I started writing this nearly three weeks ago, but had a bit of an interruption. I was invited on a trip that was supposed to be 2 days long and agreed to go. The two day trip turned into a two week journey, however, and so it put some other things on hold. It was a really good trip though, with lots of adventures as well as an opportunity to spend 24/7 with three monks who all spoke English and were able to talk to me about their philosophy as we drove along.
I will tell more about the trip later as I would like to get this posted and I don’t want to lengthen it a great deal more; it’s already a bit lengthy. However, the ideas that I wrote about here were discussed much more along the way and I had an opportunity to experience an understanding of them in a deeper way as the days went on. It makes such a difference to experience something, or to be able to learn within a context that provides both a backdrop and a foundation for the ideas. I’m afraid that my brief explanations below are a bit inadequate for the task set to them. However, it seems helpful for me to try to put some thoughts together in this way, so I’ll go ahead and do it and hope that it doesn’t do any harm to anyone… J
My days here at the temple are coming to an end
as well. It is hard to believe that I have been here five months now and I only
have a week before I leave for Bangkok and head for home. I have been asking
myself why I am leaving here, as in many ways it has started to feel like home
and I have come to realize more of the significance of what is happening in
this place and what it is about. However, there is so much at home and there
are so many people that I respect and care for; it seems that it’s time to come
back.
I also have been asking myself if it was all
worthwhile. Did I find what I was looking for, solve or resolve anything, find
something to bring back and make a difference with? Will I seem to be any
different, or have any more answers than when I left? I’m not sure really. The
answer to all of these questions seems to be both “yes” and “no” – in the way
of things here where there are no absolutes and it is all about that that is
beyond “yes” and “no”… “There is no need to make a difference in the world”, “of
course you are different – you are always changing”, “there is nothing to solve
or resolve, don’t worry”. “Everything is already OK.” … so many words and ideas
and they will take time to integrate and find their ways of expression in a new
context. However, I am thankful for the richness of experience that has been
offered to me here and the great kindness and generosity that has been
expressed by the all of the people I have met and been with. I have been very
blessed over these past months!
Remembering what happened last time when I
returned I am also somewhat worried. Will the transition prove to be so very
difficult again? I think it will be much different and better this time. If not,
though, there are many things that I understand better now that will help to
get me through...
Here are a few of those things, and the thoughts
and learning that have been going on over the past couple of months.
A question to ask one's self, I suppose, is who,
and what, do I think I am? The answer to this question
can change a lot of things. Here at the temple, the answer is that there is no
"me" in the sense of a continuing self. "I" am basically a wave, travelling through changes of
form that we call life and death,
carrying characteristics and results of past actions forward with "me". This life is one small blip on an
endless line, one role in an endless line
of performances. That's pretty hard to accept as "truth", at
least for me, although I've been having
more and more experiences that would seem to verify it as a strong possibility. However, even without
that, I find it impossible to refute the
fact that nothing in this world, including "me"
and "my" thoughts and feelings and desires, are permanent. All of
them change no matter what I do or don't do, and
I will die one day, no matter what I do
or don't do. Endless chain of existence or one life or something else –
that can all be argued one way or another, but the fact of impermanence really
can’t be disputed.
A monk recently told me that all anyone can do is
open the door of "truth" and if people
want to hear it, they will. The "truth" that he spoke of was impermanence and all that stems from it. Here, they
say that "mind" has been
building and continuing through eternity. But mind is not a "thing", it is just a process that happens
without "me" to make it happen.
Descartes was wrong. Thinking does not prove that I exist. Thinking is just a by-product of this movement of
mind. Desires and all feelings are things
that happen "in themselves", without connection or need to be connected to "me". Let thoughts
happen on their own, without trying. Let
go of everything that comes into awareness. Let it fall away, cut away, flush away without forcing or trying
or doing. Thoughts arise, feelings arise,
desires arise. No need to stop them - but
don't follow them or give them attention. "Don't mind, and if you do then don't fixate on it, and if you do, don't worry
about it... and if you still worry then
don't worry about worrying..." There is nothing "wrong" with anything. However,
whatever we attempt to hold will hurt
because it will eventually go.
