Sound Advice on Emotions

 This morning, I went to the Fed Ex Kinkos to scan a document for school. I happened to be carrying a copy of Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler's book Art of Happiness at Work. Just as I was about to turn in my copy card, the clerk there told me to keep the card and save it for a later time when it could be refilled with money as needed. As I was inserting my card into my already 'over-carded' wallet, the clerk must have seen the image of Dalai Lama on the cover of the book. She suddenly brightened up and asked me what book I was reading by His Holiness. After I told her a bit about it, the clerk mentioned that she is from Tibet, and was quite glad to see that the Dalai Lama was known in Canada and was even being read. She even seemed somewhat surprised to hear that the Dalai Lama's book was on the bestseller list for many weeks, particularly his Art of Happiness series.
    I think one of the most valuable lessons I am learning from this book is how to look at emotions in any given situation., such as work or in meetings. My usual mental map of emotions is that they are signs of something that is concrete, solid and 'real'. If I am feeling hurt, there must be some solid and tangible reality 'out there' that makes me feel this way. If I feel a pain in my finger, it must be caused by something solid and enduring, such as a piece of broken glass or a hammer. But if one looks deeply into the situation, are these external objects so solid and enduring? Glass may seem powerful, but exposure to broken glass requires many conditions, including the original breakage, contact on the surface of a finger, neurons to register pain sensations in the brain, etc. And this is only the beginning: there are also attitudes, perceptions, memories and interpretations that lead into the experience of a painful moment. I add to the situation such thoughts as "stupid me for not seeing the broken glass," or "now my finger is irreparably damaged". And there are attitudinal factors that also lead to how I frame pain in mind. So given all these things, can I really say that some single thing 'causes' suffering? When I examine the complexity of the single moment, I see that there is often no one thing to blame for it.
    The Dalai Lama urges us to consider "the fundamental cause of various problems", when he describes:

  the reality that everything is interconnected. If there are certain problems in the workplace,  or layoffs and one is having difficulty finding a job, there are always many factors at play. So, you experience dissatisfaction. You suffer. Maybe some worldwide economic conditions or even some environmental problems may be at the root of the problem. In those cases, it does no good to take things so personally and complain to the company, or perhaps direct your anger toward one individual boss. (p.31)

Here, the Dalai Lama points out two interesting ways of  looking at emotions. The first is to see that emotions often arise from very complex and intertwined factors. It isn't just one person who causes me a problem, but one's challenges are often the result of many interlocking forces, attitudes, and even personal choices that things arise as they do in the mind. In that case, is it useful to target one thing for arising situations? The caveat here is that even these factors are going to change from one moment to the next. There is no sense in rigidly sticking to some form of blame, either toward oneself or a single 'cause' of grief.

A second interesting approach is to look at the social and emotional value of emotions, rather than automatically linking emotions to fixed realities. For example, if I am upset or envious toward others, I might consider: what value does harboring and feeding this emotion have on my existence? Is it something worth 'feeding' or does it only create detriment to me? Considering emotions in this way, I am no longer feeling that an emotion corresponds to some concrete fact. Sometimes, emotions are deceiving. I might feel strongly about something, but that strong feeling might be based on distorted thoughts about the value or significance of an event.

In this way, rather than trying to appraise emotions based on their correspondence to reality, I might want to consider what role this emotion plays in my life. Is the emotion really signalling to me something that I could investigate in a constructive way, to see what's going on? Or is it only feeding its own misery or agitated state? Through seeing emotions as interdependent on multiple factors and possibilities, one is able to adapt a wider range of choices and perspectives on them.

H.H. The Dalai Lama & Cutler, Howard C. (2003), The Art of Happiness at Work.  New York: Riverhead Books

"Where Nothing Begins"

   I came across a very interesting article from Robert Aitken, called "The Dragon Who Never Sleeps" (collected in the book Engaged Buddhist Reader, edited by Arnold Kottler). Aitken is talking about gathas, which are short poems used in Buddhist practice to convey concise Buddhist teachings, as well as to remind people of what they need to be mindful of in their daily spiritual practice. Aitken wishes to adapt gathas for 'modern' Western audiences, particularly related to relationships that one would encounter in modern life. So he decided to write a whole string of gathas designed specifically for "modern Western" audiences who are interested in Buddhism. One of the gathas that really struck me goes as follows:

         When someone is late for a meeting
          I vow with all beings
          to give up the past and the future
          and relax where nothing begins. (p.35)


This gatha really speaks to me. For one, it reminds me of the anxiety that people face around 'nothing'. For another, it has a modern feel to it. I am picturing the unease that people feel when someone is not on time for a meeting, as well as that social space created as a result. Are people able to truly relax into something unplanned and unknown? Or does it create an unbearable space where something 'should' be happening but simply isn't?
    Aitken writes his gatha in a time when Western offices are very time-oriented. Products and services are often measured for 'time efficiency', sometimes leaving little mental energy to generate or incubate new ideas. The obsession with filling one's time with conversation and content often ends up stigmatizing silence, as well as more accidental moments where surprise connections can be made. I take it that Aitken is being somewhat ironic when he inserts the phrase 'where nothing begins', as though to indicate that 'nothing' has a specific beginning and an ending. Perhaps it might seem that way, but maybe 'nothing' is always pervading in between the spaces of thoughts. Hence, in an earlier gatha, Aitken writes:
     
      When thoughts form an endless procession,
      I vow with all beings
      to notice the spaces between them
      and give the thrushes a chance (p.34)

In fact, both space and time are somehow immeasurable. Can anyone really measure the time it takes for an idea to form in mind? I am sure that someday, a scientist might come up with a study to do exactly that, but it somehow doesn't address the question or how ideas are formed. It seems that the process of forming an idea is often mysterious, and I can never quite know where the good ideas arise.
     Aitken's gathas challenge my notion of how to measure the value of 'my time'. If a person is continually measuring themselves by habitual ways of being and doing, they are bound to start seeing time as something they own. Recently, I heard the expression, "not on my time" to refer to someone taking ownership of their time, as opposed to following someone else's rules. But in a meeting, whose 'time' is it anyway? Groups of people are really in one space and time. They don't occupy separate 'spaces'  or 'times', so can we say that there is 'my time' and 'your time'?
   Staying in a space of 'nothing' might also allow me to see that there are certain things about ourselves that simply cannot be known or resolved. It's interesting that a lot of Western psychology tries to fill that space with supposed problems or 'root causes', such as separation anxiety, trauma, or poor individuation. But it makes me wonder if perhaps the real source of the anxiety is simply a realization that there is a nothing that can't be covered up by something. That 'nothing' might just be the mysterious mind that can't be pinned down to an object or a thought. But knowing this, can I not simply 'rest' in this awareness of nothing, without trying to make an object of it?

Aitken, Robert (1996) "The Dragon Who Never Sleeps". In Engaged Buddhist Reader (ed Arnold Kottler). Berkley: Parallax Press.
        

The Art of Well-Wishing

  In the Distillery District, people now pay $5 to get into the Christmas Market. After a long line, I am met with many large crowds, coming from many parts of the world to enjoy a sort of "night market" of chocolate, barbecue foods, poutine, and beer. I guess this is a season of well-wishing, judging from people's faces and the general atmosphere of conviviality. And we are entreated to little trinket shops where there are ancient bygones of toys: something called 'tinker toy' from the 1950s, as well as a book which pokes fun at the 'ease' of parenting. There is an element of bittersweet when one strolls through a 'toy shop for adults', marvelling at one's childhood and realizing it is long gone. I wonder, as 2015 comes to a close, do people here think about their loved ones, or do they just come to enjoy the paraphernalia?

    For myself, wishing others well is not such an easy practice. I think that oftentimes, it's because Western cultures in particular place a value on commitment, and this often takes the form of owning something for a long period of time. Having to 'give away' something without expecting a return is often unheard of. I read a facetious quote about the monk Ajahn Braun, from a book by Sarah Naphthali called Buddhism for Couples which defines non-attachment and 'true love' as "your best friend and your partner fall in love and run away together and you feel glad that two people you love so much have managed to achieve greater happiness." (p.145) Can people imagine doing this, I wonder?
  
   I think that life itself is a process of coming to realize that one only has things for a limited time. It's not easy to grasp that point, but the process is easier if a person learns to let go and take in the fact that they are no less for doing so. Well-wishing is the art of wishing others well, even when you may never see that person enjoy the tangible benefits of the wish itself. When a person is so free that she or he is not even attached to another person's coming or going, their heart is big enough to accommodate giving away their time, without necessarily expecting a tangible gain from it.

   But I also want to add a caveat here: I think that the only way this well-wishing is done gracefully is when a person fully acknowledges a tangible sense of loss as a part of  one's life. Simply denying feelings of loss doesn't quite cut it. If I try to suppress my feelings of wanting others to be around when they cannot be, I am missing the rich vulnerability of desire. And that desire furnishes something quite educative. It is this 'bittersweet' that is the real source of compassion, because it asks that one truly 'give away' to others what is deepest and most real to someone's heart. If someone is my source of happiness, real love would be wanting to give that other person the happiness that I wish were mine.

