Mindfulness of Separation

Feelings of separation are really quite complex, and they can take us deep into mystery, but the problem is that a lot of the time, we don't see these separations as relationships with reality. The problem is that we have a very crude vocabulary for describing separation. "Separation" I am talking about has nothing to do with loneliness: it is more about being open to the mysterious and groundless aspect of the world and to the heart itself that is in this wasteland of sorts. It is a strange place, but all too often, we ascribe this feeling of separation to "not having the company of others". The result is that a person in the thrall of this separation anxiety immediately runs toward the first company they can find to drown out the feelings of separation. Because of the way society has taught us to associate feelings of separation with "not enough company", people immediately flock to the crowd as a way of gaining safety from it.
   It's a pity that one doesn't just stay with those feelings for a while to understand the deeper meaning behind them: to behold a kind of immense groundless aspect of being. I can't quite describe it, and sometimes music gets us closer to it, but there is a feeling of having something on the top of one's head but not quite remembering what it is, and then searching and searching for it like a pair of lost keys. But the important thing is that a person needs to balance these immense mysteries with the social identity in which one is able to live and work. That is tricky indeed, because if I go the way of immensity, I will easily get lost in it and might even not come back to any working self. If I go the way of too much "self" in society, I will lose that immensity, and every glimpse of it will make me run for the next social group or support, or task that will remind me of "who I am". In fact, all these tasks I am fulfilling are only tools to allow me to fully relate to this groundless immensity: to do so in a balanced way that allows others to share it and live with it in harmony.

Authority in Spiritual Life

 I recently came across the following quote in a book called Chan Comes West (2016) by Dharma Drum Mountain disciple and teacher, Simon Child, where he notes:

I have travelled through and beyond skepticism and an aversion to "religiosity", I have found confirmation in my own lifetime of the truth of Chan. I have found arising in me, in a welcome and natural manner, not as something externally imposed upon me, manifestations of what I previously labelled as religiosity. Compassion, gratitude, and repentance arise spontaneously from a clearer mind with less self; they are not some task to be undertaken reluctantly (p.66-67)

As I have been reading this quote, I have asked myself the questions: when does the "authority" of "religiosity" described by Child carry real weight, and when is it brushed off as something "imposed" from "outside"? More to the point---aren't "outside" and "inside" unreal distinctions in Chan? Just exactly where do the notions of "inside" and "outside" arise, if not from the mind itself and its tendency to take certain things as "myself" and leaving the rest as "not myself"?
    Related to this is the phenomenology of receiving authority. Has anybody studied this subject yet? I think it's interesting to consider under what conditions and in what way some choose to take on authority as extensions of themselves, whereas others are very resistant to authority. When do these experiences happen?
   It might be a simple matter of empathy which allows people to identify with authority: I see the other as someone who is somewhat like me in the way I feel, and thus I choose to accept their authority rather than seeing it as something alien or foreign to me, or "imposed upon me". On the other hand, I am sure that many have experienced situations where the encounter with authority left them feeling completely unaccepted or unacceptable as persons. Somehow, the authority triggers a part of ourselves that does not feel adequate, or loved, or lovable, perhaps because the authority figure is not seeing us as individuals.
    Sometimes, I think that the way spiritual authority might work is something like a dialectic tension between the sublimity of something "bigger" and the joy of internalizing a piece of it within ourselves. Too much sublimity will lead a person to feel overwhelmed and even pushed somewhat by the authority into doing unsavory or undesirable things which feel life/self-denying. When a small piece of that authority is acknowledged as living within one's soul and being, then it's no longer experienced as an external power, but more as an internal conscience or an honored space of conflict that resides in the mind, not necessarily even between persons.
   Authority might also be something like a seed implanted in us until we can become our own authorities of sorts. The important point for Child, like others, is that people don't get stuck in the two poles of either accepting authority entirely on faith and obedience (which often leads to disillusionment and over-idealizing others), or rejecting outright as always imposing and "bad".

Sheng Yen, et al (2016). Chan Comes West (2nd ed). New York: Dharma Drum Publications

Demolitions

On the way through Sheppard Subway station, I saw a demolition team going into the mall interstices to drill through some walls. And later this morning on the way to the back specialist, I saw two cars had collided with each other close to Bloor Street. What do these events signify in my mind?
  Demolitions are easier than constructions--and somehow more fascinating. I think there is something about the human mind that likes to stop to see destruction such as car accidents, and for the life of me, I can't quite figure out the reason why. Could it be that there is a certain part of us that instinctively wants to let go of the pressure to keep constructing? Is the opposite element also necessary for the maintenance of life?
     I have been reading a book by Chongyam Trungpa called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, where he talks about this tendency for humans to build the ego, either through the Lord of Form (material possessions), the Lord of Speech (identification with words, concepts, language) and the Lord of Mind (spiritual ideas). The latter is most difficult to detect because a lot of spiritual practitioners decide to emulate their spiritual teachers rather than doing the difficult "demolition" of letting go and simply being with whatever energies are emerging in mind. Chongyam Trungpa remarks:
 
The exciting, colorful, dramatic quality of the emotions captures our attention as if we were watching an absorbing film show. In the practice of meditation we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. By seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining and distracting us. Thus they become the inexhaustible energy which fulfills egoless action (p.10-11)

This teaching is difficult because it requires that a person completely release any ideas they have about themselves as being good or bad, spiritual or non-spiritual, and not to accumulate any ideas nor cling to specific ideas as one's identity. I think of this as similar to a human "demolition".
   Until such a time as people can live in this way, they might always be a little bit fascinated by acts of demolition, because such acts hint at a kind of release of grasping and 'constructing' a false or illusory sense of self.

Trungpa, Chogyam. (1973). Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Boulder: Shambhala

Emotions = Good or Bad?

