Published on May 15, 2013
Remembering Being
Our fear-based doings block us from realizing the formless dimension of our Being, and living from that source of wisdom and love. This talk explores the habitual control strategies that keep us from presence; and the role of mindfulness and lovingkindness in reconnecting with the ground of Being.
Remembering Being – Part 1B
At the heart of Buddhist teachings is a crucial ambiguity that has become increasingly problematic as Buddhism has globalized. Today it’s clear that this ambivalence needs to be resolved if the Buddhist tradition is to help us address most effectively the challenges that now confront us.
In early Buddhism the “end of suffering” is nirvana, literally “blown out” or “cooled off.” Yet it’s not clear what that metaphor means, because the Buddha described nirvana mostly with negatives (the end of craving, ignorance, etc.) and other metaphors (the Shelter, Harbor, Refuge, etc.). His reticence leaves the important question whether nirvana refers to something that transcends this world — some other dimension or reality — or whether it describes an experience that is immanent in this world — a state of being that could perhaps be understood more psychologically, as the end of greed, ill will and delusion in our lives right here and now.
Theravada Buddhism, which bases itself on what it believes to be the original teachings of the Buddha, understands nirvana as an Unconditioned realm that transcends samsara, this world of suffering, craving and ignorance. The ultimate goal is to escape the unsatisfactory world we now live in, by avoiding rebirth into samsara.
Whether or not the duality between this world and some otherworldly goal accurately reflects the original views of the historical Buddha, it is similar to what is found in most of the other spiritual traditions that developed around the same time, during the Axial Age (roughly 800-200 B.C.E.) that gave rise to Vedanta, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Judaism, as well as Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy and Platonism.
The Axial worldview was quite different from that of older empires such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, which believed that the gods related to humanity mainly through a king or emperor at the top of the social pyramid. The authority of such rulers was as much sacred as secular, because they were the only ones directly in touch with the divine realms. The Axial revolution brought about a new relationship between the transcendent and each individual. In fact, this relationship created the individual. Instead of connecting to the divine through a priest-king, now everyone has his or her own personal relationship with God, Brahman, or the Tao. In Buddhist terms, each of us has the possibility of awakening and attaining nirvana. This also implied a circle of empathy and compassion that incorporated everyone else who has a relationship with the sacred.
The most revolutionary aspect of this new relationship was a sacred demand that we transform ourselves. It was no longer enough to fulfill one’s social function by supporting the ruler’s sacrosanct role: now the transcendent expected each individual to take responsibility for his or her own life. In the Abrahamic traditions this was mainly an ethical requirement that we live according to God’s commandments. To risk a further generalization, the emphasis in India was more on liberation from this world of maya, usually translated as illusion. To awaken is to realize the really Real, which is something other than its appearances.
“Give me a place to stand and I shall move the Earth,” Archimedes said. Culturally, that leverage has been provided by (our belief in) transcendence, which offered the reflective distance — the alternative perspective — necessary to evaluate and try to improve oneself. To paraphrase something Renan wrote, the transcendent is the way that the ideal has made its appearance in human history. The world we live in today — including our concern for democracy, human rights and social justice — became possible because of that “other world.”
Nevertheless, such cosmological dualism has also been problematic. It became a split within us, between the “higher” part (the soul, rationality) that yearns for escape from this vale of sorrow and the “lower” part that is of the earth (physical bodies and emotions). As the Buddha emphasized, this world is a place of suffering and death. Much of the attraction of the Axial religions, including Buddhism, is that they seem to offer an escape from mortality. Dread of death also explains our degradation of the material world, nature, animals, our bodies, sex and women (who remind us that we are conceived and born like other mammals). We don’t want to perish: We want to be immortal souls that can qualify for heaven! Or no-selves that might attain nirvana. All the Axial spiritual traditions were or became patriarchal: the hierarchy between higher and lower worlds became reproduced in the hierarchy of men over women.
The problem with those approaches today, of course, is that science has not discovered anything that supports such cosmological dualisms, which may have outlived their role.
Largely in reaction, a this-worldly alternative has become widespread in contemporary Buddhism: understanding the path as a program of psychological development to help us deal with personal problems, especially one’s “monkey mind” and afflictive emotions. The aim is to gain insight into how our minds work, in order to make our lives less stressful.
Although this is a beneficial development in many ways, what we might call the “psychologization” of Buddhism tends to de-emphasize its ethical precepts, community life and awakening itself, all of which are central aspects of Buddhism in its Asian context. This is especially true of the mindfulness movement, which extracts one technique from a tradition that has so much more to offer, including a deeper transformative insight into one’s true nature.
