This and other experiences in Asia over the years gave me intimate insight into the lives of peasants. I was virtually one myself, at least financially speaking. Although I never worked long days in the rice fields, I had settled into what amounted to a peasant life style.

Fast forward about a decade to Sweden. There I settled into an area of Stockholm inhabited by the wealthiest Swedes (the King also lived in that area). I never settled into a Swedish life style though, my more peasant-like one being more comfortable. I couldn’t help notice and compare the lives of the upper class folks I came to know there, with the peasants I had lived among in Asia. One thing stood out like a sore thumb: these wealthy folks seemed no happier than poor Thai peasants. Odd to say, if anything, they even seemed a bit less so.

Looking back, I understand it better. Living creatures (including us) live out their days struggling against the inevitable (i.e., the entropic path in Buddha’s First Truth”…birth, growth, decay and death” ). The instinct to struggle (the survival instinct) is built into life’s DHA. In the case of peasants, the struggle instinct is fully engaged in the simple operation of basic survival. Not so for wealthier folk. On what does a rich person’s struggle instinct struggle? It certainly isn’t engaged in practical down-to-earth survival!

On the other side of this struggle instinct, in life’s equation, is the innate drive to seek ‘happiness’. I’ll call that the contentment instinct. Like the ‘fight or flight’ equation, each must find balance between struggle and contentment. On one hand we stir, move forward and work; on the other, we are still, return and rest. So far so good. When our struggle instinct engages itself in down-to-earth challenges, it is operating closer to the hunter gatherer circumstances of its evolution.

Wealth (i.e., more is better) promises us an escape from nitty-gritty challenges. Surly then we can live struggle-free, content in comfort and security. Actual success in achieving ‘more and more’ (we call it progress) has unintended consequences: What, pray tell, will one’s struggle instinct strive for then? Changing circumstances doesn’t delete DNA. The acquisition of wealth doesn’t neutralize the struggle instinct. Oops. Woe to him who willfully innovates while ignorant of the constant.

The striking thing I remember from Sweden was how wealthy folk worried about trivial things, like the selling of South African grapefruit in Sweden, while Thai peasants worry about practical challenges like the price of lard with which to cook. It appears that being spared from struggling on practical basics can easily lower overall contentment and happiness. Actual wealth delivers profoundly less than it promises. This more-is-better illusion is one of nature’s most potent hoodwinks. Instinct overrides reason, and we take the bait even though we think that we know that ‘money doesn’t bring happiness’⁽²⁾. As Christ said, “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“. So, be aware and beware!

⁽¹⁾ I had planned to settle down in Thailand. When money ran really low I went off to Vietnam to work and save money. The plan was to return with a grubstake and upgrade the bakery. That plan changed, but that’s another story. Suffice to say, at that tender age I lacked the experience to know that plans are little more than visions based on past experience. Life, on the other hand, flows out moment to moment into what is called indistinct and shadowy.

⁽²⁾ Wealth is relative! If you are starving and you find food, you are profoundly wealthier, at least until your food runs out. The Thai peasants were wealthy relative to the many folks I saw in India, Ethiopia, Niger, for example. A truer definition of wealth is found in the Tao Te Ching’s, He who knows contentment is rich, or as Henry David Thoreau put it, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone”. From this standpoint, Mother Theresa’s view that America was ‘poorer’ than India holds more water. Mind you, it is not that people in India don’t want to be rich; they do. And when they succeed, they will be as ‘poor’ as us.

By the way, among other things, wealth ‘frees’ me to struggle at writing down as coherently as possible what I see. By the same token, wealth ‘frees’ you to struggle to see if there is anything coherent, even useful, in what I say. The struggle continues and we’re happy.

Grandma, 82, reading the paper

The use of chairs in the West is ubiquitous. One of the most important life style changes I ever made was giving up my use of the chair fifty years ago. Chairs (and sit down toilets) are good examples of my motto, ‘short term pleasure attracts long term pain; short term pain attracts long term pleasure‘. The physical ease a chair provides gradually robs the body of an important part of its natural capability. Over time that bring long term pain. This is easy to see, for example, by comparing older Western people with older Japan people.

The photo above is of my son Kyle’s Japanese friend’s grandmother. She’s 82 and much more flexible than many Western people half (or dare I say 1/4) her age. So, what is so good about being flexible? Oh the list is so long; I’ll spare you. Besides, I think the long term pleasurable benefits are obvious to most. I suppose people just don’t realize in their youth how the use of chairs will greatly exacerbate loss of flexibility.

Flossing, forward bending, and studying

The benefits of maintaining flexibility, subtle though they may be, add to the quality of life throughout life.  So, become more natural and animal like, and throw out your chairs. Take the lower position.

For another angle on this see also my recent post:  Bathtub Tai Chi

Eligible bachelors

There is a curious thing I notice in the life of my two sons. They are not chasing girls like I was at their age. They aren’t gay either, so what gives? I look back on my youthful lust and see a disconnected lad looking for companionship that my ‘independent’ upbringing (plus innate nature, I suppose) never provided. All I ever really wanted was intimacy and acceptance. And the only path to that deeper sense of connection was through a boy-girl relationship. That was true of my wife and most everyone I know (especially in Western cultures). Ironically, our culture’s love of ‘independence and self reliance’ actually leave its people with just the opposite, deep down anyway.

