2010.01.31 - Lojong 3 [dream]

Eliza Madrigal: Hi Katharine, Brain
BrainCrave OHare: hello eliza
Eliza Madrigal: Oh My Gaya... what to say....
Timbo Quan: pretty crazed!
Dao Yheng: wow!
Gaya Ethaniel: Hello BrainCrave, Calvino Dao, Eliza, Katherine, Mitsu and Tim :)
Mitsu Ishii: oh man Gaya
BrainCrave OHare: hello gaya
Gaya Ethaniel: Thanks, a friend makes cyberpunk stuff :)
Timbo Quan: really?
Eliza Madrigal: pretty fierce :)
Gaya Ethaniel: You know the Korean friend I told you about Tim ...
Timbo Quan: indeed
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Epicurus
Dao Yheng: Woops, Kat is having connection issues...
Gaya Ethaniel: ah ... shame
Gaya Ethaniel: Hello Gilles :)
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Gilles :)
Epicurus Zuidde: hi, eliza
Gaya Ethaniel: Hello Epicurus :)
Gilles Kuhn: hello all
Epicurus Zuidde: hi, everyone
Dao Yheng: Hi Giles, Epicurus
Mitsu Ishii: Katharine's SL crashed but it's back up now
Gaya Ethaniel: Great :)
Mitsu Ishii: unfortunately she has to leave early to meet a friend for lunch
Mitsu Ishii: well welcome everyone
Gaya Ethaniel: ok
Mitsu Ishii: a lot of people here today!
Gaya Ethaniel: :)
Eliza Madrigal: ! yes
Dao Yheng: I'm looking forward to hearing more about Eliza's report!
Gaya Ethaniel nods nods.
Eliza Madrigal: Hm, maybe not much more to report on ... stepped out a bit there and used some colorful language...
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Timbo Quan: yes more people here this week
Mitsu Ishii: we're referring to this http://ways-of-knowing.wik.is/3Repor...igal/Report_41
Dao Yheng: I'm curious about the Heavy Substance...
Dao Yheng: can you say a little more about that?
Gaya Ethaniel: I am familiar with the crab dream :) but not everyone would be Eliza.
Eliza Madrigal: Well, maybe we should set up that we've been talking about Lojong...
Eliza Madrigal: and about a few slogans in particular...
Mitsu Ishii: Yes, two weeks ago we decided to start looking at the Lojong slogans from Buddhism
Eliza Madrigal: One being "Treat everything you perceive as a dream."
Mitsu Ishii: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojong
Mitsu Ishii: and that's the particular slogan we've been talking about the last two weeks.
Mitsu Ishii: so there are at least three things from Eliza's report I'm curious about myself
Eliza Madrigal: So to my noticing, I begin to see that in walking through daily life, as well as in dreaming, there is a commonality to what comes across as 'lucid' if you will... or waking
Mitsu Ishii: the first is your description of "Heavy Substance"
Eliza Madrigal: yes, for me that would be it
Eliza Madrigal: a sense of a kind of thickness... a slowing down even
Eliza Madrigal: but it is also, strangely, lighter and... illuminating things, causing everything to be more vivid
Mitsu Ishii: ah yes, right
Dao Yheng: A sense of stopping?
Eliza Madrigal: which is why Dao's sentence in the logs jumped at me a bit: Dao Yheng: for me, it can be more vivid, but also less solid
Mitsu Ishii: so it is slower, thicker, but also lighter and more vivid
Eliza Madrigal: Hm, I wouldn't say stopping...
Eliza Madrigal: strange, I know, but it is difficult to articulate :)
Eliza Madrigal: I bring it up because it seems something that might be noticed by others...
Gaya Ethaniel: Perhaps the lightness and vividness is the quality of the clarity?
Eliza Madrigal nods
Mitsu Ishii: no, that's the part that confused me, when you said "heavy" because there's also a sense of lightness in the experience I have, but I do have this sense of "slowing down" as well
Mitsu Ishii: but I understand heavy yet light
Gaya Ethaniel: Well when things slow down, one can be in the experience more ... better.
