Active Mind / Receptive Mind: The Journey of Mindfulness

By John Monopoli

Active Mind/Receptive Mind: The Journey of Mindfulness is designed to provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to mindfulness and its relationship to constructive action. It also provides readers with a systematic comparison between Eastern and Western models of mindfulness and in-depth instructions for "holding" and transcendi

• Language: English
• Publisher: TransPersonal Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781912698134

John Monopoli

Dr. Monopoli, a licensed psychologist for 33 years, treats individuals using a combination of Mindfulness psychotherapy, meditation, hypnotherapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. He believes that a clear, focused, relaxed and lucid mind is the best instrument for self-discovery, the resolution of personal difficulties, and the identification of a personal life path. He enjoys working with a wide range of individuals, especially young adults and those seeking answers in their spiritual and philosophical paths. His areas of expertise include the treatment of depression, anxiety, stress and a range of life issues using meditative techniques and guided self-analysis.

Book preview

Part 1

The Nature of Mind and Consciousness

Chapter One

Superordinate States of Consciousness: The Active Mind and the Receptive Mind

The receptive mind or Being mode can be seen as passive, receptive, desireless, non-manipulative and choiceless while the active mind or Doing mode is active, motivated and manipulative.

As complicated and profound as human consciousness is, we can basically run it on one of two possible tracks: the track of will, desire and judgment or the track of pure, unbiased, unmotivated, non-judgmental observation. The first track is that of the active mind or Doing consciousness; the second track is that of the receptive mind or Being consciousness. Employing a wide range of differing terms, both Eastern and Western traditions have commented on this basic dichotomy of the mind: acting on the environment or observing it.

Active or Doing consciousness, or what Maslow refers to as ordinary cognition, is that form of consciousness we normally use during most of the day for most of our lives. It is typically that form of consciousness allied to the use of words – the use of words to order reality, categorize reality and control reality. More often than not, it is verbal consciousness. When Maslow refers to the shaping aspect of ordinary cognition, it is important to remember that what is being shaped is reality itself – our conception of the nature of the world as contained in the channels of thought created by words. Most of the time, the goal of this shaping is the imposition of our will upon our internal and external worlds. The control of reality requires the labeling of reality. Our labeling and interpretation of our social and physical environments results not only in a sense of discernibility about the external world but also a sense of how to get by – how to maneuver through these environments to succeed, to achieve, or to win. Deikman refers to active consciousness as the action mode or a state of striving, oriented toward achieving personal goals... Through the process of shaping and selection, the world which one hopes to control is also very much the world which one has conceptually created. In this sense, we build mental constructions and then live within them. We live within the reality we ourselves have created. Social order, according to Berger and Luckman in The Social Construction of Reality, "is not part of the ‘nature of things,’ and it cannot be derived from the ‘laws of nature.’ Social order exists only as a product of human activity."

Mental constructions can accurately or inaccurately reflect our individual experiences. To the extent that these constructions reflect not the true nature of our present experience – what we are feeling now, hearing now, smelling, seeing and touching now – but rather reflect instead our desires, attachments and preoccupations, active consciousness becomes projective consciousness or what Perls referred to as the intellect or the whore of intelligence – a fitting game in which all experience is categorized and filtered through desire. The result of this filtering – shifting all present experience through conceptual filters of importance vs. non-importance, relevance vs. non-relevance, significance vs. non-significance, is that our interpretation of reality can become more important than reality itself. When the experience of the present moment – the experience of our senses and feelings – becomes secondary to our interpretation of the present moment, it becomes nearly impossible to separate our comments, editorials and theories about our present from the present itself.

This separation of raw experience from commentary upon experience is absolute in the receptive or Being mind. The Surangama Scripture speaks of the pure mind – the mind which is not entangled in the snarls of attachments and contaminations – the mind which is an empty space – the mind which receives in the same way that a mirror receives, reflecting perfectly but not adding anything. Not commenting. Not editorializing. Not judging. Not comparing. Not creating mental categories in which, according to the Scripture, the mind is thrown into a medley of bewildering puzzles which in time become attached to the mind and contaminate it. These puzzles are created, according to Perls, when one becomes so busy and preoccupied with active, conceptual consciousness – with one’s computer – that your energy goes into your thinking, and you don’t see and hear anymore. Perls sees intuition as the true source of experience – the sense of seeing and hearing and sensing without preconceptions or mental veils.

