Refining Disenchantment

     A recent post concluded with: "We can prevent a great deal of unnecessary suffering by carefully observing how craving & aversion operate in our daily life, recognizing their arising early, ... and shifting attention from these towards matters that will actually benefit us." http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/07/14/Advertising
     Easy to say, but how can we actually put this into practice? First of all, we need to become disenchanted with life as it is. For some, especially those who've had a challenging childhood, and are reasonably in touch with what's going on internally & around them, disenchantment can start early in life. For many, disenchantment hits like a sledgehammer on their deathbed. For others, disenchantment ensues from major trauma, shattering their illusion of control, self-concept & worldview all at once ("shipwreck"). 
     "Disenchanted" is an interesting word, implying that our default tendency is sleep- or trance-like. So wisdom traditions, especially Buddhism, teach that we need to wake up or else continue suffering needlessly over & over again. So like a gardener, if we don't like the crops we're producing, we have to re-assess & optimize our gardening procedures. As in gardening, we are to minimize & finally eliminate all that impedes healthy crop growth - in our case, evolution of consciousness.

      “In practical terms, cultivating (the perception of not delighting in the whole world) can be implemented through a willingness to let go and relinquish whatever one is accustomed to clinging to, in particular one’s opinions and preferences, judgments and views. In this way a refinement takes place compared to ... freedom from sensual desire through dispassion and freedom from ill will and harming through cessation. At the present juncture even the more subtle traces of unwholesomeness in the form of any type of clinging are being relinquished.” 
     Analayo. "Mindfully Facing Disease & Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts.” Wisdom, 2016.

Morning Sea Fog at Conrad Beach, Nova Scotia

Categories of "Happiness"

     "... happiness has long been proposed as the ultimate goal of human functioning. However, given the differences between the two conceptions of happiness ... the nature of that goal should be interpreted quite differently. 
     Hedonic enjoyment refers to the positive affects that accompany getting or having the material objects and action opportunities one wishes to possess or to experience. The proponents of ethical hedonism ... contended that such pleasure is the sole good and that the ‘good life’ consists of maximizing such experiences. 
     In contrast, eudaimonia has been defined not in terms of being pleased with one's life, but as the subjective experiences associated with doing what is worth doing and having what is worth having. Eudaimonistic ethics ... proposes that the goal of human functioning is to live in a manner consistent with one's daimon, or true self, where the daimon represents one's best potentials. ... Eudaimonia, as a subjective state, refers to the feelings present when one is moving toward self-realization in terms of the developing one's unique individual potentials and furthering one's purposes in living.
     ... the two conceptions of happiness are both positive subjective states experienced to greater extents when one is engaged in some activities than when engaged in others. They are not, however, independent constructs. When individuals consider the development of personal potentials important, and when they are engaged in activities yielding some success in realizing those potentials, then both hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonia will be experienced. From a philosophical perspective, eudaimonia has been deemed a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for hedonic enjoyment. There are many things that a person may wish to have or to do that bear no relationship to the development of individual potentials. Engaging in activities that yield some success in attaining goals unrelated to personal potentials would be expected to give rise to hedonic enjoyment but not to eudaimonia.

      The category of activities high on eudaimonia but low on hedonic enjoyment has been considered a theoretical null within philosophy, and it approached an empirical null in the research reported here."
     Waterman AS, Schwartz SJ, Conti R. "The implications of two conceptions of happiness (hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonia) for the understanding of intrinsic motivation." Journal of Happiness Studies 2008; 9: 41-79.

     This paper describes researchers' concise, easy-to-define, and hence necessarily limited concept of happiness.
     Completely overlooked by such research is the aim & fruit of Buddhist meditation practice: "cultivation of disenchantment and dispassion, with 'peace that passeth understanding'" - a qualitatively different category of 'happiness' that can only be experienced & appreciated personally.

Letting Go of Being Judgmental

Question : 
     I've been going through phases of being content and happy, but you can see that's not where I'm speaking from at the moment. I drop into phases of depression and anxiety and believing that I'm a separate self. I know that I get it, and sit in awareness, or feel that I'm that a decent amount, but how can I still end up constantly believing I'm a separate self, and how do I get out of it?

