The Scientist, Philosopher and Artist.

The Scientist.
Scientists like to experiment. They like to figure out what is really going on, and then to look to discover solutions to problems. The scientist pursues knowledge, but she does so through experience, trial and error.

The Philosopher.
The philosopher likes to examine and question. They want to know what is true, what is deceptive, and how these views influence and shape our world. The philosopher examines the very nature of our being and what can be known about our world by relying on reason, logic and critical thinking.

The Artist.
The artist is concerned with connection, relationships and impact. The artist conveys the value aspect of her work, her work creates meaning. Meaning is created through connection, change and impact. If no connection is made, or if no one is impacted, then the artist's work is undone. The artist's medium is reality, people and the web in which we are all connected.

Each of these three archetypes play a role in our practice.

When we sit down to meditate, we should sit down as a scientist. Your mind is your lab, what are you trying to solve?

Once we gain stability in our meditation, we should become a philosopher. Look deeper into your experience. Examine the nature of your own mind and the nature of reality. What is the true nature of the mind? What can be known through your experience?

When we stand from meditation, we stand as an artist. Use your daily life and interactions as the medium to create art. Share kindness, generosity and compassion. Use your trade to impact your community, create change and shape the world.

Don't be attached to any one role. Don't get caught up in the result or effect of your work. Simply attend to the different roles as they arise. There is a time to be a experiment, a time to analyze, and yes, even a time to dance.

The tool shed.

What's the sense in having a tool shed these days?

We live in a time when you can easily find someone with the necessary skills to fix your problem for you.  It doesn't really matter what the problem is, there is a product or service out there for you.  With all of these resources available to you at the tip of your fingers, what is the sense in having a tool shed?

Well, you might be a problem solver.  A self-reliant tinkerer.  You might be a mad scientist looking to do something that has never been done before, not like this.

You might be someone who isn't just looking for the right answer, you want to know how to solve the question.  Your not simply looking for the quick fix, figuring out the root of the dilemma is more important than the fix itself.

If you are this kind of practitioner, your view liberates you.  Your view is liberating because problems become malleable and you can sit with conflict and strife.  You are willing to explore the unknown and fearless in the face of resistance.   You know you already have the tools necessary to solve the problem, it is just a matter of working it out.  And you can do that.

Contrast this with the person who has no tools and every problem is an emergency.  Panic sets in at the slightest discomfort and the resolution to problems is always reliant on finding someone else for the fix.  We could call this other-reliant.

Be a source of refuge for yourself.

If you want to gain the freedom and confidence of being able to solve your own problems, you need to have a tool shed.  Meditation is that tool shed.  It is your mind lab.

You might learn to be a problem solver.  You also might discover something worth sharing. 

Three Hats.

1. Debater.
The debater uses reason and logic to examine a claim.  People can say whatever they want, but the debater asks, Why?  Why is what your saying actually the case?

2. Scientist.
The scientist wants evidence and supporting facts for your claim.  They want to see a real life example, some data that actually support your claim.  You can be skilled at reason and logic, but if reality doesn't match up with your claims, the scientist rejects it as false.

3. Yogin.
The yogin is a practitioner.  It is a lived experience.  They have first-hand experience, a testimony to share and a legacy to pass on.   

You need to wear all three hats.

If you only wear the yogins hat, you may have profound life experiences and a great deal of certainty, but doubt can easily creep in when people question your experience.  They can expose potential flaws or different views which may create uncertainty and doubt in your own experience.  When you doubt your own experience, you essentially have nothing, so the yogin needs the debater and scientist hats to eliminate and manage doubt and also to analyze the validity of their experience. 

If you only wear the scientist hat your understanding is limited to an objective frame of reference.  The scientist by necessity really needs to also wear the debater hat, but without the yogin's hat they are always somewhat removed or distant from their subject matter.  They don't allow their subject matter to change them, it remains an object of knowledge and a concept.

The debater may also wear the yogin's hat, but without the scientist's hat they risk falling to the extreme of a televangelist.  The debater can formulate concrete proofs and use a wide range of logical reasoning to support their position and indeed a deep heartfelt experience, but if they are not open to the scientist's view they may be fighting for the side of ignorance.  When reality and the facts don't match up to your view, sometimes it is your view that needs changing not the tone of your voice.

