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.

Jungle church in Malaya

Well, why not! But seriously, this is a question I have not heard asked much… if at all⁽¹⁾ Debates mostly focus on whose God is best, the nature of God, or does God even existence. Asking “why do we believe in God” is more of a zoological approach to this issue. That is the place to begin; after all, we are animals first.

I’ve long see the God idea as an emergent property of our social need for leadership, i.e., ‘alpha male’, the decider. All social primate groups have some individual serving this unifying role. Being a thinking ape, it is natural that we would image the existence of a super-leader in a super-home (heaven). Being social apes, it is also nature that we’d enjoy gathering to share the experience. A recent article in Science News, Connected at church, happy with life, offered some support for the why of it all.

Here are a few excerpts from the article that caught my eye…

Researchers have long noted that religious people report higher levels of happiness and well-being than nonreligious folk. Lim and Putnam offer a rare glimpse, based on telephone surveys of a national sample of 1,915 adults in 2006 and 2007, of how religion improves quality of life. “Our evidence shows that it is not really going to church and listening to sermons or praying that makes people happier, but making church-based friends and building social networks there,” Lim says.

What’s more, spiritual aspects of religion do little to further well-being, the researchers say. Neither survey participants who “personally experience the presence of God” nor those who often “personally feel God’s love in life” report more well-being than people who do not. Volunteers who do and don’t believe in God or heaven with absolute certainty display comparable satisfaction with their lives.

Being on the same wave length enhances the feeling of mutual connection.

One-third of participants who had a strong religious identity and three to five close friends in their congregation reported being “extremely satisfied” with their lives, a figure that rose to nearly 40 percent for those with 11 or more such friends. The researchers defined “extremely satisfied” as a rating of 10 on a life-satisfaction scale ranging from one to 10.

In contrast, one-fifth of churchgoers who had three to five congregational friends but didn’t identify strongly with their faith reported extreme life satisfaction. The same figure applied to nonreligious people whose friends were not part of congregations.

So, the strong the sense of connection between folks, the more satisfied they feel. Sharing a strong religious identity amplifies the sense of connection.

Private religious practices, such as praying and holding religious services at home, also show no link to greater life satisfaction, the new report finds.

Lim emphasizes that, according to survey data, spirituality and theology bolster well-being only for people who build friendships at church.

This shows me that sharing a strong identity is the essential key, not the spirituality and theology per se. Yep, it’s the social connection that does the trick. Common belief in something is the glue, whether its political ideology, sports, food, music, _(you name it)_. However, sharing a strong sense of spirituality is the most personal, like family. Which bring me to another question, why church?

Church provides a deep sense of social connection, as does any place where people meet (market, job, restaurants, bars). A spiritual setting, like church, offers the safest, least judgmental, and non competitive meeting place. The only other setting like this, besides a stable family, was the ancestral hunter gatherer tribe. In those prehistoric times people shared their entire lives, from birth to death, with several dozen people. The exceptionally high level of “socio-emotional” security this offered declined as civilization took over the human experience. We unwittingly traded material comforts and security for emotional comfort and security. Church (and religion in general) is merely a symptoms of this loss, and our effort to compensate as best we can.

Churches (and God) are symptoms of current needs however. There is much archaeological evidence for various forms of spirituality in humanity culture going back tens of thousands of years. Very curiously no other animals appears to rely upon so called “spirituality”. What is the difference between all of them and us? We think! As chapter 71 puts it, 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. Our ideals, beliefs and myths go a long way to helps us think that we know. The human mind has been overtaken by names and words (language) so extensively that it disconnects us from the immediate moment-to-moment experience-of-being that other animals enjoy. Spirituality simply reflects our attempt to compensate for that.

My final question is, why don’t I attend a nice local church? I simply can’t buy into the ideals, belief and myths. Once, when I was around ten year old, I did believe in God. I don’t recall when or why I dropped that belief. When I was sixteen a friend invited my to his church to meet girls. I did believe in girl, so I went for a few years. Years later, while hitchhiking across the Sahara Dessert I had reached bottom – I felt life absolutely meaningless. I even wished I could be a true believer in something, as many people seemed to me to be. I suppose many who read Centertao will know what I’m referring to. Fortunately the The net of heaven is cast wide. Though the mesh is not fine, yet nothing ever slips through. I’ve also come to realize that ‘true belief’ is a very precarious approach to life which accounts for the passion that often bolsters it.

