Monkey Mind: non cogito ergo sum (video)

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (video); Nick Berk, Dhr. Seven, Ananda M., Wisdom Quarterly

Discursive thinking is a bad idea when trying to meditate (1843magazine.com).

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Sometimes I have a mind of my own.

The Monkey Mind is a terrible thing, a menace to serene meditation. There is no need to make it stop.

It is enough to let it be, to tolerate it cheerfully (free of annoyance), to cultivate forbearance (the highest virtue), to be comfortable in spite of its otherwise maddening nonstop activity. It is enough to let it run its course without feeding it one way or the other.

I am king of the monkeys.

What is one way, what the other? One way we feed the Monkey Mind is by trying to stop it. The other is feeding it by adding to it, commenting, reacting, arguing...

What is the BASIC meditation instruction? In a positive sense it is focusing on the breath, being with the breath, knowing the breath -- not by thinking but by direct peaceful experience. When we hold perfectly still, we can sense all other movement.

When we grow quiet in spite of the fact that the Monkey Mind is still going, we realize: That's not us. Let us not get sucked in by its nonsense. The venerable Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche explains it very well and very concisely:

How to deal with the Monkey Mind

A Day at the Beach (no-self)

Sister Khema, Meditating on No-Self: Dhamma Talk (Edited for Bodhi Leaves) edited by Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven for Wisdom Quarterly

This is me, myself, and I...and my dog.

In Buddhism we use the words "self" and "no-self," so it is important to understand just what this "no-self" (anatta) is all about even if it is first just an idea.

This is because the essence of the Buddha's teaching hinges on this realization. This teaching is unique to Buddhism. No other spiritual teachers in history, other than buddhas, which are fully enlightened teachers establishing the Dharma in the world, ever come to realize and teach no-self. No philosophers, no thinkers, no debaters, no sages or seers. It may be the only teaching that has no parallel in other philosophies, religions, or doctrines.

Because of the way it was formulated by the Buddha, there exists the possibility of speaking about it. Otherwise, it would not even occur to one that it is true. Much has been written about no-self, but in order to know it, one must experience it. And that is what the teaching aims at, the experience (liberating insight) of no-self, egolessness, impersonality, suchness (utterly altruistic unselfishness).

 

Look at me, look at my body. This is me.

Yet in order to experience no-self, one has first to fully know what "self" is, actually know it. For unless we do know what this "self" we are slaves to is, the self called "me," "myself" and that grasps at things as "mine," it is impossible to know what is meant by the preposterous/perplexing claim, "There [ultimately speaking] is no self there." In order to give something away, to let it go, to abandon it, we first have to have it in hand. We have to know why we would want to do that.

 

We are constantly trying to reaffirm self. This already shows that this "self" is a very fragile and wispy thing. If it weren't why would we constantly have to reaffirm it? Why are we constantly afraid of the "self" being threatened, being insecure, worrying that i may not get what it needs for survival? If it were such a solid entity as we believe it to be, as we take for granted that it is, we would not so often feel threatened.

 

Southern California coast where the salt hits he sand, Point Dune, Malibu (wiki)

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I bought all these clothes; they're totally me!

We affirm "self" again and again through identification. We identify with a certain name, an appearance, a memory, a story, an age, a gender, a habit, an ability, an occupation. "I am a lawyer, I am a doctor, I am an accountant, I am a student." And we identify with the people we are attached to. "I am a husband, I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a daughter, I am a son."

Now, in the manner of conventional speech, we have to use the word/concept "self" in that way -- but it isn't only in speech. We really think that that "self" we refer to is real, is enduring, is who we are. We really believe it.

There is no doubt in our mind that that "self" is who we are. When any one of these factors is threatened, if being a wife is threatened, if being a mother is threatened, if being a lawyer is threatened, if being a teacher is threatened -- or if we lose the people who enable us to retain that "self" -- what a tragedy!

 

The self-identification becomes insecure, and "me" finds it hard to say "look at me," "this is me." Praise and blame are included. Praise reaffirms "me." Blame threatens [but subtly reinforces the sense of] "me." So we like the praise and we dislike the blame. The ego is threatened. Fame and infamy -- same thing. Loss and gain. If we gain, the ego gets bigger; if we lose, it gets a bit smaller.

So we are constantly in a quandary and in constant fear. The ego might lose a little bit of its grandeur. It might be made a bit smaller by someone. And it happens to all of us. Somebody is undoubtedly going to blame us for something eventually. Even the Buddha was blamed.

