Ornoth

So we have a global health crisis on our hands. The COVID-19 virus has eluded even our harshest attempts at containment, and there’s no prospect of either a preventative or treatment, other than for associated diagnoses such as pneumonia.

With an unknown number of infectious but asymptomatic carriers wandering around, Inna and I have taken the only measure anyone can do, which is complete social self-isolation.

No more Monday or Wednesday meditation groups, and I prematurely ended my brief stint as a CMU brain research subject. Inna has cancelled a business trip, two seminars in Austin, and plans to take the salt cave women’s group she leads online.

We don’t plan on leaving our apartment except for safely isolated outdoor activities like hikes, or emergency grocery runs. We’re pretty well stocked with supplies, having each made major trips before our lockdown.

Thankfully, cycling will still be a good option for me, although I’ll curtail rides of more than two hours, rather than replenish at the usual convenience store.

It’s very reminiscent of the widespread lockdowns following the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, and the shelter-in-place order that followed the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. It’s the same scope of disruption, and the same sense of separation from general society.

In the meantime, the stock market—which had been on a tear so far this year—has experienced unprecedented volatility. Like a good long-term investor, I’ve sat tight and gritted my teeth, and even made one opportunistic buy, but it’s nerve-wracking watching your money vaporize. Where I had been crowing about my growing wealth in February, in little more than two weeks I’ve experienced massive losses that bewilder the imagination.

Between the stock market’s gyrations, the fear of illness, the social isolation, the wholesale cancellation of all group activity, and the drama surrounding the Presidential primary elections, there’s been a surfeit of emotion to process, even for someone as stolid as myself.

No one likes uncertainty, and no one likes anxiety, but the situation is unlikely to change for several weeks, if not months. Rather than venting that discomfort in random ways (like a completely pointless run on bottled water), it’s important that each person discover how to accept their anxiety and be okay with it.

For me, my meditation practice provides a reassuring guide: acknowledge my feelings and my fears about the future, then take refuge in what’s happening at the present moment, because none of those fears have manifested in my present-day, lived experience. Life really isn’t that bad, so long as you have the mental discipline to stop the mind from fabricating and getting lost in wild doomsday scenarios.

And I’m blessed to be sharing my space with a partner who also manages her internal state with great insight and wisdom. Viewed from a less fretful perspective, this is an opportunity to deepen our relationship while also getting some goddamned housecleaning done!

Be well, my friends.

I spent yesterday in a one-day retreat held by my Kalyana Mitta (spiritual friends) group. I wanted to share some notes on that topic.

Firstly, I should point out how honored I am to be a part of the group. We have become a close-knit family of well-intentioned, caring, serious practitioners who are willing to be completely open with one another. I’m honored to receive their friendship.

Meditating with this group is a delight. The sense of support and comradery is palpable, and in the two years since the group began, my practice has blossomed. Yesterday’s retreat was no different, and my deepest appreciation goes out to the folks who attended.

With that aside, I did have a couple interesting thoughts…

The first was an insight that might benefit practitioners with limited indoor space for walking meditation. Modify a gym-style treadmill so that it runs at one half mile per hour (or less), and voilà: the Buddhist walking meditation treadmill!

The other memorable incident happened at lunch. A thoughtful yogi brought a vegetable juicer and proceeded to juice some vegetables. Since I wasn’t eating anyways, I spent the lunch period meditating. But after spending the morning in silence, the noise of the juicer struck my ears as sudden, loud, and incredibly violent. Like someone was puréeing baby harp seals, but the blender was having a hard time breaking up their hard little skulls. That’s what it sounded like to me…

But overall it was a wonderful day of sitting and sharing aspirations and intentions with good friends. Really!

I actually have more to say about last spring’s two-day retreat, which was the KM group’s first retreat. For some reason, I held off posting about it, but I want to make sure a few of my notes are saved for posteriority… (sic)

Although it was only one night, it was actually my first overnight/residential retreat, which seems noteworthy.

Although the plan was for all eleven of us to stay under one roof, in the end it was just the hosts, myself, and one other guy. I was disappointed when my expectations for the weekend weren’t met.

At one point, while listening to a pre-recorded guided meditation by Joseph Goldstein, it became apparent that a second version of his talk was playing very softly in the background, slightly out of sync with the main one.

