incurable skepticism?

9:42 am

fascinating thing happening now. after yet another s. teaching debacle, i did my walking and was noting sadness, confusion, doubt, and anger. kept turning the ideas over, got them to a resolution point, but there was still a sense of constriction. then when i said to myself “i trust my practice, I’m going to write a little of this down,” a wonderful calm has come over me which is building now. for that reason, I’m going to keep the notes short.

oh and then as soon as i started to head in - with some reluctance, since i was desiring the calm and don’t want to hurt it - the guy started doing some very noisy shoveling, and probably will shovel my walking area. so: the universe provides. bashert.

in light of that last comment, i want to note to myself that i really am a skeptic. at this point, i have experiences of energy, samadhi, transpersonal awareness, and the universe providing (among other things) - but i remain very attached to truth. maybe too attached. the thing is, i get tight around it, and have to do process before i can, like now, be loose again. i think that may be ok - for the reason below.

s. said today that given the choice between believing in the law of karma, and not, might as well believe in it because it brings happiness. 180 degrees wrong. for that, i might as well believe in the chosen people concept, or sugarcandy mountain. no, that is delusion, pure and simple. if the law of karma or past lives can be observed, or even reconciled with observable reality, that is one thing. but to just take something on faith because it makes life happier? that is diametrically opposed to everything i believe in.

it makes me sad because when he says these things, i feel like this path is not really my path. i know that already. i know that i am a hodgepodge of judaism, humanism, theravada buddhism, mahayana buddhism, sufism, and lots of other isms. s. hates life, it’s that simple. he gives lip service to “you still experience the joys and the pleasures” but the fact is when you cultivate his kind of equanimity, you sacrifice joy. in my experience, anyway. moreover, his complete overlooking of injustice – that story about the trees being cut down, like it’s just another irritation in the mind – shows a serious flaw in his brand of religion. i have strong, strong doubts that his kind of buddhism really addresses injustice. now, of course, judaism fails too - look at the rabbis and the palestinians. christianity, islam - we all fail. but there are streams within each tradition, including buddhism, which are more activist.

it leads to self-doubt, but I’ve been over that turf already.

so, here’s what i want to say in my interview. report the experience from Monday & Tuesday. then the anger and the ending of that period. then the problem is that the doubt undermines. it’s not that the good feelings leave, although that’s sad enough, it’s that they are undermined later. but then, when i hear something like s.’s fideism - believing because it makes us happier - that really rubs me the wrong way. am i too skeptical? how do we know when to take things on faith? ever?

the thing is, the practice can be very simple. seeing clearly. but what we see is so different. though, honestly, i can’t see how taking the law of karma because it feels better is seeing clearly. that seems to me very unclear seeing. why? because of my own fidelity to truth.

i remember when, in college, i worried that all mystical experience could be reduced to a brain chemistry phenomenon. funny, i guess i still worry that now. but where i have come lately, over the last few retreats, is: judge by the fruits. are the insights attained in these altered states moving us towards more truth, as examined under various conditions, or less? more love, or less?

a wrinkle for me is, i still want to add: more rich living, or less. because i don’t believe in future lives, and i don’t believe that bad people get what’s coming to them. I’ve observed neither, and neither fits with other things i think i know about the universe (e.g. that there’s nothing to reincarnate, there’s no soul separate from the conditions, i.e. God).

okay i am going to go walk for a few minutes and see where this calm leads. it seems to have come from nowhere. i think it is so much better to accept that samadhi just happens at almost random times. on the evidence, of course :-). this one had a trigger – relaxing into my process and deciding it was ok to write – but you can pull the triggers all day long and it won’t happen. necessary but not sufficient, perhaps. ok-ness.


a little later:


what’s the worst case scenario? the worst case scenario is, this is a mind-state that engenders more calm, appreciation of the objects in the world and their qualities, and insights into stuff about my life and life in general. um, is that so bad?
next worst is that, plus a way of experiencing knowing itself, just in the brain.

the next worst case scenario is, it brings one into closer contact with Being, which in some outlooks including mine is God.

the better case is, the sense of Awareness one has, and the sense that it is larger than oneself and shared with the whole of Being, is real.

but the worst case ain’t so bad.


229pm

just digesting some of the interview with sharon. her view is, what’s not letting you allow the experience just as an experience, just as the “worst case.” it seems right that it is the attachment to truth. which, i have to say, is not a bad attachment. in my case, it feels like the equivalent of the desire to be happy/end suffering. but there is attachment and attachment.

her view is, the experience gives you a view into reality. it’s different from a retreat crush or non-truthful drugs because it doesn’t cause delusion, and look at its consequences: more love, more compassion, less attachment to objects as separate. but, she says, mystics can’t express why or even how something is true. (if they could, presumably they would have.) they can only express their deepest certainty that it is.

so I’m interested in this quality of certainty. wittgenstein, right? on certainty. how do we know something is the case. what is the noetic content of feeling it in your gut.

i feel like I’m on the top edge of a trianglular mountain that either way i could slide in. i guess that’s what doubt is, right, being on the fence? not moving anywhere?

why am i so attached to the belief that the world as conventionally understood might exist, that is, as just separate instances of matter and energy, with no overarching “awareness.” I’m still not clear what the laws of physics really are. i mean, what are these laws? in their deepest sense. what are these forces? why does gravity work, why does space curve that way. i don’t mean in the sense of scientific explanation, but rather, why should there be the principle of ‘law’ at all?

notice that it is very hard to stay on the experiential level. conceptual thought comes in almost immediately. i guess the better buddhist thing to do is be patient. the teacher would say, okay, you’ve had an experience that seems to fit with this truth. okay. you’re not certain of it now, though you were then. okay. so, be patient, keep practicing, and another experience will come along eventually. or it won’t, but probably it will.

i feel like i really want the home run. and yet, i do also fear it. because, what happens to my conventional life at that point? not in the sense of dissolution but, well, let’s just say that my career stuff suddenly gets really unimportant.
maybe one of the appeals of ken wilber is he says you can have it all. you plunge into nondual awareness, but then when you come out of it, you go about your business. not unchanged, of course, but, interesting how the consequences align perfectly with what the buddha says: less clinging, etc.

i wonder if the process is, you have this experience time and time and time again, and they get deeper and deeper, until finally you give way. you finally surrender to the truth of the experience and stop trying to fight it, justify it, or defend it to others. my inner james again.

before going to the sit, let’s just clarify that where i am is: i have had this experience and it was as certain as anything, definitely as certain as i know that if i click this button on the screen, x or y will happen. that certain. now, in a calm place but one where doubt is clearly present, i question the sense of certainty. i suppose one distinction is, i can click the button now to verify it. but in order to verify that experience, i have to, well, it’s quite a process.

so, i have been to the place where the mystics have been. maybe not the farthest place, but a place. i have seen with my own mind that it is as they report. all is seen to be one, rising in empty awareness. i have known that knowledge and walked that road. todah la’el. it is as they say. is it as things actually are? I’ve listed the effects of it, and the congruencies, and so on. i feel at this point i can do no more.

thus, i rest - and sit.