Many people nowadays are starting to tap into something called "growth" mindset. According to this view, people in organizations no longer ascribe to the view that they possess fixed characteristics or capabilities. Rather, all people are shifting beings, who are always learning and expanding to embrace new ways of thinking. To believe that one is limited by genetics or set ways of thinking is only to perpetuate a myth of permanence or inflexible nature. As a way of remedying the emphasis on 'finalities' (final nature, final result, etc.) experts in this field seem to be suggesting an emphasis on process: it's not the end result that counts but, more so, an unfolding process of learning that makes a journey worthwhile and worth embarking on. Many of the modern slogans in the growth mindset field remind me of things written by John Dewey a century ago.
So far, so good, but I have to wonder: where does the concept of 'growth' fit into this? And is there ever a reliable way of gauging whether or not something has 'grown' based on a process or even a result? I think that the concept of growth starts to become murkier as a person starts to explore the inner growth of, say, children. Children are such complex beings that I wonder: does the imposition of 'growing curve' sometimes inhibit children from doing something that feels genuinely authentic to them? Whose growth is it anyway? At what cost to a person's inner life must they face growth or go through growth?
To me, the most lasting kinds of growth seem to come from within a person's sincere heart. It might seem that a person is growing when she or he is following how others want them to be, but this is only growth for something outside of oneself, such as a corporation or a corporate value. What often happens in that case is that a person starts to split themselves into a 'personal' self and a 'corporate', almost bureaucratic, self. If values such as 'growth' are meant to be a permanent part of one's life, then it needs to come from a real desire for change. And even in that case, it's still hard to say when change becomes growth. To use a Darwinian example, animals are hardly said to 'grow' through adaptation, since adaptation is simply that: adapting to the circumstances in which an animal lives. But growth seems to me to be something more integral, and more encompassing. To 'grow' is to seem to step beyond a way of living while simultaneously containing it: to see life in a context of something bigger than itself.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
The World We Want is Within Us
Many people are feeling shocked about the election results in the U.S., and as of now, the votes are coming in. I believe that it is a close race, and in some sense, it's meant to be a disappointment for a lot of people. But I had two thoughts as I was heading home tonight from class and a very late dinner. The first thought I had was a very cynical one. It was something like: no matter who is voted into power, the machinery of power is going to keep going. In other words, power is power, and it is going to be pretty much the same hierarchical order regardless of who wins. But then I started to reflect that this is not necessarily the case at all. I think that the world a person wants to have is already within themselves, waiting to ripen with education and cultivation of some kind. So this second thought is a lot more hopeful.
If you think about it, nothing can stop a person from creating a pure land. All it really requires is a pure intention and a method to which a person remains loyal. This is not about collecting spiritual slogans on Facebook. It's more like a consistent practice that one can and does always return to, such as a deep listening to one's breath. If the heart is pure, how can the world be impure? If the intention is pure, one would never see an ill intention in anyone else around them. This is so because everything we experience is only a reflection of the mind. If what I see is 'despicable', then I need to consider: what am I rejecting about this situation, and why? What is it about me and how I am moving that makes me reject one thing and seek another?
Even in the worst kinds of adversity, the mind need not see this as terrible at all. It is a kind of crucible for one's soul or one's practice (depending on how you call or to what spiritual tradition you belong). Sometimes, difficult people are in one's life just to help them overcome some blockage or discrimination in their mind. Once a person sees through the label, is there anything that is to be rejected? The only real discrimination is simply created by the mind.
This is why, quite simply, one should never give up their wish for a better world. Look at your state of mind closely, drop all the clinging to thoughts, and you will find the better world, both within and outside.
If you think about it, nothing can stop a person from creating a pure land. All it really requires is a pure intention and a method to which a person remains loyal. This is not about collecting spiritual slogans on Facebook. It's more like a consistent practice that one can and does always return to, such as a deep listening to one's breath. If the heart is pure, how can the world be impure? If the intention is pure, one would never see an ill intention in anyone else around them. This is so because everything we experience is only a reflection of the mind. If what I see is 'despicable', then I need to consider: what am I rejecting about this situation, and why? What is it about me and how I am moving that makes me reject one thing and seek another?
Even in the worst kinds of adversity, the mind need not see this as terrible at all. It is a kind of crucible for one's soul or one's practice (depending on how you call or to what spiritual tradition you belong). Sometimes, difficult people are in one's life just to help them overcome some blockage or discrimination in their mind. Once a person sees through the label, is there anything that is to be rejected? The only real discrimination is simply created by the mind.
