Pyrrho

Tom McLoughlin – My Solo Weekend Retreat

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Image of solo meditator Tom McLoughlin
Tom McLoughlin talks to the online meditation group about his solo retreat

At the beginning of lockdown in the UK (in March 2020 or thereabouts), I decided to take up meditation. Initially, this was to find some measure of “inner peace” in the unusual circumstances that a global pandemic presented.

Over the last 6 months or so, I’ve done a regular online Tuesday meditation practice with Bob and a few other regulars. Although Bob has reminded us time and again that like any skill, meditation is easier with practice, my own attempts have been sporadic at best. However, after finishing my university studies in Birmingham, I was ready for a new challenge.

Even with my own infrequent practice of meditation, I had noticed a real shift in my own approach to the world, and that day to day I was more able to let stuff go. When I floated the idea of an online retreat to Bob, he was keen, but ultimately I was the only participant in the weekend retreat. I was slightly worried this would mean that the experience wasn’t an authentic retreat- you know, a wise old guru guiding me to enlightenment- but in my case I was the only one doing the meditation, the lone monk!

The first day began with me waking up at 8am, starting with a simple breathing meditation for 40 minutes. You perform this practice by focusing on the inhalation and exhalation of air through your nostrils. Most of my previous meditation experience has been with just sitting meditation, or zazen, so this was a challenge. Surprisingly, focusing on the sensation of the breath felt like I was learning to meditate all over again! And in a way I was I suppose, by packing so much meditation into one weekend.

After the breathing meditation I had breakfast, and then did forty minutes of just sitting meditation. This was a continuation of my regular practice, but I hadn’t meditated for 40 minutes in one go before. This, and the 4:30am roll call I was facing on the second day were two of the biggest obstacles I saw before the retreat. Surprisingly, the 40 minutes wasn’t too bad at all. I did notice around the 20 minute mark, that the boredom set in, but this soon gave way a lot of other emotions I hadn’t encountered meditating before, including joy. Of course, I didn’t fixate on these feelings and let them go, including the positive ones. Nevertheless, it was interesting to note that the deeper I went into my own meditation practice, the wider the spectrum of thoughts and feelings I felt myself experiencing.

Getting into the swing of things, I then read a selection of writings from Sextus Empiricus the Pyrrhonist philosopher who suspended judgement over having opinions about the world. Admittedly I was a little sceptical before I began the retreat about the philosophy reading and subsequent meditation on it, but in hindsight the weekend’s programme wouldn’t have been the same without it. I have found it to be useful not for the being in the present like meditation, but for challenging my own belief systems.

Aside from empirically verifiable things such as gravity, or the price of a bacon sarnie or the colour of a car, what can be believed? Even then those things are subject to debate. Suspending judgment of my own opinions and beliefs allowed me to move past limiting beliefs such as that I couldn’t do the meditation retreat.

Obviously I physically could, but the mental belief I had that I couldn’t wasn’t helping me. Having gone in super confident would also be a mistake by Pyrrho’s reckoning, so the middle way so to speak was to suspend judgement, and see what would happen during the retreat. I believe Bob is running a ‘Pyrrho Protocol’ seminar later this month, going more in depth into this topic.

After my encounter with Pyrrhonism, next up was walking meditation. Like the breathing meditation, trying a different form of practice made me feel like a beginner again, and not in a bad way! Focusing on a different action aside from sitting helped keep the blood in my legs flowing, and gave me another tool to overcome distractions from the present. I still haven’t cracked this walking meditation, and I’ll save any further thoughts on this particular method for another post .

After a spot of lunch, I came to the ‘work period’ found on typical meditation retreats. I did some weeding garden for my parents, and as you can imagine it wasn’t the most thrilling of experiences. Still, I knew that if I could literally stare at a wall for forty minutes doing nothing else, I could do any task no matter how seemingly boring (although I would suspend judgement as to whether it would be boring or not).

Lone monk Tom McLoughlin with a halo around his head
Tom McLoughlin discusses his experiences with the online meditation group

In the evening of both days of my retreat, I had a quick chat with Bob. This was an alternative to the discussions retreat participants might have with the retreat leader, and I particularly appreciated it as I was doing the rest of the retreat solo. Chatting with Bob was helpful as he gave me a few koans to use. Koans are phrases or saying you contemplate while you meditate, and I found that they were useful ways to help me focus on my practice. The koans I sat with were “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” and “what did your face look like before you were born?” If they sound like they don’t mean anything, then you’re on the right track.

