07-09 - Gen Standing in for Storm: Dropping Subject/Object

This is Gen's summary of these three days in July.

2009.07.07 01:00 - Phenomenology and Intentionality

Vajra Raymaker: : -) You think there can be awareness without a subject-object split. The phrase "subject-object split" is building in something unfairly
Vajra Raymaker: It is presupposing that to speak of a subject and of an object is to split something that is naturally one, or one, if we are metaphysically proper. I am not sure I want to agree to the idea that it is metaphysically improper to say there are the two, at least not at this stage in the game
Pema Pera: I'm happy to use different words
Vajra Raymaker: So you are telling me you think there can be awareness without an object. Yes?
Pema Pera: yes, and without a subject too, the two go together
Vajra Raymaker: And you are also telling me that when this occurs, the awareness has no subject?
Pema Pera: yes
Vajra Raymaker: okay good
Pema Pera: like two ends of a stick
Pema Pera: can't drop only one of them
Vajra Raymaker: Well, if things are like that, then you could say that it is like two ends of a stick. But why should I think that we are not changing the subject when we are positing awareness without a subject
Vajra Raymaker: Why call this consciousness, if there is nothing that is conscious
Vajra Raymaker: But sorry, I shouldn't grill, as it was my own question
Pema Pera: I am refering not so much to a speculation, as to an attempt to put in words what seems to be a common thread in the literature of many traditions, and to some extent something that I have experienced sufficiently to recognize the similarities with the reports in those traditions
Vajra Raymaker: But I am glad you have a position on it! So that I can
Pema Pera: and please grill, I'm enjoying this!
Pema Pera: I much prefer specificity than woolly generalities :-)
Pema Pera: Hi Neela!
Pema Pera: ah, that's a key question!
Neela Blaisdale: Hello Pema!

It was nice to see Neela again, it had been a while since our paths crossed.

Pema Pera: awareness normally comes with a clear sense of subject -- but that doesn't imply there are no other forms
Pema Pera: Neela, have you met Vajra?
Neela Blaisdale: Nice to meet you Vijra, sorry to interrupt
Pema Pera: we are talking about whether awareness can appear without subject and/or object
Neela Blaisdale: interesting....and with awareness of being..is that subject or object?
Vajra Raymaker: okay, now I too have encountered in various traditions -- well, in Buddhist traditions -- the view that there can be awareness without an object. And also (but not in the same passages) in those and other traditions the view that there can be awareness iswhout a subject. But I am not sure how this kind of idea fares when held up against some very clear thinking about the nature of meaning that I have encounterd in other thinking
Vajra Raymaker: Hi Neela! : -)
Vajra Raymaker: Just because someone says it, doesn't make it true
Pema Pera: well, let us start with our own experience
Vajra Raymaker: Just because you have experienced something in meditation that you might describe that way, does not mean that that is the BEST way to describe it
Vajra Raymaker: okay, have you experienced awareness without an object?
Pema Pera: we all have had moments in which everything seems to be flowing just perfectly; there are many ways people describe this; it can be "falling into" a landscape, or into a painting, or into a mathematical proof, it can involve a sexual experience, or it can just something that happens, looking at a ray of sunlight or a piece of garbage -- when that kind of "flow" or "suspension of usual judgment" happens, certainly the sense of subject and object is much less present than it is normally
Pema Pera: so that would be a starting point, on a sliding scale, from a very present sense of ego that needs to be protected to a more and more free flowing, more and more open form of communing with all that appears
Pema Pera: with the vanishing point at the other side the no-subject experience -- though "experience" is not a very good word there.
Pema Pera: And yes, I have had various "experiences" along those lines, some stronger, some less so.
Pema Pera: and the best way to talk about them would be to say that they involved a keen sense of "no-self"
Vajra Raymaker: sure. I think that a person can have more or less rigid a notion of the self and that can corrupt one's experience to a greater or lesser degree.
Vajra Raymaker: But in your examples above, notice
Vajra Raymaker: you did name objects: a landscape, a ray of sun
Vajra Raymaker: now perhaps the problem is that language is used to describe experience

