Philosophical Fantasies

      When I was a teenager, I came across a book by Clark Ashton Smith called Out of Space and Time Volume 1. It was a used book which was among a pile of others in a comic book store (of all places), even though it was all prose writing with very few graphics. The other 'volumes' of this series seem to have escaped me, but I certainly remember the garish cover: an animate skeleton with a green background and a kind of supine figure floating in the foreground. The book was an anthology of short stories in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, much of which had fascinated me at that time. I seem to have recalled one particular story in Smith's collection: a first person narrative about the experience of being buried alive, and the kinds of feelings that accompany it. Although it was a gruesome story, I afterward reflected: life itself sometimes 'buries' us when we are still alive. Has anyone ever not experienced the emotion of being trapped or engulfed in the everyday? I also started to wonder: when a person is overwhelmed, what do they have that keeps them intact? What prevents them from disappearing altogether in the avalanche of experiences?
    Now that I am much older, I probably don't relate to science fiction with the same fascination that I did as a teenager. For instance, I am not one to imagine other worlds or fantastic beings the way I used to at one time. But when I had the opportunity to re-read Smith's short stories in his collection Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, I have other views about Smith. In one of the stories, "The Last Incantation", Smith writes about a jaded sorcerer of dark magic who is simply bored with his powers and nearing the end of his life. He is such an adept magician that he has subdued most spirits and has power over a great many things, but his heart is dissatisfied. Reflecting on his past, he recalls a girl he had fallen in love with when he was younger, Nylissa. Smith's prose is quite magical here:
  
Then Malygris groped backward to the years of his youth, to the misty, remote, incredible year, where, like an alien star, one memory still burned with unfailing luster---the memory of the girl Nylissa whom he had loved in days ere the lust of unpermitted knowledge and necromantic dominion had ever entered his soul. (p.17)


Nylissa dies of illness at a young age, and Malygris decides to devise a spell that would revive her spirit. With the help of a talking viper, Malygris manages to conjure a spirit who resembles Nylissa in every respect, yet he seems to doubt that it is the 'real' Nylissa:


...somehow, as he gazed and listened, there grew a tiny doubt--a doubt no less absurd than intolerable, but nevertheless insistent: was this altogether the same Nylissa he had known? Was there not some elusive change, too subtle to be named or defined, had time and the grave not taken something away---an innominable something that his magic had not wholly restored?(p.20)


Concluding that the spirit in front of him couldn't possibly be the real Nylissa, Malygris orders this spirit to leave. It is later that the viper reveals to Malygris that the girl was the real Nylissa, and it is Malygris' own youth that has eluded him after all: "no necromantic spell could recall for you your own lost youth or the fervent and guileless hear that loved Nylissa, or the ardent eyes that beheld her then." (p.20) The one thing that Malygris has no power to restore is his own emotions, as well as the newness of the experience he had as a youth.


      Some might think that this story is a kind of romance, but I think the story speaks of the effort to try to make something in the past into something new. What is the source of Malygris suffering after all? To me, the story is about impermanence. There is just no way to recover a thought that has already passed, and conditions are constantly changing. Malygris longs for something that symbolizes an eternal youth, when in fact every waking moment is eternal. Why does he get stuck in the past?
      Another interpretation of the story is that it is a meditation on the nature of power. Even when a person has achieved power over the natural world and even over themselves, this power somehow corrupts experience. The more powerful I feel I am, the more I think I can create my own happiness, or control how I feel just by manipulating the conditions around me. But as the story suggests, Malygris has no power over himself at all: even when he can restore the dead, he still cannot feel the same way that he did when he was younger. It seems that the sense of power leads to more discontentment.
     On a deeper level, the things that people think they have power over are actually already passed. Take a scientific discovery as an example. I might think I have mastered a result by setting up the right conditions, but this mastery is a kind of generalization which ignores the complexity of the present moment. Think of technological discoveries as an example. On the short term, technology offers a solution, but in the end, it creates new problems and challenges that were not foreseen in the past. I might think that I have more power, but this power is always about things that have passed, and they don't relate to the present conditions. Technology is only a temporary fix for a set of conditions we might already be familiar with, but it doesn't consider consequences or repercussions that are bound to arise. Much of the climate problems we now experience are the result of recent technologies.
    I wonder, then, does Clark's story suggest that people need to get rid of the past to see things with new eyes of wonder? Or does it mean the opposite--that there is simply no way to recover the sense of wonder once it has passed? I think that both possibilities are there. On the one hand, trying to chase after a memory is futile, because it's an attachment to something that is already gone, and was never permanent to begin with. Most 'phantoms' are just memories of things that weren't meant to be forever. On the other hand, if Malygris had let go of the past and wanting to control himself to be happier, who knows--he might have realized that the sense of wonder is in every moment. There is no simple answer, but Smith's story raises interesting meditations about the nature of memory and how people's sense of being changes over time.


Smith, Clark Ashton (2014), The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies. New York: Penguin Books
    

one step at a time

When I walked into my apartment tonight, the first thing I thought was: there is so much to clean, and it's been a while since I have been home to attend to it.And it seems like a while since I had tidied things, so it started to look dismal. I decided to break things down into distinct steps: make the bed first (perhaps the hardest task), followed by the various books scattered here and there on the floor and desk; finally, organizing clothes for cleaning. At first, I felt somewhat heavy, thinking how long it would take to get it done. But over time, I chanted and it settled my mind a bit. And I noticed that when I stopped wanting the time to go by, things did get to be quite a bit easier.
    I begin to feel that the root of feeling overwhelmed is not about having time vs. not having enough time, or being busy vs. not being busy. I have come to feel that even when there is much to do, the mental attitude can be something like "one thing at a time." There is only one thing I need to pick up and put away in this moment, so it doesn't benefit me to contemplate each and every future moment. To do so is bound to make anyone feel overwhelmed or stressed. It's almost like imagining how much food I am going to eat over the next week or so, and losing my appetite just trying to contemplate all the quantities of food. Is there any sense in contemplating things in this way? Not really, unless I want to be turned off food or any activity altogether.
    The same thing can apply to reading. It has often been my habit as a student to have several books  being read in parallel, and I would pick and choose my reading based on necessity or perhaps general mood. But if I were to contemplate how many books I need to finish in a certain stretch of time, I completely lose my enjoyment of the books. Not only do I stop enjoying the books, but I also lose the sense of meaning from these books. It reminds me of how, when I was in elementary school, the librarian would try to motivate students to read by having them write down all the books they have read in a month. After a certain number, students get special prizes--a trip to Acapulco, or something like that. The librarian was smart in the sense that she was tapping into students' love of extrinsic rewards. But in another sense, trying to read for quantity rather than meaning is the fastest way to turn people off reading altogether! It becomes a chore of sorts, or even a contest, where we compete even with ourselves to see how many 'things' we can finish in a stretch of time. The problem here is that we lose the ability to simply be with anything, because we are biting off way more than we can chew.
    Of course, I don't think this is a simple solution that works in all cases. I just read something the other day that hit home to me: if we want to reduce how much we clean, we might want to reduce how much we buy in the first place. I found in my own experience that the fewer things I own, the easier it is to maintain my lifestyle and life in general. The same kind of thing applies to the mind..  If my mind is loaded with concepts, theories, philosophies and so on, it can get cluttered very quickly. And if I do a quick check of what I am thinking, I will find that many things are idle curiosities which come and go. They lack solidity, so why should I be entangled in these thoughts and theories?  I am trying to say, less is better, and it's a good reminder for me to try to be simpler in lifestyle when my mental habits become complicated. Quite simply, people need far less than they think they need to be satisfied and to function in the social world. 

Through a Glass Darkly

 This morning while on the bus to work, I was reading a passage from Wen Haiming's fine introduction, Chinese Philosophy, where he was talking about Guo Xiang's discussion on being and non-being (p.81). Guo Xiang notes a delicate balance between the notions of 'being' and 'non-being'. While things and people do have these peculiar characteristics which give them a certain 'isolation' form each other, they also interact in novel ways all the time. Essentially, however, Guo Xiang sees all things as having a certain amount of solitude from each other, and spontaneously arise from their own nature. Hence, Haiming remarks:

Existentially, the beings of living reality are left in seclusion, and people  are forced to confront a transforming world of nothingness. Guo Xiang portrays the myriad things as changing both naturally and independently, but he does not extrapolate in regard to the feeling one would hold toward the world. (p.82)

What does it mean that beings are in relative seclusion? What I think it means is that beings come into this world with destinies that are not immediate or apparent in our surroundings. One particular view in education, for instance, that is popular these days is that children are blank slates who are waiting to be filled with new information. Any simple observation of children would show that they are very different and possess unique talents, characteristics and challenges. This isn't to say that children cannot change or don't change (they do, in fact), but I think GuoXiang's philosophy suggests or hints toward the mysterious process of coming to unfold our true selves. To be 'left in seclusion' is somewhat like saying: each person has this unique destiny that nobody else can fill.
    Guo Xiang''s notion of destiny somewhat falls in line with the Buddhist notion of cause and condition. This notion does not state that sentient beings are bound to one way of being, but, rather, destiny is constantly in a state of flux or change. This is why Guo Xiang characterizes destiny as 'contingent' and subject to constant change through new encounters. In a sense, this also accounts for why he is suggesting that beings develop in 'solitude'. If I am always encountering completely new or unfamiliar situations that are not subject to reasoning or explanation, I am in essence alone to understand the situation. There is never a point in time where I fully understand the true 'reasons' for things, because encounters are contingent (accidental somewhat) and subject to spontaneous and new creation.
        I think this in essence is similar to Buddhist teachings, where we accept the previous conditions but are also capable of seeing that new conditions are continually being created. Buddhists do not need to feel that their karma from the past binds them to being the same way over and over again into the future. Rather, because things are subject to constant interaction and change, there is never a full point of resolution for any being. Guo Xiang's philosophy also reminds me of Sartre, who was also experimenting with the ideas of freedom (spontaneity) and contingency. For both philosophers, the experience of being cannot be reproduced or replicated in any way--hence, its solitude. Even choices cannot be replicated or systematized, since consciousness is always the result of spontaneous encounter that is not hardwired into the brain or genes.

