Magic and Danger

  In our class today, I learned a bit about Tantric Buddhism. There is so much of this practice that is a mystery to me, and as one of my classmates had remarked to me, there is a kind of endless probing that can take place when one keeps going deeper into these teachings. While a younger part of me might have been quite fascinated and curious about the kinds of supernatural elements that might be found in Tantric Buddhism, another part of me wonders: if I really understood how it works, would it not cease to be magic after all?
    What's tied to the notion of magic is the idea that there are certain powers that the majority of humans have not yet developed the capacity to use, the result of which it can be risky to expose this information to everyone. Anything that seems to dangerous for the majority of people to use is classified as magic, in this regard. But once a certain percentage of the population learns to utilize something, it soon enough becomes formalized. Fire is a good example. I could imagine that in early times, people thought of harnessing fire as magical, and even attributed its presence to the deities. But once humans learned to harness fire in useful or controllable ways, the idea of making a fire ceased to be so magical, and nor was it the property of one or two people who were high-status figures. As soon as one person can predict how to create something using the same principles, it no longer becomes magic, but is a science.
   In my readings of Brahminic sacrifices in India in Buddha's time, I learned how much the sacrificial ritual is complicated by issues of knowledge. If knowledge is deemed as too 'simple', it becomes a public knowledge which anyone can use, and it no longer has the status of authority anymore. To 'know' something is in some ways to have access to special kinds of information that not everyone is aware of. That is why it was so vital to Brahminic power and status that rituals remain complicated affairs, which only certain kinds of people were privy to. Knowledge creates status and prosperity, and it then becomes a kind of power that only certain people can have, or afford to have.
  

Dr. Strange and Chan

 Tonight I had a chance to watch the movie Dr. Strange, and I had a few thoughts about this film. The movie is in some ways typical of a Hollywood adventure with the usual trappings of special effects, explosions, chase scenes and collapsing buildings. But what made this movie distinct, at least from a visual perspective, is the way reality itself is conveyed as continually collapsing, like a magic mirror which distorts and re-distorts things to the point where nothing seems quite what it appears to be. Visually, this movie is quite stunning, and it forces viewers to subconsciously balk at what they thought was a solid element, such as buildings and time itself.
   Strange is a very talented doctor who can solve just about any problem that his patients present him with, including a bullet lodged deep into a vital part of a man's brain. One evening, he is in a serious car accident, and not even his beloved colleague and fellow doctor can help him recover use of his hands to resume his career as a world-renowned surgeon. Strange ends up finding a man who fully recovered from a debilitating spinal injury, who then directs him to Nepal where he discovers a teacher by the name of the Ancient One. She is the one who in fact reveals to Strange that it is not the body which heals but the mind. One is only limited by one's imagination in terms of what is possible. Strange is skeptical, and he attributes this idea to a kind of cheap or crass New Age sentiment. It's only later, after a shocking demonstration of different dimensions of reality, that Strange realizes that what he believed was true is only a tiny, miniscule piece of an infinite reality. He is so inspired to become the Ancient One's disciple that he even camps out in front of her abode after she kicks him out for being an arrogant and egoistic pain!
    The rest of the movie explores Strange's induction into the magical world, where he learns to use his mind to avert the evil plots of one of the Ancient One's former disciples. One of the most interesting scenes, however, occurs when Strange is training in using his new-found powers, yet lacks faith in the strength of his hands and mind to do what others are doing. The Ancient One then pushes him into a situation where he is on the coldest part of Mount Everest, and he truly needs to use his powers to get back to the Ancient One's abode. "Surrender", the Ancient One urges Strange, after he despairingly tells her how impossible it is for him to do what others are doing. When Strange finally does surrender his limiting beliefs about what it means to know something and perform it well, he is able to return.
     A lot of these ideas about surrendering to one's true nature and powers are found in other science fiction or fantasy movies, Star Wars being one example. What impressed me about this movie is how sophisticated the magic is, to the point where even the concepts of space and time are being challenged. This isn't about using magic to ensure that the good folks win over the bad, but about using magic to challenge and subvert the human tendency to limit their beliefs to what they think they know. Even the very 'laws' of good and evil are challenged, as Strange is forced to decide whether to trust the sincerity and goodness of the Ancient One, after he learns that she has been using dark magic to keep herself alive indefinitely. 
     But what impressed me the most is the Chan perspective that this film sometime exudes: the idea that the biggest enemy is not outside oneself but actually consists of the beliefs that one has related to what they can and cannot do. It's these beliefs which create the ego, and they become even more dangerous when they mask as 'the good of everyone'. For instance, Strange begins the movie a very self-assured man, so confident in himself and his own decisions. When he is stripped of that confidence, he is forced to admit that his ideas of what is good and evil were only relative to his functioning as a prestigious, well-respected member of a community. In contrast, the Ancient One has used dark magic to try to restore balance to the world and is well aware of the contradiction this creates. Somehow, she shows a humility, in realizing that what she is doing is complex, but she is also doing it for the benefit of others, not herself. The contrast between these characters suggest that sometimes the wisest and most compassionate actions are deeply complicated, and even a wise and selfless person might live a life of ambiguity. But when viewers become aware of this ambiguity, they are not so quick to judge who is the good or the bad person in this movie, or what 'good' and 'bad' magic is.

