Secular Buddhism

[danski]

I've listened to and read so much over the years and he still comes out on top. He knew East and Western thought and psychotherapy like the back of his hand so when he speaks, I listen. I am suspect of people who haven't given this deep thought and compared it with other modes of thinking/philosophy. Someone like watts, beliefs are formed after a process of trial and error and compare contrast. Time is precious and its good to be skeptical of this stuff. But I trust him. Does it make a difference that he knew art, the western and Eastern philosophical cannon, literature like the back of his hand. Yes, to me massively so.

Also, he’s just kind of telling you to get on with it. There’s no trick, no secret. Nothing for him to gain.

And that’s what is such a headfuck!!!

It can be so simple. In those moments of clarity it all makes sense.
Then, everything, including me, is shit.

However, I think I am turning a corner as I am realising that I need to be shit to know that I’m not, apart from when I am but that doesn’t matter. I think

 

[8ball]

utterly beautiful from JDK. he had a lovely way with words when he wanted to

He always made a lot more sense to me than Watts does right now. I’m not sure whether I’m missing something or whether I’m just more in line with those Buddhists who disagreed with Watts back in the day.

 

[brixtonscot]

Red Enlightenment : Graham Jones on Repeater Radio
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
21:00-22:00
Red Enlightenment is an 8-part exploration of socialism, science, and spirituality.

Episode 1, "Reclaiming Enlightenment," sets the scene with the growth of the far right, investigates whether we can rescue the notion of Enlightenment, and then looks to the thought of Michael Brooks and Mark Fisher on the idea of materialist spirituality.

repeater radio

www.repeater-radio.com

 

[BigMoaner]

don't knwo about anyone else but meditation helps me identify feelings that long have been covered up with matrixes of thought - so my mind would be turning it over, trying to use thought to work out why the feeling has occured (probably some deep conditioning from prior in life). i always assumed thought and feeling were linked somehow - i.e. the thought causes the feeling, or the feeling causes the thought. but actually i have started to notice that feeling happens on its own at times (especially negative ones). so say i feel gripped by fear in a social situation, i am not thinking, say, "everyone hates me and this going to go terribly" and then feeling anxious, instead there is just the lunge of the feeling...thought then comes along to try and suppress, change, alter said feeling. Just identifying said feeling, watching it, and allowing it has helped me immensely recently. but yeh it's taken me a long time to realise that feeling is not necessarily linked iwth any thought process (although it is of course sometimes/many times). shame is important here for me too - shame can be a constant sense that things are not okay with my "self" - a sort of low level hum in the background. but looking at that hum...it's just a feeling. and if i allow it into my psyche instead of having the other half of my mind wishing it away/fighting it...the mind then moves on, and perspective can well up without any effort. it's a bit like Jung's shadow - the more you stress "good qualities" of the psyche, the deeper the inverse is in the shadows, suppressed, not being "allowed out". just allowing all that darkness of feeling into awareness has helped me. realising that even the mind operates dualistically - the idea that there is "good and healthy and spirtual here or over there" and there is "bad and scary unspiritual and unhealthy over here or over there", que exhausting mental battle between good/healthy and evil/unhealthy, all based on the idea that there is a controller to manager it all....when really it's all one mind, and is needlesly divided up over and over, perhaps we have been trained that htere is good feelings and bad feelings when perhaps there is just good actions and bad actions in response to those feelings (i.e. getting smashed each time one is feeling low). i was reminded this of the other day when a wailing toddler, screaming her head off and in tears, was being firmly told by her mum to "stop crying." you could see the child put a lid on it, eventually, after being told to stop about for times. stiff upper lip anyone? it's our cultures way of saying to cut off from parts of yourself instead of actually listening to it.

dropping off hte threat for a while. feel like i am taking up too much of it. but it's nice to write these things out as, i say, not part of any community who talks these things through.

 

[BigMoaner]

Red Enlightenment : Graham Jones on Repeater Radio
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
21:00-22:00
Red Enlightenment is an 8-part exploration of socialism, science, and spirituality.