Eliza Madrigal: yes... and strangely it isn't that everything slows down...
Gaya Ethaniel: Feels richer afterwards as if a lot 'happened'.
Eliza Madrigal: it flows better... yes, Gaya!
Dao Yheng: Perhaps there's a sense of some extra dimensionality in space and time --
Mitsu Ishii: it's interesting because I haven't thought a lot about this recently, but there is a sense of --- every moment of time (let's say, a second) having a lot more in it, richer
Mitsu Ishii: and also space as well. so each bit of space feels like it contains more
Eliza Madrigal: yes , both Dao and Mitsu... wonderful ways to describe ....
Mitsu Ishii: I used to think of it as though I had become a giant, sort of moving slowly through the world
Mitsu Ishii: but not just me, everything
Gaya Ethaniel nods ... opening.
Eliza Madrigal: I think we often have moments of dream 'experiences', but that paying attention during the day we can allow this sense 'in' to me seems amazing
Eliza Madrigal: and yet normal too
Mitsu Ishii: So I thought this was also very interesting from your report: "What I notice now, is that things that are 'hard', that I don't 'want' to do, like sort the finances or deal with paperwork or clean the refrigerator, can be like digging into a 'more' tangible clay which then gives 'breaks 'me' down' a bit, allowing the dreamy substance in to things ... "
Mitsu Ishii: last week we were talking about how certain things seem to make it difficult to experience life as a dream, because they seem so "real". but you are saying, it sounds like, that some of these things you actually use to break things open a bit
Eliza Madrigal nods... yes the 'seeing what you perceive as a dream' is actually helpful in a practical way
Eliza Madrigal: going in more than one direction
Katharine Kozlowski: so the substance seems to be located around 'you' sometimes, but sometimes seems pervasive, in other objects, too?
Gaya Ethaniel: Perhaps getting bumped into self who doesn't want to do things creates that opening ... so on one hand, one 'travels' in time/space doing the boring tasks yet just be outside space/time mind frame.
BrainCrave OHare: I'd like to understand what you're suggesting here better. you're saying that by looking as conscious life as a dream helps you practically? how?
BrainCrave OHare: at conscious life
Eliza Madrigal: I'd say pervasive more so than located around me, Katharine... but of course hard to describe...
Eliza Madrigal: like Gaya says often we bump into ourselves... that's what is in the way
Eliza Madrigal: "I don't want to do that"
Calvino Rabeni: well for a modern metaphor, take the dream life as another information feed on the screen of consciousness
Eliza Madrigal: so if I just go into it, into what i don't want to do, there is a more tangible potential? Hm...
Eliza Madrigal: Ah, say more Calvino?
Katharine Kozlowski: i think I've experienced it both ways, as something that seemed localized and also as something everywhere
Calvino Rabeni: as you have multiple minds, dream mind is one of them, and you may be able to integrate them through awareness
Calvino Rabeni: the qualities of one channel spill over into the others
Gaya Ethaniel: Sounds strange but it helps one to observe better and experience more fully.
Calvino Rabeni: so if dream mind has flexibility and fluidity, it may help the "awake mind" think more flexibly about whatever its concerns are
Calvino Rabeni: it is a qualitative improvement
Mitsu Ishii: Yes, I think one of the ideas of that particular aphorism is that we tend to embed ourselves into a somewhat rigid idea of ourselves, the world, our problems, our situatedness in time, etc., and by looking at or experiencing things as dream we can dislodge some of the rigidity of that complex of associations and ideas and thoughts and perceptions.
Eliza Madrigal: Well, yes the flexibility aspect does seem rather important
Calvino Rabeni: that seems like a "practical" aspect of the aphorism
Gilles Kuhn: well we can achieve the same result by rational reflexion and critic and hyper critic thinking
Eliza Madrigal: yes no need to leave anything out :)
Mitsu Ishii: breaking it a little, giving it more flexibility, which allows us to notice more about our actual presence that we might have been systematically ignoring
Calvino Rabeni: A result that appears similar in some ways
Katharine Kozlowski: i have to run, alas. this is very interesting
Gaya Ethaniel: Indeed Gilles, contemplation :)
Gaya Ethaniel: Enjoy your day Katharine :)
Eliza Madrigal: Bye Katharine, glad you made it for a little while
Dao Yheng: Bye Cat!