Gratitude Object Exercise for Foreign Language Learners: A Mindfulness-Based Practice

   This post will introduce a special kind of gratitude journaling exercise which I have developed for students that I am currently tutoring in ESL. It comes from research I am doing in "foreign language anxiety (FLA for short), which is defined as a kind of fear of using a language with which one perceives a lack of proficiency (Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993).
     For a long time, I have been thinking about how guided meditation can be used in tandem with journaling to create a special experience of gratitude for speakers of a second language. This orientation toward gratitude is intended to shift the learner away from feelings of inadequacy about their performance in a second language, and toward warmer feelings of appreciating the things that one can write about, using whatever language skills and proficiencies they have acquired up to that point.
     After reading about the relationship between foreign language anxiety and self-perception, I am convinced that it's possible to overcome or at least manage this anxiety through a heightened appreciation and gratitude toward all beings, as well as toward one's own efforts as a language learner. When learning a language, like anything else, the common tendency is to focus on the mistakes rather than on the successes. This approach can make a person somewhat afraid to practice a new language in front of others. But it's possible to see things differently by reframing language learning as a process of connecting with others. When one appreciates their own effort to learn language as a dedication to helping others and connecting deeply with them, the emphasis is not on perfecting oneself through language, but rather through the sincere intention to benefit others in the process of learning. Perhaps, then, language learning becomes a kind of spiritual practice that can be offered to others as a dedication.
    But without a specific writing exercise to ground one's practice of a language, it's hard to imagine the possibilities of what learning a language could mean. As a result, I have decided to design this exercise to create a conversation about how the quality of gratitude can be used as both a motivation and a tool to inspire people in learning a new language.
    Below is my sample exercise on gratitude journaling for foreign language learners:

Gratitude Object Exercise for Foreign Language Learners: A Mindfulness-Based Practice

Choose an object for this exercise. It could be a photograph, or a gift, or any household item, preferably something you can see and feel. Have the object in front of you or in your hand before you start this exercise.

Before starting this writing exercise, make sure your body is relaxed. Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes.

Take a moment to become aware of all the sensations in your body, without controlling the body. Feel your forehead and temples relaxing, followed by your eyes and eye sockets. Feel your facial muscles relaxing, then your neck and shoulders. Take three deep breaths. With each in-breath, feel your chest gently expanding, and relaxing completely with each outbreath. Then notice your waist becoming softer with each outbreath. Then become aware of your back, hips, thighs relaxing. Be aware of your ankles, feet and toes relaxing. Enjoy the sensation of the breath, and feel it spreading to all parts of the body, like a gentle breeze.

Now open your eyes.

Take a moment to reflect on the particular object you have chosen, without attaching any meaning to it.

You can take a moment to feel it in your hands, noting its texture, or smell, or appearance. Put your whole mind and heart on the object and become acquainted with it. See your connection to the object and feel it ‘speak’ to you. What does the object say if it could speak to you?

Put down the object. Now, in five minutes, write down as many phrases, words or sentences as possible related to that object or associated with it, without thinking about grammar or spelling. Let the mind be completely relaxed, without considering whether your writing is “correct” or not.

Pay attention to writing continuously, without stopping. Don’t be afraid to repeat the same words again and again, based on what you know.

If your mind wanders away from the process of writing about the object, gently go back to the object itself. Don’t judge the process but simply treat it as a writing practice.

In the next part of the exercise, consider all the things you wrote about the object. Then answer the following specific questions about the object itself.

1. Consider: where does this object come from? Who made it? What kind of work went into it? How was the object made? Reflect on all the living beings who contacted the object, or shaped it, or lived in it or beside it. Write down a few words or sentences about where it came from and who or what made it.
    
2. Take a moment to appreciate the living beings who came into contact with this object and shaped it or interacted with it in some way. Write a few words about who (or what) contacted the object. Reflect on what efforts they made to shape the object into something you could use or consume.  Reflect on the common bond you have with the living beings who made this object, or the natural world which shaped it. Write down a few words or sentences about the connection between the object and others.
    

Now go back to your list. Look at all the words you used to write your descriptions and dedications.

 Take a moment to appreciate the effort you made to spend time with each word, in the present, and to learn each word.

Appreciate your efforts to learn the language and all the words you have learned.

Dedicate your continued effort to using the new language you are learning to communicating good intention, peace and wellness to others.

Thank yourself for taking the time to be fully present with this exercise.

 

 

 Gardner, R. & MacIntyre, P. (1993). A Student’s Contribution to Second Language Learning, Part II: Affect Variables. Language Teaching 26, 1-11.

Up for Grabs!

  I recall a couple of months back, how Judy and I had stumbled upon a couple of old books which were on the street, 'up for grabs'. One was about language, in particular the history of English language and characters, while the other is a book by Terry Orlick called Free to Feel Great: Teaching Children to Excel at Living (1993). This book is a real treasure, because it actually talks about mindfulness without even using the term 'mindful'! Now, think of that--schools have been insisting on trying to de-sacralise the meditation process by stripping it of any element of spiritual tradition attached to it. But more than 20 years ago, a man did exactly this, and went even farther to stop using the term mindfulness! He even uses "Book of Highlights" to describe a gratitude journal which explores how children can highlight the positive and wholesome things in their lives. He lists a few examples, including Human Contact, Contact with Nature, Play, Personal Accomplishments, Relaxation, Discovery and Good Sensations (p.14-15). After reading this list just now, I start to realize that this book should perhaps be for adults. But luckily it is not...because the adult world has a tendency to use abstract terms to describe what are really very emotional and visceral, everyday experiences of being in touch with one's surroundings, body and sensations. All this is 'mindfulness', but without the very important (if not overused) language.
    The reason I bring up this point is to say: the practice of being mindful paradoxically means that one often has to innovate on the terminology a bit in order to keep the ideas fresh in mind. When I read Orlick's book, I am seeing something I have perhaps read in a different way, but it is being presented with fresh, almost child-like eyes and mindset. And this mindset of curiosity and simple child-like delight is often part of what it means to be in this moment, with everything one has and is. Rather than thinking of this process as some abstract 'mind discovery' it might perhaps be an advantage to go back to what this experience really looks and feels like in the day to day grind of life.
    I must say, Orlick's book is a gem, and it is helping me to get fresh perspectives on the topic of gratitude.

