Meditation

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Pursuit of Faster Results in Learning to Meditate; A New Fast-Track Technique to Consider

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Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome everybody. Uh, the podcast today is on the idea and practice of meditation. Um, I like to start off with a few comments about how to listen to these podcasts that I’m doing. Um, the thing to keep in mind is that I might be wrong to always be asking yourself, is this right? How to find out what the best way forward is the idea, the general idea behind the podcast is that everyone is better off carefully thinking on their own about their own life situation, rather than relying on other people to give them direct guidance. Of course, input from other people is quite valuable, valuable, and forming your own ideas. But the idea generally is to be skeptical and mistrust and think things out for yourself. So I present these ideas in that context, and I’m quite interestingly, it’s not far from the ideas of the Dalai Lama himself who quite amusingly has intimated and even presented the idea that Buddhism itself, um, can be thought of as an experiment rather than, um, some truth it’s in stone, not to imply that this podcast will be on Buddhism. It isn’t, um, it’s much more about my own pursuit of the question, what meditation is as a technique or a technology I’m trying to abstract away from all that’s been said about meditation to what might be, um, a generalization across, uh, what other people have found. Um, so again, think of it in terms of, uh, Bertrand Russell’s admonition, that the greatest challenge in life is to know what is true
Speaker 1 00:02:01 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:02:06 After all. Um, uh, it’s an interesting question. I remember as a younger man reading that he had said that, and at that time, um, quite an experience as I was, I thought to myself, well, it’s generally quite obvious where it is true, but I later found out that that is not at all the case. It’s quite difficult sometimes to know what is true and what is reminded even that these days in our era of, uh, enlightenment, hopefully and science, um, the review of scientific conclusions is finding that many, many studies need to be revised that many it’s, it’s actually possible to reserve that perhaps even the majority of studies are wrong. Now this isn’t a disparaged science because very often where there’s wrongness, it’s it say what it was said needs adjustment rather than, than to need, need to be discarded. So, um, this is on meditation.
Speaker 0 00:03:17 The reasons for doing meditation are many and varied and different from person to person. Um, for many it’s an experience, uh, people pursue a calmness in their lives. Some people I tried to get away from mental language, uh, Leonard Cohen himself mentioned is that he doesn’t think people would pursue something such as said Zen Buddhism, unless there was something really off, something were wrong in their psychological, um, uh, in their mentality and their psychological wellbeing, um, that may or may not be true, but it sure is true for may or may not be true generally, but I’m sure it’s true for some, uh, another reason is to pursue social empathy after all. Um, there’s, uh, an honorable hypothesis that RA better off if we attempt to understand the lives of others. Um, in fact, the Buddha himself, um, perhaps approached the meditation in this way because, um, as a, as a protection, as a protected young person, he hadn’t experienced suffering or the implications of death.
Speaker 0 00:04:36 And when he came to experience, uh, have experiences that indicated these things existed out in the world, um, uh, it led him to try to find what would be the answer to experiences of suffering. And that’s often presented Gerald motivation for, uh, practice in Buddhism, uh, through his suffering in all sentient beings. Um, but also you might be interested in, uh, meditation as a form of general inquiry, curiosity, what’s going on. Everybody talks about mindfulness these days. Many people talk about mindfulness. Uh, it might be just your curiosity or scientific inquiry. Yes, you might want to increase empathy.
Speaker 0 00:05:27 Um, but you might also notice that, um, that, uh, Buddhists and those who meditate regularly have more caring for animals, even insects. Um, it’s just might interest you. How do people come to have this, this outlook of caring for others? Um, elsewhere, I’ll be doing a podcast on Simone de Beauvoir, not as a feminist, but as a psychologist where she makes a, what I claim is the most major discovery in psychology the last 200 years. Um, and that has to do with penetrating the perspective of others. Um, so-called objectification as an obstacle as an obstacle. Uh, so who pursues meditation, um, very often it’s those who’ve confronted on happiness, not necessarily depressed people, but those who she’s suffering. Um, and, uh, uh, perhaps it faced the problem of death early and might have some overlap with the experiences of the Buddha. Um, it might seem grandiose to seek, to remove the suffering for all sentient beings.
