Same and Different

In my thinking about various things, I arrive again and again at a basic conundrum of human experience: the Same and the Different.

Even in ancient times this question exercised philosophers. How do we understand the ideas of Same and Different? What makes something the Same as something else, and what makes it Different? I thought of doing a drawing or a painting with the title of "Same and Different": two identical eggs side by side. They're the same--but different.

Another way of presenting this same idea is the notion of Genus and Species. In the ancient, original sense, Genus was the category to which two individuals belonged--as, say, the Genus "egg" in my example--and the Species was the individual instance within the category--as the two individual eggs. Two Different individuals within the Same category. They're the Same--just Different.

Two other terms for Same and Different are Familiar and Strange. For something to be the Same, it must be Familiar: we must have a preexisting idea of it against which to compare it and note its Sameness. The Strange is Different from our familiar ideas. We recognize its novelty.

Every created work will be an amalgam of Familiar and Strange, Same and Different, Old and New. Familiar words in a Strange sequence, for example.

My first thought was about historical fiction: that it is a particular example of Same and Different. For, like, say, science fiction, it transports us to a world removed in time from our own: to a place none of us has been in our lifetime. In that sense it must be Strange and Different. But in that Strange and Different time, it contains people, things, situations, that are Familiar--the Same as what we recognize in our own lives now.

But it's not just historical fiction and science fiction that traffic in the Familiar and the Strange in this way--it's every work. An artist is exactly someone who assembles the Familiar and the Strange in a creative and novel way to evoke a sense of aesthetic enjoyment and meaning in a viewer or reader.

And hence, again, that excellent saying about high-quality writing: it makes the familiar seem strange and the strange seem familiar. This is the ability to see (and represent) things with fresh, unprejudiced vision, with the eye of newness.

A historical project is simply one way of doing that. Right now, it's my way. Day in and day out, I journey through the Strange to find the Familiar in history--and finding the Familiar in history, recognize the Strange in today. My task is to share those insights.

genius

Our word genius has an interesting background. In Latin it means "that which is just born". To the ancient Romans it meant the collection of traits and potentials that came into being or manifested at the birth of a person or anything else. They deified the concept as an entity that accompanied a man from birth to death (a woman was accompanied by a corresponding being called iuno--the same as the goddess Juno).

The genius was visualized in the form of a bearded snake that had its locus at the forehead. So it was an active, living principle, not the same as one's ego, but representing one's powers and one's destiny. The psychologist James Hillman has made use of this principle in his thinking, seeing in it a correspondence with other ideas, such as that of the guardian angel.

The image that just sprang to my mind was that of the strand of DNA that we regard as encoding our uniqueness as living beings. Being materialists, we tend to imagine this as a dumb thing, a record like a strip of magnetic tape that passively undergoes chemical operations in the course of our biological functioning.

But to me this is a silly way of looking at it. Our DNA is not dumb and inert; everything about it and its functioning suggests purpose and unbelievably brilliant design--a work of, yes, genius. Every one of us has a unique set of DNA, and its operation is purposeful, even relentless. This combination of uniqueness and forward-pushing purpose would be recognized by the Romans as one's genius.

We tend to reserve the word genius for exceptional people whose talents and achievements set them far apart from the norm. But even those who are closer to the norm are still unique, even if they are not famous.

Our task is to tune in to our uniqueness, and get out of its way. The serpent of our genius is always dragging us forward, and we spend much of our time, perhaps, fighting it mulishly, digging in our heels, perhaps out of a desire to be hitched to someone else's genius--to be doing things their way.

Possibly the people we call geniuses are simply those who don't do that. They have stopped fighting their genius--or they never started. Where their genius tugs them, they go. And when you run with your genius, you can run fast and far. It sees farther and knows more than we do. Why not just give in and enjoy the trip?

welcome, stranger

In the 1970s or perhaps the early 1980s there was a British documentary TV series called The Infinite Search, in which the presenter (forget who he was) visited practitioners and authorities of the various major religions of the world. In one of the episodes he visited a Zen monastery in Japan and interviewed the abbot, who could speak English.

At some point the presenter asked the Zen master what spiritual advice he could give to the Western viewers of the show. The Zen master answered, "I think it is important to know thyself."

In the words of my friend Brad, who first described this interview to me, it was a masterful reply. The dictum "know thyself" was of course the famous motto of the oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, so with those two words the Zen master bridged East and West in one go. The deceptive simplicity of the advice makes it like a Zen koan in the sense that the more you reflect on it, the more provocative and bottomless it becomes.

According to Buddhist doctrine, of course, there is no self to "know"--but understanding this is far from easy. For from the Buddhist point of view, even though things are not real, neither do they lack reality.

In East and West, we're enjoined to investigate this unreality called our self and get to know it. The biggest obstacle is the complacency of thinking that we already know. Once you admit that you don't know, you open the door to the greatest mystery we can find. To a greater or lesser extent, we're all strangers to ourselves. And how do we treat strangers?

I feel strongly that my work relates to this quest, but I'm darned if I could tell you how.

happiness and unhappiness

What would a "happy" life look like for me?

I'm not sure but I'm probably living it.

All of life is a tension of opposites, is it not? Happiness exists only in contradistinction to its opposite, unhappiness (or misery or sorrow or suffering). Only when the opposites are in fairly close proximity do we feel the intensity of one or the other. If you've had a biopsy for a suspected cancer, you may be waiting for the result with feelings of anxiety, even dread. When it comes back negative, you feel a rush of relief and joy. For a while, life seems rich and wonderful--a gift. But the intensity of contrast wears off as a function of time, and you return to your previous state of tension along the happiness-unhappiness axis.

Writers, like other people, tend to measure success in terms of social rewards such as prestige and earnings. But if an intelligent, objective person looks at those rewards carefully, there is not much to them. I think about, say, Conrad Black, the once-Canadian tycoon now languishing in hoosegow in Florida. Wealthy, prominent, and successful by just about any social yardstick except his own, he sought, Gatsby-like, to attain to some limit or singularity of social success and glamor, to "suck on the pap of wonder" (I think those were Fitzgerald's words) by becoming a British lord and joining the "real" nobility.

It was not to be. Or rather, it was--but then ended, spectacularly and suddenly, generating a contrast-experience in the downward direction.

The psychologist Victor Frankl says that life does not provide the answers; life asks the questions, and we provide the answers. Our lives, our living situations, are, basically, our answer--so far--to the questions put to us by life. Each problem or dilemma in life is another question, and our response is our answer to that question.

Whatever my feelings about toiling in obscurity, this toil and this obscurity are the result of choices I have made--my answers to the questions set by my life. If I don't like that, then I have a new question to answer. But my Buddhist training tells me to have caution. The restless search for a better deal in life is the hallmark of the human realm, and is itself a manifestation of suffering--of living in samsara.

The best definition of samsara that I've come across is "wanting things to be other than they are". Here's something to try: if you find yourself wishing things were other than they are, take a deliberate break from that way of thinking. For a few moments, just accept the way things are and pay attention to your surroundings. Notice then how your mind feels. To the extent that you can do this, you have had a taste of nirvana.

