© amazon.com 2011

Many of my readers clamor for another post on Generation E. These are mostly readers who have found the early posts in this web blog on that topic of interest and helpful. One of my students recently read my book The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning , and found the E-model so intriguing that for a class assignment to create an utopia (after we studied Plato’s The Republic)  this student wrote a short essay on the topic. Here is an excerpt (printed with permission.)

Heptilibrium: A perfect balance of the nine ways to be in the world: Perfectionist, Helper, Performer, Dreamer, Observer, Questioner, Optimist, Boss and Peace Keeper. In order to create the perfect utopia, especially one that accommodates nine different aspects of living, requires a profound and complete educational system. The general principles of education will revolve around the core values of the utopia: equality, compassion, fairness, honesty and trust. Every teacher will be trained in the nine ways to live and with this broad spectrum of knowledge they will teach these principles and values to all students. The nine different ways of learning will be accommodated: every student can explore their own learning style. Students will learn how to compete fairly, treat each other with honesty and respect, and be guided to acquire true knowledge of life. Students will learn compassion and how to care for and be concerned about, others. Exploring various cultures (through the nine lenses) will teach them to forgo racism and respect the differences among people. Students will perceive the world through different perspectives. To elaborate on the core values, everyone is created equal and has equal rights under the law. There is no racism and separatism between the people; everyone is taken care of on an equal basis.

Heptilibrium is governed under the perfect balance of the nine. By forming harmony with nature, different cultures, moral principles and one’s inner self, citizens of Heptilibrium will walk the paths of happiness and live life content with joy while being responsible and upright citizens.

Every year in my philosophy classes (high school seniors) when I teach Plato’s The Republic students grapple with Socrates’ notion of happiness. Before we reach that part of the text we do an exercise. As class begins and without any time to think about their response, I ask students to write down a 1 or 2 sentence definition of happiness. We each write our response on the board and consider the connections (or not) we can find. Here is a sample list in no particular order.

Happiness is the continual pursuit of life.

Happiness is the advancement of wholeness.

Happiness the fount of satisfaction.

Happiness is the freedom from reactivity.

Photo: © Janet Levine, Varanasi, 2007

Happiness is the balance of struggle and reward.

Happiness is nothing more and nothing less.

Happiness is love for self, others, and whatever circumstance arises.

Happiness is the uncontrollable feeling of contentment.

Happiness is doing what you want.

Happiness is having no regrets.

Happiness is the sensation felt in the body when a person acts according to what they believe is good.

Happiness is the state of personal, communal, and spiritual fulfillment.

Scanning the list one sees there are many sentiments both Socrates and the Buddha would commend. Did Socrates know of the Buddha’s teachings? There is no doubt about that in my mind. But that is a topic for another occasion. What does the Buddha say about happiness? Here is the Metta Sutra (teaching) of the Buddha.

“May all beings be happy and at their ease. May they be joyous and live in safety. All beings, omitting none, whether weak or strong; small or great; in high, middle or low realms of existence; near or far away; visible or invisible; born or to-be born. May all beings be happy and at their ease. Let none deceive another, or despise any being in any state. Let none wish harm to another. But even as a mother loves , watches over, and protects her child, her only child; so may all with a boundless mind cherish all living beings, radiating friendliness over the entire world without limit. May we cultivate a boundless goodwill, free from ill-will or enmity, and maintain the sublime abiding of this recollection.”

What is your definition of happiness? Use the comment form below. I am most interested to learn.

It is almost here, the December solstice, the one that coincides with the end of our calendar year. In the United States the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, in South Africa it is the longest. As I have noted in previous blogs time is a concept of change, nothing is permanent except our awareness of each passing moment. In our western tradition this is a moment to give thanks and share joy and blessings.

Thank you loyal readers, I love reading your comments. I appreciate your time and consideration in sharing your responses with me.

In return I want to share with you a blog on a more personal note. I want to introduce you to my two wonderful sons who are the joy and blessing of their mother’s life. I cannot imagine anyone being more proud of and grateful for their children than I am of my boys. I know many of us feel this way, so you can share my moment. They are both grown men now with their own lives. One is a teacher at a university and a writer, and he identifies himself as “a writer who teaches.”  He is a serious outdoorsman and a loving son. He can complete the Friday and Saturday New York Times crossword puzzles (I cannot). This feat impresses me. His first book has just been published. No-one can be prouder of his birth as a serious writer than a mother (who is also a writer) than I am of him. Here is the cover image of his book, (© Yale University Press) A Living Man From Africa.

