I did an event at a Finnish sauna last week. In Finland saunas aren’t just places weird health-nuts go and sweat by themselves. They are communal gathering spaces. People have parties in them, get spiritual in them, all kinds of stuff. I met one Finnish guy who was born in a sauna.
This particular Zen sauna event was set up for me by Essi, a woman who leads a pagan group at Helsinki University. We gathered at the sauna, discussed Zen and things for a little while in the lobby area, and then went inside the hot, humid, dimly lit sauna room itself where we sweated and spoke some more.
Among the people who attended the event was a guy who was very interested in drug-induced spiritual practices. As regular readers know, I’m not a big fan of that stuff. He tried to make some points but it got a little convoluted so he asked if he could show a YouTube video about five minutes long. I said OK. We were back in the lobby at this point.
So he gets out his iPad and shows us all this video of Ken Wilber talking to some people about using psychedelics for spiritual practice. Wilber is one of the worst of the current crop of blithering idiots who hog up cyber space to mislead and misinform spiritual seekers everywhere.
The video was typical Wilberian garbage. In some ways, Ken Wilber is kind of interesting to me, although not interesting enough for me to ever want to read his books. On his videos he comes across as a person who probably had a moment or two of genuine, deep understanding a number of years ago. But, rather than really getting a handle on what that moment was, he has instead spun a bit of real insight into an amazingly profitable persona and career. Branding, folks. It’s all about branding.
Be that as it may, during this video Wilber puts forth an assertion that sounds like he’s used it a few hundred times before. He says, “That which has a beginning and ending in time is not real.”
If someone ever said that to me in dokusan I’d be inclined to slap him hard in the face and ask, “Did that have a beginning and ending in time or not?”
Ken Wilber looks like he works out, so he’d probably beat me up if I slapped him. Still, I think it’s the only appropriate response to such an idiotic statement. It’s not that I’d be angry about it. But anyone who was so thoroughly lost in his own head that he’d say such a thing would probably require at least a hard slap in the face to put him back on the right track.
What makes Ken Wilber so truly and deeply bad is that everything he says points his followers directly away from that which they are paying him huge wads of money to help them seek. He sends them out searching for fantasies he, himself, has concocted. He gives his followers treasure maps with X’s marking spots where nothing is buried except more phony treasure maps.
Let me help you out, Kenny. Sometimes meditation will allow you get a glimpse into the state of timelessness. My first teacher said that enlightenment takes place outside of time. That’s a good way of putting it. And, just like any other good way of putting it, it’s also bullshit. Zen teachers have other ways of indicating this state of timelessness. Dogen uses the phrase “your original face, before your parents were born” to point the way to it.
The problem is that the timeless state and “that which has a beginning and ending in time” are two ways of looking at the very same thing. Once you say that one is real and the other is not, you’re hopelessly smothered by your own brain farts. If you go down that dark road there’s very little that anyone, even Buddha himself, can do to help you.
A slap in the face is real. And orgasm is real. Stubbing your toe on a rock as you leave the temple in a big huff is real. Reading this silly blog about a guy I met in a Finnish sauna is real.
It is also timeless. It has no beginning and no end.
Dogen explains it best in his essay Uji, aka Being-Time, in Shobogenzo. You and I are time, he says. We are not beings who exist in time, who have a beginning and ending on some great cosmic chessboard called “time.” Rather we are time itself. We our very selves are manifestations of time and, as such, we are all of time. To be is to be time.
And yet every sentence has a beginning and ending in time. The phrase “that which has a beginning and ending in time is not real” has a beginning and ending in time and, by Wilber’s dimwitted definition, is not real.
Yet it is real. Real stupid.
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Well done!
(the Dharmafield link should be: toe)
All I can say is NO to Ken Wilber in his undershirt.
Thanks, Brad. The brain functions best when its neurochemical balance is not altered by toxins, disease processes, or exogenous substances. One would think this would be fairly obvious, especially with the accumulated evidence provided by those of us who’ve beat our heads bloody against that particular wall, but then we’ve never suffered from a shortage of stupidity.
Full disclosure: been there, done that to excess (drugs, that is. Still doing stupidity to varying degrees, although I like to think I’m working on that). “Real stupid,” pretty well summarizes recreational or “spiritual” drug use. “Lucky to have survived,” is another phrase that comes to mind. Gateway to “enlightenment?” Complete B.S.
The only catch with balling out Wilbur for this is that there is also some abhidharma that says exactly the same thing, i.e. that anything ephemeral is an “illusion” and that the only “thing” that is “real” is Nirvana.