I am thinking a little bit about how emotions become "shoulds" or "shouldn't". How is it that something a person feels becomes a source of moral shame, and then prohibition? The reason I am thinking about this is that we had a Surangama Sutra study group this afternoon where we talked about the Buddhist notion of karmic retribution: how, for instance, an animal must live its life in retribution for previous deeds. When the animal has finally completed its retribution or has "overpayed" retribution, it then has the opportunity to become a human. It's only when there is a Buddha around that these sentient beings (animals, humans, etc.) can come to realize that the entire back and forth of retribution is a complete delusion. It's similar to the hand: a hand is simply a series of separate moments, forming this concept "hand", when in fact they don't come together at all to form any enduring identity whatsoever. It's all an illusion to say that they are unified. Yet the mind creates these dreams and nightmares.
  To go back to my topic of emotion and karma: many people interpret the meaning of this section of Surangama Sutra as "you are being punished for doing bad things, so you are an animal in this life". In other words, rather than seeing the situation simply from the perspective of the natural function of cause and effect, there is an additional moral approbation tacked onto it. But I am wondering, what would it mean not to attach any moral approbation to the causes and conditions? Instead, what if I were to simply see karma as a natural law, no different from the laws of gravity or the conservation of matter and energy?
   The problem is that people just don't do that because they are afraid that not morally grading things is going to lead to chaos. The result is that we simply are unable to work with emotions, because they are either repressed or denied, because they don't fit with the idealized image we have of ourselves: "always happy", "pleasant", "easy going", "able to accommodate everyone" etc. Paradoxically, the lack of integration of such emotions can lead to a certain brittleness. Again, is Buddha really saying that certain beings do "bad" things and are therefore "bad"? Or is he really saying that certain states of being create certain consequences and therefore should be studied in some way to prevent painful outcomes?
  Emotions could be de-stigmatized, at which point they can become ways for us to reflect more deeply on ourselves and why we suffer. But if there is a moral meaning attached to emotions, it becomes nearly impossible to see oneself clearly.

On Being Contrite

Contrition seems to be an important theme in Buddhist philosophy. I define "contrition" as the ability to look upon one's path as still lacking and incomplete, rather than believing that it has somehow already completed itself. In a way, it's a good thing that one's acts are incomplete, because without that sense of incompleteness or "failure", one might think they have attained something that they truly haven't. Contrition aids in thus allowing a person to practice humility, which opens doors to a bigger world.
  It's interesting how sometimes cynicism can lead to contrition through a process of exhaustion. If a person knows everything and has "been there before" or "done that" then there is simply nothing new, and that road will lead to stagnation. However, being with that stagnation for a while, one can see the natural sense of contrition or opening up to the wound that is embedded in cynicism. With cynicism, a person clings to the past sense of disappointment or unmet expectations. But with contrition there is some realization that one's mind is spacious enough to contain that disappointment. It is so much more than the disappointed ego or the frustrated wishes a person experiences. In being with the pain of disappointment or failure, one can sense a spacious mind that is always more than these things. The attitude of contrition might be to recognize that bumps in life come from previous karmic roots, and that these bumps are inevitable. In suffering the disappointment and relaxing with it, a person might begin to see themselves as not truly bound by it.
  Writing itself can be an act of contrition. How so, you might ask? Writing opens up pathways in the mind that pure repetitive thinking sometimes cannot do. If I am stewing on something, it's better that I take the thought to the page (or the screen, in this case) to explore the hidden dimensions or possibilities that are peripheral to the stuck feelings. Writing often connects things in ways that just cogitating or stewing about something won't necessarily do. One can even surprise oneself to know that one is capable of insights in paper that they might not normally have just through pure thinking. I believe that narration itself is a kind of search for meaning, albeit an impermanent one.
   Writing in a sense can redirect the mind toward something that is more hopeful and worth working toward. It clarifies a lot of one's values and beliefs, and can allow the person to go through a process of resetting their ideas when the ideas are stuck in terrible emotions. Of course this act of writing is not the only way to extend one's experience, but it is an accessible way to explore new possibilities.
 

Practicing Metta in Social Life

 The other day at the Thursday meditation, one of the practitioners had commented on the idea of using metta (loving kindness) meditation as a social practice.This comment was made in response to someone who felt disconnected from others and wondered if there are ways that he could be more "in his own body" with others. While the practitioner suggested many other activities such as dance or physical movement to "feel in the body", I found that I was most interested in metta practice in social contexts. In fact, I agree with this practitioner that if a person focuses more on the others, they will be less preoccupied with whether they gain the feeling or "connection" or "disconnection". In the process, feelings of connection are more likely to emerge.
  There is one caveat to this, however, which I feel is quite important if one is to seek this kind of practice. Actually, two caveats. The first is that a person is best not to deceive themselves into practicing metta with the "hidden agenda" of wanting to connect. I have found that when I am treating the practice purely for its own sake, it seems to work better than practicing with the secret intention of receiving a reward in exchange for practicing metta. This point is extremely important, and it requires a certain kind of honesty. In relating with others, there are nearly always going to surface hidden expectations or even subconscious forms of transference, which even the sincerest affections never quite erases. In spite of its seeming glibness, metta is challenging because it surfaces our hidden assumptions about relationships by posing an alternative of not seeking others for one's own sense of connection.
  The second caveat is that there is a sense that it's not necessary to feel "connection" at all in the presence of others. It's more important to simply use the meditation to be present. The reason I suggest this is that trying to feel connected all the time is another habitual craving. What would happen if one simply let go of the desire or insistence of "always feeling connected with others?" When that desire drops off, there isn't any pressure to make an impression, and one can really inhabit one's body in those moments. In other words, really enjoying the presence of others involves a paradoxical detachment from others and re-embodying one's present state of being.

Time's Arrow

Time is sometimes thought of as an arrow. I have often heard time referenced as unidirectional, just like an arrow: it doesn't move back, and nor does it ever stay in one particular place at any given time. At the same time, the image of the arrow denotes acceleration. Let's face it; at various moments in our lives, we become "swept away" by the forces of time, in much the same way that the tides sweep things up into the sea. These moments of being swept away by moments can be valuable meditative experiences, in the sense that they help a person to see the impermanence of all situations, as well as to learn to navigate those moments in a way that does not require completion or perfection.
   Why do people often become distressed about time? I think it's because deep down inside, we want to be like the barnacle that clings to the bottom of the ship, and wants to stay there forever. There is a nagging sense of holding onto something, or some piece of security, that makes time seem all the more agonizing when it accelerates into an unknown future. If we don't cling to such notions of self or security, then there is no need to worry, and we can move through different times without feeling the sense that we have lost something or are trying to grab something else.
   Navigating time's arrow is a skill, for sure, but it doesn't mean that people shouldn't stop to take a rest. Recently, I have noticed that when I am at work, I get so many interruptions to do new things, that I found myself feeling tired even though the day just started. In those moments, I need to check in with myself to see how I am handling things and what might be a way for me to take on one thing at a time, rather than feeling that I have to do everything at once. While it's good to embrace the challenges of an accelerated work world, equally valuable is the ability to prioritize and rest from the frantic pace.

