The "Good" vs "Emptiness"

 One of my favorite essay collections has to be Iris Murdoch's Existentialists and Mystics. I have been taking some notes on this fascinating anthology of some of Murdoch's best essays and lectures. Murdoch is both a critic of 20th Century philosophy as well as a promoter of a somewhat Platonic sense of the Good. She critiques certain strands of modern philosophy as being too focused on the will and "free choice", as opposed to cultivating the proper attention needed to make meaningful choices that are based on clear evaluations of what truly exists. Although Murdoch does not precisely define the Good (any more than, say, Plato does), I find myself making parallels between her notion of the Good and the Buddhist notion of Sunyata, or emptiness. Here are the parallels that I draw between both concepts.

1) Both concepts involve a reality that is independent of "self" or self grasping. Both emptiness and "The Good" are independent of our wants, desires, self-centered tendencies. 

2) Both concepts require contemplation or a disciplined activity of the mind to be fully known or revealed. Murdoch suggests that contemplation of nature, art, or any other discipline such as academic subjects or crafts, can take us effectively out of ourselves and into a realm where values matter. A tradesperson definitely can tell the difference between a quality furniture and furniture that is sloppily made. By analogy, most people have an instinctive sense of values that are conducive to the good. Murdoch also introduces Simone Weil's concept of "attention" to denote a patient and diligent attitude where we humble ourselves before a subject matter--waiting for it to disclose itself rather than trying to impose our prejudices or quick judgments on the thing to be studied. Of course, emptiness is similarly something that requires contemplative awareness to be deeply known or fathomed.

3) Both concepts entail a sense of contingency. Contrary to the human impulse to try to systematize or contain the truth in a single philosophy or work of art. both "the Good" and "emptiness" defy all expectation. This is simply because things operate from endless changing factors, and are constituted by factors that are not contained within neat or predictable concepts. Emptiness is an idea that takes us beyond conceptualization, because it suggests a "thusness" that cannot be controlled, predicted or fully shaped or known by the intellect.

There a lot of other things to say about the parallels between Murdoch and the Buddhist concept of emptiness as I understand it. However, I do want to add that from what I understand of Chan and Zen Buddhism, what we think of as Good and Bad are not absolutes but necessarily co-exist. This is one thing that I don't think Murdoch's philosophy goes into very much, but I am very fond of Thich Nhat Hanh's frequently cited notion of the "lotus" and the "mud", which suggests that all things inter-are. We can't have a beautiful lotus without the ugly and smelly mud, and nor can we have flowers without filth or garbage to fertilize them. 

As much as Murdoch wants to delineate a clear and fixed notion of Good, there is something in what I have read from Buddhism and Taoism in particular that tells me that both good and bad are in the same boat. If something is sinking the boat, good also suffers, and so we had might as well view both good and bad with equal parts care and consideration, knowing that they are not fixed, unchanging entities. They co-exist. A sloppy craftsman sometimes needs to be sloppy before they can become good, since the sloppiness is the grounds through which we practice perfecting our craft. This doesn't necessarily negate the ideal of perfection that the craftsman might aim for, but it suggests that we can't condemn the bad as imperfect or flawed if, in the end, it contributes to the craft. 

Being able to see the good intention in something or someone (and value it) is one expedient way of reminding a person that their actions are a form of light struggling to find itself, even when the behavior seems ostensibly to be destructive. Destructive relative to what? Even the worst forms of destruction can be the grounds for some deep learning or reconstruction. On the other hand, if we try to cut up the world into good and bad, we are not respecting that an organic process is happening and unfolding, often through some dialectic struggle of sorts. Knowing this and acting upon it does not guarantee goodness, but I believe that thinking this way makes goodness more likely, because it does not try to divide the world into unsolvable opposites. And also, thinking this way can keep one's spirits hopeful even in times of darkness and struggle.

Murdoch, Iris (1997). Existentialists and Mystics. Penguin Books

The Ultimate Generosity

  In Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go, Thich Nhat Hanh remarks, "[P]ractice is not hard labor. When we work too hard at anything, whether it is business or enlightenment, then we can't stop in order to see all the wonders of life inside and around us" (p.101). Does this mean that we should not work hard at all, and not have any thoughts? I think, to the contrary, that when there is truly nothing to attain, then we may behave like people with infinite wealth: because we have nothing to hold onto and nothing to lose, there is no reason not to give to others. However, Thay cautions: don't work too hard at anything. I certainly like this approach, since I am naturally a lazy bum!

