after the tempest

I have been reflecting upon Master Sheng Yen's saying "To transcend the suffering of death, keep to the three principles: never seek death, never fear death, and never wait for death to come." I have wondered, is the Buddhist view of death only related to one's physical death, or is it referring to all forms of loss in general? The more I reflect on it, the more I feel that this principle of "never seeking, never fearing and never waiting" can apply to many things. They even seem to correspond with modes of being that look upon objects as separate things: to be desired, to be feared or simply to be waited for.
     I am particularly interested in the third part of Master Sheng Yen's statement, because it seems to be a balance for the other two. Whereas the first two parts of this adage seem to refer to seeking and avoiding, it's the third that is the most subtle form of attachment, in the sense that it relates to despair. Once I think that some big loss or death is on the horizon, I begin to lose hope for all other parts of the life around me. There is even a subtle aversion to all experience. I was reading a passage from Shakespeare's Othello where Othello reflects upon how the tempest he had just survived only accentuated the loving contentment he felt for his wife Desdemona. The idea is that he starts to fear the ensuing moments, hoping that death would come quickly over him...for fear that he could never again feel or even recreate that absolute contentment he felt toward Desdemona, in that special moment. The problem is that Othello takes that one moment of contentment and develops another desire of wanting it to last forever. Not only this, but he even develops a wish to die after suspecting that things will never be as happy as he was in that moment.
   Grim food for thought, but always intriguing.

Journey of redoing

Today, I had to redo the fonts and formatting for my blog assignment pages, due to discrepancies in the fonts sizes and colors. I felt a lot of frustration in having to redo the whole page, but in another sense, the opportunity to redo something often yields a better result than if one simply tries a touch-up here and there. I think one of the interesting aspects of having to repeat something is that it allows a person to revisit something with much less frivolity. The repeated project tends to gloss over the unnecessary details and offers a more sleek version of the original.
   Another good thing is that I didn't have to do everything 'from scratch', since the text of my blog was intact. Here again is another opportunity to look at things from a spiritual lens; that is, is there ever any point where we are ever doing something 'from scratch'? Or is what we do the result of previous conditions?
  With vows, it's a similar principle: I know that I have to 'redo' life in some format or another, and death is an inevitable part of that process. However, there is a continuity across those existences which relates to what one sets out to do in each lifetime. If one limits their scope to 'this onw life' , they will grow very despondent if their goals are not reached by the end of it. But if one's focus is on the way the mind is cultivated across a given life, then nothing is truly wasted under that view. Redoing always carries the residuals of the previous doings.

non duality

 Non-duality is often considered a way of being in Buddhism. One of the ways it is experienced is through meditation itself, especially where the notion of a separate 'subject' and 'object' start to disappear. I think that there is a lot in human conditioning that is somewhat stacked against non-duality, and I have found in my own personal practice that it is difficult to sustain. One example of a dualistic approach that is encouraged in modern life is advertising. Walk into any movie theater these days, and you will find that there are enough commercials (esp. car commercials) to fill an entire two hours! But what advertising relies on is the belief that one's own body and personality are limited by circumstances and in need of the newest gadget or accessory. Without dualistic notions of self and other, the advertising industry might not do so well as it is doing today, because there wouldn't be this sense of a vulnerable self that 'needs' something beyond itself to be special, happy, etc.
   I feel it is very important to cultivate a neutral approach and not to succumb to the notion of subject and object. How is it possible to do so? One way that has worked well for me is to realize that I won\t die from not having certain possessions or recognition from others. If I have this approach of not taking things to the extremes of a subject 'acquiring' an object, I can learn to live peacefully without craving (or secretly craving) some recognition or attention from others around me.

technology as self-reflection

 Today, I did encounter the frustration of having to align parts of my poems and photographs to my blog on the Six Paramitas. It turned out not quite as I had wanted it to be, and I started to realize how fickle the whole process is. At times, learning to navigate blog creation is a kind of art which requires a lot of situated practice.
  I think all of this suggests to me that the process itself is more important than the result. When I can rest in the lesson that difficulty and frustration can present in a situation, then there is no longer any pressure leaning on the result itself. I can try a few different approaches and leave things as best as I can create them if worse comes to worse. I think this approach leaves room for mistakes and even for the imperfections of creation to arise.
   Technology is not something that is foreign to a person's mind and humanity, for that matter. I have heard the argument that technology is but an extension of people's facilities. So why is it the case that at times technology seems so alien? I think it's because there is something unrelenting and uncompromising about machines and how they break down in very unique and special ways. Whereas humans allow for a certain negotiation, machines just break down when it's least convenient. However, now that I am thinking more into it, I wonder if machines are really as 'soulless' as we think them to be. Is it possible that by learning to see the unique soul in our technologies, we might end up constructing a much more fruitful connection to it?

is even 'connection' somehow an empty concept?

