CTSM Chapters 1-3: Transcendental Common Sense · 7 August 2010
Introduction: Buddhism “begins with suffering and confusion” and then works by “unraveling” them to their origins.
Accordingly, Trungpa introduces CTSM, the methodology, as what one might call a wisdom path – a kind of jnana yoga, we might say. He introduces three main types of delusion—the lords of form, speech and mind—and writes that CTSM and the dharma itself works by cutting through the ego’s “elaborate defenses layer by layer.”
Chapter 1: Spiritual Materialism
The chapter begins with a canny discussion of how one imitates teachings rather than internalizing them—the imitation is adornment of the ego. It is role-play. Such practice is not dharma or self-realization or whatever: imitation and spiritual consumerism is the practice of spiritual materialism (p. 16).
Trungpa uses the metaphor of consumption to describe some students’ spiritual practices. This language is particularly apt for students who fetishize old knowledge as valuable in and of itself, rather than living, practical information. “If we regard knowledge as an antique, as ‘ancient wisdom’ to be collected, then we are on the wrong path” (p. 19).
The passage of pages 16-24 is extremely rich in this regard, and prescient when it comes to what has happened in yoga communities in recent decades. This section most closely characterizes yoga communities that think they have some claim to “authenticity” or “ancient wisdom”: reading it cuts right in to the delusion and fundamental egomania we express any time we claim special access to ancient truths.
While Trungpa makes a passing plea that spiritual consumers at least consume selectively and well rather than turning their spiritual houses in to junk-shops, his ultimate point seems to be that knowledge collection is only a shadow of real transmission. Actual transmission is “always up-to-date… not … an old legend… not passed along as… folktales…. It is real experience” (p. 19).
Chapter 2: Surrendering
“Surrender means… trying to get beyond fascination and expectation” (p. 28) of what practice will be like, what fruits it will yield, how it will feel, and what the teachers will be.
“Disappointment… is the best chariot.”
After introducing the idea of surrender and speaking a bit about what surrender is not, Trungpa depicts some of the delusional, radically non-self-responsible forms of surrender. If one surrenders to the idea of surrender rather than to ordinariness, then all kinds of self-deceiving fantasies result—fantasies on the order of “Guruji is perfect, Guruji can do no harm” et cetera.
I expected this book to be a compendium of ways to feel spiritually anxious, an anatomy of spiritual materialism so relentless that I’d finish feeling that some level of SM delusion was utterly unavoidable no matter what. But, on the contrary, Trungpa puts a lot of emphasis here on the need for spiritual self-confidence. I wonder if he was responding to the same kind of self-infantalizing and self-hatred we sometimes feel as Westerners interested in Eastern spirituality… the fundamental distrust of our own personal and cultural wisdom that often manifests in our relationships to yoga and dharma more generally.
In any case, pages 28-33 exhort students to remain grounded and develop self-confidence. “If we begin to give up our self-criticism, then we may feel… as though someone were taking away our job. We would have no further occupation if we were to surrender everything: there would be nothing to hold on to. Self-evaluation and self-criticism are, basically, neurotic tendencies which derive from our not having enough confidence in ourselves, confidence in the sense of seeing what we are, knowing what we are, knowing that we can afford to open” (pp. 28-29). The main argument of this chapter is summarized clearly in its final two paragraphs.
Chapter 3: The Guru
This chapter begins by noting the central delusion in seeking a teacher—the idea that one can “get” anything at all from the teacher (p. 35).
What follows is mostly the story of Kagyu lineage-founders Naropa, Marpa and Milarepa. Among other great anecdotes, Marpa journeys to India to collect teachings to then bring home and use to enrich local tradition and, in a sense, his own renown. He takes notes on the aspects of Naropa’s teachings he does not understand, but the notes are washed away in a river and he’s left with only the teachings he did not write down because they were already part of his experience. He returns home disappointed (disappointment being the best chariot) but more knowledgeable than he realizes at the time. The teachings are practical – anything not living and practical is of little use and thus little spiritual value.
In passing, Trungpa refers to Spiritual Materialism as “ignoring family or… [one’s] practical relationship to the earth.”
There is some discussion of translating “guru” as “spiritual friend.” Trungpa doesn’t note it, but “spiritual friend” is a common term in early Buddhism, and used to characterize many teacher-student relationships—relationships with a high degree of mutuality, honesty and respect, not characterized by students’ striving to impress or fool the teacher about their own level of realization (one can listen to Hokai Sobol’s recent podcasts at Buddhist Geeks on this subject).
A lovely passage: “ There are many stories of teacher-student relationships… in which the student had to make long journeys and endure many hardships until his fascination and impulses began to wear out. This seems to be the point: the impulse of searching for something is, in itself, a hang-up. When this impulse begins to wear out, then our fundamental basic nakedness begins to appear and the meeting of the two minds begins to take place” (p. 49).
On p. 56, the Buddha’s dharma is referred to as “transcendental common sense.”
ON FROM HERE:
Let’s continue some of the remaining discussion of this part of the book in the comment thread for the present post. And at the same time, let’s all go ahead and read the next 5 chapters – through to the end of “Sense of Humor.” J
If it seems time, I’ll post the summary of that section tomorrow. Or perhaps we’ll stay in this section a bit longer…
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Pulling forward some of the discussion from the last thread:
There is this lingering discussion of momentum, from the last half-dozen or so comments, especially by Karen, Rebecca and Patrick…
I wanted to agree that people in the LA Metro area do say the most vapid things in and around so-called “spirituality.” The word has become somewhat vacant for me too. I’m using it without scare quotes or irony for the purpose of this discussion, as a way to point to practice that has to do with dharma generally, with burning through egoic delusions, with some sense of clarifying my view of “reality.” (Happy to leave reality in scare quotes though, for now…!)
