This will be blogged in a haphazard way at first then getting into form as it unfolds.
I first noticed OCD symptoms or rather I first remember doing ritual type behavior when about 11 years old. I don't remember the words but I used to recite very precisely something for protection. At 8 years old I would talk often about death. Nothing particularly monumental occured in my everyday life, except constant family arguments. Many families argue alot and I do not attribute my death ponderings or my protection "spells" (as I came to loosely think of them) to that aspect. It was pure me. Other social aspects of my behavior were effected; but everyone is effected in their own ways.
More on some of the ways OCD manifested over the years and how I came to recognize the spiritual dimension.
First I opened up to the possibilities that there might be a wisdom aspect of OCD.
It IS a very weird mental illness. And a perfect one for someone already musing on death as a youngster.
To skip ahead to my first spiritual clue. I read a book on Zen. I do not recall where I got this book or why I read it. In it there was an interview with a Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn. His motto was,"Always keep don't know mind and keep going straight." The phrase "don't know mind" resonated deeply within me. At that time, during my 23rd year, I would not have used the term resonate, but it really felt right. OCD was already manifesting for 12 years. I was aware of it and read about it. The sense of uncertainty and doubt is prominent in OCD and it was prominent within me. I doubted everything. Well, almost everything. I did strange rituals, said "prayers", walked funny and other way out displays of OCD. I knew it was called "the doubting disease" and so when I read about "Don't Know Mind" it was like WOW! here was a spiritual tradition that honored uncertainty. This makes sense!
DOUBT (updated 5/24/04)
What is it about DOUBT that may hold the key to wisdom? Why does Sahn Sa Nim use the phrase "Don’t Know Mind" so often? For a scientist are not questions the driving force?
In Obsessive Compulsive Disorder the doubt is pathological; meaning it interferes with everyday life in a substantial way. It slows life down in terms of actions in the world. This is due to getting stuck with doubt about reality and even doubt about our own minds and senses! Hence very difficult to get it all together and move forward. It bogs life down, clogs the machinery…
But there is a kind of doubt that deepens one’s experience and knowledge of life. The doubt of a scientist, of a creative artist, of philosophers that enhance one’s and other’s lives. To me the phrase "don’t know mind" keeps all possibilities of life open. To not know and not only be OK with that but to embrace that! Could this be empowering to all people, but especially people with OCD?
How is wisdom attained by using the eye of doubt?
There is also an implicit trust when you embrace more and more the open quality of "don’t know." The Buddhists might say this is one’s Buddha Nature and of course, this is good. In other words, by experimenting with doubt and keeping the mind free of trying to know. To let go of putting labels on reality whether they might be on the mark or not. And then see for oneself whether what naturally and spontaneously arises from our more relaxed being is not wisdom manifesting itself. So for OCDers to expand one’s tent of doubt to include ever-larger pieces of their reality but in areas that are not emotionally charged. In those areas one should experiment with doubting their doubt from above so to speak. This process was crystalized in me when I connected so strongly with "don’t know mind". I also kept in mind that his words were meant for all minds not only Obsessive-Compulsives and this gave me hope.
I believe wisdom manifests when keeping a pure state of not only "don’t know mind" but also "not needing to know or not know" mind. These states of mind are spacelike and has many good qualities that both feel good to the person and others as well. Such as tolerance. But in everyone’s own style or in Buddhist terms "one’s true nature" comes out more freely since not bogged down by weighty concepts of reality. Of course, whenever one tries to describe the mind, that is so open to doubt as to be almost free of it, one is using concepts to describe the indescribable. And it has to be indescribable! This is another instance of trust. That even though we use words to describe these internal and external realities it is the experience itself that is the wisdom. Actually practicing to keep the mind open of needing to close around what is going on in life internally and externally. And as the issue of closure is fundamental in obsessive compulsive disorder this will slowly ease the need for closure, hence certainty, hence the painful opposite of "don’t know mind".
These practices elevate doubt. As doubt is elevated from the mundane then more "freedom to be" grows. One must also remember to continue to doubt the doubt leaving nothing out…This further "purifies" doubt. The pathological doubt weakens and one is able to "see" reality more clearly hence wisdom naturally arises...Because there is doubt there is wisdom!
THE ACCUMULATION OF CLUES -updated 3/27/04
There is a comparable phase in the Buddhist tradition namely; the Path of Accumulation. This is the accumulation of wisdom similar to the accumulation of clues slowly revealing the spiritual dimension of OCD to me.