Not that there are different grades or martial art style belts in meditation, but having done the retreat I feel like I have moved from a Level One to a Level Two Meditator.

In the next Tuesday meditation session I attended after the retreat, the attendees asked me a few questions about my experience. Going back to meditating for just (hah!) 20 minutes at a time felt much less of a burden after having about 15 hours or so over the course of a weekend. One person in the Tuesday session asked me how long I felt this impact would last, and how often I would need to have a ‘top up’ to maintain peace of mind. For me, this top up has been meditating everyday, forty minutes being a “good session”. But even then, all meditation is useful, and a quick five minutes here and there does bring me out of a slump. Staying in the present is staying in the present no matter whether its for four seconds or four hours.

At the end of the day, I would encourage anyone interested in meditation to do a retreat. Furthermore, I would encourage them to do it sooner rather than later! I wish I had done this retreat after 6 weeks as opposed to 6 months. You can begin to meditate and be more in the present at any time, so why not start today?

As a final note, here’s a copy of the timetable Bob laid out for me:

DAY ONE OF RETREAT

0800        Wake up….Breathing Meditation

0840        Breakfast

0900        Meditation Just Sitting

0940        Reading … Sextus Empiricus

1100        Meditation on Sextus

1200        Lunch

1300        Pick a belief system…Suspend Judgement!

1400        Walking Meditation

1420        Just Sitting

1500        Working Period

1700        Just Sitting

1740        Dinner

1830        Breathing Meditation

1930        Break

2100        Just Sitting

2130        Bedtime

DAY TWO OF RETREAT

0430        Wake Up ….

0450        Just Sitting

0515        Walking Meditation

0530        Just Sitting

0600        Breakfast…Shower etc

0700        Reading Sextus….

0845        Meditation on Sextus

0945        Walking Meditation

1000        Tea Break…seriously!

1030        Just Sitting

1045        Walking Meditation

1100        Relaxation Break

1130        Breathing Meditation

1230        Lunch

1330        Walking Meditation

1345        Suspending Beliefs

1445        Work Period

1600        Just Sitting

1700        Walking Meditation

1715        Reflection on Sextus Maxims

1830        Suspending Judgement

1930        Interview with Bob

How The Philosophy Of Pyrrho Will Make You Happier

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Philosophical meme of man saying I don't always cling to a belief system, but when I do, I don't take myself so seriously

It seems that everyone is into Stoicism at the moment. Greek Philosophy seems to be the order of the day everywhere you look online and in the bookshops.

And yet there is one figure in the world of Greek philosophy that seems to be overlooked. We hear of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, The Meditations, and The Stoics, but no one mentions the King of them all. Pyrrho of Elis.

He developed a system of thought we now know as Ancient Skepticism. His ideas and philosophy were at odds with the systems being preached during that period. He put forward the idea that beliefs were the cause of the problem at a time when other philosopher were taking dogmatic positions and were constantly attempting to disprove others dogmas. Pyrrho didn’t concern himself with finding “Truth”.

He was looking to achieve Ataraxia or tranquillity/unperturbedness.

Pyrrho took a fresh approach and posited the thought that maybe we just don’t know what is true and should suspend judgement and take the world for what it is.

What it appears to be.

The world of the Evident.

The world of Appearances.

What is non-evident (such as beliefs) is not that relevant to leading a balanced life.

For example, we know that gravity (or the phenomenon we call Gravity exists) and we can work with that and utilise it. That is evident.

… but how it works… well that’s non evident, and we can have theories and beliefs about how it works but we still don’t really know.

Other beliefs can be more damaging, however. Dogmatists will fight tooth and nail and even kill to support their beliefs. Not a very balanced approach that will lead to tranquillity!

Getting yourself tied in knots trying to justify your beliefs makes for a life out of balance and attaching yourself to a belief is harmful in many other ways too.

If you want to be happy Pyrrho suggests we suspend our judgement and dogma will fall away like a damp heavy coat that you take off when it’s weighing you down. There’s a genuine sense of relief.

Pyrrhonism is a practical philosophy that will make your life less perturbed and more tranquil, and it’s something I have got to grips with recently. It really has made life so much more balanced, despite the craziness that’s going on in the world at the moment.

There are many facets to Pyrrho’s philosophy, so to begin with I will give you a simple technique to help you start to make a shift in the way you perceive the world.

One of his techniques was to use Maxims: little phrases that would remind you that life is not what you think it is.

That life can be more than what you “believe it to be”.

