Images of Self and Others

   The sharing of our meditation group tonight was around the topic of how deep-seated emotions can be faced using meditative practice, particularly when one has certain deeply ingrained, instantaneous judgments about what is happening in a situation. It somehow reminded me of when I was in my early 20s as an undergraduate, and was experiencing different kinds of emotions and reactions around the different people I had been meeting at the time. One of the issues that everyone has to face at some time or another is the role that their own emotions can play, as well as how others might react towards me.
   No matter how much we might contribute Buddhist theories and phenomenology to the study of appearances and how ideas shape our views of others, the intersubjective realm can easily become sticky and tricky. I am not only interacting with you but also with your images of me, and my image of you as well. When all of these things are put together, there is a confused mess of things to sort out, because we are seeing both the image of the person and our own projected desires and hopes on that person. I would say that the best one can do as a practitioner is not to identify too much with any thoughts or emotions that are tending to arise here. No matter whether one has pleasant or unpleasant thoughts, there is nobody standing to gain or lose from any of the transactions of daily life, as these transactions are only temporary. In that sense, one can choose to have fun with it, knowing that our images of each other are really creations of the mind which can be changed or shaped at any given time.
   If the thought of your boss or supervisor angers you, is it the actual supervisor or boss who "makes" you angry? Not really, because what triggers the suffering is not the person but the image that lingers in our mind which one relates to that person. Knowing and clearly reflecting on this, one can relax with the person, because they are no longer confusing their thoughts with an enduring self.

Volition in Buddhism

 After the evening meditation tonight, we watched a video regarding the role of volition in the 12 links of conditioned arising. I started to wonder, is there truly such a thing as free will in Buddhism? One of the participants was sharing that only the Buddha has total free will, as otherwise we are all influenced by our conditioning. I reflect now that this kind of conditioning need not be seen as a form of despair. For instance, going to the meditation center may be to a certain degree 'conditioned' by one's previous encounters or readings of Buddhist or spiritual teachings in general. However, these very same conditions become reasons for bringing a person closer to liberation. In this sense, we follow the conditions that are most conducive to that liberation, until liberation becomes a foreseeable possibility. It isn't that one 'gains' liberation, but one is turned around to the extent that they no longer see the necessity of posing a 'free' self over and against the rest of the world. And in that moment, there is no attachment to gain or loss.
    Seeing that there is no singular 'free will' can be in itself an interesting experience, because doing something no longer means having to muster the 'will power' to do it. Undertaking any task simply involves arranging conditions so that they are most favorable to the task you want to accomplish. Just before I started writing this blog entry, I had no idea what I was going to write! However, somehow, I created the conditions, such as giving myself a timeline to get the writing done, opening my computer, signing into blogger, etc. Eventually, after asking myself for a topic, my mind alighted upon the recent discussion in the meditation hall. Without all of these conditions joined together at a point in time, this article you are reading would not have been completed in the form in which you are seeing it. Looking at it from this perspective, there isn't a single will that is moving anything. It is more the confluence of motivations, associations, and cognitions that come together at the right time, forming the sentences.
   This isn't to say that effort is not involved in what one does. But it is to suggest, rather, that there are many things behind what we do, and this interdependence is very interesting to watch. Seeing one's actions in this way, there is less anxiety to do things frantically or without consideration for the causes that make it work a certain way.

Do First, Enjoy Later

I find that when I am in a rush to go to class in the evenings, I will wonder what I am doing it all for. But when I am in the class itself, something happens. If I am participating in the class regularly, I get a sense of mirroring and connection. I don't know if it even has anything to do with the subject matter itself, but somehow I believe that all these classes are opportunities to develop affinities based on shared interests. This is not unimportant. There  is a kind of emotional currency that happens when people share honestly and deeply from their heartfelt efforts, which in itself is a kind of blessing or merit of sorts.
   What I really wanted to stress, however, is how enjoyment of something often (perhaps unfortunately, in some cases) only really happens after one steps in the door as it were. If I am pondering or debating about whether to do something or not, then I have lost connection with the reality that we never really know what we like until we are doing something, or are engaged in it. The classic example of where this goes wrong is that of waiting for the surplus vacation time to do something you've been wanting to do for quite some time. I have found that in most cases, these times proved most unproductive at all, because I have lost sight of the fact that what we do with our time in the future is often dependent on the conditions we are sowing in the present. In putting off what I think I want to do for some future time, I will often end up cutting off the momentum that is necessary to jump-start the process. Action never takes place in a void, and it's perhaps a myth to say that freeing up time will initiate things.

Positive

I feel as though the times in my life when I am most wanting to be positive are the times when I didn't feel I had much choice but to do so. I think this is the true positivity, which is knowing very clearly what you have to offer and what limitations you have to work with. It's not something that is just contrived or based on any number of possibilities, but it's something that is close to the ground.
   I have recently felt a pain in my foot, for which I have sought a lot of treatment, even though I don't know the source of it. It's taken a while for me to get used to how to move in it, and to let go of my worries about what the pain could be. One of the things it's forced me to do is to question whether my beliefs are really productive ones, or whether they might just be going against my interests. If I think of the worst case scenario, I start to imagine all sorts of possibilities that aren't necessarily real at all, and I am not even prepared to entertain such possibilities. Instead of thinking how this change is a disadvantage compared to in the past, I can start to ask myself: how can I work with this now, and who will help me through it? In fact, these are the things that are precisely being taught in the proseminar course at OISE, which is how to survive a PhD. Could the same principles of surviving the PhD also apply to life in general?
   There are parallels between PhD and "life in general", in the sense that they are both mysterious projects which at times have no foreseeable outcome or end. The despair one feels at the beginning of that project is the task of defining one's purpose and commitments, particularly around the things that are of most interest and to which one can contribute some meaningful information to the community.  But there will also be setbacks along the way that are just plain unforeseeable, because you are working in the middle of creation, which always entails risks and uncertainty. In that sense, the PhD might be a kind of condensed version of the kinds of uncertainties and 'forks in the road' that can play out in the stretch of a lifetime, unbeknownst to us.
   To go back to my original point, it seems that positivity is always a response to challenge. To simply be positive without a challenging limitation or obstacle may be a bit redundant, because the positive heart and attitude probably needs to speak to something that is not necessarily positive. I remember someone joking about this, when he said that if he lost his job, he wouldn't feel that positive about the watch he is wearing on his wrist. Why not? Because the positive attitude can't just sideskirt the challenging situation. It needs to connect with the challenge in a way that it sees it in a completely new light that is refreshing and workable. If I lose something that is dear to me, an attitude of ignoring that loss would not be a genuine positive experience: it would be a kind of blunting of the senses and mind through denial.. So the positive always needs to ground itself in something that feels a bit challenging.

