Professor: Eleanor H. Rosch
Lecture 1:
Buddist psychology – looking at the mind from the point of view of someone who has a mind.
Psychology – looking at mind from 3rd person point of view.
Direct experience – knowing what is going on with you. • Alienated from direct experience by personal judgments.
3 major forms of Buddhism in the world:
- Teribata – speech of the elders
- Mahariana – great vehicle – china, vietnam
- Diamond vehicle – japan, china, tiabet
- Perhaps a 4th form: Shabala – incorporate wisdom of buddism. Incorporate other features from world. Say individual dev and enlighted society needed to happen at the same time.
Buddhism started in india. Earliest form spread to lower eastern asia.
3 yana approach: way of teaching. • Dev of historical mind (see what earlier buddist ppl saw). Each buddism form builds upon each other. • Like a fetus going through evolutionary stages.
Gave out a few short readings in different voices. Many articles, trying to get students to feel a connection with an article.
After death – nirvana. Don’t specify what nirvana is.
Legend in which man finds meaning of words. He doesn’t know meaning of words but thought he did. Went on a quest to find the meaning.
Buddism class does not interfere with other religions.
- Takes time for material to soak in.
Scientism – think science is right, set in stone, unchanging. An obstacle for buddism class, don’t try to analyze how buddism topics fit with other topics.
Kids come for an experiment. Some told will get a treat if good job, others not told anything. Kids later brought in and those who were in treat condition did not want to draw, while those told nothing still wanted to draw.
Ask self – what is my mind doing right now and is that true?
Lecture 2: summarized
Life of buddha. Some evidence that buddha was a real person in existence.
16 000 yrs ago. Indigenous ppl who may have done some meditating. Archealogists found evidence of shiela. Warrior tribe arose in germany. Had good tech, smelted copper. Made chariots very fast. Spread over much of europe. Himilaya, hindu, india. Conquered local ppl and then settled down. Became farmers and such. Develop castes in india. Religious organization of ppl. Kings, administrators, untouchable doing religiously dirty work. Iron smelting came into existence. Improved quality of life, created more leisure time, created more arts and such. Made more weapons, kingdoms became slightly larger. Made possible collection of taxes, created courts. Helped culture dev. Travel increased. Communication improved. Boats improved. Trade increased. Greeks and Phoenicians trading. War tribe had sky gods as their religion. Similar to greek. Greek religion due to war tribe. Bramans – kept religion in order, sang hyms to sky god while drinking substance. Many rival religious views. Many religions came into being and many faded. Buddha born around this time. He was suppose to be a son of a king. (In myths, most protagonists are suppose to be kings/princes/princesses or woodcutter/beggars.)
Little buddha was visited by a sage who prophasized something. Prophecy – either a religious leader or a universal monarch. • No families want their kids to be a religious leader, no family saves for that. King tried to keep everything at the palace perfect to try to make son monarch. Son very good at most things he does. Ppl like him, kept entertained.
Buddha falls in love with chief administrators daughter. They get married. Buddha had perfect life, but was not satisfied. Remained in palace grounds for all this time. King finally agrees, orders that city outside palace be cleaned up and made perfect. Day comes for buddha to go out, ppl are suppose to be in their best dress and throwing flowers.
In some versions of story, gods provide him with 3 visions. Other versions – can’t clean up human life so much. First thing buddha sees is sick man. Chariot driver explains to buddha what is wrong with the man and that everyone can get sick. Next thing – old lady. Chariot drivers explains that buddha will get old and so will evyone else. Finally, buddha sees a dead person be carried through streets. Buddha asks chariot driver and receives a similar answer.
Some versions, he sees a vision of a monk walking peacefully. Monk seems to be not part of whole thing.
Buddha goes back to palace and is disturbed. He leaves palace and studies with religious teacher. In each version, he attains what he was suppose. None of the religions worked for him. Does some meditation.
Evy religion says others are making mistakes.
Buddhism says that 2 types of meditation.
- 1 type is where you enter a state of ignorance about the quality of the world. Ignore problems, but think above world.
- Other about sterity, great discipline, achieve great power.
Buddha has found evything dissatisfactory.
