The Fruits of Knowing

   The interesting thing about learning and knowing is that we often only see the results, and the results don't always convey the process. Well, take, for example, the biopic. Biopics are stories of people's lives that have been made into movies. You can be certain that they've been edited for the consumption of the viewer, and often they are designed to inspire people to do similar things in their lives. One problematic aspect of most biopics is that they don't convey the often mundane or boring waiting moments when one's thoughts are not yet formed and there is a sense of indirection. It's interesting how this works, because when the movie is being scripted, there is a sense of an ending that you don't get when you actually live that experience. At times, when biographers narrate their experiences, they don't distinguish between the experience of "living it but not knowing the outcome" and "standing in the future, looking back, and knowing what it means." Meaning itself happens over multiple time frames which is not often felt when it is actually being lived.
   I wonder if sometimes, the rush to turn our lives into stories can blur the agonizing uncertainty that comes from processing experiences. Processing experiences is never an easy thing, and there is no single interpretation that neatly fits it. Is there really a person "standing over" the experience who understands it all along (the omnipotent narrator), even when the felt experience contains no such certainty?
   The confusion that I feel is that of wondering if there is a controlling narrator to one's life story. For some, it's God that makes sense of stories, because the divine creator ensures a place where our book has a binding, a specific shelf in the library, and a beginning, middle and end. In the absence of such a sense of a creator, we write our own stories, with the faith that the stories make coherent sense. As one reaches the end of one of life's chapters, one can neatly wrap up the previous experiences, narrating a single overriding theme to it. But what happens when, in a person's journey, there is no theme at all? In those situations, where do we go? Can the desire to find a controlling theme sometimes be a source of suffering? Perhaps we need to go beyond stories themselves to find the answers.

Golden Ages

 Reading Gulliver's Travels, I get a sense of a writer who was deeply nostalgic for antiquity, particularly when the narrator laments the loss of 'vigor' which had characterized the early Greeks and Romans. It's been a common complaint that people have lost their vitality across generations, thus spawning a theory of the degeneration of character, as well as a longing for a time when character was stronger and more robust. Even some Buddhist suttas such as the Cakkravarti Sutta talk about times when people start to 'degenerate' in appearance and lifespan, due to previous negative karma that is played out across generations.
   Is this theory correct and true? Somehow, I think it's constructed from an assumption about what is right and good about people, and it's always based on a context. We can never really go back in time to see how people were, for even if we could do this, we would be basing our experiences on what we have already experienced up to that point. In a sense, there is never going back to an original point where human nature is 'pure', because this purity itself is a construction based on a notion of impurity. I sometimes think that with Buddhist sutras, the notion of a Dharma ending age is more serving to warn people to stay on their practice and read sutras, rather than referring to an actual point in history. In fact, one can say that Dharma ending ages can happen several times in a person's life, depending on the obstacles one encounters.
    Is there such a thing as a golden age, then? I think that the golden age is the promise that is always present to have a peaceful mind. It seems to arise not from the past but is always present in someone's psyche, as a kind of promise of what already is, but hasn't been realized.

Inner Strength

 I find that often, I am not able to see what resources I have in me unless there is some dire situation arising. I have heard stories about mothers who have been able to lift cars in order to save their children, yet would not have mustered such strength under any other circumstances. Why is this? Is it because the mind and body are only able to be strong during moments of distress? I think a more reasonable explanation for this phenomena is that risky situations can force people to focus their priorities, and thus muster the strength to push through perceived barriers or limitations. It's not the risk or danger itself which forces a person to do this, but rather, the heightened sense of loss can often induce a state of focus and being in the moment that is rarely found in the mundane or everyday.