 

But the blame that is levied at us is not the problem. The problem is our reaction. The problem is that we feel smaller. The ego has a hard time reasserting itself. So what we usually do is we blame back, making the other's ego a bit smaller too.

 

Money, sex, food...am "I" enlightened yet?

Identification with whatever it is that we do and whatever it is that we have, be it possessions or people, is -- so we believe -- needed for our survival, "self" survival. If we don't identify with this or that, we feel as if we were in limbo. This is the reason why it is difficult to stop thinking in meditation. Without thinking there would be no identification. If I don't think, what do I identify with?

It is difficult to come to a stage in meditation in which there is actually nothing to identify with anymore.

 

Happiness, too, may be an identification. "I am happy." "I am unhappy." Because we are so keen on survival, we have got to keep on identifying... More

• Rebirth takes place according to perception even though there is no self to be reborn -- because this empty process (dependent on impersonal factors) rolls on (and is kept rolling by ignorance, craving, aversion)
  

JOKES II: The Buddhist Comic! (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; R. Shultz; Ven. Yuttadhammo; G. Keillor; J. Rogan; S. MacFarlane...

Buddhist stand up? Oh no! Dying on stage with an American sense of humor and timing

  
Seven Minutes and 10 Seconds of Suffering
Ron Schultz, the Buddhist Comic

Bryan Krasner as Budai (sacredfools.com)

Thank you, thank you. Great to be here with you tonight at the Christian Comedy Club.

I am the Buddhist Comic. Thank you, thank you.

You know, I can feel the emptiness of the room. Can't you?

There's not a great difference between the Christians and the Buddhists -- unless, of course, you take into account that the Buddhists don't believe in an eternal God. I suppose that's a pretty big difference.

• JOKES I: Buddhists are funny! (video)
• Year-End "Comics Issue" (LA Weekly)
• Buddhist JOKES: Do Dalai Lamas laugh?
• A new Buddhist joke (finally)

Laugh with J. tonight only...

Anyway, I want to assure you all that being a Buddhist comic, you're not going to be hearing a bunch of "make me one with everything" jokes, or vacuums with too many attachments, or schizophrenic Buddhists who want to be two with everything. He-he. There won't even be any, "How many Zen Buddhists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" [koans/jokes]. Tree in golden forest.
 

Well, okay, let let me give you an example of what you are going to hear. Okay, so there are these two colleagues. They go into a bar. And one says to the other, "I hear you're a Buddhist?" 

MoonDoxy, Fat Happy Hotei

And the Buddhist says, "Yeah, you want to make something out of it?" Thank you, no, no, really, yes.

Okay, well, let me explain this a little. You see, the Buddhist thinks there's no such thing as independent self-arising. They don't think that anything comes into being by itself. Everything is what they call dependent arising. Everything is compounded, made of something else.

So, of course, this gets me thinking. And I decide to ask my guru a question that keeps coming up for me. So I go to him and I say, "Rinpoche," which is what I call him, "Rinpoche, isn't masturbation an example of 'self-arising'?" And he smiles, and he says, "No, no, it's just clinging to self." Ha-ha. Thanks, thanks a lot.
  

"Won't be needing this" (Mr Will Coles)

You know, I started thinking maybe I'm thinking too much about this whole thing. So, so one day I'm looking through the paper, and I discover this group, Thinkers Anonymous. I think it's perfect, right? So I go to my first meeting, and it's my turn, and I say, "Hi, my name's Ron, and I haven't had a thought in... Oh, wait a minute, I just had a thought. Wait a minute, I just had another thought!

You know, thinking about thinking, one of my favorite Buddhist jokes is actually about one of the greatest Western philosophers, Rene Descartes. So you see, Rene Descartes goes into his favorite bar.
  
And the bartender says, "Oh, Mssr. Descartes, Mssr. Descartes! How nice to see you! Will it be the usual?"

And Rene Descartes says, "I think not" and disappears. Thank you, ha ha. This must be what the sound of one hand clapping sounds like. Ha ha ha.

I tell you, these Buddhists are a funny lot, aren't they? I mean, the first enlightened thing the Buddha says is, "Everything is suffering." Pretty funny stuff, huh? And then one someone asks him, "You mean, EVERYTHING is suffering?" And the Buddha says, "Isn't it?"

Heh.  Hey, thanks, no. Anyone enlightened yet!?
 

