Shinzen Young quoting Tony Soprano during his Keynote presentation

I’m still riding high from the Buddhist Geeks Conference over the weekend. I’ve already posted a daily summary (see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3) but even that is not enough to cover the wealth of information, not to mention the intangibles, that was shared during the conference. Luckily for those who were not able to attend, Buddhist Geeks will soon publish the videos online once all the necessary editing are done. So stay tuned. 

Ken McLeod summarized the conference very succinctly: “Great vision. Great staff. Great execution.” I couldn’t agree more. Props to all the organizers, designers, volunteers, teachers, sponsors, and attendees that made this magical gathering possible. Special props to the geeky Alpha Dawg, Vincent Horn for taking Buddhist Geeks where it is today. He deserved the standing ovation at the end of the conference.

Another person I want to thank is my wife. I almost didn’t make it to the conference. Why? Well, my wife and I take turns in taking care of our baby. She works on weekends, which means weekends are daddy daycare for me. At first I’ve decided that I’ll skip the conference. But as the conference drew near I felt a tug in my belly that I should really be there. So I asked my wife if it’s okay with her that I go to the conference. She said that she understands how important it is for me to go. So she asked some favors at her work to swap her weekend schedule. Fortunately, there was someone who was willing to swap schedule with her. So my wife had to work consecutive 12-hour days to cover the swap. And then she had to take care of our baby during the weekend that I was away. In short, I owe her a big one. (Translation: I’m her b*tch in the foreseeable future )

geeky credentials

The fun factor doubled when two of my Seattle friends (@dtolmie and @yogageekgirl) decided to go to the conference and synchronized their travel schedule with me. They took the boredom out of traveling alone, not to mention that we had some fun conversations along the way. And in case someone doubts our geek credentials, consider this: between the three of us we had 3 iPads, 2 laptops, 3 iPhones, and 5 GPS-capable devices. And serendipitously, our rental car was a Ford Focus. If you didn’t get the pun, then I’m afraid that you’re just not geeky enough.

One of the main reasons I wanted to attend the conference was to meet my old Boulder buddies (Vince, Emily, Ryan — the Buddhist Geeks) and witness first-hand their great job at keeping the Buddhist Geeks brand and community alive and kicking all these years. I’ve been a supporter from the very beginning. So I’m very happy and proud of their accomplishments. They’ve made something very special here. And the results speak for itself.

Shinzen Young wearing his Avengers shirt with some dorky guy in a Thundercats shirt

My other agenda was to meet my primary dharma teacher–Shinzen Young–in person and thank him personally for his tireless work and his unique approach to the dharma. Before Shinzen I was very cautious and even cynical when it comes to dharma teachers. But all of that changed when I encountered his teachings. I felt a deep sense of connection to his no-fluff methodology, specificity, humor, openness, generosity, and all around geekiness. And he’s a wonderful human being too. What more can I ask for a dharma teacher/mentor/peer?

The conference was packed with awesome presentations. I enjoyed them all. The speakers were  superb and presented their subject-matter very well. But the other highlight of the conference for me was meeting people whom I only interacted with online. It was a pleasure meeting Hokai Sobol, Al Jigen Billings, Rev. Danny Fisher, Rohan Gunatillake, Jason Lange, Ron Crouch, Kenneth Folk, David Chapman, Antonio Ramirez, Tom Buckley-Houston, Kristen Stancik, Chee X, and many more wonderful people whom I met for the first time offline.

Thundercats, Hooooo!

Btw, there was also a wild serendipity which I just have to share here. While I was packing for the conference I picked a cool shirt and thought to myself, “Now this shirt should be unique!” But lo and behold there was someone in the conference wearing a similar shirt with a bigger logo! What are the friggin’ odds?! I was so not worthy! So I had to capture the moment of geeky serendipity (see photo). Incidentally, the mystery guy in the Thundercats shirt will remain a mystery. He is a dark sangha practitioner. He’s been practicing for a long time alone (more than 15 years if I remember correctly). He has no sangha but he felt compelled to attend the conference. Heck, he doesn’t even have a Twitter account and doesn’t do Facebook. But the guy is cool and fun to talk with. I think I’ll be seeing him around the corner sometime soon.