The lack of preconception is the essence of the Being Mode or what Deikman refers to as the receptive mode – the state organized around intake of the environment rather than manipulation. Because intake rather manipulation is the essence of the receptive mode, this mode involves a dominance of the sensory over the formal – a dominance of the look, feel, smell and touch of any object over the need to label or categorize the object. Again, when there is a need to manipulate an object, person or situation, there is also a need to label that which we hope to manipulate. When no such need exists, that which we perceive can stand on its own and, in fact, must stand on its own if we are to perceive it accurately. Within the Being Mode, we move, according to J. Krishnamurti, from always seeking something to observing without choice. It is this lack of choice that makes for accuracy of perception.

This extinguishing of active consciousness in order to open receptive consciousness involves a somewhat paradoxical process – a process depicted in Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery. Herrigel embarks on a five year quest to learn archery in the Zen mode by letting go of himself – doing by not doing. Questioning his teacher about releasing the bow without purpose, he asks, So I must become purposeless – on purpose? Ultimately, his teacher responds, Wait until it is time – wait, in effect, until the bow, arrow and target are in alignment rather than attempting to create such an alignment. The paradox of doing by not doing is what makes receptive consciousness or mindfulness so elusive, so beyond technique according to Germer.

This perception of objects, the external world and everything in the external world as standing on its own requires what Maslow, echoing Krishnamurti, refers to as choiceless awareness or the ability to surrender and submit to the experience – to receive being rather than to order or manipulate being. This capacity he calls Being Cognition or B-Cognition which, by definition, must be contemplative rather than forceful and undemanding rather than demanding in order to let the percept be itself. This capacity is, in essence, total reception – an extinguishing of critical and evaluative consciousness in the service of total perceptual immersion – a state, according to Zindel, Segal and Teasdale, in which no gap exists between how things are and how we would like them to be and in which there are no discrepancies between desired and actual states.

One can function primarily within the Being mode or primarily within the Doing mode or within a mixture of both in which one or the other dominates consciousness.

Interestingly, Deikman observed that the same object or situation experienced under the action mode can, within a matter of moments, be experienced under the receptive mode and that, just as easily, a receptive experience can transition to an active, conceptual experience. Deikman gives the example of a monk working in his garden who can actively manage, shape and rearrange the garden or receive the garden – without words, intent, or motive. Similarly, Deikman points out that same distinction applies to sex in which lovers can actively, intently, planfully screw each other or passively take in each other as they make love. It is thus the intention, not the degree of energy expended, that determines which mode will become dominant – many experiences, perhaps most life experiences, are not purely active or receptive but are reflections of what Deikman calls a modal balance – not an absence of either mode but a dominance of one mode over another dependent on the actor’s purpose. The receptive state should dominate, if not entirely consume, consciousness during meditation, while the flight or fight response should dominate during emergencies. But most experiences require this modal balance for effective performance – a mixture of pure, unbiased observation followed by informed and therefore intelligent action.

However, it is possible to apply the incorrect mode to a situation requiring primarily its opposite. Trudy observed that When we are operating in reactive mode, without mindfulness, our emotions stream too fast and strong for us to reflect upon them. The active mode, operating in the absence of receptive observation, makes action ignorant and uninformed – like a wild horse galloping wildly without a rider. Interestingly, primarily active experiences can become primarily receptive experiences and vice versa – an observation Kabat-Zinn makes in describing how the active pursuit of exercise can, when the domain of being is actively cultivated, transform exercise into meditation. Similarly, Segal points out that one can try to meditate with so much focus that it becomes meditating in a doing rather than a being mode, because the meditation is ‘driven’ by the desire to relax. Meditation is an inherently receptive process and any element of the active mode included in the meditative process – such as desire, guidance or evaluation – turns meditation into just another active process. In other words, meditation becomes non-meditation when attempted in the opposite, active mode.

Mindful or Right action is a perfect convergence of the active and receptive minds. This convergence has also been given the term flow.

