Gently Agitated

The title of this entry comes from an idea I contemplated today at lunch time, during my daily walk. I was thinking: every time we hear people swear, do we not also sense their agitation? Would it be still possible for the literal 'tone' of language to have a lower pitch, and thus become 'relaxed' with agitation? I also reflect that the reason this doesn't happen so often is that one already judges an emotion in terms of the self before it even fully registers in the mind. One thinks that 'anger', for example, automatically gives the stamp of attachment, when the real attachment might be the inner conflict of not accepting the experience fully. It is as if I am so busy admiring the outside circumstances that I am simply unable to accept my state of being as it is in this moment.
   I suggest instead an exercise where, rather than associating my states of being with discreet 'personalities' which give rise to conflict, I contemplate the following:


a) there are no distinct, unchanging personality characteristics at all, but rather, things are always conditioned by other things
b) all states of mind are okay, and there is no need to set up an observer who rejects one state in favour of others


Please try the experiment yourself: how would it feel if, in this very moment of time, you were to completely and unreservedly accept your whole being as it is? What if you were to also recognize that this too will pass? Try to experiment with the notion that we lack permanent selfhood, and therefore there is no sense identifying with one's emotions in this way.

Off Kilter

     I have had a plugged ear throughout this week, due to sleeping on it the wrong way, resulting in a very weird effect of feeling pressure on one side of the face, and not the other. In times like this, I am so appreciative of the way the body balances--and how one minute or tiny imbalance can set everything off kilter. In a sense, it reminds me of the original meaning of the term 'dukkha' which in Buddhism refers to a loose wheel that is a little bit off kilter. Even a little bit off can mean a whole lot of suffering. What's to be done when this imbalance starts to take hold of someone?
   The great thing about the practice of gratitude is that yes, one can marvel at the way things are made to balance each other. But there is a tragic sense in this--things rarely do balance perfectly, and because of the longing for balance, a person suffers a great deal. One can extend this metaphor to the intense practice of trying to learn who one is and what is true about life. In the beginning, there is a feeling that something is off balance, and the yearning to get it right again. Later, one starts to realize that this yearning itself is an impossible desire, and one had better let go of even this aspiration. But what isn't lost is the hunger that balance makes visible--perhaps a hunger for unity in difference , equanimity in conflict, etc.

"Neurotic Pride"

  One of the things I remember Chan teacher Gilbert discussing this past weekend is how consciousness often seeks objects. It is as though, in order to affirm its existence, the conscious part of our mind is always looking for ways to objectify something and then own it or claim it as ours. It also reminds me of an expression called "neurotic pride" which was coined by the psychologist Karen Horney to describe certain kinds of pride in being something which doesn't really amount to much but might be a form of self-reference which allays anxiety. For instance, a person might pride herself on being the calmest person in the room, or even the least "gossipy" person in the room, as though these were fixed markers or attributes about a person. In these instances, it is as though the person were looking for a way to symbolize themselves so that they know who exactly they are at any given point in time. But does any of us really and truly know who we are?
   The point is that having a specific object is often a way of stabilizing one's mind, and I think this is one of the positive aspects of 'neurotic pride' (or attachment in general) which can get underplayed. In a sense, I feel that all these forms of object-creation are attempts, albeit misguided at times, to calm the mind sufficiently to the point where the mind's natural clarity might appear. Without 'objects', people who are beginning a spiritual or inner path may not have sufficient reference points to curb their anxiety, and I sometimes think that even neurotic pride is one attempt to calm the mind. Even the breath is an 'object' of meditation. Unlike other objects, however, the breath is simple enough that it can allow the mind to illuminate all things rather than getting caught up in one thing. Meditation methods are such that it's nearly impossible to be attached to them, simply because they are things one often takes for granted, such as the breath or the sound of a name, or even the body sensation.
 And with something that simple as observing the breath, it is hardly possible to form a self around it, since we are dealing more and more with objects that are short lived and transient.

Calm in the Face of Dilemmas

 The calm face. What is it like? It is like the breath. I have noticed times when I have stretched myself to the point of not knowing how to resolve a problem or dilemma, only to realize later that the attempt to control it was creating a greater problem in my mind. It is like adding wave upon wave to the water, making it even more turbulent than it was in the first place, when in actuality, a wave already contains its own opposite, and peters out on its own eventually. Why use great force, when in this situation, the matter eventually resolves itself after some time?
    If a person exhausts every avenue to solve a problem, the only way to go is a straight line: evenly aware of the problem, not giving into an alarm or a sense of haste in wanting to get rid of it, yet cultivating some curiosity to be better acquainted with it in some way or another. I think this may be what happens when a person beats their head long enough, and realizes that their panic is not making their challenges get easier or go away so quickly.

