Meditation, Neuroscience, Observability and Controllability

I wrote a comment here on the C4chaos blog, about some talks that Shinzen Young gave on enlightenment, meditation and neuroscience.

I think it's a great thing that neuroscientists study meditation and that experience, and correlate it with what is observed.

However, as I note there, I'm deeply skeptical of claims such as:

However, the kind of thing that I have in mind would require and exceedingly precise kind of biofeedback where we knew exactly what kind we were dealing with, we knew the necessary and sufficient physiological correlates of enlightenment itself, and then we could use biofeedback to train those correlates more efficiently. Now, having said that much, please do not think that I am so naive as to think that that in it of itself is going to bring a person into enlightenment. However, I would strongly suspect that it could cut the time required to a tenth. There’ll be all sorts of other ancillary trainings and learnings and life experiences that would have to go around that. You’re not just gonna hook somebody up to a machine and just because their physiology emulates enlightenment think that they’re gonna get enlightened. But boy, it could sure make my job a lot easier, if we could do stuff like this. And that’s what I’m looking towards from practical point of view. Why?

...Only a small number of people participate in the meditation endeavor. Not elitist because meditators don’t want to spread it. Meditators do their best to spread it. But it’s too hard, it takes too much time, people aren’t interested, it doesn’t seem relevant. If we had a way of bringing deep experiences more easily, then we could reach a significant portion of the population, and we could start to make a change on this planet.

Besides what I wrote there (expectations regarding meditation, etc.) I would raise yellow flags of caution as both a Buddhist and a systems engineer with expertise in communication theory, information theory, signal processing and control theory.

First, let's put out front where the technology is: you can do all kinds of things with devices now to emulate feelings in the brain, and even perform simple control functions such as moving a mouse on a screen and what-not. But, there's notions of controllability and observability that, when applied to the fact that our brains are "to go" obviate the need for such devices.

Even if such a device, in meditation could speed up the experience of emptiness or sammadhi, the fact is all that's kind of irrelevant if you aren't applying this moment to moment in everyday life. You'd need to be able to observe the ensemble of mental states during the day (which, even in restricted areas of the brain is not trivial in the near future), and then you'd have to have some control mechanism to put it where it's "supposed" to be. And point is, it's "supposed" to be where it already is.

We sit on a cushion to get off the cushion, and actually expressing sunyata moment to moment in our interaction with our fellow beings and our environment is where the rubber really meets the road.

Because of what I said above, I'm not sure we can do this, and if we can...then...could not we be able to, just as well, convert a whole segment of society into paranoid, delusional, enraged teabaggers? How could you stop folks from doing that, as long as they thought there was something in it for them? Hell, people are already doing that with crude means because they think there's something in it for them. Which, I suppose makes a counter argument for creating neuropsychological techniques to "walk people back" from paranoia, delusion, and rage. But I suspect that's a different brain app than a Nirvana app.

To me, as a technologist, we always have to view technology as a double edged sword. Technology is never wholly on the side of bodhisattvas or the enraged and fearful (or angels and demons, if you prefer). It's neutral. So we need to be careful.

So, yeah, let's study how the brain functions in sammadhi, for sure. But as someone wrote about Masters and Johnson's sex research, ultimately that's not the point, except that in the case of sammadhi and kensho (見性), the feeling isn't the point either.

A New Holiday I Can Support

HT: Miaoming

I really want this to happen nationwide: Give Your Stuff Away Day.

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 3, Section LXI

Standard disclaimer: I'm   using the translation here, and as usual, and I'm just doing this as myself, to get myself to read this stuff.

The Tathagata "has not uttered even a word, nor will he ever utter; for not-speaking is the Buddha's speaking."

Why?

For two reasons:

They are the truth of self-realisation and an eternally-abiding reality...[The truth of self-realisation has]  has been realised by the Tathagatas, that is my own realisation, in which there is neither decreasing nor increasing; for the realm of self-realisation is free from words and discriminations, having nothing to do with dualistic terminology...

What is meant by an eternally-abiding reality? The ancient road of reality, Mahamati, has been here all the time, like gold, silver, or pearl preserved in the mine, Mahamati; the Dharmadhatu abides foreover, whether the Tathagata appears in the world or not; as the Tathagata eternally abides so does the reason (dharmata) of all things; reality foreover abides, reality keeps its order, like the roads in an ancient city...


