The Fly

  Back in 1986, I had become something of a science fiction fan, at the encouragement of a librarian in my junior high school who introduced me to the books of Robert A. Heinlein. I seem to remember that time period (1986-1987) to be exciting times, mainly because I used to buy these magazines called Analog and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction at the corner magazine store for, like, 2 or 3 dollars (magazines aren't that cheap nowadays). There was one particular movie that was popular back then, David Cronenberg's The Fly, that had an impact on me, as well as a little-known song by Bryan Ferry called "Help Me" that was part of that soundtrack. 

    The story of The Fly is essentially about a scientist who becomes (in a drunken stupor) part of his own experiment, by putting himself in a teleporter that synthesizes different molecules into something enhanced. What he doesn't realize is that a fly had entered the same teleporter as himself, so parts of the fly's DNA become fused with his. This is sadly a love story as well, and the leading lady of this movie has to watch his slow deterioration into a monstrous fly without a conscience. To me, this movie comes closest to being a Kafka-style science fiction movie. It had both elements of pathos and horror combined.

  I think of this story as the horror of becoming dependent on someone else for help even when the helping person is horrified of who the other has become. Yes, this is certainly a metaphor for ageing and death, but I also think there is a deeper metaphor for how we contain irreconcilable opposites within us, and are afraid of transforming into something darker than our "best" or "most favored" parts. This is the dilemma of being both a witness to something horrific as well as being consumed by it at the same time.

In Buddhism, we probably have to go through all the forms of suffering to reach enlightenment. The hardest is to realize that we are prisoners to our own bodies when we are ill--yet to know that from a practice perspective, we are really not bound to the body at all.

The World's a Taxi

  In the middle of the night, just outside the hospital, this survivor sees a taxi. He hails it, knowing that it will be his only chance of getting home and back to a normal state the next day--at least normal enough to resume work and put on an air of everything being ok. After all, things are ok, aren't they? He feels grateful that in the end, the taxi ride was only $20. Only $20...

 Taxis and hotels, for me, symbolize the transitional nature of reality and the world. Anytime you see a movie that involves either of these elements, you are bound to find intrigue and even a touch of sleaziness, since they are transitional realms between the civilized world and the underlying chaos. But at the same time, anytime there is a disaster or an unexpected circumstance (like a breakdown of the transit system, a winter storm, or a late night falling out), there is bound to be a taxi somewhere in the corner, waiting patiently for you to give them your money. Here, taxis become reminiscent of the Hermetic messenger or the boatman who is thought to take people to the realm of Hades. It is the messenger between two or more different worlds.

  Life is unexpectedly merciful in all the weirdest ways. It's the unexpected mercies that remind us of grace, and how, no matter how much a person tries to control their circumstances, nothing is fully in a person's control. In my vignette above, I see the grace in the facticity of hospitals: always being 24 hours open for people. But also, "normalcy" is just around the corner from the most dire circumstances. Order lives beside chaos and vice versa--they are intimate strangers, in fact. And of course there is the mercy of knowing that what seems a costly trip was not at all costly from the traveler's perspective. It's important to pay attention to these small moments of mercy whenever we can.

   Buddhism talks about the ferry that takes people to the other shore, which means Dharma teachings have a way of transforming a person's mindset away from samsara and into nirvana. When stagnation becomes transition, we are aware that our situation is always changing, and we are connected always with other beings who can help.  Dharma is like a cool water that splashes over a hot and unbearable situation, because it cuts through the illusion of isolation. It reminds us that we are not trapped individuals, not trapped in any situation except for the illusion of solidity and permanence. 

Sometimes we need to take a ride in the mysterious taxi late at night, to remind ourselves of the long dream we are sharing in this life.

Karmic View of Illness

  It's hard to relate to the fact that pain and illness are natural functions of life and having a body. More and more, people attribute health to some kind of personal responsibility, which suggests that we can somehow control our bodies or even decide when we will be ill. Karma is much more complex than that, and I tend to think of illness more as an opportunity to see how our practice takes us rather than as a punishment. In addition, from what I understand of Buddhist teachings, we might even be paying back our karmic debts by suffering the symptoms of an illness. So it's perhaps best to see the manifestation of illness as a kind of natural movement, much the same way as water moves across a stone in order to erode it and wear it away over time.

    I recently read an interview with a famous person who mentioned that he may have caused "damage" to himself through reckless behavior when he was young, thereby precipitating a genetic illness. I wonder about this: can we blame the younger part of ourselves for something that is happening to us now? If so, how? Could that younger self have "known better", as though they could fast forward to a different time in the future and see what unfolds? Time doesn't work that way, and the mental trap here is trying to juxtapose one thought of what is happening now onto another state that has already passed. Is this act of juxtaposing one thought over another a sincere practice (similar to repentance), or is it sometimes indulging in wistful "what if" thinking? Unless there is something we can constructively do with the reflection and rumination, perhaps all it really serves is to re-envision life from a presumably more powerful perspective.

   Illness is part of life, but we don't need to suffer if we embrace it. It means letting go of the idea that a separate self creates illness. Illness is the culmination of many factors, and few people recognize that the chief cause of illness lies in some form of mental stress. If our minds are balanced, our bodies will also achieve the proper balance of diet, exercise and rest. Without the mental balance, we add pressure to our lives and fail to take care of our bodies.

