Restating the 'no-self doctrine'

Eric wrote: To me this points to the difference between being temporarily flown to the top of the mountain in a helicopter, versus slowly hiking up on foot with the goal of living on the top of the mountain. Which is like sudden insight vs. developmental progress. But the top of the mountain is the top of the mountain, yes? or not?

But the top of the mountain is not a particular state, no matter how grandiose or numinous or awesome. To play on the metaphor, I don't think the goal is to reach the top of the mountain and set up camp there permanently. It is a worthy endeavor to reach the top of the mountain (the view is breathtaking, and gives you a new perspective on everything that's below), but you can't stay there permanently nor is that really desirable. Rather, once you've made the trek, you can be comfortable on any part of the mountain with your knowledge of the entirety of the mountain.

By my current understanding, non-self is not a particular experience, but an aspect of experience at large. A meta-experience, maybe. My experience is not a perpetual agency-less free-fall non-dual state, but whenever I turn towards the aspect of self/no-self, it's just obvious that there's no "me" that is experiencing this apart from this or at the center of this ("there's no there there" ), and that that's how it was before I turned toward it.

Awesome Nadav!

I only used psychedelics in college, maybe a dozen times over eight years or so, and I remember some of the experiences being very fun and/or weird, but I don't remember them being anything like waking up or being awake.

I wrote this post the other day, after some weeks of pondering and rewriting and pondering some more: onakiser.com/2013/07/05/putting-spiritua...nces-in-perspective/

And I wrote that as someone who's had more than her fair share of radical weird fun strange cool spiritual experiences... which in hindsight (and really only lately) just don't seem particularly important. Perhaps that perspective will change again. It's the thought of the moment, in any case.

nadav wrote: ...It is a worthy endeavor to reach the top of the mountain (the view is breathtaking, and gives you a new perspective on everything that's below), but you can't stay there permanently nor is that really desirable. Rather, once you've made the trek, you can be comfortable on any part of the mountain with your knowledge of the entirety of the mountain. ...

Or maybe you realize that the top of the mountain is actually not at all different from any other part of it?

Well you just freakin' never know when or where the next bit of illumination will appear. I went to hear Rebecca Solnit read from her new book at my local bookstore the other night. Started reading it for myself today. Found this:

“When the disease (leprosy) became curable, Brand wondered why even the cured patients continued to lose joints or whole digits of hands and feet and to acquire more injuries and infections.

His investigations revealed that it was due to numbness: you might hold the match or the cigarette until it burned your fingers, touch the too-hot iron, hold the tool with the sharp edge that gouged your hand, wear the badly fitting shoes until they rubbed holes into your feet, and then ignore the resulting damage and infection. Your self is what you feel, and for those with leprosy that sense of self retreated up the hand or arm or leg as the extremities went numb.

Some of the Indian youths Brand treated described their hands as no longer part of themselves, and his job was to teach them to take care of these insensible, alienated limbs with the kindness with which they might tend someone else…

( Said Dr. Brand, ) ‘Pain, along with its cousin touch, is distributed universally on the body, providing a sort of boundary of self. Even after surgery, they tended to view their repaired hands and feet as tools or artificial appendages. They lacked the basic instinct of self-protection that pain normally provides. One of the boys said to me, ‘My hands and feet don’t feel like part of me. They are like tools I can use. But they aren’t really me. I can see them, but in my mind they are dead.’ I heard similar comments often, underscoring the crucial role pain plays in unifying the human body.’”

For me, the light this sheds on 'no-self' is brilliant. Because, for me, the equally accurate way to describe the boundary-lessness is 'no-other.' Nothing and no one is alien or merely instrumental: everyone and everything is equally alive and sentient in a way that (mysteriously) I participate in.

For those expecting that "extinguishing the self" will mean "the end of suffering," a rude shock awaits. It is the privilege of the self that is extinguished, not its feeling-- as "the cries of the world" and its suffering become just as audible, just as palpable, as they are to Kuan Yin. They are all your cries, your suffering. The reason you are not destroyed by the magnitude, is that all those thousands of arms and helping hands she has-- those are yours, too.

