There are two ways to bring about a change - either by conversation or by action. Conversation is in many ways preferable, but often the arguments people offer are not close to their real reasons. If someone is afraid of change, there is no point in speaking to them about it, because they will hide the fear behind all kinds of rationalizations. Defeat one argument and, like the hydra, two more spring up in its place. What the other person needs is not reason, but a sense of security.
Sometimes, then, the best way forward is to take a different tack. Give people a different experience; give them an experience that they enjoy and like; and then, when they're happy, explain why it is they feel good about it.
That, I suppose, is the possibility offered to the School by the internet - blogging, online communities, podcasting, downloads. The old paradigm is where the wisdom comes down out of a cloud, in little drops, to the waiting faithful. The traffic is one direction only. If we take up the opportunity offered by the internet, we will suddenly have a different paradigm - in which we create a worldwide online community of philosophy, where every voice is equal in status. And why not, indeed? Socrates went around Greece asking people questions - from slaves to statesmen. What mattered was not who they were, but their wisdom.
Of course, it should never be a substitute for real conversation ... but what do you think? This is a chance to take part in the experiment.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
New Media, New Paradigm
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Zen and the Art of Non-Duality
by Sengstan (Third Zen Patriarch)
The great way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the Truth
Then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
Is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the Mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The way is perfect; like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things
and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
your effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.
(cont...)
Friday, November 24, 2006
Nowhere Man
This was sparked off by Laura's story, which I quote here.
I heard a story today: 'A teacher was supervising her young pupils during class. As she walked round she noticed that one little girl was very intent on her drawing.
'What are you drawing?' asked the teacher.
'God,' said the child.
'But no one knows what God looks like,' said the teacher.
'They will soon,' said the child as she continued her drawing.
A few of us met with Mr Jaiswal at the weekend to talk about art - everyone there was either an artist of some kind or a writer - and he said "the artist is the soul of the school". He added that while the rationalist understands the past very well, he has no vision of the future; but the artist sees the future.
This phrase, "the future" is particularly odd. We are accustomed in our tradition to think of the present as the only reality, yet Mr Jaiswal in another talk spoke about "the absolute of the past", "the absolute of the present" and "the absolute of the future". Creativity is "the absolute of the future". What does this mean?
Maybe the key is the Sanskrit word sat, which means "real", "good" and "manifest". To connect with the present is to connect with sat. Then we have the word asat which has some negative connotations, but also carries the sense of "unmanifest". In one of the Upanishads (sorry, can't remember where) the asat is higher than the sat. This makes sense, of course, because the unmanifest is closer to the absolute.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V Sc i.
So the artist, it seems, discovers the asat, that which will be, while the practical man connects only with the sat, that which is.
When we met the Indian tradition at the start of the 1960s, we brought with us a tradition that connected strongly with the sat of the present moment. Accordingly, there was a strong mistrust of anything that smacked of asat: imagination, dream, thinking are all words we learned to disparage. They were associated with delusion, sickness and psychosis - which, of course, has some truth. Shakespeare in the same passage says "The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact". If we tread in the unmanifest, we may stray into the unreal, that which has no possiblity of manifestation.
The Indian tradition is rather different. It does talk about the value of the present, but it gives it far less emphasis than one would think from second-hand accounts. There is much more to the tradition than sat. To give one example, there is meditation: a practice that is a retreat from the waking consciousness of sat. Which probably explains why we have never made much progress with meditation, and why even our leaders can tell us so little about it.
By the way, you know about meditation. You've just learned to despise that part of you that knows it.
How best to serve the School? Is it by stopping on the path, asserting that we have already arrived, and protecting its heritage? Or is it by continuing along the path, doing what we can to build upon and exceed what has already been done?
We are like tourists who have two maps. The first one is commercially produced by a roadside inn, showing how to get there, but nothing else. The other is a real map, which shows not only the inn but the terrain and the way ahead to a site of pilgrimage, which is the historical reason for the road's existence. Both maps are true, but unless we put away the first and start to follow the second, we will stay where we are. The inn is getting older and a bit run-down, because fewer people pass along that way.
The way to help the inn recover its health is not by fixing up the sign or replacing the tables or advertising it, but to make the pilgrimage. When people are reminded of that, then they will need the School to help them on the way. But they don't need the School in itself, any more than we need an inn on a road to nowhere.
Only the artist - the real philosopher - can see that 'nowhere' is really where it's at. The challenge is to make that obvious, even to someone as dense as a practical man.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Whispering to the Elephant
It this Philosophy for Dummies TM ?
Why is it that even the most bland or mundane utterance of the wise can take us from darkness towards light? I suppose that maybe the word "wise" is the key there - the respect that it implies makes us pause, and that pause allows our native intelligence to function over our native ignorance. So maybe we don't need much.
