spiritual sustainability

cafe chat

After a two and a half hour session of meditation with the Sangha I had coffee and chat with Jane - another biology teacher.

The main theme was the link between new science and the old dharma.

But I noticed that I was noticing shortcomings in the process of interacting almost as much as the subject matter.

Thinker be-aware

There was the normal problem of short term memory loss – especially for names and, in my case at least, for the details of concepts such as epigenetics and consilience. There was a spacious and nebulous ‘feel’ for the concepts but the ability to distil it into words was missing.

Another problem was that I often lost track of where story lines were going – especially Jane’s. I understood the individual points as they appeared but I forgot the earlier ones as the later ones arrived. This was perhaps a variation on the poor short term memory theme.

There was also the ‘intentionality’ problem. I do not give enough attention to what other people are saying - unless it is easy to position it on the map of my pre-existing viewpoints and world views. This might link to my encultured thought habit that there is a ‘truth’ out there and that there are paths leading towards and away from it. 

I quickly lose interest when I judge that the other person is on an away path. And this is in spite of the fact that, in rational up-front consciousness, ‘I’ no longer believe in stand alone, real truth. It would appear that (a) the old-fashioned thought habit still exists in the unconscious and (b) it can easily pop up in lazy brained moments. Thinker be-aware!

But this is not only a social interaction problem. My own thought trains sometimes stop short. Several points present themselves as if lined up in a row. But suddenly attention is withdrawn from the story line and there is a stupefied pause: I am struck dumb or at least made to stutter. 

But there is a workaround. I can write down the various individual and sequenced points. It is then a simple matter to re-view them and keep track of how they fit in the bigger picture. There can be ongoing additions and subtractions and fine tuning of the sequences. Much of the patterning of the utterance will be rooted in the ever active unconscious. Note that there is a strong whiff of an ‘intentional agency’ but it is hard to pin it on an ‘I’. 

Psychological (mind) stuff has physiological (brain) correlates. The ‘stop short’ phenomenon might be due to (a) a cessation of activity in the involved brain modules or (b) a break in the transmission from unconscious to conscious. These in their turn might be due to old age or, in my case, to the impact of Parkinson’s Disease and its medications on the amount and location of dopamine in my brain. The cause of the PD remains unknown. PD – why me now? Serendipity!

Listening and sharing

ATalkingStick

Previous to the chat in the café the meditation session had included a period for ‘sharing from the heart and deep listening’. The ‘talking stick’ went round the circle of sixteen participants most of whom took the opportunity to say a few words about their practice.

I cannot now remember in detail what was said but several people noted a feeling of having their minds read and of how comforting it was to realize that people who were apparently very different can have very similar experiences and stories.

The meditation session also included a dharma reading. A book by Jack Kornfield was passed round the circle and each person read a few paragraphs. In the café chat afterwards we noted that dharma stories from books or tapes are usually well thought through in advance. This in itself is not a bad thing but it creates the mode of shepherd and sheep, of expert and novice, of self and other. This again is not a bad thing in itself but (a) it does not go down too well with those who are not sheep, and (b) it affords an existential cop out for the sheep.

Most of the participants had experience of non Thay traditions. They reported finding the Thay way more democratic, and user friendly. The emphasis on everyday practice was particularly appreciated.

My early interactions were with the spiritual literature and more recently with audio and video presentations.  I attended various local weekend retreats in the last few years – FWBO and Northern Lights at Newbold House, and Mike Leutchford  and David Smith at Anam Cara.  I immersed myself in Zen and then in Vipassana before finding the Thay way.

The evolutionary emergence of mystics

Mystics are in every culture but always in very small numbers. They all point to the possibility of using the brain in a more enlightened way. They talk of liberation from the parochial and xenophobic worldviews that prevail in post hunting and gathering humanity. They talk of the enlightened mind state as our human birthright.

In terms of ancestors, the primates were around 75 million years ago, the great apes 15 million years ago, and early examples of the genus Homo 2.5 million years ago.

Somewhere around 200,000 to 50,000 years ago modern human culture started to evolve more rapidly. People were hunters and gatherers during this period but they used tools and early versions of language. This shift to behavioral modernity has been called a "Great Leap Forward", or the "Upper Palaeolithic Revolution". 

Like all sentient beings people were conscious at that time. The additional capacity for being self conscious presumably grew along with language. The mental construct that is the “illusory self” would have had its roots during this period and, given that it has survived and expanded, it must have had its uses. The majority of people conceived of their selfish ‘self’ as having an abiding reality – they did not see the illusion.

Karl Jaspers reckons that there was an Axial Age, a second leap forward, during the period from 800 to 200 BC. Similar revolutionary thinking appeared in Persia, India, China and the Occident and the charismatic mystics who were involved became the face of what are now the major world religions. 

A sequence begins to emerge:

conscious                                           no self - encultured robot
self –conscious                                   self and other (dualism)
conscious of consciousness                  no self only the Oneness

What might this be about from the point of view of evolutionary psychology? Survival of the fittest what? It seems reasonable to suppose that group or community selection is most relevant. The struggle for survival is between communities with more or less efficient and effective political and economic systems that are supported by language.

The vanguard is coming

Once an effective social system has evolved there is need to lock it down and preserve it. A mystical lunatic fringe of nutters is not therefore appreciated. “That man thinks too much, such men are dangerous.” But when things change, as they surely will, an elite fringe of creative sages is needed as a source of innovation and inspiration.

Lost in thought

The move from hunting and gathering towards settled agriculture, city states, empires and nation states was not an unmitigated success. The quantity of food produced by an individual farmer increased but the range of food stuffs decreased. Various forms of malnutrition became endemic. 

And it might be argued that there was a corresponding form of spiritual/ psychological malnutrition. The workers were encouraged to reify their selfish selves and thus to become wage slaves and capitalist consumers. The ruling elite used the media to hegemonise the cultural world view and to keep the peasants in ignorance.

And so the noble savage of old becomes the spiritually and psychologically malnourished serf. This is not so much wrong as maladaptive. It results in psychological and physical dust bowls.

What is required is a massive mind set campaigning for sustainable green. The time may be right for such a thing. There is deep rooted disaffection with the way things are. God is dead and people are existentially adrift. 

Mindfulness meditation is becoming popular in the West. For example Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has gone mainstream with many thousands of people taking part in courses. There are eight sessions in a course and evaluations are typically very positive. 

There is an ever growing vanguard drawing on east/west synergies. Here are a couple of potential bumper stickers:

Spiritual support for sustainability

Mystical movement for a mindful modernity