Buddhist "Mindfulness" -- Compatible with Ti?

[Totenkindly]

Read this today on a Buddhism/meditation site:

...[FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]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.[/FONT]

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.

 

[Totenkindly]

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.

 

[Totenkindly]

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]

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.

 

[FemMecha]

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.

 

[RDF]

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]

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

 

[Totenkindly]

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.

 

[niffer]

I remember being taught that concept in a sermon in the temple I go to once. It's like looking at words in a language you know. You can't help but hear the word in your head and know the meaning when you look at it. It doesn't just appear to be an image. I wonder how animals see English words and letters. Even though this is such a small aspect of the mind, the difference between seeing something as what it truly is - part of a whole, and seeing it as what you know it is, is almost incomprehendably different. Nothing has a form, or expectations, and the world just seems so free, and complex, and beautiful. Babies must feel this way when they are first born...what they see they know is reality, and that is all they know about it. Freedom like this makes room for creating.

 

[meshou]

...

I'm not entirely sure what viewpoint you're opposing. I do not believe in an objective "spiritual" world, and such belief is not nessicary to especially non-theistic Buddhism.

In fact, my identification as a non-theistic Buddhist came from my interest in cognative science. There's really pretty damn good evidence that, for example, the majority of decisions are not made on a concious level. This pretty well argues to me, at least, for the Buddhist concept of an illusory ego.

So all I'm doing is learning how to control my own brain states? Well, seeing as I am my brain, I don't see anything wrong with that. So spiritual experience of the world is built into my brain? Well, that seems to argue against totally atrophying that bit of my awareness. Indeed, "spiritual" thinking may, for all I know, be a nice back door into some of my less concious processes.

I approach meditation from the same stance I approach many other things: It's better to know than not to, and it's better to have skill where possible rather than abstain from skill.

In short, I don't get what part of your post you imagine anyone here would disagree with.

 

[RDF]

I'm not entirely sure what viewpoint you're opposing. I do not believe in an objective "spiritual" world, and such belief is not nessicary to especially non-theistic Buddhism.

In fact, my identification as a non-theistic Buddhist came from my interest in cognative science. There's really pretty damn good evidence that, for example, the majority of decisions are not made on a concious level. This pretty well argues to me, at least, for the Buddhist concept of an illusory ego.

So all I'm doing is learning how to control my own brain states? Well, seeing as I am my brain, I don't see anything wrong with that. So spiritual experience of the world is built into my brain? Well, that seems to argue against totally atrophying that bit of my awareness. Indeed, "spiritual" thinking may, for all I know, be a nice back door into some of my less concious processes.

I approach meditation from the same stance I approach many other things: It's better to know than not to, and it's better to have skill where possible rather than abstain from skill.

In short, I don't get what part of your post you imagine anyone here would disagree with.

I didn't oppose any viewpoint. I just expressed my own views on the subject like anyone else.

If you were put off by my announcing that I'm a skeptic, that was just a casual label to let people know where I'm coming from. At some message boards with a heavy emphasis on debate about religion and mysticism, it's traditional for someone in my position to label himself as "an atheist and skeptic"; IOW, I'm an atheist when it to traditional religious beliefs and I'm a skeptic when it comes to New Agey-type stuff or Eastern mysticism.

But it's not a judgment on anyone else or an announcement of opposition. If people are discussing traditional religion on a message board, then I would intro my first post with "I'm an atheist..." It wouldn't matter whether the participants were all fellow atheists like me or all believers, and it wouldn't be a commentary on them or what went before. It's just a casual courtesy.

Similarly, if the discussion is about Buddhism, I intro my first post with "I'm a skeptic..." Again it doesn't express opposition to anyone or anything in the thread. It's a courtesy label. I just did it out of habit.

If the intro caught you off-guard or if it seemed to be a comment on what went before, then I apologize. It's a normal-enough intro on some message boards, but maybe not here. I've usually been staying out of the forums dealing with religion and politics while at INTPc and MBTIc because I don't want to do those debates any more. But as a result I don't know the conventions here for posting in those forums.

FL

 

[FranG]

Wow this thread is interesting. Some interesting responses from certain people I didn't expect to hear.

