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RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/30/12 1:44 AM as a reply to . Jake ..
Mr. Jake *:
What do you think?


Spot on!

While I understand that one can argue that what 'Mr. Jake' have presented is a mere view, an opinion, I believe (see? An opinion...) that the post by 'Mr. Jake' should be separated from this thread, or duplicated, and made sticky and possibly augmented with the essay in the first post of this thread and other relevant posts.

Separating the illusory and unnecessary 'self-referencing tendency' from the hugely beneficial 'ego structure' is very, very important, methinks. Also, learning to skillfully (re-)configure (e.g. simplify) and satisfy what I have called here 'the ego structure' is tremendously beneficial.

If you mix these things up and proceed to rip apart your 'ego structure' (depersonalization), you will have done yourself and others a great disservice.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/30/12 11:08 PM as a reply to . Jake ..
Hi Jake,

What I've always assumed is that a healthy ego will be naturally happy and successful in the material World. He's not blissful or super wealthy with 100's of friends, just reasonably happy a fair amount of the time, and able to function at work and in close relationships.
And the absence of these functional criteria would indicate someone with a poorly developed self-construct.

Do you (or anyone else) think that's unreasonable?

Would a lifetime history of difficulty in these areas be diagnostic?
Compare this to someone who has already demonstrated an ability to enjoy a reasonably happy healthy normal life, then decided he was interested in something else that transcended his normal boundaries.

Some other thoughts I had:

I don't like the term "no-self". Self must still exist even when enlightened, otherwise how would you know which body to feed? How would you know which body to dress or which mouth to speak out of? This one here or that one over there? I think of it more like a shift of identity from individual to universal, where the individual still exists in full. And if the self still exists, how useful will it be in the world if it has never learned how to make a living or relate to people? It would be the equivalent of a drug addict, blissed out in his own home, avoiding the world because he can't function in it, avoiding people because he can't relate to them, totally useless.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/30/12 8:03 PM as a reply to C C C.
I think what you're saying, how you phrase it here in the first paragraph, *is* reasonable. For the most part, the majority of people I know fit that bill ;-)

I definitely don't see that as incompatible with opening to deeper dimensions of this moment of experience, and starting to live with deeper intent that expresses that deeper clarity. In other words, as far as I can tell from my own experience, going into insight territory has, even during dark night phases, unequivocally improved my capacity for 'ordinary happiness' and 'materially successful function' in the world.

I just posted something on some thread or other about the dark night in which I made a case for sharply distinguishing between insights into how 'dukkha' is the result of the way mind functions rather than of circumstances and other people, and on the other hand, the basically pathological ways we can react to those insights as we struggle against them. I tried to make the case that what is often called the dark night, I think imprecisely, confounds those insights with the struggle against them and the symptoms which arise from that struggle. So although I definitely recognize those cycles, I absolutely do not advocate the crazy assed years of torture version of what the dark night is. It isn't that. That's what happens when we try to pretend we aren't learning those dukha lessons and struggle to maintain the facade that we can blame others and the world for our basic suffering.

But learning to see how much of my suffering (all, depending on the definition) comes from how my own mind operates, and learning to operate in new ways, is not in any way incompatible with living a healthy full human life, in my experience anyway. I certainly get the point that navel gazing can be indulgent and selfish. So can an objectively reasonable, materially successful life!

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/30/12 11:07 PM as a reply to . Jake ..
So maybe true dark night = the unwillingness to surrender to oblivion. Resisting the dissolution of one's cherished beliefs and world view causes the suffering. No resistance = no dark night?

Most of the Dho threads are about understanding and clarification of terms or processes or experiences. And yet, being willing to not know or understand anything is very much called for as a practice. In my experience this is true, which is why I am against too much intellectual debate.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/31/12 12:57 AM as a reply to C C C.
Dear CCC: you want it? I am all for it, and you got it.

Daniel

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/31/12 3:41 AM as a reply to C C C.
Tommy, I've started my blog and I want you to come and make a guest appearance.

emoticon I love you too, disagreements and all.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
1/31/12 4:47 AM as a reply to C C C.
C C C:
I don't like the term "no-self". Self must still exist even when enlightened, otherwise how would you know which body to feed? How would you know which body to dress or which mouth to speak out of? This one here or that one over there? I think of it more like a shift of identity from individual to universal, where the individual still exists in full. And if the self still exists, how useful will it be in the world if it has never learned how to make a living or relate to people? It would be the equivalent of a drug addict, blissed out in his own home, avoiding the world because he can't function in it, avoiding people because he can't relate to them, totally useless.