[W]hat has been realised by myself and other Tathagatas is this reality, the eternally-abiding reality (sthitita), the self-regulating reality (niyamata), the suchness of things (tathata), the realness of things (bhutata), the truth itself (satyata). For this reason, Mahamati, it is stated by me that from the night of the Tathagata's Enlightenment till the night of his entrance into Nirvana, he has not in the meantime uttered, nor ever will utter, one word. So it is said:

 From the night of Enlightenment till that of Nirvana, I have not in the meantime made any proclamation whatever.

A footnote to the last sentence notes that "The Zen masters frequently refer to this important declaration."

My own teacher cautioned me when I first visited him that "There is no teacher.  Bodhidharma is the teacher."

That is, the Dharma and its practice and realization are there no matter what.  Even this "Word Honored One"  cannot "talk out" the realization. It's there, and depends not on any one person.

So if you ever wondered why Zen teachers who really teach Zen are the way they are, they are taking a cue from here.  Which of course, is no cue at all.

And that physicist has a point...

In the exchange I posted below, the theoretical physicist says something to the effect of "I have never heard a good definition of conciousness."

 He has never heard a good definition of the the state of being conscious.  Of course language is like this - all definitions are ultimately circular until referenced outside of the language - "That thing over there is a rock!"

But consciousness itself has no external referents - when the Buddha said "I am awake" we could not, in and of itself, tell that apart from other mental states externally.  True enough, there are externally measurable phenomena coincident with reports of consciousness or awareness, but we're not able to externally, purely objectively replicate awareness - only phenomena associated with it. Maybe the robot is sentient.  Maybe you are - you probably seem to be in person, I'd wager.  The subjective and objective spheres are interdependent, as the Identity of the Relative and the Absolute.

The goal of Zen practice is not to go too deeply into what awareness or consciousness is, and that's not a useful  awareness philosophy in the original, Socratic sense of the meaning of philosophy - Socrates himself had always said he had no learning himself. to impart (reminds me of Lin-Chi).  It's very largely about showing up and acting skillfully in the world, rather than prattling about "superpositions of possibilities."

Deepak Chopra versus a Theoretical Physicist

Can you understand why technical Zen folks aren't exactly enamored with this guy?

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 3, Section LIX & LX

This lay person is    using the translation here, and as usual, and I'm just doing this as myself, to get myself to read this stuff...

In LIX, the best thing that can explain this short paragraph is this part of Suzuki's introduction:

The Buddha's love is not something ego-centered. It is a will-force which desires and acts in the realm of twofold egolessness, it is above the dualism of being and non-being, it rises from a heart of non-discrimination, it manifests itself in the conduct of purposelessness (anabhogacarya).

 So ...

Said the Blessed One: when the egolessness of things as well as of persons is understood, when the knowledge of the twofold hindrance is thoroughly taken hold of, when the twofold death (cyuti) is accomplished, and when the twofold group of passions is destroyed, there, Mahamati, is the Buddha-nature of the Buddhas and the Blessed Ones. 

In LX the following question is addressed:

According to what deeper sense² did you make this announcement before the congregation, that "I am all the Buddhas of the past," and that "I have gone through many a birth in varieties of forms, being thus at times the king Mandhatri, Elephant, Parrot, Indra, Vyasa, Sunetra, and other beings in my one hundred thousand births?"

 The footnote explains that this "deeper sense" only is a term of reference in the Lankavatara.  The point of this section is to say that the aspects of the Buddha are echoed by many, and these aspects are found from the teachings and behavior, including the behavior of embodiment of nonduality.

The Huffington Post is worse than I thought...

Andrew Cohen's cohort is there?

No Hindrance Therefore No Fear

While swimming today, an odd, irrational fear arose in me that I would not have enough strength to turn around in the deep part of the pool.  Now, truth be told, the "deep" part of the pool is only 5'; and that affords me the ability to get my 5'6 head sufficiently above water to take a breath no matter what. Furthermore, I knew that I know how to maneuver myself in water.  But it took effort to be with the fear, swim with it, and go through the turns.

And of course nothing happened.

