A Heartfelt Knowing

   There's a very beautiful quote from ecological writer Aldo Leopold which I came across in an article called "The Blue Sapphire of the Mind" by Douglas Burton-Christie. At one point, Leopold was travelling in Arizona, and he and his friends had come upon a wolf accompanying her pups. He decided to kill the mother wolf as a kind of sport, perhaps as a way of proving his valor to his friends...or perhaps out of a recklessness. But when he sees the wolf dying, he suddenly changes his view of nature and the world in general. He writes:

     We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and  have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes--something known only to her and to the mountain....I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. (cited in Burton-Christie, p.43)

Leopold's reaction and his change in the way he sees the wolf are quite remarkable to me. For one, they indicate a shift away from a utilitarian view of nature. Rather than seeing the wolves as simply 'factors' in controlling the deer population, Leopold is able in that moment to observe the wolf participating in a greater mystery. When Leopold is able to suspend his views about what a wolf "is" and what "it is for", he yields to something deeper and more mysterious: a commonality shared between the wolf and the mountain. The other poignant aspect of Leopold's experience is that he learns humility: there are simply some things that he does not know, and perhaps can never know, that are shared between other sentient beings. I suggest that when Leopold moved away from a view that all knowledge must be his, he was able to give rise to compassion.

Reading this passage,  I can sometimes comprehend why the assumption of 'knowing' what things are 'used for' can obscure compassion. I think it is because, under that assumption of 'knowing' what a person sees in that moment isn't really the living totality. It is only a kind of dry figment of life which has been preserved in a jar, or like one of those butterflies that has been stuck between onion-skin papers and left to dry. It is only a semblance of life that comes to mind, not the total and awe-inspiring whole. It is kind of like confusing the thought for an existential knowing, or a knowing that comes from being itself.

Leopold's experience is a kind of symbol of what compassion might look like. It might be that moment when a person stops trying to know everything by classifying, and sees with the total heart exposed in the moment. This heart wisdom is not about grasping, but it's about 'hanging out there' in that moment and not being afraid to be wrong, to be humbled, or to even be nothing or 'not quite something.'

Burton-Christie, Douglas (2011) "The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Christian Contemplative Practice and the Healing of the Whole". from Contemplation Nation: How Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way We Live. Ed. Mirabai Bush. Kalamazoo: Fetzer Institute

Extraordinary in Ordinary

   One of the things that always attracted me Buddhism in general is that it does not exclude or leave out any particular experience, or privilege one experience over another. It doesn't try to say "this phenomena is more special than any other" and therefore deserves higher mention. All experiences come from the same source. In that regard, phenomena are treated equally from the perspective of the mind. To try to place one phenomena higher over the other is to take phenomena itself to be an end goal. This is a bit like making the phenomena more important and constellating our experiences around it. And to seek out these special experiences would only cause deeper vexation to the mind. The worst scenario might be to start ranking people according to their ability to have certain experiences.

     Many spiritual practices tend to emphasize attaining specific levels of experience, which is often marked by the ability or the skill to do something in a certain way. Sometimes it means having visions, magical powers, the ability to transport oneself to another dimension,  and so on. While I have heard many stories about these things happening, I often go back to the question of what value these powers might have to people's lives, and whether these visions pertain to wisdom. Even if someone was able to 'crack the code' and look into other people's minds or teleport themselves across dimensions, the question remains: what value might this have for others? And, if a person uses such powers for personal gain, is it not reinforcing the notion of a separate self?

    I am always wary of a point when spirituality might end up becoming a kind of 'dividing practice', to use a term from Michel Foucault: a kind of way of separating the identities of spiritual practitioners in terms of presumably different levels of ability. While I think that it's important to follow teachers in study of Buddhism, I don't think a true spiritual master would ever say "I have come this far because I do this, this and this." I think that a teacher can be best judged by the contents of what they are imparting to people, especially when it comes to the practice of Chan.

     In a sense, there is something extraordinary about the ordinary. Buddhism in particular seems to celebrate that all phenomena comes from a source. To know the source is the way of practice. When I know where things arise and how they do in meditation, even a simple thing like a flower or a sunrise becomes something extraordinary. I needn't go too far afield to see magic or miracles, if I only know the source of all one's experiences. To me, that is the beauty and simplicity of Chan. It is realizing that one doesn't need to travel far to know that one's nose is pointing downward. Or it is to know where all phenomena come  from.

