Psychology Today Blogs - East Meets West

Take the Plunge: an Auto-Biographically Tangential Pep-Talk

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:57:21 -0700

Take a Plunge

There is this really neat book store where I live... Some days, when I have time to kill, I grab a cup of coffee and head there... Right outside the store, they have this cart with $1 and $2 used books for sale. A while back I stumbled upon an 1975 issue of "Crystal Mirror," an annual journal by Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Center... What a find!

This morning, as I was heading out to take my dog for a walk to the park, I took the journal with me. I've read and re-read it many a time and wasn't quite sure why I really took it. I had a feeling there was a "blog post" in it somewhere... And there was...

But first, let me tell you a little story from my childhood... It won't take but a minute.

As a kid, growing up in Moscow, I attended a "sports school" (a peculiar Soviet secondary education institution designed to both educate scholastically and to also cultivate the "olympic reserves") with a "specialty" in water polo. I was an okay swimmer and did okay on the "water" field. With the last name (Somov) that approximately translates from Russian as "son-of-a-catfish," I was a natural water-born. What I couldn't, however do, is a backflip from the side of a pool.

Here's how I went about learning it. First, I gathered information from my more acrobatic friends. Struggling for words and relying primarily on gestures and body language, they shared their know-how with me. Armed with this information, I tried doing a backflip and hurt myself a few times before I got it right. In retrospect, I realize that the information I gathered had essentially no value; as I tried to do a backflip, I was following no one's blueprint but enacting a kind of intuitive kinesthetic visualization that I had in my mind long before I consulted my friends. Having materialized that kinesthetic vision, I had acquired experiential awareness of how a backflip is done, my own know-how of the backflip that cannot be adequately expressed in words.

Informational awareness (such as the one I acquired about the kinesthetics of a backflip) is a vital precursor of change. Without having the illusory comfort of knowledge about how to do a backflip, I would have probably never attempted it. But informational awareness is nearly not enough: there has to be a leap of faith with a subsequent trial-and-error fine-tuning...

With this auto-biographical detour aside, let me get back to the business of East-West synthesis and the matters of meditation.

So, here I flip through the pages of the "Crystal Mirror" - watching my dog tear up a stick - and I stumble upon the following words by Tarthang Tulku, instructing on meditation:

"When you are trying to understand conceptual instructions, at that time, yes, listen and try to be aware. But once you enter into this process (of meditation), accept everything as fine and beautiful, just as it is" (p. 147).

And: "Once you are within the meditation, do not try to find some better experience, or try to be more "aware." This only creates fixations about what meditation is and what it should be" (p. 147).

I flip through a few more pages: on the margins of the book I see the markings of a previous reader. Next to where Tulku writes "Starting to meditate is very simple..." - there is a circled 1. Next to where Tulku provides what could be conceptualized as step 2, there is a circled 2. I flip the page: there's a circled 3 right in tandem with Tulku's next point of instruction.

So, here's the evidence of a Western mind (that belonged to the former owner of the book) getting ready for a meditative backflip... and trying to arm itself with "conceptual instructions."

At the risk of being redundant, let me quote Tulku again: "When you are trying to understand conceptual instructions, at that time, yes, listen and try to be aware. But once you enter into this process, accept everything as fine and beautiful, just as it is" (p. 147).

What's my point? Well, be it meditation or a backflip - yes, we do need some illusion of a framework to even consider the endeavor. But ultimately - and there's no way around it - we have to take the plunge...

Without the actual dive into the stream of consciousness, all this "East meets West" blog-reading is just a bunch of somebody else's blah-blah-blah...

It's time to take the plunge. Here: I left for you a fresh towel...

A Circular Autopsy of Absorption

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:55:42 -0700

A Circular Autopsy of Absorption

Knut Hamsun:

"My soul broods. Mechanically I walk over to a tree, pull my cap low over my eyes and lean with my back against the tree, hands clasped behind my neck. I gaze and think, the flames from my fire dazzle my eyes, but I feel nothing. For some time I stand in this meaningless attitude, looking into the fire. My legs are the first to forsake me, they grow weary, and I sit down stiffly. Only now do I think what I have been doing. Why did I stare so long into the fire?"*

Step 1: "My soul broods" - a problem of mood, a problem of emotional self-regulation.

Step 2: "Mechanically I walk over to a tree, pull my cap over my eyes and lean..." - an intuitive solution of introspection is endeavored.

Step 3: "I gaze and think, the flames from my fire dazzle my eyes..." - an episode of concentrative, one-pointed contemplation ensues.

Step 4: "But I feel nothing" - the mere fact of tracing the origin of the brooding soul, the cognitive narrowing onto the source of suffering, the intuitive "where's all this coming from?" inquiry takes the mind to an orbit of ("nirvanic") meta-cognitive distance, to an orbit of content-less being.

