UNBORN VITALITY - ZEN & THE WORK OF THE LIBERATION OF HABIT-ENERGY
Newsletter, 08 October, 2023
"And so onwards along the path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence! However you may be, be your own source of experience! Throw off your discontent about your nature; forgive yourself your own self, for you have in it a ladder with a hundred rungs, on which you can climb to knowledge. The age into which you feel yourself thrown with sorrow calls you blessed because of this stroke of fortune; it calls to you so that you may share in experiences that men of a later time will perhaps have to forego. Do not disdain having once been religious; investigate thoroughly how you once had a genuine access to art. Do not these very experiences help you to pursue with greater understanding enormous stretches of earlier humanity?…And by wanting with all your strength to detect in advance how the knot of the future will be tied, your own life takes on the value of a tool and means to knowledge. You have it in your power to merge everything you have lived through-attempts, false starts, errors, delusions, passions, your love and your hope-into your goal, with nothing left over: you are to become an inevitable chain of culture-rings, and on the basis of this inevitability, to deduce the inevitable course of culture in general. When your sight has become good enough to see the bottom in the dark well of your being and knowing, you may also see in its mirror the distant constellations of future cultures. Do you think this kind of life with this kind of goal is too arduous, too bereft of all comforts? Then you have not yet learned that no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge, and that the hanging clouds of sadness must serve you as an udder, from which you will squeeze the milk to refresh yourself. Only when you are older will you perceive properly how you listened to the voice of nature, that nature which rules the whole world through pleasure. The same life that comes to a peak in old age also comes to a peak in wisdom, in that gentle sunshine of continual spiritual joyfulness; you encounter both old age and wisdom on one ridge of life-that is how nature wanted it. Then it is time, and no cause for anger that the fog of death is approaching. Towards the light-your last movement; a joyful shout of knowledge-your last sound."
Human all too human
Isn't that one of the greatest things you’ve read?
I always try to remember to be grateful for the possibilities to merge; something about which most will never have even an inkling of understanding. A link of the inevitable chain of culture rings. It's definitely a heartening thought, I like to remind myself of it through various struggles.
Zen and Buddhism generally have a bad rap amongst Western-centric vitalistic e-philosophers. Viewing from the outside at a cursory glance, this is understandable. The often misunderstood ideas of "samsara", "life as suffering", or dukkha are often mocked as being yet another form of weak, turn the other cheek type views. At odds with what is powerful, and beautiful and thus the very last thing anybody in this world needs. I’ll grant that it is understandable on a philosophical or theoretical level that such sentiments could be seen as life-denying or invital.
Yet, it betrays the general tendency for this online commentariat to trust words, thinking & abstraction above all else. Choosing not to run empirical experiments to test, as the Buddha himself said that one must do. Not to trust his words only.
"Verify for yourself," the Buddha informed the Bikkhus, "whether what I teach corresponds with the truth." He used a single word to express this sentiment: Ehipassiko, or “come and see”.
That is the point of this newsletter and blog: test and verify for yourself as the ultimate standard of proof. That's the good thing about this bio-individual-type work; to a large extent, that is possible because other than tangible outcomes and planned actions, there’s really nothing else to believe in outside of what you choose, for fun and profit.
Things are not true because the Buddha or anyone else says they’re so. I know we like to think the opposite is the case, but it simply cannot be. Truth is 'true' because it corresponds with the reality. Belief is an assertion without evidence, and is untrue, or at best maybe true.
In this way, the problem with framing the practice of Buddhism as invital, at least that of Zen, is that such conclusions are never tested through vital methods. Testing requires work and experimentation. The philosophy itself needs to be understood through practice. Truths of psychology and experience as it is, expressed in words pointing to something beyond them to be verified by practice. All valid things worth your time should be like this.
