Fairness and Justice

In societies in which there is one overarching world view, fairness and justice are complex issues. Interpretations of the law, in Judaism, always include the minority opinion, a way of saying that fairness and justice are contingent, not absolute, principles.

In a society in which there is multiplicity of perspectives and world views, different views compete and fairness and justice can become functions of power.

Spiritual practice goes nowhere if it follows this path. Everything gets lost in interpretation, conceptual thinking, unacknowledged prejudice and bias, etc.

In spiritual practice, we have to dispense completely with appeals to justice and fairness, precisely because they are open to interpretation and dependent on position. And if we claim access to a higher truth, we are, in effect, claiming the power and the right to decide for others.

Aside: I dislike and avoid the notion that spiritual truth is a higher truth, in terms of society and the world, etc. Spiritual practice is based on a principles that run counter to many principles of society. To claim that spiritual practice is a "higher truth" is another form of prejudice. Instead, I have to acknowledge that the principles on which I base my decisions are different from the principles that a person in a social context may base his or her decisions.

I now rarely try to persuade people to adopt a specific perspective, Buddhist or otherwise. Rather, I seek to help them find what is true for them in the world they experience. As we explore this together, appeals to justice or fairness are almost always stories that hide or protect unacknowledged hurts or pains. As they open to those pains, people frequently find clarity on their own and know what to do, not because it is "fair" or "just" or "right" (these are, in the end, somewhat childish motivations), but because, when everything, inside and out, is included in awareness, often only one course of action is indicated — the direction of the present, to use Uchiyama's phrase.

In other words, the illusion of choice is an indication of a lack of freedom.

clarifying oranges and deities

Three words that, clearly, should not be in the same sentence together.

An email exchange prompted by an earlier post.

The question:  

Dear Mr. McLeod, I greatly value your teaching but found the latest email about concentration not being meditation a bit odd. My experience with both shamatha and (even more so) deity practice is that they are unequivocally concentration practices. Yes it's important to drop any sense of undue struggle or will but the whole point at least for a long while is to drop (but not supress) thoughts that distract one from focus on the object and return to it. There is a clear preference for one object over all others and an ever clearer preference for concentration over distraction. What am I missing?  

And the reply:  

I'm not sure you are missing anything. My aim was to move people away from trying to bind the mind to the object by force of will and toward bringing about stable attention by resting with the object (or more accurately, in the experience of the object). This particularly applies to deity practice. Here, one is not actually focusing on an object, but resting in the sense of being the deity. All kinds of internal voices rise up against this (we experience these as distractions). Concentration tends to lead people in the direction of suppressing those voices, creating tension in the system, which undermines stability in attention. Resting in the whole experience allows the emotional material driving those voices to be experienced, releasing the emotional tension, and thus the distractions, and now one can rest more completely as the deity. This way of practicing is not what most people usually understand from the word "concentration".

Concentrate is what we do to oranges

Several times now, I've had occasion to meet with groups of practitioners whose practice is based on focusing attention on an object or observing thoughts and sensations or watching the breath. They frequently report difficulty, a kind of catch 22: either the effort they make in concentration works against stability or they lose clarity when they try to relax. They are usually trying to control their experience, to make it conform to certain expectations of how meditation should be.

All forms of practice that involve such effort, i.e., "I am doing something", inevitably reinforce that sense of separation from experience that arises as "I".

A monk sat meditating in the courtyard of a monastery.

"What are you doing?" asked the abbot.

"Meditating to attain enlightenment," replied the monk.

The abbot sat down beside him, picked up stone, and started to polish it with his robe. After a while, the monk's patience ran out.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Making a glass tile," replied the abbot.

"You can't make a glass tile by polishing a stone."

"Nor can you reach enlightenment by meditating."

Part of the problem is the word concentration. It has, unfortunately, become an accepted translation for the Sanskrit samadhi, a choice that was made about 100 years ago before many Westerners had much experiential understanding of Buddhism. And it sets up expectations, always a problem in meditation practice.

Samadhi denotes a deep level of attention, usually accessed through some form of meditation. In samadhi, it is said that the mind joins with the object of attention. But this union is not brought about by concentration on the object. That just squeezes the mind. It comes about by resting in the experience of the object.

When I suggest in these groups that, instead of concentrating or observing or watching, they just rest and open to what arises, they have a very different experience. The sense of "I" subsides naturally and they come to rest in experience, not separate from it.

We truly rest only when there is no enemy: we include everything that arises in experience, excluding nothing. We have to build the capacity to do this, of course, but we can build that capacity through resting and opening, not concentrating or focusing.

Catch 22

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," Yossarian observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

The Stones Stand Cold

Sisyphus is tired.

Too clever by half, inevitably

He draws the gods' revenge.

Things are the way they are

For a reason.

But he never learns.

Teachers teach.

And they all agree

A quiet colloquy may be desired, maybe needed.

But the fire calls them

To their calling

And they go.

The stones stand cold

As he waits,

Angry and alone.

And the gods have their revenge.

Evolution and Buddhahood

Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. 'You forget,' said the Devil, with a chuckle, 'that I have been evolving too.'
— William Ralph Inge

When I read about the stages of practice and buddhahood in Tibetan texts, I come away with the sense that there is some ideal state to which all paths of practice converge. One finds elaborate descriptions of various stages, culminating in the final attainment of buddhahood. At the same time, I haven't seen any evidence for such a convergence, whether in the various teachers with whom I've studied, my own practice, or the countless hours I've spent with students.

