In his book about Dogen, the Japanese Zen Master, Brad Warner writes:
Dogen went back to Japan. When he got there, folks asked him what he’d brought back from China. “Nothing,” he said. Disappointed with this wiseass answer, as well as the fact that they didn’t get any souveniers, they pressed him for more, and he said that he had brought back a soft and flexible mind.
I’ve been pondering this story, and the profound paradox that there is a kind of strength to be found in soft flexibility that is stronger than anything rigid, robust strength can offer.
As I’ve been pondering, I’ve stumbled across Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of antifragility (the ability to grow stronger through challenge), which Tal Ben-Shahar unpacks in this video:
Don’t chase happiness. Become antifragile | Tal Ben-Shahar | Big Think - YouTube
Tal Ben-Shahar introduces the SPIRE model for cultivating antifragility, stressing the importance of spiritual growth, physical well-being, intellectual curiosity, strong relational webs and emotional intelligence.
I’ve been asking myself, what model would I use to help guide me as I try to cultivate a more antifragile life?
Although I am still very much a student in this matter, living with the challenge of “bipolar” over the last decade has given me some data to analyse. My key takeaways are that antifragility requires:
(1) nurturing an open, malleable, unknowing mind,
(2) crafting a simple, authentic, balanced life, and
(3) cultivating a vulnerable, dynamic, loving community.
The Mind That Doesn’t Know:
The great Daoist sage Lao Tzu wrote that:
Knowing you don’t know is wholeness.
Thinking you know is a disease.
Only by recognizing that you have an illness
can you move to seek a cure.
For this reason he taught that those who truly seek the way unlearn something new every day.
In praising unlearning and not-knowing, Lao Tzu was not praising ignorance or stupidity, but challenging us to unlearn old patterns of thinking and action that no longer serve us well, so that we can embrace reality in its full, mysterious complexity.
One of the ideas we often need to drop is the idea that pleasant is always good and painful is always bad. The tale of Sai Weng’s horse highlights the wisdom of staying open and withholding judgment in this respect:
Sāi Wēng lived on the border and he raised horses for a living. One day, he lost one of his prized horses. After hearing of the misfortune, his neighbor felt sorry for him and came to comfort him. But Sāi Wēng simply asked, “How could we know it is not a good thing for me?”
After a while, the lost horse returned and with another beautiful horse. The neighbor came over again and congratulated Sāi Wēng on his good fortune. But Sāi Wēng simply asked, “How could we know it is not a bad thing for me?”
One day, his son went out for a ride with the new horse. He was violently thrown from the horse and broke his leg. The neighbors once again expressed their condolences to Sāi Wēng, but Sāi Wēng simply said, “How could we know it is not a good thing for me?” One year later, the Emperor’s army arrived at the village to recruit all able-bodied men to fight in the war. Because of his injury, Sāi Wēng’s son could not go off to war, and was spared from certain death.
In her work on vulnerability and wholeheartedness, Brene Brown highlights how our tendency to try and keep “painful” emotions, like fear, shame, grief, sadness, rejection and disappointment, at bay only serves to close off the vulnerability that also enables us to experience “pleasant” emotions, like courage, belonging, love, joy, peace and happiness. She highlights how the pleasant and the painful go hand in hand, neither good, neither bad, both just two sides of the same coin, the coin of wholehearted life.
If we can give up the mindset that says that only pleasant things are welcome, only nice, tidy, stable things, and instead train ourselves into the courageous vulnerability that welcomes whatever comes, light and dark, life and death, victory and defeat, that can embrace and learn from every experience, then we are well on the way to the mind that doesn't know, and a truly antifragile life.
The Life That Is Free To Flow:
If we are to live antifragile lives, we must also learn how to craft flexible, adaptable, malleable lives, lives that are able to react and respond to crises, that can move and dance with disruptions, that can learn and grow from the inevitable challenges of life. We must craft lives that can thrive and flourish on change and transformation rather than on stability and order.
While we may think that hording and controlling is the way to make ourselves safe, nothing we do can protect us entirely in this life, whether from major crises - wars, economic collapses, famines, fires and floods – or from the more ordinary, smaller scale accidents and incidents of life – being hit by a car, developing cancer, losing a loved one, etc. Too many possessions, too much stuff, too many ideas, too many obligations, too many attempts to keep life neat and tidy and under control, may paradoxically serve to make us heavy, rigid and brittle just at the moments when we most need to be adaptable and light on our feet.
