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I recently discovered that several months ago, the founder of an important Zen offshoot was found to have been involved in several extra-marital affairs, including one with his senior student. This is not the first spirituality sex scandal, and certainly not the last, and I am not judging his behavior – but what’s the issue here?

In my opinion, it’s not the act, but rather the pretense and vows – including the pretense of being a ‘spiritual master’ – that are the real issues at stake.

I recently received an email from his organization positing three ways I should consider reaching out to him to join his rank of students. Ugh…no. If they asked me if I’d like to share insights and discoveries with him and his group, I’d say sure! But by continuing to insist that his role is strictly as Zen Master whose role is to teach the lost, confused masses, I feel he’s doing his own growth a disservice.

He does seem to be seeing himself more as a human being, less as a Zen Master, so I do sense this might be changing (see Returning Home). Nonetheless, there’s still a long way to go — I feel the next step is for him to simply drop the remaining trappings of the title and aura of ‘Zen Master’, as well as open up the two way street of discovery. The problem is that he’s still too enmeshed in the whole buildup around himself as Master..

Spiritual titles and vows I feel serve to create the grounds for hypocrisy, pretense and denial – little more. Our journey takes us through consistency and contradiction, joy and suffering, experimentation and application, virtue and sin – this is the case for each and every one of us. When we put ourselves, or allow ourselves, to operate from an “elevated position”, we are simply asking for nature to pull the chair from under us. The sooner titles, ranks, vows, and precepts are stripped from spiritual movements, the purer the spirituality becomes.

Ultimately, I’m not saying everyone’s words are equally insightful, or that all behavior is equally intelligent. What I am saying is that our spiritual contributions should be self-evident, not self-proclaimed…unless, that is, we want to sell something. And that is a different topic altogether.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer – Please Read

Dialog often shifts from one perspective frame, to another, to another, nonstop during the course of a conversation:

We might start expressing our own point of view, then take on the point of view of the person we are talking with.

From there, we might shift to a shared experience with the person we’re talking with, then shift to a collective experience of the group we both belong to, then shift to our unique individual interpretation of this collective experience.

From there, we might explore a different facet within our own individual interpretation, from there question the other person’s interpretation of our perspective, from there validate an assumption of their perspective we have.

All these perspective shifts happen continuously, constantly, in our dialogue — often without us even realizing they are happening.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper

Someone shared with me a quote pulled from a post on the Meditation Insights blog, in a description of the book “Face to Face with Fear: Transforming Fear into Love”. In it, the author describes three concentric circles of meditation – the outer (defensive) circle, the middle (vulnerable) circle, and the core (true self). I will riff on this insight below…

Our ignorant habits occur on the outer circle. This includes defensiveness, posturing, avoidance, clinging, and the like. We often skate on the outer circle till we might reach a tipping point – some sort of suffering, frustration, dissatisfaction with how we’ve been living all along.

At this point, we shift gears to seek great change in our life. We now try to directly tune into our core. We take great efforts to ‘be equanimous’, ‘be still’, ‘be present’, ‘be in-the-moment’, ‘be honest’, ‘be aware’, ‘be noble’, etc. However, sooner or later this effort also falls apart, and falls apart hard.

Experience has taught me time and time again that ignorance leads to great suffering. However, tying to life with full passion, honesty, awareness and presence also is great suffering. Why? Simply because such an effort is based ultimately on chasing our imagined idea of such ideals, bringing dissatisfaction to the states and situations we are currently in.

So then, where do we go from here? Well, the answer is the middle circle. The brilliance of this insight is that it’s the middle circle, not the core, where optimum life is lived. That’s where life works. That’s where grace exists. That’s what we tune into, and tune from.

The middle circle is just vulnerable enough, just safe enough, just sharp enough, just painful enough, just comfortable enough, to be ridden. This is sustainable everlasting transcendence. The middle circle provides the tangible gradient through which not emotional joy but transcendent joy springs forth.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer – please read

This is a myth I’ve touched on a couple of times before, but I am compelled to touch on again — the notion that meditation and our appearance of calm are linked.

There is this image that meditators are calm in word, demeanor, action, presence and so forth. While a meditator might naturally have all of these qualities, or explore these qualities along the way, the explicit quality has little if anything to do with true meditation itself, unless of course a calm demeanor is an image a meditator might be playing into.

I think Hindu deity depictions are great. You got both gentle and terrifying versions of deities, signifying the full range of expressions of the divine. Though worshipers pray to both the violent and serene forms, many fail to make the connection that spiritual maturity involves far more than simply appearing calm, gentle and harmonious at all times.