For me, to be in a state of tension between happiness and unhappiness is the way things are. Well, why not?

the goal-directed life

Another morning, another cup of coffee, another blog-post. I've done my morning research-work (keying notes from A History of Technology, volume 2, and reading the online book The Private Life of the Romans); now it's time to get in a quick post. Such is the structured order of my day.

I like purpose. I've thought and said this many times, but only gradually is its full significance beginning to dawn on me. Everything that people do has some kind of purpose, of course, even the most random-seeming drunken rioting. But I'm speaking here of more consciously chosen, goal-directed behavior. I sense that choosing a goal that is in accord with one's nature, and then consistently pursuing it, is what we call the feeling of meaning in our lives.

The feeling of meaning happens on a smaller scale too. A memory that stands out for me was of traveling with my friend Tim in Spain in December 1978. We had arrived at Cadiz at the Strait of Gibraltar, and were driving through the city in our red VW Westfalia, enjoying the sights and the ambience: palmettos and the lovely blue of the sea after weeks of driving inland. As we drove down along the port we saw a large ferry docked there, marked with its destination: the Canary Islands. There must have been a schedule there, telling us that it would be leaving in a couple of hours. We looked at each other: did we want to go?

Yes, we decided. Cool! Neither of us had imagined we would ever be setting out for the Canary Islands. But we had to take care of some things first--I don't exactly recall what, whether just buying fuel and provisions, or getting the tickets from a travel agent, or taking care of some other business. But anyway, we had to hustle a bit in order to be able to make the sailing. We were still driving around Cadiz, but now we were driving around with a sense of purpose, with a time limit. There was a fresh feeling of adventure and urgency--would we make it on board the ferry? Or would we miss the boat? Now the views of palmettos and sea seemed more fleeting and precious, more charged with meaning. They were the backdrop of an adventure, and took a new aspect. There was a feeling of going forward.

We caught the ferry, and wound up spending Christmas and New Year on Gran Canaria--a delightful side-trip. The mini-adventure of catching the ferry had provided a story in our lives: a goal, and the question of whether it would be achieved.

To me the difference in feeling, the appearance of the very same scenery under these different mental and emotional conditions, was striking. It almost suggested the difference between the ennui of immortality vs. the fleeting excitement of finite life. Catching the ferry was a little metaphor of life: it's short; you've got to attend to your tasks and enjoy the view along the way.

So it is with my reading. It's almost all purpose-driven, part of a bigger project. I think of a guy I knew back at Buddhist Seminary in the Rockies in 1994. He was from (I think) Wisconsin--maybe Minnesota. And he read a great deal, almost all fiction. The way he selected his reading, though, was one I could never adopt. He scanned book reviews of publications that he respected, then set out to read all the works that got the best reviews. He wanted to be reading all the best and most important fiction being published in America. Apart from the fact that I don't read much fiction, this approach would be altogether too passive for me. There's no plan except to try to read everything that other presumed experts regard as "good".

No. I want to be going in my own direction, under my own power, as much as possible, as far as possible.

nature's cathedral

I'm very skeptical about the theory of evolution as it now exists. I don't doubt that evolution occurs; that seems to be established beyond question. What I can't swallow are the explanations currently on offer for how it happens, what the process is. On the whole these strike me, so far as I'm aware of them, as being pitifully inadequate.

What provokes this spasm of skepticism? Watching my DVD lecture series from The Teaching Company called Understanding the Brain by Jeanette Norden. I've now seen 11 of the 36 half-hour lectures. With my casual but longtime interest in the brain, much of the material is review for me, but quite a lot of it is new too. The structure and function of the brain are such as to make me certain that it cannot be merely the product of random or deterministic processes, no matter how long such processes may have been operating. But for me the coup de grace for a purely random and deterministic origin for the brain came while watching the lecture on development, in which Dr. Norden described how the developing neurons of the fetus are guided precisely into place by helper cells, who in effect shepherd them long distances in order to ensure they wind up where they're supposed to, and are wired up properly with their neighbors.

Looking at my last sentence, I see that I instinctively and without hesitation used the pronoun who to refer to the helper cells, rather than which, meaning that I see them as persons rather than as things. The cells of course are living things, but in general our language is loaded with impersonal and mechanical references, to stay consistent with the prevailing idea that physical processes are necessarily mechanical at bottom. Biologists go through contortions of language to expunge any suggestion that living things, especially low-level ones such as single cells, operate through any kind of consciousness or intention. It is still as Andrew, a scientist acquaintance back in the 1980s, asserted when ruling out certain kinds of explanation: "That would be teleology."

Teleology--the explanation of events by the idea that they are guided by a goal or intentionality--is a "third rail" in biology: an idea with which no serious practitioner can appear to have any truck. It is doctrinally forbidden, for it would appear to open the door to God and "intelligent design".

I understand the resistance to "intelligent design" by biologists, insofar as it is a codeword for sneaking the Bible into school science classes--an event that would indeed signal the intellectual decadence and bankruptcy of our civilization. If "intelligent design" means teaching Genesis 1 in science class, then OK, let's find another term. But the idea of intentionality and purpose--the universal behavior of all living things--does not necessarily mean having to invoke sacred scriptures as our scientific authorities. It does mean thinking about things in a new and more expanded way.

Even back in the 1980s my response to Andrew was, "But what if the processes are teleological--in fact? Wouldn't you want to know?"

I'd want to know--and I do want to know.

I'm developing my own ideas about evolution and life (a fun hobby for me). Maybe I'll share those in due course.

But for now I just wanted to note that in watching this lecture-series on the brain I find I'm gaining access to that important emotion wonder or awe. I think about Joseph Campbell's assertion that the first function of any living mythology is to evoke a sense of wonder or awe, and an image flashed through my mind as I watched and listened: that the brain is a cathedral.

I've visited a few cathedrals, on my trip to Europe with Tim back in 1978. I recall feelings of awe at these buildings, feelings arising from some mixture of the size of the buildings, their beauty, and also an awareness of their age and purpose. They are not utilitarian unless you regard "utility" as including a relationship with the divine or invisible reality.

The brain is incomparably more complex than any cathedral, incomparably better designed and built, by very many orders of magnitude. It's one living structure among many, it's true, but as the seat of consciousness it has a special place, and a special claim to sacred status, I think.

Given that human life is supported by such an ongoing miracle of design and complexity, I inevitably think about the uses to which I'm putting that life. Am I worthy of marvels that support my existence? Or am I squandering them and taking them for granted?

Lots to think about. Luckily, I have just the organ for it.

the knowledge hunter

These days I'm still thinking and reading about as much as ever, but I find that my train of thought is dispersed. I feel less of a sense of goal or direction in my thinking. I have a sense of being becalmed, and am unsure of which way to go.

I'm kept in motion by habit. "Just keep doing what you're doing," I tell myself. "Just keep doing what you're doing."

I feel intellectually tantalized. In some sense I think I always have.

