Lucy Fleetwood
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spacious 🙂
It was interesting when I did what you suggested in the first paragraph, my heart had a reaction, like a little electricity that didn’t feel nice.
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Dear Andrei
Welcome and thank you for beginning this wonderful conversation, there is so much for me to learn hear. I have been immersed in Tibetan Buddhism for the last 14 years with teachers from the Sakya and Kagyu lineages.
When we run the introductory classes at our centres we teach the meditation that Don mentions – counting breaths. We count to 21. In the Tibetan tradition, it is called shamatha meditation, also known as calm abiding, and is for calming the mind so that gradually the mind becomes still enough to then focus the mind – vipassana meditation – with the aim of realising the empty nature of everything that appears. We also work with deity practises. I remember when I began my root lama gave me my daily practices with the advice, practice without hope. Such wise advice, lovely I think 🙂
I look forward to reading more of everyone’s thoughts.
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This is such a fascinating read and opens my mind in different directions. How the senses attend seems to be the focus. And yet the conversation about duality and non-duality also interesting. I reflect through my own experiences. Before finding a teacher and following the Buddhist pathway (Tibetan), I had spacious and alternate experiences, and some I would have expressed as non-dual or with a wider use of the senses.
The Buddhist wisdom teachings on emptiness, that need to be not just reflected upon, but accompanied with practices that can lead to a realisation of the teaching, beyond elaboration, have the potential to take you beyond all the concepts. The view is that samsara and nirvana are one, but our vision is obscured, our Buddha nature (a term describing the unelaborated nature of reality) is here right now, we just don’t experience it.
The two pathways, hinyana and mahayana take people to different places. The hinyana for those who wish to practice for themselves, can take people so far, but not all the way, because they retain a subtle sense of duality. The mahayana can take people all the way, because within the wisdom teaching and practices, this perception of something solid that exists (even if it is just an atom that flows into different states/things) is not there.
The process of practicing can lead to a wider use of the senses, but ultimately, the senses are also part of the dreamlike illusion. The true nature of things is viewed as something that cannot be elaborated.
I’m not sure if any of this is of any value to the thread! But I felt drawn to join in.
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Hi Anneloes,
This makes sense to me, I think it is the same for all the arts. When I write, I write well and it touches people’s hearts but only when ‘I’m’ not writing, if that makes sense. The words and ideas write themselves. It’s as if there is something to be written and I’m lucky enough for that to happen through me. When the writing isn’t happening in this way, it is never really enjoyable, it is a chore.
And I think this can be applied to the whole of life. The place we speak from can also come from our neural habits and patterns, or speaking can happen through us.
I once sat by a lake, and I disappeared into my surroundings, and then a thought came, what’s looking out of my eyes. Sometimes the habits of my personality are looking out of my eyes, attending and responding, and at other, more spacious times, looking, is looking out of my eyes. I just ask myself the question, what is looking out of my eyes, and I immediately feel different, spacious, there is never an answer, just a change of view.
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What a deeply thoughtful thread. We are conditioned to think we are the owners of our thoughts and feelings, and so much of the challenges we currently face I think are due to this. That Tibetan practice is such a good one for creating some spaciousness around this.
I remember while I was training as a hypnotherapist, walking along the street one day, feeling some disturbed emotions towards someone and watching as my neural networks fired up. It was like a firework display of thoughts followed instantaneously by feelings. I really saw and experienced that I wasn’t these thoughts or feelings, there was a space in between them and my awareness of this. But this is a very mechanical way of expressing this, I think I like the ancient Greek way better.
Another time I was sitting by a lake, it was so beautiful and for a moment I wasn’t there, then suddenly I found myself thinking, what’s looking out of my eyes. This was also a very spacious feeling. It is such a shame that the classics were taken out of the education system at the beginning of the 1900’s.
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Hi Don, ‘prana shakti’ interesting to read this. I work as an Ayurvedic coach with people between stages 1-4 of the disease process, training with the American Institute of Vedic Studies. I’m also a Tibetan Buddhist of 14 years. I am still learning 🙂 I wondered if TMWT addresses the idea of prana, and also the Tibetan Buddhist concept of mind (I haven’t read it yet).
I have conversations with my Buddhist friends about AI and they will say, but Lucy AI cannot touch the mind. I find myself baffled in relation to AI and possible implants in the future, connecting the human brain to a machine, and how this impacts our humanness in relation to our (Buddhist concept of) mind, and in relation to prana (I’m still not quite sure how to think about prana in relation to the Buddhist ideas of mind).
I guess these thoughts are a little off track with this thread. I need a better understanding of Iain’s thoughts in relation to the RH. Am I right in thinking that Iain explains the RH is the part of the brain that connects with the spiritual/animated/God/other word/ aspect of life while the LH doesn’t?