Old Homes

   This evening, I went exploring in the cold night an old home at Marwill Street where I used to live when I was an undergraduate at York. And going into the street, I found a strange sight. I found a new and much bigger house that had been built on top of that old one-storey bungalow from so many years ago.. I am not sure why it would surprise me that this house would have been replaced by now. After all, it was over twenty years ago that I had first moved into the basement apartment at Marwill, as a way of living away from home to go to school at York.. But I felt a bittersweet taste as I saw the tall and 'new' structure standing where that bungalow once was. I wonder if this new structure represents something deep and unfathomable: a kind of life pattern where the impersonal and new overrides the 'cozy' and old. Why does it always look and feel this way?
    I remember reading Schopenhauer's philosophy on the way to university, around 1994-1995, and reflecting on his idea that thoughts become more 'contemplative' as they slip deeper into the past. And why is this? According to Schopenhauer, people are in a much better position to reflect from a distance on what happened in the past, without the interfering factors of struggle "in the present". To relate this concept to Buddhist practice, we can say that every moment is a Pure Land if one lets go of the vexations associated with the present thoughts, which are in turn rooted in the sense of self. Without the strong attachment to self, things can be enjoyed as temporary, fleeing manifestations of mind. But when I engage in an inner struggle with 'me' against the things around me, I am unable to really see things as they are. Only when I am reflecting on what has already happened without attachment am I allowed the distance from self to be able to contemplate that experience, and even enjoy that experience more wholeheartedly.
   How does this relate to my present subject of 'old homes'? I think that seeing where I used to live is a kind of experiment in Schopenhauer's philosophy of 'contemplation'. Did I feel somehow more peaceful to see something from the past come back to me? Not really. I think what really happened was much more complex.. For one, I did feel the regret of not being able to fully taste that moment as it was happening at the time.  In the midst of all my anxiety to succeed in school and to find employment afterward, I had failed to see that everything is always in this present. I am not ''rushing into the future" any more than I am moving away from the past. There really is no time, but the illusion of time passing prevented me from seeing that all of what I experience is in this one timeless 'now' of awareness. It looks as though it was an illusion for me to believe that I was 'going into' a future that never happened.
       But if I really take this teaching to heart, I will know that there was never such as thing as the past, and what happens is always in the unfolding moment of being-here. Though I may believe that I am moving from the past into the future, it is the same mind that registers all the moments--and that mind is not subject to moving whatsoever. If it were subject to moving, there would be no awareness of 'time' in the first place. To know this deeply and feel it intimately is to know that nothing ever leaves, nothing ever arises, nothing ever vanishes, nothing ever stays. Because the mind that sees the house as it is today is the same mind that sees the memory of the house of yesterday. Why feel loss or regret at something that never 'passed by'?

How Did I Sit Today?

How did I sit today...and yesterday?
I ask myself with my tongue-tied and eyes-crossed
How did I sit on the cushion today?

A hundred thoughts crossed through the mind
and I judged myself for having them
and calculated how much I stand to gain and lose

A thousand black flies played with my nose
Taunting and tempting me to swat them clear
Reminding me that life stops for nobody

Ten thousand doubts sashayed and zig-zagged
Doubts about who I am to myself, to others,
And Who is saying this stuff anyway?

So what could I do today that is right, except
To let this moment completely reveal itself
And not confuse anything in it for the real self

So what could I do today to serve things well, except
Allow my feelings to completely confound me?
And know that they will do so, for such is their nature

Just as the nature of flies is to tickle our noses
So these feelings are there, daring me to live
And respect anything that moves, breathes, gives

Not distractions, not dangers,  not things to kill
These feelings seem like the waves that make an ocean rise and fall
Built into the flowing nature of water itself

What shame is there to be in this muck of feelings
When feelings are just as much a form of mind
As the riddles I try to solve, and the languages I try to speak

What value is there for me to 'be' like a statue
When feelings teach me how connected I am
Thus showing a deeper reality than what meets the senses

So how did I sit today?
What did sitting reveal?
And to whom is it revealed?

How did I sit today?
How do I feel?
Who is the miracle who feels?

Just Being

   I have been hearing a lot recently about the expression "just be", which seems quite common in circles where meditation is being discussed. I am sure there must be books out there with titles such as "The Power of Being" to reinforce this notion that being is radically powerful and present with us everywhere. One of the problematic aspects of the expression "just be"  is that it contains an invisible polarity: "just be" as opposed to what? Non-being? Doing? In his book To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm refers to the diverging orientations of having and 'just being'. For Fromm, consumer culture encourages people to become passive and identified with consumable objects, whereas being is something that is accessed to everyone at all times. It makes me wonder, however, whether the modern consumer really 'doesn't have a soul' after all, and whether the two orientations are really mutually exclusive.
    Part of the problem, I think, is that it is easy to misunderstand the expression 'just be'. For many, it represents a flight from action or responsibility; as long as "I am I', I don't need to serve anyone or anything else outside 'my' being. Of course, real being is always inter-being. There is never a disembodied 'being' that is somehow cut off from the phenomena of the universe. I think a more nuanced understanding of 'just being' might be to see that everything one does, thinks, has, and sees is included as being. There isn't a thought that is alien or beyond being. All is included in being.
   When I am really knowing that this mind is inhabiting all the present moment in totality, is there anything that isn't 'to be'? At that point, even non-being starts to seem illusory, because there needs to be an awareness that is aware of non-being in order for non-being to be. Knowing this or at least sensing it, I relax my desire to somehow 'purify' my experiences by making my thoughts more clear. Instead, I am able to see that anything coming up in mind is an instance of being. And none of the thoughts stays the same from one moment to the next, so can I even see them as obstacles to being anymore?

