Wayne Wirs - Discussion
Wayne Wirs
Rednaxela, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 3:22 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 8:34 AM
Wayne Wirs
Posts: 158 Join Date: 12/23/11 Recent Posts
This man was interviewed at Batgap in 2015, has a blogsite (waynewirs.com) and wrote "Mystical oneness and the nine aspects of being" in December. About 60% of the way through Mystical, i stumbled upon the fact that this awakened man ended his life in August.
Doctor Avocado, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 11:03 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 11:03 AM
RE: Wayne Wirs
Posts: 50 Join Date: 11/2/16 Recent PostsRednaxela:
This man was interviewed at Batgap in 2015, has a blogsite (waynewirs.com) and wrote "Mystical oneness and the nine aspects of being" in December. About 60% of the way through Mystical, i stumbled upon the fact that this awakened man ended his life at the end of August.
I did not know of Wayne, but just read his last blog post. Very sad to hear of his pain and suffering.
His post raises an important point though, which has not been discussed much here. He says in this post:
"Do not feel sad. I have accomplished everything I have set out to do. No authentic spiritual teacher fears death, so why would they allow themselves to endure physical suffering?"
I don't know where Wayne was in terms of the maps thrown around here. But he refers here to not allowing himself to endure physical suffering. There are other examples such as the Buddha's back pain and I think Daniel also referred to his time with a high grade fever in one post a while ago.
Shinzen also says; Suffering = Pain x Resistance. I am not an arhat. But this equation has largely been my experience, equanimity and removing a big part of the resistance component did reduce baseline suffering a lot.
But, having faced some pain and difficulties lately... There did seem to be an intensity, perhaps the top 2%, that did not benefit from a reduction in general baseline resistance/reactivity. It was like minimal resistance didn't really matter much when the pain component got very high. It just kind of wiped out everything. I also noticed a very sharp reduction in access to jhanic states, which in good health could generally be tuned into just by orientating there. They relied upon a healthy body and mind. Insight practise was useful in some sense of knowing what to do, knowing the components of what was occuring, not taking sensations to be self, naturally blunting any loops between physical sensation and mental reaction, often breaking up intensity in vibration, and so on. Who knows, maybe it would have been 5-10x worse without insight practise?
And yet, it still disheartening that such a high degree of suffering was still possible. A motivation to practise much more, but also a question of, what is really possible? Are there false expectations here?
On the other hand... I remember reading biographies of sages like Ramana Maharshi, who when afflicted with cancer/diseases, still appeared to be in bliss, not suffering at all.
I'd be very grateful to hear any insight and personal experiences into the nature of suffering vs pain at 4th path and beyond.
svmonk, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 12:50 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 12:47 PM
RE: Wayne Wirs
Posts: 403 Join Date: 8/23/14 Recent Posts
Hey there Doctor A!
Enjoy your satirical posts, but this one seems more on the serious side.
My experience with pain is that if you can kind of get underneath it and experience it as "energy" * plus some aversion, and then realise the aversion as sort of the sharp end of wisdom, you are just left with the energy. It's sort of like Shinzen's formula but not quite as cut and dried, not so objective. I've only had experience with really serious pain once, when I had a bicycle accident and broke my right shoulder in two places. That actually led to a serious insight into not self while sitting on the examining room table in the emergency room, watching as a painkiller slowly caused the pain to recede. Other times, mostly if I can gather enough concentration, I can make the separation, but sometimes it just escapes me. Especially with abdominal pain.
The basic problem with prolonged pain is that it seriously drains you, especially if you need to concentrate the mind on it for a long period of time. Your entire sense of identity is overwhelmed by the pain. On a more theoretical level, I'm right now studying some tantra and the basic idea there is to use the kleshas to achieve realization. The sort of motto is: the First Turning is about abandoning the kleshas to achieve Enlightenment, the Second Turning (aka Nagarjuna and the Prasangika Madhyamaka ) is about realizing the kleshas as Emptiness, the Third Turning (aka tantra) is about using the kleshas to achieve Enlightenment. So that sense of identity being overwhelmed is kind of like dropping your identification with body/mind.
