A Book with Torn Pages

 On the subway tonight, I came to discover that a book I had borrowed had several pages torn from it! What a surprise, and a bit of a frustration, particularly since this book, Elizabeth Grosz's Volatile Bodies, is one of the most readable poststructural texts I have encountered, with sentences that truly cohere and make some degree of sense. But it's perhaps symbolic that the "good read" I was experiencing tonight was disrupted by the sudden appearance of the missing pages. It reminds me that in the end, these compelling words are just constructions that are conditioned by a sense of "completion" or of putting something together to create coherence.
    It makes me wonder...have you ever had one of those experiences where you accidentally flipped ahead of your reading by a page or two, and then had to figure out how you connect the two "disconnected" pieces of text? Sometimes, the mind does in fact have tricky ways of doing this. In the absence of any evidence otherwise, I would find myself asking what I misunderstood or overlooked in not being able to put the two different fragments of the text together. In other words, my mind basically tries to regulate the misunderstanding by trying to create some kind of sense. In fact, we are doing this all the time, in the effort to maintain a shared and practical reality, though we are often unaware that we are doing such a thing. It's only when the process of narrating is unexpectedly interrupted that one starts to become aware that the text is being constructed and "made sense of"continuously by the mind.

Scaling Impossible Mountains

 The movie Free Solo tells the true story about Alex Honnold, who is the first to successfully climb El Capitain, a famous mountain in Yosemite Park. I found this movie to be interesting in many ways, particularly in how it chronicles the contradictory values of companionship and goals, and how these two are precariously balanced. One of the apt metaphors that resonated with me while watching this movie was that of armor: how character must suit itself up in a tight armor of focus in order to achieve the almost impossible accomplishment of climbing such a steep mountain.
  Watching this movie convinces me that in some ways, people come into this world with very specific things they need to do, and there is no rational way of explaining these things away. Very exceptional characters and personalities like Honnold remind me of the soul's important mission and work in the world as well as the complexity of embracing contradictions on the journey. After all, achieving the goals that most resonate with one's soul and calling is not without the needs for community and being grounded in companionship. Alex's partner Sanni stands by him throughout this journey, and yet has to face the fact that her partner is glued to his goal of scaling the mountain.      Is there any way around such a goal?\ A few times in this movie, I felt that Alex was going to abandon his mountain journey and embrace an ordinary life. But toward the end, I became convinced that when the soul calls, people are going to need to answer it in some way. It is simply not enough to hide in a safe framework of a suburban existence, for example; one must face those deepest desires to achieve sooner or later. At the same time, I can see that there is a give and take here, where Alex learns that he can't do anything totally separate from the community and people who care about him. In this way, the soul needs community to continue its journey.

Flexible Boundaries

  I was reading in one textbook by Chris Weedon (1999)on feminist philosophy the theory of Nancy Chodorow (p.83-86) that women are socialized to have more flexible ego boundaries. I really resonate with the term "flexible boundary" because there is a sense of balance and art:the ability to shift one's sense of self when situations call for more leeway and balance. I think this is one of many things that perhaps men struggle with, perhaps because the male role model is always a little bit distant or detached. But it's also interesting to reflect on what "relaxed ego boundary" truly means.Does it entail being completely submissive? I once heard the expression that the strongest branch is the one that bends, and I think this is where the term "ego boundaries" indeed becomes very useful to contemplate.

  Its' certainly not the case that with this "ego boundary" notion, I "crack" every time I am faced with something, and nor do I resist it outright. Instead, like the branch that bends with the wind, I am actively working with whatever energies are arising in the moment. Working with those energies means I don't reject them but in fact I do try to harmonize with them. If something feels "stuck" for me, it might be helpful for me to reflect, what am I trying to resist? Is resisting the flow of whatever is happening truly the way to resolve the suffering I am experiencing? Of course, some kinds of resistance are needed to accomplish certain tasks, but even in those cases, it's important to consider whether that resistance wisely considers the relationships, or whether it miscalculates. Resisting something only because we "don't like it" gives us no opportunity to grow within it or to even learn how to live with that emotion until it transforms into something more interesting, nuanced or observational. Resisting too easily can also lead to a knee jerk refusal to engage anything that is complex or difficult, which then becomes a habit of isolating from these difficulties. The alternative is to stay with these difficulties and see how they work through a person and change to something different over time.

