Pirius

2009-01-22T15:01:00.002-05:00

Form is Emptiness

Buddha once said that "form is emptiness". As an illustration, let's write down some simple equations.

0

1-1 = 0

(3*2-6)/(4.15/(0.3+8.85)) = 0

...I could go on and on and with infinite amount of time produce an equation of infinite complexity, which would still be equal to 0, nothing, emptiness.

And if the whole is nothing, can any part of it become something?

The Universe very nicely balances itself out into nothingness. The hints are openly available, like one of the Newton's laws (the force of action is always equal to the force of reaction - to balance the equation).

An interesting question is why it did not stop at the first, perfect 0, where there was only emptiness and no form?

Buddha also said that "emptiness is form". There is really no such thing as emptiness, so what am I talking about?

2008-09-14T14:05:00.005-04:00

Winners and Losers

A loser is somebody who does not have a clear opinion of what victory is. Because of that wishy-washy thinking, no matter how things go, the victory will never be definitive. Loser knows that his victories will always be spoiled by a "but...", and this knowing kills most of the motivation necessary to win.

In a way, only dumb people can be 100% winners, because only dumb people don't understand that every situation always has two sides. You win something, you lose something. Primitive or single-minded people see their lifes as black and white, so their wins are always just wins, and their losses are just losses. As a result, they don't fight with themselves as much as losers do, so achieving a "victory" is easier for them - at least when it does not involve much of thinking or moral judgement.

As an example, here is why loser has all chances to lose in a serios fistfight, even when the fighting skills of both sides are equal:

He knows that he may be hurt badly during fight, so even if he wins, it is still a loss (potential health problems, socially unacceptable bruises, pain and problems with the law - especially if the opponent is hurt).
He knows that the opponent is probably just an idiot who cannot see the consequences of his acts - so there is no fun in punishing that guy - what's the point?
Several forces are struggling in his head - ego, fear, reason, testosteron... No matter how things go, some of these forces are bound to be defeated. There is no clear victory to look forward to. This internal conflict makes him hesitate and, if the fight (or, usually, pre-fight exchange of threats) goes for too long, it will psychologically wear him out. That's why most of fights, even between animals, are finished before they start - one opponent sees that he has no guts to go all the way to the possible end, so he quits.
He is not a hero, his self-preservation instinct is strong - he is a loser, after all, so his priorities are geared more towards survival, not winning.
He is not used to conflict situations as much as the other guy, he does not know how to communicate, and his verbal threats sound lame. He is ashamed of that, and it evaporates the last drop of motivation left in him.

In contrast, the "winner" guy is not built in such complex way. For him, the goal is crystal clear and the promise of victory has a definitely sweet taste. He only has to fight with the opponent, not with himself - that is much easier. So, soon enough he enjoys his ego-inflating victory, blissfully unaware of all not-so-good "side effects" that were brought with it into his life in a long run.

Yes, what about the "long run"? Loser eventually finds his own victories in situations where there is no human opponent in sight (be it collecting Star Wars figures or hacking a bank). He learns how to live with a shame of loss and realizes that it is not the end of the world. So, he adapts - but maybe by doing that he forfeits his chance to reach for the stars...

Winner, on another hand, has several dangers waiting for him: he may get seriously addicted to the win/lose game, and eventually encounters an even stronger guy who splits his spirit in half and plants fear into him. Or he may start treating every life situation as a battle, and ruins his relationships with close people, or just wastes all of his energy by trying to break through an unbreakable wall. He may also run out of challenges - if there is nothing left that is worth winning, but you still need your dose of whatever narcotic that victory produces in your brain, what do you do?

Well, you might ask, what is the right strategy then? It goes beyound winning and losing. First, it comes to single-mindfullness, "taming the ox" in Zen words, and mastering the forces that act in your head. Then, to stop being a loser, you need to let go of an attachment to winning as well - just outgrow this whole game altogether. After all, winning and losing, unlike survival, are just illusionary concepts that exist only in our minds. There is no victory or loss to speak about, if you don't believe in social rules that draw a division between them.