I also wanted to affirm Gregor’s comment about how reading this would have prevented him from spending 13 years in a cult with a somewhat crazy, cruel master. Do others have the sense that reading this stuff earlier might have prevented certain delusions? (I feel uncomfortable about how familiar some of his parodies feel and sound.)
Louise’s discomfort with Chapter 3 is also noted. Please refer to her comment in the previous thread. Anyone else find this chapter to be at odds with Chapter 2’s discussion of spiritual confidence?
Finally, does any of CTSM so far offer insight in to the recent re-branding of ashtanga at JOISYOGA? I’m actually not sure it does – the book is quite different from the rant on consumerism I expected… and yet, perhaps my expectations are keeping me from seeing how this does relate to somewhat trivial yoga branding and identification that I like to believe we are too sophisticated to allow to hook us.
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 7, 07:02 PM · #
Haha! I see I’m suddenly using the word “uncomfortable” a lot!
Talk to you all soon…
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 7, 07:04 PM · #
For those of us who practise yoga, we respond when we are referred to as yogi – its not entirely our fault that we’re perceived as ‘spiritual’ but no doubt our ego loves it. Trungpa feels so strongly about the pitfalls on the path of spirituality that he goes so far as to describe it as ‘possibly destroying the whole wisdom of humanity’. I feel CTSM fundamental message apparent early is that we need to raise awareness and realise what we’re faced with. Some of us are more aware than others, we choose to listen to the instinct that tells us to ‘switch off’ when we hear terms like spirituality bandied around left right and center, all the time LA style, this is simply evidence of a deep rooted desire for self preservation / realisation – we ‘switch off’ because we know deep down that its wrong to respond to the egos view of spirituality which is all we have, we know deep down that it’s a road to ruin and we also know deep down that the best pointers will come from within, not to be found in the pages of a book or from crazy cruel masters. And we’re right to listen to that instinct. We’re curious so we keep asking questions about the ‘shard of glass that distort our vision ‘ and we’re presented with CTSM, but I feel it is not an instruction manual to be over analysed as today’s ‘knowledge’ simply to add to our junk shop. CTSM asks us to wake up with a few well placed pointers – it asks us to listen to ourselves and let the pointers come from within. Chapter 2 Surrendering is perfect in that it gives great pointers on understanding what the perfect guru might be – your higher self / instincts? I’m flying blind here as google books stops me at p.53! central London book shop trek for me today.
As far as the new brand JOISYOGA goes, CTSM invites us to be aware. When viewed objectively the anger, fear, or repulsion or whatever felt about the new name should be considered the perfect opportunity to perfectly measure how much ‘spirituality’ we think our ashtanga practise has endowed us with. The more we feel repulsed by the perceived consumerism behind the new name, the perfect slide rule to measure how lacking we are in the truest sense of the word. It might just be a new name or it might be a gift from beyond by SKPJ et all to wake up and simply do your practise.
Posted by: shaf · Aug 8, 03:03 AM · #
My first thoughts on the first three chapters were that I seemed to be noticing a theme regarding “how we have a glimpse when our spiritual practice is moving towards genuine”. He talks in many ways about balance. The “wise” teachers in the lineage were those that had incorporated spiritual practices into life (i.e. teacher and farmer) rather than practices which encouraged avoidance of life experience. He seems to be saying that if the spiritual practices and/or teacher/guru are leading someone towards seeing life as the ultimate spiritual practice and teacher then the path at least is moving in the direction away from spiritual materialism. I think of Patrick as a great example here of really making this shift to life as practice through wrestling with “seventh series”. As I don’t have the same kind of pull toward family/householding responsibilities at the moment, I find myself still very attached to ashtanga yoga practice and feel a disinclination to let go of it on the few occasions that “life practice” has to be the priority.
Posted by: Christine · Aug 8, 03:54 AM · #
“...should be considered the perfect opportunity to perfectly measure how much ‘spirituality’ we think our ashtanga practise has endowed us with.”
Great point. And not just the JOIS rebranding, but anything that “catches us on its hooks” — as they say in the Kwan Um school of zen.
Owl, the exhortation to develop self-confidence runs through zen stories well before any Westerners were involved. And it’s a deep vein in koan study, so while we may benefit from it, it wasn’t invented for us. That said, I always struggle with where self-confidence becomes blind entitlement. So perhaps there’s something in the design that’s particularly apt for the West.
Posted by: karen · Aug 8, 05:16 AM · #
Christine, thanks! FWIW, I look back at my experience/writing of seventh series and see massive “disappointment” and I find myself KEENLY resisting “claiming that” now with CTSM in mind, as “the path” or somesuch. It’ll take me at least a longish blog post to sort that out more—it’s coming, sometime.
Rebecca, momentum: YES to your last post in the thread prior. Rudder and entropy, indeed; Satchidananda in his Sutras commentary asks us to be “master swimmers.” A sort of skill rather than a being, an identity…
Tangent 1: recently I had my first encounter with what seems to be wheat allergy. Never had such a thing. This “subversion from within” by the body becomes a big, chewy jnana question: if “I” am not the body, then who, then what?
Tangent 2: I find myself thinking that CT might well say there is no such thing as a “spiritual experience.” So much of CTSM thus far is relational (guru, within or without). It seems that one achieves “ordinariness,” not “spirituality” (which is not to fall in with the “you already have it” school of bad Advaita).
