The Art of Wonder: Curiosity and Its Place in Compassion

Edward, our second son at age 8 stayed home from school on Friday with a stomach bug. I noticed at about mid-point in the day, that in almost six hours he never ceased asking questions. His endless inquiries "(I have a question!) were about the world, the past, the future and the mechanics of illness. There was no boundary to his wonder, only the boundary that I could not meet each question with an answer. Siri comes in handy in moments like these. But what is more fascinating to me is the freedom to take a full morning just to explore all of the things he wanted to know about but doesn't. 

In 1649 Descartes, a French Philosopher, wrote an essay called Passions of the Soul: an attempt to categorize passions, one of the three things that humans have that allow us to respond to the outside world. The other two are appetite and the senses. Passion, defined by Descartes as “those perceptions, sensations or emotions of the soul which we refer particularly to it, and which are caused, maintained and strengthened by some movement of the spirits”. I first categorized this definition as less body-based, but anyone who experiences passion knows it is very much of the body. The sixth chapter of Passions of the Soul unites introduces wonder as "the first of all passions" illuminating Edward's place as being endlessly curious, testing his inquiring mind (and mine) for hours. 

Descartes writes: 

6. Wonder and GenerosityPerhaps the most distinctive of the passions that Descartes identifies, however is the one that involves no evaluation of its object: wonder [admiration] merely presents its object as something novel or unusual. As such, wonder produces no change in the heart or the blood, which would prepare the body for movement. But it does involve the motions of the animal spirits through the brain and into the muscles, thereby fixing an “impression” of the object in the brain. And that explains the function of wonder: to “learn and retain in our memory things of which we were previously ignorant” (AT XI 384, CSM I 354). It is our response to those features of the world worthy of our consideration – something useful both for the preservation of the mind-body union and for the soul itself in its pursuit of knowledge. Descartes's understanding of wonder may well recall Aristotle's famous dictum that philosophy begins with wonder. But wherever it begins, Descartes certainly does not think it should end there. Wonder can become excessive, and make us crave novelty simply for its own sake. Wonder is only functional if it prompts us to resolve it in the satisfaction of knowledge.
Another distinctive passion Descartes describes is generosity [generosité], which produces a kind of self-directed wonder, or esteem, grounded in our recognition “that nothing really belongs to us other than the free disposition of our volitions,” along with sensing “in ourselves at the same time a firm and constant resolution to use them well” (AT XI 446, slightly altered from CSM I 384). It is this passion that seems to be the keystone for “the pursuit of virtue,” in particular because it “serves as a remedy against all the disorders of the passions” (AT XI 447, CSM I 385). And although generosity is a perception directed at the self, combining a knowledge of what is truly important in and for ourselves with the will to act on the basis of that knowledge, it seems to generate like esteem for others: generous people do good without self-interest, are courteous, gracious and obliging, and live free from contempt, jealousy, envy, hatred, fear and anger for others. The key seems to be that generous people “are entirely masters of their passions” (AT XI 448, modified from CSM I 385).

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD2Descartes.html)

How curious that he couples wonder with generosity, and I love that generous people are "masters of their passions". Compassion asks for both. Compassion, the act of caring for the happiness of others (H.H. Dalai Lama http://www.dalailama.com/messages/compassion) invites us to wonder about others and give of ourselves for another person's well being: generosity. Compassion invites to ask and to care. It is that simple. "How are you" is a familiar starting place. Compassion invites us to say "I want to know about you because I care." In my hurried world, mindfulness reminds me to listen more compassionately to that answer, and to ask the next question with connection and relevance. Listening is a much a part of wonder as asking the question. If I care about the happiness of others, I know that their happiness is greater if they know I am present, mindful and listening.

Therefore:

Wonder leads me to curiosity. Curiosity leads me to ask with a generous heart, and a generous heart teaches me how to be more compassionate. All of these human gifts and experiences are innate to living with the heart and mind of a child. As children, we are by nature curious. We are by nature inclined to wonder. We are by nature generous and compassionate beings. And, now at 44, tumbled in and out of the adult world where we forget many things we knew as children (like where the fairies live) I am working on remembering what it is like to have a heart and of a child. Thank goodness I have an 8 year-old and a 9 year-old to remind me.

I want to be a master of compassion, too. And so this multi-year study of compassion begins with glimpses back at the great thinkers of our histories. Much of my exploration will be based in how compassion is expressed in philosophy, religion and art. I will study the collection of works of art from the Crow Collection of Asian Art as catalysts and purveyors of compassion. I will learn from great masters of compassion found in the arts of Asia: Buddha, Tara, Guanyin, Avalokitesvara, Vishnu, Krishna and so many others. I invite you to learn with me, because we will learn more learning together. And when I ask you how you are, know that I am truly listening.