2008-09-12T22:35:00.002-04:00

A Little Something about the Meaning of Life

Here is an interesting idea to chew upon: God created the world but he could not understand his own creation. You know, kind of like when you struggle to solve a puzzle and then all of a sudden it is solved and you do not know what was that you did to solve it.

So, after creating the world and not understanding how it works, God decided to create us, so that we live in this world and learn about it from the inside, and God can discover it through our eyes and our experiences.

This is similar to what is called "evolutionary algorithms" in programming - algorithms that are created to find a best solution among all possible alternatives. It is also a viable possibility that our world was created to find a solution to some very complex problem, but, as I said before, it is possible that we were injected into it to act as God's agents and discover for him the principles that his creation is built upon.

Whatever that divine plan is, it's not really that important. The best thing you can do in given circumstances is enjoy the ride and live your life while you can. Every experience counts!

2008-08-19T21:00:00.002-04:00

Of Structured and Unstructured

There are all kinds of structures present all the time. Each structure considers itself good and other structures bad or evil, simply because they are different from it. "Different" and "bad" are in a way synonymous - the only distinction is whether "other" structures are tolerated or not.

It is a natural tendency of all lasting structures to retain their form. All structures that cannot retain their form disappear soon after forming. This is just a natural law of evolution which is nothing but a game of big numbers. By "form" I mean not just a physical shape, but anything that can be thought of in terms of being different from something else. For example, 1 is a form that is different from 2.

And then there is chaos, which is a true source of everything. Chaos is that invisible force of life that animates. Without it the world would become just a frozen collection of empty forms, structures that never changes. Chaos is the blessing of our univerce, it is the only thing that makes it alive, moving and interesting. Naturally, structures hate chaos because it is the same very force that will eventually kill them against their tendency to retain their form at all costs.

What's interesting is that, being the source of life, at the same time chaos is something that by itself does not exist. It is an absence of existence. It is nothing that will make everything around you (including your own form) become nothing as well. But that is exactly what gives a chance for new things to appear and take their place, thus propelling the life forward.

Hindus call this chaos thing "Shiva", the destroyer and creator of the Universe. What many people don't understand though, is that Shiva is working non-stop, destroying and creating our world as you read this post.

2008-03-13T17:11:00.001-04:00

Life is a mind-blowing example of how a person can get used even to a miracle.

What we all experience at this very moment is nothing less than a miracle: now. "Now" is an extremely rare thing - you can't find it anywhere else through billions and billions of years of the past or the future. Mathematically speaking, probablity of being part of now is about zero. It's like a lottery where you need to guess a million of numbers.

And yet, we all are the lucky winners. We stand right on this tiny edge, the only living place in the vast valley of death that is the past and the future.

We won't be able to ride this wave for long.

And yet, all we do with it is just getting bored.

2008-03-05T12:07:00.000-05:00

You think that you are someone else.

2008-02-27T21:45:00.003-05:00

Define "real"

Reality is a totally human notion. Outside of our minds there is nothing that is either "real" or "not real". Something becomes real or not only because we care to make such a distinction using some rules that change with every generation. If you remove a person who makes the judgment, the characteristic of reality disappears and all forms become perfectly equal to nothingness.

In a way, "realness" and "importance" are very similar notions. "Important" things are what is important to us on emotional and moral levels. "Real" things are important in the similar way, but on a conceptual and less conscious level because they form a basis on which our model of the world is built. Without "real" things the model falls apart and our self-identity dies with it.

But if you admit a possibility that your self-identity might be just an artificial creation of your own mind, you can see that without that identity it does not really matter whether anything is real or not. And if it does not matter, the whole notion of reality falls apart.

Is soul real or not? For Christians it is, just as our sins. For scientists it is not because it cannot be detected in a physical experiment. For me, it is outside of the real/unreal scale. "Reality", "soul" and "scientific experiment" - all these things fall into exactly the same bucket.