Napththali, Sarah (2014), Buddhism for Couples. New York: Penguin

Imagery in Spirit Life

  If anyone has ever read Victor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, they probably might have remembered a part in it where one of the concentration camp survivors recounts how he managed to keep his spirit alive. He used a photo of his wife to remind him and keep connected with a meaningful relationship. Even when this man had not seen his wife in such a long time, he is able to maintain a spirit connection with her. (Interested readers can also refer a book called Kything by Savory and Berne, where the authors explore the notion of spiritually connecting with someone who is not near).
   A skeptic is likely to wonder, is there such a thing as a 'real' connection through imagining someone else? But I think there are two problems here. The first is that we are always bound to frame others according to our perceptions and memories, even when they are present in front of us. I am reminded of a story where the psychologist Carl Jung related: when a husband and wife get into bed, they are really sleeping with 6 people: themselves, their parents, and their partner's parents. This is because of the influence of the past relationships on what one experiences in the present. In this sense, there is never a true 'in person' encounter. If there is one, it is much harder to come by, and it is also challenged by the question: who is separate from others?
    The second problem is more logistical. I find that many people around me, including myself at times ,tend to be 'realist' by nature. They might argue: it's not about whether something is comforting or 'feels meaningful', but more whether it is really there or not. But I wonder, where does this idea of reality come from? A lot of times, a person faces a challenge and then says, "it's not in my cards for this to turn out this way". But does anyone really know what is possible or not possible? If my intention is to benefit someone else, would that intention not cause me to make steps to benefiting the other person? On the  other hand, if I simply conclude that the situation is not probable or possible, I may not even venture to try or to experiment with different possibilities. It seems that one needs to be careful in assigning value or judgment on what is 'real' and 'not real', since that judgment itself can shape a person's unfolding reality.
   But to go back to the more concrete example mentioned in Frankl's book: I think using an image to inspire one could work to alleviate some kinds of suffering. But it only seems to work when one fully knows or accepts that the energy to sustain that image comes from the mind. If I try to pin that image to a 'real' person who is supposed to arise at my wish, I am bound to feel disillusioned after a while. I end up waiting for the 'real' person to arrive, when I am only engaging the image. I think it's because deep down inside, I have rejected the image in favor of the real person who is supposed to be behind the image. My thought about the image struggles with my thought of the 'reality behind' the image. If I see the image for what it is without connecting it to anything else, then the image no longer induces suffering.
    Pragmatically and ethically speaking, having images can be a blessing. With images of teachers or those whom I love or feel inspired, I can be inspired to be a positive person. Without those images, life might at times feel bland or somehow a bit 'too' realist. On the other hand, relying on images to achieve desired results is a bit like setting oneself up for disappointment and trouble. I think the key is not to treat an image as a means to something else, but as an intrinsically valuable thought. In that way, I am free to adopt that image when lacking inspiration, but I put it down if it causes me to feel anxiety, desire or vexation.

Sitting Through Pain

     During the group meditation sharing today, we talked about the question of whether it's best to sit through pain without moving,  as opposed to gently moving one's body to adjust one's position. It was mentioned that making this a goal of meditation can be problematic. It might lead to the sense that the aim of meditation is to somehow overcome pain or 'do something with it'. It also lead me to realize that so much of what a person does in meditation relates to trying to find new coping strategies. Even when there are no problems, we can somehow find ways to create them, both on and off the cushion.
     If I can see pain as just part of a totality, I might not think of it as a challenge or an obstacle to be overcome. It becomes part of the overall scenery of my experience. I can simply abide in the pain without insisting that I either enjoy it or dislike it. After all, even trying hard to enjoy something creates yet another barrier to seeing things clearly as they are.
       I recall times when I was very young and I 'braced myself' before eating something that seemed unpleasant to me. This 'bracing myself' at times worked very well for me. It even gave me a boost of confidence to realize that there was something I was able to do with just the right modicum of will-power. But soon enough, that 'will power' becomes an end in itself, and it isn't long before it too starts to become stale.
    The alternative to this attitude of 'overcoming pain by enduring it', is to acknowledge pain, but not to make a goal out of it. This attitude almost seems to go against my conditioning to be one way or another--either 'for' some experience or 'against' it altogether. But is it possible to simply acknowledge an experience for all its difficulty, without necessarily looking for ways to mitigate it or solve it? I believe it is possible, but one must first of all see that experience in light of the totality of awareness. Without a sense of an all-encompassing mind, it is too easy for me to contract into a painful experience and create a solid mental image around it. Rather than seeing the pain as local, one pans outward and sees it as the result of many layers of conditions. Pain becomes part of the scenery but I am not consumed by it.

Mind-Created Prisons

 Every so often, if I am overwhelmed with challenges in work life or in general, I will almost long for a kind of escape to somewhere else. It might feel a bit like when a person in a prison for a very long time suddenly sees a small gleam of sunlight through a crack in the window. Such a person gets ecstatic at the first opportunity to 'escape' from prison. But actually, the biggest prison is the one created by mind.
   Usually, if my mind is having difficulty, it's because I have made a judgment about how I am supposed to function in the world. For example, if I am at a meeting and I am inwardly pressuring myself to say something brilliant or profound, I am only creating pressure within myself. In that moment, I could easily choose to allow the situation to unfold without pressuring myself to do or be anything. But my mind creates a kind of prison around that desire to 'be someone' or accomplish something great. Of course, in order to survive, it seems one has to be productive. But more often than not, the pressure I put on myself far exceeds what is required to get things done. Nobody in that moment has the power to pressure me. Only attaching to certain thoughts and  expectations does so.
    People often craft all sorts of ways to imprison themselves. One example happens a lot with spiritual practitioners I have met. I have found that many Buddhists or other spiritual practitioners often challenge themselves by trying to 'bear' any and everything, in order to 'test' their spiritual abilities. I have this same tendency at times. For example, a practitioner who has difficulty dealing with noise would rather challenge herself to bear the noise than alleviate it. She might even open all the windows in her room to test how well she can meditate with all the sounds happening. What happens here is a subtle pressure is created in mind. The practitioner or spiritual learner will say something like, "I need to bear this in order to prove that I have a refined, cultivated awareness." Or, "I need to be able to withstand a tough situation in order to lessen my attachment." In a sense, there is a grain of truth to this, but it creates a subtle goal-seeking. Underneath it is a desire to achieve something in order to know that one is okay.
     There are other mind-created prisons as well, such as excessive self-blame or criticism. I know for myself that I sometimes feel a need to criticize myself harshly 'ahead of time' or as a preventative measure, so that others don't do so. But this practice eventually leads to too much mental tension, and a need to escape from that. If I am too hard on myself, I only increase the amount of inner stress or muscular tension, which then causes even everyday situations to seem very difficult and even painful. So I need to continually ask myself: is this criticism perhaps going farther than where it needs to go? Do I really need to 'push myself harder', or is this only my voice telling me to do so out of insecurity?
     I believe if we let go of all views of self, then everything will be 'okay', even when we happen to fail the tests we create for ourselves. But this okay-ness doesn't mean that people do nothing when they face challenges or difficulties. It means that whatever one does gently accords with one's own conditions and where one is. A person who just started to meditate does not go on a ten day pilgrimage to a retreat center. Maybe they could do that, but it probably might make them sick from meditating. Rather, a person simply knows how to treat themselves so that what happens does not give rise to an inner resistance. This seems to require a skill in just being alert and observing one's reactions without trying to push oneself in a direction not conducive to present circumstances. It takes a while to know how much challenge one can accept, but only moment-to-moment awareness can do so. I have to adjust continually both my expectations and my actions, to make sure I am harmonizing with the conditions. But this also requires a relaxed mindset that is not so quick to 'know' or to 'judge' what is best.

Random Thoughts on Karmic Retribution

  I was reflecting today on my lunch break how the concept of karmic retribution almost balances and even resolves a long-standing debate in Western philosophy: namely, that conflict between 'free will' and  'determinism'. I recall enjoying this particular debate in my early years at university, even though I was never quite able to resolve it myself. In the end, I almost tended to side more toward determinism, because I was so aware of how much is stacked against a person when it comes to making choices. Even though a person truly believes that she or he is free to choose what they want, are people really free in terms of what they want? The debate tended to turn around the issue of where one's desires come from, and whether they are freely chosen.
    I didn't learn about karma until I started reading about Buddhism. My initial understanding was to take karma as being about punishment and reward: do good deeds and you will attain happiness, just as doing bad deeds leads to punishment. But it turns out, again, not to be so easily understood. Often, people might do things badly  or with ill intent, and yet still receive some pleasurable result from it. But from what I have learned from the teachings of Chan, this small amount of pleasure is just a drop in an ocean compared to all the consequences that come from an action. Even if someone makes a destructive choice today and doesn't reap the result immediately, certain causes have already been created for a future retribution. I can never tell when that will arise, because I am still feeling the effects of other deeds performed in the past. So, in a sense, the concept of karmic retribution is not so easy to grasp.
    I think the notion of karmic retribution resolves the problem of free will and determinism, by looking at these as two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, whatever one experiences in this very moment is the result of previous causes planted in mind. Therefore, there is no escaping the results of these causes. On the other hand, just as these results are coming from changing conditions, so I can create completely new ones in this moment. It's the fact that things are conditioned (determinism) that leads to an endless potential for new conditions (free-will). In that sense, it seems one is always capable of creating new causes and conditions. Even in a case where it seems that one is governed by strong thoughts and emotions, these thoughts and emotions are perpetuated by a tendency to keep generating new thoughts that are similar to the previous (though not the same).
   Of course,  the true freedom has to come from cultivating a space where one does not attach to thoughts. If I am always bringing up the same thought again and again, it's because in this very moment, an attachment to that thought has taken place. As long as there is attachment, I am just replaying previous conditions over and over like a skipping record...recreating them over and over in mind. And though the mind is always free in doing that, it is still under the illusion that the phenomena is controlling the mind.
     Even without a strong sense of cultivation, I can still appreciate the idea of karmic retribution at work and other parts of life. When I am facing adversity at work, I need to reflect that the causes and conditions have already been sown, and this is what I need to take in the moment. Complaining or thinking that the situation is unfair is only going to exacerbate my emotions, and thus contribute to a view of trying to escape the current situation by blaming others. There is simply no use in complaining in this way. On the other hand, if I truly and fully accept that what is happening right now is laid down by conditions from the past, then I cease to try to manipulate the experience to look like it 'shouldn't be' that way. In fact, it should be that way, precisely because the causes and conditions were laid down previously to make things as they are now.
    Instead of wasting my energy trying to make appear unfair, I can then focus my energies on what I can do with the present 'imperfections', to make things a bit better. This is a delicate work. On the one hand, it requires a sense of contrition: knowing that I have made mistakes in the past, resolving to always improve myself, and not assuming that I am always 'correct' in what I do. After all, we only know so much about what conditions we are planting in our actions. On the other hand, there is a realization that there isn't a permanent self to blame here. Conditions change, and so do sentient beings, in every single moment. In that way, there needn't be a sense of guilt, regret  or , "I should have known that at the time I embarked on this journey." Because I am no longer under the illusion that I was ever an all knowing knower, I can let go of self-blame when I find myself having to learn anew, and from many mistakes.
    

