HOW TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING

If the effort in writing and, thus, thinking are to make sense of a complex world, then it seems valuable to develop a way to think about anything that occurs in all of the complexity. It also seems valuable (but maybe a bit more ambitious) to have a simplified model from which to work. It seems to me that there are many mental models proposed by folks who are intent on what I am trying to do and that is to make simple work of something that is innately hard. It is hard to put pieces of a puzzle together if they are scattered all about and then to see what meaning there is to the puzzle itself. It is in the order of things these days to comment on how dizzying the pace of life has become, how distracted we are in our daily lives, how we are challenged to make connections when we are so driven. I think all of these things are true but they don't obviate the opportunity to make some sense of the puzzle.

I begin my own puzzle-making by setting the intention to be curious. Curiosity is really all about inquiry, asking questions to frame out the context and relationships of what it is that puzzles. Or it may be a situation that is the basic point of interest. No matter what the context is, it involves human behavior and human responses, for it is humans caught up in the tangle of uncertainty. I have asked myself what mental model would fit the need I have to solve the puzzles that occupy me? What simple formulation is available to assist me? This leads me to a very familiar source, the Buddha.

The Buddha taught many things about existential life but the most helpful for me are his Four Noble Truths and where they lead. The Four Truths state that: There is suffering. There are causes of suffering. There is a method to deal with the suffering. And the method is the Eightfold Path. This seems very simple but, as with many simple observations, within it lie all the considerations one might make of human behavior. He is, after all, addressing his monks and nuns in the context of their lives and how they might address the needs of the people they will be serving. Over the millennia he continues to address the faithful Buddhists but also offers his teaching to anyone willing to listen and absorb it.

His observation about suffering is a universal given. In these days we pair suffering with the pain that precedes it. So often we do not get beyond the pains of our lives and get stuck in a fixed mindset. We are beset with the pain and cannot move beyond it or the suffering we bring to it. Pain is also a universal given for human beings. Pain will come into everyone's life, be it physical, mental/emotional, or spiritual. There will be suffering as we layer onto the pain our complicated emotional responses within the context of our individual lives. The Buddha suggested a few of the causes of our suffering that include greed, anger, and delusion. But one could make a very long list of those human behavioral characteristics that cause suffering, including those that on their face appear to be desirable reactions. There is a Buddhist teaching that there can be two arrows afflicting us in any event of trauma. The first arrow is the pain of the experience. The second arrow is the suffering we concoct because of the pain. The first arrow is a condition of human existence. The second arrow is optional. We get to choose how to experience our pain and can decide not to take the second arrow, one we inflict on ourselves.

The Eightfold Path has just a few steps on it, each one connected to all the others so that someone traveling can step forward or back no matter which step he takes. They are in an order that begins to make sense and the order begins with Right View. Here I want to suggest that what has traditionally been a reference to “right” is not really carving out the duality of right and wrong. I don't think the Buddha would have been so dogmatic. What makes sense to me is to use the word “appropriate,” as that references context and relationships, just the way I think it helps to discern the pieces of any puzzle.

It is helpful to use an example that is right at hand today. We are in the middle of a string of very hot weather with temperatures nearing 100 degrees on some days. What has been called climate change is really climate disruption and its true nature is a complicated puzzle for scientists to unravel and interpret. Unfortunately, it has become a political football that has ideological and economic implications for some people and especially the people in power who control legislation and the financial means to work on climate disruption mitigation (if that is still possible). What it means to me is that the heat causes pain and suffering. In times past, I have been greatly affected by heat. It has never been a situation in which recreation is possible. The pain of the heat has stimulated reactions of frustration and even anger that it had to occur in the first place. It has resulted in thinking about investing in air conditioning for this old farmhouse or about where in the country one might move to escape the heat of summer. Each day that heats up now brings the suffering of mental torpor and physical sloth. When this happens, I feel guilty for having wasted precious time and I am more aware as I age how time is shortening and how I want to insert into time various projects that seem important to me, like this blog post. But this thinking has me bypassing the first step in the Eightfold Path that could give me a different perspective, a perspective that in the long run will lead to and support a growth mindset, the opposite of a fixed one that has me wallowing in suffering.

