36 Introspection and the Lab of the Mind

Olaso.

Good morning. So I mentioned briefly that it was back in 1997, I’m quite sure, when my mentor, my primary mentor in physics - Arthur Zajonc- organised a mind and life meeting in Dharamsala. One of our five day extravaganzas. And it was on physics, physics and Buddhism and he invited to this meeting, just a remarkable, delightful group of open minded physicists and clearly the most renowned one, and quite, very impressive one was Anton Zeilinger. I mentioned before. But there are others. I met him for the first time on that occasion and then on a number of occasions later, but others as well who really brought openness, and it was a real dialogue. They weren’t there just to lecture the Dalai Lama about the latest you know, cutting edge research in quantum mechanics that actually they, or cosmology and so on, but they’re really there to listen, it was delightful. Tremendous privilege to be there with Thubten Jinpa in the role of co - interpreter. It was like just a feast, it was such a delight to see the open mind on both sides engaging with each other. That was 1997 and I told this antidote many times, it will be very short, but when Anton Zeilinger describing quantum mechanics and the implications of quantum mechanics and commenting and I paraphrase here - that when you try to find an elementary particle like an electron and really identify it, what it’s characteristics are from it’s own side, by its own inherent nature, you don’t find it. Well His Holiness who is a master of Madhyamaka, he listened to this, and of course the whole talk, he had two and a half hours to present, it was marvelous, and His Holiness commented - “It’s remarkable you’ve had such insight into the nature of emptiness without knowing Madhyamaka.” And then Anton Zeilinger’s response was - “what’s Madhyamaka?” [laugher]

[1:54] He’d come to this conference simply because he was curious, he had an open mind and thought perhaps, who knows, maybe these Tibetans have something interesting to say, the Dalai Lama, a great representative, not just of an individual but of a whole culture, not only Tibetan culture but the whole history of Buddhism going back to the Buddha himself. He’s a representative of that, right. And so, Anton Zeilinger asked - What’s Madhyamaka? Then His Holiness gave a brilliant synopsis of that. Of the Madhyamaka view, and then Anton, I can’t quote this verbatim, but my recollection is - “he said It’s amazing that you can have insights like that without knowing quantum mechanics”. [ laughter] But what was really cool was what followed from that, there was a real meeting of minds here, and Thubten Jinpa and I were kind of the glue fitting the two together just as the language liaisons.

[2:50] But then it got really much more thrilling, and that is, then Anton who back then was still at the University of Innsbruck where he had done his groundbreaking work in quantum teleportation, he said - “Your Holiness I would love to invite you to my lab so I can show you what the experiments are that we have used to come to these conclusions based on empirical evidence. Would you like to come to my lab, I can show you around and we can discuss the empirical evidence and research giving rise to that evidence.” His Holiness turned to his assistant, it was Tenzin Geshe back then and basically, remember Star Trek and Jean-Luc Picard? He said number 1 - make it so. [laughter]

[3:29] Not quite in so many words, but that was it - make it so. [laughter]. That is - it’s happening. It was the next year that was set up. So His Holiness and of course Arthur Zajonc was there, Thubten Jinpa and I as the two interpreters came there and this was just fairy-tale. To be walking through Anton’s cutting edge, state of the art, quantum physics laboratory with His Holiness and he’s showing him experiment by experiment by experiment, how they had come to those conclusions. It was sheer delightful. Then His Holiness needed to zip off to Finland right afterwards, I think he was only there for two days, but Thubten Jinpa and I weren’t in any hurry. Thubten Jinpa stayed behind, so His Holiness went to Finland a day, somehow Thubten Jinpa didn’t need to go immediately. So Thubten Jinpa and I and Arthur Zajonc and Anton Zeilinger had the day off, and the four of us hiked up into the Tyrolean alps and we talked physics, philosophy and Madhyamaka all day. And came back with incredible sunburn. But it really was one of the most magnificent days of my life, to be part of that. It was fantastic.

