Glimpses of infinity

These four stories are powerful exemplars of how certain events can completely open up our whole being to a new vision of reality.

A teacher making a pilgrimage around Mt. Kailash in Tibet
This is an abridged account  from Ajahn Sucitto, a monk who is one of my favorite teachers. He was in Tibet on his way to a pilgrimage on Mount Kailash, a holy site for Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains. One day the group he was with got out of their car to have a bite to eat:

“Then we noticed a little line of people coming down a big hill. They look like little balls--grey, brown, ragged, greasy rags--coming toward us. As they approach us, they look at me and their eyes light up [because he is a monk]. Then one by one, they come forward and bend over: they just want a touch from me. When I touch their shoulders, they look up and their eyes light with joy. And they bring the babies...OK, touch the baby. Another one. A whole line of villagers coming down. And every time I bend up, they look up and their eyes lit up with joy.

After a while, the person I was with started crying. He couldn’t handle any more – such vulnerability! People at the end of the material world and they weren’t asking for money or food, they just wanted a blessing! Their eyes lit up to have a blessing. And where is the blessing? The blessing is when we fully acknowledge our own vulnerability, our own death, our mortality, our pain, our uncertainty. We acknowledge it purely, without wavering. And we acknowledge it in another, purely, without wavering. Then the boundaries disappear, and our hearts open up completely. The boundaries of the manifest – the skin, the clothes, the hair, the status, the name, the position – are seen to be just rags, of no real value, of no real worth. When those are seen through the heart, it rises up. That’s where you meet: heart to heart. The meeting is the blessing, and something rejoices in that. This is what the heart needs. It’s always a responsibility to handle the activities of daily life , but we don’t have to let it create fever and confusion. Handle it so that it’s just enough – just enough rags to wear. And meet in the blessing.”

My son in Israel
Over 10 years ago my son went to Israel on a Birthright trip for Americans who have Jewish ancestry. This is an excerpt from his many reflections on the trip:

“It was Sabbath evening at the Wailing Wall. As our group rounded the corner and the Wall stood right in front of me, I could not breathe. I hadn’t even imagined what the Wall would look like, but its intense beauty took my breath away. Our tour guide told us: No cell phones, no cameras, no flashlights. Please be respectful of those keeping the Sabbath. These were valuable words because it meant that we could not distract ourselves on our phones or try to find the best, most artistic photo of the Wall to bring back home. We had no choice but to be present. Present with the sounds of people shouting “am Yisrael, am Yisrael, am Yisrael chai!” (which translates to "the people of Israel live").  Present with the sight of Hasidic Jews in full garb praying in front of the Wall. Present with the energy of pure joy and happiness just because it was Shabbat, another Friday night.

Our newly formed, tight-knit group followed our guide into a circle of about twenty other Birthrighters to join in the chanting and joy. We sang, danced, and paraded our way through the crowd. After about 15 minutes our guide said that we had some free time to explore the Wall on our own. Immediately I knew I had one thing to do: get up to the Wall. That’s it. I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there. I maneuvered my way through the thousands of people and landed myself right up against the Wall.  

There I stood. Face to face and looking up at this enormous structure that represents resilience, pride, and on this day, joy. As I closed my eyes, head against the Wall, I decided to just listen to the sound of everything and everyone around me and try to quiet my mind. I heard the mumbling prayers of all the Jews. I felt a comforting warmth soothe my body. Then I slipped into a gentle meditative state, allowing the energy of the Wall and all its people to envelop me. And in this state I began to slowly, passionately recite: “Shema Yisrael…” [a powerful Jewish prayer at weekly Shabbat services.] I didn’t even know where the words were coming from. I hadn't recited that prayer since my Bar Mitzvah, over 10 years earlier. I only even noticed I was chanting when halfway through that first line I slipped out of my meditation as I choked on one of the words. I was crying. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, but I could not stop them. I didn’t want to stop them.

Then, out of nowhere, my grandmother appeared. She was beaming with pure love and pride. My grandma – who had survived the Holocaust, raised two children on her own after her husband died in a tragic accident, and overcome cancer two times in her life only to lose the battle the third time – was staring right into my eyes and giving me the same love, happiness, and affection that she always had. She never displayed sadness, remorse, or anger no matter what was going on. As I stood there feeling my grandma’s presence, my tears began racing down my face taking on the form of sorrow and guilt. Sorrow for her having suffered so many trials and tribulations in her life, and guilt for my never having connected on what meant so much to her: Judaism.

I continued reciting the Shema, but now with my grandma accompanying me. The words continued pouring out with the tears. But now the tears were no longer in the form of guilt and sorrow but rather guidance and connection. I felt guided by the people around me and connected to not only my grandma, but to her husband Oscar, my grandpa, whom I had never met, and to all my mother’s ancestors both living and dead – ones I had met and others I never knew existed. They were all with me, accompanying me in the Shema.       

By the time I reached the end of the prayer, my face was swollen with guilt, pride, and love but most of all, connection. It was absolute bliss. And looking around, I was only elevated by the faces of Hasids, soldiers, and fellow Tagliters alike who were all sharing their experience with me.”

A cactus wren nest
When I was in middle school, we literally lived in the Sonoran desert south of Tucson. My dad worked for a mining company and the copper mine was about 15 miles south of Tucson. The company wanted four key people to be nearby when various emergencies happened. So they set down four prefab houses about a mile from the mine, hooked up plumbing and electricity, and then strung a barbed wire fence around the four houses to keep out the range animals.

It was heaven for a kid and hell for a mom. During the four years we lived there, we encountered many residents of the area, including rattlesnakes, king snakes, one poisonous coral snake, tarantulas, scorpions, gila monsters, and numerous "cute" little horned toads. There were some trees, mostly mesquite and palo verde. There were many kinds of cacti, including saguaro, barrel, prickly pear, ocotillo, yucca. There were cholla, called jumping cactus because though the spines look fuzzy, when newcomers attempt to touch them, the spines seem to jump into the person's flesh.  Cactus wrens nested in the cholla because they generally grow 6 to 8 feet in height, and their spines make it virtually impossible for predators, especially snakes, to climb up their trunks.

I was given freedom to walk in the desert as long as I didn't go too far away. One day as I was walking, I saw a cactus wren nest in a small opening in the cholla. There were several eggs in the nest, which were visible because both parents were out getting food. From that day I visited the nest regularly. I wanted so badly for the eggs to hatch and it seemed like forever. Finally, one day I saw the baby birds! I then went every day to see them grow.

One day when I was approaching the nest, I saw one of the baby birds making what was possibly its first flight back to the nest. As it made it into the nest safely, I realized that the bird didn't get a second chance. There was almost no margin of error. If it didn't do it right, the spines of the cacti would catch it, and it would die. And while that was terrible, it is how the natural world generally works. I remember having two very powerful and opposing feelings. One was "that's not fair; that's awful." The other was absolute awe. It was a life-changing moment in seeing both the beauty and power of nature and yet the reality that life for all beings ends, and can end in a moment.

Namaste
During my two years in Nepal, I was captured by the beauty of the traditional "Namaste" greeting. Thirty years later, a colleague and I brought a group of college students to Nepal in 2012 after teaching them about Nepal during the semester. On our last day, we asked the students to share their most powerful experiences during the 17 days which included touring the many pagodas and shrines, a flight to Mt. Everest, volunteering in a poor village, being paired with a Nepali college student for a different week in a town in the hills, and a one night home stay with an ethnic group in a small hill village. So many experiences!

To our amazement, the first student said, almost immediately, 'Namaste.' The other six students laughed, their faces nodding in agreement. He then said, "No really. When we first got here, saying Namaste was really cool, but then it became so much more." He pointed out that virtually every time they said Namaste to someone, the same sequence occurred: the person made clear eye contact, smiled, nodded their head, put their hands together, and said Namaste in return, consciously and slowly. A common translation of Namaste in yoga circles is: “The divine in me honors the divine in you; I see you!" Reflecting back on my own experience of Namaste, I think my students were taken by how much more connected they felt with other people when saying Namaste than with the traditional "How are you" in the United States.  