Meditating on the Body --Plus and Minus

    A lot of Buddhist practices I have read about suggest that meditating on the body and even the womb can lesson one’s attachment to existence and procreation. Kritzer (2004) suggests that some of the Buddhist texts go so far as to create derogatory images of birth and the fetus, as ways to generate feelings of disgust as well as counterbalance lustful feelings. I have a certain ambivalence about this practice. In learning from a tradition which doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on visualizing the body as a contemplative practice, I wonder whether generating aversion to something is really a good way to counteract desires. Isn’t aversion also a form of desire, in the sense of wanting to flee or cast dispersions upon certain phenomena or appearances?

     The danger with contemplating something that might arouse ‘disgust’ is that it also might conceal certain kinds of discriminatory beliefs or thoughts. Can a person really look on someone fairly if they see the body as something that is impure? It’s hard to say, but I suspect that expressions of impurity might also be concealing derogatory attitudes, as Kritzer also argues in his writing. Again, I think that contemplative practices need to be looked at with caution and a critical perspective. If I am only using contemplation to bolster prejudices or conflicts I might have with others, I am not able to arouse compassion or equanimity.

   I wonder if learning about the human body might be a more moderate way of cultivating respect for its processes without being enthralled by its appearances. I am thinking of the example of doctors, or those who are in the medical profession. Some writers such as J.G. Ballard have written about experiences where they have learned to become dispassionate—perhaps even clinical---about the body when they were working in the medical field. Rather than seeing a bleeding or disfigured body with revulsion, these writers describe how they developed equanimity regarding death and life.  Perhaps the difference is that in studying the human body and treating its illnesses, I am applying myself to improving the well-being of others, rather than trying only to work on my own feelings and attitudes. My attachment lessens not because I have overcome desire as a kind of goal in itself, but because I am applying myself to learning something and helping others in the process.

Kritzer, Robert (2004). "Childbirth and the Mother's Body in the Abhidharmakośa and

Related Texts." In Mikogami Eshō Kyōju kinen ronshū kankōkai (Kyoto: Nagata bunshodō, 2004),

pp. 1085-1109

Revisiting Thanksgiving

 It was the American Thanksgiving just this past week, followed by a rather ironic stint of "Black Friday", where shoppers will flock to the shopping malls to figure out what they can obtain at discounted prices before the holidays officially begin. I say "ironic" because gratitude and thanksgiving are often said to be quite the opposite tendency: looking at what we have already with appreciation rather than trying to buy more. Now why is this thanksgiving even something we need reminders about? If gratitude is so compelling, why would we need a special day to give thanks or to remind ourselves to do so?
   Of course, Thanksgiving has its own historical roots, but the point is, why is it hard to remember gratitude? My answer to this question is perhaps a bit unexpected, but I think there are two possible reasons. The first is that gratitude is often seen as something we cultivate as a moral virtue, thus making it seem a bit like a forced exercise. "Be grateful" comes across as a forced conceptual or moral construct rather than as something that can be genuinely felt or appreciated. The second reason is that sometimes we try too hard to be grateful by practicing 'being in the moment'. I think this is also a forced attitude, and it hardly leads to grateful emotions because there is an element of force behind it.
   I think the easy answer is to simply relax in every moment and to allow experiences to totally happen to us. When this happens and we are really open to what is happening and allowing it, gratitude will naturally arise. And why? It's because that relaxed attitude invites the natural joy and connections that we have with other beings and with world as a whole. This attitude requires actually no effort at all, not even a 'trying to be grateful' approach. It is more about a kind of allowing, a granting to one's place in the moment, almost like a child exploring walking for the first time, or exploring books and nature. If you ever recall the first book you read that captured your imagination, you will probably get the idea of what I am talking about.
   The other trick to gratitude that often eludes us is that it doesn't apply universally to everyone in the same ways. What you are grateful for is going to be unique to your own experience, affinity and ways of seeing and experiencing the world. This is because how we connect with the world is going to be very different from one person to the next. This is why it's probably not healthy to try to apply a single yardstick to determine how grateful a person feels. Sometimes acknowledging one's position with its unique advantages is enough to generate simple and relaxed gratitude, as well as a softening of one's attitude.

No self and conflict

During the group sharing tonight, we explored the notion of how conflict in the workplace often revolves around the strong sense of self. If I am clinging to the idea of my body as "myself", I will tend to react defensively at all provocation of that fragile self, without really recognizing that the whole room and it's surroundings are truly my experience. It's not "this body" that stands to gain or lose from anything that people say or do, but only the perception of separation that does so. One practice that has benefitted me in particular as of late is that of allowing myself to see how far I can sacrifice the sense of gain without becoming overly anxious. I believe that challenges such as this can allow a person to truly go deeply into practice as well as treat each challenge as a way to deepen awareness.

Even more recently, I have noticed that when I am present and listening to a conversation or discussion without 'contributing' verbally, I am still able to attain the gist of the information and feel that I was truly involved. Before, I tended to 'gauge' my involvement with others by how much I felt I contributed in terms of what to say. But lately I have come to realize that there is no need for me to come into conversation with a grasping mindset. I think this comes from truly realizing that there is no separation of myself from the surroundings in which I am interacting.