The word tantalize comes from Tantalus, a figure of Greek mythology whose name meant (according to Robert Graves) either "lurching" or "most wretched". He was alleged to have committed two crimes against the gods: one was stealing ambrosia, the divine food, from one of their banquets; the other was the butchering of his own son Pelops and making him part of a stew served to Zeus and the other gods. He was caught at both, and Zeus killed him and arranged a special punishment in the underworld. Tantalus was hung from a fruit-tree so that he dangled in a lake. Tormented by thirst and hunger, he would bend down to sip the water, only to find that the level of the lake dropped away as he did so, returning when he raised his head again. He would then try to grab fruit from the tree, but a wind pushed the fruit just out of his grasp every time he did so. In this hungry, thirsty, and unfulfilled state he would remain for eternity.

To be tantalized, then, means to have the object of one's desire always just beyond one's grasp, and more especially it must mean that it recedes from you just as you approach it or reach out for it.

It's hyperbole of course. But in learning I do have a feeling of forever reaching out, and never quite grasping what I think I'm reaching for. It might be that I don't know what I'm reaching for.

So I play it by instinct. What I read, and what I write in my notes, is a matter of following my urge or impulse of the moment. A hunting metaphor springs to mind: the deer runs through the forest, across country, trying to elude you. It's not trying to make it easy for you; it's trying to make it hard. Very hard--impossible. If you've made that deer your prey, then you're stuck with whatever terrain it leads you through: dense brush, gooey swamp, steep hillside. Now that you've fixated on it, it sets the terms of the chase.

If I get scratched, trip, break my leg, or indeed plunge off a cliff and die, that's not the deer's fault. It's the risk I assume by taking on the role of hunter.

Right now I feel I've kind of lost the trail. The deer is nowhere in sight, and I'm shifting back and forth, looking for its tracks. This is part of the hunt too, but it's an anxious and unrewarding part. Yes, even a tantalizing part.

looking at evil

I've sat here for several minutes now, staring at the screen, wondering what to write.

It's not that there's nothing to write about. It's that there seems to be too much to write about. Any topic I might begin with feels like the beginning of a whole journey, a commitment. Everything is interconnected, and to raise one topic feels like it must be related to everything else in order to make sense, or to seem other than merely an isolated, irrelevant interest of mine.

Yesterday I received a new book in the mail--a favorite event for me. This was a small paperback entitled Monarchy, Aristocracy and the State in Europe 1300-1800 by Hillay Zmora. Why this? you might ask.

I was led to it by a particular stream of thought. Following the stream backwards, or, I suppose, upstream: I had arrived at an interest in the idea of aristocracy or a ruling class. The notion of a ruling class seemed to have arisen from the distinction between warriors and producers or farmers. This in turn seemed to have arisen from the emergence of distinct ways of life on two different kinds of landscape: the fertile ground of riverbanks for farmers, and the arid land of the steppes for warriors, who were nomadic pastoralists. Farming and pastoralism in turn seemed to be the evolved extensions of plant-gathering on the one hand and hunting on the other. These different economic activities were respectively engaged in by women and by men, and arose in their turn from more primitive foraging and scavenging. Our early and pre-human ancestors made their living by finding plants and meat to eat where they could.

Why was I interested in all this in the first place? I was investigating the question of evil: what is it, where did it come from? Is its origin in the brutality and hard-heartedness of pastoralism, in which herdsmen round up animals and slaughter them? Exploiting the weak and dumb in order to survive--and then transferring that attitude to one's fellow creatures, and developing an ethos of superiority based on physical prowess and violence? The ruling class.

Cats prey on mice, and mice don't like it. Does that make cats evil? Do they not deserve to live too? Nature seems not to have taken an opinion on good and evil. Does that mean they don't exist?

I'm concerned about the evils of our own time, and of the past century. The rise of mechanized weapons and mechanized bureaucracy seems to have created fertile fields for evil inflicted on a mass scale. Was this inevitable? If so, why? If not, why did it happen? Why is it still happening?

Hillay Zmora, in his book, starts out by saying that the modern European state, founded on human rights and the rule of law, was born from the violence of relentless warfare that had to be financed. Raising money for war was the basis of the modern state.

Yes, I'm curious about these things--they trouble me, and I'm going to keep looking.

on (not) wasting time

I awoke at about 3:45 this morning and lay awake.

Without going into detail, there are things bothering me. It happens especially at night. While I might have some qualms about my life situation and decisions during the day, the habitual flow of activity distracts the mind and I'm not troubled. Ah, but at night...

If I look closely at what is bothersome about certain kinds of thoughts, I think it boils down to this: fear of wasting time.

This is not a concern about efficiency. Rather, when I was pressed once to come up with my idea of wisdom, I said this: "A wise person does not waste his time."

What did I mean?

One image that stays pressed in my mind is from watching an interview on CBC television. Evan Solomon was interviewing a former hit-man for the American mob, now living under an assumed identity in an undisclosed location. The hit-man, possibly in his 60s, was matter-of-fact and not shy about talking about his life of crime. He described a few of the murders he had committed--things like shooting someone in the back of the head from the back seat of a car. Once, when shooting someone on his doorstep, he also shot a woman who lived in the same house and who turned out to be a nun.

"Do you regret that one?" said Evan.

"Oh yeah. That's the only one I regret."

By that he meant that all the other victims were also mobsters: guys on the inside who had assumed the risk of getting whacked if they stepped out of line in certain ways. But it turned out he also had regrets over all. Toward the end of the interview, Evan asked him how he would sum up his career.

"A wasted life," the man said.

He said it in the same matter-of-fact way, but I sensed his pain and regret. With those three words he had passed the most damning judgment possible on himself.

I'm not a hit-man, not a mobster. I've done bad things, and from time to time continue to do bad things. But I think the issue of wasting life is not purely a matter of ethics. It arises from a sense that life matters, and that how we spend it matters. Ethics is part of that, but it's not the whole issue. Our mission is not simply to keep our souls pure, but to engage with life in a way that makes full use of our faculties and our uniqueness. Time slips by, and every moment counts. Somehow, it's the very unforced nature of our decisions that puts a heavy responsibility on us.

When I was a temporary monk at Gampo Abbey in 2002, I slept the deep, peaceful, restful sleep of one who had no second thoughts about what he was doing with his life. I knew I was not wasting my time; I was using it to the max.

Now I'm not sure. I'm not plugged in to a structure that has already been given meaning by someone else, so to speak. I'm completely responsible for the meaning of my own life now, and sometimes, well, it keeps me up at night.

an elephant and his beliefs

My life these days is largely reading--more than it is writing, that's for sure.

I've always loved reading, and I do more of it now than I ever have before. Our old family friend, the late Dorothy Burt, born in 1908, spent much of every day reading for a large part of her adult life. Her day was broken down into the different things she read: The Observer, The Manchester Guardian, nonfiction book, fiction...

I used to think it was a bit strange to spend all of one's time reading and never doing anything, or at least writing something oneself. I think I still feel that way, although I'm less sure.