Dao Yheng: Kat!
BrainCrave OHare: ok, so assuming that this is the hypothesis (e.g., that looking at your conscious state as more of a dream leads to more productivity in life), what's the logic you use and how do you prove it? otherwise (i.e., without either), wouldn't it just be mysticism?
Gilles Kuhn: contemplation is by definition passive and so will hardly give you another perspective
Calvino Rabeni: Not true about contemplation
Gaya Ethaniel: hm ... I don't necessary think contemplation passive ...
Calvino Rabeni: you might look around for other definitions giles
Eliza Madrigal: Hm, contemplation seems active stretching actually...
Gilles Kuhn: actually contemplation was often a tool for hyperconservatism
BrainCrave OHare: i don't understand how contemplation could be considered passive - you're actively using your mind (and choosing to do so)
Calvino Rabeni: anyway, contemplation is a worthy subject for ... contemplation
Eliza Madrigal nods...
Gilles Kuhn: not for nothing joseph the second prohibited contemplative orders
Mitsu Ishii: Well, it might be helpful to try to define terms here a bit
Eliza Madrigal: Sure
Mitsu Ishii: there are many possible definitions for "contemplation" -- in the sense we've been using it in this workshop, we're referring to a contemplation which is not passive or conservative, but in fact quite the opposite.
Gaya Ethaniel: If I find myself in a confrontational situation, being able not to get too emotionally affected by being 'lucid' while waking can help me to see better and come up with how best to deal with it.
Gaya Ethaniel: A practical example ...
Eliza Madrigal nods..yes it is a kind of muscle
Calvino Rabeni: Lojong - has qualities of active style of contemplation, involving focus and intent
Mitsu Ishii: For example, considering, say, something like Zen meditation --- if one were to describe the "point" of it (which cannot easily be said), part of it has to do with questioning assumptions (though not in a logical manner, in a different manner)
Gaya Ethaniel: Even will I'd say Calvino.
Eliza Madrigal: holding/not holding many views at once
Gaya Ethaniel: Depending on the practitioner after all.
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Calvino Rabeni: that too
Calvino Rabeni: the "many views" is a key
Calvino Rabeni: and the assumption, that they already exist
Mitsu Ishii: Right, having the ability to, for example, look at multiple paradigms at once
Eliza Madrigal: yes, and not immediately throw up barriers when something is not understood in one's current/comfortable context...
Eliza Madrigal: but just see it...
Calvino Rabeni: exactly
Mitsu Ishii: If we were to take an example from a more scientific model
Calvino Rabeni: not assume "I" am just one conscious process
Calvino Rabeni: that everything has to be fit into
Gaya Ethaniel: I agree ... I think some debates are a result of discussing these topics using conceptual thinking only.
Calvino Rabeni: yes
Mitsu Ishii: I once spent some time looking at computational neuroscience
Eliza Madrigal listens
Mitsu Ishii: one of the interesting problems there was that some of the simulated neural network models would get "stuck"
Mitsu Ishii: that is to say, they'd overfit their training data
Eliza Madrigal: hm
Mitsu Ishii: so for example, you'd be trying to teach it how to recognize the letter "A" and it would learn a little too well the training set
Mitsu Ishii: bits of noise or whatever in the training data would get incorporated into the network's pattern matching of the letter "A"
Gilles Kuhn: then you can play with learning rate bias etc in order not to get stuck in local suboptima
Mitsu Ishii: right. but other approaches involve, for example, "heating" the network or even removing nodes from the network to get it out of the local suboptima.
