what i've learned about mind so far

I wrote most of this recently while spending time in Pharping, Nepal doing a little retreat. I have the time and inspiration to think back on my experience as an amateur meditator for the last eight years. I just finished reading a book called "The Taboo of Subjectivity," which really forced me to deeply examine my own hidden assumptions about mind and matter. I offer in the hopes that it spurs dialogue and that it might benefit some sentient being somewhere.

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From the very beginning, when I read Descartes' famous proposal, “I think, therefore I am,” I was deeply uncomfortable with the hidden assumptions implicit in this statement. It already begins with “I,” the existence of which seems obvious enough, but should also be called into question in such inquiry. Methinks it could be better phrased, “Thought occurs, therefore there is awareness of thought.” That is all we can be truly sure of for the moment.

Mind's location within the physical space of our experience is apparently culturally variable. Due to the prevalence of the (not-yet-proven) equation of mind and physical brain, mind is generally thought and experienced in the scientific West to be “in the head.” Tibetans and other cultures discuss and actually experience thoughts as occuring “in the heart.” I have heard that other cultures hold the mind to be in the throat, or even potentially in other parts of the body. I speculate this has to do with what chakra the culture collectively gravitates towards, and the resulting habituation yielding mind experientially abiding in one bodily location or another. Once I discovered this fact, I began to play around with this in my own experience and have found that despite my extensive habituation to the mind-in-the-head culture, the seeming center or locus of my mind can be shifted to my heart or belly or sacrum. Very quickly though, like a rubber band, my mind will snap back to its comfortable location in the head. I have also found that when residing in any of these locations, mind takes on a different tone. In the head, various conceptual thoughts predominate. In the heart, feelings of love and expansiveness dominate. In the belly or sacrum, feelings of groundedness and settledness predominate. It is all quite interesting. I postulate that there are many implications which come from the culturally-determined location of ming, including what kind of pathologies people develop and where their native intelligence is directed.

The dynamic energy of my mind, which expresses itself in coarse and subtle thought, feelings, emotions, the shifting of attention from one place or object to another, and the nervous regulation and grasping to experience – is relentless and does not tire.

Though I am for sure still a beginner, at this point I have meditated for some hundreds of hours, and my mind is still quite untamed. By untamed, I mean that the turbulent waves of thought come ferociously through my experience. Even when my mind is most calm, there is always movement. My mind is, for the time being, incessantly active.

There are many layers or strata of thought. Sometimes, during meditation practice, at first it seems that there aren't any thoughts arising – that the mind is calm and clear. Not thinking of much at all. Then I notice that there is a secondary layer of thought, which is almost constant, and narrates or directs the present flow of experience. My meditational awareness usually does not even recognize this strata of thought, which is much quieter and subtler than the ordinary thoughts which flood my mind, as thought.

There is a nervous aspect of the mind, which is like an aggressive policeman who feels the need to regulate the behavior of everyone he encounters. Even when it is my intent to simply let thoughts, sensations and perceptions be, this directional attention always jumps up to meet the incoming experience, to hold it or push it away.

When I am experiencing aversion to something, resisting something, while the directional attention is trying to push it out of the field of experience, it also seems to hold on to the object, which is quite a ridiculous endeavor – tightly holding to and pushing away at the time time. Its like muscular resistance training for the mind – and its had a lot of practice.

When examining the mind conceptually, I used to conceive of it as a field, something like empty space which allows for the knowing of the various phenomena of experience – inner thoughts and feelings and outer sense perceptions. In this field, which does not possess definite spatial dimensions, anything can arise – from the most intimate of thoughts to the visual perception of stars many many light-years distant. Naturally, all of this arises from the constant vantage point of here – wherever here happens to be – rooted to the six sense faculties (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile and mental) which are rooted to the present location of the body/mind aggregates. This field of awareness has a few different aspects. First, it acts as a potential for anything and everything to arise and be known. Each of the sense faculties has its own character in the way that it is known by the mind. Visual forms are perceived from the vantage point of the eyes, while arising in the space of the visual consciousness, whereas sounds do not seem to arise from the vantage point of the ears so much as in the space around the body. Thoughts, most notably and subtly, are cognized in what I can only describe in a holographic sense. They are not known from one side, much like a flashlight might illuminate only one side of a cow, but rather seem to be known in a very four-dimensional manner – three spatial dimensions plus time, almost like a flashlight which can illuminate all sides of an object at once. So, this mind is a field of empty space which allows for objects of the six senses to be known in their various ways. They are known however quite clearly and lucidly and directly.

