One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

I was having a discussion recently with a friend about the ideas of duality and non-duality—different branches and texts associated with yoga tend to describe things in one of these two ways.  It is funny that the “non-dualists,” who propose that all is one have to describe themselves as NON-dualists, that is, “we are this, not that,” which is, of course, dualistic.

I can see why it is difficult to take a non-dualistic view, even for some who identify as non-dualist.  It seems to be the natural thing our minds want to do—to put things into categories, especially the good/bad categories, which also manifest as I like/I don’t like and pleasant/unpleasant.  I’m not sure this can really be avoided (and really, even wanting to puts us back into dualistic thinking).  OK, I’m trying not to get to heady here.  The fact of the matter is that nature is full of pairs of opposites (or perhaps we could say complements)—night and day, hot and cold, etc.  To say this isn’t true or that one side is true and the other isn’t just seems silly.  It’s that whole yin and yang thing—both sides are part of the whole. 

I’m remembering a workshop with Daniel Siegel, the big brain guy, where he talked a lot about integration and that integration requires differentiating the parts and then bringing them together.  For him, integration is the hallmark of well-being (I feel like I’ve talked about this before in the blog, but oh well).  So, it seems like “non-dualism” is a matter of stepping back far enough to see the big picture and how the two parts relate to each other and are actually inextricable.

So, just for example, our dog, Maggie, is really cute and a really good dog overall and brings me a lot of happiness just in being who she is.  I like her.  And today, she just kept barking and growling all morning—there must have been something going on outside that was out of my hearing or something.  She was driving me crazy and I was getting really irritated.  I didn’t like her.  Both sides exist.  I challenge you to find someone that you like 100% of the time.  For most of us, the opposite is a little more difficult to see because we are conditioned to look for what we don’t like mostly, but if I think of someone I don’t like, I can find something about them that I do like or can appreciate or even something that I don’t dislike quite as much.  The two things are intertwined—two sides of the same coin.  Think about that phrase, “two sides of the same coin.”  The two sides are distinct and yet together they make the whole.  To me, that’s non-dualism.  It’s not picking one side and just saying that the other side isn’t there or something.

So who cares?  What does this have to do with anything?  Well, I can just speak for myself.  I don’t really think it matters what you call it, but in my experience, when I can hold opposing viewpoints or perspectives, when I can accept the complexity and multidimensionality of any person, object, experience or situation, I have more peace.  I have less compulsion to do something, to get something, to get away from something, to make things different.  This ultimately results in fewer waves in my mind (citta vrtti in yogaspeak).  I am not caught so much in the push and pull of raga and dvesha (attraction and aversion).  It may seem counterintuitive that by acknowledging the attraction and aversion inherent in all things, inherent in life, they have less power over me, but that is how it works.  (And by the way, that’s how it works with everything—it’s the things we don’t acknowledge that keep us trapped).

In the spirit of “keepin’ it real,” I will offer you something practical:  a favorite Samarya game called Upside/Downside.  Just spend a day looking for the upside and downside of everything and see what happens.  Like right now for me:  boy, this dinner is taking a lot longer to cook than I thought.  The upside is that my husband is getting home much later than he was planning, so dinner is not sitting around waiting for him getting cold or getting overcooked.  The downside is that I am hungry and I am tired of cooking dinner.  I’d love to hear from you about how this little activity goes.

As I was writing, two quotes came to mind, so I’ll put them here:

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.  –Anne Lamott  (I’ve been thinking of that one a lot lately and this seems like as good a time as any to share it)

All men are deceived by the appearances of things, even Homer himself, who was the wisest man in Greece; for he was deceived by boys catching lice: they said to him, “What we have caught and what we have killed we have left behind, but what has escaped us we bring with us.” –Heraclitus (the epigraph in a book of poetry by W. S. Merwin)

Since Leaving the Jury Room

I have been thinking a lot about responsibility since my jury experience.  While I have a great deal of compassion for people’s suffering and struggles, I do believe that we are responsible for our actions.  And I think we have a responsibility as a society to the members of our society.  We are interconnected and need to support and care for one another.  It seems that many of the problems we face today arise from our ability to disconnect from each other and from the consequences of our choices.

