Changing views
Non-attachment and flowing with wild currents in the river of life
Dear Enchantable readers,
Over the past nearly two years, you have seen many iterations of this view from my balcony, my morning meditation perch. It was the main image for my last post and many others.
This week, my view is changing, unexpectedly. Welcome to my new view, the new foreground of my writing:
It wasn’t a choice. We would have happily stayed with our old view indefinitely. Indefinido, I always tell people when they ask how long we plan on staying in Costa Rica. Not defined.
But sometimes life forces you to change views.
My landlord came over one night to check a leak in the roof, which was odd because I had sent him a video and he doesn’t fix things himself. It was also torrentially pouring and there was nothing that could be done about it in that moment. As he was leaving, he told me he needed to talk with me, and shared that he needed to move back into the house. He wanted us out by November. Which is soon.
While this threw me for a loop, I also always knew this day could come (as you do when you are a lifelong renter). In a previous miscommunication some months ago, I had thought he was asking us to leave (he wasn’t), so I had already gone through the mental process of grieving the place, the possibility of having to leave the place which we have loved and which has been so convenient for our life. So when he told me, I wasn’t entirely shocked. I also really felt for him, as the circumstances of his returning to the house were not happy or easy ones.
The timing didn’t feel great. It is my busiest time of year, the first semester. In addition to my heavy teaching load, I have a number of public engagements with online offerings and conferences in the coming weeks (details below) - things I am excited about but things that take time and attention. Time I don’t have to spend scouring rental ads and visiting dwellings.
He left, and I texted my friends, in part to commiserate, in part to let them know that I was on the lookout for a new place in case they knew of anything. To my friend Julia, I said, “If your neighbor is renting her place, let me know,” not thinking that she actually would be. Maybe a year ago, Julia had informed me that the house next door was available, and as beautiful as it sounded, we weren’t looking to move. It wasn’t the right time.
Julia texted me back with the ad. It was for rent, within our budget. Within minutes I had an appointment for viewing. In less than 48 hours, I had signed the lease. In less than 48 hours, our life had changed rather dramatically.
What does it mean to change views?
In this case, I am moving physical locations. Same town, other side. You can see different things. The view is jaw-dropping, sweeping, the roar of the Rio Pacacua always in the background, birds soaring across the canyon, clouds shapeshifting throughout the day. It is absolute beauty and tranquility, my nervous system settling just at the thought. At night the city lights of San Jose twinkle in the distance.
Changing my view will change my life. I do not yet know how, but I am curious about it.
How will it inform my writing? How will it inform how I feel? How will this new view shape my life? What will I notice?
What will it mean to write with the river? The sky? The monkeys? How will this change what flows through my mind and heart?
In the class I just taught on identity, community, and peace, we talk - and practice - a lot about what it means to be in a community with diverse views. Yes, everyone is there because they care about peace, but that does not mean that we think the same way about it. In a diverse multicultural global community, there are wildly different views about everything - which is the greatest source of beauty, learning, and joy, and a source of tension and conflict (also learning!).
We don’t need to change views to understand them, or make space for them, though maybe in just seeking to understand and make space for other views, we are changed, our views are changed. In this class, one of the words that came up in making our agreements was alterity, which means a state of being other or different. The word was brought into our discussion on community agreements to acknowledge that yes, we are interconnected and we can have empathy for each other, but also we are having very different experiences and will never fully know what it’s like to be in another’s shoes. We have different views from the respective places where we are standing and coming from. We don’t have to change our own view in order to accept someone else’s view from where they are standing. We also need each other’s views to get a fuller picture of truth - what in the Plum Village community we call seeing with sangha eyes, what adrienne maree brown calls imagination collaboration.
This isn’t to say we have to (or should) accept or tolerate all views. As the great James Baldwin said, "We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist." We should not accept views that are rooted in our own or others’ oppression or denial of their humanity.
This is taken up in the third mindfulness training of the the fourteen mindfulness trainings of the Order of Interbeing,(this is the beauty of the trainings!), which states:
We are committed to respecting the right of others to be different, to choose what to believe and how to decide. We will, however, learn to help others let go of and transform fanaticism and narrowness through loving speech and compassionate dialogue.
Yes, this is a tricky, complicated practice. And that’s why it’s a practice. It’s not a dogma. It’s an ongoing, ever-changing flow with life.
The second mindfulness training is about non-attachment to view:
Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. We are committed to learning and practicing non-attachment to views and being open to others’ experiences and insights in order to benefit from the collective wisdom. We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Insight is revealed through the practice of compassionate listening, deep looking, and letting go of notions rather than through the accumulation of intellectual knowledge. Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives.
In our commitment to the mindfulness trainings, we recite them monthly. This is a beautiful practice which helps us remember our deepest aspirations, and to reflect on where our practice has been strong and where we would like to deepen it. One of the things I love about the recitation is noticing which words and phrases stand out with each review, the ones that ring loudly, the ones that call me in.
It is easy to practice non-attachment to my home view when the view I am moving to is so stunning. Other views are much harder to let go of. Other views are harder to be open to.
The last line of the second training is one of my favorites of all: truth is found in life. This, I believe, is the heart of re-imagining education with the earth which we will be doing together at the upcoming Re-Imagining Education Conference (join us!!!).
**I will be going live on Instagram with my friend Salo from Ecoversities Alliance to talk about the conference. Join us tonight (Sunday, October 13) at 6pm Costa Rica time!1
I have a lot of online public engagements this month, and I would love to join me at any or all of the following!
Pluriverse Symposium: Join Minna and I of Prism of Wisdom for a session on community dreamwork as pluriversal practice! The symposium is organized by Courage of Care Coalition.
Re-Imagining Education Conference: I will be doing a session on October 26th with my students from UPEACE about the pains and possibilities of re-imagining education from within.
I’ll be offering a session with Abrazadores de la Tierra’s lead-up to COP-16 on re-imagining education with the earth.
I’m offering a session on pedagogies for peace at the National Community College Peacebuilding Seminar on November 1, organized by the Forage Center.
I’ve been invited to be a guest on the Metta Center’s Nonviolence Radio show. Stay tuned for details!
I am deeply honored to participate in these events and hope you can join me for some of them!
As I write, it is the celebration of Thich Nhat Hanh’s continuation day (birthday, but in Buddhism, no birth, no death :) Happy continuation, dear Thay! I try each day to be a beautiful continuation of your teachings :) I really recommend listening to the new album released by the Plum Village Band, which I have had on repeat this weekend. It is an incredibly beautiful continuation of Thay’s teaching and legacy.
As I added links to this post, I came across my recent post, Flowing with the river of life, and I had to laugh. I had to smile. In that post, I talked about how the semester feels like being in a very fast-moving stretch of river, which has now taken me to an actual fast-moving river. The place in the river I described in my post looks so similar to the river that is my view now. Things with this move have happened so fast, it really has felt like being swept up in a current - but not a dangerous one, a supportive one, an easeful one.
The river is calling me. What truth is it here to teach me?
Wishing you ease and buoyancy on the stretch of the river of life you are flowing with, dear readers.
With love and care,
Stephanie
To join us, you need to be following me @stephanieknoxsteiner or @ecoversities on Instagram, and if you are logged into at that time and when we go live, you should see us at the top of your screen