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Posts clarifying the relationship of Buddhist philosophy and practices to the evolution of Human Nature.

The Middle Ways

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In broad terms, the liberal versus conservative divide also characterizes the difference between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. This is not to say that Western traditions focus on institutions while Eastern traditions focus on freedom. Rather, it is that Western traditions invest power and authority in exemplars, while Eastern traditions tend to focus on advancing the ability of the individual to manage his or her interior life.

The focus on personal truth generated oscillations in Eastern – and in particular Indian – speculations. Starting at one end with a focus to learn how the world operated, the Indian philosophers would examine the reality around them, and then realize that the senses and psychology of the investigator influenced their observations. Delving ever deeper into theories of human experience with the goal of eliminating bias, the investigator would encounter levels of interior truth, until a deep mystical connection to a benevolent presence was encountered. The mystic’s desire to bond permanently to that presence would lead them into deeper and deeper introspection, and eventually a complete withdrawal from society. This led to irrelevance, vulnerability and ridicule, which would cause a shift by later generations back towards concern with material realities. The cycle would repeat over the time-scale of centuries.

It was through the lens of this philosophical context that I first interpreted the Buddhist concept of “The Middle Way”. It was a set of practices and principles that helped the investigator to maintain a presence in both worlds. The principles include compassion for all sentient beings and mindfulness. The most widely known practice is meditation, although tantra expands more broadly into human sensory experience. Less well known is “emptiness”: the skill of relating to reality without imposing a personal agenda upon its unfolding.

I am bemused by the way that this wisdom is being repackaged for consumption in modern Western culture. It appears that there is a cycle being created within the cycle. I don’t know whether the teachers are conscious of the program they are constructing, or whether they are simply focusing on what makes sense to them in the context of modern psychology.

In this new framework, the “middle way” is a path between narcissism and social engagement. The focus is relation with each other, and in particular removing the impediment of aggression against human bonding. “Mindfulness” is a method for being conscious of and therefore maintaining some influence over our reactions to events around us. Meditation is first and foremost a means of developing mental discipline.

I call this a “cycle within a cycle” because it appears that establishing these skills is an important precondition for entering into the greater “Middle Way” that leads to participation in the evolution of spiritual principles. This is terribly momentous and psychologically hazardous work with “infinite” dependencies, as Ethan Nichtern pointed out in his last lecture. It is not a place for people that are confused about the boundaries of their personalities.

What bemuses me is the conflation of the “Middle Way” and the “middle way”. I am concerned that the leap between the two is far greater than is suggested by the casual use of shared terminology. Between the surrender of the self and entry into negotiation between principles is a long, confusing and often blundering exploration of how the principles are arrayed about us. They penetrate into material reality with subtle and non-local manifestations. Upon being uprooted from one location, they drift – almost literally – on the wind until they find a place to root in sympathetic circumstances. When excluded, they gather in concentrated form, which is why our avatars, both good and evil, tend to arise in paradoxical circumstances.

One of the practices upheld in Bodhisattva teaching is that of patience. As Ethan emphasized, those that adopt the path are doing the work of generations. Given that insight, I am hoping that a practice of shared spiritual cartography would be offered to those trying to make the leap across the “middles”.

The Absolute Theory of Relatives

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At this summer’s Buddhist Geeks conference in Rosemead, I was impressed in particular by two of the presenters: Diane Hamilton and Ethan Nichtern.

Ethan was until recently the head of the InterDependence Project in New York City. IDP offers a certificate program in Buddhist studies, so when Ethan sent me a notice that he was starting a lecture series on the Bodhisattva path, I signed up for the study-at-home program.

As I understand Ethan, the Bodhisattva path is the pursuit of Bodhichitta, or compassion for all sentient beings. Achieving a consistent expression of that perspective requires that we consciously dissolve the separation between ourselves and the other. On this path, the seeker is offered four reliances to guard against a descent into narcissism. Trust the teaching more than the teacher. Trust the meaning, not the words. Hold ultimate guidance above provisional guidance. Trust wisdom (with Ethan characterizes as the melding of understanding and intuition) above knowledge.