In my case, although I enjoy reading, I seldom read purely for "pleasure". For me, all reading is study, and that in fact is why I find it pleasurable. Possibly then it's not really reading I like, but learning, and reading is still the most efficient, accessible, and affordable way to learn. Aristotle said that humans by nature love to learn, and that the appeal of art is exactly that we learn from it.

So I'm learning. But am I really? In one obvious sense I certainly am. I do retain some quantity of what I read (less than I'd like). But the motive that keeps pushing me to read more is a feeling of dissatisfaction: that I have not yet learned what I'm seeking to learn.

What am I seeking? I'm searching for my beliefs. What do I think is true? What are the reasons--the real reasons--behind what I see in the world, in my experience?

According to William James, a belief is by definition a concept that we use as the basis for action. We act on what we believe, and only on what we believe. I reach down to my keyboard right now to press keys because I believe that when I do, the corresponding letters will appear on the monitor before me. (So far, so good.) I'm doing that because I believe that when I press the Publish Post button on the screen, this post will uploaded to my blog and become available for people to read. If I found out that these posts were not being uploaded to the blog, I would quite soon stop writing them. My belief would have changed, and with it my behavior.

I look around me in the world and see, mainly, actions based on erroneous or misguided beliefs. These happen on vast, world-changing scales. If, for example, you believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq, as was stated, in order to root out weapons of mass destruction, then that whole costly invasion and subsequent war was initiated on the basis of an erroneous belief. But even if you believe, as I do, that the invasion was for quite other purposes, such as "future oil security", or even "world domination", these too, in my view, are mistaken, since I am certain that neither one can be achieved in this way. Enormous resources are being consumed and lives lost right now, as I type, all on the basis of mistaken beliefs.

In Buddhism, it is taught that we are all separated from complete great enlightenment by the "two veils": the veil of "conflicting emotions" and the veil of "primitive beliefs about reality". Both of these are very difficult to remove, but the first one, "conflicting emotions", is much easier than the second, "primitive beliefs".

It might seem odd that an Indian monk who lived 2,500 years ago would, if he could look at our modern society with its secular outlook and advanced technology, describe our beliefs as primitive--but he would. He did. Our modernity and technology don't touch the issue of our basic mistakenness about things.

Of course, I'm not going to find Buddhist-style enlightenment in books. But I do want to become informed. Even in this relative and temporal way, I want to find out what the true causal forces are working in the world around me. I don't want to act--I don't feel I can act--until I feel I understand what's going on well enough. That means that instead of going out to achieve things, to crusade in the world, I'm sitting in my soft chair, book and highlighter in hand.

I feel like an elephant. It's said that an elephant will not step onto a bridge that won't hold its weight. An elephant just knows. And yet it's probably not just intuition; the elephant must look at the bridge, examine it, and come to a conclusion on the basis of its observations. It arrives at a belief about the bridge, and acts accordingly. I feel that most actions in the world are like that bridge, and I'm still trying to figure out if it will hold my weight.

inquiring minds

It snowed again overnight, so I went out first thing again to shovel. There was less snow than yesterday, but I found the job harder, mainly I think because of the unaccustomed work for certain muscles--surprisingly, my thigh muscles. Then it was inside again to make the coffee and start keying research notes.

It feels as though my study has, if anything, intensified over the past few weeks. No doubt study, like everything else in life, follows a basic pattern of alternating movement and rest. You feel yourself in motion, trying to learn something, trying to understand something, and conscious of the fact that you're not there yet. At some point you understand. Something clicks and you get it. A light goes on, and you achieve a state of rest or tranquility. If you were rock-climbing, this would be a ledge--a place to stand or rest between stretches of scaling vertical rock.

This image is not bad, because it emphasizes the partial or provisional nature of the insights gained along the way. The rock-climber can't hang around forever on the ledge; he has to get going again to the next station on his journey up. Only at the summit is the task finished.

Sometimes, to me, it feels as though the ledges are few and the vertical stretches of rock are long. Long, long. Whenever I "arrive" anywhere in my studies, I'm conscious of how most of what I want to know remains obscure, unaddressed.

Maybe that's because the question that interests me most is the last and hardest one of the five that journalists are supposed to be concerned with: who, what, where, when, and why. Any of those questions can be a mystery, but the last one, why, tends to be the biggest mystery. Answering that question depends mainly on the questioner's notion of what constitutes an answer. When do you regard something as explained?

It's the philosopher's question. Even a simple version of it opens up avenues. Why do I live in North Vancouver? Well, I grew up here. All right, but is that a reason to live here now? Well, I actually left North Vancouver when my family moved from it in 1977, and I returned here to live with my girlfriend, who happened to have an apartment here. We kept living here because, in part, we were working here. From another point of view you could say that I live here because I bought a house here in 1987, and once you've bought a place, you need a good reason to sell out and leave. Or at least, I need a good reason--put that down to my character. Looking back further, you could say that I live here because my parents, both unlikely immigrants to Vancouver in the 1950s, happened to get together and at some point chose to move to North Vancouver, imprinting this place as my home.

More than the other questions, the question why requires a sense of purpose or direction on the part of the questioner: you need to know what kind of an answer you're looking for. In short, it points back to the question of why the questioner is asking this question! It's a two-edged question.

I suppose that the main reason my research seems endless is that the question I'm always most interested in is this why. It's the question that keeps on breeding offspring. And the answers you accept reveal your belief system: they show up your mythology.

An example: I'm reading Sven Lindqvist's excellent little book "Exterminate All the Brutes", an investigation into the phenomenon of genocide. He mentions the mass deaths of natives that resulted from the incursion of Europeans in the Americas. Lindqvist says that when the 16th-century British asked why so many Indians had died in South and Central America, the answer was not far to seek: the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the Spanish. Then, when Indians died in vast numbers in North America as a result of contact with the British, a different explanation had to be found: divine intervention. God was clearing the land for the European settlers.

The explanation--the answer to why--depends sensitively on one's already existing beliefs, and also on one's level of objectivity and maturity. Once you become aware of these factors, it becomes hard to answer the question why satisfactorily. Am I just reaching for an easy prejudice? Am I accepting a cover story? Am I simply justifying my own selfishness? These are all likely possibilities.

In psychology, why is known as a hostile question. Usually, when someone asks us why we've done or said something, there is an element of challenge: we're being asked to account for ourselves. The implication is that our behavior needs accounting for, and that our challenger--our accuser--has a right to this account. It's a "scientific" attack: instead of saying that I don't like what you did, I call on you to justify it, leaving my own motive unstated. There's a sense of ambush.

I suppose the question why is a kind of attack, even when made not on a person but on the world. It's a challenge to the world to provide an answer--and the world pushes back: "who wants to know?"

Well, I want to know.

And who are you?

Hmm. Good one...

security blankets

Sitting here again, staring at the blank window of Blogger, wondering how to launch on my nth blog-post.

It's not that I've run out of things to say. Indeed, I feel there is too much to say, that I'm always scratching the surface and introducing topics that need to be addressed in more depth.

