Welcome to office hours. We began this week's office hours with the unusual sight of Milo not Frasier occupying the coveted alpha dog throne position. Now, ordinarily if we saw this, we might have our darkest suspicions aroused and we might say things like, Milo, what have you done with Frasier? Milo? But as you can see, Milo doesn't look very guilty, and that's because I don't think he is. Last week, we saw both Milo and Frasier showing signs of embracing the dharma so I'm inclined to interpret Milo's position here in much more innocent terms. I suspect Frasier's off meditating and Milo is just keeping Frasier's seat warm for him. Because now that Milo's following the dharma, Frazier's interests are at least as important as Milo's in Milo's view. At any rate, we will get to the bottom of this before the end of this. We will track Frazier down. I don't want to go a week without some Frazier footage. We'll figure this out. Meanwhile, let's talk about some things. First of all, let me get rid of a little guilt. At the end of the last taping I felt a little bad about the way I had handled the serenity issue. I spend a lot of time singing the praises of serenity and talking about how in my daily meditation, I often get to this point where I feel a little serene, it's great, keeps me coming back. But, in the back of my mind, was something that I actually alluded to last week, which was that a lot of meditation teachers would warn you against getting attached to any pleasant state that meditation tends to bring and that's true. For a couple of reasons. One is that, it's not always going to be there. Someday's you won't hit the zone. And you don't want to start thinking of that as failure because you might quit meditating or something. And, the other thing is that there's a lot of constructive useful stuff to do in meditation other than blissing out. So, what a meditation teacher would tell you is, in those weeks when you approach nothing like serenity, that's fine, just observe whatever is happening. If you're feeling unsettled, observe the feeling of unsettlement. Where is it? Is it in your legs? Just pay attention to it. And I think, because that is what leads to kind of the mindfulness broadly speaking, that is the way you cultivate mindfulness, broadly speaking. So anyway, didn't mean to oversell serenity. It's great, I recommend it if you can. And what I said is kind of true that an interesting thing is that often you feel that the serenity is a result of seeing things more clearly. Seeing things, including your feelings, with less kind of narrative overlay than usual. And, by the same token, serenity itself can lead you to see things more clearly. And in fact, it sometime happens to me during my meditation, I'll kind of be feeling really nice, and calm. Some issue that I've been wrestling with will pop into my mind, and the resolution will suddenly seem so obvious. It's like, no don't send the confrontational email. Send the less confrontational email. It doesn't sound that profound when I say it now but ordinary, every day human consciousness being what it is, it's just sometimes hard to see what the obviously less destructive thing is. Unless you kind of calm down, and that's a pretty mundane, in a way, use of meditation compared to stuff we've talked about in the course, enlightenment and so on. Mundane benefits are good benefits. Speaking of profound things like enlightenment. Okay, so there were a couple of comments about this thing I did in the final lecture where I did this kind of breakdown of positive, like elements of enlightenment. I had a chart that looked something like this. Let me grab this. Looked something like this. Not exactly. And I gotta say I'd expected to get a little more blowback than I got, this does after all seem like kind of a parody of a crude western attempt to break down analytically what is actually a holistic state that should not be broken down right? I didn't actually get as much of that kind of blowback as I thought I would in the discussion forum. But there were some critical, or at least, inquisitive comments and, by the way, I should emphasize, I know this is like kind of crude, but I think, there is some virtue to the exercise in any event. Here's what someone said. Vignesh Villamayor Jayaraman, what would you say the chances are that I pronounced those three names correctly? Anyway, he asks how is enlightenment leading to both objective and moral truth? Remember, I had made this assertion that one of the interesting things is the Buddhist claim that through enlightenment you're both seeing the world more clearly and kind of apprehending the morally true view of things as well. And I said it was interesting that there is this, the assertion of this alignment between kind of moral truth and the objective truth about the world was a interesting thing. Not necessarily shared in so many words, by all religions, certainly not that explicitly. Although I was reminded this ancient Egyptian religion concept of Maat, M-A-A-T, has some of these two dimensions