The Goonies: Sattva

I'm taking this quote from Sankhya philosophy, but it seems to hold for a number of presentations I have seen:

Sattva is equilibrium. When Sattva prevails, there is peace or tranquillity. Rajas is activity which is expressed as Raga-Dvesha, likes or dislikes, love or hatred, attraction or repulsion. Tamas is that binding force with a tendency to lethargy, sloth and foolish actions. It causes delusion or non-discrimination.

This sort of idea seems to put a finishing touch on the understanding I've been working on. Essentially, a fairly thorough understanding of the goonies describes and prescribes balance as one moves through the stages of actualization. Because our attentional abilities become more complex as we develop (adding more advanced abilities and perhaps improving lower abilities while also tracing an increasingly unique life-path) as well as potentially more subtle, "balance" will have a different look and feel at different times throughout any given life. Or we could say that an Olympic weightlifter will adjust his/her balance differently than a basketball player or a ballerina. But balance is still balance whether our bodies or our consciousness is relatively "heavy" (obvious or gross or undeveloped) or relatively subtle. Balance is important to all of them/us.

I've been talking about intentional deployment of attention or attention as an economy. A working understanding of both balance and stages of actualization provides a rubric for how to deploy attention so that one profits from this type of investment or deployment. Smart or wise investment involves a good proportional mix of the gunas depending on one's situations, temperament, and abilities. It also involves recognizing that there may be a progressive development and how much energy to put into development as opposed to balance.

It is very important to understand that I am speaking of general, orienting heuristics rather than precise instructions. While we can improve our knowledge of various fields by following instructions, we develop resilience and wisdom in those fields by applying our own strength, flexibility, balance, and concentration. As opposed to very precise instructions, this is like taking off the training wheels.

By utilizing the gunas for a rough description of balance/proportion, we can distinguish psychological balance from wisdom without needing very subtle descriptions or experience. We can think of balance as involving not too much tamas or rajas and not too much or too little progress. Wisdom, then, is the understanding and application that comes from such a perspective--a perspective centered within one's ability to notice and remain engaged in a balanced manner. We can see, then, that wisdom is much more about knowing what I know rather than being intelligent, experienced, or subtle.

While I have discussed much of this in terms of the individual, since we include speech, emotions, and relationships, it is not possible to work on this stuff without including others. Actualization, then, can be described as balanced continuation of wellbeing in body, speech, and mind. And because we are human, that continuation means a homeodynamic progress rather than more of just a homeostatic maintenance.

Rest and Digest vs. Fight or Flight: the Goonies

I was very happy to review the three gunas with a set of videos with James Swartz recently. Most of what I'd heard about gunas--referenced to yoga here--struck me as very strange and unworkable. Swartz's presentation seemed very sensible to me, and I think it fits easily with most modern science. I've been trying to decide how to present a hierarchy of development in a straightforward and understandable manner for some time now, and one of my remaining challenges had been to find an applicable and understandable way to talk about qualities rather than quantities. This gets into the same murky areas where the psychological "catfish" like to spend time--talking about "process" in a muddy way if they aren't into some particular sort of esotericism.

Now, although not all of my connections hold up incredibly well, there is a really solid and simple addition to be made regarding the goonies--tamas, rajas, and sattva. In a rough sense, tamas is like the parasympathetic functioning (rest-and-digest) and rajas is like sympathetic functioning (fight-or-flight). Too much of a tamasic influence will lead to sloth and perhaps depression. Too much rajasic influence leads to overactivation/overstimulation: anger, lust, greed, anxiety, fear, envy, etc. And we can see how many people use something like caffeine (stimulating, rajas) in the morning to wake up and then balance that with alcohol or valium or sleeping pills (depressant, tamas) to calm down. Relying on these two influences to get things right is crazy-making because going from one to the other is like being on a merry-go-round. The more important it becomes to change from one to the other, the faster it spins. In Hinduism and Buddhism, this is described as a whirlpool--samsara. And believing that the whirlpool can be solved by spinning either faster or slower is believing in illusion--maya.

Just as many concepts don't translate perfectly and directly between Hindu and Buddhist usages, the goonies also don't translate perfectly into modern scientific language. But it's a workable fit in most instances in the same way that most of us can get through our lives perfectly well by following Newton's rules and not fully grasping quantum mechanics. While it is somewhat rough, it also is a fit.

