Changing the Subject

 I overheard a freelance music teacher today discussing how her younger students are often pressured to take on many classes and tutorials. And she added that very often, the parents will be on the lookout for comments that allude to the child's natural gifts: "someday she/he is going to be a famous actor/actress/football player". And the parents are often quite frantic to bring out the potential in their children, thinking that it's their duty as parents to do so. It reminds me of a time when I was growing up, when I had gone through a phase of wondering where my path is and what talents I am born with. Sometimes, because I only had distant role models upon which to base my self-understanding, I would confuse what it means to be grown up with something very serious. Actually, when I look at my life, there is no time in which one's role is ever carved in stone. A person can change their interests and pursuits over time, and there is no  single path that overarches and defines someone.
    Sometimes, if a person believes that they are only put in the world to do 'one thing', they can become quite single-minded, or even obsessed with embodying that particular role. Later, one begins to see that these roles are often just self-created for the moment. A person might tentatively look into pursuing an education to take on a certain role that feels right for the person's current interest. But later, as they start to go deeper into the subject matter, they might find that it is not of such great interest. Sometimes they might even start to discern what set of ideas brought them to that subject and then start to disillusion themselves, realizing that the actual study itself wasn't anything like what they thought it would be. I noticed that this happened with many people as they graduated from university and decided to pursue careers in completely opposite directions. It is as though the career was a reaction to a subject they came to find fault with or dislike.
     Is it inevitable that the thing one feels passionate about can leave a person feeling disillusioned? Sometimes, but only if a person's mind is not flexible to see new potentials in that subject area. Just as in any kind of relationship, the things people study have many different sides and facets. In order to see those facets, one needs to free one's mind and not attach to only one side of it. I am reminded here of the metaphor of the Jewel Net in the Buddhist Huayen Sutra. In this sutra, reality is envisioned almost like a holographic reflection which stretches infinitely across all phenomena. To explore one thing thoroughly is to see the universe reflected in that thing. It's hard to comprehend, but one can bring any particular subject to life by having the view that it will eventually bottom out into a view of emptiness and co-dependent arising.
    When I was very young, I remember receiving birthday money from my grandmother and deciding to use that money to buy a pocket book on beetles. When my dad saw my purchase, he expressed a strong surprise, and wondered: what possessed me to spend all that money on a single book? At the time, I had no way to explain to my dad the feeling I had. Perhaps he had thought that I was being a bit obsessive about beetles. But now that I look back on it, it could be that I was groping to appreciate the diversity of created things, and part of me was attracted to the many forms of beetles as well as the ways they adapt in size and color to different situations and climates. It wasn't that I was training to be an entomologist, but it was more that I was learning to respect the diversity of the natural world, which always reveals infinite possibility. Had I been able to connect this feeling I had to a Buddhist teaching at the time, I might have seen that the fascination has to do with tapping into the way things depend on each other for a full understanding, and how they reflect the way the world works.
    For example, think of how beetles are classified. Scientists take great pains to classify beetles by their similar characteristics and morphology. But they also need to respect the differences in form, which are based on the environments and surroundings to which the beetles have been selected to adapt. The more I contemplate the diversity and simultaneous 'similarity' of characteristics, the more I realize that things can be both different and 'identical', and how it's a function of the mind itself to be able to see difference in similarity and similarity in difference. If all things are completely 'undifferentiated', there would be no classification of anything whatsoever, and no way of seeing interconnectedness. Beetles, environment, observer would be one jumbled and indescribable mess. On the other hand, too much uniqueness means no comparison and no co-existence across species. Then there would be no common shared universe in which things interact. But the fact that there is both similarity and difference is a characteristic of mind, through which phenomena are both co-existing and distinguished.
    All of this somewhat diverts from my original topic, but the point I am making is that all subjects can reveal the depth of the universe and mind, as well as the wonder, if one sees its nuances. If I am too attached to one impression of a subject area, that is bound to change according to whims or my subjective tastes at the moment. But if I go a bit deeper and see how the subject comes to be formed in mind, it can be a reflection of mind itself. Then one sees the subject not as an alien thing that needs to be appropriated (or rejected) but as a reflection of mind nature.