Equal Mind in All

  It's not always easy to have equal awareness to everything in the world. I think one of the best ways to do so is to recognize that all things have an equal place in mind, even though what one experiences is different. I remember reading about this in Francis Cook's Jewel Net of Indra, where he talks about how in the Huayen Buddhist system, a grain of sand is equal to a tiger and vice versa. This doesn't mean that the tiger is identical to the grain of sand (which would be logically absurd) but from the perspective of mind, the way a tiger comes to exist in mind is the same as how a grain of sand exists in mind. The same thing goes with many tasks in life. Even if I prefer writing essays to taking out the garbage, in fact the two phenomena come from the same source, and are generated in mind. They are thoughts, and by virtue of being of the mind, they share the same source. In this way, by pointing these events or relationships back to the very same mind, they no longer appear as drastically or dramatically different, and I stop picking and choosing one over the other.
   When one is clear about this, it would seem that the mind is better able to rest in the present activity that requires doing. For instance, in truly seeing what I am typing here as coming from the same source (causes and conditions arising in mind), there would be less compulsion to replace it with something more 'desirable' or palatable, such as drinking a coffee. This helps me to see that I don't need to prefer or privilege one action as 'more mind-like' than another, as long as I can clearly see that these actions are created by the same mind.
    But as soon as I privilege one thing over another, a desire forms around a perceived object, followed by the subject. Then I think, "I need to have this", not realizing that the mechanism of wanting to have something is artificially generated by an illusory, distinct object and subject. Can I go back to the realization that there is truly no subject and object?

Respecting and Yet Transcending

 This past weekend retreat was both a struggle and a surprise, like pretty much all the retreats I have attended. It was a struggle in the sense that I was spending quite a bit of time in some pain or another, which isn't unusual considering the many posts I have had on this subject in the blog. But it is a surprise in a sense that I can never tell what works and doesn't work from one retreat to the next. I think this is the case because mind is something so elusive that it cannot be known so directly, even through repetition of a method. In fact, it seems to arise at moments when I have overcome attachment to techniques.
   Is there a method that works best in dealing with pain? I haven't worked it out in any way because, again, techniques are never a means to it, but I have found that there is a balance of respecting phenomena for what it reveals to us (treating it as a kind of guest or teacher) and transcending the sensation by looking deeply into its empty nature, or by using the phenomena as a starting point for huatou practice. In the afternoon of this retreat, I did find that the latter worked well when I interspersed it with the question, who is experiencing the pain?  By questioning the sense of self, I had a more spacious and less grasping attitude toward the pain. When there is no grasping sense of self that desires and rejects, there isn't so much of a problem or challenge, because the pain is not attributed to a sustainable fixed self. In fact, it starts to lose its ability to invoke suffering.  I even started to see that the nature of mind is deeply embedded in pain, rather than trying to demonize it or cast it out of me.

Empty Cups

One of the greatest things about Chan Buddhism is that it is investigating something that is really limitless. From my experiences of this practice, the curiosity to keep going deeper and further is what drives the joy of practice, even though it may not be very blissful all the time. I am even wondering if this experience of mind could be called "miraculous everyday", though I object to the term 'miraculous'. I am trying to say that Chan is so marvelous in terms of its ability to go deeply into contemplation, even when the things it is exploring really pertain to ordinary life experiences.
   Gilbert said something very interesting today about a very commonly recited story about the monk who keeps pouring tea into a scholar's cup even though the cup is full. While the common interpretation of this story is that one can never learn 'with a full cup', Gilbert offered an alternate interpretation of this story, and that is that the mind itself is always overflowing, so much so that the intellect could never fathom this mind. What is so interesting about Chan practice is how the fascination for mind continues even though a person might be going through leg pain and other very heavy thoughts and sensations. Gilbert explained today that the mind itself is always trying to equalize the phenomena: there is an inherent  drive toward this equalization of all experiences, to achieve a state where there is no attaching or adding to thoughts.
    This interpretation of the empty cup story is interesting, because it suggests that Chan is not about limiting the mind to 'simplify' experience. On the contrary, it seems to be about seeing that all things are just coming up in mind, and one need not fear these experiences anymore: they are really manifestations of the vast nature of a mind without limits. Seeing things in this way, I can freely come and go, without trying to expand a mind that is already inclusive of everything. It is somewhat like the merchant who comes down from a mountain with lots of gifts to give out. It's not that the merchant has anything to sacrifice, but at the same time, she or he has everything to give because the heart is not tied or attached to one place or thing. Everything becomes the heart's gift and the heart's home.