Episode 1, "Reclaiming Enlightenment," sets the scene with the growth of the far right, investigates whether we can rescue the notion of Enlightenment, and then looks to the thought of Michael Brooks and Mark Fisher on the idea of materialist spirituality.

repeater radio

www.repeater-radio.com

the "spiritual" stuff i see on the extreme right and the covid deniers and qanon folk is far, far different to most of hte nondual traditions -it's all warriors and "energy" and "abundance and potentialities" "past lives" and all that sort of stuff. The usual Good vs evil garbage stuff dressed up in memes of American Indians or people gazing over sunsets. i could be wrong though, hope not. (don't think i've ever met a right wing buddhist/vedanta etc).

 

[BigMoaner]

poor michael brooks - loved him. so funny too

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

I'm feeling a bit uneasy about this mindfulness course. The teacher wants us to do an hour-long meditation every day, plus journal keeping, plus other things like mindful eating, walking, etc.

I said in class today that this is a real problem for me - I only have limited hours after work and I need to talk on the phone to my husband, who I'm living apart from for six months, and my dad who's struggling with the challenges of living through the pandemic, and who I am the only relative of, and who I am stuck on the other side of the world from, and who I am very uncomfortable not being there for on a daily basis, as I have been since March 2020. And the teacher just said, "well, this seems to be telling me that you need to prioritize yourself, and in the long-run your relationships will be better for it".

Other attendees said they'd replaced the hour-long meditation sessions with 20 minute ones, and he said this was "totally useless".

I dunno. I feel like he's worryingly evangelical.

I want to commit to a daily mindfulness practice, but not at the expense of my husband and father. I'd find 30 minutes much more manageable, and I'm pretty sure that's the kind of sitting practice I had before. Thirty mins mediation a day is still fairly decent, right?

 

[BigMoaner]

I only do 10 mins, but I do it religiously. Also do it in between a and b, driving etc. But then I'm not using it to cure or get rid of anything so feels enuff.

 

[BigMoaner]

I think programs os mindfulness are just that, programs, so probably require thay u go heavy with it for a while.

 

[BigMoaner]

Also mine is just sitting, not mindfulness! Sorry not much help here lol

 

[8ball]

I'm feeling a bit uneasy about this mindfulness course. The teacher wants us to do an hour-long meditation every day, plus journal keeping, plus other things like mindful eating, walking, etc.

I said in class today that this is a real problem for me - I only have limited hours after work and I need to talk on the phone to my husband, who I'm living apart from for six months, and my dad who's struggling with the challenges of living through the pandemic, and who I am the only relative of, and who I am stuck on the other side of the world from, and who I am very uncomfortable not being there for on a daily basis, as I have been since March 2020. And the teacher just said, "well, this seems to be telling me that you need to prioritize yourself, and in the long-run your relationships will be better for it".

Other attendees said they'd replaced the hour-long meditation sessions with 20 minute ones, and he said this was "totally useless".

I dunno. I feel like he's worryingly evangelical.

I want to commit to a daily mindfulness practice, but not at the expense of my husband and father. I'd find 30 minutes much more manageable, and I'm pretty sure that's the kind of sitting practice I had before. Thirty mins mediation a day is still fairly decent, right?

It sounds to me like this teacher is liable to have a mutiny on his hands before long.
I’d have expected such heavy requirements to have been clear beforehand.

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

It sounds to me like this teacher is liable to have a mutiny on his hands before long.
I’d have expected such heavy requirements to have been clear beforehand.

Right! We've all laid out several hundred pounds and now we're being told anything other than his extensive requirements are useless, and we should effectively cut off our family in order to practice. It's not a fucking cult.

Most people in the group seem to just be doing no practice at all between meetings, since the requirements are unobtainable.

I think I'm just going to ditch his demands and do 30 minutes of guided awareness of the breath with Joseph Goldstein every day between meetings. Maybe try to do a Big Mind meditation on Saturdays and Sundays. If I never do another 60 minute body scan it'll be too soon.

 

[8ball]

The body scan thing kind of annoys me. I know it’s important for linking up with other things but if I ask my body whether something itches, everything starts itching.