Following the teaching that uses no words doesn’t offer any concrete belief to share with others in church or anywhere else. Certainly, if I’d been in this survey, I never would have “reported being “extremely satisfied” with my life”. That doesn’t mean I’m not content, however. I suspect that the ability to believe one is “extremely satisfied” is part of the same ability to believe in God. It may not be objectively true, but that doesn’t matter because ‘truth is in the eye of the beholder’. For my part, I compensate for my lack of belief by ’soaking up the moment’. That gives me all the sense of connection I seem to need.

⁽¹⁾ I’ve not heard this question asked, as I recall, except by me. My symptoms point-of-view could not help wonder about that first and foremost.

I have wondered at times why I’m such a stickler for what I call watchfulness (paying attention, mindfulness, seeing what I’ve not seen, being moment to moment, and so on). Frankly, all the common ‘spiritual’ reasons were too pie-in-the-sky for me.

My more practical rationale has long been that watchfulness is a core survival asset for all life. A prey’s wandering awareness is its predator’s windfall; a predator’s wandering awareness is its prey’s windfall. Although in truth, I haven’t advocated watchfulness because of that. I’ve felt watchfulness vital for as long as I can remember. As time goes by, I see increasingly why. This research now helps show how nature entices my mind to value watchfulness. Clearly, paying attention focuses my wandering mind making me feel happier.

On the other hand, survival can benefit from a lack of watchfulness, besides the advantages mentioned above for predator and prey. Wandering awareness is one (perhaps ‘The’) source spring of creativity. Simply put, I only see what I haven’t seen by taking my eye-off-the-ball, so my mind’s gaze can wander outside-its-box. Therefore, I imagine life’s goal is finding an optimal balance between focus and wandering. Heck, I’d even say seeking an optimal balance across all aspects of life is the true definition of health. It is a tug-of-war alright, and certainly gives reason for the bewildering array of diversity we see throughout nature.

The wandering mind is unhappy mind may also explain why we are so drawn to music, in the listening as well as the playing. Rhythm holds our attention, almost hypnotically for some. To this beat, add a flowing melody to hold our attention and the mind has a surefire path to follow, avoiding its unhappy wandering. Not the most romantic or beautiful rational for our love of music, but perhaps closer to the truth (i.e., truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful).

When I returned to this country I listen a lot to talk radio. At the time I thought I was just reacquainting myself with this culture. Looking back, I can see how it also kept me feeling ‘happier’ (I’ve never been one for listening to music). Now a days my mind is usually either watching to spot connections (incidents of mysterious sameness) or resting at various levels of silent wandering awareness (with this blog simply reporting what I stumble upon).

Importantly, I don’t choose to use my mind this way; it happens naturally, and perhaps this research explains why. It is how I avoid a lost, wandering mind is unhappy mind. Come to think of it, a yearning to notice connections conceivably plays a large role in every mental activity humans engage in: music, games, science, literature, gossip, sex, you ___(name it)___!

A wandering mind is really a lost, empty mind—a mind wandering around looking for any way to avoid the void. The reason it is less ‘happy’ is that it feels life less meaningful when awareness is wandering around, essentially looking for something meaningful. Of course an ‘empty mind’ filled with awareness of the flowing moment feels meaningful, but only as long as that lasts. The moment the sense of meaningfulness is lost, attention will wander away looking for another meaningful engagement. The process of a meditative life is feeling ‘the’ meaningful flowing moment, then wandering away, then returning—a cyclic ebbing and flowing⁽¹⁾. How long each cycle lasts just depends on one’s innate personality (i.e., despite our dreams to the contrary, it’s not subject to free will.)

One major mistake we make as a species is our ignorance of how thoroughly nature is in charge. We only feel we are free to choose and in control (the illusion of free will). I’m sure all animals feel likewise. Our core difficulty is that we also think that we know. The universal drive to control which all animals share, causes us to believe we have (or can have) control. This myth accounts for much of our trouble. Thankfully science is steadily, if slowly, revealing  the animal we actually are. Yahoo!

⁽¹⁾ I notice a synergy between the two side of awareness. One side can articulate, but can’t see beyond what is ‘thinkable’. The wandering side can see beyond what is ‘thinkable’ (the forest, the big picture), but is as dumb as a doornail. They are complementary. They work together well as long as I don’t expect one to walk in the others shoes.

