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Post by jhananda on Jan 29, 2011 9:50:03 GMT -5
Jeffrey, that is very interesting, I have not before made the distinction between meditation and contemplation. It seems like a small point, but to say "i meditate, or I practice mediation" and, "I experience contemplation, or the contemplative states" or two totally different things. One who says they meditate, means next to nothing, we would have to ask, and do you experience contemplation? ...I would speculate that genuine, professional artists, become increasingly neurotic due to the fact that no one acknowledges, values, respects, or understands, the 'contemplative aspect of art, or the practice of art, and therefore artists, usually blind to their gifts, are driven further into anxiety as they receive less and less recognition for what is indeed the true value of their art. People who are contemplatives have the same problem that you identified with artists. That is, those who teach meditation today, have no idea, nor respect for the contemplative states, nor do they recognize that the practice of meditation leads to contemplative states. And, this is in part why many who are becoming mystics find themselves marginalized by their meditation teachers, and community of contemplatives, and thus often become more neurotic, not less. Also, those who experience the contemplative states will also go through corresponding spiritual crises, and since no meditation teacher understands or values the contemplative states, then they also will not understand the spiritual crises.
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Post by jhananda on Jan 29, 2011 9:57:46 GMT -5
Re: Technique ...As with meditation, the ones who fail are the ones who get 'stuck' on the technique itself, as an end in itself. So you have failed musicians, or artists in general, who still practice their scales diligently, but in futility. Or those who still must turn on the metronome because they cannot 'feel' the pulse. I completely agree with you. And, would add that those who practice meditation, but fail to achieve the contemplative states, are those who get 'stuck' on the meditation technique, not realizing that the technique is meant to lead to the stages of contemplation (samadhi). And, since most meditation teachers teach that one should never leave the meditation technique, then we can say those meditation teachers have gotten stuck in the technique, and have thus never experienced the states of contemplation (samadhi).
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Post by David on Jan 31, 2011 6:20:54 GMT -5
Yeah, or they get stuck at just the 1st Jana and translate that as feeling less anxiety and stress, and thus the end goal of the 20 min in the morning 20 min in the evening routine that they do for 30 years and talk about with great pride.
But there are also so called enlightened teachers who are obsessed with being marginalized and refuse to acknowledge that there are other ways to practice meditation that also lead to contemplative states, as that would seem to detract from their life long pursuit of becoming a singular 'true' mystic by a community of loving and devout followers. Thus they marginalize as much as anyone else ecstatic states of consciousness as they arise in ordinary people engaged in activities such as playing the piano.
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Post by jhananda on Jan 31, 2011 8:54:59 GMT -5
Yes, I agree, David, too many people just skim the surface of the contemplative life by meditating just 20 minutes once or twice a day. They get to the first jhana and think that is all there is to achieve, and they tend to marginalize the contemplative who meditates an hour or more, two or more times a day and finds deeper ecstasy. We could say that this is typical of mainstream religion in general. Christians go to church once a week and find the first stage of contemplation that is mediated by the priest, and think that is all there is to religion.
Then a mystic comes along, and says, "If you meditated rigorously and consistently you would find greater ecstasy and deeper succor."
The mainstream followers during the Inquisition were threatened by that, so they burned their contemplatives and mystics at the stake, and that explains why the west did not understand the contemplative arts, and had to reach out to Asia to recover the practice that leads to attainment. However, the history and literature of Asia shows that mainstream versions of Hinduism and Buddhism have done the same thing the Catholic Church did during the Inquisition.
Now, I am fine with non-traditional methods of leading a self-aware contemplative life, such as the pursuit of philosophy, the sciences and/or the arts; however, we find philosophers and scientists who do not lead a contemplative life tend to be too intellectual. And, artists who do not lead a contemplative life tend to be too neurotic. So, how about a middle path for these pursuits, like follow philosophy, the sciences and/or the arts, but also meditate rigorously and deeply?
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Post by don on Feb 13, 2011 16:53:43 GMT -5
Those are interesting observations Jeffrey, I agree there needs to be a contemplative component to any science/art based practice, these are as you say about self-awareness and making deep connections that can only be reached, arguably, from deep contemplative states. The contemplative states are non-cognitive and self organizing, and so it would seem that it is only from there that deep 'insight' is attained.
