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.