Open Enlightenment

Buddhist Geeks

Buddhist Geeks is a cutting-edge Dharma podcast hosted by my good friend Vince Horn. Since 2007 the Buddhist Geeks have interviewed many leading authors, teachers and entrepreneurs in the field of Buddhism, covering diverse topics from the future of Buddhism in the West to the possible Buddha nature of the internet. Here are some of my favourites:

Episode 138: Reflections on 21st Century Dharma

Episode 133: Erik Curren: The Buddhist Politician

Episode 122: The Evolution of the Mind and Life Dialogues

Episode 112: Vajrayana in Plain English

Episode 62: Reverberations from The Shamatha Project

Remarkably, Buddhist Geeks is produced on a part-time basis, and is offered for free.

If you are serious about 21^st Century Dharma, then you need to get serious about Buddhist Geeks. Please consider supporting this amazing project: become a micro-patron.

In the future, Vince hopes to offer a digital magazine, and a TED style BuddhaDharma 2.0 conference. I can’t believe how lucky we are!

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New Developments

Things have certainly moved on in the last few weeks. In my last post I mentioned the desire to set up a bone fide Western tradition of enlightenment, and coupled with recently learning how to use the internet properly, I now have a more fleshed out business model for Open Enlightenment and my other projects.

Site #1: Open Enlightenment

This site has always been about discussing enlightenment in an honest and sane manner, with a view to presenting enlightenment to the public as a very real and natural human development. This project is very much a product of the times we live in, and in some sense is also reactionary, and so it is not the ideal basis upon which to build a tradition.

I have therefore separated out the teaching side of the equation (see below), leaving OE to its original aims. This also means that the conversation facilitated by OE can be opened up to many different viewpoints and traditions, without any ideological inconsistencies getting in the way.

I’m currently excited by how the internet and the growing New Marketing is effecting spirituality and what this means for the future of teaching enlightenment, and my work for OE will be dealing with this topic in the near future.

I see OE growing into a digital magazine with many contributors, a repository of resources (written, audio and video), and an events facilitator for many great cutting edge spirituality teachers. And yes, that centre is still a dream.

I would like to fund all of the above on a micro-patron basis. I have it on good authority that approximately 2% of an audience can be expected to take part, but I have every confidence that the audience for OE will grow dramatically over the coming years.

Teachings have been removed from this site, revised and will be presented on a new site shortly.

Site #2: The Baptist’s Head

I originally considered closing down this site after the original aim of the project was fulfilled: the completion of the Great Work by two contemporary magicians. Duncan has painstakingly edited, polished and indexed the best material from the BH into three books (one for each stage of the magical process), with the first two available soon (self-published – and not ‘on demand’ – too!).

But ending this project would be ending a conversation when there are a growing number of people who have only just joined in. The BH is a movement (even if it is small), not a just a website, and so the plan is to scale down the site to a blog, so that the conversation around Advanced Magick for Beginners and the three BH books can continue, as well as having a portal for new articles, videos (Scrying an enochian aethyr is coming soon!) and new titles.

Funding wise, the BH will continue as it always has, as a labour of love.

Site #3: Original Nature

This is the name of my teaching and tradition. I’ll be giving away all of the teachings and practices for free on the website, but I’ll be charging for group sessions, workshops and retreats. I’m currently looking in to setting up an online instruction course that offers a degree of one-on-one tuition, without incurring the usual costs of conference calls, or venue hire in meat space. I’ll also be doing a lot of work in the real world too, as well as having a book in the pipeline.

The pledge bank group mentioned to your right is the beginnings of an Original Nature meditation group in London.

The teaching includes everything I’ve learnt from every practice and tradition I’ve used personally, but presented in an easily understood and contemporary fashion. It will include work with daydreams, dreams, understanding how the mind is always meditating and how best to approach using it, working with Providence and synchronicity, and all within the context of a coherent psychology and philosophy.