Why is this important? Well, when most of us want things to improve, we either try too hard or quit too early. Or, we might advance and retreat--one step forwards, two steps back. The same is true when we are talking about personal actualization. In meditation, there is a really important aspect of awareness that often goes unrecognized or creates unnecessary confusion. This is like mindfulness' twin. I think of it in terms of "vigilance". Mindfulness could be described as a balanced and precise awareness that neither grasps nor rejects. Most of us have at least heard of mindfulness practices. One question that arises with experienced meditators is: when do I shift from mindfulness to something else? something deeper or better? While there are all kinds of doctrinal answers and wonderful teachers, since they're not me, I'll offer what I've got.

If mindfulness is the balanced or precise and focused awareness, vigilance is that bit of attention we deploy to recognizing when we slip off that mindful point of focus. Vigilance reminds us to return to mindfulness. (This is coming directly from MAHAMUDRA: THE MOONLIGHT--QUINTESSENCE OF MIND AND MEDITATION, a fantastic presentation if you're ready for it. Yes, this note is getting into two fairly different applications. I'm giving one fairly high-level example, and I'll give another example that is more applicable to beginners.) Basically, as long as we still need to allocate some attention to vigilance, it is impossible to intentionally choose a state of oneness. Although this is subtle stuff, it is the same principle that athletes are familiar with when they talk about the difference between playing to not lose and playing to win. Some things are difficult enough that we cannot simultaneously try to succeed and also try to not fail. Although we may not be guaranteed success if we go all out, we are guaranteed failure if we lose focus or don't commit 100%. Intentionally entering states of oneness is basically like that.

So, in the beginning, we need to practice vigilance. And later down the road, if we hit rough patches, we may need to be willing to bring vigilance in again. But one goal is to become good enough with mindful concentration that it is possible to have certain moments where we can trust ourselves and our ability and situation enough to go "all in"--to let go of deploying vigilance along with mindfulness.

Lower down the developmental scale, we can also check ourselves by the quality or feeling of where we are at any given moment. For example, if you're angry, you don't want to drink so much that you become morose and depressed. That doesn't balance things out. That's more like flipping the same coin to its other ugly side. Or, if you're depressed, drinking coffee will give you a little pick-me-up, but after that rajasic up moment, it will also give you a little extra drop-me-down afterwards. That sets up the merry-go-round or toggle. Back, forth, back, forth. If that is happening, you're probably out of balance between your rajas (stimulation) and tamas (heaviness, groundedness, rest). Too anxious/aggressive or too lazy.depressed. In other words, you can't fix having too much sympathetic arousal by overstimulating your parasympathetic system; you can't caffeinate your way out of depression or booze your way out of anger.

More to come on sattva.

Stretching

It's warm tonight, but not too warm. Perfect for stretching. Knowing there will only be a few hours' respite between the heat from today and the heat tomorrow, not feeling sleepy as the house retains the day's warmth, and uninterested in sitting meditation at the moment, stretching is perfect. Kristin bought me these $10 cotton pants at Target a few years ago, and they still fit the bill. Some things never change.

Loosening my pelvic muscles and back, it strikes me that I am not always in touch with or interested in "meditative" states--the deep absorptions. Right now I'm bothered by no one, the ceiling fans keep a breeze going, and I can hear minimal late night traffic on the Interstate a mile or so away. It strikes me that this is an apt setting for me as a simple self--more drifting or contemplative than pinpoint meditative or resting in formlessness. This is more like vacationing in the shadow or echo of formlessness. It's like the seduction before the act itself and also like the quiet afterglow. The stirring of lemonade and clinking of ice cubes in the glass pitcher rather than the tart, cool sweetness itself.

I like this idea and feeling of a simple self. It does not "break through" like moments of original face and it is not as deep as eternity. It's an easy movement away from my everyday mentality but not needing to arrive somewhere else. Just the peaceful, enjoyable feel of stretching.

Intoxication and the Self

From early on, I've had a somewhat ascetic view on drugs. The simple understanding that drugs tend to be used in escapist ways was obvious from the beginning; even when they are used for practical purposes, they often cloud the mind. While that perspective still seems "correct" to me, it now seems correct in a somewhat narrow or rigidly disciplined way. After too many years of back pain, drinking, and a (somewhat) recent interest in the effects of LSD and marijuana--certainly influenced by living in California--I'm revisiting that narrow view (with a glass of wine in hand).

While much of my attitude has a tongue-in-cheek feel, I really appreciate the deeper tones involved in revisiting the subject of drugs. And, as far as I'm concerned, we can throw dietary restrictions into the same category of external physical things used for psychological purposes like substituting ice cream for love. Not surprisingly, wine has softened the militaristic edge that youth put on my early perspective. That's been both good and bad--good in that it has made me a little easier in how I approach many of my own and other people's downfallings, and mostly bad in how it has fuzzed my sense of focus and purpose along with the judgemental edges.