[4:41] The point here, number one I just like telling stories [laughter] but number two is what was so cool about this is that Anton didn’t simply have some very cool ideas, he could take us to his lab, and His Holiness being the great empiricist himself immediately leapt at the opportunity and it took place just one year later. What I would love to see is if His Holiness could say - Anton, would you like to come to our lab and I’ll show you the yogis who have achieved shamatha and the first Jhana, second jhana, who are working with the kasinas and the nimittas, would you like to see why we believe what we believe, what’s our empirical evidence, what’s our research, what are our methodologies by which we’ve come to these conclusions which are not just religious beliefs or philosophical speculations? But are theories based on empirical evidence. [laughter] I would have loved for that to have been the case. So once again I was sounding the same drum, you know, need to come back to experience.

[5:42] But now here we are practicing now this taking the mind as the path, which is both a shamatha method, which it clearly is, but by the by, as we’re attending very closely to the mind, we’re bound to, even without introducing the word Vipassana, even without introducing any sophisticated modes of investigation or analysis, by carefully observing anything for a while, you’re bound to get some insights, just because you’re looking very carefully, discerningly. Mindfully. And so then one could ask - well then if such, such methods exist, then why isn’t introspection, I mean there are people in psychology, neuroscience, they’re very intelligent, they’re way above average intelligence, they’re highly educated, they’re sophisticated. And they want to know the truth, I think those are all very fair statements, and good generalizations. So over the last hundred years, that’s an awful lot of time, you know, they say that in the 20th century we’ll learn scientifically more about the universe than all the preceding centuries combined…probably true. So without elaborating on that point, with all that intelligence, why have we overlooked introspection? The most obvious thing to do when one, if you want to understand the nature of the minds different mental states, maybe different dimensions of consciousness, why has it been overlooked? Why? There’s not a simple answer. But again I want to emphasize, with great respect, these people are very intelligent.

[7:05] I know a lot of them, academics at college, I’ve been criticizing their views a lot but it’s not because they’re unintelligent. But neither were highly educated, European, Eurocentric men a hundred years ago. They weren’t unintelligent either. Highly educated, very intelligent and completely ignoring, and I mean almost completely ignoring potential contribution of half the human race to expanding understanding of the nature of reality for one couple corporations, businesses, law, medicine and so forth. That’s quite astonishing! Half! I mean that’s idiotic, that’s just like cutting Italy in half and saying - Southern part of Italy doesn’t count, shut up, have kids, raise the farm, we in Northern Italy, we’ll run the show. [laughter] I’m sensing there may be some of that sentiment. [laughter] Let alone Northern Europe and Southern Europe. Let alone West and East. You know, I mean what on earth could the Chinese, the Thais, the Indians, Tibetans, what on earth could they know about reality that they haven’t learned from us? I mean really, what, how could they know anything? For the last five thousand years. The cognitive deficit is absolutely staggering and it’s still here. We love to laugh at the people a hundred years ago, they’re going to be getting a belly laugh out of us if we survive.

[8:42] So why haven’t introspective modes of observation been introduced, incorporated, enthusiastically integrated into scientific methodologies? Which after all was proposed a hundred and twenty five years ago. By William James, Harvard professor, great distinction, great renown, on both sides of the Atlantic, and he said - why we should draw on neuroscientific enquiry, go look at the neural correlates, we should draw on behaviour for the behavioral expressions, first foremost and always we should rely upon introspection to understand the nature of mind. Understand the nature of subjective experience. He said it so clearly. And he’s been so resoundingly ignored ever since the rise of behaviorism a hundred and five years ago. Here’s some of the objections, and these are not trivial - But these are the reasons I’m suggesting here, apart from metaphysical reasons, personal prejudice, money, politics, power prestige, all those non subjective elements which are enormously influential, but purely scientific reservations about four, about, including introspection within the repertoire of methodologies of the scientific study of the mind. Again these are not unintelligent people. So the reasons are not silly. Here’s the first one, that I’ve come up with, it’s a short list -

