Piet's Summary

I tried to switch from using phenomena as instruments to letting myself be an instrument. In Taoist terms, I was exploring deeper levels of wu-wei. In Buddhist terms, I was watching my sense of self at work, trying to see through its antics, letting it operate without fueling it through further identification with it. In terms of monotheistic religions, I was trying to be a tool in Gods hand, rather than playing God by trying to orchestrate my own life in a narrow way.

This last week, I reflected on the difference between usual forms of meditation and working with our working hypothesis. When a scientist really struggles with an all-consuming problem, she keeps the problem in mind day and night. She does not tell herself: "each morning I will spend forty minutes sitting behind my desk, dedicating my time to this problem I am working with, and perhaps I will do this for twice forty minutes in the weekend, if I can find the time." Instead, the problem keeps nagging her, whether she is brushing her teeth, waiting for the bus, doing the dishes, and perhaps even while talking with other people.

In many ways, working with the working hypothesis is a lot like working with a zen koan, something that can be done in formal sessions, but that is supposed to pervade your whole waking consciousness throughout the day, and your sleeping and dreaming consciousness as well. The five minutes that we have agreed to spend every morning focusing on the working hypothesis is a first step in that direction, and a very important step. It teaches us the form of discipline needed to stick to a given problem. 5 minutes may be a factor 288 shorter than 24 hours, but it is infinitely longer than 0 minutes. So in that sense at least, we're almost there already, relatively speaking (^_^).

We have come now to the end of our second month, in our first Practice cycle. One more month to go, before we start our second three-month cycle. This is a good time for all of us to reflect on our effort so far, and on ways to intensify our work with the wh. If you have any suggestion as to how to deepen our daily engagement, please do not hesitate to make some suggestions!

Response to Jake

Yes, you are absolutely right: there is really no need for a WoK Practice intensive since all is so accessible. Everything else Steven and I are saying and writing on these pages are watered-down versions of that statement. You can take that statement as a koan, it's a good one!!

Response to Maria

When you can find even just a moment to watch your emotions, while they are `way out of control' as you described it, there is a chance for the wh to take over momentarily. The power that our emotions have is something we give them. As soon as we start to really doubt their power, we can see their power beginning to drain; and when we look even more clearly, we can see they have no power at all!

Response to Nicole

Thanks for sharing with us your smile about insanity/misery! Just one question: when you wrote brains and hormones, you use a way of speaking that is quite common now. However, it is a type of reduction, of real emotions to something that are interpreted as being caused by brains or hormones. So the challenge is not only to be free to watch emotions, rather than be pulled along with them automatically, but also to watch them as they appear, as emotions, just emotions, without reducing them to `states of the body'. Watching them as they are, in their sheer appearance, is the key to finding freedom; tying them down to body states risks throwing that key away right from the beginning . . .

Response to Frank

Thanks a lot, Frank, for your detailed response! It is fascinating, isn't it, that working with a working hypothesis sounds dry. And yet, when a scientist struggles deeply with a major scientific problem, the struggle is anything but dry. As I tried to sketch above, it can be as gripping, and hence `juicy', as anything in life. So one question is: how can we give the wh a better rap.

Another question is the difference between 1) devotion to a deeply held idea/belief, namely that all is perfect, on the one hand; and 2) devotion to an intense struggle with the incredible paradox that the wh presents, by holding up the possibility (not the certainty!) of ultimate perfection in the face of blatant imperfection all around us, on the other hand.

If I understand you correctly, you work with 1). This is certainly a wonderful path of religious practice. Whether 1) or 2) is the best approach will depend on the person, and even for the same person, may be different at different times in his or her life. However, whichever we choose, I think it is important to be clear about our choice. 1) and 2) are not the same. Devotion to Great Doubt, as in 2) is not the same as devotion to Great Faith, as in 1). Both are wonderful paths to pursue, and I do not want to make any value judgment here.

There is a lot more that I could say, but let us take one step at a time. I enjoyed what you wrote about "letting THIS meditate" rather than you trying to meditate; this is very similar to what I have found myself, as I wrote above (I read your piece after I wrote the above paragraphs, and I was happy to see our convergence!). Yet, meditation and working with the wh is not the same, and part of any investigation, scientific or spiritual, is to be really clear about fine but important distinctions.

Do you agree that there is a difference, and if so, how do you see your approach with respect to 1) and 2) above? Or would you characterize your approach as yet different from the two I sketched? Don't worry in the slightest about whether your natural affinity for a choice may or may not fit any formal definition of a `working hypothesis' -- the only thing important is that you are at home with your own practice. Whether or not that will turn out to fit in the category `working with the wh' is another question.

However, we should get clarity about that last question, in order to have clarity in our dialogue. If it turns out that different people mean something different with `working with the wh', we should at least flag that clearly, so that we can address each other's concerns more precisely and more respectfully. Rather than taking our natural tendency to pray, meditate, or otherwise engage with reality, and re-label it `working with the wh', let us see, step by step, to what extent such a labeling is appropriate.

Response to Rod

Thank you, Rod, for your systematic comparison of the wh with various existing approaches. I agree that of the four you mentioned, phenomenology and meditation go most directly to the core of the paradoxes that we are confronting. Yet both of them seem to me to be subtly different from working with the wh. It may well be that we can combine working with the wh with one or the other, or perhaps even both. Yet, for the sake of clarity, as I mentioned in my response to Frank, we should make sure to respect differences if and when we notice them.

I am looking forward to hearing from all of you, and from Frank and Rod in particular, whether you agree that working with the working hypothesis is different from various forms of traditional meditation and devotion, and if so, how you would describe the differences. It would be marvelous if we could agree about precise distinctions, first, so that we can then explore to what extent we can find ways to combine perhaps the best of all of these approaches!