The Natural State

From a list conversation:

Dear J: If the 'Natural State' is what lives in my heart of hearts, then I 'heartily' agree, because the Natural State is Total Contentment.

And quoting your excellent Bob O'Hearn quote: "...thus we sit in the unknown, as the unknown, and in the midst of the ashes of all our beliefs and ideas, a kind of sprout may push up, breaking through the dreamy fabric of our consciousness, a kind of awake-ness, and this awake-ness has no name, though people like to name, and so we have all the sutras and commentaries and whatnot, but at heart, it is really a very simple thing, the most simple thing there is, our original innocence."

I especially and literally note his 'at heart.' Our Natural State of Original Innocence is Total Contentment.

And quoting you: "Again, like the glowing luminescence of compassionate resonance that 'backflows' upon our own Presence. More commonly known as the 'joy of giving'..."

Yes, wonderful! Compassion for all suffering spontaneously arises in jhana absorption.

And quoting you again: "We do have many testaments of recent "Buddhas" who offer a differing view. I am clearly in their camp."

Have there really been more recent 'Buddhas'? I sure hope so, but such a distant hope! If there really was a Buddha living amongst us, wouldn't the impact of such a presence be felt more widely? If Buddha has followed Buddha upon the world stage since Siddartha, don't you think we as a life form would have evolved further?

I suppose you can argue that there always have been 'evolved' entities hidden away here and there. but I think we're way past the time for such privileged hierarchies and 'special cases,' yes? We're looking for an easy (Yes, easy, as Mama promised us), universally accessible, immediately enthralling and blissful way for the average Joe, between time-outs in the football game, to drop into his heart and stay there as permanently as possible. Of course you can say that Dzogchen points out the easiest path, and in a certain sense this is true. AS LONG AS the person has established themselves in a daily practice of some seriousness. But I'm after the 'basket cases' and 'impossibles,' as a friend of mine named some of the characters at our hippie communes. And for this reason I'm interested in very very easy initial entry exercises into bliss-soaked meditation, inasmuch as it's bliss that leads to relaxed one-pointedness.

When Ajahn Brahm describes various ways to keep one's attention on 'the beautiful breath' (such as thanking the trees and plants that make oxygen for you, and realizing how you make CO2 for them), I make a note of this suggestion to pass on to others.

And quoting you again: "Much of what you write about is definitely biased toward trying to experience some 'blissful' or 'pleasurable' experience. Experience is not Rigpa, even a fantastic and marvelous blissful and joyous state."

I think there are states of 'well-being' that have no opposite. More like Ken Wilber's 'stages' (levels) -- Archaic, Magic, Mythic, Mental, Pluralistic, Integral -- that once achieved, become permanent and include all the previous ones. States (experiences) never are permanent (gross, subtle, causal, nondual) and can be experienced on any stage. Thus a Nazi can achieve satori, and in Ken's view, 'Nazis' make up about 70 percent of our world population today, trapped on the enthnocentric (Mythic) level or lower. This is why it's so important that we find easy and immediately bliss-inducing exercises to haul these folks up a notch or three.

J writes: "Rigpa is THAT which experiences that blissful state. But to Rigpa, the experiences are all the same (suffering or pleasure)... just another reflection appearing in the mirror of our infinite experiences. We are the 'mirror' and the reflections that arise from us and within us as mirror, have no benefit whether pleasurable of painful. Rigpa neither seeks pleasure nor avoids pain and suffering."

Sounds a little Stoic... Since planetary living is made up of 'experiences,' and despite the fact that Rigpa is indifferent to both pleasure and pain, out of the depth of my compassion that also includes compassion for my 'horse,' Ego (mind), I will encourage those stages in my horse that bring joy and relief from suffering in the same way I would encourage the same for others, or I would wrap an ace bandage around a sore fetlock. I think an unrecognized puritanism has crept into some Buddhism that frowns upon so-called 'bliss bunnyhood' and tends to promote 'dry' insight instead -- sort of unfortunate, in my opinion, because this makes the ride a whole lot rougher – sort of like a vehicle in need of a lube job.

J writes: "As long as suffering exists, the heart of the Bodhisattva is fully engaged in relieving that pain in any and every way possible."

'The heart of the Bodhisattva.' Well said! And of course relieving the pain in one's own mind as well by dismounting from the mind, unsaddling it, and putting it out to graze 'in the fields of the Lord...'

Starting 'top-down' with the Dzogchen approach is of course very interesting for the advanced student who has spent years perfecting various meditation 'tools'. But for the vast majority of us, a step-by-step approach is more useful. For example, although one-pointedness - ekkagata - is mentioned frequently in various texts - it's only rarely that one reads that concentration - one-pointedness - is important to achieve because without it certain energy flows are blocked in the meridians. Once acquired, one can relax away from 'willing' it, and concentration remains.

