Wisdom of No Choice

There is a certain wisdom to be found in not choosing, and not insisting in being in the driver’s seat. When we make ourselves believe that we are solely or entirely responsible for what is happening to us, a sense of morbid guilt and regret ensues. We feel guilty for not leading the life we feel we’re supposed to have lead up to a certain time and age in our life. We feel regret at not having fulfilled or consummated those life wishes.

Why do we feel that we are responsible for everything that happens to us? I believe because we are so often exposed to blame when we are young, and this sets us up for self-criticism. An alternate way of thinking is that, like babies, we are all learning to crawl, to walk and then to run. We cannot learn to walk until we have learned to crawl, and we  certainly can’t run until we know how to walk. Similarly, by viewing our life as a series of stages, we are spared the burden of needing to get everything right in one go or one shot.

When we are in a dream, is there any reason to emerge from it? Instead, let us enjoy it, knowing that we are not tied to what’s happening. This is a very important point that I want you to ponder deeply. Are we our bodies? Is what we are doing somehow tied to a sense of “I” or the ego?

The ego is really only a series of mental patterns. It has no form, no structure and no specific shape or color. We might confusedly think that we are “egoistic”, but let us remind ourselves that “egoistic” is not a “thing” or a reified identity. It is only a habit of deludedly thinking there is a fixed self that is behind all the phenomena around us. Even when we face criticism and blame, we should never fall into the trap that there is a fixed “self” who is the object of criticism or blame. This is because the awareness is not tied to a specific self. That self is only a creation of the mind. And, more so, the self is constantly changing. But most importantly, there is never an ultimate self that we can say “sums up” who we are. Who we are is completely beyond the phenomenal. Our original face has nothing to do with the phenomenal world.

But does that mean that we should hover over the world and stay away from it? This is interesting: it’s like someone who suddenly awakens from a bad dream, and is so afraid of falling asleep for fear that she or he will fall into the same dream all over again. If we know that it’s literally “just a dream”—something temporary that our mind creates—would we be afraid of the phenomena? We need to literally look into the eye of the storm to gain insight into this dream.

Put it in a different way: if you are in the midst of a conflict that escalates, as long as your mind remains calm and still, you will find that there is a kind of “center” that is never subject to the fluctuations of the conflict. We may use a lot of analogies to describe this quality or state. Among one of my favorites is that of the “movie screen”. As violent and bloody as a horror movie can be, does blood actually stain the movie screen? Does the blood that appears in a movie actually affect the screen itself? If we think back to any number of situations we have been in, we will find that the fundamental and primal awareness is not affected by anything that comes through the six senses.

Life is like a dream: we are living it but transcending it every moment. We are in the dream and we suffer whatever consequences are involved in participating in the dream. However, there is always an observer that is not really touched by the dream. The nature of mind is such that, like the movie screen, it can never be sectioned off as a character in the dream. It lacks the temporal and spatial qualities that makes it appear as an actor or an element in the dream itself. Instead, these images are simply projected onto the screen. Our true nature has no part to play, other than to reflect the phenomena coming and going through the workings of cause and effect.

If, out of fear and despair, we tell ourselves, “I need to get out of this dream right now”, then we have fallen into the trap (the proverbial “ditch”, as noted in the opening vignette) of believing that there is a self that can awaken out of the dream, that is solid, substantial and real. In fact, however, there is no such thing. Everything has an empty nature and is coming together from cause and conditions. What stays unchanging is the principle of impermanence, emptiness, and no-self that forms the center of the movie screen metaphor. Impermanence means that whatever appears on the screen has no lasting temporal existence. It vanishes without a trace in the next frame. The belief that one frame connects to the next is an illusion that is constructed by the mind itself. Emptiness means that everything is compounded from a series of mental and physical heaps or aggregates. The compounded nature of things makes them always dependent on other things for their appearance, and are therefore interdependent. No Self entails the absence of an enduring self that undercuts or underlies all appearances.

