by embodytrue | Jan 3, 2011 | Emptiness, Meditation, Yoga
Here is a little insight i had about finding the right amount of effort in your yoga or meditation practice. To be a little more clear its really all about releasing any conceptual basis for what effort is all together and finding that place in the middle.
Now when it comes to yoga and meditation you often come up against a paradox that does not appear logically possible. Although if you let go of what you think you may know and allow your self to just experience you will understand the meaning of the paradox. A frequent teaching is; “find the place in the middle”, “not too tight, not too loose”, “effortless effort”, “Stay active but remain relaxed”, “go to your edge but no farther.” It comes in many different sayings but what do they mean ?
Lets consider the concept of effort. Since everything is relative and a concept only really makes sense in relationship to something, (Yin and Yang , Positive and Negative) the concept of effort has no meaning unless there is something to compare it to. Thus we have effort and non effort, in order to intellectualize this concept we must separate it into opposites. The amount of effort or non effort you may be experiencing is a subjective amount. No one else but you really knows how much you may be or may not be exercising effort. We draw arbitrary lines for ourselves for what we consider too much effort , not enough effort or just enough effort. The idea is not to create the concept for some arbitrary point of “just enough effort” but it is too let go of any concept of effort what so ever, with out grasping and with out aversion.
Imagine a number line -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5. Lets say this is our effort scale. The positive numbers are effort and the negative numbers are non effort. At any point you may be able to rate your self on this arbitrary scale, telling your self how much effort or non effort you are exerting. When you continue to hold on to this dualistic concept, on one side effort on the other side non effort, you are in a constant battle either grasping on to where you think you should be or avoiding where you think you should not be. How do you find the place in the middle ? What is in the middle ? That’s right “Zero”. What does zero mean here ? It is nothing at all or does it have some kind of quality. In math zero is not simply nothingness it has attributes and its own nature. In meditation or yoga zero pertains to the concept of emptiness, a concept not having an intrinsic value with out a relative nature(Non-dual realization).
So in order to find “Zero”, the place in the middle, effortless effort, you must let go of dualistic concepts such as effort or non effort. Experience your current state fully allowing your self to be as you are without intentionally holding back or pushing. It is this thought, that we need to be at a place other than where we already are, that places us on the relative scale. When you can dissolve the concept of effort all together with out falling into the positive or negative range you will experience the solution to this paradox.
by embodytrue | Jun 10, 2010 | Emptiness
After Listening to a retreat by Allan Wallace on Lucid Dreaming and Dream Yoga which you can find here in 13 parts (http://www.upaya.org/dharma/) I feel as if i have a glimpse of what the middle way is saying about the nature of reality. Although i have thought of it and even talked about it in the past, i don’t think i really understood it until now. Even now I’m sure i have much to learn and experience. So ill share a brief description, feel free to listen to the entire retreat if you have some time to kill, A lot of great stuff in there!
So taking a strictly materialist scientific point of view one might come to the conclusion that all that really “exists” is physical matter. Things have independent proprieties and are there if we are looking at them or not. Why not believe this ? It seems to fit with our experience of reality. If i look at something and turn around its still there when i look again. There is mutual agreement between many people on the proprieties of an object or the description of an experience. So there must be something fundamental about “reality” that has nothing to do with me and i just come in contact with it.
Not so fast! From the stand point of a radical empiricist what do we really experience, what do we really perceive ? Is it the object its self or is it our mental relationships to the object. Do we perceive water ? or are we aware of the sense perceptions that our interaction with the water creates. If reality is made up of matter independent of our perceptions, who has even seen this matter ? Atoms, Molecules are theory’s, concepts based on our scientific framework and modes of inquiry. All we know of them is what we can write down or say in relation to our sense perceptions, information that we can extract from them. So what are we left with ? That physical reality is empty of inherent existence and all there really is , is mind and our perceptions.
Not so fast ! How do we account for the changing of the seasons, the growing of a plant, the decay of organic matter. That happens on its own with out our mind needing to perceive it. If all there is, is mind who has ever seen this mind ? When you practice meditation you look deeply into the nature of mind it self. When you can attend to it with awareness and concentration you can ask, where is this mind independent of concepts and independent of what it is perceiving. Is the mind something solid that you can hold on to. When you apply the same consideration to mind as you do the physical world you come to the same conclusion. Mind is also empty of inherent existence independent of causes and conditions. So what are we left with, no matter, no mind ? Is reality nothing at all ?
This is where the wisdom of the middle way comes in. Let us not ask questions that are unknowable in principal. We will never be able to know of matter and mind independent of our own conceptual framework of them, because that is all that is available to our experience. What emptiness is telling us, is that things are dependently originated. Meaning matter and mind both exists and doesn’t exist. That they arise together, interconnected, and can not be thought of as something independent of our interpretation of them. Our very perception makes mind and matter what it is and at the same time what it is creates our perception. The two can not be separated.
Chew on that for a little while see how you feel.
Sat Chit Ananda!
