[Marxism] The Dhamma Brothers

[Greg McDonald]

All through the thinking of the Dharma bums, and of Jack Kerouac is a
"Rejection of Reason"
That lets me out
writes George Anthony.

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Jack Kerouac and the Dharma Bums aside, there is no need to reject  
reason to practice vipassana meditation. There was this thing early  
on about the inscrutability of Zen, the koan, and so forth. As  
Burmese vipassana is the only type of meditation I practice, it is  
the only kind I am qualified to speak about. I do not know about  
other types of meditation. If I do recall correctly, Gary Snyder was  
the main personage of that early group to take up meditation in a  
serious way, and it certainly hasn't affected his poetry. Some people  
might even say it has been a source of creative impulse.

A little demystification is in order. Here's what happens during a  
retreat. For three days you spend 10 to 12 hours each day not talking  
and focusing all your awareness on the breath at the tip of the  
nostrils, the physical sensation of the breath as it passes back and  
forth at the tip of the nose and underneath the nostrils. With the  
silent background, mental chatter quiets down, the mind becomes more  
focused, and the body becomes more relaxed.

Then for 6 days you scan the body, one inch at a time, from the top  
of the head to the toes, over and over, simply observing whatever  
physical sensation manifests at that particular spot on the body. On  
the tenth day silence is broken and meditators talk to one another,  
but the meditation continues. This is to reorient to the outside  
world in a transitional way.

The teaching: By becoming aware of sensation without reacting, one is  
in fact reversing the habit pattern of the mind, which is to react  
with craving to positive sensation, and to react with aversion to  
negative sensation, as it is experienced at the biochemical level in  
the body. These sensations arise automatically due to outside stimuli  
being processed by the  mind without our conscious awareness. It is  
habitual. If a mosquito pricks you with its needle you slap it  
without thinking. Automatic. The slap was a result of your mind's  
habitual aversion to being bitten by the insect.  Since slapping  
without aversion is difficult to do,  we say just stop slapping.  
Someone calls you a name, some misfortune occurs, there is a dispute,  
whatever. Negativity arises in the body and the mind almost  
simultaneously, and one feeds on the other. By facing any and all  
sensation with a non-reactive equanimous mind, by observing the  
sensation, not only all of the tension which is present starts to  
unwind, but if there is no external environment creating negativity  
for a prolonged period, i.e. a retreat situation, then all the  
tension that has been stored in the body starts to unwind, years and  
years worth.

This is because a state of constant tension is the physiological  
result of a mind stuck in a habit pattern of craving and aversion.  
Not all cravings can be fulfilled, and this creates tension in the  
body. And many cravings which are fed are in fact unhealthy and also  
negatively affect the body.  Habitually and psychologically,  
unfulfilled craving and over-fulfilled craving creates negativity in  
the mind and body, and the result is a body filled with knots of  
tension. This creates a chronic tightening in the body, leading  
eventually to sickness and/or mental disorder. This is in part why  
people seem to age as they get older. Some is due to the passage of  
time, sure, but some is also due to an unhealthy relationship with  
oneself. Knots of tension are stored and repressed.  At the glandular  
level, we see the release of adrenaline from the adrenal glands  
during the fight or flight set of biochemical reactions, to name a  
common example which most people are familiar with. Fight or flight  
for the most part no longer serves us well as an instinctual  
response. It is ill-served to deal with an overly demanding boss, or  
a crying infant.  If you hit your boss or strike your child you will  
be fired and put in jail. Likewise, if you run away from either  
uncomfortable situation you face the risk of being accused of  
abandoning your post or your child, and only misfortune can result  
from that. Better to face the music directly. By breaking this chain  
reaction at the level of sensation in the body as the mind becomes  
aware of it, and by observing sensation without reacting to it,  
stress and tension is released from the body. This is a fact.

During the course of a retreat a lot of stress is released from the  
body, more so than from any other technique I have tried, which  
includes hatha yoga, pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, sports,  
working out at the gym, you name it.  The teachers recommend two  
hours of practice daily outside of retreat situations to preserve the  
continuity of practice.

  At the end of the retreat, after having  dumped a lot of stress,  
you have a practice that enables you to face difficult life  
situations in a more realistic way. Bad stuff happens inevitably, and  
if you sit there and face it it goes away more quickly. Basically,  
that's it. I sure wish I had been well-versed in this technique as an  
activist. It would have saved a lot of time and energy to focus on work.

Note that the technique says nothing about adopting a passive  
attitude in the face of injustice. Far from it. As one has learned to  
distinguish between the inevitable and the preventable,  one faces  
the inevitable with equanimity, just as one faces injustice with  
strong action. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Greg McDonald