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I've come back to Herbert Benson's book THE BREAKOUT PRINCIPLE--also coming back to the relative importance of peak experiences. I think I got this generally right when I placed the stage of Clarity (inspiration) just beyond Appreciation (and mindfulness). I'm starting to really mentally GRASP how that relates to Nonconceptuality and why it is difficult to understand the vast qualitative differences between Clarity and Nonconceptuality.

There are two general critiques within the meditative community as a whole, concerning technique (if you're willing to look at things this way). The first is too passive and the second is too active. We see this clearly in the differences between Soto and Rinzai Zen. More recently, Soto has taken on many Rinzai techniques (like koans) and become more effective, more complete.

One premise I'm working with here is that ultimate truth (or THE ultimate Truth) is not meaningful. Meaning comes from relating. In Tibetan Buddhism, they speak of ultimate truth and conventional truth, which Wilber has called "the two truths doctrine". I have always had a problem with acting/speaking as if these are separate. But ultimate truth is not relative, which means not meaningful, which means, not packageable (in words). It is impossible to communicate because, in a sense, it doesn't move, it's already everywhere, so you can't bring it to someone. But you can help them break out of a conventional mindset or ignorance.

So I've been talking about the difference between freedom and liberation. We can liberate ourselves and help others liberate themselves. But freedom simply is. That simple being (Abiding) is easy, effortless. But getting to Abiding takes effort. Some traditions have emphasized the goal (peace, Abiding...) and others have emphasized the path (and its effort).

Early on, it is most effective to emphasize activity. Learn to concentrate, learn to intentionally relax, and learn meditation. Those skills are the base for peaks, inspiration, and mental-emotional clarity. To sustain a sense of mental-emotional clarity, we need consistently repeated or revisited moments of inspiration. As we experience these, the sense of clarity itself (rather than the ecstatic energy of the "psychic" levels) stands out as important (to anyone who continues on further). Many people don't experience consistent enough inspiration, and they remain with the amusement-park quality of the ecstasy rather than moving onto a predominance of clarity and its subtler bliss. Drugs encourage that stuckness as well as fragmentation of self-identity rather than a liberted self-identity.

DIfferent types of peaks must be actively sought. Benson lists different types. Because many people have taken inspiration to be ultimate in some way (just because it is exciting and liberating), many experienced meditators are rightly (to an extent) against listing types of peaks or focusing on actively seaking peaks. Partially, this is the case because many flashy gurus have only emphasized the ecstasy. Benson's list includes the peaks of: self-awareness, creativity, productivity, athleticism, rejuvenation, and transcendence. In the same way that I have emphasized different degrees of competence at early levels and a qualitative difference between early levels, Benson focuses here on experiences of high competence at those levels. Peaks of Creativity fit my first level (creativity/play/exposure). Peaks of Productivity and Athleticism fit my second level of Purpose. Peaks of Rejuvenation fit Relaxation. Self-awareness fits with mindful appreciation and flow/clarity. And peaks of transcendence actually fit with Nonconceptuality.

If we see this whole mess clearly, we can see that it is worth chasing peaks--not for the ecstasy, but--as moments of high competence at each level. As we become more competent at each level, we work more smoothly, freeing energy up for the subtler focus on higher levels while also practicing increasing subtlety. Pursuing peaks without a comprehensive grasp of how they fit in and what they mean means that we will tend to over-interpret their importance and under-interpret their applicability. We will act as if they are more important than they are but also get less out of them. Essentially, most peaks are not important by themselves, but they can become important when they are fed into the overall process towards increasing liberation and a clearer, more consistent experience of Abiding.

There need be nothing esoteric about describing this process. But there is a significant shift from Clarity to Nonconceptuality. As we de-emphasize inspiration and stick more with subtle bliss and the feeling of liberation, we increase the sense that we are all already liberated. But without a comprehensive and accurate understanding, we may get confused and caught up in wondering why people don't always act and feel already liberated. All the explanatory systems (karma, God, etc.) are more relative/less ultimate than the actual ultimate truth. So the explanations create certain problems, but we need an Understanding so we can allow for suffering, old age, and death in our life and the lives of others.