Except that I had a vivid reminder of how the "fear" or "flight" portions of the brain can easily over-ride the rational parts of the brain to the point where useful, purposeful activity is impeded.  It takes practice to not be driven by fear.

This then reminded me of how demagogues work; by appealing to fear they hope they can get people to stop thinking.  The ability to restrain the discursive mind, as we Zen Buddhist  folk know, is very important to act purposefully in the world.  But if that restraint is born of greed, hatred, ignorance, attachments, and fear, it becomes very difficult to work purposefully in the world; in fact it is yet an instance of exchanging one head for another, or an escape from where one is, rather than operating in non-duality.  

As John Cleese said about why he was no longer a newt, "I got better."

It also reminds me of the Teabagger movement.  Fear is their oxygen, and it is fed by demagogues.  If we want to build a better world, we should try to help them not be afraid skillfully.  We need to realize they're just as much Buddhas as the rest of us.  I recently realized a good way to talk with these people, and it has to do with the fact that their language is loaded with fantasy, abstraction, and "what's over there."   By gently keeping the discussion as to what is right now, what is pragmatic, what works,  it is possible to engage the fearful without further stoking their fear.

Takes skill.

The right tool for the job

Nathan at Dangerous Harvest does the "pox on both your houses" bit on atheism versus theism.  I disagree.  He says:

Talk of heaven and God-daddies in the sky always has felt like a screwy attempt to deal with human psychological dramas to me. There are terrible things occurring on Earth, so there must be a God waiting to punish us for our misdeeds, and "he" must be separate from us, otherwise "he'd" be tainted.

And frankly, talk of atheism can quickly stray into something screwy as well. Human reason is the highest power. Only that which is scientifically confirmed is real. There is nothing beyond the material...

Both ends of that spectrum dull the shit out of me, and are, as far as I'm concerned, completely lifeless - deader than the worn out logs currently floating down the flooded Mississippi. 

 There's nothing screwy at all about the proposition that that which is observed, measured, quantified, and probed in the meat world we inhabit pretty much stays there.  No ill-informed appeals to quantum physics metaphysics are needed.

Likewise, there's nothing really screwy about saying there's "nothing beyond the material," because that's the world we inhabit. 

Furthermore, from a viewpoint of non-duality, all three of these positions are not complete.

Nonduality and being ridiculously busy

Some days, such as these days, everything doesn't fit into 24 hours; in fact everything never fits into 24 hours.

So we do our best.

No point being out of sorts more than you are simply because being out of sorts is woven into the fabric of existence.

Nothing to report today...

Still planning....watch this space, as they say...

More on Aitken-Shimano in the future...

I've written something about the Eido Shimano - Robert Aitken - DBZ scandal before, but, with continued practice I think I can see more a bit of the why, as in why Shimano is still there.  The lineage of Shimano is legit; the Dharma is indeed propagated by his successors, but the real question, to me, is how to make whole what was shattered.  In a certain sense it cannot be, and in another sense it's more than full.

That said, we Americans do appreciate the notion of public accountability, and though Shimano is now aged, words should be spoken.

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 3, Section LVIII

As always, at least for this sutra,  I'm using the translation here, and as usual, and I'm just doing this as an ordinary guy...

Many times I write posts on these sutras, I admit, I have a shred of trepidation within me, as it is true that these texts are often incredibly repetitive, probably because of the limited literacy of the monks who were perhaps young students.  But today is clearly an exception.  Today's excerpt, in keeping with the theme of non-duality of the Lankavatara, could have been written by William Blake (if Blake were a Mahayana Buddhist in India well over 1500 years before he actually existed).

At that time again Mahāmati the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva said this to the Blessed One: The five immediacies are preached by the Blessed One; and what are these five, Blessed One, which being committed by a son or a daughter of a good family cause them to fall into the Avici hell?

The Blessed One replied: Then, Mahāmati, listen well and reflect, for I will tell you.

Mahāmati the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva said; Certainly, Blessed One, and gave ear to the Blessed One.

The Blessed One said thus to him: What are the five immediacies? They are: (1) the murdering of the mother, (2) of the father, (3) of the Arhat, (4) the breaking-up of the Brotherhood, and (5) causing the body of the Tathagata to bleed from malice.