A Place, Now and Then

    At the registrar's office at York University, I am waiting for three copies of my old academic transcripts. The place is so quiet and mellow compared to how I imagined it before. And I realize that York has acquired quite a few new buildings.
     I am most impressed by the way York is looking more modern lately, even though it also looks a bit 'under construction' recently, especially with the new promised subway extension.
    There is something about being in a place where I used to study, and revisiting it after almost twenty years have passed. It is a strange feeling to know that, with all the new people here, this is not the place I knew before. It may be the same plot of land and some of the same buildings, but everything else has changed. Many faculty have moved on. I even heard that one of my favorite professors who recently retired had passed away. I feel sad but at the same time I knew from his obituary that he was not just an academic: he lived a full life and cultivated many friends among his students, in addition to being a practicing therapist as well.
    It interests me that somehow, I have never really and fully inhabit 'real spaces'. What I mean by this is: I reflect on how much my being in one place was influenced by the thoughts that were going on in me at the time. I wasn't just seeing buildings at York twenty years ago, when I was first an undergraduate. Rather, I was seeing hopes, dreams, daydreams, fears, disappointments. I was seeing Kant, Plato, Nietzsche, Christianity. I was wrestling with what I thought was true and getting stuck on what may not have been true at all. It's funny how, in all that time, I perhaps wasn't fully there. I might have been caught up in these thoughts.
   My undergraduate years at York were a time when I was trying to figure things out, such as meaning of life, ideal society, ethics, and how to think and analyse information. But I found that I lacked the experience to know when something was worth figuring out and what was worth leaving behind. Experiences such as work or social life can pull us away from these ruminations and lead us to realize that the real life is happening between people and within spaces, not in these spinning thoughts. But it's important to have confidence in oneself to be able to fully venture into those spaces, and that can be hard to come by.
    If there is one thing I could have done more of at York, I think volunteer would have been a good answer at the time: it would have helped me feel more socially connected at the time and less caught up in theories and abstract ideas. But in retrospect, I have no regrets about my years at York, and I think  of it as a time when I was trying out new ideas and developing a few writing skills as well.

"faking" attention

   In her book, A Buddhist in the Classroom (2008), Sid Brown relates how she tried to bring the quality of mindful attention to all her students, often not without a struggle. At one point, she tries to address the struggles that teachers might go through in trying to be fully attentive to students, even when the teachers feel tired, burned out or afflicted. She remarks:

 Attend as much as you can. Pay close attention in class, to your work, to grading, to each student who comes to your office or passes you in the hall. And if you feel disconnected, if you feel alienated, if you are tired and just want to curl up by a fire with a book and forget this whole thing...try to pay attention anyway....But if you can't, pretend. Pretend you're attending. Pretend this is the most important moment in your life and in that of your students. Pretend that this thing called a classroom is a crucible. Pretend that we all breathe to be together doing this. Until it's true (p.29-30)

Much of Brown's remarks on attention remind me of the statement "fake it till you make it." But as I was reading this section, a question arose: what is the difference between 'attending' and 'pretending'? When it comes to paying attention, this distinction blurs a bit for me.
           If someone is really expecting to always feel emotionally connected to everyone at all times, they will feel that they are 'only pretending' when they need to make an effort to do so. But sometimes, as Brown suggests, expecting to be enthusiastic and fully connected may be too much to ask, especially in one's off-days or lower spirits. Pretending may not be so much deceiving oneself as behaving  "as if" something were important when it is important. But, in Brown's case of 'pretending', I am not deceiving myself into thinking I am truly interested. Rather, I fully know that I am just pretending 'for now', so that something might mean more to me at a later time.
      This example helps me understand that the mind does not need to attach to feelings as guides to actions. In fact, simply paying attention is something that can be done anywhere, without any particular motivation behind it. It is illusory to think that attention requires or depends on a preceding motivation or 'feeling'. Actually, Brown suggests that the quality of awareness and attention are always present, even if the feelings are not there. Yet, somehow, I think people feel you have to have  a strong emotion in order to really pay attention to something.
      Brown's example also reminds me: there are many situations where I need to assume meaning before I can feel that something is meaningful. Western cultures in recent years place a lot of value on 'being real', or authentic, and not hiding true feelings behind masks or personas. This is all fine and ideal, but it tends to conceal the fact that there are situations where I must act a certain way even though I don't feel that way at all. But as Brown suggests, if I attend to something as a practice, I am bound to eventually develop a feeling for that thing or situation. Attention can do that, because it doesn't rely on conditions to function. Quite the opposite, attention is what fosters emotions. When I meet people for the first time, I often don't feel for them too much, but if I attend to their needs for a while, I will then start to feel connected in some way.

Brown, Sid (2008), A Buddha in the Classroom. New York: State University of New York Press

Peripheral Visions

   November has a kind of dreary feel to it which can also be enlivening as well. The trees form these inter-meshing networks of twigs which stretch out into the bare sky. And on a night like this, the sky is full of gray clouds. Is this a sign of death to the natural world, or is it only the starting point to new life?
   I am reflecting on the way that quite often, falls from grace or from previous security give way to peripheral visions. This kind of vision looks to the sides and  around, rather than only focusing on looking forward.  It is often scary to think this way, but people can often be forced into these positions, through no particular reason other than the causes and conditions that happen to be in their lives.
     In the course of reading about spiritual writing, I came across Haiku poetry as a tradition in which there is an attempt to communicate direct experience. One of the most famous poets, Kobayashi Issa (in Higginson & Harter, 1985), was apparently given a whole lot to deal with in his life: banishment from his hometown, an unhealthy relationship with his stepmother, and poverty well into his teens (p.16). But surprisingly, Issa does not rail against the injustices of his misfortune. Instead, he starts to use this particular situation to  develop a compassion toward the small creatures of the world, such as "grasshoppers, flies and bugs, sparrows, and other less-than-glamorous beings." (p.17). One of Issa's poems, whose English translation I would like to share here, reflects on how a katydid deals with the forces of nature in the best way that it can:

                            cool breeze...
                            with all his might
                             the katydid (p.19)

Issa's poetics are simple, sparse and meaningful in their own beautiful way. What they illustrate is the determination for all beings to live and survive against overwhelming elements, using all the resources they can at their disposal. What impresses me the most about this vision from Issa is the sense of unassuming fascination with other beings. It almost seems as though Issa is determined to find meaning in spite of some traumatic experience he may have had. He refuses to give up on that search for meaning, even if it shifts down to the smallest creatures.

I don't quite know how to convey this fascination with insects, but it seems that Higginson & Harter relate it to Issa's unfortunate situation. But, by presenting natural imagery, Issa also suggests that all life is fleeting and transient. Although many might feel that their lives are indomitable, there is no life that doesn't encounter change, impermanence and dissolution or loss at some point or another. Using the very  simple, natural image of the katydid, Issa's poem forces its readers to look sideways and into the smallest crevasses to learn what life is about. He seems to be saying, don't look into your own tragedy, but look outward into the beauty of other beings and their struggles. In that looking outward, one finds a mirror into one's own deepest inner meaning, which is beyond winning and losing.

