Buddhist "Mindfulness" -- Compatible with Ti?

[Jennifer]

Read this today on a Buddhism/meditation site:

...When you first become aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure awareness just before you conceptualize the thing, before you identify it. That is a stage of Mindfulness.

Ordinarily, this stage is very short. It is that flashing split second just as you focus your eyes on the thing, just as you focus your mind on the thing, just before you objectify it, clamp down on it mentally and segregate it from the rest of existence. It takes place just before you start thinking about it--before your mind says, "Oh, it's a dog." That flowing, soft-focused moment of pure awareness is Mindfulness.

In that brief flashing mind-moment you experience a thing as an un-thing. You experience a softly flowing moment of pure experience that is interlocked with the rest of reality, not separate from it. Mindfulness is very much like what you see with your peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision.

Yet this moment of soft, unfocused, awareness contains a very deep sort of knowing that is lost as soon as you focus your mind and objectify the object into a thing. In the process of ordinary perception, the Mindfulness step is so fleeting as to be unobservable. We have developed the habit of squandering our attention on all the remaining steps, focusing on the perception, recognizing the perception, labeling it, and most of all, getting involved in a long string of symbolic thought about it. That original moment of Mindfulness is rapidly passed over.

It is the purpose of the above mentioned Vipassana (or insight) meditation to train us to prolong that moment of awareness.

The essence of the internalized judging functions (and other judging functions as well, to be honest) is to take the "thing" and objectify it and then to deconstruct, label, and organize it in some way. Ti does this immediately with anything it runs into.

I find this interesting, since so many INTPs have mentioned a focus on Buddhism as their preferred religious belief (as opposed to one based on some sort of creed).

How do you integrate being a Ti (or Fi, for you INFP types) person, if the goal of the philosophy is to focus on your perceiving functions and not really engage your internal judging function, since the latter is unpreferable and avoids perceiving the "thing" as it really is?

[meshou]

With difficulty. Takes lots of meditation, and it takes turning off that constantly babbling voice in your head.

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by meshou

With difficulty. Takes lots of meditation, and it takes turning off that constantly babbling voice in your head.

I guess what I want to understand is, if Ti/Fi are our "natural" functions that we use to process the world, and they're supposedly "good" functions as per MBTI and how we've talked about them here, and in fact those functions were probably used just to develop Buddhism as a philosophy in the first place, is Buddhism actually suggesting that those functions are not as useful as the Perceiving functions and in fact usually just cause trouble in terms of interacting in the best possible way with the world?

That they are functions to really be discarded, at the highest plane of existence/awareness?

Or am I reading too much into this?

[meshou]

They're not good or bad, they just are.

I posted a thread about turning them off on INTPc before, and gotten an interesting reaction from most-- "I can't."

Given the assumption that skill is preferable to lack of it, it is better to be able to do so, and the ability takes some work.

There's a sort of misconception about Buddhism that the goal is reaching Nirvana. To be sure, that is a place which, at least theoretically, can be reached, and which can be based on certain statements about the nature of man. However, while it's a noble goal which many of the devoted choose for themselves, it's not the only one out there, and it's not a failure if you choose a lower level of devotion.

But on the lower levels, learning the skill of turning off your primary function is a doable, and I feel, worthwhile goal.

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by meshou

They're not good or bad, they just are. I posted a thread about turning them off on INTPc before, and gotten an interesting reaction from most-- "I can't."

I feel the same way -- I even habitually have trouble sleeping at night because my mind won't gear down and shut up.

So, are you saying that the "thoughts" should be treated just like any other sensation/experience coming from outside, just accepted for what they are and then "let go" rather than viewed as "part of me" commenting on things?

(Note: Technically, I guess there really is no "outside" because that assumes I have an ego and thus an inside.)

Given the assumption that skill is preferable to lack of it, it is better to be able to do so, and the ability takes some work.

I know that part of my progress over the last few years comes from just accepting things and looking at them, rather than trying to deconstruct them constantly and "understand" them...

There's a sort of misconception about Buddhism that the goal is reaching Nirvana. To be sure, that is a place which, at least theoretically, can be reached, and which can be based on certain statements about the nature of man.

Now, Nirvana is not a place, right? It's a "state of consciousness" where one is perfectly in sync with everything else, rather than being 'separate' and thus ego-bound? (please correct)

However, while it's a noble goal which many of the devoted choose for themselves, it's not the only one out there, and it's not a failure if you choose a lower level of devotion.

Are there any other defined plateaus in Buddhism (such as Nirvana at the top), or are you just talking in general here?

[meshou]

Originally Posted by Fortunato

So, are you saying that the "thoughts" should be treated just like any other sensation/experience coming from outside, just accepted for what they are and then "let go" rather than viewed as "part of me" commenting on things?

That may be a good way to go about it. My own process is:

1) intellectually realizing that that part of you is a lot less significant to your process of making decisions than you might think-- that attatchement to it as something you "need" is not correct.

2) Yoga and meditation as a way of pushing myself further and further into not thinking.

It's possible to go about your day in a meditative state, work and cooking and even some speaking without thinking.

Now, Nirvana is not a place, right? It's a "state of consciousness" where one is perfectly in sync with everything else, rather than being 'separate' and thus ego-bound? (please correct)

Yeah, correct. "Place" was figurative.

