On Trying To Be Buddhist

Reflections on Aging - 2 - The View Changes

Another aspect of getting older for me has been a shift in my viewpoint.  All my life I've been accustomed to thinking ahead - plans for the next day, the next week, details of projects for the future, plans to improve my finances, my weight, lists of books to read; I've kept notebooks with outlines that I wanted to expand into well worked out essays.  There were friends and acquaintances that I wanted to spend more time with and get to know better.  And of course there was spiritual practice - I tried to keep at it day by day, but also looked forward to a more intense level of practice sometime in the future.  At work I considered new projects in part for how they would look on my resume.  I looked steadily toward the future. 

Then, when I was fifty, and had just completed a very difficult project, it dawned on me that I would never top what I'd just finished.  Not long after that I began to see that my resume was loosing its importance because I was nearing the end of my working life.  This was a pleasant prospect.  Although I enjoyed my work - except for the stress of the job itself (computer support) and always being on call - my pleasure was simply that of solving puzzles and making systems work; it was not a vocation that I would miss when I left it. 

By then I'd also begun to notice how much longer my view into the past had become.  I looked back at decade after decade of my own life - and from knowing various family members and hearing family stories and reflecting on our whole family's past, my view seemed to stretch even beyond my own time into that of my parents and grandparents. All of the 1900's seemed familiar, as though I'd lived it myself, because I'd tasted the flavor it had for Grandma and Grandpa, and my aunts and uncles.  There's a certain richness to this experience as well as something strange, almost like remembering a past life.

But as the past expands, through the passage of time itself as well as through knowing other's lives, the future is contracting.  Just in this wonderful era when scientific knowledge is exploding, and I have the leisure to explore it, I can no longer realistically think of studying everything that fascinates me.  I do not have the span of time required - even if I am very fortunate.  I hear of experiments and studies that in a few years or just a few decades will tell us so much more about our world, and our reality.  This future is exciting - and yet, in a few decades at the most, I won't even be here.  One afternoon while meditating, I looked up at a beautiful statue on my shrine, and an image flashed through my mind of a stranger meditating before that statue sometime in the future.  Things that I treasure may still be here, may still be treasured by someone, but not by me.  The poignancy of that moment brought tears to my eyes and though it passed quickly, it left its mark. 

Of course for a Buddhist there is a context for this awareness - it is even a blessing to be reminded over and over to use my resources well.  And in the Buddhist context these reflections are not grim and depressing.  In contrast, our western view of aging is practically to deny the process.  "You are only as old as you feel..." and so on.  There is a strong push to see older people as essentially no different from people in their twenties and thirties (just more medicated, I'm afraid.)  Their interests and activities remain the same - and it's thought wonderful that they can still keep up with all the things they always enjoyed.  Unfortunately this view misses almost entirely the real differences - and so the value in them is left unexplored.  I can't say what that value is - I'm only starting to consider it myself, but it is one of the things that makes my own life interesting right now.  I am old and this process is fascinating.

Not Enough Me

I wish I were six people.  More might be greedy - but less couldn't get the job done.  The job?  Just doing the things that interest me, or that I need to do.  Some of this has to do with aging - with less time ahead of me, I want to get more done in each moment.  Now that I'm retired I do have free time but even so, there's so much more that draws me than I can respond to. 

In Buddhism itself, there is so much to learn.  And at least a bit of western philosophy would help me to understand the Buddhist framing of issues of reality, cosmology, psychology, epistemology.  Modern physics has much to say about this reality that I would like to know.  And then there's the internet universe - so many blogs that richly reward frequent reading - what people all around the world are up to - what they think, value, experience.  There are reference works on nearly every topic imaginable. Last week I came across a new blog initiated by an author whose work I enjoy very much.  She's planning a new novel about a medieval saint, and it brings up some very rich issues - the variety within early Christianity before the Roman rite became dominant for example.  I want to leap in, start reading up on the topic, offer some suggestions.... There is no end.

All of this is fine in its own way - but it involves me in a gluttony only slightly more subtle than the usual.  If I were six people or sixty, I'd find more and more to do - more to enjoy, although more to be concerned about too.  More and more and more.  In the long run, I think Buddhism is really about less and less.  A little adjusting to do here. 

No News is Good News

At the end of September, I canceled our subscription to the local paper.  As noted in my last entry, I did miss it at first - both the paper itself and the distraction it provided.  But very soon after that, I really began to appreciate having more time, and less angst in the morning.  I'm getting more done - though not the sitting I intended to use the time for.  Instead I'm wrapped up in an effort to organize my life, set goals, get more disciplined and efficient.  (For reports on progress or lack of same, you can read my other blog if you'd like.) In addition, I'm coming to the conclusion that spending time trying to understand American (and other nations') politics is a lost cause for me. 

