seeing and thinking
some thoughts on forming an opinion
For my New Yorkers: have you made a plan to vote? I hope that you’ll vote for Zohran Mamdani on the Working Families Party line! A vote on the WFP party line counts the same as a vote on the Democratic line and sends a message that we want a viable third-party option in the U.S. Additionally, ICE is targeting communities in NYC. Know Your Rights and think about how you can support the most vulnerable among us.
As always: Hi!
And an extra special Hi! to the 74 new subscribers to SLOWLY, SLOWLY. For a quick primer: I’m Jessica. I’m a writer, artist, and dharma practitioner. SLOWLY, SLOWLY is a monthly newsletter where I share thoughts on dharma, ecology, and the process of awakening consciousness, as well as updates on my projects and any ‘ol thing that might be on my mind. Welcome! All posts are free, and paid subscribers receive a copy of my riso-printed project, THE MANY FACES OF THE BUDDHA. That’s about it, but if you’d like to learn more about my work, you can visit the ABOUT page of this newsletter or check out my website (years-long under construction but coming along, more soon).
Some of you made it my way via my last newsletter, BUDDHISM FOR BEGINNERS, which included a list of recommended readings from my friends and dharma practitioners on what they read at the onset of their meditation practices and dharma paths. The People loved this, and message heard - I plan to do more of these in the future. 🫡 Another group of you found your way here after reading my comments on the essay “Ezra Klein Just Showed Us Everything Wrong With Secularized Meditation.” This is where I want to focus some thoughts for this newsletter.
The focus of the aforementioned essay is on Ezra Klein’s mention of The Five Remembrances in his recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show in conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. The author argues that Ezra Klein inserted a non-sequitur about his meditation practice into a conversation about political violence. She describes the moment as “whiplash.” It then goes on to cite this as an example of the dangers of mindfulness meditation sans ethics, an issue that has peaked as Western optimization culture has secularized Buddhism to make it a life hack for efficiency and mental well-being. The reflections in the essay are worth a read. As I note in my comment, I was nodding along reading the essay, but I also had an itchy sensation because, as I read the quote, I was thinking: If it was indeed a whiplash moment in the interview, then what did Ta-Nehisi Coates say in response? This was absent from the essay. So I listened to the full episode. After I listened, I felt that the author of this essay had widely mischaracterized Ezra Klein’s mention of The Five Remembrances to fit the argument for her essay. When isolated, Ezra Klein’s mention of this Buddhist practice could absolutely read as an example of how Klein uses his personal meditation practice to retreat from the world. But when you listen to the conversation in full, I think, like me, you might see that Klein is drawing on his experience of this Buddhist practice to engage with the question of how to live despite the fact of violence.
Ladies and Gentlewomen, there are many issues with how Ezra Klein represented himself in that conversation (see: recent episode of Vibe Check on “An Abundance of White Mediocrity”), but spiritual bypassing is not one of them. Once more, I truly hate to be in the position of defending a YT Man, especially one who has nothing to do with me (I don’t even listen to his show!), but alas, Here I Am. And that’s not even what I want to explore in this moment. I share all of this as a primer to the point of discernment and how to build it.
My issue with the Ezra Klein Is Spiritually Bypassing Essay is that 1) it takes quotes out of context to benefit a specific argument, and 2) people will take these quotes as truth because they haven’t listened to the episode and drawn a conclusion for themselves. Here we are on the internet in the plethora of voices, where we are apt to pick up pieces of information and accept them as absolute truth. I am fearful of an attention span that does not click on the links that are referenced in articles, and that has lost the muscle of building an opinion.
