A couple months back I read One City by Ethan Nichtern. It’s a meditation on the Buddhist principle of interdependence as well as coping with life in a large modern city. There’s also some excellent thoughts on divorcing meditation techniques from religious or spiritual trappings, and instead promoting those techniques as tools for dealing with the stress and pace of modern life, along with developing some useful mindfulness. All in all a great read.
Ethan founded the Interdependence Project in New York city, as a further exploration of interdependence as well as a think tank for engaged social activism and artistic expression.
My personal take-away from the book is Ethan’s expression of the Buddhist idea of “practice.” Essentially this idea of “practice” runs counter to the normal meaning in our Western culture. In common usage “practice” is seen as something you do to get to a goal, and then abandon, or use as a maitenance tool. In the idea expressed in One City, “practice” is seen as something you use as an ongoing tool to work on mindfulness and connected Buddhist virtues. It’s not a means to an end, but the end itself. In 12 Step programs we have a saying with a similar connotation; “Practice, not perfection.” It is recognized that we will never become perfected beings, but we can practice towards it.
I like that idea. A “practice” then becomes a meaningful act in, and of, itself without either needing to have a future result or to be done perfectly.
Here is an interview with Ethan on The Alcove.
And, here is the first in a three part interview with Ethan by the awesome geeks over at BuddhistGeeks.
Stumble it!
5 Comments
The Budda meditated daily until his death. A skilled pianist will still play scales. We sit for sittings sake alone. If there is thought of gain then the whole point is missed.
Thanks, Steve.
This has come up for me a lot lately. There is a tendency to equate enlightenment about our true nature with some superhuman all-encompassing perfection. The fact that Buddha continued to meditate after his realization under the bodhi tree gives the lie to this tendency.
Cheers!
I’ve never read it, but Stephen Wingate put out a book called “The Outragous Myths of Enlightenment” and maybe this is the perception of many. What I have discovered is that nothing really violates common sense. Like everything this is easier discovered in hindsight.
I have distaste for the word enlightenment because there is nothing objective to which it refers. I like the simplicity of “no self, no problem’ but even this is wrong unless it is understood that it is not the end of ego which is sought, but the understanding of its nature.
There is a similarity between the ego and a mirage. Both are real and unreal-objectively not real but experiencialy very real. The problem with humanity is that we take the ego to be objectively real. When it is discovered that it is essentially unreal, then it can be taken or left. More fun staying in pure Being of course, but when thought can be apprehended as just thought-not’my thought’ then the pain and worry of being attached to thought disappears.
Jesus, I’m wordy! My apologies.
Cheers to you!
They are good words. Don’t apologize.
I agree with you. The ego is not a villain until we paint it as such. Once seen for it’s nature, it can be taken or left, just like everything else.
I also agree that enlightenment has become a difficult word. It is too much built up, and set an an unattainable lofty goal. For me, as I have said in another post, enlightenment is only moving the truth of what you are from the realm of something you don’t know that you know, to the realm of something that you know that you know. That shift changes nothing in life, but is a very good point from which to continue the play of life. Not a big deal.
Buddha meditated after he drank from the well of Nirvana. The void of no-mind is the eighth of the Ten Ox Herding Pictures. Life is a practice and play that does not end.
I believe we grok.
Very well said. The shift is a small one
but a lot of luggage is dropped then.
The seventh ox awaits me, but no hurry, neither of us is inclined to go anywhere
soon.
Much Peace
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