Introspection, why not include them? Because introspection, introspective observations are unstable, and impossible to verify. I think you’ve all experienced unstable observations, right? Who hasn’t. You get an insight, you have some breakthrough, some big experience and then....ahhh…it’s gone. And I wanted it back and I tried and I couldn’t find it. Unstable, yeah, they are. Impossible to verify? Sure, what kind of fruit and I thinking of, am I thinking of a fruit at all? Is it a watermelon or Marilyn Monroe? How do you know? I can tell you, but then maybe I’m lying, maybe I’m delusional, you don’t know. But I’ve addressed that one already, that you don’t know any more than I understand Sir Andrew Wiles solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem. With it’s hundred and fifty pages of logic, I look at that, I couldn’t even read the first line, let alone critique and find the mistake in the earlier version halfway through, or whenever it was. But if I were sufficiently trained and if I am sufficiently intelligent, then I could, but not without training. Similarly, as I’ve noted again and again, and it’s just an empirical fact - highly trained Hindu Yogis they recognize each other. Highly trained Buddhist Yogis, the great Zen masters recognize other great Zen masters, great Tibetan masters recognize other Zen masters, and so forth. And they may critique, total brilliance, but here’s a point that I find effective - and yet it’s all internal. But it’s intersubjective and they’re dealing out of a common pool of very high level, sophisticated training. Okay?

[11.44] So unstable, well that’s why we develop Shamatha, so there’s an addressable problem. They are unstable but not intrinsically. But if you have no methods of training attention skills at all, that’s modern science, then that looks like an insoluble problem. If you have no pool of highly trained contemplatives with their intersubjective language and peer review, which Tibetans do have still, and they certainly had in Tibet, if you have none of that then they’re impossible to verify. It’s just he said - she said. So one more yogi says -I’m enlightened, I’m enlightened and if he or she is really charismatic, gives off really good vibe, really articulate, gets a whole lot of followers, they’re regarded as an authority. Imagine if science worked that way. You know, no peer review. Just if you’re a good bullshitter then you get a lot of reputation regarded as an authority. And then suddenly everybody is quoting you. This is pathetic! But it’s because we’re so primitive, contemplatively. So there’s the first one.

[12:40] What addressable problems, unstable and impossible to verify? Yeah, if you’re living in a contemplative, primitive society. And if you have no means for developing shamatha, that’s true. But, not otherwise. These are addressable here. Second one - Introspective observations are useful only for understanding meditative states but not ordinary and pathological mental states, that is - this is a good, this is a qualm raised by people who have clearly have never meditated in their lives. They think if you meditate, you know, if you do it for like a long time, like ten minutes, [laughter] that you’ll enter into something called a ‘meditative state’, but when you meditate you just get a meditative state.... right, because that’s what meditate is for, to enter a meditative state - but then if you’re in a meditative state you won’t know about ordinary states. I guess you become amnesiac or something. And then you won’t know about pathological states unless you’re a crazy meditator. [laughter] This one is just completely naive, but it’s also very very common, that is in the popular press nowadays and I’ve seen it in scientific literature I’m very sad to say. It’s very, very wide spread that scientists study meditation and meditative state and then one of them. And they’re basically if you read the popular literature right now, promoted by over enthusiastic, zealous, propagandists for the mindfulness movement. They will tell you that mindfulness, as in moment to moment, not in mental awareness - that’s the essence of all meditation. So you don’t really need to look elsewhere. We’ve already grabbed it by the balls. And this is it. This is the horrendously ridiculous but quite obnoxious propaganda coming out of the, we’ve already captured it, this is all there is to it, and it’s really good for stress reduction, and productivity in the marketplace, and it has health benefits, but that’s pretty much it, we just wrapped up what Chinese and Indian Buddhists and so forth, civilization came up with five thousand years ago - they’re really good at reducing stress. [laughter] They’re really good, they’re really good. The ethnocentric bigotry of this staggers the imagination. And it’s in the popular press - there is something called - the meditative state. That’s like a primitive person coming from let’s say Tibet, hearing about science and then saying - I’ve heard you’ve got something called the Scientific Method, what is it? And thinking it’s one thing. Whether you’re a cosmologist or ornithologist , or you’re studying viruses, you know, it basically, tell me what’s that scientific method? Tell me what was that again? What’s the ‘Scientific Method’ - you know - that one thing? Would you please go away and get educated.

