Затеялся читать online книжку по Ваджраяне

[dmm]

Есть такой замечательный человек по имени David Chapman, который пишет всякие философские интернетные книжки, и вот он недавно сделал "tweetstorm" на тему о рисках медитатации: twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1357113012356714497

vividness.live/meditation-risks

Надо сказать, что в реальности, в которой я обитал, не было никаких рисков, связанных с медитацией, пока Пелевин не выпустил осенью 2018-го "Тайные виды на гору Фудзи", в которой риски медитации - центральная тема. Тут-то сразу пошли статьи в разных местах про риски и побочные эффекты, связанные с медитацией, и я, вдруг, оказался в реальности, где уже лет 10, а то и больше, люди пишут разные тексты про эти самые риски и изучают эту тематику. Вот что Пелевин животворящий делает с реальностью (и это не в первый раз).

Система медитации, которой я занимаюсь примерно с лета 2012-го года (хотя в последнее время менее систематически), по книжке "The Presence Process" by Michael Brown, она, как раз, не переходит ту границу, за которой начинаются риски, но, при этом, крайне эффективна (Дэвид Чапмен, как раз, пишет про то, где "граница безопасности", и, замечательным образом, книжка "The Presence Process" как раз живёт в точности на этой границе). И она вполне в западном мейнстриме по определению Чапмена.

Но, в общем, ясно, что надо бы найти новую систему, в дополнение к той, которой я занимаюсь, и вот, эта книжка Чапмена, как раз, выглядит как то, что нужно: vividness.live/

А та сложная книжка, про которую я писал некоторое время назад, к ней, как раз, применима критика Чапмена (я посмотрел-посмотрел на неё, и решил, в итоге, "на фиг, на фиг"; и Чапмен как раз хорошо вербализует, почему я так решил, а "Тайные виды на гору Фудзи" это прямо-таки живописно и в ярких красках объясняет): dmm.dreamwidth.org/21712.html

UPDATE: It's a very good book, but it's not a "self-facilitated practice book" (I don't think the author even believes in self-facilitated tantric practices).

What is good about "The Presence Process" book is that one can use it for a rather far-reaching self-facilitated practice. (It's not even "officially Buddhist", it's a very secular and rather effective practice.)

But this book, while quite remarkable, can't be used to build a self-guided practice (as far as I can tell at the moment).

UPDATE 2: Actually, I think, some subset ("Yidams" and "Pure Land") should not be too difficult to transform into a self-facilitated practice (the author does not like the idea of self-facilitated practices, but so what; a lot of us don't like the idea of dependence on a "spiritual teacher" even more): dmm.dreamwidth.org/37665.html?thread=97057#cmt97057

Comments

[dmm]

https://vividness.live/unclogging

"The method of tantra is:

Unclogging energy by uniting spaciousness and passion."

"Energy is blocked by fixed meanings: when narrowed perception insists that things must only go one way."

***

"Unclogging internal energies"

"The tantric alternative is to unify spaciousness with passion. Spaciousness loosens the causal links between perception and emotion, and between emotion and action. Spaciousness reveals the absence of inherent meaning in all three. Your boss’s selfishness, arrogance, and idiocy do not force you to feel anger; feeling anger does not require either expression or suppression.

Since emotions have no inherent meaning, and there is nothing actually wrong with any of them, there are no reasons to reject any. Spaciousness dissolves the fixations of passion in the high-energy strategy. It undoes the denial of passion in the low-energy strategy.

Tantra releases the energy that was bound up in fighting other energy, or that was dissipated into depression. It removes the dams and dikes and sluices you have built to divert energy from its courses. Freed from conceptual constraints, each energy manifests vividly, and they dance together as the full-spectrum rainbow of human biological potential.

This may be experienced as turning up the brightness knob on perception, turning up the volume knob on emotions, and kicking action into high gear.

Of course, unblocking energy does not necessarily solve the problem of unwanted actions. Liberating anger without finding spacious freedom from pointless violence would be a mistake.

This means either tantra needs to be gradual—unkinking pathways carefully over many years, only as you gain sufficient spaciousness—or it needs to be practiced in a bomb-proof container. Both approaches are available."

***

"Unclogging the energy of situations"

"You can unclog the energy of external situations, just like internal ones, by loosening causal links that appear fixed. Here, as a tantrika, you work with other people’s perception of meaning, their emotional responses to meanings, and their emotionally-driven actions.

The process begins with “spacious activity”: undirected exploration of a situation. The tantrika has no agenda; no hope of accomplishing anything in particular. He or she is just curious.

Then the tantrika begins to poke at things playfully, to see what happens. From observation and little nudges, he or she gets a feel for the pattern, for the ways the energetic flows balance. Over here there is an obstacle to one potential flow; over there, an energy is forced to take a circuitous route through a series of kinks in the channel."

"High-energy stuck situations"

"In a high-energy stuck situation, people have fixed ideas about what things mean. There are intense passions in conflict, and a spaciousness deficit. Here the tantrika feels for alternative possibilities that have been overlooked by the participants; for other meanings that can be found in the situation. Because the tantrika has no preconceived ideas about what should happen, his or her attitude is free of arrogance.

Then, he or she jumps into the gap. Ideally, the tantrika finds a place to stand where applying a slight force at precisely the right time and angle causes the whole structure to settle into a new, more productive arrangement, using its own energy. [...]"

"Either way, the intervention is at the level of meaning. The tantrika inserts a new interpretation—whether subtly or bluntly.

The tantrika becomes the space in which reconfiguration occurs. The tantrika’s mind expands to encompass the situation and all the energies in it, and the other actors play out their dramas inside the space he or she provides. The tantrika brings freshness, humor, and grace to the situation. If the other participants lack spaciousness, the tantrika’s activity may be incomprehensible. It might even seem a little like magic.

(I hope this doesn’t sound mystical; there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s not exactly metaphorical, either, though, because there actually isn’t an objective boundary around individuals.)"

"Low-energy stuck situations"

"In low-energy stuck situations, there is a passion deficit. Whatever energy flows into the situation is immediately dissipated, because potential meanings have been denied. Everything is flat and dull."

"Here the tantrika can liberate the situation by supplying passion and meaningfulness. Again, this requires a detailed feel for the workings of the situation, and skill in intervention. The force of despair driving the dissipation of energy may be far stronger than you. Opposing it directly would fail. The tantrika reaches into spaciousness to locate a specific passion, latent in the situation, that can overcome the force of dissipation. The tantrika becomes the passion that is needed, and the situation reconfigures itself around that passion.

The tantrika’s tools here are inspiration, art, ritual, creativity, and leadership. These are ways of demonstrating passion in order to bring it out in others.

Creativity is central in tantric Buddhism. However, the goal is not “self-expression.” (Selves are not particularly interesting.) Nor is it to make something new just because it’s new. Nor is it about connecting with the Absolute Infinite.

Creativity means allowing the spaciousness of specifics to express themselves. It means being the space in which latent meanings coalesce into visible forms.

In both high- and low-energy situations, the tantrika unclogs energy by increasing passion or spaciousness (or both), and by unifying the two. Energy flows freely when no passion is denied, and when no meaning is fixed.

There may seem to be a paradox here: passion naturally seeks changes; spaciousness means allowing things to be as they are. The resolution is that the tantrika works with the energies that are already present in a situation, and frees them to be as they naturally are. The aim of tantra is not to fix the world. The world is unfixable. The aim of tantra is to liberate it from imposed meanings."