Tea and Understanding

Just like sugar in tea or salt on food, knowledge is an added extra we don't really need.

Yesterday, I did pretty well at a Taiji excercise I hope to be assessed on. In fact, I was able to go beyond the expected standard and proudly felt, "This is great, I'm doing well. Won't they think I'm good. Yay me!" So I carried on longer than I needed just to see if I could do it.

I don't know enough about Taiji and qi (chi, energy) but these excercises certainly energise; and doing more energised more. I felt great! So in the afternoon I did more gardening than usual. Mistake: my habits of thought and movement were still their usual unhelpful selves and more activity just drained me more. (Another lesson in the fact that we are whole persons and that shortcuts are not fixes.)

The problem was not the excess Taiji but my mental commentary. It was extra: not only unnecessary but (like sugar and salt) potentially damaging. And it occurred to me we don't need knowledge to live! In fact, it gets in the way.

Disembodied knowledge

Of course knowledge is essential for the science and technology we mistake for "civilization". We believe we must know things in our heads to understand the world and our ability to function within it. An awareness of how symbols (sometimes words, sometimes wordless images) connect to other concepts and implications is certainly one form of understanding. But there is another way.

Consider "tea with sugar". We may have a mental awareness of what we know as "tea", and how we remember "sugar" affecting it. Alternatively, we can embrace the real world that occasionally includes tea and sugar (or references to it). When we need to understand "tea with sugar" there will be something in the Present Moment bringing that to our awareness (often the tea itself). How can we have a need for something without being aware of needing it? Everything we require is present, literally, and we can be conscious of it if we choose.

Incarnate comprehension

A famous roboticist, Rodney Brooks, made history in the world of AI (Artificial Intelligence) when he demonstrated that the world is its own best model. For us too, the world as it is, is sufficient. Accumulated memories and complex webs of connections are unnecessary baggage, unless we want to live someplace other than the present. Surely imagining we live in an insubstantial flicker sandwiched between a hefty past and a real future is to live in a dream world. It is a kind of madness to evade the obvious — our only be-ing is the eternal Now.

True understanding is an involved corporeal consciousness; an awareness of how things "fit", along with the consequences of that dynamic equilibrium. We may build a model in our heads but that is just a poor copy of the real thing. The important word is involved. On the occasions we visit "reality" it seems too limited for our sophisticated lives. That's partly because we confuse sophistication with living, and partly because we simply visit it.

The third person view required of science can never produce genuine understanding because it stays detatched, never embracing its subject. The world is already embracing us despite our resistance. As we return that embrace our interdependence means we are inseperable; to remove the other is to cut away part of ourselves, and vice versa. Instead, in our poverty, we gather scraps of "understanding" and piece them together as best we can. How misguided to be proud of such "knowledge"!

Alan Watts used to talk of going to a restaurant, seeing all the good things described on the menu, then eating the menu. Understanding only comes as we eat the food. And it departs as easily when something else arises in this wondrous, eternal present we live in. Travel light.

Practice

Practice means "to do". I am thinking of spiritual practice here. But the same is true of a doctor's practice: it is what they do. We expect that a lifetime of doing means we get better at it, but the "getting better" is quite different from the advancement expected from a student, for instance.

Consider waves moving sand and pebbles up and down a beach. That is what waves breaking on the shoreline do. We glibbly say that waves shape the shoreline rocks, but there's a lot more going on. These waves give some insight as to how spiritual practice brings about spiritual change.

For the wave there is power in each moment. Sometimes it is shoreward, until the power over-reaches itself. The surface water moving fastest begins to move faster than the body can sustain. The finest droplets, more mobile than the rest, leads the way but it has gone too far; there is no water beneath it so it drops. The wave's momentum means solid water follows, falling into the undertow beneath to create swirling eddies of foam. This is our daily experience.

Having lost its power, the water falls onto water and moves with it. But this water is directed by the sloping ground beneath, and the cyclic movement of the waves would leave a vacuum if this undertow were not there to rush in and fill it. So more water surges upward for a new wave, driven half the time back toward the shore by the tide's rhythmic flow. Our interaction with our surroundings have similar self-sustaining patterns.