[15:16] You know. Same. So this one is not even worthy of consideration. It’s just too ignorant. The third one is an interesting one. And that is - your introspective observations are suspect, unreliable, cannot be counted on because they are subject to contamination by theory. One could spend the rest of the next five weeks on that one. [laughter] Because it’s legitimate. This is why, according to the history books, and I have a very good article by the way, by Kurt Danziger on the Rise and Fall of Introspection and he showed the complex reasons why introspection was discarded. I can put that on the website if you like, it’s very good and it shows we’re much more complicated than the propaganda suggests - that it didn’t work, and then we moved on. And that’s the popular view, the propaganda view, they won. They had the microphone. It just didn’t work. Well, but it didn’t work for various reasons and one that is commonly cited is that when they were doing these introspective research, with not the scientists, but their subjects doing the introspection, 125 years ago, that as I said before, the scientist would lead the witness to get them, and tell them what they thought they would probably see and then so, and then lo and behold their observations were contaminated by the hypothesis, the pet theories, the beliefs, expectations of the scientists because the subject wanted to please them. [16:37]

And so one Laboratory proved this, another one proved the contrary because the people running the labs had different beliefs. So it was pseudoscience, and they tried that for 35 years and then they just started and then discarded it. So that’s a legitimate concern. This is not trivial, this is an important one. So we have Christian contemplatives for example who are, many of them, very, very well versed, very knowledgeable in Christian Theology. Like Thomas Aquinas for example, who after years and years and years of study and writing and theologizing and then when entered into contemplative, he had a contemplative breakthrough, but of course whether it’s he or Meister Eckhart or Nicholas of Cusa or Jacob Burma, whoever it is, when they come out of their meditative states, which often are referred to as being ineffable, inconceivable, ineffable, but they talk about it, which is reasonable, Buddhists do that, everybody does that, of course they’re going to describe, explain, the nature of their ineffable, or transcending experience in terms of the conceptual framework that they’ve embraced before they started. And that’s true for everybody. Of course, whether you’re a Tibetan Buddhist, Zen Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, whatever, you talk about it it’s going to be in terms of the Tao, it’s going to be Atman and Brahman, in terms of primordial consciousness, in terms of Nibbana and so forth, right. So that’s an issue, that’s a significant one. You make observations, but we had Hilary Putnam, now what did he say? That language is so embedded in reality that to try to describe a reality independent of language is hopeless endeavor. So then how? This is an interesting one.

[18:18] How do you enter into meditative states that transcend language, that are probing into a dimension of reality that is language independent, not contingent upon conceptual designation? How do you do that? How do you not have your introspection, your Christian contemplative practice going right down into you know, the depths of the deepest insights of Christian contemplatives and so forth, how do you not drag with you your conceptual framework, your language and so forth? How do you ever transcend it? And then when you come out and articulate it, how do you do it in a dogma neutral language? How do you do that? That’s an interesting one. So how do we, but let’s not consider it intractable, because after all, we step back and we say okay …but now Buddhist contemplative practice, is it working, is it helping? Are there people gaining deep realization? Yeah they are. So there’s an empirical fact. Chatral Rinpoche and Drupon Rinpoche. And one after another, these are great yogis and Yangthang Rinpoche, so we don’t have to wonder are they doing okay, or are they basically screwed up? Anybody who watches with an open mind - they’re not screwed up at all. So something’s working. How’s it working? How do they transcend the contamination by theory? And the greatest contemplatives in the Christian tradition, the Advaita tradition and so forth. They have done it but how did they do it? So I think we are back to, we’re here in kindergarten here, taking the mind as the path. So what we’re seeking to do is this right - I’m holding up my little, my index finger, again this stillness, as much as you can be quiet, rest in the silent room of awareness, don’t talk, don’t project, don’t judge, don’t evaluate, don’t censor, don’t edit, don’t react, don’t like, don’t dislike ....just try to get a clear signal to…noise ratio…and see what reality is telling you… rather than immediately, obsessively and compulsively fusing it with your expectations, beliefs, thoughts and so forth. Try to get a clear signal. We’ve been doing that from day one, and we can make progress, that’s good - that you don’t try it for six months or even for two months and say - pfff - I’m no better now than I was on the first day - I could completely, completely, there was no progress, whatsoever. I’ve never actually heard anybody say that, after an eight week retreat - nothing happened, I’m still in the same bog, the same rut as I was when I began. I never heard that. So are there grounds for improvement? Can we contaminate less if we, so then let’s do it less, and let’s do it less and less and less. And you go into Mahamudra or Dzogchen and it’s really less. That’s an interesting one.