Furthermore, the simpler we live, the freer we are to allow our lives to flow with a deep authenticity and creativity. Jan Vincents Johannessen explores this idea in his beautiful book ‘Life Is A River’:
You can plan for a life in full, but you will never know what will happen in the next hour…
There are in fact no smart and easy guides to solving all the problems we will encounter… You cannot buy solutions like instant coffee. You cannot take one spoonful, put it in a cup of warm water, stir, and drink. If that was the case life would not be the mystery it is, just a programmable and predictable process without dynamics. A routine. Not a life.
Find your own path through life… Do not take the main road. Go where there is no road. Then your footprints will stand out. All of us are born originals, but most of us die like copies. We should all do our best to die like originals.
Alongside nurturing a mind that doesn’t know, we can craft lives that are light, simple, flexible and free, lives that are able to flow with a deeply human dynamism, with meaning and purpose, with balance and spontaneity, with peace and joy.
Learning to flow is the second step towards a more antifragile life!
The Community That Is Ready To Go:
“No man is an island, entire of itself”, wrote John Donne.
We humans are relational beings, interdependent from the day we are born until the day we die. However much we may prize independence, and delude ourselves into thinking we are “self-made” people, the reality is that none of us could have survived for a single day without the loving care of others, and we all continue to need compassion, connection, and care in order to survive and thrive. The truth is, the stronger our relational networks, the more likely we are to grow through life’s challenges and crisis moments - the more antifragile we are.
My parents are friends with a community of Syrians who have been forced to leave everything - their homes, their jobs, their beloved country - and take refuge in the UK. I was recently inspired to hear that despite all the challenges they face, this network have created a “bread fund” (a collective savings pot), whereby each month they all make a small contribution, so that when one family is in particular need, this bread fund can be drawn upon. This is antifragility in practice!
People must need one another (and embrace their mutual neediness) for real community to be possible. In this increasingly crisis-ridden world, we will all need each other more and more in the days ahead. We will all need communities that are ready to respond with mutual aid and solidarity in the moments of crisis that are to come. We will all need communities that are good to go! And while this is a scary truth for many of us to face, it is also an immense opportunity, an opportunity for community, an opportunity for practicing antifragility together.
This challenging moment we find ourselves in is also a ripe moment, a moment for us to learn new ways of being human together in this complex world of ours!
Exercise of the Month:
Going with the flow requires a “yes” energy rather than a “no” energy towards life. Paradoxically, when it comes to our “inner world” of thoughts and desires, resisting things tends only to increase their power over us. However, simply observing them, accepting their presence while simultaneously letting them go, allows for them to pass on by in their own way and time.
Visualizing being one with a river can help us move into a more welcoming, flowing state of mind, and ultimately into nurturing “the mind that does not know”. So, for this month’s exercise (taken from Richard Rohr’s book ‘A Spring Within Us’) I invite you to practice being a river as it flows. It may help to lie down somewhere quiet and comfortable for this exercise.
Imagine that you are lying in a river, supported by a firm bed of rock, looking up at the ripples and sky above. As floating leaves and debris come into view, notice them, then let them drift on by. There is no need to follow them downstream; you are rooted to the riverbed, firm and still. The river flows over and around you, never disturbing the deep peace of the Earth holding water.
Rest in this exercise for as long as it feels beneficial, and repeat as often as you need to!
Poem of the Month:
This month’s poem is inspired by Chapter 8 of Lao Tzu’s ‘Dao De Ching’, and is entitled ‘go with the flow’:
The person who is at home in themselves is like flowing water that quenches thirst, never needing to compete with anyone or anything.
They are happy to wind their way into in the low, dry valleys, which everyone else avoids.
Flexible and adaptable, they find their balance in all moments with spontaneity and ease.
Like ocean depths, they are grounded, calm and peaceful.
Like generous springs in the desert, their hearts lie wide open, radiating warmth.
Relishing the wisdom of simplicity, they enjoy the persistency of rivers.
Sharing the constancy of the flowing brook, they live with wholehearted integrity, softly wearing their way through the hardest of rock, as they journey on towards the sea.
Within them there is no hint of grasping or control, so their work has a natural artistry, the way that crops grow with mysterious beauty, without anxiety or strife.
Never trying to force their agenda, their timing is perfect.
Never rejecting, their welcome is renowned.
Fully content, they taste the sweet satisfaction of being themselves, just as they are, warts and all.
They know the true joy of belonging.