I think the problem is in interpreting what “real”, “illusion” and “Nirvana” mean, and if you interpret them in the default and superficial ways that our culture normally does, you end up with a very stupid belief.
Like a koan, you have to dig deeper to get at the truth behind the apparent “craziness”.
That’s not quite what the abhidharma says. It says all compounded phenomena are impermanent, suffering, and without a self. The Heart Sutra says there is no arising or cessation. Which, to be charitable, is what I’d guess Ken Wilbur was trying to say.
Philosophy has its time and place, but you need to know its limits. What I’d tell someone who said this is, “Then please give me all the illusory cash in your wallet.”
“Then please give me all the illusory cash in your wallet.”
Funny you should say that. I’m sure Mr. Wilber has a smooth segue into this very statement or some variation of it himself, as do all people who make a career out of telling others what they think they want to hear.
Perhaps you and I have just read different abhidharma…. there is a LOT of it, in different traditions.
Nice use of the internet technique knows as “disagreeing to agree”. 😉
Meh.
Language and meaning are just a wet brain-fart diffused in the sauna-steam of the saha world. When the Finn slaps me for farting, the slap is real – but is the ‘real’ slap the slap I felt, or the slap she gave, or the slap you saw? Or is it some fuzzy combo of those three POVs? At which infinitesimal quantum of ‘real’ time-ness did the fart come into being, and the build-up of bum pressure cease to be? Is there more fart mixed into this big part of the steam, or that little part?
You can fault anything that anybody says about reality – coz the real world (and the real moment) is just a patch of steam with no unambiguous edges. Providing meaning is a mug’s game in this world of fuzz – and what Wilber said is no stupider than the one about the Original Face.
Meh.
OK, now I’ve watched his video, I see your point. The phrase “that which has a beginning and ending in time is not real” is stupid – because he said it.
Seething post, Mr. Warner. Clearly written in response to something someone asked you to do, namely, look at a Ken Wilbur video.
‘Well Stack says to the devil: “Devil, let’s us have some fun.
You stab me with a pitchfork and I’ll shoot you with my gun.”‘
(Van Ronk’s version, “Stackerlee”)
Thanks, GC, for the post about cross-currents in American music on the last comments thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3L2qf3q-ok
The foamy waves are flooding the bathroom floor, even as the tattoo artist attempts to cover the place the needle won’t enter; some say it’s all about a good bm, some say it’s all about meaning, but Brad is starting to feel like it’s all about a good sucker punch.
Get that man a tar-baby!
What have you been smolkin?
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/06/the-singular-universe-and-reality-of-time-universe-smolin-review
A blow to the head is real.
I just don’t get using drugs for peak experiences. Even if one has a so-called peak experience, wouldn’t you want it to be real and not drug induced? I find everyday life to be a peak experience. I’m always surprised by what is really going on if I remain as present as I can for it. Zazen has really cultivated that for me. I don’t know if seeking out peak experiences (as talked about it the Wilber) video, is not just another form of craving for what you don’t have, or think you should be having. It’s more of not being satisfied with your life.
Seeing family members destroy themselves with drugs ( I mean severe addiction, not just mild experimenting), it always just seemed like a one-way ticket to despair and physical and mental destruction—to even death.
Hi Kyla,
Just a guess, but I’d say the reason you don’t get it is because you aren’t stupid. That’s also probably why you found Mr. Wilber’s undershirt and muscles marketing ploy distasteful. 🙂
Keep on sitting. Glad you’re here.
I find experience is just experience, it’s a trap to fetishize certain experiences as real and others as unreal. You can be open to the whole gamut of possible human experience, possibly even non-human experience, without it necessarily ending up in craving or self-destruction. However it is true that certain drug and meditative experiences are so incredible that its hard not to want to visit em again. But people are always craving after experience, even if its just pizza and television, or this blog. Sobriety can just end up being a safe cocoon for some who are afraid to step out into something different.
Hope for the dope,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepTbTQdrmc
You are Here (& Now)
http://imgur.com/XrmockD
Thanks Dog Star. I find too with Zazen, my discernment of what I want to do, versus not do has changed. I make different choices in my life now in all areas. I don’t know if others find this. Eg. I am less reactive, and more thoughtful about behaviours or relationships I engage in.
‘The only power the precepts– or any of this practice– has is the power we give it, the meaning we make of it. This is why I have such a high tolerance for teachers, ceremonies, and ritual; they’re inherently devoid of meaning until I create my own, through and with those external points of reference.’