[ 21:05] And then we have - subject to phenomenological illusion - Phenomenological illusion, or, just by the way, subject, that your observations are subject to contamination by theory - that’s very true actually. William James recognized this - that introspection is fallible. It’s prone to error, you can make observations that are false. But, through trial and error and multiple people being trained in introspection, slowly over time through trial and error, looking back and identifying prior errors you can come, in principal, to a consensus of highly trained introspectionists without theory contamination, making valid, replicable, inter-subjective discoveries, it can be done. it’s an addressable problem. But William James pointed out - this is enormously important - that yes introspection is fallible, and that’s true for every other kind of observation that we ever make. They are all fallible. They’re all fallible. Cosmology, elemental particle physics, biology and so forth, observations are fallible. For a myriad of reasons, there’s that issue, but also enormously important and we’ll come back to this, we’re going to have a ball this afternoon, that even if you’re a scientist your observations are contaminated by theory. And anybody who says otherwise is mistaken. Sometimes I use a little word…I could use so many words at that point, what to say....mistake. Observations. The word theory from the Greek means to observe. It means to behold. Einstein said it is, I’m paraphrasing here - it’s common to believe, what did he say…belief..and observation…he said - contrary to popular belief it’s your beliefs that enable you to make observations. Can’t…that the end. ..while the contrary belief is common, that you make your observations and belief comes afterward…he said in reality it’s your belief that enables you to make observations. I can give an exact quote if you like, but that was the gist of it. So ya, this is a legitimate concern and it’s a concern for all of science and it’s a concern for anybody interested in reality who’s basing their beliefs on observations. The next one is subject to phenomenological illusion - and that is, what that means is that the way things appear is not how they exist. Gee that sounds familiar. That’s true for every branch of science. You look out at the stars, well there’s no star there, where you’re looking at right now, there’s no star there…it’s moved on. Because it took that light, it took that light hundreds of years, thousands of years, millions of years, to get to your eyeball. And you’re looking at it right there, there’s no star there. Maybe it’s burned out. You know. You won’t know until the light gets to you and maybe it takes, you know, five thousand years in which case you’ll never know. All appearances, we’ve known this since time of Copernicus and long before then, it’s seen like the sun is rising, from the, while the earth is stable,....okay… [laughter]…it’s all over the place, it’s over the way from elementary particles to cosmology - appearances are contrary or different with often incompatible with the reality.

[24:30] Now we come to observing mental images, mental appearances, thoughts and so forth. They are what they are. They’re not representations of something else. They are just like - I’m looking at the blue sky - I’m not saying that there’s something objectively out there that is blue, I’m just saying when I look at the sky I see blue. The blue appearance is not an optical illusion, it’s not misleading, it’s not a phenomenological - what did they call it - a phenomenological illusion. It’s, when I look at the sky it’s blue. That’s not an illusion. That’s true. When I observe appearances arising in my mind they’re not phenomenological illusions, they are what they are. They are what they are. It’s an image of a watermelon, that’s what it is, it’s not an illusion, it’s not a watermelon, but I didn’t think it was there was a watermelon inside my head, otherwise I’d sell them. [laughter] I can come up with watermelons faster than you can grow them. [laughter] If they were real I could just start selling them, I’d be watermelon seller, I could make my living that way. But why not diamonds? Right, imagine diamonds you know, whatever. So that one’s kind of lame. This one’s much more true of making observations of the outside world. Galileo as he gazed through his telescope was looking at images created in dependence upon his visual cortex. That appeared to be out there but they weren’t. That’s an optical illusion. That’s phenomenological illusion. And there’s those observations that provide this starting point for all of modern science. All of modern science is based on observations of phenomenological illusions. And it’s done pretty well. Observing mental phenomena, these are not phenomenological illusions. This is by a materialist that said - if you’re seeing anything that’s not physical you must be delusional. This is just sheer dogma. This is absurd. Because they don’t want to, they will, they will gag on their vomit before they will acknowledge that actually there are none physical phenomena that can be observed. They just don’t want to admit that. So if you’re observing thoughts and they’re non physical, then you’re having a delusional fit. Because it doesn’t correspond with their beliefs. My Philosophy of mind Professor - that said mental images don’t exist because they’re not physical. I don’t know what to do with that except walk away and have a nice day.

