Benevolent Man

Sometimes you find spirituality in the darnedest of places. Here is a quote from Adam Smith, who could legitimately be considered the father of Western Capitalism:

No benevolent man ever lost altogether the fruits of his benevolence. If he does not always gather them from the persons from whom he ought to have gathered them, he seldom fails to gather them, and with a tenfold increase, from other people. Kindness is the parent of kindness; and if to be beloved by our brethren be the great object of our ambition, the surest way of obtaining it is, by our conduct to show that we really love them. 

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VI Section II Chapter I

I don't actually feel that this one needs much comment... nor do I need to point out that the golden rule is "hidden" in there somewhere, along with some notion of moral justice and/or (the erroneous Western understanding of) karma... Nope! no need...

Buddha, Buddhism and Internal Paradox

I am now reading "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula, who wrote this in 1958 while in Paris studying at the Sorbonne (which creates some sort of an affinity with me in my mind as it is also my alma mater).

What I like about this is that Rahula attempts to simply present the texts and Siddharta Gautama's original words and teachings. I am not sure that it is possible to do so but at least he makes an honest attempt to do just that.

While reading this book, from the very beginning, what struck me immediately is an internal paradox linked to Buddhism. Siddharta Gautama found his own truth by abandoning all traditional religions and their methods and going his own way. Unfortunately, to me this is the essence of Siddharta's message, you need to walk your own path. I say unfortunately because it makes our work more difficult. And my own feeling on this is that following any one else's method, no matter how beautiful, evolved, thoughtful, spiritual, ... including those of Buddhism, is a shortcut to someone else's truth.

The Buddha himself, who I prefer to call by his name Siddharta Gautama in order not to deify him, "attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavour and human intelligence." And he seemed to believe that "man is how own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny."

According to Rahula, Siddharta "taught, encouraged and stimulated each person to develop himself and to work out his own emancipation, for man has the power to liberate himself from all bondage through his own personal effort and intelligence."

So how do we go from a personal journey to an -ism, like other isms, religions and codified practices? While I have no doubt that the intentions were pure it seems that Siddharta was lacking the coldness of heart that someone like Jiddu Krishnamurti had. Siddharta saw the plight of others and tried to "teach, encourage and stimulate" where Krishnamurti called for uncompromising introspection with no real hints as to the how of proper self-knowledge and spent a lifetime trying not to become anyone's guru. It seems to me that both have a similar message but that somehow Siddharta allowed himself to become the Buddha, thus recreating some of that from which he broke free.

This is the inherent paradox I see in Buddhism. And it is even apparent to Rahula at some level as he begins his book by comparing the Buddha to other founders of religion, while wondering aloud "if we are permitted to call him a founder of a religion."

A final 'food for thought': Siddharta's story also made me think about how often in history spirituality is a privilege of the wealthy. Much like St. Francis of Assis, Siddharta was the son of wealthy parents (royalty) before becoming a renunciate. Maybe only wealth to the point of not having to worry about the bottom elements of Maslow's heirarchy of needs from a young age, leaves the mind to dedicate itself to more lofty or existential thinking. Who knows?

Nowism versus Balance?

In recent years among the many, many spiritual books, self-help books and assimilated, there have been two competing "truths". The first, embodied by 'the power of now', living only in the present instant, with books like the one with the same name by Eckhart Tolle, and the second embodied by this more fluffy notion of 'balance' accompanied by the injunction to find balance in your life, balance your personal and professional lives, eat a balanced diet, etc.

However, it seems strange to me that no one I have seen in the spiritual and self-help circles has written much about balance in relation to the power of now. I guess the main reason is that if you do you tend to invalidate the whole notion, I mean you can't live mostly in the present moment and be in the now. It's kind of like the joke about being somewhat pregnant, it's actually an either/or situation.

Trying to live only the present moment can, without too much intellectualization required, could lead the unsuspecting 'nowist' to hedonism, short-termism, egoism and probaly many other isms. That said, applying the notion of 'nowism', living in the present, participating fully in what you are doing, is something that is important to remember and, more importantly, to do, when appropriate. It is definitely easy to be so preoccupied with the future or the past that you don't participate fully in 'what's going on' and in that sense the injunction to live in the now is very useful.

A wider application of the power of now mandate of living in the present moment, as the future does not yet exist and the past only exist in our minds, is more difficult to apply. On the one hand, for those of us who have studied a bit of physics there is no such thing as past-present-future in such straightforward terms. While the injunction is probably useful for highly-evolved beings, if something like that exists, for the rest of us who are living in the time continuum it would be quite dangerous to apply the injunction 24/7. Which leads to my thinking on why we have not seen more people reminding us to balance this too. The tyranny of balance has been thrown at us at all levels in recent years, "you need to find balance", from balancing your finances to balancing all aspects of your personal, social, professional, educational, emotional, physical, and 'leisureal' (couldn't find an '-al' for that one) lives...

So what would balance in respect to the power of now look like? I guess it would imply that you experience the present fully (whatever that means) while still planning for the future (e.g. making plans) and remembering the past (e.g. using experience to avoid past mistakes). Could it be that simple???

PS Just for fun and thought: What's going on, Marvin Gaye

Mother, mother - There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother - There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way - To bring some lovin' here today 

Father, father - We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer - For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way - To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs - Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see - Oh, what's going on
What's going on - Ya, what's going on - Ah, what's going on

In the mean time - Right on, baby - Right on - Right on

Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us - Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way - To bring some understanding here today

Picket lines and picket signs - Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me - So you can see - What's going on - Ya, what's going on
Tell me what's going on - I'll tell you what's going on - Uh
Right on baby - Right on baby 

PS2 Thanks Marvin

Not understanding someone = a spiritual lesson on its way?

Every once in a while I see somone in a complicated situation and I think to myself "How did they let things get that way?" I wonder why they didn't they do X or Y or Z as it is so obvious that that is what is necessary. I just don't understand them. Often I shake my head, or think to myself in one form or another "I would have done things differently" which is a subtle or not-so-subtle way of considering myself smarter than another.

Something has happened though recently. Or rather I have started to notice something recently that looks like a pattern emerging. I have a feeling that every time I "don't understand someone" I condemn myself to understanding that person sooner or later. Learning, any form of learning, comes from reaching understanding concerning something which was formerly not understood. Spiritual learning, I have a feeling, comes from understanding humanity in all its forms. Sometimes I think that maybe we are God's Little Learners and that our growing understanding of human nature contributes to God's.

Once I hit on this idea I started to realize the long list of non-understandings that I have condemned myself to understand. Probably the majority of the list comes from our parents. "I don't understand how my parents could..." could be the beginning of many, many sentences.

Some things are silly in perspective but nevertheless there they are. I couldn't understand how my parents could be addicted to coffee. Or how they could drink coffee on a hot summer day. Now I do. I could not understand how my father could be addicted to smoking. Now I smoke a cigarette a few times a week and see how addicting it is.

Many more lessons come to me from my students, my colleagues, my friends, the occasional boss... I don't understand how... and then I do. I couldn't understand a certain type of plagiarism, I couldn't understand certain frustrations, I couldn't understand weight-reduction inducing heartbreak, I couldn't understand managing from emergency to emergency... now I do.

Let him without sin cast the first stone. Whether we have sinned or not, the potential is there in all of us. Which makes us all similar. Human. Maybe that is what our mission here is all about, checking off a long list of 'not understandings', a different kind of bucket list than we are accustomed to thinking about.

Now whenever I don't understand someone, it freaks me out a bit.  I realize either I have to figure it out then and there or I am condemning myself to live the experience. Then again, maybe life is all about empathy. I never could understand life ; )

[Follow up] Spirituality at work

So my last blog 'post', if I can call it that, on the subject of spirituality at work was a bit brief. As I struggle personally with the subject, it was interesting to find a few gems hidden in a book that I had started and not finished, right before I was about to banish it back to my bookshelves, possibly forever (gasp!).