But what really excites me is the ethical practice involved, and I would very much like to begin introducing the benefits of enlightenment into the real world, perhaps as a form of activism, working with the poor, prisoners or the sick and dying. I’m currently inspired by the ID project.

Moneywise, Original Nature will work on a membership basis, although on and offline events can be paid for individually. And of course, donations will always be welcome.

Site #4: My personal site

I thought it would be a good idea to have all of this stuff – plus everything I’ve ever done and will do – in one place. I’ll probably blog about anything that interests me that isn’t relevant to any of the above conversations here. No funding necessary.

New Marketing

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that the internet is not just an online extension or presence for real-world services or products; it’s a completely new way of doing things. I’ll be exploring this a lot in the future on OE, but the general gist is that the internet is about genuine interest and honesty, and communication between everyone. The internet is about conversations, not advertising or products.

This realisation is responsible for everything I’ve outlined here, as well as the revelation that building whizz-bang sites with their own forums and stuff is a symptom of approaching the net as if it were just another advertising channel. All the sites are (or will be) in wordpress, which is free, and I intend on using the already available social media instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (you may have noticed a new social bookmarking function at the bottom of each thread to aid in the conversation).

Design for each site is coming, and thankfully I won’t be doing any of it! Woohoo!

Updates will be coming as soon as each site becomes available.

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The Myth of Concentration

Lucid dreaming is a concentration attainment, because being aware that you’re dreaming whilst in a dream is a particular state of mind, and the awareness lasts only as long as that state of mind. Lucid dreaming is the ability to induce and maintain that lucid state. The ability to cultivate and sustain any mental state is what we call ‘concentration’.

Alan Guiden is probably one of the best lucid dreamers alive. His recommended technique for inducing lucidity boils down to this: fall asleep, but remain awake.

If you haven’t already, give this a try. It’s very hard. It could even be argued that Guiden’s technique (or my summary of it, at least) isn’t a technique at all because it doesn’t really tell you how to have a lucid dream; it’s simply a description of what one is.

I don’t intend to suggest that Guiden’s writing on lucid dreaming isn’t helpful – it very definitely is – but it’s a good illustration of the fact that the only thing you can do to attain a mental state is to set your mind on attaining it, keep it set until that state arises, and then set it against wandering off.

In meditation, there’s no real ‘how-to’ for experiencing a concentration jhana. You wait until it happens, or until it stops not happening. Of course, there’s guidance given to students, but that guidance boils down to merely a description of the state: ‘Let your awareness fill your whole body… Focus the attention finely but gently,’ etc. If you do this, then that is the state; it’s not an instruction for how to do it.

It would be really great if we could give someone a proper set of instructions – for example: ‘Sit like this… Breathe this number of times per minute.’ But of course, it doesn’t work. Where mental states are concerned what ‘needs to be done’ is at the same time the result of the doing. Because the action and the result are the same thing, all the supposed ‘how-tos’ of meditation are really just descriptions of the states themselves dressed up as advice. And, like all descriptions of mental states, they are often very subjective.

Many other kinds of action – such as talking, walking, thinking or feeling – most of the time issue in results beyond themselves. But concentration, and other forms of activity that require concentration to a large degree – such as singing, making art, praying, etc. – tend to share this characteristic of the action becoming its own result.

You might argue that the results of concentration also lie outside itself, if you hold the results of concentration to be things like ‘reduction of stress’, or ‘improved memory’. But aren’t these merely side-effects? Consider: the lucid dream and the jhana will both collapse as soon as our concentration ceases. Yet walking, talking, thinking and feeling will still tend to lead to their results whether there is concentration or not.

So where does this leave the idea that we can develop the ability to concentrate, or that concentration provides us with mastery over the mind? If concentration is the cultivation and maintenance of a mental state, does it start when we focus our mind, or when we sit down on the cushion, or before both of these in the first moment we resolve it’s time to go and sit down? Likewise, when does it end, because can the mind be said to ever do anything other than concentrate? Even when the mind strays from its intended object it is nevertheless entering a state, which is sustained for a while until the next one arises.