Old Dead Tortoise

“How long have you been draining the lake?” I asked watching two whirlpools (one larger than the other) on the west side sucking brown water forcefully into white PVC pipes that sat threaded under the road just for this purpose.

The Foreman replied “Since January 1st”. By my count that’s 47 days. Today we are at water’s edge studying the engineering of this plan and troubleshooting something stuck on one of the drains. It was (that is to say it no longer is) a large, armored tortoise now dead and capping the drain to get to the bottom of things, namely the lake, in order that long-needed repairs on the dam could begin.

The House Manager asked for the role of Tortoise Remover and she grabbed her hoe and headed down the bank. She expertly pulled on his massive shell, fighting his dead weight and the draw of the water around the scaly creature. It was clear he’d been in this lake a long time (the kind of time tortoises have) his shell a cross section of settlement and algae and crust.

This tortoise was dead, just passing along as he has for decades and pulled into an unexpected unintentional trap: the one that drains water and not turtles. She pulled on him several times until his carcass was more than half-way on the shore. I wanted to get closer, but close was close enough. Meeting this creature that is more dinosaur than amphibian in its death state from several yards away was close enough.

Thirty years. That’s how long it’s been since the lake was made. This process is the first time they’ve attempted to drain the lake. As a result, thirty years of time are exposed inch by inch. Dead fish are snatched up by hawks. Snakes retreat. Turtles drown. It is a sloughing.

After lunch we walked around on the north side of the lake where most of the water has receded. An old, nature-made creek from another time is clearly visible running through the bottom of this man-made lake-in-draining. Eerie. The water is clear and fresh, free from the layers of lake and time, bright in the sunshine this little creek hasn’t seen in 30 years. How odd that creeks have memory.

I spotted a little black head. Water Moccasin. I was sure of it. Where would the nests and families and packs of snakes go as the water pulled back crackled earth and old cypress roots? Well to the creek to be sure. I stepped off of the dock, new Saucony tennis shoes sinking in the layers of silt and pine needle. It was time to face this snake, this monster of my youth, and fearful no more. With closer views I recognized tiny feet and a round shell. Turtle. Baby Turtle. Playing and swimming and sliding along this old creek, oblivious of it’s past or a future. I relaxed a little bit and went back to sit with my friend. No snakes today. 60 degrees in February and I will choose to believe they are still sleeping through winter. At least for now.

I study the lake. Or the place where the lake was. An old oar sticks up in the drying silt. I see a bucket or two, several tires and tree stumps and logs, softened by years of seasons. This landscape: the one at the bottom of a lake is one I only know through the few times I’ve gone lake swimming: tentative toes squishing in mud and lake weed. Today is different. Exposure to sun and air created wide cracks and crevices. Drain the water and we have something new. A new place to study. It’s not ugly or scarred: it’s a fascinating exposure to an underbelly ecosystem we may not get to see again in this lifetime.

I am here on a retreat with my leadership coach and it occurred to me this afternoon that I, me, this human just days away from crossing the threshold to forty-four, am the lake. I am the lake composed of layers of silt and history, old buckets and dead turtles. I am the lake with little streams inside of me finding old patterns and memories I don’t even know I have.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about being a human being is the opportunity to compose a life and change a future. I can imagine this sloughing within me: an exfoliation of the old to expose the new.

If I am the lake then stress or “being stressed” is the Old Dead Turtle blocking the drain. Stress is just a thing that blocks us from the real work. Stress for me is imagined: an interpretation of the way I think things are. Blockages trigger stress reactions. I can feel blocked from speaking, being heard, getting “my” way, seeing someone else’s point of view, criticizing, wanting, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like it’s not fair: all are triggers to many ways of responding.  It is the moment after the trigger that matters the most. The moment after the trigger can happen three ways:


1.     No action: allow the issue to sit (in this example the turtle continues to block the drain): some water gets through but it is diseased, poisoned, and the lake doesn’t drain

2.     A reaction (imagine trying to push the dead turtle through): more negative energy is created, more hurt, less forgiveness

3.     A change (find the hoe, move the turtle, drain the lake) the change will feel unfamiliar and new but finding the new way of being in new practices takes time

In my forty-fourth year, I want to change a future: my future. I am listening and responding to the “who” that I am and thinking about how others hear me. I want to sculpt my language and saturate my being in compassion and forgiveness in a new lake with new water. 

I am more aware of the layers of life and memory: the memory creeks are there as a part of me, but the debris and detritus that were making me sick are gone. It will take a while to fill this lake and there is much work to do. Breakdowns will happen. Fish will die, but dead fish will sustain young birds. Baby turtles will glide down stream and some will fight the current. It’s all there in this life: hopes and disappointments, mistakes and growth, death and rebirth and they are all but a moment. 