"... the crucial role pain plays in unifying the human body.”-- indeed.

Ona Kiser wrote: Or maybe you realize that the top of the mountain is actually not at all different from any other part of it?

Exactly. The metaphor can go a lot of ways.

Kate Gowen wrote: ... the equally accurate way to describe the boundary-lessness is 'no-other.' Nothing and no one is alien or merely instrumental: everyone and everything is equally alive and sentient in a way that (mysteriously) I participate in.

For those expecting that "extinguishing the self" will mean "the end of suffering," a rude shock awaits. It is the privilege of the self that is extinguished, not its feeling-- as "the cries of the world" and its suffering become just as audible, just as palpable, as they are to Kuan Yin. They are all your cries, your suffering. The reason you are not destroyed by the magnitude, is that all those thousands of arms and helping hands she has-- those are yours, too.

"... the crucial role pain plays in unifying the human body.”-- indeed.

I agree on that.

That said there's a specific self-centered-obsessiveness-generated misery that many (not all) people flail around in, and awakening does (gradually) seem to shake that up. All the stuff that's about me me me - like "maybe she doesn't like me, I'm not doing enough to make him happy, what if they think I'm stupid, I'm a loser, I'm supposed to be achieving something" - that becomes less and less important.

The other angle is that some level of misery in life can come from wanting to know what everything means and why it is and what the point is and all that, and I've found that the answer has been to discover that not knowing those things is okay, even grand and delightful. I'm not in control of my life, I don't know what God has in store for me, I don't know what the next moment will bring, and while for a long time that sucked, I now find it very fun. It's actually part of what that story of Job was about: you can't possibly wrap your head around the vastness of the universe. Once that overwhelmingly infinite vastness is recognized (in as much as is humanly possible), it puts in perspective all the complaining and lashing out we spend so much energy on.

One thing I can add re psychedelics is that in many ways they didn't do much for me either back in the day, I'm really thinking back to college, but certainly anything prior to my A&P, to pick a point in time. They were trippy and cool experiences that were pointing in a certain direction that I didn't entirely get at the time. Maybe the tiniest bit of insight, but just kind of forgotten after a while. Just experiences, like a ride at an amusement park.

But my experiences post A&P have been a different animal - some extremely useful stuff as far as insight practice goes. I'm not sure what the dividing line was other than I was meditating a lot as opposed to earlier experiences. Roland Griffiths' work on psilocybin and meditation will prove very interesting on this point. He has already teased that it is looking like there are benefits to the combination.

I like the idea of being comfortable with the whole mountain. I think we may be bending the metaphor in slightly different ways.

As much as it all seems the same, it does seem like there are useful distinctions, like say the percent of time spent present and not embedded in thought. One is present anyway, sure, and there could be genetic predispositions or something, but for me this percentage has gone up, and it seems pretty seriously correlated with whatever strange developments we're chattering about. From my perspective on what I'm calling the mountain, people who are just getting started walking up are not going to be nearly as comfortable. I'm seeing it as at least something of a progress thing as opposed to say a representation of the landscape of experience.

Thanks for the pointers on how different psychedelics seem now compared to before. Interesting.

Eric, your last reply made me ponder something a little tangential (tho not entirely). Almost everyone does other things in conjunction with meditation - such as energy-system practices, yoga, concentration or visualization practices, jhanas, (spirit conjurations! mushrooms! mountain climbing!), and so on, depending on our interests and tradition(s).

If I happened to join the "tennis for awakening" school and did 30 minutes a day of tennis followed by 30 of meditation for three years, I bet I would start to really have a big change in my tennis playing... and I might wake up... and then I'd think the tennis was crucial to waking up and that waking up had brought my tennis game to new levels?