The Sense of Purpose in Chan

 During Gilbert Gutierrez's Dharma talk tonight, I once again had that amazing feeling of coming home to the true mind. But I have to say that this feeling is more like standing over a cliff than a comforting 'fuzzy' feeling, because Gilbert was asking his audience whether or not they have a plan for their lives. This was a challenging question, and at first, I puzzled over the connection between Chan and having a plan in life. But as I wrestled with it, I started to realize that there is this kind of purpose in the act of being present: it's not a kind of wandering from one thought to the next, but it's the sense of clarity in knowing where thoughts originate. Once a person is clear about this orientation, the sense of self and the desire for constant gratification of the self starts to diminish, but there is also a sense of wanting to sincerely repent of habitual attitudes and tendencies of the self. I certainly felt this way when I was listening to Gilbert's talk tonight.
   Gilbert used a lot of down to earth examples during this talk, including that of video games. Most people nowadays love to play video game on their cellphones, and the thing about them is how addictive they are. When I was young, my favorite game was one called "Zelda", and the thing I liked about it at the time was how I could master different levels of the game and find unexpected surprises at each stage. But at the end of the day, what does this distraction amount to but the accumulation of abstract and intangible 'prizes'?  Gilbert compared this state of mind to that of a virus on a computer: the virus habitually short-circuits the natural operating systems of a computer to the point where it's original purpose in this moment is continually being side-tracked. Since starting to write this blog, for instance, I was distracted by so many things, including the desire to check my cellphone or even the desire to eat grapes! Where these desires come from is not the clear space of mind, but the limited states of consciousness which are always posing an object and subject. It's like watching a movie and getting so involved in the individual characters that one starts to believe they are one character or another. This mentality can get a person to the point of desperately clinging to one sense of identity, without questioning whether that is their real self or not.
   Gilbert used many examples to suggest that there are ways to mitigate the sense of self, and certainly one of them has to do with propagating Buddhadharma in some way. I can't say that I am doing a good job of that in this blog, but my fascination has always been with the teachings of Chan Buddhism, and I have a strong wish to impart the things which inspire me in my teachers. Continuing the vow is also another way. Gilbert mentioned the idea that when a person makes a big vow, their practice of Chan is no longer narrowly focused on avoiding suffering. They can come and go with others and learn to get along with all sentient beings, based on their conditions; there is no limit to their compassion.

Here Now, There Later

 
There were some moments during the walking meditation session tonight where I was walking very quickly, but I wasn't affected by the movement very much at all. The way I experienced it was: one minute I am in his position, while the next  I am somewhere else, as though the two moments didn't quite connect seamlessly into a whole. If you have ever been in a room with a strobe light, you might get the similar affect of having all these separate individual moments of visual experience. It's not that the mind cannot put two and two together to make four, but these kinds of experiences seem to reveal in more relief that these individual moments aren't the same identity at all, but it is the consciousness that brings them together into something that seems continuous and seamless.


   It's interesting how this kind of experience is actually liberating, because there is room there to see the phenomena without any attachment to its coming and going. As long as I am not fooled into thinking that something around me has an enduring existence, I won't make the added error of seeking or rejecting that phenomena. What results is a kind of smoothness because I am no longer swamped in the subject and object distinction: movement therefore becomes much more efficacious, and I even see the totality of the environment as more or less equal. There are rare glimpses of this kind of thing in my practice, and I am only lucky that I do get to experience them now and again in the group sitting.

 

Who Drags the Corpse Around?

 During the group meditation tonight, I could start to see how huatou practice can mediate pain by allowing one to let go of identification with the body. I am convinced that much of the pain I feel in my body is not due to the body itself so much as it is due to an unconscious clinging to the body, in the belief that I have to lock the body in place to 'confirm' my existence. It is here that I am starting to sound like Wilhelm Reich, who had similar ideas about body armoring and its role in character development. But I am convinced simply by virtue of personal experience that the main source of suffering is in this subconscious tendency to want to 'hold onto' the body.
    Think of it this way: how would you feel if, the entire day, you had to hold your hand in a fist in order to keep something in your palms? You would likely feel very tense. In the same way, there is this kind of 'inner holding' that takes place when I think that somehow I need to hold onto this body to prevent the self from flying away. The body becomes the 'container' for the wriggling self. But if I tell myself that I am not my body, suddenly, I sense this lessening of tension in the spine, and it is then that a lot of my back discomfort is virtually gone! Can you believe it? It is not the back itself that causes pain, but rather the mind's tendency to want to hold that spine in one place, rigidly. It is as though I found this body and don't want to relinquish it for any reason.
   As I was doing my meditation practice today, I couldn't help but think of the huatou, "Who is dragging the corpse around". And this question helped me loosen up more, even to the point where the mind just didn't seem to originate in the body anymore. The body in fact is only one of many conditions, much like the external environment. Through lessening attachment to the body, one also suffers less. I would like to create a guided meditation around this someday..and I will share it once I do.

When the Mind is Not Moving

I don't know if you have ever been on a crowded bus or a subway and sometimes felt as though you were in a tin of sardines..but I certainly have. And one of the practices, or 'principles', I tried in handling this situation on the 25 bus today was simply to move my body without moving the mind. How is this possible? Well, it's possible precisely because the mind has never moved in the first place; it's only in chasing after the different thoughts that one gets an illusory sense that the mind moves with the body.
   I have tried to do this by just knowing that the mind is unmoving, but also practicing not confusing the phenomena with the still mind. I always attribute the mind to a part of the body. But if I am clear that the mind is not moving, there is no confusion in that moment, and I am not drawn into the illusion of a mind that is always swaying with the movements of passengers. It is only in practicing this method (with some persistence), that one stops feeling agitated by movement, because they have freed themselves from thinking that their 'selves' have been moved, or that there are distinct selves moving.

