Failure

I tend to talk a lot lately about all the great things that are happening as I meditate and take actions to improve myself as a person. But every once in a while, I break down and have a failure. Today was one such failure.

I meditated for a couple hours in the morning, but noticed I was more agitated than usual. That's fine, since there's no such thing as a perfect day. Besides, expectations that meditation will "fix everything" will lead quickly to giving up on it. It's never an immediate cause-effect relationship.

After the meditation though, I had to go to the Apple store to get Julia's computer fixed. The screen stopped working out of the blue, with no apparent cause (she hadn't dropped it, etc). I was agitated as I was trying to find a parking spot, because they make you sign up for appointments, and it took 15 minutes to find a spot, making me late. Without turning this into a gripe session (by going over the details), I got pretty worked up when I was talking to the service employees, because they wanted to charge me money for something I felt should have been covered by their warranty. I was angry and I was definitely showing it.

As you might recall, I promised a while back to quit getting angry. This was a clear case of breaking that promise. However, I had time to reflect as the customer service employee took down the computer's info to get the repair started. At first, I thought "Ugh, I failed again. I'm a total failure. All this meditation and self-improvement stuff is crap. I'm just a big phony, talking about all this high-minded love and stuff." That's a pretty typical response for me when I fail. I get pretty down on myself. It usually makes me more agitated, and I "give up" in my mind. The agitation from failing contributes to even more anger, and I see no reason to continue trying to rein it in. The downward cycle continues.

But at some point, I reflected: "I'm angry. That's not what I want to be, but that's ok." I mentally checked it off as a red "x", and then made the commitment to try to move on a bit. It was hard. But then I thought "well, maybe this interaction can still be salvaged. This guy is trying to help. He actually looks a bit scared." I was still angry (with righteous indignation regarding some of Apple's policies) -- there was no doubt about that. But I had a little space to work with.

Towards the end, I decided, there's no point in me sticking to a position just out of principle, or to protect my self-image. I told myself I'm going to at least apologize to this guy for being a jerk. At the end, to finish up the repair process, he stuck his hand out to shake my hand. He was clearly dreading my response, since I had been pretty curt. I shook his hand, and sort of muttered "Sorry I was so grumpy." It was kind of half-hearted, as there was still anger lingering in my mind. He then said he was sorry he had to charge all that money, it's just the policy. I tried to say something else, but it still came out a bit awkward. "Yeah, but I apologize for being so rude. I've just been running around pretty stressed out and stuff." He accepted, but still seemed a bit nervous.

I walked out not feeling so great, and was self-conscious about the things I did (get angry, then apologize). I felt their gaze on my back as I walked out of the store. But once I was outside, I just let it go. "Whatever. Nobody's perfect. Time to move on." From that point onward, I tried to make up for it by giving right of way to others, by asking how other people were feeling, etc. The agitation was (and still probably is) lingering, but I smiled a bit internally when I saw that I at least succeeded in being kinder to others afterwards, without giving in to the lingering anger in my mind.

There are reasons to be optimistic, even about failure.

At peace

A thought occurred to me the other day (when I was feeling particularly at peace)

"At peace" -- when there is nothing that needs to be any particular way.

Conceptual thought

I had an interesting realization today: "Conceptual thought is both humanity's greatest gift, as well as its greatest source of dissatisfaction"

This is a rather broad and abstract claim. But I'll try to justify it here.

Conceptual thought helps us do a lot. We can generalize, qualify, and project, allowing us to anticipate the future with great accuracy. This enables us to take actions that will reliably lead to increased resources (for survival), while simplifying the assessment of a situation so that a minimum of time/energy is required to arrive at a decision.

As an example, by thinking about an orange as an abstract object with parts that are desirable (the inner fruit) and undesirable (the skin and seeds), I can efficiently derive nutrition from it by quickly deciding to eat the fruit and leave the peel and seeds. If I looked at it and only saw colors, or perceived all of the molecules that comprise it, I'd miss it completely, or be lost in thought for days examining it. Either way, I'd starve (or be eaten by a predator adept at conceptualizing me as a potential meal!).

As humans, we've obviously taken conceptualization far beyond simple survival, and understanding what can and can't be eaten -- we've used conceptualization to create powerful systems that support the lives of billions of human beings (farming practices, manufacturing, etc). The development of these systems would be completely impossible without conceptual thought. It is indeed our greatest strength.

