Not Knowing What's Next

It’s interesting how I feel that I have been privileged with a lot of uncertainty: not ever knowing for certain what I would be doing in 5-10 years, and yet learning to accept that this is always going to be the case. Still, it’s good to have a direction or a reminder to oneself as to why one is doing what one does, especially when embarking on bigger projects. I have found the Buddhist perspective on making vows to be useful in this regard, because vows are not hooked to concrete, absolute plans. They are more like what one does when swimming in an ocean: it’s just moving through the conditions with the intent of a certain direction or orientation, without knowing what waves are going to arise next, or even if there is going to be a tidal wave.

What is the faith that keeps a person going in these situations? I don’t have an answer to this, but I think that it’s important to let go of attachment to ‘finishes’. Nothing ever completely finishes, in fact, but everything has something through which one can learn. If opportunities are being used to connect and dissolve artificial boundaries that people put up, then there is no need to cling to the future result or feel regret if the ‘final’ goal is not achieved. This is perhaps one of the hardest challenges that I have to face in terms of my outlook on life, because I often want to have clear-cut answers when there are none. I want to know where I ‘best’ fit, but sometimes it’s in the ‘mis-fitting’ that I find the deepest lessons, including how to be compassionate toward those who ‘don’t fit’, which is pretty much the whole of humanity. I do want to be able to swim with the flow of things, but I am aware that even in myself there are going to be difficult emotions and obstacles that may be beyond my control. At best, the contemplative approach allows me to be present and not shift between extremes of wanting to escape and feelings of despair.

The Life and Death Feeling

    I recall reading many years ago about Jean-Paul Sartre, and how his most lucid moments in life occurred when he was facing life and death, particularly while part of the French Resistance in the Second World War. I have never experienced such a harrowing situation before, and am glad for it in a way, but I can understand what happens to a person when they are in extreme anxiety and uncertainty. One of the things that happens is that time seems to slow down almost to the point of stopping, and one can easily lose sight of what is really dangerous and what isn't. It's as though any minor explosion or sound becomes a major, life-threatening signal to run for cover. While Sartre celebrated the emotion as an affirmation of freedom (that is, the barebones sensation of existing, without the baggage of the past), I can't help but feel that the mind is easily confused in these moments, thinking that things are a danger when they are not so dangerous.
    It makes me wonder, is the sensation of life-or-death really a form of mental liberation, or is it attachment? I think that it's more likely than not attachment to a feeling or a mood. It's quite true, as Sartre suggests, that moments of danger can bring people very close to the 'facticity' of their being, stripped away of frivolous or irrelevant notions of self and identity which arise from one's past conditioning. In that sense, a lot of vexations can start to drop away when danger puts one in the present moment. On the other hand, I can't help but feel that too many stress signals or traumatic episodes can foster new and more problematic attachments, particularly if one is not in a position to see them in their proper proportions. Too much 'life and death' can prolong a groundless attitude that one is constantly in danger and therefore must constantly be on guard, as though one has created a permanent identity based on the emotion of fear itself.
     Perhaps I am talking about two different kinds of attachments here. One is based on attachment to habits, while the other is the more fundamental habit of fear of losing the self by losing one's body. Perhaps the latter was so exhilarating to Sartre precisely because it touches the one fundamental attachment that leads to the others, offering a possibility of transcending that attachment through insight and experience.

Not Really Controllable

  The more that I explore lesson planning, the more I can respect the difference between 'plan to' and 'the result', which are often completely different. It often happens to me when I am confident in an idea, only to find that when I start to put it on paper or design a presentation, it doesn't quite come out so elegantly. What do I do in cases like that? Well, one thing is to keep at it and persist until I find a solution or a structure that makes sense. Perhaps doing some research will help me to see what others have done, and be able to model their work. But failing that, it's sometimes better to step away from the planning process for a while, since it must mean that the ideas haven't fully ripened yet, or there may need to be other elements that are not yet in place. It's interesting for me to observe that I often persist in doing something well, only to realize that I am not fully in control of the process at all, and I can tell that I am becoming too tied up in conflicting thoughts about how the lesson plan should go.
That's when I really need to find other ways to tackle it and rest from it for the time being.
    When I look at this more from the perspective of mindfulness, I have to ask myself, what's really going on here? The problem seems to be that the mind is caught in entangling thoughts: trying to predict what will happen in the future, then not quite having an idea of how to handle the situation. When my mind is so attached to having a good result or a certain idea, it's no longer free to take in other ideas that might expand the plan or even take it in a different direction. Not only this, but also the anxiety to get something done quickly (and attachment to the finished result) prevent me from enjoying the process and being open to new surprises. I have fixated on something, thinking that it will be the key for me to be successful in every lesson, when in fact there is no such key. Each lesson plan is quite different and has a different feeling and atmosphere to it, so sometimes it's better to open up and be curious to where this lesson will lead me, rather than trying to push it in some way to work.
      I see the analogies between this process and meditation. Even though it's said that all thoughts are created by the mind, sometimes it might be taken too literally to mean that we shape our thoughts rather than recognizing that thoughts are often the result of previous karma. Meditation is not about sitting and trying to create thoughts, but it's more so about having awareness to recognize their created nature. There seems to be a subtle but very important difference here. In the example of active creation, we are said to sculpt or shape thoughts to our own desires, but in the second case, we are receiving thoughts as natural results of causes and conditions but not getting attached to them. I treat the thought as a guest, but I don't get so attached to the guest that I lose sight of awareness altogether. Similarly, this seems to be a good approach to lesson planning--trying out different ideas but not getting so attached to them that one is consumed by making them work or fit one's desired result.