Discernment is one of the less often talked about outcomes of mindfulness practice, but one I hold very close to the heart. Gaining space from the reactivity of emotions and first impulses, noticing the inclination of the mind toward a habitual energy of thoughts, cultivates a clarity of mind that allows you to determine your path forward. In the gap (or in the “pause” as Viktor Frankl calls it), we can think about how to respond. In Buddhism, we might use that liminal space to think about the object of our concern and the Eightfold Path - Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration - our guideposts for ethical living. In non-Buddhist terms, when I put space between my emotions and my reaction to those emotions, I have better access to my critical thinking skills, which helps me to come to a conclusion about the things I run into in my life.
Criticism is high on my mind of late, namely because I’m currently in a writing fellowship focused on urban criticism (New City Critics, more below), but also it comes up in long phone conversation with my friend Lindsley where we talk about the preponderance of commentary that reads of a “hot-take”, things predicated on a strong opinion that is presumed to be “right” or “correct”. In one of our first NCC sessions, the writer Garnette Cadogan spoke to us about developing a critical sensibility, the relationship of trust between author and reader, and the question of how we’re drawing the reader closer. For me, the “hot-take” type writing keeps me at surface level. I do not go deep when I read these things, and it does not draw me close.
My favorite sort of criticism is the type that invites the reader into a framework of thinking as opposed to smashing the reader over the head with an opinion or static point of view.
On my walk to the Art x Care panel this past Saturday, I listened to Zadie Smith on The New Yorker Radio Hour. I find that I enjoy Zadie Smith’s essays more than her fiction, and was reminded of this fact listening to her conversation with David Remnick. She speaks about spending a lot of time listening to things, reading things, and resisting the daily diet of media consumptions. She says that she moves slower. She calls herself the “slow food movement of writing” because it takes her a moment to think.
In an older interview, she comments:
“I never conceived of myself as a mouthpiece. Nor do I think of myself as telling “my stories”, exactly. I think of myself as thinking about all sorts of things, on the page, in public. I try to point out the idiosyncratic way in which I think and also the commonality I’m seeking. Something like: “I’m thinking this – are you, reader?” But I don’t mind if the answer turns out to be no. I’m less interested in convincing people of an argument than in modelling a style of thinking. That’s what’s important to me in the literary world: ways of seeing and thinking.”
Funny, that term “ways of seeing” briefly flew by in the conversation with Garnette, but in reference to the John Berger docu-series. Like Zadie Smith, Berger encourages cultivating a personal point of view, asking the viewer to consider how their point of view has been / might be manipulated. As with words, the “meaning” of a painting might be distorted by zooming in too tightly. I love the moment toward the end of the first episode, where Berger explains the “false mystification” that surrounds art, how the language of the art critique makes the art inaccessible, by way of telling you how to feel about the artwork:
“It is as though the author wants to mask the images, as though he fears their directness and accessibility…It’s as though he doesn’t want us to make sense of it in our terms. And when he sums up, he resorts to meaningless generalisations.”
-Ways of Seeing
He then shows a group of school children experiencing a Carravaggio, demonstrating how, until they’re educated out of and forced to accept mystification, children will look at and interpret images directly drawing conclusions. It’s a good ‘ol Krishnamurti sentiment: “You think you’re thinking your thoughts. You are not. You are thinking the culture’s thoughts.”
I am on this journey of quieting the noise so that I can hear my own thoughts and discern my feelings. This looks like some of the slowness that Zadie Smith talks about. I have some trusted cultural critics and theorists whose words I look to for guidance, and I try to make an effort to personally engage with the object of these critics’ critique. If they reference a video, I will look it up and watch the video, if they are referencing an essay, I will open that essay and read it, and if they are referencing a podcast, I am going to listen to that podcast. Because I am not a perfect person, I don’t do this every time. But if I care about the issue, have a personal stake in the topic of reference, or find myself particularly intrigued, I’m gonna go check it out for myself, especially before sharing it with others. Yes, sometimes I hear my favorite critic’s critique of a thing and don’t go to the bibliography, and the most likely case here is that I have read the earlier receipts of their work and have a trust in the integrity of their word. In the same way that the Buddha encouraged students not to take his teachings as gospel, but to experience them personally and make a determination on their truth, I adopt this attitude of “come and see,” building experiential knowledge to cultivate my critical thinking. I also discuss aloud the things I am turning over in my mind with my friends, which is essential to critical thinking as well - talking about your ideas with people and receiving feedback.
