Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Queens for a Day
I'm happy to report that I am now available for treatments out in Queens! Queens Acupuncture, run by my friend and colleague Samina Quraishi, is having me over on Sundays from 10 am until 2 pm. The clinic itself is a wonderfully inviting place, with good qi going for it. Best of all, it's a community acupuncture clinic, so rates are from $20 to $40 ($30 to $50 for initial visits). Come one, come all!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Proliferative Thinking
A few days ago, I was listening to a dharma talk on my iPod while riding the subway. I love downloading dharma talk via podcast, and Zencast has a ton of them. Anyway, this particular dharma talk addressed thinking.
I won't try to break down the entire podcast, as it was rather lengthy, but I want to single out one idea that Ajahn Amaro brought up, and that is the idea of "papancha."
Papancha, translated as mental proliferating, is what happens when your mind comes into contact with a sense object, via the portal of one of the senses. A smell, a taste, a glimpse of something; all of which leaves an impression on what is considered the sixth sense in Buddhist psychology, the mind.
As human beings, with minds trained to think symbolically, coming into contact with a sense object doesn't merely end with acknowledging that object. The mind starts to weave at first a simple tale, and then a complex one, until finally the mind has constructed the most elaborate tale it can tell itself, all from contact with the object in question.
Take, for example, a coffee mug. Let's say it's a pink ceramic mug that you happen to see in a window while walking along the street. It's a rather nice mug. In fact, it looks very much like the mug your girlfriend used to use. Well, ex-girlfriend. She used to have a mug like that. She always used to drink Folgers in it. I'm a bustelo man myself, you think. Could never stand Folgers. But, she always used to brew it. Then she would always have a second cup in the afternoon. I wonder whatever happened to her? She was kind of nice, although some of her habits drove me crazy. Leaving her dirty mug on the table was one of them. With the Folgers in it; ghastly stuff. You know, if not for that coffee, we might still be together now...
Just like that, the mind is off and running. And it happens all the time. We do it constantly. We never just simply come into contact with a sense object, and leave it at that. Now, maybe in some cases that's good, as I'm sure a lot of great literature has been inspired by papancha. Mark Twain once quipped, "My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened." In his case, it was definitely good that he could commiserate with such miseries, and then go on to write about them.
For most of us, we could make creative use of papancha also, and we do. Our minds spin whole tales about future events, based on an object important (or not so important) to us. This in itself is okay, so long as we realize that we're doing it, and make use of it. It's when papancha sweeps our minds along without our realizing it, or being in control of it, that it becomes a symptom of ego grasping, and a component of suffering. Twain, at least, had the sense to know that most of his misfortunes never happened, but many of us act as if the stories we tell ourselves are happening. Consequently, we suffer.
So what do we do? Close ourselves off to sense objects? Be boring and pedantic regarding the everyday? My personal take is that so long as we are aware of mental proliferating we need not fear it. It's just a function of the mind. Eido roshi has said that the function of the mind is to think, and this function has served human beings well over the span of our existence on Earth. Artificially arresting thoughts, therefore, isn't the answer. As Ajahn Amaro has said in the course of his talk, you can come to a state of no-thinking, yet still find that you're suffering. Not-thinking isn't necessarily Nirvana. The purpose of this entry isn't to explain what Nirvana is. I would like to say that papancha isn't something we need be on guard about. Not being aware of it, is something we must definitely be on guard about.
I won't try to break down the entire podcast, as it was rather lengthy, but I want to single out one idea that Ajahn Amaro brought up, and that is the idea of "papancha."
Papancha, translated as mental proliferating, is what happens when your mind comes into contact with a sense object, via the portal of one of the senses. A smell, a taste, a glimpse of something; all of which leaves an impression on what is considered the sixth sense in Buddhist psychology, the mind.
As human beings, with minds trained to think symbolically, coming into contact with a sense object doesn't merely end with acknowledging that object. The mind starts to weave at first a simple tale, and then a complex one, until finally the mind has constructed the most elaborate tale it can tell itself, all from contact with the object in question.
Take, for example, a coffee mug. Let's say it's a pink ceramic mug that you happen to see in a window while walking along the street. It's a rather nice mug. In fact, it looks very much like the mug your girlfriend used to use. Well, ex-girlfriend. She used to have a mug like that. She always used to drink Folgers in it. I'm a bustelo man myself, you think. Could never stand Folgers. But, she always used to brew it. Then she would always have a second cup in the afternoon. I wonder whatever happened to her? She was kind of nice, although some of her habits drove me crazy. Leaving her dirty mug on the table was one of them. With the Folgers in it; ghastly stuff. You know, if not for that coffee, we might still be together now...
Just like that, the mind is off and running. And it happens all the time. We do it constantly. We never just simply come into contact with a sense object, and leave it at that. Now, maybe in some cases that's good, as I'm sure a lot of great literature has been inspired by papancha. Mark Twain once quipped, "My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened." In his case, it was definitely good that he could commiserate with such miseries, and then go on to write about them.
For most of us, we could make creative use of papancha also, and we do. Our minds spin whole tales about future events, based on an object important (or not so important) to us. This in itself is okay, so long as we realize that we're doing it, and make use of it. It's when papancha sweeps our minds along without our realizing it, or being in control of it, that it becomes a symptom of ego grasping, and a component of suffering. Twain, at least, had the sense to know that most of his misfortunes never happened, but many of us act as if the stories we tell ourselves are happening. Consequently, we suffer.