Maxims serve as a reminder to stop for a moment before you suffer the consequences of a typical knee jerk reaction that we sometimes have to a situation. It helps us suspend judgement and thus prevent the formation of new beliefs.

Here’s a few basic Maxims:

“Perhaps” “Possibly” “Maybe”

These are not meant to be a statement of what you might believe. They are not beliefs at all, but expressions of how to think about situations as they happen. It’s all about helping you change your perception of events.

“Perhaps it is the case”

Perhaps it is not the case”

“It is possibly the case”

“Possibly it is not the case”

“Maybe it is”

“Maybe it is not”

So the next time you generalise and convince yourself that you are right and that your beliefs are “True” …

STOP

… then challenge this assumption by reminding yourself that “Maybe it is… Maybe it’s not”

By challenging your belief with a statement like this it prevents you from being swept away by a non evident idea.

You suspend judgement and remain Skeptical!

It’s not possible to do justice to a philosophy like Pyrrhonism and so I have developed a one-day seminar called “The Pyrrho Protocol. A way of creating a life balance.”

I will hold the seminar online on October 25th at 2pm – 5pm and costs a measly £15

Hope to see you there,

Bob

Buddhism & Pyrrhonism – Liberation Through Skepticism

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Greek Philosopher Pyrrho of Elis poses in a 17th century drawing
Greek Skeptic Philosopher Pyrrho

I’ve just been spending the week putting together a meditation seminar for this weekend, and it suddenly struck me how my attitudes to practice have changed since I first picked up a book on Buddhism and practiced meditation in the early 70’s.

My journey on the path started with three distinctly different schools of Buddhism. The Tibetan tradition, the Japanese tradition and the Thai Tradition.

The Tibetans love elaborate rituals, incense, horns, bells and whistles. Tibetan Monks and Lamas were clad in heavy dark red robes with flashes of yellow in places. Some senior Lamas wore heavy brocade and had amazing hats balanced precariously on their shaved heads. Massive rosaries and artifacts of all kinds were sometimes carried around in their hands. The highly decorative shrine rooms amazed me, festooned in candles and images of gurus and bodhisattvas and enormous images of the Buddha in a variety of styles. The deeply intoned chants of their voices made it other worldly. Not to mention the Guru worship that went along with all this. It sort of reminded me of a catholic mass that I had once attended.

So much of Buddhism appeared to be heavily invested in supporting fixed beliefs about Karma and reincarnation. I am surprised I didn’t pick up on it at as being the opposite of what the Buddha had spoken about in his early words written down later in the Pali Canon. I guess, like many followers, I got swept away by how fantastic it all seemed. It was sensory overload! I didn’t have the head space to think!

In fact, when I questioned beliefs about Karma and the after death plane, I was simply told to meditate. There were never any straightforward answers to my questions. No help with the doubts I harboured.

Then, there was the Soto Zen tradition, with its focus primarily on ‘just sitting.’ I would sit for hours on a black zabuton (mattress) and a zafu (cushion) placed on top. Sitting still and upright like a mountain, immovable and steady.

I would sit facing and staring at a blank wall in a sparsely decorated Zendo (meditation hall), with the slightest hint of ritual and no dependence on any belief systems that I can remember. You were there alone with your thoughts and little else.

It was quite liberating and made more sense. It was honestly much tougher because there were no distractions and the teachers attitude towards my questions were more pragmatic and made more sense.

I remember saying to Roshi (Teacher) at the time, that I was coming up for a weekend retreat and she said we don’t call them a retreat. “We are not here to retreat from the world,” she said, “we are here to face things head on!”

I liked the Zen attitude to life and it’s aftershocks have remained with me long after the Tibetan symbolism, dogmas and guru worship had gone. Having said that, I still admire Tibetan art and the symbolism, but it means little to me philosophically as a westerner.

The system that seemed to straddle both traditions was Theravadin Buddhism. This is the school of Buddhism practiced mainly in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand. I spent some time practicing Samatha and Vippasana techniques and found them to be very good. In fact, I still use these methods from time to time.

In Thailand the approach I took was from the Forest Tradition and is similar to what the Buddha probably practiced. The idea that you would go off into the forest alone and practice appealed to me, but it still had chanting, relied on beliefs and had a hierarchy which I wasn’t comfortable with. (By the way I do enjoy listening to the chanting and even learned some of them by rote).