Psyc: 2 basic motivations: motives/action tendencies/attractor principles. • Approach – want something. (grasping in early buddism.) Scientist in the crib starts that way. Buddism says it doesn’t work. Wanting things is a someone adversive state. Getting something doesn’t make wanting go away, wanting changes to a different obj. • Avoidance – don’t want something (can be fighting). If flee, then doesn’t remove fear. Destroying something makes someone more aggressive. Trying to get better. • Third: ignoring things. Not officially a psyc motive. Not considered in folk psychology as well. Type of meditation, buddha found it not effective.
All 3 of those^ like a carrot in from of a donkey. Buddha saw that human suffering inevitable.
Buddha sat under a tree until he found an answer and the tradition started.
Some proof that too much choice can be bad for ppl.
Experiences go through phases, at first very novel, then novelty dies – elenor.
Sit still and feel like what it is to be you for 1 minute. Premeditation.
Other one is ‘what is my mind doing’.
Lecture 3: summarized
Meditation is not learning a new skill, it is discovering what is already there. Getting to know the mind that is already there. • Inclusive, not trying to fix things, trying to find everything there is to find. Everything your mind can do is included in this practice. • Cannot be done wrong. • Including (gently). Meditating is not a battle, if it is, then do it gently. Not too tight, not too lose.
Vipassana – classic, basic mindfulness. • Polyword, language spoken by terivata. Language of text. Derivative of indian. Means “inside, where clear seeing.” Be presence in experience where they occur in a nonjudgmental fashion. Not related to conceptual mechanisms, different from attention. • The meaning of mindfulness changes as buddism changes.
Post colonial revival in south east asia. Initially conquerors disliked buddism and banned it. When colonialism officially ended, buddism came back into popularity. Ppl tried reading the different scripts and thinking back to grandparent techniques.
America found: Body scan – Mahasi technique – (from east bay)
Parts of meditation: • Shamata – peace. When you let mind, mind will naturally come to peace with contents, despite emotions. Clarity, insight/wisdom. • Traditionally with eyes close. • Try to sit as straight as possible, feet flat on floor (helps with grounding you). • Breathing – simple, reliability. Constant obj of attention. ◦ Trying to focus attention right where breath leaves nostrils. Ex. guard at gate, mule train leaving, then mule train entering, but guard does not move position. Ex. carpenter moving hand saw, if focus on spot where saw sawing through wood, saw remains straight. Shouldn’t focus on movement of saw.
Or can try:
- paying attention to breath by diaphragm.
Can imagine physically wherever.
Mind often tries to do other things, like thinking. The mind if like waves, doesn’t just lie there. When attention is lost, turn attention to distraction. Label distraction, if it helps, as what it is (“worring”, “hearing”, “remembering”, “planning”, repeated thoughts; “that one”.) Keep noticing it until it stops coming or changes. Then return to breathing. Don’t worry too much about label name. • Don’t have to label if it is confusing. It’s a way of seeing what mind is doing. Settles world down.
Student commented that he noticed he labels a lot throughout his day, noticed due to meditation. • Not emotional labeling, simply detached labeling.
Breath is thought of as chi in chinese. Prana in indian. • Meditation practice is to be as simple as possible. Trying not to think of energy component of breath. Maybe don’t want to focus on energy. Can be very individual about meditation choices. Each person can have own way of being mindful.
If sleepy, get sleep.
If itch, can try to repeatedly notice itching. If too much, scratch it.
Not trying to analyze thoughts or suppress thoughts.
Lecture 4: Foundation of mindfulness
Why aren’t we mindful? • Evolutionarily, shouldn’t we be mindful? Even before modern time, ppl weren’t very mindful.
Alive, rather than focusing on surviving.
3 marks of existance – evolution of mindfulness
Impermance: attending to breathing. Discovering that thought and breath comes and goes. Often not the same thought. Plans and memories and thoughts about the past/future, however these thoughts are not actually the past/future.
Egolisence: the you that is having experiences changes at each moment. Listening you, thinking you.
Suffering: impermance, egolisence is disorienting/disturbing. Kind of suppose to be happy rather than suffering.
