A Never Ending Journey

In her book This Worldly Nibbana, Hsiao-Lin Hu remarks, "in the interconnected web, there is no center to be found, nor is there any clearly defined path that can guarantee one's rightness/or righteousness." More so, she maintains that "the right and the wrong of an action are determined only when all dimensions of an action are put into consideration, including one's mentality at the time of taking the action, the concrete results produced by the action, and the impacts on the well-being of both self and others." (p.145) This seems to be a very daunting task, and I wonder, are Buddhists in particular ever nostalgic for some day when good and bad were clearly defined?
   The loss of clear-cut notions of good and bad can seem scary, because the result is to place total responsibility on one's own thoughts, reflections and behaviors in guiding them to make wholesome actions that are not attached to preconceived ideas. I am reminded, somehow, of the term 'moral holiday', which was coined by William James to describe how the belief in a divine power can sometimes give people a much-needed rest from having to make complex decisions from moment to moment. Hu's remarks should in a sense be qualified: although Buddhist practitioners carry the responsibility of their own karma, they wouldn't necessarily need to treat this a burden. First of all, it's simply not possible for people to take care of every single factor in their environment or life that leads to suffering or vexation. I have heard that it can be good enough to acknowledge that the present moment is the result of previous conditions. When I fully accept the present as the result of previous actions (wholesome or not), I can truly rest and not struggle with necessarily trying to make it different or looking for some reason 'why' it happened.
    During the talk I had attended today, Venerable ChangXing had mentioned four specific ways of responding to situations from a Chan perspective. They are :


        a) Acceptance of retribution/enmity: that is, realizing that what you encountered is the result of previous karma, and there is no use complaining about it or somehow forcing it to be different
       b) Acting in accord with conditions: knowing that there is no stable self to speak of, one resolves to be fully with the situation and flow with circumstances without clinging to a fixed notion of the self and its place
      c) "Seek nothing". This refers to renunciation, the ability to let go of the three poisons of greed, hatred and ignorance and cultivating an attitude of letting go of attachment
     d) Acting in accordance with Dharma (including cultivating right views).


These are very well known in Buddhism, but I found them to be elegant and very clear principles which can help a person to navigate a world where there are no binary opposites of good/bad. Rather than trying to assign blame for present situations by referring to fixed rules, these principles point to a more accepting philosophy which sees the present as the result of intertwining causes and conditions.    
      But I would argue that these principles also challenge the notion that Buddhists have to arrive at any fixed conclusions of right and wrong, based on a complete assessment of the situation. First of all, as Hu mentions in her book, it's pretty much impossible to assess all the causes that go into a situation. Even if this could be done, it doesn't mean that new causes could not arise to affect the present situation or even change its meaning over time. How often have you heard the idea that an illness can change a person's life in ways that they could never have imagined just by diagnosing the illness itself?  I think this experience of 'reappraisal' suggests that even the way we look at causality itself is influenced by the narrative framework we choose to place on something. Sometimes, looking for the reasons for something also blinds or masks the fact that the situation contains hidden potentials and opportunities. Rather than looking to the past, the situation might hint at beneficial things arising in the future.


Hu, Hsiao-Lan (2011). This-Worldly Nibbana: A Buddhist-Feminist Social Ethic for Peacemaking in the Global Community. Albany NY: SUNY

If You Think So..

 I have a real feeling that prayer and mantra work only if you believe that they do. But what makes a person 'believe' in the power of prayer and mantra? Is it the 'will' to believe, or is there something more subtle going on in a person's ability to believe? These are interesting questions that are worth investigating and researching. But I have a sense that surrender, confidence, and curiosity play key roles in the power of prayer and mantra.
   Surrender is one quality which I quite admire in people who are devoted to prayer and chanting rituals. I found that many people who chant in the group practices in the Buddhist centre I attend tend to have such a deep emotional connection, which arises from the profound compassion that one has toward sentient beings. Although I tend to have a more 'dry' disposition when it comes to these things, I think that the key part is to yield to the prayer or mantra as though it were the only thing available in one's life. It's in the sense of surrender and relaxing in the moment that the simple word can have a great amount of power. There is a trust there, but it often comes from not having too much expectation or hope in anything else. In the classic book Varieties of Religious Experience, William James has chronicled many examples of people who come to a religious devotion not from striving to do so, but more from a sense of 'giving in' to something that is higher than the self. The paradox of surrender is that it brings a person closer to a state of sincere devotion than someone who is only striving to attain a sense of self as a 'spiritual being'.
   Confidence seems to naturally arise after one has surrendered fully to prayer or mantra. I think this confidence is more like a raft than an edifice. It is about not about holding onto something but feeling safe and grounded in what's sustaining your momentary awareness. If a person believes that who they are praying to is millions of light years away, how are they going to feel when praying? Most likely, they will feel disconnected and lack confidence. For this reason, it seems best to trust that the prayer is being directed at one's own heart, and the compassion that naturally resides there.
     Curiosity is needed to weather the storms between connection and disconnection. Curiosity is similar to the presentation of love that is found in Plato's Symposium (particularly in the section on Diotima), because it mediates between oneself and a loved or admired object. Through curiosity, I am attracted to a process of moving toward something, but also in all my relationships (close or distant) to some loved being. Without curiosity, there is no way to really find meaningful ways to connect when it is hard to connect or when there is a dryness in spiritual practice.
    I don't expect people to always feel connected to their spiritual lives. Doubt can play a key part in the tides of a spiritual practice, and having doubt can actually become a way of strengthening one's faith in the end. It's important to even embrace disconnection as a vital process which often brings a person into a more genuine connection with their spiritual practice and personal life. If one doesn't embrace periods of doubt and despair, they miss a golden opportunity to deepen their reasons to have a spiritual practice in the first place.

