Month: January 2013

Godel’s incompleteness theorem is not only accepted mathematics, but the first theorem to be subjected to formal proof by means of a computer. The theorem says that maybe 2 + 2 is not always 4, which is hard for many mathematicians to swallow (google “Is Arithmetic Consistent?”), and the reason arithmetic may contain some contradictions is the axiom of extension, the method of proof used to demonstrate that the finite case implies all cases.

If we have assumptions that produce no contradictions, then those assumptions will never describe all of mathematics; if our assumptions describe all that is known in mathematics, then there are contradictions that can be derived from our assumptions.

Gautama the Buddha was very careful about how far the logic he developed could be applied, and in some cases he said things like “(statement such-and-such) goes too far”, meaning that what someone was asking could not be discussed within the logic he had developed to describe his experience.

It’s possible to make very powerful statements about relationships that underlie much of the natural world with mathematics, but it’s not possible to describe the whole of what we know without contradiction. If we can limit ourselves to assumptions that don’t give rise to contradictions, maybe we like Gautama the Buddha can describe our experience in the practice of zazen in ways that communicate something of the relationships involved.

I’ll start: calming of the activity of the mind in the movement of breath, like relaxation of the activity of the body in the movement of breath, is conducive to the induction of a hynogogic state that actually sharpens the wits.

I have to be careful in my assumptions: I can relax, and I can calm down, and I believe science has a lot to offer in this regard, but the attainment of a hypnogogic state will always be “something other than” what I think it to be (as Gautama put it).

That’s why Shunryu Suzuki said that “zazen sits zazen”.

I can drop body and mind, but I can’t attain enlightenment. At a certain point, relaxing is the induction of a hypnogogic state; practice is enlightenment.

When scores of monks a day took the knife because of “the meditation on the unlovely” which Gautama had taught, Gautama gathered the monks and related his own practice before and after enlightenment, which was “the intent concentration on in-breaths and out-breaths”. This, he said, was a thing that was peaceful and conducive to happiness, in and of itself.

The only actions that are included in “the intent concentration on in-breaths and out-breaths” are relaxing the activity of the body with the in-breath and out-breath, and calming and composing the activity of mind with the in-breath and out-breath. The practice begins with awareness of the in-breath and out-breath, and I would argue the rest follows naturally as the body is relaxed and the mind is calmed down.

I’ve been studying a couple of illustrations Apech turned me onto–from the temples in Egypt, a long time ago. You might find this useful, with regard to the sacrum and L5:

I would suggest that the reed that the god is holding on either side of the pillar represents the horizontal ilio-lumbar ligaments, that engage as the spine is relaxed upward from the sacrum in the movement of exhalation. The presence of the god is an indication that the tensile support of the ligament is realized not through the direction of any conscious activity, but solely through the experience of the location of awareness and the ability to feel in the necessity of breath.

The hieroglyphs on the top of the pillar are in praise of the king of Egypt, but they also depict an orb like the sun, which is perhaps the Egyptian “akh” or consciousness freed of any fixture to location.

The toes of the god rest against either side of something shaped like the sacrum of the body; close-ups show that not only is the footrest of the god the shape of the sacrum, but it is also segmented in five parts like the sacrum.

The nerves which exit between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae and the first vertebrae of the sacrum allow an ability to feel in the lower legs and along the soles of the feet, right to the surface of the skin. As feeling for the placement and orientation of the legs and feet is absorbed into the sense of location in the occurrence of awareness, the alignment of vertebrae may allow feeling for the placement and orientation of the sacrum to enter awareness, and likewise for the bottom-most part of the spine.

