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| SAND Europe panel Jeff Warren, Lisa Cairns Tim Freke |
The panel discussions were "What is Enlightenment?" w/Tim Freke and Paul Smit moderated by Conscious TV (available in 4 wks) and "Filling in the Details" w/Tim Freke and Lisa Cairns moderated by Jeff Warren.
One of the key points at the conference, and what is at the heart of the confusion of what nonduality and "enlightenment" are, is the misconception that "There's nothing you have to do, you are already enlightened."
This concept appeared when Zen fully manifested in America in the 50s and 60s and in advaita in the 80s and 90s in the teachings of Poonjaji, Gangaji, and others. It is increasingly the "joke" about nonduality among serious meditation practitioners.
my final slide "What does 'there's nothing you have to do' mean?", had historical comments from Tony Parsons, Poonjaji and Steven Harrison (below). i benefited greatly from Tony's, Poonjaji's, and Gangaji's teachings. IME, these teachers are simply speaking from where they are. There are contemporary Neo-Advaita teachers who, IMHO, parrot the nondual teachings w/little understanding under the guise of "there's nothing you have to do" after having an experience.
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| Poonjaji |
Poonjaji — “You do not have
to practice any sadhana”. However, earlier, Poonjaji chanted daily for 7 hrs before work and after work chanted until he went to
sleep. he did 50,000 recitations/day, synchronizing the chanting with breathing and recited the names of the divine (japa) w/mantras and prayers “with great fervor!”
Steven Harrison “Sought out every
mystic, seer and magician” he could find over twenty-five years of
"study of philosophies, severe austerities, periods of isolation and
meditation.” He concluded “… it was all useless.”
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| Malcolm Gladwell |
This concept came to prominence in Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling "Outliers: The Story of Success". Gladwell's earlier best sellers were "The Tipping Point" and "Blink". The 10,000 hr phenomena is based on the work of K. Anders Ericsson, a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is widely recognized as one of the world's leading researchers on expertise.
Ericsson studies the cognitive structure of expert performance in medicine, music, chess, sports, and many other skills, investigating how expert performers acquire their superior performance through extended deliberate practice, high concentration practice beyond one's comfort zone.
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| K. Anders Ericsson Florida State Univ |
Ericsson's work is summarized in the Harvard Business Review article "The Making of An Expert" by Ericsson, et al. (2007) as "New research shows that outstanding performance is the product of years of deliberate practice and coaching, not of any innate talent or skill".
What can we learn from this research to help us structure our practices to be more productive in the time available and to make awakening more likely?
Key findings from Ericsson's work:
1. There is no correlation between IQ and expert performance in surgery, acting, chess, writing, computer programming, ballet, music, mathematics, aviation, firefighting, sports and many other activities.
2. All superb performers practiced intensively.
3. Experts are always made, not born. Forget the folklore about genius.
4. The development of genuine expertise requires sacrifice, and honest, often painful self-assessment. There are no shortcuts.
5. Not all practice makes perfect. You need a particular kind of practice — deliberate practice — to develop expertise. When most people practice, they do what they already know how to do. Deliberate practice entails specific, sustained efforts to do what you can’t do well.
6. Deliberate practice involves two kinds of learning: improving the skills you have and extending their reach and range. The concentration required limits the amount of time you can spend doing them.7. Practice as much as you can accomplish with concentration. Most experts set aside only a couple of hours a day, typically in the morning. (This is the length of time, and time of day, i worked with, out of necessity, not insight, but it worked.)
8. It’s easy to neglect deliberate practice as you are moving outside your comfort zone.
9. People are naive about how long it takes to become an expert.
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| Mozart |
i had two Zen masters for pass/fail assessment, but they had little/no experience w/the self-inquiry process and so could not be "coaches". Also, the process had not really been described in useful detail in any texts. IMHO, that is why it took 20,000 hrs - i was "flying blind".
However, it was "perfect" as i worked w/many approaches and made many mistakes which is useful in working w/folk; there aren't many mistakes i haven't made. It also made the "page turning" permanent and uneventful.
