Encephalon

I guess I can squeeze in a plug for my home town, San Francisco, CA at #30. It really is something of an outlier on the urban American spectrum. It was the site of the first zoning regulations - some guy tried to run a hog rendering facility in an upscale residential neighborhood before he was booted out. That's the story for the rest of the industrial history of the city. The reason it's so pleasant and eye-catching is because the early residents insisted that all industrial processes be taken up on the other side of the Bay. That's why Oakland and Richmond look like hell, while San Francisco looks like a postcard. I wish I could post the photos of all the denuded forests around Tahoe that were mowed down to construct the city. Still, SF was THE portal through which most of the early Japanese Buddhist teachers came to spread the word of the Buddha to the West. The Bay Area remains full of intellectual and spiritual vitality - resources of every kind in abundance - and I understand that Master Lam Kam-Chuen just moved from England to Oakland. Wish I could move back to the Bay Area, but my wife's job here in LA is just too good to give up now.

Are you suggesting that I should pick another place for enlightened conversation besides the McDondald's inside the Walmart next to the strip mall by the industrial park?

I stand corrected. I did a cut/paste job off of a Huffington Post story that was skewed, evidently. Still, within the top 30 of 200+ cities ain't too bad. Ya'll know I was joking about communism, right?

Where are you studying Cognitive Science? That's a mighty interesting subject, especially where it intersects with Buddhist and Taoist cultivation techniques.

I suspect we'll both be getting volume II before 2012 is over. Vol. I only goes so far. The Energy Pathways detailed in the appendix really changed my energy pattern. Accurate maps are a good thing!

The Water Method, as taught by B.K. Frantzis. The important value it has for me is that it can be used for mindfulness training just like zazen; when the mind wanders, you simply bring your attention back to the task of opening the energy gates, rather than the breath. A zen master I am not, but the process is so so captivating that I've been able to go a minute or two without thoughts interrupting the attention, and that's a lot for me. I feel less and less inclined to describe the process because the more I go into the process the less I really know with any certainty. I am so grateful and humbled by the power of this technique that trying to discuss it seems like I'm cheapening the teaching. "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body" by Frantzis. Get your copy today!

I don't think the addictive nature of vicodin, or pot, or cupcakes is the real issue. Saying that people throw away their sobriety because they want to get drunk doesn't really explain much either. At some point people make a choice to indulge or re-indulge in addictive behavior because their relationship with raw reality becomes too painful to bear without it. (My own slippery slope happens to be boredom, but I am not alone.) People who maintain a steady and consistent mindfulness practice generally don't throw their lives into the addictive dustbin. But that level of mindfulness is above and beyond what a simple concession to the first step can yield, and if that's all that sobriety hinges on, I'd say that's a pretty wretched way to live. I think this may partially explain why the success rate for 12-step groups hovers around 5%. We're powerless, yes, but we needn't be helpless.

OK, I'm sold. Please send ten 25 mcg hits to my original address in time for New Year's. It's been at least ten years since I travelled. Thanks.

Cool. thanks for reminding me, an old man north of 50, about this stuff!

Looks like they got ruffled to me! And you didn't even read the book! I didn't either, but I did read "On the Warrior's Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology" by the same author, Daniele Bolelli, and that was a good read.

50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion This will definitely ruffle some feathers!

I too found it refreshing that it simply didn't resolve with a "Just say No to drugs" cliche.

