LIAM CHAI

The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young

Peak experience vs actual enlightenment. Most people have had peak experiences. But enlightenment is not a peak from which you descend over time. It is a plateau from which you ascend, further and further as the months years and decades pass. This is why samadhi is so important.
 
Mental talk + mental images = mind space
 
“You must try to be in this state at all times, even as you go about ordinary activity”
 
Subjective science of the East.
Objective science of the West.
 
Mindfulness
 
A threefold attentional skill: 

• Concentration power
• Sensory clarity
• Equanimity
   
  In science:
• Precise instruments (x-rays, microscopes, telescopes)
• Deconstruction or component analysis
• Neutral observer
   
  Mindfulness meditation often translated as vipassana.
   
  Taking the Mist out of Mysticism
   
  Precision of language is important in Shinzen’s style of teaching. In every day common language the words power, energy, force and potential all sound sort of similar. In physics however they each have a very precise definition.
   
  Research paper to read: “Neurobiological Substrates Underlying Varieties of Restful Experience” by David Vago
   
  Have you ever been in a situation of extreme danger, where time slowed down, everything got very peaceful, and you felt extremely focused, without fear, and able to respond in a remarkably effective way?
   
  When asked to a large group of people, several people always raise their hands and say, “Yes”. What most people don’t realise is that this state is trainable. And it doesn’t have to be sporadic or short-lived. It can be a permanent abode.
   
  The Most Fundamental Skill
   
  In science you have a hierarchy or pyramid of the sciences. Where physics and then maths is right at the bottom. However there is a skill even deeper and broader than mathematics. It is concentration ability. This lies at the base of the pyramid of all human training.
   
  Meditation elevates your base level of concentration power and because concentration power facilitates all human endeavours, the question, “what’s meditation good for?” has a simple answer: meditation is good for everything. (Page 30-31, this is the USP for meditation)
   
  Breathing Rate and Heart Rate
   
  Copy out story of Wuguang on page 32
   
  Brainwaves
   
  Delta = dreamless sleep
  Theta = hypnagogic state
  Beta = normal waking state
  Alpha = alert tearfulness state (meditative)
   
  Most people can only maintain a state of high alpha with their eyes closed. Meditators have the ability to maintain high alpha with their eyes opened.
   
  Happiness Independent of Conditions
   
  To meditate for better health or to be more productive is to undermine the potential of meditation. After all if you ask yourself why do you want better or to be more productive, the answer will ultimately lead to “because I want to be happier”. If I have a healthier body, then I’ll be happier.
   
  Yet the deeper potential of meditation is to be able to attain happiness independent of conditions. So skip the whole health part (that’s just a by-product) and go straight to the goal.
   
  Definition of Meditation
   
  Meditation is any practice that significantly elevates a person’s base level of focus. A meditative state is any state wherein you are extraordinarily focused. So any situation wherein you’re consciously cultivating focus is, by definition, a meditation.
   
• Talking to someone and entering a I-Thou relationship with them (Focus In or Focus Out)
• Washing the dishes (Focus Out)
• Driving through traffic (Focus Out)
   
  Intrinsic Reward
   
  Rigorous research by people in the positive psychology movement has shown that a concentrated state is intrinsically rewarding, and that reward is independent of the contents of one’s experience.
   
• Boring or painful states can become interesting or pleasant when experienced with intense concentration.
• Colloquially referred to as “flow state”
   
  Four Subskills of Concentration
   
  Concentration is defined as the ability to focus on whatever is deemed relevant at any given moment.
   
• Learning how to restrict attention to small sensory events
• Learning how to evenly cover large sensory events
• Learning how to sustain concentration on one thing for an extended period of time
• Learning how to taste a momentary state of concentration consciously with whatever randomly calls your attention
   
  Noting  by Mahasi
   
• This technique is good for staying in meditative state while doing complex daily activities.
   
  If you do a physical workout with regularity, you elevate the base level of body strength. If you do meditation with regularity, you elevate the base level of focus strength.
   
  Is happiness independent of conditions a good thing?
   
  If your happiness becomes less dependent on objective circumstances, does that mean that you will tend to be indifferent to objective circumstances? In theory, that could happen, but a good teacher won’t let you go down that path. No, no, no… hell no! The substance of enlightenment may be emptiness but its function is to provide a place outside yourself – a place from which you can optimally refine your personhood and joyously improve your world.
   
  For Others
   
  As you become happier and more fulfilled, the people close to you reap the benefits of that. We are all profoundly entangled. And in Connected we see lots of evidence for that. Therefore the arguments for say smoking become stronger because not only are you harming your own body, because you are profoundly connected with others your choice to smoke will likely increase the potential others will smoke.
   