Search for concentration and we cannot find it. Paradoxically, the more we focus upon it and look, the more it yields to the procession of our experiences framing themselves as such before each gives way to the next. Some of these frame themselves as a ‘continuation’ of the previous experience, but if our awareness is keen we see through this lie and realise its emptiness. We can either mistake concentration for the lie of ‘continuity’ or admit it’s something that’s nowhere to be found.

If it’s not something that we can even find, let alone do, how can we fool ourselves that we can or should master it? Of course, we know what is meant and what we should do when someone asks us to concentrate, and we understand it involves qualities such as focus, calmness, alertness, etc. But these are all qualities cultivated by an effort not to allow other qualities to predominate. If we’re successful at this, then we have the impression of concentration. But can we really describe as a ‘skill’ something that can only be described in terms of not allowing anything else to happen?

Alan Guiden, supreme master of lucid dreaming that he is, admits to dry periods in his practice where for weeks on end he can gain not even a sniff of lucidity. Hiroshi Motoyama, on the other hand, developed the ability to induce out-of-body experiences at will through meditation (Corazza 2008: 51-2). The downside is that several hours of sitting are usually required before astral lift-off is achieved. Alan B. Wallace strongly suggests that if you want to bring yourself up to the standard of the world’s best concentrators you’ll need to undertake a year-long retreat dedicated to doing nothing else (Wallace 2006: 162). He also mentions that the ability will start to degrade as soon as you come off retreat.

In the same way that the heart beats and the lungs breathe, the mind manufactures thoughts and impressions by breaking down the radiance of the Absolute into the splintered colours of individuality. To try to force the mind into not doing what it does is like holding the breath or trying to stop the heart. Yet I do not mean to claim that exploring the limits of our nature is somehow wrong or pointless.

I’ve experienced first-hand how it’s possible to concentrate too much. I remember a period (after reading Alan Wallace) when my practice suffered because the focus on the breath was too tight. It’s not sufficient – I discovered – to follow exclusively the sensations of the breath. Some ‘room’ has to be left for the jhana, because how can you experience the jhana if you’re focused too tightly to notice it?

Focus on the breath is not the ‘how-to’, but only an aspect of the description of the state. And the more we consider the nature of concentration, the clearer it becomes that ‘mastery’ is something alien to its nature.

References

Ornella Corazza (2008). Near-Death Experiences. Oxford: Routledge.

Alan Guiden (forthcoming). Traveling. London: Aeon Books.

B. Alan Wallace (2006). The Attention Revolution. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications.

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Shinzen Young

Shinzen Young is one of those rare Buddhist teachers who actually teach enlightenment. You can find his website here, and here’s a whole bunch of great videos .

Thanks to OE reader C4Chaos for the link to this wonderfully frank and in-depth discussion of Shinzen’s approach to teaching enlightenment. Shinzen is the real deal: a bone fide spiritual authority (in the sense that he has experienced everything he talks about) who accurately describes the territory and gives a great overview of what to expect, even after enlightenment, which is very rare indeed.

I’m not sure that I would agree with Shinzen that the first experience of enlightenment permanently does away with the notion of the self, because in my experience the final stage of enlightenment – what Shinzen calls the 4^th stage in the interview – involves the dropping of something fundamental that is not touched by the peak and partial awakening stages beforehand, which is why it remains permanent. (It’s the difference between Adyashanti’s ‘awakening’ and ‘liberation’.) But this is splitting hairs really; his model of four stages is useful and accurate, as I’m sure a lot of Ingram fans would agree.

However, Shinzen doesn’t make the mistake of putting all of his eggs in one basket by only recognising a gradual process of stages, and marginalizing anyone else’s experience that doesn’t fit this model (something I’ve only just recently learned this year); progress with enlightenment can be unnoticeable for a long time, and for some people there may not have been a before or after at all. I think a lot of ‘practical Buddhists’ could learn a lot from this man.

