The Search for Belonging

 I have not really touched upon how much I rely on meditation as a community as well as place of belonging. Tonight, for example, after the group sitting, I had to leave early to take care of lesson plans for this coming Saturday's classes. My sitting tonight wasn't very good, to be honest, because I was somewhat tired and also distracted by the things I need to do. And yet behind all the distractions were two distinct wishes: one to "practice well" and consistently, and the other to belong in the group somehow. I don't always feel such a belonging, since a lot of times, I face cultural and language barriers with the non-English speakers in the group. And there are even times when I simply am not engaging with others, because I am wanting something much more from myself in terms of practice. But nonetheless, being in such a community does raise for me issues of "sense of belonging" and to what extent it is fulfilled in the group meditation practice or other Buddhist activities.
  I am also aware that the sense of belonging is entirely subjective: it isn't something that a group consensus builds, since everyone has a very different understanding of what belonging looks and feels like. In writing this, I also begin to realize that the feeling of belonging is really only a passing perception: there are moments when I am quite engaged and others when I am not engaged in practice. Knowing that both engagement and disengagement aren't permanent or even real, objective events that are external, can help one to get over the attachment to being engaged with anything. It's a bit like what Master Sheng Yen was explaining in the video after tonight's meditation, around "love". While feelings of love might be thought in some traditions as being eternal and unifying, Buddhism suggests that most kinds of love are forms of craving or attachment. While they may be temporarily satisfying, it helps to understand that they are passing perceptions which can be framed and reframed. They can even be renewed, if one is willing to endure the cloudier or dryer aspects of one's experiences.

Writing as Practice and Discipline

After the recent three day retreat (which seems to have impacted me a great deal), I have been reflecting on the kinds of things, besides meditation, which I consider a practice and discipline worth doing. Writing is certainly one of the things that has proven to be both a discipline and a passion for me. However, what's interesting to me is how the "discipline" aspect of writing has tempered my understanding of what "passion to write" really means to me. I would have to say that this interplay of daily "disciplined" practice and passion are building upon each other continuously.
   To take a simple example, I remember when I first entered undergrad English at York, I was quite adamant about wanting to be a writer, and I did write passionately in various forms. However, there came times in my life when I became attached to the feeling that seems to go with "writing passionately"---that is, being in a kind of psychic flow or zone with my words, and not being inhibited in any way by any criticism, whether from within or outside me. But surely, such a feeling does not come all the time, and there are moments when writing does not happen with passion because one's ideas are not always coming to life in the writing. There could be different reasons for this, such as an idea that is not yet ripened enough to be generated in words, or simply a lack of interest in one's ideas. Sometimes it's even a matter of not having enough experiences in life to write about, or lacking the stimulation of another perspective which often comes from reading in one's favored genres. But part of the discipline of writing is to push through those dry periods by continuing to write. The idea of reserving a time to write is something which doesn't tolerate too many excuses, such as "lack of inspiration". And what it ends up doing is subverting the presumptions one has about where and how passion to write manifests.
  I have noticed that in the process of writing some of my blog entries, I simply didn't know how the subject would take shape until I actually started writing. At that point, a tiny candle flame can become something that warms me, and indeed I start to "warm up" to my subject. I have even had to change my subject line halfway in writing, realizing that what I set out to write about isn't the actual subject I really want to describe in the moment. Writing balances these needs for spontaneity with the need for a coherent subject that "feeds" the fires of curiosity. Discipline thus informs my understanding of passion, by starting more modestly with the simple act of setting aside time and "just doing it" regardless of whether one thinks they have creative inspiration or not. And it takes courage to let oneself do this---to let go of one's sense of control over a process that is altogether a mystery, since one can never know exactly where these ideas are coming from in any case.
  Lastly, discipline and daily practice can reduce the tendency to take on too many topics in one blog. It's one thing to formulate in one's head what they want to write about, and get very grandiose about the design. But in actuality, a structured piece of writing only generally allows for one specialized area of grounded observation and conclusion. Trying to take on too much in writing even one's life story (an onerous task) can be lightened through simple daily reflections. Such reflections have often taught me that "less" is sometimes "better", and that one can only share a small piece of what they have learned with their readers. Knowing that this small "piece" is enough, is in itself a gift, and it can be an incredible source of peace to get a good sense of when enough is enough. Writing practice can help one be a good gauge of this, or at least a somewhat better gauge anyway.

Compassion and Reflection

I have recently been exploring the idea of compassion as a reflective act, not just a feeling. This is a big step for me; in my mental maps, I tend to associate compassion with emotions such as sympathy and pity. But in my more recent readings on the subject (Anderson, 2017, and Miller, 2018), I tend to think of compassion as a more nuanced, interpretive attention to situations, similar to what we do when we read books or understand literature. I have even been considering my early days as an undergraduate student in English. Studying English literature has lead me to wonder, what makes the context of a book come to life? It's the way that different positions interact to create that moment of engagement for the reader. When a book opens, we see the characters, the author's history, and the reader's history intersect and come to life together. For me, "compassion" is more about seeing and examining the delicate interrelations among living things, not just a feeling of wanting to give to others in a single predefined role.
   Compassion seems to require a certain kind of ability to know what others might require in a situation. Peterson cites the example of a big campaign to aid Nepal after a devastating earthquake.After criticizing the Nepalese government for delaying the delivery of goods to the Nepalese people, the government fired back by saying that the donors from other countries were providing tuna fish and mayonnaise, rather than essential grains that the people needed to rehabilitate after the earthquake (p.22). Anderson uses this example to suggest that compassion is not just wanting to help; it needs to be supplemented with some understanding of what that particular people might require. Compassion is more than a knee jerk reaction. There needs to be a calm assessment with a clear awareness.
  Miller (2018) also sites examples where contemplative practices of calming the mind (such as meditation) might aid in love and compassion (p.91). He suggests that meditation practice can allow people to attend to what's happening in the present moment, which can help them develop a calm awareness of what can or does require care. I am reminded here of situations where I have a tendency to want to fix people's problems without seeing what the deeper paradoxes are behind the problems. When someone presents me with an issue or an experience they are going through, I might think there is an "easy" way to handle it, without really reflecting on what's at stake for the other person. My action might seem to me to be helping, but it's actually not considering the parts of a person's life that need care and attention. I have to remind myself that when I suggest a quick solution, am I doing it out of an awareness of the problem, or out of a wish for the problem to just go away?
    I am also reflecting as I write this: compassion requires a certain courage to face discomfort. Just this past weekend, I attended a meditation retreat in which I had to face many kinds of discomfort, such as leg pain, spinal pain or even a sense of dullness. Rather than distracting myself from these situations, I had to use a method of practice to see them as phenomena that have a reason to exist in their own right. I think this "allowing" is needed for compassion, even though it's the most painful thing to experience. Allowing phenomena to arise without quick judgments often brings up fear that the self cannot be "comfortable" or "in control". It relates to the awareness that one needs to drop their prior 'knowing' to truly engage what is presently arising.
   Venerable Chang Hu (see previous entry) used the example of Chuang Tzu's empty boat parable, and I have to keep re-examining this one. If the boat that crashed our own boat is empty, would we be mad at it? From Chuang Tzu's perspective, getting mad at an empty, uninhabited boat is a bit pointless. And few people would really be mad in such a situation because the boat has no ability to be aware: how can it steer clear of one's own boat? If I use an example in daily life: seeing the irritation as coming from a "person" is just like thinking the boat has someone in it. In reality, my reactions are to phenomena that are just coming up in mind. Why do I need to attach a person to it? When I do, I go back to the view that what I am experiencing is phenomena that are arising through a combination of very complex conditions that are fleeting and always changing. Without that view, I am not seeing the phenomena clearly, and I am acting as though there were someone who is opposed to me. In fact, the phenomena are all co-existing; none are opposed to each other, arising from the same source.

