Philip Seymour Hoffman on happiness

This is a snippet of an interview with Philip Seymour Hoffman wherein he touches briefly on pleasure, noting that anything can be overdone and then ceases to be pleasurable, and goes on to discuss happiness at more length.

He talks about how the biggest interruption to his happiness comes from thoughts rooted in the past. That leaves him wondering (and what follows is my paraphrase):

Have I ever been happy in my life? How would I know? What is the indicator for that?

He goes on to talk about how pervasive and sticky are the thoughts of the past that continue to haunt him, an observation clarified by meditation.

I'm an enthusiast of the Living Inquiries, developed by Scott Kiloby and colleagues. In the past I had worked with cognitive therapy and the programs of Landmark Education, but for my money, the Inquiries go deeper and are more effective as a technique for uprooting the painful influences of the past.

These are all good ways to explore the negative space of things that aren't happiness. What I've seen with people involved in each of these is that when painful influences are absent, happiness seems to just pop up out of nowhere, like some sort of underground spring that previously went unnoticed amid the distractions of misery.

I can talk a lot about what gets in the way of happiness. But I don't really have a clue about what happiness actually is, and my best guess is that nobody else does either. Hoffman's uncertainty about whether he had ever really been happy makes sense to me. Interestingly and perhaps unfortunately, the place he looked for an answer was in his memory of the past. I find myself hoping that this uncertainty wasn't troubling him when he died.

When I started this blog, it began as an exercise in reading the writings of people who'd claimed to have experiences of "spiritual awakening", whatever that might be. Experiences, however, come and go, even those that seem extraordinary in the moment, and all these people return to "normal" afterwards. The only difference then is their interpretation of "normal" experience.

I've sometimes felt that spiritual awakening ought to be bigger and more impersonal than the happiness or misery of any particular individual, something like the discovery of a new law of physics. I have no idea where to look for such a thing, and the happiness of individuals is prominently visible and actionable. These days, the closest thing to "spiritual awakening" that I can identify is recognizing the behaviors of the mind that are obstructions to happiness, and for human beings at least, there is a definite universality to those.

No Views is Good Views

There's a great old story where George Berkeley has claimed the non-existence of matter, and Samuel Johnson and James Boswell are thinking about how to refute the claim, and Johnson's idea is to find a large rock and kick it, an appeal to the empirical that would make any heavy-metal fan proud. Now his toe hurts, and we'll come back to that. Meanwhile what about the existence of things?

A Brahman approaches the Buddha and asks, “Venerable Gautama, do all things exist?”
The Buddha replies, “The view that all things exist is one extreme materialistic view.”
“Then all things do not exist?”
“The view that all things do not exist is the second materialistic view.”
“Are all things, then, one?”
“The view that all things are one is the third materialistic view.”
“Are all things, then, a plurality?”
“The view that all things are a plurality is the fourth materialistic view. The Tathagata proclaims a teaching that is balanced, avoiding these extremes, thus, ‘With ignorance as condition there are volitional impulses; with volitional impulses as condition, consciousness . . . with the complete abandoning of ignorance, volitional impulses cease; with the cessation of volitional impulses, consciousness ceases.’”

Smith, Rodney (2011-07-22). Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self (p. 38). Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.

In the time I've been working with Scott Kiloby's velcro effect (page 2) and related inquiries, I feel that I've seen much more deeply into the Buddha's teachings. Here the Buddha refutes not just the view that things exist, but pretty much all possible views one could adopt on the question. What's the deal? Is the Buddha having some fun at the expense of the poor reader?

Interpretation #1: Adoption of any of those possible views leads to suffering, and the Buddha's teachings lead away from suffering, so the Buddha declines to endorse any of them.
Interpretation #2: As limited beings, we can't really know with 100% certainty which of those views is correct, and we should admit to ourselves that we don't know, otherwise we'll suffer.
Interpretation #3: The correctness of any view about anything is not 100% knowable, and holding any view on anything leads to suffering.

I have come to favor the last interpretation. One could say "ah, but that is just another view, with the same failings as any other view". And quite frankly I don't have a good answer to that objection.

Discarding views about anything has interesting implications.

If the Buddha proclaims the existence of Nirvana, we might conclude it's this THING that we might not have, and if we don't have it, maybe we're supposed to go FIND it. And people sometimes spend decades trying, and fail, and THAT is big-time suffering. Whatever else we may be ignorant about, we don't like suffering (until we so thoroughly deconstruct it that it no longer exists).