My other son is also a writer (his book will be published by John Wiley & Sons in 2011) and a teacher (an adjunct professor at a business school.) Through his astute entrepreneurship he is on the forefront of innovative developments in the non-profit sector that are already having a major impact on the direction of philanthropy to end world poverty. You can read about his work at www.theginn.org. He travels the world and on any given day he can be in India, England, somewhere in Africa or at home. He is an amazing whirlwind of energy, ideas, and caring. And there is always time for a call to his mesmerized mother.

My most grateful best wishes and blessings to you, dear reader, and your family, for a bountiful 2011 filled for us all with happiness and peace of mind.

What is Time? Such a seemingly simple question but it can lead to intensely elusive searches for a concept that defies easy answers. Sure we have schedules, and clocks, and calendars based by our ancient forebears on their observations of the wheeling stars and planets. But we also have so many postulations by so many philosophers and cosmologists and various scientists that one’s head can spin from it all. What is Time? Some say Time is a synonym for God. Others that Time is change. Saint Augustine said a thousand years ago, “Intuitively I know what time is, but if you ask me to explain time to you I cannot do so.” What is Time? If all human life disappeared from this planet would Time cease to exist? In other words does our consciousness conceive of Time or does it exist whether we are here or not?

A woman in Soweto, South Africa, a tour guide for a group of harried Americans, wanted to stop at a museum but was asked “Do we have time?” She answered, “I don’t know if you have time. I know you have watches…and I know I have time.”

T.S. Eliot one of the most famous poets of the twentieth century wrote one of his master works The Four Quartets as an exploration into Time. In Burnt Norton, one of the quartets he writes, “Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/And time future contained in time past./…all time is eternally present…”

All time is eternally present. What you need to know is that Eliot studied Eastern spirituality as an undergraduate at Harvard and had in depth knowledge of the teachings of the Buddha. One of the Buddha’s seminal teachings is that Time is an unceasing succession of transient nanoseconds through which our lives pass and of which passage we need to be aware as our ephemeral future so rapidly becomes our fleeting past. Or in other more colloquial words we need to live in the present moment. Not the past. Not the future. But the present moment. To be truly alive we need to bring all our attention and awareness to every moment of our lives: to our loves, our activities, our preoccupations, our commute, to our emotions, to eating, bathing and on and on. Then perhaps we can begin to understand what Time is and what Time is not.

It seems impossible that it is more than a month since I wrote a post. I apologize to my loyal readers. The start up of the school year is an all-consuming process. It reminds me of a large water bird that has been resting on the water all summer and as the year cycles into September it begins to seek the air currents again. It lumbers, an ungainly sight, on the surface of the water, slowly extending its wings and when it has reached a respectable speed, folds its legs into its body and slowly ascends into the sky, where it gracefully takes flight.

Here on our New England campus we have almost ascended into flight, a few more wing beats (measured in days and weeks) will see us aloft until June.

The days are shorter, but the leaves are late in turning this year. Maybe a month of drought in August that painted our lawns a golden Californian color, has affected the cycle of leaf chemistry? Several times a week I walk in the 200 year old cemetery near where I live. The trees are magnificent, 100 year old oaks, beeches, pines and others set amid the 17th century tomb stones. Sometimes one has to think of life and cycles in centuries and not days and weeks, this season and the next.

In class this week we discussed philosopher Peter Singer’s work that birthed the animal rights movement. In the last period of the day on Friday, one of my students articulated why Singer is so adamant that animal liberation is actually about human liberation. It was a beautiful moment of absolute clarity, such moments are what teachers live for. The students had been animated all week about issues on this topic. I asked them why they are responding in such a visceral and vociferous manner. They explained that this is the first time they are encountering these issues and they are working through their emotions and responses. It behooves us all to remember that dawning awareness is also cyclical and encountered generation by generation.