This is why, quite simply, one should never give up their wish for a better world. Look at your state of mind closely, drop all the clinging to thoughts, and you will find the better world, both within and outside.
Sunday, November 6, 2016
A Biological Model?
One of the unfortunate aspects of some forms of psychoanalysis is a tendency to think of human beings as "instinctively" driven beings, rather than beings who are interconnected with others since birth. It seems that 'instincts' are these isolated tendencies within a person, when in reality, the way a person experiences emotion is often the result of more than simply inner triggers of emotions in the body.
I was reading these articles today for my course in Buddhism and mental health, and I came across a few about the relationship between post-traumatic stress and certain kinds of states of being and behavior. The articles were suggesting that post-traumatic stress can profoundly affect the neurochemistry of the brain, resulting in behaviors such as substance abuse or depression. This is all very well, but I couldn't help but notice how the authors seemed to be rooting behaviors in very specific chemical deficiencies in the body. Using a model of 'deficiency' and/or 'imbalance', the authors tried to show correlations between these imbalances and subsequent behaviors. Somehow, I get a sense that these articles are lending themselves to a medical view of life. It's as though all one needed to do to address these problems would be to inject some new chemical which counterbalances the deficiencies which lead to problem behaviors.
I am somehow reminded that perhaps these scientific explanations are only creations of the mind. If I think in terms of deficiency or imbalance, I no sooner start to become a consumer, whose aim in life is to correct the deficiency--to 'fill the hole' somehow. But then I also started to wonder, is there ever a perfect 'equilibrium' achieved in life, or is perhaps even the concept of balance relative? I am afraid that perhaps the medical view only perpetuates this idea of trying to compensate for deficiencies using some quick fix. Perhaps in reality, nobody fully understands the relationship between the chemicals produced in the body.
An alternate explanation might be that when a person is only looking through the microscope, they miss out on the larger currents that might be factoring into an experience. But because things might seem more precisely measured when they are small units, we get this idea that they can predict the whole behavior of humans. Yet, most people start to become aware that humans are much more complicated in how they think and behave. Is it fair to focus only on their brain chemistry to understand what really happens with them?
I was reading these articles today for my course in Buddhism and mental health, and I came across a few about the relationship between post-traumatic stress and certain kinds of states of being and behavior. The articles were suggesting that post-traumatic stress can profoundly affect the neurochemistry of the brain, resulting in behaviors such as substance abuse or depression. This is all very well, but I couldn't help but notice how the authors seemed to be rooting behaviors in very specific chemical deficiencies in the body. Using a model of 'deficiency' and/or 'imbalance', the authors tried to show correlations between these imbalances and subsequent behaviors. Somehow, I get a sense that these articles are lending themselves to a medical view of life. It's as though all one needed to do to address these problems would be to inject some new chemical which counterbalances the deficiencies which lead to problem behaviors.
I am somehow reminded that perhaps these scientific explanations are only creations of the mind. If I think in terms of deficiency or imbalance, I no sooner start to become a consumer, whose aim in life is to correct the deficiency--to 'fill the hole' somehow. But then I also started to wonder, is there ever a perfect 'equilibrium' achieved in life, or is perhaps even the concept of balance relative? I am afraid that perhaps the medical view only perpetuates this idea of trying to compensate for deficiencies using some quick fix. Perhaps in reality, nobody fully understands the relationship between the chemicals produced in the body.
An alternate explanation might be that when a person is only looking through the microscope, they miss out on the larger currents that might be factoring into an experience. But because things might seem more precisely measured when they are small units, we get this idea that they can predict the whole behavior of humans. Yet, most people start to become aware that humans are much more complicated in how they think and behave. Is it fair to focus only on their brain chemistry to understand what really happens with them?
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Guilt vs Responsibility
I am continuing to reflect on guilt and its relationship to responsibility. I think part of the confusion for me in this area is that I tend to associate these two together, because guilt often seems to be a 'motivator' to take responsibility, or at least the feeling of regret or remorse. I am ambivalent about guilt, because the emotion itself is always trying to recruit the mind. But again, is guilt a truly constructive emotion? And as for responsibility--what are the limits, if any, to that for which a person must be responsible?
To give one example: there is an argument that says something like, you are fully responsible for what happens to you. If I recall the book Zero Limits by Joe Vitale, there is this idea that one should assume that everything that happens to oneself is really the result of the perfect arising of cause and conditions. Therefore, it's only fitting that a person approach their challenges in life with an attitude of humility: the sense that I am simply responding to situations that have ripened from previous actions or karma. So far so good...but what is it that prevents this attitude from taking on more than what a person can do? What prevents this practice from becoming too burdensome to carry?