[27:00] The next one is also interesting. And this is from Freud or the Freudian movement, very interesting, sound - these observations we’re making introspectively are unreliable and so forth because they’re subject to concealment and misrepresentation by unconscious mental processes and motivations. The subconscious gets in there, and it edits, it suppresses, it represses, it distorts, it warps, according to motives, desires, inhibitions and so forth, we may not even be aware of. So what finally comes to the surface of the conscious mind is not just what was there, but what got through the editors. And the censorship, and the distortions and bias, and so forth. So in the case of my philosophy of mind professor, I guess he just doesn’t see any mental images, because they shouldn’t be there and John Searle, he’s a very intelligent man, when I debated with him I found it was not a productive conversation but certainly he is not unintelligent. Very intelligent. But he said introspection doesn’t exist. And why? Because he’s a materialist. Mental images, you know, what do you do? You shouldn’t be able to observe them. Because otherwise you’d have to start taking introspective observations seriously, doesn’t want to do that. And so, any kind of allegiance to dogma, is bound to screen out, let alone subconscious ones, conscious ones, you know. We can exaggerate the nature of our experiences, by thinking - oh I just had nirvana, I just realized rigpa, I just had, I’m, I heard one fellow say - I’m Sambhogakaya I’ve achieved sambhogakaya I’m not very compassionate though, he had a problem, asked Geshe Rabten. What will I do, I’m Sambhogakaya but I’m not very compassionate. So he’s seeing things that are not there because he wanted them to be there. Other people don’t see a thing there because they don’t believe they can be, or they don’t want them to be. This is on a conscious level let alone subconscious drives, you know way beyond ideology and indoctrination. So that’s a real issue. This is an interesting one. Serious one. And so what to do with that? I think probably the best method would be just try to be as still as possible and whatever comes up just let it be let it be let it be let it be let it be let it be....there’s a solution. It’s not going to be overnight, it’s not going to be - I used to be a sinner and now I’m free. I used to edit and so forth because of my subconscious drives and now I don’t. It’s not going to be like [snaps fingers] I just decided to stop doing it. But as one becomes more and more adept in this practice you can make more and more observations. When you feel a core sense of ease, it feels core sense of ease, a sense of, of refuge, a sense of ease, a sense of fearlessness, then even if some horrendously awful thought comes up, I won’t even give an example, but just the most wretched disgusting thought, or emotion or desire comes up - you’re not it. You didn’t create it and you’re not responsible for it. And you don’t own it, it just came up in your neighborhood, you know. It’s like being in a room with a lot of people and suddenly you smell this incredibly terrible fart [laughter] we have to smell it but you didn’t do it. [laughter] And if you did, you wouldn’t admit it. [laughter] So we just let the mind fart away and whether it really stinks or just smells like, you know, the most expensive cologne or perfume, it’s not yours. It’s just what’s coming up in the air. [laughter] And if you’re not cognitively fusing with it , it comes and it goes. [laughter] And in midst of this fart wind you remain like an unflickering candle flame, unmoved. [laughter] Uncontaminated and not blown out . So this is tough, but this practice precisely is designed to address that. You look at the shadow, you look at the demons, you like Bhikkuni Vajira, the Maras come up you don’t run away from them, you face them square on. And in her case she was doing more than just settling the mind in its nature state, the Mara came up with a question, it wasn’t a bad question. The motivation was completely to unnerve her, disable her, but she had guts, she rose right back and defeated him. And he went away dejected and discouraged. So that’s vipassana, but even though we’re preparing for that in settling the mind, that sense of ease, that sense of looseness, that sense of calm, a sense of fearlessness. Gyatrul Rinpoche told me years ago, about 20 years ago when I went into a six month quite intensive retreat in this practice, he said - even if a thousand Maras assault you they will not be able to hurt you. And even if a thousand Buddhas come to bless you they won’t be able to help you. He’s talking about mental appearances. I don’t need any blessing from some mental appearance in my mind whether it looks like the Dalai Lama or Dudjom Lingpa or whoever it is, a mental appearance doesn’t give any blessing. It’s just cartoon. And whether it’s a cartoon of a demon or a cartoon of you know, a sacred being, they’re just empty appearances. Empty appearances can’t harm and they can’t help any more than the appearances in a lucid dream. If you are seeing the appearances as appearances you can relax. And you can take the knife and plunge it right into your guts and you still be well. Alright? So that’s a good one.