Non-empirical analysis of Zen is typically nothing beyond an internal symbol representation that "feels good" to the individual stating the internal demarcation. This is then seen as "truth". This is true of both detractors and adherents. In simplistic terms, the only verification conducted in these cases is "how I feel about it". No matter how cleverly we garnish things with clever words or concepts. In my opinion, and that of Nietzsche who visits this newsletter more than usual, it is, in fact, this predilection that constitutes real disconnectedness. Real invitality.
In a way it's genuinely ironic for commenters on vitality that they would only trust words and theories that feel good to them to parse out the features of the phenomenal and empirical world in it’s various expressions.
But here, at Chateau Le Islands de Transcendence, we can see clearly why such viewpoints and criticisms while perhaps containing some kernels of truth worthy of consideration, don't hold a bar to our personal experimentation and verification. Of our doing and use. Doing and use reveals the truth about these practices being invital or not. Not words and subjective feelings disguised as assortments of world salads.
For a bio-individual, that's the name of the game.
PNEUMA AND PSYCHE - JUST THIS BREATH & WESTERN ZEN?
I recently came across an academic article (I've since lost the link - I will endeavour to find and post it in notes) where the author explained that classical Greek philosophers intuited that the vital energy that animates all life and the cosmos enters the bodies of living organisms by their breath.
According to the author, the strength of will and vital force of an organism was seen as being determined by the power and reservoir of vital energy available to and reserved within the organism.
All living creatures' lives are controlled by their bodies' availability and expression of such energy. Such an animating vital force was referred to as pneuma in ancient Greek.
This fits nicely with the Gestalt of vitality we investigated in prior weeks. A gestalt of pneuma for you sirs?
Aristotle, as one who modelled this, tells us of something other than pneuma, a complimentary but scarcely perceptible form and a kind of essence that affects the phenomenal lives of all living organisms; he called it psyche. Psyche was the essence, indistinct or not separate from the thing itself.
Psyche was the essence, or form. Pneuma was then, to Aristotle, the animating vital force or heat. (Heat something I've discussed here through the frame of the Buddha and Heraclitus a few newsletters back). As an aside, I really dislike talk of essences, but I’m willing to acknowledge the internal logic here.
He distinguished between the vital heat in lower and higher animals, referring to it as soma physikon pneuma (warm air) for higher animals such as ourselves.
Pneuma mediates the relationship between the form and the body, and the power of the Gestalt of their interaction is reflected as a spark or force in the organism. The amplitude of the arousal or desire created. For Aristotle, pneuma constituted a prime mover represented in the outward perceptible vitality of the organism.
Bringing us back to the original point:
"The Greek word psyche, meaning 'soul', has the same root as psychein, meaning 'to breathe'; and the Greek word pneuma, meaning 'spirit', also means 'wind'. Furthermore, the Latin words animus, meaning 'spirit', and anima, meaning 'soul', come from the Greek anemos, which is another word for 'wind'."
- York University
I would guess the archaic Greeks intuited or just flat out saw as obvious, that heat generated by such processes intermediates between the conditions of mind and body, adjusting and harmonising them.
The Zen tradition approaches life in much the same way, albeit more focused on practice and a little less on models and explanations in the proto-scientific Aristotelean manner.
Posture, breath and mastery comprise a considerable segment of the practice. Entire cultural movements have sprung up surrounding the breath and belly as the central spiritual focus of the human organism in many places in the East, particularly ancient China and Japan. Those familiar with my work here will be familiar with much of this history and technique.
The explanatory or analytic watermark such cultures place over the experience of biology as we understand it at least may differ outwardly. Nonetheless, what is being pointed to is perhaps precisely the same function and process.
It seems fitting that we begin such an article on Zen and vitality by engaging with an experience of what vitality really is and what happens when you practice it.
Even if it is only a momentary glimpse.
EXPERIMENTING
Set yourself somewhere comfortable, preferably sitting up or kneeling in meditation posture, but lying down if you're a cripple…
Going Deeper into the liberation of habit energy….
ii) Before you read on, try this experiment. It is an excellent preparatory exercise a zen master shared with me. Remember:
Only those
who live from the belly
can take advantage of both ends
-The Good Doctor
While you do this, think about what's been said. See if you notice what was said. Watch the heat in your body, the changes in your mind, what habits come up…
A pillar of proper mind and focus in Zen is the adjustment of breathing and the mediation it induces - as elaborated above.