I think that with Zero Limits, the goal is not at all to take on other people's problems, as though one had to solve everything and make everyone happy. In fact, I think one of the messages in this book is the opposite: namely that we can cultivate a wholesome intention to help other beings without necessarily even communicating with them directly. And I think that it's exactly this attitude which prevents the practice of taking responsibility not as burdensome as it might seem in other contexts. There is a very small spark of kindness, and all it really requires is an awareness to nurture it. And it comes from owning up to the fact that things are here in this moment for very specific reasons.
This responsibility is quite different from guilt. Whereas guilt tends to focus on what has already passed (for which there is no turning back, really), responsibility is relating more to the incomplete present. I cannot 'take responsibility' for that over which I no longer have a meaningful choice. Even in the case of having a debilitating illness, one can still take responsibility for how one behaves and thinks about the illness itself. In that sense, there is always this tiny window of choice, which arises from the attitude I decide to take toward what faces me. And I know that if the conditions around me have already arisen as they have, then I had might as well accept those conditions.
The key point is that responsibility requires a clear-eyed responsiveness to conditions, whereas guilt is something that really cannot be responded to, because there is something closed about it. Guilt is that sensation of, "you can't go back to being who you were", and there is a heaviness associated with it. But responsibility says: even though one cannot turn back to the past, there is still some way to respond to the present, and this is the empowering aspect of responsibility.
To give one example: there is an argument that says something like, you are fully responsible for what happens to you. If I recall the book Zero Limits by Joe Vitale, there is this idea that one should assume that everything that happens to oneself is really the result of the perfect arising of cause and conditions. Therefore, it's only fitting that a person approach their challenges in life with an attitude of humility: the sense that I am simply responding to situations that have ripened from previous actions or karma. So far so good...but what is it that prevents this attitude from taking on more than what a person can do? What prevents this practice from becoming too burdensome to carry?
I think that with Zero Limits, the goal is not at all to take on other people's problems, as though one had to solve everything and make everyone happy. In fact, I think one of the messages in this book is the opposite: namely that we can cultivate a wholesome intention to help other beings without necessarily even communicating with them directly. And I think that it's exactly this attitude which prevents the practice of taking responsibility not as burdensome as it might seem in other contexts. There is a very small spark of kindness, and all it really requires is an awareness to nurture it. And it comes from owning up to the fact that things are here in this moment for very specific reasons.
This responsibility is quite different from guilt. Whereas guilt tends to focus on what has already passed (for which there is no turning back, really), responsibility is relating more to the incomplete present. I cannot 'take responsibility' for that over which I no longer have a meaningful choice. Even in the case of having a debilitating illness, one can still take responsibility for how one behaves and thinks about the illness itself. In that sense, there is always this tiny window of choice, which arises from the attitude I decide to take toward what faces me. And I know that if the conditions around me have already arisen as they have, then I had might as well accept those conditions.
The key point is that responsibility requires a clear-eyed responsiveness to conditions, whereas guilt is something that really cannot be responded to, because there is something closed about it. Guilt is that sensation of, "you can't go back to being who you were", and there is a heaviness associated with it. But responsibility says: even though one cannot turn back to the past, there is still some way to respond to the present, and this is the empowering aspect of responsibility.
Friday, November 4, 2016
barking up trees: guilt in spiritual life
Tonight, I was thinking about the value of guilt in spiritual life. Is there a role in it, after all, and are there certain values to feeling guilt? I think that in Western religions especially, there is a common assumption that guilt has a special value of deterring a person from doing something that can be harmful. In a sense, I believe that this idea comes more from a behaviorist tradition, because it works by means of self-punishment. When I really and truly feel that I am to blame for something that has happened, the force of that belief is so severe and painful that I am deterred from performing the same action again. In that sense, we have sometimes heard the expression, 'you have to feel pain in order to embrace change', or something to that effect. But I also wonder if there are in fact detrimental aspects to guilt as well.
Guilt seems to speak to a universal belief in the power of punishment, both toward self and others. It's as though one assigns a feeling which is so heavy and so blaming that a person will no longer wish to engage in a certain undesirable behavior. But I sometimes wonder how this dynamic of guilt works in relationships. If I am self-punishing, how does that tendency to punish play out in respect to others? I can look at the converse effect and wonder: if I am simply more tolerant and understanding towards others, would I not also start to feel less guilty and punishing toward myself whenever things don't turn out as I thought they should be? It can perhaps hardly be the case that the guilt one feels toward oneself does not have an effect on others. I believe that feeling inner guilt can set a precedent for how one views the behaviors of others.
