Doubting vs Believing

 Tonight, I have been reflecting on Peter Elbow, who wrote an article on the 'believing game' vs 'the doubting game'. According to Elbow, there are two very distinct ways of interpreting events: one which looks at things through a critical, deconstructive lens (doubting), while the other with a more inspirational, faith-based perspective (believing). The current vogue in academia is to play the doubting game, particularly by looking at events in terms of underlying power dynamics. There is a certain clarity in this method and approach, because it allows people to be refreshingly clear and honest about the kinds of social motivations for what they are doing. For example, when we are in any organization, we don't just look at what inspires  people to be there, but what hidden agendas (socially based) might be influencing them in that situation. But I would have to argue that there is a price for the honest clarity of these approaches, and that price is to strip people down to the lowest elements. Are people, I wonder, entirely motivated by power? And how can we even frame power in relation to intention and motivation? Is power even at all about motivation?
     I suspect that people are not just doing things for power, even though power may be a consideration in what they are doing. When I look at people, I tend to see them as complex and deeply nuanced beings, who have complex reasons and motivations for what they do that even they themselves may not fully comprehend. Knowing the social dimensions or political aspects of what people do is certainly one way of looking clearly and honestly at their behavior. But I think it would be a great injustice to reduce people to elements of power or powered relationships. It might be more helpful to suggest that there is no final reduction to anything, since the way we see things is always immersed in our own particular ways of seeing, which are also interwoven with social/psychological elements.  And even the way people relate to each other is constantly in a state of flux  or change.
    So what is the alternative "believing game" made up of? I think what underpins the believing game is the way in which people assume that other people's intent is not to harm. In Buddhism, the attitude is that every being possesses the seed of wisdom and compassion within them. There isn't really a defective person or being in Buddhism, even though beings are prone to make mistakes due to misguided views or distorted lenses. If I at least believe that beings have this wisdom already in them, I am not trying to somehow replace who they are with a theoretical template that is foreign to their being and thriving. Instead, I am trying as much as I can to understand their ways so that their Buddha nature is clear to me, This is quite different from the Machiavellian view which has inspired a lot of the post-modern critical approaches to looking at selves and others. Under this latter view, people are only units in a greater scheme of dominant power and oppression. Much of that may be true, but it's not the only thing in the universe. And again, I think that focusing too much on dominance/oppression overshadows and even (dare I say) oppresses the aspects of ourselves that are connected to wisdom and compassion.
       Without the fundamental faith that people of all cultures and walks of life have wisdom, it can be quite easy to perpetuate power games and struggles. I certainly hope that this belief in people's wisdom does not disappear in academia.

Elbow, Peter (2008), "The Believing Game: Methodological Believing" http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=eng_faculty_pubs

A Compelling Myth

 There are times when I am not able to see the end of certain philosophical discussions. And I think some of them are a bit futile, because they mix together things that aren't really necessarily related. An example of this is the idea that Eros (love or libido) is a kind of 'raw' energy that gets channeled into either good or bad actions, depending on how we 'use' the energy. I think that Freud was a kind of advocate of this general idea, as did Rousseau. Throughout his writings, Rousseau kept trying to find a way to refine Eros to the point where it could extend to the general love of all people or the general will. In fact, I believe that Rousseau's theory of education was based on the notion of refining the raw energy of emotions into an altruistic love of all people. But I am wondering if this is ever a possibility at all, at this point in time. I have to wonder, can love of particular people or close ones ever be related to the love of all beings, let alone extended to everyone? Can the love of one extend to all beings? I tend to be thinking lately that the two (love of one and love of all beings) aren't really related to each other at all. The love we have for significant others isn't at all related to a general love for all humanity. Each path seems different albeit necessary. While one focuses on the particulars of a relationship, the other tends to focus on a general sentiment and trust of living beings.
     The promise of channelling one thing into another is almost like the alchemists' search to transform all metals into gold. It's compelling, a little bit like taking something we desire and turning into all manner of different shapes for use. But I begin to realize that any spiritual practice involves a combination of many very distinct elements. There needs to be instruction, guidance, group practice, individuals willing to support the spiritual community, time, material amenities., etc. According to the Surangama Sutra, to use one example, there is nothing we can see or feel that is not conditioned somehow by other interrelated events. Even something as simple as a light in a room is preconditioned by a variety of events and circumstances, such as an open space for light to shine, an eye to see the light, a mind to recognize light, etc. If any one of these elements is missing, the phenomena of the light just cannot exist. The same sort of thing surely should go for Eros. Eros is not necessarily an energy per se, but rather a set of conditions which happen to come favorably together in certain social contexts. But the dream of being able to extend Eros infinitely in all directions to embrace all things is a compelling fantasy: one which often ignores the principles of cause and condition, to the point of pretending omnipotence.

