[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 930824 10:12:55 EDT) ]
Hal Pepinsky (various)
My understanding of non-attachment is far from the notion of giving up
goals or desires. Rather, it is ceasing to upset oneself when goals are
not met. It is not results that are problematic (taken as aims or goals),
but ATTACHMENT to particular results.
From a certain perspective, some of the difference in experience can be
perceived as ends vs. means. Only the higher-order ends are relatively
constant (though nothing is changeless). At lower levels of perceptual
control, goals (reference perceptions) change continually, as the
discrepancy between higher-order goals and real-time perceptual input
varies. Attachment then is often an addictive demand that particular
means be employed, obscuring higher-level goals or even actually
substituting subordinate goals (e.g. more money) in place of the
higher-level goals.
Vedantists, theosophists, and others perceived oriental teachings through
Judaeo-Christian sectarian glasses, it seems to me. However it was, they
overlaid the notion that non-attachment means one must "kill out desire."
Kill desire and life stops. Our Eastern friends were not so foolish as
that, I think. Many Western students are still caught up in judgements
about the sinful flesh, etc. There is no moral judgement about it at all
(though it is the basis for what an outside observer might perceive as
morality and ethics). It is a very practical matter: just perception.
PCT does not yet have much to say about emotion (reactiveness) and
perception. A PCT rendition of the Buddhist view might go something like
this: a sensation in the body gives rise to perceptions out of memory and
imagination. Where the initial sensation or any of the perceptions thus
associated with it are controlled perceptions, effectors in the body
produce behavioral outputs (muscle tensions, glandular secretions, body
movements, etc.) Sensations arise in the body in consequence of these,
even if there has not yet been any observed body movement. For a given
controlled perception, perceptual inputs not provided by real-time
sensory inputs to the body may be provided by the imagination loop
(copying the reference signal of a given elementary control system [ECS]
at the input function of that ECS). The sensations consequent upon the
behavioral outputs, together with the remembered and imagined perceptual
signals, give rise to perceptions out of memory and imagination, just as
the initial sensation did. A replica of the initial sensation often is
perpetuated out of memory and imagination after the initial sensory input
itself has passed away. Vipassana practice is simply to be aware of the
initial sensory inputs as they arise and pass away, without galloping off
on the camel of reaction, interpretation, and judgement. That's all.
Anicchaa (impermanence) is a characteristic of one's perceptual universe
that one comes to realize through this practice. The appearance of
permanence is an artifact of the feedback through memory/imagination
(rather than through the environment) sketched above. This includes the
appearance of permanence in higher-level perceptions, such as what Bill
calls system concepts. Not that there's anything bad (or good) about
creating permanence. It's just useful to know that's what we're doing,
so we can do it skillfully.
Regarding prisons, do you know the book _We're All Doing Time_?
Bruce Nevin
bn@bbn.com (still)