The Fox and Mosquitoes

Tonight, I had a power outage in my area, due to an accident close to Yonge and Steeles. I experienced a bit of a irritation, to feel that my pattern of the evening was slightly disrupted, but at the same time, things weren't going well as I had planned anyway. I was having difficulties updating my online ethics protocol for my thesis project---so when this happened, it was like the universe telling me to stop trying to fix it and get out of the house. Where that took me was, first, to the place where I might find fuel for my computer and for my belly: namely, the local Starbucks, which happened to close just as I arrived there. My second option was to simply feed the mosquitoes and go to Lilian Park. I had no choice but the latter.
  On the way to the park, I stumbled upon an unexpected friend: a red fox! And I must admit, I have not seen any such animal casually prancing around the park, the way I had done this time. While I felt bad for the fox, I didn't feel bad for the swarm of mosquitoes around me, who seemed to have a field day feeding on my skin and blood. They did this while I tried to figure out the ethics protocol issue using the data on my cellphone. It was then that I discovered that I was able to do revisions through my cellphone.
   When I arrived home, the power had been restored. I wonder, would the same be said for the hungry fox, who seemed powerless against the humans outside who were trying to take selfies with it? I appreciate that I have a home to return to, but the fox didn't seem quite at home, at least not as much as the mosquitoes and flies were.
   Life sometimes asks that I leave the familiar, and even to stand under the sky naked, without the familiar distractions of words, projects, timetables and books. Well, being naked (or lacking the familiar) always feels discomforting, but there are these reminders that many beings make their homes on the edges, and manage to survive somehow. The food they eat is adventure. I know that sounds ridiculous to say to a fox, but when I say "adventure",  I do mean the traditional meaning of "to venture", to set forth, or to initiate things that have no beginnings or endings. A fox knows that it belongs nowhere, but does someone with a brief power outage have such self-knowledge?

Grateful for Bothersome Things?

 Can we be grateful for things that challenge our comfort zones and "bother us"? I am hesitant here to use the word "grateful", for fear that it entails a forced sense of joy. I think gratitude might be used to mean a sense of seeing meaning in bothersome things rather than going to a place of dislike/like. If I can see pain as meaningful in some ways, I am already close to opening up to it in some way. But that also means being open to the complex emotions I might feel in that space of meaning: neither total like nor dislike, nor total openness or closedness. In the space of meeting that "thing", whatever bothers us, there is actually a transcending of halves and binaries.
  The problem is that this experience I am edging toward has no opposites, so there is no language to really describe it. Language can render some of this irritable contact "comprehensible", but language also obscures the rawness of that contact. It fails to capture the vulnerability of being with others. Even when I use the word "bothersome", I am entailing a kind of stance toward it--a contracting back or inward--and this obscures the pain of vulnerability to the other. The mind seems to be beyond these binaries. Perhaps this is where bothersome can become thankful, because anything that awakens one to the wholeness of mind is surely of benefit.

The Value of Repentance

I have been reflecting on repentance: what is its true value? One that I can think of is that it promotes a total responsibility for all that has come about in life. But repentance is not easy. For instance, I might superficially accept the things that have happened to me as coming from my previous karma, but that acceptance is only half-heartedly so, or perhaps even begrudging. If I am resigned in my attitude toward my present life, how can that really be "repentance' in any sense of the word? I think to really repent requires a deep appreciation that this life perfectly matches/meshes with one's previous karma, and can be a powerful way to learn from it.
  For example, if I think of karma as a punishment, my attitude will be that of a helpless person who is angry or resentful. I carry the sense that someone else is deliberately trying to punish me. On the other hand, if I think of karma as the inevitable result of causes and conditions that never fail, I can take a much more curious, even scientific approach to it. Knowing that this karma is a "natural" result of previous actions, what can I do differently? Or, what can I really learn and reflect based on what's given to me now? If I am not in tune with this idea, I will naturally feel a kind of begrudging sense that some being (a parental figure or deity perhaps) has deliberately put me in this situation. In reality, the situation is none other than the result of many past conditions.
  I have influence in terms of my attitude: not seeing this in a resigned way, but seeing it from the perspective of an explorer: what new things can I learn from this situation ? How might I develop more flexible strategies? What do I need to let go of? It's important, at least from my point of view, to explore the idea of karma as a kind of learning, rather than as a strict punishment that is designed to make a person feel bad.