  On a serious note, I really think that from this perspective, generosity needs to come from a feeling that we have enough to give, not that we are somehow obligated to do so. This is a tricky point, since feeling obligated can lead to resentment, as we feel we are being forced to give by a deity or a commandment. When we change the notion of commandment to preferences (as Albert Ellis brilliantly did in his books), then it's easier to negotiate preferences without fostering unnecessary guilt or resentment.

 To go back to Thay's point, when there is nothing to attain and no attainment, people might conclude that this takes away the motivation to give. To the contrary, however, I think that full presence in itself is the ultimate generosity. It does not make any demands, leads to no feelings of resentment, etc. precisely because it is totally in the moment with nothing held back. A person who feels gifted by the present is no longer making demands on the world, and feels confident that who they are is precisely what they are giving in the moment. From this perspective, there is no fear or resentment. There is simply this continuum of being that is committed to weathering life's ups and down's without any craving for more or rejection of what is actually emerging. This "presence" is precisely what is needed, and it's thus the perfect gift.

Kaleidoscope Visions

 In the book, Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go, Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary of Master Linji, we read the following words:

...if the wave knows how to take refuge in water, if it knows to believe in the water, then the wave loses all of its fears, sadness, and jealousy. If we take refuge in our true nature then we aren't afraid anymore of gaining, of losing, of having, of not having, of living, of dying, of being, and nonbeing (p.99)

Now what does this mean? If I understand correctly, it means that we have to be very mindful of when our practices are nothing but a wave running around trying to find something that it already inevitably is. When we are feeling miserable and unhappy or not at peace with ourselves, chances are that we are chasing after and identifying with the phenomena, rather than going back to our true nature which is the mind itself. And it can be wonderful to realize that our misery is not a sign of ourselves being in the wrong in some way, but rather that we have simply missed the mark and overdid something that does not require doing at all.

The other day, I was browsing in a toy store (actually looking for headphones, to be precise), when I came across a toy I used to have as a child called the kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope is a deceptively simply toy consisting of small pieces of rock or paper, inside a glass tube with a series of mirrors that gives the image of symmetrical transformations each time the tube is turned by the viewer. The kaleidoscope, for me, represents the illusory world of appearances. For one, it embodies the mental distortions that come from reflecting surfaces--which suggests how we misrepresent our world through concepts, habits, and conditioning. The second illusory aspect is the sense of time: colored pieces of paper have a habit of shifting over time, especially when they are continually being turned in a kaleidoscope. This, for me, represents the delusion of "permanence"--believing that something will remain when in fact we are always in a state of flux.

If we are able to behold appearances using the analogy of the kaleidoscope, we will see that all our representations fail to grasp or embody the full reality of change and emptiness. Then we can fully relax and let go of all representations of self and other, time and space, wave and ocean. If our practices don't take us to this continued realization, then they become more entrenched habits and delusions. That is why we must examine whether our practice feels like a burden, or whether it is a lightening and softening process.

Thich Nhat Hanh, (2007). Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go. Parallax Press.

Dealing with Tension

Tension can be a physical sensation but most often, I think it's associated with conflict. The most pervasive conflict that characterizes tension is between wanting something to be a certain way and accepting what it is. I have noticed that when my forehead is tense, the way to "untense it" is to paradoxically enjoy the tension itself. We so often associate tension with a kind of trap or prison, and it needn't necessarily look that way.

There is the bodily aspect of tension but there is also the mental tension as well: wanting something to be what it isn't, and failing to accept what it is now. This comes from believing that thoughts are more enduring than they are, as well as an attitude of judging oneself and the moment. Rather than trying to judge the moment, we should treat each moment like a special flavor of chocolate or something else that we enjoy, and fully savor it. It is not enduring or substantial, but can we look closely and see its empty aspect, and how are mind is constantly changing in relation to it? This is where even the simplest moment or most mundane can turn into a rather fascinating meditation on the mind. But in order to do this, we need the depth to find wonder and paradox even in the midst of the mundane. This is certainly where practice sets in.