References

Higginson, William J. & Harter, Penny (1985), The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. Toronto: McGraw Hill

                           

An Experiment in"Social Silence"

  The title of my blog is a pun on "Social Science", but I wanted to introduce the idea of being silent in the midst of being social. I guess the entry hinges on this question: what kind of experiment could I do on myself to be silent in social situations? And is all silence necessarily healthy?
   There seem to be two radically different views on the function and purpose of silence. One is to say that silence is a form of violence or oppression. If I am in a room and I am the only one not talking, is this a kind of violence against me? Often,I experience situations where it seems necessary to talk, in order to be seen as a viable social being. If I am not talking at all, where is that not-talking truly coming from? On the other hand, observing others is also a kind of rich participation in the lives of others. To observe it to take part in the energies that surround all beings. To observe with attention is a way of even altering the situation, as the energy of observing always gets interspersed with those who are observed. In fact, both observer and observed occupy the same shared energy, as Rupert Sheldrake and others are noting in their experiments on morphic fields.
    Observation is only one of many examples of how one interacts without saying too much. Another idea that interests me is the Quaker notion of speaking only what truly needs to be said. (Actually, this process is not only shared by Quakers, but Zen/Chan practitioners as well). Now, how does one know what 'needs' saying? I have to admit that I have only occasionally had this experience. I think that it happens when there is a hollow space just wide enough for voice to directly speak a need or a reality. And that happens only when I have exhausted the compulsion to talk, whether out of fear or the desire to please someone else. This voice  is a voice that genuinely gives something, but it is not forced to give at all. In fact, the content of the speech is not at all as important as the space where the voice originates. It is generous precisely because it feels no compulsion to give at all. Giver and receiver are already one at that instance of the utterance.
    The other side of this is that some people 'romanticize' silence as the cure-all for social ills. I think this is also a mistake, in the sense that it attaches too much weight to silence. Silence, like talking, is not that important. What's important is the mind itself that is silent or talking. If my silence comes from resentment, or wanting attention, or trying to avoid something painful, then it is a very noisy silence. It is the silence that still wants to be heard. But if the silence is a kind of by-product of finding stillness, then it is a very different experience altogether. In that instance, the person no longer feels that either silence or speech is particularly compelling. In that moment, both silence and speech come from the same source, and they are not opposites as we imagined them to be.
    To go back to my theme of ''social silence": I think the best kind of silence is the stillness of genuinely feeling that nothing needs to be said, and yet nothing needs to be silent either. I can speak, then, but at that point, what is there really to say? The funny  part of it is that it doesn't matter what I say or not say. If the saying is located in one's deepest awareness of mind, then even an incoherent grunt would be acceptable. But, if one is only grunting to be known as a wise person, then this is not the truest silence. It is only a pale imitation, trying to impress rather than attain a true equilibrium in all situations.
   Speech and silence are only gifts when I have stopped using them to achieve certain ends. A true gift is freely given in that way. But how often have I been able to give so freely? The thought humbles me.

Crossroads Meditation

I remember coming across the expression "Crossroads Meditation" some time back, to describe a kind of meditation where one is bombarded by a lot of sensory information: traffic sounds, distracting signs, and so on. And at the time, I think I had assumed it meant "challenging" one's sitting practice to see if it has 'matured' or not. Nowadays, I don't think that's the real purpose or meaning of the expression "meditating in the crossroads". I think that it is pointing to the idea that meditation can happen in any situation. It does so because mind is always including every phenomena that arises. It is only an illusion that I separate the phenomena into these objects and then call them 'obstacles'. I wonder, how would that change if one realizes that the sounds and sights they experience are all coming from themselves?

In our group practice tonight, there were a lot of people mingling outside from the previous group. And, as always, I felt that mixture of anxiety and wanting to help others to calm down. In the guidance, I suggested that there really isn't a need to feel any of the sounds or stimuli as separate from the mind. This is a hard thing to understand for me, because I often associate meditation and mind with a total stillness and quiet. But if I have to wait for total stillness to be aware, I would just be craving silence all the time. Real life doesn't seem to work that way.

Something that helps me is to remind myself that no matter how I might respond to situations, it is 'the mind responding to mind'. There is nothing beyond that. If I am shaping a piece of clay into a chair and accidentally make it look like a toilet, does the clay itself change? It is the same substance. In the same way, even if I am responding with anger to a situation that doesn't seem to warrant that strong emotion, I can still trust that it's just mind responding to mind. This is not an invitation to anarchy, but more like a hint to use a gentle approach when facing different environments. I don't need to look for a way to resolve or stop interruptions. I can let the interruptions be signs that all situations are bound to change. And it's not even about 'going with the flow' of thoughts, because even that expression assumes a mind separate from thoughts.

Is Space Ethical?

   When I write this piece, I am writing slightly tongue in cheek. I am reflecting on this idea that the so-called "Mindfulness Movement" in America started by Jon Kabat-Zinn and others might be overshadowing other aspects of spirituality, by focusing only on awareness and concentration. Some people might say that being mindful can also make one very good and competition and killing, rather than using mindfulness to create healthy space for compassion and generosity.
   As I reflected on this idea, I wonder, is there not something ethical in the act of making space for mind? In other words, I wonder whether the space we make when we meditate is not also a kind of honoring of other beings, in and of itself.. Is it possible that the experience of meditative practice itself already contains a kind of 'ethical stance' within it? Or is all 'ethics' really just based on reflection on rules and precepts?
      I myself am not even sure how to answer this question, but I will venture a few guesses. I think there is something already compassionate and nurturing about the experience of making space for mind. Allowing the mind to open up or even to relax body and mind is already a kindness that extends to all sentient beings. It isn't just a kind of frivolity, but there is something somber about this practice. Part of the solemnity and dignity of meditation is that it is about refraining from doing the habitual. If I sit solidly and still, I become more aware of my tendency or inclination to fidget, to want things, or just zone out in a daydream. And yet, because I am allowing myself to just be with those emotions rather than acting on them, I start to want fewer things. I settle into a place where I crave and reject less. Maybe I might feel more things (including desire, pain and anger) but I am not acting on them. In this sense, I allow a more ethical space to open up, where I consider all beings rather than just serving my desires.
    This idea does not discount the possibility that meditation might have other motivations. Some people do meditate to become better competitors. I even venture that mindfulness could be used to break precepts, or even to kill. But, all things considered, I would suggest that even in those cases, a sustained effort of meditation or mindfulness practice would probably take the edges off those desires and motivations. Why? I think it's because the desires to kill, to break rules, to harm others, are driven by thoughts and emotions, often magnified out of proportion to the present situation. To see past these thoughts, one would really need to let go of their attachment to them. If I am really doing this process in a correct manner, I become less driven to act out of an impulse to better ''myself" or to harm another.
    In the end, I don't think that mindfulness is separate from ethics. I think the two do interconnect and inform each other. I even suggest that true mindfulness is a sincere inquiry into desires, rather than a tool used to serve desires.

It Is and It Is Not

      I remember a time when I had been attending a Christian Church, and I had taken part in Bible studies classes many years ago, in my very early twenties. And there was this moment when I was riding the subway home when I was reflecting on the certainty of the faith, then the sensation of seeing the shadows on the Plexi-glass mirrors, somewhat distorted. And I had this somewhat strange experience. I think the experience was something like realizing that what is written in a book is so starkly different from what is happening in my sensed experience of things.  I wondered how long anyone can really linger in the pure or felt senses, without resorting back to explanatory frameworks of books. I think it probably does not (and cannot) take very long before one does have to go back to a cultural framework to make sense of the world and scaffold things. But the experience of stark discord between the neatness of reading and the rawness of experiences did strike a chord for me on that day.
    I almost tend to believe that there are two ways of looking at things, especially difficulties and challenges that I face. One is to see that there are definite principles out there, of which the phenomena are only signs. This might be similar to a Platonic view of things, seeing that the shadows are only pointing to a true essence in all things. The second way is to see that the essence is in the shadows themselves. In fact, whatever that essence happens to be is none other than the shadows. The difference is that with the second view, I am no longer separating the real from the false, or the shadows from a crystalline essence. Instead, I am seeing a kind of wholeness even in the fragile reflections of things.
    Whenever I experience some difficulties in life, I often try to find the principle that will clarify the situation for me, or at least bring it into greater relief. Most theories seem to serve as these maps which sketch out a terrain and provide select information to help me guide myself. An example might be a regular street map, which emphasizes location names, or a contour relief map, which reflects on slopes and terrains. But I am lately beginning to feel that this way of doing things or approaching problems is somehow violent: it is like trying to substitute a theory for a lived experience, which is not emerging in the same way as a theory does. Do all theories need to be so crystalline and so spelled out? Or are some theories capable of recognizing their own limitations, seeing that they co-exist among overlapping causes and conditions?
    I think that the expectation that theories can resolve life issues may be too high at times. The notion of theory-as-solution to life problems also ends up becoming prescriptive, somewhere along the line. Once someone establishes a model for identifying a problem and solving it, one then starts to solidify it into lifestyles and choices to live. It becomes an ethic. Sooner or later, people feel ashamed if a proposed theory does not work for them to solve their problems. They may feel, I am not doing this enough times or with enough regularity...not realizing the complex factors that often do make up a problem. Not only am I alienated by the problem itself, but I am also unable to follow the complicated ethics that circle around the proposed solution. That can easily make me an outcast on both accounts.
     The best way to describe the role of theory in life, is something like: it is and it is not. While theories fit certain bills, there is always an exception to that process, and minds can only approximate the kinds of idealizations imposed by the theory. I may perfectly know how to do something and even know the theoretical value of some idea (such as meditation). But without the real daily practice, the theories are not really true for me.