Trusting the Why

 In one of my previous blog entries, I talked about the idea of learning to accept reality as it is without going too much into the "why" questions: why did this happen to me? What am I supposed to learn from it? and so on. It's interesting, because tonight, I am going back to the why questions again! Why is that?
   I think that it's important to ask questions not necessarily to get answers or to elicit pity, but out of a genuine desire to explore what's unknown. "Having the right question" is not as important, perhaps, as knowing the intention behind the question. Questions are 'interlocutionary' meaning that they are a particular form of action that elicits a certain response in and of itself. Take, for example, the question, "why do you keep doing that?" Without knowing what "that" happens to be, I am already guessing the mood and the possible motivations behind the question (i.e. to stop you from doing that thing, or at least to make you more self-conscious about doing it). Questions might also be veiled forms of wanting to manipulate others, as when we ask questions not to seek answers but to persuade others to give us what we want in life. So how can we distinguish genuinely good questions from the latter sorts?
  I believe that good questions truly speak to the deepest and most rooted originations of the things around us. If the question I ask is loaded, I am bound to find myself being narrowed by it. For example, questions like "how could she/he", "why on earth are they like that", "how can I get this (now that I am in this position)" tend to shut people down in the sense that they create walls rather than exploring genuine possibilities. The most interesting questions don't even have subjects or objects, or terms, or conditions: they speak to the existential angst that is behind the existence of every question. But if instead of questioning the existence and who is aware of it, I focus only on surface appearances, I miss out on the gold of really deep and inticing questions. Another way of putting this is that every shallow question has a deeper one, if only one doesn't get caught up in the shallower forms of the questions.
   If one doesn't really know the difference between shallow and deep questioning (yes, I am even getting confused on that one), the best thing is to stay deeply rooted in the questioning mindset whenever one is confused, and to allow that deep confusion to turn into wonderment. This is the hidden value of questions that often get lost when we are too focused on answers. The questioning mindset itself can be a deep spiritual source if, instead of looking for premature judgments or statements, we simply stay as long as we can with the question, and let our soaking in that question allow deeper insights and reflections to emerge than what we would expect from simple 'rules of logic'.

Mindfulness in Modernity

 I listened to a presentation on mindfulness tonight, and it was quite interesting to ponder. It described how modern mindfulness movement has gone away from the original Buddhist notion of mindfulness (satti), especially in overemphasizing 'bare awareness' or attention without the other aspects of Buddhist teachings, such as ethics and wisdom. Reflecting on it, I do believe it's true that most people who learn about mindfulness in a modern context probably don't venture very far into other Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths. This is the case because there is a general fear that presenting Buddhist teachings might come across as too 'religious' for a secular culture. What we have as a result is a kind of diluted version of mindfulness which does not stress the underlying reasons for mindfulness itself.
   To the credit of the pioneers of the mindfulness movement like Jon Kabat-Zinn, I do believe that mindfulness as a movement has done a lot of things to help people, particularly those who are dealing with chronic pain. As I mentioned in the class today, not a lot of people who have pain are willing to listen to a long lecture about why the pain got there in the first place, what is suffering, etc. Sometimes the meditative practices that are introduced to people are designed first and foremost to help them deal with the conditions they happen to have in that moment as well as accept their body and conditions as they are. Kabat-Zinn rarely if ever talks about concepts like 'karma' in his presentation of mindfulness, but he does introduce the idea of how chronic pain sufferers can come to accept their total selves, pain and all, without making the mistake of identifying a sense of self with that pain.
   I tend to feel that there are more concepts discussed in the mindfulness movement than what the critics may imagine. Yes, bare awareness is stressed as an essential component to the practice; however, other concepts do need to scaffold that awareness, such as unconditional acceptance, non-striving, abiding within/embracing the current state of mind and body. And while these aren't necessarily uniquely Buddhist concepts, they nonetheless create the tenor for people to practice facing their situations with a compassionate frame of mind, rather than discriminating or categorizing their experiences in order to distance from them. I think these are the positive aspects of the mindfulness movement: not so much the techniques as it is the atmosphere of compassion and acceptance that it has fostered in people.

What's Under My Nose

 There is such a treasure under my nose, if only I can see it. It's the world around me and below me, and the only thing I need to do is to find the calm of mind to be able to see it. Without moments to reflect, will we be able to savor what has always been ours to begin with, or are we still longing for something that is distant and not yet attained?
  Yesterday, I was stupid enough to sprain my foot after doing ankle rolls, and today I suffer the consequence of a sprained foot. More than anything, the inability to walk really fast today gave me a sense that I have these abilities which I take for granted, yet which are mine, after many years of experience. It pains me to realize that something as simple as walking can slip by me, as though it were a given rather than something that gives me great privileges in life. Of course, every so often, I will remember this, but do I really take long enough to reflect on it, and what it could mean?
 There is a time to strive for things, and there is also a time to just reflect on what is here. I think the two complement each other. Without the appreciation for what's there, striving would be quite pointless. Conversely, striving is the extension of a gratitude that I have for what I am able to attain, given my limitations and capabilities.

Contemplative Survival Skills

I was reading an interesting article as part of an ESL teaching book for one of my students, which talks about survival skills (Gonzales 2014: 129-132). This article was interesting because it identifies the survival skills most likely to allow a person to survive and be resilient in the face of stress and crisis. Interestingly, I sense that most of the skills are contemplative, in the sense that they relate to a lot of spiritual ways of knowing that we learn about in ancient traditions. For one, being calm is emphasized, which essentially means being mindful and having a settled awareness that tries to take in everything without making impulsive decisions. Now this makes sense, both from a spiritual and evolutionary perspective. If I am in the jungle, and I act out of a false belief that I am stronger or more well equipped than a dangerous predator hiding in the trees, I will likely not survive. On the other hand, my ability to stay calm and not act on my emotions is very crucial to such survival scenarios.
    Other skills that are described in the article include the ability to think things through in small steps; use of mantras as ways to focus the mind when it is buffeted by many stimuli; a positive attitude; and, perhaps the strangest of all, the ability to surrender to the circumstances and the acceptance of death as a real possibility. I was struck by the fact that most if not all of these skills are the kinds of things that many spiritual traditions (including Buddhism) are emphasizing, which suggests that wisdom is always a common denominator in whether one survives or not.
   One of the areas that wasn't covered in this article, but which could be studied more, is what I might refer to as a 'lack of presumption.' I have sometimes heard this referred to as beginner's mind, but I would like to take it in a different way to mean the ability to soldier on with the details of one's thrown condition and circumstances, rather than endlessly questioning why they are in that situation in the first place. I use the term 'thrown' (Heidegger's term, in fact), because I want to suggest that this is where we always are, in the middle of it all, and there is no illusory starting point. If a person can sort through the messes they are in without revolting against the mess or trying to restore the mess into a fictitious 'purity', quite often one finds the things they need in the mess to make okay decisions. If, on the other hand, one starts to ask themselves "why am I in this? Ws predicament? Why me? What did I do to fall into this trap? What am I supposed to learn from thhat karma brought me here?", there will be no end to these questions, and one will end up succumbing to depression before getting eaten by the tiger. But these questions really represent unconscious longings to go to a place of innocence, where there are no messes or ambiguities or conflicts to sort out or to 'be within'. I think that survivors are the ones who are able to face the situation they are in and embrace it rather than trying to force themselves back into an original, idyllic state of being which never existed to begin with.