Speaking of serendipity, there was a five-finger cult in the conference (@dragonc, @meaningness, @lesrinchen). They looked so comfy I’m now considering getting a pair for myself.

As the high emotions from #BGeeks11 starts to wane I remain enthusiastic that a multitude of seeds have been planted. I haven’t talked to anyone who didn’t enjoy or wasn’t blown away by the conference. As Shinzen had quoted Tony Soprano during his keynote presentation, “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor.” That’s exactly how I felt. I sense that Buddhist Geeks is just getting started. And I’m glad I was there when it happened.

P.S. See also the following brilliant #BGeeks11 accounts.

Nikki Chau: Reflection from Buddhist Geeks Conference 11

David Chapman: Buddhist Geeks Conference Rocks

Open Buddha: Buddhist Geeks 2011 Day 1.5

Open Buddha: Last Day and Closing Thoughts

LA Weekly: Buddhist Geeks Conference: What is the Sound of One Nerd Tweeting

Day 3 of the Buddhist Geeks Conference 2011 started with an #openpractice with Ken McLeod. Ken guided us with an expansive/contractive awareness meditation technique. It was a good sit. If done correctly the technique will lead the practitioner to perceive the expansive and contractive flow of sensory experience. I’ve just added this awareness technique to my bag of #openpractice “tricks.” 

After the sitting practice, Diane “Musho” Hamilton took the stage to kick off the Buddhist Geeks Live presentation. Diane’s talk was about “Enlightenment Through an Evolutionary Lens.”  She walked us through the stages of psychological/cultural/spiritual development: egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric, kosmocentric. Diane was the torch-bearer of the integral approach among the presenters. And, as usual, she did a fine job of representing the integral perspective.

Then Ken McLeod followed up with his talk on “There is No Enemy.” He reminded the audience not to fall on either side of the extremes. But instead to embrace both black and white to get the whole spectrum of the rainbow. My favorite quote: “Obstacles aren’t obstacles. They are features of the landscape that need to be negotiated.” Upon hearing this, I wanted to raise my hand and ask him what he thinks about President Obama’s handling of the debt ceiling (pseudo-crisis) negotiations. But nah, no need to get political in the middle of a dharma talk. (Then again, if you’re reading this Ken, I’d really like to know your political analysis/opinion.)

And then this young guy from the U.K., Rohan Gunatillake, took the stage and blew everyone away. His talk was about “Disrupting the Awakening Industry” and “why the aesthetic of meditation is broken.” Basically, he issued a clarion call to all the geeky entrepreneurs to channel their “out of the box” thinking and passion on making the dharma available and palatable to as many people as possible. He said that ” the fringe is gonna do it anyway” so he better be ahead of the curve. And that’s why he’s working on Buddhify. Quotable quote: “We need Buddhist startups. Go ahead and tweet that.”

The afternoon panel discussion was led by Diane Hamilton, Ken McLeod, Shinzen Young, and Hokai Sobol (as chair). They riffed on “The Emerging Face of Buddhism.” Their discussion covered controversial topics such as economics of the dharma, power dynamics between teachers and students, cross-fertilization of the teachings (e.g. Shinzen describes his teachings as “Japano-Burmese fusion created by an American Jew”), professionalization of dharma teachers, depth of practice and “the dark sangha” (Those D.I.Y. types who practice by themselves without–or very minimal–interaction with a community. I just met one at the conference.)

[An aside: Before the start of the panel discussion Diane Hamilton announced that her Gmail account was hacked and she was having a hard time proving to Google tech support her real identity. So she challenged the geeky audience that if there's someone out there who could help her, she will be forever beholden to Buddhist Geeks. And sure enough, there was a Googler in da house. Sorry Diane, all your souls from past, current, and future incarnations are belong to us.]

During the Q&A Willoughby Britton (see her TEDx talk) brought up the issue of accountability of teachers whenever a student has a psychological breakdown or whenever a teacher crosses the line of giving a medical advice which they are not qualified for. This opened a can of worms on whether dharma teachers should have a liability insurance. It’s good that Michael Zimmerman (Diane Hamilton’s husband and former justice of the Utah Supreme Court) was in the audience to offer his legal advice. Basically, (if I remember his legalese correctly) he said that, depending on the intention of the lawyer or the plaintiff, there could be grounds for legal action if it could be proven that the teacher has misrepresented him/herself as an expert. Now that was very interesting. You don’t hear that kind of discussion in mainstream dharma talks.