Posted by: patrick · Aug 8, 06:59 AM · #
apologies for jumping in late to introduce myself, i’m rebecca from mysore recently transitioned back to rebecca from toronto. for the sake of ease, i’ll label my messages from ‘becca’. i know a little about Trungpa but nothing about CTSM and i love the idea of learning in the company of others, thanks for this. i haven’t followed the thread yet, wanted to say hello first, am looking forward to curling my jetlagged self up on my couch and spending the afternoon reading. i’ll play along better with the next chapters. for now, happy sunday all. r.
Posted by: becca · Aug 8, 07:47 AM · #
I’m a new reader, who is catygay?
Posted by: shaf · Aug 8, 09:35 AM · #
“Disappointment… is the best chariot.” If this is true I might be in the spiritual express lane!
It’s funny too, with the emphasis on not searching outside ourselves, in distant places. I am coming to that. I realize that I am not going to find anything in India that I won’t find in NYC, and possibly quite lass. If I go again, it’ll just be for a change in scenery.
I also LOVE the phrase “spiritual friend”. I think of my old pal C here.
Posted by: boodiba · Aug 8, 12:22 PM · #
There was a bunch of stuff, but I’ll summarize the intuitive and put aside the intellectualizing.
Christine: the idea of life experience as practice and as guru resonates with me, as well.
Louise: I am also uncomfortable with the idea of a guru person. At the end of Chapter 3, I thought — why would I want one of those? The anecdotes, the idea of surrender, the evolution of the guru-student relationship described in the chapter all seem to emphasize guru as master, and belie the idea of guru as “spiritual friend”. It seems to me that we can practice openness in any relationship.
And I am not interested in villainizing ego (see militaristic language in the Intro). I am interested in putting it gently aside. Intellectually, I keep wondering about the evolution of the ego: does it have a purpose or is it a spandrel? Personally, I wonder what is lost in setting it aside? i.e., how/why will I get up in the morning if self-improvement, guilt, achievement, desire for knowledge, etc are left aside?
Posted by: Wombat · Aug 8, 12:35 PM · #
Ego as spandrel, oh god! Sort of like the mind’s spleen.
I should have guessed the self-confidence stream was there, Karen. That part where the Buddha tells people to kill the Buddha… how helpful of him to say that! (Marx made a similar statement, as did Jesus, in his way. But the -ists and -ians really didn’t get those messages.)
Spiritual friend… I can’t help but hear strains of various prurient 1980s songs (ahem)! Ack! Speaking of which, CATYGAY, when he roamed the internets, was an oversexed SpiritualMaterial demigod with a snark that sounds like Shaf on a bad day. But nevermind. On spiritual friends, if you’re cooking and cleaning tonight, Hokai Sobol’s last three podcasts on Buddhist Geeks are sociologically and historically excellent (and short!). Scrolling down that page, they’re at July 19, July 26 and Aug 2.
Becca, great to see you and welcome back.
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 8, 03:17 PM · #
Christine… reading CTSM as commentary on how to glimpse a deeper movement in your own practice. Yes, I resonate with that too…
I thought it would be excoriating. I thought it would damn JOISYOGA to hell and get me very, very turned on in the process. And instead we get this: the clearest-yet instructions on how to use our reactions to JOISYOGA as the index of our own pseudospirituality.
I feel so subverted.
So far, if someone asked you “What does CT say is wrong with spiritual materialism?” what would you say? Is this a moral commentary?
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 8, 03:22 PM · #
i am massively behind except this word “unraveling” is haunting me as i consider what trungpa and the rest of this wonderfully motley crew has to say. i’m an unusually slow read right now. i think his impulse initially was, more than anything, cautionary rather than defeatist.
hi, i’m sara.
the sun is setting behind me at the lake. talk about spiritual material.
Posted by: Sara · Aug 8, 04:32 PM · #
CT argues that spiritual materialism is a danger b/c it looks spiritual, but it is fundamentally aquisitory (contra surrender and relinquishment). It doesn’t strike me as moral commentary — it has very little to say about how we should treat others, persay, except an exhortation to openness. I’m not sure it has much to say about JOISYOGA, either (who, I hope, will come out with a special line of never-stinky ashtanga yoga pants). Even without branding, one can fall into aquisitiveness with ashtanga, as Karen mentioned wrt improvement of poses or extending the sequence, or by accumulation of retreats with well-known teachers.
Posted by: Wombat · Aug 8, 04:47 PM · #
I’m struck that the acquisitiveness is also any impulse I have toward “improving” or “getting better” at anything, including (and especially!) getting better at being a spiritual, or more realized, or whatever-word-you-want-to-use person. ANYTHING other than openness to the moment is spiritual materialism, no?
And I feel sensitive to the fact that any translation of our intuitions into words might automatically qualify as spiritual materialism…
Posted by: karen · Aug 8, 05:06 PM · #
“And I feel sensitive to the fact that any translation of our intuitions into words might automatically qualify as spiritual materialism…”
Yup. I start to open my mouth, and then shut it again.
Posted by: Wombat · Aug 8, 05:49 PM · #
One of the reasons I was interested in entering this discussion was because I had a viscerally negative reaction to the JOISYOGA announcement and I’ve noticed a backlash in the Astanga community. I hoped an examination of ‘spiritual materialism’ might shed some light and meaning on the emergence of JOISYOGA as a brand and what it means for the practice.
I think the backlash is more than just an antipathy to ‘fancy yoga pants’. In the first couple chapters, Trungpa drops some good hints.
