monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
eating disorder
So after my recent struggles with the more mystical components of Tibetan Buddhism and Shambhala Training - which is the mind training techniques of Tibetan Buddhism extracted into a secular western style course of study - I was talking about the shamanic influence in various Buddhist traditions with my friend Barnaby. He is quite the scholar, and he holds the opinion that it’s not shamanic influence at all. He feels that the superstitious quality that we perceive as westerners is in fact core to Buddhism. All traditions he notes have some component of spirits or energy work or viewing the world as not quite entirely logical. I’ve always passed that off as just Buddhism melding with the indigenous culture, but at the same time wondered how something that can seem so logical allow the irrational view to persist.
That was perhaps just my western arrogance assuming all things with merit would be logical and not mystical. But I am starting to appreciate how though mystical language might not describe reality from a science view very well, it is sometimes a better way to describe the subconscious mind and this experience that I actually live in day to day. Moreover, as a language to enact change or to embody a principle in my life, logic isn’t always that great. I logically know I shouldn’t eat that brownie, but the tides of emotion which I live in while experiencing the brownie and my relationship to the brownie might be better described in other language. Especially if it’s a chocolate brownie.
More instruction in groundlessness and a wider view; thanks Barnaby.
If you're new here, thanks for visiting! Please subscribe to my RSS feed and consider visiting my design-related blog and my meditation-related blog.
30. April 2004 at 1:44 am :
You don’t state specifically what you had a problem with in the teaching or the interaction at the retreat, so it’s a bit difficult to engage directly with what you are talking about. I have a vague idea of what you mean and I have lots of opinions on this sort of subject. (me have opinions, I know it’s surprising)
On a base level, I think that many Buddhist practices ask you to call in to question (or pull the rug out from under) those things that you rely upon for your interpretation of the world and find solidity in it, including logic. Something I gleam from teachings on emptiness is this: …nothing “is” as it appears and yet it appears. It does not exist as you imagine but it does not “not exist”. You have to let go of your logical grip somewhat. It is difficult, if not impossible, to approach certain understandings with the critical mind (and yet our critical mind tends to be the most important resource that most of us have to relate to the world). The teachings end up alluding to things without touching them; defining reality in terms of the relationship between one thing and another rather than to what it “is”.
I do see many of the Tibetan energy and iconography teachings as metaphor. However, in some ways, those metaphors may help us to relate to experiential world more directly than logical conceptual thinking. Sometimes the teachings ask you to “sense” your way around your life.
With relation to science, there have been many times when I have read the Buddha’s teachings and thought, “Damn, over 3000 years ago this man had a sense of modern physics”. Buddhism broke down the material world so thoroughly that many of its teachings dovetail with the quantum, chaos, and string theories that are being explored in modern scientific thinking now. That is one of the reasons I am drawn to Buddhism, the interwoven and inextricable nature of critical thought and how that critical thought opens you to what you don’t or perhaps cannot “know”. But we could talk about this for days.
Also, don’t always question your body’s desire for sweets or whatever. It might know something that you don’t “know”. I crave greens and beets all the time and simple sugars often…but you probably know when it’s just asking for attention and supplication.
1. May 2004 at 12:23 pm :
Hmmm, I am wondering why you suggest that the irrational cannot also be logical. Are there not mathematical concepts that are irrational, or irreducible? Non-real numbers? Square roots of negative? Divide by zero.
I just watched Mindwalk with SM, which is a movie from the early 90s that’s based on F Capra’s work (He wrote Tao of Physics). Is a very good description of systems theory. The question put to the theoretical physicist in the story is ‘ok great, we are fields of probability that are difficult to compress, but, if we are all connected fields of energy where are the other people in your system?’ I think anything that feels irrational or mystical or supernatural is our individual desire to remain distinct, thus we need to believe other things are distinct, too.
Meh, rambling.