What is "Resignation"? A Positive and Negative View

   I would like to share a bit on my delights in the philosopher Schopenhauer. I have occasionally had the insight that the most important thing we can possibly do is to let the present be what it is, without the illusion that it could be something else. This is actually an extremely difficult thing to do. I am often reminded of Schopenhauer's philosophy, as I believe he reflected on endless desire (the longing for more) as the root of all suffering. So, the one thing that holds us back from being in the present is the relentless desire for something else.

    I guess the only way of entering into this discussion is to say: most people aren't aware of the destructiveness of their desires. Even though we often associate desire with something carnal (such as lust or endless hours spent in front of facebook or cellphones), it isn't just these distracting and trivial things that form the core of our desires. We think of our work, for example, as a culmination of who we are, often not aware that as workers, we can easily be replaced. What was once a lucrative profession in the 80s or 90s is now being done by AI or some other kinds of automation. We cannot possibly "gum" ourselves to our jobs, any more than we can align our identities with our houses, our choice of vehicle, or the clothes that we wear. And yet, underneath the striving to acquire these things is the belief that they define who we are, and therefore, we cannot be "complete" without them. 

  The same goes with work itself, and that endless striving for recognition--one of the Eight Winds that I had referred to in my previous entry. We want more recognition, so we work harder and even strive to be "better" than our peers. Writing one book isn't good enough, so we need to write a second and a third. One educational degree is simply not enough to fill a wall full of degrees and accolades--the degree needs to be followed by another. Why? It's because we are often in the habit of associating who we are with the things we have acquired, including status markers. It is not enough for us to simply say, "whoever I am is enough", because when we peer into that void of the self, we find something endless and infinite, as well as completely unpredictable. So we need to feel the stability and security of knowing who we are at any given time. 

It's not necessary, at least to my mind, to "let go of" or "detach" from desires all at once, like we are putting down a bunch of heavy luggage. Instead, we need to be aware of the ensnaring nature of desires, and how we are entangled. We become entangled through hypervigilance to protect what we desire and get rid of what we dislike. Our lives become complicated by the needs for safety and security, as we calculate our investments and figure out which one will lead us to the best result. All the while, we don't realize that there is no stability in anything, really. What seems a safe and good bet today may easily end in something disastrous tomorrow. 

Knowing these things, I think Schopenhauer's philosophy is based on the idea that we should utilize art and even asceticism to take a deeper look at the suffering desires create. We are swamped in our desires and in others' desires as well. It's nearly impossible to lead a simple life when we are ensnared in our own desires and others desires, and when people even compete to have their desires and needs met. If a group of people equally desire things, then they may fight to the bitter death to have their own needs met, like the time in COVID 19 when people hoarded toilet paper. Couples fight endlessly over competing desires, such as for money, property, how to invest time and energy, and it just builds walls of resentment. Is that the kind of life we would want? We need to prioritize peaceful mind, simplicity, letting go. Otherwise our lives just become proliferating cancers of thoughts that seem super urgent and important, only to later take on an effervescent and fleeting appearance.

Looking back, it seems silly, but anything can become a symbol of our longing for security and safety, whether it's a degree, or toilet paper, or a house, or a job. These "things", so called, are actually really just relationships. A degree, for example, often means nothing unless you live in a country where the status of that degree is recognized and you are at least able to exercise the skills you had acquired with that degree. Knowing that our desires relate to interconnected arrangements (not static "things") can help us let go of an overinvestment in desire.

I wrote a lot about desire tonight, but the point I want to make is, we need to look at all desire closely, with the mind of: is all this wanting making me happy? When I get what I think I want, will I be happy? Will those around me be happy? If people fight to have their needs met, is the fighting really worth it, or does it only lead to alienation and a more solid sense of "separate I"? These are questions I need to ask myself every day. But at the end of the day, even thoughts are only temporary. So let's not get attached to thoughts.

"Negative" resignation is the one we are more familiar with: "I give up" and "I give in".  A more positive view of resignation is the unburdening of the self: I choose not to let things get to me too much, including the striving for knowledge, truth, recognition, identity. These are only temporary and they often lead to more inner stress than they were ever worth striving for.

The Clearing in the Forest of Thought

  Thoughts are not our enemies as long as we are not invested in them as the self. We have often heard the expression, "not taking the forest for the trees" and I think another interesting idea here is not to take thoughts to be ourselves. It's easy to see how irritation arises if we are surrounded by all kinds of thoughts. For one, thinking creates the anxiety and rush to do things. This doing can become overwhelming: not because thoughts are overwhelming in themselves but because subconsciously we take the thoughts to be ourselves and ourselves to be in our thoughts. That is, as soon as I identify a thinker (I) who is thinking the thoughts, I start to ponder my relationship to the thoughts and I spin in that identification. If the thoughts, on the other hand, are seen only as thoughts (with no thinker who is required to act immediately on these thoughts) then I am no longer suffering as a result, and I can be more able to handle my physical and mental conditions.   Thoughts can certainly lead to fear, but only if we are overly invested in them.