Tension in "Team"

  The more that I venture on testing systems at work, the more I can appreciate that teamwork is always going to have some kind of tension. That sort of tension doesn't necessarily need to be bad, and there is in fact such a thing as "creative tension", where there ideas evolve due to the differences in people's personalities. The way that a person interprets and understands "difference" can make a big difference (pardon the pun) in how tensions are negotiated. If I see tensions as signs of danger, then I will constantly seek refuge from them, clinging to a false sense of comfort. If, on the other hand, tension is seen as a natural aspect of teamwork, then there is no contradiction between teamwork and tension. The two do go together in a sense, not necessarily in a bad sense.
   Another way of looking at it is not to frame tension as something that needs to "snap". Sometimes the metaphor of elasticity is evoked here, to suggest that the only way to resolve tension is by literally "snapping": angrily withdrawing or trying to pull inward, just as an elastic would after it has been snapped violently. But what if tension could be enjoyed in that moment and seen not as duality but as a single moment? I notice in myself that when this happens, I can better observe that the tension fluctuates and often dissolves on its own without anyone forcing it to do so. There is never any time when a person holds tension forever, since tension is always a more or less equal and contradictory balance of forces. More often than not, such a balance changes or shifts toward something else in time, as the two sides are joined or resolved in some ways. But if I am too attached to my one way of being then I am more likely to view differences as threatening, and it's important that I am aware of that tendency without necessarily swinging toward the opposite direction of merely "complying" with everything around me. This balance requires not only an awareness of the other team members' ideas and contributions but also my own energies and ability to sustain ideas or work them into my present situation.

Holistic and Moral /Pastoral Education: How Related?

   I have been reading a book by Sally Power called The Pastoral and the Academic (1996) which talks about how different schools in Britain have embraced two sometimes conflicted categories of schooling: one is called "academic", which embraces the traditional subjects of school (reading, geography, etc) while the other is referred to as the "pastoral", and it refers to caring approaches in schools. The latter covers "life skills", moral education, and general education for "goodness" or "virtue". Reading this book has made me reflect on similar experiences I had in grade school and junior high school around the differences between school subjects and so-called "preparation for life", the latter mostly being covered under guidance counselling. Like most students back in the time, I hardly appreciated guidance counselling because there was never a grade attached to it. In addition, there were no particular assignments related to "moral" education or dilemmas in schools, besides the occasional debate in science classes of an ethical nature, or discussion about "family planning" in health class. I sometimes wonder why schools nowadays are reluctant to grade students in these areas, though  also sense that it has to do with school as a place where students work out value neutral 'facts' rather than working out an ethical lifestyle or perspective.
   Holistic and "spiritual" education might be thought of as a North American equivalent to moral and "pastoral" education in the British context. Both areas focus on educating the "whole child" (Powers, p.45-48), which means not pigeonholing children into streamlined subject areas but trying to educate all of a person's capacities for personhood. I think that unlike traditional moral education, however, holistic education does not approach whole child learning from a strictly moral lens. Instead of indoctrinating children with specific moral perspectives, holistic education focuses on the inherent value of children's experiences. I am almost tempted to refer to David Hume's notion of the moral self as something so natural that we can feel in our bones what are the best social arrangements simply through exposure to them. Rather than learning morals through indoctrination, the holistic approach sees children as inherently good and "moral" but in need of the opportunities to discover these qualities through free play and creative endeavors.
    Holistic education is also reluctant to use categories such as "good" and "bad" to relate or understand children's ways of being or experiences. This is because part of what holistic education tries to address and even resist is the tendency to label or constrain children to prejudiced notions of what good and bad are. This isn't necessarily to detour into moral relativism, but it's to say that approaches to living a good life need to be sensitive to the natural discovery and unfolding of a child's abilities and strengths. A child who internalizes the message that they are "bad" for doing certain things does not get a chance to learn what happens inside when they are doing socially inappropriate behavior. Holistic education allows children to reflect on both thinking and feeling sides, thus allowing for a fuller accounting for moral experiences.
   The more I think about it,the more reluctant I am to say that both moral and holistic approaches reach for the same thing (that is, the whole child experience). While both approaches depart from subject area specialization as the sole form of education, each has its own unique point of departure. Even though I see connections between the two strands (moral and holistic), I would be cautious to join them together or conflate the two.

Powers, S. (1996). The Pastoral and the Academic: Conflict and Contradiction in the Curriculum. London: Cassell.

The Tension of Knowing and Dreaming

 This evening, I had a chance to see a movie called The Greatest Showman, which stars Hugh Jackman and a bunch of other really good actors and actresses. The movie is a very interesting musical which was inspired by the life of P.T. Barnum, and it details how this person rose from being a very poorly treated boy in the lower classes to someone who lived out his dreams through the circus. For me, the movie tells a story about how in fulfilling a dream, there is a temptation to go into other dreams, which fall into the trap of losing the sense of one's innermost dream. I am saying: the dream of sustaining a family and having a home for Barnum's wife and two daughters eventually morphs into something else, namely, the need to address the demons of his past: being treated poorly by an elitist upper class whom he and his father had to serve, and trying to prove oneself to those old ghosts from the past. In the end, Barnum needs to literally and metaphorically "come home" to the people and things he cares about the most, return to the original motives for his circus, and appreciate the relationships that sustain it. One of the most poignant lines in the movie comes from actress Michelle Williams, who plays Barnum's wife, where she remarks something to the effect that being loved and cared for by a few good people is enough; trying to please everyone is impossible. That's a very good point.
   I have to admit that the philosophical part of myself kept hearkening back to Rousseau's concept of amour "en soi" and "amour propre" which I described in a previous blog. In fact, this movie's love triangle does remind me of that found in Stendahls' book Red and the Black which was also somehow inspired by Rousseau's philosophy of love. One kind of love is the love that is the key to a person's heart and home; the other kind of love is the key that promises to open the hearts of the whole world. Rousseau (and decidedly this movie's producers and writers) ultimately side with the first kind of love, since it connects with the more authentic parts of our souls, and it brings out the best virtues in a person: love of friends, loved ones and family. The second is more like an impossible dream, which plays out as a wish to heal a wound that never really gets fully healed, and that is the wound of never feeling fully loved by the public or by the "greater social world" (read: upper classes, popular images, stereotypical "normal"), and it often manifests as a desire to be "respected" and accepted without the shadow of hatred or stigma. Barnum (at least in this movie anyway) needs to learn the hard way that this kind of respectability is not worth the ruin of the things that matter the most to his heart and which reflect his true loves, namely family and entertainment. They also don't allow him to be who he truly is, yet another key theme in this movie.
   The other philosophical thought I had came from a Buddhist perspective. I begin to reflect that as long as Barnum doesn't realize that he is always in a dream, his desires keep proliferating. It's as though each time he becomes more successful, he is tempted to use that success to fulfill another desire. I think this is somehow the human condition, but this interpretation also makes me reflect that we are always interacting with dreams, and there is never a point where we reach the authentic "me", since these dreams and fantasies are continually changing-much like the kaleidoscopic instrument that projects light images which Barnum gives to his daughter as a birthday gift toward the beginning of the movie. Are we going to turn dreams into nightmares (the way Barnum's nemesis critic does, at least until later when he starts to respect Barnum's visions a little), or do we use dreams to uplift each other and see into our situation as fellow dreamers? This is a question that continues to recur throughout the movie, and it suggests that all dreams are tricks (or "hoodwinks") but they needn't be harmful ones as long as they are benefiting people and making their lives happier and healthier.

