Between Gurdjieff and Zen, I much prefer Zen

Wanting to read something different yesterday, I picked up my copy of P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous. Since that copy has a 1949 copyright date, it's a first edition of the book that was published after Ouspensky died in 1947.

My mother, though not at all religious, was a fan of P.D. Ouspensky, who studied a form of Eastern mysticism (roughly speaking) taught by George Gurdjieff.

I kept a few books of my mother's after she died. One was The Fourth Way by Ouspensky. I'm pretty sure In Search of the Miraculous also was her book, though it doesn't have her name in it, nor any markings.

I've read the first chapter of In Search of the Miraculous. It's an interesting tale of how Ouspensky met Gurdjieff in Russia during the beginning of the First World War, 1914. He was searching for the miraculous.

I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of contradictions in which we live except by an entirely new road, unlike anything hitherto known or used by us. But where this new or forgotten road began I was unable to say.

After meeting Gurdjieff, Ouspensky learned of what Gurdjieff called the "work." It took him a while, through repeated conversations with Gurdjieff, to begin to learn what the work consisted of. The first chapter only gives glimpses of this.

Gurdjieff's system exists to this day. When I got my first research associate job in 1973 at the University of Oregon Medical School's Department of Family Practice, a young computer guy working with me spoke about how he and some other people were engaged in the Gurdjieff work. I recall that once he said he'd gone without sleep for several days as part of an experiment that was part of the work.

From the first chapter, it's clear that Gurdjieff had some sound ideas and also some crazy ones. Below I'll share part of a passage about how mechanical we humans are that sounds like something Robert Sapolsky, a denier of free will, could have said in his recent book, Determined. But Gurdjieff also believed that the sun, moon, and planets controlled human actions and were conscious.

This is what Gurdjieff said, according to Ouspensky.

All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything happens. 

All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him -- all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.

Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels -- all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything. It all happens. 

...It always seem to people that others invariably do things wrongly, not in the way they should be done. Everybody always thinks he could do it better. They do not understand, and do not want to understand, that what is being done, and particularly what has already been done in one way, cannot be, and could not have been, done in another way.

This is good stuff. However, I'm not sure if I want to read all eighteen chapters of In Search of the Miraculous to find occasional other good stuff that will be mixed in with the weird stuff. Well, I'll probably read the last chapter, since the Wikipedia article about Ouspensky says that he parted ways with Gurdjieff in 1924, for reasons explained in that final chapter.

After I finished reading the first chapter of In Search of the Miraculous, today I listened to a talk on Sam Harris' Waking Up app by Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and Zen practitioner who co-authored The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. 

This was the second of a series of short talks called "Zen and the Art of Living." It was a breath of fresh clear spiritual air after my decidedly murky reading of In Search of the Miraculous. What struck me was how simple Waldinger's central message was: genuine wellbeing (eudaimonia, as the ancient Greeks termed it) is quite different from hedonic happiness based on pleasure.

There's nothing wrong with pleasure, of course. We should embrace whatever pleasures life offers us. However, what makes us feel fulfilled, what gives us a sense of purpose, what truly satisfies, is being as much concerned, or more concerned, with the happiness of other people as with our own happiness.

This is both part of the teachings of Zen, and a conclusion from the long-lasting scientific study of happiness. Social connections are what matter most to our happiness and well-being. And it isn't possible to be self-centered or selfish and have good social connections. Here's a video of a TED talk Waldinger gave on this subject. 

Comments

[Ron E.]

Just an initial comment to this post on Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. It took me back several decades when I was reading Ouspensky. He mentioned ‘The Way of the Sly Man’. If I remember correctly, he decided to practice ‘self-remembering’. He stepped out of his door to fetch some milk, maintaining his awareness as he opened the door, locking it behind him – and then, the next he was aware of was ‘waking up’ again as he opened his door with his milk in his hand. From door to shop and back to his door again, he had been absorbed in his thoughts and missed maintaining awareness.

It was about then that I decided to practice awareness, that is, to notice what my senses were conveying to me, as well as the awareness of when I was engaged in thinking. This marked the beginning of my ‘practice’. So, all down to Ouspensky who ‘kick-started’ my enquiry so to speak – and here we are.

[Sant64]

II've found no more practical meditation than zazen. "Practical" in that zazen fosters direct appreciation and intimacy with every aspect of life.

