--- In [email protected], Michael Jackson <mjackson74@...> wrote [in response to Duveyoung]: > > Wow - there is a lot here - at least for me as I have been in the process of > processing my feelings/experiences with TM these last months - I have tired > also to make that point that if TM is actually as effective why do so many > people quit? Why do so many people who do TM long term act like asses or > become completely ineffective in life? Not everyone, but a lot do. > > I appreciate your posting these words. > > I was re-reading part of Earl Kaplan's letter and want to know what you think > of this part: > > "One other important point is that the mechanical repetition > of a mantra without meaning or devotion brings no spiritual progress > whatsoever. This point is referred to in the yoga sutras and in many > discussions of great spiritual teachers. The mechanical repetition of some > meaningless word brings no opening of the heart, no love in one's life, and no > unfoldment of true spiritual values. > Haven't you ever > wondered why so many people in the TM movement seemed so heartless, especially > the administrators the early courses? It was because their mechanical > repetition of a meaningless word was actually closing their heart, not opening > it. That is why so many people in the TM movement have suffered a sort of > disassociation with so much of their life where they don't have the same > feelings they used to. It's not because they are more highly evolved, it is > because they are disconnected from their hearts." > > What do you think about this?
While there are various explanations of how heart evolves (recall an earlier post by Card about some new TMO technique involving the heart), I read somewhere that Adyashanti described in general terms that enlightenment unfolds first for the mind (intellect), then the heart, and then the 'gut' (the latter being the release of an existential hold onto life), not that this happens to everybody in the same sequence or in clearly defined steps). This seems to parallel MMYs CC, GC, UC sequence. With TM we do not seem to get a lot of nitty gritty details about how this proceeds, or what kind of experiences one might go through. I mean, if one has a heart of stone, releasing that constriction might be very uncomfortable, because something perhaps very traumatic shut it down. Softening of the heart means some kind of devotion that cracks personal boundaries and fears. In the TMO this is idea seems to be forced in the direction of adulation and service to MMY, which is now impossible now that he is dead. One can be devoted to an image, an icon of MMY, a memory. But devotion is really just part of any path that one is focused on. You could be devoted to helping others, or devoted to being a more reasonable kind of person. You could be devoted to taking care of injured animals. One thing is sure compassion is not quite the same as empathy or sympathy, which basically bleed you out into some other person's difficulties. To be useful to someone who is in dire straits and suffering because of their delusions or situation (say physical pain), it does no good to get caught up in their misery, you have to be there for them, and, at the same time not appear as some callous bastard. It has been suggested that doctors with poor bedside manners take acting lessons, to avoid these problems. But people who can just 'be there' with you and make a person feel safe is perhaps best of all. As I lay here under the influence of a winter illness, I thought I would see if anybody had written some cogent comparison of the two main forms of meditation, transcendental meditation, and mindfulness. I found the following discussion on a Buddhist web site. What I find remarkable about it is it displays no antagonism toward transcendental meditation, even though this is from a teacher of mindfulness meditation. This is in stark contrast to the TMO practice of always asserting the practice of TM is superior. In fact this author here acknowledges that TM is easier to learn. I find his comparison here really instructive. 'Many people in the West get their first exposure to meditation through what is know as TM or Transcendental Meditation. TM is essentially the classic mantra practice of India presented in a contemporary format, easily accessible to Westerners. Mindfulness meditation is another practice which is growing in popularity in Europe and North America. It is also known as Insight Meditation or Vipassana. As a teacher of Vipassana meditation, I am frequently asked about the relationship between mantra practice and mindfulness. 'On the surface they would seem to be very different, perhaps even antithetical. Typically in TM one leans back against a wall, withdraws from the phenomenal world and repeats a mantra to oneself for perhaps twenty minutes. It's relatively easy and usually brings immediate calming effects. In mindfulness practice one sits bolt upright with intense alertness, attending to the flow of ordinary experience. This usually means focusing on rather banal and sometimes uncomfortable phenomena such as itches, sounds, thought patterns, pains, etc. It would almost seem that the mantra practice "takes you out" while the mindfulness practice "brings you down." (However, beneath the surface differences, these two practices have a commonality that can easily go unrecognized.) 