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PlayAsBeing Wiki > Guardian Pages > Guardians' Contributions > Calvino > Groups > Original Face > 2021 Review, 11 Years On
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2021 Review, 11 Years On

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    Every so often we revisit the Zen koan question about one's "Original Face".
     
    We find it's at the core of whatever other themes we're recently entertaining, 
    that they are all facets of the one, complex activity of being human, 
    performing many roles, being persons and citizens, members of cultures and groups,
    being an individual "self".
     
    One school of psychology uses the concept of a "Real Self" to refer to a state of experiencing, a way of being when one is relatively clear from the rigid patterns of feeling and behavior that go along with suffering.  Maybe there's pain, but not suffering-- the difference being suffering is an ABSENCE of self from itself and from the world. 
     
    When self is instead PRESENT, what does THAT look like?  What are its qualities?
     
    (According to this explanation) "real" self is adaptive, flexible, shows qualities like confidence, calmness, creativity, clarity, curiosity, courage, compassion, and connectedness.
     
    These are all aspects of "presence" and "authenticity".
     
    The temptation is to call this "good", and to call suffering "bad".
    But chances are, doing so is not going to deepen understanding of "self" (original or otherwise).
     
    A Zen Elder asked one of his students (who went by the name Emyo):
    "What is primordially Emyo (your true self), if you do not think this is good nor do you think this is evil?"
     
    Notice how particular this question is-- he's not asking about the "nature" of "self" as an abstract concept, but about this real person, about who and what he is in particular, and without evaluative pre-judgments ("good" or "evil").
     
    So "true self" isn't like there was something perfect and original long ago, which got in some way covered or contaminated by foreign influences.
     
    He's just suggesting seeing it as it is, without the artificial and added complexities of conceptual thinking or moral categories, especially dualities like "good" and "bad".
     
    A later Zen Elder put it this way:
     
    Cease practice based
    On intellectual understanding,
    Pursuing words and
    Following after speech.
    Learn the backward
    Step that turns
    Your light inward
    To illuminate within.
     
    How do we experience and recognize that "backward step"?
     
    Is there a way to "do it" or to increase the possibility of it "happening"?
     
    Here are two possible answers to these questions:
     
    It looks (or rather, feels like) an inner "soft spot", that may be subtle and fleeting, or all-encompassing.
    And its possibility can be created and sustained through "practice".
     
    A friend told me a story recently:
     
    I do a lot of walking during these days. A little ways into my last walk, I came across a message, written in chalk in approximately 8 inch-tall letters: 
     
    “Show Kindness,"-- with three hearts nested inside each other.
     
    A few hundred feet on, the next one: “You Matter!” Another heart. 
    That was something I needed most, and it put a smile on my face that remained with me for the remainder of my 3-mile stroll.
     
    Then after a few hundred feet more, came, “I like your smile (heart).”
     
    The messages started getting closer together. 
     
    The next one said “Stay Wild,”
     
    and then “Move Forward.”
     
    followed by “Keep Going,” 
     
    and then “Teach me,” 
     
    and then, “Sing on!”
     
    the final message: “Love Wins!"
     
    Let's think about that story, because it's really interesting and unusual.
     
    If we pay attention we might notice that it's almost universal in our culture and experience, that a story or statement is used to DEFINE and REDUCE the self, to claim ONE way of being is the correct one, implying that others are inferior or unimportant. 
     
    This story is a rare exception. 
     
    It doesn't try to define you, or to say what's good and what's bad.
    But it does give a WAY, a repeated practice of being present and active in different ways.
     
    It doesn't try to fix you, or convert you, or induce you to be a particular way.
    It's free of the motivation, all too typical in philosopy and religion as well as marketing, to capture you in some way.
     
    We live in a "dominator culture". It's a way of thinking and behaving that is so pervasive and familiar that we forget there is any other possibility.
     
    There are a series of steps or stations in this sequence, all significantly different, with each strengthening the others, a catalyst to their possibility. But all are about the "soft spot" on our way of being selves and going through life.
     
    So it is suggesting a practice-- repeat this, come back to presence, see what happens, let things change.
    There is a certain overall quality to it, an "atmosphere" of compassion and self-compassion,
    and not a merely passive one, but one that reaches, moves, connects, celebrates.
     
    And this is more than a one-time, special purpose series of events-- it suggests a way of approaching many of the settings and situations of one's life.
     
    This is a journey, a pilgrimage in which the heart is able to open and change
    and the quality of traveling is the source of its possibility. 
     
    In all of these there is the necessity to think about self as a non-object-- as a person or intelligent being, or more abstractly, as a kind of lively "space" of possibilities and hidden commitments. 
     
    Self or selves are complex, mostly hidden (latent), and of interest in many fields of knowledge and tradition. They are difficult to perceive, to develop and sustain understanding and skillful action.
     
    We use many language tools to support our knowing in these areas.
     
    This includes many metaphors that are spacious and diffuse. You might have heard about the fish knowing "water" metaphor. For humans, that would be something like "air".  It's conditions are "weather", wind, the scent or fragrance, the "atmosphere" of the place.  Other areas of discussion use more abstract words-- the "field", a "space", even the "context".
     
