And so it goes

(Thrangu Rinpoche, HH the Dalai Lama, and HH the 17th Karmapa)

Today I had the amazing good fortune to be allowed a very special interview with Thrangu Rinpoche.

I'd like to tell you that I had all my questions answered, received profound wisdom, and that I gained direct insight into the nature of mind and reality, but alas, it ain't so!

Instead, I'm left with what is bound to be the only foolproof advice likely to penetrate my skull: take it slow and keep plugging away at it.

No easy answers, I guess!

Tonglen

I often say that I don't miss people. Lest this be misconstrued as some sort of cold-hearted stoicism, rest assured that that's not at all the case. As I was reflecting on that, I realized that explaining the Tibetan practice of Tonglen might shed some light on it.

Tonglen literally means "giving and taking." In the practice, one imagines oneself taking on all the pain, suffering, and mental afflictions of another person, and sending back all of one's good health, happiness, fortune, etc. with kindness. It's typical to start with people close to your heart, move out to acquaintances, then strangers, then enemies (if you have any!).

In this way, by focusing intently on each person, one generates a sense of well-wishing that engenders an inner peace and joy that stands in stark contrast to the yearning, and sometimes saddening, feeling of missing people (or the hatred you feel for your enemies). Not that I'm free of yearning! But it provides an interesting counterpoint for sure.

Anyway, as for news: Rinpoche arrives today, and Lama is very kindly seeing that I get an extra long interview with him. From the 20th-29th I'll just be going to his instruction, so with all the cleaning and commotion this has turned out to be more like a 2-month retreat. I'd like to say I'm a completely different person, but I suspect you'll see through that quickly :)

I think I'll be spending all of July meditating at my parents' house; it turns out this "meditation" thing is worthwhile. On that note, maybe I'll have time to type up another post or two. I think shedding all the baggage that comes with the term "meditation" and giving a clear description of its immense practical benefit could really be useful. In short: it makes you more human (and less zombie/animal/etc.).

Also, hopefully I will find time to catch up with people before I return to Seattle...

Math again

It seems that whenever there's a lull in meditation, math springs to mind. That's actually a large part of why I'm meditating... I could do without so many useless thoughts! So here's your warning: this is useless, and will only make sense if you love math and/or physics (I know there are a few of you out there).

I've had a few neat thoughts to share regarding musical instrument and note detection (regarding Hilbert spaces. No, I'm not joking ;)), but I figure someone's already tried it out. So instead, here's a useless problem where a neat flash of intuition came in handy. They say intuitive flashes are more common when the mind is calm; I'm not sure if this is such an example, but it felt like one.

Consider the wave formed by the sum of sine waves of differing amplitudes and offsets, but the same frequency:

f(x) = a1 * sin (vx + k1) + a2 * sin (vx + k2) ...

Does it have multiple peaks (and troughs) per period, or just one? With the usual disclaimer that this may be obvious to everyone but me, here's a quick proof that it's just one:

f''(x) = -v^2 * f(x)

Thus the only inflection points (where f''(x) = 0) are where the wave crosses the x-axis. Hence only one "hump" in-between.

Then it occurred to me that it relates to the following situation I was thinking about earlier:

Planets orbiting distant stars are detected by the redshift they induce on the star's light. What can we determine about the number, distance, and masses of planets given just the time series data of the star's redshift?

That problem is a bit richer, but the following reduction is useful:

Multiple planets orbiting at the same distance have the same period (not hard to verify: the gravitational acceleration of a body is uniquely determined by its distance from the star, neglecting the pull from other sources), but have different pulls on the star (thus the different amplitudes above). But regardless of their "offsets" around the star, the perturbation of the star will take on what shape? A circle! QED.

(For the sticklers, yes, I left out a few steps: the position being circular implies that the velocity and acceleration vectors are also circular; the acceleration in each dimension is uniquely determined by the position of the planets in those dimensions.)

It feels easier both to relate problems to each other and to use intuition to solve them. I don't know if this will persist, or if it does, whether it will derail my meditation. But it's a nice little break!

Note. On second thought, here's a simpler proof: f(x) and f'(x) have the same periodicity. Oops.

Distractedness vs Presence

Okay lots to say but don't wanna waste too much time writing.

When meditating, we can roughly break our experience up into two modes: presence and distractedness. Presence is when you're aware of the object (if there is one), and by God, you know it. Distractedness is when your mind is wandering; its existence is only detected at some later point in an "oops!" moment. In some meaningful sense, your wits are not fully about you. During the beginning stages of meditation, most people spend the majority of their time in distractedness.

We can apply these labels to our everyday (non-meditating) consciousness as well. It's just sometimes harder to do when there is no object per se whose absence unequivocally reveals our lack of presence. This is why the form of meditation that uses no object is considered advanced. The practice is summed up in the following quote:

Although there is nothing to meditate upon,
Don't be distracted for even an instant!

So if during meditation, when we're trying our best to not be distracted, we spend the majority of time distracted anyway, you can imagine the picture we'd get if we could see all the times in our daily life that we're not "all there."

That's sobering. Isn't life too short to spend 90% of it distracted?

Okay on to the second point.

When we're in pain, we spend most of the time dwelling on the pain. This is being distracted from the pain. If that seems counterintuitive, consider the difference between watching the bare physical perception of pain and compulsively forming ideation about it. The first requires a keen presence; the second feels much more akin to what we would call "distractedness."

