The Allure of Anger

 I believe that if anything, the 21st Century might eventually be coined "The Age of Anger" in much the same way that the 19th century was characterizes as an age of "Sexual Repression". When I say, "Age of Anger", I am talking about how political discourses (in social media and so on) are becoming more and more mired in bitterness, resentment, cynicism or lashing out. Some people might (and do, in fact) suggest that this is an expression of the loss of manners and mores in Western societies. I have a different hypothesis, and that is that anger is becoming an industry that actually makes people money, from advocates who sue for the rights of their angry clients, to filmmakers who milk human resentment in the form of violent blockbusters. Anger sells in the same way that "sex"' is said to sell so many decades ago. The industry of anger, like the industry of love or romance, serves something. Whether it's the reinforcement of boundaries between one nation and another, or the emboldening of a military complex, anger narratives establish strong boundaries between one place and another, setting up lines of transgression.
   I even reflect on this: of all human emotions that might bring a person toward a spiritual practice, which is the most common? Is it sadness? Jealousy? Lust? Anger? I believe that anger must contend for one of the highest places in this ranking, simply because anger threatens to destroy so much more than the other emotions. Even "jealousy" might be less destructive if we see it as something like "protecting" the things we care about the most by wanting to covet those things to ourselves (or something similar).Stories of craving and attachment may point to equally destructive outcomes, but somehow many are lead to feel that attractions are not as destructive as anger, or might redeem themselves through the object of attraction. As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us in his own book about Anger, the face of the angry person is one of the most unappealing sights imaginable, and looking at one's own contorted angry face can be enough to scare everyone away from anger itself. The threat of anger necessitates remedies (and quick ones) more than other emotions.
  This entry is not designed to say, "anger is bad" so don't feel angry. What I am driving at is the way anger is thought to draw a person towards, say, meditation, more so than feelings like sadness.

The Good Sides of Poststructuralism

 I have not been writing a lot in my blog recently because I did get caught up in my recent course work, which relates to Poststructural Research Methods in education. To be honest, I am still getting the hang of Poststructuralism. I have often (falsely, I think), equated poststructural thinking with nihilism or even a kind of suspicious doubt that attacks every foundation of what a person believes about the self. Hey, doesn't Chan Buddhist practice try to do the same? However, I notice that while practicing Chan makes me feel relaxed and uplifted, Poststructural thinking often makes me feel a little heavy, as though I were trying to master an entirely new vocabulary with so much subtlety and nuance. It is often like filling "big shoes".
   I think the value of thinking and learning poststructurally is that it allows a person to question "foundations" and "essence" which are always tricky and suspect. But at the same time, I can't help but warn myself, not to go too far with this kind of thing, because it can end up pretty much eating  and eroding everything. It's almost like one of those cleaners that is so powerful that it dissolves the hand that is using it to scrub the tiles. At the end of the day, people do need to occupy narratives, and these narratives (however tentative) are the projects that are needed to connect people together, to nourish people and to help people.
    Why would poststructuralism lead me to feel heavy (depressed) whereas the exact same philosophy coming from, say, Nagarjuna (a famous Buddhist monk) does not make me feel this way? That's a good question, and I would love to do a study on that. I suspect it's because Buddhist practices are not designed for people to construct complex, nuanced field texts, the way Poststructuralists do, so there is much less pressure among Buddhists to try to impress each other or prove each other "wrong". Buddhism never attempts to be obscure or deliberately sophisticated, whereas I do find at times that Poststructuralism proliferates a kind of elitism using complex ways of expressing things. What it does is that it makes a person continually anxious to find enlightenment (o sorts) through choosing the right expression. Poetic, yes, but not always entirely "clear", and there is even a phobia amongst Poststructural thinking toward "clarity" especially if it is clear because it's a dominant familiar narrative.
   I could go on, but I do think that too much thinking in Poststructural jargon can be a rather depressing act of striving to impress fellow intellectuals, striving to step out of the familiar discourses of self and society, yet having no place to roost at the end of it.