The Unsolvable

   I was reflecting today on the notion of how much I value 'figuring something out', and the feeling that comes from that ability to do so. When I was studying in formal school and learning how to solve math problems and computer programs, I always felt a discomfort when I failed to figure out how to solve the problem. It's a very palpable feeling that if I don't know how to figure out a problem, I must somehow go into emergency mode. I wonder how many have felt that sense of everything around them literally turning the color grey, because they were stuck trying to solve the unsolvable, or barely solvable. I have often felt this way whenever I am trying to generate a new idea or at least something tangible among a lot of intangible theories or ideas.
   It's equally difficult to know when one should stop and take a break from trying to solve a problem or come up with a viable idea for a project or a proposal. I remember reading something in one of physicist David Bohm's books, where he talked about scientists who are struggling on the cusp of a solution, only to find themselves solving the problem either through a dream or something as mundane as stepping on a bus. These examples either prove that the mind operates best when it is not clouded by thinking, or that the mind is always trying to solve a problem, even when not conscious of it. It could be a combination of both. But I wonder what happens, exactly, when the mind simply exhausts all possible solutions to a problem. Does mind continue to generate faith that the problem can be solved at some other time, or does it conclude that there is just not enough information to go by?
    I think that rather than pushing aside the feeling of not being able to solve a problem, that experience probably needs to be studied in more detail. I don't even think there is a particular name for it, to tell you the truth. The closest expression I can think of to the sensation of 'not being able to solve the problem' might be frustration. However, the latter has often been used in psychoanalytic terms to refer to specific drives that are engrained in human beings. Is there a similar 'drive' we can speak of to solve a problem, a kind of 'intellectual drive'? Maybe and maybe not. But the experience needs to be known in order to prevent people from being overwhelmed by it.
   People are always, it seems, either in the process of completing something or moving to something else, or both. When a particular problem has yet to be solved, can anyone just be in that null space, or do they need to keep going internally until the problem is solved? I think it takes a bit of shaking up to realize that the solution does not lie in me at all. It could simply be that the thought is conditioned in a certain way that there is no other thought available to seem to complete it. In those cases, the only answer available is to wait. But another way is to realize that none of our thoughts complete each other. If a thought remains without a solution, that thought is already complete; it doesn't need the completion of a solution. While that may not satisfy people looking for answers, it creates a space to allow thoughts to be complete in themselves, with no need for connection to a new thought.

Dualistic Thinking

   Many thinkers believe in 'conquering' adversity by splitting things into right and wrong, good and bad, etc. I remember reading a chapter this week from Robert Tremmel's Zen and the Practice of Teaching English where he talks about the success of using dualism to conquer difficulties. He remarks, "Even though it is fashionable in these days of 'New Age' ideas to attack Western culture for...tendencies toward dualistic thinking, the record shows that this use of mind has been a potent tool for building great civilizations and comfortable, technologically advanced democracies."  (p.73) Tremmel later offers a reason for adopting a more holistic approach in classrooms, where teachers use bare attention rather than imposing a conceptual layer into their classrooms. But his point is quite interesting. Would civilization collapse, I wonder, without 'dualism'? On the other hand, are the dualistic concepts that civilization advances not responsible for oppressive notions of merit and worth?
   I think that in a sense, dualism doesn't begin with something outside the mind, but it is part of the mind. But what normally happens, I think, is that people see the concept first, without realizing that the concept or category was created by mind in the first place. To use an example, instead of seeing that I create the category of 'dogmatic' and 'free thinking', I only see a person as 'dogmatic'. In labelling the person that way, I shut down any possibility to understand what makes me see that person behave 'dogmatically', or what makes me label them this way. Instead of probing into the way categories are created, I assume the category exists in a real world 'out there'. But actually, it only exists because of my situation in space and time, and how I connect with my thoughts. What a person sees is shaped by their way of seeing. And that way of seeing is so subtle, because the way is not reducible to an object.
     I believe that I have seen something before. A thought now reminds me of 'something else' that had arisen in the past, so I then conclude that what I see now must be the same as what I saw in the past. But are the two thoughts really connected? They connect in mind, but this doesn't mean that the thoughts have the same causes and conditions. It only means that I am looking at the thought now in light of the previous thought. I see a person and I think, "there he goes again, up to trouble!" But what I have really done is connected that person's present circumstances to what I see in the past. It never occurs to me that the two situations are different, and have different conditions giving rise to them. I only think, "ha, this person must be like this". My thinking limits me, in that sense. There is a story in Aesop's fable called "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It's an interesting story, because most people reading it (including perhaps the author) take it as a cautionary tale not ask for help when one doesn't really need help, and not to distort the truth. But could this lesson be turned around? Could it be about people who trust their previous thoughts more than the present situation, leading to the boy's eventual demise to the wolf?
   It's easy for past thoughts to become generalizations. Is the solution to replace them with new thoughts? There is a behavioral therapy out there called "Stimulus Exposure" therapy (or something like that), and it talks about exposing people to what they fear the most. According to the theorists behind this therapy, people with phobias often connect the present experience of a feared object to a past memory ingrained in mind. Through repeated, habitual exposure to 'safe' versions of this stimulus, the therapists believe that a person's fears can be cured. I do have to wonder,  though, can anyone replace a thought with another thought? This therapy optimistically assumes that one can do so. But is there another way to approach that?
   Dualistic notions tend to rest on the idea that we replace what we dislike with what we like. But if I realize that all thoughts are not 'connected' at all except through mind's activity, I am no longer motivated to replace one thought with another. They then become just thoughts, with no permanent, enduring reality. From this view, I don't need to 'fight' one thought with another, and so the notion of dual sides to things might start to fade away a bit.

Tremmel , Robert (1999), Zen and the Art of Teaching English. Boynton-Cook. Heinemann

Even Pain is a Method

I was experiencing quite a lot during the meditation retreat today. There are times when using the method of practice (in this case huatou, or asking a question) is refreshing, while other periods involve this kind of dryness that's hard to explain. It is as though all the juice has been squeezed out of the lemon, and I don't seem to experience any doubt sensation. In fact, I often experience a sense that the juice is running out of the huatou. But it's in those moments that I need to fully be in that experience itself--to just be and to use that experience to pose a question on where it originates.
   I often have difficulty telling whether the pain or the 'dry spell' is more difficult to bear in the meditation practice. I think that even the 'dryness' one experiences has a source in mind, and one only need keep pointing to the source.  Sometimes even when I fix upon a solution to pain or dryness such as through a compelling visualization, I later realize that the 'fix' is not genuine. For one, it doesn't last that long (at least not the benefits, anyway), and secondly, it's not what one is looking for anyway. There is a wonderful parable in The Lotus Sutra which describes this temporary 'halfway  point' between towns where a person goes to take a rest from their travels. If one stays in that town, one loses sight of the destination to which they are meant to go. In the same way, it's very easy to see how empty are the half-way measures in meditation. One needs to really keep trying to get directly to the source of mind, even if it ends up being a failed attempt. I think the more I attend the intermediate retreats, the more I see that there is no substitute for the real pointing to mind. There is something interesting here, because what one perceives as success in one moment may end up being off the mark the next..and vice versa. That is why it's so important to let go of measuring the results of meditative practice.
    I have always been assailed by pain in meditation, especially toward the last few periods of sitting at the end of the day. Recently, I came across a passage in the Surangama Sutra which talks about a bodhisattva, Pilindavatsa, who uses awareness of pain to attain enlightenment. It reads:

     I heard the Thus-Come One say many times that nothing in this world can bring true joy. One day,  as I was reflecting upon this teaching during my alms round in the city, I failed to notice a poisonous thorn lying in the road. I stepped on it, and pain suffused my entire body. I reflected on the sensation: I was aware of a deep pain, but I was also aware of my awareness of the pain, and I realized that in this pure mind there is neither pain nor awareness of pain. I had this further thought: how can it be that one body has two awarenesses? I held fast to this thought, and before long my body and mind became empty. (p.214)

I love this example for several reasons. First, it talks about this attitude that 'nothing in this world can bring true joy". I think that one of the driving forces of meditation is the ability to experience unconditioned joy, as opposed to the conditioned pleasures of the world. Pilindavatsa is apparently intent in contemplating this point as he was making his alms rounds, when he suddenly steps on a poisonous thorn. Not only does Pilindavatsa feel the pain but he also senses his awareness, which seems to divide him into two parts. Pilindavatsa has this insight that although there is a pain sensation, the sensation and its awareness are empty and interdependent. I am thinking of the example: if I use an anesthetic before stepping on a thorn, will the pain come to awareness? In these cases, my sensory awareness and the pain are temporarily arising in mind, but they lack a permanent substance, and they depend on so many interlocking factors. Through contemplation, Pilindatavatsa lessens his attachment to pain and is helped to know that the pain is not a permanent situation in mind.
    In daily life today, can one use pain as a basis for purifying the mind or becoming enlightened? I believe that pain itself is a gateway to deeper contemplation, for which one can even be thankful. For myself, I find that contemplating the 'non-self' of pain is perhaps the best and most direct method for addressing pain. If one contemplates that the sensation of pain does not have an attached sense of self, who then feels pain? When doing this practice, I was able to see that pain is not so 'painful' when there isn't this self acting to try to control the pain or exaggerate pain as having awareness in itself. I think this contemplation of pain as an aggregate of sensation would help lessen self-attachment and help me realize that pain is just a phenomena like any other. Attaching 'me' to the pain only aggravates and centralizes its claim on my awareness, which then leads to further attachment.  Asking the question "who is experiencing the pain" also seems to work in situations where one experiences pain in meditation.