Speaker 0 00:06:50 But then again, we remember during the Vietnam war, there was a Buddhist priest who shook the whole world, raised awareness, no doubt had a psychological effect on everyone watching the day when it was worldwide, when he sat and ambulated himself. And just as a representation of his unhappiness with the suffering that was occurring. Um, it’s quite an interesting topic, but beyond these various motivations for, uh, thinking about, um, meditation, I claim that there’s, or I’m interested in the possibility or the fact for me that there’s a general human problem, which is, which could be summarized. Where should you put your mind, um, day to day, your mind is taken here and there, um, you’ll fall into cycles of unproductive thought everyone does it. Um, you might, um, you, you might find that you’re consumed with social media. You might find that you’re consumed with negative thoughts.
Speaker 0 00:08:04 You might find you’re consumed with so much dreaming about things you could do that you never do anything. There is this general question in human existence. Where should you put your mind and how do you do it? Most people have no concept of putting your mind somewhere. And this is the essence of meditation learning how, when we’re learning about the possibility that you can have control a partial, and even to increasing extent over where you put your mind, incidentally, this is related to the essence of cognitive behavioral therapy. Uh, it’s very different in a way, but in case you were interested in your mental wellbeing or that of others, um, it’s been found that cognitive behavior therapy, behavioral therapy can be as effective often as, um, uh, sacral Tropic medications, uh, for psychological, um, just discomfort and difficulties, um, not to make any recommendation here.
Speaker 0 00:09:19 I think the, what psychologists have found is the combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and medications, and sometimes it’s the best. Um, so not to push that point too far, but, uh, it is a further illustration that, um, that, um, you may want to consider. Is there value in learning how to have some personal control over where you put your mind? Um, this is not a new idea. Um, frightening aspect of it is even electroshock where upsettingly some psychiatrists find benefit in using electric shock to erase some of memory. Uh, so w so the, the places you put your memory begin from always partially a Queen’s late, um, that’s not a authoritative professional description, but there’s an analogy there that you might want to consider, but less as a stark, perhaps there are other comparisons that you might consider. Um, uh, what is the relationship with Zen meditation or any meditation and Catholic prayer?
Speaker 0 00:10:40 Um, the repetition, the concentration, uh, the, uh, the devotion of heart, um, in, in prayer, not just Catholic prayer, but in many kinds of fare in many religions, many, many sex, um, bear similarities to, uh, pure more, more to the type of meditation that is independent of religion. Um, but there are overlaps to Thomas Merton, the famous intellectual of several decades ago, um, uh, w w was, uh, uh, so taken by, uh, vocations in discussions with, with, uh, Eastern philosophy meditators that I would say that even his practice became bifurcated, where he maintained, uh, for the most part and devotion to Catholicism, but also wholeheartedly, um, adopted our relationship to meditation practice. Um, and that, that raises an interesting point because many have observed that Buddhism might not be defined as a religion in the way that some other religions are there is accrued differences.
Speaker 0 00:12:08 Um, without getting into that, we could still observe perhaps useful a year that, um, meditation is fundamentally ecumenical. It’s a part of many religious and shamanic practices, and it is not a religion. Um, my interest is in meditation as a technique or actually a technology. Um, now there are effects in religious, so, um, people who are highly high achievers and, um, this idea of, um, uh, having the mind become where of mind and detaching oneself from all the distractions and being able to, um, practice enlightenment at a deep, deep, deep level, um, hate to use the word achievement because that can work against effective, uh, meditative practice, but PE people, folks who are very, uh, deep into meditative practice, let’s put it that way. Um, can often have a kind of charisma, um, the most famous of the Vietnamese Buddhist practitioners, um, has a lot of personal crisp. The Dalai Lama has a water first. There were some, uh, um, there are even folks who feel that the best way to influence the world is not through mass political action. I’m not taking a position on this, but there are people who believe that the best thing to do is to develop yourself into a form of inspiration to others and let that spread.
