‘Meditation’ 2017 Sept-Oct

The Yin and Yang of Embodied Consciousness

This is Post 24 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

In order to understand meditation fully, an understanding of the way our psychology manifests somatically, or energetically in the field of the body, is essential. We especially need to understand the way in which female and male spiritual character manifests somatically. These are things that are extremely poorly understood, given their great importance as key factors that govern the level of harmony and fulfilment that we experience in sexual relationships. They appear to be difficult to consciously acknowledge and talk about, even though we are all very keenly aware of them.

This is perhaps partly because these phenomena are so difficult to conceptualise. The great Carl Jung, who developed a very sophisticated understanding of the way archetypal, or transpersonal, psychic forces shape male and female psychological character, also understood that the archetypal psychology of sexual difference manifests somatically – in the subtle energies of the body. He theorised that there was an energetic patterning of the body, or somatic unconscious, that shapes our psychology in a similar way to the archetypes of the collective psychic unconscious. Whereas the archetypes of the collective unconscious show themselves in our myths, stories, dreams, and movies, the energies of the somatic unconscious can be felt in the body as energetic dynamics and states.

Our ability to know ourselves, and to function with psychological freedom and integrity, is closely related to our capacity to fully acknowledge this bodily-felt dimension of the inner world. Our engagement with the somatic dimension takes us to the core of the human mystery – and to the core of how human beings embody Consciousness, or fail to do so.

The Qualia of Embodiment

In connection with the yellow Southern Quadrant of the mandala and the brahmavihāra of muditā, or Appreciative Joy, it is helpful to acknowledge the experience of ‘Embodiment’ that we have been addressing is a ‘qualia’. The qualia are the difficult-to-define subjectively experienced phenomena that occur in connection with Consciousness. As a way of finding alignment at the beginning of a meditation session, try just taking a few moments to notice your experience of ‘Embodiment’. You are likely to find that when you look in your experience for ‘Embodiment’, you will find yourself being pointed to the experience of Consciousness. You will have a similar experience when you look for the experience of ‘Being’, which names another key qualia. Continue reading

October 17, 2017

Plato’s Cave Revisited

This is Post 23 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

Self-inquiry, meditation practice, and the practice that the English-speaking Buddhist traditions call ‘Mindfulness’, all involve what can be described metaphorically as an inner drawing back, out of the egoic identification in which we find ourselves, into an identification with the field of Consciousness itself – and discovering the blessings that flow from that. We usually associate these practices with Indian and far eastern spirituality (and perhaps with a few Christian mystical traditions like the Quakers). It is important to understand however, that the same subtle spiritual knowledge was present at the beginning of Western Philosophy in the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions that flourished before the Christian period, and then re-emerged in the Renaissance.

An Ancient Greek Vision of Spiritual Freedom

Socrates, the Classical Greek philosopher, who lived in Athens in the 5th Century BCE, was teaching on ethics and the ultimate nature of mind in the same century that the Buddha was addressing these themes in ancient India. If he did ever do any writing himself, none of Socrates’ writings have survived, so we only know of his ideas though the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and via the playwright Aristophanes.

There is much in Plato’s literary record of Socrates’ life and teachings, that is relevant to this series of posts on the brahmavihāras, but I would like to return to one of his teachings that I have touched on briefly before in this series (here) – the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ from Plato’s Republic. Set in the context of a wider discussion about the value of education and of spiritual knowledge, it appears to present a philosophical theory of human perception that is very similar to both the Buddha’s view, and that of Quantum Physics. Continue reading

October 1, 2017

Zazen – Just Sitting – Resting as Consciousness

This is Post 22 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

In very general terms, the classic Zen meditation practice of Zazen, or ‘Just Sitting’, is usually thought of as a meditation that takes the body as a whole, and its environment, as the ‘object’ of the meditation practice. For those that have not experienced the practice, it can be difficult to understand how this seemingly diffuse and unfocused approach to meditation could, in a very natural and effortless way, give rise to strong states of somatic integration, where it appears that Consciousness is the unifying power that is producing the state of effortless concentration. I could be argued that the ‘object’ of attention in Zazen practice, if there is one, is Consciousness itself – the field of Consciousness in which all our experiencing is happening; and Consciousness as it is experienced in the field of the body. Zazen therefore, is a prime example of the practice of ‘resting as Consciousness’.

Sympathetic Joy – the Zen of Embodied Consciousness

In the last few posts I have reflecting in different ways on the brahmavihāras or muditā, which is usually translated as Sympathetic Joy. In the text of these articles, I have mostly been translating muditā as Appreciative Joy, which I prefer. I can see that the translation of muditā as Sympathetic Joy is in some ways more appropriate when we are describing the extraverted aspect of muditā – our relational response to the wellbeing or achievement of another – but when talking about our relationship to our own experience, Appreciative Joy is definitely more appropriate.