In the end, everything that we know about comes to us as a set of perceptions. Whatever happens next, whatever you think of next, is just a new set of perceptions. It's like a dream or a movie - if you knew that what you see is a dream and lacks "reality", would you care so much about what scene you see next? Now what if there is no such thing as "reality"? Just stop worrying about the next scene and enjoy the movie as it unfolds!

2008-02-18T20:07:00.003-05:00

About Meditation Posture

Some observations about what posture and other bodily specifics work best for meditation. I may add more later as I keep discovering new things or recalling something that I noticed and then forgot.

Pretty much every posture is good enough if it is well balanced. Your mind needs to get centered inside your body, and if posture is not balanced, that will keep distracting your mind and stirring the cloud of emotions and parasite thoughts.

Also, posture that is out of balance will disrupt your breathing and that is not a good thing. Breathing is the most important thing for body and, consequently, the fear of suffocation is one of the most powerful emotions that can make your body tense and bring the sense of anxiety into your subconsciousness. That works in regular life too - a lot of anxiety and unrest may come because we forget to breethe properly or sit in a posture that compresses lungs and diaphragm.

Anyway, like I said, any balanced posture that lets your breathe freely is good enough. But the lotus pose is the best. It is hard for Western people though as we are used to sitting in chairs, so your legs are not flexible enough. I can only sit in half-lotus, and even then I don't put my leg on the hip most of the time - I keep it on the ankle, next to the knee.

But that makes my knees to lay too far apart. In proper lotus pose the legs are on hips and that brings knees much closer together. Why it is good? You need to try it for yourself. Basically, it brings the whole body into much more compact form and naturally evokes the sense of being balanced, centered and, for the lack of better term, "at home". You really get a warm cozy feeling that your home is right here in your body, that you are complete and everything is just all right. Maybe later I'll find better words to describe this feeling.

Plus, this way of sitting has few more benefits:

It brings your center and awareness to the "hara" area, as Japanese call it - basically, your center of gravity. That's where all body's power comes from and most people never use it because their imaginary center (where they feel their "I" resides) is located much higher, close to the head - e.g. mine is located in the neck area. So when they act, they act from that center and not from the center of the body. So many problems arise from that - I'll have to come back to this subject some other time.
It removes some strain from the back and allows you to keep the spine in a vertical position easily. Your sit like a king on a throne and you feel like a mountain.
Vertical spine also means that your lungs and diaphragm are properly expanded and you can breath freely and spontaneously. You don't really need to think about breathing when you meditate, unless you are at a very early stage when you try to follow your breath (e.g. count it) to discipline your mind a little bit and teach it how to stay concentrated.
Also, proper lotus posture puts your ancles in a position where they naturally become a comfortable support for your hands - your palms calmly rest on ankles right next to your hara area and reinforce it.

Like with anything else, with meditation you can't just rush in and "try hard-er". First, you need to gradually "break in", and even after that, your practice needs to be very gentle and comfortable. It is all about learning to feel signals that are normally buried under your and outside frantic activities. That goes for the posture too. You can't just break your legs and force yourself into the full lotus. Even if you succeed, in few years your joints will become a total wreck.

You need to stretch the muscles first to the point where sitting in the lotus posture feels comfortable and does not strain your knees - especially this! Knees are very fragile and it is way too easy to make the ligaments loose. It's not the ligaments that must stretch - it's the muscles.

Here is a link to a good set of stretching excercises - http://membres.lycos.fr/zenmontpellier/Lotus-english.html. Unfortunately, on my computer images does not come up properly - this site is old and probably not maintained anymore.

Good luck, friends!

2008-02-17T18:59:00.002-05:00

Zen Meditation

Everyone's heard the word "meditation", but if you ask what it stands for, you'll get as many answers as there are people. Here I will try to explain to myself how I understand it from Zen practice.

There are two kinds of Zen meditation. First kind can rougly be compared to peeling an onion, or, better yet, rooting out a stump of a tree. I had to do this couple of weeks ago so I remember the experience.

What we try to uproot is our primordial state of ignorance, our delusions that have very deep roots in the consciousness. When you start doing that, first you make some progress relatively easily. You find some roots that are close to surface, then you pull them out and feel enlightened for a while.

