My Applied Philosophy

The living version of several previous swirls.

An extremely brief summary:

• Practice
  • The path
• Layers
  • Ride the waves
  • Calm the waves
  • Be the waves
• Theory
  • Reality
  • Consciousness
  • The cosmos

Practice

An important part is that this is a stance. A direction(ional heading), a vector, a posture.

When meditating, I try to just sit, like Zen Shikantaza. There’s a relaxed, open, but watchful quality to it. A bit like alertness, but not tense. A sort of mix of single-tasking and one-pointedness and commitment and focus.

When out and about, I have a few little practices.

• To notice my true nature, I look for at the centre, for myself at zero distance.
• To notice the nonduality of Reality, I look for the edges.
  • Alternate take: Notice how things show up together.
• To notice impermanence, I watch for the changes.
• When I feel stressed, I remind myself of the three uhds.
• I remind myself that the path is goal.

LSD: Listen, Slow your tempo, Doubt.

The path

Living a good enough, ordinary, life.

• Take the path as the goal.
• Practice is enlightenment.
• A gradual, never-ending, actualisation, embodiment, and integration.
• Living more frequently, for longer periods, from Reality, direct experience, instead of concepts.
• Continued recommitment to aligning your actions with your values.
  • Use “grips” that are practical, pragmatic, feasible, workable.
  • (From Notes section of Precepts remixing) Using Valued Action as a way to examine deeply who I am, and into my failures to live up to the values.
• Keeping things alive and fresh by changing them regularly (not necessarily frequently).
• Stick to simple rules.
• Build in redundancy.
• Focus more on avoiding things that don’t work than on trying to find out what does.
• What’s the stance you’re taking? What direction are you going?
  • Notice: does this lead towards suffering or away?
  • Uncovering. Letting go.
  • Notice and relax the patterns and conditioned identification.

Layers

Spheres, area. Distinctions, not division. Useful ways of getting a handle on things, not actually separate things. All is included, all is needed: both/and, not either/or. Considering and taking multiple perspectives and viewpoints.

• Body, Mind, Spirit
• Personal, Professional, Practice
• Inner/Outer and Individual/Collective
• Layers, depths (layers: influences each other; are distinct, but not divided; offer changes in context, scale, extent; move at different paces; have fuzzy boundaries)
  • ride the waves, calm the waves, be the waves
  • psychology to philosophy
  • mind, body, spirit
  • outer to inner
  • shallow to deep
  • outer to inner
  • noise, sounds, silence
  • thoughts, thoughts as illusion, before thought

“(You are) the ocean, not the waves” is a perhaps a bit cheesy and overused now. But it is also very good and accurate and fruitful. So I’m using that here as: ride the waves, calm the waves, be the waves.

Ride the waves

Look around. Apply psychological and logical understanding.

Not rules to be good, but guides to examine deeply who we are.

• Do less, not do more.
• Just do what needs to be done. Free of goals or outcomes.
• Notice (the details of) the map you’re using.
• Negative Capability: remain in doubt and uncertainty.
• Take the more integrated picture, multiple viewpoints at once.
• Listen for The Avoidance Alarm.
• Right speech: true, kind, helpful, contextually appropriate.
• Plain language: clear, concise, well-organised.
• Piggyblocking. Establish a new habit more easily by putting it between two existing habits.
• Ask yourself: “How would you advise a friend?”
• Use Implementation Intentions on Redirects. Catch a bad habits and redirect to: Meditation; Philotation; another activity.
• Use Negative visualisation to soften the stings.

Calm the waves

Look closer. Feel your way through the ups and downs of being an embodied human being.

