our brain are part of the overall goo matrix and they also contribute to what we imagine we see.<br />
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I am, my consciousness is, the imagining of a goo blob. It has no physical reality other than electro-chemical signals being exchanged among neurons. I do not experience anything directly through my sense organs. I experience the impact of those organs on the imagination processes in my goo blob. These processes are very complex and many things influence them and can set them off kilter.<br />
<br />
Drugs, illness, biological (structural) variations all impact how my goo blob works and, thereby, the reality I experience.<br />
<br />
Brad Warner has quoted Gudo Nishijima as saying 'There is one reality, but we all experience it differently.' This, I believe, is a fundamental truth that is very difficult to internalize intuitively.<br />
<br />
By 'intuitively' I mean the way we react to things prior to any analysis of "what's going on".<br />
<br />
I often think that two healthy people in the same location must be getting the same data about any event, and so should reasonably come to the same conclusions about that event. I am now coming to realize how false that assumption could be.<br />
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The influence of our sensory systems on the image we have in our consciousness of what's going on is strongly influenced by our senses, but they do not have absolute rule. Things like disease, biological difference, past trauma etc... all have real lasting physical impact on our goo blobs such that no two people can actually experience the same thing the same way.<br />
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Let me re-iterate this thesis, because I think it is rather surprising... it is physically impossible for two different people's consciousness to necessarily experience the same external events the same way, much less the same internal events such as pondering a particular thought (e.g. lines from a sutra).<br />
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Granted we can often be close to one another in our experiences. There are similarities in how we perceive things that have been brought on in our goo-blobs by natural selection. We tend to align more on older, more basic to survival events that have commonly impacted how our goo-blobs are structured. It is very rare to see someone genuinely enjoy an arrow through the gut, unless their goo blob is extremely altered in its functioning by unusual chemicals.<br />
<br />
So how we function is certainly open to the 'we' commonality -- there is no real being who is not experiencing their life by means of electro-chemical events in their goo-blob. Therefore, yes, we all experience life by means of goo-blobs and the general rules of how gloo-blobs function apply to all of us.<br />
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But notions of a specific experience are much harder to put in the 'we' bucket, particularly when we get into the realm of ideas, and out of the realm of direct external experience. Everyone's specific goo-blobs are structured differently, and by 'structure' I mean BOTH the physical interconnection of neurons AND the soup in which neurons sit and operate that mediates the signal jumping from one neuron to the next. This is a constantly active and changing biological system. There is no stasis.<br />
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'We all mourn the passing of XYZ' is an absolute predictive falsehood (of course one could consider a limited group of people who were all interviewed and reported mourning, but as a predictive face it is entirely false). 'We all get tired if we don't have enough rest' is probably closer to true.<br />
<br />
The main purpose of this ramble is to get to the point of 'I'.<br />
<br />
There is a silly notion proposed by some Buddhists that 'I' is a terrible way to think.... and that one should always think in terms of 'we', and there are some who proudly use 'we' for all manner of observations they have never tested on the population they are speaking to such as 'in Soto Zen we believe.... XYZ'.<br />
<br />
Many in Buddhism identify 'I' talk as a sort of delusion; an 'egocentric' view of the world; bad.<br />
<br />
My view is these notions of ego=bad are based on poor translations of the 'original' concerns wherever they might be buried in sutra's etc... mixed with old Western clinical notions of ego (which hold little sway among modern psychologists), mixed with ill informed popular notions of ego, mixed with the fact that even our Buddhists elders can have gotten something wrong as they tried to figure out the world. Certainly much information about evolution and neuro-biology was not available to them.<br />
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Thus, to extend the wisdom of Dr. Thomas Boyce, no two people are born into the same world. It is a fundamental truth that each person can only experience the world in their unique way. 'I' is the most honest and true expression of what you know. Stick to it. We can work it out.Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-78928436811413645712018-08-26T08:09:00.000-07:002018-08-26T10:44:26.220-07:00Duck, Duck, Soup - The Role of Altering Brain Chemistry in Achieving the Profound Goal of Supreme Enlightenment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It ain't there.<br />
<br />
If this be error and upon me proved.<br />
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.<br />
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<ol>
<li>The brain is a complex tangle of nuerons (Ikkyu's garden of weeds, no doubt) sitting in a soup. </li>
<li>Yes, you can alter the soup so the nuerons function differently. </li>
<li>The different functioning can feel like something. It can affect emotions so that it feels quite profound and special. </li>
<li>The spectrum of soup recipies across humanity is the result of evolution.</li>
<li>Do not consider the romanticized, anthropomorphicized version of Darwins "survival of the fittest", think of the more pragmatic reality... "what can exist, will. What cannot, will not". </li>
<li>The way society is structured now allows all sorts of soup recipes to be effective that would not have been many years ago. </li>
<li>A "drunk" can be protected by society for a long time. </li>
<li>A "drunk" when drunk probably could not survive a wolf attack. A sober person might. </li>
<li>Thinking of the basic things you might like to be capable of in any moment - fucking with your natural soup recipe in ways that takes you away from being fit for them. Best not do it. That is what underlies the intoxication precept. </li>
<li>The soup affects how you feel. </li>
<li>Feelings are different from consideration (wisdom?). </li>
<li>Taking action because of feelings can cause trouble directly to you or comming back atchya later on.</li>
<li>You might have experience differentiating the feelings you normally experience and managing the actions you are motivated to take with your consideration. In most people it takes a long time to even appreciate the difference between feeling driven actions and consideration. </li>
<li>If you fuck with your soup too much you might have feelings that drive you to actions and have no experience to moderate those urges. That way there be beasties. </li>
<li>There is one single reality as it is. It is out there. It is rather boring though quite majestic in its incomprehensibility. </li>
<li>Our bodies are not able to apprehend reality as it is. There's all kinds of stuff going on that we can't sense, or can't sense with complete resolution to see how all be bits work. </li>
<li>We are indeed fish looking out of a fish bowl. Frogs in a well. </li>
<li>Altering your soup can only mess with the perception's appearance in your consciousness. It does not open any magic doors. You can dick with the horizontal, you can dick with vertical, but the picture you get is still limited by your flyback transformer. </li>
<li>You remain separated from complete full spectrum, exact detail experience of reality as it is. Even language separates you as it puts borders on things that have no borders. </li>
<li> As a side note, "the mind waves" was the third truth not a correction of the first two. </li>
<li>You are on no journey to anywhere that can be actually facilitated by messing with your soup. </li>
<li>You are just here. A bowl of soup sitting in reality as it is, trying to make sense of reality as it is. </li>
<li>It's like it's night and you have a cluttered porch sitting in darkness. "enlightenment" is turning on the porch light. You can see the clutter more clearly, but that's all you get. A better, perhaps longer lasting, view of reality as it is.</li>
<li>Best not mess with your soup too much. Learn to discern how your feeling and your consideration work with the soup you normally have (and its inevitable variations in the course of a day, based on all kinds of influencers from diet to biom to sleep, etc....). </li>
<li> </li>
</ol>
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<br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-56895218739465817172018-08-05T12:31:00.001-07:002018-08-05T15:22:20.937-07:00A Silly Song of Fundamental Zen Concepts<br />
The other morning I saw this posted on a Zen FB group "Please don't post silly memes on this page - it may not seem so to you, but it is somewhat demeaning to the question or issue that someone is posting. The ZD Page is about dialogue or discussion - there are times you may just want to not respond rather than respond with silliness. I would define silliness as different from humor, btw, which is a hallmark of Zen. You probably know the difference."<br />
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My immediate reaction was to recall a lovely silly thing from my daughter's childhood, and post it in reply.<br />
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As I drove into work I realized what a surprising piece of Zen that lovely thing was.<br />
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Later in the day I saw that my post was deleted, by the ZD admin(s), I can only assume.<br />
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The lovely thing came to me many years ago from some direction in our social circle in Texas, when someone had gifted my young daughter a VHS cassette of "Veggie Tales" -- a sweet and simple exegesis of Christianity in the form of the mad-cap capers of cartoon vegetables. One of the hosts was Larry the Cucumber, a lovable Gilligan of sorts, who interrupts the story line in many episodes for a moment of "Silly Songs with Larry".<br />
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The lovely thing I had recalled was "The Water Buffalo Song".<br />
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Here are the lyrics, and the surrounding script for your appreciation. Note the interruption by the much more conservative stalk of asparagus, Archie, who shares a distemper for silliness with the Zen group administrator.<br />
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<hr />
NARRATOR:<br />
And now it's time for Silly Songs with Larry. The part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song. So without further ado... Silly Songs with Larry<br />
<br />
LARRY: <br />
The Water Buffalo song<br />
[singing]<br />
<br />
Everybody's got a water buffalo<br />
Yours is fast but mine is slow<br />
Oh, where do you get them I don't know<br />
But everyone's got a water buffaloooooo [sustained howl]<br />
<br />
I took my buffalo to the store<br />
Got his head stuck in the door<br />
Spilled some lima beans on the floor<br />
Oh everybody's got a...<br />
<br />
ARCHIE: [interupting]<br />
Stop it! Stop! Stop right this instant! What do you think you are doing?<br />
You can't say everybody's got a water buffalo when everyone does not have a water buffalo!<br />
We're going to get nasty letters saying "where's my water buffalo? Why don't i have a water buffalo?"<br />
And are you prepared to deal with that? I don't think so!<br />
<b>Just stop being so silly</b>!<br />
<br />
NARRATOR:<br />
This has been Silly Songs with Larry. Tune in next week when Larry sings...<br />
<br />
LARRY:<br />
[singing]<br />
Everybody's got a baby kangaroo<br />
Your's is pink but mine is blue.<br />
Hers was small but...<br />
<br />
ARCHIE: [running Larry off the stage]<br />
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........<br />