[33:04] And the final one is, I’m sure there are more but this is my short list - they are not reliable because introspective observations are subject to distortion, due to the observer participancy. And that is the fact that what we are observing does not exist independently of our observations of it. When Galileo was observing, discovering the moons around Jupiter, I think it is safe to say that he did not influence their orbit or influence whether they existed, and after he observed them I think they went on their merry way, unperturbed, uninfluenced by his observation. That really set the gold standard for objectivity of observation. That you’re observing something and your observation of it just doesn’t have any impact on what you’re observing, at all. That was the gold standard. He started it when he rolled balls down a ramp to see whether they accelerated constant velocity. Well it was just, he didn’t, he just watched when he put the big ball and the little ball off, you know dropped them off the Tower of Pisa, he just watched, and then he saw what occurred whether or not he was watching, there were truths there that were not contingent upon his seeing them, right? So… on the one hand, on the other hand as we move 400 years forward to the rise of quantum mechanics it’s widely known…not disputed…every observation you make in quantum mechanics influences that which you are observing. And quantum mechanics is the most successful branch of physics in the history of science. Incredibly successful. But observer participate is just one of those facts you deal with. So if it’s okay for quantum mechanics it should be okay for introspective contemplative psychology.

Lets practice.

Meditate Bell Rings [35:37].

[36:15] Meditation Begins.

With a working hypothesis that insight into the nature of reality is that which frees, liberates, awakens, we don’t know that that’s true but it’s a good hypothesis. Taking refuge in that hypothesis and that there are those who have come to know reality as it is and who are free. With the motivation to achieve the highest freedom, the greatest awakening for the benefit of all the world, let’s venture into this session, first of all settling body, speech and mind in the natural state and then for a little while calming the discursive mind, quieting the noise of the mind with mindfulness of breathing with or without counting, as you see fit.

[40:14] Then let your eyes be gently, softly open, your gaze vacantly resting in the space in front of you. Having a clear sense of coming, subjectively coming outside of your head. Do not reinforce the superstition that your thoughts, memories, emotions, are all inside your skull. Eyes open. Awareness open. And single pointedly direct your mental awareness, the focus of your attention to the space of the mind. And to whatever thoughts and images and other mental events that arise within that space, there needs to be a core sense of relaxation, of ease, a freedom from grasping, otherwise you’ll never progress in this practice. That stillness of awareness, resting without grasping in the present moment. Illuminating and knowing whatever arises within this sixth domain of experience .............as we’ve seen from these objections, some of them very astute, it’s imperative to observe without preference, with as little contamination by assumptions, beliefs, desires, biases, as possible.

[42:12] From this sense of relaxation you cultivate stability, continuity, so that you can make stable, reliable, replicable observations. First relaxation, then stability and clarity, so that your observations are precise, sophisticated, and rigorous.