Surangama Sutra: A New Translation (2009) . Buddhist Text Translation Society

Gratitude as an Inner Quality

   The Buddhist study group met tonight and dissolved again into the cold air. I felt all the tensions or worries  of the day dissolving into a sense of gratitude. What is this feeling of gratitude? I think I would like to explore the meaning of the 'felt' sense of gratitude, since all too often I tend to think of gratitude in terms of external things (such as being grateful for work or for a non-violent existence).
    I don't think being grateful means that one only focus on positive aspects of life. The gratitude I felt tonight was more a sense of equanimity. I somehow felt that each comment the participants made was a rare gift, like a sparkling jewel. But the mental attitude I adopted in that space of listening is not to reject and not to seek anything from what is being said. Everything, as even the Buddha had taught, is a kind of experiment of sorts. "Try for yourself", and see what works for you, put down what doesn't, and explore for other connections when it does work. One doesn't stop learning this way, and over time, even the strong vexations can be seen in the same light as contributing to a loosening of self-attachment.
    The other aspect of gratitude is to feel supported in a genuine way.  I mentioned earlier this idea of being one's own best friend, or at least conceiving the possibility to nurture oneself in this way. I think this is very hard to do. It's easy to get into the habit of being the worst on oneself, in the interest of training mind to bear every kind of suffering 'out there'. Gratitude allows a person to see that there are real friends in one's life, including one's own awareness, who are going to be there and respect one's being, no matter what. Even if this position is not available, one can still find a  way to generate that inner compassion in a  balanced and sincere way. This again seems important; not easy to do, but important to balance and harmonize.
   By reflecting on the things that have gone somehow well or what one has learned, one can see that not everything is terrible. Sometimes things can seem terrible if deep inside, one does not have this basic sense of self-love: the idea that I will not allow the misfortunes of life to affect the sense of my true nature, my true being. One needs to practice speaking more softly, thinking more softly, and even writing more softly (!) to get to this sense that things are well overall. But balance is most important.
   I also think that gratitude is a choice, a kind of commitment one makes to see things as genuinely supportive.  For  the most part, people live in a very competitive time, particularly in industrialized communities where the emphasis is  economic growth. It's very easy to start to see oneself as replaceable, like a cog in a wheel. Gratitude allows me to re-person myself. I start to think, for example, on the people who have been one's teachers, or lovers, or people who might have shared some feeling that impacted us. Here too is a kind of gratitude: the sense that one has never been alone in their journey.
   A final way of feeling gratitude is to know that this writing is mind-to-mind, and nothing more. It is to know that the words leave an impression in mind but don't leave any trace on the screen as they are typed. This is a more subtle kind of gratitude, but perhaps I can sum it up as the natural gratitude of knowing that all is  of the mind, and there is no need to reach outward to be in the home of one's mind in every moment.
    

What's In a Name?

      In Chan Buddhism, people sometimes talk about there not being any distinction between 'you', 'I' and 'they'. Master Sheng Yen refers to "you", "I" and "they" as terms of reference that arise when people have "attachments, discriminations and vexations" (2014, p.227). I think that in daily life, people are bound to use labels to describe themselves and others, even if it is just a simple pronoun. There is no getting around that, especially where we need to refer to each other as names or delegate specific responsibilities. How could one assign appropriate tasks and roles to people if they don't differentiate between qualities or characteristics of one person or another? The convention of naming has a value, somewhat, as long as we don't cling to that value we temporarily assign.
   In a conversation I had today with a participant in meditation, we described how the anxiety of having a role at work can sometimes lead to clinging to something fixed and unchanging such as a job title. We both reflected that having this static job title is almost like a social 'self'. It provides a sense of security and order in a stressful work situation that is often unpredictable. Though I may have a great sense of camaraderie with co-workers in an office, having no responsibilities assigned to me can be a daunting, chaotic experience. I knew a colleague who once described the feeling of being given a management position where there was simply no structure to speak of: no other duties assigned, no supporting roles, and no 'scaffolding' to tell her the role expected of her. No doubt, this person felt stressed in her new position. Eventually, she ended up going back to a previous position which was much more routine and familiar, even though it lacked the 'status' of a managerial position.
     I don't think that Buddhism is saying one should give up all labels, titles, or designations. To do so would be to risk going to a state of childhood, in a way. While this state may be useful in pursuing artistic forms, I have to wonder what life would be like without the sense of naming. I think the clue is that Chan always operates in the lived practical world. For example, we can have titles, roles and responsibilities, yet still know that these 'names' we give ourselves (or others) are always subject to change. The job title through which I entered an organization is even bound to change as technologies and capabilities change, as well as requirements. It would be incorrect if I tried to compare my present job requirements with that  of ten or fifteen years previously. But all these labels are happening in mind. I think it's notable that even the impression I have about a certain job title will be quite different from someone else's. All we can ever do is approximate the reality to which a name or title refers, because each person has different associations and impressions arising from that name.
    On the other hand, if I become too attached to names, what happens then? What I imagine is the anxiety of trying to cling to forms that are always changing. As the practitioner had put it tonight, it's a little bit like trying very hard to find that small thread of something that is going to last. Ordinary people like myself need those reassurances that there is something there to say that I exist: a name card, a reflection of myself in some form of contact or conversation.. But through practice, one can learn not to lean on titles for comfort, but to widen one's tolerance for discomfort when roles and names shift over time.

Sheng Yen (2014), Chan and Enlightenment. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing
   

the concept of 'fit'

   In the process of exploring the city, I learned a lot about the nature of the fitness business. It seems that the bigger the gyms are, the more compelling it is for the employees to give the customers the very best of  their time and attention. On the other hand, smaller gyms tend to be less 'hands on' and more inclined to leave people to learn on their own, either through a website or a brochure.
    No matter what the situation is, cause and conditions prevail. With more income comes a greater demand for any business to expand to accommodate new customers. That's certainly when the nature of the business changes into something more 'corporate'. I do wonder whether it's always necessarily good to go 'big'. It seems that there is room for everyone in this kind of business. While some customers prefer a quieter place to do their own exercise, others prefer the attention of a trainer. I think that there needs to be room for both the smaller/mid sized gyms and the larger gyms, just as there need to be room to accommodate different bodies and individuals.
       One of the themes that Aldous Huxley explores in his chapter on "Religion and Temperament" in The Perennial Philosophy is this idea that one size does not 'fit all' in spiritual practices. One example he uses is the parable of Martha and Mary in the New Testament. While Martha embodies salvation through work, Mary embodies salvation through contemplative practice. While interpretations of the Bible tend to suggest that Mary's way is favored over Martha's, Huxley points out that there isn't a single 'right way', and it really depends on the person and her needs. Huxley also advocates a sense of balance when it comes to one or more temperaments predominating in a religious movement. Hence he remarks, "In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religions." (p.155). Now, it isn't clear what the ultimate end of all religions is, but I think that Huxley's point is that it is ideal to strike a balance between different ways of seeing and relating to the world, as a corrective to extremes. This is also something I learned regarding the Middle Path.
     The concept of "fit" gets problematized, when one considers how quickly things change. One may say that she or he has a specific body type, but that is bound to change over time. Someone may say they are not familiar with a certain language  or way of being, but then further interaction with it will change our own view of those things. In other words, there is nothing that stays the same in the course of learning from others or being in new environments.
    Many of the ideas of 'fitness' that Huxley explores in his book seem quite dated, even though they were fashionable ideas at the time he was writing. One such idea is that body type is a precursor to personality (the 'endomorph', 'somatomorph', 'ectomorph' theory). I don't hear too much of this theory nowadays. I doubt that there can be any model to summarize why people are as they are. Like any theory about 'fitness', categorizing bodies into types of being or personality has a potential to stereotype and to discriminate. At best, these kinds of typologies might attune people to diversity of ways of being.

Huxley, Aldous (1990), Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper Collins