Stian Gudmundsen Høiland:
Separating the illusory and unnecessary 'self-referencing tendency' from the hugely beneficial 'ego structure' is very, very important, methinks. Also, learning to skillfully (re-)configure (e.g. simplify) and satisfy what I have called here 'the ego structure' is tremendously beneficial.

If you mix these things up and proceed to rip apart your 'ego structure' (depersonalization), you will have done yourself and others a great disservice.


The 'self' that is being talked about, the apparent center-point of experience, the one you want to get rid of, the one that in the end is seen as not even having been there in the first place; this 'self' which you do want to get rid of is not the 'self' that knows where it's mouth is.

If you read the above sentence a few times and actually trust that it is true, you will experience some sort of cognitive dissonance - you'll wonder: "What? But I thought... But isn't... Is the 'self' that I've thought I must get rid of not the 'self' I should actually get rid of? How can this be? And since I've been paying attention to the 'wrong' self, what and where exactly is the 'self' that I should be paying attention to?".

EDIT:

'Anatta' can be translated in many ways. Commonly it is translated as 'not-self', and this is not only because 'not-self' has a certain degree or precision in conveying the intended meaning of 'anatta', but also because of socio-cultural circumstances (and indeed, other causes as well). What I'm saying is that the reason why you think Mr. Buddha meant 'not-self' when he said 'anatta', is not necessarily because it is the most correct representation.

Buddhism in a Nutshell - Anatta
ANATTA: The Concept of No-Self in Buddhism
Atman
Anatta

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 2:31 AM as a reply to Stian Gudmundsen Høiland.
I've never heard it put like that, Stian. Thanks. Is there any more where that came from? emoticon

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 3:35 AM as a reply to Andrew ..
Strange that you would ask like that because actually there is. I've recently had so many insights lining up coupled with some very down-to-earth explainations and I've been taking notes constantly. Currently I'm trying to come up with ways to combine the notes in a presentable way.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 3:59 AM as a reply to Stian Gudmundsen Høiland.
The self in question doesn't exist, AND NEVER HAS AND NEVER COULD, which is an essential point. (Sorry for those who don't like a lot of caps).

Anyway, working backwards, discrimination was always not self, clarity was always not self, thought was always not self, memory was always not self, perception was always not self, effort was always not self, investigation was always not self.

The trick it to figure out how to take basically the exact same stuff and see it clearly, as when you do this well, suddenly you find that what seemed like the same stuff actually implies things totally differently from when it was poorly perceived, and it shows directly:

All things happen on their own
There are no fundamental boundaries in the field of experience at some basic, transformative level
There never was an observer or controller or doer
There was never any continuous existence of anything from a direct sensate point of view, which, being the basis of all other extrapolation, is the fundamental thing

It is sort of like that classic drawing that viewed one way looks like an old women, and viewed another way looks like a young one: same picture, completely different ways of viewing it.

Or those 3D pictures that initially look like a bunch of similarly repetitive nonsense but if you cross your eyes just right you suddenly see floating 3D images in space that you couldn't see before: same image, very different way of perceiving it.

Helpful?

Daniel

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 6:32 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Yes very.

the juxtaposition of the 'illusionary self' with the term 'structural ego', and then reading carefully;

discrimination was always not self, clarity was always not self, thought was always not self, memory was always not self, perception was always not self, effort was always not self, investigation was always not self.


See all of me functionally there, yet knowing that the perceptual quality can be so vastly improved.

I've never considered them side by side like that, the eastern and western conceptions as being complementary.

so side by side, to get back to the OP, a healthy western ego, and anatta are both possible/desirable.

Well adjusted and awake. I dig.

emoticon

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 8:10 AM as a reply to . Jake ..
theres plenty of gold in here for everyone...thanks Mr Jake.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 10:15 PM as a reply to Stian Gudmundsen Høiland.
Richard Gombrich says the translation of anatta (anatman)
"is very often mistranslated (sometimes by too, in the past) as 'not having a self or essence'. That is indeed how later Buddhists came to interpret it, but that was not its original meaning - in fact, it is doubly misleading. Both Pali grammar [14] and a comparison with the Vendanta show that the word means 'is not atman' rather than 'does not have atman'. Comparison with the Vendanta further shows that the translation 'self' is appropriate, as the reference is to living beings. However, as time went by the term was taken as a possessive compound and also taken to refer to everything, so that it became the one-word expression of the buddha's anti-essentialism."Page 70, What the Buddha Thought


[14] "The word was originally a karmadharaya compound, not a bahuvrihi" page 214, Notes to pages 69-81 (links to wikipedia added, not Gombrich's links)

Therefore anatman was not, according to Gombrich, using the primitive a to create a "no-atman" entity or condition (e.g., new noun with which to establish a negative version (the no-atman) of the positive version (the atman)), but was using primitive "a" as an appositional compound (wherein "an" is applied to the unchanged concept of "atman" to mean "is not atman") and, thus, atman does not change its meaning nor is it modified by the preceding primitive a.