Teaching Without Knowing

Teaching young people is interesting because it makes me realize that there is not too much in life that I can plan. Kids can really be the best teachers because we don’t know what their moods are going to be from one day to the next, or whether they are truly up to ‘learning’ whatever it is that I plan for them to learn. It is also a lesson in humility, because even though I might rehearse in my mind what I expect to happen, it never quite turns out that way that I planned. I even have moments, especially with Grade 4s who are much older than primary school students, that my plans are quite trivial compared to what really happens in the classroom. Often, what I really feel is going to be a ‘hit’ with students can turn out to be something that doesn’t resonate with them at all, or it turns out that the process is not as smooth as I imagine.

I think that the whole point of this process is that I am learning to at least try to be more secure in situations where there is not much that I can cling to in my imagination. To do this requires a kind of trust which I think it akin to the ‘living classroom’, a term coined by the educator Christopher Bache. The  idea of the living classroom is a bit tricky, but it’s a notion that teachers are not the originators of learning, but are rather carried by a kind of group energy that originates in the classroom dynamic itself. In order to sustain that energy, teachers need to be both planful (if there is such a word) and open to what that present moment truly needs. Of course, trying to gauge what the present moment needs is not easy and does not often seem possible considering all of one’s anxieties and wandering thoughts. But I think the idea is that one uses one’s plans not as a fixed template but as a way to engage in a totality that is always moving by mysterious conditions. The teacher’s role is one of only many that are integral to the processes of learning, and knowing this, the teacher sees herself in a different way from the traditional ‘classroom leader’. It is more like giving breathing space for learning in the room to arise in a much more organic way than imagined.

This also seems to mean allowing moments when things don’t seem to work. In times like that, it seems like my humanity really shows, especially my tendency to despair when things aren’t working as I imagine they could or should. But instead of rejecting that ‘humanity’, I might just decide to show it a bit, and even take risks to change the course of the daily plan for the class. After all, this is what humans do: plan, then break plans, then make new ones. And one needn’t have a license to do so!

The Other Side of Tragedy

  When I was in high school, tragedy typically was presented as the 'fall from grace', such as through Shakespeare's Macbeth or Othello. There was even a very specific way in which tragedy was taught and presented--as a kind of cycle, where the protagonist has everything, only to succumb to the darker sides of fear, suspicion and mistrust. The natural cycle is often portrayed as something that is disturbed when the main character steps out of line of their proper place and role. I wonder if the emphasis on tragic plays in high school was not somehow serving as a warning to students not to do things out of a sense of greed and craving, but more so out of a sense of honor and self-respect.
   Fast forward to another time, such as in one's middle age , and I believe that tragedy is not looked upon this way anymore. Why not? It's because there is a point where I start to reflect that life is not all about striving and gain, or position and status, or honor and dishonor. There are just certain things in life that are just built into the process of living, such as ageing and death, which don't fall under the categories of 'gain' and 'loss'--they just are, and no amount of striving will change this suchness of those things. In the face of that, there is no way to use the traditional motif of tragedy to describe what happens as people age or become ill. These experiences transcend gain and loss, and they teach us the very basic things that are taken for granted over the span of a life.
   Even from a Buddhist perspective, I wonder if the view of tragedy might change to something that is more universal: the suffering experienced as a sentient being cannot be avoided. But in facing the reality of suffering, one can embrace that reality rather than trying to avoid it at all costs. In doing so, one takes the greatest risk of all, to accept that there is no secure and enduring body anywhere. But it also means that compassion is everywhere, because there is no one who is immune to the concerns of living.
   