As the years rolled by I found myself being drawn towards what the Buddhist academics were writing about with regard to Buddhism, and realised I was becoming more and more secular in my approach. Following the publication of some of Stephen Batchelors early works and those of Robert M Ellis, I drifted away from the more Traditional Schools of Buddhism and spent time researching the historical background in India around the time of the Buddha.

Doors started opening for me.

I read Trevor Ling’s book on The Buddha and it gave me a historical perspective I had never thought about. He discussed the issues of the time, the development of agriculture and the rise of a new type of political structure. Things I had never considered before. I needed more information! He spoke about the Buddha as a man living in a time of great social and political change and it set me on a path.

I wanted to know more about the Buddha as a man, for that was all he was; and how he had learned to be more awake to the world. Not some god-like figure to be worshiped, but a man with a plan. With ideas and techniques to help people flourish, to create a better society.

I realised I was living out a life based on a variety of belief systems that I felt I had to justify. That I was searching for a TRUTH that couldn’t exist. These beliefs were holding me back and I decided to take stand against them; and you know what? For the first time it seems, I was having personal breakthroughs, both on and off the meditation cushion.

It’s not a new idea and I wasn’t the only one having personal breakthroughs.

The Greek Skeptic Pyrrho posited these ideas around the time when the Greeks were expanding their empire and had invaded North Western India. Some academics theorise that Pyrrho may have picked these ideas up when he was in India with Alexander. There are some Academics who think that he was influenced by the local Sramanas (Ascetics) and Gymnosophists (naked yogis)  and that the ideas he brought back to Greece may provide us with important insights into what was being taught in India at that time. (This is the period shortly after the Buddhas death).

Who Knows?

Whatever the practices Pyrrho was following and one of his students wrote about (Sextus Empiricus: Outlines Of Pyrrhonism) made sense to me, and fitted in with my meditation practice. I started reading about the Greeks and their philosophies. Pyrrho stood head and shoulders above the other Greek philosophers in that he talked about suspending judgement on beliefs about non-evident things.

The evident and the non-evident are something I want to explore in another post. Suffice to say his ideas struck a chord with me and I immediately put them into practice. They were unlike anything I had practiced before, and so different to meditation.

Consequently, whenever I sit now I use a simple principle of picking one of my strongly held beliefs and attempt to suspend judgement about whether it’s right or wrong until I find that there is no argument either way. This puts me in a very different state to that which I experienced previously and creates what the Greeks called aphasia (speechlessness). It is not possible to describe the experience, but many of you will have experienced this at some time in your life when you drop all thoughts of past and future whilst meditating. It is quite liberating. At its best it creates a certain tranquillity so thoughts no longer create a disturbance. This Pyrrho calls Ataraxia. It was a condition actually experienced by Greek soldiers in the midst of battle and can be roughly translated as unperturbedness. It is about being in the present moment, wherein you can have an appropriate response and therefore act effectively in the world.

My search continues…

In the next post I will report back on how things are progressing and talk a little more about the techniques I am using in more detail.

In the meantime…

Keep sitting and drop off those ideas!

Buddhism, Pyrrhonism & The Search For Enlightenment

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Photo of seated Gandhara_Buddha sculpture from the Berlin Museum

17th-Century illustration of Greek philosopher PyrrhoMy journey on the path started a long time ago; initially started by an old secondary school teacher who pointed out the differences between the various religions that existed in the modern world. She called it Religious Education and I have a feeling she was just supposed to stick to Christian Dogma.

Over several weeks we explored world religions, and it should come as no surprise that I was attracted to Buddhism. The religion that depended on no external agency to prop you up. I was always fiercely independent, and I guess it just made sense to me.

Since that time I have immersed myself in the various schools of Buddhist thought, but lurking like a shadow behind me was a fascination for the Hellenistic traditions. Greek philosophy had always interested me, but I was unlikely to study the Greek Classics in a secondary modern school in the North East of England.

I first noticed these traditions when I took up a study of astronomy at the age of 11.

I loved looking at the sky at night, and I remember my first book on astronomy vividly. In fact, I still have it. It was the ‘Observers Book of Astronomy’. A small slim volume that was filled with images of constellations and pictures of nebulae, clusters, spiral galaxies and the planets.

I remember learning the Greek alphabet from that book.

“Learning the Greek alphabet?” I hear you ask…

Let me explain.

Stars are of varying brightness and in order to catalogue them, astronomers of ages past used the Greek alphabet as a prefix for the star’s name.

So the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog from Greek mythology) is made up of stars of varying brightness. The brightest star in that constellation Sirius is called Alpha Canis Major.