Maneuvering through almost any environment – inner consciousness or outer reality – requires both awareness and action. Yet an action, any action, is intelligent, mindful or skillful only to the extent that it is in alignment with awareness – unbiased, objective, motiveless perception. What is the value of such perception? Maslow makes the fascinating point that impersonal perception is not valueless but actually gains in value as it gains in ego-detachment and passive reception, causing is and ought to fuse. In essence, perfect perception is perfect value. This impersonal perception depends upon the loss of ego. The ego is lost when sidelong glances at oneself, at others, or at the results, are absent (Thera) and …in the absence of a detached sense of self-awareness (Styron). Thus, action and awareness are perfectly unified only when free from the obstruction of self-consciousness or self-evaluation. According to Herrigel, when the obstruction of self is removed, The hand that guides the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment the mind began to form it… the material and the spiritual, the project and the object, flow together without a break. Such a flow, such a unification of action and perception, requires that all objects, all considerations, all expectations outside of this flow, become non-existent: …a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else... (Csikszentmihalyi); …we encourage our clients to focus attention solely on that task, with minimal thought about future outcomes… (T.D. Borkovec and Brian Sharpless); No longer hampered by conceptions of how things should be, we can be effective in undreamed of ways. Being in unity with each situation, we respond in total harmony (Tarthang Tulku).

In the purist form of the flow state, action is set in motion not only with the absence of motives such as winning or manipulating but also without the most elementary use of words. Keeping in mind the spirit of reception, to label an object is to impose rather than receive. A perfect example of this principle is found in Buddha’s Lotus Sutra in which the Buddha conducts a sermon for his followers simply consisting of his outstretched arm holding a white lotus flower. To label the flower as a lotus or even as white would be an act of imposition. The flower stands on its own and is received without comment. In this spirit, a Japanese Garden-Designer in Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen commented about his state of mind during a fencing match: I acted in response to my direct feeling and deepest mind, without considering victory or defeat, opponent or myself, and with no awareness of even engaging in a match. To call this unification of perception and action a match or to consider victory or defeat would be to impose himself upon the match rather than to allow the match to consume his mind.

An even further imposition of ego upon action would be the labeling of one’s work as a masterpiece. Trungpa calls the idea of a masterpiece irrelevant: The masterpiece, the perfect work of art, comes as a by-product of this process of identifying with what you are doing. The masterpiece comes about by forgetting oneself – by accepting the unification of action and perception, by becoming the unification of action and perception – and standing clear of this unification by withholding any comment at all. Within the spirit of this unification, the production of a masterpiece and the simple act of sawing wood are identical acts. Finally, in Conze’s Buddhist Scriptures, Sessan Amakuki, quotes an ancient worthy and makes the fascinating observation that Meditation in movement is a hundred, a thousand, a million times superior to meditation at rest. – implying that, while the pure perception of the receptive mind is itself the goal of meditation, a state in which perception and action merge is an even higher state of consciousness.

Chapter Two

Zen/Direct Perception as the Primordial Form of the Receptive Mind; Conceptual Consciousness as the Most Typical Manifestation of the Active Mind

Zen/direct perception/bare attention/primordial mindfulness – as the purest manifestation of the receptive mind – involves the absence of all mental categories of comparison or analysis. Conceptual consciousness, as the most typical manifestation of the active mind, uses language and mental categories to order and control experience.

Whether we use the term Zen or direct perception or mindfulness (in the form of nonverbal, primordial mindfulness), direct perception is perception without comment – perception which receives so wholly and completely that the use of even simple words would be an imposition upon the object of contemplation. In modern circles, the term mindfulness is used at times as implying non-verbal awareness but, at other times, implying verbal insight. While non-verbal awareness and skillful insight or clear comprehension are intimately related, it is very important to differentiate primordial mindfulness from its verbal counterpart. This is because pure mindfulness or direct perception as the purest form of awareness is completely, non-verbally, receptive while clear comprehension, which derives from direct perception, uses the tool of the active mind – language – to translate what is received by direct perception. Thus, direct perception or Zen, as a completely receptive state, is completely empty – it holds the object of perception with complete non-reaction. This is a principle stressed by a variety of Eastern and Western theorists. Kapleau refers to Zazen as the mind that "is freed from bondage to all thought-forms, visions, objects, and imaginings, however sacred or elevating, and brought to a state of absolute emptiness. Tulku likens emptiness to the space between thoughts. Seng writes, Wordiness and Intellection – The more with them, the further astray we go. According to the Lankavatara Scripture, Anyone who teaches a doctrine that is dependent upon letters and words is a mere prattler, because Truth is beyond letters and words in books. Morita sees going beyond verbal processing as an essential aspect of satori/enlightenment itself. Similarly, Rosen Takashina writes, …from the ensuing absence of thoughts are born naturally and rightly brilliant understanding…"

