Into the Hurricane

  When there is a hurricane stirring up, the instinctive thing to do is to try to seek shelter from the storm. In fact, I apply this principle to other kinds of suffering, including mental suffering. If I experience vexation, the first thing I try to do is to curb the sources of the vexation or try to find a way around it. Another process that happens even before this is that I treat the emotion as something far away from experience, as though trying to dissociate from it. Of course, this ends up not really addressing the feeling at all, but instead only intensifying my felt sense that it is not good, or needs to be eradicated in some way.
    When I was at the Science Centre yesterday, I saw an exhibit which talks about researchers who go into the hurricane in order to better understand it, predict its severity, and figure out ways to minimize its effects on others. Here, the hurricane is still seen as a potential source of suffering. But the approach is different from trying to avoid the problems latent in the hurricane. In this case, the scientists go directly into the storm itself to fully understand it. Rather than trying to avoid the hurricane or see it from a distance, there is a sense of wanting to genuinely know what it is, to thoroughly understand it before making any decisions related to it.
     This experience of 'entering the hurricane' might be analogous in meditation to that of questioning where the phenomena comes from in mind. Here, I am not trying to solidify my understanding of the hurricane and how I relate to it, but rather am changing my overall experience of myself and the hurricane (and everything around it) into a question. By asking 'who' is having this experience, I am going beyond the sense of self and other, or separate 'me' vs 'hurricane'. It's not easy, because my deep-rooted instinct is to look for an object that I can call the source of suffering. Without that object, anxiety will tend to arise, which takes the form of a kind of malaise: a sense that the world I inhabit makes no sense or is just 'meaningless'. But if I am staying close to this malaise, I will recognize that even the desire for 'meaning' is just another form of the desire for awareness to have a tangible object. Perhaps it's also a desire to locate the source of suffering in something tangible, thus separating what is 'good' (which I want to preserve) from what is 'bad' (which I want to reject or get rid of). This attempt to create 'good' and 'bad' objects only perpetuates anxiety and a sense of overall dissatisfaction. Perhaps meditation explores how a person can stay with discomfort of not having an object: of being 'naked' without objects to cling to.
    But in meditation, there still needs to be an object, which is why the question itself becomes the object. But, one can't just treat the object like a safe mantra: one must start to see where that object is coming from, in order to break through the craving for objects.

Science and the Role of Awe

    I took a trip to the Ontario Science Center today, as part of the week's relaxing Christmas holiday. It had been quite a while since I had been there, and I notice that a lot has changed. I was particularly impressed by the fact that there is an entire wall of placards which display the contributions of Canadian inventors and scientists, in particular the exhibit about Inuit inventions. Many of the placards suggested the debt that scientists owe to others in their local and scientific communities, in the realization that science is never a solitary pursuit, but is part of an unfolding collective of knowledge.
   Probably the most interesting part of the exhibits for me was a series of aquariums which demonstrate two very different ecosystems: one related to the Atlantic coast, while the other related to a tropical coral reef. The people who had put this exhibit together seemed quite sensitive and attuned to how species interact together to create an optimal survival condition, making sure throughout the process that the species are introduced slowly and gradually. The analogy described in the accompanying video was that of introducing a family to newcomers. The good way to introduce newcomers, according to this video, is to carefully observe how all the existing family members (or species, in this case) are surviving and coping with the new element. Care is made to ensure that there are no shocking changes that might disturb the ecosystem that has already been built up. This exhibit impressed me in particular because it showed me how science is not necessarily about creating anything 'new', entirely from scratch. It can be about preserving the delicate balances of what already exists in nature. One other thing that impressed me about the aquariums is that they have a timed release of water which is supposed to imitate the movement of the tides, which also replenishes oxygen and water circulation throughout the tank.
     It strikes me that doing good science must require a sense of awe in beholding the natural balances that exist in the world. And there is this ceaseless need to keep questioning and digging deeper in into the given subject. There are said to be many 'magic' numbers in the universe, such as the proportionate distances between proton and neutron. But most things also have magic when one sees them with openness. I almost tend to think of it as a sense of excitement and adventure: there is always something new in the phenomena one is observing that can be discovered. Even with the most tight experimental design, there needs to be room for entertaining fresh new questions. I wonder: when proposals for experiments are being approved, how much openness is there in the learning community to redesign the experiment at a later time, based on a very new or unexpected discovery?Are researchers pressured to stick with their original plan, or is there room to redesign or rethink the experiment using new variables and even new questions?
    What I am realizing recently is that a lot of the quandaries of doing research can apply to many situations in life itself. There is a spirituality to research, just as there is spirituality in anything. Some of the points I am working out in my own life include 1) having the courage to abandon 'best-laid' plans when a more interesting question emerges; 2) not presuming to know something before it's been deeply and 'messily' investigated, using whatever means are available; 3) drawing from other, often unrelated traditions and disciplines to enrich the base to inquire into a subject; 4) persevering (sometimes doggedly) with a particular broader vision of good; 5) never believing that there is ever a final 'finishing' point in research, as it is a going-concern. Well, I am sure that I can think of others, but the point I am hinting at is how research can become a spiritual practice. In fact, trying to fathom how knowledge is constructed and reconstructed after inevitable disintegration, is an interesting facet of the research process, which I would consider to be a spiritual journey of building, losing and building again.

Focus and Grounding

In the process of focusing on meditation, I have come to understand other principles in life as well. One of them has to do with the process of relating to a method of practice. Tonight, for example, I did notice myself treating the method as though it were a person--perhaps even a divine sort of being. And I was literally appealing to the method to keep me in the present as well as help my body to stay settled, in exchange for my full attention to the method itself. It is odd, because I found that doing this really helped me to stay focused throughout the practice. One might argue that the 'person' or 'being' I am appealing to is only a projection of mind itself. But it can help to see things in this way, because it's an important part of practice to be really devoted to something bigger than the self. I wonder if perhaps the appeal of monotheistic religions is not just this: it provides an anchor in devotion to be able to put one's deepest existential concerns to a higher being.
    One caveat, however, is that this practice only seems to work under the condition that I am not asking the higher power for anything that the ego craves or wants. Instead, what is actually being asked for is a kind of connection to the universe or to one's existence that is deeper than consciousness or the senses. This is, after all, why I came to practice meditation. I didn't come to meditation to relieve stress. I came to it to find the deepest part of who I am and to connect with that. Without that deep connection, life is just scrambling after twigs while swimming upstream against tumbling rapids. And I get this feeling when I am most in meditation: a kind of feeling of despair. I am most fond of the intellect, so I often try to find what I am looking for in philosophies, but actually, intellect does not really suffice to satisfy the mind in any way.