Yet I also make the claim that it is our greatest source of dissatisfaction. And how is that?

So long as we live within the world of conceptual thought, our capacity for happiness is severely limited. This is because in the world of conceptual thought, we spend most of our time and effort trying to achieve short periods of happiness. (When viewed from the perspective that time is a resource, we are spending >90% of it to feel good for <10% of the time. That's pretty inefficient.)

For example, I might spend 5 minutes picking over a basket of oranges to find the "good" ones. I conceptualize all the oranges, and based on various perceived attributes, I make my decisions. This time is either spent in a "neutral" or "goal-seeking" state of mind. Not enjoyable in itself. However, the time spent in pleasure while eating that orange is very short -- on the order of seconds. Once the orange is gone, the sweet taste has left, and only a memory remains. Moreover, that sensation (the sweetness of the fruit) could hardly be called profound happiness. At best, it's "tasty" or "sweet".

Suppose instead that I were adept at stopping (or slowing down) conceptual thought, so that only sensations and my mind's direct responses to them remained. Then, rather than focusing on whether a particular orange was good or bad (a rather boring task), I could spend the 5 minutes in complete peace, without worry for which oranges were the best (or any other concerns for that matter). The happiness experienced for those 5 minutes is continuous (lasting for the entire period), and orders of magnitude greater in intensity and depth than that experienced eating a sweet fruit.

Now, extend that analogy to any type of activity, where most of the time is spent dissatisfied and striving, with a small treat at the end of the road. From one perspective, you could say that we are robbed of great peace (which could be potentially experienced for 100% of all moments) by the endless web of conceptual thought.

Seen another way, intense conceptual thought clouds over the mind, and prevents the flowering of deep peace that lies underneath. When we are free of regrets, worries, and obsessive thoughts, the happiness within us rises to the surface.

Why struggle so hard to gain so little, when the greatest treasure is so close at hand?

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EDIT: Just wanted to make it clear that I'm not advocating the ending of all conceptual thought! I just wanted to point out that while conceptual thought has in some ways been our greatest strength, it is still the source of great unhappiness. We should veer away from either extreme -- conceptualizing all the time, but also not conceptualizing at all. This post was meant as a reminder that conceptual thought alone will not lead to consistent happiness.

The Nuns

On my usual bike route for exercise, I head into the hills (up Elena rd, then to Natoma). At that intersection, I always pass by a very interesting space. It has the sign "Poor Clares Monastery" and has a lot of open green space and some buildings.

Intrigued, I eventually looked them up (http://poorclares.wordpress.com/). I know very little about Christianity, but apparently it's a monastery of nuns. Something on the website really caught my eye: "They live within the cloister observing strict papal enclosure. They are totally dependent on God’s Providence through benefactors He sends them." Basically, everything they get must be donated by others.

That reminded me of the practice of Buddhist monks, who rely entirely on the generosity of others for their food, clothing, etc (depending on the type of Buddhism they follow). I decided I'd go pay them a visit, after seeing that there's a place you can drop stuff off to donate.

I'd been putting it off for a while, but finally decided to go when our intern wanted to go on a bike ride. I loaded my bike shirt with tangerines and oranges, and we headed up the hill.

There's a little room where you go (see the website) to drop stuff off. We followed the instructions and buzzed the buzzer, and went in. To my surprise, the person who appeared behind the screen was a Chinese-American lady who was very smiley. We had a good chat, and she laughed and smiled a lot. She thought we had been there before, but she probably confused us with others. Her happiness and joy were effusive and genuine. It was very nice to chat with her. Then we left the oranges in the transfer box (since the nuns are cloistered) and went back to our bikes.

It was a very interesting feeling. I have no association with Christianity, but it was touching to see someone so happy and so genuinely devoted to a spiritual pursuit. It also felt nice to give something that was so sincerely appreciated.

Disbelief

As I stood in the parking lot, experiencing one of the happiest moments of my life, I couldn't help but chuckle in disbelief.

"Who would have thought such happiness was even possible? All I'm doing is standing in a parking lot just looking at cars! This happiness isn't even from anything I got or I achieved. Simply from being consistently mindful of my thoughts and feelings"

At this moment, my only wish is that all people (and all beings) experience this happiness.

Meditate, and devote yourself to self-improvement. It will lead to your happiness for a long time :)