Why be mindful? • In life, underlying anxiety if not mindful. • ??
4 Foundations:
1. Body: body health/age doesn’t matter. 2. Feeling: Buddism doesn’t not ignore feeling. Feelings are positive, negative, neutral. Could try labeling as positive/negative/neutral feeling. 3. States of mind: open to experience is best? 4. Mindfulness of mind:
Lecture 5:
4 Foundations:
1. Body 2. 3. Openness to experience: noticing experiences changing. 4. .Egolisence: no self.
Hume: when I enter myself, I always catch myself at some perception. (cold, emotion, etc)
In clinical psyc: say you have to have an ego.
5 skanas: (means heaps)
• form: body and environment as experienced by 6 senses. ◦ Vision – ◦ Audition – ◦ Touch – ◦ Smell – ◦ Mind – in thoughts, there is a me who is experiencing them. (dualism) ◦ ◦ The object is thoughts. Observer sense? ◦ • feelings: • perception impulse – me that perceiving and a feeling tone. Immediate impulse to go for/move away from good/bad thought or ignoring irrelevant thoughts. ◦ 3 poisons: ▪ Wanting ▪ Avoiding ▪ Ignoring • consciousness – not exactly cog sci usage. ◦ 3 poisons become habits. ◦ Recognizable psyc states.
Lecture 6:
6 realms:
Living things are born into realms.
Class only deals with human realm.
Realm retreat – thinking about what it would be like to be in a realm. Sometimes done as group activity.
Traditional realm order – hell (fear, anger, hatred, aggression).
Hell realm – realm of aggression:
Habitually enter hell states of thinking. (bad moods)
Hot hell and cold hell. • Hot is typical of west. ◦ Mind creates demons, which symbolize bad moods.
Anger: • Object to be angry at. • Often dehumanize object. • Which causes you to not attribute human like motives, which causes you to not be able to reason with them. • Negative reinforcement doesn’t work in the long run. • Often feel like if attack back, other will back down in some way. • Many ppl when angered feel as if they are victim. • Lose theory of mind. • Ppl try to eliminate object of aggression. Doesn’t eliminate all potential and future objects of aggression.
There is a buddha in each realm.
Doug – a story about a man that when confronted in a mugging scenario, he turned his anger into good emotions and smiled and talked to the muggers. The mugger’s proceeded to run away. He did martial arts which was similar to some versions of meditations.
Lecture 7:
Passion – aggression – ignorance
Traditional realm order – hell, preta, animal, god, jealous god, human.
Hungry ghost (preta) realm – lower realm of (desire and) passion:
hungry, desperate.
Spirited away – shows all realms in some way or another.
Object – anything you see as desirable. (Need not be physical obj, can be idea).
Match girl story – hungry ghost story.
“Have you ever noticed how touchy proud ppl are?” (narcissistic)
More vulnerable to hungry ghost realm when tired/sleepy.
Animal realm – lower realm of ignorance: • No vision or depth or humor. • Just going with the flow – not really looking ahead or being in the moment. Don’t really know why doing something, ex. doing something due to schedule alone. • Similar to an animal.
God realm – upper realm ignorance: • Not like other religion’s gods. • Doesn’t last long, often leads to hell realm. • Similar to being drunk. Ignoring. • Procrastination.
Jealous God realm – upper realm of aggression: • White collar aggression, paranoia. • Object is competitor. Lots of comparisons made. • When you beat a person at activity, increases competitiveness.
Human realm – upper realm of passion: • Underneath hell realm motives are wants. • Intelligent realm, see problems and try to find better outcomes. • Closer to enlightened former, better than other realms. • ~Seeks ideals. Confusing about whether achieved ideals.
When stuck in realm, ppl often try to do the same thing that realm encourages.
No realms are permanent, being stuck means that one will circle.
Lecture 13: New Meditation Technique – the heart sutra
Following exhale as it leaves, and doing nothing with inhale. Can do with just nostrils, or can do with whole body. Usually done with eyes open. Not trying to force exhale to do anything different.