Haiming, Wen, (2010)  Chinese Philosophy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Sense of Priorities

    Are priorities carved in stone? I found that recently, in my work, I am noticing how priorities aren't so easily kept in place. There are times when I have a list of things I need to do, only to later find that many of these priorities shift as a new project comes along, or a new enthusiasm. And I found that it does take some wisdom to know when to keep awareness on a priority and when to accommodate other situations that emerge. Pema Chodron describes, in a similar manner, the attitude one takes toward meditation when she describes the level of attention needed to watch the breath: "it's only twenty-five percent awareness on the out-breath. The other awareness is less specific; it's simply that you are alive in this room with all the different things that are occurring here." (p.21)
     I start to realize that meditation practice is similar to keeping priorities, and vice versa. Priorities are not carved in stone 'musts' but are more like reminders which bring the mind into the present situation. For instance, when I rank the things I need to do at work according to level of urgency, timing, practicality, etc,. this action prompts me to be attentive to what I am doing and to arrange my day. But if I am suddenly pulled away from these priorities to do something else, I needn't feel 'bound' to my priorities  or overly attached to them. After all, priorities are 'maps' and not the territory, and if I am too attached to them, I will end up not learning from new opportunities or experiences.
    I think a similar principle might apply with meditation practice. If I am overly determined to stay with  the method itself and not see the unfolding experience or process as well, I am not aware of what the mind is doing in those in between moments when not engaged in the meditation. It is as though I am only interested in the particular method itself, and I lack a sense of tenderness for my whole being in the process. But the problem here is that I become blind to my whole experiences, whereas the methods of practice are only designed to reveal all these experiences, without discriminating them. So, for instance, if I take the approach that 'only thoughts of the method are acceptable', I am subtly rejecting the true workings of the mind. This too becomes attachment. A middle approach is to see the method as a tool to be present and cultivate equanimity toward all states of mind and body, rather than being fixated on method.
   There are also times when no matter how determined I am in my practice, I am simply unable to stay with the method of practice, most likely due to pain. In those moments, I recommend treating the pain itself as a kind of question...a body question that is similar to the question generated by the mind. By being curious about the question of body pain, I suspend my judgment about it and am able to better tolerate or create spaces for it, rather than trying to avoid it altogether.

Chodron, Pema ( 2010) The Wisdom of No Escape.. Boston: Shambhala

"Being Yourself" in Meditation

      One of my favorite books on meditative practice has to be Pema Chodron's small but very precious book. Wisdom of No Escape. This book is remarkable not only because it explains the techniques of meditation, but also explores the essential attitudes of the practice. Chodron emphasizes how meditation is not designed to make people 'better themselves', but to discover who they are in entirety. Rather than trying to reject the parts of us that we consider as 'neurotic' or 'ego-clinging', Chodron exhorts her audience to stay with watching these tendencies long enough to realize that they too are part  of the true Buddha mind. Using the Buddhist parable of four kinds of horses (p.8), Chodron describes how many meditators want to be the best horse, the kind of horse that moves even without the crack of the whip. But as Chodron later describes, being the 'slowest' or dullest horse has its own unique gift, and can often be a spur to deepen meditative practice itself as well as compassion. Chodron remarks at one point:

We don't have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse. We could be very sympathetic with that and use it as a motivation to keep trying to develop ourselves, to find our own true nature. Not only will we find our own true nature, but we'll learn about other people, because in our heart of hearts almost all of use feel that we are the worst horse. (p.11)

Chodron's argument for learning from our own reactive tendencies is a subtle one, and might (perhaps) easily be misunderstood to mean that we simply identify with our own grasping or clinging tendencies. I think the point of the practice is not to 'celebrate' one's neuroses (or grasping tendencies), but rather to look at them long enough to know that we are not identified with those tendencies. It is a bit like: if I stay with something long enough, I become aware that this 'thing' I am looking at is not an object that is separate from me, but it isn't me either. If it were all 'me', then how could it be possibly observed by me? Most of the time, people will identify with the tendencies by labelling them ("oh, this is who I am") and then not linger on them long enough to see that we are not those tendencies at all! It is as though the mind categorizes before fully experiencing the tendencies as not 'me' or 'the fundamental self'.
   The paradox is not easy to grasp, and I think it requires practice to understand it.  What I have experienced in my own practice are times when I have felt pain around another person. Rather than giving into that pain or concluding that the pain is a reflection of who I am (my inadequacies), I have at times used huatou in the moment to keep questioning the experience: who is having this painful experience, and is the other person a separate individual? As I do this recitation, there is no longer a conceptual framework in which to rest. The pain gradually dissolves or becomes less substantial because I am not adding anything more to it through a train of thought. But I am also acknowledging that there is a painful experience here....I  am not trying to cover up my grasping or rejecting tendencies, but just  quietly observing them with a full acceptance of their reality. Soon however, the pain is seen as impermanent.
    So I think that in meditation, 'being yourself' becomes more and more elusive, to the point where I can't see a model of self being sustainable in practice. What I do see possible is not giving into the judgments we make about our experiences, about self and others. In doing that, I widen my base of experience and am able to see that I don't need to be identified with one tendency exclusively, or another. Mind is much more vast than I had ever imagined.

Chodron, Pema (2010) Wisdom of No Escape.Boston :Shambhala.

The Wandering Life

What is the right balance between over-restraining oneself and allowing oneself to be true to one's nature? I believe that in reading Wen Haiming's book Chinese Philosophy, this is a key theme and issue for many early Chinese philosophers. I am reading about Zhuangzhi who, according to the author, "Zhuangzi employs every resource of rhetoric in his writings and persuades people to free themselves from societal bondage, which is exactly the opposite of Confucian teachings." (p.48) I wondered to myself, does the Chan teaching side closer to restraint or to the 'wandering' suggested by Zhuangzi?
  I think the 'wandering' that Zhuangzi suggests is not the same as having wandering thoughts in meditation practice. For example, in meditation, we don't encourage people to just sit and entertain their thoughts in any direction that it goes, since this would not be that different from an ordinary wandering mind that is never really present. I think it means the opposite: Zhuangzi's philosophy as Haiming describes it as: "The way to wander free and easy is to transform oneself to have no form, and to exist as if there is no self" (p.51). The example brought up in this text is that of the butcher who keeps his knife sharp and brand new because he is able to find a way to cut along the already existing spaces within the meat.  It is as though the knife were so harmonious with the edges of the animals' body that there is no trace of resistance or 'cutting into' something that already has spaciousness.  The way is not to impose a hard and fast rule onto everything, but rather to find a space to work with things' true natures so that people are not interfering with them but are according with them in their real way.
   A similar kind of discussion arises in the Surangama Sutra, in the chapter called "On Making False Claims". This chapter exhorts people not to proclaim that they are bodhisattvas, since the only motivation to do so would be to distinguish oneself for personal gain. The idea is similar to the idea of the butcher: when a knife cuts into meat, it's not by virtue of the knife that a clean cut can be made, but the actual combination of butcher's movements, knife blade and nature of the meat itself : its 'emptiness' or spaciousness. If a material were totally opaque and solid, there would be no way for another substance to permeate or cut through that object.
           Rather than imposing a universal doctrine onto everyone, it is written in the Surangama Sutra that "Bodhisattvas and the Arhats will appear before beings in whatever bodily form may be appropriate for rescuing them from the cycle of death and rebirth."(p.275) I think what the sutra is saying here is that bodhisattvas are not limited to any specific form. If I try to be something in order to be something for everyone, this is not going to go very well for all situations, and it will only end up creating resistance. I found this especially happens in churches where people are sometimes taught to see themselves as "saved" and in a position to try to convert the "unsaved'. In fact, posing myself as 'anything' on 'any given path' seems inherently problematic, because life never quite works that way. Zhuangzi's example of the butcher suggests that a good butcher is a master of empty space, and must therefore empty her or himself at any moment to successfully work with the materials of life.
      I used to think that the wandering life is ideal because people should be continually learning to keep their minds fresh. To stay in one station at all times is to risk stagnation, and there have been times when I have idealized the life of constant change and renewal. These days, however, I feel that there needs to be stability of mind to 'wander well'. If I am not grounded in a sense of community of some kind, it is easy for me to follow any thoughts I please and then believe this is 'following my nature'. But Zhuangzi and Chan teachings are more subtle than that, because they use natural imagery to suggest that we need to work very closely and intimately with forms to be able to understand and experience their emptiness. In this way, we neither attach to forms nor the notion of 'wandering' in emptiness.