In the Kana Shōbōgenzō, the bible of Zen practice and philosophy, "Zazen-gi", Eihei Dōgen tells us: “Once the body's form is stabilised, adjust the breathing”.
In a seated position (or lying down), exhale for a long time, as long as you can until you empty your lungs. Using your mouth and keeping it open as if trying to connect the air flowing outside of you with the air coming out of your lower abdomen. While doing this, view it as if you're trying to create a physical relationship between the "2 things" - external air and inner core, or lungs/belly. (2 inches below your belly, as if an internal "balloon" extends through all tissues in 3 dimensions). This should be quite forceful, or better said, "energetic". I like to make a forceful sound when I engage in this part.
NOTE: Through the subsequent movements, although you may find yourself automatically clenching ancillary muscles in the throat of chest. Resist gripping your throat, chest, and other ancillary musculature while inhaling or exhaling.
On the inhalation, let the inhale drift right in without trying to "breath in." - there should be a whiplash effect as the pressure automatically creates a drawing in or breath - that doesn't require your explicit participation when done well due to the equalisation of internal and external pressure. Do this maybe 5 times, or however many times you like.
Your next move should be to do the same: exhaling a long streaming breath; however, this time, really focus on the contraction of your lower abdomen. On this contraction phase, only focusing on your lower abdomen, you will find that the bottom of your chest will also be engaged - but do not consciously force this. With the contraction, noise, and entire lung of air, a good, decent exhalation will take about thirty seconds - unless you have issues. However long you can do it is ok. You may purse your lips to drag out the exhalation and create a sound.
You should start to feel like your mind is clearing out. As we add another step to this process, and upon final exhalation completing this another 5-10 times, simply relax your lower abdomen, ready for the next phase.
On the inhale, begin to draw breath from your nose. As explained, due to pressures, inhalation should come naturally without using any ancillary muscles. Let the inhalation fill the area below the navel and into your lower chest without forcing.
On this next inhalation, pause for one second. And exhale, preparing for the next step…
Before drawing breath, extend your lower abdomen outwards while contracting the perineum (which mainly involves the spinal diaphragm). Gently push this breath into your lower abdomen - as low as possible. Try to feel that you're squeezing the breath as it is in your lower abdomen. Keeping the perineum, spinal diaphragm, and anus “closed”, exhale the air like described earlier - through the mouth for about 30 seconds.
9. Repeat this final sequence about 10 times - or as many times as you like.
What do you notice about your state of mind?
Can you remember what it was, the content?
What does this tell you about what "thinking" really is?
Do you feel sensations of heat?
Any other sensations?
Keep this in mind, and let's read on…
FEAR AND CATASTROPHE
"Disturbing thoughts and opinions can be abruptly discarded like broken dippers; emotional delusions cannot be discarded except gradually like the filaments of the lotus root."
- Zen Proverb
We are being energetically consumed. No nasty demons. No occult force is exacting this.
In the past, I have referred to bundles of habits as knots and contractions, and stated that such contractions are energetically expensive. Which is entirely accurate in a psycho-physiological sense.
In part, patterns most of us retain result from playing it safe. Playing it safe helps us avoid some form of fantastical catastrophe.
Like a child, the monster under the bed is almost always wholly imagined. We all at once reinforce with habit and devices to ways to try and outwit our fear of catastrophe, and we become stuck in doing so.
Supposed principles, cherished concepts, "our morals", wishes, hopes, and books I read once...Even having our little enemies. These are symbolic representations of our stylised, artificial "stuck" habit energies. A fear of catastrophe reinforces all of it, and acts as the foundation. We often live a fear-based response to life. Because of this, any true dynamism is blunted. Emerging from stuck habit-energies is invitality.
