In response to the last post Stephanie said, "I find this kind of motivational cheese off-putting because it's great for those of us who have had the luck and ability to pursue and realize our dreams, but not so great for the people who did not. A lot of it is out of our control and I think the notion that people who don't realize their dreams simply did not believe in themselves enough is feel-good yuppie fluff that isn't true. Life is hard and some people do the right thing and still suffer."I've learned a lot from my mother, who has suffered many disappointments, lost a lot, and has many dreams that were unfulfilled. She works a job she doesn't like and that holds no meaning for her, but for many reasons has no options but to continue. But she has grown in wisdom throughout her life and not always getting what she wants or realizing her dreams is part of what has made her wise. The beauty of Zen: we are liberated from 'what we want' and no longer have to be yoked to its tyranny."
Good points. I'm sorry the post came off a bit like one of those cheezy "reach for your dreams" things. But it wasn't so much about going for your dreams as about not letting others define for you what you should be. It sounds like Stephanie's mom has managed to avoid letting others define who she should be. Good. And by the way, I never said anything like, "people who don't realize their dreams simply did not believe in themselves enough." Just FYI.
It's been amazing to me to see that even getting exactly what you want is never really getting exactly what you want. Like Johnny Ramone said, "Being a rock and roll guitar player is a great job. But in the end, it's still a job and I still hate it." Disappointments come from both not realizing your dreams and from realizing them. Disappointment may have very little to do with either. I've gotten exactly what I wanted many times and been deeply disappointed.
Yet, on the other hand, there is something to be said for the old "reach for your dreams" nonsense. I think we all know innately what the universe wants us to do. And yet we are easily deterred by society that has its own often deeply confused and wrong-headed demands. Those dreams you have may or may not be narcissistic desire for grandeur. They may, instead, come from your connection with the whole of society and the whole of reality and a clear vision of what it is you need to do in the world. You may be sensing what society actually wants rather than what it thinks it wants.
In that sense of it, letting others convince you that you can't do those things does as much of a disservice to them as it does to you. Going for your dreams may be the best thing you can do not just for you, but for everyone.
Still, what you really want may be, in fact, to be a garbageman and not a movie star. There is dignity and worthiness in any occupation or station in life. It's society's confusion that tells you othewise, tells you that what you have now is unworthy. Disappointment may be the difference between what you actually want and what you think you want.
I'd say the beauty of Zen is to be liberated from what we think we want and to find out what we actually want.
Oh and good luck, Philbob! Maybe this blog will replace OK Cupid!
Now onto some questions from my bulging ... uh ... mailbox. That's it. Mailbox!
I'm a dad of two young ones, 2.5 and 0.5 years old to be exact. I'm finally getting around to reading Zen Dipped in Karma and in it you have an aside where you mention that from our childhood we've had this idea of self drilled into us by our parents, and that it is not our parents fault but that we need to work through zazen to untangle all of this. However, we also need to teach our kids how to "play the game" of society that everyone buys into so they can be successful as they travel through it. I'm coming to accept the world as contradiction but it is hard to instill this idea of contradiction into kids. It is hard enough to instill the idea of eating with utensils (however I have instilled a deep love of The Clash and John Lee Hooker into my daughter, And Bad Brains. She loves Bad Brains.) So how do you think this would be done? I feel that I have this great opportunity to perhaps point them in a direction where they will already be that much farther along when they do get older.
Ho boy. I have no children (that I know of!*) so I am supremely unqualified to give parenting advice. But here are my thoughts on the matter anyway.
It is absolutely necessary for children to be raised with an understanding of how most people understand the world. They can't survive without that. And I understand that even managing that much is a huge amount of work for any parent. You mentioned eating with utensils and that's just a small part of teaching children how the greater society works and how to interact with it.
As far as the other stuff goes, I think you demonstrate more than teach. Kids will pick up on the fact that you don't really buy into society's bullshit without being told. And they're being conditioned by more than just you, anyway. So you don't have much hope if you try to fight all of society by yourself. No matter how hard people try to be the one sole influence on a kid's life it never really works.
I've been a horn-ball since I was a kid, and sexual tension keeps coming up as a distraction in all kinds of situations. How do I keep it in check? Sex has some kind of weird truth to it that comes in and smacks me on the face when I think I'm all balanced. The only sensible way I've come up with to incorporate it into my practice is to think of everything as sex.
In "Sit Down and Shut Up" you talk about how a friend of yours was looking at a hot girl and said she was out of his league. Your perspective was that just by looking at her she has already given something to you. When I apply that sort of gratitude to actual sex it actually gets a lot better. Any thoughts on how that fits in with zazen? By the way, when I do zazen at night and I get sleepy, sometimes sexual thoughts come in and wake me up and I let them, and sometimes if I don't hold onto them they seem to help the zazen.
Oh lord. I do know what you mean. I've often felt like the only guy in the zendo with a sex drive. I know now this is not true. And I suspected it even way back when.
When I started out I was almost always the youngest guy in the room at any Zen place. Usually by at least 10 years, most often more. This tended to accentuate my isolation in the sense of feeling like the only guy who ever got horny. Plus there's an unhealthy pretentiousness that develops in Zen places. It's not cool to admit you have a sex drive, so everyone pretends they don't.
But sexual thoughts are just one category of stuff that comes up. Like other thoughts they'll pass if you don't feed them. But it's often really hard to resist. Sometimes zazen brings up deeper stuff. And the sex fantasies that can be released can be much hotter than the ones you'd consciously create.
Thoughts don't really need to be kept in check. Actions certainly do. Thoughts can be very free. You can't control what comes up. The best you can do is learn to let it go.
I like the idea of thinking of everything as sex. For lots of people, sex is the one area of life in which they're truly participating 100% without holding anything back. Learning to approach the whole of life the way we approach sex might have some real value.
* Actually I've been very careful throughout my sex life, so definitely I have no children.
