Making emotional states into "objects"

 When a person associates a particular activity or situation with a single emotional state, they essentially commit an injustice to the activity. A roller coaster ride can become "scary" when it is labelled as such, even though the person experiencing a roller coaster actually undergoes many minute emotional states. Labels essentially dismiss; just as a painting gets labelled "Impressionist", "Cubist" or some other style, so emotional experiences in general are often given a single title or designation which allows one to keep the experience at arm's length. 

   I feel it is important to clarify that the process of reifying an emotion--making it into a "thing"--often becomes a way of dismissing the nuanced process of experience itself. Meditation, for instance, can be experienced as a long period of dullness or pain, and can thus become associated with such feelings. This happens in spite of the fact that many emotions and physical sensations arise in meditation, some not even classifiable per se. Knowing the difference between an experience as a process and the "labels" we affix to experiences, is one way of breaking out of the prison or the mold of a label.

    Furthermore, even a singular emotional experience (if one such exists) is actually an intensely unique and context-rich state. It's hard to pin down an emotional state. "Boredom" is a good example of this. Sometimes what seems boring or empty is really just the state of mind that is rushing to do something else, or to experience something presumably more intense. Boredom is not a "pure" emotional state, because being bored is often paired with a specific craving or desire to do or be somewhere else. In other words, boredom has this underside of rushing toward something that isn't there or hasn't even arisen yet. It is a masked craving: a feeling of wanting something that won't materialize given the current conditions. If a person were to simply let go of this subtle craving or yearning, the boredom state has no place to stand.

   What's also tricky about boredom is that the label "bored" is itself boring! It doesn't explain anything, it doesn't go anywhere, and it demands something else that is not there. What place does this emotion have in a person's life, except to signal either an unrequited desire or perhaps an impossible requirement or demand? To relax these demands and desires is to dissolve the tightness and tension that comes with boredom.

Radical Openess

   Vulnerability and openness is such an important part of Chan practice that often gets overlooked. The analogy of the empty room, which Guo Gu writes about in his book Silent Illumination, is an apt starting point to investigate this idea. The room is open and vast, and does not contract or change its shape no matter how much furniture is put into it. In the same respect, radical openness means to know the contents of the mind (emotional states, thoughts etc.) without attaching to the individual components. This is akin to having a basic confidence that the room (one's true mind or "identity") does not change, regardless of the contents that are there.

    If I am looking at a particular emotional state under this perspective, how do I face it without dwelling on the particular furniture? I think radical openness is the key, which means not identifying with the situation as myself. I can take responsibility for what is happening without clinging to the notion of "this is me". Guo Gu writes:

      We are so used to being caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we lose sight of our true        nature.  The key to meditation is to recognize that the host is not the guest. The comings and goings of   thoughts and feelings are like guests coming into our homes. Would you let guests run your house?         Of course not. You're the host. (p.39)

This idea does not mean that we disown feelings or try to get rid of thoughts. Instead, it means trying to acknowledge that the spaciousness of mind can accommodate all states without being affected or identified to it. This is difficult to conceptually accept, because I normally have an image in my mind about who I am. When I am listening to a sentence, I pick out the part of the sentence that is "myself" and then exclude all the parts that I don't think are myself. But if my mind is open, I am not discriminating between this is "my" thought and those are others. It's a bit like seeing everything as existing equally in the map of mind.

  At the end of the day, clarity of what's happening in mind seems to be foremost to practice: being aware without being tied to thoughts. This doesn't in the least bit mean suppressing thoughts, however. This ties into a radical openness and acceptance.

Guo Gu, Silent Illuminatino: A Chan Buddhist View To Natural Awakening. Shambhala.

Is There Something That Isn't A Thought?

  One of the important beginning principles of meditation is finding a method that will take one to something more fundamental than thought. Is there something that isn't a thought? Descartes once said, "I think, therefore I am", but what about the sense of just being? Is "being" a "thought"? If being is just a thought, who is the thinker of such a thought? And how can the thought of "being" be fundamental to being, if there is a thinker having that thought?

   The initial stages of sitting are always designed to calm the mind of wandering thoughts. Such thoughts are not the true originator of all thought. Even what I call "the body" is a concept from which I derive all sorts of notions of location and identity. When I am sitting on the meditation cushion, can I really locate where the body is? Is this sense of embodiment something that I can treat as an object? Quite often, I do treat the senses as belonging to an object. For instance, I locate the sense of touch in various parts of the body. But from where does this sense of the body truly originate? Is it from these physical forms called "arms", "hands", etc?

