Buddhism 101: Going with the flow…

img_1935There are two kinds of people in this world. How many times have you heard that? That the world can be divided between optimist or pessimists. LA people or San Fran people. Cubs fan or a White Sox fan, chick-flicks or action movies, Beatles or the Stones (yawn), or maybe even white meat or dark (we’re talking about chicken, unless you’re new to Thailand and the locals are looking for you a GF)…

But I’m thinking of something more substantial, that goes to the heart of personality, or lack thereof, that determines an individual’s entire approach to the world around him (or her) and underlies all human interaction, it seems to me. And that is whether an individual interacts with the environment, giving and taking, advancing and retreating, responding to changes proportionately, or whether the individual’s approach is to dominate the environment, and Nature, by acts of will and brute force, where necessary…

I certainly have a distinct preference for the former alternative, and its kinship to Buddhism, while the latter alternative would seem to be more the typical American beat-em-up approach, ‘forcing Nature to reveal her secrets’ and harvesting the bounty therein with little thought to the future…

Less is More (no, really, I’m serious)…

It all depends on what you want to do with your life. We Westerners, Americans especially, have it ingrained in us from birth that the meaning of life comes from the consumption of consumer ‘goods’, long term or short, your place or mine, cash or credit, regular or with that special sauce, and that not only is this good, no matter our bulging waist-lines, marginalized masses or burning planet, BUT—God wants it that way, if ‘He’ wants anything at all (and He usually does)…

So in this point of view, the thing to do, with that glass half full, is to fill that sucker up to the brim, or even to overflowing, and then procure a few more glasses and then proceed to fill them up, too, on and on, ad infinitum, till death do us part, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. But what if you want to go live in Europe for a year? Now what are you going to do with all that crap? Riiiiight, you’re going to put it in storage, something that the US also specializes in…

But after you’ve done that a few times, then maybe a paradigm shift is in order. Like maybe possession of less ‘stuff’? There’s a reason we call it ‘stuff’, you know—we’re engorged on it. And maybe there’s a reason why human beings traveled the globe before ‘settling down’ during the Agricultural Revolution. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad life, after all, whether seasonal migration, point-to-point back-and-forth every year, or with destination unknown, migration as a way of life, “just like a rolling stone’…

Of course that is hardly practical these days, but many peoples still practice versions of it, mostly seasonal, Flagstaff in the summer and Tucson in the winter, or some variation on the theme. The point is that change is not only inevitable, but it is good, and the ability to adjust one’s self—non-self—to those changes likewise. Anicca (impermanence) is one of the foundations of Buddhism, of course, along with dukkha (suffering) and anatta (no self):

“Rūpa anicca, Vedanā aniccā, Saññā aniccā, Sankhārā aniccā, Viññānaṃ aniccaṃ…

“Form is inconstant, Feeling is inconstant, Perception is inconstant, Mental processes are inconstant, Consciousness is inconstant…

So ‘going with the flow’ assumes metaphysical importance in Buddhism, the ability and willingness to accept change as intrinsic to our way of life and system of survival. We’re going to need it. It is a law of Evolution that smaller more adaptable units are the ones to survive. Actually maybe we should be giving awards and rewards to those who make the least money, not the most; those who have the smallest houses, not the biggest; those who do the least in life, not the most—hmm, wait a minute…