I don't mean to be flippant, because I thought that about energy-body practices, about spirit work, about Magick, etc etc. I am very, very doubtful now whether those things have a significant causal effect on waking up. I do think they have a very strong impact on intention, and they keep one engaged with practice, they are expressions of ones personality, and they train the brain to do various tricks (pay attention to one thing, go into altered states, etc.). I even wrote on my own blog that the combination of Magick and meditation was the fastest way to awaken... I don't believe that anymore. It might be true only because of the intention/engagement factor... still not sure.

I'm totally open to being wrong. Just thought it relates to the topic and this is a nice pondery sort of thread for it.

Lots of people mention getting hung up on what got them A&P or stream entry. I'm one of them, in recovery.

But I do think we can look to commonalities, find the underlying thread of awareness or whatever.

On a posting roll this morning.

Kind of going back and forth on this stuff. I was reading thru more of that Gateless Gatecrashers and was thinking that it does seem possible to get it just from that Advaitic perspective, I don't see why not. Didn't completely work for me, but it seems possible. But then there is this developmental axis, this training of attention and tranquility, that I really value. The developmental axis seems to make it easier, but is it necessary? Is it part of "enlightenment?" I mean, I like it in there, but then again I'd like to have a certain amount of psychological development in the definition as well.

One thing about the Advaita-style direct pointing - this may yield "awakening" - but in my experience it's rare that it yields "full awakening" all at once. That is, it contributes to an ongoing process. So the questioning and inquiry leads to an insight...and another...and later another. One may finally, after some period of questioning, "see through" some stuff and have an opening, sort of equivalent to a path moment. And then after some period of time and more inquiry and investigation, another one. Often they imply that people "wake up" in one go, and they may interpret any opening/shift as "waking up" - but it would be normal for those events/experiences to be partial, so to speak, just as path shifts are, and then the person continues, delving deeper. They may or may not distinguish different "levels" like that (probably depends on the teacher) but from an outside perspective that's my impression.

Make sense?

I don't know if GG use this paradigm, but as I understand it, for (at least some) more traditionalist Advaitins there are two kinds of 'awakenings' - one in which the seeker has already done a lot of preparatory work in various different spiritual areas (including morality) and which is full and complete when it occurs, and the other in which this has not been done and as a result there will be continuous development for some time after the 'event.' Here's a quote from Dennis Waite:

"Advaita teaches that there is ‘enlightenment’, after which one may be referred to as a j~nAnI (i.e. one who knows the truth) and then there are the ‘fruits of enlightenment’ – jIvanmukti – which bring the ‘benefits’ of peace of mind etc. For someone who is fully prepared mentally prior to enlightenment (as per Shankara’s chatuShTaya sampatti), the fruits accompany enlightenment. For those who were not fully prepared, further nididhyAsana is required. Note that mental preparation and practices such as meditation do not in themselves bring about enlightenment – for that, only self-knowledge is effective. But the preparation makes it more likely that knowledge will be heard and recognised when it is given. Those who have had no preparation at all cannot become a j~nAnI."

every3rdthought wrote: I don't know if GG use this paradigm, but as I understand it, for (at least some) more traditionalist Advaitins there are two kinds of 'awakenings' - one in which the seeker has already done a lot of preparatory work in various different spiritual areas (including morality) and which is full and complete when it occurs, and the other in which this has not been done and as a result there will be continuous development for some time after the 'event.' Here's a quote from Dennis Waite:

"Advaita teaches that there is ‘enlightenment’, after which one may be referred to as a j~nAnI (i.e. one who knows the truth) and then there are the ‘fruits of enlightenment’ – jIvanmukti – which bring the ‘benefits’ of peace of mind etc. For someone who is fully prepared mentally prior to enlightenment (as per Shankara’s chatuShTaya sampatti), the fruits accompany enlightenment. For those who were not fully prepared, further nididhyAsana is required. Note that mental preparation and practices such as meditation do not in themselves bring about enlightenment – for that, only self-knowledge is effective. But the preparation makes it more likely that knowledge will be heard and recognised when it is given. Those who have had no preparation at all cannot become a j~nAnI."

