CNN recently ran a story about the devastating wildfires raging across southern Australia, a natural disaster that may have involved climate change, normal weather patterns, and even arson. 200 people have died so far and the loss of homes and property is stunning. The story included an interview with a man who sent his family to safety and then endured the utter and complete loss of his home near Melbourne. Life as he knew it was over, and the man could have allowed himself to be crippled by grief, overcome by loss, or paralyzed by tragedy. Instead he responded like water to the obstacles before him and moved immediately to redefine his role in the world by becoming a relief worker who helped neighbors preserve what they could and reach safety. Heroic and straightforward, it is a tale of instantaneous transformation, an example of the ability of the human mind to avoid attachment and reach a state of higher consciousness.
The same morning I heard the story, I taught a class in sword sparring in a local park. I was reminded that such fluidity of mind is rare and wonderful. Showing my students a particular attack, I was surprised to see that they were unable to counter it even when they knew it was coming. In other words, shown the problem and shown the solution they had trouble adopting that solution even when it was physically trivial. Over and over again they would fall into the same trap, repeatedly making the same wrong move in response to the attack and then cursing themselves for doing it. Typically it took twenty to thirty tries before all of them could inhibit whatever reflexive panic reaction the attack had initially elicited in favor of a new, better response—one that allowed an effortless and effective defense.
It was a fascinating lesson in what creatures of habit we are, and in just how unusual and amazing was the Melbourne man’s ability to shift gears. We all suffer from an emotional and intellectual inertia that may in the case of physical movement also involve so-called muscle memory, but is more likely to stem from the way our brain works. We really are creatures of habit, and our tendency to get attached to things, habits, routines and reactions runs deep. While it is possible that the magnitude of the tragedy ripped the fire victim from his patterns and roots, it is also a well-known fact that even the threat of death does not always do so: soldiers freeze in battle and get blown away; pedestrians hesitate in the middle of the street and get run over, swordsmen of yore, stuck in their patterns of movement, were routinely cut in half.
Learning to remain relaxed and go with life’s flow is a high achievement indeed. Mind-body practice helps, meditation helps, but in the end it is self-awareness that is required—an ability to turn the zoom lens of the mind to the widest possible angle, one that allows us to see ourselves trapped in our habits and to see our place in the world in broader perspective. We must not expect ourselves not to feel—to do so would be to yearn to become a robot—but rather to feel, experience, and then regain our equilibrium and move on.
A recent San Francisco State study (http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/02/09/Happiness_study_Imagine_no_possessions/UPI-52681234159631/) shows that possessions don’t bring lasting happiness. Australian fire victims, facing the loss of their homes and possessions, are unlikely to find much succor in this news. Certainly the fires are a horror, a terrible human tragedy to be rued and mourned by all of us. Yet for the one person (perhaps there are many more) who managed to transcend suffering and act in a way that redefined himself, this particular example of material loss turned out to be a freeing and empowering development—a step toward something he might not otherwise have achieved.
Should we court disaster, natural or unnatural or wish it on anyone for the sake of personal growth? Obviously that’s a preposterous idea, and indeed perhaps the exception fire victim was already a living Bodhisattva, a person of enlightenment devoted to service who needed no such hot boot to behave as he did. If this was not the case, something both terrible and wonderful happened. The rest of us can only hope that when life takes a difficult turn or twist we find ourselves able to rise to meet it with grace.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
On Mastery
Some women claim their ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously is confirmation of the obvious superiority of the female mind; some men respond that multi-tasking is simply a term for doing a bunch of things badly. Parents lament that computer games and Internet surfing is costing their kids their intelligence; a new study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081014111043.htm shows that searching the Internet actually makes us smarter. However you spin it, the complexity of modern life has us more distracted than ever, and inundated by stimuli and messages that divide our time in such a way that no one activity is likely to bear the brunt of it.
It’s a pity, this, because while being a jack of all trades may make it easier to slip into current of 21st century life, the weapons of mass distraction around us make it harder and harder for us to achieve any kind of mastery. Without narrow focus, long practice and plenty of patience we are likely to see the beauty of the landscape around the lake, perhaps even notice the patterns on the water when the wind blows or we skim a stone, but we will probably miss the plants growing at the bottom, the baby garfish swimming between the tall weeds just above the bottom, and the flash of a watersnake’s tail as it navigates a cluster of thick branches just below the surface.