"Natural" Compassion

    I have been thinking lately that cultivating compassion requires a certain space to behold things as they are. Meditation is one of the spaces where compassion is able to flourish, because it's not a place where one indulges in over-thinking or even logical kinds of deduction.  I also believe, particularly after my visit to the aquarium yesterday, that observing nature and its creations can have a similar effect on the mind.  I think it takes a person out of the pitfalls of overthinking, to be able to simply feel in awe of the creation that doesn't belong to anyone in particular. When I look at the pictures I took yesterday on my cellphone, I am similarly reminded of the joy of connecting with sentient beings in a way where I am not projecting myself in any way onto what I am seeing.
  Is there anything particularly wrong with 'overthinking', you might ask? I get a sense in my own experiences that overthinking can lead to an illusion of control. It is as though the mind were trying to compromise on a lack of control by mentally categorizing and classifying things, with the intention of thinking that one is prepared the next time. But trying to be prepared is also a kind of safety measure which is often designed to protect the sense of self from harms, perceived or otherwise. It can also be a battleground in which one mentally tries to separate what is good from what is harmful in an experience, in the hopes of ensuring that one doesn't accidentally harm the good. But experience seems to suggest that good things often go with unpleasant situations, and vice versa. There is no way to insulate oneself against the hardships that life offers.
    I don't think there is a formula or a way to be 'stronger' or even 'kinder' in the face of adversity. The reason for this is quite simply that thoughts tend to obscure the strength and kindness that is a natural part of who sentient beings are. One already has these qualities, but often thoughts can get in the way because they tend to cut up experiences in often unnecessary or even violent ways. It is as though I were to receive a painting of a good friend and tried to use a crayon to accentuate the things I 'like' in the person's appearance and brush away the elements I dislike. In the process of trying to manipulate the world through thought, I tend to forget how spontaneous action in the world can often handle the situation much better than trying to make the world different through a kind of selective judgment.
  

Nature's Symmetry

 A trip to the Aquarium can often yield very interesting insights into the way nature is. Looking at even something as simple as an archerfish using water to squirt its prey into the water, I am lead to think that it's a kind of miracle. How can the fish have even been designed in such a way that it could detect what's above the water, much less find a way to use water to shoot something back into the water? Even more interesting is how an archerfish can shoot something down to the water, and then allow its fellows to eat the prey instead of claiming it for itself. I believe that this kind of hunting works along the inexorable rules of connection. That is, the more one fish does its part in the hunt, the more it will be rewarded in turn by a strong school of healthy fish, which in turn increases its chances to survive and have food for itself. I wonder if perhaps this group dynamic helps each fish to survive better than it would have if it were strictly on its own.
     Somehow, I get a sense that reflecting on the wonders of nature can help people to trust in the ways of life, much more than they would when left to their own devices. I have found that nature actually has a kind of symmetry: there is a lot of symbiosis between creatures, and unexpected relationships as well. An example might be how the hermit crab has evolved in a way that it gathers discarded shells of mollusks and uses these to make its temporary shelter. Nature doesn't seem to waste anything, and this is truly what is amazing about it. But there is also a sense that nature provides certain grounding principles which allow organisms of very different genetic blueprints to thrive. For example, the circular shape of certain mollusks can allow hermit crabs to create a viable shell, without having to hide away in crevasses or rocky surfaces. It is as though the hermit crab is able to take the relative immobility of a shell and innovate it by using it to enhance its hunting or foraging abilities. Not only does this build on what the natural world has already left behind, but also uses the existing abilities of a creature to enhance those designs.
      When I visit the aquarium, I recognize that nature has so many interesting designs, and it makes me realize how miraculous the living world can be. But it also gives one a sense of humility. When so many species of fish, for example, are being endangered due to the obstructions created by human technologies, I wonder what we stand to lose if we allow these creations to die out. There is so much that we owe to nature in terms of our current technologies and designs--and so much we can learn in the future.

Turning the Moment into Something Lovable

    Have you ever wondered why one can easily get annoyed over the smallest things or the smallest trifles? I have often heard Buddhist books talk about it being the ego that always wants to have things a certain way. But there is another question, and that is, what happens for the ego to arise in the first place? This seems to be something worth observing. After all, if there is no comparing one moment to the next, is there even an opportunity for the ego to get involved? I think there needs to be a deep look into this actual experience.
  When, for instance, I even say 'ego', there is already this reified 'thing' that I take to be 'me' or 'mine'. Then another part says that this 'ego' is not okay, and I take all the things I intensely dislike about myself and rack it up to ego. What does one make of this? Who is disliking the ego anyway?
   Anytime I propose that there is something bad that needs to be transcended or is limited in some way, I am operating from some dualistic concern. This is a tricky point, because even words like "love" can entail a dualistic opposite, such as hate or dislike. Can we possibly suspend all of this and live in a psychic space where everything is equal in its own way? I think this is a tricky point again!
   To go back to my first paragraph: the reason one gets annoyed is that one is comparing one state of being to another and preferring it. In fact, the more I desire something, the more irritated I am with my present circumstances and way of being: I am in such a state of distress trying to get the desired thing that nothing else seems to satisfy me at all. And even if I then presuppose a spiritual entity that want to embody, I end up doing violence to myself by saying "I need to be like this, not the irritated person I am now." Rather than softening the edges around that emotion, I create another category of being that is opposite to that emotion and then strive to get to that other side.
    There is always a kind of dialectic process in place when one is trying to open a compassionate space around their present experience. I suggest that there be room to play with the opposites, rather than trying to choose one side and reject the other. Beholding multiple states in mind, all equally, seems to be the way of genuine curiosity, and it is perhaps similar to the notion of Tao. It's not so much about trying to get to a certain place in life, but rather being always open to a candid exploration of what makes things the way they are in this moment.

Inner Criticism

  One of the interesting things we have seen recently is the spate of self-help books which describe how to 'silence' one's 'inner critic'. But can and does criticism always necessarily serve a disparaging, negative function? I suppose the answer to this question depends on the context in which the criticism is framed. If the criticism becomes very damning, it can be so easy to forget one's own strengths, and this kind of criticism can even weaken the will to live or survive in the world. A very self-critical stance toward actions one committed in the past can create a huge and almost insurmountable regret. By suggesting that what was done is all my fault, I am carrying a heavy burden of guilt on my shoulders, and it makes my steps heavy as a result. If I find myself getting that way, then chances are that I am globalizing a single moment into an incredibly huge judgment about myself. And this can tend to make me feel extremely heavy and even hopeless about the future.
    I am continuing to read Ian Suttie's Origins of Love and Hate, and I resonate a lot with the idea that people tend to reject sentimental or warm feelings, on the grounds that they don't feel 'deserving' of those feelings. I agree with Suttie that part of the taboo on tenderness probably arises from early childhood, when one's parents may not have always been emotionally available or so eager to embrace their child, due to all sorts of responsibilities as well as the existential reality that we are separate (even though intertwined). The price of becoming an individual is to suffer intermittent disengagement with others, and I even wonder if perhaps that early tenderness one felt as a baby could ever be fully recovered in adult life. I think what later happens is that when a child no longer feels nurtured, she or he interprets this to somehow mean that they did something wrong or bad. Thus, the loss of love in life is associated with a kind of punishment for being somehow inadequate or doing something wrong. The deleterious result of all this is that a child can tend to associate gaining love with the threat of losing it all over again. The result is that the child might start to disengage out of anticipation of a future rejection.
   To bring me back to the topic: I wonder if perhaps the function of a lot of self-criticism is in fact to guard oneself against the desire for forgiveness or nurturing from others. How this works is that a person feels needy yet does not want to take too much from others, for fear that they will then have to pay it back again. We internalize the idea that love is a series of 'points' that are given and taken away, as though it were so conditional. And that explains the reluctance to engage, for fear of taking too much away.