Step 5: "For some time I stand in this meaningless attitude, looking into the fire" - lost in thought or lost in no-thought, in mindful mindlessness, saved by the intuitive "gaze meditation" upon flames. The perennial problem of the brooding soul - incinerated "by looking into the fire."

Step 6: "My legs are the first to forsake me, the grow weary, and I sit down stiffly" - the Body, a homeostatic alarm clock, wakes up the wandering Mind to... an Autopsy of Absorption (Step 7): "Why did I stare so long into the fire?"

And Steps 1 through 7 are repeated... And so we go, round and round, lost and found in the ruminative fjords of absorption...

*Knut Hamsun, Pan.

Pavel Somov

Zazen: Just Sitting or Is There More to It?

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:34:38 -0700

Buddhism, as a healing art rather than a religion, in its therapeutic mandate of healing human suffering, takes the path of getting rid, not of the Suffering, but of the Sufferer...

Let me clarify...

Buddhism, in its strategic (long-term) rather than tactical (short-term) mandate, is not a "feel-good" endeavor, it's a "feel-nothing" endeavor: "According to Buddhism, the pleasure/pain mechanism keeps people locked into a self-perpetuating cycle of conditioned existence <...>. Any teaching, or medical or therapeutic intervention intended simply to improve the lived quality of people's lives cannot move beyond the pleasure/pain mechanism, because such tools are themselves conditioned responses designed to make people "feel better." in order to break out of the cycle of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, and achieve a state of supraliminal equanimity, an entirely different type of medicine is required, a transcendental one. <...> Dharma leads to a state beyond the very possibility of suffering" (Fenner, p. 2).

That is to mean: beyond the possibility of feeling! Not beyond the possibility of sensing, but beyond the possibility of identification with the sensation. Beyond the possibility of the emotional involvement with the sensation (whether it's of pain or pleasure). In other words, beyond the posibility of feeling the sensation!

Read on...

According to the doctrine of Anatman (the doctrine of No-Self), "a human is composed of five components <which are> physical form, feeling, perception, drives and impulses, and consciousness. Even the most cherished and seemingly distinctive features of our humanity - affection, loyalty, memory, talent, aesthetic discernment - resolve into the interplay of these five components. Since each of these components is impermanent and lacking in any defining characteristic, it inevitably follows that the whole that they compose must share those characteristics - it must, in other words, be anatman, ‘no self.' <...> This realization progressively frees the meditator from pain and suffering as he or she realizes that there is no self to suffer. Ultimately, the meditator ceases to exist as an independent entity. His or her conditioned experience transforms into an experience of unconditioned freedom, transcending all notions of time, space, and existence" (Fenner, p. 15).

Bottom-line: Buddhist psychology takes no Self hostage.

"Through repeated meditations over thousands and thousands of hours, they (meditators) thoroughly eliminate all traces of the belief that they are unique and self-existent" (Fenner, p. 33).

In a manner of speaking, the nine digit social security number of your self-other distinctions is reduced to just one number: One.

And in this phenomenological enmeshment you stand to gain the true social security of being One with All.

The King/Queen of Self disrobes the layers of its acquired informational-biographical distinctions in an identity striptease...

So, it seems that the idea behind this type of suffering-reduction and pain management is to basically put you out of the misery of suffering through a kind of phenomenological lobotomy which is accomplished by doing away with the very notion of the suffering Self and/or by erasing the duality of pain and pleasure in the first place...

Is it a mercy killing of individuality and subjectivity or a form of transcendence? You decide.

With this in mind, it seems that in the West, the Buddhist psychology - as a school of therapy - is mostly utilized at a tactical, short-term plane, without the strategic buy-in. Mindfulness meditation is clinicaly taught as a tactic of pain/distress management with the goal of getting rid of Suffering, and not in its strategic sense of getting rid of the Sufferer.

As we (clinicians and clients) fool around with various tools of Buddhist psychology, we often fail to appreciate that these surgical "diamond cutters" in our hands are designed to "grind away the false belief that we have an autonomous and independent existence" as stand-alone and localized Selves (Fenner, p. 30).

The goal of Buddhist psychology is not Self-Growth, but Self-Reduction!

Take the case of Zazen, the "just sitting" meditation.

Here's a description of the purpose of zazen by Peter Fenner: "There seem to be two ways to stimulate an intense observation the ego. One way is to remove all structure and meaning from living, so that the there is neither reason for doing what we are doing, nor any way of determining whether we are on or off track in terms of our spiritual aspirations. In this situation, the ego constantly searches for grounding and reference by creating its own systems of meaning in order to have a purpose and to track its performance and progress. The other way to stimulate the ego's defenses is to impose a severe level of constancy and uniformity on one's physical uniqueness and independence against a background imposed from outside" (p. 39-40).

