"The Indians have had mantra for quite a long time. If you look at the state of India, you have to say that mantra cannot be the answer to everything". - Language lecture 2006
This seems logical and reasonable, but for many years we've had a faith in meditation as the answer to everything (along with satsanga, which the Indians have also had for a while). Is it the answer?
If so, to what? In part or full? And how?
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Deep Thought
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15 comments:
Not all Indians meditate.
Would a country that never meditated on mantras be in a worse mess?
Perhaps I should say for the benefit of the more conservatively minded that I believe there are real and tangible benefits to meditation. As well as imaginary and fictional ones.
Depends on what the criteria for success are? And doesn't this depend on what the purpose of life is?
By way of exploration, two views came to mind here which might be inadequately described as 'Western' and 'Eastern':
Western
i) I meditate in order that my action is more refined. With more refined action I can serve the world better through creative or social endeavour. Or:
ii) I meditate just enough to provide more energy and sharpness of mind which I use in pursuit of things which are still essentially ego-centred. (mention King Janaka in your justification somewhere and you'll be fine)
Eastern
i) The primary goal is to realise the Self. Action is unavoidable for the needs of the body but needn't interfere with the spiritual practise.
Seems to me we can safely assume that the West has engaged in more activity than is useful or necessary. Otherwise we wouldn't be facing ecological disaster. The fact that India and others are following this model doesn't bring a great deal of optimism here. I feel we could use a great deal more contentment and simplicity rather than more 'headless chicken' activity seeking comfort and fickle use of technology for various forms of escapism. Even some of the successes of Western medicine may be questioned if in the words of Buddha:
"Better to live one single day in pursuit of truth than 100 years in ignorance and unrestraint."
Does this mean we shouldn't help those in physical need? No, of course not, but it does put it in context. Should India have better social systems? Is its seeming callousness in this regard to do with coarse interpretations of the action of karma? Will this get worse as Western materialism widens the gap between rich and poor even further? And on top of this, should we even expect mantras to bring about better health and material circumstances? The body is transient. It's going to snuff it whatever. Sri Ramana, Sri Ramakrishna, Nisargadatta – all died of cancer.
The Gita says that none of us can avoid action so we've all got to earn our bread and butter however we can in the context of the society we find ourselves in. But I would question whether we in the West can see past the frenetic activity of the modern world to get a sense of the 'starting point' for such a statement made in the Gita, i.e, being already established in yoga – then act.
There's more to this that comes to mind, but I'm not sure I can or want to go into it. There have been occasions where simple attention in itself transformed a situation. e.g, just listening. I wonder just how much consciousness in itself affects things directly? Is this not also service? And is this sorting things out nearer the cause rather than fire-fighting like much activity appears to be? i.e, sorting out the mistakes created by past errors and creating more errors in the process because the activity is based on limited understanding? I think we're way too obsessed with activity because of the materialism of our age. How many people believe in anything they can't appreciate with the senses?
When the Shankaracarya tells us that half a dozen realised men will change the world, how will they effect it? Through physical work? We have to give credit to subtler forms of activity if we give this any credence at all.
If I were a country then I would be in a worse mess.
It's difficult to generalise or to know how a country would behave in those circumstances except to extrapolate from individual experience.
It would certainly be quieter around dawn and dusk.
Interestingly - I find it interesting anyway - there is exactly half an hour at dawn in India when the mosquitoes have gone to bed and before the flies get going, and in the evening it's the other way round.
A window of opportunity certainly.
That would be a case of "Laura Unto Herself" :-)
Kapila, the aim of the question was to demystify the fictional and thereby clear some space for the reality.
Someone said the other day that meditation is there as a preparation for playing one's part; that most people want a better life rather than self-realization; and that therefore we should emphasise the practical benefits. This person agrees with your rather negative view of the 'Western' mindset, but draws a different conclusion - meditation helps people to get on, therefore we should advertise it in that way.
Just one problem with this, it seems to me, is that meditation has a fairly tangential effect on one's efficiency. The real benefits are far more obvious.
In Jonathan Haidt's book The Happiness Hypothesis he gives the research evidence to show that there are only three ways to change your default setting of happiness - that's to say, whether you are a "glass half full" or "glass half empty" person. It's possible to scan a baby's brain and say whether they will tend to look on the bright side or be gloomy - and, as I said, there are only 3 ways that are proven to make a difference.
One of them is Prozac; enough said. The other two are cognitive therapy - which is quite a good description of a regular philosophy group - and meditation. The evidence shows that meditation 'reduces anxiety, increases contentment and self-esteem, empathy, trust ... and improves memory'. According to Haidt, "the goal of meditation is to change automatic thought processes [by] the breaking of attachments".
This is a Western-type description, but what it describes is spiritual and universal. If we sell meditation as a route to get what we want, it's like pressing the accelerator and brake at the same time, leading to confusion and a burnt-out engine. Nodding donkeys in the ballroom.
I do take your point about the Western way, Kapila, but I think there's a danger that we imagine the East to be a spiritual realm where peace prevails. It's a bit like call-centre outsourcing ... we no longer need to be spiritual here because they do it so well in India with their wobbly heads. That's what we call the knowledge economy. Just four wise men with an 8GB broadband connection can transform your customers' experience!