    How do these metaphors influence our possibilities for understanding?  What guidance do they offer?
     
    They provide a more non-conceptual way of knowing.  And this really needed for any attempt to understand or work with "self".
     
    Here are several essential features of mind that they support:
     
    • An opportunity to think in terms of qualities, which means to use our holistic, aesthetic intelligence.
    • Room to move-- literally, figuratively, in many ways.
    • Ability to think about time and change-- to change states and forms, to transition between them. To enter. To leave. To return.
    • A place to meet other people, and to have things in common.
    • A shelter or container or setting to provide needed conditions-- support, or refuge, or focus, or any other quality.
     
    So awareness of "true self" is not so much a way of uncovering something that was already there,  a mining operation, like digging up buried gold.
     
    It's a way of opening to the depth and flexibility of what one is, and what one is becoming in virtue of being with and in the flow of life.
     
    This contact, intimate relationship, skilled presence happens "in the moment", 
    but that moment includes one's full history, the unique stories of how possibilties became real and active, remain latent, come and go.
     
    And this "history", or "karma" is not merely personal, but includes others, the world, our shared history and development of mind and soul.
     
    Here are some questions based on these considerations.
     
    Which of the messages in the "sidewalk" story resonated with you or intrigued you?
     
    If you had all the time in the world, which of its "stations" would you pause at, to find out what would change, to let it develop more fully?
     
    For me, each of them are quite evocative.
    And INvocative, that is they have a power to "call something up".
     
    Where in your life, recently or in memory, do you feel the "soft spot"?
     
    This doesn't have to be a clear, total, dramatic experience. 
    In fact, its better NOT to be that way, since clarity and drama are prime characteristics of conventional conceptual thinking, not real experiencing.
     
    This is any experience in which hardened feelings and attitudes about who you are (and what the world is) start to melt or dissolve.
     
    Do you have some ideas about your "hard spots", places you get stuck?
    Some of these seem never to change, that is, they seem like "invariants", always-true aspects of experience and of who one is.
     
    Are you aware of the aspects of this "invariant" pattern in self?  It's qualities, structure... typical feelings / thoughts ... the form or feeling in the bones and muscles and one's gaze?
     
    In contrast, soft spots seem to respond to something that happens in the world, 
    and generally in a way one cannot foresee, control, or engineer-- 
     
    with a quality of surprise, or grace,freshness...
    they start to shift, respond to the possibility of being different, in some cases to release temporarily or for a longer time.
     
    How do you "speak to" yourself as you go through everyday life? 
    What are the "tone" and the expectations behind the voice?
    Are you kind?  Encouraging? 
     
    Or maybe something else ... Irritated? Impatient?
    Or something else not easily defined in emotional terms-- Decisive? Deliberate?  Earnest?  Tentative? (etc.)
     
    What are some practices you engage in...
    that are not motivated by control, reduction, domination, or conceptual clarity...
     
    that serve as a "solvent", that keep things open, that create safety and open new possibility, that respect and honor yourself and others?
     
    Where are your "soft spots" and how do you nourish and sustain them?
     

    From the Dialogue

    I'm thinking, trees have the wisdom not to uproot themselves...and to bear and enjoy the weather...
     
    Humans might find wisdom in doing so... but I think the attention is better placed on "root", to lead to an overall balance of how we live.
     
    Regarding meditation, I don't really believe in a "right way". So I am not sure it's possible for me to get "off the path" since the path is wherever I am and whatever I'm doing. 
     
    Here's a metaphoric situation from ordinary life...
    I did get "off the path" for a while.
     
    I have a lot of household consumer devices.  I wish they'd last forever, but they don't, and then they end up in a land fill.
     
    Only one button on the microwave oven works.
     
    The blender also stopped working properly, with a faulty switch.
    I was going to throw it away, but then worked out a way to be with it,
    that respects both it and myself.
     
    It's no longer an "ideal technological machine" that just does the job and does things for me.
    Now it wants me to participate! 
    I have to hold it with great force -- now it's an exercise machine.
    And I have to wipe up spills from inside the mechanism -- so now it's a device for practicing dexterity and relaxed focus.
     
    What is it to "be wild"?
     
    I have a way to do this in the kitchen (among other places).
    I simply look at what's in front of me and do the "next thing" that comes up, without pre-planning and without second-guessing myself.  Following instinct, allowing a "flow" to develop.
     
    This tranformed the quality my cooking and kitchen activity, and spills over into other things I do. The "field" of the practice is larger than the kitchen, even if the kitchen can be a kind of home base or space for it.
     
    Emerging Themes
     
    Some themes came up during this session, that we might return to.  There are also previous session(s) on these...
     
    • Wildness (in everyday life, not limited to wilderness or "Nature")
    • Daily personal rituals that sustain the "soft spot" (among other needed qualities)
    • Life's "limitations" (and how we ground in or transform their effects)
    • Eldership (not named, but present in the background of the discussion)
     

    Comments

    This is a kind of "metamodern" spirituality. It can offer possibilities and guidance, but renounces the compulsion to control, fix, prescribe behavior or attitudes, or to "capture" you in any way. 

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