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<br />
Here is a <a href="https://youtu.be/_MO2Dab-MOI">link to the performance,</a> but it might be removed for various copyright reasons, so I am also including an image of the first page of the sheet music (which itself might get snagged), cause it's important for you to fully realize the majesty of the song....<br />
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<br />
Anyway.... In pondering the song, I appreciated many Buddhist connections, none of which were intended.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Larry is a cucumber --- David Chadwick wrote a well known biography of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi called "Crooked Cucumber". From the introduction: From the Introduction: "From the time he was a new monk at age 13, Suzuki's master, Gyokujun So-on Suzuki, called him Crooked Cucumber. Crooked cucumbers were useless; farmers would compost them; children would use them for batting practice. So-on told Suzuki he felt sorry for him, because he would never have any good disciples. For a long time it looked as though So-on was right. Then Crooked Cucumber fulfilled a lifelong dream. He came to America, where he had many students and died in the full bloom of what he had come to do. His 12 1/2 years here profoundly changed his life and the lives of many others." .... So we can imagine Larry as a proxy for Suzuki-roshi. Worth paying attention to!</li>
<li>A water buffalo is a kind of ox --- The 10 Ox Herding pictures are a famous representation of ones travels toward realization. </li>
<li>We each travel at our own speed --- The lyrics declare "Everybody's got a water buffalo, yours is fast but mine is slow". This is clearly a message of the fact that we are all on a journey of discovery, but each of us must move at our own pace. We each must take responsibility for our own direction and learning. </li>
<li>"Only don't know!" --- This is a famous answer of the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn to question of life, the universe, and, well, everything, and Larry uses it too when considering the fundamental question we all have of how did we get placed on this journey, what is the meaning of all of this, as represented in the water buffalo. His reply; "Where do you get them, I don't know" - Only don't know. </li>
<li>The universal truth --- These are tough questions for Zen masters and for Larry, but it is a situation common to us all... "everyone's got a water buffalo!"</li>
<li>The gateless gate - as you probably know well, koans are those little Zen stories that help puzzle us into understanding. One of the great collections of koans is the forty-eight cases gathered in the Gateless Gate. The thirty-eighth case is a quite short somewhat awkward answer to a question that is not captured in the case. It is as follows: "To give an example, it is like a buffalo passing through a window. Its head, horns and four legs have all passed through. Why is it that its tail cannot?”. Another famous koan has a novice monk asking Master Tozan, “What is Buddha?” to which Tozan replies, “Three pounds of flax.”. In the silly song we see Larry skillfully combine these into the buffalo stuck in the door and spilling the lima beans on the floor (my guess is three pounds worth). Where is Buddha in this? What comes next when the head is stuck in this trap!? Just spill them to find the freedom!</li>
</ol>
Why the ZD admin(s) deleted reference to this vehicle of fundamental Buddhist principles is beyond understanding.... at least, clearly, theirs.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div>
I'll finish with further defense that silliness has not just an important role, but a fundamental role in Zen. The silly puzzles the mind away from normal modes of tired, formal and normal thinking and opens it to new essential non-sequitur of reality as it is. </div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>The first transmission occurred when the Buddha silently picked up a flower and twirled it. Among hundreds of serious arhats gathered, only Mahakasyapa apprehended this special transmission outside of the scriptures. Please do not try to convince me that the Buddha twirling a flower silently in that audience was anything but a silly thing to do!</li>
<li>In another Koan Master Joshu famously put his slippers on his head and walked out...</li>
<li>Kodo Sawaki warns "We cannot exchange even a fart with another, can we?..."</li>
</ol>
<div>
Silly is fundamental to Zen. </div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-25134436921686592472018-07-22T06:34:00.001-07:002018-07-22T15:49:56.459-07:00Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps<div dir="ltr">
<a href="https://youtu.be/GUVT1NZtZPo">https://youtu.be/GUVT1NZtZPo</a></div>
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"Whether art it was or heedless hap ."</div>
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An early meaning of hap is just what occurs without particular planning or obvious agency. So a happy person could be one who gets along with what comes along, not necessarily a delusional person. In this sense, the eightfold path could lead easily to better happiness, and I could live easily, per-haps.<br />
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Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-10157780261509652442018-07-05T14:57:00.002-07:002018-07-05T14:57:44.091-07:00Transcription of Peter Rocca Chatting with Gudo Nishijima-roshi about Buddhism, Realism, Intuition, and Precepts<br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Audio file from <a href="http://www.zen.ie/audio.html">http://www.zen.ie/audio.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Above is a snap of Peter's blog where I got the sound file. It is an image, so the link does not work. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Transcribed
by Lauren Crane around July 2018. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Regarding
the transcription: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<ul>
<li>·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">In the following SNS = sympathetic
nervous system. PNS = parasympathetic nervous system. ANS = autonomic nervous
system. ANSs = autonomic nervous systems [which are the SNS and PNS]… all are
spoken out by Nishijima-roshi, I have abbreviated them for convenience.</span></li>
<li>·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">I have attempted to capture
some of the flavor of the natural flow of this conversation with various “ahs” “unns”
and the like. Not all have been captured.</span></li>
<li>·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">Nishijima-roshi often started
speaking with “so da…” which, with my limited exposure to Japanese over many
years, I take as a casual thought starter which might more formally be “so desu…”.
I do not think it has literal meaning other than a gentle confirmation of what
was said, or affirmation of what will be said.</span></li>
<li>·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">I’ve installed some time
stamps in brackets throughout so you can locate snips in the tape (sorry... my age is showing. I mean, of course, the sound file). </span></li>
<li>·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">I’ve also installed some
comments in brackets where I had trouble clearly understanding what was being
said, or to note vocal effects such as chuckles.</span></li>
<li>·<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">Comments in braces {} are my
impression of the meaning of what is happening on the tape that is not present
as words.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Peter and Nishijima-roshi are discussing a story from chapter 20 in the first volume of the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo titled "</span>Kokyō - The Eternal Mirror". In particular this story...</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"Great Master Seppō Shinkaku on one occasion preaches to the</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">assembly, “If you want to understand this matter, my concrete state is like</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">one face of the eternal mirror. [When] a foreigner comes, a foreigner appears.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">[When] a Chinese person comes, a Chinese person appears.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">(the PDF files have been available <a href="http://www.thezensite.com/MainPages/Dogen_teachings.html">here</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p>==== Transcription</o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G:
Okay?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: Ya <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: umm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The story suggests the
difference between European civilization and Indian civilization.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And in European
civilization the two fundamental philosophies - idealism and materialism - are
the ehhh main um symbols, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">but in the Indian
philosophy, Guatama Buddha insists reality exists only, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">and therefore,
Buddhism insists that even though in European civilization people revered two philosophies
- idealism and materialism; but in Indian Buddhism they think that transcending
two philosophies – idealism and materialism; and should establish only one
realism, is Buddha’s saying.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So in such situation,
the Shobogenzo Chinese master utilizes the symbol of two mirrors. And when two
mirrors have met, two mirrors vanish, and reality exists in front of them, that
is the meaning of the story. [2:16]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: So the mirrors are
symbols of ideas, of concepts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: ahhhh… yes ... <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so da … such mirror is the human intuition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: Right. When the two
mirrors meet… human intuition vanishes?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: unh…so da…. vanish…
and reality manifests itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: ….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: So manifesting
reality, is the ultimate phase of Buddhist philosophy [2:52]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: ohhh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Therefore, to
explain such situation, Chinese Buddhism utilized </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">two piece of mirrors. [3:10]</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: um um …I see…so at
the beginning of the story the master Seppou Shinkaku says uh, if you want to
understand the matter … my concrete state is like one face of the eternal
mirror. When a foreigner comes, a foreigner appears. When a Chinese person
comes, a Chinese person appears. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What does that mean – “when
a Foreigner comes a Foreigner appears”?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: mmm so da…it is the
story which symbolizes some kind of philosophical relations so da ….. Chinese master
utilizes mirror as the symbol of human intuition and uh…. Two masters have met….
Two masters idea vanishes and only one reality is maintained….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: So when they meet face
to face, they are in reality, that’s the real….. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: So this is the
process of explanation [?]…. So the real situation such kind of intuition
vanishes and there is just reality itself. [4:46]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: This intuition, is
it something that we that we can kind of unders … is it something we can
understand ourselves and think about … or does it just happen… is it a very natural…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: So intuition is
different from thinking, so da …we should explain such problem on the basis of
ANS, and when SNS is stronger, we are skillful to think. Therefore, in that
case, we are skillful to consider philosophical problems on the basis of
idealism, but when PNS is stronger the people usually be sensitive. In that
case, people think philosophical problems on the basis of material world.