     Why should we ground ourselves in the feelings of the body when even these feelings themselves are mere abstractions or mental objects? That is, why do we go to the body when there is no sense of self? The answer is that the sense of embodiment takes a person one step closer to no thought. Bodily sensations are closer to original mind, in the sense that they are not mediated by language--they are often states that are actively and directly discovered by the mind, rather than simply given a conceptual label. When I am sitting and feeling pain in the legs, that feeling is not something I think about; it is something less mediated by abstractions and therefore closer to an original source of thoughts. But still, even sensations become objects of thought, and it's not possible to identify sensations as the true mind. Mind is what is needed to feel sensations, but sensations themselves, once isolated and labeled as such, don't encapsulate all of the mind.

    It's important to ground the attention in moment to moment being. This is the starting point to investigation. But let's be clear--even the term "being" is a concept. It's an abstraction. So there is something else that must originate the concept of being. It's that something else --that "I don't know what"--which becomes the starting point of investigation. It's not enough to simply be content with the "just being", because that "Just being" is also a thought! So what has the thought of being? What thinks "being"? What makes being come to mind? That is where one must continue to investigate.

Reading Jules Verne

  Jules Verne is a kind of favorite author of mine, though it's hard to say why I find him so endearing. I first learned about Jules Verne through the movie 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea where I was introduced to a character named Captain Nemo. But it was only when I was in Grade 11 that I learned about the massive oeuvre that this man had produced in his life. I did a French ISU at that time where I had to choose to describe a famous French writer or celebrity, and it was Verne that I chose, due to my interest in science fiction.

  Of course, part of the appeal of Verne is that he was a science fiction writer at a time when there were very few, and the genre had yet to truly establish itself. That is, a lot of the hard-coded
"conventions" had not yet solidified, so we can safely say that Jules Verne was a bit of a trailblazer. He wasn't afraid to introduce characters who became mouthpieces for his more extravagant ideas about travel (whether to the moon, around the world, or under the sea); at times, his main characters were platforms through which an idea could be explored, debated or argued amongst other individuals. Verne seemed to have also been writing during the era where people truly did enjoy debating intellectually, and would meet in these trendy millionaire's clubs to debate or discuss some hot topic. H.G. Wells seems to have had a similar preoccupation in his stories with debate, although it seems that his writing was more political in nature. Both writers were satirizing and even illuminating the problems of nationalism and colonialism, by imagining a world where humans have to face (and sometimes fight with) unknown powers that are greater than themselves. Verne was decidedly more cheerful, I think, whereas Wells seemed to have given up on finding solutions to human problems (see his book Mind at the end of Its Tether, for example).

  The thing I do enjoy and appreciate the most about Verne was not the science behind his writing, but rather the attitude of wonder that he conveys in each page. Too often, I think human beings are prone t be jaded nowadays, since "technological marvels" are few and far between (with the exception of the latest gadget, perhaps). Verne happened to be writing at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, where so many ideas were changing and there was quite a bit of hope related to using all this released power to simply build a better world. Even though Verne himself was often subject to the stereotypes of his day (including odd characterizations based on the nationalities of his characters), I do believe that underneath his glib satire, he envisioned humanity as working together to made the world more livable and exciting through these technological marvels. His sense of wonder is something that I believe can be intentionally instilled in a person, at least by imagining what it would be like to approach things with curiosity rather than cynicism: the "believing game", to quote Peter Elbow, rather than the "doubting game". I also believe that my own exploration of meditative practices is akin to Verne's discovery of new worlds: both involve suspension of previous ideas and the ability to freely embrace the unknown by seeing everything as truly new.

Verne's stories are warm because we know that the characters work together for a goal and there is such a sense of belonging in the shared goal. Although his books may seem jaded these days, I do appreciate the more enlivening aspects of his writing that are so rarely found these days, to my thinking.

Question Duality

   If you have ever felt hurt by something that a person says to you, you will notice that part of the hurt comes from the fact that you are subconsciously agreeing with what the other says. You hold that possibility in your mind and even start to collude with it. A person says that I am walking too slowly, and then I feel terrible about it. For one, I might suspect that the person is correct in their assessment of me, and start to become somehow defensive. For another, I agree with the person's evaluation of what it means to be a slow person; that is, I see it in a negative light, rather than in a neutral one. I might even go so far as to think that all the world would agree with him, and therefore I am the only one who is slow. Thus, I brand myself a kind of outsider to the world. 

   All of these states are rather depressing, and they all come from the agreement that something is good and something else is bad. Not once do I ever question this dualism. Is it really correct that one person's pace is superior to another's? If so, where does that belief come from? Can that belief possibly be questioned? This is where it's important to see that duality is always a construction of the mind. A person, a quality or a thing is never "good" or "bad" unless some value system or judgment is imposed upon it, at which point it starts to appear as good or bad. From this appearance comes a host of suffering, including feelings of estrangement, insecurity, bitterness, defensiveness, and so on. If one is able to see that all duality is fundamentally a construction of mind, would one be so quick to deem one thing as "good "and the other as "bad"? Perhaps if a person could see the harm that duality causes people (including cases of human conflict and war) they would be able to see how deceiving it is, and how much suffering it makes i the world. On the other hand, if a person suspended their own tendency to see things dualistically, they may start to relieve the suffering they create for themselves or those around them. Things and situations are never absolutely good or bad. Instead, these are always assessments or value judgments we make in the moment that create suffering. 

