I finished Sam's book Waking Up this week, and I found it fascinating. One of the most interesting things that the book discussed was the applications of a feeling of Dzogchen-based selflessness to social interactions. While it might appear the dissolving the feeling of a sense of self would be detrimental to interacting with people, feeling selfless can have several interesting positive effects. For instance, a feeling of selflessness can lower unnecessary social inhibitions. Focusing on noticing thoughts and sensations for what they are without judging them tends to make us less self-conscious, which can help us immerse ourselves more fully in the present. Additionally, a feeling of selflessness can help us overcome the desire to distract ourselves in the middle of a conversation by reaching for a phone. If we can recognize that the urge to check our phone is simply an appearance in consciousness, rather than as an element of the self, we can let this sensation pass over us more easily. Overall, the ability to go into a state of mind in which we feel like a self separate from the rest of the world can make it much easier for us to have spontaneous social interactions with anyone, including strangers.
Another thing I realized after reading Sam's book is that it is impossible to be truly bored if you have achieved a high level of vipassana-like practice. Vipassana is all about becoming fascinated by and enthralled by your own breath to the point at which you are focused on nothing else. If you hone the ability to become intensely concentrated on something as mundane as the breath, then it isn't difficult to become interested in absolutely anything, from the feeling of your body in the chair to the surrounding walls and furniture. This boredom-eliminating effect of Vipassana is much like the concentration-boosting effect of Vipassana that I discussed earlier. In addition, I learned from Sam's book that Dzogchen can also be helpful in eliminating boredom, because Dzogchen practice allows us to recognize feelings of boredom as yet another appearance in consciousness, rather than a part of ourselves. Besides finishing Sam's book, I listened to one of Sam's podcasts about the science of happiness, and I found some of the social applications of Dzogchen practice relevant to what his guest was discussing on the podcast. On the podcast, Sam's guest discussed the fact that even small social interactions with strangers, such as the barista at a coffee shop, can go a long way in the aggregate towards increasing our general sense of well-being. Such social interactions are difficult to have in any meaningful way if we are too self-conscious to go out of our way and talk to people more than we need to, and this is something that Dzogchen practice can help with. If a Dzogchen practitioner identifies a situation during which it would be beneficial to talk with a stranger, but they are feeling self-conscious, they can immediately go into a state of selflessness and likely break down their own inhibitions enough to talk to the person. On the podcast episode I listened to, I learned about a book that I should read: William B. Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life. The book is a brief introduction to the ancient Roman and Greek philosophy of stoicism, which is highly compatible with meditation. This week, I'll continue practicing daily meditations on Sam Harris's app Waking Up and read William B. Irvine's book.
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In addition to continuing to practice Vipassana-based and Dzogchen-based practice, I learned a new type of meditation this week: loving kindness meditation, based on the Buddhist tradition of Metta. The purpose of this meditation is to nurture feelings of goodwill and happiness first towards a specific person, and eventually towards all of humanity (or even all living things). I had heard of loving kindness meditation before this week, but this is the first time I've ever tried it for myself.
