Inner Abundance

 During meditation tonight, I had a sense of a calm space around the various thoughts flooding my mind.. I could see how harmful it can be for unresolved tension and worry to stay with me. It is like the motor through which a constant buzz of thoughts come up non-stop, bombarding consciousness. It took quite some time and determination before the mind could settle somewhat, and there wasn't this sticky attachment to the thoughts and their outcomes.
    With all the possible thoughts that come up to mind, why does my consciousness only seem to register a handful of them?  It's likely because there is too much attachment to one or two thoughts. It is almost like a looping bird sound in a meadow. I enjoy or become fixated on the sound of the bird so much that I lose sight of the details; the other thoughts and experiences I am capable of having.  It is s a pity, and it makes me realize how important it is to try to maintain calm awareness all the time, so that I don't miss out on the limitless possibilities of the mind. There are so many possible thoughts, but attaching to the ones that appeal to me the most only constricts my consciousness and personality, to the point of losing attention to the totality of the moment.
     To use an example: as soon as someone switches on her or his internet, a flood of images and news stories flashes on the screen. Some of the news is significant, while other pieces of news are trivia. Even before I can decide which is important for me to know and what isn't, I find myself hooked on the buzz-lines, even curious to know what is happening there. This kind of attachment to particular stories restricts my view, and doesn't allow me to see the many ideas that are possible. I might even venture to say that this attachment immobilizes me in some way, and prevents wholehearted engagement. I have to let go of the desire to know these things to be fully present with what I need to do on the computer. That means foregoing the temptation to keep checking the internet for interesting stories.
   Perhaps more importantly, the true 'inner abundance' is not about having a large number of different thoughts. It is about appreciating a mind that can have endless possibilities. Witnessing the many thoughts as they emerge feels richer somehow.. It is as though the mind has a much wider pasture than I had imagined when I confined myself to attachments. I think the ironic part of this is that the less I crave, the more I recognize what I already have. Reducing craving for certain thoughts frees me to have endless thoughts, yet not be attached to any of them. This creates a sense of greater inner abundance.

Joanna Macy's "Greening" of Self

Joanna Macy talks about the "Greening of The Self" in a chapter in Engaged Buddhist Reader, where she describes how the sense of a bounded, separate self has been eroded in recent times by ecological awareness. With the sense of crisis that we are facing with the natural environment, there is a corresponding sense that people are not separate beings in the universe. They are deeply interconnected with the natural world, particularly in the sense that there is a continual feedback loop happening between what humans do and how the environment responds. One of my favorite quotes from Macy's essay reads:

Many have felt the imperative to extend self-interest to embrace the whole. What is notable in our situation is that this extension of identity can come not through an effort to be noble or good or altruistic, but simply to be present and own our own pain. And that is why this shift in the sense of self is credible to people. (p.175)

I think Macy's idea is quite fascinating, because it parallels a shift in how I have felt about meditative practice. While I started meditating with the thought that I am doing it to develop specific 'virtues' I wanted to have for myself, I have recently found it more valuable to see meditation as a process of looking into or owning deep or twisted knots of pain. The tree imagery here is not accidental, because like a tree, pain is organically connected to the unique history of a self living in a complex world. Roots don't grow straight up: they need to meet the rocks and soil as they arise, as well as plenty of other hard or bumpy surfaces that make growth more circuitous.

It is also equally interesting to reflect on how an experience of pain can bring a person closer to something that is genuinely shared between more than one being. Pain is rarely experienced in isolation from others. For example, there is always a source of pain somewhere, and it can reverberate over many people. If parents experience the heaviness or frustration of raising children, children will also experience a parallel pain. Pain can be contagious: even though only I can experience the pain of losing someone or being in a dire state of health, that same pain emotionally impacts others.

Macy's emphasis on pain is not accidental, because she is taking a quite direct and visceral sensation as a basis for seeing the true nature of interconnection. Whereas focusing on 'being noble, good or altruistic' is often based on a supposedly measurable notion of how one should be, it is rarely something that can be share d outside of the abstract concept of striving to be good. I find it interesting that these 'virtues' are less contagious than pain, because they often give rise to a corresponding sense of alienation. If someone around me is on her or his best behavior, I often have difficulty relating to it, unless I can find a similar motivation in myself at that moment. While pain is much more direct and easier to feel, 'virtuous behavior' is harder to feel or even to share among people. I wonder if this is why people sometimes feel resentful when they are with people who are always striving to display moral virtues. Is it a jealous feeling, or is it simply the sense of disconnection: of admiring something from a distance, but not knowing how to experience the emotional motivations of that state of being?

Macy's emphasis on being present and 'owning our own pain', creates an interesting shift in how people "do" ethics. While traditional ethics tends to focus on developing qualities through one's own initiative or will power, perhaps a more ecological ethics uses emotional awareness as a starting point for how to engage the world in a caring way. The more I can accept my own pain, the less need I have to push away the sources of pain or to isolate a self from pain. The knife that cuts me is no longer 'the enemy', but it becomes a part of my experience of totality, not to be rejected. With this 'ethic', there could potentially be a move away from clear delineations between people based on preconceived views, and more a shift toward the sense that things are intimately connected and equally in need of care and tenderness.

Macy, Joanna (1996), "The Greening of the Self". In Engaged Buddhist Reader: Ten Years of Engaged Buddhist Publishing. Berkeley, California: Parallax Press.

Listening to Fear

   Being someone who is often prone to anxiety, I have found that there  is no easy way to deal with fear, especially when faced with some new  development or dealing with the unknown. But what I have found is that fear has the double element of contracting one's vision and expanding it at the same time. Why this paradox? On the one hand, fears can get a person into survival  mode, especially if the fear is related to such areas as money, where one is to live, basic amenities, and employment. In this way, fear of  losing these things or not knowing where to acquire them can be quite narrowing and constricting.
     On the other hand, there are many situations where these kinds of fears can really bring a person to a vivid experience of life. I have observed, for example, that fearing the unknown can help me see what is most important in my life. I am reminded of how the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre had described how he never felt more alive than when fighting the French resistance in wartime, because it took him to the closeness of life and death. Sartre's example is quite extreme, but he is describing how brushing up against something urgent can bring one's attention down to earth. I think these situations have a way of naturally prioritizing one's life situation. Suddenly,those small or petty worries start to fade or at least seem not so important as they were before, when faced with a decision that relates to the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, that sort of thing.
     I sometimes wonder how contemplative practices (such as meditation or mindfulness) can help a person separate needs from wants, in the same way that major life crises can. One does not want to suffer the stresses related to basic survival on a daily basis, but at the same time, it is useful to know what is truly needed. I have found that the practice of listening to my fears with a wide attention helps in this way. When I am softly attentive to what is making me fearful or insecure, I slowly become aware  of the things I need to do in the situation.. The situation itself becomes my teacher of sorts, as my awareness pans out to explore what kinds of steps I need to take to rectify the situation or make it better. Rather than interpreting the fear itself as an unwanted intruder into my comfort, I begin to softly but firmly inquire: what is this fear trying to tell  me? How can I best heed the fear, rather than seeing it as only a sign  that 'something is terribly wrong'? Rather than seeing the fear as a herald of something terrible or a burden in itself, I can befriend the fear by gently abiding in it for a while.
    Another attitude I find helpful is to try to be with others, even if I am finding it tempting to be alone with fears or to sort them out in a hasty manner. I think the temptation to be alone relates to a kind of 'shutting down': I think, I am unable to handle being with others until I can solve whatever is leading to fearful states of being.  But being  with people  I love can help me to soften the fears and put them into perspective. And I have found that when I am a bit more present to these emotions, I have more space to be  present to others as well, and what they are going through. In doing so, I practice realizing that my life does not need to revolve around the things that I fear, and sometimes these things have a way of taking care of themselves over time, without too much intervention on my part. Being with an emotion is sometimes more valuable than having to solve the emotion right away, even though the temptation is always to try to fix it and get rid of fear itself.
      Finally, I have found that through some kind of observational awareness, I have somewhat been able to let go of the temptation to fix things quickly or arrive at a hasty closure. Sometimes, the pain or suffering have nothing to do with the situation itself. Rather, it relates more to a painful emotional reaction and the temptation to reject it. For example, I had an experience once as a kid when I had fallen off my bike and split my lip. The first reaction I had was to think that my teeth were loose and about to fall out, and the accompanying fear was: "My gosh, what will happen to me if I have no teeth?" But later, I was reassured by my mom that things would be okay, and I just had a split lip. I had a thought that didn't correspond to reality, and the accompanying fear put me in a place of distress.
      These situations teach me that it's okay to observe for a while and collect myself and my thoughts, rather than follow the first impulse and react to it in some way. Of course, the emotions are still going to be there, for me to go through, and there are situations that are deeply distressing no matter what. But the process is to go into that distress rather than to hastily act on it. By "go into" it, I think I mean to be present with the emotion itself, and to take up a faithful attitude that this feeling is not going to kill me, and nor will the situation do so. Hard to practice, yes! But it seems worth it to adopt this gentle faith, as well as a mentality of breaking things down into moments....especially when one is overwhelmed.