I'd like to share the following article by Dr. Andrew Weil. I think it's important because alcoholics and addicts often wrestle with the first step, actually admitting they've got addictive issues to work out, and entire meetings can unfold where nothing is discussed but the critical differences that exist between "normal" people and substance abusers. As Buddhism makes clear, we are all addicts, and consumer culture presses all the buttons. WHY WE ARE ALL ADDICTED by Andrew Weil I recently ran across an article that appeared in "Science" back in 1961. The senior author was a man named Heinz von Forster, who's an electrical engineer at MIT. The title of the article was "Doomsday, Friday the 13th, 2026." Von Forster, who was not a population biologist, and as a result of that the article outraged population biologists, did an analysis of the increase in world population and developed a new mathematical model to account for and predict the way the population was increasing. His conclusion was that the population curve was following what he called "super exponential growth," that the expansion of population was proportional to the square of the growth rate. He was concerned with the doubling time of the human population. In other words, the time it took for the human population to go from small numbers to one billion was a very, very long time. From one billion to two billion was a tiny fraction of that time, but still long. When I was growing up, the population of the world was two billion. From two billion to four billion has occurred within my lifetime; it took about thirty years. Von Forster's prediction is that from four billion to eight billion will be about fifteen years, from eight billion to sixteen billion around seven and a half years, and so forth. On the basis of this, he drew a curve that described this expansion and concluded that somewhere around the year 2026, plus or minus five years, the population of the world would reach infinity-that is all the mass of the earth would have been converted to people. Therefore, the end of the world would be by squeezing to death. Obviously, long before the population of the world got near infinity, there would be disasters of one sort or another -epidemics, wars, famines, or whatever. When the article appeared in 1961 it was roundly denounced in subsequent issues of "Science" by mathematicians and population biologists. The theme of population biologists at that time was that the rate of increase of population was slowing, and therefore population biologists were putting out an optimistic message. However, a long letter appeared in "Science" in April of last year by a population biologist who urged readers to remember von Forster and the doomsday curve, and pointed out that the actual increase in world population since 1961 has not only conformed to von Forster's prediction, but in fact is slightly ahead of it. That means that the end of the world, or at least the end of civilization as we know it, is really not far off. I would assume that the disasters that will come in the wake of this population increase will happen much before 2026. It could happen within twenty years - well within our lifetimes. The reasons for the global catastrophes that are coming have a lot to do with addictive behavior. The world population increase has a lot to do with addiction to sex, for example. The destruction of rainforests and the pollution of oceans and atmospheres has a lot to do with addiction to power and to money. The subject of addiction cannot be taken out of the context of the imminence of the end of life as we know it. Roger Walsh has said that he thinks that addiction is the fundamental problem. I could not agree with that more. It's fundamental in every sense of the word. It is a deep core problem. It is at the core of being human. It's also at the core of all of the specific problems that we have in the world today. I can think of no area in which it is more important to try to get help for ourselves and for everyone. I also feel very strongly that addiction is a universal problem. All of us are taken up in addictive behavior. Hopefully, we are in a process of change now where we are beginning to see the universality of addiction. But still there is a tendency to focus on some kinds of addictions as the ones that are serious and to ignore others either because they are socially acceptable or because they don't fit our conceptual model of what addiction is. I watched a movie the other night that was made in 1934 in black and white. All of the characters in the movie smoked. No wonder that generations of Americans were fascinated by smoking! We are living at a time when that social consensus is changing. Smoking is becoming unfashionable. If you talk to any smoker you will hear how irritated they are about how unfashionable it is becoming. It's a very different situation from the 1930s. But that legacy of the 1930s and the years before conditioned our thinking about tobacco addiction. In World War II soldiers were issued cigarettes in their rations. There was a tendency in the 1920s and 1930s to encourage people to smoke in the belief that smoking facilitated concentration. You only have to look back to the 1950s to Life magazine to find doctors selling cigarettes. You will find full page ads of doctors in white coats with mirrors on their heads, holding out packages of Old Golds saying, "I recommend these to all my patients because they're soothing to the throat." Imagine. That was forty years ago. It was only within the past ten years that the American Medical Association was forced to divest itself of tobacco stock by voices of protest from its constituents. When I was a student in Harvard Medical School between 1964 and 1968, I was taught that tobacco was not addictive. I was taught that it was a health problem in that it led to emphysema and lung cancer, but there was not a word about it being addictive. It was a psychological habit and therefore unimportant. So it was not discussed. We didn't hear much about what they considered real addictions, either. Basically we heard a little bit about heroin addiction, which was the model or prototype of addiction. Tobacco did not fit that model so it wasn't taken seriously. Nobody paid any attention to it, and that consensus was so strong and it so affected American science that no one even did research