Post by zendancer on May 26, 2023 10:56:56 GMT -5
I recently had a conversation with a friend. The friend has a lot of drama in his extended family regarding many different issues. The primary issue at the moment is an older male in-law being charged with some alleged crimes involving underage females. Many members of the family are supportive of the male and expect all other members of the family to be equally supportive. Parts of the family do not know whether the alleged criminal activities actually took place, so they want to reserve judgement until the issue is resolved in court. It may be a "he-said/she-said" case, but there is more than one female involved, and nothing has yet been proven.
My friend and his wife want to stay uninvolved, but they face lots of pressure from other family members. He and his wife love to fish, and every year they rent a cabin on a lake and fish for two weeks. He told me that he was looking forward to two weeks of what he calls "bobber therapy." What he means is that when they go fishing, he and his wife leave all of the family drama behind as they focus on watching their bobbers bob due to fish strikes. They have both realized that their two weeks of fishing results in temporary peace of mind and their peace of mind often carries over for a week or so after they return home. I told him that what he calls "bobber therapy" is actually a form of ATA-T because what they're doing is shifting attention away from thoughts to direct sensory perception. I implied that what they're doing can continue after they return home if they continue shifting attention away from thoughts to what is actually happening in the present moment. He did not express any interest in that, so I didn't say anything more about it.
Afterwards, while thinking about our conversation, I remembered many other people who have described other similar activities that got them out of their heads and into their bodies, so to speak. This included comments by bird watchers, gardeners, hunters, and others. I remember one fellow telling me that his happiest memories from childhood involved going hunting with his father. His father insisted on total silence, and they would often sit together under a tree in a state of alert silence while watching for game. He told me that even if his father never saw a deer or anything else to take a shot at, there was something magical about sitting and watching in silence, and it made him feel very close to his father.
I suspect that most people have similar activities that cause them to shift attention away from self-referential thoughts, family drama-thoughts, or negative thoughts to direct sensory perception, but in most cases this kind of attention shifting is intermittent and short term in nature. I suggested to some people on a recent ND zoom meeting that there are several different approaches used by sages who interact with seekers that include:
1. The Neo-Advaita Tony Parsons approach of "nothing to do." The sage is saying that who the seeker thinks s/he is is imaginary, and the imaginary SVP can't do anything. This approach often triggers awakening events because it metaphorically slams the door on the seeker's mind, and it functions like jamming a log into a set of interlocking gears.
2. The Self-enquiry approach recommended by sages like Ramana. Seekers are told to enquire into who or what is it that sees, hears, feels, or thinks. Contemplating this kind of koan can shut down the mind and force a deeper level of intelligence (some people call it intuition) to become activated and yield an answer. In fact all koan contemplation, in general, works the same way.
3. Mindfulness (ATA+T) practice. This is a meditative activity during which one mentally stands back and dispassionately watches everything including both the "inside world" of thoughts and feelings as well as the "outside world" of what we might call "physical reality." The idea is to break identification with being a SVP and discover that one is awareness, itself.
4. Dissecting thoughts via questioning their validity. This approach is used by sages like Byron Katie. Her basic four questions include, (1) Is a particular thought true? (2) Can you know absolutely that it is true? (3) How do you feel and react when you have that thought? (4) How would you feel if you didn't have that thought? She then suggests reversing the thought and contemplating the implications of that reversal. The underlying idea is to show that all thoughts are both true and false at the same time and that no thoughts accurately reflect the truth.
5. Discarding thoughts altogether by shifting attention away from them (ATA-T) until one becomes free of the mind. Eckhart Tolle is one sage who uses this approach and when reviewing a summary of his teachings on the web, there were two admonitions that stood out--(1) Become free of the mind, and (2) After one becomes free of the mind (after mind is no longer dominant), then one can entertain thoughts without becoming attached to thoughts. This pointer coincides with the goal that Zen people call "non-abidance in mind." IOW, one utilizes various meditative activities to trigger realizations that change habits of mind until the mind becomes submissive to the deeper level of intelligence that is running the whole show. "Bobber therapy" and other forms of ATA-T would all fall under this pathway to truth. I often tell people that 99% of conventional thinking is unnecessary and is nothing more than an unconscious habit. It's not an easy habit to break, but breaking that habit is much like learning to speed-read, and breaking that habit seems to be highly correlated with existential realizations.
There are other pathways, such as mantra repetition favored by Tibetan Buddhists, but even though they may not explicitly state what that activity is doing, it seems to be another way of shutting off conventional thought patterns so that realizations get triggered and ultimately one attains freedom from the mind.
