Titles

 When we think of titles, we might think of something that we grow into. Although I agree with this point, I also think that having a title can be a bit of an impediment to growth. Firstly, titles can provide people with an illusory feeling that the role they are given is somehow linear. In fact, most learning is hardly linear, and learning that I have experienced in life has often consisted of literal spurts (and stops or pauses). The idea of gracefully "landing" a position, like landing a plane, is based on the illusion of a smooth transition from one way of being to another. Secondly, having a title can sometimes make us afraid of failure or not "looking or acting the part". This self-consciousness that we feel around having a title or responsibility becomes detrimental to learning because it suggests that we have to know our roles perfectly well in order to fulfill them. Again, this creates an illusion of boundedness and fixed knowledge that doesn't often happen in daily life.

   I prefer to think of a title as a guideline and nothing more. It tells us where we should be focusing our energies, but we shouldn't limit ourselves only to that for which we are nominally responsible. Instead, titles should allow us to branch out into other areas, and give a person the chance to learn new things. That is why I try to avoid as much as possible getting mixed up with titles.

Non-Attainment

  When we were in the study group the other day, the thought occurred to me that the Complete Enlightenment Sutra contains the verses:

When enlightenment pervades all ten directions, the Buddha Path is accomplished. There is no place where illusions vanish, and there is no attainment in accomplishing the Buddha Path,

It interests me that this sutra describes the act of accomplishing the Buddha Path, yet without attainment. So what exactly does "attainment" mean in this context, and how is it different from "accomplishing" the Buddha Path?

I have often heard something to the effect that in Buddhism, "accomplishment" is not about acquiring things but more about letting go. I think this is perhaps an oversimplification, but it might be true that wisdom is about letting go of conditioned thinking and embracing a much broader-minded vision of the world. One example is that if we are only thinking in terms of a narrow self, everything is seen through the lens of our own wants and needs. But if the view is just a bit broader and we are able to see what we have in common with other living beings--humans, plants, animals, and even the tiniest microorganisms--then our perspective changes to one of identifying with all beings rather than with a narrow self. But even this too is a kind of "attainment", since it's sometimes been described in Chan as exchanging a "small" self for a very large, unified self that includes all other beings. Now, how does this vision relate to "non-attainment"?

The problem, to my thinking, is that even if a person reaches a state of unified mind or awareness, there is still a subtle sense of a self that embraces or includes other beings. I might say, like Walt Whitman did in some cases, that I am identified with all people, all beings, and so on, but there is still an "I" there: a center that believes that feelings come from the body, for example. Non-attainment would have to go beyond this and suggest that there is no containable sense of self that is unified in any way. It would need to go beyond even the idea of a bigger self.

I guess "accomplishment" really does mean to let go, but I often have to struggle to realize what I need to let go of especially when I question: who is letting go?

Every Bit Counts

  Every bit of our presence in the world counts. I think that people often take this for granted, wanting to impress or try to be something bigger than they are, and yet the small things that a person does can make a difference. For example, the decision to "just show up", and be as fully present as possible, can be a form of subtle appreciation. I choose to attend to this moment for which I am a part because I know that this is happening and not something else. When I choose to be present, I can have whatever emotional responses arise--in fact, I can own those experiences, without necessarily being overly invested in them. And in this way, my purpose in the world starts to manifest, and I can expand to include many factors.

   With presence comes less reliance on an object to declare myself, and more availability--less fear of the unknown, and more appreciation of even seemingly painful or negative experiences. Again, the importance here is not to pick and choose our experiences, but rather to be truly available to them. It means acceptance but it also means being able to be generative and creative, rather than simply being passive. This requires a fair amount of trust. I sometimes liken this to the way walking meditation practitioners will "lean forward" while engaging in fast-walking meditation, as a way of encouraging ourselves to be more energetic in practice. That leaning forward is an indication of trust: trusting that what I generate will balance itself and will have a purpose, will be received properly by the world as needed.