Haiming, Wen (2010  ) Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Surangama Sutra: A New Translation. (2009)  Buddhist Text Translation Society

Being Unassuming

After the group meditation today, I thought about the practice of being unassuming:  not pretending to be something that I am not. In the chapter in Surangama Sutra called "On Making False Claims", Buddha warns people not to communicate to others their attainments, since there is already a kind of presumption there that one has attained something over others. But I think that assumptions often remain hidden even from awareness. We may assume certain privileges and entitlements that are simply not ours, by virtue of habit or a sense of things being unchallenged for a long time.
    Meditation practice can cut through a lot of this, because it does not add a second thought to a first thought. Rather than jumping towards conclusions, meditative practice leaves thoughts as they are and allows mind to see them as a little bit like bubbles. It's a little  bit like how, when I stir a pot, I ensure that nothing sticks to the pot. I have used this analogy in my personal life to characterize meditation not as a passive  practice but as something that is always real, always aware. I cannot think meditation is just an activity I do for an hour or two, after which I get up and go back to my old habits. This is helpful to contemplate, because whenever I am faced with a challenge, I often presume a self. I go into a mode of "I should not feel challenged" or "this is too difficult for me", not realizing that there is a presumption of a permanent self here. If I don't see there is a permanent self, can I presume to be offended  or hurt by someone else? In fact, the more I see that thoughts are impermanent, the more confident I can feel that there isn't a permanent self at all from which to take a firm stand or position. But part of the practice is to let go of the anxiety associated with the  self.
   The same is true with desires. All desires assume a subject that desires and a usually unattainable object. But at the moment I see an object, is that object separate from mind? It is in a sense simultaneous with seeing, and inseparable from awareness. So why do I have a desire? It's like trying to hold onto the previous thought when it has already passed. Even the belief "I desire" is a thought which has already passed. If I think this way, there is no anxiety to try to let go of a self that wasn't substantial to begin with.
    Desires are sometimes distillations of all that we long for in terms of having a permanent self. But if there is not such a strong feeling of a permanent self, it seems senseless to try to cling to objects as though they were enduring. But if I build the habit of seeing the self as solid and substantial ("I see, I want"), what follows is the entire world, much of which is assumed to be stable and static. The idea that the sun rises everyday, I always have a job to go to, and I always have the same friends forever are examples of assumptions that cannot be confirmed  or proven. Yet, through habit, we make these things appear to be true forever and for always, even making them seem like logical conclusions. As the philosopher David Hume suggests, these ideas are not based on unchanging laws of cause and effect or necessity, but are just habitual ways of seeing that come from past experience. In no way does it mean that these experiences will be the same forever.
    When I stop assuming, my mind can be like a child, just discovering the world for the first time at every moment. This can make me more open to a life  of gratitude for what I have, rather than calculating and assuming that things will always be the same all the time.

Getting Lost

  The walk down Eglinton Avenue winds into a neighbourhood called "Leaside", and it feels like a completely different world. Where there was traffic, now there are just a lot of trees and residential areas. The roads curve gently, leading from an industrial area on Laird Road to a much more luxurious area, complete with newly renovated and very big, expensive-looking houses. I can't tell whether this place is quiet and gorgeous, or lonely and isolating. Perhaps it's a combination of both. In heaven, nothing bad happens, but then again, one could say nothing really happens period. All I know is that there are few people interacting, few cars travelling, and only a stray and very friendly young female cat sauntering around to welcome strangers.
     The feeling I got while walking that long road was: when will I find something familiar, as well as the other contradictory feeling of "hope to continue to explore the unfamiliar". And I noticed that when I was ready to eat, I longed for the familiar intersection where I could find food. But otherwise, I relish the experience of the unknown. And I wondered whether it is perhaps sometimes beneficial to get lost for the sake of getting lost, rather than always feeling I have to know where I am at all times.
   It's interesting how not having a reference point can be so frightening. But what I observe in myself is that one needs space to allow an unknown element to emerge, since who we think we  are is only a fraction of possibilities. It is especially frightening to try to bear all one is without trying to change it into something else. In Wisdom of No Escape, Pema Chodron remarks about meditation:

The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether has to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness. The ground is ourselves, we're here to study ourselves and to get to know ourselves now, not later...So come as you are. The magic is being willing to open to that, being wtilling to be fully awake to that. (p.3)

Chodron likens meditation and loving kindness practices to a process of willful discovery, being awake to who one really is. I find this practice can be interesting and confusing at the same time. It's interesting in that meditation pushes a person to just be present with the material of the mind, without trying to embellish upon it or make it into something else. When I am able to do this, I let go of trying to make the situation different from how it is, and I can befriend all the conditions inside and around me. But what is needed is a kind of renunciation of reference points, and that is easier said than done. The reference points I am talking about are like the compass points on a map: the sense of who we 'think' we are, the feeling of where we want to go, our sense of inner wants, our preferences, presumptions, as well as the unconscious standards that shape a person. Without this gradual letting go, the process of being lost becomes daunting. I tend to think that meditation itself is the anchor point to let us know that no matter how lost we feel we are never actually lost: we have our method, our practice and our minds.

Chodron, Pema (1991), Wisdom of No Escape. Boston: Shambhala.
   
    

No Shortcuts

  Reading the chapter in Surangama Sutra called "On Stealing", I begin to ponder on the true meaning of theft. I have always tended to associate stealing with taking physical property, as when we hear cases of 'breaking and entering' in the news. But in the Sutra, Buddha was addressing monks and others who are wandering mendicants, and would not normally have property to their names. But the Buddha somehow connects stealing with "the stress of experiencing perceived objects", and shows how refraining from stealing is a basic prerequisite in how people can relate to material things in a wholesome way. It is interesting that, rather than expounding on the causes of stealing, the Buddha addresses more the effects or the specific retribution that goes with stealing:

"The best among them [who steal] will become energy-devouring nature-spirits; those at intermediate levels will be succubae or incubi; and those a the lowest levels will be unwholesome people possessed by such spirits. These unwholesome beings will attract groups of disciples and will tell them that they have realized the supreme enlightenment....Their boasting will delude the ignorant and will instill fear that will rob people of their good judgment." (p.270)

In none of these passages do I get a real sense or emphasis on physical stealing. Rather, I get a strong impression that there is a spiritual aspect of stealing, as when a person abuses power or privilege to mislead other beings. Of particular concern with Buddha is those reborn as 'spirit possessed' people who attract disciples with false claims of enlightenment. Throughout this passage, the Buddha uses the metaphor of theft to describe taking energy that is not one's own and 'robbing' others of their judgment. It's not property theft that is of utmost concern but rather, stealing the time and energy that could be used to cultivate genuine spiritual practice and attitudes.

What characterizes stealing and its retribution, it seems, is the tendency to short-cut the difficulties  of honest self-reflection and try to seize opportunities to influence other people. In a sense, I believe that this is similar to the concept of amour de soi and amour propre that philosopher Rousseau was describing. For Rousseau, only amour de soi is true love, because it is the love that comes from one's authentic feeling, and isn't based on social approval or the need to belong. On the other hand, Rousseau maintains that amour propre is the sense of a more socialized love which is often based on comparing oneself to others. Rousseau claims that this latter kind of love leads to all kinds of competitive tendencies. It can also lead to wanting to do less to gain more, as when people might try to cut corners at work to achieve bigger quantities of output.

It's interesting that the Buddha cautions a life of humility and material dependence, in order to teach monks to let go of their cravings for material things. Hence, it is written in the sutra:

I teach the monks to make their almsrounds in whatever place they find themselves so that they my let go of craving and become enlightened. The monks do not cook for themselves; and leading the rest of their lives this way, they wander from place to place in the three realms so that, at the end of their lives, they will not have to return (p.271)

I think that the Buddha is suggesting that this lifestyle can help monastics not secure so much power for themselves or crave that power. And it's also interesting that after this passage, the Buddha cautions against "thieves who wear a monk's rob for the sake of persona gain" (p.271) The Buddha links the desire for power and personal gain with the tendency to mislead others with false teachings, which then confuses others and leads them astray. I like the way this chapter interweaves the themes of taking for personal gain what is not one's own with deceiving others. To me, this is the much greater harm that comes from desire for personal prestige. It's not so much that a person is taking away power that could be bestowed on qualified people, but more that power in the wrong hands can mislead others, which creates bad karma for both parties. This is why the almsround seemed to be such a powerful practice in Buddha's time to release monks from the desire for independent wealth, as well as teach them the value of accepting gifts with equanimity.