Let's accept modernity and Westernness, and work with it. I don't disagree with what you say, but I wonder whether you're surrendering on the outside instead of on the inside - like Arjuna objecting that we've had enough activity, enough struggle. Krishna says: get on with your work and then at the end of the day you can meditate.
Hmm ... I better take his advice. Peace out.
I take the point about people getting on better and I relate this back to asking, "what is real purpose of life?". In a couple of work situations recently it became evident that meeting the humanity in the 'other' was infinitely more important than the 'functions' of people that were being discussed. The 'West' seems also obsessed with this level of function. "What do you do?", people ask. "What does it matter?", I keep thinking.
Interesting also that you mention therapy because what came to mind today is an excerpt from a book I read several years ago by a psychiatrist. There are a number of case studies and this one is to do with a man diagnosed with cancer facing up to his hedonistic lifestyle:
***
C: "Since we stopped chemotherapy two months ago, I go days at a time without thinking of the cancer. That's goddamn good isn't it - to forget it, to be free of it, to be able to live a normal life for a while?"
I: Good question! I thought. Was it good to forget? I wasn't so sure. Over the months I had been seeing Carlos, I had discovered that I could chart, with astonishing accuracy, the course of his cancer by noting the things he thought about. Whenever his cancer worsened and he was actively facing death, he rearranged his life priorities and became more thoughtful, compassionate, wiser. When, on the other hand, he was in remission, he was guided, as he put it, by his pecker and grew noticeably more coarse and shallow.
~ Irvin Yalom
***
What is service in this instance? What is service to his body and what is of service to his soul? Do we try to help with our material arsenal but with our material understanding and thereby miss the purpose of what we are actually facing in life? I don't know why people incarnate into various circumstances in life. How can we judge what's going on in India or anywhere else? Do we seek to create a material utopia or is the churning pot of the world the way it is for a purpose that goes beyond our understanding?
Many big questions. You probably recognise the computer from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the title to this post, which calculated for millions of years and then announced that the answer to the ultimate question was 42. The question itself remained unknown.
It seems like the best thing to do is to start from where we are and try to think as clearly as we can.
Why should there be "a" purpose to life? I would say all lives have purpose, but that is individual to them. HH says that we all come into life with desires to fulfill ... challengingly he says the trick is to fulfill them, but not to create more.
According to positive psychology,
H = S + C + V
Happiness = Setting + Conditions + Voluntary activities
(where 'setting' is one's inbuilt disposition, 'conditions' are environmental, and 'v' is what we choose to do voluntarily with our lives)
According to this theory, meditation mainly affects S. The other two are "in the world", but they do make a difference to our happiness.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was from Miss Rosenberg when she said, 'We can't do much to influence what we're presented with, but we can choose how we'll respond.'
If kept in mind this approach cuts out all self-pity and justification, clears the ground regularly, may even break attachments (mentioned above as a benefit of meditation)... and allows for a freer choice next time.
I keep hearing about cognitive therapy - does anyone have any experience of it? (hollow laugh)
You started it way back with your lodger's NLP book - isn't that cognitive therapy?
From what I understand the essence of it is that if you have a problem, say with dogs, you don't try and go back to the point in time when that dog stole your ice-cream; you just change the way you habitually think about dogs. So it is pretty much what we do in groups.
In my experience Miss R's advice is good. However there is something else in addition to response, which is that we can consciously choose to create good conditions for ourselves.
For me, I wasn't happy until I got my work sorted out and found the right place to live. No matter how many times I surrendered I couldn't get round the fact that I lived in Neasden.
I never said I was a saint.
Hee, hee! Didn't the dead parrot also live in Neasden?
I'll see if I can find any more out about NLP/cognitive behavioural therapy, connections between...
The Rosenberg advice is deceptively simple, I find, and the example you've given illustrates that perfectly. You were presented with Neasden and you chose something else, thus putting in place a different dynamic. The choice you made thus allowed another act in the play to begin.
Miss R didn't specify what kind of response.
Of course Miss R's advice is Stoic philosophy, pure and simple. Nothing wrong with that.
But people are always asking "is it all right to plan for the future?" and "is it all right to initiate actions?" Our language confuses them, I think.
For my part, I found that the idea of merely responding discouraged me from acting for a long time.
See what you mean, and, yes, the language is confusing. I find it helps to recognise that there's never a blank sheet and that any action, if considered aright, is always a response to something. Then it's a matter of whether or not the action is right for the something.
It's the 'initiating' no-no that's the bugbear here. I can see where it's coming from, a 'no' to individual desires, but, yes, it is confusing and can lead to a passive response or, at the most extreme, to paralysis.
And herein lies a tale.
Laura said:
"I find it helps to recognise that there's never a blank sheet and that any action, if considered aright, is always a response to something. Then it's a matter of whether or not the action is right for the something."
Yes, thanks Laura, that's well put and clears up some seeming contradictions. I don't know about "any" action though but I take the basic point!
I'd go further... leave out the 'if considered aright' (it's a bit weaselly in the circs). How can an action not be a response to something?
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