Greetings, Friendlies. : ) I’d hoped to finish the HemLat series before a Dzogchen retreat with Tsoknyi Rinpoche (and ensuing road trip). But as ChatGPT said consolingly, “The rodent has plans, but the Milky Way has perspective.” That story another time. This is just a hello; I’m cruising the canyon lands of the Southwest US. […]
Greetings, Friendlies.:) All experience is preceded by mind,Led by mind,Made by mind. ~DhP 1.1 Translation by Gil Fronsdal Well, almost. It appears experience is shaped, not by mind, but by minds. Two of them. And those two minds are conditioned by the left and right hemispheres of the brain. To truncate E.B. White: We are […]
Greetings, Friendlies.:) In Western Dhamma we have a tendency to atomize—to part-out—spiritual traditions: take what is useful and leave the rest. This is an incredible privilege. But it can leave a practitioner adrift, yearning for a coherent sense of meaning. Having collected various bits of Dhamma—and they are each immensely helpful: apply this bit here, […]
Greetings, Friendlies.:) “It’s just a theory. It doesn’t have anything to do with my practice.” Some of us have been taught that theory—anything intellectual really—is disruptive to dhammic path-ing. Theory, we have been told, actively hinders liberation. But that take, “theory is not good for practice” is itself a theory and it shapes our practice. […]
Greetings, Friendlies.:) Have you ever noticed how some parts of you want to deeply engage with the world—and other parts want to control it? Classically we might identify the one as a kind of Buddha-nature and the other as the work of Māra. McGilchrist’s view of hemisphere lateralization [1] suggests that these two views of […]
Greetings, Friendlies. :) For some Dhamma folk, discussions of “brain hemispheres” and “neural algorithms” elicits an instant—perhaps bodily—contraction. The resistance seems to come from a belief that the richness of human experience, the sacredness of being, is being reduced to mere mechanism. But that view is itself reductionist: “Either I must throw off the knowledge […]
Greetings, Friendlies. :) I play improv. It’s a kind of make-believe for grownups. If you know the TV show “Who’s Line is it, Anyway?”, that’s improv. Kalyana-mitta express surprise when I refer to improv as sīla practice. How could such undignified behavior qualify as ethical training? Where are the robes? Where are the cushions? Where […]
Greetings, Friendlies. :) They say that the best way to learn is to teach. Perhaps. But what do we get from teaching? And are there alternatives? I’d say that the most important thing we get from teaching is learning to refine our ideas. We root around and gather up the vague hints and notions lurking […]
Greetings, Friendlies! For years I’ve threatened to host a book club bringing Dhamma folks together to read non-Dhamma books. Particularly CogScience-y books. The dream is manifest. Behold: Tiny Book Club! Just two people, just one book. For the first iteration kalyana-Darrell and I will read Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, a substantial tome […]
Well, friendlies, we made it. Congratulations. :))) Over the past 27(ish) posts we’ve looked at the Classical View of Humanity, the Interpreter Module, Avijjā, Simple Knowing, Skillfulness, Reactivity, Fabrication, Implicit Bias, Hemisphere Specialization, and the Goal of the Practice. The “Survival Series for Kids” authors would be proud of us, I think. Not that we’re […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Okay, the title is an exaggeration. But this quote landed with a THA-WUMP in my lap t’other day: Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before [they allow themselves] to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid. ~H.W. Fowler My writing […]
The power of grounding in times of inner and outer conflict.
I’ll be giving another class report 06JAN, 1000 Pacific. Would love to have you. :
In February John Peacock wrote a powerful article, originally published in Tricycle (re-published with permission on SecularBuddhistNetwork) titled “The Elephant in the Dharma Hall”. (If you’ve not read, may I recommend?) The illustration is by Robert Neubecker and I thought it would make an amazing t-shirt. Neither Neubecker nor Peacock responded to the recommendation. ;)
The Paradoxical Commandments People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.Be […]
Greetings, Friendlies! In Part 8 we considered the modularity of brain organization. So what? Well, at the 50,000 foot level, if avijjā resides primarily in not understanding the kind of beings we are, then understanding brain function is a movement towards less avijjā. But let’s zoom from 50,000 to, say, 20,000 feet and ask again, […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Following on our metaphorical room cleaning: let’s begin by picking up the Classical Western View of Humanity. The Classical View seems important juxtaposed against what is possible with a more scientifically informed view. By scientifically informed, I mean, among other things, physics (itty-bitty physics all the way up to great big physics), ecology, […]
When I was small(er) my parents gave me the book, What to Do When Your Mom or Dad Says… Clean Your Room!. Part of a series titled “Survival Series for Kids” (Seriously. My poor parents.): A proto- Marie Kondo treatise. With better pictures. One begins by clearing off and making the bed. That is, establishing […]
Greetings, Friendlies! I harbor some baseless supposition (BS?) that classical dhamma education unfolds via a structure honed over, perhaps, several thousand years? Theories and practices presented in an order and at a pace curated and refined for generations. Practical. Reproducible. Safe. I have not been the beneficiary (or victim) of such a system; coming up […]
What I see as the fundamental problem, and what I am most interested in working on, is that we humans do not understand the kind of beings we are.
Perhaps. Some dharma teachers claim there is no English equivalent for the Pāli “vedanā” . Although I do not know a word in common usage, there has been a word used in psychology since the 1930s, “valence”, that I think will do the job very well. [1] In (the HIGHLY recommended) How Emotions Are Made, […]
“if we want to focus our minds on serious and difficult things, we may at points have to take some radical steps – and to do things that will strike some people as odd and or even unwarranted.” ~Alain de Botton, How to Think More Effectively A few years ago I wrote about Gregg McKeowen’s […]
Greetings, Friendlies! Leigh Brasington recently self-published a new book on the Gradual Training; it is available on his website (dāna basis): http://gt.leighb.com/. If you didn’t know, along with _Right Concentration_ (on the sutta jhānas), Leigh published a book on Dependent Origination, also available on his website: https://www.leighb.com/sodapi/index.html. With friendliness!
This sounds awfully familiar somehow…
Transcript for Episode 9 of Dharma PhD (the podcast); we talk about bringing a dhammic lens to the zombie apocalypse (ie, HBO’s TV Series, _The Last of Us_).
‘Nuff said.
Greeting, Friendlies! Part of the tangle of ideas I spoke about in Part 1 comes from reading or hearing teachers or practitioners* use words in contexts such that I think they are referring to a territory near(ish) to Awakening. In this post I’d like to acknowledge these words and ask the hivemind what others might […]
Single lifetime liberation, yo!
My kind of meditation instruction. :)
Greetings, Friendlies! Please excuse the radio silence; took myself to the woods for a 25-night personal samadhi/jhāna retreat. For guidance I followed Rob Burbea’s excellent 2019 3-week jhāna retreat at Gaia House. I’ve worked with Bhante Vimalaramsi’s TWIM and Leigh Brasington’s (Ayya Kema’s) techniques; very much enjoyed the spin Burbea brought to the practice. I […]
Dharma PhD 