This short CBS news piece, The science behind pleasure-seeking (after a short ad), adds some interesting color to the process. The curious thing is, however, not all rich people do this. Warren Buffet’s life style is a good example. This report sheds light on that too, in a round about way. This report, although slanted towards the benefits of pleasure, does offer food-for-thought on why some folks pursue pleasure more than others do.

Not surprisingly, the report makes no mention of Buddha’s Second Noble Truth. What a total bummer the truth would be! Naturally, I won’t overlook this most important aspect; especially noteworthy is how the Second Truth ends: Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain. Keep Buddha’s Truths in mind as you listen to (or read the transcript below) this report. You can see, for example, how thinking plays such a large role in life for humans, and why Taoism speaks to its downside. As my favorite passage puts it, thinking that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Frankly, well-being is not connected to pleasure, per se. Although, you could say pleasure does promise us well-being. No wonder Buddha called it “bait”. So why is Warren Buffet an apparent exception to the path of ostentatious wealth that many rich people take? Wealthy people who live simple lives don’t take the bait. By the way, from a symptoms point of view, the fact that wealthy people often continue to up-the-anti, pleasure-wise proves the old cliché ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’. They are the wealthy poor! Shall we pray for them?  ;-)

Transcript

It can be as simple as a sunset, as decadent as a dessert, or as extravagant as a weekend in Paris. But we all have our own little pleasures …

“Chocolate and peanuts! … mmmmm …”
“I’m a Barbie collector. I have, like, over 100 Barbies.”
“I love Mexican food!”
“The rush of cliff jumping, when you’re up in the air, and you’re hoping the water is deep enough, and your heart is beating a thousand miles an hour, and you SPLASH!”

Professor Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, notes that some pleasures are no less than a matter of survival.

“Pleasure is an instantaneous feeling of something good,” Dr. Berns said. “When you teach a bunch of undergraduates and teenagers like I do and I ask them to list the things that give them pleasure, sleep is always at the top of the list.

“You have kind of the basic needs, right? So you have food, sleep, and sex. Pretty much boils down to that, if you’re talking about actual pleasure,” Berns laughed.

But pleasure goes well beyond basic needs. Yale psychologist Paul Bloom says WHY we enjoy what we enjoy is very complicated.

“It seems like we just taste food, and taste wine, we respond to our visceral sensations. But actually it is surprisingly deep,” Bloom said.

So deep, in fact, that Bloom was pleased to write a book on pleasure, which he says is as much about our brains as about our experiences.

“Our pleasure is a response not just to the physical makeup of something, what it looks like or tastes like, or smells like, or feels like, but rather to our beliefs of what it really IS, what its real essence is,” Bloom said.

And boy, can we be fooled!

Bloom recalls one famous experiment with wine drinkers done by scientists at Stanford and Cal Tech …

“Half the people are told they’re drinking cheap plunk, the other half are told they’re drinking something out of $100-$150 bottle,” Bloom said. “It tastes better to them, if they THINK they’re drinking from an expensive bottle. And it turns out that if they think they’re drinking expensive wine, parts of the brain that are associated with pleasure and reward light up like a Christmas tree.”

“So if I have people over for dinner, I should add a little ‘1″ in front of the price tag, and put it on the table?” Spencer asked.

“That is the ultimate trick to making wine taste better,” Bloom said.

And it’s the sort of trick that works only on human beings.

“Both my dog and me enjoy drinking water when we’re thirsty, but I’m the one who cares about where the water came from – whether it’s bottled water, or from the tap,” Bloom said. “My dog doesn’t care.”

“You’re the one that, if we put a higher price tag on that bottle of water, you’ll enjoy it more?” suggested Spencer.

“That’s right! I might give my dog premium dog food, but the dog doesn’t care that I spent a lot of money for it.”

People, on the other hand, seem to get ENORMOUS pleasure out of spending ENORMOUS sums on some very curious things.

Was Michael Jackson’s jacket really worth $1.8 million?

Or how about President Kennedy’s tape measure, which went for almost $50,000 at auction?

Or Eric Clapton’s guitar, snapped up for just under a million bucks?

Given all that, Paul Bloom wondered what people might pay for the pleasure of owning, say, George Clooney’s sweater?

“And the answer is, a fair amount,” said Bloom. “Much more than they’d pay for MY sweater, or for a brand new sweater.”

