Friday, October 28, 2016

BLOG #9 The Little Trump Inside Us All

One oft-repeated comment said in support of Donald Trump in the early days of his campaign was, “I like him because he says what I think.” What does that imply now that his sexually demeaning and predatory history has surfaced for the whole world to hear?

Naturally, our immediate response is to distance our self from such reprehensible speech and behavior. But I want to specifically ask the men – how much of our outrage is about him? And how much of it is about us and our life in the world of men?

I would like to offer a quote from a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, Acharya Fleet Maull. He points out, "One of the greatest psychological insights that human beings have ever come up with is that the stuff that bothers us in other people is the most accurate and direct window into our own stuff that we can ever possibly want.” To that I would add, “So isn’t there at least a little Trump inside us all?”

From the point of view of our self-respect, dignity and virtue, this is difficult to swallow. The majority of men abhor the idea that they are anything like Trump, even if only to an infinitesimal degree. Yet I think it is to our benefit to consider it carefully. I don’t want to be jailed as a whistleblower on the male subculture, but whether it is by design or purely due to karma, most men have been swimming in this sea of female objectification for their entire lifetime. We’ve been lobbied to accept this purported natural order of things ever since we were little boys. We heard it from the mouths of society’s dissolute as well as from the big fish (the alpha-males and the sons of alpha-males.) We less-macho fish have been schooling in the shallows, trying to avoid hearing and repeating those odious messages, but very few of us come out unscathed.

I doubt that most women are shocked by this. Anyone who pays attention knows that most women have encountered this abuse and ill-conceived, ill-sanctioned, male privilege and violence throughout their lives. Yet, so many men – yes, even the good men who are your husbands, boyfriends, sons and brothers – are loathe to admit to such thoughts and acts that have been sanctioned and condoned by other males.

But it’s in us. It’s like bacteria that are deeply enfolded in our guts, and it’s going to take multiple rounds of antibiotics to get healthy. In other words, our problem is going to keep showing up. Somehow, this reminds me of all the home movies and photos I appear in as a child, in which I am endlessly calling out for attention. I no longer have a defense for being one of the earliest photo bombers in modern history – always making faces, wearing bizarre hats, clowning and moping about – but I don’t really don’t know what compelled me to act out and be so annoying.

When the family gathers around these photos (which is always embarrassing) I say, “I don’t know what made me that way. I am a victim of circumstances!” So was I not loved enough? Was it karma from a past life? It’s a joke, but it is also true; we all have an inheritance that we didn’t ask for.

Why do I bring up this anecdote? Because we are not always in control of our circumstances. For instance, my parents were gentle and kind; and so were my brother and sisters; and so was my best friend – everyone looked over me. But when I was a young, there were also children for whom a dark light was already burning within them. So, yes…I was there, watching, when WL fed a captured box turtle a lit firecracker; I was there when JT told his girlfriend to remove her shirt, and we all felt her breasts; I was there when my friend WM got beat up and kicked in the face with a heavy leather boot, and I didn’t do anything because I was afraid. These are the things that happen along the way, as we move from being a boy to a man. For the entire journey, we are challenged with what to do and what not to do; knowing what’s right, and what’s wrong. Hopefully, somewhere along the way, we figure out what is moral, and have enough good examples to guide us.

The three vignettes I just mentioned, still make me sad. I still feel shame that I did the wrong thing – even when I wasn’t a participant, but just watching from the shadows. Still, for many young men, my confessions appear rather tepid, for they might have grown up in a world where the power of misguided, destructive male energy had no limitations on horrifics.

Whether it is me, Father Anyname, or Donald Trump, we all started as guppies, swimming with piranhas in rivers of violence, misogyny and racism – the unholy Trinity. And boy, are we seeing the effects of that in our culture! The truth has arisen with a vengeance. It is all over the news, coming to us with a frequency we could have never imagined a few years ago: Blacks in America being killed for routine traffic violations – or for selling single cigarettes outside a store?  A presidential candidate, talking about grabbing ‘pussies’?

Which ring of Dante’s hell are we in?

I promise you that there are lots of men across America who are experiencing much fear and shame due to the national media exposure of Donald Trump’s sexual predation. Add to that, Billy Bush’s indefensible complicity, and you’ve got a snapshot of the culture of men that has been overtly and tacitly condoning objectification of women for centuries.