Now what is meant by the mother of all beings? It is desire which is procreative, going together with joy and anger and upholding all with motherliness. Ignorance representing fatherhood brings about one's rebirth in the six villages of the sense-world. When there takes place a complete destruction of both roots, fatherhood and motherhood, it is said that mother and father are murdered. When there is a complete extermination of the subordinate group of passions such as anger, etc., which are like an enemy, a venomous rat, the murdering of the Arhat is said to take place. What is meant by the breaking-up of the Brotherhood? When there is a complete fundamental breaking-up of the combination of the Skandhas whose characteristic mark is a state of mutual dependence among dissimilarities, it is said that the Brotherhood is split up.  Mahāmati, when the body of the eight Vijñānas, which erroneously recognises individuality and generality as being outside the Mind—which is seen [by the ignorant] in the form of an external world—is completely extirpated by means of faulty discriminations, that is, by means of the triple emancipation and the non-outflows, and when thus the faulty mentality of the Vijñāna-Buddha is made to bleed, it is known as an immediacy-deed. These,

Mahāmati, are the five inner immediacies, and when they are experienced by a son or a daughter of a good family, there is an immediacy-deed of realisation as regards the Dharma...

...The Śrāvakas of transformation, Mahāmati, who are sustained by the sustaining power either of the Bodhisattvas or Tathagatas, may see somebody else practising deeds of wickedness, and they will repeatedly make great efforts to turn him away from his wickness and faulty views, and to make him realise the non-reality of wickedness and faulty views by laying down his burden. This is the way I demonstrate facts of the transformation, the sustaining power, and the realisation.

 In other words, the worst things you could possibly do, and the worst experiences you could have as a result of your actions can be transformed; can be overcome, and transcended.  Not because a deity came and gave you a get out of jail for free card, but because it is all phenomena of Mind itself.  So this is seeing into the nature  of the self and understanding it is - yeah - not some tripped out experience, but indeed cathartic, and just right.

Practice Makes Perfect

I hate the genre of "science proves Buddhism" story...although, as an applied scientist and a Buddhist I do have a certain fondness for the "this story correlates with Buddhist practice" genre.

And that's what I thought in reading this NY Times Book Review article on "The Genius in All of Us" by David Shenk.

Motivational gurus from Dale Carnegie to Tony Robbins have long promised access to these hidden stores of genius. Now here comes David Shenk with “The Genius in All of Us,” which argues that we have before us not a “talent scarcity” but a “latent talent abundance.” Our problem “isn’t our inadequate genetic assets,” but “our inability, so far, to tap into what we already have.” The truth is “that few of us know our true limits, that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our ‘un­actualized potential.’ ” At first it would seem that Shenk, the author of thoughtful books on information overload, memory loss and chess, has veered into guru territory. But he has assembled a large body of research to back up his claims.

Two bodies, in fact. The first concerns the emerging science of epigenetics, the study of how the environment modifies the way genes are expressed. Since the days of Crick and Watson, we’ve tended to see genes as a set of straightforward instructions, a blueprint for constructing a person. Over the last 20 years, however, some scientists have begun to complicate that picture. “It turns out that the genetic instructions themselves are influenced by other inputs,” Shenk writes. “Genes are constantly activated and deactivated by environmental stimuli, nutrition, hormones, nerve impulses and other genes.” That means there can be no guaranteed genetic windfalls, or fixed genetic limits, bestowed at the moment of conception. Instead there is a continually unfolding interaction between our heredity and our world, a process that may be in some measure under our control.

The second body of research investigates the nature of exceptional ability and how it arises. We’ve traditionally regarded superior talent as a rare and mysterious gift bequeathed to a lucky few. In fact, Shenk writes, science is revealing it to be the product of highly concentrated effort. He describes the work of the psychologist Anders Ericsson, who wondered if he could train an ordinary person to perform extraordinary feats of memory. When Eric­sson began working with a young man identified as S.F., his subject could, like most of us, hold only seven numbers in his short-term memory. By the end of the study, S.F. could correctly recall an astonishing 80-plus digits. With the right kind of mental discipline, Ericsson and his co-­investigator concluded, “there is seemingly no limit to memory performance.” Shenk weaves accounts of such laboratory experiments, conducted on average people, with the tales of singularly accomplished individuals — Ted Williams and Michael Jordan, Mozart and Beethoven — who all worked relentlessly to hone their skills...

