Renunciative versus life-affirming types of meditation

I'm an easy sell when it comes to books about meditation. Especially when they have a title like Opening Awareness: A Guide to Finding Vividness in Spacious Clarity. 

Hey, give me some of that vividness, especially if it's found in spacious clarity, leaving aside the minor problem that I had no idea what those lofty words meant. So I sent $15 off to Amazon.

(When I just checked out the group that published the book, Evolving Ground, I noticed that portions of this little book are available online, but not the whole thing.) 

The basic meditation approach presented in the book is what I think of as open awareness. Not focusing or concentrating on anything specific, just being aware of thoughts, emotions, perceptions, breathing, whatever, without seizing on any of these contents of consciousness. 

Here's a description of the approach in the online version of the book.

The method is simple: sit and remain uninvolved with whatever arises.

Ordinarily, we remain involved with experience. For example, an itching sensation arises on the skin and we scratch it. We tend to cognitively elaborate what is occurring, with ideas, thought-stories, imagination, even the focusing of attention. Remaining uninvolved is to experience whatever is happening without engaging, elaborating, or acting in response.

Remaining uninvolved is not ignoring.

Imagine lying in a tent, hearing the sounds of the night outside. They take place in your field of experience: you are neither straining to hear them nor actively shutting them out. So long as you remain aware of experience as it arises, potential for involvement is available, even while it is suspended. While lying in your tent, if you heard an animal in distress, you could decide to become involved and help it. By contrast, ignoring experience eventually shuts it out of awareness completely, until there is no potential for involvement.

Without involvement, conceptual elaboration of experience tends to subside. As elaboration subsides and awareness remains, immediate, unelaborated experience becomes more apparent. This unelaborated awareness is sometimes called “direct experience” or “as it is.”

Remain uninvolved … with what? 

With anything, with everything.

Well, this makes sense. Sort of. Because the printed version of the book also says:

This may seem paradoxical at first. The overall aim of the path is passionate engagement with the fullness of life. That is the opposite of uninvolvement. However, opening awareness leads to spacious clarity, within which we perceive all of life with new, more vivid accuracy. 

We can find that spacious clarity in every other activity. Opening awareness trains us, through remaining temporarily uninvolved during practice sessions, to find clarity even when fully involved.

I've got some problems with this, because I've come to view meditation and everyday life as being pretty much the same thing, since mindfulness is my current way of meditating and I aspire to mindfulness during the rest of my day.

However, otherwise I'm enjoying the book. It takes a relaxed approach to meditation.

Whatever works for you is the basic advice. And in a section called "Scaffolding practices," familiar methods like remaining aware of the breath, or counting breaths, are recommended as adjuncts to the sit and remain uninvolved approach.

What I definitely resonated with in an early section was a discussion of two basic views of what meditation is all about: renunciative and life-affirming. For about 35 years I was a member of an India-based organization headed up by a guru whose teachings were definitely in the renunciative camp.

The goal was to leave this physical world behind and find a better one in higher realms of reality. To do that, it was necessary to beware of the Five Deadly Foes, lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism. So really serious stuff. Vows were taken of no sex outside of marriage, no use of alcohol or recreational drugs, no meat, fish, or eggs. 

Nothing wrong with all that if that's what you want in life. But I observed many instances of fellow initiates becoming rigid, moralistic, judgmental, holier-than-thou, and generally not pleasant to be around. Stifle normal urges and emotions and you've got a textbook renunciative theology.

Here's what the book says on this subject.

A meditation system's view profoundly shapes its goals, and so its path, and so then its methods. "View" is a term for an overarching collection of assumptions about how the world is and what meditation is for.

Contemporary society has inherited many different, sometimes incompatible views from multiple eras and cultures. Ancient views may remain implicit in a meditation system, informing its attitudes and goals. Making views explicit draws attention to potential internal contradictions. It may reveal unexpected ways a path is incompatible with your own views and purposes.

In Evolving Ground we draw attention to two broad categories: renunciative views and life-affirming views.

Many religious systems are renunciative: they see everyday life as inherently impure, and so to be abandoned. Most meditation methods originally evolved for renunciative purposes in renunciative settings.

They were designed to help you sever human relationships, in combination with a life of celibacy and abstinence in a monastery. Meditation was meant to enable a metaphysical escape from a cycle of suffering and rebirth by withdrawing from all connection with the defiled and defiling world.

The aim was enlightenment: a state of eternal perfection, free from the emotional turbulence of ordinary life.

Opening awareness is not designed for cloistered, monastic life. It is accompanied by a life-affirming view, and is designed to help you experience aliveness and connection in relationships.

A life-affirming view regards emotions and self, suffering and enjoyment, relationship and involvement in practical affairs as natural and pervasive aspects of human experience. Opening awareness practice prepares you for spacious involvement with all life's circumstances -- work, family, and society. This spacious involvement is the basis for enjoyable, useful activity in the world.

The renunciative view accompanying a meditation method may sometimes go unnoticed. How do you know when a worldview is implicitly renunciative? If emotions, self, and suffering are seen as inherently problematic obstacles, and it aims to overcome them with meditation, that's a sign of a renunciative view.

