Review by Benjamin Howard of Roshi’s new book: BEING WITH DYING: CULTIVATING COMPASSION AND FEARLESSNESS IN THE PRESENCE OF DEATH
Friday, December 19th, 2008

One Time, One Meeting
The Practice of Zen Meditation
By Ben Howard

“Snow was general all over Ireland,” writes James Joyce at the end of his short story “The Dead.” In this celebrated story Gabriel Conroy, a middle-aged Dubliner, comes to terms with his own mortality. As often in Western literature, snow is a metaphor for death.
Today, what is general all over America—and indeed the world—is fear, whether its object be joblessness, a terrorist attack, or the more familiar specters of aging, sick-ness, and death. What have Zen teachings to say about fear? And what has Zen practice to offer?
One person who has confronted fear in general and the fear of death in particular is Joan Halifax Roshi, founder and Abbot of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Trained as an anthropologist, Roshi Joan turned to Zen practice after the death of her grandmother. For the past four decades she has devoted her life to teaching Zen and caring for the dying.
In her new book, Being with Dying (Shambhala Publications), Halifax presents the fruit of her life’s work. Observing that the fear of death causes many of us to avoid, ignore, or otherwise deny the “only certainty of our lives,” she reminds us that “to deny death is to deny life.” And to embrace death can be the ultimate form of liberation:
The sooner we can embrace death, the more time we have to live completely, and to live in reality. Our acceptance of death influences not only the experience of dying but also the experience of living; life and death lie along the same continuum. One cannot—as so many of us try to do—lead life fully and struggle to keep the inevitable at bay.

But how, exactly, are we to embrace death? To address our fear?
Halifax offer a wealth of “skillful means,” including zazen, walking meditation, reflection on one’s priorities, and the contemplation of nine perspectives on living and dying (“The human life span is ever-decreasing; each breath brings us closer to death”). But of her many strategems, two in particular stand out, the first of them a practical method, the second a matter of attitude.
Halifax calls her method “strong back, soft front.” By this she means the posture of meditation, in which we first straighten, then relax, our backs, feeling the strength and stability of an upright spine. Having established that stability, we soften the front of our bodies, opening our lungs to the air and our minds to things as they are. We bring our presence, strengthened but softened, to whatever suffering we encounter.
Simple though it sounds, this practice can bring immediate calm. And over time, it can engender a profound shift of attitude :
To meet suffering and bear witness to it without collapsing or withdrawing into aliena-tion, first we must stabilize the mind and make friends with it. Next, we open the mind to life—the whole of life, within and around us, seeing it clearly and unconditionally from that stable inner base. And then we fearlessly open our hearts to the world, welcoming it inside no matter how wretched or full of pain it might be. I’ve come to call this the “threefold transparency”—us being transparent to ourselves, the world’s being trans-parent to us, and us being transparent to the world.

As Halifax readily acknowledges, this practice is anything but quick or easy. But with the necessary effort come eventual liberation and the capacity to be of genuine help to others. “It may take effort,” she observes, “to return our mind to practice. And it usu-ally takes effort to bring energy and commitment to everything we do. Effort at its very core means letting go of fear.”
At a time when fear is as general as Joyce’s snow, such a perspective is as worthy as it is rare.
Ben Howard is Emeritus Professor of English at Alfred University and leader of the Fal-ling Leaf Sangha, a Zen sitting group in Alfred. For further information, please see fallingleafsangha.blogspot.com. For more information on Joan Halifax and the Upaya Zen Center, see www.upaya.org.

* * *

[This column first appeared in the Alfred Sun, the community newspaper of Alfred, New York, on December 18, 2008].