Ameru

 I have been learning about the concept of ameru from a book by Takeo Doi called The Anatomy of Dependence. Ameru is described as a feeling of trusting a caregiver to allow one to indulge in receiving care (I am using my own paraphrasing here). The author notes how he found it very difficult to relate this concept to existing terms in English, let alone American culture. With an emphasis on a rugged independence, Americans apparently don't have an equivalent concept of being the passive love object of someone else. In fact, the closest I can come to here is the notion of intergenerational responsibility, as when the younger generation blames the older for all of society's current ills. The assumption is that the older generation is truly responsible for creating a world that the young now have to inherit. This also reminds me of Parker Palmer's concept of the "luxury" of being a student who can stand aside an critique a teacher's plan, with the comfort of knowing they don't need to design a plan themselves!

   Ameru probably most comes out in Christian culture. Jesus has been compared to a lamb, and the lamb is perhaps considered to be a symbol of docility and total submission or surrender. It's true that North American society tends to associate this kind of submission to either weakness or oppression. However, without a proper sense of trust or surrender, we lack the ability to devote ourselves to something that we deem higher and worthy of our respect. This is the basis for much of our religious worship. We even lack the "childlike" surrender that we sometimes read about in the Bible: 

Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18: 1-3).

I personally don't think that ameru translates very well in the context of North American relationships. When it does, the person who practices it needs to take it with a grain of salt: not being totally dependent on someone else, but perhaps practicing ameru as a form of giving rather than receiving. During our study group today, one of the participants related how, when taking care of his Alzheimer's suffering mother, he came to the epiphany that actually he needed her, rather than the other way around. This changed the way he approached care. He became much more responsive to his mother, and more capable of seeing all the ways in which caring was meaningful to him. We can practice ameru not necessarily with the expectation of "being cared for", but more as a gesture of a general trust that the world is a caring place as long as we remain open to come what may. 

Desire and Ignorance

 Schopenhauer once described the intellect as a "dwarf" riding on the top of the shoulders of a giant. I am paraphrasing here, but one thing I am contemplating recently is the relationship between desire and ignorance, particularly in light of the Buddhadharma lecture on the 12 links of conditioned arising today. My question is, if abolishing ignorance is so fundamental to the Buddhist path, what is its relationship to desire? Is desire simply the product of ignorance, and therefore naturally gets abolished once ignorance yields to wisdom? Or is it more complex than simply thinking that desire is a "product" of ignorance--a model that I have been entertaining recently in my studies.

   I personally think that desire colors one's world view, to the extent that what we see is often the result of desire. Like Schopenhauer, I think that by the time we are experiencing the world, we are already doing so through the emotional tones that speak of particular desires. If my desire is to please others (out of an underlying desire to abolish the craving of loneliness, for instance), then that desire colors how I see the world. It binds me to ways of being that are not easy to abolish. Simply reciting a mantra like "all phenomena are empty" can sometimes be a way of evading the hopes and desires that cloud one's view of life. Loneliness is a good example: how often do we simply go with the flow of others simply because we are afraid to be alone or feel abandoned? The way we view the world is not as straightforward as removing cognitive or mental distortions. It also requires that we face the fear of loneliness that might subconsciously prevent us from letting go of ignorance. 

   I think that once we stop buying into the idea that we will die if we don't have someone else's approval, then a lot of the difficulties we face will not be so powerful. Then the problems will be not so burdensome or difficult to solve. This is because we are not basing our view of reality on whether we will feel "ok" and acceptable to others in accepting that view. Perhaps this is a complicated way of saying we have to stop pandering to a collective consciousness and try to penetrate to the underlying emptiness, impermanence and no-self that marks existence.

Everyday Miracles

 "We are surrounded by miracles, but we have to recognize them; otherwise there is no life" (Thich Nhat Hanh True Love, p. 16)

The miracle of everyday is that we don't really get to see it, so focused we are on what hasn't happened or on what's already passed. To be here, however, requires the ultimate sacrifice: to let go of expectations and any ideas of payment or values that are extraneous to the present itself. This can be hard to do, and as Thich Nhat Hanh himself explains, it requires a method such as tending to the body and breath. For without a non-conceptual, direct relationship to life, there is not much chance to see its novelty and its newness each and every moment.

Also accompanying this is a sense of real trust. What you experience now is the portal to real direct knowing and wisdom. It's not about trying to look for wisdom but seeing wisdom in the now. This requires full embracing of the moment and not even being afraid of disappointing others in the process of inhabiting this body, this mind and these feelings.

Finally, it means embracing the service of others, an essential part of love, care and concern. How to embody this? By letting go of concepts, desire, expectations.

Cultivating Blessings

  This past month, I have been showing a lot of Master Sheng Yen's videos regarding blessings during the Wednesday group practices, specifically around cultivating blessings and sources of blessings. I would like to take some time to digest the information and share my thoughts on this topic.

   Why is it hard to feel blessed? Quite simply, it's because people look for blessings in things they haven't yet acquired or known. I am thinking about people who have gotten in the habit of paying for things using their credit cards instead of buying with the money they already have in their bank account. Buying on credit often leads to a habit of not even waiting before one is fully paid to purchase things. But I think this is somewhat analogous to someone who is not counting, much less seeing, their blessings. Sometimes I have to go through a process of subtraction--that is, trying to imagine what it would be like not to have something cherished or beloved in my life. Then through this process I can see that there are certain things I am blessed with that I can appreciate. If I am operating in an autopilot and not realizing my blessings in this moment, then my mind dwells only on future attainments, which often don't even come to fruition. In a sense, the ability to be present is crucial to the feeling of being blessed.