I was doing a connections mapping exercise tonight for my media class, and the idea behind it is to find all the ways in which I am connected to others. As I was doing this exercise, I realized both the ‘reality’ of interconnection and its fundamental emptiness. For instance, there are so many ways in which we can be said be connected to others that the question becomes one of : how to narrow down one’s ideas regarding how they are connected? As soon as I define how ‘you’ relate to ‘me’, I am describing a kind of connection that seems hard-lined, but actually it is a kind of mental label which describes only one of many ways of seeing things and people.

I think it’s important to understand that even the concept of interconnection entails a grid-relationship which doesn’t necessarily actually exist anywhere. That is, what I consider to be ‘our’ relationship may look very different from your side, and vice versa. This whole exercise has lead me to wonder: could the very notion of being interconnected be a kind of oversimplification of sorts, designed to connect what might be deeply divergent in nature or opinion? I think the danger of being too glib about the idea of interconnection is that it might cast a false net over everything, not realizing that even the net is the product of one’s thinking which changes over time and perspectives.

Is life a school?

I currently reading a book by Christopher Bache called Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life (1991). This book is interesting because even though it supports the idea of reincarnation, it rejects the idea that humans can reincarnate into 'lower beings' such as animals. Bache remarks:


Some cultures even constructed an elaborate system that tied specific moral failings to specific animal incarnations. This may be an effective method for teaching moral behavior to children and for reinforcing it in adults, but it is not a philosophically adequate concept of reincarnation (p.58)


Bache furthermore goes on to explain his remarks, stating "Once one is operating within the context and resources of human consciousness, all of one's lessons will take place in that context" (p.59). This is very different from Buddhist teachings, which have always suggested that life itself is a circle, where beings can always regress to animals or ghosts. I tend to wonder, which account is correct?
    I am not too sure at this point if I can safely say that I will be a human in the next life. Many Buddhist traditions describe how difficult and rare it is to even achieve a human form. Not only this, but I am also inclined to suspect that all the sentient beings are on a spectrum. While I can say that there are elements of me that are human, there are also aspects of myself that are ghostlike and animal-like. To say that these forms have been transcended by human forms seems a bit of a stretch. It also subtly anthromorphizes, by holding the humans as a privileged class of beings.

Bache, C.M. (1991). Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life. New York: Paragon House.

YouTube Creations

  I found that the prospect of making YouTube videos goes through many different phases. The first emotion I had upon realizing that I am required to design YouTube videos for my course is one of 'shock' and horror. "Me", I think..." I hardly even know how to use a TV remote, let alone upload a file to YouTube". But once I forced myself to go through the process, I realized how strangely easy it is to upload videos on YouTube. The fact of the matter is that there is only one click of a button needed to upload videos, and then there it is, in a matter of two or three minutes.
   Of course, what happens next is the 'honeymoon phase', where I start to believe that any and everything I publish on YouTube has some magic in it. This is similar to the time when I received an electric typewriter when I was 16 years old, and marvelled at how the lovely font on the typewriter made everything I wrote look like a 'classic'. I suppose that the handsome font on the typewriter made up for my many years of poor penmanship, but nonetheless, I think I took my enthusiasm much too far.
   Now, I am starting to develop a bit more discernment, realizing that what I am doing is rather amateur compared to the wonderful stories and narratives that are out there in the YouTube world. This period of 'comparison' seems to follow any honeymoon phase. Think about the married couple who tries to compare the color of their curtains with those of their neighbours across the street. Is there any need to compare, for that matter? But such seems to be a natural tendency: as soon as a person gets over the fear of not having the capability to create something useful or meaningful using a certain medium, they no sooner start to evaluate themselves based on how they perceive others are doing! It seems like human beings just love to make themselves suffer, no matter what kinds of fortune besets them.
    What will be my future feeling with YouTube? Well, to be honest, I do believe that this medium has opened up a door for me, because I am suddenly realizing the implications of it. Not only am I capable of taking pictures and making videos, but now I have the ability to combine them and upload the result to one site. This encourages me to be a bit like a storyteller, who takes whatever he can find in the way of sound and images to create narratives. I think it's for sure very exciting, but I have to wonder for how long I will be able to creatively endure, considering the time that is consumed in making a video. I suppose time will tell how far I will go into this new creative venture.