Has mastery become an old-fashioned notion? Maybe so, with information developing at such a rate that whatever we learn in school is obsolete by the time we get out and whatever technology we come to command at our first job will likely be considered archaic by the time we arrive at our second. Still as any quantum physicist or superstring theoretician knows, there are layers upon layers to experience, and universes within worlds. Spending time at one thing long enough to develop mastery develops a quantum awareness within us, lends us ability to see past the differences in things and tease out the similarities, to understand the sort of foundation truths that transcend fields of study, industries, software programs and even particular human relationships—truths that are all pervasive, meaningful and useful.
Some of us are lucky enough to have engaged a career whose dimensions have remained stable over time, allowing us to go deeper and deeper into our chosen field and thereby develop insights that not only make us valuable to employers, but which reveal the world to us in irreplaceable ways. In addition to a vocation or job, we might have worked long and hard at a succesful marriage. It seems we are increasingly unlikely to develop mastery in an avocation or hobby these days, not only because our culture puts a tremendous financial slant on activities and experience (if it doesn’t make you money, doesn’t get you something, why in the world are you doing it?) but because we have so many choices for each hour of free time that we’re unlikely to stick with any one for very long.
Mastering a hobby is unlikely in the zany “rush to the end” frenzy of modern life. We might like to garden but be pulled out of the yard and into the house by eBay auctions or on-demand video. We might like to play football but notice that our knees are often sore and anyway the kids like the Nintendo Wii more than mixing it up on real turf. We might in the past have learned to play a classical instrument or at least become knowledgeable connoisseurs of classical music, preferably at a live performance or on a really great high-fidelity system. Now we find that live orchestras are rare, hi-fi is an indulgence for a few wealthy folks, and most of the dynamic range and quality is removed from music by the recording process anyway. We listen rather than play, and sample a bit of this or a bit of that on our MP3/MP4 player, thereby missing the deeper experience of music and gaining no mastery over anything but switches and buttons.
Mastery takes time, something most of us have trouble finding. It takes discipline, a quality in short supply today. It takes patience, an attribute best appreciated in its absence. It takes dedication, something peer pressure and changing social mores makes more difficult all the time. And yet staying with a practice or a field for years on end offers even more than the insights already cited. Mastery, it turns out, is not merely valuable for the pure joy of gaining command of a flute, a sword, a foreign language, a woodcarver’s chisel, an artist’s palette, a golf club, tennis racket, calligraphy pen or guitar; mastery is all about self-knowledge. Nobody seems to talk about it anymore, but decades spent mastering something we truly love reveals us to ourselves in ways nothing else can.
So let go of fear and excuses and distractions and delay. Pick whatever really rings your chimes—you probably already know what it is—and commit to mastering it no matter how long it takes. The decision itself will make you stronger, and the rewards are sweeter than you can possibly imagine at the start.
It’s a pity, this, because while being a jack of all trades may make it easier to slip into current of 21st century life, the weapons of mass distraction around us make it harder and harder for us to achieve any kind of mastery. Without narrow focus, long practice and plenty of patience we are likely to see the beauty of the landscape around the lake, perhaps even notice the patterns on the water when the wind blows or we skim a stone, but we will probably miss the plants growing at the bottom, the baby garfish swimming between the tall weeds just above the bottom, and the flash of a watersnake’s tail as it navigates a cluster of thick branches just below the surface.
Has mastery become an old-fashioned notion? Maybe so, with information developing at such a rate that whatever we learn in school is obsolete by the time we get out and whatever technology we come to command at our first job will likely be considered archaic by the time we arrive at our second. Still as any quantum physicist or superstring theoretician knows, there are layers upon layers to experience, and universes within worlds. Spending time at one thing long enough to develop mastery develops a quantum awareness within us, lends us ability to see past the differences in things and tease out the similarities, to understand the sort of foundation truths that transcend fields of study, industries, software programs and even particular human relationships—truths that are all pervasive, meaningful and useful.
Some of us are lucky enough to have engaged a career whose dimensions have remained stable over time, allowing us to go deeper and deeper into our chosen field and thereby develop insights that not only make us valuable to employers, but which reveal the world to us in irreplaceable ways. In addition to a vocation or job, we might have worked long and hard at a succesful marriage. It seems we are increasingly unlikely to develop mastery in an avocation or hobby these days, not only because our culture puts a tremendous financial slant on activities and experience (if it doesn’t make you money, doesn’t get you something, why in the world are you doing it?) but because we have so many choices for each hour of free time that we’re unlikely to stick with any one for very long.