Sidewalk Tiles

   After today's meditation session, I was reminded of something from a cassette of a talk I had heard from Alan Watts, so many years ago. This cassette was something I had found in a library sale sometime around 1992 or 1993. I have no idea where that cassette might have landed at this point, but what I can remember is that it talked about how each moment is like the tile of a sidewalk. Either  a person can feel overwhelmed about all the tiles she or he needs to traverse before a journey is completed, or can note that there is really only one tile to traverse in one instant of time. If I recall, Watts had used a similar analogy when describing a simple act such as doing the dishes. What interested me about Watts view is how it creates a metaphor for understanding why a person can get overwhelmed in the first place, and its relationship to the sense of time.
    When there is a thought of so many things to do, is that really 'many things to do' after all? It's easy to attach to that thought out of fear that something will fall out of 'my' responsibility. But what happens if I decide not to take on everything at all? What happens if I entertain the possibility that something will either be done at a later time, or will get done through some other means? Does that make a person less responsible? There is an illusion embedded in this thought of being overwhelmed by too many things; namely, that there is a single person responsible for 'all these things'. In fact, I wonder if this is ever really the case after all.
     To put it in a different framework, what becomes of what 'doesn't happen right now?' I can think of many things.. The obvious answer is that it will get done in some future time by the person who fails to do  it now. Another possibility is that this thing never needs to be done, as it starts to lose priority in light of more pressing and comprehensive solutions. A third possibility is that there will be more hands and better equipment to do the work in some future time, should I fail to attend to it now. A fourth possibility is that someone else simply takes care of it. But my point is, in all these possibilities, is there a loss or a gain of self? Does the self stand to lose or to gain from failing to do all that needs to be done? And is there ever a point where I can prove to myself that  I have 'done enough', and 'that is that'?
     Of course, much needs to be done in life, because there is a whole universe of doing and relating. As long as there is a tangible and separate subject and object, there is a constant flurry of things to be patched, connected and reconnected. But the point of these questions is to suggest that perhaps there is no discrete and isolated self responsible for getting all this done in the end. Nothing ever gets done without the right amounts and degrees of cause and conditions. In that sense, there is never a single self that can engineer even the slightest of what has been assigned to do. Even a child's homework is not done in isolation by one person. It is done at least in part thanks to the cause and conditions that assist the child in completing the task: a good and quiet home environment, supportive teachers, clear instructions, a healthy political environment, a healthy physical body, sufficient amounts of rest, etc.
     I doubt that many people would explore this argument, since Western cultures at least seem taken with the notion of personal autonomy, and salvation through autonomy. But it is always interesting to explore what happens when these hard boundaries of self start to loosen a bit, when I challenge the notion of how much a single body can do, given the space and times under consideration. Contemplating the nature of what happens over time might ease the demands that people place upon themselves to conquer all the things assigned to them.

No Self in Problems

  The holidays come to a slow halt, but people still run around, catching up on sales. From the nearby food court, I can still hear the sounds of Christmas carols, and wonder if I will still hear them tomorrow. One of them talks about the one day of the year when people's hearts start to open and be merry. Still others lament of lost loves, or people they could not be with on the last days  of the calendar year.
     I sometimes wonder if, like myself, others around me might also celebrate having 'survived' the season, and whether they might approach the sentiment with a similar kind of ambivalence.
     I came across a quote from D.T Suzuki which I would like to share, from his book, Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings. The quote reads:
   
"Zen recognizes nothing from which we are to be saved. We are from the first already 'saved' in all reality, and it is due to our ignorance of the fact that we talk about being saved or delivered or freed. So with 'escape', etc., Zen knows no traps or complexities from which we are to escape. The traps or complexities are our own creation. We find ourselves, and when we realize this, we are what we have been from the very beginning of things."(p.254-255)

Reading this quote, I have wondered: does it entail that there are simply no problems to solve from this perspective of Zen? It seems that there is more to this point. If a person sees themselves as someone to be 'saved', there is a self there. But if there is no separate 'self' from the environment, can anyone see a need to escape or rescue themselves from a problem? It isn't that problems magically vanish in thin air. It is rather that there isn't such a strong concept of "I" in the problems themselves. I think that this entails a very different relationship to the challenges of life. Rather than judging who I am according to whether I am able to 'surmount' or overcome a specific challenge, I am freed up to see that the challenge has nothing to do with the self. It is only the causes coming together in that moment to create that situation.

Conversely, even if I do manage to solve the problem, I am free to question: is it just 'me' that did that, or were there other conditions involved? Again, it's not about avoiding challenges altogether, but rather, not assigning a self-reference to the challenge. In this way, I am able to see things not from the perspective of having to prove the self, but from the idea of what really needs attention in the moment. My self-worth does not depend on dealing with a situation in a specific way. In fact, when I let go of self-reference, I am able to see other reasons to do things, which relate to the practice of non-duality. For example, instead of fulfilling a responsibility because 'not doing so will make me a bad person', what would it be like to do something in order to practice non-duality (not separating the action from the person doing it)? This sounds like a strange motivation for doing something, but there is something wonderful about this notion of pushing the boundary of what I think is 'me', by challenging what it means to do anything, and 'who' is doing it in the first place.

Some people might still wonder, does this mean that a person will stop having a sense of purpose in life? If, for instance,a  person stops thinking of doing things with a self in mind (self-advancement, for instance), would all activity cease? What I am finding is that this approach is like an empty canvas, where I am free to add or not add whatever is required to fill the canvas. Not only that, but I am also able to rewrite previous plans. Not being attached to self does not mean that nothing will be done. It simply provides more space to elaborate on certain intentions or modify others as the situations arise.

But there is one caveat, and that is, I think this attitude does require a trust in the non-duality of the present moment. If I still cling to the view that I am 'this body' and the world is 'around me', will I be motivated to work toward the benefits of a community as a whole? Or will I only protect this body? To really interact requires an ability to surrender the narrow idea that I am this body only. I am still puzzled as to where this 'trust' comes from, but I think having a group meditative practice or spiritual community can help in the process. It also requires a simple willingness to cultivate faith that the mind is not separate from any experience.

Suzuki, D.T. (1956), Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki (Ed. William Barrett). New York: Doubleday
 

Everyday Tea

     I recently saw a picture posted on the internet, in which a person decided to go to Nunavut in the minus 40 temperature and toss a cup of boiling tea up in the air. The purpose of the "experiment" was to see how long it would take for the tea to freeze. Actually, it didn't take very long after all: the temperature is so cold that the tea freezes almost instantly in mid-air, forming a spectacular crown of radiating lines around the person who is throwing the tea. Not only did the experiment say something interesting about the temperature in Nunavut--it also made an incredible scene which went viral. Apparently, tea can look very artistic when it freezes in mid-air.
       I am not sure how this experiment would be regarded by Zen practitioners, who tend to place a high value on the art of making tea. In his article "Please Call Me By My True Names" Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh notes:

 In Japan, in the past, people took three hours to drink one cup of tea. You might think this is a   waste of time, because time is money. But two people spending three hours drinking tea, being with each other, has to do with peace. The two men or two women did not speak a lot. They exchanged only a word or two, but they were really there, enjoying the time and the tea. They really knew the tea and the presence of each other. (p.107)

I think this quote is interesting, for many reasons. One is that there is nothing magical about the tea itself. Thay describes the tea as a kind of background object, through which people can co-exist together in a single place. But in another sense, tea becomes an opportunity for people to enjoy each others' presence. It points to something that is unspoken or unseen, and that is often taken for granted by people in a shared space, unless it is kept bare and minimal.
    Another aspect of the situation that Thay describes is that the tea itself becomes an opportunity for the simple enjoyment of the normal and ordinary. People can even converse about what they taste, what they smell, or what is interesting or distinctive about the way the tea is brewed. In that moment, something simple is truly being felt by both people, and the shared taste becomes an opportunity to converse on the subtleties of an experience.
       It is not very often, in my opinion, that our experiences are simple enough to be analyzed in this way. I think more often than not, I experience an opposite tendency in myself of wanting to 'plan a lot' into an experience, for fear that it won't be stimulating enough. But 'not stimulating enough' is just a thought, and it's based on a desire for something that is not present at all. If only one can just be fully in the room, imagine how interesting and enjoyable things can be. And how restful it would be as well.
       Thay contrasts this experience with another, where people don't pay attention to the simple experiences of drinking tea. Comparing contemporary society with that of historic Japan, he notes,

Nowadays, we allow only a few minutes for tea, or coffee. We go into a café and order a cup of tea or coffee and listen to music, and other loud noises, thinking about the business we will transact afterwards. In that situation, the tea does not exist. We are violent to the tea." (p.107)

It may seem odd here to think of ignoring one's tea as a form of 'violence'. But I think Thay is suggesting that violence always begins with neglecting the things of the mind. How often do I miss the everyday in favor of a thought that points to some future that never materializes? This focus on the imaginary is often a great source of violence and perpetuates the fear of things that never happen. And such imaginary thoughts lay waste to the things that truly are.

Hanh, T. H (1996) "Call Me By My True Names", from Engaged Buddhist Reader (Ed. Arnold Kottler). Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.