John Borthwick and Kenneth Lerer
Micro-Giving: A New Era in Fundraising

Thirty years ago, a young economics professor named Muhammad Yunus started a new kind of banking in Bangladesh -- tiny loans to small entrepreneurs. Few thought these dreamers in a dirt-poor country would ever repay. But most did --- and in 2006, Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Micro-lending has changed lives, built communities and created unlikely leaders.
Now a wave of friends and "loose ties" within the social media community are bringing the micro-lending concept and applying it to charitable giving.
Call it "Micro-giving".
Late last week Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting launched a new kind of fundraising drive: an effort to raise $25,000 for a nonprofit called charity: water, a cause that works to bring clean, safe water to developing countries. She chose Twitter as her platform for financial pledges. And because she was aware of the bleak economy bearing down on her friends, she didn't want to lean on them for significant contributions. "I asked for $25,000," she says, "which would be just $2 for each reader I have on Twitter."
In four days, @wellwishes had raised over $5,000. Average pledge size has been $8.50, the median is $2. And the beneficiary has taken notice. "I see micro-giving as the next stage of online fund raising," says Scott Harrison, founder and president of charity: water. "The idea of thousands of $2 gifts adding up to wells in Africa that impact thousands of lives is something everybody can get behind."
Though reminiscent of the Obama campaign's decentralized funding, @wellwishes is a whole new model because it incorporates convenient, tiny donations made right on Twitter -- the word-of-mouth powered social network and microblogging platform. Using payment service from a company called Tipjoy, it's both simple and social to give. Your pledge shows up on Twitter as "p $2 @wellwishes for charity: water to save lives" (This is shorthand for "pay $2 to the Charity organization whose user name on Twitter is wellwishes.") And that message goes -- instantly -- to all of the people who follow you on Twitter.
Laura Fitton (her Twitter user name is Pistachio) kicked off the campaign with an announcement of the experiment:
p $2 @wellwishes just to practice my hand at using micropayments on @tipjoy
In a later Tweet, she made her appeal:
I want something TOTALLY insane for Christmas: 12,500 people each to donate $2 for clean water @wellwishes.
And many did. Okay, these are pledges, not donations. But just as poor people pay their micro-loans, so micro-donors make good on their pledges -- so far, an astonishing 86% have come through.
And then there's the fact that the request gets personalized as people pass it on. Some add just a phrase: "very cool". Others say the same thing, but with more characters: "small bits via Twitter + big audience = good xmas".
The message is as important as the medium --- using Twitter/Tipjoy, everyone who participates is both a donor and a broadcaster.
That suggests we're entering a new era in fundraising and perhaps other social/political causes. What's new? Virtual tribes -- networks of caring people with more commitment than cash.
And that's what excites us about micro-giving: It takes so little. You might not have much to spare, but you've got a penny jar -- and we all know that if you reach in and remove a handful of change, you'll feel no pain. What's great about the new, frictionless online giving we're testing here is that, if you've got a good cause, you no longer need to spend a fortune on real-world marketing. Online, with word of mouth and simple technology, pennies can become serious money.
Muhammad Yunus says that we can create a poverty-free world "if we collectively believe in it." That's a lot of belief. It will be easier to create that world if good causes have adequate funding --- and if they can get that funding a few pennies at a time.
That, it seems to us, is a "very cool" idea. So give it a whirl. Give here and support charity: water, and be among the first to try what we hope is a new way to give online --- micro-giving. For which you get large thanks.
Can we get 12,500 people to chip in $2 each to save lives:
give $ and tweet about it!
Twitter username
Twitter password
your tweet: p $2 @wellwishes for CharityWater to save lives. What can $2 do http://bit.ly/13xKO You can tweet donate via @tipjoy too
powered by tipjoy

Maybe we should call it change for Change? Sorry, couldn't resist.

John Borthwick is CEO of betaworks, and Kenneth Lerer is Vice Chairman of betaworks (and Co-Founder & Chairman of the Huffington Post). (betaworks is an investor in Twitter and Tipjoy. Tipjoy waived all fees for this effort, and, with betaworks, is making a matching gift.)

turning the tide of violence......
we can do it:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2186231/amnesty_international_you_are_powerful/

“In the heart of winter, the chill freezes lakes and rivers; water becomes so solid that it can bear men, beasts and carts. As the spring approaches, earth and water warm up and thaw. What then remains of the hardness of the ice? Water is soft and fluid, ice hard and sharp, so we cannot say that they are identical; but neither can we say that they are different, because ice is only solidified water, and water is only melted ice. The same applies to our perception of the world around us. To be attached to the reality of phenomena, to be tormented by attraction and repulsion, by pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and obscurity, praise and blame, creates a solidity in the mind. What we have to do, therefore, is to melt the ice of concepts into the living water of freedom within.” —Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Reflections on Gaza and the Ritual of Mutual Destruction
Hozan Alan Senauke — 1.2.09


