--- In [email protected], Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote: > > If modern meditation research is any indication, one of the > things that is notable and actually helpful is research which > shows random people compared to experienced meditators and then > presented with some sort of averse stimuli: the screams of a > women in extreme distress, pictures of a burn victim having > their dead skin peeled off, a child with a terrible deformity -- > interspersed with lovely scenery, pictures of ice cream, etc. > > In most people, the prefrontal cortex,the most evolved part of > the human brain, simply shuts down and "goes dark". They retract > into some instinctive, approach/withdraw circuitry of fear and > paranoia; basic programming; survival mode. Advanced meditators > however are the *opposite*, their prefrontal cortex lights up > and the areas associated with compassion instinctively "light > up". One type instinctively "embraces" differences and > strangeness, the other instinctively retracts. > > In current humanity, most people's "circle of compassion" is very > small: their immediate family, some relatives, some close friends, > their animal companions. Maybe that's part of the problem. A > future humanity--or for homo sapiens to survive--we may be > required to develop of style of functioning where we instinctively > embrace more and more, to the point on non-object referral > embracing (nondual compassion). Retraction and fear and paranoia, > being parts of the more reptilian and primitive centers of the > brain will have less and less sway over such a future Man. We've > been out of Natural Selection for many centuries now, yet we still > are responding to patterns of a being living in the "the strongest > will survive, the weak shall die" level of functioning. It's time > to grow up or we'll actually kill ourselves and take a huge chunk > of the biosphere along with us.
This is all very interesting to me (and I'll run out of posts before any discussion on it gets very deep). One of the things that made me think about this "victim mentality" thing was the attempt to demonize the Dalai Lama (or at the very least portray him as having "flawed judgment") because he said something positive about George W. Bush. Anyone who believes that is devoid of compassion; the Dalai Lama is not. The other thing that's gotten me thinking about it is watching the movie I posted a mini-review of the other day, "Five Minutes Of Heaven." It's bloody brilliant, and is all about the lingering effects of trauma *in the same terms you're talking about above* -- aversion and the inability to see situations clearly. Both of the characters are *broken* as a result of what transpired between them 25 years ago. Both have had the face of the other person in their minds ever since; they can't get rid of it. And it has left both of their lives a shattered mess. They are, as you suggest, stuck in a mode of reaction/aversion based on over- identification with a negative stimulus, and an inability to overcome it. The movie was brilliant in portraying "a way beyond suffering," a way of breaking free of these aversions. And I have seen that same process undergone successfully in Buddhist organizations I've interacted with. In my opinion, the ability to see "shades of gray" and NOT "bag" everything you see as 100% negative or 100% bad or 100% good is synonymous with what we call "evolution" or higher states of consciousness. The concept of an enlightened being thinking of another human being (or themselves) as "all bad" or "all good" just does not compute for me. I find myself wondering, as I did yesterday, how much of this is traceable back to the myths that underlie Buddhism vs. Hinduism or "Veda-ism." The myths in Hindu and Vedic books are all *simplistic*, black and white, with no shades of gray and no room for equiv- ocation. All the characters are either all good or all bad. And I guess this is good for teaching kids, because this simplistic approach can begin to teach beginner concepts of right and wrong. But it's *limited*, because if your "training myths" contain only characters who are "all good" and "all bad," there is no way to teach *compassion*, because there is never any need for it. You don't try to understand and feel compassion for one of the Kauravas or for a rakshasa -- you just kill them. And sometimes I think that this simplistic tendency to reduce all things to "all good" and "all bad" is one of the factors that leads people to become paranoid and fearful. Imprinted to believe that everything is "all good" or "all bad," they have no mechanism for under- standing that a person who believes something different than they do isn't "all bad." They can't conceive of them being good, or even partly good, and not believing the "right" dogma. Anyway...interesting rap, Vaj. Thanks for throw- ing it out there...