Note: As before, there are multiple definitions of the word ‘calm’. I’m not referring to transcendent ‘inner calm’. Here, I’m referring to any explicit visible quality that one might observe and typically judge as calm. If you look at the picture of Kali Ma for instance, you see pure rage, though her inner light might be pure equanimity.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer — please read

There are numerous reasons we relate to others — four of them are like, adoration, surface respect, and deep respect. Of these, only deep respect has essential value in relationship.

Like is when someone is agreeable to us — they are those we stand with, laugh with, share stories with, enjoy hanging out with, and feel good around. Nothing wrong with this, but it doesn’t hit the core.

Adoration is intimacy — they are those who are your doll, your baby, the recipient of your joy, warmth, and affection. Nothing wrong with this, but it doesn’t hit the core.

Surface respect is honoring those who have a certain status. They are those who have wealth, fame, seniority, good looks, charisma, wisdom, or enlightenment. These qualities might seem great, but they don’t empower us. Nothing wrong with this respect, but it doesn’t hit the core.

Deep respect in honoring those that have qualities that actually transform, engage, and move us. They are those we listen to, reflect on, and challenge. They are those whose words, actions, and presence empowers us, whether agreeable or not. This, and only this quality, hits the core.

Very often we get these jumbled up in choosing the relationships in our lives, as well as the relationships we allow in. Yet, time and time again, it comes down to deep respect, and I’d say deep respect alone, that has any redeeming quality in a relationship. The other qualities aren’t necessarily bad, and can even be fun and refreshing. However, they can only be supplementary, not the core, of a relationship. If they are the core of a relationship, we’ll be dragged down.

Note: this applies to everyone — from friends and partners to parents, siblings, and even children. It can be very difficult to question the value of our lifelong relations, but we might find being honest with their value more important than simply pretending or assuming what it is.

The follow up question — can we learn to cultivate deep respect, or is it something that is just there or not? My friend @renzagliarobb once shook me up — yes, we can and should seek out the redeeming qualities especially in our family members. And I do agree. Flipping it around, I do feel a great many others could not offer deep respect because they couldn’t see past clouds in front of their eyes. So I do know it works both ways.

That said, deep respect cannot be forced, demanded, coerced, or even earned, contrary to popular notion. It doesn’t work that way. It can only occur as a natural result of clarity and wisdom, not obligation.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper

All of us know someone who simply thinks and acts contrarian, just for the sake of being contrary. Mind you, this person doesn’t just share their own views, but actually tries to be different, seemingly for the heck of it.

Is this person just being an immature, pain in the ass? Is this person crying out for attention? Or is there a deeper significance to his desire to express something different?

Well, let’s take a look at the nature of perspective itself. Perspectives on the surface appear to be unique points of view through which each of us interpret the world. However if we look a little deeper, we find that perspectives seem to counterbalance each other. For every perspective on one hand, there’s an equally balanced counter-perspective on the other hand. Caution counterbalances innovation, restraint counterbalances freedom, feminine counterbalances masculine, and so on.

That said, there seems to be a primordial impulse in us to express, or even spontaneously develop on the fly, a contrarian perspective simply to offset current prevalent perspectives. It might have nothing to do with the person’s preexisting views on the world, yet nonetheless this perspective can be considered divinely inspired.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@dustmapper

Pain can be interpreted in a couple of different ways. The standard interpretation of pain is that it interferes with our life flow, preventing us from experiencing the lifestyle we want. This immature interpretation of pain is called dukkha — suffering.

The mature interpretation of pain is that it represents nature communicating something to us — typically that our ego is interfering with the natural flow of life and it, not the pain itself, is the source of suffering. This realization is called panna — wisdom.

Pain thus has two possible interpretations — one is dukkha, one is panna. The more instances we realize dukkha and panna are linked, the more transcendent our life.

Now this is all nice and good, but in real-life, we might find it impossible to simply ‘reinterpret’ our way through suffering with wisdom — it’s far, far more involved. Why? Well, let’s try and delve into it a bit.

Pain, especially chronic pain, physical and psychological, is often searing, unrelenting, non-stop, suffering, 24 hours/day. It requires a corresponding mind of such unrelenting diligence as to transform our perception each and every moment. That is where meditation comes in — not just meditation a few minutes or hours a day here and there, but a 24-7 meditation process that covers each and every moment, and micro-moment, during the day, whether we’re awake, asleep, eating, drinking, walking, talking, crying, laughing, drinking, smoking, relaxing, or sitting.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer — Please Read

It’s a near universal human tendency for us to get upset when we hear perspectives that seem to conflict with our own. Even those specially trained to keep their emotional outbursts at bay get subtly dismayed when their perspective has been contradicted.