(Gesshin Greenwood, “Taking the Precepts in Gibberish”, on “That’s so Zen”)
Mathematics is inherently devoid of meaning until someone puts together a way to use the mathematics to predict real-world events, isn’t it so? I am skeptical of much of modern mathematics, because of the paradoxes, but I’m not really qualified to judge.
I’m skeptical of much about Zen teachers, ceremonies, and ritual- because of the paradoxes- but I’m not really qualified to judge. I think it comes down to basically the same thing, the notion of the completed infinity.
Speaking of being lost in ones head, fantasizing about Ken Wilber brining philosophical questions to dokusan with you, really? Was he wearing the sexy wife beater in your fantasy?
In your last blog post you mentioned doing what people ask you to do. I’m asking you to slap yourself, now.
Well, winding up in a psychiatric ward after spice use (synthetic marijuana) is one heck of an experience all right. It can cause psychosis and paranoia. Me, I’ll skip that one.
Empty-handed, holding a hoe,
Walking, riding a water buffalo.
Man is crossing a bridge;
The bridge but not the river flows.
(“Mahasattva” Fu, tr. T. Cleary, from “The Book of Serenity” intro)
“Don’t worry; be happy.”- Meher Baba
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R62zFqcHjN8
“Ken Wilber looks like he works out, so he’d probably beat me up if I slapped him. Still, I think it’s the only appropriate response to such an idiotic statement. It’s not that I’d be angry about it. But anyone who was so thoroughly lost in his own head that he’d say such a thing would probably require at least a hard slap in the face to put him back on the right track.”
Ken Wilber has some type of RNA disease. He lays in bed most of the time now.
“Sobriety can just end up being a safe cocoon for some who are afraid to step out into something different.”
Not really, there are consequences for dumping chemicals into your brain. Somewhere in maturity it isn’t necessary to do that anymore.
And the stepping into something different is just another illusionary state.
If you go to the end of the video, Mr Wilber talks about the ever present witness.
That which was there (or not there ), on the bridge over the Sengawa River.
You never know Fred, some mushrooms might actually help grow that brain of yours.
http://reset.me/study/study-psilocybin-mushrooms-stimulate-growth-of-new-brain-cells
…and a hyperconnected brain may be more suited to penetrating the veil of your illusions.
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/magic-mushroom-brain/
Both articles say ” we can speculate ” and one says it is beyond the …………..
So, you can say that they don’t really know what is going on there.
The veil of illusions is penetrated by non-thinking, not by more complexity.
Thank you for responding hyperconnected brain.
I will admit that Ryushin Marchaj the ayahusca user speaks very well, but he had a med degree before hand and it may reflect his intellectual capacity.
Would you make the same claims for weed and acid, or psychedelic drugs targeting serotonergic systems, as you would for magic mushrooms?
Fred, quit worrying and enjoy the ride man, your such a buzz kill sometimes. You have a brain, don’t be afraid to put a little mileage on it every now and again, you don’t have to keep it locked up in the garage your whole life. Psychedelics might not be your thing, but you can at least take a look at your cognitive biases. Certain experiences in life might be worth a little risk. Space is dangerous, there is lots of high energy cosmic radiation, your bones and muscle’s deteriorate, an accident could prove catastrophic, but humans gonna explore, and that’s a good thing. Not everyone needs to be an astronaut, but we shouldn’t give the people who are a hard time just because we prefer to keep our butts well glued to the floor. Someday you might die, you might want someone there with you who knows the territory and understands the process. Perhaps your already enlightened and got it figured, how would I know.
Anyway, I’m not a scientist, so I’m not going to make any scientific claims about serotonergic systems, I will leave that stuff to the experts. Like a lot of Newfoundlanders I mostly just like to play music, get drunk, and enjoy myself before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.
Read this you blowhard,
http://www.maps.org/bulletin-items/383-bulletin-winter-2014/5430-my-experience-as-a-guide-in-the-johns-hopkins-psilocybin-research-project
That explains it, a Newfie. When they’re not clubbing baby seals to death, they’re huffing gasoline in the shithouse. Their ancestors were Viking beserkers sailing the high seas looking for trouble. Good luck with those novelty seeking genes.
That cuts very close to the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC-T0rC6m7I
Seems riskier to me to sit and truly face myself, see who I really am without altered states of consciousness.
I don’t see people who take drugs in a moral light, I don’t think it is inherently bad—it’s just a choice in life.