At the time of reading the Zen interview of Seung Sahn I was going to University. I majored in Mathematics since that was the best way to abstract my mind so as to understand death. This is how I thought about mathematics since my high school days when I was reading books on cryogenics among other subjects. I also started dabbling with writing poetry and fiction. A friend of mine mentioned to me that my writing seems like Zen Koans he was reading about. Since this was about the time I "discovered" the Zen book and read the interview that felt so right this excited me. I wanted to meet a Zen master and at the time had no idea how to go about this. So I started reading books on Zen.
These readings became a source of comfort in my otherwise chaotic mental life. Depression and the associated restriction of social contact that that caused as well as the many protection obsessions and compulsions left me dazed and confused, but for some reason this zen stuff spoke to me deeply.
Many people in the sciences or any field where one loves the subject one ponders, muses, thinks often about it. But for me for example in Chemistry I would get bogged down with the tiniest details and I could not stop thinking about it until I asked my professor. I would write pages and pages of questions to ask. Since I was too shy to talk in front of the class I waited for the professor after class or would go by their office. One such professor of Chemistry actually told a fellow student to keep me away from him with all my questions. I never knew if he was serious or not but it stood out. Of course I often came up with a question that most people would never think of and it helped me deeply undestand the subject BUT most of the time my obsessional questions caused me great mental pain. This is the difference between healthy passion and my obsessional questions. It was like my mind was a cauldron with both sharp intelligence and obsessional loops of questions and doubts all mixed together.
SACRED VISION---3/28
This is a term that comes up a few years later and its profundity continues to amaze me. During the time of College the same friend (we started an underground paper The Ikonoclast) told me about The Myth of Freedom by the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa. Neither title nor the cover caught my interest. Zen buddhism was it. He then told me about this new College called Naropa, started by Trungpa and the poet Alan Ginsberg and it intrigued me. I needed to meet these people. I also learned that Zen masters also taught there at times. So I decided to drive out there during the summer of 1982.
The notion of emptiness appealed to me so I signed up for a course on Shunyata (the sanskrit term usually translated as emptiness) at Naropa with Zazep Tulku. I was not very good socially and always getting smacked down with my verbal mistatements. At other times I was as smooth as can be. Before I actually arrived at Naropa that summer I called Allen Ginsberg and joked that I want to study with him because I want some help. I really was joking but it came out wrong. Of course I was confused and wanted help but I was being overall light and jokey about Buddhism and what I've been writiing. Basically I was excited. He said kind of rudely he's not a therapist. This embarrased me and these type of events throughout my earlier days made the tacitern wall thicker. But he was a great teacher, even though I never really spoke to him. I never spoke to Trungpa either but took an Art and Buddism class with him. And it was Trungpa talking about the Tantric path where he spoke of Sacred Vision. I never could be sure I understood what he meant and was not sure I did not understand because I did not get it or because of OCD doubt. Pretty twisted? But this is how my mind would think. But it started to mean to me that whatever I perceived, whatever internal experiences I had, no matter what I was doing, whether awake or asleep, talking, reading or eating I was doing something in a sacred dimension, in a sacred dance, superimposed on everyday reality , both internal and external. The key here was not the words "sacred dimension" "sacred dance" but rather a palpable sense that I, my ego I, was in a larger storyline. I felt it. I still feel it.
And this is why I am finally writing these words. It is time! For what I do not know. How can I? I have OCD. Of course this is said in half jest but the underlying sensation of uncertainty is always there.
I found that there are many comparable descriptions of mind in the abidharma (buddhist psychology) and in Trungpa's books. I found them in Tarthang Tulku's books as well. The interesting thing is he was the first Buddhist teacher I ever read. In 1976 I read his Time, Space and Knowledge and how way back then it spoke to me but not in the Buddhist sense. I do not think I realized what a Tibetan Lama was or even the Buddhist aspect. This is when during my early college days I was being turned on to philosophy by a friend who majored in that area. I used to argue there was no such thing as time but having only a Mathematics background and spoke with a thick New York accent with attitude my verbal arguments were often colored by many curses.
Therefore even this Book in progress is a manifestation of this Sacred Vision and all who happen to come to it. This is a seeming very mystical statement and way too early for me to have uttered it. But it has been uttered and will be let go of now in meditative space to continue with the clues and continual doubt filled insights.