Feeling deeply connected--to life and to other people is something we all want and need. Each of the experiences described above can be seen as spiritual in the sense described by Parker Palmer: "the diverse ways we answer the heart’s longing to be connected with the largeness of life." There is an ineffability in each of the experiences that leaves the person realizing that words alone cannot capture the essence, similar to many people's experience of pictures they took and saying that the picture didn't, couldn't, capture the full experience. Some spiritual experiences happen only in extraordinary situations. However, one gift of mindfulness is to also see the extraordinary in the ordinary. 

Forest Bathing

Last month an old friend, who now lives in a retirement community in Concord, told me how he and several friends go Forest Bathing every week and how beneficial it has been to his recovery from cancer. I have read about Forest Bathing before. From the internet, I learned that it became popular in Japan over 40 years ago and involves taking deliberate time in forests to quiet and calm the mind and body and uplift the heart. Scientists studying forest bathing and similar practices of deliberate time in nature have found many benefits from this practice, including lower blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels; improved mood; better sleep; and increased creativity.

In a recent article, a doctor in Oakland reported this interaction with one of her patients: “Dr. Hass, I can’t thank you enough for that prescription you gave me to ride my bike to the marina and watch the sunset. I have been watching that sunset almost every day. I can’t thank you enough!” The doctor said that she has been giving out old-school paper prescriptions for about two years now, where she prescribes non-pharmaceutical steps that have been proven to make people healthier. She said, "I had heard that nature can make people happier and healthier, but I assumed it would offer just a slight bump in the happiness quotient. That patient showed me that I had underestimated both the impact of getting outside and who could be helped."

Recently many doctors in Canada are writing prescriptions where the instruction can be as general as taking time in nature three times a week to going to a park near your work and standing in the grass for 10 minutes. A program with the British Columbia Parks Foundation has started offering health care professionals nature prescription files and codes, with instructions for how to prescribe and log their nature prescriptions. Over 5,000 physicians in Canada have registered for this program!

During the winter months of early 2021, I was recovering from an almost fatal aortic dissection. I was exhausted and my health was delicate, so my only exercise was walking slowly. For months, I walked almost daily on a one mile stretch of the path along the Ashuelot River which is about 200 yards from my house. The slow walking, coupled with my long-standing mindfulness practice, yielded so many amazing sights, sounds, and smells. My mindfulness practice on these walks consisted of bringing an intention of curiosity and of walking without expectations. I would begin by grounding my attention for the first steps on the path: feeling my feet on the ground and my breathing. Over time, inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer's writing, I also greeted the forest: "Hello old friend, I'm so happy to be with you again."

Every day that winter I saw something that I had never noticed before:
• amazing ice formations encircling the bases of trees
• delicate patterns of snow on two creeks
• at one spot in the river, the water close to the bank flowed upstream for over 70 feet
• a large pine tree, leaning at an alarming angle at the very edge of the bank, knowing that the next thunder storm could end its life; realizing a next dissection could end my life, and somehow taking comfort in that connection to the tree which I named Bobby McGee: "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose"

I also noticed other things I had been aware of before, but now felt moments of quiet and sometimes exultant joy in seeing:
• patterns of light reflecting on the water in the river
• an ironwood tree, its bark almost as hard as a rock
• the tiny eddies and whirlpools on the surface of the river
• so many different bird songs
• so many different kinds of trees

In the summer, I enjoyed the noticeable drop in temperature as I entered the forest and the calming effect on my minds. I found quiet joys:
• the rays of sunlight filtering through the trees as I walked under the canopy of the trees
• the reflections of the trees and undergrowth on both banks of the river
• being mesmerized by the various tiny and large eddies and whirlpools at this spot and all along the river
• seeing the turtles lined up and sunbathing on a tree trunk that had fallen into the river

Like Dr. Hass' patient, I felt that these almost daily walks contributed hugely to my recovery: becoming more attuned to my body than ever before, so many moments of joy in each walk, and the calming and quieting effect on my mind.

Simply walking in the woods is clearly beneficial since so many people do it. When people talk about Forest Bathing, they are simply making the practice more deliberate, more intentional. Some common aspects of various descriptions include:
1. turning off your cell phone;
2. bringing the intention to be curious;
3. moving through the forest slowly and allowing yourself to experience the forest through all your senses: what do you see? smell? hear? feel with your hands and feet?
4. starting with a comfortable amount of time and building up to longer walks, an hour or so;
5. reflecting on how you feel at the end of the walk.

Try it. Who knows what you will notice!

The Usefulness of Mindfulness During a Stressful Time

On March 15 we received a phone call at 6:30 in the morning from our son-in-law, Christian, saying that our 38 week pregnant daughter, Emily, was in intense pain and they were going to the emergency room. Their neighbors would stay with our two year old grandson Ollie until we got there. We sprang into action and got to their house within an hour. Soon after, Christian called again: they were going to do an emergency C-section. Then no call for three hours!

How does one bring mindfulness to terrified thoughts which were coursing through my brain at that time? My conditioning from my parents is to expect the worst and hope for the best. Until we got the call that Emily and the baby were OK, I found the best response was to turn on the TV and watch Curious George with my grandson Ollie. He sat contentedly in my lap, my arm wrapped around his body. Whenever the terrified thoughts came, I acknowledged those parts of myself that were terrified, and then I looked at Ollie and gently hugged him closer. Even after Sophia's birth I had to deal with fears about her and Emily's health. From Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems, I have learned that those parts of me that expect and fear the worst are parts that were formed in my childhood and that those parts are trying to protect me. Rumi's famous poem The Guest House tells us that it is important to welcome those parts. Thich Nhat Hanh taught me how to welcome those parts: "hello old friend fear, come sit with me." During those three days when intense feelings arrived, I was able to welcome them. If I was in the middle of something, especially with Ollie, I would simply acknowledge them. If I had more space, I would feel the places in my body where they resided and take a few mindful breaths. Sometimes, I would radiate loving-kindness phrases to myself and our family: may I/you have moments of happiness, moments of peace, moments of freedom from suffering.

After the birth, Yvette and I realized we might be there for a few days, so we settled into watching Ollie. All he knew was that mama, dada, and baby sister were at a place called hospital and that he couldn't see them now, and he is two and we are seventy-four. Welcome to a marathon. So how did I practice mindfulness now that the worst had not happened?

First, I made the intention to pace myself. Three years after the aortic dissection which nearly killed me, I do not have the amount of energy that I had before, partly because of pills I take daily to lower my heart rate and blood pressure. I have learned during this time how to monitor my lower energy levels so that I don't crash. So I made the intention to be aware of moving more slowly throughout the day. I was often aware of taking a few breaths mindfully, and I made sure to take breaks when I realized that my energy was getting dangerously low.

I also identified situations that would likely trigger some reactivity on my part, for example, walking into the kitchen and their big golden retriever jumping up on me or walking in my path, and times when I was more likely to feel challenged by Ollie, like meal times and other transitions. Because of my intention to remember these situations, I was able to generally make appropriate responses-not yelling at the dog or being irritated with Ollie.

While Yvette and I are generally in agreement about how to deal with our grandchildren, we don't always agree. As the days wore on, we were more tired and there were moments of irritation with each other. In those moments, it was so helpful to remember the four questions the Buddha encouraged people to ask before they spoke: Is what I am about to say true? Will it be helpful? Can I say it kindly? and Is this a good time to say it? Most of the time, I could not answer yes to all four questions, and so I kept my mouth shut in those moments. Fortunately, Yvette also knows Buddhist psychology, so my silence was understood.

The only times during those three days that I actually meditated were when I was putting Ollie down for his daily naps and at bedtime. As I was lying in bed and he in his crib, I would sometimes simply breathe in and breath out for a while, sometimes I would practice a body scan, and sometimes the loving-kindness phrases, directed to him, Emily, Sophia, and Christian: may you be happy, moments peaceful, free from suffering.

