At Spadina Subway station, on a stairwell, a woman slowly descends the steps. In one hand, she sports a long white and red cane,while on the other hand,she has a tight leash. A black coated seeing eye dog slowly guides the woman down each step, one by one, until he stops midway at the middle point of the stairwell. The woman, noticing those slight hesitations, immediately pipes up,
"Why are you hesitating?" she asks. She quickly tugs on the leash to encourage the dog, as well as to hasten herself to catch a train that hasn't arrived yet. Meanwhile, her companion, a young man in his twenties, walks confidently beside her and verbally explains to her all the objects in front of her,
"I don't understand this dog at all," the woman remarks, as they finally reach the bottom of the stairwell together.
When I reach the bottom of the stairs,I too become curious about the dog's hesitations. When I spot him, I see him eyeing the subway platform with an uncertainty that almost bordered on embarrassment.I wondered, what is this dog thinking? Perhaps the dog is confused because its owner decided to take a steep flight of stairs rather than take an elevator or escalator.Or maybe there are so many people on the platform that the dog feels unsure of itself or its role. Better still, maybe the dog is simply new to its job.Seeing that the size of the dog is quite small compared to others of its kind, I guess that the dog might be quite new to this job.
I am even tempted to approach the dog and at least console him for his hesitation and uncertainty, but then I remember that I am not supposed to disturb seeing eye dogs when they are on their duties. So, I amble close to the far end of the platform, never quite getting a chance to return the dog's lonely gaze.
***
There is something quite miraculous and even mysterious about seeing the uncertainty of another being. Perhaps it is all just a projection of one's own inner uncertainty. I am not sure if the dog-owner was reading into the dog's hesitation her own mixed feelings about not knowing where she is going. I sometimes find this situation happening when I am not sure whether I want to be in a situation or not, or engage in some social activity such as watching a particular movie. Rather than cluing into my own uncertainty, I might subconsciously project it onto someone else. I have also heard couples say something like "where are we going to now?" "....|"It's up to you..."... "no, no,it's really up to you". Finally, once the couple decides where they are going and one of the two does not like their destination after all, she or he will say, "well,this was your idea...I had no say in it!" But in reality, the person's uncertainty colored the experience itself. Somehow, the person was unable to commit to a line or action or throw her or himself into the present moment, once the decision was made.
Is it a contradiction to see uncertainty in a being whose role is to 'guide' another being? Some people feel that uncertainty is a sign of unprofessional behavior, something like 'not knowing your stuff'. But without encountering one's questions, life would just be a series of automatic judgments, a little bit like what happens when one does the same work again and again for many years. It's true that one becomes more proficient in that way, but the ability to be in an unknown situation becomes threatening to that sense of security. Sometimes it can be a good idea to immerse oneself in the experience of simply being unsure, of being hazy, or of having a deep question but not yet knowing what that question is. That seems to be the beginning of the knowing gaze,the wandering eye, and the soft look that pulls a being away from a habit path around others,
The wonderful thing about uncertainty is that it is very close to the living pulse of possibility. It moves and beats according to it. But it can be scary, and I saw my own fear in the dog's eyes. Uncertainty can help one to raise one's eyes a bit and see another compassionately, with a bare and vulnerable presence.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Negative Capability
I came across the expression "negative capability" in a book by Celia Hunt, called Transformative Learning through Creative Life Writing. This concept originated with the poet John Keats. According to Keats, negative capability refers to a state in which one "is capable of being in uncertainty, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" (quoted in Hunt, p.124). This book actually explores the role that writing can play in allowing a space for uncertainty. As Hunt articulates in her book, Keats apparently was referring to the process of writing in particular.