So, zazen is designed to "stimulate the ego's defenses," a kind of psychological tickle, if not a squirm... Not exactly water-boarding, but clearly a mandate of distress inoculation...

A look into the Nietzschean abyss of emptiness for those of us who keep climbing the ladder rungs of self-growth without having yet worked through our fear of existential heights...

A reality check into our own non-reality...

No wonder that "just sitting" and "doing nothing" stirs up such a panic in the prototypical Western mind that's always on the run from its own emptiness...

As such, zazen, in its strategic mandate, along with the rest of the Buddhist self-deconstruction tool-kit, is not intended as a relaxing moment of respite.

Strategically, zazen is just another way to jog your mind into a state of categorical weightlessness, to shake up the pseudo-gravity of our assumptions about our existence, to knock the mind of its quick-sand ground of illusionary permanence.

Tactically, however, "just sitting" might be a nice moment of contemplative respite during a busy day... And - paradoxically - a way to get grounded.

Where do you go from here? Do you want to use Buddhist psychology on a "feel-good" basis or do you want to try to go all the way into the Nirvanic never-land of No-Suffering?

It's your existential choice.

In the meantime, here's a "feel-good," existence-affirming (rather than existence-disconfirming) take on zazen. Read the following "primer" and try "just sitting."

Zazen: "just sitting."
Such a simple set of instructions...
But so hard to follow!

It is...
It is, indeed, hard to follow a set of instructions that leads a chronically goal-oriented mind into a Nowhere of Purposelessness...

That's right: just sitting is just that: just sitting...
without any attempt to meditate or not-meditate,
without either trying to think or trying to not think...

Sitting is sitting...
Nothing else to it...
It's neither a meditation, nor a non-meditation...
Just a practice of just being...
without any pragmatic just-ifications...

Just being...
Just being in time...
Rather than doing time...
An affirmation of existence for its own sake...

Pavel Somov

References:

Peter Fenner, The Edge of Certainty: Dilemmas on the Buddhist Path, 2002, Nicolas-Hays, Inc.

Rumination Lullaby

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:45:19 -0700

Mind is an information-processing system. As such, it is in the business of digestion - and, not unlike your stomach, sometimes it chokes up on spice of life...

Say, something happened - and now It is eating You as You are trying to digest It. The informational tug-of-war is on. No crisis here: same ol' evolutionary game of the survival of the best-informed.

Look: if you are alive and reading this, you've won this contest every time - you've eventually swallowed every information byte reality has served you.

Information-processing - like food-processing - is a metabolic process. It has its own pace and rate of digestion. Rumination is part of this digestive cycle. If it ("the food for thought" the life has just served you) needs to come up, then it needs to come up. If you feel you have already masticated all the "musts" and "mustn'ts" out of this informational cud, then no need to chew on this again, just re-swallow it.

Learn from Bankei, a 17th century Japanese Zen master: "Cutting off occurring thoughts is like washing blood off in blood. The original blood might be washed off, but you're still defiled by the blood you wash in" (Fenner, P., The Edge of Certainty, p. 79, 2002).

In other words, trying not to think about "it" involves thinking about "it." So, if you are still thinking about "it," it's because you are still digesting "it" while "it" is trying to digest you... Remember that in this war of digestion, your mind has found a way - each and every time - to stomach the information that it had been served.

Accept the motility of your informational metabolism and find solace in the notion that there's never been a thought - so far - that you choked on to death. Remember that Christmas jingle you couldn't get out of your mind after your power-walk in the mall? Well, it's gone, isn't it?! And so will this be, whatever "this" is for you at the moment...

Learn from Bankei again: "You must realize that thoughts are temporary, changing appearances, and neither seize on them or hate them, just let them occur and cease of themselves" (p. 80).

And while at it, forget this non-sense of "forgive-and-forget" as a way of dealing with rumination. For one, forgetting - as a memory function - is not available on demand. It's just not a given: just like you cannot decide and forget your name, you cannot decide and forget the name of the person that made fun of your name. Forgetting is not under voluntary control.

As to forgiving, don't get me wrong: it's a psychologically healthy aspiration. So, do work on that. But forgiving - as a formula for stopping rumination - is no Tums. Just because you forgave someone for their transgression it doesn't mean that you will stop thinking about the event in question. Remember: even the food for thought needs time to settle. As this river of consciousness runs its course, the ripple effects of the stone of judgment that disturbed the equanimity of your mind will soothe out and the silt of your resentment will eventually settle...

