Year: 2010

The Good Life

Caroline and I enjoy a bit of TV — or at least, we try. With so many channels these days, audience share is fragmented; quality suffers. The new wildlife documentaries seem to be more about the daredevil production crew than the animals; history programs are more re-enactment dramas than historical fact … and then there are the sitcoms and crime shows. Gore is cool; so is cynicism; there’s even a new twist on that old staple, sex — the new normal is to have lots of sex with lots of people in lots of places, especially at work, especially if you’re a lawyer or doctor. Everyone knows that long-term monogamous relationships are doomed; ‘love’ is whatever you can grab from those heady first days and (if you’re lucky) weeks of newfound passion.

And then there’s me, sitting quietly, reading about Aristotle and ‘the good life.’ No, he wasn’t talking about la dolce vita but about a life worth living — an enriching, satisfying path to dignity and integrity. Gosh, just using words like that makes me feel like a dinosaur. But then I remind myself, I’m not suddenly losing touch — I always was old-fashioned. I was skeptical as a teenager, and I’m still skeptical about those things that strike me as contemptible — mindless popular trends and the age-old myths of progress and success.

Progress? It’s mostly technology; what’s it accomplished? Our ability to stress ourselves beyond reason, for one. It’s also morphed war into the new form of world-wide terrorism — no distinction between combatants and civilians, no front lines, no end in sight.

Success? We have more millionaires than ever, but do we have happier people? MSN News reports that 55% of Americans under 45 hate their jobs; where’s the success in that? And with all that short-term sex, who still experiences the exquisite rewards of well-worn intimacy and deep companionship?

The Good Life meant something quite different to Aristotle. Unfortunately, my college professors left me thinking that philosophers had too much time on their hands and a genetic predisposition to long-windedness. Now at last, a whole new generation of Western philosophers is revisiting that dreary approach to the Classics. It turns out that those dead old Greeks weren’t just trying to be clever; they were working with their thoughts and feelings to become less reactive, more in tune. They were in search of mental and emotional wellbeing — which is why I can relate to them; that’s why I abandoned everything and went off to India.

What Aristotle called ‘the good life,’ the Buddha called ‘awakening.’ It just goes to show that people are people, no matter which corner of the planet they come from. Both these men recognized stress as a response to life and tried to find a way to change that response. Did either of them succeed? That’s for you to figure out.

What so many of us can’t stomach any more is the way religions have hijacked ethics and turned them into totalitarian rules to be believed whether you understand or not. There’s more to ethics than thou shalt not. Ethics are a skill that grows from self-discipline — something profoundly out of sync with today’s do-what-feels-good attitude.

I’ve always thought of myself as an arch-rebel, but when I look back on what I was rebelling against, I see that it was and is against a society in moral decline. Who cares for the values of fuddy-duddy, finger-wagging old school marms? We want leaders who respect our opinions, and teachers who encourage exploration and curiosity. But look at these questions that, incredibly, only philosophers care to ask: Why is it wrong to harm others? What’s wrong with having as much sex as possible with as many people as you can? What are the consequences of hiring strangers to raise our children and care for our aged parents? Does guilt cause disease?

Today’s a sunny fall Sunday and I sit inside my house, unable to enjoy my garden because my neighbours are filling the neighbourhood with noise and air pollution from leaf-blowers, pneumatic log-splitters and powerful garden vacuums that suck up bugs and dirt along with fallen leaves and grass cuttings. When I ask them to take a break, they insist they have to do this on weekends, that their machines are really quiet and that they don’t really cause any air pollution. They seem to think they’re fooling me. What are the consequence of such absurd denial? How does it affect their own well-being, never mind my own?

These aren’t trivial questions, even though the circumstances may be. By seeking to answer them in ways we can understand, we approach the good life. Life is never free of irritation, even tragedy, but by understanding the way we deal with it, we can change our experience. People have been trying to improve the world for centuries by making money and enacting laws; true, the richer nations have made advances in civil rights, but only because people fought for them; who’s fighting for the good life? It’s about personal self-discipline, not the law; it’s not the struggle to work harder and make more stuff, but the dignity to stop this infernal vicious circle, take a breath, look at those around you and enjoy — and share — the fruits of a life well-spent.