  On Holding Space and Suffering
   
  “Most people don’t maintain a continuous mindful relationship with their subjective thoughts and feelings, so most people do not have the ability to experience anger, fear, sadness, shame and confusion without suffering.” – this paragraph hits the nail on why I sometimes notice confusion or frustration arise when I express how I feel to people. I get a sense that they don’t want me to feel what I am feeling. But there is just this feeling, and there’s no suffering. It’s just an impermanent feeling arising. But that’s not their perspective.
   
  Understanding All the Problems of the World
   
  Copy out diagram in page 45. This is definitely worth teaching at third CEB weekend.
   
  Meditation allows us to experience pain without suffering and pleasure without neediness.
   
  (Personal insight): I experienced a lot of neediness with Izzy because of the unconscious pleasure from sex and cuddles. I deeply wanted to bring consciousness to any form of touch we did in the beginning, but this began to wane. Thus expectations, neediness, attachment, obligations, grasping onto started to arise. A distortion. This led to destructive actions and behaviours.
   
  Wanting to Help
   
  It’s not enough to sincerely and simply wish to help others. A lot of terrible things have been done by people who started out wanting to help. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
   
  We have to become skilful in how we deal with our emotions so that we can be of service optimally. Meditation is a tool for that to prevent the three outs:
   
• Burn-out
• Bum-out
• Freak-out
   
  Christian Zen by Father Bill
   
  Techniques for attaining high states of concentration were central to all religions. All religions have a meditative core, which is sometimes referred to as mystical or Contemplative.
   
  Three Types of Spirituality
  Page 51-52
   
  Spirituality of Thought
  Vast majority of people have their religious experiences centred around concepts, belief systems, prayer, dogmas, faiths, credos etc.
  Thinking process
  Word centered spirituality reaches its extreme in fundamentalism
   
  Spirituality of Feeling
  Characterised by devotion, piety, and the heart.
  Feeling love awe and devotion to figures like Jesus or Krishna.
  Pietism in the West of Bhakti in the East.
   
  Currently on Earth most religion is either based in feeling, based in thinking or a mixture of the two.
   
  Mysticism or Spirituality of Enlightenment
  Colloquial English this term usually implies something occult, weird, airheaded or New Age.
  This is not what scholars mean by the term. In Christianity spirituality centres on high concentration was referred to as “mystical theology”.
  This third type is in minority.
   
  The science of enlightenment doesn’t belong to any particular religion or culture or period, rather it belongs to humanity as a whole and helps us connect to our basic humanness.
   
  The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila
  Cloud of Unknowing by 14th century anonymous English author
  Meister Eckhart’s writings
   
  Space itself is simultaneously expanding and contracting. This is a hypothesis to investigate.
   
  Taoism
   
  Jing -> Qi -> Shen
  This process can be likened to Buddhism’s anicca or impermanence.
  From gross solidified sensations (jing) experiencing them as they are with high concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity they transform into Qi – waves and vibrations. Then experiencing those sensations eventually one experiences space itself expanding and contracting (yin and yang). This is Shen.
   
  Raja Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga
   
  Dharana
  Holding onto. Every time you are distracted you come back to the object. Like training a muscle.
   
  Dhyana
  Now you’ve trained so much you can maintain uninterrupted continuity. The dhyana you experience is no longer specific to your object but to anything you are doing. This uninterrupted flow of awareness can stay on anything you do (talking, washing, sitting, walking)
   
  Samadhi
  Now you become one with anything you  put your attention on.
   
  Sabija Samadhi
  Samadhi with a seed. The I that observes dissolves and all that is left is the ‘seed’ – the object of meditation.
   
  Nirbija Samadhi
  Samadhi without a seed. Now the I dissolves but also the object now ceases to be an object. Like a particle in physics becoming a wave. Now there’s just nothingness. Achieving this state we can say you have reached the initial level of enlightenment. 
   
  Shamanism
  Page 62
   
  An Experience of Enlightenment by Flora Courtois
  The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley
   
  A Unifying Principle  

• Despite enormous cultural and philosophical differences, mystics describe their experiences in rather similar ways.
• These descriptions sound counterintuitive and paradoxical to the average person.
   
  Once you begin to have mystical experiences, you can feel right at home in anybody’s church. 
   
  “Whenever we practice meditation, we are linked to a global phenomenon that has been a core human experience all over this planet for a long time. Whenever we practice meditation, we are sitting on the tip of a vast pyramid that extends out in space and back in time and directly links us to a global lineage involving thousands, perhaps millions, of extraordinary human beings, all the way back to our prehistoric ancestors. Knowing this moves me deeply.” – Shinzen Young
   
  Calming and Clarifying (Samatha and Vipassana)
   
  Tea was introduced into Japan by Zen monks to help them remain awake during long periods of meditation.
   