We had another good laugh when the hostess’ kickoff message was interrupted by Joseph’s full-volume baritone announcing, “Where is your mind now?”. Apparently the recorded guided meditation had continued playing (mostly silently) in the background for a while.

Note: unannounced candid flash photography during a silent meditation retreat is probably suboptimal.

Also, given that people try to eat slowly and mindfully during retreats, we learned that corn on the cob really isn’t the easiest thing to eat daintily and in silence.

Overheard from the house next door: “Mom! I’m gonna sing MacArthur Park until you let me have a slice of pie!”

Our hosts’ house has squeaky hardwood floors. My thought process after hearing one series of creaks went something like this: The house is settling. Isn’t it settled enough already? Do houses get unsettled? People get unsettled when houses settle. Does the house get unsettled when its people settle?

During one meditation, I opened my eyes and noticed that the four men in the room were all meditating in the same position: hands folded covering their crotches. Meanwhile, the two women both had their hands palms up on their thighs. I think this signifies something.

Thirty years ago, I felt that the Who’s song “Behind Blue Eyes” really captured the essence of what it was like being a teenager in the 70s. The key lyric goes, “No one knows what it’s like to feel these feelings like I do… and I blame you!”

That adolescent Ornoth fell prey to a common misconception: that if life’s conditions are good, and there’s still suffering, then it must be someone’s fault. If that blame is aimed at oneself, then it’s internalized as self-hatred and depression; if it’s directed externally (as it was in my case) it manifests as judgmentalism, anger, and hatefulness.

These days, I realize that my emotions—even the highest highs and the lowest lows—aren’t the least bit unique to me. They’re an essential part of the human experience that everyone on the planet shares.

The analogy can be extended to human society as a whole. For millenia, Western culture told us that technological progress was the key to achieving control and happiness. If only our basic needs were guaranteed, it would usher in a new age of lasting happiness.

In today’s modern society, virtually all of our needs are met, as well as most of our merest whims. But there’s still suffering. If anything, there’s been increased hue and cry about, “How can it be that we have so much, yet we’re more unhappy than ever before?”

Most people are still stuck in the mode of looking for someone (perhaps themselves) to blame for their unhappiness, but an openminded person doesn’t have to look far to find the real causes: every one of us suffers with our inability to predict and control the world, plus the inevitability of old age, sickness, and death. Happiness isn’t having everything one wants; it’s accepting what one has, and understanding the very real limitations on what life can—and cannot—give us.

The Who might have gotten it wrong, but their contemporaries the Stones got it right: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

Every day, modern science progresses forward, making us a more technically advanced society. But when was the last time you heard about a major ethical breakthrough? We’re a 21st century people living with ethics that almost exclusively derive from the Middle Ages, biblical time, and the ancient Greeks.

Since the Industrial Revolution, individual occupations have gotten increasingly specialized. We now have farmers who only know how to grow soybeans, doctors who only know how to treat foot problems, and teachers whose only subject is ancient Chinese art. This increased specialization allows us to develop very advanced domain knowledge which would be unavailable to us if everyone was a generalist.

However, essentially no one has focused on and undertaken that same degree of specialization in ethics. There’s no financial incentive to study ethics. We, as a society, have decided that ethical development isn’t worth the investment, so we haven’t shown any real progress in morality since the Middle Ages, and our outlook on life shows a decidedly feudal flavor. For that same reason, there’s no one to turn to who can serve as ethical mentors, guides, or leaders for individuals who want to cultivate an ethical life.

The biggest questions of the day—abortion, stem cell research, cloning, human rights—are all ethical questions, and modern society, lacking a modern ethical framework, has no effective way of addressing them.

Some people look at our ethics in a very functional way. Our deep valuing of children, fairness, and compassion can be thought of as an evolutionary advantage: they helped ensure that our species survived.

One might well ask whether continuing our ethical development would be a further evolutionary advantage. Would we face man-made threats like acts of terror, environmental disaster, genocide, and nuclear destruction if our ethical development hadn’t been arrested prematurely?

Morality might seem pretty old-fashioned in these modern times, but at the same time, even the most cursory glance at our society shows the problems associated with the disregard of the ethical component of life.

I’m not advocating a proscriptive ethics mandated by an elite. We went through that in the feudal period, and it’s not appropriate for a modern, educated society. On the other hand, the problems associated with subjective and/or situational ethics are obvious. What’s needed is a concerted effort to explore our values and their implications, under the guidance of wise, open-minded, ethically literate leadership.