"Seeing things for what they really are" in Buddhism

Don't be fooled.

When buddhists talk about seeing things for what they really are (as they are wont to do), they do not mean anything the pesky nonbuddhists might imagine. Such as, seeing the sunrise in all its glory, or seeing the beautiful woman in the street as a real person instead of a sex object (hey, it's summer, guys, I'm just as horny as you!).

The phrase means to see things as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and void of self. These are called the Three Marks of Existence. They are directly connected with the Four Noble Truths and are fundamental axioms of the buddhist philosophy.

You may or may not subscribe to this worldview. Fine if you do. Fine if you don't.

I urge you to remember that this is a religious doctrine. Every valuable spiritual experience in buddhism is supposed to confirm it. If you come out of a meditation session with the revelation that things are permanent and very satisfactory indeed, you'll probably be escorted, very gently, out of the sangha. Or at least seen as a very odd kind of buddhist.

This ties into what I said earlier about Experience and Religion. The truth is, there is no way of directly experiencing all things as afflicted with the Three Marks. You simply don't have the experience of all things.

The Anicca part is the least problematic of the three. We all seem to experience that things start end end. Meditation makes it very apparent that this is the case for our emotions and thoughts, and it does so in a highly productive way. But if you jump from this experience, as universal as it seems to be, to a global assertion about everything in all possible universes, you're committing a fallacy of induction. All you can really say is that it is true, with very high probability, of everything you will ever experience.

Anatta suffers from the same problem, but on top of that, it is rather hard to define what a self really is, and whether this is not just a repetition of Anicca from another perspective.

Dukkha is a different beast. It doesn't fit in with the other two. Anicca and Anatta are ontological axioms, whereas dukkha has an element of psychology to it. Lumping it together with the other two seems inconsistent. It has little to do with "how things really are", and more with "how I relate to things".

In conclusion, I believe that buddhism asks you to take a few key assertions on blind faith, and then reassert them with every "experience" that you have. Buddhists do not experience the Three Marks, but they take them for granted, and then use this framework to interpret their experiences. The experience itself, I maintain, is anonymous. It might be better if we tried not to interpret it at all.


It is a religion. Don't be fooled.

Instead, meditate.

Kundalini Danger - The REAL Dangers Of Tantra

I knew a woman, and we got intimate, and at some point I suggested that she try out a little tantric breathing.

It took her about 30 seconds to break off the experiment in alarm.

What was going wrong?

Well, you should probably know that this woman had suffered through some severe trauma. And while, in theory, I knew that tantra might wake up buried emotions, at that point I just didn't think about that, or didn't quite realize the connection with the situation at hand, and suggested it anyway. Luckily for the both of us, this woman has put lots of time and energy into her therapy, and - partly as a result of that, partly because this is just how awesome she is - she is reflected and mature enough to know what is good for her, and what is not.

So, this stirring of arbitrary emotions without any controlling instance, without a carefully set-up safe environment, definitely counts as a danger to me. What if this hadn't happened with a woman in her mid-30s, but with an insecure twen suffering from bipolar disorder? What if it hadn't happened at home, but in a tantra course, with some "instructor" pushing people into the exercises? Stuff like that falls under the category of a psychotherapeutic intervention, and stuff like that is definitely not to be fooled around with.

In short, tantric breathing can trigger re-traumatization in victims of childhood abuse, people who suffer from PTSD, torture victims, etc. If this is your history, you'd better consult with a trained professional before venturing into tantra.

The other real danger I see is that a so-called "kundalini awakening" seems to sometimes trigger a state similar to perpetual arousal syndrome. From what I know, this is quite rare, so it won't keep me from venturing further on this path. One thing I shall say is that there were a few moments when I was a bit afraid of what might happen if the state of arousal wouldn't wane off by itself. If having a few orgasms doesn't get you off your arousal, then what are you supposed to do? That doesn't sound like a healthy thing to me at all. But as I said, I figure the chances of that are actually extremely slim, so I see no real issue.

Interestingly, some of the symptoms seem to be consistent with what some fundamentalist christians describe as the result of the demonic influence that they see behind said "kundalini awakenings".

