(See anatta language for use of Zandtao, Zandtaomed and Bill to avoid I in writing. From now on there will be no capitals of zandtao, zandtaomed and bill).
Z-questing Sharon so far has led zandtaomed to a greater acceptance of wellness and the wellness industry. In some ways wellness could be seen as making the best vihara of body, emotion and mind preparing the seeker for the integration of the 4th tetrad reconnecting with the Dhamma and the unknown. This approach places wellness in the context of the path in which wellness is concerned with the 1st 3 tetrads and the path itself develops awakening in the 4th tetrad.
Making the best vihara creates wellness, but is wellness always seen in this context? What about the wellness that is promoted for psychological well-being? This is a wellness that is primarily concerned with balance in the defiled world. It is an important wellness helping people cope with the problems of daily life (in a defiled world), but coping with problems and making the best vihara are not the same. The wellness that is coping with problems is looking at conditioning within the defiled world and finding ways of coping with that conditioning. As part of its strategy coping wellness would develop self-esteem as a means of dealing with the defiled world – building up the conditioned self in order to survive with the other selves in that world; yet wellness on the path (spiritual wellness?) would be releasing conditioning of which aspects of self-esteem would be a part.
Making the best vihara would be wellness on the path, and would have similarities with wellness in the industry. But the objectives are different. The wellness industry is primarily concerned with psychological well-being in the defiled world whereas wellness on the path would be concerned with releasing the conditioning that comes from our upbringing (conditioning that is developed by the defiled world).
Initially there might be a convergence of these two wellnesses. If a person is not psychologically coping with society – lacking wellness, then they are unlikely to have the personal strength to start on the path of seeking. The conditioning of upbringing is intended to provide that psychological coping – the creation of self, so that as a young adult a person can survive in daily life – job, family etc. But this is not a coping that will reconnect to the path, yet it is a fallback wellness that might be appropriate for some individuals to survive.
Does the psychological coping of wellness in the defiled world lead to seeking? Maybe. Without it there can be no seeking as the individual cannot cope with daily life. But once an individual can cope with daily life then there is a potential for being a seeker. This would depend on the wellness strategy of the teacher, is the actual teacher's wellness part of path awareness?
Making the best vihara and wellness adopt similar approaches; they are concerned with understanding and using conditioning. Understanding the conditioning that creates low self-esteem is important before the wellness of appropriate self-esteem can be established. But if there is clinging to that self-esteem then the individual is stuck in the world of conditioning. If the individual looks to end that clinging then the individual begins seeking the path.
Is the seeker always consciously aware of the path? Or is that perhaps a definition of being a seeker? Within wellness an individual will have come to terms with the conditioning of upbringing and will then be able to cope with daily life – a description of wellness. In that situation there might well be a glimpse (nibbana-dhatu) of the path enabling the individual to become a seeker who does not just accept the coping with daily life but wants to release the conditioned egos thus leading them to follow the path they have glimpsed.
Premature seeking might well be counter-productive. If a person starts seeking without the psychological wellness of coping with daily life then there can appear confusion. If we look at some seekers we can see that confusion; before upheaval bill was confused. Throughout his 2nd childhood after upheaval bill was mostly seeking in confusion, but whilst seeking he developed the psychological wellness to cope with daily life. Being an alcoholic was tied up with this confusion. In his first teaching job when bill was coming to terms with the compromise of path, compassion and the teaching job, he became an alcoholic – the addiction seemed to help him compromise. As a teacher he was limited in following the path because education restricted the path’s level of compassion; he drank away path-energy. Slowly the wellness of compromise led to an ability to cope whilst living a 2nd childhood and gaining the experience necessary to develop the path, but for this level of wellness to occur the path’s energy could not be utilised in completely dedicating himself to the path. Because of the compromises required he could not be following his path and be in his teaching situation at the same time; this might have led to psychological unwellness. During the alcoholic phase of his life bill coped psychologically sufficiently well to live with his compromise on the path.
After upheaval, to begin with there was an imbalance of seeking and coping with daily life. bill's compassion decision to go into education placed him in a situation where education required the dedication that later became his dedication to the path. Unconsciously he knew this false path and that is why he was leaving education at the end of his 1st teaching job, but life taught him about love instead and in the end gave him sufficient money that dedication to the path was pushed aside until early retirement.
Just after upheaval bill was still immature. His life was anchored in the path, but compromises with daily life led initially to alcoholism and later an acceptance of the job - a form of dedication - that led to tiredness at the weekends. Between alcoholism and tiredness there was a psychological wellness anchored by the path. He could not have compromised with the job any other way – that was his path's compromise with daily life. bill did not meet people in education who were spiritually active, zandtao doesn’t want to be definitive but it seems that being dedicated to the path and being in the current education system are not compatible. Maybe another seeker can find that balance of dedication to the path and being in education, zandtao just doesn’t know.