Recent scientific research suggests another answer. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt borrows the Buddha's analogy for the human being of a rider on an elephant. The rider is our conscious, verbal mind; the elephant is the rest of us. The thing is, of course, the rider is a recent invention - in evolutionary terms it was dreamed up yesterday - whereas the elephant has been tested and perfected over literally millions of years. Haidt says that in effect we have "Rider 1.0" trying to control Elephant 1 million.
The rider might have his own ideas about where they are going, but if the elephant sees something it wants - or something it wants to avoid - then we go where the elephant chooses. That's why I am unable to live a measured life, even though I know all about its benefits in both theory and practice. The elephant has different priorities.
Many techniques have been developed, especially in recent times, that attempt to solve our problems by addressing the rider. Psychoanalysis, for example - if only I could understand what it was that happened with that dog when I was 2, I'd be much better able to deal with my boss. The only thing is though, psychoanalysis has never been proven to work - it might bring understanding to the rider, but he still does pretty much everything the elephant wants. When the elephant says, "Want Buns", the rider says, "how many?" (of course the elephant can't count ... this is part of the problem).
So we come back to the ancient solutions. Instead of trying to explain everything at the beginning, the traditional remedies or paths start with simple, repetitive exercises. Some are designed to give small, regular rewards for good behaviour. Others are designed to punish wrong-doing. Others, like meditation, bypass the thought process altogether. These things have to be repeated every day, because elephants don't, contrary to popular belief, have long memories. This process, if followed faithfully, builds up strength and capacity. It is compared to churning milk to make butter - there needs to be a transformation first, and then understanding. Until the disciple has gone through all of this, he or she isn't ready for philosophy.
The point is not for the rider to gain control, but for the two to learn to talk to each other, to become integrated. The elephant doesn't know what's good for it, so it desires status and power; the rider has to teach it to pursue the things that will lead to happiness. The elephant is a pessimist, and its fears dominate its thinking - it has learned over aeons that the consequences of missing a meal are far less severe than those of becoming a meal. The elephant is partial to its own interests, so it has to be taught the value of impartiality. It can't be taught all of this in one go, and it doesn't understand English or Sanskrit. It's hard to imagine that any lesson could be repeated too often, or spelled out too much.
That's why a few simple words from the wise help.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Why are we dying?
As yet another friend dies from cancer this week, I do wonder if School deaths accord with the general pattern of deaths in the UK?
As a group we are not particularly long-lived - worn out from too much activity? Or maybe it's something completely different? I haven't done a head-count over the last few years, but I can think of only one fatal heart attack but numbers of deaths from cancer.
This line of thought is not particularly helpful - except that it might point to areas of imbalance amongst the still living which could then be addressed. It would certainly repay study, to cut through any disabling myths about the health of the human body which are still lurking around the School.
If anyone is reading this who is a doctor, or similar, would you care to look at School members in this respect?
Our health may depend on it.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Can you move a little faster, said the whiting to the snail.
Recently our stream was addressed by Bill Whiting, head of the School of Meditation. For this listener, he exemplified how to teach the subject: he not only knows what His Holiness says on the subject, but also tells you what it is like to meditate, for him. I asked him about whether we should talk about meditation and he said that we certainly should.
Although I appreciate, and feel, the concern that people have about speaking of meditation, I think the value of this has been very exaggerated in the School. Why? Because there are very few people in the School - very few tutors - that feel confident to talk about it. Their reticence has led their students to follow suit. This means that the problems never get addressed or resolved. I recently spoke to someone who said that she had recently 'fessed up' to her tutor - in 25 years she'd never really got what meditation is about, and in fact she didn't meditate on her own time. I don't think that's uncommon among senior people. It's time to be honest with ourselves, and others.
I think what we should also consider is the growing scientific evidence about meditation. Firstly, it suggests that it's 'a good thing', and secondly it specifies why it's a good thing.
One thing I've noticed about meditation is that it has definite effects on the body. This morning I sat down to meditate and I noticed that I felt tense - my shoulders were gripped with tension and stiffness. There's not much you can do about this kind of tension. A massage helps a bit, or exercise, but really you're only addressing the symptoms. But after 30 minutes of meditation (no fireworks, lot of thinking) the physical problem is gone. It works by itself, despite my own worst efforts. It's kind of miraculous, and it's a daily contradiction of what I normally believe about cause and effect.
One of my students gave me printouts of two medical abstracts about meditation. The first one concludes that "the practice of meditation activates neural structures involved in attention and control of the autonomic nervous system". The second one says meditation changes the physical structure of the brain. It thickens the brain cortex, an effect especially notable in older people: "suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning". This means that meditation might be a safeguard against senility or diseases like Huntingdon's. Another book I read recently summarised the research that showed that meditation was the only thing, other than prozac or cognitive therapy, that you can do to make your outlook on life sunnier. Psychoanalysis, and all the panoply of therapies and spiritual practices, do not have a reliable effect on your level of inner happiness, but meditation does.