But why? For bragging rights? Or to re-sell on eBay? Apparently not …

Bloom conducted an experiment where people were not allowed to tell people or boast about buying Clooney’s sweater, or even re-sell it, and the perceived value was reduced. “But here’s what makes the value really drop: We told another group of subjects that we thoroughly washed it before it got to them. Now the value plummets.”

“It’s not still ‘George Clooney’s sweater’?” asked Spencer.

“As my wife put it, you washed away the Clooney cooties!” Bloom laughed. “You’ve washed away the sort of essence of the person.”

“That gives them more pleasure in owning it?”

“Human beings are strange,” laughed Spencer.

“Human beings are extraordinary,” he replied.

Some pleasures are universal, like eating the mouth-watering butter-and-sugar concoctions at Magnolia Bakery in New York City – it really is pure pleasure on a plate.

But not all of life’s pleasures are so straight-forward. In fact, if you think about it, some of them are downright weird.

Take cheese.

“Cheese is spoiled milk, it smells bad,” said psychologist Paul Rozin. “But the point is that we get great pleasure out of it. And some people love the stinky cheeses. And part of the pleasure of eating them is that they really smell bad, but they’re good!”

Rozin’s studies go well beyond the pleasures of the disgusting, to the joy of the downright painful. Take hot chili peppers …

“Well, hot chili peppers are eaten by over two billion people in the world,” Rozin said. “And yet, this is an innately negative experience. Little babies don’t like it. So, the question to me was, why would anybody put in their mouth something that produces a pain signal from the mouth to the brain?”

His answer? What he calls “benign masochism” – the same human quirk that explains why we enjoy horror movies that terrify us … why we like sad songs that make us cry.

“It’s a sense of your mind over your body,” Rozin said. “Your body is saying, ‘Bad news, get out of here!’ Your mind knows, ‘I’m actually not in danger. I’m mastering this negative experience, and my mastery of it gives me pleasure.’”

But there are limits. Just ask those chili pepper people…

“What happens is the one that people like best tends to be the one that’s just below the level they can’t bear,” Rozin laughed. “In other words, they’re pushing the limit of how hot they can stand it. Similarly with roller coasters. People who love roller coasters will like the steepest and scariest one they can stand.”

Push your pleasure to that limit and – odd as it seems – odds are you’ll want more. So what’s the best strategy to maximize life’s pleasures?

Emory Professor Gregory Berns did an experiment that offers a clue: When he gave subjects alternating drops of water and juice, their brain activity showed they preferred the juice. No surprise. But when the juice came at unexpected intervals and was a surprise, they liked it even more.

His advice: Plan surprises.

“You have to take risks, I think, to really experience pleasure,” Dr. Berns said. “And there’s, you know, there’s a reason why people say the first time is always the best. The first time you experience something, whether it’s your first kiss, your first bite of sushi, whatever you like, it’s always the best, it’s always the most memorable.”

So whether it’s Clooney’s sweater … roller coasters … chili peppers … or something else entirely (”Chocolate” … “good friend, good beer” …), treasure those pleasures.

But remember: There’s always room for something new – and people keep pushing the envelope, like bungee jumping.

“Yeah, why not?” said Dr. Berns.

For more info:

“How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like” by Paul Bloom (W.W. Norton)

Buddha (around the age of 80, 486bc) felt his time nearing the end, traveled North towards the land of his childhood. The Buddha reached a little town on the edge of the Ganges plane where he fell ill.

His disciples could not bear to let him go. Buddha replied, “What more do you want of me? Ask no more of me. I have made known the teaching. You are the community now. I’ve reached the end of my journey”. His last words then, before he passed, “All created things must pass, strive on diligently”.

“All created things must pass, strive on diligently” parallels chapter 33…

He who knows contentment is rich;
He who perseveres is a man of purpose;
He who does not lose his station will endure;
He who lives out his days has had a long life.

Buddha’s last words also reflect sentiments voiced in the Bhagavad Gita, “Offer to me all thy works and rest thy mind on the Supreme. Be free from vain hopes and selfish thoughts, and with inner peace fight thou thy fight.”

Buddha on his Death Bed

In my view, the actual intention of both Buddha and Jesus was to help people refocus on their culture’s universal spiritual core, not to become as ‘gods’ themselves. The Buddha’s teaching, expresses the core teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, albeit more succinctly and rationally I suppose. The same with the Old Testament and Jesus. You could say Buddha and Jesus updated and consolidated those ancient messages to fit the times. Alas, their simple and straight-forward re-teachings were soon dogmatized, watered down, homogenized to the lowest common denominator. And naturally so… such is entropy, you know!