The book is one that I already discussed in this blog in a past post - The Five Languages of Love. A good book with many pearls of wisdom that are very applicable. As I leafed through the book on the way to the bookshelf I feel on one of the last chapters which discussed love languages at work. The author relates one story in which two co-workers did not really get along. One of the two attempted to apply the precepts of the book and try to understand the love language of her co-worker. Once she did this her whole attitude to the co-worker changed, timidly, and, surprisingly to her, so did that of the co-worker did too. From two co-workers that were cold to each other, their relationship became one of mutual aid and eventually friendship. Asides from being a modern fable, it was actually quite interesting to think about... I tried to relate it to my own experience and it has given me food for thought.

A bit further though I read something that really caught my eye and attention. A sub-chapter entitled "Is it hypocritical to love?" It got my attention because this is really something I have been struggling with. How do you find love for people you work with if you don't know them or have an initially cold relationship? Can you pretend to love them without feeling like an idiot, or hypocritical or without causing them to think that you are just plain weird? It all seems very California granola-ish... not sure that it works anywhere in which granola is not considered one of the primary food groups.

And here was the chapter attempting to answer my question for me. So I read on.  The author Gary Chapman punted himself and referred to another author-thinker CS Lewis whom he quotes as follows:

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you love someone, you will presently come to love him.

I have been trying to apply these words. Occasionally I forget and the reaction of the 'other' is not pretty. When I stay on track though it is heart-warming (usually) to see the reactions of others.

It seems that no matter where I go with this blog it keeps circling back to the golden rule. Hmmm.

Anyway, I will try to apply CS Lewis's method. Just remind me gently if you see me forgetting to walk the talk... Gently. Please.

Benevolence and intention...

In a recent business presentation, of all places, I came across the following quote from Adam Smith, an economist who is best known for his Invisible Hand metaphor which is often understood, and possibly with the author's intention, to say that each of us, following and acting on our own self-interest (read egotism) actually ends up doing good for society, even if it is unintentional.

As the philosophical father of modern capitalism, I was a bit surprised to come across the following from the same author in a treatise entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

No benevolent man ever lost altogether the fruits of his benevolence. If he does not always gather them from the persons from whom he ought to have gathered them, he seldom fails to gather them, and with a tenfold increase, from other people. Kindness is the parent of kindness; and if to be beloved by our brethren be the great object of our ambition, the surest way of obtaining it is, by our conduct to show that we really love them.

The first part of this quote is not too original but expresses the sentiment that is a bit like 'bread upon the waters' in which you gather what you sow tenfold in terms of human kindness. A definite benefit for those who apply the golden rule (see a previous post on this subject).

The second element, "kindness is the parent of kindness" is also a wonderful sentiment and something to remember, just like the contagious nature of smiles and laughter, kindness is also viral... So taking these two elements together it would seem that not only do you get back tenfold benevolence but you also spread tenfold benevolence around the world. The image that comes to my mind is the proverbial pebble ripples in a pond. Nice to think that that is or could be the case.

The third element of this wonderfully rich paragraph is a bit more intriguing: "if to be beloved by our brethren be the great object of our ambition". My initial reaction was 1/it seems strange to me that we can have an ambition of being beloved by others and/or that that could be a positive thing; and 2/that today the word ambition has a negative connotation (albeit only in my mind) or at least a connotation that is not very spiritual. Upon reflection, ambition, just like pride, can be very positive sentiments that can encourage and inspire people to do great things. And just like the 'invisible hand' if it is out of an ambition to be beloved by others that drives you to loving others, as Adam Smith suggests, what could be wrong with that?! For what a wonderful way to end this lovely paragraph, it is not about telling people that you love them but by showing them - by our conduct to show that we really love them.

Love thy neighbor as thyself... do unto others as you would have them do unto you... Adam Smith seems to be giving us another version of the golden rule. What is interesting too is that Adam Smith begins his paragraph in the third person (he, other) but ends it on a collective and more personal note (our).

A wonderful paragraph rich in wonderful sentiments.

And now I suggest that we go out and throw our little pebbles into the big pond...

The Bible - The Old Testament

One of my favorite authors, if not my favorite author, Meir Shalev, wrote a book whose title I could translate from Hebrew into "Firsts" but will apparently appear as In the Beginning: Firsts in the Bible. It is all about firsts mentioned in Genesis. The first love, first kiss, first hate, first murder, first war, first king, first laugh, first dream, first cry, first spy, first prophet, first wise man... A book of firsts which is interesting, especially for anyone who enjoys the Bible, and even more so, for anyone who enjoys literary and/or biblical interpretation. 

For those who know the Old Testament, there are always at least three levels of interpretation for each word, let alone each story. Shalev adds another level of interpretation by implicitly suggesting that each first that appears in the first book about "in the beginning" (the literal translation of Genesis from the Hebrew) has additional importance by the mere fact of it being a first.

An interesting example is that the first love that is mentioned in Genesis is not what you would expect and not when you would expect it. Love appears relatively late in the narrative as it waits for Abraham. And the first love is not what you would expect either. It is not love for God, it is not love for his wife Sarah, it is not love for Agar the servant with whom he had his first son Ismael, it is not for his first born Ismael... The first love that is mentioned is the love of Isaac, his son from Sarah his wife, and it is only mentioned by God when he instructs Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

Chapter 22 of Genesis:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him: 'Abraham'; and he said: 'Here am I.' And He said: 'Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.'

So it is interesting to consider, and Shalev invites us to do so, that no love was mentioned between Adam and Eve, that it wasn't lover's love or a mother's love, but that of a father for his son. And it was neither the son nor the father that mentions it, but rather God. It almost seems like an adjective used to describe Isaac, rather than an appreciation of the love of a father for his son, but there it is nonetheless.

As an aside to this story, and something I had never realized before, but Shalev points out that this event, the very grim pseudo sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, created a significant before-after rift. One of the gifts of the Biblical author(s) is subtlety. In a very subtle manner it is possible to understand without it being said explicitly that Abraham does not go back to Sarah after this and that Abraham and Isaac never live together again.

The rest of the story is also fascinating, with Abraham later sending a servant to help find a wife, Rebecca, for Isaac. But that you will have to read on your own (Genesis chapters 26 and onwards).

With some humor, Shalev announces another first: the first dream. He declares with some sadness that the first dream is not what we would guess either. It is not Jacob's Ladder, in which Angels ascend and descend from Heaven but the dream of a foreign King who dreams of Abraham (then Avram) wife Sarah (then Sarai) who the king wanted to take as a concubine as he was told that she was Avram's sister (Avram was afraid that he would be killed by the king because Sarai was so beautiful)...

The book is full of stories and interesting personal interpretation on Shalev's part. It is a wonderful book, but it is also a wonderful way to rediscover the Old Testament. So many wonderful and rich stories. While the book is wonderful it is even better if you keep a copy of the Old Testament next to your bedside table so as to be able to revisit the original in parallel.

Great literature and inspiration to go back and discover-rediscover Genesis. A wonderful book no matter what belief system you bring with you.

PS Shalev wrote another book on the Old Testament, Bible Now, already in 1985, with personal interpretations of biblical stories.
PS2 Another great book of Meir Shalev's, recently translated into English, About a Pigeon and a Boy, . Wonderful literature. Highly recommended!

[Thoughts on] EnlightenNext magazine

One of my favorite magazines of recent years, or at least one of the only ones that I really try to read cover to cover is EnlightenNext (formerly What is Enlightenment). Recently it appears that they have had financial problems, like much of the printed press, and are now calling for donations, financial support and the like. I am kind of worried about them as most people in a delicate financial situation only make those kinds of requests/announcements late in the game and when they have to.

Already, in the last few years I noticed the increasing use of advertising in their pages and started to wonder about that. Although, to their credit, these have usually been (more or less) spiritually-oriented ads. Which brings me to the real subject (sub-text) of this post: how can you reconcile spirituality with commerciality? (I know that that's not really a word, or at least a regularly-used word, but I am sure you know what I mean). How can you be discussing enlightenment on page 1 and asking for money on page 2? Then again, maybe it is a modern form of (the somewhat medieval) alms - people on a spiritual mission depending on the generosity of strangers for their survival.

And here I go off on another tangent. Alms and living off other people's generosity reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi, one of my favorite religious historical figures. God's little pauper, as Kazantzakis called him, was one of the first well-known (or at least well-documented) renunciates. While he had absolute faith, his acolytes probably had a more difficult time dealing with the day-to-day. As I see a personal letter from the founder of the magazine calling for financial help I must admit I hear more concern and realism than the irrealism born of absolute faith. Which probably means that the rest of the staff is a lot more worried... I do hope that they figure out a solution.

