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From the age of 15 or 16, I instinctively
recognised that some kinds of enquiry could only be made
with reference to non-Western cultures. The scientific
materialism of the West is the basis for some astonishing
technological and cultural developments, not least of
which is the computer and the Internet. But Western culture
has never had much to say about human consciousness.
I do not think we should romanticise
or idealise Indian or Chinese philosophy, like the 1960s
hippies did. Understanding consciousness is not culturally
or historically specific, and inevitably some of the ideas
and methods of a foreign culture are appropriate for them,
but not necessarily for others. The Western mind typically
questions and analyses, while the Indian and Chinese mind
is more submissive and accepting. I say this, based on
years of experience of Indian yoga and Chinese martial
arts. In traditional classes, you are expected to believe
in the authority of your teacher - the basis of the 'guru'
relationship. If you question them - as I did - you are
quite likely to be asked to leave - as I was.
I once lived at a London yoga
centre for several months, and I quite enjoyed the regular
classes. You had to get up at about 5 am, which was a
painful but interesting experience; it gave a different
rhythm to the day as you set off to work or study (I was
undergoing Alexander Technique training), having been
awake for many hours. What I objected to was the content
of those early morning classes. They were not simply yoga
exercises, in fact they began later and were optional.
The early morning 'sadhana' (spiritual practice) was an
Indian style sing-song. If you lived at the centre, you
had to engage with devotional singing about various deities.
I remember part of one song which was a memorably painful
experience when led by a particular woman who shouted
rather than sang, and most discordant it was. The words
were "jaya ganesha, jaya ganesha, jaya ganesha pahriman;
subramanyha, subramanyha, subramanyha rakshaman". The
first part means 'victory to ganesha' - who is an elephant
headed, Indian deity. What, you might ask, does victory
mean to a god with an elephant trunk? I was similarly
mystified.
Other songs went on about the
river Ganges and other kinds of silliness. As far as I
was concerned, this was not yoga - it was Hinduism. I
stopped going to the morning sessions and was asked to
leave.
I have trained with eight different
Wing Chun kung fu teachers in different parts of the country,
and the last time I did this I was visiting two teachers
simultaneously. They were different, and had different
things to offer; it was an intelligent strategy similar
to the notion of athletic cross-training. However class
A - run by a Chinese teacher - discovered that I was attending
class B - run by a British person. Class A told me I would
have to leave. I explained that I was, at the time, giving
private English lessons to young students who also attended
school. They benefited from this arrangement. What was
different about Wing Chun? Well, two things. Admittedly,
commercial interests were involved here which were valid
to some extent. But more importantly, the traditional
Chinese classes were, effectively, not straightforward
Wing Chun. By signing up, you were obliged to adhere to
a guru subservience which meant you never questioned the
teacher and became absorbed into a relationship reminiscent
of Chinese feudalism. The 'tradition' and the system was
more important than the individual person. Many different
schools operate in this way and then argue about who is
superior, exactly like different religious cults. I said
these things, and was asked to leave.
I am naturally rebellious in circumstances
that oppress, devalue or undermine me - not in an obstreperous
way, but intelligently. Bruce Lee had this quality too
- he challenged much of the feudal, traditional nonsense
of Chinese martial arts, which he called the "classical
mess". In his books, he puts the individual person at
the centre of their learning and as a teacher, he provided
uniquely tailored programmes for each person. This is
called 'student centred learning' and is the approached
most favoured in contemporary teacher training. Traditional
martial arts are an unquestioning, one-size-fits-all approach
where the teacher and his personal outlook is the overriding
factor.
The Indian and the Chinese psycho-physical
systems have something to say about consciousness. The
Indian methods refer to the chakra model of subtle anatomy,
and the Chinese methods were historically related to Buddhism
and Taoism, which have their own 'maps' of consciousness.
The Indian systems are more comprehensive in this respect,
for two reasons. The practice of meditation is central,
and there is a highly sophisticated philosophy and methodology
in Vedanta texts. For example, Vedanta describes the principle
of 'samadhi', which means union. It is not an intellectual
abstraction, but an experiential possibility to be realised
in meditation. There are two kinds of samadhi: with seed,
and without. The first might be union with a mantra or
visual symbol; the second is union with nothing: literally
no-thing, thus emptiness. Samadhi without seed is the
true meaning of the term 'enlightenment' - a term which
is used in a variety of different and contradictory ways,
so its actual significance has been badly diluted. There
are many different kinds of realisation you can make in
meditation, but the fundamental objective is that which
is ultimate: the final discovery beyond which there is
nothing else, sometimes called unity. This is no-thing
which is everything, because it cannot be defined as any-thing.
In conclusion, I suggest that
the old 1960s romanticism is best left behind in regard
to Eastern philosophy. The Western mind analyses and challenges
- and that is healthy and productive. However, Western
thinking is often trapped within empirical materialism,
which is a mind-set not conducive to understanding human
consciousness. An example here is the reductionist belief
that thought and consciousness can be located and mapped
as phenomena within the brain. It's quite clear that brain
patterns correspond to thought in some ways, but there
is no scientific evidence - their own criteria - to suggest
that the brain causes thought or consciousness. The problem
here is acting as if consciousness is an observable, quantifiable
phenomena separate from the person who observes it. It
isn't - consciousness is the biggest subject there is
because it incorporates literally everything else; it
is not, in relation to brain studies, the other way round,
and it necessarily begins and ends with self study. This
is why Vedanta philosophy is so rich and sophisticated:
it is about self study and the various discoveries that
can be made, for oneself, by closing the eyes and investigating
subtle regions which transcend the mind.
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