to find out why that substance had such a powerful control over people's behavior. For years I have urged people to look at smoking for what it is. Heroin addicts only have to get a fix once, twice, or three times a day. Tobacco addicts have to fix up every twenty minutes. Every twenty minutes the brain demands a discrete pulse of a high dose of nicotine coming through the arterial system. Why didn't anyone do research on that? Why didn't anyone look to see how nicotine caused such a profound influence on brain physiology? They didn't do it because it didn't fit the conceptual model and because it was a socially acceptable addiction. Well, there are many other socially acceptable addictions today that we don't take very seriously. It's awfully difficult in mainstream America to talk about sexual addiction as a concept. We live in a culture that tells us that it is desirable to have as many orgasms as possible all the time. When I ask people, as part of my medical history taking, if they have any sexual difficulties, the most common answer I get is that they aren't getting enough. In the cultural context in which we live, sexual addiction is invisible. Or take addiction to work or addiction to making money. These are both things that our culture tells us are good. So it is not seen in the same way that addiction to an unpopular drug is seen. I think that many of our theories of addiction and our ways of looking at addiction are limited because they don't take into account the full spectrum of addictive behavior. As an example, let me read you a definition of addiction from this conference. After talking about how addiction extends far beyond the realm of chemical dependence, it then says, "In the broadest sense, addiction can be defined as an attitude that sees various aspects of the material world as exclusive sources of satisfaction. Addiction, understood in this way, represents a prominent feature of the entire Western civilization, which has lost the connection with its inner resources." That, to my mind, is far from being a broad conception of addiction. And it surely does not involve just the Western world. That's a very limited view. First of all, if it's the attitude that various aspects of the material world make us feel all right, what about sexual addiction? Is that a material addiction? I mean it may involve physical organs and other people, but what we're really talking about is an addiction to an inner experience. What about addiction to thought? That's something hardly ever discussed in the Western world. It is discussed in Buddhism. In Buddhist psychology, addiction to thought is seen as a serious impediment to enlightenment. That's one of the reasons you meditate -to try and get some freedom from thought. So you could look at universities as monuments to thought addiction where you are rewarded for the beauty or complexity or novelty of the thoughts that you produce. Given that social context, with those social rewards, why would you ever even think that thought could be addictive. And if your conception is that addiction involves something material and external, then that doesn't fit, so you don't pay attention to it. I maintain that the essence of addiction is craving for an experience or object to make yourself feel all right. It's the craving for something other than the self, even if that's within the realm of the mind. I also feel that addiction is something that's fundamentally human; it affects everybody. It's very easy to feel special about our addictions. That's an attitude that I run into a lot. One of the things that in the past has put me off about some of the twelve step programs is that they tend to regard certain addictions as more important than others, that alcohol addiction is somehow fundamentally worse, more difficult, than coffee addiction. I love to talk about coffee addiction. My new book has an entire section on coffee addiction. To me, that's the most interesting drug at the moment, because it's a hidden addiction in our culture. So I don't agree that alcoholism is somehow more important than coffee addiction. On the level that I'm talking about, on the level that we have to look at addiction, it is the same thing. It's the same process. It's the same craving for something apart from yourself to make you feel okay. What I'm most interested in is that process. What is the origin of craving? And what is the solution to the craving? I had a patient come to me about four or five years ago who was shooting five to six grams of cocaine a day intravenously. I had never encountered cocaine use on that scale. She had been doing that for six months and had gotten into it after several years of snorting vast amounts of cocaine. When she moved in with a man who was dealing cocaine, he introduced her to using it intravenously and her usage quickly escalated. Remarkably, given the nature of that drug and the nature of her usage, she was in good health. She actually held a job. She was a single mother, and at the moment she was doing a fantastic juggling act of keeping her life together despite her drug usage. I didn't know how much longer she would be able to do that. I learned a number of things just in listening to her talk about her addiction. First of all, in describing the experience that she had from using cocaine in this way, she said that the first few minutes after the first injection of the day, she felt an overwhelming pleasure and rush. But that was it for pleasure. The rest of the time - five or six hours - was filled with paranoia, violent shaking, insomnia, and palpitations. I find this interesting because many people think that people get involved with addictions because they're sources of pleasure, but when you look at people caught up in extreme forms of addiction, especially with substances and food, the percentage of pleasure relative to the percentage of distress is minimal. There's not that much pleasure there, so the pleasure is certainly not the thing that keeps the addiction going. So after going on very articulately about how awful her life had become being a slave to this compulsion, she looked off and said something that was just a beautiful expression of the plight of the addict. She said, "I want not to want it." If you want not to want things, how do you achieve that? What is this problem of craving? Where does it come from? What is