More importantly, the emphasis of this chapter is around using phenomena to go beyond craving. In this way, I am not bound to karmic debts from the past and nor will I create new ones in the future. The Buddha describes some examples of practices that go beyond craving, such as giving to the hungry what is not needed, owning a simple wardrobe, and taking scolding as praise. The true meaning of refraining from stealing is to train oneself not to be addicted to anything to the point where it becomes an impediment to spiritual practice. It's not, as some modern political thinkers might suggest, only to guard private property against intruders! Rather, this warning against stealing ties more into the way people use material goods and spiritual teachings in spiritual ways, rather than as means to personal power and enjoyment.

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

Redisovering the Ordinary

   During our group meditation tonight, one of the participants had remarked that he felt the meditation to be somewhat antithetical to daily practice, which often emphasizes "impressing others and making money". I was thinking about this idea, because I believe it can go in different ways. On the one hand, I have known people to say that they use meditative practice to make more money, in the sense that the practice tends to calm their minds and allow them to be more efficient and make better decisions. On the other hand, there are those who are determined to use meditation to 'escape' or transcend the world of money and riches. These people might even develop an aversion toward the materialist views of success. I wonder, is there a middle ground between using meditation as an instrument for worldly values, and using meditation to transcend values.
     I often think that meditation does not offer anything more or less than what a person has or is. But the key is to know what a person has or is. If I ascribe only to the view that I am limited by my wealth or body health, then I limit the meaning of who I can be. It's similar to people who get caught up in particular mood states. Because the mood feels so powerful, a person will then conclude that they must be this kind of mood, or even genetically predisposed to it. When I don't take the thoughts so personally as myself, the 'ordinary', unpretentious me becomes 'extraordinary'. This is because there is no longer any ideal or conceptual self to compare my states of being to. In that state of mind, it's like having questions on a test where the options are 'all the above' or 'none of the above' and both happen to be correct. The reason they are correct is that for everyday mind, everything is possible but nothing is absolutely necessary. I can use rules to get through social rituals and meet the requirements for a social life, but I am not chained to those rules or identify them with a self.
    In this way, I don't think that a person necessarily need to strive to transcend the world via meditation or, conversely, try to prove the value of meditation through worldly practices. It is letting go of the need to prove oneself period, by dissolving the necessity of the ego. Even when ego is trying to meet its self-image, it is always doing so tyrannically, with hidden shoulds or musts. For instance, if I think that the only acceptable way to be is according to an image of myself as 'intellectual', I will insist to myself that everything I do or say conform to that image. And the same goes with any image one holds up to oneself. Though we start out using those images to feel confident and secure, sooner or later they become imprisoning, because they dictate what makes a person 'okay' to the society. It's best to learn not to operate with too much image operating in the background.

Totally Accepting

  During the meditation sitting tonight, I was using Chang Zhai Fashi's suggested method of directly contemplating painful sensations, particularly in my spine. And I found two things: the first is that when I embrace and even love the pain, this seems to be the most direct approach to accepting the pain. The second is that, I have to let go of all intellectual diversions to really enjoy it for what it is. The labelling of pain is what briefly distances me from its experience, and this in turn ends up bringing in more scattered thoughts. The analogy is something like: the more I can talk "about" lifting a heavy weight, the less inclined I will be to lift that weight. It's because the process of walking around something through labels ends up scattering energy that could be used to directly experience something with all awareness. But when I have divested myself of all labels, what I find is that the pain can be enjoyed, in the same way that a book can be read. There is a sense that I am no longer afraid of this experience, and thus it turns into a place of discovery for me.
   It makes me wonder, when does 'acceptance' fail? I think it fails when a person uses a concept to accept rather than directly immersing oneself in the whole  experience. I 'accept' or 'tolerate' can easily become a label in itself for something a person truly doesn't want to face. At the same time,  there is a hidden desire that comes from the idea of acceptance. I make a bargain with myself that if I accept this one thing, this will eventually lead me to enjoy life or even remove the obstacle. The problem with this ''acceptance' is that it really is a mask for non-acceptance, since I busy myself  trying to remove what feels difficult in order to reach a certain state of mind. A better understanding of acceptance might involve seeing that there is nothing that is an obstacle at all: taking the experience entirely as it is, which takes me beyond labelling altogether.
     Acceptance also fails when a person assumes it is emotionless. I sometimes think acceptance is a kind of neutral stance, as when we refer to a work as 'acceptable' (neither terribly good nor terribly bad). Yet, as my own experience in meditation suggests, acceptance requires a kind of heart which is determined to accept. This is because what  is sometimes considered a ''neutral state' of mind is actually often a screen to prevent painful situations from being faced. In order to overcome that screen, a person sometimes needs to do the opposite to what they are inclined, by assuming the position of enjoying discomfort. It is not difficult to do this, as long as one sees that all phenomena are of the same mind, and pain awakens people to their true mind. If everything were completely comfortable, there would be not that much motivation to practice or to go beyond a comfortable identity in daily life. For this reason, acceptance often requires a kind of desire to accept whatever situation arises, almost like an aspiration to accept.

Channeling Into Good Work

     I believe that it's possible to take any energy and channel it into what you are presently doing. How is it possible, though? It seems that even in the most tranquil work environments, there is the push and pull of desires: wanting things to be accomplished in a certain fixed period of time, wanting to complete a project so that I can move onto another one, wanting to go into a pleasant thought, etc. So what is the trick to being present with everything one is doing?
    If I reflect on how my mind works even in the context of this writing, I realize that it starts by knowing every action is part of the true mind. If it is true that everything is true mind, there is no point in jumping over to do something more desirable. I think the first insight is to realize that no matter what I write, it comes from the true mind, which already has everything, and is everything. Of course, in daily life, one still needs to converse and narrow focus to specific things, to accomplish certain goals. However, the point is to see that the goal is already contained in the doing, and therefore to rest the mind and heart in the doing itself. This is quite different from the attitude of having a certain goal in mind and then moving toward that goal. In the latter case the motivation is to actually finish or end a process as quickly as possible. It's no wonder that people find certain kinds of work intolerable, because they are always working to 'end' work. It's as though the real value of work is that one does not ever have to see the work again after it's 'done'. I recall one co-worker who used to joke, "I wish I could just finish this work in the wave of a magic wand". But again, the very fact that we refer to work as 'finished' and 'unfinished' reflects how far the culture values ends over means, often at the cost of present engagement in work.
     I think that once a person can realize that mind is in every moment, a kind of trust arises from that, which assures continuity. I may not know when a job is thoroughly finished or be able to quantify how much attention I should put to it, but I trust my integral connection with the work itself, at least enough to know that it will get done using the best of my resources. Trust also comes from a growing confidence that the present moment already contains the seeds of totality. One can find interest in any book on any subject, as long as one sees the book not as an external object, but as an engagement with mind. Think about it this way: if I am only looking to finish a book without involving my mind in it's language, the book only becomes a kind of physical enjoyment, like the enjoyment of 'finishing' putting the book away on a shelf. But when I know that this book is already mind, I can mine it for the treasures that I already possess.
    Finally, I think that good work consists of being able to embrace what we would normally think to be negative states of work, such as 'being stuck' or 'being bored'. Any state of being is already mind, so one works with those states just as she or he would travel on a road. While the path might vary between bumpy and smooth, the driver must learn to trust that each part of the road is part of the same overall path. In this way, there is no need to rush, to say anything particularly profound or even to differentiate different parts of the road. Even the negative states are part of mind, so we needn't shy away from what is already ours. In this sense, any kind of work, no matter how seemingly mundane, can be seen as part of the mind's miraculous working.