So, if after the conscious work of forgiving you are still feeling the acidic memory of the transgression back up into your mind, once again: no need to re-chew this informational cud, just re-swallow it. You don't have to question if you are "still not over it." You don't have to re-do the work of your forgiveness and second-guess the frailty of your ego. All is fine as long as the river of your consciousness is flowing.

Here's a Russian information-processing digestion tip: "Morning is wiser than night" ("outro vechera mudrenn'ee"). In other words, sleep on it. And console yourself with the fact that whatever it is that you saw in the mirror of your consciousness, it'll pass. Once again learn from Bankei: "the image doesn't stay in the mirror," particularly when you turn off the lights. It's a rare informational cud that survives till the next morning...

In short, let go of this thought that you need to let go of this thought. Never mind the un-invited mind: it'll see itself out. Chew on this for a while as you go to sleep. See you in the morning just as you always are...

Tautology: Total Eclipse of Meaning

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:24:43 -0700

The word “tautology” literally means “repeating what has been said” (from Greek tauto for “same” and logos for “saying”)(1), as in "A is A." The philosophical East and West differ in terms of the value of saying the same thing twice.

From the stand-point of the Western thought, Popeye’s “I yam what I yam” is empty rhetoric. After all, to say the same thing twice is to say nothing new; thus, the pejorative connotation of the word tautology. Tautologies, in the circularity of their reasoning, are viewed as inherently meaningless, as a total waste of breath, and, at best, as just argumentative.

From the stand-point of the Eastern thought, however, Popeye’s “I yam what I yam” is a reflection of an enlightened mind, of an existential sailor that has finally cast the anchor of his consciousness in the abyss of non-duality…

Let’s take a closer look…

Zhuangzi (365-290 BCE), an ancient Chinese dialectician, writes in the “Equality of All Things:” “A thing seems to be so when we say it is so; it does not, when we say that it is not. A path is formed by being walked on. <…> How is it so? It is so because it is so. How is it not so? It is not so because it is not so.” (2).

“What is this?! What kind of statement is this?!! What does this mean?!!! This makes no sense…” – rebels the Western mind. “Exactly! Nonsense, on one had; wisdom, on the other hand… Except that the enlightened mind is one-handed…” - it half-clarifies, half-confuses, and, on the whole, enlightens, albeit with misleading smart-aleck agreeableness.

How are we, the Logicians of the West, to make sense of this illogical self-referencing circularity? We are not… That’s exactly the point. You see, we’ve come to expect the language to say something, to add some informational value. But the Eastern thought seems to pursue an altogether different vector: in saying nothing, it is trying to avoid saying something that isn’t…

True, tautologies – irrefutable in their truism – seem to be the only way to say something without distorting the reality of what is…

You see, to describe is to differentiate; and to differentiate is to draw out a boundary between “this” and “that;” and to draw a boundary is to separate what Eastern thought views as indivisible and inseparable. Thus the Buddhist “ban” on discursive (i.e. labeling, judging) thought: each description draws a false, arbitrary, subjective line of distinction right through the undifferentiated Oneness of it all…

Listen to Zhuangzi, Garab Dorje and Suzuki collaborate on this point…

“Everything has its inherent character and its proper capability; there is nothing that is without these” (Zuangzi). Yet “there is no concept that can define the condition of ‘what is’” (Garab Dorjie, the Six Vajra Verses) (3). “A finger is needed to point at the moon, but what a calamity it would be if one took the finger for the moon” (Suzuki) (4).

So here we have it: a tautology says nothing. In so doing, a tautology is a total eclipse of meaning, but not with nonsense… with the transparence of acceptance!

“An apple is an apple. “ Such truism feeds no Adam’s thirst for knowledge. A tautology, from the stand-point of its informational value, is an empty calorie. Its point is not to feed the mind with information, but to prod the mind to accept what is as it is. The emphasis is not on the “what” or the “how” of what is but on the “isness of all things” (5).

Take the infamous tautological cliché - “it is what it is” - for example. “It is what it is” is, perhaps, both the most frequent-flyer tautology that there is and the closest we get to being philosophical in our day to day non-appraisal of things. This statement prompts us to let go of trying to understand the un-understandable and to shift to its acceptance as is.

While the Western mind pursues knowledge, the Eastern mind chases acceptance. The Logical mind says “How can I accept this if I don’t understand this?!” The Nondual mind says “How can I not accept this? If it exists, it is valid, whether I understand it or not…”

As close as we come to this “edge of certainty” (6) of trying to figure out what’s what, ultimately – from the stand-point of Buddhist epistemology (as I understand it) – knowledge is an illusion. Garab Dorjie, in the first verse of his Vajra Verses: “The nature of phenomena is nondual (and) <...> beyond the limits of the mind.”

Each word is a unit of description, each description is nothing but a finger pointing at the moon. With this in mind, all language is sign language, all language is just hand-waving; and no amount of hand-waving and gesturing at the moon equals the moon.