the origin? It seems to me that the Eastern spiritual philosophies, especially Buddhism, have the most to say on the subject. The first noble truth of Buddha is that life is somehow incomplete and unfulfilled, so that in anything you do there is something missing. There's a sense that there should be more and it's not supplied by the things of this world and the things of life. It's often translated as life is suffering - and I suppose there is certainly a suffering that comes out of that - but suffering is very easily misunderstood by speakers of English. That's not the sense of it; it's that life is incomplete; it's unfulfilled. The second noble truth is that the cause of this incompleteness is craving and attachment. But the Buddha has nothing to say about where craving comes from. That's the question that has always interested me. Why do we crave? Why does everyone crave? Why aren't we content to just be as we are? If, in fact, our core essence of being is pure self-luminous consciousness, why do we have to go outside of that? That's not an easy question to answer. The prevailing view in psychiatry and medicine and science today is that consciousness is an epiphenomenon that happens to arise out of the chance circuitry of the brain or biochemical interactions in the brain. In other words, consciousness is incidental. It's a product of matter arranged in certain ways. There is, however, a minority opinion - call it the mystical view - that consciousness precedes matter. In other words, consciousness is what's primary, and consciousness initiated the evolution of energy and matter into more and more complex forms, seemingly with the purpose of knowing itself better. At the moment, human consciousness is the form where that process has reached its highest expression. But why does consciousness need to know itself in this roundabout way? Why can't it just sit in its own being's awareness of bliss and self-knowledge? The whole paradox of existence is tied up with that question. The most frustrating and interesting aspect of quantum physics and the quantum view of reality is the paradoxes that are revealed by it. If you push knowledge inquiry in any direction, you run into the limit of paradox. And the essence of paradox is self reference. The reason you get into paradox is because you're trying somehow to refer to the thing that you're part of. So the old view that we are passive observers of a mechanistic universe doesn't work anymore. We're connected; we're part of the universe that is trying to understand itself. So you get into that endless loop of paradox like a dog chasing its tail. And all of that was initiated by consciousness attempting to know itself and in the process initiating a cycle of manifested existence. So the big bang was not the initiating event. The big bang was an effect of what I'd call the little itch. What is that little itch? What is it that disturbed consciousness that led to all this? It was the primal craving. To me, if you try to trace the root of craving, you literally get tied up with the origins of the universe and the evolution of human consciousness. It's that fundamental. It's that much a part of our humanness. Not only is addiction universal not only are all of us in it but it's the essence of our being as humans. It's not something to be disowned. You can't do that, because addiction is part of our core being. It's part of who we are. Given that, what can we do about addictive behavior? I can think of only two things to do about it. The first is to try to move it, to try and shift it so that the forms of its expression are less harmful rather than more harmful. lt is better to be addicted to a twelve-step program than to be addicted to alcohol. It is better to be addicted to exercise than it is to be ad- dicted to smoking. You can make those value judgments about addictive behavior. And that approach to addiction should not be discounted because, in fact, maybe that's the only thing that most of us can do. The only other strategy is to try and get at the root of craving. The Oriental religions would have us believe that this is possible through intense introspection and meditation and practice. I'm not so sure of that. I think maybe you can go a long way - you can get way down there - but if the origin of craving is indeed tied up with the origin of the universe, then I'm not so sure that it can be uprooted. I think all you can do is do the best you can. I mean, go after it; try and contain it and understand it. The biggest mistake we can make is trying to disown it. I don't think addiction is curable until the expansion of the universe reverses and we begin going back to a single point. But that should not be a source of despair. That's part of who we are. What we need to do is to accept that aspect of our humanness and work with it so that it's not destructive to ourselves or to other people. We also need to celebrate it for what it is. Because it connects us with all other people, it's a source of great compassion and great empathy. It's a motivation to work with others to try to halt the kinds of destructive behavior that are happening today. I can think of nothing more important than that. So don't let your perspective about addiction be limited by one group's definition of it. It is the broadest and most important problem we face. It's something that all of us share, and it's what connects us to everybody and to the higher power. That's how it is. Andrew Weil is a botanist, physician, and author. He is an expert on alternative medicine and an advocate of multidisciplinary health care and preventive education. Dr. Weil holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and is associate director of the Division of Social Perspectives in Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He is the author of five books about consciousness, drugs, and health and healing: The Natural Mind: A New Way of Looking at Drugs and Higher Consciousness; The Marriage of the Sun and Moon: A Quest for Unity in Consciousness; From Chocolate to Morphine: Understanding Mind Active Drugs; Health and Healing: Understanding Conventional and Alternative Medicine;and, Natural Health, Natural Medicine: A Comprehensive Guide to Wellness and Self Care. The preceding is an edited version of a talk Dr.Weil gave at the International Transpersonal Conference in Eugene, Oregon.

