Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Fourteen

Holding onto the One

Another type of meditation practice is known as shou-i, or, “holding onto the One”. Harold D. Roth describes this practice as

---holding fast to the One entails retaining a sense or a vision of the Way as the one unifying force within phenomenal reality while seeing this reality in all its complexity.

(Original Tao, Harold D. Roth trans and commentary, Chapter 3, part XIII)

Whereas sitting and forgetting was about finding a quiet place to sit and ignore the world around you so you can focus on how your mind operates, holding onto the One is something that you try to do every other moment of your waking life. It is about reminding yourself to be aware of your surroundings and look for the subtle forces at play in it. If you remind yourself to look for subtleties, you will eventually begin to see them. And when you do, you will find yourself being able to achieve interesting results.

 

Let me give an illustrative example. Where I work I was once approached by a student who wanted the Library to install public computer printers that were able to print on both sides of a sheet of paper---to help the environment. I'm too low on the food-chain to have any influence, but I explained to him a strategy for getting his suggestion implemented.

 

I told him that there would be no sense at all trying to make a suggestion to any individual manager, as it would be ignored. Primarily, this is because he would just consider this proposal extra work with no value to his career. The solution, therefore, would be to do all the work for the manager and to submit the proposal in a venue where it would be visible to the manager's boss. The way to do this, therefore, was for him to write up a detailed proposal outlining the costs involved plus a source for the new printing equipment. This meant the manager really didn't have to do any work. And instead of just sending this proposal to the person who managed the public printers, I suggested he send the suggestion to the Library “Question and Answer Board”. Since all of these submissions went directly to the Associate Chief Librarian---who then passed them onto relevant managers with her comments attached---it would be impossible for the relevant manager to simply ignore, because it would be coming from his boss instead of just a student.

 

I outlined this strategy by first asking the student “Do you really want to get these printers changed?” That is because a lot of times people just want to vent, but can't be bothered to do any heavy lifting. The guy surprised me by saying “yes, I do”. And he also surprised me by actually following my suggestion. Two weeks later, I saw his detailed proposal posted on the Q and A board, and by the end of the semester the printers had been upgraded to do double-sided printing.

 

Holding onto the One has obvious similarities to Buddhist “mindfulness”. Both of them require reminding yourself that you exist and are an observer to your existence. Both are against “losing yourself in your delusions”. But holding onto the One has the added emphasis on looking for the subtle “Daos” that exist in our environment. In the example I gave above, I was explaining to the student the Dao of bureaucracy and how he could use my knowledge to exert some kung fu on it.

 

.........

 

Learning to hold onto the One is also a mental project, just like sitting and forgetting. You have to be aware of what your mind is doing to be able to really see what is happening in the world around you. You have to be calm to see what is in front of you. You also need to be aware of your biases if you are going to have some sort of objective viewpoint. So holding onto the One is also a process of learning about how your mind operates. And just as sitting and forgetting has potential dangers, so does holding onto the One.

 

If not done properly, the practice of constant careful observation can lead to an inability to ever relax and simply “be in the moment”. That too is important. In Japanese Zen this ability to just act without thinking is known as “mushin no shin” or “mind without mind”. It is an integral part of martial arts training, but it also blends into all of human life. To give an example, while sparring in taijiquan (ie: “push hands” or tuishou) sometimes I have had the experience of “just acting” totally without any forethought. The result is often that someone flies through the air, or, gets pinned with a joint lock. This is an interesting phenomenon, but paradoxically, to understand it you have to be willing to make the effort to hold onto the One and carefully observe the way your mind operates.

 

Consider the act of speaking or writing. Did you choose the particular word you just spoke? Perhaps you did, but how often do you stop and make the time to do that? In writing this book there have been times when I had to stop and think about exactly what word I wish to write. And, of course, I am constantly looking at the text and making changes to “polish it” to the point where it will be published. But even when I stop and make changes, the words just “pop” into existence. Again, think about the act of choosing. Did you choose the word you use? If so, did you “choose to choose” that word? Or did you just act? And even if you did “choose to choose”, did you “choose to choose to choose”? The point I am trying to make is that even in the most carefully contrived and worked-over human decision, there is ultimately an experience of a thought or action just popping into existence.

The unipede said to the millipede, “I go hippity-hopping along on my one foot but barely manage. How is it, sir, that you can control myriad feet?”

“It's not so,” said the millipede. “Haven't you seen a person spit? When he spews them forth, the big globs are like pearls, the droplets are like a mist. All mixed up together, the number that falls is immeasurable. Now, I just move by my natural inner workings but don't know why it is so.”

Zhuangzi, “Autumn Floods”, part 2, Mair translation

It is possible for someone trying to hold onto the One to forget this fact and change from observing the way things really are to fretting about how things should be, or, how things come about. This gets in the way of the spontaneous generation of new actions and thoughts. This situation is like the story of the centipede that was found paralyzed by the side of the road. When asked what happened, she answered by saying that someone asked her how she could control all her different legs. Once she started thinking about the question, she lost the ability to walk. She had succumbed to “analysis paralysis”.

 

Don't let that happen to you!

 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!