2009.07.25 19:00 - Thinking Groundlessly

The Guardian for this meeting was Pema Pera. The comments are by Pema Pera.

Eliza Madrigal: :) Hi Pema
Pema Pera: Hi there Eliza!
Eliza Madrigal: All well?
Pema Pera: No Saturday night fever here, so far :)
Eliza Madrigal: Not yet :)
Pema Pera: who knows what rowdy parties may show up . . .
Pema Pera: and how are you?
Eliza Madrigal looks around
Eliza Madrigal: :) Well , thanks
Eliza Madrigal: I've been enjoying reading the PaB logs for the last few days
Pema Pera: glad to hear that! Any comments, ideas, responses?
Eliza Madrigal: I enjoy the way you walk people through excercizes, and find that I jump in there too
Pema Pera: :)
Eliza Madrigal: It adds a kind of sharper focus
Eliza Madrigal: I'm learning to think 'groundlessly' and realizing that is openness that you often mention... to allow Being to see
Pema Pera: yes
Eliza Madrigal: It tends me make me a little 'underground' though, so I've been talking less :))
Pema Pera: :-)
Pema Pera: that's certainly all good to hear! And yes, sometimes the right response feels like just remaining silent. Was there anything specific that resonated with you?
Pema Pera: any particular exercise/exploration, or specific aspect thereof?
Eliza Madrigal: I related very much to what Gen said re: therapy, and the 'if' koan
Eliza Madrigal: And after that, when sitting many things floated up to the surface that I then attached metaphors to...
Eliza Madrigal: tried to work them out :), then heard so clearly to drop those metaphors
Eliza Madrigal: and it was very simple to do. As soon as I saw that, they were already gone
Eliza Madrigal: So then I think I saw 'Seeing is enough" more clearly in that...
--BELL--
Eliza Madrigal: ...that by the time I hear "drop that" it has been gone for a while
Eliza Madrigal: May sound odd, but that's been my experience thus far
Pema Pera: no, sounds perfectly reasonable and simple :-) thank you for sharing that!
Pema Pera: these are the directions I have always hoped PaB would grow into:
Pema Pera: simplicity, stopping, dropping . . . .
Pema Pera: and of course we've been talking about that in the group as a whole for more than a year now
Eliza Madrigal smiles. Yes.
Pema Pera: but hearing it is one thing, getting acquainted with it quite another, really beginning to taste it again quite something else, and so on

Eliza Madrigal: 'Experience first' is exactly that....
Eliza Madrigal: I think there are many ways in which I've been right in there, understanding at whatever capacity allowed that moment...
Pema Pera: as I tried to express at the end of the session you refered to, by now I often feel that when I look back a few months, or a month, or even just a week, I shake my head seeing how limited my understanding was then, and how much deeper I now "get" what the same words were trying to point to
Eliza Madrigal: yes! It honestly is a wonderous thing
Pema Pera: yes, and that is the other side of the coin: often when we fall into a really deep experience, we realize we felt/saw something very similar way back when, but we couldn't integrate it then and we seemingly lost it again
Pema Pera: it is very non-linear, not a steady progress
Eliza Madrigal: Oh my goodness, yes
Eliza Madrigal: It is extremely difficult to 'pin down' this type of learning....
Eliza Madrigal: it isn't supposed to be :)
Eliza Madrigal: Once in a while someone asks me a question, and I find I can't say "this began here" or "there"
Pema Pera: perhaps it is more like the way you learn to love someone: one day you just can't stand your partner, another day you feel so very peaceful, just being with the other.
Eliza Madrigal: yes perhaps
Pema Pera: the devotion aspect is important, but a bit hard to talk about in our culture . . . . we are suspicious of devotion
Pema Pera: yet any great scientist is totally devoted to her/his research, for example!
Pema Pera: or any great sports player or musician, artist, you name it
Eliza Madrigal: yes, and that is what I love about what you were saying last night re: scepticism
Pema Pera: devotion is the base, also for PaB . . . .
Pema Pera: yes, thanks :)
Pema Pera: but in PaB it is not devotion to a deity or person, it is something else . . .
Pema Pera: would you care to try to put words on what devotion could be in PaB ?

Eliza Madrigal: Hm
Eliza Madrigal: When you spoke to I think, Vajra, about atheism, I realized that THAT to me is PaB,
Eliza Madrigal: that we can sit and speak in terms of God, Not God, Being, Emptiness, etc...
Eliza Madrigal: and we are on the same page at heart
Eliza Madrigal: That is an impossible thing in most setting
Eliza Madrigal: *settings
Eliza Madrigal: That is inspiring to me
Eliza Madrigal: something I can feel 'devoted' to
Eliza Madrigal: The benefit of the doubt/ good skepticism is the thing there... the openness
Eliza Madrigal: Or that's what I'd say this second :)
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Pema Pera: yes, I find that almost miraculous -- that we can be so widely open to all orientations, far beyond what normally is called "eucumanical", "interfaith", etc, including humanists, atheists, anyone really -- and yet not become flat of superficial
Pema Pera: there is the fear that spreading wide leads to the effect of the lowest common denominator
Pema Pera: being left just with "be kind to yourself and to others" -- which is a great point, but perhaps not the only point to work with :-)
Eliza Madrigal: We aren't hiding most of ourselves in order not to make waves or conform to some ideal
--BELL--
Pema Pera: yes, there is the openness of play, and also a great amount of trust and respect
Pema Pera: just being together is somehow very powerful in our group
Eliza Madrigal nods
Eliza Madrigal: My specifically buddhist practice (very new) is quite enhanced by being here. I don't leave it at the door, which is so nice.
Pema Pera: this "being with", "being together" by itself is a nice local representation of the more universal notion of "Being" in Play as Being
Pema Pera: oh yes, it fits right in!
Pema Pera: but so does Christianity, Islam, humanism, and so on
Eliza Madrigal: yes, exactly!
Eliza Madrigal: Helps to perhaps not be so serious I must say.
Pema Pera: I'm so glad we have guardians like Cal, Sophia, Geo, with an orientation that is more non-religious, Christian, Islamic, respectively.
Pema Pera: oh yes, indeed, being playful is key -- but in most settings I know dropping seriousness often leads to just being silly
Pema Pera: which is fine of course, and necessary from time to time
Pema Pera: but what we have is far more than just decompression
Eliza Madrigal: Indeed