[5:55]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So da…. we have
tendency that when our SNS is stronger we are prone to be spiritual, and if our
PNS is stronger, we are prone to be materialistic. So those two states are
different from Buddhist situation. In the Buddhist situation, SNS and PNS have
the equal strength. In that case, plus minus zero, then we can notice the existence
of reality. [6:54]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So European
philosophies and Buddhist philosophies should think about utilizing such [unclear
– something like “uh… simile”]. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So in
Euorpean civilization, there is body and mind, but in Indian philosophy, our
ANSs are balanced…. so such is described “plus minus zero”, then we can grasp
reality directly. [7:41]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So practicing zazen is
making our ANS balanced, and then, we can grasp reality directly. So not consideration,
not perception, but just sitting, keeping the posture regularly, then we can
experience reality itself, directly. That is the practice of zazen. And therefore,
practice of zazen is the central importance in Buddhist philosophy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[8:26] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: And what is the
relationship, then, between intuition and this balanced state?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Ah…so da… when ANS
balanced, function of autonomic…[correcting himself] function of SNS and
function of PNS become equal, so such situation is like plus minus zero, and
such situation of plus minus zero is just the basis of reality. [9:15]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Therefore by practicing
zazen, we can utilize practice of zazen, we can live in the reality. The
reality is situation of plus minus zero. [9:36]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: I see. So this
situation of plus minus zero, is the same as the situation of reality, of the
universe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes, yes, that’s it.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: So we’re in plus
minus zero and reality is plus minus zero. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes, yes. [9:53]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: And then where does
intuition come from? Is that, is that, part of reality [???] does that come
from inside each person?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Ah, so da…. reality
comes {“from” seems implied by not said} the equality between strength of SNS and
strength of PNS. [10:14]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: That’s .. intuition
comes…. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: They’re, they’re…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes. So intuition is
beyond consideration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: Right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Beyond sense
perception.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: aha<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: ummm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: And is it an
individual thing? Do individuals kind of generate their own intuition, or is it
a kind of a universal… ?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Ah..so… therefore
in European philosophy, we do not revere intuition, and sometimes we think that
intuition is very dangerous. Therefore, before deciding something, we should be
more considerable, but Buddhism insists different theory, and true decision
comes from our intuition, not from consideration, not from sense perception. [11:25]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When our ANSs are
balanced, then we can grasp the truth directly, intuitively. That is the theory
of Buddhism. Therefore, Buddhism revere the balanced state, and when our ANSs
are balanced, we can reflect the truth intuitively. [11:53]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: …and we reflect the
truth intuitively… the truth exists in reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: I see. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: so da…. the
universe is truth itself. [12:07]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: Ah ha…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: So if we … make
identify {perhaps he intended “identical”} our mental wave with the universal
wave, we can listen to the universal voice [light chuckle] {my impression is he
is amused by this analogy with radio signals}<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[12:24]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: ah ha… great…great…
When we do that, can we listen to it kind of consciously? Can we do it in our
men[tal]… do we get a mental … can we actually recognize it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Ahhh yes…
therefore, sitting spine straight vertically, we are having balanced state of
ANS then the wave from the universe come into our body and mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: ah… and where does
the wave from the universe… where does that originate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: It is fact. [13:02]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: uh huh… it exists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Universe has such
function. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: I see. Is this… is
intuition… prajna… the word prajna… is that separate to the word dharma? You
know we talk about the universal law and universal rule. Is…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Therefore balanced
ANS is the wave of the universe. Therefore when human beings make their ANS
balanced, then they can listen to the broadcasting from the universe. [13:52]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: right.. and the
broadcasting from the universe is truth, it’s reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes, yes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: well that’s very
good, thank you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: So the Buddhist
philosophy is not belief but philosophical fact. Therefore, I think all human
beings should study Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism can never be [unclear] but
philosophy itself. [14:25]. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because in the case of
Buddhism, that is nothing to believe in. The Buddhist theory is fact itself. Therefore,
we should not believe in anything. We should find the existence of Buddhism
itself. [14:55]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: We believe in
reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: …like that… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Yes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: It’s not that… we
don’t believe in a particular idea, we believe in….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: ah…We do not need
to believe any idea [15:12]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: uh huh…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: umm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: I’m sorry.. one
last question.. how do the precepts relate to, you know, our intuition?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: ah..so da…. when I want
to explain such situation, I usually use very wide pasture. And in the pasture,
ox and horse are playing very pleasantly. But if they over the fences, the
outside is very dangerous. Therefore, without getting out from the fence, is
very important condition to make ox and horses safe. [16:15]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: right..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: umm… so precept is
such kind of face… fence… therefore we should not get outside of the fence,
that is the precepts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: I see…. Occasionally
there are times when we have to act…sometimes we do something that goes against
the words of the precepts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: Ah yes…. Therefore,
in such case we should come back to the pasture hastily.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: Hastily…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: [chuckle] {of
amused confirmation}<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P:And usually the
precepts and the truth in reality they should kind of be… they should … uh
conform to each other… they should be… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: uhh… Precepts is
first step. And first having the precepts, but it is rather difficult to follow
the precepts. So we make our effort and gradually we will get ability to follow
the precepts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: I see…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: So precepts is the
first fess… fence… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">P: yes…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">G: umm. And breaking
the precepts is common for human beings. Therefore, we should make our effort
to follow the… play… inside the fences. Then we can have freedom, even though
we are living on the earth. [18:08]</span></div>
Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-4739945668716309732017-09-02T16:03:00.001-07:002017-09-02T16:03:29.818-07:00Facebook DiariesI've been spending some time in the Soto Zen FB group and occasionally inspired to contribute a few things, well, I like. I am capturing some here to have them under one roof with my other ramblings. In the order FB chose .<br />
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Zen is a method, similar to the scientific method, a tool kit for coming to understand what is (dharma), and how my interaction with what is informs my sense of suffering as a human. Shikantaza, the precepts, and a few other items are very useful tools in the tool kit. That is basically it. Any other 'stuff'; ordination, sects, enlightenment, etc... has nothing, fundamentally, to do with 'it'.</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10155346212580692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="">July 3</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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I just read a story about the ex cop in Japan who is acknowledged to have the largest collection of Hello Kitty stuff. Spends a huge part of his income on the collection. His wife says it's okay "everyone has to make their mark on the world." This is certainly a concept I struggle with. I find an urge to make a mark, to be recognized socially, lurking in many parts of my week. Usually it's a worry that I have not, rather than the satisfaction that in some small action I have.<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
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As a partial antidote for this 'self' centered ennui, I contemplate the millions of people who live each day completely out of any spot light other than, perhaps, their family circle. All the people who have gone before that are unknown to me. And in 5 billion years when the expanding, dying sun engulfs the Earth, the millions upon millions of unknown lives, with mine, for which any trace at all will disappear except for the bits of atom that constituted them, cast across this patch of an infinite universe. But such grand poesy also falls short.</div>
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In the end the better solution may be to side step all that. Just reach out at night and adjust the pillow....step off the 100 foot pole... get on with it...give someone a smile and let them wonder what's up...かな....</div>
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I self identify as Soto Zen, mainly because that is the lineage in which I took jukai. However I often see posts in the group where some says "we in Soto Zen XYZ" and I think it very much misses the mark as I understand it, or their statements sure don't include the way I think. Perhaps this is just the impact of the unskillful "we" rather than the more honest "I", but it makes me wonder how could one identify a Soto zen practitioner by characteristics? Is it a mater of the p<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">articular way someone practices, or what they claim to believe, or simply an issue of functional lineage? What are the 'unmistakable marks' of Soto?</span></div>
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A la "The Hunting of the Snark"</div>
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... "Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again<br />
The five unmistakable marks<br />
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,<br />
The warranted genuine Snarks.</div>
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Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,<br />
Which is meager and hollow, but crisp:<br />
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,<br />
With a flavor of Will-o-the-wisp.</div>
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Its habit of getting up late you'll agree<br />
That it carries too far, when I say<br />
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,<br />
And dines on the following day.</div>
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The third is its slowness in taking a jest.<br />
Should you happen to venture on one,<br />
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:<br />
And it always looks grave at a pun.</div>
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The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,<br />
Which it constantly carries about,<br />
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes--<br />
A sentiment open to doubt.</div>
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The fifth is ambition. It next will be right<br />
To describe each particular batch:<br />
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,<br />
And those that have whiskers, and scratch."</div>
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There are two types of people in this world: Those who have gotten past dualistic thinking, and ...</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10155167626185692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="">May 11</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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I don't want to look at Zen as a guide for how I should *appear*. I want to be honest, and sometimes I am honestly angry, or rude, or snarky, or sad....or supportive or self sacrificing. My hope is that my Zen practice might change who I am, so that I honestly become someone less angry, or rude, or snarky, or sad. Zen as my marrow rather than Zen as my clothing.</div>
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I seem to have a choice in zazen. Look with purpose at a fixed point so that my vision field is normal, but this feels like I'm doing more than just sitting; or let my eyes relax, which results in a cross eyed image, which seems to give rise more quickly to day dreaming. Does anyone else experience this choice? What do you recommend?</div>
