At this stage in my life, I'm not in the habit of remembering my dreams, but I had a pretty vivid one last night. I was looking through my grandmother's old apartment at various artifacts, missing my grandmother. I recall seeing a wooden ipad with a completely transparent screen. In fact, kind of like an empty picture frame, but maybe with electronics. At some point, I realized I was dreaming and it occurred to me to try to dream my grandmother into existence. I saw a movement in the door, and excitedly I went through to take a closer look, but it was someone else, another older woman with very little resemblance. I woke up, but I was still dreaming, and the rest is vaguer. I was discussing with someone else the meaning of the dream. We concluded that the sadness I feel for the loss of my grandmother is not the problem. It's something else, yet to be discovered.
In the context of my self-analysis via this blog, this is very interesting. I restarted this blog because I felt I had some kind of block which I needed to assess and deal with, and a couple major things came up for me as I went through this process. Anger at my Dad, sadness at the loss of my Grandmother, heightened sensitivity to racism and injustice, and I do feel like I am making some sort of progress, like peeling back the layers of an onion. On the other hand, I kind of agree with the dream that the main block has not yet been found or dealt with, and I'm not even sure what it might be or how it should be conceptualized. The Buddhist methods for freeing your mind are different from the psychoanalytic or therapeutic approach, in the sense that when you meditate, you are not actively searching for causes. A teacher I respect, Lama Karma Chötso, put it eloquently. She said that when you are ready to deal with something, it will naturally present itself to your mind to process. My own analysis is that calm abiding meditation gives you the space to see what your mind is doing. There are also so-called Vajrayana techniques of meditation, which are more dynamic, work a lot faster, and as a result, can upend your world over and over. I suspect I am going through such a continued transition now as an outcome of Vajrayana practice. Lama Lena, another Lama who I respect deeply, has said that the aim of Vajrayana practice is to release blockages in the subtle body. These blockages restrict the flow of energy. It's a fairly uncontroversial fact that we all hold emotions in our body. Somatic meditation (body scan meditation) can help put us in tune with this. But even without that, we probably agree that tension can be carried in the shoulders, or are familiar with the sensation of "butterflies in the stomach." Emotions have a very strong somatic component, which becomes increasingly obvious as you train yourself to look for it. (I recall one vivid example of feeling jealousy as a movement of heat in my chest.) Vajrayana takes this to the extreme, and as far as I understand it, says that all of our issues arise from blockages in the subtle body.
I don't think that you can say that every blockage (or mental rut) comes from some childhood trauma, and that therefore the job of self-analysis is to root out childhood experiences. These experiences are important, and as I discovered, become irrascible when neglected, but I don't think they are the whole story or even most of it. Indeed, let's go whole hog into the Vajrayana Buddhist perspective here. According to that, the habits we've built up in this lifetime pale in comparison to what we've done in our previous infinitely many lifetimes. We've built up a lot of mental habits over the course of these lifetimes, and these ruts are very well worn. From that perspective, dealing with only the issues of this lifetime actually only scratches the surface. Looking at my own mind, I do sense a vastness and depth that seem to be too complex for one lifetime to account for. That's just an intuition.
I do feel like I'm making progress on the path, and that the dharma and my teachers are working essentially as they should. Calm abiding meditation and Vajrayana practices are quite different. In the first one, the mind is pacified by reducing outward stimulus. One makes oneself and one's environment calm. In the Vajrayana, that inner peace is cultivated in the face of an outer hurricane. Last Thursday, I chanted the Chenrezi sadhana with the local sangha, and I had the experience of having certain negative emotions amplified during the entire session, and then afterwards, they basically went away, were turned off like a switch. The interesting thing is that I watched the whole process as it happened, as if from a short distance, and it didn't bother me at all. To connect with my previous description, I felt an inner calmness, even in the face of strong(ish) emotions that would normally occupy my attention, and probably trigger a sense of shame. "I'm chanting this peaceful practice for the benefit of all sentient beings, but I can't maintain a pure attitude. Shame on me!" It was a very interesting experience, and I think emblematic of the way Vajrayana works.
So, the takeaway message seems to be, keep doing my dharma practices, and things will unfold as they should, but probably not the way I expect them to!
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Review of "Time and Now" by Steve Hagen
Recently I clicked on the article "Time and Now" in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. It caught my attention with the first couple of sentences
Unfortunately, my expectations were foiled. In a nutshell, the author mentions several modern physical theories, described in everyday language ---which is fine---, but with no indication of how accepted they are by the modern physics community ---which is not fine. Further, there are no sources or clues for the interested reader to research more carefully the various claims and models that are casually bandied about. It treats physics like an oracle, which can be relied on for certain cryptic pronouncements. In a way, the article felt condescending.