Gonzales, L. (2014). Mind Over Matter. In Mazur-Jeffries (2014), Reading and Vocabulary 4: Focus. Boston: National Geographic Learning.

Significance/Non Significance

 The more I reflect on it, the more I believe that there needs to be a middle way between feeling significant and not significant. I think that my tendency is to lean toward the latter. I have often struggled with feelings of not being good enough or important enough for others, and it's only been in the most caring kinds of relationships that I was able to feel that I matter to others. Of course, this latter point can sometimes be a place of contention. I know a parent who recently shared with me that she expected her oldest child to be more dependent, because she gave him more affection before his younger sister was born. Such an overemphasis of attention on one child can lead the child to feel entitled to a certain amount of attention. This is the other extreme of inflated ego or entitlement.
   What's the middle way then? I think the middle is to recognize that one can be significant to significant others! And it's important to distinguish between people who are committed to caring and others who are more casual acquaintances. If I base feelings of significance on people who are only casually acquainted with me, I am bound to feel disappointed because I might have expected those acquaintances to support me more than they did. I might later on realize that those acquaintances had only a small connection with me, and they might have flattered me once or twice! But if the feelings of significance simply come from ongoing relationships where there is reciprocal support, than these feelings are healthy. Why? Because if, for example, a parent felt no significance in being a parent, they might not take their responsibilities very seriously. Having that sense of significance can help the parent be very clear about their responsibilities rather than taking them casually.
   In Buddhist writings, there is often an emphasis on no-self. But I have to wonder: is it possible for people to take no-self in a distorted way, to entail that one needn't engage with the world or take on responsibilities since there is no self there? This is a distortion, because no self does not necessarily mean having no engagements with the world. It only means not being attached to the sense of self occupying these roles. It also doesn't deny the parts that one does play in life, such as a worker, a parent, friend, etc. These things are still important, because they are the vehicles by which we can really know our connectedness with other beings and to become more compassionate in the process. So our roles and responsibilities in relation to others are significant.

Altruistic Attitudes

I was thinking recently about Martin Buber's "I and Thou" understanding of how human beings authentically relate to one another as equals, and how it is quite different from narrating relationships in terms of 'needs' or functions. It seems as though in the modern business world, people negotiate from the point of view of a shared interest, where people work with one another to achieve a common goal, such as profit for the organization. Is this altruistic? In a sense, it's a kind of enlightened self-interest, which amounts to saying that we work together for our mutual benefit. What's perhaps more challenging is to work with those with whom we don't really stand to benefit from them, nor them from us. This requires a completely different orientation, which Buber's "I and Thou" has an ability to induce, given sufficient reflection on the term itself.
  How can we reflect in terms of people as people, when so often we are conditioned to thinking in a way that creates maximum benefits to self and others? Is Buber's ontology outdated in a world of cost/benefit analysis and utilitarian ethics? From a Buddhist perspective, it would be interesting to explore linkages between Buddha's teachings and Buber's "I and Thou". One way of approaching it is to contemplate to what extent our relationships with fellow sentient beings are tainted with the three kleshas of greed, hatred and ignorance. In letting go of these taints, it's more possible for people to operate together from a deeper sense of meditative joy, which creates a space for not needing anything in particular from others. Again, I can't stress enough: there is a joy in this kind of letting go which I have most frequently, if at all, found in meditative practice. Sadly, I don't find much evidence for meditation in Buber's writings, so there are times when I am at a loss as to what can help induce I Thou moments. Buber himself suggests that we inevitably have these moments where there is a fluctuation of "I Thou" and "I It" orientations. A person simply has a hard time sustaining the genuine moments of I/Thou reciprocation, in a world where people are often treated as a means to an end.
   While I am optimistic that practices like meditation can offer more chances for genuine I/Thou openness, I also agree with Buber's claims that the I/Thou relationship can never be reduced to a technique or a formula. It's only in the dropping of attachments to formula that we can behold each other as fellow beings rather than trying to strive against others to obtain desired states.


Buber, M (1970). I and Thou. New York: Scribner

Spirit

 Spirit, I reflect, is something that has nothing to do with one's conditioning. It's simply the decision to get up, when one is covered in sand on a beach. The sand represents all of one's conditioning, and 'being covered' refers to the analogy of how we use sand to create shapes around our bodies and cover ourselves for a kind of false sense of protection. Without clinging to the sand itself, we would find it easy to just get up and see our real bodies for the way they are. The problem is that we mistaken the sand for the true form of ourselves, and we simply get caught up in its fragility, not realizing that it has nothing to do with ourselves.
   If we didn't take the drifting, passing sand to be our real being, we wouldn't be so worried about its fickleness and how its different shapes elude our grasp. Instead of fretting about sudden changes in fortune, we would be able to be with our present experience, and not worry about the sand crumbling around us. This is the deeper experience which is underneath the surface, the interconnection that we all have with each other. The challenge is not to 'get rid' of fragility, but to see beyond fragility.

On Being Stuck and Unstuck

 During the Dharma video sharing tonight after the group meditation, Master Sheng Yen remarked that for Chan practitioners, there is always a way out even if one feels stuck or has reached a kind of wall of sorts. I think Master Sheng Yen was referring to the fact that from the perspective of emptiness itself, there are infinite possibilities available to mine and explore. The only reason I fret or lament over the loss of one possibility is that I treat that one possibility as the only one, not realizing how it's connected with an infinite array of others. In other words, my sense of stuck-ness or frustration is only due to a narrow mindset which is clinging to only one way of thinking about things.
   After listening to this talk and reflecting on it, I wondered, does this entail a kind of dogged refusal to bow down to one's own goals or intended results, until something 'gives' as it were? I don't think so. To the contrary, I think that Master Sheng Yen is suggesting that it's only when I can stop attaching to any result whatsoever that my mind becomes open to endless possibilities. This isn't easy to do, but I think the work involves continuing to frame situations in different ways so that one can expand their awareness of how to deal with it creatively.
   I think, however, that it's more important to know when one is stuck, rather than admiring the cosmic possibilities. Being stuck in a particular view can be such a source of suffering, and of course desiring what is unattainable is one such example. If I am thinking that the road to a goal is impossible, it might be helpful for me to envision the road as a series of short steps, rather than getting stuck on the entire journey as a whole (which is always subject to change at any given time).

