From macro- to microcosm

 

In one affirmation-sharing activity during a yearend assessment workshop with colleagues at work, someone passed on a note expressing amazement at the Martian's ability to focus on small, practical matters then shift to really big and abstract ideas.  Such feedback was uplifting at that moment, bringing another dimension to the sense of concrete results stemming from these mindfulness efforts in the past decade or two.  First thing that came to mind while deciding on the content and title for this post.  Now wondering whether this kind of whole spectrum thinking, jumping from one end to the other, could have some side effects.  Like not paying enough attention to people, relationships, and other important things around you.  Including this subdued but palpable anger that wells up when such absent-mindedness is finally brought to one's attention.

Something that has to be brought into the Martian's practice in the coming days.  Downloaded Joko Beck's dharma talks recently, to be played and listened to during work breaks and those quick drives to the supermarket.  In one of her recordings, Beck was tackling this whole system of a person's learned automatic reactions to outside stimulus and events that are thus mostly unconscious and generating counter-reactions from and effects in other beings, often negative.  And how having such awareness now of the said system, one can the begin to make some careful tweaks in the links and the chains.  Posted this photo of massive Jupiter (that tiny dot on top) and the much closer and hellish Venus at the bottom to remind one of how this macrocosm of interdependent causes and effects builds on a microcosm of passing thoughts and unconscious actions.  Took it the other night while walking with Sam.

Rage Against the Machine's iconic compilation album Renegades playing now on this antique radio/cassette tape/CD player that only a week or two ago was most certainly headed either to a repair shop or an electronic items junkyard.  Any CD, whether heavily scratched from too much use or fresh from its case, took these irritating pauses (that lasted for a few seconds) when played.  But perhaps many thanks to this summer heat, which must have vaporized all those oily residues on the CD player's lens, been getting few to none of such pauses lately.  Even encouraged an online order for a copy of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same double album (but perhaps a topic for a possible future post).  Going back to Renegades, no other RATM album in the Martian's CD library, so this one serves as the go to collection when in need of a quick dose of some powerful hip-hop protest tunes.  Definitely nothing like a background of funky noise to get those writing juices really going. Renegades of Funk, which carries the album's title, and with its anthemic lyrics (memorializing famous resisters in American history, from Chief Sitting Bull and Tom Paine, to Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X) and driving rhythm, is easily a contender as one's personal favorite.

From renegade music, mind is then drawn to this message from your aging parents requesting for some therapeutic leaves from a tree.  Last night, it was all about the kasambahay or domestic worker being sick and not able to report for her duties.  Expecting the next one to be a request to come and visit them at the old family home.  Have to start travelling early tomorrow morning. 

New practice

 

Periodic trips to the mall these days, often on weekends but during work days as well (especially on those days with no online meetings), to procure dog food and groceries have also been marked by visits to the branch of this Filipino bookstore chain which has revived its old practice of selling these popular budget books after focusing for a while (i.e., post-pandemic) on just school items, and art and office supplies.  They've been having sales recently, with some books offered on a buy one, take one basis, and both for only Php 100.  Got a copy of David Sedaris' Happy-Go-Lucky which was initially priced at Php 399 prior to the sale.  Bought a pocket book version of Frank Herbert's Chapterhouse: Dune, the final volume of his famous hexalogy, for Php 99 (its original price was Php 315).  A personal version of shopping as stress management.

What comes next is either a hot Spanish latte (that's coffee with sweetened milk; so really sweet), or a hot bowl of spicy ramen coupled with a glass of red ice tea (not that great-tasting, but quite passable as a thirst quencher).  The Spanish latte would be from a stall on the third floor, while the hot ramen would be from the ramen house at the second floor.  A stall in the food court that also sells squid tako balls, has some ramen on its menu, but not quite the spicy ramen being sold by the ramen house.  The ramen from the ramen house comes with three to four strips of meat (probably pork) which are often simply left in the bowl afterwards, in light of the policy that customers are not allowed to take home any leftovers from what one had ordered and paid for.  Not even for feeding one's pet.  No matter - sipping the tasty broth and eating those noodles and boiled eggs, with the chopped onion leaves, prime the mind for those moments of inner stillness and empty gazes, when for a few minutes thought becomes detached from worries of daughters losing interest in finishing college, one's organization not having enough funds to continue its operations and thus finding oneself suddenly jobless, and a dog with damaged liver.

As the first quarter ends

 

That tiny, faint dot at the lower left portion of the picture, framed by the trees' branches, is Venus.  Took the photo shortly after sunset, two Sundays ago, after taking Sam out for her evening walk.  The sky was clear, though with a bit of a haze.  The air is starting to turn heavy and warm, after several windy days with cool early morning breezes.  Hasn't rained for weeks now.  So summer could just be around the corner.  In Cebu, after our workshop sessions two weeks ago, a colleague was pointing out that the El Niño phenomenon had already set in and would bring back dreaded spells of drought.