Francis Lucille :
     But you see, your question already makes the assumption that you are a separate self, believing to be a separate self.

Question : 
     How do I not believe it? When I'm in those moments, I feel so contracted and limited and judgmental that it's hard to end up in a place of inquiry.

Francis Lucille :
     Yes, because you are judging yourself for being judgmental. So you are piling up judgment upon judgment. Why judge yourself for being judgmental? Judgment happens. Just like rain happens and wind happens, judgment happens. It's a cosmic event when it happens. 
     There is nobody to judge for being judgmental. Judgmentalness happens like the flu. You don't blame yourself for getting the flu. The flu happens during flu season. And judgmentalness or judgmentality happens during judgment season.
     If we try to do something about it, it's because there is someone wanting to get rid of it and the one who wants to get rid of it is one judging himself or herself for being judgmental. Allow for it to flourish. It's like a poisonous plant in nature - it's beautiful. Look at the datura plant - beautiful, beautiful white flowers! So there is beauty also in it. Not beauty of judgment, but beauty of the whole game. 
     Also, understand that in the moment when you are being caught by being judgmental, to try to do something about it always comes from the wrong place: judging yourself for being judgmental. So that's already the beginning of freedom, because you see it - so you stop trying to do anything - it's very important.
     Do you understand, as a separate person, our powerlessness? To fully accept our powerlessness as a
separate person - there is humility in it. We have to start from this humility, this recognition of our powerlessness as a separate person. 
     It is not that attempt to get rid of the judgment that is going to take you in the right direction. It comes from hatred - hatred for yourself, hatred for being judgmental. And hate always takes us in the wrong direction. 
     Only love, love for the truth, interest. To be interested in what we truly are. But in these moments when we are judgmental, these are not the good moments. It's like when it is storm season, hurricane season, you just board your windows, and you go somewhere else. 
     To 'board your windows' means don't listen to your fear, to your desire to judge yourself, to do whatever against it. 
     To 'go somewhere else' would mean to leave the body-mind house. You are not in it. The body-mind house is in you. To leave the body-mind house means first to investigate, if you can, in this moment.
     But a true investigation is an open-ended investigation. It is an investigation that has no personal agenda in it. That's a big difference. As long as there is a personal agenda, such as in this case: 'I don't want to be judgmental any longer.' Forget about it! It is better to do nothing, than to do the stupid things this agenda will make you do.
     Open-mindedness in an investigation means I let the investigation take me where it's going to take me. I don't know ahead of time what the outcome is going to be. 

Question : 
     But how do you end up in an open-ended question from a place of fear and contraction, wanting it to be different?

Francis Lucille :
     You first have to renounce what this frustration is telling you to do. What makes you renounce it, and board the windows and the doors in this house? It is the understanding of your powerlessness, and that whatever you are going to do is only going to make things worse. That's why I started answering your question from this vantage point. Understand that the desire to get rid of judgment, comes from judging yourself for being judgmental. Which is more judgment. So you have to stop this layer of judgment. That's the first thing to do.
     Now the second thing to do is to understand that the reason for being judgmental is that you believe yourself to be a separate person. Because it is both the separate person who is being judged for being judgmental, and it is the separate person that judges, saying, 'It is not convenient for me to be judgmental.'
     So when you see this entire process, there is an intelligence that comes into play. So that you just stop. Whatever is going to happen next, you don't know, but at least you've let go of the process, even for one millisecond. That's a moment of intelligence there because you have been somehow out of the process. But, you are not involved in this judgmental or whatever ignorant behaviour all the time. 
     We all have moments of availability, moments of interest when we think about the truth. The thought about the truth comes spontaneously to us. In these moments, we have the desire to investigate, not because we have a personal agenda, but for the sake of truth alone. And it is only in these moments that we should investigate. We shouldn't investigate with a personal result in mind. Then it's better to watch a movie, to do something stupid. We should reserve meditation investigation for these moments when we truly are interested, because then it becomes effective. And it is these moments, when we are truly interested, when we want to know without projecting what the outcome of this investigation is going to be. 
     It is these moments that in fact liberate us from being a person. Because they lead to an understanding, they lead to meditation, and they lead to moments of freedom when we experience our freedom. And later on, this freedom is experienced as peace, and then as joy. And that's how the cure takes place.
     It is not bad to recognize, to be aware of these moments when we are judgmental. What is bad is to judge ourself for being judgmental. What would be much better, would be to say, 'WOW, I just noticed that I was judgmental! I congratulate myself.' Because in this moment, when I saw it, I was out of it. I was in my true nature. Even for a split second, I was out of it. So you should congratulate yourself for having distanced yourself, even for a very short moment, having seen it. Because most people, unlike you in these moments, they are not aware of it. They are judgmental all the time, all the time. That's their modus operandi.