Doing Less

  It's funny how, whenever I know I have a lot of assignments to do at work, I kind of hunch my shoulders a bit, as though I were about to pounce on a mouse. I get this way especially after my weekend finishes and I have to buckle down to the tasks at hand. And yet, time and again, I notice that at work, it all comes down to one thing at a time. It reminds me of an old game I used to play as a kid called "Beat the 8 Ball", where these four players had to compete to be the first one to intercept a spinning ball as it was travelling down a funnel. The idea behind the game is that no matter how many people play, only one move can intercept the ball. There can't be more than one winner. In the same way, there can only be one clear route at a time, and our ambitions to get everything done have to funnel down into a few manageable steps.
    "Doing less" does not necessarily mean slacking off, or doing nothing at all. I think it means having a clearer perspective on what can be done at any given time, and not giving oneself too much stress regarding what hasn't been done. It might even mean the ability to relax a little bit at work, knowing that some things do manage to resolve themselves without too much intervention from ourselves.
   There are two ways to look at this. The first is that being tense (or raising one's shoulders in pounce mode) is not going to make one's work go quicker. This way of tensing up the body is perhaps a holdover from days when we needed to make ourselves look bigger and stronger than the animals around us who were prone to prey upon us. Since those days are far behind us, it's not productive to always be hunched over and over-tensed at work.
    The second way to look at it is that there is never a need to invest fear into one's work. If the work can't be completed on time, then it's okay. As far as one is more concerned about the work itself than about a perceived timeline, then one can know whether it's been done to the best of one's abilities. Of course, we often have to calibrate time and effort in ways that maximize efficiency, but there is no need to be fearful about it. Whatever we fail to do becomes a learning opportunity as well.

More Ideas On Conflict

Samagamma Sutta describes the roots of conflict in a kind of resentment. The Buddha remarks:

There are, Ānanda, these six roots of disputes. What six? Here, Ānanda, a bhikkhu is angry and resentful. Such a bhikkhu dwells disrespectful and undeferential towards the Teacher, towards the Dhamma, and towards the Sangha, and he does not fulfil the training. A bhikkhu who dwells disrespectful and undeferential towards the Teacher, towards the Dhamma, and towards the Sangha, and who does not fulfil the training, creates a dispute in the Sangha, which would be for the harm and unhappiness of many, for the loss, harm, and suffering of gods and humans (Nanamoli & Bodhi 1995: 854).

But if I look deeper into this, I ask the question, what is the real source of ‘resentment’ and where does it come from exactly? Resentment seems to involve a kind of ‘re-evaluation’ of something that has already passed in some way. I look at the traffic that is slow, and suddenly my mind reels back: there is something that this situation could be that it’s not, and I compare what could be with what is happening now. I notice that when this thing happens, there arises the illusion of consciousness. I think that something about the situation itself is deliberately doing something I don’t want it to do.  I start to endow the situation with a consciousness or a deliberate purpose, which it often does not have at all. That’s when I start to develop a strong desire to repel the deliberate perpetrator or cause of my suffering, and thus a strong sense of self. This happens so quickly as to seem imperceptible, but it seems that it creates a whole vicious cycle of blaming the teacher; then blaming the teachings for ‘obstinately refusing’ to give me what I want; then turning away from the development of meditative practice and training (again, out of a possible resentment toward the pain that emerges from the practice, which is magnified by this illusion of a conscious design); then creating disputes with others, and finally, impacting others outside of one’s social circle through resentful emotions or attitudes.

When I look closely at this cycle, what is the root of it? If I am not mistaken, the root of it is a kind of projection of conscious purpose on the events in my life which don’t warrant such a needless projection. What this is a projection of, however, is the grasping self. If it were not for the self that grasps what it wants or rejects what it dislikes, would there be any persecutor or conscious demon? In fact, there would only be the present conditions that are arising spontaneously out of previous conditions. If I were to think in this way and drop my ideas about there being a conscious purpose to what’s happening to me, things might be a whole lot more manageable, and I would be clear about what I am seeing, not fixated on the notion of a punisher and punished.

What happens, though, if we find that people around us carry the view that there are separate selves who do things on purpose to upset other selves? I believe that the answer is to examine closely the nature of those selves and to ask if they, too, are not conditioned constructs. Quite often what people see in ‘me’ is a construct in their minds, based on different perceptions which don’t add up to a big picture of what’s happening to influence the perceiver and perceived. Without this bigger, wider picture, there are just a lot of assumptions and guesses, with accompanying beliefs that the other is trying to trick us or we should not trust such an other. But what’s the alternative? I think it’s to know that there is never a final ‘conscious’ designer of anything we experience. Even if someone is really trying to trick us, that ‘tricking’ behavior is also conditioned by the person’s previous experiences or traumas, especially around their own inability to adopt a trusting position in the world. The root of all this conscious tricking and such is really a self that is grasping, whether for glory or reputation, or revenge or love. And all of these grasping attitudes perpetuate suffering. Do we need to think this way?

How can I design a specific practice that would test out my theory about the origins of resentment? Well, something for me to think about.

Reference

Nanamoli & Bodhi. 1995. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: a translation of the Majjima Nikaya . Boston: Shambhala

Arguing from Analogy

   I am reading books on conflict resolution, and am trying to wrap my head around a Buddhist notion of conflict and how it's resolved. One of the things I reflected on today is the idea of 'using analogies' to connect different arguments that may seem quite different. Why are analogies useful? As I was teaching the Grade 4 students a few weeks back, analogies (or metaphors) can sometimes be ways of bridging the gaps between one thing that's familiar to us and something that is unfamiliar. In R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins remarks on how the turtles on the island are similar in size to bathtubs. When we read this passage, we can better imagine what the turtle might look like by analogy with something more culturally familiar to us.
   Analogies are not just clever metaphors, however. They are also ways of thinking about new things or 'unfamiliar' concepts and situations which might bring people closer to an empathetic understanding of the new. By somehow comparing or imagining something new as similar to an experience one has had, one can better relate to the new in an embodied way. Without this thinking by analogy, we might have a harder time establishing a link to something that is completely new. The concept may be so completely new to us that without an experiential base, we are inclined to reject it in some way.
   I have decided to make it a practice to approach things analogically when I am not sure how to understand or interpret them. The reason is that unless this is done, one has a hard time integrating aspects of thinking into one's repertoire. But while metaphor and analogy are useful, it might also be interesting to suspend these tools and allow oneself to be shocked by the new concept, to the point where one can be changed by it. If one only assimilates new into already existing experience, they may not have the opportunity to be truly challenged by the experience. But analogies might be ways to approach new things in ways that deepen one's connection to them or even reframe them in a new or interesting way.
 