It may be hard to appreciate how profoundly the times were a-changing back then. Looking back, it all can blend together as ‘ancient history’. Living through the times would have been otherwise. Notably, the introduction of efficient iron smelting and iron fabrication into tools of agriculture and war had a revolutionary impact on daily life.  Curiously, I sense the harnessing of electricity, begun a century ago and continuing through computers and such today, is having a similar world-shattering impact on humanity’s ‘way of life’. And, I imagine we’ve seen only the beginning of the ‘electric age’.

If you doubt the impact, just imagine your life today without the use of electricity: no cars, no planes, none of the monumental advancements in sciences or medicine, no electricity based media. Also, think of all the things electric motors do for us. In a fundamental way, electricity has become a modern version of ’slave labor’. You’re hot and sweaty; turn on a fan or air conditioner. Now there’s no need for a slave or a servant to wield a fan. The consequences of this: having such power at our finger tips makes us all as rich as kings (in many respects)… and the consequence of this, as Jesus put it, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” No wonder Buddha left his kingdom and wealth behind.

It is hard to fully realize the long term impact of all this while living through it. Lives are short; memories are shorter. Out there, somewhere, sooner or later, newer updates and consolidations of the ‘eternal message’ are coming to pass to fit the times. It is an awesome time to be alive. Spiritual grounding, by whatever definition (’enlightenment’, or ‘entering the kingdom of God’) is the first casualty of ‘progress’ whether wrought by the dawning of the ‘agriculture age’, ‘bronze age’, ‘iron age’, and now the ‘electric age’.  What to do? What to do?

As Buddha suggested,  ”All created things must pass, strive on diligently”.

Which path leads where?

A few months ago a new member Dan asked me, “So, I’d like to ask, do you have any life advice for a man approaching 30″?

One problem with that question was too many things came to mind. So I turned the question over to my subconscious. Oddly, I find not thinking about tricky issues is the best way to resolve them. Of course “not thinking about” doesn’t mean disregarding. I suppose the ‘not thinking about’ phase helps the mind get through its blind spot.

Finally, up bubbled something worthy of the question. Overall, nothing feels more important to me than understanding. While stressing the importance of understanding seems obvious, it may not be as simple as it sounds.

As I’ve said before, true understanding may only be possible for that which you already know intuitively. Knowing comes with maturity (time and circumstances) and not from any external particulars, per se. Knowing moves from inside out, not from the outside in. If I’m correct, how can we ever teach or learn from each other? Naturally, there’s more to this.

Just consider how methodically we are culturally and linguistically ‘brain washed’ (albeit in the nicest possible way) from birth onward. As a result, much of what we think and ‘know’, is derived from preconceptions that we’ve been trained to believe to be true and real. Now, if what we teach and learn are along the lines of our ‘brain washing’, things usually go smoothly enough. On the other hand, understanding anything outside our cultural and linguistic ‘box’ is another matter. That can be a fearsome experience which is why few people peer into the darkness willingly.

Actually, we all know anyway!

Even so, we can’t help but sense that darkness. ‘To know yet to think that one does not know‘ actually speaks to this silent, universal knowing. While all life feels the mystery, only we have names and words for which to think about it. We can’t help but try to cognitively shine light on (explain, describe, interpret) the mysterious mirror feeling—including right now as I write and you read this. Truth to tell, all our thinking never unravels the mystery. Instead, we end up cultivating a sense of self and pseudo security as we follow the paths for which we feel an innate affinity (e.g., religion, art, sports, business, science, etc.).

Our difficulties begin when we get overly certain in what we think (i.e., to think that one knows will lead to difficulty). I regard certainty as merely a symptom of a desperate need for the security believable answers promise us. Honestly, this is the dynamic that drives me to ponder life (and death) and write about it. Still, using cognitive certainty to shore up my innate insecurity doesn’t overly impair me, as long as I know and understand what is driving my certainty in the first place. In other words, it is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.

If we’re not alive to this difficulty, we end up putting all our eggs in one cognitive basket and hang on for dear life. The resulting blind spot puts what we might otherwise ‘know’ just beyond our mind’s eye. Put another way, thinking enables us to focus on the trees; this blinds us to the forest. This is not to say thinking is bad; it is just more dangerous than we imagine. It is like a loaded gun with no safety in the hands of monkeys. Much of our problem stems from not realizing that we, like all animals, are supposed to feel somewhat insecure. Being on fear’s razor edge aids survival. Dulling this by relentlessly thinking that we know is no different than refining foods to enhance our eating pleasure at the expense of nutritional value. Both quickly become cases of willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant, and it comes back to bite us.