What I read (past tense) between the lines is what got me thinking and what eventually led to this post. It is not easy to reconcile "doing the right thing" (or a good thing) and getting paid for it. We are now in a world in which we expect a lot of things to be free, open source, 24/7, available, shareable, etc. So how can spirituality not be all of that too?

While I don't know if they are considering this, I have a feeling that many of their readers would be willing to pay more for their subscription to see the magazine survive. How much is too much to pay for a unique magazine? Not sure I know the answer to that one, but I do imagine that the price sensitivity of their readership will be less elastic for this magazine than for others.

Finally, getting back to the ads I mentioned earlier. One of the phenomena I have seen on the internet in financial advising, commercial websites, blogs (but not mine, otherwise there would be more than a dozen of you reading this) and now spirituality is something I call "closed-circle expertization". A handful of experts mention a handful of experts, write the testimonials for their books, blogs, courses, conferences, show up as guests in the books, blogs, courses and conferences of each other, are present on the same panels, roundtables and speaking circuits. A kind of cartel in which each boosts the interests of the others in order to boost their own interests. It is a great business model and one that probably evolves more naturally (organically to use the parlance) than most business cartels, but it not less present nonetheless. Such it is with most of the spiritual leaders we read and hear about today - and EnglightenNext's panel of spiritual leaders is not much different.

Nevertheless the quality of the writing, the breadth and depth of articles and spiritual leaders, as well as the themes they explore does make it a magazine well worth reading and thinking about and, now, supporting.

Enjoy! and tell them I sent you ; )

Being spiritual at work

Is difficult...

The man and his word...

Emmanuel Levinas wrote a famous essay, I love the Torah more than God, after reading a short story written by my grandfather, Yosl Rakover Talks to God by Zvi Kolitz. (Note to self: write a blog entry on Yosl and his story.) The essence of this story, if I remember correctly (it has been a while since I have read it) was that Levinas admitted that he could not comprehend God and his actions (or lack of action) because he could not understand how God as we understand the notion could allow something like the Holocaust to happen.

This is kind of a lead in to what I wanted to write about today - can we admire the work of someone (writer, thinker, author, philosopher, guru, ...) for whom we have no admiration as a person? When you read the writings of spiritual 'leaders' like Osho or Gurdjieff (to name but two) and see wisdom, profundity, inspiring words and ideas, thinking that you recognize as 'right' for you... it is very difficult, for me, to reconcile their spiritual wisdom with their life stupidity. When you read accounts of how they treated people, how they abused their power, their (often) material crassness, etc. then what is one to think of their words? Do you throw out the bath water because the baby is dirty? Or do you do as Levinas has done with God, admitting that he cannot understand the creator while confessing his admiration for the creation?

One person who has taken a good stab at framing this question of 'how is it possible to be so developed and enlightened on one level and a total idiot on other levels?' is Ken Wilber. He has developed a philosophical / developmental framework he originally named after himself but later renamed AQAL (all quadrants all levels). The idea being, in a nutshell, that there are four axes of development we all follow and you can be advanced on one axe and not very far along another - concurrently! Thus it is quite logical that someone can be both spiritually wise and a social idiot, or something to that effect.

The framework looks something like the diagram above which I believe he has revised a bit since, but hopefully the idea is clear: four axes - social, cultural, behavioral and intentional - on which we can develop. In some areas we advance faster and in others slower.

I should mention my take on Wilber. I think he is brilliant but I don't think he is enlightened and I think he would rather be enlightened than brilliant. He is a master synthesist (he now, rightfully, calls his work 'Integral') and he is probably one of the more thoughtful and knowledgeable writers-thinkers-philosophers-psychologists of our times. However, I feel that if he would just stop trying to impress everyone with his spirituality (as he has always impressed everyone with his intellect - apparently that was not enough), his writing would be even more fantastic than it already is. He is also a major contributor to EnlightenNext magazine in which he is the Pandit to Andrew Cohen's Guru (Cohen who suffers from the opposite of Wilber - he is probably enlightened but would like to be brilliant - which makes their partnership even more interesting...).

So what do you think, what takes precedence the creator or the creation? Can one shine without the other? Or do only those that walk the talk, like Thich Nhat Hahn, merit our consideration?

[Still more thoughts on] Peace is every step

I have been reading Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh in small sips, savoring them like a glass of fine wine. And interestingly, that's how I imagine he would like his short thought pieces to be read. Read, think, digest, apply.

He has a small chapter called Hugging Meditation. I will reproduce the first couple of paragraphs as they convey the essential message quite clearly, simply and with an economy of words (as usual):

Hugging is a beautiful Western custom, and we from the East would like to contribute the practice of conscious breathing to it. When you hold a child in your arms, or hugy your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.

If you are distracted, thinking about other things, your hug will be distracted also, not very deep, and you may not enjoy hugging very much. So when you hug your child, your friend, your spouse, I recommend that you first breathe in and out consciously and return to the present moment. Then, while you hold him or her in your arms, breathe three times consciously, and you will enjoy your hugging more than ever before.

Quite simple isn't it?! As in much Eastern spirituality, the importance is "being there", focused on what you are doing. As a Japanese friend once said to me "you have to decide: either you are talking to me or you are making me tea." At the time I did not understand why talking while making tea could be seen as insulting...

Growing up in the States, I always took hugging for granted. While bear hugs are common, and true hugs happen often, hugging in America can also be a superficial affair with minimal contact, or little back taps that hide the discomfort of physical proximity. Thich Nhat's hugging meditation can make those more real. Not that all hugs need to be real, but the ones he mentions - those among parents and children, friends, family, spouses - could probably benefit from this 'focused hugging' approach.

Even though my parents were not American-born they were quick to pick up the custom. I was hugged as a child and so I feel comfortable hugging. But many countries are not hugging countries. France is one of them. People kiss to say hello, even guys, but we don't hug here. There is actually no real word for hugging. The word for embracing, which would be the literal translation, is used for kissing. To differentiate I use the word 'hug' in French, which does not exist and has the double inconvenience of the h which the French do not like to pronounce on its own. Linguistic differences aside, it is interesting to see the cultural differences too.

In France, at least based on my experience, it is not common for parents to hug their children and thus grownups are probably less comfortable hugging too. Despite being very tactile, holding hangs, putting arms around each other's waists or shoulders, public displays of affection, couples do not really hug very often or at all. A hug is usually the prelude to a kiss, not an end in and of its own. I remember one ex-girlfriend who admitted to me that she had never hugged her mother, ever. I tried to coax her to hug but she did not feel comfortable initiating contact. We figured out a way around the problem by me 'sending hugs' to her mother which she would deliver. But even then, she admitted that it was not natural. The things we take for granted!

In any case, truly hugging someone, focusing on the hug, can be an incredible experience. Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that these "hugging meditations" have the power to make serious breakthroughs in relationships in general and especially among couples... and like smiling, it's free!

Happy hugging

[Thoughts on] The Bible

While on vacation I came across the French "Philosophie" magazine's special summer issue on the Bible, i.e. the Old Testament. The wonderful and not always comprehensible stories of the Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, Abraham's fatherhood at 100, Abraham's apparent inhumanity in the face of the banishment of Ishmael, Abraham's apparent inhumanity in the sacrifice of Isaac, the story of Joseph and his brothers, are all commented by philosophers living or dead, with more or less pertinence, understanding and wisdom...

Those stories and others like the story of Jacob and Rachel, which inspired Thomas Mann to 'fill out' the biblical author's tendency to concision and obfuscation of insight (we are told what happens but rarely why or what thinking led to specific actions), are very intriguing - both in literary and spiritual terms.

For example, how can one understand the notion of human sacrifice? Abraham for example, was willing to sacrifice both of his children, his only children. He sends off his firt-born, Ishmael, into the desert with Agar with nothing more than some bread and water... no sheep, no donkey, no nothin'. Then, soon after, he is  willing to sacrifice the son he had at 100 with Sarah (who was 94 at the time) who, for all he knows will be his only son (it turns out he will have other children, and sons, with future wives - and there was no viagra at the time...).