of truth, it's a very multi-faceted version of truth itself. Anyway, I digress because I'm sure the parallel there is not exact anyway. But, back to Vignesh, he's questioning the claim that enlightenment leads to both objective moral truth. He points out that after all, in this little chart there's only one case with what I'd call the interior version of the not-self experience where you see both objective and moral truth checked off in my little crude checklist. And so he says, he doesn't see such a, says out of the four elements of enlightenment, only one is counted for both objective and moral truths, so I'm not able to understand how it leads to an alignment between objective and moral truth. Okay, let me say, couple of things. First of all, I think, although I've broken it down, most people, the people I'd expected to ridicule me a little more than they did would say, well this is like a whole experiment. Enlightenment is ultimately kind of one thing. It is the true apprehension of the world. You can try to break it down into components, but it's one thing. So if it brings, one way or another, both moral truth and objective truth, you've got some asterisks in both, well then it is bringing both. That's one thing I would say. And I would say, by the way, even there's all kinds of unities among these, I would say, I mean even when I made the distinction between exterior not-self and interior not-self, well, that experientially might seem like a much more continuous thing. Impermanence, well, in fact, this leads me to a comment by, I guess, Ng Yeow Foo, again, no way I've pronounced that correctly, I'm sure. N-G Y-E-O-W F-O-O, I may have gotten the Foo part right, has an interesting claim that impermanence should have an asterisk under moral truth, and I think you can make that claim. Let me elaborate on this comment. When one realizes impermanence of all things, one ceases to grasp. And then later says, when things change, what can there be for one's self to identify as me, mine, myself? So, there's really two points I'd like to get out of this very interesting comment. One is that, arguably, you should have an asterisk here. And I think, as I said in the lectures, you could make the argument. You should have asterisks here and here. It was just not as obviously strong a claim to me as that you would have the asterisks here. So I think you could make the argument that there should be eight asterisks here, there should be eight checkmarks. That's one point, the other point being made in this comment is that the impermanence is related to the not-self experience. In other words, to quote again, what can there be for oneself to identify as me, mine, and myself. Right. So the idea of impermanence is kind of integrally related to the not-self experience. So I'm just getting back to the point that ultimately enlightenment would be seen as this collective thing, right? And, by the way, emptiness, formlessness is also related to not-self. Some people, especially in the Mahayana tradition, where they emphasize emptiness, not-self is kind of seen as the interior version of what's called emptiness when you see it out there. And the logic behind calling it emptiness, behind saying it lacks essence, is somewhat the same in the two cases. So, just in summary, I recognize, kind of, all these are intertwined, and that's why enlightenment is thought of as a kind of a more holistic thing. And many people would just assume you not crudely break it down into these components, not to mention the fact that there are other things you can nominate as being components, at the experience of enlightenment. So, there's that, and then there's the fact that even if you do agree, that it's worth breaking down, you can make the argument, if I had time, I might make the argument that all of these check marks should be checked. Okay now, I mentioned formlessness, emptiness, and someone said in the comment section, emptiness is not formlessness. You'll notice that I have them as roughly equal. And I want to see who that was. Let's see. It's Morris Sullivan, but I also want to read something that Morris said. So let me actually go retrieve Morris's comments. Give me a sec. Okay, I am back. And couple of things, first of all, while you were away, there was a changing of the guard. Guess who came back? Frasier and Milo graciously surrendered the coveted throne to Frasier. That is the kind of Buddhist Milo is. And Milo, as you can see, is meditating. And Frasier, as you can see, is, I think we can call that sleeping. It's the sound of snoring that helps you distinguish between the two. Hi Frazier, we were just talking about you. So anyway, all is well. Maybe, except that Frazier May have fleas or something, judging by the scratching. We'll get to the bottom of that, too, eventually. So, the other thing while you were away is I had a second thought about what I had said about serenity. I wanted to add one other thing, which is just that when meditation's not going well, I have one thing, I mean well in the sense of like not making