Mind the Gap

Sunday Musings on Saturday Buddhist Class

2:

Mind the Gap

In 1969, Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground (in the song ‘Some kind of love’) sang “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime”, which brings to mind not only the Viennese  psychiatrist Viktor Frankl and his Logotherapy and the ‘space’ between stimulus and response, but is also reminiscent of the Buddhist notion of a ‘gap’ on the ‘Wheel of Life’, or the very practical aspects of the Karmic domino effect of our actions in life, and maybe beyond, depending upon your notion of rebirth..

The class was as fascinating as ever.

I continue to be enthused about the paired down, no nonsense, demystified approach to Buddhism. If you might consider Buddhism to be a stripped down version of the religious collective known as Hinduism, then Western Buddhism is Buddhism Lite, devoid of the mysticism, just as Protestantism is a more pragmatic version of Catholicism within the Christian faith.

This week, before meditation we, the humble travellers not on a ribald Chaucerian pilgrimage but on our own separate journeying into Buddhist practices, were introduced to the ‘Tibetan Wheel of Life’, or the map of Samsara which, at first glance, seems to be an Asian visual rendering of Dante's Nine Circles of Hell.

The bad news is that suffering (Dukkha) exists. The worse news is that we will all suffer. But the good news is that we can do something about it.

Enter, not the dragon but the karmic gap, and back to Viktor Frankl and his ‘space’ between stimulus and response. Frankl, like Herman Hesse and Carl Jung, journeyed to the East and took back to the West notions found there, including borrowings from Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, so is it no wonder that there may be similarities between a Logoistic/psychodynamic and Buddhist approach to the action and re-action we all seem to suffer from.

Please mind the gap. This is heard at some of the stations on the British ‘Tube’ (underground rail system). That gap being a physical manifestation of the more metaphysical ‘gap’ in the action and the seemingly autonomous reactive response we suffer in life. The secret is not to mind, but to be mindful of that gap and that infinitesimal ‘augenblik’ (moment) between action and reaction.