When we left Samuel Johnson, he'd gotten a sore toe from kicking a big rock. He still thinks the rock is irrefutably real. If he looks carefully, he'll see that his belief in the reality of the rock comes from a collection of experiences that aren't fundamentally connected: in his visual field the "rock" is a bunch of shapes and colors, in his toe the "rock" is actually an experience of pain, if he sits on it the "rock" is sensations in his butt, and if he drops another rock on it then it's an experience of a sound that he'll call a collision. Plenty of sensations and an appearance of consistency between them, but no ACTUAL ROCK matching the one in his imagination.

More about working with pain

In an earlier posting I dealt with pain, and I'd like to revisit the subject here. I'll discuss it in terms of what Scott Kiloby calls the velcro effect (1, 2), where something takes on the appearance of a permanent object because thoughts (in the forms of words and pictures) have become commingled with body sensations. The thoughts claim the body sensations as proof that the thoughts must be taken seriously. If we notice that body sensations don't prove anything (the notion of "proof" exists only in thought and language), then the claim made by the thoughts can be ignored.

I've worked with several of the people Scott has trained to facilitate the inquiries he's developed. Yesterday was the first session where I've been facilitated by Scott himself. We worked on some chronic pain in my left calf.

One can easily imagine working with thoughts-as-words. That's what people do in therapy, and we've all seen therapy sessions on TV and in the movies if we haven't been in therapy ourselves. The inquiries carefully skirt the question of whether verbal thoughts are true or false, since that can lead to an endless morasse of analysis piled on top of analysis, and indeed, people sometimes spend years (and fortunes) in therapy doing exactly that. For pain, verbal thoughts (this shouldn't be happening, this is unbearable, this will get worse) are worth noticing for the purposes of distinguishing them from the body sensations they claim to describe. Those thoughts and body sensations are distinct.

But what was really useful in my session with Scott was working with thoughts-as-pictures. When I experience pain, usually it is associated with an idea of where the pain resides in my body. For me this generally takes the form of a 3D anatomical drawing, usually colorless like a model done in transparent plastic. I don't have medical training so it's not very detailed. The pictures do not include tissues or blood vessels or nerve ganglia. Nor do they include bones except in those instances where I have a good idea of the shapes of the bones in the region.

Scott asked me to look at the shape and color of the picture of pain in my calf. The shape resembled a bent thin strip of wood that a sailor might call a batten. The color seemed to be yellow. Scott was using the Anxiety Inquiry so he asked whether either that picture, or the raw sensation, represented a threat or danger of any kind. That question guided the process. I studied that picture apart from the direct sensation for a few minutes, and then I studied the direct sensation apart from the picture for a few minutes. I went back and forth. As I did, both the picture and the direct sensation changed over time. The picture would fade from my imagination and be replaced by a different shape and different color. The sensation seemed to move and change in intensity. After going back and forth about four times, I found the sensation had diminished to the point where I just didn't care about it any more.

Some lovely non-dual poetry

This exquisite little poem popped up on a Facebook page where I probably spend too much time. The poet is Julie Klopp, who acknowledges the influences of Edgar Allen Poe and Dr. Seuss. She expressed a little worry that "spiritual" poems should look a particular way and this one doesn't, but I think it's fantastic.

Sucked into the vortex

of my cerebral cortex,
I live for that which comes next,
caught in a web of time.

I think I am a person
who must strive and push and try,
because things can only worsen,
and someday I will die.

So I decide I need analysis
to find the place beyond my mess,
to transcend myself and make progress,
and find my pure Consciousness,
my link to the Divine.

I think that others have It,
I search from place to place,
even as they tell me
there's nothing there to chase.

From time to time I stop to look
and realize it hasn't worked.
Perhaps I'll read another book...
and get it right next time.

Eventually I've failed enough,
tired of looking for other stuff,
it really shouldn't be this tough,
this quest of mine.

What is there to do now?
Perhaps I'm getting wise.
Stop worshipping some sacred cow,
it's time to realize...

That there's no past to work through,
no self to understand,
not a single thought is truthful
when it comes to What I Am.

There is no "me" appearing,
no person that needs steering,
no karma that needs clearing,
without a thought of "mine".