Vivacity and Restraint

 Looking at L.M Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, as an adult reader, I relate more to the adult characters (such as Marilla and Matthew) than to Anne herself. I am pretty sure that things would have been different had I read this book as a pre-teen or as a teenager. The exuberance of Anne, at one point, leads Marilla to realize the depth of her love for Anne, only to then restrain herself again with the injunction to "not show her feelings", much less encourage Anne to show hers. And, of course, I begin to see a change in Anne herself as the novel progresses, and she herself loses her appetite to talk voraciously as she matures. This perhaps leads me to wonder whether many, if not most, children lose that natural vivacity to talk or to volubly express their thoughts, in the name of "maturity". (And then comes the deeper question of what maturity is, and what cultural factors shape one's understanding of its meaning and direction).
  One of the clues, perhaps, comes at the beginning of the novel, when Anne describes how it's better not to get too close to things we love if we know that they are going to leave us (I am paraphrasing, here). This is the same plain that I heard when I read Freud's accounts of melancholy: the idea that beautiful things scare people, and cause them to back away, because loving something too much might lead to a huge mourning that cannot be surmounted. To put it in another way, perhaps the hidden shadow of restraint is a lack of restraint, just as coldness and rigidity might be hiding a warmth that is afraid to lose.
   In any case, the mourning I feel the most in this novel is Anne's eventual socialization into the competitive world, starting with rivalry with other students for the top grades, and continuing into her journey as a teacher. But at the same time, the process does shape Anne's character, and allows her a sense of purpose that her vivacity would have denied her. Too much vivacity and romanticism,without restraint, can lead to all kinds of dead ends, which are recounted humorously throughout the book. Eventually Anne (and Marilla, for that matter) find a balance in all of this, as their souls begin to connect as mother and daughters do.

The Belief in a Benevolent Universe

 I have been thinking recently about the difference between my early spiritual ideas about providence, fate, and the hand of "God/gods", and my more recently learned ideas about karma. I realize that when I was in my early twenties, the idea of having a benevolent caregiver in the universe was not only a idea that I fancied as being "spiritual", but seemed necessary as well. This is because, being young and not having established myself anywhere, I needed to create some kind of optimism or hope for the future. Interestingly, I do believe that when I nourished that confidence and faith, people around me would come to me with the same confidence and nurturing qualities. I think this is because we invite the very things we believe and nurture in our minds.
   Now that I am older, I find that I seem to lean less on the idea of universal benevolence. I seem to recognize that nothing in life is totally enduring and everything will inevitably have its ups and downs. Although I still reassure myself that things will be "ok", I no longer feel the need to trust in the permanence of okay-ness. Sometimes things will be okay, while other times they may be not okay I think I am saying that I no longer feel that I need to rely on a permanent source of benevolence to get on in life.
   I wonder if this means that I have taken a step "back" from spiritual life...or might it mean a step forward? Have I perhaps become cold to the kinds of things that might require more warmth from me? Perhaps what I am really driving at is that I have more tolerance for the impermanence of life than before, and I am willing to suspend thoughts altogether, without having to control things to make them seem favorable to me. Perhaps this comes from a deeper confidence that life does not have to go as per any plan, and from equanimity.

What One Can Provide

 According to the bodhisattva path, one must aim to "deliver all sentient beings". But I have found that in this kind of lofty goal, I have often found myself overstepping my means--that is, not having the wisdom or resources to be of help when it is needed. I wonder if trying to be of help can also be a kind of self-attachment, meaning that we have an idea of what being helpful might look like, and then try to impose it on others. Similarly, even at work, wanting to be everything to everyone turns out to be an impossible goal, and it would be perhaps the height of self-attachment to think that one could embody that goal. Could some of the process of becoming a bodhisattva consist in realizing the impossibility of helping all beings? And could that impossibility be the road to no-self?

 In Christian tradition, Paul Tillich uses a similar idea that humans are born eternally and irrevocably guilty. Humans owe immeasurable things to their creators and supporting beings, yet have no way of paying back the dividends. In reaching the point of impossibility--after genuinely trying to embody it--one has an opportunity to drop the self altogether. This is because all those efforts to vainly cover and help all sentient beings proved to be an utter delusion, so much so that one  is in a corner and all they can do is drop the illusory "giving" self that they had harbored for so long.

 In The Man Who Died, D.H. Lawrence talks about a Christ figure who decides, after his resurrection, to abandon the life of a savior, perhaps realizing the futility of trying to save all. I take this as an allegory for the exhaustion of the self, and the realization that the goal was to lose the self altogether, rather than harbor a sacrificial self.