Shared Giving

     I truly feel that conditioning makes us try to be players in the game of life. I remember reading a book by science fiction writer A.E. Van Vogt called Players of Null A, which precisely used the metaphor of life as a game that people use to influence things and people. We are all encouraged to play a part, to wrack the most points and so on. We might even fear not having anything to offer--and this is truly the deepest fear we might have. What happens when I have less to give than the others? And the problem as I see it here is that one is separating themselves from others and trying to quantify our gifts so that we feel secure that we are able to provide for ourselves and others. 

    Courage is needed to settle that desire to try to enhance the self as a giver. If someone offers a gift that everyone enjoys, I want to offer a bigger gift. Why is that? It's because the gift draws attention to my ability to give and contribute to social well-being. Then someone else wants to outdo that gift, and so on. Then we accumulate points and start to see ourselves as givers. There is nothing terribly wrong with this, other than that it deprives others the opportunity to be givers themselves! Sooner or later, we become attached to our status as a giver and are not able to receive let alone depend on the moment or identify with the greater unfolding moments of which we are a part. I am too narrowly focused on my own contribution to see how much of our experiences are already deeply shared. 

    An example would be a conversation: nobody can really converse with a robot. A true conversation has to be a dance between talker and listener and vice versa. Here, there is no point saying one is doing more than the other. When people are in sync, it feels that they are able to support the other even when they are feeling tired and cannot contribute that moment.  Here, it ceases to be a competition: people feel that they are mutually together on something. I think this is also the essence of encountering people. People are infinite mysteries, and none of us can ever fully know another person's ins and outs even if we lived with them for eternity. The same is true of all sentient beings, in all their infinite travels and journeys; we simply cannot fathom who we've interacted with in previous lifetimes and what paths crossed. To accept the mystery of being is to let go of the tendency to try to quantify the self or value or experiences in general.

Decisions Decisions!

  Having to reflect on career paths at work is a real headache for me. I think that the issue is that I see many ways I fit in some roles and not in others, and vice versa. My mind then makes the mistake of assuming there is one ideal role that does not suffer the disadvantages of the others. This is a mistake that comes from discriminating mind and comparing.  What is important is to distinguish between when a decision seems sound as a result of calm reflection, and when a decision is pursued only for the sake of excitement or novelty.

   I was teaching my student today about "hyperbole" as a  literary technique, and one thing that I mentioned is how exaggeration seems to be an inherent part of the interpretation process. I think this is so because interpretations are not just passive readings of experience; they, rather, contain directives and purposes. Interpretations come with an idea or a plan of action embedded within them. We don't just "think" ideas, but we "do" ideas, and there are times when we need to create the interpretation that will motivate us to do what we feel is correct. But I think this interpretation always leaves something out--perhaps it needs to in order for life to move. Yet it's important to keep in mind that because interpretations bias us toward acting in certain ways, they are always inherently incomplete. There is always something that is not quite captured in the interpretation itself.

   Two ways to combat this is to calm the mind, and to be grateful for what one has. That is: not to rush into anything new just because it seems initially exciting, but to let the mind settle so that all the points can be considered with some clarity. The second is gratitude: counting what one has instead of only seeking for what one doesn't have, which means that no matter what decision we end up making, we will have reasons to be content with it.

"SWOP" Analysis

 In Dalai Lama's book, Wheel of Life, there is a wonderful preface by Jeffrey Hopkins which describes ignorance as follows:

Not knowing how things actually exist, we superimpose onto phenomena an over-concretized status that they actually do not have (p.3)

Hopkins goes on to further characterize ignorance as "the conception or assumption that phenomena exist in a far more concrete way than they actually do" (p.4). Hopkins emphasizes the overlay of the "concrete", and I would like to further characterize this sense of the concrete in terms of four particular qualities that I refer to as the acronym "SWOP": Substance, Wholeness, Ownership, and Permanence. I will list these below:

1. "Substance" refers to the illusory idea that when a phenomena arises or we sense something within us, those phenomena refer to things that have fixed essences or "substances" that are not subject to change over time. That is, we think that the people and situations around us have some kind of inner quality that does not change under any circumstances, much like candle wax maintains its "waxy" substance even when it's melted. This view, however innocuous, is responsible for materialist philosophy, which tries to reduce everything to matter (or some underlying essence) without recognizing that phenomena are continually being shaped by causes and conditions, and in fact are continually being born and die every moment. Substance is often linked to the belief in an eternal or immortal soul, which Buddhism does not agree with.