One thing that does work for me in life though, in relation to working with people and living life, is to connect from my heart, the rest flows from there. How does the heart fit with it all? For a Buddhist the heart is the mind (as opposed to the brain), there maybe no words but there is knowing.
When you have a traumatic experience, if you are in the company of someone who knows that experience and has moved through it to a place of healing, just being in their company can shift things for you. On the other hand you could talk till the cows came home to someone that had theories but not the experience, and stay stuck. I think that is what the heart brings, a mind that operates beyond the limited function of words and LH reasoning.
Well, I am rambling, but all these different rambles, do go together 🙂 I’m just still in flow with my thoughts.
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What an interesting conversation. I have a couple of questions, and please forgive me if I seem a little ignorant, I am at the beginning of my learning.
First, does Dr McGilchrist say that the LH is running away? I thought he suggested that our culture conditions us to use the LH over the RH, which perhaps has a different understanding/meaning?
And “LH deserting its station…” , gives a feel of the LH being a thing that is doing something, rather than a way of attending and acting in the world, and perhaps that gives a slightly different understanding to this conversation, or perhaps I’m just misreading the meaning of theses words, words are such blunt intstruments.
Second, ‘…I might speculate on how one might involve one hemisphere more than the other…’ This intrigued me. I trained in hypnotherapy, and part of that training talked about the left pre-frontal cortex being the intelligent, reflective, spacious part of the brain, able to imagine and come up with positive thoughts and scenarios, and this was contrasted with the survival brain which can only respond from a place of negativity, anxiety, anger, depression and obsession (not necessarily all!). The view is that as stress builds the brain has a metaphorical stress bucket which it empties each night during REM sleep, but because REM sleep is only about 20% of our sleep cycle the brain doesn’t always manage to process all the stress, and when that metaphorical stress bucket starts to fill up we start to operate from the survival brain. The idea being that when stress levels in that metaphorical bucket become too high the person cannot function from the left pre-frontal cortex and the thinking becomes negative, with the inability to reflect and the brainwaves shift from beta (everyday consciousness) to high beta. The solution, we are taught, is to engage the person in solution focused conversation to start getting the positive neural networks firing up again, and relax them into a light trance state that is similar to day dreaming. And so I was thinking, perhaps this process is a way of helping people shift from the LH to the RH, for those whose brain is operating from the survival brain (for instance, the survival brain can cut out the functioning of the left pre-frontal cortex when there is a post traumatic stress disorder that is triggered). But I have to say I am confused, in that the LH has been assigned with a lack of spacious thinking, and I have been taught that the left pre-frontal cortex is the reflective positive part of the brain, I wondered if you had any thoughts regarding all this?
Thirdly, I find this really interesting and wondered if others had any thoughts around it? “I find in many of the discussions on this channel, LH and RH are referred to as if they are discrete entities, and on the verge of assuming they control consciousness rather than are vehicles for it, or perhaps more accurate, simply reflect – as does all matter – activities of consciousness….”
Fourthly, does Dr McGilchrist really say that “…RH activity more often correlates with depressed feelings,” – I’m sorry for my lack of knowing this, but I am wondering if there is a context to when and how he said this? The reason I ask is because my understanding is that the RH is where we attend and operate from when we have spiritual experiences that are euphoric, blissful and awakened?
Many thanks if you have read to the end.
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Hi to everyone, what an interesting conversation.
In relation to Don’s question as to whether this would apply to the working classes as well, I would say a definite ‘Yes’. I know lots of working class people, myself included, who are conditioned to operate from the LH through news, culture and social media, in fact I’d go as far as to say, we are caught and captured there. But I would love to hear if you feel or think differently. Such an interesting subject.
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This is an interesting topic. I wonder if it is necessary to repress, since the LH is so useful for certain things. Would it be better to teach them the value of each hemisphere of the brain. Is suppression a LH approach?
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HI Paul, I completely agree.
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Hi Andrei,
That is all so good to hear. Yes, I meditated in a simple way for about 15 years daily, having a number of experiences and bumping into various Buddhist groups throughout that time. I never intended to become a Buddhist. But one day in my early 40’s I thought, I need to find a pathway and go deeper, I need a teacher, to see what that is like. I spent a year going to lots of events and groups with a deep knowing that I would feel it in my bones (if that makes sense) when I met the right teacher for me. I went to Satsangs, the quakers, Buddhist groups and even the Abbey where I lived, as well as various spiritual teachers that leant into the new age movement. But I didn’t feel any of them in my bones. So I let go and decided that perhaps I had got the idea of meeting a teacher and specific pathway wrong. Then a year later, I thought I would like to meditate with a group again – I had a strong practice of 15 years meditating morning and evening and taking that into my days and nights. I went to the end of the road and round the corner to a meditation group. It happened to be a Buddhist group.