For men, this is a bone-chilling wake-up call because we don’t want this magnifying glass on us.Of course, since we didn’t want it and feared the truth of it, it came to us anyway. What we are all getting now is a dose of forced mindfulness. Due to ignorance and self-deception, we are now faced with the demand to pay attention. A lot more attention. We just can’t live in a world of Cosbys, Clintons, and Trumps—plus revelations of African-Americans being murdered by police every few days—and not take responsibility for our complicity, whether deserved or undeserved; whether huge or infinitesimal.

As music magnate, Russell Simmons posted on FB, “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.” As horrifying as it may be, what’s been on the news is one of the best things that has ever happened to us. Whether it is the detestable words and actions of Trump, or the body cameras and civilians’ cell phone videos of police killing unarmed black man, the world is demanding that we own up and wake up.

Taking responsibility means taking the vow to be more and more mindful; to have mindfulness without limit. It may seem like a mild and inadequate antidote, but being mindful and aware, not ignorant or oblivious, is critical. We can’t be whole and healthy without owning up to what is buried inside us.

Finally, with regard to misogyny, sexism and the sins of ourselves and our fathers, I would like to suggest that we confess. That may sound like a fabulously antiquated notion, but confession is a way for us to peel back and ventilate our camouflaged shame. I’m not talking about confessing to a priest…I’m suggesting we take heartfelt ownership of the world we have inherited by confessing, with great tenderness, to someone who truly loves us and who we feel safe with. Even if it’s about something that happened 40 years ago. We have to gain forgiveness. As Robert Bly says, “It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.”

Russell Simmons’s quote reminds us that so many sins of the world are finally becoming revealed, and there is more to come. If we can hold tight, with love, we can get ourselves free of the hidden shame that numbs us into fear and inaction. We all know what tough love is; this is tough mindfulness, and there is no way out.

Women and men: What are your thoughts about this? They are important. Please share.

© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Blog #8 You Can't Save Yourself by Saving Your Self

A Slippery Contradiction

Everything is dissolving and falling apart. Our houses, the street outside our house, our body…let’s face it; our world is indelibly marked by change. We don’t like it because it’s unpredictable, and we want to always be assured of what’s happening now and what’s going to happen next.

Being comfortable with not knowing—though considered delightful by Buddhas far and near—is not our strong suit, so we seek security, solidity and steadiness from a world that will give us none of that. Despite our best efforts, the world remains out of our control. Still, we do our best; we replace worn-out tires, we refrigerate our food…we might even take public transportation in order to minimize global warming. It’s probably the best we can do during our 80 year stint.

The world continuously, effortlessly, falls apart and we spend our lifetime battling that. This struggle, although it makes sense in our physical world, has less-than stellar-results in our psychological world. Why? Because that unpredictability is even more problematic with to our quest to establish “Me”. There is nothing more slippery and evanescent than the thing we call “self”, or “I”…yet we live and die by it.

Although this world that is constantly changing, we nevertheless feel compelled to find something that is solid and steady—a bulwark against instability. We long so deeply for something that can give us a sense of security while everything else around us is continually morphing. We just want a rock that will stand still for us in the middle of this wild river’s turbulence.

The point is that you cannot stabilize self. Self is an arbitrary definition we give to ourselves, and as meditators, all evidence shows us there’s nothing at all we can hang on to. The holding on that we do happens in many ways. We give it the name ego if we are too arrogant. Then we take a snapshot of that and present it to everyone we encounter—even when our actions are nothing to be proud of. Ego can also be built from a snap-shot of how long-suffering we are—and even when blessings come our way, we pull out that snapshot to maintain our continuity of depression; because our need for security lords over whatever vacillates, every time.  Ego can also be built upon anger, blame, or low self-esteem…all of them become snapshots that we treasure because they make us feel secure and unwavering. We don’t want doubt; we want to be defined.


Monkeys!

Our “Self” is a collection of observations that we cobble together for convenience’s sake. We could take an analytical approach to understanding this, but I like the traditional “monkeys in the house” analogy to understand how we build a solid self out of ever fleeting conscious moments.

Let’s imagine a house filled with monkeys…six monkeys to be exact. Each of these monkeys has a window to look out of, and each window represents a sense perception. Now, we know that there are five sense perceptions—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch; but in Buddhist psychology, there is a sixth, which is mind. Like the other five, perception is comprised of hardware (the organ) and software (the process of perceiving). So in the case of the sixth sense organ we have (roughly) the brain and its ability to sort through the activities of mind. The house is obviously our body (or it could even be the head.)

But back to our monkeys.