Random Notes on Media Studies

  The more I am getting involved in media studies, the more convinced I am that we (as practitioners) essentially convert ourselves through the inspirational media we interact with. I believe that the desire for inspiration is much like food: it is a kind of craving for many people. And the internet is one outlet through which that desire is somehow met, through a multiplicity of different forms.
   I was designing a video project this week for one of my last assignments in the course, and I found myself just enjoying the result--much better than I would if I were not somehow involved in the creative process. Why is that? I guess one cynical take on it is that it is a form of pride of sorts. But I think a deeper clue to it is that creation itself becomes a reflection of one's deepest motivations and values, which often remain hidden in people until there are moments of clarity. Have you ever considered why you tend to imitate some people and not others? I believe that it's because there is just a stronger resonance in some cases than in others. When I am actively creating an object on a spiritual theme, I am articulating what matters to me the most about the spiritual subject, and this has a great impact on my motivation to practice the spiritual teaching itself.
   I also get to realize the opposite, namely that there are aspects of spiritual life which give rise to doubt, discontinuity and even distance. This shouldn't be surprising, considering that all beings are at different spectrum in relation to a spiritual practice. There can never be 100% 'engagement' all the time, and perhaps what a person could aim for is seeing the spiritual practice itself as a means through which they can reflect upon themselves, rather than 'replacing' oneself with the spiritual teaching.

Cheerfulness Embodied

Two days ago, I read the news that jazz musician Al Jarreau had passed away at the age of 76. I was saddened to hear the news of his passing, and am still feeling the impact of it. Prior to studying Buddhism and becoming very busy in life, I think a lot of my spare time was parsed between reading and music. Al Jarreau was certainly one of the 'big three' who inspired me the most in terms of music--the other two being George Benson and Steely Dan. All three have a contemporary jazz feel to them, but I believe that of the three, Al's music cheered me the most. It's no wonder that Al Jarreau's online press release described healing others as being his number one priority (music being the second).
   I am not too sure which of Al's songs touched me the most, but it was his album L for Lover which was most inspiring and impactful for me. I remember hearing the title track from that album in the car on the way to shopping, and it has that very bright, suburban feel to it. I quickly noted his name from the radio announcer and at some point or another, headed for the library, where I managed to find the cassette of the album. I can say that the albums' sound is definitely 1986: sophisticated but most importantly, very uplifting. Some of those songs, including "Golden Girl", talk about having hope in the midst of dark despair, and you can certainly feel Al's religious leanings and traditions in some of the songs. When I was feeling sad or disheartened,  I would listen to a few tracks from Al's 1984 live album, such as "I Will be There for You", "Roof Garden" and "Let's Pretend". Somehow, this very gifted musician was able to address both romance and despair, while using his whole body and voice as a living instrument, both literally and metaphorically. He seemed very deeply attuned to people's heartaches, and set out to write songs which essentially console people and give them hope for love.
    I think I can go on about Al Jarreau, but I believe you would do best to google his name and watch some of his youtube videos to see for yourself. But the point I wanted to make is how powerful and healing music can be. It's amazing how music itself can reach so many people. However, in another sense, the best way we know how to reach others is to know deeply how we feel about things, and touch the loneliness that is part of human existence.  Music seems to be a simple enough medium to transcend words.
  

Learning from Mistakes

 Trying to create a video piece for my media course has been rather taxing. I enjoy the process and at the same time find that it brings out my misgivings about technology. For this video piece, there are certain things which simply don't make sense to me, which relate to the alignment of things. But I am slowly getting the hang of things, and it's just going to take me some time to get used to it.
    Sometimes even these frustrating experiences are opportunities to observe the self and see how its dynamics unfold. For instance, I sense a desire for things to be neatly explained and finished before I really take time to reflect on what could be learned from the missteps and mistakes. Would life be so exciting if everything were just genuinely neat and straight out of the box? Such would hardly make the world interesting. I am learning to rethink moments of frustration, but it will take me time to overcome my fears of it.

