2011.07.09 19:00 - Bypassing Cynicism

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

Pema Pera: hi there, Hokon!
Hokon Cazalet: hi =)
Hokon Cazalet: how are you tonight?
Pema Pera: fine! it's 11 am for me
Hokon Cazalet: hehe =)
Pema Pera: but in a few days I'll return to the US
Pema Pera: (for three days :-)
Hokon Cazalet: what are you doing where you are?
Hokon Cazalet: hehe
Pema Pera: going home, and then after three days going to Halifax,
Hokon Cazalet: whatca gonna do there?
Pema Pera: for the Play as Being retreat near there
Hokon Cazalet: oo =)
Hokon Cazalet: aw thats right, that came up fast =)
Pema Pera: you're welcome to join us, if you like :)
Hokon Cazalet: hehe id like to, but dont have the money
Pema Pera: the next one will be in Seattle
Pema Pera: toward the end of September
Pema Pera: yes, RL travel is a lot more expensive than SL travel . . .
Hokon Cazalet: well i got one other trip im trying to do before that, meet my sister in texas, but i got money troubles for even that trip =(
Hokon Cazalet: hehe
Hokon Cazalet: yup sadly
Hokon Cazalet: for now =_)
Hokon Cazalet: =)
Pema Pera: In my student days, in Holland, I hitchhiked . . . but then again, Holland is far smaller than the US, and in those days it was quite safe to hitchhike . . . .
Hokon Cazalet: yeah, though i have had thoughts of just being a wanderer
Hokon Cazalet: live out of a vehicle or something, and wander from town to town
Pema Pera: attractive idea, but not necessarily easy in this modern world . . .
Hokon Cazalet: i know =(
Pema Pera: if you have a big enough vehicle and stay in safe places, it might work
Pema Pera: but that wouldn't be cheap, necessarily
Hokon Cazalet: yeah
Pema Pera: shall we talk a bit more about the epoche?
Hokon Cazalet: sure why not =)
Pema Pera: an easy way to introduce it, without mentioning a strange Greek name
Pema Pera: is to simply ask what happens when you change your focus from the content of thoughts to awareness itself
Pema Pera: like changing your focus from a painting to the paint
Pema Pera: or from a newspaper to the white paper and black ink
--BELL--
Pema Pera: I wonder whether that is sufficient, as a start -- what do you think?
Hokon Cazalet: well you could take it that way, although the contents werent suspend in husserlian epoché; so while that is a nice way to phrase it, its not wholly accurate - i like to phrase it in terms of not looking through appearances to some object or substance, but merely gaze upon an appearance
Hokon Cazalet: its a good start but needs to be amended
Pema Pera: yes, the two approaches are quite complementary
Pema Pera: when you are stuck, physically, bent over say, it is good to stretch
Pema Pera: and you can stretch in different ways :-)
Hokon Cazalet: i think though mine ignores the subject-side of intentional acts . . . so yours would be good to mix with mine =)
Pema Pera: all of them help
Hokon Cazalet: hehe
Hokon Cazalet: yup
Pema Pera: snap!
Pema Pera: so there are three things/aspects/levels
Pema Pera: what an appearance points to
Hokon Cazalet: though you dont want the subject-side to become a substance either (i.e. a soul), which ive seen some doing wthat with awareness or presence in new age thought recently
Pema Pera: the appearance in itself
Hokon Cazalet: what would you say those three are?
Pema Pera: and the awareness that allows the appearance
Pema Pera: sorry to break it up in three lines :)
Pema Pera: you talked about the switch between the first two
Hokon Cazalet: its ok, text isnt the best medium, as you can tell im awkward with it :Þ
Pema Pera: I about the switch between the last two
Hokon Cazalet: yup
Pema Pera: so you: back to appearance itself
Pema Pera: and I: back to awareness itself
Hokon Cazalet: hehe, noesis and noema; act and content
Hokon Cazalet: and i do think we need both
Pema Pera: and with my approach there is the danger of hyle
Hokon Cazalet: an epoché of the thing-in-itself, but also of the content to see the act of awareness itself
Pema Pera: of making awareness into a substance, a kind of ether
Hokon Cazalet: in what sense?
Hokon Cazalet: yes
Hokon Cazalet: its a problem i have a lot =)
Pema Pera: one example I've used sometimes is when I got my first camera, and started to see the world as given in terms of light, rather than matter
Pema Pera: hi Storm!
Storm Nordwind: Hi there!
Hokon Cazalet: prob cuz i focus so much on the content-side, i dont practice suspension with the act-side . . .
