There Is No Spoon? So There Is No Cube Either

The following is an extract from the movie "The Matrix"















Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

"The Matrix" trilogy is undoubtedly one of the richest movies in terms of philosophical contents. The scene above has everything to do with our recent contemplations.

When the Spoon Boy tells Neo that there is no spoon, he is saying the same thing that we have been contemplating in the Cube experience; that we co-emerge with the object. The object gains its meaning because of the observer and the observer only exists because of the objects. One is not independent from the other.

What is the spoon really? Are there spoon molecules? Perhaps, spoon atoms? Maybe spoon electrons and neutrons?

No, the spoon arises only because we recognize it as such. We, as observers, don't establish connections with its atoms, molecules and any other cognitive element, we don't think about those things when we hold a spoon. We establish a connection with the "form" which presents a meaning to us, a meaning that we add to it. And if we are adding meaning to it, we are co-emerging with the object.

Having said all that, we can conclude that "forms" come to exist based on the relationship we establish with them. We don't establish a relationship with the raw materials of the objects, but with their meanings, and these meanings are what we will call "forms".

More to come! Great contemplation everyone!

Cris

So? Why does the Cube matter?

As a result of the contemplation of the Cube Experience, we can see that the it appears because of an internal mental disposition. Object and observer co-emerge in the same experience, and that shows that we have an important role as creators of reality, opposed to being mere spectators of it. We tend to think there is a world out there governed by external rules, and we assume a passive role trying to adjust ourselves to this pre-existent reality.

This example shows us how we are creating the world we see, by adding meaning and dimensions according to our own internal world. Furthermore, our difficulty to switch between cubes voluntarily, shows how uncontrolled our minds can be, and how difficult it is to change between perspectives.

If we look to the vertex "A", we can see one cube, and if we look at the vertex "B" we can see another one. Though neither of them really exists, we can see two of them, and the switch between them can be in accord to our own will or simply involuntarily by the will of our uncontrolled mind. Therefore not only we create things, but we get stuck in what we created losing control of it.
















Following this line of reasoning, we can see that when we face a difficult situation in life, not only we forget that we are the ones who have created that situation we are experiencing, but we solidify it by victimizing ourselves. If only we had the ability to switch our view of reality and recognize the opportunities we have by looking in different directions, we could turn that situation all around.

When the Dalai Lama states that compassion is key to happiness, that is what he means, to have the ability to look at the same situation under different perspectives. Compassion is the key instrument that allows us to remove the focus of our consciousness from our ego and broaden our minds toward a wider reality with vast possibilities. If we look around and pay attention to how other people manage to cope with bigger problems in life, and at the same time, lead a more happy one, we can find strength and wisdom within ourselves to search for alternative routes instead of blaming the external circumstances.

When a person does something negative to us, it is difficult to see good qualities in that person. Our view gets frozen in only one perspective, this way we limit our perception of reality and create more suffering. This limitation of reality is what we call ignorance. And here is where meditation plays a key role, because it will enable us to practice compassion, by making us not so responsive to our impulses and therefore broaden our minds.

It is amazing how this simple example from Lama Samten can show so much.

Have a great contemplation everyone!!!

Cris

THE CUBE INITIATION - PART II

When we contemplate carefully the picture of the CUBE below, we see there is a dimension that has been added, we are looking at a 2D picture and we see a 3D one instead.

Then we can start wondering more about it. Has this dimension been added by the picture? Or it has been added by the observer? Or is it a combination of both? Is the picture separate from the observer? Or do they come to exist in the same experience, they co-emerge?

It's not difficult to see that the picture alone does not have that power of adding the third dimension, so there must be something else, maybe something within us. Is it our eyes maybe? Even though we see the picture through our eyes, we cannot assume that they are neutral about the object they are capturing, otherwise we wouldn't be able to switch between the Cubes without moving their position.

If we keep staring at the picture without moving our eyes, we can see that the cubes switch from time to time. With practice we can switch between the cubes at our own will without any eye movement at all. Therefore we see that it is not the eyes that add the third dimension to the drawing either.

So maybe it is something else. Is it the mind then? Well, here we can start wondering again. What is the mind? Is it our current flow of thoughts, plans and memories? Let's call this the ordinary mind, just for the sake of understanding. If we investigate a little deeper we see that everything we can think of are linked to the five senses. In other words, all of our thoughts are related to things that we have seen, smelled, tasted, heard and/or touched.