On the evening of the third day Emily, Sophia, and Christian came home. Yvette and I drove back to Keene and collapsed, relieved that the worst had not happened and joyful for Sophia's arrival.

The next morning I was in the grocery store and realized how irritated I was. My wife and I had worked hard to keep it together during those three days and now was the predictable letdown. When someone was in my way, I was able to remember to feel that space between stimulus (they are in my way) and reactive thought (get out of my way), and I remembered that I had choices about how to respond. While I could have asked them to move, I realized that I was really irritated and that I probably couldn't make that request without irritation in my voice. I decided they didn't need to feel that irritation directed toward them, so I chose to move on or go down a different aisle and then come back later.

I used other practices and strategies, but this is already long. However, it gives a sense of what mindfulness looked like for me during these four days, and I know that there are many other practices and strategies that were also available.

Addendum: This last paragraph is for parents and grandparents of young children. Ollie has had moments of what I would call acting out or terrible twos but which my daughter calls "having big feelings." Here is how she handled one situation differently than Yvette and I did 35 years ago. The whole family was in the king size bed and Ollie started hitting Emily. Her response was to ask Ollie: "are you feeling like hitting me?" When he nodded his head affirmatively, she said "you can't hit me because it hurts. Would you like to hit the pillow?" He smiled and nodded. So he hit the pillow several times until he didn't need to anymore. Interestingly, this resonates with Jon Kabat Zinn's training for teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, where he used aikido to model a different way of responding to aggressiveness. The aikido response is to meet that aggressiveness by acknowledging it and working with it as opposed to suppressing it

The Value of Noticing Glimmers

We are often asked how to practice mindfulness during the day. One practice, interestingly, is from a person who is not a mindfulness teacher. Deb Dana, who writes primarily about polyvagal theory, coined the term glimmer. She writes: "glimmers refer to small moments when our biology is in a place of connection or regulation, which cues our nervous system to feel safe or calm. We're not talking about big expansive experiences of joy or safety or connection. These are micro moments that begin to shape our system in very gentle ways."

Some examples of glimmers include:
• petting an animal
• gently rocking your body or wrapping yourself in a soft blanket
• humming
• savoring some delicious food or a hot cup of a favorite beverage
• gardening
• listening to a favorite song
• feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin
• receiving or giving a hug
• stopping to notice the shape of trees or flowers in bloom
• listening to the birds singing
• looking at a photograph of someone you love
• watching a child laugh or a puppy frolic

Savoring glimmers bring moments of calmness, joy, and peace. If we pay attention, we’ll see that glimmers are everywhere!

Here are examples of glimmer moments from mindfulness teachers:
• Bringing mindfulness to something you do every day. I was in the Peace Corps in Nepal, and there was no running water in my village which was cold in the winter. Over 40 years later, I enjoy my showers and feel gratitude that I have this regular pleasure.
• I savor my morning cup of coffee, especially in the cold weather when I wrap my hands around the warm cup.
• Choosing passwords that make you smile, for example, Breathe123. My favorite password was Yogibooboo22. It never failed to bring a smile to my face.
• Wearing a bracelet, necklace, ring, or something in your pocket that reminds you to breathe or smile.
• Taking a moment to look out the window and feel the gratitude and joy in simply being alive.
• Bringing attention to your breath when waiting at a stoplight, road construction, in line at a store, etc.
• Breathing before and after using your cell phone or email or computer.
• Keeping a gratitude journal to note what you are grateful for.
• Practicing small acts of generosity: opening a door for someone, letting someone go ahead of you in a line, asking a clerk how their day is going, and many more possibilities.
• When I take my daily medications because of my aortic dissection three years ago, I feel gratitude that I survived. This was especially true when I held my latest grandchild in my arms!
• Looking at good news websites. Simply Google the title to browse the website: Daily Good, Karuna News, Reasons to be Cheerful, Good News Network, Nice News.

Every day I make the intention to pause about 10 times a day to ask and respond to two questions:
1. Where am I?
    Am I here or in the future or in the past or somewhere else, maybe the Bahamas?

2. How am I?
    I take a few seconds to register points of tension or discomfort, for example, eyes, facial muscles, tongue, jaw, shoulders, back, etc.
   I take a few seconds to register emotions that are present and their strength or intensity.
These two pauses take less than 30 seconds. Almost always they bring me to a state of gratitude and calmness.

It is so easy to feel despair in these times, whether you get your news from the newspaper or on the web. Deb Dana says that there is research that we can change our nervous system by noticing glimmers more often, as little as 10 times a day. Of course, we start small, one glimmer at a time!

Seeing clearly: A personal story

Last week was the third anniversary of the aortic dissection three years ago which changed my life in many ways and about which I have written many blog posts. Reflecting on what has changed, I realized that I have been making obvious and subtle decisions that are having a bigger than expected effect on my life.

In July I realized for the nth time that I have watched a lot of sports during my lifetime, a lot! My father was an avid sports fan, and so I became an avid fan, living and dying with the ups and downs of the teams and people I rooted for. As I grew older, I continued to watch a lot of sports--baseball, football, basketball, the Olympics, golf, and more.

When I got back from the Peace Corps in 1981, I had become very involved in meditation, and I began to question the amount of time I was watching sports. My wife tells a humorous story several months after we met. I had come to her house on a Sunday afternoon to watch football. I was also crocheting a baby blanket for friends who were expecting a baby. She loved the contrast of me crocheting and occasionally yelling at the TV if there was a bad call by the referees!

Over the years, I made excuses for watching so much sports. When the kids were young and I was working so hard, watching games was important down time for me. Also, my father and I had very little in common other than sports. So keeping up with the sports he loved gave us something to talk about on the phone.

My father died two years ago, and I wondered if my sports watching would decline now that I no longer needed to stay current to have something to talk about with him. But the habit was deep. I realized that the addiction to sports was as deep as the addiction to cigarettes, which I started smoking in 1965. I tried to quit within two years, but it took until 1984 to finally quit.

One morning this past July, I suddenly saw with clarity that this obsession with sports just wasn't serving me anymore. That morning I decided to go cold turkey on sports for one week--no internet or TV. I also decided to do the same thing for news--no internet or TV. For the next week, the house was pretty quiet, though I would occasionally have soft music in the background. I spent more time reading, writing, and walking. Suddenly I had plenty of time! The week went by pretty quickly and at the end of the week I thought about what I had noticed.

What jumped out quickly is that my mind was quieter during meditation. That made sense because of the stimulation of watching sports or news. However, I realized that it was more than constant stimulation. It was also constant agitation—the loud commercials during the games and the tendency of the news channels to exaggerate and catastrophize because that sells!

At the end of my reflection, I decided to "sign up" for another week. A week later, I realized that during meditation my mind wandered less and when it did wander, it didn't go as far away. After that two weeks, I experimented and found that I could occasionally check sports and watch parts of games if I was tired, and I could check the news, but just on the internet.

My decisions connect to Skillful Effort, part of the 8-fold path in Buddhism. The Buddha talked about the importance of developing and maintaining healthy habits ( like generosity, gratitude, kindness) and letting go of and preventing the arising of unhealthy habits (like drinking, getting angry, and watching too much TV). A commonly used phrase in Skillful Effort is "guard the sense doors." That is, be mindful of what you allow to come into your awareness. If I had fully known the effect of so much time watching sports, I would have let go of this activity a long time ago!

Other more subtle changes
I have noticed more subtle changes that have also had significant effects.

Partly because of less attention on sports and the news, I am able to remember more often to move more slowly when I am in the house instead of rushing, another life-long habit. More often I can feel my feet on the floor and the sense of gracefulness as I walk around the house. I am remembering to shut cabinets. My usually leaving them open has both amused and irritated my family for 40 year! I am also preparing meals more slowly, enjoying cutting one carrot at a time instead of lining up three carrots so I can make the salad in half the time. By working slowly, I am remembering my physical therapist telling me that if I stand more upright when I am preparing food, my back will ache less. I am also typing more slowly rather than as fast as I can. Now instead of a typo every sentence, it's every other sentence.