"Spectral" Thinking

  Some of my favorite thinkers when it comes to 'thought' itself include David Burns, David Bohm and Alfred Korzybski. What I most appreciate about these thinkers is that they specialize in a kind of metacognition: ways to think "about" thought itself which go beyond traditional ways in which we are taught to think, such as through problem solving exercises or the command to 'concentrate'. If there is one thing which characterizes all three, it's that they try to steer away from thoughts which polarize into fixed categories. Burns refers to this habit of polarizing as 'all or nothing' thinking, while Bohm has described mind as a field instead of a space of fixed qualities and characteristics. Korzybski also rejects the Aristotelian emphasis on a fixed identity, arguing instead that the "A" I thought was true has since then changed as a result of many conditions. Korzybski even makes me wonder whether two points in time could ever be compared, given that the conditions that act upon them may be radically different from each other.
   Korzybski's work suggests that one of the deepest and most malignant sources of conflict is that of trying to take two things which appear to be the same in space or in time, and trying to stuff them into one category which simply cannot apply to both. I may behave one way in one situation, but it's never a guarantee that I can stay this way given other factors. Conflict arises when I confuse my present conditions with the previous ones, and thus give rise to a belief that I should 'return' to the previous state in order to be happy. In fact, I am positive that many philosophies have arisen from this false struggle to achieve a Golden Age that actually never really was golden. It is like feeling nostalgic for yesterday's dropped ice cream, under the false belief that there is a way to preserve it eternally as it is, without the effects of nature, heat or weather.
      What I also admire about these thinkers is their ability to think "spectrally"; that is, to see that thinking is always a process deeply rooted in relative conditions and lies on a spectrum rather than extremes. Thinking is not a pristine category of doing, but it has its roots in lived experiences such a long walks, meditation, preparing food, eating food, and so on. Under the conditions of messy, lived experience, it's unrealistic to try to achieve the 'best' thoughts imaginable, given that all thoughts come from a subjective and impermanent existence. Yet, it's worthwhile to put thinking on the table, knowing that thoughts can often evolve into something that is useful to others. Not clinging to 'good' or 'bad' as categories can let go of the tendency to judge ones thoughts, and thus allow a more free-flowing exchange of ideas, which can prove to be quite fruitful.

Grace

    Reading Gerald May's Addiction and Grace again, I am lead to rediscover why I love his writings. May explores in this book how addictions (and cravings in general) offer a kind of narrow margin of freedom to see past suffering through states of grace. Writes May, "We are dependent upon grace for liberation from our addictions, but those very addictions impair our receptivity to grace. The message may not sound like good news. Yet God creates and cares for us in such a way that our addictions can never completely vanquish our freedom." (p.18) While May writes from a Christian perspective and context, I am often thinking that the notion of grace can enter into many contemplative perspectives. It has a quality of versatility because of its relationship to the mind in times of turmoil and struggle.
     What is the relationship between craving (desire) and grace? This isn't an easy question to answer. I recall that Master Sheng Yen has written about the human realm being one of passions and ideals, and desire might be included as part of that. Without the struggle of desires, many people would not bother to embark on any spiritual practice--it is as though there are not enough thorns in their path that they would consider themselves doing so. But I think that the relationship between desire and grace might be deeper than that. Craving seems to be a distorted reflection of an ideal and mature sort of surrender, and often craving for small things is a tiny reflection of greater aspirations. To take a very mundane example, the craving for coffee in the morning is not just about a substance, but it is often about the kind of life one wishes to have given the energetic spike that coffee provides. I could give up the energy of coffee, but perhaps at the expense of the aspiration to do more in the mornings, as well as do things with enthusiasm and zeal. These kinds of cravings are distorted, in the sense that they don't reflect the ideal state of body and mind that could come with proper practice and exercise. Yet, for brief moments, they provide substitutes in the form of short cuts.
   Grace seems to be the free giving of a state of liberation which is the birthright of all beings. I can't describe it, but it's that fleeting experience of 'you're already home wherever you are', and there is simply no need for a gimmick or a mind trick to take one there. It is the acceptance, in love, of who one is, precisely in this moment, that seems to be a hallmark of grace, and that acceptance is what allows me to see cravings as the distorted wish for that acceptance. Grace takes a person out of the idea that they are conditioned to be loved by the presence of certain things around them, and into the realization of their always being loved and lovable by some higher being or universe.
  

May, Gerald ( 1988 ) Addiction and Grace. New York: Harper and Row