Coordinate Language · 21 September 2008

Or, the post where my blog explodes.

Ok, so step right up. Choose a mantra, any mantra. I don’t care if it’s the sensation of the breath going past the tip of the nose, or some word in whatever language repeated and repeated, or counting as high as you can go before you lose track, or the secret gibberish for which you paid the TM society an ungodly sum, or the feel of your sitbones grounding down into the earth. It’s all exactly the same. This is meditation 101. Shamatha practice.

When you have trained your mind a long while, so there’s some strength and consistency to the practice (like training the body—it works the same… you do first series 1,000 days to settle your shit down), then maybe you do meditation 102 and relax the hold on the mantra. Spacious awareness can get so beautifully empty in part because it doesn’t care what it’s of: when content comes in, it may be "physical," like the ache between the shoulderblades or the cramp arising in the hip flexor; or "mental," like infernal line of a Steve Miller song or the strip of all-too-real memory that arises from out of nowhere. Sounds, emotions, feelings—at this level of concentration and sophistication—are just contents of awareness. In a practical sense, there's no difference between what’s physical or mental.

So ok. New illustration. Do you remember last year when the NYT ran the Op-Ed on the neuroscience of meditation? At first, all the Buddhist geeks were soooo excited—mainstreaming of practice and all that—but later they realized what was wrong with the article. It was scienceist. It did the same as all neuroscience since Descartes, which is reduce the mind to the brain (legend is Descartes said the cries of the dogs he vivisected were automatic blips, not subjective pain). It was explaining the experience of meditation in terms of neural hard-wiring, as if all mental conditions can be controlled once we know the exact brain process that produced them. Meditators said: Stop, reductionists! Mind is not physical! Mind is mental! Understandably, meditators (me included) get irritated when scientists reduce the mind to the body.

Well, that’s science. It wants physical explanations. Not mystical, ethereal “causes,” but rather causal mechanisms. De-mystifying apparently automatic relationships… even in the age of quantum. What do you think CERN is about, after all? Finer levels of physical data.

But then there is this other, equally reductionist tendency there on the other side of science. Reductio-ad-woo-woo. This is the Obama pranayamites, the make-your-own-reality mental recessionistas, and the yoga teachers who think the only reason your foot won’t go behind your head is you have some “emotion” stuck in your hip. Since this kind of anti-physical reductionism is more common in the owl realm, that’s why I wrote about it instead of anti-mental reductionism.

I also wrote about it because woowoo-ism is the metaphysics of the privileged. “The markets will sort themselves out” is what you say when whether you’ll freeze this winter isn’t really in doubt. “The Indian untouchables have such a sense of serenity and spiritual transcendencence about them” is what you say when you’re totally ignorant of the fact that passivity is the trance you fall in to when you are beaten down by physical life: it is only in the poorest countries where the stray dogs become too apathetic to chase you in the streets. “You just need to surrender your fear,” is what you say to your students when you never had to experience hamstring separating from bone on your way to paschi-ma. There is lovely truth in all these statements (and I do love the Obama pranayama), but they are also forms of mystification—efforts to hide from oneself the physics of class, national and embodied privilege. The rich, the American and the flexible: we want to think that the difficulties of others are all in their minds. The woo-woo side of reductionism can be incredibly elitist and uncompassionate.

Anyway. The woo-woo/physicalist cultural rift here is holographic of the mind/body rift that pervades everyday talk. And this is what I’m really trying to discuss. Some reader asked why I resort to dualist language to describe practice, as if there is a difference between body and mind. The idea here is that any talk that opposes mind and body instantiates a separation that is untrue, shaping experience into unnessary oppositions.

Well… I would say there is a difference, and there isn’t. Some sensations arise in the mind. Some arise in the body. These are fields of consciousness (or of reality); but they don’t have to be opposite. In everyday experience and in scientist-vrs-spiritualist culture wars we sometimes act as if there is a difference. But both reductionisms are self-limiting hack metaphysics. Everything is god; nothing is god; god is everything, nothing, whatever; one, many, emptiness, form, whatever whatever whatever. To live at all honestly we have to have a practical substrate that doesn’t make us hold absurd positions about the primacy of either physical or mental reality. 1-800-Integrate.

So I talk about the mind, I talk about the body, I talk about the interpenetration of the two fields. Is this dualist? A reification that locks me into binary experience of the world? It can be, yes.

But...! That assumption is not necessarily contained in language that speaks of mind and body, physical and woo-woo. Is North/South/East/West dualist? Mind/Body is coordinate language misapplied as metaphysical language.

Now, I might have to blow up the blog. You are not supposed to blog about metaphysics. It’s like blogging about your bowel movements—a kind of practical tedium that debases the form and makes your readers never feel quite normal about you again.

Oh well. You win for getting to the end of this discussion. Or I win for tricking you all the way through. Or maybe everyone can win all the time and this does not have to mean that there are losers.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: integration , science , self-deception , spirituality

Comment

1. I would like to say I personally have a mind and a body free from opposites and mutually destructive discrepancies, thank you.

