Transforming Internal Formations pt. 9
Jim Bootman’s internal formation was not straightforward to transform. It was what we might call a real stinker. This is the case with any internal formation that pre-conceptually shapes the felt implications of objects of mind. By the time you’re “investigating,” you’re already carrying out the agenda of the formation. You’re reinforcing it. This is especially true of formations that mandate action, and Jim’s was exactly such a formation. It had a very specific flavor, but before I describe that flavor, I want to talk about wine tasting.
Do you like wine? I don’t really, but I’ve tasted good wine, and I could tell that it was good. It didn’t taste like that two dollar bottle that we drank on the beach during our high-school language exchange in France. I’ve also sat at a table with two wine connoisseurs, a couple that was incidentally struggling with alcoholism. We were catching up after quite some time apart. Over the course of the afternoon they had described in detail their recent wine tour and the flavor profiles of their favorite wines. They told me with a peculiar sense of import that they would only drink a single glass with dinner. I declined the invitation, my own guilty pleasure being sparkling water. I have no idea why, but after their glasses were poured they left the wine bottle on the table.
Never before have I seen a lifeless thing exert more force on its surroundings. I am convinced that after those glasses were emptied, that bottle became the single heaviest object in the universe. Our conversation continued as before, but as time wore on the bottle began to attract fretful glances. An unmistakable air of distress slowly pervaded the scene. Why on earth was that bottle still on the table? They looked at it uncertainly. I looked at them uncertainly. One of them literally broke into a sweat. Banal dinner conversation has never been so pained, so meaningless, so utterly divorced from the situation at hand. And still, no movement was made toward the bottle. Finally, with the grim determination of an old rancher about to put down his beloved cattle dog, my friend stood up and said, “Well, since we’re not going to have any more of this, I guess I’ll put it away.” No fucking shit!
This is not a public service announcement about wine or alcoholism. It’s about fascination. I ask you this: in light of that experience, how do you imagine I feel when these friends tell me about the joys of the life of a wine connoisseur, when they painstakingly recount for me the tale of the 1990 Château Latour, the chain of events, beginning with the formation of our solar system, that led eventually to the unusual weather conditions around Bordeaux in 1990 that ultimately produced this legendary vintage? How do you think I feel when they describe for me its unforgettable flavor? Well, I must say, I have mixed feelings.
Fascination is a kind of pastime. As a dedicated practitioner of fruitless rumination, I am the last person to criticize anyone for their hobbies. But if you tell me in the same breath about the joys of drinking and your desire to quit, it raises questions. If you tell me in the same breath about the fascinating implications of the observation of the subtlest of mental phenomena, and that you are interested in liberation, I will have the same response. Practically speaking, only the wine maker needs a refined palate, and for him, the sophisticated rhetoric is optional. Jim Bootman, through hard work, developed exactly the kind of taste required to discern the subtle blending together of mental factors that constituted his formation. If he tried, he could probably give us a clumsy account of what happened, but to what effect? The only important fact about the transformation, as far as he is concerned, is that it lies in the past. In this domain I find Mr. Bootman’s lack of refinement quite refreshing. It does however mean that you will have to hear the scintillating details from me.
Post-Mortem of an Internal Formation
Inside every one of us is a well-meaning detective that always gets the wrong guy. Telling an insight narrative is misleading because it seems as though we are sorting through the clues, the raw material of experience, and eventually coming to a new, liberating grasp of a situation. If we look this way, we may be tempted to praise our inner detective, but the real story is almost exactly the opposite. The formation could only function because the case was already closed. The process of insight meditation is not one of solving a mystery, but of un-solving a mystery so hard that the detective turns to dust. What looks like a series of breakthrough perceptions is actually just the formation failing to take shape.