This youtube video is the source of the above transcript.

Letting Everything Go

Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

Johnny Cash "Hurt"

     As Alzheimer's progresses, Hob gradually loses all connection to the life he had known. As a senior meditation teacher (in Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen order), Hob knew very well that we are to let go of absolutely everything - even Buddhist teachings! But unless our practice is very advanced, actually letting everything go is far from an easy - we suffer because of, and in proportion to, our futile clinging.

     “… the story was like a golden thread for him, a connection to a teaching that he needed when everything else was dissolving.” 

       Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, NY, 2008.



                              There is no place to seek the mind:
                              it is like the footprints of the birds in the sky                         Zenrin Kushu

                              Nothing lasts forever

                              Even cold November rains                                                              Guns & Roses "November Rain"

 

See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/studying-way.html

Desire, Noisy Ego, & Mental Torment - Merely Visitors Passing Through

      “ ‘The kilesā are not at home in our hearts; they’re merely visitors.’
         ( kilesa - defilement; a torment of mind )

     Somebody once asked a well-known Indian spiritual teacher, “What is renunciation?’ He replied, ‘Renunciation is the giving up of any sense of self’. ‘And for that do you have to give up all your possessions, give up all that you own?’ The teacher answered, ‘Above all, you have to give up the owner. 
     The act of renunciation is, of course, an important principle in Buddhism too. It is often associated with people who are in a very obvious way practicing a way of renunciation, such as monks and nuns and holy men walking the streets of India. But this is only the outward form: giving up worldly possessions as an act of renunciation. More important is the inner sense of renunciation, giving up any impulses, thoughts, feelings or emotions which are coming from a sense of ‘self’, from egoic identity.”                Ajahn Khemasiri 

        “Seeing The Way Volume 2, 2011” Aruna Publications, iBooks.


     "With the development of wisdom, you will understand that sensual desire is not pleasure; it is suffering; it is a force that inhibits the deep peace and rest you seek."


        Shaila Catherine. “Wisdom Wide and Deep. A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana.” Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2011.

The Problem of Evil - a Zen Perspective

     "In Zen language, 'the great death' stands for the nondual sense of life as one. All things, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, express that oneness. To experience the great death is to see, face to face and for oneself, that everything is real, everything is true, everything is just as it is. ...
     The great death, oneness, enlightenment, total acceptance of reality beyond good and evil - this is a necessary step in Zen or any other profound spiritual practice. But although this may be ultimate, it is only a step. Zen calls it 'the great death' for a good reason. It is a kind of 'death.' It requires a complete letting go, a complete relinquishment, in trust, of everything that one has identified as one's life.
     To be truly alive, as Zen sees it, one has to die - to let go of life. But until we are physically dead we can't remain dead. We have to be alive. We can't remain in the darkness and purity of beyond-good-and-evil. We have to arrive in the daylight of this physical, limited world of distinctions and moral choices. Difficult though it may be, there is no escape and no alternative. And yet we celebrate. Having died the great death, we know what a miracle it is to be alive, and how strange and marvelous it is - even with its difficult and sad challenges, which are themselves miraculous."

       Norman Fischer "The Problem of Evil" Shambhala Sun, May 2015. http://www.lionsroar.com/category/shambhala-sun/


     The 'great death' also appears in other wisdom traditions: 
     “At three o’clock, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)
http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Apr2004/Feature1.asp

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