On the Nature of Dialogue

          * Dialogue starts from a willingness to be tentative about what you know.
          * The focus of dialogue is on what is, rather than on ideas and opinions. 
          * You can participate by verbally or silently sharing perceptions.
          * Dialogue is letting the issue unfold in affection and mutual respect.
          * When a reaction arises, neither suppress it nor defend it, but suspend it in the mind and in the group, keeping it constantly available for observation and questioning.
          * Dialogue is being together and seeing together in an unfolding relationship.

          Krishnamurti Foundation of America                               www.kfa.org

Monet's Flowers

Nature or Nurture?

     “… mysticism [is] the critical means of gaining insight into life’s essential mysteries. … science’s particular tools cannot access the full spectrum of what we are, or of what the world is. … we have a noetic, experiential capacity for accessing knowledge, a mystical function of our being that directly accesses a truth unattainable by scientific or analytical means. There are methods whereby we can expand our minds, expand our consciousness, to the point where we can apprehend metaphysical dimensions of what we are (and of what the world is) that escape an exclusively rational or quantitative approach. … awakening to these noetic dimensions, as had been achieved in earlier generations by mystics in all cultures, is not only our innate human capacity but also a necessary step in our evolution as a species. 
     … Maybe people were assuming that their consciousness was fixed by its very nature when in reality it was only fixed by nurture, based on social conditioning and the momentum of everyday habits; maybe there is a wide band of possible experiences that we shut out daily because of that conditioning and the weight of our personal assumptions.”

       Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.
 

Rhone Valley, France

Awareness is Not for Wimps

     “Wasn’t it true that there was a place in all of us where we kept our secret under lock and key, vain animals capable of strange, petty, sometimes violent unpredictabilities? ... We all had our secrets, and maybe the most terrible of them was that we weren’t exactly who we thought we were, who we said we were, who we dreamed of being, that we were divided and at war and half made of self-mythologies, too. Sometimes on that staircase spiraling up from the darkness, we met ourselves coming up into the light, not recognizing ourselves or what we might do next.”

       Michael Paterniti “The Telling Room. A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese.” The Dial Press, NY, 2013

 

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

Our Confused Urge to Purge

     Don't we just love to hear an intelligent, devastating critique of a person or group we hate? Yes! It makes us feel so right, smart, good, holy; and makes "the other" look so wrong, stupid, bad, evil!
     It's easy if people we hate are different - not one of us. As Homer Simpson famously said "He's different - I don't like him!" We can even create differences to suit an agenda, as was apparently the case to divide Rwanda into Hutus & Tutsis. Religious belief is trickier, especially among those with essentially the same religion, but we've succeeded with a vengeance in this as well - Catholics vs Protestants, Shia Muslims vs Sunni Muslims ...

     Reformers within such groups, who believe that butchering each other may not be the best, most evolved, or sustainable approach, are often branded as traitors & heretics, shunned or even killed. Whistleblowers in large companies or governments fare no better. Why?

     Because we hate to face, much less to clean-up, our own home. It's so much easier to find fault in other individuals & groups, and then eradicate all our problems by declaring war on ... anything but the real problem. Eradicate whoever / whatever we project our own shadow upon, then everything will be perfect. "And how's that working for you?" Dr. Phil might reasonably inquire.
     We must recognize that we're still surprisingly primitive & tribal. The present state of the human race reflects the very early level of our individual psychosocialspiritual evolution. Each of us has a lot of growing-up to do. 
     This requires a complete turnabout, an inversion of sorts, turning our world right-side-up. Whenever we get very righteously energized to denounce or attack (verbally or otherwise) a person or a group, let's remember to look within - what dark aspect of ourselves are we trying to disown?
     Studying oneself, with steady awareness & gentle acceptance, is a continuously humbling experience. It makes one less & less judgmental of others, and more & more grateful to all those who put up with us while we were even less civilized than we are today. 

     "Be kind, for everyone is carrying a heavy load."