Best news I've had since I woke up today! Muchas Gracias.

I think there's some overlap in what we are saying. I think "one reason" people go out is because the joy that comes from increasing our mindful engagement of reality on a daily basis gets short-circuited when we fail to maintain consistent practice, and getting high represents a more appealing experience. A relative of mine, a retired substance abuse counselor, got hooked on vicodin after he retired because he got bored with life, made no changes, and like so many westerners in 12-step movements, only gave lip service to the necessity of meditation.

I'm pretty sure this subject came around once before when I launched an "alchemy and creativity" thread. I'm remember the musicians Steve F and Ya Mu plugging in some good points. My early musical career was derailed by booze but I picked up my trumpet when I was a 40-something college student and took all the performance classes I could get into. It was a frigging blast. But this was still 7 years before my intro to taoist alchemy practices and I only progressed so far. I couldn't bring my piano when I moved to LA, and I stopped playing the horn because of other projects, but my wife and I did buy a couple of acoustic guitars three years ago, and like you, Mal, I am a little blown away by not only the mechanical progress I've made in those few years but my inner musicianship. Since nei kung and water method meditation, I find it vastly easier to resolve chord progressions, decipher chord structure and isolate bass lines. I think it's safe to say that internal alchemy practice simply rewards one's natural talents, including those of musicians. I've discovered that I get a lot more emotional when I listen to music, but it could be that what I have discovered of late in the sounds of vince Mendoza is simply some of the most beautiful and emotive music I've heard in quite some time. Here's another taste of Vince Mendoza's arrangement of Azure Moon, a 5/4 peiuce by the YellowJackets. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9W3r8AzLIc

I think it refers to what a millions of yogis chi kung masters throughout Asia have known for eons; changing your mind, using your mind, is a real bitch, especially for westerners, and one of the reasons why people in recovery from substnace abuse don't often make progress. But changing your mind using your body? That's an entirely different matter, and brings the somatic dimension into play. Creation - I'm sure the nei kung played a major role. Perhaps the three months that I played around with Gary Clyman's dvds had an impact. All I know is, Nei kung instruction for me here in LA is always a lesson in humility. I think I've got a posture down pat only to be told I'm doing little more than isometrics! But I get my posture corrected by a degree or two and in five seconds the current begins to flow; the whole body becomes the "bubbling spring."

I just recently shared with another member that I am simply not qualified to assess which practice has been most beneficial, the nei kung or the Water Method of Taoist meditation, or a combo of both. I believe that running your energy through your gates and meridians as Frantzis describes is a mindfulness practice in itself, so I no longer practice any distinctly Buddhist meditation practice, nor do I believe that it is necessary for an agnostic Buddhist path.

I'm totally immersed in the inner dissolving Water Method as detailed by Bruce Frantzis in Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. Great, safe, fast, deep, blissed out!

