Investing in Ourselves

It appears that the Escher-eque architecture of the political economy (or is that the economic politic?) is finally betraying itself for what it is: a mesmerizing but trumped-up house of cards.  And while most houses of cards are at least built upon foundations as solid as, say, a coffee table, ours is held aloft by increasingly sporadic gusts of hot air from the maw of a bloated, sickly, senile carnivore.

I'll let those images float around free of further interpretation.  I don't claim any real talent for political/economic analysis.  For that, I'd like to recommend Very Knowledge and Club Orlov.  The authors of both are highly skilled at summing up just why, exactly, we're in so much trouble.  Trouble?  It depends on how you look at it.  But most people would call this Trouble with a capital T: the Western, consumption-oriented way of life is on its last legs, at least in the West (China may just be getting started).  The writing is on the wall.  The eagle has crashed into the ocean.  Yes, change is afoot, Mr. Obama.  Great upheaval is on the horizon, as the re-orientation of something as massive as the global economy won't happen without making a few, uh, waves.  As in tidal waves.  Things in the U.S. are poised to get radically ugly.  This is a good reason not to gloat, even over the downfall of as brutal, myopic a tyrant as the U.S. has become.  But it is exciting.

Amidst such a backdrop of gushing oil and economic failure, it's a good time to think about very basic things, including such impolite questions as "where does your food come from (and where will it come from)?"  And "what is your plan for when oil costs $10 a gallon?"  Many highly intelligent authors have argued that the necessary questions are going to be good deal harsher than this second one, since I have assumed that oil will still be available, and, implicitly, that things like highways will still be in good repair and safe to venture out on in a private vehicle.  Check out James Howard Kunstler for some juicy speculations on that score.  There are limitless possible scenarios, but I don't fancy stockpiling guns and canned food or even for that matter moving up to a remote hilltop in Vermont year round and tending a big garden and a flock of sheep.  Much as I like the sound of the latter, it just ain't me.  For these purposes, the details of just how a post peak-oil America will look are not really the point.  Instead, I prefer to focus on the basics.  When pondering how to spend time, money, physical and mental energy in a time of intense uncertainty, I find myself asking "what can I invest in that I won't end up regretting no matter what happens in the world?"

The short answer is "myself."  Lest that sound irretrievably egocentric, let me backtrack a bit.  

I've figured out that the intersection of my talents and passions and the needs of the world--which is how someone famous or other once defined "calling"--lies in the realm of nourishing, in making myself a vessel for traditions that nourish and tend toward wholeness.  If this I were in The Giver, I'd have been named Nourisher on my thirteenth birthday (and been awfully confused at the time, except that even then I loved to cook).  So I've decided to invest in the pursuit of that general goal.  Health being at something of a premium these days, there will be no shortage of work to be done.  All the more so if we define health broadly, to mean not just lack of detectable disease, but also a positive state of balance and contentment.  Ayurveda provides a set of powerful conceptual tools for achieving balance in body and even in mind.  The contentment part, though, is more elusive.  This is the realm of what we might call spiritual health.

Wait, hold it.  This is getting suspect already.  What does "spirituality" even mean?  Luckily it doesn't fall into the category of asking "what is jazz?," to which Louis Armstrong famously responded "man, if you've got to ask, you'll never know."  Really good jazz has a certain ineffability that defies definition, and if you can't feel it, there's no use trying to pin it down with words.  Ultimate reality may share some of that elusive quality--ask Mahayana Buddhists, who have developed complex ways of talking about that very elusiveness without reifying the concept of elusiveness itself, or physicists, who delve ever deeper into the structure of time and space, uncovering marvels within marvels.  Even the innermost marvels, if there are any that are ultimately innermost, defy all comprehensibility, with features like wave-particle duality.  The most promising theory, String Theory, requires that there be something like 11 extra imperceptible dimensions curled up into vanishingly small knots at every point in space-time--and this is in the name of simplifying.  Ultimate reality may well be beyond our capacity to understand it (wouldn't it be weird if it weren't?), but spirituality is not.  Leaving aside the term's mixed connotations, let us think of spirituality as a sense of purpose in our lives.  This doesn't mean we have to "know the meaning of life," just that we have an operational, pragmatic idea of how to create our own meaning.  Once we have meaning, we have direction, and we have something larger than our own egos and desires to base our lives upon.  Direction gives perspectives and resilience, a certain stabilization that, tended to, will tend us in return and keep us on the path.  

If this spirituality--meaningfulness--is the goal, what is the means to it?  A good place to begin the search is with the Sanskrit term for health itself.  The word is swasthya.  It means self-situatedness.  It conveys a sense that the place to start is with ourselves.  Each of us.  Working on her/himself.  This sounds simple, but in the context of Western society it is in fact radical, for we are accustomed to looking everywhere but within for fulfillment.  But it would seem that some sort of self-work is in order.  This is not egocentrism, for the goal of the process (or one of its side effects) is to eliminate the pernicious and false construct of the ego.  Rather, one's self is the only place one can start.  Later on ripples will spread outward, but those ripples come from the center.  We have to be self-centered; the challenge is (to paraphrase Einstein again) to widen our circles of compassion enough to embrace every being.

