Trying to avoid unpleasantness

Seems to me greed arises out of the instinct for self-preservation. It is not "caused" by an internal or external event, that is, it is not involved in a reaction. It is just there. Pliability seems to be the idea that one is not swayed by internal or external events. This is where I saw the distinction.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. I lately find the Christian stuff very profound.
I don't understand the pliability/greed thing? What do you mean?


-ona

On my school break I finally got around to reading a book given to me by a friend several years ago: "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" by Lossky. Really profound articulation of the contemplative path in Orthodox hesychastic spirituality. It actually helped put some things in perspective and dovetailed significantly with my coming-back-to-my-vajrayana roots thing that has also been happening lately.

Neat combo. It was nice to realize that just because I was raised to think of "christianity" as a dirty word, I can differentiate my own adult responses to something from the learned responses of childhood. That in itself has been a liberating theme of the path for me.

To become more unencumbered by the pseudo-weighty patterns, both those received through socialization and those concocted on my own as an at-the-time-best-effort to understand and respond to things.

Freshness is ever present, if we can get the feel for it. I think that's where pliability comes from, for me; coming to understand more deeply how every moment is literally the beginning of time. The weight of old patterns (and the weight of current attempts to "change" them) are both dissolved in the space of "the beginning". Then I get lost again.... repeat

@michael - No, I don't think it's silly, because most people have some preconceptions of what it means to be enlightened or awakened or a perfected master or whatever, and it's useful to be aware of what those are. Because, for example, what you are implying in this answer is quite significant to reflect on:
" I don't think there is a life possibly in which one never gets "upset."
"What practice... can do is reduce and sometimes eliminate the destruction my feelings might have on myself [and others etc]..."
"[destructive] feelings can be turned into insight, love, compassion..."
and so on.

-ona

Sorry, I didn't mean your question or topic was silly, just the idea that some of us have of this perfect enlightened life.

I think the main thing that I used to picture about what "enlightenment/awakening" would be is to have a kind of "flow" experience -- all the time. Just always just flowing along with no pain, no confusion, no akwardness, no desire really, always knowing the next coolest nicest thing to do or say. To look at each moment and instantly understand what it all meant, where everything that was happening came from and where it would all lead. Something like that.

This is starting to sound like this to me:
"Being awake is not really different than not being awake."
Is that what ya'll are saying?

-cmarti

I think we are saying that being awake isn't what we may have imagined it to be before we started practicing in ernest but that is is still wonderful and very worthwhile.

@chris, re: ""Being awake is not really different than not being awake.""

I think that that is a rather bad view, personally. But I was getting to my point rather slowly, and curious about addressing how people might imagine being awake at various points, and how that changes over time. I think that in itself is a very useful subject to investigate for oneself in ones own practice. At least it has been for me. It's a bit like a self-inquiry question, as one becomes aware of what one is clinging to or hiding from, and how one is bringing ones own preconceptions to what is actually experienced.

But then I went to dinner...

What's the standard being used for "being awake?"


-cmarti

didn't we have a thread on "the qualities of awakening" or such? I can't find it.

Well here's a couple of "issues" that make this discussion complex.

1) we all see a lot of people come to meditation because they want to avoid their problems, and hope to just sit around feeling blissy all the time. so one needs to point out that a fundamental part of practice is learning to BE WITH all the stuff, rather than trying to run away from it. In other words: letting go of attachment to pleasant stuff and aversion to unpleasant stuff.

However

2) this can lead to a further misunderstanding, which was arising in this thread, that therefore awakening means you just sit around feeling either good or crappy, and just embrace it all.

BUT

it's sort of a trick. Because the practice of being with stuff as it is is not the same as the "end result." The fruit of practice, when it comes in its own time (not by some acquired skill of tolerating everything, or an intellectual appreciation for the ups and downs of life) the experience of each moment of experience is utterly transformed. Categories like good and bad, me and not me collapse.

(juice break)

The same is true of other teachings. Many teachings are not false, per se, but address specific points in a student's practice, which then are further seen through later. So for example the idea that there is a sort of "field of emptiness" from which "stuff arises and into which it again passes away" is something that most people I know have directly experienced. So there are a lot of teachings which try to point students to this perception, because it is a natural stage in the process.

However, to hold on to that perception (are you forgetting to let go?) is reifying emptiness as a "thing" some sort of substrate or essence of God or mysterious void, etc. separate from the "stuff" that comes and goes. Emptiness is simply a quality or the nature of phenomena, not a thing in itself.

This doesn't make the teaching wrong, it's just aimed at a specific phase of development and is very useful there.

Off the top of my head, based on conversations with a dozen people I know, I'd say Abiding Awakening is a permanent transformation of consciousness marked by a specific experience in which:

-the sense of self falls away (the former self-center is literally experienced as empty)
-the doer/knower/seeker/sense of agency falls away (perhaps relating to the oft-told stories of laughing at how much effort one had been making in practice, when it suddenly becomes apparent that it was a ridiculous game of trying to find something that has always been right in front of you)
-the difference between meditating and not meditating becomes inapplicable
-the sense of inside/outside, this/that, and other dualities collapse
-reading most teachings from various traditions seems like a celebration of Truth rather than an aspiration to strive for
-clinging and aversive reactions become difficult to sustain, even if initially they still arise out of habit/momentum; over time (in my experience and that of others) habitual reactive patterns continue to drop away by themselves
-relating to some of the above, experience experiences itself, awareness co-arises with phenomena, this can be experienced as a sense of flow, of everything unfolding by itself.