However, the deeper you go, the more work needs to be done - you've already dug a hole around the trunk and removed some of the roots, but the stump is still sitting in the ground as strong as ever. Even worse, the whole site starts looking quite messy and unpleasant, compared to nice clean trees of delusion that grow beautifully in minds of people around you.

But if you've been practicing Zen for a while, the damage has already been done so you can't just call it quits and go back to your regular old life. Unfortunately, at this point many people get stuck as they do what I would call an equivalent to kicking the stump over and over again in hopes that eventually this will do the job. You sit over and over again and "meditate", keep "practicing" (whatever artificial activity your mind means by that) and you think that something is changing and eventually you'll get a breakthrough. But in fact all that happens is you getting dumber and dumber. You keep kicking the trunk with a bare foot but that will not do anything substantial even if you spend all your life doing that.

The more productive approach, just as with a real tree stump, is to get smarter and try attacking it with different tools and from different angles. Dig a little, chop a little, apply some leverage, then have some rest and try from the other side. The most frustrating part is that almost to the last moment the damn stump just sits there like nothing is happening, and the place around gets messier and messier (that's me allright!). And then - bam! - the trunk starts moving and soon the whole thing is out, laying on the ground. What a relief! Some roots remain in the ground, of course, but they'll rot by themselves, sooner or later.

