Concentration practice incompatible with shikantaza?

[Grizzly]

Re: Concentration practice incompatible with shikantaza?

Hi Chet and Rich

'Better' is based on belief - not the choice

My bad..as one of my American friends would say. You are quite right. I was being lazy in my writing. The a priori assumption that practice is to make us "better" people is an assumption I choose to take, and yes that is conditioned by previous things of course. However, we all have assumptions that are based on the conditioned. My defintion of better would be any action that doesn't produce harm, or produces the least harm in a given situation, or produces the most happiness for the most people in a given situation. That's a minefield I know, but to simplify it I would say its living the eightfold path. The alchoholic teacher would be taking steps to address the drinking as this is part of the that path. At the very least they would be open and up front about their problem. Perhaps some are I don't know. The same goes for all the other issues, both in the Zen and Theravadan schools (and others). Unless we are working to create peace in this world, more friendliness/love and more happiness for each of us then I think that any form of practice is redundant.

Have you not tasted the unconditioned? In fact, you are soaking in it! The conditioned are expressions of the unconditioned, the unconditioned is the essence of the conditioned. Re-read the Heart Sutra in light of earnest practice if you have not already.

An experience that seems like the unconditoned doesn't have to be anything of the sort. This statement is a belief. It is the same as a Christian who experiences something and says it is definitely God. Batchelor suggest that the original "unconditoned by greed, hatred and delusion"- which refers to something more concrete- was misunderstood (If I recall him correctly). It is an article of faith, or perhaps more accurately a description of an experience that is not necessarily an accurate description.

A subjective and inter-subjective experience is not a metaphysical postulate

No, the experience itself isn't a postulate, but as all of our understanding of the world is based on conditioned phenomena anything postulated as unconditioned is meta- to the -physical.

I'm sorry if sometimes I give the impression of certainty

me too- that's why I mention it every now and then. I come from a universty debating background where we take any point of view and argue it for different reasons. Sometimes we did it to challenge our own beliefs, sometimes just for fun and sometimes to develop our own mental flexibility to "go against the grain"- mostly all mixed in. However, the passion we put into that sometimes giave the impression to outsiders that we really held that point of view and were being dogmatic.

Also it is very easy to join a group and cover over doubts about the group beliefs or accept them without challenging them. This is part of my practice to be authentic and transparent (I have a loooong way to go) and risk being wrong as well as being right- or neither. At the end of the day my position so far is that we can't rely on our minds- just check out the self delusion work in psychology and philosophy (which we all suffer from)- and my experience as a scientist shows that all of our descriptions are just that. Reality is unknowable and we as human beings are "modellers" of that reality, but we forget the model is not the thing. Any model. This leaves us only with the practical and our values- hence my answer to the koan of "nansen and the cat" and my position on taking a life in that thread. Everything else is uncertain in a sense.

It all comes back to the fact I should've kept my mouth shut at the beginning What the hell do I know?

Best wishes to you all (and thanks Chet for your wishes ).

Rich

[disastermouse]

Re: Concentration practice incompatible with shikantaza?

Hi Chet and Rich

'Better' is based on belief - not the choice

My bad..as one of my American friends would say. You are quite right. I was being lazy in my writing. The a priori assumption that practice is to make us "better" people is an assumption I choose to take, and yes that is conditioned by previous things of course. However, we all have assumptions that are based on the conditioned. My defintion of better would be any action that doesn't produce harm, or produces the least harm in a given situation, or produces the most happiness for the most people in a given situation. That's a minefield I know, but to simplify it I would say its living the eightfold path. The alchoholic teacher would be taking steps to address the drinking as this is part of the that path. At the very least they would be open and up front about their problem. Perhaps some are I don't know. The same goes for all the other issues, both in the Zen and Theravadan schools (and others). Unless we are working to create peace in this world, more friendliness/love and more happiness for each of us then I think that any form of practice is redundant.

I think it was Barry Magid who brought this up, either in his book 'Ending the Pursuit of Happiness' or the talk he gave at SFZC - that Buddhism in general has very much acknowledged the contributions it can make to psychotherapy, but has not until recently accepted that it has things to learn from psychotherapy. I think that some stumbling blocks are best addressed with psychotherapy with Buddhist practice as a helpful adjunct. So, I definitely see your critique as valid. It should be noted that Jundo himself also accepts that Buddhist practice does not 'cure' all that ails us.

An experience that seems like the unconditoned doesn't have to be anything of the sort. This statement is a belief. It is the same as a Christian who experiences something and says it is definitely God. Batchelor suggest that the original "unconditoned by greed, hatred and delusion"- which refers to something more concrete- was misunderstood (If I recall him correctly). It is an article of faith, or perhaps more accurately a description of an experience that is not necessarily an accurate description.

Now you fall into the trap of invalidating all subjective and inter-subjective experiences as essentially 'unreal'. This is a common modern problem - but realize that a 'community of the adequate' has repeated these internal experiences/experiments, and 'Dharma Transmission' can in fact be seen, in its ideal, as a sort of intersubjective 'falsifiability model'. As Ken Wilber would say, although interpretations of Hamlet may vary and are subjective/intersubjective, they are still subject to a 'community of the adequate' and that all interpretations are not of equal quality. The normative process of the repeatability of the 'subjective experiment' is very much in motion here, and cannot be brushed aside without falling into 'Scientific Materialism' - a particularly modern version of the sort of nihilism that Siddhartha Gautama quite definitely rejected. In short, subjective experiences are not immune from a sort of falsifiability that scientism holds only to its own methods - methods that inherently, and unjustly, disqualify subjective experience.