Without denigrating such practices, we need to ask: Do psychological and mindfulness approaches help to develop an awakened society that pursues social and ecological justice? How do they address the challenge of growth-oriented corporations that are damaging the sustainability of life on Earth? Is Western Buddhism being commodified into a self-help and stress-reduction program that does not raise questions about consumerism and our dysfunctional economic system, but helps us adapt to them?
Beyond Transcendence and Immanence
If transcendence encourages dis-identifying from our lives here, because focused on escaping this world, psychological appropriations of Buddhism (including the mindfulness movement) tend to accept this world as it is — to presuppose the prevalent, Western-derived worldview about who we are, what the world really is, and our role within it.
Do both miss the point? Buddhist awakening is a profoundly transformative realization that this world as we usually experience it, including the way that I usually experience myself, is neither real nor unreal, but a psychological/social/linguistic construction that can be deconstructed and reconstructed, which is what the spiritual path is about.
The most problematical aspect of this construct is the sense of myself as a being separate from the rest of the world. Because it has no substantiality or reality of its own, the sense of an “I” that feels separate from others is inherently insecure and anxious.
Awakening, from this perspective, is not an escape from this suffering world, nor a grudging acceptance of its existential and social realities, but letting-go of oneself (Dogen calls it “forgetting yourself”) and “falling into” the world, to realize one’s nonduality with it. Meditation enables this process, because we let-go of the mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, etc., that normally work together to sustain one’s sense of self.
As Nisargadatta put it:
When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that’s love. Between these two my life turns.
If there is no inside (my mind), the outside (external world) is not outside! Wisdom and compassion: the two wings of the dharma.
This way of understanding enlightenment has important implications. If awakening involves transcending this suffering world, we can ignore its problems. If the Buddhist path is psychological therapy, we can focus on our own problems. But both of those approaches reinforce the illusion — the basic problem — that I am separate from others, and therefore can be indifferent to what they are experiencing.
Then the bodhisattva path is simply a more developed stage of personal practice. One learns to live in a way that embodies what has been realized. There is no individual salvation from the ecological and social crises that confront us today. They are just as much spiritual crises, because they challenge us to wake up and realize that our own well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of others, or from the health of the whole Earth.
David Loy advises the Ecobuddhism project.
David R. Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. His essays and books have been translated into many languages. He lectures & leads workshops nationally and internationally on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity, social and ecological issues.
Mindfulness has attracted ever-growing interest and tens of thousands of practitioners, who have come to the discipline from both within and outside the Buddhist tradition. In Fully Present, leading mindfulness researchers and educators Dr. Sue Smalley and Diana Winston provide an all-in-one guide for anyone interested in bringing mindfulness to daily life as a means of enhancing well-being. Fully Present provides both a scientific explanation for how mindfulness positively and powerfully affects the brain and the body as well as practical guidance to develop both a practice and mindfulness in daily living, not only through meditation but also during daily experiences, such as waiting in line at the supermarket, exercising, or facing difficult news.
Dr. Smalley, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, conducted seminal studies on the genetics of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum disorders, publishing over 100 studies in the field of behavioral genetics. In 2004, she founded the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA to increase mindfulness through research and education. She writes, lectures, and works philanthropically to promote a kinder and more equitable society. She serves on the Board of Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to gender equality and the High Panel on Education formed by Gordon and Sarah Brown to tackle the issue of education for all.
Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) where she teaches mindfulness classes, trainings, and events for the public, as well as medical and mental health professionals, youth, and educators.
She is also a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California and has been teaching Buddhist retreats since 2000.
Diana has been practicing insight meditation since 1989 when she first came across it in Thailand. She lived for a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma (Myanmar) where she shaved her head and ate only two meals before noon.
In 1993 Diana started teaching teens meditation and is one of the founders of the teen meditation retreat started at Insight Meditation Society and currently nationwide through MAYA– Mindful Awareness for Young Adults.
She is the founder of the Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement (BASE) with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and is an advocate for socially engaged Buddhism, teaching the interface of Buddhism and social change nationally and internationally.
She is the author of Wide Awake, her book for teens, as well as co author with Susan Smalley of the upcoming Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness. Her CD is Mindful Meditations, available on itunes.
Currently she is a new mom.
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Description
Personal Transformation Based on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
What’s your most important goal? Why does it matter so deeply? How will you overcome the obstacles? Answer these questions with sincerity, proceed with mindfulness and compassion, and you have just set in motion a revolutionary method for personal change that is supported by both the latest science and traditional wisdom. On The Neuroscience of Change, psychologist and award-winning Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal presents six sessions of breakthrough ideas, guided practices, and real-world exercises for making self-awareness and kindness the basis for meaningful transformation.