The Opposite of Success

 It's scary to reflect that most of the stories that I internalize are "success" stories--stories about triumph, winning, doing everything perfectly, and never achieving less than A scores. I have come to realize that this game of success is addictive, but it also constitutes an entirely new self over time.
    I recall when I was in 7th or 8th grade, swinging on a big swing in a cottage in a rural area on a family vacation--and thinking about how this time I would do the things I always dreamed about doing: being a scientist (that was my one big dream at 10 years old) and, excelling in math (a subject I truly dreaded). That fateful day began a series of what I like to call "success stories": stories about the young boy who kept a notebook in his front shirt pocket, and wrote down all his "to do's" including upcoming homework assignments, tests, you name it. When that boy finally did succeed in achieving fairly decent scores in both math and science (maybe not fantastic scores but surprisingly decent scores), he inducted a new series of performances into his life. And what heralded all of this was the realization that indeed, there is a reciprocal relationship between diligence and success. Indeed, if I concentrate in class and do everything I am told to do, I stand a pretty good chance of having some degree of control over my future. Sounds easy, don't it?
    But with those repeated experiences of meeting fairly predictable, measurable expectations comes the unpredictable: being invited to math competitions where the answers to the questions could not be derived from neat sets of formulae; taking courses that don't accord with a felt sense of what success means; being derailed by my self-image of a person who can succeed at anything, in theory, by these moments when there is no success on the horizon. How the narrative of success is then maintained is by sometimes introducing complex arguments for the relationship between successful outcomes and emotional management. After all, isn't it my own despair at not succeeding that derails the smooth path of determination to succeed? So here again comes the insidious narrative of being able to do whatever one likes to do, veiled behind the discourses of managing emotions, minding emotions, mindfulness, and so on. Embedded in meditative and mindful moments is the possibility of being awake through difficult emotions..but always with the promise that being mindful will allow the process to go by quicker and in a more integrated way than suppressing those hard emotions.
   I realize that my style tonight is different from before, but I am challenging myself to ask: how did this determination to succeed arise in the first place? What did the dreams of becoming eventually become over time, and where am I at in terms of my current views of success? How the self moves through these discursive moments is something I would like to view in more detail.

Meditation and trees

During the meditation practice tonight, I reflected on the way that mediation is always an effort. It is a beautiful effort and often simultaneously a futile one, because there are so many scattered thoughts that come to mind, and one is not in control a lot of the time. But what I shared in tonight's session was about a time when I had visited an art gallery and had seen a painting of trees which are blown around by violent winds. On that day, I reflected on how the tree looked so strong in spite of being buffeted this way and that by the harshest natural forces. I sometimes think this is how meditation is; the tree represents a kind of stability in one's method that one can turn back to many times. But with stability comes fragility, and vice versa: without the ability to "bend" with the breezes around it, the tree would not have an easy time contending with the natural forces. In fact, the tree's strength is a combination of "being" and "non being", "resilience" and "surrender", which allow it to continue to stand in one place while contending with the natural elements.

Random Thoughts on Education as an Expansive Verb

  Tonight, I finished an application for a scholarship. I started to reflect on this privilege of having an education: how the chance does not come to everyone, and how it actually is fortunate that I have a chance to be educated. Education is priceless in the sense that it allows people to be in company with life-changing ideas. Yet, with that education comes the responsibility to always be ready to include those who are not part of that system, or to change the system itself to open up to differences in how people learn and thrive.
   Education is constructed out of discourses. It's not a fixed entity but is composed of activities that define what is "right" to teach. The politics of education is also subject to changes, but what remains the same is the need to continually adapt to different lives and needs. If people get too caught up in the specific books that make them educated, they lose sight of how education itself means something different to different people. One "mark" of education may not actually apply to others. I believe that for this reason, education needs to problematize its own definitions and be open to continuous growth and change.

Deep Impermanence

 Many scholars have talked about "deep ecology" in recent years, which was explored by Arne Naess in his philosophies. What it refers to is not beholding nature as an object but as something that is part of us. I would like to extend this notion of "deep ecology" to the term "deep impermanence": an expression that entails a refusal to take anything for granted. Unlike "shallow" forms of impermanence which might pay tribute to the way some things change, "deep" impermanence suggests that even the ground that "I" stand upon is an iceberg that could just as easily melt. There is nothing so solid that it cannot disappear in the next moment.
    If I think this way about impermanence, somehow,I am less 'calculating'. After all, the very notion of calculation means that there is always something at the end of the day that I can claim as "my own", and this "my own" becomes the bedrock of my experience. I then start to "pool" my resources (money, persuasion, words, thoughts) to keep that bedrock intact, only to find myself getting anxious and flustered, knowing deep down that even this precious sense of "I" is not resting on a firm foundation at all. Have you ever had those dreams where you felt that your teeth are going to fall out, and then wake up to feel your teeth---to know that they are intact after all? Deep impermanence is the realization that one's teeth are not one's true self, any more than any other part of the body.
   Far from making a person detached, I think that deep impermanence can allow a person to take more risks, and realize that what they have right now are the colors to paint tomorrow's canvas. That paint is meant to be used to make art, and this too will pass. So make art while you still can.