Zen and Impersonal Experience

       In a chapter of Zen Buddhism called "Satori, or Enlightenment", D.T. Suzuki remarks, "Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Zen experience is that it has no personal note in it as is observable  in Christian mystic experiences." (p.106) Suzuki is referring to the idea that satori experiences are often direct glimpses of the everyday, rather than having to do with ideas of connecting with a higher being. Being associated with "any ordinary occurrence in one's daily life" (p.1017), Zen does not involve glorifying some idea of connection or a higher being: rather, "Here is nothing painted in high colours, all is grey and extremely unobtrusive and unattractive." (p.107)
    Why would such a compassionate philosophy as Buddhism, for instance, uphold the notion of the 'impersonal'? Have people not at times heard the criticism that modern life is impersonal, and people are often treated as numbers? Why would anyone therefore embrace what Suzuki refers to as "impersonal" experience? Like anything related to Zen teachings, Suzuki's remarks seem to require qualification, particularly for those who imagine spiritual experience as intensely ''personal'.
    I think that when Suzuki talks about the 'impersonal', he is likely not referring to a kind of 'bureaucratic' or 'soulless' style of impersonal life that we sometimes see in contemporary society. He is not describing 'being treated as a number'. in other words. A more apt explanation might be to describe the 'impersonal' as a release from the bondage of 'the personal.'. And a person can experience that bondage in so many ways. One way is the way in which we frame ourselves and others in terms of narratives of personal expectation and role-play. Because so-and-so seems the 'caring sort', my expectation is that such a person will always care for me, or might always be able to read my emotions. Such a state of thinking 'over-personalizes', without seeing what is truly happening in each moment. Rather than seeing a person truly as they are from moment to moment, I am seeing that person through the lens of my desires and my preferences for them.
    Many spiritual teachers describe how people categorize others according to whether they benefit someone, whether they harm or neither. These three tendencies appear to correspond to the three kleshas of desire, hatred and ignorance. This way of being not only makes every experience personal (by projecting my image onto the situation), but it also creates suffering for everyone. This is because, rather than seeing a person as they appear in the present moment, I am always comparing that moment to my previous thought of the person. This fluctuation creates a great deal of turbulence. If I am able to see that these are just projections of my inner desires, I am better able to distance from them and not take them as 'personal.' In fact, perhaps the ultimate impersonal moment occurs when I don't attach a self to any of what is happening. Instead, I see that they are just causes and conditions arising, and I don't see those thoughts as reflections of me at all. At that point, even the notion of 'impersonal' and 'personal' disappear, because there is no dividing line where "I" am and where I am not.
    I have found that when I let go of trying to see experiences in terms of personally edifying outcomes, the experience itself is overall more satisfying. It lacks the ease or security of an experience that fulfills a narrow view of who I am, but it still turns out to be more enjoyable than experiences caught up in self and craving.It is at that point the ordinary can intrigue and provide even entry points to mystery.


Suzuki, D. T (1956), Zen Buddhism. New York: Doubleday

Ways of Seeing Love

   Around the holiday season, there is always a sense of wanting to wrap up things and resolve for new beginnings. People often try to find a 'resolution' that will make their year a new start. I begin to wonder, however, whether or not there is such a thing as a completely new beginning, and what it might mean? Things always seem to be in process. People are often in a state of striving to complete something, to finish, or to resolve some issue. But no sooner does the issue arise that the cause and conditions shaping it are already starting to fade away. Often, the problem I am seeing is really something that has already passed. I wonder if, instead of making a new year's resolution, a more modest proposal might be to honor the process and everyday rhythm of things.
    I am still trying to puzzle my way around Anders Nygren's book Agape and Eros. What is it about these two kinds of love that continues to fascinate me? I think that the answer has something to do with a struggle that they both seem to represent: the struggle between the love that sees something as  final goal or an anticipation (Eros) and the gentler love of the everyday--- the love that is granted to oneself just through the process of just being (Agape). According to Nygren, the original idea of Christian Agape is that of a Creator who loves through all beings, not because they have earned that love but precisely for the sake of love itself: a love that knows no conditions or boundaries.  The opposite conception of love is one where a person is striving to earn love, to work for love, to complete or consummate love. This kind of love is tied into ego, because it raises the question of whether the lover is capable of 'earning' the love of another being, or a divine being.
     I think the reason this distinction captures my imagination is that it represents for me two different ways of being in the world. The first way is the way of thinking that I must find some precious gem and separate it from the stuff of everyday thought and experience. Whether that precious gem is beauty or truth, or hope...whatever it is, it always comes with the fear that one will never attain it or achieve it if one does the wrong things. What invariably ends up happening is that a person becomes tight inside, as though their life depends on the attainment of an almost impossible goal. According to this view, my happiness depends on the attainment of something that is always far away and better, even though I may not even know what this is. Incidentally, this is also the view that some practitioners have toward the process of enlightenment. I sometimes get this sense that I need to be getting somewhere by a certain time. But do I really understand where I am supposed to be?
    Another way of looking at things might be to trust that certain experiences are present and have their own unique value in a total life. Rather than second guessing the value of things or sacrificing their value for some faraway goal or place, an alternate way would be to value everything equally, as equal parts of mind. This is a kind of choice to see things as natural gifts and then try to figure out how to connect to those gifts. Rather than thinking there is 'only one' thing to strive for, perhaps there is a way of seeing the value and the lesson of this present moment, and to be confident in its gift and value.

A Graceful Karma

    During the Surangama Sutra Study group, we had talked about the 25 sages, who had each attained Enlightenment by different means. The methods that are described in the Sutra are quite diverse, as they range from contemplating the whiteness on the tip of the nose when breathing to the impermanence of sounds. But one of the things that touched me was how the sages often have to see an obstacle in a new light. One of the sages, Gavampati, suffers from "an illness which causes me to chew like a cow" (p.213), due to insulting an elder monk in a previous life. In this story, the Buddha shows Gavampati how to contemplate flavors so that he is able to investigate where the flavors come from.
      As I read this story, I started to wonder, was the challenge that Gavampati was born with really an example of 'bad' karma? Or was it simply an opportunity to go deeper into awareness of a particular sense, to find its source in mind? This vignette is an example of where something that seems to have a bad result ends up containing a seed of opportunity to practice. I am tempted to refer to this experience as a kind of 'grace', but I don't think that Buddhism has an equivalent to this kind of notion or concept.
   Everyday life often provides me with ample evidence to suggest  that there are no absolutely bad  situations. I recall one time when I was much younger, how I did poorly on a math assignment because I had failed to read the instructions correctly. I think that I had either been too careless or not able to  The grade I received was not that great, but the experience gave me an opportunity to communicate better with the teacher to clarify what I needed to do. I ended up revising the assignment to the point where I was able to do something more creative than I had expected.
      More recently, I had a similar experience in a different course. During these experiences, I have often felt the frustration of not knowing how to change the assignments, and there was some feeling of fear around having to start anew in what felt like a disadvantageous position. But if I was able to pause and put down who I think I was supposed to be in that moment, I would have realized that there is nothing bad about starting from the beginning or even being 'behind' in some ways.
          I think a challenge I am faced with is to have faith that something that seems like ''bad" karma or a "bad' outcome from previous actions, could often furnish possibilities for some good outcomes as well. I suspect that I am not the only person who sometimes associates a bad outcome with 'falling off ' track, falling behind, or being out of some place/time where I am supposed to be. It seems that these situations can create a lot of anxiety for me regarding falling behind a self-created standard. It arouses fears of the isolation that people sometimes feel when they are 'detained' or 'suspended' from the course of things because they are not up to par with others in an average bracket.
     I wonder, from an educational perspective: how can the fear of falling behind be addressed? Just as karma is not absolutely 'good' or 'bad', is there a more holistic way of grading that considers student performance from a wide variety of lenses, and assigns more qualitative feedback? It might be helpful to teach students to reflect on both failures and successes, especially when they receive an evaluation that is less than average in terms of grades. Reflection might also be a way for student to empower themselves, rather than seeing their identities exclusively as a fixed set of grades.