Seeing the Whirlwind

On my special day off today, I went to Park Road for the back doctor, as well as a stroll through Park Road itself. I ended up at Lilian Park again, in the mid afternoon, toting two books that I will be teaching to my young students; Anne of Green Gables and Cricket of Times Square. And I started tracing a few elementary course syllabus.
  My reflections for today (were many, perhaps too many). Firstly, that texts never have a clearly delineated reader (subject) and finished product (object). Texts intersect in strange and unexpected ways with readers. It's illusory and overwhelming to try to get the "full" meaning of a text, while ignoring an authentic and pre-cognitive connection with the text that has little to do with either "full" or "official". Thinking in this way allows me much greater room to explore my curiosity about books, rather than trying to plumb the "ultimate" depth of books themselves. It allows me more room to see the permutations of reading books, and how unlimited subject positions really are within it.
  Second reflection: sometimes the whirlwinds people are drawn to are not in any way indicative of people's stations in life. Literally, whirlwinds don't go anywhere: they spin a person in one place. Rather than whirling with the whirlwind, it is best to keep the mind as still a possible--not attached to the intricacies of the whirlwind--yet paradoxically humble to the fact that the whirlwind cannot be resisted. It's in surrendering even one's very will (seeing through the will, realizing its vanity and shallowness, etc.) that the will truly stops. Will and whirlwind drive each other: one tempting/torturing, the other chasing and tortured. When one part gives up or becomes tired, the other will naturally fall away, as illusory.

Stillness in the Park

I found a park, somehow by mistake, on my way home from grabbing a take-home dinner. I used to think that this park was actually a schoolyard, until I realized that there were plenty of picnic tables and park benches.
  I sat peacefully on the bench eating dinner, watching the family practice tennis in the nearby tennis court. And for a while, everything just happened synchronously, falling together in one place, without a me to grasp at anything. Everything separate yet harmonized; nothing interfering with the process of anything else, and everything together in motion and in stillness. It seemed to me that everything, in spite of my misgivings, felt okay to me. But then, of course, the anxieties of everyday start to creep in again: will I be okay ? Will there be enough work for me to do tomorrow?  And as these anxieties kick in  naturally, I forget that the self is not so real, and there is nothing really enduring to cling to. Everything comes and goes like the breeze, the birds, the seasons, and the passing of the ball back and forth.
And though I will still worry about what happens to me, perhaps I can also make room for uncertainty. This is because the self is a fabrication, and cherishing the self is no more than like cherishing a smoke that is always changing.

Sound and Silence

I have been contemplating why it's especially important that each person finds their own way of expressing spiritual practice and ways of being. People often admire the truly devoted practitioner who is able and chooses to attend a temple on a daily or weekly basis, perhaps even to the point of becoming a nun or a monk. While this is certainly a good thing to look up to, not everyone has the causes and conditions to take on this path.
  We might even try to divest ourselves of things in our life to attain what seems like a simple, austere life, not realizing that every life, no matter what the situation, has an inner complexity. Respecting this complexity and the ways that spirit meanders (instead of proceeding in a linear way) is so integral to developing a respect and tolerance for the diversity of different forms of spiritual practice, as well as one's own unique position in all of it.
   One way of practicing this respect is to go back to this idea of polarity therapy, and to actively practice it. If I am in a busy intersection with lots of noise (both internal and external), I can picture my left hand holding a ball called "Noise" and my right hand holding the ball called "Stillness". Then I can reflect: is one of these completely bad and unacceptable, while the other completely good and holy? What happens if the world suddenly reverts to "total stillness"? Will that make everyone's mind at ease? And is the Noise I am upset about really related to sounds, or is it more about an inner reaction that I can observe instead of trying to "fix" by getting rid of sounds?
   When I evoke these kinds of questions, I start to see that both silence and sound have the same source in mind, and one is not superior to the other. In fact, the only "noise" is the noise my heart makes in getting unduly upset with the sounds, while silence is inherent in noise when I choose not to be upset or disturbed by the sounds. In this way, the busy intersection and the beautiful park becomes places of stillnes.

