MCM 2/4 – meditation course middle level – the body

MCM 2/4 – meditation course middle level – the body

Review

Started looking at mindfulness of body

Leaving the world of ideas

Arriving in the body

what emerges with that

Any thoughts observations during the week?

This week looking in more detail

At world of ideas

Stories, personal myths, collective myths, identity, strategies, beliefs

That build our sense of self

Our character 

Who we are

In fact not so much leaving the world of ideas

As adding to the world of ideas

By an awareness of the body

Adding to our sense of self

But we can add to our sense of self 

By better understanding ourselves

By becoming more aware of ourselves

We can do this by analysing ourselves

Before I start just mention Anatman 

You might be thinking about Anatman 

The doctrine of no self

Well known Buddhist teaching

But this teaching is the negation of Hindu idea of Atman

A fixed permanent separate self

Uniquely in control of its destiny

Buddha said such a self doesn’t exist

Challenged anyone to find such a separate self, that you can point to,

this is me, this is unique to me, and this is not found anywhere else in the universe

In their experience as they meditate 

So we can talk about the self

Sangharakshita talks about the empirical self

The self we experience 

What’s more this self can change

It is how it is on the basis of conditions 

Change for the worse or better

Depending on how we act

Being clear about who we are helps us change for the better

So we can analyse the self from different points of view

1/ logic reason facts knowledge 

My age

Nationality

Sex

Family

Profession etc …

2/ symbols, myths and legends, beliefs, сказки

The great Russian soul

Religion

Сказки

Stories that have moved us etc …

So reason and emotion, we can group the different things together as reason or emotion, 

Rational knowledge 

Emotional knowledge 

But there is a third category

3/ direct experience, an the intuition that arise in dependance on it

This is usually less developed 

Mindfulness of the body helps us develop it

Our direct experience can sometimes be in conflict with the other two. 

We might think all Germans are orderly. 

A German is before us

He might not be orderly. 

So direct experience can modify our ideas and emotions. 

That’s why analysis of our direct experience is important. 

We can develop our ability to access direct experience 

Do this by mindfulness of the body

What is our direct experience?

DO THE PRACTICE 

and report back

WHAT NEXT?

What discrepancies can we discover comparing rational and emotional knowledge with direct experience?

1/ in the stories we tell

Things we repeat to ourselves 

Become our identity 

have an emotional force

Always strengthening it by repetition

Basis if relations to world

Or we try to forget something or someone,

Try to ignore them, and we lose part of ourselves, leads to weakness,

wholeness is strength. 

Could be positive 

But often negative 

A Russian woman friend often talked about Russian men

Women in love

2/ in beliefs

I follow such and such religion

This is how my religion tells me to treat my wife

And who makes certain choices

Regardless of what I think is best

3/ plans and strategies 

Ideas that we follow

Maybe from psychology

Good to keep strong boundaries

Idea of simply being the strongest

The cleverest

The richest

The most beautiful etc …

Let’s call it winning all the time

Q which has the strongest influence on you

Stories beliefs strategies winning

Are you satisfied with living like that

If not why not?