Okay, so let's go through the article a bit more carefully. The first physical model that is introduced "has been around since the 1940s." I already have no idea what he is talking about historically, but the model is clear enough. For the purposes of illustration one imagines that the universe is only two dimensional, and then imagines stacking all of the different moments of time on top of one another to get a stack of snapshots of the universe. These fit together to make a three dimensional whole, and one can imagine the progression of time as the rise of a cross-section like an elevator through the 3D block. Hagen goes on to point out that time need not be considered movement. The 3D block (or in our universe the 4D block exists) and the passage of time can be regarded as an illusion of consciousness. There are certain paths through the block which correspond to the lives of people, and if you read the path in one direction, memories accumulate and time seems to be passing for the observer. The idea of a uniform 4D universe which exists outside of time dates back to Einstein in 1916 at least, if not earlier. I have no idea why Hagen refers to the 1940s. A reference would have been nice.
As far as how mainstream this theory is, you can't get more widely accepted than general relativity. So the idea that the whole 4D universe already exists, including both past and future, would seem to be an ineluctable consequence. To be fair, the philosophical interpretation of general relativity is far from clear. But anyway, we're resting on pretty solid ground here. (Although there is a disturbing lack of free will in this completely deterministic model!)
The next model that is discussed is the idea that positrons are electrons traveling backward in time. This is a charming theory, one that the famous physicist Richard Feynman apparently subscribed to, at least during part of his career. If a positron (the antimatter version of the electron) collides with an electron, they both disappear in a flash of photons. One way to conceptualize this is that the electron "bounces off" the photons and is sent careening backward in time as a positron. That appears to be a consistent view, and Feynman described feeling quite excited about this way of thinking. (I once even considered writing a short story based on the phenomenon myself.) However, despite the charm of this interpretation, it doesn't actually seem to solve any questions, and furthermore doesn't seem to give us any insight into the passage of time that wasn't already gained by thinking of the 4D model of the universe as existing all at once, as opposed to being continuously created. I would say that the interpretation of positrons as backward-traveling electrons is respectable in the physics community, though perhaps not widely shared. Feynman himself would later downplay the idea, feeling that it didn't lead anywhere, and I think a lot of modern physicists would take a similar view. (Please correct or corroborate!)
Now we get to the last example, which is the one I find the most bothersome.
In the end, he gave no satisfying connection between the physics discussed and the enigmatic Buddhist quotes beyond the bare fact that physics supports the illusory nature of time. I had been hoping for an explanation of why it might be reasonable to describe the event of enlightenment as occurring at the same time for all sentient beings, but the discussion as presented could easily have been used to legitimate any weird quote where time doesn't make sense. I felt like there was a bait and switch.
I once met a dharma student who had given up a career as theoretical physicist to pursue the dharma full time. I mentioned to him that having such detailed knowledge of reality must help his dharma practice, and he scoffed at the notion. He agreed that knowing that matter is made up of strangely behaving "particles" is helpful for breaking down our usual solid notions of reality, but the details of complicated physical theories don't really help. The current article has not refuted his view.
How could it be that the Buddha's enlightenment occurred simultaneously with all beings? Didn't this event happen a long time ago? And if it already happened, where is it now? Doesn't "all beings" include us?In various Buddhist texts, seemingly counterfactual statements along these lines are made. One such saying is that when the Buddha was enlightened, so were all sentient beings. Actually, this sort of cryptic comment was one of the first hooks that got me interested in Buddhism. Although I didn't understand what this and other statements meant, they sounded deep and I wanted to learn more. On the other hand, since I've become a Buddhist, I actually haven't heard a teacher address the particular phenomenon mentioned in this quote, so it was with high expectation that I read the article.
Unfortunately, my expectations were foiled. In a nutshell, the author mentions several modern physical theories, described in everyday language ---which is fine---, but with no indication of how accepted they are by the modern physics community ---which is not fine. Further, there are no sources or clues for the interested reader to research more carefully the various claims and models that are casually bandied about. It treats physics like an oracle, which can be relied on for certain cryptic pronouncements. In a way, the article felt condescending.
