The Practice of Looking

Sit Comfortably

The first step in the practice of looking is to sit in a comfortable position and simply observe with your eyes open. You may assume a lotus position but that is not necessary. The necessary part is to keep your back straight and upright. You may sit in a straight-backed chair if that is more comfortable. When sitting in a chair, however, you must keep feet flat on the floor, and hands in the lap. Make sure you have had enough to eat and rest. You do not want your body to be a distraction.

Look Plainly

Look at what is plainly visible around you, and also at the thoughts arising in your mind, without associating them with what you see. Once you are comfortable with looking with your eyes open, go ahead and close your eyes. Do not move or do anything. Just be there as an observer.

Close Your Eyes

After closing your eyes, simply observe what is there. At first, you may perceive only blackness. But soon you may become aware of light and darkness, various sounds and smells, the temperature in the room, the pull of gravity, the taste in your mouth, and scores of other such perceptions from the body. The mind may present pictures of current or past situations, thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Be an Observer

It is important to understand who is observing. The body’s eyes are closed so you cannot be the body. You are observing the mind so you cannot be the mind. Who are you then? In the practice of looking you simply are an observer.

Do not Suppress

As you sit with your eyes closed all kind of things will come up, some flattering and some not so flattering. Just look without being judgmental. Do not try to concentrate on any one thing, or try to make the mind blank, as done in meditation. The idea is to look and not suppress anything. It will take time before any activity in the mind settles down.

Experience Everything

The practice of looking includes experiencing the feelings, emotions, and sensations presented by the mind. The essential part here is not to resist the mental objects that come up. Pictures may come up that remind you of something embarrassing or painful. The normal reaction would be to flinch and look away. But in the practice of looking you must experience whatever comes up, no matter how painful and embarrassing that may appear to be.

Observe without Resisting

There is a safety factor built into the mind. That is, the mind would never present something so embarrassing, discomforting, or painful that it is overwhelming. Just be there with whatever comes up. It is important that you let the mind present things to you, and not to present things to the mind. As you persevere without resisting, the painful and embarrassing pictures in the mind will ultimately discharge.

Be Still

There may be a tendency to squirm, twitch, move or change position. This occurs when you encounter something difficult to experience but you are not yet aware of it. Make sure before you start this practice session that you are in a comfortable position. Then just be there without moving or doing anything else. However, if the physical discomfort becomes too much, it does no good to suppress it. When that happens, it is better to readjust your body in a comfortable position and then restart the practice session once again.

Persevere

During the practice of looking, certain physical reactions may occur, such as, stabs of pain, drowsiness, dullness of senses, twitches in muscles, and so on. Do not do anything. Do not resist or try to fight them. If the drowsiness overcomes you, let it do so. Just experience the drowsiness. These physical reactions will discharge after some time.

If you find yourself getting involved in thoughts or doing something else mentally then simply realize this fact and do nothing else.  This will automatically get you back to just being there as an observer.

NOTE: To orient yourself to present time you may put some attention on your breathing if necessary.

Realizations

As you recognize and experience the material presented by the mind, new realizations occur. Your ability to experience things improves. As this happens, the mind finds it safe to present more material that you were not aware of before. And so it continues.

Try ending each practice session when some persisting reaction has just gone away. Do not end the session while you are in the middle of a reaction. Then that reaction may take longer to go away.

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Summary

This practice of looking is an adventure. You embark on it to become more aware. It helps you discover the causes of conditions and gain control over them. And the results are beyond any expectations.

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June 27, 2012 – 7:09 PM Categories: Self-Improvement | Comments (2)

Foundation series

This is Science Fiction at its best. I read the Foundation Trilogy back in the sixties. It is quite a treat to read the whole series once again. There are many things to be learned from it.

[From Wikipedia: Foundation series]

The Foundation Series is a science fiction series by Isaac Asimov. There are seven volumes in the Foundation Series proper, which in its in-universe chronological order are Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Earth.

The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology (analogous to mathematical physics). Using the laws of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy, which has a population of quadrillions of humans, inhabiting millions of star systems). The larger the number, the more predictable is the future.

Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises. Seldon’s psychohistory also foresees an alternative where the intermittent period will last only one thousand years. To ensure his vision of a second great Empire comes to fruition, Seldon creates two Foundations—small, secluded havens of all human knowledge—at “opposite ends of the galaxy”.

The focus of the series is on the First Foundation and its attempts to overcome various obstacles during the formation and installation of the Second Empire, all the while being silently guided by the unknown specifics of The Seldon Plan.

The series is best known for the Foundation Trilogy, which comprises the books Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. While the term “Foundation Series” can be used specifically for the seven Foundation books, it can also be used more generally to include the Robot series and Empire series, which are set in the same fictional universe, but in earlier time periods. If all works are included, in total, there are fifteen novels and dozens of short stories written by Asimov, and six novels written by other authors after his death, expanding the time spanned in the original trilogy (roughly 550 years) by more than twenty thousand years. The series is highly acclaimed, winning the one-time Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966.