I certainly begin to feel that there are parallels between writing and the meditative process, as I read Natalie Goldberg and Celia Hunt, as well as Keats' account of negative capability. What I observe is that writing can be a way of 'putting down' thoughts. By literally putting things down on paper, I am often freed from the necessity of having to engage those thoughts again, or in greater detail. I also find that when I can boil a few wandering thoughts to a written paragraph, it turns out to be not as significant as I once thought. Writing has a way of anchoring one's thoughts. At the very least, writing down what I think I understand tends to distill a lot of circular thinking into very specific situations or principles. And I tend to understand the meditative process in an almost parallel way of finding a place where those thoughts are no longer leading me. They are driven downward into a solid space of the paper, just as one rediscovers the sense of gravity when sitting on a cushion.
The hardest thing, however, is that writing also has a tendency to do the exact opposite of letting go. Writing constructs and builds sometimes fixated identities. For example, reading my diaries as a high school student, I begin to see the way writing can lock people into identities and fixations with specific things or narratives. If I take words to seriously, I can get very attached to them very quickly. Goldberg in particular is urging her students to just keep their hands moving, rather than actively trying to appraise or identify with any of the writing with oneself. She seems to have a keen insight into how the identification with words that can lead to rigid patterns of thinking. It's useful to observe the difference between simply letting all thoughts or stream of consciousness 'onto the paper' (or screen) and trying to cling to one of those which I like. I think this parallels Keats' account of "irritable reaching" or trying to grab some truth that I can call permanent and forever.
I think an inevitable question that might arise here is, if thoughts are meant to be 'let go' onto the paper, why bother to write at all? And why writing, as opposed to simply yelling off a mountaintop? Is it contradictory to advocate "letting go" of thoughts on a medium that does preserve itself fairly well over time? Speaking from my own experience, I think writing can heal a person of the sense that the self is permanent and fixed. But the act of writing is paradoxically a way of honoring the reality of those impermanent moments. Writing becomes a practice in loving. By reflecting the fleeing moment, writing can point to a state where I can see that none of the thoughts stay with me. I am not those thoughts, even though they stayed with me for a while and kept company with mind.
Hunt Celia (2013), Transformative Learning Through Creative Life Writing: Exploring the self in the learning process. New York: Routledge
I certainly begin to feel that there are parallels between writing and the meditative process, as I read Natalie Goldberg and Celia Hunt, as well as Keats' account of negative capability. What I observe is that writing can be a way of 'putting down' thoughts. By literally putting things down on paper, I am often freed from the necessity of having to engage those thoughts again, or in greater detail. I also find that when I can boil a few wandering thoughts to a written paragraph, it turns out to be not as significant as I once thought. Writing has a way of anchoring one's thoughts. At the very least, writing down what I think I understand tends to distill a lot of circular thinking into very specific situations or principles. And I tend to understand the meditative process in an almost parallel way of finding a place where those thoughts are no longer leading me. They are driven downward into a solid space of the paper, just as one rediscovers the sense of gravity when sitting on a cushion.
The hardest thing, however, is that writing also has a tendency to do the exact opposite of letting go. Writing constructs and builds sometimes fixated identities. For example, reading my diaries as a high school student, I begin to see the way writing can lock people into identities and fixations with specific things or narratives. If I take words to seriously, I can get very attached to them very quickly. Goldberg in particular is urging her students to just keep their hands moving, rather than actively trying to appraise or identify with any of the writing with oneself. She seems to have a keen insight into how the identification with words that can lead to rigid patterns of thinking. It's useful to observe the difference between simply letting all thoughts or stream of consciousness 'onto the paper' (or screen) and trying to cling to one of those which I like. I think this parallels Keats' account of "irritable reaching" or trying to grab some truth that I can call permanent and forever.
I think an inevitable question that might arise here is, if thoughts are meant to be 'let go' onto the paper, why bother to write at all? And why writing, as opposed to simply yelling off a mountaintop? Is it contradictory to advocate "letting go" of thoughts on a medium that does preserve itself fairly well over time? Speaking from my own experience, I think writing can heal a person of the sense that the self is permanent and fixed. But the act of writing is paradoxically a way of honoring the reality of those impermanent moments. Writing becomes a practice in loving. By reflecting the fleeing moment, writing can point to a state where I can see that none of the thoughts stay with me. I am not those thoughts, even though they stayed with me for a while and kept company with mind.