The way out of this impasse is that I can start to slowly appreciate that whatever I have done in the past is not capturing the fullest and deepest parts of my being. This is quite opposite to a strict view of morality where a person tries to apply negative deterrents to prevent her or himself from performing specific actions. This latter view can work in some situations, but the problem is that it doesn't expand the spirit in any way, and it tends to leave a person living in fear of being reprimanded.
I am really quite convinced that feeling bad about what one has done in the past is not the best idea. The idea would be to use what one has learned from the past to cultivate a wider and more forgiving understanding of all sentient beings.
Guilt seems to speak to a universal belief in the power of punishment, both toward self and others. It's as though one assigns a feeling which is so heavy and so blaming that a person will no longer wish to engage in a certain undesirable behavior. But I sometimes wonder how this dynamic of guilt works in relationships. If I am self-punishing, how does that tendency to punish play out in respect to others? I can look at the converse effect and wonder: if I am simply more tolerant and understanding towards others, would I not also start to feel less guilty and punishing toward myself whenever things don't turn out as I thought they should be? It can perhaps hardly be the case that the guilt one feels toward oneself does not have an effect on others. I believe that feeling inner guilt can set a precedent for how one views the behaviors of others.
The way out of this impasse is that I can start to slowly appreciate that whatever I have done in the past is not capturing the fullest and deepest parts of my being. This is quite opposite to a strict view of morality where a person tries to apply negative deterrents to prevent her or himself from performing specific actions. This latter view can work in some situations, but the problem is that it doesn't expand the spirit in any way, and it tends to leave a person living in fear of being reprimanded.
I am really quite convinced that feeling bad about what one has done in the past is not the best idea. The idea would be to use what one has learned from the past to cultivate a wider and more forgiving understanding of all sentient beings.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
When Things Stop Moving
During the group meditation practice tonight, we talked a lot about the idea of time not really having an existence in the absolute sense. While conventional wisdom teaches that there is a past, present and future, the ultimate sense of the mind is beyond time itself. I believe that once a person stops attaching to thoughts, they lose the sense of time. What is time, after all, if not the ability to bind certain ideas or thoughts together, as Korzybski might put it?
Time doesn't stop, however, unless a person really works at it. I am saying that for the most part, I am attached to moments and am engaging in things in a certain way, which is what gives rise to a past, present and future. If I see a cake and then start to salivate and think about how nice that cake is going to taste if I get a hold of it, I am already stirring up all kinds of thoughts about time. Here I am now, craving the cake in the future that has just arisen in mind previously. But if I were not so attached to the thought of cake in the first place, would all this have been perceived as happening?
I have often heard the expression that human beings are 'makers' of their own destiny and fate. I never quite understood this expression, until I started to learn about the Buddhist concepts of time and karma. As long as I am associating certain experiences with ideas of like, dislike or neutrality, I color my world and create seeds for a future world. An easy example of this might be the current trend in global warming. The world that is collectively resulting today comes from a lot of previous ideas and thoughts, many of which relate to this unbridled optimism of consuming as many things as one wishes to feel affluent or more distinct than others. But this in turn comes from the idea that I have a body that continues across space and time. If I didn't have such an idea of having this distinct body that can be filled or deprived, would I have so much craving? Wouldn't there simply be no sense of past, present and future to connect?
The point, however, is that the human world is composed of distinctly human kinds of attachments: food, companionship, material things, shelter, and so on. And in some regards, that world is perpetuated by its own desires for comfort, security, and power over the physical world. Meditative practice is not meant to take a person out of that world of time, but to allow a person to see how time arises, and to be clear about it. Then there is much more room to be unmoved by the passage of time, to the point where one can play with time to influence others. In this case, we don't think of time as an accomplishment or as an end point anymore but rather as a kind of creative unfolding and combining of thoughts that don't necessarily require combination at all.
Time doesn't stop, however, unless a person really works at it. I am saying that for the most part, I am attached to moments and am engaging in things in a certain way, which is what gives rise to a past, present and future. If I see a cake and then start to salivate and think about how nice that cake is going to taste if I get a hold of it, I am already stirring up all kinds of thoughts about time. Here I am now, craving the cake in the future that has just arisen in mind previously. But if I were not so attached to the thought of cake in the first place, would all this have been perceived as happening?
