So as part of an at-home retreat, I’ve recently restarted my dharma practice, devoting the first 5 hours of the day to sitting meditation, reading dharma texts and contemplation.

While it would seem that spending a good part of my day doing not much of anything would reduce my productivity; ironically it has the opposite effect. When I start work after practicing all morning, my head is clear and I am focused. Frivolous distractions have less power to pull me away and if they do I come back faster–just like comng back to the breath.

Things that Id been putting off due to some subtle fear or aversion, now I just lean in and do it fearlessly. What a great feeling.

This insight is not new to me I’ve known it for years. Yet it is still easy to fool oneself into thinkng that the more one works the more one gets done. But as usual quality is more important than quantity. Do less to get more done.

And from a spiritual perspective the only way to get anything done is to do absolutely no-thing.

In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm

When the ‘08 presidential election was happening, I read a lot of news, I became a sort of Obamaholic, wanting to read anything about the inspiring man and his plans. A month after the election is over, I’m in retreat, not thinking about Obama or politics at all and a few times I’ve woken up in the morning having dreamed about him and petty political scenarios.  Something is going on here, obviously all the news reading had some sort of lasting effect on my mind, otherwise I wouldn’t be processing it in my sleep.

Powerful movies and video games also seem to have this hang-over affect on the mind. Sometimes after watching a movie, I’ll go to bed and the whole dream world will be filled with the theme of that movie. The same occurs when I work many hours on the computer just before going to bed. My dreams are often a strange version of the computer world.

All of these examples are to illustrate that all of our actions in fact have an effect down the road. These are strong examples, but it can also be quite subtle as well.

Even everything we think matters. When I first heard this taught in a Buddhist course, I’m not sure I believed it, but I was shocked at the idea of it. Now, years latter, after having pondered it, I believe it to be true.

Extreme examples always popup, so lets address one. If the thought of killing someone arises, does that matter? Should I be afraid of my thoughts? No, not really. I think the main point is that thinking in certain ways for prolonged periods of time can actually change our way of being. The more emotionally charged these thoughts, and the longer periods of time, the stronger the effect.

An example, I do a lot of work for non-profit groups. In the beginning of projects I often think, ‘how wonderful I am helping out this great group’ but there is also another thought, ‘oh and I’m making an income as well.’ The project begins with joy, but as my mind dwells again and again on the money I’m making, near the end of the project I sometimes think, ‘I’ve worked so hard on this, and got paid so little.’ What happened was that over time, I unconsciously cultivated the selfish thought about money over and over again, subtly. In the end my altruistic attitude changed to a selfish one solely due to this seemingly innocent thought.

What are we in the moment other than a culmination of everything we’ve ever done and thought.

The more we do or think something, the more we are creating the momentum for that to happen again in the future. It is subtle, but over time it is surely true. I think we can all accept this as true, the more I am an angry person, in time, I just become more and more like that. This is true for all states of mind. The momentum does not stop on its own, it is a never ending cycle that fuels itself. When things get too hot, or a catastrophe occurs, only then do we change our ways.

Do we start with a fresh slate when were born and does all of this end when we die? The Buddhist would say no; there is some continuity of mind between each lifetime we live. Does that mean we have a soul, that ‘I’ am going to come back? Not really, the teachings say that it is just the moment to moment stream of consciousness that continues, and in that contains all our habitual tendencies. (There is no enduring self that continues or fundamentally exists. But it is not a nothingness either, as there is this clarity of awareness always with us.)

It took me many years to come to terms with believing in reincarnation, and it was only through the scientific evidence by Prof. Ian Stevenson that I now lean towards it being true. He documented thousands of cases around the world of young children who remember past lives. Some of the most striking evidence involve children with birth marks that match the death wounds of the previous incarnation. In another article I’ll go into depth on this subject.

The above description of the continuity of mind between lives I can begin to understand and accept-if I’m a very desirous person in this life, then I shall be as well in the next, or at least choose parents that have that trait which then reinforce it in me over time.

What I have had a difficult time accepting is the Buddhist idea of karma where something that happens to me in this lifetime is the result of something I did many lifetimes ago. Notwithstanding the potential social misunderstandings of this teaching, (i.e. being poor or sick is one’s own fault because of something one did in a past life) I still could not understand exactly where those actions are stored. None of the descriptions made any sense to me. The teachings say they are kept in the store-house consciousness, the eight consciousness, well where exactly is that?

