I hadn't written here for a long time until I decided today to use this blog to host some of my reflections for an on-line course I'm taking.  I'd like to start writing more again.  So I'll add a thought that excited me this morning.

Why should mindfulness-type meditation practices help a person better control their emotional reactivity?  Help a person be more compassionate and patient?

Reading a book of dialogs between Paul Ekman and the Dalai Lama, I came across an answer that seems obvious to me now, but I'd never recognized.  Most mindfulness meditation practices are about becoming consciously aware of a largely automatic process (breathing, walking, etc).  Emotional reactions are another similarly automatic process, and one that can be interrupted when it is recognized.

I would argue further that compassion and patience are innate qualities, but often derailed by emotional reaction or excessive mental activity, either of which can be attenuated by the light of mindfulness.

Learning Creative Learning - Week #2 Reflections

For anyone wondering what this is, I'm taking an MOOC on Learning Creative Learning and am using my blog as a place to post some of my discussion for the class.

I'm enjoying the course.  It's made me feel excited - that the world is in a very critical time of transformation and that anyone can sieze the opportunity to shape and contribute to the world we're moving towards.

I don't feel I have anything too interesting to offer on my "Gears of Childhood" (lego, programming, stochastic modelling), so will instead reflect on the article in general, together with the week's other readings.

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I felt a little uncomfortable with Papert's assertion that "Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models."  He, of course, acknowledges that learning of new models is an important part of the picture, but it still sounds like a case of "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  I feel that being able to open one's mind to new ways of contextualizing knowledge is an essential part of learning.  Trying to fit every new piece of knowledge into one's extant ways of thinking seems very limiting.

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The relationship between formal and informal learning is very interesting.  Ito considers two paths: placing more value on and providing more support for informal learning, or making formal learning more flexible.  It would be interesting to discuss whether or not there is any fundamental difference between these two approaches.

Ultimately, education cannot be isolated from its cultural and especially economic context. Education has many roles beyond the "pure" sense of discovery and learning: socialization, recognition of capability, sorting into appropriate roles in society, etc...

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One thought: maybe a formal education should really be about learning to learn, along with the "soft" skills necessary to apply one's capabilities.  Informal education can take care of much of the actual "content" and "skills" of education.

Having some experience hiring staff for positions that do involve some technical skills, I have found, again and again, that hiring candidates because they possess these technical skills is a mistake.  The hires that work out well have particular "meta-capabilities": attention to detail, self-discipline, a sense of leadership (more an ability to take ownership of their work domain), and an ability to learn quickly.

More than once, my success in a work situation has hinged, not on any skills I possessed in advance of the work, but my ability to learn the necessary skills quickly.

The world is changing.  Perhaps to quickly for education to "keep up."  Maybe the ability to learn dynamically is the real educational currency of our age.

Another take on the importance of empahy

This video expresses very nicely several ideas I've touched upon in many of my posts.  It also makes a perhaps optimistic but certainly heartening call for all of us to expand our notions of family and tribe.

As well, the video hints at raising the question, but then never quite gets there: are our political and economic systems fundamentally contrary to human nature?

Midfulness Meditation and Empathy

I’ve written previously (here and here) about the importance of spiritual education and practice in developing the human capacity for empathy.  A recent article suggests that mindfulness meditation practice may help cultivate this ability in a physiologically detectable way.

As in this press release from Massachusetts, General Hospital, an 8-week mindfulness program resulted in changes in particular regions of the brain associated with empathy.  Reading the full article (referenced below), it seems that the association of the areas of the brain studied with compassion is a little questionable, but the results are still very promising.

As I’ve written before, compassion is an innate human faculty, but like any other ability: mental, physical, or spiritual; it needs to be practiced, exercised, and cultivated.  Mindfulness meditation certainly isn’t the only way to do this, but it seems it may be an effective choice.

In the big picture, encouraging the practice of mindfulness could be a very important part of dealing with the social problems and the violence that we, all together, face today.

Hölzela, BK., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti, SM., Gard, T., & Lazar, SW. (2011) Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191, 36-43

Human Nature – Good and Evil

People are complex.  No action can be understood independently of the web of motivations behind it and the experiences that make up the person that takes it; however, I still find it interesting to explore the concept of a human nature.

We like to speak of “humane” or “inhumane” acts and exhort each other to “have a heart”.  Clearly, there is a cultural concept of the moral nature of humanity.  Religion, of course, has a lot to say about this.  Original sin has many interpretations, but generally seems to argue that we are flawed by nature.

To me the idea that we are fundamentally compassionate and altruistic is spiritually appealing.  It can also be argued from a neurological perspective.  There is extensive research into “mirror neurons” which can be seen as a basis for compassion.  Simply put, mirror neurons allow one to feel pain when witnessing another in pain or feel joy when seeing that someone else is happy.  Compassion.  And, further, since another’s pain or joy becomes one’s own experience, we see a sort of altruism emerge.