Gaza is burning. The violence must end before anything else can happen. We can all think nice thoughts about right and wrong, who acted first, who acted worst. We can argue about politics — national, international, geopolitical, corporate. Whatever intellectual thread my mind pulls at quickly comes to a hopeless tangle. The reality of fear, death, and destruction is beyond all this. A father weeps for his five daughters who died in their sleep, “collateral damage” in the heart of Gaza City. A daughter cries out for her mother, lost in a Hamas rocket attack on the town of Ashdod. Multiply that scene by a thousand. See yourself right in the midst of it. In this latest round, to date, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli attacks. The Israeli government counts 19 fatalities from Hamas rockets since 2002.

There is, of course, something pointless to the algebra of comparative suffering. But Israel’s attack on Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel. The body count and vast disproportion of weapons, technology, and killing make me ashamed to acknowledge that my government supplies so much of Israel’s weaponry, and ashamed to be a Jew, even as I fear for the future of the people I was born to. Present day Israel seems to have forgotten the words God spoke through the old prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 12:19,20):

"…and say unto the people of the land, thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of Israel; they shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land shall be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid to waste, and the land shall be desolate, and ye shall know that I am the Lord."

I confess, this is not a God I am comfortable with. It seems to be the voice of primitive religion and warring tribes, hardly the standard I’d hope we would be raising today. But in the language of his time and place, Ezekiel speaks the compelling truth of cause and effect.

Lets return to Gaza and Israel today. If you have heard bombs falling and seen the flash and glare of destruction, then you understand the essence of fear. Never knowing where violent death may fall upon you. Anyone who has been to war knows exactly what this is like. If you have not felt it directly, please use your imagination.

Two reflections, 2500 years apart, come to mind.

As recorded in the Dhammapada, Shakyamuni Buddha said:

All tremble at violence,
All fear death;
Comparing oneself with others
One should neither kill nor cause others to kill.
— Dhp. 129

All tremble at violence,
Life is dear to all.
Comparing others with oneself
One should neither kill nor cause others to kill.
— Dhp. 130

Victory breeds hatred,
The defeated live in pain.
Happily the peaceful live,
Giving up victory and defeat.
— Dhp. 201


Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking to his congregation in Montgomery, Alabama said:

"I think the first reason that we should love our enemies…is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil… Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off, and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love."

— "Loving Your Enemies" 17 November 1957

The rest is commentary. In Israel & Palestine, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Burma, and a dozen other killing fields, no resolution will come from spiraling violence. There will simply be more wounded and traumatized people who will wittingly or unwittingly pass their wounds to generation after generation. As Dr. King said, “Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off, and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.”

I don’t know precisely how to do this. But there must be a clear intention, a policy of non-retaliation, understanding that retaliation, however emotionally compelling, leads just to more retaliation. Generosity is always an option — offering food, medicine, shelter, and education — rather than death. Generosity is the basis of connection. This offering doesn’t come from the superiority of one or another side, but on the fact that we need each other if we are to survive. We owe each other life, simply on the ground of our shared humanity.

I’ve written before that a policy of generosity — which many will see as hopelessly naïve — can hardly be less effective (or more expensive) than the dance of death Israel and Palestine are presently locked into. I have to say that between Israel and Palestine, the vast preponderance of resources — wealth, technology, arms, food, and water — are controlled by the state of Israel. Palestinian militants seem to have one key resource, the will to say to Israel, we will not let you rest easily with all that you have and all you have stolen from us.

Each side must have the courage and vision first to let go of violence, and then to step very carefully into the very midst of their fears. Israel’s leaders have to let go of their stranglehold on land and resources. Palestine’s leaders have to let go of the belief that 1. Israel is an implacable enemy and 2. that somehow through their efforts Israel will disappear. (Some in Palestine clearly understand this. A friend received a card from Wi’am, The Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem that reads: “We do not want to bring the Israelis to their knees; we want them to come to their senses.”)