I suppose I mention all of this because I think a lot of people don't really believe in meditation. They don't believe because their tutors don't believe. This is not to blame the tutors, but to note an area that needs some honest self-assessment by individuals and the organisation. In the previous post I noted one reason why this might be: the School is strongly oriented towards 'the way of action', and meditation is not an activity. Meditation contradicts many of the things we believe in.
This leaves us in a bit of a quandary. In one of the Marx Brothers films, a lady says to Chico Marx that she had seen him cheating at cards "with my own eyes". Chico retorts: "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Until we start believing our own eyes, our own perceptions, our own insights and intelligence, our beliefs are no better than hearsay. Until we get used to speaking about what we find, and acting on what we say, we're not really philosophers.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
There is another way ... or maybe two
According to His Holiness, there are three principal 'ways' to self-realization: knowledge, devotion, action. Then there is the 'fourth way', which is the way of the householder. Sometimes Shantananda seems to favour the way of devotion, perhaps as the most direct of the three; at other times he expresses a distinct preference for the fourth way, as being less extreme and more natural than the others. The School is supposed to be for people on the fourth way, but at the same time it's clear that individuals will by their own nature be drawn to one or more of knowledge, devotion or action. All three must be accommodated.
That gives us a framework, a guiding principle. How do we measure up in practice?
My own theory - and as someone said, there's nothing so practical as a good theory - is that the School has a strong preference for the way of action. This will come as a surprise to many people - I think the general view is that the School has a predilection, if anything, for knowledge. But what I note is that the people who are most contented and at home in the School are, almost invariably, lovers of action.
Show me an entirely happy long-term School student, and I will show you a man of action. It's what we do well.
I recently listened to one of Shane Mulhall's CDs, in which he spoke at some length on the three types of people, with respect to career. According to Mr Mulhall, the devotional person is mainly interested in "relationships" - his example was a restaurateur who asks, "How was your food?", but who in reality doesn't care what sort of rubbish he serves. He's only interested in having a friendly relationship. According to Mr Mulhall, the intellectual person is not interested in people, or in being effective, but only in knowing. His example of this was a doctor 'who would be more interested in the disease than the patient'. Neither of these are, I think, people one would necessarily want to be. By contrast, his portrait of the man of action was fulsome and almost without negativity.
Now, Mr Mulhall is someone who normally sticks very closely to Shantananda's words, but here he veers dramatically away from the view presented in the Conversations. He's a thoroughly even-handed and clear-sighted individual, to judge by his lectures; and for this reason it's all the more surprising that on this topic he resembles a cyclops who's just been chopping onions. It appears that the preference for the way of action is tremendously strong in the School.
The rule holds true in almost every case. The man of action is happy in the School, because we love karma yoga - duties, action, physical work, vigour. The man of knowledge is a bit less happy, because when it comes to enquiry after truth we have a rather weaker tradition. We're not quite sure in the School whether we are really seeking truth, or whether we've already found it and, if it wasn't for that goldarned ahankara, then by golly we'd all be realised. Speaking as someone who has a bit of an affiliation to this way, I can assure you that we have a lot to learn about how to foster knowledge. We have cut "knowledge" down to our own size - a manageable size - instead of enlarging our minds. Even the phrase "practical philosophy" has a flavour of utilitarianism about it - as if the purpose of knowledge is to serve action. "Wisdom Works", according to one slogan. Does it? According to Plato, wisdom is the state of soul when it becomes unchanging. Not much work needed there.
But if you want to see someone who is really unhappy in the School, look at the man of devotion. If you hang around the School long enough you might think the word 'devoted' means 'loyal, faithful, always ready to make the tea ... maybe a bit thick, bless 'em'. In other words, the devotional person is someone who can't cut the mustard intellectually, but who is useful for practical tasks. According to this view, the purpose of devotion is to serve action. This is not devotion. In fact, it's just old-fashioned English class prejudice.
This explains why we're so bad, so throroughly and unspeakably bad, at meditation. Meditation takes you beyond doing, into being. Meditation is what the way of action knows nothing about. It is a devotional practice, and it develops the intellect by freeing us from attachment. It's really simple - at least if you're not trying to make it into something it's not. Meditation points one way; School tradition points the other. It's a wonder we've kept it going. Obviously someone up there likes us.
Fortunately, His Holiness is rather detailed in his remarks on this subject. According to him, devotion or love is the Royal Way, quicker and more direct than the others. The man of devotion has no time to attend a School or to do duties. He wakes up in the morning praising God, and there's really no need to get out of bed. He's already there. This has been ignored or rationalised away, with words such as "sentimental" or "idle".
But why take my word for it? I would recommend anyone who is interested in knowledge or devotion to read the Conversations - 1965 and 1967 for a start. But read them without your Old-School glasses on, if you can. You might find you can see more clearly.
