Secret Agency

“Be a lamp unto yourself.” - Buddha

“What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as ‘play’ is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously.” - Thomas Merton

I’ve been talking a lot this year, both in my coaching and formal dharma talks, about agency. It is a topic that is really resonating with my mentees and students, and me.

That’s not a surprise to me. I think the most debilitating feeling a person can have is one of powerlessness.

(Unfortunately, there are strong cultural, geopolitical and now geophysical forces that can amplify our feelings of powerlessness, from rampant regimes of fear and violence, to internalized consumerist ideologies, to massive climate disruption. But I don’t want to focus on the external forces here.)

There are two reasons why powerlessness is so terrible and debilitating: the first is that when we feel powerless, we don’t see how things are going to change, which leads to catastrophizing, which makes us feel even worse. We spiral the drain.

We usually believe unconsciously that we “have to do something” in order to …. well, fill in the blank. Feel better, make progress, accomplish something.

It’s always on us to “do something” (we believe) and if we don’t have the power to do what needs to be done, well then, we’re rightly screwed.

When you reflect on your life, or study impermanence directly as we do in Zen practice, you see that this drive to do something is misplaced. You actually don’t have to do anything for things to change, because everything always does. You might also find that things get done without you doing anything, or the things that you thought needed to get done don’t.

All that is a helpful re-frame of our sense of powerlessness, but it goes deeper. The second reason powerlessness is so debilitating is that taking agency — exercising our power to act as we decide — is the fundamental source of meaning and happiness in our lives.

The Buddha was quite explicit about this in his teachings about “right mindfulness”. When we exercise our power to place our attention in the right way (specifically on our own body, feelings, mind and sense experience) we are exercising our fundamental agency in a way that transforms our experience AND leads to greater agency of action in our lives and the world.

And THAT is the essential source of our own happiness.

(As a sidenote …. some strands of the modern mindfulness movement are more passive and miss this aspect of Right Mindfulness. They can leave you feeling more powerless and unhappy!)

What’s more, many modern philosophers and psychologists, from Nietzche to Victor Frankl and beyond, have identified the exercise of our conscious agency as the essential source of meaning. We make our lives meaningful through our conscious choices to act.

I agree.

So, as is often the case with Zen, we are counseled to turn inward to find happiness and meaning.

To feel in to how we are moved to move.

To listen in to what we desire.

To make the decision to act.

Move, feel, choose, act.

When we do this, our spirit of action, as the mystic monk Thomas Merton describes, can and should (perhaps) feel more like play, than serious duty or work.

This is where vows come in. Vows are just deep conscious commitments to act in a certain way. Not to produce a certain result, but to enter into an action or behavior with a certain spirit of connection and expression. With the hope to feel and spread joy.

When you commit to marry someone, leave a job, pursue a new job, go on a year sabbatical, raise your child with a certain dedication …. it’s all a leap of faith that will yield happiness and meaning in your life, the more consciously and whole-heartedly you make the commitment.

It’s all in your hands. You have the agency, which may appear secret or hidden, if you have not made the leaps in your life, or if you listen too closely to cultural messages.

A deep commitment is serious, but not heavy serious. It’s the serious playfulness of children, who seem to intrinsically know that the universe is not fixed and separate from what is going on within their own imaginations.

When I walked into the coffeeshop today baristas Leily and Jess were absolutely cracking up as they showed me the special “frog latte” they have concocted for leap day. That’s the spirit …. Thanks guys!

Taking a leap will make you happy.

Making a deep commitment will give you meaning.

Happy Leap Day.