you feel great and even being a little kind of uncomfortable, like do I really have to do this. For me, what has helped is, what I think is true, is to reflect on what I think is true, which is that even if it's not particularly blissful and maybe far from it, in my experience, it does seem like the day goes a little better when I meditate, even if nothing spectacular happens when I meditate. Even if I'm not sitting there loving it. And that conviction, which I think is based in fact, kind of keeps me at it. Okay, for what that's worth, back to emptiness and formlessness. So I had said that this Mahayana concept of emptiness, that things like essence, you say, I had said, I had equated it with an idea you could call formlessness, that sometimes is called formlessness, that I heard about more in a Theravada context. At least, I've heard Theravada teachers talk about it. And Morris Sullivan questions my equation of the two points to what is probably the best known Buddhist text on emptiness. It's the famous heart sutra, where it says form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And Morris says in his interpretation, form is still present, but form is just empty of this essence we'd call a self or inherent existence. Okay, that's true. I would say at the same time I mean I guess it's true. I'm willing to accept it as a stipulation. I want to emphasize a couple of things. First of all, I was talking about experience, not philosophy. I was suggesting that the meditative experience that some of these Theravada teachers might be calling formlessness, and the experience that sometimes they may carry into everyday life that they think of as formlessness in the way they apprehend things. Is, maybe, the same thing as the experience that a Mahayana Buddhist might refer to as emptiness. If they said, well, I had this apprehension of emptiness while I was meditating, or I carry this apprehension into everyday life or whatever. So it was not meant to be a philosophical equation. And in fact, I'm not aware of some kind of well worked out doctrine or formlessness in Theravada Buddhism although there could be one. It's so many nooks and crannies of Buddhist thought. But I was just talking about experience. At the same time, I would say that the logic of emptiness, logic behind the doctrine of emptiness suggests that maybe formless is a kind of appropriate word, actually. And also this is going to bring us back to the raging controversy from last week over whether, how misleading it is to talk about the oneness of everything as being a kind of a Buddhist type insight, which we talked about in last week's office hours. Okay, so here's what I mean. First of all, well no, here's what I mean. As I understand it, and I'm not an expert on Mahayana philosophy, but as I understand it, the logic, if you work out the logic of emptiness, as opposed to just the experiential apprehension of emptiness, which is what, again, what I was talking about, has to do, again, with this idea a Buddhist word sometimes translated as a dependent arising or interdependent co-arising, and that's probably the translation that's most apt for these purposes. And what that refers to is just the interdependence of things for their very existence. Okay, so I could not exist, well as an historical matter, if my father and mother hadn't existed. I could not exist now if there weren't oxygen in the environment. I would not be doing the things that I'm doing at this moment had it not been with all kinds of little interactions and influences. So you could say that I don't have independent existence, right? And as I understand it that is kind of the logic behind emptiness. There's nothing out there that has inherent, intrinsic existence independent of all of these other things. That sustain it as we see it, okay? That's kind of the idea. So there's this rich intertwining of everything. And I would say actually that, to the extent that that's conducive to thinking these things as emptiness. It's probably equally conducive to questioning the very form of things in the sense that the bounds of them no longer seem so rigid. The bounds of them seem more kind of permeable. The bounds of them are seen as things through which influence is passing kind of back and forth all the time. So although it's convenient to carve the world up into these forms, there's actually this fluid interaction among the things we think of as forms, that when you think about it, calls into question the structure of the forms themselves in a way. At least I think you could make that case, but that's a pretty obscure thing. But I do want to get back, do want to revisit the raging controversy. I'm starting to think you really can make the case for oneness [LAUGH] in a Buddhist context, more than I was thinking the last time. I'll get back to that, but first let me visit this comment from Penny Jennings. I am troubled by your use of the word essence in the examples that you gave. I thought that the meaning of essence is the attribute or a