   Separation of this mind/body theme is not dualistic, it’s minutialistic. Let’s take these things apart and look at it, then we can put it back together again. Right? You do know what you’re doing. Right Owl? I really can’t help you put it back at this point, you’ve taken it down way past where I stopped….

   :)

   Posted by: Susan · Sep 21, 12:16 PM · #

2. ‘Some reader asked why I resort to dualist language to describe practice’... er… isn’t all language dualistic? Isn’t that its nature? What am I missing? The moment we started naming things is the moment we emerged from the realm of the undifferentiated, for better or for worse.

   It doesn’t mean we should stop talking about things, though!

   Posted by: susananda · Sep 21, 02:15 PM · #

3. Considering ‘mind’ and ‘body’ as unique elements of a being is not much different from considering ‘left foot’ and ‘right foot’ as unique elements. Is it dualism to consider that the left foot is not the right foot?

   To tire the point a little: We don’t eat bran muffins to purge our minds of clogging thoughts, right? Bran muffins work on the digestive system, and cleanse it of immobile goop (though their nutrients do affect mentation in ways) and immobile thinking is dealt with in an altogether different way.

   Posted by: Carl · Sep 21, 02:32 PM · #

4. Not to stop thinking, rather think better. Not to stop thoughts, rather be thought better, that is, decrease your suffering to better decrease the suffering of others. Microcosm, macrocosm. As above, so below. Inside to outside, then outside to in…ekam….dve….trini…..dve…..ekam…..shunya

   God against Man. Man against God. Man against Nature. Nature against Man. Nature against God. God against Nature. Very funny religion. -suzuki

   the ego flies on one wing, the Spirit flies on two….

   Posted by: holdenjoy · Sep 21, 10:41 PM · #

5. Its true that some will not get eka pada sirsana because the angle that the neck of the femur makes with the femoral shaft precludes such rotations. Its true that some will not get eka pada sirsana because they will practice limb 1.a before limb 3. Its true that some will not get eka pada sirsana because they can’t see it “mentally”. Its true that some will not get eka pada sirsana because WTF is the point anyway?

   Speaking of woo-woo. Went to the “Global Mala” and saw some thought-provoking demonstrations of deluded narcissistic yogier than thou posturing calling itself yoga. Got to love the Kali Yuga, or do we? It appears that were stuck with it for another 428 thousand years, I guess I better get used to it. Oh that it could be true – lets do 108 bastardized versions of SuryaNamaskar A and end war….Lets see was it Woodstock where the call was made to think real hard and stop this rain?

   Posted by: holdenjoy · Sep 21, 10:58 PM · #

6. Carl’s foot thing is kind of what I was trying to say too.

   Posted by: susananda · Sep 22, 12:06 AM · #

7. I think perhaps one of the big problem with science is that it is fascinated by bowel movements, while most of us are not. Ahem. I am glad they are. However they do not seem at all interested in fashion. This specialization has gone to far obviously.

   Clothes for scientists I say! Lets give them another perspective! Lets go on the attack!

   Posted by: Gregor · Sep 22, 01:19 PM · #

8. We’re not supposed to blog about asana practice either, is what I’ve heard.

   So do you meditate regularly or not? That’s what I’d like to know. You may have said it but I only REALLY read the first couple paragraphs :)

   Posted by: boodiba · Sep 22, 04:08 PM · #

9. I think woowooville or whatever you’ve called it here is pretty fascinating, just in its difference (yes, differANCE is so 1995) from my tendency to embody mind (Antonin Artaud taught me how to do that).

   Let’s pretend this is D&D: no, I’m serious. Unifying the bodymind so that any enactment of body or thought results instantly in the full expression of any random asana is TOTALLY a spell of at least 8th level. NOT for newbies. Wizards are, essentially, academics, and you wouldn’t throw that level of magical research to college freshmen.

   Just because the unified Big Mind or whatever is “true” or “real” or whatever, doesn’t mean that somehow we all get to cease to exist or stop struggling or stop making any kind of effort. If that were true, Gautama would not have Four Noble Truths but only One! Plus, he would probably never have needed to be incarnate to even say it!

   I think it’s fine to write about metaphysics. Sure, Deleuze and Guattari would say you’re full of it, but look what mind-embodiers they are anyway. Horizontal metaphysics=body without organs. Oooh, pretty slick, sis!

   Yes, absolutely, to “these physical coordinates need not become metaphysical categories.” HELL YES. Let’s indeed, not assume we’re all hopelessly dualistic simply because we have right and left feet.

   Even when the Sutras say, essentially, that what one believes is what is true, I have always read that as actually saying, “The limits one believes in are the limits one lives with,” and we all know from the MATRIX what kind of hardcore tests you have to commit in order to change in what you believe. Who wants to take a bullet simply to believe s/he can? Anyone? Step right up!

