Talk 20 - What Is Awakening?

Some views on awakening from a decent sample of fairly awake people.

From Buddha At The Gas Pump, 14 people discuss the theme "What Is Awakening", starting after a 7-8 minute introduction. 

From Sounds True, interviews with 34 people on "What Is Awakening".  Seems a bit expensive here, but this was initially available as a freebie for people trying out Audible.  Also, it weighs in at a prodigious ~23 hours.  This collection contains some big names like Tolle, Adyashanti, Kornfield, Wilber, Brach and includes some science friendly types like Hanson.  I really liked Mukti's direct pointing, Hanson's reasonable approach, and Adyashanti breaking down in tears.

I think it's useful to get a lot of different views, and although there are indeed a lot of different perspectives, I think what is important are the similarities that cut through all of it.  Jeffrey Martin's work on surveying and studying these type of people is useful as well.

[Addendum: from Conscious TV, conversation "What is Enlightenment" with Freke, Weber, etc.]

For myself, at one time I posited that awakening is something like the degree to which one has re-trained the mind metaphorically "back" towards the original, bare, pre-conceptual awareness style.  Which I would still substantially agree with.  Some people bristle at the metaphor of the original mind, because we leave that behind with the conditioning of language and culture, and we can't ever quite put the genie entirely back in the bottle.  But I still think it's a good pointer.

I think now I might want to point a bit more at the relative degree to which the mind is unattached to objects of awareness.  In my opinion it's that constant direction of letting go, of relaxation, that is the essential benefit of awakening.  Letting go of attachment to thoughts, self-identity, emotions, so there is an internal flexibility and openness and ease of being.  Internally, one stops fighting and arguing with reality and leaves things be.

In a conversation the other day, I noticed towards the end I was trying to make a certain point, which is fine, but I was grasping a bit, and that kind of thing really sticks out to me in recent years.  In that moment, I was fighting a little bit internally, like I wasn't completely okay with the outcome if I didn't get this point across.  And that's where the practice is for me, to see that internal grasping and to let go of that and if possible, any beliefs that might be causing it.  I can still make points, and could even do this very emphatically if that is what is actually flowing without internal resistance, but to be clear the path I am taking is towards where everything is just happening as it is, without the arguing or grasping or resistance.  An ease of being.  Ultimately to be more okay with everything.  In that sense awakening is just kind of adjusting to reality, to what is.

Roland Griffiths and Psilocybin and Meditation

Psychedelic researcher Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins on a few podcasts talking about psilocybin and meditation.

Buddhist Geeks 377: Meditating on Mushrooms
Although the formal research is ongoing, in this podcast Roland hints that at least so far,  there appear to be significant benefits for experienced meditators that occasionally (and carefully and prudently) experiment with psilocybin.  Your mileage may vary, but in my experience, duh!  Very exciting to finally hear a little bit about this slowly progressing study.

They are still looking for appropriate candidates that are experienced meditators that have either no experience with psychedelics or experience that preceded regular meditation practice.

Buddhist Geeks 378: Psilocybin: A Crash Course in Mindfulness
Continuing the interview with Roland Griffiths.

Radiolab: Blisshrooms
Some talk about the Good Friday Experiment, Griffiths' validation of that, etc.

Jeffrey Martin's Finders Course Protocol

For reference on the Finders Course, some notes from a Three-Part Video Workshop taken by Jake Yeager.

The advice seems to be to meditate for an hour a day, starting with breath meditation and then body scanning and then moving on to a number of different major meditation protocols to see what works, mixed with a bit of positive psychology.

Psilocybin Research Expanding

A study at UW-Madison is doing something along the lines of the Johns Hopkins research on psilocybin.  The main emphasis here is on the pharmacokinetics, however attention is paid to set and setting.

And the NYU - Johns Hopkins studies continue, now with an eye towards members of the clergy as participants in the psilocybin research.

Lucid Dreamers More Aware

“Our results indicate that self-reflection in everyday life is more pronounced in persons who can easily control their dreams”

It does seems kind of obvious, that awareness in daily life would lead to awareness in dreams.  That's certainly been my experience, not that I'm a "super" lucid dreamer or something.  But since I've "gotten the meditation thing done", the lucid dreaming has definitely increased from close to nothing to not uncommon.  I think it's particularly useful to closely examine one's environment in a lucid dream, and also to meditate within the dream.

Dharma Talk(s) 019 - The Progress of Insight

Somewhat amazingly, someone from the IMS tradition is talking with relative openness about the "progress of insight", an old Buddhist map of progress from the commentaries, most commonly associated with the Mahasi tradition.  The consensus meditation community tends to avoid direct talk about such things.