There is a subtle 'bliss' energy that has no opposite because it's always there, beyond the dualities. For example, beyond the dualities of the in and out breath sensation' there is a more subtle energy sensation that is constant - the so-called 'subtle breath'. This all reminds me of a similar conversation I had in 1967 where I defended 'enlightenment' as 'sitting in your puddle of peace' to someone else's more nihilistic 'enlightenment as sitting in nothingness'. But how can you be sure you're not just 'nothinging out' if you did not get there on the jhana elevator? Even the Buddha says:

"There is no Jhana without wisdom
There is no wisdom without Jhana
But for one with both Jhana and wisdom
They are in the presence of Nibbana."

The bottom line on bliss for me is that the bliss that arises from deeper and deeper lettings-go is not coming from attachment. Yee haw! And the much-touted Relaxation Response is more than just 'no suffering reporting in.' I think true relaxation - letting go - is an immersion in a bubbly bath of happy heart energies.

(off to feed my horse Ego a carrot)

On second thought, I'll end with a little more Ajahn Brahm from his essay, "The Bliss of Letting Go," that I think bridges J's and my views:

http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books/Ajahn_Brahm_Bliss_of_Letting_GO.htm

"... a meditator who has familiarity with Jhanas will recognise them as blissful states of letting go, and it is right there, in the experience of letting go, letting go, that the relevance of Jhana is known. The First Jhana is the natural result of letting go of the concern for sensory pleasure (Kama Sukha), by which is meant all concern, even for mere comfort, in the realm of the five external senses (sight, sound, smell, taste and touch). In the First Jhana, through sustained and complete removal of all interest in these five senses the meditator loses all sense of the body, and these five external senses disappear. They abide wholly in the sixth sense that is pure mind, and are still, in blissful inner silence. The Buddha called this "The Bliss of Renunciation", or the bliss of letting go. The Second Jhana is the natural result of abandoning a very subtle movement of attention towards and holding onto this blissful mind object. When this final 'wobbling' of attention is let go of, one experiences the even more pleasurable bliss of full inner stillness (Samadhi), where the mind is absolutely one-pointed and motionless. The Third Jhana is the natural result of letting go of the subtle excitement of rapture, and the Fourth Jhana is the natural result of letting go of happiness itself, so as to enjoy the most profound and immovable mental equanimity.

>" In Buddhism, experience, not speculation, and even less blind belief, is the criterion for understanding. A meditator simply does not realise what stillness, rapture, happiness or equanimity fully mean until they have become familiar with the Jhanas. But the experience of the Jhanas, these stages of letting go, give one direct understanding through experience of these mental phenomena, in particular happiness (Sukha) and suffering (Dukkha)."

I'll have mine over-easy with a sprinkle of Amrita, thanks!

My all-time favorite quote on Love

This is my all-time favorite quote about love:

From the Dutch magazine Am1go at: http://www.ods.nl/am1gos/am1gos3/index.html

Love cannot be given
From a talk with Wolter Keers in Gent on January 18, 1978.

I had a meeting yesterday evening with a group of psychiatrists and psychologists. There I defended the proposition that there is only one psychic obstacle and that you can reduce all of psychology and psychotherapy, and all psychiatry to that one obstacle. That one problem is that we have forgotten that we are love. It was told to us when we were little that we got love from our mother and father and so on. And when it all maybe went wrong later in all sorts of ways, we discovered that we had not received enough love. And so love became for us something like a sack of potatoes that you can give and get in a big sack or a small sack and the like.
This has nothing to do with love. What we actually are is the most humble of all humble things, that in which everything arises. That is the light itself. Nothing is more ordinary, common, everyday than that light; we have known nothing except that. Love is the discovery of myself (the light) in the other; the recognition of the Silence that I am in the other. That is love. Love cannot be given to anyone, you cannot get love; you can't make water wet, because water is wetness. Neither can anyone give you love, no one can receive love from you, you can only recognize love in yourself and you can recognize love in others. The moment that it happens, there is naturally no other anymore, because you indeed recognize in other, in the most literal sense, notice well, in the most literal sense; yourself. I never speak to anyone except myself, and you never hear anyone except yourself. I cannot underline enough how literally true this is. Love is to recognize yourself in the other, in what you unjustly saw as 'an other' until that moment. But it is yourself that you see there because there is only one Self. There is only one light. There is only one love. The recognition of yourself in the other, of the Silence that you are in the other, of the light that you are in the other, that is what we call love. It is not a question of giving, it is not a question of receiving, it is a question of recognition.