We can close our eyes and imagine a certain picture, a scene of a movie, a scene from your own life. We can even remember and reproduce in our minds the smells, sounds, textures and tastes we have ever experienced before. So we see that our minds are intimately connected with our senses, our senses are intimately connected with their objects, therefore, the ordinary mind is also intimately connected with the objects.

From there we can conclude that the ordinary mind alone would not be able to add the third dimension either. So, what can it? Following that line of reasoning we can conclude that us, the observers, do not come to exist without the objects. For us to exist we depend on the objects we perceive. However, the objects we perceive come to exist due to the abilities of our minds to create and add meanings to objects. Then both, observer and object come to exist in the same experience,they co-emerge, they exist together.

When we look at the drawing and see a cube, we can observe that there is an internal disposition which allows us to see the cube. There is this internal, subtle, "mark" that allows us to perceive the Cube. So the Cube is nothing but a reflexion of this internal disposition.

More to come! Have a great contemplation everyone!

Feel free to make comments, questions and so forth!



Cris

THE CUBE INITIATION - PART I

Hi there folks,


We are back on track after a while without posting. In the few last meditation meetings we've talked about the 12 links of inter-dependence origination and we saw that all our confusion starts with ignorance. But what kind of ignorance are we talking about here?


This ignorance we are referring to has nothing to do with a lack of studying of a certain subject, neither it refers to stupidity of some kind. It has to do with an erroneous perception of reality.


When we establish contact with the world through our physical senses we automatically interpret reality as being separate from us, therefore we see objects, events and phenomena as if they existed independently, as if they had an autonomous and intrinsic identity.


This automatic interpretation leads us to believe that our senses are neutral before the objects we establish contact with, and that they are accurate means for capturing reality. This view is the cause for the origination of ego and its consequences like desire for what is pleasant and aversion for what is not.




One of the best examples from Lama Samten to help us see how we are deceived by our senses is the Cube example. When you look at the picture below, what do you see?
























A cube?


How many cubes can you see?


Think carefully!!!


How many?


Two?

The next question would be, how can we see a cube, which is a 3D form in a flat 2D screen?

Where is the third dimension that allows us to see not only one, but two cubes? When we are looking at the picture we can shift from one cube to the other, what makes this shift possible?

I will let you guys contemplate it for a while and come back with more comments on the Cube example. There are so many topics for contemplation in this single picture!

Have a good exercise everyone!

Cris

His Holiness The Dalai Lama in Calgary

Last week, on September 30th at the Saddledome, we had the privilege to have here in Calgary His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. In one unique and magical event, people from all ages, religious traditions, backgrounds and walks of life were able to experience for themselves the energy of being in the presence of a great master who, with humility, sense of humor and straightforward sincerity, captivated the whole audience.

Even though subjects such as “world peace” and “compassion” are not entirely new, hearing the Dalai Lama explaining how we should strive on this direction can be very compelling. Inner peace, through the cultivation of a tranquil mind are his recommendations so we can first change the world in the individual level and extend it to the family, community, city, state, country, and worldwide levels subsequently. His Holiness emphasized that the world is getting smaller and smaller, so it doesn’t make sense we keep differentiating ourselves as “us” and “them”, and concluded “harming your neighbor is harming yourself”.

In our search for happiness we condition ourselves to events and circumstances without which we might become sad and depressed, making us say words and make actions we might regret afterwards, so we keep leading our lives blindly guided by impulses. Although His Holiness calls himself “a simple Buddhist monk”, it has been evident through the story of his life, as well as through the energy of his presence, how having the lucidity which arises from a controlled mind can bring infinite benefits to infinite beings.

Cris

The Conditioned Existence

As we progress on our meditation sessions, we start getting more acquainted with the four noble truths that Buddha announced after his enlightment. Last session we contemplated the first noble truth in which the Buddha points out the human situation of suffering. In the gross level, we suffer when we feel pain or discomfort. This gross level of suffering is somewhat easy to recognize since whenever we feel pain, we do something to get rid of it.

