To Be Or Not To Be Is Not the Question

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read this book several times -- first edition and second. It's not really hard to understand at all. The authors have a clear and to-the-point writing style--unusually entertaining for a non-fiction idea-oriented book of this sort. It is hard to accept. What it says is so disturbing to the prevailing world-view that I'm sure many people just shut it out by saying, "Oh this is too hard to understand." That means they've probably understood. Other readers may say, "This is all old-hat. Nothing new here -- it's boring." That's probably someone who doesn't understand what the book is saying. 

The quantum experiments are about as simple in principle as it's possible to be -- although some of them may require some awfully hi-tech equipment to conduct. So you don't need much if any math to understand this book. It's more about the implications of the experiments. What kind of world is this? Is it real? What does "real" mean? Do things have any separate existence? How can things that have no known physical connection still be connected -- even at vast distances -- in some weird mysterious way? How can things exist in different -- and even opposing -- states depending on how they are observed? How can the fact of being observed affect the values of the properties being measured?

I won't promise that you will find the answers to all these questions in this book. But I think you may learn more about what the questions are and how to ask them -- perhaps better than I have.  Knowing how to ask a question is, I believe, a large part of finding the answer.

Metta Practice as Metapractice

There is only one "I" that looks through all the eyes in the world. If you understand that saying, you understand what I mean by metta.

According to Narada Maha Thera: 

Metta embraces all beings without exception. The culmination of Metta is the identification of oneself with all beings....Metta is the sincere wish for the good and welfare of all. It discards illwill. --Narada, A Manual of Abhidhamma (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Buddhist Missionary Society, Fourth Revised Edition, 1979), 114.

When we identify with some other being, we in some way become the same as that other being. In metta, we become the same in some way with all beings. When we see someone in tears, for example, we see these tears as our own. If they are tears of joy, we feel the joy as being our own. If they are tears of sorrow, we feel the sorrow as being our own.

I led a meditation group called Blue Iris Sangha that met on Monday nights for 17 years in New Orleans. The group closed each meditation session with a period of metta practice in which we shared our concerns for the welfare of others. Participants were invited to mention anyone -- a relative, a friend, a neighbor, a pet, a stray dog or cat, a co-worker -- any one about whom they were concerned in some way. 

We often remembered those who were sick or in grief. But sometimes we also remembered those experiencing something fresh, something beautiful, something wonderful (a new job, a new baby, a new insight). In any case, we "held them in the light of loving awareness" as some people liked to put it. It became our way of prayer. 

And for some of us, expanding our awareness of the needs and concerns of those around us became a way of life. I don't think any of us claimed to live up to this ideal all the time or even most of the time. But some of us did recognize that when we were in this state of awareness that reached out to include the needs and interests of those around us -- and only then -- were we really and truly alive in the fullest sense of that word.  In this way, metta practice became metapractice.

Metapractice is what is beyond practice. If you are practicing playing the piano, metapractice is the recital. If you are practicing to run a marathon, the marathon is metapractice. But notice that the two aren't really different with respect to what we are doing, Practice is just a structured period in which we develop skills and habits we need for the metapractice -- the main event. When we practice running a race we do that by running. When we practice for a piano recital, we do that by playing the piano. And when we do metta practice, we do this by practicing metta.

Metta practice, however, is a little different from these other types of practice I've compared it to. With metta practice, the main event begins the moment your period of practice ends -- the moment you get up from your chair or cushion -- and it lasts until you sit down again for another session of practice.

At the end of each period of metta practice in Blue Iris Sangha, we all recited this excerpt together from the Metta Sutta, which is one of the most ancient of Buddhist scriptures and one of the greatest prayers ever prayed:

May all beings be happy and safe

and may their hearts be filled with joy.

May all beings live in security and peace --

whether weak or strong,

large or small,

near or far away,

visible or invisible,

already born or yet to be born --

may all of them dwell in perfect tranquility.

