Seeing the Whirlwind

On my special day off today, I went to Park Road for the back doctor, as well as a stroll through Park Road itself. I ended up at Lilian Park again, in the mid afternoon, toting two books that I will be teaching to my young students; Anne of Green Gables and Cricket of Times Square. And I started tracing a few elementary course syllabus.
  My reflections for today (were many, perhaps too many). Firstly, that texts never have a clearly delineated reader (subject) and finished product (object). Texts intersect in strange and unexpected ways with readers. It's illusory and overwhelming to try to get the "full" meaning of a text, while ignoring an authentic and pre-cognitive connection with the text that has little to do with either "full" or "official". Thinking in this way allows me much greater room to explore my curiosity about books, rather than trying to plumb the "ultimate" depth of books themselves. It allows me more room to see the permutations of reading books, and how unlimited subject positions really are within it.
  Second reflection: sometimes the whirlwinds people are drawn to are not in any way indicative of people's stations in life. Literally, whirlwinds don't go anywhere: they spin a person in one place. Rather than whirling with the whirlwind, it is best to keep the mind as still a possible--not attached to the intricacies of the whirlwind--yet paradoxically humble to the fact that the whirlwind cannot be resisted. It's in surrendering even one's very will (seeing through the will, realizing its vanity and shallowness, etc.) that the will truly stops. Will and whirlwind drive each other: one tempting/torturing, the other chasing and tortured. When one part gives up or becomes tired, the other will naturally fall away, as illusory.

Stillness in the Park

I found a park, somehow by mistake, on my way home from grabbing a take-home dinner. I used to think that this park was actually a schoolyard, until I realized that there were plenty of picnic tables and park benches.
  I sat peacefully on the bench eating dinner, watching the family practice tennis in the nearby tennis court. And for a while, everything just happened synchronously, falling together in one place, without a me to grasp at anything. Everything separate yet harmonized; nothing interfering with the process of anything else, and everything together in motion and in stillness. It seemed to me that everything, in spite of my misgivings, felt okay to me. But then, of course, the anxieties of everyday start to creep in again: will I be okay ? Will there be enough work for me to do tomorrow?  And as these anxieties kick in  naturally, I forget that the self is not so real, and there is nothing really enduring to cling to. Everything comes and goes like the breeze, the birds, the seasons, and the passing of the ball back and forth.
And though I will still worry about what happens to me, perhaps I can also make room for uncertainty. This is because the self is a fabrication, and cherishing the self is no more than like cherishing a smoke that is always changing.

Sound and Silence

I have been contemplating why it's especially important that each person finds their own way of expressing spiritual practice and ways of being. People often admire the truly devoted practitioner who is able and chooses to attend a temple on a daily or weekly basis, perhaps even to the point of becoming a nun or a monk. While this is certainly a good thing to look up to, not everyone has the causes and conditions to take on this path.
  We might even try to divest ourselves of things in our life to attain what seems like a simple, austere life, not realizing that every life, no matter what the situation, has an inner complexity. Respecting this complexity and the ways that spirit meanders (instead of proceeding in a linear way) is so integral to developing a respect and tolerance for the diversity of different forms of spiritual practice, as well as one's own unique position in all of it.
   One way of practicing this respect is to go back to this idea of polarity therapy, and to actively practice it. If I am in a busy intersection with lots of noise (both internal and external), I can picture my left hand holding a ball called "Noise" and my right hand holding the ball called "Stillness". Then I can reflect: is one of these completely bad and unacceptable, while the other completely good and holy? What happens if the world suddenly reverts to "total stillness"? Will that make everyone's mind at ease? And is the Noise I am upset about really related to sounds, or is it more about an inner reaction that I can observe instead of trying to "fix" by getting rid of sounds?
   When I evoke these kinds of questions, I start to see that both silence and sound have the same source in mind, and one is not superior to the other. In fact, the only "noise" is the noise my heart makes in getting unduly upset with the sounds, while silence is inherent in noise when I choose not to be upset or disturbed by the sounds. In this way, the busy intersection and the beautiful park becomes places of stillnes.

Intensity is not permanent

Often, when one is worried or consumed by some feeling, they are not yet opened to the totality of the moment. The sense of self is contracted into this one view of self, and one can feel the sense of self rubbing up against that which doesn't uphold the self. Or, it could even be that there is something about their self-presentation that they don't like. I believe we sometimes say that the person has "lost face" or may not even be able to look at themselves for days!
   It's important in these moments to recognize impermanence. A person does not carry an enduring self around them all the time. The sense of discomfort that comes from an invalidating sense of self is really only the arising of provisional conditions, and intensity of discomfort does not equate to permanence. This illusion of intensity as permanent probably comes from a fear of being saddled with something that will stay the same over time. But nothing really stays the same over time.
  Discomfort is most likely to be endured when one recognizes this equation of intensity = permanence is not at all real. I feel something very painful and then project that pain into an imaginary future, thinking it will stay that way. This not only ends up being inaccurate,but it also prolongs unnecessary pain and suffering. I am having this pain,but then also imagining that this pain goes on and on forever! That only multiplies the sense of pain a hundred-fold. It's important to recognize that the intensity of the pain has no relation to a fixed duration.
  In thinking this way, we can relax more with pain and let go of the story line that tries to control it. Pain will go away on it's own; there is no need to create a story to avoid pain or difficulty. But paradoxically, one has to go through it to see that it's impermanent.