I have often heard the expression that human beings are 'makers' of their own destiny and fate. I never quite understood this expression, until I started to learn about the Buddhist concepts of time and karma. As long as I am associating certain experiences with ideas of like, dislike or neutrality, I color my world and create seeds for a future world. An easy example of this might be the current trend in global warming. The world that is collectively resulting today comes from a lot of previous ideas and thoughts, many of which relate to this unbridled optimism of consuming as many things as one wishes to feel affluent or more distinct than others. But this in turn comes from the idea that I have a body that continues across space and time. If I didn't have such an idea of having this distinct body that can be filled or deprived, would I have so much craving? Wouldn't there simply be no sense of past, present and future to connect?
The point, however, is that the human world is composed of distinctly human kinds of attachments: food, companionship, material things, shelter, and so on. And in some regards, that world is perpetuated by its own desires for comfort, security, and power over the physical world. Meditative practice is not meant to take a person out of that world of time, but to allow a person to see how time arises, and to be clear about it. Then there is much more room to be unmoved by the passage of time, to the point where one can play with time to influence others. In this case, we don't think of time as an accomplishment or as an end point anymore but rather as a kind of creative unfolding and combining of thoughts that don't necessarily require combination at all.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Value of Sadness
What value does sadness have in spiritual life? This question might seem unusual to some, considering that the key goals of spiritual life are usually couched in terms of 'peace' , 'joy', 'happiness' and 'well being.' There is a certain indelible joy, however, that is hidden in sadness and sorrow. I would describe this 'joy of sadness' as something like the joy of being deeply grounded in a need for care and compassion. In fact, I have found in myself that this acknowledgement of need is a kind of door that opens to one's own joyful compassion.
In the deepest sadness, there is acknowledgement of vulnerability. Have you ever felt so trapped in life that the only way out was to cry or to feel a sadness of heart? What normally happens in those moments is that a person starts to see things very clearly, because up to that point, their seeing had been blocked by avoidance and other defensive strategies to make a person feel they are 'in control' of a situation. When a person finally yields their sense of control (often by force of circumstance itself) what emerges is a surprising release into feelings of sorrow and sadness. There is an element of relinquishment here, but not without the very difficult price of having to let go of one's cherished sense that 'things are alright and in my control.' But once that defensive structure is finally released, there is a wonderful grace that arises: it's the simple grace of the left hand wanting to support the right.
I am suggesting that sadness can really and truly bring a person to a deeper part of themselves which goes beyond the dualistic ideas of 'me' vs 'the world'. Does it then make a person more compassionate toward all beings? I wouldn't be so quick to say, because I am still on that journey myself. But I sense that the more a person can truly abide in one's own sense of sadness and vulnerability, the more they are able to extend that similar tenderness to others. The reason seems quite simply to be that one is no longer afraid of this deep well of suffering and struggle that all sentient beings undergo as they are thrown into their own worlds, not quite knowing or being fully aware of how they got there in the first place. This deep awareness of one's 'thrownness' (to use Heidegger's term) is enough for anyone to feel a concern for others, who are also in this same boat of life.
In the deepest sadness, there is acknowledgement of vulnerability. Have you ever felt so trapped in life that the only way out was to cry or to feel a sadness of heart? What normally happens in those moments is that a person starts to see things very clearly, because up to that point, their seeing had been blocked by avoidance and other defensive strategies to make a person feel they are 'in control' of a situation. When a person finally yields their sense of control (often by force of circumstance itself) what emerges is a surprising release into feelings of sorrow and sadness. There is an element of relinquishment here, but not without the very difficult price of having to let go of one's cherished sense that 'things are alright and in my control.' But once that defensive structure is finally released, there is a wonderful grace that arises: it's the simple grace of the left hand wanting to support the right.
I am suggesting that sadness can really and truly bring a person to a deeper part of themselves which goes beyond the dualistic ideas of 'me' vs 'the world'. Does it then make a person more compassionate toward all beings? I wouldn't be so quick to say, because I am still on that journey myself. But I sense that the more a person can truly abide in one's own sense of sadness and vulnerability, the more they are able to extend that similar tenderness to others. The reason seems quite simply to be that one is no longer afraid of this deep well of suffering and struggle that all sentient beings undergo as they are thrown into their own worlds, not quite knowing or being fully aware of how they got there in the first place. This deep awareness of one's 'thrownness' (to use Heidegger's term) is enough for anyone to feel a concern for others, who are also in this same boat of life.
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