...Forget about genes as unchanging “blueprints” and talent as a “gift,” all tied up in a bow. “We cannot allow ourselves to think that way anymore,” he declares with some fervor. Instead, Shenk proposes, imagine the genome as a giant control board, with thousands of switches and knobs that turn genes off and on or tune them up and down. And think of talent not as a thing, but as a process; not as something we have, but as something we do.

Yep. No fixed essence to us it seems.

And, isn't this really all about Zen Budhist practice or what?

Shenk doesn’t neglect the take-home point we’re all waiting for, even titling a chapter “How to Be a Genius (or Merely Great).” The answer has less in common with the bromides of motivational speakers than with the old saw about how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible. Behold our long rumored potential, unleashed at last! Shenk is vague about how, exactly, this happens, but to his credit he doesn’t make it sound easy. “You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.”

Now, if the reviewer had a notion of "karma," she'd know why some folks instill and cultivate discipline and some do not.

Moreover, of course we probably won't all be Mozart, Ted Williams, or Hakuin. But that's not the point. At least, it's not the point from a Buddhist perspective.

Some folks, from the 12 Step world, I think, have a notion of "Insanity is repeating the same mistake and expecting a different outcome." I think this aphorism should be changed a bit to: "Sanity is repeated practice in the direction of perfection." The thing is, such repeated practice in the direction of perfection will inevitably result in a mistake, the "one continuous mistake" of which Shunryu Suzuki spoke, I think. Moreover, denial of my aphorism in favor of the "insanity" aphorism is itself insanity, since it opposes reality.

No exit?

Heather Havrilesky's kind of got a point: the Sopranos made descent into darker and darker a new plot technique to explore in cable shows, but it seems unrelenting, irredeemable.

I think there's a narrative of change for the positive that will be introduced.

Maybe somebody on the Huff Post blog with LA connections should write a Buddhist themed "Breaking Bad to Better."

And now for something completely different...Jon Stewart does Glenn Beck...

Even though Viacom is suing Google (look at Google news for juicy details),  I think putting Jon Stewart doing Glenn Beck here is...well... a nice break.

Stewart is showing he is essentially the H. L. Mencken or Mark Twain of this age, and I'm not exaggerating.

Sorry if you folks in the rest of the world don't "get" this humor, but just go to YouTube & look at Glenn Beck to see the guy Stewart is parodying.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Robert Thurman gets shrill

And when he starts to defend the faith healing Falun Da Fa, well, that's pitiful.  Just for the record (you can find it in a Wall Street Journal article from a few years back which I read in the paper edition) Falun Da Fa was outed as a dangerous cult by...wait for it...a Chinese Buddhist scholar (with roughly the same position there as Robert Thurman has at Columbia University, except he wasn't a Tibet specialist).  And that scholar was not a member of the Communist party.

"Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt."

So says P.Z. Myers, in his lambasting of the "On Faith"  folks at the Washington Post commenting on this report on "non-believing clergy."  As a Rinzai guy, let me add in my 2 cents...

One pastor in the report recounted:

“My first few years of doing this were wracked with, ‘God, should I be doing this? Is this ---? Am I being ---? Am I posing? Am I being less than authentic; less than honest?’ … And, I really wrestled with it and to some degree still. But not nearly as much.”
“I will be the first to admit that I see Christianity as a means to an end, not as an end unto itself. And the end is very basically, a kind of liberal, democratic values. So I will use Christianity sometimes against itself to try to lead people to that point. But there’s so much within the Christian tradition that itself influenced the development of those liberal values, you know. They didn’t arise through secular means. They came out of some religious stuff. …I could couch all that in very secular language. If we were in a college setting, I would. But we’re in a religious setting, so I use the religious language.”

Myers says about this report by Daniel C. Dennett:

Unfortunately, the WaPo couldn't just put up Dennett's bombshell on its own: they've surrounded it with a confusing cloud of commissioned articles to answer the question, "What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination?". Most of them are believers, except for Rebecca Goldstein and Tom Flynn and Herb Silverman, and most of them are making excuses. You just knew that someone would make the inane argument that "doubt is part of faith." No, it's not. Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt.