The Upside of Down

 Watching the movie The Upside tonight, a question lingered in my mind. At the beginning of the movie, Phillip is rejecting all the "outstanding" and very creative candidates to be his auxiliary support person, only to find that he accepts the one man who is most reluctant to take on this job, an ex convict named Dell. Why does he take this man over the others? What is it about Dell, with his crude humor and street smarts, that appeals to Phillip? Is it indeed because unconsciously, Phillip wants the man who is more likely not to resuscitate him. I think it's deeper than this, however.
  People are not entirely governed by reason or even by something that is planned. Sometimes it's the unplanned that is needed to wake someone out of a depression or another state of being that is akin to dying or a deep sleep. I think that when people have reached a low point in their lives, they are deep down inside looking for a way to wake up from it, even though they might not be aware of it. For this reason, one sympathizes: this kind of relationship between the two men thrives precisely because it is highly "unlikely".
    It also makes me believe that we are never alone in terms of the things that happen to us. Every living being has these fields of energy, and those fields naturally seek each other in ways that serve to heal imbalances. This is not a fully articulated theory, but I have been thinking about that uncanny sense in which things do fit together and there is a symbiotic relationship of events that is not planned.

Starting from the Now

Many people have lately been critiquing the mindfulness movement as being a sometimes glib and shallow "version" of Buddhist teaching that does not encompass the whole of Buddhism. I don't really agree because I think that any interpretation of what something should be is bound to alienate some parts of one's experience. I generally tend to subscribe to the idea that mindfulness is the beginning of something, in the sense that everything begins with mind. But knowing that mindfulness itself does not cover all aspects of Buddhist philosophy and practice does not bother me as much as it does others. I think it's because I don't devalue "beginnings"; they are expressions of what is always here, and always changing into something else. Why valorize the "after" and why stay only in the "beginning"? Both beginning and after are moments in the totality.
   Mindfulness is a commitment to be now with all the messiness of one's lived experiences. It doesn't mean that I am mastering an all-seeing, all knowing wisdom, but it means that whatever I am doing I am starting from the ground of experience, which is this moment. Even when there are all these turbulent feelings in me (tiredness, exhaustion, irritation), I am honoring these as parts of my being and not trying to silo them off, but nor am I making them into a fixed identity. Again, this is how experience can flow without the interruptions of conceptual absolutes.

Beholding Fear/Anxiety

 Beholding the sense of one's fears and anxieties is not an easy thing to do, and it requires a lot of patience. How often does one's stories sound like, "if only this weren't true (xx or so and so), I would be happy? These kinds of narratives tend to shift to blaming modes rather than seeing that people are often caught in a multitude of different interconnecting factors and reasons.
  Actually, let's turn it around and say, most stories are neither all happy nor all sad. Even very painful situations have valuable learning opportunities embedded in them, while happiness comes at a price. Do you remember times when a happy experience felt like sand slipping through your fingers--a kind of nagging sense that this state of contentment won't last? This is the secret unhappiness that comes with happiness.
   "Beholding" means to simply "be with" rather than to try to push away. Fear and anxieties are simply one's griefs left unrecognized. They reflect deep fears of loss that need to be attended to with the utmost attentiveness, listening and empathy; a kind of fellow feeling. But to try to construct a counter narrative of "if only..then this won't be here", often doesn't help at all.

Staying in Incompletion

  Again,  I keep circling back to the narrative of "happy incompletion"...because life is always incomplete in its journey. One never can really tell when it finishes, and it's the incompletion that is so important. I don't think I want to be able to say, "well, I have said all I have needed to say, and learned everything I needed to learn." First of all, this cannot be true of anyone--simply being human (perhaps even sentient) means that something can be learned in life, and some new connection can be made. The narration of "wanting to stop"only really means wanting to take a temporary rest until the next round. And so on.
   