Knowing Who We Are

   We had the honor of having Venerable Chang Zhai attending the Thursday evening meditation practice tonight. Chang Zhai is a wonderful nun whose soothing and quiet voice had an immediately calming effect on the group today. Her guidance had a lot of presence to it, and what I liked the most was the walking meditation. We had a slow walking session that was long enough to be like a sitting meditation. I enjoyed the fact that all I needed to do was settle the mind into walking, much the same way one would do on the cushion. I definitely enjoyed this process, and Venerable had remarked that it is best not to see the walking meditation only as a 'break' from sitting meditation. I certainly emotionally resonated from this practice today.
    One of the participants had asked the question: between negative experiences and deeply positive ones, what experiences are more important to meditation practice?  The Venerable's answer was simply that they are all equal. Whether the experience is deemed as positive or difficult, each experience one has while meditating can provide a portal into one's being and see how a person responds to situations. When I asked Venerable to clarify what a person can do with this kind of knowledge, she remarked that there are times,for instance, when serious pain might elicit seeing a doctor. However, most of the time, one's reaction to pain is based on attachment to the body. There are certain states of feeling that one deems as undesirable, because they compare that state of mind to something better. Perhaps the memory of some pleasant feeling arises and gives a person the impression that this peaceful feeling is what is needed to arise. So they use that pleasant sensation as the 'benchmark' through which to measure subsequent sensations. But meditation is not really about this. Rather, it is really about learning to abide in all the states of being. I liked Venerable Chang Zhai's point that meditation is a window to know who we are. If a person uses this attitude to discover oneself rather than just trying to populate one's mind with pleasant experiences, then the meditation becomes a sort of welcome adventure.
   I think that the key defining characteristic in this practice is clarity, rather than focusing on one emotional state. As long as I am very clear about emotional states in particular and accept them, I am not attaching to them. Is this not a paradox? It is, but in a way, attachment always comes from the illusion that these states are permanent fixtures rather than just states of being that come and go. As soon as I fix on even one, that 'becomes' who I think I am, and that view colors the way I see the world. To take a simple example: if I suddenly get fixated on the number of tasks I can do at work, I then measure myself (or sense of self) based on the number of things I can do. If I cannot succeed, due to whatever causes and conditions arise, I then start to feel panic for not achieving the basic sense of self-hood I am creating. But if I relax into the situation, I then start to see that all the things I do are not set in stone, and do not determine who I am, They are based on many conditions.
     Does it make sense to say that everything that happens to a person is based on free, personal will? Some philosophers would say so. But it is perhaps not the most practical thing to think. While it's important to be determined and diligent in what one sets out to do, it makes no sense to do it with at tense, win/lose mentality. Otherwise, one will start to miss out on the fact that a lot of cause and conditions determine the outcomes of situations. I am not in total control over what I think or feel at any given point in time. But if I open a space to be very clear about what's happening inside me and accept it fully, I may not need to operate from a win/lose mentality. In this way, there is an opportunity to learn about myself rather than set up impossible standards to fulfill.

Let Go, With Only A Question

  During the meditation tonight, I had been struggling in the first part to fully relax. It was almost as if I had a whole bunch of ideas in my mind about how I should relax, where to start, and where to settle the mind and body. When I finally engaged in huatou practice, I had to fully focus on the question by first of all realizing that the body is illusion. There is no compromising about this, because any concept I attach to the body ends up becoming a self. "Whose body is it anyway?" This is the most basic question. Then the question of 'what self feels pain' is the next? These questions are very important, because by going deeply into them, I shortcut an attachment to the body sensation. I am no longer trying to get the body to feel a certain way, once I determine that the body is empty of a sense of self. The third aspect is posing the question sincerely and waiting for the answer in a space of doubt.
     Really, the main part of my practice was consisting of these three parts: a) not attaching to the body (whose body); b) not attaching to the self ; c) posing the question/waiting for an answer. I recall that when I was doing this practice today, there came a point where the pains arising in the body did not have any distinct 'character' to them. There was no sense of burden, no sense of heaviness or 'this is terrible'. There was simply a felt facticity about the pain: it's just there, among all the other phenomena. And the more I asked the question "who has this pain?" the more spacious I felt in accommodating the pain experience.
     In the second part of the meditation, I started to generate a slight doubt about what I was experiencing in the phenomena itself. If I can't see any 'self' in this experience, or bounded personality that I can point to as 'me', then who is having this experience anyway? This is where the huatou really comes into play. All huatous are questions that point to an unnameable mind. They pose questions that simply cannot be resolved using discursive thinking. And what's interesting is that I am able to apply this doubt to all the phenomena. Normally, in daily life, my observation of something comes with a sense of a name, a definition, and a sense of solidity. We identify what we see with solid labels, as if to say that they have a substantial and firm reality independent of our observations and interactions with them.  But if I go into huatou, it no longer seems clear how these objects really come about in awareness. It's like watching a movie and suddenly beginning to think that what we see is part of a moving montage of images. In daily life, we 'think' we know what is bounded and seemingly solid around us, and that's where the problems arise. These bounded and solid things soon become habitual ways of being in the world, and reinforce the sense that we can play out life in automatic, without having to examine the sources of our impressions.
    In the last part of the meditation, I did have this sense of stopping and waiting for the answer to the huatou to naturally arise. Did the answer arise? If it did arise, it was certainly not the way I had expected or imagined. But by giving myself the space to behold the possible answer without grasping on a language answer, I became naturally calmer and clearer. I realized that the 'full' mind (full of its own sense of solidity and habits) is often the real source of anxiety.

