Ban Po - Neolithic Village Site

6,000 years ago people hunted, fished, grew crops, baked pottery, loved and died on this exact spot.  Exploring this site by myself today I realized that not much has changed.  We still don't know who we really are are why we're here. 

There is an experiment where the scientist records the moment when a decision to move the wrist is made in the brain.  Then the moment of the actual movement is recorded. That's quite straight forward, it takes time before the thought results in a movement.  However, the EEG was able to detect that the specific brain activity took place BEFORE the person thought they made the decision.  We think we have conscious free will, but at the time when we thought we made a decision to move.... the decision had already been made!

 What has this to do with the primitive village?  The primitive village is simpler - you can see how there lives are intimately enmeshed in their environment.  I believe it is the primary conundrum of human existence.  We desperately want to consider ourselves as free individuals.    Yet if everything we think and do is dependent on patterns that have already taken place then who we think we are is actually a very complicated mixture of predetermined flows.  Therefore, the idea of an 'I' who is steering the ship is only an illusion!  The beautifully formed bowl, the image of a face, the fishhooks for ears all arise from earlier causes.

 So what I am wondering is....if each choice was already made because of a complicated network of causes....maybe the life force that animated the primitive village is no different from the life force which surrounds it today in the form of enormous concrete apartment towers.  I would be tempted to say, "We are still here." Except that my theory/realization blows the pronoun 'we' right out of the water.

Descartes' statement:  "I think, therefore I am."  takes on new meaning if we care to wonder who we are if thinking becomes still.

On my days off I am experimenting with awareness of the breath. Even though it's sometimes hard to keep the mind on the breath, I notice it's always possible to attend to a single breath.  The mind wants very much to escape and think about something more interesting; however, if it always is just one breath the task never changes and never becomes more difficult.  Practicing this made me aware of the enormous resistance - a resistance, moreover, that is wholly incapable of justifying itself.  "Why keep running around?"  I ask the mind.  It has no excuse. "Why not be still for an hour?"  The mind goes into a panic and rebels.  I'm wondering if the reason for this panic is that it comes from an illusory entity (a false self) that is desperately trying to avoid exposure.

Now I am getting busy with my classes, trying to help Chinese people learn a language from a small island on the other side of the globe that happens to have spread itself world wide.  I know I am part of an unfolding that goes so far beyond me in time and space.  Did neolithic times contain the seeds of all we are today?

Things do not fall apart. The centre is sufficient to hold. Yeats, though brilliant, was wrong.

My class has been growing - there were 17 students today, with a sprinkling of parents.  It seems like a small number, but this is pretty much a freelance operation.  This was my 5th Saturday evening class. These people all live in the towers nearby.  The kids go to school during the day. Today was Saturday, but there was school because it was a make-up day for the National Holiday.  I'm just the foreign teacher they've seen in the neighbourhood, so attendance in the class is completely dependent on what they think of it.
Nobody here has advanced much in the way of opinions regarding what I should do in the class and there are no guarantees regarding age, level of English or ability.  So I have been pretty much inventing it as I go along.  I do some research on the internet and most, perhaps all of the students are between 11 and 18.  Consequently the classes are adapted to the students that come as seen through the lens of my own experience and imagination.  It works!  Everyone seems happy and they are learning some English.  One surprising aspect comes out of the fact that I'm basically living with some of the students; their dormitory is in the same apartment as my room.  Some of them speak enough English to have attached themselves to me in a charming manner.  They like to look after me and are always trying to help. This help is very real due to the fact that we're in China, they speak Mandarin and I don't. As a teacher I have never felt so immersed in what I'm doing, nor so effective. Beginning teachers ought to have this experience.  It gives you a much more profound and realistic appreciation of the role and its human dimension.
It was a low key afternoon because my plan to get together with Alice fell through.  She is dealing with the recent sad death of her Grandmother so there numerous family gatherings.  I know its important for the family to be together at such a time.  We cannot and should not ignore death when it comes.  Personally I'm reminded of the guiding experience of my life and how easily I forget lessons that I thought I had learned.
It was the death of my father which lead to my commitment in India to the search for spiritual truth.  From that time forward, coming up to 40 years ago, the search has been the central pole star guiding my choices.  I cannot help noticing that whereas my daily companions in Taiwan were university students, in China it has shifted even younger - to high school students!  there is a sense that I'm in exactly the right place, learning exactly what I need to learn. The job of the ego is to get out of the way, because the stars are aligned,  My observations of the traffic intersection suggest that it is the emptiness of the centre that allows the policeman to function.  From the central position he can judge the different flows and how they need to move.  He doesn't judge good or bad.  He doesn't prefer any particular direction or type of vehicle.  He just assists everyone in getting to where they need to go.  When I find the empty centre in my mind its hardly surprising that everything in my life starts to fall into place.
Call me crazy or deluded if you like, but really you should try it and see for yourself.