While I still have times when I am several minutes into a meditation and still haven't noticed my breath, this is much less frequent. Off the meditation cushion, I am noticing more quickly when I'm beginning to get irritated or frustrated, or having feelings of despair about the future of the country and world, or worrying when one of my grandchildren is sick.

The Buddha taught many practices which can help us to see more clearly the consequences of our choices and actions. I have written about these in my blog posts and many of the people who have come to our Mindfulness Center and to the courses I have taught have also noticed striking and subtle changes in their life. Lastly I note that such changes are not just available from Buddhist practice. It is simply the practice that has worked best for me.

An inclusive framing of the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism

In talking with other people, I realize that many Buddhist concepts are widely misunderstood. I believe that the Buddha was the first human to comprehensively explain the psychology of being human--what leads us to happiness, joy, generosity, etc. and what leads us to resentment, anger, bitterness, hatred, etc. I offer my understanding of the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism from a psychological perspective and not getting into the religious aspects of Buddhism.

The First Noble Truth
This has often been mistranslated as "life is suffering." The actual translation is ''there is suffering." The word the Buddha used, dukkha, was an everyday word in his time and also now in Nepal (where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer). Dukkha is used when talking about a headache, dinner tasting badly, work going badly, getting very sick, or someone dying. So the Buddha was essentially saying that dukkha is a daily experience in everyone's life: rich, poor, lucky, unlucky, those in good health and those in poor health, young and old alike.

Alternative translations used by many teachers for dukkha include stress, discontent, and dissatisfaction which make more sense in the context of modern life.

The Second Noble Truth
The root cause of dukkha is getting caught in wanting and craving what is pleasant and disliking and hating what is unpleasant. He talked about the 3 Poisons, also known as the 3 Fires.
• greed, e.g., I want, I want, I want more
• aversion, e.g., I hate, I dislike, I want this to be gone
• delusion: e.g., someone saying they don't have a drinking problem when they do.

Mindfulness helps us to see clearly what is happening and how the current me has come to be. Although neuroscience is a very new field, the Buddha also talked about the complexity of the human mind and that our behaviors are influenced by an almost infinite number of causes and conditions. The Buddha spoke of the 4 Imponderables, "which would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about them." One of the imponderables was trying to trace the path of one's karma, for example, identifying all the factors of an unwholesome habit, like being prone to anger.

The Third Noble Truth
The good news is that there is an end to dukkha which he called Nirvana. He described Nirvana in many ways. One that connects to the 3 Fires is that we are on fire with our greed, aversion, and delusion. When we have a negative experience and we are on fire, to use a metaphor, we add fuel to the fire. For example, someone has a toothache and within minutes they see the toothache leading to a root canal and then a crown or worse yet the tooth needing to be pulled and then an implant and a crown. A recent research study asked people with high anxiety to note all the things they were anxious about happening in the near future. They found that less than 10 percent of the worries actually came true!

Once, when asked how he came to the end of dukkha, he said he no longer added fuel to the fire which was now completely and forever extinguished. One framing of Nirvana is cooling down. With respect to Nirvana, one meditation teacher said that instead of talking about attaining Nirvana, it might be more useful to talk about moments of enlightenment, and mini-Nirvanas are accessible every day.

The Fourth Noble Truth
The Buddha laid out the 8-fold path which leads to an end to suffering. These have been organized into three groups:
• Sila (morality): right action (including generosity), right livelihood, right speech
• Samadhi (focus): right effort, right concentration, right mindfulness
• Panna (wisdom): right intention/attitude; right view/understanding

Many people have struggled with the word right, and translation is always an issue. One teacher used the practice of bell making to illustrate the Buddha's intention. During the process of bell making, the bell is regularly tested to see if the sound is right or true. At some point, the maker smiles and says that the bell is now right. The Buddha did not mean right, as opposed to wrong, but right as when one's practice is true like the bell.

I appreciate that the Buddha was so specific in his instructions. For example, regarding right speech, he said that before speaking, ask yourself these four questions:
1. Is what I am about to say truthful/accurate?
2. Do I believe that it will be useful/helpful?
3. Can I say it kindly, without judgment?
4. Is this the right time and situation to say it?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then reconsider.

He spoke of wholesome and unwholesome actions and behaviors and encouraged people to think about, examine, explore what we might do to:
• sustain wholesome behaviors we already have, for example, generosity;
• develop wholesome behaviors we do not currently have in abundance, for example, gratitude;
• let go of unwholesome behaviors we have, for example, being quick to anger;
• prevent unwholesome behaviors that we don’t have, for example, by avoiding certain places or situations

The 5 Precepts under right action are: not killing, not stealing, not lying, not abusing sex, and not using intoxicants. I love Thich Nhat Hanh's framing of the precepts which he calls The 5 Mindfulness Trainings. I offer an excerpt of his formulation of the fifth precept: "Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming...I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films and conversations... I will work to transform violence, fear, anger and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. " If you are interested, you can find his framing on the web: 5 Mindfulness Trainings.

A last word is that though I have read extensively about Buddhism in the past 40 years and I meditate almost daily, I am not a scholar but simply walking the path as best I can. This is my synthesis of what I have read and heard that has been so helpful to me.

I would love to hear in the Comment section below what you found useful or helpful, in your own words. Thank you.

The Importance of Looking Deeply at the Consequences of Our Actions

Many spiritual teachers, and recently many scientists, have spoken and written about the deep interconnectedness of all life. Thich Nhat Hanh coined the term 'interbeing' for this purpose. In one of his talks he held up a sheet of paper and asked what we saw. Like many others I simply saw a piece of paper. However, he said that he saw the whole universe in that sheet of paper. This is an abridged version of his short talk on interbeing:

"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees, we cannot make paper...If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper..."

Many meditation teachers speak of the importance of looking deeply at the narratives we tell about interconnectedness--our relationship to others and to the world at large.

One morning I looked more deeply while saying a short meditation adapted from Thich Nhat Hanh:

I am grateful to have this abundance of nutritious food.
I give thanks to all who made this meal possible.
I vow to live in such a way to make the world a better place for all beings.

I paused at each item on my plate:
Eggs: from certified pasture raised chickens.
Coffee: organic and fair trade from Guatemala,
Toast: whole wheat bread from a local bakery.

I considered this same breakfast 60 years ago:
The eggs were from a factory farm, the chickens living their whole lives cooped up in cages, and their beaks clipped to keep them from harming each other because of the anxiety from being so crowded together.

The coffee was from a coffee plantation where the workers were paid barely enough to live, and the government used repressive measures to keep the people from uprising, and U. S. companies were making huge profits.

The bread had all sorts of additives, and was baked in a huge bakery with workers paid minimum wages while the owners got rich.

I started moving toward buying eggs from free range chickens and fair trade coffee many years ago after a friend of mine, who had looked more deeply, told me that, to large egg producers, free range chickens meant they were let out of their cramped cages into a slightly less cramped space less than an hour a day, and that fair trade coffee simply meant that at least 10% of the coffee was indeed from fair trade coffee growers.

When I looked on the internet, I discovered that the USDA defines free range as chickens having 2 square feet of living space and being led outside on days when the weather is good. Imagine a chicken coop the size of a basketball court. An average of 2 square feet per hen would have 2500 hens in that space. With respect to coffee, there are several Fair Trade and Equal Exchange organizations, each with their own standards. It is still confusing to sort out.

Whew--what we can notice when looking deeply with both our minds and our hearts! As a result of a large enough number of people looking more deeply and then acting on what they saw, more chicken farmers now treat their chickens more humanely, more coffee growers now pay their employees a living wage, and more people now buy local bread which also helps the local economy. All three of these actions means more food is grown sustainably which makes people healthier and can slow down the effects of climate change.

If we inquire further and look deeply at all (or even many) of the items we buy, and we feel that we have a sense of this interconnectedness of life, we start to feel compelled to make changes in our purchasing of food, clothing, and other items which enables a more sustainable world for the people producing these items and a more sustainable environment which benefits both humans and animals. If we continue to look deeply, we pay attention to how we dispose of food waste and possessions that we no longer need or break down or become outdated. A simple phrase captures this ethos: Reduce Reuse Repurpose Recycle.