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"Zazen is a kind of habit, and it is necessary for us to establish the daily habit without fail. It is not necessary for us to get the so-called enlightenment. Because the so-called enlightenment is just a Romantic story, which many children love. But Buddhism is never a Romantic story, but it is just Action. It is just sitting. It is just Practice. It is just Reality." Gudo Nishijima</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10151712535100692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target=""><abbr class="_5ptz" data-shorten="1" data-utime="1371667991" style="border-bottom: none; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial;" title="Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at 1:53pm"><span class="timestampContent" id="js_1fm" style="font-family: inherit;">June 19, 2013</span></abbr></a><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><a class="_5pcq" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=106224666074625" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-Texas/106224666074625" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Austin</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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Would it be useful if Zen centers tried an "experiment in thus-ness" by declaring, for example, "because we are not free from picking and choosing, the zendo leader sits on a specially designated cushion", "because we are tied to ideas of hierarchy we ask you only to wear rakusu of the approved style and color", "because we are afraid of our passions, please don't wear bright clothing in the Zendo"?</div>
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Can Zen survive if the institutionalized contradictions of basic principles is not acknowledged?</div>
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Is there doubt that institutionalized contradictions exist?</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10152652707855692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target=""><abbr class="_5ptz" data-shorten="1" data-utime="1408501114" style="border-bottom: none; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial;" title="Tuesday, August 19, 2014 at 9:18pm"><span class="timestampContent" id="js_1fj" style="font-family: inherit;">August 19, 2014</span></abbr></a><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><a class="_5pcq" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=106224666074625" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-Texas/106224666074625" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Austin</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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We've been discussing precepts a lot lately. Today I was struck with a more fundamental question... regardless of what a precept means, what does it imply if I find I haven't kept one, or several (regardless of what I understand them to be)? I'm quite certain that I have failed in some precept or another. Am I in trouble? A poor Buddhist? No big deal? Try again tomorrow? What is the meaning of vowing to abide by the precepts?</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10152391769475692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target=""><abbr class="_5ptz" data-shorten="1" data-utime="1398613109" style="border-bottom: none; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial;" title="Sunday, April 27, 2014 at 10:38am"><span class="timestampContent" id="js_39b" style="font-family: inherit;">April 27, 2014</span></abbr></a><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><a class="_5pcq" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=106041646094495" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cedar-Park-Texas/106041646094495" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Cedar Park</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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Every day bodies are turned to ash or laid in boxes in the ground.<br />
Everyday babies emerge from wombs and draw first breath.<br />
And yet some Zen "masters" say that birth and death can be "overcome" or "escaped from" and spread platitudes like "ultimate reality is free from birth and dying." Can anyone explain the skill/truth in such apparent lies?</div>
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I can see cultivating an attitude that has no interest or clinging to such events, but that is far different, and just a semantic trick, from denying the events occur.</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10155115442075692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="">April 23</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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"There once was a temple with long hallways and new students from many different places. Everyone walked down the halls differently, some on the left, some on the right, some down the middle. It was hard to get anything done because of the many collisions and near misses. There was lots of grumbling and excited conversation of who was right and wrong for how they walked in the halls.</div>
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The abbot of the temple called everyone together and asked everyone to walk on the left. Som<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">e folks wanted to walk on the right, but he said 'please', and they said okay. After a week or so getting used to the new method, things got much easier in the temple. Few crashes, less excitement.</span></div>
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When new students came to the temple, as part of their introduction, the Abbot would mention people walk on the left in the hallways, and could they please also do this, telling them about the history of the temple's decision over a comfortable tea. Some new students would forget and walk on the right, but eventually got into the habit of walking on the left. Students did well, and the temple was successful.</div>
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A few years later, the abbot died. A senior student took over the job of introducing new students to the temple. He would tell them it is a rule of the temple that everyone must walk on the left. The temple soon withered and died. No one cared to practice there."</div>
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-from the wet goose chronicles-</div>
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'Licchavi Vimalakirti came to the foot of that tree and said to me, ’Reverend Sariputra, this is not the way to absorb yourself in contemplation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that neither body nor mind appear anywhere in the triple world. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest all ordinary behavior without forsaking cessation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest the nature of an ordinary person without abandoning your cultivated spiritual nature.'<br />
Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra</div>
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I might do well not to think of impermanence as a sad, or lofty, or centering, or revealing idea. It's just a convenient fact, useful to keep in mind.</div>
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I might regret stating this, but....</div>
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Zazen doesn't cause anything, per se. There is no "zen charge up" battery charging while I sit. It is a practice. It is the practicing of something.</div>
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Do not see it as subtleties or magic. Do not see it as special robes or piercing insights. Zen is putting on a shoe.</div>
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<span class="_5paw _14zs" data-ft="{"tn":"j"}" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="fsm fwn fcg" style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="_5pcq" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10155070250750692/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="">April 10</a></span></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" role="presentation" style="font-family: inherit;"> · </span><br />
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Of course there is a goal. Perhaps one way to express it is the goal of sitting to practice not chasing any particular thought. Which somewhat paradoxically includes not chasing the goal of not chasing.</div>
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It's nothing special."</div>
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Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-31256558904621623332016-02-21T07:52:00.001-08:002016-02-21T08:04:08.042-08:00Material Dharma<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
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A talk by Gudo Nishijima randomly came up on my play list the other day and provoked some thoughts I find interesting.<br />
<br />
He said, Buddha insisted there was one reality.<br />
<br />
I completely enjoy this idea. There is only one truth going on and each person has a different view of it. In expressing those views it appears that truth is a matter of belief. Rather it is a matter of observation. This may be a difference between, roughly speaking, religion and science.<br />
<br />
I once had the idea that becoming enlightened is rather like turning on the porch light at night for the first time. It's not that there's anything new to see when the light comes on, it was all there prior, but now one can see it. And it is mundane.<br />
<br />
I do not think there is a soul. There is nothing extra-corporeal that lingers after death. Rather like one proposal I saw in science mags recently, consciousness is a 4th state of matter. Matter in the universe has characteristics that cause it to assemble into conscious things under certain conditions. We happen to be the outcome of a series of those conditions.<br />
<br />
But neither is it as elegant as 'natural selection' makes it sound. I don't like that phrase. It anthropomorphizes what is inherent possibility. There is no 'grand design' coming into its own. Things that survive do, and those that can't don't. Given a slightly different set of conditions, those things that are not now, might well be. There is no 'selecting' going on.<br />
<br />
So there is one truth. The dharma.<br />
<br />
Nishijima talks a lot about idealism and materialism. Roughly speaking, I think materialism is this one truth. But materialism is also an idea (part of idealism), so this is where things get a little tricky.<br />
<br />
Setting aside (or rather allowing) for a moment the fact that discussion of concepts is by its very nature idealistic, reality is materialistic. As I understand the word, the truth of reality is the truth of materials. We and our consciousness are one of those materials. Our thinking is material. There is not one thought conscious or subconscious that occurs that is not the result of some material chemical action in our bodies (in our brains). But, from this material truth, idealism arises.<br />
<br />
I think humans are uniquely idealistic. It is very hard to test, I think, whether other animals have 'ideas' per se. There is such a tendency in us to anthropomorphize things (thus attributing emotions to things like 'angry' weather and 'calm' seas), it is difficult to judge if a dog has 'ideas'. A very sophisticated neural network could look like it is 'thinking' about ideas, but quite simply be responding robotically to stimuli. Indeed some thinkers suppose that perhaps even humans don't have free will at all, and are only responding to stimuli in a predictable way that could be copied with the right computer set up with the right pre-conditions.<br />
<br />
Regardless of whether it is truly free thought or not I think one can characterize ideas as those things which are self experienced as free, and go on further to say that there is a marked difference in this activity in humans verses other animals.<br />
<br />
I think that there may be some 'idealism' going on in other higher mammals such as gorillas and dolphins. If so they may, to some extent fall into the same bucket as we humans which I am attempting to describe here.<br />
<br />
So there is one truth based on facts of materialism and this is the dharma.<br />
<br />
Because of the specific nature of our material reality (i.e. how our brains are structured), humans are idealistic, and this brings suffering. This is a bit of a recast of the first nobel truth. And, I think it is an important difference.<br />
<br />
The less a living organism is 'thinking' (lets use the proxy sentient, for this) the less it suffers. Even sentients might not be the right word here. I think dogs are very sentient, but I think most of their behavior is materialistic. They are just responding to stimuli and don't have a strong conscious experience of situations. At least not anywhere near as strong as humans. They do not sit around pondering, for example, what the semantic difference might be between 'idealism' and 'materialism'. When they get an itch, they scratch, and they don't think 'my, I've got an itch, I should scratch it. Could this be a Zika mosquito bite?' while they do so.<br />
<br />
So I with GB has formed his first noble truth as 'For humans, life is suffering'. And in this I embrace the more general meaning of suffering, which is a type of discontent. This discontent comes from idealism. Thinking (of the type I am trying to express here - not just any brain activity) is idealism.<br />
<br />
Therefore, contemplating materialism is idealism.<br />
<br />
Our idealism gives rise to suffering. The various ideas we get about what's going on bring us to be discontent.<br />
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We cannot escape idealism. It is our nature.<br />
<br />
And this is where my current concepts appear t diverge from Nishijima-roshi's. I think the 'purpose' of zazen, or perhaps better said as its fundamental benefit, is a balance of our idealistic nature verses our materialism.<br />
<br />
In zazen we express our materialism concretely by simply sitting and letting it be. The sounds the temperature on our skin, the comfort (or not) in our muscles, the smells, the sights, are all our materialistic nature 'manifesting'. Usually in life our idealism dominates our awareness. We operate as all ideals with a few headlines now and then from the real material worlds. In zazen we can 'see' our idealism manifest with our materialism. They both can sit there manifesting without us chasing one or the other with more ideas.....sometimes and for short periods. Then ideas arise. But we can practice not chasing them.<br />
<br />