Orlick, Terry (1993). Free to Feel Great: Teaching Children to Excel at Living. Carp, ON: Creative Bound

Planting Seeds, not Running Races

  There is something to be said about not making too many leaps. I learned this in meditation, because it's the most subtle thing that there is in the world. Anyone who tries to put a marker of 'progress' on meditation is bound to be disappointed, because eventually you will reach a kind of still point where even the idea of progress seems superimposed, if not a bit fake. Can we put 'progress' on water or oceans? We never think that these things 'progress' and yet there is a tendency to value progress over and above the simple things in life.
   I tend to think it in this way. For everything I do in life, I will say that I try to put in 400% of who I am. I mean: I set a high bar for myself, even if I know that deep down, it's not possible for me to achieve it given my mental and physical limitations. But there is always going to be something out there that surprises me or dumbfounds me. For instance, even with the best intentions,  I might test a process at work, only to find later that there is some bug in the program that wasn't even discovered in the test cases. Even with the very best blueprint, there are times when that plan itself can blind a person to other factors that could not have been imagined or conceived of when the blueprint was first designed. Does progress or 'thinking fast' help in those situations? Sometimes it does help to think quickly, but one should never be lulled into equating quickness with solving a problem thoroughly. In other words, there is no guarantee in progress that one doesn't have to start all over again.
    I find that it's important not to think too linearly. I cannot harbor this illusion that success happens when a person covers all the bases. Life doesn't happen this way, because there is no plan that can account for all the karmic seeds and how they ripen at different moments in time. When you see a well-crafted movie, you will notice all its subtle twists and turns, and how the good director weaves the details together symbolically, and none of it is quite what you expected. Now take that movie and multiply it by all the people and situations you come across, and you will find that life is made of a million overlapping and conflicting movie plots, plans, and blueprints. Can any of these things orchestrate to create a predictable outcome? One can reasonably expect things to happen based on previous trials, but besides that, can it be done so quickly and in a linear fashion of jumping from A to B?
    I think Buddhism has an interesting take on this, and that is to refer to merit as a field, instead of as an edifice. The typical meritorious symbol in certain cultures in the West is that of a statue: I build one to commemorate a famous person, or someone who contributed their resources to a better society. But Buddhism uses the field instead of the statue, to represent virtue or goodness. Goodness does not come about automatically by doing something noteworthy. Rather, it is about doing certain things at certain moments, to certain things, and waiting for other conditions to co-create a wholesome result. None of this is about rushing: we can't just plant the seed and stare at it, waiting for it to grow. In fact, the whole process of observing the development of something is teaching us about the ways of the universe: complex, unpredictable, and always full of twists and emerging new karmic results. None of this is boring, and it's wonderful to think that relationships themselves are really about learning the ways of the universe from each other. Why race through it when it can be enjoyed slowly?

Emotional Roller Coasters

 Tonight, during the group sitting, we talked about the notion of emotional roller coasters. After watching Master Sheng Yen's video about emotions in Buddhism, one participant had asked the question: would the view that one 'should' cultivate equanimity lead to a boring view? Aren't emotional roller coasters somewhat exciting in life, and why would anyone want to embrace a 'flat line' emotional life when they can have roller coasters all the time?
    This question interests me mainly because I really never did love roller coasters, even as a child. Somehow, the idea of being plunked into a semi-secure metal (or sometimes wooden) partition and then flung up into the air was never my idea of 'fun'. Now I do know others out there who crave the excitement and stimulation of a roller coaster, which leads me to suspect that a lot of one's reactions to roller coasters may be due to previous affinities or karma. Somehow, I have learned to prefer stability of mind, even though there were times when my mind was far from stable, especially when young.
   To go back to the Chan attitude: in fact, Chan is meant to help a person develop equanimity in the face of all situations, whether they are roller coasters or straight lines. It is not designed to flatten emotions, but it is meant to see emotions as impermanent manifestations. If I feel angry, I can feel that way without thinking that the anger is inseparable from me. The same goes with other emotions as well. If I am really knowing that the emotions are parts of a dream, then I am neither moved by them nor rejecting them. I simply see the emotion as part of the mind that is just arising then and there. But this doesn't mean that I crave stillness, because stillness is just the natural way of mind. It isn't something that needs to be actively cultivated separately from one's experiences. In this way, it's possible to live a roller coaster life, but not feel that one's mind is a roller coaster. This has a lot to do with not attaching to the roller coaster itself: neither seeking it nor rejecting it. This means that I can rejoice in another's interests, but always know in the back of my mind that opportunities to indulge the interest or hobbies don't last: they too will pass. This way I learn to ride the roller coaster but always with this awareness that I will get off it soon enough.

All Beings are our Mothers?

I have often heard the argument in Tibetan traditions that one must learn to see all sentient beings as one's mother, particularly as we have all been in this endless cycle of samsara...and somehow through all that time, we must have all mothered each other at some point. I find it interesting that mothering should be the paradigm for Tibetans, and I get stuck here. Even though I have been mothered, in fact, I don't recall ever having been a mother, and I don't think I even have what is called a maternal instinct within me. There are times when I simply find it hard to relate to the notion of loving all things unconditionally as a mother would a child. It is as though I am looking for a somewhat easier metaphor to work with, yet cannot find one at all.
   As much as I do value the metaphors of all sentient beings having been one's mother, I also feel that the maternal loving feeling we give and receive is never sufficient. Why do I say that? I say it because all those maternal feelings are skilful means to soften the heart, but they don't always necessarily constitute deepest wisdom. To give an example: we have all come across examples of mothers who overprotect their children or even develop unhealthy attachments to them, and vice versa. In fact, most psychology of the twentieth century is concerned just with this notion of maternal bonds gone awry! It leads me to wonder, is Mother a singular quality after all, or are there as many styles of mothering as there are mothers?
   