This morning I've keyed research notes from three different books: The Epic Cosmos, Asimov's Guide to the Bible (Old Testament), and The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I felt a deep stirring within me as I typed this paragraph from James's famous book:

The experiences which we have been studying show the universe to be a more many-sided affair than any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for. What, in the end, are all our verifications but experiences that agree with more or less isolated systems of ideas (conceptual systems) that our minds have framed? Why in the name of common sense need we assume that only one such system of ideas can be true? The obvious outcome of our total experience is that the world can be handled according to many systems of ideas, and is so handled by different men, and will each time give some characteristic kind of profit, for which he cares, to the handler, while at the same time some other kind of profit has to be omitted or postponed. Science gives to all of us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis. Religion in the shape of mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons. Evidently, then, science and religion are both genuine keys for unlocking the world's treasure-house to him who can use either of them practically. Just as evidently neither is exhaustive or exclusive of the other's simultaneous use. And why may not the world be so complex as to consist of many interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can thus approach in alternation by using different conceptions and assuming different attitudes? On this view religion and science, each verified in its own way form hour to hour and from life to life, would be co-eternal. Primitive thought, with its belief in individualized personal forces, seems as far as ever from being driven by science from the field today. Numbers of educated people still find it the directest experimental channel by which to carry on their intercourse with reality.

There you have it: different strokes for different folks--and different strokes for the same folks at different times. The reality that each of us lives in is much broader than any particular belief-system. All of our fanaticisms are so many efforts to reassure ourselves that we've found the ultimate security blanket. But William James didn't need a security blanket. He could calmly look at the world and embrace it with a warm but discriminating and passionate eye.

From Asimov's book I'm typing up material on the Book of Judges--a period of (as usual in the Bible) conquest, slaughter, and revenge. Precious little of it could be called in any way edifying. Not able to lay your hands on all of the "inheritance" promised you by God? Go find a city that looks a bit weak, attack it, kill the residents, and live there. Problem solved--until someone roots you out of the place and levels it to the ground.

It's still much the same, not only in the "Holy Land" but everywhere else: people continuing to do the same things, hoping for different results. I'm afraid there's no alternative: we need to give up the security blanket of our tribal gods, and the sooner, the better.

if it feels good...

My musings yesterday about Abraham Maslow's psychological ideas were prompted by thoughts about motivation, or more generally: why do we do what we do?

As long as you don't look at it too closely, the question seems simple. I'm hungry, so I go into the kitchen to pull a slice of cold pizza out of the fridge and eat it. And yes that is simple: an instance of keeping one of the most basic survival needs satisfied. Without food, you can't pursue your other goals for very long. Before long, more and more of your attention and effort will be applied to the problem of getting fed, until that becomes the first, last, and only thing on your mind, and all of your ingenuity and effort are bent on it.

As we satisfy those more basic needs and move up Maslow's hierarchy, our behavior becomes more subtle and indirect. The higher needs involve other people, first singly, then as groups. The needs for belonging and esteem are social needs that can only be satisfied by numbers of people around us, each of whom is an individual and must be treated in an individualized way. You can't just go to people and say, "respect me" or "esteem me", and expect them to comply. On the contrary, you'll lower yourself in their esteem by doing so. Respect and esteem are gained only by reading the norms of one's society accurately, and consistently directing one's behavior to meet or exceed those norms.

At least, that's my first stab at suggesting how to gain respect and esteem--the need for which, according to Maslow, is innate for us all.

But, as I mentioned yesterday, Maslow was interested most of all in the needs that exist in us beyond those innate "deficiency" needs (D-needs): the holes in us that we try to fill up in order to feel healthy. When they're all (more or less) full, we're free to pursue our "being" needs (B-needs), which are unique to each of us. Just as our face and our fingerprint are unique, our purpose on Earth and our path to maximum fulfillment and self-expression are unique. I cannot follow your path and find fulfillment for myself; you cannot follow mine. We might travel together for a way, but at some point we must part company and go our own way.

And how do we know which is our own way? According to Maslow, our path is essentially the path of enjoyment. What we truly enjoy is our path forward to unique personal fulfillment.

Isn't this just the old 1960s ethos of, "if it feels good, do it"?

Well, yes, it is. But won't that just lead to a society of blissed-out drug addicts? Everyone getting their rocks off every which way? No, it won't.

Why not? Because (by the way, this is me talking, not Maslow--at least, as far as I know, being only 40% of the way through this first book!) being a drug addict is not really enjoyable. It might feel good to get high, but if one gets out of control with it, consequences ensue that feel very un-good. I remember the addiction expert Vern Johnson's description of the difference between the proto-addict and the non-addict. When the non-addict wakes up with his hangover, and is confronted with the fact that while drunk he embarrassed people by, say, hitting clumsily on the hostess, he feels remorse and resolves never to let that happen again. The proto-addict, on the contrary, rationalizes his behavior, or simply doesn't believe that he did anything wrong. In short, he resorts to the defense mechanism of denial--laying the groundwork for hanging on to his addiction.

The addict is stuck, with an ever-thickening wall of denial between himself and the misery of his existence. He has become estranged from himself, and clutches at short-term physical gratification as a compensation for having lost the path to his own actual enjoyment of life.

The kind of enjoyment that Maslow really means is the enjoyment of the "peak experience"--an event that particularly interested him. He conducted surveys, asking people questions about their experience at the most wonderful moments of their lives--times when they had felt most happy, joyous, and fulfilled. Everyone (or almost everyone) has such experiences in their lives, but people on the path of self-actualization--those attending to their B-needs--have them more often, and also regularly exhibit many of the mental traits that the rest of us take on only during those peak experiences.

I want to tune in to the wavelength of my own enjoyment of life. As I go about my day, I check my response to what I'm doing: how do I feel about it? Really, honestly? When I do certain things, I think, Yes, this is what I want to be doing; this is what I enjoy.

Writing is one of those. Even with the difficult struggle of a large, uncertain creative project, I still feel that it's what I want to be doing. If I were doing something else, no matter how "exciting" or rewarding in other ways (such as, say, financially), I would feel that was playing hooky. Something would nag at me, urging me to get back to what I want to be doing.

I feel the same way about reading. When I sit there with my highlighter, reading, I feel that I'm doing the right thing--right for me. I feel natural, at home, and I enjoy myself. For me, that's exciting.

In reading I also feel a big difference between different books. When I feel a book is not really taking me where I want to go--is not part of my path--I get a feeling of distaste and revulsion. Reading starts feeling like forced labor. Now, when I start feeling that, I put the book aside. That's why I leave so many books unfinished.

So that's today's hot tip: If it feels good, do it.

enjoy your life

Here I was puttering through my morning, puzzling a little over how there seemed not much to do. Then I remembered my blog. Oh yeah--I'm supposed to do a blog-post!

I'm in semi-vacation mode (the mode I go into when Kimmie is in actual vacation mode). No alarm-clock, no fixed requirements on my day. To be sure, I'm lying awake in the night for long stretches, more than I usually do during regular "working" times. I put that down to particular circumstances in my life at the moment rather than anything to do specifically with being on "vacation". Jesus counseled us to be carefree--as have other spiritual teachers. At Gampo Abbey a quote from Suzuki Roshi was photocopied and hung on various walls to pop into one's view unexpectedly as one went about the day: "Enjoy your life."