Okay, so let's go through the article a bit more carefully. The first physical model that is introduced "has been around since the 1940s." I already have no idea what he is talking about historically, but the model is clear enough. For the purposes of illustration one imagines that the universe is only two dimensional, and then imagines stacking all of the different moments of time on top of one another to get a stack of snapshots of the universe. These fit together to make a three dimensional whole, and one can imagine the progression of time as the rise of a cross-section like an elevator through the 3D block. Hagen goes on to point out that time need not be considered movement. The 3D block (or in our universe the 4D block exists) and the passage of time can be regarded as an illusion of consciousness. There are certain paths through the block which correspond to the lives of people, and if you read the path in one direction, memories accumulate and time seems to be passing for the observer. The idea of a uniform 4D universe which exists outside of time dates back to Einstein in 1916 at least, if not earlier. I have no idea why Hagen refers to the 1940s. A reference would have been nice.
As far as how mainstream this theory is, you can't get more widely accepted than general relativity. So the idea that the whole 4D universe already exists, including both past and future, would seem to be an ineluctable consequence. To be fair, the philosophical interpretation of general relativity is far from clear. But anyway, we're resting on pretty solid ground here. (Although there is a disturbing lack of free will in this completely deterministic model!)
The next model that is discussed is the idea that positrons are electrons traveling backward in time. This is a charming theory, one that the famous physicist Richard Feynman apparently subscribed to, at least during part of his career. If a positron (the antimatter version of the electron) collides with an electron, they both disappear in a flash of photons. One way to conceptualize this is that the electron "bounces off" the photons and is sent careening backward in time as a positron. That appears to be a consistent view, and Feynman described feeling quite excited about this way of thinking. (I once even considered writing a short story based on the phenomenon myself.) However, despite the charm of this interpretation, it doesn't actually seem to solve any questions, and furthermore doesn't seem to give us any insight into the passage of time that wasn't already gained by thinking of the 4D model of the universe as existing all at once, as opposed to being continuously created. I would say that the interpretation of positrons as backward-traveling electrons is respectable in the physics community, though perhaps not widely shared. Feynman himself would later downplay the idea, feeling that it didn't lead anywhere, and I think a lot of modern physicists would take a similar view. (Please correct or corroborate!)
Now we get to the last example, which is the one I find the most bothersome.
To put it in highly simplified terms, physicists are beginning to hypothesize something like the following. When, say, an electron in your kitchen vibrates, it sends out a signal traveling at the speed of light through all of time and space. When another electron receives that signal, it vibrates sympathetically and sends a return signal back to the original electron in your kitchen. Each electron gets this information from other particles anywhere and everywhere—indeed, from literally everything that it reaches out to touch in all of time and space. As a result of this process, each electron "knows" its exact place and importance in the universe.I think he may be referring to the theory of pilot waves, which is a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics that has its small number of adherents. It is certainly a respectable theory, but not widely shared in the modern physics community. I expected more of Steve Hagen, but what is "As a result of this process, each electron "knows" its exact place and importance in the universe." supposed to mean? That is a fine example of new age technobabble. The main point of the pilot wave example is to again give evidence that time is not what we commonly perceive it to be. He could easily have done this without invoking controversial physics.
In the end, he gave no satisfying connection between the physics discussed and the enigmatic Buddhist quotes beyond the bare fact that physics supports the illusory nature of time. I had been hoping for an explanation of why it might be reasonable to describe the event of enlightenment as occurring at the same time for all sentient beings, but the discussion as presented could easily have been used to legitimate any weird quote where time doesn't make sense. I felt like there was a bait and switch.
I once met a dharma student who had given up a career as theoretical physicist to pursue the dharma full time. I mentioned to him that having such detailed knowledge of reality must help his dharma practice, and he scoffed at the notion. He agreed that knowing that matter is made up of strangely behaving "particles" is helpful for breaking down our usual solid notions of reality, but the details of complicated physical theories don't really help. The current article has not refuted his view.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Cultural psychosis
A friend of mine posted this story on the warnings that black women give their male children about surviving in a white world on Facebook today, adding that he remembered getting this talk when he was five. Reading the testimonials of what black women were telling their sons, deep sobs built in me and gushed outward. Anyone who knows me knows that this is pretty uncharacteristic behavior, and I am not sure exactly what caused me to empathize so deeply right now. Possibly opening to my own childhood pain has given me a point of reference. This is a deep tragedy happening to so many kids all around us all the time. Unfortunately, it seems that nobody really knows how to talk about it, and much of the conversation seems stuck on whether racism really exists. I think the problem is that people have largely unexamined irrational unconscious or implicit beliefs which affect their actions. The implicit bias website, Project Implicit, tests for such hidden biases, and many people find biases within themselves that they had previously been unaware of. As well, there have been a number of illustrative studies on racism. A notable one involved sending identical resumes to employers, one with a white-sounding name and one with a more black-sounding name. Employers were more likely to hire the person whose name sounded white.