The Line Between "It's Better To" and "Must"

  I have been reading a lot of Albert Ellis's writings on REBT therapy principles, and I find that a lot of is somehow similar to the Buddhist teachings on non-attachment. Ellis offers a reasoned way of helping his clients (and readers) understand how to maximize their efforts without getting into what he calls "masturbation"--that tendency to think that things have to be done just because it is most beneficial that they are done. I think this is similar to the tendency to link a series of impressions into a subject and object. For instance, I see something I like, and then soon I start to sense an "I" that is deficient unless I absolutely have to own that thing. I suspect that Buddhist phenomenology has a more detailed and nuanced way of articulating Ellis's principles, but Ellis tends to be more direct and logical, rather than anatomizing the process of coming to form a self and other. Nonetheless, there are perhaps a few parallels in the two ways of thinking.
    The struggle I have with Ellis is that he poses two (in my opinion) very different and sometimes potentially conflicting discourses, and then somehow tries to put them together. I am not sure if the result is successful or whether it's up to the client to navigate the two different discourses and bring them together.
       One of these discourses is that of "unconditional self/other acceptance." This refers to the ability for the mind to pretty much accept everything, provided that one is not insisting that reality go according to their likes, preferences and plans. In other words, Ellis suggests that everything is bearable if we stop feeling that we have to have things a certain way that feels 'right' for us. Similarly, loving others comes from the attitude of complete, unconditional acceptance. Ellis argues that there  is no limit to this acceptance.  Even when a person feels the sadness of losing a loved one or being unemployed, for instance, the mind is able to accept the condition of sadness itself as natural and inevitable, rather than railing against the circumstances or trying to make them different. So far, this aspect is reminiscent of the Buddhist concepts of renunciation (nekhamma) and even the 'suchness' of tathagathagarbha. In these latter concepts, there is a complete acceptance which is not tainted with attachment to certain feelings, thoughts or ideal states of being. As a result, there is no self-attachment when things are not going as planned.
     The second discourse that predominate in Ellis's writing is the attitude which he refers to as "PYA" or "Push your ass". Ellis is referring to the fact that because most desirable things in life are hard-won and require great amounts of personal effort, one had better learn to tolerate a certain amount of natural and inevitable hardship and frustration to achieve one's desired goals. Already, I begin to sense that this discourse somewhat contradicts the notion of unconditional acceptance. For example, if I unconditionally accept things as they are now, why would I need to have goals or work hard to achieve anything? Of course, I am stating this crudely, but I am suggesting that these two ideas may sit uneasily in the mind. I have often heard group meditation practitioners ask this same question: does the non-attachment found in meditation contradict the process of goal setting that students undergo? Of course, the answer to this question from a Buddhist perspective is that we still set goals, but the goals are more often related to achieving wholesome states of mind as well as providing benefits to others. These are not considered forms of tanha or egoistic cravings that the Buddha describes as the second Noble Truth, or source of suffering. From Ellis' perspective, however, it's not so clear. I wonder if Ellis is suggesting that even though we may not be attached to preferences, we still have preferences, and an optimal life consists in pursuing preferred states of being without insisting that they happen. In other words: set goals, but do not turn goals into shoulds or musts.
     So far, so good, but I think that the conflict for me reaches its peak when I consider how we orient ourselves to anxiety at work. If I take the first discourse, I may become too lackadaisical, and become resigned to the idea that I accept myself as I am rather than exerting effort to improve a process or situation. Now, this is still attachment, and Ellis would argue that it's more akin to insisting that one be 'the same' as one was a minute ago, which is certainly a dogmatic kind of view rather than a true acceptance. True acceptance is by necessity fluid in the sense that it spontaneously adopts to a variety of novel and existing situations. My 'resigning' myself to one view of who I am is already a form of attachment, and both the Buddha and Ellis would argue that it creates suffering because it only solidifies the false notion of who one is.
    I have a sense that the second discourse (Push your ass) can only be sustainable once a person has fully and thoroughly mastered the first concept. The reason for this is that hard work only becomes another form of torturous suffering when one has invested their sense of identity, value and worth into it. Ellis wants us to disabuse ourselves of these investments, precisely so that we can smoothly move into the second discourse. While the first discourse might be compared to 'stilling' the mind by lessening attachment, the second discourse might be more akin to a selfless investigation of things as they are. Once I have accepted myself and situation without attaching to my work as 'my value', I then paradoxically have a lot of mental space to take on more projects and do so without anxiously measuring my value by what I complete or perform 'well'.
    Whenever a person feels flustered, it's best that they shift away from a pull your ass mentality and toward a sense of unconditional worth and love. The alternating discourses of pull your ass and unconditional acceptance are actually two dialectic poles, and need to be equally validated and introduced. However, I suspect that Ellis is right in placing somewhat more stress on unconditional self acceptance. Without it, 'pushing one's ass' becomes another form of anxious suffering rooted in attachments.