Miller, John P. (2018) Love and Compassion: Exploring their Role in Education. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Peterson, Andrew (2017), Compassion and Education: Cultivating Compassionate Children, Schools and Communities. London: Palgrave MacMillan

 

Crieff Hills 3 Day Meditation Retreat Write Up

 

From Friday January 26 to Sunday January 28, Dharma Drum Mountain in Toronto had the pleasure of hosting a 3 day meditation retreat with Venerable Chang Hu, at Crieff Hills Retreat Center in Pushlinch, Ontario. During this retreat, Venerable Chang Hu provided very in-depth guidance on many aspects of the meditation practice, including posture, methods and setting up a daily life practice and attitude. Perhaps the most important theme that was brought up throughout the retreat was the importance of relaxation: how to relax, why relaxation is so necessary to meditative practice, and the way relaxation embodies the teachings and practice. Venerable Chang Hu guided the group of fifteen participants through gentle moving exercise, massage, standing exercise, and other techniques to deepen one’s awareness of the body prior to using the meditation method.  These instructions were supplemented with very detailed understanding of the energy flows throughout the body and how they can become blocked through improper daily posture, excessive computer use, and other issues. I had the pleasure of volunteering as the timekeeper for this special event, and the following is a brief write up of some of my observations.

 Throughout this retreat, participants were reminded of one key principle of meditation practice: how the state of mind and body are crucial to how we understand and embody the teachings themselves. As Venerable Chang Hu mentioned, if a person’s state of body and mind are moving, their understanding of the Dharma teachings is going to be colored by that moving mind. Conversely, if a person deepens their relaxation, they will be able to develop a still mind with more depth of understanding. Venerable used the example of someone who is a kind of “expert” in stillness practice, whose samadhi had developed to the point where they are able to see the individual colors prior to the formation of  a light beam. Venerable Chang Hu suggested that we often say we “know” impermanence, but we are not able to experience it close-up because of the mind being continually moving from one thought to the next, and not having necessary stillness to appreciate impermanence. As Venerable Chang Hu emphasized, simply reading about Dharma is not going to help a person understand it. The understanding needs to come from a stillness which arises from a mind that is not agitated by thoughts.

Another example is the five skandhas, or aggregates, mentioned in the Heart Sutra. Can a person really experience the skhandas, or are they only conceptually knowing it? Venerable Chang Hu brought up the example of a story from Chuang Tzu, where a person becomes very angry at a boat colliding with his, only to find later that the other boat had been empty all along. It’s perhaps not easy for people to extend this practice to the emptiness of daily things: when we are angry with a co-worker, for example, can we really know in that moment that we are angry at our own thoughts and preconceptions, not an actual person? Though it might be easy to know this conceptually, it’s hard to experience it to the point of feeling it in one’s body. This disconnect comes from diving into the method without a proper grounding in relaxation practice. As Venerable Chang Hu suggested, relaxation is not forced or “commanded”, as when we say “relax your arms!” It needs to come out of one’s awareness and experience, rather than being forced through some conceptual logic or book learning.

Another point that I found quite valuable in the retreat was Venerable Chang Hu’s reminder to incorporate slowness into their daily practice. Instead of quickly getting up after meditation, he advised  participants to take their time to thoroughly massage after each sitting, particularly as preparation for the next activity or practice. When eating, one engages a similar process of observing oneself rather than rushing for the next bite or piece of food. I have to admit that I struggled with the teaching on slowness throughout the retreat. On the second day, for example, I did experience pain in my knees and legs, and I was tempted to very quickly pull them out and focus on massaging them. However, after striking the bell, I noticed that Venerable Chang Hu hardly seemed to move at all, let alone open his eyes! I waited somewhat impatiently to see what he was doing next, only to find that he would gradually move his fingers and upper body after about a minute. What I liked about this approach is that Venerable Chang Hu is not responding “automatically” to the sound of the chime. He is giving his body a chance to gradually and naturally emerge from the meditation practice, with slow and deliberate gestures. Equally important was massaging thoroughly without cutting corners or focusing only on “painful” parts of the body. Here, too, Venerable Chang Hu provided a wealth of different kinds of massage to focus on all the major touchpoints of the body, emphasizing a gradual and methodical approach to massage before getting up to take a break or do another practice.

Because Crieff Hills Retreat Centre was providing such delicious meals throughout the retreat, I did rush a little bit during the breakfast to pick out my favorite foods. Maybe this was also partly because I hadn’t eaten a very big dinner on the previous evening, but I am sure it has to do with the delicious food I saw that morning. Venerable Chang Hu mentioned how he observed many participants taking much more than they needed during the breakfast, remarking on the tendency for our mind to grasp and take more than what we really require, let alone can ingest. When Venerable Chang Hu mentioned this, I did feel a bit embarrassed, remembering my eager “run” for the breakfast table in the early morning and how I spilled a lot of my food while eating. But when lunchtime came around that day, I decided to take Venerable Chang Hu’s approach and try to slow down while eating the various items on my plate. When I did this, I did notice my tendency to panic a bit when I did not have the food I really liked in my mouth right away. This is a real insight for me into the way my mind is completely taken in by certain kinds of experiences or sensations. Interestingly, when I ate more slowly and deliberately, I found myself savoring the food more, while also being less hungry in the end. I realized that the craving didn’t come from the food itself, but from all the associations I was making between that food and my past experiences. Chewing the food deliberately made me realize that the actual taste of the food itself had very little to do with my past experiences or expectations.