In this, is the one reality accessible? All I can say at this point is I think so. The reality is we are idealistic. Ideas are not truth, not the dharma, but the dharma includes us as idealists. Ideas can express the truth. That is there original purpose I think. We humans, came to the ability of forming stories about the world around us, which afforded us survival. The more correct the stories are the more useful they might be to our continued survival. But we are also in a place in many societies where survival is so inherently built into to fabric we live in that off-ideas (errors) do not bring quick death, and so can be perpetuated.<br />
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We cannot directly see the truth beyond seeing our materialism and knowing it is colored with idealism. We can see the power of our idealism to color our experience of the world, and strive to 'dial down' the weight we give it in our lives.<br />
<br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-19890022191432109712015-09-19T09:01:00.001-07:002015-09-19T09:01:32.179-07:00Grundabwesendenangst and Alpha bits. I just saw a post from a friend that included an interesting graphic related to the impact an early, clained to be flawed, medical 'study' had on the anti-vaxer movement. <br/><br/>I've blogged before about how there seems to be a instintual drive in humans to come up with a story to explain things. When we get it right it's very helpful to our existance. <br/><br/>The anti-vaxers may not as a whole be 'wanting to believe' in a medical conspiracy, or if they are, it may be driven by a more primative fear of not being able to come up with a more believable story. <br/><br/>I've decided a name for this basic fear of there not being a reason. To riff off of classic, cliche, Freudian terms it's cobbled roughly in German as Grundabwesendenangst. <br/><br/>This primal urge to explain in a way we can accept and relate to drives the anti-vax movement, the government-did-it theories of 9/11, and belief in gods. It is so much easier to think of an agency, whether it be a god or a kabal of evit pharmacutical companies that cause badness, than to comtemplate a more complex, apparently random, chain of cause and effect that brings disaster. <br/><br/>When fears point to some large agent, it is an echoe, a proxy, of our need for the alpha leader in a tribe. When we characterize the alpha we have hopes of relating to it. Overlay the US legal penchant and we can call it evil an hope to erradicate it, but this still causes the theory of agency to arise. <br/><br/>We can't think of how a small group halfway around the world could decided to drive planes into our buildings. We can't hope to relate to them as alphas. We don't understand how to lay on our backs and submissively show our bellies so they will not hurt us. We don't know how to engage them in an alpha challenge..... so it can't be them. It must have been our own government with whom we have a much more definable, comprehendable agency relationship. <br/><br/>Tribal instinct allows us to accept evil as long as it is alpha evil we can relate to in agency. <br/><br/>I'm not saying this is an absolute, but it is a strong influence on how we, how I, might tend to behave. I assume some primative parts of me are always on the lookout for the comfort of alpha agency. That's why even in Zen, the sangha wants "the master", and why contemplating "just don't know" can be liberating (and extremely nerve racking). When there is an agent boss, there is reason and our Grundabwesendenagnst is calmed. <br/><br/><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-52007822275655469612015-08-08T08:08:00.001-07:002015-08-08T08:08:28.890-07:00There Is No Screen. "You" are Jello.<div class="separator" style="text-align: center; clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-52OEAPFWdyM/VcYbafvp_LI/AAAAAAAAATQ/oHoQ_OcEdkM/s817/Photo%25252020150808100818246.jpg" target="_blank" style=""><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-52OEAPFWdyM/VcYbafvp_LI/AAAAAAAAATQ/oHoQ_OcEdkM/s500/Photo%25252020150808100818246.jpg" id="blogsy-1439046506945.64" class="alignnone" width="500" height="584" alt=""></a></div> <br/><br/> Lately I have been trying to comprehend my consiousness, and have been churning mainly on the visual side of it. When I open my eyes I have this sense of seeing a "world out there" in which my head is positioned. <br/><br/>Since the dawn of photography, I'll hazard the guess, people think of consious experience as a sort of camera box. It is a sort of Pacific Rim (the movie) "Jaeger" model. There is equipment which gathers visual images and projects them via lenses (old school) or flat screen TVs (new school) to a 'person' type object living between the ears that percieves them. There are countless movies and pictures depicting this model. <br/><br/>Those models are, of course, an onion that can never be peeled. If one accepts a humanoid consciousness that is within ones brain percieving all the sensory input, then what is going on in that humanoids head? As the person said (I think), "It's turtles all the way down from there."<br/><br/>The truth is much more bizarre. All the signals that my brain processes that appear to me as me sitting in a particular place, seeing and hearing certain things with a strong sense of locus, of specific location, do not actually exist themselves in any fixed locus.... sort of. <br/><br/>I have the impression that the sights I see are data that is being captured by equipment (eyes) and transmitted (by nerves) to "me". I have the impression "I" inside my head have aview through biological portholes on what is going on out thier. Likewise for hearing, touch, a sense of attittude (airplane lingo- pitch, yaw and roll), and so on. I have the sense, in the simplest form, that, e.g., my eyes are a long tunnel, letting sights "out there" get to me "in here". <br/><br/>What blows my mind these days, and is very hard to mentally grasp, is that that is absolutley a false analogy. There is no projector room in my head. There is no team of little "mission control" people veiwing data on screens and speakers and providing the experience of "me." The brain is, poetically speaking, jello. It is a soggy blob of neurons. The physical reality of "me" is a tangle of bio-circuits with electrical potentials and chemicals actions going on at a furious rate. <br/><br/>Think of this.... This experience I so earnestly feel as real and in 3D is truely just an arrangement of chemicals and potentials in a pot of goo. <br/><br/>I experience nothing "directly". This "me" that I feel is just electrical potentials. That is why there are optical and audio illusions. I have some limited sense organs that convert physical phenomena into bio-electrical signals, which come into a pot of jelly that manifests and experience of beingness.<br/><br/>If all my inputs were shut down (ala Cat Stevens, "If I ever loose my eyes, all my colors, all run dry"), would "I" even exist, I wonder. <br/><br/>This begins to resonate for me with the notion from the ancients that "subject and object" are both in me. The place in which I write this is truly a mystery. I am an amazing manifiestation of signals. What "I see" is not projected on a screen. I am the electric field inside. Yikes!<br/><br/> <br/><br/> <br/><br/><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-69705605852891529352015-06-07T09:11:00.001-07:002015-06-07T09:11:08.503-07:00Future Past Theories Think of a pan of BBs tilted.<br/><br/>Think of that small wave front on the beach that children love to chase. <br/><br/>Think of a line of domino's with one now falling. <br/><br/>Think of a room filled with mouse traps set with ping pong balls and one just sprung. <br/><br/>Now is a cascade of cause/outcome. A wave-front of instant coming into being and dropping away.<br/><br/>'Past' is a theory of what has happened but it has no nominal existance. It is not there. <br/><br/>Now drop the pan of BB's analogy. <br/><br/>Drop the domino's analogy. <br/><br/>Drop the ping pong balls. <br/><br/>Really only the beach wavefront is close. <br/><br/>One can imangine the myriad and unknown influences. <br/><br/>Think of how quantum physics tells us some outcomes are not predicatable. What happens can only be known when it happens, not before. <br/><br/>That is the future. <br/><br/>Also not nominal, non-existant, not foreseeable<br/><br/>The 'future' is a theory now of what might be, but it is not yet there to walk into. <br/><br/> And yet, thank God, I can still make coffee. <br/><br/><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-69450906588535517362015-06-07T08:36:00.001-07:002015-06-07T08:36:21.097-07:00Not Not Saying it's 'survival of the fitest' brings some sort of judgement into it. We tend to anthropomorphisize (?) with observations such as 'the giraff developed a long neck in order to reach higher leaves.' There is no will in evolution. The things that continue, do so because conditions support/allow/dictate. There seems to be no English word that does not carry some judgement flavor (support/allow/dictate). There is no choice available to a thing in its continuing or not. Quite simply the universe demands my existence. <br/><br/><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-60536012888830529372015-06-06T10:12:00.001-07:002015-06-06T10:18:50.379-07:00A Decidedly Strange Story Rules are related to decision. When one encounters a rule, the presumption is they will consider their pending action and decide to do it or not, depending on how it aligns with the rule. <br/><br/>Rules depend on decision.<br/><br/>If one could explain to a dog there is a rule about tail wagging it would be pointless. A dog wags its tail based on the circumstance it is exposed to, not because it decides to wag its tail.<br/><br/>In this sense, the precepts should not and cannot be rules because decision does not play a significant role in how a person actually behaves. <br/><br/>Decision, quite literally, is a thin layer over a largely automatic and independent brain core. 'Decision' is likely just another word for what in a mind acts as 'story'.<br/><br/>I think 'story' should really be the name of what humans have in the brain that is unique, and perhaps is slightly shared by other higher sentients. 'Story' was an evolutionary differentiator. It became a capability in early humans and because it allowed early humans to put 2 and 2 together and come up with a prediction of future outcome, it provided for better survival, and so got 'amplified'.<br/><br/>Story provided early humans with an effective logic such as 'When the sky is a certain color and the wind just so, rain will soon follow' and 'When I rub one stick into another it releases the fire inside', even more so.<br/><br/>The catch is that our stories feel real. They are constructed from the same brain processes that deal with real sensory perception, and so when the story strikes, when a brain starts running a story, it can seem as if the contents of the story are actually playing out. Recent studies have started to identify that the way the brain reacts when one is truly immersed in a good book, is the same, or very similar, to how it reacts when responding to 'real life.' <br><br>That, I think, is the curse that Buddha was attempting remedy. Suffering is the 'story' part of our brain reacting to the world around us. Objectively, suffering does not exist in any particular set of conditions, but the story our brain creates from those conditions, the predictions of the future in the story, actually does trouble us.<br/><br/> <br/><br/>Similarly decisions feel very real, as if they do impact our behavior. I cannot claim they have no impact, but I do think the impact they feel like they have is more story than truth. Largely, decisions are a story we tell ourselves. <br><br/><br/><br>I think decision does play a role in changed behavior... in a sense. I think of it more as 'training' than 'decision'. "I will never again xyz' is decision that I think does not work, particularly if it is in light of "Every day in the past I have xyz-ed". <br><br>The more effective form of change through reflections is something like 'Whenever abc occurs I tend to xyz'. This logic accepts that my tendance to xyz is a behaviour, a reaction to stimuli, rather than a 'decision.'<br><br>When the story of ourselves is counter to what is really going on in ourselves, we start to loose any hope of real change, and are left with only seeming change. Overt or hidden hypocrisy. Because our story and our feelings do indeed originate from two different parts of the brain, we can indeed have two different influences running in our 'mind'. e.g., fact:'I am really angry at Joe' and story:'I am not the sort of person who becomes angry.'<br><br>When our story more nearly matches reality, we have a better chance of affecting who we are in total. e.g., fact:'I am really angry at Joe' and story:'Wow, I am really angry at Joe, and this is what I am going to do'. When we recognize our selves in this way we have a better chance of taking the bull by the ring in its nose and leading it. <br/><br/> <br/><br/>Just like feelings, it must be true that the story which occurs is in some sense inherent programming. It is not something we invent each time in the moment. It too is set in the configuration of neurons, but it is plastic. Somehow we can train it, and yes in some ways that training occurs through decision... the story of our story<br/><br/> <br/><br/>I think that is the real value of meditation. To rest our stories enough to see our feelings, our reactions, going by in real time. or perhaps it is development of a third sense which can see both story and feeling/reaction occuring. A meta-story perhaps?<br/><br/> <br/><br/><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-84996105077191977212015-06-06T09:48:00.002-07:002015-06-06T09:55:31.325-07:00Karma Quip<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DYCOWkIAO4k/VXMlh1us97I/AAAAAAAAASs/68rbxWCCpo0/s420/Photo%25252020150606115325819.jpg" target="_blank" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DYCOWkIAO4k/VXMlh1us97I/AAAAAAAAASs/68rbxWCCpo0/s420/Photo%25252020150606115325819.jpg" id="blogsy-1433609636971.202" class="aligncenter" alt="" width="420" height="294"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-align: center;"> </div><p style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"> </p>This is not how Karma works. There is no "judgement" machine working in the world that tracks good and bad and then assigns a just outcome to a person. The universe does not pick and choose. It just functions..... cause linking to affect linking to cause... a wave front of instances tumbling 'forward' in time.<br/><br/> <br/><br/>So what's the lesson of karma? Why worry? Why care? Because when I am experiencing choice (whatever that might really be) I can consider what sort of wave front I would like to start. But even this smacks of picking and choosing, doesn't it?<br/><br/> <br/><br/>Perhaps its more a concept of harmonic vibrations ("new age" apologies). When one string on an instrument vibrates in harmony with another, it is not by choice, but by natural inclination. It simply *is* in harmony with the other. The more I can relax (?) into a natural self, the more I will vibrate in harmony with the universe around me. Simply by not doing, and not-not doing I become harmonic. <br/><br/> <br/><br/>When I am discordant, the lesson of karma observes the bad waves can come crashing back to me. But the lesson of karma is not that picking and choosing yields the better outcome. <br/><br/> <br/><br/>The slogan above should perhaps be, then, "Have the day headed your way". <br/><br/> <br/><br/> <br/><br/> <br/><br/><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-41818735054634405722015-01-07T13:00:00.003-08:002015-01-07T13:00:31.053-08:00Physical Thought<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Not a single thought occurs without a change in the physical structure of the brain in either the wires or the juice.</span></div>
Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-60577522706547363492014-09-11T17:52:00.001-07:002014-09-11T17:52:54.782-07:00The Better Enso Leaves a Gap<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=14/09/11/678.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/14/09/11/s_678.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='212' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />While browsing facebook I stumbled on a wall with a post with this picture. An enso. More commonly done with an ink brush. Most ensos have a small gap. Not all. The post I stumbled upon invited a poem or a proverb to be added, so I guess that woke up my muse after a long work day. <br /><br />Because of the clean line on the vibrant background I saw the enso for the first time as a line, rather than a circle, and the following thoughts came tumbling out. I don't know if this is a unique perspective or not. I've never read up on the 'meaning of the enso'. I only know that I have always thought of the enso as circle rather than a line. <br /><br />I now see the enso as a simplified metaphor of duality and individuality. Regarding individuality - I might feel like I am unique because of this shell that defines me, this body, or even my self-concepts, but in reality I am connected to the whole universe (via that little gap in the circle), and even more, I am the same stuff as the universal. The only think that defines me is the tenuous line that makes the limit I declare of myself. Regarding duality - If I see the circle not as forming a new thing, but really just a line within what was already there (imagine a string dropped on the ground that almost touches its tail). How can I say "in" or "out". The "in" is part of the all and the "out" is part of the all. I *can* say "in" or "out" based on my choice/my judgement (represented by the line), but in the enso picture it is clear how meaningless the distinction is. <br /><br />Thanks to Sunyata Purnamadah whose wall I had stumbled on. <br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-45907720172494756412014-07-20T09:27:00.001-07:002014-07-20T09:27:39.371-07:00Straightening up Indra's Net in a Neighborhood Near YouIndra's Net is a metaphor of the interconnectedness of everything. I accept this as true, and I think science supports this also. Nothing exists in isolation. Another nuanced aspect of the Indra metaphor is that everything is reflected in everything else. I also accept this as true. I think the Buddhist theory of dependent origination is in line with this. As Browning said, "as the wine must taste of it's own grapes". <br /><br />There is never any real stasis. All is changing and connected. <br /><br />What I see sometimes in myself is that I would like to imagine that I am not part of this connectedness. I say "we are all one" but in the next breath I might say "I do not abuse intoxicants" and wax on to ponder if I should give money to someone I have reason to believe might use it to buy intoxicants. <br /><br />I hear of some behavior I judge as bad, and think, 'I don't do that'. Here Indra's net crashes into a notion of independence. If all things are connected and reflect all others, then we all murder, abuse, intoxicate etc... There is no escaping this. <br /><br />Using the buddhist precepts does not extract me from Indra's net. They simply allow me to keep my part of it 'clean', or perhaps 'working well'. <br /><br />Hopefully not stretching the net analogy too far, one can imagine the proper functioning and improper functioning of the net. A net design in harmony, and one discordant. This idea is criticized by the obvious picking and chosing, and so probably needs revision, but it is useful for the point at hand. <br /><br />Or maybe not (knot!). Maybe I can dispense with 'good' functioning in Indra's net and simply note all is connected. <br /><br />Falling back to the basic theory of Buddha that there is suffering and presumable we humans wish to remove it, then Indra's web is another expression of Karma. What wiggles here, wiggles there. And worse of all, the suffering acts I bring to the world get reflected back to me by the whole world. A rotten pearl in the net is reflected back by all other pearls to that self same rotten pearl. <br /><br />Here, I think, is the wisdom and the benefit of precepts. Do my best to keep my part of the net clean and tidy, and that will *tend* to be what is reflected back. The humbling part of the net is that regardless of all my do gooding, I am connected to, and have an influence on, murder, abuse and all other unpleasant human activity. <br /><br />The 'problem', or perhaps less judgingly, the 'fact' is that any good I do that supports another person can be linked to any bad that person does. <br /><br />If I give a junkie a dollar and she buys a fix, have I broken a precept? If I pay my taxes allowing the government to fulfill a grant to the Boston philharmonic orchestra such that the third chair violin can afford Montesory school for his wife's brothers son so that a teacher gets paid and buys a drink, and in drunken anger kick their dog, have I broken a precept? The difference, one might argue, is my responsibility which is dependent on my reasonable ability to predict. This may be a Western legal argument in disquise.... about the "reasonable" person. <br /><br />I think the theory of Indra's web puts an end to this arguement, and potential self torture. If everything is connected then I am equally guilty or absolved in each case. True buddhism suggests I should forget about that detail and just strive to always mitigate suffering as best I can understand it in the real moment (vs. the hypothetical moment). The precepts are a great guide, but not rulebook, for doing so. <br /><br />I vow to keep my corner of Indra's net as clean and suffering free as I can. <br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-23258921102019811152014-06-28T21:23:00.003-07:002014-06-28T21:23:56.908-07:00EnlightenmentEnlightenment is just turning on the porch light.<br />
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"Oh, that's what that is. Silly me."Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-23347592103660882402014-05-31T09:59:00.002-07:002014-05-31T09:59:47.789-07:00Leggo my Ego - 'Cause It's Not Even There<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It seems that the Western language of Buddhism is stuck in some fundamental ways in a psychological vocabulary long extinct. I easily read 1 to 5 bits of Buddhist ephemera a day (blog posts, Facebook comments, etc...) that use the word 'ego' as if it means something.<br />
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I think that ultimately Buddha, and the many of the great leaders of Zen thought were striving to understand the human 'self'. The self-experience. How the human perception of the world gives rise to suffering. How I interact with my surroundings, how my person was informed by past events, that gives rise to my 'now.' Buddhism is a science, but importantly, a practical science, not a science of wild un-experienceable theories. I love the phrase 'natural philosophy' so I'll marry it with Buddhism. Buddhism, and I think most specifically Zen, is the attempt to really probe human experience as a practical reality, which must admit the role of mind. Zen strives to unravel mind, to step outside mind. To SEE mind.<br />
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Therefore Zen does not look well on theories alone. Zen trips up theories in subtle and important ways. "Pain is only the mind a work, I have transcended it" -- until you stub your toe and cry "ouch". You have transcended nothing, Zen teaches.<br />
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Zen-speak is very stuck on ego. But serious Zen practitioners (or perhaps l should be more generous and simply say, practitioners who are striving for the truth in the manner I expound above), should be very careful of the idea-set that has "ego" at its center. Zen is a science, and must move forward with new understandings in how mind works and how "self" is experienced in the body.<br />
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I think the ancients knew well how "things worked" in the human experience. I think the ancients did their best to express what they saw and knew. It think many translations and subsequent teachers using English have completely mis-colored Zen with the idea of Ego.<br />
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Ego was largely invented by Freud and is now largely discredited. It no long has meaning. It was a theory set of how the mind works that is no longer held by most modern technical analysts of the human condition. "Ego" was just a fantasy of Freud that appealed as religion to the tribal lust of a generation. It was not based on scientific method.<br />
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Quoting from io9.com <a href="http://io9.com/why-freud-still-matters-when-he-was-wrong-about-almost-1055800815">"Why Freud Still Matters, When He Was Wrong About Almost Everything</a>" (Emphasis added)<br />
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"Freudian Fallacies</h4>
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The primary trouble with Freud is that, while his ideas appear intriguing and even common sensical, there’s very little empirical evidence to back them up. Modern psychology has produced very little to substantiate many of his claims.</div>
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For instance, there’s no scientific evidence in support of the idea that boys lust after their mothers and hate their fathers. He was totally, utterly wrong about gender. And his notion of “penis envy” is now both laughable and tragic.</div>
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<b><span style="color: #660000;">There’s no proof of the id, ego, or superego.</span></b><span style="color: #222222;"> There’s also no evidence to support the notion that human development proceeds through oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages. Nor that the interference, or arresting, of these stages leads to specific developmental manifestations."</span></div>
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I may do wrong things, and sabotage myself. I may insist "I" exist. I may be drawn to certain false idea's. But it is not because of a pernicious 'ego' acting in me. The brain is a complex and real system of interconnects of matter, of flesh. And, indeed, modern science is beginning to see in demonstrable ways how the brain is not alone in our bodies in informing our experience of self. Nervous and endocrine systems not between my ears are a significant part of experience of 'me'. </div>
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I am not a theory run by some disembodied rule set, which is what Freud's theories essentially described. E.g., where was the seat of the compulsion he described for me to want to kill my father? In which part of the brain was a knot of neurons consistently formed in all peoples to carry this desire? Of course, in fact, there is none. </div>
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Freuds ideas, including Ego, are a story. A well meant fairy tale of red riding hood and the wolf that tasted of the truth but was not indeed the truth. </div>
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It is time for Buddhists to let go the fallacy of 'ego.' The earth is not flat. </div>
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<br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-84061216768204196192014-05-23T05:41:00.001-07:002014-05-23T05:41:40.505-07:00Danger, Will RobinsonI currently think....<br /><br />When certain feeling states or action impulses are identified as (effectively) "sin" people tend to feel shame when they arise and will tend to hide or mask them so as to seem not to have them, rather than "deal" with them. To the extent that such feelings or impulses might be toxic, this behavior seals them under an effective scab of pretending, trapping the poison closer to the self where it eats away and does double damage. <br /><br />When certain feeling states or action impulses are identified as (effectively) common, human occurrences, but which are a little dangerous, I think people will tend to talk about them, deal with them, seek help for them, try to mitigate them. The more they can be open about them, the more quickly they can be expressed (sent out) leaving the safer person behind. <br /><br />The precepts are a list of potentially dangerous activities. Warning posts of what might cause harm to me. I suffer from all of them from time to time. They are not a list of sins. <br /><br /><br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-35790414071878979212014-03-09T14:05:00.002-07:002014-03-09T14:05:33.938-07:00"Marco" .... and how Roshi X made a benevolent fire turtle<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Roshi X is a real person. I only cloud his ID with this
little bit of fun because I am sure I cannot honestly tell how much of my disappointment
is my responsibility vs. his. Sure I feel (more than “believe”) Roshi X
could have done better. So this is a post about feelings, really. This is a
post of how I feel and not about what Roshi
X really did. It seems after coming up with the term Roshi X, I find it is also
an allusion for me to “Racer X”, and, in a similar way to Speed Racer, Roshi X
is a thorn in my side who may, nonetheless, wish only the best for me. </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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My “Buddhist name” is Nankin Rouren (sorry, Melville), but I
haven’t taken that name on fully yet. It is too bittersweet. All the following anger,
sadness and regrets associated with that name embarrass me like a gardener who
is actually fully tangled in vines but tends to talk about the beauty of the clear
and open lotus. Sometimes I think I am a zen mess.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nearly 5 years ago now, I was browsing in a bookstore for
something “uplifting and religious.” Looking for just the right book to help me
feel less alien in the philo-spiritual landscape I saw myself in. I considered
myself Christian, but only in the sense of Jesus Christ Superstar or The Matrix.