I feel a strong sense of urgency about this, because predictions about the future of life on earth range from serious and devastating changes to many places in the world to catastrophic changes across the whole planet in the lifetime of people were born since 2000. A recent study found that more than half of the 16- to 25-year-olds said they believe humanity is doomed. A local middle school teacher confirmed that these figures resonate with what she is hearing from her students.

I think it is time for all of us to look more deeply at our spending and consuming habits and then take action. I also believe that this action needs to be driven from love of the world more than from hatred toward those people doing most of the damage to the environment. Otherwise we simply increase the polarization that has risen dramatically in the last few decades.

Insight meditation and transformation

The goal of practicing meditation and mindfulness is much more than just calming ourselves when we are stressed, though that is very helpful in itself. The larger goal is to understand (more than just conceptually) why we behave the way we behave. This understanding can free us from habits developed over our lifetime which might have served us when we were young but no longer serve us. For many of us this involves meditation, therapy, and various other practices and tools to keep our bodies, thoughts, and hearts healthy.

I want to focus here on two types of meditation in the mindfulness tradition: calming/concentration and insight/wisdom. The two of them are interconnected and often weave together in a meditation session.

When choosing to meditate, if our primary intention is calming/concentration, one selects a calming practice (breath, body, loving-kindness, prayer, visualizing a “happy place”, etc.) and when thoughts or emotions pull our attention away, we acknowledge them, smile, and return to our chosen practice.

If our primary intention is insight/wisdom, when our mind is sufficiently calm and concentrated, we can make a different choice when we realize that a thought stream or emotion is pulling us away consistently. We make that thought stream or emotion the object of our attention. There are many ways in which we can be in relationship with the thoughts/emotions. (See Being with unwanted thoughts and emotions.)

Whether or not our intention is calming or insight, we do not suppress or fight the thoughts/emotions, because then we are fighting part of ourselves. Dick Schwartz talked about this with respect to being kind to all of our parts ( See Complementary Practices and Welcoming Unwanted Parts ), and Rumi talked about welcoming all the unwanted visitors The Guest House ("a meanness, a dark thought" etc.). That is why in calming meditation, I have emphasized Acknowledging and smiling at the thought/emotion. Acknowledging is also the A in RAIN (See The RAIN practice).

Ideally we begin each day with the intention to be present (to ourselves and others), to be more responsive than reactive, to be kind, generous, thoughtful, and so on. We also know that almost every day something unpleasant or stressful happens. We have heard stories about when people remembered and chose to bring mindfulness to a situation that was stressful. This is what the practice is about: remembering and then having the capacity to make healthy decisions. Many teachers have mentioned that if we do this only some of the time, that is wonderful. "Progress not perfection" is a great phrase to remember.

So we begin the day with some kind of activity that helps us to remember our intentions, maybe a body practice like yoga or qigong (even if only a few minutes) or perhaps meditation or sitting quietly. During the day we can build moments of remembering into the day, for example, pausing when getting in and out of the car, breathing when at a stoplight, smiling when we have to use a password, etc. Developing these daily habits is important because it increases the probability that we will remember to bring mindfulness to bear when something unpleasant or stressful arises.

We don't always remember to be mindful when we are stressed. Here is a short story of remembering but not having the capacity. A few weeks ago, I bit the bullet and sat down to do our taxes. It quickly turned into a nightmare. Taxes since my dissection have been problematic, because my low energy has resulted in poor record keeping. I couldn't find two 1099s and a couple other receipts. I also realized that I had missed a quarterly IRS tax payment which will result in a penalty. After 4 hours, I was done and I was fried. During the 4 hours, I had maintained enough mindfulness so that I wasn't snotty and short with my wife and I hadn't yelled or slammed my fist down. However, I was drained. I chose to get a bowl of chips and salsa and turn on the TV and watch sports which I did for a couple hours.

If I had it to do over, I would have practiced mindfulness, alternating between awareness of breath/body and standing behind the waterfall as a way to deal with the many thoughts and emotions that were literally coursing through my mind, heart, and body. That would have saved me several hundred calories and would have better washed the stress chemicals out of my system. I could have berated myself: "who the hell do you think you are to teach mindfulness; you should be embarrassed that you didn't practice what you preach." And those thoughts did come to mind. Instead, I congratulated myself that I didn't have a tantrum and I didn't take it out on my wife, and then I moved on. I was able to feel my feelings to a degree and I was able (mostly) to accept all my parts that were at play during and after these four hours.

The challenge for each of us is to construct our life so that we can actualize the wisdom from this tradition and other wisdom we have developed over our lifetime. As Mary Oliver ended one poem: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

The other quote/poem I find helpful is from Mark Nepo:
When courageous enough to relax our soul open,
the pace at which our mind thinks slows to the pace at which our heart feels, and, amazingly,
together they unfold the rhythm with which our eyes can see the miracle waiting in all that is ordinary.

Helpful Ideas for Those Who Struggle with Concentration

In The Meditator's Dilemma, Bill Morgan notes that many Westerners struggle with developing a regular meditation practice. He points out that the Buddha taught meditation to rural, nonliterate people 2,600 years ago. Two characteristics of most people in the US that weren't true in the Buddha's time are our very busy minds and the tendency to be hard on ourselves when we struggle.

One of my teachers said that when he was a new monk, his teacher came into the room and said, "go make yourself happy and then come back and meditate." His point was that the goal of meditation is not to get happy but to gain wisdom. His teacher said we need to bring a happy and uplifted heart to our meditation.

Bill addresses this directly in his book. He states what should be obvious: that meditation can and should be something that people look forward to and enjoy as opposed to taking cod liver oil: it doesn't taste good but it's good for you. He has developed many practices, which I have modified, that people can do at the beginning of a meditation session that bring a sense of quiet joy and can help the mind to settle and calm down.

You might play with these and see if one suits you best. Feel free to modify any of them. You could make any of them a voice memo on your cell phone, with pauses between each step, so it becomes a guided meditation. Each of these exercises can take as long as you like, even the whole meditation period if you are distressed or restless.

Calming
1. Taking a minute or so to ease into the meditation by focusing on the body and the breath.
2. Then imagining you are sitting in a warm and comforting bath. Can you feel the tensions in different parts of your body dissolving?
3. As you exhale, letting go of tensions and outside matters to the extent that you can. Don't suppress them or push them away, but rather keep bringing your attention back to the pleasant sensations of the bath.
4. Take your time.

Delight
1. Allowing a memory of a happy moment to arise, one in which you were filled with delight and the energy that brings.
2. Letting the memory wash over your whole body, heart, and mind.
3. As the sense of delight strengthens, letting go of the imagery. Simply enjoying the sitting and breathing in this atmosphere of playful ease and relaxation that has been created. If tension creeps in or the mind gets carried off, simply return again to the flow of imagery of this uplifting scene.

Arousing Gratitude
1. Settling into the meditation space, consciously relaxing the body and simply breathing.
2. Allowing a memory of gratitude to come into your heart and mind. It could be one far in the past or recent.
3. As images of this scene unfold, encouraging the feelings of appreciation and gratitude to bloom.
4. If the feeling of gratitude fluctuates, see what happens when you are totally interested and absorbed in the memory versus when you start to think about the situation and what it means.
5. Letting go of all thoughts and images and breathe as if you were grateful for the miracle of breath.

Arousing Wonder
1. Taking a few minutes to let the body and mind settle a bit, focusing on your anchor meditation, which could be breath, body, sounds, an image, or the loving-kindness phrases, etc.
2. Bringing to mind a time when you felt a sense of amazement or wonder, deeply moved by the magnitude or mystery of life. This could be from nature like watching a sunset or the night sky or seeing a butterfly, or it could be human creations--a piece of art or music, magnificent architecture like a cathedral or the pyramids, etc.
3. Allowing the feeling of wonder to grow stronger and spread throughout the body, heart, and mind.
4. Allowing the imagery to fade, breathe with a sense of wonder, as if it were quite amazing to be sitting and breathing and simply aware.