Spirituality

This word drives me nuts. Like ‘God,’ it’s acquired so many shades of meaning—some of them perfectly contradictory—that there’s no way of knowing what goes through someone’s mind when you say it. Nevertheless, it’s used a lot: in the yoga and meditation communities, among natural health enthusiasts—osteopaths, naturopaths, energy workers, vegans, new-agers, there’s a motley crew of people who use ‘the universe’ as a spiritual channel. It needs to be somehow clarified.

Being traditionally spiritual means reaching for something extra-worldly outside oneself to connect with. Call it God, the Universe, the One, the Infinite…. It’s always capitalized; it’s inconceivable, unfathomable, sublime. It’s often called ineffable, meaning it can’t be expressed in language. This doesn’t stop people trying to describe God, sometimes as a white-bearded grandfather in the sky.

This childish image has become an easy target for today’s radical atheists—by which I mean institutional atheists like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris; these men are understandably furious at the abuses of organized religion, but about as dogmatic as the religious establishment in their intolerance of anyone contemplating the ineffable. See how stupid believers are, they point out, to fall for such nonsense. That’s quite a logical jump. Those who don’t think of God as a person but more like the underlying logos of the universe are lumped into the same category as fairy-tale believers. What these atheists throw out with the bathwater is awe. Their attacks on religion are partly rational, but they’re often as emotionally charged as the believers they’re attacking. It takes two to argue; the more they have in common, the more fervently they’ll fight.

For those of us not satisfied by reason alone, the problem is the idea of God as a person, because then (s)he has to have a gender and personality and—most complicated of all—ends up with judgement, preferences and a temperament. Enter the God of Abraham who used to incite atrocities and morphed into a loving father. The question of whether God is to be feared or loved has led countless generations of believers into agonized doubt. They used to ‘keep their religion’ for politically correct reasons which apply less and less as faith becomes increasingly divorced from state. Today they’re free to drift, but freedom doesn’t always make life easier. By default and from frustration, many become half-baked, angry ‘atheists.’ Others turn to Hatha Yoga, Buddhism, Taoism or other systems that emphasize personal experience over faith, and demand a fair bit of soul-searching.

Spiritual seekers were always a funny lot. Siddhattha and Jesus, Milarepa and Saint Teresa of Avila were all breakers of tradition and taboo. When everyone in my Mindful Reflection workshops has their eyes closed, I look at the faces of my students and feel at home; I like to think they do too. When I tell them that most people aren’t like us and that we’re the weirdos, they giggle nervously.

I’m more of an agnostic than an atheist. I don’t believe in God, but neither do I disbelieve. This drives some people nuts, but what am I supposed to do—make an arbitrary decision? I have no evidence either way. Much more to the point, I don’t need a superbeing to know that I want to put my every breath to the best possible use, and to recognize that non-violence is the key ethic. No Buddhist institution would accept me as a bona-fide Buddhist any more, but I’m still an avid student of the Buddha; he makes so much sense. I have other sources, too—the Tao Te Ching provides the closest I get to answers, and I still find myself amazed when I open the Bible and find inspiration.

And then there’s a whole other category of ‘spiritual’ people who practice what used to be called the ‘dark arts’ but which have been revived these days as healing, tarot, astrology, dowsing, new-age enlightenment—there’s a veritable crowd of fashionable beliefs. Thinking their lives are led by unseen forces, practitioners say things like, “The universe guided me,” when other people might say, “My, what a coincidence.” What makes them seem spiritual is their belief in the immaterial. In their urgency to explain things they maintain an unorthodox use of reasoning, but it’s still reasoning, and it’s rooted in the very material urge to have right answers. Scientists may not see them as rational, but they have their own form of logic that enables them to explain things, no matter who considers them right or wrong. I used to dabble in it myself; I understand it, and am sometimes sympathetic, but what I today call ‘spiritual’ is quite different.

For me, a spiritual path is one that changes the way we are. It’s proactive and transformational. Simply coming up with an alternative rationale doesn’t actually change anything, whether it makes sense or not. The bigger trouble is that these rationales are so open-ended that they can explain away pretty well anything. I see them most often used as convenient ways to avoid confrontation with reality at its most unpleasant—which is the most effective (perhaps the only) way to fundamentally change your outlook. The practices of Buddhism are designed to put your illusions face to face with reality; only then can you watch them dissolve. For the Buddha, the problem isn’t unpleasantness; it’s our desire to hide it away—whether in plain denial or in obfuscating rationalizations.