Also, I like how zazen has no "moving parts," as it were. That is, in practicing zazen you don't have to plug into an idealistic philosophy or theology that necessitates faith in a structure of beliefs.

For example, practice of sant mat meditation requires a rather complex structure of interworking beliefs to be free of the irk of cognitive dissonance. In other words, sant mat meditation only works if one has absolute faith in one's guru. Someone told me that 40 years ago and durned if he wasn't right. Without that absolute faith, the sant mat meditator is always wading through doubt about issues of who the guru is, where the guru is, what shabd is, what sach khand is, what the inner experiences are, how much karma is in front of him, where he is on "the path," ad infinitum. The meditator is rarely "here," he's always on the path to a somewhere inside him that's outside of the material plane. Yes, there's also times of bliss and love, but for some of us the complexity is inescapably confounding.

[Ron E.]

Here’s another reminiscence from my early readings of Gurdjeif, Ouspensky and Nicoll. A book came out around late 60’s or 70’s entitled The Teachers of Gurdjeiff. The author was Rafael Lefort and describes how he became disillusioned with the Gurdjeiff school he was involved with, so he took off to the middle east to discover his (Gurdjeiff’s) teachers. After being sent from one teacher to another he was eventually given an address of someone he should contact. And surprise, surprise, it happened to be the street that he lived in and where he started his search from!

Some say the author was Idries Shah, the prolific Sufi writer and the people Raphael Lefort encountered were Sufis (Naqshbandi Sufis?) I reckon that if Shah wrote the book, then he was perhaps emphasising that the ‘search’ finally entails ‘coming home’, back to the one who is searching – where the answers lay. Also, interestingly, an anagram of the Name Rafael Lefort is La (French ‘the’) Real Effort?

[Spence Tepper]

Hi SantMat64:

You wrote:
"Without that absolute faith, the sant mat meditator is always wading through doubt about issues of who the guru is, where the guru is, what shabd is, what sach khand is, what the inner experiences are, how much karma is in front of him, where he is on "the path," ad infinitum. The meditator is rarely "here," he's always on the path to a somewhere inside him that's outside of the material plane. Yes, there's also times of bliss and love, but for some of us the complexity is inescapably confounding."

It is a path of love. For some folks, love is easier than deep intellectual understanding. For others, that understanding is TRUTH. Different paths.

Love of a Guru in a culture where children are brought up on Karma theory and Gurus is very natural.. The leap of faith proves itself in bliss, and that is all that is expected. A path of Bhakti. Love is the answer for those who are devoted to a pure love.

For someone brought up on the need to verify factually, it's very difficult. That is also a love. Love of Truth.

But Faith of all kinds is at work. We all have unspoken faith that tomorrow will be pretty much as it is today. And when someone moves our cheese, we are surprised.

Even Truth is often based upon our own viewpoint, our premesis, hence Brian's focus on a more universal platform of factual truth.

Meetings With Remarkable Men was my first exposure to Gurdjieff.

But no mention of light or sound there, and that was what I'd been set up with...So for me Sant Mat appealed on scientific grounds, not on love of Master. He looked a lot like my Dad so it was easy to think of him in the same way...a guy who wasn't perfect, but filled with compassion and love, there to help me make sense of my experience. But it became a path of love and devotion. You are right.

With Gurdjieff I really appreciated the desire to cut through, the reductionist approach. But still you had the personality there.

In Zen no personality at all...all experience, and a life keeping things constantly clean of overlay and bias. There is all compassion, love and bliss in that too.

The path we are on is always an individual path, because it is how we understand it, how we take it, how our DNA lines up to it and what therefore we filter and absorb from it.

But if we can connect with something universal and timeless within, then we are all on the same path, brothers and sisters of the same family...Life.

Waldinger shares a great and famous, ongoing Harvard research project's results (he is the current head of that study). When we connect in a healthy way, those connections have very healthy effects for us. They become the basis of happiness. Not material things, but instead, connections. Those relationships with each other.

[Appreciative Reader]

Enjoyed the TED Talk.

Apart from the takeaway he concluded with, the other clearly is to avoid non-supportive and/or toxic relationships like poison.

And apart from specific takeaways, what I found remarkable was the study itself, ongoing now for close to a hundred years!

Also remarkable and kind of counters intuitive was how apparently uniform were the factors that made for happiness and health. I'd have imagined people at different levels of education and income would be different on both counts. But apparently not, while the guy doesn't spell it out in so many words, that did seem to be the implication there. Cool study.