On Fixing and Not Fixing Things

  Before the Wednesday group meditation practice tonight, I ran into the dilemma of not being able to find a cable that connects the laptop to the projector. In the end, I did not have the time to figure out what happened or what connections were required to make it work, so I ended up not showing any Dharma video at the end of the class. In the beginning, I felt bad about this, because somehow the evening practice doesn't seem complete without the video showing. But then soon enough, I started to narrate the sense of incompleteness into my closing sharing. I talked about how Master Sheng Yen taught us the four steps of solving a problem: face it, accept it, deal with it, and let it go.
   Rather than being a pacifist or fatalist philosophy, Chan attempts to embrace these kinds of situations head on. According to this view, when solving problems one must exert their best efforts to achieve the best results. The more I try different things and show a genuine concern for solving the problem, the more likely a solution will arise based on the developing conditions. However, the final step in the problem solving process is always to "let it go". If for whatever reason, I am unable to surmount the challenge posed by the difficulty and have done what I could do, then in that moment it is best to rest my mind and not get agitated that I could not solve it. After all, "I" am not the sole cause or factor in solving any problem. The process of engaging problems requires a whole set of interlocking conditions in place, such as know-how and the luck to have teachers who will be able to assist a person in dealing with the problem. In the absence of these things, there may not be an opportunity to solve the problem oneself.
    I have found especially today that there is a careful balance struck between 'right' effort and not getting too attached to an outcome. To preserve this distinction, I have needed to be very clear about where the issues are arising in mind. If it is a process of thinking through the possible solutions or reasons behind a problem, then my actions will be fairly smooth in executing a series of trials or steps to address the possible factors. But if my thinking is focused on regret ("I should have come earlier to solve this!") or shame ("I should be able to figure this out!") or even anger and blame ("why can't others make this easier for me?"), then I experience a deep, personal vexation over what is otherwise just a simple glitch. At that point, it is best to check oneself and ask: does it really reflect poorly on me that this situation didn't get resolved in spite of my best efforts? It's also important to look at it in perspective by considering the other alternatives, and not being overly attached to one outcome. Will this session really be a complete failure if I don't show a video? and so on.
   Of course, it sounds easy in writing, but it is very difficult to cultivate the right equanimity to acknowledge a problem and confront it, without insisting on one's own way or getting attached to the idea of solving a problem. I suppose that all this takes some kind of practice in encountering situations that are either hard or impossible to fix.

Words in Spiritual Practice

Many people might be under the impression that spiritual traditions are very strict lineages that need to be followed by the word. But I begin to reflect: can any spiritual life be reduced to words on a page? While words offer guidance to those who are practicing a contemplative activity, it can get easy to confuse the words for the practice, as well as to think in terms of rigid shoulds. It is as though I had this jewel but I was so reluctant to get it away from my sight for fear that it will be lost. Rather than focusing on the jewel, I start to focus on all the strategies that are at my disposal to ensure that the jewel is preserved and kept in my ownership. This is a bit like confusing a spiritual practice for words.
    I feel that somehow it's important to have a clear idea of the role  of words in a spiritual life. An example  of where it might alienate people to use words arises when a person tries to take 'spiritual arguments' and use them to show that they are 'right' and someone else is 'wrong'. Without reflecting on their intention, people can often use spiritual words to set themselves apart from someone else, even to the point of overly exhorting the other person to convert to their views and aspirations. While some of this might be noble and wholesome, a lot of it can create conflict and tension that doesn't necessarily attract a person to a spiritual practice.
      A different approach might be to simply start with the experience of not discriminating one's own abilities from that of another person. If I don't see myself as necessarily better or 'more learned' than you, how is that going to play out? It might be an opportunity to collaborate different ideas, or it might be the suggestion that I have something to learn from you that is equally as valuable as my own experiences. What this does it not privilege anyone's views over another's but to, rather, to presuppose that all beings are of fundamentally the same spiritual essence, or nature. In Buddhism, we call it Buddha nature, but in other traditions, it might be called something else. And the point here is to suggest that words don't privilege the being of one over another. Rather, the essential spiritual nature is already the same everywhere. In this regard, there is no competition or no valuing of one's experience over that of others.
    Certain formalities are definitely still needed for a spiritual practice to be strong. But even then, it seems important never to put the formality over the person, as though the person were put on this earth only to mold themselves into the form. The real 'form' we are seeking is actually already in us, and the rituals we use in practice are only designed to illuminate what is ideally already ours to begin with.

On Being a Created Creature

Tonight, I started working out the bare bones of a proposal for a chapter that I may be co-writing in the new year. It was only later on after some time that a kind of fatigue has set over me, and I have to put everything down and get a good rest. Yet still--I lingered on, dawdling and thinking that if I  could only get past the first 'hurdle' of proposal-writing fatigue,  then I will be perfectly fine and ready to keep motoring! But it isn't like that at all: quite simply, I am only physically exhausted from the day's chores and errands, and my body is definitely saying it's time to pack it in and get sleep.
   I think it must have learned the term 'creaturely' from a theologian at one point or another, though I can't quite remember who it was. It might have been Paul Tillich, but more than likely it might have come from Matthew Fox or Parker Palmer. In any case, I think 'creaturely' refers to the fact that human beings are not just creators of their own experiences but are also (and just as often) created as well. This means, in a sense, that people are always under the influence of their biological needs and unique conditions in doing what they set out  to do. My tiredness is not a fluke, but is part of what it means to be me at 11:59 at night. Similarly, 'creatureliness'  refers to all those things which make us subject to the causality of the body itself. There is no sense fighting off sleep if one's mind needs sleep to function, for instance.
  Why this is so important to note is that there is certainly a difference between idealizing about who one is, and really attempting to embody it. To embody an ideal is always infinitely harder than to spell it out on paper, and part of the reason is that one's ideal is often only a visual representation in mind. The same is true with writing itself. A proposal might look really neat and tidy, with few loose threads, but actually engaging in the writing itself can be an unpredictable process, where some ideas start to get shaped or even scrapped over time. Designing a proposal might be similar to a divine eye view of the project itself, whereas the actual writing of the project can be subject to all matter of twists and turns. But the joy of being a creature is that it gets a person away from perfection of ideals and shows them what those ideals really start to be like in the midst of so many conditions and circumstances. But it also reminds a person to exercise good judgment when executing plans, and to consider the many factors that constrain individuals in their pursuit of goals or ideals.

The Terrible

In Subtle Wisdom, Master Sheng Yen relates a story where, as a boy, he observes a frog succumbing to a snake. Master Sheng Yen initially wants to save the frog from the snake, but then he starts to wonder, how else would the snake be able to eat. He muses:




I watched the shape of the frog travel from the mouth of the snake through the throat and into the body. It made a vivid impression. Because I could still see the frog, I wondered, "What happens to the frog? Do the frog and the snake merge into one life? If I were the frog, where would I be now?"

What also confused me was that the frog had clearly been afraid of the snake initially. He tried to escape and obviously did not want to be eaten. Why, then, did the frog finally crawl toward the mouth of the snake and let himself be eaten? I could not figure it out, and it left me deeply puzzled.


What interests me about this passage is the theme of something that seems so inevitable and how the frog seems to realize it has no choice but to embrace what was unavoidable to itself. It makes me relate to how I myself relate to what seems 'terrible' in life.


I am reading Albert Ellis's theories of REBT, and I quite enjoy how he uses the idea of 'not awful-izing' to defuse the tensions of life. If you don't make something seem 'awful' or 'terrible' then it will see that this is just a judgment that one makes about what is otherwise only a sad or regrettable experience. To put it in a different way: once a person is able to at least accept the fact that she or he will not die from a terribly awkward experience, then they can learn to face it in a realistic and creative way. Rather than damning oneself or punishing themselves through self-defeating thoughts or behaviors, there is a space to just accept this present moment in all its terrifying ways. 