So what are the tools that you have? Asking some basic questions ("Who am I? What is all this?"), but not accepting answers that your mind comes up with (those are like little pieces of dirt and wood chips) is like using a crowbar as a leverage. Watching yourself and noticing how your delusions express themselves through your thoughts and actions is like using an axe to chop off the roots. And just getting still and sensitive in your mind to listen to messages that your intuition sends out of nowhere is like using a shovel to remove dirt that obscures the roots.

~~~

The second kind of meditation is simply not doing anything. Now that sounds simple, but in fact it is next to impossible for the intellectual mind to achieve. The thing is that "doing nothing" does not mean literally not doing anything, e.g. suppressing all mind activities. It simply means not using your mind to modify anything that comes up in any way - not fabricating anything. Sometimes that means indeed not doing something, and sometimes it's the opposite - not struggling with something that comes up naturally and spontaneously. If the water is still, don't stir it. But if the water is already moving, as in a stream - don't build a dam to stop it, let it flow!

Of course the thinking active mind rarely knows what is the right thing not to do. Most of the time all it is capable of is doing. It moves when it's time to be still, and it tries to get still and suppress thoughts that spontaneously come out of nowhere. But why it is so hard for mind?

I think the reason is that typically there is so much of habitual "doing" going on in our own mind that it completely overwhelms and drowns the intuitive sense of what "not doing" is at any given moment. It's like we get partially deaf because the noise is so loud, and even as we sit down and try to listen to our sense of non-doing, the signal is too weak - we can't hear it.

This situation is hard to change. Unless you totally uproot the trunk of the tree of delusions that grows in your mind, it will keep whispering with its leaves and obscuring sun's light. But you can still learn what non-doing is - little by little, gradually regain some sensitivity, which will in turn bring the noise of activities of mind down a bit, and you'll be able to hear silence a bit better, and that will tell you how to bring the noise down a little, and so on... And at the end, you'll realize that there never was that tree of delusions at all - it was completely imagined by your own mind!

That's an elegant way of uprooting a tree, isn't it? ;)

2008-01-21T22:36:00.000-05:00

What you think you are is just your thoughts. You are that what thinks. You don't need to think of who you are. You can't, anyway. But if you don't think of who you are, you will never realize that who you think you are is just another thought of yours.

This is like a knot that can only untie by itself.

2008-01-06T00:11:00.000-05:00

The biggest strength a man can possess is persistence. But acceptance goes even further.

2007-08-28T09:59:00.001-04:00

If I Were to Create a New Religion...

...One thing that I would definitely put into my holy book - some extra details about my rules and their expiration. "Do not work on Saturdays if you worked more than 10 hours a day Monday through Friday". "Women should wear scarf around their faces to protect them. However, when times and situation change, community leaders should use their own wisdom to decide if it is still necessary".

Seeing how all religions mix highest spiritual ideas with outdated organization rules is funny and sad at the same time. This is how dogmas are born. Time goes on and many rules are not applicable anymore - but a founder of a religion has forgotten to put a mechanism in place to review and change them. None of those founders probably thought that their words will last for so long - in fact, most of them probably were not aware that they were creating a new world religion! And now everyone is afraid to take the responsibility and change rules that have become irrelevant.

And this is OK. Like anything else, religions are born, get older and die. As long as there is something new and fresh coming to replace them, the hope is still here.

2007-08-23T09:16:00.001-04:00

The Great Simplifier

I have just come from a 4-day Zen retreat and want to share some impressions.

Zen-buddhism is all about pointers. Its main subject cannot be explained in words, yet the goal is to make a student realize it somehow. So a teacher tries to point at it, hoping that the student will finally take a look in that direction and notice obvious truth that has always been right under his/her nose.

The problem with Zen, however, is that there are just way too many pointers. There were so many teachers and so many writings in history of Zen and Buddhism in general, that by now it has become an equivalent of a highway with 5 road signs per every foot of the road. "Straight ahead", "Just stop", "Take left", "Take right". "Three treasures", "Four vows", "Right here now", "A formless field of benefaction", etc. etc... No wonder Zen students feel overwhelmed and confused. I certainly did for a while.

The truth is everywhere if you know how to look, so all these signs are valuable... and so confusing for inexperienced practitioner! You are moving ahead, as one sign told you, then another one makes you take a left turn, then right turn, then go back... So all you do is going in rounds, memorizing sutras and chants and never finding what you are looking for.

So what to do then? Simplify your practice. Stop reading spiritual books and analyzing all kinds of ambiguous phrases and self-contradicting teachings that are out there. Choose one simple question and concentrate on it until you penetrate through it and doubt whatsoever is left.

"Who am I?" "What the hell is going on?" Something like that. Just one simple question. Find a faith in your own ability to answer it and don't accept whatever conceptual crap your mind is offering. You are a sleeping Buddha. You have all it takes.

And forget about everything else, it won't help you. More is not better.

2007-08-01T18:02:00.000-04:00

Something About Enlightenment

I wonder why I have stopped posting for such a long time... Lack of energy, that's what it was. Anyway, I will try to write more, just for myself.

Enlightenment - I can compare it with lightning. The charge is already there sitting in the clouds above your head and waiting for a suitable channel to come through. All you need to do is to mark yourself available.

As they say, never be the highest nor the wettest one during a thunderstorm. Well, here it is the opposite. Get up and open yourself and it will come through you with such overwhelming force that you could never imagine. It will certainly burn "you" to the ashes!