How did Jim Bootman’s formation fail? The first thing that happened was that his automatic, unreflective response to it lost its credibility. He got a kind of sobering jolt when he realized, “Oh shit, I think I’m being mindful, but actually this is just more reactivity.” This can be a kind of destabilizing realization, which is exactly what is needed. This formation has enjoyed quite enough stability! It can also feel paralyzing, because no action is warranted. Action completely loses credibility. It didn’t happen for Jim Bootman, but fear can come up here, or thoughts of helplessness, or dismay, “I’ve been watering the wrong seeds the whole time!” Compassion is the only entryway to the inner workings of the formation. Without it, reactivity to the unpleasant vedana sweeps you off down the old familiar road of mental proliferation. You haven’t been watering the wrong seeds the whole time. If that were the case, you’d never be able to recognize this now.
Jim, interestingly, didn’t experience much proliferation of this kind. I think it’s probably because, in the traditional terminology, he had cultivated so much merit. Jim was resting in his chair after a long day of honest work. He had eaten dinner with his family, helped his son with his homework, spent a quiet evening reading with his wife, and then found himself alone with time to contemplate. For years, every time he had chosen to bring presence to his everyday life rather than to fuss about transforming his anxiety, he had slightly weakened the habit of identifying himself in relation to the formation. The intense puzzlement he experienced lead naturally to a harmonization of the Seven Factors, and his familiarity with compassion prevented any unpleasant feelings from interrupting the process.
Then, what we might call the actual investigation began, which consists of repeatedly hearing the conclusions of the detective without listening to them. Pre-conceptual formations shape the baseline of the present moment. Thoughts about what’s going on are all downstream. When you are aware of them, you can get an idea of how the formation is functioning, but thinking alone can’t reach it. Thinking has to fail. When that happens, but the formation still functions, you get the curious sensation of “observing nothing.” You become a fish suddenly aware of water, but you don’t have words for it. When proliferation does fire, it will produce thoughts like, “Nothing is happening,” “There’s nothing to observe.” But what it’s really saying is, “This is how things are. This is reality with nothing added.” The correct response here is, “Oh, really?”
Let’s take for a moment that statement at face value. If there is nothing happening, nothing to observe, then there is nothing to transform. Isn’t this the great triumph we’ve been striving for? Actually, some formations disappear just like this, no fanfare, no spectacular explosion, no farewell. But sometimes the sensation of anticlimax is suspiciously strong. In Jim’s case, pretty quickly he could tell that something was going on, something he couldn’t name. Something that was giving every action, every interpretation, a certain flavor. Proliferation here, happening within the observational frame of the Seven Factors of Awakening, is actually very telling.
The actual chain of perceptible factors of mind that Jim experienced, as far as we know, was random. We can’t say that he needed to experience these specific things: a sense of having a closed mind, a sense of disgust, a sense of shame, a sense of vulnerability, a complex sequence of thoughts, feelings, and images associated with a childhood memory. But in this case, because they weren’t pursued or taken at face value, they helped paint a sort of picture of the truth of the world that this formation posited. Now, I will do the greatest violence possible to all of the subtlety and nuance that Jim experienced, and flatten it into a single phrase, “There is something wrong, and it is on me to do something about it.” This was the conclusion of the detective. This was the pre-conceptual mold that shaped the way that Jim invariably looked at the present moment. It is no shock that actions taken on the basis of this premise eventually led to anxiety.
So what transformed the internal formation? Nothing. Nothing! The transformation, like the formation itself, unfolded in dependence on causes and conditions. The Seven Factors of Awakening, plus compassion, repeatedly prevented the various forms that the formation took from being mistaken for “I, me, or mine.” It was “dwelling happily in the present moment” all the way down. It is a testament to Jim’s solidity as a practitioner that this was true through the resurfacing of the childhood memory. That was the point at which the formation looked the most personal. It would have been very easy for him, at that moment, to come to the conclusion, “Oh! This is what this is really about. This is about my relationship with my dad. This is about my desire to make an impact on the world. This is about compassion,” or a million other possible conclusions that would have stopped him short of the finish line. Instead, he could see that the fit between the formation and the memory was just another correspondence. Neither the situation nor the interpretation could claim the throne of “the thing that caused it all,” and the formation fell apart. The end.
