Shaking things up
yagr
Veteran
For myself, I've found experience to be paramount and preferable to knowledge. For instance, a person who has spent thirty minutes meditating is far ahead of a person who has read thirty minutes of articles explaining meditation. With this idea in mind, I've tried to explore life from a variety of angles. I don't imagine that I'm alone in this but what wondering what you may have done to shake things up.
For instance, when I was much younger, I accompanied a friends daughter to the Braille Institute as she was going blind. Later, I procured some opaque contact lenses, moved to an area I had never been before and lived as a blind person for three months. I got to examine my own beliefs fall away, examine how other people related to me and my thoughts surrounding this. I learned things that I had taken for granted, preconceived notions I, as well as others, had. The experience taught me so much that I then went out and learned sign language specifically for the purpose of moving to another new location and living as a deaf/mute for the next three months.
Today, nothing so drastic, but for instance, when I found myself becoming intolerant toward people of a particular religious preference, or people who are intellectually challenged, or a specific political ideology - I have set aside my thinking and moved somewhere that I could adopt those particular ideals or behaviors and try to live that persona (while making an effort to not do any harm). For example, I moved to a new location and applied for a dishwashing job with the help of a sympathetic friend. In that role I lived as a mentally retarded person and watched as I was taken advantage of by co-workers, offered kindness by folks who would let fear prevent them from being kind to someone who they felt could take advantage of them, called names by some and had others rise to the occasion to try and protect me.
Anyway, as a result, I've found it has helped me with losing the strength of attachment to what I consider to be 'self' as well as my thoughts and ideas. How about you? Any techniques you've used to help?
Comments
A very interesting post.....
From my view, your processes for gaining new perspectives were really questionable subterfuges on many different levels.
While it might have given you new perspectives, the purpose of my meditation is not the acquisition of new perspectives so much as
simply not attaching to or trying to manipulate any of the current incoming sense data.
I get this, and expected a harsher take on said subterfuges. That said, there is still time.
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p>> While it might have given you new perspectives, the purpose of my meditation is not the acquisition of new perspectives so much as
I believe that I understand what you are saying here, though I've had to run it through my own filters to try and do so - and therein lies the problem. I have attachments and I manipulate sense data constantly - and am not even aware that I am doing so. Despite my efforts, I often get trapped in certain ways of thinking and it takes a bit to get me to abandon unhelpful ideas...this method has helped.
My reasoning, which may be faulty, is that just believing that I am 'me' is subterfuge. I know in my head that I am not me, I am not these political ideologies, I am not my intelligence (or, some would say, my lack of); I am not all the things that I associate with my'self'. What harm does it do, in your opinion, to temporarily adopt another persona that is not 'me'?
P.S. @how regarding your comment, "...the purpose of my meditation is not the acquisition of new perspectives..." I agree. I am not trying to acquire more perspectives, but to loosen my grip on the ones that I already have.
"Trying" isn't "doing". Just drop it, and don't aim for anything.
I think that knowledge and experience have to work together in a lot of cases. Using your example, you would not have thought to try simulate the experience of your friend going blind if you did not first have the information about what she was going through. Information/knowledge guided your experience, to an extent. For me, learning to meditate was much the same. I tried it without knowing much about it, and got nothing but frustration and a perceived sense of failure. A short amount of time with a teacher in a retreat setting, and the knowledge I received changed what I thought and so I was able to experience. So for me, I started with knowledge, had the experience, and came out with wisdom, which makes the most sense to me as knowledge and experience combined. Not to say that I meditated once and came out wise, LOL, but just that general progression from knowledge->experience->eventually some wisdom that circles back around to knowledge and enhances the experience and then thus the wisdom and so on.