I appreciate the way Trungpa identifies spiritual knowledge as fundamentally experiential. For me, this implies a more fluid experience – of both teachings and teachers. Experience isn’t static, it’s transformative.
Each individual takes teachings and churns them through the gristmill of personal experience, ideally creating something unique. In the process, the teacher is a ‘companion’ on the path, rather than a ‘leader’ (I love the term ‘spiritual friend. I need more of these!). The teachings themselves become vibrant, living entities. Marpa only benefited from the teachings that became part of his life experiences. So, in a sense, what is codified becomes stagnant.
Trungpa recasts faith as ‘confidence’. He rejects ‘pre-fabricated solutions’ in favor of flexibility and creativity. He explains that ‘blind faith’ is not creative because there’s no thought process involved, there’s no room for the individual experience to shape knowledge. Blind faith constructs expectations, suggests experiences and rejects challenges.
Okay, back to JOISYOGA...
Branding, by its very definition, is the creation, manipulation and enforcement of ‘blind faith’. A brand identity creates a culture around whatever is being commodified, including image, stories, language, and message. These create a concrete vehicle through which the commodity is presented to the potential consumer and defended from imitators.
There’s no flexibility here – the brand exists as an identity and must be guarded from infringement. If the clarity of that identity is challenged through imitation, the brand itself becomes distorted. A brand is inflexible; it exists to be protected.
If you take a practice that purports to be ‘spiritual’ and you add blind faith to the mix, what do you get? Some would argue: a cult. And that’s exactly the reaction many people have to ‘yoga brands’ such as Anusara (*ahem* Trademark) and Bikram. To be fair, that accusation has already been launched at Astanga as well. Both Anusara and Bikram have created an identity/culture and sought to differentiate their brands by the establishment of trademarks, enforcement of intellectual property and through separation (both styles discourage other types of yoga from being taught in their studios).
The interesting thing about Astanga as a practice is that it’s always been in flux, transforming and changing with time, circumstances, different contexts and with each new practitioner/teacher who experiences it. There have been no limits on this. It’s been argued that the branding of Astanga as JOISYOGA will protect the practice from interlopers. In other words, ‘if we don’t do it, someone else will’.’
The effect that JOISYOGA ‘the brand’ has on Astanga yoga ‘the practice’ will depend on the response from the community of current practitioners as well as future practitioners who are attracted to the vision that the JOISYOGA brand promises (and what, exactly, that ‘vision’ is).
In other words, who’s gonna drink the Kool-aid and for that matter, what’s in the Kool-aid? And will we still be able to change the recipe? Were we ever able to? Have we been drinking the Kool-aid all along?
Posted by: Kai · Aug 8, 06:46 PM · #
E&SJ. I like to think of the ego as the minds immune system – this is sort of borrowed from Ayurveda. Too strong and it destroys, not strong enough and it gets invaded. So that word, like the G-word (God), does not bother my “ego” so much anymore. Nowadays it seems like Spiritual is sort of replacing the G-word – like you have to be Spiritual or …. fill in the blanks: you are not one of “us”, you need to grow, you will cause harm etc. Perhaps a different word for a few decades will get us too what we seem to be pointing at and then we can discard that word.
What is interesting for me, after hanging out there in Trungpas own temple, is that it was filled with loads and loads of literal “spiritual” objects, trinkets, rituals, icons, ahem, material. It adds a certain reverence factor, but for me created such an air of bogus piety – I felt like I was that Catholic alter boy again. I know he is referring to the mind with regard to the material, yet with so much iconography it seems all the easier to miss the metaphor. And I for one, have one thing I am spiritually material about: no more wars over metaphors. (And I am aware that the source of war is more often not about religion per se, but religion is certainly used to whip up an apathetic yet xenophobic population that ultimately must fight that war.)
Posted by: e&sj · Aug 8, 09:35 PM · #
a freudian typo – I meant Altar boy. I know a lot of boys were altered but I thank my Catholic Jesus Deity that I was not one of them.
Posted by: e&sj · Aug 8, 09:40 PM · #
Kai, its all very well pondering the merits of kool aid but isn’t the question really how much does it cost and based on perceived levels of spirituality can data from attendance registers in yoga schools such as anusara bikram hatha etc be used to formulate a new world markets spirituality index?
Bood, hows mooshi??
E&SJ as far as Freudian typos go, it was tame, best ones are when they come up in a different language!
Wombats in line for the Trungpa oscar for best quotable comment of:
‘It seems to me that we can practice openness in any relationship’
and I say this even though I might be accused of being the numpty catygay!
Apologies all just lightening the mood few days off work…
Posted by: shaf · Aug 9, 01:16 AM · #
Two thumbs up for the Karen/Wombat dialogue above.
Posted by: patrick · Aug 9, 04:42 AM · #
“Both Anusara and Bikram have created an identity/culture and sought to differentiate their brands by the establishment of trademarks, enforcement of intellectual property and through separation (both styles discourage other types of yoga from being taught in their studios).”
I’d argue that Ashtanga had a brand before JOIS, and the problem n ow is that the KoolAid drinkers just don’t Ike the new re-branding.
But in the end, the real issue might be why practitioners are eager to include Ashtanga (JOIS or traditional — and yes, I see those terms on the side of the sparkling, condensation-laden can bring held up to the camera by smiling, shiny people) as part of our own personal brand.
We can chant “I’m an Ashtangi!” like a mantra, but when you’re on your mat practicing, are you thinking about terms and concepts that define you, or do you just do it?