Commotion - inside and out

 Today I went for a walk in the rain. In a way the rain is welcome because it cleans the air and washes the streets.  My umbrella is up for the task and the only real problem is to keep the feet dry.

This intersection is very busy almost all day long.  If you want to walk across it you have to take the   overhead walkway which encompasses all four sides of the square.  Its a great vantage point for watching the constant drama below.  Some people do the strangest things in their attempts to cross  the intersection.  If you include the scooter and bicycle lanes there 5 lanes heading in each of the 4 directions.  They all criss-cross, but the circle in the centre is always empty.  Potentially it means that 20 vehicles are all facing each other.  Each vehicle could go left, right, forward or remain still.  That adds up to 80 possibilities.  If you were to calculate the various combinations that can occur it all amounts to an ever-changing puzzle that continually unfolds in  different patterns before your eyes.

But the centre remains empty.  No one goes there.  It occurred to me that its a perfect metaphor of the mind.  Everything is chaotic unless you stay in the centre.  You just let go of all the thoughts and let them go whatever way they want like the cars.  One is able to apply constant attention as well as constant non-attachment simply by remaining centred and letting it all go.  Instead of a stressful, busy intersection it becomes a joyful dance, like the dance of Shiva.

To the right is an example of what happens if you lose your attention for a moment. Traffic on the right was backed up for miles with a bus driver and a taxi driver shouting at each other over a small scratch.
Actually in a month of watching the teeming traffic in Xi'an I have witnessed surprisingly few accidents.
In retirement one can enter the fourth phase of man - freed from worldly concerns he is at last able to retire in peace to the forest and contemplate the nature of things.  One of the discoveries in doing this is that peace is nowhere to be found.  Wherever you go you bring along your own baggage.  By, apparently, retiring to the forest of a busy Chinese city I have found that the principles of peace remain the same.  Be patient, Accept, Know joy, Let go, Be still.  Let it all swirl around you as everything goes on its own special way to its own special place while you stand choiceless, transported, rapt in wonder.

Yan an

 It was still dark in Xi'an when I took the taxi to the subway.  Strange to see the wide streets almost empty except for a few sleepy workers raking up last night's refuse.  The bullet train whisked us over 300 km North to Yan'an in just over two hours. We emerged into bright sunshine and blue skies.  Yan an is a special place in the story of the Chinese revolution.  It was here that Mao Tse Tung's battered army gathered in 1935 after the grueling Long March through the western mountains.

It was here that they used ancient copperplate printing to put out the millions of Chinese characters of propaganda that by 1949 had cemented China into the People's Republic that we know today.  They lived in the actual caves that we visited today.  A museum has been constructed around them. You can still see the thin woolen blankets and the black soot on the ceilings from the wood fires that kept them warm through the long winters.  The poor quality of the photos in the small museum reveals young faces hopeful and determined.  They faced cold and hunger, persecution by Chiang's Nationalist Army, an imminent Japanese invasion and little support from foreign powers.  By 1937 the prospect did not look good.

I found the experience to be both moving and humbling. There is no hint of grandiose exaggeration of heroism by the present government.  The ghosts of the past are allowed to speak via the actual traces that remain.  We did not visit the cave where Mao lived.  We saw the printing presses, the blackened lanterns, the hand generators and the images of people surviving the most extreme hardships because of their shared belief in a better world.  All around the protected sights flows the chaotic traffic and shiny new construction of a modern city of almost 2 million people.  Most of the tourists go shopping and eating, or climb to look out points where they buy cheap souvenirs.  The halls of the museum were almost empty. I never saw a single Western face.
I was very lucky to have the help of Jenny for this trip.  Jenny is on the staff of an English teaching program in Xi'an.  In spite of having grown up not far away she had never been to Yanan.  So she agreed to make the trip with me.  There are numerous obstacles for a Western person.  First of all its hard to get the train tickets (she bought them online in Chinese)  Secondly, English guidebooks are a bit sketchy on this location - it doesn't attract many foreign tourists and its a bit remote.  Of course the remoteness is the main factor that enabled the fledgling Communist Party to survive. Thirdly, when you arrive at the station you encounter dense crowds, intense traffic and signs only in Chinese.  I think its safe to say I could not have made this  trip successfully without Jenny.
Its quite common for Western people to gloss over the roots of the CPC when we see the images of  Chairman Mao, Tiananmen Square, parades of military hardware and other signs of China's astonishing growth since 1980.  Yesterday I caught a glimpse of a deeper story and it wasn't about Mao - it was about a determined group of young people, fueled by courage and ingenuity surviving extraordinary hardship in pursuit of a wonderful dream.