While I agree with Ellis that there are definitely ways to defuse the tension by not focusing on self-blame or belief in a permanent state of things, there are times when things can seem so severe that one often isn't able to talk herself out of thinking that things are 'awful' or just plain 'terrible'. In these times, we may have to be like the frog and just let ourselves succumb naturally to the snake, seeing it as one with ourselves. But again, it doesn't have to be done in a way that a person feels that they are dying: instead it can be a kind of wholehearted seeing that the snake isn't separate from our being, and is in fact a phenomena of our being.


Can we change this feeling of 'terrible' into a feeling of exhilaration? Well, I think one has to experience being eaten many, many, many times, before they truly can. So...bon appetit! 


Master Sheng Yen, Subtle Wisdom : excerpt from: http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/165637/subtle-wisdom-by-master-sheng-yen/excerpt

Thoughts of Belonging

Earlier today,  I was reading some passages from Ian Suttie's book, Origins of Love and Hate, which I had purchased for a dollar at the bargain bin of BMV some weeks ago. In it, Suttie talks about a very interesting shift in the understanding of human psychology which moves away from the idea of people as "bundles of instincts" and toward a more relational view of people. This shift is quite subtle, and it takes a while to unpack its implications. But according to Suttie, people are literally born into interconnection, particularly through the maternal bond. This means that people do not have these isolated instincts or desires which need to be vented at given moments, either through acts of fulfilment or aggression. Rather, the aggression or desire one does feel is always a kind of expression toward someone else or to a group of people. 
       Let's say, for example, that there is a depression that is inside of me that doesn't seem to let up no matter what I do. So-called "traditional" psychoanalysis might view the depression as the case of either pent-up anger directed inward in response to frustrated urges (eros), or perhaps even a repressed urge toward death or destruction (thanatos). In other words, the phenomena is viewed as resulting from these isolated urges or instincts. On the other hand, Suttie suggests a different way of looking at this. If I understand it correctly, the idea is: my feeling depressed is a kind of expression toward other beings which is designed in some way to say something to others. Ultimately, the purpose of this utterance is to create a connection so that the person's loneliness and lack of belonging and acceptance are alleviated. If one looks at it this way, one can see that even the most aggressive tendencies are related to the need for love and social nurturance. A person who is aggressive is not trying to reject all people through a kind of 'death' instinct or desire for non-existence that is hard-wired into their bodies. Rather, the rejection is more like a protest which is staged for the purposes of having certain social connections in place. In other words, all feeling states are ways of expressing an overarching desire for the companionship and nurturing of others.
    I am still trying to think through the implications of this approach. One of the implications is simply to recognize that our feelings are often calls for help to others, not events that are isolated in mind. This sort of makes sense, although I am not entirely convinced that feelings don't somehow connect to the inmost reaches of a person's visceral and emotional experience, independent of others. For instance, if someone says something to me that is considered insulting by many, how I actually experience that insulting comment depends on how I relate to the situation itself. If I am able to see that the insult has nothing to do with anything enduring or substantial, my attitude toward it will differ from, say, a person who confuses the words for her or his true self. In other words, one's attitude toward the situation can go a long way in altering how one responds or feels about it. None of this at all negates or takes away from the intriguing implications of Suttie's approach, but it could raise questions as to whether one is socially determined to behave in fixed ways to have certain social needs met.
   On the other hand, one positive aspect of Suttie's approach is that it could lessen the sense of denial for tenderness which often passes off for 'maturity'. Throughout one's formative years, one gets the oft-repeated message that the goal of maturity is to become a completely self-sustaining individual. As a result, it's common to try to repress emotions or pretend that certain desirable states of belonging should be 'overcome' through a tough or hardened approach to life. With this comes the unconscious belief that if I choose to 'toughen up', I will be given some higher reward, in the form of a more favorable rebirth or perhaps the satisfaction of knowing that I didn't 'cave in' to my emotions. If I come to acknowledge that my feelings relate to concrete desires in a social world, I can then pause to make more realistic assessments of whether those desires are attainable, beneficial, and noble, based on a more cool-headed assessment of their value and purposes. Rather than punishing myself for having these desires in the first place, and then replacing them with a hard or tough exterior, I can assess how realistic my desires are without condemning them. In fact I can then find more nurturing ways to harness these same desires without repressing them.


Suttie, Ian (1960) Origins of Love and Hate. Oxford: Pelican

Let Go of Meaning Itself

   During the bus ride home today, I was reading a copy of a book of Chan and Zen teachings by Charles Luk, and I came across the following line from the introduction to "The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment":



"We should never stray from our 'Self' and should know how to take up the 'host' position, because if we allow our mind to wander outside in quest of externals, we will slip into the 'guest' position and will see only the indicating finger instead of the moon actually pointed at in the sutras" (p.152)



For some reason, as I read this particular passage, I felt a certain kind of calm which comes from 'letting go'. The letting go happens not because I found this particular passage 'satisfying' or compelling to read. Quite to the contrary: it is in exhausting any satisfaction in what I was reading that I suddenly had this moment of still quiet, where there was simply nothing left for me to really do or push myself to do. I am not surprised that in certain religions, one might impute this as being an 'act of grace', since it honestly didn't come to me at all from my own abilities or powers. In fact, the very understanding that it didn't left me in a state of awe and gratitude, for whatever it was that allowed me to rest in that moment.



This 'grace' of letting go I am describing is actually not so simple as it seems. One in fact has to struggle a bit to go through the exhaustion of no longer finding a satisfying answer to their existential position in life. In this passage I was describing before, there is the further clarification: "The 'host' position can be taken only after our mind has been stripped of all worldly feelings and passions by means of our immanent wisdom." (ibid). Now that is a bit of a violent image, to be 'stripped' of one's worldly desires and passions, and yet, could this be the letting go/exhaustion of the senses I was referring to?



In many points of a person's life, particularly in depression, one's previous satisfactions seem jaded. It's the same way when one adopts or at least tries to deeply understand a particular spiritual tradition. It is almost designed in such a way that eventually one will see the teachings like cotton in one's mouth and want to spit it all out...because, in a sense, it has no flavor whatsoever! In that moment,one has many choices, but perhaps the only thing they can do is really accept the existential anguish and frustration of not being able to intellectually grasp what one is looking for. Yes, one also needs humor! But if I can courageously stare at the frustration, it tends to be a lot more manageable. And what is the gift of that? The gift is to come home to this 'just being' that is inherent to the moment, and might also be known as one's 'immanent wisdom'. And it is the just being that comes from not striving anymore, not even striving to get out of one's self-imposed cave. Why? Because one knows that any struggle to escape is just another manifestation of the prison of self. And it too will only lead to greater frustration and anguish.



Eventually when the pain itself just seems incredibly unbearable, there is this space of complete surrender to the moment, without waiting for the next or trying to step out of the previous. There is simply no struggle anymore, at that point. And then when I am reading this kind of text, I am no longer even trying to fathom its meaning intellectually. I try to open up to this text as though it were a mirror to something that I am confident exists within me, even though I can’t really taste it, or touch it or find it ‘stimulating’ in any way. This is the faith that these words I am reading point to mind itself, without further ‘understanding’ needed to add to it.



