Embracing the Unknown
Embracing the Unknown during the Time of Covid-19
Synopsis of Zoom Talk May 27, 2020
I would first like to take a moment to acknowledge the frontline workers, all the individuals who are putting themselves in danger in order to assist those afflicted by the covid-19 virus. And also those who are doing the same to maintain the supply chains of food and medicine so that our lives do not completely collapse into chaos.
If any of you have those close to you who have or are suffering directly, or find yourselves in a precarious situation, I would like to express my support and solidarity in this difficult time.
For many of us, our experience is more like the caption of a recent New Yorker cartoon:
“Other than the constant looming threat of danger, it’s a beautiful day.”
Outside can seem somewhat dreamlike, or surreal. In some ways more peaceful, less frenetic, more relaxed. Everything seems the same, nevertheless, everything is somehow different. In many ways it is an odd juxtaposition of contradictions. Cities are calmer, skies are cleaner, life in many ways seems simpler. But beneath this surface, lies a profound unease. We have seen Paris Boulevards and Roman Squares completely empty. At one point ⅓ of the world’s population was sequestered in place. This is not life as normal. Our usual world, with many of our reassuring reference points, has come to almost a complete stop.
For those of us who meditate, ironically, every time we sit the idea is to bring our mind, our world to a momentary stop. That is because, as we learn to recognize, we are normally caught up in an endless project of “spinning” ourselves into existence, largely based on habitual patterns and deep conditioning.
Since something similar arises moment after moment, we attribute solidity and an idea of “reality” to what is arising. In fact we are re-apprising our world, and re-creating our idea of personal identity moment after moment. Better this be done with valid information and lucid intelligence. This is the inner path of awakening we aspire to.
What is interesting in the current situation, we find direct parallels between our micro personal inner experience, and a macro socio-economic-political environment. So what are some of the tips and lessons we can learn and that may help us to navigate the territory of this new “unknown”?
Through meditative introspection, if we are honest, we discover our natural reflex is to seek refuge in complacency, in the comfort of what is familiar, thinking of short-term gratification. Moreover, we have a compulsive need to be “in control,” managing ourselves and our world either directly, or simply through the “knowing” function of our conceptual mind. What becomes clear is that all of these reflexes operate in concert with our conditioning and our unconscious assumptions about “reality” that give shape and form to how we understand ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves.
The key element, we discover, is that all of this is in service of self-interest. So it is an enormous and continuous challenge to locate, identify, and understand the machinations of self-interest. And the challenge, which is not insignificant, is to cut through this mental “noise”; to recognize and learn not to indulge in all those “refuges” of comfort, avoidance, and self-delusion.
And even if we aspire to an altruistic ethic, we are still not free of the dominance of that self which will never let us be free of its own interests on some level. We may comfort ourselves by adhering to a religious tradition that espouses transcendent or selfless values, but allow this to becomes a self-congratulatory method for self-satisfaction. We should also keep in mind that all too often those promoting these values as individuals represent institutions and that inevitably the individuals and the institutions both have a great deal of vested self-interest! And finally, as we learn different “techniques” of spiritual development, all too often we find we measure “success” in becoming “proficient” at the technique rather than using these as tools for self discovery and transformation.
As we become capable of cutting through the “noise” of our self-preoccupation and develop a degree of meditative stability, we may come to a point where the internal mental chatter actually comes to a stop. I remember when that first happened to me many years ago: in the first instances of that mental silence I was terrified that I would forget how to think! Honestly! Of course I need not have worried. Shall we say, thinking is like riding a bike. Once you know how to do it, you never forget.
In the same way, we are terrified to drop our personal fixation and attachment to self, and our compulsion to “be in control”; but if we let it go, we discover an ease of open awareness that is not servile to the self. We find that, at the same time, we are still able to function and act in a sane normal manner. We discover that we embody an awareness, intelligence, and presence that allows us to be “responsive” rather than “reactive”. We can still “care” for our personal needs, as we understand them in the global context of “needs” of others and the planet. In fact we discover that our true well-being is only accomplished in the context of the common good.
We discover that there is another way of “being”, another way of holding ourselves, and holding our world. If we accept the challenge of cutting through our habitual projections and discard our normal defensiveness, we discover that we can drop into a space of openness and natural ease. We find that from the point of view of that natural openness and ease we are both the individual we take ourselves to be, but also much more. That “individual” exists in the context of a vastness that is inclusive and interdependent; not separate from others or the world. This experience of “non-self” that has been described by religious figures and trans-personal psychologists is a state of authentic being grounded in our very nature. It affords us a radically different experience and perspective of ourselves and our world.