Throughout this retreat, I had quite a few challenges. First and foremost was being able to internalize the methods of relaxation taught by Venerable Chang Hu. While the first evening was delightfully relaxing, the second day proved to be a day of tests, as leg and back pain started to take over all those gentle experiences that Venerable Chang Hu was guiding us with. Part of the problem was that I did not know how to relax every part of my body, because some parts (such as the spine) are hard to trace, let alone understand.  I resonated with Venerable Chang Hu’s remark that sometimes when a person really contemplates pain, the pain ends up being very elusive and hard to locate. On the Saturday evening of the retreat, Venerable Chang Hu explained different approaches to managing these kinds of pain. Among them are being able to imagine a warm, sweet fluid pouring down the muscles of one’s body; contemplation of the pain (where it arises, what it feels like, etc.); acceptance of certain kinds of pain as inevitable; adjusting one’s body to a more relaxed position that addresses the specific pain; and, finally, awareness of the breath. Venerable Chang Hu suggested that the latter is perhaps the most effective, precisely because it moves away from excessive dwelling or attachment to painful sensations. Perhaps the one remark that benefitted me the most was “Pain is none other than true mind”. That is, how a person experiences the pain is a reflection of their mind: the more one attributes thoughts and particular feelings to pain, the further away one gets from the true source of the pain, and the more pain becomes a very complicated vexation.

During the Saturday evening Dharma talk, I was most particularly moved when Venerable Chang Hu discussed the importance of diligence, and not being lazy with one’s practice. He noted one psychologist whose practice is to focus on his method before the pain even starts to set in. Venerable Chang Hu mentioned cases where people were able to survive the most unsustainable conditions of hunger and thirst because they had “gotten used to waiting”, or simply through sheer will power alone. His examples made me reflect on to what extent I might be using the feeling of pain as an excuse not to go deeply into my method, since I may be afraid to know what the method will reveal about me. After Venerable Chang Hu’s talk and subsequent prostration practice, I redoubled my efforts to go deeply into my method. I found that my angry determination to stay with the method caused my body to somehow adjust to whatever aches and pains it was experiencing, and I was able to sit for much longer than I could have imagined before. This example suggests to me that sometimes all we need in practice is a sense of faith and determination to keep going with our method, not dwelling on the inner pains that arise like tiny doubts on our consciousness.

During one of the Sunday sitting practices, I had also experienced this similar “fear of what my method could do”, and I think it’s somehow a fear of emptiness. What if this “body” of “mine” and this self I have cherished for so long turned out not to be really not really fully who I am? Then who am I? I shivered a bit at the boundlessness of that question and its potential answer, knowing that it is stirring up fear inside. I found myself hitting a barrier then, but I continued to practice anyway, just allowing my mind to relax. The question lingers with me, however. When participants were sharing at the end of the retreat, Venerable Chang Hu mentioned the importance of knowing where one’s questions really come from. Are we asking questions about practice because we really do want to practice, or are the questions only ways to delay our knowing of what we need to do to develop as practitioners? Venerable Chang Hu used the example of time, noting that when we want to do something, we will find the time to do it. In this world of suffering, am I really making the time for daily practice, or do I just enjoy the samsara so much that I will keep putting off practice indefinitely? These questions are for me to reflect on well and long after the retreat.

The pictures below are taken from Crieff Hills retreat center, in my daily walks. I had the opportunity to see some, but not all, of the sights, since there are at least three trails in the area. I hope to come back some other time to see the others, preferably when the trails are less muddy and icy.

 

pragmatic wisdom

When I was getting the cushions out to prepare for tonight's meditation, I had this reflection: in the end, there is only ever one mind one has to deal with, and that is the present mind. It's not "this mind" or "that mind", it's only mind. All too often, there is this tendency to think that the mind is confined to this self, which is limited in space and time, but no matter where we are, there we are. There is no other "there", over  there, or off in some other place. What follows from this is that when there is adversity in life, or when one encounters uncertainty, it's important to ask the right lines of inquiry: not "what am I supposed to learn from this?", but rather, "what parts of this experience foster the best in me?" or "what can I make of this that brings out the natural wisdom of the mind?"
   To use an example: a lot of people consult fortune tellers or psychics to try to determine their path of success in life. As they start to do so, they begin to try to figure out what their karma is: why they got to be what they are now, and even asking for assistance to learn how they can achieve better karma or results. The problem with this approach is that the more a person relies on this kind of thinking, the more they think there is something "out there" which they need to learn in order to be whole: a missing puzzle piece, for instance. While there is some merit to this idea, it can also lead to feelings of dependency, as when we were young and we were continually looking for ways to complete the puzzles in our lives, because we didn't think we were ever good enough to do so on our own. What if we already had the resources within us and the wisdom to make decisions, and what we really need to do is trust and have faith that our present mind has the ability to be okay and sort things through? More to the point, what would happen if we realized that there is simply no special spirit "out there" with special answers, but that the real work is to trust this present mind and the wisdom of simply being present?
   Perhaps pragmatic wisdom, then, is the wisdom of starting with where we are and then asking: how can we see the things in our life in such a way that we bring out our most responsible, virtuous and beneficial traits? It's not about what's is "true", what one's "fate" is, what I am "meant to do", etc....more like, what aspects or interpretations of the world I find myself in now can help me to be the best person I can be? For instance, if I am not feeling good about the political situation around me, I can either start writing hateful or vindictive letters to world leaders and get into an emotional foam, or I can look at it this way: what I can learn from this is how to settle my life in the midst of turmoil and figure out, in collaboration with others, ways to make things better or more workable for those around me. In this way, setting an example would be the one way I can influence the political situations in the broader society. Why is this second way more beneficial than the first? It's because I don't burn myself out or fume while trying to influence those in power to give up their power. Instead, I use the powers of patience and compassion within to create "mini" and sustainable communities of peace around me, thus setting a framework for how I would like to be, how I would like to be treated, and how I want everyone to live and be left to live according to their deepest aspirations.
   When I am acting and thinking, am I thinking there is a "Big Brother" who is to be influenced or turned around? Or am I thinking of what this mind can do and be in this present moment, in all its manifestations? If the former, I will be forever frustrated, because such a big power is always going to be elusive and seem so much bigger than who I think I am. If the latter, then I am working with the abilities and limitations I have, and become more intimate with who I am, thus paving the way for a harmonious relationship with the world.