tolerance

  I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary on the Lotus Sutra, called Peaceful Action, Open Heart, and he talks about the theme of tolerance in one of the chapters which is referred to in the sutra as "dwelling in the place of Action" (p.90). Hanh remarks: "'Dwelling in the place of action'  means practicing patience and seeking harmony with others in everything that you do. If you are patient and tolerant of others, then you can create peace and joy for yourself, and thanks to that, those around you will also feel  peaceful and joyful." (ibid). I was thinking, where does this view of tolerance begin? Does it start, for instance, from the view of passively accepting everything that people say or do at face value? Or is there a deeper meaning to tolerance that Hanh describes?
     Certainly in the Lotus Sutra, tolerance is not portrayed as a passive quality but as something that actively meets people where they are, comparable to the rain falling on all plants. Just as each plant has a certain form which allows it to take a unique place of sustenance from the rain, so all beings have different requirements in order to receive wisdom. I would have to say that tolerance would need to begin with a basic faith that all beings are able to act from the deepest wisdom, even if wisdom is not fully known or revealed. For instance, if I 'tolerate' someone only for the sake of keeping the peace, this kind of tolerance only gets me in the door...it doesn't quite help me to fully understand and honor the wisdom of all beings. But if my tolerance means that I see the highest and deepest qualities in a person, that seeing is no longer limited to appearances. It is actually peering into the deep potentialities that are already there in a person waiting to be seen and revealed.
    There is a wonderful scene in the movie Waiting for Guffman, where the actors are putting on this amateur performance and really giving it their best, because they believe that someone in the audience is a famous critic. At the end of their performance, the actors gather around this one man who is sitting in the front of the room and start showering him with questions: what did he think? Was it a pass? Did he like the performance? And the man meekly nods his head and says yes, it was great. The actors start to become super ecstatic, thinking they are going to get a positive review in the newspaper by this famous critic. But then, so it turns out, the person in the audience wasn't a critic after all. The critic who was slated to come was unable to show up, so the reserved spot had become vacant for another audience member. The humor of this movie is quite obvious, if not familiar: the way we treat people according to our preconceptions of them can make a vast difference in who they 'are' to us.  Perhaps the movie also cynically hints that people construct perceptions about others that have no correspondence in actual reality.
     According to the Lotus Sutra, this seeing the ultimate in someone else is not just an intellectual exercise. It is reality. If as Buddha suggests, all beings (down to a blade of grass) possess Buddha nature,  or the deepest wisdom nature of the mind, then all things are worthy of the highest idealization. But of course, ordinary human beings will find it difficult to believe this, so they do need to start with those with whom they have close affinities and to whom they find endearment. Otherwise, it is like trying to see the Sistine Chapel in a blade of grass. It would seem a stretch of the imagination. Perhaps even when a person is in love, they are getting glimpses of that true nature in someone else. But of course, the key is not to idolize or try to make a person all-powerful while diminishing oneself. It should be more similar to a mirror, where mind is reflected in all things, and there is no attachment to one reflection or the other.
   

Six Realms

          I have always been quite fascinated with what are called the 6 realms in Buddhism: the heavenly, asuras, human, animals, pretas (ghosts) and hell beings. Part of me resonates with the notion of a hierarchical structure, very much similar to the heavenly and hell realms in Christian philosophy. It makes me realize how much choice there is in terms of what kinds of states of mind people can cultivate.