It's worth emphasizing that this kind of spiritual work is precisely that: work.  It is work in much the same way farming is work, and involves many of the same processes: preparing the ground, planting the right seeds, weeding out what is undesirable.  It requires the same sorts of attributes that help make any long-term endeavor successful: attentiveness.  The will to succeed.  Effort.  A sense of timing.  Immense patience.  Faith.  All these are necessary qualities, and yet they are also the fruit of the labor.  Thus the process is cyclical, and as different stages are reached, the seeker gains the strength and skill to proceed further.

So far I've avoided talk of religion per se.  Spirituality in the sense of finding and refining one's purpose through "self-cultivation," may or may not come associated with a particular religious tradition.  Many find that having a well-trodden path to follow is helpful--even if (in the world of so many Southasians I've spoken to), "all roads lead to the mountain"/"all rivers lead to the sea"--while others develop practices independently.  For most, some level of guidance is helpful.  What kind of path to follow does, of course, depend on one's aims, level of motivation, and many other factors.  And not all spiritual techniques accomplish the same thing.  The term "spiritual work" is still a useful one, however, if understood as that which contributes to an increase in positive attributes in the practitioner such as contentment, selflessness, and equanimity, while weakening negative thoughts and tendencies.  Buddhism and Christianity, for example, have some serious metaphysical differences, but they both aim to cultivate ethical living through kindness and compassion.

In the Southasian context, spiritual paths take many forms.  Even within Hindu traditions in which the overall goal is union with the divine, there are a number of different paths that are recognized.  Since yoga means union, these have names like karma yoga (the yoga of action), bhakti yoga (devotion), and jnana yoga (higher insight), as well as the more familiar hatha yoga.  Speak with Bharat Natyam dancers or Tabla players, and you will hear of their own practices as paths to the divine.  It doesn't so much matter what as it does as how: Zen Archery could equally well be Zen Underwater Basket Weaving, as long as it performed with mindfulness and devotion.  Many profoundly spiritual people don't associate themselves with any particular tradition, but simply follow the quiet voice of their own way.  I'd love to hear people's stories of others they've known that fit this description, because I think we all have met people who inspire us with their inner quiet, quiet courage, courageous eccentricity.

As I find (to my own continuing surprise) my own spirituality unfolding along a Buddhist path, I have more to say from that perspective than I do in terms of general remarks.  At the heart of Buddhist practice lies meditation, a direct and unmediated act of self-cultivation (bhaavana).  As practices go, meditation is relatively subtle: no signs of visible activity or direct impact on the world.  There is a tendency in our culture to discount the subtle in favor of the obvious, the tangible.  This may partly explain the difficulty so many have in conceiving of something like meditation as having any real value.  Why do Tai Chi when you could really burn some calories by lifting weights?  In reality, subtle forces are the most influential, as gentle, unassuming water carves a gorge out of solid rock.  Emotions may be insubstantial, but murder would never happen if not for rage, hatred, fear, and jealousy.  This principle--that the subtle governs the concrete--is what makes meditation so powerful.  Along with plants and animals, who so far have not been the cause of much Trouble, the world is composed of vast human societies, each of which is composed of discrete cities and towns plus rural areas, composed in turn of families, and finally, of course, composed of billions of individual people.  These people's actions, their ways of being in the world, depend on their internal states.  Without peace and harmony in the inner world, we can't expect it on the outside, either.  Start at the center and ripple out.  And--neat trick--eventually (they say) the center disappears.

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  For someone interested in pursuing self-cultivation of the sort I've been describing, but who is not sure where to start, there is nothing to be lost and much to be gained by developing mindfulness.   A calm, steady mind is a necessary stage on a number of paths, and it's a beneficial practice in its own right.  Calming the mind through this kind of meditation is akin to simply stopping the motion that we're always making.  If the mind is a car, then it's always running, and of course we need to stop it before we can open it up, see what's wrong, and fix the durn thing.  I like the analogy of muddy water.  Since the mind is always moving, the mud never has a chance to settle out, and the water never clears.  But with enough calming meditation, the motion slows to a stop, and the particulate matter settles to the bottom.  The water becomes clear, full of light.

The simplest form of samatha or calming meditation uses the breath to still the mind and make it one-pointed, absorbed in its object of concentration.  Here are some simple instructions aimed at a novice meditator, enough to get you started with a simple daily practice.  Sit in a comfortable position on the floor or in a chair.  Establish a firm, comfortable foundation.  Straighten your back, but not so much that you make yourself uncomfortable.  Loosen any tight belt or pants so that you can breathe freely, down into your belly.  Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes.  Close your eyes gently, and turn your attention to your breath, just the way you breath naturally, in and out.  Try not to control your breath, just watch it as it passes in and out through your nostrils.  Sounds simple, but it's not.  The mind will wander away again and again.  Each time you catch it wandering, gently but firmly bring it back to the object of concentration, the breath.  This is enough for many sessions, and it will be hard work.  It sounds obvious, but there is no substitute for doing the work.  Merely reading about it is no good.  You have to do it, every day.  "5 minutes a day better than half an hour on the weekend," says one of my teachers.  If you persist, you will find that the ability to concentrate develops, and your mind will wander less far and less frequently.  You will start to notice sensations that you hadn't before.  As this happens, you can zero your attention in very specifically on the place in or around the nostrils that the breath touches as it moves in and out.  You haven't exhausted the usefulness of this technique until you are able to sit completely absorbed in your breathing, without a trace of discursive chatter nor even a feeling of joy at your accomplishment, for extended periods of time.  Until then, there's always room for refinement of awareness, for sharpness of concentration.