I was reading an essay by Steven Connor, where he talks about sound and space:
Life inheres, not, as Bergson and so many others following him have said, in proliferation, but rather in reservation, the holding back of the ongoing passage of things. Life is flux folded back into form. Space is not something inert that we have to quicken and diversify, but something terrifyingly infinite that we have to make exist, by withdrawing it from the apeiron, the indefinite all. We need a language to help us understand the ways in which sound shelters and defends us from the agoraphobia of edgeless enlargement, by giving us definition, finitude, which is to say life, which is also to say, after a while, death.
What better language than that of the mystics? I know what he means by the 'edgeless enlargement' of space, having glimpsed something of that while in meditation and having lost body awareness, experiencing something like an eclipse of the moon in front of the sun, it was frightening in a way, in its sheer expansiveness. But this also made me think Jeffrey of your descriptions of having experienced all the stars of the universe as cells of your body, having become the universe itself. Now that is expansive...but do you agree with what he says about life, and how sound "shelters and defends us" from the infinitude of space?
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Post by jhananda on Feb 14, 2011 8:55:03 GMT -5
Interesting observations, Don. My research shows the most frightening religious experience is the void. I have experienced the void many, many times. And, I was terrified of it for decades. The reason why I found it frightening, and why most others are terrified of it is, because the experience is utterly dimensionless. There is no sense of time, nor space there, and even the ego is utterly effaced there. There is nothing, but blackness and awareness, but it is awareness of absolutely nothing.
So, humans find themselves deeply threatened by infinite space, with no boundaries or delineation. It is "edgeless enlargement' of space" that completely shatters our sense of self. Without other, there is no self.
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Post by nelly on Feb 15, 2011 0:05:07 GMT -5
Well yes that of course would be the unconscious fear of death, it seems we are instinctively afraid of what we do not know. I want to live forever, its only when you hit around 40 that you begin to realize that this is a one way trip. Without other there is no self. This has been a very big issue in contemporary thought, how and what we perceive as 'the other', but I wonder if we couldn't say that the 'other', whether it be our 'enemy', 'prejudices', these are just masks we put on a deeper fear of death itself.
Look at how 'paranoia' has become a veritable American 'trait', power is a curse that we bring upon ourselves, the will or desire for power, to feel superior to 'others' (one of the fetters isn't it?), give it to those who want it, and be glad not to have it.
I wondered in the deeper contemplations, when I resided in equanimity and freedom from anxiety, immersed in a sense of bliss and joy at being, a being which brought my body into a perfect alignment, that could this have been that state from which 'kings' came into existence? I mean from the very beginning of tribes, and the formation of a 'head figure', a leader, the wise forefather, which would have eventually become corrupted as the 'leader' or 'king' lost there enlightened states.
The formation of the tribe, the politics and society would have formed 'around' that figure, which would still have required that person to stand and represent a position, even though they had long since lost their original enlightenment. At some point the political organization broke off from 'royalty', and became autonomous, as the royal aspect of the ruler lost its substance.
We seem to still associate today people who seem 'noble' or who are a 'gentleman', bringing a lost sense of what it must have meant at some point in time to be 'royal', which perhaps was the beginnings of what it originally meant to be a 'leader'? One who was enlightened.
I think we still associate the 'good' with something that can rise above the corruption and power of society, that can break through the bondage of struggle and worry, the vain grasping at power, and simply be a 'shining' example of what the 'good' is, which people will simply see and follow as a higher form of truth.
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Post by jhananda on Feb 15, 2011 8:34:04 GMT -5
Interesting thoughts Nelly, the earliest literature of most cultures reveals stories about enlightened leaders who guided the people in righteous behavior and prosperity, but then decline comes to every culture and greed takes over. Then the greedy become entrenched in their power and wealth and viciously defend it.
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Post by nelly on Feb 17, 2011 9:46:08 GMT -5
Jeffrey I saw the world today like we might look at somewhere like Cambodia, a place of genocide, after what you said about how the West Killed all its mystics and so had to borrow from the East, a kind of starvation, of course the east being for the most part run by fake priest too, it turned into another example of greedy capitalist exploitation, selling snake oil. But I saw how barren the world has become, despiritualized, how the current 'addiction' craze, and consequent 'recovery' craze, is all about industries manipulating the deluded, ignorant, hungry masses, first making them addicts, and then selling them the recovery solution...what do you think?
