Monkey See, Monkey Do

this friday and saturday i have the good fortune of studying with his holiness the dalai lama on his visit to san francisco. the topic is interdependence, and his holiness will comment on two texts about it. here is stanza 2 from the first text (the first stanza is a traditional praise of the buddha)

2. Whatever degenerations there are in the world,
The root of all these is ignorance;
You taught that it is dependent origination,
The seeing of which will undo this ignorance.

so here the text begins by saying, in my interpretation, that understanding interdependence will cure all of the degeneration in the world. quite a statement. what do you think? how could something like ‘interdependence’ be such a panacea?

just got this sogyal rinpoche quote. do you think this is controversial? outrageous?

At present, our body is undoubtedly the center of our whole universe. We associate it, without thinking, with our self and our ego, and this thoughtless and false association continually reinforces our illusion of their inseparable, concrete existence. Because our body seems so convincingly to exist, our “I” seems to exist, and “you” seem to exist, and the entire illusory, dualistic world we never stop projecting around us looks ultimately solid and real. When we die, this whole compound construction falls dramatically to pieces.

“I” definitely associate my body with “me”, as defining the boundaries of me. but i’m also not entirely consistent about it: if i were to lose an arm by accident, i would think i was still “me” even without the arm. perhaps i would be a different me, and others would experience me as different. but i would still be “me”. so the connection between body and me is not exact, though conventionally i think it is.

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spent a good chunk of this weekend meditating, and today practiced a bit with a visiting teacher. it was really wonderful to practice so much. i forget what a good long day of sitting can do for me.

last night i went to a very unusual and interesting party called Yuri’s Night, celebrating Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space and to orbit the earth. the event was hosted at the nasa ames research facility, the first time that facility has opened itself to the public for an event like that. multiple sound systems were brought, including a sound system on the space cowboy’s unimog. this was akin to a rave, hosted in one of the large aircraft hangers at moffett field with government security gates protecting the ravers. as i drove up, the guard talked to the car in front of me, the driver dressed completely in silver and wearing ski goggles. the goggles probably self illuminated. this surely was entertaining for both participants and hosts.

somewhat a marriage of unusual cultures, the hanger also had science exhibits and technology oriented art pieces. my friend spot (aka scott) came from new york to show off electric sheep. and music from the glitch mob and cowboys had everyone jumping.

also for me the event was somewhat political and healing. i grew up thinking that nuclear bombs were going to rain down on me at any minute. the US and Russia were always just minutes away from obliteration. that had some effect on me growing up. when the wall came down, and the soviet union disassembled itself, a huge burden lifted for me. it was subtle, and progressive, but i remember the feeling. it felt so good. last night, dancing in a US government facility and celebrating the life of a Russian hero was an affirmation of that change in the world. I don’t think celebrating Yuri’s life could have happened here only twenty years ago. this is a noteworthy change. i told someone there why this was significant for me, and i found i was quoted (somewhat misquoted) on the nasa ames web site today.

and then icing on the cake, i found someone’s lost drivers license walking back to my car. and thanks to google and their name being fairly unique, i was able to find them and contact them and plan how to return it. that’s also something that wasn’t possible twenty years ago.

so if there’s a moral in all this for me, today i’m thinking that in spite of our fear as countries, as cultures, as individuals, we can still connect, celebrate, and take care of each other. it just takes a little effort, and it’s probably not as much effort as we fear.

i always wondered if the “just say no” to drugs campaigns and similar educational efforts were really effective at modifying behavior. i found them condescending. the recent finding that abstinence-only sex education programs are completely ineffective should give pause. my conclusion, treat children like intelligent beings and give them all the information they need.

i’ve mentioned monk and scholar alan wallace previously, but i wanted to point out an interesting lecture he gave at google last august as well. in this he proposes a new way for science to look at consciousness studies with rigor but including subjective measures instead of rejecting all non-neurological data entirely:

wow, that was a nifty way to organize my “to do” list today. instead of just being tasks prioritized, there was room for what would make my day a great day. very interesting way of reframing it.

ok, so the following question was posed to me recently. how do you measure a great day? or in other words, how do you know if today was a great day or not? is it an intuitive thing for you? just a feeling? or do you have a measure of some kind? if you had to rate today on a scale from 1 to 10, where a 10 would be a great day, then what would you use in order to pick your rating?

there are a few things which would just make my day a perfect 10 on the spot i think, but generally those are out of control. like a wonderful, spontaneous interaction with someone or hearing unexpected great news. but if it’s just an ordinary day, i think a collection of good things would add up to a good day. perhaps i’ll experiment with a point scale and see how that goes. have you ever tried this?

i think generally i’m intuitive about this scale, but i’m wondering today what more quantitative measure i could use. so far i’m off to a good start. my meditation first thing this morning, when i woke up, was insightful (1 point). i talked briefly to a random stranger commuting to work, i generally enjoy that (1 point). i had a good lunch (1 point). hmm… any suggestions for what might make good points to add up to 10 today?

i just learned that perfectionism isn’t in the DSM IV. hmm… i definitely think of it as a neurosis and something that can be problematic. i guess when it’s pathologic it’s called perfectionism disorder but that’s listed as a risk factor for OCD. perhaps if you continue on the spectrum to the extreme, you end up with obsessive compulsive disorder? what do you think?

hmm… the description of perfectionism is interesting. it includes symptoms like procrastination (because one doesn’t want to do things unless they’re confident that it can be perfect), self deprecation (managing others expectations around performance), depression, anxiety, and self esteem issues along with workaholism and i’m guessing high achievement. what a shame to be driven to perform to such heights only to be plagued with depression and periods of low performance. i guess it makes sense that it would make you either ‘on’ or ‘off’, more black and white in what one does. some of the citations in wikipedia are about being gifted and its vulnerabilities.

i have definitely felt this way trying to learn the violin as an adult. i have an ear for music, from playing wind instruments as a child. but that means i can keenly hear when the violin is out of tune. which it is *always* out of tune when you’re learning. it’s maddening. and i had to put the instrument down for awhile. i might not pick it up, because i couldn’t stand to hear myself scratch away at it. hmm…

a recent study found older adults practicing tai chi provided some additional protection against a virus. during the study, doing tai chi restored people age 59 - 86 to the equivalent immune system of those much younger, with respect to viral infection.

my cough is getting much better, thanks to ample sleep and my diligence in taking it easy. i can sleep fairly easily now, without my cough waking me up all night. All without the help of tai chi.