set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is. Your example seemed more like definitions of values that we put on any object based on the associations that we have with said object. Okay, so right. I was talking about how people seem to naturally kind of without even thinking about it attribute essence to things. Penny's kind of formal definition of essence is a set of attributes that distinguish something. Fine, that's perfectly fine. Formal definition, but, yes. My point was that the way we actually, when we attribute essence to things, the way the human mind does identify something and assign attributes to it is inextricably entwined with evaluating it, assigning value to it. Specifically, affected value. We have feelings about everything, things that may be very subtle feelings, but my argument was that the process of assigning essence to something does involve feelings, okay. So, and where do we go from here? Well, one place, I'd like to get up this quote from this psychologist named Zajonc. I really wish I'd kind of quoted him during the lectures, and if I act fast enough I can maybe dig up this quote. But he was somebody who emphasized how affect pervades human perception. He was really I think a deeply insightful student of the human mind. And here, we are hoping to get to this quote any moment now. Okay, here's what he says. When we evaluate an object or an event, we are describing not so much what is in the object or in the event, but something that is in ourselves. Thus, affective judgments are always about the self. They identify the state of the judge in relation to the object of judgment. Okay that. Is kind of my point, that when we, we're kind of perceiving what we think of as the essence of something. That actually, that's involving these value judgments that ultimately are traceable to natural selection having built the human mind to evaluate things in relation to the self, because that's what natural selection cares about, preserving this body. So that is the point of all this and I recommend the work of Zeajonc. Z-E-A-J-O-N-C. Believe it or not I think I am close to the correct pronunciation on that. In any event, I don't think you need the first name which I don't remember, because I believe if you Google that last name you won't come up with a whole lot of alternative candidates. He was a psychologist if you need to narrow it down any further than that. So let's get back to the raging controversy over Buddhism and oneness. First of all, Dew Nada. Now, you may think that means do nothing. English word do, nada being Spanish for nothing. It does not, it's the name of the person who said this. Dew is D-E-W, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Nada is indeed N-A-D-A as the Spanish word for nothing, which is kind of appropriate, because concept of emptiness is involved in what Dew Nada is saying. Remember, the raging controversy was over, one of the kind of serious meditators that we saw in lecture six, Gary Webber described an experience of what I was calling the exterior version of not self. In other words, the kind of a break down of the bounds of self-perception of that. Gary was describing that as kind of being an experience of oneness with the things out there. Although, in other ways he was conceding that's a a misleading thing, but anyway, then commenters pointed out that now according to mañana philosophy, oneness is not the way to describe the continuity between what's in here and what's out there, because it's actually continuity of emptiness. Not self here, objects our there also have not self. Same kind of logic. And now says my two cents on the raging controversy over Electra six, oneness is orthodox Buddhist teaching. According to Dew Nada the ancient Huayan tradition affirms the all in one, one in all. Teaching Huayan is H-U-A-Y-A-N. Dew Nada mentions the bright dawn center of oneness Buddhism about which I know nothing, but says that it is a contemporary lineage which promotes the central importance of realizing oneness. Anyway, the [BLANK AUDIO] more I think about this, the more I think we really are, it's just a matter of wordplay almost. Here's what I mean. Again, as I just said, I think if I'm remembering correctly. The idea that this kind of Huayan critique of calling it oneness with everything begins with the idea that no, everything's empty, I'm empty of self. Of that kind of essence. World out there. Things are empty of essence. And the logic, as I understand it again, is about interdependence and interrelationship of things. Things are so interdependent. I can't be here without oxygen, with out gravity I wouldn't be anything like I am. If I hadn't just heard Milo rustle, I wouldn't have turned around right then, and so on. So, or if I hadn't and if Milo hadn't heard his name when I said that, he would not have walked over here, under the impression that he was about to get some attention which I guess he will get. He's a good dog. And Frazier the Buddhist, we think he's not jealous of the fact that I'm petting Milo. Whereas, only weeks ago he might have