Posted by: karen · Aug 9, 04:56 AM · #
although i’m not reading the actual Trungpa piece, i’m learning thru reading your comments, thank you. in my path, i experienced spiritual “first fervor” in my teens much like OvO and LI Ashtangi, and went through a phase of rebellion like another participant, then found spirituality again thru yoga.
Posted by: arturo · Aug 9, 04:58 AM · #
...we just do it Karen
:)
Posted by: arturo · Aug 9, 05:01 AM · #
Wombat,
Interesting thought, “what would be lost in setting aside the ego” ...would I still get up in the morning for yoga practice without some ego-driven motivitation? I don’t know…but then would I still need that practice at all if ego had been completely set aside? Great stuff to ponder.
Owl,
Subverted! Yes, just the word. :)
CT seems to be pointing out that the trappings of JOISYOGA fall away so quickly that all I am left with, if I allow myself to get riled up about it, is my own “materialistic” ideas of authenticity and tradition. His emphasis on current and relevant practice rather than a collection of antiques leaves me feeling very convicted on that score. If as an Ashtanga student or teacher, I force any particular “way of doing things” just because it is the “traditional way” or “the way I learned it” when I know that it is not appropriate for whatever reason in that situation in that moment, then I think I have allowed myself to create a “brand” just as much as JOISYOGA...but perhaps a more deceptive one…
The idea of relevant practice really resonates with me. I’m looking forward to how that plays out in the rest of the book.
CT doesn’t seem to me to be suggesting that “Spiritual Materialism” is morally wrong, just ineffective. The difficulty being that ego changes disguises about as fast as we can pin it down.
Posted by: Christine · Aug 9, 05:05 AM · #
In “The Myth of Freedom,” CT calls spiritual materialism “the way of suicide.” :O
Posted by: patrick · Aug 9, 05:43 AM · #
reading CTSM, i’m remembering a tibetan teacher who spoke on mahamudra at the shambala center in boulder a few years ago. his visit was an important event for that community.
intensive grinning and nodding from the audience met his words throughout the evening. many people, including myself, were writing his teachings.
finally, he just stopped talking altogether and looked out at everyone. in response, everyone stopped grinning or even moving— it was like the hand being removed from a sock puppet. he said as if bewildered, “what are you all possibly writing down? what are you doing with those pens? you’re missing the point altogether.”
o! the room BLAZED with emptiness at that moment.
Posted by: Sara · Aug 9, 06:24 AM · #
hi, i’m sara (really, still…). i’m a nomad in the US at the moment,looking for “fertile ground” with my partner j, who also lurks in this blogsphere. i was raised in brooklyn where my yoga was existing in the mixture.
trungpa presents as the antidote to this spiritual materialism: a recognition of “the tremendous view of life”— THE TREMENDOUS VIEW OF LIFE— that opens up when we STOP trying to mask our own transitoriness to ourselves.
i am sitting with that one statement. for me it has tremendous energy and hopeful directness. maybe it is the whole picture. anyone else?
rather than shielding ourselves from the irritants of nature (lord o form in fine form), we roll with them.
he doesn’t complexify further the neurotic mind: he doesn’t give the lord of speech any more cookies to chew on at snack time. in his scheme, paranoia/neurosis closes us off; meditation, undertaken without imitative ambition, opens us up.
i’m finding i’m moving really slow with chapter one. too slow to move on to two or three…
he has a vital question that can be applied to any practice we undertake, and any relationship:
“did we actually taste it and chew it and swallow it properly, that one object of beauty, that one spiritual teaching?” (b.c. in rush to accumulate, we miss this).
“the teachings have the quality of warm, fresh-baked bread” (hence the aforementioned chewing…)
and most of all:
“we are tremendous people, we have tremendous things in us: we simply have to let ourselves be.”
i’ve read all your comments and so appreciate the constellation they create.
Posted by: Sara · Aug 9, 06:45 AM · #
Karen: ‘i’d argue that Ashtanga had a brand before JOIS, and the problem n ow is that the KoolAid drinkers just don’t Ike the new re-branding.’
Definitely Ashtanga had a brand but a subtle one at that, kool aid drinkers won’t like the new brand of JOISYOGA because its so highly visible. The fuss people are making is simply because the ego is being questioned – the actual act of ctsm was never going to be easy.
Karen: ‘We can chant “I’m an Ashtangi!” like a mantra, but when you’re on your mat practicing, are you thinking about terms and concepts that define you, or do you just do it?’
Simply put the ego loves anything that backs its view – we love the idea that ‘ashtangis are the chosen people’. The ego loves company – although usually forced off the mat because when on the mat we are alone, its when we’re off the mat the ego needs to be fed.
Being alone on the mat will probably be an ashtangi’s / joisyogi’s lone saving grace.
Posted by: shaf · Aug 9, 07:40 AM · #
Sara—loving that, all of it.
There was a lot of writing at a weekend workshop with a senior teacher a couple months ago. I didn’t have pen and paper with me—hadn’t occurred to me at ALL to bring them—and I find that I recall everything that I needed from that workshop. Indeed: what are you all POSSIBLY writing down? :D
Posted by: patrick · Aug 9, 08:44 AM · #
Re: Jois yoga thing. Maybe because I’ve never been to Mysore, or because I self practice 11 months of the year, it doesn’t bother me one bit.
However, I had a funny thing happen the other day:
In needling techniques class- we were doing Large Intestine points on the shoulder, and the girl needling me starts feeling around my shoulder for a point. Then she says “Oh my god, you have such muscly shoulders.” and I made a comment about ashtanga shoulders. Her jaw dropped open, and she said “You do ASHTANGA?! That’s so hardcore!” At which point my ego nearly got up and floated away it was so chuffed with itself. Spiritual materialism indeed…
Posted by: Rebecca · Aug 9, 12:23 PM · #
Sara, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said, that all resonates with me very well. Thank you, simplified my own errant thoughts!