Saying the Word Over Again...

      I am reading a book by Andrew Peterson (2017) called Compassion and Education: Cultivating Compassionate Children, Schools and Communities. In this book, Peterson devotes much of the second chapter to elaborating on an understanding of what compassion is, or is not. Is it a feeling? Well, it's more than a feeling, even though many people have talked about the emotions associated with it. Is it a reasoned principle or virtue? To a certain extent, but it's not the same as, say, courage, because it admits of neither extremes nor means. Peterson suggests that there is a combination of "practical wisdom" and "sense of common humanity" (p.16) in his analysis, opting for a more richly contextualized view of compassion which admits of varying intensities and ways of expression.
     Part of this discussion, I must admit, reminds me of an old game that kids used to play in the school yard, and it had to do with saying a word so often, repeatedly, that it starts to sound completely different from what it's supposed to refer to. For instance, if you keep saying the word "chair" over and over again, resting your mind only on the act of saying "chair", it starts to lose its meaning referent over time. Soon enough, one begins to wonder, "what exactly do these five characters symbolize?", since the very sound "chair" has nothing to do with the object you sit on that has four legs. 
   I believe that the same thing goes for the case of the word "compassion". Repeating it over and over in different contexts to try to get a better sense of what it is or is not, turns out to be a very fatiguing task for me. It ends up becoming such a broad appeal to continued reflection and "reasoned action" (p.16), that I am tempted to think that compassion is what a person makes of it, rather than being something that is fixed in nature, like a concept or a thing. In her discussions on gratitude, Kerry Howells (2012) also warns her readers of the dangers of trying to reduce gratitude into a kind of external "thing" (p.28), or a kind of disembodied concept. For Howells, the act of "doing gratitude" is an unfolding and deliberative process that is richly contextual and interconnected with others on a shared landscape of a community or a school.
   It seems that in both books, the act of letting go of these concepts of gratitude and compassion ironically leads to their renewal- precisely because at the end of the day, what they point to is not restricted to form. Gratitude and compassion are boundless ways of seeing and being which are not attached to objects, but instead use objects as ways of uplifting mind itself. But even these too are words, and I am afraid that the best they can do is point to lived here and now-ness. In other words, we cannot fall back on a reified concept of these two words, but must let our sense of wonder of what they might mean guide us to something that is more formless and interconnected.

Howells, K. (2012). Gratitude in Education: A Radical View. Boston: Sense Publishers
Peterson, A. (2017). Compassion and Education: Cultivating Compassionate Children, Schools and Communities. London: Springer

Coexisting and not disowning

 I think one of the trickiest things in one's spiritual practice is not demonizing or trying to disown one's various tendencies, but instead to consider them as part of a larger ecosystem. If there is something in particular that one doesn't like about themselves, how might they see that in a way that is compassionate of all? I remember reading something by a psychiatrist who talked about the kinds of suffering that people often went into because their desires weren't accepted in the greater community. Rather than condemning those people, he felt compassion for them, and was able to see that desire lies on an emotional spectrum rather than a kind of polarity.
   What's interesting about this is that it positions desire as a gateway to compassion. If we don't suffer or go through the ups and downs, we hardly have a basis for relating to others or for being able to see the wildness (and beauty) of all things. This is why it can be sometimes useful to stop judging emotions and just see them for what they are, even relaxing with them.
  Of course, suppressing what a person feels is also detrimental because it ends up creating inner turmoil or conflict. Paradoxically, it is only when a person stops fighting with these things that they lose their power over a person; in a sense, they become more clear to the person and one can start to ask, what does this desire want of me? What is it asking me to explore that is unresolved, or what kinds of discomfort is the desire asking me to become a bit more comfortable with? Sometimes there is no actual grand "finale" moment when a desire reveals some key meaning to life. Moreso, the desire might have been tricking a person all along into thinking that fulfilling it would bring about some major transformation or overnight success; in fact, what it was doing was putting a person on a journey of learning about oneself and how they react toward different things, including frustration. I consider all of this as an opportunity to co-exist with all one's emotions and tensions.

Gratitude Continued..

I think that from reading Kerry Howells' book on gratitude and education, I get a sense that indeed, our notions of gratitude tend to be bit solipsistic. If I say "I am grateful to have a job, to have so and so friends, to be successful" and so on, the object of that gratitude is actually this kind of self: the sense of "I" am comfortable, or I have what I need to feel good about myself. But, as Howells suggests in her book, genuine gratitude is really at a kind of special intersection between a giver and a receiver. What this means is that my feeling of gratitude comes from the ability to contribute or to connect with another, without an expectation of personal gain or a reward.
   In this sense, gratitude strikes me as being more of a commitment than it is a feeling of special gain. For instance, the gratitude I feel toward my job consists in how I am able to give something to the company again and again: a kind of commitment that comes through a regular dedication and unwavering loyalty to my job. Sometimes it doesn't always feel good to me, but I have reached a point where it doesn't matter how it feels to me; it is more the ability to connect and contribute that becomes the hub of that grateful connection. For me, this gratitude actually consists in the feeling that I am able to give, thanks to whoever is receiving what I am giving. And all at once, that flips the relationship of giver and receiver, so that the giver actually receives a special privilege as giver.
   In Buddhism, there is a tradition of thanking the recipient of one's gifts or time for the ability to allow the giver to give, and thus practice buddhadharma. Are there similar equivalents in education? I would have to say so, because a teacher's ability to give is also dependent in some way on students' ability to receive the teacher's care. In that sense, the teacher is as indebted to student as is vice versa. Gratitude thus operates in a kind of inter-connection of giving and receiving, where both parties serve both to give and receive. Even though I may appear to be offering myself in giving to someone else, I am freely being offered the ability to be of service to the other. My ability to serve is as much a gift to me as it is to someone else, if not more so.
   This may sound like a moot point, but when I frame the practice of care and giving in light of the theory of gratitude as stated above, I no longer consider myself as having privileges as a result of giving. It's really up to the receiver who accepts my gift (or not), so I no longer have this sense of entitlement based on how much I see myself as the giver. In other words, no matter how much I give or think I give, I am not entitled to receive anything from the other, since my free offerings depend on their (the receiver's) fee offerings. This allows me to give with less desire or expectation, much less a sense of entitlement as to what I think I deserve from others. And that can be very freeing for me.