There is no trick to figure out,
no veil to penetrate,
no reason I must doubt,
no reason I must wait.

The secret I've been keeping
is I am what I've been seeking.
I need no further tweaking,
everything is fine.

There is no somewhere else,
there is no other time,
there are no other selves,
there's not even a Divine.

Scott Kiloby, Boston & Providence, December 2012

Scott is back in town and spoke this evening in Newton, a suburb of Boston. His work has been evolving in interesting directions over the last six or seven months since his last Boston area visit, and now focuses on a set of inquiries that he has developed from his experience working with hundreds of people. Here's a nice video by Fiona Robertson, one of the people who has trained with Scott to facilitate the inquiries for people.

This blog post would be remiss not to mention the inquiries but I'd like to move on to some other stuff. One of the ideas mentioned in an earlier post is what Scott calls the "velcro effect", where thoughts (words and pictures) become entangled with body sensations, and hard to pick apart. An example would be if you're in pain, and simultaneously with the physical sensations of pain, there are thoughts rapidly flitting through your consciousness like "this is unbearable" or "I'm afraid this is going to get much worse" or "I shouldn't have to deal with this". If I can notice those thoughts and sensations and keep them separate, the entire situation becomes much more tolerable. And in general, the velcro-ing together of thoughts and body sensations is responsible for a lot of avoidable suffering.

This evening Scott expanded on that and some related ideas. Looking at the notes I scribbled, here's what I found particularly compelling.

Often we seek or crave something (a fast car, a romantic partner, a donut, enlightenment) and that seeking can become a source of suffering. The act of seeking is the indulgence of the velcro effect applied to the thing in question, how it feels to lack it and wish we had it. So it obstructs direct experience in the present of what is going on in our body and mind. If we allow ourselves to experience those directly, our craving diminishes in intensity and can even turn to indifference. The seeking unwinds. Whenever we find ourselves emotionally triggered by the people or events around us, it's helpful to take a moment to pick apart the thoughts from the body sensations and experience each directly. Doing this repeatedly, we find that our capacity to cope with life's variations is much greater than we believed.

Awakening is simply being here without seeking awakening.

Connecting back to the inquiries mentioned above, one of the recent and more effective inquiries is the Compulsion Inquiry. It sometimes seems we are driven or compelled to do something, sometimes even something we don't want to do. When I drive past a Dunkin Donuts, there is often a strong urge to stop and get a Boston Creme donut. In the Compulsion Inquiry, we sniff around among our thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, to see if we can find a very literal command like "You must eat a donut". As we look around, un-velcroing as necessary, we find that the command does not exist anywhere. That might seem obvious enough -- how could a "command" appear in a collection of only words and pictures and feelings and body sensations? -- but actually going through the process has a very liberating effect.

Since there is a Dunkin Donuts on the route that I was driving home, I decided to give it a try. I parked in the parking lot and started thinking about getting a donut. I could visualize the process of buying it. No particular charge there, a set of mental pictures not velcroed to any feeling or body sensation. I could visualize holding the donut, and I'm starting to get a visceral reaction. Biting into the donut, tasting it, imagining the texture and sensation of swallowing it. Now there are body sensations and feelings, so separate them from the words and pictures and dig into the raw sensations. Experience them and look for a command anywhere among them. Nope, no command, so go back to the words and pictures. Plenty of descriptions of donuts and donut-buying and donut-eating scenarios, in both pictures and words, but no actual command. If I had found something, like an emotionally charged thought of "I want a donut", I would have un-velcroed the feelings and body sensations that gave it the emotional charge and looked just at the letters "I w a n t a d o n u t" or the phonemes "Aye uu aa nn tt uh d oh n uh t", looking to see which letter or which phoneme was where the command actually resided. Again that might seem silly, but going through the exercise, you're left with a big freedom around donut eating. And by the end of the exercise, I was utterly indifferent about whether or not to eat a donut, and I continued driving home.

Living without thinking, and a conjecture

I saw this video the other day, wherein Gary Weber described his experience of having his thoughts slow down and stop. At the time he was a high-powered executive and when he went to work in the morning, he expected that the absence of thoughts would be a problem for conducting business. But he found that he was still entirely functional. The absence of thoughts brought him peace and joy, without any apparent downside.

I've once or twice had a similar experience but for me it's not lasted more than five or ten minutes. The onset when it has happened has been astonishing. Thoughts just come to a stop, and whatever I was about to think about, it seems like it can wait until later.