So psychological wellness was always a big part in bill's life, initially after upheaval he can remember feeling conscious of sanity (pronounce Zanetti). He has fond memories of his time in the 1st teaching job yet the people don’t want to know him now. Whilst he was dealing with the psychological wellness, he was not making friends! This was later summed up by the E-word, why was he concerned about Education couldn’t he just accept making money and teaching to exams? In his 1st job, couldn’t bill just accept keeping the kids off the street and educating them a little? Whilst he was anchored in the path and all the benefits that gave him, compromise with the path created psychological wellness issues; for bill being dedicated to the path was not a possibility then.
For Batgap people zandtao can see their overcoming the confusion caused by the compromise between the path and daily life, and zandtao can see that confusion as a lack of commitment to coping with daily life that might appear to some as psychological unwellness. For the teachers in bill's 1st school, they were accepting the conditioning that led them to the career. This conditioning was always threatened by the path but in the 1st job bill had not reached the balance of compromise with education so this enabled the teachers to blame his apparent psychological unwellness. Much later bill was sacked in the private schools because his path more in harmony with natural education, his path without any psychological unwellness, exposed the weaknesses of student-run sycophancy and an individual exploiting the education company.
In society there is a level of psychological wellness that comes with accepting conditioning but because of this acceptance there is a risk. Clinging to conditioning and egos is not in harmony with the path so this disharmony functions effectively only as the ability to block off the path through clinging. Such disharmony can lead to a different psychological unwellness as within these individuals their path is always trying to reconnect with itself. They have the protection that comes from the collective conforming acceptance of conditioning that tries to avoid spiritual disharmony, but path reconnection is different for each person and for some the collective acceptance functions as a barrier to the path.
So psychological wellness can be beneficial as a way of coping with daily life, and yet at the same time psychological wellness in reinforcing the disharmony that blocks the spiritual path can be detrimental. However, if a component of psychological wellness is awareness of the path through releasing conditioning, then psychological wellness can be seen as part of developing the best vihara. If psychological wellness is releasing the conditioning then it is the path.
But it is important to remember that path and psychological wellness can be exclusive. For some in this defiled world psychological wellness is needed to survive, once individuals can cope then there comes a choice of this psychological wellness to be a seeker; this choice comes from their approach to releasing conditioning. Sadly for some, reinforcing that conditioning (such as self-esteem) is a requirement before they can cope with daily life. Finding harmony between the path and daily life can appear as psychological unwellness for those who accept the conditioning, but the path will always provide wellness if we follow it. The path will always provide the best life even if we cannot see it. Sadly, any psychological unwellness that arises from the path is used by the conditioned to mock and deride the path - as well as avoiding their path through their own delusionary compromise with conditioning.
It is important to see the relationship between wellness and the vihara and not simply dismiss wellness because for some/many it does not mean following the path. The path can provide the wellness of vihara but conditioned wellness might be compromised such as through the use of medication that restricts the path. Clinging to self-esteem, as with clinging to identity, might compromise following the path. Self-esteem and identity-awareness are stepping stones to the path, conditionings that need to be released whilst maintaining compassion and justice.
Up to this point in this z-quest zandtao has only sought cherry-picking from Sharon’s erudition, but this morning in meditation he was conscious of the next section “letting go of perfection”. He has a term for this – warts’n’all, it kind-of fits.
zandtao wanted to avoid bouncing off everything Sharon says as it would take too long but the spiritual ego part of warts’n’all said it wanted to respond. To be honest it wouldn’t let go of the meditation, so here it is.
With emotions zandtao cheats, he has never been in emotional control living with a partner. It was usually things about her that got bill down yet at the same time emotionally he always wanted to do more for her. There were times when bill enjoyed living with a woman especially when that woman was a lover, but the bad times always outweighed the good. When things get him down in life he fixes them, on a number of occasions he was unable to fix them in partnership; he tried to accept these things but couldn’t. This was one of the reasons zandtao lives alone; solitude is his way of coping with the intense emotions of relationship.
Yet now emotions occur when zandtaomed meets people. In conversation he hears what they think – this upsets him and he wants to change it; he hears the mess they are in – he wants to help solve their problems. Solitude would solve their problems as well but they cannot cope with solitude; nor do they accept they have problems. In solitude there is community – just, there is connection. When zandtaomed comes out of solitude, he is often vehement to change - to help. It is not balanced – it works warts’n’all.
Warts’n’all are not just connected with interactions with others; zandtaomed has clingings but they hurt no-one else. If we look at the 3-memes:-
throughout there is a recognition that there is not perfection. The vihara cannot be perfected, but faith enables the path and prajna. "Doing the best you can to be the best you can be" – there is no perfection in this. There is an admission of some failure but it is OK because there is no beating up. zandtaomed is 100%-dedicated to the path except for warts’n’all. Would that he could be better but no-one is hurt.