Tales from the Subway

The subway is packed full of people and I find myself wedged on the side  of the door facing the oncoming passengers. An older man comes into the train just as the last of the spaces is occupied. He is sporting a grey jacket and has a look of silent worry on his face. I seem to face him for a very long time and there is such a closeness between us. I feel as though this is a challenging closeness that makes me gently look downward and close my eyes.. Yet somehow, in the muffled silence of the subway, everyone is close together, and there is something soothing about our solidarity in suffering the cramped conditions of the subway.
   As I close my eyes, I only can be aware of the various sounds on the subway train and my mind begins to settle. What about all of this feels so real that I might feel agitated by the closeness of all the bodies packed together? If I stand and contemplate the sounds for long, what will remain afterward? Hearing the sounds coming and going, something more solid starts to emerge, if not fleetingly. That solidness is like a kind of confidence, a grounding in something that isn't always coming and going. It's hard to describe, but it happens in those in between moments when one does not confuse the mind with the moving phenomena.
   I think it's a good practice to do this sort of contemplation if one is averse to crowds. The concept of the 'crowd'  in itself is interesting, because I tend to have a preconception of crowds as a disorganized mass of people, who are considered solid bodies. But the next time it happens, you might consider, are all these bodies separate minds, or is the same mind contemplating the crowd as one? If the bodies are separate, I am forced to conclude that I too have a separate body. But if the crowd is joined in a single awareness, there is no illusion of separate bodies.
    It is distressing to live in a way that sees all bodies as separate. As soon as I have this notion, I live in a way where I am trying to please some and repel others. But who benefits and who is harmed by this view? Who suffers if I try to repel someone from my experience? Even if I think I am rejecting someone else who is separate from me, only my mind can experience the repercussions. I cannot live the experience of someone else, so even the rejection is only experienced by this mind. If I observe my reactions in this way, it will start to occur to me that it's best not to reject at all, since the rejection is really me rejecting a thought of someone else. It is not that the 'someone else' is pushed aside, but it is me that if fighting with my thought emerging in mind. With all this energy swirling back and forth, it's no wonder I will get exhausted from the inner struggle. Letting go of that struggle might begin when I acknowledge that what I see is not separate from me at all; it is all emerging in mind. So what I do with it is entirely mind's business, and nobody else's. If I think in this way, most of my thoughts of like and dislike start to look unnecessary and even harmful, because they just stir up anxiety and distraction in mind. It is like playing a game with myself. Regardless of who wins or loses, I only start to feel more agitated by setting up winners and losers and struggling between the two.
     This practice of not separating others from myself can be done when I start to ask the question:: who is the seer and who is seen? It's worth trying on those busy and crowded commutes, particularly when one is tired and agitated. And I find it works for me to calm my mind and not take my thoughts too seriously.

Needs and Wants

  Master Sheng Yen has this adage, "Our needs are few; our wants are many." This sounds like a simple statement, but is it really after all? This afternoon, I had the reflection that what is considered a need nowadays is perhaps once a 'want' or a desire at another point in time. I am thinking of the example of the internet. Once long ago (perhaps 1995), I had heard of something called the World  Wide Web, yet somehow did not really even get an email account until around 2002, almost ten years after learning about the internet. At the time when the internet had first proliferated, there didn't seem to be any necessity for me to have such a thing, and it always seemed like a somewhat unreliable research tool, since anyone could post anything without really validating information. At the time, I had considered published books as 'needs' while the internet was something of  a want. But nowadays, it is hard for me to imagine a life without the internet. So, I begin to wonder, how does one truly draw a line between wants and needs, and is it possible for an individual to demarcate the two? How would Buddhist teachings approach such a distinction?
       It seems that the world of the Internet was not decided by one person but is the result of collective karma, particularly the coming together of many evolving ideas. E.F. Schumacher describes how people often tend to look at industries or technologies as things which are created by a single person, when in fact their complexity is the result of continually evolving ideas (p.175).  There is a snowball effect, it seems, that pushes something from an invention to a household product, and finally to something that is vital  to an individual relating to society. It would be almost impossible to imagine reverting to a time when, for example, there were no computers or networks between them. But at the same time, does this mean that with more technology, there is more want and more attachment in the modern world?
     I think in the original expression by Sheng Yen, a clue is "few" and "many". The reason I can see that I have vexations is that there are so many proliferating and distracting wants in any given day. But it seems that this depends on the state of mind. If my mind is calmly reflective and relaxed, it doesn't cling to the many wants. For example, when I am calmly focused on what is to be done in the moment, there is no impulse to suddenly switch gears and do something 'more stimulating'. This is because the mind is not comparing this current state to any expected or past state of mind. It is in equilibrium. When the mind is settled, it is more likely to live according to needs, which are a function of the present moment. To be stuck in wants, on the other hand, is to be alienated by being enthralled in appearances. I think I 'need' the coat in the store front, but that 'need' turns out to be a wandering thought. It's not based so much on necessity as a kind of emotional craving that comes and goes. In this way, 'want' is not a particular thing but more of a state of mind one has toward things. I can find many things in the Internet that I 'want', but this state of wanting only leaves me unproductive and a bit exhausted emotionally. But if I use the internet only to find what I really need, I won't have this kind of running around in the mind. It is just put to use in a way that enhances my time and energies rather than draining it. I suppose the measure might be: does this tool only make me want to keep going back to it, or is it used for a specific meaningful end?
   Schumacher also doesn't conclude that technology is attachment. He also has a Buddhist approach of seeing technology from the perspective of the middle path, not something to be labelled as 'good' or 'bad'. For Schumacher, if the technology is only replacing the ability to humanly produce, then this kind of technology only proliferates desires and the accompanying feeling of emptiness. A person who is denied the pleasures of creative work is often consigned to producing things for consumption using machines of mass production. But if technology puts people back into the driver's seat of work, then they are no longer stuck in accumulating desires to state off boredom  or emptiness. In that sense, they live according to needs rather than mental wants. So I think in that sense, Schumacher echoes the approach of not treating things as categories of need and want, but seeing the mental states we use to approach things.

Schumacher, E.F (1973) Small is  Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. London: Harper Perennial

Soothing Aching Heads Everywhere

" If with kindly generosity/One merely has the wish to soothe/The aching heads of the other beings/Such merit knows no bounds" -Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva verse 1.21 (quoted in Chodron, Pema (2005), No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva, p.14)

As I read the passage quoted above, I begin to wonder: how can I soothe the aching heads of other beings when I still have an aching head myself? I suppose this is a kind of huatou, wondering what comes first: the chicken or the egg. I believe that according to Chodron, we are able to soothe other beings' aching heads precisely because we are experiencing aching heads now, in this moment. She remarks, "Bodhisattvas practice 'in the middle of the fire'. This means they enter into the suffering of the world; it also means they stay steady with the fire of their own painful emotions." (p.11). It is only by being in the midst of suffering (without rejecting it) that we can truly help other beings resolve their own suffering. To fearlessly swim in suffering is to teach others the same fearlessness.
     This is the reading that Chodron offers us, but I also felt that Shantideva's verses allude to the suffering of the intellect. In today's 'knowledge economy', it often seems that knowing more is having more and 'being more'. But the acquisitive model of knowing more only creates its own kind of suffering--the suffering of 'never knowing enough'. I don't think Socrates or Confucius would have had such a suffering, since their teachings evoke a different approach to learning. Socrates emphasizes a questioning mentality toward the basic assumptions we 'think' we know. Confucius explores life with the attitude of a scientist, who encourages people to learn from their ancestors and history rather than resorting to abstract generalizing. Both offer a humble approach: no matter how much we learn and study, we are really like children in the world, and all we can do is keep asking questions as new situations arise.
    As soon as I am aware that someone else's situation is different from mine, I want to 'know more' about them. So I will often go to a library seeking answers about the person's situation or culture. But what is the motive behind this learning? I think it's a kind of grasping, and the basic mentality is a  belief that I don't have enough in me to relate to the other person. But if I look more deeply into the  situation, I begin to realize that nobody can learn everything or 'know' everything, no matter how many books they read. Even if a person did read all the books in the universe, knowing is inexhaustible. Even according to the modern quantum physics view, all knowing is based on a position that is indeterminate. Even when I am able to isolate the speed of a particle, the position cannot be definitely known and vice versa. So why is there this anxiety to know except to try to cover every base? Sometimes we even learn with the intention not to leave any spaces of unknowing. But is this possible? Is it even necessarily desirable to leave no gaps in the  conversation?
    So, to go back to the original quote, what is the way to soothe others' aching heads, when one's own head is aching? I think the secret lies in two realizations. One is that it is simply impossible to know everything: the quest for knowledge is inexhaustible. The second is the realization that one does not need to 'know' to be of help. Opening up to the present without knowing what that present is beforehand is the way to truly and directly encounter what is, without the screen of reasoning to block what is happening or to cut it into pieces. Of course, this does not reject discursive thinking, but it suggests that discursive thinking should never close off the opportunity to be simply and purely present with all one's inner conflicts and confusions. It is about not seeing opposition as 'dividing', but to see opposition as a natural state of mind and to relax with that opposition. These principles can help others in the sense that it removes the obstacle of trying to separate myself from what I experience from moment to moment.
Chodron, Pema (2005), No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva. Boston: Shambhala