And can we just all ignore that it MAY be my ego thats grokking?
Wombat, et al, I don’t know about your ego’s, but I need mine now and then, it is the mind that seeks, its not the mind that just is, though.
Rebecca, personally I am inspired by hardcore disciplines, as long as they are not too inflexible and have some sense of humour!
The Jois/Ashtanga thing is our little hit of impermanence, but it occurs to me that branding is just the negative term for a ‘marque’. When something is created with care and consistency it then created a name for itself, and that name became its marque, and that became its trafe-marque which helped to avoid deception by others who pretended to purvey that ‘something’. ‘Negative’ Branding on the other hand is to claim a marque by various forms of psychological and socialized deception.
Oh and regarding Aikido, and mirroring, and being one owns guru. We can get very good at aikido when we practice (like dancing) with multiple partners, everyone behaves differently and expects and offers different things, some too much energy and some too little. It seems CTSM is pointing essentially at that we have to be our own masters but its helpful to have our egos illuminated back at us for some personal work, not so much with the teacher (the final archetypal projection?) but every mysterious everyone else we find ourselves harumphing our ideas with.
I have been sailing in the western isles today, I may have had too much sun.
Posted by: Gregor · Aug 9, 03:55 PM · #
Ah Iona, Venice, Hubbard Lake. Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Hawai’i. England, China, Canada. You’ve answered most of my lingering lord of speech impulses for the moment.
I had this mis-impression that CTSM was a moral or aesthetic critique – that it trafficked in matters of taste. But it’s a discussion of side-tracks… and I guess this is why even for those who are skeptical that there’s really anything “wrong” with SM, or dubious about the possibilities of surrendering to outer teachers to peel it away, the argument that it’s a poor use of energy seems to resonate with us all.
Kai and Sara, I loved the summaries.
Alter boy… not altered, but maybe an alter. I’m an alter too. And incidentally, have you read J. Alter? Useful for CTSM before Mark Singleton hit it out of the park.
Also a good laugh: ashtangis as the chosen people. Oh god.
Christine’s boiling it down: any kind of claim to authenticity and ownership of the tradition is a form of SM. Maybe Trungpa, in chapters 1 and 2, cuts in right at that location—holy authenticity— because it was so common a hangup among his students. Why is authenticity such a humungus symbolic hangup everywhere?
Wombat and Karen, on whether anything other than openness is ultimately SM. I don’t know… does the argument go that far? Is the argument that having a self or an ego is itself a form of SM? I feel like the cutting-through method is more specific to the habit of adorning the ego with spirituality and imitative so-called practice… like CTSM is still sort of a big dharma talk on the pointlessness of playing at being holy. But having a self arise, or making use of speech or mind in a particular moment, if that too is SM, well… roll me in to silly putty and squish me under the sofa cushions. For now, I am hoping the book argues that openness and surrender encompass sometime-employment of form, speech, mind, self and such.
Perhaps I’m just resisting the full implications of the critique—engaging only in the first layer of the cut in to SM?
I’m actually curious to see whether the next layers strip away even more. I’m ok to surrender form, but speech and mind, well, hrmmm….
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 9, 07:00 PM · #
Owl, I guess what I was responding to in Karen’s comment is this: As I composed my responses to the chapter to comment in this forum, parts of those responses felt like they were derived from ego — to show I’m clever or to intellectualize the argument rather than comment honestly on insights. This is why I liked Sara’s comment so much – I perceived it as unprocessed insight. So before I posted my comment, I revised it, trying to disentangle the honest impressions from the “look I’m so clever”. To me, doing this feels like editing for openness. And to resist posting the clever comment that doesn’t further the discussion is, for me, a relinquishment of ego. But, if I tune in, I can feel the switch from open to intellectualizing and, sometimes, being aware of that feels uncomfortable and stymies my ability to say much of anything. So, I wouldn’t go quite as far as Karen to say that “any” translation of our intuition into words is spiritual materialism. But I do find myself trying to distinguish what is and what isn’t in my writing.
Posted by: Wombat · Aug 9, 09:59 PM · #
You know we have this method of enlightenment from the east and its called yoga, its been around thousands of years but lets not forget it existed and sometimes flourished in a society that was completely different to our own. We have what can be considered a fairly gross system of upper middle and lower classes, a class system that is arguably evidence of our own collective mental deficiencies. Now from what I can see the East based their society around a marginally less mentally deficient system with Brahmins, harijans and everything inbetween but it didn’t choose to neglect its spirituality – the East allowed for the psyches thirst for all things truly spiritual by introducing the ascetics path – a well respected segment of eastern society that exists but doesn’t pander to the gross classes. That’s the yard stick to measure how different our society is to the east and that should allow us to gain some insight. The closest thing our western psyche has to a true ascetic is the homeless guy who sells the Big Issue? Now as far as yoga goes, is it any wonder that its not a good fit? What we seem to be doing is taking the ‘round peg’ that is the Eastern answer to enlightenment and trying to fit it into the square hole that is the Western mentality. But what’s to draw from all this? Drawing from the current thought stream I feel we shouldn’t feel guilty about the ego, yes it’s a worthy adversary but no need a war cry and a rally to arms, now more drawn to the idea to side step and understand why we have been given the gift of ego, now this is where it seems to get interesting, after trying bagging the ego maybe its time to get to know it? share intel with it? maybe an effective way to ctsm? Just a thought.