Hokon Cazalet: hi =)
Pema Pera: we're talking about switching from what we see to how we see
Hokon Cazalet: thats a cool example =)
Pema Pera: from what appears to how it appears
Storm Nordwind: And perhaps the seeing of how we see? ;)
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: and how we then reify the we that we impute as doing the seeing
Pema Pera: rather than letting the seeing see
Hokon Cazalet: btw thats a huge problem i have with heidegger, i think he reifies a lot - [side note]
Storm Nordwind: When we don't understand what we see, we can be suspicious about how we see. The contemporary opinion of Isaac Newton's gravity = action at a distant being branded 'occult' being a case in point!
Hokon Cazalet: (or maybe hypostatize is a better term, lol, oh well)
Hokon Cazalet: hehe yup
Hokon Cazalet: leibniz, the other inventor of calculus called it that
Pema Pera: yes, nice example
Pema Pera: (Heidegger tried to avoid reifying, but he so much cloaked his thinking in his own almost impenetrable language that it is hard to know what he really thought; he did talk about "Being crossed out" though)
Pema Pera: It should not be too hard to teach "watching your own thought" at, say, high school level
Pema Pera: say, 15 minutes a day
Pema Pera: taking about 5% of the curriculum
Hokon Cazalet: well i do think heidegger over-obscured the language, the actual concepts he tells, from what i understood, wasnt that complicated in some ways
Pema Pera: I wonder whether there are schools like that
Storm Nordwind: No - I think it's important to do it around the age of, say, 8 - before the cynicism and peer pressure of high school take control
Hokon Cazalet: then again, heidegger didnt like the present-at-hand attitude, he didnt want things to be in plain sight or presence for mere gazing
Hokon Cazalet: i agree sotmr =0
Hokon Cazalet: storm =)*
--BELL--
Pema Pera: that's an interesting idea, Storm; I don't know how much time is needed to let the regular subject-object understanding settle before starting to offer alternatives; I wonder whether doing it too early may interfere? -- but then again, music lessons sometimes starts at age three :-)
Hokon Cazalet: =)
Hokon Cazalet: i think the earlier the better, so that their mind doesnt have a sediment beneath it, that they have to crack through later as adults
Storm Nordwind: I suspect - from raising 4 kids and (unbelievable I know) being one myself once - that there's a narrow window of opportunity for educating a child in this way. The opportunity will come again perhaps, but not during school days and maybe not until the late 20s.
Pema Pera: in my case I started working with these questions at age 17
Hokon Cazalet: yeah, its that way with a lot of things; like letting kids run wild and hoping they will follow rules and be tame later - nope; if the kid is a brat and your hitting the teen years, its too late
Pema Pera: but I have no idea, of course, what would have happened, had I started earlier or later
Hokon Cazalet: =)
Storm Nordwind: The point is not the ability to do it earlier, it's the necessaity of bypassing cynicism and establishing it as just another normal subject at an early age
Pema Pera: what makes age 8 the best time, you think, Storm?
Hokon Cazalet: i guess for me, my aim would be more radical, producing a new type of individual [i dunno though, having kids scares me a lot - all that responsibility]
Storm Nordwind: At around the age of 8, plus or minus a little, I think children are settled into the learning and investigating process. It's more than play by then. It starts to have practical value. They have respect for their teachers (or not!) forming. Four years later the pressures of adolescence start, and so it's quite a narrow window.
Pema Pera: that makes sense. I remember working with my dreams around age 7 I think it was
Storm Nordwind nods and smiles
Hokon Cazalet: =) thats cool
Pema Pera: tinkering with ways of waking up from unpleasant dreams
Storm Nordwind: yes!
Pema Pera: I first found that jumping from a high tower did the trick -- that was out of necessity, with a dark force chasing me up till I had no room left
Pema Pera: but then I realized that any jump would do
Pema Pera: in the end I just jumped from the side walk onto the pavement of the street -- less than a foot would do
Pema Pera: it was my own signal to wake up
Storm Nordwind found at the age of 5 that negotiating with them did the trick!
Pema Pera: since then I have hardly had any nightmares
Pema Pera: in what way, Storm?
Hokon Cazalet: my trick i found, while in my 20s, was realizing all the bad guys in my dreams were simply ideas . . . my ideas; and i was their god =P
Storm Nordwind: Well I treated these phantoms of the night as real. Reall beings have real needs. What did they really want? As it turned out, they just wanted someone to accept them for what they were, rather than run away and be frightened! :)
Pema Pera: :-)
Hokon Cazalet: well sadly my nightmares wwere based on, well . . . lets just say creatures that wouldnt care to reason, except as a way to manipulate me further
Hokon Cazalet: im glad it worked for you though =)
Hokon Cazalet: i wish i had more faith in dialouge
Storm Nordwind: I wonder whether it was my faith in dialogue, and not rather more likely my faith in my own will, which simply changed the scenario as I wanted.