2. "Wholeness" refers to the belief that things are self-contained wholes that are lacking in parts or composites. A tree, in other words, is a whole tree (without regard for the fact that it consists in branches, roots, bark, and tissues within the bark itself). The illusion of wholeness can be traced back to the story of the Chariot from the Milinda Panha, where the Buddha explains that a chariot is not an actual self-existing thing, but is a label that is given to a bunch of composite parts (wheels, horses, carriage, etc.) that happen to be working together in the moment. What is often overlooked is that the name I give to something is only a conventional term that I use to distinguish the function of conditions that happen to arise. For instance, "paper" may appear to be some kind of self-existing material, but we forget that it is made up of pulp that comes from trees which in turn needed water to grow, ink, etc. From the view of Five Skandhas, all experiences consist of interdependent aggregates that ultimately depend on the mind to come together in that moment. 

3. "Ownership" refers to the illusion that these self-contained 'wholes' and eternal 'substances' can be somehow grasped, owned and protected in some way. If I were to buy a house, I would assume, first of all, that the house is a singular "thing" with a fixed price-tag that guarantees exclusive ownership--when, in fact, a house really consists of plumbing, electrical wiring, beams, roofing, windows, etc. that are constantly subject to the natural conditions of weather, rain, age, and so on. Ownership comes from the illusion that things can be acquired and kept "forever" when in fact the components of which these items are made are continually changing. Even my body is something I technically do not "own", since the body is subject to continual aging and death, much of which is beyond my capacity to control or influence. In a sense, nothing is truly ours forever, even though we may sign a contract or pay money to have something.

4. "Permanence" refers to the idea that something is going to always endure, always be the same, and never be subject to loss, change, decay and so on. From the foregoing analysis, it should be pretty evident that permanence is truly an illusion. The belief that a good thing will always be good, or a bad thing always bad, is only the result of inflexibility of thinking and grasping at concepts of permanence that don't bear out in daily life.

Perhaps whenever one is feeling vexation about something, they may apply the following fourfold "SWOP" analysis.

1. Does the vexation refer to something I believe is a separate "thing" (like an ideology, a product, a service)? When I analyze it, can I see that perhaps we are not able to generalize the experience into a single thing? 

2. Does the vexation behave as a "whole" that stays unified all the time, or is it made up of interlocking parts that influence the whole? Could something that seems broken, for instance, or even ill, be looked at as a functioning process with a few dysfunctional parts, instead of as a defective whole?

3. Can I own this vexation, or is the vexation not so easily grasped? If I like something I cannot own, does this mean not having it is a source of suffering? Could having it also be a source of continual suffering as I attempt to protect it from inevitable breakdown, loss and decay?

4. Is this vexation permanent? For how long will I feel it? Will it stay with me forever, or change to something else?

I think it's a good idea to try this analysis for a week and see if it has been therapeutic in some way!

Dalai Lama (2015). The Wheel of Life: Buddhist Perspectives on Cause and Effect. Boston: Wisdom.

The Gosh Factor

 Reading Arthur C. Clarke's book Report from Planet 3, I am delighted, just as I felt when I was a teenager exploring science fiction for the first time. But I look at it differently from before. Whereas before, I would treat science fiction as literally about the future, I now acknowledge that it's a text that was constructed by someone in the "then present". This shifts the focus away from an imagined future and toward telling a story that is unfolding in a particular time and context. The future (or what we imagine it to be anyway) can only be looked at in terms of the present day hopes and apprehensions.