When I look at what prevents this happening more often, it's a couple of things. One is that I suffer from a belief that if I'm thinking about something, it must be important and I'd better be careful not to forget it, so I need to continue thinking about it. Another is a belief that thinking will protect me from harm, because thinking is (allegedly) a good way to anticipate and avoid potential problems. But that's not really borne out by experience: thinking, at least of the gadfly variety, is far more likely to distract me from things of real importance.

I was thinking about Scott Kiloby's exercise of resting in awareness, and thinking that it's a nice way to have this thought-free experience for a few seconds. In those seconds, there is an absence of the usual sorts of suffering that one experiences on a daily basis. One is not concerned about the future of one's career or relationship or health. One does not suffer self-esteem issues or painful memories of childhood or family interactions. One simply experiences what is present in the moment in a peaceful way. And thoughts are conspicuous by their absence.

Having had the experience of thoughtlessness and found it quite pleasant. I'm interested in recapturing it, and I wonder if it might be possible to remain in the resting-in-awareness exercise for a minute, and later an hour, and later an entire day, and eventually all the time. When I try to do this, what comes up to hinder my attempt?

I usually start with my eyes closed, and it's simply not practical to go through my day with my eyes closed. But I can continue with the eyes open, focusing on body sensations like breathing or warmth to avoid getting too engaged in thoughts. Next comes the fear that without thoughts, I will lack ambition, and without ambition, I won't accomplish anything. Rationally I know that my thoughts often get in the way of ambitions more than helping with them. And I know I'll run into the belief that thinking is necessary for safety, and again rationally I know that's not the case. I think this is something to continue tinkering with, and see if I can get anywhere with it.

Greg Goode's book "Standing as Awareness"

I've been reading Standing as Awareness the past few days. Greg Goode addresses questions that might come up for a reader or listener, where other non-duality teachers might just say "Don't over-analyze it" or "You're in your head". A person might indeed be in their head, over-analyzing things, but perhaps they're simply stuck at that place until their questions have been satisfactorily addressed.

On pages 13 through 15, there is a delightfully lucid exploration of how external physical objects can be regarded as awareness. He begins with an examination of vision, and points out that the raw data of vision is nothing more than colors and shapes and the boundaries between shapes. Any sense of distance, size, location, or material properties does not inhere in the visual experience, it is something that you've inferred. Outside of thought, there is no evidence for these additional properties, so if one is to be rigorous, they can be considered inessential to the present-moment experience of the object.

In terms of your experience in the moment, a coffee cup is indistinguishable from the shapes and colors you see. There is no vantage point from which you can see the cup as one thing, and the shapes and colors as another. They are identical in your experience. Likewise, these colors and shapes are indistinguishable from the act of seeing: there is no seeing apart from the shapes and colors seen. Finally, there is no awareness distinguishable from the objects of awareness. There's no vantage point from which you can see awareness over here, and colors and shapes over there. So all these things are identical, and so the coffee cup is a "piece" of awareness.

Within a couple of pages, Goode tackles the objection that will arise in the minds of many people looking at this chain of identity. How can the world's objects not exist physically, outside one's awareness? Is one to believe that objects cease to exist when one stops looking in their direction? Wouldn't we reasonably expect anybody making such a claim to get a clinical diagnosis and a prescription for psych meds? Goode grants that external existence of objects is a possibility but not one that can be irrefutably confirmed in your own direct experience. The apparent persistence of objects is a conclusion drawn from memory, and memory is notoriously fallible.

I once saw a discussion along similar lines between Rupert Spira and Chris Hebard. When I heard these ideas presented, they were so new and so at odds with my notion of an objective reality outside myself that I could barely follow along. I find that when my notion of reality is confronted at such a basic level, I may become sleepy or distracted. Goode's book gave me another angle of attack, with great lucidity and intelligence, and has made this stuff more accessible.

Goode goes on to talk about the recognition of a witnessing awareness once the identity of all things is seen as awareness. The witness arises, then just as suddenly evaporates into pure consciousness. That's what he says, anyway, but I have to admit that at this point I'm well out of my depth. Nevertheless, it's written with clarity and intelligence and accessible discussion of otherwise esoteric topics, and I recommend it. He has another book out, The Direct Path, and I look forward to reading that soon.