Gombrich describes the triad which Gotama countered as the Upanishadic concepts of being*, consciousness, and bliss


*Page 67:
The Buddha was influenced by the Upanishadic theory if 'being' on two levels. Firstly, he accepted the conceptualization of 'being' as the opposite of 'change' or 'becoming". On a more abstract or philosophical level, however, he rejects the reification of 'being'. He declares that there are three major fetters (samyojana) binding us to the cycle of rebirth, and the first of these is the view that there is a category 'being'. [10]

(...)

Famously, the Buddha's approach to life's problems was pragmatic. Our problems are urgent, and irrelevant theorizing is as silly as refusing to receive treatment for an arrow wound until you know the name of the man who shot the arrow. Today we see the world as in perpetual motion, and that reminds people of the Buddhist principle of imperanence. True, the Buddha saw our experiences as an ever-changing process, a stream of consciousness - the literal Pali equivalent of that expression does occur. But we are talking physics, whereas the Buddha was talking psychology. In my view, he did not see an object like a stone or table as changing from moment to moment (see below). Nor did he hold the opposite view. Such an analysis of the world outside our minds was to him irrelevant and a mere distraction from what should be commanding our attention, namely, escape from samsara. I shall have more to say about this pragmatic approach in Chapter 11. Here let me just reiterate that it was our experience of the world - of life, if you like, that the Buddha was focusing on, and it was our experience that he considered to be a causally conditioned process.



[10] sak-kaya-ditthi. The Sanskrit equivalent would be sat-kaya-drsti. I have devoted an article to this: 'Vedanta stood on its head: sakkaya and skkaya ditthi'.

To consider Gombrich's research could be to accept things as they are, as in: I am here, and 'I' is not some substrate of being, consciousness or bliss, nor is there a not-I (aka: no self) form/entity/condition arising among spontaneously arising forms/things-happening-on-their-own speculation. This could cause a believer of the no-self cosmology (with all matter arising spontaneouslyhappening-on-their-own) to quarrel with the pragmatic I-exist-without-permanent-beingness/see-things-as-they-are person. There is no reason to enter such a dialogue after/if differing views are exchanged. Such views do not even need to be cultivated:
Gombrich again:
The result of this self-denying ordinance was that the Buddha condemned all theorizing which had no practical value. Whether we like it or not, he tended to be quite harsh on those who indulged in metaphysical speculation. In the Pali tradition, the very first sutta in the entire collection of his sermons is the Brahma-jala Sutta, which spends many pages on the kinds of speculation that people indulge in concerning both the world and the self, and then saying that the Buddha has himself realized their seductive power and made his escape from them".

(...)

'So', says the Buddha, 'remember what I have left unexplained as unexplained..."


Page 166-67, What the Buddha Thought

Anyway, wet your whistle? It's good book, though debated among scholars.



Edit: bolding a section, and then some

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 11:46 PM as a reply to . Jake ..
Mr. Jake *:

... participants at DhO in general are not trained to recognize the difference between pathological deformations of the self-structure and no-self, and in general there is too much tendency to just interpret everything anyone posts as practice/insight related, which is a shame, since it seems like conventional wisdom that in the contemporary West many people with structural pathologies are attracted to buddhism because it seems to confirm their pathological intuitions. They want their borderline ego structure to be no-self, because that would save them a lot of trouble. Generally it seems like careful reading of posts and especially observation of posting patterns can reveal a lot in this regard, but granted, few if any here are qualified to make any diagnoses particularly given the scant data present in posts.
-Jake


Oh boy, have I seen this around the traps. And in myself...

Coupled with Santiago's comment (I think it was him) that we mostly define suffering as 'things we don't want to do' it puts a whole new spin on why I might go of on a tangent so easily.

We want to change all the things we call 'suffering' (read; bothersome things we don't want to do/experience) -but we want to do that by affirming our own point of view/ mind state with new terminology. Doh!

Back to the cushion.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/2/12 11:55 PM as a reply to katy steger.
katy steger:
But we are talking physics, whereas the Buddha was talking psychology. In my view, he did not see an object like a stone or table as changing from moment to moment (see below). Nor did he hold the opposite view. Such an analysis of the world outside our minds was to him irrelevant and a mere distraction from what should be commanding our attention, namely, escape from samsara. I shall have more to say about this pragmatic approach in Chapter 11. Here let me just reiterate that it was our experience of the world - of life, if you like, that the Buddha was focusing on, and it was our experience that he considered to be a causally conditioned process.