“It is what it is” is a powerful epistemological reality-check, but, to be faithfully non-dual, it is also not… Western thought seeks enlightenment through understanding, Eastern thought seeks enlightenment through confusion. Thus, the former needs declarative, dualistic “this is this, not that” statements, whereas the latter subsists on epistemologically tail-chasing circularity of “it is what it is.”

Look at how shamelessly, from the point of logic, Suzuki spins the web of confusion, negating a tautology with a tautology: “How hard, then, and yet how easy it is to understand the truth of Zen! Hard because to understand it is not to understand it; easy because not to understand it is to understand it” (4). Not only “A” is “A," but “A” is also “not-A.” To understand is both to understand and not to understand.

But that’s the epistemological ticket, per Zhuangzi: “Where there is no opposition between this view and that view, there is the pivot of the dao. As soon as this pivot is found, we stand in the center where we can respond without an end to changing views” (2).

As such, any tautology is a Point of Consensus and that’s what enables the eventual shift to a position of acceptance. “It is what it is” – who can disagree with that?!

The endless circularity of tautology (“it is what it is what it is what it is…” or “I am what I am what I am…”) vortexes us into the very center –point of the circle, into the common denominator of “is-ness.” “Everything that is, is,” or, put differently, “everything that exists, exists” – this is the stem-cell tautology that underlies all others that we can all agree on; as to the “how” and “what” of this “is,” it is a matter of perspective…

As the Western mind dismisses tautology as meaningless self-referencing, it preoccupies itself with nothing other than self-referencing. As soon as we begin to deviate from the truth that “it is what it is” we embark on an arbitrary, self-referencing tug-of-war of defining "it" as “this” or “that.” “It is this, not that” I insist, as you insist that this “this” is actually a “that.”

Let me close with the words of Dattatreya, an extreme non-dualist who had “shaken off” all attachment to “this” or “that” - “Some seek nonduality, others duality. They do not know the Truth, which is the same at all times and everywhere, which is devoid of both duality and nonduality" (7).

If the truth is the same at all times, it would appear that tautology, in saying the same thing over and over gain, by definition, is the only way to stay true to the message…

Tautology - nonsense or wisdom? Failure of description or language of acceptance? Both or neither? It is what it is. Can you accept that?

(1) Online Etymology Dictionary www.etymonline.com

(2) Zhuangzi (Kolak, D., The Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy)

(3) Dzogchen: the Self-Perfected State (Norbu, C. N., Snow Lion Publications)

(4) An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Suzuki, Grove Press)

(5) Double Vision: Duality and Nonduality in Human Experience (John Welwood, in “The Sacred mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy,” Prendergast et al., Paragon House)

(6) The Edge of Certainty: Dilemmas on the Buddhist Path (Fenner, Nicolas-Hays, Inc.)

(7) Advaita Vedanta: the Avadhuta Gita (One: Essential Writings on Nonduality” Katz, Sentinent Publications)

Pavel Somov

Nabokov: the Thin Ice of Presence

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:56:50 -0700

Nabokov: The Thin Ice of Presence

Meaningful Meaninglessness of Now

Meaning is an association of what is now with what once was…

Take a look at any object in your immediate environment: say, you are looking at a “so-called” (I’ll explain the “so-called” parenthetical in a few moments) cup. Say, I picked it up from your desk and asked: “What is this?” You’d say: “A cup.” And I’d say: “No, what is this?” After a moment of bemusement, you might offer: “A mug?” And I – with the best of the poker faces – would stay firm: “No, what is this?” After a pause and/or after a little friendly prodding from me, you might suggest: “A container for liquids?” To welcome the emerging looseness of your associations, I’d kick the door of your mind with a more clue-like question: “Yes… What else could this object be?” With this prompt, you’d likely fire off a series of ideas: “A paper-weight, a weapon if you throw it, a small hand-held shovel…”

So here we are: what used to be a cup now has acquired some additional meanings, by virtue of re-association…

Where am I going with this? Okay: let me reiterate the thesis: meaning is an association. When, as kids, we first encounter a new object, we ask: “Mom/Dad, what is this?” “It’s a fork,” Mom/Dad programs our mind… “And this (fill in the blank)?” Mom/Dad: “This is (fill in the blank).”

Meaning is a process of filling in the blanks of the mind… with words… that trigger other words… that trigger more words… As we grow and acquire language, we, in essence, acquire a baggage of associations that weighs us down as we try to skate the thin ice of presence.

Vladimir Nabokov, in Transparent Things, writes: “When we concentrate on a material object <…> the very act of attention may lead to our involuntary sinking into the history of that object. Novices must learn to skim over matter if they want to stay at the exact level of the moment.”