Inbuilt into the path is 100% but there is also tolerance – compassion. Through mindfulness there is the awareness that there could be better, but mindfulness also knows the value of peace. Because zandtaomed has faith in the path he accepts “failure”, warts’n’all are there but it doesn’t matter. And zandtaomed has faith that if it did matter the path would tell him.
The following arose from Sharon's discussion of the Inner Critic in section 1.4 that starts here [Real Love Ref 11.4]. For zandtaomed 3-memes copes with the inner critic; zandtaomed could do better, he could do far worse. The critic is there telling zandtaomed he could do better, and mindfulness is there telling him to be at peace. Mindfulness guides him. How does he tell the difference? Peace – the nonag position. If mindfulness wants something zandtaomed becomes aware, sometimes agitated, and resolves it – mindfulness. At other times mindfulness lets him have nonag peace with warts’n’all that is ahimsa (not harmful).
bill's past has been far from nonag peace with sankhara-khandha often disturbing his sleep. This disturbance was usually connected with the compromise – sometimes the path would be supporting the compromise and other times the path would be centring pulling bill back because the compromise had taken him too far. Sankhara-khandha was very active towards the end of his working life – the compromise. It would not let him meditate, and was always active in future planning for retirement. Once retired he gradually grew into a state of nonag as he began studying, meditating more and basically following his path more closely. Nonag has increased throughout retirement with the peace of 100% dedication in meditation and z-quests - mostly nagging has disappeared. Yet there is still warts’n’all.
Following from Sharons' discussion on perfection in section 1.5 that started here [Real Love Ref 12.6], zandtaomed notes there is no perfection in his path – just acceptance and nonag. To develop nonag, one approach is to recognise the aggregates – khandhas – kaya-body, vedana-feelings, sanna-memories/perceptions, sankhara-mental operations, and the vinnana-consciousness that enables them. In our upbringing conditioning attaches to these khandhas to develop a self that we use for survival – surviving in the defiled world of conditioning. But as we mature we let go of this conditioning – “removing the I and mine from the 5 khandhas” as Buddhadasa put it. We find a khandha-balance where the khandhas function without attachment as was the intention. In this balance is the state of nonag. What happens if there isn’t balance? The “inner critic” starts banging on.
This gives us a nonag strategy – balancing the 5 khandhas. We are seeking balance in the 1st 3 tetrads with the khandhas - this is mostly the same, and MwB can provide that. But there needs to be balance in our daily lives, or the nagging will start. Using MwB ("Mindfulness with Breathing" by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu) mindfulness can tell us what is required for balance. In fact we can use nagging as an indicator as to whether we are finding balance.
In bill's case sankhara-khandha was the source of much nagging. zandtao feels nonag has come because the sankhara-nagger has been redirected into z-quests. Sankhara-khandha is no less active now. When zandtao wakes up sankhara is telling him the next things to write in z-quest, if it doesn’t happen then it happens during meditation – today the two worked together. Balance cannot happen through repression, aggregates must function – it is their nature. For nonag find the balance of the khandhas (3 tetrads).
What the balance of the khandhas does not address directly is the 4th tetrad – reconnecting to Dhamma, the path. As with the Seeker Story conditioning is addressed with balancing the khandhas, but there is also the awakening story. How do we provide the reconnection when we cannot feel awakenings? zandtao compensates with this through Prajna, bringing in Prajna – presence, being in the present moment; if we are in a state of presence then there is no need for awakenings. As a way through, perhaps we could have as a rule of thumb - if there is a non-specific state of nagging bring in Prajna to develop nonag. Then mindfulness will be happy, and will cope with any attached nagging.
This is not generalised advice but is a technique zandtao occasionally uses to attain nonag:-
 MwB balancing the khandhas
Listening to sankhara-khandha on z-quests
Bringing in Prajna to provide balance
For zandtao with this approach mindfulness can provide nonag.
What about nonag generally? Balance the khandhas. Know your nags so that you know how to balance your khandhas. Bring in presence for reconnection to path. The state of nonag is a peaceful state.
zandtao has struggled to relate to Sharon’s discussion on perfectionism, and realised that upheaval ended any thoughts of the perfect. Upheaval redefined what was perfect as the path, there was nothing else to be perfect about. What other definitions of perfection there were made no difference to zandtao because the path was perfect.