We’re too clever for our britches

Finding enough humility to acknowledge that thinking that that one knows will lead to difficulty can help avoid ‘thinking ourselves into a corner’. This is an important step in understanding what is beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world. This is difficult because our self identity is created and maintained by the beliefs and paths to which we cling and follow. As Buddha put it, “The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things”. “Things” is often considered to be material objects. I find that our mental “things” play at least as large a role in this illusion.

Buddha had it right in his Eight Fold Path. While each ‘fold’ affect the other, notice which fold comes first—understanding! As understanding deepens and broadens over time, our actions follow naturally. I can’t really see what else can be ‘done’. The doing arises out of the knowing. Willfully doing anything would be like putting the cart before the horse. This may partly explain the Taoist frequent call to ‘action-less action’. Chapter 43 sums it up well:

That is why I know the benefit of resorting to no action. The teaching that uses no words, the benefit of resorting to no action, these are beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world.

There’s a silver lining though

Our thoughts and actions are driven by the needs or fears we feel right now, without much sense of the long term, big picture, balanced understanding. So what hope is there? I’ve found being hesitant and tentative in what I think helps me keep balance. Mind you, it’s okay to lose balance. That’s only human. However, it is invaluable to recognize when I do. Here are some ‘tells’ I use to warn me when I’m losing balance:

• Any strong sense of attraction or aversion, likes or dislikes, needs or fears (emotion) tells me that whatever I think I am seeing is actually simply a reflection of that emotion. It’s not that; it’s this.

• Any perception that make differences appear significant (makes mountains out of presumable mole hills). Remaining alive to the relative nature of judgment helps avoid taking a cognitive ‘wrong turn’ and ending up in the ditch.

• Impatient are we? Feeling the impulse to resolve it now, get it done, fix it ‘yesterday’ are excellent indications of imbalance. Going with my impetuous flow is usually looming disaster. Count to ten, take a deep breath, go take a nap, sleep on it.

In summary: which path shall it be?

They both look the same, but...

The ultimate value of understanding lies in how it helps us with a central choice we are faced with each day, even each moment, throughout life. “Do I want to feel happy or to feel a sense of well being?” I expect many folks regard these synonymous. Not necessarily, at least as I define those words. Happiness is more up beat, stimulating, fun, pleasurable, ‘high’ on life. Somewhat conversely, well-being is even, cool and calm, down-to-earth, impartial, balanced. Simply put: We chase after happiness; we return to well-being.

Buddha’s prescription of life comes down to this choice, happiness or well-being. Recognizing the difference requires Right Understanding, as Buddha calls it. All in all, Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is the best road map I’ve come across for choosing the path of well-being over happiness. Use it from the bottom of your heart is my advice.

This exemplifies the shaky foundation of the Christian world view. How does a believer reconcile the deep disconnect between a God that favors us (Adam and Eve, Noah,  Jesus dying for our sins, etc.) and the ruthless reality of nature. Not surprisingly, Christians can’t bridge this gap, and must always fall back on ‘faith’. I imagine some of the evangelic fever seen in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic path is symptomatic of this underlying reality (i.e., Subconsciously, they doth protest too much, methinks).

Coming from a Taoist world view I would simply tell the young girl that this is simply nature’s way. There is no reward or punishment, no evil or good, no sin or salvation in nature. Those are human myths. If she were familiar with biology, I’d also add that we have a ‘fairness’ social instinct from which these myths arise in the first place⁽¹⁾.

If an animal is at the ‘wrong place and the wrong time’ it gets struck by lightening. Similarly, the folks who lived by the sea were at the wrong place at the wrong time and got struck by the Tsunami. I’d also offer her Buddha’s Four Noble Truths to finish on a positive note. Every since my kids were toddlers I’ve stressed those truths, and they’ve never had any difficulty understanding them. These truths (or at least the first two) are easily verified through experience by even the youngest child.

Again, the wisdom of chapter 71 rises to the occasion:

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

It is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.
The sage meets with no difficulty.
It is because he is alive to it that he meets with no difficulty.

⁽¹⁾ In the end, all our stories are emergent properties arising out of instinct… including this one I just wrote, I’m sure. The remarkable invincibility of the ‘taoist story’ lie in the fact that it is based on Nothing, whatever that is

'He who conquers self...'