Attention and Intention

Attention is closely related to intention. Intention includes some of the meanings of will, volition, aim, and purpose. Such words point to an aspect of consciousness that can’t be completely represented by a single concept or cluster of related concepts. Attempts to do so is like trying to walk across a quicksand pit. “Once the whole is divided, the parts need names…. Knowing when to stop averts trouble.” [Tao te Ching, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, Vintage Books, 1972]

According to the Buddhists, an action doesn’t influence future states of consciousness unless it is intentional. Such intentional action became known as karma,.

If I’m walking in my garden, for example, and I accidentally step on a snail and kill it, this action is not karmic. However, if I see the snail (that is, if it becomes an object of my attention), and I step on it “on purpose”, as we usually say, the action is karmic, that is, its influence propagates like a wave into future states of consciousness. Buddhists believe we will meet with the effects of this action again in a kind of moral or ethical version of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Or as the popular version puts it: "What goes around, comes around."

The situation is more complicated than that described by the laws of motion, however. What if the snail in question had been injured already and appeared to be trapped in a hopeless state of suffering, and my intention in stepping on it was merciful? Should our concern be for the bare facts of what happened (physically and biologically) as a result of the action? Or is the intent of the action the matter of concern?

I was confronted with these questions once when I was walking through Jackson Square in front of St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. There on the burning hot sidewalk in the hundred-degree heat was a baby pigeon with no feathers who had fallen from its nest high on the wall of the cathedral. It was dehydrated, infected with pox, and severely wounded by the fall. To make matters worse, it was being devoured alive by fire ants. Its condition was clearly terminal and hopeless. All that remained was senseless suffering. I knocked the ants off, put it into a paper bag that I found lying nearby, and took it home. There I gave it water. It drank and drank and drank. Then I bathed it, and when this precious little morsel of life had relaxed and fallen asleep, I killed it. Intentionally. With tears in my eyes.  And with the hope that its passing had been quick and painless. It had suffered enough for several lifetimes.

So you see, intention is a profound phenomenon. It’s like a portal into a multidimensional world of motives and emotions that co-exists in parallel to the world of sensory perception. In the world of sensory perception, where attention operates, two events may appear to be identical (man steps on snail and kills it). But they may be entirely different in the world of intention, emotion,  and motivation. And yet attention and intention are inseparable aspects of a single event. We usually make our judgments about things from the external appearances. But we have recognized for many centuries that intention must also be considered, "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he," [Proverbs 23:7]

Some people think that meditation involves paying attention without having any intentions involved in the process. I have serious doubts that's possible. One may enter a trance state in which attention may be present and intention may not be apparent. But my guess is that intention is still hiding in there somewhere. But if it is possible to separate attention from intention, I doubt that the resulting state of consciousness would be a functional one. In the ordinary states of awareness that are required for survival, I believe attention and intention are inseparable.

That intention is impossible apart from attention seems self-evident to me. I saw many people walk by the little pigeon in Jackson Square without noticing it at all. They had no intention with respect to the little bird because they paid no attention to it. Many of these people probably were aware of the bird at a deep level of consciousness. But they were victims of what Harry Stack Sullivan called “selective inattention”. The sight was too disturbing for them to allow themselves to notice it. In any case, it’s easy to see that intention cannot occur apart from attention.

It’s taken me longer to see that attention does not occur apart from intention. Intention is what directs attention. If attention is the car, intention is the driver. I'm not sure if Sullivan thought inattention is always selective, but I do. And if inattention is selective, then attention certainly is too. And the selection process is directed and controlled by our intentions. And these intentions are shaped by our values -- by what is important to us.

If this post has seemed a bit of a rough ride to you so far, my apologies. And hold on to your hat. We have one last little bump coming up. While intentions are certainly shaped by our values, this happens because of  the emotions aroused by those values in response to the objects of our attention. The complication is that those emotions are in turn influenced by our intentions. And not only that. The intentions and feelings that arise in response to what we are noticing (the objects of our attention in the world of sensory perception) feedback and influence what it is that we actually perceive when we notice something!