It is incredibly hard to turn towards ones fears, whether they are personal, communal, or national. In fact, greedy people and power-hungry demagogues on all sides will happily play on those fears to serve themselves. But we can help Israelis and Palestinians set aside violence. We can raise our voices in support of peace. We can remind them that we wish their security and freedom from fear, as they wish for themselves.

Call and write to the United States government and the United Nations to press for a full and immediate ceasefire, and an end to the devastating blockade imprisoning Gaza’s people. Open the border between Israel and Gaza, between Israel and the West Bank. Since the U.S, is the world’s largest arms dealer, we can press U.S. makers and vendors of high-tech weapons to stop this flow that feeds the Israeli military violence.

The essential work of peace will begin in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. But each of us, and our governments, must help rather than toy with them for our own geo-political purposes. We cannot close our eyes or turn away.

"Join this group... intended for anyone who has an interest in applying Buddhism to situations of suffering, and to Buddhist chaplaincy in particular." To see more details and confirm this invitation, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=615556864&k=6ZDX6YWXQXVM51D1SG5UYP

There are a growing number of chaplaincy programs and individuals and groups who are endeavoring to apply Buddhist teachings and practices in service to individuals and institutions.
The Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training program ( http://www.upaya.org/training/chaplaincy/ ), for example, focuses on altruistic and compassionate service, and on social transformation from a systems perspective. The training is intended to prepare people to have the skillful means to transform all forms of suffering, including suffering induced by structural violence. The Chaplaincy Training is part of the Zen Peacemaker Order, a leader in integrating spiritual practice with social action.

The training is based on the premise that those doing ministerial work are endeavoring to serve and heal not only individuals, but environments and social systems as well. Thus, chaplaincy is conceived as compassionate service from the point of view of systems change, a deep healing that takes place in concentric circles, from intrapsychic and interpersonal to environmental and global. This approach, based on complexity and systems theory and Buddhist philosophy, is radically innovative and is the theoretical, practical, and compassionate basis of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a huge growth in the presence of Buddhism in the West and what it has to offer as a way of life and a means for transforming suffering in the world. During the two-year training program, faculty and students study suffering, its causes, the end of suffering, and the way that suffering can be transformed (the Four Noble Truths). Our studies, practices, processes, and projects are all based in the profound motivation to end suffering in the world and in our lives. The “how” of this altruistic intention is the heart of our training.
http://www.upaya.org/training/chaplaincy/

i never thought to see the day when our government would address empathy as a relevant process. but today, this......
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/bridging_the_empathy_gap_-_yes_we_can

Dear Friends,

This is an extraordinary video of courage and hope......... RJoan

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2UE4GWfB58
 

A Korean camera crew in Gaza documented one of the most heroic actions we have ever seen or heard of. In the spirit of Rachel Corrie, who gave her life to defend a Palestinian home. Unlike the iconic image of the Chinese man standing in front of the tanks come to crush the Tiananmen protests in Beijing, 1989 and images splashed all over the world's media, you are unlikely to see this video or its images in the U.S. media. It is also a video of some hope. Her courageous action seems, at least, momentarily successful.
She has been identified as Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder and central figure in the International Solidarity Movement and, recently, the Free Gaza Movement (the folks organizing the boat trips from Cyprus to Gaza).

The stated mission of the ISM is to resist the Israeli occupation using nonviolent tactics. Arraf is married to Adam Shapiro, another ISM co-founder, whom she met while both were working at the Jerusalem center of "Seeds of Peace*," an organization that seeks to foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian youth.

Arraf, who is Christian, is the daughter of a Israeli Arab father and a Palestinian mother. Arraf majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also spent a year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew on a kibbutz.

Huwaida later earned a JD at American University's Washington College of Law. Her focus was on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with a particular interest in war crimes prosecution.

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass,or even in one drop of water.