Ok so what’s going on here? Our ego at play, of course.

Our ego’s job is to assert a perspective. That’s what it does. Our ego isn’t necessarily ‘bad’ — and unlike many futile spiritual efforts to do so, it never, in my opinion, can ever be destroyed.

What’s the solution? Maturity. Mature our ego by training it to realize how our perspective plugs into the world, not overrun it. Mature our ego by training it to see how our own perspective itself changes over time, often in fact changing into the very opposite perspective.

Through maturity and awareness, without stifling our ego, we learn to transcend the automatic disappointment we so often have when we hear different perspectives. This is the only viable path towards collective harmony.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@dustmapper

There’s a famous self-help principle called ‘Constant and Neverending Improvement’. I think it’s a great ideal, though for the purpose of meditation, I like to tweak it and say ‘Constant and Neverending Maturity’ is what we’re looking for.

Ok, so what’s the difference? Well, maturity, ultimately, is the consummate fulfillment of our life experience. It involves seeing our actions and their reverberating consequences with clarity. I feel it is synonymous with wisdom.

As for improvement? Well, we can’t really count on it. In fact, we can probably count on a wide variety of factors worsening over age — our brain, our organs, our vision, our hearing, our stamina, our endurance, our strength — virtually all our faculties gradually start to decline after the age of 30. Sure it is admirable to want to maintain these capacities as long as possible, and if science brings us to the point where we start reversing these trends, all the better. Ultimately, however, the nature of our mind and body is that our faculties decline, not improve.

Maturity however doesn’t necessarily decline over time. We can continue to mature in our understanding of ourselves and the world till our last breath. The caveat is that maturity doesn’t necessarily develop. We’ve all met children more mature than adults. Maturity could develop over time, depending very much on the person, but there is no guarantee. If we are able to turn this quality into our goal and driving force, then we have a sustainable motive that we can ride for our entire life.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer — Please Read

A resonant perspective is one that is in harmony with our own. In dialog for instance, when we hear a statement that in some ways taps into an experience we ourselves have, we have such a sense of resonance. Resonating perspectives might not even be the same as our own…just on a wavelength that synergistically vibrates with ours.

Resonance is not equivalent to agreement, I must make clear. Resonance is a match on a a vibratory level, whereas agreement is a deemed match on a cognitive process level. They certainly can overlap, but resonance has the sense of ‘synchronicity’ or ‘click’ to it, whereas agreement generally has some processing component – a statement is first determined to be in line to our own before we agree.

The music and sound analogies of these terms work very well in describing the felt experience of how our perspectives mesh, or don’t mesh, with others. Resonance is a deeper level of ‘feeling out’ an interaction and the perspectives involved beyond what we might be used to.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper

For years I’ve held blanket gratitude to be one of our highest virtues..a quality I felt linked to transcendence itself. But over the last year or two, this quality has changed its timbre for me.

The first question is what should we be grateful for? Are we grateful for positive experiences? If so, we’re denying the gift of negative experiences in helping us grow.

Or are we grateful for negative experiences? Then, we’re denying the gift of positive experiences in our life in helping us grow.

Are we grateful for all experience, negative or positive? If so, then the value of gratitude is rendered useless – there is no alternative.

A second note is that gratitude can distort our interpretation of an experience. Reframing abuse, trauma, calamity, and torture as somehow being blessings is perverse, needing no elaboration.. Sure we learn and grow tremendously from such experiences, and in many cases grow even stronger and more grounded than before. However, it reeks of perversion to be grateful for these types of experiences themselves.

As a courtesy and as an human, social emotion we feel, gratitude is incredible and essential. It’s still beautiful and feels nice to express and feel thanks. However, as a divine quality that highlights certain experiences to be grateful for, as well as perversely reframing others, blanket gratitude is not the answer.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer – Please Read

This realization simply flies in the face of pretty much all of mainstream science and popular spirituality as it exists at the time of this writing. However, it’s what I find to be the bedrock of truth after years of the deepest contemplation and meditation:

There is no causation, only correlation.

Nothing causes anything.