11. Mozart is presented as a child prodigy with exceptional innate musical genius. His development started when he was four years old, and his father was a famous music teacher. Mozart was not born an expert — he became one.
Remember that "awakening" is not an end point, nor experiences which pass, nor an Olympic Gold Medal to be attached to and identified with, but an ongoing process in deepening a new way of being. As Harada Roshi said (Three Pillars of Zen) "Enlightenment is capable of endless enlargement".
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| Harada Roshi |
Don't believe that nothing happens until 10,000 hrs. As discussed in the Dialogues w/Dominic blogposts ("Working in a 'big job' w/family, w/o thoughts" and "DIY nondual awakening w/big job, family, 3yrs on/off practice") it is possible in one year of e-mails and diligent effort, w/minimal meditation experience, to reach an awakened state that continues to enlarge, and enlarge, "on its own".
"Good stuff" happens quickly. Working w/a Harvard MD, after two face-to-face sessions and four or five skypes, she reported that her "rounds" were going easier, she was more present w/patients and co-workers, her stress level had fallen dramatically, etc.
There are some great advantages to the self-inquiry approach:
1) you have "already installed", easily-accessible, diagnostic tools - "Are your self-referential thoughts changing in duration, 'stickiness' and emotion?" On a longer time scale, "Has your suffering decreased?". And, what is your current state-of-mind, this second? Are you at ease, without regrets, at peace with "yourself"?
2) The brain is on "your" side. The brain "likes" lower levels of stress, confusion, anxiety, fear, etc. If it sees this state repeatedly, it will "all by itself" work out the neural refunctionalizing to produce it. This is a consistent report.
At some point, you realize that you are not "doing" the process; it has taken on a "life of its own", endogenously. This is not true in most other "skills", which exogenously "train" the brain.
3) Self-inquiry can be done anywhere, anytime, w/o anyone knowing. It can be used w/every interaction, confrontation, reaction, thought, etc. throughout your day. This disrupting of the habitual I/me/my actions, catching the self in "real time", has disproportionate benefits.
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| Ram Dass "Grist for the Mill" |
4) Your "deliberate practice" by "sustained efforts to do what you can’t do well" occurs in your working w/relationships in "everyday life".
The interactions you dread, the folk/situations you avoid are the "grist for your mill of awakening". Living in seclusion doesn't give you the "deliberate practice"...only relationships w/co-workers, partners, family, etc. can do that.
"Where am I?", "To whom does this thought, emotion, memory arise?", "Let go, let go", etc., become active tools, not dull practices.
As discussed earlier, it does appear, anecdotally, as if some exposure to some psychedelics may be useful in the awakening process. The studies being conducted now @ Johns Hopkins on psilocybin +/- meditation ("the latest psychedelic research ...new meditation +/- psilocybin studies") may yield some insights.
Awakening is about developing a better way to "be", second by second, now, now, now, not a memory of an experience or a title to be clung to. Just remember to persist and let go, let go, let go...
Each time I comment on Gary's blogs I tend to say something like "this is the best yet!" well....This Is the Best Yet! This topic is controversial, but really, the jury has returned and yes, sadhanas help. Even Eckhart Tolle's famous "shift" was followed immediately by meditative practices and much study before he even understood the nature of the experience he had, let alone how to live with it. Nisargadatta chanted until he died. I wonder how many times Ramana Maharshi sang his songs. Andy H
ReplyDeleteMy comment would be that analytic reasoning combined with enhanced right brain function is the key. Developing a feeling brain (body senses, visual imagery, concentration in the present moment) and then using that with analytic reasoning to answer the following questions:
ReplyDelete"Who am I?"
"Where is the dividing line between living and dead objects for consciousness, attraction and repulsion, self propagation/growth, etc?"
"How do I differ from a bird or squirrel or ant?"
"How to animals differ from plants and why?"
"How would it feel to be an ant/spider/bird?"