Are there any other defined plateaus in Buddhism (such as Nirvana at the top), or are you just talking in general here?

Well, no other plateaus that I know of, but I personally don't believe that the Buddha was seriously proposing the entire world become monks and nuns. Day to day life does go on, and there are lesser revelations to be had.

The acceptance of suffering as a result of your choices can just as easily make you able to live your life more fully as it can be part of a path to Nirvana.

[toonia]

Originally Posted by Fortunato

The essence of the internalized judging functions (and other judging functions as well, to be honest) is to take the "thing" and objectify it and then to deconstruct, label, and organize it in some way. Ti does this immediately with anything it runs into.

I find this interesting, since so many INTPs have mentioned a focus on Buddhism as their preferred religious belief (as opposed to one based on some sort of creed).

How do you integrate being a Ti (or Fi, for you INFP types) person, if the goal of the philosophy is to focus on your perceiving functions and not really engage your internal judging function, since the latter is unpreferable and avoids perceiving the "thing" as it really is?

On a related note, the ability to perceive and accept w/o labeling, to see as though for the first time, is the experience of wonder. Even the most pedestrian objects can take on a stunning quality. Look at a cloud as though you have never seen a 'cloud', as if there is no category to which it belongs, it just is. The more deeply I do this the more intense the feeling of awe, wonder. That is key to how I learned to lose myself in nature. I believe this is how animals tends to look at the world, at least moreso than people. It also demonstrates the importance, meaning, and complexity in thinking w/o language. Language is the process of labeling.

edit: from what I understand of it, this tends towards my natural state of thinking - not sure what function that refers to. I'm guessing I don't have Ti because labeling is a continual struggle for me. My mind resists it terribly.

[FineLine]

Just want to throw in my skeptic's opinion here.

I took a transcendental meditation class in the 70s and played around with meditation for a while. When all was said and done, I considered it a mild form of self-hypnosis good for stress reduction and getting to sleep.

More recently, scientists have used PET scans to locate the meditation/prayer experience in the parietal lobe of the brain, which governs the individual's perception of spatial orientation. Monks and Buddhists basically shut down their parietal lobe and get a feeling of being free-floating.

It's kind of like entering a hall of mirrors and enjoying that moment of disorientation and floating before you start analyzing and trying to figure out how and where the mirrors are located. It's a mild case of vertigo.

Being a little light on the analysis facility, INFPs like to brag about how they can play around with this kind of disorientation and prolong it. Sometimes when I'm overtired and headed home from work late at night, I take a glass walkway high over a busy highway. Right in the middle I'll get hit with a little wave of vertigo and disorientation (stars, headlights, night sky, hanging in space), and I'll just linger and enjoy the disorientation for a while.

Here's a quote on the parietal lobe thing. I just yanked it from the first article I googled. Better articles could probably be found on the topic.

[...] In the experiments, Newberg and D'Aquili used a technology called SPECT scanning to map the brains of several Tibetan Buddhists as they immersed themselves in meditative states. Later they did the same with Franciscan nuns who were engaged in deep, contemplative prayer. The scans photographed levels of neural activity in each subject's brain at the moment that person had reached an intense spiritual peak. The Buddhists typically described this moment as a blending into a larger oneness, and a sense of losing the self. The Franciscans described it as a sensation of a deeper, truer self being drawn into unity with God.

When they studied the scans, Newberg and D'Aquili's attention was drawn to a chunk of the brain's parietal lobe they called the orientation association area. The area is responsible for defining the limits of the physical self, and for generating the perceptions of space in which that self can be oriented. In simpler terms, it draws the line between the self and the rest of existence. This is a task of staggering complexity, which requires a constant stream of neural information flowing in from the senses. What the scans revealed, however, was that at peak moments of prayer and meditation, the flow of neural impulses to the parietal lobe was dramatically reduced.

This was exactly the result the two men expected, and based on their knowledge of brain function, they knew what its effects would be: the orientation area, deprived of the information it needed to draw the line between the self and the world, would generate a sense of a limitless awareness melting into infinite space. [...]

The Biology of Belief [note: do not prejudge this item, read it all first - Barry - Debates & Discussions - The Lounge

That pretty well answers it for me.

FL

[Geoff]

Originally Posted by meshou

With difficulty. Takes lots of meditation, and it takes turning off that constantly babbling voice in your head.

Yes, that's right. I find an external focus allows me to do that, but it must be one not worthy of objectifying or considering in detail. So typically the unfocussed awareness can be placed on something like the pattern on a wall with my eyes... release the "me" behind them, and float off. That same intangible meditative awareness is then waiting to be released.

It's like a tweak on the universe of my own senses. And, it's difficult to stop the babbling voice rushing in (I can meditate for a while, but eventually consciousness swamps me)

-Geoff

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by toonia

from what I understand of it, this tends towards my natural state of thinking - not sure what function that refers to. I'm guessing I don't have Ti because labeling is a continual struggle for me. My mind resists it terribly.

I am inclined to think this is because of your primary Ni function -- that's its job, to "unlabel" things and creatively see them from multiple (and supposedly inherently equal) perspectives.