• Treat the everyday as sacred.
• Remember the three uhds. Let go of the shoulds. Let go of the coulds. Rest in the good(s).
• Try, and fail, to find the edges. (Reality is one)
• Watch as things arise and pass away. (Reality is in constant flux)
• Watch as things happen on their own. (The infinite causes and conditions of Reality create everything)
  • Notice the causes, conditions, and patterns.
• Remember that the map is not the territory. (Reality is complex, deep, rich)
  • Notice the fractal nature of everything.
• Look for what’s static, fixed. (Reality is flow, motion, change)
  • Notice the motion, the changes. Watch it arise, watch it pass away.
• Notice the directionality, purposefulness, of things. (The cosmos is purposeful, patterned)
• Notice the playful nature of everything. There’s exploring and realising, playing hide and seek. (The cosmos is playful)
• Leave things as they are, without adding a story or a label.
• “What wants attention or acceptance right now?” (from Trusting the Gold).
• Things that happen, our imperfections, are signposts on the Path, not obstacles to the Way.
• Be generous, give generously.
• Work with what you find in the chaos of the world.

Be the waves

Look wider. Connect to a deeper sense of self.

This links with “The cosmos is playful” later in this page: the waves are a playful expression of the ocean. They waves aren’t separate from the ocean. The ocean doesn’t like small waves and dislike big waves (or vice versa).

• Notice the causes and conditions that lead to your suffering.
• Notice the causes, conditions, patterns that make you who you are.
• Look for source of an action, a decision, and notice the absence.
• Look for yourself, at zero distance. (The context of consciousness, not the contents)
  • Come back to the direct, embodied, experience.
  • Look for thinker of thoughts and notice the absence.
• Settle into an energetic balance, “between” two poles / opposites.
• Letting go of “this isn’t it.”
• Sit with koans to harness the energy of inquisitiveness and activate intuition.

Theory

The nature of Reality, Consciousness, the cosmos.

Reality

• Reality is one.
  • There are distinctions, but not divisions.
    • A network of interdependence and mutual support.
    • Most things exist on a spectrum, not as a binary.
  • All forms are relational.
  • Things that are separate can’t influence and act on each other.
  • The unity of Absolute and Relative, of emptiness and form.
    • “Why can’t it be both?”
    • Both/and instead of either/or.
• Reality is complex, deep, rich.
  • Concepts make forms, draw lines, build fences.
  • The closer you look, the more there is to see. Boredom is a failure to pay enough attention.
• Reality is in constant flux and motion.
  • Everything flows, changes, is impermanent.
  • “-ing”
    • Only the verb: no subject, no object.
    • Self as process.
• Reality is free of concepts, language, characteristics.
  • It’s empty of intrinsic, solid, stable, form(s), of boundaries.
  • Thinking, especially judging, creates separation, distance.
• The infinite causes and conditions of Reality create everything.
  • Including all our thoughts and actions.
    • But/and: we create our own reality.
      • Perception is participation, and creates different forms, depending on the scale.
  • Things arise and pass away on their own.
  • Our thoughts, actions, bodies, are in and of Reality.
    • When we are experience, there is no suffering. When we believe we’re separate from it, there is suffering.
• Concepts are many, simple, simple, full, static.
  • In Zen, Reality and Concepts are called Absolute and Relative.
  • Our stance is both/and, not either/or.

Consciousness

• Our true nature, awareness, is the (open, empty, luminous) context of consciousness, not the contents.
  • Anything that can be named or located can’t be you: it must an object in awareness or you couldn’t be aware of it.
  • Subject and object arise as a pair in awareness.
  • The context is always bright, clear, boundless, whatever the contents of consciousness.
  • There’s no separate, solid, stable, self.
  • Seen in the first instant.
    • Before thoughts like classification, measuring, labelling.
    • It’s close, not far away. It’s on the surface, not deep down.
  • Always and already here, but temporarily concealed.
• All matter is swirls of degrees of consciousness.
  • Like eddies in a river.
  • Life is consciousness that’s more concentrated.

The cosmos

• The cosmos is purposeful, patterned.
  • Value is intrinsic to Reality. Utility can’t explain beauty, truth, goodness.
  • But/and: only the verb is required. There’s no separation of subject and object. There’s no doer.
• The cosmos is playful.
  • There’s exploring and realising, playing hide and seek.
• The cosmos is consciousness as a verb.
  • All matter is swirls of degrees of consciousness.
  • Life is consciousness that’s more concentrated.
  • Consciousness is the cosmos becoming more aware of itself.

Added 2024-12-14, last updated 2025-01-01.