If anything is true of this modern world, it is that the hoi polloi operate from fear. Almost everything they and their governments do is geared to try and avoid some imagined catastrophe. Each form is peculiar to their root culture and their own strange life experience. As individuals and groups it is through this fear and demented habit-imagination that the architecture of the lamest, most dishonest world imaginable is drafted.
"Fear is the mother of morality."
Nietzsche - beyond good and evil
WORDS ON ZEN, HABIT-ENERGIES, VITALITY & THE BOUND SPIRIT
Although Zen Buddhism is typically seen as religious or spiritual, it offers something far more profound than that, as I've indicated in the past.
It is, in my opinion, mostly a kind of physiological training. A pyscho-physiological training. Some I know have expressed annoyance that I denigrate their spiritual traditions in such a way, but I believe the opposite is the case. The superstitious spiritualism denigrates these technologies, and needlessly obfuscate their true value to the earnest.
Zen shows us all the processes of experience in their ultimate context. It shows us, simultaneously, the world before concept formation. Before the binding and formation of habit-energy.
In this way, our bound habit-energies become increasingly apparent to us. Over time, we become capable of seeing a world without them, devoid of them - the world as it is, a free world. Once spotlighted in their ultimate context, a confrontation with these ghosts and fantasies is undergone. With some luck and guidance, many habit-energies are liberated or cleansed.
Societal influences and familial or civilisational pathologies create a feedback loop of convention in individuals. Some of these things may be okay and worth hanging on to, but in most cases they are bound up in the human being in all sorts of self-defeating and irrational ways.
The outcome of this is the creation of a bound spirit, to borrow from Nietzsche. A spirit bound in the chains of habit-energies - to be precise. The bound spirit is fighting with its own mental creations, so far from the organic that other than disconcerting moments, it can’t even begin to see what is actually happening.
All these feedback-loop reinforcements of a bound spirit form the basis of invital automation in life. They can be well understood as brain pollution that forms the basis of fear automation and personal catastrophe avoidance. Such a conscious agent becomes stiffened towards the world in its own twisted way. It’s focus greatly narrowed in addition to being automated. A rainman.
Protecting us from confrontation with the vital and the anxiety that occurs when we consider the possibility of our annihilation.
Bringing this down to earth. This is very real; this is not abstract. I know in myself when I first started the work the overwhelming fear that would sometimes come up when working through such habits. Physiological, energetic habit contractions are felt as very real and can be seen in the body and how it moves. Almost everyone would have some idea of this, even trying to change or overcome basic every day habits.
This is the way of the bound thinker or bound spirit as Nietzsche tells us. From a concrete non-abstract psycho-physiological point of view.
When practised well, Zen provides broad insights and assists with dismantling. It represents an integration that undoes bound habit-energies. In this way, over time, energy, however you want to term it - vital energy, bio-energy, heat, whatever - is released, allowing the organism a greater scope of possibility to express itself maximally.
Nietzsche alluded to such a constitution as that of a bound spirit:
"Bound Spirits, in training themselves to convention, tradition and habit, live within the metaphor edifices they have created. They train themselves to ignore their senses, and in doing so restrict the field of their experience to what is familiar such that that no signs of resistance even appear. In this self-reinforcing dynamic, their senses grow duller, more intellectual, and their instincts weaker. …In other words, bound spirits are minds bound to a conception and use of their own body that denies bodily being and constitutive role in the production of knowledge…"
Echoing and building on this, D.T. Suzuki once wrote:
"…Psychologically vasana (karmic imprint that causes current behaviour - me) is a memory, for it is something left after a deed is done, mental or physical, and it is retained and stored up in the storehouse unconscious as a sort of latent energy ready to be set in motion. This memory habit-energy, or habitual perfuming is not necessarily individual; the storehouse unconscious, being super-individual, holds in it not only individual memory but all that has been experienced by sentient beings. When the Lankavatara Sutra says that in the storehouse unconscious is found all that has been going on since beginningless time systematically stored up as a kind of seed, this does not refer to individual experiences, but to something general, beyond the individual, making up in a way the background on which all individual psychic activities are reflected.