Howells, K. (2012). Gratitude in Education: A Radical View. Boston: Sense Publishers

Random Acts

  It would be interesting, I think, to explore where the notion of "Random Acts of Kindness" came from. Yesterday, during my class on Gulliver's Travels, I explored the idea of a society where acts of virtue are rewarded as much as transgressions are punished. In a game that I created for the students, I had them rank in order of what was important, things they would like to see get rewarded with "extra marks" in school. Among one of the list items was "performing random acts of kindness." One of the students facetiously remarked that her concept of "random" would be something like giving a sandwich to a plant. The humor of this random act is that, of course, we wouldn't imagine doing something so random that it isn't beneficial to the other. In that sense, there isn't really such a thing as a "random act", since even kindness to strangers is predicated on the idea that it actually benefits those strangers in some way. For instance, I remember someone telling me that she decided to pay all her ex-boyfriend's phone bills. Had the boyfriend not had a phone or was a multimillionaire, perhaps this wouldn't have been an act she would have been motivated to do.
   The point of the "random acts" movement is not to reward unsuspecting recipients as much as it is to uplift or help the giver to stop attaching to specific people who are recipients. That is, a person often gives things with the idea of how they themselves will benefit from giving: for instance, through seeing the other person smile, or through a strengthened bond with that person. In giving randomly to strangers, the person learns to let go of self-attachment and to expand the view of who is worthy of her offering. Generally speaking, I would have to say that "random acts" aren't easy to do--and nor are they random after all. There is often some reason which is embedded in a spiritual tradition and a view of humanity which motivates such acts. For example, if I truly believe that everyone has their own separate predestined fate and individual karma, then the act of giving to the other, for no other reason than giving itself, might not make sense to me. If, on the other hand, I ascribe to the view that all beings can benefit from the merits of others and be uplifted by others' gifts, if not transformed by them, then my giving seems more meaningful and significant. Even when a person states that they are doing this giving "spontaneously", this is only because they have trained themselves in a certain way of seeing or being in the world, such as though a spiritual idea or practice.
    There are deeper reasons why we give which have a lot to do with how we are able to step into the shoes of others. But the point is that without a basic understanding of the importance and benefits of free gifts, it's easy to get caught up in a narrative where things are always given in exchange for other goods. I wonder if there are people in the world who are born and brought up believing that everything they have ever done in life had to be earned through their own efforts. I am sure that most people have been in situations where they simply couldn't pull themselves up (as in cases where we are ill), at which point they could see that nobody can possibly live only on their own efforts. From here, I suppose a person can develop a real gratitude.
 

What I Didn't Teach

 When I opened the Power Point for the Grade 4 class on Gulliver's Travels, I knew instinctively that I wasn't going to follow it during this class. I could see that I had put together too many quotes from the book and long , wordy historical references to the conflicts between England and Ireland in Swift's time...and for Grade 4 students! And there were simply not enough pictures in my power point to make something compelling for me to teach. It seems as though when I had designed this power point, I had either overestimated the kids' interest in historical forays, or was simply in a scholarly mood. I gather that teachers may sometimes have difficulties of drawing the line between their own pet interests and those of their students. And sometimes even one's confidence can falter in those tiny micro-moments between looking at the power point and starting to engage the class.
   It turns out, as usual, that my students become my best teachers when it comes to communicating to me how I can best communicate with them. Surprisingly to me, the students do have their own unique curiosities about Swift, much of which center around the kinds of things that many of the "censored" children's editions of Gulliver's Travels leave out, namely the scatalogical and urological references. Let's face it: perhaps the most memorable part of this book is  the one we don't see in the children's movie version, namely the part where Gulliver urinates on a building to put out a fire in Lilliput. Even I find it amusing, and I am supposedly a grown man. It's not just the physical act itself which is amusing (although that's part of it), but more so the ethical meanings that the kids can tease out of it, including whether Gulliver was right to soil the Princesses' quarters with his bodily fluid, in the interests of putting out a fire. One of the students insisted that we read this part together--which he certainly volunteered to do with a lot of gusto. And he made me realize that there is no need to fluff up this book with too many royal frills from a historical past; Gulliver's dilemmas still have relevance and interest for young readers, with or without the historical references to battles and skirmishes that took place in Ireland and England in the 1700s.
   At the same time, I can honestly reflect that I could have done a better job in being more confident about what I did prepare. Sometimes, a teacher needs to pause and ask her or himself: if this "thing" that I prepared is so onerous, so daunting, so painful to look at, why did it seem like "a good idea at the time"? What was it about that time, that place, that mental space, etc. that lead me to create those slides, and not some others? Reflecting on these decisions can allow me to fine tune my approach, incorporating historical background into a more pedestrian, everyday summary of what is actually going on in the text. So, there is a balance of decisions to be made here, which relate to both past and present: namely, how to "render" the meaning of what a person prepared in the past with the contingencies of the current moment. That's a skill that I hope to learn more in teaching.

Doing What You Will

 I recall reading a book by Aldous Huxley years ago, in my early 20s, and it was called Do What You Will. I have forgotten where the title of the book comes from exactly, but I remember reading this book at a time when this is exactly what I was doing--doing what I willed--and enjoying it as well. I was enjoying the fact that I had one more year before graduating from university, as well as the fact that I was no longer reading books because I was forced to or felt the need to 'lift myself' out of the quagmire of literature. I was simply reading whatever I wanted to read, in particular Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, and a bevy of other writers.
   Lately, I experience the same sense of wanting to read more of what I like. But I am old enough to recognize that this is simply in response to the pressures of having to read what I don't particularly enjoy or find engaging, and thus reacting to the implied "other" who is authoritative and happens to enjoy what I enjoy less. The point is: what happens to that enjoyment when the sense of pressure is no longer there? Sometimes the enjoyment stays, but more likely, it starts to transform into a kind of routine, where one no longer delights in the contrast between unpleasant and the "healing pleasant".
   The point is: even when I say I have a "will" of my own to enjoy the things I really "like" to do, it seems to me that the notion of liking is contingent upon states of dislike. I mean that without the sense of what I find cumbersome, there is no real enjoyment of the less cumbersome. And why is that? The only answer I can think of is that the two states of being are always interconnected and exist in unique tension with one another that is dynamic and changing.
   "Like" and "dislike" are really two sides of a coin. While this isn't to say that one should discard likes, it might be helpful to know how like and dislike co-exist in tension, and are even indispensable to one another. A good example might be ice cream. I remember when a friend and I had gone to a mutual friend's house and ended up raiding the ice cream --literally starting out with a small taste and later culminating into many gulps of ice cream before the friend came back! Had the friend never come back, the ice cream would have been seen as already within our means, and therefore perhaps less delightful. Everyone has heard about the idea that making something "forbidden" only increases our desire or craving for it, but this might be another way of saying that unpleasant repercussions always hang over the pleasant, warning us not to take too much and to be mindful of the consequences.

