This year our son transferred from private to public school. I was concerned about the transition because although he is a bright kid, he has mild Tourette syndrome and the public system could be rougher socially. Now after a couple of weeks of school he is doing well, the school is fine.. and one reason he is doing well is because of his worldview. This view has been absorbed by osmosis from how his mother and I see and experience first hand, and he has grown up with it. He is independent in spirit, but this view seems natural to his reason and experience. After a parent-teacher class tour I talked with him (his name is Will) about it all ,and this is how he describes it. He knows the term Samsara/Nirvana as a poetic way to describe the natural universe. Life manifest in space and time is always unfolding, is an unfolding. There is a great metabolic arc from high energy disequilibrium to low energy equilibrium. This process is everything including “me” inside and out. It is a miraculous dance, but it also means that everything is “impermanent, empty of inherent self, and unsatisfactory.”
That last point is often misunderstood, because life is actually very satisfactory. The very real base-note can be described as Joy. The dissatisfaction comes from a widespread false promise, and this is where our kid is fortunate and is showing the benefit of exposure to “right view”. He knows that a dynamic colorful world, the very process of extension in space and time, means there is always a tipping. There is an incompleteness-reaching inherent in everything. A given problem set may be resolved, but then a new one will present. The joy is in the dance, not in attachment to results. We can care deeply about a set of conditions, but if we lock onto conditions they will drag us into dissolution and death. How many times have I been through mini-deaths by hanging onto something as an absolute, only to have it be relative and contingent?... and this is the thing he gets, there is no absolute to hang onto, there is only this wonderful dance. Will gets this not as an imposed believe, but as a common sense living reality. The result is he can see how people around him suffer from the false promise that if things be arranged just right, they can rest contented with no more problems, that it is possible to built a zone of security and well-being. We work on such a zone anyway, it is only natural.. but we cannot make our home on shifting sand, and expect permanent happy conditions. He understands that. Will feels at home everywhere, makes no apologies for his neuro-quirks, and has nothing above him but sky. Authority in the form of teachers and the system is something he participates in, not something he is subject to. This kid will go through good times and tough times, but he knows it is all in the mix of this beautiful, painful, messy, gorgeous, heartbreaking world, and he says “Yes!”. As a parent nothing could be more joyful. There is no telling what his choices will be, that is up to him, but wherever he goes he will be ok, even when he isn't.
Just some sharing about the kid.
Gassho
Daizan
sat today
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thank you. 