Most widely-available meditation methods, ancient religious ones and modern secular ones, were devised to subdue emotions by detaching from them altogether. "Non-attachment" and "letting go" commonly describe such renunciative methods. The purpose may be to "calm the mind."

"It wasn't until I realized how lonely and frustrating it was for my wife being married to the equanimous, distant version of Jared that I started to wonder if there was a different way to approach my meditation practice." -- Jared James, Evolving Ground cofounder

By contrast with renunciative methods, opening awareness clarifies the mind so that the full range of physical and emotional experience is available without conceptual elaboration. With a life-affirming attitude any experience you encounter is welcome.

Spacious clarity includes everything that arises in experience, without ignoring, rejecting, or cutting it off. No sound is distracting, no thought is bad, no experience is wrong. Emotions and sensations come and go in awareness. Disturbing thought-stories and images gradually dissipate when they have space to do their own thing.

As your mind clears while maintaining awareness of everything you perceive, you feel more connected with the world, not less. In this experience of vivid connection, everything seems immediate and fresh.

Developing this friendly attitude towards everything that arises in your sitting practice will have positive repercussions in your relationships. Although opening awareness is most often a solitary practice, its aim is relational transformation, and beyond that social transformation.

This is a path of celebration, of down-to-earth realism, of uplifting courage, of gentle precision, and of open hearts.

Comments

[A Seeker]

i came across this

https://youtu.be/H-SEfK4uFa8?si=nMNZDef8SUDfAGcx

how is 'witnessing' different from 'remaining uninvolved' ?

[A Seeker]

I have stopped attending RSSB Satsangs as a consequence of that incident that happened in the Coventry centre. After further investigations, it turns out the incident was far more sinister than I originally thought.
It was clearly criminal because a satsangi was assaulted, and now virtually the entire Coventry sangat is aware of the incident. It appears that the followers think it's okay.
I have spoken to my parents and asked them why it is okay for sevadars to use violence and it is acceptable behaviour. They have no answer except, "we don't know exactly what happened and don't want to get involved"
RSSB followers are sheep and unable to think. I am no longer a follower.

[Ron E.]

@ “The overall aim of the path is passionate engagement with the fullness of life. That is the opposite of uninvolvement. However, opening awareness leads to spacious clarity, within which we perceive all of life with new, more vivid accuracy.”
And: “Opening awareness is not designed for cloistered, monastic life. It is accompanied by a life-affirming view, and is designed to help you experience aliveness and connection in relationships.”

I quite resonate with the statements ‘perceive and all of life with new, more vivid accuracy’ and to ‘experience aliveness and connection in relationships.’ And also appreciate Brian’s statement that he has ‘come to view meditation and everyday life as being pretty much the same thing.’

Many would disagree and put forward their various arguments and reasoning for rejecting the message of this guide ‘Opening Awareness’, and that’s fair enough, though I have a particular observation regarding ‘clarity to perceive all life anew’ and ‘connection in relationships.’

It does seem to me that we humans having lost our connections with the natural world (which includes other people and ourselves), feel a great sense of ‘something missing.’ We try to fill this void with all manner of beliefs and stories, with pleasure seeking, entertainments and a whole host of distractions – spearheaded today with the latest reliance on mobile phones.

I can offer think of no better example (at the moment) than Stephen Batchelor’s ‘Everyday Sublime’ chapter from his book ‘After Mindfulness’: - “Meditation originates and culminates in the everyday sublime. I have little interest in achieving states of sustained concentration in which the sensory richness of experience is replaced by pure introspective rapture. I have no interest in reciting mantras, visualizing Buddhas or mandalas, gaining out-of-body experiences, reading other people’s thoughts, practicing lucid dreaming, channelling psychic energies through chakras, let alone absorbing my consciousness in the transcendent perfection of the Unconditioned. Meditation is about embracing what is happening to this organism as it touches its environment in this moment. I do not reject the experience of the mystical. I only reject the view that the mystical is concealed behind what is merely apparent, that it is any-thing other than what is occurring in time and space right now. The mystical does not transcend the world, but saturates it. “It is not how things are in the world that is mystical” noted Wittgenstein in 1961, “but that it exists”

[um]

@ Seeker

Let me, as one that has it ll left behind yeras ago, give you and unasked for advise.

IF you leave do so for your own reasons, reasons that have NOTHING to do with what you see others doing, otherwise you will come to regret that later on.

If you cannot stand the atmosferen, stay at home but go on doing what you were doing.

When you started on that path you did it for your own good reasons .. stick to these reasons out of respect for yourself and do not let that spoiled by what you see.

When you started out, you didn't know them, you only knew your own reasons

It is my understanding that what is going on is more an reflection of what is going on in the world at large than that it is typical for RSSB .. the whole world is at drift.

Hold on to youself ... practice at home and do not talk about it with others.
If Sant Mat is no longer a source of inspiration, do what ever suits you but do not let outward events spoil what was once dear to you.

[um]

@ 777
Most of the time I do not understand what you write ... in dutch one would use the word "wartaal". It might understandable to others but not to me .. so not to blame you.