Nabokov, the great Russian-English novelist, whose own style is so ingeniously laden with association-rich detail, here, both de-constructs his own style and defines Zen: “A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film.”

Nabokov’s advice is straight from Buddhism: to stay in the moment, we must somehow avoid weighing down “what is” with our pre-conceived notions of “what it means.”

As we encounter reality, we continuously make meaning, i.e. we associate “what is” with “what it means.” In so doing, we continuously confuse the Present for the Past. “Oh,” we think with quickly fading interest, “this is a fork” as we look at a “so-called” (I’ll explain the “so-called” parenthetical in a few moments) fork.

Nabokov proclaims: “Transparent things, through which the past shines!”

Yes: the Present is Transparent. If seen as such, not through the lens of past associations, it has the proverbial clarity of enlightenment. But how elusive this way of seeing, or rather not seeing! How thin this ice of Presence!

Meaning is an artifact of the Past, not the actual fact of the Present. Things that we have not yet encountered have no meaning to us. And when we encounter something new, we are understandably startled. The more we live, the more reality we manage to label with words of meaning, the heavier is the baggage of our associations. And as we progress in time, we lose the spontaneity of the response: we’ve seen it all, nothing’s new, everything has been already categorized…

So, instead of seeing reality as it is, we see a “so-called” reality – a reality that we so called, a reality of our own associations, a reflection of our subjective life experience, documented in the narrative of choice. Language constructs perception: first, the word, then, the perceived reality.

If we call this This "this," so it becomes "so-called."

Case in point: the ones of us who have avoided the correctional side of society (whether it is on the side of an inmate or a prison guard) look at a so-called fork, we see a utensil, rather a weapon because for us this object has come to mean exactly that. An inmate or a prison guard looks at the very same fork, and sees an opportunity or a threat, respectively, i.e. a very different reality…

But in reality, we are all imprisoned in our “so-called” realities of habitual interpretation. Buddhism, particularly, Zen Buddhism, offers a way out of this prison: non-discursive thought. Mindfulness – as a practice – can be understood as interpretive silence: witness but don’t label, witness but don’t describe, witness what is as it is, avoid the lens of the past associations.

As such, mindfulness is a form of meaninglessness. And that is its existential meaning!

Seeing the reality as is, not through the distorting prism of past associations, allows us the invigorating encounter with the novelty of Now: after all, this moment that you almost dismissed as something that you’ve already seen, is entirely unprecedented. This Now is, in fact, the only news!

To Nabokov, skimming the Present without sinking into the Past is a miracle that befits only the most experienced: “Otherwise the inexperienced miracle-worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish” (if I may add) under the weight of past associations.

Pavel Somov

Keeping Cool When Mind's On Fire

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:24:31 -0700

There's thinking... and there's thinking about thinking as a stream of thoughts...

Think about it...

Here goes a thought... Here goes another... And so it goes... On and on and on...

Consciousness has been compared to a river: like a river, mind flows, from one thought to another, incessantly, irrevocably...

Here's one of the thoughts that Buddhism built its psychological salvation on: "there has never been a thought that didn't go away."

Hmm...

No need to try to not think about what I don't want to think about! No need to resist the thoughts that I am already having! No need to push the thoughts I don't like out! No need to do anything but stay and watch the thoughts go... After all, if it's true that there's never been a thought that didn't go away, why do the river's work? The river knows how to flow...

Wow...

"There's never been a thought that didn't go away..."

What if... what if I let go of every thought except this one? What if all I thought was "there's never been a thought that didn't go away?" What would that be like?!

So, here I'd sit, on the bank of this babbling brook of consciousness, watching thoughts pass, thinking "there's never been a thought that didn't go away." What would that be like?!

Swami Vivekananda, in writing about Dattatreya, the author of Advahuta Gita, a Vedanta text on Nonduality, wrote: "Men like the one who wrote this Song <...> they care for nothing, they feel nothing done to the body, care not for heat, cold, danger, or anything. They sit still <...> and though red-hot coals burn the body, they feel them not." (1)

Such people are sometimes called "non-returners" - having left the stream of consciousness, having found a place in the shade of the meta-cognitive distance, on the bank of this babbling brook of consciousness, they never re-enter the river of the experience. They think of thoughts as thoughts, and, thus, remain un-touched by the never-ceasing evanescence of their mind-states...

My guess is that what it'd be like...

Is that possible?

Journalist Malcolm Brown witnessed one such "non-returner" in 1963 when a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc performed an act of self-immolation. The man sat down, poured gasoline over himself and lit himself up. What's amazing - to me - is not the cause, not even the decision, but what happened after... Nothing happened: the man sat, in a lotus position, while burning alive. The skin of his face coagulating in flames... Dying... Burning alive...