Lately though, the sense of there being a field in which objects are known has dropped away under analysis, and there only seems to be knowing, which is fresh each moment and can and does know everything that it does. Its hard to talk about for sure, but I encourage you to examine your own experience.

Mind does not respect any convenient designations of outer and inner. In Buddhist epistemology or pramana, there exists the idea that there are two primary mental objects: specifically characterized objects and generally characterized objects. Specifically characterized objects are those that appear directly to the five sense consciousnesses (visual forms and so on) and (there is some debate on this) thoughts that appear freshly and directly to the mental consciousness. Generally characterized objects are those that appear to the mind (they are strictly conceptual), and do not refer to specific objects which “exist” in space and time (like the words you are reading on this screen right now, or the computer screen on which the words appear). They are thoughts about thoughts, and thoughts about objects. This is all well and good, except that the mind is often unclear about which are which. It readily confuses generally characterized objects for specifically characterized objects. This can be very tricky, and its consequence are quite profound and far reaching.

My best example of this phenomena occurred when I worked at Oregon Wild in Eugene, Oregon. Our office was in the Grower's Market building, a long running and venerable establishment housing many non-profit organizations. I worked in this office twice a week, every week for about 16 months. During this time, I ate a diet composed mostly of fruit, and thus had to pee far more often than the typical cooked food person. So, during the course of my workday, I would walk to the bathroom a few times. If I went to the bathroom thee times a day, twice a week, four weeks a month, for sixteen months, then I walked past the Douglas Supporting Teens office approximately three hundred eighty four times. Outside this office, there are many signs with the logo and words Douglas Supporting Teens. My eyes would glance at them often, and I read Douglas many many many times. I referred to the office by this name when talking about it with other people. Very close to the end of my tenure with Oregon Wild, sometime caught my eye as I walked past their office on the way to the bathroom. The signs all read, Doulas Supporting Teens, NOT Douglas Supporting Teens. Every single one. My mind cracked open as I realized that I had mentally imputed a “g” onto those signs for well over a year. I had mistaken the mental image of “Douglas Supporting Teens” and actually mentally pasted it over the direct sensory experience of the signs outside the office of Doulas Supporing Teens. Doulas, incidentally are a sort of midwife, I am told.

The implication of this is that, on coarse levels (like this one here) and subtle levels, we are constantly experiencing a mixture of our fresh sensory perceptions and a conceptual overlay that we do not know as such. The world we experience is actually created by the mind. This is obvious if we just check in with our experience. Have you ever experienced something outside of your mind? To do so is, naturally, impossible.

What becomes possible when we fail to recognize our projections for the truth of our experience? Keeping this discussion within the realm of the mind, in the west, a major implication of this is the way that we think about the mind and its relationship to the brain. In the media (the New York Times is serially guilty of this) and in common parlance, we have created the idea that the brain is the mind. The brain, being material is primary to any thing which may or may not exist and is called “mind.” Most people simply assume that the brain is the mind and do not think much more about it. Despite there being no scientific or experiential evidence for this theory, it is the assumed dogma even of many neuroscientists and most modern western people. A consequence, if the mind is naught but the brain, is that if you have a mental or emotional problem, then it must have a material solution, because the brain is a material objects, hence the range of intense psychopharmacological chemicals legally and illegally available to regulate your mental experience. Because the mind is the brain, the question is not asked whether one can directly train or work with one's mental experience to gain freedom from said problem. There are many other examples of how our mental imputations actually create the world we live in, socially and experientially, this is only one.

Maxed Out My Blessing Card

This weekend, the Boudhanath neighborhood of Kathmandu vibrates intensely with the blessings of recently arrived lamas. The Rangjung Yeshe Institute feels transformed in its aftermath, and many are the joyful beings who are presently rejoicing, and frankly, recovering after benefiting from more felicity than seems rightly our share.

Friday

The weekend started with confirmations of a long whispered rumor: Dunsey Thinley Norbu Rinpoche had arrived in Kathmandu and had gone to Pharping (Yangleshod - Tib.) to consecrate Khenpo Sangpo's new monastery. An opportunity opened for a place to stay in Pharping near to the monastery, and Anya and I made plans to go. Shortly thereafter, the plans dissolved as such things are want to do in Nepal. So, we decided to settle into Boudha and maybe make the trip out to Pharping later. Later Friday evening, I was walking to the Stupa to use the ol' internet when I ran into my Tibetan father (Pa-lah), who was talking with his super dreadlocked ngakpa (lay-practitioner of Vajrayana) brother, who I will hereafter be referring to as Akhu Ngakpa (Uncle Ngakpa). Pa-lah gleefully informed me that Dungsey Rinpoche was planning on circumambulating the Boudha Stupa that evening. I called Anya and met her at the Stupa soonafter, and we began waiting.