What is an appropriate view of heat and climate disruption? I think such a view eliminates all the emotional reactions that lead to suffering in the context of the heat and natural processes. It seems clear that human activity and ongoing choices are bringing us to this global environment that has disrupted the natural processes of the jet stream and also the magnificent and little understood oceanic tides. This is an appropriate view of the context and relationships of what we experience as a hotter Earth. What this means to me is that, instead of reacting against the heat by adding to the problem yet one more home appliance with energy-sucking technology in the form of air conditioning, it is more important to think about ways in which I can learn to live with the heat and, perhaps, learn to condition my body to adapt to it. So, the suffering is gone and in its place is an intention to work within the context of weather patterns to see my own place in the natural world as someone who can adapt rather than as a victim of forces out of my control. It may be that climate disruption is now beyond human abilities to alter its path, but that isn't clear to me yet. What I do know is that climate disruption and this string of very hot days is part of my present context of living and I can choose to willingly participate in adapting to it and not railing and ranting about how little is being done to “fix” it.

It sounds naive, and it is, to say that I now sit in front of a fan that uses far less energy than air conditioning would and, while I still sweat and dial down my physical pace, I hydrate better and do not feel victimized by the heat. It is summer and if summers in the future are to be more like this one, then it seems prudent to learn better ways of adapting to them. If nothing else, it is a bit liberating to be able to see a previous pain with its suffering in a new light and to feel that I still belong on this Earth with its own patterns and changing responses to environmental forces and pressures. I will not be able to fix global climate disruption but I can contribute to its mitigation and at the same time alter my own perception of how humans can respond to it without pain and suffering.

Having said that, I believe there is another way to interpret the Buddha's Four Noble Truths. He does note that our lives are universally afflicted with pain and suffering. He assumes that all pains will be accompanied by suffering and so offers his Eightfold Path as a methodology for relief. But my questions are: What if we really accept the idea that the suffering is optional? What if the universality of painful events is coupled with joy? In a cross-spiritual reference, I am thinking about the life of Saint Francis and how his life might offer a different way to view the common human existential condition (and maybe this is an “appropriate view,” in the Buddha's formulation). Saint Francis lived a life of radical love that was simple and pure. The physical pains he experienced were not accompanied by suffering, inasmuch as it blocked a more expansive expression of his love. The love he aspired to was his interpretation of the love he was given by the God who animated his life. When he experienced the worldly pains of physical and emotional traumas, he returned love. His greatest joy was in being able to bless the perpetrators for bringing him back to the path of pure love, the love that he felt was channeled through him. He did not think of himself as special or chosen or powerful because of this relationship, but tried ever harder to include the most cruel and evil as well as the most displaced and marginalized and oppressed humans in his universe of love, for he believed that all things and beings were creations of God and so embodied God's flame of life and love.

So, I think it is possible to re-do the Buddha's initial formulation and replace suffering with the joy that Saint Francis offers as an expression of pure, simple, and radical love.

I think over time thoughtful human beings have dealt with pain and suffering in millions of ways, perhaps billions of ways. Because it is a universal state of being, they come to all of us in one form or another. I am curious to learn how individuals whose lives can be publicly accessed have defined the context and relationships that have led to a growth mindset. I am thinking of poets and those I call “notables” in my painting sketch project. I am eager to see what I can learn from their unique perspectives and how they spent their lives in “appropriate livelihood,” another of the eight steps on the Path.

So, my intention is to highlight those individuals who illustrate how to think about the world in which they live/d and to see where that led them. In a way, it is to see how they might have managed pain and suffering as a path to personal growth. I think this is what intrigues me about my own life and think it must also be true for so many others. The present times are an incubator for how a growth mindset is possible when so many puzzles lie before us and we find ourselves confused and tangled in fact, fiction, technological changes, social disconnections, distractions, temptations, and exhaustion. The Buddha continues to offer a methodology for tackling the pain and suffering that weigh on all of us one way or another. In the back of my mind I have the intention of offering these little essays to children in my grandchildren's cohort when they are faced with the conundrums of discernment and their personal agency in a world that is continually changing and challenging. The stories to be told about the Buddha and by the Buddha are intergenerational gems that can be treasured as a resource for engaging in a turbulent and sometimes fearful (but always joyful) world.