What is funny is that the conversation between Abraham and God used to sound surreal, or not how normal "people" speak. With modern times, it now, funnily enough, sounds more or less like a cell phone conversation... "Abraham?" "Here I am."... (As usual, the biblical author doesn't say where the conversation takes place or how, there is basically just a transcript.)

What is incredible is that Genesis is practically not much more than a short story - in my English version it is about 68 pages long, it is even less in my Hebrew version. And within those pages, how many stories! how much subtext! how much possible commentary! It is teeming with history, geneology, creation, destruction, incredible love stories, treachery, murder, birth, death, new beginnings, vices of all sorts, angels, nation-building, leaving home, homecomings, deception, generosity, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Garden of Eden, kings and paupers, fidelity and adultery, the many faces of man, the many facets of God... 68 pages. Rich, dense, intriguing, fascinating... Just for a little perspective, Thomas Mann wrote over 1300 pages in Joseph and His Brothers 'filling out' just a few pages from Genesis.

Well friends, it looks like it is time, for me, to reread it. First in English and then I will try again in Hebrew. I hope I gave you the desire to read it again too...

[More thoughts on] Men and Women

Well as I continue reading David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man (that I discussed in a recent blog entry) I keep finding myself having aha! moments. While sometimes he can seem to push the "Me Tarzan, You Jane" envelope a bit, it seems to me that he is actually quite clear and insightful about expected roles, default roles, and what happens if partners play different roles than the 'classic' roles of Tarzan and Jane. He is not against straying from traditional roles per se, but warns us about the consequences if we stray without understanding what that implies long-term for the relationship's dynamics.

I found myself revisiting various relationships I have had in the past and seeing how what he describes "could happen if" did come to pass in those relationships. I found myself shaking my head and thinking to myself 'yup, I did that' and 'yup that happened to us' and 'yeah, I guess that's what we did', etc.

While this is not the essential issues I am refering to, here is one example that I know I have been guilty of on numerous occasions... David Deida writes, "The thing your woman is complaining about is rarely the thing she is complaining about. It is a mistake to believe the content of what she is saying, and then respond to her complaints, point by point." He gives a few examples, which not everyone will find pertinent to them but which illustrate his message quite well, namely that a complaint coming from a partner is an alert to something, the content of which is usually only somewhat-related to the true problem that is being signaled.

In that context Deida goes on to write, "you must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor. She usually is speaking in a very tangential, but revelatory, style. [...] Hear her complaint as the universe giving you signs about your life." Here Deida builds a pretty good case for realizing that women are good at realizing that there may be a problem in their man's life but not always adept at verbalizing it. If you get stuck on the details of the complaint and you don't hear the true message that is behind it, both partners end up frustrated, feeling misunderstood and often angry...

This is a bit similar to another idea Deida talks about which is the "feminine trait of wanting one thing and asking for another." He points out that many men get pissed off and wonder "Why don't you just tell me what you really want, instead of saying one thing and meaning another, expecting me to figure it out?" I have, and probably all of my guy friends have definitely felt this (and complained about this) in the past. However Deida does a pretty good job at explaining how easy it is to 'miss the point'. He suggests that the "superior man" should understand the underlying dynamic (which is basically a test of your manhood) and react to it intelligently and in a way that builds the relationship rather than whittling away at it. In psychological terms, this is similar to a double bind. According to Deida the woman verbalizes a desire for one thing that if satisfied would keep her man from satisfying a personal desire or doing what he needs to do. His idea is that if you give in to her and satisfy her need she may be happy in the short-term but the man will have undermined some of the respect she has for him.  As you can see, this makes for interesting reading and there is a lot of material that could potentially turn off more than just the hard-core feminists...

The chapters of the book are short and you can get most of the message from the title of the chapter and the lengthy sub-headings that follow them. However, to me the overall message is kind of like a guide to optimal relationship building - both in a polarized (Tarzan-Jane) world and a non-polarized (we are all equal) world - and a guide to mutual understanding among men and women. A guide that, for me, appears more intelligent, more on target, and less comic-bookish than the Venus and Mars series.

I would be curious to see how many who have read this book see things, or if it suffers from an overly masculine perspective that I naturally felt comfortable with but which others may not appreciate as much.

Let me know?!

The spiritual truth as told by a cat...

I just thought I would share this with you (I got it from a good friend by e-mail) as it corresponds quite well to my situation, not because it is exactly the same situation but because it describe a similar sentiment: I find that I can go from feeling 'in tune with higher feelings' one second and can lose it with someone for something silly the next... a humbling reality check (i.e. a reminder that there is still a lot of work to do).

I think I am a karmic wimp...

For anyone interested in spirituality (especially the Hindu and Buddhist varieties), in 'spiritual light' literature ("spirit-light-lit"?), or even (gasp, dare we say it) mainstream hip lit, we hear a lot about karma, karmic destiny, karmic cleansing, karma this and karma that...

Most of the reading and thinking I have seen on karma has been something like if you had your karmic act together in the past you get a better karmic deal in the present and future... or something to that effect. My very personal theory, it is personal at least because I have never seen it expounded elsewhere, is that karma works backwards as to how most of us understand it.

Let me explain.

But before I do, I would like to make an admission, according to this theory, I am most probably a karmic wimp! And the bad news is that most of you who are reading this are in the same situation, as are most of the people you know...

Basically my idea is this. If we believe in reincarnation, which is more or less a prerequisite for believing in karma, we probably also believe that we have something to learn in our lifetime(s) here on Earth. So my thinking is quite simple in this regard, learning is positively correlated with challenges, i.e. the more difficult the material and existential details of our lives the more we learn. Which also means that the opposite probably holds true. So for those of us, like me, who were born in houses with rooms, heat, electricity, running water, a full fridge, car pools, after school activities that don't involve survival, probably have thinner karmic skins than those who were born without... Or to say it differently yet again, Maslow's pyramid is a karmic map, it's just upside down.


Furthermore, many traditions who believe in karma also believe that we choose the conditions of our birth, including material comfort, existential challenges, who our parents are, geography, etc. And since we are here to learn (and/or to remember our divinity, which we could semantically or philosophically argue is quite similar), my intuition is that we learn a lot more about humanity, divinity, grace in the face of difficulty, generosity and love when life is short, difficult and very little can be taken for granted. Granted, some lessons are probably easier or more difficult to learn depending on circumstance, but it just feels like spiritual learning must be accelerated when comfort is not part of the equation...

Personally, I don't know if I would last long in an existence that many denizens of the third-world must face daily and just don't know how much humanity would shine through. I have a hard enough time expressing my humanity in my cushy little existence.

Maybe this approach to karma helps explain why the Psalmist announced that "the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace."

If anyone knows about someone who has written about this or attempted to explain it differently, please let me know.

Any other thoughts/comments/ideas?

[Notes on] I-Ching (the Book of Changes)

A good friend recently gave me a copy of the I-Ching, also called the Book of Changes or Zhouyi. Apparently it is not that easy to attribute the date of the origin of I-Ching, which has probably been modified over the ages, but the debate goes from approximately 3000 years BCE to 300 years BCE, with recent research preferring 9th century BCE. Regardless of the date and the person/s behind the I-Ching, in any case it has been around for quite some time and has had quite an influence on Chinese and Asian philosophy and thinking.

According to wikipedia, "The text describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs. The cosmology centres on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change."

I have now been trying it out for a couple of days and it does seem interesting. While I am only discovering the book and its wisdom, my early impressions is that it feels like an intelligent daily horoscope which not only guides you but also makes you think and ponder over personal issues. Kind of like an active meditation (meditation in the sense contemplating or turning something over in one's mind). Interesting in any case and I look forward to discovering more about it.

I won't even try to explain what it is for those who are not familiar with it but once again allow Wikipedia's anonymous authors to attempt an explanation:

The text of the I Ching is a set of oracular statements represented by a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams. Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines, where each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 2⁶ or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.
The hexagram diagram is conceptually subdivided into two three-line arrangements called trigrams. There are 2³, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining the two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Note also that these numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system.

While that is not the easiest explanation, maybe a visual one of the trigrams could help:

Basically, to use the I-Ching the 8 trigrams are organized in an 8 by 8 matrix and there is a simple method to find the appropriate square on the I-Ching 'checkerboard' (my personal expression).


