Going Off and On The Rails

  Sometimes, riding the rails of the subway can teach us many things about the human condition, and I believe that it is highly symbolic in many respects. I am not so much talking about the shared humanity of the subway (something that many have written about) but the metaphorical aspects of the subway 'stops' and 'starts'. This past weekend, there was a major subway closure on the north end (also known as Line 1, or Yonge Street Line) and it resulted in a lot of complicated arrangements, such as switching to a different line and making multiple transfers--all to avoid the overcrowding of the city buses. Somehow, the whole experience created an atmosphere for me: a felt sense that life is often consisting of the roundabout motions toward truth, a kind of stumbling toward reality that never quite solidifies because it is forever in a dream.
   It also makes me feel that there is a certain validity and meaning to the sense that one is wasting time or going 'round about' to avoid certain unavoidable obstacles. These experiences sometimes can ground a person in the fact that no one is truly alone, and that nobody is fully in control either. There is something about the delays and construction 'off-times' of the subways which reminds me of the whale in Moby Dick: there is a certain complexity about things that eludes and defies human planning, as when the functions of a subway car are subject to the laws of nature and are bound to wear down over time.
    Thinking about subways may be not entirely different from thinking about one's human relationships, because everything operates as a kind of metaphor pointing to the functions of mind. To study my connection to a subway is to study myself and where I get stuck or confused about my place in the world.

Living and Literature

  After teaching the class today in Treasure Island, I started to reflect on what the connection is between 'lived experience' and literature, and how far away I feel from this way of looking at it. I have been so used to looking at my own experiences in a deconstructionist way that it is difficult for me to ask the simple and direct question: what does this mean for me and my own life? From a deconstructionist point of view, 'my own life' refers to a set of behaviors and languages that has been acquired, particularly through repeated narratives and 're-tellings'. And while I tend to agree with this perspective, I wonder if it sometimes closes of the possibilities of connecting with literature in ways that feel most authentic to me. And, to be honest, I even cringe at this last sentence, knowing that even the term 'authentic' is based on a very constructed narrative of what it means to be 'really me'. When I start to peel away the layers, the onion doesn't appear so solid anymore.
   Literature like Treasure Island can take people very deeply (and quickly) into issues of class and imperialism, especially how they are tactfully handled through the sinister image of the treasure-hunting pirate. On a crude level, the pirate represents the acquisitiveness of a society that focuses on wealth as a marker of status and power, while concealing that representation by showing the pirate as a 'hated other'. In other words, the pirate becomes the shadow of what the others are afraid to admit of themselves, such as an insatiable desire for conquest or to be 'the very first' to achieve something. But on a more empathetic level, pirates also represent disowned and under-served voices; people who haven't attained the privilege that certain kinds of education, language and epistemology have granted to certain people, like the doctor and squire in the book. When 'respectability' of a favored class is denied someone, they are wont to try to achieve that respectability in whatever means they can, including the drive toward adventure, battle and a certain kind of disciplined life within a marginalized community. I think this latter comes close to how I feel about the 'symbolism' of the pirate, as I keep reading and re-reading the text. A pirate is only a pirate because the society exposes and then labels her or him as such. Their ways of gaining wealth, power and fame may not be too remove from the ways people in the mainstream often do so, by whatever means they can.
     To go back to my original question, does this have anything to do with life? I think that it has to do with the whole social life, but I am still struggling to know whether we can capture that entire "life of a society" by relating it only to one's personal experiences (my first trip, my 'preferred treasure', etc.). I suspect that relating Treasure Island to my own life will require several re-readings, and it's the sheer effort to connect to the text that will provide natural inroads to one's personal life, often without one's even knowing it.

