Sunday Reflections: Excerpt from T'ai Chi Ch'uan: The Internal Tradition
Dispassionate Observation
Observing with no attachments to, or investment in, the outcome of an occurrence is dispassionate observation. There is no excess involved. By excess I mean opinions, judgments, meanings.
A person who dispassionately observes another can “sense” another’s thoughts and respond accordingly: “If I see the road upon which a man walks I know where he will turn.” There is no lag here between thought and occurrence, between the experience of energy and its movement; in fact, there is no emotion.
Change, in all its shapes, is a fundamental truth, That is to say it exists and is continuous, whether or not we as human beings want it to happen (and despite our intentions to manipulate its course). At times it appears to be separate from us; something out there is changing and we are not, or we are changing too slow or too fast and the process is painful. As we live and grow in our lives, change is an ever-present force, appearing sometimes as a friend, at others a foe.
Change can be experienced, and often is, as a source of suffering, a source of pain, whether it is burning your breakfast, getting in a car accident, or a death of a loved one. When change happens, our relationship to it is that of a victim. Or we can be bored, feel as though things are moving too slow, there isn’t enough going on, change isn’t happening fast enough.
So, things don’t happen in the way we want them to, or if they do, it is at the wrong time. People don’t act the way we want them to act. When we are in a hurry, all the traffic lights are red. So… here we are living our lives, doing our work, being in relationships, all the while buffeted by the winds of change. We would be happy if only things changed the way we wanted them to. The problem with this approach is that it puts responsibility for our being happy on something we view as separate from ourselves. This is the role of a victim. If we adopt this position it affects (and creates) everything we do, or don’t do. We avoid things we think will hurt us, and seek those things that will give us pleasure. This at first glance may appear to be a normal, healthy way to live. Yet constantly avoiding pain and seeking pleasure can turn into an unsatisfying and unfulfilling game. Even though we may get the new car, or new relationship, or pint of ice cream, we all know the car will break down, the relationship will change and the ice cream will soon be gone. Everything changes; change does not stop, it is bigger than we are.
Life is in constant change and is continually making demands. Answer the phone; let out the dogs; buy more ice cream. Whatever. Some demands we like, some we don’t. This is the pleasure/pain cycle again; if we get what we want we are happy and we act happy. If we don’t, we are unhappy and we act it; in fact, we try to spread it around!
T’ai Chi Ch’uan : The Internal Tradition by Ron Sieh [pages 44-45]
Through my many years of studying Buddhism and the Tao, I’ve struggled consistently with the idea of being dispassionate or detached. As we’ve just finished the lessons on evolving our order of consciousness from being attached to our (or others’) feelings and desires, there lies a growing necessity of understanding what it means to be shift our perspective from our emotions, opinions or ourselves into a perspective that encompasses and invites in the whole web of possibilities that reality has to offer. I often find myself wondering if it were far easier in the Buddha’s time to be detached, being born into a world without extreme consumerist conditioning, without aimless emotional politics buzzing in every pocket, and ultimately, without much stuff. Maybe it was easier thousands of years ago, however it is important to recognize that all things are susceptible to change except for the necessity of understanding change and one’s place in it.
Ron Sieh isn’t an ancient man, he lives in our very modern world that is brimful with change and intellectual concepts around every corner. His need for becoming a detached observer comes from the realm of martial arts, a place wherein thinking about how unhappy you are someone is throwing a punch at you may result in a bloody nose. While many of us are not martial artists, we are constantly “buffeted by the winds of change” and our reactions to them directly influence how well we can handle our lives. When change occurs in our lives, we may not end up with a bloody nose, but we may end up with new responsibilities, without a job, in debt, or even ostracized from society. Our attachments to how these things affect us mentally can mislead us into thinking that complaining about it or becoming emotional will help us in any way. I personally tend to waste plenty of time bitching about things and being upset rather than utilizing that very same energy towards resolving them. In the face of insurmountable odds, it feels easier to surrender to despair rather than detach oneself and begin anew.
Can we surrender to change and retain our autonomy? Or does change force us into constant reaction? Certain types of people cannot help but regress into their known comforts when change comes knocking at their door. It can feel easier to perceive oneself as the victim, and completely shut down. Perhaps my attachments have been dragging me down for so long, I’m blind to them. I’ve spent much of my time down in the emotional dumps, prescribing all sorts of substances and recreations for my self-diagnosed and self-pitying problems. Indeed, becoming a dispassionate observer can illuminate that perhaps it was myself bloodying my own nose repeatedly after the first few blows came from life itself.
Apologies if you were looking forward to a lesson this past week! For the previous lesson, I had split it into two parts and worked on each half for a week. This next lesson I’m trying a different approach: working on it for two weeks straight. While my pride demands I stick with the weekly schedule for lessons, I would be remiss to not experiment with my approach if it could result in higher quality work. Please look forward to my next lesson on Friday, the 29th of October. It will fit quite well with the Halloween theme, I guarantee it! In the meantime, I highly recommend the book today’s excerpt was pulled from. It is a short read, geared towards martial artists, yet the value from the author’s experience is priceless. Future lessons will derive from that very same material.