Understanding the “relative” nature of our “Self” identity is extremely important. I was very impressed with an idea I encountered reading Ken Wilber many years ago. He was explaining that anything exhibiting a personal “identity” was made of parts; and that element whose “identity” we are considering is also part of larger wholes. The “identity” of the person or thing should be strong enough to provide cohesion to the parts comprising it, while not inhibiting its function as a part of a larger whole. And when that balance is lost, one finds oneself in a situation that is untenable, and that we might consider “cancerous”. Whether we are talking about a “cell” of our body or of ourselves as individuals forming communities and societies.
Considering further the idea of relativity and “perspective”, I’d like to share a story. A while ago I attended a 50th anniversary reunion of my high school graduating class in the small town I grew up in. One of my close friends from that class had spent the previous 40 years as general manager of the local ski station and offered all the attendees a free pass on the gondola to the top of the mountain. It was a beautiful sunny day and many of us took advantage of this offer. I rode up to the top with my friend. From the top we had a magnificent 360 degree view of the whole region: mountains, valleys, towns and villages, rivers, lakes and ocean. That evening, as class valedictorian I was asked to say a few words and among other things I spoke of perspective. That we can live our lives, narrowly defined, with detailed familiarity of our own clan, neighborhood or “valley” without appreciating it’s place in the larger landscape; or we can hold the greater view of the whole region, and our local neighborhood within it without in any way lessening our knowledge and ability to function in our immediate locality.
In some ways, just as we climb mountains to gain a vaster perspective, through contemplative training we are able to “deepen” our experience of mind and discover the experiential vastness that holds both our specific personal identity, and at the same time holds and embraces the totality of our world.
Appreciating the relative nature of our personal identity in context of the inclusive vastness of being only makes us more skillful in our choices and decisions as we escape from the reflex of narrow self-interested “reactivity” to become more expansive and “responsive” beings; In the same way an informed global environmental awareness allows us to be more informed and skillful in acting externally.
Our world has known specific conflict and suffering more acute than the current situation, be it from wars - most recently we can think of Syria and the Middle East; or natural disasters - we can remember vividly Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, or the more recent hurricane in India. These have tended to be local or regional, and so in most cases far from our own lives.
The current pandemic is different. It is silent and invisible, global, and deadly, at least to a percentage of the population - particularly those more vulnerable.
Of course the situation varies from country to country, and region to region. Here in Canada we have political and health leaders both provincially and federally who are transparent, and empathetic and have taken significant steps to soften the impact on our most vulnerable citizens. In the US the situation is much more chaotic. This is not the time or place to engage in a political polemic, but suffice it to say, given the dominant position of the US in the world, it is not inappropriate for us all to experience a degree of anxiety and concern about our current and future situation.
We can also say that the current pandemic is not the first, nor the last, and we could easily face another pandemic as contagious but much more deadly. And of course not far behind is the looming crisis of climate change and the ecological disaster we have visited upon ourselves.
This current situation has made obvious the degree to which our society as a whole has given itself over to personal self-interest, greed and the pursuit of power. And the usual “refuges” of denial and short-termed self-interest, have made us impotent to address the many challenges that face us globally.
What we have at the present moment is a historically unique situation. The true nature of existential reality - the tenuousness and fragility of our lives - has rudely and undeniably declared its presence in our personal experience. On the macro level then, our usual routines and assumptions have been challenged as our refuge in complacency and self-satisfaction has been shattered. We could withdraw into a defensive posture, radical self-interested isolation, denial, and brutal self-preservation. Or we can accept this as a gift obliging self-reflection and honest reappraisal both of our relationship to our personal identity and its mode of operation and also of current social political systems in a way that opens us to solutions that reflect intelligent responsiveness and encourage us to embrace efforts at radical re-alignment of economic-social-political structures to reflect an ethic of the greatest benefit for all.
So in many ways, the challenges we are facing on a macro level: how to "be in the world” are directly parallel to those we face in our micro experience of how to “be in ourselves”: echoing lessons from our training in mind and awareness on the “path of awakening” .
In navigating this territory, I think it might be useful to address a number of points:
First, is the case of anxiety and fear - we should acknowledge that our human evolution has incorporated a very sensible self-preservation “fear-to-danger” response. There is intelligence in this response that acknowledges danger. Fire can burn, water can drown. However the point is to address and respond to the danger rather than becoming narrowly reactive. We learn to manage and use fire and water rather than reacting simply by fearing them. To be able to respond creatively to danger we need to be correctly and fully informed. And to respond in a way that is not simply personal and individualistic but is a shared response for the common good.
In order to be fully informed, we discover another aspect of our behavior, and that is the fact that we have learned to limit the amount of information we can process. Whether we are talking of the external environment, or our inner emotional life, we can easily feel “overwhelmed” and have learned to limit the degree to which we allow the reality of the situation access into our conscious mind. Some buddhists may also have developed the idea that we are to cultivate “non attachment”, understanding this to be “free of feeling” on an inner level, and a passive posture externally.
