philosophy

A few times a week I go to a philosophy class where I sit, cross-legged on a bamboo mat, and listen to my teacher speak words that blow the doors of my mind wide open. On several occasions he’s said something that resonated so strongly that I felt it physically – a deep, inner “clunk” as something connects, shifts and changes – and I take notes. I want to remember these words, come back to them, share them with others but the few times that I have returned to my notes to write about them I’ve stopped because I can’t. What I’ve written isn’t mind blowing, it’s simple. Perhaps because life IS simple, we just like to complicate it.

He asks very gentle questions and poses them from a place of curiosity instead of judgment, as if he genuinely wants to know your answer. He asks questions like “Does it make you happy? No? Then why do you keep doing it?” genuinely hoping you’ll have an answer because – really – why DO something that doesn’t bring happiness? I think it’s because his questions are so simple and straightforward that the pennies drop. A simple question deserves a simple answer; do we have one for why we do things that create unhappiness? Why we think in ways that harm us? Why we attach to our obstacles instead of choosing to overcome them? I don’t. My answers are long and convoluted and, in the end, aren’t actually answers at all. I don’t actually know why I attach to memories that hurt, keep asking "why" to things that aren't mine to understand, and choose to make some things so damn hard when, perhaps, it’s all very easy in the end.

It’s when I don’t have an answer, when I’m left with nowhere else to go from there, that I actually go places. Doors are blown open, thinking begins, new perspectives are allowed in, and shifts are felt. There’s no agenda, no curriculum, no textbooks; just the teacher sitting cross-legged also listening to our questions, telling stories, giving information and then batting a question back to us so gently that it takes a few seconds for it to sink in and take effect. It's awesome.