For several years I've thought a lot about my responsibility - especially as a Buddhist - to understand what is going on in our government, in world affairs, etc., take a position, and act on it.  But I seem hopelessly inept at this.  It has happened many times that, after reflecting on some issue for awhile, reading, finding TV specials on the topic, I get an impression that seems reasonable and draw some hesitant conclusions.  Then later I find some other information - in a paper, an internet site, another TV interview - that completely undercuts that view; and it too is entirely reasonable and pretty convincing.  End result: I just plain don't know what to think. Though I do trust my over-all view (the Iraq war is insane, students aren't being taught how to think, global warming and evolution are both real, the next generations are going to pay in blood for what we're doing) the details, the subtle causes, the solutions, the possibilities, are all obscure to me. 

One response would be to put in the time necessary to research and study each of these issues.  I could form and test out theories, and so on.  But I'm far closer to the end of my life than the beginning - and I find myself saying, about these issues, and many other potential interests, "Not in this lifetime."  The ultimate triage.

So I'm in the process of disengaging - canceling the newspaper is one sign of this process.  However, this is not giving up, quitting the field, as it were.  My purpose is to discern more clearly what I can do, and find the time and energy to do it.

A Small Insight

A very small insight. 

The Buddhist prayers I've said most often over the years, I have, in the process, memorized.  Not deliberately - just through frequent repetition. 

In A History of God, which I was reading a few days ago, Karen Armstrong speaks of  learning something "by heart" - of course that's a very familiar expression, but I had not thought of memorization in those words in a long time.  But that's what is so potent in memorization - it goes beyond the brain and intelect - it engages the heart.

When I've learned something at this level, even something quite trivial, it reveals a richness that I hadn't guessed was there in my initial encounters.  Learning can be not just an accumulation but a transformation.  This takes time.  It means, in the long run, learning a bit less, but learning it with my heart.

Triage - Again

I'm considering whether to subscribe to a new magazine, Scientific American Mind.  It looks fascinating, but would this magazine be a useful thing for me to spend time on?  How would it help me?  Why am I even considering it? 

Well - I want to learn about the mind, because the mind is very important to me as a meditator, as a Buddhist.  My assumption is that science can tell me something about it.  Certainly the scientists active in this field are also making that assumption.  That's where the problems start, though.  For example, one of the first articles I find when I go through the online archive, is one titled "How the Brain Creates the Mind."  Here's a whopping big assumption - a common one, of course, but an assumption nevertheless.  The brain creates the mind.  Not my view at all.  Will it help me to read this - or articles like it? 

I think part of what lures me toward this is that it conflicts with my understanding of reality at its very foundation.  But science of this sort is generating the world view or views that are coming to dominate our culture.  I guess what I'm experiencing is the Buddhist flavor of the 'war' between science and religion.  And I'm feeling a bit of the need to know my 'enemy.'  Now - that puts me rather closer to the intelligent design folks than I really want to be.  (Or than they would like,  I'm sure.)  Moreover, the Dalai Lama himself speaks often of his interest in science, and his belief in the need to work with such knowledge, rather than reacting against it.  So what's my problem?

It's the assumptions.  It's how it feels to me to encounter such a mindset, and what results from it.  Even while puzzled by the nature of mind and consciousness, and unable to fully describe or define either, these scientists are quite rooted in the reductionist view that what is physical is primary.  Any alternative is most of the time rejected out of hand. 

What is wrong with this view?  The biggest problem for me is that most of what I've learned as a Buddhist runs counter to it.  And more important, much of what Buddhists do - what I do -  in terms of meditation, and other practices, is quite outside the scope of that scientific view.  What we think, learn, practice are all not part of the western scientific world.  Or to say it differently - I see a whole lot of evidence that our scientists are pretty much unaware of, and it's evidence that sometimes or often contradicts their 'knowledge.'   It's evidence that is not considered to exist at all from their perspective. 

So I think part of my desire to learn more has to do with a need to look at some of this work and see if it fits with what I see, and, if so, how it fits.  I certainly see it as having some validity - and I want to reconcile it with other facets of my reality.  But does it make sense to do this?  Is this a good use of my (ever decreasing) time?   Is it better to learn about something that contradicts my understanding of reality and deal with it intellectually, or to become myself evidence of its inadequacy?   Do I have to choose?