Open Mindedness vs Certainty

     "Uncertainty is a profoundly important practice. ... I trained in a South Korean monastery ... where the practice was to learn how to rest in a state of perplexity - a state that is focused, in that tradition, around the idea of great doubt, of 'What is this?' was the question we asked. That was the only meditation we did for 3 months in the summer, 3 months in the winter, we sit on a cushion, stare at a wall, and ask 'What is this?' 
     That was the most powerful practice I think I ever did as a monk. It's not that you then become some kind of thorough-going skeptic. But it's the fact that you acknowledge that fundamentally, you do not know what is going on. That the world is fundamentally mysterious. I think it's very difficult for Westerners to valorize uncertainty. We always want to know the answer. We always want to be right. And this kind of practice, which has been enormously influential in my life, is about learning to not only live with uncertainty, but actually to cultivate uncertainty. To cultivate an ongoing sense of questioning, of curiosity, of astonishment, of perplexity. This is both an act of humility, it's also for me an act of devotion, which might sound a bit strange, and it really throws into question every kind of certitude or conviction or belief that you might have. And it touches something very deep.
     What brings us to Buddhism in the first place, is that kind of existential uncertainty. And yet so often, as in all religions, we prefer to substitute belief for actually the very living pulse that brought us to that place in the first instance. There's a wonderful aphorism that our teacher Kusan Sunim used to recite all the time: 
          'Great doubt, great awakening;
          Little doubt, little awakening;
          No doubt, no awakening.' "                    Stephen Batchelor

     Above transcribed from the YouTube video: "Stephen Batchelor and Ven Brahmali debate in Melbourne 2014" found on: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/

QTrung   www.dpreview.com

On Being Curious & Open-minded Towards All Phenomena

     In mindfulness training we encourage participants (& ourselves) to be nonjudgmental, have an open mind & be curious towards all arising phenomena, even those we would normally consider unpleasant. 

     "Curiosity is the predisposition to recognize & search for new knowledge and experiences. The psychological urge evoked by curiosity is accompanied by increased engagement with the world, including exploratory behavior, meaning making, and learning. For decades, scientists have narrowly focused on how curiosity is relevant to achievement in school, work, and sports, & an appreciation of art. Curiosity ... is relevant to any context where there is the potential for novelty, uncertainty, complexity, surprise, and conflict between the urges to approach or avoid stimuli. Several scientists have argued that a family of individual difference variables that conceptually overlap with curiosity (ie novelty seeking, uncertainty orientation, need for structure, need for closure, need for cognition, openness to experience) are relevant to healthy social interactions & relationship. The present research extends this work about the relevance of curiosity to social functioning.
     Results: A curious personality was linked to a wide range of adaptive behaviors, including tolerance of anxiety & uncertainty, positive emotional expressiveness, initiation of humor & playfulness, unconventional thinking, & a nondefensive, noncritical attitude.  

     Conclusions: This characterization of curious people provides insights into mechanisms underlying associated healthy social outcomes."

     Kashdan TB, Sherman RA, Yarbro J, Funder DC. How are curious people viewed and how do they behave in social situations? From the perspectives of self, friends, parents, and unacquainted observers. J Pers 2013; 81(2): 142-54. 

     Read "Creativity & The Brain Review": http://www.knowyourbrain.ca/Library/Library.html

Jett in deep contemplation - by Amanda Wintink PhD

Opening to Embrace Vastness

     “… the paradox that where opposites met, wisdom might, indeed, be born if a person learned to hold them in balance. This embracing of the contradictory truths, without one canceling out the other, was said by the wise to be the essence of wisdom itself.”

       Matousek M. "Ethical wisdom. What makes us good." Random House, Toronto, 2011.

Kentville, Nova Scotia

Self-knowledge, Self-compassion, Humility, Tolerance

     “‘Nothing human is foreign to me,’ said Terence, the Roman philosopher, and he wasn’t kidding. We’re kaleidoscopes of contradictions, Satyricons of lust, greed, and hatred, rationalizers of fairness and justice, idolators, cheaters, and fakes – not to mention hypocrites – with hearts that long to be divine. We are moral platypuses with seemingly mismatched parts who manage to come up with healthy eggs. Pulled in opposite directions, we search each day for some sort of middle path, a balance point, to navigate our way through this obstacle course. We ask ourselves the Holy Question: How ought we to live?”

       Matousek M. Ethical wisdom. What makes us good. Random House, Toronto, 2011. 

Our Goals Change for the Better

     "When we meditate for a purpose - to be calm, to gain insight - we are striving, not meditating.

     The problem with having a known goal is that it is a purchase from the store of things we already know, when what we truly want is something glimpsed dimly and imagined in a haze.

     It's painful to let go of our original intentions but, eventually, they are in the way because we have changed, we are no longer the person who set off. Our intentions gave us the journey and that is enough.

