• 

• 

• 

• 

Like many, I see myself as healthy or sick. But maybe I’m neither; maybe I’m both.

I first dived into Zen Buddhism and Taoism more than 20 years ago. I practiced taichi every day for a few years until I developed lower back issues and I’ve been practicing zazen (zen meditation) a little more regularly. Taoism on the surface looks like alchemy, but I prefer to think of it as scientific theorizing using 3,000-year old vocabulary. Zen is not a religion. British philosopher Alan Watts (1915-1973) suggests it is a mental practice, more psychotherapy than creed. I practice Zen as such. I haven’t been inside the Mahayana Buddhist temple next door to my house (see above) but I haven’t been inside. I have the impression that Mahayana is closer to religion than is Zen.

So I’m not a religious Buddhist. I don’t read the scriptures nor use buddha beads. I do not adopt their view that black is the same as non-black as both are part of one reality. Readers familiar with the Taoist yin-yang symbol, which fans of Koreanovelas will recognize, might understand that black is inside white, and vice versa, and that each manifests in cycles. Western philosophers might see in yin-yang an apparent rejection of the law of non-contradiction.

There are benefits to stretching that law a little. In matters like health, it is indeed possible to say that one is healthy and not healthy while asserting that one is either SARSCoV2-positive or negative. The benefit of saying that one is healthy and not healthy is the attitude that it does not really matter. Health is accidental, but being present and real is essential.

I am not my achievements, I am not my failures either. I can cycle between winning and losing as I cycle between flu and feeling great. One’s life at the center is what matters, and even that life cycles through an even large circle. That’s not exactly reincarnation — which I do not buy. However, I do think of sleeping and waking as a kind of death and life cycle. Buddhists and Taoists think that past, present, and future are one reality that cycles, denying cause-and-effect as a result. But in reality everyone acts to bring about some effects. Karma or retribution at the core of Buddhist ethics is cause-and-effect on the moral sphere.

Changes occur all around me. But am I aware that I am a rock in a stream that could either stay put or tumble about? Most people are “caught up” in so many things and end up defining their worth by what they have, do, or achieve. They apply practices such as kaizen to achieve great goals and become rich, while others do the same and stay poor. Yet, whether one is rich or poor, the question that most matters is whether I could trust that rock enough to lay my foot on it. In other words, are you happy? Do you make others happy? Central to the practice of zazen is not to focus on one thing, not even a thought, to be aware of everything including the chaos and not be captured by it. That’s the beginning of being centered. The best thing I got from zazen was a heightened ability to concentrate without being obsessed about any one thing. Some would call this detachment, which is not the same as indifference.

I said earlier that one can deny causality when one believes in cycles. The problem as I see it is that the yin-yang symbol appears flat; but, one can spiral rather than circle around a spot. Still, I could use this flatness as a tool. I can refuse to give myself too much credit for anything, to feel excessively guilty or ashamed.

Readers may recall the Pepsi 349 scandal of 1992. Briefly, cash value printed on bottlecaps could be exchanged for real money if a number on the cap was drawn from a controlled pool. The problem was Pepsi printed hundreds of thousands of P1M bottlecaps with the uncontrolled number 349, and announced that number by mistake. Suddenly thousands of people were claiming P1 million each! Some poor people from the provinces were known to have sold all their property to buy air tickets to Manila in order to claim their prize. Riots, lawsuits, even bombings of Pepsi trucks were in and out of the headlines for the next 14 years. Although Pepsi eventually won in court, in the Philippines the brand remains far behind Coca Cola to this day.

What would I have done had I gotten a 349 bottlecap? Would I feel entitled to the full reward as many people did? Would I hold on to the bottlecap then join a class action suit? Or would I have settled for a P500 goodwill compensation offered by Pepsi? I asked myself that question in 1992. It was obvious that a genuine error was committed, the payouts were too large, the cause-and-effect picture was too complicated, and I believed Pepsi would eventually win in court, which it finally did in 2006.

The people who sued believed Pepsi was the cause of their misery. They gave the company too much credit for what they felt, and then promised themselves shame and guilt if they did not fight.

Most causes and effects connect as a web rather than a linear chain. We simplify to linear by ignoring minor causes or making assumptions to avoid information overload. The slippery slope is dangerous because it depends on assumptions about unseen causes. Indeed, all cause-and-effect relationships are incomplete. Obsession over “getting it right” may be behind anxiety, despair over it leads to depression. Imagine a ball on the sea calmly bobbing up and down over the waves. The ball is not a fatalist; it is not indifferent or unaffected, but its acceptance of chaos allows it to act calmly. A calm mind is better able to solve problems.

The fact that my thinking is part of the web always makes me a part of any problem relevant to me. If I died tonight all my current problems would cease to be a problem. Sometimes, sleeping over it opens a new angle on a problem. That’s one way to see sleep as death and waking up as reincarnation.

When things normalize in this part of the world I might pay a visit to the Buddhist temple next door.