Hokon Cazalet: =)
--BELL--
Pema Pera: or perhaps just your willingness to enter into your own feelings, rather than turn away from them? I image that that can be done wordlessly, as a movement/orientation rather than a word-based dialogue
Hokon Cazalet: yup i know it can =)
Hokon Cazalet: ive done that quite a bit with my lucid dreaming the past few years
Storm Nordwind: That might have been the symbology behind it, Pema, but I suspect it was more will. It seems more like, "I'm suffering. Why? Can I change it? Yes. So let me change it. And I'll use a plausible scenario in which I do it."
Pema Pera: yes, I recognize that aspect, in the way I dealt with my problematic dreams by jumping
Hokon Cazalet: ive done quite a bit of "psychological" work that way with lucid dreaming; get into painful feelings, create a better scenerio, and i heal a bit
Pema Pera: a tinkering approach: there is a problem, now lets play with it, walk around it, try this and that, to see what happens
Storm Nordwind: I think I must have recognized at an early age that my suffering was inside not outside. Just like my happiness was inside not outside. In which case I'm more likely to be able to change what's inside than outside.
Pema Pera: and then the question is how teachable that is, and at what age
Storm Nordwind: Indeed. I suspect very teachable BUT only if you stop teaching all the things that say the contrary - for they are legion!
Pema Pera: perhaps trying to teach that too early may hinder the formation of a healthy normal sense of self?
Pema Pera: we seem to have to center onto ourselves before we can discover we are the universe :-)
Storm Nordwind: You'd have to define what a "healthy normal sense of self" is before i could comment! ;-))
Hokon Cazalet: id agree storm =)
Pema Pera: for example, in alzheimers, one problem is not finding yourself anymore in the stream of appearances
Pema Pera: that's an extreme case, of course
Storm Nordwind: Sure. But do you you define mainstream education by the exceptions? I doubt it, although you may allow for them.
Pema Pera: by seeing through a fallacy is different from closing your eyes for a fallacy
Pema Pera: oh no, meanstream education does not produce a healthy balance at all
Storm Nordwind: Meanstream ... a great typo!
Pema Pera: :-)
Pema Pera: we should make a list of PaB typos
Hokon Cazalet: lol
Pema Pera: a full spiritual training course!
Storm Nordwind: But perhaps it could, if it were restructured one day
Hokon Cazalet: itll get restructured eventually, even if its in a few hundred years
Storm Nordwind: There have been several attempts
Pema Pera: what I'm trying to say is that a child probably should learn to exert its own will, as you did in your dream explorations, before being told or shown very strongly that there is no self -- if you see what I mean (I'm not very precise here)
Storm Nordwind: Rudolph Stiener schools bring to mind. I have no clue how successful they are though
Pema Pera: yes, the Waldorf schools, and Montessori, and Dalton, and several others
Storm Nordwind: Yes perhaps.
Hokon Cazalet: yeah if you tell a kid really early no self exists, they might have problems being able to empathize, no analogy between self and other exists cuz there are no selves
Pema Pera: in my experience, those who seem to have a deep sense of no-self come across in every-day terms as often having quite a strong "self" when seen from the outside
Storm Nordwind: It's an occupational hazard ;)
Pema Pera: they're certainly not wishy-washy, going with the flow type of no-self :-)
Hokon Cazalet: (by no self are we referring to the buddhist notion of no permament self, i.e. a soul; or a more mystical view of all=one)?
Pema Pera: we need a language for describing the nuances and dimensions of "no self"
Storm Nordwind: a calculus of being :)
--BELL--
Pema Pera: yes!
Pema Pera: both, if properly understood, Hokon, and neither if not :-)
Hokon Cazalet: well no
Hokon Cazalet: the buddhists dont think nihilism is truye
Hokon Cazalet: they are the middle path, between an absolute self and nihilism
Hokon Cazalet: if you check the original snaskirt it becomes clear
Pema Pera: yes, but there are many fine nuances there . . . . :-)
Pema Pera: it's not something you can catch in a sentence
Hokon Cazalet: alot of new agers are confused as to what buddhism is due to odd translations
Pema Pera: or even a liftime
Pema Pera: *lifetime
Hokon Cazalet: there are
Pema Pera: I'm going to engage now in a calculus of what to eat for lunch :-) Nice talking with you both on this quiet Saturday evening!
Hokon Cazalet: but buddhism doesnt believe its one undifferentied blob; ok have fun =)
Pema Pera: bye for now!
Storm Nordwind: Buddhist scholars have argued over these things for nearly 2000 years. one side of the middle way has been at loggerheads with the other side :)
Storm Nordwind: Bye Pema
Hokon Cazalet: well most americans do have it wrong, buddhism doesnt think a self at all doesnt exist, the self is real just in flux
Storm Nordwind must bid farewell too
Hokon Cazalet: its not just buddhism too
Storm Nordwind nods and smiles
Hokon Cazalet: lol
Hokon Cazalet: bye
Storm Nordwind: hehe yes
Storm Nordwind: bye for now