From the recorded discussion, both Bodhichitta and the final reliance are difficult to grasp. They define states of being, rather than describing the transformative potential of achieving those states. That means that we don’t know how those states will influence behavior, nor how to interact with or support the work done by people that achieve those states.

One of the most powerful concepts in Buddhism, although it takes several formulations, is the distinction between absolute and relative forms of truth. I first encountered these concepts in the chapters on “Other Buddhist Teachings” in Thich Naht Hahn’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. Ethan observes that there is a slippery correlation between “ultimate” and absolute. I’ll start by explaining my understanding of the nature of absolute and relative forms of truth, and elaborate from there.

This axiom is fundamental: Life is the co-evolution of material and spiritual forms. The ultimate goal is the acquisition of spiritual power. That power can be used for two purposes: to gain influence over material reality, or to liberate the self from attachments with the goal of returning to the realm of the Divine. There are two kinds of attachments: entanglement with selfish personalities that seek to tie us down, and material concerns, which are driven by pain.

The paradox of this reality is that to separate ourselves from selfish personalities, we either have to brace our spirits against matter or purge our intimates of their selfishness. If we choose the former, we expose our selves to pain, which leads us naturally to question our choices, and so to enter into the trap of suffering. If we choose the latter, the only way to establish buy-in to the program is to express with complete authenticity our concern for the other.

Now it seems like we’re almost to the end, as in that last sentence we can almost see the principle of Bodhichitta in action. But let’s backtrack a bit: spirit did not start out knowing the endpoint. In the early, highly dynamic stages of material evolution, patterns of spirit that were universally applicable to their needs would have been the only patterns to survive. These would be patterns that we would now characterize as principles. Examples might be “stability”, “consumption” and “proliferation”. Association with “stability” facilitates the survival of a spiritual pattern, adding “consumption” facilitates coupling to material forms that acquire resources to support growth (undermining stability), adding “proliferation” extends access to resources while limiting physical growth (harmonizing stability and consumption).

So here is the realm of the absolute truths, in the realm of spiritual principles. They are persistent resources that various and diverse biological forms can draw upon to more effectively organize and acquire spiritual power. The problem, of course, is that the principles themselves are in competition. It’s amusing here to recall the challenge of competition in Tolkein’s words:

One ring to rule them all. One ring to find them. One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

In other words, competition is itself a principle. It’s action is to force principles into intimate and self-corrupting engagements that eventually squeeze the life out of them. A benefit can be rationalized: competition is one way of breaking stasis, and thereby producing new principles.

The counter-acting principle, and it’s no accident that its avatars shed light, is unconditional love. It involves the intelligent and conscious practice of helping principles organize themselves in ways that strengthen the aggregate. The primary advantage of this approach is that it doesn’t eat itself as competition does (one of the truths that informed the choice of the title “Love Works”). It tends to view differences through the lens of comparison.

In contrast, the realm of the relative is full of events dominated by dumb matter. This includes things like supernovae and volcanic eruptions, but also many of our autonomous functions (breathing and hunger). Obviously, experience is often a composite of the relative and absolute. Principles influence our concrete behaviors, and our behavior injects energy (either supportive or corrupting) into the principles.

While I wouldn’t claim to be a Bodhisattva, so the suggestion is “provisional” (Ouch! Not enough words!), I believe that the action of a Bodhisattva is to participate in the organization of principles. Their formulation of ultimate guidance express that work. The Bodhisattva’s engagement affords them a certain clarity of perception regarding the relationship between relative behaviors and intimacy with absolute principles. They make suggestions to students intended to improve their associations, which are presented to the student as provisional guidance. Once the student achieves intimacy, of course, the provisional guidance fall away.