     Attention is a kind of love and our way of showing up, and when we do that, life unfolds by itself." 

       John Tarrant, Shambhala Sun, September 2013

Liminality - Insight into Emptiness - Śūnyatā

     The term "'liminal' first appears in publication in the field of psychology in 1884, but the idea was introduced to the field of anthropology in 1909 by Arnold Van Gennep ... (who) described rites of passage such as coming-of-age rituals and marriage as having the following three-part structure:

     separation
     liminal period
     reassimilation

     The initiate (person undergoing the ritual) is first stripped of the social status that he or she possessed before the ritual, inducted into the liminal period of transition, and finally given his or her new status and reassimilated into society. ...
     ... 'the subject of passage ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not physically, "invisible". That is, the status of liminal individuals is socially and structurally ambiguous. ... 'Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise.'"   http://www.liminality.org/about/whatisliminality/

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/liminality.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/02/comfortable.html

gerry328   www.dpreview.com

Only Keep the Heart Open Continuously

     When the heart is open, it's not closed. A powerful object of meditation is steadily monitoring the feel of the heart area: is it open, relaxed, warm? If not, it has closed due to self-centered fear. Let go - each microsecond - a fresh opportunity to exercise the heart-re-opening muscles - endlessly tirelessly gently keep returning to open-heartedly embrace whatever the present moment holds.

     “each moment of interpersonal contact is infused with both selfish and altruistic desire – with hunger and with love. … whenever my hungers diminished, love and compassion appeared. … love and hunger are intermingled … Since both are usually present, whenever one is attenuated, the other becomes more prominent. Imagine a jar of muddy water – if you let it settle and then remove the silt, what remains is clear. It is that simple: when hungers diminish, love remains.”     Kramer G. “Insight dialogue. The interpersonal path to freedom.” Shambhala, Boston, 2007.

     One word to remember - "OPEN"

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/10/choose-now-fresh-or-stale.html 

"We are so lightly here" - Leonard Cohen

Trust Emergence, Wisdom of Not Knowing, Curiosity

“As you let go of plans,
you are perched on the edge of possibility.
Let the reminder to Trust Emergence arouse curiosity.
What is happening now?
Feel the truth of contingency
and let it pull you out of any comfortable certainty.
Attune to the unfolding moment
and let your mind become nonresistive and pliable;
let it move with experience.
You can’t predict what someone will say,
what will happen tomorrow.
So you are waiting, relaxed with expectancy.
Dwell in the moment lightly, with patience.
If the mind wants to run ahead, to figure things out,
Remind yourself of the unpredictability of things.
Let all plans fall away.
Ride the moment.
Locate the wisdom in not knowing.
This leaves you open to anything, and not fearing change.
Trust Emergence.”

        Kramer G. “Insight dialogue. The interpersonal path to freedom.” Shambhala, Boston, 2007.

Congruent Healing Metaphors Transform

     "At the heart of any healing practice are metaphorical transformations of the quality of experience (from feeling ill to wellness) and the identity of the person (from afflicted to healed). 

     metaphorical thinking conjoins sensory, affective and motivational levels of representation in ways that can help account for psychophysiological effects of symbolic interventions. Imagine a hierarchy of mental representational ‘spaces’ in which the lower levels correspond to the processing done by phylogenetically older parts of the brain involving sensory qualities and basic motivational valences, whereas other levels or layers correspond to representations of experience in terms of emotional states and more abstract conceptual structures. Metaphors transform our perceptions and representations by moving them through sensory, affective and abstract conceptual spaces. According to how this movement occurs within these independent spaces, any communication gives rise to multiple interpretations.These hierarchically stacked levels of meaning are text and subtext, literal and metaphorical strands of meaning in communication and action. Importantly, these multiple levels of interpretation go on in parallel and may reinforce each other, giving experience profound depth and resonance, or contradict each other creating complex experiences of irony, ambivalence and ambiguity."

       Kirmayer LJ.  The cultural diversity of healing: meaning, metaphor and mechanism. Br Med Bull 2004; 69: 33-48.

Photo: Bill Bentley   www.dpreview.com

Attitude

       We ALL inevitably undergo MANY significant changes throughout a lifetime: being born, starting school, moving out of our parents’ home, falling in love, starting a new job, birth of our child, starting and ending relationships, retirement, serious illnesses, death of loved ones, aging, our own death.
     While we have little or no control over these major transitions themselves, we have complete control over how we relate to them – and thus over the impact these have on us - whether we suffer or benefit. No matter how traumatized some people are by these perfectly normal, inevitable life events, others grow and benefit (“post-traumatic growth”) from the exact same events. They grow via psychological flexibility rather than embalming themselves in dysfunctional rigidity.

     “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes!’ to your adventure.”                  Joseph Campbell

Photo: Aaron Teasdale   http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/