The stupa is usually buzzing with excitement on Friday evenings, but Friday felt different. Crowds gathered near the main gate and Big Bell, and would thin out and regather as rumors swelled that Rinpoche had arrived somewhere, or when another Rinpoche wandered by. During our two hour wait, information trickled in via cellphone reports from better connected ones than us. Rinpoche was coming, and soon!

Side note: Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is known for being completely unpredictable and difficult to see. Though he lives primarily in the US, I have heard that most of his students never know where he is or when they will see him next.

At 8pm, we received word that Rinpoche's arrival was immanent. The crowd lined up around the stupa holding khatakas, smiling at the likelihood of seeing Thinley Norbu after a 12 year absence in Nepal. Many Tibetans I've talked to remember his presence here with great devotion and have long longed to see him again. Around the bend of the stupa, a phalanx of young monks poured out, hands outstretched to keep the crowd at bay. If you've ever attended an dharma event with Tibetans in Asia, you know this is a necessary precaution. As the monks reached me, all hell broke loose as the crowd pushed forward and the monks pushed back. I stumbled back as dozens of monks landed in a burgundy pile at my feet.

I looked up and saw Rinpoche, grey-haired and unmoved by the insanity, slowly walking forward, being held from behind by a tall blond western woman. As Rinpoche passed me by, I ran with hundreds others further along the circumambulation route to catch another glimpse. I repeated this a number of times, catching glimpse and being passed. What struck me the most was how Rinpoche was the one still point in the midst of a crowd driven mad by religious devotion and a no-holds-barred-trample-your-grandmother attitude to acquiring the blessings of seeing the lama. After Rinpoche, entourage and mob completed one circumambulation, he exiting the main gate, followed by a pulse of hundreds of Tibetans. I watched as the crowd emptied into the street and Rinpoche drove away.

Very quickly, the Stupa became peaceful again as the crowd thinned out and people went home. Anya and I retired to my house for some celebratory momo's, still reeling with joy at having seen Thinley Norbu, who had for me been more a mythical person that someone I might actually see.

Saturday

The day started out lazy enough. Anya and I woke up and had breakfast: eggs, bread and spicy potatoes as usual. After returning home to do some solo studying, I met with Anya at the Dream Factory Cafe, where we met my erstwhile elder brother (Cho-chok) Adam who joined us for lunch. He let slip what was to soon be confirmed by text message from another friend: that his teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche was arriving in Kathmandu today, bearing the reincarnation of his father: Tulku Urgyen Yangsi Rinpoche. We checked with the requisite authorities and discovered that Yangsi (literally again-born) Rinpoche would be arriving at Rangjung Yeshe Gompa (our monastery-school) that afteroon.

We gathered in the courtyard of the monastery around 2pm and studyied Abhidharma and Buddhist epistemology while we waited. The monastery's full compliment of monks slowly filled the edges of the courtyard, joined by nuns from Nagi Gompa and a small compliment of local Tibetans and westerners. Eventually, the convoy arrived, bearing 9 year old Urgyen Yangsi and almost the whole family. See the above linked article for more information, but I'll say it was really a joyful occasion to see Urgyen Tulku returning to his home - this time to stay for good and commence his religious education under the direction of his sons from his precious life. This 9 year old boy was so serene and kind, patiently offering everyone lining both sides of the walkway khataks. Not your usual 9 year old to be sure. The event had a markedly different tone compared to the insanity at the Stupa the night before. It felt like a family event, and indeed it was, as the whole Rangjung Yeshe clan (minus Mingyur Rinpoche) was assembled for the first time in over a year. Calm pervaded the crowd, and there was none of the mad desperation of the night before.

I cannot really describe how happy I am to know that Urgyen Yangsi will be living here at the monastery where I study. The place feels transformed and I am filled with renewed vigor to continue my studies.

Sunday

After all that, I'll suffice to say that on Sunday, Anya and I made the trip to Pharping with our friend Pema Chokyi to participate in a Tsok (ritual feast) with Thinley Norbu Rinpoche and a few thousands dharma people. We spent the night in the Shugseb Ani Gompa - Anya with a nun friend of hers, and me with a Golokpa Rinpoche friend of Pema's. It was a nice cap to the weekend. And after being awoken at 4:3oam after finishing Tsok at 11pm, I am very tired and haggard though joyful to have made a small connection with a few holy beings.