  Coffee is a natural complement to meditation, because it helps keep you alert. Yet most people would see coffee and meditation as opposites.
   
  Focus on Rest
   
  Through concentration you magnify those tiny subtle pleasant experiences into something that is hugely enjoyable and available to you any time you want.
   
  Two Main Traps on the Path
   
• Mistaking the map for the journey. Thinking about and debating about the paths becomes a substitute for systematically practicing a path
• Getting caught in a good place: the path leads to something good (tranquility anytime you want), but growth slows after that. 
   
  Three Basic Components of Any Emotional Experience
   
• Mental talk
• Mental imagery
• Emotional-type body sensations
   
  The possible combinations of these three are these 8:
   
  Three single occurrences:

• Mental image only
• Mental talk my
• Body emotion only 
  Three pair occurrences:
• Mental image and mental talk
• Mental image and body emotion
• Mental talk and body emotion
  Two extremes
• All three active at the same time
• All three restful at the same time
   
  By breaking it down like this we develop and refine our sensory clarity of our moment to moment experience.
   
  Thought: mental image and mental talk
  Emotions: mental image, mental talk plus emotional body sensations
   
  Breaking It Down Further (the Secret Sauce of Mindfulness Meditation)
   
  Outer Activity:
• Physical-type body sensations (this includes chemical senses, smell and taste for simplicity)
• Physical sights
• Physical sounds
   
  Inner Activity:
• Mental talk (auditory component)
• Mental images (visual component)
• Emotional-type body sensations
   
  Thinking Mind
   
  Isn’t there more to thoughts than the surface mental images or mental talk? What about say the subconscious?
   
  For many people, images associated with memory, planning and fantasy tend to occur in front of/behind the eyes. Self-images tend to occur where the body is. When your eyes are closed, the images you get of your surroundings tend to be arrayed out and around you. “Image space”
   
  Mental talk tends to occur in the head or at the ears. “Talk space”
   
  “Mind space” is a union of those two.
   
  This makes ‘mind’ spatially tangible – it has width, depth and height.
   
  At some point, surface pictures and explicit words tend to die away. At that point you begin to detect a subtle undercurrent, a sort of subterranean stirring in image space and talk space. That’s your subconscious mind. You don’t see explicit images or hear explicit words but you know which part is visual and which part is auditory by its location. Unblocking the natural flow of this subtle mental activity nurtures intuition, wisdom and creativity. But you can’t unblock it until you can detect it.
   
  First you separate experience into basic components. Then you detect and untangle subcomponents of those components, and then the sun-subcomponents until we can get down to the ultimate building blocks or substance that underlies all experience. This makes experience trackable. Trackable = tractable.
   
  Two Sub-skills of Sensory Clarity
   
• Discrimination skill – the ability to separate (e.g. Mental talk from mental image)
• Detection skill – the ability to pick up on what’s subtle.
   
  Having a Complete Experience
   
  On the spiritual path, we have to learn how to have a complete experience of anger, so that anger does not cause suffering which then distorts our behaviour. For the same reason, we have to learn how to have a complete experience of fear, sadness, physical pain, fatigue, nausea and so on.
   
  “Complete experience” is a quick way of saying, “Experience X with so much concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity that there’s no time to coagulate X – or yourself – into a reified thing.” You and X become an integrated flow of energy and spaciousness.
   
  Learning how to have a completed experience of discomfort sets us free. Learning how to have a complete experience of pleasure deeply fulfils.
   
  Formulae
   
  Suffering = Discomfort x Resistance
   
  10 + 10 + 10 = 30
   
  10 x 10 x 10 = 1,000
   
  (Page 94)
   
  Also page 96 bottom paragraph about nature bringing us to enlightenment.. Uhm, I disagree…
   
  On Complete Experiences Again
   
  Any experience can be greeted with concentration, clarity and equanimity (or not).
   
  There is a deep complementarity between having complete experiences and purifying consciousness. By trying to experience each event in life as completely as possible, we purify consciousness, but the more consciousness gets purified, the easier it is to have complete experiences. When there is maximal concentration, clarity and equanimity, an experience becomes maximally complete, and any maximally complete experience is much like any other complete experience. They all have “one taste” – the taste of rich vacuity combined with dynamic tranquility.
   
