Month: April 2012

That which we will…, and that which we intend to do and that wherewithal we are occupied:–this becomes an object for the persistance of consciousness. The object being there, there comes to be a station of consciousness. Consciousness being stationed and growing, rebirth of renewed existance takes place in the future, and here from birth, decay, and death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow, and despair come to pass. Such is the uprising of this mass of ill.

Even if we do not will, or intend to do, and yet are occupied with something, this too becomes an object for the persistance of consciousness… whence birth… takes place.

But if we neither will, nor intend to do, nor are occupied about something, there is no becoming of an object for the persistance of consciousness. The object being absent, there comes to be no station of consciousness. Consciousness not being stationed and growing, no rebirth of renewed existence takes place in the future, and herefrom birth, decay-and-death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow and despair cease. Such is the ceasing of this entire mass of ill.

(SN II 65, Pali Text Society vol. 2 pg 45)

So how does one act in the absence of will, intention, and preoccupation? I would contend that what we truly believe causes us to act, like the hypnotist’s subject responding to suggestion, and that such action can take place in the absence of will, intention, or preoccupation, just as a hypnotist’s subject can be moved without the exercise of their will or intention.

If you grant that this is possible, then the collection of experiences and thoughts that make up what we believe cause our action. We think it’s our exercise of will or intention that sets us in motion, physically and mentally, because we have never watched ourselves move without volition, but actually we have no more choice about it than the subject in a deep trance.

Those who think they can resist hypnosis are generally the easiest to hypnotize, that’s my understanding. Those who think what they believe has no relationship to their actions, haven’t realized what it is that they truly believe.

I was dancing a little bit tonight to a pair of guitar players at an event, and for me something seemed to flow as I accepted the ability of the cranial-sacral rhythm at my place of mind to open the cranial-sacral rhythm elsewhere in my body. Sometimes our unconscious arranges for consciousness to take place at precisely the location necessary to impact a stretch and open the exit of nerves from the sacrum, spinal column, or skull; I would say that’s exactly what happened when you bent over to pick up that shoe. It wasn’t just the bending; it was the impact of consciousness at a particular place with regard to your mind and body that added just a tiny bit of movement to the cranial-sacral rhythm where it was already moving well, opening the movement where it was not.

When I describe something I do that comes to me out of a necessity of breath and posture, like the way I dance or the stretches involved in the way I sit, I have to add that the real thing happens waking up and falling asleep. If I grasp at the feeling I have, I am no longer waking up and falling asleep, and my ability to feel changes. If what I feel informs the place of occurrence of consciousness, then the ability to feel is my necessity of breath and posture, and I find myself waking up or falling asleep in the midst of my activity.

You could not have opened movement in your sacrum and pelvis without a necessity that placed your mind just so, in response to your ability to feel.

I’m interested that Gautama the Buddha advocated for mindfulness or “remembrance” associated with four fields as the way to be a lamp onto oneself (no mention of precepts here, although I know it appears elsewhere). He stated that his own practice before and after enlightenment was such remembrance, in conjunction with inhalation or exhalation. The critical piece of his practice, the comprehension of the long inhalation as long, the short inhalation as short, the long exhalation as long, and the short exhalation as short is seldom mentioned when meditation is taught in Soto Buddhist temples. Perhaps that’s because of Dogen’s teacher Tiantong (Rujing), who said that since the breath came from “no place” to the tan-tien, it was neither long nor short.

My own experience teaches me that Dogen’s “pivot of zazen” is the ease and absorption that attend the inclusion of the mind as the sixth sense in the experience of the “where” of consciousness, and that this is related to the Gautamid’s “remembrance” of the long and short of the movement of breath.

To experience the long and short of inhalation and exhalation, I relinquish activity to the point of falling down and realize a hypnogogic detachment with regard to the place of occurrence of consciousness, in spite of the presence of postural behaviour associated with falling down triggered by the amygdala from childhood memories. I have described this as the practice of waking up and falling asleep (it’s easiest to find lying down falling asleep). If I judge a breath long or short in inhalation or exhalation, the practice of waking up and falling asleep is over, and yet the length of the breath in or out can be comprehended without being grasped.

That’s the nature of “mindfulness” and practice in general, it depends on “waking up and falling asleep” and is fundamentally ungraspable.