   It's important to keep some of the "gosh" factor within as we age and see new realities, but I am beginning to feel that the "form" of gosh is more important than the content. That is: it's not what fascinates you so much as how you are able to sustain an inner sense of fascination, that truly matters. And I do think that it comes from giving proper due to an idea, no matter how strange or seemingly irrelevant it may be. Sometimes when I don't particularly think that an idea or vision will fly very well (or have already criticized it as silly or unattainable), I take a moment to make as if the idea has hidden wings in it. With the "as if", I plant the seed for learning to see good in the idea, without necessarily committing to the "this is the best idea" notion. What ends up happening is that either the idea evolves into something bigger, or it grows just enough to enrich already existing concepts. Even when an idea doesn't quite seem tenable in the end, harboring ideas enriches our current situation and thoughts. But the important thing is to be able to foster an openness to new ideas that still need time to germinate. That's why it's important to have a part of you that is willing to say "gosh" or to balk at something, even if it's only a contrived sense of surprise in the beginning.

Creativity and Trust

    The times when I wasn't creative are likely times when I didn't think I had anything within me that was special and distinct from others.  I have often found myself in situations where I thought that I need to look up to authorities and spiritual teachers, to the point where I no longer know what my "voice" is, and unfortunately these are times when I wasn't so generative or creative. Think about the difference between a plant that is fixed in one place so that it can only grow in one direction, and the happy majority of plants that do not suffer from this impediment. Whereas the plant that is fixed indeed grows to be quite tall and dignified, it lacks the kind of shape that makes it distinct in the world. I think that sometimes I have had to trust that there is something within me worth being a source of creative flow, even when I would sometimes rather just be told what to do and the right way of doing things.

    Creativity, like meditation itself, requires the space to observe. Too much emphasis on method will end up suppressing what is really within us--the raw material that we have to work with, like the soil itself. And a failure to trust that the soil is going to grow good things can lead to a stilting of creativity. This also comes from stereotyping the creative person as someone who is artistic, a "genius", gifted, exceptional, an outlier, and so on. These terms only serve to exotify something that is actually very natural and everyday, and can take the form of even having a conversation.

    It takes trust to allow a flower within to open up, and to know that the flower won't overrun the garden, or won't go out of control completely. We love our creations without falling in love with them--that is, knowing that creativity always yields beautiful yet impermanent things. And in these cases, sometimes the joy of creativity lies not so much in the finished product itself, but that ability to leave a window of trust through which we know that some things of worth will arise when they are freely expressed.

Cynicism

  Perhaps the essence of cynicism is "been there and done that", without realizing that there are no two steps that have been in the same place. It's important to be mindful of when the mind becomes weary and falls into the habit of expecting negative things--repetitions of the past--to happen again. In those moments, we must have the courage to face things freshly knowing that they really are new experiences. This is the essence of beginner's mind, in fact, but I realize in myself the strong resistance, the thought that if I open myself up to beginner's mind, I might take on too many of the same things as before. Cynicism can only be countered with a kind of disciplined decision to be surprised by the moment--in fact, to see inspiration as a choice and not as something that just happens out of a whim or as a result of novelty. We have to always be on guard against this habit of falling back into a habitual malaise--a kind of feeling that nothing new is to be discovered, or an attitude which protects us from being alive.

Being Inspired in the Moment

 During the study group today, someone had asked the delightful question, "What's your favourite skandha?" I paused to reflect on it, as I am often inclined to do so, and then came up with the word: sensation. I enjoy sensation the most because we can contemplate changes more easily and directly as opposed to say, the body or perceptions, or even thoughts. But perhaps more importantly, sensations can be direct portals into a world of being that is not mediated by words, concepts or comparisons. I remember hearing a song lyric that goes "feelings never lie", and I believe that sensations (which are somewhat more basic in nature than feelings) are much the same in that they simply register qualities in the brain rather than saying something about them, as we would normally when we interpret a song or a text.

One can easily be inspired in the moment if they are able to stay with sensations as they are naturally occurring, without judgment, so far as they point to the impermanence of the mind. And this is quite real because these sensations are not mediated by interpretations or comparisons with the past. Sensations simply are--and their facticity points to something that simply cannot be compared to anything else. As soon as I overlay a memory (perhaps of something subtly beautiful, expansive, or nice) onto the current sensation, I am adding something more to it, and this takes me away from its presence. This happens all the time without my truly being aware of it. Suffering happens when these two thoughts (the current and the past) get mixed together into one essence, and I think even boredom happens because the sensation is no longer alive: it's being confused with a thought that is ossified. Labels tend to be like this, in the sense that they over-define the moment while denying its subtle qualities of being. And yet, just as I am writing this piece,  I am recognizing that we need a language to envelop this process of being with our experiences without trying to romantically embellish or diagnose them. 