Putting the mind out to pasture

Someone on a Yahoo list asked, “How do we “cut the root of mind?”

Mind - i.e. self-awareness in humans - lags about a 1/2 second behind pure awareness, according to neuroscience. Also, of the 11 million bits of information per second that our perceptions receive, supposedly only 40 bits per second are presented to our consciousness. I suppose it saves glucose to process as much as possible unconsciously.

So… is the NOW 1/2 second 'wide?' And if so, how do we place ourselves on the frothy edge of the wave? All of Nature surfs there, except for our heads… But what about our hearts?

My heart lives on the front edge of the NOW. If I dismount from the 'high horse' of self-awareness, I can 'unsaddle' the mind and turn it loose in the meadow to graze on its own while I remain mindlessly blissful in the heart, the 'seat' of pure perception? The headless horseman?

How do I remain 'mindlessly blissful' in the heart?

Wellllll, there really is NOTHING to do, is there? Perhaps just a teensy exertion of the will, a 'leaning-forward' in front of the thought stream… like a surfer leaning forward on the surfboard, a letting-go similar to falling asleep, but staying alert and awake…

Okay, I admit it. I cheat. I do the 'three vajra mantra' to resonate the trachea, which resonates the aorta and upper vena cava, which resonates the heart and bloodstream. Total bliss, which in turn creates relaxed one-pointedness.

On the inhale: OMMMMMM (vibrating the septum, soft palate, trachea)
On the hold: (silently) AHHH
On the exhale: HUNGGGG (although I think of it more as a gargle on a French “R”)

It feels just too good to center other than in the heart. And mind is so happy off in the far corner of the pasture, cropping succulent grass all on its own, swishing its tail!

Wow! Where did the summer go?

Hello, Gentle Reader:
I really do believe I'd posted here during August, but don't see anything! So here's a quick catch-up, which hopefully will inspire me to post some more by topic names. Firstly, enlightened master David Spero has graced us with two evenings at The Noe Valley Ministry, and will return September 24 for his third and probably final San Francisco appearance this year. Don't miss this, if you're in the Bay Area!
The Sixth annual season of The Odd Monday Series, presented by my very dedicated and adorable partner Judith and myself, with the blessings of the Ministry, began on 9/11 with an evening devoted to the anniversary of the WTC tragedy. Three speakers from the three Abrahamic faiths spoke very movingly, and then a member of the Compassionate Listening Project presented an example of just how they teach the topic. All in all it was a very moving evening, with music provided by the Noe Valley Ministry choir.
What else? On September 30th, composer Nick Alva will present 'The Morningstar Idyll,' a scaled-down version of the Morningstar musical he has written. This will be its first showing, and will take place at The Marconi Center on Route One near Marshall during the annual Communal Studies Association meeting. The Morningstar event is open to the public, but seating is limited. The conference itself is for CSA members only.
Currently I've been listening to recorded meditations by Adyashanti, a local meditation teacher whom I like a lot. His three-CD set includes three meditations that are excellent, especially the one on the phrase, "Not my will but the will of my heart" (paraphrased?)
I've also been reading with great interest a new book by Ajahn Brahm, abbot of a Buddhist monastery in Australia, titled "Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook." In it he explains how the Buddha promoted bliss states as essential to entering meditative absorption, but how many teachers today ignore or do not emphasize this aspect. Quoting from p 130:

...the Buddha repeatedly stated that the pleasure of jhana 'is to be followed, is to be developed, and is to be encouraged. It is not to be feared.' (MN 66,21).
In spite of this clear advice from the Buddha himself, some students of meditation are misled by those who discourage jhana on the grounds that one can become so attached to jhana that one never becomes enlightened. It should be pointed out that the Buddha's word for attachment, 'upadana,' refers only to attachment to the comfort and pleasure of the five-sense world or to attachments to various forms of wrong view (such as a view of a self). It never means attachment to wholesome things like jhana.
Simply put, jhana states are stages of letting go. One cannot be attached to letting go, just as one cannot be imprisoned by freedom. One can indulge in jhana, in the bliss of letting go, and this is what some people are misled into fearing. But in the 'Pasadika Sutta' (DN 29,25), the Buddha said that one who indulges in the pleasure of jhana may expect only one of four consequences: stream winning, once-returning, non-returning or full enlightenment! In other words, indulging in jhana leads only to the four stages of enlightenment. Thus, in the words of the Buddha, 'One should not fear jhana.'

There is a free online or .pdf downloadable version of an earlier draft that later became chapter 9ff, at look under Ajahn Brahn