The world is changing, yes, I know, it always is, but in many ways at this juncture of space and time, change is speeding up and seems to be happening around us as we watch. “The time is out of joint” said Prince Hamlet and cursed his fate that he “had to set it right.” I don’t feel the need to set anything right, I am just a minuscule microorganism in the quantum vat of broiling time, but I do feel a need to try and be aware of the waves of change, even if only in some vague and uneasy way. Change is changing change in dizzying fashion.

This is nowhere more apparent to me than in the area of the ever-changing world of the Internet because I am involved in bringing my new novel “Leela’s Gift” into the flow of virtual words in cyberspace. Twenty ago when my political memoir  was published, it garnered attention in the print world of book reviews (there was no electronic world), being widely reviewed in prestigious and well-known places. One thing lead to another in an orderly and time-honored way. Ten years later I adapted a personality system for educators and parents and published these two psychology books. In the fine print of book contracts the words “electronic rights” were now seen, and (of course) belonged to the publisher. Who knew what was coming? While reviews on the young Internet were welcome and easily published by web–site customers, print reviews still had some cachet.

Now several years later (change is exponential) the landscape is completely different. Aside from the venerable “New York Times Book Review” print reviews of books (and indeed newspapers and journals themselves) are disappearing, although sometimes there are two–three sentence blurbs on books in trendy magazines. Yet, paradoxically, the world of words and books is exploding, growing like a virus on steroids inside the box on your desk, or sitting on your lap, or indeed being held in your hand.

This I know from my recent foray into the world of eBook publishing where scores of web sites all over the globe that have no general name recognition electronically carry hundreds of thousand of book titles that you or I can download almost instantaneously at the click of a button to one of many hand held reading device and often for free.

Amazon.com rules the publishing waves. Hand held reading devices, as has been promised for twenty years, will soon be the most common way to read—anything. Even an elderly friend, who is by choice a technological Luddite, uses and loves her Kindle. If she does, so will we all.

I saw a robin today as I walked across campus, a harbinger of spring to come. In a flower bed in front of my home office window there are a host of white and green snowdrops emerging from under those leaves that were not swept away last fall. My heart leaps at the marvel of them. Up here in the north-east corner of this great country of ours, in and around Boston, despite some frigid weeks in December, January and February we have had a mild winter. While all around us and especially to the south and west snowfalls amounts have accumulated above sixty inches (which is our average too),  this year we are at twenty eight and a half inches. Of course we can still encounter some huge storms and maybe will, but on the other hand an early spring is also a possibility. In my native South Africa the change of seasons was not of note. Nine months of summer merged into three months of winter and then, at least in Johannesburg where I lived, the dusty winds of August (spring) heralded the first rains and onset of dry summer heat. Here the spring is a true rebirth. The talons of icy winds and below freezing temperatures slowly loosen their grip on the land and on our psyche. There is an explosion of buds and birds, lawns turn green, the air is warmer on our cheeks, days lengthen, and it rains (a lot). Suddenly the sidewalks are filled with suburban walkers and joggers. More people smile.

Over the past weeks my Philosophy class of college-bound seniors read and discussed Tibetan Buddhist master and Western teacher, Chogyam Trungpa’s book “Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior.” As I read their reflective journals these past days I was struck at how these two-thousand year old teachings caused a rebirth of sorts in my students, an awakening, an opening. They responded with touching honesty to ideas such as “basic goodness”, “being in the now”, “letting go”,  and “drala” the energetic interconnection of all that is. Some wrote of their awareness of their own fears, of how they worry and question, of the endless conveyor belt of expectations they find themselves on, of the material rewards they have accepted as the goal they need to strive towards in order to be “successful” and achieve “happiness.” Trungpa suggests alternative mind-structures, those built of inner balance and harmony, gentleness and respect for self and others. He posits meditation practice as a giant step on the path to becoming a spiritual warrior. As we read the book I taught the basics of meditation and breath-focused attention practices and many students responded positively to the sense of inner calm they can begin to feel burgeoning within.

As Trungpa says “Synchronizing mind and body is not a concept or a random technique someone thought up for self-improvement. Rather, it is a basic principle of how to be a human being and how to use your sense perceptions, your mind and your body together.”