                On the other hand, I often do wonder: what does it mean to look at life in this way? Some people might interpret the six realms of existence to mean that some realms are more favorable than others. Certainly, having a rebirth in heaven would seem more favorable than an animal or ghost realm. But, the problem is that this mentality in itself creates a certain kind of suffering. I am tempted to say that the suffering relates in some ways to the fear that people have of ‘falling down’ on a ladder, or being in a less favorable condition than they are in now. Somehow, contemplating the six realms reminds me of a game we used to play as children in Kindergarten called Snakes and Ladders. The idea behind this game was trying to traverse a board and land on special spaces where a person can advance up a ladder or conversely, slide down one. The sense of exhilaration hat this game elicits is quite fascinating. It makes me wonder, aren’t all hierarchical visions of the universe somehow fear-driven? For example, if I contemplate that the universe is based on inescapable laws of cause and effect, I might start to fear my death, and wonder which realm I am going to land in. It can be a healthy and motivating fear, yes, but if it is all-consuming, I think it might give rise to a very anxious thought indeed. Nobody really knows, in the end, where they are going after they die. And even given the right kinds of instructions, there may be no way to know if a person can really and truly influence their future existence or life.

                A different way to approach the six realms, I believe, would be to take it as an opportunity to practice compassion for all beings. Instead of fearing which realm I am going to be in, it might be helpful to consider, from a Buddhist perspective, how often sentient beings cycle through these realms, since beginningless time. It’s not that one being is more virtuous and therefore spends less time in suffering than another. For example, even those who are in a heavenly realm will eventually exhaust their karma over time. In this way, all beings go through the same struggles in wanting to gain protection from bad karma and wanting to avoid suffering. If a person realizes this, they will naturally feel compassion for all beings on the wheel, rather than struggle over whether or not they will have a more favorable rebirth. This is because even if someone happens to receive a favorable rebirth from past merits, they are still  on a wheel of suffering that never stops spinning. But if I truly realize this for myself, then the wheel can stop spinning for me, because I am no longer caught in the desire to be on the ‘favorable’ side of it. I have truly accepted the fact that the wheel of life is a suffering one, and I must transcend it through a compassionate understanding and embrace of the true meaning of suffering.

Looking at Struggles

  During the meditation practice this morning, all four of us had experienced the gamut of sounds and bustling about in the center. There was a chanting ceremony upstairs, and we were in the small room downstairs, close to the impending traffic. Volunteers were also busily preparing lunch just outside our quiet room, and the meditation was punctuated by the sounds of human presence: whispers, the stacking of books, the shuffle of slippers against the hardwood floors.
      One of the participants remarked during the sharing that, initially, he had been disturbed by the sound of the cars outside when he had first practiced in this particular room. Now, however, he is much calmer when hearing the traffic noise during meditation. I had remarked on how good it is that we can continue to practice when there is so much going on in daily life.
      I used to feel that meditation is about somehow eliminating struggle from one's life. It's tempting to think this way, because according to Buddhist teachings (for example), dualistic thinking is one source of suffering and vexation. And the 'goal', if there is one, in meditative practice, is to somehow overcome duality. In this way, it's tempting to say that meditation involves stilling and quieting the mind so that it is no longer even aware of struggles. But if one is really seeing without dualism, they likely would not distinguish even 'struggle' from 'non-struggle'. In fact, they would be able to see that the two are phenomena of the same mind, and are thus not opposing each other.
    Why is it important to somehow embrace struggle, even when on the sitting cushion? I suppose there are different ways to look at it. One is that struggle is an inevitable part of being human, from the struggle to work, to the struggle to educate oneself, even to the struggle to communicate or relate to others. I don't know anyone in this world who has not somehow had to work to obtain something, whether it be an income, an education or even a life in a new country. Even in an ideal world where all resources were equally accessible to all beings, one still needs to struggle somewhat to get out of bed, maintain one's health, and get on with the necessities of life. To try to eliminate struggle would be quite counter to how the world of samsara is, where even humans have to struggle to survive and even find work.
    I think that what meditation and Buddhist teachings offer isn't necessarily an 'end' to struggle, but a way of looking at it that does not personalize struggle or 'internalize' it. That is, a person recognizes daily struggle without thinking there is a concrete 'self' that struggles. There are people, for example, who dream about winning the lottery so they can get out of struggle, or be one of those lucky people who watches other people go to work or school, etc. On the other hand, there are those who lament their suffering of hardship, and even feel they are the worst of the lot. In both cases, there is a strong feeling of "I" who is struggling. In fact, if I internalize the sense of "I struggle and that is terrible", it isn't long before I start to identify with the struggle and even create a 'struggle identity'. Then when things are really going smoothly, I suffer because my  'struggle identity' is no longer being fed! Then I don't know where to go from there!
    On the other hand, if I am not taking struggle personally, I can start to see it more as a phenomena that doesn't reference a self. Things need to be done and there is no end to these things that need doing, but the difference is that I am not stopping to figure out who is gaining or losing from it. I don't keep checking to see if I have had enough, or how well I am doing, or what I am gaining or losing from struggle. Without self-identifying with struggle, I can start to see it in a less disastrous way. If I lose struggle or win, it's no longer about 'me' being a failure or a success. Rather, I accept the struggle simply as a challenge and exert whatever efforts I can to meet it. In this way, struggle never 'ends' but my attachment to its outcome does.