It turns out that when you maintain a lucid awareness of the physical sensation itself, the conceptual embellishment vanishes, and the suffering goes with it. The pain is still there, but the sense of being hurt by the pain disappears. They've been yelling this from the rooftops for millennia, but until one sees it for oneself, it sounds too mystical to be true.

So that's the second point: distraction brings suffering, while having a clear, vibrant presence of mind reveals the counterintuitive observation that sensations in and of themselves have no intrinsic power to harm. This insight itself releases the suffering that we normally assume must be part and parcel of the sensation.

To recap, distractedness robs you of the vitality of being there in life, and burdens you with suffering and the illusion that it is unavoidable; presence puts you front and center, and makes all perceptions wondrous spectacles of the mind.

Put in those terms, I'm becoming inclined to return to my boring practice of meditation...

(This was all typed up too quickly to respond to objections, some of which I foresee.)

Slowly coming together

Yesterday during my one-on-one with Lama, as we were discussing my progress, he mentioned that it's probably not so critical that I refrain from social contact at this point. The basic reason, I think, is that meditation is not so foreign to me any more.

In a previous post I mentioned that reaching "the next stage" was very tricky because it was resistant to grasping. Well, it turns out that in the tradition I'm studying, there are no "stages" as such, and since the instructions are more or less "don't grasp," it's clear why that approach just doesn't work.

For anyone who's worried that meditation is hard and boring, here's a bit of good news: once you figure out an approach that works well for you, it's not so bad. The approach I study is the simplest of all, it turns out, and because most Westerners want desperately to do something, it can also be the hardest. I'll try to give you a bit of intuition so you can see if it works for you...

A quick primer on "simple" meditation

If you've ever sat down to watch your breath for 15 minutes, you've almost certainly noticed at some point that you're thinking about something else entirely, even though you fully intended to watch the breath. Ask yourself what exactly was happening in your mind at the time. You'll find that it's like a mini-bout of amnesia: you know you're supposed to be meditating, but you kinda sorta temporarily forgot. Oops!

The English term "mindfulness" is a translation of the Pali term "sati" (Sanskrit "smrti"), which refers to remembering. In this case, it's remembering that you're supposed to be watching the breath. It's not that you "forgot" in the colloquial sense -- if someone were to interrupt your daydream by asking you what you're doing, you'd say "meditating."

But there's a clear distinction between the times you're remember to watch your breath, and the times you're "forgetting": it's a sense of cognizance, awareness, witnessing, presence of mind. Call it what you want, but the key point is to get an intuition about the difference between being "on the ball" and being either spaced out or lost in thought. The breath is used as a "support" because it's dead obvious when you've lost the witnessing aspect: if you're not watching the breath, you've lost presence of mind. Beware of false positives, though: it's no good to be watching the breath in a spacey, absentminded, or distracted way.

Once you gain a firm understanding of the difference between presence and absence of mind, it's not so crucial to have a support for meditation. At that point, just relax, and keep your wits about you. Bit by bit, you'll develop lucidity and vividness, the presence will stabilize, compulsive thoughts will subside, and you'll end up in a much more aware state than when you were a bare novice!

Don't expect applause

It's getting busy around the center, as they prepare for Rinpoche's visit. That means more dirty dishes, and although doing them is not my assigned task, I figure it's better to do them so that we can, you know, eat.

Well, people see me doing them, and assume that it must be my job. I sometimes get a cursory "need any help?" while they scurry off without waiting for an answer. Don't get me wrong -- everyone here is wonderful, and probably better than I'll ever be, but after talking to many people about the Buddhist community, it's interesting to learn that Buddhism is just like any other pursuit: people learn the basics, get some medals and emblems, and then pride themselves on being better than everyone else.

So it's fun to take a different approach: trying to figure out exactly what I'm getting myself into here, and learning it whether it's easy or not. It's hard as hell (not the meditation -- that part is fun and easy), but boy is it rewarding. As an example, here are two different suggestions from two separate masters. I call them "suggestions" because there are no commandments, but you'd be hard pressed to call yourself a Buddhist without trying to incorporate these.

* Don't expect applause

* Bodhisattva vow #16:

Even if a person for whom you've cared
Like your own child regards you as an enemy,
Cherish him specially, like a mother
Does her child who is stricken by sickness -
This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.

This has nothing to do with being meek so you can reap rewards later, or allowing yourself to be stepped on because you are worthless or undeserving. That's closer to the territory of the "lower" Buddhist vehicle. In contrast, in the Bodhisattva path, you are expected to realize that such philosophy is the only way to shed the adamantine panoply of ego that you think is keeping you safe.

Acting any other way is like a turtle retreating into his shell. The main difference between a saint and your average chump sobbing about being used is expectation. There's far too much to be done to waste time waiting for applause, to worry about being liked or appreciated, to drown in regret, or simmer over others' faults.

Oh, and one can't forget the key point in becoming a Bodhisattva:

















A sense of humor!

Lest any of you nutters expect any such behavior from the likes of me, rest assured I harbor no such delusions. I am still as useless as ever!

Meditators For Intergalactic Peace!

Apparently we've solved all of our problems here on earth, because the best use researchers can find for meditation is ...

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html

"Benson believes that such a capability could be useful for space travel. Travelers might use meditation to ease stress and oxygen consumption on long flights to other planets."