Meditation is a great tool for bringing unconscious beliefs to the fore. I have had this happen to me time and again. My mind would do something reflexive and the meditation practice gave me the space and training to notice that it happened. Once these implicit beliefs become conscious, they become far less powerful. They like to operate under cover in the dark. The light of day tends to evaporate them. Of course, the more engrained the belief, the longer this process will take. Yesterday I was riding my bike down the street and I saw a group of black teenagers hanging out on the side of the road. My first thought was fear and even the fleeting thought that I hope they don't kill me. That reaction lay unexamined in my mind until today when I realized what I had done. Unconscious racism. Now that that reaction is exposed under the full light of my conscious awareness I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed by it, but with it in sight, I can not listen to it or be controlled by it. I suspect that a lot of people suppress such self-analysis in defense of ego. Even as I write this, it worries me what other people will think, but how are we going to root out racism if we can't see it when it's right in front of our faces?
I think one of the ways racism and sexism functions is via archetypes. The mind has a culturally informed ''typical example" of certain categories, like say "scientist." For many people, the archetypal scientist is an older white guy, perhaps in a lab coat. When we are not careful, this archetype informs our thinking in pretty deep ways. I really like the comic strip Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, because the author consciously evenly distributes the role of scientist to men, women, whites and blacks, as well as gay and straight characters. This is something that would have been difficult for old time comics distributed in printed newspapers because the confusion that it causes among readers eats into the bottom line. This is similar to why commercials tend to reinforce stereotypes. Challenging your unconscious beliefs will associate discomfort in your mind with their product, so it's better to reinforce your beliefs from the profit perspective. Aware of the strong sexist tendencies in society, I try to do something similar in my classes. I try to use the female pronoun as often as the male pronoun, and in particular when I crack jokes, which I am wont to do, I try to include both genders fairly. Looking through humor on the internet is actually kind of depressing because jokes tend to lay bare the archetypes I've been talking about. If a joke mentions a mathematician, for example, that mathematician is almost always male, because that is the normative trait for the defining archetype, and mentioning a female mathematician, when it is not relevant to the punchline, strikes many people as artificial. Which is completely fucking nuts. The idea that white and male is normative is as universal as it is pathological. It's a cultural psychosis.
Anyway, feeling the pain of my friend and so many other millions of kids so personally and deeply has made me renew my efforts to lay bare and root out the manifestations of that psychosis in myself.
Meditation is a great tool for bringing unconscious beliefs to the fore. I have had this happen to me time and again. My mind would do something reflexive and the meditation practice gave me the space and training to notice that it happened. Once these implicit beliefs become conscious, they become far less powerful. They like to operate under cover in the dark. The light of day tends to evaporate them. Of course, the more engrained the belief, the longer this process will take. Yesterday I was riding my bike down the street and I saw a group of black teenagers hanging out on the side of the road. My first thought was fear and even the fleeting thought that I hope they don't kill me. That reaction lay unexamined in my mind until today when I realized what I had done. Unconscious racism. Now that that reaction is exposed under the full light of my conscious awareness I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed by it, but with it in sight, I can not listen to it or be controlled by it. I suspect that a lot of people suppress such self-analysis in defense of ego. Even as I write this, it worries me what other people will think, but how are we going to root out racism if we can't see it when it's right in front of our faces?
I think one of the ways racism and sexism functions is via archetypes. The mind has a culturally informed ''typical example" of certain categories, like say "scientist." For many people, the archetypal scientist is an older white guy, perhaps in a lab coat. When we are not careful, this archetype informs our thinking in pretty deep ways. I really like the comic strip Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, because the author consciously evenly distributes the role of scientist to men, women, whites and blacks, as well as gay and straight characters. This is something that would have been difficult for old time comics distributed in printed newspapers because the confusion that it causes among readers eats into the bottom line. This is similar to why commercials tend to reinforce stereotypes. Challenging your unconscious beliefs will associate discomfort in your mind with their product, so it's better to reinforce your beliefs from the profit perspective. Aware of the strong sexist tendencies in society, I try to do something similar in my classes. I try to use the female pronoun as often as the male pronoun, and in particular when I crack jokes, which I am wont to do, I try to include both genders fairly. Looking through humor on the internet is actually kind of depressing because jokes tend to lay bare the archetypes I've been talking about. If a joke mentions a mathematician, for example, that mathematician is almost always male, because that is the normative trait for the defining archetype, and mentioning a female mathematician, when it is not relevant to the punchline, strikes many people as artificial. Which is completely fucking nuts. The idea that white and male is normative is as universal as it is pathological. It's a cultural psychosis.