Zen Master Eihei Dogen

Exchange between Roshi Joan, George Dreyfus, Al Kaszniak, John Dunne, and Evan Thompson regarding attention/awareness in concentrative meditation and receptive meditation

From Roshi Joan:
Dear Al, Evan, George, John,
A question that you might help me with. Clearly concentrative meditation employs attention to focus on an object. But open presence? Seems like that is awareness....... not attention........ can you help with this? Rj

From Al Kaszniak, January 14, 2009 3:17 PM MST:

Dear Roshi: The question you raise is at the heart of a broader set regarding how we shouldmap constructs regarding mental processes that come from Western psychology(which have generally not been informed by meditative practice familiarity) andthe phenomenology of meditative experience.
CLICK-FOR-MORE

In describing what they term "open monitoring" (OM; as contrasted with "focused
attention" FA) meditation, Lutz, Slagter, Dunne and Davidson (2008) note that
while OM involves no explicit focus on objects, it does involve nonreactive
meta-cognitive monitoring. As they state, "One aims to remain only in the
monitoring state, attentive moment by moment to anything that occurs in
experience without focusing on any explicit object." (p. 164). This way of
using the term "attentive" as apparently synonymous with "aware," goes back to
a historical distinction made in cognitive psychology between two different but
related meanings of attention: "selective attention" (i.e., processes that
determine which of the many competing stimuli get through to consciousness) and
"attentional capacity" (i.e., a hypothetical limited-capacity information
processing resource associated with conscious awareness of the information
being processed).

Although I have adopted this way of describing open monitoring meditation, I suspect that using "attention" as an umbrella term to encapsulate both "focused attention" and "metacognitive monitoring," confuses rather than clarifies. One hope is that the
neurophenomenological approach, as described by Francisco and now Evan, might
lead to a refinement of cognitive/affective terminology.

Does this help at all?

love,

Al K.

From Roshi Joan, Jan 14, 1:46PM, MST
Dear All,
Clearly concentrative meditations employ focussed attention. But the word attention implies mental reaching; thus receptive meditation or open presence would seem not to be attentionally based, as according to Jim Austin, receptive meditation is involuntary and bottom up etc?

Your views would be helpful. Am ccing John Dunne as he might have a good perspective on this as well.

From George Dreyfus, January 14, 2:34PM:
Understood in this way, see below, it does not seem to be a problem to say that mindfulness meditation and other forms of receptive meditation involve attention. I do not think that attention needs to be voluntary.  Objects often grab our attention in a bottom up way but still we attend to them, don't we?   bests, g

“The taking possession of the mind in clear
  and vivid form by one out of what seem like
  several objects or trains of thought.”

“Attention is a cognitive system that allows preferential processing of relevant information while ignoring irrelevant or distracting information.”

From Roshi Joan, January 14, 6:04PM:
Thanks, george. that is helpful.
Am still trying to describe the process of mind that opens in "shikantaza" which is basically a receptive and reflective precognitive state. If you have any further thoughts or references, don't hold back. My best to you, rj

From George, January 15, 5AM:
Yes, it is hard to describe.  I think you would want to say that this kind of meditation is reflexive but not reflective.  It is also usually described as involving a pre-reflective self-awareness.  All these terms come from phenomenology, Husserl and Sartre mostly.  Best, g

From Roshi Joan, Jan 15, 2009, at 7:06 AM, Mountain Time:
Awareness or self-awareness? as in the state/process of shikantaza, there "seems" to be no self, ie we say: body and mind drop off. Forgive the Zen metaphors. j

From George, Jan 15, 5:09AM:
Yes, but isn't there is an element of reflexivity, an element of awareness of what is going on in one's mind, though it is not reflective (it does not have a subject/object structure)...

From Roshi Joan, Jan 15, 7:03AM:
Is this where we find vedana? And can one call vedana precognitive?