It is a fairly theoretical overview, but there are some practical tips and some references to actual phenomenon, for example in the section on the arising and passing.  Thanks to Winnie Nazarko (and Dharmaseed) for these talks, each of which is around an hour in length.

Progress of Insight part I - insights 1-3 starting around 40 minutes or so in

Progress of Insight part II - insight 4, the Arising and Passing

Progress of Insight part III - insights 5-11, the Dukkha Nanas thru Equanimity

For reference, the Progress of Insight, as outlined by Mahasi Sayadaw:

• 1 - Mind & Body
• 2 - Cause & Effect
• 3 - Three Characteristics
• 4 - Arising & Passing
• 5 - Dissolution
• 6 - Fear
• 7 - Misery
• 8 - Disgust
• 9 - Desire for Deliverance
• 10 - Re-Observation
• 11 - Equanimity

My brief thoughts on this:

These could be thought of as forming something like a sine wave on a scale of pleasantness vs. unpleasantness, with the peak of pleasantness being at 4 - Arising & Passing, then sliding down through the zero point in 5 - Dissolution, then falling into the unsatisfactory valley of the rest of the dukkha nanas 6-10, then rising back to even once more to 11 - Equanimity at the end.  At equanimity, technical Stream Entry (cessation) is possible.

As for the first few nanas, there really isn't much there if you ask me.  These were I believe added by Mahasi for largely theoretical reasons and to have something to talk about for rank beginners.   3 - Three Characteristics are indeed part of Buddhist philosophy, but I'm not sure the nana is really specifically about that.  It's more commonly experienced, if at all, as something like a persistent hardness or pain and perhaps relates to the sustained attention required in the territory of 1st jhana.

And being able to let go of this sustained attention and/or pain, this leads to the release experienced in nana 4 - Arising and Passing, again, not sure it necessarily relates to the theoretical qualities of the title, but there can be great pleasantness, and there can be bliss and light and energy and so forth and it relates to the territory of the 2nd jhana.  Everything is beautiful, baby, and if a big experience is going to happen, it's typically going to happen in this territory.

Then on to the Dukkha (unsatisfactory) nanas, relating perhaps to the out-of-phase-ness of the 3rd jhana, and these can be thought of as something more like a kind of package rather than individual bits coming up separately in a specific order.  But these types of things can be experienced.  One might be more likely to experience a pang of fear out of nowhere or have a fear/danger dream.  One might be more likely to experience frustration in everyday life, or feel a grimace-like digust-type sensation in meditation.  At Desire for Deliverance, one may feel quite the need to get up off the cushion ("I gotta get out of here!").  Re-Observation, however, is the real boss, the real suck, like all of the dukkha rolled into one - an angsty, depressing, unsatisfactoriness.  The trick is to keep going, stay aware, and to allow it to be just like that.

And then one can break out of that, letting go into Equanimity, relating to the territory of 4th jhana, where everything is okay.  Pleasant stuff is happening, that's okay.  Unpleasant stuff is happening, that's okay too.  It's all good.

Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART)

Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness is a long and dense paper that attempts to blend knowledge about ancient meditation practices with modern neuroscience in a comprehensive way.

It gets a bit more into details and neurology than I or most laypeople could follow, but I think it contains some really nice secular pointers.

S-ART refers to three components of mindfulness, Self - Awareness, Regulation, & Transcendence:

•  Self-Awareness - a meta-awareness
•  Self-Regulation - an ability to effectively modulate one's behavior
•  Self-Transcendence - a positive relationship between self and other that transcends self-focused needs and increases prosocial characteristics.

This triad "illustrates a method for becoming aware of the conditions that cause (and remove) distortions or biases."

Relevant perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral neuropsychological processes are highlighted as supporting mechanisms for S-ART, including:

• intention and motivation
• attention regulation
• emotion regulation
• extinction and reconsolidation
• prosociality
• non-attachment and decentering

"mindful awareness is thought to be critical for improving access and insight toward subject-object relations, such that the most fundamental nature of objects (including the self) is perceived "as they truly are," without distortions or biases inherent in cognition. This undistorted form of insight or experiencing is also referred to as “bare attention,” perception without interpretation."

Analysis of a number of different mindfulness scales used in research resulted in five facets of mindfulness including:

• Observing - An enhanced capacity for noticing or attending to internal and external experiences
• Describing - An enhanced capacity for noting and labeling internal experiences (feelings, images, and thoughts)
• Awareness - An enhanced capacity for acting with present-centered awareness rather than on “automatic pilot”—lost in the past or the future
• Non-Judgement - An enhanced ability to take a non-evaluative, non-judgmental stance toward inner thoughts, images, and feelings and outer experiences
• Non-Reactivity - An enhanced ability to allow thoughts, images, and feelings to come and go without reacting to them or getting carried away by them