The reason I am writing tonight is that I think I have found for myself the center of how all intoxication of whatever kinds keeps one (in this case, me) off the meditative point or lifestyle. At the same time, intoxication can help one get beyond the strict boundaries of the relative ego or jiva. But just like happiness, meditation can't really be avoided into. Avoidance and a balanced awareness of suchness are mutually exclusive. So we may have to use a "dirty" method of moving forward before dropping or minimizing that method. Shoshaku jushaku.

As usual for me, this particular insight or consolidation came along from a sort of low level or background consideration of a few different messages. The first is a comment from Ramana Maharshi that the intellect is valuable insofar as to direct the ego to return to the Self, original self, or original state. Once there, he tended to recommend staying there. As with many spiritual aspirants, this seemed reasonable to me but I didn't know what it meant. (Yes, it's fine if you're laughing at me:) And maybe there is more for me to glean from this comment, but I get it at a deeper level than before. Another comment that took a few years to sink in was Trungpa's discussion of the five buddha families. The gist is that people have different styles (families) of enlightenment. It took a long time before I took this as more than just Trungpa's favorite sort of astrological or personality classifications. Again, I had a hint that there was something valuable there, but I couldn't tell if it was mostly just a joke or a sham.

One more thing to throw in, since I like triangulations. As a counseling intern, I related with folks who had addictions, psychoses, severe depression, phobias, and eventually I encountered mania too. (I don't know that traumatic stress responses fit in this commentary, but those were interesting as well, to say the least.) The point of mixing in these states is that, whether the major influences are internal or external, we can be quite fascinated with various forms of intoxication. In a crude sense, we can see intoxication or attachment to these sorts of states as the complex forms of a basic ignorance which is the opposite of awakeness. And, as we all have different families, experiences, and personalities, we prefer different forms (or allegorical "families", you could say) of intoxication. Getting stuck in philoosophy has also been described as one of these forms.

The breakthrough with Ramana's comment about returning to and resting in the Self came when I was reading James Austin's ZEN-BRAIN REFLECTIONS. He mentioned the phrase "preattentional resources", and the lightbulb went on. PRE-attention...I'd heard that from numerous meditation presentations. Before your awareness reaches out for something or attaches to anything, the brain or our basic awareness already has existing processes and resources which function as noticing. But it is noticing and aware-ing before it becomes concentrated or directed enough to be considered attention. For years, people would tell me to just relax into meditation and I'd respond that I was willing to try as hard as necessary to relax. The problem with their commentary and my interpretations was that this basic awareness is phenomenologically prior to the trying. So attempting to "relax" into it was like trying to relax into being human--how? And Ramana stuck to this idea of going before anything reaches out and dwelling there. Oh, what a relief once you get it!

But even now, it isn't deep for me. It's obvious and light and clear, but it will probably take some time for me to really take it deep. That's okay, the obviousness and the relief make the timeframe perfectly workable. This preattentive, pre-self (pre-small self) state doesn't strike me as being prajna, but it is nice to be able to connect with it as a basis of consciousness and a place of rest, a place of denuding the self of itself--or more accurately, a place where the bare thing needs nothing added or subtracted...prior to any complication.

From a sense of familiarity with this standpoint, everything that is not peaceful, obvious, and clear all feels the same in some way. It's all unnecessary, all extra. Because there are no personal interests in justifying or projecting, no solid, relative, desiring self around which to hang justifications and projections, everything is simple on its own. It is like this state, then, is the doorway to prajna. In this state, there is no reason to go out and look at things and interact. But there is also no reason not to go out and look at things and touch and interact. If one does more than "rest in the Self", it seems to me that prajna arises in this fundamental space or from this fundamental space. Tranquility and insight.

Ramana also said, "Peace is the state of utmost activity." I wrote that one down because I knew that it was beyond me. I wasn't impressed by it--rather I felt, "Well, I know all those words. What the f#%k?!" The amazing thing is that this preattentive state seems to allow one to "go into" any situation without losing this state. Being able to say and feel that I have my own buddha style or family let me separate out other styles that I can't pretend to pull off. It's not "my" style because it comes in somewhere before the individual "I" does. But, like the family that includes my brother, sister, mom, and dad, it doesn't matter whether or not I want them or choose them--they're already family. It's a little strange to think of peace that way--that you're already in that state whether you choose it or not. I don't really know what the neurological correlates or signifiers are, and I may never care.

It is wondrous to feel the phrase, "I know I do not know" as praise and utter simplicity.

Male/Female Differences

There's an interesting three minutes in this talk by Helen Fisher on the differences between male and female brain functioning. It's between 10 and 13 minutes into this talk that she give a nice, succinct simplification--unavoidably an oversimplification, but a really good snapshot regardless.

