{"id":10465,"date":"2020-04-17T06:52:08","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T11:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10465"},"modified":"2020-04-17T07:15:15","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T12:15:15","slug":"comments-on-process-relational-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/17\/comments-on-process-relational-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"Comments on process-relational meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Part Two of my book <\/em>Shadowing the Anthropocene (open access to all<\/a>) outlines a system of “bodymindfulness” practice rooted in the mindfulness meditation system of Shinzen Young<\/a>, but extended triadically to account for the active nature of living. Here are a couple of comments on and tweaks to that system, which I’ll refer to as pre-G<\/a> practice, short for “process-relational ecosophy-G”<\/a> practice.<\/em> (Note: This is my post for Orthodox\/Byzantine Good Friday… Now I will go listen to my favorite Vespers, Michael Fortounatto’s on Ikon Records<\/a> (IKO 9), which I am still awaiting the digital release of. Someone please convince Musica Russica to do that.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On sitting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting practice is generally thought to be something like the baseline, the exemplar, and perhaps the “gold standard” of meditation practice. Pre-G practice resists that notion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Sitting is a luxury and a gift. Anyone who can carve out chunks of their day for regular bouts of undisturbed sitting is living a luxury most people can scarcely afford. It is a gift from those who make it possible for the person to do that. It constitutes a baseline only in that it sets up parameters and boundaries within which practice is made easier, rather like a sandbox does for building castles or like piano practice does for live performance. Without it, for many of us, stepping into a life of practice is nearly impossible. But it is also neither the end goal nor the standard within which one’s practice should be evaluated. That standard is life, in the midst of relations with all of the rest of life’s companions, resistances, and exigencies. If sitting is practice, then it is practice for living<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, there is a way in which sitting practice provides the most accessible<\/em> opportunity for what can be called “a complete<\/a> act.” There is nothing missing from it; all of the elements that constitute life itself are present in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is the Firstness of “that which is presencing” — all of the things, the processes, and the relations that make up a moment can be witnessed and noted. Shadowing<\/em> refers to this dimension of Firstness in terms of the noting of what is<\/em>, whether it be seemingly external<\/em> to oneself (sights, sounds, sensations, and so on) or seemingly internal<\/em> to oneself (thoughts and memories heard or seen in the “mind’s eye,” felt feelings, and so on). We can simply call that Presencing, the Presencing of That Which Is. There is the Secondness of Action, in its encounter with resistance and otherness: in seated meditation practice, this is found in the effort <\/em>of witnessing. And then there is the Thirdness of Realization, whatever form that takes (visually “mapped,” auditorially “spoken” or “conveyed,” feelingly “moved,” et al.; see here<\/a> for the technical terms). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presencing, Action, Realization: these are the experiential correlatives of Peirce’s categories (firstness, secondness, thirdness), Hegel’s dialectics (thesis, antithesis, synthesis), and Gurdjieff’s Law of Three<\/a> (affirming, denying, reconciling; we can leave aside the differences between these three triads for now). In seated meditation we can think of these as Presencing, Witnessing, and Realization<\/s>; the first two are sufficient to reveal the third term, which needs no label. Each of them is ultimately a “flow<\/a>” of relational process, and the realization of that<\/em> and of how<\/em> they are so, in the specificity of the moment, makes of sitting practice a (potentially) complete act. There is nothing missing from it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there is nothing missing, then the entirety of the world is there, too, which means that everything and everybody is there with you. (That, to my mind, is what Whitehead was getting at in his idea of the “solidarity of the world<\/a>,” whereby every actual entity presupposes the entire world that is given to it and, in some sense, the entire world, full stop.) As they will be when you get up from your seat (even more so, of course). So make the most of their presence. Experience them in their completeness<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The obverse, the negative, and the solidarity of all things<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pre-G system presents a series of triads that can be contemplated and “activated” as one goes through life. Among them is the triad of becoming, which in its firstness moves from the Void (as I initially<\/a> called it, encompassing the darkness, silence, and emptiness before the arising of any form) to the Presencing of that which is (seen, heard, felt), in its secondness from the Heart (the tremor, murmur, and flicker at the origin of any action) to the Deed (showing, sounding, touching), and in its thirdness from the Mystery (the unknowability, unspeakability, and immovability that precedes any realization) to the Realization (as mapped, conveyed, and moved in any way). Renamed slightly, this triad of becomings looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n