Utopia Continued

 Exploring Utopias in grade school and junior high school is obviously not necessarily meant to be applied to real life settings. Rather, they seem to function more as exercises in understanding the kinds of values that matter the most in one's life. Bacon's New Atlantis is an example of a "Utopia" which envisions a just society that is based on the freedom to experiment given shared resources and property. Bacon expounds the many ways that leaders can encourage the free expansion of knowledge by allowing everyone equal share to resources as well as free rein of ideas. Could such a Utopia ever be realized? It may certainly not, but the free range of imagination can allow people to "try on" the kinds of worlds they  think they might want to have.
   While I say this, however, I am somewhat haunted by my previous blog entry, where I talked about the downside of Utopias. I recall in high school reading William Golding's Lord of the Flies, and being assigned a group project where we are put into groups to design a perfect "island society" based on our different skills and interests. We later had to determine who gets to "stay" on our island and who gets to "leave", faced with shrinking resources . As a seventeen year old at time, I had so much confidence in what  had to offer the world, so it never occurred to me that I would be the "one" to be booted off the island. I wasn't this time, and it turned out later that the outcasts formed their own society which invaded the others.
    Utopias are fraught with the tension between desire and control. I desire a perfected "free" world that represents all the finest that I can imagine. But in order to sustain such an imagination, I need to control or dampen something else. This kind of tension is what always makes Utopia one step away from the worst hell imaginable.
   Perhaps one take home for students when exploring these strange worlds is to recognize that there is a difference between the "perfection" of one's mind and the lived interaction of many minds. It also reminds people that there is a disparity between thinking and living which no Utopian vision quite surmounts. The hard labor that supports the life of the mind is always shrinking in the distance, receding and never quite integrated into the Utopian vision.

Reading Utopias

 I am preparing a lesson plan for an upcoming Gulliver's Travels class for the Grade 4 students, where I plan to talk about Laputa as a "scientific Utopia" or a model of a society as an operating machine. It seems that this analogy of the social machine rises to prominence in the 1500s and 1600s,with Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and Thomas More's much earlier Utopia as examples of the genre where society is set up as an operational, functioning machinery. I am not so sure if Swift's Gulliver's Travels follows the same pattern, but I suspect that its particular depiction of a futuristic society is more akin to a satire than a literal depiction of the author's social or moral ideals. In presenting a society governed by the less savory extremes of science (including pedantry, animal cruelty, and a tendency to over-abstract to the point of diminishing human contact), Swift seems to warn his readers much more than encouraging them to foster dreams of a future society governed by technology.
   I think, from a curriculum perspective, it's important for young learners to play around with these ideas. Part of my fascination with science fiction at a relatively young age is that I was able to step into alternate views of the world, as a way of questioning whether the customs and patterns I enjoy in society today are really the best or most realistic ones. As kids start to get older, I don't know whether they retain the sense of awe or wonder, but at least they do have the habit of considering ideas or proposals from fresh and new angles.
   So far, I have not read a single Utopia that doesn't have its downside. For More, it's the slaves who are kept chained in every household. For Plato, perhaps the pessimism was in hiring "outside" mercenaries to do warlike behaviors, thus sparing the lives of those in the state. I wonder if what is implied here is that Utopia doesn't make everyone's lives better, but only shifts the burdens of forced labor or war onto the "others" who are considered less deserving of certain rights. Swift certainly suggests the "downside" literally in his depiction of the island that is below Laputa, as a place where people do the necessary toil to support the flying city. Besides the oblique historical references to Ireland and England (or other forms of political oppression at the time of Swift), I wonder if this section of Gulliver's Travels can invite a wider discussion about what makes a "good" society, and whether the good society always must incorporate or "handle" the downside of people not wanting to perform the necessary services of the social world. Can a Utopia be pleasant for everyone or only for certain entitled, meritorious classes? What happens to the unpleasant tasks used to sustain such a society? These questions might form an inquiry where students reflect on similar experiences in their school.

An Impossible Task

Today, I had some difficulties with system testing at work, especially not knowing how to analyse such a large set of data in little time. The experience reminded me that we process so many bits of information daily, without ever realizing how much is being done behind the scenes to organize one's current world. System "testing" is like challenging the habitual world: it asks that a person not just take things  as given, but that one carefully scrutinize a system to see what can be improved and made more efficient. Such a task is not as easy as it seems, because it challenges the tester to try to engage the same data in new ways.
  I have found in the past weeks that two approaches have been most helpful in system testing. The first is assume that something is wrong. If everyone just expects the system analysts and IT people to be always right all the time, then there is no purpose in testing, and the business users had might as well sweep the problems under the proverbial rug. The second principle is to try to chunk the data in ways that maximize the effort, given the small time in which a person has to test. This latter principle is actually difficult to put into practice, because it requires a strategy which isn't going to be uniformly applied. One strategy might be to pass over the "perfect" or "near perfect" system matches and focus on more questionable or "deficient" data discrepancies.  Another might be the opposite: to look for the chinks in the armor, or focus on data that seems deceptively perfect or good. I am beginning to focus more on the data that is less clean or might need remedial help to become fully cleansed. But this strategy doesn't always necessarily work, and one has to budget according to the needs and profits as well.
   When I say "impossible", I mean the metaphor of data testing is something like trying to bite into a cookie the size of a building. It's possible to take a little bit, but that doesn't mean there will be a complete analysis of everything. Sometimes it helps to know that, like a cake, all the ingredients in a data "mixture" are reflected in each tiny piece. It only takes a sharp willingness to look at a small piece to know how the larger piece works. I believe that this is where the Huayen sutra can be helpful in understanding the way parts of data reflect the whole. It can also remind me that an intuitive acquaintance with a small set of data is enough to see the larger picture, in many cases.