Let’s imagine that these five monkeys are sitting in front of five different ‘windows’, and the sixth monkey sits in the middle of the house and keeps communication flow with the five. Each monkey can only do one thing: monkey #1 reports on what can be seen; monkey #2 reports on what can be heard; monkey #3 reports on what can be smelled; monkey #4 reports on what is tasted; and monkey #5 reports on what is felt throughout the body.

So our five windows—or better, apertures—are our sense organs, or sense gates, and the sixth is the control room. Let’s imagine we are in a restaurant and the sixth monkey (the coordinator, mind) – asks the third monkey “What’s going on?” The third monkey says, “Man, something smells good. It’s kind of like coffee, but something else happening.” The first monkey says, “Hey, I see Jameson’s and they are putting whipped cream over it.”

The sixth monkey puts two and two together and says, “Oh yeah…Irish coffee.” He then calls out to #2—the sound perception monkey, “What’s going on over there?” “Someone dropped a tray of dishes. It’s so loud in here, I can hardly hear myself think.” #4—the taste perception monkey shouts, “Oh yummy, wine, Full bodied. A bit oaky!” Then #6—mind monkey says, “It’s a Chardonnay. California, Sonoma Coast, I suspect.”

Monkey #3 is back online: “Wow, where’s that nice perfume coming from?”  Monkey #5—“My nose itches.” Monkey #6, “Posture! Sit up!” Monkey #1— “Forget it, she’s wearing a ring.” Monkey #6, “Alright everybody. Let’s all calm down.”

When you meditate—when you sit down and calmly take notice of what’s happening—what phenomena arise; what phenomena disappears…it works in exactly the same manner; the messages from our sense perceptions continue unabated, but rather than being in a restaurant, we are in a meditation space and #1 says, rug; #2…siren; #3…incense; #4…a lingering coffee taste in my mouth; #5…my knees hurt; #6…”When is the damn gong going to ring?”

The Panoply of Thoughts

Brain research tells us that all of these perceptions are happening between 60 and 100 times per second; just like the frames on movie film…giving us the illusion of seamless motion.

And of course there is more: there are thoughts, opinions, judgments, memories—and all of them carry on the same way as perceptions—moment by moment, and in a constant cascade. Brain research also tells us that we can experience upwards of 50,000 thoughts per day. This means approximately 40 thoughts per minute per person. A lot is in play.

Let’s get back to “Self.” How many of the 50,000 thoughts are nice, and how many of them are mean? Which ones do we grasp to convince us that we are a nice person? How many of those thoughts make us think. “I am a depressed person?” Which thoughts do we select to cobble together to define “Me?” Which thoughts default to define “Self?”

This self, this thing we want to protect, is ever-changing; nevertheless, we take a sample of all those thoughts, emotions, feelings, judgments, and we decide we are like this or like that. But there is nothing solid there at all. We are simply trying to hold together what is always changing and falling apart. We try to freeze a fluid situation, but it won’t freeze. One day I’m depressed Alan; the next day I’m confident Alan; an hour later I am sad Alan. Who is Alan?

As much as I hold tightly to identify myself as ‘depressed’ on a particular day, I hold myself just as strongly to the idea of being ‘smart’ or ‘cheerful’ on the next. It doesn’t matter if I’m happy or depressed, really—our “Self” just wants to be sure. It wants to be uncontested. Ego, self, I—whatever we call it—it wants to be assured of something solid in an ever-changing world…which is basically impossible.

We’ve been trained for this since we were infants. We have heard, “Oh look isn’t she cute?; Oh naughty boy; You are bad. Stop that…that’s a good girl.” The die was cast decades ago.


Practice Brings Familiarity

When we practice mindfulness meditation, and we practice with humor and curiosity, we train ourselves to be interested in whatever arises. We learn to become comfortable with contradictions. Instead of being addicted to who we are, we get to be far more interested in what we do—and how we conjure up a reality that is no more solid than the cloud I am looking at outside my kitchen window.

The very sights, sounds, tastes, thoughts and feelings that you experience at this very moment, also occur on your meditation seat. The meditation seat is our laboratory; so can we give ourselves some time to see whether or not these monkeys, thoughts and opinions manifest the way that Buddhists have described for centuries?

In Tibetan terminology there’s something called jung, ne, dro sum. Arising, abiding and ceasing—all three. These terms are fully aligned with this idea of monkey mind. Thoughts and perceptions arise, stay, and then disappear. Then the next one arises and disappears, ad infinitum. Everything is in constant flux, and so are we. There is no solid and definite “I”. Instead of fighting to freeze what will not freeze, we could let go of our “Me” construction project, and trust our perceptions which are so good, and so accurate.

What do you think?

© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson