Dreaming as a Metaphor

   Just today, I had a beautiful 'text' conversation about William Faulkner's book As I Lay Dying, which I remember reading many years ago, if not as a teenager. What I recall about that book is how it relates the burial of the family matriarch, and how all these characters go about honoring their mother. One of the book's themes is about motivation: something that seems on the outside to be so pure might be motivated by very different things such as money, escape, or some wish to be glorified in some way. Each chapter is written from a very different perspective, and there are many characters to keep track of throughout the journey.
     In Buddhist teachings there is often the notion that we are 'talking about dreams while in dreams' (Shengyen, 2014, p.97). We think that one thing is only a dream while the other is 'real', but actually even that which one considers as real is part of a larger dream. In other words, one can never break out of the cause and conditioned life unless they realize that cause and conditions are not permanent, and they are experienced very uniquely according to the karma of the perceiver. At that point, the person can recognize that they are in a dream. I wonder if perhaps Faulkner's many-pointed perspectives also serves the same function: to show that everyone is functioning in a dream. Often, a person may go through life not even fully aware of her or his motivations. If people were so clear about them, perhaps they wouldn't even venture to do anything, out of fear that the motives are not pure.
    Faulkner's narrative is 'horizontal': rather than telling a story that has an upward trajectory for a single character, he moves between characters who are on a similar yet very different journey. By treating his readers in this way, Faulkner allows the reader to look at a situation from a multitudinous perspective, while not attaching to any one view as 'the real one'. It also describes how there is no idealized image of a family, because everyone is affected by very different things that are often outside the scope of a family. I haven't come across a narrative that is any better than this one for illuminating how conditioned people are to look at the present from the perspective of their own pasts. Here again is where the dreaming metaphor becomes an interesting point of view to help people see their own viewpoints as somehow relative and open to change. Maybe this would also give a person the humor and courage not to buy into a single story line which attempts to explain everything.

Shengyen (2014), Chan and Enlightenment.  Elmhurst, New York: Dharma Drum Publishing

"Degrees" of Letting Go

 Wednesday night's group meditation always seems to remind me that there are many degrees of letting go. For instance, during today's meditation, I noticed that my tense posture is related to a desire to 'stay with' something during meditation. But the paradox of meditation is that this 'staying with' does not require some kind of rigid, inflexible posture--quite the opposite, there is a kind of subtle flexibility that is needed. An analogy might be that if a fox is chasing a mouse, it is not enough for the fox to be able to fix its eye rigidly on the mouse's body. Nor is it necessarily a good idea for the fox to be so intensely focused on the mouse that its muscles start to get tight and stiffen. Rather, the fox has to learn to somehow move with the causes and conditions; to be labile enough while not losing its ultimate goal.
    Of course, the even more challenging aspect of meditation is that the goal is not even to get the mouse. Rather, it is to know that there is ultimately no fox and no mouse. The only way to get there is to have this kind of 'let go' mind which is always 'this mind' at the same time. It I not even particularly letting go at all, because to think of it that way would be to say that there is something external to me that needs to be let go of.
    How do I get to that state of 'letting go'? I have found that asking 'how' is a kind of mental trap, and it's only when I give up the how altogether that I can experience this letting go. "How" comes from an emphasis on technical rationality: the notion that things can be attained by following a set of instructions that can be reproduced anytime or anywhere. The reason it is not so easy to apply in meditation is that the 'how' creates an object, which in turn creates the rational subject. And one starts to see very quickly that this division of subject and object creates an eternal state of striving to merge with something, be it an emotion or a desired state of mind. Even 'letting go' can get embroiled in this striving: we strive to 'let go' in order to 'achieve' some desired state of bliss or relaxation. But this again creates a very interesting dynamic of striving for something that one isn't already. So again, letting go cannot be taken to be a goal that involves striving of any kind.
     It is only when even letting go ceases to matter that an authentic letting go is possible. In other words, the letting go simply embraces both attachment and non-attachment. It doesn't try to seek non-attachment or flee attachment. It is almost like a state of pure knowing without striving: seeing these habitual tendencies to seek and reject, without adding another layer of seeking and rejection in response to the latter seeing. At the same time, this 'pure observation' is never in opposition to striving, since it embraces every state of being equally. At this stage, anything is possible, and the mind is open to every possibility, taking care never to reject or create another mind that is separate from infinite possibility. So this letting go is actually a state of complete inclusion. What one really lets go of is the process of splitting into a self-object relationship and then attaching to certain objects and rejecting others.

Holy Shy!

 Kierkegaard remarks in Works of Love that the third part of God is a 'cooling factor' in a relationship which also acts as a "soothing agent" (p.313). Essentially, he is arguing that the spiritual third party in a relationship serves to remind people that they are truly servants of the good, rather than serving exclusively each other. This helps to relieve conflicts between family members, neighbors and relatives, because it reminds them that before God, everyone is basically equal; I am not 'better' than you, and we are both learning how to grow and live together under the same sky. If people can keep in mind that nobody is superior or inferior to the other, then there is neither pride nor shame in the interaction. Moreover, there is a certain element of what Kierkegaard refers to as "holy shyness" (p.314)--the sense that a divine being is watching over the people in the interaction. When I experience holy shyness, it's almost as though I were imagining what the interaction would look like from the perspective of an ultimate good, or a divine being. If a king were to come over and visit your family, would you behave just as you normally would, or would you feel a little more conscious of how you behave with the others? Surely, people can feel a little bit modest when they can conceive that there is a divinity watching over them.
     It's interesting to reflect on how this applies to situations where a person is not necessarily believing in a higher power or God. At this point, I am not so sure whether there is any equivalent to this concept of "holy shyness" in any other philosophy or religion I have encountered so far. There are, however, times when I wonder what a Buddhist master would say if she or he would to see me in a stressful situation. When I imagine someone with a lot of wisdom seeing me, I suddenly do feel modest, and a lot of things I might normally do and think seem frivolous in that moment. Another example is after a period of meditation. I have noticed that after meditation, things that bother me start to feel embarrassingly slight, as though the air had cleared and the monster is actually a cute little mouse. Then I do wonder: what was that all about? Why did I have such distressing thoughts about something so insignificant? I do wonder if perhaps meditation can bring a person to a point of view of wisdom. That is, I am no longer taken by my ego drives or desires, but start to see things with a very wide and spacious lens. There are many times when even short periods of quiet leave me feeling humbled.
     But what is the difference between humility and humiliation? Wouldn't too much humility seem too constricting? According to Kierkegaard, when people are not seeing themselves in comparison with others, there is no real humiliation. It's only when I start to think that someone else has 'more' of something than I (more virtue, more spirituality, etc.) that I start to go through these cycles of humiliation and pride. In a sense, I wonder if one of the great advantages of meditation is that it can take a person beyond comparison with others, and thus deflate a lot of conflicts that arise from the effort to 'save face' before someone else. Meditation could be one way, and prayer could be another. But I would also suggest that anything done mindfully can be a way to bring oneself to a more authentic relationship with the world, which is not affected by the filter of comparison.

Kierkegaard, S ( 1962), Works of Love (trans. Hong, H. & Hong, E). New York: Harper. 

Nature's Lessons

  Today is Labour Day, and some are thinking of it as the last day of summer. But somehow the natural world is still very much alive throughout Toronto, particularly in the parks and trails. And I was thinking that no matter how much I might long for summer to last forever, life continues to go on its pace. And I was also reflecting on how the natural world can teach a person about resilience in the face of change.
   If I were to lament on how much I have to get up and travel to work on weekdays, I should probably stop to reflect on what the wildfowl are doing today: preparing themselves for a winter down south. When I stop to think of it, nature doesn't need to reflect that something is either easy or hard: it never steps out of its process of just being and doing according to the instinctively coded plans of nature. The blue heron minces its steps to catch a fish along the Humber River, but does it ever need to reflect: 'it is so hard to catch a fish.'? It certainly looks challenging from a human vantage point, but the heron simply does not give up. It continues its process until it can reach the next catch. Yet somehow when I have the thought that something is hard, I am adding a layer of thought to what isn't easy or hard in and by itself. I literally 'make' things challenging by labelling them as such, rather than seeing them as unfolding causes and conditions.
    Another thing I learn from nature is that there is not much to gain or lose. Things combine and recombine to form life, but this life is subject to death and rebirth. The cicadas, for instance, may be calling out in their thin buzzing of wings, but what happens tomorrow? Perhaps their only hope of posterity is the continuation in future offspring. In the natural world, even loss is considered a gain in some future state. I wonder if perhaps observing nature can help a person let go of a specific narrow concept of life's goal. Rather than seeing life as the glorification of an individual, one can train through natural processes to see that life is always supporting other life, both across space and time. Observing the fragility of nature can lessen a person's attachment to the self.
     What holds nature together? This is a question that is hard to fathom, and it's especially hard to have faith that nature is 'held together' when even the climate is changing so fast. But when I observe the natural world, there is always some mysterious way in which animals adapt to changes and somehow even cooperate with others. The Canada geese today were all bathing on the same spot, close to the waterfall, and it was most amusing to see them all doing the same thing, as though they were in the same family. It is one example of where living beings are always in communication with each other, and this interconnection also extends to the ways things mutually relate and behave. Is it possible that all these phenomena tell us that nothing was ever really separate in the first place?

Spiritual "Poverty" and Eternity

  I start to realize that reading Kierkegaard's book Works of Love is inspiring me to use words like 'temporal' and 'eternal', ideas which are foreign to Buddhist philosophy. And Kierkegaard's notion of the eternal still remains somewhat mysterious to me. I would like to take time to write about what I am learning from him.
   One thing I greatly respect about this book is that it describes 'eternal' as opposed to 'empty', even though the two terms equate to a kind of infinite possibility that is always existing a little bit forward into the future. When people talk about the Buddhist concept of emptiness, there is this similar notion of things always being possible and potential-- a dynamic interweaving of forces in the environment which allows new combinations to arise constantly. And the principle in emptiness would be a co-dependent arising. But why would Kierkegaard use 'eternal' to describe this? Is Kierkegaard perhaps referring to a more timeless sort of realm, similar to the realm of forms in Plato's philosophy?
   Some of this is not yet clear to me, but what I can glean from it is that the eternal is an act of turning to and believing in every possibility, since all things are possible with God. It means that there is no boundary and nothing that isn't possible since there is always grace in everything. Even something that seems like an ultimate tragedy or a disaster doesn't need to be seen as a closed situation, as though it had no more possibility beyond it. In fact, it then becomes that hope becomes an act of choice: I choose to believe that the world is not bounded by what's already happened in the past, but is always continually being 'created anew' by new sets of causes and conditions.
      Some modern thinkers tend to emphasize the "choice" aspect of this philosophy. In fact, existentialism seems to be characterized by this understanding that human life is based on choice. But is this all that Kierkegaard says--that we choose our own fates? I tend to think he is suggesting the opposite--that who we think we are is just another factor, and we can never fully see the eternal, any more than we can stare at the sun. That's because possibilities are infinite, and there is no way to know which way things will go with all the indeterminate factors in the universe. Grace would be the sudden insight that things don't need to be 'my' way or anyone's way, because there is a surrender: a final surmounting of the belief that "I" am in charge of what happens to me. But again this doesn't need to be a cause for despair. It is rather knowing that there is no permanent self to salvage, and what we do experience are moments that are constantly arising in time.
     If I think that this is somehow depressing, then I am still holding onto the self that is supposed to have a static purpose in life. In that way, I am closing the possibility of any other way of seeing the situation. It is as though I have already seen how a movie ends so I despair of wanting to see the movie again. But if I am holding to the eternal, I am aware that the same movie can be viewed an infinite number of times, with infinite perspectives. All that is really limiting me from this infinity is my own tendency to close off further meanings or possibilities--perhaps wanting to salvage an enduring sense of separate self.