Gratitude Can't Be Rushed

 This evening, I was unable to attend group meditation sitting due to planning work system testing the following day. As with many situations where I miss the group sitting, I often feel anxiety and loneliness. The group meditation is such an authentic and nurturing space for me to check in with my body, my mind and those around me who are also doing the same. I have often reflected that meditation in a group has become my social life, and that it is almost the perfect social life for those who do suffer anxieties, whether they relate to being with others or parting from others. (In fact, I believe that these latter two are sides of the same coin). However, I told myself that this evening, I would make the best of my time away from the meditation group, and my work planning itself became a meditative practice. Instead of feeling "rushed" or hurried between various meetings as often happens at work, I was able to reflect by myself what kinds of tests I needed to perform to ensure that it is thorough and accurate. While I did feel regret in not being able to meditate with the group, being away from them allowed me to feel natural gratitude.
   This vignette has made me reflect on a few things. One is the very familiar question of how work becomes meditative, especially when there are numerous social pressures to accomplish things quickly in a very small time frame. The second aspect is that of gratitude itself. Have you ever wondered why we say that we don't know what we have until we don't have it? I think the reason is that when a person has something, they are often too in a rush to really understand what it is and to enjoy it. But when a person has time away from it, they realize that it was their choice all along to have it in their life; it just so happened that they could not see the value that it had to them. By being away, one's mind is not swept up in the rush of things, and is better able to contemplate the good things they have. I think real gratitude precisely arises from the ability to slow down and feel the gifts that are in a person's life.
   The sad thing, I think, is that in a very affluent society where there are many opportunities to enjoy so many things, one rarely gets a chance to savor a few things that are very important or mean something. It seems that even knowing something that well requires the discipline of a routine: spending a long time, if not even a lifetime, cultivating one or two things that are meaningful and knowing the ins and outs, ups and downs, of that experience. The group meditation is one example of a practice that I have found not only useful in itself but also a nurturing community which supports spiritual learning and practice.
   In fact, I think this is why many seasoned meditation practitioners say they love the pain of meditation. It's not that the pain is diminished over time, but that it starts to take on a deeper meaning in context of the practice that is being cultivated as well as the diminished sense of self/entitlement that hopefully can arise over time.

A Well Rounded Education

  When we talk about "well rounded", we tend to mean someone who knows a bit of everything, in many subject areas. But when I personally think of well rounded, I do imagine people who can weather different kinds of cycles and seasons of life. Their shoulders are "round": meaning that they are able to carry different kinds of things on their backs, and their weight is spread evenly across their bodies. Of course, this is a metaphor, but it seems to be about facing the whole character and not flinching from even the shadow aspects of the self, even when a person is terrified of those aspects.
   In Buddhist philosophy, the metaphor of the lotus flower in the mud is one way of expressing how every situation, no matter how dire, is actually fertilizer for the growing plant. It's not about trying to separate good from bad or to suppress anything, but it's about clearly knowing not to identify ourselves with the material. This is hard to do, because even in movies and media, there is a tendency to want to punish things that people dislike or disown and reward the "good stuff". The problem with this is that we tend to depict this very triumph of good vs evil as something inherently violent. It is as though one disowns the violence by putting it forth onto others. I see this kind of retaliatory dynamic happen a lot, and it reflects the struggle to purge what is unsavory about ourselves and project it onto others. On the other hand, if a person can be truly okay with the material that comes to mind and not see themselves as "that" (simultaneous not identifying yet beholding), then there isn't a need to take it out on someone else. That someone else is just another voice in ourselves, or in the mind itself. There is no need to even feel bad; just feel okay about whatever feelings are emerging and not judge it as pure or impure, and then one begins to see it as shifting energy.
 

"Ordinary" Role Models

 When I was in a Teaching Writing class with Professor Guy Allen a couple of years ago, I was introduced to two very interesting and influential ideas. The first is, the best way to teach writing is to actually do writing, however badly that writing happens to be. This, by the way, didn't appeal to some the hard core teachers who decided to attend this class. I remember one or two walking out of Professor Allen's class when he explained that his class would not be about "how to teach writing" as much as it is about "how to write".

The second idea that got me was how he used his previous students' writing as a role model for the current class writing. This idea was extremely interesting for me, because it toned down many students' tendencies to want to imitate their favorite writers, who happened to be very accomplished due to many years' dedicated devotion to their craft. Why would Professor Allen choose previous student writing to inspire his class to write? The answer is simple: it's because the model is achievable enough, yet good enough, that the writing practitioner can and wants to imitate it. This balance between "making it challenging" but "not too overwhelming" is not entirely new. It forms the basis of social thinking such as Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development theory of learning. However, I found it unique and helpful when it was applied to Professor Allen's model of how to teach up and coming writers.

The idea of realistic social modelling interests me. I have a theory, and that is, when left to their own devices, most people gravitate toward people who are a little bit more accomplished than themselves in certain areas, but not so accomplished that they are considered too "lofty"to be imitated. This balance is hard, of course, but it seems natural for people to want to imitate those whom they know they can imitate to a certain extent. Is it possible that sometimes we admire people not just for their skill in something but also for a sense of goodness or virtue (decency?) that they exude? I am exploring some of these questions recently.

Managing Time and Energy

The more that I explore being a student in addition to other roles I am taking on, the more I recognize that it's not just about time management but also "energy" management. Which energies do I currently have at my disposal, and what can be put aside to be done when my energies are different? I have noticed recently that my ability to allocate personal energy is so crucial to managing different priorities.
   One of the biggest "drains" of energy is over-inflated expectations, or the tendency to try to plan to do everything in a single night or period of time. This is a big drain because it often involves deliberating on multiple things that need to be done. I need to ask myself the question, at times, can all these things be done with the same level of intensity and enthusiasm? I have found that trying to switch gears between different research topics in one period of time can be quite draining.
   Another energy "drain" involves choosing to do something when one doesn't have the specific energy that might best accomplish the action. In the very late evening, for example, I find that writing becomes too difficult a task, and so I do need to switch to something more passive or relaxing, such as reading. Sometimes one just gets a sense of when they have done "enough" of something, and they then need to switch gears or get rest.
   It's a mistake to think that pushing past energy blockages is the way to resolve them. Even in meditative traditions, monastic teachers don't generally encourage trying to force oneself not to be tired. Quite the opposite: being less tired might mean having to find other ways to do things while conserving energy. I think the analogy might be that of crop rotation: being able to rotate or switch to a different crop is one way to preserve the soil of an overused crop area, thus replenishing that crop in the long run. Overdoing one thing at the expense of others also lacks the much needed balance between different projects and activities. This is why it's important to examine what can be done given one's overall energy inclinations.

On Being Given a Name

 Labels can be quite interesting, in the sense that they can confer a particular status on a person which is either earned or not earned. I have many times felt "shocked" or surprised to be labeled or thought of in a certain way, only to find myself later wondering, is it the act of labeling itself which is a shock, or is it the surprise at the label itself?
   I suppose that a lot of this depends on one's attitude toward the name or label. If I think that labels define who I am (whether they are coming from me or someone else) then I am bound to feel somewhat limited by the label itself. If on the other hand I see the label as just a new way of looking at something I never thought about before (or something to ponder), then that very same label is less restrictive and predefining of me. However, I feel it's important to be able to reflect on where the reaction is coming from---that is, what the motive is of the reaction itself.
  Quite often, for instance, it's not the labeling process that hurts a person so much as the kind of label one gets, and to what extent it might not resonate with the subconscious labels one might give themselves. It can work in another way too. Suppose, for instance, I am given the label of "genius", when throughout my life, I have labelled myself as stupid or somehow mentally incapable in some way or another. That label of "genius" can be emotionally moving or empowering, because it frames me in a way that might inspire me to feel confident and having more to offer to the world than I had ever imagined previously. But of course, if the label doesn't reflect what could actually happen, then it might prove counterproductive. The point is that it's not being given a label that's limiting so much as the conflict one has between a description of themselves which (perhaps) they don't recognize, and their felt experience or sense of who they are.
    I also think that being labeled in a narrow sense can also be mysteriously liberating. If a person has too many ill-defined expectations of themselves and they are given a label that more accurately reflects their passions and aspirations, then this process of labeling can re-align that person's emotional energies. In that sense, labeling might not be all that bad. On the other hand, taking one's labels "literally" is always going to be a bit problematic, because we can never define all our possibilities through one or two words.

The Spirituality of Exhaustion

  I am quite tired due to different situations, such as the weather and a fairly busy week. But I have been reflecting that in fact, my schedule isn't that different from anyone else's, and in fact others such as parents would have more responsibilities than I do. Is there a way of observing one's tiredness to better handle it?
   I notice that when I observe myself, two things tend to arise. One is that when I feel tired and start to internalize the message of "how tired I am", I will tend to conserve energy rather than exert efforts, thinking I am more occupied than I actually am. When this happens, I will end up feeling more tired, because my attitude has slackened. It's as though I give myself the message that "I am too tired to do anything significant" and my body simply follows. Paradoxically, when I tell myself that I have too many things on the go to be tired (the opposite message), I tend to feel more energetic. This is because I didn't trick myself into believing that my physical state determines how I am going to behave.
   This evening, I happen to feel a bit more energetic than usual because I am aware that the weekend will be busy with studies, teaching and retreat combined. But knowing this, I came home much more energized than usual because I am somehow determined to get all these things completed. This is one example of where being busy doesn't necessarily have to make a person feel exhausted. More so, I tell myself that I can handle more than I have imagined, and I end up mustering energy to do each task.
   Exhaustion tends to be a mental attitude that comes from taking on too much mentally. I find that I am most exhausted when I am either taking on too many things at once, or trying to be a perfectionist in what I do. Both these attitudes are detrimental to action, because they tend to burden the mind with worrisome thoughts. I tell myself that everything has to be a certain way in order for me to completely function well, when in fact, even in our most alert moments, we are only able to do so much.  Accepting what we can do as valid is one way to work with tiredness rather than shouldering too many burdens that can lead to utter exhaustion.

Modern Wood Chopping

In our Thursday evening sittings at University of Toronto, I like to keep things simple and easy to understand. When we sit, we are completely sitting and present; when walking, we enjoy the process of walking as though it were "for the very first time". As I was saying to one of the other members and volunteers in the group, there are times when the students will leave for quite a while and then suddenly come back to practice, after many years in a "hiatus" from meditation. We mutually concluded that the complexity of life and its changes can often take a person away from a daily or regular practice of anything, not only meditation.

In Chan and Enlightenment, Master Sheng Yen reminds his audience of a time when life was much simpler for the ancient Chan masters (p.191). He suggests that ancient Chan masters had to practice flexibly in their daily lives by applying their methods to chopping wood, and other chores. While this is wonderful in its simplicity, I do still wonder how the principle of doing things one at a time can apply to certain creative endeavors, where people often think "in parallel" or synthesize different ideas across different disciplines. It can become harder to find time to calm the mind when we are often asked to market ourselves to think beyond our current ways.

 It almost seems as though, in the absence of huge blocks of time to go on retreats or even meditate regularly, individuals do need to find ways to at least extend a basic discipline or attitude into their daily life, whether it's mindfully and slowly turning on one's computer at work (as our recent visiting teacher Chang Hu Fashi suggested) or just dropping what we are occupied with to listen to the person beside us. These moments of time are so important because they remind us that we are not our thoughts, as one of the practitioners tonight was suggesting. We may have negative thoughts, but those thoughts are not our true selves.

I may not be exposed in my work to "chopping wood" or carrying wood, as Chan Masters did, but what would be the equivalent in modern contexts? Perhaps it is going to the photocopier to make copies! This too requires full attention and a meaningful presence to prevent our minds from going on autopilot. There are certainly always ways to extend the simplicity of doing one thing at a time, even in our technological world.

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

Three Organizational Orientations

            Going to facilitate the group meditation tonight, I felt very tired. Maybe due to the weather or for a variety of different reasons, I could not muster much confidence or boldness in my steps, and felt as though I were just going to the motions of attending the center every week. For some reason, I almost fell asleep in the first session, and I then felt a sense of shame. At times, I wonder if the reason I am not attending to my practice is that I am seeing the facilitation of the meditation practice itself as a role more than as a passion. I also noticed that because of this tendency to retreat into a habitual role when I am not feeling engage or am tired, I don’t develop sufficient initiative to do something extra such as play the Dharma video at the end for the group or share about the passage from a sutra. In any case after feeling the regret and shame, I quickly recovered my sense of responsibility to the group but also wondered what I could do to better serve the group in the future.

