Jump to content
IndiaDivine.org

Interesting email.....

Rate this topic


Guest guest

Recommended Posts

We have built up a good relationship with Prof Charles Tart

who has come up with a new book Mind Science

He is due to appear on American TV and maybe you can

see the programme and let the list know what you make of it

 

regards

jay

 

===copy of message from Prof Tart ===========

 

Since we've corresponded recently, I thought you might be

interested in my newest book, " Mind Science: Meditation Training

for Practical People. "

 

Meditation training? " What, " you might wonder, " is a scientist,

an experimental psychologist like Tart doing writing a book

teaching meditation practice? Isn't that just for gurus? "

 

I've always been interested in meditation and mindfulness

techniques. My professional and scientific interest comes from

seeing these as ways of better understanding the mind. My

personal interest comes from wanting to understand and use my own

mind more effectively, so I can live up to my ideals of,

hopefully, becoming a little wiser, more compassionate, and able

to be of help to others.

 

My scholarly and scientific understanding was, for a long, long

time, the only understanding I had of meditation: I had tried

various classical meditation techniques off and on for years -

with very poor results. My mind was just too busy and jumpy.

Someone could instruct me, " First, quiet your mind and then..... "

but I never got past that first part. I can particularly

remember taking a meditation class several times from a respected

Tibetan lama in Berkeley, Tarthang Tulku. He frequently referred

to finding the " space between thoughts " as a key to meditation

and spiritual growth. I found the _concept_ of the space between

thoughts fascinating in a theoretical way, but, in my experience,

there was no space between my thoughts!

 

After years of repeated failure at meditation, I discovered G. I.

Gurdjieff's ideas of developing mindfulness in the midst of

everyday life, instead of walking around in the waking daydream

we usually live in. This didn't require the achievement of great

mental quiet in order to work, and I've fruitfully practiced

Gurdjieff's self-observation and self-remembering techniques for

years.

 

In 1986 I met a meditation teacher, Shinzen Young, at a

scientific conference in New Mexico, and something about the way

he spoke told me he really knew what he was talking about from

his own, deep experience. I started going to his six o'clock in

the morning meditation training sessions (something of a

" paranormal " phenomena for me to do that, for I was not someone

who functioned at that hour back then!), and found I could learn

much about meditation from the way he taught. Shinzen gave me an

introduction to and a boost in meditation that has lasted since

then, and I now practice the concentrative (shamatha) and insight

(vipassana) forms of classical Buddhist meditation, as he has

adapted them to work better for Westerners, regularly, as well as

meditation of a dzogchen flavor that I've learned from Sogyal

Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. And I do it mainly because I

enjoy it and get something from it, rather than because I

" should " meditate.

 

For years I continued my practice on Gurdjieffian mindfulness in

life and regular meditation together, finding they synergized one

another, but I didn't teach these techniques because, being

dedicated to honesty, I knew I was just a beginner compared to

where I thought these techniques could take one. Genuine and

realistic humility, I suppose, but......

 

I was also a student of Aikido, a Japanese martial art that, in

many ways, is another form of mindfulness training - maintaining

mindfulness, peacefulness, and compassion for your partner under

the stress of being attacked. One day I was asking my teacher if

he could find a Black Belt level teacher who would come up to the

University of California at Davis where I taught and teach Aikido

to students. " Why don't you teach them? " he asked me.

 

I responded that there was so much I didn't know about Aikido, I

was only a Brown Belt in rank, etc., etc. But, he pointed out,

while there was indeed much I didn't' know, compared to rank

beginners like my UCD students would be, I was extremely

knowledgeable!

 

It was hard to argue with that, so I had a very pleasant and

productive experience teaching Aikido, and my students learned a

lot.

 

I've been through the same process with teaching Gurdjieffian

mindfulness and classic meditation. My teachers would suggest I

teach, I would talk about how little I knew compared to what

there was to know, they would remind me that I knew more than

enough to help people get started on these paths, and so I

occasionally teach. And it works - I turn out to be good at

teaching beginners (and even some people beyond beginners). With

the wisdom of hindsight in teaching Aikido, meditation, and

mindfulness, I remember how sometimes you can learn more from

another student who is only a few steps ahead of you, because

they remember the difficulties, than you can from a master who is

so far ahead of you that the practices are all " obvious " to them,

like " First, quiet your mind..... "

 

And yes, now I sometimes can find and briefly rest in the " space

between thoughts....... "

 

My new book, " Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical

People " is based on a very successful workshop in which I

introduced people to classical concentrative and insight

meditation and segued from that into Gurdjieffian mindfulness

practices for daily life. The occasion was the third University

of Arizona " Toward A Science of Consciousness " conference, and

the students were mostly scientists and scholars - skeptical and

practical people. Judging from my own experience of the way my

practical, skeptical and scientific mind keeps my thoughts so

busy, and had made it so hard for me to learn meditation for so

long, I think of this kind of group as having lots of obstacles

to learning mediation. Yet the way the group responded reminded

me that I do teach meditation and mindfulness in a way that gets

across to modern, practical people, and so the book. " Mind

Science " contains both conceptual material to place meditation

and mindfulness practice within the context of modern science and

experiential exercises and instructions to start people learning

these skills to a high enough degree to be both personally and

professionally (understanding the mind) useful.

 

 

Incidentally I am scheduled to be on the Coast-to-Coast AM show

(most think of it as the Art Bell show, but it has a new host,

Mike Siegel, now that Art has retired), discussing the book and

related topics, from 10 pm (Pacific time) on November 14th to 2

am the following morning. Information on local radio stations

carrying Coast-to-Coast AM is available at

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/.

 

Charles T. Tart Ph.D

Professor, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto CA

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...