Reflections on a Taiwanese Bubble Teahouse

    North of Sheppard Avenue and south from where I live is a strip of teahouses and dessert places, all a culinary delight. If ever I wanted my sugar fix, I only need attend one of these places and try out different flavors such as grapefruit ice, mango smoothies, or other flavors. And note also the atmosphere: many of these stores offer great opportunities for face to face and intimate conversations. I saw into one of the Korean stores an noticed the intimacy of the booths and individual tables, as well as the earthy colors. The whole scene somehow brings me back to my youth growing up in Mississauga, which felt starkly different.  In most suburbs like Mississauga, it's hard to find the feeling of earthiness, unless one decides to create it in the intimacy of their own home. I reflect on how many of the teahouses north of Sheppard strive to create a 'public intimacy', where even total strangers feel calmed and even soothed by the pastel colors of the interiors.
   I also consider: how did I 'socialize' as a young man growing up? The answer is that I simply did not, or not sufficiently so. Somehow, the sense of place and atmosphere had a lot to do with my failure to  socialize while growing up. I am not trying to blame the environment or circumstances around me, but I suggest that creating a warm and welcoming dynamic through public space is often a key to bridging the divisions that people can feel in situations. When a business is more devoted to making the most profit, it becomes determined to 'move people along' rather than keeping them long enough in a single space to feel at home and acquainted with others, even if not on a speaking term. This is why our former mayor of Mississauga once banned Taco Bell because of a fear that it would end up becoming a 'hangout' place for students. And notice what this term 'hangout' has come to mean these days. It connotes the attitude of being in a place for too long, malingering, 'hanging around' where there is no specific purpose or aim in doing so. It's no wonder that 'hang out' can seem synonymous with 'looking for trouble', since it connotes a kind of alienated state of being rather than an intimate one. When I say I am 'hanging out' with someone, there is almost an implied distance or casualness which borders on the aimless.
   I think that when a business or public space starts to experiment by emphasizing creating a warm and intimate atmosphere, it thrives on the love of customers. It is not about just hooking a customer on a product or spectacular show but of bringing out a sense of being at home. I begin to wonder, in fact, whether the businesses of the future will start to save resources by focusing more on quality of atmosphere and lifestyle rather than a quick fix or addiction, such as that found in the older arcades of the 80s. But on the other side of it, I think that a spiritual change would have to take place before these kinds of business or public spaces can become places of interconnection and whole being. On the customer side of it, people need to feel that they are not enriched by what they own but by the space of open and unconditional inter-being. When this happens, we may start to see a shift away from a product-centered 'consumer' economy and a more participatory economy of shared space and belonging, the quiet intimacy of a teahouse.

Pain as a Question

 Tonight, during the group meditation practice, I continued to explore the notion of seeing everyday experiences as open inquiry. And I did this by incorporating the experience of back pain into my huatou practice. An interesting thing happened for a short time in the first sitting. I started to directly contemplate the pain and wonder 'whose pain' is it? When I sincerely wondered about it, the pain did not seem to be pain anymore at all, but an ever-changing, unfolding process and experience. I gradually felt a shift in my felt experience of pain, away from a biological model and toward a more inquiry based, existential way of viewing pain.
   What would be the difference between ''biological" and "existential" views of pain? Here, I am likely influenced by E. F Schumacher again, who warned against a modern tendency inherited from the 19th century to try to reduce higher level activities to a 'lower' rung of motivation. Freud was said to have 'reduced' human emotion to sexual and aggressive instincts (an oversimplification of Freud), while other philosophers reduce mental activities to chemical processes and the like. When I first started to meditate, I would sometimes deal with pain in precisely this way by imagining the emotion as a series of electrical impulses. I even went so far as to visualize a neuron on those longer retreats when I had felt some dull pains here and there. The effect of visualizing is to reduce pain to something somewhat more innocuous than a sharp or invading sensation. After all, who could be angry with a bundle of cells and electrical impulses? This kind of reductionism can sometimes take the edge away from painful experiences.  I refer to these approaches as 'biological'  views of pain, where sensations are somehow seen as indicative of physiological or even chemical processes rather than as unique mental events in their own right.
        And I believe that the effect of a lot of biological knowledge (such as even Darwin's notion of survival of the fittest) is to create a kind of distance around one's personal experiences, or perhaps a 'wider' perspective. It is as though in panning out of one's own suffering, one is able to have a less desperate stance toward one's own 'personal' or inner suffering. I believe that there are even stories in Buddhism which suggest that this kind of knowing is a glimpse into emptiness. I am thinking of the story of the woman who comes to the Buddha asking him to revive her dead child, only to later find that everyone in her village has suffered the loss of a relative or loved one. Such a panning out can help a person deal with suffering, because it suggests that pain isn't a personal affair, and it is shared across a whole species.
      The other approach to pain is to see it as an existential event, which I will refer to as a question. Yes, pain can be a question! Why? It's a question because at the moment that pain arises, there is something unclear and unsettled about it, similar to an unresolved question or problem. I simply cannot put a neat framework around the pain, any more than I can resolve a relationship issue using neat logic. Schumacher, again, distinguishes between convergent thinking and divergent thinking, as a way to get people to think about the differences between kinds of problems. While convergent thinking uses analysis and deductive logic to arrive at a limited answer, divergent thinking requires a process of reconciling opposites and coming to compromises. While convergent thinking seems to correspond to 'biological'  views of pain (reducing pain to a common denominator such as neurons, genes, environmental factors, etc.) divergent thinking seems to approach a more existential way of relating to things as deeply personal, often conflicted and messy to the very end.
    Seeing pain as an existential 'question' is quite interesting for a variety of reasons. First, it lifts the pressure away from trying to use a theory or technique to explain away the pain. I have found in my own meditation practice that putting a theory in front of an experience can temporarily numb emotions, but it tends not to allow a person to be really in the pain itself or to work through it. By beholding pain as a tension of opposites (the urge to flee vs. the urge to sit, relief vs. abiding in discomfort, etc.) one begins to see pain more as a continuum than as a pat and fixed experience that is always the same. This leads to my second point, which is that seeing pain as part of an existential question of being puts the pain on a level of something that is respected and beheld. I found that when this happens, the pain no longer revolts or consumes a person's awareness. It's certainly aware, but it's not so aware that it is 'in one's face'. It even combines pain with the questioning nature of mind, thus elevating pain's function to part of an overall quest for understanding and insight into one's existence.
    

Stay with the Question

 Lately, I have been feeling that my meditation practice goes right into huatou (generating a question) method. I am not deliberately trying to relax the body from top to bottom, and nor am I even focusing on the body. Tonight, it worked quite well for me, because I was able to sit for an hour without really worrying about the pains in my body. Every so often, I would simply adjust my spine whenever I felt some sensation of compression or tightness, as my spine does tend to tighten a bit over a longer sitting. And I found that I was able to let go of trying to find the 'sweet spot' of comfort in the body. A space opened up in mind where I was able to just see the confusion of the mind as it is. Even striving for an answer to the question seemed non-existent. Only the question, "who is reciting the Buddha's name?" lingered.
   I have noticed in myself a tendency not to be able to stay with questions in daily life. I am somehow used to the idea of trying to grasp and answers or desirable states of being to comfort myself when I am confused or don't have a full answer to a challenge I am facing. But what I notice is that the ultimate relaxation is not to answer a question at all, but simply to raise it again and again. By raising a question without trying to answer it, I give myself the mental space to appreciate the real existential confusions that are part of my being. I am not trying to delegate the question to some mundane process, like 'how to make friends' or 'how not to be lonely'. These are just false questions, because they already presuppose that I fully understand the existential questions I wrestle with as a person. Instead of trying to funnel the questions into these mundane sort of conditions or 'problem categories', one can choose the opposite approach of funnelling outward, or driving these smaller questions into a more ultimate question such as "who am I"? Where is the mind? How do I know anything? What is thinking? Who is sitting? etc.
   In his book Work as a Spiritual Practice, Lewis Richmond advocates a kind of question generating method where a person tries to suspend her or his tendencies to answer a question using preconceived ideas of what the real question is. He suggests a staged process of working with questions, which I will list below (and which is further described on pages 48 and 49 of Richmond's book):

1) Raise the question- at this stage, the person begins to focus on their emotions and wonders what kind of questions are being signalled by the emotion itself. If I am feeling worried or unsettled, what question might be underneath that state of worry or discomfort? This stage involves framing or possibly seeking a question that may need answering

2) Repeat the question- at this point, the person repeats the question softly to her or himself, without trying to jump in and answer it. I consider this stage to be quite similar to the huatou method as taught by Chan and Zen masters, in the sense that it is appreciating the existence of a question rather than trying to find an answer. According to Chan and Zen, all 'answers' are really just coming from the discriminating mind which separates itself into subject and object. Repeating the question stalls and subverts this  process by not being satisfied with a simple answer which isn't really an answer at all.

3) Follow the question- this process involves continually returning to the question at all times of life, in a relaxed manner. Again, the process parallels the huatou method, in the sense that returning to the question incubates a doubt sensation. Richmond recommends embodying the question by somehow tying the question to a specific action like walking or doing some work. Where Richmond's  approach departs from huatou method is that he allows the practitioner to change her or his question as needed, and considers the question to be constantly morphing into new forms as one works with the question subconsciously. With huatou practice, on the other hand, one is continually staying on the same question.

4) Settle the question- if one has been persistent enough up to this point,  they will have either found an answer to the question or settled the desire to question. Richmond suggests that the question is resolved not through intellectual answers but through fully involving one's being in the question itself. Being fully with one's concerns can also sometimes unearth a deeper or more substantial question than what had been first posed.