Posted by: shaf · Aug 10, 12:58 AM · #
I does not exist. But this isn’t to say we need to try to get rid of it. You posted this before, Owl, I believe. The distinction between the Freudian ego and ego as CTSM is using it is really important.
http://www.tricycle.com/feature/freud-and-dr-buddha-the-search-selflessness?page=0,0
Posted by: karen · Aug 10, 04:34 AM · #
In 1872 in a famous letter, Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “I is an other.” Surrealism loves its Freud, but its (unrealizable?) goals always tend toward “over there,” over some edge, some horizon (political, aesthetic, cultural). When I teach Dada/Surrealism to the art students, someone inevitably asks, “were these guys into Eastern philosophy?” They weren’t, not in any systematic way, but there is a negation/expansion that has a Vedanta flavor. Too often, though, it results in madness of various kinds (Rimbaud, Artaud, Nietzsche even).
Posted by: patrick · Aug 10, 05:48 AM · #
Hi Patrick i would have thought surrealism and in particular veristic surrealism has no goals other than to inadvertently get people to get in touch with their subconscious, i agree with the vedanta flavour but not entirely sure of the point your making, links if you have any would be appreciated.
Posted by: shaf · Aug 10, 07:46 AM · #
Hi, I’m Susan. Sorry I am so late here, but it seems like the snipers have been taking up the slack :). The Owl website consistently displays as a pristine unsullied white page nowadays on the home PC, and I have not the patience to comment by iPhone, where I can’t see the beginning of my own comment to edit. So looks like I’ll be playing this game on work time, mostly!
I am Canadian, living in London UK for the last twelve years after stints in Dublin and Paris, where I did my MA in French. My foreign language mania used to really feed a part of me that wanted to see without filters…. see as others might see, in different ways (Japanese was FUN for this)… as though trying on different filters would lead me closer to discarding them, to the essence of things. Religion was absent from my upbringing, for which I am very grateful, and I grew up doing junior science experiments and obsessed with Nature (funny, I remember a kids’ magazine called precisely OWL) before dedicating myself to imagination in the form of Literature (and now I work in electronic FX broking, go figure). But when my Mom took me to my first yoga class around the age of ten, I knew instantly that I was on to something crucial, and I have been a seeker ever since, acquiring a whole host of ‘objects to decorate my room’, from the philosophers and mystics and ancient texts to various drug experiences, and every flaky new age thing you can imagine. I don’t read so much about ‘spirituality’ nowadays (count me among those who despise this word), I just try to do my practice, but occasionally someone like Daniel Ingram blows my mind, and this is another good one. I am really enjoying all of your comments.
No surprises in the first part, I was fully prepared for a smackdown. What with being ‘the most advanced student in the shala’, and elevated to near pop-star status among gym yoga students (seriously, the students just love me and I feel ashamed for not giving them more), it has been pretty obvious to me how I wear this practice sometimes and how in thrall I am to the Lord of Form. But then since ‘self-evaluation and self-criticism are, basically, neurotic tendencies which derive from our not having enough confidence in ourselves’ (p29), I can ‘march directly into disappointment’ and deal with it. I am talking here about disappointment in oneself for being a spiritual materialist, a specific example of the fact that ‘our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing’ (p29). And that is simply true – whether it’s that I would like it to be sunny but it’s shite weather, or I would like to be a ‘real’ spiritual person instead of suspecting myself of being a phony, or that I would like to do a tictoc today but can’t, or if it’s just that I would not like to die….. my expectations are irrelevant. It is the way it is, and it is OK to ‘land on hard, ordinary ground, on rocky, wild countryside. Once we open ourselves, then we land on what is.’ (p31). Loved this! We can’t even BEGIN until we land on what is, so let’s face up to it and surrender. And maybe a bit of laughter would not go amiss.
Regarding surrender, he mentions prostration. Every chaturanga is a prostration… every uttanasana too, in fact. Anyone else feel this? That it allows us to ‘open psychologically and surrender completely’… and we have this over and over again right at the start of our practice? How beautiful!
I wanted to say more about surrender, but can’t remember what, since the pages have gone missing now on google books. Really must get my hands on a hard copy….
Re the Jois branding – reading the comments, I had a thought. I was first taught about ‘ashtanga yoga’ as a young hatha yoga student when we studied and discussed the sutras. When I first came across ‘ashtanga’ years later, I was somewhat offended that the name had been appropriated by one school of physical yoga, whilst the concepts are universal and essential to practice. So I think I’m good with calling it Jois yoga, although that doesn’t mean I have to look at the website :)
Posted by: susananda · Aug 10, 07:56 AM · #
Shaf: I agree with you on feeling guilty about the ego. I mean, if you think back to our primal ancestors, at one point the left and right brain were firmly integrated. The need for an ‘I’ is a survival mechanism- because when the world looks like a dream and all is one, the desire to run away from a saber-toothed tiger is not that great. Goodbye species.
I think that the key is in the recognition that ‘I’ (whichever one of our eyes it is) is not a. the most important i in the world. b. remotely special whatsoever. c. immune to death. d. set in stone. In other words I think there’s a difference between having an ‘i’, and being attached to that ‘i’. And I think that a lot of the chapter on ‘surrender’ refers to these things too. Well I hope it does, maybe I’m just reading it that way because if I take it at face value I find it so repugnant.