192 ungrad – followup to psychology 107. Titled <
Grad - clinical and other applications of eastern thought and meditation. • Transcripts from patients, research
Mahayana – • Emptiness • Evolved from early buddhism, starts around 0 BC. • Around same period as hindi practice. • Great vehicle. Early buddhism is equivalent to narrow vehicle.
Heart surtra is a text. Doing shortest book, many variations. • Might be popular in japan.
Surtra of the heart of transendent knowledge. • Prologue – thus have I heard – buddha with his monks. ◦ New ideal. Similar to an enlightened figure, but doesn’t go to nirvana, tries to stay and help enlighten all being. ◦ Monks thought skandas were empty of nature.
Different translation: • Famous quote about forms, senses. Skandas basically. • No realms. No dukha. No ignorance or end. No end to age and death, no circle of life. No noble truths. No nirvana. • No fear.
Lecture 14: Shunyata – emptiness – interdependence and release
Buddhism changed: • Due to cultural influence • Inherit development (her opinion)
Shunyata = emptiness. • Related to 4 things: ◦ Lowest lvl: release ▪ Eating a sour grape. ▪ Experiencing something vividly. ▪ Dying as a lucid dreamer. ▪ These releases, happen all the time. New meditation can have release and end of new meditation. ▪ Something bad, then the bad going away. Ex joke about something bad that happened. ▪ Causes 1 to release that the world isn’t as solid as it seems. ▪ When release happening, not seeing world through samsara mind. Ex blooming mind. ◦ Interdependence ▪ Defining words via other words. ▪ Polar words need the opposite word to understand meaning. ▪ Making a dam causes side effects. Homeostasis. ▪ Microinterdependence: • Moment to moment ▪ Net of inra: everything is related to everything else. (causation) ▪ Samsara mind is more geared toward immediate survival rather than long term planning. Stuck with infant scientist in crib mentality. ▪ Deeper mind can see interdependence, can be outside of conscious thought and felt interest. Perspective. ◦ 2 warmth toward world ◦ Discovery of deep nature
When the snake uncoils flowers bloom and, a bee can gather nectar. • Representing a tense mind. • Apparently when a snake uncoils, it uncoils instantly. • Depth dimensions, nectar symbolizes good thing.
A survey shows that ppl think they need 20% more money to be happier. Incl millionaires.
Lecture 15: Shunyata, Western Nihilism and existential pain
Meditation is like throwing a pebble into a river, the pebble simply naturally sinks down to the bottom and remains there without any effort. Should allow mind and body to rest and naturally let thoughts pass by.
Trying to understand shunyata by understanding what it is not. (In this class)
Apparently shunyata can cause repressed memories to surface.
Existential pain: everything feels disconnected and worthless. • Can make one feel tired of being a human. • Depression has some overlap, however depression is often self centered. • Yogacha came into play after shunyata, it is more positive.
Book called “the wall” • About an insurgent awaiting execution next day. It follows his train of thought of that night. • Began with a mind set of bravado. • Became calm and felt existential pain. • Was with 2 ppl in the cell. 1 of his fellow prisoner was crying but the protagonist didn’t fell any pitty. • He says that his leader is hiding in the cemetery and the capturers find the leader and free the protagonist. Protagonist doesn’t know what to do with his freedom.
Western Nihilism – disbelief in all religious and moral matters, often believe life is meaningless.
A book by a russian: • Protagonist is dead for 3 days and then revived. When he looks ppl in the eye, eventually they feel drained and die. • The emperor of the nation meets with the protagonist and wants to live to take care of his ppl, so he has the protagonist blinded.
Nihilism state happened to 2 student in Eleanor’s class.
A king in India conquered a lot of territory. He was conquering territory and then changed his mind and started doing good things. His brother slept with the queen and was going to be punished by death. The king said that his brother was jealous of him and allowed his brother to live like him for 2 weeks and was going to execute his brother in 2 weeks. When the king came back, the brother was in existential pain and as such the king said that the brother had learnt and called of the execution. The brother then decided to do something meaningful. It’s a buddhist story – so brother became a buddist monk.
Shunyata – ground of innocence. • Brings a person to existential state, which is similar to depression in the west. • Sees that samsara doesn’t work, but can’t see beyond samsara. • Should treat nihilism as a state of mind.