  The point I am making is, if one is able to see the mechanism through which the mind creates dualisms and reinforces them, there is more chance to behold those dualities as parts of a whole, rather than seeing oneself as "one" or "the other". This is a bit like a chess player who is playing both sides of the chess game. She or his is cognizant that a chess game could not exist if only one player's pieces were on the board. Similarly, for me to feel the grief of thinking I am one thing, there must be an accompanying tension to embody the other. And both sides are simply being played out in the mind. This is a bit like Yin and Yang. To see that these tensions and opposites are continually feeding on one another for their existence is to reckon that we are neither absolutely one nor the other, but that both conditions co-exist as mental constructs that are in flow or in process. And what is the mind that truly beholds those processes, moment to moment? Well, that's for all of us to figure out!

Beginner's Mind vs "Inner Drives"

   The concept of having a beginner's mind often seems to run counter to a tendency to see novelty as a sign of progress. When I am in a bookstore, I have a craving to read every single book I see, knowing that each one contains a certain wisdom. But I feel like this urge to consume more and more is related to a more primitive drive that equates "accumulation" with "success". It's like that old story of Aesop about the Grasshopper and the Ant. While the grasshopper is busy enjoying himself and playing his fiddle, the ants store up their food for the winter and end up prevailing. In the same manner, I have a tendency of equating "more" and "new" with better. It would appear that I, like many human beings, am geared up to prefer both accumulation and novelty.

   The problem with too much of this "drive" is that it sacrifices depth and intensity for superficiality and breadth. But also, it leads to a kind of artificially induced boredom. If I see something I have "seen before" or "read before', I automatically assume that it is already known to me, so I might pass on and read something else. Or, worse still, I will feel that I am missing out on something else that is new to me that happens to be "somewhere else". Truly, however, is any book or paragraph exhaustible, or does it have multiple meanings? Here is where I think the concept of "beginner's mind" can be quite useful and empowering. If I can see that the same paragraph, when read at different times and in different contexts, can give rise to novel meanings, I am no longer bound to the idea of accumulation/novelty. These things cease to matter, in fact, when innumerable jewels exist in the same text. Many expressions tend to circle around this idea, such as how the river is never the same river from one moment to the next. But the point is: it really depends on one's mental attitude. If one's mental attitude is prepared to see newness even when they experience the familiar, then something overrides the habit of classifying similar experiences, and I am then seeing something anew-with a fresh new perspective. This ability to see the same thing through different eyes needs to be trained. It somehow needs to be disciplined. 

        I am not necessarily talking about meditation per se, but there needs to be a mindset or attitude that allows for surprise even when the text appears to yield information that we already know. And here is the point--this attitude must override a habitual way of pursuing only what appears as new or different. 

Self-Soothing in Meditation

  The "self-soothing" system is an idea that has been introduced to me in Paul Gilbert and Chodron's book, Mindful Compassion. The authors describe self-soothing as the part of one's body and mind that is associated with contentment, and which is often linked to the parasympathetic nervous system. Being content with what is: now why would that have ever been an evolutionary advantage for humans? In contrast with the drives toward fulfilment of hunger, status, etc. it would seem that the feeling of contentment would run counter to the drive for survival. However, self-soothing is important because without it, there wouldn't be any foundation for a social life or world. Instead of cherishing what they have in terms of their relationships and things, people would continue to strive for more things, which would certainly upset the ecological and social balance of life. For this reason, being content with what is or with what one has seems like an underrated but necessary element of human survival.

   How does "self-soothing" relate to meditation? The idea is that, by grounding one's experiences in the fundamental processes of the body--the abdomen and breath, for instance--one is tuning into aspects of their being that are not rooted in planning, strategizing or striving. Quite simply, these are the fundamental parts of our being that exist independently of thinking, planning and striving. They are not subject to gain or loss; they simply function to serve the body's survival. By tuning into these processes, people can turn to a more clear-minded, nonjudgmental acceptance of the world that is not subject to the ups and downs of trying to acquire or achieve things or, conversely, try to avoid unwanted things. 

    This idea reminds me that at the end of the day, humans are creatures--they are created and embodied. The body is a miracle, but I so rarely turn to it and see it for its amazing capabilities. Even the process of breathing is very complex and requires that many vital functions are in order, and yet none of these functions really requires my conscious effort, assistance or guidance. Many processes, in fact, work in this way, without the brain having to tell it to do so. For this reason, I have to only marvel at it and observe it gratefully when I am meditating.