                The above vignette is a segue for me to describe three distinct orientations that a person can take toward organizations. The first relates to the idea that I am a passive body to be acted upon by the organization—an orientation that is similar to Miller’s “transmission” model of learning (Miller, 2018, p.119), where learners are “passive bodies” to be given instructions from a lecture or an authoritative source. This orientation corresponds to a narrative more or less looking at causes or motivations for doing things, as though we are more or less billiard balls which interact with physical forces such as the weather or “a variety of different reasons” as noted in the first part of the vignette above. It’s safe to say that learners or participants in the organization under this mentality 

The second orientation is what I call “role based” or “role playing”, wherein the person attending an organization becomes a more active shaper in their identity, by tending to and reflecting upon particular behaviors they engage in which relate to the organization’s structure or the lives of others. I believe this corresponds to Miller’s “transaction” approach (ibid) where learning takes place through acquisition of new skills but also through improvisation of such skills in interaction with others. Transactional learning tends to take place in groups, and may involve active application of learning to solve problems or become sophisticated in one’s roles. This orientation shapes people in organizations to be active stakeholders and givers who see their identity implicated in the organization’s growth. Rather than relating to the organization passively, such participants see themselves as shaping the organization’s processes through a confident grounding in their relationships to others and to the organization itself. I also see this as confidence in one’s identity as unfolding interconnection with others. Here, I try to leverage my social identity and recognition as a volunteer to get me through the difficulty of engagement.

The third orientation is what I call soulful/spiritual orientation (something I am borrowing from Miller’s work) and that is to consider the process of being in an organization as not limited to the boundaries and played roles of the organization itself. More so, soulful orientations acknowledge or awaken to the ways in which our commitments to specific organizations and relationships are designed to point to lessons that the soul needs to learn along life’s journey. These “life lessons” are more about the heart and how the heart relates directly to itself and its felt world. Sometimes called “contemplative”, soulful orientations are often not about skill learning or acquiring certain kinds of identities, but are more about being able to connect to this present moment in all its fullness. Thus, this orientation operates from the abundance of being rather than the deficit of objects. Naturally, this corresponds to a transformational model (ibid) which focuses on learning to reflect one’s most heartfelt place in the universe through the relationships in which one engages. This comes back to my learning moment when I recognized that my heart wasn’t connecting to the meditation group, and I could do something to adjust myself to be more engaged instead of making myself into a passive recipient or role-player.

            Knowing that these three orientations are always present in one’s choices can help a person navigate and balance between them as well as stay engaged in an organization by knowing there can be dry periods or times when we go off kilter. I consider these to be road maps because they prevent a person from over-reliance on organizational supports when the organization is really a vehicle for a spiritual understanding and journey. At the same time, having three orientations acknowledges that we do have dependencies in organizations, and this is one aspect of being part of the world that we all have to navigate.

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

Wisdom for Kids?

The connection between education and wisdom is not always easy to understand. Do students really want to become wise? Conversely, will students be willing to listen to the “wisdom” of teachers when they encounter such teachers?

     I remember when I was in fifth grade how I went through a period when I became fascinated with the wise old philosopher—even though I hardly even knew where I had picked up my representation of such a person. There was a time when I was visiting my dad in the hospital and discovered a mysterious note on the ground which had contained cryptic Latin words. I imagined that somehow these words belonged to one of the faculties where people were doing their research. I was mystified not only by the strangeness of the words themselves (which literally seemed to have come from another planet), but also the kinds of disciplines I was learning about through encyclopedias and personal explorations in science and nature literature: cytology, embryology, anatomy, therapy, physiology. All of these words were opening up mysterious worlds to me.

    Did “wisdom” matter to me when I was ten years old? Perhaps not. Looking back in retrospect, I suppose that teachers need wisdom to manage themselves, impart important and valuable information in the classroom, and they also know much more about the emotional dynamics of their students: how to motivate them when they are feeling low, how to inspire their curiosity, and so on. But for children like myself, I don’t think it’s the “wisdom” of elders that impressed me so much as the awe and mystery of the adult world.

    It is sad to me now that when I hear the words “cytology” or even “molecular biology”, I simply don’t have the same awe or wonder I had as a young child reading those school books. What happened to those feelings, I wonder? Were they simply stages of development that I went through to pick up the kinds of knowledge that were needed for me at the time? Or was it all just dreaming and imagining what isn’t there to begin with?

   I think that even when teachers are not able to inspire students with practical examples of wisdom or morality, it’s worthwhile that students can at least spend time getting fascinated by the world beyond the school. When I am teaching Gulliver’s Travels to the Grade 4 students, I am always trying to incorporate some element of mystery or fascination about the political, social and scientific worlds that Swift inhabited at the time when he was writing this book. I am not so sure---I do have doubts and hesitations around whether the students are learning anything useful to themselves. However, what I do try to instill within them is the sense that there is always something new and mysterious that hasn’t yet been explored. This sense of wonder is what drives the search for wisdom, in some ways, because it forces the students out of the world of comfort and familiarity.

The Hidden “Spiritual Life” of Doctoral Studies?

When I first entered the doctoral program, I was mainly worried about the high tuition fee. Naturally, when one is worried about finances, their initial orientation is going to be, “what’s the financial payoff of doing this program?” In other words, the emphasis shifts toward a cost/benefit analysis. Lately, however, I have lately been thinking that it may be important to look at this whole journey more in terms of a spiritual journey. There is even a spiritual meaning to paying a high price for uncertainty.

            Doctoral studies seems to me to most resemble initiation into liminal space: a transition space where a person is trying to consolidate their identity, and where there are very few structures that direct a person to where to go or what area in which to specialize. Such a journey has to be met with a strange combination of soft yielding and perseverance. “Soft yielding” means being able to abide with uncertainty until a creative process can take birth. Perseverance means to be able to push through and still work with some degree of regularity and continuity. I compare this latter to “making a solid building in the middle of a cyclone”. Of course the “solid building” is going to crumble many, many times, but a person still needs to cultivate the attitude of a daily practice, whether it be in reading, walking reflection, writing, or just doing the regular class work that is expected.

            And what does the “cyclone” in the latter metaphor refer to? For me, it’s really and basically about navigating the unformed ideas that have not yet been synthesized. I wrote four “practice” proposals for a recent scholarship application, and, to be honest, I am not pleased with any of them. They are things that I did in the hopes of being able to form a robust thesis, but they are written at a time when things simply aren’t solidified yet in my mind. Still, I have to do the things that students do for funding, and that is, write, write and write, until something in that writing (and reading) starts to make sense and look somewhat original.

            Writing and research, like meditation, is a discipline that is done in the midst of impermanence. The hardest thing about it is knowing that there is no measurement for saying that a person is doing well or poorly, because as soon as a person does that, they are no longer meditating! They are not in the moment of creation; instead, through doubt and wanting to measure themselves, they have stepped out of that process altogether. So it seems best not to try to measure one’s progress.