Hunt Celia (2013), Transformative Learning Through Creative Life Writing: Exploring the self in the learning process. New York: Routledge
Monday, October 5, 2015
“Sinking Into”
Wind chills, head spins. The alarm clock shatters in tinny
glass shards inside my head. I scramble awake, though my body is curled into a
rock. Stiff and clamoring for a warm
shower, only to be cascaded with the pouring cold. Shampoo un-rinsed-in-hair,
getting out, rising, rinsing, drying, shaking myself. Hastily, I consolidate
the pile of clothes on top of the sink into the semblance of a dressed man.
Then shave, dull shave, money save. I sink into the moment.
I sail
into the different pieces of today: school work, appointments, a Mandarin
class, some errands, some emails. It looks chaotic from here. Is it? I lurch and
sometimes I stumble. The city clenches its fist like a chef-sized iron fry-pan
waiting to catch fire. Cold and shambling buildings threaten to topple over
with the tiny puff of a loaded whisper-wind. The pressured clamor of Monday
commuters make their way back to the streets after a peaceful weekend. Which one
of these scenes, one peaceful and the other unruly, are the real picture? I
sink into the moment.
In her
book The True Secret of Writing,
Natalie Goldberg has this to say about the seeming chaos: “our lives have their
own trajectory. No matter how hard you try to orchestrate your day, it seems to
have its own composition. A large or different structure is operating through
us” (p.88). In a later passage, Goldberg refers to the everyday accidents of
life as “lucky interruptions”. How are they lucky? Don’t we deserve the peace
of the cushion, the quiet ripple of a quiet lake?
There
are days when I want everything to not only go well as planned, but I want
everything to be meaningful as well. Sometimes, that might already be two too
many ‘wants’. One thing I remind myself is that self is a fleeting and tricky
thing. What I wanted one day will change the next day, and I will wind up
wondering why I wanted it in the first place. The endless pursuit of desires
continues, ignoring the way these wants tend to shift over time. It doesn’t
mean that one should reject the situations one is in. On the contrary, for me,
it is to realize that many of these situations come from previous choices and
actions that have already passed. It’s important to know that the choices often
come from a specific intent. Even if they don’t seem that way now, I need to
respect that previous intentions and actions put me in this place I am in
today. In doing so, I can learn to accept my choices and realize that other
choices can be made as well. This is balancing: accept the conditions as they
are now, but know that some of them could change in the future.
If I
can see that the suffering of the moment is the result of always wanting what
is not here, then this moment becomes all I really need to face. This is like
sinking into one’s own chair, not trying to look out the window to see when the
next train is going to come. When the wheels have already been set in motion,
it is good to recognize that this is where I am.
References
Goldberg, Natalie (2013), The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. New York: Atria
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Kindness
A Buddhist friend and practitioner described to me the journey of kindness. She is starting to use the practice of helping or showing kindness to at least 2 people around her, including strangers or those who might not even be asking for help from others. Some of the reactions are ranging from "I don't need your help!" to the often unspoken "what's this for?" Sometimes, not responding to kindness reflects the latter, or even an uncertainty as to how to receive kindness. Does receiving kindness mean that one has to pay the other back? I also think the former situation is common in cases where people insist on doing things for themselves. To receive kindness might be a kind of weakness, according to these people. Modern Western cultures in particular seem to emphasize the value of self-reliance, but what would such a gesture have appeared in a more communal setting?
Kindness is something that often feels and looks good on paper,but it takes risk, and it is not at all certain. The risk is about complexity. When I am kind to someone in a way I think is kind, will that person feel the same way about it? Chances are that acts of kindness are negotiated between people. For example, if a person is trying to be kind but ends up sacrificing her own needs or priorities, then I wonder if this is kind to either the giver or the recipient. Can too much availability to someone else sometimes create a loss of boundaries? Another question I had is what happens when people feel threatened by another's kindness. Kind acts have sometimes been known to smother, to affirm the giver more than the receiver, or to even, unwittingly, create or reinforce a power imbalance. Is kindness so simple as it appears?