Only after having my world view shaken by a number of ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru did I begin to get a glimpse of what it might all be about. The most profound experiences, and the most transformative are largely beyond words. But they led me to start to trust that everything is a divine unity. Time, which seems linear to us now is in fact not linear, rather it is merely an appearance, illusory.

These experiences, or glimpses into the nature of reality, are just that, glimpses. During these times, one is in an intense state of hyper-awareness, there can be an overwhelming amount of energy in the body and in the world. One has trouble staying focused on one thing as these overwhelming energies push us around like a ball on an open ocean. But in this experience, there can be vivid glimpses into the multi-dimensional nature of reality: that all things are made of vibrating energy, that all things are in fact a great perfection, that there is a spirit world filled with divine entities. There is more too, but much of what is experienced is forgotten, as it is just too much to bring back. The term Great Mystery is quite apt for this experience. (Granted, this only happens one in every ten ceremonies, it’s not always that intense.)

If time is just an appearance, not solid like we experience it, then the greatest problem in accepting past life karma is gone. There is no need for a place to store the karma if time is illusory. We do actions, and these actions have an result, a fruition. For us in the illusion of time it can seem like much later, but as things are a unity, it is much simpler. An action causes an effect which may seem like it is in the future, but when looked at as a unity, it is all just happening in the radical now.

This fundamentally different view of existence might also explain how fortune tellers can predict the future. But never 100% as we still have free choice in every moment.

Do we always have to experience the results of our actions? The teachings say that if we remain ignorant, then yes, but through practice these past seeds can be purified. I have also experienced powerful energetic purging in ayahuasca, which seems to be a similar thing. Many people have reported that after a powerful purge, they are free of something they did not even know they were holding on to.

Over the years having studies many Buddhist teachings, I have never believed any of them until I had the experience or evidence that it was true. That has made things hard, and progress slow for a while, but in the end, every single thing that I doubted has shown itself to be true to me. There are still a few more left that I continue to doubt-all in the esoteric tantric teachings-but I’m staying open.

So everything we do matters, whether moment to moment, day to day, after many years or even over lifetimes. This is the basic teaching of karma, and I encourage everyone to look and see if it is true.

Looking at it from the physical perspective I can see that in the beginning of our universe out of matter came life, and as we became more complex creatures, we developed complex emotions that helped us to survive. The complex emotions that helped our ancestors survive in the savanna and jungle are those of fear, desire and love. The monkey that sat on the ground enjoying the beautiful sunrise without worries got eaten by the tiger, and the monkey that was scared for his life, filled with sexual desire and loved his children desperately, this is our great great great … grand parent. So why do we love, because it help keep our children alive. It’s no fluke that babies are so darn cute! That is why there exists fear, desire, jealousy, even hatred – they served a purpose in the unfolding of our physical beings. Our powerful brains overrun with thoughts also evolved for the same reason – to help us survive better. But these emotions which were once gifts of survival are now the cause of our greatest suffering. 

That is the view of physical evolution, what about consciousness? From the perspective of mind and awareness, matter itself arose out of the ground of consciousness. But until there was a complex enough form for the consciousness to know itself, it remained somewhat dormant. The wise sages of the past and the present (because they still exist) were the first to become self aware – aware of their own nature as consciousness, one with the universe. 

So to try to answer your question Alberto, I believe that love is simply an emotion that we experience, part of our array of emotions, and this experience of love is the closest thing that we can come to describe or relate with the great oneness that is everything. When we catch a glimpse of this cosmic oneness in either meditation, shamanic journey or entheogenic experience, it is most similar to our experience of love. So we call it that. But I think it is more than that, it just is. In the Buddhist Dzogchen tradition, they call it the great perfection, everything is completely perfect as it is.

From this point of view, even the deep suffering that beings experience is seen as perfect as it is. That might sound harsh, but if one can realize this truth in actuality then the suffering ceases to be. But most of us (humbly including myself) fail to recognize this great perfection and remain caught up in the swirling fantasy, chasing happiness which is always just around the corner. 

So the question of why do we suffer, why do we have all this baggage of confusing emotions, for myself it can be answered by looking at evolution. The only ‘why’ in evolution is: that which is successful continues. Fear and anger are competitive emotions and love and compassion are cooperative. But all of them helped us survive so we got ‘em in us.