So when I said in the post just before this one that meditation is not so much about what we pay attention to as it is about how we pay attention, I was talking about those streams of intention and emotion that run alongside of or within the world of attention. In meditation, we not only look outward at the objects of attention in the world of sensory perception, but also inward at that world of emotion and intention that is directing our attention. That’s why we call meditation mindful awareness. Mindful awareness is complete awareness – the whole picture. It’s a transcendent state of mind – and I use the word transcendent in this context simply to mean something beyond what words can express. And it’s utterly impossible for full awareness to occur in its most profound manifestation apart from that state of intention and emotion that St. Paul called agape in 1 Cor 13 and which I called “boundless unconditional love” in the first post of this blog. Such a state of boundless love is in the Buddhist tradition named by the Pali word metta.

The Light Shines In the Darkness

Think of consciousness as working  like a flashlight (or torch as the British would say) -- one that you rotate the lens cell to focus the beam. Rotate the lens in one direction and the beam becomes broad and dim like a floodlight. Rotate it in the other and the beam becomes narrow and bright like a spotlight.

We need the broad dim floodlight type of awareness to gain perspective, to see the big picture, to make sure we don't miss something important in the peripheral areas of our sphere of awareness. We need the narrow bright  spotlight to zoom in on something that appears important to us so that we can see it in detail and understand it better.

In our normal state of consciousness we move continuously between these two ways of focusing awareness  with most of our time being spent in between the two extremes. Some people have deficiencies of certain neurotransmitters (dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) that make proper control and direction of attention difficult or impossible. People who suffer from such disorders may not be able to focus attention properly into that bright spotlight or they  may get stuck in the other extreme -- unable to see the big picture. In the latter case, they may get sucked so totally into one small task that they lose perspective and work very hard to achieve very little. They may set out to put their cluttered living quarters in order, for example, and work very hard all day moving this over here and that over there. But at the end of the day, though everything may be in a different place, the overall state of clutter remains unchanged.

I mention all this because one of the things I want to talk about  is the practice of meditation. And the practice of meditation is essentially the practice of paying attention. It's not so much about what we pay attention to as how we pay attention. How we pay attention does eventually affect, however, what attracts our attention, and therefore does change what we pay attention to. But this is not the direct result of meditation practice. Meditation is not about training yourself to pay attention to certain things and not to others. Meditation changes what you pay attention to because it changes what is important to you.  Your attention is directed by what is important to you. What is important to you is a matter of your values. If your values don't change, no matter how much you practice meditation, nothing of any consequence really changes.

Meditation isn't likely to solve the problems of those suffering from attention deficit disorders related to the neurotransmitter problems mentioned previously. While meditation practice may help people with such disorders, it will be of more benefit after they consult a  psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist and restore neurotransmitters to proper levels.  Meditation practice is intended primarily for those  in the state of functional unhappiness we call  normal.

Beyond the Last Rung

Ludwig Wittgenstein published Tractatus  Logico-Philosophicus in 1922. It shook the world of philosophy, which was already in the middle of an intellectual earthquake with the publication of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and the General Theory of Relativity in 1915 and (as if that were not enough) the explosion of quantum theory that followed in the 1920s. After the dust had settled a bit at the corner of Academia Avenue and Intelligentsia Boulevard, the wise folks there began the task of writing a memo to the rest of us. A century later, unfortunately, the dust clouds are still swirling over the rest of us and large segments of the population, particularly those dominated by the "religions of the Book", have yet to get the memo -- or if they got it, they don't really get it.

But back to Tractatus. It's essentially seven propositions. The sixth one ends with Wittgenstein telling us that anyone who understands what he's saying will realize it is nonsense. They will use his words, he tells us, like a ladder -- to climb up beyond them. His seventh and last proposition consists of a single sentence, which in German reads, "Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen" and which C. K. Ogden translated into English as, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Now let's travel back in time 1300 years and gather in the Ta Fan Temple of Tang Dynasty China. Hui-neng, the Sixth Zen Patriarch, is reciting a verse he composed for those adherents of what he called the "Sudden School" of enlightenment. Let's listen to a few lines:

We should constantly set up the Light of Wisdom.