The recent self-help movements most likely coined the term 'random acts of kindness' to refer to the possibility that kindness comes with no complexity or strings. According to this movement, I randomly choose someone and generate a positive action for that person: smile at them, give them five dollars, compliment them, etc. Aside from my doubts as to whether it is truly random or not , I often wonder what it's like to be on the receiving end of that interchange. Much has been written about how great it feels to give these random acts,but not much has been written about receiving. I have the impression that someone who is the recipient of the random act of kindness would perhaps feel special, for a moment,... only to later find out that their giving friend just read a self-help book on random acts, and you are her guinea pig! And then the person would sigh and say, "oh, she is doing it for that reason. What was I thinking? That I was special? Silly me!"
One challenge I see it, is that a random act of kindness isn't truly random at all. There is an element of deliberation about it, where the giver plans to give 'randomly' because they were told this was a good thing from a book, or maybe by a teacher. The interesting thing is that if the act of kindness were not random and were based on a consideration of the person and what her true needs might be, it seems that this might take it to a more personal and more heartfelt experience for both giver and receiver.
While the principle of random kindness is great, I wonder if true kindness starts from a more basic 'feeling with' someone, which often doesn't happen in an instant. Kindness might begin not with a deliberate action, but by way of a conversation with a person, where we mutually inquire into the meaning of connection. Could this more subtle, open-ended kindness be a more valuable place to start? I think yes, but I am also inclined to think that it's not an instant best-seller, because this space means navigating complexity and ambiguity. It suggests that kindness is an intention that might not fully get translated into a clear or unequivocal act of benefit to someone else.
Kindness is something that often feels and looks good on paper,but it takes risk, and it is not at all certain. The risk is about complexity. When I am kind to someone in a way I think is kind, will that person feel the same way about it? Chances are that acts of kindness are negotiated between people. For example, if a person is trying to be kind but ends up sacrificing her own needs or priorities, then I wonder if this is kind to either the giver or the recipient. Can too much availability to someone else sometimes create a loss of boundaries? Another question I had is what happens when people feel threatened by another's kindness. Kind acts have sometimes been known to smother, to affirm the giver more than the receiver, or to even, unwittingly, create or reinforce a power imbalance. Is kindness so simple as it appears?
The recent self-help movements most likely coined the term 'random acts of kindness' to refer to the possibility that kindness comes with no complexity or strings. According to this movement, I randomly choose someone and generate a positive action for that person: smile at them, give them five dollars, compliment them, etc. Aside from my doubts as to whether it is truly random or not , I often wonder what it's like to be on the receiving end of that interchange. Much has been written about how great it feels to give these random acts,but not much has been written about receiving. I have the impression that someone who is the recipient of the random act of kindness would perhaps feel special, for a moment,... only to later find out that their giving friend just read a self-help book on random acts, and you are her guinea pig! And then the person would sigh and say, "oh, she is doing it for that reason. What was I thinking? That I was special? Silly me!"
One challenge I see it, is that a random act of kindness isn't truly random at all. There is an element of deliberation about it, where the giver plans to give 'randomly' because they were told this was a good thing from a book, or maybe by a teacher. The interesting thing is that if the act of kindness were not random and were based on a consideration of the person and what her true needs might be, it seems that this might take it to a more personal and more heartfelt experience for both giver and receiver.
While the principle of random kindness is great, I wonder if true kindness starts from a more basic 'feeling with' someone, which often doesn't happen in an instant. Kindness might begin not with a deliberate action, but by way of a conversation with a person, where we mutually inquire into the meaning of connection. Could this more subtle, open-ended kindness be a more valuable place to start? I think yes, but I am also inclined to think that it's not an instant best-seller, because this space means navigating complexity and ambiguity. It suggests that kindness is an intention that might not fully get translated into a clear or unequivocal act of benefit to someone else.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
What's In a Night?