Joys of Disagreement

 When people work together in a group or a team,  is it always considered healthy if they never disagree with one another? Of course, the common wisdom in self-help books is, 'agree to disagree'. I suppose this is a safe way to express disagreement, at least in a way that is respectful of others. But I wonder, is there an expectation that people should always resolve their differences? Or can disagreement open the possibility that people can never fully resolve difference?
   I sometimes feel that excessive disagreement can lead to love. Why? It's because disagreement is the most intimate thing, at times. The fact that people can disagree so vehemently about topics or ideologies, for instance, is possibly a sign of deep shared experiences. I even imagine that it took many lifetimes for the disagreement to swell to such a proportion as one sees it now. Does that mean that one should just keep fighting and arguing? I don't think I am arguing for a glorification of disagreement so much as a realization that disagreement can be a sign of a deeply shared connection with someone. When a person focuses on that aspect, the disagreement may start to lose a bit of its edge, and it can yield to harmony. I am talking here about an experience of gratitude: one feels simply grateful to have the opportunity to learn so much about themselves, by virtue of how deeply they react to someone else. Is this kind of disagreement not a rich opportunity to discover one's own tendencies, while practicing a spiritual path?
    Perhaps there is a certain joy in knowing that there are people to whom we might be meant to disagree, but that this disagreement can be an opportunity for learning and growth.

The Joys and Pains of Showing Up

  I am thinking lately about the concept of liminal space, and how it affects the way I think about social life.  "Liminal space" is often heard in holistic education circles, to refer to either a rite of passage which leads to maturity, or a kind of 'in between' space where there is not too much certainty in things. One of the most anxiety-provoking liminal spaces one can experience is that of transitioning to new social situations or new groups, or perhaps even re-entering a group for a second time. The anxiety of the liminal space is that of not being too sure whether one can really be accepted within the group or feel secure in it. It's also an anxiety which relates to identity: not quite knowing who one is or how a person functions in a community. I have sometimes heard of the term 'anomie' which is related to the sense of not knowing how to perform in a community where values have been subverted or turned into question. Like "liminal space", anomie can sometimes refer to a dreadful sense of despair, of not quite knowing what to do to achieve the things one truly needs to survive.
   Liminal space can perhaps best be described as the situation of "Just showing up": one commits one's presence to a situation without even knowing how one's body and habits 'fit' into the new environment or situation.  Even though the experience may seem harrowing and unfamiliar, my 'just showing up' to be fully present to that moment is all I really need to do. Once I can start to observe the situation and see what it's about, I can then do more than show up. For example, I can perhaps share a moment or a laugh with someone, or bond with people. But in the interregnum, there is this 'showing up', which can sometimes be accompanied with the anxiety of not having a script or way to meaningfully perform within that experience.
    I find it quite useful to approach these situations not from an 'all or nothing' perspective. If I am all-or-nothing, I either withdraw into a shell (determined not to emerge) or I desperately reach out my many tentacles in the hopes of grabbing something (anything). I am either a turtle (in the first case) or an octopus (in the second). These extremes are perhaps to be avoided as much as possible, because they mask the fact that social life is always a tension of opposites. I don't come into a social situation completely needy, and nor do I come into it completely self-sufficient. In fact, both extremes can become impediments, because they carry so many loaded assumptions about what is to be expected or demanded from the situation itself. If I am aware that social and community life are always going to be fraught with these kinds of irreconcilable tensions (social bonding vs self-sufficiency; identity vs. fusion etc.) then I can almost make a kind of game out of them. I can be curious: how much am I willing to stay with this experience, and what kinds of feelings emerge from it? What roles do I feel most comfortable playing, and what roles scare me? Where do I fit, and where do I not fit at all? Is it possible to experience this situation as an observer who is enjoying the unfolding play of experience?
    The tension of opposites is extremely interesting, and I think it's useful to go to unknown spaces an figure out what kinds of opposites emerge. This experience also teaches people that they are much more complex and layered than they often assume. And there is something both joyful and painful about that.