Beyond Praise and Blame

 If we look closely at praise and blame, these two things are part and parcel of the same thing. They refer to the habit of believing that someone is solely responsible for our happiness, fame and success. Just as blaming others (and yourself) can place undue burdens on them, so also too much praise can have a similar effect, in the sense of over-inflating the sense of agency. In reality, what happens to us is often the result of interlocking and complex interplay of forces. Why would we want to place the burden on one single person for the many things that could and do happen to us? This way is the opposite of compassion. 

  Tomorrow, we have a big election south of the border. Does it mean anything to me? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. But the point is that catastrophizing about who will be a nation's leader is not a very wise approach. Leaders only represent a great many people who make up a political party, not to mention the diverse populations who choose to support those leaders. Even when one "wins", does that person win all the time and for every occasion? Leadership requires continuous maintenance and support, so it would be a little unwise to think that our lives depend on the outcome of a single day. This would be taking away our day to day responsibility to be in the moment, by thinking someone has way more power than us than they actually do.

   People often exist as images in our mind. We trigger those images through recollections, memories and even narratives about what was done to us in the past. Do those images really exist outside of our thoughts, recollections and stories? They certainly have an influence on how we feel, but we can never say they have an objective life of their own. I only make these thoughts powerful by continuing to indulge them and giving them a value that they can only have through the mind. In fact, we can never hold anyone responsible for our happiness or sadness, madness or gladness. This is because we determine how we see people, just as we determine our attitudes toward people.

Forbearance

 Forbearance is one of the six paramitas ("patience" as it is sometimes called), which Fashi had discussed during the Dharma study today. I have lately been reflecting on what's the difference between forbearance and "merely putting up with" an unusually negative or unpleasant situation. Here I would like to clarify my understanding based on what I heard during the lecture today. 

1. Buddha Nature is not affected by "outside" (or even inside, for that matter). Fashi connected low patience to a lack of focus, which in turn comes from focusing too much on external regard from others in order to feel accepted. A truly stable mind is one that is grounded in the present moment, and therefore would not be attached to instances of praise or blame that come from the outside world. As Fashi remarked in today's class, "your Buddha nature will not be frustrated by the situation outside".

2. The 8 Winds are all perishable phenomena. The 8 winds are outlined as follows

a) Prosperity: prospering through gain or advantage
b) Honor: receiving honors or accolades by the public
c) Praise: being praised or admired by those around us
d) Pleasure: enjoying physical and spiritual gratification
e) Decline: suffering loss of various kinds and disadvantage
f) Disgrace: being dishonored and humiliated by the public
g) Censure: being criticized or disparaged by those around us
h) Suffering: experiencing physical or mental suffering

All of these 8 winds relate to external phenomena. When we begin to engage the question deeply--"just who or what is this mind that experiences these 8 winds?" then we become less identified or attached to praise or blame, and can even experiment with the idea that nothing affects our original Buddha nature, or the nature of that which is aware itself. When we gently separate ourselves from our thoughts of gain and loss, we no longer need to buy into the idea that we will only be "OK" when we have a certain amount of wealth,  status, possessions, praise, blame etc. In fact, we can see that being deprived of these external things can be a hidden blessing in the sense that it points us to something that is beyond all of our conditioning, a kind of naked awareness that does not fluctuate with the coming and going of positive and negative emotional states.

3) Practice non-identity. What or who is meant to receive retribution? If we are less attached to our bodies, then we are better able to see karmic retribution for what it is,  rather than adding layer upon layer of identification with what's happening. 

I think non-identity is simple to contemplate: what is it that is reading these words? Without giving rise to any thoughts, are you able to experience a kind of gap or opening before all the subsequent thoughts arise? This gap can actually be the point where we become confident that Buddha nature is already there, but the only issue is that we cloud that Buddha nature by adding all kinds of seeking thoughts. 

Spinning Wheels

 I have sometimes heard the expression "to spin in one's wheels" to refer to a habit of ruminating: coming back to the same thought again and again, and feeling stuck in it. This is such a powerful metaphor, if mainly because it evokes times in my early childhood when something would get stuck in a wheel of one of my toys, and even the slightest piece of dust would cause the car to spin in circles. It's funny how this very same metaphor continues to survive in my memory to this day, as sometimes the image comes up from time to time.