Onward Cultivation and Boredom

For some reason, after coming back from a 1 day meditation retreat today, my mind came back to the difference between Voltaire's "Candide" and Dr. Pangloss. It's a weird thought, yes? If you have never read Voltaire's Candide, you might recognize it as a kind of satire, where Candide represents all the possible misfortunes that a person can go through in life, whereas Pangloss is the quintessential idealist, always theorizing that this is the 'best of all possible worlds' in the same style that Leibniz did.  The two characters nicely suggest a disparity between the ideal concept of how life should unfold and the reality of contingency and accident, as well as the need to continually cultivate one's garden.
  I believe that one of the tensions that practitioners might experience in the course of doing meditation is in fact the 'real' vs the 'ideal'. In the morning of the 1 day retreat, I have to admit that I was stoked as always, and coffee certainly didn't hurt. I think that when I am entering the retreat for the first time, I always have the best intentions, and hope that the energy I invest into it will pay off in the afternoon when my mind gets off the coffee high and starts to slow down a bit. What I observed today, however, was the opposite. I started to realize that it's not the intention or the 'drive to create' that impels meditation, but in fact the exhaustion of all these possibilities that opens up a space to explore and behold. In the afternoon today, I had this sense that although I was not as energetic to pick up my method as in the morning, I saw the value of being more grounded and seeing the contrivances of trying to 'get the most of meditation' using the mental strategies that often accompany a good cup of coffee.
   What I experienced this afternoon was a kind of observation of thoughts as 'bubbles' lacking in any permanent significance. Every so often, I would use these bubbles to inquire: who creates the bubbles, and where do they come from? Although I could not sustain this practice for long given lack of sleep from the previous night, I found that not adding anything special or auspicious to the experience made the practice somehow more like an enriching discovery. Even when boredom was faced in the afternoon, it was a kind of interesting boredom, if you could call it that. Why? Because there is something actually intriguing about how the mind goes to boredom in the late afternoons of meditation retreats, and I am inclined to observe it carefully and almost respectfully. Although boredom is often considered a 'bane' of a productive and overworked society, it can in meditative circles be very wonderful to observe boredom's dynamics and figure out how to be truly in it without trying to make it into something more glamorous. This is what makes boredom a meditative practice in its own right.

Living in Service

  During the Chan discussion group tonight, one of the themes we discussed was that of not being attached to material or personal comforts, as well as status. It's very easy for a person to become attached to these, being the result of previous efforts, but once one gets fixated on them, they define one's existence. I think that the remedy is to live 'in service' or to make one's life a serving to others, without getting attached to the body or its comforts. This is a practice that is true to Chan itself.
   In fact, I would go a step further than this and suggest that in order for it to happen, one must sense that they are not their bodies, pure and simple. If I am taking the sense of bodily comfort or physical comfort as 'myself', then any slightest thing which threatens that sense of comfort is seen as an existential threat. But there really isn't anything that one feels or senses that stays permanently with one's body anyway, so there is again a question of why get attached to comfort anyway?
    While all of this sounds great, I don't think it's possible to fully realize it unless a person devotes their energies to some community or some way of uplifting the spirits of other beings. Without that, it's easy to become fixated in every little ache and pain of the body. I think this is actually very simple to prove. If you have ever come home very tired or tense after work, you might be inclined at first to want to flop on the bed or easy chair, only to feel more stuck, because you get fixated on the pleasurable experiences of relaxation. But if instead you choose to invest that tiredness into helping others in some way, such as through a volunteer program or group meditation, you will find that your energy naturally increases, or at least stays steady. This is because you are not fixating on the feelings in the body, but instead are devoting yourself to things outside this tight sense of 'self''. For this reason, I think that serving others is an important aspect of therapy, and it should be the case that we are always finding ways to serve others when we are not working.

Those Unanswered Prayers

   When a person tries to fulfill their dreams or accomplishments, they often find that the result is less than what they expected. I am trying to teach this idea through the Grade 4 students' reading of Treasure Island.. Young Jim Hawkins doesn't know what to expect when he embarks on his adventure: he might be what you would describe as a very inexperienced boy who is expecting a life of pirates, swashbuckling and all sorts of run-ins with buried treasure, only to find a life of rain, waiting for things to happen, violence, failed trust, and treachery. These are not the kinds of things that any young person expects from a dream, yet somehow Treasure Island seems to be the contemplative 'laboratory' to understand the nature of wishes and aspirations.
   Many readers might pessimistically conclude that Jim was wrong to embark on his journey in the first place, and perhaps he should have at least stayed at home to take care of his mother, rather than going out on that journey. One of the things I try to do in the last session of the Treasure Island class is to ask this very same question in a more personal way: if you had to choose between the safe protection of the familiar and beloved, and the more perilous adventure of risking one's life for a dream, which would you choose, and why? Jim may have stayed behind, but would that have been the end of his dreams, or would he simply have found a different expression for those dreams? I really want the students to reflect on themselves, not just the book itself and its characters, because it does have a lot of relevance as they get older.
    Personally, I don't even have a particular answer to the above dilemma, but it seems that dreams are ways of awakening and maturing one's learning about the deeper contours of one's emotions and relationships. It's only when the dream 'touches the road' of reality, using its bumpy or rickety wheels to steer around, that we have the stark contrast that allows us to better know our position in life. Without that contrast, it can be hard to really know or articulate ourselves and our position and values in life. This is why I feel that dreams are essential to articulating identity and values, even if dreams are not realistic and hardly ever come true. Rather than rejecting our dreams for being impractical or even disappointing at times, we can perhaps see the dream as a chance to entertain 'counter realities', which in turn can help us better know ourselves, what our preferences are, and what conflicts arise between the desire and the pursuit of that desire.