A Feeling of Chan in a Room

 During the group sharing this morning, one of the participants mentioned that he quite enjoyed the energy of the center. I have often wondered, where does that energy come from? I think that in a sense, it was coming from his own experience of the place. Quite literally, it is a heart connection that a person makes, partly from their own attentiveness, and partly from the ability of the surroundings to invoke or enhance it in some way.
   I am often surprised in my own experiences to know or discover what qualifies as a 'Chan' or 'Zen' environment. The basement in which we conduct our private Sunday morning gathering is hardly an auspicious place. It is not even set up to be a 'proper' Chan Hall: the floors are carpeted, there is a big drum in the center of the room that has to be relocated to the back, and there are many visual distractions around it, from a nearby children's playroom to an overstocked storage space. Yet, somehow, I have to admit that this place endears me a lot. There is something about the rustic cramped-ness of the room that gives it an authentic Zen/Chan feel. Can I say that, in spite of the cold temperatures in the basement, it is cozy in some way? And I also wonder: what is it about cramped, often cluttered spaces that makes them 'cozy'? Here, I believe that there is an unabasedly human element to the messiness. I even wonder if people deliberately make messes (subconsciously) in order to induce that state of 'someone is here' or 'lived in' feel of the room.
   Sometimes, a place does not need to be particularly well constructed or organized to have a good energy for practice. While there should perhaps be less clutter, there also doesn't have to be so much planning or preparation. Sometimes the space takes care of itself, just as the mind will tend to settle naturally if there are few attachments.
   At the end of the day, a good spirit energy must arise when everyone agrees to practice--and put their whole hearts and minds into it. That energy will tend to linger for a long time, and build itself into the space like a habit.

Weird Dreamy Thoughts

    The retreat went well today, only the funny thing is that I had feedback from other practitioners which reflects my own experiences in a couple of the sittings. That is, I was experiencing, at times, this kind of 'dreamy' experience of seeing thoughts emerge which don't make too much sense. This is perhaps a bit different from the regular kind of scattered thoughts. Unlike with the scattered thoughts one normally experiences, this situation involves seeing thoughts that have little or no connection with anything. And what's worse is that the arrive at a relatively quiescent state of mind.. and  in this relatively quiescent state, it can be quite hard to be able to summon up the energy to bring up the huatou.
  I don't quite know how to deal with these situations, and I was advised by one of the practitioners not to try to fight these situations at all. The more I try to resist, the more tired I will become, and the less I can really practice huatou. So the only thing I can do in those situations is to observe the conditions of my mind and relax into it, without necessarily trying to 'arouse' a motivation to practice.
    This kind of experience does lead me to wonder: to what extent are we truly in control of our motivations to practice? Many Chan and Zen texts I have read exhort practitioners to give rise to determination and diligence of mind, which perhaps suggests that the will to practice is always within a person's individual control. After today's experience on the retreat, I tend to challenge this view. I think that a lot of what we consider to be will power is often the result  of  many conditions working favorably together. I think a lot of this has to do with challenging my ideas about how much meditation is based on will power and how much is about observing things as they are.

Making Vows

 Master Sheng Yen has always stressed the importance of making vows, and I haven't really reflected on it for a while...but certainly one of the most impactful expressions he has made is, "it's better to break a vow than to have no vow to break." Although Master Sheng Yen was addressing this expression in a Buddhist context, I tend to believe that it might just as well apply to any moral perspective. Without a kind of promise to fulfill a value or standard, life can easily devolve into a kind of numbing or filling the void.
     Does this mean, however, that one should feel eternally bad when they break a vow? And another related question is, does breaking a vow mean that a person was not sincere enough to keep the vow? In today's very cynical world, there is a tendency to think that because people break their promises or ideals, then therefore ideals in general are either very fake or very unattainable. In fact, however, it's not difficult to understand why people don't keep vows. For one, it's not always easy to discern where to put one's energies, and thus it can be quite easy to make mistakes when trying to actualize one's values or ideal sense of being. The other reason is that we don't always live in social worlds that welcome the personal values we uphold, and there might even be a tendency to downplay those ideals in favor of more expedient or less mindful ways of being. And finally, there may be so many competing aims within us, that it can become very difficult to discern which parts will win out in the 'battle for the mind.'
    Does all this mean, however , that one should throw in the towel and never make moral vows? No, it doesn't mean that: it simply means that one can learn to distinguish very clearly, from one instant to the next, between the ideal and one's present situation, with all its internal and external demands. When a person is able to clearly hold these two things in dynamic tension (ideals and present reality), one is in a better position to choose wholesome actions.
    If a person tries to stifle their experiences in favour of an unrealized, abstract principle, there always ends up this kind of inner resistance. In a sense, it's like two parts of the brain aren't even talking to each other, and they need to start talking for the whole brain to work. Maybe this requires  a literal conversation: checking in with the parts of me that are not 'with' the ideals I uphold, and seeing exactly why there may be a reluctance or a resistance there. This kind of delicate curiosity might also be the key to doing peace work, but the problem is that I am still making assumptions about what is 'good' and 'not so good' about me, and this could also be due to ideals which have nothing to do with my value as a person.

