Being Good Hearted Necessary to Practice?

      I was reading a translated material from a Buddhist text today, which stated that being "good natured" is a basic prerequisite to following Buddhism. After all, a person can spend a lifetime reading and diligently studying scriptures, yet, may not fully benefit from such a practice if they are not kind-hearted to begin with. Some Buddhist teachers even recommend that people stay away from Buddhism altogether if they lack the basic disposition of kindness. This, I assume, is to ensure that Buddhism's reputation as a belief system is not harmed by people who lack that required goodness.
   I think that such kind of a recommendation is a very good reminder that people should approach Buddhism with the intent of uplifting others and oneself. However, it leads me to wonder: if those who start to practice Buddhism lack a disposition to be happy or good-natured, would they not benefit even more from being a Buddhist? I am thinking in particular of famous "Buddhists" in history who killed, such as Milarepa, before being suddenly changed by a particular teaching or even a turn of phrase. Some of the most dramatic conversion narratives in religion, in fact, arise when people who are "mean" spirited are suddenly turned in the opposite direction, if not simply by the grace of a higher being. Paul in the Bible is one such example of a person who starts out as persecuting Christianity, only to later make a 360 degree turn.
  If people are only allowed to practice a religion when they have a specific temperament that is benevolent, a lot of others end up being excluded from it, including those who do make sudden progress after a period of drudgery and study. Perhaps what was meant by this translation is that one should, regardless of temperament, always try to look to the best parts of themselves when taking on a spiritual practice. Otherwise, it can be very easy to slip into looking at spirituality through a defensive or uncharitable lens. I also assume that even if we might not have a natural disposition to be friendly, at the very least, we can cultivate humility to this fact and start to work on softening our character and lightening up a bit. After all, it's through a certain kind of softness and openness that these teachings can slip into the cracks of the heart.

Calm Days, Calm Ways

 What is it about brisk spring days that can soothe the heart? It's hard to believe that tomorrow is the beginning of June, and I seem to relish the times in the fresh air when I can feel the breeze in my hair and the air filling my chest.
   Natural walks can teach oneself what it means to be calm, and thus provide a baseline for times when life is not so calm. I believe that nature can extend and project one's feelings of compassion, by presenting an atmosphere of subtle impermanence. The swaying of trees and the blowing of pollen from the flowers tell us so : these things pass. And it is a reminder as well to relish the days of warmth before the winter strikes again.
   But compassion also says: life is interconnected. Just as some things die, others sprout. I was able to see that some homeowners had been culling the branches from trees, presumably branches that had already died. They would surely be hoping to make way for new branches and blossoms as summer approaches.
  Nature and compassion go hand in hand, even though you might think this is an unlikely partnership. Nature seems "red in tooth and claw", but only if we are seeing the immediate presence of something that seems threatening and painful. In the grandness of things, life is continually renewing. There is no need to grasp even existence itself, when it carries on without end in this way. In life, there aren't these winners and losers, but the cycle of gain and loss needs to keep happening until mind is capable of truly seeing that there is no gain or loss. Unfortunately, this delusional kind of pain/suffering has to keep happening again and again until one can see through it.

Merger Anxieties

I find that anxiety is most provoked when we want to bring two ideas together. We want to make one better and enhance it. There is a curiosity that arises. How should I say it? It is the weird sense that something that was originally "you" (a part of you) and is actually still "you" has been split from you, and is separate.
   I remember seeing once a cat who was so fascinated upon seeing another cat across the street in another window--yet, what was behind that fascination? You might call it instinct, but I think it's the eerie sense of meeting one's true being through something foreign and alien: something which, by necessity, needs to stand "out there" to prevent from being sucked into the vortex of a boring, yawning self.
  Anxiety and desire: the sense of being close to something that is essentially one's own being, yet not being able to touch it. It's not really out there at all, but it's not "in here" among my conditioned parts and habits, so what could it be?
  Perhaps we insist on keeping things strange (exotifying them?) to prevent them from getting lost in the void of the self.

Faith in Practice

  Faith is an important aspect of any spiritual practice. I was reading Master Shen Yen's small book Chan Practice and Faith (in https://chancenter.org/en/publication/free-books) before the meditation tonight, where it talks about how entrusting that there are beings wiser than ourselves (and even enlisting their help at times) is an important aspect of the practice. Without it, we might either become very despondent and forget practice altogether, or very arrogant--thinking that we have already attained everything and don't have anyone "higher" to look up to. The point, however, of having others to have faith in is that it does indeed tap into elements of the mind that are closer to one's own inherent wisdom. They may appear to be expressed in someone else, but they could be seen as expressions of the mind that is within.
   The problem is that if I say "I don't need anyone, I have already what I need inside me", I am already limiting who I am to something I perceive as being "inside" me, as opposed to "outside me". In this way, we disown our own being by contracting inward into a tiny corner of being that is defended. This is not a real nature of mind but it is some kind of very impoverished sense of the self as enclosed in a body (with its own aches and pains). Going back to my previous entry, we start to behave as though we are an isolated body "tossed about" by the waves around us.
   Faith is more expansive and it also leaves room to learn more. Literally, when I allow myself to "look up" to a more advanced stage of wisdom, I am giving myself room to imagine something more than who I might think I am at the moment. This faith is not about reaching the highest summit, as though climbing a mountain. It is more about being able to have a vision of wisdom that is both within one's reach (literally one's own nature) and beyond one's reach (our nature is clouded by ignorance and conditioning). This paradox of both being and not being, both near and far, is the paradox of faith itself.
   Faith also means investing in (as in a kind of cathexis) the value of an experience, or method, without having an expectation of the result. I find that this practice of faith needs to be honored in some way before doing meditation. Otherwise, the meditation practice will not feel authentic, and one lacks trust in the method.

