Post #61: The Perils of Going on Vacation

5 Sept. 2023

Who needs to be reminded that there is much to be said for taking a break sometimes from one’s workaday routines and making memories with one’s loved ones somewhere a little out of the ordinary? Do something different, see something new; nothing wrong. But there are hazards too. Monks never take vacations, so far as I know, though at some Zen monasteries, there is a tradition of suspending the rules for one day a year. That single day can wreak havoc enough; make it a week or two and you are asking for trouble.

In other words, my latest series broke, yet again. Traveling in the sense of getting from a to b does not agree with me much, especially when it involves flying or long car-rides, and by the time I made it to the other end this time and I was finally ready to sit, it was too late; I could not muster the fighting spirit that would have been required to get through the full hour. And as so many times before, alas, that first rent in the fabric quickly turned into a tear. How long it will take me to stitch things up properly again remains to be seen. Sigh.

In terms of mind-management more generally, taking a vacation looks like a mixed blessing to me as well. It really does have its benefits, for a few days at least, not to have much to do, to go to bed early and sleep long. The beach feels a bit odd in the rainy season, but it’s not without its drizzly charms, romantic even, making for an atmosphere that is congenial to love in a way that everyday life with its endless humdrum routines usually isn’t. So far so good.

But there are darker shadows looming in the background. The things awaiting me back home, for example—nothing too worrisome, but still unpleasant to contemplate. Of course I try not to think about them, to protect my time off by “staying in the here and now” as much as I am able. But I am not always able. Nor do I find the departure from my established daily habits particularly liberating, on balance—something I’ve known for too long to be surprised by it. There are the sittings that get wobbly, but also plenty of other things I normally do to keep body and mind together as much as possible: a mixed regimen of hot yoga, the gym, massages, and the sauna from which I rarely take a day off, so that a suspension of the whole structure does not work wonders for my moods or mental stability.

The meditation crowd tends to indulge in a fair amount of “mind over matter” thinking, and in a sense their take, though usually too one-sidedly optimistic, is in line with the orthodoxy: that we make the world with our thoughts—perhaps not in the sense that it would not exist without them, but that it would not be intelligible to us—is the guiding thought of the Dhammapada from its first lines on, and a kind of red thread for the practice from beginning to end.

At the same time, the relationship between mind and matter is very subtle in the Buddhist conception—so much so, as I have had occasion to admit before (see especially Post #56 on Heaven and Hell), that I am not at all sure I understand it even approximately. But what I can see clearly enough is that the relationship does not go in one direction only: the world as we know it may be a projection of the mind (as Schopenhauer also insisted), but physical processes in turn affect the mind much more than can be comfortable for us as supposedly autonomous beings. Skip a meal and watch yourself turn into a zombie…

If a ho-hum sugar low can transform you into a monster, or leave you a wretch incapable of making even simple decisions with confidence (meditation or not); if something so unbearably mundane can have such a deleterious effect all the way up the hierarchy of your mental functions, then what limit is there really to how much the mind might get upset, in every sense of the word, even in the ordinary course of life? Not for nothing did the Buddha present his insight into dependent origination as practically synonymous with the Teaching (Majjhima Nikaya 26.19, see especially Post #7). The world as we know it does not arise from the mind alone, but from an unfathomably complex matrix of causal conditions and interactions, mental as well as physical, whose intricacies we cannot trace, only outline, if that much.*

I do not mean to suggest that we are altogether at the mercy of these causal connections, mere passive playthings in a process we do not understand at all and over which we exercise no control whatsoever. If things were quite so dire, there would be little sense in speaking of a deliberate path through life. We do get choices enough, even if it may not be clear who or what is making them, or what exactly our freedom consists in. The exhortations of a Buddha or any other teacher would serve no purpose if we did not, to some extent at least, get to set our orientation if life, approximate and imperfect as our understanding may be of what it entails, practically or metaphysically, and incapable as we may find ourselves of measuring up to its demands, let alone of reaching the promised destinations it points out to us, even if we believe in them.

Like giant tankers on the high seas of life (see Post #13), our existences are too bound up with habits and too deeply embedded in causal constraints to be turned around with a quick flick of the wrist on the steering wheel, however much we may yearn for such sudden breakthroughs to redemption. Yet, for all the inertia that defines these behemoths or leviathans (would that we also shared their stability in massive storms), even their great bulk can be redirected. A new course may be charted right away; seeing the change through, however, especially when it requires a drastic reorientation or even an about-turn, is an elaborate long-term maneuver that can be carried out in tiny increments only, one degree at a time. Still, over time, even the most seemingly insignificant deviations from the old course can produce remarkable alterations and revelations. One might well find oneself going, one fine day, in quite the opposite direction from where one was once heading, and in a good way (rapid deterioration and self-sabotage takes much less effort, alas); but such salutary reversals are accomplishments of perseverance, not just the fruits of momentary insight and determination.

The challenge that the Buddha’s teaching presents, to all of us really, has often been clouded by the idea that he issued a set of religious prescriptions relevant for and binding upon only his devotees, and perhaps properly so only for those truly committed souls who were, and are, willing to follow him into “homelessness,” take their vows, shave their heads, don robes, and submit to the full panoply of monastic regulations, compromising some 227 rules for monks and 311 for nuns. And of course this religious, institutionalized aspect of the practice is important and central to the tradition, not something to be casually brushed aside by 21st-century know-it-alls.

As always, there is nonetheless another side to the story, perhaps best illustrated by one of the most seminal of all the Buddha’s sermons in the Pali canon: the Mangala Sutta on the greatest blessings in life (Khuddakapatha 5, Sutta Nipata 2.4)—addressed not to believers only, or to monks, or to those willing to commit themselves fully, but to any and all human beings, even those entirely unwilling to forgo the sensual delights and creature comforts of householding life.

The Sutta commences its journey in the human lowlands, stressing the great blessing of being spared the company of fools. It wanders along the midlands of a congenial place to live, access to suitable education and training, and getting to do fitting work, via the underappreciated benefits of speaking with wisdom, sure-tongued tact, and good manners, then moves on to the blessings of family and married life (no fine print here precluding sexual enjoyment). In passing the foothills we encounter the advantages of self-restraint and righteous living, the boon of generosity towards others, of contentment with and gratitude for one’s own gifts of fortune; we are reminded of how valuable it is to have an eye and ear for the Dhamma, and appropriate humility and reverence towards its teachers, with due patience and a willingness to mend one’s ways without resentment when corrected.

Heading into the mountains proper, we arrive at understanding the Noble Truth and witnessing Nibbana (that is to say, the attainment of stream-entry, the first stage of Buddhist sainthood, said to make one’s course on the Path irreversible and to be the last station still compatible with householding life). Yet the enumeration does not end or culminate, as one might expect, with a view of these majestic peaks. The very highest blessing of all, we are told instead, is something much simpler, or so it may appear. Though touched as much as others by the vicissitudes and vagaries of life, the minds of the truly blessed remain unshaken: sorrowless, stainless, and secure, they are everywhere invincible; only they are truly safe anywhere they go, vacations included.