Seeking Simplicity

Darren Lwyd through the window by ceridwen

In a New York Times opinion piece published just before the New Year, essayist Pico Iyer discusses the challenges of living in an "always on" culture, with the average American spending over 8 hours per day in front of the screen of some type of device (no, the irony isn't lost on me as I type this entry on my laptop.)  Digital devices are ubiquitous.  We have smart phones, e-readers, tablets, laptops, and desktops.  We email, share on Facebook, blog, text, "hangout" on Google+, tweet, and post to YouTube.

I find that keeping up with my myriad channels of communication can sometimes seem like a chore, and in certain moments, my interactions become fast, shallow, and unsatisfying.  I'm not alone in recognizing the challenges of living in highly connected, fast moving technological times.  The Wisdom 2.0 series of conferences brings Silicon Valley leaders together with major thinkers and leaders in the mindfulness  traditions to discuss how to live with awareness, wisdom, and compassion in a technological age.  

In a face-to-face conversation with a friend, I came to realize that one answer to starting to live with awareness, compassion, and some sanity was hidden in plain sight.  I was missing it because I had fallen  for our current cultural notion that "more is better."  I've been seeking to simplify my life by adding more things to it, which has the opposite effect.  When my friend stated bluntly that whenever he acquires something new (either an object or a commitment), he finds something else to let go of, it made perfect, shocking sense.  I've been packing my life with more stuff and I wasn't letting anything go. 

Wednesday, February 22 is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.  I've already begun what will be my spiritual practice during this season, which is clearing my life.  I'm getting rid of physical objects that clutter my space by giving clothes and other items to charitable organizations.  I'm also seeking to identify the commitments I can give up or pare back, and I'm thinking very carefully before taking on any new discretionary commitments.  I'm hoping this will give me some space and time to engage my life more deeply.  I'll report back to my readers near the end of Lent and let you all know how it has been going.  

Radical Wishing

All people want to be happy. This is one of the common threads that bind us together. Yet many of us unwittingly predicate our own happiness on the unhappiness of others.

How do we seek the unhappiness of others? Win/lose thinking is the culprit. "For me to be happy, I need to win, and you need to lose," is the pervasive belief that places us on a treadmill to nowhere. We see it in sports, the "who's hot, who's not" celebrity gossip filling our media, competition at work, our economic and political systems, and even the competition among religions for adherents.

What if we realized that this mode of living was a guarantee that we will be involved in never-ending conflict, with occasionally satisfying "victories" but no lasting happiness? Imagine how it would change the world if instead we learned to hold our own views without believing we had discovered the only way to live. Imagine what could happen if we recognized that the people with whom we disagree are also seeking happiness. Imagine if we began to seek ways for others to have their happiness without sacrificing our own. Admittedly, this will require some creativity, but getting out of the win/lose mindset and giving it a shot seems worthwhile at this critical juncture for our world.

The ramifications could be enormous. The need for conflict and war would evaporate. Happiness would cease to be something we were in endless (but fruitless) pursuit of and become something real that we all reflect in the world.

Imagine if we could recite the Buddhist prayer known as the Four Immeasurables, and really mean it for all beings, understanding that if they find their true happiness, we will find ours as well.

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings never be parted from freedom's true joy.
May all beings dwell in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.

Evidence and Honesty

On a recent trip to Amarillo, Texas, I saw a woman driving a car with a bumper sticker that said, "Born OK the First Time." West Texas is a hotbed of born again Christian fundamentalism. It was an act of courage and honesty for that driver to assert that she felt alright about herself without being part of the "born again" herd.

We often have trouble listening to the truths we tell each other about our lives, preferring instead to project our own ideological thinking onto one another. Fundamentalism and other inflexible ideologies plays a big role here. Fundamentalists and ideologues frequently won't listen to and take seriously the religious experience of people from other faiths or no faith, and they also frequently dismiss our current scientific theories. Whether it is the big bang theory regarding the origin of the universe, the notion that abstinence-only education is the best way to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, or the fact that some people have different personal experiences around religion, the overarching preference for ideologues is to accept ideology over evidence.

In order to build a saner society, we need to learn new ways of speaking and listening to one another. This requires that we become seekers and providers of evidence. We need to cultivate the courage to tell each other about the truths of our experience, and we need to do this in as specific a way as possible. We also need to listen carefully. When people speak from their own experience (which is a form of evidence), we need to be especially cautious about dismissing what they are saying. When the discussion veers away from being evidenced-based to being ideological, we need to be disciplined about asking where the evidence is for the expressed views.

Of course, not everything can be based on evidence. Many acts of creativity require speculation and non-evidential thinking. But I believe that if we can base more of our common life on seeking evidence and honesty in our speaking and listening, we'll build a much better future than any ideology could give us.

Cultivating Gratitude

Today is Thanksgiving, and I'm realizing that holidays carry with them certain assumptions. We believe that somehow we should automatically feel gratitude on Thanksgiving, happiness on Christmas, repentence on Yom Kippur, and patriotism on Independence Day. All cultures have days set aside for specific purposes, and it is easy to believe that these days dictate a certain way we should be or feel. This is a lot to live up to, because our moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings are not under our direct control. This means that sadness on Christmas or worry on Thanksgiving can often be more painful than on a "regular" day.

Is there a different way to look at holidays? Rather than seeing them as days to feel or be a certain way, can we view them as days of cultivation toward a given feeling or way of being? The difference is subtle but pointed. We cannot decide to feel gratitude, but we can decide to sit down and reflect on the good things in our lives. The action of reflection can lead to the arising of gratitude. Or not. It really doesn't matter what comes up. We can trust that the act of cultivation will eventually bear fruit.