I tried to put myself in someone else's spot once. It totally felt wrong to me and could have ended quite badly for me. I wanted so badly to understand what the person was doing, that I made drastic (negative) changes to my life to put myself in his shoes to try to understand, and to try to bond with him, in a sense. I cannot walk another's path. I can only support, or not support, them on their path. I do think there can be value of different variations of being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes, but I think there can be danger, too. Even if you try to replicate what the other person experiences, you cannot become them, and you cannot attempt to think you understand what they are going through because you tried it. Not saying you do that, just that I think anyone doing such things would have to be cautious of that. There is more that goes into how we perceive and experience situations than simply the one situation. That's why there is such variation to how people respond to similar situations. One person can come from a hellish childhood and make their lives something great. The next person cannot. All due to the causes and conditions of their life, and their previous lives. My putting myself in that position in an attempt to understand does not mean I can truly think and feel and experience what they did.
@yagr
Wishing to loosen your grip on your perspective should have you asking what is gripping it?
Meditation has the potential of not feeding that "what" where most other forms of deliberate mentality only offer a change of menu.
Success at loosening this grip through a meditation practice does require both patience as you are actually trying to address a lifetime of identity momentum and a fostering of your willingness to try to give that meditation practice priority status over all other arising, living and passing phenomena.
@ how
Thank you for coming back and responding to my questions. I do meditate regularly and have found it to be of immeasurable value. I have found the above to be of value as well. You said, and I agree, with your description, "...only offers a change of menu." but as I tried to explain what my reaction to that comment was, I was reminded of something Ajahn Brahm said. He mentioned his three years as a vegetarian prior to entering the monastery and said that they were allowed to eat meat in the monastery but between the whole frogs and fried bugs, he longed for his 'sparse' vegetarian diet again. The change of menu taught him something he values.
Perhaps this technique is not valuable for the reasons that I've thought. That said, I'm much kinder today to groups that I once had no tolerance for after trying to walk a mile in their shoes. Just to try to not be understood, that comment didn't refer to mentally retarded folks - but I did have a shirt that said, "I'm allergic to stupid people" which I got rid of after that particular trial.
@yagr
Almost anything can illuminate the Dharma when one is ready to see it.
I was less interested in adding my spin to your human experimentation than in pointing out that the efficacy of a meditation practice can provide whatever Dharmic illumination one is able to accept without having ones identity co opt the process.
I don't want to get into the midst of this kerfuffle, but the OP put me in mind of a 1939 Federal Writers' Project interview with a man named Charles Monroe. who is described as a "Hill Town Mail Clerk and Philosopher" living in New Marlborough Mass. Here is an excerpt:
"I try to be a good citizen by performing certain public and personal duties which most of my friends would throw up their hands at if I suggested they perform along with me. In my opinion there's too much 'passing the buck' going on today. I don't like many of our laws - capital punishment, for instance - but since I'm a voter and a sustainer of our form of government, I of course automatically make myself as responsible as any other individual in the upholding of our laws. As a sort of an 'accessory to the fact' I once forced myself to attend an execution down in Sing Sing prison where my brother-in-law holds a good job. It was an ugly business. One witness fainted and another vomited, and it was a big relief to get out of there. I felt like the executioner myself, as I was partly, for the fact that we do not press the button or cut the rope doesn't let any of us off.
"But if I can't convince you that I was a killer in that instance, you'll have to grant that I'm a killer of pigs and cattle, for I've often helped farmers butcher their live stock. I've done this to satisfy my own conscience, for I'm a meat eater, and being a meat-eater, why shouldn't I assist with the dirty work? You smile!"
I hope it wasn't a kerfuffle. I may hold a different opinion than user how, but I really appreciate him sharing his thoughts and opinions. In the short time I've been here I've already managed to learn a few things from him...and you. Nonviolence and mosquito's on the testicles indeed.
I learned to use the imagination rather than boiling myself alive to find out about being a lobster.
Hope that helps.
. . . Next on 'reality tv'
. . . jumping up and down to become a cosmic milk sheikh . . .
Wow.
When I try to "put myself in someone else's place" I certainly don't do it literally. I am envious that you had the time, circumstances, and freedom to do this, and amazed that you undertook the adventure(s). I think you are on to something with the "self" image. Hearing your story is a good reminder for the rest of us that we really have it pretty easy. If there's a self I want to become, I can gradually migrate toward the mindset, circumstances, associations. I don't have to leave my home, my job, my town. The journey is inward.