The radically different path my sons seem to be on is not that surprising when considered from a symptoms point of view. The boys get a level of acceptance and intimacy from me and my wife that only a ‘taoist’ paradigm can give. (Note, my use of small ‘t’ ‘taoist’, not Taoist.) They never felt the need to rebel as teenagers; how can you rebel against a ‘taoist’ point of view; how can one push back against nothing? By not pushing self reliance on them, self reliance happened to them naturally. In other words, to paraphrase chapter 2: It is because we lay claim to no self reliance, that self reliance never deserts us.

True, we do have a family business which gives them something to sink their teeth into. Also, I gladly let them take on any level of responsibility they wish (something neither my parents, nor any I knew, seem willing to do; parents want to maintain control). Come to think of it, a sense of responsibility also conforms to the view that we often get just the opposite of what we push for. Or, to paraphrase chapter 22: He does not consider himself responsible, and so is illustrious (i.e., responsible).

Much of what parents do in raising their children is in reaction to, and symptomatic of,  their needs and fears. I find most people need to think they are in control (i.e., free will), and end up pushing that ’story’ onto their kids. Teenager then just end up rebelling against this projection of parental expectations. Our vain struggle for free will and choice is such a waste of time and energy. I find I waste much less, now that I understand that my actions (or inactions) are simply reactions – symptoms of deeper causes. Being aware of this moment – to – moment ‘karma’, I can not help but be more tentative, hesitant, and vacant like a valley.

So when will my sons find their “significant others”? Unlike me, I am guessing they will seek a mate in earnest only when they feel the real inner pull to have a family of their own. Hmm, I better keep taking good care of myself if I ever want to see grandchildren!

Background
Memories become dimmer as the years fly by. Many are even too misty to write down without filling in the voids with poetic license (fiction). Still, I’ve set out to fetch what memories remain before they fade any further. See: The Further One Goes for background on this ‘Times of Yore’ series.

A magazine's back cover c.1945

Today is my 67^th year here on earth.  The picture is a magazine’s back cover of me, at a lake in Arizona, in my birthday suit⁽¹⁾. From then until today, fate has been fortunate; I should have bitten the dust quite a few times by now. (I wrote about the first time in the blog Suicide Just Doesn’t Work.) As to my health, wealth and family, I couldn’t ask for more. Indeed, there are so many things to be happy for on this birthday, and every day. Don’t worry though, I’ll find a problem somewhere it that. Hmm, let me see…

Most striking too me is how easily we notice and dwell on what is ‘wrong’.  I’d say the cup’s half empty gene is more dominant than the cup’s half full gene. This is one of the more poignant, if not tragic, sides of life, in my view. Of course, Nature can’t abide any other way – we need to see the cup half empty more than the reverse to keep busy at the task of survival. We are but servants of survival.

Being told to smile?

I’ve found the most effective counter measure to this trap is knowing nothing! I guess this corresponds to the  Japanese proverbial ‘three monkeys‘  (三猿) — “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.  Although, for me knowing Nothing suggests far more.  In my early years I fought ignorance by pursuing knowledge. The road to happiness, I felt, lied in knowing and doing things, the more the better. How else could I keep the half empty cup from draining away entirely.

Through experience I’ve gradually found the opposite to be so. More specifically, thinking that I know will always lead to difficulty. On the other hand, to know yet to think that I do not know is best. In practical terms that means being as hesitant and tentative about certitudes as possible. Patiently keep judgments fuzzy. Does my actively thinking that I don’t know arise out of a deeper knowing that I really don’t know? It is odd; it is ironic.

In papa's arms

It also gives meaning to the view, One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know.  Knowing I don’t know is knowing something. Yet saying (or writing) that I don’t know implies I don’t even know that much. It is all a bit confusing. Little wonder we say, to use words but rarely is to be natural. I think it is time for a margarita, with an extra shot of tequila for good measure.

⁽¹⁾ I don’t know what magazine this is from. As my parents were photographers, my brother and I did a lot of ‘modeling’ throughout childhood. The only difficulty I remember  about those years was being asked to “smile for the camera”. It always felt odd and forced. Years ago I did zazen in Japan. Afterwards, they took a group picture, and not a soul smiled for it. Now that’s my kind of photo shoot!

Here is another photo at that lake, and the text on the photo from the magazine:

Let Your Child Go Native

Such moments are rare but when it is possible, let your child come close to nature.

My, what a big head you have

Within a reasonable distance from most people’s homes there is a meadow, or a spot like this where, under supervision, children can open the pores of body and spirit to sun and air.

We can’t know just what it means to a child to feel that he’s on his own, even though you are nearby — and most of all, to feel that the world is his, and he is part of the world. He can’t know, but our common sense tells us it must be good.

Give your child his chance this summer if you can!

Background
Memories become dimmer as the years fly by. Many are even too misty to write down without filling in the voids with poetic license (fiction). Still, I’ve set out to fetch what memories remain before they fade any further. See: The Further One Goes for background on this ‘Times of Yore’ series.