Mastering a hobby is unlikely in the zany “rush to the end” frenzy of modern life. We might like to garden but be pulled out of the yard and into the house by eBay auctions or on-demand video. We might like to play football but notice that our knees are often sore and anyway the kids like the Nintendo Wii more than mixing it up on real turf. We might in the past have learned to play a classical instrument or at least become knowledgeable connoisseurs of classical music, preferably at a live performance or on a really great high-fidelity system. Now we find that live orchestras are rare, hi-fi is an indulgence for a few wealthy folks, and most of the dynamic range and quality is removed from music by the recording process anyway. We listen rather than play, and sample a bit of this or a bit of that on our MP3/MP4 player, thereby missing the deeper experience of music and gaining no mastery over anything but switches and buttons.
Mastery takes time, something most of us have trouble finding. It takes discipline, a quality in short supply today. It takes patience, an attribute best appreciated in its absence. It takes dedication, something peer pressure and changing social mores makes more difficult all the time. And yet staying with a practice or a field for years on end offers even more than the insights already cited. Mastery, it turns out, is not merely valuable for the pure joy of gaining command of a flute, a sword, a foreign language, a woodcarver’s chisel, an artist’s palette, a golf club, tennis racket, calligraphy pen or guitar; mastery is all about self-knowledge. Nobody seems to talk about it anymore, but decades spent mastering something we truly love reveals us to ourselves in ways nothing else can.
So let go of fear and excuses and distractions and delay. Pick whatever really rings your chimes—you probably already know what it is—and commit to mastering it no matter how long it takes. The decision itself will make you stronger, and the rewards are sweeter than you can possibly imagine at the start.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Pushing Hands
The more troublesome the nation’s economic woes become, the more each of us seems to complain about all the bad things “happening to me”. The distinction between happening in the world and happening to me may seem specious or trivial or even irrelevant, but in fact it could not be more important. Interpreting external events through our own eyes is a necessary consequence of having eyes, and indeed of being human, but interpreting events as aimed at you by some vast unknown conspiracy or because the university doesn’t like you or because God is punishing you is simply a road to misery. Pain, as the Buddhists say, is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
Some of us are inextricably married to the beleaguring idea that the world is cruel and unfair and choose to live in a judgmental, negative state that separates us from others. Others of us, by contrast, disconnect from the world because we find it too painful, building emotional or physical walls to prevent people, and pain, from entering. Both these tactics bring little joy and require lots of energy. The good news is there is a third option: to engage things more deeply, bringing our passion and energy and intelligence to bear on creating a whole that includes us, although it may not be controlled by us, a whole that evidences a harmonious interplay of opposing forces.
The sublime Chinese martial art of tai chi teaches the “mechanics” of this option in a lovely, lasting way, offering a laboratory for learning it so well you can easily apply the skill to real life. To do so, tai chi employs a game called Pushing Hands (some say sensing or sticking rather than pushing). There are various postures and patterns to the game—meaning we make different patterns and engage different timing with our hands and feet—but all involve the same principles.
The first stage of the game is to learn to keep our balance. To do this we try to relax, to offer no resistance, to feel light as a cloud in the torso and sunken, strong and rooted in the lower body. We also learn how to grip the ground with our feet and turn our waist to deflect a partner’s incoming force (note that tai chi uses the term partner, not opponent in this context because in Pushing Hands we help each other) as well as to keep our spine straight and our eyes level and to breath smoothly and easily.
The notion that job one is to keep our own balance is a consummately useful one out there in the world, not merely in tai chi class; without our own emotional and physical equilibrium how can we respond to what life dishes out? Taking care of yourself first is the principle on which the airline safety dictum install your own oxygen mask before assisting others is based. If we cannot breathe, we cannot help. If we are angry, desperate, fearful, depressed or falling down, we can’t see clearly or act appropriately.