If you'd like to learn more, the following article relates a personal experience with that issue - it completely turned the lady in question off sex for several years:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/17/my_tantric_awakening_turned_me_off_sex/

Let's Turn It Into An Art Form!

It just dawned on me... in all my attempts at dealing with my own emotions, all the personal-development stuff I've tried, with whatever success... one thing was missing all that time.

Just look at it. Picture me dealing with some "difficult emotion", whatever it is.

The buddhist doctrine will tell me that it just "is what it is", and then to focus on my breath and meditate.

The NLPers will say that I have to break it down into its various sensory qualities, then create a new feeling from scratch, anchor that, yadda yadda yadda.

Tony Robbins will tell me I have not yet succeeded in making "feeling better" a MUST, that I should shift my pose and focus on the right things. Father Barron will want me to rejoin the catholic *cough*cult*cough* church, and Steven Pylarinos will make another video.

The psychoanalyst will try to find the root cause for a few years, the christian will find my lack of faith disturbing and tell me to pray nonetheless, Marshall Rosenberg will offer four stages (not three! not five!), the advaitin will say that there's nothing to learn anyway...

And they all have exactly one thing in common: They offer me one (or maybe two or three) recipes, based on a few ideological premises that are to be accepted. When you cut to the chase, there is One True Way, and by necessity the others are false, or at least not the best way.

There is a certain... fearful timidity to that approach. As if my inner life was like an ancient chinese vase about to fall and break into a thousand pieces!

Do you, my dear reader, share my impression that the best things in life generally tend to make you feel free, spontaneous and creative?

If so, why don't we start being creative about our own emotional development? There is this troubling feeling. I can yell at it to go away. I can consciously choose to identify with it. I can name it, externalize it, picture it as a color. I can breathe into it. I can dance around the room, or at least visualize myself doing so. I can try and add warmth to it, or else push it away and make it appear smaller and in black-and-white. I can focus on my breath. I can come up with a few fun affirmations...

I have all those things to try, and then some.

Doesn't that feel tremendously more empowering than sticking to one method devised by some clever guru? Even if that guru be the christ, or the buddha himself...

Let's reclaim our own relationship with ourselves! Let's turn our self-appreciation into an art form, our self-love into an eternal dance, a fire of passion, creativity, unabashed recklessness. Some things will make us feel divine for a short time, some things will help us in the long term, and some attempts will blow up in our face like a big old jack-in-the-box. Let's learn from our experiences, mistakes and successes, and let's share our insights.

I'm not a broken vase. I am my own art project.

Move To The Rhythm!

Recently, I read a book on trauma therapy. It said, among many other useful and intriguing things, that they endorse methods of meditation or therapy that are centered in the body: such as qi gong, yoga, etc.

Now what is the common factor of all those methods?

They get you to take deep slow breaths, they get you to move in a certain smooth way, they get you to focus on your breath, and they get you to synchronize your movements to your breath. (*)

So quite possibly, this simple trick - move to the rhythm of your breath - is therapeutic in and of itself. I can attest that it feels good, regardless of whether you do the prescribed motions of, say, qi gong, or whether you just move about in that way. I wonder, how about doing your daily chores in such a way?

Anyway, it's part of my daily routine now, and it feels great.

I say, hooray for reductionism!

And Happy New Year!





(*) To be fair, I can't remember whether I read that in said book, or whether this is my own huge revelation.

It Happened So Fast... (A Word of Warning for Aspiring Meditationists)

When I got into buddhist meditation, I was in a major depression. Regular meditation practice helped me with that - it made me a lot calmer. And for quite a while, it was good. Very good, actually.

Now, most buddhist writers (and speakers) place a lot of emphasis on being here and now, not blindly following the fantasies, slowly disidentifying from the "monkey mind", the "mindless mind chatter".

So, ever so slowly, while becoming calmer, I also got more disengaged from some of my old thought patterns, some of my old feelings. That was good, because it was bad feelings and destructive thoughts that got me depressed in the first place.