 

Weedon, Chris (1999)  Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers

"Tomorrow Is Another Day"

 I have been extremely busy in the past month, and so strapped for time that I have often failed to keep up with my daily blog. Part of the reason is that taking a course in Poststructural research "unsettles" the whole project of writing a daily blog. It has the effect of forcing me to think about this blog as a construction but also as a kind of contrivance: I am playing a part when writing this blog that is very specifically inscribed in other social processes. For example, the idea that writing daily is a good thing (much like eating a healthy diet, for example, or running) is not something I just made up in my head, but it came rather from a historical premise: the idea that writing daily is an honest rendering of things that "actually" happen or that "actually" represent "real" people. In fact, that edifice starts to look weak when I explore it alongside Poststructural leanings.
   Now, my original topic for tonight's blog was going to be "Tomorrow Is Another Day", and I am sure it would have combined some Buddhist learning and stoicism to provide "me" with some fruitful self-edification. But now more and more I tend to think that the process of writing itself is a discursive act that goes even farther than the boundaries of the topic itself. For example  it invisibly reinforces privilege (the ability to comfortably write from a safe vantage point without the threat of discrimination or obstracism); authority (the claim to "know" that I will be okay tomorrow, even if I don't actually know that this is going to be the case); power (the ability to put words together creating a life world which I can safely inhabit for said reasons above), and so on. The fact that daily writing "makes" a writer...and the importance accorded to being a writer (the power, status, privilege, recognition, etc.) ...all of these things define the act and rationale for writing, because they are part of the manufacture of a cosmopolitan intellectual: a kind of hybrid figure who is neither university trained professor nor bachelor student, neither "published" to a wide audience (or in a recognized publishing house) nor "unpublished" (hence, you are reading this blog)
     Deconstructing texts actually forces me to consider: are the themes I choose to write about really self-evident truths, or are they specifically curated with a particular subject in mind? The "persevering", "survivalist" subject of "Tomorrow Is Another Day", is this not the response to an ideology of survivalism/resilience and macho bravado that characterizes a lot of Western existentialist thinkers? I leave it at that to ponder...

Parent Child Love

I remember how, when I was very small, I saw a father trying to encourage a very sad child by showing a puppet and speaking through that puppet in soothing words. (This was in a shopping mall called Square One, in a store called Romper Room). The child was having none of it, and kept walking ahead of the father, very upset or angry about something. I remember feeling sad for the father, and even wondering, in my childlike imagination, whether the father would "die" from the lack of affection from his child. Conversely, would the father's love for the child die?
  During my recent trip to Ripley's Aquarium, a child had mistaken me for her father, tugging on my arm and saying, "hold my hand, daddy!" Part of me did wonder, could such a confusion happen between children and their mothers? To this child's credit, the aquarium is a pretty dark place, so perhaps her confusion is understandable. But here again, I begin to question why the child's relationship with their father is always problematic. It's easier to imagine the shattering of the paternal bond than the maternal one, perhaps because mothers are often traditionally nurturing the child very closely, whereas fathers might take on a somewhat more tentative, reluctant role or stance.
   Sometimes I feel that even when a parent's love for their child falters or is met with indifference or apathy, there is a learning opportunity to be had there. Not all feelings "plug into" or easily transfer to the objects of those feelings in ways that feel like a perfect, tight circle. Both parent and child need to adjust to each other's wavelength. Perhaps the same goes for people who are friends or colleagues, but the difference is that adults have a much wider range of choices of how to express themselves. Children are limited by their experience of others, and parents have to find ways to imagine their children's needs before they can connect with them.

Performing Badly

 This morning in the Chan Hall, I made the mistake of hastily folding a towel, just before "modelling" how to enter and exit the Chan Hall. The Fashi went over and showed everyone how to fold the towel properly and "with respect", while I stood by quite flummoxed and beside myself. I reasoned to myself that perhaps the whole idea of demonstrating how to fold a towel is that you need someone around who has no idea how to fold one properly or correctly! Of course, one can go on about this and wonder if such a rationalization is perhaps too evasive. The point is, there is no reason to necessarily excessively feel bad that something wasn't done properly or correctly; one can only take it as a learning for the next time.
    This is not the first time it happened to me. In fact, on my very first 3 day retreat, the Fashi (a nun) had told two of the volunteers to show me how to fold a towel correctly. Back in that time, I felt both ashamed and a little bit angry that I had been called out on something like this. But this time, I don't feel any sense of real anger. I take it that there are many ways of looking at something, and part of what one needs to do is keep their minds and hearts open to possibility. For example, how does the "bad student" furnish the possibility for new ways of knowing, simply by virtue of "performing badly"? There are a lot of ways to go with this, such as giving the teacher the opportunity to hone in on their practices, or allowing the student to redefine or reconsider their practices. But it's not a good thing for this type of situation to create impossible conflicts or divisions. It's better to acknowledge that students do make mistakes at times, and not to reflect that on the student as a person, but more to look at it as a series of conditions that arose in that moment.
    Performance is really just performance, and I do believe that everything we perform (and the subsequent feedback) does get stored in the mind in some way. There is therefore no need to be excessively critical but to keep in mind for the next time that something could be improved.