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Post by jhananda on Feb 18, 2011 9:24:50 GMT -5
Nelly, I completely agree with you. Decay occurs in every religion and culture, when the hegemony exerts political, economic, ideological and cultural power other the peasantry. Then, the culture will soon collapse into ruin. All cultures collapse eventually, because of the shear weight of it hegemony.
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Post by Don on Feb 28, 2011 17:02:21 GMT -5
Jeffrey, in Ch 14 of 'A Thousand Plateau's' by D&G, they describe the distinctions between 'smooth and striated' space, playing with the rich metaphorical associations of the two models, shifting between them from politics to art and science, showing how overly striated space - as you say about the exertion of a hegemony - must break down into smooth space - as nature or a return to natural processes - with the two in an almost indistinguishable reciprocal interplay, a continuous variation, the smooth being that which remains constant through morphological change, like a bridge between the immaterial to the striation of the material.
I remember you mentioned before that the material and non-material domains are completely distinct, but more like 'mirrors(?)' of one another than anything resembling a smooth continuous surface linking the two together. However, I most certainly find the process of losing body awareness to be a bit like moving from 'striation' of the mind and body aggregation with the matrix of world, slipping out into the 'smooth' space of the non-material...its just when I have slipped write out into a lucid dream, you really are as you say in whole different 'reality'?
But then there are the experiences which I would call 'psychedelic' in the sense that this world becomes 'hyper-real', where for example I suddenly felt myself burrowing into a word on the page and suddenly the whole two pages spread out with huge gaps between the words and I could see every word on both pages all at the same time. This would be an instance where this reality turned into a dream like experience, the 'waking dream' effect as it is sometimes called.
I would say in all instances the awareness becomes focused on itself perhaps, viewed through the refraction of the mind, turning it into what we call psychedelic or a 'dream-like' experience. The metaphor of smooth (awareness) and striation (the mind) seems to fit here?
Anyways just some thoughts...
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Post by jhananda on Mar 1, 2011 8:53:23 GMT -5
You have made a number of good points, Don. Yes, if we want life to be reach and highly textured, then we want to develop some depth to our lives, as contemplatives and mystics do. So, the hegemony really needs to make way for the depth that mystics offer. Unfortunately civilization has its ups and downs, so mystics tend to be marginalized shortly after they are celebrated.
And, being a human is a bit more complex than mainstream culture wants us to believe. We are after all spirit beings from the immaterial domains, who are residing briefly in a creature's body. So, there will be times when we can link simultaneously to both the material and immaterial domains. This is that highly textured experience that you described while creating, art, music, dance and poetry.
Best, Jhanananda
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Post by John Cole on Mar 15, 2011 20:45:12 GMT -5
Dear Jeffrey, what do you think of Robert Anton Wilson? Always find he had interesting things to say. But just another Leary-like toss off?
Enjoying this forum! John
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Post by jhananda on Mar 16, 2011 9:04:33 GMT -5
Hello John, and thank-you for posting your inquiry. Until your question I had not encountered the name or work of Robert Anton Wilson. Wiki has an interesting entry for him, which suggests to me he was not an authentic mystics, nor contemplative, but had quite an impressive imagination.
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Post by John Cole on Mar 16, 2011 16:29:27 GMT -5
Dear Jeffrey, I was surprised that you hadn't heard of him, he seemed a fairly suspicious character to me at first, but I have become more interested lately in a distinction between dominate cultural values and artistic categories and those artists who work on the margins of those categories, engaging and questioning those values while significantly contributing to 'alternative' or 'counter-cultural' movements that seem historically important to the evolution and diversity expressed by a rich and highly textured culture. But from a mystics perspective, is right to say that they stand 'outside' of historical or cultural movements, and basically say that its all a waste and distraction from obtaining liberation from all that? Once liberated, how does a mystic engage culture and participation in society? I can see how perhaps some would say that people like Wilson were simply deluded and totally misguided, and really did nothing to contribute to the liberation of human suffering. What do you think?
Best regards, John
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