At this point, I think that we have arrived at one of the aspects of “wisdom” described by Ethan, but there’s more to be said. This is less well supported here – Chapter 4 of “Love Works” describes a class of physical theories that support this perspective – but my experience is that spiritual forms have a different experience of “time” than do material forms. This has to do with the “relative” (Ouch again! Take the mathematical sense) speeds of signal propagation. When we enter into collaboration with the principles, the future becomes visible to us through the lens of their evolution. I have taken to saying that “holy moments join the past and future through a conduit of love”. That’s the basis of the old adage about “women’s intuition”. I’m hoping (closer to expecting?) that people like Ethan find it readily available to them.

The Rude Chakra

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I would imagine that readers of this blog might be asking “Why?” Not just, “why are you writing this”, but also “why do you think you have the authority to undertake this work?”

Bear with me while I explain:

Among the methods for spiritual development are practices that focus on the activation of “energy centers” in an ascending sequence from the hips to the crown of the head.

My orientation to the seven chakras, an Indian categorization, occurred simultaneously with reading of Cozolino’s The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. I was stunned by the close parallels between the personality traits manifested at each stage of chakra activation and the development of the seven neurological centers involved with socialization. Clearly, the investigators of chakra had captured something fundamental about human personality.

So what, then, to make of the parapsychology of the chakra system? The capacity for healing obtained through activation of the heart chakra? The gifts of divine knowledge and wisdom? Why would the investigators have corrupted their careful study of human psychology with unfounded assertions such as these? My sense was that it would be unlikely – that in fact the assertions are based in fact.

The principal hazard in exploration of the chakras is the sequential order of the activation. The theory is that the root chakra, located at the base of the spine, is the conduit for spiritual energy (prana) that arises and activates subsequent energy centers. Of course, that energy is tied to fundamental life processes, including, at the root level, our sexuality.

In adults, once control of that energy is established, a common tendency is to engage in sexual self-gratification. Some people never tire of that game. Worse, kundalini energy, once turned on, becomes an extremely powerful tool in the hands of manipulators interested in controlling our will.

Having gotten past that stage, I am now mortified when the response to an offer of heart or mind energy is sexual energy. It’s usually driven by simple greed: the simplest way to ensure access to knowledge and power is to grab on to the source at the root level. In the process, energies that are designed to support our basic life processes are raised up and set loose in the more delicate structures of personal discipline and social imagination. Generally, a mess results.

It is, indeed, rude, in the sense of both “crude” and “insensitive”.

It was with some interest, then, that I reacted to being told by a reader of auras that I have a gap of four inches in the flow of prana up my spine, located just above the root chakra. I was told at the same time that “[I] keep on losing parts of myself” in the course of the sequence of my lives. I therefore assumed that the gap was a prophylactic step taken before entering this life, as a means of keeping people from getting into my heart energy through sex.

There’s some truth to this, but recent events counter that interpretation. When I finally decided that I needed to stop investing energy in people that were unable to reciprocate in kind, I went through a period of several weeks in which I felt at times that the top of my head was going to come off. All the energy I had been laying about was seeking an outlet through the crown chakra.

At the suggestion of a friend, one night I began experimenting with alternative channels for the flow. In a few minutes, I found myself directing it down through my spine, bridging the gap. In the following days, the transformation in my personal energy was unexpected. In yoga classes, problems with alignment of my spine began to evaporate. And in interacting with peers and family members, I have become more direct, to the point, well, of being “rude”.

In terms of the activation of the chakras, though, I need to emphasize the reversal of sequence. I am reorganizing my root chakra with energy originating from the heart, rising through the crown, and now being directed downwards.

And this brings to mind the Native American theory of energy centers. In that theory, there are twenty total stages of development. The first ten are similar to the Indian chakras, rising along the spine and blooming from the body through the crown. The pattern of personal development is also similar. One the tenth stage is activated, the subsequent stages repeat the sequence, with the subject of the work being the community served by the practitioner.

So, to the original question: the reason I am doing this is because it is the only thing that works for me at this time. A consequence of that program, I am beginning to realize, will be the injection of discipline into the pool of prana drawn upon by Human Nature.