Wandering Mind Is Unhappy Mind
A wandering mind often stumbles downhill emotionally. People spend nearly half their waking lives thinking about stuff other than what they’re actually doing, and these imaginary rambles frequently feel bad, according to a new study that surveyed volunteers at random times via their iPhones.

People’s minds wander at least 30 percent of the time during all activities except sex, say graduate student Matthew Killingsworth and psychologist Daniel Gilbert, both of Harvard University. Individuals feel considerably worse when their minds wander to unpleasant or neutral topics, as opposed to focusing on current pursuits, Killingsworth and Gilbert report in the Nov. 12 Science.

These new findings jibe with philosophical and religious teachings that assert happiness is found by living in the moment and learning to resist mind wandering, Killingsworth says.

Mind wandering serves useful purposes, he acknowledges, such as providing a way to reflect on past actions, plan for the future and imagine possible consequences of important decisions. “We may tend to reflect on things that went poorly or are a cause for worry,” Killingsworth proposes. “That’s not a recipe for happiness, even if it’s necessary.”

In his new study, people’s minds actually wandered more often to pleasant topics than to unpleasant or neutral topics. But those reveries offered no measurable mood boost over thinking about tasks at hand, the researchers found.

It’s important to note that the new data apply only in the short run, comments psychologist Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Positive flights of fancy may lead to creative problem solving and planning that makes people happier down the road,” he speculates.

(this is the working title and draft cover)

I wrote this Yoga manual^[1] in 1979. While it still holds up well, I decided it’s worth updating. As part of this, I am attempting to sum up the Principles (the “spirit of yoga”) as I see it today.

Yoga is a process, not a destination. So many folks think of yoga as something you need flexibility for. Just the opposite. If anything, the more flexible you are, the harder yoga becomes. Again, unlike most secular things in life, yoga isn’t about the destination. It is about the journey…the way.

PRINCIPLES

(from an older and perhaps wiser point of view)

I wrote this Yoga manual in 1979. Now, 30 years later, it still holds up well. I’ve decided to leave the original introductory pages mostly as is, especially PRINCIPLES (from a younger point of view). These reflect my youthful belief in free will … that anything is possible if I set my mind to it. Naturally, it reads a bit strident, naively so from my point of view today. Yet, its message may offer a useful perspective.

Ideal Free Will

Soon after I finished the manual, I began to question my faith in free will^[2], and I began earnestly searching for evidence of it. So far, I’ve found nothing in human behavior that can not be explained by a simpler motivation—the biological push-pull force of need/fear. In the end, free will appears to be a case of wishful thinking more than fact. It seems that I just needed to believe in free will. Why?

Conflicting needs (or fears) was the problem, and free will promised a solution. If, as it now appears, free will is no more than a promise, what can I do? Ironically, I’ve found hope lies in knowing that the strongest need (or fear) I feel at the moment determines what I do (or don’t do). Paradoxically, this makes ‘free will’ and need/fear almost synonymous, i.e., need and fear determine what I want, and what I worry about. Need and fear, wanting and worrying are as interdependent as muscle and bone.

Actual Free Will

Happily, the resolution of conflicting needs (or fears) depends largely upon me being mindful of what I truly want of life. And what is that? Honestly, I’ve always known what I want deep down. We all have (and do), intuitively anyway. It is just that short term desires and worries keep distracting us. We forget again and again, turning over one new leaf after another as we wander and stumble down life’s very short road.

Prioritizing desires counteracts this distraction by diminishing desire’s (and worry’s) impact on us. In doing this, we are effectively desiring not to desire. As the Tao Te Ching puts it: “Therefore the sage desires not to desire, and does not value goods which are hard to come by”… (64).

Watch Your Self

If I had to sum up the secret of yoga, I’d say it all comes down to watchfulness—or as Buddha said, Right Mindfulness, Right Attentiveness, Right Concentration. In a yoga posture, this means watching your body, mind and emotion moment to moment. Are you pushing too hard, (too ‘Ha’), or taking it too easy (too ‘Tha’)? All you need do is watch for these lapses from the ‘middle path’, and go the other way… towards balance.

Watching oneself honestly couldn’t be easier or more straightforward. This is a level playing field, perhaps the only one in life—no knowledge, skill, teaching, or innate talent is required. And yet, as the Tao Te Ching says, “Our 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”… (70). Okay, that may be an over-statement, but not by much. Living in watchful self-honesty is most difficult.