The Importance of Faith

 I did not have any idea of a topic for my second assignment at school, and luckily....Avalokiteśvara helped me. I know that sounds a little bit crazy, but it was literally true. I found a very evocative and interesting image which I took years ago of Avalokiteśvara  reflected through a store glass window with flowers, and I found this to be a perfect narrative to talk about the decentering effects and narratives of Poststructuralism. It made me realize that without Avalokiteśvara ,  I would not have literally any idea what to do for this assignment.
 Something I learned today is that when reason fails, faith will kick in. What is faith, and how is it manifest? I am afraid that this question cannot be answered by me, because I think that a lot of times moments of grace (such as today's) convince me that I cannot figure things out on my own, and I need to get help some of the time from some beings. It doesn't mean that I need to be so dependent on help that I am always going to them even when I don't make any efforts, but it does mean that I need to make room in my inner life for beings that are simply more compassionate, wise and powerful than myself. When I am able to empty myself of the foolish idea that I am or could be in control of my life, that's when grace will be most available to show me something different. After all, this insistence that I am on my own to do everything is a veiled kind of  pride. It is like saying to the world, "I don't need you...I can do this on my own!" when in fact, very few people in history have ever done things completely on their own. 
  Faith does not mean that one should wait for everything, but I believe that there is a time for waiting. Things don't always come together all at once, and sometimes even with one's best efforts, they don't happen at all. 

Guanyin 4

Guanyin

Guanyin 2

Guanyin

A Long Walk in the Cold

  After the introductory meditation class tonight, I decided to take a jaunt in the cold, from Finch station to home. I reflected on my course materials and what I would like to do with my final assignment. It was nice to be able to sort things out, even though here are quite a few things to iron out in the process.
As someone who relishes words as a form of self-assurance (or even empowerment), there are times when unspeakable confusion feels very bad to me. I have tried to balance two poles, which could be described as sun and moon, but which represents two different ways of looking at life: one that is very structured, and one confused and de-centered somewhat. But it's important to stay with confusion for a while rather than trying to put all that confusion into words.
    Can too much confusion be "bad"? Well, I think it's important to be grounded in the moment and not to become depressed or despairing about confusion. It's very simple: if one is perplexed about what they are doing, studying, feeling, and so on, they simply need to step away from the computer or the desk, and go for a long walk in the cold. Such kinds of things can help to re-energize the mind and prepare oneself for what lies ahead. But at the same time, it's important not to make the "walk into the cold" a kind of escape. There's the balance, I think, between going into a moment to revitalize and going there to get away altogether from the difficulties of decisions, thoughts, problems, and so on. I am reflecting on the importance of knowing when that long walk is escape and when it is engaging the problems of life constructively.

From Searching For, to Building Meaning

  The world is becoming busier and more complex. In these situations,it's a good idea to find out what's happening in your life, and to make peace in your heart. This sounds very sappy, but if one thinks about it, only they can really affirm their own existence as meaningful in the world. And through that process of affirming meaning, one can also begin to see life--any kind of life, in fact---as a valid building of meaning.
   Now why did I change the metaphor from "search" (a common one) to that of building meaning? It's because more and more, I am starting to see how narratives affect the way we can function in the world and understand how the world works. Even the idea of "how the world works' is a construction, and there is no end to that sense of constructing the world. But to know that one's meaning is constantly created is to be vulnerable to uncertainty: who knows where that sense of meaning is going to come from next? All we can guarantee is that we will be kind to ourselves and offer something that is unconditional, no matter what spaces one inhabits in life.
  The other reason for the shift to building meaning is that it places the onus on me to build and foster a sense of meaning. I think this is quite valuable because trying to tell someone else that they are the arbiter of my worth or value is my decision, not the other person's choice.

Finding Inner Meaning

 There is a time to be humble but also there is a time to find one's own confidence within. This is one of the ideas I was having tonight after meditation class. Not entirely a spectacular narrative, but I have come to realize that too much humility might often be deep down inside a desire to be "propped up" or supported by someone else, when in reality, it's possible to be one's own support in positive ways that are realistic and reflective of a person's abilities. Some of this is "common sense" for some, but it's quite good to check in from time to time and realize that only one's own soul can validate their life and reason for being.
   This "confidence" I am talking about has nothing at all to do with one's accomplishments, since those accomplishments are fleeting and even a bit relative. I am talking more about the ability and trust that one can find a meaning in the journey of their life. Even if that journey is full of uncertainty or even pain, there is some capacity deep in the individual to frame it in a meaningful way that is not dependent on the approval or validation of colleagues and so on. It's important to simply realize that this is the case, and then to actively practice it in some way.

