Grounding in Values

Talk offered as a ‘Wisdom Wednesday’ at Mountain Cloud Zen Center; August 7, 2024.

On this first Wisdom Wednesday of the month, it’s always good to return to basics, to begin again … and so, let’s return to “wisdom”, referred to here as “the skillfulness of action with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, and judgement.”

I’d like to touch on something this evening that may appear so basic, so obvious, as to be disregarded or overlooked. It is, often, the most simple of things that are left unexamined, and yet contain profound truths and inherent wisdom for a life well-lived. I’m referring here to the prime importance of recognizing, and grounding ourselves in, our own unique set of values. And, subsequently, how we align our actions accordingly in the day-to-day to reveal our skillful paths through life.

First, what is meant by “values” in this context? Quite simply, it is one’s judgement of what is important in life. And here, it’s essential to acknowledge the individual nature of this judgement; it’s for each of us to recognize and realize for ourselves what it is that we value. The risk of not appreciating this uniqueness is that we can so easily fall prey to the societal and cultural values pressed upon us in a deluge of inputs. It’s this blind acceptance of conditioning that seriously jeopardizes—and likely precludes—our own sense of satisfaction and contentment, and, by extension, our collective flourishing.

One clear example of conditioned values is what could be called the ‘doctrine of more’: more money, more comfort, more security, more status, more power. The arithmetic of the egoic mind is incredibly basic—it only knows ‘addition’; so, surely, we think, contentment lies just after the next acquisition or accomplishment, whatever that may be for us.

Left unexamined, following such values compels paths through life that may not only be misaligned, but in fact antithetical to our own deeper peace and wellbeing. We therefore find ourselves chasing after false goals, prioritizing our time and attention on empty pursuits, and then wondering why ‘success’, as defined for us, leaves us with existential angst and a sense of purposelessness. We may not even be able to adequately define this angst or underlying dissatisfaction for ourselves because we’ve been so thoroughly following what we think we should do, with the tacit belief that these conventional pursuits will eventually bring us the sense of completeness they promise.

Fortunately, it’s only a crack in this conditioning that’s needed to fundamentally alter our path; to set up the journey such that it’s aligned with our own deeper values. The seed of discontent—or perhaps the seed has grown into a full tree or forest of discontent—is the nucleus of skillful change. As always, suffering is the compass that reorients us.

How, then, do we discover what is uniquely important to us? The answer, I’d suggest, lies partly in the word “discover”; it is a process of discovery, of revealing what’s already there. There’s nothing to go out to find or attain; rather, it’s through shedding our accumulated conditioning. It’s in removal of these layers that we begin to allow our deeper—and true—values to rise to the surface of awareness. They’re always there, quietly fueling the underlying, or perhaps more overt, dissatisfaction we feel when the volume is turned up on our conditioned thought and action. We need to re-mix the levels such that our own individual ‘music’ can be heard above the collective ‘noise’. This adjustment happens through quieting the mind; getting still and silent … meditation … Zazen.

As most will be well aware, the term “meditation” was introduced as a translation for Eastern spiritual practices, referred to as dhyana in Hinduism and Buddhism, and which comes from a Sanskrit root, sometimes translated as “familiarization”. Getting familiar—becoming directly acquainted with the capital-S Self. Nothing esoteric. It’s through this process of familiarization that we begin to know more and more who we are; not our conditioned, superficial self, but at a deeper level that’s been shrouded by a variety of inputs. We begin to develop a clearer picture of what, for ourselves, is central to a life well lived.

Sincere and consistent practice fundamentally changes the way we see life, and so what we do with our life naturally begins to shift. As we ground in our values, it’s quite common for life to become considerably more simple; not necessarily because of newfound virtue, but because, as we get clear on what we truly value, we find we need less and desires recede.

However, there’s an element herein of “be careful what you wish for,” because it’s not all blissful simplicity. There’s a fierceness to Zen and to knowing thyself and the realignment to values. If we’ve forged a path at odds with our values, it’s possible—likely necessary—that a path of destruction will ensue. We may need to tear down the ‘rickety palace’ we’ve built in order to then rebuild a simple dwelling upon the solid foundation of our values. This could be in the form of the end of relationships, or a career, or significant change to other well-worn circumstances. The more we know who we are, we may begin to travel a path that appears to others as particularly odd, difficult, and impractical. It’s easy for others to value the ‘palace’ that was built according to shared conditioned values, and difficult for them to understand why you’d ever want to knock it down. I’m reminded here of a line from an essay by David Whyte, titled Ambition … in it, he writes: “The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others; the very disease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others.”

This is the individualistic nature of our values—nobody can judge whether our own values are right or wrong, or better or worse; only we can know whether we’re living in accord with them. If not, it appears to be a universal truth that life will continue to present us with problems that lack purpose and meaning. James Hollis, in Living An Examined Life, writes: "The more we give ourselves to the security of the known path, the more acceptable we may feel, but something in us does not accept this bad-faith arrangement. The more we are part of comforting consensus, the less we feel ourselves. The more we find approval from without, the more the psyche has to withdraw approval, until we feel drained, burned out, and depressed."

Perhaps it’s obvious at this point that this talk is very much directed at myself. Just as one writes the book they need to read; I’m giving the talk I needed to hear. It was only a handful of years ago that I really started considering—or being forced to consider—what was truly important in my life and how my day-to-day activities reflected those priorities. I was repeatedly hitting my head against a wall and wondering why I had a headache.

My unexamined view was that, as we travel on this linear path of life, our circumstances should be constantly improving; we should be succeeding in the conventional sense. This notion of success was accepted despite the suffering that continually came along for the ride. Of course, the thinking goes: surely this suffering will be addressed and eliminated by the next job, the next promotion, a bigger house, a nicer car, more luxurious vacations. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with those things, they’re dead-ends on the road to flourishing, except for the fact that suffering keeps pace until it can no longer be ignored. A fundamental challenge with this approach to life, and my path through it, was that I was effectively unmoored; I lacked grounding in what I valued. Rather, I was blown around by the whims of external conditioning.

This recognition, for me, arose out of sincere contemplative practices: primarily meditation, running, and a consistent writing practice. Writing, as a meta-cognitive activity, is a powerful tool, allowing for reflection on our own thoughts, feelings, emotions. Noting insights, learnings, challenges, allows for new ways of seeing to be revealed to ourselves. Patterns emerge, previously hidden to our own awareness. It’s a mechanism through which we can amplify and solidify realization happening on and off the cushion. Through these practices, among others, what is truly important—our own unique values—naturally float to the surface and become undeniable. I crystalized around a set of values that were indeed at odds, or at least seriously misaligned, with several aspects of my lived circumstances, and so ensued a period of destruction, of removing the inessential, the complicating, to reveal a way of being rooted more firmly in the essential.

A critical element of this process of destruction, or renewal, was the removal of the ‘me’ at the center of all circumstances—having Grant as the constant focus is exhausting! As our recent guest, David Hinton, writes: “Self-absorption is a form of lonely exile from the very nature of cosmos and consciousness.” But, we’re told, enhancing ourselves through the ‘doctrine of more’ is highly valuable and the path to enduring happiness. Rather, an inevitable outcome of revealing who we are more essentially is the development of deep compassion and a desire, or need, to be of service in whatever ways we feel called to.

While our unique path, anchored by our own values, may bring about new practical challenges, the beauty is that we start to trade-in the existential angst that rides along with misalignment, for a deeper contentment and fulfillment, and a sense of true wealth, with respect to time and attention placed upon those things that really matter to us. Ultimately, we orient ourselves in the direction of flourishing—individual and collective—with each step of the journey being the point in itself.