Thich - a real, historically-documented non-returner... He didn't return because he never left the place of his here-and-now presence.... even with a river of pain-lava flowing through his mind...

How's that possible?

It is.

Imagine you had a chance to ask Thich this very question: "How is this possible? How are you able to just sit while you are on fire?"

My guess, Thich would've asked in return: "What fire?"

"There's never been a thought that didn't go away..."

In this myriad of fleeting thoughts, perhaps, this one is the only one worth holding?

(Jerry Katz, "One: Essential Writings on Nonduality," First Sentinent Publications, 2007).

Pavel Somov

Self-Liberation: liberation of Self or liberation from an illusion of Self?

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:15:06 -0700

"The bamboo-shadows move over the stone steps

as if to sweep them, but no dust is stirred;

The moon is reflected deep in the pool,

but the water shows no trace of its penetration."

from D. T. Suzuki, "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism"

Self - from the stand-point of Buddhism - is an illusion. It is this "doctrine of no Self" (not to be confused with any ethical or moral or religious doctrines of self-less-ness) that is a shocker to the Western mind.

No Self? How can that be?!

Buddhism doesn't bother to explain how it is, it just claims that is.

Stay with this thought for the next seven moments...

The seven sentences above are a sample of seven moments "you" might go through. Note the constancy of am-ness and the fleeting, ever-changing evanescence of the states that "you" pass through...

The "I am" column (on the left) is the "stone steps" that reflect the "bamboo-shadows" of your mind-states. The "I am" column is the "pool" that reflects the image of the "moon."

This phenomenological (subjectively-experiential) baseline of am-ness doesn't change: the "I am" of moment one is the same "I am" of moment seven. The "bamboo-shadows" "stir" no dust. The moon's "deep" reflection does not really "penetrate" the surface.

This sense of Self - it appears - is nothing but shadows and reflections against the mirror of am-ness...

Prendergast, Fenner & Krystal (the editors of "The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom in Psychotherapy," Paragon House, 2003) reference the metaphor of a mirror in understanding "the essential nature" of consciousness - "the awareness that is prior to and inclusive of all thoughts, feelings, and sensations" (p. 3).

Dan Berkow (in his chapter on "Psychology of No-thingness," in Prendergast et al.) emphasizes the goal of this new, "fourth wave" psychology as "knowing" that one's Self is "not-a-thing," not an actual "thing" or "entity" that is "moving ahead through time," but mental construction that has been taken too literally, a cognitive projection (of an image onto a screen) that has been mistaken for something real, for something that actually exists.

It's heavy-duty stuff, I admit. Berkow offers some normalization as well: he speaks of the anxiety that comes with the realization of this "situationlessness," of the attempts to ground and anchor this fleeing image that we have of our Selves with various circumstantial accoutrements of traits, identities, and roles.

Berkow writes: "'Self' may consist of memories, experiences, feelings, values, roles <...> Health in the sense of balance and well-being is the relinquishment of any attempt to hold experiences, the release of the fear of losing self, relinquishment of the effort to maintain the believed-to-be-necessary self-at-the-center" (p. 188, in "The Sacred Mirror").

Self-liberation - in this context - means not liberation of Self, but liberation from the illusion of Self... What general psychology would consider to be regressive defense mechanism of disassociation here acquires the status of a recovery path. There's a lot to ponder here as these Nondual psychology "bamboo-shadows" do, indeed, stir a good bit of dust on the stone-steps of our self-growth ladders...

So, what is your image of Self? Is your Self-Image an image of an image on a canvas? Or is your Self-Image an image of a canvas adorned by a never-ceasing procession of bamboo shadows and reflections of the moon? Do you envision your Self as Contents or as a Container, as a Mirror or a specific reflection in it?

And what is the day-to-day psychology of re-thinking your Self as a stage rather than its performer, as the surface of a lake rather than the familiar pattern of cognitive ripples from the daily drip of your self-talk about who and what you are?

Here's a little exercise to try: go look at yourself in the mirror, and make a scary, scary face... Boo! Do you think the mirror is afraid?

In this deprecation of the non-existent Self, you make such scary faces even the Buddha laughs...

Pavel Somov

Relax: It's Just a Meditation

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:10:34 -0700

It's 4am... Anyone up yet for a Sun Salutation?

Never mind: let me make a couple of points and go back to sleep...

You've heard people say: there are many roads to Rome - meaning, many different means to the same end, many a path to get to one and the same destination. That's understood.

What's a bit more confusing, however, is when you've got one road that leads to quite a few different places. Take the mindfulness practice for example. Say, you sat down to watch the river of your experience, to listen to this babbling brook of your consciousness... What's it all about? Where's this investment of time going? What's the goal?