I didn’t believe in a man sitting in a floating throne, or divine insemination.
I considered myself a Quaker and had long ago joined a meeting…, I liked
silence, and queries and kindness and simplicity, but I was extremely “lapsed.”
In a cloud of suburban ennui I reached out at random in a book store and picked
up Roshi X’s first book. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Flipping to a random page or two I really liked what I read.
It was accessible. It made sense. It was not chock full of mystical revelations
or saccharin platitudes. I did not have to “just” anything (i.e., “just believe”,
“just know”, “just have faith”, “just realize”). It was written from a certain
level of mud and water that I enjoy so much in Ryokan. And I wallowed happily in
that mud. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So, here was a writer, Roshi X, I could really connect to.
What next? Well, long story a bit shorter, I decided to go to one of his
sesshin’s. I followed the bread crumbs in his book to hook up with the event. I
studied the preliminary instructions dutifully. I wrote all the various notes
up into a guide and shared them out to others on the mailing list for that
year. I even practiced one day of the schedule at home to make sure I would not
go crazy from stilling so much each day. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I went… it was wonderful, the details left for some other
post. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So this was great stuff. I was really hooked. I started
following Roshi X on his blog. People complained different things about Roshi X,
who is a bit of a rebel in the field, and I occasionally became a Roshi X
apologist. I read more of his books. I came to feel his message was important
and worth sharing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Coincident with a new book publication Roshi X was looking
for places to speak. I offered to help him get gigs and get around in my part
of the country. In the same plan, I asked if he could give me jukai. He said
yes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A long season of work ensued. I got the basic sketch of what
was involved with Jukai from info written by Roshi X’s teacher. Found the
instructions for a rakusu. Diligently gathered real rags to make it from. Sewed
and sewed and sewed. Also in this time I used my best project management skills
to find speaking gigs for Roshi X. Called around to bookstores and Zen centers,
and got him booked in at some good locations. So it was all cool, all
wonderful. He was coming, I was going to have jukai. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My rakusu was complete. I pushed to gather authentic props
for the ceremony. I traveled several miles out of town to secure a genuine pine
branch. I needed an image of Buddha, so I painted one… a very large picture (in
all the other mess that has come out of these events, I have no regrets about
creating that picture). I carefully brought my wife and young daughter up to
speed on what was going to be happening to take all the “cult” edge off that I
could. “Daddy is going to be a sort of monk”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Roshi X came, we travelled. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I drove him from point to point in a very large route: Austin,
San Antonio, Houston, Dallas. I received Jukai in my home with wife and
daughter as witness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It was cool. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It was also miserable stressful. It was also traumatic.
Sometimes I think I should have never done it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The great, and tragic, turning point of the traveling was
learning that Roshi X was a big fan of Jesus Christ Super Star. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That album (the studio version, by the way, not the movie
sound track), probably saved my life in my teenage years. That’s a separate
hundred pages of blog I probably don’t have the skill to write, but that album
set me up with everything that gets me through any hard time that has every struck
my life in the 40+ years that have followed. All that I carry as hope or
compassion or appreciation of mystery comes from that one record. It is very
important to me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One might think, and I certainly did, that this would indicate
an inherent commonality between Roshi X and I. Since he is my age peer, I saw
it as the harbinger of a great friendship. We had the same philosophical interests,
the same love for JCSS, we were the same age. Here was finally the friend of a
lifetime. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But that was not the case. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There was an odd hint in the whole affair that now echoes
ominously in my recall. At some point in our travels, no doubt an early point,
Roshi X said “you probably won’t like me.” I thought it was an odd and slightly
sad thing for him to say at the time. I kindly brushed it off, but in
retrospect I think he was right. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In our travels the crushing Buddhist formality really got me.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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I stepped wrong. I didn’t know stuff. I felt out of the
conversations of wonderful and lofty ideas. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At one Zen center in a beautiful old house in a beautiful
old neighborhood…. I joined in for Zazen. I didn’t know which zafu I could sit
on. I had no idea how to muck about my rakusu for Chodai Kesa No Ge. They did
the damned English version and I did not know it, and couldn’t read their little
cheat sheet in the dim lighting of the room. I had no idea how to get in line
for Kin Hin. My leg fell asleep in zazen and I felt rushed to get in the
fucking line so we can fucking start kin hin. After kin hin, some bell rang. I thought
we were done. I went up to my room to get ready to leave. I was completely
stressed out and feeling completely out of place and unwelcome . I started
sobbing. I am generally not a crier, but this place had pushed me to my limits.
I was alone and confused and there was not a soul in this bastion of compassion
who was interested how things were going for me. I decided to try a shower to
calm down. I was walking heavy footed back and forth across the floor of my
second story room from suitcase and bed to shower. I was worried sick about what
the “rules” were for washcloths and using hot water, and every goddamed thing I
was trying to do. In the shower – more breaking down, more sobbing. Done with
my shower, I worried how I should hang the used wash cloth. Do I have to dry
off the soap? Can I flush my dental floss or is that wasteful of water? Where
should I put the towel? Should I fold it? Should I leave the sheets on my bead
or take them off? <o:p></o:p></div>
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My nerves were wracked in this hell of Buddhist “what is the
most skillfull” way. Then a knock at the door. The head priest is there and she
informs me they are trying to meditate downstairs… could I be more quiet? I could
have died, and I think part of me did. Turns out my room was right above the
room they use as the zendo. Who the hell knows how much of my trodding and
sobbing was heard below, but I felt like it all was. Why the hell didn’t anyone
explain to me clearly that there would be another session of sitting after kin hin!
Who puts a guest room above their zendo?! This was absolutely a “naked a school”
dream in reality. This was the worst social trauma I’ve ever felt since getting
beaten up in high school with no understanding of defense. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When we finally got to leave that place I was in such a
hurry, I nearly ripped my rear-view mirror off on the gate post of the
driveway. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m sure everyone meant kinder vibes that what I recall, but
most of what I recall was a huge sense of “I don’t fit in.” It didn’t help that
I was traveling with an up and coming Zen super star, promoting his books,
promoting his story. I was definitely 5<sup>th</sup> or 6<sup>th</sup> fiddle.
It was kinda cool to be able to ride his rakusu tails a little, but ultimately
I feel I was of little importance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And, on a personal level, Roshi X turned out to <u>seem</u> largely
shallow and narcissistic. Though appropriately thankful for my efforts, I never felt a vibe of friendship. In many ways I wanted/needed his friendship,
but he did not need mine. The trip was about him, his books, his wonderfulness. {or perhaps my jealousy and unquenchable sense of loss from years ago}<o:p></o:p></div>
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He couldn’t complete the “name panel” on my rakusu while we
were traveling so he took it with him when he left. It took a very long time to
get done. He kinda lost it amongst his stuff during a relocation. He was pretty
uncommunicative after he had left. I felt like I was being taken as a chump and
that the rakusu I had labored so hard on was lost. I emailed him to just return
it, I didn’t care if it was done or not. To quote myself from all those years
ago (pretty embarrassing now, but gives a good sense of where my head was)….<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="color: blue;">“I don't know what the non-communication thing is about.
It certainly hurts. (yes, yes, attachment, blah, blah, blah) . "You win".
I will go away. Could you please return my rakusu though? I put a lot of
fucking "naive" effort into it.‘</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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He suggested I “settle the fuck down” and to not presume
things of him, “that’s not how this works.”
I never understood what the “this” was he was referring to. </div>
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That exchange was years ago. That shattered most of my hope
of being friends with this guy. He has famously said on his blog since then (speaking
generally) that he does not want students, and describing how flawed some
people are who have asked to be his students. In every word I just hear him
disapproving of me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This is the sticking point. This is where I feel blind and I
want to see clearly. I am uncomfortable about this, and I want comfort. I don’t
understand, and I want understanding. I want help framing all this, and I can’t
seem to find it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Roshi X has often written blogs that contain what I read as “it
ain’t me, it’s you.” It is often put in (what I think of as)
pseudo-loving-Buddhist-non-compassion. “You got to take responsibility for
yourself”. “If our interaction made you feel bad, that is your delusions at
work”. This triggers in me some old school days memories of “Fuck off, loser,
you don’t belong here” <o:p></o:p></div>
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With him, and with all the Buddhist formalities in our trip,
I felt scared. The words were nice but the vibe was “you don’t rate”. I was too
odd for acceptance. I was the naïve newbie. My rakusu was the topic of buzz because
it was not uniform, nor the right color. Roshi X is somewhat of an outsider in
the Zen establishment, so people even seemed to wonder even if my Jukai was
bona fide. “Who did you sew with?”…. I had no answer. I read the instructions
and did it myself. …I and not one who has been sitting for 20 years. I don’t sit morning and night.
My views don’t seem count in the “heavy” conversations. I haven’t written
books, or become a priest, or have the heart sutra memorized. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So this silly name I got with all that trauma is Nankin
Rouren. Roshi X likes monster movies, so Nankin’s kanji means “fire turtle” after
Gamera. Which I like. The last name is my English name realized with kanji.
Contemporary dictionaries render the kanji as “labor union”, but Roshi X was looking
at some old dictionary and trying for “bringing benevolence.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sorry….this post is falling of the tracks a bit. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Part of this is a great and an almost tearful
lament…. I thought Roshi X would be a friend. Would be someone I could finally
connect too. If I was creating a profile on Friend.com I couldn’t have found a
better match (at least speaking predictively. In retrospect not so much). But
it did not happen. Roshi X, left after
our road trip, and after the rakusu kerfuful there has been really no communication. I feel I was Charlie Brown running to kick the football and Lucy snatched it away
laughing. What a waste of hope. What a schmuk…. Is how I feel. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think Zen is important. I think Zen has something useful
to say. I still sit and read and comment and follow things Zen, but, to put it honestly, I am afraid of the
Sangha…. afraid of a “teacher”. I don’t ever want to worry that a teacher thinks I am “not enough.” I don’t ever want to feel that a sangha is tisking me for
stepping in with my left foot instead of my right foot. I’m sick of robes just
so and rakusu’s just so and put your shoes here, no toes facing out.... fool! I am
sick of black and brown clothes and speaking in hushed tones and false smiling
and “we have to have compassion for everyone” knowing full well many curse the
garbage folk on the weekend if they don’t but the cans back just so. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I accept that I carry much of this perceived negativity between
my own ears. I want a teacher who
reaches out to me. Asks me how I am doing. Who is interested in how I see things.