Speaker 0 00:14:02 So, um, um, there are many angles from which one can view meditation. Um, um, one very interesting one these days when China appears to have some separation from traditions elsewhere in the world, is to, uh, go back and look for inspiration and, and heartfelt admiration for the China Buddhism that existed in the mountains of China from the tongue down, this the end, even before, um, scholars, such as red pine, a westerner and others have investigated this and discovered in fact that the, that the, the, the meditation hermits in the mountains of China have likely, always been there, practicing their, um, approach to, um, to learning about their own human mind for centuries and centuries. And so there’s this intersection among that segment of, uh, Chinese experience and all of the Western interest in mindfulness. Um, well, those are some general characterizations, um, another approach to, um, understanding the, the meditation, um, um, to understanding the meditation, um, sorry, I’m resetting my notes here.
Speaker 0 00:15:38 Uh, understanding the meditation, um, uh, world is, uh, to think about all of the stories, the anecdotes about meditation. Um, there are so many of them they’re so rich, they’re so entertaining. Uh, we might just reflect on a few of these by way of introduction to the lofty areas that the off the, uh, kinds of thinking that meditation might take you to, um, reference by the way is, is the, uh, the coeds and the what’s known as the blue cliff record, which is an attempt to take all of the mental puzzles used in early Chon and Zen, uh, to, uh, get practitioners, to drop all the intellectual interference that comes in from everyday thinking and work their way toward, um, the desired meditative state. Um, if you, if you read through the book of record, you’ll find many interesting antidotes and many puzzles presented to you that will truly puzzle you. It will puzzle you because there is no rational solution, but you will find quickly that the purpose of them is to get you to give up on rational, uh, when you’re, um, kind of off the wall, thinking in your everyday life. Um, I would go into that more detail. Oh, let’s talk about a couple of examples. Uh, w w w one example is, uh, in a certain monastery, there were two monks fighting over a cat.
Speaker 0 00:17:26 Um, maybe they both laid claim to this, uh, this cat. So the enlightened, um, um, leader, um, who was the, um, the main inspiration and the monastery. So reduction in absurdism in this wasteful thought process. Who’s is the cat who owns the cat for whom is the cat. So he simply said, well, why don’t you folks, uh, decide this, if not, I have a solution, uh, we’ll simply cut that cat in half, and we’ll give half to each of you. Now that’s an upsetting and simple thing, poor example, but it brings you very quickly to the idea that your, your everyday thought processes may lead nowhere or to destructive conclusions or whatever. Um, if you follow them through and that solution sometimes come and just letting go of that, the idea of being, let go of that, and you’ll be left with appreciation of the cat and the problem could dissolve.
Speaker 0 00:18:43 Um, so whistle thought processes, um, uh, our constant focus of those trying to, uh, we’re in meditation, the object being to get rid of them. Um, the objective in meditation is to put your mind, push your mind where the intellectual options fall away. Uh, you’ll hear folks talking about dualism, making distinctions, maintaining categories. Um, here’s another anecdote that you’ll, um, encounter if you undertake reading about these subjects. Um, um, one of the, the most respected, um, and, uh, leaders in the monastery said to imagine yourself hanging by a rope from a cliff, there you are hanging. You’ve got both hands on the rope, but the nature of the rope is it requires two hands to hold on and you’re desperate. And you walk around your mind is obviously focused and you turn your head and you see a couple feet away.
Speaker 0 00:20:17 There’s a strawberry, a beautiful, luscious strawberry, and you think yourself, there’s nobody around to help me. The rope is such that I cannot climb up and I can not go down. I’m stuck here. I have two choices I can hang on in which case I’m doomed, or I can reach for the strawberry, in which case I had this airy, and then I’m doing, so this is, this is a call to presence of mind, actually evaluating where your mind is and what your options are. And deciding whether just hanging on to a rope, bemoaning the situation, negative thoughts, reflecting that there’s no out you’re doing that. You’re doomed. There’s no outcome other than disaster. What is the alternative, or perhaps you look for whatever positive experiences available to you. Um, I don’t want to push these in until it’s too far as analogies into real life. They have their limitations, but they also have quite a bit of power.
