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.