Enjoy your life. Good idea--why not? For us monks and nuns, leading a disciplined, vegetarian, sex- and drug-free lifestyle, it was wonderful advice, and very accessible. Speaking for myself, I would have to say that my time at the Abbey was perhaps the most enjoyable of my life--in many ways. Certainly there were times when I experienced a greater depth of joy there than I have anywhere else.

Suzuki Roshi was pointing, I think, to the idea that enjoyment of one's life is more a matter of choice or attitude than of circumstance. Whatever's happening, why not enjoy it? What's the alternative? And why would you prefer that alternative? You can feel hard done by, ripped off, and cheated--and maybe in some sense you have been cheated. Well--what of it?

I think about Epictetus, the philosopher-slave of the 2nd century AD. How we respond to any situation is up to us: a tyrant can send me into exile, but he can't force me to be uncheerful about it.

Life might be a horror--but don't people pay to see horror movies? Our love of story proves that we recognize deep down that life is in some sense a problem--an unending series of problems. And yet I feel ripped off when I face problems in my own life, as though they shouldn't be there.

But do they have to be so hard?

Years ago on Saturday Night Live there was a sketch done in the form of a late-night movie, some low-budget Italian show about Hercules that had been dubbed poorly into English. A pot-bellied, cigarette-smoking, middle-aged Hercules was going about his labors. One of his labors was to lift a boulder. He strains at it briefly, then says, "That rock is too heavy. Perhaps I can lift a lighter one."

Yes, maybe I can lift a lighter rock. But somehow, this seems to be the one I've actually got in front of me.

not afraid

In yesterday's post I talked about Who Are We?, a nonfiction book project that I work on as a kind of hobby apart from the fictional opus that is the (supposed) subject of this blog.

But I have other projects on the go as well. They might not actually be developed enough to be termed projects, but I have them on the go in any case. Within the folder labeled Writing on my PC, for example, one of the subfolders is labeled Thinking. In this folder I have set up a number of Word documents, each devoted to a topic area--things that I like to think about, at least sometimes. One of these is Identity, of course, but there are others, things like Evil, History, Purpose, and Story.

What do I think about these things? What do I believe?

Here I record my thoughts, mainly sparked by material that I read. In a sense these files are my way of entering into dialogue with the authors I read.

Where are all these files going? I don't know. They represent what William James called "thought in movement"--the thinking process of the mind seeking the stillness of "thought at rest", the condition of knowledge or belief that can serve as the basis of action. (I've talked about this in previous posts, such as this one.)

I think one function of religion is to put an end to such questing. Rather than being suspended in uncertainty, unknowing and therefore unable to take action, we click into a belief system that seems to work for us. A revealed, worked-out religion provides a backstop of belief: answers to the basic, most searching questions.

If it's a religion that we are not raised in, then it can't be just anything, of course: a chosen religion has to suit our outlook, has to be "believable". In my late teens and 20s I searched hard for this believable faith, and eventually found it in Buddhism--more particularly in the Vajrayana Buddhism that I discovered (or was led to) in my quest.

I would not say that I've left that faith altogether behind. But my relationship with it has changed. There are a number of reasons for this, or factors in my decision to distance myself from the practice of those teachings. An important one, as I've expressed before, is the realization that I felt I could not be fully free as an artist so long as I held a received faith as my truth--my final "belief". I can hear my Buddhist companions expressing dismay that I could make such an elementary mistake: to regard Buddhism as a "faith". As one Western teacher of Buddhism put it: "I became a Buddhist because here no one ever asked me to believe anything."

That's true--but only up to a point. It's certainly true that our training was never to accept anything merely on someone's say-so, not even that of our teacher or the Buddha, but to test the words against our own experience. In this way, Buddhist practitioners become realized people--people whose knowledge of the teachings may be slight, but is nonetheless genuine and practical. They are not mere parrots or Bible-thumpers. (I had a couple of these appear at my door yesterday--two attractive young women asking me whether I read the Bible. Yup, read it.)

But there are aspects of Buddhism that must be taken on faith. One is the doctrine of karma and rebirth: that we continually experience the results of actions we've made in the past, including an infinite series of previous lives. (Interestingly, while many Westerners struggle with both karma and rebirth, I have no problem with either and believe in them both.) Another, of course, is that there is indeed such a thing as supreme, perfect, complete, great enlightenment and that the Buddha attained it. This is made easier by being in the presence of an authentic teacher or guru, such as Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche (whom I never did meet or see in person), who is a living example of such enlightenment.

Furthermore, over the centuries and millennia Buddhism has accumulated a great deal of elaborate doctrine and what amounts to a theology of enlightenment, Buddha-realms, bodhisattvas, and so on. It's said that very advanced practitioners experience these things directly--but I wouldn't know.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing these teachings, which in my own experience I can say are profound, powerful, and extremely effective. They have survived for a reason, and have caught hold in the Western imagination for a reason. But as an artist, I saw, only very gradually, a need to go my separate way. Even in a great world faith, I found I was in it, but not truly of it.

I may have made a very big mistake.

So be it. As an artist I find my credo not in any sacred text, but in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in the words of his hero Stephen Dedalus speaking to his friend Cranly:

You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.

who are we?

As established in yesterday's post, I never have only one project on the go. What else, then, have I got going besides a massive novel (and intended sequels thereto)?

One project, I suppose potentially a nonfiction book, is a more or less directed inquiry into my own beliefs. What do I believe? What do I think is true?

I remember reading, years ago, I think in an astrological text by Zipporah Dobyns, that it is a good idea to discover what one's beliefs are, to bring them from the darkness of unconsciousness into conscious awareness. Twenty years later I'm still working on it.

Who knew that this task would be so difficult? It is much complicated by the fact that, as the painter Robert Henri put it,

Most folks don't think what they think they think.

He's pointing to our capacity for self-deception. For while we tend to deceive others more or less all the time, or at least conceal our true thoughts from them, the issue of self-deception is less obvious, and indeed impossible to discover without outside help. It doesn't have to be professional help: other people are well able to act as mirrors for our self-deceptions. Others can see clearly where we're kidding ourselves, as we can see where they're kidding themselves.

The specific project I'm now working on is centered around the question of identity, and my working title for it is Who Are We? Who are we? I find this question provocative, mysterious, koan-like.

And indeed in a sense it's a very Buddhist question. Buddhist analysis shows that the root of all our suffering in life is one thing: what we call our ego, or the thing denoted by the word I. Then it instructs us to isolate this I to discover what exactly it is.

The Buddha's answer is that if you look long and hard enough, you will discover that there is no I. What we call I is a shifting collection of thoughts that exist first of all for convenience, and then become a matter of intense emotional attachment. When we look very closely, we find that everything we think I is, it isn't--and that it isn't anything other than these things either. It's a movie projected on mist.