Speaker 0 00:21:43 The next day, antidote is actually, uh, at the origination of the, uh, uh, Buddhism. Um, of course, Buddha sent her to the Bodhi tree and he, uh, achieved, um, enlightenment, um, took him such a long time, a diminished his body. He really, um, worked very, very hard, then had more water that too. It just worked very, very hard, but he, he achieved what he found to be the solution to suffering in the world, excuse me. And then at the end of his days, the question came up of how he would pass the tradition on he had to pick his first disciple. And to this day, there’s a tradition of formerly passing on a discipleship.
Speaker 0 00:22:44 Uh, so he presented a question to an audience of acolytes, to an audience of, of his followers to see who might have an answer that would inspire him to believe that this is the person to carry on the tradition. And there were various attempts at verbal responses, and here’s the key 0.1 person in the audience didn’t offer a verbal response, but simply held up a flower and he was chosen. So there again, that gives us a hint what meditation is about. It’s, it’s perceiving the opportunity, the beauty, even the, um, the constructiveness, the queen opportunity of whatever’s around you is a very constructive process. We could continue to another story that’s told about Steve jobs master. Now, I don’t want to claim this Steve jobs was himself a master, or I don’t even know how accomplished he was because he, um, uh, uh, uh, is known for an interest in Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, but also there’s stories of how well he treated people you worked with, um, even for good purpose.
Speaker 0 00:24:28 Um, he can sometimes if you, if you just look at documentaries and things, he can seem driven, um, but he had a master who, uh, who was quite a good communicator. And let me explain what I mean by that with another anecdote, um, as people realized that Steve jobs master was available in the California area, there was a request for him to do a public presentation, which he agreed to. And he did it down by the sea up overlooking the, the Pacific one imagines big Sur, although I don’t think it was there. And, um, he had a very wide or large audience and, um, uh, they were all there watching for a particular event because this master had pursued archery as is in practice. Of course, this is well known, the, the famous book Zen and the art of our tree, where Oregon hair or a gal is quite well known.
Speaker 0 00:25:40 Um, so, so, so people were so interested to see this Zen master, take his bow and shoot at the target just to wa once again, meditators can have a lot of personal charisma. They were interested in observing this person for the Christmas. He must’ve had to influence Steve jobs. Uh, what kind of has a following in tech, in tech circles, et cetera, in technological circles? Um, well, w what jobs mastered did was take an arrow, um, put it in the bow. He drew it back very serenely with the Christmas we were talking about. He let go of the arrow and fired it, and it missed the target by a lot, which must’ve created quite an interesting reaction in the crowd. I’m not sure that’s been reported, but, um, what’s particularly amusing about this event is having done that and then turned to the crowd. And he said, bulls-eye, which, which helps one to understand that, um, the purpose of meditation is not the same as being driven toward a particular goal.
Speaker 0 00:27:13 It’s on another level. So the bull’s eye is not hitting the target, but it’s in the, in the psychological experience. Uh, archery is interesting in this regard, it’s even, uh, quite, uh, quite fun to read or Oregon hear gal’s book. Uh, we stopped to the point where he talks about the beginning of his training, because with regard to not having goals and having a different orientation towards mind and where one puts one’s mind, it’s quite amusing when you were in, uh, Oregon went into the, the training program. It was two years before they gave him an arrow for the first two years where we’re learning to draw the bow, even to draw the bow without drawing the bow with which once again takes away the concept of goal orientation. Um, so, um, that book is an anecdote in itself. You can read about the experience, um, an anecdote that I particularly am fond of also has to do with a, uh, a China China’s the, uh, is the word for, is the Chinese word for which the Japanese word Zen derives, and it shows the Zen originates back in China.
Speaker 0 00:28:49 Um, so perhaps my favorite anecdote has to do with, um, and you’ll find out here in a little while, while I am so fond into this, um, this anecdote has to do with a young person coming to a monastery and wanting to, um, join the monastery, become a novice monk and begin the training. Um, that in itself is interesting. Very often, novices are made to sit outside the gate for long, long periods to show that their, um, their level of interest is high enough that they have the dedication to the T or the vocation for what they’re setting out to do. But in this, there was none of that. Instead, there was a novice approaching the monastery, but queer where the entrance was unclear how to get in. He wanted to knock on the door and ask permission to join, but he couldn’t find the door.
