Not "Empty" Enough

 People nowadays often speak of life as being "empty", but actually, I am convinced that the problem is quite the opposite:  there is often not enough emptiness in a person's life in today's world. By "emptiness", I do not refer to lack, but rather the abundance that comes from stillness: having a mind that is observing, not picking and choosing, and resting in the moment. Because I am fixated on trying to solve things "logically" (perhaps as a result of some school or academic training), I fail to see that too much logic can lead to a kind of dryness. It is as though one were trying to create a full life through one's thoughts. This never quite works out, no matter how brilliant one thinks their thoughts happen to be. People do not live simply on logic and thinking alone.
   When a person is feeling tense and vexed, their tendency might be to try to solve that tension through more thinking. The tension is posed as a problem that somehow needs resolving, and sooner or later it does feel like a problem because a person has made it that way. Problems arise from fixating on certain mental constructions, and taking those mental constructions to be "The Truth". Here, even as I am writing these lines, I can choose to think that this writing is "truth", when in fact it  is not really true at all! All that words can do is hint at certain kinds of experiences, but they in no way substitute for them.
   It's not to say that thinking is bad, but it's a reminder to be mindful when,after some period of sustained thinking or working out possible solutions, that one might experience a sense of deflation or disappointment. This is because, no matter how lofty or precise one's thinking is, one can never live in those solutions. One is always living in a dream, where thoughts are only temporary signposts. The only thing one can do at that point is to let go of hope for ultimate answers in the form of intellect and thinking.

Two Orientations to Problems

 One might say that there are two orientations toward looking at problems. The orientation that I am most familiar with is sometimes referred to as a "merge and kill" approach: to break down a problem into individual parts, find commonalities between the parts, isolate the causes, and then conquer the problem (as it were) with a kind of neat solution. Generally, part of what made algebra so appealing to me is that it often symbolically and metaphorically embodies this aspect of eliminating redundant terms and then seeking to find the simplest expression for the remainder. Having taken enough algebra courses in high school, I can personally attest to the beauty of reduction, and it's this approach that might also explain the way people might approach everyday problems. "Simplify" becomes the catch-all phrase for such an approach, and I believe that my early enjoyment of the logical positivists was also a testament to this simplifying tendency.
   There is another approach to looking at problems that I am only beginning to understand at my current age. Rather than seeing problems as isolated "weak links" in a chain of otherwise very strong members, "problems" are often entry points into flipping a worldview or a habitual way of seeing completely upside down. That is, problems become symptoms of an emerging totality, and they can even become signs of exploration and expansion. If I try to solve problems only through the first process of simplification and elimination, my world-view overall remains fairly intact, because I managed to isolate the hardest part and smooth over the other parts that are affected by the problem. But in the second orientation, problems unravel the status quo by showing quirks or kinks, revealing new possibilities that would not have otherwise been known were it not for the awakening affects of the problem itself. While the first approach might favor the demonizing of problems, the second approach might begin to see problems as opportunities to change the way we think of things, and even to make surprising new connections.
   It's useful to see that in both cases, "problems" are framed as such by minds. Even knowing or realizing that a problem is "a problem" because of a human tendency to label such, is a good way to extend its possibilities and find new inroads. But I think that in the second case, there is more wiggle room for problems to actually promote passionate, seeking and adventurous approaches to experiences. In understanding problems as hinting at overall mysteries, one opens to a life of love and intrigue rather than one of "divide and conquer".

Treating Difficulties With Patience

 During the study group tonight, I heard a very interesting expression, about beings who give blessings to Buddhist practitioners by way of difficulties. I interpret this to be that when we apply the practices of non-abiding, no-form,and no thought, difficulties can certainly be transformed into teachers. On the other hand, if we are always grasping at the self, everyone appears as an obstacle who is in the way of an elusive something else.
  I consider this to be the problem that we should always keep to the idea that "problems" are forms of grasping at an imagined result. What would life be like if the problems were seen as teachers? I think that we would have much more faith that the people who seem to create difficulties have something meaningful to say that can enrich one's presence and engagement in a practice. But the key point is that there needs to be a practice in order for such a "lesson" to become engaging and meaningful. Without a sense of practice, it becomes impossible to think that anything in this moment can speak to who we are.Instead, we continually keep hearkening to reflections of the past and future.

Puttering Around

 A lot of what doctoral studies means to me is a kind of proverbial "puttering around"; that is, exploring the contours of different theories to seek connections and new questions. Sometimes nothing appears to be happening on the surface, and at that point, it is necessary to simply write. In fact, this is one of the pieces of advice I was given in my Proseminar Course by a former colleague in education who completed the program: namely, getting into the habit of writing simply for the sake of writing, even if it doesn't appear to be coming together.
   There is something quite amazing about this: recognizing that, in the process of doing something, there is something that is actually in you that just hasn't surfaced. And, in addition, there is a corollary point to this, and that is, we should have faith in our own ability to surface important things, which requires an attitude of surrender to that process.
   The balance between exploration and writing is such a delicate one, and I think I am slowly having to learn to see that there will be good days and bad days!
 

The Four Temperaments

 I am looking at the Four Temperaments, which is a kind of hallmark in Greek philosophy, and thinking about how to explore personality in my students' classes. Why is this such an interesting topic? Part of the reason is that it allows young students (and older students like myself) to reflect that not all people are alike.I am surprised, in looking at some of the pop quizzes out there about the Four Temperaments, that some of their characteristics definitely seem salient in being able to predict different kinds of people and their personalities. Yet, still, this raises the interesting question, why is it valuable to explore this issue of personality to begin with?
   I used to think that personality was a fixed quality or characteristic that is genetically encoded in a person's make up, but recently I am beginning to feel that this is not necessarily the case. What I think is most important about studying personality is not that one is dealing with these fixed qualities/characteristics, but that one is dealing with interrelationships, where no two people respond to each other in the same way. And it's about celebrating the diversity of relationships, knowing that people are different, that one is in fact able to make the most of a person's uniqueness and characteristics. This can then be reflected back to the literature being studied and appreciated.