That's an interesting way to look at it. I don't disagree. I think it also applies to those with meditation practices, which might explain the "path" idea, as well as the "post awakening integration" stuff.

Ona, Tom may already have sent you a copy of my essay "The Phenomenon of Awakening." Chapter 1 attempts to give a modern definition of no-self. I'll leave you to judge how successful that attempt it is. Chapter 4 is my personal story.

You might sum up the "what is awakening" part for everyone else here (though it's covered in your video in the Introductions thread). But what intrigues me a bit is that you seem to have a Christian background or interests, and also a background/interest in psychology and in Buddhism (academic or professional background?) Do you find the psychological approach most relevant? Why?

Yes, I do have a background in the academic study of religion, plus additional training in counseling and psychotherapy.

Your question as to why I gravitate toward psychological terminology is a good one, but I'm not sure I have a good answer!

We are trying to produce a verbal model of something that is preverbal. Yet unless we have a verbal model, we can never communicate.

I suppose I find using the secular, psychological model provides common ground with the largest number of people. To use metaphysical or theological terms limits our communications to those who share that conceptual background. Hence I find vocabulary such as "Atman," "Brahman," "Ignorance," "Ultimate Reality," etc., to be not particularly useful. On the other hand, anyone who's reasonably well read knows what a defense mechanism is.

I hear you. I do find that these sort of secular or pragmatic vocabularies are so useful for communication (at least in certain circles!), and I use them when it's practical (for the same reasons you articulate). But personally the poetry, passion and beauty of the Christian tradition resonates in a way that makes my heart sing. I find a bit of that resonance in some Zen writing, too. I like the playfulness of Zen, though I haven't read or studied deeply in that tradition.

I think there is good reason to go slow on the assumption that all metaphysical ideas are either equivalent, or reducible, to psychology. In the long arc of human attempts at self-understanding, psychology is merely the latest fad.

(We can see where my preferences lie: give me some Zen or Daoism or Dzogchen, or insightful poetry of any age!)

@Kate (and everyone else) - do you think "choice of framework(s)" can just be an aesthetic choice? a person who's arty vs one who's intellectual etc etc are going to be drawn to different ways of expressing what they experience (and to different approaches to practice, too). Or is there a fundamental "problem" with some forms of expression? Or is that "problem" always personal (ie I don't like religion therefore religious forms of expression are not relevant, etc.)...

I was just stating my preference. However, I do think that any framework is going to express some things better and others worse; which are more significant is probably in the eye of the beholder.

I tend to think that it's always personal - and also will change over time for individuals as well as some frameworks appealing more to some than others (I know it has for me and for others here, but also thinking of people who are well-known figureheads look at e.g. Adyashanti, interesting case of starting out in Zen but ending up closest to Advaita in terms of his terminology etc).

But the problem with the thing about it being personal occurs when some frameworks are seen as truer than others and providing an objective point from which others can be evaluated (particularly when the speaker doesn't even realise they're doing this) - the 'view from nowhere.' Hence one reason why I like postmodernist/deconstructionist thinking.

In the contemporary West this dominant/invisible 'truth' is often the 'scientific'/materialist/neurobiological framework, but we don't realise that this too is a particular myth or set of myths, contingent on a certain place and time (and this too is interesting because it's about the question of 'accurate access to reality') - there's an interesting/frustrating thread over on DhO at the moment on this. For this reason particularly I'm not personally a big fan of the emphasis in lots of meditation/dharma circles on that kind of approach (more of McMahon's Making of Buddhist Modernism stuff), but I do see that it will speak to a lot of Westerners, and if that leads more people to get interested in practice it can only be a good thing. Still, I wonder to what extent the scientific method can ever access contemplation inasmuch as consciousness is always subjective...

"consider the source".... dolphin wisdom, dude.

Saturday morning dolphin wisdom at the library.