The crowds are gathering for an annual all-night art celebration in Toronto, full of cheer. As I watch them going out and coming in through the subway doors, I wonder to myself: what the relationship is between art and city life? Are they travelling to learn about art? Are they artists themselves? Or are they simply explorers?
On one building around Queen street, there is a holographic image projected onto a building, in which observers see projected an image of the building being demolished. Which of these images is the real building? The 'real' building appears to be a giant slab of windowed concrete, one which stands so solid and secure. But, could the image of its demolition simply be the projected image of its not-so-distant future? As I watch this so-called hologram, I am reminded that all things, no matter how sturdy and strong, are continually being constructed and taken down, only to be reconstructed in new forms. What I mean is, buildings are not simply 'there', as monolithic monuments to be side-skirted by unsuspecting pedestrians and passerby's. Rather, the buildings are there because people put them there, and they are later taken down when they no longer follow the function for which they were built. Onward and outward, this process repeats itself anew. So which is the illusion? I begin to think that perhaps the image I have of the tall, sturdy and unchanging building is the 'real' illusion. Seeing something as solid is only a snapshot in a wider context of what happens over time. It is not final. That sense of finality is only a trick of the mind, in a sense. But then again, everything is illusion; like the hologram, nothing stays, and everything is touched by the conditioned universe.
Some people might think that many of the people going to the festival downtown aren't really serious to look at art. They are simply doing it as a way to get out of the house, to party with friends, or to just enjoy a night of wandering that doesn't end. But I believe that a lot of this probably has everything to do with art, because art is a communal process. There was one installation at City Hall where people descended down into the underground parking lot, only to find it transformed into a kind of small park, complete with trees, potted soil and sod on the ground. Looking at that sight, I was almost expecting a horse to emerge. No such horse did emerge, though I think I certainly had the image of the horse coming to mind as I smelled the wood chips and hay on the ground. Of course, I later discover, the entire exhibit is a play on a grammatical mis-construal: "Park Here!" only needs the accidentally added period to become "Park. Here!", and then we have a completely different concept altogether. The period in between becomes the galvanizing condition for an urban wasteland to become an idyllic nature scene. What does this say about the shifting nature of things?
This kind of night allows art to emerge in a spontaneous way, through the right conditions and combinations of creators, media, and spectators. But I think it's the communal space of many coming together that allows the art to breathe. When people are not confined to any fixed notion of what they are supposed to see or interpret in the creations of others, there is a lot of room for artistic ways of being to proliferate. This could take the form of providing a commentary on someone's display, or simply being there to behold the space between artistic creation, city and other beings.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Following Function
I have often been pondering one of Master Sheng Yen's adages, in fact the first of the 108 sayings: "Our needs are few, our wants are many". When I first heard this saying, I was puzzled. I wondered, how is it sometimes possible to distinguish one's many wants from the very few needs? How can a person tell what really 'needs' to happen in this moment, or in any moment for that matter?
I had a reflection today where I started to think how much suffering comes from not quite knowing where I am of most help to others. There are times when, in spite of my good intentions which I think I have, I am not that helpful to a situation. I might go to a meeting thinking that I have some vital contribution to play, only to realize that I wasn't needed that much after all. Or, perhaps I was needed in a less active role. In those moments, I might consider that there were other places in which I could have been more helpful, yet of course this only creates a mental vexation,
In my reflection, I found that one useful concept is that of following the function of the mind. The true mind doesn't move to help one being, then the other, and then the other, because the mind doesn't actually move at all. There is only this belief that the mind moves, because there is a sense of self attaching to all these thoughts. "I" think "I" am good if I do this or help in this other way, but these are also just racing thoughts. I assign values to actions based on how they uphold a sense of self. But this isn't really being in the present moment at all. Instead, it is just catering to a concept of a self. So there is sometimes a value in 'not having anything to do', as that experience challenges what we mean by this self who has to do so much in order to be a 'good' self.