I'd be happy to share what I know. I should say first off that it took me about 3 decades for the teaching to have a real effect on my inner life. For most of that time, Buddhism offered me intellectual resonance and inspiration, but being a wallower in self-loathing, I failed to address the problem of Doubt, one of the Five Hindrances. I always thought that I was temperamentally unsuited to spiritual progress along this path. But intellectual resonance must be good for something, because I stuck with it on that level at least! I jettisoned all my metaphysical notions, lost my "faith," and gradually drifted toward secular humanism about the time I started formal college, in my mid-30s (1995). By accident, a copy of "Buddhism Without Beliefs" by Stephen Batchelor, a countryman of yours, came across my radar, and by 2001 I was comfortably in the Buddhist fold, or sangha, as an agnostic Buddhist. I had also plunged deeply into critical thinking studies as an undergrad, and Batchelor's words just blew me out of the water. I suddenly realized I could have a spiritual life along Buddhist and humanist grounds that was consistent with the rest of my academic universe. I would recommend BWB for all parents and spouses. It is a primer for buddhist practice in modern life. I read that the introduction of Buddhism to the west was through the portal of psychology, as the dialogue mainly took place between Japanese Zen Buddhists and western psychologists and psychiatrists, and I chuckled when I read this because when I looked back at my own study history, Buddhist psychology was the main subject. As the number of western Buddhist scholars increased over the last couple of decades, I've examined the subject through the variety of fields that interest me that I listed in my opening post. I eventually went on to write my master's thesis in geography - "The Geography of Consumerism: A Buddhist Deconstruction of Los Angeles" -in part because I didn't have the stomach for more post-modern globalization studies! I found the Buddhist scholar David Loy - "A Buddhist History of the West" - to be my favorite author when it comes to the study of social theory and globalization studies. Since I'm still just a struggling ex-drunk soaking in the addictive mire of consumer culture, I'm currently most interested in deepening my practice in light of my addictive impulses. Jack Kornfield - "The Wise Heart" remains my favorite all-time work on Buddhist psychology and deals specifically with how we transform the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion into the three pillars - generosity, compassion, and wisdom. I can't emphasize enough that my Taoist meditation practice healed my psychic wounds more in three years than in the previous 15 years of Buddhist practice. so, I definitely need both. Hope that helps. Scott PS - regarding desires and emotions... I think much of my progress in impulse control may be due to the fact that I just crossed over into my 50s, but self-effacement aside, there is something to said for the eightfold path in reducing our vulnerability to various appetites. As far as emotions go, I am more emotional now than I ever have been. I am deeply and easily moved by the slightest triggers, and have felt for the last two years at least that my nei kung practice was discharging mountains of grief; grief incurred over my own life, and the grief regarding our collective human plight in the midst of ecological suicide. But like Ken Wilber says, it hurts more but bothers me less. -

Grateful to see you initiating this thread. Turning 51 last September and having my first child 3 weeks later has stretched out my conceptions of time and aging into dimensions I may never fully comprehend. I am reminded of an observation Simone de Beauvoir made: she once wrote that she used to regard the elderly as dead people whose legs continued to function. That gave me a chuckle, but I've discovered in midlife that I can connect with the young spirits that reside beneath the wrinkles of the elderly, but at the same time I find myself transformed by my 7-week old daughter, who has now acquired enough consciousness to look her mother and father in the eye while breaking out in smiles and laughter. I am immensely grateful that I still have extremely good health and feel secure in the knowledge that with a disciplined diet and a consistent nei kung and meditation practice I could well see my daughter into her own midlife. I am also grateful on this Thanksgiving Day that I am not in Los Angeles but up in Northern California with my wife and daughter visiting my family. We drove from my mother's house, a small but beautiful geodesic dome up in the hills of the Mother Lode, to the San francisco Bay Area, and are enjoying a lot of fine food, fresh air, and good times with our relatives. Showing off my beloved daughter for the first time is tempered by all of today's sobering news. Somehow, I have reconciled the joy of parenthood with the prospect of the Tao and Mother Nature hitting the reset button sometime before the 22nd century. And I am grateful that I live in a part of the world where I can access the wisdom of the East in securing a meaningful life, in spite of what the future may hold. I should send out some small thanks to Sean for creating this website. Sometimes it is infuriating, but my practice would not be as productive as it is today without the knowledge and information I gleaned from its members.

Yes, and in the three Poisons model of buddhism, advertising = delusion delusion = greed (consumerism, false desires) greed = hatred (militarizing the supply chains) hatred = delusion (consumerism is good) Consumerism is the capitalist's wet dream. In the quest to turn the world's resources into commodities, and commodities into liquid capital, nothing gets the job done better or faster than a global consumer culture. Suck that planet dry!!