Survival Stories

   We often balk at the complexity of life's everyday demands, and wish for a reprieve. Yet, the mind can be complicated at times, wanting to have more power, more interconnection (when the world is already connected to us in deep ways). We basically want the impossible sense of security of knowing what will happen to us and always being in control. But look at the sun in the sky, and it's there every single day. It would be a shame not to enjoy it and not to see it for its magnificence. If we turn to it in this way with a mind of awe, being inspired by it, we will be a little bit more peaceful.

   Sometimes we can even tell ourselves "survival" stories; reminding ourselves of the many ways in which we have endured life's shares of scrapes and misadventures. Once when I was as early as 19 years old, a friend of mine told me, "think of all the things you have endured and survived these past years". Although 19 years is not a long time to live, there are certainly a lot of moments in there when we can absorb many learning lessons. Internalizing the sense of accomplishment of having survived as long as we have, in different circumstances, can be a wonderful resource to keep us resilient.

   In times of stress, it's important to remind ourselves that we have survived so many things, even into past lives. And there is a part of our being that outlives all of it, that is already pure, whole and sane. Guess what it is? Look inside and you will find it, past the racing and clouding thoughts.

   

Our Unique Gifts

 In his wonderful book, Transformative Learning, Edmund O'Sullivan (1999) remarks, "to become oneself as a person or community is to become distinct, unique in different ways from all that exists in the present and all that has existed in the past or that will exist in the future. This means that what a person brings to any relationship can be given by no one else in the universe" (p.223). For a long time, I have reflected on both the challenge and the opportunity of this statement, particularly in my ideas of the notion of gifts in education. 

If we are "gifts" that have unique properties, why do we often feel like "damaged goods" in the educational system? Are these gifts truly perfect as they are, or do they need to become as such through a steady process of refinement? Why do we sometimes feel rudderless and alienated, trying desperately to fit into a universe where we may feel like a square peg in a round hole? I believe that the process of expressing our unique gifts involves a constant checking in with what really constitutes our gifts to the world--which means we somehow have to merge with our communities in some form or another. After all, gifts are two-way streets: to have a gift, one has to have a receiver who can accept the gift and mirror it back to the giver. The struggle of identity thus becomes a struggle toward community and communion.

I think that the gift phenomenology is one which requires a certain faith and hope in one's purpose in life. It's this sense of purpose that can buffer us against the inevitable frictions and tensions of life. After all, what makes us unique is also what sometimes creates conflict with the spaces where we don't feel we belong. Uniqueness and belonging, indeed, need to exist in a dialectical tension. Too much belonging can make us become self-sacrificing of our unique gifts and talents, or what makes us uniquely 'ourselves', whereas too much uniqueness can make us fail to communicate our gifts to others, which can also be painful.

O’Sullivan, E. (1999).  Transformative Learning: Educational Vision for the 21^st Century. New York: Zed Books.

Happiness in All Moments

  Is it possible to be OK in all moments? This is hard to do, unless we tackle the underlying sense of discontent. When my mindset is that of a subtle grasping, then for sure, an attitude of unhappiness and discontent is going to color my life. Even when I don't have some direct thought of wanting something to be different, the overall dissatisfaction of craving will create an overall mood tone that influences the day. It comes down to believing there is something to be grasped, as opposed to the someone who grasps. It might take the form of the sentence, "I would be happy if only things were a little bit different" (my health, my job, my knowledge level, etc.)

   Underlying the discontent is the belief that the world is made up of objects and, by extension, we are "nothing" without an object to grasp. That sense of nothingness creates a seed of discontent in the mind, which then leads to wanting to prove that we exist to ourselves as objects. I believe it was psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who described how children at an early age learn to identify themselves with a unified body--something in the mirror that they can point to that truly says "this is I". Without that sense of a unified body, the child feels buffeted by so many thoughts and emotions that are hard to handle and process. 