Too Tight/Too Loose?

During the Wednesday introductory meditation session today, we talked about the importance of not taking the breathing method as something to hold onto too tightly. Really and truly, it's only a method for being aware, and it's even in the "recognizing one has lost awareness of the breath" that one feels a certain kind of joy.
    There is often a discourse in meditation that goes back to the Buddha's idea of stringing the lyre: one's practice is neither "too tight" nor "too loose". But I have begun to wonder recently, can the metaphor of the lyre go too far in the sense of literally dividing the mind between two opposites? The problem with metaphors of "balance" or "in between" is that there really turns out not to be any absolute "middle" at all. The Middle Path does not necessarily even entail a kind of middle point, and it's certainly not a point on a graph. In Surangama Sutra, Buddha even repudiates Ananda's view that the mind is somehow situated in the "middle" of one's body and the outside world, by saying, "where exactly is this 'middle'? Even from a geographical perspective, what seems "middle" to one person in one country is not the middle in another country. Again, the idea of a middle between two extremes can seem deceptively simple, but it's not so easy to apply.
   I think that meditation practice is coming to mean learning how to lose, both literally and metaphorically. What, though, to lose? It's to lose the attachment to self, and to trying to "be" anything for the sake of the self. If I am coming into the practice with a specific achievement orientation or even a poor relationship to my body, it will show in the meditation. And if that happens, there is no reason to feel bad at all, because the self-grasping that leads to tension is also just phenomena that one can be aware of: none of it is inherent to a person.

Unsettled

  The older I get, the less I seem to mind the notion of being mentally or emotionally "unsettled". This might be an unsettling conclusion to start with, especially when people tend to think of aging as a process of "settling". In fact, the metaphor of "sedimentation", a process common in geology, comes to mind as I write these words. Just as layers of sand and mud tend to aggregate and settle into predictable grooves, eventually turning to rock, one would expect that one's thoughts and habits would do the same over time.
   I prefer the idea of being a little bit unsettled: not sure about who I am, not sure which identities are "mine", and not settled in one direction in life. This sounds nightmarish to some, but I think it's a dedication to a critical and thoughtful life that one would not take any easy path of "this is me", or "this is the final goal", but rather to think that each part of life is a piece on a learning journey that doesn't end. Why do I think this is a good way? I think it's a good way because it is the way one's heart remains open to others and does not ever think that it knows everything, or even anything for that matter. This is the key to continually challenging the illusion of a concrete self that is never changing, static, and has nothing more to learn or to do.
  That having been said, I would qualify this remark by saying that not all learning is verbal, comes from books, or even comes from having degrees or achieving concrete goals that are socially sanctioned or prized. Sometimes this learning is more like an inner maturity that happens over time and space through a process of atonement with things and memories. But nonetheless the principle is the same to always be on the lookout for new ideas and discoveries, and to be humble in the face of what isn't known.

Resisting the Tyranny of Quickness

Nowadays, I believe that technology (including that found in the workplace) is pushing for greater volumes and quicker processing of products and services, to serve higher populations. I have noticed that whenever I am personally overwhelmed or unable to keep up with the pace around me, I fail to recognize that this "pace" is actually created by myself. Nobody ever forced me to do things quickly, so why do I need to push myself beyond my capacities to reflect? In principal, this is much easier said than done, and the workplace is a good example of a contested site where people do indeed have pressure to work quicker and process more. However, I still believe that the way to approach those rush situations is still to turn back to one's own reflections and awareness. After all, the mind is not the one that is moving, so why get sick identifying with all the moving parts arising?
    Even in cases where someone does not meditate a lot, I have personally found that stopping to reflect honesty on "what do I really think and feel about this?" can be a healthy way to really slow down and not over-identify with so many changes around me. This reflection doesn't have to be much and it doesn't need to come to the point of vexation. It is more like checking in with oneself to see what the state of their mind is like. Is the mind confusing its thoughts with itself? Is it just complicating things by insisting that everything be resolved at once? What is the mind doing to confuse itself into thinking that everything needs to be resolved at this moment? Again, sometimes it's not the environment that does this, but in fact the tendency to want to resolve conflicts, tensions and confusions all at once so that they don't need to be faced.

