Hilarie's Response: Rethinking Nirvana

[Website Services Admin]

#521

The “steady attention” that Anne the teacher references in the epigraph to Perl’s article is a really interesting concept. I associate this with abhyasa, the Sanskrit concept I mentioned in class last week, but I also think it’s almost entirely elusive. For me, at least, searching for it can tend to stress me out. The thing that puts me most firmly in it is excitement. If I can find a way to get excited about what I’m reading, I’ll read it deeply, diving beneath the surface. I’ll get ideas about it. I’ll ignore outside distractions in order to give it my fullest, steadiest attention. (I actually think the superlative is important here – it’s easier for me to conceptualize a gradation of steadiness of attention than one dedicated one, which Anne’s phrasing seems to imply.)

Applying these ideas outward to the body of the article, I think the notion of gradations of attention dovetails with the notion of recursiveness in writing. Perl writes, “recursiveness in writing implies that there is a forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward-moving action” (364). The explicit identification of felt sense as one of the recursive patterns of writing – coded very clearly as a positive rather than a negative feature of attention – is key, I think, because it centers the person’s own expertise in the area of thoughts and feelings within the core of the creative process. Another way of putting it, perhaps, is that the recursiveness of felt sense happens because it is part of who we are – in an of itself, felt sense is a link between mind and body. The unity of body and mind also comes up a lot in yogic philosophy and even in the words of Sanskrit. Yoga is the link between breath and body, and meditation is the bridge between the lower strata of the body and the higher, ephemeral ones (working up through which, it’s traditionally held, we work to achieve nirvana).

Part of what’s revolutionary about this article and about felt sense is the recognition of the patterns in people’s creative processes that happen despite the existence of a norm advising against them. We all get distracted. Why not acknowledge it – or better, embrace it, and find ways to use it to our advantage? (Meditation practices say this, too – instead of trying not to think, we are encouraged to acknowledge thoughts as they appear and just try to let them go. Instead of waiting to see what comes, as felt sense holds, we see what comes and accept it and move on.) Cathy Davidson and Katherine Hayles both get at this idea when they discuss the advantages of the kind of thinking technology is teaching us to so, tracing the positives instead of the negatives (which come up when they are compared to what I’m starting to think of as tech-free reading and concentration).

Nirvana itself, then, is not necessarily a helpful concept. It can be (but I think doesn’t have to be) part of what encourages us to think in a linear fashion, or to code mistakes and confusion as fundamentally wrong and clarity of thought or purpose as fundamentally right. It seems more useful to reassign the name nirvana to a more natural process – perhaps the feeling of momentary understanding, perhaps the drafting of a new idea, perhaps felt sense itself (or intuition, as Perl links it).

[Anonymous]

#532

Hilarie, It’s really exciting the way you are applying these Eastern concepts to the composing process. I’d like to hear more about it, including how Nirvana fits in as a positive or negative concept. I was struck when you said: “Part of what’s revolutionary about this article and about felt sense is the recognition of the patterns in people’s creative processes that happen despite the existence of a norm advising against them.” I really like the idea of process working to push back against norms.

Sondra was wise to focus here on the sophisticated vision that she was “for”. But I feel her also making a subtle rhetorical critique (as I feel also in the 1979 composing process article) writing “against” simple formalism– an institutional norm that has often advised against complex creative processes, a problem she saw in her students back then. (Foolish maybe to opine about a writer’s intentions when she is our teacher/reader :-)) –Sean

• This reply was modified 11 years, 1 month ago by .

[Sondra Perl]

#549

Hilarie: What’s interesting to me here is the distinction made in yogic thinking/philosophy about the ‘lower body’ and the ‘higher mind.’ Gene would say that here, too, the thinking is a bit off in making these hierarchical. In his philosophy, they are all together and one implies the other….into occurring….and back into implying as we move thru the processes of living.

Sean: Fascinating to me to read your interpretation of what was both present in the early work and what was implicit. “Wise” — a lovely compliment. 🙂

[Website Services Admin]

#567

Sean: thanks for your thoughts! I’m thinking of Nirvana as a positive concept here, in line with Hindu/yogic tradition. It turns out the valence is slightly different in Buddhism. In Sanskrit (I just learned), the word means “blown out” (like a candle). When it’s used in India and in the American yoga contexts with which I’m most familiar, it describes the attainment of egolessness, which is related to union with Brahma, the creator of the universe. Ego is a bad thing in this context, which maybe relates a little to your question (since other traditions don’t think that, and it certainly doesn’t always seem to be a bad thing in the yoga selfie, yoga as a sport world we live in). I’m also getting SO interested in process in a comp context and also realizing that to some degree I always have been – I look forward to talking more!

Sondra: thanks, too! I think you’re absolutely right that the hierarchy is an uncomfortable one, particularly for Gendlin. My understanding of the yoga philosophy of body is that the lower body is called that in part because it’s closer to the ground, not because it’s lower in an evaluative sense – but the goal still is to move up to the highest chakra (energy channel), which is the seventh, on the top of the head. In broad strokes, what the yoga practice is supposed to do is unblock the energy throughout your body so that you can eventually move into the higher realms. I’d like to think through how Gene’s implying could rework these tensions a bit, because I suspect there are ways in which it could dovetail beautifully with some aspects of yogic thought (like the science of breathing, maybe).

[Sondra Perl]

#578

Yes, Hilarie, that makes sense. In Gene’s terms, the bodily processes are always ‘carrying us forward.’

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