The Terms of Investigation

 The more that I spend time thinking about it, the more I recognize that a lot of questions a person frames are presuming certain structures of thinking. Even when a question seems to be genuine and real, it's already based on constructed assumptions regarding what should or shouldn't be questioned at all. It's almost as if questions are only ways of filling the spaces where one has structured a pre-existing view of reality.
   When I ask a question, maybe one of the things I need to ask myself is: what does the question say about who I am and what I am most passionate about? I may have this question, but am I even so confident that others around me would even frame such a question, given that they also have their own conditioned way of framing their lives and experiences? I am trying to theorize about the act of questioning in a way that goes beyond conventionally seeing questions as 'revealing' an underlying reality. Instead, questions are ways of exposing what we already believe we know and what we believe needs to be filled in.
  Is there such a thing as a 'bad' question? Well, based on what I just mentioned, perhaps questions are neither good nor bad. They are always based on a situation where certain factors in a person's awareness or thinking come to the foreground which require elaboration or verification. But since our questions are determined by our ways of cutting up the world, questions are also 'constructions'. In other words, a question doesn't just happen because I have certain amounts of information and require a missing piece. Rather, they seem to arise from a creative act of wanting to extend my chosen vision of the world to something potentially unexplored.
  This might entail that the amount of questioning a person is capable of may be determined by how much they've been socialized to investigate the world in certain terms. If I haven't gotten used to the idea of thinking that there are 'insides' to something, for example, I may never get to question what something is made out of, much less have the curiosity to want to know. I am sure that deeper spiritual questions might also arise from the same shared meanings across different communities. For example, I never really thought of the question "is there life after death?" until I encountered people whose religion was pointing to this question in the form of stories or parables. Had I not run into them, I would perhaps have never framed this question, because it would never have occurred to me to think in this way.

Waiting Game

  Doing school work can sometimes seem like a waiting game-- only the waiting is about 'inspiration', and being able to put things together to form a unity and direction. It's safe to say that this waiting game does not only happen in educational settings, although education itself suggests a trajectory where there is some growth or maturation. The ups and downs of going to school might be compared with a kind of spiritual education in understanding the workings of causes and conditions. It's only when I go through the whole process that I can know that there are times to go forward and times to hold back. Unfortunately, it's often the case that in times of uncertainty, people are better at going forward, even when they could just as well hold back for a while.
   This process is naturally going to be depressing at times, but I think the key point is to endure some of the painful moments with equanimity. In order to do so, I have told myself recently two things: the first is, there is really nothing to lose in trying. When I sincerely know that I did my best to achieve a goal within the constraints that I have been given, there is no need or room for regret. It's only if I didn't make any effort at all that I would be left with the nagging regrets of 'could I have'/'should I have', and so on. The second principle I observe is to see the pain to the very end. If I am lifting the ball of iron and drop it mid-way in despair, then I can't really get to the realization that the pain is not going to harm me. So there are moments when, quite simply, I have to stop following my self-doubts and stay with the emotional pain that is in that moment.
    I would imagine that in most cases, what causes people to lose their balance is not a negative event, but rather an ambivalent one. It's when I am not sure that I am left in a state of painful choice: to go or to hold back, to continue or to stop, etc. And that anguish of simply not knowing precisely how to choose is such a tremendous source of pain. It's like not really knowing what's awaiting you at the end of the corridor, and having this wide range of actions before I get to the end. In those times, we can only wait a while for new information to guide us, rather than trying to invent information that simply doesn't exist. And at times, I do need to train myself to wait a little longer for clarity.

Being Fooled

 I have been reflecting recently on how 'non-attachment' to thinking in Buddhism might be mistakenly read as something like "don't trust anything you think, since it's probably wrong anyway." The extreme of this view might be something like what Descartes experienced before he formulated his philosophy of first principles. Descartes imagined a scary scenario in which there was an evil demon who kept fooling the mind into thinking that what it sees is real--only to present the mind with yet another delusion. I myself have recently been inclined to criticize myself when I thought something could be real, but was 'fooled later'. This happens when we commit to a certain plan of action such a school, only to realize later that it's much more complicated than we thought. And my mind then often goes back to the old childhood taunt of the trickster who reveals they had been fooling you all along! Notice how this deliberate trickster plays a prominent role in the inner mythology of emotions.
   Tricksters often play an equally important role in spiritual traditions, of which Buddhism is only one. People are often 'tricked' in Buddhist stories into doing or believing something as a skillful means. For example, in Lotus Sutra, it's thought that the Buddha tricks the early monastic orders into thinking that the arhat path is the 'final' goal, as a skillful means of bringing them to a more open space and mind to understand the 'ultimate truth'. In that sense, the Buddha is regarded not as an evil trickster, but as a benevolent being who works according to a being's capabilities. But in spite of that benevolence, there seems no doubt judging from the Lotus Sutra itself that the arhats would have been quite shaken up by this skilful means. Many in fact left the assembly where Buddha was teaching apparently because they could not handle what he was telling them. Again, there is an instinctive urge to resent being fooled, because 'being fooled' often represents the subversion of one's whole sense of reality and identity.
    Perhaps it's significant to work with the idea that, because nothing is truly foundational, there really isn't anything that is being taken away when we are 'fooled'. The moment when we feel that sting of 'loss' that accompanies knowing we've been fooled, we have this golden opportunity to let go of what we thought was fundamental to ourselves. However, in order to do this, one must also befriend the trickster and not impute any ill-will to them, since that trickster allowed us to wake up a little bit more. Being 'fooled' is painful because we are face to face with our ego which always wants to be in control of reality, and resents the fact that even the most precious things it cherishes will also be taken away sooner or later. But if we don't see it in this way, we will continue to mistrust people and think they are doing something on purpose to harm us, which is an unfortunate way of getting stuck in life.

