A Whole New World

I just finished reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth”.

I’m not a big fan of Eckie. Like Landmark Education, he cherry-picks chosen philosophical points from various and diverse lineages and presents them largely as his own thinking. But more irritating to me is his penchant for making bald, specious assertions without bothering to support them with any argument or evidence. So I’ve got issues with some of his stuff.

The problem is that when he takes the time to explain his thinking, some of it is actually very insightful. His writing tends to be very accessible to people, and he’s gathered a loyal following. And I’m glad if anyone can instill any kind of spiritual change in our modern society.

The new book has more insight and fewer unjustified sweeping conclusions. Taken largely from Buddhism, it delivers one of Buddhism’s more difficult concepts (non-self) in a pretty palatable way.

The book is largely a deconstruction of how the human ego works, and its causal linkage to our inability to find happiness. If that sounds like a tough slog, it can be, but Eckie’s good at taking such stuff and making it real for people, and he does a good job of it here.

Not that I think this is a book for the masses. He assumes a fair level of familiarity with philosophy, meditation, and self-knowledge. In my opinion, this is an awesome book for someone who is partway down the path; it’s definitely too esoteric for a complete neophyte.

I’m not going to summarize the book here, since it’s chock full of subtle but vital points. But here are just a few nuggets that struck home for me.

Here’s one that amused me, because Eckie came to the same conclusion I did about the Existentialists: they got it right, but then wrung their hands over it, rather than figuring out how to live an ethical life based on their beliefs. “Some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, such as Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce, recognized alienation as the universal dilemma of human existence, probably felt it deeply within themselves and so were able to express it brilliantly in their works. They don’t offer a solution. Their contribution is to show us a reflection of the human predicament so that we can see it more clearly.” Thankfully, at least one group took the next step in human ethical development.

Here’s Eckie’s summary definition of enlightenment. It boils down to pure truth, although it does kinda hide the important implications of achieving that state. “Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate.” As I said in this blog post, your life is not what you *think*.

Tolle’s definition of karma was somewhat interesting. According to him, karma consists of the deeply-ingrained patterns of thought that you developed in the past, combined with unconsciously acting those patterns out through your behavior. In short, karma’s kinda like Socrates’ “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He’s emphasizing the importance of evaluating your thought patterns and behavior in every moment.

“Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.” This is definitional; if you’re looking for happiness, that means you haven’t got it, and you never will get it until you stop looking and realize that it’s not something you find or aquire at some other point in time. Happiness is something you *are*, not something you find or acquire.

“When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do—and with it the quality of your life—increases dramatically. […] On the new earth, enjoyment will replace wanting as the motivating power behind people’s actions.” This is interesting, because it confirms that wanting is the source of suffering, which comes straight out of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. And it also points to the powerful joy to be found in enjoying the present moment. These are truths I have long lived by and can attest to.

Here’s a related observation about ego. “For the ego to survive, it must make time—past and future—more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment.” We are preoccupied with me, my potential, and my struggle to realize that potential. Every day, today—now—is perpetually viewed as nothing more than an uncomfortable interstitial state, a means to an end. It’s just the ego’s way of minimizing the importance of and distracting us from the all-important present moment.

Here Eckie addresses the question of how you set goals if you only live in the moment. “An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself *having* this or that are all static goals and therefore don’t empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an *activity* that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole.” In other words, goals should not be things you *become* or *acquire*, but things you *are* or *are doing*. That puts them in the present and also makes them immediately actionable.

Finally, I want to describe something that happened to me as I began to understand Tolle’s explanation of the mechanics of ego. Basically, everything finally clicked for me, and it wasn’t merely a revelation about ego and non-self.

Looking back, I’ve spent much of the past seven years in philosophical inquiry and increasingly-earnest Buddhist practise. I’ve read thousands of pages of both source material and scholarly discourse. I’ve listened to over a thousand Dharma talks. I’ve spent man-months in formal meditation, both in retreats and in daily practise.

Over that time, I’ve become increasingly familiar with the Dharma, and gradually incorporated it more and more into my life. However, the Buddhist concept of non-self never really sunk in until now.

And now that it has, I think I’ve finally reached a turning point. I *know* the Dharma. I may not know every last little detail, but I know a lot of it. I want to say *enough* of it. It suddenly struck me that—in one sense—I’ve come to the end of the path. There’s nothing more I need to learn from written canon or Dharma talks.

I get it.

That’s not to say that I have mastered its application. Knowing the mechanics of surfing doesn’t mean one can go out and do a fins-free snap off the top. Actually living the Dharma is a lifetime’s practise, and much more difficult than merely understanding it. However, I think I can say that I know everything I need to know. Now it’s just a question of applying that knowledge, which, trust me, is challenge enough!

Over-Valued

Huh. I was sorting through an electronic pile of refuse when I came across this little gem I wrote. Not sure how long ago.

Core values: corporations who think they’re important love them. Little do they know that in most cases they’re actually the kiss of death.

Think about it. When corporate leaders formulate a list of the company’s core values, they rarely think about how their employees actually behave; usually they’re thinking of how they *wish* their staff behaved. Even the guys and girls in the corner offices who are aware that there’s a difference between the two shrug it off, thinking it should inspire their workers and give them a lofty target to aspire to.

But when you are a worker bee and every day you see people violating the “core values”, then you come to have a lot of disdain and even contempt for that list and the people who dreamed it up it on their two-week Caribbean offsite. That attitude rapidly spreads throughout a company, and very effectively de-motivates even the most bushy-tailed college recruit.

What’s the alternative? How about taking a good, honest look at your company culture before etching those lofty values in brass? Make your values descriptive, not proscriptive. Maybe you’ll wind up with a core value of “We try to help our clients, even though they frustrate the hell out of us sometimes”. It’s not exactly a call to excellence, but at least it’s accurate, and that’s a lot less harmful than when a veteran shows the plaque to an eager and gullible new hire and says, “Yeah, we really don’t do that shit. Some manager just made those up.” I remember finding one such brass plaque at my first job, discarded on the floor in a storage closet.

In consulting, probably the single most important thing you learn is to manage people’s expectations. You always strive to under-promise and over-deliver, because doing more than someone expects makes you look like a hero, and doing less than someone expects causes doubt, mistrust, and contempt.

What surprises me is that senior managers never apply that expectation management lesson to corporate core values. Most companies set lofty, unattainable values that they never live up to, ensuring that any employee who believes in the core values winds up disappointed, crushing any enthusiasm they might have had. While the “leadership team” sits in the boardroom and wonders why they have morale issues despite the awesome core values the company stands for.

So if your company starts talking about core values, take a very careful look at whether they’re descriptive or wholly proscriptive, because the latter are guaranteed to cause trouble.