The Grateful Feelings

 For some reason, after the group sitting practice, I did feel incredible gratitude for the other participants. It seems that in the process of being tired from the busy week and trying to hold onto the method amidst the scattered mind, there is this room to behold the others and appreciate their vow to be practicing in the same place, even when it did not yield the expected "result", such as a unified mind. I wonder if this is not perhaps the whole point, and that is that I am not in control and I never had to be in control in the first place. And what this does is that it opens up a space where we can truly acknowledge interdependence.

I was reading a chapter in Master Sheng Yen's Common Questions in the Practice of Buddhism  where it describes whether Buddhism believes in a monotheistic God (p.172-174). The gist of it is that Buddhism does not disbelieve in the existence of powerful beings; it only disavows the idea that there can be a single "originator" of all things. I take this more metaphorically than literally, in the sense that it could apply to most relationships. If I take credit for everything that happens at work, then I solidify the burdensome idea that only I can be responsible for what happens, and thus be in control. Is it possible to feel connected with anyone if one feels this responsible for things? Conversely, if I am not thinking that everything is on my shoulders, I might start to see that there are rhythms to life, and we only take some of the waves, only to pass them on to others and receive new waves in turn. In taking on responsibilities, I am never solely responsible for what happens. I am only ensuring that my part is done with the least negative consequences to others, which requires a gentle approach.

Perhaps there is something about meditation itself that finally allows a person to stop trying to take on a dominating agency in life: expecting specific outcomes is almost antithetical to the process of only sitting.

Sheng Yen (2017). Common Questions in the Practice of Buddhism. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publications

Troubling Utopia

This evening, I tutored a student who has been doing a group assignment on "designing Utopias" for her high school class. I mentioned that I had also been touching upon this very same subject in the Gulliver's Travels Grade 4 class that I am teaching, specifically since the topic of Utopia had been quite "hot" in Swift's time. What was interesting was the discussion that ensued between us, which ranged from the nature of government (democracy vs. meritocracy), how Utopia would be "policed" (in this case, robots were one possibility), and how crime is controlled (alas, the group had resorted to an "atomizer" which disintegrates unwanted things and reconverts them into new things).
    I have encountered the topic "design your own Utopia" in many contexts up to this point, all of which proved to be somewhat wild experiences. My first encounter of it was in seventh grade, in which I had been asked to design my own "planet", while my second encounter happened in the context of reading Golding's Lord of the Flies in eleventh grade. Finally, teaching Utopias has been another interesting foray. I personally can't quite pin a reason for this topic: is it a chance for young people to discover the kinds of societies they would like to live in? A way to think and reason sociologically?  Or is it an exercise in pure imagination? More than anything, Utopias reveal one's own personal yearnings, especially at the age where one hasn't quite found their bearings yet, and there are so many possibilities opening up.
   At times, I don't quite know how to teach the unit on Utopias. Today, the student talked about how her group discussed their ideal Utopia as having "only one race"and "one civilization which includes all others."  In addition, there was even some discussion regarding outcasting elders who reached a certain age: a point which was later replaced by the somewhat more humdrum option of uploading one's memories into a supercomputer after one's body has reached a certain old age. Whereas the second point raises issues about aging, the second relates to how diversity is approached in Utopia.
   I think the idea of  having a single "race" of people way to resolve the challenges of diversity, but it raises so many problems. Whose race, more specifically, will represent all people in Utopia? In addition, I wonder how I as a teacher am to respond to this idea, given that it has very terrible historical precedents such as genocide. Do I simply entertain this idea as "possibility", or might I challenge the student to find ways to honor diversity or re-think about inclusion in the world they are envisioning? I tend to go with the latter, albeit carefully, because the exercise is an opportunity to raise questions as well as link imagined worlds to actual worlds in which humans have been historically situated. Just as Swift used various "ideal" worlds to shed light on the world of 17th-18th century England, so it's also conceivable that one's Utopias can lead to very sinister ideas that actually need to be brought out to see their full effect and to challenge them. At the same time, however, I have to be careful to allow the students to give free reign to their imagination and for the ideas that they are raising to come up from their own hearts. My attitude has been to try to listen to the students to understand the ways in which they are coming to their own conclusions regarding how societies can address issues and run properly.