Of course, clearly, people are capable of evil.  Our faculties for compassion can, like any other neurological process, be inhibited or damaged.

And maybe our ability to be compassionate must be practiced and exercised to develop completely.  This fits nicely with my previous article about Spiritual Education.  Here’s what the Dalai Lama has to say:

Although I personally believe that our human nature is fundamentally gentle and compassionate, I feel it is not enough that this is our underlying nature; we must also develop an appreciation and awareness of that fact. And changing how we perceive ourselves, through learning and understanding, can have a very real impact on how we interact with others and how we conduct our daily lives.

- Posted to the facebook account His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama on December 6^th of 2010

It is my firm conviction that human nature is essentially compassionate and gentle. That is the predominant feature of human nature. Anger, violence, and aggression may arise, but on a secondary or more superficial level; in a sense, they arise when we are frustrated in our efforts to achieve love and affection. They are not part of our most basic, underlying nature.

- Posted to the facebook account His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama on December 27^th of 2010

From this perspective one could say that our nature is good, but that this nature still needs to be cultivated and certainly can also be denied.  Practice compassion.

Language, culture, and love

I’ve long thought that the English language was lacking in its ability to describe love.  As a teacher of yoga and meditation, I sometimes teach on “metta” which is usually translated as “loving kindness”.  The only problem is that, generally, the word “love” in English is inseparable from concepts of romance and sexuality; metta has nothing to do with this.

Briefly, metta is an acknowledgement of interconnectedness.  If I feel metta for you, then I am happy when you are happy, feel sad when you are sad, and as a consequence wish the same for you as I would for myself.  Is there a simple way to express this in English?  Especially towards a single individual?

In some places, with some people, I can tell a friend or family member that I love them and it’s understood this way.  But in many other cases, if I use the word love, it’s understood to be romantic/sexual.  I think that, as a culture, we have trouble distinguishing the concept of love-in-and-of-itself.

Over dinner, I was talking about this with a Turkish friend.  In Turkish, they have one word for, as she described it, “passionate” love and another word that can be used with friends and family in general.  So they have it figured out I guess.

I often idealize how the Argentine Tango can (sometimes) isolate love and intimacy from sex and romance, but it seems that the Spanish language doesn’t do a very good job.  I’m still a student of the language, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems “amar” (to love), querer (to want), and gustar (to like or be pleased by) all have sexual connotations when used on a person.  The only way I know of to express that you like a person outside of this is “caer bien con” (to get along with).

On the other hand “un beso” (a kiss) or “un abrazo” (a hug) are common ways to sign off an e-mail, so physical demonstrations of non-sexual affection are easy to express.

So to what extent is a culture’s perspective on love and connectedness coloured by language?  I wouldn’t say that I know enough to make any conclusions here.  I’d love to hear your ideas.

And I have nothing against sex and romance.  I just want to be able to express love independently of them.

Engaged Buddhism

I spent the weekend in a retreat with Cheri Maples.  Most spiritual teachers speak simply and authentically and Cheri certainly is no exception, but she also offers a clarity and precision in her teaching that I found very valuable.

One of her talks clarified something for me.  The question of how to resolve the paradox of “socially engaged Buddhism” – how to reconcile acceptance of what is with action as a means to bring change.

One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by wanting things to be different than they are, or by a conflict between an individual’s view of reality and reality as it is.

Cheri told the story of an Indian sage (Krishnamurti).  Eventually this sage agreed to reveal his deepest secret; telling his students “I don’t mind what happens.”

Similar is the story of a man who managed to live to a ripe old age while maintaining his health and enthusiasm.  When asked the secret of his longevity, he answered: “when it rains, I let it rain”.

The theme here is an acceptance that what happens in life is beyond our control.  We’re going to have a lot more luck adapting ourselves to the world than trying to adapt the world to our desires.  We don’t control reality, so we’d best accept it.

However, what we do control, what we can own, are our choices and our actions (Karma).  From a Buddhist (or Existentialist) perspective, our choices and actions are all we really are, and all that defines us.

So even if we can never guarantee the outcomes of our actions, we can choose them according to principles, including social engagement.  The idea of choosing the best actions we can, but then divorcing ourselves from the consequences, accepting that the outcome is beyond our control, is a very powerful idea and, to my understanding (as taught by Devarshi), a major theme of the Bhagavad-Gita.

I’ve previously mentioned one of my favourite books, “Fugitive Pieces” by Anne Michaels.  One quote from it explains this beautifully:

It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.

I always interpreted this as stating that we can’t control the path of day-to-day life: whether we get a given job or meet a given person, but we can choose what principles we will live our lives by.

Now I see a new, very similar interpretation: we can’t control the outcomes of our choices and are at the mercy of countless other choices made by countless others; however, we can choose the actions we take, the choices we make, and the principles that we use to guide those choices.

Although I might introduce myself by referencing, for example, my career, this is a small thing.  Ultimately, it’s the “large things” that make us who we are.