Much footering

If I was to enter a Zen monastery my days would be well structured. There would be a schedule of activities lasting from dawn to dusk and beyond. The details vary between monastic traditions, but the essence is to be found in all of them. And the essence is mindfulness which means being non-judgmentally aware of the thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) that arrive, hang around, and depart from up front consciousness.

The TFM that appear to you are rooted in your nature, nurture and chance, and ‘exist’ in the memory circuits of your brain. The hard wired, natural examples evolved in the times of our ancestors and these included not only the apes but also the mammals, the reptiles, the fish, a fabulous array of invertebrates, and a host of unicellular organisms. Note – we all have the same DNA

Humans are born in a helpless condition and need to be nurtured to fit in with the group to which they belong. This process takes the form of more or less formal education although it might also be viewed as brainwashing, enculturation or indoctrination. The curriculum expanded when language evolved and collective learning came of age. Note that we do not want 100% efficiency in the enculturation process. There must be variation upon which natural selection will act.

In most human groups there are three types of people – leaders, managers and workers and there will be genes controlling the expression of group type. It is possible that all members of the group contain all the genes for hierarchy and the nurturing process switches them on and off.

AND it is possible to have a fourth group type – the outlier who is a spiritual mystic. They will once have been a useless baby but later in life their mindbrain will have experienced a range of extra-ordinary TFM such that they become liberated from their standard model.

The only constant thing is change. But most people resist it. But this is not a problem – it generates a possibly creative and popular, multi-stakeholder debate.

The mystic worldviews from times past were restatements of widely accepted myth and magic. Most of them were well off the wall. About 2000 years ago a few isolated monks independently came to realize that what people know is not reality. By sitting quietly doing no-thing the mindbrain changes.

Modern brain scientists are working with experienced meditators to investigate what happens in the brain when they enter non-egoic states. 

In short,

• the brain changes the mind which changes the brain
• the road is made by walking – use it or lose it.
• the non-egoic state is called Flow, in the groove, in the zone
• no-self (aka non-ego), no problem
• how to achieve non problematic (enlightened) thinking? – just sit
• drop off body and mind
• and know the PEACE, BLISS, ENLIGHTENMENT, RELEASE etc

I find it useful to suppose that there is a genetic basis for ‘flow’ but that it is not often switched on. This means that it is easy to “Keep the peasants in ignorance!” which would have become necessary once settled agriculture became established and hierarchies became more pronounced and exploitative as kingdoms, empires and nation states.

But now there is globalisation which is inspired by consumer capitalism and the commodification of goods and services - and the bottom line is profit. These days there is also talk of the triple bottom line – economic, social and environmental. And, as a gesture towards holism, I have outlined an 8-fold bottom line (https://sites.google.com/site/steeplessrds/ ) social, technological, environmental, economic, political, legal, ethical and spiritual. This complements the work of Minu Hemmati on Multi-stakeholder processes. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-stakeholder-Processes-Governance-Sustainability-Deadlock/dp/1853838705

 

I do not have the rigid discipline of a Zen monastery. Some days the mind footers about on autopilot while on other days it is focused on reculturing my ‘self’. While TFM watching I do not always remember to drop off body and mind. But I remember to forget more often than not. The loss of memory goes along with old age.