Purity of Intention

  Being able to practice purity of intention is not easy, because there is often the expectation of a specific result. If I focus on what I have or don't have; what I have gained or what I could lose; what I need to know and lack knowledge of---these are all results-based thinking. They come from the perspective that gain/loss, pass/fail, win/lose are the end results of any endeavor. They also overlook the role that intention can play in shaping our actions and attitudes.

   Without a sense of intention, a person like myself can end up spinning in endless thoughts of gain/loss. This is a dog chasing its tail indeed. It overlooks the way that a single pure thought can outshine everything else. In fact, the intention counts more than the outcome, because even outcomes are impermanent. Intentions are the seeds of the heart. A pure intention plants the seed to a good heart.

 What is the key to this "purity of intention"? I believe it consists in letting go of all thinking that tries to take advantage of any situation for a gain.  It has to do with seeing everything as a totality and not thinking there is one part that gains, and one part that loses. All are interconnected. In this way, there is no sense pining over what one can lose, and no sense in trying to seize anything strictly for the self. All such thoughts of self/other prove to be irrelevant.

Chains of Thought

  During group meditation practice tonight, I practiced reciting Buddha's name, imagining that each sound (Na-Mo-A-Mi-To_Fo) formed a complete circle or chain. In fact, it reminded me that each moment, though forming a chain, stands in itself for all the world and everything within it. There is no actual sense of time when I get into this state. It becomes a kind of direct seeing into each sound.

    It's hard not to follow the "chain"of one's thoughts unless there is a stillness that breaks the chain or at least goes beyond it. When the mind is unsettled, it's like a chain reaction (to extend the metaphor of chain): something seems to automatically lead to something else. When stillness breaks in and one is attending to only one thing with full attention, the links in the chain start to be seen as entities in themselves. There is no interaction between the links in those chains, and therefore no reason to think of each thought as inevitably related in some way. Imagine what the mind were like if it did not see thoughts as inevitable links in a chain. It would be much more flexible to adapt different approaches to learning and would no longer be bound by one chain of thought or another.

   I also noticed that when I am in that state of just attending to each sound, the pain in my body felt less apparent, and I was able to be curious and even genrou toward the pain. I coul see that pain was part of my experience, and there was no sense of  me having toget a new body or rplace that pain in any way. Perhaps this is due to the stillness of mind as well.

Developmental Approaches To Learning

     From time to time, I find that developmental ideas of learning are extremely compelling. They suggest that children's learning unfolds from predictable levels of abstraction that occur over time. Bob Samples (1976) has talked about the legacy of Piaget (p.55) in developing a linear model of how the mind transcends the sensuous to encompass successively higher levels of abstraction. Yet, Samples suggests that rather than being a natural pre-given order of things, Piaget is simply echoing a larger cultural bias toward logical, linear thinking that dominates mainly in Western society. This reminds me of a chicken and egg dilemma: does the "natural" order of learning determine cultural models, or vice versa? Because different cultures learn differently and are influenced by different language structures, I am compelled to feel that culture plays a great part in socializing and organizing the learning experience for children. What appears natural ---especially in hindsight--is most likely the result of dialectical tensions between the learner and her or his social environments. To put it plainly: because there are cultural pressures in place to learn, behave and respond in certain ways that are somewhat predetermined and somewhat negotiable, people do tend to learn roughly the same things in the same order. Even one's motivations to learn are often conditioned by what is afforded to people in the environment.

    As a child, I was fascinated by so many things--nature, astronomy, science fiction and so on. But now that I am in my forties, I feel that that part of my life is not so compelling. Although I still feel a sense of wonder about some things, my questions nowadays tend to focus more on process and practicality. A question, for me, needs to lead to some sense of purpose that goes beyond the simple pleasures of learning a subject for its own sake. All of this probably came from being socialized to think along the lines of academia, but I also think it's because my personality did change as well. I think that "development" might not be so much a sense of one stage being "better than" another, as it is the way cultures choose to select and encourage certain kinds of curiosity that most serve the greater community. This is how "pleasures" are channeled into "professions" and skills come out of interests.

Samples, B (1976),The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wellesley

Looking Backward

 If a person looks back and wonders what could have happened had they taken a different route or path in life, do they have a productive thought? I would have to doubt it. There are many "time travel" or parallel universe movies which attempt to show how a protagonist could relive their life had they taken some specific fork in the road. (I am thinking in particular about the movie "Peggy Sue Got Married", but "Back to the Future" also comes as a close second). I have to say, however, that these movies are based on a particular idea that life has specific paths that could be taken by a person. This is also epitomized in the poem by Robert Frost, "The Road Less Taken". Is this idea of life as a series of paths a valid one?

    I have reasons to suspect that this idea of "time as a road" has some potential defects. First of all, people often believe that "things could have been different" had they chosen a different field or path, but this does not necessarily mean that a person's character would be different on either path. Deep inside, regardless of one's chosen vocation, one may still encounter the same or similar difficulties based on the perceptions and karma that they bring to that specific path. Simply choosing one path, in other words, does not eradicate one's habits and character, so it's possible that the life of a person is not qualitatively different regardless of which of the two or more paths they take. 

    Second, and perhaps more verifiable, is the idea that a single decision often does not determine everything that happens thereafter. The road metaphor assumes two clearly laid out paths that are separated by a very large wedge or fork. In fact, paths are never this clearly laid out or straightforward. Even after a person chooses to embark on one path, they still have the ability to influence the direction of their life based on current choices and motivations. In fact, even being on a path does not determine how one travels that path or what they want to do or create while on it.

   Thirdly, even reflecting on a road not taken is actually reflecting from the present moment perspective. If one really wants to know why they didn't take the road that they did, they need only ask themselves, "what would I do now?" Often they will realize that there are complicated reasons why we do or don't do something. Many causes and conditions (to borrow from a Buddhist concept) could influence one's decision to embark on a project or refrain from doing so. There is not even any point in reflecting on what "could have been" if in fact one can take steps in the present moment to make their life closer to what they would like to do.

  For these reasons, I would be inclined to doubt the premise that time consists in discrete "forks" in the road, opting instead to think that there are possibilities, but everyone carries their own distinct karmic conditions with them, along with whatever choices they make. Perhaps this leads to the idea that rather than thinking of time as a road, it might be best to think of it as literally, "footprints in the snow". There is no road in the snow; there are only steps that we can use to create a temporary path.