Category: body as path

Attention of and to the Matrix of Life

On February 6, 2024

In body, body as path, ecology, embodied, Gendlin, implicit order, mindfulness

When I think over the fifty-six years since I left high school, I can say confidently that I can think of no single thing which has contributed to my healthy development (in terms of growing up and waking up) more than wisely-directed attention. Conversely, if I think of the suffering which I have brought upon myself and others at one juncture or another in that time, inevitably the most influential factor in my harmful behaviour was unskilful attention. If you ask what characterizes unskilful attention, I would say that in general I have hurt myself and others when selfishness has guided attention.

This may sound harsh, especially because when I left high school I was young – inexperienced, naive, and (in my case) very lost. That’s so. And yet, looking at the situation with an honest gaze, it was exactly that lack of self-knowledge that played a part in directing my attention unskilfully. I had much to learn, and the learning which has occurred was precisely due to the ‘right’ use of attention.

What characterizes ‘right attention’? Development became possible when attention was directed to knowing myself as a concrete life. The etymology of ‘concrete’ is helpful here. The word descends from a Latin root which means: to grow together. In the present context, what are the processes which are connected, or ‘grow together’?

I find this tricky to talk about, because the two processes I will start with aren’t ‘connected’ in the sense of there being ‘two processes’ at all. We talk that way, and it helps; but it’s not the most accurate way to conceive of our situation. That is, in a very real way the human individual is a growth movement with and of their matrix – which is the natural world. An individual is a separate process in some important respects, but not in all respects. World and organism are one interaction and move forward together. Your lived world and the big world of nature are indissolubly united in growing together. In his A Process Model Gendlin says that while the body and environment are in some respects different, “The body is a nonrepresentational concretion of (with) its environment.” That is, in its fundamental actuality it is one body-environment process.

So, let me suggest that the world of personal experience is both ‘within’ and of the bigger world. This has been recognised for a long time. What the European phenomenologists called ‘the lived world’ the Buddha called ‘a world within a world.’ The important thing to note here is that one’s lived world and the bigger life process have always grown together.

Humans have not only evolved ‘up from Eden,’ as has been said – but, we have evolved with Eden. And the human process we call attention is still in the process of developing with vast nature as its matrix. When, at last, skilful attention led me to this realisation, and when I could confidently conceive of my body as of the world, then healthy development became organic.

But where do we now find ourselves, at this point within the evolution of the wider world? Poised for extinction, or for a further development? At our present level of development, we can think of our attention as functioning on two different levels. One level is shaped by three major urges such as: the need to possess people and things (a going toward); the desire to be aggressive (a going against); and a limited ability to learn from the matrix of primordial experiencing (a going away).

The other level involves disconnecting from the concrete in an even stronger way than simply a limit on learning. Via our capacity for symbol-making we effect a dissociation from bodily life. This second level creates the kinds of thinking and recreation of the world which are out of kilter with the way things are. This happens when preferences, thoughts, self-representations, and societal conditioning come into play. The matrix itself, of course, doesn’t prohibit this, but it is obvious that this level’s malfunctioning is not in favour of our continued life on planet earth.

The arising of symbolizing in the species was not itself a problem. For a time this level carried human life forward. However, it is how we are using it at this stage in our development which has brought our present dangerous predicament.

We will explore how this has happened, and the way forward. A large part of my project here is directed toward understanding what healthy attention is, and how it can develop from this ‘default mode.’ It might help us survive if we can develop attention in such a way that it can fulfil its true function as the world’s attention. It seems to me that this is an invitation that the bigger world offers.

Letter to Friends: Concern

By Christopher

On January 1, 2024

In body as path, body-mind dualism, everyday life, goal

Dear Kalyanamitta,

I have had two life-long preoccupations. Firstly, ever since I was a child, I wanted to know what people were talking about when they referred to ‘the mind.’ This preoccupation first manifested as a wish to know what was meant by the word ‘I.’ At age four, I asked my father “Who am I?” I didn’t want to know my name and place in the family; but his answer was: “What are you talking about? You’re Christopher. You’re your mother’s son.” Yet, my question was more essential than this.

I wanted to know what the nature of the knower was. I knew that I knew things, but I couldn’t see that knower, the one who was experiencing the ‘seens’ and ‘heards’ of the world. I remember later, at nine years old, staring at some stones and asking, “They’re there (those stones), so where is the one who is seeing them, the one I am in here?” I’d look back, inwardly, to see if I could discern ‘me’; but to no avail. In adult language, I can say that from age four onwards, I was occasionally beset by perceptions about (what a sophisticated person might call) ‘the inside/outside distinction.’

