Great Quote

"Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity."- Tao Te Ching.

The Tao Te Ching is one of my spiritual guides to life. What it teaches is very similar to Zen Buddhism-- essentially to know yourself and to live a rich spiritual life is the only way to inner peace. How is this possible? Meditation, of course; but meditation is only a guide into understanding that one's inner nature is no different from the Tao, or what I like to call God. That is the most important insight of Tao and Buddhism. There is no point to seek God... we are all God.

Great Quote

"Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."-Buddha

Like most things the Buddha says, this quote is deceptively simple, yet wise its in perception of mankind...

Ideology could use some help from Buddhism

I was reading Paul Krugman's blog today, and he had a little post about how conservative economists still want to keep the same policies of George W. Bush despite, as Krugman notes, how much those policies have contributed to our current economic crisis:

Thus, John Taylor — a very good economist, when he wants to be — insists that we must respond to the economy’s temporary weakness with a permanent tax cut. Let us reason together. Does it make sense to let one recession dictate tax policy in perpetuity? What happens if there’s a boom; can we increase taxes (no, because then the cut wouldn’t have been permanent.) What if there’s another recession? Do we permanently cut taxes again? Is there a tax-cut ratchet (or maybe racket)? Think this through, and it makes no sense at all...

Recession, recovery, whatever: it’s always proof that the Bush years should continue forever.

Of course, this is hogwash. Not so much because Milton Friedman and his economic buddies don't have some validity to their theories because they certainly do, but because these conservative economists have turned theory into ideology, the well-thought out into divine reasoning.

What's the problem with turning any theory, whether on the left or right, into ideology? A rigidity and lack of flexibility to the problems at hand. Despite the failed policies of George W. Bush, these economists still insist that there way is the best way.

Don't get me wrong, the left has plenty of ideologs as well-- Paul Krugman is pretty much an ideolog himself-- and I personally can sometimes fall victim to this tendency as well.

But my core belief in the end has nothing to do with ideology: It is to believe in nothing (I'm pretty sure I stole this from Zen Buddhism somewhere). What do I mean? Well, only when we believe in nothing, are we open to anything. And only when we are open to anything can we see the world as it really is. Ideologs and intellectuals are rarely open to this. But it is failing we all have some of the time...

Winnicott and potential space

"The potential space between baby and mother, between child and family, between individual and society or the world, depends on experience which leads to trust. It can be looked upon as sacred to the individual in that it is here that the individual experiences creative living." -D.W. Winnicott from "The Location of Cultural Experience," 1967

I've been reading a lot D.W. Winnicott lately, who is widely considered the greatest British psychotherapist ever to live, and I am fascinated by his theories. Unlike most philosophy, which tries to explain the world from the rational point of view of a philosopher, or most psychology, which focus on the illness of mental health, Winnicott focuses on the everyday, the interaction between the inner and outer worlds and the space in between in which we all live.

For Winnicott, the focus of most academic theory is either the internal or the external from the theories of Freud to the external behavior models of B.F. Skinner, but the world, in his view, is more complicated. Most of what takes place in the world is the interaction between a person and another person, his environment and his culture. It is here where creativity lies.

I happen to agree with most of what he says and it reminds me quite of Buddhism. For Buddhism, the "I," otherwise known as our egos, real does not exist the way we think it does. There is no concrete self, just a complex interaction between mind, body and environment. We are always changing, always adapting to the needs and wants of ourselves and the world around us. And to be truly mindful of this interaction is a path to some peace.

Winnicott is saying something very similar. The world most of us inhabit is not all outward and sensory or all inward and thought. The world most of us inhabit is the potential space where the inner and outer meet. It is only here where the "true self," as he liked to call, it lies. It is only here when we understand ourselves not as an "I," which is immovable and unchangeable, but an "I" that is more ethereal and is in constant interaction with the world around it.

(I'm not sure if any of that makes sense, but if you read it all the way through, I thank you. And if you're interested, I highly recommend "Playing and Reality" below)