By relying on any explanation that includes suffering as an important motivator towards Nonconceptuality, we take suffering with us into Nonconceptuality. If we do not conceptually interrogate the idea of suffering as important, though, it becomes nearly impossible to dislodge suffering in toto without being somewhat avoidant, without retreating into transcendence to some extent. Or, if we acknowledge suffering in a different way, we get stuck at the level of bodhisattvas (Nonconceptuality) because we feel it would be unethical to become (Abiding) buddhas while others still suffer. By not becoming buddha, we existentially insist on retaining (attaching to and thereby maintaining) suffering. When this is the case, our best ideal can only be either an avoidant sort of nirvana or an unenlightened (bodhisattva-not-buddha) sort of compassion. We cannot actualize enlightenment without allowing the full suffering in and of the universe as it is. Besides the doctrinal misunderstangings of not being too active or too passive with one's meditation, this final message is one that bodhisattvas--in their unending but not infinite compassion--resist. The compassion fo buddhas, based in ultimate truth and experience and freedom is beyond Understanding but it is also beyond meaning itself. It cannot be understood or known as something other than me-everything. It cannot be said to be more subjective or objective in the least. And we cannot have faith in this ultimate state-stage-Way-BEING because we already always are this/that. We must finally give up faith to be who we are.

Joriki Revisited II

I've been mentally revolving around this issue of the difference between freedom and liberation. To me, liberation is the noun form of a verb--to liberate, to free. Besides the sense of motion here--that freedom may be still or always existent while liberation happens--there seems to be a difference concerning ineffability and intangibility. You can access this conundrum by asking, "If my meditation-mind is always present, why do I not feel it always?"

From a perspective that sees that not-always-feeling-free as wrong, there are many reasons. It's like asking why you got skin cancer. There's over-exposure, genetic predispositions, free radicals, immune malfunction, etc., etc. But compare those reasons to the feeling of being warmed by the sun, ahhhh. The sun isn't so much good or bad, just as cancer is not so much good or bad. But I'm not so far gone into my sense of peace that I'd say it's fine to have cancer. Given a choice, I'll pass. Given cancer, I'll try to handle it well (and get rid of it if I can). I've never been satisfied with the instruction in some spiritual traditions to just passively accept anything and everything. I'd rather be dissatisfied in many situations--especially the ones I can change for the better.

But is not-always-feeling-free wrong? It certainly seems natural enough; it's quite common at least. I'm dissatisfied with the explanations about how we're motivated by powerful subconscious forces or that we're originally sinful or that we simply have not achieved a high enough consciousness. Bullshit to that. Those explanations usually have something to add, but they tend to over-complicate the picture. The people who offer those explanations, then, present themselves as the ones to uncomplicate it, and they feel they can do so because they are motivated by conscious forces, they are "saved", they have achieved a higher consciousness, etc. It's circular, emotional reasoning at its best. Unconvincing to me.

Freedom is simply there. Like space. Like love. Like the sun warms your skin. But liberation has as many feelings as there are individuals and moments. The feeling of liberation depends somewhat on the previous moment of awareness. Sunlight liberates me from chilliness. Love liberates me from isolation and anger, etc. Awareness of freedom does not liberate me from a lack of awareness. That's impossible. Awareness of freedom liberates me from awareness of something else, like awareness of injustice.

Freedom does not dominate anything. It does not trump not-always-feeling-free like some people speak of "higher consciousness" trumping "monkey mind" or "ego". Freedom is free because it isn't in that game. Lao Tzu talked about water in this way, saying that water is the most powerful because it is humblest. It goes to the lowest spot, and nothing comes to fight against it for that spot. Freedom is simple, like space. Space does not change whether it is full of one type of particles, another type of particles, or very few particles. The space in your living room is not conquered when you put a sofa in it. There is simply a sofa within that space. Freedom is similar. Awareness is similar.

Liberation is different.

Liberation needs an object, an experiencer, someone to feel liberated. Without someone to say what liberation is, there is no liberation. Liberation is a movement, a process, an experience. Freedom just seems to be, but we feel liberation. It's possible (from what i hear) to experience formless freedom, but we usually first feel liberation. So I can feel liberated from the job (or "should") of clenching onto a pencil in my fist. I can also feel liberated from the clenching itself. If I don't mind tensing my muscles, I can even keep gripping the pencil without feeling any psychological distress or strain from continuing to flex.