ASK A MONK: Is humor or finding things humorous allowed in Buddhism?
  

Hey, hey, speaking of that, How many Buddhists does it take to screw in an enlightenment-bulb? Hey what's enlightenment anyway! HEY. Come on, I'm dying here.

I'm just kidding. Actually, I'm not kidding. There's something you don't get from your other ways of being, huh? The Buddhists love talking about dying. "Impermanence," they call it. Now, if that ain't funny, I don't know what is.

So what's the good news here? Actually, that's it. No matter what, we're dying. Some of us a little sooner than others. Yeah.

Family Guy: "The Dangers of Religion"

Well, um, I guess the good news is here we always got karma, huh? Good ol' cause-condition-and-effect karma. You know, it's because of our karma that we're all here together today. How lucky is that? Just us chickens.

Hey, did you hear about the one about the Buddhist chicken? Ha ha ha. Nah, I'm just kidding there. There aren't any Buddhist chickens. Well, I guess my time is up.

You get it? That's an impermanence joke. Anyway, before I'm done here, I want to leave you with a paraphrase of that great semi-Buddhist comic Steven Wright: "I don't want a p*nis. Where would I put it?" Hey, hey, hey, thanks. You've been real.

Ladies and gentleman, "the Buddhist Comic"!

Audio: the Buddhist Comic
Listen to audio of the only known performance of the Buddhist Comic

It's not funny because it's true
Comedian-philosopher Joe Rogan off of DMT and into a reality that's stranger than fiction: "The American War Machine" a.k.a. our Military-Industrial Complex

THE JOKE SHOW
Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion (APM/PublicRadio.org)
An old woman gets on a plane in New York and flies to Tibet. She gets off the plane, climbs a mountain to the monastery. She bangs on the door. No answer. She bangs some more. Finally the door opens and a monk says to her, "What do you want?"

"I'm here to see the lama," the woman insists. "He's busy! He's meditating right now," the monk says abruptly as begins to close the door. The woman wedges her foot in the door saying, "I'll wait." The monk, seeing no easy alternative, opens the door and welcomes the woman in: "Take a seat; have some brown rice."

The woman waits and waits for hours then finally the heavy inner chamber doors begin to open. Incense smoke swirls out. And there in the splendor of his magnificent saffron robes and bald head stands the lama. And the woman shouts, "Sheldon! Enough! It's time to come home!" MORE:



God's Money

A rabbi, a minister, and a priest... The three church leaders were talking about tithing and the division of donations in their religions. One explained that in his tradition, he gathered all that had been given. Then he drew a small circle and tossed the money in the air. "Whatever falls in the circle is God's, the rest is mine." Another explained that he did the same thing, except he drew a big circle, kept whatever landed in it, and the rest was for God. They turned to ask the third what he did. And he explained that he didn't draw any circles. He just threw the money up in the air so God could take his share. Whatever fell to the ground, that was his money. 

-Anonymous

"When I was little, I prayed every night for a bike. Then when I grew up, I learned that God does not work that way. So I stole a bike for my own kid and asked God to forgive me."

- Marvin Purser, Hollywood, Florida

A millionaire renounces trade, turns over all his money to the church, and enters the monastery. The rules are strict. No luxuries, no commodities, and he is only allowed to speak a single word every seven years. After seven years, he is brought into the abbot's office and asked what his word is. "Hungry" he mumbles. The abbot gives him a bowl of soup and sends him back to his cell. Seven years later, he is asked again. He says "cold." The abbot gives him a blanket and sends him back. Seven years after that he comes in on his own and breaks the rule by saying two words, "I quit!" The abbot looks at him and says, "I'm not surprised. You've done nothing but complain since you got here."

"I was into 'extreme couponing' back when it was just called 'holding up the line.'"

- Lisa Ann Walter

• Cracking ATM PIN codes is a joke - here's how

Why good girls like bad boys EXPLAINED

I think therefore I am"? Descartes was wrong

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly UPDATED (edited by Ashley Wells, May 19, 2016)

The many confusing thoughts of Descates (Leashcolon26/flickr.com).

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Rene Descartes Opera Philosophica (btinternet.com)

By the way, Rene Descartes was wrong. He is a famous philosopher in the Western tradition. He is most famous for deducing the maxim, "I think therefore I am."

He was wondering and reasoning and questioning, What is true? Do I exist? How can I know? What can I be sure of? As he thought and pondered, he realized that the only thing he could be sure of what that he was thinking.