The spiritual quest isn’t about finding answers; it’s about letting go of grasping; in particular, grasping at the need to explain everything, as if explanations will make everything better. In order to really let go, you have to be open—to other people and to what they have to say, but most importantly to experience. Reason may be the great human tool, but it’s also the great weaver of illusion. Is your spirituality just another system of rationalization, or is it a practice?

The Secret

…getting what you want makes you happy. That, of course, is the prime tenet of consumerism.

People have been asking me for ages what I think of The Secret. After putting it off for far too long, I recently acquired a copy and now have an opinion; actually, several opinions.

The thing that first grabbed my attention wasn’t the book itself but the way people asked about it — as if they feared expressing their own doubts; didn’t dare question such a successful phenomenon (‘success’ meaning huge sales). It’s a disconcerting fact that many people look over their shoulder to see what others think before voicing an opinion.

The book jumps quickly into the meat of the matter: you get what you wish for; if you don’t, you’re not wishing properly. Surely that’s no secret; it was exactly what I was taught as a child, though instead of ‘wishing,’ it was called ’prayer.’ It tortured me that my prayers weren’t answered. It was obviously my fault; you can’t blame God.

As I renounced the nonsense heaped on me in the name of religion, I got on with life and discovered that in fact one does tend to get what one truly wishes for. My childhood problem had been that I thought that I could just make up wishes as I went along, like ‘lots of money,’ or ‘an intimate relationship with my father,’ or simply, ‘staying out of trouble.’ What I learned is that wishes are never far from dreams; they’re to be discovered, not invented. You get to any destination you truly focus on; assuming you persist, where else would you end up?

Well that’s the meat of the matter, and there’s tons and tons of meat in The Secret. The basic tenet of wishing is repeated in every conceivable way, with quotes from notables like the two Alberts (Einstein and Schweizer). Who am I to contradict them? The trouble is, I know Einstein’s writings, and saw at once that his words were out of context, and considerably shallower than the man himself. In fact, that’s a good adjective for the book: shallow; or, if you insist, meaty — but in a very indigestible way.

If only that were the worst of it. The Secret, which is lauded as a work of spirituality, is founded upon, and never questions, the premise that getting what you want makes you happy. That, of course, is the prime tenet of consumerism. Watch a few TV ads this evening and you’ll see what I mean. Buy Tide and your clean laundry will make you beam just like the pretty lady. Don’t you want her smile, her joy?

The secret of The Secret is that it tells us exactly what we want to hear. Its author Rhonda Byrne is a TV writer and producer who’s tapped lucratively into New-Age positivity (positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power). These magical beliefs are thought to be spiritual simply because they’re intangible, but I beg to differ. I find nothing but worldliness in the notions that we don’t need to learn from our screw-ups, that we just have to wish harder, that there’s no need to question the wisdom of what we want and can assume it’s the gateway to joy, that money, power, prestige and success are what life is all about. Where’s the spirituality? Perhaps in recognizing mind as the root of all happiness and sorrow; on that one idea I agree. However, that’s just an idea. With the book, I disagree wholeheartedly. It’s condescending.

Ah! Now I understand why people hesitate to criticize. How could I possibly take issue with all the rest of it? Must be jealousy, or plain pig-headedness. The book’s sold four million copies, so how on earth could so many people be so wrong? How many books have I sold?

Sorry, I still beg to differ. I beg you to differ too, at least a bit. Read it and use it; there are some nuggets in there, but please please come to your own judgement; don’t swallow it hook, line and sinker.

Believers in The Secret might find me a fuddy-duddy in insisting that there’s work to be done in our search for happiness. Sorry, I just don’t have an aversion to hard work, or to hard knocks for that matter. The pursuit of life and its mysterious ups and downs is just what the human mind was made to figure out. Go figure.

The Inhuman Condition

I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 32

Wisdom & knowledge

Wisdom in the mind is better than money in the hand.