Neela Blaisdale: For me also moments that seem "suspended" from a particular object yet encompass a variety of objects in terms of sensing them
Vajra Raymaker: and language brings in reference to objects
Pema Pera: yes, using words, and reflecting on experience already treats the experience as an object
Pema Pera: so we have to deal with that :-)
Vajra Raymaker: ooo I like that, Neela, moments suspended from an object
Vajra Raymaker: no, not exactly what I was saying, Pema
Vajra Raymaker: well, or it could be interpreted a couple of ways "treating the experience as an object"
Pema Pera: can you say more, Neela, about that sense of suspension?
Pema Pera: Vajra, memory by definition is couched in subject-object terms, I think
Pema Pera: so to remember an awareness that goes beyond subject-object by necessity does violence to that awareness, distorts it
Pema Pera: though it is still recognizable, when you are familiar with it
Vajra Raymaker: okay, Pema.
Neela Blaisdale: as if being aware of a whole that is larger than any particular object that I am perceiving...
Vajra Raymaker: I can see that memory would bring in enough concepts so that the experience would get structured by categories that would define objects
Neela Blaisdale: but yet the ojects are all there and a part of the experience
Neela Blaisdale: *b
Pema Pera: yes, Neela, I recognize that way of seeing objects de-emphasized
Vajra Raymaker: Nevertheless, even if the original experience (or the current experience : -) ) is very flow-ey and open, what makes you say (in your theoretical mind) that there are not objects of which you are aware.
Pema Pera: yes, the objects don't disappear, but at the same time they are not longer distinct from the subject
Pema Pera: that's what I meant with the suspension of the split -- a term you didn't like, but which describes, for me at least, phenomenologically how that feels
Pema Pera: it's not an erasing of information, but a different way of holding it together, sensing it, as Neela also pointed out, I think
Pema Pera: answer to "Nevertheless": because there is no (or much less) sense of self there
Pema Pera: the distinction between self and other no longer holds in a firm way -- not that it washes together, far from that
Pema Pera: poets are much better at expressing this :-)
Pema Pera: If I can quote a present-day Japanese zen master, who in turn is quoting an ancient zen master:

Pema Pera:

As Rinzai said:

``In this five-foot lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank always coming in and going out; if you have not seen it yet, see it now!''

. . . It is always coming and going in and out of our body.
When it goes out, if we see a flower, we become a flower; when we hear a beautiful bird's song, we become a singing bird.
When we go within, we are hungry, sleepy, hot, and cold. There is a true master like that within each of us.
We see a river and we are flowing without pause. We see the sky full of stars and we become it all.
We dive into the suffering of all people, into society's miseries. Within this is a true person of no rank.

Vajra Raymaker: Well now this is problematic in discerning the structure of experience (and trying to understand the structure of the mental attitudes directed upon the world): what do we use as evidence when we are going according to the descirption of experience. Let me ask my question in a new way. Suppose we say that there is awareness where the distinction between the self and other goes away. Aren't there still always objects of awareness, things of which one is aware?
Pema Pera: This is very clearly and very recognizably (for me at least, and for many people I know) a description of a non-subject-object experience, the quote I just gave
Vajra Raymaker: whoops let me go back and read the poem

time for me to take off
Pema Pera: It's 6 pm here in Japan, I have to go out for dinner. Can we continue this some other day? I find this a fascinating discussion!
Neela Blaisdale: Pema where is that quote from?
Pema Pera: it is by Harada, a Japanese zen master, Shodo Harada, born in 1940