The Act of Dis-labelling

I recently read a rather humorous posting on Facebook, in Thich Nhat Hanh's group of all places. It read something to the tune of "it doesn't matter whether others are mean a**holes...just be nice to everyone and let them be whatever they want to be." The interesting contradiction I found in this poster is that the person clings to the view that they are nice and the other person is not so nice. In this regard, it seems that this same nice person is bound to encounter the same difficulty over and over again, so long as they make such a discrimination between 'nice' and 'not nice'. I found that this poster was rather ironic, considering that it was posted in a forum related to Buddhism. I have since then began to wonder if perhaps the participants in the online forum may have misunderstood certain aspects of the teachings, and might be distorting it somehow to justify labelling others harshly. I think I will stick with my original interpretation that it is meant to be a kind of light humor!
  I always go back to the Chan view that everything is coming from the mind. What I think is happening 'outside of me' is actually a projection of mental activities, habits and energies. By the time I have labelled the other person as an 'other' (or a more offensive epithet), I have already gone quite a remove from the pure, undivided experience that constitutes that encounter. Is there such a thing as "a nice person" or a "not so nice" person? In fact, these kinds of things are only the result of a very long process of labelling and making decisions based on those labels. I have come to wonder if even non-practitioners could benefit, perhaps, from trying to remove these labels from their emotional vocabulary altogether, opting instead to stick to the phenomena and resulting sensations. For sure, we do this on retreats and during direct contemplation practice, but it seems equally helpful to remind ourselves of this idea in daily life practice. If there is a word that we use often to differentiate between ourselves and another person, what would it be like to refrain from using this word for a while?
   I have a nagging suspicion that the purpose of labelling people using harsh language is to drive a distance between oneself and unpleasant situations or encounters. It can be quite useful when the mind and body are overwhelmed, but what happens when these labels become the habitual way that a person tries to protect themselves from pain or uncertainty?

Friends of the Spirit

  Tonight, I was involved in a planning meeting for our upcoming introductory meditation class. We started to talk about whether or not we should schedule follow up classes, at which point I started to reflect on what has attracted me to the meditation group in the first place. I have to say that there are two things that keep me coming back to meditation in general, and group meditation practice in particular. The first is simple curiosity, much akin to that of a researcher or explorer. Meditation is an always uncharted and forever boundless place to explore one's life and depths. But the other aspect of it has to do with the warmth and openness of friends who are exploring this kind of thing together. I am greatly appreciative of this second part, and I start to realize how crucial it is to create a group space where people can cultivate and foster a mutual sense of curiosity about practice.
   I am also aware of how delicate this balance can be, between engaging and even challenging group participants, and allowing the participants their own unique ways into the practice. It is not always so easy to sustain such a balance, but I think the rule of thumb is not to make meditation into a stepping stone for something supposedly 'more religious' or spiritual. It needs to have its own foundation, so that people are not feeling pressured to fit it into a bigger framework that may seem unfamiliar to them. This requires an attitude of, again, beginner's mind, as well as a respect for what we don't know, rather than a mindset which is always so confident on what it does know. I believe that this kind of tentative approach is really working for me in the group practice space, and it's what I definitely want to continue to sustain going forward.

Adventures in Beginningless Ignorance

    We watched a video after the group meditation practice, where Master Sheng Yen elaborated on a term that is often found in repentance prayer practices in Buddhism. It is a line which talks about beginningless ignorance, and the vows are to repent of ignorance since 'time without beginning.' While I suggested that this idea entails a kind of negative or pessimistic approach, another participant in the discussion offered the opposite--that 'beginningless ignorance' entails a flipside of beginningless wisdom. I think the meaning of this idea is simple: once I am no longer afraid of illusions and can see that they point to endless wisdom, then these illusions cease to be ignorance to me, and they cease to be vexations as well. Even if the illusions still constitute a state of ignorance, there is a sense that knowing they are illusions helps one to take them less seriously, and see wisdom in them. In this way, even the most miserable conditions are transformed into something that is interesting and playful.
   I have a class coming up on Saturdays, where I teach young boys about R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island. I have to admit that I have gone through three distinct 'stages' while reading this book. The first stage is the doubting stage: "Why are all these pirates fighting over a pile of gold?" Part of me was most certainly rejecting the materialist elements of Treasure Island, and I didn't feel too interested in joining Jim Hawkins on his journey. The second stage is one of empathizing; recognizing that I can still be interested in something for the sake of wearing someone else's shoes, even though the interest may not seem to directly pertain to my life. This is a stage where I start to realize that many perspectives are possible if I am not attached to my habitual ways of seeing. I am now at a third stage, where I take the new perspective back to my original one and ask myself, what can this story do to enrich my many 'stories'? Are there aspects to 'digging for treasure' that parallel a spiritual quest that I am on? What are the latent meanings behind treasure hunting, and how has this story shed light on a journey that I might actually share?
   I am writing about this because I have a sense that it relates to the idea of taking illusions as expedient means for a deepened perspective on life and experience. It isn't so much the story itself that counts so much as it is the way that narratives can enhance perspectives on life or deepen them. In this case, I don't take the illusion to be something substantial like a pot of gold, but rather take it to be symbolic of the way the mind works or relates in the world.

