David Rome
David Rome, Senior Fellow at Garrison Institute and former secretary to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is a practitioner of both Buddhism and focussing—the discipline of bringing gentle, interested attention to one’s bodily felt experience.
In an interview with the Shambhala Times (newsletter of Shambhala International) David argues that “Buddhist meditation gives a way of working with mind and making situations more workable because you’re able to have space and detachment. What meditation is not so beneficial for is actually exploring the situation or feelings themselves.” He says mindfulness-awareness is a wonderful tool for taming the mind, and in so doing can “relieve some of the pressure of emotional conflict, neurosis—but that doesn’t mean that it allows the source of those conflicts to be resolved.” We know that the Buddha taught the value of insight, not just sitting with a calm mind. Says David, focussing is one discipline that creates a setting where fresh insight can arise.
Read the entire interview with David here, and check out the article David wrote on this topic for the Shambhala Sun.
Let’s hear from YOU, SunSpace readers: What does meditation allow you to explore or touch in to? What other disciplines might be needed in life to get to the core of emotional, unclear, or conflicted issues? Broad question, but worth hearing the breadth of experience.
Final notes: David and others will explore such topics at the Applied Mindfulness Conference at Karme Choling in July; see details in our Calendar. Also: David offers a wonderful commentary on William Stafford’s poem “Like a Little Stone” in the July issue of Shambhala Sun, on sale beginning June 2.
6 Comments
"Meditation" and "mindfulness" alone are not Buddhism. It seems that we in the west want to simplify the rather intricate and nuanced teachings of the Buddha down to a couple of simple concepts that should fix everything. It doesn't really work that way. As someone who uses mindfulness in both educational and therapeutic situation I find them very useful. But they do not get the whole job done. There is a lot of untying of mental/emotional/physical/social knots…karma…that is needed as well.
As a Vajrayana practitioner I have come to deeply value how much my Buddhism confronts me with my own issues and forces me to deal with them or watch my suffering. But I can not really use those practices and techniques in my work yet.
Jack Kornfield at Omega[youtube VIVNAVwinMo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIVNAVwinMo youtube]
I just recently took a workshop with Jack Kornfield last November and loved it! He's so amazing and I recommend him and Tara Brach to anyone who is new to meditation.
@ Rome re: meditation
ur doin it rong
Wrong or right, I find the question really intriguing. I have no doubt that—with the right presence of mind—meditation can unravel all we need to know about ourselves. And yet, we may not have the presence of mind in meditation to see who/how we are.
I like this Molly, it's one of the big issues
Thanks John. A friend who is a practitioner of both meditation and focussing said to me that what David (and others like Reginald Ray) are trying to point out is the cultural bias in our western world view that prevents us from connecting deeply to our experienece– a level of experience that is not commonly attended to through habitual thinking.