been, but look how serene Frazier looks. See, see? He's serene. Which is both the result of his seeing the truth and is in turn conducive to seeing more truth. And that's why Frazier is unbothered by the attention that Milo's getting now. Okay, good doggie. So, [BLANK AUDIO] and by the way, one comment. Who was it who said that my dogs had domesticated me? I'll try to dig up that name and bring him to justice for that, for saying something. So, so deeply, deeply offensive. Now actually, it's wasn't offensive, it's actually related to what I'm saying, is that the dogs, it's not like I'm controlling the dogs. The dogs are controlling me. I respond to them. They respond to me. And that's interdependence. So that's the thing. So my point is, if emptiness is about how the different things we see out there are so interdependent, and they are so interdependent with us. Because after all, every perception influences us. And there's so much interplay, intertwining all the things in the world, if that's what's behind the idea of emptiness, and I think it is, it just doesn't seem to me all that misleading to talk about it as oneness. I mean [LAUGH] I understand that. The way the philosophy has become to be articulated, that's apparently verboten. But, [LAUGH] I'm just saying, I respect philosophers, they're sticklers about words and so, I do respect that. At the same time it does seem to me a little ironic that, since any mystical tradition is, almost by definition, kind of skeptical of the ability of language to capture reality, and mystical traditions, for that reason, tend to get preference to the experiential apprehension of at least ultimate realities. It just seems to me it would be kind of ironic if we got too hung up on the way these experiences wind up getting articulated is a formal philosophical matter along different philosophical lineages. I would say that. The other thing I would say is this. I kind of said this last time but just, [BLANK AUDIO] saying to have the full on experience of not self, which involves, again, not just skepticism about the internal kind of a coherence of self in a certain sense or solidity and permanence of self and CEO-ness of self, but also is a skepticism about the bounds between this self and what's out there. If one of the virtues of that is a kind of moral or ethical virtue of seeing more continuity of kind of interest or continuity of legitimacy of interest between yourself and other beings. It just seems to me one that's certainly a nice if possibly idealistic, even utopian or something way to describe that. I don't know. So I'm just feeling although I feel, I think it was a good point to make, that what Gary said in that video did not comply strictly speaking with miahona philosophy, which he wasn't trying to do anyway. He was just describing an experience. I increasingly wonder how real the difference is, and as I suggested, I think the meditative experience of what might be articulated as oneness in one context, such as some Hindu contexts, may be exactly what the meditative experience is in a miahona context. Where the interpretation might have to do more with emptiness or continuity of emptiness and oneness. Anyway, I've said some of that, so I'll quit saying that. Now who was it who made that little comment about me and my, me having been domesticated by my dogs? We should give that person due credit, if we can find out but maybe I should turn the camera off, find the person, give due credit, and then talk about a couple of other things and call it a day. Okay, I'm back and it turns out that the person I should credit for saying that my dogs have domesticated me is named anonymous. Okay, so Craig Reukers, R-E-U-K-E-R-S, had written in the discussion forum about me and my two dogs, and anonymous chimed in and don't you just love how well they have domesticated him. So true, now on quickly this question of whether Buddhist meditation can, or the dharma generally can dampen your moral fervor and any activist impulse you might have otherwise expressed. We talked about this a little, a number of people are interested in it. Maria Salvucci on Facebook expresses interest. She says living in Arizona I feel a strong need to be a voice standing up for fairness, empathy and compassion towards others. So she's very interested in hearing about this question of Buddhism and activism. Justin Schulz weighs in, Vincenzo Gazoli started a thread on the subject, and in that thread a variety of views were expressed. Anonymous, possibly a different anonymous from the other anonymous, says isn't a desire for justice and fairness always set in motion by anger and passion? Suggesting that yeah, meditation could dampen the quest for justice and fairness as a practical matter. But RC Nemer, N-E-M-E-R, says, as for moral fervor, I suspect that meditating might reduce its intensity, but in a positive way. So our sense of morality is expressed in subtler less polarizing ways. Similarly, Brian Chung says, well it says once a person achieves enlightenment, that rules me out but