As an example of the purity of direct perception, to describe a white flower as white or flower would constitute what Shunryu Suzuki often describes as something extra. The extra here involves the attempt to classify, categorize, critique or editorialize upon the raw data of the external world and our own internal experience in order to divide up the world into pieces or objects (Deikman). Direct perception seems at first mystical to many of us precisely because we are accustomed to the nearly automatic coupling of raw sensation with a conceptual label. Yet, as Fulton and Siegel point out, Indeed, thinking actually obscures direct seeing into the nature of things. For individuals new to meditation, the idea that active, alert attention can exist without thought is unimaginable. This obscuring of direct seeing is precisely because most verbal/conceptual forms are active in nature in the sense of carrying the observer’s bias and motivations rather than reflecting a given object as is. Krishnamurti makes this point by contrasting the mind that has stopped searching with the mind that is essentially projective – carrying its own bias in the observation of the unknown. Lacking emptiness, the projective mind reflects only its own preconceptions: That state in which the mind says, ‘I do not know,’ is not negation. The mind has completely stopped searching; it has ceased making any movement, for it sees that any movement out of the known towards the thing it calls the unknown is only a projection of the known.

It is almost self-evident that, during most situations in our lives, conceptual consciousness dominates. For example, when we see the form of a chair, we automatically apply the label chair. It then becomes difficult, if not impossible, to perceive this form in any other way – to appreciate the raw perceptual qualities of the chair, its color, height, texture, shape etc. because our raw perceptual abilities have been turned off in the service of a mental category. Because we usually serve our mental categories rather than our raw perceptions, we do not so much cognize the nature of the world as it actually is, but, as Maslow explains, serve the organization of our own inner world outlook. The world as organized becomes more real and essential than the world as it exists on its own.

Because direct perception or what Maslow refers to as B-Cognition or Being Cognition is non-comparing cognition or non-evaluating or non-judging cognition, the object of contemplation is allowed to stand on its own – as a unique entity appreciated for its own qualities. While we may have encountered many white flowers, when we look at this particular white flower, we allow ourselves to be taken in by its own particular, never seen before qualities. We can do this precisely because we are perceiving without reference in the largest sense: without reference to other flowers, without evaluation or judgment of the flower, and without even the use of the word flower. Thus, free of verbal labels and the comment of the verbal mode, direct perception reverses our normal mode of consciousness: perception, rather than categorization, becomes the priority. A rose is now allowed to be just a rose not, as Germer reminds us, a romantic relationship that ended tragically 4 years ago or an imperative to trim the hedges over the weekend. Direct perception is, in essence, consciousness in the pure form of awareness rather than consciousness equipped with pre-set ground rules.

Direct perception or Maslow’s B-Cognition or Being Cognition, has, in Buddhist literature, been traditionally referred to as bare attention. Nyanaponika Thera sees bare attention as the bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference... Bare attention is thus a wordless, non-reactive, non-self-referential awareness of an object.

Conceptual consciousness entails observer-object differentiation while direct perception entails observer-object non-differentiation.

The control of an object requires the labeling of an object by someone standing outside of the object. Whether the object is concrete or abstract, tangible or even imaginary, the imposition of our will upon it requires a designation of the object and someone who does the designating: …for success in acting on the world, according to Deikman, requires a clear sense of self-object difference. Observer-object differentiation, within the mode of conceptual consciousness, is, in a sense, a form of consciousness which is continually split as it alternates between self-consciousness and consciousness of the object. Within differentiation, the observer usually registers or contemplates the object only to the extent that it is seen as relevant, significant, useful or even interesting to the self – any innate or given quality of the object not directly related to the needs or desires of the observer is seen as irrelevant and, in a sense, ceases to exist. Thus, for most of us, most of the time, contemplation and thought are self-referential rather than truly perceptual. For most of us, perception is actually a projected view of the object – an object which exists solely within the mindset, prejudices and attachments of the observer.