Gilles Kuhn: yes absolutely
Mitsu Ishii: in some sense I'd say there is an analogy with Zen contemplation
Gilles Kuhn: (was in the etc)
Gilles Kuhn: ^^
Mitsu Ishii: because with Zen meditation a lot of it isn't about trying to achieve some knowledge or learn something, but rather dislodging the mind from over-attachment to our paradigms, view of ourselves, the world, etc.
Mitsu Ishii: which is partly why it is so difficult to explain what it is "for" or what you're trying to "do" with it. For example, Suzuki-roshi liked to talk about "beginner's mind"
Eliza Madrigal nods
Mitsu Ishii: He said "In the mind of the beginner, there are many possibilities, in the mind of the expert, there are few"
Gaya Ethaniel: :)
Eliza Madrigal: and for some the sound of beginners mind, in a perpetual sense, sounds like a torture :)
Mitsu Ishii: this was his way of trying to talk about this aspect of it (there are many aspects but this is one of them)
Gaya Ethaniel: Because one thinks one must make a choice ... doesn't have to be that way. One can stay open ... rather than find a niche to get comfortable in ^^;;;
Eliza Madrigal nods
Calvino Rabeni: yes yes
Calvino Rabeni: The mass of conceptual machinery is designed to keep people from thinking in depth
Gilles Kuhn: correct and this exist in western philosophy as well
Calvino Rabeni: to grab for fast answers and move on
Gilles Kuhn: but you need concepts to think depthly or not
Mitsu Ishii: right. so you don't have to withdraw from the world, but it's also important not to overfit the training data (what Buddhists might call overly conditioned awareness)
Gilles Kuhn: because thinkings is about creation and creation of abstraction are concepts
Mitsu Ishii: yes. the idea isn't to get rid of concepts
Gaya Ethaniel: Using a set of tools is one thing but getting stuck with them is another ...
Mitsu Ishii: but rather to hold them less tightly
Calvino Rabeni: yes
Mitsu Ishii: to pick them up when you need them, then put them down
Calvino Rabeni: the awareness has to encompass the proper use of concepts as tools
Gaya Ethaniel: I think Eliza demonstrated this point well with her 'letting go' of some past significant dreams.
Mitsu Ishii: instead of carrying them around all the time as though you needed them at all times
Calvino Rabeni: do they lead to depth ? maybe. Do they lead to "dead head" ? maybe.
Gaya Ethaniel: How did you feel Eliza? You felt it was the right time to do so?
Eliza Madrigal: yes, Mitsu, as though things can be 'lost' somehow
Gaya Ethaniel: :)
Gaya Ethaniel: I remember something Stim said ...
Eliza Madrigal: Ah, Gaya... well I took the reference to the crab dream down, but yes there was a natural course to that dream picture I guess...
Gaya Ethaniel: Putting it down once in a while ...
Calvino Rabeni: What is to be lost, Eliza?
Eliza Madrigal: Calvino I was referring to the 'gathering' tendency...
Gaya Ethaniel: ^^;;;
Eliza Madrigal: of fortifying our 'selves'
Calvino Rabeni: That is worth losing then I take it
Eliza Madrigal: Gaya, yes and I like Stim's phrasing of 'holding it in a different way' too
Gaya Ethaniel: I think like shedding sense of self, it's not always about losing.
Eliza Madrigal: hmmm
Calvino Rabeni: To lose something dead is often to gain new life
Gaya Ethaniel: That was about 'dropping' wasn't it?
Eliza Madrigal: yes :)
Gaya Ethaniel: :)
Eliza Madrigal: we can work really hard to drop things, then keep picking them up to see if we dropped them
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, a certain level of practitioner focuses on the "dropping"
Calvino Rabeni: rather than the opening that can come after the dropping
Calvino Rabeni: as if the dropping were and end in itself
Gilles Kuhn: (afk 10 min)
Gaya Ethaniel: I guess dropping can apply to seeing life as dream.
Eliza Madrigal: yes !
Gaya Ethaniel: I knew PaB lingo will make sense to you Eliza ^^;;;
Eliza Madrigal: one is learning to continually shed conceptual attachments
Eliza Madrigal giggles
Eliza Madrigal: so seeing 'this' or feeling 'this' one can shed assumptions about the solidity perhaps...