Being One's Own Best Friend

     Occasionally, I find an article that has such a beautiful sense of presence, which I want to share with others. This one article I  found in a book called Spirited Practices: Spirituality and the Helping Professions is by a man named Giles Barton, and the article is called "Buddhism, mental illness and loss" (pp.92-99). Barton's article focuses on the Buddhist principles he has found helpful in alleviating the suffering of depressed and suicidal youths with whom he has worked. 
     This particular article stands out from all the rest because I felt calm when reading it. From the start, this article shows a kind and loving presence, when it begins: "Open the door of your heart and soften to whatever is in the present moment, with acceptance rather than blame, anger or criticism; let go of trying to change or escape the circumstances, Theravadin  monk and meditation teacher Ajahn Brahm encourages. From this point the confusion of our minds and the overwhelming emotions that arise can begin to be understood and calmed." (p.92) Here, it turns out that Barton is paraphrasing Ajahn Brahm, but the way he paraphrases it is compelling nonetheless. And as I was reading this section, I wondered, what is the real heart of this acceptance that Giles Barton talks about?
   I think a clue to this question is to look at what Barton is saying in this text. He exhorts readers to open the door of their hearts and soften to what is in the present moment. This point, however, is not the same as being resigned to the moment, or steeling one's will to the moment either. People who suffer from depression or sadness often say they ''accept" things, but their emotional state deteriorates at that point. The reason is that their kind of 'acceptance' is a resigned one, almost as though one is up against a wall and forced to accept what is happening to them.  So what would 'acceptance' mean? Softening and 'opening up the heart' evoke something quite different from resignation. I think it's important to distinguish 'soft' from 'resigned' acceptance, lest the Buddhist teaching of acceptance become a form of suppressing one's emotions and soft spots.
     From my understanding of Barton's article,  I think 'soft acceptance' means creating a space where one can simply be with whoever one is, in whatever circumstances one is in at the moment. This means leaving room to allow things to be as they are. As Barton remarks, "In meditation removing the arrow of mental suffering is achieved by being open and accepting what you find as you sit to meditate, not by finding fault with the situation and wishing for something better to come along." (p.94) It also entails loosening the sense of self so that one is not blaming her or himself for illnesses or other personal issues that are often beyond a person's control.
     In order to clarify what 'opening the door to the heart' means, Barton remarks: "When trying to help young people understand, I ask them what they would do if someone were talking to their best friend in a harsh way. To follow this up, I ask what stops them from being their own best friend, since they need someone on their side if no one else is around." (p.98). I think this is the key point in the article, and it's what distinguishes soft from 'resigned' acceptance. Without a good relationship to oneself, it becomes quite difficult to avoid self-criticism, much less buffer against the difficulties of emotional hardship or pain.
       As I read this article, I reflected on how difficult it must be for many people to experience the total acceptance that might come from meditative practice. I think the reason is that what we try to accept is often a 'reality' loaded with internal scripts, many of which say that we are not good enough to survive in the world, or not 'this' enough, or 'that' enough. Much of it is rooted in this tendency to separate 'me' as 'my body', rather than seeing the totality of all things as part of mind. Many if not all these 'inner scripts' are just thoughts or impressions, yet they can be powerful enough to seem incredibly real. Accepting these unconscious scripts is not the same as the kind of acceptance that Barton is describing. A best friend can come close to offering that acceptance, because best friends are often not hampered by the internal scripts inside one's memory. But if one has these internal scripts, it certainly colors what they see, to the point where 'just accepting things as they are' can mean accepting the terrible self-judgments that one has. For this reason, Barton's skilful means of asking his young clients to imagine themselves in the eyes of a best friend, can be a very effective one...and worth implementing if one is caught up in challenging self-views.

Barton, Giles (2007), "Buddhism, Mental Illness and Loss". In Spirited Practices: Spirituality and the Helping Professions. (Ed Gale, F., Bolzan, N., McRae-McMahon, D.) Crows Nest: Allen Unwin.

    

Power and Spiritual Life

In Perennial Philosophy, Huxley elaborates on the view that power is a kind of expansive craving. He remarks, "Craving for power is not a vice of the body, consequently knows none of the limitations imposed by a tired or satiated physiology upon gluttony, intemperance and lust. Growing with every successive satisfaction, the appetite for power can manifest itself indefinitely without interruption by bodily fatigue or sickness." (p.121).

Huxley's point is to suggest that, unlike with other desires, there is simply no 'curbing' of power through satiation. The more one seeks power and gains it, the more one wants to expand her or his power indefinitely. Huxley, maintains, "the nature of society is such that the higher a man [sic] climbs in the political, economic or religious hierarchy, the greater are his opportunities or resources for exercising power." (ibid) I suppose this principle does not just apply to rulers, but it applies to anyone who is forever seeking something more--such as another degree, another house, or another car. Huxley suggests that as people get older, their opportunities to expand power can only increase, which means more craving for power. Huxley is so pessimistic about the ability for power to be curbed or tamed that he goes on to remark, "No infallible method for controlling the political manifestations of the lust for power has ever been devised." (p.122) Only through a "divided" (or perhaps representative) government can power be kept in check.

Seeing that power can be an indefinite self-aggrandizing vehicle, is there a place in power for spirituality? In other words, does all power have to be corrupt, or could there potentially be spiritual forms of being powerful?

I think the question ends up becoming, for me: can a person be powerful in society without succumbing to the illusion of ego? I think the answer is yes: power can come precisely from lack of ego and even virtue. I think the idea is that truly powerful people are not seeking power for its own sake. For example, if someone is really using a principle of non-self attachment in their daily life, they will gain power of support from others in their endeavors, because they naturally harmonize with other minds.  People will naturally find ways to benefit each other when their talents are being recognized and they are not trying to compete with each other to gain a single 'spotlight'.

If, on the other hand, power is pursued for its own sake, it ends up never being satisfied. I think it's because power is a result of actions, not an actual tool or a means. If I am doing things that support other beings or lead other beings to work better together, then power becomes a result of that specific endeavor aimed at harmony or peace. As some Taoist philosophers suggest, people simply work better when they are being governed according to their natural abilities and capacities to harmonize together. But if I then take that same principle and tell myself, "I can have the most power out of everyone", then I am taking a result and making it the means: I take 'my' power to be the means to conquer or influence others. In fact, however, it's the other way around, isn't it? My "power", far from being the tool to influence others, is the result of others' acknowledgement of my efforts on their behalf. In that sense, whatever power I have is always the result of others' support. It's never entirely my effort that sustains power. For this reason, the effort to 'be' powerful is a never ending one, because it is always relying on the continuous support of others, be it stakeholders or voters or party members, etc.

My point here is to suggest that perhaps power was never meant to be 'gained' in the first place, because it is only the result of small causes and consequences emerging in the moment, across many hands. I have even heard the argument that power is only temporarily lent to people to fulfill certain social obligations. Yet, a lot of belief systems tend to reinforce the illusion that power is something to be gained and kept. People who accumulate educational degrees to 'add to the resume' are under the belief that more of something can give them more ability to influence job interviewers on their next job. No sooner does this become widespread that new educational degrees are invented to satiate the need for more powerful roles or echelons. I think the only way to curb this craving is to see, again, that the degree itself is only powerful because a few people say it is so. And it is always up  to the person whether that degree will accord with people's lives and benefit other, or whether it's a kind of credential that doesn't add much more to the person.

Huxley, Aldous (1945, 1990), The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West. New York: Harper.

View of No Vexations

      In Chan and Enlightenment, Master Sheng Yen remarks, "Practitioners need not fear having vexations, wandering thoughts, or erroneous thoughts. With our self as the center that takes control, when we become aware of erroneous thoughts, the erroneous thoughts do not exist anymore" (p.233). As I am reading this passage, I am wondering, what is it about awareness that has this power to extinguish erroneous thoughts? I think I have a clue about this in the later sentence, "Vexations definitely have their objects, which are either 'you' or 'them'. No matter whether the 'you' and 'them' are things or people, if there are no 'you' or 'them', it is impossible for us to have vexations."
    Normally, when there is a thought that is upsetting me, I can get easily drawn into its power. At that point, I lose my sense of the real origin of that thought, assuming that the thought is an object with a life of its own. At that point, I try to find ways to defend myself against the invading thought. I think what Master Sheng Yen is saying here is that all of it is mind, and therefore we can almost say that all of it is 'mine'. Knowing this, it would not serve me to try to fight the thought. In this sense, if I know that the thought is just part of awareness and not a separate object, then it's impossible for those vexations to exist.
  I think that getting to the point of 'impossible to have no vexations'  takes practice. It takes an awareness of thoughts arising, rather than focusing only on the content of thoughts. But without that awareness, all I am doing is trying to replace one thought with another, which can be an endless task. As soon as a thought appears in awareness, it's the tail end of the thought. But I am in so much of a habit of trying to replace 'thoughts I dislike' with 'thoughts I like'. This is what one does when she or he daydreams, or wanders off into the events of the day, or projects into the future. And it looks as though I make progress through this approach, only to find that the 'objects' of vexations return again.
   To use a simple example, a depressed person often has the thought, "I am not loveable or likeable", and that person uses the thought to judge her or himself. In psychology books, we find that one useful technique is to replace the thought "I am not loveable" to "I am loveable". The depressed person then disputes the negative thinking with the positive statements, with evidence that she or he is loveable. She or he takes one bad thought and replaces it with ten  good ones.Over time, it is hoped that the feelings of not being loveable will be replaced with other thoughts.
   These psychological ways of changing one's outlook have been known to work with people by creating new habits of thought. But one potential drawback with this approach is that all thoughts are impermanent. What works for me today may not apply tomorrow, when I am faced with other situations. Another is that thoughts don't really 'act on' other thoughts. The idea that thoughts connect together is a kind of illusion, similar to taking a flame and swinging it in a circle to create a ring. I may think I am acting on a thought to change it, but that in itself  is a new thought.
   A more direct approach might be to suggest that all thoughts are coming from the same source. Whether I have the thought, "I am unlovable" or "I am great", they are ultimately only thoughts. They don't really connect with who one is deep inside, and they don't make conclusions which capture true nature of mind. In fact, mind is neither unlovable nor great. Mind is the essence of thought but cannot be defined by the content of thoughts.
     I think it's useful to investigate: can anyone ever 'live' in a thought, the way a snail lives in a shell? I think it's worth it to try this way: try to have one thought for an entire half hour, and see what happens? Is it the same thought I have for that entire  half hour? Is it a new thought?  But in order to investigate this question, one cannot 'use' thinking to do so. One must create a space that is beyond thinking, which is why one needs to sit with the question and relax with it, rather than using another thought to answer it.