Merit Transfer

    Every time I facilitate the group meditation practice, I have made it a point to recite the transfer of merit prayer at the end of the session. I am not quite sure how it came about, or even how I was able to remember this prayer, since I have a poor memory for details. But somehow this prayer has always stuck with me and meant something to me as well, so I have always made it a point to use it in the closing part of the meditation practice.
    As I am reading about the subject of merit for the Buddhist foundations class, I do begin to wonder, how exactly does merit transfer work? It may seem quite simple to say that those who do wholesome deeds can dedicate the result to others, but does it not contradict the notion that everyone is alone in reaping the results of previous karma? To be honest, I haven't quite thought deeply about this subject. I have only been transferring merits because the practice feels right to me, like feeling so good about a practice that one can't help but want others to feel the same as we do.
     For me, I don't really even know for certain whether transfer of merit actually happens. But what I do know is that I myself feel complete after doing this kind of prayer. The feeling that I have is that, usually after meditation, I feel that there aren't that many boundaries between self and others, and that there is this one collective mental space occupied by all. I naturally feel that merit transfer is just an extension of that mind space and not thinking that it is even a 'transfer'. After all, a real transfer would have to be between very separate entities, and yet after meditation, one feels that in fact there is no real distinction between self and others.
    If I were to best describe transfer of merit, I would have to use the analogy of what happens at work. Let's suppose (and it's happened to me), there is an announcement on a Monday morning that there are mass layoffs expected at one's workplace, and everyone had better make their plans to look for work. That announcement, whether on purpose or not, triggers a kind of collective feeling that often hits everyone in similar ways, even though people's reactions may be somewhat different. This one action, in other words, generates an impact on others, and thus creates a ripple effect of suffering. Now, if one considers the opposite, the scenario changes. If I announce that everyone in the company is getting a raise, what happens? Everyone starts to celebrate and feel more relaxed, knowing that they are doing the right things to get that raise. So in that sense, there is a collective response to one person's generosity in providing everyone with a raise. I would have to say that this is a kind of merit transfer. I am taking my generosity and transferring it to those who most stand to benefit  themselves and others from it.
   This very mundane example might be a key to how one experiences merit transfer. When a person does something thoughtful or wholeheartedly and then extends that deed outward, it becomes a kind of gift that uplifts others in significant ways. It could be something as simple as deciding that because I have learned to be proficient in a language and benefit from the privileges of knowing that language, I should try to help others learn it. In fact, the more grateful I am for having that skill, the more inclined I will likely feel to want others to feel the same and have that benefit. There is nothing too metaphysical about this idea. It is just the dedication of one's personal benefit to other beings, through a kind of uplifting action that extends the personal benefit to others.

A Good Discipline

When I look at my professor's writings, I think about all the things I need to do to improve, and what it would take for me to be at a similar level of writing, stylistically and so on. What I recognize from that exercise is that writing is definitely a social discourse, having its rules, audience and intentions. I believe that the first time I ever truly recognized this point was back in 2002, when I decided to have some of my poems published through an amateur magazine. Up to that point, I had been writing poems primarily for my own interest, but when I had to actually consider their market, I realized that there is more to professional writing than simply writing what one feels like writing. I would even go so far as to say that professional and 'hobby' writing are completely different beasts. It is not good enough for me to simply see professional writing as a polished version of what I write for myself. Rather there are specific things that people look for, and it's quite hard to satisfy those wishes if one doesn't have a community which shows the way.
    Does this mean that writing for oneself has no value? Actually, quite the contrary, it suggests that the two kinds of writing are normally separate yet equal. Whereas professional writing often extends the writing of others in community, I tend to think of my own writing more like a self-discovery, where I am trying to work things out and make sense of them. I think that daily writing is 'good discipline', not insofar as it might get a person closer to writing for a market, but because it encourages a kind of articulation of how one thinks and feels which is not always captured in the final product of a writer's book or short story. In a sense, the two purposes of writing can complement each other and give a writer motivation to continue her or his craft.
     

The nature of fire

Santideva writes the following analogy when describing anger on others:

If inflicting harm on others is the nature of the foolish, then my anger toward them is as inappropriate as it would be toward fire, which has the nature of burning (p.66, No 39)

This passage seems to make sense, but how often does a person really practice the idea? I have a sense that Santideva's view of emotions goes against a common sense view, which I like to describe as something like "you did it first". A person often treats the anger as something that is triggered from someone or something else and keeps looking for the cause in that other person. But where exactly does anger begin, if not from the perceptions and ways that one frames the world? If I am clear about the fact that anger doesn't come from someone else, then I can observe the anger without ever thinking it is caused by someone else. In that sense, I never turn anger into an object or an enemy.
   It seems the nature of consciousness to try to treat everything as a concrete object. One example I come across is when people talk about 'depression' as though it were a kind of thing that enters one's mind and body. If you have never watched the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", it is a kind of fitting example of the thinking where I treat a mental state as a kind of alien invader. Rather than seeing depression as a label for a set of complicated factors or characteristics, I overuse the term depression...at first as a short hand, but then as a kind of catch-all phrase to describe any difficult mental state which involves a heavy or sad impression.
    In a similar way, Santideva is referring to people who make something really important out of what are really just cause and conditions. If a driver cuts another off on the highway and that person becomes angry, the angry person will rarely consider in that moment that many factors would be contributing the other driver's behavior. Instead, that other driver starts to contain the personification of all the things one has rejected, both in oneself and in others. This is a kind of strange magic that the mind does. It endows events or situations with properties and values that don't necessarily belong to the situation at all.
    What Santideva is trying to do in this passage, I believe, is to go back to the original state of things, by comparing people's behavior to the nature of fire. Now, nobody ever blames fire for burning, so why would we blame people for being themselves? Santideva is using a simple example of properties we can all agree on as 'natural', and extending this metaphor to all people. It's interesting that this analogy is incredibly hard to grasp and practice, because the typical attitude between people is to exaggerate or even distort what one perceives as either 'good' or 'bad' qualities. But if I finally accept that people are the result of their previous behaviors, thoughts and decisions, is there any reason not to see them as like the fire that burns? This attitude is a simple and unconditional acknowledgment that there is always a cause for why people behave as they do, and one needs patience to really look upon it.
 