I am the lake and I choose something new this year. I will listen, write, meditate, pray, read, learn and teach. I will spend more time with my family. I will spend more time taking care of this body that carries me through this life. I will look for focus and abandon distraction. I will find patterns to turn into practices and I will repeat them over and over and over again until they are part of this new lake.

A Sign of Change

A Mindful Advent: A Mindful Calendar

As I look at the next three weeks I've realized there are 21 events in as many days, a handful social, most work-related, all wonderful opportunities to be with friends and colleagues. The season has begun. It used to launch with the arrival of Margaret Crow's Crane Christmas Card very properly hand-addressed on the day after Thanksgiving. Now it is the memory of how thoughtful she was to be the first to exclaim her hope that we would all have a very Merry Christmas. 

Our plans are a weaving of new and old traditions, familiar faces in all the right places. So, as we continue this journey together of finding the space for quiet anticipation in these days of jolly cheer, know that the real work is to find the litte moments that we and our children will remember the most. I'll do my best to make it to these many and wonderous occasions, but I am going to do so with a new awareness for how my being there is really being there: awake and alive, listening. 

First, I am not going to worry this season of waiting and patience about being late. We will get there when we get there. Friends understand, and this season of love is not a time to be hard on ourselves. I will work on compassion for the effort to arrive when I can and leave when I need to. The compassionate host understands. Just being is enough. As simple as the in breath and the out breath: all we have to do amid this list and that one is just breathe and just be. All is well. And all is well. 

I am going to really listen and be present for the people I am with. This moment, not the gifts or the frolic, this moment with this amazing person is the one that matters. As with works of art in a large gallery, the moments of really studying just two or three on a tour are the richer, more rewarding experiences. Instead of the slow art tour this Christmas season, I'm taking the slow-friend tour: I'm setting aside small talk for bigger, more meaningful connections. I want to be there, in new more mindful ways as my gift to the people I will meet, and a gift to myself. 

And as I cross this landscape of really being with the people I am with, I hope to also give myself the gift of One New Friend. I was once endearingly called a Collector of Friends, and I hope to create a new friendship this December: someone I will know and learn from and with for the rest of my life. I can secretly call them my Advent Friend. 

So, in this quest to be mindful and quiet, I recognize that we live in this world of engagements. The real world is busy, but as with mindfulness, we have to learn to quiet the mind in a very busy environment. Simple techniques like mini-meditations at the valet stand, on elevators, in lines and just in a corner for a short moment will remind me of this work toward a Mindful Advent: one little breath at a time. Join me as we explore the beauty in quiet: the beautiful interactions between loved ones and colleagues, the exquisite glow of a Christmas Tree, the love and compassionate hospitality put into creating these parties and the gift of more time to be with each other. Join me in that celebration. 

A Mindful Advent: Please Wait, Here

Be serious. What's to laugh at? Advent has begun and its real meaning is so far from the Black-Friday today's Cyber-Monday it's hardly funny. So what is the moniker for Advent?

By definition of time and purpose, Advent is twenty-six days of waiting and expectation: a reason to do the exact opposite of what commercial culture asks us to do: pause. Please wait, here.

But we don't. How can we possibly pause with email reminders of greater discounts and hours and one more day to spend more and save less. Or we can spend less time going there, all of the places they tell us we need to go and spend more time...Here.

Please wait, here. Here in this moment. If we are really listening to the reason for this season of Advent, we are listening to a request to pause, wait and think. We are asked to wait for the news of a bright star, a mother, a father and a Baby. Just wait.

Waiting is the best kind of meditation. A call to be still, to center your mind and remember to breathe.   The wait brings us the quietest moments of our day: in line, waiting to be next, in a queue on a call, waiting for a human, in bed, waiting for sleep to come. Quiet the mind and know that all you really have to do in this moment of is be present and breathe. The lists will get shorter and the worries will dissipate. Real meaning comes when we are focused and calm.

Like every sunrise, What Child is this we are waiting for? This Boy-Teacher who carries love and compassion in his future, like other teachers before him and others after him, he is just a human, living in truth, putting care and concern for others first and teaching us how to love. And this month, this season of Advent we wait for him so we can begin to Listen.

Please Wait, Here. 

A Mindful Advent: One Candle

Watchful waiting, a mindful Advent. If we are truly awake and alive our December is one of pause, gratefulness and peace: one of realizing how precious it is to have these days anticipating one coming or another.