 I have on and off been wondering: can such a state of focus be induced in everyday life? I believe that the answer is yes, but it requires a certain kind of disciplined positive-ness. What I mean by this is the ability to hem in one's distracting thoughts and desires, and to be more focused on the things one has which matter to them, such as health and friends. I have heard that in ancient Roman times, there was a way of achieving such a state of intentional gratitude, by reflecting on a state that is less advantageous than one's present state. If one meditates deeply enough on a dire situation, they may foster a kind of enforced gratitude toward what they are able to enjoy here and now. The other advantage to this approach is that it lessens the distracting influences of desires.

  My other point is that too many desires can sap the ability to enjoy what one presently has. It can be all to alluring to reflect on the many attractions in the world, including future ambitions, position, status, fame, and the like, but doing so excessively can lead one to feel empty. The opposite tendency might involve being able to contemplate a less desirable situation, and to bring it to bear upon what we are fortunate enough to do now. This kind of exercise is important because it can turn our perceived deficiencies into actual strengths. But at the end of the day, one should also be aware that even these perceptions are created by the mind. There is no such thing as an "ultimately" disadvantaged position, so these exercises are more importantly enabling a person to be more present with who they are and what they have.

Images of Self and Others

   The sharing of our meditation group tonight was around the topic of how deep-seated emotions can be faced using meditative practice, particularly when one has certain deeply ingrained, instantaneous judgments about what is happening in a situation. It somehow reminded me of when I was in my early 20s as an undergraduate, and was experiencing different kinds of emotions and reactions around the different people I had been meeting at the time. One of the issues that everyone has to face at some time or another is the role that their own emotions can play, as well as how others might react towards me.
   No matter how much we might contribute Buddhist theories and phenomenology to the study of appearances and how ideas shape our views of others, the intersubjective realm can easily become sticky and tricky. I am not only interacting with you but also with your images of me, and my image of you as well. When all of these things are put together, there is a confused mess of things to sort out, because we are seeing both the image of the person and our own projected desires and hopes on that person. I would say that the best one can do as a practitioner is not to identify too much with any thoughts or emotions that are tending to arise here. No matter whether one has pleasant or unpleasant thoughts, there is nobody standing to gain or lose from any of the transactions of daily life, as these transactions are only temporary. In that sense, one can choose to have fun with it, knowing that our images of each other are really creations of the mind which can be changed or shaped at any given time.
   If the thought of your boss or supervisor angers you, is it the actual supervisor or boss who "makes" you angry? Not really, because what triggers the suffering is not the person but the image that lingers in our mind which one relates to that person. Knowing and clearly reflecting on this, one can relax with the person, because they are no longer confusing their thoughts with an enduring self.

Volition in Buddhism

 After the evening meditation tonight, we watched a video regarding the role of volition in the 12 links of conditioned arising. I started to wonder, is there truly such a thing as free will in Buddhism? One of the participants was sharing that only the Buddha has total free will, as otherwise we are all influenced by our conditioning. I reflect now that this kind of conditioning need not be seen as a form of despair. For instance, going to the meditation center may be to a certain degree 'conditioned' by one's previous encounters or readings of Buddhist or spiritual teachings in general. However, these very same conditions become reasons for bringing a person closer to liberation. In this sense, we follow the conditions that are most conducive to that liberation, until liberation becomes a foreseeable possibility. It isn't that one 'gains' liberation, but one is turned around to the extent that they no longer see the necessity of posing a 'free' self over and against the rest of the world. And in that moment, there is no attachment to gain or loss.
    Seeing that there is no singular 'free will' can be in itself an interesting experience, because doing something no longer means having to muster the 'will power' to do it. Undertaking any task simply involves arranging conditions so that they are most favorable to the task you want to accomplish. Just before I started writing this blog entry, I had no idea what I was going to write! However, somehow, I created the conditions, such as giving myself a timeline to get the writing done, opening my computer, signing into blogger, etc. Eventually, after asking myself for a topic, my mind alighted upon the recent discussion in the meditation hall. Without all of these conditions joined together at a point in time, this article you are reading would not have been completed in the form in which you are seeing it. Looking at it from this perspective, there isn't a single will that is moving anything. It is more the confluence of motivations, associations, and cognitions that come together at the right time, forming the sentences.
   This isn't to say that effort is not involved in what one does. But it is to suggest, rather, that there are many things behind what we do, and this interdependence is very interesting to watch. Seeing one's actions in this way, there is less anxiety to do things frantically or without consideration for the causes that make it work a certain way.