Speaker 0 00:30:00 So, um, he was wondering around and he came across a monk outside the monastery, and he said to him, I, you know, I want to go knock on the door, but I can’t find the entrance. How do you, he says, how do you get in? And the monk says, uh, I recommend that you enter by the sound of the river, uh, which I find this would strike you as being a monumental answer right away. But if you pursue a lot of study, as I’ve tried to do and find, uh, a commonality in all meditation practice, it has to do with not just listening, but putting your mind in the state of input, as opposed to analysis. Um, you, you might come back to this anecdote and see that it was deep, deeply insightful, answer the entrances by the sound of the river.
Speaker 0 00:31:10 When doesn’t know if the, if the, uh, the aspiring novice actually followed the river and didn’t understand, or whether, uh, he got the, the irony and the, um, the subtleness of those of that direction. Um, another anecdote, um, illustrates the concept of non-attachment. If in meditation, one tries to avoid having one’s mind attached to all the ideas that were kind of, um, addicted or obsessed with the things that forced their way into our mind and occupied our time and our mind. Um, if you think about that as a problem, you would quickly come to the conclusion that non-attachment to ideas, uh, is an important aspect of meditation practice. Um, and there’s a story. Some of these are intentionally shocking. Um, don’t take them as sociological accounts of, of good practice by good human beings. They’re, they’re meant to capture a mind. This one has to do once again with them.
Speaker 0 00:32:30 I try and monk who lived in a mountain cabin, not too far from the village and, uh, word had it. Uh, there were, there was a young, attractive woman that would come to visit and, um, uh, she came back and forth and, um, one day she appeared, I believe with the parents in the monks, whittle home, and named the monkey as the father and said, you know, I’m paraphrasing here, or I’m kind of making this up, but look, look what you’ve done to me. Look at the problem. I, this isn’t a baby I wanted. And he said, I don’t want to raise this baby. You caused this baby. So we want you to take care of it. Anyway, the value of this part of the anecdote is the very simple response that the mother gave to the, the new young mother and the family, which was okay then.
Speaker 0 00:33:37 And that shows that his intuition, that him into a solution, which was so natural and wholesome that there was no need for intellectual debate. He was just drilling into it in a very, um, um, um, supportive way for the young woman. Well, that’s when you have the story, because sometime later, I don’t remember if it’s a year or two later, um, the woman can’t recanted the story and, and said, uh, she had just been blaming the muck and that the baby was not in fact is, and she wanted to raise it. And that was her baby. And, um, so once again, uh, the, the, the monk who now had been raising the baby was confronted in his little home with this new proposition that she wanted the baby back. And, uh, what’s particularly significant about it was that there was no great intellectual debate. Again, his ex his response this time again, after no doubt having become devoted to, and having probably fallen in love with the idea of raising the baby was okay then.
Speaker 0 00:35:05 So this illustrates the possibility of non attachment, whether they’re things that are, I don’t know if you’d say destined, but there are things that are seem good for the world. There’s a way to go, but there’s a lot of negatives, a lot of debate considerations. This, this gentleman just very easily went with the flow, and you could see that there was a flow like water with his mind, um, water down the stream, I’d hit a rock. So it does, but it just moves and flows around it. Um, so that, that concludes, uh, uh, a number of anecdotes that a person might encounter that help to indicate what meditation might be about and indicate what some of the results might be in terms of personal psychology and, uh, help to just guide an inquiry. Um, and I just offer those as things that I happened upon myself now, um, what I want to do now is go on to the very clear, um, very, very clear state of meditation in our modern world, where there is such a variety of approaches.
Speaker 0 00:36:37 There are so many approaches, and I want to talk about this in the context of my own idea, to try and find out what they have in common to try and find the intellectual core that the intellectual center, this is why I call meditate, meditation, a technique or a technology, um, a lot of the folk or, and stories such as I’ve been told him. There’s a lot of surrounding a lot of culture surrounding the idea of meditation, but what is the, the nugget at the center of it all? Um, now, um, I don’t present myself as being any great guide to all of this. Um, I actually find Sam Harris is waking up app quite excellent, uh, highly intellectual guy who walks through effective techniques, uh, quite effectively. Um, so there, there are other people who have tried to, um, put together, um, a reduction from all of the complexities and differences and distinctions and disagreements in schools of, um, meditation to try and simply find things, a simple step by step approach that might be effective.