I begin the practice by focusing on my breath for a few moments to steady my attention, as I would in Vipassana-based practice. I then bring to mind a person in my life whom I have positive feelings toward. For a beginner like myself, it's wise to avoid bringing to mind someone with whom I'm romantically involved, because it's easy to accidentally conflate feelings of romantic attachment with the feelings of loving kindness that this meditation is meant to nurture. Some people I chose to bring to mind this week included teachers I especially like and friends of mine. Once the person is clearly in my mind, I mentally say things like "may you be happy" and "may you be free from suffering," directed towards this person. This may sound contrived, but by focusing on the true meaning of these words, it's possible to generate a remarkable level of passion for the person's well-being. Another useful technique to generate this feeling of loving kindness is to picture the person radiantly happy, completely free from suffering and enjoying each moment of their life. I continue these visualizations for an extended period of time, nurturing the goodwill they produce. After building up a strong feeling of loving kindness, a useful extension of this practice is to switch the person in my mind to someone whom I dislike. The already established fire of loving kindness that I build by thinking about someone whom I like for several minutes makes it much easier to direct goodwill towards people I don't like. After practicing for a few days and becoming familiar with the unique feeling of loving kindness, I also tried directing these thoughts towards the person I'm romantically involved with, and I found it very interesting to isolate a new kind of love for this person, one which was a bit different from romantic love. Although I don't believe that my goodwill alone has any metaphysical effects on the people I think about, I do believe that nurturing feelings of goodwill towards people has the power to shape my own behavior in ways that will positively influence others. I think I'm taking advantage of my neural plasticity by engaging in loving kindness meditation: the more I nurture strong feelings of love toward others, the more readily such feelings will appear and be maintained in daily life. Having such feelings of unconditional love towards others makes irrelevant a variety of negative emotions such as jealousy. It looks like I'll finish Sam Harris's book this week, and I look forward to writing next week about miscellaneous insights I have obtained from the book! I have noticed that many things I'm learning from his book are more salient as a result of my meditation practice. I'm almost done with Sam Harris's beginner meditation course, so I'll settle into doing his daily meditations in the next week or two. This week, the meditations I did as part of Sam Harris's course began to transition to a different type of meditation, based on the tradition of dzochen practice in Buddhism. The purpose of this type of meditation is to investigate, and eventually dissolve, the illusion that you are a "self" that is separate from the rest of the world. Although this initially sounds like a faith-based proposition, dzogchen meditation shows that this state of consciousness is always possible to experience subjectively.
This type of meditation usually begins by focusing on a specific sense. For instance, I may begin by becoming aware of all the sounds in my environment, simply noticing everything I hear without judging it. After I'm comfortably focused on these sounds, I take the crucial step: I try to identify that which is hearing. Is there a "hearer" hearing all these sounds, or are the sounds merely appearing in consciousness? Before long, it becomes clear that there is in fact no "hearer" to identify, and all these sounds are appearances in consciousness. When I began this type of meditation, I initially began to feel my body more strongly when I searched for the hearer, and I assumed that the physical sensation of my body represented the self that was hearing. However, these physical sensations of touch, pressure, and heat/cold are also appearances in consciousness, and they appear in the same space in which sounds appear. Any apparent evidence of a self that is experiencing all these things would by definition have to appear in consciousness to be noticed. Thus, such apparent evidence could appropriately be regarded simply as another appearance in consciousness, rather than evidence of some separate self. This type of meditation reveals that the very concept of a self is somewhat irrational; everything we experience, by way of thought or physical sense, is simply an appearance in consciousness. To be clear, I'm not making the solipsistic claim that my consciousness is all that exists, or the absurd claim that the physical body is an allusion. I am merely noticing that as a matter of experience, the concept of a self is something our brains assemble rather than something that objectively exists. The idea of a self, I am discovering, is a model. In many cases, it is a very useful model: if something is rapidly moving towards that which I feel is myself, I would do well to move out of the way lest I get hit. However, the ability to recognize the illusory nature of the self is tremendously useful in avoiding negative states of mind. If I notice a sense of anger arising, for instance, I can step back from my sense of self and simply feel the sensation as a pattern of energy appearing in consciousness. This alternate view of anger–or any negative emotion–allows the emotion to pass much more rapidly than it would if I were personally identified with it. Additionally, experiencing the emotion as an appearance in consciousness rather than as something I generated allows me to avoid letting the emotion color my decision-making abilities. I am over halfway done with Sam Harris's book, and I will write about my thoughts on the book a few weeks from now when I finish it. This week, I will continue reading the book and doing daily meditations, progressing through Sam Harris's beginner course. |
Jeremy MahoneyPsychological explorer, lover of learning, and admirer of the universe ArchivesCategories |