It begins with the light of one candle. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." [John 8:12]  
As a seeker of the sunrise, this first light is cherished, especially on the coldest mornings of the year. This first light is the promise of today, of warmth, hope, a calling and a coming, as it is every morning and in this Advent. Ever-present, as it is on this first day of Advent, as "continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way" [Daffodils, William Wordsworth Longfellow]  this light says "Yes, I am here, I am coming. Be peaceful". 

Be peaceful. I have been studying about mood lately: how mood informs our capacity for the possibility of our lives. This Advent we can choose a mood of hope or one of despair. And as we learned in Fr. George Luck's poignant sermon this morning at St. Matthew's Cathedral Church: "Hope only comes when we are ready for a change."

Be peaceful. Be ready. be prepared: prepared for a different season of Advent. We have the gift of 27 days. I am hopeful this Advent will be different. 

I am hopeful this Advent will be simple: as simple as the age-old practice of lighting a candle. One candle. The one that lights the beautiful faces of children, the one that lights our table, our homes, our temples and churches. This universal practice is the start of a change: a glorious change in all of us. Light one candle for us: knowing that the dawn of a change is coming. We are aware and we will be ready. 

The Mindful Detox

On September 7, 2015 I began, with a small group of friends, an elimination cleanse foregoing processed sugar, coffee, gluten, dairy and alcohol. I paired this effort with a new meditation practice we started three months prior at water's edge at White Rock Lake. A daily practice of mindfulness opens up new worlds for what is possible with focus and clarity. You see the places where chaos is and chaos isn't. My detox started in my mind. 

Eating in healthy ways has been easy--as long as I stay prepared with fresh foods and nutrient-rich options. Each morning as we sit with the rising light of day, I am called back to this work: this work of being with myself and taking a new layer of my health on. It's a thick layer, but one wanting to be less, wanting to be less-inflamed, less allergic and more energetic, nimble and capable to do all of the things I want to do. I believe it is the mindfulness that is making this possible. 

About two weeks into the cleanse I started listening to the wildly popular book: Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,". I kept my distance from this topic, seemingly too challenging for me, by not reading it but listening to during my morning commute. Twenty minutes here, twenty minutes there can't hurt, right? Sure, I might try some of these things, but I am just going to dip an ear in and out, and well, it's not a bad listen. 

Kondo reached me through osmosis, or hypnosis or some unexpected osis. It started three Saturdays ago with the garage. It was a deep dive cleanse: focus, resolve and move on. We hauled trash to the trash, Goodwill to the Goodwill, we categorized and purged. I didn't spend time fretting that I actually found items (many) set aside for goodwill the last time we made efforts to de-clutter. I went fast and fastidiously so. No time for sentiment. Three hours later we sprayed down the inside, revealing a concrete color I didn't know,  and driving into the garage is now a pleasurable, mindful and clear experience. 

This joy seeped into my house, and the next purge was with the boys' room: I completely emptied it out: to every last foot-piericing lego. We removed the large clutter-magnet shelves and told the boys to pick a small number of toys to bring back into their room. They absorbed our energy, and surprisingly for the first time there were no tears and grabbing back the treasures of their lives. We picked out a paint color together, removed the dust-gathering plantation shutters and made it a room of their own. We took four carloads to Goodwill. 

In the second weekend, I scanned and de-cluttered every cabinet in the kitchen and bathrooms, categorizing collections I didn't even realize I had. We gave more away. And with Kondo's call to acknowledge the life these objects have had with us, and let them go off into the world to other places this detachment was easy. And cumulative. The more we worked the more possibility I saw for how this new way of being felt: freeing, possible and clear. 

I went through all of my jewelry. Forty-three years of jewelry. I took the pieces I don't need anymore to the office and relished in watching my colleagues play and try and take. It was so joyous. And I haven't looked back. 

With the help of a friend, I boxed 17 boxes of books on Art and Asia: beautiful books both from my adventures in learning and from the gifts of my parents and professors--most unseen and unopened for the last fifteen years. They have gone into the library at the museum on long-term loan. They have a new life in a new world, with new seekers of wonder. 

I sold the large rug in our bedroom: a landscape for dust and a big piece we'd kept not because we loved it, but because it was, well, big. After a swift sell on a Facebook estate sale site, a darling young lady, soon-to-be married, practically skipped down the driveway as we helped her move it to her car. "It's perfect" she said. We smiled, thinking of our own expression of the same sentence when we found it just after we married almost eleven years ago. Yes, it was. 

There is still more to do, but there always will be. This is a new practice, too. I will keep meditating and continuing to bring the balance of pause into each shelf and closet. And will will think twice when I stop at that estate sale down the street or as I stand looking at a silent auction item I think I can't live without. It's a new day, and I have a new living room and den, the art completely re-installed with a sensibility for less. And how fulfilling to create new attachments to less by letting the more go. 

Namaste.