From: hank@westford.ccur.com (Hank Cohen)
Subject: Re: Transcendental Meditation
Keywords:  effortless
Reply-To: hank@westford.ccur.com (Hank Cohen)
Organization: Concurrent Nippon Corp. Tokyo  Japan.
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 04:45:43 GMT

Marc Wachowitz (mw@ki.fht-mannheim.de) made some comments on my
posting on TM.
First regarding the importance of non-concentration I state simply:
: 1. TM is not a technique of concentration.
>That's also true for many other forms of meditation (including the Zen practice
>of "just sitting" (shikantaza); one should note that here the attitude is more
>important than the body-position - D.T.Suzuki once said "the mind is sitting").

: Personal opinion: Zen is a technique of concentration.  If your 
: concentration wavers someone will come along and hit you with a
: stick.
>That's true in some variants (particularly in the Rinzai tradition); seeing the
>stick just as a means to keep people from sleeping is a common misunderstanding.
> Another aspect is
>that when someone is in extreme concentration, a sudden stimulation can cause
>a letting-go of the ego and a "small satori".
>(just some background information, I'm not advocating this)

So we agree that the stick is applied when concentration wavers.
Q.E.D.
It seems that this point is not clear or is not being treated as
sufficiently important.  It is a very important point.  
Concentration inhibits the effectiveness of meditation.  
Meditation is a natural function of the nervous system that allows it
to gain deep rest and release stress.  This is a self regulating
process.  To concentrate is to use the attention to direct the
process.  In TM the process is responsive to the needs of the body and
nervous system at the time of meditation.  In that sense it is a
completely here and now process.  TM holds that the body and not the
intellect should control the process.  For this reason TM teaches not
to judge the subjective experience of meditation.  Some sessions may 
feel better that others but we just ask, "Was it easy? Was it restful?"

On mantras:
: TM uses a sound called a mantra which I will discuss more later but 
: for now we should understand that the mantra is meaningless and it 
: is not an object of concentration.
>So why all that worry about keeping it private?

The first reason for keeping the mantra private is that it is taught
under the agreement that it will be kept private.  This has been true
for thousands of years.  For a more "objective" reason the mantra is
used for turning the mind within into silence.  To speak it out loud
has a jarring effect.  It may damage the effectiveness of the mantra,
I'm not entirely sure.  In any case we can as eaisly say why all that
worry about exactly what the mantra sounds like?

And later:
: I do not know any mantras besides my own and I am not going to tell anyone my
: mantra.  These things are taught in private and are kept in private.
>Yes, it is told to do so, since many people would be surprised that there's
>actually only a small number of words used. An excellent way of creating myth
>around it.

So what?  Do you really think it matters how many mantras there are?
All you can get a TM teacher to say is that there are more than one
and less than 6 Billion (or whatever the current population of the
planet is).  I fail to see how the number of sounds involved makes any
difference at all.

>Btw, from my perspective mantras and thought-following are still forms of
>concentration, not non-exclusive awareness.

First the mantra is not an object of concentration any more than your
breath is an object of concentration in normal activity.  We can be
aware of it without concentrating on it.  It comes and goes easialy,
without effort.

Second what is "non-exclusive awareness"?  Do you propose that there
is some disjunction here?  One is either concentrating or
"non-exclusively" aware?  I would appeal to common experience that we
can be aware of things effortlessly without concentrating.  

: thought and follow a thought backward from the level of awareness down
: into the subconsciousness until we can transcend thought and arrive at
: the level of pure consciousness.
>In Zen this is called pseudo-nirvana and blindness, not the goal.

Also on a similar point Mr. Joni Jarvenkyla (jjj@mits.mdata.fi) 
writes:
>However I think your explanation of samadhi is a little bit
>too narrow, because "pure consciousness" leads me to believe that
>"this is It", whereas "samadhi" really is only "the beginning of It".

Exactly! just the beginning. The goal of meditation is not the
experience of meditation.  We meditate to acheive better activity outside 
of meditation.  I don't claim that samadhi is the goal.  What I 
claimed as the goal was Enlightenment or Cosmic Conciousness.  
Samadhi is the path.  It is the repeated experience of transcendental 
conciousness on a regular basis that purifies the nervous system and 
prepares it for Cosmic Conciousness.  (Wow what a word.  I wish that 
there was less predjudicial word.  I actually prefer simply Enlightenment.)  

Mr. Wachowitz seems to think that samadhi is not a desirable state.
That is is somehow deluded.  If so then he is mistaken.  
What I am discussing is not the goal but the path, they are not the
same thing.
It has been common to mistake descriptions of Enlightenment for
perscriptions to attain Enlightenment.  This is a serious error.
An effective technique for attaing Enlightenment must take into
account that we are not there.  It should prescribe a step by step
procedure to go from wherever we are to the goal. "A journy of a
hundred miles begins with the first step." Thoreau (I think).
Personally I appreciate that TM provides a consistent intellectual
framework for understanding both the process and the goal.  I find Zen
to be irrational and anti-intellectual and I don't like either
quality.

: Learning to meditate is not the same thing as learning to teach meditation at
: all.
>It can be seriously doubted that meditation cannot really be tought, but must
>be found out, and all kinds of methods are just hindrances to that.

That is a rather cynical and fatalistic view.  I prefer to think that
meditation can be easily learned by anyone and that it's effectiveness
is not a matter of faith but experience.

Mr. Joni Jarvenkyla (jjj@mits.mdata.fi)  goes on to point out:
>
>I don't want to criticize TM as such, because I believe that every
>effort towards a better understanding of your self is always worth it.
>I would still like to point out that our Average Net Reader does NOT
>have to go and join into a TM group (the $$ aspect), but the lower
>states of consciousness are also reachable at home, just by yourself.
>And maybe even more easily, if other people make you nervous. And this
>is (in my opinion only, of course) the clue of TM: it may be a rather
>interesting way to "get social" ;-)

I should point out that TM is not a social organization.  The fee that
one pays for instruction is just that, a fee for instruction.  After
instruction there are various activities and follow up programs that
one is free to participate in or not.  There is a free service called
checking that verifies correct practice of the technique and any
meditator can get checked whenever he likes.  There are also sometimes
advanced lectures on the philosophy behind the technique and there are
retreats or Residence Courses where one can spend a weekend or up to
several weeks in a residential setting gaining a deeper experience.
These activites are not required and the charges are based on costs.
For me it was very important when I started TM that I was not joining
a group.  I didn't want to get a haircut :^).  Other people may be
dissapointed that there are not more social activities.

As for the price TM is certainly competitive with many other personal
development programs.  Churches ask for annual contributions and I
expect that Zen centers expect a little something to support the
center.  After paying the 1 time fee for TM you need never pay another
cent to the organization.  The only really important after instruction
service, checking, is free.  Also I have never heard of someone being
refused instruction because they were unable to pay the initiation
fee.  People who are truly unable to pay the fee can often make some
alternative arrangement.  This is inability mind you not
disinclination.  Nobody wants to pay all that money but on the other
hand it is expected for the student to make some sacrifice to indicate
the value that he places on the knowledge that he hopes to recieve.
-- 
Hank Cohen
Concurrent Nippon Corp.  	Shuwa yanagibashi Bldg. 5F
Yanagibashi 2-19-6 Taito-ku 	Tokyo 111, Japan
Denwa: 03-3864-5714 	Fax: 03-3864-0898
Newsgroups: alt.consciousness