Right Exertions

I posted this little excerpt from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep in a comment at Zatoads Blog a few days/weeks ago.

Although some Western psychologies believe that the dreamer should not control the dream, according to Tibetan teachings this is a wrong view. It is better for the lucid and aware dreamer to control the dream than for the dreamer to be dreamed. The same is true with thoughts: it is better for the thinker to control the thoughts than for the thoughts to control the thinker.

It got me to thinking about an aspect of Buddhist doctrine that I have as a reminder task on my PDA that pops up every 2-3 weeks titled sammapathana. I use it to remind me to practice the “Four Right Exertions”.

I think the Four Right Exertions provide some direction to help the thinker to control the thoughts rather than the thoughts controlling the thinker. In the notes for this to-do list reminder item I have:

1. Guarding - unskillful qualities that have not yet arisen
2. Abandoning - unskillful qualities that have arisen
3. Developing - skillful qualities that have not yet arisen
4. Maintaining - maintenance, non-confusion, increase, plenitude, development, & culmination of skillful qualities that have arisen.

So, I try to identify patterns of unskillful thinking as well as skillful thinking. At the very least, it sometimes helps to keep potato chips from reaching my lips, or mean words from coming out of my lips.

I have spent more time recently exploring the thought origination component since the thinker doesn’t enter the picture until quite late in the thought origination process. I wonder if one can view the body-mind/mind-body relationship like this:
?

Another's Shoes

I find the cognitive line of development very interesting, especially in the early childhood years. One of the key cognitive abilities that must emerge before a person can develop true compassion and empathy for other life forms requires the cognitive skill of taking on someone else’s perspective. Young children can’t do that, as some of Jean Piaget’s experiments showed:


Until Johnny reaches a certain age he doesn't have the cognitive capability to answer that question.

Another example:


Once again, until Johnny reaches a certain age, he can't answer the question.

But after a person does have that basic capability, a teacher can help push it into the beginnings of true humanness. I just love Robert Kegan’s description of a school teacher manipulating young minds into developing this skill in his book In Over Our Heads:

On this particular morning, as the students are engaged in a heated controversy, the learning goal on his mind has to do with the very way students listen to each other – or more precisely, the way they do not.
……
He lets the conversation/debate proceed, but he institutes one new requirement: before any speaker may make her point, she must restate the preceding speaker’s point with sufficient accuracy that the preceding speaker agrees it has been adequately restated. At first the students try to fulfill the agreement by restating the point in the straw man fashion they are prepared to attack. But they do not get the chance to attack, because, amid the laughter and hooting, the preceding speaker objects, requiring them to restate the opposing view in a nondistorting, noneditorialized fashion, however maddening it may be to do so.

….
The trick is that this unwelcome route, first seen as a mere means to an end, has the promise of becoming an end in itself, since the continuous consideration of another’s view in an uncooptive fashion, which requires a continuous stepping outside of one’s view, is a definite move towards making one’s own view object rather than subject and toward considering its relation to other views.

Wow! At 50 years of age, I still have trouble trying to step out of my own worldview enough to see another's worldview, without my own worldview's interference. I can only imagine a world where children get taught this skill early on.

Note: I felt inspired to write this after browsing a few blog entries in Donna's Mundane Little World. I have come to realize that children get really cheated when it comes to education in how to move from animal to human.

Dream Report Cards

I have a dream reporting scheme I started using a few years back as I continued to pursue dream practice. It has morphed and changed a bit over the years. One of the projects on my to-do list involves going back through my dream journals from 1997-2000 and identify all the lucid dreams. I think that over that particular period of time I had my biggest successes.

I’ve ended up preferring color schemes over the other various grading schemes I have used:

RED – I didn’t think about dreaming at all
ORANGE – I vowed to myself that I would try and recall my dreams, but ended up doing little more than that
YELLOW – I had a lot of dream activity, but darn it, I can’t remember a single detail of any of them
YELLOW GREEN – I remembered dream(s) but did not jot down any notes
GREEN – I jotted down a few dream notes
PURPLE – LUCID DREAM!!!