There is - as I understand - a fundamental difference between relaxation and meditation. While both may share the same road, the very same road seems to lead to rather different destinations.

Relaxation is fundamentally a self-regulatory pursuit. Its very goal is to change how you feel. Relaxation is, by definition, about relaxing a tension. Thus, in the case of relaxation, the agenda is quite clear - to relax, to feel better.

Therein lies the potential stress of relaxation - in its goal-oriented mandate, relaxation can be somewhat stressful. And, indeed, you carved out a ten minute break to do your "clinical homework" of "mental hygiene" that your therapist so emphatically encouraged you to "experiment with." What pressure! You have to relax, you think. After all, isn't that the goal of relaxation?!

Meditation is an entirely different matter. Meditation is literally an open-ended process of pondering, a free-wheeling contemplation. Unlike relaxation, meditation involves no destination: it's just a road to roam, not a road to Rome. Meditation is like shooting an arrow blind, without a target, with aimlessness being the only aim. As such, without even aspiring to, the meditation breathes with relaxation...

So, here's the "performance-anxiety" paradox so familiar to the ancients: try too hard and fail, let go and succeed.

When approaching stress-management as a matter of performance with clear-cut objectives and timelines ("ten minutes to reset my Autonomic Nervous System to its parasympathetic baseline"), we try too hard to relax and, thus, tense up instead.

What paradox! One and the same vehicle - but such different destinations. So, here you are, practicing mindfulness. This is the vehicle of the moment. If you are all gung ho to relax, to ease this anxiety of being, mindfulness turns into stressful hyperscanning where each sensation you notice rattles you up like parking lot speed-bumps. But, if you just take this vehicle of mindfulness for a top-down-Saturday-morning-no-destination spin, all of a sudden you find yourself on an open road to a relaxing nowhere.

This is the psychology of goal orientation. In expectation of the future relaxation ("expectation" from Latin ex-spectare, where ex- means "thoroughly" and spectare means "look"), we overlook the present; in waiting to get to the destination of the Rome, we miss out on the relaxing scenery of the journey.

So, as your and my minds finally wind down to the end of this open-ended rambling meditation on meditation, my suggestion is this: relax, it's just a meditation.

It's 5am. Another Sun Salutation misspent at the keyboard... The Sun's getting up. It's time to go to our waking sleep: the working zombies of the world unite!

Pavel Somov

A Breeze of Eastern Epistemology: Knowing What Exists

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:41:26 -0700

Point 1

What exists?

Does yesterday exist now?

Does tomorrow exist now?

Of course, not.

Our thoughts of yesterday may exist now if we are now thinking of yesterday.

Our thoughts of tomorrow may exist now if we are now thinking of tomorrow.

But neither yesterday nor tomorrow exists.

What about the moment a second ago when you started reading this blog? What about a moment from now when you will have finished reading this blog? Do these moments exist?

Of course, not.

Our thoughts of these moments may exist if we are now thinking of them...

What exists now but now?!

Point 2

What can be known?

Only that which exists.

Will you wake up tomorrow morning?

Who knows... But I am sure that you believe that you will.

We can know and we can believe.

We can only know that which we witness.

Will your car start when you head back home today after work?

You don't know, of course, but you believe that it will.

When we don't know we have no choice but to believe.

To believe is to act as if you know even though you don't know.

What else can you do instead?!

After all, you can't know that which doesn't yet exist...

Point 3

Ignorance, they say, is bliss.

But there are two kinds of ignorance - ignorance out of lack of conscious awareness and ignorance by conscious choice, ignorance of not knowing and ignorance of consciously ignoring that which cannot be known...

Which one is bliss?

Will you wake up tomorrow?

Who knows?! Don't you know that you can't know that which doesn't yet exist?!

Ignore the un-knowable...

And notice the Now that still exists...

Point 4

The Buddhist doctrine of Sunyata (the doctrine of emptiness) is often misunderstood as a nihilistic doctrine of nothingness.

Buddhist psychology negates that which doesn't exist only to affirm that which still exists.

You've heard this before: the past has already happened, therefore it doesn't exist; the future hasn't happened, therefore it doesn't exist. Thus, there's nothing but Now...

So, here we stand, sandwiched between the Nothingness of the Past that's already gone and doesn't exist and the Future that hasn't yet happened and therefore doesn't exist...

Here we stand in this proverbial and pre-verbal here-and-now, in the middle of Nothingness...

This is all there is...

And to ignore this "Now" would be the ignorance of un-awareness.

To ignore what's outside of this "Now" would be the ignorance of bliss...

Point 5

Psychology - arguably - is a study of Being.

Epistemology is a study of Knowing.

Psychology is Epistemology inasmuch as Being here-and-now is Knowing what still exists.

P. Somov