It's also worth reflecting on Suzuki's idea of habitual-performing, not necessarily being of individual origin or conception. When Nietzsche tells us, "...Do not these very experiences help you to pursue with greater understanding enormous stretches of earlier humanity?..." It’s interesting to note the very obvious similarities in these two outlooks.
Overcoming this is more than just giving into base instinct. Revitalisation has nothing to do with indulging in animalistic reactivity to find the instinct one is out of touch with - although it can involve some of this. Overall, the opposite is the case:
"The freedom of this spirit is not a careless play; nor an unrestrained pursuit of instinct and desire. On the contrary, the freedom Nietzsche envisions is a result to long discipline and training-but a training to rather than away from bodily becoming."
LaMothe - Nietzsche's dancers
Zen practice provides us with this exact discipline of the body-mind. Granted, it's not the only kind. Though, the method of Zen unlike many other nonetheless worthy and valuable modalities, is a supercharged and fast method. A radical confrontation, allowing you nowhere to run to. Again, anything but a turning away from life. But you’d need to actually do it to notice this.
Mindfulness allows us to level a gaze at all the factors we can possibly wrangle with. Forcing an immediate confrontation with our bound spirit. Bound habit energy.
So what of the opposite, the free spirit and Nietzsche understood it?
"The Free Spirit is a relative concept. A man is called a free spirit if he thinks otherwise than would be expected, based on his origin, environment, class, and position, or based on prevailing contemporary views. He is the exception: bound spirits are the rule."
LaMothe - Nietzsche's dancers
A practical report to consider: When I spend many days meditating on retreat, I become aware that my body is on fire; it vibrates intensely.
What does this mean for those who say Buddhism is life-denying?
Why should I be told that the renewing heat and vibration is denying life, and the online vitalist writing of words and a momentary inspiration - this is the expression of pro-life?
It's worth seriously considering the shortcomings of theory with no verification.
Remember:
"The free spirit is free to do what is necessary for becoming what he is."
Nietzsche
CONFRONTATION WITH HABIT-ENERGY & SUFFERING - LIFE DENIAL?
Zen and Buddhism indeed emphasise the idea of suffering as a key to understanding the ailments of man. In general this is the element of Buddhism that causes so many bellyaches amongst the pro-living-lifers online.
So lets clarify the clumsy ancient language a little as I like to do here for people - I prefer to view this doctrine as outlining the roadblocks to the vitalisation process. Dukkha is often translated as suffering; however I believe there is a much better definition - fundamental anxiety. Fear.
In Zen, suffering stems from ignorance. Ignorance occurs when grasping conception. Or attachment to phenomena.
The practice involves confronting fundamental anxiety in all its forms. Backaches while sitting, thirst, hangovers, the Sunday Scary’s, an inability to breathe or sit straight, and strange encounters with the compulsive mental tangents we've described above. It shows us everything. We cannot run; we want to run according to all of our bound habits but there is no way other than to quit the practice. And after a time, we can stay with it in a bound-less space.
Fundamental anxiety or maybe better, fundamental fear, perpetuates feelings of detachment from oneself, others, and the world. It is said that the Buddhist practitioner is detached, which is why he is deeemed anti-life. In fact it is the very opposite that is the case.
As we can see, he is centred in unfiltered immediacy more than most can comprehend or physically tolerate. It is very much a psycho-physical toleration as anyone who has done my course is recognising. Through mastery of this the practitioner is far more present than almost anyone else knows possible. True immediate presence is boundless. Boundless space is one way of looking at it, but I also like to include the definition of boundless as without attachment to any binding influence.
Fundamental fear on the other hand drives rigidified, contracted, nervous and muscular attachments. Habit-energies that turn over like a broken record, cutting us off from the vision of unfiltered immediacy or any further possibility. The only thing we seem to be able to do is construct vast edifices of words to try and dig our way out, which really just intensify the habits we try to escape.