"What are the illusions of ego and why? Self, love, free will, death"
"What are the common threads in the mythological truths embedded in human religions?"
Once the ego is understood clearly the process becomes self perpetuating.
That approach is unlikely to be successful, IME. Self-inquiry isn't an analytical reasoning/intellectual exercise, but an experiential one. If awakening could be attained by analysis, there would be thousands of philosophers, Western as well as Buddhist and advaita Vedantins who were awakened, but there are very few. Few advaita Vedantin swamis meditate; it is actively discouraged in some centers.
DeleteThe self-inquiry questions are designed to stop thought and reveal what is there when it does. They do not need, in fact do not work w/the complex, but interesting questions you have posed, IME. Simply returning again, and again and again to "Where am I?", or "Who hears?" is what has been shown to be successful.
Generating the "enhanced right brain function" takes a great deal of "practice" in concentration to get it to stabilize w/a deactivated DMN, even w/o "tasking" taking place. (See the blogpost "Folk who meditate decrease mind wandering")
Just doing tasking/problem solving in the right brain in the TPN, as you seem to suggest, doesn't do it, or we'd have thousands of scientists who were awakened, and very few are.
i do agree that a "feeling brain" is critical, as the approach is more sensory than intellectual, as well as with your comment that "the process becomes self perpetuating". A common report is that a point is reached where this is obvious, i.e. the "I" has become so de-energized that it is clear that there is no "doer", but the process continues, i.e. the brain is doing is "all by itself".
Tks for the comment. stillness.
I just stumbled across you recently and I'm very happy to see someone who's on the same page! E.g. I wrote a blog article (in German) some months ago, stating almost the same argument about Tony Parsons and the like, in that it is quite naive (and not very scientific) to claim post-hoc that none of the pre-awakening efforts would have done anything. R. Sylvester goes even that far to state in his (actually nice to be read, once one is already awakened) book 'I hope you die soon' that it would be totally irrelevant in terms of awakening if one spends 20 years meditating or spends 20 years being an alcoholic... A statement I regard as false, highly dangerous and quite cynical.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, there seems to be a subjectively felt gap between 'before' and 'after' (while the whole process is at the same time a continuous unfolding). I wonder, with regards to neuroscience, if this perceived gap (and the continuity as well) might be mirrored by the way, neuronal connectivity is built- and also broken down. E.g. connections get weaker and weaker- until this one moment when they are disrupted.
Last thing, I read the interview with you on spiritualteachers.org and your point that you absolutely HAD to awaken resonated with me very, very much. Don't know if you're familiar with the books of Jed McKenna (?)- but this is what he calls 'taking the first step' and goes on to state this is actually the first, and last step (if it's really, earnestly THE first step). I experienced this first step after being a victim of domestic violence- that was the moment I kind of pledged to myself, that this is it, from now on everything has to change and I wouldn't stop working on this change, even if I would die from doing so. Had no clue at that time what I actually was signing up for- and even less of a clue, that 'I' indeed would die in the process eventually.
Keep up your great work- and all the best to you (although I know the best already happened- and is still unfolding anyway)
Thank you!
Hi Verena,
DeleteThanks for the comments on the "there's nothing you have to do" crowd. More folk are actively challenging Parsons, and others, now that the neuroscience so conclusively demonstrates the exact opposite.
Re the "before" and "after", yes, agree on the weakening of the connections and the sometimes extensive networks that are involved. It is also helpful for folk to realize that the seemingly fast progress and then flat periods that are consciously experienced as the work progresses don't reflect what is actually going on in the brain that we, fortunately, have no way to directly observe. The process involves building, trying something out, finding what doesn't work, tearing it down, hauling it away, and rebuilding the next iteration until the brain gets it really right. It's like learning to ride a bicycle, just keep doing it until the brain learns how to do it "perfectly".
Great comment as well on the "HAD to awaken". Adyashanti has also observed this to the extent that he said that he never met anyone who really "HAD to awaken" who didn't. my experience matches that.
Tks for the feedback and insights.
stillness