When you wear all three hats you have a complete practice.  You really have something worth sharing.  You not only know the practice, you know why the practice is important and what effect it has.  You know where the potential sources of error and problems lie, you know how to approach failure and mistakes.  You know what is authentic, and what is not.

With all three hats, you develop certainty and confidence.  With certainty and confidence, you fulfill your own aims and you can truly act for the aims of others.  

Impermanence

The second preliminary is the contemplation on impermanence.  The key point is that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent.

There are several implications to consider when contemplating impermanence.  First is the impermanence of the outer world.  No matter where we look we cannot find anything permanent or lasting.  Our environment composed of mountains, lakes and trees is constantly changing.  The beings that live in the world are constantly undergoing birth, aging, sickness and death.  No matter where we look, high or low, nothing permanent or lasting can be found.

Second, we can examine the inner world- our own life, body, thoughts and feelings.  When we look closely, we cannot find anything that withstands the test of time.  Our body undergoes many changes throughout life, our thoughts come and go like a never ending movie, our feelings constantly rise and fall like the tide.  Whether our experiences are pleasant or not, they come and go leaving only a faint memory similar to last nights dream. 

People often say, 'I cannot believe how fast this month/ year has gone.'  It is quite strange that even though we notice how quickly life passes us by, they do not apply it to their future.  We stand with our mouths agape at how fast the past ten years have went, what about the next ten?  Do you think they are going to slow down?   This life is like a water bubble, clearly apparent for a moment but vanishing in an instant. 

The third implication to consider is the faults of permanence.  We often consider phenomena, whether that of the outer world or the inner world, to possess an identify of their own.  We think that they really truly exist from their own side.  We tend to fixate on notions of self and other, mine and yours, right and wrong.  It is this fixation that then leads to fear, stress, anxiety, anger and attachment.  

When we understand the impermanence of the outer and inner world as well as the faults of permanence, we can come to embrace a larger scope, which is that if everything is impermanent then change is possible.  We often feel stuck- in situations, work, feelings and thoughts.  When we contemplate on impermanence we gain certainty that nothing is fixed, that while things may seem very solid at the time it is really just our mistaken perception.  By loosening our fixation on identity, we come to eliminate the extreme and faults of permanence.  We come to appreciate the larger scope, that reality is dynamic, flexible, a vast web of dependent origination. 

We then come to the decisive experience of impermanence.  By not getting caught up in the dynamic display of the environment or beings, we come to discover the fundamental ground of being, the true nature of reality which is unchanging.  Having never existed as anything whatsoever, it manifests in any way at all.  All that appears and exists within samsara and nirvana is nothing but an ornament of awareness, the unceasing play of dependent origination that is utterly beyond speech, thought or expression.  Life opens itself to an endless dance of creative display.  Our minds, free from fixation, come to appreciate and rejoice in experience rather than being bound by it. 

While there is uncertainty as to the time of death, death is certain so we must realize our true nature now.  For too long we have thought we had so much time, but now the sun is setting and life has run its course.  We have no time left to practice, our body is growing old and weak, our mind frail. 

Life is a passing glance of possibility.  Do we act or not?  Seize the moment!

Digging Up the Roots

Previously we have discussed dependent origination and how we get entrapped in the cycle of conditioned existence.  It may seem hard to determine how we can apply these teachings to our life, what their usefulness is to us right now and especially how to apply them at times when we are caught up in the cycle. 

There are two points at which we can attack this cycle, 1) fixation and 2) ignorance.  There is some debate about this within different Buddhist schools, but we can say that if we cut through fixation then we can indeed be free from suffering because we cut through the rest of the process of birth, aging, sickness and death.  Now, this is not to be equated with being a Buddha, because even though we may be free from suffering, we still have the conceptual veils which obscure our vision, we still have duality, subject and object. 