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

Holiday Shopping and Mind

 The holiday shoppers downtown compete with the wind and flurries to get their last minute shopping done. There are swirls of snow in the dark clouds outside as people haul into the Bay and Winners, lining up for the 40% off sales, 20%, then 10%. And people calmly appraise the items as though on a mission to get the best deal imaginable. And in the store fronts on Queen Street there are many welcoming signs of the holidays: montages of animated mannequins who display the comforts of holiday seasons, including the anticipation of gifts, the decoration of trees, and the making of toys for kids. Sometimes the displays are quite fun, while other times, the sense is of being overwhelmed.
    Holidays are often times when people might feel the push to maintain a festive spirit in work and daily life. I once heard the story that many people end up feeling worse around the holiday seasons, precisely for the reason that people's feelings might not resonate with the expectation and anticipation that the holidays promise. It could also be a failure to empathize with the attitude that the holidays are trying to induce. There are times when I wonder what kinds of attitudes would most endear me to the spirit of the season.
      I have often experienced a sense of dislocation in the bigger department stores, particularly toward the end of the year, as the holidays approach. When I look at the feeling carefully, I think part of this disorientation is being faced with the range of choices in terms of gifts to buy, sales be aware of, signs and signals from the aisles. I am simply not a shopping type at the moment, except when it comes to things like books. I imagine that this process takes getting used to, and shopping in the holiday season often feels like coming out of a hibernation of sorts.  I think there is also an anxiety of not wanting to buy things that are not needed. These experiences teach me the value of discerning the difference between want and need. And that discernment seems to take a long time of cultivation. Still other times, there is a sense of disengagement. Many stores try to make the experience much more exciting than it actually is. Shopping is a kind of work, like any other.
   Today, I  read a chapter from a selection of writings from D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism, where he talks about the role of the 'material' in daily life. Suzuki echoes a general approach to material things when he notes that they are an integral part of the daily experience of mind. At one point, he notes "You do not want salvation at the cost of your own existence. If so, drink and eat, and find your way of freedom in this drinking and eating." (p.14) Here I think: the very basic things of life, like eating and drinking could become an experience in practice, just as shopping or doing some other chore can also create the same opportunity to investigate within.
          Suzuki reminds me to take shopping as one more aspect of mind. Whatever experience is arising from it is not coming from the shopping itself, or the items in the aisle, and nor is it coming from a specific place within. So where is this experience coming from, exactly? Where does one locate the feeling of disorientation? It's not something anyone needs to answer, but it is turning something that seems mundane into a source of wonder. It also avoids thinking of the experience as just another habitual thing that is performed.
         I think that if I can learn to practice an awareness that isn't comparing to my previous memory, everything can look fresh to me and new. But even in the event that I cannot achieve that freshness, I found it enjoyable to simply be with the emotions I was having while shopping, and letting go of the judgments. It is still a long journey for me before I can say that this experience is natural or enjoyable to me. But in observing it the way Suzuki describes, it can become an interesting experience to observe the mind's variety of reactions, and never to conclude that it is an absolutely 'good' or 'bad' experience.
 
Suzuki, D.T (1956) (ed, William Barrett), Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki. New York: Doubleday Anchor.
   

meditation and love

 What is the relationship between Buddhist meditation and loving thoughts? Does meditation make a person more loving toward others? This question interests me, because I hardly hear that many Buddhist discussions on "love" per se, at least not in the sense that it is talked about in popular cultures. Most monastic teachers focus more on qualities such as karuna (compassion) and moral uprightness (sila), or wisdom (prajna). And yet I have often heard the question, does a person need to supplement meditation with other practices, such as loving kindness or devotional practice? Again, the questions are interesting, and they touch upon what it means to meditate. Is meditation designed to 'create' certain socially favorable  emotions such as love?
     Just today, I was in a shopping mall before heading to the gym, and I saw a lady who was apparently in a lot of distress outside a chocolate store. I could tell even from a distance that there was an argument of some sort, because one man's body language was quite stiff. The lady was talking to another lady, presumably the store manager, and acting as though the man wasn't even there. As I approached closer, I could hear the woman saying that the man had made her feel confused. I felt the emotion coming from in myself, and the awkwardness of the situation. I even began to wonder: is this kind of complaint so necessary on a festive occasion such as a Christmas-themed chocolate store? But I knew that this was my own judgment about a situation of which I knew nothing. And yet, there were still feelings of pity arising. Inside me, there was a still a thought of wanting things to be more harmonious. In any case, it didn't stop the woman from going back into the store and continuing her chocolate shopping. And I guess life went on as planned.
     The point of my example is that it gave me pause to reflect. I wonder, what exactly does loving 'response' look like, and what does it mean to love in this context of these very different people, having very different experiences? I can't honestly say what would be the best action to take so that everyone here feels loved or attended to, and perhaps it isn't anyone's job to do so. For example, if I decide that I am going to be more loving to the lady who is complaining, what might that mean for the man who apparently confused her? And vice versa? Would being loving toward one person simply be preferential and biased? From a more holistic perspective, one might also ask: is love the only thing to consider when faced with conflict and complex situations?
     I believe that in many cultures, love and 'positive emotions' are considered to be curative of many complex ailments. People believe that if only they are able to feel love, or joy, then the things around them will be okay,or at least look okay from their perspective. But even that feeling is only arising from a perspective, my own. I wouldn't necessarily be able to speak for the others. That is why I am hesitant to say that love is going to heal all things. After all, whose love heals? And who gets love in these situations? Who is more entitled to be given love? Who assigns value to who gets love? These are all complex questions which require wisdom more than anything...and experience, of course.
    I don't believe that meditative practices are necessarily designed so that one becomes 'more' of one thing or another. It perhaps has more to do with an attitude of being truly open to what this current moment offers. From this perspective, it doesn't matter what kinds of states or emotions arise; they could be angry or confused, or sad, or regretful even. But if I stay with it and don't reject any of this experience, or myself, or whatever...if I really embrace who I am in that moment, and accept others as part of the mind in that moment...then I am not trying to gain any particular state of being. It is more like a garden where I see so many beautiful flowers. Each one has a very different smell, look, feel. Why reject one because it doesn't look like the other? Why say the violet is less than the rose when they are both making the garden in that moment? This broader view gives me the space to accept fully what is happening, without making that mistake of trying to gain some quality or another.
    I cannot guarantee that even this attitude of total acceptance is going to make me more loving or even more appealing as a person. But this attitude yields more surprises and insights than it would if I were to simply tell myself to be more loving or change the way I am thinking and feeling. In that sense, life becomes more interesting and fertile when I am open to whatever is emerging,and fully accept it.
   

Love and Conditions

  While reading Anders Nygren's book Agape and Eros (I am tempted to say a classic in its own right), the thought occurred to me that Christian concepts of love are often based on something that is fundamentally 'eternal'. Whether that eternity consists in the absolute love of a divinity for all creation (Agape) or the love that climbs upward toward an ideal beloved (Eros), there is always a sense that love has an enduring quality of permanence. And I do wonder whether this 'permanence' is also not a source of suffering for so many people, especially lovers or married people. Is there any state of being, state of doing, or state of feeling that we can say is 'permanent'?
    I think that the Buddhist theory of cause and conditions can say something quite new about love, even though it seems to be a very disheartening concept from a distance. According to causes and conditions, there would be many factors that go into the making of a relationship. I remember reading Peter Berger's Invitation to Sociology, where he talks about the many social factors that go into a relationship happening or not happening. It was humorous to reflect that love doesn't work if any one of these conditions is happening. For example, would the couple feel comfortable to go through with the relationship if their statuses were different, or one family disapproved of the match? Would they still keep going if one of them had to move far away?
        Many purists of the Western love motif are going to argue that 'true' love is unconditional, and should not suffer the pangs of conditions around. While I agree with that view, I also think that there can be many factors preventing a relationship from unfolding as planned. Simply willing something to happen or having a strong vow is not going to necessarily control or influence things in this way. Sometimes doing so also creates disappointed expectations. It seems that vows are directions or intentions that people can take for the benefit of others, but that vow does not prescribe or control an outcome.
     The motif of Eros, as Nygren rightly points out, could be (problematically) egocentric. That is, striving to obtain some desired state of being or relationship is often self-serving of some personal state of completion. What is often not stated in the literature on Eros (in Plato, for example) is how painful and tenuous the state of striving for an ideal can be, even if one is convinced that the ideal is absolute and worthy of one's 'all'. It also defies the principal of cause and conditions, by suggesting that what we find beautiful is the shadow of an ideal form that is meant to be pursued and appreciated. Cause and conditions aren't considered relevant to the discussion. I wonder to what extent people can go crazy chasing after this pristine ideal that never quite gets realized in the daily life of present moment to moment awareness.
    I also wonder if another way of loving might be one which fully and clearly sees conditions as integral to the life of both lover and beloved. If one person moves away from a relationship, of course it will change the way the other interacts with the person. To ignore or not acknowledge that would be to disregard what truly happens in the moment. Rather than seeing these conditions as obstacles, would it not be interesting to perhaps reflect on them as equally important elements in a total experience? Thinking in this way, I don't discriminate between the 'essence' and the 'unimportant' aspects of an experience, much less the 'desired' from the 'undesired'. Even the sadness of losing someone I care about is an element of the experience that I can cherish and appreciate as much as the 'gaining' of something. Both are temporary yet integral elements in a changing landscape.
    What I am proposing is that the view of love as 'unconditional' does not need to exclude or rule out the role that conditions play in how a person experiences love. Just as there are clouds in the blue sky, so there are bound to be conditions that will prevent a desired situation from being fully realized. But to ignore the clouds is also detrimental, because conditions are just as much a part of experience as the unconditioned. The role of the lover is to embrace all of it, to the point where there is not a lover seeking the loved at all, but just conditions coming together at a given moment to create a total picture. What is 'unconditioned' is not any particular object but the totality of the experience itself.

