dharmapunx NYC

One of the key themes found in contemporary philosophy and psychology revolves around the recurrent idea, perhaps initiated by Saussure, that we do not employ language to express meaning or ideas, but rather that our meanings and experiences are actually creations of language. Our thoughts don't commence as something outside of words, which are subsequently placed into language to be communicated  from one person to another, its the inverse: We have meaningful experiences, that we wish to exchange, because we live embedded in language. And this in turn means that our very consciousness is profoundly social, for language does not exist in the individual, it is transpersonal, arising between us, a set of communally established, self-referring realm of symbols. This insight dovetails nicely with the profound evolutionary realization that the human brain's size and structure didn't precede societal organization, but rather was a result of the complex processing requirements...

As always, feel welcome to listen in on the talks at Dharmapunx NYC! http://dharmapunxnyc.podbean.com/

Human beings need other humans to help us process and regulate our emotions; this is the primary 'intersubjectivity' we all seek from others, the underlying need that bonds us together. Starting at approximately 3 months of age, well before the acquisition of language, the right hemisphere of an infant's brain is employing the body—via gestures, sounds and facial expressions—to send out social cue s indicating its basic states—excitement, fear, surprise, etc—which the primary caregiver reads and reflects back. This exchange is vital for the infant's social development and sense of security. However, the primary caregiver does more than simply 'mirroring' back an infant's emotional state; a caregiver, as part of the empathetic, sustained, resonant exchange, helps the infant regulate its early emotional states. It's an unconscious process, where the caretaker either decreases or amplifies a mood via reassuring facial gestures and body language; even fr...

One occasionally hears today, from a variety of different sources, that the Buddha taught two different forms of meditation: one is referred to as concentration, the other as insight. Concentration is a practice wherein the mind learns to settle and maintain awareness on a single, reoccurring event, such focusing on the breath or by repeating metta phrases; this practice is regarded as the most efficient route of developing states of tranquility and single minded focus, known as jhana. Insight is the process of developing enough bare attention—i.e. freedom from distracting thoughts and perceptions—to allow the mind to observe any internal experienced from an unbiased, neutral perspective. The mind is free to move from object to object—it doesn’t stay pinned as in concentration—noting the impermanence and lack of lasting, underlying identity inherent to each event that arises in life. The detached view this observational state entails ultimately results equanimity, which we’re inform...

Human beings are pack animals and not meant to live in isolation. We associate for security; our ability to bond with others is essential to our very survival. While on one level this is achieved through conscious communication through language (the realm of the brain's left hemisphere), we also achieve this through unconscious signals known as emotions (the domain of the right hemisphere). Just behind the field of awareness we're constantly sending and receiving messages about our state of being through tone of voice, locking glances, facial expressions, body language, posture and movements. How well our emotions are received help us regulate our emotional states; also, early interpersonal attempts at bonding, with caretakers, set our expectations as to how deeply and reliably others will connect with us. In the buddha's teachings, becoming, or bhāva in the original pali, marks the establishment of an identity we believe will spare us from the inevitable discomforts o...

It's hardly news that life is stressful, a journey in which disappointing and emotionally difficult events will occur. Putting aside the inevitable ordeals of aging and sickness, we all experience the loss of loved ones, projects we've devoted years of effort towards can fail, shit hits the fan. It's not news that the world doesn't conform to our plans. The jolts of adrenaline and cortisol, which allow us to sustain vigilance and move quickly during demanding experiences, are natural responses to anything that effects our long term survival. A stress-free life is not possible. And yet most of our stress reactions are entirely unwarranted. This is the unfortunate, habitually ingrained tendency to address the small frustrations of life, the mosquito bites of existence, as if they'll matter in the long run, that important stuff is really at stake. The grind of unavoidable frustrations is far too long to list, but to give some examples: being late for appointmen...

"What is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering."—the Buddha There is no experience more profoundly human and natural than that of sadness and despair over separation from the loved. Its our natural response to mourn the loss of a deep connection with another; we are pack animals; bonding is our species great survival advantage. When an important bond is severed, due to the end of a relationship, death, conflict or other commitments, it is inevitable that a deep emotional pain should be experienced. Unfortunately, this suffering can feel so overwhelming, the dejection so hopeless, that we seek to suppress the experience, to somehow 'grin and bear it' and move on through life as if we 'can handle it.' Alas, separation depression must be felt; the unacknowledged doesn't evaporate, it is simply shunted into largely un...

Most of us, by the time we reach adult life, develop ways of relating to the obsessive thoughts that visit us; those inner voices that relentlessly detail bleak tales about the future, mistakes made in the past, inventories of what's missing from life. The brain’s set up to fret, and we all have to learn how to function in life without being dragged under by its constant jabbering. Despite these self-destructive tendencies, all we're after is a little peace of mind. While we may understand that certain types of thoughts cause us a lot of stress, it’s less obvious that the mind's tendency to jump around, from one inner narrative to the next, plays a large part in our suffering. The mind doesn't generally roam in search of peace. The brain's subsystems that activate our impulses tend to reward us for cogitation about issues that effect our survival, from whether or not we'll ever find a lasting relationship, to attempting to predict our unknowable financial f...