Another way I like to look at evolution is that it is simply karma. As I attempt to learn more about what karma is, the more my definition of it grows and grows. In the west our understanding of karma is generally: if I do something bad, it will come back to me. The most basic definition of karma is cause and effect. It is my growing understanding that karma is in fact everything. What is evolution but a very long chain of cause and effect. Everything we see, including us,  is a result of myriad causes and effects, nothing more. And while we cannot change the karma of our human bodies, and our basic emotions, we can decide how we work with our minds. We can work with that karma.

I could probably go on and on about this, but I think I’ll stop here for now

• Helping other people helps me.
• Having guts always works out for me.
• Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
• Starting a charity is surprisingly easy.
• Being not truthful works against me.
• Everything I do always comes back to me.
• Assuming is stifling.
• [Addictive] drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
• Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted.
• Money does not make me happy.
• Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
• Keeping a diary supports personal development.
• Trying to look good limits my life.
• Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
• Worrying solves nothing.
• Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
• Actually doing the things I set out to do increases my overall satisfaction.
• Everybody thinks they are right.
• Low expectations are a good strategy.
• Whatever I want to explore professionally, its best to try it out for myself first.
• Everybody who is honest is interesting. 

This is a powerful, pithy book on mahamudra. The teachings are direct, and while the traditional four levels of mahamudra are covered, I prefer the preceding chapters where a fresh, lucid, almost personal account of the nature of mind is given. It seems as if this was written as one-on-one personal advice from an enlightened master to a student on solitary retreat, which in a way it perhaps was meant to be.

Here are a few selections:

“Make compassion the activity of your meditation practice, so that you cultivate loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta for all sentient beings and bring them under your protection with dedication and aspirations. Until you have reached perfection in your meditation training, keep to secluded places and regard as Mara’s obstacles the superficial acts of “benefiting other” by teaching and propagating the Dharma to them.”

“It isn’t enough to just think that the essential meditation training is an indescribable state beyond concepts, free of arising and ceasing. Within an undistracted and wide-open state of mind, look vividly and without fixating in the identity of the meditation state. Look repeatedly to see how it is.  Likewise, look repeatedly into the meditation mind and into the mind that clings to ‘I’ and ‘me’. Moreover, look to see whether there is any difference between the past, future or present mind. Look into  where the past mind came from, where the future mind will come from and how the present mind is. Spend a couple f days clearing up any uncertainty you may have about this and gain a decisive experience.  The meditation object, the meditator and the mind states of past, present and future are  not each a different nature, Rather, they are this very mind that can appear in any way while not having any concrete existence whatsoever.”

“Utilizing Sickness: When sick from a disease, do not worry about its particular causes,  circumstances, etc. Do not get involved in suppressing or encouraging it. Use the acute feeling of ache and pain as the very substance of the training and,  without trying to alter it, suspend it in being vividly present. … Here, in this context, it is more a matter of using your sickness for spiritual training, rather than foolishly assuming that it does not matter whether or not the physical support for attaining enlightenment dies.”

Here are some article highlights:

• Alternative Cosmologies and Altered States – Stanislav Grof
• Interview withPribram Karl
• Consciousness and the New Physics
• Universe as a Hologram, The - Michael Talbot
• Reality and Consciousness (From Science to God) - Peter Russell

I hope you may enjoy this hidden treasure.

A strange buddha mandala I discovered under a temple in Shikoku, Japan

When I was  young, I recall being reprimanded for taking apart my aunt’s toaster—I just wanted to understand how it worked. Now I find myself attempting to do the same thing with reality itself. How is it all put together, what is it’s nature, how does it work?

I’ve never been that interested in a philosophical approach because I think one could easily get lost in a spiral of thoughts. I’m more interested in an experiential approach supported by a healthy skepticism. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that this search in intertwined with a spiritual journey. And the more the journey continues I realize that the spiritual journey of self transformation is actually the most important thing. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder: what is it all about. 

In my search I have come across three powerful, distinct ways of understanding: meditation, science, and entheogens. (The term entheogen refers to mind altering substances used in spiritual ceremony. I hesitate to use the term psychedelic because of it’s connection with the drug culture of the 60s).

I learned meditation in the Buddhist tradition, and this practice has changed my life, softened me and helped me to understand my own mind. I see the buddhist teachings, mainly the mahamudra and dzogchen teachings as a pinnacle of understanding the nature of consciousness. I believe the great masters of the past and living ones today understand the nature of mind, and perhaps therefore reality, in a more complete and holistic way then any others on the planet. But they are not masters in other fields such as science, culture, politics, etc. (Ken Wilber will be the first to point that out). 