Speaker 0 00:38:08 In fact, the doctors, the MDs that university of messages, medical center in Western, who well known for something known as the relaxation response, where they have, um, done just what I’m going to be talking about, try to find, uh, take out all the religion, take all of the folk or take out everything. Except the simple technique that’s shared by many, many of meditation and presented as an offering for people that want to get the benefits without entering into any of the cultural, uh, surroundings that went off in fines. Um, transcendental meditation also attempts to, uh, get right to the nub and, um, has been, has been used by many, 100 people over the years to begin a practice of meditation. Um, and we find it, we find commonalities, um, commonalities, um, everywhere we walk. Um, you’ll find in many forms of meditation, there’s a focus on breathing, paying attention to your own breathing.
Speaker 0 00:39:24 Now, my own view of this is that by paying attention to breathing, you get your mind off of all the distractions in life, but you still have yourself on an intellectual focal point. So it’s a great, important stepping stone quite far along. Um, are there other forms of meditation focus on the such and such as, as a, um, or as I mentioned earlier, a coin, the coin being, uh, an impossible to solve intellectual puzzle, which if you focus on it and focus on it, can by reputation cause you to, uh, transition to, into a state of abandoning all of that intellectual visitation, even karate, which I practiced for quite a while. In my earlier years, the repetition of kata until Katar are the forums, the imaginary practice fights, which are really just sometimes they call them structured calisthenics, but they’re practiced over and over the same ones until it becomes unconscious, but muscle learning, uh, muscle learning challenge.
Speaker 0 00:40:39 Um, you want things to become very, very automatic and it’s a concentration on a repeated action as much like the sound, um, or the breathing. Um, so, um, everybody has noticed commonality. What I’m trying to do here is not completely unique. What I think might be new, although you can never be sure of that. There’s so many people in the world for some, so many perspectives is that, uh, I thought against what everybody tells you, that intellectual study of it all might be productive. And there was everybody says that you can’t learn Zen, you can’t learn, um, yoga, meditation, you can’t wear any of these things. You can’t worry the relaxation response by reading about it. You have to do it, or they’re say you really have to have a master to guide you, but the, the hypothesis has been that you don’t make progress in something which is essentially non intellectual. I wouldn’t say anti intellectual, we’ll get Thomas Merton, a great intellectual of the last century who was much dedicated to, uh, to meditation. Um, but, um, you know, folks view that as like paradoxical, how are you going to learn about, uh, uh, something which is an intellectual by doing something intellectual?
Speaker 0 00:42:23 Well, I agree, I agree with that somewhat, but, um, I thought he didn’t need to practice at some point, but the question is whether you could really make a lot of progress hooding the whole thing down to a focus that you want to pursue such that it would take much less practice to actually get somewhere. Um, you know, I started this whole, um, I started my interest in this by going to a Zen center here in Massachusetts. And, um, I had an interesting experience because the instructor, uh, you know, uh, supposedly an enlightened person, I have no doubt or what it was true. Um, presented an electrical question and we’re sitting in a circle and he, there was a bell saying the, I said, what is it? What is a bell? What is about, um, before I actually get onto the upshot from this story, I’ll just tell another little anecdote.
Speaker 0 00:43:30 There was somebody in that class who had been in Vietnam, uh, after the war. And she was a Buddhist and many people wanted to get out of the people from wealthy families, wanted to get away from the, uh, what they felt was socialist repression, which was, you know, made their way very difficult. And the families would accumulate. It would all pitch it and money from many different sources to finance, getting one person out. And she was, he benefited from this, the family put together a great, uh, fund for her to get out. And, um, uh, she knew one other person who had another family who was going to go. So they agreed that they would go together just to be a T a little bit of a team. And, um, she gave him her, uh, parts of collected money keep, and they had, uh, a, uh, a meeting time.