The Finished Project

Today, I presented my video project to the class.  I definitely felt a sense of joy, not just for the fact that I "got through it" okay (without too much anxiety at least) but for the sharing of others' videos. I was so impressed with the level of skill that my classmates showed with respect to their video projects, and many felt not only very artistic but also extremely professional.
   One thing that I have learned from all of this is that everyone has something to contribute to the diversity of the classroom and everyone has a strength as well as a challenge. I would like to see more educational experiences like this one, where it's not about ranking people in terms of grades, but more about sharing strengths and challenges in a supportive space.  It's not often that I really feel this sense of people mutually regarding each other while being realistic about what could be improved or worked upon in the near future. Grading itself doesn't only need to be 'vertical' (as though along a hierarchy from 'best' to 'worst') but can be a more horizontal process where different factors are considered and weighed prior to assigning a final grade.
  In any case, I have linked my video below for sharing. Thank you for viewing it!

"I Love It When It Doesn't Work"

 Today, I spent half the day editing and working on a final assessment for my course (which ends soon), and the other half was in the struggle to understand Surangama Sutra's 57 stages of the Buddha path. I wasn't very successful in the second part of my day! And yet, one of the other participants in the group had remarked that the English version of this text is much easier to read than the Chinese version, at which point I wondered why I was finding the text so difficult to read today.
   I think it's important to use one's moments of frustration and 'impossibility' to imagine 'loving the impossible'. It's not all that easy to do, I have to admit, but it's this kind of paradox which really gets me going, and it can best happen in the space of meditation. How is it possible to love the impossible? I believe that one can do so only when one knows that 'possible' and 'impossible' are concepts created by mind, and thus our relationship to them can have many permutations. Just knowing that 'impossible' is only a label one gives to some experience can allow one to see more in it than one's usual labels or distinctions. If I study what it really feels like to enjoy something, and all the mental attitudes that go with it, what stops me from applying these very same attitudes and experiences to something I don't necessarily enjoy or agree with?
   The same thing goes with things that don't work. What makes me think they even should work, and according to whose standards should they work? Is it possible to love the broken machines of our lives, simply for being broken? This kind of love requires a letting go, but if I understand the Christian love correctly, it is exactly the love of the broken that is quite liberating and freeing.

Falling Spirits

  I have been learning in my media evangelization class this idea of the 'holding space' in religious and spiritual communities: a place where people can safely explore conflicts and inner tensions in spiritual life. Perhaps spiritual life is always going to be fraught with doubts, mainly because the term "spiritual" implies that there is something non-spiritual, such as a part of one's being that is 'bad' or impure. Doubt can also refer to not knowing whether one is performing a ritual or a practice correctly, or perhaps even sensing that the way it has been done before is better than how it was done in the past. I think these kinds of doubts give rise to the notion that spiritual life is something that can be gained or lost, rather than being some kind of equanimity.
    I really do want to explore the notion of 'falling', because it reminds me a bit about the fall of Lucifer from heaven. Is falling 'away' from a previous state of 'spirituality' necessarily bad or evil? Sometimes there is much more continuity between stability and 'falling' than one would expect. For instance, by failing to do what I feel is expected of me by a spiritual community, I may find other, more creative ways to sustain my relationship to that community. This is related closely to the idea that spiritual life can never be fixed in one way, any more than the mind can be fixed. I wonder if sometimes a person needs to suffer the occasional 'fall' from grace in spiritual community, in order to find sufficient headway to make new inroads or discover new expressions of this community. The main point however, is that these 'falls' should never be taken as ultimate decisions. It's better to just observe the fall as part of a pattern of continually engaging one's community, albeit in new or unexplored ways.

All Encompassing

   Every moment is a choice as to whether there is going to be a pure land or not. I was thinking about this: one actively chooses purity in their world or impurity. How is this done, you might wonder? From my understanding of Buddhist teachings, impurity does not refer to something that is poor in quality compared to something else. Rather, it relates more to an orientation; a way of seeing that treats phenomena as actively created and shaped by mind. I can see something in an infinite number of ways, to the point where that phenomena I am experiencing is really the product of choices I am or have made. Without those choices, nothing would really exist.
   This is a very liberating perspective, but there is something deeper than this, and that is the notion that mind encompasses every state of being, no matter what it happens to be. In other words, there is simply no need for me to take sides in any of this: to side with the torturer or the tortured, since they are both phenomena. It's hard to really practice this approach, yet it is essential to try doing so, even if it's only mapping the situation out on paper until one gets a genuine feel for it.
   What it entails is that there is simply no winning and losing. The only time I think of 'win' or 'lose' is when I keep comparing two thoughts. An example: I see someone get in front of me in a line or on the street, and the immediate thoughts are, "how dare he or she try to surpass me!" But in this situation, the thought of the person passing by is being paired with the thought of me standing or walking (whichever happens to be the case). The suffering arises when I am thinking that these two thoughts interact with each other, when they don't in reality. In fact, the two are completely unrelated; it is only the mind that just happens to connect them together and come up with associations and comparisons.
   If I didn't do this kind of thing and allowed my mind to simply be present, a lot of the tension and suffering I feel would naturally disappear on its own. Of course, this perspective is not easy to reach, but I think it can be practiced by writing it out as a reminder or saying it out loud.