     I think the antidote is simply to embrace what is, fully and truly, as it is: welcoming its textures, and savoring it. This doesn't mean we don't change things for the better, but it means that there is no need to grasp what was inherently ungraspable to begin with.

Worries

  Worry can be very exhausting. We worry about the future and we also dwell on what's happened in the past. When I reflect on the Middle Path teachings, I am thinking that actually everything is constantly changing like the stock market. The more that a person reflects on uncertainty in all situations, the more they realize that life is a gamble, and there are going to be some losses but also unexpected gains down the road. If one were to concisely define worry, it might be something like, "seeing the painful past reflected in the future". In fact, these pasts and futures are always only unfolding in a tenuous and changing present.

  I have also been reflecting on how most of the actual pain of worry is self-induced. I might have some mysterious meeting with a manager that has an ominous ring to it, such as "we need to have a talk"--then brood about it all night and feel myself getting nervous all over. But then, once the meeting actually unfolds, I realize that the suffering I had the night before has nothing to do with what unfolds in the meeting. That is because a meeting simply happens once, but our mind replays it again and again, like a repeating tape loop. The meeting, in other words, just happens: it doesn't have a past, present or future. It's like water going through a tap. We imagine that the water is blocked, when in fact, it's constantly flowing, and the only actual blockage is our resistance to what we think is going to happen, not what is actually happening. Worry is like this: it is one part fear, but then nine parts resistance. If we let go of resisting the situation, then the worry becomes much more manageable.

    The sense of "fearing loss of control" is only strong when we believe that fundamentally, we are in control. It's like a fist trying to hold on for dear life to something to prevent it from blowing away in the wind. But what if people are not as in control as they initially believe, and only have a small modicum of control in the end? In that case, we would probably do our best to do what we can, but the gripping and grasping elements of worry would not be there. And then the emotion does become more manageable.

Organic Growth

  One of the keys to being a good leader, so I begin to reflect, is having the flexibility to embrace change of any kind--not just falling into the category of "desirable" changes. That is, many would-be leaders are fixated on a certain picture of growth that is strictly linear. They have bought into the narrative that we can only grow by seeming to improve on our previous self, when in fact, it's sometimes in the process of failing that this "self" is only a partial self. When I have let go of the self that I am supposed to become, or at least hold it a bit gentler in mind than I am now, I start to see that leadership is not so rigidly tied to a strict model of growth or linear progress. We can move a few steps forward and then a few steps back, and this is an okay or adequate model of progress. It challenges the view that even failure is bad, by suggesting that there could be advantages to not getting things the way we want them to be.

   

Body Scan

 ChangYuan Fashi introduced our meditation group to the body scan method today. One of the key points he mentioned was how we should pay attention to how the air, or what he calls "wind" makes contact with the skin, as well as how the clothes contact our skin. The emphasis is on how the body is intimately connected to the outside environment, and how even our hands can form a vital contact with the muscles, nerves and tissues of the body. Fashi spent several days of a 10 day retreat using only this method alone, which impressed me a great deal.

   We so rarely get to feel how miraculous it is to be embodied or to have a continuous connection with the body. The body allows for a continuous experience of education and growth, from birth to old age and onward to death, yet we take for granted that we have such a tool. When I am in meetings or interfacing with others, I am so focused on whether I offer some sense of value or worth to others, not realizing that the body is already alive and functioning quite well--sustaining one's health and allowing them to get from A to B. But more to the point, body scan allows one to stop living in "thoughts"-that is, to have something that allows them to anchor themselves in the present and not stick so heavily to the life of thoughts, whether future or past possibilities.

  I will certainly try the body scan whenever I am feeling the pull of wandering thoughts.

The Castle of Mind

 Castles represent fortresses where our best things are kept. I am reminded of the Rook in chess--a very powerful yet seemingly innocuous piece that has almost as much power as the Queen, even though it stands in the back and at the corner of the board. Castles also represent home--an impregnable place where nothing can really enter, at least without risk of intrusion.