Luk, Charles (trans) (1962 )Chan and Zen Teaching, Third Series. London: Rider and Company

Coping with Ego

  I remember reading a story about a retreat participant at Master Sheng Yen's retreat, who said she wanted to 'get rid of the ego' or the self when meditating. Master Sheng Yen responded by standing in front of her where his shadow was cast along the wall, and then asking the participant, "can you get rid of the shadow?" The ego, I surmise, is just like this: the more a person tries to get 'over it' or rid of it, the more it tends to come back to haunt the mind. And why is this? If one thinks of the ego as the master illusionist, then it it bound to be threatened  in very strong ways when there is any threat to its sense of being.
   I have found that it is near impossible to ever combat the sense of self, and that a better approach is to observe it in a relaxed way, without identifying too much with it. How one does this is by not identifying with one's thoughts or even with the sensations of the body. If I take the tension in my body as 'me', soon enough my self will also start to feel like something that is contracting inward, in need of protection. But if I simply see the sensations as 'just feelings' or 'just thoughts', then I no longer take them to have anything to do with me. In that way, I can start to relax in the presence of feelings and thoughts.
     Another approach comes from REBT therapy, and that is not to succumb to absolutistic 'shoulds' or demands related to how we want to be seen or treated by others. Albert Ellis and, to some extent, Stoic philosophers, have tended to focus on the self's desire for approval, recognition and even praise from others. While the Buddhist approach tends to see people's ego as enmeshed in greed, desire and aversion, the Stoic and REBT philosophy tends to focus on the demand for recognition and approval as a high priority for the self's sense of worth. It is as though the self is so desperately craving recognition to confirm its own existence and validity. Ellis in particular tends to focus on disputing the idea that we absolutely require approval of some kind of survive. For instance, he uses shame disputing exercises to expose his clients to shame-producing behaviors, with the intention of showing that shame does not "kill" a person, and there is no harm in performing less than one's expected standard.
  Perhaps the bottom line for the above approaches is that the self does not need to be gratified, and the ability to gently frustrate the sense of self by creating space around it is one way to diminish the cravings of the self. This is an indirect approach to diminishing the self's demands, whereas the approach of trying to control or suppress the self's demands often ends up only strengthening the resolve to have things in a certain way. Another thing to consider: one should perhaps not turn the 'fight against the self' into another form of self or pride.

The Striving for Spiritual

  During the meditation practice tonight, a practitioner had shared about how counting the breath in meditation lead him to feel tension in his forehead. Somehow, I began to wonder: as much as I have had a similar experience of tension, where does it really come from? What intentions or emotions are happening in mind that trigger a person to be tense during meditation?
    I haven't personally been able to isolate one cause of this. Sometimes, tension is the result of many conditions that happen to take fruition in that moment. But one thing I do notice is that there are certain underlying thoughts which provide a particular mood or flavor to a person's meditation. One such thought is the striving to 'be' something, such as a spiritual or 'focused' being. This happens a lot when a person tries to use a meditation method to shut out anything that isn't meditation, but it can also happen when a person is trying too hard to focus on one particular object. On a larger scale, it seems to arise when a person is striving to embody a certain set of ideals, rather than questioning what gives rise to all ideals and all experiences in the first place.
   As I am writing these sentences, I am looking not at the words themselves or at their meanings, but at the background upon which they are written. This is very much an analogy for how one can look at meditative practice. By looking just a bit askance, I start to type these words without a sense of being attached to them. Moreover, it's the screen that is the most significant thing for me in this moment, since without the screen there would be no words, no coherent text, and no readers either. Similarly, with meditation, one is not directly focused exclusively on one particular stimulus. Instead, the person is seeing the object of their practice only in light of the background from which it arises and disappears. It is this background that both illuminates and is illuminated in turn. And in this way, the object never becomes an object of attachment, but more like a temporary tool to point to the canvas.
    When looked at in this way, practice need not be a kind of dogmatic focus on one thing and suppression of others. More to the point, it has to do with having this object in mind (be it the breath, or huatou, or silent illumination) and using it to look a little bit to the canvas from which is arises and can be known. It's the canvas that gives meaning to the picture, by fully contextualizing the object as impermanent and reflective of something else. Even words function in this way: when I put letters together, the letters themselves are not 'objects' by themselves but are designed to illuminate what come before and after. It's not about objects in and of themselves, but it is more about the background upon which interconnection can be seen and exemplified. This is in fact the beauty of writing, let alone any kind of process: it teaches the deep connection between all things. One only needs look at a paragraph to see this interdependence evolve: letters to words, words to sentences, sentences linking to paragraphs.

Making oneself big or small

  It has taken me a while to figure out that anxiety hardly pays, though, in a sense, I believe that there is an emotional currency in it. When I become anxious, my body becomes very tense. In a way, this tension actually can give me the illusory idea that my body is more 'substantial' than it actually is, and in that sense I start to prepare for action. Sometimes, I have observed this kind of things with cats especially. If you ever see a cat that is afraid of a person or another animal, it will usually either crouch in a contracted body position, or it will try to make itself larger than it really is. The crouched position can give the cat a survival advantage by making it less visible and a little bit less vulnerable to attacks, while the larger position makes the cat more dangerous-looking. In both cases, one tries to give oneself a sense of having more substance with which to fly from the enemy or to perhaps attack. With anxiety, there is usually this sense of seeming more than one really is.
  It is interesting how, the less I try to base my existence on this feeling of 'being something', the less I feel a need to protect the body and person I identify as myself. It is much harder to do this, because one feels a lot more vulnerable. But there is not that much survival value to anxiety. For instance, trying to 'make myself big or small' in front of my boss just isn't going to do anything! Yet my body seems primed to do something when faced with even the anger or criticism of someone else.
    I think one thing to keep in mind with anxiety is that very little in life is a life or death situation.  One often imagines that it is, but the anxiety is just based on an illusory desire for a protected, more substantial feeling of the self as an integrated whole, ready for fight or flight. The funny thing is that the mind doesn't change with the changing moods or body position, but because one is so attached to the body or moods, it seems like one 'is' one's body when anxious. I think that in a funny sense, there is a craving hidden in anxiety, which perpetuates it. Although nobody truly wants to be anxious, the feeling of tensing up the body seems more bearable than a feeling of being otherwise exposed to some perceived danger. In a similar sense, I wonder if the 'sense of self' is not simply a holdover from our animal existence in the scale of evolution, when 'crouching low' and 'looking big' were associated with enhanced protection against predators. Just as I try to hide myself in isolation or try to look bigger than I am, so the twin poles of self-deprecation and self-aggrandizement serve to protect my body against perceived threats. Could one's 'self' have potentially evolved from these basic understandings of the body's relation to the world?
   I am not so sure if this theory is correct, but I am often curious to know what is the biological explanation or account for how the sense of self arises. Also, does this sense of how the self arises in nature perhaps help a person to let go of its illusory hold over the human psyche?

