Deconstructing our World

A book I read somewhere stated that “animals live in an environment, humans in a world.” At the time I read it, I was skeptical of any statement that claimed some uniqueness for humans, but over time I have come to see it as containing a deep truth. We humans live in a world created from beliefs, mythologies, ideologies and fantasies; from memories of the past and anticipations of the future; from words, words and more words. 

Instead of merely being in time, we exist in a grid of time. A grid marked by hours, months and days. Instead of merely being in space, we live in a grid of space – most of us live at an address uniquely identified from any other in the world. 

On a spring morning, we read the news and our mind becomes obsessed with something that is happening on the other side of the country or the other side of the world. It blinds us to the sights, sounds, smells and textures of the world immediately available to our senses. Many of us spend more time thinking and talking about the news, shows and sporting events we’ve watched on television than we spend being aware of our immediate environment. 

What would it be to live completely in our immediate environment? I’m not sure it is even possible for a human. But what is possible is to cultivate mindfulness of our immediate environment and to make that part of our world.

A good deal of Eastern spirituality is about deconstructing this mental world and inhabiting the world that our senses present to us – living in it as fully as we can. Buddhism uses the term maya, which is often translated as illusion, for something like the way our mind creates a world, and we live in that created world as if it were the real world. A goal of Buddhism is to see through maya.

I am not out to say that this world, this mental artifact, is a bad thing. We humans have the ability to see what doesn’t exist and then make it exist. This is our unique talent, our great survival strategy. We are creative in ways that no other living things are. Yes, bees make hives and birds make nests and beavers make dams, but in comparison to the range, magnitude and flexibility of things we humans create, those are pretty meagre.

The problem with this world, as mentioned earlier, is that we can get so lost in it that we lose touch with the world presented to our senses. We live in our abstractions, or worse in our distractions. We can end up living on a mental map, rather than a real territory, and when constructed out of myths, dogmas, ideologies and such, the mental map may be a terribly inaccurate guide to any real territory.

Mindfulness is to spiritual naturalism somewhat what prayer is to Christianity. It is the central spiritual practice for many of us. In the more than 55 years that I’ve been practicing mindfulness, I have explored many different meditation and contemplation traditions. One tradition that is particularly pertinent to understanding how we construct our world, and how we can deconstruct it, is vipassana meditation. A central practice of this meditation is watching sensations and thoughts arise and pass away without reacting, clinging, or fighting against them. I think of it as being a cultural anthropologist of our own mind. 

Through this practice we can actively watch how our mental world comes into existence and how it entices us to attach ourselves to various thoughts and sensations. At the same time, in resisting this enticement, we learn how to stay mindful; to stay focused on the immediate and concrete rather than the abstract. 

This is not to say we should always stay in such a mind. Letting the mind wander around in its imaginings and abstractions is essential to creativity. But learning how to reign the mind in is a wonderful thing to know.

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The Tao Te Ching speaks of “returning to the root.” The root is our essence; it is the mind effortlessly being mind. An ancient commentary on verse 16 of the Tao Te Ching interprets the return as merely one stage in the unending life of the round. It states that “the empty and quiet is not the ultimate destiny, but that to which beings return to be reinvigorated for reemergence into life.” Things return to the root so they can come back to life and flourish.(1)

This is certainly my experience. I recently turned 73. My body is subject to all the aches and pains of old age. Yet, when I meditate, I feel as young as a spring day. I feel like a timeless maple tree with the sap rising up to let me flourish for yet another season, or in my case, for another day. It is a great joy.

In conclusion, it is as natural for a human to live in a world constructed of mental stuff, as it is for an animal to live in an immediate environment. This mental world can be a source of deep understanding and creativity, but it can also be an endless source of illusion, of maya. Mindfulness can help us see through maya, and see to the truth of our being.

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Notes:

1. This material is from the Ho-shang commentary as quoted by Ellen Chen in her translation with commentaries of the Tao Te Ching. Of the many translations of the Tao Te Ching I have encountered, this is my favorite and the one I would recommend to anyone looking for a good translation.