The dream, then, lacks a dreamer. And even the movie screen is only a kind of metaphor that is used to describe the nature of mind. It is not designed to tell us what mind is and where mind is located, since there is no actual “screen” that we can point to as “a screen”. Rather, the screen metaphor is used to hint at the impermanent, empty  and non-self aspects of our true nature.

At Home In the Universe

 All of us want, in some form or another, to feel at home in the universe. What does that mean? What, exactly, does “home” mean? Sometimes we need to create our own homes in our imagination when the outside world is not hospitable. This does not mean that we should go into a kind of withdrawal from the world but, rather, we need to get a sense of what home means to us.

If we take a certain place as “our home”, we are bound to feel insecure about it. A home is an investment that fluctuates and even loses its value over time due to the reality of decay and even depreciation. When we become so attached to the comfort of sitting in one place, being in charge of a particular domain called “my room”, “my office”, or “my space”, we are bound to create an opposition in our mind and start to reject anything that doesn’t fall into the category of home. That is why the form of home is only one step away from a sense of clinging and attachment. In fact, we can say similar things about all of our possessions, whether they’re tangible or intangible.

Home comes from letting go and being present with whatever is. Even when things are super unpleasant, we need to realize we are only in a dream. The conditions around us are continually changing, and what we frame to be “tragedy” is actually just a temporary experience that is going to disappear or change into something else eventually. So the “home” is the stillness—the awareness that we are using here and now, to contemplate all of our experiences as they are arising and changing over time.

Clinging to our possessions is only the first layer that comes from attachment to the physical. Mental formations can also turn into attachments. When we pick up thoughts, we think they are “ours” or “mine”. Then we create an opposition in our minds, like “this is my thought” and “You can’t change my mind”. Thus, we confuse the thoughts as being inseparable from our mind or our identity. We even create pressure and resistance when we imagine that there is “my” thought and “someone else’s” thought. In fact, all thoughts are the result of arising causes and conditions. They all happen in the present moment and are experienced by the same mind. That mind is not divided into “I” and “You”, “this” or “that”. When we are bringing our awareness back to this fundamental mind that sees, feels, hears, tastes, touches, etc., we find our true home. That home is not swayed by the coming and goings of phenomena, and as a result, does not experience the pressure of trying to be one thing or another. The pressure becomes nothing more than an illusion stemming from discrimination of “I” and “not-I”.

We need to feel at home within ourselves by letting go of everything: mine, yours, emotions, thoughts. When there is too much of an attachment to a center, we tend to push anything that isn’t this “center” into the periphery, like a spiral galaxy of the mind. It’s not necessary to even discriminate between likes and dislikes, when they are only passing forms. The ice cream we find tasty just melts in our tongue. The money we cherish is used to buy things that are ultimately perishable. What we achieved yesterday is already passed. So with this attitude, we have to find a home in our present moment, which does not depend on the shifting conditions.

I think that for myself, being at home in the world (and in myself) entails the following qualities:

·         A sense of interiority that is not encroached upon by the outside world. There needs to be a part of me that feels a bit separate, a kind of sanctuary where I can go to when I don’t want to respond to anyone or am not in the mood to engage with others or the outside world.

·         A sense of “everything is ok”. This dovetails with the theme of acceptance. A feeling that, no matter what, things will turn out for the best, the world is basically friendly, and one doesn’t necessarily need to be in total control of the unfolding situation. This also entails an attitude of letting go, and allowing the causes and conditions to unfold naturally.

·         Ability to inhabit one’s emotions, even when they are not socially acceptable. Apathy, exhaustion—these are the kinds of emotions that we all feel from time to time and we need to make space for them even when they are unpleasant or point to not so pleasant realities

·         A sense that everything is impermanent. This is to say that all situations have their own natural unfolding

Can we find a home within our mind? Is this mind what we see? Is it this body, these hands that I use to type these words, or even the words themselves? We need to inquire into this.

"Good Indeed"! And Come What May-!