Speaker 0 00:44:35 And, um, uh, when she went to meet to get on the boat, that’s the way you do it. You get on a smaller boat, goes to a bigger boat. Um, uh, he had left without her with all the money and it created such a rage in her, such an incredible rage, even extended to that family. And she was obsessed in the days after what, why the rage will be, cause she was shamed. And she had, she felt like she had let down. I don’t know it dozens of people in her extended family who had given up a lot to contribute to this fund. So she’s had uncontrollable anger, and, uh, she tells the story of being on the way P I guess people are out of their homes. And she was on the way with, with, uh, some sort of flammable liquid to set a fire on home, a fire set, a fire in the home, just a pure, uh, fueling desirous of pure revenge.
Speaker 0 00:45:36 And, uh, she had always been friend with his friends with, uh, Zen priest, the small monastery up on the Hill. And, uh, his position was such that he could always see the village and he saw her go walking across. And, uh, what he did was he rang the bell and, and that bell was a giant gong I imagined. And I know it was only used in ceremonial occasions a few days of the year. So it was extremely unusual in an alert for that to go off for that to be set off or struck for that bell to be struck on a day that was not a holiday while she saw that. And she looked up and she saw him and it reorganized her thinking and she gave up on that. She laid her left on another boat. This in itself is such a story that these women who, after that now would carry suicide pills because they were so often raped and abused by the pirate type people that were in the business of getting them out.
Speaker 0 00:46:44 They would get in desperate circumstances. Anyway, all this, all this by way of saying that the bell is very important in many schools of meditation. And I was in a middle class, led by an enlightened leader and he asked, what is the bell? And, um, two things happened. Um, I’m doing not to necessarily go along with the flow of things. I just picked up the bell and rang it. Now that of course was the answer. And it was, I don’t even think it was very clever to think of that answer. But the thing that, the thing that, um, kind of worried me was that it upset the instructor. Instructor obviously did not have command over where he would put his mind. He kind of took the wind out of his well lecture, but I maybe it was an thoughtful thing for me to do, but it just taught me that, that when you go into the meditation world, you’re going to find like everywhere else, everybody is imperfect.
Speaker 0 00:47:46 That’s why I give the warnings at the beginning of this, talk about my own imperfections and all that. I may not understand well, it’s up to you to find your own way and, um, and find your way around all the, the things that were misleading in this world. Anyway, my approach was to read scores of books, develop a theory. I, you know, my life was that of a scientist develop a theory and then test the theory. So the technique that I came up with from all this reading talks, personal experiment, um, seemed to work for me. I quickly had the experience known as Ken show. That’s like the first level of a little bit of enlightenment. You’re not deeply imbued with it. You have a moment of experience. It’s transitory. It’s not permanent. There’s a bigger challenge to get Kensho to be more lasting than once or twice.
Speaker 0 00:48:49 And, and, uh, he continued as a more or less permanent characteristic. Um, but, but it was interesting for me that, that my technique seemed to work. And I wondered if I had maybe found something, which is why I’m doing this video. I don’t know what others will find. And I found that I could lower my pulse. I have various electronic devices and I could lower my blood pressure. And we said, I can do that with no audience. I’ve often wondered an audience if I can ever do that. Um, so can’t show is the first level of enlightenment, but it’s passing not sustained. And, uh, furthermore, you can’t instantaneously activated if you’re in some life situation. So I’m not presenting. What I have here is the ultimate solution to enlightenment. There’s much more so, you know, you would want to pursue schools and excuse me, a leaders who have a deep life experience and going much further than I chose to do, but can’t show is a feeling and perception that one’s not separate from the world.
Speaker 0 00:49:59 It’s a feeling of sublime, beauty of the world. Um, you’re overcome with emotion. Some people cry. Uh, and the idea is, um, the, the, the technique I used is, was, was one of, uh, what I concluded was that all these meditative States, when they’re most come from the practitioner, coaxing themselves to a position where they’re trying for input on lean to the mind input on what you know, processing, this is the key idea that this podcast is. We need to input it on way inter by the sound of the stream. So, um, Hey, yeah, the technique used is to sit attentively. I was, as if you heard something or something about to enter the room, and you’re just, you open your mind to what’s about to happen. And what you try for is keeping your mind in that state. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s like what’s going to happen input only, no, no, no thinking no processing input only.