Happy place
1. Imagining being in one of your happy places, one which brings a sense of calm whenever you go there.
2. Allowing the memories and images and feelings of this happy place to enter into your body, heart, and mind.
3. Next focusing on each sense, one at a time, feeling the response in your body and heart as you bring mindfulness to each sense.
a. What are you seeing in this place?
b. What sounds are you hearing in this place?
c. What sensations are you noticing on and in your body in this happy place?
d. What smells are you noticing in this happy place?
4. Bringing attention now to your breath or body or the loving-kindness phrases as you continue to enjoy being in the happy place.

As I will discuss in the next post, while meditation has many benefits including some stress relief, meditation ultimately enables us to develop a deeper understanding of the consequences of our responses to the challenges that life presents. However, these benefits are limited if the mind remains busy and restless during our meditations.

An Inspiring Story of Indigenous Wisdom and Mindfulness

I recently finished a one year online program called Touching the Earth, co-led by Jeanne Corrigal. Jeanne is a member of the mixed heritage Métis Nation in Canada. She told this story during one of our sessions, and I have told it many times because it is such a powerful story in so many ways. Recently the story was posted on the Insight Meditation Society website. Here is the story in Jeanne’s words.

Buddhist practice and Indigenous wisdom share a similar invitation into an embodied way of knowing that goes beyond the cognitive. One of my sacred or heart stories demonstrates this kind of wisdom. It is a universal story of coming home in our beings, even in difficult times, through this kind of receptive, embodied knowing.

This story is about Jim Settee, the Métis elder (also Swampy Cree and English) who I have worked with for many years. It’s a story from my young adulthood that led me forward and supported me until I found this practice. When I did, it was like this practice and Indigenous ways of knowing married. This is the story I sit with every time I sit on the cushion.

Jim Settee was an elder who was beloved across Treaty Six which is where I’m from in Central Saskatchewan. He was known as a historian, storyteller, guide, and tracker. And he worked with my dad in Prince Albert National Park, which is a park in central Saskatchewan in the traditional lands of his people. They were displaced when the park was formed and one of the things that Jim did was create a home for this community called the Fish Lake Métis Settlement.

He also did his best to create healing. One of the ways he did this was to support the people in his community to work in the park. So, the wardens, fire tower people, and fire crew all around the park were from Indigenous First Nations and Métis communities. So, they really knew this area well. Jim would take wardens under his wing, and he took my dad under his wing. My dad was a tracker. And Jim was known as the best tracker across the whole territory. Whenever anyone was lost, or if anyone needed help, they could contact Jim and he would help.

In the early days, when Jim and my dad, Andy, worked together in the park, people would get lost in the park and the park would call the Métis and First Nation trackers. In the story that I grew up on, one day a young boy was lost.

Jim was off that day, so they called my dad and dad called everybody together and they started to look for this boy. And normally they could find someone in an hour. But on this day, they looked and looked, and they could not find the lost boy. So, they had to leave him in the bush all night by himself.

The next morning, they started looking again. And they looked and looked and, again, could not find the boy. So, they had to leave him in the bush all by himself for another night.

The next morning, they started looking again for the boy and they looked and looked until about noon. At this point they were desperate because they didn’t know if the boy could survive another night in the bush.

So, they decided to get Jim. They went to his home on the Fish Lake Métis Settlement. They didn’t have phones there, so my dad and the other people had to go. And they said, “Jim, can you come?” And Jim said, “Yes.”

He came and he said to my dad, “Show me where that boy was last seen.” And dad showed him where the boy was last seen by the lake. Dad said that Jim just stood in that spot. He got really quiet and very still. And everybody around him, the whole search team, got really quiet.

Jim stood there surrounded by all the ground that had been completely trampled by the search team because they’d been there for three days already. After about two, three minutes, Jim took off walking real fast into the bush. Dad was following behind. My dad was known as a fast walker, and he said he could hardly keep up to Jim.

Jim tracked through six miles of muskeg and bush. And then dad saw him stop. And that boy was right there in front of him.

Dad said that he and the other trackers didn’t understand how he did it.

This is a story I grew up on as a child. I would think, if I were lost, Jim Settee could find me. He was big in my imagination. Jim moved away when I was just a baby, so I never met him until I was about 25.

He was speaking in my hometown about First Nation and Métis history, and I went to hear him speak. I felt like I was about to meet somebody out of a legend. I went up to him and gave him my hand and said, “Mr. Settee, you won’t remember me, but I’m one of Andy and Dorothy’s daughters.”

He took my hand into both of his hands—I still remember how soft and warm his hand was—he leaned towards me with a little twinkle in his eye and he said, “Are you Jeanne?” And I said, “Yes, I am.” He said, “I remember you. I remember you sleeping in a basket on the porch of your parents’ cabin. And we were all working around, and you just slept and slept and slept.”

In that moment, I understood why so many people loved him. Because every time you spoke to him, he gave you a piece of yourself. He helped you come home in a way.

After that, I started to visit Jim in his home. And after a few visits, I said, “Mr. Settee, how did you find that boy?” What he told me has many layers and it’s become a life-long teaching and guide for me. He said, “When I look for any lost person, I put myself into the mind of the person who’s lost. And that helps me pick up their trail more easily.”

I said, “What did you do when you found that particular boy?”
“That boy was out of his mind with fear,” he said. “He couldn’t talk, he couldn’t walk. I just sat down beside him for half an hour, until he could come back inside himself, inside his body. And then we walked out of the bush together.”

This story is, for me, the story of our practice. And I find myself in all aspects of the story at different times. Sometimes, I’m the boy who’s lost—lost in reactivity in my mind. Up here, we say you get bush panic when you’re lost and you start going faster, getting tighter, more caught, and more lost.

And sometimes I’m in the searchers—the people searching and doing. They’re doing as hard as they can.

And sometimes I’m in Jim Settee. Or sometimes Jim Settee is in me. And just like mindfulness always remembers us—that sense of Jim Settee is always there too—when we turn to it, it’s always there. When I can remember that and put myself into my own mind, when I’m the lost boy, I can pick up my trail more easily.

And when I’m caught somewhere—paralyzed by fear, self-judgment, or any number of states that we all know—in those moments, I remember the story and I remember that Jim Settee just sat with that boy in kindness.

This brings in the other wing of our practice. Jim didn’t say, “Time to get up. Come on, now. Get up, we gotta go. Snap out of it.” He sat with that boy until the boy could come back inside his own body.

Sometimes when I’m really out of my body or out of the situation, I just call in this great kindness. Can I be here, even in the midst of this numbness or restlessness or fear or anxiety? Can I bring great kindness in right here until I can come back inside? And at that moment, I’m home. We are home in that moment.

This story has been a real guide for me. And every aspect of this is embodied knowing no matter where we are in the story—lost mode, doing mode, or kindness and mindfulness mode. There is a body sense everywhere we are in the story. Even if we’re feeling numb, that’s a felt sense.

And it’s the knowing of it which helps us to simply know what’s happening. Nothing in particular needs to be happening. But if we can have this relationship of wisdom and kindness with whatever’s happening, this can lead us home.

Recognizing “Othering”: A Necessary First Step Toward Inner Peace

Last week we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The notion of "othering" lies at the heart of what he was fighting for. Othering can be defined in many ways, from treating certain people as intrinsically different from me to treating certain people as less than me.

Extreme versions of othering abound in history:      
what South Africans did to blacks to justify apartheid,
      what Americans did to slaves to justify slavery,
      what the English did to the Irish to justify their brutal treatment, and
      what armies do in training soldiers for war, with language like Krauts, Japs, and gooks.

From a developmental perspective, it's natural for people to create us and others. That is what clans, tribes, and countries do: what distinguishes us from others. In The End of Othering, Rhonda McGee asserts that "modern-day forms of racism, caste, xenophobia, and other kinds of categorical “othering” remain prevalent" and that othering always carries with it the threat of dehumanization. She has used mindfulness in her work with students to help them heal from the wounds that othering can cause. She believes that "integrating embodied mindfulness into racial justice work helps reconnect us to ourselves, to one another, and to our power to take actions together to change systems."