   Posted by: patrick · Sep 22, 05:40 PM · #

10. Gregor, you forget that you are talking to ashtangis. We are fascinated by bowel movements too.

    Posted by: susananda · Sep 23, 12:12 AM · #

11. a night flight and a new yuga will trick you back.
    These metaphysical sutures slicing the nerves – that woman in the bright sari by the stinking drain screams as her child dies, just as we would. The stoa is warm in the midmorning but freezes the arse even so come winter.
    etc

    Posted by: meniscusmerangue · Sep 23, 01:15 AM · #

12. Was going to write a long comment here seeing as I was the one to tease you about your dualism but I really can’t be arsed. The dualism I’m concerned with is the overcoming of the subject/object distinction. Mind/body talk just reaffirms it, though it’s convenient to employ it sometimes. It was the prevalence of the “uniting the mind and body” talk (not from you necessarily as I said at the time I think) that I was referring to. I don’t believe there is a separation of mind and body or a distinction between subject/object so to talk about UNITING them…...But then overcoming that distinction, well that’s the project of the age. Amusing to find it playing on your mind through your last few posts, it bothers you huh. And so it should, it should bother all of us. It speaks to the nature of how we experience experience.

    Posted by: grimmly · Sep 23, 09:50 AM · #

13. Yes.

    And et cet.

    I wonder what new yuga remains beyond kali, but for now we work with what we’ve got.

    Om Et Cet?

    That said, in my absence yesterday, did you people go and make a dent in this so-called problem? (I am talking about mind-body, yes… though Susananda and Grimmly see the maybe even more exciting conondrum.)

    I love all of these comments. A lot. Good minds alurking. Esp. those of you who are new in these parts… welcome.

    I return anon. (In the adverbial sense.)

    Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 23, 10:05 AM · #

14. Minutialistic. Susan. :).
    .
    Carl, left foot right foot. Yeah. Having two left feet solves everything!

    HoldenJoy, thank god you are alive. I thought the catcher had hung himself in Pomona last Friday, but I see not. I love what you said. The ego flies on one wing, spirit flies on two. I guess that’s dualist, but it’s supersmart.

    Funny about global yuga. Honestly, I’m sure it’s ignorant of me, but my little mental poster for kaliyuga is a bunch of anusarians sitting around clapping for someone doing a guitar-solo-esque yoga posture. Brutal I know. The more I ridicule these people the likelier it gets that I’ll find myself in Ithaca or Houston or one of the many other places where they rule supreme.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 23, 10:37 AM · #

15. Meditation—yes. There is this weird tendency in ashtanga to meditate to get things. A friend I really like just did 40 days of puja to a hindu diety in order to find a good house.

    I know religion BEGAN with sacrificing goats to take the famine away and saying prayers to bring the rain, but that is all very 1000 BCE. And very Woodstock! (That’s hilarious HJ—I’d never heard that.) Focusing your mind on things to get them does work quite well sometimes, so it’s a great practical skill; but I agree it’s y(o)ugic – narcissistic. What about contemplative meditation? That’s where I’m at for now. And it seems that anyone who thinks of asana as a life practice would be so well served in that by some vipassana retreats (maybe other approaches too—vipassana is what I know). Major shift in consciousness, potentially.

    In my experience, ashtangis who have a long term sitting practice have a way more accurate understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the asana thing.

    For me, a bit of high quality instruction now and then is extremely useful and inspiring. Retreats too… just to show how intense that practice really is.

    Speaking of retreats and medititan training… About subjects and objects. In my experience this distinction is quite hard-wired outside the rare moments when the mind does the oneness thing. You can undo the hard wiring, though. It’s actually possible. Do you know that undoing the subject/object hardwiring is a big part of Vajrayana—diamond vehicle to enlightenment—training? I have only watched an intimate friend go through it, and was… well… horrified by the self-violence of the process. Unwiring her basic discursive structure freaked her out and made her totally identify with her increasingly nondual state. WTF? She got mean and solipsistic. Basic everyday skills of taking the perspective of others went away. Which is hugely ironic. Or even tragic. Maybe she came out the other side and solved the subject/object problem for real. But I wouldn’t know—she ended even her last intimate friendships when embodied otherness became a problem she refused to experience. Yeah, I’m not saying I undstood all of it, but I did understand enough to have a strong sense that the training sucked. Maybe becoming mean and solipsistic is necessary. That proposition actually undermines my faith in humanity though. Even though in general I’m all for diamond vehicles.

    A softer if limited approach is possible. MM’s favorite ashtanga teacher, Steve Dwelley, teaches an “Encounters” class wherein yogis get to freak themselves out staring into each others’ eyes and do things that challenge the self-felt boundaries of one’s own self vrs “the world” out there. I like it. Key similarities with good sex.

    You all are so thought-provocative. I’d actually like to say more (not minutailistic, sorry) on this admittedly random topic. But maybe that is enough out of me. Also: very different things must be writ today by these hands.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 23, 10:48 AM · #

16. Susananda, Sorry about that, sometimes Owl just makes me forget. Makes me I tell you! Oh but here again she’s dropping that ashtangii(?) are hot lovers schtick… what a SELL job! Market to the male reptilian brain, just like McCain. Is he from Montana?

    Posted by: Gregor · Sep 23, 02:26 PM · #

17. I run an ‘Encounters’ class on Salford precinct every saturday night. Few similarities with good sex – unless you like it concrete-rough with bottle shards and dog shit. Which, of course, is fine as these things go.

    Posted by: meniscusmerangue · Sep 24, 12:22 AM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.