As is the case of so many everyday catch phrases, "you are what you eat," contains an important message—though wrapped in a trite idiomatic saying—that the food we take into the body eventually becomes and sustains the body. If we are to maintain health, its beneficial to consume a nourishing, balanced diet. Now, we might find such a message obvious, but it asks us to perceive experience in a manner that’s both essential yet not easy for many of us, namely taking into consideration the long term results our actions. The Snickers bar tastes sweet, the Red Bull provides a quick energy boost, but they don't provide path to lasting health and vitality. When we suppress thoughts about the long term ramifications of a cheeseburger and milkshake, we’re living as actions don’t have results; like an infant covering its eyes to avoid a scary situation, we act as if what we don't acknowledge can't hurt us. It was quite clever, then, of the Buddha to use appetite and ...

Back in the late 1970s Jon Kabat-Zinn realized the potential value the 2,500 Buddhist meditation and awareness technique called sati—commonly translated into english as “mindfulness”—would have in therapeutic settings if it was stripped of its spiritual trappings and presented as a course in stress reduction. And so secular mindfulness was born, the wholsesale transformation of one the many, integrated tools of Buddhist practice into an entire self-help cottage industry. The new mindfulness was employed towards a vast array of ends, from reducing stress in the workplace to preventing addiction relapses, developing well being and so on. The list is potentially endless (check out a catalogue from your local 'well being' institute for the details). Naturally, an essential development in presenting mindfulness as a marketable commodity was to extract it from the less market friendly tools in buddhist practice, such as the demands to participate in a spiritual community (sangh...

In the Buddhist practice known as Theravada, awakening, or Nibbana  (pali) is the achievement of of inner peace that sustains itself regardless of conditions beyond control. Awake to the true nature of life, we observe how experiences unfold in a process of constant flux and upheaval; we are all subject to the ravages of aging and sickness, the grief of separation and loss. The mind’s default setting is to search for contentment in the quickest fixes available to us: the spiritually nutritionless candy bars of material wealth, fame, power, short term sensual pleasures. No matter how much we accumulate, we feel that underlying awareness that the sugary sweetness of sensory pleasures will end and we’ll once again realize how exposed we are to inevitable losses and separation. While the lures of money, objects, sex and privilege lose their luster, liberation through spiritual practice provides a complete form of happiness; awakening means becoming aware of a calmness and eas...

The Buddha recommended five daily recollections as a catalyst for spiritual practice: “I am of the nature to grow old, sick and die; I will be separated from all that I love; my peace of mind rests dependent on the quality of my actions." While these reflections may at first appear grim, it is important to note that they do place happiness within our control. Furthermore, it is necessary and foundational for any serious spiritual inquiry to remind us of the fragility of the human condition, as the delusion that “there’ll always be another day” needlessly delays the efforts required to develop lasting inner peace; skillful attributes such as forgiveness, gratitude or acceptance are not easy to sustain. And so day in and out we must return to the bedrock: we live in bodies without guarantees for endurance or health, and we live dependent on conditions that are constantly in flux. Now, it is not uncommon to misinterpret this and other teachings as an instruction to detach and dist...

It has long been established that the transformation from the vulnerable and fragile states of childhood to the relative independence and self-navigating states of adult life is profoundly influenced by the early relationships we experienced with our core caretakers. The nature of these influential experiences—whether or not we felt securely connected to and emotionally tolerated by our parents—establishes a set of unconscious 'internal working models,’ or road maps, to the world (note the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Masterson, Kohut, Shore, Fonagy, etc). These internal maps guide our behavior in relationship to others—friends, romantic partners, etc—and establish our expectations of what others can provide. These models are what motivate our wise and startlingly self-sabotaging choices for romantic partners. The sturdiness of our early relationships in essence affects all our important, subsequent relationships, even our deepest views of human nature, to positive or negative deg...

The following is what I wrote for, and read at, last night's Dharma Punx New Year's Eve celebration, which had a full house throughout the evening. Practitioners asked me to make this available; it's a long, and may or may not be of interest. Metta, j _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ It is both human nature and culturally instilled behavior to seek lasting security, happiness and transcendent meaning amidst the roller coaster ride of fleeting conditions: sexy pleasures followed by gastric discomforts, financial gains followed by losses, approval one day, criticism the next; our 15 minutes of fame giving way to insignificance. Just as the youth of today may respond with blank expressions when The Clash is mentioned (this has already happened), so too will Miley Cyrus’ ascendance prove ephemeral. In hunting down and latching onto what feels good, we inevitably experience the disappointment that arises when day gives way to night or,...

The Buddha taught that we live surrounded by "mountains that are moving in on us from all sides, crushing all in its path…" such are the inevitable experiences of aging, sickness, separation from the loved and death. He continues in the sutta by noting that "troops can hold no ground, nor wealth win out" against these forces. Yet, aware of our fragility amidst such unsparing outcomes, we seek false refuges, attempts to deny and avoid our disappointments, to live life without truly opening to the emotional cost of loss. Alas, there is no inoculation from pain, even in spiritual practice. It should go without noting that life is not only loss: Sadness and delight, separation and connection, easeful and challenging states are intertwined and braided throughout our days. Just as we cannot outrun the darkness that arrives after a beautiful day, if we try to bypass disappointment and depression, we cannot truly relax and appreciate times of excitement and joy. Whe...