Lecture 16: Compassion 1 – new view of interpersonal relationships and a comppassion meditation
Shunyata – letting go, release. • When let go of the world, the world comes back with a touch of warmth. • Compassion and shunyata are related. (like open mind, open heart. Like 2 wings on a bird) In christianity, called love. (all you need is love – beetles) ◦ Most quoted phrase in bible is ‘it put love at the for front’) ◦ In meditation groups, if long term members don’t reach this dimension, they are grumpier about meditation. • Compassion can easily turn into the poisons of samsara.
Compassion: caring about other beings (incl pets), • Doesn’t matter which step that one starts on. (Ex, giving/receiving compassion) • Gestation: seeing something you love. ◦ Beauty: can be same as gestation. Rep by lotus pond/lotus flower. Can be music. ◦ Humor: • Acknowledging interdependence amongst humans. (Incl men) • Seeing compassion in unexpected or uncommon places. • Like when butterflies leave cocoon, and they wait for blood to circulate into wings to make them functional. Compassion meditation is like this.
Samsara interpersonal relationships: • Similar to business deal/mafia. • Trying to make a profit on relationship. • In study each couple overestimates how much housework s/he does. Incl money smarts. • Human realm is closest to compassion, but still business like.
Bodi cheta – awake mind/heart. Open mind/heart. Noble mind/heart. • Used when a talk concerns compassion.
The american life – archive – 1997 – 75 – kindness of strangers: 1 hour podcast
Eleanor hit her head and the blood drained into her face making her look rather scary. Everyone was still nice to eleanor, but couldn’t look at her. However a 4 yr old girl ran up to eleanor and said she looked like a monster. (at meditation center where eleanor lived for some time) Eleanor and the girl played peak-a-boo (with eleanor being the monster). An austisic boy who liked chocolate asked ppl for chocolate, however he only knew a few words, one such word was chocolate. He had a ‘chocolate sense’. He gave eleanor a chocolate.
Something to make ppl donate is; need, hopelessness, young.
Lecture 17: Compassion 2 – the 6 paramitas
Some girl thought of this meditation method by herself, vastly helped her life particularly social life.
A type of no-self practice. Grounded sense of self.
- Destroys ego. With ego – don’t see interdependence (which makes one weak).
Sun in the wind: the wind has an argument with the sun about who is stronger. • Wind tries to blow coat of man, but could not. • Sun causes the man to take off his coat – rep compassion?
Paramitas – that which takes you to the other shore. Order is circular rather than linear. 1. Generosity a. Rep by Wishfulfilling jewel. First take by release is to radiate out when released from shunyata. Radiation is generosity. b. Can achieve by being generous. i. Problems – don’t know what to give, don’t have anything to give. c. Should breath out. 2. Discipline a. Rep by sword cutting through obstacle. b. Have to ignore ego voices. 3. Patience a. Rep by natural armour. 4. Exertion a. Re by warrior’s horse. Doing what really inspires you, leaving ego concerns behind. Still know interdepence, so won’t do anything too crazy. 5. Meditation a. Re by warrior’s seat on horse. 6. Wisdom a. Re by. Letting things clear. Don’t not forgive by pretending to forgive. Don’t make weaker ppl do tasks you could do.
Child of illusion – after meditation, world appears softer.
Some ppl fear being an enlightened jellyfish and doing nothing notable.
Lecture 21: Vajrayana Core theme 2 – world as wisdom mantra
This is last lecture specifically about buddhism.
Vajrayana practices: how to be practical in evyday activites. • A king wanted to know how to rule and still be enlightened.
Essence, natural state, all experience is wisdom – abstract
Coemergent wisdom: have both enlightened and sane tendencies. Going to bring tendencies together. • Bring samsara and awakened part together. • The 2 never really separated.