Smelling Meditation

This evening, during the group sharing period, Venerable Chang Hu introduced us to a practice which he calls "smelling meditation". He took a piece of incense and burned it, after which he passed the bowl of incense around so that the others can smell it as well. The participants then reported on what they experienced with using the object of smell to meditate.
   I found one interesting observation, and that is that smell is a very non-pervasive object. So long as the smell is not overbearing, it actually forms a very subtle object which allows the mind to be less distracted. When I was meditating, I was reminded that sometimes we need some kind of object to allow our minds to rest and not be easily stirred by the surroundings. What's interesting about smell for me is that it's not an object that is likely to lead to other associations, the way sight or sound is. A smell is often just a smell, and unless there are specific memories associated with it, it's not likely that it will sway one's mind state in other directions. The other thing I observed is that when the smell is pleasant and comforting, the way incense is, I will have a tendency to breathe a little bit deeper and finer. For this reason, I quite appreciated the practice tonight. I even symbolically associated the incense rising upward with the way that the group was coalescing in the meditation together. There was definitely a sense of a shared experience in the act of passing a fragrance around the room.
   In general, I think Chang Hu Fashi's teaching is something I need right now the most: to learn to relax in every condition, no matter what it happens to be. When I asked Chang Hu Fashi how I could relax at work, he offered many suggestions, including slowing down to observe my body turning on the computer, taking short breaks in between to be mindful of my body state, and even setting an alarm which will allow me to take meditative breaks or slow myself down to appreciate the way I do my work rather than rushing through it all the time. I find that when my body is tense, I am always interpreting my experiences as a state of danger or fear. Chang Hu Fashi's teaching reminds me to take care of the basic elements of my experience rather than getting caught up in theories about meditation.

blocked thoughts

I find that when I am writing a commentary for one of my class postings, I will get somewhat blocked. My ability to generate new ideas or to resonate with the subject is often dependent on how relaxed my mind is. For example, today felt very busy at work, and there were some things which caused some stress toward the end of the day for me. When I got home, I was not only distracted from the process of framing responses to the weekly writings, but even when I sat down to think about it, my mind felt a bit confined.
   Years ago, I read a study which suggests that people who suffer depression are more prone to thinking "literally" about things than others who are not depressed. I think this relates to what I experienced earlier tonight: when a person is experiencing some amount of stress, their mind will go into a kind of strategizing mode where every outcome becomes like the spaces on a chessboard. In contrast, framing responses to writing requires more parallel thinking, which seems to be inhibited somewhat by the strategic style of thinking. To a certain extent. it's as though one is telling themselves that there is no "luxury" to entertain possibilities or to think more spaciously when situations arise at work that feel dangerous. Stress in fact has a tendency to mobilize people into a mode of fight or flight.
   Of course, most of this comes from allowing certain thoughts to magnify one's experiences. A person might take 100 per cent of the blame for something and burden themselves with that sense of responsibility, only to realize later that all situations involve many factors. No single person can ever take the blame for all situations, but they can only examine which factors that they can influence. While this sounds flippant, actually, having this quiet reflection on cause and conditions sometimes mitigates the heaviness that one feels when they try to take total blame for things. Such an idea of "total blame" is not compassionate, and at times, we need to step outside of it to really get a sense of what is going on and how we can see it in new ways. The converse of blame is the "all powerful self" which is supposedly autonomous and independent--again, another kind of mythical portrayal of what accountability might look like in community with others.

The Nothing Space

 I am convinced that when it comes to a creative life, there is an essential skill in being able to "do nothing". When I say "do nothing", I don't mean just letting things hang out, the way a person might do at the family dinner gathering, but more like a kind of quiet potency. If you've ever seen a cat staring out a window, you might start to notice the sense of quietly waiting for conditions to ripen. The cat is very alert, but at the same time very relaxed. Normally, these two things (alertness and relaxation) don't appear in the same sentence, since one tends to associate alertness with a kind of restlessness.
    This skill is hard to really perfect, I think, because we are used to having something to do, and even when we do nothing, the emphasis is on the "nothing" part as though that were a "thing" or an object that we cling to. If I am lying in bed on a Sunday morning, I might appear to be doing nothing at all, but in my heart I am holding onto the sense of comfort in being in a warm bed: I am attached to something, and that feeling of pleasure defines my being in bed in that moment. But if I am truly "doing nothing", the emphasis is more on the doing--that is, the quiet attentiveness and the potency of being. When I am in that mode, I am capable of receiving the world with an open heart, and responding to the world with an easy mind that is not chained to any particular sense or agenda. And in this receptiveness, there is the opportunity to put together new perspectives or at least discover them with a new set of paradigms or frameworks.
   This morning and yesterday, I didn't feel very well. What happened was that as soon as I got home in the evening from the library, I had this thought of wanting to work on my proposal drafts in some depth. The problem is, as I reasoned later, these books I have lying on the floor and in front of me don't have the same feeling that they did when I borrowed them some few months back. And even though they are renewable (still), I somehow need to clear them away before I can find a new place to start in the subjects of my interest. Earlier today, this is just what I did. However, I kept one of the books because it started to feel mysteriously interesting on the subway ride, and I ended up signing out 3 new books related somewhat to my proposal. Sometimes, it's just like this, and the process of taking back old books and signing out new (and rediscovering the "old") is part of the randomness of creative processes. All one can do sometimes is to ride this randomness and be open to surprises. This is truly a "nothing space" where many things can be discovered.
   