As far as love .. as I have written many a time before I have no idea what it is all about, but I can write the word .

What I also know that there is an difference between how You and Spence, both presenting themselves here as realized souls, and the late MCS, write about the path and the experiences.

[Kranvir]

Shocking behaviour in the Coventry rssb satsang @seeker.

The sevadars are on a power trip because their mafia boss, gurinder singh dhillon also loves power, a reflection of the top of the triangle. Gurinder, shows everyone the manufactured image of a perfect saint on stage, hiding his truly evil nature of a obsessive control freak, with anger issues, a bully to those that tread on his toes and business. This evil soul even conspired to have killed his wife, stole billions off his blood nephews and show no remorse thinking hes the most cleverest criminal on the planet , hiding in plain sight. Gurinder, your days are numbered. You are a crook, a liar, a hypocrite and total contradiction to what you preach on stage. Your rssb cult only gives enlightenment to lucifer , the devil. The mantra sangat get initiated into is satanic. The first word , jot nirunjan means light of the devil. Avoid this cult, it's a spiders web, a soul trap, a route 66 to hell.

[Spence Tepper]

Any effective form of Meditation, whether "Renunciative" or "Wholeistic"; "Inquisitive" or "Liberative", "Embracing" or "Cleansing", "Affirmative" or "reductive" or whatever dualistic concept we overlay it with, if it is effective, will raise us beyond these. And all of them will be contained within that experience.

Deferred gratification leads to greater gratification.
Accepting what is gives us power to move beyond what is to what is greater.
Keeping things simple by eliminating distraction gives us the totality in a grain of sand.
In the moment we embrace ourselves, we humble ourselves.
In the moment we do not accept what society, our family and friends even our own notions impose upon us about who and what we really are, we begin to become ourselves.

"There is no such thing as prayer in which 'nothing is done' or 'nothing happens', although there may well be a prayer in which nothing is perceived or felt or thought."
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Ron:
You quoted:
"I only reject the view that the mystical is concealed behind what is merely apparent, that it is any-thing other than what is occurring in time and space right now. "

So many, many things are hidden. The solution to every problem is hidden, until it is uncovered and understood. The feelings and emotions of other people, particularly those distant from us, are hidden, though people have no problem judging others who live in other parts of the world.

Even who and what we really are, is hidden. You have the layer you understand now, but tomorrow, you may look back and see something else, in a new perspective.

Our ability to be aware, to attend, to understand is constantly shaped by our unconscious, and by elements in our environment we are entirely unaware of, as well as elements we see but have no control over.

The mystical experience transcends these things and brings, in its wake, greater awareness. What we didn't see before, not only within but around us, and in those we love, even those we once hated, now we see and understand. And understanding, seeing, we cannot hate anyone. And we are no longer enraptured by anything. We are all the of the same substance.

But the path of growing awareness, expanding our understanding of the natural world as it is, not how we conceive of it, is the mystical path. That is greater connection with the entire world, not through concepts, but actual connection. If looking through a microscope opens up a world you have not seen before and have little understanding of, then that should help you understand there is much more here than human perception.

And of course anyone can tell you that a focused mind sees more of what is going on than a distracted mind.

To claim that what you don't see, don't feel, don't understand doesn't exist is false. Every good parent teaches this to their child. But like so many lessons, children, as they grow, often forget and need to be reminded, not by anyone's words, but by experience.

And if you attend to that experience, then that becomes your teacher. And that teacher says "There is more to see and understand".

[Spence Tepper]

If you must use words to describe an experience, you have already divided that experience into a dualistic concept.

Words and language are artificial creations. Language arises naturally enough, as we are built with symbol-making perceptual and conceptual tools. But there are many different languages. And all have undergone human engineering and tampering to satisfy the soon-fading fads and fashions of the times.

In mysticism, we are connecting with reality, not with another set of symbols. Therefore symbolic descriptions are derivative.

When we search for truth through language, symbols, we are dining on someone else's pre-digested and adulterated food.

In Mysticism, in Spirituality, we dine on direct experience, before language, and beyond language's ability. Something that intellect can never understand. And there is such uniqueness and joy to that experience of Spirit, and so, without thought, we find ourselves going back to it, and noting that in the wake of those experiences, those divine moments, that our burdens are now lightened, gradually or all at once: That we are now open, and what we witnessed now brings forth other effects: understanding, compassion, insight, wisdom: the peace, joy and love that surpass conceptual understanding, that we share with all others, with nature, as we ourselves are the children of such love; and we are part and parcel of the natural world, even the very foundation of it.

At that point, dualistic thinking no longer leads us.
Until that point, dualistic concepts are all we have to guide us, except for our own inner, wordless yearnings for something beyond them.

But anything that leads one to meditation practice automatically leads one to mysticism. One has to start denying all sorts of things to continue to cling to the notion that the light that shined forth and which we saw for ourselves and keep on seeing was "nothing". At some point we wear out the need to squeeze spirit into a concept, into an explanation, into the living death of language. And then, wearing that habit of intellect out, we naturally gravitate to wisdom instead.