Berger, Peter (1963)  Invitation to Sociology. Toronto: Doubleday
Nygren, Anders (1982), Agape and Eros. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Letting Go

       During my meditation practice tonight, I felt a certain tightness arising in my low back. I tried to let go of the tension as I started  to do a gentle recitation. During my short break, I also did some exercises to loosen the muscles. I gather that likely all this is related to me sitting for a long time, and my exercises help me to stretch the muscles. But something else also happened. I think that rather than trying to control the pain, I let something greater than 'self' take care of that pain. Instead of trying to use the conscious mind to control or add thoughts to it, I allowed the pain to be known to the whole mind, and to yield to the total experience of mind. This is neither about repressing, nor 'embracing' , nor enjoying or controlling. A more accurate description might be fully being with the entire mind during this experience, while acknowledging the distressful emotions arising. In a sense, I was allowing all these reactions to arise, but surrendering them to something greater and much vaster than my consciousness, without saying that any of it is 'the true me'. This knowing that there is something more than consciousness seems to be so crucial. With this subtle knowing, there is no longer the compulsion to try to influence the moment to be a certain way, because the moment itself is experienced as fully perfected in its current state. But the most difficult thing of all is to try to describe what this 'whole mind' experience is about.
       An analogy might be to compare this experience to a fountain where water is continually coursing down it, after which it is recycled again and drawn back up to feed the fountain again. Although the water is never at any point retained, it is never lost either. With this 'letting go', there is a faith that there is nothing that will be 'gone' or lost. All phenomena simply goes back to the source from which it arose. There is no sense of 'depletion' or conservation of energy. Because nothing is lost, there is nothing to let go either. The letting go is simply an attitude of faith and of trust that the moment is already perfect as is, and there is no need to control any experience.  Even when a person takes actions or responsibility, are they ever fully 'in control' of that moment? Not quite. It is more that the person is simply using what's available to meet the needs of that moment.
    My experience leads me to wonder about something. My previous writing professor had once related how many young students who are having difficulties in school immediately start to recover themselves once they are given a specific diagnosis of what causes their difficulties, such as attention deficit disorder. I often wonder, what is the secret to being given a label to indicate the source of an illness? I think the answer is that perhaps these labels free people from continuing to blame themselves for experiences over which they might have minimal influence. A label helps people to organize their minds so that they are able to let the pain go a bit. It doesn't fully explain anything, but at least it gives a person the temporary space not to identify themselves as their condition.

Halfway Places

    Here is a poem I would like to share from a translation of one of Master Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems, edited and translated by J.P. Seaton:


        " I always wanted to go to East Cliff
        more years than I can remember
        until today I just grabbed a vine
        and started up. Halfway up
        wind and a heavy mist closed in,
        and the narrow path tugged at my shirt:
        it was hard to get on. The slickery
        mud under the moss on the rocks 
        gave way, and I couldn't keep going.  
        So here I stay, under this cinnamon tree,
        white clouds for my pillow,
        I'll just take a nap" (p.25)

When I read this poem, I think about the many ways in which I feel an aspiration to do something, only to find myself going 'halfway' in the end. What is it about the nature of longing and desire that leads a person to the 'half way' mark?

One time when I was very young, I had this particular moment when I wanted to read a whole pile of books on my winter break. I recall the moment when I was just about to finish my course work, and how I came down with a cold at that very moment when there was simply nothing more for me to do. In a way, that time of 'non-doing' seemed to be so strange that my body almost seemed to develop a reaction when there wasn't anything more to do. If I couldn't occupy myself with studies, I could at least have a virus to occupy my body! But I also marvel how there is never a point where I am at the place I 'want' to be. It would be a contradiction of want itself, which is always striving toward some greater state of ease or relaxation. And the most elusive part of this whole experience was the sense that what I thought I wanted kept receding further and further along the horizon. I realized that there could never be a time when I could fully relax or settle. There is always going to be a sense of unease: the nagging sense that I am still caught in a delusive trap of thinking I am this body.

Han Shan's poem also alludes to the elusiveness of spiritual practice. Wanting to go somewhere creates a tension that over-strains the mind, to the point where it is constantly adding some new trick to what should already be present and self-evident. When the narrator finally does climb up the vines and traverse toward East Cliff, he is beset with all kinds of obstacles to his seeing, his feeling, and even his way of movement. In the final stanzas of the poem, the reader is left wondering, did the narrator find what he was searching for, did the journey elude his grasp,  or did he settle for something less? I have a sense that the sheer exhaustion of Han Shan's journey yields to the peace that he may have been seeking in the first place. It happens only when Han Shan has given up trying to find the object of his search in a particular place. He is resting not in the goal but in the mind itself, hence his remark "I'll just take a nap".

Sometimes, we long for the soft bed in which to rest, but perhaps where we end up resting is always on the side of the road, where rest is least expected. Maybe ponder this one for a while!

Han Shan (ed/trans. J. P. Seaton) (2009), Cold Mountain Poems. Boston: Shambhala

Joyful Illusions?

  People often refer to illusions as somehow bad or in a negative light. For example, we say, "I thought this was real but it was just an illusion". In fact, there are plenty of love songs around the world that essentially say just this point. Many people feel bitter when they think that something is going to last forever, only to find to their dismay that things change. Feelings change, thoughts change, and 'seasons change', as the popular song goes. I sometimes wonder, is illusory nature necessarily harmful or bad? Or is it possible to savor the illusions without being governed by them in some way?
   Here again, I am reminded of something I read in Master Sheng Yen's Chan and Enlightenment. He remarks, "Illusory dharmas refer to 'many' and 'dual' dharmas that result from changing conditions in space and time. Through causation, these dharmas form the myriad kinds of phenomena.  Because we do not fully recognize that phenomena arise from causes and conditions, and are forever changing, we think that phenomena are enduring. Therefore, by pursuing, possessing and rejecting, we give rise to 'the many'." (p.236) I believe that as long as a person does not see their experiences as these permanent, enduring entities, then there is no need to cry about illusions. Illusions are unavoidable. because they refer to the way all of our situations are destined to come and go, not to last.
  I recall reading a long-standing debate that happened between two 'rival' philosophies, the Roman Cynics and the Epicureans. The Cynics believed that it is best not to succumb to any illusory ideas about the enduring existence of anything, so they decided to renounce all their possessions and live in poverty. According to these philosophers, it is best not to even be tempted by the possibility of money or fame, so it is therefore ideal not to even start on that path at all. I think their approach is similar to Ascetics, who deliberately renounced all pleasurable experiences to train themselves spiritually.
     For Epicureans, on the other hand, it is okay to enjoy pleasurable pursuits as long as one does not succumb to the attitude that they are enduring in any way. Epicureans even conceptualized pleasure as a way of training the mind to find the 'right' ways to enjoy friendships and pleasurable situations: almost with a kind of aesthetic, 'recreational' distance which allows me to appreciate the form of things without distorting them into ego or possessiveness. I think the Epicurean philosophy became the ancestor to a later 'sentimental' education, where students learn how to appreciate fine art using these senses, without degrading sensual pleasure into a form of seeking.
     It's hard to say which of these two positions is a good middle path in looking at illusions, and perhaps both have their weaknesses. The trouble with Cynicism is that it doesn't quite renounce the ideal of fame, since it is constantly 'rebelling' against fame and pleasure. Without anything to compare to, would Cynics still be proud of their ability to withstand temptations and live frugally? Here, it is hard to say. One virtue of Cynicism is that it would make for a simpler and less destructive lifestyle, since it does involve living simply and renouncing the usual trappings of honor and social status, I think that Cynics would be able to enjoy their lives with less, but it's hard to say whether or not that would be an insight into the spiritual condition of humanity.
        For Epicureans, on the other hand, the situation is much more complex. I would imagine that an Epicurean life would spin between being safely distant from emotions and being seduced by appearances. It's hard to find anyone in this day and age who only takes one sip of wine in a room full of wine bottles. For this reason, I would imagine that a modern-day Epicurean would be a deeply troubled or complex being, who is trying to attain spiritual salvation through a combination of 'beholding' the beautiful and abstaining (distancing?) from excess.
     With meditative practice, I think it's possible to have experiences that could not be conceived of if one is simply enjoying or beholding temporary phenomena. But the emphasis here is not on the quality of experiences, but having an insight into the temporary nature of these experiences: how they emerge and disappear, and how it is observed from moment to moment. This is quite different from admiring a work of art or appreciation. It involves a deeper knowing of what those thoughts and feelings are, and not being blinded by their allurements. The joy would consist precisely in beholding the impermanence of phenomena as pointers to a deeper experience of mind.