Anyway, I have the Brian Browne Walker translation. If anyone has a good book to recommend so that I can learn more on the subject please let me know.

In praise of non-happiness

I have written a little about this, and have talked about this quite a bit with friends, but I personally believe that depression has an important role to play in our lives and that holding up "perma-happy" as the ultimate state-of-mind to be in is a mistake modern society is increasingly making.

Periods of non-happiness, periods of mild depression, seem to be periods in which people stop to take stock of things, ask themselves important questions (even if it is to ask questions that have no real answers), reconsider things like partner, choice of career, health, diet, leisure, family and friends. Things that are not that unimportant in the grander scheme of things : )

But society is hostile to depression or any form of non-happiness basically, telling us in many shapes and forms to 'snap back', 'stop dwelling', 'buckle up', 'think positive', 'take a pill', 'get out', 'get laid', 'get a grip', 'get help', etc.

Recently a friend-acquaintance of mine was looking a bit down. I gave him my spiel on how I felt happiness was overrated and 'the blues' were underrated. That if he was going through a tough time that is was important, the he must be at a transition point, that it must be the right time to take stock of things and decide what is important for him and, basically, that a mild depression was not only normal but would probably turn out to be very useful. Another friend who was there reacted to my words was truly surprised to hear my words. With a lot of female intelligence, she added yes, it is normal, but pointed out  that wallowing in his blues would not do much good and that asking questions without answers could put him into a dark spiral. At first, the friend in question asked us if it was really that apparent that he wasn't 'feeling 100%' and then he smiled weakly and admitted that he was trying to deal with quite a bit including the "fact" that you can't really let on to others that you aren't doing that well (especially since he works in the service industry) which is why he was trying to hide it.

While I do realize that in extreme cases depression can become severe and lead to dangerous behavior and even suicide, but I can't help to think that, except in those cases, people can be helped if we as a society except non-happiness as normal and even useful.

An interesting sidenote to all this, and the article that sparked my blog entry comes from The Economist magazine. Here is an excerpt from that article: 

Depression may be linked to how willing someone is to give up his goals

CLINICAL depression is a serious ailment, but almost everyone gets mildly depressed from time to time. Randolph Nesse, a psychologist and researcher in evolutionary medicine at the University of Michigan, likens the relationship between mild and clinical depression to the one between normal and chronic pain. He sees both pain and low mood as warning mechanisms and thinks that, just as understanding chronic pain means first understanding normal pain, so understanding clinical depression means understanding mild depression.

Dr Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

It is a neat hypothesis, but is it true? A study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests it might be. Carsten Wrosch from Concordia University in Montreal and Gregory Miller of the University of British Columbia studied depression in teenage girls. They measured the “goal adjustment capacities” of 97 girls aged 15-19 over the course of 19 months. They asked the participants questions about their ability to disengage from unattainable goals and to re-engage with new goals. They also asked about a range of symptoms associated with depression, and tracked how these changed over the course of the study.

Their conclusion was that those who experienced mild depressive symptoms  could, indeed, disengage more easily from unreachable goals. That supports Dr Nesse’s hypothesis. But the new study also found a remarkable corollary: those women who could disengage from the unattainable proved less likely to suffer more serious depression in the long run.

Mild depressive symptoms can therefore be seen as a natural part of dealing with failure in young adulthood. They set in when a goal is identified as unreachable and lead to a decline in motivation. In this period of low motivation, energy is saved and new goals can be found. If this mechanism does not function properly, though, severe depression can be the consequence. 

While the article deals with teenagers, I can't help to believe that something similar is going on with adults. The kind of crises people have at 30, 40, 50 and 60, in which oddly enough adults start to act a bit like adolescents, seem similar - people 'take advantage' of these so-called crises to stop and dwell on the circumstances of their lives, to reconsider dreams (if they are attainable, if they have slipped away, if it is 'now or never', if they have to be redefined or let go of, ...) and to reevaluate goals.

So the next time someone we know seems a bit down in the dumps, let's be supportive and make our own little contribution in the name of praise for the valuable and often spiritual growth that non-happiness can bring into our lives.

[Thoughts on] The Way of the Superior Man

I have been hearing and reading about Davide Deida, the author of The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire for some time. And I must admit to a good portion of skepticism before ordering and then reading this book. I first read something substantial about him in a spiritual magazine article, in EnlightenNext (previously What is Enlightenment?). The description did not really make me want to read the book but he just kept popping up time and again in different places - with some strongly for and others passionately against - and I decided that I needed to make up my own mind on the subject.

One of the ways I personally decide the value of a book is how much I underline (or not) the chapters I have read. Looking back through the book now I see that many passages are underlined and many others have achieved 'star status' (which means that I put an exclamation point or an asterisk next to a passage to symbolize that it is worth re-reading).

I could see how a book like this could piss of many women, feminists or egalitarians of either sex and just about everyone. But, he actually has a lot of very interesting things to say. And one of the most important things he says actually deflects most of the flak he receives as a macho pig - which is that while he talks about him and her he means whoever is playing a typically masculine or feminine role in a relationship (the masculine role can be played by the woman and vice versa).

His opinions are very clear and very 'piss or get off the pot' but many of them hit home with me. Much deeper and concentrated in terms of insights than what I considered the fluff of the Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars series. I found myself rethinking many situations with past girlfriends and understanding where I and we screwed up (mostly me though), what the source of many past frustrations actually were and how to, quite easily actually, change my behavior in the future.

His book delves into a lot more than the him-her relationship decoding/coaching and includes chapters on parenting, on the value of friends and friendships, on being true to your journey, on how not to compromise for the wrong reasons, and many other subjects which, at the end of the day I could summarize as treating the much larger subject of how to live life without regretting the life lived. A subject that is truly one that we can all relate too and that resonated with me quite a bit. Like someone tapping you on the shoulder and - sometimes gently, sometimes more aggressively - saying, "hey you, be careful, make sure you are on course, otherwise the list of regrets may be long and painful to look at..."

An example, well if you ask so kindly here it is:

When you do your tasks the right way, they liberate your life energy so that you can attend to what really matters - the investigation, realization, and embodiment of true freedom. Do you even know what that means? Have you devoted yourself to finding out the deepest truth of your own existence? If, in this very moment, your tasks are not supporting your life in this way, you must drop them or change them so that they do. Otherwise, you are wasting your life.

The above is excerpted from a chapter entitled "Don't Get Lost in Tasks and Duties" which like many of the chapter titles are a quite clear summary of what is within the chapter. Other chapters are entitled, "Praise Her" (with a byline, I like, that begins 'The masculine grows by challenge, but the feminine grows by praise), "Don't Use your Family and your Life as an Excuse", "Live with an Open Heart Even if it Hurts", ...

I still haven't finished reading the book, and some of the later chapters are the more controversial, but I will probably relate my impressions on the rest of the book when I dig into the rest. Good stuff, but to be digested bit by small bit, like many the spiritual book.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Alon

[Notes on] Krishnamurti's As One Is

The full title of this small collection of talks (the former equivalent of today's podcast transmissions I guess) is As One Is - To Free the Mind of All Conditioning. And as a good friend recently pointed out, you don't really need to read the book once you read and understand the title...

In any case, this is definitely a key theme for Jiddu Krishnamurti (who I wrote about in a previous post) and the toughest injunction he left us: free your mind from all conditioning! To get there, it seems to me like he is asking each and every one of us to do two things - a permanent auto-psychoanalysis and meditation. The first is about trying to bring to light the different influences that may be operating on us (family, culture, religion, tradition, country, wealth, color of skin, place of birth, morals, society, peer pressure, expectations, desires, wants, needs, dogma, ideology, isms, etc. etc. etc.). Not to judge ourselves about them, but to try to understand them, not to avoid them or hide from them, just to bring them to the light and look them over so to speak.

The latter, meditation, is different (I get the impression) from the mainstream understanding of what meditation is or what it is for. I cannot profess to completely understand what he means when he says or talks about meditation, but most of all he tells us that if meditation is about taking control over the chattiness of the brain, or any other form of attempting to control, then that is not meditation and that is not helpful.