In my language, I've said that some people have a temperamental or biological propensity towards "doing" certain levels and abilities more easily. And in general, women are better at Appreciation while having to work harder at valuing Purpose while men are better at Purpose, having to work harder at valuing Appreciation. So we communicate and Understand in typically different manners (generally speaking). The largely male influence on meditation traditions has often influenced our understanding of mindfulness away from mindful appreciation, webbed mindfulness, connected mindfulness, social mindfulness. It seems that the American influences on meditation--towards social action, female influences including women in leadership roles, and psychological applications all bring meditation "off the mountain" so to speak, pragmatically demystifying much of what is possible.

Research Support for Purpose/Concentration

Well, it hasn't been all that easy finding research that relates directly to what I've been looking for in terms of attentional abilities, but our neuroscientists are getting it done. In the book THE ATTENTIVE BRAIN, chapter 18 "Executive Attention: Conflict, Target Detection, and Cognitive Control", the authors cite research that supports the idea that infants at around 10 months have trouble "concentrating" in the manner I mean it, while at 18 months, this ability is common. This gives a background for determining the basic brain structuring involved in the function of concentrating as well as giving a strong relative date for common development of the basic ability. A.B Clohessy and Michael Posner are two of the cited researchers on this topic.

This is exciting because it points the direction for determining a solid anatomical foundation for this second step. Most likely, adequate research already exists for distinguishing the stage of Understanding. Beyond that stage, the abilities may be less dependent on developments in anatomical structure, although they will be related to changes in anatomical structure. For example, mindfulness may come more easily once we're through the chemical firestorm, neuronal growth, and pruning that adolescence brings--related to physical changes in adolescence while not being so directly dependent upon changes in anatomical structure because it is so directly influenced by chemical elements, hormones.

Associational Matrices

A friend of mine recently commented on how it is as if we all live in our own personal universes, like interacting video games. To me, this sort of comment seems connected to how I have described intuition and distributed processes (in the glossary). Rather than thinking in politically and psychologically loaded terms like biases and prejudices, and rather than trying to model our living experience on mechanical processes like video games, I think we can talk about our "individual universes" or familiar frames of reference as associational matrices. This seems like a fairly neutral/abstract term that people can apply in their own ways.

Part of what I find fascinating is that much of what exists in my associational matrix is not always accessible to my attention or conscious awareness. (We can think of an association matrix as including items that are reside in conscious access awareness and nonintentional or nonconscious access awareness.) Many of my associations, then, function without me being aware of them. This happens in positive ways of training or habituation, like in learning to drive a car. Much of what needs to happen to drive fairly safely happens "on autopilot" so to speak--and my conscious intentional attention is pulled to the fore only when necessary. This "active" autopilot is different than when I am simply spacing out or daydreaming and not paying attention to driving at all. These nonintentional functions can also happen in ways that are politically "negative"--concerning bigotry and prejudice, for example.

My associational matrix will be mostly made up of things from my past and things I am becoming peripherally aware of now. We are usually more likely to have intentional control of whatever item or process when we can name that item, remember it when we want to, and "see" multiple other things that are connected to it. (By "see" in this sentence, I mean think about.)

One of the interesting points that comes up is that it is equally stupid to expect ourselves to not react to things within our association matrices as it is to expect ourselves to react to things which are not included in our association matrices. An example is that earlier environmental activists could react to pollution, but we cannot hold them accountable for reacting to "global warming" until we reach that point in history where people have tied together and compounded the effects of multiple sources of pollution as "global warming". Likewise, we can't hold people accountable for dealing with things in a simplistic or prejudiced way when their association matrix is thin on those particular things.

While these ideas may lend themselves to all sorts of whacko apologists, I am only an apologist for sensibility here. Once we have relatively position-neutral terms, we can work on those items in our actual universe in a shared endeavor rather than in a position-privileged manner. This helps to grind "wisdom" into a more pragmatic definition as well. If we are trying to engage in a conversation that incurs minimal resistance from another party, it makes sense to converse in ways that are not necessarily position-privileged or "loaded". Dealing with associational matrices as common, necessary, and not always open to intentional control allows us to emphasize the aspects of our lived experiences that tend to be common--such as trying for position-privileged ways of interacting that privilege our position over their positions. From that common ground, we can expand our matrices and explore our world(s) together.

**For those of us who have been talking about perspective-taking, I'd say that a "position" added to personal history yields a particular momentary perspective. While we may never get the fully individual perspective of another person, we can get our own taste of their experience by taking their position and that position's perspective to the extent we are able. The more richly populated and similar two association matrices, the closer the individual experiences will be when we "share" positions.