The second level of suffering (more subtle) is the suffering of change. Whenever we experience a dramatic change in our lives we suffer, as an example, being laid off, ending a relationship, etc. We believe in our abilities of planning our lives beforehand, but, as things don’t always go as planned, we suffer.

The third level of suffering is the most subtle one, the one which is much more difficult to realize, the most deceiving one. It prevails anything and everything. Even the happy moments of our lives contain seeds for this suffering to sprout. This is the suffering of conditioned existence. In our daily lives we fail to realize the interconnection between everything, from the objects which we interact with, through our physical senses, to our most intimate thoughts. Everything is conditioned to something else. For me to be here writing this, I depend on having my arms, my hands, the enough dexterity in order to type, as well as my intellectual capacity for writing in English and, the most important, my intellectual understanding of the subject. If any of these conditions were not met, this text would not have been written.

Therefore, everything is dependent on something, or on a combination of other things. As Lama Samten suggests, ask yourself this question: “I am happy if…?” Then a list of factors come up in our list, factors that would cause us to be happy. If we analyze each and everyone of these factors we will also see that they are compounded of smaller parts and if any is missing, your ideal of happiness is not possible.

Because everything is interconnected, we fail to realize the impermanence of everything, from objects to events, and we strive to make the universe around us permanent and stable so we can accomplish our goals. However, when impermanence touches, we suffer. Another aspect of this suffering is our impulses of action (karma) in this impermanent, interconnected environment. We react to events in an automatic way without being aware of the consequences that will lead our lives.

Having said all that, we can see that this third level of suffering is the one underlying the previous two ones. It is the most subtle and it is the essence of our prison. It is a prison because we don’t have controls of our lives as we think we do; we live by following our karmic automatisms and getting frustration after frustration until we die. We desperately seek happiness in impermanent sources, like as if we were trying to kill our thirsts by drinking water from the ocean. We never really get anywhere.

However, not even this prison is permanent and we can break out from it. In the following sessions we will start studying and contemplating the causes that create and sustain this, so we can contemplate how we get out of it. We do have the power and the potential to get rid of this situation, the key to all this is the lucidity of our minds.

May all beings benefit from this!

Alan Wallace In Brazil

It's with great joy that I announce that Alan Wallace will be touring Brazil from the 4th to 15th of June. He will be giving lectures on where and how Buddhism and Meditation converge with Neuroscience, as well as providing meditation retreats. He will also be launching one of his latest books: "Hidden Dimensions" which I pasted a little piece of it here so you can have a glimpse:

“… A third disparity between mental appearances and reality pertains to the fact that thoughts, emotions, and other mental phenomena seem to have an inherent personal quality. When strong identification with these processes occurs, one may feel that one’s very identity has become fused with them, and momentarily have the sense “I am angry”, or “I am elated”. But with some skill in observing the contents of the mind, one finds that thoughts and mental images arise by themselves, with no voluntary intervention or control by a separate agent or self.

…As noted previously, all usual kinds of experience, both sensory and introspective, are structured by memories, language, beliefs, and expectations, which cause us to assimilate even novel experiences whether we want to or not. …”

B. Alan Wallace
Hidden Dimensions - page 45
http://www.alanwallace.org/index.htm

Cris

Walking The Path

Last meditation meeting we started looking into the path we are going to analyze through our meditation, as recommended by Lama Samten, in which we have the thinking, contemplating and reposing steps. It was suggested that I put the overview here so you guys could have it fresh in your minds and even help you to start contemplating. The steps presented below are within the approach of my master Lama Samten.

We start off by reminding ourselves of something very important that, in the words from His Holiness The Dalai Lama: “All beings wish to be happy and want to avoid suffering”. All sentient beings move toward this goal, from the tiny little ants to the biggest of the elephants.

By having this in mind we contemplate the fact that happiness is somewhat connected to peace, otherwise happiness is either not possible or is too fragile. Then we contemplate the fact that we do not live alone, we are all interdependent, we depend on others to be successful, to be patient, to obtain peace, even to become enlightened. Peace comes from the positive interactions we have with others, if we hurt someone, we are hurting ourselves, we are making our minds more disturbed and agitated. Therefore the notion of Universal Responsibility arises. Here Lama Samten reminds us of the four directions we should establish positive connections with: first with ourselves, then with other people we know, then with all the humanity, and finally with the environment.