Do First, Enjoy Later

I find that when I am in a rush to go to class in the evenings, I will wonder what I am doing it all for. But when I am in the class itself, something happens. If I am participating in the class regularly, I get a sense of mirroring and connection. I don't know if it even has anything to do with the subject matter itself, but somehow I believe that all these classes are opportunities to develop affinities based on shared interests. This is not unimportant. There  is a kind of emotional currency that happens when people share honestly and deeply from their heartfelt efforts, which in itself is a kind of blessing or merit of sorts.
   What I really wanted to stress, however, is how enjoyment of something often (perhaps unfortunately, in some cases) only really happens after one steps in the door as it were. If I am pondering or debating about whether to do something or not, then I have lost connection with the reality that we never really know what we like until we are doing something, or are engaged in it. The classic example of where this goes wrong is that of waiting for the surplus vacation time to do something you've been wanting to do for quite some time. I have found that in most cases, these times proved most unproductive at all, because I have lost sight of the fact that what we do with our time in the future is often dependent on the conditions we are sowing in the present. In putting off what I think I want to do for some future time, I will often end up cutting off the momentum that is necessary to jump-start the process. Action never takes place in a void, and it's perhaps a myth to say that freeing up time will initiate things.

Positive

I feel as though the times in my life when I am most wanting to be positive are the times when I didn't feel I had much choice but to do so. I think this is the true positivity, which is knowing very clearly what you have to offer and what limitations you have to work with. It's not something that is just contrived or based on any number of possibilities, but it's something that is close to the ground.
   I have recently felt a pain in my foot, for which I have sought a lot of treatment, even though I don't know the source of it. It's taken a while for me to get used to how to move in it, and to let go of my worries about what the pain could be. One of the things it's forced me to do is to question whether my beliefs are really productive ones, or whether they might just be going against my interests. If I think of the worst case scenario, I start to imagine all sorts of possibilities that aren't necessarily real at all, and I am not even prepared to entertain such possibilities. Instead of thinking how this change is a disadvantage compared to in the past, I can start to ask myself: how can I work with this now, and who will help me through it? In fact, these are the things that are precisely being taught in the proseminar course at OISE, which is how to survive a PhD. Could the same principles of surviving the PhD also apply to life in general?
   There are parallels between PhD and "life in general", in the sense that they are both mysterious projects which at times have no foreseeable outcome or end. The despair one feels at the beginning of that project is the task of defining one's purpose and commitments, particularly around the things that are of most interest and to which one can contribute some meaningful information to the community.  But there will also be setbacks along the way that are just plain unforeseeable, because you are working in the middle of creation, which always entails risks and uncertainty. In that sense, the PhD might be a kind of condensed version of the kinds of uncertainties and 'forks in the road' that can play out in the stretch of a lifetime, unbeknownst to us.
   To go back to my original point, it seems that positivity is always a response to challenge. To simply be positive without a challenging limitation or obstacle may be a bit redundant, because the positive heart and attitude probably needs to speak to something that is not necessarily positive. I remember someone joking about this, when he said that if he lost his job, he wouldn't feel that positive about the watch he is wearing on his wrist. Why not? Because the positive attitude can't just sideskirt the challenging situation. It needs to connect with the challenge in a way that it sees it in a completely new light that is refreshing and workable. If I lose something that is dear to me, an attitude of ignoring that loss would not be a genuine positive experience: it would be a kind of blunting of the senses and mind through denial.. So the positive always needs to ground itself in something that feels a bit challenging.