Shinzen has certainly helped in disabusing me of the idea that after enlightenment there is nothing left to learn on the subject, and if I could have him as my teacher, I certainly would.

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Doubt and Faith

The last few weeks have been disappointing.

Website

First of all, people just do not want to do things unless money is involved. Three designers have promised to help, one because he owed a favour, and two on a gift economy basis.  Not one has delivered anything.

Someone promised to build a salesforce back end, with an additional site for an online community with all kinds of whizz-bang features. I learned how to write copy, then wrote all the copy for the new site, and fleshed out the IA, all in time for the deadline….which came and went.

As a result, I’ve given up on the idea of a bespoke site with a bespoke design; we’re going to stick with word press and apply a nice skin. Out of sheer desperation, I downloaded GIMP the other day in the hope that I can learn how to use a graphics package, and knock up a logo myself. How sad.

Then, instead of re-inventing the wheel, we can just use facebook, twitter and other social networking services to aid in the cause.

Detractors

Boy, have they been coming out of the wood work this month! I’m not talking about people who question stuff on this site (and elsewhere) as a genuine inquiry into the subject; I’m talking about ignorant, lazy, and patronising people who in some cases haven’t even bothered to read what they are criticising. Having an inbox full of such e-mails and websites full of such comments can really begin to challenge your faith in humanity. I have wondered a few times if I’ve really wasted the last few years of my life in trying to demonstrate that magick is a genuine enlightenment tradition, and if I’m wasting my time now in trying to demonstrate that enlightenment is a very real, accessible experience for everyone; because so many people seem not only ungrateful, but actually resentful! I’m feeling quite tired of defending my position at the moment, when I’m not quite sure why I have to. Explains why a lot of teachers don’t answer comments or e-mails in person.

Anyway, to alleviate the burden I’ve written a little FAQ for detractors so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.

Online communities

The Dharma Overground is a great idea: an online community for discussing the practicalities of enlightenment, such as what to practice and what to expect in terms of states, events and stages, run by people who have actually experienced enlightenment.

Sadly, anyone can go on there and call themselves an arahat (someone who has experienced enlightenment), and although there are some genuine arahats on there, there are a few who I believe are not, based on how their experience sounds like mine prior to enlightenment, and therefore nothing like my actual experience of enlightenment, or the Buddha’s, or Daniel Ingram’s, or Adyashanti’s, or Ramana Maharshi’s, or Lao Tzu’s, or any other respected teacher’s description of it.

These pseudo-arahats are into a movement called Actual Freedom and (I’ve chosen my words very carefully here) it is absolute dog shit. It is vile, anti-enlightenment, counter-initiatory guff. And it really saddens me to see other members of the Dharma Overground check it out and buy into it. I am absolutely baffled how intelligent people actually think psychosis is desirable (and I’m not just calling it psychosis because I don’t like it; the specific types of psychosis – such as ‘permanent’ depersonalisation – are listed on the site).

Now there is an Actual Freedom forum for people interested in the anti-enlightenment movement on the Dharma Overground, a site dedicated to honest and practical discussion of enlightenment. I’m at a loss for words.

Faith and Tradition

All of this leads very nicely to my new found appreciation for faith and tradition. To practice in order to engage with enlightenment requires faith in both the description of enlightenment offered by those who claim to have experienced it, and their ability to describe it accurately enough as to not be misleading.

There are so many individuals throughout history and alive today who have described a phenomenon called enlightenment in similar ways that mustering up the faith in enlightenment is not very difficult to do. If practice begins in earnest, that faith is vindicated to an extent by even a small degree of progress on the path. But no matter how great an experience might be, if it does not match the deep features of what has been described as enlightenment by this body of peers, then it is not what they are describing. Faith is required right up to the end of ignorance.