Spaces for Wholeness

            Wendy Cadge's book Paging God; Religion in the Halls of Medicine (2012) beautifully explores the notion of the chaplaincy in hospitals, and how it has changed over time in North American hospitals, both in meaning and in appearance. I have been learning quite a few interesting points from this book. For one, I never realized prior to reading this book how much hospitals in North America have historically been tied to religious spaces, such as the Christian church. In fact, hospitals originally arose from hospices, places where pastoral care was a frequent driving force for healing both the physical body and the spirit. Only recently have hospitals become more focused on healing the physical body through science, as opposed to the more holistic goal of healing the whole person. 
         It has only been recently, it seems, that chaplaincy has become an established discipline in its own right, with the growing pressures to validate or certify all health-care professionals . Cadge also chronicles an accompanying urge to neutralize chaplain spaces so that no one is excluded from spiritual practices in hospitals. For example, she notes how chaplaincy spaces in hospitals are often stripped of any religious symbols or furnishings, so that people of all denominations can feel welcome. Where possible, pulpits and other furnishing in traditional churches are equipped with wheels,  so that spaces can make way for other denominations. It is difficult to say whether perhaps too much neutrality can end up diminishing the spiritual capabilities of a space. For example, Cadge reports  chaplaincy places in hospitals where hardly anyone attends, because the spaces are so bare, save for the occasional abstract painting or gurgling fountain (p.67). It seems that without overt spiritual or religious symbolism, people may be at a loss as to how to use public spaces for personal spiritual practice, such as meditation or prayer.
    Cadge's observations are perhaps not surprising, considering a long-standing debate over the value of imagery and iconography in spiritual practice. Some spiritual practices heavily rely on images as pointers or symbols that help guide practitioners to an insight into themselves or their nature. Others feel that all spirituality is completely internal, and it is not valuable for practitioners to rely too heavily on  external images for support. Negotiating what belongs or does not belong in a place of meditation or worship might involve a tug of war between conflicting views of what spiritual spaces should be able to furnish for people.
    As I read Cadge's book, I become more aware of how problematic geographically locating spiritual practice can be. Where are spaces of spiritual learning and wholeness, exactly, and can anyone really leave a particular space to naturally furnish that for people?  What happens when people look to a particular space to provide them with spiritual inspiration, be it in the form of a quiet meditation room, or a prayer hall, or the like? My feeling is that it's hard for a space to speak to people's spiritual needs unless it points to something that teaches, guides, or informs the person in some way. It is also hard for a space to 'become' spiritually inviting unless there are communities of practitioners actively and regularly using that space. For example, simply attending a quite space is not going to automatically make a person want to meditate, even those who have a prior background of meditation experience. Even something that is presented as 'neutral' or non-intrusive can end up becoming an obstacle to practice, simply because it does not invite practice to arise. It gets overlooked, unless some group of practitioners can see the image's potential to point to a contemplative experience.
     The interesting point I also found in Cadge's work is: I cannot help but feel that the natural imagery and 'abstract art' found in some chaplaincy spaces in hospitals owes something to a similar "Zen" aesthetic found in certain paintings or poems. But I think the main difference is that whereas those traditional Zen arts are trying to point to mind, I am not sure if the natural or abstract images found in hospital meditation rooms are accomplishing the same thing. It's tempting to say that any form of art or scenery that is 'minimal' can encourage a place for contemplative or reflective practice. On the other hand, neutrality often has a way of being overlooked or habituated, especially if people haven't yet caught inspiration to practice meditation or contemplative practices. So I think that a further study is warranted into what spiritual space in hospitals really do for people, and how they are experienced by different kinds of practitioners.


Cadge, Wendy, (2012), Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Huxley and the Meaning of Charity

Every now and then, I come across a book that attempts to 'say it all' about what makes life meaningful. Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy is one such a book. I have to say that Huxley's understanding of human beings and his humaneness shows throughout this book. And I am humbled when reading it, because there are many instances where I am seeing a tall mountain in his writings and saying, "wow, that's quite a high place to scale! I have a long way to go!"  Good writers perhaps give us a glimpse of this mountain. I think the trick is not to make readers feel terrible about their position in relation to that mountain but, more so, to inspire them in the process of contemplating and engaging the mountain itself.

Huxley has a chapter on "Charity" where he talks about a kind of ideal love that is not blemished by desires or  lusts. He cites different spiritual texts and religious viewpoints to show a kind of current that runs throughout religious writings. I want to share the following quote:

 "We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love.  Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge become unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility." (p.81).

Already, my brain starts to crackle as I am reading these lines. Can love be a 'mode of knowledge'? How does that work? The dominant paradigm in scientific circles, at least, is to see knowledge as something detached from love. But then, as I read these sentences, I reflect: is it not the case that we only know deeply what we are capable of loving deeply? If my experience of something is only cursory and lacks the passion of involvement, can I really say I 'know it' well? To know is to spend time with something, at least on a regular basis. For example, there is a qualitatively vast difference between reading about a cat or dog in an anatomy textbook, and sitting down with a cat or a dog to interact. In this regard, I can even think of a regular meditative practice as a form of love. It is committed,  it is repetitive (to a certain extent), and it involves revisiting the same situation with new eyes each time. And this kind of involvement is a simple curiosity which might start with something small and stay with smallness. Seeing the universe in a drop of rain might be one example of what kind of knowing the love of simple things might yield if one waits for it to happen.

But Huxley doesn't just stop here. He refers to the idea that "when love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge". It's interesting for me to see the words 'disinterested' and 'intense' in the same sentence. Can love be both disinterested and intense a the same time? In order to understand Huxley's view, we have to read further to see what isn't love, in Huxley's eyes. Huxley remarks, "Where there is no disinterested love (or, more briefly, no charity), there is only biased self-love, and consequently only a partial and distorted knowledge both of the self and of the world of things, lives, minds and spirit outside the self." (p.81). So, Huxley is saying that disinterestedness is the hallmark of love. It is not about 'not having passion', but it is more about being passionate without a bias or a sense of "I" am loving something. Huxley suggests that our normal ways of looking at love as 'desire' is often a distortion of things around us, because it refers back to the lusts of the self. Rather than seeing things the way they are, the "lust-dieted man", as Huxley puts it, "subordinates the laws of Nature and the spirit to his own cravings" (ibid).

Does Huxley mean that true love has  no 'object' and no  'subject', no 'lover' and no 'loved'? Huxley uses the term 'love knowledge' (p.82) to describe a  kind of pure love of God or all creation which is not tainted by attachment to 'my likes' or particular others. As difficult as it may seem to grasp that this love without attachment is possible, Huxley sticks to this vision through and through. He insists that the only way to true love of the divine or all reality is through a kind of self-emptying, which he describes through various quotes from spiritual teachers (p.86-89). To love is to completely accept things as they are unfolding, things as they are created, and things as they are in their revealing to us. This contrasts with trying to grasp particular qualities in order to hold onto special 'sweet' experiences, including what Huxley calls "the sweetness of God" (p.86).

I think that a lot of what Huxley says in these brief passages can relate to meditation. Regardless of what tradition it comes from, most meditative practices stress the relaxation of the mind, to a point where all the objects of the mind are not seen apart from mind itself. The 'edges' around subject and object start to smooth over, as a meditator stops attaching to coarse thoughts about liking one or disliking another. What results is a kind of lightness of being. I can't say that this lightness of being is anything like traditional notions of 'love' that I internalized while growing up. It certainly  isn't a very stereotypical love that tries to get attention or something from someone. It's rather an open curiosity which treats all things  on an equal par.

One of the dangers of reading Huxley without that first-hand experience of lightness is that it tends to look as though Huxley is advocating a 'resigned' attitude, or even a 'do-gooder' attitude toward charity. His chapter on "mortification" (p.96) attests to this possibility: I need to somehow 'give up' desire altogether in order to embrace 'true love', much the same way that I should eat broccoli instead of chocolate. People give lip service to this idea, without really knowing where they can access its power.

From my own experiences (however shallow) in meditation, I can say that this resignation is not quite what meditation is like. With meditation, one is not trying to even get rid of lusts or desires. Slowly, one is observing that lusts are phenomena of mind, and not these kind of solid, concrete 'givens' of the body. The letting go experience, however, is not at all a kind of 'willful parting' of desires. In fact, it is a kind of letting go of grasping to any ideas whatsoever, including ideas on what love is supposed to be. For example, if I cling to the notion that love should be charitable and not self-interested, all I am doing is adding one thought to another, and creating a conflict between these two thoughts: one that 'desires', the other that says, "desires are bad". This inner conflict creates the illusion that real love will win over desires. But does this happen? It hardly does, because one is relying on will-power to credit one thought over another. In fact, people will need to continue to use will-power to make it seem that one thought is 'better' than the other, when all thoughts are only conditioned and temporary experiences arising in mind.

I believe that Huxley's analysis and definition of true love is correct, but I don't think that one needs to view it as opposite to 'lusts'. Lusts are also part of the mind that can be enjoyed without being indulged. If I observe the sensation of lust, but don't see that there is a 'me' having lust, I can actually just observe it passing through without a 'me' being compelled to act on it. This is hard to realize, but acting on lust is always assuming that there is a solid 'me' that has to act on it or control the situation. But if I view the lust as one part of an unfolding, total environment, does it ever need to be acted upon? In this way, all experienced can be completely accepted without the need to react to one or the other.

Of course, in the end, Huxley's conclusions mesh with my own conclusions, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that love and lust are opposites. Love and lust just exist on very different wavelengths. And it is possible for love to encompass all emotional states without attaching to them.

Huxley, Aldous (1945, 1990), The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West. New York: Harper.