No, the experience itself isn't a postulate, but as all of our understanding of the world is based on conditioned phenomena anything postulated as unconditioned is meta- to the -physical.

Are you saying that you are not right now experiencing the unconditioned? A realization of the unconditioned is specifically not an explanation. We run into the 'Magic Eye' problem stated by Hank in the other thread here. Enlightenment is not an understanding - it's more like an undertaking.

Chet

[Grizzly]

Re: Concentration practice incompatible with shikantaza?

I think it was Barry Magid who brought this up, either in his book 'Ending the Pursuit of Happiness' or the talk he gave at SFZC - that Buddhism in general has very much acknowledged the contributions it can make to psychotherapy, but has not until recently accepted that it has things to learn from psychotherapy. I think that some stumbling blocks are best addressed with psychotherapy with Buddhist practice as a helpful adjunct. So, I definitely see your critique as valid. It should be noted that Jundo himself also accepts that Buddhist practice does not 'cure' all that ails us.

Hi Chet. I would go further and say that Buddhism and psychotherapy are not two. The work I do with clients, while very rarely mentioning Buddhism, is relative world Buddhism in that a) its designed to ease suffering, b) is based on the supposition that beliefs, thoughts etc are just that and need to be transformed into skilful beliefs and thoughts, to enable the individual to have a more peaceful and productive life. Of course, I don't go as far as instilling my values upon them and working covertly to get them to follow the eightfold path. I have to jump into their reality and work with their goals, which is of course getting into the relational reality of non-self, as I understand it. That's a clumsy sentence but I don't want to be typing all night! There's a lot more to this but I'm very tired and feeling quite sick at the moment so please forgive me for the inadequacy of my reply. However, I'm in agreement with what you have said.

Now you fall into the trap of invalidating all subjective and inter-subjective experiences as essentially 'unreal'. This is a common modern problem - but realize that a 'community of the adequate' has repeated these internal experiences/experiments, and 'Dharma Transmission' can in fact be seen, in its ideal, as a sort of intersubjective 'falsifiability model'. As Ken Wilber would say, although interpretations of Hamlet may vary and are subjective/intersubjective, they are still subject to a 'community of the adequate' and that all interpretations are not of equal quality. The normative process of the repeatability of the 'subjective experiment' is very much in motion here, and cannot be brushed aside without falling into 'Scientific Materialism' - a particularly modern version of the sort of nihilism that Siddhartha Gautama quite definitely rejected. In short, subjective experiences are not immune from a sort of falsifiability that scientism holds only to its own methods - methods that inherently, and unjustly, disqualify subjective experience.

I am not denying that subjective experience is "real", just that it is not real outside of subjective experience as far as we know. As for scientific materialism, then no (http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclo ... terialism/) I am not in agreement with this, because as the defintion says science is agnostic to the supernatural and I am a scientist and thus not a scientific materialist. It goes back to the only true honesty of "dont know" I mentioned at the beginning of my time here. I do have a tendency to support the view, within that ultimate "don't know", that experience is the correlate of physical processes- and not coming from a 'level beyond' for want of a better term. Purely and simply because there is no evidence to support that idea. If we believe in 'that for which there is no objective evidence' then we can believe in God and fairies. A fundamentalist once told me I was going to hell and I said, "Well if you are right (which although highly unlikely is possible) then that's OK as there are plenty of people suffering down there and maybe I can help". It didn't come from best motives I have to admit but was still true in that Buddhism is nothing if it is not a practical way to help sentient beings. Anything else I personally find no use for. In one sense I'm validating counter points from others- if we cannot transcend samsara because there is nowhere to transcend to then samsara has to be able to be nirvana bringing the two seamlessly together and rejecting all defintions/conceptualisations including this whole argument/thread- but that still leaves us with what is practical to help. I just read an article by some non-Buddhist that said there are differences between faiths/views that are important issues and many that seem important issues but are not. With some people who seem to be moving in a different direction to us we later find that actually we were moving towards each other the whole time but with others where it appears we are moving closer it turns out we are getting further apart on future reflection.

This brings me back to the title of the whole thread. Some Zen people would seem to reject Jundo's borrowing of the Theravadan replacing unskilful states with skilful ones (which I applaud) as being a practice that goes in a different direction to just sitting. Likewise here we have the rejection of concentration practice as being something that goes in a different direction to Shikantanza. Is that so, or is this just another "view" like rejecting the "state replacement" practice? I tend to think it might be. A seeming contradiction is not necessarily a true one if one looks beyond the surface. Of course if I find that one truly "perfect" being and they say categorically "no" then I'll follow that advice (did I make a funny, Chet, in an English way? ) Until then, in this great experiment called life, I'll test that assumption until I'm saitsfied one way or another. And the acid test will be the way I live and act, because what else is important?

All the best

Rich