Nondecision

  I found recently that I am experimenting with the idea of not deciding, or trying to decide too quickly on something that requires a decision. This state of being I call 'non-decision', as distinguished from 'indecision', to refer to a space where there is openness simply not to make any decision at all. I find it interesting that such a term as 'non-decision' has not found its way into a dictionary, yet 'indecision' has done so. I think that it suggests how the culture privileges the idea of making a decision, yet laments an 'inability' to do so, or even pathologizes the inability to decide. Meanwhile, the idea of not choosing at all has hardly any currency in the language, even as a kind of negative statement.
    How is it possible to suspend the process of deciding to do something without foreclosing the possibility of deciding at a later time? It is not an easy process, I have found, when many aspects of social and work life seem to encourage a quick responding to situations. In those moments, there is a push to decide that is somehow added on top of my process of trying to weigh the pros and cons of doing something. Because the push carries the weight that I need to decide right away, I tend to lose my ability to process the information and arrive at a more naturally available set of options. Meditative practice comes close to creating the space to not decide at all, but to wait and be patient with an unfolding process. But, how is this done in a work situation, when there is a push to have a response right away?
    In my own practice, I have found that it's important to distinguish the sensation of urgency from an actual urgent situation that requires response. The fact that something needs responding to does not mean that one has to have a sensation of urgency in the body. For example, some people naturally seem to respond to emergencies in a calm way which allows them to know what to do and when to do so. The sensation of urgency, on the contrary, seems to be separate from actual urgency. It is almost a kind of anxiety which nervously looks back at the self to see if it is doing things in the 'right way', according to outside protocols. I have found that when I confuse the sensation of urgency for actual urgency, my body will deliberately tense, as though the tension were somehow required to get the job done or accomplish the given task. But, looking at the examples of calm people under stressful situations...do they need to feel anxious or tense in order to respond to an emerging situation? Often, they don't feel this way at all. Rather, there is only the need to respond, which is not a felt sense of having to do something right away.
    In reality, there really isn't any need to respond to anything out of the sensation of urgency. When things need doing, there are ways of responding to it that just come from a natural state of reflection. If I constantly worry about whether "I" am doing the right thing, I am already focused on self-image and far away from the doing itself.
    I can't say that I have been successful in averting the sensation of urgency when things need accomplishing or when I don't know how to do something. But what I tried to practice recently is attempting to wait for a time when my thoughts have settled, before I come to any conclusion about a good path to take. The settling part might consist in doing some menial task wholeheartedly, as a way of settling the mind, before engaging in a more reflective or intellectual process of deciding.  I found that when I have these moments of resting the mind, the sensation of urgency goes away and I am able to address the urgency in a more calm and clear standpoint.

Enjoying without Finish

   This evening, I had finished my French language exchange tutoring at around 9 pm, and was on my way from OISE back home.  Somehow, I got on the wrong subway, and found out too late that I was going south instead of north. Upon realizing my mistake, I got off the subway, and waited about fifteen minutes for a northbound subway to come. I  reasoned that somehow it's a good way to read my books while I was waiting to get home. But I could also sense a kind of sensitivity to time as I was riding the subway.
    I find it can be challenging to balance between the responsibilities  that require a sense of time, and letting go of the need to cling to time as the promise of fulfilled results. But I think this analogy can extend into the orientation one takes toward many relationships. Sometimes the miracle of what a person truly has with other people doesn't occur until one has realized that there is really no standard out there that is judging that relationship at all.
     For example, if my standard in life is simply to complete what I was supposed to finish, then anything else becomes a nightmare for me  If I am always worried about trying to finalize or assign a final value to something, I am missing the value of the incomplete, and how moments sometimes enrich other moments much later in the future.. Then I need to ask myself, why do I need to 'finish' at a certain time, and what does it mean to finish? "Finishing" is like imposing the standard of the future onto what hasn't happened yet. And what I observe from writing practice and meditation is how the place where talking ends and silence begins is often a bit arbitrary. It is there as a way to communicate and give others the space  to have their own experiences. But the finish of a lesson, an instruction, a book, etc. is not meant to finalize the meaning of that experience.