Abstract
This paper addresses the problem of “the insufficiency of now” that stems from the entanglement of education with time. Namely, the embodied-lived present is always inferior compared to the hypothetical ideal future. Education and its promise hence carry the seed of inevitable disenchantment. This problem is examined based on two contrasting perspectives: Plato’s cave allegory and its application to contemporary schooling on the one hand and the Yogacara Buddhist “mind-moments” model on the other hand. The insufficiency of now emerges from both models in different ways; however, the latter model accentuates the mind’s role in its formation. The paper then describes mindfulness practice in light of the latter model, and suggests that it may be a necessary pedagogy for addressing a problem that is inherent in the concept of education and in the mind. However, the teaching of mindfulness itself has to overcome the present/future dualism that is the basis for the insufficiency of now.
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Notes
To some degree the untrained mind reflects some of the appetites described in book IX of Plato's Republic. That is, hunger, thirst, sex, etc. prevent the soul's harmony, which is achieved only when the voice of reason takes over. However, Buddhism offers a far more complex concept of mind and the processes of perception, in which what Plato referred to as appetites would be broken down into various types and distinctions (Olendzki 2011). Furthermore, the idea of "soul" as a stable inner essence would make a serious juxtaposition here quite difficult given that Buddhist schools of thought would not adhere to such view.
These can be further elaborated because the sense of touch, for example does not merely entail touching external objects, but also includes our sensed embodiment (proprioception), and sensations of balance/imbalance, pressure, temperature and so forth. Some senses offer different types of mind-moments that are generalized under the name of that particular sense.
A similar point was made by Higgins (2017): "What we bring from the past (our store of meanings, our diet of questions, our vectors of interest, our weights and measures) simultaneously opens the present to us as a space of productive encounter and limits this moment to the present of this past" (p. 540). We can further accentuate this limitation as involving the present of this future; that is, the subordination of A to B, the present as a means for the future.
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Ergas, O. Education and Time: Coming to Terms with the “Insufficiency of Now” Through Mindfulness. Stud Philos Educ 38, 113–128 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09646-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09646-3