But at some point, I realized that I had gotten more than I had bargained for. I had lost some of my desires. But did I actually WANT to lose them? Among those desires was my desire to write good literature (in my mother language, of course, don't you worry!). But I didn't realize that there might be a connection; I just assumed that it was one of those naturally occurring periods in which I didn't fancy writing so much. And writing had often been connected with intense suffering, so actually, that felt pretty good, too. So I had no motivation to change that, I assumed that it would just come back at some point (as it always had), and anyway since I didn't know what was going on, I had no way of changing it either.

A while later, I got into tantra. I learned how to create ecstatic feelings at will. And for quite a while, it was good. Very good, actually.

Now, tantra places a lot of emphasis on being here and now, not blindly following the fantasies, instead focusing on deep breaths and utterly slow motions.

That was good, because it made me feel happy, and there's rarely a guy out there who couldn't use some slowness and endurance in their sex.

But at some point, I felt my sexual desire floating away. Not that it felt bad - it was just weird, and slightly astounding. (Maybe I should tell you that I'm basically horniness incarnate. I cannot remember any time before that - after hitting puberty of course - when I didn't want sex. Not. One. Day. Seriously.) I thought it might just have to do with getting older and thus, less flooded with hormones. So there wasn't really a lot I could do about it, and as I said, it did feel really good in a way, so I let it go.

But a week ago, I got back into my old habit of keeping a dream diary, and then a few days later, I started reading a book on daydreams. Basically, it's about how they're a good thing, how they are necessary for any creative effort, for planning, for building a life.

Then it suddenly hit me: I have basically made a habit out of treating my daydreams with disrespect. I was always a rather introverted kind of guy, I enjoy having a conversation with myself in my own mind, I like building inner-world universes. If I don't treat my fantasies right, of course I don't get what I want! Of course I lose my creative spark.

So I'm rebuilding my daydreams now. I'm keeping a daydream diary along with the night-dream diary, and I consciously build up those sexual fantasies again.

So...

Not that I'm blaming anyone, or whining around. I took this upon myself, and now I found another detail, and that is excellent. It's just one more part of my journey.

I just feel that those experiences need to be shared, so that, if you plan to delve into some form of meditative practice, you know that something like that can happen to you. It's not necessarily bad, either - just something to watch out for. If you feel that your fantasies are overwhelming, and they're giving you a hard time, then that's exactly what you want: some distance. If you're low on energy and in a constant mellow state.. probably not so much.

I think the bottom line is that meditation, tantra, etc. are all tools. Excellent tools. But they're not perfect,  they're not ends in themselves, and as with any tool, using them has a downside that one should be aware of.

And never never never never EVER let anyone tell you that your daydreams are a bad thing, filthy, sinful, or something to be avoided. (Of course, there is something to the buddhist perspective that you shouldn't identify with your thoughts, and of course, this is yet another tool that has other downsides that I'm not seeing yet... but... it's complicated. I'll say more about it once I actually know what I'm talking about.) I say honor your daydreams, treat them with respect, hone them, nurse them, water them like beautiful flowers. They deserve your best, and they will pay you back what you give them, interest and all.

A poor experience

This is a post from a (professional, it seems) tantrika, about a session gone sour... I believe it is good to keep an eye out - just because it's "tantra", that does not imply that it is all good and fine, roses and wine, all the time...

http://tantrictouch.blogspot.com/2011/11/several-of-my-clients-have-asked-me-my.html

Two specific points of interest:

"When I practice massage, I am the giver and my own sexual feelings have no role in the room. " 

Hmmm... I'm not sure about that. If "have no role" means that they shouldn't drive the action, I wholeheartedly agree. The fact that they're there... well, if tantra is about accepting things as they truly are, then the presence of sexual feelings shouldn't be denied.