Intensity is not permanent

Often, when one is worried or consumed by some feeling, they are not yet opened to the totality of the moment. The sense of self is contracted into this one view of self, and one can feel the sense of self rubbing up against that which doesn't uphold the self. Or, it could even be that there is something about their self-presentation that they don't like. I believe we sometimes say that the person has "lost face" or may not even be able to look at themselves for days!
   It's important in these moments to recognize impermanence. A person does not carry an enduring self around them all the time. The sense of discomfort that comes from an invalidating sense of self is really only the arising of provisional conditions, and intensity of discomfort does not equate to permanence. This illusion of intensity as permanent probably comes from a fear of being saddled with something that will stay the same over time. But nothing really stays the same over time.
  Discomfort is most likely to be endured when one recognizes this equation of intensity = permanence is not at all real. I feel something very painful and then project that pain into an imaginary future, thinking it will stay that way. This not only ends up being inaccurate,but it also prolongs unnecessary pain and suffering. I am having this pain,but then also imagining that this pain goes on and on forever! That only multiplies the sense of pain a hundred-fold. It's important to recognize that the intensity of the pain has no relation to a fixed duration.
  In thinking this way, we can relax more with pain and let go of the story line that tries to control it. Pain will go away on it's own; there is no need to create a story to avoid pain or difficulty. But paradoxically, one has to go through it to see that it's impermanent.

One Hand and The Other

I have been quite taken by Ken Wilber's writings in the past couple of months. I would have to say that he has been largely influential in getting me to think more "integrally"--or, to put it more simply, to think not in terms of binaries but in terms of nested wholes. His account of polarity therapy in particular is parallel with ideas of non-duality which I have encountered in Buddhism. What I would like to share is a kind of spin-off exercise which I have even tried with some of my intermediate-level students, called "on the one hand/on the other".
  This exercise gets students to think from multiple perspectives about the same idea or character. Are the character's decisions the "right" ones? Would you do the same if you were in the character's shoes, or would you have done it differently? By getting the students to examine advantages and drawbacks of each alternative scenario, I introduce them to something like a polarity theory: the idea that a person can have opposites and contradictory ideas, and yet embrace these ideas simultaneously.
   People who suffer from depression might often think in terms of poles. Either I am "really good" or "terrible", with no "in between". David Burns, a prominent cognitive therapist, has suggested that depressed people tend to generalize negative situations into all situations, a kind of "emotional reasoning" which projects their mood onto situations. I wonder if being able to embrace an opposite view--to entertain the idea that there at least some things that I have done well--can defuse the tension and anxiety of feeling that one is either "good" or "bad", with no "in between". But it's also worthwhile to consider that even seemingly "bad" qualities that one might dislike about themselves can be beheld just as they are, without judging the person. In other words, one just observes the judgment without following the judgment to conclude that something or someone is good or bad. Is it then possible to accept that some things, from some perspectives, might seem "bad" from some view, but this "bad" is also conditioned arising and is subject to change over time? Again, I hesitate to judge: people are neither good nor bad. Actions might lack skill or be inappropriate at certain times, but that doesn't make a person bad.

Bodily Investigation

During the meditation practice today,I had the idea that "if only my back weren't so tight, I could practice better". This is a view that comes from believing that the mind is trapped in something called "the body", as though the body were a kind of metaphorical container. But if one really examines, using modern science, what gives rise to the feelings of the body, it turns out that there is no container whatsoever.
  I feel a sharp pain in my back or lower side, and I then have the thought, "If I shift it this  way, it will become more balanced", or "this would relieve it". So I imagine taking a tight thing and loosening it to make it more spacious. The more I engage in this process of trying to "fix" my posture to an ideal position,the more I lose sight of investigating the mind. I start to cultivate the idea that the body is an obstacle to meditative practice that needs to be fixed, conquered or tamed. This might be analogous to how civilizations view nature. It seems to be intuitively correct, but is it?
  The body might feel relieved for a little while, but soon enough, "relief" becomes another habitual feeling. I then search for a better sensation, such as a cool drink on my mouth. Is the "body" ever "filled completely" or even satiated? For a little while, it seems this way, but actually the body cannot be filled because it's a habitual concept. As long as I cherish the body as an enduring object, I give into feelings of dissatisfaction and wanting to fill the body with pleasure.
   There isn't really anything to do with the body. One must be confident in the method of trying to find the mind that contemplates body or cherishes the idea of body. It is this mind that is the real "object" of meditative investigation, even though it can never really be an object whatsoever.