Calvino Rabeni: Shedding concepts - one might also be concerned with the quality of the new ones one acquires
Gaya Ethaniel: Actually I realised that when I used to feel 'continually' X was impossible it was because it is impossible for 'I'.
Calvino Rabeni: Metaphor - playing cards - you drop some, hope to pick up better ones
Gaya Ethaniel: This I operates with time so ... of course it's not really possible.
Eliza Madrigal: Ahhh, Gaya.. yes... "you' can't do it.. but what you are in a larger sense can"
Eliza Madrigal: (hears Stim) :)
Mitsu Ishii: ha ha
Gaya Ethaniel: heh Eliza :)
Gaya Ethaniel: If I am ever in need of talking to Stim, I go to Eliza these days :)
Eliza Madrigal: hahahah, oh no
Calvino Rabeni: The payoff isn't becoming a "not-self" but a "greater self"
Mitsu Ishii: yes, that is one of the biggest clarifications
Eliza Madrigal: or an unsticky self
Gaya Ethaniel: I said this to a friend a while ago, killing 'self' is dangerous and I still believe it.
Mitsu Ishii: it's not about denial of self, but opening to a larger space of possibility
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Gaya Ethaniel: Try to do that is just not good ... I can't see it any other way.
Calvino Rabeni: but possibilities need to be realized or realizable
Mitsu Ishii: in scientific terms (since we are still continuing the Ways of Knowing emphasis a bit here) you could call it a larger phase space
Gaya Ethaniel: ?
Calvino Rabeni: otherwise they aren't actually possibilities
Mitsu Ishii: A phase space is just the space of possible states of a system
Gaya Ethaniel: I somehow cannot associate space with infinity ...
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, the math metaphor is slightly misleading
Mitsu Ishii: (I just said that since Gilles seems to have a scientific background)
Calvino Rabeni: in that the dimensionality of the model is considered fixed, whereas in reality it is open
Gaya Ethaniel: He does :)
Mitsu Ishii: yes, you are right, Calvino
Mitsu Ishii: it's simply a metaphor
Gaya Ethaniel: ok
Eliza Madrigal: hm... I wonder if Dao or Gaya might comment on their homework reports too? I know we have just a few minutes....
Calvino Rabeni: And that distinction is crucial in practice
Gaya Ethaniel: Well personally time/space hasn't been a good tool to work with so far with me, except sense of time.
Gaya Ethaniel listens to Dao :)
Dao Yheng: Eliza, I found your comments (and others) quite apropos to some of the questions I've been having
Mitsu Ishii: one could say, to perhaps overuse the metaphor, that there is always a vastly larger dimensionality one could open out to
Gilles Kuhn: actually i have more a philosophical background mitsu but i have a master in science too that s correct
Calvino Rabeni: yes that is what I meant
Eliza Madrigal: I think seeing gossiping as a dream is helpful.. not giving it substance...
Gilles Kuhn: and well the notion of kuhnian paradigm is at my opinion even more potent than phase space
Calvino Rabeni: And often the effort of conceptual thinking is to converge, whereas the opposite "opening" is to diverge or ramify
Mitsu Ishii: right, Gilles, I agree
Mitsu Ishii: Kuhn/Lakatos/Feyerabend could be applied here very fruitfully
Dao Yheng: I find that working with space and time more straightforward, working with the knot of feelings and habits around interactions with people, etc quite more challenging
Calvino Rabeni: because you are using a different "mind" to do that Dao
Dao Yheng: so, yes, seeing gossiping as a dream might lighten the load a little bit
Gilles Kuhn: more because the notion is fuzzy btw as it try to define non comparable "space of conceptualisations"
Eliza Madrigal: hmm.. yes
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, gossip is excellent
Calvino Rabeni: for that purpose
Gaya Ethaniel: I guess Gilles meditation and 'contemplation' fits me in making that shift. I'm sure some people are more philosophically inclined :)
Mitsu Ishii: yes I agree Gilles, the idea of a space of conceptualizations can only really be a kind of metaphor
Gilles Kuhn: well lol my thesis director reading it saw i see you were very influenced by feyerabend only at the time I had not read it yet ..... he could not have been born some 20 years after....;;-)
Dao Yheng: calvino, could you say a little more about the kind of minds involved?