Getting "Unstuck"

 Tonight I experienced the frustration of realizing that an old set of data I had in 2014 is locked inside a computer that is too old to start up. I was looking for this data for a recent course I had registered in, and now I am beginning to realize that it might be locked for good. It's sometimes saddening when you get a glimpse of what could have been, only to realize that it's literally locked away in the past. And it can lead to the sort of fixation of trying to retrieve it, literally at "any cost", which can be quite debilitating to say the least. But it's important to reflect at the end of the day that something that is "gone" might not have really meant to be. It's important in those moments to "unstick oneself".
   One such practice I have found most helpful for this purpose is the ability to see that something is not always as golden as one thought. If I am thinking that something is good to have, am I pushing it to "absolutely essential"? If so, is that realistic to have as a goal, or might it be only an assumption? Thinking that something is absolutely necessary is a form of unnecessary attachment, and it might be helpful to start looking at reasons why the thing I seek is not as glamorous as I thought: for example, is the data I am seeking as complete and as promising as I thought, or am I only imagining it to be so great?
   Another strategy is quite simply to let go. This sounds very deceptively simple, but it's not necessarily simple at all. Letting go requires a lot of courage, and also the space to see that there could be another avenue or direction that hasn't yet been discovered. When I can observe that my current attachment to a thought is preventing new thoughts or possibilities to emerge, that might just be my cue to start to let go a bit and see what's happening and why I am so attached to the one thing, unable to see other possibilities.

Not Attaching to Thoughts, Embracing the New

 Non attachment to thought is not so easy to do, but I suppose it has a lot to do with facing one's inner energy and not getting caught up in taking thoughts as being real. An example has to do with facing  a challenge. A lot of times when taking courses, I am faced with a creative "block" of sorts, where I begin to doubt myself and cannot find ways to overcome the problem. But when I allow myself not to know or to be so certain, I realize that I am operating under the thought "this is too hard" and that thought itself of "this is too hard" stems from a craving for certainty. In the event that I cannot tolerate uncertainty or even the possibility of failure or disorientation, I tend to stick with the very easy thought "this is too hard" and even give up altogether.
    I have always admired artists or musicians who never do the same thing twice. I recall reading about an interview of Freddy Mercury where he remarked that he did not want to perform the same style twice, so many of his songs adopt very different styles. The reason I admire such musicians, however, is that they risk failure even when what they have done before assures them success. For example, if I have a fan base of people who always support me in my ideas, I might very well make a living simply from my fans. Nowadays, there are many tools to do that, and one is bound to find employment simply from this approach. On the other hand, taking a risk into uncertainty allows me to find new connections and new ideas. I think this is where it is important not to fall for the very easy and familiar pattern of taking new challenges as "difficult". In fact, the only difficulty is being able to face ambiguity: after all, nobody ever fully "fails" or "succeeds" at anything, and learning is a unique process that cannot be replicated or even imitated.

Exploring Afflictions

Whenever I experience some vexation or troubling emotions, I consider: well, this is another possibility to explore and to wonder "why". I think that this orientation in itself is part of what makes vexation so interesting and intriguing. When vexation is turned into an interesting process of contemplation or even (dare I say) study, then one's attitude toward vexation itself changes. It's not even said to be "vexation" anymore; instead, it's one of many energies from mind, just like the waves in an ocean.
   Part of the problem is that vexations and afflictions in the mind often invite shame. This is interesting, because I sometimes wonder why people might feel the sense of shame when it comes to experiencing disturbing states of mind. It is almost as though one were to feel they were losing face if any emotion comes to their mind that does not match up with one's self-image. Experiencing vexations might also bring a person to a train of thought where they don't allow themselves to feel disturbed, either for fear that it will get out of control or because they believe they should know better than to have such feelings. It's only when a person is open to exploring emotions in a relaxed way that they will not block themselves from processing the emotions.
 To give a simple example, if I just missed the bus and I feel some kind of irritation, I might then add to the irritation by telling myself "you should not feel that way", or even imagining what I would look like in that moment. But there is another way, and that is to simply behold the irritation and to observe how it rushes through the body, generating all sorts of internal reactions. Treating the sensation as a curiosity, I can then start to better appreciate its living energy, rather than trying to hem it in with rules or expectations. When I only observe this emotion, I also have the chance to let go of any narratives I have about myself in the relationship to that emotion. (Who I am, what I look like to others, and so on). Knowing that emotions do not have automatic judgments attached to them can help me better understand and deal with them as they arise.