Emotional Landscapes

  Throughout my life, I have been trying to articulate different 'models' for looking at emotional life, particularly focusing on holistic approaches. One of the most attractive ideas is that of reframing emotional life. Emotions tend to follow a kind of hydraulic metaphor, as though feelings were fluids. For instance, one says that anger is 'pent up', or I 'blow off' the steam of anxiety, or I feel 'drained' emotionally. Has anyone ever stopped to wonder why so many emotions are viewed as 'liquids'? Of course, one interesting side effect is that, like any fluid, emotions can be thought of as consumable.
     One alternative I have been trying out recently is that of regarding emotions as landscapes, somewhat akin to landscape paintings. Now, what would it be like to see emotions in this way? Well, one thing is that emotions would start to be less located in the body and more found diffused throughout experience. I think this would make emotions seem less like invaders and more like the stuff of art, or part of the way things are configured in the present situation. It would also help to allow people to pause for a bit and fully appreciate the landscape of their experience, rather than treating the emotion as something that needs fixing in some way or another.
   There has to be some way that we can sit alongside our emotions and not see them as part of who we are or as threatening in some way. I think this is a large part about meditation practice, and in some regards I take it to be a phenomenological approach to life: to start with the structure of one's feelings to determine if that's a good enough structure to sustain our actions and optimize meaningful life.

"The Death of the Contemplative Mind"

 Richard Rohr, a theologian who was recommended to me by my professor, states in his video "Christianity and Unknowing", that the split in the churches after the reformation is responsible for what he calls "the death of the contemplative mind." I love this statement. I have found that there is a very thin line between what Rohr describes as "knowing" and "not knowing and not needing to know". I think part of the reason is that people in communities are so worried about preserving the purity of their ideas that they forget the whole point of contemplative life. I also believe that there is so much emphasis on religious identity, and I wonder if there is room for a religious non-identity: a just being in the midst of other beings. An example of this is to walk into a situation with a 'trying mind': a mind that simply tries things out, rather than trying to put on something like it is a kind of character armor.
   When I was in group meditation practice tonight, the participants were talking about sitting in the full lotus posture and I could not help but feel a certain resistance. I was interpreting the discussion along the lines of: it's better for me to sit in full lotus, and I should try it out, even if for a little while. I stayed  with the sense of disconnection I was feeling, and later I was able to see that these voices are only suggestions, and I can feel free to experiment with them. But what happens if an entire community starts to believe that something absolutely should be the case, or has to be the case, in order for one to be a serious or committed spiritual practitioner? That, I think, is when the curiosity of trying turns into the dogma of knowing, and when there is this illusion of people progressing toward an ideal state. I think this is the kind of thing that can only lead to a depression or a despair: the sense that one is never owning up to the ideal. But, one thing that helps me in these situation is to honor foolishness. Maybe I am not "It", and maybe I am just here!
    As Rohr remarks, as a participant in the dance of the divine, there is nothing to prove, only interconnection. But sometimes in order to really be comfortable in that community, there needs to be a space for rebellion (albeit with the chance of a dialogue), but also for reconnecting. I can't describe it other than a kind of flow--sometimes one pushes back when it's too hot, then draws back in when it's too cold, and so on. To know that this flow is happening all the time and have the vocabulary to speak of that flow seems to be an important skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnTC4NNIACk

Diving Deeply

 There is something really paradoxical about pain. It's a little bit like pushing a finger through a fabric or perhaps a tissue. In the beginning, there is a kind of resistance to the pain but then later, there is a breakthrough, and it's only when one goes deeply through that pain that something joyful will come out of it. However, the joy isn't separate from the experience of pain itself; rather, it's a kind of reciprocation or even a reiteration of the painful experience itself.
   An example is something like aloneness. Most of the time, people will try to alleviate the sense of aloneness by choosing company or trying to find stimulation of some kind. The paradox is that it's only when a person has fully experienced aloneness that a kind of reciprocation sets in. I am thinking of examples of times when I had a solitary walk, and felt that there was something a bit dreary about the atmosphere or the environment. Yet, because I stayed there long enough in that moment and didn't flee from it, later I realized that there was always a very 'human' presence to the whole scene, and that there was no need for me to fear depersonalization by inhabiting it for a while.
     Most people seem to associate mindfulness with this idea of trying to erase the personality, but I don't think that is necessarily entailed by mindfulness. Rather, being fully with one's environment shows that the environment itself is as alive, as sentient and as full of awareness as one's own body: awareness is not limited to the body. And then there is this aha moment when I realize that I can never be apart from awareness, so why fear being alone? The very question of how to avoid being alone comes from a living, sentient awareness that cannot ever be alienated from itself. That is why in those moments of total acceptance, there is not even a concept of being alone, because I am not identifying with an image or an idea of who I am. I am completely with whatever is happening for me in that moment.