Eliza Madrigal: In one of the recent logs someone said "What I need here, is this group of people"
Pema Pera: there is the willingness to look at ourselves, our own identifications, and to question them, now THAT is really remarkable for the large group that we have, not just two or three people
Pema Pera: a lovely quote indeed!
Eliza Madrigal: and I thought it was such a beautiful statement... so simple and sincere. It really touched me.
Pema Pera: yes, me too
Eliza Madrigal: yes, a very large, very dynamic group
Eliza Madrigal: I didn't expect to spend so much time here when I first arrived :)
Pema Pera: good thing too!
Pema Pera: you might have been scared away if you'd known :-)
Eliza Madrigal: Hah!
Pema Pera: I myself was originally thinking of ten minutes per session, a few times a day
Pema Pera: and I told people so, the first day
Pema Pera: April 1, 2008
Eliza Madrigal: Ten minutes?
Pema Pera: yeah, seemed long enough, much longer than 9 sec, right?
Eliza Madrigal: Hard to imagine that with so many interesting ideas
Eliza Madrigal smiles, yes perhaps
Pema Pera: I was *thinking* of ten minutes -- but already the first day it grew into more like an hour per session
Pema Pera: and has stayed that way ever since
Eliza Madrigal: So it took on a life of its own in a sense
Pema Pera: oh, very much so
Pema Pera: we play as Being, but PaB seems to have its own momentum
Pema Pera: its own character
Pema Pera: its own flow
Pema Pera: like a river
Pema Pera: with many bends and twists and turns and unexpected white water rapids
Eliza Madrigal: Ah, yes
Eliza Madrigal: times of stepping softly
Pema Pera: and sometimes very peaceful dreamlike flows too
Pema Pera: yes

Pema Pera: as an example of the way PaB evolved by itself: after the very first session, I just jotted down a few lines as summary, on the wiki (was a blog then, but later copied to wiki): http://playasbeing.wik.is/Chat_Logs/2008/04/2008.04.01_07%3a00_-_Our_First_Meeting
Pema Pera: then the same day, six hours later, for the first time I included a "snippet" of the chat log, on http://playasbeing.wik.is/Chat_Logs/2008/04/2008.04.01_13%3a00_-_Reminding_yourself_of_the_0-sec_rule
Pema Pera: then that evening, still on the same day, I decided I might as well include the whole chat log for that session -- and that pattern has stayed, for 1500 or so sessions so far. :-)
Pema Pera: but that was never planned, it just spontaneously appeared as a pattern during the first day
Pema Pera: but felt like the right thing
Eliza Madrigal: Ah, do you know someone asked me one day, what the purpose of the logs was
--BELL--
Eliza Madrigal: and I said that they create continuity. In all my reading (and there has been plenty), I hadn't read these pages.
Pema Pera: yes, continuity is key
Pema Pera: The most honest and direct answer, speaking for myself, is that it just felt like the right thing to do -- but upon reflection I can recognize many inspiring and useful aspects; as so often happens: we feel that something is right, first, and then, second, we begin to see more and more in detail why that might be good
Eliza Madrigal: yes, it grew organically
Pema Pera: like scientific research: the important step is a new intuition, something totally non-rational; only at the second step of verification does rationality weigh in, as a late-comer, quality-control kind of thing. In that sense, the core of science is not rational at all.
Eliza Madrigal: Be ready for strange leaps then
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Pema Pera: yes!
Eliza Madrigal: For myself, the logs allow me to hear voices I might not otherwise
Eliza Madrigal: and to see how someone else hears in a completely 'new to me' way
Eliza Madrigal: even if talking about the same idea which was discussed before
Pema Pera: yes. someone during one session compared it to Indra's net
Pema Pera: where each knot in the net has a jewel that reflects all other jewels
Eliza Madrigal: :) yes, I like that analogy very much
Eliza Madrigal: very fitting... a resonance not restricted by time
Eliza Madrigal: Well Pema, sorry no rowdy parties tonight
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Pema Pera: outwardly not no
Pema Pera: but the power of the ideas we talked about is quite a bit more rowdy than the parties people can think of for Saturday evenings . . . .
Pema Pera: dropping self, dropping time, compared to that any party I've ever seen is very very tame :)
Eliza Madrigal grins. Yes, a nice evening. Thank you :) I really enjoy hearing your vision for PaB too.
Pema Pera: Thank you for a great conversation, Eliza!
Eliza Madrigal: Thanks Pema. Have a good day.
Pema Pera: and I enjoyed the refreshing simplicity and directness of your descriptions!
Pema Pera: And a good night to you, Eliza