Master Sheng Yen (2014) Chan and Enlightenment. New York: Dharma Drum


   

David Loy's Great Awakening

   When I first picked up David Loy's book The Great Awakening; A Buddhist Social Theory,  I was both excited and also uncertain as to what to expect. First, then, my expectations: I was expecting a kind of theory about how people interact in greater society using Buddhist principles. Now, the reality: it looks as though Loy is showing how Buddhist concepts can form a potential framework for positive social and ecological change. Loy suggests that social change can be made through cultivating awareness of the three kleshas of greed, hatred and ignorance, and showing their social equivalents in unchecked consumption, hatred toward other nations, and dualistic thinking about nature and the world. Much of what Loy is writing speaks clearly to me, because he is going to the teachings of the six paramitas, the five precepts and Eightfold Noble Path to spell out a way to live a simpler and more abundant life, while illuminating specific social and environmental ills. But as I am reading this book, I also begin to wonder whether there is anything uniquely "social" about this slant on Buddhism.
   From a certain perspective, there is likely not too much of a difference between personal practice and "social" Buddhist practice. Both touch upon cultivating wisdom and compassion for all life, as well as seeing life as intrinsically possessing the same mind nature. Even though social practice refers to how practitioners might treat others, it still seems to arise from the same principles as inner cultivation.  I still consider this to be a spiritual practice that just happens to have social benefits, not a social practice on its own. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is meant to inquire into whether there is truly a social practice/theory of Buddhism that is separate or even distinct from the original teachings of Buddhism. Even if I discuss recent trends such as biotechnology in light of Buddhist practice, I am still using the basic principles of spiritual practice to provide a perspective on this issue. On the other hand, the great thing Loy does here is show the global repercussions of what happens when people act upon their sense of separation from the world. It forms a solid critique of the way people think and act when they are guided by the delusion of a separate self.
    As I read Loy's book, I feel a great resonance with his ideas about Buddhist social perspectives. I also a sense a potential for further exploration and study on how the principles of Buddhism play out in actual, truly lived experiences of people in Buddhist communities. Loy himself suggests that Buddhism is not Utopian (p.33) and isn't even necessarily about perfecting people or social life. What could be explored in future studies is to what extent Buddhist principles really do get embodied in socially engaged projects, and to what extent they might only stay 'on the cushion', or even in the intellect. Loy provides a pretty solid road map for what a socially engaged society could look like under the lens of traditional Buddhist principles, However,  I think what I would also like to explore is what it looks like for a Buddhist community to do social outreach, using the principles of Buddhist practice. I would also be interested to learn about the tensions and difficulties that emerge when people do this practice. I see a lot of possibility for future ethnographic study in this area.

Loy, David (2003), The Great Awakening:: A Buddhist Social Theory. Boston: Wisdom Publications

One and Many

 Reading Master Sheng Yen's Chapter in Chan And Enlightenment , I came across the following sentence: "When one's practices reach a certain level one realizes that all dharmas are no treal, and that the true buddha is not without but within--a pure mind is buddha. When one reaches this level, it is to returnn to oneness from the myriad dharmas [phenomena], from the external to the buddha-nature within." (p.238) Today, when I was reflecting on this passage, I had a question. My question was, does the view of 'buddha nature within' mean that one denies the existence of 'other beings'  or other minds? How might this view be different from solipsism, which declares that there is only 'one' mind that exists, 'my own mind'?

I guess, like most things, the answer is not so easy to understand, especially with the intellect. For example, Master Sheng Yen points out in the same chapter that Chan saying, "All dharmas return to one; to where does the one return?" (p.236) I believe this is suggesting that practitioners don't just stop at the view of 'one' mind, because this 'one' anything already limits us to a concept of unity. Master Sheng Yen uses the example of drawing a circle on a blackboard (p.237) to show that even if I were to try to include everything in the circle, there would still be something assumed as outside of it. So even if I conclude that there is 'one mind' I still need to question, who is experiencing 'oneness'? Another way of asking it would be, is the mind limited to a unified experience of all things? If so, how would mind be able to grasp individual things within that unity? It seems best not to attach to either one nor many.

Another way of thinking of it might be to say: if I start to have an experience of all things being unified, there is always a hidden tension in that experience. For example, a person who has a deep experience of all living things being 'harmonized' in one view (such as a God), might start to fear the intrusion of some chaotic element. How often has a person felt unified in body and environment, only to be startled by the sound of a voice yelling? There is always an opportunity for unity to be punctured by the 'disunity' that it entails. On the other hand, if mind makes no discrimination between what seems 'unified' and what seems 'dis-unified' then there is no reason at that point to try to go in the direction of unity or disunity. The two can be experienced equally with an even mind, as cause and conditions. But as soon as I get hooked on one of these polarities, I will for sure feel vexed when the other half intrudes on my reality.

I think there were two philosophers in the nineteenth century who might have exemplified "one" and "many". Hegel was a philosopher who, in my opinion, exemplifies a philosopher of the 'one'. Hegel tried to create a unified view of the world and society, to show that society was slowly progressing toward an evolved totality that mirrors the reasoning mind. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, seems to have been a philosopher of the 'many'. Kierkegaard rejected systems building, and he felt that the only way to truth would be through a totally subjective experience of one's relation to God. One person's experience, according to Kierkegaard, could not be reduced to another, or to a system understanding. While Hegel was aiming for more order, I think Kierkegaard was trying to problematize order, to show that the more unified things seem, the more superficial or inauthentic is one's relation to true reality.

If a person can stand over these viewpoints and see their potential shortcomings, then one is perhaps choosing a middle path, and not getting attached to either One or Many. In that sense, people can let go of the temptation to seek simplistic answers. It might also encourage people to see things as already perfect in themselves, not needing a system or a philosophy to 'make' them perfect or mold them into something they are not.

Master Sheng Yen (2014), Chan and Enlightenment. New York: Dharma Drum Publishing.

A Love Not Tragic

   It has taken me quite a while to grasp what love or "like" is like that is not tragic in any way: not about win and loss, not about 'fighting for survival or possession'. To give an example from the Buddhist Study Group sharing tonight: one of the practitioners mentioned that what attracted her to Buddhism was never the final goal of being a more 'compassionate' or 'loving' person, but rather, it has come from a much more intuitive love for the teachings of Buddha. In other words, learning Buddhist teachings, for her, is not about acquiring some special knowledge or state of being. It is a little more like the mind gently allures itself through its own creations, in order to realize its true being. And this gentle allurement is not about 'win' or 'lose' or possessing something that is going to make us somehow wiser or better than other beings. I think this way of being is a fearless cultivation of simple love for a teaching and practice.
     Without the enjoyment or curiosity about a spiritual practice, it is quite difficult to cultivate. Practice has its ups and downs. For people who are trying to incorporate spiritual practice into the life of attractions and rejection, it is most difficult to maintain equanimity and to let go of attachments. Is it possible, I wonder, to cultivate a simple enjoyment and appreciation, rather than expecting too much in the way of attainment? I believe it's possible to do this practice with anything. An example I am thinking of now is reading. Though reading is one of my favorite past-times, there are times when my mood is "what is the point that this book is making?", and there is no patience in me for the details. At that point, what can I cultivate? I think I recognize that my feeling is agitated, and then I start to appraise the book as a friend who is vying for my attention. And I respect this friend and surround it with a kind of warmth. This process is about slowing down and being 'more beside' whatever is in front of me, rather than trying to get some main point out of it.
    Another helpful metaphor for 'being with' something is to think of teachings as 'seeds' to cultivate mind rather than as 'grand points' or revelations. This too was another metaphor that was mentioned in the group study to describe how to approach Buddhist teachings. Too often, if I am focused on learning in order to gain an epiphany or a 'breakthrough' from it, I will overlook the more subtle nuances in a text which can make it unique and give it a different flavor from what I have read in the past. I miss the way that text lives in me, its energy and its way of being, in my rush to find some preconceived 'gem' that is a reflection of a desire. Here, I am not suggesting that we need to 'get rid of desires'. A more apt metaphor might be to make room for that which isn't one's desire: to recognize that there are other gifts that the world has to offer besides one's wants or dreams.
       Reading is one thing, but the process of reading might relate to how a person copes with their dreams for others. Rather than seeing other as 'other', is it possible to see the encounter as appreciation and gentle invitation to explore? Here again, there are ways to shift away from the understanding that beings are separate and need to compete for resources to survive. Instead of thinking in this way, is it possible to see that all encounters are just situations that the mind creates to awaken? If this is the case, is there anything 'outside' mind that is graspable?

"True" and "Illusory"

        During the group meditation today, a feeling of exhaustion lingered inside, and it was hard for me to shake it off. It could be that I had a long week at work. I reminded myself to gently adjust my facilitation to make sure my exhaustion didn't rub off on other participants.. But during the sitting, I had to accept the fact that this tiredness is just an aspect of my experience.
  Now, how does a person 'accept' an aspect of experience without being overwhelmed in it? Reading from Master Sheng Yen's book Chan and Enlightenment, I get some kind of clue when he is describing how the concept of 'many' phenomena arise in an experience. He remarks:
 
 Illusory dharmas refer to 'many' and 'dual' dharmas that result from changing conditions in space    and time. Through causation, these dharmas form the myriad kinds of phenomena. Because we do
 not fully recognize  that phenomena arise from causes and conditions and are forever changing, we think that phenomena are enduring. Therefore, by pursuing, possessing and rejecting,we give
rise to the 'many'. (p.236)
       
When I read this, I have a kind of mental map to help me understand what happens when I get 'caught up' in an experience. I think what happens is that I take the experience itself to be enduring rather than seeing it as always changing. I have many choices as to how to behave in that situation. I can follow the conditions of the past and simply react to it the way I have before, or I can see that the situation is only temporary, and is always changing with new conditions.

On the other hand, if I assume that the state of mind I am in is fixed and has no prior conditioning, I will just add the thought of exhaustion to the exhaustion, until it becomes something bigger than it really is. That is when the second stage comes, of 'pursuing, possessing and rejecting" things based on how we evaluate them and their qualities. That is when the notion of the 'many' arises, according to the passage above. If I think that my heaviness is something enduring, I will do everything in my power to push it away. This includes looking for an easier way to handle the emotions or even going into a daydreaming state as a way of escape.