 Our meditation sessions in the last couple of days have touched upon the nature of conditioned arising, and how the mind can get fooled into a state of suffering by believing that things exist permanently and as uncompounded. If I were to systematize this teaching a bit, I would say it as follows:

a) All things are created by the mind: our experience of the world is conditioned by our thinking and judgments, and therefore, we are free to substitute "positive" thoughts for "negative" thoughts, knowing that both are fundamental creations. We might think of this using the analogy of "glass half full or empty". This means that we can approach the exact same situation using very different attitudes, depending on the thoughts we put into the situation.

b) All events, even when not mediated through thoughts and judgments are based on compounded experiences. Something that seems fixed and irreversible, is actually the product of very specific causes and conditions acting in a very specific time and place, which are bound to change just like the weather. Even the "self" that experiences something turns out to be something that is impermanent and subject to causes and conditions

c) Even bad experiences are impermanent. They are based on temporary formations, so we should try to see them as dreamlike rather than projecting a fixed notion of permanence or "this is forever".

Knowing this, can we not say that everything is "good indeed"? Even depression and anxiety are not really who we are, so we can experience them without making the mistake of thinking they are irrevocably who we are.

Minimalism and the Leaf in the Wind

   Tiankong Fashi, who will go to China soon to eventually become ordained, had compared himself to a "leaf in the wind". I loved the metaphor, and it suggests the notion of allowing things to unfold in the way they will, although I have to say that it takes a lot of courage to apply this to practice in daily life. I would have to say the principle behind it is that we use the concept to try to reduce self-attachment. That is, if I can at least treat myself like a leaf in the wind, I can learn to cooperate with causes and conditions rather than pretending that I am standing above them and overseeing or "orchestrating" them. This latter approach is more akin to playing god.

    I relate the concept of the leaf in the wind to spiritual and mental "minimalism"--the notion that spiritual practice may sometimes require taking inventory of our thoughts, values, beliefs, and underlying attitudes, to better appreciate where we are most attached and what is weighing us down. To be minimalist means to not have to go circuitous routes, but to take a much simpler approach to everyday challenges and stresses. Chan expresses this something like "rest when you are tired, eat when you are hungry" etc. According to this perspective, it's only our heavy beliefs in what we need that end up weighing us down. Once we are able to unburden ourselves of the heavy baggage of the mind, we can learn to be more practical and face every situation equally without a sense of a heavy self-identity. 

   This is to say, when we have a strong sense of self, we carry with us the emotional baggage that comes from trying to fulfill the sense of self. Whether it's from status or education, or how much money one has, we make suffering out of all of this when we imagine that there is a self we are protecting and maintaining by accumulating all of these things. If I no longer attach to such a self, then I no longer need to see myself as someone who accumulates so much in terms of status, success, accolades etc. Of course, this is not easy to do, but we can always ask ourselves the question: is any of this truly need, or is it just a want? For example, if I feel that my dignity is being undermined by someone, does this constitute a "need" (that is, the need to defend myself) or is it only a want? In fact, Buddhism talks about one Buddha who was so adamant about seeing Buddha nature in everyone that he endured all kinds of humiliation from those who mocked him or thought of him as a fool. What he demonstrated is that we don't even need to be admired or liked by others to function or to be of some benefit in the community. All we need is the sincerity of our practice and the faith in mind --we have Buddha mind, it's just that it needs to be a little bit uncovered from all the dust and accumulation of attitudes, beliefs and what not.

What is "Resignation"? A Positive and Negative View

   I would like to share a bit on my delights in the philosopher Schopenhauer. I have occasionally had the insight that the most important thing we can possibly do is to let the present be what it is, without the illusion that it could be something else. This is actually an extremely difficult thing to do. I am often reminded of Schopenhauer's philosophy, as I believe he reflected on endless desire (the longing for more) as the root of all suffering. So, the one thing that holds us back from being in the present is the relentless desire for something else.