Water is heavy, and like a child on a swing the movement reinforces itself, driven by the shape of the shore, wind and tide. This power is dispassionate and relentless. Anything small enough is caught up in the motion — sand, seaweed, flotsam, pebbles. It isn't intentional, but these have their own movement, their own actions and consequences. Of course, we aspire to include intention and consciousness, but the same is true for us: our activity has its own power.

Consciousness, as something we do, has the power to move cliffs. If we can truly be, aware of the present moment and acting from that consciousness, our intentional mind can (at some point) have the power of the wind and the waves. For then we are an agent in the only place Life happens — Now. But for most of us that is patchy at best. No surprise then, that more of us aren't "rock-shapers" yet!

The relentless movement of the shore has its own dynamic, its own shape and rhythm. Variation at this level is with the tide, the weather and the seasons. Every wave is part of this unchanging pattern: slow changes that build sand in one place while dredging it from another. The sand has its own movement. They are interdependent: if the sand was not there, the wave would break somewhere else. Each wave has no control at this level. Behaviour is a cummulative concequence of particular, habitual, interactions.

On a time scale unknown to wind and water, sand and pebbles, the rocks themselves are also changing. Scientists might talk of friction and erosion caused by a grain of sand or a stone rubbing on the rock's surface. But we may as well say that raindrops causes a flood for the amount of understanding that give us. The incessant waves are part of an equally obdurate form. Swirls and eddies maintained by the to-ing and fro-ing of mobile matter have their own relentless cycles. These are the energies of life (and why I practice Taiji).

Sand and pebbles are the same stuff as the rocks they move over. It is inconceivable that their effects would not be mutual. So pebbles become sand, and the rocks themselves also yield of themselves under such an uncompromising onslaught.

Do the waves form the cliffs? Maybe, but it is futile to think each wave sculpts the cliff it breaks upon. In the same way, it is futile to think each practice shapes who we are. It is neither the water nor the sand it carries that makes the rock the shape it is, but the the pattern the waves fall into. The pattern is a nebulous thing without matter or energy, hardness or strength, yet without it the rocks would never change. It is the pattern of our daily life that is our power, too. This is a much bigger investment than an interest, something to try.

In the same way spiritual (or any other) practice is just activity. It is what we do, and can have no more effect than that. I for one tend to take my spiritual practice too seriously. But when I look at the waves, they play! Frolicking and dancing or angrily pounding, they do what they do with their whole being, having no thought or intention except to be what they are. Practice does not change us in the way we learn to drive a car, for instance. That just changes the practice.

But if it is in my nature to practice, having formed a lifelong habit of sitting in meditation, I miss it when I miss it. Like a swirling pebble wearing a hole in a rocky outcrop, it has made its own shape. In turn, the water that drives the pebble flows differently because the hole exists.

Is it the habit that changes us? No, that is just change at the level of behaviour. Perhaps change occurs in the dynamic equilibrium we call living, the rhythm of action and withdrawal, doing and reflection, interacting with our surroundings. Part of that scenario is us, how we are. Some parts of us are the sand and some parts are rock. Do our individual actions changes us as people? Superficially perhaps. Can singleminded patterns of behaviour change our being? Its inescapable.

Meekness

I once tried out one of my Dad's ideas on a Christian I respected, suggesting degrees of helpfulness described actions better than "good" or "bad". I was firmly put in my place and told the Bible was very clear that actions were either good or evil. Ok, wanting clarity is good; but at the expense of truth?

The world is as it is, regardless of how we view it. I have shared accommodation with bishops and beggars; been bullied and beaten, robbed and ridiculed. But among the many thousands of people I have known, I have never come across one that wasn't doing what they thought was best at the time. (Admittedly, sometimes it was only their best that was considered. And often their actions hurt others. But even when this was known it was not as real to them as the benefits they imagined.) The idea that there are "evil" people out there whose sole purpose in life is to harm us simply doesn't square with the facts.

My Dad used to talk in terms of circles: our horizons for care and action. The circle in the middle holds me, myself and I. Around it are the people close to us, either through daily contact, blood or relationships. Then there are those we live amongst; the people "like us" who live "around here", but we don't actually know. Further out are our city/county, country, race and so forth.