The Anguish of "Attainment"

I explained to the other facilitator in the group practice tonight how trying to attain something in meditation is always accompanied by a certain kind of anguish. I may not be using the correct word here, but I am thinking about Jean Paul Sartre's use of the term, to describe that sense of having to continually re-build or re-commit oneself even after they have made some kind of inroad in that commitment. It is also something akin to Sisyphus rolling the rock up the mountain. The more I try to encapsulate what a 'good' meditation sitting might happen to be, the more I experience the fear of losing it, as well as the nausea of knowing that it will fade or need to be rebuilt again.
    The thing is, meditation can say an awful lot to us about our desires for neat and perfect narratives, as well as the fears that our narratives will discontinue, for unforeseen circumstances. I have often heard post-retreat sharing in which participants couch their meditation experience in terms of very familiar, grand narratives of loss, struggle, redemption, success, and return. It is as though without these hopeful stories, others could not find any reason to practice. I tend to take the opposite approach, in suggesting that meditation is post-structural: it has the power to subtly deconstruct our narratives, by suggesting that experience outlives the fickleness of narratives. I say 'fickle' because, indeed, although I may be having the time of my life in one meditation sitting, that narrative hardly holds true for future meditation sittings. This is perhaps the anguish that needs to be faced: impermanence, or what Sartre might have regarded as the negation that is at the heart of being.

Jello and Ice Cream

Many times in the course of the group meditation sharing, I notice that there are similarities in terms of what we share. If there's a day when one person expresses drowsiness, I find that I too felt the same way. Sometimes, what the participant relates is like a kind of spot-on impression of how I experienced the meditation practice as well. For instance, one participant mentioned today that she felt disconnected with her body and method and almost went into a dream state of successive thoughts--and I had a similar experience in the first sitting! Now, is this just a case of selective memory? Or is it a genuinely shared co-experience?
   As I am writing this thought, I am reminded of childhood memories when I used to have a dessert which was a concoction of jello (green jello, to be precise) and melted ice cream. The two ingredients did not seem to be a match at all: one being rubbery in consistency, while the other being in a liquid state when melted. In spite of that, however, I was still able to enjoy the two ingredients together, until one day the thought of jello with ice cream became a kind of social norm. In other words, what 'happens' is often co-created, and whatever is emphasized in a shared narrative often influences one's experience of something. A good example might be how a very hot pepper might seem to be painful in one context, yet very edible and desirable in the context of a hot pepper competition. Suddenly, through the institutionalization of hot pepper eating contests, hot peppers are not seen as problematic, but as challenging and exciting to deal with.
   I wonder if perhaps we get our cues on what to share or not to share from the overall emotional atmosphere that the group collectively evokes at a given time. I have yet to study this question but I think the meditation group would be an ideal area to study this kind of phenomena.