By contemplating that, we come to realize that it is important that we establish a Culture of Peace, in which a good heart will be the central key in accomplishing it. Here Lama Samten says: “Peace is like a medicine, first we take this medicine, and after we are healed, we offer this same medicine to the world”.

Therefore it is important that we understand how we operate, what our current condition is, know ourselves, and then make the necessary changes to manifest ourselves more positively in the world.

So we start contemplating reality and ourselves under the lenses of the teachings from Shakiamuni Buddha, on the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path.

I. In the First Noble Truth we see that we are stuck in cyclic existence where everything is conditioned, and we fluctuate between mental landscapes and scenarios. Sometimes we are doing well, sometimes not so well, sometimes miserable, and so forth. And that is suffering, we are always following our impulses and are never lucid about the impermanence of all things.

II. In the Second Noble Truth we see that suffering is dependant on causes. We suffer because we rely our happiness on impermanent things, trying to obtain peace by changing the world outside us, trying to make permanent what is actually impermanent.

III. In the Third Noble Truth we see that suffering can be stopped once we remove its causes, once we stop relying our security, our happiness on transitory objects, events, emotional states and so on.

IV. In the Fourth Noble Truth, Buddha then showed a path that leads to cessation of suffering.

1 In the first step of this path we generate the right view. By contemplating suffering and its causes, and the fact that all beings are in this river of suffering, we generate the motivation to get out of it. We want to rely on something permanent, free from conditions and fluctuations, and we want help other as well.

In the next three steps we understand that some actions are unwholesome and produce harm to others and to ourselves, therefore they drive us out of our goal and disturb our minds, so should be avoided:

2 Mind Actions: Greed, Heresy, Aversion

3 Speech Actions: Using harsh language, lying, slandering, gossiping;

4 Body Actions: killing, stealing, having sexual misconduct;

5 By not causing harm we learn how to create ourselves more positively in the world by exercising the Four Immeasurable Qualities:
Compassion
Love
Joy
Equanimity

And the six perfections – Paramittas

Generosity / Morality / Patience / Constant Energy / Concentration / Wisdom

6 In this step we sit and meditate, by doing so, we train ourselves not to follow the impulses that drive us along, and blind us from seeing things in different ways, so we start generating lucidity by not responding to outer stimulus.

7 Here we contemplate emptiness, the realization of the fact that nothing is independent, but interdependent. Objects, ego and phenomena present themselves as if they had an inherent existence when they actually don’t. By contemplating emptiness we come to the realization that everything comes together by the interaction of parts, which will then constitute the whole.

8 In this final step we contemplate the fact that we have an unshakable nature, which creates the possibilities for everything to happen. It is always pure and perfect, free from any oscillation of our identities, for it is stable and not dependent on any conditions. Lama Samten always gives one nice example that goes like this: “When you are watching a movie on the theatre (or on the TV screen), no matter how violent the movie is, how many gunshots were fired, how much blood was spilt; at the end of the movie the projection screen doesn’t have any holes, it is not stained with blood, it doesn’t smell of gun powder. So is our true nature. Unshakable by the fluctuations of the characters we put on.”

This is briefly the path we talked about last meeting!

May all beings benefit from it!

Cris

A Message From H.H. the Dalai Lama on Universal Responsibility

"As we approach the end of the Twentieth Century, we find that the world is becoming one community. We are being drawn together by the grave problems of over population, dwindling natural resources, and an environmental crisis that threaten the very foundation of our existence on this planet. Human rights, environmental protection and great social and economic equality, are all interrelated. I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one's own family or one's nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the is the best foundation for world peace ....

I, for one, strongly believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Every individual has a responsibility to help more our global family in the right direction and we must each assume that responsibility. As a Buddhist monk, I try to develop compassion within myself, not simply as a religious practice, but on a human level as well. To encourage myself in this altruistic attitude, I sometimes find it helpful to imagine myself standing as a single individual on one side, facing a huge gathering of all other human beings on the other side. Then I ask myself, 'Whose interests are more important?' To me it is quite clear that however important I may feel I am, I am just one individual while others are infinite in number and importance."

Dalai Lama
http://www.tibet.com/dl/vienna.html