A Return to Santideva...

  Now, after all the tussle of the past few months, where did I leave off in my writing about Santideva? In fact, I might ask the more fundamental question, why Santideva? Maybe this is the more interesting question to ask, since I often wonder whether it's good to look up to any philosopher for insights or points of view, or if perhaps it's better to go on one's own and find what is true to themselves.
    This little dilemma I have reminds me of a scene in the movie adaptation of Siddartha (the Herman Hesse novel), where the main character, a kind of Buddha figure, suddenly realizes that he cannot rest content with what others have taught him. In an act of defiance, he yells something to the effect of "I have to follow my own heart!', upon which he rejects all authority and decides to look for truth away from all institutions. Siddartha was written at a time when Buddhism was relatively new to the West, and I see it as an interpretation of some aspect of Zen that might have been popular sometime in the 60s or 70s. Zen must have been an intriguing possibility to many in the West at that time, precisely because of its mystery and being from another culture entirely. But I do have to wonder, is the truth always to be found in one's own heart, or do we sometimes need to go to other people's hearts for guidance? I believe it's certainly a balance between the former and the latter, although I haven't quite figured out where that balance lies. The romantic notion of the lone individual who finds her or his own truth in isolation seems like a thing of the past. Somehow, I get a real sense that there needs to be a community or two which allows a person to find that truth.
    When I read Santideva's writings, am I relating to him as an authority? I haven't yet come to the point of asking myself, 'what would Santideva say in this situation?' I see Santideva as someone who, like myself, seems to have written in order to remind himself of the things that are most valuable to him. In that sense, I like the idea of writing to remind oneself, because it can transform writing away from venting emotions toward something that is trying actively to relate one's experiences and emotions to some principle or idea one is wrestling with. In this way, rather than following a teacher blindly, the exploration of that teacher's writings becomes a kind of
    I have, so far, not yet really gone into Santideva's writings. Perhaps this makes the title of my blog deceiving. But since I am making up for the lost blogs of this past month, I will return to Santideva shortly.

The Value of Isolation

 Over the last couple of days, I had a chance to read a few things and watch lecturer (who is an eminent child psychologist) talk about the theme of childhood development. One of the things the lecturer talked about was how child development requires a great deal of bonding with parental figures. This bonding is not about attaching to the parent with anxiety but more about providing 'holding spaces' where it feels safe to be on one's own, knowing that the parental guide is always available when required. But in order for a child to truly develop, she or he needs to tolerate times when the parent is not emotionally available, without interpreting these periods of unavailability as devastating or corrupting of a child's regularity. This is why it is important for children to have a space of their own so that they can learn to be resilient even when there is no constant coddling or 'stroking' available from the parent.
    I tend to agree with those of the likes of Ian Suttie (author of Origins of Love and Hate) who tended to see it as normal for even adult human beings to require stroking in the form of human support. People need to feel somewhat important to other people, in order to insure that their world doesn't seem unreliable to them. Of course, there also needs to be a genuine insight into how I create this world of unreliability through my thinking about things in a certain way. If I believe my own thoughts that others are always, at all times, unreliable, I forge the fact that people can and do help when the need and circumstances arise. Perhaps the trick is to let go of always expecting to be rewarded with the emotional support of others when life gets difficult.
   I know that for myself, in periods of isolation, I have the chance to test my own thinking. In a sense, meditation also provides a kind of space where one can see which thoughts are so compelling, and form interpretations of others' intentions which may or may not be true. But at the same time, isolation always needs to return back to something in order to become meaningful: it needs to have a context. Even people who study in the mountains for years need to be able to take their practice back down to the marketplace where people thrive. This is because the real insight of isolation is interconnection. By learning to better tolerate periods when others are not sustaining me, I have this great opportunity to expand my heart even when there is no reward or mutual regard. This is a real test of how deeply one has found their own true heart, rather than getting caught in a chronic need for approval to feel safe or assured.  I can't say that I am particularly 'good' at this process, but wish to outline what I understand about it.

Agitated thoughts

   Today was a bit of an agitating day for me: some stress at work, followed by a busy commute on a late and very crowded bus, on the way to group meditation. By the time I had arrived at the centre to set up the cushions and video for the evening sharing, I already noticed myself being in a very agitated state. I felt like one of those glass ornaments with the snow inside, that had been shaken once too many times...! But nonetheless, here I was in a position to try to calm myself before starting the meditation, yet knowing that I was not really going to be calm at all, at least not at the beginning.
    When I was guiding the meditation and doing the practice tonight, I started to realize how much this agitation I was experiencing actually 'grounded' me in the moment. How is that possible, you may wonder? Shouldn't agitation be the enemy of calm mind? Actually, not really, because in fact it's the agitation in our lives which reminds us that we need to get out of thinking we are our own thoughts. If everything is so comfortable and serene that one can just enjoy thoughts on their patio while blowing soap bubbles, then one is never motivated to quite get out from one's thoughts: in fact, in an ideal state of being, many people fall in love with their thoughts and become enamoured with the illusion of stability which comes from thinking. It's only when one becomes extremely busy with painful thoughts that one becomes truly motivated to meditate! In fact, it's then that meditation starts to make sense as an alternative to the busy-ness of one's thinking.
   One of the participants in the group sitting mentioned that she had difficulty really settling in the practice, this being her first time at the meditation session. She referred to how she had to keep coming back to the awareness of breath many times after falling away into wandering thoughts. But I mentioned that in fact, this is the miracle and joy of meditation itself. In a sense, one often doesn't even realize that she or he is thinking, let alone returning to her or his breath. In this sense, one only need trust that the practice itself will lead to a calm mind, and one needn't obsess over looking for a perfect 'static' state of mind.