Now, the study and practice and distraction continues.

Love to you all.

In the meantime...

So, its been quite some time since I posted to this weblog. Life has been very full since I started school a month ago. While I only sit in class for 3.5 hours at most a day, soaking myself in the Tibetan language is a full time endeavor. I have relaxed significantly recently and am beginning to settle into the long haul that will be required to really learn this language. Habitually I would give myself grief for not perfectly understanding something (here, a language) that I've only really been studying formally for a month, so thankfully this tendency is beginning to relax itself as I gain awareness of it and see it for what it is.

Also, over the last few days I have been reflecting on what I feel is my most significant internal accomplishment of this life - that I have finally gained significant altitude on the most troubling inner voice in my psychology: The Critic. For those of you who are intimate with my psychology, you know that there is a significant habit pattern of crippling and indiscriminate self-judgement which has been a roadblock to my personal and spiritual development for much of my life. Beginning two years ago when I met Lama Drimed, and really taking off this year after working with Louis Carrosio, I finally am able to see the arising of this voice which bears terrible and false messages like "You're not doing this right!" or "You'll never master this!" or "No, you aren't feeling _____ strongly enough! So it doesn't count as feeling!" Following a month-long solitary meditation retreat in southern Oregon this summer and endless weeks of suffering at the heavy hand of the Critic, I finally got enough perspective on his ways and means that I am able to see him arising, and to tell him to take a hike. For this skill, I can definitely thank Ranier Maria Rilke, whose Letters to a Young Poet I read in retreat. I quote a passage which perfectly captures my new relationship to the Critic:

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers - perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.

- Letter 9; November 4, 1904

This weekend I'm hoping to see Marcus, a friend from my Bodh Gaya days who has spent the last few weeks driving a three wheeled auto-rickshaw from Goa to somewhere in Nepal (over 2000 km - an insane distance in a contraption not designed for long-distance travel nor known for reliability). We are also having a day off of school as the Hindus celebrate Desain by (so far) blasting trance music in the emptied school yards and (soon apparently) sacrificing goats en mass and accumulating negative karma as quickly as possible.

Its really disconcerting every time I peek my head into the news-sphere and am confronted with the unfortunate reality of political discourse in America. Given that my opinion matters far less than it even minimally does normally, I will refrain from pronouncing on the subject, but instead offer my prayers that my country will get its collective shit together, start speaking in meaningfully complete sentences that convey useful information, and get in the habit of making difficult decisions about more than whether to get up and go to the refrigerator.

I hope that is extravagant enough for you!

Empty Echoes

Sitting in my bedroom, the acoustic space is filled with empty reverberations. Usually, from upstairs, the drum n' bell sounds of an endless puja reorient the body/speech/mind to practice. Starting early in the morning and continuing well after dark, the whine of an electric skill saw and hammer strikes remind me to work hard, to study. Often popular Nepali music can be heard, mixing with the sound of prayer, mantra, and reading aloud that reverberates from my vocal chords. Today though, interspersed with excited Nepali conversation, is something new and strange. The sound of bagpipes. Yes, bagpipes. The nasal notes floating over a steady bass background note. These bagpipes though, speak the tonal structure of the music of the subcontinent, not Scotland. Every day, an unexpected experience arises in Nepal.

A handful of regular beggars strategically situate themselves at the end of our alley to catch the Injee's (westerners) who come out of the few clustered apartment buildings where I live, as well as those walking down Seto Gompa Marg (White Monastery Road), which I cross daily on my way to class. A young boy, his legs hopelessly disfigured and an old man with leprosy, his fingers shrunken to barely function stubs, accept my measly five rupee note with great dignity and silent solemnity and drop it into their tiffin. There are others who seem more able bodied and haven't yet found their way into my heart. The orange clad (holy?) men wandering through Boudha are more insistent, following for a few steps, and in a low nasally tone repeating “Namaste” and “Hello,” as I continue down the road. Until I figure out their social role within Nepali Hindu society and why they are out begging, I don't feel comfortable giving to them either.

We finally started classes yesterday. I feel quite bad for the administrators here at Rangjung Yeshe, who I've really given hell while trying to figure out where I belong. My final lineup, presuming that I pass the language placement test this week will be:

• First year Colloquial Tibetan
• Second year Classical (written) Tibetan
• Second year philosophy class, on Mipham Rinpoche's “Gateway to Knowledge” a commentary on the Abhidharma.