There was the question, what would life be like without any fixation, is that even possible to conceive of?  Indeed, that is difficult to conceive of, but we should contrast fixation with enjoyment.  We can conceive of a situation where we enjoy in something without being fixated on it.  Normally, in our process of enjoyment we reinforce our fixation, further craving to have that experience again and again.  But it is indeed possible to enjoy whatever it is that manifests, free from trying to make it better or worse, just enjoying in things as they are.  It is this process of spontaneous enjoyment. The manifestations never stop.  In fact that is part of the nature of the mind- that arising is unceasing- but we don’t need to cling to that, we can spontaneously enjoy whatever manifests.  

The Metaphysical Scientist

The easiest way to attack fixation is in our meditation, or own personal laboratory.  When we meditate we want to have an open, expansive mind.  We want to have control over our mind so that we can work with situations in our life.  Normally we grasp at all the appearances of mind, whatever it is that is arising- thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds- we always make these subtle investments into them, like adding pennies to your saving account.  It doesn’t seem like they are adding up much, but by fixating on those appearances of the mind, we are never going to be able to recognize and rest in the nature of the mind.  We are instead stuck in this process of taking births, again and again.  I want to make a little disclaimer here about the nature of the mind.  You are never going to ‘see’ the nature of mind, you are never going to be able to say ‘Aha, this is it.’  In fact, you can examine in the context of this discussion what proclaiming ‘this is it’ would imply.  The nature of the mind can only be experienced, we can talk about chocolate all day, but until you taste it you don’t really know it. 

In our meditation, we can discuss two methods so far, 1) resting in the natural state and 2) riding or watching the breath.  Both of these methods can be used to attack fixation, in the first it is non-referential and without an object which is much more difficult at the beginning.  Right now we have this mind that has this tendency to fixate on things, this monkey mind that is constantly jumping from object to object, never sitting still.  So we can use skillful means, we can intentionally choose an object like the breath to fixate on.  When meditating on the breath, if we are distracted and fixate on something else like our thoughts, the moment we recognize that distraction we cut through our fixation and bring it back to the breath.  It is through this process that we tame the mind and develop a strong meditation, continually cutting through fixation.  But we also want to practice resting in the natural state, which is without any particular object.  

 

Using this technique, we are still having thoughts, feelings, sights and sounds arising, but we are not grasping at them.  We are letting our mind rest naturally- an open, expansive mind- in which we are aware of appearances but not fixating on them.  Simply by shining the light of our awareness, or illuminating appearances as they arise, they naturally subside on their own.  This method is more difficult, but we want to get started on it, laying the foundation for this type of meditation.  If we always use an object for our meditation, eventually, we are going to need to cut through that object. 

 

That is fixation, the second place we can attack the cycle is at ignorance, the root.  This is much more difficult and takes a lot of studying, contemplation and meditation before the wisdom of non-duality can arise.  When we are meditating in the natural state, any time that we are correcting or fixing our meditation we are in fact moving away from our true, authentic condition.  In fact, if we continue this type of subtle fixation we will never find genuine lasting freedom.  Our tendency is to always create something anew, this addiction to taking births that we talked about before.  If we think about how we treat addicts, the first thing is awareness or to recognize that there is a problem.  Most of us are completely unaware we even have a problem, we just go on investing in conditioned existence and turning that wheel.  There is a key instruction from the masters of the past and present- Let it be, as it is.  This exemplifies what we have been talking about, letting whatever it is that is manifesting be just as it is.  

 

Buddhas, or awakened beings, always recognize and abide in the authentic condition, the true nature of mind in which there is no duality.  Before we talked about dependent origination and this vast web of interconnectedness.  That is the vision of Buddhas, they see that everything, all beings and all environments are this vast web.  They abide in spontaneous fulfillment, fulfilling their own benefit and the benefit of others at the same time.  

There is a common example used to describe this, we can compare the awakened mind to the orb of the sun.  The sun (from its own side) is always fully manifest, completely radiant and utterly lucid.  The sun shines impartially, radiating light in all directions, not preferring some areas over others.  The warmth that radiates from the sun is like the love and compassion that naturally radiates from awakened mind, instantly and effortlessly accomplishing their own and others wishes.