Erroneous views keep us in defilement

While right views remove us from it,

But when we are in a position to discard both of them

We are then absolutely pure,

Bodhi [Enlightenment] is immanent in our Essence of Mind [self-nature].

An attempt to look for it elsewhere is erroneous.

Within our impure mind the pure one is to be found ...

Right views are called 'transcendental';

Wrong views are called 'worldly'.

When all views, right or erroneous, are discarded

Then the essence of Bodhi appears.
 --[from the Sutra of Hui-neng, translated by Wong Mou-Lam, 1929]

I read the excerpt from Hui-neng before I read Tractatus and experienced something similar to a déjà vu moment when I read Wittgenstein's proposition seven.

In a sense, Hui-neng regards all views as being ultimately wrong. But let's not hastily conclude that we should discard all views right away. Not all views are equal. Some views lead us up beyond the words in which they are expressed -- Hui-neng calls these "transcendental" views. Other views lead us into more confusion. But even when our views point us towards the truth (the proverbial finger pointing to the moon), we must remember that words can never completely encompass the truth,

To completely encompass the truth, words would of necessity express literally "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." The truth in this context is synonymous with the totality of what is real. The totality of what is real is the whole universe -- or the whole multiverse, if there is more than one. So we are trying to use words to encompass what is all-encompassing. Words convey information about things by distinguishing what a thing is from what it is not, but something that encompasses everything leaves us with nothing to be distinguished from.

This all-encompassing reality is not an abstraction. It's what we mean when we speak of  "this present moment" or the "realness" of whatever we are experiencing right now. or when we speak of "consciousness-itself" or "awareness-itself."

There's an ancient Zen saying that the truth is like sweetness. There's no way to say what it is. But the moment you taste it, you know. So how do we taste the truth?  We fall awake, my friends. We pay attention.

And Now I Open My Mouth

I ended my first post in this blog with the words of Seng-tsan, the Third Zen Patriarch,  "The moment you open your mouth, you are wrong." I think he was right when he said that. But then you must remember that he opened his mouth to say it.

It's always that way. Take, for example, when Pope Francis opened his mouth about the great wall proposed by Mr. Trump along the border between the United States and Mexico. If we look at that through the eyes of boundless love, we see what an unloving proposal it is. Here we are in a land of so much food that we throw away enough every week to feed most of the world (or so I read somewhere, though I never understood how that calculation was done). Even if that calculation is an indulgence in hyperbole, I have no doubt that it points to a truth -- people are trying to get across the border even though it is a life-threatening thing to do because they are desperate. They are hungry.  If they can't get across themselves, they will at least try to get their children across.

Now St. John (or whoever the Biblical writer was who called himself or herself "the elder") says in 1 Jn. 3, "If we have this world's goods and we see our brother in need and yet we close our hearts against him,  how can we say that the love of God abides in us? "  Jesus said (Mt:10) that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of the Father. So we can be sure that the cries of little children who are hungry must also be heard, wouldn't you say? Jesus also said (Mt. 25), "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it unto me." I would say hungry people in Mexico are definitely included, wouldn't you?

So the Pope seems on solid ground to me when he simply points out that it is not Christian to "only think about building walls and not building bridges."  But remember: the Pope had to open his mouth to say that.

One thing seems clear: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." Mr. Frost never opened his mouth to say what that something is, but I myself vote for the Force. Even so, there is that Dark Side, you know. I mean we all feel walls are necessary sometimes, don't we?  When my partner Danny and I bought the house we live in now, it had never had locks on it. It was built in 1913 and people had been living in it for almost a century, and it was impossible to lock it up when you went to bed at night! Oh my God! Here we are in central Texas -- that's where the Texas Chain Saw Massacre happened -- well, that's where it was filmed anyway, I don't think it really happened anywhere. (Did it???) In any case, we wasted no time in getting locks installed. Lots of locks. And I have to say, I don't think that was an un-Christian thing to do.