Entheogens have played an important part of my understanding of myself and reality as well. I still maintain a healthy skepticism that altered states of consciousness could be just hallucinations. However, I am struck with the remarkable similarities between the wisdom gained from entheogenic experiences and the sacred writings of the world’s major religions. When I see futher similarities between the entheogenic experience and the latest multi-dimensional string theories of modern physics, my doubt in my own experience as hallucination diminishes. There is also the ineffable feeling I have sometimes in an ayahausca ceremony that the experience is ‘more real than real’. 

I’d like to look at how these entheogenic experiences relate to religion and science. A common realization in an altered state of consciousness is that all is one, everything is light and energy. This can easily accepted by most religions as well as science.  In ayahuasca one might have a visceral experience that there are multiply dimensions of reality. Does this correlate with the latest versions of string theory that posit 10 or 11 dimensions of reality? Another common insight is that time is an illusion. Physicists have no problem seeing time as moving in both directions; as well this is a core understanding of mahayana buddhism.

In addition to physics and religion being largely in accord with the radical entheogenic experience, traditional cultures around the world have teachings which are also in agreement. For example, the wisdom of the Native American Indians, the south american shamans, the Australian aborigines all point towards a lucid, vibrant, world of magic, and energy, not just a solid world of objective matter. 

With such an overwhelming weight of evidence pointing towards a more fluid, illusory nature of reality. I start to ponder that maybe it is my dualistic, materialistic world view that might be in error. To question what one has believed in for one’s whole life is a difficult thing to do.

So what is the nature of reality? For me, understanding this is a work in progress, and will be until the day I die (and perhaps beyond). But for now, my working understanding is this: The foundation or substrate of reality is consciousness and from this unfolds information, energy and then matter. This view comes buddhist philosophy and practice, theories of William Tiller and others as well as my own personal experience.

The integral movement is a fast growing community of people who are taking the integral philosophies of Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber and others and putting this inclusive world view into action in the world. In brief, integral theory takes the position that every tradition from spiritual to cultural to scientific has a slice of the truth. Using a four quadrant model with different levels in each quadrant, each truth has it’s place and relationship with the whole.

One Sky is using this-in my opinion, brilliant-model as the central part of their work. Rather than the traditional approach which often focuses on a narrow field such as conservation, development, or social issues, their work is taking all aspects and all perspectives into account when creating a new program.

An example of the four perspectives in an integral conservation and development project are:

•       Rainforest conservation activities based on environmental science
•       External community needs such as health care and teacher training
•       The shared internal cultural values of the community, respecting tradition
•       The internal personal and spiritual experiences of everyone involved

They have a project quite close to Cusco, so hopefully one day I can go and visit. They have an interesting video highlighting their philosophy and their project in peru. Here is their website: http://onesky.ca

The general scientific view on consciousness is that it is a product of billions of years of evolution resulting in us—homo sapiens—the pinnacle of higher thought on this planet. Our bodies and brains have been shaped by millions of years of environmental factors; beginning with single celled amoebas that are attracted to food and escape danger and ending with all of nature’s beautiful complexity, including our unique frontal lobes.

In the field of neuroscience, the theory of consciousness generally put forward is that consciousness as we experience it arises from the complex interactions of neurons (and now other cells) in the brain: the brain is a computer. This view of consciousness is a materialistic bottom up approach where this simple equation might suffice:

energy <-> particles <-> molecules <-> cells <-> brain <-> consciousness

The view that consciousness is a product of the brain seems to be accepted by most other branches of science as well. For example, I did not find one major school of modern physics that included consciousness in its model. Why should it, consciousness is obviously not a fundamental building block of reality… or is it?

World religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, as well as some aboriginal societies regard our very consciousness itself as the fundamental aspect of reality. They arrived at this view through an in-depth study of their internal experience. Through meditation and contemplation they test the hypothesis of enlightenment and then experience the results as increased freedom, happiness and compassion.

These two ways of viewing reality are both equally valid and equally shared by the planet’s inhabitants (we would be wrong to assume that everyone shares our scientific materialistic point of view.) So is it possible to come to an understanding of reality that encompasses both points of view? Can we have a view that includes the full dynamic of evolution, biology, neuroscience, and particle physics with the view that consciousness is the fundamental ground aspect of reality, and that subtle body energies (Qi) exist, and mind to mind communication is common?

A few modern scientists and philosophers are attempting to address this potentially massive paradigm shift. Ken Wilber, an integral philosopher has created a four quadrant model of reality where the internal personal experience of the meditator shares an aspect of reality with external knowledge of science. (Also in the quadrants are the shared internal experience of culture and external data of societies.)