  Totally Paradoxical
   
  Complete pain causes rather little suffering and doesn’t turn into aversion. 
  Complete pleasure brings lasting satisfaction and doesn’t turn into neediness. 
  Complete experience of confusion creates a basis for spiritual intuition.
  Complete experience of desire is desireless.
  Complete experience of boredom is endlessly fascinating.
  A sensory experience is just some tiny part of the universe – the wind touching your face, an act of making love, tying your shoes, being angry with a student – yet when we experience any of these completely, it links us to the fullness of Creation and the vacuity of the Creator.
   
  Equanimity
   
  Learning to love every sensory experience as it arises but not to hold onto it inappropriately as it passes.
   
  Are the Mountains Dancing?
  Page 107
  Yes. No. It depends.
   
  How does one come to an extraordinary experience of impermanence – an experience of impermanence that alters one’s world view and liberates one’s mind and body?  This comes about by carefully paying attention to “ordinary” impermanence consistently, for a long period of time.

Audiobook Notes:
Every major religion has a mystical tradition associated with it.
 
“Christian Zen” 
 
There is a SEQUENCE of meditation states, a continuum.
 
Bliss, joy… Oneness
 
A meditative state can be defined as ‘RELAXED AND ALERT”
 
Meditation is the OPPOSITE of withdrawal. It is being FULLY PRESENT.
 
Studies done on meditators where they are bolt upright but muscles are relaxed as sleeping. 
 
HAPPINESS INDEPENDENT OF CONDITIONS. A complete experience of this moment. Identity becomes merged with the universe.
 
There is the THINKING MIND and the FEELING BODY. You are neither of these things. 
 
Meditation enhances ANY life activity. 
 
 
Equanimity of MIND and BODY.
 
In equanimity, consciousness is being purified. How? One greets eruptions of pain, distractions, aversions, euphoria etc with EQUANIMITY. This REWIRES the DEEP brain.
 
Sensations are characterised by their SHAPE, LOCATION, INTENSITY and QUALITY.
 
Impermanent = the wave nature. Expands, contracts, undulates.
 
Experience is an interactive wave of the universe.
 
Nature of nature.
 
The THINKING MIND and FEELING BODY is wave-like. 
 
History of Science Analogy
 
I claim that there are billions of cells in my body. Trillions of germs on the surface. On a deeper level, humans and animals are essentially the same.
 
We accept that nowadays. A few hundred years ago that was insane to think. It didn’t make sense according to their paradigm.
 
Our senses don’t tell us this. Why do we still accept it? Our senses say there is no underlying common structure between us and an animal.
 
MICROSCOPES. Magnify and Resolve. Science is a SEQUENCE OF AWARENESS EXTENDING TOOLS. 
 
What we are saying now is that our fundamental reality is just strings of vibration. 
 
This is what an experienced meditator experiences and senses. 
 
CONCENTRATION HELPS EXTEND AWARENESS, just like technological improvements in microscopes helps science do the same.

 Experience is complex. What does science do? Break it down into it’s component and sub-component parts.
 
HEARING
SEEING
TASTING
SMELLING
 
FEELING
THINKING
 
Thinking:
REMEMBERING
JUDGING
PLANNING
BELIEVING/CONVICTIONS
WORRYING
FANTASISING
 
OR
 
WORDS
IMAGES
SUBTLE PROCESSING (neither words nor images)
 
Feeling:
 
PLEASURE
PAIN
NEUTRAL
 
FEAR . ANGER . SADNESS . DEEP RELAXATION/BLISS . EROTIC/SEXUAL . PHYSICAL PAIN . FATIGUE/TIREDNESS 
 
YOU MUST HAVE A COMPLETE EXPERIENCE OF EACH OF THESE. 
 
Quality = Anger
Intensity = Irritation -> Homicidal RAGE.
Quality = Fear
Intensity = Anxiety – > Terror 
 
FEELING = BODY SENSATION
 
Most people do not equate the two. They are too caught up in their thinking minds. We think our feelings happen in our minds. Baby’s and animals reside in feeling. Adult humans reside in thinking. 
 
Emotions = TANGLING together of Feelings of Body + Thinking/Ideas in the Mind
 
SKILL OF FEELING
Ability to greet feelings with mindfulness + equanimity 
 
Mindfulness: tracking moment-to-moment each component + sub-components of your experience. 
 
Equanimity: Non-interference of the natural movement of components. Involving relaxation (in the body) and non-judgement (in the thinking mind). 
A RADICAL PERMISSION TO FEEL
 
Equations:
 
Suffering = Pain x Resistance
 
Spiritual Purification = Pain x Equanimity
 
Fulfilment = Pleasure / Grasping 
 
Spiritual Purifcatioin = Pleasure x Equanimity