2009.07.07 19:00 - A Strawberry Can Be An Opening

Eos Amaterasu: there's a lot of plasticity in how we can be
Hana Furlough: yeah it kind of feels like being everywhere and everything
Eos Amaterasu: and we seem to come from a deep field of possibility
Hana Furlough: but that kind of feels like a really lofty statement
Hana Furlough: yes! possibilities
Eos Amaterasu: which means not inherently any one thing
Eos Amaterasu: but any distinct thing distinct in that openness
Hana Furlough: yeah it can't be just one thing, because it feels like anything and everything
Eos Amaterasu: the interesting thing is that that applies to oneself :-)
Hana Furlough: you mean like what we think we are?
Eos Amaterasu: yes, every little story about yourself
Hana Furlough: exactly
Eos Amaterasu: every wish and every fear
Hana Furlough: but the challenge is to remember and actualize this
Hana Furlough: how do yo do it?
Eos Amaterasu: remembering is hard
Eos Amaterasu: it is hard
Eos Amaterasu: little gaps, between doing this and doing that
Eos Amaterasu: sometimes you catch yourself in the act
Eos Amaterasu: sometimes the color stops you
Hana Furlough: what is the color?
Eos Amaterasu: Oh, the color of something you see, the emotional textural feel of music, .....
Hana Furlough: oh right
Eos Amaterasu: I think we all have our "practices", as well as little contemplations and exercises, as Pema was saying
Hana Furlough: yeah definitely
Hana Furlough: but do you find it hard to do this when you're in the thick of things, so to speak?
Eos Amaterasu: Oh yes, I can get "carried away", so to speak
Hana Furlough: me to
Eos Amaterasu: but stillness and activity are not opposed when it comes to such awareness
Eos Amaterasu: being is presenting in active appearance as well as in appearance that leaves an opening
Hana Furlough: so how do we get through that opening?
Eos Amaterasu: a strawberry can be an opening
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Hana Furlough: wow nice
Eos Amaterasu: I think APA, appreciating the presence of appearance, can be as simple as that
Eos Amaterasu: just a little moment
Eos Amaterasu: doing that repeatedly, as the 9 secs every 900 secs would do, can be profound
Hana Furlough: i agree
Eos Amaterasu: in the sense that it might unsettle you, or the youness of you
Eos Amaterasu: which is maybe what Sophia Sharon was talking aboiut
Eos Amaterasu: but doing that repeatedly takes remembering
Hana Furlough: yeah and instances arise when you can't let go
Hana Furlough: like if we're talking to someone, driving a car, etc
Eos Amaterasu: but the more you do it the more you're coming from that already
Eos Amaterasu: mabye humor provides a space :-)
Hana Furlough: yeah i think we need humor -- serious can be quite scary
Eos Amaterasu: good humor, good spirit, good chi

2009.07.09 13:00 - Mantra and meadow

Storm Nordwind: 35 or more years ago, I learnt a technique of meditation
Storm Nordwind: And ostensibly it focused on the breath
Storm Nordwind: and also on a mantra to be chanted internally in sync with the breath
Storm Nordwind: And there were huge claims made for this particular sort of meditation
Storm Nordwind: And people pointed to scriptures of all religions, even Christianity, saying it was at the heart of all things
Eliza Madrigal: Hm
Storm Nordwind: But at first it seemed odd to me, that one's own breath and this sound of the mantra could be universal or powerful
Storm Nordwind: But after some practice, an amazing thing happened
Storm Nordwind: I started to feel a tide of energy sweep through me, almost like it was moving my breath
Eliza Madrigal: MM How nice
Gaya Ethaniel: What kind of mantra Storm?
Storm Nordwind: And I switched the focus of my meditation to this flow, instead of being on the breath or the mantra
Eliza Madrigal: ahhh
Gaya Ethaniel: Would you mind giving us a bit of details?
Storm Nordwind: The mantra was a sound, two syllables, that I promised not to pass on
Gaya Ethaniel: Hello Mick :)
Eliza Madrigal waves to Mick
Mickorod Renard: hi all
Storm Nordwind: And in the end I was able to experience this flow outside meditation sessions