Isaac Asimov   1920 – 1992

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June 27, 2012 – 5:28 AM Categories: General | Post a comment

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Looking at Hallucinations

Hallucination

Looking is simply noticing what the perceptions provide in terms of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, feeling, etc. To learn to look is to learn to differentiate one thing from another. Looking is followed by a recognition of what is there.

It seems that the first level of differentiation would be in terms of senses. What is being perceived? Is it a sight, a sound, a smell, a taste, a touch, a thought or a feeling. However, a level before that might be, ‘Is it out there, or is it in the mind?’

Sometimes it is hard to make the differentiation, ‘Is it out there, or is it in the mind?’ This is especially so when nobody is around to confirm or deny it. Doubt may still persist even when somebody is around agreeing or disagreeing. Lately there have been many movies on this subject.

There is hallucination. Dictionary tells us that it is a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind. The root meaning of the word ‘hallucination’ is ‘a wandering of the mind’.

Let me put this question out there,

“When the technique of ‘looking’ is applied to spot inconsistencies what happens to hallucinations?”

Or, maybe someone could provide an alternate question.

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June 10, 2012 – 6:17 AM Categories: Self-Improvement | Comments (65)

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The Eight-Fold Path to Nirvana

Reference: The Fourth Noble Truth: Magga

The path to Nirvana is neither through the pleasures of the senses, nor through self-mortification in different forms of asceticism. The path to Nirvana is through the following actions.

(A) Wisdom

1.  Right Understanding (seeing a thing in its true nature, without name and label)

(a) The nature of life is Dukkha (suffering)

(b) The origin of Dukkha is ‘thirst’ (desire)

(c) Nirvana (the Absolute Truth) is the cessation of Dukkha

(d) The path to Nirvana

 2.  Right Thought (extended to all beings)

(a) Thoughts of selfless renunciation or detachment

(b) Thoughts of love

(c) Thoughts of non-violence

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(B) Ethical Conduct

 3.  Right Speech

(a) Abstain from telling lies

(b) Abstain from backbiting and slander and talk that may bring about hatred, enmity, disunity, and disharmony among individuals or groups of people.

(c) Abstain from harsh, rude, impolite, malicious and abusive language.

(d) Abstain from idle, useless and foolish babble and gossip.

(e) Do not speak carelessly: speech should be at the right time and place.

(f) If one cannot say something useful, one should keep ‘noble silence’.

 4.  Right Action

(a) Abstain from destroying life, from stealing, from dishonest dealings, and from illegitimate sexual intercourse.

(b) Always aim at promoting moral, honorable and peaceful product.

(c) Help others to lead a peaceful and honorable life in the right way.

 5.  Right Livelihood

(a) Abstain from making living through a profession that brings harm to others, such as

  • Trading in arms and lethal weapons,
  • Intoxicating drinks,
  • Poisons,
  • Killing animals,
  • Cheating, etc.

(b) Live by a profession which is honorable, blameless and innocent of harm to others.

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(C) Mental Discipline

 6.  Right Effort (energetic will)

(a) To prevent evil and unwholesome states of mind from arising

(b) To get rid of such evil and unwholesome states that have already arisen within a man

(c) To produce, to cause to arise, good and wholesome states of mind not yet arisen

(d) To develop and bring to perfection the good and wholesome states of mind already present in a man.

 7.  Right Mindfulness (to be diligently aware, mindful and attentive with regard to)

(a) The activities of the body.

  • Be clearly aware of breathing
  • Whether it is deep or shallow
  • Of how it appears and disappears within the body

 (b) Sensations or feelings.

  • Be clearly aware of all forms of feelings and sensations
  • Whether pleasant, unpleasant and neutral
  • Of how they appear and disappear within oneself

 (c) The activities of the mind

  • Whether one’s mind is lustful or not, given to hatred or not, deluded or not, distracted or concentrated, etc.
  • All movements of mind, how they arise and disappear.

 (d) Ideas, thoughts, conceptions and things

  • One should know their nature
  • How they appear and disappear
  •  How they are developed
  •  How they are suppressed, and destroyed, and so on

8.  Right Concentration

(a) First Stage

  • Passionate desires and certain unwholesome thoughts like sensuous lust, ill-will, languor, worry, restlessness, and skeptical doubt are discarded
  • Feelings of joy and happiness are maintained, along with certain mental activities.

(b) Second Stage

  • All intellectual activities are suppressed
  • Tranquility and ‘one-pointedness’ of mind is developed
  • The feelings of joy and happiness are still retained.

(c) Third Stage

  • The feeling of joy, which is an active sensation, also disappears
  • The disposition of happiness still remains
  • Mindful equanimity remains

(d) Fourth Stage

  • All sensations, even of happiness and unhappiness, of joy and sorrow, disappear
  • Only pure equanimity and awareness remains

This path needs to be explained in different ways in different words to different people, according to the stage of their development and their capacity to understand and follow it. These eight categories or divisions of the Path are to be developed more or less simultaneously, as far as possible according to the capacity of each individual.

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June 7, 2012 – 2:55 PM Categories: Buddhism | Comments (13)

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The 2012 Transit of Venus

The 2012 Transit of Venus

A Trip Across the Solar System

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June 7, 2012 – 5:42 AM Categories: Science | Comments (5)

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