Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation

Recently I've found myself doing more brahmavihara meditation in general, with a particular focus on self-compassion (often appearing as compassion for my parts).  On my last retreat, I was surprised to find that this seemed to open up the possibility of some of the immaterial jhanas.  It also seemed to lead to an increasing ... blankness ... of experience, as if all the knots that made up the world of phenomena were gradually coming untied.  All this was pretty vague however, so I decided to pick up another of Bikkhu Analayo's books, one which promised to somehow connect compassion and emptiness.

Unlike his book on the Satipatthana Sutta, this one is not intended for beginners.  Here, Analayo feels free to talk about things like the brahmaviharas and the jhanas without explaining them first.  The reader is presumed to be fairly well versed in these concepts at the outset.  Also presumed is an at least passing familiarity with early buddhist suttas, though since the book is structured as an in-depth examination of the instructions given in the Karajakaya, Culasunnata, and Mahasunnata suttas, Analayo provides an appendix with his own translations of these.  

The basic trajectory Analayo suggests is summed up well by the final chapter entitled Practical Instructions -- 1) use the radiative form of the brahmaviharas as a concentration object to 2) access some level of the first three immaterial jhanas, then 3) proceed from the perception of nothingness to let go of the idea that there is any subject perceiving any thing at all, and 4) finally incline the mind towards Nirvana.  While Analayo does not use the term, the penultimate step in this sequence, called the "signless concentration of mind", seems to be a form of nondual perception.  Sense data continues but is no longer assembled into objects; life continues, but no longer belongs to a subject, even a subject experiencing 'its' absence of self.  Analayo ultimately claims that even this nondual experience somehow falls short of the perfect liberation of Nirvana, though in the end its not clear to me what the difference would be beyond the conceptual category error that arises when we discuss the problem (Nirvana is not a state).  

Needless to say, this is the very short version, and the book contains a wealth of more subtle guidance.  Just to give an example, one point that will stick with me is the way the connection between compassion and emptiness actually comes about through the boundless and radiating aspect of the brahmaviharas.  This form of practice links the tangibility of something like compassion to the abstractions of the sphere of infinite space, consciousness and nothingness.  But I think Analayo suggests this approach not just because boundless radiation prepares one for the leap to boundless space and consciousness, but also because it grounds our deeper meditative experiences in a moral practice.  So perhaps what we're trying to create here is some sort of ethico-meditative feedback loop where our goodwill towards the world lets us experience deeper internal states, and these deeper internal states in turn allow us to continue extending the circumference of our goodwill.  And indeed, meditation does seem to work in just the way this model would imply -- it's not that bad feelings are permanently removed or avoided, but simply that, with practice, good states and good intentions become more numerous and more powerful.  The change does not come from some third party perspective outside the system, but from a snowballing cultivation that operates from within.  

The Double

I've really enjoyed Pevear and Volokhonsky's new Dostoevsky translations.  And I've been thinking some about the strange feeling of echo that mindfulness or metacognition can produce.  So when I saw that the couple had also done The Double and The Gambler as a single collection, I decided to go for it.  As they mention in their introduction, The Double reads like a dress rehearsal for Notes from Underground.  Certainly, they treat the same theme of a hyper-self-consciousness torn between a dignified self defense and an abject self loathing.  As the title suggests, The Double personifies this inner tension as an outer relationship between a mid-level bureaucrat and his doppelgänger who comes to usurp his place at the same agency.  It's the sort of magical realism we associate with Kafka, and a direct descendant of Gogol's The Nose.  In other words, while it's an interesting story, it doesn't seem to me that Dostoevsky had really achieved his fully distinctive voice by the time he wrote it.  Though the night when our poor hero, trudging through a blizzard of disappointment, first encounters his double on the Ismailovsky bridge is a truly memorable scene that definitely foreshadows the amazingly dramatic moments of some of the later novels.

Farewell, My Lovely

This year's Noirpocalypse™ features the adaptation of another Chandler novel that was released (in the US) under the title of Murder, My Sweet.  While, I definitely enjoy Chandler's hard-boiled style with its colorful metaphors and rapid-fire dialogue, I'm beginning to think that he just got drunk and made up these plots during an epic late night bender.  Perhaps this one holds together slightly better than The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye, but there's still nothing like the sense of neat progression and I-should-have-seen-it-coming closure of Hammett's style.  In this case, there are multiple not terribly well integrated subplots and details that are either designed as red herrings (whose redness is never addressed) or were simply left in place when the whole trajectory of the story changed.  As with the other cases, the film adaptations actually serve as an improved second draft of the idea, with more care given to integrating the various strands into a (mostly) intelligible whole.  Not that I'm complaining.  You read Chandler for the ambiance of bourbon and legs, not for the literary design.  And this one has bourbon enough to make you feel as large as Moose Malloy.