I even wonder if 'compensating' for an emotion is also another form of 'seeking' and 'rejecting'. However, I think it depends on the situation. If I am aware of the emotion and try to address it from a place of wisdom and discernment, I will not use another 'feeling' to try to cover up the exhaustion. Rather, I might adjust my style of teaching in the hopes that tired feelings will not affect my ability to impart instructions. This is quite different from trying to 'use' one thought to supplant another.

So long as I can see that the experiences are temporary and fleeting, I don't get sucked into the idea that there are these many discrete forms with enduring properties. And my mind can be pliable and soft in the face of these conditions if I am in that meditative state.

Master Sheng Yen (2014), Chan and Enlightenment. New York: Dharma Drum Publishing

Trusting the Moment to Unfold

  I didn't particularly want to join the social gathering, with all its loud music and festive cheer. Somehow, it felt intrusive to my desire to catch up on work during the day. But when I got there, I realized that I could accept and be at peace with my heart, even when I felt unwilling to be there. I could sense the memory of past experiences, when people would talk me into attending events or use fear to persuade me. And I could recall experiences when I felt this body somehow being pushed and pulled: here going in this direction, then being pulled back.
      But this time, as I entered the room, something different happened. Rather than giving into reactions, I tried just seeing the reaction emerge in the empty space of the moment. And instead of being fooled into thinking my mind was being moved, there was this simple thought arising, "I think I am being moved". Seeing it as a thought helped to understand that there is nobody being moved in this scene. Even when there is the feeling that 'my body' was forced to be in the room, in fact all the room is in awareness. Mind is not one of these elements that is being 'moved'. It is only the thought that gives the illusion that "I" am moved. Who is this "I" anyway? Again, I look to the method of huatou (meditative question/saying) to understand where the true nature is. And what arose was this sense of completeness: an awareness that all there is, is, and there is nothing more to add to what is. To add is to try to complete an already 'full' moment that is already passing to another moment. It was hard to sustain this experience, but at least for a moment, I gave myself permission to experience it in some manner.
    This practice is not about pleasing other beings. Quite the opposite, it is the simple knowing that beings are already connected in awareness. To try to appease 'others' commits one to the mistake of thinking there is a separate 'other' to be appeased or even feared. But in that present situation, can anyone say where one person's experience begins and another person's ends? In fact, the entire experience is totality. From this totality, I trust the experience to unfold as it is, and I keep asking where the 'self' is, and wonder whether there is any need for the self at all.
    If in that moment, I start to say 'what am I doing with this?', I lose the experience of being truly here in the moment. Instead, I go back to this mentality of constantly projecting into the future that never 'is', a kind of fantasy wish-fulfillment or anticipation of 'things to come'. And this projection only commits me deeper and deeper into its vicious spiral of always promising to deliver what never quite emerges. I think it's something to keep in mind when people are trying to approach spirituality as 'socially engaged'. Sometimes the engagement is simply the moment itself,  and conveying that moment. But as soon as I say 'now what'? What do I 'do with this?" I am again committing this mistake of projecting this present moment into a future moment. And this is another duality. To enter true engagement is to enter into trust. It is very difficult to 'engage' from a planning mentality of trying so hard to 'create' an experience. I think this is why there  is a lot of stress on acceptance of the moment in spiritual practices.

Writing (Not) from Self

   I remember years ago, I had read somewhere the idea that we should "write what we know". In fact, that was one of the main principles I had learned in Writer's Craft class, and I think it has always been a caution against writers who try to envision their characters in some far-off place, such as an historic moment to which they were not a part. "Write what you know" is almost like Albert Camus' notion of 'fidelity to one's limits': be true to what you have truly learned and digested, rather than trying to overextend your reach. But now I wonder, what does it really mean? And if I only write what I ''think I know" how is that getting anywhere outside the comfort of my own home?
   One of the scary things (perhaps) about free writing practice is that it can take a person to somewhere that is not familiar to her or him. Like meditation, writing just without using discursive thinking is a way of discovery and process. It is that empty space, I guess, where all my experiences start to distill, including what I have seen and heard in the past. The interesting thing about it is that I am never limited to who I think the 'self'' is, especially the self that I present to the world to function or survive. Instead, writing can invite a person not to necessarily write from a center at all, but to consider all characters or situations as a totality. I think this is akin to a Silent Illumination meditative practice as applied to writing. Here, I am not favoring one character, or one situation, or even trying to make some characters have a happy ending. Instead, my position as a writer becomes a little bit like floating between the spaces of different characters and beholding them equally in each of their uniqueness. In meditative practice, one can sometimes reach a state where even seemingly 'familiar' things start to lose their familiarity, and can be written from other stances. Think, for example, about how a soft and cute kitten might appear to a mouse. In that instance, the kitten starts to look fierce and aggressive. Then pan back to the kitten in your lap. Different perspectives create very different scenes and situations.
     Another principle of free writing is to allow the characters to be the channels through which a person writes a story. This is hard for writers to do, because it might sometimes seem like relinquishing one's ability or power to that of a character. Of course, some would argue that the character is really just an extension of one's self. It's true, but in another way, each character that comes up is a surprise. It's surprising what each character tells a writer about her or himself, as well as the kinds of discoveries that are latent in that process. Sometimes, I even think of it as allowing my strong sense of self to take a side-step, to allow other voices to channel through my fingers.
    Another point of writing from 'non-self' is perhaps the idea of letting go. If I am writing and I stumble upon a character or sentence I really like, the instruction on free writing is to just keep writing. Don't attach to 'this one was good' or 'I really liked that sentence', in other words. I think this practice is a way of not identifying too much with writing. In the end, words are also just vehicles that help me to convey a message. They too have no meaning except in the context of being read in a particular time or place. For that reason, it would be foolish if I over-identified with any of my thoughts or writing. Perhaps the principle is that all writing is an effort to convey an existence that cannot be fully conveyed. And language is just a way of dancing around the spaces where people live. It combines and recombines in fanciful ways, but the forms don't quite capture the full range of possibility. In that way, a person can write from a place of not overly attaching to anything that is written or read.
   

A Heartfelt Knowing

   There's a very beautiful quote from ecological writer Aldo Leopold which I came across in an article called "The Blue Sapphire of the Mind" by Douglas Burton-Christie. At one point, Leopold was travelling in Arizona, and he and his friends had come upon a wolf accompanying her pups. He decided to kill the mother wolf as a kind of sport, perhaps as a way of proving his valor to his friends...or perhaps out of a recklessness. But when he sees the wolf dying, he suddenly changes his view of nature and the world in general. He writes:

     We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and  have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes--something known only to her and to the mountain....I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. (cited in Burton-Christie, p.43)

Leopold's reaction and his change in the way he sees the wolf are quite remarkable to me. For one, they indicate a shift away from a utilitarian view of nature. Rather than seeing the wolves as simply 'factors' in controlling the deer population, Leopold is able in that moment to observe the wolf participating in a greater mystery. When Leopold is able to suspend his views about what a wolf "is" and what "it is for", he yields to something deeper and more mysterious: a commonality shared between the wolf and the mountain. The other poignant aspect of Leopold's experience is that he learns humility: there are simply some things that he does not know, and perhaps can never know, that are shared between other sentient beings. I suggest that when Leopold moved away from a view that all knowledge must be his, he was able to give rise to compassion.

Reading this passage,  I can sometimes comprehend why the assumption of 'knowing' what things are 'used for' can obscure compassion. I think it is because, under that assumption of 'knowing' what a person sees in that moment isn't really the living totality. It is only a kind of dry figment of life which has been preserved in a jar, or like one of those butterflies that has been stuck between onion-skin papers and left to dry. It is only a semblance of life that comes to mind, not the total and awe-inspiring whole. It is kind of like confusing the thought for an existential knowing, or a knowing that comes from being itself.

Leopold's experience is a kind of symbol of what compassion might look like. It might be that moment when a person stops trying to know everything by classifying, and sees with the total heart exposed in the moment. This heart wisdom is not about grasping, but it's about 'hanging out there' in that moment and not being afraid to be wrong, to be humbled, or to even be nothing or 'not quite something.'

Burton-Christie, Douglas (2011) "The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Christian Contemplative Practice and the Healing of the Whole". from Contemplation Nation: How Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way We Live. Ed. Mirabai Bush. Kalamazoo: Fetzer Institute

Extraordinary in Ordinary

   One of the things that always attracted me Buddhism in general is that it does not exclude or leave out any particular experience, or privilege one experience over another. It doesn't try to say "this phenomena is more special than any other" and therefore deserves higher mention. All experiences come from the same source. In that regard, phenomena are treated equally from the perspective of the mind. To try to place one phenomena higher over the other is to take phenomena itself to be an end goal. This is a bit like making the phenomena more important and constellating our experiences around it. And to seek out these special experiences would only cause deeper vexation to the mind. The worst scenario might be to start ranking people according to their ability to have certain experiences.

     Many spiritual practices tend to emphasize attaining specific levels of experience, which is often marked by the ability or the skill to do something in a certain way. Sometimes it means having visions, magical powers, the ability to transport oneself to another dimension,  and so on. While I have heard many stories about these things happening, I often go back to the question of what value these powers might have to people's lives, and whether these visions pertain to wisdom. Even if someone was able to 'crack the code' and look into other people's minds or teleport themselves across dimensions, the question remains: what value might this have for others? And, if a person uses such powers for personal gain, is it not reinforcing the notion of a separate self?