    I guess the only way of entering into this discussion is to say: most people aren't aware of the destructiveness of their desires. Even though we often associate desire with something carnal (such as lust or endless hours spent in front of facebook or cellphones), it isn't just these distracting and trivial things that form the core of our desires. We think of our work, for example, as a culmination of who we are, often not aware that as workers, we can easily be replaced. What was once a lucrative profession in the 80s or 90s is now being done by AI or some other kinds of automation. We cannot possibly "gum" ourselves to our jobs, any more than we can align our identities with our houses, our choice of vehicle, or the clothes that we wear. And yet, underneath the striving to acquire these things is the belief that they define who we are, and therefore, we cannot be "complete" without them. 

  The same goes with work itself, and that endless striving for recognition--one of the Eight Winds that I had referred to in my previous entry. We want more recognition, so we work harder and even strive to be "better" than our peers. Writing one book isn't good enough, so we need to write a second and a third. One educational degree is simply not enough to fill a wall full of degrees and accolades--the degree needs to be followed by another. Why? It's because we are often in the habit of associating who we are with the things we have acquired, including status markers. It is not enough for us to simply say, "whoever I am is enough", because when we peer into that void of the self, we find something endless and infinite, as well as completely unpredictable. So we need to feel the stability and security of knowing who we are at any given time. 

It's not necessary, at least to my mind, to "let go of" or "detach" from desires all at once, like we are putting down a bunch of heavy luggage. Instead, we need to be aware of the ensnaring nature of desires, and how we are entangled. We become entangled through hypervigilance to protect what we desire and get rid of what we dislike. Our lives become complicated by the needs for safety and security, as we calculate our investments and figure out which one will lead us to the best result. All the while, we don't realize that there is no stability in anything, really. What seems a safe and good bet today may easily end in something disastrous tomorrow. 

Knowing these things, I think Schopenhauer's philosophy is based on the idea that we should utilize art and even asceticism to take a deeper look at the suffering desires create. We are swamped in our desires and in others' desires as well. It's nearly impossible to lead a simple life when we are ensnared in our own desires and others desires, and when people even compete to have their desires and needs met. If a group of people equally desire things, then they may fight to the bitter death to have their own needs met, like the time in COVID 19 when people hoarded toilet paper. Couples fight endlessly over competing desires, such as for money, property, how to invest time and energy, and it just builds walls of resentment. Is that the kind of life we would want? We need to prioritize peaceful mind, simplicity, letting go. Otherwise our lives just become proliferating cancers of thoughts that seem super urgent and important, only to later take on an effervescent and fleeting appearance.

Looking back, it seems silly, but anything can become a symbol of our longing for security and safety, whether it's a degree, or toilet paper, or a house, or a job. These "things", so called, are actually really just relationships. A degree, for example, often means nothing unless you live in a country where the status of that degree is recognized and you are at least able to exercise the skills you had acquired with that degree. Knowing that our desires relate to interconnected arrangements (not static "things") can help us let go of an overinvestment in desire.

I wrote a lot about desire tonight, but the point I want to make is, we need to look at all desire closely, with the mind of: is all this wanting making me happy? When I get what I think I want, will I be happy? Will those around me be happy? If people fight to have their needs met, is the fighting really worth it, or does it only lead to alienation and a more solid sense of "separate I"? These are questions I need to ask myself every day. But at the end of the day, even thoughts are only temporary. So let's not get attached to thoughts.

"Negative" resignation is the one we are more familiar with: "I give up" and "I give in".  A more positive view of resignation is the unburdening of the self: I choose not to let things get to me too much, including the striving for knowledge, truth, recognition, identity. These are only temporary and they often lead to more inner stress than they were ever worth striving for.

The Clearing in the Forest of Thought

  Thoughts are not our enemies as long as we are not invested in them as the self. We have often heard the expression, "not taking the forest for the trees" and I think another interesting idea here is not to take thoughts to be ourselves. It's easy to see how irritation arises if we are surrounded by all kinds of thoughts. For one, thinking creates the anxiety and rush to do things. This doing can become overwhelming: not because thoughts are overwhelming in themselves but because subconsciously we take the thoughts to be ourselves and ourselves to be in our thoughts. That is, as soon as I identify a thinker (I) who is thinking the thoughts, I start to ponder my relationship to the thoughts and I spin in that identification. If the thoughts, on the other hand, are seen only as thoughts (with no thinker who is required to act immediately on these thoughts) then I am no longer suffering as a result, and I can be more able to handle my physical and mental conditions.   Thoughts can certainly lead to fear, but only if we are overly invested in them.