Fear of Missing Out

 I have not been writing in this blog consistently for the last few days or so, and my only excuse is that I have been hard at work on a paper for one of my classes, which compares Hindu and Buddhist sacrificial rituals.
    I have noticed, as I just started to formulate a topic for tonight, how much I miss the blog. Free writing is such a different style than the academic research writing which I have had to undertake recently, and I must say that it's a relief not to have to cite everything I write with a bibliographic reference! So there is a kind of stiffness I feel for not having free-written in a couple of days, combined with a sense of genuinely wanting to resume my daily blog writing.
     I was having this conversation the other day with a Chan practitioner about the proliferation of social media, and how it can become distracting at times to really practicing single-pointed awareness. I sometimes make it a habit to turn off my internet when coming home so that I can focus on writing a paper or reading a few academic articles. This measure is necessary because it is so easy to get distracted by the internet, similar to the way in which a person gets caught in wandering thoughts. Besides 'turning off the internet', is there any other way to avoid the tendency to surf?
    It seems that the most compelling driver for internet use is something called fear of missing out (which has even been abbreviated to FOMO!). I read an article which talked about how a lot of anxiety among young adults stems from this fear, particularly due to the proliferation of things and events that compete for a person's time and attention. With all the meetup groups out there, how does a person choose which to attend? If I attend one, for sure I will be in a position where I will have to forego the other, and so on.
    It seems that the ultimate remedy for FOMO is to see things with equanimity. One might think that staying at home is less glamorous than being downtown on a Friday night, but then one can recount the advantages of the former over the latter. Being at home means more time to relax, to catch up on one's reading, and to be in a warm place for a while. Is there not always an advantage to any state one is in? Even being in a traffic jam gives a person an opportunity to see that this stressful situation could always be worse, and isn't all that bad either. Consider: if I am in a traffic jam, at least I am not caught in the rain. It seems that these small gratitude reminders could help deal with the fear of missing out.

Krishnamurti comes to mind...

   On my facebook feed, I am hearing and reading a lot of stories about how people are reacting to the election results in the U.S. I am seeing something akin to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's account of the different stages that we go through when dealing with the loss of loved ones. Of course, the first stage of the process is denial and disbelief, followed by extreme resistance and even an effort to bargain with others to bring the loved state of being back. But none of these measures prove to be lasting, and eventually they give way to a more accepting way of being. Has acceptance and accommodation happened for the U.S. elections? Perhaps now and perhaps never. It's hard to say what is 'normal' anymore, much less the baseline to which one can reliably turn.
  I am not especially interested in the idea of trying to look for a villain in the story of the elections. It seems to me that the country is so complex, and there is no one cause for things in this story. The more a person demonizes another, the harder it is for that demonized or stigmatized person to learn from others or participate in community with others. Filled with fear and shame, such a person can do nothing but try to solve the problems of the nation on their own, with minimum involvement in others' lives. Conversely, those who demonize others without sincerely trying to understand the others' motivation are only perpetuating a culture and climate of hatred or exclusion. In a sense, I have to wonder: are we yet evolving to the point where we start to see through our labels and judgments?
   Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher, comes to mind as I am thinking this through. I learned from my readings of his books that conflict is not something we need to stigmatize or see as 'abnormal'. As this election suggests, conflict is part of the everyday meaning and process of being human. If one learns not to balk at conflict, the feelings and perceptions associated with it are not regarded as bad at all. But it always seems the case that conflict almost primes a person for a flight or fight, knee-jerk reaction to things. I end this blog with the question: can people learn to abide in conflict without reacting or taking sides?

The Problem with "Growth"

 Many people nowadays are starting to tap into something called "growth" mindset. According to this view, people in organizations no longer ascribe to the view that they possess fixed characteristics or capabilities. Rather, all people are shifting beings, who are always learning and expanding to embrace new ways of thinking. To believe that one is limited by genetics or set ways of thinking is only to perpetuate a myth of permanence or inflexible nature. As a way of remedying the emphasis on 'finalities' (final nature, final result, etc.) experts in this field seem to be suggesting an emphasis on process: it's not the end result that counts but, more so, an unfolding process of learning that makes a journey worthwhile and worth embarking on. Many of the modern slogans in the growth mindset field remind me of things written by John Dewey a century ago.
    So far, so good, but I have to wonder: where does the concept of 'growth' fit into this? And is there ever a reliable way of gauging whether or not something has 'grown' based on a process or even a result? I think that the concept of growth starts to become murkier as a person starts to explore the inner growth of, say, children. Children are such complex beings that I wonder:  does the imposition of 'growing curve' sometimes inhibit children from doing something that feels genuinely authentic to them? Whose growth is it anyway? At what cost to a person's inner life must they face growth or go through growth?
    To me, the most lasting kinds of growth seem to come from within a person's sincere heart. It might seem that a person is growing when she or he is following how others want them to be, but this is only growth for something outside of oneself, such as a corporation or a corporate value. What often happens in that case is that a person starts to split themselves into a 'personal' self and a 'corporate', almost bureaucratic, self. If values such as 'growth' are meant to be a permanent part of one's life, then it needs to come from a real desire for change. And even in that case, it's still hard to say when change becomes growth. To use a Darwinian example, animals are hardly said to 'grow' through adaptation, since adaptation is simply that: adapting to the circumstances in which an animal lives. But growth seems to me to be something more integral, and more encompassing. To 'grow' is to seem to step beyond a way of living while simultaneously containing it: to see life in a context of something bigger than itself.