Look at the sign that was on the wall of the classroom in China where my daughter Melanie was teaching this summer (left). It’s got a Chinese ring to it, and yet it’s a universal message. Still, it bugged me. Schools are places of knowledge, not wisdom. Wisdom cannot be taught, only found within oneself (which is why it’s also called insight). The sign on the wall implies that knowledge is equivalent to wisdom, which it’s not, or that it necessarily leads to wisdom, which it doesn’t.

What’s the difference? For example, knowledge tells me all about my bad habits — they hurt me; I’d be better off without them. That knowledge, however, doesn’t change those habits one bit. They might even grow stronger. That’s why trying to quit smoking, lose weight or become more tolerant can frustrate the hell out of you. Knowledge is a way of objectifying the world and our place in it. To learn how to be objective, we go to school. Knowledge tells you what to do, but not how to do it. For that, you need insight.

Insight is subjective; it comes from within. It’s intuitive. We don’t learn to be aware — we just are; whatever we pay attention to is reflected in our minds. Insight can’t be learned but it can be trained — by cultivating attention. That’s why we start by watching the breath and letting go of thoughts.

Look into the eyes of newborns. They know nothing, but they’re full of attention. As they start to accumulate knowledge, everything changes.

The more we learn, the less attentive we become. Knowledge brings illusions of control; it reaches critical mass in our teens, when we think we know it all and can do anything. That’s when we begin in earnest to ignore the simple joy of being. Now the human mind becomes a bottomless pit demanding to be filled. We forget what was once obvious: that it’s already filled with the light of awareness.

That’s why, when we start watching the breath, knowledge struggles against the light. “Am I sitting the right way? I’m no good at this. Why am I bored? Shouldn’t I feel blissful?” Similarly, we might study mindfulness, attend spiritual conferences and meet great teachers — but never stop and let go. It’s as if we can’t move forward without first finding the right answer, but being isn’t a problem; it needs no explanations, no solutions, no answers.

Mindfulness is hard because we tell ourselves it is. In reality it’s child’s play — literally. Just acknowledge that the chatter is not mindfulness and that the bits in between are, and they’ll gradually become more frequent.

Make no mistake, we need knowledge. It’s indispensible for work, to raise a family, to play and relax — but it becomes a control freak, threatened by insight. It portrays insight as boring, which is why people laugh at meditators, and why we beat ourselves up when we don’t get it ‘right.’ We just sit there doing nothing. What a waste of life!

There’s room for both knowledge and insight. In fact, only with both do we become whole. Understanding this helps us move forward, towards allowing insight to do its stuff. The difficulty is that, as adults, we insist that everything is processed through the filter of the objective mind. Trusting your insight is a leap into the unknown; or rather, into the forgotten.

Go on — let go!

The Customer’s Always Right

My dad ran a fine Gloucester restaurant in the West of England and used to recite these words like a mantra. It contrasted with his considered opinion that many customers were philistines who didn’t appreciate good food and wine. Still, he acknowledged their custom nevertheless, knowing that his livelihood depended on them. That wasn’t the least bit unusual; it was the prevailing business attitude in those days before the term ‘customer service’ was invented.

Today, it’s a ubiquitous label used by corporation worldwide, ostensibly to establish in black and white that yes they really do care about their customers, but more often to deal with disgruntled ones. Getting through to someone with authority in the higher echelons of today’s corporations is about as easy as getting through to Barack Obama for a nice chat.

A case in point is Videotron, my cable internet supplier and, oh dear, a service industry. I called because I had been initially charged  $5 for 5 gigabytes of bandwidth, but then $7.95 per additional gigabyte. Why, I wanted to know, were there two rates?

“Because,” said the customer service representative, you went over what you were allowed.

“Allowed?” I echoed. “You make me sound like a naughty boy. Don’t you want me to consume your product?”

“Of course we do, sir.”

‘Sir,’ of course, is meant to denote respect, but you’d never know it from her tone of voice.

“Well,” I said, “It seems punitive to me. Why would you want to upset your customers?”

“We’re not trying to upset our customers,” she insisted.

“Well in this case you have. Don’t you find that unbearable?”

No answer.

“So why are there two rates?”

“I already told you sir, because you went over your limit. You’re not allowed to do that.”

“Allowed,” I mused. “There’s that word again.”

She ignored me.

“Please remind me, why am I not allowed?”

“Because you’ve purchased a 5 gigabyte package and have gone over the limit.”