[43:55] There were multiple challenges in that this that I just narrated - let’s examine now closely one of them. The theme which some regard as a problem of observer participancy. The fact that when you observe something it may influence that which you are observing in which case it’s not truly objective, ontologically. That’s true. We’ve addressed this in quantum mechanics, it’s not proven to be a problem, it’s just part of the system. So this is a mind system in which awareness of observing events that are related to awareness, that’s inescapable. But now I’m observe empirically. Simply with careful observation. When a thought comes up, a memory, an image, whatever comes up....hover there, motionlessly, clearly, discerningly in the present moment, and observe whatever comes up as swiftly as possible, optimally in the very moment that it arises, be aware that it arises. And then observe it carefully. What impact if any is there on that which you’re observing, due to the fact that you’re observing it. Is your observation entirely passive? Is it really quite objective, unrelated to, independent of that which you’re observing? Is that the case? Can you note whether your observations somehow involuntarily modifies that which you are observing. Is that the case? Or at least on occasion does your observation actually snuff out, extinguish that which you’re observing. If it does, does it do it all the time or only some of the time? And if it’s not all of the time, then examine closely the nature of your observation from one moment to the next that determines the extent to which your observation influences, or extinguishes that which you’re observing.

[49:11] You may very well find it more peaceful when the mind is quiet, when there are very few thoughts or memories, and we like peace. And so it’s very easy to, at least subconsciously, prefer it. Prefer the thoughts, memories and so on to subside, so we can have some nice peace and quiet. If this desire is entering into the practice it violates the practice. That’s exactly what Freud was talking about. Subliminal preference. Release it. Recognize that in this practice whatever comes up is not noise and view it as one taste, pleasant, unpleasant, virtuous non virtuous, coarse or subtle, long or short, no editing, no preference, no modification. Fearlessly and with utter ease, simply observe from moment to moment whatever arises, and sustain that flow of mindful presence without distraction and without grasping.

[55:01] It’s crucially important in this practice to distinguish between noise and signal. What was noise in mindfulness of breathing is now the main event. The thoughts, the images, the emotions, desires and so on, the perturbations of the mind, that’s exactly what we’re observing but not from within the mind, but from the stillness of awareness. But there’s still noise and the noise comes in as in all shamatha practices. When the flow of attention succumbs to either of the two extremes, of laxity or excitation, that’s when the signal is confounded, polluted, contaminated by the noise of excitation . And the signal grows dim, vague, vanishes. Because of the influence of laxity and dullness. So tune your attention like a musician tunes a string instrument, not too tight, not too loose, and tune it finer and finer. Let’s continue practicing now in silence.

[59:38] Bell Meditation ends.

[1:00:04] Olaso.

As I’ve said a number of times now the practice here is essentially aimed at becoming lucid with respect to our minds during the waking state. Very analogous to entering into and sustaining a lucid dream. And the parallel goes further and that is as they’re also, to repeat a little bit, when you first become lucid it’s very easy to become excited and then lose your lucidity and wake up. And so you want to be first of all - relaxed. Then you want to maintain the continuity of the dream and of your awareness that it’s a dream - there’s stability - and then as you attend more and more closely, perhaps even bringing in some enquiry, you want to enhance the clarity, the resolution, the vividness, the precision of your observations, your explorations of the dream reality. So in a similar fashion as we now go into non formal practice - that is not sitting practice - let’s follow the same themes, and that is - experiences are bound to arise, that they will, that’s called being alive, or being dead, or being in the bardo, experiences continue to arise, and some of them can really cause a lot of excitation. Either because they are so good or because they are so bad. Excitation of desire, craving and attachment, agitation, excitation because we don’t like it, disturbed by it, upset by it and so forth. Try to maintain that continuity of ease, relaxation, freedom of grasping and just deal with whatever comes up. Without the perturbations. Maintain, through clarity, the ongoing experiences of daytime waking experience, that we call waking experience, that you’re clear, you’re engaged. And maintain the flow of cognizance, the awareness of appearances as appearances and not conflating appearances with some outside, independent reality, because they’re not the same. And then do so with clarity. So we have a full time job here. We have nothing else to do in about the most optimal environment that we can imagine. So let’s take full advantage of it.

So, let’s terminate. Please cut the recording, recording’s finished.

Transcribed by Cheri Langston

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by KrissKringle Sprinkle

Discussion

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