by Peter Carlson | May 10, 2018 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk focuses on the Second of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Vedanupassana, Mindfulness of Feelings. The Buddhist view of feelings isn’t just about emotions; more emphasis is placed on affect, the potency or impulsive urgency associated with any moment of experience. When unskillfully managed and conditioned by clinging, affect manifests as craving, that is, for pleasant experience to arise and continue or for unpleasant feeling to be avoided or gotten rid of. Peter described some of the important neural brain structures associated with affect and cognition, emphasizing that affect is the “driver” of cognition, as suggested by traditional Buddhist doctrine and current neuroscientific research. This makes mindfulness of feelings a crucial skill to develop, that is, to perceive feelings as just mental phenomena, not a self, not “my feelings”. Modern research demonstrates that mindfulness of breathing meditation develops areas of the brain that function to regulate the degree of reactivity to affect, thereby interrupting craving and clinging.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: Understanding Feelings
Next week’s talk will focus on a review of paticca samuppada, dependent origination, a key concept of Buddhism describing how the selfing process operates and demonstrating the crucial role mindfulness of feelings plays in the process of Awakening. Peter will explain a different view of this concept that he calls contingent provisional emergence, which combines traditional Buddhist views with a contemporary complexity theory of personality organization.
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by Peter Carlson | Oct 22, 2015 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this discussion, Peter related the lojong aphorism, “Work on the stronger disturbing emotions first,” relating it to the second Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of feelings as feelings, not a self. The integrated operation of the lojong aphorisms was reviewed, emphasizing the importance of regular mindfulness meditation practice to cultivate the emotional self-regulation required to benefit from mindful investigation of feelings, separate from the narrative “selfing story”, which reinforces “buying into” a sense of self that is distressed and confused.
This approach to alleviating suffering is similar to a modern psychotherapeutic intervention, “Exposure Therapy”, which combines progressive relaxation with direct investigation of the distressed emotional tone that a person suffers from. This exposure, over time, reduces reactivity to the distress, provided the person does not align with a narrative associated with the distress.
After the discussion, there was a lively dialogue among the participants regarding concrete experiences that the practice of desensitization can be applied to.
Here are the notes prepared for the discussion: THE BENEFITS OF INVESTIGATING EMOTIONALLY POTENT ISSUES
Next week’s topic will explore the importance of non-judgmental reflection on the application of a lojong aphorism.
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by Peter Carlson | Mar 14, 2014 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This is the second of two talks about the importance of the practice of mindfulness of feelings. During this talk, Peter reviewed paticca samuppada, usually translated as dependent origination. A new rendering of the term was explained, that is, contingent provisional emergence, with clarification of the non-linear, mutually influential functions that affect how the mind overlays a provisional interpretation of raw sense data input, thereby creating a “selfing moment”. In this creative process, attention becomes fixated on a particular feeling and perception, creating the craving and clinging dynamic that is the driving force of our distresses about life. Mindfulness of feelings as feelings allows the skilled meditator to avoid “personalizing” the emerging self-organization, providing relief from craving and clinging.
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by Peter Carlson | Mar 7, 2014 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this dialogue, Peter began to discuss the second Foundation of Mindfulness, vedanupassana (mindfulness of feelings). He talked of how feelings are not emotions as we might describe them in the West, but rather what in psychological terms is affect, the pull towards pleasant experience or away from unpleasant experience. Feelings are the bridge between physical sensations and the mental creations of meaning and self-organization we experience. He read a translation of the second foundation, and then led a brief guided meditation that illustrates concretely what to notice as a feeling, a perception and the mental formations that create what the Buddha called “the tyranny of I, me and mine”. This was followed by dialogues that further clarified the experiences of the guided meditation.
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by Peter Carlson | Jan 30, 2014 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this first of a series of talks exploring the Satipatthana Sutta, Peter talked of the mutually supportive functions of samadhi (concentration) and vipassana (insight). This was followed by a lively discussion regarding how different meditators cultivate these qualities, both during formal meditation and normal daily routines.
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