anyway, he can do more to properly correct injustice than any unenlightened person can. The problem with attachment activism in our current un-enlightened states is that we don't have the wisdom and the powers that Buddha does. Instead we are driven by passion. An activist may actually end up pouring gasoline on the fire and accidentally escalate things into civil war. There's certainly truth there and in fact I would say a lot of activist energy certainly is expressed in dialogue on the Internet winds up counter-productively just antagonizing people who disagree. And if anything impeding mutual comprehension. Still, it's nice to have some kind of energy to drive you right and I think it is a very serious question as to whether, in principle whether sometimes the Buddhist path does dampen this kind of energy. I came across an interesting interview with Bhikkhu Bodhi, I won't say much about it. I encourage everybody to read it. That's very much on topic. It's in Religion Dispatches, a very good website, religiondispatches.org. If you go there and search for Bhikkhu Bodhi, you'll come across this interview, which was done by Joshua Eaton, E-A-T-O-N. Just a couple of quick highlights. Bhikkhu Bodhi says after I encountered Buddhism, you may remember Bhikkhu Bodhi appeared in the course. And he's a very kind of venerable scholar and monk, in the Theravada tradition. He says, after I encountered Buddhism, I decided that my primary task was to change myself rather than to change the world and thus, my focus shifted on my spiritual development. I maintained this attitude toward social issues, and so on, basically until 1982. Then he started changing and he said after that, I was troubled by the way many Buddhists while speaking eloquently about compassion viewed the Dharma essentially as a path to inner peace and treated engagement with social and political matters as tangential to their practice, and so on. I'm going to read this and think about it, and I hope have a little more to say about it in the next office hours and there will be one more office hours, even though the lectures are now all out there. There will be yet one more because after all, the site will stay open for at least a couple of more weeks. So that puts us into the third week of May. So, that gives me time to accumulate enough questions and comments or for enough questions and comments to accumulate. For me to, I guess, have an excuse to do this again, which I enjoy. I'm not sure that it'll be at the usual time, the usual kind of Monday. Maybe a little longer, it may take long before I do it, I'm not sure but in any event I will send out emails when it happens. Meanwhile, I encourage you to keep commenting in a discussion form, on our Facebook page or you can tweet questions to me at @darwindharma, one word. And probably if you want to be sure something comes to my attention, I mean the discussion forum is so vast that although I check into it and try to kind of get the highlights, things there can elude my attention. So if you have a specific question for me, not that I can manage to address all of them on office hours, but tweeting is a good way to get it to me or on the Facebook page. It's possible to keep track of things in the Facebook page. That's a little more manageable than the discussion forum. But on this one subject of Buddhist activism, I will say one thing about the discussion forum, is it's a good place to have an extended discussion, because of its structure. So if people start or continue threads there on the subject, I will try to find them. Finally, on this very subject, I think last time I promised to share with you a YouTube thing that a commenter, a student had called attention to on this subject involving Ram Dass and Thich Nhat Hahn. Well basically, I'll show you the URL, okay, as crude a way as this is to get you to it. It is at at YouTube, see at the bottom there, last line, that is the URL that would get you there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZKrl5n as in Nancy, 7, 9hY, will get you there. And it's at 3 minutes and 43 seconds at this part of the dialogue starts. So thank you again, Frazier and Milo, thank you. And as you can see, I mean if you're just wondering how the dharma might conceivably sap any activist impulse you might have. Well do they look like they are ready to go man the barricades, and join an anti war protest or something? Not exactly. I don't think Frasier is really upset with the status quo right now. He's awakening from his dogmatic slumber. A little dog pun there. And maybe, maybe, he's about to go to an anti-war march or something. Milo, on the other hand Not so much, but they're happy. And they'll be back next week as will I, or at some point before too long, at lease one more time before the course site closes, which will be I'll have details on exactly when it closes. It definitely will not be staying open longer than the end of May. But I'll have an exact date for you before long. Thank you so much for tuning in, and all three of us say, until next time.