Anway, I leave you with this consideration, the closest thing to a hot take1 that I have to offer at the moment: You don’t need someone to tell you how to think and feel. You have it in you to come to a conclusion, to fumble the ball and get things wrong, to return again and again to thinking and wondering and shaping your thoughts.
What is your process / what is your relationship to forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion? I’d love to know how you’re thinking about thinking. You can reply directly to me by replying to this newsletter in your inbox, or you can comment below if you’re reading this on desktop or the Substack app.
xo Jessica
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HERBS! HERBS! HERBS!
In recent experiments with herbs: last month, when I was up at The Strange, I picked holy basil, lemon balm, mullein, and borage flowers, then boiled water, stuck these fresh herbs in the boiling water, turned the stove off, and let the whole thing steep overnight. In the morning, I strained the herbs, et voila! An infusion was born. I imbibed this in the evenings over the course of a week, heated up with a drop of honey.
It is incredibly easy to make a nourishing herbal infusion such as this. Fresh herbs are great if you’ve got them, but more often than not, I make an infusion from dried herbs that I’ve purchased (usually the Vibrance blend from Flower Power in the East Village).
This year, I am finally trying my hand at making a tincture with the herbs from 462 Halsey. Last month, me and a garden friend harvested lemon balm and holy basil (and shiso too, for bitters). I’m using the simple and slow “folk method” which involves chopping up your herbs, placing them in a jar, pouring a high-proof alcohol over your herbs (Everclear, lol), closing the jar and letting that whole thing sit in a cool, dark place for 6 - 8 weeks, pulling the jar out a couple times a week to shake up the herbs and aid in the maceration process. The alcohol helps to extract the beneficial compounds from the herbs, but you can use an alcohol-free process, too. My herbs are currently in week 6 of the maceration process, so I will be straining and bottling my tinctures soon. 🤓
All this shared, I am certainly not an herbalist! For my tinctures, especially when I am looking for blends, I either go to a local shop (RIP to Radicle Herbs on Atlantic Avenue) or I have been buying from Jennifer Patterson of Corpus Ritual for years and couldn’t recommend her shop enough.
NEW CITY CRITICS
I am almost two months into my time as a New City Critics Fellow with Urban Omnibus. This fellowship is a partnership between The Architectural League of New York and Urban Design Forum, designed to expand who writes about cities and shapes our public imagination.
During the fellowship year, I’ll be probing the process of becoming ‘of’ a place, indigeneity and urban practice, the relationships between land and psychic geography, climate policy and green space, repetition, and walking as a method of placemaking. I’ll make an effort to share new writing from the fellowship in this newsletter as it comes, but I also encourage you to subscribe to Urban Omnibus to not miss any of the writing coming from my cohort and beyond.
Learn more about the New City Critics program, my fellowship cohort, and what we’re currently reading. »»»
WORK WITH ME
You can find me most often at 462 Halsey Community Farm. 👩🏾🌾
Interested in starting a meditation practice and delving into Buddhist studies? I offer one-on-one meditation mentorship sessions to help support individuals in establishing a meditation practice and finding their path in the dharma. You can learn more here.
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My actual “hot-take”: You don’t need someone to tell you how to build a home library. You can just collect the books you like to read over the years.
So refreshing to read something so considered when the internet is full of hot takes.
This was excellent. I feel like hot takes can often end up being a way for us to platform our ideas on something we already feel strongly about, rather than about the actual event. I appreciated the author's thoughts on spiritual bypassing but the example felt oddly piggy-backed on a conversation that didn't quite fit her thesis. It's such an internet problem.