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.

Bless You!

 Blessing is usually thought to be something that comes from someone else, but I just learned recently that to be blessed is more like a decision that a person can make in this moment. Having an attitude of abundance really helps. I worry that there is "not enough work" to do, when in fact, there is always something as long as my mind opens up to the challenges around me. I have cultivated the habit of not saying no to a person's request at work--and especially, not giving it to someone else to work out or figure out. And what results from this is that more people come to me with questions, because they know that I do my best to answer them and I don't turn people away. This is about not only feeling blessed with a challenge but having the mindset of wanting to bless others in the process.

Scarcity mindset is thinking there is not enough of something: time, energy, stuff to do, purpose, meaning etc. But I think the antidote is to slow down and reflect that that there is always enough, because we are enough. I have enough because I feel I am enough, and with that mindset, I feel abundance in everything. On the other hand, if I always feel a deep void or an empty spot within, nothing I will do, consume or feel is going to cover up that void. The root problem is not checking in to feel that one is enough, and one does not need anything else to feel that they are "enough". This is the mindset of feeling already blessed without a sense of needing to strive for something more.

The Meaning of "Retreat"

   The other day, I was reflecting on the work situation that I am currently going through, as I transition to a mysterious new chapter in my career. I received the hexagram from the I Ching related to retreat, called Tun. It had to do with the idea of retreating away from something difficult and painful, to take stock of what I have rather than to take action. Is retreat always a kind of defeat of sorts? I am sure that this has militaristic terms, but it also has spiritual connotations, as when we say we are "going on retreat". It entails the ability to pool one's own spiritual resources and thereby prevent them from dwindling. It furthermore suggests a storage of energy that is protected from distractions or making rash decisions at the spur of the moment.

   Sometimes, the only thing a person can do is wait--but this waiting I am referring to is not the anxious quality of waiting for something to happen, but more so a quieter sense of dropping all anticipation of easy closure. Whenever I have been stuck in very long meetings, I give myself the mental trick of believing that the meeting will go on much longer than I expected, which then gives me time to settle into the moment and drop the anticipation of a quick finish. This kind of waiting is a commitment to being present rather than a waiting for as when we wait to be at the beginning of the line.

   Retreat can also mean that I don't try to solve situations on my own. Recently, I have found a tendency within myself to press forward and come to an easy or quick resolution, perhaps because I am so used to many things being done quickly in order to get to something else. But sometimes, some part of me just tells me to wait longer until the conditions ripen. Maybe the plans I am making at work are not the way forward for me, but are just ways to stave off the anxiety of not having a plan. But this is more to reflect, do we always need to have a plan? Maybe there is a way that happens independently of one's plans.

Being OK with Everything, Like OK Buddha

  One of the most interesting parables I heard of was of a king who wants to cover the world with grass because he hates walking on the hard ground with bare feet. He is gifted with a pair of slippers. I know that either I am hopelessly mangling the story but the idea I wanted to convey is that wisdom does not try to "change the world". Instead, it learns to meaningfully accommodate and flow with the cause and conditions. And that means having to wrestle with the diversity of voices and images we are bombarded with throughout our lives, such as not feeling good enough and so on.

   When the world makes people feel inadequate, not good enough and so on, there is a tendency to try to fill an imaginary void that we have inside of us. We truly begin to believe we are inadequate, so we need to fill our emptiness. And stopping that means accepting the possibility that others won't see us the way we want to be seen. This is OK. Because the images we are experiencing are only possibilities, only phenomena, and they don't have power over us unless we endow them with such. The 'gift of slippers' or sandals (or whatever) represents the ability we have to calm our minds in the face of the darkest images we have of ourselves--to even embrace the sense of inadequacy we might have as both conventionally real and ultimately unreal. In this way, our anxieties are fleeting and impermanent.