 Of course the WaPo panelists present a "conventional" view of the faith/doubt issue

à la Larry King, and for "inclusive" purposes there's that guy Deepak Chopra...

Q:What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination? Do clergy have a moral obligation not to challenge the sincere faith of their parishioners? If this requires them to dissemble from the pulpit, doesn't this create systematic hypocrisy at the center of religion? What would you want your pastor to do with his or her personal doubts or loss of faith?

Religion poses many tests of conscience. This isn't a drawback. If anything, it's one of the reasons organized faith exists. But of course there are extremes of opinion about how acceptable it is to disagree with church doctrine. My insistence that religion must teach people how to think about God for themselves would be seen as extreme -- or even heretical -- by those at the opposite end of the spectrum. We've witnessed the tide of tolerance ebb and flow in the Catholic Church. We've seen gay Episcopal bishops advance in a liberal climate only to cause a schism among conservatives.

 Needless to say neither the WaPo panelists, especially Chopra, nor P.Z. Myers  reflect the views of Zen Buddhists, which is the point of this post. Great doubt and great faith must coexist for great enlightenment.  You have to doubt the faith, you have to have faith that the doubt will lead somewhere.  The question is key.

With this viewpoint, you simply cannot lose your faith, nor can you blindly believe. Dammit, that guy long ago said "Rely on yourself.  Do not rely on others.  Rely on the Dharma.  Do not rely on others."  Which of course leads to the questions: What is the Dharma? What am I? Am I different than the Dharma? Am I the same? Is this gibberish?

But, like all phenomena, Buddha nature is "stuck" to it - permeated through it like a dye on a fabric, as some teacher said.  Even if I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and what not, or even if I picket all religious institutions or lack thereof, or even if I just watch TV for weeks on end munching on potato chips, it's all there.  Now there's consequences, of course, to all behaviors, including behaviors of pretending to believe, which is recommended by certain folks ("Fake it 'til you make it" is a slogan in certain religious quarters).

But there is no escape.  The authentic "position" or "stance" in which one carriers out one's life, and the emptiness of all of it (including emptiness of emptiness) remains the same.  You cannot not be who you are, even if you are pretending to be something.  The "essence" of Sartre's waiter performing as a waiter did not annihilate the emptiness of the phenomena of the waiter-in-life.

So, basically, we practicing Zen Buddhists don't have the problem alluded to in the report or panel responses or Myer's response.  And when Chopra says

My insistence that religion must teach people how to think about God for themselves would be seen as extreme -- or even heretical -- by those at the opposite end of the spectrum.

 and when Myers says

Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt.

I have to call them both out.  Great doubt and great faith must coexist, and nobody can tell you how to do that or not to do that, and all the rumination, pretense, or lack thereof simply cannot change the nature of our existence in this life.  Great doubt and great faith are natural functions and conditions of our existence, and to privilege one against the other is to "oppose our reality."

And that's my 2 cents.

Altar in My Home Zendo

Because it's some sort of meme.

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 3, Section LVII

To say it again,  I'm using the translation here, and as usual, and I'm just doing this as an ordinary guy.

The core of this section is this:

The Blessed One then said this: There are three kinds of will-body, Mahāmati. What are the three? They are: (1) the will-body obtained in the enjoyment of the Samādhi; (2) the will-body obtained by recognising the self-nature of the Dharma; and (3) the will-body which is assumed [by a Bodhisattva according to] the class of beings [to be saved] and which perfects and achieves [without a thought of its own achievement]. By realising the higher stages successively after the first is attained, the Yogin will experience them [all].

 In going through this I am struck by how closely Zen practice is framed from this, despite how it might appear in the West.  It might also be considered a "guide" to the practitioner insofar as it would highlight to the practitioner that "this" is how you might be experiencing your practice. In particular...

What is the will-body obtained by recognising the self-nature of the Dharma? When [the Yogin] of the the eighth stage has a thoroughgoing penetration into the nature of things which is like Māyā and not image-producing, he experiences a revulsion at the seat of consciousness and obtains the Samādhi known as Māyā-like and other Samādhis..

When [the Yogin] is thoroughly conversant with all the characteristics of self-realisation and its bliss which pervades the teachings of the Buddha, he is said to have the body which is will-made, born with [the class], perfecting and achieving..

 This is the direction in which to be going.