From George, Jan 15, 5:13AM:
Vedana is one of the dimensions or qualities of this state.  Vedana can be cognitive or pre-cognitive, if I understand this word.  I know what is going on in my mind, and hence I am aware of various feelings or sensations, but only in a recessive way, not in a thematic way, as when I focus on my sensations in normal states.  g

From Roshi Joan, Jan 15, 7:17AM:
Well, that is odd...... reflexivity without subject/object structure. Let me "think"........ there is no monitoring, as well a lack of mental adhesiveness, but one can recall the contents of the experience in retrospect. Btw, the state is relaxed but vivid. No torpor. Well, i guess i don't understand what you mean by reflexive. i need to look more deeply into the experience but also learn more what you are saying/meaning.... rj

From George, Jan 15, 6:01AM:
I am just using sartre's words to describe what you capture very well:  there is no monitoring but there can be recollection.  This is what I mean by reflexivity, that is, pre-reflectivity.

From Roshi Joan, Jan 15, 2009, 11:01 AM:
well, perhaps we can talk when next we see each other. i am stumped on the terms reflexivity and pre-reflectivity. i don't want to bore you with my ignorance of these terms. it is simply that i tend to want to be precise in describing what we experience in zen and as well to check out terminology in relation to my direct experience in practice. Already you have clarified several points. But the use of the terms above are somewhat confounding for me. alas...... i am just a zen teacher.......  thanks, dear george....... we all have such busy lives and thus i appreciate your responding to my queries. Rj

From George, Jan 15, 10:16AM
The philosophical vocabulary is not necessarily transparent indeed but it can be useful at times.  Look forward to talking more about this.  Best, g

From Roshi Joan:
Dear Al, am ccing Evan. would love his input. i think there is a distinction here. As in Zen, we emphasize the "precognitive state." But let me think about this a bit more. Your input is very helpful. and there is something here i cannot get my head around, as per my experience. Now back to sesshin....... so much love to you and ev, rj

From Evan Thompson, Jan 19, 2009, at 6:35 AM:
Sorry to take so long replying to this one...

Here is my two cents worth, based on my very limited understanding:

Concentrative meditation is defined by its focus on a chosen object of attention. It leads to deep states of absorption, in which ultimately any distinction between the subject of meditation and the object of meditation is said to disappear. The Buddha is recorded as saying in the Pali Canon that there can be states of deep concentration of "infinite space," "infinite consciousness," "nothingness," and "neither perception nor non-perception."

Throughout these states, as an invariant, is the luminosity of the mind, where "luminosity" seems to be an image or metaphor for describing the sheer witnessing quality of consciousness, not dependent on any object to be witnessed. Consciousness is luminous because it discloses or reveals any object (including non-objects like nothingness) without itself being an object or object-dependent.

My understanding is that open presence and just sitting in Zen orient the practitioner towards this sheer luminosity or radiance of the mind. In which case, I think, as Roshi Joan says, we are dealing with awareness as such and not attention. According to Abhidharma, attention is an ever-present mental factor, so it presumably does not go away, but it operates within or against the background of sheer awareness.

If this is right, then "open monitoring" is not the best term, because "monitoring" suggests a kind of higher-order or executive attention. I understand that the reason for using this term is to connect to Western cognitive psychology, but "monitoring" seems to privilege one aspect of the practice and not strike at the heart of what the practice is about, namely, resting or abiding in pure awareness.

Love to you both,
Evan

From John Dunne, January 23, 2009 2:19:19 PM MST:
Hi, Roshi Joan.

Interesting question about the role of attention. I think that Jim is right to say that more receptive styles are comparatively bottom-up. However, one can also argue that some features of attention play an important role here. Specifically, one aspect of attention is the need to disengage from selected objects and re-orient toward a new object that is then selected. The capacity to disengage -- i.e., to not make en effort to engage with an object -- is thus an aspect of the executive control of attention. And the fact that receptive styles involve the absence of object selection suggests that they are reliant on this feature of executive control.

Likewise, receptive styles often involve a type of reflexive awareness or presence that seems closely related to the metacognitive capacity to monitor one's cognitive and affective states, and this too is a feature of attention.

In short, I think that I would be reluctant to cut attention out of the picture altogether in receptive styles of meditation. A middle road might also be to say that most practitioners have not reached the fully receptive state, and they are therefore still using attention-related features such as metacognition, even though they are not deliberately or effortfully engaging with any object.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. I hope that all is going well....

J