So why didn’t bill do more to follow my path? That is a good question that zandtao doesn’t have an answer to – for then or for now. Upheaval meant that his life was about the path, and some level of seeking was always going to be what bill did. There was just seeking but there was never the desire to be a perfect seeker – there was no dedication of life to seeking. Why not? In truth there was never any awareness as to how to be a perfect seeker, to do what a perfect seeker did – whatever that was, nor was there any desire to find out. The path was something bill did – or not. Compassion happened that led to bill's career and fashioned the structure of his life during 2nd childhood. The path created bill's search for romantic love, the path created his addiction. It all just happened, there was no conscious success/failure in terms of seeking, no conscious decision-making about path.
Even when bill retired there was limited awareness about decision-making. The distance in the state of mind from holidays to work was growing too wide, whilst teaching was not hard it was just something he did and his interaction with each school was getting worse and worse. bill had become the facilitator of exam passes – and this had limited spiritual meaning, bill still called it Education but it was limited meaning. bill had started being a Buddhist, that was central but he never thought of Buddhism as path. bill was 2nd childhood travelling – he was enjoying the travel and being in different communities of private school teaching. And then with his parents dying he had the money to retire. These conditions came together and he retired.
This was not a decision made with a view to “perfect seeking”, things just came together. Following upheaval bill was open to letting things happen through him. Now zandtao can conjecture that the path happened to bill at upheaval, that creative writing had happened to bill at upheaval, and that bill could accept that things happened to bill. Neither zandtao, zandtaomed or bill were creators of life and decisions in it; decisions came and were followed. For there to be a “perfect seeking” of the path there needs to have been a conscious seeking desire, there has never been such a consciousness.
Once zandtao retired, his life shaped around seeking but there was no desire of perfect seeking and no desire to do what he did perfectly. zandtao studied, he wrote, he slept and wrote again. What zandtao studied came from sleep or meditation as did what he wrote; it was doing - not a desire for perfection.
The nearest thing in his life to perfectionism was professionalism, it mattered to bill that his teaching was professional. bill knew that he could never be a perfect teacher – there was never time in the day to do that, but over the years he had developed a professionalism that was a minimal requirement. There was an NUT professional Code of Conduct that he never read but abided by – the best that he could be.
Throughout section 1 Sharon talks about self-love. It appears that because of her upbringing she had issues with self-love, and the techniques in this section she used to help herself to build up self-esteem and self-confidence to cope with the defiled world.
Despite much commercialism and kilesa in the world of wellness, zandtao recognises that wellness has much to offer for people coping with daily life. But at some point this wellness approach is counter-productive because it builds up attachments through building up self. In Buddhism one of the 3 characteristics is anatta – no-self (other two are anicca – impermanence and dukkha – suffering), and at some point on the path there is a need to let go of all the attachments that make up self so that a seeker can start to develop anatta. In Buddhism we recognise conditioning. From birth we undergo conditioning, and this conditioning works in childhood to build up self – self-love, self-esteem and self-confidence – to cope with daily life in this defiled world. But as we mature as an adult we let go of this self and follow our paths; at some point we let go of wellness, and begin to follow our paths.
For zandtao it didn’t happen this way so it is not possible for zandtaomed to teach about these techniques of self-love, and recommends this first section for appropriate seekers. zandtaomed teaches MwB where the first 3 tetrads build up the vihara and contain much of the wellness approach, yet mostly in the 4th tetrad zandtaomed teaches the seeker to follow the path. For zandtao conditioning in upbringing didn’t build up the self so bill’s self-esteem and self-confidence were very low. He was unable to cope with daily life and there was a breakdown, and following that breakdown there was a partial awakening and bill became conscious of the path. Through this awareness of the path and reconnection to it, bill coped with daily life during a 2nd childhood. Although he built up a self in 2nd childhood the path guided him in part and he never sought wellness through self-esteem and self-confidence; the path gave him the tools to cope with daily life in 2nd childhood.
But bill retired early fed up with careerism and politics in teaching, and having a desire to study and meditate. For the last few years of his working life bill had been meditating – bill had become a Buddhist following a mid-life review, and through this meditation he had begun to let go of attachments from his 2nd childhood that were blocking the path. Fortunately having sufficient finance to retire early, bill began study and meditation that eventually led to 100% dedication to the path giving the teachings of zandtaomed - and his own path developing as zandtao the seeker into the unknown that he discusses in the Prajna portal. At upheaval bill had unconsciously let go of his few attachments from his upbringing and reconnected with path, during 2nd childhood bill gained the experience that in early retirement through meditation and study let go of further attachments until finally there was the maturity to become 100% dedicated to the path.
Whilst self-esteem and self-confidence are important in building self-love to cope with daily life, at some point the focus on wellness needs to move to following the path; sadly within the wellness industry this does not always happen. With MwB ("Mindfulness with Breathing" by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu) and the Companion, the teachings of zandtaomed can help a seeker move beyond wellness, leave behind the self that blocks the path, and follow the path with all its fruits and benefits.
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