Cultivating the Three Essential Values

 

Every living organism on our planet, from any of the five kingdoms (Bacteria, Protists, Fungi, Plants, and Animals) depends, for its survival, on three essential values, or criteria for survival: health, competence, and resilience. These can be briefly defined as follows:

    Health is internal homeostasis, the proper functioning and interrelation of all of the complex elements of the open, autopoietic systems we call "life." For humans (and, to a certain extent, other complex multicellular beings as well), this includes not only physical health, but mental and spiritual health as well. Mental health is often called "emotional intelligence"--the ability to cope effectively with adversity, while spiritual health is, at a deeper level, faith, or acceptance of that that is, whether this is in the context of religious belief systems ("Thy will be done") or simple, unadorned stoicism ( as old Walter Cronkite would put it. "That's the way it is.")  Faith is often confused with belief, but beliefs are simply culturally evolved mental formations for articulating and reinforcing one's faith. Faith unites us all; beliefs divide us.  In its essence, faith is saying "yes" to life--it is what we have in common with sunflowers, butterflies, and whales.

Competence is, as the root verb suggests, the ability to compete; that is, the skills--whether innate or learned or both--necessary to compete effectively and thus survive--and even thrive--within a specific ecological or sociocultural niche. It is, by and large, what people are taught in schools and colleges. But it is context-bound--skills that are adaptive in one context are often either useless or maladaptive in another.

Resilience is adaptive flexibility--the ability to adapt to unpredictable changes in one's niche, or context. Often, in both the nonhuman and human realms, competence and resilience are at odds. The more highly competent and specialized one becomes within a given niche--whether a wetland or a modern corporation--the less resilient one is when circumstances change.  Wolves, for example, are highly competent top predators.  But predation is all they do, so they rely upon very specialized niches in order to survive. Coyotes, conversely, are nowhere near as competent at predation as wolves, but they make up for it by their amazing resilience--their ability to adapt to a wide diversity of niches, and still find enough food to survive. In the human realm, likewise, a highly competent, super-rich stockbroker is likely to be far less resilient than the average small farmer, if the stock market collapses and his wealth vanishes.

So again, these three values--health, competence, and resilience--are essential to the survival of all living organisms, ourselves included.  So how can we best cultivate all three?

There are, of course, a vast number of techniques for cultivating these three values, but seldom, at least in my experience, do these techniques--from physical therapy to job training to psychotherapy--address any more than one at a time.  Many East Asian holistic disciplines, such as yoga, qigong, and tai chi. are far better at nurturing all three values, since--unlike the west--they do not draw a strict conceptual boundary between body, mind, and spirit. 

So I wish to share my own approach, which works well for me. I call it the "Dharma Gaia Mantra," and it consists of ten verb phrases or injunctions, repeated and contemplated on the breath, which can be used, optionally, with a visual diagram--the Pythagorean Tetractys.

Here, in brief, is how it works:

BREATHE: The first injunction--from which all others derive, like a tree growing out of a seed, has multiple benefits for our physical, emotional, and spiritual health. The quiet, steady rhythm of our breath has many therapeutic effects on our metabolism, our anxieties, our ability to concentrate, and our ability to focus our attention on the present moment. In India, for example, a whole branch of yoga--Pranayama--had grown up around cultivating these physical. mental, and spiritual benefits of conscious breathing. And quite naturally, our breath connects us to all other life--to Gaia--by taking in the oxygen provided by trees, and giving back the CO2 that the trees need.

OBSERVE: Facilitated by our breath, the ability to observe--to attend mindfully to what is going on around us (and within us)--is a key to cultivating competence--the ability to focus on, and learn from, what we are doing in any given moment.

LET GO:  Facilitated by observing, the ability to let go of attachments--to ideas, to ways of doing things, to limiting self-concepts--tends to increase our resilience--our ability to stay flexible and adapt when things go wrong, or when circumstances change unexpectedly.

These three cardinal injunctions--breathing, observing, and letting go--in turn constitute the foundation for developing the higher skills we need to get through life:

BE WELL--to cultivate or restore our health, whether physical, mental, or spiritual;

DO GOOD WORK--to observe what we are doing. in order to cultivate our competence;

KEEP IN TOUCH--to take care of everything and everyone, abandoning nothing and no one, in order to cultivate our resilience--our ability to learn new skills, to get along with others, to build social capital.

And finally, as the fruition of all these efforts. to establish and renew four essential life goals:

LEARN to nurture our own health, competence, and resilience;

TEACH to share what we have learned with others, so that they, in turn, can nurture their health, competence, and resilience;

HEAL--to use the knowledge and skills we have acquired to take care of, and nurture, the health, competence, and resilience of other people, of our society, and of our ecosystems;

CREATE--to use our innate and acquired skills to solve problems in a new way, to benefit ourselves and others, and to leave an inspiring legacy for others after we die.

Just repeat this mantra mindfully (not by rote)--whether in formal meditation, during morning exercises, or simply to overcome moments of stress, confusion, or depression, and see how well it works. Feel free to improvise.

Hope this helps!