Observing Emotions

Observing emotions is a key to coping with life. I often try to wrap things in stories, when the emotions (confused, angry, hurt or whatever) are what really speak to me about things. Staying with the emotion instead of spinning endless narratives about why emotions are there, how they got there, etc. seems to be one helpful way of dealing with them. In a way, observing neither suppresses nor does it add fuel to the emotion.
  This week, I feel rushed: lots of emails to write and taxes to do as well. But what is the emotion? It's just a discomfort in the stomach area, as well as a heaviness in the chest. Such emotions are in the body, but I subconsciously think that these emotions reside in the things that need doing. Taxes become a pain in the stomach; meetings a "pain in the neck". But, in fact, the physical sensation has no relation to the event itself. It's only a bodily feeling that happens to be triggered with some thoughts or events.
  To feel fluttering in the stomach might make a person feel as though the events outside of them stir them to action (note the metaphorical way of thinking). But that sense of fluttering is no more than a nervous reaction that travels to the brain cells and gives signals. Even the sense of "pressure" in the chest has no external correlate; they are only analogies for speaking about stress, and there is no corresponding reality of being pushed, stirred or pressured. Such ideas only form an internal landscape of the mind.
    If one can separate the internal from the external, what happens is that I have this emotion, and then there is this "thing to do", and that is that: the thing to do has no relation to the emotion,and vice versa. In this way, they can co-exist: not needing to do one to make the other disappear, or manage one to manage the other.

Uncreative

 People hardly hear moments of uncreativity. Let's face it; they're unglamorous moments. People tend to see the result of creativity after a series of steps --and sometimes mis-steps. There is hardly any account of the mis-steps or even the dry spells, where things aren't coming together at all. It's a little bit like when I was trying to teach Percy Shelley's Ozymandias to the Junior class today. The statue looks pristine, but how do we explain the desert wasteland that laid claim to that slender beauty?
   Two events I am thinking about: the arduous process of lesson planning for one, and the task of doing a thesis project for another (in particular, the pilot study). Lesson plans often come across, for me, as dry affairs. It's not easy to know when creativity will strike a teacher and they will make connections between the material of a book being studied and something that is precious or important to students. Metaphorical thinking, parallel thinking, and imaginative improvisation are often collectively needed. But even in these moments, sometimes one cannot stretch far enough. The soul is blocked: it needs some nourishment, yet doesn't know how to seek or attain that nourishment. And there is no technique to get it. Well, then time for a break or a walk.
   Pilot projects can be even scarier, because they seek to gain better understandings about something that is not really well known.  A pilot project tests the robustness of an idea--and in the process, renders both the idea and the creator of the idea vulnerable. People clearly are addicted to projects that "work out"--that are somehow transformative, or provide valuable information through which people's lives are changed. But what is a "failed" experiment but a very ripe bit of information waiting to be mined? I am wondering if, after all, the problem is not "creative block" so much as it is the inhibiting desire for a rather limited view of success, one that does not tolerate the "failing" effort let alone see the fertility of all efforts as a whole.
   I think it's important not to see dryness or stuckness in a bad way---maybe there is something in there that is growing but hasn't emerged from the dirt yet. Give it a bit of time and tomorrow we might start to see buds growing. But like meditation itself, the key is to stay in dryness rather than trying to escape from it. It is indeed part of the process.

Non Resistance

Non-resistance is, ironically, not something that one can just take up "by choice". This is because the principle of non-resistance is about not choosing at all. Ken Wilber has described something like: seeing everything around you as though it were a picture. You take everything in with a sense of equanimity, and nothing is rejected. Well, the picture metaphor might be extended to the idea that nothing in a picture is either ugly, disfigured or out of place. I don't even complain to say the artist "should have done this" or "should have excluded that", because I have this basic trust that the picture's elements all fall together and have their own essential and unique place. Even things we don't like during meditation have a basic good place, and there is a resting in that awareness, without trying to reject anything.
  I have found that this state doesn't just get turned on like a switch. It requires an attitude of surrendering to what is and inquiring always into its true nature. An honest surrendering does not try to ignore pain; it sees it for what it is and allows it to arise naturally. And it takes it all as something to be cherished. Even the slightest idealization or "thinking it would be nice if this were something else" is already far off this attitude of accepting the totality. There is already the thought of privileging one thing over the other, or one thought over the previous.