It sometimes takes a lot of imagination to reverse the attitude that one must somehow 'go somewhere' 'with something' or 'for someone', in order to have one's existence validated. It is not an easy practice, because most people want to see themselves as virtuous and responsible beings in some capacity. With that comes the view that one should do the most things in the least amount of time. But it's also important to know that all these moments in time don't belong to anyone, and there is nothing so tangible about all this doing and serving. In the end, trying to serve so many parts of our life teaches us the impermanence of our roles. It is a gentle reminder that there is no tangible, solid self that endures the problems and continuous shifts of daily life.
References
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18193328-108-adages-of-wisdom
I had a reflection today where I started to think how much suffering comes from not quite knowing where I am of most help to others. There are times when, in spite of my good intentions which I think I have, I am not that helpful to a situation. I might go to a meeting thinking that I have some vital contribution to play, only to realize that I wasn't needed that much after all. Or, perhaps I was needed in a less active role. In those moments, I might consider that there were other places in which I could have been more helpful, yet of course this only creates a mental vexation,
In my reflection, I found that one useful concept is that of following the function of the mind. The true mind doesn't move to help one being, then the other, and then the other, because the mind doesn't actually move at all. There is only this belief that the mind moves, because there is a sense of self attaching to all these thoughts. "I" think "I" am good if I do this or help in this other way, but these are also just racing thoughts. I assign values to actions based on how they uphold a sense of self. But this isn't really being in the present moment at all. Instead, it is just catering to a concept of a self. So there is sometimes a value in 'not having anything to do', as that experience challenges what we mean by this self who has to do so much in order to be a 'good' self.
It sometimes takes a lot of imagination to reverse the attitude that one must somehow 'go somewhere' 'with something' or 'for someone', in order to have one's existence validated. It is not an easy practice, because most people want to see themselves as virtuous and responsible beings in some capacity. With that comes the view that one should do the most things in the least amount of time. But it's also important to know that all these moments in time don't belong to anyone, and there is nothing so tangible about all this doing and serving. In the end, trying to serve so many parts of our life teaches us the impermanence of our roles. It is a gentle reminder that there is no tangible, solid self that endures the problems and continuous shifts of daily life.
References
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18193328-108-adages-of-wisdom
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Spirituality and Children
During the meditation session tonight, the topic came up of whether or not children are enlightened beings. It was an interesting question,and there was a lot of talk about the originality of children: how they see things in fresh ways that adults don't; how they are able to spontaneously generate emotions at any moment; how they lack the filtering and judgments that come with socialization. It seems that there are characteristics of very young children that are close to wisdom,such as the ability to see things anew, without the stimulation or conditioning that drives people into fixated states of being. For example, I don't see too many very young babies competing for building blocks or trying to build the biggest or fanciest structure. Play, for children, often really means "play", as a kind of entertainment of different ideas. There is no self-consciousness, no sense that "I" or "mine" needs to be better than that of others.
In a sense, I think that many adults hearken back to a time when they had an ability to just be, rather than trying to out-do themselves or those around them through an elaborate accomplishment of the mind. Descartes and Rousseau seemed to be two philosophers who elevated children as examples of truly enlightened beings. For Descartes, children possessed pristine rationality, which was then corrupted through a subtle process of socializing people not to question or inquire into their experiences too much. I suppose this happens everyday,when parents grow tired of children asking the "God" questions: why is the sky blue? I think Rousseau talks more about how children's natural sentiments are corrupted by faulty education, which in turn alienates children from their authentic feelings and puts them into an artificial world of abstract reason and social posturing. Rousseau's education of children is a kind of cultivation of the sentiments. as opposed to abstract reasoning.