Of course, now and then if you have to deal with the postman or the clerk at the grocery store, a little Vicoden can't hurt.
Hope that helps.
*I hate that word, it sounds so new agey but I don't know what else to call it. It's called prana in Sanskirt, particularly in tantric study, and at has a specific meaning but there is no real equivalent in English. "Energy" to me means kwh or joules or something like that, the capacity to do work, not this swirling mass of powerful sensation that causes you to want to jump up and do something.
Enjoy your satirical posts, but this one seems more on the serious side.
My experience with pain is that if you can kind of get underneath it and experience it as "energy" * plus some aversion, and then realise the aversion as sort of the sharp end of wisdom, you are just left with the energy. It's sort of like Shinzen's formula but not quite as cut and dried, not so objective. I've only had experience with really serious pain once, when I had a bicycle accident and broke my right shoulder in two places. That actually led to a serious insight into not self while sitting on the examining room table in the emergency room, watching as a painkiller slowly caused the pain to recede. Other times, mostly if I can gather enough concentration, I can make the separation, but sometimes it just escapes me. Especially with abdominal pain.
The basic problem with prolonged pain is that it seriously drains you, especially if you need to concentrate the mind on it for a long period of time. Your entire sense of identity is overwhelmed by the pain. On a more theoretical level, I'm right now studying some tantra and the basic idea there is to use the kleshas to achieve realization. The sort of motto is: the First Turning is about abandoning the kleshas to achieve Enlightenment, the Second Turning (aka Nagarjuna and the Prasangika Madhyamaka ) is about realizing the kleshas as Emptiness, the Third Turning (aka tantra) is about using the kleshas to achieve Enlightenment. So that sense of identity being overwhelmed is kind of like dropping your identification with body/mind.
Of course, now and then if you have to deal with the postman or the clerk at the grocery store, a little Vicoden can't hurt.
Hope that helps.
*I hate that word, it sounds so new agey but I don't know what else to call it. It's called prana in Sanskirt, particularly in tantric study, and at has a specific meaning but there is no real equivalent in English. "Energy" to me means kwh or joules or something like that, the capacity to do work, not this swirling mass of powerful sensation that causes you to want to jump up and do something.
Rednaxela, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 2:16 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 2:14 PM
RE: Wayne Wirs
Posts: 158 Join Date: 12/23/11 Recent PostsDoctor Avocado:
His post raises an important point though, which has not been discussed much here. He says in this post:
"Do not feel sad. I have accomplished everything I have set out to do. No authentic spiritual teacher fears death, so why would they allow themselves to endure physical suffering?"
"Do not feel sad. I have accomplished everything I have set out to do. No authentic spiritual teacher fears death, so why would they allow themselves to endure physical suffering?"
What somewhat troubles me in reading Mystical Oneness is how convinced Wayne is of an eternal soul and future lives. This was based on some holototropic breathwork and a few acadamics studies. Great that he didn't fear death but I really hope he got this right.
Stirling Campbell, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 3:25 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 3:25 PM
RE: Wayne Wirs
Posts: 636 Join Date: 3/13/16 Recent PostsGenerate Operate Destroy:
Like each moment was it's own separate existence/life, and the most painful thing to happen is to be "born" through identification with what's happening.
How does this "look" to you? I see something similiar, that presents a bit like "moments" are dividing up into the frames of a film. I've suffered through a couple of things, watching in this view and not engaging, so that the pain is just another sensation, though not entirely without a pleasant/unpleasant bias.
Stirling Campbell, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 5:51 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/17 5:49 PM
RE: Wayne Wirs
Posts: 636 Join Date: 3/13/16 Recent Posts
It sounds like what you are talking about is "putting your mind on an object" as one of my Zen teachers would say, or "creating local awareness" as one of my Dzogchen teachers would put it. Loch Kelly does some stuff on this. The idea here being awareness is away from the painful stimuli.
It DOES work.
It DOES work.