All of this seems rather distant or unreal, or maybe like
interesting ideas but not something that has any connection with everyday life
until one starts to experience it – and that is what happens here at the
temple. It provides the conditions whereby people slowly (or sometimes quickly
I guess) begin to decompress from all of the pressures and weights that they
are carrying. As this happens, deeper realities naturally begin to rise into
experience. If one stays here long enough, I guess, the ability to stay in this
lighter state of being becomes easier to maintain and one can then go back out
into the world at large and not be so affected by all of the turmoil out there.
However, I haven’t gotten that far yet I don’t think. It does raise the question,
again, of why I am coming back now and not taking this as far as I can. Again…
I don’t know.
We think we are selves, looking for fulfillment
through satisfaction of our desires and needs as these
needs and desires are taught to us by our
culture, parents, and history. We think that we have things to do and problems to solve and issues to deal with and
that it is all terribly important. What if the
only thing that is important is to take the stickiness of importance out of
things – to have more fun with them and be less attached to them?
We think that the problems that we experience and
the relationships that we form all have to do with choices that we make in the
present. What if we have known all of these people before and we are just
meeting again? What if the dramas and trials that we experience have as much or
more to do with patterns and causes from distant times and places as they do
from what we think of as our choices and experience now? In many ways it doesn’t
matter – all we really have is now – but in many ways it can also be helpful.
It helps to explain why it is not so important to focus on the apparent cause of a problem or situation. What we are seeing is old and
the result of what has already occurred. In order to allow new possibilities to
arise, we have to first stop holding on to what has already been by trying to
fix it. Even on the rather surface level of psychology this is true – the repeating issues and dramas with spouses, bosses, children, life situations - all are most often based on patterns that arose early in our lives. We just repeat the patterns of our early learning, thinking we are making new choices and blaming things on new situations and people. Buddhist psychology, and the way of thinking here at
the temple pretty much says the same thing, but takes this idea a bit further.
The idea that we are not the solid selves that we think we are, or
that our existence in this universe is an immensely long string of living and dying,
continuously changing form, probably sounds
pretty farfetched, impossible, or silly. I have been spending quite a bit of energy in resisting believing it since
I've been here. However, the question remains,
what if this is true? Certainly,
impermanence is true. Certainly it is not in my control to determine what happens to this "me". I can
try very hard and work very hard and I
can protect myself or plan my way into or out of some things, but feelings will continue to come without my
asking, thoughts will continue to happen
without my control, my body will age and change,
and I will die. I cannot stop these things. If I have no control over them, can I say that they are
"me"? Perhaps more importantly, regardless of if they are “me”
or not, if I have no control over them, is it productive or useful to be
worried or create further drama about them?
A physicist by the name of Amit Goswami has some interesting
things to say on youtube. There is a movie called “The Quantum Activist” and
there are also some shorter youtube videos. One of them is about “QuantumPhysics and Consciousness”. It’s quite interesting, and clearly and simply
explained I thought. One thing he talks about is something called
subject/object entanglement. In quantum physics the universe is not material at
all, but is a mass of bubbling probability. The reality that we experience is
pulled from this probability field and “made real” by the collective action of
the observers – us perhaps – or perhaps the universe is observing itself… He likens it to MC Escher’s drawing of two hands.
The right hand is reaching from the paper to draw the left and the left is
drawing the right. This is the phenomenon where the observer has something to
do with altering what is observed, which in turn alters the observer, who
further alters what is observed, etc.
Here at the temple they say “Don’t touch it. If it comes into
awareness, OK, but make the touch as light as possible. Let it go”. This seems
to me to be very similar to what Mr. Goswami is saying about the nature of the
universe – the more firmly it is “touched” or observed, the more firmly a
reality is pulled from the field of probability.
On a practical level, we often come up against
problems, thoughts and feelings that we don’t like, things from the past that
continue to haunt or bother us and we wonder what to do with or about them. There
is a huge therapy industry (of which I’ve been a part) that has invented many
different methods of helping with this – some more effective than others. From
the standpoint of what is taught here though, the answer is that there is no “method”
to follow, but just let it go. It is/was
just itself and has no need of analysis or holding or further thought. Let it be itself, without putting the idea of
"you" into it. Why do you think you need to own this problem
or pain or thought or feeling when it is just a temporary phenomenon in a
reality of constant change. Stop trying to keep it and it will change itself.