    I am always wary of a point when spirituality might end up becoming a kind of 'dividing practice', to use a term from Michel Foucault: a kind of way of separating the identities of spiritual practitioners in terms of presumably different levels of ability. While I think that it's important to follow teachers in study of Buddhism, I don't think a true spiritual master would ever say "I have come this far because I do this, this and this." I think that a teacher can be best judged by the contents of what they are imparting to people, especially when it comes to the practice of Chan.

     In a sense, there is something extraordinary about the ordinary. Buddhism in particular seems to celebrate that all phenomena comes from a source. To know the source is the way of practice. When I know where things arise and how they do in meditation, even a simple thing like a flower or a sunrise becomes something extraordinary. I needn't go too far afield to see magic or miracles, if I only know the source of all one's experiences. To me, that is the beauty and simplicity of Chan. It is realizing that one doesn't need to travel far to know that one's nose is pointing downward. Or it is to know where all phenomena come  from.

Old Homes

   This evening, I went exploring in the cold night an old home at Marwill Street where I used to live when I was an undergraduate at York. And going into the street, I found a strange sight. I found a new and much bigger house that had been built on top of that old one-storey bungalow from so many years ago.. I am not sure why it would surprise me that this house would have been replaced by now. After all, it was over twenty years ago that I had first moved into the basement apartment at Marwill, as a way of living away from home to go to school at York.. But I felt a bittersweet taste as I saw the tall and 'new' structure standing where that bungalow once was. I wonder if this new structure represents something deep and unfathomable: a kind of life pattern where the impersonal and new overrides the 'cozy' and old. Why does it always look and feel this way?
    I remember reading Schopenhauer's philosophy on the way to university, around 1994-1995, and reflecting on his idea that thoughts become more 'contemplative' as they slip deeper into the past. And why is this? According to Schopenhauer, people are in a much better position to reflect from a distance on what happened in the past, without the interfering factors of struggle "in the present". To relate this concept to Buddhist practice, we can say that every moment is a Pure Land if one lets go of the vexations associated with the present thoughts, which are in turn rooted in the sense of self. Without the strong attachment to self, things can be enjoyed as temporary, fleeing manifestations of mind. But when I engage in an inner struggle with 'me' against the things around me, I am unable to really see things as they are. Only when I am reflecting on what has already happened without attachment am I allowed the distance from self to be able to contemplate that experience, and even enjoy that experience more wholeheartedly.
   How does this relate to my present subject of 'old homes'? I think that seeing where I used to live is a kind of experiment in Schopenhauer's philosophy of 'contemplation'. Did I feel somehow more peaceful to see something from the past come back to me? Not really. I think what really happened was much more complex.. For one, I did feel the regret of not being able to fully taste that moment as it was happening at the time.  In the midst of all my anxiety to succeed in school and to find employment afterward, I had failed to see that everything is always in this present. I am not ''rushing into the future" any more than I am moving away from the past. There really is no time, but the illusion of time passing prevented me from seeing that all of what I experience is in this one timeless 'now' of awareness. It looks as though it was an illusion for me to believe that I was 'going into' a future that never happened.
       But if I really take this teaching to heart, I will know that there was never such as thing as the past, and what happens is always in the unfolding moment of being-here. Though I may believe that I am moving from the past into the future, it is the same mind that registers all the moments--and that mind is not subject to moving whatsoever. If it were subject to moving, there would be no awareness of 'time' in the first place. To know this deeply and feel it intimately is to know that nothing ever leaves, nothing ever arises, nothing ever vanishes, nothing ever stays. Because the mind that sees the house as it is today is the same mind that sees the memory of the house of yesterday. Why feel loss or regret at something that never 'passed by'?

How Did I Sit Today?

How did I sit today...and yesterday?
I ask myself with my tongue-tied and eyes-crossed
How did I sit on the cushion today?

A hundred thoughts crossed through the mind
and I judged myself for having them
and calculated how much I stand to gain and lose

A thousand black flies played with my nose
Taunting and tempting me to swat them clear
Reminding me that life stops for nobody

Ten thousand doubts sashayed and zig-zagged
Doubts about who I am to myself, to others,
And Who is saying this stuff anyway?

So what could I do today that is right, except
To let this moment completely reveal itself
And not confuse anything in it for the real self

So what could I do today to serve things well, except
Allow my feelings to completely confound me?
And know that they will do so, for such is their nature

Just as the nature of flies is to tickle our noses
So these feelings are there, daring me to live
And respect anything that moves, breathes, gives

Not distractions, not dangers,  not things to kill
These feelings seem like the waves that make an ocean rise and fall
Built into the flowing nature of water itself

What shame is there to be in this muck of feelings
When feelings are just as much a form of mind
As the riddles I try to solve, and the languages I try to speak

What value is there for me to 'be' like a statue
When feelings teach me how connected I am
Thus showing a deeper reality than what meets the senses

So how did I sit today?
What did sitting reveal?
And to whom is it revealed?

How did I sit today?
How do I feel?
Who is the miracle who feels?

Just Being

   I have been hearing a lot recently about the expression "just be", which seems quite common in circles where meditation is being discussed. I am sure there must be books out there with titles such as "The Power of Being" to reinforce this notion that being is radically powerful and present with us everywhere. One of the problematic aspects of the expression "just be"  is that it contains an invisible polarity: "just be" as opposed to what? Non-being? Doing? In his book To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm refers to the diverging orientations of having and 'just being'. For Fromm, consumer culture encourages people to become passive and identified with consumable objects, whereas being is something that is accessed to everyone at all times. It makes me wonder, however, whether the modern consumer really 'doesn't have a soul' after all, and whether the two orientations are really mutually exclusive.
    Part of the problem, I think, is that it is easy to misunderstand the expression 'just be'. For many, it represents a flight from action or responsibility; as long as "I am I', I don't need to serve anyone or anything else outside 'my' being. Of course, real being is always inter-being. There is never a disembodied 'being' that is somehow cut off from the phenomena of the universe. I think a more nuanced understanding of 'just being' might be to see that everything one does, thinks, has, and sees is included as being. There isn't a thought that is alien or beyond being. All is included in being.
   When I am really knowing that this mind is inhabiting all the present moment in totality, is there anything that isn't 'to be'? At that point, even non-being starts to seem illusory, because there needs to be an awareness that is aware of non-being in order for non-being to be. Knowing this or at least sensing it, I relax my desire to somehow 'purify' my experiences by making my thoughts more clear. Instead, I am able to see that anything coming up in mind is an instance of being. And none of the thoughts stays the same from one moment to the next, so can I even see them as obstacles to being anymore?

Nondecision

  I found recently that I am experimenting with the idea of not deciding, or trying to decide too quickly on something that requires a decision. This state of being I call 'non-decision', as distinguished from 'indecision', to refer to a space where there is openness simply not to make any decision at all. I find it interesting that such a term as 'non-decision' has not found its way into a dictionary, yet 'indecision' has done so. I think that it suggests how the culture privileges the idea of making a decision, yet laments an 'inability' to do so, or even pathologizes the inability to decide. Meanwhile, the idea of not choosing at all has hardly any currency in the language, even as a kind of negative statement.
    How is it possible to suspend the process of deciding to do something without foreclosing the possibility of deciding at a later time? It is not an easy process, I have found, when many aspects of social and work life seem to encourage a quick responding to situations. In those moments, there is a push to decide that is somehow added on top of my process of trying to weigh the pros and cons of doing something. Because the push carries the weight that I need to decide right away, I tend to lose my ability to process the information and arrive at a more naturally available set of options. Meditative practice comes close to creating the space to not decide at all, but to wait and be patient with an unfolding process. But, how is this done in a work situation, when there is a push to have a response right away?
    In my own practice, I have found that it's important to distinguish the sensation of urgency from an actual urgent situation that requires response. The fact that something needs responding to does not mean that one has to have a sensation of urgency in the body. For example, some people naturally seem to respond to emergencies in a calm way which allows them to know what to do and when to do so. The sensation of urgency, on the contrary, seems to be separate from actual urgency. It is almost a kind of anxiety which nervously looks back at the self to see if it is doing things in the 'right way', according to outside protocols. I have found that when I confuse the sensation of urgency for actual urgency, my body will deliberately tense, as though the tension were somehow required to get the job done or accomplish the given task. But, looking at the examples of calm people under stressful situations...do they need to feel anxious or tense in order to respond to an emerging situation? Often, they don't feel this way at all. Rather, there is only the need to respond, which is not a felt sense of having to do something right away.
    In reality, there really isn't any need to respond to anything out of the sensation of urgency. When things need doing, there are ways of responding to it that just come from a natural state of reflection. If I constantly worry about whether "I" am doing the right thing, I am already focused on self-image and far away from the doing itself.
    I can't say that I have been successful in averting the sensation of urgency when things need accomplishing or when I don't know how to do something. But what I tried to practice recently is attempting to wait for a time when my thoughts have settled, before I come to any conclusion about a good path to take. The settling part might consist in doing some menial task wholeheartedly, as a way of settling the mind, before engaging in a more reflective or intellectual process of deciding.  I found that when I have these moments of resting the mind, the sensation of urgency goes away and I am able to address the urgency in a more calm and clear standpoint.