I think that there is another advantage to 'staying' with a question that Richmond perhaps doesn't discuss too much in his book. I think that sometimes trying to create an answer too prematurely can only create more vexations. For instance, if I become confident that I know how to answer a question and keep reminding myself of the answer, it is a bit like trying to fit the breadth of a question into a tiny thimble. If questions were so easy to answer that they would only require one or two simple sentences (like 1 + 1 = 2), there would never have been a sense of worry to begin with. So I have found it important to take the feeling of worry seriously, as indicating a series of interlocking unsolved riddles. When I stop grasping a hold of one 'cause' and saying 'this is the reason, and only this', I find that I feel less anxious. It is as though I am appreciating the gravity of my questioning mind, rather than trying to silence questioning through easy, pat answers or 'root causes'.

The other advantage to Richmond's method is that it allows for greater frustration tolerance, particularly when questions appear to be insoluble at the moment. Only when I can stay with a challenging dilemma can I experience its complexity and also be able to know that the confusion is bearable. I can stand to be nothing and take no stand for a while, as I sort out the different threads of my  life situation.

Richmond, Lewis (1999), Work as a Spiritual Practice. New York: Broadway Books

A Buddhist View of Work

 I came cross one of my favorite books, E.F Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, on my bookshelf. It's a worn and tattered copy, like many of the books that end up stashed in my knapsack for a few weeks (or years). Schumacher, while perhaps not himself a  Buddhist, tries to re-envision the meaning of work and economics from a Buddhist perspective. Emphasizing the Buddhist path of Right Livelihood, Schumacher suggests that the key emphasis in the Buddhist framework is to see work as an opportunity to cultivate character, rather than as simply a means to a product. Much of what Schumacher writes is quite golden and to the point:

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him  to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. (p.58)

Many consequences seem to follow from this notion of a "Buddhist" economics, which are worth exploring. For one, the nature of work and its purpose start to change. If work is designed to overcome human egocentricity and enhance human existence, it is important that the role be designed for human flourishing. If I try to oversimplify a process so that people can do it quickly and without thought for the product, I somehow violate the human element of the work and its potential to develop character.  As well, there is a shift away from working for the sake of quantity and a more mindful approach to the work itself.

I think another consequence might be this: as a person's satisfaction with work grows, she or he might even be more inclined to spend time working than in consuming. But by "work", I don't mean the way we think of work as a kind of drudgery or punishment. Rather, I am envisioning the creative work that often happens when people are developing products or ideas in small groups or individually. If I find satisfaction in a particular kind of work or study which means something and yields insights, I am less inclined to base my value on what I buy, or try to fill an emptiness with food or drink.

I do wonder if making work satisfying might seem to be an actual threat to the consumer economy. If work is so great that a person would want to spend more time there than taking a trip or going to the mall, this might actually cause the economy to suffer. Sure, maybe! But I agree with Schumacher that the more one redesigns work to include people's skills and talents, the more work there will end up being. Perhaps this will come about as people are engaged in small projects for smaller companies, where they have the creative freedom to serve as consultants and build contacts. In these situations, people are not hired by multinational corporations but are doing meaningful things on a local level, while developing their skills and talents in cooperation with start up companies. And there is enough productivity to ensure that new services are created in lieu of gadgets or short-lived products. With less attachment to material goods, people in such an economy might start to appreciate the less tangible benefits of human services, such as art.

Schumacher, E. F (1973), Small is Beautiful: Economics as If People Matter,

Language Learning as Spiritual Practice?

I was thinking for quite some time about the connection between language learning (particularly Mandarin, in my case) and spirituality. Is there a connection between spirituality and the process of learning a language? I believe that there are parallel elements which I would like to describe in terms of sense of discovery, humility, and seeing language as a layered, conditioned process. Many of these processes could parallel those which are found in traditional sitting meditation practices.
     Learning a new language (particularly as an adult) can yield interesting discoveries about one's mental processes. When I was a child, I had picked up language without really reflecting too much on how I learned it. However, as an adult, I have to admit that language is much more challenging for me to learn. I am starting to observe the process in which I start to recognize patterns in the language as well as the correspondence of sound, symbol and meaning. I do notice how the process of learning itself is conditioned, and it has given me a sense of wonder. Even though we talk about learning something as a process of 'absorbing' or ''soaking in" images and symbols, I find it hard to really understand what is happening when I pick up a new language, and start to realize how little a person can know about it. There is simply no way to fully grasp intellectually, and I am prone to regard language as more of a process of dedicating to one thing, even if there is no guarantee when it will yield a result. When I turn toward the process of language and examine how I at times shut out, surrender to it, become open to it, then zone out again--I can see how the way I learn language is a reflection of how the mind moves and often makes comparisons between one state of being and another. I start to observe also how my mind balks at unfamiliar sounds, only to find tricky ways to try to link them to other sounds with which I am familiar. In this sense, language is a holistic, often psychological process of making and sometimes not making meaning.
    Learning a new language is also a practice of humility, as I take in the fact that I am a beginner all over again. With a new language, it is hard to express what I know in the few words I have learned so far, and this can make it difficult to see the process as meaningful. I might sometimes stop to wonder, why am I learning this new language if it will take me so many years even to express a very simple statement? But by going back to a beginner's mode, I can appreciate the process for what it is and also accept the fact that I am able to return to a beginning mode and still thrive there. Perhaps it takes a lot of humility to realize that I need others to help me in learning the new language as well.
   Finally, learning a new language seems to suggest language as highly conditioned and contextual. Language learners quickly start to realize that there are many words to express the same thing, and this can create a frustrating sense of insufficient context. But by being sensitive to the nuances of a new language, one is picking up the conditioned and dependent arising of conceptual knowledge. This is also humbling because I start  to realize that there are no substantial solid objects in language, only symbolic pointers that never quite materialize into something fixed or singular.

A Room Without Chairs

  In the morning, I stop off at the local gas station to grab a coffee. As I am taking my coffee and breakfast out of the store, I notice that there is a new Pepsi flavor called "Pepsi Ginger". I decide to buy it to try the flavor. But then just as  I leave the gas station, I reflect: possibly a similar flavor could be achieved by combining any cola with ginger ale. Could it be such an original idea after all, and why didn't anyone arrive at it before?
   I head into the meditation hall, which now happens to be downstairs instead of upstairs. I take down the tables that function as meeting spaces and later stack the chairs. I clear a space for the meditation mats and cushions, thinking there will be perhaps a maximum of 6 practitioners attending. It never occurs to me that a participant might need a chair, but one of the participants does. And at the end of the session, I help to put chairs into rows. The other volunteer mentioned that only one table is needed this time for the food, and participants in the chanting and meditation centers can just use chairs to sit and eat their lunches. Here is the same room, with three different functions: a place to meet, a place to eat, and a place to meditate. And all one needs to do is reconfigure the arrangements to accommodate each. What is a room, if not a space where things are rearranged for different purposes? For a moment, I reflect: a room only looks a certain way and functions that way because people agreed to set it up to do certain things. But if the people agree or think differently, they arrangement suddenly changes to become something else.  A dining room becomes a study or a meditation hall, depending on the function. Can we say the room is only one thing, and one thing alone?
   I suppose the analogy can be extended to the ginger-flavored pepsi. On the outset, it appears to be something 'brand new', but what are the ingredients? It's that ages old pepsi formula with sprigs of natural ginger flavor. And what is in the pepsi? Water, sugar, flavors, carbonation. The constituents are the same ones found in nature, only rearranged to taste a certain way.  When I market it with a special brown (presumably ginger-colored) label, I am confronted with something new. New, yet, in a sense, many of the flavors have been tried and tasted before.
     If I am not careful, I will be fooled into thinking that these things around me have fixed essences. If someone were to tell me that I cannot move the tables because the room is for meeting only, there is a restriction to what the room is thought to do. If I confuse the ginger pepsi for a magic elixir, I forget that it's made up of ingredients you can find pretty much anywhere else. The same goes with thoughts and emotions. While one emotion may seem wonderful, it is often compounded of other conditions. I had better not think that the emotion is so powerful as to stand on its own. The same thing with rooms; if I fill the space with chairs, I can make a new function in the room. But I had better not then conclude that the room is only meant for chairs.  By limiting myself with labels or emotional reactions, I think: a room with chairs can only be a room with chairs.