In the next stage we concentrate on sensitivity. Our palms and fingers and forearms become hyperaware. We turn them into organic devices—think human stethescopes or x-ray machines—with which to see into our partner’s body and ultimately sense his or her intention even before there is the tiniest physical movement. Cultivating sensivity and applying it requires our complete attention. If the mind wanders for a moment we can lose track of what our partner is doing and he or she may then take us off balance. Concentrating on the other person in our two-person world—trying to feel what they are doing with their body so as to predict when and where their force will come—draws us out of our own dramas and pushes back our boundaries. Imagine how such skills could serve us not only as fighters but as lovers. Imagine how such a skill could enhance our ability to empathize, to sympathize, to understand another’s plight or point of view. Imagine what negotiators and diplomats we would all be if we were so sensitive to others.
At the highest level of Pushing Hands we lose the distinction between our partner and ourself. Gone is the notion of other, the sense of me and him or her. Gone are the senses of antagonism, preservation, agenda, reaction or even ego. When we have practiced to this level of achievement we have come to realize that there is no conflict if we choose to meld with it. The dual nature of mind, the notion of a world outside us that stands apart from us to either hinder or help us—is a misconception of our own making.
Does this third option require us to be passive? Does it obviate the possibility of evil or injustice in the world? Does it preclude the imperative that we should stand up for our own interests? No and no and no. What it does do is give us a nuts-and-bolts way both to duck life’s curve balls and when we can’t, to recognize they are not aimed at us.
Some of us are inextricably married to the beleaguring idea that the world is cruel and unfair and choose to live in a judgmental, negative state that separates us from others. Others of us, by contrast, disconnect from the world because we find it too painful, building emotional or physical walls to prevent people, and pain, from entering. Both these tactics bring little joy and require lots of energy. The good news is there is a third option: to engage things more deeply, bringing our passion and energy and intelligence to bear on creating a whole that includes us, although it may not be controlled by us, a whole that evidences a harmonious interplay of opposing forces.
The sublime Chinese martial art of tai chi teaches the “mechanics” of this option in a lovely, lasting way, offering a laboratory for learning it so well you can easily apply the skill to real life. To do so, tai chi employs a game called Pushing Hands (some say sensing or sticking rather than pushing). There are various postures and patterns to the game—meaning we make different patterns and engage different timing with our hands and feet—but all involve the same principles.
The first stage of the game is to learn to keep our balance. To do this we try to relax, to offer no resistance, to feel light as a cloud in the torso and sunken, strong and rooted in the lower body. We also learn how to grip the ground with our feet and turn our waist to deflect a partner’s incoming force (note that tai chi uses the term partner, not opponent in this context because in Pushing Hands we help each other) as well as to keep our spine straight and our eyes level and to breath smoothly and easily.
The notion that job one is to keep our own balance is a consummately useful one out there in the world, not merely in tai chi class; without our own emotional and physical equilibrium how can we respond to what life dishes out? Taking care of yourself first is the principle on which the airline safety dictum install your own oxygen mask before assisting others is based. If we cannot breathe, we cannot help. If we are angry, desperate, fearful, depressed or falling down, we can’t see clearly or act appropriately.
In the next stage we concentrate on sensitivity. Our palms and fingers and forearms become hyperaware. We turn them into organic devices—think human stethescopes or x-ray machines—with which to see into our partner’s body and ultimately sense his or her intention even before there is the tiniest physical movement. Cultivating sensivity and applying it requires our complete attention. If the mind wanders for a moment we can lose track of what our partner is doing and he or she may then take us off balance. Concentrating on the other person in our two-person world—trying to feel what they are doing with their body so as to predict when and where their force will come—draws us out of our own dramas and pushes back our boundaries. Imagine how such skills could serve us not only as fighters but as lovers. Imagine how such a skill could enhance our ability to empathize, to sympathize, to understand another’s plight or point of view. Imagine what negotiators and diplomats we would all be if we were so sensitive to others.
At the highest level of Pushing Hands we lose the distinction between our partner and ourself. Gone is the notion of other, the sense of me and him or her. Gone are the senses of antagonism, preservation, agenda, reaction or even ego. When we have practiced to this level of achievement we have come to realize that there is no conflict if we choose to meld with it. The dual nature of mind, the notion of a world outside us that stands apart from us to either hinder or help us—is a misconception of our own making.
Does this third option require us to be passive? Does it obviate the possibility of evil or injustice in the world? Does it preclude the imperative that we should stand up for our own interests? No and no and no. What it does do is give us a nuts-and-bolts way both to duck life’s curve balls and when we can’t, to recognize they are not aimed at us.
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