Why? Because every innate advantage we have has its downside. I can’t emphasize this enough; every plus we enjoy has a minus we suffer. Worse yet, what we think is so gets in the way of seeing what is actually so. We fool ourselves. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, “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.“…(71).

Balance

Individually, we are on both sides of balance’s happy medium—over-doing some areas, under-doing other areas. Clearly, balance lies in under-doing the former and over-doing the later. And fortunately, despite fears to the contrary, there’s little chance of overcompensating in either direction. Why?

The areas where we innately under-do or over-do are actually symptomatic of our primal ‘inner’ nature. That means, unlike the tip of an iceberg, it changes little. Sure, we may think we can change, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg talking. Like free will, the ideal of true change is more likely a case of wishful thinking.

Is it Karma?

Our primal nature is like an iceberg below the water line, massive and unseen. As it bobs and tilts one direction, we react by ‘over-doing’ or ‘under-doing’ in the opposite direction to counterbalance. Deeper down our primal nature may itself be counterbalancing still deeper currents. Who knows—it’s a little murky down there.

This whole balancing process may represent a kernel of truth in the myth of Karma—not a cause and effect chain of Karmic past and future, but of ‘karmic’ layers of cause and effect… moment to moment. This is where balance lives, without memory, past or future. Only now!

One practical consequence of seeing life this way is that you soon realize all your perceptions and actions are merely reflections of yourself. In other words, what you perceive or do ‘out there’ is really symptomatic of your own needs/fears (a.k.a. loves/hates) deep down ‘in here’ right now.

Self-honesty floods awareness; the judge becomes the judged. Judging books by their covers becomes increasingly difficult when you realize that you are just perceiving symptoms of a deep, less definable other side. Such a blurring of distinction, (”mysterious sameness” as the Tao Te Ching puts it) can really help you avoid being knocked off balance by self-serving judgments and biases.

Thinking beats the drum

Of human emotions, desire is the one with which all religions take issue. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, “There is no crime greater than having too many desires; There is no disaster greater than not being content”… (46)

However, I say desire is not the real problem, per se. 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).

Just look at the world: From political and religious extremists at one end, down to the little neurotic quirks, opinions and bias that are common to everyone at the other end. All illustrate the consequences of overly trusting that what we think is true. However, when we take thought with a grain of salt, it becomes easier to calm down and preserve emotional equilibrium.

But, who am I kidding? This is a tough nut to crack. Those primal emotions (need and fear) drive thinking. To make matters worse, thinking feeds back into and reinforces emotion. It is a vicious cycle. Still, contemporaneously knowing this is going on as I think helps me distrust thinking, even as I’m thinking. This lack of faith in thought weakens its ability to feed into and re-enforce emotion.

Civilization’s price tag

One of the primary functions of civilization is providing the means to achieve our goals and satisfy our desires. To meet this end, civilization must side-step nature’s wild ruthless side—a side which happens to help keep life balanced. It’s not surprising that our nearly obsessive avoidance of nature’s uncomfortable side increases our difficulty maintaining balance. No wonder we easily swing from one extreme to the other. Civilization’s endless blind pursuit of safety and comfort comes with unforeseen, unwanted, and unpleasant consequences. We only think we’ve conquered nature; the negative consequences prove otherwise.

I have a motto to help me counteract civilization’s safety and comfort bias and keep me more grounded: “Short term pain; [leads to] long term pleasure. Short term pleasure; [leads to] long term pain”. Civilization is biased towards the later. Balance lies in accepting the former. That is the principle essence of yoga for me—balance.

The Spirit of Yoga

Through these Principles I’ve tried to convey the spirit of yoga. Now the ball is in your court. When you do yoga postures deep amid this spirit, you will be truly doing yoga no matter how stiff, weak, or far from the ideal form you are.

Conversely, yoga done without this spirit, is not yoga… no matter how much it looks like yoga. It is merely exercise, which isn’t bad—it’s just not yoga. Naturally, no one else will know. Only you can know when you are too ‘Ha’, or too ‘Tha’. Only you can fear your imbalance and feel the need to tilt yourself in the other direction…towards balance and what you truly want.

^[1] If you are doing or would like to do yoga, download these two PDF’s for instructions on the first few dozen beginning yoga postures.

Hatha Yoga: Principles and Precautions and Hatha Yoga: Programs 1 & 2

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.