Global Ratings of Self

  When we rate ourselves in terms of our achievements, we are identifying something that is solid, without realizing that each moment is changing. Such an idea is so pervasive that it tends to tire us out! Deep down, we are comparing who we feel we are in this moment to a kind of false social ideal that is static and forever unchanging. I believe this kind of self-rating happens not only in the world of career but also in social situations, where we try to live up to our very own personal expectations of what a "worthy" person is supposed to be and be like. Life becomes a kind of strenuous tension between what we feel in the moment and the moral code of the ideal person we strive to be. I believe that the book Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse dramatizes this interesting tension.

    What if, instead of viewing these as opposites, we could see that both the immediate feeling and the social ideal are one of many possibilities that simply do not remain from moment to moment. By relaxing the requirements that one possibility prevail over the others, we allow the wolf and the human to co-exist--to both have an equal claim and legitimacy in the ecosystem of the psyche. This requires that we give up this desire to globally rate ourselves in terms of being "all good" or "all bad", when in fact all these possibilities are only seeds.  This radical honesty forces us to accept that we are not all "one person" and can be a mixture of many different tendencies, even unwholesome ones. But true "wholesomeness" is simply to know that they are all empty of a self-existence that endures over time. 

   I neither indulge the wolf nor indulge the angelic, but I see they are both equally valid potentials that can co-exist within if we allow them to do so and give them all the necessary room and space to flourish in "rooms of their own". This avoids all the binary confrontations that we needlessly impose or construct for ourselves.

Attitude

   Most businesses stress the importance of knowledge, but I tend to believe that attitude is more important than knowledge, skill or abilities..  Having a good attitude means that there is no need to value ourselves by what we do, or base our sense of worth on our actions. If we were to only base our worth on what we do, we would fluctuate: sometimes thinking we are "good" when we do something "amazing", while other times feeling bad when we perform "poorly". I put these words in quotation marks, because I truly believe that the sense of achievement is relative to a great many factors, much of which is beyond our control. Something may seem middling as an achievement yet, due to the effort involved, may have turned out to be a tremendous stretch in terms of one's abilities.

   One of the most important attitudes that we can bring to a business or any endeavor, for that matter, is an attitude of "just showing up". What I mean by this is that we should always value our own sense of presence, rather than belittling presence as unimportant. The act of being in the moment, or just accompanying a situation, is a way of bringing our real self into the picture--and that is already good in itself, whether we acknowledge it or not. We have so many experiences, memories and even tidbits of insight to bring into every situation, so we need not "study for the part" of being in the moment and giving something of ourselves into the conversation.

   Failure is also relative...and although failure never feels good, I see failure as an investment in the future, since mistakes now will create memories that will lead us to better performance in the future. I believe these principles are important to any endeavor, be it work related or other.

Compassion-Based Learning

  Most of the theories of learning I have encountered, whether implicit or explicitly stated, focus on the idea of mastering a subject. Of course, this is the ultimate goal of education of any kind, which is to become a subject matter expert in an area. But I think that education gets derailed when there is an idea of a precise goal. In other words, it can be easy to try to imagine what "mastering a subject" looks and feels like before we even dive into its depths. It seems that to really learn requires an immersion that is not driven by the pressure to master a subject all at once. Instead, one finds the simple passion and enjoyment of something to be the main driver of learning.

    Alfie Kohn is one educator who has focused on the question: what happens when children are more focused on external rewards than on the intrinsic motivation to perform a task? One obvious answer is that children become distracted by the reward itself and are therefore unable to appreciate or focus on the task. A more subtle thing that occurs is that the learner simply sees it as an accomplishment rather than as something to simply enjoy in a brief sort of way. And also, there comes a tendency to compete and compare oneself  with others.

  Compassion-based learning is not so much focused on the final goal--wanting to "do well" in something--but more the intrinsic understanding of the relationships that happen between things, even if they happen to be very theoretical ones. If one is able to find connections or start to see a more clear picture of something, an "aha" kicks in, and we feel more part of the learning itself. We no longer focus on our own merit, but start to enjoy the process itself. In this way, the "compassion" is not about having any special feeling such as joy or kindness to the subject we are studying, but more of a sense of play, discovery and some kind of openness to wonder.