And one still goes to work, takes a shower, has coffee with friends, pays taxes, and all the other normal things in life, unless one is living in a monastery.

is that five yet?

"This doesn't make the teaching wrong, it's just aimed at a specific phase of development and is very useful there." - ona

And then sometimes they just aim as far as they know a la Dogen's "practice IS enlightenment" and say go!

Seems to me greed arises out of the instinct for self-preservation. It is not "caused" by an internal or external event, that is, it is not involved in a reaction. It is just there. Pliability seems to be the idea that one is not swayed by internal or external events. This is where I saw the distinction.



-sunyata

I'm not sure. I mean, if someone insults you and you get angry, that's not unrelated to a self-defense mechanism, fearing for your safety (whether your literal life safety or the safety of your social status in the group, for example). Greed sort of comes from fear, too, perhaps: fear of not having enough (even if you have enough), fear of things being taken away, fear of loss or oblivion, fear of death.

I went to a workshop with a teacher who is also a psychologist and his take was that almost every stressful reaction we have ultimately comes down to fear of death. Like someone says something rude and the ego runs off with a story "Oh no, she doesn't like me. Now my friends will side with her and abandon me. I'll be left alone in the world...and then I'll DIE!!!" or "Ow, I stubbed my toe. I'm such a klutz. I'll never be good at anything. I'll never be anybody. No one will appreciate me, I'll be abandoned, and then I'll DIE!!!" That kind of thing. This rarely being a conscious thing, but being the reason that stupid small stuff ends up getting us so upset and stressed out.

Thoughts?

"his take was that almost every stressful reaction we have ultimately comes down to fear of death." - ona

I think it might be a pretty good take.

I was thinking the same thing as you after I wrote that post, i.e. greed comes from fear. Perhaps then pliability, i.e. remaining calm in the face of life's vagaries, could also apply to greed. The idea of pliability allowing "God" to enter into you and to do his will through you presupposes that you don't have any hang-ups like greed outfitted to a small self getting in the way.

Do y'all think the fear of death is something that disappears in the course of meditation? What I read indicates "yes." Zen calls it the "Great Death", which is represented in the eighth picture of the 10 Ox-Herding pictures. According to Motoyama and Pali texts, the fear of death is extinguished in the fifth stage of meditation, "[Empty] Sky of No-Boundary".

At a minimum in the sense we've been talking about in the most recent posts on this thread, it seems to.

RE: fear of death



Part of the problem with asking whether the fear of death is expelled at certain stages of spiritual progress is the assumption that every human being has one mind that fears. This doesn't appear to be the case. One can experience cessation in meditation, and therefore, know first-hand what it's like to be thoroughly gone. And, it's not so bad. I remember writing Daniel Ingram after experiencing cessation for the first time (i.e. stream-entry), and telling him that if that's what death is like, I'm not afraid of it. He said the same thought occurred to him.



But, our whole organism doesn't stop responding to situations it recognizes are threatening. I may have made some kind of peace with death, but that doesn't mean that if I had heart attack, or if I was shot by a mugger, I wouldn't experience panic. The body is, for the most part, wired to survive. Much of it has nothing to do with insight. It's a part of our evolutionary history.



So, to be more specific, I'd say that meditation can alleviate the fear OF the fear-of-death. That is, we can remove the fear of fear, to some degree. It's sort of like the idea between "clean pain" and "dirty pain"; the former being pain without resistance, and the latter being pain PLUS resistance, which adds another layer of painful experience.

I'd

...
But, our whole organism doesn't stop responding to situations it recognizes are threatening. I may have made some kind of peace with death, but that doesn't mean that if I had heart attack, or if I was shot by a mugger, I wouldn't experience panic. The body is, for the most part, wired to survive. Much of it has nothing to do with insight. It's a part of our evolutionary history.
...


-awouldbehipster

That was more my implication. How people respond to actual bodily harm varies even among non-meditators, depending upon many factors. Some people die peacefully, some struggle. Some die violently, some from illness, some quickly, some slowly. I don't expect one can really do other than guess in that case.

That's different from walking around with a kind of underlying dread of death all the time, which can come up as ongoing anxiety, stressful reactions to mundane situations (insult, anger, paranoia) or as an appalled horror and nightmares at any open discussion of bodily death. (For example friends or relatives who might dismiss with fear any conversation about how they want to arrange their Final Will, or horror that can come from visiting dying relatives, or reading about dying, etc.).

Right now, right here, I can think about or read about dying with non of the internal horror it used to bring up, and I do not have constant loops of anxiety where I imagine mundane accidents that might kill me or others (from car wrecks to falling down the stairs and so on), which used to be part of my ongoing daily experience.

"I may have made some kind of peace with death, but that doesn't mean that if I had heart attack, or if I was shot by a mugger, I wouldn't experience panic." - jackson


I feel like this panic is indicative of separate "self" that remains. One reason I say this is I remember a quotation from a Yasutani-roshi in Three Pillars of Zen from his "Commentary on Mu":

"When you truly understand this fundamental principle [i.e. living means birth AND death] you will not be anxious about your life or your death. You will then attain a steadfast mind and be happy in your daily life. Even though heaven and earth would be turned upside down you would have no fear. And if an atomic or hydrogen bomb were exploded, you would not quake in terror. So long as you become one with the bomb, what would there be to fear? But whether you want to or not you would perforce become one with it would you not?"

I gather from this that if one differentiates onself from Oneness, then there is fear. If one lives oneself in abiding Oneness, there is no fear.