It is hard to relate here how dense his thinking is; dense in the sense that when I start to underline the hard-hitting ideas and sentences (as I am wont to do), I end up underlining almost the entire book. An example can get this point across and especially share with you the wonder that is Krishnamurti - the powerhouse spiritual thinker:

To stand alone is to be uncorrupted, innocent, free of all tradition, dogma, of opinion, of what another says, and so on. Such a mind does not seek because there is nothing to seek; being free, such a mind is completely still without a want, without movement. But this state is not to be achieved; it isn't a thing that you buy through discipline; it doesn't come into being by giving up sex, or practicing a certain yoga. It comes into being only when there is understanding of the ways of the self, the 'me', which shows itself through the conscious mind in everyday activity, and also in the unconscious. What matters is to understand for oneself, not through the direction of others, the total content of consciousness, which is conditioned, which is the result of society, of religion, of various impacts, impressions, memories--to understand all that conditioning and be free of it. But there is no "how" to be free. If you ask how to be free, you are not listening.

When you read Krishnamurti you also realize, because he tells you, that the whole notion of 'spiritual progress'--so dear to East and West--is not where it's at. By seeking with an objective in mind we are not truly seeking, we are simply continuing our conditioning... He also helped me to understand the difference between aloneness (something very positive as he explains it--reread the above quote for his understanding of the concept) and loneliness...

Another quote linked to the first one, and to show you how with Krishnamurti you feel like he sees us in all our ugly and petty habits, names them, brings them to the light and challenges us to do something about, i.e. understand them, here is another short passage on listening:

Do you really listen, or are you interpreting what is being said in terms of your own understanding? Are you capable of listening to anybody? Or is it that in the process of listening, various thoughts, opinions, arise so that your own knowledge and experience intervene between what is being said and your comprehension of it?

Using this (his) strict definition, I don't think anyone could 'throw the first stone'...

He also has a wonderful passage on the explanation between concentration (which is narrow and excludes) and attention (which is open and includes); the latter which he defines as complete awareness without interpretation. Which I guess is true listening.

And I will finish this post, although I will continue to read and review the book for another post in the near future, on his take on meditation that I alluded to at the outset of this post. As usual, beautiful, right on and so difficult to apply:

Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. Self-knowledge is not according to some psychologist, book, or philosopher but it is to know oneself as one is from moment to moment. Do you understand? To know oneself is to observe what one thinks, how one feels, not just superficially, but to be deeply aware of what is without condemnation, without judgment, without evaluation or comparison. Try it and you will see how extraordinarily difficult it is for a mind that has been trained for centuries to compare, to condemn, to judge, to evaluate, to stop that whole process and simply to observe what is; but unless this takes place, not only at the superficial level, but right through the whole content of consciousness, there can be no delving into the profundity of the mind. Please, if you are really here to understand what is being said, it is this that we are concerned with and nothing else. Our problem is not what societies you should belong to, what kind of activities you should indulge in, what books you should read, and all that superficial business, but how to free the mind from conditioning...

To be continued...

On George Carlin and the future of nostalgia

I recently received an e-mail from a friend entitled "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but the moments that take our breath away..." with some words attributed (properly?) to George Carlin.

I am not sure that it is really from him but allow me to reproduce the main gist of the message and then react to it. Here is my excerpt from the message:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways,but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

So, well, overall it is cute and makes some valid points, but in a nutshell I don't buy into it!

It seems every generation has nostalgia for the good old days, and we are just another generation with another case of 'where-did-the-good-times-go' blues... when things were better, simpler, more wholesome, cheaper, of better quality, realer, whatever, etc. etc. etc.

Come on! We have it soooo good but we don't want to admit it. Now I realize that anyone who is reading this is part of the estimated (but not by me) 1% of the world's population who has it good but even if there are lots of things we all would change about the way things are going, we also have a lot more to be thankful for today than ever before. Or at least that is the way I would like to see it, my illusion so to speak.

For anyone growing up in the States, we were enticed regularly to finish our plates because "think of all the starving kids in China"... I don't think any parents are using that line anymore. Moreover, the rising tide of China's economy is now also lifting Vietnam and starting to spillover to the economies of countries like Laos and Cambodia (along the lines of Kennedy's aphorism "a rising tide lifts all boats").

Progress in health means added years of living, even for people who are diagnosed with diseases that used to mean short-term death sentences. Those extra years, in those situations, are priceless. Personally, chemotherapy and other modern developments allowed my dad to add 10 months to his life after having been told that he only had one to live.  Those extra months, while difficult, allowed him to be present at his daughter's wedding, spend quality time with the family, etc. And thanks to progress in modern medicine, and pain management, the dying process was a lot less painful than it would otherwise have been - for him and for us.

While some people do watch TV more than read, for many of the people I know this is simple not true, sorry George. Spirituality, depth, caring, giving, volunteering, spontaneous acts of kindness are there every day, at all times, if we just care to notice them more than what the news shows us about conflict and war and expressoins of violence and hatred. We don't need to turn a blind eye to the negative aspects but should learn to see the positive more often.

Any time there is a catastrophe somewhere in the world, people from all over the world send money, food, aid or themselves to help. Spontaneously. When the Tsunami hit, the outpouring of aid from all over the world that the aid agencies and NGOs received more money than they knew what to do with. Not from governments but from people like you and me.

I guess it all goes back to our original decisions about life - is it a positive or negative experience? is man inherently good or evil? is the universe inherently loving or not? If you see a loving universe then its development can only be more loving... which means that if we give it a little thought, optimism about the future should replace our illusory, i.e. the future of nostalgia should not be so bright...

[My Stroke of Insight] Yet more left-hemisphere thoughts on the left-right dichotomy

I have had some very interesting feedback from different friends, readers and my mom on the subject of the left-right hemispheres of the brain. And as I need to do a few papers on the Human Brain for my doctorate, my reading about all this is getting deeper (or at least wider).

Synchronistically, my mother spoke to me about an incredible woman and her story of left-brain stroke and the incredible euphoria she experienced for the several weeks that her left brain was out of service. Apparently she almost regretted getting her left-brain back and describes living with only the right hemisphere active as a kind of nirvana, a growing sense of peace that sounds much like the nirvana described by the Enlightened who have attempted to describe the undescribable in left-brain language (nirvana being, as we now know, a right-brained 'phenomenon'). Interesting (dare I say cute) sidenote, the woman remembered experiencing a feeling of being enveloped by perfect love while she lay in her hospital bed. Only after she wrote about this did her own mother tell her that while she was recovering but unable to recognize anyone, she would lie in her hospital bed next to her and hug her for hours...

The synchronicity I mention comes from another friend (you know who you are) who sent me a similar description the next day with a link to the following article on Jill Bolte Taylor, the woman my mother was telling me about (although she could not remember her name). Cool coincidence in any case. Anyhoo, said friend, also sent me this excerpt from JBT's book, My Stroke of Insight, which kind of brings home the subject of the last three post entries quite well while explaining our need for the left brains 'chatter' to function in this world:

One of the jobs of our left hemisphere language centers is to define our self by saying “I am.”  Through the use of brain chatter, your brain repeats over and over again the details of your life so you can remember them. It is the home of the ego center, which provides you with an internal awareness of what your name is, what your credentials are, and where you live.  Without these cells performing their job, you would forget who you are and lose track of your life and your identity.

Together with the following quote, this time from the above-mentioned article, Ms. Taylor describes the feeling as she was having the stroke:

As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent, my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a "being at one" with the universe, if you will. In a compelling sort of way, it felt like the good road home and I liked it. 

Pretty incredible!

My further thinking on this is that it doesn't seem elegant to me that we should be searching to neutralize the left brain and its chatter to achieve true and lasting 'nirvana', joy, bliss, whatever (and I doubt we would want to always be there even if we could). Based on what we know of the Universe, it would seem to make more sense that we need to find a way to dissipate the duality of the two hemispheres and allow the left to keep us grounded and allow the right to allow us to feel higher emotions, i.e. find a synthesis of the two rather than a promotion of the one over the other. Unity (or advaita (non-duality)) rather than duality... where have I heard that spiritual theme before???

More thoughts on the left-right brain dichotomy

Well, I keep on thinking on the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the implications it has in spirituality, in observation, in regards to ego, in regards to understanding things and I find it all quite fascinating.