   I think about all the ways in which Buddhist practitioners (and spiritual practitioners in general) need to ration their energy and time, so that their practice does not dissipate or become muddy. Worry is one way that we dissipate our energies: thinking that something needs to be solved in one day or a catastrophe will ensue, for instance. This attitude only drains one's energy, in addition to leading to a frantic pace that becomes exhausting after awhile.

   One way is to treat every single moment as practice, rather than sitting on a cushion to "wait" to practice. Another is simply to do something with a still, unmoving yet faithful and alert attitude. Simone de Beauvoir referred to this waiting as a kind of faith that God will give us the words, the insights, the proper actions, if we put our awareness and faith first before the deed itself. Rushing into an action often leads to inattention, or at the very least, energies that remain dispersed and uncollected. Having a moment to reign in one's energies in a focused way is certainly a good way to develop self-compassion. This might be summed up as: rather than rushing toward things in a desperate bid to attain them, wait patiently for the conditions to ripen, with an attitude of stillness and non-grasping.

  The mind can be compared to a kind of castle. It stands solidly as long as we are not lowering all the bridges and draining the moats. A castle is only as powerful as we are willing to keep it that way, and truly treat it as our home.

Cooperation and Competition

  Is there any particular need to compare oneself to others? I prefer a different paradigm, namely seeing difference and being able to respect that we are on this world to learn from differences. This requires a careful balancing act. On the one hand, we acknowledge that we are incomplete in many ways, and we require the talents and skills of others in order for our lives to be completed. No matter how romantic the solitary life of a Thoreau might seem, even Thoreau would have acknowledged that he cannot provide all the things he needs to survive by himself simply through free will. In this way, I learn that I have skills that others need, while others need skills that I need. This is an attitude of mutual cooperation that is quite different from the ethos of competition, which reads something like , "I had better have something that others need, so that I don't become redundant". This latter view is based on the idea of scarcity of talents: there are not enough talents, abilities, skills, etc, to go around, in other words.

    If I revise the notion of "not good enough" and "need to be the same as others" to "we are different" and "I can learn from you", then I am no longer trying to be something different from the current state of who I am. I am willing to plant seeds to improve, but I am not sticking to the idea that someone else is "better" than I, or vice versa. All interconnections are like the intermingling of gardens: some seeds are planted, but that doesn't mean that every plant will grow in the same way, at the same rate, or even with the same vitality. Respecting different kinds of growth seems the key to avoiding resentment. This requires a rich sense of difference and diversity that does not go into needless comparisons.

Giving Up on Cures

  When we say that something is a "problem" (or define it as such), we have already created a label or box around it. In psychiatry, labels can be a healthy way of diagnosing an illness in order to treat the illness, but thinkers such as Thomas Szasz have lamented the way that labels can make us feel that we are predetermined to act a certain way, which can inhibit the sense of choice. But I am thinking about a deeper issue here, and that is the tendency for the label of problem to isolate something and exaggerate its intensity. This happens a lot in meditation, but it also happens in life as a whole. When I complain that work "gives me pressure", I am reifying a concept called "pressure" and making into a thing that can somehow be grasped in isolation of all the elements that compose it. In reality, pressure is not necessarily the result of something external pressing down upon us, but it is more so the result of resistance within: there is something out there that feels separate from me because I am subconsciously resisting its pull, and thus making it to be more of a struggle than it actually is.

   I think that when we give up resistance and embrace the now, we are no longer so inclined to look for cures or even isolate specific problems that need to be fixed. More so, we are not trying to isolate anything, but are seeing it as part of a greater totality. The pain that we feel in daily life is no longer linked to a specific narrative about how it's unbearable, boring, cruel, etc. but instead, we are able to see it as one phenomena among many that need not be actively grasped or resisted. When this happens, there is no longer a need to fix the problem itself. Of course, this means we still do need to practice self care and protection but it need not be something burdensome, like something that requires a remedy. I think it's a good idea to practice this flowing non-resistance toward things.