“So I used more, and I have to pay for it.”

“Exactly,” she said, relieved that I’d finally seen the light.

“Fair enough,” I added.

“I’m glad you see my point, sir.”

“Good,” I added. “Now, why does the cost go up by 795%?”

“What?”

Well, $5 for 5 gigabytes is a dollar a gigabyte, correct?

She didn’t answer.

“And $7.95 a gigabyte is 7.95 times as much, right? That’s a 795% increase.”

She’s still silent.

“Look,” I said, “If I’m not allowed any more, why don’t you just turn off the tap?”

“What?” Now she’s annoyed.

“Why don’t you stop supplying me when I reach my limit. After all, I’m not allowed any more — right?”

“We don’t cut off our customers like that sir.”

“Ah,” I said. “Could it be that you want me to go over, so you can the gouge me?”

Silence.

“Is that it? Does Videotron engage in trickery?”

“Sir, why did you contact us?” Her voice suggests I’ll be nonplussed by her clever question.

“To get my money back,” I said. I’ll give you two dollars for two gigabytes. Seems fair to me.

“And what happens next month?”

“Next month?”

“Yes, sir. You’re going to go over the limi again next month. Then what?”

“I’m confused,” I said. “You know how much bandwidth I’ll use next month?”

“You went over your limit this month. You’ll go over again next month, and the month after. Then what will you do?”

“Good Lord,” I exclaimed. “You see into the future? How can you possibly know what I’m going to do in the next month?”

“How much bandwidth will you use then, sir?”

I’m now irritated. “I don’t know. If I did, it would be none of your business.”

“You see?” she says, “You don’t know. That why you need to purchase our Extreme high-speed package.”

“Don’t want it,” I said. “Are you going to refund that extortionate billing, or do I move to one of your competitors?”

“Our competitors bill their clients exactly as we do, sir.”

“So?”

“So that’s what we do. It’s perfectly reasonable.”

“Because they gouge their customers, it’s okay for you to do the same?”

“Yes.”

She missed that one. The poor girl wouldn’t know a logical inference if it hit her in the face. Perhaps that’s because she’s sacrificed her wits for her job, trying to follow bureaucratically-designed customer service conversations instead of her own sense of right and wrong. She sacrifices her integrity daily to keep her job. Sad.

“So will you upgrade to the extreme high-speed package?”

“No thanks. I don’t need it.”

“Yes you do sir.”

“Who on Earth are you,” I explode. “God?”

“So why are you calling us?”

“Actually, I’m not calling you. I emailed you and expected an email response.”

“We called you back, sir. That is Videotron’s policy. We wish to speak directly to customers in order to resolve their concerns. It’s in the customer’s best interests.”

“Not mine.”

“Why is that, sir?” Oh boy, she ready for me now. I bet she has company policy memorized word for word.”

“Because you didn’t leave me a call-back number.”

“It’s not our policy to do that, sir.”

“I suppose that wouldn’t be in my best interests?”

No answer.

“And you called, what, ten or twelve times, disturbing my wife and daughter with your incessant calls, leaving no message.”

“Sir, it’s not Videotron policy….”

“So what’s your answer? Do I get my refund, or find a new internet supplier?”

“You won’t get a penny more.”

“A penny more than what?”

“Than the $15.90 for the two gigabytes at $7.95.”

“You’re actually going to refund it?”

“I’ll give you a credit, sir. But you won’t get a penny more in credit.”

“Madam,” I explain, “You’re giving me exactly what I want.”

“That’s all!” she insists. “Not a penny more!”

I exclaim, “Oh dear!” Perhaps that will console her.

“Is there anything else I can help you with this evening?”

“No thanks.

“Thank you for contact Videotron Customer Support sir, and have a great day.”

“Really?”

I hang up thinking about the Buddha’s injunction to avoid wrong livelihoods. It couldn’t be simpler. Put your source of income before your own integrity and you’re on a slippery slope to discontent and stress. Sure you need money, but you need mental health too, something too often pushed far down the list of priorities. When you think that Xeroxed conversations like this are being taught to tens of thousands of people in customer service centres worldwide, you can only wonder what the world’s coming to. But then, people wonder that in one generation after another, don’t they?

What a strange lot we are, human beings.