Meanwhile, read this online article yesterday about plans by other Earthlings to send another inter-planetary probe through the thick Venusian atmosphere and onto its alien surface with its lead-melting temperatures, bone-crushing pressure, and sulfuric acid drizzles.  The proposition was for a probe that looked much like the Soviet-era Veneras but which could survive in the planet's hostile (hellish) environment for more than two hundred days instead of just an hour and a few minutes - a record set by one of the Veneras.  Now that would really be something.  Another stride for Venusian planetology that hasn't received as much attention as that of the Earth's moon and Mars in recent decades.  That is, if all goes well, the said proposal gets approved and receives sufficient funding.

Incomprehensible how such push for exploration beyond Gaia is happening in times of open armed conflict among nations (with the United States government, egged on by Israel and its Arab allies, now contemplating a ground invasion of Iran; the conflict has been going on for almost eight weeks now and has brought devastation to people's homes and lives in Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon, while detrimentally impacting on livelihoods in other parts of the globe).  In fact, a craft carrying four people was launched a few days back and is now on its way for a rendezvous with Luna.  Decades ago, in 1969, men set foot on the moon while American bombers were trying to send the Vietnamese back to the stone age.  And so that's pretty much the same way we'll close this year's first quarter.  With such madness from Earthlings who dream of greatness.

The political game called "hegemony"

 

Started reading works of Antonio Gramsci many years ago back in college, including compilations of selected essays from Prison Notebooks, and other books about his life and ideas written by other authors.  The latter materials often reflected on what Gramsci as a Marxist thinker and a practicing communist in Italy said about particular aspects of the workers' struggle against a post-industrial capitalist system that was on the cusp of another global conflict.  Never got to finish a single title though (based on my vague recollection now).  Except for this one by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe that I recalled reading at a time when the Berlin wall was being torn down, the Soviet Union was collapsing, and the communist regime in China was violently putting down student protests in Tiananmen square.  A bleak state of affairs for most socialist movements, parties and activists everywhere.  Here in the Philippines, a number of independent Filipino socialists that followed the orange banner of the Union for the Advancement of Socialist Thought and Practice (BISIG), a loose aggrupation of left-leaning intellectuals, trade unionists, community organizers, local feminists, and student leaders - fallouts and renegades from traditional leftist groups and failed coalition-building efforts across these organizations - struggled to sustain its discourse around a local brand of socialism that purportedly forged a middle ground between state socialism of the Soviet and Maoist brands, and the hybrid welfare state models being peddled by the local social and liberal democratic groups.

But even BISIG's Socialist Vision, I think, was not quite what Laclau and Mouffe had in mind when they talked about a notion of hegemonic practice towards a radical and pluralist democracy that was shorn of any presumptions or ideas about which social antagonism was "determinant in the last instance", who or which actor had a decisive and primary role to play at this historical juncture, and what revolution as a deep transformative break from the old order should look like.  While it did carefully outline a broader (and in most cases, more nuanced) line of march for transforming the various aspects and sectors of a capitalist Philippine society that was stunted by its dependency on the world market, its articulation of social ills and vision for an alternative future was still heavily along the mold of its anti-capitalist paradigm.  It would have been such a good research topic then, along Laclau's and Mouffe's line of thought, to look into the history of local struggles that were able to frame their own relations of antagonism, define their own vision of a transformed social order, and articulate how they could contribute to a new progressive path working with other groups including socialists without any proposition for a totalizing strategy (e.g., a vanguard role for a particular class or group) and a decisive rupture from the old order.

Been out of touch with such discussions for decades now.  Perhaps the only threads connecting me now with any related ruminations would be my own reading life (and encountering or re-encountering these leftist tomes like Hegemony and Socialist Strategy), these electoral exercises every three years when I go out to register my vote for this pluralistic party-list group (but which unfortunately has not shown any clear socialist or anti-capitalist legislative agenda, much less positions in relation to key issues of the day for quite a long, long time now), and my current work with a development and humanitarian organization that continues to toy with ideas around "broader systemic change".  Almost half a century ago, I recalled reading this book on the German Greens by Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak (Green Politics: The Global Promise) at about the same time that I was poring over Laclau's and Mouffe's work.  Thought then that the West German Green Party's (Die Grünen) formation, with indefatigable leaders like Petra Kelly helping to forge bases of unity across a diverse set of groups (radical feminists, old communists, deep ecologists, religious groups, retired military officers, local activists, etc.), exemplified Laclau and Mouffe's notion of hegemonic practice albeit in its early less sophisticated stage.  But definitely leading to quite radical convergences and positions (federated economic models inspired by the Swiss cantons, zero economic growth, nuclear-free citizen defense, party-run pubs as community-building spaces) and quite unorthodox political practices and actions.