That the body can be held upright in zazen solely through the interplay between a sense of location, an ability to feel, and relaxation in the movement of breath is illustrated in another graphic from the walls of the temples of Egypt:

The goddesses Isis and Nephthys kneel on what may be a woven material, one knee of each goddess resting against what might be construed to be a representation of the first lumbar transverse processes. This is exactly the vertebrae supported by the horizontal ilio-lumbar ligaments, and here a connection between the placement and orientation of the legs at the knees and support for this vertebrae is suggested. The hands of the goddesses frame the lower spine, while the headdresses, the baboons on either side of the image, the hands of the baboons and the hands of the “ankh” (the cross with an oval) all emphasize an upward extension. There are two mounds outside of the benches on which the goddesses kneel, very much in the shape of the pelvic wings, while the dunes the baboons walk on form a space whose interior resembles the cavity of the chest. The large dark border along the top of the image strongly resembles the diaphragm. The “ankh” or looped cross is speculated by some to be a representation of the vertebrae of a cow, and in my mind it’s entirely possible that this shape is used to represent the cranial-sacral fluid system as described in modern cranial-sacral osteopathy; regardless, the occurrence of consciousness freed of fixture to location is again depicted in the orb of the sun, here framed by hands extended upward from the ankh, and touching on the central cone of the diaphragm-like dark line.

The benches the goddesses kneel on I believe represent the ligaments that connect the sacrum to the pelvis, and the central point of the illustration would be the upward support provided as feeling opens for the orientation of the legs at the knees and the weight that rests on the ilio-sacral ligaments in the relaxed movement of breath.

The short rendition would be that feeling in the soles of the feet corresponds with feeling at the ilio-sacral joints, especially as a sense of roll is realized at the location of awareness and feeling throughout the body informs the sense of location. Roll has an aspect that is stretch and activity in the obturators, the muscles that hammock the hips away from the pelvis. Feeling for placement and motion in the knees corresponds with feeling at L5-L4-L3; I have an excellent dermatone chart from “Lower Back Pain” by Calliet that shows feeling on the surface of the skin on either side of the calf corresponds with L5-L4, and feeling above the knee with L3. This ability to feel is especially connected with yaw at the location of awareness, and the action of sartorius to swing the wings of the pelvis and engage gluteous and piriformis under the sitbones.

Even shorter rendition: the information coming from muscles, tendons, and joints informs the ability to feel necessary to relax the movement of breath, and contributes to the induction of a hypnogogic state with its accompanying singularity in the sense of location.

I’m writing lately about proprioception and sitting the lotus; I write for myself, first and foremost, but I’m hoping this approach will also serve for Westerners who want to learn to sit the lotus. I don’t sit many sesshins, and I don’t care if my sitting is ten minutes or 50; maybe I average about 30. It’s about stretch, but it’s also about subtle activity that takes place because of the stretch in the ligaments and fascia. These tissues can generate nerve impulses to contract muscles to relieve stretch, and in the lotus there’s a constant reciprocal stretch and activity.

Here’s some of what I have so far:

I would like to think that zazen, like the practice of “standing” in Chinese martial arts, puts me in a position to realize activity out of the necessity of breath.

Sitting cross-legged is sitting with a stretch. The ability to relax and allow action generated by the stretch of ligaments or fascia is part of the necessity of breath in the posture, and informs the place of occurrence of consciousness and the ability to feel.

Most people don’t realize that the ligaments and fascia of the body can generate nerve impulses that will contract muscles. Stretch in one of the seated postures of zazen (like the lotus) or in one of the standing postures of Tai-Chi (like the “single-whip” pose) can result in a subtle muscular activity that facilitates the lengthening of ligaments and can gradually include the entire body.

Stretch and activity in these postures is an involuntary reflex, as the location of awareness and the ability to feel respond to the necessity of breath at the moment.

Moshe Feldenkrais described three exercises that he said would facilitate getting up from a chair without holding the breath. These exercises consisted of swaying the upper body forward and back, then side to side, and finally in a circle around the base of the tailbone. Similar exercises are often recommended for settling into the posture of zazen, although instead of swaying in a circle, the zazen practitioner leans out diagonally over the knees.

These stretches highlight the ongoing activity of an upright posture, namely the action of the obturators that hammock the hips from the pelvis (side to side), the action of the sartorius muscles that shift the wings of the pelvis (toward the diagonals), and the action of the extensor and psoas muscles that balance the weight of the upper body on the sitbones of the pelvis (forward and back). The idea is to stretch ligaments and facilitate activity in all three directions, to allow the movement of breath to remain continuous even as the posture or carriage shifts.