Damn! This gets complicated, doesn't it? Actually, I think not. The only thing that gets complicated is talking about it. The moment you open your mouth you are wrong. But if we close our mouths and open our hearts to boundless, unconditional love, we will know instantly when to put locks on the doors and when not to build a wall. It's not really that complicated at all.

Through a Window Dimly

The title of this blog (and of this first post) is taken from 1 Corinthians 13 in which St. Paul said:

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with.  For we know in part, and we prophesy in part;  but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with.  When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.  For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known. [World English Bible (WEB), V. 8-12, Bold emphasis added.]

The word translated love in the WEB is agape in the original Greek. The word was translated charity in The King James Version, perhaps to indicate it doesn't refer to affection but to what some call "Divine love" -- love that is unconditional and boundless, as in no-strings-attached and everyone-included-no-exceptions type love.

The word I translated as window in the blog title is esoptrou in Greek, and no one is sure exactly what Paul meant. He could have meant a mirror -- and that evidently is the opinion of the WEB translators (see the phrase in bold font). The ancient mirrors were of polished metal and didn't usually reflect things very clearly. But he may also have been referring to a piece of translucent, highly-polished stone of a kind sometimes used as a window. Such ancient windows probably provided a somewhat distorted view of the world beyond the wall in which they were installed, but certainly provided more information than one would have without them. I believe the latter meaning is the one Paul had in mind.  What he seems to be saying is that when we look at the world through the window of knowledge (science, we would say nowadays), through the window of language (logic and concepts), or through the window of prophecy (spiritual revelation), we are looking at the world in a dim or distorted way. We may see part of the picture, but never the whole thing. We may get a vague idea of the truth, but we fail to grasp it clearly.

The word the WEB translates as languages is glossai in Greek and literally means tongues. But it is also the ordinary word for languages. Many people think, however, that Paul meant the phenomenon of glossalalia  or "speaking in tongues" when he used the Greek word glossai. I think so too. He refers to this phenomenon as the "tongues of angels" in the first verse of 1 Cor 13 (quoted below).  But I think he meant ordinary languages also. He calls those the tongues of men.

Paul has made it clear elsewhere (1 Cor 14:28) that while speaking in the tongues of angels may be of value if one does it privately, it is of no value when done publicly unless people understand what is said. Someone must make the meaning clear of the ecstatic stream of seemingly meaningless syllables that characterizes glossalalia.

So in either case -- the tongues of men or those of angels -- his  point is the same: the windows through which we ordinarily look at the world  (science, spiritual revelation, logic and conceptual thought) do not convey the whole picture. For now (when we look at the world through those windows) we see it dimly. But then, he says, we shall see face to face. Then, we shall know as we are also known. 

So the central point of the whole chapter comes down to the meaning of the word then. What does the word then refer to? The answer I have heard all my life is that he means when we are dead. The standard interpretation -- the orthodox understanding, we could say -- is that Paul believes we can never see things as they truly are in this life. We can only see the full truth in the after-life. Yet no where in the entire passage is there any evidence at all for this understanding (or misunderstanding, as I see it). The passage is not about the state of life versus the state of death.  The passage is about the state of boundless unconditional love versus the state in which such love is absent. I think he makes this quite clear right up front:

Though I speak with tongues of men or of angels -- if I have no love, I'm no more than a tinkling bell or a clanging cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy, though I understand all mysteries and have attained all knowledge, though I have the faith to move mountains -- if I have no love, I am nothing! [verses 1 - 2]

So here it is folks -- the bottom line: the word then refers to those moments when we attain that state of mind in which we look at the world though the eyes of unconditional and boundless love. Only when we look at the world through the eyes of such love can we see it as it truly is. 

The problem is we can't say what it is that we see through the eyes of boundless love. The moment we try to put that vision into words, we are back to looking through the distorting window of language. This insight isn't unique to Christianity. We find it in Buddhist teachings also. For example, the Diamond Sutra says, "The truth is uncontainable and inexpressible" (Section VII, A.F. Price translation), and  the Third Zen Patriarch is traditionally credited with the Buddhist saying, "The moment you open your mouth, you are wrong!"