Ring of protective energy, rep by demon. In real life – police, army. Protects dharma. Before you enter, you see craziness. 1. Anger: (first like gate) a. In psychotherapy – feeling can be represented by things that mean the opposite. b. Ferdinand the bull – bull who would rather smell flowers than fight. Got stung by a bee and became enraged for a bit. In bull fights, bulls are usually killed after. Was peaceful in arena, then was returned to meadow. Being peaceful was the best option. c. Being peaceful – achieved by being mindful. 2. Greed – poverty mind – hungry ghost a. Richness – from skandas of feeling. b. Can be rep by thanks giving. Can see richness. c. Can counter by equanimity – realizing richness already there. Related to being generous. 3. Prodma – grasping – passion – human realm a. Relationship, magnetism. b. See what really what, discrimination daily wisdom. c. Puts good into situations. 4. Karma – formation, conscious, habits. a. When being paranoid, jealous.
Tour of the mandala
When stuff comes up, see if you can find it’s good useful cores.
Lecture 8:
Samsara: cycle of birth, death, rebirth.
Know found cause if can do something and something will change.
Macro approach to karma: • Causality across life times. Affects future lives.
Micro karma: • Causation moment to moment. About habits. • Can see it during the same life time.
James herbrington, conversation with a lemming: • He meets a lemming, who made a life long study of ppl. Lemming says the same thing. • He doesn’t understand why lemmings drown themself. The lemming doesn’t understand why humans don’t drown themselves.
Karma is not: • Faith • Being reborn into the same life
Ant analogy: can watch ant move and can see where the pathway goes. Ant does not see where own path goes.
Karma – one event causes x, which causes y, which causes q etc. • Gives random events meaning. Esp negative event. ◦ Can think of it as past self, ex self yesterday.
Wheel of samsara: the wheel with the realms.
Outer circle of the samsara: (about habits/karma)
- Step 1: ignorance – thinks this wheel is the only thing there is. Usually represented by old blind lady. Interested in gossip.
- Step 2: due to ignorance, start spinning out, wanting things, not wanting things. Represented by pottery wheel.
- Step 3 to 6: skandas. Urge toward action from 3 poisons. End up in consciousness. Monkey mind – busy mind, leaps from one things to another.
- Step 4: born as a person with a mind. Rep by man in boat.
- Step 5: have 6 senses. Rep by house with windows. Rep by couple embracing.
- Step 7 & 8: can break habbit in these steps.
- Step 7: Feeling. Rep by man with arrow through eye.
- Step 8: craving. Rep by drinking milk and honey. (Irresitable food of the time). Craving to either get it or not get it.
- Step 9: grasping. Rep by child picking fruit from orchard. Causes rest of step to carry on. Need to be mindful before this step.
- Step 10: becoming. Rep by pregnant woman.
- Step 11 & 12: point where wake up and understand what is happening. Like trying to only eat 1 and end up eating everything.
- Step 12: already happening. Rep by corpse. Then steps repeat, set up self for step 1.
Behavorism karma relation: rats press bar to get food, when receive shock, will temporarily stop pressing, but occasionally will try to press bar again.
Behav has to occur without the next steps occuring, in order to break habbit.
Consciousness means realms, born into consciousness.
6th sense is contacting mind and emotions.
There is a point where you can notice things before you usually notice things.
Lecture 9:
Summary of Early Buddhism (last lecture on early buddhism)
Can try to meditate with group, aura emitted by group may help.
Buddha didn’t know whether or not to teach. Some ppl he had economic issues with came to buddha to settle their score. The credit sharks came to him and as they approached they were wondered by his aura and asked him to teach them what he learnt. (They wanted money as they were initially coming, then changed their mind). • Hindi version where hindi gods came to buddha and told him to teach.
First teaching by Buddha – Dukkha (noble truths)
No getting past suffering. Can get through it, but must suffer at some time.
Eleanor has a story about an alcoholic student: after breaking up with his gf due to domestic violence, he attended one this very class long ago. Was in bad mood. As the lecture proceeded, he started feeling better. He was impressed by how the class was about suffering. (He sent eleanor his novel, which was never published). He was improving his life a bit before attending class, but class may have helped.