In the video the man talks about using ayahuasca and getting involved in other indigenous cultures and their historic practices. A person doing that is not coming from the cultural, historic background or really understanding the hallucinogenic’s place in that culture.
Upper-middle class folks seem to love to dip their toes into these cultures without understanding them or having to live in some of the conditions these people now have to live in. Eg. white folks appropriating Native American spiritual culture without having to adopt all the painful history, the current poverty etc.
I just feel that people should be able to find their own way without having to fear arrest or stigmatization by the dominate colonial culture. As an example, I’m not even sure if I could qualify to be a police officer in Canada just because I have used a psychedelic. The limitations on peoples cognitive liberties is a serious human rights issue for all us, it’s not just an issue in religious and cultural traditions. We can poke fun at ayahuasca tourism and issues of cultural appropriation, but it’s difficult to create our own new forms of shamanic and spiritual practice when the state seems bent on suppressing people who don’t conform to the dominant materialistic paradigm.
This talk kind of sums up alot of my own thinking,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zZMRNuKeLs
I can see your point. I mean, real/unadulterated marijuana is not nearly as harmful as alcohol so the fact that it is illegal as compared to alcohol is ridiculous.
I was in no way poking fun at cultural appropriation. I don’t think it’s a laughing matter as it speaks to privilege. One half of my family is Native Canadian so it is a serious issue for me.
I do believe that legalizing certain drugs would lead to much less harmful versions of them because right now, many drugs are full of harmful, cheap chemicals that hurt drug users. Medical marijuana is far safer than what one can by on the street. I’m not just blowing this stuff out my ass, I’ve worked in the field for over 20 years. Smoking marijuana for example, does not generally lead to the blissed-out state as understood by the mainstream because of the quality people can buy on the street. If often leads to paranoia and psychosis.
Great points, the dangerousness of tobacco and alcohol, even a lot of prescription medications far outstrips the danger of many illegal drugs, particularly psychedelics. And yes, because the safe psychedelics are illegal people often resort to synthetic research analogues which are generally less well understood in terms of long term effects. Native issues are important to me and I wasn’t intending to imply that they aren’t serious, they are, our current government hasn’t exactly shined in this area. I rarely smoke marijuana anymore, it just tends to make me withdrawn and neurotic, but yeah no one should end up in an emergency room from a synthetic cannabinoid because they didn’t have access to the real thing, what’s wrong with this world, doesn’t anyone listen to Marley anymore…
My audio wasn’t working when I clicked the Ken Wilber video. So at first I was looking at his non-verbal communication. That was very instructive. If you don’t like him, you can turn off audio and look at the video again. You will still not like him. You might understand your dislike better.
Ken’s response:
http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/46
Ken says to suck his dick
The higher a tree grows, the more wind it has on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=217&v=oTM3YPTYNo0
“Those who justify themselves do not convince.” Lao Tzu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-A4zT8wp8E&list=PLB6248788DF0D6824&index=7
Of course Ken is the biggest…and has the biggest…
But doesn’t that apply to most you (Zen-)teachers?
*shaking the head* and :-/
Should be funny, but somehow isn’t…
Unlike so many other great texts of Brad Warner and others, even early Ken
Wilber
Would really like to leave this exact phrase under Wilber response on his blog. As this isn’t possibly … Which says a lot about famous Wilbers arrogance (aside from his embarassing ranting) and makes Brad a bit more likeable again despite his little and at least not embarassing ranting
Cygni, thanks for the Mary Cosimano article.
“In order to relax, a safe and trusting environment is necessary. Ideally, our preparation meetings have provided that, thus enabling participants to relax into a deeper and more expansive experience. This expansiveness often leads to a deep sense of love and connection for self and all…”
A tune such as this and a roomful of enthusiastic hoofers at a place like my local karioke parlor generally gives me a feeling of love and connection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znlFu_lemsU
Caution: dancing sober to an acoustic guitarist like Andy McKee at a sit-down show can cause folks to shift in their chairs and mentally prepare for the worst (“peace, love- spare change?”). What’s a mother to do… -Mary!
Your welcome Mark,
The people involved in Maps are pretty amazing. I had my first psilocybin experience when I was 15 and have been spreading the good news since then. Societies are often slow to evolve but change can happen as long as people are willing to speak the truth. In 50 years people will probably look back on our repressive drug laws the way we look back on laws against homosexuality or inter-racial marriage.