Lifelong Learning

  I remember when I was 10 years old, I picked up a book--at K-Mart, of all places--called The Lifelong Learner. I don't know if this book still exists anymore or whether or not it's still in print. In fact, I don't even remember who the author was. But I bought that book anyway, and I think the reason I did was that I simply love the concept of "lifelong" learning. Even though I wasn't aware of it at the time and didn't have the words to say it, I think what struck me was the spiritual aspect of 'lifelong' learning. It's essentially a learning that has no limits and no credentials: something that isn't demarcated by earned status, or number of years spent in a certain field, or number of credits. It isn't conferred upon a person by a degree either. In a sense, it is the kind of learning that goes beyond the sense of being given a status.
   The reason, I think, that lifelong learning is not as popular as it could be is that people tend to think there is only one life, and one's merits are limited to what they do and complete in this life. But what if the things one does are never completed? Would life lose its meaning if that were the case? I have found that even when I cannot finish a particular degree or diploma, I am still able to enjoy the courses themselves and find some value in the process of learning. But in order to do that, I have to stop believing that there are ever completions. Instead, I need to believe that life is cyclic, and the value of one's purposes lies more in the intention and vows than in the process of completing something.
   This doesn't mean that people should not strive to complete anything. Rather, I think it means that one should not be attached to this notion of completion/non-completion. Sometimes we complete things that are not fulfilling at all, or we may not complete something that is deeply fulfilling. Which one of these two has the most value?
    When I stop valuing learning for its ends and start valuing learning for its own sake, then I don't worry if I don't finish what I set out to do. The learning itself has value, and other things will naturally take care of themselves in the process of learning.

a third choice

  I have lately been thinking about the idea that people often think there is only one of two choices in life. The classic example I can think of is that of the 'fork in the road'. This idea relates to how one's decision to do one thing invariably appears to exclude the other. But I have to wonder, is this necessarily the case? My concern is that in abandoning one road in favour of the other, I am under the illusion that both roads are separate. In fact, the two roads (the one taken and the one not taken) are really two sides of the same road; they are essentially intertwined.
   When I make one decision, the other path doesn't go away. Rather, it lives in my heart still, as a stillborn or undeveloped path. If I don't honor the path I didn't take, or simply try to repress that path, it will somehow come back in another form. How do I honor that other path? I think the best way seems to be to validate that all paths have a certain legitimacy. While only one path gets chosen in the end, that choice needs to somehow incorporate the other unchosen paths, either through an acknowledgment or a token which represents the blessings of those alternate paths. By recognizing the gravity of choosing one path over others, I am embracing a 'third choice' which is neither rejecting one path nor seeking the other. It's about seeing all paths, whether taken or not, as equal yet different, and having their own unique gifts.

The Nervous Presenter!

When I did my presentation today, I was much more nervous than I had expected, but in another way, it was okay for me to be nervous. Perhaps there are many reasons to feel that way: not knowing if I will fill the time or if there will be not enough time, the sense of uncertainty, the fear that others won’t like the presentation, and so on. I went through the gamut of all those emotions, and somehow I knew that it should be that way. I think that staying with my nervous condition and seeing that it won’t ‘kill me’ is a much greater value than trying to make the nervousness go away.

A lot of what I experienced today ties in naturally with the sense that loving kindness is not about replacing bad feelings with good ones, but it more about having the spaciousness to abide on one’s present momentary reality. Knowing that there is nothing wrong with being nervous or scared is one paradoxical way in which the fear is somehow reduced. I am confident that the feeling has its own legitimacy, and there is no need for me to force that feeling to go away; it in fact has its own place and time.

I had a very good time revisiting my thesis on Loving Kindness meditation practice, and this presentation did give me a good opportunity to read the thesis in a book form. I have to say that this experience was satisfying in the sense that it validated the efforts and care I put in the wording of the thesis. Reading it again allowed me to re-experience the magic of being able to work on the project, pushing through in spite of the difficulties. As one of the participants suggested to me afterward, “just keep going” with what I am doing. I hope to do so in whatever form it will take, preferably writing.

The Checks and Balances of Presentations

In preparing for a presentation which I will deliver tomorrow, I have noticed that there are these very interesting relationships around expectations. If I form a very strong image of those to whom I am presenting, I will often feel surprised or often disappointed when the things that people do turn out different from my 'image'. In fact, what actually happens is often, if not always, different from how one imagines it, because there are so many unforeseen conditions that influence the way a particular presentation is going to unfold. If one were to actually 'fathom' the factors that influence the look and feel of a presentation, I am sure it would be quite mind-boggling to behold.
    Why, then, does one need to prepare for a presentation if there are so many unforeseen factors? Well, this might be along the lines of asking, why does one need a train track when so many unexpected hazards will cross the tracks? Of course, one needs a path or a track, to make the train work and allow it to accomplish what is needed. But if the fixation is on the track itself rather than on the whole journey that one makes, then everything will seem like a jolt to the train's path. In a similar way, one needs to have some kind of a plan for how to organize a discussion and what to teach. I see it as the dialectic between the speaker and the listener. If I am only speaking to hear my own voice, then the listener will feel totally excluded from the unfolding process of learning, and it will seem a waste of time for the listener. But if the speaker is able to organize her or his thoughts according to the situation of the listener, then the presentation becomes a good fit, and the learner's needs are considered.
    Imaginatively,  I picture a presentation as a bit like what an artist does when she or he paints. I have once watched a television program when I was a teenager where an artist paints, then stands back to look at what she or he has painted...then paints, then stands back..repeating the process back and forth until satisfied with the unfolding view of the picture. If I am not checking in now and then to see how the picture might look from a distance, from another angle, or in another's place, then the picture only becomes a monologue, and I am not able to see if from other perspectives. There is a careful straddling here between sticking to one's purpose and allowing other purposes to influence the direction.

