The Philosophical Self-Inquiry Discussion Group meets in Corvallis on alternate Mondays at Corvallis Public Library and Eugene on alternate Tuesdays at Daily Drind Cafe in the lower level of Knight Library. Meetings begin at 6:00 pm and run until 8.
Those curious to learn more about themselves are invited to air their views
and hear what others have to say on the discussion topic in an atmosphere of
friendly investigation. Meeting guidelines.
Monday, January 30, and Tuesday, January 31, 2012:
I Wished To Live Deliberately
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
~ Henry David Thoreau, from Walden
Have you fronted the essential facts of life?
Monday, Februrary 13, and Tuesday, February 14, 2012:
There's Someone In My Head,
But It's Not Me
"And then there's your brain. Three pounds of the most complex material we've discovered in the universe. This is the mission control center that drives the whole operation, gathering dispatches through small portals in the armored bunker of the skull.
"Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia--hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city. And each one contains the entire human genome and traffics billions of molecules in intricate economies. Each cell sends electrical pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon of light, the combined output would be blinding.
"The cells are connected to one another in a network of such staggering complexity that it bankrupts human language and necessitates new strains of mathematics. A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
"The three-pound organ in your skull--with its pink consistency of Jell-o--is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building. So if you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet."
~ Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman
If you are not the controller of the brain, what are you?
Monday, February 27, and Tuesday, February 28, 2012:
The Beginning of All Real Knowledge
"The knowledge of even the wisest of all men, if communicated to us, will be to us nothing more than an opinion, as long as it is not experienced within our own selves. As long as we cannot penetrate within the soul of Man, we can know little more about him but his corporeal form; but how could we penetrate within the soul of another as long as we do not know our own? Therefore the beginning of all real knowledge is the knowledge of Self; the knowledge of the Soul and not the vagaries of the brain."
~ Franz Hartmann, Magic White & Black
What do you really know?
Monday, March 12, and Tuesday, March 13, 2012:
Inner Wakefulness
This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams
he's living in another town
in the dream he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in
he believes the reality
of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep
Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences
and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually
startle us back
to the truth of
who we are
~ By, Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
What do you consider real?
2011 Annual Fall Intensive Retreat "Casting off Illusion"
Sunday-Friday, Nov. 13-18
Objective: Find complete & permanent X (Truth, Love, Security, Satisfaction, Reality, Being, etc.)
Direction: Within
Objection: Yes, but ... how do I go, sink or dive within?
The tiger's in a cage...
An opportunity arises, and he jumps
Headlong into freedom,
Only to find himself trapped again
By limitation.
The tiger or the mouse
Discovers there's always been a means of egress
Behind him, back through the projection
Off self and other, into
True Freedom.
for more information.
2011 Annual Summer Men's Intensive Retreat "The Next Step"
Sunday-Friday, Jun. 19-24
"Group Retreat"
Like a bus ride …
Waiting for the bus, it finally appears
We're carried along faster & farther than our own energy would carry us
It offers certain comforts, maybe also some interpersonal frictions
But the ride ends, becomes a memory
It may be the last bus ride …
All experience disappoints, leaves us unfulfilled.
How did life's bus ride get you to where you find yourself?
What is your life-objective?
How would you evaluate your progress-to-date?
What is your next step?
Individual presentations, group discussions, and workshops … combined with plenty of time for silent contemplation and nature walks....
FELT DIMLY in the soul, by world-man unconceived;
Unknown Goal of all yearning;
The Fullness that fills the inner void,
Completing the half-forms of outer life;
The Eternal Beloved, veiled in the objects of human desire;
Undying, Timeless, Everlasting;
Old as Infinity, yet ever new as upspringing youth;
Pearl beyond price, Peace all-enveloping;
Divinity spreading through all.
"Blown-out" in the grand conflagration of Eternity,
Death destroyed as a dream no longer remembered.
Life below but a living death,
Nirvana the ever-living Reality....
~ From Franklin Merrell-Wolff's "Nirvana"
for more information.
Tied Up In Knots?
Once an earnest beginner in the pursuit of Tao came to visit Lao Tzu. As soon
as Lao Tzu saw him, he asked, "Who are all those people whom you have
brought with you?" The disciple whirled around to look. Nothing there.
Panic! Lao Tzu said, "Don't you understand?" This only added
confusion to his panic. Lao Tzu then pressed him to tell him what was ailing
him. The disciple said (to use the version of Thomas Merton):
"When I don't know, people treat me like a fool. When I do know, the
knowledge gets me into trouble. When I fail to do good, I hurt others. When I do
good, I hurt myself. If I avoid my duty, I am remiss, but if I do it I am
ruined. How can I get out of these contradictions? That is what I came to ask
you."
Lao Tzu replied: "A moment ago I looked into your eyes. I saw you were
hemmed in by contradictions. Your words confirm this. You are scared to
death, like a child who has lost father and mother. You are trying to sound
the middle of the ocean with a six-foot pole. You have got lost, and are
trying to find your way back to your own true self. You find nothing but
illegible signposts pointing in all directions. I pity you."
The disciple asked for admittance, took a cell, and there meditated, trying
to cultivate qualities he thought desirable and get rid of others which he
disliked. Ten days of that! Despair!
"Miserable!" said Lao. "All blocked up! Tied in knots! Try to
get untied! If your obstructions are on the outside, do not attempt to grasp
them one by one and thrust them away. Impossible! Learn to ignore them. If
they are within yourself, you cannot destroy them piecemeal, but you can
refuse to let them take effect. If they are both inside and outside, do not
try to hold on to Tao – just hope that Tao will keep hold of you!"
John C.H. Wu,
The Golden Age of Zen
Meeting Guidelines
The meetings serve as forums for discussing issues related to
self-inquiry and self-definition. This is a tricky proposition – using the mind to understand the mind. To expedite the process, a facilitator directs the discussion.
Typical meeting formats are round-robin style, where participants have an
equal amount of time to air their views. The object of this airing is to help
each person clarify contradictions, tracing them back to prides and fears
that cloud our mental processes. One of the ways of doing this is a friendly
mode of challenging, or confrontation, not of the person but of his or
her assumptions, beliefs, values and ethics. The facilitator is not to be
confronted, as this disrupts the flow of the meeting.
A successful interchange relies on the cooperation of all participants and
their willingness to "play the game." No one should preach or be
subject to preaching. As much as is humanly possible we should try to:
Listen actively, without interrupting, maintaining a felt connection with
the speaker.
Keep the focus on each participant in turn, avoiding the temptation to
shift the attention to ourselves – either out of a desire to rescue the
person from tension or a desire to be the center of attention ourselves. When
such a shift occurs, the facilitator or other participant should point it
out.
Try to understand the speaker's point of view and challenge him to
question his own thinking, not argue with him or try to sell our views.
Monday, January 30, and Tuesday, January 31, 2012:
"Group Retreat"
Meeting Guidelines