'For one thing, both practices build calm and concentration, although in different ways. In mantra practice, one relaxes, withdraws and lets the rhythmic sounds of a mantra replace the chaotic sounds of ones internal conversations. This develops concentration, since internal talk is the major source of distraction in daily life. In mindfulness practice, each moment of ordinary experience is "penetrated" with awareness. The awareness literally soaks into the itches and sounds and thoughts like water into a sponge. This in effect represents a kind of silent merging or samadhi with each phenomenon as it arises in the six senses - hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, the feeling body and the thinking mind. Thus in mindfulness practice, though ones attention may shift rapidly through a sequence of diverse phenomena, one experiences samadhi with each in turn. The net effect is the same as having maintained samadhi on a single object (such as a mantra) for the same length of time. In Pali, the classical language of early Buddhism, this is technically referred to as khanika samadhi or "sequential momentary deep concentration." 'Most people find this much harder to do than the simple mantra practice; so why bother? The answer to that question has many sides to it. I will only discuss one here. But before I can do that, we need to first clarify an even deeper way in which mantra and mindfulness are related. Because mantra is a repetitive rhythm, it sets up periodic waves or vibrations in ones consciousness. Let me try to explain this with a somewhat crude metaphor. You are probably familiar with hand-held electrical vibrators that are used for massage. Imagine the effect of holding such a vibrator in contact with the surface of a pool of water. It would impart very regular pleasing patterns of ripples throughout the water. Focusing on those patterns of ripples could easily take you into a state of relaxation. This is one facet of how mantra works. Its repetitive nature sets up rhythmic ripples throughout the meditator's whole consciousness. The meditator then focuses on the regularity of those ripples and rides them into deeper and deeper levels of relaxation, concentration and integration. 'In mindfulness practice one focuses on a sequence of "material objects" but because of the penetrating way one focuses, those objects sometimes break up as soon as they arise. Break up into what? Pleasing ripples and vibrations! Buddhists call this aniccha or "impermanence." The mindfulness meditator can then ride these ripples into deeper and deeper states of peace and fulfillment just as the mantra meditator does. In advanced stages mindfulness meditation in essence turns each ordinary experience into a mantra. To extend the metaphor of the pool of water, in fully developed mindfulness practice, there is no mechanical vibrator imposing regularity. Rather, drops of rainwater (thoughts, feelings, sounds, etc.) incessantly impinge on the pool, but they immediately dissolve into pleasing, relaxing patterns of energy. 'Should we then consider mindfulness to be a better form of meditation than mantra? Not at all! Such simple comparisons between meditation techniques are not appropriate. Each way of meditating has its own characteristic strong points and weak points. And each meditator has his or her needs and proclivities. The mindfulness practice can be difficult if not downright painful, especially at the beginning. By way of compensation it equips the meditator with a systematic procedure that will transform any ordinary experience of daily life into a profound contact with ones spiritual source. Mantra practice is easy to start with and has (at least theoretically) the potential to influence daily life.' I would keep this in mind when we argue here on FFL about the relative utility of various techniques. For example, the teacher Adyashanti remarks at times that at some point in one's practice, ALL techniques will fail, and I seem to recall Maharishi implied the same thing, that at some point it is only a matter of time, and not technique that finishes the journey. That many of us in the past, and surely even now in the present, have experienced that what we are doing does not seem to work as well as it did, or that it has utterly stopped working. It may be that in these cases, if one does not have a die hard resentment against what is happening, that whatever practice one had been doing has matured to the point where we are ripe for insight regardless of what technique we are practicing, that the failure of a technique might imply something other than defeat. Happy New Year, although it is just another day that we call a 'new year', as if it were something significant beyond the labeling - it is seeing past our labeling of the world that brings fulfilment. 'Transcending' that bugaboo word that seems to imply going somewhere, works in two fictitious directions - inner and outer. When the difference between inner and outer is abolished, we're home, but until then we are stuck on one side or the other, or straddling off-balance a peculiar divide where we a comfortable in neither.
