Zen Futures
Social Change, Week 14
I just want to send a quick note today before getting back to Thanksgiving celebration. Last week we wrapped class with a guest lecture from Hauson Le, recent graduate of the Houston Foresight program and the leader of foresight work at AFI, which helps local government entities innovate and collaborate. I met Hauson this summer at the UH Spring Gathering, where he did a presentation on joy in foresight work. This time he shared some ideas related to another one of his guiding principles: presence.
His goal in this work was to adapt or carry forward the spirit of the Mont Fleur scenarios, possibly the most consequential foresight scenario exercise in the history of the world. As part of resolving the conflict in South Africa over apartheid, a wide series of community events was held, including a scenario planning exercise. I don’t intend to overstate the importance here; the scenarios aren’t singlehandedly responsible for South Africa’s democratic transition. But they did map out the conditions for success and failure, and they created a shared language and shorthand that entered the public consciousness, so they were a pretty big deal.
Hauson wants to carry forward some of the spirit of this work of radical collaboration (imagining paths forward through seemingly intractable problems) in settings with much smaller groups: in essence, reimagining relationships between two stakeholders in a way that can be repeated throughout the problem domain by progressively removing barriers to connection and collaboration. He did this by adapting practices and contemplations from Zen Buddhism that help us see issues differently:
First, pondering the flame. We consider a flame to be a single object, but every moment it’s a new set of igniting gas; the permanence is basically the illusion of something that’s new in every moment. Similarly, if we consider the parts of the problem that refuse to change, what if, in fact, they are constantly changing?
Second, pondering the flower. The flower was created by rain, soil, and sunlight, but where can you see those in the flower1? We create these ideas about separation of objects, ideas, and people, but a deep interbeing and interconnectedness is an equally valid perspective. What connections can we discover that might help us see the problem differently?
Last, pondering the wave. Where does the wave end and the ocean begin? All these labels are dualities and concepts we impose on reality to order and direct it, but they can also obscure our vision. What concepts in the problem have become obstacles, and what insight do we have when we transcend the concept and see reality with fewer filters?
By working through these in sequence and without hurry, the hope is that new possibilities are unlocked for solving problems in novel ways that allow more people to have their perspective integrated.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’ve deeply grateful for everyone who spends the time reading my writing and going on this journey with me.
True, the flower also requires air to grow, but you can’t see air anyway, so we can let that one slide.