Pitfalls of "Only Mindfulness"

 I glanced over the library books in the Buddhist section, after doing my tutoring session this afternoon. One of the books that stood out for me is a book by Analayo called Mindfully Facing Disease and Death. I look at it and want to take a look at it, wondering what it could be about, and indeed it looks quite fascinating. But when I glance at other books, I feel a sense of troubling discomfort. Most of the books that use "mindfulness" in the title seem pretty thin in premise and in quantity of pages. I think that trying to condense the concept of mindfulness into one hundred pages might not capture what it really is about. And a sense of pain sets into me, a kind of dread. It is as though the books are so light yet are so heavy at the same time. The words in these books weighs a thousand tons each. And why?
   I think that I have become disillusioned with 'only mindfulness', because there are times when mindfulness stripped of the other aspects of Buddhadharma seems too thin to be sustainable. This is because mindfulness in these texts often connects to the notion of 'bare awareness', without the accompanying principles that underpin that awareness. There is also contained in it a view that somehow being mindful will cure all of life's ailments and sufferings, when actually, it's really a kind of beginning or a journey. So when I see these books, I tend to feel that they are not cure-alls, and somehow more is needed to fully map a Buddhist philosophy and how it can benefit others.
   Without a sense of the inner psychodynamics that can beset a person, mindfulness practices could potentially open the doors to revisiting troubling situations. This is why I think it's important to round out one's education, be it through readings in psychology, or sociology, or Buddhism in general. Without a grounded context for one's practice, one can sometimes confuse certain experiences for what they are not, or inadvertently suppress certain forms of suffering or pain. This is because the texts on mindfulness emphasize being present, but there is no context of understanding that we can also be present with our past memories, as they come to surface, and being clear about how they influence our perceptions. In other words, 'present' is not so much a moment in time as it is an attitude of seeing things as they are unfolding with a clear and aware mind, whether it's the things around us or the memories and expectations we harbor.

Online Learning and Showcasing Work

  I have been thinking for a while about the prospect of studying how students can showcase their work online, and its effect on creating a culture of creativity, dialogue and learning. In particular, it would certainly be an interesting process to study how children's learning and empathy are facilitated when they write book reviews and translate these reviews into a different language for others (such as their parents) to read. I believe that this kind of study would touch upon the themes of writing and translating for multicultural audiences, and how doing so can help children foster empathy toward people of different cultures and generations, especially those in their own family. Related to this would be the kinds of decisions that young learners make when deciding how to translate their writing, for whom they are writing, and so on.
   I am not so sure about methodology, but this study seems interesting in a way. What interests me is the idea of taking books and using the stories one has read to interpret its key meanings for others. When we tell and retell stories, the nature of that story will change quite often, depending on the person with whom one is sharing the key story. This of course points to the impermanent nature of stories, but also points to the ability for stories to transform and change depending on the audience and the intention of the reviewer. It even makes me wonder whether the book review itself is a vehicle for empathy and voice. Even if I never read the book you are reviewing, the review itself gives me some insight into your thinking as a person, as well as the unique response between yourself and the book. Are there things conveyed in reviews which we don't read in the actual book itself? Of course there are, and that is the interesting aspect of reviews, in the sense that the communicate a book's meaning from one person to a specific audience.

Attitude of Non-Opposing

   Most action stories envision conflict as a contest between two or more people, usually branded as 'good' or 'bad' in some way. I have often felt the pull of feeling that my opinion may be more correct than someone else's, only to realize that the struggle to be 'right' is almost always a source of suffering in itself. Have you ever experienced moments when you felt that your point of view was so right that you were determined to make sure the other person knew it? There is a kind of desire there, which culminates in the satisfaction of feeling that the other was proven to be wrong. But all of this is often just a mask for one's own insecurities and need for control and power. For example, what would happen if instead of trying to correct the person whom I feel is wrong, I let that person do what they need to do, and gently tell them my own perspective or suggestions? Here, the orientation is not about being wrong or right, but about working with the conditions presented to oneself, and trying to empathize with multiple viewpoints.
    It seems helpful, for me anyway, to understand that what I think is 'right' is the result of my own conditions. If I am in a society that tends to support my way of thinking or framework, I am likely to never question myself or my own premises. I might even tend to unconsciously believe that anyone who strays from the pattern of right is a deviant and is therefore a threat to my sense of order, which I inherit from the society itself. There are times in everyone's life, however, when their sense of inviolable right is challenged, whether through being ostracized from a mainstream opinion or group, or coming to lose a precious role in the social order. Outsiders in society often represent this alternative, because they have had the fortune never to fall for the belief that there is a static role to fulfill in the world---one which represents a 'natural' or 'stable' state of things.
   I think that there are several things which need to arise to cultivate this attitude wholeheartedly. The first is to awaken to the fact that my 'right' is just a conditioned dream that is likely to change through opening up to new experiences and perspectives. Therefore, there isn't a need to cling to that view with a sense of 'this is who I am' or 'nobody can change me'. The second attitude is a trust in the way things work out. Sometimes the people who frighten us with their views (right or wrong) are the ones who most stand to teach us the things we may need to know. In particular, people whose views are different from ours can teach us the value of letting go of tenacious clinging to views, as well as the precious value of 'non-views' or not seeing things with a favored point of view. Finally, this kind of attitude requires an insight into the impermanent state of things in general. When I commit to this insight, I am no longer wedded to any view, and I can work with anyone.

Psychic Spaces and Voice

When I am facilitating group meditation, there are times when I really find my own voice, and those are moments when I am holding the doctrine of Buddhism very lightly, rather than trying to clutch it for meaning. I don't know how to describe this, but it's probably something that people experience all the time in one form or another. In the beginning of a learning process, there is a typical amount of tension, as learners master the alphabet or the language of a particular skill or trade. It's only at a later point that one can start to add a particular voice or style that is uniquely their own to it. But if a person is only thinking of learning as an accumulation of knowledge, they will tend to become more tense. It's as though one has forgotten what they have already internalized.
   When I first got my job in the current place where I work, I remember feeling overwhelmed by what I had to learn. The young girl who was training me at that time asked me one simple question,a and that is: "What is it that you know right now?" This simple question allowed me to reflect on what I already was understanding about the process, which in turn clarified the things that I was missing in terms of experience or information. As soon as I had the felt sense of 'knowing something', I quickly began to calm down, and I was more comfortable with uncertainty. I believe that this 'turning back to what I have learned' and reiterating it in an expressive form was what helped me stay with what I didn't know, and build upon what I knew.
   Online learning environments might be a great place where children can express what they have learned and read, as well as translate and teach others what they have learned. It would be interesting to study how people find their voices in learning, and when learning becomes a significant place of self-discovery. Do children start to enjoy learning more when they can present it to others? Are there downsides to an overemphasis on presenting one's work, and might it lead to a competitive dynamic? What do the learners feel when they have the opportunity to share and celebrate what they have learned? And does that learning open more space to accept uncertainty with new learning? These are also interesting things to learn when connected with the anxieties of learning a new language.