In zazen, the sense of equilibrium associated with the current location of awareness in space brings forward the particulars of stretch necessary to the relaxed movement of breath. In particular, feeling for stretch side-to-side and action in the obturators comes by necessity with a sense of roll in the current location of awareness; feeling for stretch on the diagonals and action in the sartorius muscles comes by necessity with a sense of yaw in the current location of awareness; and feeling for stretch forward-and-back and action in the extensor and psoas muscles comes by necessity with a sense of pitch in the current location of awareness.

The sense of pitch, yaw, and roll that an aircraft pilot might utilize is very much at play in zazen; through the sense of equilibrium associated with the location of awareness in space, stretch and activity are initiated that align specific vertebrae and permit the ability to feel necessary to the current movement of breath.

In juggling, the juggler realizes the momentum and weight of each object as a contribution to the juggler’s own sense of physical location, in order to relax the activity of throwing and catching; in practicing zazan, the sitter experiences the orientation and weight of any body part that crosses the mind as a contribution to the sense of physical location, and the pitch, yaw, and roll inherent in the experience of location informs the stretch and activity necessary to the relaxed movement of breath.

To be clear, the effort is to relax and calm down. Master Cheng Man-ching’s instructions for the practice of Tai-Chi emphasized a thorough relaxation of the entire body, followed by a relaxation of the chest:

(The practitioner) should relax. The relaxation should be overall, that is, throughout the entire body. And it should be thorough, that is, without the least strain anywhere. The aim is to throw every bone and muscle of the entire body wide open without hindrance or obstruction anywhere. When (one) has done this, (one) will be in a position to talk about ch’i. To start with, (one) should let (the) ch’i sink right down to the “tan t’ien”. To do this (one) should first relax the chest, for the ch’i can only sink freely when the chest is relaxed. Gradually the ch’i will be felt to accumulate.

(Cheng Man-ch’ing, T’ai-chi Ch’uan, North Atlantic Books, 1981, pg 7, copyright Juliana T. Cheng- parantheticals paraphrase original)

And a little more:

The Chan teacher Yuanwu appears to have described the induction of a hypnogogic state, when he wrote:

You must strive with all your might to bite through here and cut off conditioned habits of mind. Be like a person who has died the great death: after your breath is cut off, then you come back to life. Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space. Only then do you reach the point where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.

(Zen Letters, translated by J.C. and Thomas Cleary, pg 84)

Yuanwu began by telling the reader to “bite through here”, drawing to mind the placement and movement of the jaw relative to the current sense of location; attention to the placement and movement of the jaw engages the sense of proprioception, or “the awareness of movement derived from muscular, tendon, and articular sources” (credited by Wikipedia to Sherrington’s “The Integrative Action of the Nervous System”, 19 6), and Yuanwu instructs his reader to engage the proprioceptive sense with the sense of location (“bite through here”), just as the Gautamid did in his description of the first meditative state (the ability to feel that leaves out no part of the body and that informs the sense of the location in awareness).

Yuanwu made a connection between proprioception as a contributor to the singularity of location and the ability to “cut off conditioned habits of mind”, where to “cut off conditioned habits of mind” meant to cease any voluntary activity of thought or direction of the body, just as though one were letting go of life itself. Yuanwu stated that as a matter of course, such a cessation of habitual activity results in a feeling that the activity of breath in the body has been cut off, and causes a person to come to their senses as though they have been returned to life from the dead. Returned to one’s senses, the location of awareness is freed to shift in three-dimensional space without restriction, as in empty space; activity is engendered by virtue of the occurrence of a single-pointed awareness that is inclusive of the senses, proprioception and equalibrioception among them, rather than through conditioned habits of mind.

Although Yuanwu was not explicit that walking on the ground of reality requires an aware state of relaxation like that in which any subject of hypnosis rests, he was quite explicit that walking on the ground of reality is associated with an experience of necessity connected with the movement of breath, and he implied that such an experience is a gateway to an altered state of mind.