The value of an accurate description of enlightenment (that we can have faith in) is its ability to take away the focus from the attainments of the teacher. Either your experience matches the description, or it is not recognised as enlightenment by the body of peers that ascribe to that description. No ifs, buts or maybes. No questioning the teacher’s ability to accurately describe enlightenment, or even the teacher’s own attainments. This doesn’t mean we end up with teachers who have no experience of enlightenment; on the contrary, if the teacher’s experience doesn’t match the description, then they cannot be a teacher.

My primary task at the moment is to create a description of enlightenment that we can have faith in. That is not to say that such descriptions haven’t been provided before (I’m very much enjoying Dogen at the moment), but we need a clear, honest 21^st Century description for Westerners, by a Westerner.

I then want to start a tradition, where people can have faith in the teachings and the teachers, which can then eventually give way to direct, personal knowledge of enlightenment. I’ll be starting my first group soon in London, just as soon as I’ve created these damn banners…

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Arguments Over The G-Word

[A response to the criticisms of OE reader Martin Gifford.]

MARTIN: We are only human beings, each with one small brain. We are too limited. We are not omniscient. No matter how amazing your experiences and journey has been, I know you’re a human being and limited.

DUNCAN: I have no argument with you there, Martin.

MARTIN: We cannot know the absolute truth or God because to know those things (and to know that you know those things) requires omniscience, and human beings lack omniscience. Knowledge of small things doesn’t require much evidence because they don’t matter much. Knowledge of the biggest greatest thing in reality (God) requires evidence that matches the claim i.e. huge evidence.

DUNCAN: The problem I have with this is the idea of God being ‘in reality’. You’d agree with me, presumably, that God can’t be sensed or conceived. So how is God a ‘thing’ and how is God ‘in reality’? You’re assuming that ‘to know’ something means to conceptualise or understand it. But you can also ‘know’ something merely by experiencing it, which does not require any understanding at all. You might say that human beings are too ‘limited’ to experience something that is by definition beyond experience, but this view assumes humans are separate from reality and the source of that reality – which is God. But how can this be, if we’re evidently a part of reality? We can’t be separate from God if we’re part of God. The contemplative practices that people engage with in order to become enlightened are all designed to enable us to realise precisely this. We can know God because we’re part of it. But you won’t necessarily realise this for yourself until you engage with the practices that enable you to experience it.

MARTIN: If you are using unconventional definitions of God, then why mention God at all?

DUNCAN: I didn’t. Neither did Alan. But Alan did write that people refer to the experience of enlightenment as the experience of ‘God’. And I don’t blame people for that. When I first began to experience emptiness, it seemed to me perfectly understandable that experiences of this type were where the conventional idea of God came from. By the way, what is the ‘conventional idea’ of God? I wasn’t aware that there was any consensus in the world on what that word actually refers to.

MARTIN: There is plenty of evidence that people who claim god realisation might be wrong. Ramana Maharshi is widely recognised to have been God-Realised, but he couldn’t even figure out how to deal with constipation in his early years!

DUNCAN: Are you seriously claiming that an experience of God should at the same time reveal how to deal with constipation?

MARTIN: The evidence required [for realisation of God would have to be] something spectacular! Maybe give me the next lotto numbers or tell me about advanced scientific discoveries on planets that are more advanced than ours. Something that demonstrates omniscience. Magic powers would get my attention at least. Levitate down Jonson Street Byron Bay tomorrow!

DUNCAN: How would my floating down the street prove I had a genuine experience of God? Your description reminds me of the feats of the famous medium Daniel Dunglas Home. He was reported to have levitated in front of numerous witnesses. He could also pick up red-hot coals from the fireplace. Impressive though this is, would you accept it as proof that he was able to talk to the dead? Anyone who accepts ‘miracles’ as proof of spiritual attainments is setting themselves up for exploitation, it seems to me.

MARTIN: People normally mention God Realisation because that’s the highest imaginable thing i.e. it’s good for business.

DUNCAN: Well, it hasn’t made me any money yet. Am I to assume that your cheque is in the post?

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