The World We Want is Within Us

  Many people are feeling shocked about the election results in the U.S., and as of now, the votes are coming in. I believe that it is a close race, and in some sense, it's meant to be a disappointment for a lot of people. But I had two thoughts as I was heading home tonight from class and a very late dinner. The first thought I had was a very cynical one. It was something like: no matter who is voted into power, the machinery of power is going to keep going. In other words, power is power, and it is going to be pretty much the same hierarchical order regardless of who wins. But then I started to reflect that this is not necessarily the case at all. I think that the world a person wants to have is already within themselves, waiting to ripen with education and cultivation of some kind.  So this second thought is a lot more hopeful.
    If you think about it, nothing can stop a person from creating a pure land. All it really requires is a pure intention and a method to which a person remains loyal. This is not about collecting spiritual slogans on Facebook. It's more like a consistent practice that one can and does always return to, such as a deep listening to one's breath. If the heart is pure, how can the world be impure? If the intention is pure, one would never see an ill intention in anyone else around them. This is so because everything we experience is only a reflection of the mind. If what I see is 'despicable', then I need to consider: what am I rejecting about this situation, and why? What is it about me and how I am moving that makes me reject one thing and seek another?
    Even in the worst kinds of adversity, the mind need not see this as terrible at all. It is a kind of crucible for one's soul or one's practice (depending on how you call or to what spiritual tradition you belong). Sometimes, difficult people are in one's life just to help them overcome some blockage or discrimination in their mind. Once a person sees through the label, is there anything that is to be rejected? The only real discrimination is simply created by the mind.
    This is why, quite simply, one should never give up their wish for a better world. Look at your state of mind closely, drop all the clinging to thoughts, and you will find the better world, both within and outside.

A Biological Model?

     One of the unfortunate aspects of some forms of psychoanalysis is a tendency to think of human beings as "instinctively" driven beings, rather than beings who are interconnected with others since birth. It seems that 'instincts' are these isolated tendencies within a person, when in reality, the way a person experiences emotion is often the result of more than simply inner triggers of emotions in the body.
      I was reading these articles today for my course in Buddhism and mental health, and I came across a few about the relationship between post-traumatic stress and certain kinds of states of being and behavior. The articles were suggesting that post-traumatic stress can profoundly affect the neurochemistry of the brain, resulting in behaviors such as substance abuse or depression. This is all very well, but I couldn't help but notice how the authors seemed to be rooting behaviors in very specific chemical deficiencies in the body. Using a model of 'deficiency' and/or 'imbalance', the authors tried to show correlations between these imbalances and subsequent behaviors. Somehow, I get a sense that these articles are lending themselves to a medical view of life. It's as though all one needed to do to address these problems would be to inject some new chemical which counterbalances the deficiencies which lead to problem behaviors.
       I am somehow reminded that perhaps these scientific explanations are only creations of the mind. If I think in terms of deficiency or imbalance, I no sooner start to become a consumer, whose aim in life is to correct the deficiency--to 'fill the hole' somehow. But then I also started to wonder, is there ever a perfect 'equilibrium' achieved in life, or is perhaps even the concept of balance relative? I am afraid that perhaps the medical view only perpetuates this idea of trying to compensate for deficiencies using some quick fix. Perhaps in reality, nobody fully understands the relationship between the chemicals produced in the body.
       An alternate explanation might be that when a person is only looking through the microscope, they miss out on the larger currents that might be factoring into an experience. But because things might seem more precisely measured when they are small units, we get this idea that they can predict the whole behavior of humans. Yet, most people start to become aware that humans are much more complicated in how they think and behave. Is it fair to focus only on their brain chemistry to understand what really happens with them?

Guilt vs Responsibility

  I am continuing to reflect on guilt and its relationship to responsibility. I think part of the confusion for me in this area is that I tend to associate these two together, because guilt often seems to be a 'motivator' to take responsibility, or at least the feeling of regret or remorse. I am ambivalent about guilt, because the emotion itself is always trying to recruit the mind. But again, is guilt a truly constructive emotion? And as for responsibility--what are the limits, if any, to that for which a person must be responsible?
   To give one example: there is an argument that says something like, you are fully responsible for what happens to you. If I recall the book Zero Limits by Joe Vitale, there is this idea that one should assume that everything that happens to oneself is really the result of the perfect arising of cause and conditions. Therefore, it's only fitting that a person approach their challenges in life with an attitude of humility: the sense that I am simply responding to situations that have ripened from previous actions or karma. So far so good...but what is it that prevents this attitude from taking on more than what a person can do? What prevents this practice from becoming too burdensome to carry?
  I think that with Zero Limits, the goal is not at all to take on other people's problems, as though one had to solve everything and make everyone happy. In fact, I think one of the messages in this book is the opposite: namely that we can cultivate a wholesome intention to help other beings without necessarily even communicating with them directly. And I think that it's exactly this attitude which prevents the practice of taking responsibility not as burdensome as it might seem in other contexts. There is a very small spark of kindness, and all it really requires is an awareness to nurture it. And it comes from owning up to the fact that things are here in this moment for very specific reasons.
     This responsibility is quite different from guilt. Whereas guilt tends to focus on what has already passed (for which there is no turning back, really), responsibility is relating more to the incomplete present. I cannot 'take responsibility' for that over which I no longer have a meaningful choice. Even in the case of having a debilitating illness, one can still take responsibility for how one behaves and thinks about the illness itself. In that sense, there is always this tiny window of choice, which arises from the attitude I decide to take toward what faces me. And I know that if the conditions around me have already arisen as they have, then I had might as well accept those conditions.
    The key point is that responsibility requires a clear-eyed responsiveness to conditions, whereas guilt is something that really cannot be responded to, because there is something closed about it. Guilt is that sensation of, "you can't go back to being who you were", and there is a heaviness associated with it. But responsibility says: even though one cannot turn back to the past, there is still some way to respond to the present, and this is the empowering aspect of responsibility.