Learning Alongside Students

 I have had the privilege of being able to teach two groups of students in the past year, one in Grade 2 and the other Grade 4, in a private institution. I consider this to be a rare opportunity, because most schools have specific mandates and strict rules about what is covered in the syllabus. While I too am subject to expectations from the students and parents, I have been much more free to improvise as well: sacrificing the content I would ideally like to teach in favor of seeing what connects students the most, while allowing them to practice expressing themselves in written and spoken forms.
   I would have to say that when I first started working in this school, I was expecting that I was solely in charge of the learning experience, while the students were meant to contain what I disseminated. Of course, this is a classic approach to education, but it ignores the reality that teachers have very little control over just what exactly is being learned much less taught in the classrooms. There is a certain degree of "observer effect" here, wherein the teacher's observation of a student's progress influences them to work harder (or resist) rather than finding motivation in the work itself. Thus, overall, there will always be at least a little bit of uncertainty with regards to what the students are learning, since they may only be acting out of a need to perform in limited situations, rather than making the information theirs which they continue to use and reflect upon even after the class.
   I have digressed a lot here, but the point is: I have recently changed my orientation to suggest that while the "authoritative" model of teaching certainly works as far as the curriculum design goes (designing the syllabus, thinking through the lesson plan, etc.), but it hardly works in face to face situations where students' behavior is often far from predictable. In this case, I can't just hide inside my Power Point! I need to be able to flex out of that presentation and into the worlds of the learners in that moment, whether through connecting the lesson with something familiar that they know, or diverting the discussion to a game language generating exercise.
   I have found that when it comes to the latter approach of improvising based on the student's energies, I would have to say that the ideal attitude is one of learning alongside students, or even being a fellow learner in their midst. There is nothing more deadening than teaching a subject where one feels that everything about it has already been explored, and there are simply no further questions to elaborate within its framework. Such a belief leads to teachers' zoning out or even looking for "stock answers" to questions rather than seeing the possibilities hidden in the learning itself. In addition, such a stance allows me to explore and show my natural curiosity, but not with any intention of using curiosity as another veiled form of authority. It is rather a curiosity that comes from being in a certain zone with things and alighting on the questions that naturally come to mind.

Looking From Outside

I think that when we talk about things like "creativity", "knowledge" and "motivation" in education, we are really forming narratives which drive our sense of identity and motion in the world, not actual literal "components" of the brain that we can point to or experience directly. I think that this issue relates to the problem of introspection: what I experience to be motivation, creativity, inner-directedness, and so on, doesn't really relate to a particular component in one's physiology. It relates more to the story one tells about one's personal identity and sense of becoming over time.
   Many times, I have fallen into a mental trap of wondering, what is it that someone has that I lack? I especially notice that I am slower than others when it comes to formulating new ideas or topics. Normally, when asking this kind of question, I am trying to establish an empirically verified, objectively measurable "thing" which I can say is contributing to my inability to do what someone else does. I have swallowed whole the notion that my mind is a kind of supercomputer that needs certain ingredients and enhancements to its system in order to function properly. But on the face of it, this narrative doesn't actually benefit me at all. Simply telling myself that the problem lies in this area of the brain only gives me a mental marker which might allow me to focus on improving something, either through will power or intellect or reading various books by psychologists. In other words, the theory affects the way I narrate  my life, but in actuality, it has no direct effect on a physical part of the brain. This is because I can't directly experience the physical brain. It only exists as a kind of narrative metaphor which allows me to pinpoint areas where I need improvement, like a literal mental map. However, it does not provide any real explanation as to what practices can improve or enhance certain mental abilities or characteristics.
    While there are limits to psychological discourse or "biological" models of the self, I suggest that there must be larger social functions to such discourses if they have remained so popular in modern culture. In the past, biological arguments were used to justify certain kinds of social orders, such as through egregious arguments about the natural "intelligence" of certain kinds of races or peoples. Recently, I think that the discourse of psychology is doing something quite different. In arguing that people can control their behavior by pinpointing "defective" areas of their minds that could be enhanced through self-help or will power, other factors that might pertain to a person's ability to learn are excluded, such as interpersonal components, social identity and other constructed selves. They also take away from an ability to really be with one's difficulties in a more direct way, by imagining that the self can be observed from "outside". I doubt that this can truly be done.

"Rules of Engagement"