I don’t think punishment works.  I don’t think it works with kids and I don’t think it works with adults convicted of crimes.  It doesn’t promote healing, learning, growth or transformation.  Nevermind the death penalty, which is completely horrifying.  So here I am, sitting on a bench in this courtroom thinking about my participation in this whole thing.  I’m feeling very uneasy about the fact that I could be making a decision that would at worst kill someone and at best take away a big chunk of his life in a meaningless sort of way.  What we are told is that our job is only to determine the facts of the case and whether or not the defendant is guilty of the crime.  Essentially, we are to compartmentalize our role in the process and not worry our pretty little heads about what happens after we are done.

This doesn’t feel good to me.  I have put a lot of work into getting more connected not less.  But I have this very strong undeniable sense that “getting out” of this based on these thoughts and feelings (if I could) would be exactly the same thing.  I see that not being on the jury does not disconnect me from what is happening, the same way not being the judge does not disconnect me from the sentence.  On the jury or off, I am connected to this.

Now, for the record, while I don’t know much about other countries’ judicial systems, I feel pretty sure that ours is better than most.  But it has problems.  For instance, this young man on trial had a lawyer who seemed so much less capable than the prosecuting attorney, I assume because he couldn’t afford anyone better.  That doesn’t seem fair.  I probably have fewer issues with the judicial system than "correctional" system, but I guess the point of this whole post is that it is all connected.

I don’t have an answer or any way to tie this all up.  I just looked up “responsibility” in the online Sanskrit dictionary and “no results were found.”  I’m quite sure that doesn’t mean that there was no notion of responsibility in ancient India, but that it was conceptualized differently.  For me, the whole practice of yoga leads to me taking responsibility for my own actions, my own life, to stop projecting things outward and look inward to see what is going on.  Perhaps this post is about karma, the law of action and reaction—whatever I do, there is a consequence.  I also think of avidya (ignorance), the first klesha (obstacle to happiness or cause of suffering).  Ignorance is not seeing that everything is connected in essence.  Dharma—I just thought of dharma—that is one form of responsibility.  That is the question I have been wrestling with.  What is my duty, my responsibility, the right thing to do?

I don’t know.  But coincidentally, the movie that arrived in my mailbox recently was a documentary called What I Want My Words to Do to You about Eve Ensler doing a writing group in a women’s prison.  It did reinforce for me that people are beautiful and full of potential.  Maybe I will get involved with teaching yoga in prison or something.  I just made a donation to the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  I wouldn’t have thought when I went to the courthouse last Monday that it would lead me here.

Tales from Juror #41

I was dismissed today after three days of jury selection for a murder trial that was expected to go until the middle of April. I feel like there has been a lot of blog material this week!

I had already been thinking about what I wrote in the last blog about saying what I want and how that is completely unrelated to thinking I should or will get what I want or especially that someone else should do or give me what I want. It is important to recognize my wants because they are part of my real experience as a real human, but not things should be the way I want them. On my way home today, I could really feel all the tension that had been building for me in the last few days and was suddenly aware of how much energy I had been spending on analyzing and trying to determine what I wanted. Part of me wanted to be on that jury as an escape from my regular life and part of me wanted to be on the jury because it would be a fascinating experience and part of me wanted to be dismissed because it would mean I would miss a training that I have been looking forward to for months and part of me wanted to be dismissed because I just wanted to go back to my regular routine.

But this whole thing had absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted. I got summoned and had a responsibility to meet; I took an oath and one of the reasons for dismissal was not “I don’t want to,” so I was just in the process waiting to see what would happen and it completely didn’t matter what I wanted. That is, it didn’t matter in terms of the external goings-on. It was useful and is useful still as I come down from the whole thing to know what is going on inside. There were moments when I considered exaggerating the truth; I spent time “strategizing” ways to appear partial. But because I was aware of my internal processes, I could keep them separate from my duty in the moment and not act on them. This leaves me with a feeling of integrity, which is nice.

Raga is one of the obstacles to happiness. It means desire or attachment. I would say it’s not desire that is the problem exactly. It’s thinking that I can only be happy when my desires are met and chasing after those desires that really causes suffering. It’s possible to want something and enjoy the wanting and even enjoy trying to meet the want without thinking that whether or not I get it means something about me or my life, that things really need to be a certain way or that there should be a certain outcome.

And besides, I would suspect that a lot of the time we actually want multiple, possibly conflicting things anyway, like me and jury duty. When I acknowledge all of my wants in that situation, then whatever happens is okay—part of me is relieved and part of me is disappointed and all of me is okay.