Doing "One's Best"

  One of the interesting aspects about meditative practice is that it is about slowing down and being able to enjoy a particular process. It doesn't matter what that process happens to be, but it becomes about valuing and enjoying the intrinsic experience of an action. Now, have you ever heard the expression, "I did my best?" I usually say this to myself whenever I have just completed a task or a long course, with a sense of uncertainty as to how I really measured up in the class overall, or was able to meet the teacher's requirements. In some cases, I hear it in the context of aiming very high but then realizing that one can only measure up against one's previous efforts. "I did my best" almost creates the alter ego of 'me' watching 'me' and evaluating that I was true to my own idea of 'best'. This is quite unusual, in the sense that one becomes one's own grader. And what, after all, does it truly mean, this 'one's best' business?
    I have often pondered about the Chan perspective on achieving things and doing one's best. Is there ever really a sense of 'best', and how do we measure our 'very best'? Quite simply when the mind is clear about what needs to do and it is relaxed and present, there is simply no need to set up a spectator who is always watching to see if one has fulfilled what they were supposed to do. Rather, it becomes more of a connection that a person makes with the things that need doing, and it's the most natural connection possible. I think it must come from letting go of the desire to look a certain way in anyone's eyes, since one is clear that this 'in one's eyes' is not the real self or the real nature of the mind. It is only a kind of fiction, and the more I try to chase after that fiction, the more suffering I incur.
   If one wants to make anything a Chan practice, all one needs to do in a sense is to do it with the wholehearted intention of wanting to do it well, for the benefit of all. This is harder to do than it perhaps sounds, because there will always be questions regarding where one should best or most fruitfully devote their efforts. But I think the point of it is not to set up a 'best' or to imagine that such a thing exists. In fact, one simply does not need that standard when one is exerting effort. For example, as I am writing this blog, I am striving to get a message across to my readers, but my demeanor is relaxed and my mind is fairly focused on what I am doing. I am not thinking about tomorrow or about what I need to do the next moment. If I for once imagined that this blog was being compared to another, my mind would go away from the process of writing it.
    This does not necessarily mean that one doesn't try to follow rubricks or other standards out there. It means that once one has studied the requirement and has a good understanding of what it is about, they needn't keep asking whether they measure up to it. All they need to do in that moment is exert their efforts based on whatever background information they have, as well as previously acquired knowledge and experience. And once the person has finished the task, they can put it down: no need to carry on with it, unless one returns to the same task to tweak it in some way.

From Inconvenience to Emergency

  It is sometimes the case that the minor inconveniences of life might start to seem overwhelming. The simple idea of not having a stable internet connection, or having a cellphone where one can speak into it but not hear, can become daunting. However, I remind myself that these are affluent problems, and these problems are not so terrible as one might think. It's very interesting how the mind often goes into emergency mode when faced with these relatively minor experiences.
  Why does that happen, I wonder? I am reminded of a book I read quite some time ago by Franz Kafka called The Trial. This book describes the plight of Joseph K., a man who is put on trial for a crime for which he seems completely unaware. The book describes how Joseph K. tries valiantly to find the answer to his crime through a rather unfeeling bureaucracy, and is later murdered at the end of the novel. I am not sure what this situation symbolizes, but it has resonances for me. One of them is that it sometimes doesn't matter whether one has actually done something 'wrong' or not. The point is how one responds. If a person is frantic and starts to believe that they are damnable or condemned, they will create their own prison from their mind state. If one succumbs to the view that they are culpable for something without really understanding why or how, they also create a suffering. The latter is a different kind of prison: the prison of not knowing, or perhaps a kind of wilful ignorance. Yet another hell is that of continually desiring an appeal, under the sometimes mistaken belief that someone will take on their punishment or have pity on them. These three sufferings seem to correspond to the three kleshas in Buddhism.
   Perhaps the best way to understand these experiences is to view them in light of the truth of suffering. No matter how well a person plans our her or his life, there are bound to be things that fall through the cracks from time to time. Of course, one can avoid this altogether by having few responsibilities in life, but it turns out that this reduction of responsibilities does not resolve the problems of life. For instance, if a person decides to slow down and not take on any new positions in life, they might first feel extremely relaxed and at ease compared to their previous frantic pace, but soon habituation starts to set in. At that point, even the simplest responsibility one has can turn into vexation, as a person starts to become so relaxed that they might forget to do the simplest thing or procrastinate. In this case, it is not the task itself that generates stress or vexation; it is, rather, one's own attitude toward the task. If instead of trying to ditch responsibility altogether, I focus instead on my attitude toward them, this can go a long way in terms of helping me better cope with what needs doing. This attitude is: don't magnify what needs doing, and don't blow inconvenience out of proportion. These things are only temporary, and they are phenomena...there is nothing inherently or substantially real, when they are the result of arising causes and conditions. The second attitude is that, even if one doesn't perform the task up to an inner standard one has, this doesn't reflect badly on the person at all. In fact, the person doing the action is not entirely responsible for everything that could arise in a situation. These points shift away from seeing the self as 'solely' to blame when things don't go as expected, and toward seeing the task as conditioned.

Strangely a Home

    Sometimes, one feels lost, even in the places one once called home. And other times, what seems like a strange place becomes, strangely, a home.
    In the library, I usually do some quiet study and reading, along with proofreading and writing. I also tutor there, and this becomes a good way for me to connect with others. Every now and then, I see interesting characters, such as the very forthright librarian who looks like he is a prison guard of some sorts. The way he swings his arms and carries books, it's as though he were about to throw them into their respective slots on the shelves. And when one of the kids asks him where a book on a certain subject is, he really doesn't even need to check the computer. Instead, he strides over to the section for the respective book and manages to find it, hurling it off the shelf. I don't think I have ever seen him once use a computer, and perhaps he doesn't need to. When he speaks, you know it is his voice, and he is a bit antithetical to what you would call a 'stereotypical librarian'. And yet, he is clearly present, and cares about being in this moment. In fact, it seems that this is what truly counts the most, rather than the image one expects to see in a librarian.
  I sometimes wonder, when observing this librarian, how he got to be here. Why not somewhere else? What draws him on his journey to this present moment, in this library? This is where curiosity sets in. If we think of ourselves a cosmic sojourners, we must imagine that each destination is no accident. It's the result of the cause and conditions which have ripened and which now ask for a new response from us, according to this new place. Sometimes the new places are lonely ones, and some are even terrifying. Where does a person go to meet the challenges of these different places? It's only when one finds acceptance in herself that she can face anything. The unease that a person has with their situation is often related to how they feel about themselves and who they are. If I am only the reflection of my perceived blemishes or mistakes, I am bound to categorize the world according to these same mistakes, since self and world are inseparable. But if I find that ontological acceptance of things-as-they-are (to use Heidegger's style of hyphenating), then everything is a pure land. Even a place of isolation can be pure when one knows how to accept where they are as a result of the previous karma. This basic acceptance is more important, perhaps, than trying to prove one's existence or trying to fit in.