One Hand and The Other

I have been quite taken by Ken Wilber's writings in the past couple of months. I would have to say that he has been largely influential in getting me to think more "integrally"--or, to put it more simply, to think not in terms of binaries but in terms of nested wholes. His account of polarity therapy in particular is parallel with ideas of non-duality which I have encountered in Buddhism. What I would like to share is a kind of spin-off exercise which I have even tried with some of my intermediate-level students, called "on the one hand/on the other".
  This exercise gets students to think from multiple perspectives about the same idea or character. Are the character's decisions the "right" ones? Would you do the same if you were in the character's shoes, or would you have done it differently? By getting the students to examine advantages and drawbacks of each alternative scenario, I introduce them to something like a polarity theory: the idea that a person can have opposites and contradictory ideas, and yet embrace these ideas simultaneously.
   People who suffer from depression might often think in terms of poles. Either I am "really good" or "terrible", with no "in between". David Burns, a prominent cognitive therapist, has suggested that depressed people tend to generalize negative situations into all situations, a kind of "emotional reasoning" which projects their mood onto situations. I wonder if being able to embrace an opposite view--to entertain the idea that there at least some things that I have done well--can defuse the tension and anxiety of feeling that one is either "good" or "bad", with no "in between". But it's also worthwhile to consider that even seemingly "bad" qualities that one might dislike about themselves can be beheld just as they are, without judging the person. In other words, one just observes the judgment without following the judgment to conclude that something or someone is good or bad. Is it then possible to accept that some things, from some perspectives, might seem "bad" from some view, but this "bad" is also conditioned arising and is subject to change over time? Again, I hesitate to judge: people are neither good nor bad. Actions might lack skill or be inappropriate at certain times, but that doesn't make a person bad.

Bodily Investigation

During the meditation practice today,I had the idea that "if only my back weren't so tight, I could practice better". This is a view that comes from believing that the mind is trapped in something called "the body", as though the body were a kind of metaphorical container. But if one really examines, using modern science, what gives rise to the feelings of the body, it turns out that there is no container whatsoever.
  I feel a sharp pain in my back or lower side, and I then have the thought, "If I shift it this  way, it will become more balanced", or "this would relieve it". So I imagine taking a tight thing and loosening it to make it more spacious. The more I engage in this process of trying to "fix" my posture to an ideal position,the more I lose sight of investigating the mind. I start to cultivate the idea that the body is an obstacle to meditative practice that needs to be fixed, conquered or tamed. This might be analogous to how civilizations view nature. It seems to be intuitively correct, but is it?
  The body might feel relieved for a little while, but soon enough, "relief" becomes another habitual feeling. I then search for a better sensation, such as a cool drink on my mouth. Is the "body" ever "filled completely" or even satiated? For a little while, it seems this way, but actually the body cannot be filled because it's a habitual concept. As long as I cherish the body as an enduring object, I give into feelings of dissatisfaction and wanting to fill the body with pleasure.
   There isn't really anything to do with the body. One must be confident in the method of trying to find the mind that contemplates body or cherishes the idea of body. It is this mind that is the real "object" of meditative investigation, even though it can never really be an object whatsoever.

Polarity Therapy

 Ken Wilber describes Polarity Therapy in the chapter "Miscellaneous Elements" of The Religion of Tomorrow. There are a few interesting aspects that I would like to explore in this therapy.
   The idea behind polarity therapy, if I am understanding correctly, is that whenever there is a deep conflict between two sides in a person, there is a tendency to attach to one side and reject the other to reduce that conflict. Freud was one of the psychologists who talked about how people repress impulses that are not considered acceptable to the greater society, in order to reach a psychic compromise with social norms. In many ways, the only way people achieve this compromise is through a process of repressing one side of themselves which embodies this "negative" or disliked element, sometimes called the "shadow". The problem with repression is two fold: firstly, it takes a lot of energy to repress unwanted elements of ourselves, and secondly, it can lead to all kinds of illnesses or bodily dysfunctions. I suppose that high blood pressure is one obvious side-effect of a repressed anger, for instance, but I wonder if perhaps depression or a mild fatigue might also be examples of the side-effects and symptoms of repression.
   Polarity therapy starts with the premise that there is something fundamentally common to two sides of something, and there is also something purposeful about these sides. Anger or compulsive behavior might seem bad altogether, but if one starts to have a conversation between "the good" and "the bad", one may begin to see that there is some common ground between them, such as a common goal. Getting angry at my computer for being non-functional at work might seem counter-productive (and therefore I repress it), but it can also have the same goal of wanting me to get back to work. So rather than denying my emotion, it might be to inquire: what kinds of concerns does this emotion to relate to? Can I trace the emotion back to the concern? Here, the emotion starts to be accepted as part of an overall situation where choices can be made and a strategy can be built.
  Then comes the part of, if emotions have common concerns, can the emotions work together somehow? Yes, anger might be one emotion, as well as anxiety, but how about recognizing that these emotions are only parts to an unfolding whole that is changing all the time? Here, the emotions are seen and respected, but they are integrated into a whole. Perhaps one can even say that rather than one emotion dominating and being 'true', each emotion is like a color that provides a useful lens for the others. In this way, polarity gives way to more harmonizing of elements.

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