I want a teacher/sangha that accepts anger, despair, silliness and selfishness as human traits and embraces them and gently guides them when, and only if, they happen to be truly unskillful, rather than just because they are contrary to
tradition and the way people what the zendo to seem. Where can I find this? <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am not completely bullish. I am fairly plastic. I get that I bring my
baggage into the conversation. Coincidentally "firery turtle" may not be far off. I think I know that my life is my responsibility. But I
also know that I am looking for a teacher/sangha who wants to help me …. to extend
a hand down…. I want a sangha/teacher that lives in mud and water and not in the
library with black robes and uniform breathing. Where can I find this?<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is the center of my chaos. It is a poor narrative. It
is written ‘cause I am looking for a “Polo” to this clumsy “Marco”. I post it
not because I think it is “right” or well written, but in case someone else who
is likewise muddled, and stumbles upon it, might feel less alone. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: #990000;">PS</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As I write this I think this perhaps is the most important part of this
piece. In making sure I got some of my attributed quotations right, I checked
my old email records. I see Roshi X being a decent person. Perhaps his harsh-ish
words quoted above were a reasonable response to the harsh-ish words I sent him
in my misery. As I said at the start, this is more about how I feel and felt,
than what he actually did. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What’s the point? Should I post? I guess so. It might prove
useful for someone else, or even me as I narcissistically read and re-read what
I’ve put out in public domain (yes….I do that). <o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-69561926075972822902014-02-23T09:29:00.001-08:002014-02-23T09:29:26.085-08:00On PTSDAfter trauma, the brain is permanently changed, injured, I n a way that is noticeably altered from past habits, and often in a way that is intrusive, unwelcome, and troubling.<br /><br />Memories are not some sort of magic. There is no "cloud" for the human brain from which I download what I want to recall. <br /><br />Memories are a result of physical changes in the brain...a particular arrangement of neurons, or weighted chemical pathways, but none the less physically real. <br /><br />Whenever something huge and traumatic happens, my brain does its best to record it, or mask it, so that I will tend to survive the current event, and a reoccurrence, if it ever happens again. The triggers for creating such "unforgettable" tendencies are probably a complex coordination of sensory input, endocrine activity, inherited nature, and past conditioning/ learning.<br /><br />The point is, the changes are a real, physical characteristic of me.<br /><br />If someone has a scar on their arm, chanting lovely stories of rainbows and kittens does not make the scar go away. No amount of encouragement or love makes the scar go away. Scars can be accommodated, adapted to, acknowledged, and new functionality can be found, but some trace is always there. A new configuration of the person. <br /><br />Similarly, mental scars probably cannot be "cured" with any amount of happy, positive thinking. But, with realistic acceptance they can be accommodated, adapted to, and new functionality can be found. <br /><br />This is not a nihilistic point of view. People with great external scars, e.g., missing limbs, can go on to live full, productive, capable lives, but they do not get there by trying to wish away their scar, but rather acknowledging it, and pressing on with a sense of practicality. Some of the scar can be worked around, but other bits are a new baseline from which they can proceed in a new but different fullness. <br /><br />I should remember this when I am embarrassed by how troubled I feel, or in dealing with other troubled people. Being "nice" and wishing good things, has its place, but first must come clear sight and acceptance. <br /><br />Wishing for the situation to be different might well be a form of trauma avoidance by the observer, hurt by what the empathetic response is imposing. This observation is not to condem, but to encourage skill.<br /><br />In the great cascade of cause and effect, the impact of all past causes carriers forward with lesser or greater effect on the Now, but can never be earased. This is Karma.<br /><br />This is me. <br />This is where I am. <br />Now in full light of that, just sit for a while. <br />In full light of that, what is the next right action, right thought?<br />What will take the whole me forward in health, rather than just my fantasies and delusions forward in empty wishing?<br />What is really here, now, beyond even these words?<br /><br /><br />[apologies if my experience with trauma seems naive to people who have survived even bigger things]<br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-52608061905260558622014-02-22T08:18:00.001-08:002014-02-22T08:19:56.175-08:00Snow Reason<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=14/02/22/468.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/14/02/22/s_468.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='210' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />We live to make a path in the snow.<br />To venture out into the wilderness, our guide dog barking and snuffling in the brush. <br />Out into the wilderness then back home. <br />A path made. <br />Footprints left. <br />No lasting mark, but just enough to give a hint of our existence, our presence, our matter. <br />In the broad world we have trekked, and then returned home, to re-collect. <br />Warm. With hints of snow melted into the jacket collar. <br />Dog sleeping by the fire, paws twitching.<br /><br />---<br />---<br /><br /><br />Originally posted as a comment on Dosho Port's FB page. Inspired by his pictures from walking his dog in the snow.... https://www.facebook.com/dosho.port/posts/10203385737226955<br /><br /><br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009883418396210370.post-74990826648731209802014-01-26T10:29:00.001-08:002014-01-26T10:29:05.530-08:00No Unchanging Self: The Plastic Pachinko MachineMuch is written about the NON-existence of "Unchanging Self". Semantically this nominal is not so inaccurate [though I wonder about this sentence, itself]. The problem arises with the analogies then given. A recent one I read likened ones self to a stream ever changing and flowing. It is in such extreme analogies that I think there is some harm. People may assume their experience of self is 100% mutable. That if they only did the right magic stuff they could suddenly become entirely different. That old fears and scars and modes of suffering could be made to vanish. <br /><br />A further harm in the analogies is that it gives a sense that my experience of self is fundamentally nothing; a chimera, a ghost, a lie my ego insists on telling because it is undisciplined and immature. <br /><br />The first point to be clear about is that the locus of self is absolutely fixed. I experience 'me' via my brian and the associated physical neurological and biological systems in my body. I will grant that perhaps there is some new frontier in fine detail related to this in the recent findings regarding bacterial and perhaps even viral 'bioms' that encompass human bodies (each person carries more cells/objects [for viruses] with 'foreign' DNA than 'self' DNA), but generally speaking my experience of 'I' is limited to the physical extent of my nervous system. And more importantly, how 'I' gets represented to my consciousness is entirely occurring in the various organs of the brain. <br /><br />If this is accepted, that 'self' arises from the physical structure of the nervous system, grossly represented in the brain, then 'self' is changing only to the extent that the physical structure of the brain is changing. The physical structure of the brain is largely un-changing. <br /><br />I repeat, the physical structure of the brain is largely un-changing. <br /><br />Additionally, it is also important to understand that he brain is not a homogenous bowl of jello. Yes, I doubt anyone actually thinks of it this way, but compared to what it really is, I think for many it might be the "same difference."<br /><br />The human brain has evolved over eons. It might be even better to say that the brain which is now human has so evolved, because the structure of the human brain has been carried forward by the species that predate humans in our evolutionary chain. <br /><br />The major steps in brain structure are more layered, than homogonized. That's why I like to think of the structures of the brain as 'organs', though 'regions' is likely more correct, the exact physical boundaries being uncertain. Some specifics from the brain-organ-soup are autonomic system, brain stem, medulla, limbic, visual cortex, audio cortex, pre-frontal cortex [this list is a bit of a cock-up so here's a link to a nice Wikipedia list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_in_the_human_brain]<br /><br />So, the point becomes that a very large percent of the brain is fixed in structure. The means by which I experience sight, is essentially the same throughout my life. The means by which I hear, beat my heart, 'know' to breath, is largely fixed. Many of my base characteristics are also fixed. How I process fight or flight, how I wake up and become drowsy (e.g., the circadian rhythm). And there are structures more or less permanent that formed when I negotiated high-stress (i.e., important) events in my life. The wounds from early experience such as a fight in childhood, or significant lack of parental care. My biology, DNA inheritance, and early experience all layer in my brain, giving rise to my 'self' (see earlier posts such as "sub-conscious karmic oxen", and "to understand your mind, understand a tree").<br /><br />There is also a part of my brain that is plasitc. From a high frequency plasticity which deals with ever changing sensory inputs such as sight and sound and location and position and temperature; to a lower frequency plasticity dealing with long and short term memory. <br /><br />My feelings, my sense of what is going on, my suffering, is a complicated mix, I think, of my underlying fixed aspects and the more plastic aspects of my brain. It's rather like an inverse pachinko machine. An 'idea' (a neurological impulse wave from) gets launched by my sensory and other primitive reaction organs and starts its way towards consiousness. It gets pinged and bopped around by various neural connects (the pins in this pachinko machine) that are both essentially fixed (e.g., the structure of my medulla) and plastic (my cortex), until it ends up as a thought or action that I can experience consciously. <br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=14/01/26/658.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/14/01/26/s_658.jpg' border='0' width='261' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br />Perhaps this has been too much of a walk into minutia, so back to the point.....<br /><br />Much of how I experience life is fixed. However, with practice I can exercise ways of thinking that, in a sense, either allow me to add new layers of pins in my pachinko machine, or bend the ones that are there so the same sort of situational inputs are experienced differently in my consciousness. <br /><br />Some terrible childhood trauma-remembering bundle of neurons might still fire off when an analogous situation is presented to me in my adulthood, but I may be able to layer some new pins (or bend some existing ones) that divert the conscious result from panic to "okay." <br /><br />It may even be possible that I can change the gross course of the panchiko balls so that sensory experience comes more directly from 'mechanical' rather than 'interpretive' parts of my brain. i.e., so that I can learn to see, hear, experience without using my judgement channels (my judgement organ pathways), but get a more direct feed from my visual or audio cortex.<br /><br />There is a very large part of the self that is, indeed, permanent, and a very important aspect of the nature of experienced self is that it is also plastic. Self does change and it can be retrained. But I am here. and I am permanent. Not in the geological sense of time, but in the sense of having substance while I am. I am a pachinko machine to be reckoned with*. <br /><br /><br />[* for Chief Inspector Endeavor Morse, "I am a pachinko machine with which to be reckoned" ????]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br />Lauren http://www.blogger.com/profile/08148785647986873693noreply@blogger.com0