In fact when I first went into Buddhist contemplative retreat in 1976, very little literature had been translated, and we were trying to fathom the actual meaning of many basic concepts, this idea among them. Our understanding was clarified when late one winter night out teacher visited. It was cold, limited lighting, and the whole room seemed shrouded in darkness and a heavy feeling. Then he spoke and said the following: “I am sad. (pause), I am very sad. A close friend, has died. It was unexpected, and he leaves behind a wife and family. It was a very unfortunate passing, and I’m very sad”! That was it. But it came as a revelation. We were actually allowed to “feel” emotions.
It was some years later that I came to understand that as one becomes confident in that inner spaciousness as ground of experience, one becomes ever more able to hold information, feelings, emotions, clearly and precisely without being reactive or carried away by them. Since one is not drawn into the reflex of narrowly identifying with the specific emotion or information, one can hold it clearly in the open relaxed lucidity of awareness. And then, if appropriate, respond. As we pursue the path of awakening we become more and not less sensitive. We are able to become even more, and ever more, sensitive, because we are able to hold it in the clear equanimity of that vastness of being.
Another aspect of feeling overwhelmed can be a sense of powerlessness. This reflects more than anything else the error of basing one’s identity on the conditioned concept of an isolated personal identity and framing this self and its capacity to act in terms of external projections. As we are able to be more and more grounded within, we find the security and stability that are the nature of the unconditioned experiential open vastness at our core. We discover a profound confidence that enables us to embrace our world fearlessly. Without assuming we can accomplish miracles, we are at least able to assume “response ability” for our being-in-itself, and being-in-the-world.
Another point I’d like to address is the idea of “agency”. There is a common idea that those engaged in inner or contemplative work are self-absorbed, navel-gazers. Moreover, some might interpret the idea of giving up our “control”, the self identity’s management” role, as implying becoming “passive”. Some Buddhists might even understand “non-attachment” applied externally to imply a position of “non-engagement”. It is true we try to learn an existential stance of nonjudgemental openness and receptivity. This is part of being fully informed. Then, as with so much of our contemplative discipline, it is a matter of learning new “muscles”. We renounce the “agency” of self-interested pursuit of goals. But in the intelligence and lucidity of the ground of open awareness that is inclusive of our “self” as well as “other’, we find a source of unbounded and fearless altruistic energy.
The final point I would like to make is about the importance of storyline or narrative. As we are re-creating and redefining our personal identity narrative moment by moment; we either unconsciously reproduce old patterns or consciously create who we wish to become; we choose to be a victim of our conditioning, or to be an agent of our awakened nature.
It is the sharing of narratives that give human societies their cohesiveness. Of course these can be either narrow-minded and prejudiced or informed and intelligent. Most often shared story-lines are promulgated by the dominant seats of power at any point in time, be these, political, religious, or economic. So we can either contribute to existing narratives or participate in and give life to new and visionary narratives.
One of the more disturbing phenomena recently has been the promulgation of fact-free or specifically deceptive narratives and even more dangerous, the express attempt to destroy shared story-line in order to create discord and chaos, all of this to establish an environment in which those of baser motives can personally profit.
Occasionally reality intrudes and obliges a re-assessment of the greater shared narratives. In this case, however terrible and terrifying the potential of the present situation might be, the “looming threat of danger”, as stated in the New Yorker cartoon, it is offering us a unique opportunity. We are being obliged to admit to the massive and blatant flaws in our current socio-politico-economic order. The glaring social and economic inequities; the unsustainability of a profit and consumption based economy; of a petro-chemical fueled energy sector contributing to environmental collapse; an utterly tenuous financial system and political structures that are overwhelmed by the global nature of the world’s existential challenges. It has become more than clear that the old solutions are not up to the task.
[Since the time of this talk, reality has once again confronted our complacency. The stark reality of endemic racism and police brutality has erupted into the public domain and we are called upon to confront the illusions embedded in many common narratives. We are obliged to acknowledge systemic inequality and recognize the insidious sense of entitlement born of privilege. Yet again, we are called to a task of profound inner and outer transformation in the interest of the “common good".]
Just as in our contemplative training we are challenged to learn to step away from the comfort of our known patterns and frames of reference and fearlessly open ourselves to the rich potential of our innate creativity expressive of the intelligence and altruism that lies at our heart; so externally we can draw on that inner clarity and strength and fearlessly participate in animating and empowering new narratives for the future.
As we make our way forward, with strength, clarity, intelligence and a profound commitment to the common good, we can keep in mind the phrase repeated by British Columbia’s chief medical officer, almost as a mantra: Be Kind! Be thoughtful, be considerate, but most of all, be kind.
