Month: September 2010

There was once a sense of revolution here around San Francisco, and a strange melding of African-American, Asian-American, Native American, and Anglo-American influences. A bop and beat culture with Taoist and Buddhist influences, that understood that Native Americans had the right idea about the land, and was determined to bring Western science into the mix. The psychedelics made a transformation of culture seem imminent. The appearance of amazing teachers from the East made the transformation of culture seem imminent. The advent of rock ‘n roll and punk rock made the transformation of culture appear imminent.

The transformation of culture depends on people having fun, and yet it also depends on people learning how to stretch into fun. The carrot here is people that can demonstrate fun consistently, like Brad Warner (and apparently Zero Defex?), like Nina Hartley, like Kobun’s successor Vanja Palmers on the dance floor (ok, haven’t seen it but I’m sure it’s true), while also demonstrating a proclivity for stretch. That is contagious. Brad is writing to demonstrate the peculiar fun of experiencing a lack of self in a posture of prayer, sexual or otherwise.

Last time I saw Kobun (unusual Zen guy, wanted to be called Kobun without any honorific), he was concluding three week-long sesshins back-to-back. Someone asked him if he had any pain or numbness in the lotus, and he replied that he never did (of course, his father was a Zen teacher, and Kobun first started sitting at age seven). Kobun noted that he did have pain in seiza, sitting on the knees.

So it can be done, that’s my take. The motion at the sacrum allows the weight of the body to trigger reciprocal innervation in the ligaments that connect the sacrum to the pelvis; that would be the sacro-iliac, sacro-spinous, and sacro-tuberous ligaments. Motion is generated at the sacrum, at the hips, down through the legs, back up the legs and the spine, forward and back between the extensors and the psoas, and in the movement of breath. In the end, the place of occurrence of consciousness sits the lotus, and it moves if you let it so that everything sits the lotus, without exception; attachment, aversion, and ignorance can be observed to condition the place of occurrence of consciousness, and the witness allows the end of a suffering.

“all bozos on this bus”- David Chadwick’s byline.

I made comments on Gudo Nishijima’s blog because I believe like him that there can be a fusion of Western and Eastern sciences. I got a very cordial response, even a request that I help Brad, and then what I felt was disinterest. Gudo didn’t respond to the ideas I put forward, except to say that he didn’t follow links to other sites. Can’t blame him, I wish him well.

Gudo talks about balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous systems, yet I have yet to find any elaboration of his meaning beyond a vague description of the two systems. I myself am convinced that the sense of place in consciousness as consciousness occurs serves the two autonomic respirations, the pulmonary and the primary (cranial-sacral osteopathy refers to the changes in fluid volume of the dural fluid as the primary respiration). This is actually very similar to Gudo’s sympathetic and parasympathetic, in that the one is centered around the sacrum, lower abdomen, and skull, and the other around the chest. The balance for me is really just the place of mind when consciousness occurs spontaneously, and when the place consciousness occurs is conditioned by ignorance, attachment, or aversion, a witness of how the place of consciousness is conditioned serves to free the occurrence of consciousness.

As far as the physics, the sense of place leads the balance of the body, and generates reciprocal innervation in the fascia and ligaments that stretch when we sit or stand, or even just breathe. The sense of place is sufficient to the appropriate action of posture.

As far as the spiritual, there is a phenomena connected with the movement of breath that enables the contact of sense to extend beyond our physical limitations, seemingly.

I think it’s possible to write the meditation manual that Dogen set out to write when he came back from China; he stole most of it (see Bielefeldt’s “Dogen ‘s Meditation Manuals”), and he didn’t have enough science. Neither do we, but thanks to John Upledger we are close!