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

The body scan thing kind of annoys me. I know it’s important for linking up with other things but if I ask my body whether something itches, everything starts itching.

The body scan thing annoys me because I have significant chronic hip pain that flares after not moving position for twenty minutes. At which point the only thing to do is make the pain the object of awareness, which is fine, but at that point it's no longer a body scan. I like a quick post-yoga body scan, but an hour of going big toe-little toe-foot-ankle-lower leg-thigh-other foot-ankle-lower leg-thigh-pelvis-lower back-upper back blah blah blah is untenable because by the time I've got to the first fucking thigh my hips are screaming and then it's either screaming pain while I try to scan the designated areas, or it's me focusing on my pain and no longer scanning my body. Arg. <-- aversion

 

[8ball]

I thought the main reason for the body scan was to help make you aware of bodily feelings that may accompany certain thoughts as they bubble up.
Probably been skipping it myself because certain thoughts have obvious noticeable feelings. Might be wrong on all this. I don’t do well with getting to the end of meditation courses.

 

[BigMoaner]

i do a quick body scan now and then, esp laying in bed. just to remember i have a body. a thing that is full of feeling and instinct, moving and functioning on it's own, in the main (although I do tell my hair to grow more on this balding head lol). running like a clock that someone/something has wound up.

"why is my heart beating?" "why is my pupil moving by itself" "why do i squint when i look at the sun". watching children play is good for this also. mine buzz about and there is no concious subjectivity, from what i can see - my son doesn't think "I am moving the car, I will move it over here". it's happening by itself. just like the body, moving through all it's wonderous physiology. it's beautiful and mysterious and a realisation initself rather than a practice to get rid of something. although it's a realisation in my view that leads to a certain amount of chilling the fuck out. in my experience the scan makes us more aware that "concious subjectivity" is just a tiny uncatchable part of the whole thing moving around an through us, that is us.

 

[8ball]

It usually just makes me more aware that my body is pretty fucked.

 

[han]

don't knwo about anyone else but meditation helps me identify feelings that long have been covered up with matrixes of thought - so my mind would be turning it over, trying to use thought to work out why the feeling has occured (probably some deep conditioning from prior in life). i always assumed thought and feeling were linked somehow - i.e. the thought causes the feeling, or the feeling causes the thought. but actually i have started to notice that feeling happens on its own at times (especially negative ones). so say i feel gripped by fear in a social situation, i am not thinking, say, "everyone hates me and this going to go terribly" and then feeling anxious, instead there is just the lunge of the feeling...thought then comes along to try and suppress, change, alter said feeling. Just identifying said feeling, watching it, and allowing it has helped me immensely recently. but yeh it's taken me a long time to realise that feeling is not necessarily linked iwth any thought process (although it is of course sometimes/many times). shame is important here for me too - shame can be a constant sense that things are not okay with my "self" - a sort of low level hum in the background. but looking at that hum...it's just a feeling. and if i allow it into my psyche instead of having the other half of my mind wishing it away/fighting it...the mind then moves on, and perspective can well up without any effort. it's a bit like Jung's shadow - the more you stress "good qualities" of the psyche, the deeper the inverse is in the shadows, suppressed, not being "allowed out". just allowing all that darkness of feeling into awareness has helped me. realising that even the mind operates dualistically - the idea that there is "good and healthy and spirtual here or over there" and there is "bad and scary unspiritual and unhealthy over here or over there", que exhausting mental battle between good/healthy and evil/unhealthy, all based on the idea that there is a controller to manager it all....when really it's all one mind, and is needlesly divided up over and over, perhaps we have been trained that htere is good feelings and bad feelings when perhaps there is just good actions and bad actions in response to those feelings (i.e. getting smashed each time one is feeling low). i was reminded this of the other day when a wailing toddler, screaming her head off and in tears, was being firmly told by her mum to "stop crying." you could see the child put a lid on it, eventually, after being told to stop about for times. stiff upper lip anyone? it's our cultures way of saying to cut off from parts of yourself instead of actually listening to it.

dropping off hte threat for a while. feel like i am taking up too much of it. but it's nice to write these things out as, i say, not part of any community who talks these things through.