My logs from 2000-2005:


NOTE: I keep these logs in addition to the logs for tracking my Dream Yoga activity.

Blue

I wanted to take a look at the Blue Spiral Dynamics v-meme a little bit. I like to try and identify Blue memes that I have embraced from time-to-time. I like to try and make myself find these behaviors in myself rather than summarily dismiss the notions that I don't, or have not, engaged in blue v-memetic behaviors.

- find meaning and purpose in living
- sacrifice self to the Way for deferred reward
- bring order and stability to all things
- control impulsivity and respond to guilt
- enforce principles of righteous living
- divine plan assigns people to their places

Blue - Truth ForceWhen people first develop a conscience or a moral sense they are ready to sacrifice themselves now for benefits later. This is the stage at which religion converts people to its truth in order to save them from hell and get to heaven. It is the process that young army recruits go through on the parade ground as they submit to the dominance of the sergeant representing the authority structure. School is a natural place for children to learn self control.

Blue is reinforced through appeals to traditions, by respecting the past, by honouring length of service and loyalty. Various forms of patriotic appeals and charitable sacrifice should accompany observances of national, religious, or secular holidays and commemorative events.



Although this blue behavior often seems associated with religious dogma. I think that scientists can behave in a blue v-meme world-view manner. I would use the pre-trans fallacy as an example of scientific dogma i.e. a doctor rejecting all alternative medical methods, and other behaviors.

Economic Vision Logic

I can remember certain minor events in my life that have resulted in my glass getting a little bigger.

Around age 25-26 while in college, I had one of those breakthroughs in mental processing capabilities, where developing a small shift in perspective had enormous consequences.

I took a required Economics class that I had a very difficult time with. It required a lot of reading, and the professor only used essay questions for exams. I would pour over 10 pages of economic theory, listen to the professor drone on and on, and not recall much of anything.

I flunked the first two question essay exam.

One weekend at a book fair I picked up a book called “Economics Mathematically Speaking” for 25 cents.

Now although I had taken numerous math courses throughout my education, I barely got by in that subject. I learned the mechanics of algebra and calculus, but never really the applications. In fact, I hated “story problems.”

But this book approached math from a different perspective. It defined a concept such as “taxes” and then said, “Now let us call that ‘T’”, and so forth with other economic terms. Then, the author would introduce a formula.

After 10 years of math classes, I finally "got it".

Suddenly I realized that a single math formula captured 10 pages of economic theory discourse. And, most importantly for me at the time, I could generate 10 pages of essay by just knowing the formula, and the definition of the variables.

It was like the formula and definition came in as input to the left side of my brain, and then the right side of my brain would “see” stuff, and then my left brain would attempt to verbalize that (verbalizing has become the bigger problem for me these days).

My Economics grades shot up, I started acing Physics tests, and I developed a love for story problems.

And I think it helped lay the groundwork for my eventual interest in the process Enneagram 20 years later.

Pre-Trans Fallacy

Ken Wilber describes a condition where things of a “higher” nature get erroneously labeled as something of a “lower” nature because they seem the same.

The “fallacy” occurs because from the initial conventional perspective, post-conventional behavior can look like pre-conventional behavior. A person operating at one level can’t see above their current level.

So for someone like myself operating in and around the orange, conventional, rational v-meme, a sage and an idiot can appear the same. Although I still suspect that some self proclaimed sages actually operate at different levels than what they think.

But I have no ability to see into a person’s heart, so I try to focus on my own emotional reactions towards people whenever possible.

My blog entries sometimes remind me of the handle of the pitcher in this story:

An idiot may be the name given to the ordinary man, who consistently misinterprets what happens to him, what he does, or what is brought about by others. He does this so completely plausibly that for himself and his peers large areas of life and thought seem logical and true.