In all of the power of now literature, whether it be by Eckhart Tolle or anyone else, there is always this injunction to be in the now. One example that is often given is the awe we experience when faced with a wondrous landscape that nature offers us. Staying with that feeling of awe is usually held up as an example of "being in the now" which is the ultimate spiritual objective (if you buy into the literature, but also because it does feel good to be in that zone/feeling/state of mind...). So when does it all go to bits this wonderful feeling of being one with nature, the universe and everything? When you name it. That is, when you start to 'speak', even without words, when you describe it, when you say to yourself or someone 'it is so beautiful'... But putting this into the perspective of my last blog post, it is all really, and simply, a question of the left hemisphere speaking up to interrupt the blissful observation of the right hemisphere. Like the left is talking to the right while the latter is saying 'shut up will ya, I'm trying to watch'...

Actually, I had an idea about left-right that maybe in the Bible, in Genesis, there would be a mention of Adam observing first and naming all of the animals later but it was a dead end. However, if you will allow me the digression, I found it funny to reread the passage where God asks Adam, did you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? And Adam says, well yeah, but it's the woman you gave me who incited me to nibble. And then the woman says, well yeah, but it was the snake who incited me to eat it. Unfortunately for the snake he had no one to pass the blame along to and ended up legless and destined to slither forever in the dust. Very childish behavior on the part of our uber-parents, very 'it wasn't me' or 'he started it'...

Anyway, back to the Power of Now, which I just reached for following paragraph one's mention of it and here are a few nuggets that I found that I want to share with you.

The first is a basic premise of the book (a worldwide bestseller - assuming that counts as a positive), or rather of the author, is that "not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction..." (page 14 of the paperback edition), pointing out that Descartes' famous quip "I think, therefore I am" had it all wrong. For Tolle, to "equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking" is a major error - "the most basic error". Bringing in the left-right argument again, allows us to rethink the 'problem' a bit, for example, understanding that there is more to the mind than the chattiness that goes on in, and is the result of, our left hemisphere.

Later in the book (page 41) Tolle admonishes us (in the face of pain or beauty or whatever) "don't let the feeling turn into thinking". Once again, using the two hemisphere framework, it seems like we need to remain in observation with the right hemisphere (the silent brain that perceives but does not speak) and not allow the left hemisphere to start naming and rationalizing (or to re-use the metaphor, talking in the middle of the film that we are watching).

Being in the now, in a state of timelessness, is something that Tolle suggests we do (more often). And it is one of the characteristics of the right brain, while the left hemisphere counts, checks the watch, wonders how much time has gone by, etc. It really makes me think that the Zen (or Zen Buddhist) paradigm is about being 'right-minded', but literally! While I still don't know how to do that, it does make it a bit more easy to understand the 'requirements' and/or approach...

To finish this post, I want to share with you a wonderful little vignette that Watzlawick quotes in the book that got me going on this whole left-right theme, The Language of Change. It has nothing to do with anything, and I think he knew that too when he put it in his book, like I'm doing with this blog, but it is a great parable by Chuang Tzu that should help us all in 'anger management' when 'stuff' happens...

Suppose a boat is crossing a river, and another, empty boat is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there is someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout for him to keeep clear. And if the other did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case, there was no anger, in the second there was; because in the first case the boat was empty, and in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only roam empty through life, who would be able to injure him?

Of course, my anger management idea, and my final thought for now, is 'consider all those boats to be empty..."

Which side is the ego on?

I am now reading a book which is not really spiritual, at least at first glance, which has succeeded in making me think about quite a number of spiritual implications of what the author is talking about. Apparently this is not completely unintentional either, as the author does make the occasional references to religion, mysticism, Buddhism and Zen. But that is not the subject of the book by any stretch.

The book is The Language of Change Elements of Therapeutic Communication by Paul Watzlawick. Here (so that you understand that the spiritual angle I am finding is after all a bit of a stretch) is the official book description:

In this groundbreaking book, a world authority on human communication and communication therapy points out a basic contradiction in the way therapists use language. Although communications emerging in therapy are ascribed to the mind's unconscious, dark side, they are habitually translated in clinical dialogue into the supposedly therapeutic language of reason and consciousness. But, Dr. Watzlawick argues, it is precisely this bizarre language of the unconscious which holds the key to those realms where alone therapeutic change can take place.

Basically, Watzlawick's approach is to say that there are two sides of the brain (I know 'big scoop'! but bear with me). The left hemisphere which is the 'digital' side, the side responsible for counting, logic, language, grammar, syntax, semantics, reading, writing, speaking and, more generally, directed thinking. The right hemisphere is the 'analog' side, the side responsible for associations, dreams, fantasies, perception, intuition, Gestalt, recognizing faces, timelessness, concepts, word games, puns and, more generally, undirected thinking.

According to the author, the right hemisphere perceives with the left hand, left eye, left nostril, left ear. And vice versa. His therapeutic approach, and I am simpilfying greatly, is about getting the left hemisphere out of the way so that he can communicate with the right hemisphere...

In the middle of the brain is the corpus callosum, responsible for inter-hemispheric communication.

What is interesting, too, is that the left hemisphere is also known as the 'verbal' brain and the right hemisphere is also called the 'silent' brain.

Now you may be asking, and rightfully so, "Okay Alon, that is almost interesting, but what is the connection between this quick overview of anatomy and functionality and spirituality?" And you would be right to do so. So let me try and explain at least a few of the associations this raised for me...

First off is the question that is the title of this blog entry, so which side of the brain is the ego on? Since we are told that the ego is our own personal and internal nemesis, hindering us in our ability to see things as they are; since we are told that ego is the little bugger that will not allow us to meditate quietly and keeps on insisting on chatting away as the ego fears silence; as we are told that it is ego that insists on rationalizing and using logic even in areas of faith that defy to a certain degree cerebral reasoning... it seems like ego sounds a lot like Watzlawick's description of the left hemisphere.

But then I began to think about the corpus callosum, sitting so strategically in between the two hemispheres. If I were the ego and wanted to wreak havoc as the ego is purported to wont to do, I would probably sit there. If it is playing a positive role, I see the corpus callosum bridging the two hemispheres. However, the corpus callosum also controls the translation between the two hemispheres, two hemispheres that do not speak the same language and/or speak a similar language in different ways.

How easy would it be then to do a "Lost in Translation" type of translation in which only a minimum of information is communicated?! Or how easy would it be to translate 'slightly off' in order to cause some confusion or 'incommunication'? If the ego is really such a trouble maker, it almost seems too easy.

Further, reading this book, I realized that the duality that Buddhism, Zen, Hinduism and most Eastern spirituality sees as something that is supposed to be transcended so that we can reach unity, see ourselves as one, and merge with the universe... is SO biological. We are trying to overcome our own brain structure which is totally dual. Which might imply that enlightenment is about getting the two hemispheres to work together, or to bridge the two hemispheres so that they work as one, or maybe to think from the corpus callosum rather than either hemisphere or ???

Interestingly many descriptions of enlightenment and meditation, and something mentioned in Eat, Pray, Love (I discussed in a previous blog entry) is the figurative 'blue pearl' which resides somewhere in the middle, or the middle-bottom, of the brain and seems to be the source of the feeling of unique euphoria linked to enlightenment and the feeling of being one with the universe.

Also, since it would seem that, wherever we are spiritually, it would be interesting to connect more and more often to the right side of the brain, the side which understands things intuitively, that sees the bigger picture, that left side of the body meditation techniques could be used. Close your right eye, block your right nostril, put an ear plug in your right ear and then try meditating. I don't meditate very often but the next time I do I will try it. If I come up with anything interesting I will let you know, here.

Finally, if, as many believe, we have chosen to come to earth and live as humans, and having done so we chose to forget our 'godliness', maybe that 'trick' was pulled off by not giving us access to knowledge we already have (you have to know in order to forget), knowledge that is waiting for us in the right hemisphere that the left hemisphere is 'protecting' us from...

But since I came up with this with the left side of my brain, how much credence should we give that idea?