Polarity Therapy

 Ken Wilber describes Polarity Therapy in the chapter "Miscellaneous Elements" of The Religion of Tomorrow. There are a few interesting aspects that I would like to explore in this therapy.
   The idea behind polarity therapy, if I am understanding correctly, is that whenever there is a deep conflict between two sides in a person, there is a tendency to attach to one side and reject the other to reduce that conflict. Freud was one of the psychologists who talked about how people repress impulses that are not considered acceptable to the greater society, in order to reach a psychic compromise with social norms. In many ways, the only way people achieve this compromise is through a process of repressing one side of themselves which embodies this "negative" or disliked element, sometimes called the "shadow". The problem with repression is two fold: firstly, it takes a lot of energy to repress unwanted elements of ourselves, and secondly, it can lead to all kinds of illnesses or bodily dysfunctions. I suppose that high blood pressure is one obvious side-effect of a repressed anger, for instance, but I wonder if perhaps depression or a mild fatigue might also be examples of the side-effects and symptoms of repression.
   Polarity therapy starts with the premise that there is something fundamentally common to two sides of something, and there is also something purposeful about these sides. Anger or compulsive behavior might seem bad altogether, but if one starts to have a conversation between "the good" and "the bad", one may begin to see that there is some common ground between them, such as a common goal. Getting angry at my computer for being non-functional at work might seem counter-productive (and therefore I repress it), but it can also have the same goal of wanting me to get back to work. So rather than denying my emotion, it might be to inquire: what kinds of concerns does this emotion to relate to? Can I trace the emotion back to the concern? Here, the emotion starts to be accepted as part of an overall situation where choices can be made and a strategy can be built.
  Then comes the part of, if emotions have common concerns, can the emotions work together somehow? Yes, anger might be one emotion, as well as anxiety, but how about recognizing that these emotions are only parts to an unfolding whole that is changing all the time? Here, the emotions are seen and respected, but they are integrated into a whole. Perhaps one can even say that rather than one emotion dominating and being 'true', each emotion is like a color that provides a useful lens for the others. In this way, polarity gives way to more harmonizing of elements.

Wilber ,  K (2017) The Religion of Tomorrow. Boston: Shambahala

Beyond Polemic and Polarity

 If I understand Ken Wilber's ideas and system overall, I would have to say something like: our states of mind are evolving. Ideas that are popular and useful to people come into being for a reason, based on a need to transcend a previous level of being that had proven inadequate. At the same time, ideas are precursors to even higher ideas. An example might be: although rationality came at a time when superstitions governed Western thinking, the limit of rationality is that it does not always embrace different perspectives. Logic can exclude key perspectives that count as truth, even though logic had functioned to debunk previous "dogma" as being too limiting and narrow. Thus one needs to go beyond even logic, even though this does not negate the function of logic.
  If I understand the principle,it is that, every idea that proves useful to people has both a potential (which is to be embraced) and a limit (to be transcended). If I anxiously cling to the potential of an idea, thinking that everything that is not that idea is dangerous or "other", I forget that there are simply more comprehensive ideas that can go beyond the current ideas and solutions. This is not "either/or" thinking, but rather the idea that something always lies in wait on the horizon: a more in depth way of seeing and being that is not captured in one's present mindset.
  Perhaps it helps to think that every idea has a before and an after: the "before" refers to what an idea was intended to integrate and replace; the "after" refers to what will eventually come along to address the limits of the current idea. No idea is ever the best or the most final, but it builds upon or transcends something that came before.
    This is not a dualistic, polarized thinking that valorizes one idea or says, "either you believe this or that". Rather,  every idea has its place and only its place in the scheme of things, and too much of one idea leads to a huge perspective diminishing or gap. This is why one needs to keep their mind open to ways of thinking that go beyond or step a little bit further down the road of the current ideas and mindset.

Detours and Roads Untravelled

In a nature path, there are 'main roads' which are paved, and there are detours. One knows surely little about the detours, and there is always a risk that the end of those dirt paths, the person who started them wasn't able to finish. As some paths become more respectable (and repeatable), people are more likely to travel them, even when they already figured the destination beforehand. Knowing where to go simply feels more reassuring in the end.
   Reading the section from Master Sheng Yen's Orthodox Chinese Buddhism today about whether there is a soul or not, I reflect: how scary it is that the "soul" or "enduring personality", is none other than the paved road! It's the identity that I am so familiar with that I think that it stays with me forever. But in fact, this identity is hardly a long path that stretches to infinity. More so, it can be likened to a kind of small island which has accumulated certain habits over time: a kind of tributary that builds up certain kinds of natural sediments while others are eroded over time. This is none other than a path that, when trodden upon enough times or built up long enough, gives the illusion to the idea of a long-standing, enduring self: an identity or soul that is fixed across many lifetimes.
   To travel an unbeaten path is similarly risking the potential erasure of the self that I have been so familiar with, in favor of the more humbling "starting over", or perhaps more aware that every step can be a new one and can lead to an unexpected or much less certain result.