Dreaming is Hard Work

 You have probably heard the cliché before that "life is but a dream". I have heard the expressions in a Buddhist context. For example, Master Sheng Yen remarks in his 108 Adages, "Everybody says life is like a dream, so why does everybody refuse to wake from this dream?" What's interesting in particular about Master Sheng Yen's remark is that it hints at the troubled relationship between the dreamer and the dream. Dreaming is so beautiful and ethereal, so why not just float along this dream and enjoy it? The problem is, as Master Sheng Yen relates, people refuse to wake up from the dream of life, and it's been said that people often have to have a tragic experience to finally want to wake from the dream.
    The point of the adage of life as dream is not to let people coast along through life without any effort. Rather, it's somewhat the opposite: if it's so easy to be lulled into this ephemeral, insubstantial set of images and thoughts, then waking from it is all that much harder to do. This is so because people like myself often wish to live with less discomfort and more ease in life. In this case, the tendency is to sometimes just live to survive rather than truly understand the dream itself. To thoroughly know life as a dream is to take a very different stance on what happens: to see that suffering comes from taking the dream to be solid (and thus desirable).
        Why do I say "Dreaming is Hard Work"? I am thinking that it takes hard work to see that one is really dreaming. And I have noticed that times of heavy work or scheduling can be wonderful opportunities to see how fleeting life can be. Think of it this way: if I didn't have so many requirements, I may take the way of resting but eventually I might also cling to something that substantiates who I am. Having things to do can ease the burden of looking for ways to 'be somebody' to the world (as it were), which then frees up the mind to serve all other beings. Once I am really (and honestly) working, I am no longer distracted by a sense of self. Now of course, it could go the other way, and I can start complaining that I have too much work to do! But the principle is not to get angry at the work, but to see it as there to open the mind up to new possibilities of seeing, as well as to devote oneself to things which are not oriented on self.

The Body's Sense of Time

 This evening, I came home and felt an unusual headache as well as a general sense of exhaustion. I say 'unusual' because I don't often have the sharp migraine that I had tonight. I did get through this headache okay (and am still recovering) but I felt as though the time had slowed down tremendously when it was hitting me strongly. Luckily, I feel that it has subsided since then, and I am thus allowed to be a bit more productive in the last hour of the night.
   It's interesting for me to observe the effect that a body ailment or sickness can have on the sense of time. Professor Mary Hess was mentioning today that we often aren't aware of rules until they are violated and broken, and I suppose the same principle applies to the body. When I am feeling well, there is not much in the way of a bodily obstacle that prevents me from more or less achieving a certain modicum of productivity. But when something feels tight or painful, I often carry that sensation into everything I do--and time eerily starts to slow down tremendously! It makes me realize that the sense of time is a deeply embodied event. When my steps are cumbersome or leaden due to a pain in the body or a sickness, time slows down because the succession of movements is a lot harder to create, much less sustain. Not only this, but at times, every moment feels like something which depends completely on my own physical exertion. I can imagine that living on a dense planet with a heavier gravitational pull that Earth's would also slow down the sense of time.
  I think the point of this discussion is to perhaps suggest that the body is quite miraculous--and it's good never to take the body for granted in its present state of health, because it is already doing amazing things.

Creativity and Its Connection to Serendipity

  While I was working on my video project tonight as one of the last assignments for my Media/Evangelism course, I felt initially frustrated. Something about the story arc that I composed for this piece felt really weighted down and cumbersome. But it no longer seemed like I could start the whole project from scratch. Not only did I seem to run out of new ideas on where to go with it, but I also felt so frustrated with the process that I saw myself disengaging from the pain of frustration.
   It was that moment that I decided to take a rest and start looking at some potential music pieces that I could add as a soundtrack for the video. I experimented with a few of the songs by playing them alongside the video to 'try them on' as it were. Again, I wasn't too thrilled about the choices at first--and there was one particular piece called "Sad Day" which seemed simple yet effective enough to carry my story along. The funny thing is that Sad Day was only 2 minutes 28 seconds long, while my video project was over 3 minutes!...so I knew I had to cut things here and there if I wanted to use this song without looping it indefinitely. But what I didn't realize at the time was that the very moment when the song ended, I realized that this point is exactly where the video needs to be cut. In fact, the accidental aspect of this discovery (also called "serendipity") sent a chill down my spine...it is as though the accident itself knew better than I did about where the video needs to be cut!
   Sometimes..well, I would have to say that in many unacknowledged cases, serendipity can serve to move people along when they have run out of solutions or new ways of looking at problems. Without the ability to entertain accidents and even see their potential to add unexpected good things to what a person is doing, there may not even be so many things completed as they are. It is certainly as though there is an intelligence in the universe that works through people, rather than leaving it up to people to decide or determine things through their own intellect.
  