Noble truths:
1st noble truth Suffering: • Suffering of suffering (gross suffering – when something you don’t want happens. Getting sick, growing older, being too old. • Suffering of change – Get something you want, anxiety over it ending soon, get bored. Get something you want, but not satisfied. Worried about losing something. Taking things for granted. (similar to how buddha left his castle). Getting a raise, but having all your colleagues getting a bigger raise. When set points go up, they are hard pressed to go down. Mourning. In rats, get most pleasure just before getting food. • All pervasive suffering – general anxiety. ◦ In sri lanka – buddhist are never clinically depressed. Always just say ‘ahh, dukkha’. Don’t blame source of problem or themselves. ◦ If you can’t get out of it, get into it.
Lottery winner’s are happiest when they find out they won.
2nd noble truth – cause of suffering: ◦ Early Buddhism thought of suffering as disease. ▪ Symptoms ▪ Cause
3rd noble truth – cessation of suffering: • Laughing can be an end to suffering. Called release. • If disease, it is curable and suffering not continuous.
4th noble truth – peace: (more so in late buddhism) • Using good karma to get more karma. • Squeezing pencil hard tenses mind and body, but muscle mind tension not part of you. • In early buddhism – if let go enough, then reach final goal of getting to nirvana. ◦ Nirvana translated means extinctions. Not necessarily extinction in a bad way.
Darhma wheel (grasping wheel vs letting go wheel)
Sitting on chairs causes back pain. Sitting on floor is bettr.
Man shot with poison arrow. He wouldn’t allow surgeon to operate on him (save him) until he knew the answer to random questions. Like a person who doesn’t want to be buddhist until they know there is a nirvana.
In center of wheel of life: • Rooster – greed • Snake – hate • Pig – ignorance
Lecture 10: Western view
In west: there is something called meditation in general. Doesn’t differentiate between practices.
- In reality, meditation happens for many different reasons.
Experiment: data collection and results.
Basic research: what is meditation, what explains it all?
Western health: • Many people meditate for health reasons in west. Many insurance programs have some coverage for meditation (but not prayer). • Difficult to distinguish between physical health and psychological health. • Started in 1960s. ▪ Initially 1 practice (uses mantra) ▪ Someone disagreed and thought benefits were simply due to being relaxed. ◦ Both of those later disappeared. • 1970s: ◦ John Cabotson: made 8 week program that on consisted of various meditations ▪ Breathing ▪ Body scan ▪ Yoga poses ▪ Told to have a nonjudging attitude ▪ Lectures about stress, poetry readings, group discussion and report, homework ◦ A person thought benefits due to separating pain from judgments. ◦ Another method is to focus on pain til it turns into sensation. (works for severe pain). ◦ 15 – 25% suffer from clinical anxiety in west. ▪ Measure of anxiety: hamilton stress scale. ▪ Vaccine shots less effective if stressed, effects don’t last as long.
Oganiga practice: some guy could stop his heart via meditation.
Can only teach mindfulness if the teacher knows how, can’t simply read instructions on it (like reading how to swim).
Can tell with brain scans if a person is focusing on breath or wandering mind. However, different for each person, each brain scan is unique. Even if method is being done correctly.
State inbetween emotion and logic that can be used to cure borderline personality disorders.
Vows – kinda make a person forgot states that will cause them to impede vow.
Left hemisphere activation predicts good mood and optimism.
In eleanor – getting ppl in human realm is a way to help clinically.
Most research is about explaining meditation. Less is about trying to see what it’s like to be a person.
To tell if a person is being mindful, can use a scale, however not exactly accurate. Deal more with being spaced out rather than buddhist definition.
Premeditation:
What is my mind doing right now? • Is that really so?
How does it feel to be me? 1 min
Try to notice interdependence in evything.
Meditation:
Compassion meditation intro: wishing well to self and various other ppl. • Traditionally start with wishing well to self, then neutrals, then friends, then enemies. • American have trouble wishing well to self, often have to start by wishing well to another person. ◦ May I be filled with love and kindness. May I be filled with x (x is positive).
• Think of a person who you want to wish for, then think “may name have/be x” and keep thinking that thought until you want to wish to a different thought or switch to a different person.Mentally tensing muscles/moving them and then letting them move back into place. 1. Attend breath – either method. 2. Then just let go of it and then sit there for a minute, then go back to breath.