Beyond Polemic and Polarity

 If I understand Ken Wilber's ideas and system overall, I would have to say something like: our states of mind are evolving. Ideas that are popular and useful to people come into being for a reason, based on a need to transcend a previous level of being that had proven inadequate. At the same time, ideas are precursors to even higher ideas. An example might be: although rationality came at a time when superstitions governed Western thinking, the limit of rationality is that it does not always embrace different perspectives. Logic can exclude key perspectives that count as truth, even though logic had functioned to debunk previous "dogma" as being too limiting and narrow. Thus one needs to go beyond even logic, even though this does not negate the function of logic.
  If I understand the principle,it is that, every idea that proves useful to people has both a potential (which is to be embraced) and a limit (to be transcended). If I anxiously cling to the potential of an idea, thinking that everything that is not that idea is dangerous or "other", I forget that there are simply more comprehensive ideas that can go beyond the current ideas and solutions. This is not "either/or" thinking, but rather the idea that something always lies in wait on the horizon: a more in depth way of seeing and being that is not captured in one's present mindset.
  Perhaps it helps to think that every idea has a before and an after: the "before" refers to what an idea was intended to integrate and replace; the "after" refers to what will eventually come along to address the limits of the current idea. No idea is ever the best or the most final, but it builds upon or transcends something that came before.
    This is not a dualistic, polarized thinking that valorizes one idea or says, "either you believe this or that". Rather,  every idea has its place and only its place in the scheme of things, and too much of one idea leads to a huge perspective diminishing or gap. This is why one needs to keep their mind open to ways of thinking that go beyond or step a little bit further down the road of the current ideas and mindset.

Detours and Roads Untravelled

In a nature path, there are 'main roads' which are paved, and there are detours. One knows surely little about the detours, and there is always a risk that the end of those dirt paths, the person who started them wasn't able to finish. As some paths become more respectable (and repeatable), people are more likely to travel them, even when they already figured the destination beforehand. Knowing where to go simply feels more reassuring in the end.
   Reading the section from Master Sheng Yen's Orthodox Chinese Buddhism today about whether there is a soul or not, I reflect: how scary it is that the "soul" or "enduring personality", is none other than the paved road! It's the identity that I am so familiar with that I think that it stays with me forever. But in fact, this identity is hardly a long path that stretches to infinity. More so, it can be likened to a kind of small island which has accumulated certain habits over time: a kind of tributary that builds up certain kinds of natural sediments while others are eroded over time. This is none other than a path that, when trodden upon enough times or built up long enough, gives the illusion to the idea of a long-standing, enduring self: an identity or soul that is fixed across many lifetimes.
   To travel an unbeaten path is similarly risking the potential erasure of the self that I have been so familiar with, in favor of the more humbling "starting over", or perhaps more aware that every step can be a new one and can lead to an unexpected or much less certain result.

Life's Spin Cycle

Ken Wilber talks a lot in his book The Religion of Tomorrow about the terms "embrace" and "transcend". The two go hand in hand. When I really own something as an integral part of myself without making it into something to be desired or repressed/hated, then I am ready to go beyond it. But it is so easy to get this wrong, especially prematurely trying to transcend something too quickly (allergy, as Wilber calls it) and/or trying to embrace to the point of making something an addiction.
   I like to use the analogy of a spin cycle. Everyone has probably experienced times when they feel they are making the same mistake over and over again, yet are constantly trying to apply the same band-aid solution. The solution looks like it's going fine, but in fact, it's eventually seen as a stopgap to prevent a real and genuine transformation. Some solutions are even worse than the things that they are meant to address or "fix" precisely because they do work for a while, only to cycle back to the original problem again.What these things really do is make people feel temporarily good, at least enough to distract them from the thing that is bothering them the most.
   When I finally recognize that the "fix" doesn't address the original problem, I stop pretending that it does, and instead, I see the spin cycle for what it is. I neither repress the problem by embracing a false solution, nor do I go back to the fixation that caused the original problem, I am simply seeing the absurd cycle, similar to clothes in a drying machine. It is only at this point that the cycle can really be transcended. It is seen for what it is, in its totality, and faced with an open eyed honesty that doesn't idealize any spoke in the wheel. Could this combination of acceptance and non-idealizing be the doorway to transcendence that Wilber describes?