Rather than expound of this realization, and all the ramifications (which even I have barely scratched the surface of), I’m going to do something different – I’m going to just let this principle sit there, like a rock. I’ll get to it over the course of this blog, surely, but for now, I’m just stating this. Nothing more.

Well, I will do one thing – I’ll share Buddha’s Law of Dependent Coarising once again.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer – Please Read

I’m going to look at a recent experience under the microscope to highlight the place of both courtesy and self interest:

I was waiting in line at the local baggage counter, and a woman simply walked right in front of me and called upon the attendant for her bags. I was a little miffed so I called her out on that, and she went back to her place. Then hardly a minute later, she went in front of me again and called the attendant for her bags. I called her out again, and she went back in place again. Then a minute later, it happened yet again. I actually yelled at her, creating an awkward moment for everyone.

So what was going on? Let me start by saying I am in India, though I am originally from the US. Let me also say that this is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, this has happened so blatantly. There ultimately seems to be different cultural perspectives involved on courtesy vs. self-interest.

In India, especially in larger cities, there are millions of people clamoring for service. There is no systematic safety net here looking out for people. While social service programs are getting started, for the most part, if you or your family have no money, you basically starve and die. If you aren’t looking out for you and your family, no one else will. Thus, the mentality here is very much self or family-interest. From her perspective, I assume, if she didn’t get her baggage, no system (ie. a queue) will ensure she gets it for her. She had to exert her initiative, and this mentality is burned deep in her system.

From my perspective, I have somewhat more trust in protocols. If I eventually wait my turn in line, I expect to be served, and everyone will be served, in proper order. That’s been my experience for the most part. She didn’t trust protocol, for good reason, and I did, for good reason.

Whose right? Well, it comes down to what I wrote last time about respecting perspectives – it’s essential to assert our perspective, so long as we don’t trample on others. In her case, her self-initiative was certainly not a bad quality – she wanted to see to it she got served. The problem came from trampling on others in the process.

What would be an alternate behavior? If she was genuinely in a rush, she could request those in front of her to let her get her bags first. She could even have unilaterally stated that was what she was doing. I sense I would have admired that. However, by simply brushing past me and others, she trampled on our experience, and had to be totally called out.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper

The principle I hope to share here is dirt simple…but so often neglected that I am compelled to write about it:

We each see the world through different eyes.

This is obvious – no one is going to challenge this principle. However, if we take a closer look at the institutions in our world, we can see this understanding is mind-numbingly deficient.

Two examples are law and politics:

Law – In law, we treat our case as inherently right, diminishing an opposing case in the process.
Politics – In politics, we treat our position as inherently correct, diminishing an opposing position in the process.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s important — nay essential — we protect the sanctity of, and thoroughly give voice to, our own perspective. However, what would law or politics look like if we didn’t disrespect other perspectives in the process?

Taken further, what if we didn’t frame other cases or positions as opposing us in the first place?

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper

Charting out my day has been a massively ego-shredding, massively elucidating process. I would say this is practically a requirement for all of us who live chaotic life patterns and pursue a meditation practice (96% of us).

What I have been doing is chart, simply, what I am going through every half hour during the full 24 hour cycle. After each day, or two, I make connections between different facets of the day – I note what experiences I went through and how they are connected with what other experiences I went through. By doing this, I can clearly see the links between seemingly unrelated life experiences. I can see far clearer patterns between diet, mood, sleep, health, activity, equanimity, awareness…and dukkha. These are patterns I simply would not see had I simply relied on a heuristic recollection or summary of what I was assumed I experienced that day.

Without integrating tools like active charting and journaling, many meditation systems simply fall right into the hands of our ego, which is very good at distorting and exaggerating what we actually went through, especially internally. Meditation can easily end up relegated to the role of daily ‘hit dispenser’, rather than integrator, discoverer, and realizer of truth.

Ranjeeth Thunga
@pov_mapper
Concept Disclaimer – Please Read

PerspectiveMapper.com

Gather Diverse Perspectives, Make Wiser Decisions

Monthly Archives: October 2011

Titles, Vows and Precepts: Silent Trappings

Constantly Shifting Perspectives

Middle Circle Transcendence

Meditation and Calm Appearance — Unrelated

Liked, Adored, or Respected?

Must…Be…Different

Interpreting Pain for Growth

Dismay at Other Perspectives

Constant and Neverending Maturity

Resonating Perspectives

Blanket Gratitude is Perverse

Only Correlation, No Causation

Courtesy vs. Self-interest: A Case Study

Respecting Alternate Perspectives

Meditation Charts

Thank you