Alpha being the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Beta is the second and so on.

My point is is that I had a fascination for all things Greek but didn’t pursue it as a philosophical subject. I was heavily invested in Buddhism and wouldn’t allow myself to be distracted by all this ‘Western Philosophy’.

As my interest in Buddhism developed and my thinking matured, I took an interest in the historical aspects of Buddhism, but information back then was scarce and there were lots of gaps in my knowledge. Gaps that were being gradually filled by the work of Trevor Ling in his book ‘The Buddha’.

At last someone was putting Buddhism into context, using hard data and evidence rather than repeating hearsay.

None of my Buddhist teachers could answer the questions I threw at them, and they kept the party line, parroting what their teachers had taught them with little recourse for independent thinking.

A very dogmatic approach to Buddhism.

I was shocked they hadn’t looked at what the academics were doing, and I was simply admonished and told to concentrate on practicing Buddhism.

Whatever that meant!

No one for example challenged the ideas of karma and rebirth. Concepts that seemed to contradict many of the ideas that early Buddhism talked about.

But even the so-called primary sources (The Pali Canon) were full of contradictions, and I needed more. I was hungry for information that would help me come to terms with the human condition. I was having an existential crisis!

I read as much as I could on what we knew of early Buddhism and reconciled myself to the fact that I needed to follow my own path (as the Buddha always recommended), when I came across a kindred spirit in the form of Stephen Batchelor. He had the same doubts as me, and I guess many others, and was writing about the subject using Pali texts and referenced Western philosophers too.

I noticed he often referred to the Greek philosopher Pyrrho, and this intrigued me. I had heard of Pyrrho the Skeptic and had not been lucky enough to read the ‘Works of Sextus Empiricus’. I just didn’t see it being relevant at that time.

It was, it turns out, the missing link.

The piece of the puzzle and the key to a new door.

It was just what I needed.

Before I turned into a dogmatist!

I instantly began to study the Greek philosophers, and I soaked up their ideas like a sponge. Just when I thought I was getting my head around Skepticism along came Adrian Kuzminski and Christopher Beckwith.

They suggested that the Indians had influenced The Greeks (although some academics say it may have been the other way round) and cited specifically Pyrrho and his ideas.

I was onto something.

Suddenly everything became clear. Many of the problems I had been having with traditional Buddhist thought started to evolve and to change. I meditated on these ideas and the old accretions of Buddhism I had been clinging onto dropped away. Even Zen started making sense and I was able to reread Nagarjuna and make sense of it for the first time.

So where does that leave me?

I am constantly going on about maps and how we can expand our maps. Before these events happened, I thought my map was pretty good. It turns out I only had the one!

Now I have an atlas!

One of the maps in my new atlas concerns meditation.

This has always been an important chapter for me and has guided me through many hard times.

I thought I knew all about it but then…

I also learned that the Greeks never had a tradition of practicing meditation in the sense that the Indian traditions followed.

Although Pyrrho evidently spent 5 years with Alexander the Great on his campaigns in India, where he met Sramanas (Holy Men) and gymnosophists who undoubtedly practiced yogas of some kind, he never brought back to Greece the idea that meditation was a useful tool.

It didn’t seem to be important to ones journey to achieve tranquility.

The Buddhists call this Nirvana, and Pyrrho called it Ataraxia.

When I read this, it reminded me of some early discourses of the Buddha, when it was said that people became “awakened” just by hearing the Buddha talk.

This idea that you needed to meditate for years to achieve tranquility was therefore probably not necessary. My teachers had taught me that meditation was a prerequisite to enlightenment.

That enlightenment (whatever that means) could only be achieved by certain people, and that it was revelatory and almost otherworldly. It was inevitably linked to other ‘truths’ such as karma and rebirth!

Dogmatic nonsense…

In fact, it was said that many people understood his teachings just by listening. I’m also sure that the Buddha just didn’t sit in meditation (which is the usual image associated with the Buddha) but that he entered into discourse and argument with many other learned teachers of his time. Just as Pyrrho and other philosophers had done in Ancient Greece.

So why am I going on about this then?

Because it has changed the way I meditate and it may help you if you have reached a sticking point.

Sometimes I do just sit and at other times I think of a belief I have and pull it apart. I dissect it and put counter arguments together until the belief itself has no meaning and I ‘suspend judgement’ and it has been revelatory.

I will explore this method in much more detail in my next post and this will be the subject of my forthcoming book:

Beyond Beliefs