Life's Spin Cycle

Ken Wilber talks a lot in his book The Religion of Tomorrow about the terms "embrace" and "transcend". The two go hand in hand. When I really own something as an integral part of myself without making it into something to be desired or repressed/hated, then I am ready to go beyond it. But it is so easy to get this wrong, especially prematurely trying to transcend something too quickly (allergy, as Wilber calls it) and/or trying to embrace to the point of making something an addiction.
   I like to use the analogy of a spin cycle. Everyone has probably experienced times when they feel they are making the same mistake over and over again, yet are constantly trying to apply the same band-aid solution. The solution looks like it's going fine, but in fact, it's eventually seen as a stopgap to prevent a real and genuine transformation. Some solutions are even worse than the things that they are meant to address or "fix" precisely because they do work for a while, only to cycle back to the original problem again.What these things really do is make people feel temporarily good, at least enough to distract them from the thing that is bothering them the most.
   When I finally recognize that the "fix" doesn't address the original problem, I stop pretending that it does, and instead, I see the spin cycle for what it is. I neither repress the problem by embracing a false solution, nor do I go back to the fixation that caused the original problem, I am simply seeing the absurd cycle, similar to clothes in a drying machine. It is only at this point that the cycle can really be transcended. It is seen for what it is, in its totality, and faced with an open eyed honesty that doesn't idealize any spoke in the wheel. Could this combination of acceptance and non-idealizing be the doorway to transcendence that Wilber describes?

No Place to Go

 I am wondering whether you have ever had the experience before where, whatever you experience in front of you is not separated from the viewer. In that moment, the only thing that matters is whether the mind is still or moving, but even if it's moving, the mind has nowhere to go.
   Well, perhaps it can be put in this way: water can have ripples or be perfectly still and unmoving, but in both cases, the water hasn't left anywhere. It simply moves or stays still. For someone to try to stop the water from moving would assume that the movement has no place at all in water. But moving and stillness are just different states of the same substance, and neither adds nor subtracts to the overall. This is to say that even if I find the water is rippling, I don't feel disturbed by the movement. I don't try to splash the water to stop the ripples from happening--which would defeat its own purposes anyway. This "no place to go" is something rather special, in fact.
  Purity and "dirt": well, this is a good example. A very dirty substance is actually not dirty at all, if you were to examine it on a molecular level. Molecules of dirt have no interaction with the substance they are interspersed with. There is not even a chemical reaction happening there. When a dirty cloth is washed, the dirt is simply removed and there is no trace of the dirt on the cloth. But in fact, the two were never fused together in the first place. Because one appears to be proximate to the other, I refer to the other as "dirty". In fact, in my mind, I preconceive what the clean version of the cloth looks like. But whether "dirty" or "clean", nothing has changed about the cloth itself.  To say one is dirty is to confuse the appearance to be something real and enduring, or having a fixed essence.
   Most of the time, I think of the surfaces: I imagine that things get dirty and get clean. If I dig a bit further, I find that no such thing really happens. One might even imagine that a mind is defiled by its own thoughts--but this is not actually the case, since thoughts never stay in the mind. Can I see that the "dirty" cloth is neither inherently clean nor dirty? Can I see that these qualities are appearances that form mental categories, and are not the essence of the cloth?

Jealousy as Projection?