I have to say that I find your words pretty mind-blowing and very helpful as well. So, please don't feel you're taking up too much of the thread - I for one really value the input you give to it.

Your paragraph above really really resonates with me. I feel that yes, in the main, thoughts create our feelings. But there are also feelings that come before thoughts. Where do they come from, why are they there - it's the past, a deep conditioning, I guess. And it's so important to allow ourselves to feel them. Not to run away from them. Because actually when we feel them we realise they're not as scary as we thought - they do dissipate after a while. Up/down, fear/joy, sunshine/rain, life/death - we cannot have one without the other. So to suppress only the negative is kind of false - we need it all to make sense of the world. If we surpress the negative, it will only come out somewhere else down the line, anyway.

But it's a paradox isn't it - as in the present moment, everything just IS. There is no duality.

 

[han]

i do a quick body scan now and then, esp laying in bed. just to remember i have a body. a thing that is full of feeling and instinct, moving and functioning on it's own, in the main (although I do tell my hair to grow more on this balding head lol). running like a clock that someone/something has wound up.

"why is my heart beating?" "why is my pupil moving by itself" "why do i squint when i look at the sun". watching children play is good for this also. mine buzz about and there is no concious subjectivity, from what i can see - my son doesn't think "I am moving the car, I will move it over here". it's happening by itself. just like the body, moving through all it's wonderous physiology. it's beautiful and mysterious and a realisation initself rather than a practice to get rid of something. although it's a realisation in my view that leads to a certain amount of chilling the fuck out. in my experience the scan makes us more aware that "concious subjectivity" is just a tiny uncatchable part of the whole thing moving around an through us, that is us.

The now-ness of a child is a beautiful thing.

 

[BigMoaner]

I have to say that I find your words pretty mind-blowing and very helpful as well. So, please don't feel you're taking up too much of the thread - I for one really value the input you give to it.

But it's a paradox isn't it - as in the present moment, everything just IS. There is no duality.

thanks nice thing to say..

re the duality - i agree, but i can get easily get lost in the intellectual understanding of it, if that make sense. and yes it's a paradox that one has to live with - namely the one appearing as the many. the sweet spot between the two worlds - both as valid as each other, expressed by skilful means, creating good karma (or simply not being an asshole!) i like what nagrajuna said, "i feel sorry for those who have are stuck on emptiness" - in otherwords, those who have attached to the idea of oneness, or nonduality, thinkin that it is the devine state, and will try their damndest to stay there. i think he is encouraging the paradox as you say - that the many is the one, and the one is the many. that ordinary, every day existance, with all it's ups and down, is the fundemental ground of being, nirvarna no less - so samsara, in my view, is nirvarna. i fucking love what Heigdegger said, his way of nailing buddhism (without even knowing he was, i suspect) - "we don't come to thought, thought comes to us." in that short phrase, in my view, is the mystical experience.

ha great thread! enjoy writing on it. i want to get involved with camberwell zen centre soon as it's great to talk this stuff through over coffee etc.

 

[BigMoaner]

for anyone interested. the dude who runs it seems a very down to earth dude (despite the bloody robes!) Home - zenyoga.org.uk

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

My weekly MBSR class went a lot better this week. Our teacher had dialed back a lot of his mad expectations and even suggested to a couple of people that they try to do two 20 min meditations during the day rather than his 60 minutes + block he was so resolute about last week.

My sitting practice is unsurprisingly getting more focused after doing it every day. I'm going 20 minutes at work and the 35 minutes at home in the evening and starting to get as much pleasure from it as I used to. I find going to this MBSR class a total pain in the arse but it really does seem to finally be the thing that's forcing me into some discipline.

 

[BigMoaner]

been enjoying an old tibetan meditation technique recently.

sit and try and hear the ships crossing the pacifc.
you will strain but you can't hear them, right? sat wherever you are now. impossible to grasp that sound.

which is a metaphor for the ungraspability of the ground of being. which includes the self, death, love, life. so therefore all conceptialised knowledge is truly ungraspable, like not being able to grasp the sound of the ships crossing the pacific.

so the technique shows to me any how that there's nothing to hold on to. i can try (like trying to hear the ships) but I'll never quite get there on a fundemental level.

helps the mind collapse into itself and recaliberate!

i like to roll certain zen phrases around my nut for a few weeks at a time.

the one i like at hte moment is this:

the student went to the Zen master and said "what is the true path of the Dhama?"