Sense of Wonder in Debate

 Yesterday, I had lead the class in Gulliver's Travels in a funny debate, related to the battle between the "low heels" and "high heels". We decided to modernize it a bit and make the debate around which is better: "low heels", "high heels" or "flip flops". Although the students tended be competitive about debates, citing ways to "offend" their competing views, the students did it in a good-natured and respectful way which, in the end, promoted peacefulness to a large extent. I think one of the reasons for this, in retrospect, is that the debate is a bit off the wall, and it somehow relates to things that might seem a bit trivial in a way. But I think that Swift might also have been making the observation that in 17th century England, a lot of what was being 'debated' or even fought over were rather insubstantial things, which he satirizes by detailing a war that is fought over how an egg should be cut (top first or bottom first). In the end, I gave the kids "gummy feet" candy to celebrate their mutual participation in the process of exploring what kinds of shoes might be the best. I did not crown anyone the real "winner" or "loser" in this debate.
   I think that before students can even tackle the larger debates that are currently of importance, they need to understand the spirit of debate. Rather than being a competition to see who can "win", perhaps debating is about more generating good ideas, regardless of who says them. When I start to write the students' answers on the white board, I notice that the students start to get more into the spirit of the game. Perhaps they want to see, out of curiosity, which side will end up having the most pluses, and which will have more minuses. But it even seems that once the ideas are written down, there is a dialectical process where the students are allowed to see how their arguments appear alongside their fellow students, and how some arguments might be refined or developed in more detail. For example, one student mentioned that high heels might be better for people with flat feet. Now, I don't know how scientific this point is, but it prompted more discussion on which shoe is healthier to wear, and thus generated more creative and thought-provoking answers. The students seem to get more excited to see the way the answers develop more questions and what was once taken for granted is questioned.
   When debates are "playful" rather than reflecting a student's sense of self-worth or intelligence, there seems to be more room for improvisation, fewer "wrong" answers, and more of a sense of agreeableness among the students, if not collegiality. Answers are less inhibited, and there's more room for humor as well. I suggest that this way of teaching debate might be valuable because it does not associate debating with trying to defeat one's opponents or making self-comparisons. Perhaps this can allow students to approach debates exploratively with a sense of wonder.

Nameless Subway Stations

   Last night, I had a strange dream, in which I had been trying to find a subway stop but was unable to locate specific labels of the subway stops on a map. I ended up naturally getting lost in a complicated, rather intestinal, subway system, finding some strange subway names such as "I" subway station. The actual name of the subway I was looking for is unknown to me now, but somehow the name reminded me of the port where ships dock.
   I don't often write about my dreams, let alone remember them, but this one struck me in an interesting way as symbolizing the search for identity and the ways in which a person can get lost in adopting multiple identities without a proper view. I hardly subscribe to the view that identity is ever a single and permanent thing, because such a view conceals the way in which we cultivate many different kinds of relationships with people and occupations, and no single identity could ever possibly fit over all of them. But at the same time, the lack of labeling of the subway stops suggests a frightening view where there isn't even a language to describe the anguish of not quite knowing how to phrase one's identity struggles into a comprehended language.
   In Buddhist philosophy, one is often told not to be too attached to one's sense of identity, since it's not a static or permanent reality. Yet, at the same time, practitioners can become skilled in being able to discern phenomena on their own terms. Master Sheng Yen remarks "all dharmas, or all things, have their respective phenomena and scopes, without the slightest disorder. Their harmonious unity does not hinder other phenomena from existing individually. If we see all phenomena in the world with the eyes of wisdom, each phenomena has its own position" (p.185). If we apply this idea to language, one will understand that language and identity exist only in terms of a particular constellation of relationships. The "feeling of lost" that I sometimes have in the midst of that is thinking there should be a single coherent identity that sums up all these relationships, when in fact there isn't: phenomena occupy the positions they do, and there is no need to disturb other phenomena since they all exist due to their unique causes and conditions.
    Perhaps one elegant way to look at this is to say that there is no need to pick and choose the subway stops, since each stop has its place and characteristics. I might feel lost or disoriented, but that's not because the stop has no labels, but because language points to human desires. All signs point to one's desires and expectations, because signs are often designed to make it easier to get to the places we want to be, in the process of shaping our lives. But if I am not clinging to the shape that life happens to have in the moment, then I can feel at home in situations where I don't know how to name my subway stop, much less find it.

Sheng Yen (2014). Chan and Enlightenment. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publications

Psychology of Disengagement

 During the Chan and Enlightenment study group today, a participant had raised an interesting question over the passage which reads, regarding the Theravadin arhats, "[I]n their minds there is not anything they want to do, nor is there anything they do not want to do" (p.182). She wondered if this perhaps entails a kind of indifference, which is perhaps similar to the experience of someone not having any preference as to what to do or not to do. As I was going home, I started to relate this topic to a question of what it means to be disengaged from certain aspects of life. Does disengagement really mean "not being connected" and "not desiring" something, or is it a bit more complicated than that?
   Buddhist notions of disengagement are much more nuanced than that of "keeping one's distance" or suppressing desires, or even trying to escape from unpleasant situations. In fact, the Buddhist notion relates precisely to the quote from Sheng Yen's book: it's not that I want to "do nothing", as I am open to doing anything. It means that the mind is not moving to preferring one state of being to the other. I am reminded here of what I once read in Schopenhauer's writings, when he talks about how we often nostalgically look back to our past because we are looking at it through the lens of things as they really are, without imposing a particular will to be or to have things, on the past memory. When my experience is not influenced by will or desire, what I experience is perfectly perfect: it is endowed with an endless and beautiful presence which arises spontaneously, without having to will its meaning into existence.
   I have had such moments of "beholding things as they are without desire" before when looking at neighborhoods in Toronto. I have often been filled with the fleeing sense of presence when I am looking at a neighborhood without a sense of prior experience of the place, let alone personalities I might associate with it. When I used to go on walks in my undergraduate university years, I would often deliberately try to seek this experience of disorientation and newness in my various walks and haunts, but I often had to deliberately suspend what I thought I knew about the place. That takes a certain amount of openness, which often happens when I am trying to "sum up" what I have experienced in a single emotion rather than trying to get lost in the details of everyday life and anxiety. Even underneath the dull and dreadful sense of 'disconnection' which we sometimes experience in life, there is a very palpable and living engagement which is inseparable from one's sense of being in the universe. It is a "there-ness" that can't fully be described much less contained.
   Disengagement, I think, is really the will getting in the way of this experience of being which is always there in the background of day to day living. It is a kind of inner conflict which arises in the disparity between what one wants to happen and what is happening in the moment.When the will gets in the way, it's all about trying to achieve the goal of some distant or vague happiness. But when I don't let the will ensnare me and practice with the faith that things are already deeply meaningful in each moment, then Idon't feel "cut off" from the distant goal itself, and I start to see things as they are without having to assert the self or even feel anything in particular. Kierkegaard at one time remarked that he had experienced such a sense of engagement in something as simple as staring at somebody's nose! I think we can all enjoy moments where just being in the present yields unexpected joys, which are not forced or planned in any way.

