A warm welcome to my newsletter. Emerging wisdom will offer monthly essays on different aspects of contemplative education. Some will be applied, discussing how contemplative approaches can be incorporated into teaching and learning. Other pieces will be more theoretical or reflective in nature, considering how a contemplative approach can support our development as educators and human beings. Although aimed at educators and with a leaning towards higher education, this newsletter may be of interest to anyone interested in contemplative practice and how it can contribute to the development of our individual and collective wisdom.

This first essay tackles head-on the precarious situation that many of us find ourselves in at this moment in higher education.

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There are many of us facing considerable uncertainty in our work in higher education (HE). I received a ‘risk of redundancy’ letter two weeks before Christmas. It is not something I have faced before. I have been struck by the pervasive impact of this unwelcome ambiguity. I reach out ahead with my stories and plans but my future passes through my fingers like smoke. I want to give up.  And I simultaneously want to start a million new inspiring, world changing projects in a desperate attempt to prove my worth.

I’ve been reflecting on how I have responded to this situation and during a solitary meditation retreat over the new year, I came across a poem which helped me understand what I was feeling.

Here is an excerpt:

How comforting it is to plan out our moves ahead of time. How terrifying it is to confront the unknown darkness beyond the table. Redundancy suddenly challenges planned moves. And for those committed to an academic career the darkness beyond the university, or beyond HE altogether, feels very dark indeed. Of course, it is not just redundancy that exposes us to uncertainty. Human life is precarious, and we experience this to different degrees throughout life.

However, it is sometimes possible to imagine that there are things to be certain about and this can make us feel safe, perhaps even ‘in control’. A sense of security and belonging is psychologically healthy, even necessary, particularly in the early stages of human development when we are most vulnerable and dependent on the care of others. But if we live a life of sufficient ‘pleasantness’ and success, we can perhaps emotionally convince ourselves that this should be possible all the time, even if rationally we know this not to be true.

Instead of seeing happiness as arising from a particular arrangement of conditions, it is possible to identify with it and overestimate the role individual choices have played in any happiness that has unfolded. Redundancy and other sources of uncertainty in human life sweep in like unwelcome guests disrupting that sense of safety and the narratives constructed around it. Why me?

This matters because experiences of uncertainty and loss serve to remind us of the reality of human life. It brings closer others’ experiences of suffering, as well as our own vulnerability, a reality that can sometimes be held at arm’s length. It is possible to attribute experiences of suffering to the failings of individuals and successes to their skills. Although not conscious, the outcome of this is the creation of a world in which suffering can be navigated and avoided, if only we make the right choices, eat the right things, know the right people, get the right promotion…and on and on. This is not to say that our skills, capacities and choices don’t play a role in shaping our lives – they do, but as components of a much wider complexity.

Being faced with this reality can support the development of wisdom. It invites humility and a more rounded awareness of the unfolding of life as it decentres us.  In a paper exploring transformation on the Buddhist path, Jones notes the constantly changing nature of our felt experience and how our expectation of a constantly benign experience is deluded:

‘…felt experience; it is constantly changing, like winds in the sky…such that the permanent acquisition of pleasant feeling is not a reasonable hope.’ (Jones 2024: 112).

At first glance, this observation may not seem that helpful. But it helps us to see that uncertainty and the unpleasant experiences are not personal.

From a Buddhist perspective, uncertainty such as that arising from possible redundancy can allow us to see more clearly because assumptions about how the world is and our capacity to avoid suffering are broken down, at least for a time. Faced with this precarious reality, the opportunities for empathy and compassion are increased as we become more closely acquainted with impermanence and loss.

I am not saying that we should immediately cast life’s challenges in a positive light. I often hear worrying examples of ‘spiritual bypassing’ where the misguided application of spiritual or religious teaching circumvents the emotional and physical reality of suffering. Nor am I disregarding the responsibility we have to care for ourselves and others. We need to pay attention to the way that harm, violence and struggle are experienced far more in some human lives than others. We have to face the practical challenges that life throws at us, and can’t meditate away having to pay the rent.

Yet, uncertainty triggers, at least in me, patterns of rumination through which I desperately try to create a sense of safety. Through urgent internal arguments about my role, my value, my importance, I cling to the idea that I know what I am doing and can successfully navigate every obstacle. My mind becomes louder as though to drown out my own powerlessness in a situation. It asserts itself more strongly, finds blame in others and external conditions.

What I now see more clearly is that this chatter simply distracts me from what I am really scared of - I am not in control, one day I will die and I have almost no say in when or how. But amidst that stark reality real compassion can be born, if only I can learn to sit with that uncertainty. When I was younger, I was ready to blame people’s life outcomes on their decisions. I always thought I could see a way that things might have been different for them. It took one event, which was completely outside of my control, that dramatically changed my life for me, to uproot that assumption. When the stories about ourselves and the world are challenged by redundancy or uncertainty of any kind, there is a chance for wisdom to arise beneath the demanding, arguing mind, and compassion is rarely far behind.

Jones, D. (2024) Dependent Arising and Buddhist Integral Ecology. In Riordan, P., & Flood, G. (Eds.). (2024). Connecting Ecologies: Integrating Responses to the Global Challenge (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429319655

Weinghast, M. (2020) Excerpt from Guardian by Gutta. In The first free women. Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, Shambhala Publications (2020)