The "Weight" of a Thought

   When the mind feels heavy or there is something weighing down on it, is it really the mind that is heavy? This is an interesting metaphor that would be notable to explore. For instance, we say, "a heaviness filled my heart", or "I feel a heavy weight on my shoulders", to mean that a person is overwhelmed or has too much happening at the moment. But I wonder, what is it that makes a thought 'heavy'? It can't be a physical weight (since thoughts don't have an actual measurable 'weight' to them), but then why do we experience some thoughts as being 'heavy' while other thoughts are considered 'light'?
   I think in a sense the 'heaviness' of a thought is often dependent on the time frame in which it has arisen in relation to a goal or a projected resolution. When I am first starting to do something, my thoughts about it are often jagged, raw, and full of complexities, in the sense of not knowing where the thought is going, or which path it will take eventually. Typically, with most problems, there are multiple causes and conditions which create the situation. Trying to somehow 'unravel' those particular thoughts can seem overly complex, because there are interlocking associations and connections surrounding that thought and what might have preceded it. It's only by examining the conditions as part of a whole that the thought can start to be revealed for its possibilities or for routes of action.
    In contrast, 'light' thoughts are usually the result of long processes of thinking, where one has resolved a lot of the previous causes and conditions that come to play in developing the situation at hand. They are smooth precisely because the other pieces in the puzzle seem to fit quite well, and there is not much need to adjust the situation.
   The point is: is there really any 'actual' distinction between these thoughts? I wonder if perhaps what makes a thought heavy or light is not the content of the thought itself, but rather one's attitude toward it. If I expect or even demand simplicity of thought at all times , then I am not being sensitive to the reality that thoughts can take a lot of time and effort to truly unfold. But the other point is that if I am able to see that the thought itself has no 'weight' attached to it, then I don't necessarily have to engage that thought in any way. It would be nice for me to clarify the thought in mind and learn more about how to handle the challenges arising in the thought, but perhaps it is not so necessary that I 'solve' anything in that thought. Letting the 'heaviness' of the thought be known rather than trying to make the thought into something else could go a long way in making it more manageable to deal with these kinds of thoughts.

Angst or Excitement

      The year 2017 is here, and I started to wonder: what will this year be like? In thinking this way, I believe that I am committing a common fallacy of jumping too far ahead. This is especially true considering that even with the beginning of each year, one is only required to take things one step at a time, one day at a time. I believe that this is an important consideration as the new year begins.
       In any given day, all one can ever really do is put their whole heart and mind into whatever is needed. Sometimes, one may not necessarily be needed or feel needed, but nonetheless, there is still a need to be present with that "not feeling needed" emotion. I am thinking of the example when I was in my early 20s, how I landed a temporary job at a retail chain store. I was hired to be a stock-boy, but I remember how my boss didn't think I was quick enough to do the job, and during the last week I was there, nobody seemed to have any work for me to do. In that moment, I needed to abide in the unpleasant feeling, but also to realize that there wasn't much that I could do to improve that situation by occupying myself with activities or work.
     Now, what do you think is harder to bear: too much work, or not enough? All I can remember about that situation was the feeling that not having enough work to do was such a source of anxiety. Whereas having a lot to do often entails the sense of accomplishment in doing a lot of things, having little to do can create a sense of uncertainty or even invite disengagement. But nonetheless, it is still important to abide in those feelings, in order to realize that one will not 'die' because of them. After all, not feeling needed is not a life/death situation, but is simply the result of causes and conditionsr riping in that moment.
   Whether one feels 'useful' or 'useless', these are only scenarios presented in the mind, often based on scant information. It is also based on a myth that somehow having a lot to do is somehow a greater guarantee of security or safety. In fact, having a lot to do sometimes creates the opposite problem of becoming addicted to busyness. Rather than simply resting with the fact that one cannot be occupied with something at all times, busyness invites the possibility of becoming too attached to occupying the mind, rather than opening a space to meaningfully reflect on one's situations in life.