Very well. I'm prepared to accept that the ego, the I, has no ultimate existence. It's not for me to contradict a wisdom tradition of 2,500 years' standing, or the teachings of a practice that has brought me so much personal benefit. But how about on the relative level? My keyboard and coffee-mug don't have any ultimate existence either, besides being a temporary agglomeration of atoms in a particular configuration. Nonetheless, for practical purposes, in those configurations they have existence and usefulness. As my teacher Sangpo at shedra, the monastic college at Gampo Abbey, taught us, relative truth is not so much in dispute, because it's all a matter of convention and convenience anyway. These are the things that are true essentially by agreement, rather than in the nature of things. If we argue over whether a certain thing is or is not a coffee-mug, for instance, it's really just an argument over a definition--not over the essence of anything.

All right. But in purely conventional terms, can I define what I am? Can I discover how I, and how we all, use what we all call I as the basis for our actions? What do I think I mean when I use it?

In writing my story for The Mission, I came to see the issue of identity, especially as it manifests in what we now call identity politics, as a key thematic strand. Why do "my people" hate "your people"? What's going on there? Why do we care about the fortunes of our local hockey team, even when its members hail from Sweden and Finland rather than anywhere nearby? Why do thousands get depressed if the team loses against "them"? Isn't that peculiar?

These questions are just a few bite-sized samplers of what got me involved in a parallel nonfiction project--a work of philosophy, really.

I have other projects too--but more of that perhaps another time.

seek, and ye shall find

I'll be away for the next two days. I'll probably resume posting on Monday 27 August 2007.

Yesterday I played hookey from the blog. I started reading an article on the international situation, "America on the Downward Slope" by journalist Dilip Hiro, and found myself absorbed. Blog-writing time came and went.

I'm brimming with thoughts, with ideas and anxieties. They run in many different directions, and one of my challenges--a major challenge of my life--is to unify them, bring them into relationship with each other. My intuition is that if one's ideas and thoughts don't come into harmonious relationship with each other, one has not really found the core of one's being--one's true self. In some sense one is in a fragmented state, like somebody suffering with multiple personality disorder.

I search for causes. I look at things that interest me and ask why. In that way I am a scientist or a philosopher. But for a long time I have not been satisfied with the way scientists address problems--or perhaps I should say, have not been satisfied with the limits on the kinds of problems that scientists can address. Nor have I been satisfied with the assumptions under which scientists generally work.

For example, an obvious problem arises with the assumption that the world is made out of matter. For one thing, we have the experience of our minds, which are immaterial. And while we take it for granted in our everyday lives and in the way we run our society that we can make decisions and act on them--that is, that our minds can cause our bodies to do things--we have no scientific way of accounting for how matter can be influenced by mind. Matter requires physical energy to move it, and the mind is nonphysical. This is the classic mind-body problem, and it remains unanswered and mostly unaddressed by modern science.

This problem is considered the province of philosophy, but there has not been a good working answer in this field either. At least, not one that the practical, scientific world has been able to accept. Mainly in philosophy there have been attempts to clarify the problem, rather than solve it.

I think of this extract (compressed) from a work by John Dewey, the American educator, quoted in Campbell's Creative Mythology:

The shock and uncertainty so characteristic of the present marks the discovery that the older ideals themselves are undermined. Instead of science and technology giving us better means for bringing them to pass, they are shaking our confidence in all large and comprehensive beliefs and purposes.

It is psychologically natural that the outcome should be a collapse of faith in all fundamental organizing and directive ideas. Skepticism becomes the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. It is the more influential because it is no longer directed against this and that article of the older creeds but is rather a bias against any kind of far-reaching ideas, and a denial of systematic participation on the part of such ideas in the intelligent direction of affairs.

The popular philosophy of life is filled with desire to attain such an all-embracing unity, and formal philosophies have been devoted to an intellectual fulfillment of the desire. Consider the place occupied in popular thought by search for the meaning of life and the purpose of the universe. Men who look for a single purport and a single end either frame an idea of them according to their private desires and tradition, or else, not finding any such single unity, give up in despair and conclude that there is no genuine meaning and value of life's episodes.

The alternatives are not exhaustive, however. There is no need of deciding between no meaning at all and one single, all-embracing meaning. There are many meanings and many purposes in the situations with which we are confronted—one, so to say, for each situation.

Campbell concludes: "In sum: the individual is now on his own."

Dewey's words were published in 1931, and they still apply. When you're on your own, where do you find your answers?

Answer: wherever you can. I think about a question that has sometimes been asked me: How do you get to work in television? Or: how do you get a TV show on the air?

The truthful answer is: I don't know. I've done it myself, but there is no process, no recipe. I use the image of shipwrecked people swimming around a lifeboat that is already overcrowded. How do you get aboard? The people on board don't want you on there; they'll smash you with an oar if you try to climb in. You'll just have to think of something--or drown.

It's a joke. But like all jokes, it contains a kernel of truth. In reality I trust those spiritual teachers who say, "Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." The real issue is not lack of answers, but lack of looking.

So I'm looking. That's my life.

thinking before acting

I continue to make my way through The Varieties of Religious Experience, the landmark book based on a series of lectures that William James delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901-02, as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion. The approach he decided on was to examine the psychology of personal religious experience: what are the feelings, thoughts, and acts that we call "religious", and what is their value?

With such a topic, everything depends on the qualities of the teacher. What are his own beliefs or prejudices? How tolerant and open-minded is he? What is the caliber of his intellect? For his thoughts to have any lasting value, he must not be pushing any private religious belief of his own; he must be wide open and tolerant of others' beliefs; and he must have a mind that is deep, subtle, sharp, and sympathetic.

William James is all of the above, in maximum degree. Hence this book, published in 1902, is still valuable and relevant today. Indeed, like any classic, it has the freshness of the present moment.

Two days ago I was reading lecture 18, "Philosophy", in which James, having covered much ground in earlier lectures on conversion, saintliness, and mysticism, addresses the conceptual content of religion: the power and value of religious ideas. With breathtaking brevity and assurance he sums up scholastic philosophy about God, then, as a tool to gauge the value of the ideas, he introduces the philosophical method known as pragmatism, first formulated in the 19th century by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. James encapsulates Peirce's idea as follows:

Thought in movement has for its only conceivable motive the attainment of belief, or thought at rest. Only when our thought about a subject has found its rest in belief can our action on the subject firmly and safely begin. Beliefs, in short, are rules for action; the whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of active habits. If there were any part of a thought that made no difference in the thought’s practical consequences, then that part would be no proper element of the thought’s significance. To develop a thought’s meaning we need therefore only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need then only consider what sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably to expect from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case the object be true.

As I read this paragraph, highlighter in hand, sitting in my soft leather occasional chair, I felt that I was arriving at a major station in my thinking career.

I had been exposed to the philosophy of pragmatism before. Indeed, my introduction to William James was via this philosophy, and the first book of his that I bought and read was Pragmatism, based on lectures given a few years after this series in Edinburgh. But this compressed summary of the philosophy, given as a preliminary to examining other ideas, struck me: it sank home.