Of course, that kind of acceptance can only arise (pun intended) in an emotional and physical safe-place. Both parties have to feel completely at ease for this to be possible. Given that the receiver was a woman, and the practitioner was a total stranger, well - I can certainly understand her unease about the situation. Sad as it is, women have to take additional precautions in that case. I'm afraid that receiving a tantric massage from a stranger is simply a no-go for a woman. Of course, everyone has to decide that for themselves, but as much as I enjoy the fantasy of practicing my skills on a strange woman I picked up from the street, I very much doubt that it's ever going to happen. Of course, I wouldn't dream of doing anything bad - but how would the woman in question know it?

This also raises the question of whether the roles can be switched. My impression is that for most tantrikas, you're either the giver or the receiver in one given session. Well, I haven't experienced it enough, but as it is, this seems like an incredibly inflexible model to me. Assuming the right circumstances of course, then if the "receiver" starts "giving", it ends up being not-quite-tantra? No, doesn't feel right. Or rather, well then so be it, who cares about the labels anyway.

"Assuming that I had suffered some negative sexual experiences, he said past sexual abuse was blocking me from moving forward in the massage."

That one kinda reminds me of my first encounter with tantra enthusiasts. At some point, one of the guys told me that I "have lots of blockages that need to be loosened." I think it was because I had doubted that tantra was anything but a thinly veiled attempt at group sex, or something.

This kind of ideological hogwash drives me up the wall. That one comment kept me from looking into tantra for years.

As a practitioner of anything - ANYTHING, from psychoanalysis to christianity to NLP or tantra - you never, never, EVER blame the recipient/client/convertee. If they're not open to whatever you're doing, then that is their frakkin' right. It's not your job to theorize about their inner processes. Doing so is rude, it's a form of violence, and on top of that it's mostly ineffective - it won't get you one step closer to your goal. Except, perhaps, if the person in question is highly insecure about themselves. (Which might just be the assumption behind the attempt, and if that is the case, it doesn't make it any better. At all.)

Quite apart from all that - even assuming that she suffered abuse and is blocked by it - then it is still not that guy's frakkin' job to decide when it's time for her to work on that blockage. Or whether she's ever up to it.

Did that guy have a degree in clinical psychology? Duh.

By the way, that kind of blaming is a technique frequently employed by cults. When that guy said that, it made tantra look like a cult to me. All the talk about lingams and yonis, the soft voices, and the excited spark in their eyes didn't help a lot, either.

See? It drives me up the wall, and into writing walls of text.

Starting Point for an Explanation

So, assuming that tantra actually does something for its practitioners - a fact that many seem convinced of, so it cannot simply be disregarded - what is a non-mystical explanation?

Let's look at one classical instruction (for guys - it's actually the one I practice the most):

"Focus on your breath. Upon inhaling, breathe as deeply as possible into your pelvic floor. upon exhaling, clench your PC muscles and direct the energy from the sex chakra up the spine."

This roughly translates to: "Focus inward - feel your breath - feel its flow - breathe deeper and deeper now - and as you go deeper and deeper inside, disregarding conscious thoughts that only come in the way, relaxing and feeling those good feelings, notice how the energy flows..."

To me, this sounds suspiciously like a trance induction. I'd hazard the guess that that's what it really is. Shifting the focus around inside your body helps to abandon verbal thinking, thereby driving you deeper into the trance. And of course, clenching the PC muscles does have a physical effect and produces sexual feelings, because it massages your prostate, and because the anal area is an erogenous zone (even if many males don't like to admit that).

As an experiment, you can try focusing the breath on totally unconnected areas. I don't know about you, but if I inhale into my left leg, and then exhale into the right leg, I get pretty much the same results. If that's not quite as much fun, probably that's because focusing on the organ that is producing those delicious sexy feelings is the best way to intensify those feelings?

I think we might be on to something here. No voodoo involved, no hindu gods invoked, no transcendental energy fields presupposed.

It simply makes sense, that's all! I strongly feel that this practice makes me stronger, that I'm actually more energetic and have more willpower if I do not ejaculate, but practice tantra instead.

This factor remains unexplained, for the time being. I have no frakking clue why not ejaculating makes me more energetic. If I had to guess, I'd say it's simply because I'm more horny, and tantra is a clever way to sublimate this horniness into useful actions.

I Do Not Believe In Energy

Okay, let's be more specific here.