You don't even need to do anything. Just realize that things like believing in concepts, expectations and self-protecting make no sense whatsoever. They are like a whirpool in the water that keeps stirring itself. They are an unnecessary tension creating a shield around you that cannot be penetrated by enlightenment. Relax - and everything is immediately solved. Phew! :)

2006-11-24T00:22:00.000-05:00

There are no Bad People
I know many will disagree with me, but I believe there are no genuine bad people in this world.

Those whom we call bad and evil just lack something very important and have so much suffering rooted so deeply in their souls... They cause pain to other living beings trying desperately to bring attention to their own pain in hope that "others" (Parents? God?) will notice it - look, that's what I feel and now you can feel it too and see my bleeding soul - help me! The world hurts me so much and you are a part of it - now experience yourself how it feels and tell everyone to stop doing that to me, to give me love that my living soul deserves!

Of course, that is not going to happen... Pain can become a message sometimes, but most often it is encountered with the same kind of reaction - now you are hurting me, do you want to experience what it feels like? Here, I'll show you! And then the suffering goes on and on...

Compassion.

2006-10-16T23:02:00.000-04:00

A Terrible Thing To Waste
A message seen on a billboard sponsored by UNCF:
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste". Amen to that. The punishment is also harsh - a life of suffering and, eventually, death.
Don't waste your mind! Find what it really is and how to use it properly!

2006-10-02T18:55:00.000-04:00

Coming Back to Your Roots

I have just posted a report from my recent trip to Minsk, which is a place in Belarus where I came from, and two great Russian cities - Moscow and Saint Petersburg. This trip has been a great experience and it has started my thinking about an important subject that I want to share with you.

I have never before indulged in nostalgia or thoughts about coming back to my roots, but now I dig it. By "roots" I mean the place where I grew up, my parents, family and other people who played an important role in my childhood. Now I know why it is important.

Most people would say you have to come back to remember who you are and what is your foundation and principles in life. But I think slightly differently. You need to come to your roots to free yourself from them.

You see, in our childhood a lot of things happen that may define our thoughts, reaction patterns and fears for the rest of our lives. Depending on what events (sometimes of a random nature) you have experienced in your childhood, you may get a life-long impression that the world is good, evil, loving, indifferent, cold, warm, dangerous, safe, caring, cynical, frightful, joyful, meaningless, empty, full. But the fact is that it is all of that and much more.

In our childhood we go through a (usually) ill-designed program of chaotic life lessons and form some sort of a filter that cuts out our perceptions and thoughts that do not fit into that limited configuration. And then life goes on and on and we may never get a chance to rethink what it really is. We act and react to whatever happens in our adult world, but how we do that is largely controlled by thinking and behavioral patterns that we adopted in our childhood. So while on the surface you may look like reacting to the events of today, at the same time in your subconsciosness you may be fighting with your parents, desperately trying to deserve their love or simply running away from that scary black dog that attacked you when you were 3.

So once we grow up, it is really important to rethink our emotional, mental and reacting habits and validate what still makes sense and what doesn't. From that perspective, coming back to your roots is a surprisingly effective way to become aware of many such patterns and to free yourself from that dead emotional and conceptual weight!

In my own trip, I have reexperienced and let go of the whole range of emotions and thoughts that kept me back - sadness, hatred, desire to prove something to people who once insulted me, various fears and tremendous sense of insecurity. All of this craziness is still here in me, but now it is something that I can see, fight and even control!

Now I realize that all these old things were always hiding in my sunconsciosness and controlled me from it. It is almost like a garage - you put some piece of junk in it for now, and then 40 years later you die and that thing is still there. That happened to my grandfather, so I know how it works. Coming back to your roots is like a trip to your mind's garage and it is your chance to take all this old stuff out to the junkyard.

However, there is a very important condition: you need a break first. You need to move out from the place where you grew up and let enough time to pass by (in my case it was 6 years), or have something very big and important happen in your life, or both. Basically, you need a chance to take out that old roll of film and start a new one - otherwise the pilgrimage to the childhood will become just another insignificant episode of your life's soap opera. You must break the life's sequence and get ready for the trip back - otherwise it will be impossible to take a fresh look at what really happened in your past and who were all those people.

But if you do it the right way, you may suddenly realize that your god- or monster-like parents were just ordinary people, younger than you are now - people who were suffering from their weaknesses, fears and ignorance just like you do... You will be able to see every person from your childhood for who they really were - and if you want the best for yourself, you will let them go, forgive them. And you will also tell all those childish fears that the danger is gone and it is time for them to go too because you are in charge now.

You may think that such experience may kill your past and make you forget about your family, but it is quite the opposite. It will make you more human and it will release your anger and all that energy of your soul that has been locked in old half-processed emotions. It will leave you with a sense of gratitude and warmth toward people who once surrounded you - even if most of the time they were total jerks!

You can remember bad things only if you cling onto them, but good things are remembered without any effort.

2006-09-26T22:16:00.000-04:00

Hi and welcome to my blog!

I am too tired tonight to write anything meaningful here, so you might just spend some time contemplating this new and virtually empty baby-page. Everything that was born will eventually become old and die, so this page will never be as fresh and silly as it is today!