Anyway, feeling the pain of my friend and so many other millions of kids so personally and deeply has made me renew my efforts to lay bare and root out the manifestations of that psychosis in myself.
Monday, August 18, 2014
An evolving relationship with the guru
When I started this blog back up a few weeks ago, it was clear to me that I had a block and I needed to deal with it. I didn't expect to be revisiting my childhood and my dad's mental illness, but I think it was beneficial on the whole. I'm not sure that was my block though. Indeed, I doubt that it is so simple. Really, I just need to hit the mat and keep meditating and practicing. I don't want this blog to become just about my dad's schizophrenia. I'd rather keep talking about my practice and development.
I just returned from a weekend program with my root teacher Lama Norlha Rinpoche. My relationship with my guru is evolving. Before I first met him, when I heard a lama was coming to town, I was kind of grumpy after having already spent a lot of time with a couple previous teachers who had visited. I felt like I needed a rest. As I was walking to a talk he was giving on the U.T. campus, I caught myself being negative, and I recalled Pema Chödron's advice in such circumstances. Wish the person to have happiness and the causes of happiness, and for them to be free of suffering and its causes. So I said a little prayer to that effect and I immediately, and completely unexpectedly, had a very powerful physical and mental experience. I heard the words from the Red Tara sadhana "Returned as wisdom blessings, the light is reabsorbed," ring like a bell in my mind. There was an intense euphoria localized in my torso which then rose and shot out the top of my head. All my negativity was immediately released. Later I asked Lama about this, and he said it was a sign that we knew each other in a previous life. What is very interesting is that I had no idea about the subtle energy body at this point, nor had I heard that experiences like "all the hair on your body standing on end" are relatively common when a person meets their root teacher. I overheard another student of Lama's independently describe a similar experience. I've come to associate Lama with these intense experiences of energy movement in the body, but I sense that that's not what I need now. Indeed, this is a rather superficial effect, even if it lies totally beyond conventional reality. It's not like feeling a short burst of energy can compare to the slow methodical work of sitting on the cushion. I mention this because, although I did feel a subtle energy briefly playing across my scalp after the empowerment this weekend, on the whole I didn't have that kind of experience, and I realize that I was disappointed as a result. In all the advice I've heard and texts that I've read, it always says don't attach to experiences like this. They will never repeat. They are a sign that you are heading in the right direction but they are not the end in itself. In many ways, these signs and experiences are irrelevant to the goal of freedom of mind. I've also read about how one's relationship with one's teacher evolves and changes over time, and moreover the teacher is constantly upending your expectations, not letting you get comfortable on whatever plateau you're stuck on. So all in all, it seems that things are progressing as they should.
I just returned from a weekend program with my root teacher Lama Norlha Rinpoche. My relationship with my guru is evolving. Before I first met him, when I heard a lama was coming to town, I was kind of grumpy after having already spent a lot of time with a couple previous teachers who had visited. I felt like I needed a rest. As I was walking to a talk he was giving on the U.T. campus, I caught myself being negative, and I recalled Pema Chödron's advice in such circumstances. Wish the person to have happiness and the causes of happiness, and for them to be free of suffering and its causes. So I said a little prayer to that effect and I immediately, and completely unexpectedly, had a very powerful physical and mental experience. I heard the words from the Red Tara sadhana "Returned as wisdom blessings, the light is reabsorbed," ring like a bell in my mind. There was an intense euphoria localized in my torso which then rose and shot out the top of my head. All my negativity was immediately released. Later I asked Lama about this, and he said it was a sign that we knew each other in a previous life. What is very interesting is that I had no idea about the subtle energy body at this point, nor had I heard that experiences like "all the hair on your body standing on end" are relatively common when a person meets their root teacher. I overheard another student of Lama's independently describe a similar experience. I've come to associate Lama with these intense experiences of energy movement in the body, but I sense that that's not what I need now. Indeed, this is a rather superficial effect, even if it lies totally beyond conventional reality. It's not like feeling a short burst of energy can compare to the slow methodical work of sitting on the cushion. I mention this because, although I did feel a subtle energy briefly playing across my scalp after the empowerment this weekend, on the whole I didn't have that kind of experience, and I realize that I was disappointed as a result. In all the advice I've heard and texts that I've read, it always says don't attach to experiences like this. They will never repeat. They are a sign that you are heading in the right direction but they are not the end in itself. In many ways, these signs and experiences are irrelevant to the goal of freedom of mind. I've also read about how one's relationship with one's teacher evolves and changes over time, and moreover the teacher is constantly upending your expectations, not letting you get comfortable on whatever plateau you're stuck on. So all in all, it seems that things are progressing as they should.
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