 Ken Wilber (2017) introduces an interesting exercise known as "3-2-1", in which the thing that we most dislike or admire starts out as an object that is "out there" (third person), after which one has a conversation with it (second person, or "you") and finally begins to recognize that what is "out there" is really "in here"--that is , it is none other than one's own mind, or mental universe. Shadow work, in which a person owns up to what they project outward onto others, is a process whereby we come to realize that the things we most fear or dislike "out there" are really disowned parts of ourselves. Many of these qualities are fear-provoking only because we project them onto others, rather than integrating those part into ourselves.
   The same, in fact, is true with desirable qualities which we tend to admire in others. If we see something we deem as wonderful or beautiful, or spiritual, etc., it is really ourselves that makes the appraisal, and the overall esteem of the desired person or thing is based on our own deepest experience. It doesn't essentially reside in the person or thing we are appraising but is, rather, a disowned part of ourselves, or at least our own mind. If we doubt this, we might consider the simple example of an heirloom that we treasure or highly value. That heirloom might look beautiful on our mantelpiece, but it takes our own mind and attention to truly see the beauty in the heirloom. It's our own unique quality of giving attention to certain things that brings their value to life, and makes their qualities real, in that moment. In fact, it is we ourselves that do the inner work of beholding the dignity and beauty of the esteemed object. Why admire or envy another person's possessions if it is the mind (one's very own mind, in fact) that is the heart of how, and to what extent, we esteem these things?
   By shifting the wonder of a thing from the prize to the way it is beheld and appreciated, one might come to recognize that all power resides not in things but in the ways that we appraise, appreciate and give attention to things.  This is the love and openness that we might bring to the present,  to bear upon the things around us.

Wilber, K (2017). The Religion of Tomorrow Boston: Shambhala Press.

Choosing Books for Lessons

I seem to have this funny sense when I choose a book for my future lessons. Perhaps it's a bit like shopping for a birthday gift that is intended for someone else, but ends up tickling one's own fancy much more. It could also mean, perhaps more accurately, the thrill of starting something new with children and having those young minds be exposed to something that also gives you  some basic joy. And of course---the thrill doesn't last, and it has its ups and downs. But there is always hope at the very beginning, which drives me through the many hours I put into forming the course outlines and syllabus
   Each time I design the class, I keep trying to look for better ways to teach. More importantly, I look for new things that I hadn't taught, much less thought about, before. I think it's important never to say, "well, this has all been done before", but to keep rediscovering the same themes in slightly different variations. This is perhaps about beginner's mind, but it also might relate to not giving up or becoming jaded.
   If I think about how a teacher must feel, marking the same assignment many times or reading the same books each semester, I begin to wonder how teachers can keep the material fresh enough in their minds that they might discover something new to reflect on. Teachers can either get into a routine, or try to build on what they learned before (what works or doesn't work), or they might just try to see the books in totally different ways, using the lenses of other things they are developing in their lives. In any case, all of these concerns I am developing are related to a question I am passionate about, and that is how teachers remain grateful and happy beings, even in the midst of the turmoils they face in schools and with the very unpredictable learners they are faced with.
   Books should always be discoveries, even if they turn out to be not what I expected to discover. I can only hope that the love of discovery itself is never squelched in me, no matter what situations we are facing as a society in these recent times.

Being Good Hearted Necessary to Practice?

      I was reading a translated material from a Buddhist text today, which stated that being "good natured" is a basic prerequisite to following Buddhism. After all, a person can spend a lifetime reading and diligently studying scriptures, yet, may not fully benefit from such a practice if they are not kind-hearted to begin with. Some Buddhist teachers even recommend that people stay away from Buddhism altogether if they lack the basic disposition of kindness. This, I assume, is to ensure that Buddhism's reputation as a belief system is not harmed by people who lack that required goodness.
   I think that such kind of a recommendation is a very good reminder that people should approach Buddhism with the intent of uplifting others and oneself. However, it leads me to wonder: if those who start to practice Buddhism lack a disposition to be happy or good-natured, would they not benefit even more from being a Buddhist? I am thinking in particular of famous "Buddhists" in history who killed, such as Milarepa, before being suddenly changed by a particular teaching or even a turn of phrase. Some of the most dramatic conversion narratives in religion, in fact, arise when people who are "mean" spirited are suddenly turned in the opposite direction, if not simply by the grace of a higher being. Paul in the Bible is one such example of a person who starts out as persecuting Christianity, only to later make a 360 degree turn.
  If people are only allowed to practice a religion when they have a specific temperament that is benevolent, a lot of others end up being excluded from it, including those who do make sudden progress after a period of drudgery and study. Perhaps what was meant by this translation is that one should, regardless of temperament, always try to look to the best parts of themselves when taking on a spiritual practice. Otherwise, it can be very easy to slip into looking at spirituality through a defensive or uncharitable lens. I also assume that even if we might not have a natural disposition to be friendly, at the very least, we can cultivate humility to this fact and start to work on softening our character and lightening up a bit. After all, it's through a certain kind of softness and openness that these teachings can slip into the cracks of the heart.