Practical Methods to Retrain Your Brain to Support Your Goals
Our understanding of the incredible power of the human brain is at an all-time high, with the emerging fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and psychophysiology opening new possibilities for greater health, happiness, and freedom from suffering. Drawing on her training as a research scientist and longtime practitioner of meditation and yoga, Dr. McGonigal reveals these startling findings—including the clinically supported methods for training the mind away from default states and negativity that no longer serve us and establishing behaviors and attitudes aligned with our highest values and aspirations.
The First Rule of Change: It’s Already Happening
As the world’s wisdom traditions teach and science is now verifying, our lives are in fact defined by constant change. Whether you’re looking to change a behavior, improve your health or other circumstances, or simply for a way to bring hope and resilience into your life as it is, The Neuroscience of Change will help you trust yourself and unfold your true capacities for personal transformation.
Highlights
Willingness, self-awareness, and surrender—how to nourish the seeds of change
Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist and award-winning lecturer at Stanford University. A leading expert on the mind-body relationship, her work integrates the latest findings of psychology, neuroscience, and medicine with contemplative practices of mindfulness and compassion from the traditions of Buddhism and yoga. She is the author of The Willpower Instinct and Yoga for Pain Relief.
Kelly McGonigal, PhD: The Science of Change
Popular Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD, spoke at East West about how the latest discoveries in neuroscience have bridged cutting edge science with ancient, time-honored wisdom.
Published on Mar 26, 2013
Being In the World Without Misery
Claude AnShin Thomas served in the Vietnam War from 1966-67. In 1995 he was ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk and currently speaks in religious and secular communities about cultures of violence and how they can become transformed. He visits war-torn countries, places of past and current suffering, hospitals, schools, and prisons. He facilitates mindfulness meditation retreats, long distance pilgrimages, street retreats and practice days in former concentration camps. He is also the founder of the Zaltho Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization that promotes nonviolence and transformation and the author of At Hell’s Gate — A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace.
Being In the World Without Misery – Part 1B (03-20-2013)
Many of us go through daily life on autopilot, without being fully aware of our conscious experience.
Neuroscientists Richard Davidson and Amishi Jha join clinical mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn to explore the role of consciousness in mental and physical health, how we can train the mind to become more flexible and adaptable, and what cutting-edge neuroscience is revealing about the transformation of consciousness through mindfulness and contemplative practice.
Buddha’s Book of Sleep is the first book to address sleep disturbances with techniques from mindfulness meditation. Yet this is a natural choice—mindfulness meditation has proven effective for psychological problems such as stress, depression, and anxiety, and these very issues are what become sleep problems when your head hits the pillow.
Divided into two sections, the book approaches sleep deprivation with a combination of wisdom and practical meditation exercises. The first section explains why mindfulness meditation, with its basis in self-awareness, is appropriate for dealing with sleeping problems, and details the practices of this increasingly popular form of meditation. The second section features seven specific exercises to do at bedtime or in the wee hours of the morning, or whenever your sleeping trouble occurs.
Providing a new perspective on why you cannot fall asleep even when you feel exhausted, and arming you with easy-to-use mindfulness meditation exercises, Buddha’s Book of Sleep will help you calm your hurried thoughts, and go from feeling always sleepy to getting the rest you need.
Joseph Emet trained with the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village, France. After some years, he was made a Dharma Teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition. He has written articles for the Reality Therapy Journal, articles on health and nutrition for Healthy Living and Alive magazines, has a doctorate in music from Boston University, and has published A Basket of Plums, a boxed book with two CDs of songs. He has worked with the Mindfulness Meditation Center in Montreal for fifteen years, and lives in Point-Claire, Canada.
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The original meaning of the word “buddha” is one who knows how to be truly happy and effective. Developing a buddha brain is for anyone – Christian, Jewish, atheist, etc.—who wants this kind of brain.
The book presents 52 practices – simple actions inside your mind – that light up neural networks of deep well-being and resilience. And because “neurons that fire together, wire together,” each time you do a practice, it strengthens key neural circuits like building a muscle in the gym.
Each practice is grounded in modern neuroscience, positive psychology, Rick’s background in the very real world of business and raising a family. Each bite-size chapter introduces a new practice, explains why it’s important, and shows you how to do it.
We are so busy these days that it’s great to have just one thing to focus on to make your life better. Practice is not some flabby, airy-fairy mumbo-jumbo – it takes grit and honest work – you earn the results, and can respect yourself for them.
