Witten sunday night
I'm sitting in a window seat in a Former Franciscan monastery listening to the rain, drinking chamomile tea and giving myself a mere 20 minutes in front of this glowing screen to reflect formally on the first day of the Mind&Life Summer Research Institute 2011. In his opening statement, one of the founders, Al Kasniak said that his motivation as a social activist and one of the founders of Mind & Life Institute was to create healthy minds. This is neither a direct quote nor the main idea of his talk but as an educator it struck me immediately. Isn't that the goal of raising children? The goal of education? The goal ofhumanity? How do we cultivate healthy minds (physical and emotional fitness, as Al put it)? The question lingered; the guiding question of my life's work. There was also a powerful caution against the search for a panacea...a call to exploration, to inquisitiveness without attachment.
The search for an answer becomes an ache. Aching for an answer when there are multiple, when there are none. The resonating note from the documentary on cognitive scientist and Mind & Life founder, the belated Francisco Varela, was that the most difficult and important thing is to be able to stay, rest, sit with a question. May science not rush to judgment on contemplative traditions, all the while searching, aching for a deeper understanding of what it is to be human, to be whole.
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