Shattering All Our Stories

   I wonder if you have ever had the experience before where everything you thought you knew was completely shattered... to the point where even your ability to make new stories is not operable anymore. I suppose this happens most often with trauma survivors. In the absence of a truly safe holding space or trust in a working order of the universe, one loses faith in a reliable story from which to draw. People who have been maimed by abusive conditions, violence or war, must at some point have suffered the debilitating loss of ability to soothe oneself through the healing power of story or personal narrative. When something truly terrible or incomprehensible has happened to a person, no story can somehow make sense of it. It remains a void space that cannot find closure in the mind.
   What I am describing here is a very extreme form of what happens in everyday life on more subtle levels. For instance, we think that a co-worker said one thing, but after a period of trying to figure out why they said this or not-this, we come to realize that they didn't say 'that thing' after all! It was only a creation of the mind. In times like these, one starts to doubt the ability to frame a workable story about what a person is really 'meaning', due to an absence in reliable interpretation. Of course, eventually, people work out workable interpretations of self and others...otherwise, the world would be pretty chaotic indeed, and no communication would likely be possible. At the very least, people come to trust that the universe at least in part mirrors some experience within themselves.
   The 'bottom-falling-out' experience of daily life is what gives rise to dukkha, a sense of dis-ease that prevails over a person's experience and consciousness. It is what happens in minuscule ways when a person's miniature model or framework of carefully-spun expectations suddenly begins to yield to a present-day circumstance that somehow refuses to fit that scheme of things. It is truly new in that sense, and there isn't any way to rebuild over it using one's familiar or habitual scaffolding. But does this mean that humans give up on their ability to create and build interpretations of the world?
    I don't think that a Buddhist would argue that it is necessary to refrain from interpreting the world, even if that interpretation is wobbly and tentative. But a Buddhist might see the meaning and underlying intent of interpretation differently. For instance, rather than seeing interpretation as a doorway to infallible truth, Buddhists tend to see them as vehicles which are designed to allow the mind to arrive at a certain place, at which point they are no longer required. I think the purpose of interpretation, in that sense, is to enrich one's experience through a synthesizing, 'constructive' act of compassion. And this compassion is not a grand scheme that is already pre-formed and uniformly distributed. Rather, it is a kind of state of moment-to-moment responding to the needs of others.
     Perhaps the best use of stories is not to 'string together' one's own identity (which is illusory) but to reinforce and provide bridges between people. Stories can be used to inspire, to encourage, and to uplift people, but perhaps they are best not over-invested with too much meaning, since they will change over time. So I do believe that one should approach interpretation with a kind of passionate sang-froid: a will to engage stories, but without the sentimental attachment to stories.

The World I Create

In Chan and Enlightenment, Master Sheng Yen remarks:


At the present time, our world cannot yet be called a pure land on earth. The environment in which we live is actually a reflection of our mental state. Different individuals with divergent states of mind will experience the world differently. (p.115)


This statement is quite profound if a person looks at it deeply, which is quite hard to do. For instance, if a person's mindset is always grasping for fame or friendship, or some other social asset in life, then they will tend to see their world as a battlefield of 'win' and 'lose', and so everything will be interpreted as either very exciting, very boring, or every aversive, depending on how it relates to the self. If on the other hand, a person just got out of a hospital having survived a major life-threatening illness, chances are that their world may be quite different from that of grasping. It would be much more filled with gratitude and relief. This all relates to a person's expectations, as well as the sense of joy that comes from the unexpected. Can anyone consciously cultivate such a gratitude that life has been given to me for yet one more day?


Master Sheng Yen further remarks, "If we are psychologically unhealthy, afflicted, or depressed, the world we perceive, as well as our immediate environment, will also fall short of our expectations" (ibid). What I find interesting about this quote is that I do wonder how much of depression is actually resulting from overly high expectations. For example, I often expect others to appreciate and understand what I am saying, or make an effort to do so. But I don't realize that others have their own business to attend to, and there are times when misunderstandings are bound to occur. More often than not, people are simply not on the same page at all. In that case, a person can either become very downtrodden about it, or they can see that actually there is an opportunity to turn inward and ask oneself, "do I need these kinds of validations to survive personally?" "Am I terrible if I don't get these forms of validation, or is it okay if sometimes I simply don't?" These kinds of things challenge the self that always expects to receive things in a certain way that accords with its own liking.


When one simply does not get what one wants, there is definitely an opportunity to cultivate there. One is to let go of demanding expectations of others, but there is a deeper practice, and that is to challenge the sense of self that is behind these expectations. Is the self that one is trying to defend really so endearing and permanent? Again, it takes some time for this point to sink in. But without this kind of practice, it can hard to resist the temptation to defend the self and to create a world around it. I think this is where meditative practice and Dharma concepts become so vital to one's mental health.




Shengyen (2014). Chan and Enlighenment. Elmhurst: Dharma Drum Publications.

From Outer to Inner Sacrifice

After reading about Brahminic sacrifice in Kutadanta Sutta, I have become quite intrigued by the idea of sacrifice, and how it has shifted away from external forms into something that is internal. The meaning of sacrifice can change as a result, because it no longer involves using a display of violence to achieve a certain state of things. But does this entail that there is an inner violence instead? When we talk about sacrifice, do we always necessarily entail something that is violent?
   Violence always entails some struggle for survival, and I tend to believe that the Buddhist path does not really embrace or entail violent struggle in the same way that perhaps other religions do. For instance, in some religions such as Christianity, there is the notion of 'fighting the good fight' for God, and this usually entails a kind of dualistic struggle between good and evil, often co-existing within the same person. I notice that in texts such as the Upanishads in Hinduism, there is this same attempt to symbolize or allegorize the internal struggles of the heart with an external battlefield that one must fight in order to conquer unsavory elements within the self. Most Chan Buddhist teachings (and Zen, for that matter) don't seem to have this emphasis on fight or struggle, since the perspective of Chan is not to valorize one side of things and demonize another. As exciting as the movies and books happen to be about inner struggles and conquests, I think a Chan Buddhist might remind a person not to get too excited or attached to the feeling of struggle or 'conquest', since these will easily slide into cravings. In fact, with the prevalence of many violent movies in theatres, I am tempted to think that people might even be addicted to the feelings that come with struggling with adversity and conquering it.
   The ultimate struggle in life is the struggle to feel that one exists--and the ultimate way to feel one exists is to create a kind of opponent and then try to conquer that opponent in some way. Buddhism does away with the craving by suggesting that it is an aggregate, not an actual self feeling. In this way, one doesn't repress experiences but is able to observe and co-exist with the threatening feeling of non-existence, without shunning it or trying to fill it with something else.

Diversity and Unity

  If everything is part of the mind, is there any sense talking about diversity? I was recently reading a book on Hindu mysticism where it talks about the idea that all consciousness is the same consciousness, whoever possesses it. It's a bit like saying that even though my form might be different from yours, the way "I" see "you" is through the same consciousness. I almost want to say the same 'substance', but here it is not so appropriate. Under this view, it may not necessarily matter who possesses what consciousness, but the essence of the consciousness is pretty much the same.
    This concept of 'unity' in consciousness seems useful in some cases, whereas the concept of diversity seems more applicable to others. In other words, it depends on the context in which a person applies the principle of either unity or diversity. To take one example, if I say that everything is just one thing, or one experience, then I express over-confidence in my ability to know what is really there to be experienced, in all its variety. It is as though in that moment in time, unity is a concept that prevents me from seeing the world in its variety. On the other hand, too much emphasis on variety and diversity can soon enough lead to identification to one form or another. It reminds me of how, when I was very young, I used to read these children's books called "Mr. Men", and each one of the characters in this series possesses a particular defining characteristic, such as Mr. Messy, Mr. Nosey, Mr. Smart, and so on. The idea behind the book is that kids would learn to see which personality traits most fit with who they are. As a person gets older, the idea of difference becomes more sophisticated. People start to organize themselves around cliques, and later the defining characteristics of a person are legitimated through various psychological tests and classifications.
   But if a person persists in enjoying and indulging in these differences, there eventually comes a point where flaws start to arise in any classifying system: messy people are sometimes clean about some thing, while it is impossible for a clean person to always be ''fully clean". So we start to experience these exceptions and realize that it is best not to cling to systems that are bound to change over time.
    I suppose that the right kind of diversity has to contain an element of unity, and vice versa. Knowing that diverse elements might have similar ways of being and feeling can give a person more confidence when they are trying to dialogue with another culture's experiences. I like to think of it as 'relaxed diversity' where differences don't 'become' a person but only mark off the contours of a body and situation that are always shifting in time. In this way, I can be fully available for diversity without thinking that I am either with or opposed to the diverse elements.