The Downside of "Flow" Experiences

 Tonight, I did become quite involved in different projects: a book review in addition to designing a lesson plan for my upcoming class. There are times when, in the process of getting absorbed in the flow of things, I started to sense my own body as being somewhat unreal, as well as identity. I consider this to be the downside of flow: the sense that one is psychically drifting somewhat without reflecting on the value of what one is doing as well as the purpose. While it can sometimes be valuable to have these flow experiences, a reflective component also seems necessary, or else it becomes another set of  wandering thoughts.
   We have sometimes heard the argument that "getting lost in one's work" is a good way to avoid unpleasant or uncomfortable feelings, such as that of not having a sense of direction or purpose. But is it really healthy to do so?  It's a bit like watching television: I surf from channel to channel, hardly cognizant that I have in fact drifted off into a dream that everyone shares through this electronic box. Soon enough, the time has past without me being aware of it. Such experiences, of course, don't qualify as "flow" experiences, because there is hardly any challenge or personal growth to them. However, even actual flow experiences can just be elegant forms of distraction, which delay a person from facing other challenges in life. It seems important to be aware of why one is engaging in a certain kind of work, rather than thinking that the smoothness with which one engages it automatically confers value upon it.
   Sometimes flow experiences can be healthy ways of getting things done. When I am at work, I often tend to start my day with fairly simple and fast projects, by way of knowing that I have accomplished a certain amount before the end of the morning. I then tackle more challenging problems in the afternoon when I am much more energized to do so. But this also has to be done with a certain awareness: it's not a matter of putting off what's difficult or challenging to the last minute, but rather organizing one's work effectively according to what can get done quickly and expediently.
 
 

A Life of Ethical Ambiguity

I have to say that I do appreciate Andrew Peterson's book (2017) , Compassion and Education: Cultivating Compassionate Children, Schools and Communities, and it has left me wanting to write more about his work. Peterson talks about the notion of how reading literature can help learners to improve their capacity to reflect actively on who they feel is most deserving of compassion and empathy (p.122-126). I think what I most appreciate about Peterson's work around empathy is that it is refreshingly non-dogmatic in the way it treats compassion. A life need not be a saintly one, for example, to be worthy of compassion, and it occurs to me that compassion is most needed to understand and reach out to ethical ambiguity. This goes back to something I recall reading years ago about the function of Buddha statues as not benefiting the Buddha himself, but, rather, as benefiting those who are uplifted by such images.Compassion seems to function in this way, because it acts upon certain kinds of suffering, while at the same time identifying a life that does not potentially need to suffer at all.
  Is there a particular moral quality that is most cultivated by beholding ambiguity in literature? If anything, I think it's the capacity to behold conflicting ideas without categorizing experiences too quickly or dismissively. This is perhaps different from the stereotypical idea of what we think is happening when we empathize with others. Rather than wholeheartedly embracing the other in an uncritically sentimental or "loving" way, perhaps compassion means to have a clear understanding of a person with their strengths and weaknesses and to apply wisdom to helping them from their own situations. This is perhaps more clear eyed but it might be a more sustainable way of looking at compassion education.

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

Amour propre vs Amour de soi

Amour propre and amour de soi are two concepts taken from Rousseau's philosophy which are discussed in Andrew Peterson's book, Compassion and Education: Cultivating Compassionate Children, Schools and Communities (2017). If I understand the two terms correctly, amour de soi is a kind of natural self-regard which comes from simple reasoning and the human desire to flourish given the abilities and skills that one is. If you have ever seen children intent on play or simple interaction, you might see people who are not concerned with style or trying to impress others. With Amour propre, on the other hand, there is a sudden sense of self-consciousness which often comes to one in adolescence, which is preoccupied with image and one's status in relation to others. Rousseau seemed to have seen this latter as the source of the deepest suffering between people, and opted instead for a political pattern which is modeled after amour de soi; that is, a respect for things as they are or should ideally be arranged when people protect each others' rational self interest, rather than fighting for prestige, authority or dominance over others. Although Rousseau is considered to have departed from the rationalist traditions which surrounded him, it would be fair to say that he is instrumental in supporting a contractual model of the state.
   Peterson's discussion supports the possibility that reasonable and compassionate behavior come from the amour de soi. At best, amour propre help one to develop proper manners of communication, since the aim is to preserve and honor one's reputation. But it is the proper respect for one's natural virtues and reasoning that allows a person to act from their own deeply embedded motives rather than continually looking outside oneself to find validation.
 Is a healthy sense of self required to live a compassionate life? This is a very interesting question when I reflect on it through a theological lens. For example, when Christians, Islams or Buddhists join their respective congregations, is it out of a concern for the rational, planning self, or is it to transcend the self altogether? In fact, however, I don't think that self-affirmation or the reasonable self is ever in conflict with the transcendental. In fact, a healthy self understanding can be a way to counterbalance the ups and downs of spiritual life, since the capacity to reflect upon a spiritual life (or all life for that matter)  is a way to buffer the strains and difficulties of practicing a spiritual tradition. Reflection can also serve as an emotional buffer zone, where practitioners in spiritual groups can reflect on what they could improve, but without the pervading sense of an unchanging ego.

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

Why Feel Good?

 Why is it important to feel good when there are terrible things in the news? I guess my question is, does it not seem more realistic to cultivate a pessimistic view about life? During the group meditation tonight, a strange thing happened to me. While I was sitting and guiding the meditation practice, the thought came to mind right away to mention how precious it is that everyone chose to practice together that night. It was not the most inspired comment that one could ever make, but I noticed that it had the effect of bringing me to appreciate that very moment on the cushion in and by itself, without comparison to other moments. And what it convinced me is that it is actually very good to feel good because feeling good can bring a person to truly know what they have rather than focus on what is deficient or lacking in their lives.
  Even if a person does not have a particularly pressure-filled life, it still seems important to cultivate a habit of feeling good even when things around a person don't seem good. Why? It's because what a person sees is often a reflection of the way their body and mind is in that moment, rather than an objective state of affairs. If the body and mind are agitated, then the world will start to look frantic and agitated. But if one has just returned from a dangerous situation or a risky one, the world will often seem still and peaceful, because one has come to appreciate the finer details that are not so violent or competitive.
  I can't think of a better way to do this than to find a way to calm the mind in all situations, regardless of what is happening in life or at work. Even if a person feels lonely, can they not build calmness around that loneliness instead of a frantic sense of wanting to quickly get rid of it? There is always a way to look at things that gives them space to be rather than frantically dashing off to the next experience. So in the same way, I think it's important to use calmness to get the state of body and mind to feel good.