Why Choice Matters

The more I consider Buddhist teachings, the more I reflect on what Buddha had originally exhorted to his early disciples: try for yourself and see for yourself. If my interpretation is correct, I don't think that the Buddha was saying that a person has to do something in order to get to heaven or avoid hell. Rather, he seemed to have been revealing something as basic as a law of life: yes, you can continue to live and suffer as you do, but there are bound to be consequences. If the Buddha were advocating an experimental attitude of 'see for yourself', however, is this negating the idea that karma is an inevitable result of previous conditions? Where does choice play into the idea that karma is a result of previous conditions.
    Well, first, I believe it may be oversimplifying to say that karma is inevitable. This view is limiting because it closes off the possibility that we can influence the view of the past by what we do today. Even though something has 'already happened', that already happened is existing in mind right now. Therefore, I can't really say that anything is 'already done', as though I have no say in how it might look from this current perspective. Because time is in this continuous stream of unfolding, it makes little sense to be deterministic about it.
   But the second is about choice. I sometimes wonder if people might start to take Buddha's teachings as dogma, when they see karma as some kind of physical law, much akin to gravity. Again, I think this is too literal a reading of Buddhism, and it can lead to a very reifying attitude: "well, I need to do this because Buddha or someone else said so, and what they say must be true, so therefore I should follow it." Ironically, this kind of thinking is exactly what the Buddha was warning his disciples not to do. Why? Couldn't the Buddha have simply set up a shrine and said "Just follow me, my way is the right way?" Again, however, this idea is based on a distorted notion of cause and effect. If things are statically related to each other, then Buddha could very well have simply asked people to accept his views on a combination of faith and trust. But his teachings mitigate against this kind of trust, because the Buddha was emphasizing the impermanent nature of all dharmas. According to this idea, there is simply no resting place or position to say, 'this is it', because one's awareness is inseparable from the 'this'. It is both a part of and somehow not imprisoned by the 'this'. That being said, it is a mistake to think that karma is a law that is external to mind or attitudes. And it would be simply dogmatic to say that one has no choice in how to view the teachings on karma, or its results.

Spirit in the World

  I am thinking about the idea of life as an eternal cycle, and how we can often be comforted by the fact that anxious moments are not 'forever' but can be an opportunity for growth.  Where does the faith come from, however--to know that suffering is not 'forever'? That's an interesting aspect which most spiritual teachings share.
    During the class today on Media and Evangelism, Dr. Hess mentioned the idea that one can only be comfortable with the tension and conflict of strangers when there is a strong sense of hope is beyond that. I don't think this is about getting a 'reward' for being kind to strangers. It has rather to do with the ability to contain tensions when there is a larger space in which to work through those same tensions. But, in another sense, it goes deeper than this. In fact, the tension itself is perhaps the key aspect to the realization of the 'beyond that'. I am not talking about either masochism or resignation. "Masochism" is the belief that embracing suffering can lead to a transcendent gain, while resignation suggests that suffering is only a side effect of a spiritual path. Both ideas aren't quite it. I think it's more productive to suggest that one needs to bear out the entire story of the stranger in order to get beyond the self and transcend the tensions of self and other, all the while quietly bearing those tensions.
    I might try to put it in another way. Sometimes, we might think there is something standing over the whole world, and we have to bear the world patiently to please or attain what stands over it. Another way is to say that the world itself is an expression of that which transcends the world. This means that spirit is deeply embedded in the world, and not apart from it. This latter view suggests that we can embrace what is in front of us as a lesson of kinds, rather than reject it in favor of something more 'world transcending'.

Good to be Cold

Sunday meditation took place in the cold basement, among a few very brave participants. I found that after hearing stories about what Zen monks suffer in the retreat centers in Japan, I tend to think that this kind of cold I feel is reasonable, if not bearable. None of the participants seem to mind, but there is a lot of mention about the heater not circulating a lot of heat, and the possibility of even changing the heater. Should we get a louder one that might disturb the participants, however much it disperses a lot of needed heat? Or the quieter one which actually has no circulating heat?
    Of course, these questions are pretty immaterial when it comes to the actual practice of meditation itself, but the point is to suggest that we normally spend a lot of time trying to adjust our inner temperatures: if sad, make happy; if alone, turn up the 'social' dial, and so on. What if we simply ignored that inner dial, or didn't adjust it even if we had the power to do so? In fact, I am lucky that we haven't had too many group meditation spaces where we could in fact have adjusted a thermostat to get the temperature 'just right'. This is because everyone's 'just right' is very different, even though people often assume that the inner thermostat is the same for everyone.
   