   Wheels evoke direction. When we aren't moving like we should, we might get impatient, until we realize that we are making the same mistake of not letting go, and taking the things around us to be solid and substantial. One example of this comes from the Christian concept of "pride", which I actually haven't heard about in a long time. Pride is often equated with the ego, but I see it as the mental trap of thinking there is something substantial within us that we have to defend. When I get caught in the quagmire of hurt, what I do is to put on the protective armor of consoling thoughts, which sooner or later becomes an overprotective armor consisting of all kinds of consolations. These consolations, as comforting as they are, imply a barricading of self against a perceived threatening "sense of the other" which could take the form of any number of hurts. There is nothing wrong with all of this, but soon, we may become so invested in a strong sense of self that we refuse to let go of it even when the "threat'' has disappeared. Then the hardest thing is to let go, and I think this is a form of pride.

  Pride can even take the form of thinking that our suffering has ennobled us. We might even hold onto the idea that we overcame something terrible in the past to make us who we are now. I think this is valuable to a certain degree, but it also means that I identify myself as fighting against some adversity, and this creates an opposition of I vs. them.

How we let go of pride is to realize that there is nothing much to defend. I think this takes many years of realizing that all the scrapes we get into are temporary experiences. What seems real today gradually recedes into the distant past later. 

Having vs Wanting to Do Things

Life goes at a frantic pace, so how do we slow down? One way of slowing down is to realize that nothing really needs doing most of the time. Most of the things that we want to do, are really only wants. I sometimes have the anxiety that unless I keep on the move, I will simply slide into lethargy and won't bother to pick up at a later time. The truth is, however, that one should always ask themselves sincerely whether something is a "want" or is in fact a need. It is in investigating the difference between wants and needs that we may be able to let go of what we don't need to do right away.

Going back to my previous entry, if we believe in the idea of cause and conditions, we can recognize that a house never gets built in a single day. Many factors are required, and it takes sustained effort that happens over a long time. During the three day retreat, Ven. GuoYen reminded the participants that it is better not to become so impatient or consumed in wanting to progress in practice that we lose energy. A tense mind hardly gets us farther down the road, so we should find other ways to be content with what has been done and let the rest be completed at a later time or phase. Another way of looking at this is to allow a plan to fold naturally rather than trying too hard to achieve in one go. Trying to do everything at once can not only pressure yourself but also those around you too.

Having to do things always comes with a hidden question: what do I stand to gain or lose in doing this? Can it wait or does it need to happen right away? Reflecting on these questions can also dovetail with the theme of having few needs.

Conditioned Arising and Life

   During our Three Day Retreat at Bliss Haven Retreat Center in Dunville, Chang Yuan Fashi was remarking on how elusive the peaceful mind can seem to us. We are often caught up in so many desires, which results in a busy mind, that we are unable to enjoy the simplicity and wonder of "just being". In fact, we even need to somehow put this simplicity into words, to "reason" it into existence. For a few moments, I was able to see the peace and freedom that comes from just dropping thoughts altogether and beholding the present moment as it is: "coming home" to it, in fact, as Fashi had suggested. But why is it so elusive? 

    Most of our desires are probably social in nature. We are taught to fear solitude and abandonment. For instance, the most harsh punishment we can possibly imagine is solitary confinement, or the common practice of arranging people to sit facing the wall, just as we normally would do in our retreat centers. We are also taught to fear rejection and scorn. I think that all of these thoughts grip around us and create the mental fog of guilt that we feel when we don't serve other people's desires or expectations. I am sure that we also contribute to a similar vicious cycle when we add our own desires (and fear of not having them fulfilled) into the mixture.

    During the retreat, Fashi asked us to try to hold the feeling of being at peace and at home into the spaces beyond the retreat itself. I sometimes wonder what this would be like. We truly can't be blissful and happy all the time, could we?  Actually, however, it's possible, but we have to honor whatever emotions arise in the moment and know that these emotions are all just parts of our empty nature. They are conditioned arising, meaning they arise based on causes and conditions. Once the conditions disappear, there is no trace of it, just as our leg pain disappears as soon as we unfold our legs and come out of the meditation. I believe freedom from suffering--especially from the ego--comes from reflecting at all times on conditioned arising. Nothing stays the same, not even the sense of an enduring self that is experiencing the conditions. So when we let go of trying to grasp this permanent sense of self, that is when we are left with the question of what is left? I believe this is an important contemplation. It is the contemplation of an open hand as opposed to a closed fist.