I should give a little context to what I’m about to say. I had been going deaf from my mid 30’s, I’m not completely deaf, but I have lost a fair bit of my hearing in both ears, and prior to getting hearing aids, as the silence grew stronger, I noticed over a period of years that the sound of the silence, the vibration of it, changed depending on where I was and who I was with. When the situation or person was very heart based, my body would respond to the sound of the silence, the vibration of it, as if I was listening to the dawn chorus.
Well when I sat with this little group of people in calm abiding meditation (counting the breaths), the sound of silence was just like that, my body was responding as if I was listening to the dawn chorus. This experience became stronger and stronger with each week that went by, and then one evening I had an experience that left me in no doubt that this was the pathway for me. And I took refuge, because I could feel it in my bones.
After 3 years of strong practice and teachings, I stepped back to process some ego things that had arisen, to give myself time to reflect. I joined a completely different Buddhist group that a friend belonged to. This coincided with my two sons taking off into the world and me taking a gap year that became 3. The space and reflection I took lasted 7 years! But throughout the whole time there was a connection with the lama that I took refuge with, quietly on the inside of my mind. I would see him in my dreams or when I woke in the middle of the night with a reflection about Buddhism and life, and there was always an answer to my questions and reflections. Then the time came when I new without a doubt that it was time to get in touch with my root lama and ask if I could be his student again. He replied, “You never left the path”.
I never felt any doubt in my heart and bones in relation to my lama or the lamas in the lineage that I am rooted in, but I did have the need to step back and take a good look at other groups and where that took me in my thoughts. And what I have found is that there is no time really, just a gentle journey into the heart, and a getting to know the mind stream that I am waking up into. And if I leave this life with a little more humility, a little more softness in my heart, and a mind that is open to waking up, that will be a very good, and this pathway can do that with me. I can feel it in my bones. I don’t look for experiences in my practice or meditations, I just turn up for life, carry out my practices, go to the teachings, and keep everything very simple. In this way I find the nature of my mind, changes, in very subtle, gentle ways. And I do this without hope 🙂
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Hi Don,
That is really interesting!
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Hi Anneloes,
That sounds so interesting, do you have any links to your music?
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Hi Don,
Thank you for your reply. Another concept of Tibetan Buddhism is the idea of relative and ultimate reality. The view is that at the relative level, we exist, and experience ourselves as separate beings that truly exist, but at the ultimate level (true nature of reality), we don’t, anymore than the person we were last night in our dreams actually exists. The reason it is so hard to articulate this, is because it is beyond elaboration, as soon as we use language, we can only point in a direction. And we do all our thinking through our sense of being a person. Suffering for Buddhism is this mistaken identification with a self. The ego is a process that we assign a self to. We do a similar thing with ideas of ‘soul’. It’s fascinating. In Buddhism there are the two vehicles (pathways), hinyana and mahayana. They each have skillful ways to create the conditions withing the mind that will allow for enlightenment, except the hinyana retains a subtle sense of self, that prevents enlightenment. The mahayana vehicle which focuses on traveling the path for the benefit of all beings, aims to cut through this. Someone on the mahayana path will also practice the hinyana pathway that creates right moral conduct and addresses the disturbed emotions, which then gives space to practice the mahayana practices. And these practices teach how suffering is due to this mistake sense of self. And so, from this perspective, if we cling to the idea of a soul, that ‘I’ exist beyond dependent origination, then we stay stuck in samsara living our the karma within the mindstream. I am probably not explaining this very well. I wonder about the LH and RH, does the sense of ‘self’ belong to the LH and no sense of self with the RH, or have I got that wrong?
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I find this thread very interesting. I am a Buddhist (Tibetan), and in Buddhism there is not a belief in a soul. Rather the view is that life in samsara has various realms that we cycle through until we awake to the true nature of reality, often called buddha nature or dharmakaya, which is beyond conceptualisation or elaboration. I have also studied Ayurveda, and in an incredibly small way, I’m aware of the Vedic view that we are making our journey back to source (if anyone knows more and I have got this wrong please correct me). I don’t have a good understanding of this, and don’t know if the Vedic pathway has a belief in soul. For Tibetan Buddhism, the Vedic Gods are still part of Samsara (cyclic existence based on karma and dependant origination), all the 6 realms of Samsaric existence are viewed as states of mind, but not a mind that belongs to a ‘person’, rather a mind stream. I am interested in the words we use in different traditions, to frame our journey of understanding through life.