I am aware that Zen Buddhism has different associations for different people, and different schools of Zen have different emphases. In this instance, I am making reference to Zen to highlight an approach to meditation practice that is characterised by a sense of embodiment, expansiveness, appreciation, contentment and gratitude, and a deep and fearless willingness to fully inhabit the body and the sensory world as Consciousness – attitudes that are characteristic, in my view, of Appreciative Joy.

While all of the brahmavihāras can spontaneously arise during Zazen meditation, but I believe the practice has this especially close connection with muditā. This is because muditā, or Appreciative Joy, is the brahmavihāra that arises in connection with the skandha of vedanā – the brahmavihāra which arises as our relationship with the vedanā skandha begins to take on a less personal and more universal character. There is a natural refinement of our relationship with our internal sensory experience as we learn to dis-identify from our experience, while simultaneously recognising our experience as ’embodied Consciousness’ – and this more refined and objective experience of vedanā is called muditā, or Appreciative Joy.

September 23, 2017

Zen and the Art of Human Life

This is Post 21 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

As previously, when reflecting on the brahmavihāras, I feel a need to emphasise that muditā, which is often translated as Sympathetic Joy, but better translated as Appreciative Joy, is not merely a mental state, but an attitude of Consciousness, and a way of being that gives expression to a quality of the universal Consciousness as we relate to the practicalities and specifics of human life. While we need to acknowledge that it is a cosmic attitude, it is also an attitude that individual people will often embody in rich personal ways even if they are not choosing to adopt the practice of resting as Consciousness. Muditā involves being in this physical world in way that is informed by, and supported by, the healing, evolutionary, and compassionate energy of our transpersonal source – so if we express this consciously it is extremely powerful source of blessing and creativity.

Muditā can perhaps be better understood by contrasting it with its egoic counterpart, which is the ordinary egoic Sensation function, which Buddhist tradition speaks of in terms of the vedanā skandha. Through meditative self-inquiry we come to recognise that we habitually and unconsciously bring multiple assumptions to the experience of Sensation and the experience of being in a physical body – assumptions that we come to recognise as untrue. Foremost among these incorrect assumptions, is the way we take the physical body to be absolute evidence of our ultimate separateness. This sense of separateness, and the ways in which we live with it, or seek to overcome it, is fundamental to, and characteristic of, the experience of being human. Buddhist tradition speaks of this habitual perception of separateness and the associated preoccupation with ‘looking after number one’ in terms of the klesha of māna, which is usually translated as ‘pride’, and sometimes as ‘conceit’.

The Human Realm – Separateness healed by Appreciative Joy

Of the Buddha’s Six Realms, which I have talked about briefly in a previous post (here), the realm associated with the Southern Quadrant of the mandala, is the Human Realm. This Human Realm, in which we find ourselves, occupies an archetypal position in the mandala of egoic styles, and can be regarded as the egoic counterpart, and polar opposite, of Appreciative Joy. The Human Realm is regarded, in Buddhist tradition, as a very special and fortuitous place to be reborn, but it is also the realm associated of the egoic Sensation function, and has particular problems for us, and a particular style of egoic unconsciousness, which we need to explore and become familiar with. Continue reading

September 3, 2017

Appreciative Joy – an Attitude and an Energetic State

This is Post 20 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

Each of the four brahmavihāras is a doorway into meditation and a doorway into a key aspect of spiritual truth. Muditā, which is usually translated as Sympathetic Joy, but is perhaps better translated as Appreciative Joy, is a particularly important doorway for us however. As I have been explaining in the last two of posts, the body, because of its seeming obviousness, is easily misunderstood and overlooked, when in reality it is our entry point into the mysterious somatic dimension. Without examining this bodily-felt dimension through meditative enquiry, the universal blessing which is our experience of embodied Consciousness cannot be fully received and understood.

The Body – our Doorway to Somatic Transformation

I have talked in a previous post (here) about the importance of acknowledging and becoming deeply familiar with the seven subtle bodies (and the seven chakras) – especially the first four bodies, which correspond to the quadrants of the mandala, and which we may call the four surface bodies. The subtle bodies are important because they provide us with a way of understanding that meditation, while it takes the apparently physical body as its starting point, gives us a way of engaging directly with these ‘subtle’, or non-physical, dimensions of our experience, which are nevertheless felt in the body.

Using the map that the mandala provides, these energetic or somatic dimensions can be distinguished and discerned in meditation. When we first start to meditate we experience the way the subtle bodies have a felt quality that reflects the psychological parts that we have fallen into identification with. As we learn to rest as Consciousness however – and learn to break our identification with psychological parts, if only in brief moments of Mindfulness, or in periods of meditation – the energies of the subtle bodies can start to transform. Even if we only practice resting as Consciousness for short moments of time whenever we remember to do so, this can be very significant, because we come to recognise our choice – and our power to transform ourselves in this way. Continue reading

September 1, 2017