If I am thinking then I am: I think therefore I am (exist). But it is not true. Based on the evidence, he should only have concluded: "I think therefore thinking is taking place."

In a sense, thoughts think themselves. It is actually more complicated than that: Thoughts are dependently-originated. What's that? Dependent Origination is a teaching so subtle that the Buddha declared that it was on account of not seeing it, not penetrating this teaching that both he and we had wandered on in this round of suffering for so long as anyone could remember.

Wisdom and insight are better than knowledge and thinking.

Descartes in cartoon form (home.wlu.edu)

The "I" he posited was assumed. There was identification with the thinking. And viewing it as personal, he was trapped by his own flawed logic: A self exists (it must exist because someone has to be thinking). And it has all of these problems, thinking being one of them.

Had he meditated under a tree like Newton or Siddhartha, Descartes might have realized: This is a painful mess. Thinking is no escape. It (thinking while steeped in ignorance) leads to logical dead ends and assumptions that have no basis in the evidence. What if "I" were to let go of thinking and just be?

By not identifying with mental phenomena (perceptions, sensations, formations, consciousness), there might be freedom from the illusion because, as has been said by more than one sage, "The Truth shall set us free." It does. Thinking is not the way to enlightenment (bodhi) and liberation (nirvana). Stillness until samadhi is reached and insight after it is reached are.

"Meditation" is letting go, allowing stillness until concentration, then systematically investigating reality with the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (DN 22) for insight.

"I think therefore I am"? Descartes was wrong

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly UPDATED (edited by Ashley Wells, May 19, 2016)
See update here

Buddhism and Quantum Physics

Christian Thomas Kohl (Special to WQ on Buddhism and Quantum Physics)Nagarjuna

EAST MEETS WEST
What is reality? The mindsets of the modern world provide and oscillate between four answers:

1. The traditional Abrahamic (Jewish, Islamic, and Christian) religions speak about a creator that holds the world together. It represents the fundamental reality. If it were separated from the world for even a moment, the world would disappear immediately. The world can only exist because this creator is maintaining and guarding it. This mindset is so fundamental that even many modern scientists cannot deviate from it. The laws of nature and elementary particles now supersede the role of the creator.
2. René Descartes takes into consideration a second mindset, wherein the subject or a subjective model of thought is fundamental. Everything else is only derived from it.
3. According to a holistic mindset, the fundamental reality should consist of both subject and object. Everything should be one. Everything should be connected with everything else.
4. A very modern mindset neglects reality. It could be called instrumentalism. According to this way of thinking, concepts do not reflect a single reality in any one way. Concepts have nothing to do with reality but only with information.

Buddhism refuses these four concepts of reality. It was therefore confronted with the critical reproach of being nihilistic.

If there is neither a creator, nor laws of nature, nor a permanent object, nor an absolute subject, nor in both, nor none, what is there to believe in? What remains that can be considered a fundamental reality?

The answer is simple. It is so simple that we barely consider it being a philosophical statement: Things depend on other things. A "thing" is dependent on its cause(s). There is no effect without a cause and no cause without an effect. There is, for instance,

• no fire without fuel
• no action without an actor
• no actor without action.

Things are dependent on other things. They are neither identical with each other, nor do they break up into objective and subjective parts. This Buddhist concept of reality [known as Dependent Origination] is often met with disapproval and considered incomprehensible. But there are modern modes of thought with points of contact.

For example, there is a discussion in quantum physics about fundamental reality. What things are fundamental in quantum physics?

• particles
• waves
• field of force
• law of nature
• mindsets
• information

Quantum physics came to express itself by certain key concepts: complementarity, interaction, and entanglement. According to these, there are no independent but only complementary quantum objects. They are at the same time both waves and particles. Quantum objects interact with others, and they show evidence of entanglement even when they are separated by great distances.

Without being observed philosophically, quantum physics has created a physical concept of reality. According to that concept the fundamental reality is an interaction of systems that interacts with other systems and with its own components.

This physical concept of reality does not agree on the four aforementioned approaches. If the fundamental reality consists of dependent systems, then its basics can neither be independent and objective laws of nature nor independent subjective modes of thought. The fundamental reality cannot be a mystic entity nor can it consist of information only.

The concepts of reality in Buddhism surprisingly parallel quantum physics.

• More: ctkohl.googlepages.com