I recently read an article by Sister Tam Muoi, a white woman who is a monastic in one of Thich Nhat Hanh's communities. She spoke of the process of educating herself about racism. During this multi-year process, she participated in a retreat where "the facilitator guided us through exercises that brought to awareness how each of us has been conditioned from a very young age to discriminate against people of color. As White people, we still have a strong habit of seeing ourselves and our culture as 'the norm' whilst the global majority are 'the other.'"

I remember a black activist in the 1970s shouting that you cannot not be racist if you are white. That statement hit home for me. I was raised in the 1950s. Almost all of the people I saw on TV shows were white. People of color were almost always in subordinate roles. Women on TV were also almost always in subordinate roles. Think of the family TV shows during that time: Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, etc.

In his book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, Thich Nhat Hanh strongly implied that in order to be angry with someone you have to 'other' them, to separate from them, to feel they're not like me in this way. I realize that when I have been angry or mean to my wife or my children, that I have in that moment 'othered' them. In those moments, I practice metta and compassion for them and for me and I apologize when I come to my senses.

Recognizing how deeply conditioned this notion of othering is for humans, Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush developed a meditation called Just Like Me. Below is an excerpt of the practice which I have done several times sitting face-to-face with another person. It is quite powerful.

This person has feelings, emotions, and thoughts, just like me.
This person has at some time felt sad, just like me.
This person has at some time felt angry, just like me.
This person has felt inadequate, just like me.
This person is learning about life, just like me.
This person wants to be caring and kind to others, just like me.
Because this person is a fellow human being, just like me.

I wish this person to be free from pain and suffering.
I wish this person to be peaceful and happy.
I wish this person to be loved.
Because this person is a fellow human being, just like me. 

Thich Nhat Hanh made a powerful point in a talk where he said, pointing his arm outward, that before we can stop the big wars out there, we have to stop the wars inside ourselves, and then stop the wars within our family, and then within our community, and so on. I encourage all of us to look inward to notice when we are 'othering.' That is the beginning step to world peace.

Note: The article by Sister Tam Muoi can be found at: https://plumvillage.org/articles/what-can-white-people-do/

Learning to Embrace Rather Than Resisting the Uncertainties of Life

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.“ Thomas Merton

Some years ago when I was at a meditation retreat, the teacher said that mindfulness can help us to rest in not knowing. Embracing or resting in uncertainty is not something that anyone does easily. During the past two years I have been challenged with uncertainty about my mortality. I have had regular CT scans to let the doctor know the state of my aorta (was it healing or still in process), and I have had two very delicate laparoscopic surgeries in which stents were placed inside my aorta to stabilize it.

Last year I read Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad who describes a four year battle with an aggressive leukemia which hit her just after she graduated from college. She spent much of the next four years in and out of hospitals for chemotherapy and surgeries. Finally the moment came where the doctors told her she was cured, though the leukemia could come back. However, she soon came to realize that hearing that you're cured "is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins."

I remember identifying with her story. Just over a year ago my surgeon told me the words that I had been longing to hear: "no longer is blood flowing in your aorta where it's not supposed to be flowing." In other words, I could get on with my life. Well, sort of. The heavy medications that were keeping my heart rate and blood pressure low were also keeping me exhausted. My new cardiologist reduced those meditations this past summer, and six weeks later I felt a surge of new energy. So my moment of "I can get on with my life" began four months ago when most of my energy came back.

Before the dissection I was happily engaged in many projects in my quest to make the world a better place. I was on the Board of three organizations, leading a monthly Civil Conversations group, teaching meditation every week at the County Jail, working on several projects with homelessness and restorative justice, writing this blog, leading a weekly meditation group, and teaching occasional 8-week courses. All in all, I had over 16 things going on. Now I can't imagine doing that many things and yet I was doing it and loving it. At this point I’m devoting about 1/3 as much time and energy on various projects as before.

Recent feedback from my wife and two children has helped me to realize that psychologically I have not been doing as well as I had thought in terms of addressing the grief and post-traumatic stress of the dissection, the uncertainty about what I do want to do with my life, and the greater sense of uncertainty about how long I might live.

While Suleika went on a cross country trip to explore how she wanted to devote her time and energy, I realize as I write this that I want to engage again with the four questions in Wayne Muller's wonderful book How Then Shall We Live?:
Who am I?
What do I love?
How shall I live, knowing I will die?
What is my gift to the family of the earth?

In her article Deepening Our Comfort with Uncertainty, Kristi Nelson unpacks this challenge of embracing uncertainty so beautifully. The first paragraph caught me right away: "I used to put myself to sleep by repeatedly reciting a little mantra that helped me transition from active days to hopes for a calm mind at night: 'There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to know.' Guiding myself into greater comfort with not knowing was always helpful in reassuring my mind that it could truly rest and take a break from trying to plan and figure everything out." You can read the whole article at https://grateful.org/resource/deepening-comfort-with-uncertainty.

Bringing Mindfulness to Pleasant and Unpleasant Experiences

“When we're not mindful [of our response to what is happening in the moment], pleasant feelings habitually condition desire and clinging, unpleasant feelings condition dislike and aversion, and neutral feelings condition delusion, i.e., not really knowing what is going on. Yet when we are mindful, these very same feelings become the vehicle of our freedom.” In this quote Joseph Goldstein is pointing out an often overlooked Buddhist concept, that in every moment our minds are labeling the information coming into our awareness as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral (not important).

Two examples of the power of bringing mindfulness to this process
I was leading a body scan meditation to some Keene State College students. I mentioned that when you notice an unpleasant or even painful sensation, to see if you can simply observe it rather than hating it. Afterwards, a student said that she had gone to the gym the day before after having not gone for months. As a result, she was sore all over and hating it. After I made my comment, her experience of the sensations of soreness on her body went from being miserable and hating it to realizing that it wasn't that bad and that the soreness wasn't forever.

This is a snippet of a dialogue in a course I was taking after we had meditated for about 30 minutes.
Teacher: What did you notice?
Participant: I noticed that I felt sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I noticed that I didn’t want to feel sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I felt even worse.

The point in both examples is that while we can’t control what comes into our awareness, we can bring mindfulness to what we are adding to that experience. In the second case, sadness was the experience and the aversion to this unpleasantness was what was added. Over time we can notice when we are adding and realize that there are other choices.

Jon Kabat-Zinn operationalized this process in the well-known and researched Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. These were his instructions:
For one week, bring mindfulness to one pleasant event each day, e.g., receiving praise or hearing a bird song.
Specifically, bring mindful attention to:
1) your body, e.g., being aware of your shoulders relaxing, a smile...
2) your emotions, e.g., joy, contentedness...
3) your thoughts, e.g., “That was sweet,” “It’s so nice to be outside"...
4) what you noticed as you reflected on the experience, e.g., "It was such a small thing, but I’m glad I noticed it."

For the next week, bring mindful attention to one unpleasant event each day, e.g., waiting in line or worrying about something or a headache. As before, bring mindful attention to what you noticed in your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and what you noticed when reflecting on the experience.

If you are hesitant to do so, you might want to read some of the insights that participants (in the MBSR courses that I taught almost 30 times) noted in our discussions.

Insights from bringing mindfulness to pleasant events
• "Fully experiencing a pleasant event changed my attitude for the whole day!"
• "Those happy moments become elongated and they followed me throughout the day."
• There are actually many pleasant events almost every day.
• “I had an increased openness to so many other pleasant events that often go unnoticed”; we are so often on automatic pilot.
• "Seeing beauty in the ordinary"
• Focusing on the pleasant was helpful to balance the tendency to focus on the negative, which is so common.

Insights from bringing mindfulness to unpleasant events
• When you bring curiosity and non-judgment to something unpleasant, "I realized that it’s not as bad as I first thought."
• When being mindful, the experience went from intolerable to just unpleasant.