The Maltese Falcon

I've been so interested in film noir over the past few years that I've decided to investigate more of the novels that inspired the films. So far I've only read a couple of Chandler's classics, and one gem that JZ recommended (that was never adapted for film).  Now, however, I'm getting a little more serious.  The cat bookstore had a copy of that packaged together Daschiell Hammett's two most famous novels: The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man.  While Hammett's prose is less crazily exuberant than Chandler's, his plot, at least in The Maltese Falcon, is much tighter.  He constructs the sort of story that you read in couple of nights because you can't wait to uncover the next and final twist that slots all the angles into correct perspective.  In contrast to the Chandler novels I've read so far, the package is in fact so neat and satisfying that they barely had to change anything to make the film.

While I can't say too much about the plot without spoiling the surprise, I will observe that I think Samuel Spade is much closer to the conventional hero than Philip Marlowe, which makes him a more suitable role model for a star like Bogart (and hence less suitable for portrayal by Jeff Bridges).  On the other hand, rarely has there been a more totally ambivalent femme fatal role than the one here given to Brigid O'Shaughnessy.  I'll make sure to pay special attention to how Mary Astor plays the part when I rewatch the film.  

Science and Cooking

This wonderful survey of the physics of cooking was a Christmas gift (thanks nice sister!) that I've been slowly working my way through for a couple of years now.  The lento tempo, however, wasn't due to the difficulty of the text.  Sure, there's plenty of physics here, with plenty of charts and graphs, and even the odd equation.  But all of the concepts they discuss -- diffusion, pH, viscosity, protein folding and unfolding, emulsions, microbes, etc ... -- are very clearly explained and presume no prior knowledge.  They also do a great job of illustrating general principles through specific examples that you can try right in your kitchen; in fact, the book began as a Harvard class that included a lab work component.  Given the excellent overview here, it would now be a much easier endeavor to tackle Harold McGee's classic, to which the current authors are much indebted.  Maybe if I'd read that as well, I wouldn't have screwed up the complicated candy cooking stage of this Cook's Illustrated Banoffee Pie recipe!

A Trackless Path

I've listened to a few inspiring interviews with Ken McLeod on Michael Taft's Deconstructing Yourself podcast.  In one of them he mentioned this translation of and commentary on a poem written by the the 18th century Tibetan monk Jigmé Lingpa. The poem itself is a very condensed set of Dzogchen practice instructions, including descriptions of possible pitfalls and remedies.  Like most of these types of works it would be almost indecipherable without McLeod's commentary.  However, given the slipperiness and, well, I guess, emptiness of the Dzogchen approach, this commentary can only remain very light and suggestive.  Fortunately, this doesn't mean it has to be abstract.  On the contrary, McLeod writes in clear simple language about his direct experience with something that's ultimately ineffable.  As a result, there's not much point in attempting to summarize the thesis of a book like this.  The main theme is clearly rest.  Resting in awareness.  Looking and resting.  But the only way to read the text is to use it, to drop these seemingly vague instructions into a meditation and see what happens.  This is also the only method that befits McLeod's experimental conception of a path which ultimately dissolves, as the title suggests, into a wide open landscape.

Like an oak peg in hard ground

Stand firm in awareness that knows

And go deep into the mystery

 

#reread

Nabakov's Quartet

While I'm not sure exactly how it ended up on the shelf, I imagine this collection of four short stories was in the bargain bin at the local used bookstore.  While I adored Lolita and loved Pale Fire with a burning passion, these stories struck me as rather forgettable by comparison.  Interestingly, three of the four were originally written in Russian, and these earlier works have a completely different voice from the one I have come to associate with Nabokov in English.  However, it's a much less distinctive one, that could nearly be confused with Dostoevsky (in the case of the first two stories) or Kafka (in the case of the final one).  Only The Vane Sisters, written much later and requiring no translation, speaks with the author's characteristic parodic erudition.  Though none of the stories especially struck me, they did make for a nice plane ride to Tuscon.