No Place to Go

 I am wondering whether you have ever had the experience before where, whatever you experience in front of you is not separated from the viewer. In that moment, the only thing that matters is whether the mind is still or moving, but even if it's moving, the mind has nowhere to go.
   Well, perhaps it can be put in this way: water can have ripples or be perfectly still and unmoving, but in both cases, the water hasn't left anywhere. It simply moves or stays still. For someone to try to stop the water from moving would assume that the movement has no place at all in water. But moving and stillness are just different states of the same substance, and neither adds nor subtracts to the overall. This is to say that even if I find the water is rippling, I don't feel disturbed by the movement. I don't try to splash the water to stop the ripples from happening--which would defeat its own purposes anyway. This "no place to go" is something rather special, in fact.
  Purity and "dirt": well, this is a good example. A very dirty substance is actually not dirty at all, if you were to examine it on a molecular level. Molecules of dirt have no interaction with the substance they are interspersed with. There is not even a chemical reaction happening there. When a dirty cloth is washed, the dirt is simply removed and there is no trace of the dirt on the cloth. But in fact, the two were never fused together in the first place. Because one appears to be proximate to the other, I refer to the other as "dirty". In fact, in my mind, I preconceive what the clean version of the cloth looks like. But whether "dirty" or "clean", nothing has changed about the cloth itself.  To say one is dirty is to confuse the appearance to be something real and enduring, or having a fixed essence.
   Most of the time, I think of the surfaces: I imagine that things get dirty and get clean. If I dig a bit further, I find that no such thing really happens. One might even imagine that a mind is defiled by its own thoughts--but this is not actually the case, since thoughts never stay in the mind. Can I see that the "dirty" cloth is neither inherently clean nor dirty? Can I see that these qualities are appearances that form mental categories, and are not the essence of the cloth?

Jealousy as Projection?

 Ken Wilber (2017) introduces an interesting exercise known as "3-2-1", in which the thing that we most dislike or admire starts out as an object that is "out there" (third person), after which one has a conversation with it (second person, or "you") and finally begins to recognize that what is "out there" is really "in here"--that is , it is none other than one's own mind, or mental universe. Shadow work, in which a person owns up to what they project outward onto others, is a process whereby we come to realize that the things we most fear or dislike "out there" are really disowned parts of ourselves. Many of these qualities are fear-provoking only because we project them onto others, rather than integrating those part into ourselves.
   The same, in fact, is true with desirable qualities which we tend to admire in others. If we see something we deem as wonderful or beautiful, or spiritual, etc., it is really ourselves that makes the appraisal, and the overall esteem of the desired person or thing is based on our own deepest experience. It doesn't essentially reside in the person or thing we are appraising but is, rather, a disowned part of ourselves, or at least our own mind. If we doubt this, we might consider the simple example of an heirloom that we treasure or highly value. That heirloom might look beautiful on our mantelpiece, but it takes our own mind and attention to truly see the beauty in the heirloom. It's our own unique quality of giving attention to certain things that brings their value to life, and makes their qualities real, in that moment. In fact, it is we ourselves that do the inner work of beholding the dignity and beauty of the esteemed object. Why admire or envy another person's possessions if it is the mind (one's very own mind, in fact) that is the heart of how, and to what extent, we esteem these things?
   By shifting the wonder of a thing from the prize to the way it is beheld and appreciated, one might come to recognize that all power resides not in things but in the ways that we appraise, appreciate and give attention to things.  This is the love and openness that we might bring to the present,  to bear upon the things around us.

Wilber, K (2017). The Religion of Tomorrow Boston: Shambhala Press.

Choosing Books for Lessons

I seem to have this funny sense when I choose a book for my future lessons. Perhaps it's a bit like shopping for a birthday gift that is intended for someone else, but ends up tickling one's own fancy much more. It could also mean, perhaps more accurately, the thrill of starting something new with children and having those young minds be exposed to something that also gives you  some basic joy. And of course---the thrill doesn't last, and it has its ups and downs. But there is always hope at the very beginning, which drives me through the many hours I put into forming the course outlines and syllabus
   Each time I design the class, I keep trying to look for better ways to teach. More importantly, I look for new things that I hadn't taught, much less thought about, before. I think it's important never to say, "well, this has all been done before", but to keep rediscovering the same themes in slightly different variations. This is perhaps about beginner's mind, but it also might relate to not giving up or becoming jaded.
   If I think about how a teacher must feel, marking the same assignment many times or reading the same books each semester, I begin to wonder how teachers can keep the material fresh enough in their minds that they might discover something new to reflect on. Teachers can either get into a routine, or try to build on what they learned before (what works or doesn't work), or they might just try to see the books in totally different ways, using the lenses of other things they are developing in their lives. In any case, all of these concerns I am developing are related to a question I am passionate about, and that is how teachers remain grateful and happy beings, even in the midst of the turmoils they face in schools and with the very unpredictable learners they are faced with.
   Books should always be discoveries, even if they turn out to be not what I expected to discover. I can only hope that the love of discovery itself is never squelched in me, no matter what situations we are facing as a society in these recent times.

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.