barking up trees: guilt in spiritual life

Tonight, I was thinking about the value of guilt in spiritual life. Is there a role in it, after all, and are there certain values to feeling guilt? I think that in Western religions especially, there is a common assumption that guilt has a special value of deterring a person from doing something that can be harmful. In a sense, I believe that this idea comes more from a behaviorist tradition, because it works by means of self-punishment. When I really and truly feel that I am to blame for something that has happened, the force of that belief is so severe and painful that I am deterred from performing the same action again. In that sense, we have sometimes heard the expression, 'you have to feel pain in order to embrace change', or something to that effect. But I also wonder if there are in fact detrimental aspects to guilt as well.
   Guilt seems to speak to a universal belief in the power of punishment, both toward self and others. It's as though one assigns a feeling which is so heavy and so blaming that a person will no longer wish to engage in a certain undesirable behavior. But I sometimes wonder how this dynamic of guilt works in relationships. If I am self-punishing, how does that tendency to punish play out in respect to others? I can look at the converse effect and wonder: if I am simply more tolerant and understanding towards others, would I not also start to feel less guilty and punishing toward myself whenever things don't turn out as I thought they should be? It can perhaps hardly be the case that the guilt one feels toward oneself does not have an effect on others. I believe that feeling inner guilt can set a precedent for how one views the behaviors of others.
   The way out of this impasse is that I can start to slowly appreciate that whatever I have done in the past is not capturing the fullest and deepest parts of my being. This is quite opposite to a strict view of morality where a person tries to apply negative deterrents to prevent her or himself from performing specific actions. This latter view can work in some situations, but the problem is that it doesn't expand the spirit in any way, and it tends to leave a person living in fear of being reprimanded.
   I am really quite convinced that feeling bad about what one has done in the past is not the best idea. The idea would be to use what one has learned from the past to cultivate a wider and more forgiving understanding of all sentient beings.

When Things Stop Moving

 During the group meditation practice tonight, we talked a lot about the idea of time not really having an existence in the absolute sense. While conventional wisdom teaches that there is a past, present and future, the ultimate sense of the mind is beyond time itself. I believe that once a person stops attaching to thoughts, they lose the sense of time. What is time, after all, if not the ability to bind certain ideas or thoughts together, as Korzybski might put it?
   Time doesn't stop, however, unless a person really works at it. I am saying that for the most part, I am attached to moments and am engaging in things in a certain way, which is what gives rise to a past, present and future. If I see a cake and then start to salivate and think about how nice that cake is going to taste if I get a hold of it, I am already stirring up all kinds of thoughts about time. Here I am now, craving the cake in the future that has just arisen in mind previously. But if I were not so attached to the thought of cake in the first place, would all this have been perceived as happening?
   I have often heard the expression that human beings are 'makers' of their own destiny and fate. I never quite understood this expression, until I started to learn about the Buddhist concepts of time and karma. As long as I am associating certain experiences with ideas of like, dislike or neutrality, I color my world and create seeds for a future world. An easy example of this might be the current trend in global warming. The world that is collectively resulting today comes from a lot of previous ideas and thoughts, many of which relate to this unbridled optimism of consuming as many things as one wishes to feel affluent or more distinct than others. But this in turn  comes from the idea that I have a body that continues across space and time. If I didn't have such an idea of having this distinct body that can be filled or deprived, would I have so much craving?  Wouldn't there simply be no sense of past, present and future to connect?
    The point, however, is that the human world is composed of distinctly human kinds of attachments: food, companionship, material things, shelter, and so on. And in some regards, that world is perpetuated by its own desires for comfort, security, and power over the physical world. Meditative practice is not meant to take a person out of that world of time, but to allow a person to see how time arises, and to be clear about it. Then there is much more room to be unmoved by the passage of time, to the point where one can play with time to influence others. In this case, we don't think of time as an accomplishment or as an end point anymore but rather as a kind of creative unfolding and combining of thoughts that don't necessarily require combination at all.

Value of Sadness

    What value does sadness have in spiritual life? This question might seem unusual to some, considering that the key goals of spiritual life are usually couched in terms of 'peace' , 'joy', 'happiness' and 'well being.' There is a certain indelible joy, however, that is hidden in sadness and sorrow. I would describe this 'joy of sadness' as something like the joy of being deeply grounded in a need for care and compassion. In fact, I have found in myself that this acknowledgement of need is a kind of door that opens to one's own joyful compassion.
    In the deepest sadness, there is acknowledgement of vulnerability. Have you ever felt so trapped in life that the only way out was to cry or to feel a sadness of heart? What normally happens in those moments is that a person starts to see things very clearly, because up to that point, their seeing had been blocked by avoidance and other defensive strategies to make a person feel they are 'in control' of a situation. When a person finally yields their sense of control (often by force of circumstance itself) what emerges is a surprising release into feelings of sorrow and sadness. There is an element of relinquishment here, but not without the very difficult price of having to let go of one's cherished sense that 'things are alright and in my control.' But once that defensive structure is finally released, there is a wonderful grace that arises: it's the simple grace of the left hand wanting to support the right.
    I am suggesting that sadness can really and truly bring a person to a deeper part of themselves which goes beyond the dualistic ideas of 'me' vs 'the world'. Does it then make a person more compassionate toward all beings? I wouldn't be so quick to say, because I am still on that journey myself. But I sense that the more a person can truly abide in one's own sense of sadness and vulnerability, the more they are able to extend that similar tenderness to others. The reason seems quite simply to be that one is no longer afraid of this deep well of suffering and struggle that all sentient beings undergo as they are thrown into their own worlds, not quite knowing or being fully aware of how they got there in the first place. This deep awareness of one's 'thrownness' (to use Heidegger's term) is enough for anyone to feel a concern for others, who are also in this same boat of life.