Eliza Madrigal: we have very dense people and situations in our experience, and if we can get excited, in a sense "Oh material to work with" then maybe it becomes hm... well... different
Gaya Ethaniel: Wittgenstein Gilles ...
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Calvino Rabeni: On that note, it seems safe to say that the notion of intersubjectivity has barely entered the PaB / Kira dialogue context
Dao Yheng: Eliza, this seems to be part of the crab dream you described?
Mitsu Ishii: ah, intersubjectivity, there's a big topic!
Mitsu Ishii: and we have two minutes to discuss it :)
Eliza Madrigal: yes definitely... like a koan that you work with and it really works you :)
Eliza Madrigal: haha Mitsu
Dao Yheng: :)
Mitsu Ishii: man I really want to read this crab dream now
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, and I'd think, except for the reticence around personal expression, that it would be of big interest to Kira denizens
Gaya Ethaniel: Which aphorism we are picking up specifically for the coming week?
Eliza Madrigal: hah...okay... will put the link back
Mitsu Ishii: the famous crab dream
Dao Yheng: it was a really good dream!
Calvino Rabeni: Given that it is an opening beyond the western hyper-individual way of thinking about buddhism
Gaya Ethaniel: :)
Calvino Rabeni: (just trying to finish a thought)
Mitsu Ishii: I think intersubjectivity would be a great subject for a future session, though perhaps we should stick with Lojong for the short term. which one do people want to talk about next
Calvino Rabeni: I'm agreeable
Gilles Kuhn: well intersubjectivity was always present as background in my seminar
Mitsu Ishii: ah I see
Gaya Ethaniel: How about this one? "Proficiency means you do it even when distracted."
Calvino Rabeni: For lojong - I suggest "first, train in the preliminaries" :)
Gaya Ethaniel: That sounds good too.
Gaya Ethaniel: How to develop abilities and motivations right?
Calvino Rabeni: We need an effort to avoid the tendency to skip over preliminaries
Gaya Ethaniel: Motivation can be a fun topic :)
Calvino Rabeni: and I think doing so would be confluent with lojong
Dao Yheng: sounds great!
Mitsu Ishii: I like that idea, though one difficulty is that "preliminaries" refers to a lot
Calvino Rabeni: Motivation of course could be considered a preliminary :)
Eliza Madrigal: okay.... link back up
Eliza Madrigal: yes, which preliminaries...
Gaya Ethaniel: Proficiency can be tied with abilities so ...
Mitsu Ishii: shall we try to narrow down this idea of "preliminaries" ?
Dao Yheng: Yeah, we won't have time finish our preliminaries before the next meeting
Calvino Rabeni: So, that's the question for the groups contemplation
Eliza Madrigal: :))))
Gaya Ethaniel: Yes it could cover a few sessions Mitsu.
Calvino Rabeni: The preliminaries themselves
Gaya Ethaniel: ok great :)
Calvino Rabeni: Not defining them in advance, then talking about specific ones
Gaya Ethaniel: ?
Dao Yheng: sounds very good!
Mitsu Ishii: okay, so we'll try to discuss preliminaries next time, perhaps each of us could talk about that from the perspective of whatever traditions we've studied/practiced and/or researched.
Dao Yheng: it would be interesting just to hear about everyone's experiences with preliminaries or lack thereof
Calvino Rabeni: Yes good
Mitsu Ishii: very nice to see you all, see you next week
Eliza Madrigal: Okay... sounds good
Eliza Madrigal: Thanks Everyone!
Calvino Rabeni: thanks all
Gaya Ethaniel: Thank you :)
Melchizedek Blauvelt: see you next week all