Zen proposes a simple solution aside from the physiological angles we've discussed. Limitless and boundless immediacy is ultaimtely psychologically renewing. It is untarnished by the dualistic conceptions that we initially set out to overcome, such as the division between happiness and suffering. In this likes the ultimate power of the Zen approach. Everything becomes. a part of the stream of experience.
Separation and distinction occur when words, concepts, or thoughts are employed. Even experiencing positive emotions signals a divide between awareness and the object of awareness. Hence, being a conscious human carries an inherent form of suffering on this profound level. Yet the suffering is self-created, stemming from a fundamental misunderstanding of reality as it is.
In Zen, the ultimate liberation from dukkha is nirvana - absolute truth. However, describing nirvana in language remains elusive, as it transcends dualistic notions like "yes" and "no" or absolute and subjective. Zen thought employs the term "empty" to convey the insight that existence's essence defies binary classification.
In refraining from rampant classification, we liberate habit-energy. We become free spirits, no longer bound.
HOW DOES ZEN PRACTICE UNBIND HABIT ENERGY?
The solution is simple, the practice complex.
"Zazen can be considered absolute forgiveness because in it we truly forgive every person, place, thing, event, situation, etc., of our lives; we completely let go of the views and emotions we usually associate with them. This is an unconditional forgiveness void of stipulations or demands. It is in this act of forgiveness that we are forgiven. We are forgiven of all things that define and limit us, regardless of whether we usually judge these things as positive or negative. In zazen we let go of memories of the past and concerns for the future, settling down into the here and now. So in a way we are "born again" in the freshness of the present. We are forgiven in an ultimate sense." Without trust in our senses, intuitions and instincts, we suffer from an absence of vital information, leading to a growing incapacity to distinguish between the real from the illusory, the true from the false.”
We become disconnected from our senses and the body as the vault of knowledge.
During meditation, there is an experience known as "dropping off body and mind". Far from any escapism, the experience embodies a radical embrace of the mentality of the free spirit.
As anyone who has had something like this can tell you, the experience is exceptionally vital, imbuing one with a sense of lightness and energy, a pulsing flux-like awareness of itself, where the contraction of habit-energy, or the so-called "self", breaks down. This is not just in meditation, this can colour ones entire life. From writing this essay, to performing a spreadsheet. Everything is imbued with an unbelievable freshness.
Here, the Gestalt of the senses that emerge prior to conception is seen as it is. Radical presence kindles a personal engagement with life as it is, freeing up habit-energies over time. Especially if one is engaged in other types of self-work, this kind of thing can really put it on steroids.
The moment becomes a locus of acute awareness, casting aside self-centred delusions. This is not meant in an empathetic or moralistic selfless sense - it means wuite literally as it is stated - self-centred delusions. It is critical to not see this as a moral statement, because it isn’t. It a psychological statement.
This heightened awareness facilitates a departure from rigid thought patterns, emotions, and behaviours. This act of stepping back and noticing fosters space, fluidity, and vitality.
A sense of liberation and connection to broader life forces beyond individual volition that are entirely outside of perceptual purview due to the anti-life anxiety rigidities of fundamental fear. Fear of catastrophe.
It is known - not simply realised - that it is not the process of life that causes misery, or even arousal or desire.
The false self is the centre of this; it is a mirage in the desert. We have been taught to drink from it. Yet, with practice, we notice it disappears the closer we get to it as we try to find it. In this way, the individual gains his connection with the ALL outside of conception. The Gestalt - the world as a process of the body and senses, and the world as play. As the mirage of conception collapses.
Meditation, Zen, whatever, is an ultimate act of the renewal towards the free-spirit.
"Could the young but realise how soon they will become bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time.' Well! he may well not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do, in strict scientific literalness, is wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let () no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out." — William James, Principles of Psychology
Until next week
~A
I practiced the breathing exercises. It rlly does clear the mind quite fast. Not so easy to do a 30 second exhale though.