However, that seems kind of disappointing
perhaps. My mind always comes back to the “but how can I do that?” We are so
conditioned to think that we need to do something to solve the problem. Or I am
at least…
I used to think that these experiences, traumas and problems did, and do, build up
inevitably and that they all had to be
dealt with or they would remain in the stack of "stuff" that would one day come up and bite me. In the confusing
way they have here of always accepting both sides of a dichotomy, I believe
they would say that both of these things are true. If we believe in, and hold
on to, our pain and worries, our desires and disappointments, our problems and
our grief, then they will indeed stack up and become heavier and heavier. If we
learn to let them flow and go then the nature of the universe is to carry them
away like water over a falls – it is always just passing by. If one accepts that the most fundamental basis of this
reality is that things change, and
nothing can be held to, then the "pile of shit" only exists by dint of the will of resistance to
change. Let go of the resistance and it
will take care of itself.
I am coming to understand what happens here in
this place in a different way. There is certainly the aspect of mysticism and
of things that go to places that are generally not known or understood.
However, there is also an aspect of training the brain and mind. In my training
as a counsellor I learned about the way in which memories are stored in
relation to body parts and areas, organs and muscles. Tapping into these areas
can bring up thoughts and feelings long forgotten and often traumatic and help
with releasing and healing them. For me, the idea that they have here of “mind”
being something that is not limited to the brain does not seem so difficult to
accept. There is a whole separate nervous system in the stomach and intestines (the
enteric nervous system) that has nearly as many nerve connections as the brain
(or perhaps as many??). It is its own processing unit. The heart has a magnetic
field that extends beyond the body and places like the heartmath institute are
finding that it too processes information. My own experiences of internal
awareness have sometimes indicated different characteristics, emotions and even
“moods” from different parts of my body, or even different internal organs. No
wonder we feel conflicted sometimes!
An article in the Globe and Mail (Sat. Jan. 26, brought
to me by my mother) was headlined “The Ultimate Class Struggle” and talked
about recent studies showing how the brains of children are affected by
poverty. Actually, the effects are more from lack of parental presence and
care, lower levels of positive stimulation and higher levels of stress, which
is not necessarily poverty related. However, these things tend to be higher in
poor families, according to the article. Making it a class struggle is also a
better headline. Anyway, these things affect the development of the brain and
cause it to adapt to be able to manage in the environment in which it finds
itself. This adaptation is not helpful for school, work, or doing well in life
however. The adaptation to the stresses of the situation shut down some of the
mind’s higher functioning and dulls some abilities to think, perceive, and
react as well as heightening things like reactivity, hypervigilance, attention
deficit and a myriad of behaviour problems. (This kind of information is not
new actually – it is becoming very well documented in research on trauma,
attachment psychology, and the way in which the brain reacts to its
environment, among other fields and areas of research).
The environment at the temple is a complex system
that appears to flow along “effortlessly” and “on its own”. However, it
provides an environment where the brain can begin to heal itself and undo the
effects of stress, trauma and/or other negative adaptations that have come
about in the past.
I have often wondered, as a therapist, how one
could possibly get to the base of the issues that I see when I work with
people. How could one provide a way to help that is more than a band-aid or
that really gets to the base of the problem? I am beginning to understand that
the environment here actually does just that. It provides a space in which the
mind can do what it is built to do – heal itself. This is on a physical level
as well as a cognitive level.
There appear to be much deeper “spiritual things”
happening too, but those are still a matter of individual perception and belief
for me. It is interesting to begin to find ways of tying my experiences here to
ideas and concepts from Western psychology and science however, as well as our
more material oriented way of seeing things.
So, no conclusions and probably not much of
clarity here but thanks for wading your way through it all. If plans stay as
they currently are, I will be on my way to Bangkok on the 16th,
flying to Vancouver on the 20th, and back to Vanderhoof somewhere
between the 21st and 25th… It might take me a while to get used to
having plans again, especially plans that don’t have a tendency to change
rapidly…
Love to all of you,
Todd
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