Not Dwelling in Thoughts

    It's important not to live in one's thoughts. I found this happening today, after spending some time doing literature review in the library and reflecting. My reflection is that most of what I think about is not necessarily based on long-term planning, but is often the result of short-term desires. And I had this moment later in the evening after watching a movie that things are impermanent and ever changing. What seemed important in one instant of time actually proves insubstantial in the next moment. Thoughts might seem to have a certain power over the mind, but there is never a thought that is so extremely powerful that it holds a certain fixed supremacy over the mind. I wonder if you've ever had those moments when you realized that your thoughts are just like dreams: passing away like clouds, only to be replaced with new, completely different, thoughts. And yet, how often have we been in situations where we think there is one 'supreme' thought that holds the highest value in organizing one's life. It's a little bit like looking for the latest gadget or trend.
    One approach I have sometimes taken when dealing with this situation is to try to 'prioritize' thoughts in terms of a dominant world view of philosophy. An example might be Marxism. According to the classic Marxist view, any thoughts that refer to an afterlife or religious theme are really just a distraction from the real struggles of this world, much of which are related to working life and labour. A Marxist, I would imagine, would prioritize her thoughts around this idea that labour is the center of life, not religions. Conversely, a religious thinker might say that 'labour' is only a distraction from the real matter at hand, which is the afterlife, heaven, or God. Which one of these views is correct? I have often debated these things in my mind when I was studying philosophy. But lately, I am feeling that these debates could go on endlessly. And if one is not careful, they can be counterproductive in the sense that they can really absorb a person in concepts that don't really address or alleviate suffering or desires.
     If I were to 'add' a thought to all of this, I might be doing a disservice to the topic, in addition to contradicting the point. But what I am recommending is that people observe how thoughts influence them over time, to look into the unreality or impermanence of thinking. It's not to say 'get rid of thoughts' but to seriously investigate, as would a scientist, the question of which thoughts are most valuable and which thoughts are only temporary desires for quick fixes.
     I am even getting to the point where I realize that the 'prioritizing' of thoughts is a little bit like the comparison of the chess player who is playing both the black and white pieces. Aren't both pieces being operated by the same player? If so, why is the player getting agitated and determined to 'beat' her or himself? In the same way, I am beginning to marvel at how a lot of my thoughts are aimed at trying to dominate the previous thought. Both current and previous thought have no relation to each other and are both not so permanent. Why chase after these thoughts to begin with, and what does one hope to accomplish through it?

A "Damaged" Good

   I was in the library today exploring some additional literature on my Loving Kindness Meditation writing project. I came across a book with a rather promising title, Be Nobody by Lama Marut. Marut's thesis is that much of the suffering in today's affluent societies relates to trying very hard to be a special or unique identity. It is as though one's survival somehow depended upon being special, different or in some ways indispensable. And Marut also describes how the source of depression is this endless struggle to overcome a fear of mediocrity: again, a modern bugbear,the 'curse' of being so average as to be somehow anonymous and indistinguishable from others. Marut cites Madonna as an example of someone who has achieved great success in the music industry, but is ironically driven by the need to avoid 'mediocrity''. Marut poignantly remarks:

The idea of a 'special self' one wishes to construct through accomplishment tends always to outstrip the reality, leaving one feeling incomplete, inadequate, and continually running to try to catch up." (p.14)

Marut suggests letting go of the shallower accomplishments one strives for in favor of a deeper self that is often embraced in religious and spiritual traditions. But I also wonder, why is it that successful people find it so hard to simply enjoy their own success? Could it be that the striving to be successful is addictive in itself, and overshadows a gratitude toward what we have?

The example I want to use is that of someone who suffers from a defective product or a broken good. Let's say you scratch a piece of furniture you have, or cause a serious dent in something like a car. Your immediate reaction might be to say that the car or whatever it is has been 'damaged' and you might even scramble to get it repaired or, in the worst case, replaced. But then you can stop and wonder: is it so damaged that it no longer functions the way it is meant to function? Can I still use it? Can it get me through the week? Working with broken or damaged things can be an interesting hobby, and it might teach people a certain gratitude for the way things function in spite of circumstances. A computer may look like a piece of junk when it's been around for a long time, has accumulated dust, and may be outmoded compared to the latest product, but it still might happen to work. The same goes with bodies. I remember watching a movie recently where one of the characters uses the term 'stupid good health' to refer to the tenacity of the human body to withstand even the most challenging pressures or diseases. One's body can be dysfunctional in some ways, but is it ever completely so? Could one re-frame the experience in a way that honors what is still doing its function. This is to say that there is much more that is working than 'not working', yet one often focuses only on what appears defective or deviant from the norm,