Conversely, Zen or direct perception has two main perceptual features. First, a focus on the object as it actually exists in its own right, within its own context – a focus which is completely free of the observer’s point of reference, especially self-reference. Mindfulness, or awareness, according to Rahula, does not mean that you should think and be conscious ‘I am doing this’ or ‘I am doing that.’ No. Just the contrary. The moment you think ‘I am doing this,’ you become self-conscious, and then you do not live in the action, but you live in the idea ‘I am,’ and consequently your work too is spoilt.

The second perceptual feature of Zen or direct perception is an intense, highly concentrated attention directed upon the object of contemplation. This attention, which is most profoundly manifested in deep states of meditation, is free of distractions and steady enough to perceive the object in increasing degrees of breadth and depth. While conceptual consciousness alternates between the observer’s awareness of himself and his awareness of the object, direct perception stays with the object completely, resulting in observer-object non-differentiation or what Maslow referred to as identification of the perceiver and the perceived. The focus upon the object is so total that, as Maslow put it, the self, in a very real sense, disappears. Deikman called this state a unity of the person with the environment or a direct knowing – knowing by being that which is known. It is precisely this union which expands awareness, free of the filters of volition, judgment and desire. The sense of unity of the person with his environment, writes Deikman, results in a horizon of awareness that has been greatly expanded. Hanh sees observer-object non-differentiation as the essence of meditation: Only when we penetrate an object and become one with it can we understand it. Taking this principle even further, Yasutani Roshi actually considers observer-object unity to be the only path to enlightenment: When you see them (flowers), not as apart from you but as yourself, you are enlightened.

Eugen Herrigel, in Zen in the Art of Archery, provides an excellent illustration of the unity vs. non-unity of the self with the object of contemplation as he recounts five agonizing years attempting to selflessly hit a target with his bow and arrow. At first, he attempts to yield to his Master’s instruction to hit the target without an I – without a self which plots, strategizes and plans. After experiencing failure after failure in letting It shoot – allowing the configuration of bow, arrow and target to come to him – he begins to devise a plan based upon his own logical analysis of the tension and configuration of his hands and arms in relation to the bow and arrow. In essence, he stands outside the target in his analysis of the target. His Master senses this almost immediately and, at first, refuses to instruct him further. It is only when Herrigel removes the distance between himself and the target that he experiences It or complete observer-object non-differentiation. He is completely befuddled by the experience: Do ‘I’ hit the goal or does the goal hit me? In essence, when he ceases to analyze the goal, he ceases to exist – his awareness of himself or of any analysis ceases in the contemplation of the target, in the unity of target and self. It is in recognition of this unity that his Master comments, Now at last, the bowstring has cut through you.

Finally, Krishnamurti makes the interesting observation that observer-object differentiation – the split between the observer and the observed – must result in conditioning or a set of pre-formed attitudes or preconceptions about any object. These attitudes and preconceptions necessarily limit and filter perception: The very division between the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experience, is the perpetuation of conditioning. The only means of freeing ourselves from this conditioning is the relinquishment of will – the essence of the active mind. Without this relinquishment, we remain caught in that conditioning. Only bare attention, Thera tells us, frees us from those tensions which so often arise from interfering, desire, aversion, or other forms of self-reference. Psychological tension between the observer and the object of observation is the result of self-reference – the often unfulfilled motive of the observer in perceiving the object. When self-reference is absent – when the distance between self and object disappears – tension disappears.

The source of both conceptual consciousness and direct perception can be seen as Void or Absolute Potential.

The Lankavatara Scripture divides consciousness along three main dimensions: the discriminating mind (manovijnana), the intuitive mind (manas) and the Universal Mind (Alaya-vijnana). The discriminating mind is essentially the mind of conceptual consciousness: a dancer who creates his own play and his own stage, a mind which goes on erroneously perceiving and discriminating differences of forms and qualities, not remaining still even for a minute. Conceptual consciousness or the discriminating mind creates its own reality but this reality is, in essence, an illusion in that "it fails to see and understand that what it sees and discriminates and grasps is only a