Anyway, wet your whistle?


Yep. Reminds me to remember what 'set of rules' I'm dealing with when thinking about my experience vs. being scientifically correct. a bit of a challenge for me actually, I like to have everything lining up, but it doesn't have to be so to work. Terms work, when applied to the sphere they describe.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/3/12 12:41 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Hi Daniel,

Helpful?


emoticon
All things happen on their own
There are no fundamental boundaries in the field of experience at some basic, transformative level
There never was an observer or controller or doer
There was never any continuous existence of anything from a direct sensate point of view, which, being the basis of all other extrapolation, is the fundamental thing

If all things happen on their own and there never was a controller or doer, then for what purpose are there the instructions of cultivation in in the Ekadhamma Suttas, for what purpose the Dhamma-vinaya, and what is meant in the dhammapada (183) instructing a doer to:
Not to do any evil
To cultivate what is wholesome
To purify one's mind:
That is the teaching of the Buddhas

And karma (consequences of one's actions),which may not be chiefly causal to one's conditions, but is at least listed as the the eighth cause for one's conditions after seven others (including basic inborn health problems)?

Gotama is so logical: why would he give instructions for conduct and practice if he knew us to be incapable of directing our doing? Knowing we are doers, why does he also observe how we should do (e.g., dhamma-vinaya, eight-fold path)?


There was never any continuous existence of anything from a direct sensate point of view, which, being the basis of all other extrapolation, is the fundamental thing

It is sort of like that classic drawing that viewed one way looks like an old women, and viewed another way looks like a young one: same picture, completely different ways of viewing it.


As in the analogy you provide of the trompe d'oeil (the old/young woman), which view of the image is "the basis" and therefore "fundamental"?


As the mind has both a capacity for a "direct sensate point of view" as well as the capacity to have other views (like perceiving the "continuous existence" of a stone), how can one view be more fundamental than the other?

If one mental capacity (your "direct sensate point of view") cannot be found to be more fundamental (the view of "continuous existence" such as a rock and its decay) then how could direct sensate perception possibly be the basis of all other extrapolation?

Is holding a polarized view of things that cannot be known by oneself (such as the fundamental basis) stressful?

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/3/12 3:24 AM as a reply to katy steger.
Relative language still works. Try reading Part I of MCTB and it goes into long detailed explanations of why ultimate and relative language both are appropriate in various contexts and for various fields of communication. There is no need to repeat this basic material here.

As to the fundamental nature of things: keep going, keep paying attention, noticing things, and see what conclusions you come to. This is something you have to see for yourself.

It is like those images where you have to cross your eyes just right to see the 3D thing emerge: until you have done it, it doesn't really make sense like for those who have done it.

Once you have seen the other way of directly perceiving the thing, then we'll talk, perhaps, but at that point, the general question becomes: "How to I keep that mode of perceiving things on all the time!" this assuming that it didn't stick when first seen, which it usually doesn't, but if it does, then that is a bit of a conversation killer in a good way.

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/3/12 3:48 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
If a AFer has no "perspectives" or point of views, then does he see the young lady or the princess?!?

The world may never know!

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/3/12 6:48 AM as a reply to Andrew ..
welcome!

RE: Meditation vs. Psychotherapy
Answer
2/3/12 7:14 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Daniel M. Ingram:

at that point, the general question becomes: "How to I keep that mode of perceiving things on all the time!" this assuming that it didn't stick when first seen, which it usually doesn't, but if it does, then that is a bit of a conversation killer in a good way.


Daniel, assuming you mean the way of perceiving things in which they all happen on their own, period, does this advice pertain to entering MCTB 4th path, or something else? I ask because this is a perspective I can access more or less at will, and can deepen by concentrating on it (keeping that mode on). In a sense, it's always evident in some way unless there's a buying in to a particularly strong emotion; but the fact that the vividness of this point oscillates implies that it could be optimized (1). "Seeing through the centerpoint" is the same way (and the two seem to be different aspects of the same insight/perspective, in fact). So anyway, is focusing on stabilizing this insight your pointer for 4th path? Thanks--

--Jake

1-- I guess the reason I haven't optimized and stabilized this insight is that, in my experience, seeing it clearly at all seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of the felt-sense of drivenness or desperation to complete some process of seeing things clearly, because this insight is always over my shoulder so to speak, which provides a whole lot of leverage to let go of issues and behavior patterns which are trouble for me and my relations (which has been a bigger motivator for me in maintaining a consistent practice than the motivation to perceive truth, which is there as well, but just not the prime motivator for quite a while).