 Prior to teaching the Grade 2 students today, I felt apprehensive about delivering a Power Point which had worked effectively in a previous class, yet didn't feel appropriate for the reading level of the current students. I was so apprehensive about this, in fact, that I even came into the classroom with a certain eagerness to engage, coupled with a curiosity to know exactly what would engage the students in a way that felt educational. In fact, I found that having this eagerness to engage (coupled with uncertainty about how to do it), made the class feel more engaged to me! The students weren't acting out as often as they would, and I also found that they seemed to respond well to my eagerness to engage their attention.
   Much of what I observe in these dynamics ends up reinforcing my belief that engagement is not something that can ever be planned. Often, having a powerpoint presentation which one feels is "effective" can be an impediment to real, genuine engagement, because it can give the instructor or presenter a rather false or substitute sense of confidence. Moreover, this false confidence doesn't come from the reality that students are often difficult to engage unless they truly know and feel cared for. To be engaged with students requires a certain apprehensiveness:  I am not sure what works, but I am willing to try a bunch of things to experiment on what could work. I have found that this slightly apprehensive approach worked best in terms of connecting with the students. Without apprehension, I no longer reach the students, because they must feel that their role has been diminished in some ways to that of a spectator to a teacher's presentation and "bullet points". I am furthermore not willing to see myself as in a position to learn from my students; rather, I wall myself into a steely role of "teacher".
   I wonder to what extent the principal of engagement that I am observing with these young students can apply more generally to working relationships with adults. Engagement truly requires a sense of mystery. After all, if I am confident in what I know, I am like the person who has sealed myself off into a wall of confidence, rather than someone who is letting in the unknown and is vulnerable to moments of uncertainty. In working life, having too much certainty (especially in an exploration stage) is terrible to system design and testing, because it fails to see the new potentials and pitfalls in the unfamiliar. In the same way, students can feel the extent to which a teacher is willing to truly extend themselves into a classroom rather than standing on the sidelines.

Walking Through Fire

 I have recently been listening to a song by Peter Gabriel, "Walk Through The Fire", which comes from the soundtrack for the movie Against All Odds. It was a song which I heard a few times when I was younger, and it came out in the mid-80s (1984, to be exact). This singer and songwriter is brilliant for the way he uses poetic metaphor and imagery to evoke an emotional idea or even a spiritual one. The song uses the metaphor of walking in fire to describe how we can walk into destruction and be able to survive it. "Destruction" in this sense does not necessarily have to literally mean a car chase or running out of a burning building. It means being able to witness something that tears out of the supposed "buildings" that we construct around ourselves, which are designed to protect us from harm. I sense that the song is evocative of an instinct to tear down the things that we have built up around us for such a long time, be it a sense of safe or secure identity, or perhaps a general expectation about how one thinks life is supposed to be or to mean. It is also a call to adventure: what would life be like if I didn't need things to feel safe? How would it be if my worst fears were realized, and yet I could do nothing but run right into it and embrace it?
   Does this idea accord with the previous notion I discussed about karma? Can the view of karma from a Buddhist view be going the opposite direction of imposing more restrictions on the sense of what a person can or cannot do? I don't think that this is what the idea of karma is about. I think the sense of danger that karma sometimes evokes, especially the sense of risk, can be seen as exciting and challenging, not necessarily restrictive or daunting. If people only see themselves in terms of their standard "boxes"--self-imposed, confined identities---then they might think that their lives are predictable and going only one way. But to know that this is not the case and that identity is essentially porous and subject to all kinds of permutations, then there is definitely more room to breathe and create. Destruction, here, is not nihilistic, but it part of a bigger cycle that includes periods of both construction and destruction. The point is, one is always creating, and that creation has such a potency in an interconnected world: it multiplies and breeds. What a person says, thinks, feels, is so profoundly implicated in the things around oneself that we can no longer take their impact for granted. In this way, tearing down the things around oneself can make way to new forms of creation.

The Humble Look of Karma

Karma is something that sometimes scares me but at the same time, I feel that it needs to be taken a certain way. It's a bit like walking on an icy patch: if I know that I don't necessarily have the best shoes to walk the path and can never be 100% immune to slipping, I will tread more carefully and with a contrite heart. I am never at the point where I am completely "indestructible" or immune to the dangers or risks of life. It's important to cultivate a mindset that knows that everything we cultivate has a deeper effect on things around us.
  That having been said: it seems a bit mistaken to go the other way and make it one's life goal to accumulate karmic "points". The reason for this is that it solidifies a sense of self that stands to benefit from good karma. Heaven is created when I manage to convince myself that my deeds have protected me from the suffering of human life, and I am able to advance to a new place which is free of cares. But this state doesn't last. In fact, one of the deepest sources of suffering is how much of the karma we create which we consider as "good karma" is not meant to last. It needs to be renewed with new actions all the time.
   Can karma sometimes look like a treadmill? If one's purpose in life is only to accumulate good karma then, yes, life is a treadmill. But if, on the other hand, one can see that there is no discrimination of good and bad, then one has seen beyond the treadmill into something that is closer to the original mind. This is true relief, because then my life is no longer being over-run by ideas about good vs bad. While karma is important, it's only insofar that it helps liberate a person from the wheel of suffering that it makes sense. Otherwise, it becomes a game where one can't backslide even for a moment from accumulating karmic deeds.