The Zen master said "walk on".

 

[han]

utterly beautiful from JDK. he had a lovely way with words when he wanted to

This is beautiful.
Contemplation of the whole, the interconnectedness of everything, not just our tiny perspective. To me this is what mindfulness is about.

 

[BigMoaner]

was meditating today - half eyes closed, just sitting, zen style, on the train.

nto sure if this counts as a dissociative state, but i was gazing at my arm and it looked like it was part of the train carriage it was resting on for a good five mins. no distinction. was wonderful. it faded back to "me" again as my thinking mind ramped up. it's rare i get weird shit like that happen but it does happen sometimes.

 

[8ball]

was meditating today - half eyes closed, just sitting, zen style, on the train.

nto sure if this counts as a dissociative state, but i was gazing at my arm and it looked like it was part of the train carriage it was resting on for a good five mins. no distinction. was wonderful. it faded back to "me" again as my thinking mind ramped up. it's rare i get weird shit like that happen but it does happen sometimes.

Perhaps a visit to the GP would be in order.

 

[han]

Really enjoying Pema Chodron's talks on Spotify at the moment. Also, a series of mp3s called 'Don't bite the hook'. They're quite Buddhist, but very applicable to non religious people.

Here are some vids of her if you're interested.

Videos - The Pema Chodron Foundation

Pema Chödrön empowers us to develop a sense of tenderness toward ourselves and the world. Here are a few videos from her career.

pemachodronfoundation.org

 

[BigMoaner]

Also, he’s just kind of telling you to get on with it. There’s no trick, no secret. Nothing for him to gain.

And that’s what is such a headfuck!!!

It can be so simple. In those moments of clarity it all makes sense.
Then, everything, including me, is shit.

However, I think I am turning a corner as I am realising that I need to be shit to know that I’m not, apart from when I am but that doesn’t matter. I think

yeh i think we spend so much effort in "not being shit", that when there's certainly shit things happening, internally or externally, it feels terrifying. but it truly is just waht is happening. there's no need for me to stand outside of it and object to it "this shouldn't be happening, i must change this". if i am worried, i am worried. if i am sad, i am sad. as soon as i take a step outside of that, the self kind of claims it even more, and then tries to fix it even more. but the fixing i have found kind of happens by itself, whether i make an effort or not. trusting oneself to live spontanously (although everything is spontanous anyway) is the heart of this stuff in my view. everything just rolls through, endlessly, but the self tries to swim against the tide somewhat. all the best moves i have had to make my life better have "just happened" just the like the sadness and the angst and the misery have "just happened". the mechanisms of reality, with no one doing it. acceptance for me is key. and if i can't accept, i try and accept that i can't accept. it gets confusing but it sorta makes sense to me.

i've had some good shifts recently with just sitting quietly on my commute. i'm getting my head around and seeing that awareness cannot be improved, or turned off by a "dooer". that awareness, "on-ness", is "on" whether I am thinking or not thinking. It is seperate from the thought system, the ego, the self, or whatever. Seeing/hearing/touching/feeling/tasting. these senses operate by themselves, no matter what is goign on cognitively. which then leads to the next thing - what is that "on ness" what the fuck is it??????? utterly beautiful to comprehend, an endless mystery. that "awareness" full of the internal and external reality. no split.

plodding on

 

[BigMoaner]

say you're looking out at hte sea or some such shit:

seeing >>>>>>>> [self comes in and claims the seeing: "I am seeing"]>>>>>>>>>self ceases to claim the seeing>>>>>>>>>>>>>>however seeing remains.

same with all the other senses. the amount of effort and bullshit my little self puts into improving something that is "on" whether it likes it or not. that "on ness" is never empty, or lacking, or without.

 

[Serene]

In terms of mental health, logic and peace and quiet, Buddhism is superb.