Sheng Yen (2014). Chan and Enlightenment. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing

Time and Engagement

  In my recent blog entries, I have been exploring the idea that sometimes what might seem repetitive and uncomfortable is actually a disguised journey of the spirit. I take my Thursday meditation practice to be one such example. It's sometimes hard for me to believe that a person with my kind of shyness could have co-facilitated such a group for so long. One of the things which motivates me is that it gives me time to practice responding to imperfect moments: those times when you wish you were more prepared, but aren't so terribly prepared on the inside, yet need to prepare something anyway. In the past, I used to get very uncomfortable and withdrawn at the prospect of not being emotionally ready to lead a group of people in some capacity. But lately, especially with the facilitation and my Saturday teaching job, I have noticed a tendency to just throw out what I have, without having to worry too much about planning what I will say and when.  The secret is in knowing that there is no time whatsoever, and that this concept of "having a lot of time" or "having no time" is really illusory. It's based on the false idea that time consists in a series of successive steps, when it's actually the mind that breaks time down into such "steps".
   It seems to me that once one starts to create a working context around an activity (the what, the where, the when, the details), what follows is a growing sense of confidence which, in turn, leads to the growing sense that time is a linear process. At the end of the day, it's not "time" itself which moves people through life, but one's creation of time, especially through a choice to meaningfully engage a process. So one needn't worry so much about preparing anything, other than to be familiar as much as possible with a process. It's no so much about preparing everything that could possibly happen as it is about having the confidence that you yourself are the "weaver" of moments, and you can make sense of different moments. Time is not moving you at all, and you are not bound by time.
 

Skating on Thin Ice

 This evening, I felt that the sidewalks had suddenly turned into skating rinks, as the deep freeze of snow and ice started to thaw out in an unexpected rain downpour. I almost got caught in it, and did struggle a bit to mobilize myself. All the while, I hearkened back to my recent foot injury,and told myself to really take it easy, even hopping on the snowy patches if need be. And my experience narrowed into something like "pure survival" in those moments. I felt somewhat dreary but at the same time very much alive to what was happening inside me and around me. How can something so constraining be such a source of aliveness, then?
   I of course have my theories about such experiences (as have others), but I do believe it has something to do with mindfulness. When we are in situations that call for us to be extraordinarily attentive to our surroundings, we are in an environment where we need to clear our mind of all the frivolous thoughts, and be very present with our steps. Even though there were moments when I simply could not walk at all, or had to stand on a bare patch of ground, I was very much in that moment of appreciating the ability to stand. And each patch of ground became like a kind of paradise of sorts. The second effect that these situations entail is that there is a clear awareness of what needs to be done in that moment. If it's about getting indoors and letting the ice thaw out, then my mind becomes determined to achieve that goal. Being very alert of what is necessary in the moment often puts us in a place that is much more resolved and peaceful than, say, the idle or scattered thoughts which often arise when things are not so pressing.
   Meditation is one way to sharpen the attention so that a person can see their life with this attitude of care. But in a sense, I am especially interested in the metaphor of "skating on thin ice", because, to me, it signifies the fragility of conditions. One careless word is just like a careless slip on the ice. Whenever a person does things without a sense of their feet being carefully planted on the ground, they might often be swept away in the torrential rush of emotions and fleeting dreams. As soon as things become "safe" again, people often go back to the old mentality of "everything's okay, so I can coast for now", until they once again fall into a risky or dangerous situation. But if we can adopt an approach of care, then we can also feel the joy of knowing one's conditions, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, and to be familiar with oneself and one's limitations and abilities. This clear understanding of how one functions in the world is often an unexpected source of joy, because it takes a person out of the suffering of lax and wandering thoughts which ultimately aren't of much value.

The Frantic Psychology of Rush Hours

 Tonight, I went home earlier than usual to handle some work-related tasks and editing, and for the first time in a long time, I experienced "rush hour" on a subway. Normally, I don't go straight home from work at all, due to other commitments I have which usually happen either in the library or in the meditation hall. Because it had been such a long time since I had done so, getting on the congested subway on the way to Finch Subway Station felt very strange for me tonight. I also felt compelled to walk home rather than take the bus back home, and I still felt uneasy until I made a detour into a quiet sidestreet. It was then (and perhaps only then) when I could experience my own solitude as a kind of relief from the pressures of the rushing hours.
   While I was on the subway, I had this reflection: between the hours of 5 pm and 7 pm (approximately), there seems to be a frantic rush for everyone to get home from work at about the same time. I feel as though many of the people who do this might benefit from not trying to rush home too fast. However, after a long day at work, perhaps the prospect of home or a bed seem super-sweet. My point, however, is: is it worth it to go home early and, in doing so, face the rush itself? Is it really "home" one goes to, if the way home is through such busyness, and such desire to get somewhere?
   I have found that my life seems to work most effectively when I am in no rush whatsoever to get home: when I dawdle, and when I am able to draw energy from places where things are not so rushed. What is more tiring: waiting in a rush hour for a bus that takes one home before 8 pm, or deciding to do a detour by attending a social event or reading a book in the library, or going for a walk or a run? I believe that the latter are less tiring, because they are done in contexts where people are engaging in something for its own sake (socializing, reading, walking, running, etc.) without this idea that they need to get somewhere fast or be settled in a certain place by a certain time. Home, yes, is a compelling idea, because it has spiritual meanings, and there is a sense of rest and repose that comes from even the abstract concept of home. However, I begin to doubt that simply rushing home after work is going to make people feel refreshed and regenerated. I have found that for myself, there is a need for a space in between work and home, where there is activity without urgency; movement without destiny; work without compulsion. And I do believe it's a good idea if everyone find that certain space for themselves, before they can conclude that going home after work is the only way to energize or rest the mind and body.