So what do we do? Close ourselves off to sense objects? Be boring and pedantic regarding the everyday? My personal take is that so long as we are aware of mental proliferating we need not fear it. It's just a function of the mind. Eido roshi has said that the function of the mind is to think, and this function has served human beings well over the span of our existence on Earth. Artificially arresting thoughts, therefore, isn't the answer. As Ajahn Amaro has said in the course of his talk, you can come to a state of no-thinking, yet still find that you're suffering. Not-thinking isn't necessarily Nirvana. The purpose of this entry isn't to explain what Nirvana is. I would like to say that papancha isn't something we need be on guard about. Not being aware of it, is something we must definitely be on guard about.
Kinestheitcs in Spirit
I'll be teaching taiji classes starting November 3rd at Kinespirit over at their East Side location. Of course, I'll be teaching Yang style taijiquan. Come one, come all, learn some taiji and have a ball!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Hofstra University
This last Wednesday, I was given the opportunity to speak at Hofstra University. It came about because one of the members of my zen sangha is chair of the Religious Studies department out there, and she's teaching a course entitled, "Religion and Medicine." Knowing I'm a practitioner of TCM, she asked me to come by and talk a little about the concepts of Chinese medicine.
Meeting and interacting with these young minds was a wonderful experience. There were some wallflowers in the class, but for the most part, they seemed like an engaging bunch. This got me to thinking about something one of my teachers from PCOM once noted; that the future of TCM is here in the United States, not in China.
Why here? Because this is fertile ground for ideas that are actually very old, but which are new to these youngsters. Plus, their minds are open to these ideas; ideas of holism vs. reductionism, ways of looking at patterns rather than causal relationships. Chinese medicine is a whole other way of looking at the world; it's not necessarily hostile or antagonistic to biomedicine, but can be complementary to it.
It seems to me that the big sin of many people who espoused Chinese medicine to the West are guilty of is a simple, innocent one: They tried to translate it. My mother, who made her living as a translator, used to say to me, "You can't translate literally, otherwise, it makes no sense." Yet, this is what many exponents of TCM have tried to do, in their efforts to win over people in the West. Perhaps no concept has been mangled more than the concept of "qi." So often, in the literature, people have tried to equate "qi" with electricity, bio-electricity, energy, spirit, etc. Yet, none of these are really correct, and do violence to the concept of "qi" as a whole to boot. As is often the case with Chinese characters and ideas, there is no one English word that can adequately capture the concept of "qi" in its entirety, and to try to do so is to lose the utility of the idea. "Qi" is the quality of and suchness of a thing that you cannot see with the naked eye (that last part is crucial), yet you know is there because of the effect that it has. Coming from a time where microscopes and other such tools were absent, "qi" is a unique work-around for people who needed an idea for their minds, and consequently their hands, to work with. "I know there's something in this that aids digestion. I can't see it directly, but it's there; that must be this herb's qi." Microscopes be damned!
Which brings me back to these young people; their minds haven't become entirely encrusted with cultural detritus yet, to the point where they can't conceive of another way of looking at the world. This, really, is the key to being able to grasp and to expound Chinese medicine; by elucidating that this is a way of looking at things, and not one-to-one bad translations of Western medical concepts.
When I was an undergraduate, I studied anthropology, so I understand that perspective and view are the keys to another cultures ideas. Perhaps with more exposure to ideas presented in this way, others will realize this also. Then we may really see a flourishing of Chinese medicine here in the States.
Meeting and interacting with these young minds was a wonderful experience. There were some wallflowers in the class, but for the most part, they seemed like an engaging bunch. This got me to thinking about something one of my teachers from PCOM once noted; that the future of TCM is here in the United States, not in China.
Why here? Because this is fertile ground for ideas that are actually very old, but which are new to these youngsters. Plus, their minds are open to these ideas; ideas of holism vs. reductionism, ways of looking at patterns rather than causal relationships. Chinese medicine is a whole other way of looking at the world; it's not necessarily hostile or antagonistic to biomedicine, but can be complementary to it.
It seems to me that the big sin of many people who espoused Chinese medicine to the West are guilty of is a simple, innocent one: They tried to translate it. My mother, who made her living as a translator, used to say to me, "You can't translate literally, otherwise, it makes no sense." Yet, this is what many exponents of TCM have tried to do, in their efforts to win over people in the West. Perhaps no concept has been mangled more than the concept of "qi." So often, in the literature, people have tried to equate "qi" with electricity, bio-electricity, energy, spirit, etc. Yet, none of these are really correct, and do violence to the concept of "qi" as a whole to boot. As is often the case with Chinese characters and ideas, there is no one English word that can adequately capture the concept of "qi" in its entirety, and to try to do so is to lose the utility of the idea. "Qi" is the quality of and suchness of a thing that you cannot see with the naked eye (that last part is crucial), yet you know is there because of the effect that it has. Coming from a time where microscopes and other such tools were absent, "qi" is a unique work-around for people who needed an idea for their minds, and consequently their hands, to work with. "I know there's something in this that aids digestion. I can't see it directly, but it's there; that must be this herb's qi." Microscopes be damned!
Which brings me back to these young people; their minds haven't become entirely encrusted with cultural detritus yet, to the point where they can't conceive of another way of looking at the world. This, really, is the key to being able to grasp and to expound Chinese medicine; by elucidating that this is a way of looking at things, and not one-to-one bad translations of Western medical concepts.
When I was an undergraduate, I studied anthropology, so I understand that perspective and view are the keys to another cultures ideas. Perhaps with more exposure to ideas presented in this way, others will realize this also. Then we may really see a flourishing of Chinese medicine here in the States.
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