Astrologer quote on activating potential

A friend sent me a quote from Grant Lewi, an astrologer, that I am passing along:

It is not limitations that eat out the heart, but inaction, the knowledge of powers not used, the sense of having failed to develop to the utmost. The overcoming of fate is not the overcoming of limitations: that is impossible. It is the exercise of free will, the assertion of the full self, expanding to its utmost with the tools at hand, in the circumstances that are set.

To me that awakens associations of potential, which sometimes sounds like a terrible word to me. I feel like it refers to great things that have not yet been done. As I have often been considered by others, and my self, as someone with 'potential'... I hope to ditch 'potential' and start asserting more of my full self, whatever that may look/feel/act like...

Just don't hold your breath, developmentally I have never been a speedy Gonzalez : )

Spirituality is kind of banal... and TNH on knots

It's funny, almost no matter what hobby or passion you have you will find that someone has written an article of how [insert your passion or hobby here] is spiritual. Usually these kind of articles, books and blog entries flourish when said hobby or passion is trendy. I remember seeing articles on golf being spiritual and all the reasons it was like meditation, as well as fishing, knitting, washing dishes and other extreme sports... Another rash of more recent articles have been written on spirituality and surfing. How it is about being one with nature, putting your ego aside, operating in the present, being in the here and now, et cetera et cetera. Soon maybe we will see articles that suggest that spirituality is like... spirituality : )

Some of these articles are stretching it a bit but I guess the point is that spirituality can show up anywhere you look for it. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said (or said something like) you won't find what you are looking for by digging shallow holes all over the place; instead pick a spot, any spot, and dig deep.

Still and always reading Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh (I'm taking peace slowly in small steps : ))...

A great chapter in this little book, which strangely enough seems a lot bigger than it actually is (which is probably a good sign, although I am not sure of what), is called "Internal Formations" (page 64 in my paperback version). In it he speaks about the formation of "knots". Basically, every trauma, no matter how big or little can create a knot. If you are insulted, or feel slighted or hurt, or embarassed by someone's behavior ... (you get the point) he suggests that this creates a small knot. By not being aware of the knot, by not immediately working to untie it, it becomes tighter and tighter until it can become impossible to untie. The idea being, for couples especially but also for friends and in working relationships to 1/be aware of the formation of the knot and 2/work to untie it sooner rather than later. This can be done by talking about it with the person in question or through meditation.

In his words, "the absence of clear understanding is the basis for every knot." The knots need "our full attention as soon as they form, while they are still weak, so that the work of transformation is easy."

The work of 'knot awareness' (my phrase not his) means being aware of small knots that form. Some clues to this can be found by pursuing the following questions (or similar questions):

• why did I feel uncomfortable when I heard him say ...?
• why did I say ... to him?
• why didn't I like that character in the movie?
• why do I always think of ... when I meet ...?

Obviously, I guess, although TNH does not mention this specifically, the objective is to attain some form of spiritual progress in which you stop making knots or, maybe, in which you tease those two little strings apart before they actually get intertwined. Personally, I have had the feeling that the truly spiritual are not only impervious to insults (i.e. masters of knot avoidance) but are also indifferent to compliments (step 2 in spiritual mastery?) as the ego knows what it is worth (or not) by then... Tout un programme (~quite the program) as the French would say...

This idea of knot formation reminds me a lot of bioenergetics and somatics (among others), i.e. disciplines of psychotherapy that believe in the body-mind connection in the sense that the body harbors all of our 'emotional traumas' real and imagined in the body, like a squirrel gathering acorns. These emotional hurts go somewhere, can build up into real blockages and until they are released (worked on) it affects both the body and the mind. But that is well beyond the scope of this little blog, so I will end on that aside.

Have a wonderful weekend.

[Thoughts on] Eat, Pray and Love

So I am reading Eat, Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and besides how much I enjoy her writing style and the content of what she writes, I find it is also a wonderful spiritual primer. The one thing with spirituality is that it is such a personal endeavor for most of us that it is hard to compare notes with others. There are things that I was sure were personal issues or shortcomings that I needed to deal with and this little book has given me a lot of perspective on that. Most of these 'issues' are faced by everyone, in varying degrees, and I (really) didn't realize it.

One (of many) great passage in the book (page 138 in the paperback edition I'm reading), Gilbert says, "I don't think I'm good at meditation... I can't seem to keep my mind still." The monk she is complaining to answers, "It's a pity that you're the only person in the history of the world who ever had this problem."

While that seems quite silly and evident, it is true that I don't think I'm good at meditation either... and I can't seem to keep my mind still too. And that has been an excuse for me for not really trying. While it makes me smile to read her adventures in this domain, it also inspires me and gives me a necessary kick in the butt. I have read alot, I keep reading alot, but do I try to stop and apply some of the things I have read? Nooooooo...

Another great part of this book, which really spoke to me was a section in which she decides that she is going to become silent. She tells of a spiritual fantasy in which she becomes a silent mystical saint that people admire for her silence. Without going into the book's details, she is then reassigned a job at her Ashram in which she will have to speak all day. She goes on to recount a favorite statement of her guru's guru: God dwells in you, as you.

She explains this as 'God dwells within you as yourself, exactly the way you are.' Spirituality is not acting like the image you have of a spiritual person. No 'massive, dramatic, change of character' is necessary, there is no need to 'renounce our individuality.' The guru's guru then adds, "To know God you only need to renounce one thing -- your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character."

Once again, not a life-shattering insight, but to me, for me, this is a very important insight/reminder. I have various and varying images of what a spiritual person might look and act like (chief among them is my image of St. Francis), but that is (sigh) not who I am. And that is ok. I guess I need to learn to accept that it is ok to 'work within my own personality' as Gilbert coins it. She, drives the home point with a quote from Sextus, a Greek philosopher, "The wise man is always similar to himself."

Sometimes you find spirituality in the most unexpected places -- even in an Oprah-recommended, NY Times bestseller -- and this book is as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking or, rather, life-provoking. Gilbert's inquiries and adventures make me want to say yes to life more wholly (holy) and find the spirituality which is me and the me which is spiritual...

Hopefully the feeling will last beyond the last page.

Sitting at a sidewalk cafe...

Yesterday I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe having a cup of coffee and reading a book. At some point someone stopped in front of me.

I looked up and saw a woman of indeterminate age (was she 40 looking like 60, 60 looking like 60, or, most probably 50) standing there and apparently talking to me. I say apparently because I was listening to music on my iPod and could only see her lips moving. Based on her dress, demeanor and the fact that she was holding her hand out at me, I realized quite quickly that she was a beggar. I looked up without hearing a word of what she had to say, I flashed her a quick plastic smile and went back to reading.

She just stayed there and apparently kept on talking. Darn, strategy number one (ignore) and two (smile and ignore) had failed. I tried strategy number three, I looked up, smiled, and spread my arms and shrugged my shoulders trying to convey 'sorry I can't help you'. She remained and kept on talking. So I took off my earphones and looked up to hear what she had to say. Doing so I looked more closely at the woman: she had natty hair (rasta style but without the style), an old dress, and the worst teeth I have seen in a long time. Black, twisted teeth, wasted teeth. And what was she saying, in broken French with a Spanish-Italian-Portuguese accent (not sure which) it sounded like 'sorry but could you spare some money for a coffee, I drink too much coffee and if I don't drink coffee I get a bad headache.' She then patted her head, as if she was saying 'my poor head' and smiled again.

She said it in a non-aggressive and somewhat apologetic manner. For some reason I thought it was cute and thought, what the heck, she doesn't look like she is going to buy alcohol or drugs with it. She probably really just wants a coffee. As I was digging for some change in my pocket she flashed me a smile and that is when I noticed her eyes. Brown eyes, standard in that department, but extremely lively, friendly and young! The splendor, sparkle and youth in her eyes was in such contrast to all the rest I couldn't believe it. The hardship that her body, hair and hygiene were communicating were nowhere to be found in her eyes. It really was surreal. 

I finally found some money and gave it to her and her entire face lit up like a little girl on Christmas morning. She took a few steps and then turned around and smiled at me again, nodded, said 'may God bless you' and then walked slowly around the corner - out of my view and, undoubtedly, life.

I couldn't stop thinking about her eyes. It is difficult to convey but it was surreal - the book and the cover were telling such completely different stories that I was left wondering who she really was and what had really just happened...