Dancing is a great way to feel connected to other people, I’m naturally a bit stiff but after a few drinks I can cut loose and have a good time on a dance floor. I sometimes live with folk musician friends, in Newfoundland we love to have kitchen parties and drink and sing and play music, that’s one way to feel the love and get riled up! Cheers!
He may have lost his mind, but I’ve read a couple of his books that were excellent.
http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Grit-Spirituality-Healing-Killam/dp/1570627428
And “No Boundary.”
Also, back in the day, his critique of Bubba Free John (Adi Da, etc., etc.) after having been a devotee who left the fold was pretty interesting.
Also, back in the day, his critique of Bubba Free John (Adi Da, etc., etc.) after having been a devotee who left the fold was pretty interesting.
Well, he was never a “regular” devotee of BFJ but rather a “celebrity” devotee who was sought after for endorsements. KW never participated in any day-to-day activities of the community, but was used for “positive quote fodder” on the back of BFJ book covers, kind of like Alan Watts was (except Watts died before ever meeting BFJ). After Adi Da died in 2008, some high level “regular” devotees joined up with Wilber’s integral movement – looking for a new “master”, I guess. I always thought he was kind of an idiot, but he did make his public repudiation of BFJ back in the day, after having learned a few things he didn’t know about at first.
https://vimeo.com/42644852
Ken Wilber is apparently suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
According to Wikipedia:
Wilber has stated that he has a debilitating illness called RNase Enzyme Deficiency Disease.
Wilber’s own (rather wordy) explanation of his condition (written in 2002):
http://www.integralworld.net/redd.html
Thanks so much, GC, for the Chemirocha video. Great tune. You probably lived in Kenya in a past life. I should listen to more Jimmy Rogers.
Interesting that the village elder is holding a whisk, that so many of the villagers have a stick in the right hand that they wave as they dance.
Dance ’til the brassiere drops off, ’til the pants fall down, I’m all for it!
Interesting read, about Ken Wilbur. Found an article describing the stages he talks about in connection with Chronic Fatigue, didn’t know they’d made any significant progress in understanding the disease but it looks like they have:
http://www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?libid=8858
Interesting about “undenatured whey” being considered therapeutic in the second phase of the illness.
I have sympathy for Ken Wilbur; had no idea he was once an Adi Da follower, hadn’t heard of his wife’s illness, didn’t know he was under the weather.
People like Ken Wilber know how( a lot of Westerners, but especially) Americans think: They are gullible, simplistic, naive, self obsessed and ignorant of history and tradition. They can only think in terms of transaction and personal gain: I pay, you give me service.
Excellent!! Thanks.
Hello Brad,
I agree 100% with your comment regarding Ken Wilber, first because I do not think he is smart enough to really understand most of what he is saying.
That which has a beginning and ending in time is not real. To which I would add; beginning and ending are what we mean by time, there is no such thing as ‘in time’. There is no beginning in time or ending in time.
Let me make some comments on this; Can your yesterday morning breakfast be call real? It had a beginning and an end, but now, it simply cannot be call real. What then is the difference between what is real and what cannot be call real? The difference is between what is actual, and what is imaginary. As I actually eat my morning breakfast, it can be said to have a beginning and an end, and so is the slap in someone’s face as you actually slap someone. When talking about my morning breakfast some hours later, it simply cannot be call real. We are time, we are space, in all we do and are, we engender a time and a space, we do not live within a time and a space. Ask yourself, where is your yesterday morning breakfast gone to? Did it came into existence and went out of existence? Where does this breakfast came from? How can you call this real? Does your slap in someone’s face came into existence? When you will die, will you fall away from the universe? Right from the very beginning, not a thing is.
It is not my yesterday morning breakfast that is real , it is not the ‘that’ or the ‘what’, it is ‘me’, the ‘that’ by which I see from, not the that or what I look at. ‘Me’ comes first, and the rest follow. I am! Whatever you look at is passing by, all we will ever experience are simply passing by, even your slap in someone’s face will be gone in a very short time, the real cannot be known, because it is you, it is me. All that we will ever experience have a beginning and an end, they have no continuity, all experiences are discontinuous and of the ephemeral, and surely cannot be call real. Because of our use of words, we tend to grasp and freeze our experiences, we tend to transform those passing by experiences into frozen words. When we forget ourselves, those frozen words seems real, the whole world seems to be real.
First thing Wilber says in the YouTube clip is that he has no experience with ayahuasca. Nevertheless he has an outspoken opinion. And that is often the problem with KW.