The details of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths vary somewhat depending on the source. I recently dug up the source for the version that I found most useful. Why useful? Mostly because it was the most sensible and succinct I’d seen.

Nevertheless, I had a minor problem with how the Third Noble Truth was stated, and long ago changed a word or two. Rereading my original source makes me want to revisit this and ponder why I revised in the first place. Here is the sequence of events:

The original says: “He who conquers self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.“

I changed the “conquers self” to “surrenders self”. I was immersed in the Bhagavad-Gita at the time which preaches surrender, e.g., “no man can be a Yogi who surrenders not his earthly will”. Perhaps the idea of ‘conquering self’ felt to aggressive to me.

A few years ago I thought back on that and changed it back to what I thought was the original, i.e., “He who extinguishes self will be free from lust…” Recently I came across that old book and retrieved the original ‘conquers self‘ phrase.

There is some chicken and the egg irony in this. The Second Noble Truth point out that “the illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. The desire to live for the enjoyment of self … (and so on)” So just how is one suppose to ‘conquer’ an illusion? If something isn’t real, then what does conquer mean, in practice. It certainly is not the same as conquering a physical enemy coming at you with guns a-blazing.

Another peculiarity is the notion that, as the Third Truth say, “…the flames of desire find no material to feed upon thus they are extinguished”. The “material” would seem to be the self, which after being conquered is no more and thus desire has nothing to feed upon. However, as the Second Truth says, the self originates and manifests itself in clinging and desire. Lust creates the illusion of self, yet conquering self frees you from lust. This feels a little chicken and the egg-y.

I get past the chicken and egg dilema by simply keeping actively aware that my sense of self is caused by my desires and fears. The illusion has a hard time withstanding such constant clarity. Conquering self is just maintaining enough perspective to avoid being completely hoodwinked by biology, the bio-hoodwink⁽¹⁾ as I call it. In other words, the more aware I am of how biology is pulling my strings, the less convincing the illusion become. Conquering self is really a matter of seeing how the trick works. Once you clearly know how the trick (magic, illusion) works, it can no long captivate you. When the illusion of self no longer captivates, it has been conquered—or at least you’ve established a truce.

One final thought on Buddha’s Second Truth. I am inclined to rephrase it this way: “He who conquers, surrenders and understands self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.” The conquering comes first as you wage battle with yourself to ‘get your act together’. Next comes the surrendering when you realize that conquering your self is not possible, at least in the normal wage war sense of the word. Finally, seeing what is actually taking place, and understanding how a bio-hoodwink is always pulling strings diminishes the “illusion of self” enough to return to one’s roots and just be who you naturally are.

(1)bio-hoodwink: I coined this term for the trick biology plays on perception. See Peeking in on Nature’s Hoodwink. Chapter 65 says: Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them. The oldest ‘of old’, when it comes to living things in nature, is the biological process of life, ‘hoodwinks’ and all.

For example, a bio-hoodwink tells the brain that the richer the food (and the more you eat) the better. This was the case in the wild before we cleverly devised ways around natural limitations in order to make food as rich and plentiful as we wished. Alas, the bio-hoodwink is inherited and out of sync with human willful innovation. The only counter-measure we have against this is understanding, which explains why Buddha put Right Understanding at the head of his Eight Fold Path.

This short lecture, John Cleese on creativity, shows he may be a ‘defacto taoist’ or perhaps a ‘natural taoist’. Meaning, anyone who has this contrarian point of view  is a ‘taoist’, although they may never have  heard the word Taoist.

The Blind Spot

This idea of backing off in order to move forward, and the humorous way he talks about the “blind spot”, parallels core Taoist principles.

For example, his comments about the “blind spot” are simply another way of saying, Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. His take on this also parallels chapter 70’s My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice.

I’d like to take this a little further though, and drill down deeper if I can. What causes the “blind spot”, and why does “sleeping on it” work, are questions that come to mind. No sooner do I wonder why, than the word ‘agenda’ comes to mind. My agenda, more than anything, blinds me to the big picture. When I “sleep on it”, I am backing away from the urgency of my agenda for a while. That distance allows me to see more broadly and create a way around the current problem. That distance allows me to see more forest, rather than just trees; I can at least begin to peek around any blind spots I have.

The next question: what gives birth to my agenda in the first place? Clearly fear and need play a huge role. These two words address the core drivers of emotion. My agenda is born from my desires and ideals which are simply the thinking side of need⁽¹⁾. What I think blocks out or otherwise skew perception to favor these emotions – and voila I’ve created my person agenda, with serious blind spots sure to follow.