Beliefs are rules for action. The whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of active habits.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I've spent my whole life thinking. Thinking and studying. Thinking is "thought in movement". I have been searching for beliefs, or "thought at rest". Without firm beliefs you can't take action. What would you do?

But it makes a huge difference what one believes. It's useless to have beliefs that lead us into mistaken or even catastrophic action. As Bertrand Russell said, "I don't want to die for my beliefs; I might be wrong." The personal convictions of George Bush an Tony Blair have not led them to take worthwhile actions, in my opinion--quite the opposite. History is a train-wreck of actions undertaken by people with strong but mistaken convictions.

So my lifelong "analysis paralysis" may not be a bad thing. The Hinayana view of Buddhism, as well as the Hippocratic oath, say it well: "First, do no harm." At least if you're sitting on a meditation cushion, anxious and confused about life, you're not making things any worse for your fellow beings.

Of course, I'm a living being and I do take action all the time--every moment of every day. But my action tends to be, more often than not, retreating to my soft chair, highlighter in hand, and opening another book...

looking for answers

Back to the routine of work. The B.C. Day long weekend is over, and also Kimmie's extra day off yesterday, giving us a mini-vacation in this glorious time of summer. Again, the city became deserted on the long weekend, making it all the more pleasant to remain here.

Yesterday the weather turned to overcast and cool drizzle, and we had a visit from Warren, my scriptwriting collaborator. He is en route with his family to Hong Kong, where his wife has been posted for two or three years with the British bank HSBC. It's been two years since I last saw him, and it may be two or three before I see him again. Thus does globalization reach into our mundane lives.

Since my travels are now in the mind, I'm happy to stay in one place. I've been reading in Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction by Luther H. Martin that the Hellenistic period--which is the period of my story--was a time of wandering. People traveled and drifted. A powerful new goddess, widely worshipped, with temples in many cities, was Fortune--whom we now know as Lady Luck. People saw their lives as buffeted by the unpredictable winds of luck. Like us, they saw themselves as sandwiched between chance and necessity: driven by mechanical forces beyond their control, and also subject to continual random rolls of the dice. Even the gods were seen as subject to the same forces.

We live in a similar period, with similar ideas. Our term globalization would have been familiar to Alexander the Great, and indeed this was his aim: to unite the (known) world under a single benign government, united by the universal adoption of what he regarded as the world's best culture--the Greek.

Our scientific ideas are also, again, the same. We imagine the world to be driven on the one hand by mechanical, deterministic forces (classical physics), and on the other to be the product of purely and ultimately random events (quantum physics, evolutionary theory). While our laws and societies and personal lives are built around the notion of choice, freedom, and individual responsibility, we have no scientific way of accounting for such ideas. We see ourselves as mechanical, random machines that are also, paradoxically, free and goal-oriented.

This dog's breakfast of beliefs would also have been familiar to the denizens of the Hellenistic world. It was an individualistic society, as ours is, in which people felt increasingly alienated and estranged from the centers of life. The questions were rising in the human soul: what to value, and why?

These questions are still with us, of course. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said that life does not provide us with answers; life asks the questions, and we provide the answers. It doesn't make finding them any easier, but I suppose it changes the direction of the search. We can wander the earth, but we need to look within.

boneless tongues

I probably need to make a lifestyle adjustment in order to get back to writing. As time goes on, I will need to make a regular place for paying work, and right now that's sitting right smack in my usual writing period of the day. In the past I have bumped my writing period to first thing in the morning, over my morning coffee, but this is not my preference; it has the flavor of duress. Of course the problem of creation vs. earning has always been central to many artists' lives.

In some sense I'm not (yet) too exercised about my long tarrying at chapter 30, since the problems I have been tussling with in it--and solving--reach far beyond the confines of that chapter. On the other hand, no matter how slowly this train moves, I don't feel comfortable when it's just sitting at the station.

For the time being, over my morning coffee, I'm keying notes from A Study of History, volume 1, by Arnold J. Toynbee, and from A History of Israel, volume 1, by Theodore H. Robinson. I continually ingest more research books and convert these slowly into typed notes for myself. I suppose this process will not end until I have polished my last draft for the last time. Indeed, the only thing that will probably end it will be the taking up of reading for my next project, whatever that might be.

Yes, folks, I love reading. I always have loved it, and a day in which I don't read is both rare and, for me, feels rather wasted. I feel that I've cheated myself of what I love the most.

When I was first exposed to Buddhist thought while traveling in 1979--in the form of books, of course: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and The Way of Zen by Alan Watts--I discovered that conceptual knowledge, the kind derived from books, can never lead one to an accurate relationship with reality. I found this to be both liberating and disappointing. Liberating, because it seemed to confirm a sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction in trying to learn the truth from books. Disappointing, because I felt that what I had always loved to do was now, in some sense, a waste of time.

This tension followed me in the ensuing years. When I took up meditation in 1986 I learned again that enlightenment can never be attained conceptually; it can only be a matter of direct experience. Nonetheless, the meditation center offered courses in which books were studied, and this type of study was encouraged. I latched on to it and studied dharma books--along with my regular diet of reading, which I never gave up.

Luckily, as I progressed in my Buddhist practice and studies, I became more relaxed about the role of reading. While concepts were still regarded as a faulty and incomplete way of knowing, they were still essential for the student. The real problem was in clinging to concepts: solidifying them as "true" and thereby creating stumbling-blocks for oneself.

I remember attending a dharma talk given by the late Tibetan teacher Jamgon Kongtrul in Vancouver. He was a young man (soon to die in a car crash in India). As I recall, the teachings were on the bardo--the "in-between" state that we inhabit between successive births. In the Tibetan teachings, a number of vivid, phantasmagoric events happens to us in this state. The question came up as to whether such experiences were real or not.

Jamgon Kongtrul responded that "these experiences are beyond duality, so you can call them real or unreal, just as you please."

This struck me. On the one hand it seemed annoying and irritating that there was not a clear answer as to whether something was real or not. But on the other, I felt power being placed in my hands--in the hands of all of us. Whether we call something real or not, in any given situation, is for us to decide. How we term things, how we see them, how we choose to respond, is a power that always lies with us. Even "reality" is situational: something that is useful in one moment, but not in the next.

I recalled another thing I had read, a commentary by some Zen master on the enigmatic statements of another master: "His tongue has no bone." At first it was a baffling image, but soon it clicked: our boneless tongues can move any which way. They're not constrained or forced by anything; they are not limited; they are free. Free to say "real" one moment, and "unreal" the next.

When I was at the shedra or monastic college at Gampo Abbey in 2002 I did lots of reading and writing--more than I did meditating. There we were taught to regard study itself as a practice, like meditation, undertaken with discipline and a certain attitude. We were still taught that a buddha's mind is free of concepts, like a cloudless sky. But I was and I remain skeptical of this. As far as I was concerned, if a buddha was using words, he was using concepts. It seemed to me people were too eager to usher concepts out the door, like unwanted relatives at a party.

But then again, what does it matter? We can call them concepts or not, just as we please.