Beyond Praise and Blame

 If we look closely at praise and blame, these two things are part and parcel of the same thing. They refer to the habit of believing that someone is solely responsible for our happiness, fame and success. Just as blaming others (and yourself) can place undue burdens on them, so also too much praise can have a similar effect, in the sense of over-inflating the sense of agency. In reality, what happens to us is often the result of interlocking and complex interplay of forces. Why would we want to place the burden on one single person for the many things that could and do happen to us? This way is the opposite of compassion. 

  Tomorrow, we have a big election south of the border. Does it mean anything to me? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. But the point is that catastrophizing about who will be a nation's leader is not a very wise approach. Leaders only represent a great many people who make up a political party, not to mention the diverse populations who choose to support those leaders. Even when one "wins", does that person win all the time and for every occasion? Leadership requires continuous maintenance and support, so it would be a little unwise to think that our lives depend on the outcome of a single day. This would be taking away our day to day responsibility to be in the moment, by thinking someone has way more power than us than they actually do.

   People often exist as images in our mind. We trigger those images through recollections, memories and even narratives about what was done to us in the past. Do those images really exist outside of our thoughts, recollections and stories? They certainly have an influence on how we feel, but we can never say they have an objective life of their own. I only make these thoughts powerful by continuing to indulge them and giving them a value that they can only have through the mind. In fact, we can never hold anyone responsible for our happiness or sadness, madness or gladness. This is because we determine how we see people, just as we determine our attitudes toward people.

Forbearance

 Forbearance is one of the six paramitas ("patience" as it is sometimes called), which Fashi had discussed during the Dharma study today. I have lately been reflecting on what's the difference between forbearance and "merely putting up with" an unusually negative or unpleasant situation. Here I would like to clarify my understanding based on what I heard during the lecture today. 

1. Buddha Nature is not affected by "outside" (or even inside, for that matter). Fashi connected low patience to a lack of focus, which in turn comes from focusing too much on external regard from others in order to feel accepted. A truly stable mind is one that is grounded in the present moment, and therefore would not be attached to instances of praise or blame that come from the outside world. As Fashi remarked in today's class, "your Buddha nature will not be frustrated by the situation outside".

2. The 8 Winds are all perishable phenomena. The 8 winds are outlined as follows

a) Prosperity: prospering through gain or advantage
b) Honor: receiving honors or accolades by the public
c) Praise: being praised or admired by those around us
d) Pleasure: enjoying physical and spiritual gratification
e) Decline: suffering loss of various kinds and disadvantage
f) Disgrace: being dishonored and humiliated by the public
g) Censure: being criticized or disparaged by those around us
h) Suffering: experiencing physical or mental suffering

All of these 8 winds relate to external phenomena. When we begin to engage the question deeply--"just who or what is this mind that experiences these 8 winds?" then we become less identified or attached to praise or blame, and can even experiment with the idea that nothing affects our original Buddha nature, or the nature of that which is aware itself. When we gently separate ourselves from our thoughts of gain and loss, we no longer need to buy into the idea that we will only be "OK" when we have a certain amount of wealth,  status, possessions, praise, blame etc. In fact, we can see that being deprived of these external things can be a hidden blessing in the sense that it points us to something that is beyond all of our conditioning, a kind of naked awareness that does not fluctuate with the coming and going of positive and negative emotional states.

3) Practice non-identity. What or who is meant to receive retribution? If we are less attached to our bodies, then we are better able to see karmic retribution for what it is,  rather than adding layer upon layer of identification with what's happening. 

I think non-identity is simple to contemplate: what is it that is reading these words? Without giving rise to any thoughts, are you able to experience a kind of gap or opening before all the subsequent thoughts arise? This gap can actually be the point where we become confident that Buddha nature is already there, but the only issue is that we cloud that Buddha nature by adding all kinds of seeking thoughts.