Starting Out the Weekend

   My meditation group had recently switched from Sunday mornings to Saturday mornings. In the beginning, I felt a bit apprehensive about the change, thinking that many would not be able to adjust to the new change in the schedule. When I checked in with the group meditation members today, however, I found that many benefitted from starting out their weekend with meditation. One of the group members, for example, shared how it can be helpful to frame one's weekend chores as a kind of meditation practice, especially in contrast to treating chores as merely something to get done.
   In fact, I would agree that meditation can give otherwise menial chores a kind of meaning. The reality is that simply being present to anything without desiring something else can make that very same thing meaningful. It takes away from the consumerist mentality that what we have is not enough, and we somehow need to acquire more in order to feel better about themselves.
     Still another participant had shared a different side of this: sometimes group meditation practice can be a kind of place that is especially away from the pressures of daily life, which is what makes it refreshing and different. This view seems to be quite different from the idea that meditation necessarily should or must attend to each moment.  I believe that both views are equally valid. While one contends that we can treat all situations as extensions of sitting meditation, the other view stresses and emphasizes that meditation itself is a special activity that has its own special place and meaning. It is not somehow mired by the stresses of daily life.
   Meditation can be considered both as a rest and as a way of reframing one's stressful life. As another participant had shared: the difference between 'relaxation' and meditation is that meditation allows one to rest in even the most unpleasant situation, while relaxation always favours the pleasant. I mention this because I strongly believe that meditation can prepare people for deep losses that they will inevitably experience in life. By attending to the unpleasant sensations of leg pain (or even boredom) in sitting practice, one is preparing for the much more difficult losses that happen outside the cushion.
    

The Heartbreak School

 I am quite interested in Parker J. Palmer's unique perspectives in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy, and in particular a line where he remarks, "Everyday life is a school of the spirit that offers us chance after chance to practice dealing with heartbreak." (p.59) This perspective is interesting when Palmer makes a distinction between breaking down and breaking out. Whereas breaking down refers to the tendency for the heart to withdraw or even shut down in the face of pain and suffering, this breaking 'outward' is more like using the experience of heartbreak to open the heart to more tension. I tend to think of it as a kind of challenge to the sense that we can ever take our suffering and reduce it to a single explanation about who we are. Perhaps the meaning of suffering in fact is to leave a person completely in the lurch regarding who they are, but without denying them the sense of responsibility for their existence and how it is unfolding in the moment.
    In myself, I find it's common for me to withdraw from suffering by trying to see myself in it. I might start to blame myself for the problem I am facing or even put a label on myself for having this problem. Overall, it creates the false sense of isolation, as though only "I" in my special weakness could have this problem. In fact, it may very well be the exact same burden that everyone has, but when I put myself in front of the experience, I make it seem as though only I am having it.
    What would life be like if, rather than narrating suffering from the perspective of I, there was this vulnerable honesty about all the fragility that comes with suffering? What if I fully experience my fallibility and fragility, without having to name myself as being 'this' or 'that'--in other words, just experiencing the pain in the raw without putting any special narrative on it? I believe this is an interesting challenge that Palmer poses in his book which I would like to explore in my spiritual practice.

Creative Tensions in Daily Life

  On the way to group meditation practice tonight, I had dozed off before my appointed stop, and ended up at Steeles Avenue. As luck wouldn't have it, I missed the bus along Steeles, so I ended up grabbing a very quick dinner and walking to the center amidst quite heavy snow. I was in quite a bit of a rush to get to the center, but upon arriving there, a sense of calm fell over me as I started to see the Chinese red lanterns creating a mellow glow in the Chan Hall. Even while we were doing the exercises, I could feel something beautiful and dreamlike about this red glow, providing a sense of comfort to the meditation practice.
    I started to reflect: although the travel to and from the meditation is tight and at times full of tension, there is what Parker Palmer would perhaps call 'creative tension' in all of this (Palmer, 2011, p.14-15), which is the ability to hold my frustration or tension as part of an overall creative process. The best way to describe this creative tension would be to suggest that whenever there is an action or a feeling, it is part of a spectrum which includes its opposite or contrasting tones. Whenever there is tension, there is also somewhere in that tension a sense of peace. After all, why else would I be going to group meditation practice except to somehow cultivate a wholesome space of peace for all?  But before I get to that place, I have to navigate other, equally valid spaces. Does it make sense? If a person is rushing frantically to get to the meditation cushion to escape those uncomfortable feelings, then they are missing out on a chance to see the tension as equally valid as the lack of tension. It's also an energy of mind, the same way in which meditation has its own energy. The key is that I look upon the tension with the same even-minded awareness as I would while in sitting meditation. I sort of enjoy that tension by immersing myself in it and fully acknowledging why it's there and why it even should be there for that matter.
    After all, tension is partly chosen, but it's partly based on the conditions as well. In looking at these tensions, could we not also cultivate a spacious awareness, perhaps even a joy in the moment?