Speaking To Others

 After the group meditation tonight, we talked about a very interesting topic, namely "wisdom" from a Chan perspective. According to Master Sheng Yen, true wisdom is objective, meaning that it lacks a self reference. When I speak to someone, rather than saying "if I were you, I would..." my wisdom mind first seeks to know what the other person is truly experiencing. Only in this way can wisdom truly manifest and the illusory self center will start to dissolve.
  I am not sure how to relate to this, since there are a lot of related principles, but one take home is that I should speak to others not with the mind to "impress" or "please" but with a mind centered on the topic itself as well as the group as a whole. In the workplace, for instance, people might approach meetings with either the idea to compete for individual recognition, or with the idea of benefiting the group as a whole. When my mind is really in the present moment and I am only focused on the topic or objective at hand, then even being silent is okay. It's really one's attention to the issues at hand that gives rise to the appropriate actions and responses, even if the appropriate response is "none whatsoever". In that kind of circle, it's not necessary for me to fret about whether I am looking "good" or not, or whether "my" idea is accepted (alas--as many of one's ideas are borrowed anyway). But the point is that the ideas might potentially contribute to the whole in some way. And even if they don't quite fit, that's okay too: it's over time and through a few trial and errors that one can learn what combinations work most effectively for this team.
    Another take home is that--well, to be honest with you, I get this more from Kafka than from the workplace or Chan Buddhism--we should expect failure and non-finality. There is never a moment when we ever "finish", and I think that this infinite aspect is where compassion comes into play. If I am someone who has absolute certainty as to what I think I and others need, then there might be some wisdom there, but it lacks compassion. Compassion needs infinitude, because it is looking at the infinity of sentient existence. Even when I look deeply into myself or "study" myself, do I ever reach the end point where I can know what I need? To the contrary, it's through working with others that one can get some idea of what those needs are, but even then the knowing of another person and the self is inexhaustible. But it's precisely here that we can truly cultivate a compassion that does not despair. When I know that there is nothing to finish and yet there is everything available to do or not do, then what I do becomes an improvisation on selves interacting. What started as a "science" starts to look more and more like an art. I guess this is how I am understanding the process of speaking to others.

Befriending Our Places, Recollecting Spinoza

Yesterday, I again deliberately (or not so deliberately) got off at the "wrong" stop in Mississauga, ending up in an old haunt, South Common Shopping Mall. This was one of my favorite teenage "haunts", a suburban terminal that served as a midway point between my home and the much bigger Erin Mills Town Centre. I often walked to both places when I was in my undergraduate years in university. Nowadays, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so, on top of which it was raining yesterday as well. Yet, undaunted, I decided to walk to my mom's place from South Common Mall.
  My thoughts went to Spinoza: a philosopher who I had admired as a 20 year old, and who I had studied at university. Spinoza was one of the first philosophers to attempt to view reason and emotion as modes of a divine being that permeates everything. "Conatus" is Spinoza's term for the organizing principle of all things, and how beings have their own individual natures (perhaps fate or destiny might be apt words) which they maintain in the midst of other natures. To give an example,  a rock, plant and bird are all "modes" of the same being, but each has its own form of expression. Rocks don't grow in the way that plants do, and plants don't communicate or move as animals do, yet according to Spinoza, their fundamental belonging to a divine being is the same. The difference is that each has its own distinct piece in the unfolding conversation of life, occupying a role that is mitigated by its organizing principles.
   For humans, "conatus" is more about how our characters unfold in the midst of our fates. For example, on a day to day basis, I am buffeted by a variety of different urges and passions. Spinoza, however, reminds us that "passions" come from the same root as "passive", in the sense that they are ideas that act upon us; we are not the active authors of our passions. Only when I can integrate those passions into my character can balance be achieved. This requires a life of knowing oneself --not just what a person likes or dislikes but also where a person fits in the world, what strengths they can contribute to the society, and how they can give to the others in their lives.
    I am not sure what it means that a 44 year old is walking the same steps that his 20 year old self did many years ago. Is it the same or is it different? From my current view, the things that the 20 year old had at the time (including experiences, reading, thoughts, relations) were simply not quite enough to help him mature into a professional life or independence, at least not at that age. And even at this age, I can acknowledge that I don't know enough, and have not developed myself enough; there is still a long way to go. However, I can also see that he had the capacity to wonder about life, and this always keeps a person going at any age. If I ever find myself without that sense of wonderment, is there any more reason to live? I guess that's another question to add to one's daily walks.