Speaker 0 00:51:27 So, and what I found quickly is as soon as I could sustain that technique, um, I began to have these very deep experiences. Um, now this falsifies, the idea that, uh, you know, the benefits of meditation, uh, can’t cannot be watched intellectually cause that’s exactly what I did read hundreds of books, abstracted out the idea of input only and tried it and seemed to work a little bit. I haven’t tried to take it further, but it was interesting that it’s interesting what happened. Um, now, um, you want to take all of that as I emphasized earlier with a grain of salt and think, and think for yourself about it. I wouldn’t mention though that in my travels, I’ve met intellectually and in person, some amazing people, there was a Zen Buddhist named Swenson is something in the, in, uh, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Um, he came to the U S uh, from a monastery in Korea and he worked in a monetary in Rhode Island.
Speaker 0 00:52:47 This is what I mean about people who achieve the ability to put their mind where that, where it will be most constructive. He had such charisma that over a period of years, he built first to fall, small following, and then a larger, smaller, or larger following. And then a system of monasteries in many countries and an actual international system. So he had natural charisma from a Whiteman, and I think it’s worth reflecting on what he, what for him, the life lessons were. Uh, first of all, he talked about it and the anecdote that I’ll know, uh, tell you about, he would often go to groups of religious folks from different backgrounds, not just meditation, but Protestants, Catholics, whatever Jewish folks, whatever. Um, and, uh, he remembers, uh, this one Protestant guy who prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. And he was complaining because he always prayed to God, but God never seemed to speak back to him, which I guess is what many Christians would wait for is his messages from God.
Speaker 0 00:54:08 Um, and so to name, uh, said, well, I know what the problem there is. And that is God has been calling you, but the line is always busy. He used the analogy of a telephone, you know, God is calling with the lion’s always busy, so he can’t get through. So this would be the idea of once again, have input on way, putting your mind where you are just taking in and not processing, not cogitating, not making distinctions, et cetera. Since then he summarized this as don’t know mine. You want to put yourself in don’t ma don’t know mine. You just sit there and you just don’t know. So that’s, uh, inspiring to me because it seems to take the same approach or come to the same conclusion that, that I’m thinking that I, I came to, um, the other thing I’d say about Cincinnati, that’s true at the pinnacle of our American civilization is he, he came here and he did all of these things.
Speaker 0 00:55:13 And, uh, uh, you asked people for what is love and what a definition of love is. And you will find a lot of misunderstanding for many people. Love is a feeling, uh, that’s not true all the time, but those are the more philosophical bent realized that love actually is also a set of actions. Because if, if there are no actions, no one will ever know that the love is there. So since he was asked, this is the last page of, one of his fine books was asked, what is love? And his definition, I find quite beautiful. You said, love, love is you asked me, I asked you, that’s the definitely, that’s his definition of love. And I quite like it because it also harmonizes with this idea that none of us has all the answers and that, um, the, you know, the pursuit of understanding comes from opening your mind to whatever the others have to say. How few of there are a few people there are, who actually listen to what others say.
Speaker 0 00:56:28 So, uh, I recommend suntan name is someone worth reading. Is that meditation though? It’s also important to rise. It’s always, it’ll always be funny. Uh, it always be humorous since then. You’ve had a tremendous sense of humor issues that pitfalls, um, even Dalai Lama saying, everything’s an experiment. Even Buddhism is kind of comical for somebody that craves more hours just sitting and practicing after this long life that he’s had and all of his commitments, um, he just wants to sit and practice, but he considered an experiment. Uh, you will find a lot of phoniness in the world of meditation. And, uh, uh, as you will, in many areas of life, many people who are just misguided and misguiding and you have to watch out for possible adverse effects. So those are my thoughts on meditation and your assignment that I would suggest after listening to all of this is for you to think about it all and try to determine if I too am a phony. Well, thanks for listening. That’s a, that’s what I have on meditation.