I am suggesting that the "root" problem that Marut describes might not necessarily be in addiction to accomplishment or to a sense of self. It's possible that addiction to self masks a deeper inability to enjoy our experiences as they are using a gratitude perspective. If we are unable to get what we desire, we can still re-frame what we have as offering many advantages. It is 're-imagining the real', in other words, in order to see the real with all its advantages. Over time, we get used to having so many things conveniently at our disposal, but what happens when we see these advantages for the first time, and are able to enjoy them as though we were just given their unique advantages? And could the simple gratitude of enjoying all of our advantages in this moment be a way to 'be nobody' and enjoy it?

Marut, Lama ( 2014 ) Be Nobody. New York: Atria

(Mis)managing Time

  After my short trip to the gym tonight, I recalled how I had finished work relatively late, late enough that I could not even sit down to have a real dinner. There are times in my life when things just get to be like that, and this evening was hard to wrap up. I have felt that there are many changes happening with testing new programs at work. Lately, I have been telling myself not to resist the pressure to accept all these new developments.  "Resisting" change sometimes takes the subtle forms of wanting things to be neatly in place, rather than being open to sudden or spontaneous changes in the schedule of things. I am practicing trying to relax into the situation itself to see what key things it is trying to tell me, rather than seeing it as an obstacle to some other goal. And of course, it's not easy, since it is quite natural to plan for specific outcomes, as this is the way society is also structured. Without a sense of structure, it would be difficult to meet deadlines or even get to work in the morning.
    What sense does flexibility have in terms of prioritizing life? If a person is 'too flexible', does she or he run the danger of losing their sense of what's important to them? I find that these are questions I think about recently. Many books in the Buddhist tradition (or 'mindfulness') tend to couch the problem as 'living in the now' as opposed to trying to live in an imagined future or past. But I don't think that it means that people should not make plans. When I am aware that plans are conditioned according to the changing circumstances, my planning can be done differently. It does not need to be that I get rid of plans just because everything is impermanent. Rather, I can keep the broad orientation of what I want to do and include the new things that arise. I think the analogy might be that of a fluid organism that is expanding to take in new things. If you ever watch an amoeba in a microscope (or at least in a picture), you might have seen this idea of a simple organism that is always expanding to include new things, without losing its structural integrity. If an organism has no such integration, it wouldn't survive at all: there would simply be no way for such an organism to keep itself intact. But on the other hand, if the organism remains rigid and impermeable, it simply could not eat or interact with the environment to survive.
    Writing is a good example of a practice that involves a balance between structure and flexibility. "Pushing" oneself to write or have "something to say" can be detrimental to creativity, because it just creates a lot of tension around something that is quite natural, like speaking. But if I go to the other extreme and say that writing should have no structure, I will soon end up not even finishing articles or paragraphs, since I no longer have the driving force to motivate me to go. So the flexibility part ends up serving specific functions, and it takes faith to know that we can already steer in the right direction without pre-conceiving how we should live or do things.