The Realm of Missing Items

 Tonight, as I was coming back to my writing practice, I suddenly realized that I am missing the MP3 player I use to listen to soothing sounds of rain. And I wondered what could possibly have happened to it? My thoughts conjure up different scenarios: accidentally put in the laundry, dropped down the toilet, hidden in a sock drawer, stashed under the bed. I try to think of all the crafty ways I might have concealed the thing to myself, or the unconscious motives for doing so. Unfortunately, it had been hooked up to my very small ear buds, which makes it all the harder to find. And it seems to be a spur for me to go on a hunt and reorganize all the things in my apartment.
    What is it about missing things that spurs the spiritual quest? I remember an old parable I had read years ago in a Buddhist text about how a person loses his keys and starts to look under the light, even though it's likely that the keys were lost somewhere else. When asked why he is looking there and not somewhere else, the man replies, "the light is better here". I am not too sure what the meaning of this story is, but I think it refers to 'losing something' (and finding it) as more than the object itself. Losing a simple thing can trigger a whole lot of doubts that relate to who we are. How often has a person lost something and repeatedly gone to the same places over again to 'double check' if it's there or not? The longer I lose something without finding it, the more my mind searches for places that contain a smidgeon of certainty, almost like the 'better light' of the man searching for his keys. But in the end, the quest only devolves into a kind of hankering after the familiar, the comforting, or the habits that make people feel safe and secure. If I cannot find the missing object that makes me whole, at least I can engage in a healing or comforting ritual that features things and actions familiar to me.
    It also explains why, in times of loss, I often crave after things that are routine and habitual. There is a mind tendency there, almost a kind of search to reassure myself through a process of doing, even if the process itself is actually quite useless. One time, thinking I had lost a library book, I went back to the library to look for the shelf where I had originally found that book, thinking perhaps it had been returned after all (or perhaps not properly scanned before going back to the shelf). Of course, the action was completely futile, and I ended up finding the book at home (mis-shelved, again!) but the point is that 'doing something' made me feel better. It somehow assured me that I had covered all the bases and even empowered me in some ways, even though the result was the same in the end.
   Of course, the 'object lesson' (pardon the pun) of all of this is quite pragmatic: I need to be more aware and organized when it comes to the things I own and borrow. But moments of loss, forgetting, missing something, are also trainings in dealing with the more significant losses of life, such as health, family, friends or even employment. These mini-losses can help a person to observe and understand what a person does, but it can also show how losses don't necessarily end our lives--they only change life, make it perhaps bumpier or less predictable than usual. And these mini-losses are also training in realizing that a lot of things are beyond one's control, but some things are. If I keep my life simple and don't have so much mental clutter, I may be able to be more effective in handling the things I own. On the other hand, if I am fussing over speculative areas of 'what if' or "I wish I could go back and salvage this", that becomes something to agitate the mind. Sometimes losses can help people to simplify themselves a bit, become less burdened and more careful of their things. Certainly it can be an encouragement to improve. And on the other hand, it's important not to get so attached to things that one is always blaming her or himself or even hankering after the lost things.

Beauty of Precepts

  During the Dharma Talk tonight, Fashi had described the importance of repentance and being true to one's practice, as well as keeping the precepts as a cornerstone to Buddhist life. And for a little while, I felt a kind of beauty in the precepts, even though in the past I associate precepts with restrictions or 'rules' of life. I even wonder what this 'beauty' or attraction to keeping precepts could mean, and how it differs from other models of moral thinking that I have encountered in the past. And it segues into my other question of how Western practitioners can become as attracted to precepts as they currently have become to meditation and mindfulness.
    I think the beauty of the precepts lies in the way of life they point to. To live with a mind of cherishing others before oneself, for instance, is the essence of "do not kill", the first of the five Buddhist precepts. But how is this life a good life, and would there not be a lot of painful sacrifice resulting from it? Not necessarily, because in a sense to cherish others is to let go of the burden of the self, which is such a huge source of anxiety for people. A practitioner gave the example the other day of how she normally doesn't think about what clothes she wears or how she styles her hair, but was told by her children to try to look more presentable for their sake, so that others don't perceive her as poor. Rather than withdrawing into an identity of 'one who doesn't care what clothes she wears', the practitioner decided to start dressing in a different way for the sake of her kids. This person does not attach to "this is my way" and "this is my kids' way", but is able to see that they are just appearances, and they can be manipulated without identifying with them.
     The precepts about not stealing, lying and committing sexual misconduct are similar, in that they arise from a sense of relating to the world and others in a way that respects their conditions and does not compromise or exploit the world for personal gain or pleasure. This would be a very green world, and a beautiful one, because it is not tainted by human desire or too much entanglement with our ideas, likes and dislikes. When one limits one's scope to what can be gained honestly and with the least harm or exploitation toward others, the clearer the mind can be, and is not taking anymore than what they can use to benefit others. Even a marriage can be thought of as fulfilling precepts to protect someone else's interests, and not to use a person or deceive them in a way that is harmful or dishonest.
    Finally, the precept against taking intoxicants relates to simplicity of what we ingest. By not engaging in mind-altering drugs, the mind remains as alert as possible and not dependent on stimulants to create a certain experience. When I engage in life in this way, one's material dependencies are not so complicated, and one can live more straightforward.
     I am simplifying a quite complex topic, but I do so with the aim of trying to see how to present precepts in an attractive way that is deeply introspective. All too often, people think of precepts as dogmatic rules, and they quickly become boring or even perceived as obvious. But precepts also point to deeper aspects of life. When they are viewed from this phenomenological perspective, precepts give people glimpses of human boundaries and even the emptiness of beliefs. They suggest a way  of being that doesn't entangle a person in self-deception, creating difficult karma, and enmeshment with others. I think there are viable ways to present precepts that move away from the idea that they are simply 'do's and don'ts'.

Finding Good After A While

  During the meditation session tonight, I had a few wandering thoughts about not progressing in practice. Somehow the judge inside me was quite strong today, and it was hard for me to let go, but then later I went into huatou with a kind of strident curiosity. And afterward, the group members got into this discussion about not making meditation into a kind of chore, but seeing it as a window into a natural awareness. The idea of even trying to change oneself during meditation practice only creates a greater burden, and transforms meditation into another 'thing to do' rather than the clarity of mind itself. What I most appreciated from the discussion tonight was the idea that painful or discomforting emotions need not be seen as 'problems'. In fact, it's the problematizing itself which creates discrimination and makes it harder for practitioners to fully awaken without dualistic concepts.
   I think there is a different idea here: by learning to fully abide in an experience without discarding it for another one, we can learn to see the inherent good of the experience, and of all experiences for that matter. It is the realization that all experiences have advantages, and one needn't seek out the good since it's already embedded in the present. But because we are always using the mind to compare one thing over another, there is not enough time to simply abide in the present and see its own unfolding good.  But in a world which values quick fixes and looking out for 'perfect' choices (as though such could be found), it's very rare to see this kind of 'unfolding' good in the experiences we are having. I have sometimes heard this 'unfolding' good refer to as the act of something 'growing on you'. We don't begin to appreciate something unless we give the necessary time and attention that is due to that situation.
      Why is it hard to see this process unfolding? I think there are two reasons, among others. One is that in a fast paced world of multitasking, it can be hard for people to find the sufficient time to devote themselves to understanding something deeply and wholeheartedly. A second possible reason is that people assume that things are entirely pre-packaged and complete, "all or nothing" affairs. But in reality, most valuable things come in mixed packages, and it would be unrealistic to assume that things are always good all the time. We might think that a certain kind of music is unsuitable to our tastes, only to find later that the music had a certain kind of appeal that had previously escaped us.
     I find that if I am able to abide in difficult thoughts and try to behold the good in every situation, I grow more confident to deal with suffering. I am able to see that seemingly negative situations can have potentially good or positive aspects to them, and suffering is impermanent.

Going Beyond Gain and Loss

      I was reflecting on the following paradox this morning: a person might reflect that in order to gain something, they need to lose something else. On the other hand, if a person tries to lose everything, including one's self and values, the gained 'end' can become valueless because there is no longer a self that esteems the goal as valuable. It seems that that tricky part of gain and loss is that there needs to be a mind that gains and loses. How is it possible to even speak of losing oneself when there is a particular mind that is gaining and losing?
     Another way of looking at this is that in order to comfortably lose, one must have faith in a deeper and more enduring being. If a person prematurely gives up everything in the hopes of gaining something in return, they commit themselves to a kind of nihilism. Ironically,  this kind of premature giving up ends up isolating oneself, rather than revealing the interconnection of self and all things. It also only reinforces that self which wants to be in control in the first place. A more relaxed approach might be to clearly prioritize one's needs in order to discern what can be given up to live a simpler life with others. Community is maintained not by irresponsibly giving up what one needs to thrive there, but in acting from a place of frugality of desire. To try to 'lose' one's responsibilities in order to gain a deeper wisdom or selfhood is only reinforcing a strong ego attachment. What wisdom could possibly lie beyond responsibility to community, work, friends, family, etc.? Yet a lot of spiritual groups might focus too much on transcending interconnection.
     I believe that there needs to be a place for a person to stand in order to clarify one's beliefs and make sure they are on the path of responsibility, both to self and others. Reflective writing may be a good way to do this, and I have found that keeping a blog helps me to clarify in language what I often can only vaguely apprehend using my inner reflections alone (or, as we sometimes say, 'wandering thoughts'). Writing can also be a grounding practice of consolidating what one feels to be true, given the many bits of data or opinions we are exposed to from day to day.
    I also think it's important to remind myself not to expect anything from others, or from a given situation, but to kind of give every situation a space to naturally breathe and be itself. If I am constantly trying to direct what I say or do into these transcribed inner 'goals', I will be much too restrained in my behavior and unable to flexibly accommodate change or new information. There's a balance to be maintained here: not getting too swamped or losing focus in details, but also not rigidly adhering to strict agenda or schedules.