Then another important and powerful question was asked by a young Asian woman in the audience. She said that she belongs to one of the Asian Buddhist communities and that she’s really not that familiar with the teachers on stage. Her question was, how does “Emerging Face of Buddhism” include Asians and Asian-Americans? And she suggested that it’s more appropriate to call it “Emerging Face of Buddhisms.” Ken McLeod acknowledged her issue and very much agreed with her concerns. However, there really is no easy answer to this question. My own take on this is that there will be (or there always have been historically) multiple streams of Buddhist cross-fertilizations. The Asian Buddhist Communities have their own unique challenges depending on the language, cultural and political barriers. So I think the more accurate phrase is “Emerging Faces of Buddhisms” of which Buddhist Geeks is only one of the many.

Shinzen Young didn’t talk much (or as much as he should have) during the panel discussion but he requested to blabber his thoughts at the end. He riffed on Christianity and suggested that we learn from its history on how it spread far and wide. He said that the biggest factor (among other important factors) was language, specifically Koinonia Greek. Shinzen suggests that it has some interesting parallels with the language of technology we used today. (I might be wrong here, but I think Shinzen was alluding to the fact that the language of science of technology will do for Buddhism as Koinonia Greek did for Christianity.) Then Ken McLeod blurted out, “Shinzen, are you a closeted Christian?!”

During the Buddhist Geeks Unplugged session I attended the “Pragmatic Dharma” discussion with Vince Horn, Kenneth Folk, and Hokai Sobol. The discussion started with Kenneth’s assertion that once neuroscience maps the physiological correlates of “enlightenment” then it would be easy to replicate this experience to a vast number of people. But then the discussion digressed on the meaning of pragmatic, the definition of enlightenment, the ontology of the archetypal realms, and the value of various practices such as Tantra.

As a hardcore science-minded dharma practitioner myself, I’m with Kenneth on this one, but not without some reservations. Same as Kenneth, I think it’s plausible that future advances in neuroscience would bring more understanding of the human brain and how various experiences are correlated with brain functions. The keyword here is *correlate*. Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. But I do believe that once neuroscientists (preferably enlightened neuroscientists) have successfully mapped the physiological correlates of no-self, then it would be possible to stimulate these physiological correlates and consistently replicate the enlightenment experience (whether through biotech pharma or electromagnetic stimulation or what have you). Although I’m a proponent of this technological approach to awakening, I do recognize its potential dangers as well as its unintended consequences.For example, let’s assume that there is an enlightenment gadget or pill. A person using it will still have to interpret his “enlightenment” experience in terms of his psychological level of development. We all know of stories of teachers who are deeply enlightened yet still screw up. What more of people who are at the egocentric, ethnocentric level of development? It’s not hard to imagine that there will still be culture wars among enlightened people. And what about the role of the government who would most probably end up owning (or sequestering) this technology? I hope I’m wrong. But I’ll leave this issue for now and just work on my own awakening.

The closing keynote was presented by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. I swear this guy must’ve been a stand-up comic in one of his past lives. His opening remarks was “Why did you invite me — do you think I’m a geek?” And then he told a story on how he looked up the meaning of the word geek on Wikipedia. His talk was packed with humor but the depth was still there. His “Monkeys in Mid-swing” is a perfect metaphor for the conservative and progressive evolutionary tension of dharma. He said that, “We must be innovative, we must have vision of change in terms of technology, and we must bring the heart to many of these developments.” As he was saying this, I had this crazy picture in my head that Ponlop was channeling Steve Jobs. He also suggested that we take a little break from technology from time to time. But of course my fingers were so busy tapping wildly on my iPhone in the middle of a tweet to capture this technological serendipity.

Shinzen kicked off the conference with his happy thought on awakening singularity. Ponlop concluded with a reminder that technology should always have a “heart” and that the purpose of technology is to bring happiness to everyone.  Massive Awakening Through Science and Technology with a Heart, for me that’s the essence that was perfectly captured in this first ever Buddhist Geeks Conference. And I’m just so glad I was there. It was more fun than fun.