William Tiller, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, is conducting detailed experiments on how human intention effects physical reality. For example, using only human intention he is measuring a large increase in the ph of water over time. The success of his experiments (which have been replicated in other labs) points towards a ‘Copernican scale revolution in science’ as he likes to call it—and I have to agree.

A British scientist, Rupert Sheldrake, has a theory that at a basic level of reality there exists a field of information—a morphogenetic field. His theory is that this field influences how an animal fetus or plant seed develops into a complex final form. The presence of this morphogenetic field would help explain the sometimes miraculous instances of evolution (often used by creationists as proof of God.) As distance is not relevant in this field, it might also explain the origin of life: the morphogenetic field of life in other galaxies or other dimensions may have helped life get started here.

There are myriad other researchers and scientists and theorists working at this ‘fringe’ of science, to name of few: Dean Radin, Charles Tart, Peter Russell, Ralph Metzner, Erwin Laszlo and Jeffrey Mishlove. Perhaps surprisingly, the founders of modern science held similar spiritual views. Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Heidegger, and others would probably find it impossible to get published in today’s respected science journals.

Hopefully popular culture is not souring the taste of these explorations with movies like The Secret, that point to the similarities between quantum physics and eastern spirituality and then commercialize it in a perverted way. The original What the Bleep do we Know? movie sometimes had this problem in stating that ‘all we need to do is collapse the quantum wave and create our own reality’ luckily the second Down the Rabbit Hole release provides new, more refined material.

So is it possible to combine the wisdom and knowledge inherent in each tradition? Perhaps we can modify the simple equation above and come to new view of reality that is more inclusive:

consciousness <-> information <-> energy <-> particles <-> molecules <-> cells <-> brain <-> conscious awareness

This provisional equation includes the full knowledge of modern science and extends ‘downward’ into the unknown area theoretical physics is exploring—which is perhaps the realm of information fields and deeper down the ground unity of consciousness itself as the base of all reality. While this may seem quite radical, is it any more radical than the 11 dimensional models of reality of current string theory?

While I am aware that my attempts at exploring this unity may be criticized as lacking evidence, being imprecise, and sophomoric, what the hell, I’m just having fun.

Easy, free, immediate access to vast amounts of information can be addictive. I meditate daily, and attempt to have some mindfulness and awareness of my actions. I notice that the more I use the internet the more my mindfulness slips away from me to be replaced by habitual desires to be entertained or informed. While reading a book I find it incredibly easy to be distracted, a thought will pop into my head and rather than let it go and get back to my reading, I’ll hop on the computer and look up the answer to my question. What is most interesting is that while on the computer, something else will catch my attention and I’ll start learning about that subject, this continues until some external event brings me back to the ‘real world’. Other times I’ll be bored, wanting to fill space, and I will habitually look up sites that I know will entertain me: nytimes.com Google news, youtube.com, technology sites, anything to feed the desire to be entertained or to get information.

The end result is that one looses one’s mindfulness, and rather than riding the horse, the horse is riding you. My current way of working with my case of ITAD is to take breaks. When there is a natural gap in my regular work on the computer, instead of filling the space with my habitual tendency to look up news (granted I write this during the 2008 presidential election new frenzy), I stop and look out the window, or get up and stretch. Another thing I’m working on is to not follow each and every distracting impulse. When I’m working on a task, stick to that task until it is complete. Let those thoughts go that call me to distraction again and again.

After a little internet research (!) I did find a definition of a similar condition called Internet Addiction Disorder.  But it does seem to be focused toward people who are total internet junkies, rather than just technology addicted.

monks taking a break from practice at the Maha Bodhi temple in India

An example of what I mean: I am an environmental activist doing good work in the world, but on a day to day basis we are hard on ourselves and treat others with disrespect, frustration and sometimes anger. Because we are so focused on protecting the environment and see that as the most important thing, eventually we burn out or become jaded. The alternative is to do environmental conservation work and at the same time realize that how we are matters, we are more relaxed, caring, gentle, and ironically because of our authentic approach we might even be more effective, but that is not the point.

At the end of our life, we are a cumulative product of how we have been, not what we did. What we did is simply a thought, a memory, whereas how we have been is the moment to moment accumulation of habitual tendencies—or karma—that creates who we are in this present moment.

I believe what we do is still important, I’m not advocating being a compassionate bank robber. I’m simply noticing the need for moving away from doing towards being.