I find it interesting that both philosophers, Descartes and Rousseau, share an almost idyllic view of children, even though they come from quite different philosophical traditions and positions, Although I can recollect certain qualities of childhood such as spontaneity and sense of wonder, I wonder if one could ever base a society on the tenets of spontaneity and wonder alone. My thinking after today's session is that perhaps enlightened being might reincorporate the 'original' perspectives found in many children. However, the difference would have to be that the person who successfully does this needs to be fully socialized, to some extent. Most children, from what I can recall, do react spontaneously, but for whom? Usually it is in response to something coming from their own body, such as a want or a desire. But I do wonder, can children extend their notion of what happens to them to what happens to others? Can children differentiate their needs from those of others, including their parents? Based on what I have read from psychoanalysis, I would have to say that this is no easy feat. It is not easy for anyone to reach an understanding of other subjectivities besides their own, even though other beings make demands on the self from the day one is born. In fact, I think the value of education is to take all the spontaneity and curiosity of children and use it to discover the existence and validity of other beings.
Chan philosophy suggests that there are no separate "I" and "You" in mind. But I don't think this is the same as the child's undifferentiated view of itself and its mom, its environment and other beings. The latter is really an experience of the totality filtered through a single body, with its fears and desires, as well as attachments. Chan is a practice that leads out of the attachment to one's body, and this attachment is so subtle that it undercuts existence. How did one ever become born into a body to begin with? Chan considers that the body is not where the mind is located, but is rather a phenomena of mind itself. From my own perspective,I would say that the struggle to come to terms with the sense of body as 'the self' is one of the hardest struggles of all. Only when this is done can a cycle of enchantment and sense of wonder be completed in a matured perspective of the body and its place in a social world. Perhaps this is where a person starts to practice a spiritual path.
In a sense, I think that many adults hearken back to a time when they had an ability to just be, rather than trying to out-do themselves or those around them through an elaborate accomplishment of the mind. Descartes and Rousseau seemed to be two philosophers who elevated children as examples of truly enlightened beings. For Descartes, children possessed pristine rationality, which was then corrupted through a subtle process of socializing people not to question or inquire into their experiences too much. I suppose this happens everyday,when parents grow tired of children asking the "God" questions: why is the sky blue? I think Rousseau talks more about how children's natural sentiments are corrupted by faulty education, which in turn alienates children from their authentic feelings and puts them into an artificial world of abstract reason and social posturing. Rousseau's education of children is a kind of cultivation of the sentiments. as opposed to abstract reasoning.
I find it interesting that both philosophers, Descartes and Rousseau, share an almost idyllic view of children, even though they come from quite different philosophical traditions and positions, Although I can recollect certain qualities of childhood such as spontaneity and sense of wonder, I wonder if one could ever base a society on the tenets of spontaneity and wonder alone. My thinking after today's session is that perhaps enlightened being might reincorporate the 'original' perspectives found in many children. However, the difference would have to be that the person who successfully does this needs to be fully socialized, to some extent. Most children, from what I can recall, do react spontaneously, but for whom? Usually it is in response to something coming from their own body, such as a want or a desire. But I do wonder, can children extend their notion of what happens to them to what happens to others? Can children differentiate their needs from those of others, including their parents? Based on what I have read from psychoanalysis, I would have to say that this is no easy feat. It is not easy for anyone to reach an understanding of other subjectivities besides their own, even though other beings make demands on the self from the day one is born. In fact, I think the value of education is to take all the spontaneity and curiosity of children and use it to discover the existence and validity of other beings.
Chan philosophy suggests that there are no separate "I" and "You" in mind. But I don't think this is the same as the child's undifferentiated view of itself and its mom, its environment and other beings. The latter is really an experience of the totality filtered through a single body, with its fears and desires, as well as attachments. Chan is a practice that leads out of the attachment to one's body, and this attachment is so subtle that it undercuts existence. How did one ever become born into a body to begin with? Chan considers that the body is not where the mind is located, but is rather a phenomena of mind itself. From my own perspective,I would say that the struggle to come to terms with the sense of body as 'the self' is one of the hardest struggles of all. Only when this is done can a cycle of enchantment and sense of wonder be completed in a matured perspective of the body and its place in a social world. Perhaps this is where a person starts to practice a spiritual path.
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