Religion's Awe

   Where does religious awe come from? As I am reflecting on this question, I am thinking about how Buddhism has come to Canada, and who is practicing Buddhism. There is something already truly miraculous about this, because people encounter Buddhism from very different experiential paths. If I only focus on Buddhism as a spiritual doctrine and set of edicts, I might fail to connect to the fact that Buddhism is encountered in infinite ways by different people and for different reasons. This is already miraculous in itself because it demonstrates the Heart Sutra proclamation, "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form". Without the specificity of form, Buddhism could not really demonstrate the empty co-mingling of phenomena. Everything would all be subsumed under one object or concept, rather than being seen as parts of an unfolding and ever-changing whole. Without the pervasiveness of emptiness, on the other hand, there would be no change and no mind permeating all the changes.  Through the permeability of all things, an infinite number of changes and combinations are possible.
    I think the sense of awe must come from the inescapable presence of mind, which often requires accident or serendipitous coincidence to really be recognized. It arrives, for instance, when a person inadvertently or intuitively juxtaposes two or more very different concepts which seem unrelated, but in fact are later found to have a deep interconnection that defies logic or mundane reasoning. Are there accidents? I suppose one should trust that there aren't that many real accidents, only discoveries of the permeability of mind in all things. This dance of coincidence goes on and on for ages, until all the mind is realizing its true nature and breaking through the subject/object duality which makes existence such a powerful prison.

"Cult" of Intelligence

 During the company-wide meeting today, the CEO was explaining the notion that 'things are changing', and organizations need to retain their best talents to navigate change. It's become a kind of adage that the world we live in today is far more 'competitive' than in previous times, if not simply due to the explosion of information available at people's fingertips. With the explosion in new kinds of learning, the gaps that (arguably) used to artificially divide people are no longer so evident today anymore, thus explaining a greater sense of competition for resources.
    One of the interesting things I have noticed lately, especially with theories of 'growth mindset', is how the ability to navigate accelerated change tends to be linked to some notion of special talent or intelligence. It is as though we live in a time when it is thought that the 'brightest' or most clever people are the ones most likely to survive. This tends to induce a kind of cult around that elusive quality known as "intelligence". Has anybody, however, ever really been able to define intelligence except for after the fact? But even if it is accurately labelled as intelligent or talented, can anyone really tell what marks a 'sharp'  mind from a 'not sharp' one?
     A lot of complicating factors prevent us from labelling or identifying intelligence or lack thereof. One of the biggest complicating factors is the fact that it's often impossible to really know what a person is thinking or even why. Nobody can truly peer into another person's mind to see what is happening there, or why it's doing what it does. Even the thinker herself may feel puzzled as to why she thinks as she does!
    If 'intelligence' can only be identified by what a person does (the quality of the result, that is), can one ever really pinpoint just what exactly makes a person intelligent? I have no answer to this question as of yet, but I am posing it as a way of making problematic the idea that intelligence is something one can accurately measure at all times and circumstances.

the hidden value of being busy

 Master Sheng Yen writes, "the busy make the most of their time" in the fifth of his 108 adages. He further goes on to suggest, "In broadly sowing the fields of merit... why fear any hardship or rebuke?" And while I agree with what Master Sheng Yen says, I begin to think that being busy actually makes me better appreciate not being busy at all! Why is that? Well, I wonder, have you ever had those moments where you became so absorbed in doing something that the sense of self just fell away? I have to admit that this kind of experience does not happen all the time for me, but the point is that moments of busy-ness can put someone in a position that is similar to that of the huatou-- it sort of pushes a person to the point where they have no time to even think about what they have finished or completed.
   This practice of viewing busyness as the emptying of self is interesting to me, because I tend to associate Buddhist views of being busy with 'gathering merit.' Yes, it's correct to say that merit can aid in one's personal practice by purifying the mind somewhat. But there seems to be more to this practice than gaining merit alone. There is a sense that over time, a person loses the feeling that their works really count for very much, focusing instead on how excessive work can really humble the mind and heart, to the point of a diminished self-striving. This is because a person reaches a saturation point, where they are so absorbed in completing the tasks single mindedly in  a 'cue' that they don't even notice themselves as separate beings, at that point. And this is a good insight, because it trains the mind not to look for praise or respond aversely to blame. When there is a lot to be done, there is not much time to dwell on either of these! But as I said previously, doing a lot makes me more thoroughly and deeply appreciate those special moments when there is nothing in particular to do. Soon, these experiences of doing something and having nothing in particular to do, can start to merge together.