How do I know when a blind spot is currently blinding me? Any stimuli out in the world that directly impacts my agenda, hidden or known, will produce symptoms. One of the most evident symptoms is anger, or its counter part flight (i.e., fight or flight). And beneath that, of course, lie my core fears and needs. Using any sign of anger as a symptom of a probable blind spot can tell me volumes about myself. Here is where the courage of self honesty comes in, and where the difficulty lies. Fortunately, difficult things in the world must have their beginnings in the easy. The “easy beginning”, in this case, is simply accepting that anger is a symptom of my “blind stop”, and therefore an essential eye-opener, if I really value being true to myself.

Seeing past my blind spot is only half the journey. I also have what I’d call a “crippled spot”. Here, ironically, emotion is essential to ‘live true’, and practice what I preach. I call it will (though not “free will” mind you). This parallels Buddhas Eight Fold Path: First comes seeing my possible blind spot (Right Understanding, Right Mindfulness). Next comes remembering my possible blind spot (Right Attentiveness, Right Concentration), and finally comes living according to what I see (Right Effort, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood).

To sum up: Emotion is what veers my life onto by-paths; emotion is what enables me to follow the way. As with everything else in life, there are two sides to each issue. Making emotion (desire, need, fear, etc.) the ‘villain’ is as shortsighted and foolish as being ignorant of their overwhelming influence on my life.

⁽¹⁾ Viewed more closely, desire seems to be a amalgamation of instinctive emotion (’gut’ need) and thinking. Without that thinking side, we’d be moved by spontaneous need just like all other animals. Need (and its source spring, fear) is the driving force behind all action. Without it we’re dead—literally. It is the thinking side of desire we could (and should) have misgivings about. Thinking beats the drum of emotion, easily making mountains out of molehills (of need and fear).

The common view is to see all this as being what makes us unique, special, superior, advanced… “higher beings” no less. Looking at this from a symptoms point of view helps me avoid such a “pat myself on the back” biases.

For example, my yoga contortions are simply a convenient, efficient way for me to compensate for the lack of nature’s pushback. Nature is always pushing back on living creatures in the wild, preventing them from willfully innovating to the point of imbalance. When doing yoga in India, I noticed how it was only the wealthy Indians, by and large, who had the time, inclination, and need to do yoga. The lower classes had their hands full with basic survival.

All cultural taboos and ethical proscriptions are symptomatic of our effort to find balance. Namely, we follow taboos and proscriptions as a means to counterbalance the instability wrought by civilization. Not civilization as it is commonly defined, however. Seen more deeply, civilization is simply the result of an overwhelming use of tools and language. The resulting disconnection from natural forces creates severe sociological and psychological instability. Oddly, all this goes on without us ever having any underlying sense of why. Perhaps this is one reason why a tipping point eventually comes, and a new set of taboos and proscriptions replaces the old ones.

Generally, the activities we pursue most, are driven by the natural instinct to take the easy way. In the wild, this seldom leads to difficulties. Natural difficulty is already pushing back. In civilized life, we’ve stripped away as many nature-induced difficulties as possible. However, the original instinct to take the easy way remains part of our DNA. As a result we swing dreadfully out of balance.

Generally, the activities we pursue that are difficult are driven by the natural inclination to want to feel life meaningful, ‘Right’ and in balance. Like a pendulum willfully riding the waves of fear and need, we swing one way and the other, constantly seeking the happier Middle Way. As I see it, there is nothing really “unique, special, superior, advanced” about us. All we are doing is struggling to maintain enough balance on the one hand, to compensate for all our success at freeing ourselves from Nature’s ruthless side on the other hand.

This is not such a flattering view of us, I know. We prefer the “positive” story we’ve created for ourselves, like how we are “created in Gods image” and the like. Does our self serving, self aggrandizing view serve us well in the end? I can’t help but think not really. Honestly considering life with as much impartiality as possible can only benefit us in the long run. After all, Right Understanding is the first fold on the Buddha’s eight fold middle way. Taking the effort to consider life from symptoms point of view is a step in that direction.

As I see it, this is a reaction to feeling fear, not fear itself. The other most common reaction to feeling fear is the opposite of fleeing; it is attack and anger.

Here it helps to consider words that correlate to fear and reactions they can initiate. For example:  Fear = silence = death = loss = weakness = Nothing. And here are some reactions these initiate: Need, sound, life, gain, strength, Something.