I'll just add to the OP that Ti is in fact very compatible with "Mindfulness." Mindfulness is that objective intuition that is often spoke about. This is an abstract concept. T is a concrete judging function. The two must work together, however the T should be the servant of objective intuition. As Meshou eluded too, one has to learn to listen to that inner voice and trust it. Then use Ti (or Te) to manifest that higher wisdom in this physical plane (i.e., the concrete world as we know it; the Matrix).

Just to add, the abstract functions are N and F, while the concrete functions are S and T. That's why NFs are so lofty (or at least come off as such).

Also interesting to hear that so many of ya'll meditate as I find that pretty hard to do. I'm still yet to effectively meditate but I haven't practiced all that much either.

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.

This is a very interesting comment. I think ultimately science can explain everything quantitatively but not qualititatively. This is probably very well true; I definitely see metitation as a form of self hypnosis. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing though, kinda just is.

But all the sagas write about obtaining "higher knowledge" and "better understanding" with meditation. They say they tap into another realm. I believe this to be true, of course I can't prove it. Maybe it isn't to be proved. I also find it interesting that a lot of classical writers say such things in describing their masterful works. Also, when I write poetry or quotes, I never know what is gonna come out. It feels like the hand has a mind of it's own often. Interestingly, sports athletes say the same thing when they have phenomenal performances in games. They say they just get in a zone and just go.

 

[RDF]

I didn't oppose any viewpoint. I just expressed my own views on the subject like anyone else.

I should also clarify that I was responding to the OP. I was commenting on the nature of the moment of "unfocused awareness" before analysis begins, how to prolong it, how Fi deals with it, etc.

My fault; I really should be more consistent about prefacing my messages with a quote from a previous post. My messages often take an overview, and it may be difficult for readers to figure out the context from which I'm speaking.

FL

 

[RDF]

This is a very interesting comment. I think ultimately science can explain everything quantitatively but not qualititatively. This is probably very well true; I definitely see metitation as a form of self hypnosis. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing though, kinda just is.

But all the sagas write about obtaining "higher knowledge" and "better understanding" with meditation. They say they tap into another realm. I believe this to be true, of course I can't prove it. Maybe it isn't to be proved. I also find it interesting that a lot of classical writers say such things in describing their masterful works. Also, when I write poetry or quotes, I never know what is gonna come out. It feels like the hand has a mind of it's own often. Interestingly, sports athletes say the same thing when they have phenomenal performances in games. They say they just get in a zone and just go.

You've mentioned a lot of different things.

"Higher knowledge" from meditation: Maybe. Or it may just be a different viewpoint. The contemplative life will yield different conclusions from the active life.

The creative process: When inspiration comes from unseen sources, I tend to figure the unconscious is providing some input. There are lots of ways to breach the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious and to tap the unconscious for inspiration.

Athletes in the zone: That seems to be state of increased focus. It's almost the opposite of meditative floating awareness. Just to use an analogy, "in the zone" is like an enhanced Sensor state, whereas meditative floating awareness is like an enhanced iNtuitive state. In both cases it's like one shuts out unneeded inputs or brain functions in order to enhance a preferred function.

In general: The brain has a lot of separate functions occurring at any given moment. One can shut down or enhance individual functions (or combinations of functions) lots of different ways: drugs, hypnosis, meditation, altering the mixes of sensory inputs, etc. It's fun to play around with that stuff, though I'm not sure how really meaningful it all is in the end.

Just my personal opinion, though. I'm not an expert on this stuff.

FL

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

Read this today on a Buddhism/meditation site:



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?

Fortunato,

Fantastic thread. It's a really weird issue. I think it all depends on preference. Ti can be used to organize reality (sensory or intuitive data) both during mindfulness and not. However, the issue is whether there's a PURPOSE for the Ti. Are you using your Ti to "get somewhere" (solve a problem, make "progress") or just to observe. The former is at odds with mindfulness because it involves distortions and judgments, while the latter seems more compatible.

 

[bluebell]

Is Se Buddhist mindfulness? Or am I confused about a) Se or b) mindfulness or c) confused about both?

Se seems to me to be just taking in the world through the senses, not thinking, not analysing - just being.

 

[wyrdsister]

To still the mind, to quiet the endless thoughts, is a wonderful tool and can aid many long blissful nights sleep.

I have spent many years learning this.