People like Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi work within wide horizons, but it is more usual for our care to not extend much beyond our families. The scandal of politicians or religious figures having extra-marital affairs is said to be because they have been caught lying. That may be true. However, I think the problem is their apparent care has been revealed as fake. They try to act in a wide arena, but if their circle of care doesn't even include their own partner, how can it extend to us?

Acting with Care

So what is "care"? It can masquerade as being interested, but that's just nosiness. It sometimes knows best how someone else should live, but that's just arrogance. Even worrying about people can be manipulativeness if you let them know. However, true care is known by its fruit. It produces possibilities, not constraints. It encourages growth, not compliance. It gives opportunity and freedom rather than proclaiming some moral code, even "for their own good".

Care always seeks the best for the other whatever it may cost. It cannot help but accept the other, yet it is more than simply unconditional positive regard. Care implies an embracing, an involvement where the other is granted power over us because what they do matters. It implies attention. For example, a home that is "cared for" has had time and work willingly spent on it. So with people.

Authentic care can be thought of as the eyes of the soul. Just as we need vision to move safely in the world, we need the sensitivity that caring brings when acting among people. Of course, our care is often patchy. We can do things with good intentions that turn out to be unwelcome. But those on the receiving end can easily tell whether the care is genuine, and such mistakes are not hard to forgive.

On the other hand, acting outside our horizon of care, we are like a monster truck oblivious of the traffic: an accident waiting to happen. Some personal motivation, unrelated to our field of activity, drives us on. Powerful actions have powerful consequences and care-less actions are almost certain to cause trouble.

Sure, the results can be good. But even the good is meager, minimal and mechanistic compared with the abundance born of care. It is like comparing the effectiveness of well-meaning bureaucracy with the natural ability of love to heal, grow and bring joy. Years ago there was a saying, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." We are part of the solution when working within our ability to care. Work outside our ability to care and we are part of the problem.

Yachts and Motor-boats

Dynamic people are respected. There is pressure on us to be doing, and to be doing good. Also, we see problems all the time and are tempted to rush in and fix them. Where those actions are guided by genuine care, we may make small mistakes but the main things generally work out well. However, where such care is not the guiding principle, the action still has a motivating force. It has a direction and power that is very likely to cut across the needs of others because it simply doesn't see them.

Good action is like a sailing boat: it get where it is going by co-operating with the wind and waves, accepting there are some directions it cannot take. In contrast, a motor boat forces its way straight there, powering through whatever seas are in its path.

We need sensitivity to recognise the limits inherent in co-operation, and grace to submit to them. The "motor-boat" approach has neither, so it cannot tell when action is ok and when it is not. The co-operative "sailing boat" way is not only safer, it is sustainable. Just as motor-boats need fuel, proactive behaviour requires an external source of power, too.

Its not that "motor boat" action is inherently bad, just that it provides the opportunity for badness, along with temptation to use short cuts with questionable merit. When, in the Lord's prayer, we say "Lead us not into temptation" we are asking for the "sailing-boat" rather than the "motor-boat" way.

Meekness

If this concentric circles idea is right, there are two sources of trouble. The first is that all horizons are necessarily limited. The second is that bad things happen when we act outside our horizon of care.

The ripple effect of actions in a complex world means wrong-doing is inescapable. We stand at a specific point within the social landscape, with an horizon beyond which we cannot act and another beyond which we cannot see. No matter how high a position we choose, there will always be issues we cannot perceive and actions beyond our ability.

One consequence is that it is best to maintain an humble attitude, keeping in mind that others around us may be able to see or reach further. Thomas Merton defined humility as being content to eat ordinary sliced white bread from the supermarket, just like everybody else. This acceptance that we are nothing special might be seen as an acceptance of both our horizon of care, and its limitedness.

The answer to the second source of trouble is meekness. Humility and meekness are often confused. Where humility relates to perception, meekness concerns how we behave. It involves accepting our horizon of action and its limitedness. As we have seen, confining our actions within our horizon of care is a good thing. This is meekness.

Avoiding the temptation to "make our mark in the world" is possibly one of the most powerful decisions we can make. In willingly limiting our sphere of activity to those who already know us, we are already co-operating, acting the "sailing-boat" way. The "motor-boat" way of forthright action is self-destructive, so ultimately can have no future. Only the "sailing-boat" way is sustainable enough to win in the end. Jesus put it like this:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.