You can  view this relationship as a proportion, i.e., fear is to silence as need is to sound. This can be displayed simply as:

Need  = sound
——–    ——-
Fear  = silence

We can show all the words this way:

Put another way: From fear, silence, death, loss, weakness, and Nothing, arise (in due course)  sound, life, gain, strength, Something.

Language has a way of distorting how we think, mainly by helping us mistake symptoms for causes. This cuts short consideration of the subtle underlying causes.  We end up amplifying differences and over-reacting instead of noticing similarities and being more circumspect in our reactions. The result: short term fixes that often create problematic unintended consequences.

Correlations helps untangle the knots and soften the glare of difference. This opens the door to mysterious sameness.  Consider these. They read in a clockwise direction. For example: Anger fights; fear flees. Need seeks, fear hides.

anger -> fights
FLEES <- FEAR

need -> seeks
HIDES <- FEAR

desire -> stirs
STILLS <- CONTENT

war -> attacks
SURRENDERS <- PEACE

Can you notice a subtle relationship between the words on the top line: anger, fights, need, seeks, desire, stirs, war, attacks? How about the bottom line: FLEES, FEAR, HIDES, FEAR, STILLS, CONTENT, SURRENDERS, PEACE?

For more on correlations see: Using Yin and Yang to Pop Preconceptions.

Looking Through The Yin Yang Lens

Yin Yang are thoughts last stop on the road to mysterious sameness. In other words, they are the simplest, most direct way to discern difference before ceasing to think. Being the simplest and most direct means of discernment limits your ability to dream up far flung rationalization, i.e., ’sophisticated’ thought enables clever people to rationalize their needs and fears, giving rise to great hypocrisy.

The process goes something like this: we feel strong primal emotion (e.g., need, fear, anger, envy, etc.). These feelings initiate thoughts which mirror the feelings. If you feel anger, you’re likely to think angry thoughts. If you feel a need for something, you’re likely to think up all the reasons why you ’should’ satisfy the need. These thoughts feed back into, and reinforce the initial emotions that got the thought-ball rolling. This makes it exceedingly difficult to be self honest and impartial in your thinking.

Pleasure’s the Bait…

The result is pain. It is one of nature’s finest hoodwinks. Pleasure attracts living things toward that which benefits survival.  On the other hand, seeing beneath the attractive surface often reveals the ‘hook’ you may want to avoid. This is also a survival advantage. (see How The Hoodwink Hooks)

Valuing life for the experience, with a bit less regard for the pleasure or pain of the experience gives one a survival advantage. Being wary of pleasure as the object of life’s actions, even as instincts clamor for immediate satisfaction, is one of life’s greatest difficulty. “A peace that is ever the same”, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, is only possible by increasing impartiality in regards to pleasure and pain. With a greater ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, life is more even, You suffer when its time comes; enjoy when its time comes.

One of the most helpful life-rules-of-thumb I’ve ever realized is: Short term pleasure (leads to) long term pain. Short term pain (leads to) long term pleasure. Of course, each must verify within one’s personal experiences that this rule holds water, and to what extent. Obviously not all short term pleasure leads to long term pain, or visa versa. A good parallel is the handling of guns. If you assume the gun is always loaded you will be more careful and avoid shooting yourself in the foot. Likewise, if you assume short term pleasure easily leads to long term pain, you’ll be more careful and avoid being ‘hooked’.

A recent chapter of the week opened up a curious dilemma. According to that chapter, when the way prevails in the empire, fleet-footed horses are relegated to ploughing the fields; when the way does not prevail in the empire, war-horses breed on the border. But, on the other side we have: The way is broad, reaching left as well as right, and of course, The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way. Here is one way to reconcile these seemingly conflicting views.

It is not the way that is not prevailing, rather, it is my perception of the way that is not prevailing. My perceptions are a reflection of my needs and fears, and so don’t meet the Taoist standard of impartiality. We are counseled to exhibit the unadorned and embrace the uncarved block, have little thought of self and as few desires as possible. So, how did this view that peace is literally more Taoist than war find its way into the Tao Te Ching? Who knows, but there are a few other places that reflect this more modern humanist view. In a Taoist world view, war and peace, like everything else, don’t exist in pristine independence. To paraphrase: War and peace, produce, complement, off-set, harmonize and follow each other.

