Kaizen/Smriti, a resolution, of sorts. Part One

Kaizen/Smriti:

I have decided upon a slightly new direction/function for this blog in the new year, and that direction/function is best seen through the concepts of Kaizen (Japanese through English) and Smriti (Buddhist.) I am using the blog as a sort of record of my year (also guided by these concepts) and as a ground for writing.

Kaizen, which has been a favorite concept of mine for quite a few years, means making continuous small improvements. At each step, there is a pause, a looking-around, and a re-implementation of direction/protocol. The Japanese means "improvement," in the same sense English does, or "amelioration" in the Chinese (改善) but through an American-English translation of Japanese business practices has come to mean "continuous improvement."

I take "continuous" to mean "anew each moment." One will get two very different measurements of the English coastline using a mile and an inch as standards of measurement. I hope to continue to make my standard of measurement smaller and smaller, finding the possibility of fundamental change in each moment, until change and being are synonymous, at which point the game looks quite different.

"Improvement" is a trickier word. Change for the better, of what? My concept of this is something like "healthy growth," but each of these terms carries a good amount of baggage as well, if associated with the word "normative." For now, think of a blooming apple tree.

I should also note that "Kaizen" has a reactive connotation to it, finding a problem and fixing it, to which I would add Otto Scharmer's idea of "presencing," the ability to sense and bring into the present one's highest future potential, which is more active. I include both active and passive, past and future, in my concept of "Kaizen."

This could be terribly inefficient, and I certainly agree here with the old leadership maxim that to do anything even if the wrong thing is better than doing nothing, but quite aware that my disposition is towards theorizing without action I am actively training my capacity to act past theorizing, which is where Smriti comes in.

Smriti is an anglicized Sanskrit word which means literally "that which is remembered," but which has taken on a much greater importance in Buddhism. I will here use it mostly as self-remembrance, and, following Alan Watts, what I really mean here is 'awareness of awareness.' The Chinese etymology is helpful as well. 念 (nian) is usually the translation for "Smriti," and consists of 今 (jin) the character which means "today" or "now," and 心 (xin) which is the character for "mind/heart." What is the mind doing now, and now, and now. The English translation "mindfulness" carries this constant connotation as well, it is something underneath each moment in consciousness, at its most concentrated. When eating, know that you are eating, when walking, know that you are walking, when talking, know that you are talking.

Of course, a zen master may say "stop being mindful!" that is, when walking, walk. No need to know you are doing this. Ultimately I agree with this, but this comes at the end of a long process of mindfulness training, at least if one wants to embody it 'off the cushion,' or outside of a meditation retreat. Neither am I, though, at the stage of merely having the thought "I am walking," but somewhere in between. Eventually, as one remembers to become aware of what's occurring in awareness bit by bit (or word by word, action by action), one realizes that there are too many things to actually literally keep track of, and the mind relaxes and lets awareness watch experience without remarking upon it. Walking is walking, and talking talking, if only temporarily. When I am aware, I can do this, and can see my mind as it inserts that thin film between the action and the awareness. But I am not always aware of what I am doing; I flicker like a light bulb not quite screwed in.

Putting these two together, Kaizen/Smriti, you have my resolution, a New Year's resolution which is continuous; my standard of measurement already much less than a mile, it would be odd for me to try once and check back next year. Resolution is a particularly effective term here, "solution" meaning both a loosening and a fix for a problem, and "re-" being an intensifier tied to temporal repetition. Apply that 're-' to each moment, and you have the concept I am looking for with Kaizen/Smriti. A resolution, 'I will remember,' as a resolution to the problems of living, which is also a resolution of what is abstract into what is practical and direct, and a whetting of the resolution of my awareness to the smallest possible interval.


Glass House, also a project aimed at cultivation of awareness, was more to find out the ways in which I was embedded in others' meaning, the chains of culture and relation behind me, and to bring that in front of me, even if not consciously undertaken as such at the time. It was to discover what roadblocks I kept putting in front of myself, and why. In this, it was largely successful, and culminated in the understanding that the reason I was subjecting myself to such a ridiculous degree of exposure was that I wanted to be found out as a fraud, and I think of this as the natural side of having a persona and an ego, and part of the process of discovering the authentic, another way of thinking of 'Smriti.' One might call this "Thanatos," the death-urge, the desire to destroy the limitations of self at one level of being to foster greater growth.

With that constant resolution creating more and more space for authenticity, for a space where I can act freed from psychological embeddedness in my culture and relationships, in the rituals of being established as a child, comes the unreining of Eros.

For Eros, you can do your own research: Wikipedia's entry is woefully inadequate; I would start with Rollo May's Love and Will. Eros is the creative/destructive force of the universe. Whitehead called it 'negentropy' for its opposition to the physical concept of entropy, and so by 'destructive' I mean the destruction that happens naturally when a new thing is created, not the lethargy of entropy, nor the malice of evil, though I would not rule out that Eros works in ways that can appear to be evil. Personally, I think of it as the delight in guiding creation, and it has a rather specific emotional/psychological/somatic feel to it. And so, if 'Glass House' was an attempt to expose the habits of mind keeping me from expressing myself to the extent of my potential, this project is the vigilance over their impetus, and the release of and identification with Eros.

I should note that not everybody's psychological life revolves around the smothering of Eros, and so while this stage of my life involves the above, this will not be directly true for everyone, or even most people. Each person carries into adulthood their own cultural/familial directives to carry out which must be uprooted and overcome if they are ever to be an individual adult.

But for me, and for now, Kenzai, Smriti, and Eros are symbols of transformation in the Jungian sense, in that they represent for me ways of human-being-in-the-world whose outlines I can vaguely perceive but whose expression I am only barely capable of comprehending, let alone enact within my own consciousness. They represent a way of being more encompassing than my own, but not by so much that it is more than a step or two away.

And with that, 2010.