More "Intrinsic"

If I look deeply into what is the source of experience, can I even find it in the work in which I am absorbed? Is being absorbed in what I like so important as knowing that it too will pass? This awareness that things pass seems to integral to the process of learning itself. Yet is it taught?

I am thinking about the experience as a whole. In life, there are things we enjoy doing, and those things are often held up as objects of learning: sciences, arts, endeavors. But then there are the things that are considered ‘non-interests’: the interruptions, the stops, the uncertain meetings between people, and those indefinable, confused moments. What I thought was, so much of the research on intrinsic motivation paradoxically treats learning as a kind of smooth, flowing product, working toward  a single given end. The more challenging parts of intrinsic being get cast off into the sidelines. What I am talking about in particular are the moments when we disconnect, when we zone out, lose a train of thought, or just feel confused about the direction. I think that one can view those disconnects in different ways. From the perspective of those who champion motivation, these disconnects are somehow frowned upon. It is thought that confusion or doubt might be a failure to connect, rather than a necessary stage in the encounter I have with something. I am also thinking of those times when I simply could not be with the things to which I most want to connect. Are those experiences not also experiences of mind? Can we also not learn to navigate those experiences, rather than rejecting them? Yet, so much of education stresses the necessity of focusing only on one object. It doesn’t offer up the possibility that focus can be a whole awareness, not restricted to one object.

In the Surangama Sutra (Part V, Chapter 2), there is a chapter where the Buddha is describing to Ananda how the mind becomes confused. It all starts out where we are able to see things as they are: light and dark, sound and silence, space and obstruction. Here, the mind follows function to see these states as they are coming and going. I imagine that this means that the mind isn’t attaching to this or that form, or labelling this or that quality. Rather, the view is so whole that there is no differentiating between these states of being. Later, the mind starts to make out specific separate forms or visual objects. And later, the senses start to ‘chase’ these objects. It is as though, once objects are created, a course kind of perception starts to set in, and that perception starts an endless pursuit of external objects.  As I read this passage, it reminded me a bit of how human pursuits get narrowed into categories. Sometimes, I will even embark on a project with a specific idea of what the outcome will be. It is as though I take a trip somewhere without even having to leave my chair. The ‘answers’ are already preformed, and I only need go to those faraway places to ‘confirm’ or repeat the answers already in mind. The confusion is that I cling to what I think should be there, rather than seeing the journey as unfolding and as complex. I wonder if anyone has ever thought: a journey requires thousands of hands. There are many people who allow the plane to take off, and many more whom one runs into along the way. Are these beings part of the journey, just accessories to the journey, or are they constituting the whole journey itself? When I reflect on this chapter of the Surangama Sutra, I think that the object is just a creation of the mind. And what is really happening all around it is also mind. So why exclude these elements from the journey itself? Yet, the champions of motivation are always trying to get people to focus on one thing, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, rather than observing the whole experience as a real mystery. Where is it all coming from? To behold that question is to see the whole unfolding experience without narrowing to a single purpose.

The Surangama Sutra: With Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hssuan Hua. A New Translation (2009) Buddhist Text Translation Society.