This reminds me of a comment my mom made to me when I was adding to an unpleasant experience: she told me I was “making a mountain out of a molehill.” I'm also reminded of a quote from Mark Twain: "most of the worst events of my life never actually happened."

When we bring curiosity and non-judgmental awareness to the unpleasantness, it softens, and our experience can go from highly unpleasant to mildly unpleasant to sometimes just “this is how it is now.” The now is important because we often literally contract in reaction to the unpleasantness because we lose perspective; that is, that this unpleasantness is impermanent.

I acknowledge that it is sometimes almost impossible to bring mindful attention to something that is extremely physically or emotionally painful. In those cases, distraction can be a more useful choice. I was aware of this several times during my stay in the intensive-care unit and during my recovery from the aortic dissection.

I end with the Buddha's actual words: "the uninstructed person does not know of any escape from unpleasant or painful feelings other than seeking something that is pleasant." One of my meditation teachers gave a personal example. She was relaxing at home and suddenly had the desire for a piece of chocolate. Upon reflection, she realized that just before that desire for chocolate, a sudden feeling of sadness had arisen. When she allowed herself to sit with that feeling of sadness for just a few moments, that urge for chocolate dissolved.

If you decide to try out this exercise, other readers and I would love to hear what you noticed.

Meditation Need Not Be Boring or Hard

I have heard many people say that they don't meditate regularly because it gets boring or it's too hard. I want to address those concerns in this piece.

First, a reminder is that meditation involves the intention to bring curiosity and openness to whatever you are noticing, and this includes the mind that is noticing whatever you are focusing on. This alone means that you are not likely to get bored unless the sensations of each breath are exactly the same as the last and your mind is otherwise still!

Second, the goal of meditation is to develop wisdom, including being kind and compassionate. A quieter mind is a byproduct of this process. However, getting the mind to stop is not what meditation is about. A totally quiet mind is not necessarily a wise mind.

Let us consider some examples.

It's too noisy
You might 'take a step back' and let the noises come to you.

You might go wide angle and be curious about all the noises you hear now.

You might zoom in on a specific noise, for example, lawnmower— what are all the sounds the lawnmower makes, Construction work— What does an electric saw make, hammering, other noises? If you are meditating in the morning, there are often bird calls you might notice.

Your mind is restless
There are several options.

One is to change your focus to breath, body, or loving-kindness.

Another is to count your breaths from 1 to 10 and start over when you get to 10. If you forget where you are, smile and start over. After all there is nothing to achieve or accomplish.

Another is to explore what restlessness feels or how the body is affected by restlessness.

You’re just not into it this morning
Can you be into just this next breath with curiosity and openness? If so, how about the next breath? The next breath?

When you breathe in, feel the life-giving oxygen entering your body.
When you breathe out, feel the natural relaxation on the exhalation.
Do you notice any relaxation or ease in your body as a result?

Pain in your body
Focus on the area that is uncomfortable.
Temporally let go of wanting it to go away and be curious:
What are all the sensations you notice there?
How big is the area of this discomfort?
What shape is it: like a line, a circle, an oval, irregular, etc.

Two images that people find helpful
Imagine a waterfall suddenly roaring because of rain in higher elevations and it is falling on your head, clobbering you. Now imagine standing behind the waterfall. You’re not getting clobbered by it anymore, though you get some splash. It's the same with thoughts when they feel like a waterfall. Stand back and just observe them mindfully—curious and open. Relate to them as thoughts, not your thoughts but just thoughts. Let go of the story of the thoughts and focus on the energy of the thoughts and their effect on your body. For example, angry thoughts land differently on the body than anxious thoughts or sad thoughts.

Another image people find helpful is to see your thoughts as clouds passing by. Occasionally, during a day with big white clouds, I will pick a small wisp of a cloud and watch it until it dissolves. This is a wonderful reminder that our thoughts are like clouds. They may last a while, but eventually they dissolve.

Two metaphors that can be helpful.
If you like dancing, meditation is like dancing--different rhythms, different effects on your body and your heart.

If you like backpacking, meditation is like backpacking. The scenery is always changing. Sometimes you go uphill and sometimes downhill. Sometimes the pace is steady, sometimes not.

Regardless of whatever image or metaphor helps you, the primary idea is to bring yourself to witness mode with respect to the thoughts.

Not having unrealistic expectations
Ajahn Chah once spoke about the tasks of a monk while meditating, and that sounded pretty rigorous, pretty hard, And then he said that if a monk could do this 10% of the time, that would be great! A well-known author on parenting gives great advice and she has two kids. She confesses that she follows her advice only about 30% of the time. The rest of the time she reverts to what her parents did. So it's not about perfection.

It took me many years to get to this point. My guess is that meditation teachers told me something like what I just wrote, but I couldn't hear it. Now I can and it is pretty easy to meditate every day--virtually never boring or hard.

Another perspective
Thich Nhat Hanh, a wonderful Vietnamese meditation teacher said "Whatever you do mindfully is meditation."

Two notes:
1. Sometimes, if you are very stressed, it can be helpful to have a meditation where the mind is quiet. In that case, you can select a focus, e.g., breath, body, mantra, etc. Whenever you find your mind has wandered, smile and gently bring your attention back to your focus.

2. There are many practices for working with a mind that is not calm. I have described only a few here.

The Magic of Compassionate Presence

I want to tell two stories about compassionate listening and presence.

I taught mindfulness every week for about 10 years at the county jail a few miles from my house. I stopped when I had the aortic dissection almost two years ago. I spent two hours each week at the jail, an hour in two different cell blocks. Participation was voluntary, and over the years I had as many as 12 men in my sessions and as few as one.

Several years ago the number of men in one of the cell blocks dwindled to a single man. One day he asked me if I was being paid to come and I told him that I was a volunteer. That blew him away. He said that no one in his life had ever offered him something without expecting something in return. The first time a person in jail told me this I was blown away. Sadly, several men have told me this over the years.

I quickly realized that he really wasn't interested in meditation. He simply enjoyed having someone who would listen to his loneliness and anguish with compassion, which I did. A couple months later he was released and I didn't hear from him again. I assumed he had moved back to Ohio. A couple years later I received a letter from him. He reminded me who he was and simply said, "I am writing to say thanks. I want you to know your presence and your kindness gave me hope." He didn't say thank you for teaching me mindfulness meditation, but thank you for your presence.

In the second story, I was on the receiving end of compassionate listening. Over 25 years ago, our weekly meditation group decided to adapt the Quaker practice of listening into our meetings. We would meditate for 75 minutes (sitting and walking) and then someone would speak when they felt moved to do so. They would raise their hands in Namaste and the rest of us would also. Because there were often periods of silence during someone's turn, that person raised their hands in Namaste when they were finished.

During this time, my wife had become very sick and was in constant pain. After many months, we still had no diagnosis. We had two teen aged children at the time and I was a full-time college professor. One day I was just exhausted and full of despair. I poured out my pain and grief for several minutes and then I was finished. I raised my hands in Namaste and the others did also.

It was several minutes before the next person spoke and he said, "I've had a pretty rough week." I filled with tears. I realized that because of the format, no one had tried to reassure me with well-intentioned words. This enabled me to feel the pure gift of people who loved me holding me in their hearts with such deep compassionate presence. Note: my wife fully recovered from this illness.

I have been in the presence of many people who have embodied this quality, most notably Thich Nhat Hanh. You could feel his presence in each moment. When he listened it seemed like every fiber of his being was present in that moment. His body was quiet, his heart was open, and his mind was focused.

I realize that this is actually the best offering I can make in my daily life with family, friends, and others--simple, whole-hearted presence. It's not easy and I can often overcommit myself and begin hurrying. However, when I remember exemplars like Thich Nhat Hanh and stories like the two I have shared, my whole being calms down and I remember what's really important.

Addendum the next day: I was reading an interview today with Oren Jay Sofer, and his description of what presence means was beautiful: when we notice “how it feels when someone is really there, we really have the sense that they’re giving us their full attention. It’s very powerful and I think it sends a very deep message when we give someone our full attention.”