The day started with an #openpractice with Diane Musho Hamilton leading a Big Mind process while highlighting the second-person (You/We) perspective. She brought in the integral flavor in a house full of geeks.

Then it was followed by a series of BGeeks Live talks starting with Kenneth Folk breaking the taboo of enlightenment while pointing out the fact the enlightenment is really for the rest of us. I liked the way he described enlightenment as the tipping point along the spectrum of non-enlightened schmuck and Buddhahood.

Then Kelly McGonigal followed up with her presentation on the neuroscience of mindfulness practice. She showed a series of cool slides of fMRI scans of longtime meditation practitioners. I definitely need to check out those research myself so I could grok the scientific details.

Then Ethan Nichtern delivered a great talk on why the Internet is not your teacher. Basically, Ethan highlighted the importance of sangha in the real world (aka meatspace). This is a great reminder especially for people like me whose main sangha is in cyberspace. Need to grab some tacos in the real world with fellow dharma practitioners once in a while.

After the break there was a Generation Wise panel discussion with Trudy Goodman, Vincent Horn, Ethan Nichtern, Diana Winston, and  surprise guest Jack Kornfield. They covered topics such as generational and cultural gaps in the Buddhist world.

And then there’s the Buddhist Geek Workout sessions… I attended Shinzen Young’s “The Importance of Feeling: The Role of Emotions in the Spiritual Path”. Shinzen led a practice session using his “Focus In” technique (one of the Five Ways in his Basic Mindfulness approach). Then I hangout with Shinzen for a while as he narrates his life story on how he ended up as the geeky uber-awesome professional Buddhist meditation teacher that he is today. Basically, his hero’s journey started with a Samurai B-movie.

Then I went to a Buddhist Geek Unplugged session where people talked about enlightenment machines, gaming, and apps for awakening. But there’s this one big problem: There’s no common definition of what “enlightenment” is. My take on this: Enlightenment is such a loaded word. It’s multi-faceted. We don’t need to define it perfectly. We just have to come to an agreement of defining enlightenment as a “bifurcation” or tipping point when a person has the profound experience of no self as thing. But that’s just me.

And then the Keynote of the day was Jane McGonigal’s “Awakening is an Epic Win” wherein she drew some interesting and suggestive parallels between gaming and Buddhist practice. I think there are some similarities but in general, gaming only develops some aspects of Buddhist practice. My preferred model for Buddhist practice (or for any spiritual practice) is Shinzen’s model. In Shinzen’s Basic Mindfulness model he defines mindfulness as the development of three core attentional skills: Concentration, Clarity, Equanimity. As I see it, gaming, for the most part, develops concentration skill. This puts the gamer in a state of “flow.” A person in a state of flow could end up in a state of equanimity. But I’m not quite sure if gamers could develop the “clarity” skill wherein they would start seeing things as they are and then drop to a state of classical enlightenment experience of no self as thing. Maybe it’s possible to lose themselves in the game they are playing at the moment but that is only a temporal peak experience. As I understand it, enlightenment is not a peak experience. The classical enlightenment experience radically alters or re-engineers the personality. It’s an opening that will get bigger and bigger until the personality recognizes that awakening is something that doesn’t  happen in time. That even the practice of meditation and seeking is, to use Jane McGonigal’s term, an “unnecessary obstacle.” I have reservations that gaming alone could deliver that awakening experience/non-experience. Then again, if awakening could happen spontaneously even without any practice to someone with the right physiological conditions, then maybe gaming could, in principle, trigger whatever physiological correlates there are to give a person that right kick into infinity. Though I still think it’s highly unlikely. Otherwise, we should be turning in thousands of thousands of gamers by now with all the millions and millions of human hours collectively spent on games and sports. But that’s just me.

Then I finished off the day by watching the awesomely amazing classical guitar performance by Benjamin Beirs. Watch out Ottmar, this kid is smokin’ hot!