Of course there is energy. It is equivalent to mass times speed of light squared. It is present as electromagnetism, the weak and the strong force, as sunlight and movement, and of course, it runs through all of our bodies in the form of chemo-electrical nerve impulses and chemically bound ions, as long as we're alive.

What I do not believe in is chi (or qi), a mystical fluidum that cannot be measured or otherwise objectively perceived, but is still supposed to somehow "be there", ready to be influenced and manipulated by puny humans.

I think that there is good reason to only believe what is actually proven to be there. And there is also excellent reason to mistrust anyone who claims to be able to manipulate unproven mystical powers, even moreso if they make a big fat show of it and have a huge flock of followers.

Ever wondered about those qi gong "masters" who are seemingly able to throw people around the room against their will and beyond any physical explanation - just by focusing their qi? Well, duh... perhaps it's time to look into why those "masters" only ever seem to be able to demonstrate their magic powers on their own followers - and how, as soon as they are to work their qi on a non-believer, they always come up with the wildest of excuses. Like, "today is a bad day for qi gong" (lame), "It would be unethical to show this to the uninitiated" (really? why?), or my all-time favourite "I would hurt him so bad it's not worth it" (at least that one's funny, albeit unintentionally so).

So... no qi going 'round. And still, I'm an avid qi gong practitioner, and as the title of this blog suggests, I'm also into tantra... an awful lot, actually.

So how can I rationalize this obvious contradiction away?

Umm... *rolls up biblical sleeves* well, it's all symbolic, ya knows?

Naaah. Not symbolic AT ALL. Quite the contrary, actually.

I like to distinguish three seperate elements: a) my actual physical/mental experience at that moment; b) my conscious visualisations; c) my theory and interpretation of the experience

In other words:

I feel whatever I'm feeling while I'm consciously breathing and working my PC muscle; this feeling is there whether I can explain it or not. If I start conceptualizing this feeling, I can compare it to other things - it feels LIKE an energy flow through my body. (That obviously doesn't mean that it IS an energy flow; big fat conceptual mistake there! Our inner perceptions are obviously flawed, as our nervous system isn't very much equipped for that - ever had a wound in your mouth, and touched it with your tongue? It feels much bigger than it really is, doesn't it?)

By visualising this energy flow, the feeling gets even more intense. The line between the feeling and the visualization gets blurred and sometimes completely vanishes, and thus in my mind at that moment, the feeling IS an energy flow. My mind has no other frame of reference, and thus, this is what it will come up with.

Now, when theorizing about it later on, one will most probably turn to the philosophical framework one is used to: If you're a christian, you might interpret this as the Holy Spirit moving through you (though I highly doubt that there are many christians out there practicing tantra, but what do I know). If you're a taoist, you might call it the qi flowing through your meridians. The yogi might find her kundalini awakening. And if you're a materialist like myself, you will perhaps look for clenched and stretched muscles, nerves transmitting signals of relaxation, and the reward center in the brain getting activated.

In all those cases, the experience itself can only be beneficial. Your ideology or your interpretation really doesn't change the experience, at least as long as it doesn't keep you from having it. (I have already been tempted to teach a few past-middle-aged christian ladies how to breathe into their pelvic floors... believe me, resisting this temptation wasn't easy... NOT AT ALL EASY!!!)

So the interpretation doesn't really matter, there might as well be none at all... does it?

Well, yes and no. Sure, we can all just join hands and enjoy.

But for one, as the buddha taught, coming up with explanations is so deeply human as to be almost unavoidable.

And secondly - and, I think, much more importantly - if we can come up with a good and solid scientific explanation, tested with the utmost scientific vigour, then we can use this knowledge for even more pleasure, even more healing, even better orgasms. Of course the trap is to make a sport and a tournament out of it and thus spoil the fun - but this trap is there anyway, even the most "spiritual" people somehow manage to engage in contests of who is "even more spiritual" than the next person.

So, to sum it up: Enjoy the experience, and enjoy making up an explanation for the experience later on! And if you cannot find any explanation, don't worry - it'll be fun anyway.