While freedom may either be ineffable or be something one must be enlightened to speak about well, we all have something to add to the conversation and experience of liberation. I find that to be at least as interesting as nirvana. So this nonattachment comes around again. I can nonattach from gripping a pencil, nonattach from feeling I should be holding it or that I should be letting it go, I can nonattach from "letting go" and from "holding on", and whatever else I am capable of noticing.

Joriki, concentration-power, is simply the act of noticing. It takes joriki to notice something I should be doing and it also takes joriki to notice letting go. The more we are aware of joriki and what we are doing with it, the more able we become at apprehending and releasing things in our consciousness, the more aware and able we become with liberation, and the more likely we seem to develop more consistent awareness of freedom. Sometimes I find this to be very interesting, and at other times, I don't pay any attention to it at all.

Joriki Revisited I

I've been thinking about the limited application of meditation to daily life for most people--the limitations in how it is presented, the limitations in how it is applied, and the physical-emotional and time constraints as well. While there may never be a moment when every sort of "meditation" in inapplicable, there has probably been no single lifetime where meditation is always applied in each moment. So the question of how meditation can be both accessible and felt to be valuable has stuck with me since I'd had the feeling of figuring out what meditation is--to a personally satisfactory extent rather than to a conclusive extent.

As a trained therapist, motivation stands out as central to the practice of meditation. Certainly, the groups we are in make a huge difference in our focus and motivation, but if we set culture and communication aside for a moment, attention and emotion in the individual seem to go hand in hand. Since emotions constantly shift, maintaining one's emotional investment in an activity entails maintaining one's sense of benefit/value or returning repeatedly to one's sense of benefit/value in said activity.

In many meditative traditions, though, we are told that we do not actively "do" meditation and that in fact trying to do can disrupt meditation. This places a nearly universal emotional fact of life (emotional shifting and the need for motivation) against meditation (as non-doing). And while this non-doing may make enough sense from an experienced meditator's standpoint (to say nothing whatsoever of enlightened meditator's), those without a certain amount of experience and familiarity still look for some motivation to continue. (At times, most experienced meditator's also end up looking for a specific feeling of motivation.)

While the benefits of any particular type of "meditation" or technique can be laid out, there seems to be something central and convincing (if not always motivating) that experienced meditators refer to within themselves even when they cannot speak of it in a motivating manner. I want to distinguish slightly, then, between the benefits and techniques that can be categorized and that aspect of ineffability. Besides all the reasons or explanations, something is convincingly right in a very fundamental sense. It is rare that any of us deeply question whether love feels good, and meditation can have a similarly unassailable feeling-quality. Before that quality is firmly established in one's history and consciousness, we look for motivation.

At first, I tried to categorize types of meditation by technique or by benefits. I then tried to figure a "best way" for Americans around my age to engage meditation--by mindfulness, relaxation/stress reduction, stories around absorption, bhakti, focus on breathing or mantra, etc. Same old story. More recently, I have been circling one of the most basic experiences involved in many forms of meditation--nonattachment. While nonattachment may be hard to describe well, it is certainly not ineffable or intangible. One teacher, when asked what it is like to let go, handed the questioner a pencil and asked the other person to grip that pencil tightly. The teacher then asked the person what it takes to let go of the pencil. We simply unclench. This is also a very fundamental experience, and the connection between the physical and psychological aspects are obvious. You unclench your fist and your mind unclenches. This is the basic feeling of nonattachment. People like speaking of "letting go", and when proponents of "letting go" go too far with it, they often demonize the thinking mode of mental operations. I would ask them how many minds they have, whether their "thinking" mind is a different "mind". That seems as ridiculous to me as to say that when I am sleeping I am a different person than when I am awake--my sleeping mind and waking mind are different in certain ways without being different minds.

Your meditative mind is not somewhere else when you are feeling not-so-meditative. It is one mind. It is mind. You don't have to change your mind like you change your shoes for different activities. Your meditation is never somewhere else. Never. And while letting go feels relaxing, holding tightly to letting go is not.