AAR, the issue of "bobber therapy" appears to be something that most people can relate to, and I wondered if other people on this forum have found similar activities that take them "beyond the mind?"
My friend and his wife want to stay uninvolved, but they face lots of pressure from other family members. He and his wife love to fish, and every year they rent a cabin on a lake and fish for two weeks. He told me that he was looking forward to two weeks of what he calls "bobber therapy." What he means is that when they go fishing, he and his wife leave all of the family drama behind as they focus on watching their bobbers bob due to fish strikes. They have both realized that their two weeks of fishing results in temporary peace of mind and their peace of mind often carries over for a week or so after they return home. I told him that what he calls "bobber therapy" is actually a form of ATA-T because what they're doing is shifting attention away from thoughts to direct sensory perception. I implied that what they're doing can continue after they return home if they continue shifting attention away from thoughts to what is actually happening in the present moment. He did not express any interest in that, so I didn't say anything more about it.
Afterwards, while thinking about our conversation, I remembered many other people who have described other similar activities that got them out of their heads and into their bodies, so to speak. This included comments by bird watchers, gardeners, hunters, and others. I remember one fellow telling me that his happiest memories from childhood involved going hunting with his father. His father insisted on total silence, and they would often sit together under a tree in a state of alert silence while watching for game. He told me that even if his father never saw a deer or anything else to take a shot at, there was something magical about sitting and watching in silence, and it made him feel very close to his father.
I suspect that most people have similar activities that cause them to shift attention away from self-referential thoughts, family drama-thoughts, or negative thoughts to direct sensory perception, but in most cases this kind of attention shifting is intermittent and short term in nature. I suggested to some people on a recent ND zoom meeting that there are several different approaches used by sages who interact with seekers that include:
1. The Neo-Advaita Tony Parsons approach of "nothing to do." The sage is saying that who the seeker thinks s/he is is imaginary, and the imaginary SVP can't do anything. This approach often triggers awakening events because it metaphorically slams the door on the seeker's mind, and it functions like jamming a log into a set of interlocking gears.
2. The Self-enquiry approach recommended by sages like Ramana. Seekers are told to enquire into who or what is it that sees, hears, feels, or thinks. Contemplating this kind of koan can shut down the mind and force a deeper level of intelligence (some people call it intuition) to become activated and yield an answer. In fact all koan contemplation, in general, works the same way.
3. Mindfulness (ATA+T) practice. This is a meditative activity during which one mentally stands back and dispassionately watches everything including both the "inside world" of thoughts and feelings as well as the "outside world" of what we might call "physical reality." The idea is to break identification with being a SVP and discover that one is awareness, itself.
4. Dissecting thoughts via questioning their validity. This approach is used by sages like Byron Katie. Her basic four questions include, (1) Is a particular thought true? (2) Can you know absolutely that it is true? (3) How do you feel and react when you have that thought? (4) How would you feel if you didn't have that thought? She then suggests reversing the thought and contemplating the implications of that reversal. The underlying idea is to show that all thoughts are both true and false at the same time and that no thoughts accurately reflect the truth.
5. Discarding thoughts altogether by shifting attention away from them (ATA-T) until one becomes free of the mind. Eckhart Tolle is one sage who uses this approach and when reviewing a summary of his teachings on the web, there were two admonitions that stood out--(1) Become free of the mind, and (2) After one becomes free of the mind (after mind is no longer dominant), then one can entertain thoughts without becoming attached to thoughts. This pointer coincides with the goal that Zen people call "non-abidance in mind." IOW, one utilizes various meditative activities to trigger realizations that change habits of mind until the mind becomes submissive to the deeper level of intelligence that is running the whole show. "Bobber therapy" and other forms of ATA-T would all fall under this pathway to truth. I often tell people that 99% of conventional thinking is unnecessary and is nothing more than an unconscious habit. It's not an easy habit to break, but breaking that habit is much like learning to speed-read, and breaking that habit seems to be highly correlated with existential realizations.
There are other pathways, such as mantra repetition favored by Tibetan Buddhists, but even though they may not explicitly state what that activity is doing, it seems to be another way of shutting off conventional thought patterns so that realizations get triggered and ultimately one attains freedom from the mind.
AAR, the issue of "bobber therapy" appears to be something that most people can relate to, and I wondered if other people on this forum have found similar activities that take them "beyond the mind?"