Instead, I've come to appreciate that things just evolve. What went before shapes what follows. One can often and easily trace how a person's way of experiencing life has evolved out of family and childhood experiences. At the same time, something new and unsuspected can arise at any time. Education, social interactions, finding a life partner and other events introduce different strands that mix with what is already there and influence the way we develop. It's rich, it's complex, it can be utterly amazing, and it can be utterly dismaying. Sometimes what happens is all too predictable and sometimes it's completely unexpected.

The Middle Way, not falling into extremes, captures, very simply and very wonderfully, this complexity. We are not just body or just mind; things are neither ordered nor chaotic; the universe is neither one nor many, and so on.

The implications for practice are profound. Systems of practice such as the Path of Purity in the Theravadan tradition or the Graded Path texts in the Tibetan traditition lay out stages of development, types of practitioners, what practices are suitable for whom and when. These are extraordinary collections of the wisdom and experience of masters over the ages, but we can easily feel that something is wrong with us if we don't recognize our experience or can't fit ourselves into those descriptions.

We need to remember one thing: there is no such thing as normal. Normality is an average and no one is actually the average. All classification schemata are after the fact, seeking to ascribe an order to the chaos and complexity of evolution. Such schemata necessarily average things, but there are always aspects of experience that don't fit or lie at one or other extreme of the bell curve.

There are general principles in spiritual practice, just as there are general principles in evolution theory. But each plant, each organism grows its own way, and we need to respect that we, too, will grow our own way.

The Buddhist concept of causality reflects this sense of evolution. It's based on the notions of genesis and conditions. Just as an acorn is the genesis of an oak tree, the genesis of awakening in us is the very awareness that is present in experience. Just as an acorn requires water, warmth, nourishment, and shelter to begin its evolution into an oak tree, we need to provide the conditions for attention, awareness, and presence to grow and evolve in our own lives.

And how we evolve is how we evolve.

...somewhere behind the most universal comprehension there must be an individual mind...
Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, page 508

We generally think of spiritual practice, and the training it involves, as something we learn from a teacher, a community or a tradition, or some combination of these three. We study texts and teachings. We are taught the particulars of practice, or a particular practice, from someone who is familiar or at least knowledgeable. Our study often includes stories about the struggles, experience, and achievements of others, usually the more famous, the more remarkable, or the more articulate. We are exposed to systems of discipline, systems of practice methods, and systems of philosophy. Our teacher or teachers may require, or we may choose, to discuss our experience with them, formally or informally, and we receive feedback, guidance, suggestions, cautions, etc.

We feel that we are becoming part of something and often forget that every spiritual practice, every teaching, every discourse or explanation began with ONE person's need to come to terms with his or her own experience. It is what worked for him or her, and his experience and understanding is what is being passed down to us.

The task, for each of us, is to ask, "Does this help me to resolve my own questions?"

One way to start is to ask, "For what question about the experience of life is this teaching an answer?" — a spiritual version of Jeopardy, if you wish.

We can begin with the usual suspects, basic meditation, death and impermanence, karma, and then move on to more subtle ones, such as bodhicitta (awakening mind), the two truths (apparent and ultimate), the two kinds of non-self (individual and experience), etc. Rather than give you my thoughts, please add your thoughts about these questions in the comments below.

We generally find that the questions we come up with are universal questions, in the sense that they have been asked for as long as history records (and probably longer). Each of the practices and teachings is how one person came to terms with that question. Maybe others find his or her answer or way of answering helpful, but not everyone, as we have so many different approaches.

The other day I watched Bab Aziz: the prince who contemplated his soul. It's a beautiful movie about a Sufi wandering in the desert with his grand-daughter. The movie opens with this quotation:

There are as many ways to God as there are souls on the earth.

And that is where I close.

Is your hair on fire?

Practice like your hair is on fire!

A traditional aphorism, which probably goes back to Buddhism in India. Gelek Rinpoche makes it the theme of his recent article in Buddhadharma. And it shows up in the Zen tradition and elsewhere.

One meaning, obviously, is to make full use of this fleeting human experience to wake up. But there are two assumptions here: the experience of being human is but one of many and waking up is the highest purpose of life.

How do approach practice if you don't buy one or other of these assumptions?

Another interpretation is that this phrase expresses the kind of totally awake clarity that one is aiming for in practice. Again, there is an assumption, namely, that this level of attention is to be sustained for long periods, if not indefinitely.

What happens to a person who is not able to sustain such a level of attention but tries to do so anyway? Frequently, he or she tries harder and harder, growing tighter and tighter, moving further and further out of the balance and rest in which clarity and freedom arise. Eventually, he or she is forced to rest, and then something quite different happens. This recognition can, as it did for Buddha Shakyamuni, lead in a very different direction. Or, a student, broken in body and heart, can just give up, and lapse into a cynical view of spiritual practice.

In traditional settings, students, by and large, had access only to instruction appropriate to their level of ability and practice. Often, students had to be encouraged to practice what they were given.

In today's world, we have access to practice instructions at every level. This access creates a different kind of problem, how to know what practice is appropriate for one's level of understanding, ability, and interest. Anyone who has practiced for any length of time knows that what works at one phase of practice may be counterproductive at another.

The consequence is that, ultimately, we have to take responsibility in determining what to practice when and how to practice it.

So, I put the question very simply: is practicing like your hair is on fire a good way for you to practice?