Broken up into five user-friendly sections, this pocket-sized “owner’s manual plus toolbox” helps you transform your brain from the inside out. The practices offered take at most a few minutes a day – and can be done anytime, anywhere. They include:
Get on Your Own Side
See the Good in Yourself
Feed Your Brain
Fill the Hole in Your Heart
Risk the Dreaded Experience
Accept the Limits of Your Influence
Don’t Throw Darts
Notice You’re Alright Right Now
and so much more!
Bottom line, it’s the law of little things. A small thing repeated each day adds up over time to produce big results; a small thing that is in your power to do – in a world in which so many things are not. Just one small thing that could change your life!
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Respond, Don’t React – Just One Thing
Published on Nov 22, 2012
How to “come home” to the responsive mode of the brain, which delights, soothes, and refuels you.
In these one minute videos, Rick Hanson speaks personally about each of the 52 practices that appear in his book – Just One Thing.
This one minute video is Respond, Don’t React.
The practices — simple actions inside your mind — light up neural networks of deep well-being and resilience. And because “neurons that fire together, wire together,” each time you do a practice, it strengthens key neural circuits like building a muscle in the gym.
Each practice is grounded in modern neuroscience, positive psychology, Rick’s background in the very real world of business and raising a family. Each video introduces a new practice, explains why it’s important, and shows you how to do it.
It’s one New Year’s resolution that you truly CAN accomplish, easily — Just One Minute at a time.
You are invited you to share your stories about how these practices work for you in your life.
This book is about enlightenment, spiritual awakening, self realization, meditation, awareness, consciousness, happiness, love, relationships, psychological suffering and human predicament. Based on actual dialogues between Francis Lucille, a spiritual teacher of non-duality, and some of his disciples, the music of freedom that it conveys resonates between the words, and gives the reader an inkling of the peace and happiness that are experienced in the presence of an authentic master.
Francis Lucille was for over twenty years a close friend and disciple of Jean Klein, a well recognized French teacher of non-duality. They both belong to a lineage of Advaita Vedanta teachers stemming from India. (Advaita Vedanta is the main nondualist Hindu spiritual tradition). Jean Klein’s guru, Pandit Veeraraghavachar, was a Professor at the Sanskrit College in Bengalore. Their teachings, despite some superficial similarities, are quite different from those of most contemporary western neo Advaita teachers.
They emphasize for instance the importance of the direct transmission from guru to disciple, through presence, beyond words, and they recognize that the same universal truth was expressed by various saints, philosophers and teachers throughout history and across the world. That which matters here is not the form of the teaching, direct or gradual for instance, as much as the authenticity of the teacher, the vibrancy of his realization, the outpouring of his love, the freedom of his humour, the brilliancy of his intelligence, the splendor of his poetry, the spontaneous sharing of his peace.
Nonduality is the common ground of Buddhism (especially Zen and Dzogchen), Advaita, Sufism, Taoism, the Kabbalah, the Gnosis and the teachings of Jesus in the Thomas Gospel, the teachings of Parmenides, Plotinus, Gaudapada, Abinavagupta, Meister Eckhart, Ramana Maharshi, Atmananda Krishna Menon, Ananda Mai and many others. For more info on Francis Lucille: http://www.francislucille.com
Biography
A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris where he studied Mathematics and Physics, Francis Lucille managed missile tests for the French armed forces, then ceased all weapon related activities after discovering the writings of J. Krishnamurti. This discovery triggered an intense quest for Reality that found its resolution shortly after his 1975 encounter with his spiritual teacher, Jean Klein. His friendship and close association with his guru lasted until the death of J. Klein in 1998.Â
He was a friend of Robert Linssen, Wolter Keers, Yvan Amar, Douglas Harding, William Samuel and Robert Adams. He was also influenced by J. Krishnamurti, Krishna Menon and Wei Wu Wei whom he knew personally.Â
Francis transmits the ancient teaching of nonduality, the common ground of Advaita Vedanta, Ch’an Buddhism, Zen,Taoism and Sufism. Many contemporary spiritual teachers have attended his teaching events.
Western Masters of Non-Duality. Francis Lucille: What is Self Inquiry?
Francis Lucille speaks answers the question, “What is Self Inquiry?”
Meng Wu Lecture: Richard Davidson, Ph.D.
Richard Davidson, Ph.D., presenting his talk, The Emergence of Contemplative Neuroscience, at a Meng Wu Lecture on October 2nd, 2012
Click Here to read his latest book, ” The Emotional Life of Your Brain “
