Teaching: Day 9 – Integrating

“While I have been a student of Buddhist thought for over two and a half decades, it has always remained something of a puzzle for me to work out as to how to integrate Buddhist epistemology into my workplace — academia.” — Glenn Hudak (Pace University, NYC – 1998)*

This is indeed a huge challenge – even more so than integrating Buddhist epistemology into our everyday lives outside of work. By ‘Buddhist epistemology‘ Dr. Hudak speaks of something distinctly other than our Western, Cartesian, Mind-Body, Self-Other, Subject-Object epistemology (way of knowing). Quoting an Alaskan Native educator’s words, he speaks instead of being “receptive,” “connected,” and “part of all that is.”

The platform for Hudak’s concerns about being a Buddhist in academia is a review of a book by Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh called “Cultivating the Mind of Love.” Hudak does a lovely job of letting the book speak directly, telling of its alternating chapters on love and Buddhist epistemology – from poetry to philosophy, slowly unweaving the two and yet showing their interconnectedness. Nhat Hanh speaks of how love as a concept can be clung to just as much as we in academia seem to cling to so many of our concepts – and how it prevents us from actually loving the person behind the concept, or seeing the truth behind our words. “The finger that points to the moon is not the moon.”

The point is that in love as much as in life (and most of all in academia it would seem), we can get caught up in concepts and words and miss the experience itself. Concepts and words can be good for understanding reality to some extent, but we have to know when to let them go and just be – receptive… connected… one with all that is... It is when we do this that we live in the ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual realm.’

“Spirit is that which transcends the known, the expected, even the ego and the self. It is the source of hope.” – Dwayne Hubner (1996 – from the Hudak essay)

It is when we give up spirit, that which is beyond, that our clinging to concepts solidifies into dogma. And this is possible with all kinds of concepts and knowledge, including Buddhist ones. Such solidification, it is wrongly believed, will give one certainty with regard to the world. The antidote is to learn to live with uncertainty. But, Hudak notes, even living with uncertainty can become a dogma when we attach “a telos – a grand purpose – and that purpose is to cure.”

And notice further, once a liberation epistemology becomes a cure, then like some precious drug it is possible to barter this drug as a possession within current relations of power. That is, for example, we, the teachers of teachers, may become experts on liberation, on how to cure suffering; as such, we may gain prominence in society, earn a healthy salary, gain respect from our peers, and in short, live a comfortable secure (certain!) lifestyle.

Of course, in that security we are cut off from the flux of reality: the ever-changing emotions and thoughts of our loved ones, the flow of society and culture. Eventually our security crumbles, as our drug loses its potency and we are no longer capable (adaptive, nimble, curious) of finding a replacement.

Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us to return to our friends, those who share a common pursuit. They are our connection with reality.

Integrating such teaching into my own fledgling career as an educator seems imperative. Yet I am surely amongst the worst of those who cling to words – alone, in my office, in my car, in my home, in my head. Perhaps I am too hard on myself. In any case the point will be one of balance: using words to teach, to write, to navigate the great labyrinths of academia, and then setting them down to listen, to experience it all, with others, and to share. More importantly, or at least of equal importance, will be the ability to fully integrate the epistemology, or way of knowing, of Buddhism – knowing myself vis a vis my students, colleagues, campus, and so on; rather than just returning to it at opportune moments when the fury of concepts and tangled words has calmed down. And if Dr. Hudak’s experience is any indication, this will be a mighty difficult process.

* from a Book Review of: Addicting Epistemologies? An Essay Review of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Cultivating the Mind of Love” by Thich Nhat Hanh – Educational Researcher, Vol. 27, No. 9. (Dec., 1998), pp. 43-47. (accessible at this address if you have JSTOR access)