Balance

I am learning about the importance of balance. I do not wish to underemphasize imbalance, incoherence, and discontinuity, but for the moment, I have been meditating on balance. Balance, it seems, is one of the first notions we attempt to teach one another. A child learn to crawl then to walk, and walking is a great feat of balance. Placing any object on only two legs and maintaining it upright is difficult, and when that entity is wobbly and energetic, not to mention mobile, then the feat is all the more impressive. Cycling is another example of balance; any cyclist one sees--except, perhaps, those on three or more wheels--is not just showing mobility, but is practicing the first major aspect of cycling: balance.

These lessons, though, seem to predominantly go only very shallowly, because everywhere life and living is imbalanced. Immediately, I think of Francis Ford Copola's Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, but I have also begun to read Bill McKibben's Hope, Human and Wild which chronicles the living examples of establishing balance, examing Curitiba, Brasil and the Indian state of Kerala. Reading Hope, Human and Wild is itself a practice in establishing balance. As I have recently mentioned, I am reading Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America, which though fantastic, has turned into a rather powerful and frustrating read. On one hand, I am reading the nitty-gritty of America food policy, agriculture, and culture; on the other I am exploring the movement toward practiced, albeit difficult, examples of hope. I am interested and both but need one to temper the other in order to appreciate both.

Bill McKibben himself comments, in chapter one, on the role Hope has in building balance in his own life. His previous work, The End of Nature, McKibben explores the global impacts human beings have had on the world. If we understand nature or "wilderness" to be the antithesis of human settlement or knowledge (for example, the Wilderness Act calls for protection of the land "untrammelled by man"), then that sort of nature is over, because the world over is now impacted by the anthropogenic realities of global warming and pollution. Hope, on the other hand, is about moving beyond our current paradigm and into one that means living satisfactorily on less, about living more in tune to the needs of one another and the ecologies of which we are a part--not apart, as wilderness environmentalism may have you believe.

When I spend my own time meditating (zazen, yoga, tai chi, or--increasingly--intentional breathing), it is generally in order to establish an internal and external harmony. (Note: By saying both internal and external, I mean to suggest their relatedness, their similitude rather than their distinctiveness.) Yoga and tai chi are the most obvious examples because those are moving practices which, novice attempts make clear, are first and foremost exercises in balance. Yoga can be used for building physical proficiency (muscles, bones, flexibility, etc.), but what comes first for me is leaving the exercise feeling in balance and pursuing later activities in that mode. Perhaps unsurprisingly, martial arts, yoga, and tai chi mostly developed out of traditions of mental exertion (sitting meditation techniques) as a means to balance the body with the mind rather than allow practitioners' physiques deteriorate; that is, monastic communities that spent all day sitting were getting too weak, so they developed physical regiments that supported healthy--and often highly toned and powerful--bodies to compliment their increasingly agile and potent minds. In this way, one practice of meditative living--both physically and mentally strenuous--was established and continues to be practiced. (The book, American Shaolin has a little to say on this, but I am not recommending any book that contains two colons in its title, unless it is by e.e. cummings.)

Establishing balance right now, between working so early and recovering sleep, feels somewhat futile. It isn't, I recognize, and it may be that I ought to recognize the many ways in which I have succeeded in finding balance since I have returned home. Work and biking both provide me with the potential thought-space to practice way-seeking (I have been rereading Eihei Dogen's The Moon in a Dewdrop), I have been reading much more than I have been able to at school, writing for leisure is a common pleasure, and I am cooking when I am able to do so; then again, work is often strenuous and anxious, my reading is distracted and unfocused, my writing time is inconsistent despite my interest in continuing, and I am eating too poorly for my tastes, nor have I made time for much meditation. This post actually arose from thinking about how distracted my reading urges have been: at night, I frequently read a bit of H.P. Lovecraft or other weird fiction, my afternoons involve some Berry or McKibben, my evenings perhaps some writing or Mary Pipher's Seeking Peace--which my mother gave me and has been set aside for far too long--and some comic books here and there, too. I have managed to listen to David Sedaris's new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men on CD over the past couple of weeks. Something about my life is far too distracted and it shows up all over my reading list, which just grows and grows and grows; but, for the first time in at least a decade, I am engaged in multiple books at once.

Then again, imbalance can be enlightening, which I hope to write about soon, but ought to get to bed since work begins in six scant hours.