Spiritual Views of Food

   The other day, one of my language students had asked me whether the Buddhist celebration of Vesak involved fasting of any kind. My student was in some ways reflecting on the Muslim traditions where people fast as part of their spiritual life. I had suddenly recollected on how Buddha had gone through many periods of fasting, before he had almost reached the point of wasting away. A young woman had then spotted him and had given him some sweetened milk, which allowed the Buddha to continue his journey toward enlightenment. Many scholars have interpreted this event in the Buddha's life as particularly meaningful in that it reminds people of the Middle Path toward consuming things: neither indulging in food out of craving nor denying things out of a misplaced belief in 'self-denial'.
    Meditative practice sometimes reveals our complicated relationships with food, particularly as the practice can increase a person's sensitivities. Just in the car tonight on the way from group practice, the facilitator was sharing about how he develops a kind of sensitivity toward sweet things while on intensive retreat, to the point where he can even sense a mental confusion after tasting a candy. Long after retreat, the facilitator will often have sweet things, since they are commonplace in Western society, but the period of not eating sweets makes him sensitive to their effects on the mind. The discussion made me realize that there are so many things that can bring a person to a state of confusion, including the everyday stimulants of caffeine or the sugar found in chocolate and soda. The confusion would come from craving: wanting something and then getting excited about having it. I have to say that my weak points are caffeine and sweets, and they are such a source of excitement to the senses. Is the solution then to cut them out altogether?
       For health purposes, I would say it's best to minimize stimulating foods as much as possible. It's easy to say, but hard to do in a society that values fast pace and almost constant stimulation. I am even tempted to say that curbing the habit of stimulating the senses requires a different kind of environment: one that is a little less competitive and certainly more natural. I think it's also important to get a sense of when people use food as a stimulant. For example, I have noticed that I tend to desire sweet or caffeinated beverages when I am under pressure or might feel emotionally isolated. It's almost as though the sugar or caffeine will lift me out of an emotion that I don't particularly like or enjoy. Here, it takes a lot of compassion to just be with that emotion rather than giving into the temptation to go into a more 'exciting' or joyful one. A second point is to be curious about difficult or heavy emotions. If I cultivate more gratitude toward emotions that feel tense or difficult and even embrace them, I will have less recourse to trying to switch to something more joyful or stimulating. And this attitude of equanimity also ends up helping the meditative practice as well.
    I don't  necessarily think that any food is 'bad' for a person. For instance, there doesn't seem to be that many foods that are harmful to people as long as they are in moderation. I think from the Chan perspective, the problems would arise when people are not aware of the habit energy that is behind consuming the foods that one enjoys. That habit energy is often accumulated emotional things, and food  is sometimes a way to assuage the habit or hide difficulties. If I am not aware of how I am approaching the foods that I enjoy, I will miss the attachments I create. I have already hinted at how these attachments are often hidden in the 'object' of the food itself, and it's hard to disentangle from the object of craving unless I face the difficult emotions that go into that attachment.
   Attachment is always a combination of avoiding things I don't enjoy, liking the pleasant, and ignoring the nature of the pleasant/unpleasant. It would be helpful to observe these challenging emotional energies without using food as a way to block them out. And this  bare observation can be one way to overcome enmeshment in cravings for food or other substances.

Passive and Active Spirituality

 Over the last day or so, I have been pondering the meaning of passive and active when it comes to spiritual practice or philosophy. In his book, The Challenge of the Mind, Oryuhu Okawa describes two kinds of religion: one which relies on other beings' powers and another which suggests the inner worth of a person. The latter point of view suggests that human beings could have 'divinity' within them and need not think of themselves as spiritually impoverished or dependent on a spiritual power for salvation. This evening after the group meditation, I also had a chance to listen to Master Sheng Yen's talk about active vs. passive. While Okawa tends to see passive and active forms of spirituality as different (if not opposite), Sheng Yen sees the two as parts of a whole. For instance, in cases where a person is interacting with others, there is always a combination of taking initiative and waiting to hear from others. The former tends to be considered 'active' while the latter is a more passive kind of responsiveness to others.
    I tend to think that there is never a completely active or passive spirituality. For instance, if I think that everything is completely under my control, I begin to wonder who this "I" is, and how does it know it is 'in control' at all? I am reminded of examples where people might think they are doing well in a social situation, only to find that others find them to be too imposing, not giving others space to be themselves. Even when we try to measure ourselves, we are limited by the standards we use or the narrow ways we measure our own achievements. I am also thinking that nobody ever lives in a vacuum, and people have to act within the boundaries of shared customs and rules. John Locke is one philosopher who seemed to stress that even property rights are protected by shared rules. There is on inalienable action that is always right for one person, since we are always living in the context of larger communities. In that sense, in order to be constructively active, one has to also observe others and yield to others to a certain degree. Both are part of human associations.
    I  could also extend the same analogy to spiritual life. If spiritual life is too individualistic and 'action focused', it often loses sight of the sacred mysteries of spirit life. We often don't fully plumb the depths of our being, even when we are taking full charge of our actions (or so we believe).I think in a sense that action is the beginning of spiritual life, in the sense that being active is what allows people to discover how they are in different situations and how the mind works. But in another sense, it's only the starting point, and much of spiritual life is discovering what can't be quantified as an action necessarily, a kind of unspeakable sacredness of being itself. Okawa tends to underplay this in his explanations, where he stresses how Buddha nature is something we need to realize through a structured program of action. But somehow I am afraid that too much activism ends up making spirituality into a sophisticated philistinism, a kind of 'salvation through good deeds'. I think somehow spiritual life needs to preserve the delicate balance between acting upon the world and receiving its mysteries and communities.

Okawa, Ryuho (1994, 2004), The Challenge of the Mind. Great Britain: Time Warner Books
Sheng Yen, "Being Active vs Being Passive", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj1lYcWXumY