Likewise there is a core connection between ‘wanting to gain’ (i.e., desire, lust, greed) and being content. It is odd how desire is always made the scapegoat for many of the problems we see (e.g., the desire for money is the root of all evil). Odd because it is actually the lack of contentment than sparks the flames of desire. When enough is enough, there can be no desire for more. It is much more helpful to see the desire for something – anything! – as merely a symptom of a lack of contentment. This is how nature works. Feeling hunger and thirst arises from a perceived lack of food and water. In humans these are also transferred symptoms of other forms of discontent. A desire (hunger and thirst) to travel is a symptom of not feeling content where you are, whether it is travel to the toilet to pee, or travel to an exotic place to play. Chapter 80 sums this up well:

Bring it about that the people will return to the use of the knotted rope,
Will find relish in their food, And beauty in their clothes,
Will be content in their abode, And happy in the way they live.

Although, how one is supposed to ‘bring that about‘ is beyond me. Is this another idealistic humanist angle on life? Feeling content is perhaps one of the most personally mysterious ‘things’ to do. You can’t just ‘do it’, because doing it comes from a lack of feeling a lack of contentment with the status quo. As the Christians might say, contentment comes “by the grace of God”. On the other hand, they say God helps those who help themselves. Can we buck the paradox and take any measures to feel more content with our lives?

Personally speaking, seeing in the broadest view possible helps. This means reflecting on what I have whenever feelings of what I lack arise. Of course, this is trying to un-fire the cannon; contentment has already begun to wane. But, taking inventory of my blessings gives another focal point for my mind. The difficulty here is having enough presence of mind to remember to count my blessings. Desire (from hunger and thirst on up) has a way of blinding presence of mind.

In the end, just knowing that the problem is constant, and solutions come and go helps. Although, you’d think it would be discouraging. Actually, fully accepting the dynamics of how life plays out fosters contentment. Buddha sure had his priorities right when he lay out his enlightenment program:

Kamakura Buddha, 1880's

The First Noble Truth is the existence of suffering. Birth is suffering; growth, decay, and death are suffering. Sad it is to be joined with that which we dislike. Sadder still is the separation from that which we love, and painful is the craving for that which cannot be obtained. If you really accept that, the rest takes care of itself!

This indicates we have what I’d call a ‘worry gene’, with some folk inheriting an extra helping and some with a more meager serving. Like the gene for body height: Some are taller than others, but everyone has height. Simply put, we are all going to worry till our dying day no matter what solutions we embrace to alter that fact⁽¹⁾.

This sounds futile, but there is hope. It begins with recognizing that problems and questions are the constant reality. This means accepting the fact that any innovative solutions or answers we conjure up will be short-lived. The promise of permanency is just another of Nature’s hoodwinks. Realizing this helps avoid putting all one’s eggs in the basket of promised solutions.

This frees emotion somewhat from the scattered, confused, scapegoat searching approach to life that results from expecting to find the solution ‘out there’. With that, you can focus on the one constant problem you may actually have some dominion over. Buddha’s Four Noble Truths points to it, with the last truth being the only solution that rests completely in your hands (or rather head):

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Middle Path that leads to the cessation of suffering. There is salvation for him whose self disappears before truth, whose will is bent on what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the performance of his duty. He who is wise will enter this path and make an end to suffering. Eight steps on the Middle Path are: Right Understanding, Right Mindedness, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Living, Right Effort, Right Attentiveness, Right Concentration.

Notice that at least half of these steps refer to the mind. Of those, attentiveness may be the one most directly connected to awareness, for without that, mind doesn’t exist. Attentiveness (awake, mindful, observant, watchful, etc.) optimizes all aspects of life for sentient animals. Attentiveness for humans is the foundation upon which Right Understanding, Right Mindedness, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Living, Right Effort, Right Concentration rest. Attentiveness for other animals (and us) is the foundation upon which survival rests. And so, the one constant problem you may actually have dominion over is attentiveness. As Christ said, “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.” ⁽²⁾

⁽¹⁾ One important feature of the worry gene is that it drives us to worry about something no matter what. It is the perpetual version of Murphy’s law. When we lack truly mountainous issues of survival to worry about, we make worrisome mountains out of any molehill in sight. The worry monster must be fed. This easily (and perhaps inevitably) leads to neurotic stressful worry (i.e., emotion is blind, causing the body to respond as if being chased by lions).

The beauty of focusing on the one constant problem is that, no matter how much you toil, you’ll always have room for improvement. That gives the worry gene something to sink its teeth into.

⁽²⁾ I consider the ‘pray’ Christ spoke about as being synonymous to Right Mindfulness, Right Understanding, Right Concentration. The ‘watch’, or course, is Right Attentiveness.