Appreciation of Simply Living

 In this past month, I have been heavily involved in projects at my work, with so little time to simply let myself be: whether it's just lying on the bed, or enjoying a coffee, or having a walk. In our Buddhist study class tonight, we talked about the idea that contemplating the body and sensations are different levels are actually ways that we can enjoy having a body. Every time we take a breath, we have an opportunity to really appreciate that we have this breath. But I don't think that this thought I am describing is that easy to experience; in fact, it sounds too polly-annish, and I want people to think of it more as a way of being than an attitude toward something. It's not about being attached, but about seeing something as impermanent and therefore worth cherishing for what it is. Having a body to live within is indeed a very lucky occurrence, and it requires the utmost appreciation to enjoy that. But the only way to enjoy, is to really let go: of comparisons, of trying to be the "best" (whatever that is), or trying to achieve security at all costs. These thoughts revolve around trying to protect a fragile sense of self that has nothing to do with one's breath and one's life.

Time's illusory drag

 The time that we occupy this world, this body and this place, always seems so abundant, as though it were forever, but I am reflecting how this sense of time is deceiving. This past month of January felt incredibly long and busy for me, to the point where the beginning of January actually feels like a distant, faraway country. But this sense of time only comes from the fact that one is very occupied. In fact, the same amount of time is passing every moment, if we can even all these units of successive change "time". After all, what is actually passing through time itself? What essence "changes" through time?
   Something that seems to last forever----an ache, a pain, a sense of burden-is actually only a repeated habitual way of thinking that is subject to change any moment. It's false to believe that these things are forever, and it's even more false to project a feeling of having all the time in the world. In fact, every moment, the world is being constructed anew. There is no time, only this time, eternally. And yet...yet there is no time, because that eternity is constantly changing. Does any of this teach one the importance of gratitude?

The Writing of Selves

 When I notice the many ways that even a simple, seemingly insignificant event can be written, my mind is full of marvel. Think about the many perspectives and selves that could be constructed when one enters the door of a house, a shopping mall or a temple; any private or public space, for that matter. The ways in which those entrances and exits can be framed are seemingly endless and proliferate in so many ways. So how can anything be exhausted? I feel that knowing and rethinking how self is framed in different ways is quite fascinating.
  Selves don't just exist as biological or even sociological "givens" or markers. As I am learning in the poststructural course, these selves are written. In a sense, we can say that the combinations of how to write the self into the picture are quite vast. So why might people settle for one way? I think the essential view of the self blocks possibilities, and also prevents seeing diversity of possibilities.
  To extend the writing analogy further: at what point does the writing part shut down? Writing in these parts still needs to be productive, for sure, in the sense that they need to interface relationships: working relationships, communities of learning and so on. But these writing of the selves enriches the communities by offering more than one possible way of connecting to community. It renders community an abundant source of trying out new ways of thinking about the self as a project.

Standing Beside Stories

 It's hard to be able to honor our stories-including the ones we never say, that are never told. I am beginning to wonder about the mind itself, especially how complex it is. Have you ever had a situation where, for some reason or another, you suddenly remember something that was previously "buried" for a long time--the snippet of a song, an old friend, or even a name that has long since been forgotten? I am sure that most people have experienced this in some form or another. But the question is, how to honor the complexity of those voices unspoken, not yet spoken, unaccounted for or simply unexpressed?
   Humility is such a key factor to this experience I am describing. It's important to appreciate the so many things I simply don't know about the world and my place in it. It is also important to keep door open to how to look at the complex threads that make people tick, without settling on only one narrative. But at the same time, in the midst of all of this, one can still act; it's just that it comes from a place of much less certainty and more room for play.