I didn’t get any help in that project from my parents, or from the other the adults in my childhood world. They, as it turned out, were as lost as I was – and it showed. Violence was a constant in my childhood. It was in my home, in the local streets, and even in the classrooms at school. The human world was a very unsafe place. By the time I left high school at seventeen, I entertained the possibility that violence went with being human. The Vietnam War – a war I refused to participate in – was raging at the time. And, as well, by the completion of my university education, I knew well of two other shocking battle-fronts: one maintained by men against women, and the other maintained by men (mostly men) against the natural environs – against the earth, plants, sky, and waters; and against the non-human creatures which inhabit these domains.

I was, of course, like everyone else, divided against myself. Regarding my own divided mind, while I was still at high school I began to take steps to find some peace. I learned a form of Eastern meditation, I encountered the philosophy of Plato and his mentor Socrates, and I also read some texts by the Christian mystic Master Eckhart. Daily meditation opened up a whole new domain of discovery, an ancestral domain. Hence, by the time I left university at twenty-three, I had started on a path of personal transformation which would resolve – for myself, at least – those two issues; that of self-knowledge, and that of the world-wide war on nature. It was clear to me that humans are lost in concepts, leading us to be insensitive to what holds us, the ever-present matrix of dynamic self-generating life.

As I proceeded through my twenties, it became evident that our war on nature – that is, against the Earth, against women, against each other, and, peculiarly, against ourselves – all this, had its roots in our lack of direct acquaintance with (what we call) ‘mind’ and its false separation from ‘body.’ In other words, the root of all conflict lies in our estrangement from our own nature. Back in those days, too, I remember reading Gregory Bateson’s teaching that the ‘mind’ is nature, and that it is a relational process.

As an aside, it struck me in my mid-twenties that I had been in my country’s education system for at least twenty years – from kindergarten, and on through university; and, in that time, not one of my educators had raised the issue of the meaning of the word ‘mind.’ Everyone used it in the most casual of conversations, yet no-one whom I met seriously questioned whether we knew its referent (except my fellow counter-cultural, consciousness trippers). I do know now, of course, that there were philosophers and psychologists who had long asked how we know the world, but I didn’t personally encounter them in all my years in the education system. That, I think, is an indication of the ignorance inherent in a Western education.

Eventually, I was able to have first-hand experience of the presence of mind – firstly through Buddhist meditation practice; and then later with the help of Western phenomenology. These two streams of inquiry enabled me, not only to feel that presence but, to further specify in modern terms what kind of accessible bodily process we refer to, when saying and thinking the word ‘mind.’ The result has been the felt inclusion of the non-conceptual dimension of ‘mind,’ a palpable embrace which helped me begin to transform the causes of conflict in myself. My ‘letters’ will explicate what I mean by ‘non-conceptual.’

The activist Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, said in Being Peace (Parallax Press): “Meditation is to see deeply into things, to see how we can change, how we can transform our situation. To transform our situation is also to transform our minds. To transform our minds is also to transform our situation, because the situation is mind, and mind is situation. Awakening is important. The nature of the bombs, the nature of injustice, the nature of the weapons, and the nature of our own being are the same. This is the real meaning of engaged Buddhism.”

‘Nature’ as the human and the ‘nature’ of everything else – it’s the same nature.

So, I am writing for those interested in contributing to the solution – the ending of conflict in humans. I meet regularly with people who are interested in healing the ‘inner’ roots of human conflict, the divided ‘mind.’ I’m not dismissing the ‘outer’ which you can study in politics, anthropology, sociology, psychology (which is mostly about brains, now), nor any other sciences. Neither am I saying that we can just meditate and all problems will be solved. Action to bring about change is important. However, without getting the ‘inner’ dimension right, we’ll only be angry, hateful forces; merely hoping that our scatter-gun can bring about change. As Dylan said, we’ll become our enemy in the instant that we speak.

sFundamentally, we need new models of the human which can stand alongside the dominant scientific concepts. Western society is still privileging models of human behaviour based on observations of the ‘outer,’ as though what’s going on ‘over there,’ at a distance, can tell us what is most essential about ourselves.

Science hasn’t yet formed a model for human knowing which includes the way we actually experience ourselves. Science has no place for what it’s like to feel like a human. Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, ‘What’s it like to be a bat?’ I presume that what he was getting at is the perennial importance of asking: ‘What’s it like to be a human being – a human being?’ “What’s it like to be you – a unique human, being?” Science is delightful and useful, to be sure, but experiencing yourself is a wholly different matter. I don’t experience neuronal networks. I experience body, feelings, perceptions, intentionality, and consciousness. (Here, there are other words and models for how to say what we experience. But this will do for now. The point is, these I can be mindful of.)