Gregor: Agreed also on the own masters vs. ego reflected back thing. And aikido with different partners— I find this interesting. A different partner every time creates a lot of fluidity, but lacks the depth of commitment that, say, a daily practice with a single partner would bring. And I find it especially common out here in vata-land, for people to be misguided by that fluidity and see it as the ultimate, where in actual fact it requires little surrender. Are we speaking of different things? (And I miss those islands… I spent a summer on Raasay, and three on the coast in Craobh Haven, taking day trips out to Jura and Islay and Mull and Rhum… we visited that big whirlpool once. That was really fun.)
Susananda: You’re late. Twenty push ups and a hail Mary.
Posted by: Rebecca · Aug 10, 09:07 AM · #
ps I was just kidding
Posted by: Rebecca · Aug 10, 09:08 AM · #
Bek dude I really don’t know, I was having a moan earlier because on the surface struggling with the ego hasn’t made me a successful ‘anything’, but struggling with the ego has (and I will say this, at the risk of sounding esoteric) I’ve seen stuff that cant be completely explained away. Its kind of why I was keen to read Trunga – he had one foot on the physical world but the other firmly placed on some esoteric plane.
I’m of the opinion that the sabre tooth tiger would turn round and walk away.
Ive got to stop commenting, im all over this thread!
Posted by: shaf · Aug 10, 10:12 AM · #
Susan,
Love that: “And maybe a bit of laughter would not go amiss”...for sure, my most “here and now” and “surrender to what is” moments happen when I can truly laugh at myself.
Posted by: Christine · Aug 10, 10:39 AM · #
Ah! But I did my 20 ‘pushups’, trying to stick my elbows out! (not really).... wouldn’t have a clue how to do a hail Mary though :)
Christine, I find that I’m SO laughable, that embracing the laughter (rather than getting pissed off with myself) seems to reconnect me instantly with Reality, that place where I am not more important or more special than any of the other grains of sand which we are…. and it’s kind of a relief.
Posted by: susananda · Aug 10, 01:16 PM · #
My fingers went agog reading and re-reading Wombat’s last comment. Thank you. I hear you.
And, Wombat, Sara has that quality in person – she just spent a few days here, sleeping on a double-decker air bed in the mini-shala and simmering me in jasmine and ginger teas.
You all, and your grounded lightness in your experiences, disentangle me a bit from my ideas of self and what humans are. Does that make any sense? It’s just that some slightly new dimension of openness is coming through here… like maybe speech can be used in ways that pare away at the lord of speech. But peacefully.
Susananda, I wish that were the truth about insideowl. But there are still lots of words. Lots and lots. :-) I’m happy you made it and indeed recommend picking up the book. Word is that after a point the google doc stops giving pages.
Also, S, I’ve been watching for you and am happy you arrived amid international digital transactions of a more straightforward kind. After you finish third series (a few more more thousand chaturangas to go), do you want to joint he Vajrayana with me? To move up the order, there is a point where you have to do a million prostrations. It takes several years, but you get special gloves, knee pads and a mat (I would kind of respect JOISYOGA if they fabricated the next generation of prostration kneepad and general prostration gear). When I first learned of this while witnessing a poor robed dope racking up prostrations in a downstairs office (they look almost exactly like moon salutations), I about vomited on a bookshelf full of identical copies of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Decided right then that Trungpa’s people weren’t for me, but then... here are the chaturangas adding up. E&SJ taught me to let go of my rolling “California chaturangas” (like California stops), which pointed me toward learning to do them more as surrender than as will. They are pretty often experienced as prostrations now; and I wonder if some of the best ashtanga teachers intentionally teach them pretty directly as such. Sigh.
Here is the article Karen linked. Thanks Karen.
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 10, 06:21 PM · #
Hey… I’m up for it! Do we get to count the ones already done? Like about 50/practice, depending on the various lengths it has been… that would add up! A million IS a lot though, that would be a tough one starting from scratch. Though maybe not as tough as the dreaded 10-day vipassana. LOL. Yes, JOISYOGA, we can email them the suggestion??
Awesome article, Karen. I can’t resist quoting!
‘It is not the case of something real being eliminated, but of the essential groundlessness being realized for what it has always been.’
‘It is not that the ego disappears, but that the belief in the ego’s solidity, the identification with ego’s representations, is abandoned in the realization of egolessness. ‘
Posted by: susananda · Aug 11, 04:49 AM · #
Shaf, I owe you a Surrealist followup. It’s coming.
I’m going to cop shamelessly one of my fave bits from CT for the Susan/Karen/Owl thread: “Ego IS the actions, the mental events. Ego IS the fear of losing the egoless state.”
Posted by: patrick · Aug 11, 08:13 AM · #
I finished the next prescribed chapters, and I have to say that both my Ego and ‘me’ felt more enlightened, more open and more compassionate due to the message. Or rather my Ego expects these things to happen shortly now since my Self was pretty happy with what was read and decided to somehow leave another layer or two of my sorely misunderstood and over-represented Ego by the roadside.
Reminds me of Monty Python’s ‘bring out yer dead’...
Posted by: Gregor · Aug 11, 01:28 PM · #
Response to first chapters:
Is it possible to cut too deep such that there is no meat, no substance, nothing to hold onto? I want to be fascinated, to be in love, with my yoga practice and life. I practice yoga to cultivate a healthy body and mind so that I can be more present in my life, be happier, be more open emotionally. I want to experience my body. I like that yoga makes me strong. I want her to be attracted to my body. Perhaps these desires will lead to suffering later when my body degrades in old age and she leaves me, but should the fear of death and loss prevent me from savoring my life now? I am not ready to surrender to emptiness completely.
Posted by: sinews · Aug 14, 10:00 AM · #
Hello! That first question is really good. I’ll probably repost it up the thread when the time is right.
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 14, 10:15 AM · #