An idiot of this kind was sent one day with a pitcher to a wise man, to collect some wine.

On the way the idiot, through his own heedlessness, smashed the jar against a rock.

When he arrived at the house of the wise man, he presented him with the handle of the pitcher, and said;

'So-and-so sent you this pitcher, but a horrid stone stole it from me.'

Amused and wishing to test his coherence, the wise man asked: 'Since the pitcher is stolen, why do you offer me the handle?'

'I am not such a fool as people say,' the idiot told him, 'and therefore I have brought the handle to prove my story.'

(From Idries Shah's Tales of the Dervishes)

Eye Yoga

I’ve worn glasses since about age 8-9. During my 20’s and 30’s i wore contact lenses. In my 40’s i started to require reading glasses. It seemed silly to wear contact lenses and still have to put on glasses. So i went back to just wearing glasses.

During 2001 this question started my exploration of eye yoga:

"Why do the eyes appear to be the only part of the physical body that is not self-healing?"

A couple of books i read put the blame on the use of corrective lenses, and those who prescribe them.


So, i spent 3-4 months practicing the exercises and spending time with my vision. After two months i went in for a new pair of glasses and i did require a less powerful prescription. But i gradually wandered away from eye exercising, and back into bad vision habits.

I experienced a couple of other tangential benefits beyond the vision improvement itself:

Corrective Lenses Create Tension
Initially i felt a sense of tension and stress when i tried to not wear my glasses. I just had constant panic urges to put them back on. I had to keep convincing myself that unless i absolutely needed clear vision for that particular moment, then i didn’t need to have my glasses on.

I gradually became more comfortable operating in that mode, and the tension situation actually reversed. I found myself putting on my glasses to see what needed seeing (much like when i need to put on my reading glasses) but then i immediately took them off. If i left them on, then i could feel the strain and tension start.

I eventually found not wearing corrective lenses very centering and useful in cultivating some forms of presence.


Dreaming Vision
The most interesting eye yoga things occurred in conjunction with lucid dreaming. I became fascinated with vision during a number of lucid dreams. It always amazes me that the visual experience in dreams happens without any sensorial input from the eyes. But i never gave much thought to the blurriness or clarity of my dream vision, until i started practicing some of the eye exercises…… while lucid in a dream.

Word Translations

I thought I would try and do a linked blog comment to Mushtaq’s The Problem With Translations post.

He discusses, with some interesting examples, the difficulty of translating words from other languages, from centuries ago, without knowing something of the culture of the time.
I realize, my poor language learning abilities aside, that even translating from one modern language to another modern language can introduce the “Lost in Translation” doodad.

I recently started listening to The Teaching Company’s “The History of Language” for a second time. The lecturer, John McWhorter, talks about various kinds of language “drifts” (i.e. grammar, meanings, sound modulations.) Those lectures help me understand how languages evolve over time into other languages.
The first 7 lecture titles:

I remember in one example he presented a Romeo and Juliet excerpt asking us why Juliet asks “Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?” Can’t she see him standing right in front of her? It turns out "wherefore" doesn’t have anything to do with “where”, but some people have started to interpret it that way.

I wondered if you could map out Ferdinand de Saussure's sign stuff on an enneagram:

And how about a run on sentence from Gurdjieff?
(From Chapter 1 of Beezlebub's Tales to his Grandson)

That is why each word, for the same thing or idea, almost always acquires for people of different geographical locality and race a very definite and entirely different so to say "inner content."

In other words, if in the entirety of any man who has arisen and been formed in any locality, from the results of the specific local influences and impressions a certain "form" has been composed, and this form evokes in him by association the sensation of a definite "inner content," and consequently of a definite picturing or notion for the expression of which he employs one or another word which has eventually become habitual, and as I have said, subjective to him, then the hearer of that word, in whose being, owing to different conditions of his arising and growth, there has been formed concerning the given word a form of a different "inner content," will always perceive and of course infallibly understand that same word in quite another sense.