Curiosity for Its Own Sake

 I was thinking about how my views of education have changed somewhat. When I was very young, learning was just taking a natural delight in things, without considering whether it's beneficial to me or not. I am not sure when that changed, but it might have been in early adulthood, when I started to consider how learning is based on application. When I first started to work, I appreciated how learning is not based on looking at something once, but doing something many times. I truly believe that one has to perform an action at least 400 times before one really understands the nuances of that  action.
   It's understandable that people would want to focus on learning what is directly applicable to their lives, their social roles and occupations. I remember reading an article where a student was interviewed in a local college. He explained that he chose the particular college because it only focused on courses that are directly applicable to one's job, without so many of what he referred to as 'poetry' or 'liberal arts' courses. In other  words: cut to the chase, focus only on 'what matters' to survive and thrive in the world. Many educational institutions focus on this pragmatic mentality, focusing only on what needs doing.
    To a certain degree, I agree with some of what is said here. If courses in high school focused more on concrete experiences such as human relating and communication, this would perhaps have been more useful than mathematical knowledge, which is often stressed in schools. But on the other hand, I am starting to think that something is lost when education only focuses on applied learning. For instance, if a person's schooling is only related to application, what happens when we are not applying ourselves to learning a specific task at work? Does the mind simply turn off? I wonder what happens if people start to believe that education is only about doing practical things. Does the curiosity to explore things in the immediate moment start to atrophy? Perhaps people start to conclude that it's pointless to learn anything unless there is a specific enhancement to one's self, or one's profession. In that case, the learning process becomes narrowed.
       Another consequence of a pragmatic view of learning is that it often fosters a competitive attitude toward learning. Students internalize the perspective that there is one goal of learning, and all classes have only a single objective which needs to be met with a certain degree of success. How is successful learning measured? Similar to the way we are graded in schools, learning is often measured by how well we can articulate our learning compared with others, immediate application, or 'getting the main point' (which often relies on memorization). But somehow, this view takes a little bit of the fun out of learning. It also assumes that learning is a finished product which happens over a transcribed or limited period of time, rather than unfolding over many time periods.
   An alternate way of looking at learning might be to view things from the perspective of 'being curious for its own sake'. I might look at a subject area and conclude that the subject is too far away, or not accessible to my daily life. But if I am open to learning for the sake of being open to the process, something might shift in me. I might become more sensitive to the things that perk my interest as well as the things which simply don't do so. A lot of this process requires an active reflection on how I connect to the world and how unique that connection happens to be. If several people are in a room listening to a lecture, is every person going to hear the lecture in the same way? Are people going to internalize the lecture in the same form or manner? If this were the case, things would be quite boring, and people wouldn't necessarily need to learn together. The uniqueness of how people see and process learning makes for a more interesting dynamic, where no single view is considered 'better' or more accurate than other views.
    How we engage in this curiosity is going to differ from one person to the next. But I think the point is to develop an awareness of where we resonate with a certain subject and to  gently inquire into that resonance, similar to following a lead. This also requires a gentler and lighter approach, almost like  a dilettantism: I entertain an interest and gently follow what it says to me, rather than pre-judging whether the learning will be 'useful' to me or not. In this way, my experience isn't depending on the external surroundings, conditions, or how others are seeing the subject matter. I am rather exploring my own interiority in all the courses I am taking or interests I pursue. From this perspective, one can find something in everything, as long as one is not narrowing their perspective to an official 'learning objective' supposedly shared by all people in a class, or a 'required learning experience.' I just wonder how, then, this interior exploration can be honored in a classroom, and even fostered.