With the hegemonic blocs that the ultra-right has been able to forge and continue to strengthen in recent years, in the Philippines and other parts of the globe, Laclau's and Mouffe's opus around the hegemonic game should be required back reading for radical activists.  Found a PDF version here.  The work has spawned a whole collection of essays and other books representing both sympathetic and more critical reviews of the authors' positions and political project.  I have yet to read any of them though.  Here's one that promises a comprehensive assessment of both the work's intellectual impact among academicians, as well as its more practical legacies.

Grounding being on the inner light

 

Finished reading "Mystics and Zen Masters" by Thomas Merton.  It took me several months, so I decided to read the first chapter again (with the same title) to get a good idea of what the whole book was all about.  Have known Merton to be this contemplative Trappist monk who was famous for his commentaries particularly on the Vietnam war and on his reflections about Christian theology and spirituality in light of such and other key political and social issues of the day, towards the latter part of the twentieth century.  Knew that he died in tragic and quite mysterious circumstances: alone in his room in Bangkok, apparently electrocuted from a toppled small desk fan.  Not sure about the real reason why I have often confused him with another Christian author who had the same first name.  Have one of Merton's several-volume journals (the exact title of which evades memory at the moment - but I know it has "mountain" in it) somewhere on these shelves at home, and could even recall starting to read it years ago.  Might have to find and read it from cover to cover soon, to better understand the man, his life, his struggles, and his thoughts.

Anyway, Mystics and Zen Masters (the chapter) was a good introduction to this work by Merton which was not entirely about Zen concepts and practice but also touched on other contemplative and mystical traditions, mostly Christian, around the world.  The chapter's linchpin story was that of the fifth Zen patriarch in China, Hung Jen, and his subsequent choice for his successor and the manner by which this was done.  The patriarch asked the candidate monks to compose verses that would embody their understanding and deepest insights on what Buddhist enlightenment was.  Shen Hsiu, the leading candidate, talked about the practice of meditation under a Bodhi tree as something that was comparable to wiping clean a mirror and ensuring that it was free from any speck of dust at all times.  This earned his practice the monicker of "mirror-wiping" Zen. 

Then there was Hui Neng who was not even properly a monk (or was the monk who, as his meditative practice, had been assigned to the kitchen to do all the cooking and the dish washing for the sangha or community of monks).  Taking off from Shen Hsiu's verse, Hui Neng's poem essentially put a question mark on the reality of all notions that Shen Hsiu had in his - the Bodhi being a tree, the mirror standing in front of the meditator, and even the grains of sand or dust that were supposed to dull the "purity" of the reflective surface.  The implications being there was nothing at all to polish and wipe clean, and the whole practice of sitting meditation was not that central to attaining clear mind.  Another reminder of the value of not being too attached to any single practice and to the view of clear mind or enlightenment as something to be achieved.

So the story ended with Hui Neng being named the sixth Chinese Zen master, and his no-mind perspective would later be the foundation of the Japanese Rinzai school of Zen with its famous practice around these sudden flashes of insights and the cultivation of even broader and deeper realizations by meditating on spiritual "riddles" called "koans".  Shen Hsiu and followers would be continuing with their own mirror-wiping practice of Zen, emphasizing the nitty-gritty of sitting meditation and honing such practice and the resulting awareness by counting breaths, simply being aware of all the inhalations and exhalations, and focusing on and watching sensations and thoughts arise and go by during each sitting.  They would go on to influence the Soto school of Zen in Japan that organizes these mentally and physically demanding meditation retreats, with their characteristic zazen ("just sitting") marathons and audiences with the Zen master.

As mentioned above, may have to read again the whole book to recall what the rest of it was actually all about.  Had this vague sense that it went on to examine related practices especially of the Christian contemplative traditions or groups, drawing out insights in the process.  My own path took me from Christianity (i.e., the crash evangelical, "born again" variety in high school) to something much akin to the Soto Zen school's frequent zazens.  At one point, the sitting was interspersed with writing down each unique experience and visions that came with the counting of breaths.  But after reading Charlotte Joko Beck's book "Everyday Zen" a couple of years ago, was more and more enamored with the idea that this whole existence, with all the things that it could throw along the way, was both the practice and the path.  So, it has been a journey so far across various spiritual traditions in an effort to continuously ground being on this inner light, rather than a notion of belonging to or being a part of a single school of beliefs or thought.