Practicing Non-Duality

The bus is typically crowded on the way to Finch Station. I was trying to practice the principle of being present with all the situations without judging or seeking, and I have to admit that it is not so easy to do. There are two approaches: one is to try to see beyond the sense of self-grasping, while the other is to harmonize with all the emotional states, knowing that they are also the essence of awakened mind. Both are very difficult approaches, but they are definitely worth trying.
   The problem arises when habitual states of like and dislike come up. This happens to me when I am not paying attention. I hear the sound of yawning, and I might think "I don't like this sound". I forget that the sound is just a sound, and I have already attached meaning to it around who is making the sound and why. If I recognize that the sound is just an energy vibrating through the ears, it isn't so irritating. I envelop and embrace the sound as one of the many energies passing through the mind, arising and then disappearing.
   The 'I' is also a tricky thing. It's experienced as a kind of solidity in the body, almost like a quiet refusal to go along with whatever is happening or emerging, a sort of 'resistance' to the ebb and flow of events. When there is a comfortable feeling or thought coming up, there is a tendency to hold onto it and push away everything else. Then there is the identification with the self: not only is there a tendency to grasp, but there is a tendency to take the grasping as a solid sense of 'I'. It's no wonder that the mind just moves from one resistance to the next. Even the 'ability' to resist 'resistance' is taken to be an achievement that the self labels as 'spiritual' or 'progress'. In fact, this feeling of progress is just as short-lived as any other feeling, and it's also a cause of suffering. Observing the self's grasping is already enough, but I add to it the desire to get rid of the self altogether, as though doing so would promise me eternal freedom from pain.
   The alternate way is to see that even the grasping is a function of the awakened mind that isn't defiled. A wave can never get away from being part of the water or the ocean.

Thoughts on Canada Day

  This Canada Day, Torontonians were entreated to the glorious site of a large rubber ducky on Lake Ontario. I thought it seemed an appropriate way to celebrate Canada, because it embodies the idea of new eyes and new discoveries. Just as a baby duck learns to look out at the world with soft eyes, so we might also say that Canada is a place for many beginnings, for a great many people. It often means a place where people can take refuge from hostile living conditions, or where people start new businesses, new careers and new families. It might also mean mastering a new language or, in my case, learning to work with people of diverse languages and cultures. While the rubber duck is hardly a national symbol (yet), there is something to say about it, and I suppose that in spite of its expensive cost, there is some symbolic meaning in it.
    I have been part of a meditation group for over 10 years now, and it is in the tradition of Chinese Chan Buddhism that I am studying and learning this beautiful spiritual tradition. I have to say that I have experienced what it means the most to 'be Canadian' by being part of this group. It signifies for me a kind of diverse, open, multicultural spiritual community that breaks the artificial boundaries that nations often create for themselves. I have met people of many nationalities and backgrounds simply through the practice of group meditation: Chinese, Taiwanese, Polish, Korean, Spanish, Persian, Italian, and the list goes on. I have found that although our stories can be quite different, we are all able to come together to support each other in a profound spiritual practice.
    With all the fear one encounters through media in this day and age, I am all the more grateful that we can mutually experience the benefits of contemplative practices and learning. Wherever there is an impasse or a power struggle conveyed in the media, I hearken back to times when I felt that I could share with others the most when my mind is calm, especially after a good and strong sitting practice. It sounds as though I am advertising meditation, but in fact I do believe that with a calmer and slower mindset, all people will be less quick to polarize or divide the world into 'good' and 'bad'. There would be more of a space for people to reflect on the workings of the mind which might cause them to react in certain circumstances or conditions, rather than attaching blame to another party for the troubles in the world. In a sense, I believe that in spite of its troubled treatment of natives in the past, the present nation of Canada still represents a place where people of all nationalities can come together and think deeply and reflectively about their commonalities and differences.