Between Present and Prickly

   I have been hearing recently in the news that the coming winter will be as cold in Toronto as it has been warm during the summer. People are already starting to brace themselves for the weather, and I notice a change in activity tonight: boarding the late night bus and finding it to be empty. Has summer already 'declared bankruptcy' and closed its doors, I wonder?
    When I think about the spiritual path, I realize that there is simply no guarantee that one will ever emerge from pain. Life is simply full of pain, often unpredictable in cases, and I find that it is best not to try to reach a state where there is no pain of any kind. Such a state would be a little bit like trying to manipulate the natural world, which is what we are in fact doing but with little benefit to ourselves. In much the same way, the effort to 'overcome' pain by becoming more comfortable or being able to predict everything in advance, is bound to hit bumps. One can even see the current global climate change as the result of an effort to try to manipulate conditions of life so that they are most conducive to human convenience and comfort. Whenever there is a plus in this direction, there is always going to be a consequence which is often not anticipated.
     In fact, I believe that the essence of spiritual practice, particularly with meditation, is to learn to love the sorrow and mistakes--as much as one loves the sweet things in life. Perhaps one can even say that sweetness is a kind of practice in loving sorrow. Once a person has tasted the sweetness of kindness, they can then extend this kindness to less pleasant things. Is it any coincidence that in my walk today, there was an intersection called "Pleasant Avenue and Cactus"? I think this very street name is a kind of symbol. It represents how pleasant has to meet with pain to see how it can integrate pain into its smooth contours. Or, another way of looking at it is to say: grace needs to be challenged, because it's the nature of grace to open its doors to every kind of experience or sensation, no matter what it happens to be.

Desire to Progress in Meditation

  One of the most damaging aspects to meditation practice is this kind of desire to progress. I have noticed myself getting into this habit of being quite determined in the practice at the beginning, almost as though I had a big battling ram and I was wanting to overcome instances of distraction, fatigue or pain. It's only that the harder I push, the more exhausting it feels to practice. And there comes a point where all the dreams of progress are quite empty, predetermined. They start to look quite absurd in a sense: as though one were trying to dream about something that I expect to experience. Not only is the dream quite elusive when I do attain it, but there is no way we can fit the circumstances into that limited dream.
    Somehow, it seems that the philosopher Kierkegaard had a good way of putting these experiences. He writes about eternal possibility as being the true source of hope, and even proposes a kind of "education of the eternal", when he remarks: "In possibility the eternal is continually near enough to be at hand and yet far enough away to keep man (sic) advancing towards the eternal, on the way, in forward movement." (p.237) I think the interesting point is that meditation is precisely pointing to this eternal, yet it is hard to pinpoint just what that 'eternal' really is. The experience of the eternal has sometimes been described as an act of sheer grace. Eternity is able to advance like a like that shines on everything, only when people stop thinking that they need to use their own power to somehow create that eternity within themselves. The nearness of eternity is precisely this understanding that the very mind we use to see, feel, to know, to act, etc. is this mind, or the true mind. But the farness of eternity is that I continue to believe that I need to add a head to another head: I have to work to create an experience, or define it for myself.
       Very often, in meditation, I find myself trying to create an experience, because I believe that this is the way the true mind is supposed to feel. I assign certain experiences as positive while others are 'off the mark'. But the point of the practice is not to say 'this' experience is the best. On the contrary, it is to affirm every experience, in clear awareness. Not even to affirm: in fact, it is simply to know, in a spacious and compassionate way, that this experience is part of Buddha mind. But the problem is exactly that the tendency to want to shape experience in a certain way that feels spiritual is precisely what blocks the true knowing of this Buddha mind as being in every single experience.
       In fact,  it is a discriminating tendency to divide spiritual aspects of practice from 'non-spiritual'. The practice is in fact to trace all the phenomena back to the source from which they are supported. This means that there is simply no phenomena that could not serve as a trace to look into the mind. When I finally realize that every phenomena is just precisely the material to know the mind, I can stop pushing it away. I see that this 'stuff' that I so dislike is actually a form of the mind.
      But the interesting thing is that even in not getting or not grasping the point I just mentioned, I am using the same mind. I remember Fashi talking about the gold that can be shaped into a beautiful figure or a toilet. The gold itself does not change. So why am I worried about not 'getting' the point when this very 'not getting' is precisely the true mind? If I knew in that very instant that even 'not getting' something is the true mind, would I keep seeking something more pristine or 'less confused' then what I have now?

Kierkegaard, Soren (1962). Works of Love. New York: Harper Perennial.