There is almost a kind of "taxonomy of the heart" that can be explored here: the ways in which the bodily sense gets washed over with abstractions (trying to label the sensations according to cultural ideas, wishful thinking (wanting the sensation to be different) and even reifying the sensation into a static thing which it is not--not to mention trying to solidify the sensation by linking it to a body part. But these mechanisms only falsify the fleeting nature of sensations by providing a false sense of knowing through these overused concepts, such as the body anatomy we learned in school, or psychoanalytic theories etc.

What is real harmony?

 Some people might argue that we don't really live in a harmonious world. Even the animal world demonstrates to us how creatures compete for survival and thus spread their progeny into the future generations. Poetic images also convey the natural world as one of competition, such as when animals are referred to as fighting "tooth and claw" for survival, or even the "fearful symmetry" of Blake's "Tyger Tyger" . This reflects an underlying belief that identity and selfhood is deeply connected to having a healthy body that can thrive and outlive other bodies. Given the fact that our bodies are subject to frequent bouts of illness and decay, is it safe to say that our world is in complete disharmony?

  Two perspectives can help to even out this view. One is that even when we say that things "lack harmony", in reality, most situations operate with some degree of causal predictability. Planting certain kinds of seeds will yield only certain fruits, for example, so it would be absurd to think that a melon seed is going to suddenly sprout into a carrot. From this perspective, there is always something that we can predict (with little or no variation). Some philosophers such as Spinoza have also suggested that all beings have a conatus, or a kind of inner principle that allows them to maintain structural integrity and remain as one thing and not another. With this view of the causal predictability and interdependence of things, could we not argue that all things are inherently harmonious?

    There is yet another argument embedded in this, and that is the idea that harmony is really an attitude of equalization. Rather than identifying my "self" as a very narrow element of the world, I may be said to naturally harmonize when I drop all identifications of "self' and "other". In this way, I am able to equalize all the elements and my mind doesn't move to one phenomena or the other. Then, when my mind does not discriminate between like and dislike, preferring "this" over "that", a natural harmony will settle over me. This is a different kind of harmony than one which involves trying to rearrange the furniture of my life according to how I think it should be. Rather, this harmony involves more deeply understanding my life as a complex interaction of many elements, both good and bad.

A Harmonious Self

   Can the self harmonize with all phenomena, no matter how disharmonious life can sometimes seem? My reflection is that if there is no solid sense of "self" to defend, and if a person takes all the phenomena around them to be the same as themselves (with no conflict), then harmony can result. This might be analogous to a garden full of flowers, where each flower does not cancel out the rest, as long as the flowers can be seen as equally worthy of love. I wonder if perhaps Christianity is very good at articulating this by suggesting that all creations under heaven are worthy of respect and love insofar as God created them. Leibniz was yet another philosopher who suggested that because each being has its own unique mechanism and reason for existing (referred to as a "monad"), this makes them eternally valuable. If we look at all beings in this way with a spirit of respect and knowing things to be inherently worthy, then our attachment to self will diminish over time. Metta meditation is also a way of fostering this kind of respect for all creation, and wishing that things are well and peaceful because they are unique creations.

   There is another way of putting it, and that is to suggest that because everything is interconnected, everything should be equally loved, lest we suffer the consequences of not tending to these interconnections. This is also a viable way of looking at things, but it sounds too much like "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine". Yes, we're interconnected, but there needs to be an intrinsic sense of generic respect for all being as a whole. There needs to be a basis for respecting all people for their uniqueness without the utilitarian attitude of what we can get from others. And that is why I feel that respect needs to come from a sense of seeing the uniqueness of all beings. In some ways, harmony can only arise when each appearance and unfolding moment can be seen as inherently perfect and not in need of improvement or change.