when i listen i make notes so i can reflect and remember...
~~~
Micheal Stone - The Building Blocks of Personality (Part 1 of 3)
Drawn from Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, Michael Stone lights up the roots of suffering, the 5 klesas, and the building blocks of personality.
~~~
The 5 Kleasas (The roots of suffering)
Introduction:
The format that we've been using here is sitting meditation every Tue - and we go through various text.
Yoga sutra - written over 2000 yrs ago. No figure of Patanjali in art/temples. A subversive character who seemed to have compiled many teachings into a text that is very paradoxical and problematic which makes it interesting, probably why its lasted so long in oral tradition.
We are now at the 1st section of the 2nd chapter.
KLESAS - translated as the root of suffering but we are looking at it as a building blocks of a personality - and how a personality is created out of the conditions in our changing life. and how a personality can be an elastic process.
To start off: when we have an experience, there's contact between
SENSE ORGAN + SENSE OBJECT = SENSATION (Attachment/Aversion)
There's seansation FEELING that gives rise to a spilt –
- positive we tend to get Attachment (Raga)
- when its negative we have Aversion (Dvesa)
Attachment is actually Aversion - and vice versa - two sides of the same coin.
When we are leaning into the experience, or away from the experience, this gives birth to a sense of self. This Gives rise to I, Me, Mine.
eg. Discomfort in the body/knee during meditation. THere's contact, feeling (negative), internally our language begins to change - we say, i am in pain or i don't' like this.
Sensation - Feeling - Aversion = 'i am in pain'
Attachment or Aversion - Gives rise to the sense of self.
TWO THINGS START TO HAPPEN -
1) the creation of a story
2) awareness of time
Our sense of self is created, we also construct a relationship to time - when there's a aversion, there's also a keen sense of time.
In JUNG's idea and definition of EGO - ie. a defense complex born of liking and disliking
and is always surrounded by this ocean that is constantly traumatizing it.
SELF = CORK IN ACTION
When the machine gets derailed, the response is not being devastated. But becoming a kind of virtuoso - agile.
Agility: allowing the self to be derailed
- if you want to open up to the world, you have to take care of the self
- you take of the self in order to forget the self
- and our ability to be an island means we are creating a boundary
- we are creating a self, out of a commitment to non reactivity
- and out of a commitment to non reactivity we find parts of our selves that are surprising
and this is what it means to be creative and in then in finding ourselves parts of ourself which are surprising,
we find a sense of self, we dont get rid of the self, and in the process of being surprised, its a process of forgetting about one self
and same thing when we are serving others
- you cannot serve others unless you take care of yourself
The mechanism in the mind that creates this story is
AHAM KARA
AHA - AHAM - i - maker
KARA - to Make
krama - to create
The i-maker/ that mechanism inside of us that seems to create a sense of self.
What happens with the with technology of meditation is that the storyteller is actually related to the way we breathe and so the citta (the patterning of the mind) is directly related to the patterning of the breathing.
And so as we start to let the breath get really really quiet the storytelling also starts getting really really quiet, and thats why i think u can't really know that kind of concentration without storytelling, without Asana Practice.
Because theres so much movement, that really requires a subtlety of breathing to get that concentration.
------ end of Part 1
No comments:
Post a Comment