Near Mahone Bay, NS

Information, Progress, & Speed

     “In his 1936 essay ‘The Storyteller,’ (Walter) Benjamin posits that the storyteller, as well as the story itself, has lost primacy in a world that craves information, progress, and speed. The teller of tales is therefore left ‘remote,’ an endangered species. The storyteller, in the oldest sense of the word – ie the one who imparts counsel or wisdom, who carries forth the tradition of tales – has been eclipsed in Benjamin’s mind by the stultifying demands of modern life. ‘Every morning brings us the news of the globe,’ he writes, ‘and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information.’ ”

        Michael Paterniti “The Telling Room. A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese.” The Dial Press, NY, 2013.

Les Deux Magots, Paris

What's in a Story?

      “A story is time itself, boxed and compressed. It is the briefest entertainment and simulacrum of real life, which is big and messy and requires a strange kind of endurance. The story is stylized for that flash of laughter and pain, thwarted desire and odd consummation, while life waterfalls with it – all of it – every day; prodigious, cloying, in decay. And when the story is finally over – even if the protagonist survives a spray of gunfire and goes on living – it’s over. Meanwhile, life carries on, river-swift.”

       Michael Paterniti “The Telling Room. A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese.” The Dial Press, NY, 2013.

Agricola Street, Halifax, NS

Human Flourishing via Meditation: More True Happiness, Less Suffering

     "What is wisdom? Aristotle wrote about wisdom … as practical decision making that leads to human flourishing. And human flourishing comes from practicing the virtues, so making decisions that are virtuous is wiser than not. Decisions that involve generosity, honesty, humility, and courage are more virtuous and thus wiser than decisions that are self-interested, stingy, duplicitous, or cowardly. We can practice making our decisions based on virtues. We can practice making better decisions by learning from experience, but to do so we need to change the way we pay attention to our decisions. How do we change the way we pay attention? It is important to develop the skill of attention.
     A gunshot will grab your attention without any effort on your part. And you can pay attention to a task you have to do and you can try harder to focus on it when it gets tedious, but we all know the limits on our ability to do that. These experiences suggest that attention is just a part of us like any other part of us (number of eyes or fingers) and there is not much we can do to change the way we use attention.

     But there is good evidence to suggest that attention and our use of attention can change and improve with practice. To develop the skills of attention means to increase the capacity for holding things in mind while thinking (working memory), to improve noticing, and to increase our control of attention. For example, some research has demonstrated that practice in playing certain video games can increase your ability to use attention practice in meditation can as well. While the effects of video game playing on increasing attention may be controversial, there is good reason to think of attention as a skill of selecting information, shifting your mind among relevant information, holding information in mind while thinking, and avoiding distraction.

     How does attention help make decisions wiser? We make a lot of our decisions without a lot of thought. Deciding what to have for lunch does not involve the same kind of thinking as deciding to change jobs. But even when we think we are thinking hard about a decision, we can be limited by habits of previous decisions. We often skim the mental surface of a problem, not stopping to be curious about what lies beneath. Some research has suggested that this might be good -- fast and unreflective decisions seem to lead to better decisions sometimes. Looking at problems and decisions through a narrow and shallow focus of past habits may work for some things, but it will not develop the skill of wisdom. If you do not see the virtuous options because you have not thought about them in the past, you may miss them. If you cannot think about a problem from someone else’s perspective, you may not consider everything necessary for a wiser decision. When we are distracted, we miss bits of information we should use in helping us decide, and improving the skill of attention, reduces such distraction. Increased attention allows us to consider more aspects of a complex problem leading to a wiser decision. Practicing the skills of attention over time, resisting distraction, holding goals in mind, and controlling what we attend to, can help all of us make wiser decisions."

       Howard C. Nusbaum "Thinking About Wisdom as a Skill" wisdomresearch.org/forums/t/1559.aspx#

 

Howard C. Nusbaum

Shutterstock / Dirk Ercken