Curiosity and Planning

One often gets this idea that all learning needs to lead to something, and usually that something is unrealistic: for instance, the study of law will make one a top criminal lawyer. Is it always the case that 'success' is defined by the highest position one can imagine, or is there a more subtle success that arises from learning?What I notice is that whatever one is studying, there are these deeper things one is learning, and these things extend beyond particular professions or roles. but I begin to wonder, has anybody really sat down and studied what these intangibles really are? In my previous blog entry I alluded to 'focus', but I also want to say that learning can make a person certainly more curious and flowing into a process. Curiosity --well, has anybody ever done a study on the actual experience of curiosity? Here again, my mind reaches a blank.
   Curiosity takes courage. I am looking at next year and am wondering, where is this study really taking me? I don't know the answer, and it is scary to sometimes fathom that there is no master plan in life. Even when people spend many hours, weeks or months, planning out what they are going to do in maybe five or ten years, even tomorrow will be different. It's not to say that planning is useless, but that the value of planning is more in the sense of engagement than in the outcome. To plan is to commit to the idea that at least in theory, one can really make sense of some things in life. Even if this theory proves to be wrong, perhaps it's better to have some kind of tentative plan, and work out the details (or itinerary) as one goes along. But if one is not too sure what the next step will be, that is when one can resort to curiosity: the desire to know or study what is not known.

Spontaneous?

  I wonder if anyone really knows what 'spontaneous' really means. A few weeks ago, someone in my class on Buddhist foundations was giving a report about karma. He was using an example which went something like: "a boy feels pity for a homeless person. Without any prior intention or motive, he spontaneously gives money to the homeless person, and does so in secret, without anyone around him watching." The question then went, is this person generating good karma, bad karma, nor no karma whatsoever?
   One of the ideas I have read about in Buddhism is that enlightened beings act 'spontaneously' in accordance with the moment, without any premeditation on whether or not the action truly benefits themselves. According to this view, a spontaneous action is done completely based on the moment, without the prior thought of gain or loss. But in another sense, one could argue that this simply according with causes and conditions. It may be spontaneous in the above sense referred to, but it is certainly not a random act either. It responds in much the same way that a mirror reflects whatever is coming toward its surface. This is a little bit different from the common parlance, where 'spontaneous' entails just acting according to whim or fancy. In that sense, one can sometimes say that spontaneous might be acting precisely according to the moment, which entails harmonizing with all the phenomena. On the other hand, there is a popular view which suggests that spontaneity means something more random and chaotic, such as going for a drive with no purpose in mind.
    Another meaning of spontaneity I have come across before is to act without attachment to one's emotions and thoughts. Perhaps in the case of the boy above: if he did not feel compelled by his emotions to react the way he did, it might qualify as somewhat spontaneous. In other words, the more unattached I am to a particular outcome or feeling, the more range of choice I have, and there is this experience of just doing according to the moment.
   There are many times when I have felt that I have never been held back to do anything, but that there were always a bunch of thoughts which gave the illusion of barriers. When those barriers are exhausted, there is this clearing in the dense forest, and a sigh of relief: there is nothing expected of me, and nothing barred from me either. The two go together. If even for a moment I felt obliged in some way to be what wasn't inside me, then that would constitute a thought of the self, trying to make an impression on the other. But when I am finally free of having to do that, there is a wide canvas in which to act, and it is no longer driven by trying to symbolically 'act out' one's compliance or rebellion from something. It's tough to reach that clearing, but in a sense it has to happen after a period of intense concentration or focus on something, be it a discipline or a work or project of some kind. This is so because periods of absorption seem to allow the mind to go through a process of channeling desires into something meaningful in order to exhaust them: to see their finitude and their impermanent nature. Once that is really done, the mind realizes that there was nothing to be done in the first place, even though the doing was the process of learning (or unlearning) that there was 'nothing to be done'. Could this perhaps be the mode upon which one discovers spontaneity?

Essay Writing a Spiritual Practice?

   There is a certain point where I start to see term papers as koans: you wrestle with them over and over, trying to tease out the answer to the question you are trying to pose. All the while, the answers always elude the mind, because there is no one single answer. And the deeper one goes into the process, the more one can only feel that the topic one has chosen never exhausts itself.
   I think there is always an opportunity to see writing an essay as a spiritual practice, particularly when one is using the essay to wrestle with a deep question which becomes uniquely one's own. It's certainly not easy these days to find the time to really engage this process, and the tendency in many schools is to rush the process. I recall my writing teacher from OISE explaining that writing needs to take place on a daily practice, as a kind of discipline. Yet, somehow, schools try to accelerate the process by requiring students to write only one paper, and then leaving it to the end of the semester to complete. There is a tendency in these situations to put off the process of composing the writing to the last minute, and this can compromise the process of revision that is such an integral part of writing and forming one's ideas.
   I think that if one really budgets their time, they can work out a paper through an entire semester of writing and rewriting. By circling around the subject many times, one gets to see this nature of writing as a process of tuning into one's thoughts, observing them for a while, and then realizing that these thoughts don't capture the reality of what you are exploring.  This process, if attended to patiently, can lead to a repetition of efforts, where a writer keeps trying out new ideas to see how they flow and whether or not they fully capture the inquiry to which one engages. Circling back again and again to this original question can become like a practice of engaging a koan: always approximating the reality to which one is pointing, yet never truly arriving anywhere. I think that no matter what inquiry one engages in, this is the real fruit: it's knowing that there is never one single answer to a question. It's also to know that this process teaches so many things about the nature of the universe, but only if one has the courage to realize that there is no settled, final answer to anything, even after a person has turned in the 'final' copy of the essay. This process is deeply humbling and rewarding at the same time.
    This process of writing essays sure won't get you money or a steady job, but it teaches you many other skills, foremost of which are patience and an insight into the impermanent nature of one's own thinking.

How to Promote "Just Now"?

  During the group meditation discussion tonight, someone had asked the question of how we can promote Chan to more Westerners. This person was sharing about many television programs in Taiwan which promote various temples and teachers, and the skillful ways in which media is used to help people learn about Buddhism as a religion. But I had to wonder, is Chan best promoted as a religion to Westerners?
    The way that I think about it might be to ask the question: how does one promote "just this?" or "just now?" Meditation is a little bit like this, as is many Chan teachings, simply because there is no special accessory or product to it. In fact, to try to add anything else to Chan would be to go way beyond and to even dilute its power. If that's the case, is there any way to promote Chan at all? I am almost thinking that the term 'promotion' in itself is too much, because we can only really promote what can be sensed or touched. Can Chan be sensed or touched? Can it be bought even? There is something about this practice that simply cannot be commodified in any way. But then on the other hand, we don't want to go to the other extreme and equate Chan with nothingness or with some invisible deity. Chan is a way of being that can only be experienced when there is some room for still awareness.
  One of the biggest traps, I believe, is how people tend to want to take something with them, as a technique. I have found that the Chan way cannot be reduced to technique, even though many techniques are taught.  This is a funny paradox, but it's bad if Chan is reduced to a series of ten steps, or even to something that is measurable. The flavour of Chan gets lost when it is looked at in this way. All one can ever really do is gently point to it, in many skilful ways, and patiently allow the fruit to ripen in mind. Is there any other way? A quicker way is not possible because we can never grab a cloud by the horns.