I have had various trainings, both Eastern (Buddhism) and Western (psychotherapy and phenomenology). I have learned much about ‘this being human’ from four main sources: from my compassionate teachers; from exploring in mindful psychotherapy sessions with many non-Buddhist clients (as a therapist myself); from experiencing my own being-as-such; and, from teaching Buddhist practice. My ‘letters’ will, no doubt, reflect all that.

I wish to suggest a model of the human being which can help transform of our underlying tendencies to destructiveness. In sum, I could say that I will unpack Nhat Hanh’s statement: “To transform our minds is also to transform our situation, because the situation is mind, and mind is situation.” (My emphasis.)

In this model, where “Awakening is important,” I place ‘experiencing’ to the forefront. The question “What’s it like, really, to be a human?” matters in every situation on our little blue planet – the only world that we people and all the other species inhabit. Let’s talk about the state of Being-here, everywhere we can.

Next: The person who wishes to discover what is true, what is real – and what is truly beautiful – must have a different relationship to authority than the person who ignores his or her relationship to (‘what is’).

Ways of Seeing the Body

By Christopher

On July 30, 2013

In body, body as path, ecology

What is clear from the experience of mindfulness, from this practice of immediacy, is that the lived body is not the body of science, nor the medical body; that it has gradations from (what might be called) course experience to very subtle. And instead of being a mere ‘housing’ for an owner, it has level upon level of intelligence of its own. Perhaps if humanity listened more attentively to the body’s wisdom, we might find a way forward in a way that respects nature, and doesn’t dominate it. Anyhow, at the very least, you and I can contribute by finding our way into belonging on the earth, by attuning to our bodies.

Body as Way and Goal

By Christopher

On July 6, 2010

In body as path, goal, Nibbāna, path

Amataṃ tesaṃ viraddhaṃ, yesaṃ kāyagatā sati viraddhā.
Amataṃ tesaṃ aviraddhaṃ, yesaṃ kāyagatā sati aviraddhā.
Amataṃ tesaṃ aparibhuttaṃ, yesaṃ kāyagatā sati aparibhuttā.
Amataṃ tesaṃ paribhuttaṃ, yesaṃ kāyagatā sati paribhuttā.

“Those who have missed mindfulness of the body, have missed nibbāna. Those who have not missed mindfulness of the body, have not missed nibbāna. Those who have not made use of mindfulness of the body, have not made use of nibbāna. Those who have made use of mindfulness of the body, have made use of nibbāna.” (A.i.46)
(translator: possibly, U Sein Nyo Tun, because the same text is at http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Ledi/Anapanasati/anapanasati.html#BodyMindfulness)

Amata is an ambrosia of immortality. It also means a state of security from change. Amata is a synonym for nibbana. So, here we are talking about the realisation of the deathless, and the deathless realisation.

“Those who have made use of mindfulness of the body, have made use of nibbana.” The deathless is often made into something so aloof that the idea of ‘using’ the deathless is rarely heard of. It reminds me of Sariputta’s advice to Anaruddha to “turn toward the deathless.” Again, often we encouraged to be very passive in our relation with the immeasureable. So, these passages need investigating in our actual lives. How can we now make use of nibbāna? Maybe Buddhadasa’s idea (and I’m remembering this and not verifying the concept from his books, right now), the idea of little nibbānas that happen everyday, would be useful here?

Along with this teaching, or in the context of this teaching on the mindfulness of the body, there is a lovely teaching in the Majjhima Nikaya, the Samana-Mundika Sutta, where the Buddha says (in Bhikkhu Thanissaro’s translation):

“Now, an individual endowed with which ten qualities is one whom I describe as being consummate in what is skillful, foremost in what is skillful, an invincible contemplative attained to the highest attainments? One endowed with the right view of one beyond training, the right resolve of one beyond training, the right speech… the right action… the right livelihood… the right effort… the right mindfulness… the right concentration… the right knowledge… the right release of one beyond training. An individual endowed with these ten qualities is one whom I describe as being consummate in what is skillful, foremost in what is skillful, an invincible contemplative attained to the highest attainments.”

This is the ten-fold path = nibbāna = with the vision of things-as-they-are (which is right knowledge beyond training). The present path is the goal, the goal is the path. This very body – is the way and the goal.