So that’s my quick summary for Day 2. Looking forward to another jam-packed day tomorrow…

Shinzen Young @ Buddhist Geeks Conference 2011

Shinzen presented his vision (aka “happy thought”) for a Science of Enlightenment. I’ve already heard him speak about this in his audio CD with the same title, but his keynote presentation was a lot juicier, funny, inspiring and mind-blowing. For someone who had only presented with PowerPoint for the first time Shinzen’s slides pack a lot of punch, and very geeky too. I thought that I already know everything he has to say in the presentation since I’ve read, listened, and watched virtually all of Shinzen’s lectures and interviews online but I was still surprised by some of the stuff he included in the lecture. I won’t attempt to rehash Shinzen’s lecture because I might screw it up. Shinzen’s lecture is already a summary in itself. (And besides, I believe all the lectures are recorded and will be made available online on the BGeeks site after all the necessary editing is done. So you just have to watch it yourself.) Each slide in the presentation would probably take hours of deep discussion so I’ll just jump to the conclusion.

Shinzen Young's version of a technological singularity

Shinzen’s vision is equivalent to Kurzweil’s technological singularity but its emphasis is not on life-extension or A.I. or things of those nature. Shinzen’s emphasis is on the application of science and technology to bring about the classical enlightenment experience (aka “stream entry”) to the masses (as in millions of people). Like I said, very geeky.

Shinzen said that there’s no guarantee that this will happen. In fact he even alluded to some obstacles that might prevent it from happening. But in Shinzen’s moments of happy thought he is optimistic that the marriage of modern science and Buddhism would make his vision *plausible*. For this to happen it would require a combination of deep practice, scientific rigor, and “thinking outside the box.” At this time, we’re only at the ground floor. But that’s the nature of exponential trend. It appears to starts slowly for a long time and then just when you least expect it, it skyrockets.

Shinzen Young riffs on The Sopranos

Unfortunately, the lecture stopped there. Shinzen can only squeeze in enough information given the time limit of his keynote presentation. I have a lot of questions and some objections racing through my head while listening to his talk. So I caught up with him after his presentation and asked him my number one objection.

Let’s say we succeed in creating a technology or paradigm that will bring about the experience of “classical enlightenment” to masses of people, how can we guarantee that the experience will result in a positive way? For example, even if people have enlightenment experience they will still interpret the experience based on their psychological development and cultural upbringing. We’ve all heard of highly enlightened people who “screwed up.” So having a mass enlightenment doesn’t necessarily guarantee that people will no longer make trouble. In short, how can we have a “fail safe” mechanism that would ensure that people will have a healthy interpretation of their enlightenment experience?

Shinzen’s answer was cut short because it was already getting late. But he told me that this is one of most common objections he hears from people. Shinzen said that it’s basically “a numbers game.” Although it’s true that there are enlightened people who screwed up, it’s only very few compared to the rest who didn’t screw up. He used the analogy of pharmaceutical drugs. Just because tens or hundreds of people would suffer from side effects, it doesn’t mean that we should withhold a medicine that saves millions.  He said that he has more to say about this topic but we’ll discuss this in another time. So I’m looking forward to hounding Shinzen in the next couple days during the conference because I really want to hear his take on this issue.

However, I had some questions on how to continue with my meditation practice whenever I find myself lucid in my dream. After all, the purpose of my lucid dream practice is to extend my meditative awareness within the dream and flow from there. So I submitted a question to Shinzen so that he could shed some light on it.

Question: When doing the Five Ways in a lucid dream, should I label the experience Touch, Sight, Sound or Image/Talk ? (For those who are not familiar with Shinzen’s lingo [pdf], I’m asking Shinzen whether to note lucid dream sensory experiences as “objective” reality or “subjective” reality.) See Shinzen’s answer in this video.

Thanks to HPK and Shinzen for entertaining my questions. May happiness be.

Shinzen and HPK on Enlightenment

Har-Prakash Khalsa, an online buddy and a fellow student of Shinzen Young, finally decided to blog his heart out. Nice! Welcome to the blogosphere, bro. *Fist bump* His very first blog post is his awesome interview with Shinzen on the subject of enlightenment. Here’s an excerpt.

Har-Prakash Khalsa – Given that, in your own words,  “enlightenment is a multi-faceted jewel”, is there a description of enlightenment that you like?

Shinzen Young – In this regard I tend to go towards my Buddhist background.  Scholastic Theravada Buddhism says that three things go away at the initial experience of enlightenment. It’s very significant that it’s put in terms of an elimination process; something goes away, rather than an attainment, a “getting” of something. So enlightenment is not yet another thing that you have to get.  And meditation as a path to enlightenment could be described as merely setting the stage for Nature/Grace to eliminate from you what needs to be eliminated.