I am so very happy to have begun my studies. The colloquial class will likely be slow for a while, though the instructor Catherine is widely reputed to be truly excellent, and my conversation with my conversation partner Penpa (meaning that he was born on Saturday) went really well. When I have somebody to speak with who is good at prompting me with questions and then repeating them slowly and clearly (difficult for many Tibetans), I find that I am able to express quite a lot despite the fact that I haven't really studied or spoken colloquial Tibetan in five years. My challenge now is to settle in for the long haul to fluency, and remember that this is going to be a multi-year process and that I need to give it time, and simply do my best with the work and challenges that I am given right now.

A small victory recently has been the discovery of greater space around some seriously negative self-voices that have dogged my being for a long time. On my meditation retreat earlier this summer back in my sweet Oregon, they did their best to sabotage confidence in the practice, the lama, and my capacity or worthiness to awaken. In the last few weeks though, I have been pleased to be able to witness these negative voices, “Oh, you'll never actually learn this language,” and the classic, “Oh, you're doing this wrong,” and seeing them clearly, allow them to dissipate in the open cognizance of my mind. In the meantime I'm working on loving myself without giving way to laziness and indolence, the habitual comfort food of this self-structure. Also, studying quite a lot, although not feeling very effective while doing so. My capacity for keeping new words and linguistic structures in mind is quite limited at present, though I'm hopeful this will grow with practice. If you have any suggestions for learning a new language, please send them along, they would be much appreciated.

Finally, the groove has been settled into, and the long journey has begun. Always with love.

In conclusion, some words from Goethe which definitely capture my feeling in setting out the long journey to learn to translate Tibetan:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do,

or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius,

power and magic in it.

on being extravagant

To inaugurate this blog, I offer this passage from Henry David Thoreau, which I intend to be the theme with which this blog is, well, blogged. Love to all of you from Nepal. More to come on my situation soon. Credit for this inspiration goes to Mark Retzlaff, who gifted me the anthology whence it came.

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I fear chiefly lest my experience not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded...

I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.....

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring....

“They pretend,” as I hear, “that the verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the esoteric doctrine of the Vedas”; but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?

Henry David Thoreau

its like that, only moreso

So I arrived in Boudhanath somwhere around two weeks ago. Time is somewhat more fluid here, containing few reference points as I am largely bereft of responsibility, though I have managed to accomplish quite a bit. At my first Saturday talk with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, I ran into an old friend from high school who is well into her Buddhist Studies MA and whose Tibetan is seriously impressive. With her, I got a kick-start introduction to Boudha and the burgundy monastic madness it specializes in. I've spent some time with Pema Chokyi, a relative of Khentrul Rinpoche's who I met in Tibet two years ago at the horse races. She introduced me to the inner Kora (circumambulation) route where there are beautiful grass spaces for sitting in.

And last week I moved in to new new digs in Casa de Thubten, who is a fantastic colloquial Tibetan teacher with a great family. I'll also being sharing the house with a kind red bearded Coloradan called Adam. Oh you red bearded Vajra brothers.

I want to share a few of my observations. Firstly, you hipsters, devotees of irony, have got nothing, I repeat, nothing on Nepali and Tibetan youth. They wear culturally curious slogans like "organic to the bone" and "Death Note" or sport Eminem and Nirvana t-shirts with great pride if some uncertainty as to the iconoclastic message the artists had for us. Indian, and now I understand, Nepali English are tremendously playful pidgeons/creols/some new category (only Danthro would truly know). My favorite sign thus far was on the back of a blue garbage truck my taxi passed on the way from the airport to Boudhanath: "My life is broken heart." How true. How true. Some recent favorites, witnessed while circumambulating the stupa with Danyo, a Swedish monk:

Never judge a girl by her bumpersticker.

It may possibly one's dream to satisfy all wish.

Last week I was watching TV with Ama-la and her son (my new Tibetan younger brother and all around maniac) Tenzin; more precisely a program called "Sai Baba" after its eponymous main character. Sai Baba, as far as I can tell, is something of a Hindu equivalent of Scott Bakula's character on "Quantum Leap." Like Dr. Sam Beckett, he is a time/space traveller. Except that he is a bliss-eyed yogi enraptured by the sweet embrace of samadhi, and travels around India (rather than through time) helping people get married. It was awesome.