The technical terms in Pali for the three things that go away are “sakkaya-ditthi”, “vicikiccha”, and “silabbata-paramasa”. Sakkaya-ditthi is the most important. Sakkaya-ditthi is the perception that there is an entity, a thing inside us called a self. That goes away.

HPK – When you say “the perception that a thing inside us called a self” goes away, do you mean completely away?

SZY – The ambiguity is the word perception. The actual word is ditti in Pali, or drishti in Sanskrit, which I think you know means “view”, literally. In this context ditti or drishti refers to a fundamental paradigm, or concept about something. So in this case perception is perhaps not the best word. It’s more like the fundamental conviction that there is a thing inside us called a self disappears. According to the traditional formulation after enlightenment that never comes back. However, if by perception of self we mean momentarily being caught in one’s sense of self, that happens to enlightened people over and over again, but less and less as enlightenment deepens and matures.

Read the rest of the interview. It’s a great read, especially for those who have a daily meditation practice. It’s an excellent example of a conversation between a teacher and a student. I like a teacher who is not afraid to talk about the “e” word, and a student who is not intimidated to ask questions. Shinzen’s matter-of-factness description of enlightenment is very clear, tangible, and pragmatic. He inspires me to make daily meditation practice integral part of growing up.

P.S. For those of us who enjoy watching Shinzen’s Youtube channel, we have Har-Prakash to thank for. He’s the guy behind the video editing and uploads. Thanks for the spreading kick-ass dharma, bro! May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, and live with ease.

“kick ass dharma” = dharma free of dogma, cultural baggage, metaphysical hubris, institutionalized nonsense, and idiot compassion.

B. Alan Wallace at Upaya

I first heard of B. Alan Wallace years ago in an Integral Naked interview. I immediately liked him due to his intellectual sharpness and his deep knowledge in Buddhist scholarship and hardcore practice. It’s rare to see someone who has the passion and the proficiency on both Eastern introspective practice and Western scientific discipline. But more importantly, Wallace is not the stereotypical armchair philosopher and scholar. He is courageous in talking the talk and backing it up with action — a true hybrid dharma teacher.

There are many things I admire about Wallace. Let me count the ways…

1) He’s a hardcore dharma practitioner, well-versed in both Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist tradition. A prolific author, translator, and researcher whose primary interest is to integrate Buddhism with Western science and create a discipline called, Contemplative Science. (Also check out the audio of his lectures at Santa Barbara Institute.)

2) He’s the Co-principal investigator and Contemplative Director of the Shamatha Project, “a longitudinal, scientific study of the effects of three months-long training in attentional and emotional balance”, in collaboration with a team of cognitive scientists. Listen to his interviews on Buddhist Geeks wherein he discussed the overview of the Shamatha Project.

3) Another of his long-term visionary project is called, Phuket Mind Training Academy. See this video of B. Alan Wallace discussing the Phuket Mind Training Academy. (This reminds me of Professor Xavier’s School for the Gifted Youngsters.)

4) He blends humor, science, and dharma in retreat settings. Listen to his recent retreat at Upaya Dharma Podcast – “Science Meets Meditation”.

5) He is not intimidated by other intellectual heavyweights. See B. Allan Wallace debate/dialogue with John Searle on Consciousness.

For those who are not familiar with B. Alan Wallace, here’s a sample of his passionate, compassionate, and beautiful mind.

B. Alan Wallace @ Google Techtalks – Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences.

For me, B. Alan Wallace is an excellent example of an intellectual samurai. I consider myself fortunate to have encountered his teachings and apply it to my practice. He’s my kind of kick ass dharma teacher.

So I’m breaking my blog silence by posting a couple of fresh videos from my kick ass dharma teacher, Shinzen Young.

“Six Common Traps on the Path to Enlightenment”

“What are your specialties as a teacher?”

There are more videos coming. I’m still waiting for the videos wherein Shinzen answered some of the questions I submitted.

In the meantime, I hope you find these videos useful, inspiring, informative, and enlightening.

P.S. For more of Shinzen Young videos check out http://www.youtube.com/user/expandcontract