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 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.

Reflections on Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh, an amazing and inspiring Vietnamese monk, died last weekend at the age of 95. In this blog post I reflect on my experiences with him.

His talk at Smith College
I was a member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship when I lived in the Amherst area from 1982-1986. The Fellowship invited him to give a talk at Smith College in 1984. After the talk, members of the committee had dinner with him at the home of a couple who were on the committee.

After dinner we were talking about our anger toward President Reagan and his policies that were increasing the threat of nuclear war. Thay, as he was also called, let us go on for a while, and then he quietly asked: "Does not anyone here have anger with people they live with?" We stopped short-he brought us back home! He added, "The only way to stop those wars (pointing outward) is to stop these wars (pointing inside to his heart). We first have to stop the wars inside ourselves, then the wars in our family, then the wars in our community. Only then can we hope to stop the wars between nations." I was so moved by listening to him and being in his presence that I don't think my feet touched down for several days!

Retreats at Omega
I attended two of his retreats at Omega Institute in 1993 and 1994. At both there was a Veterans "retreat within the retreat" where they worked with a teacher on healing their wounds through writing. At the end of the first retreat, they asked to share their experiences. One by one, the veterans basically vomited out their pain--failed marriages and jobs, addiction, and more. One of the veterans said, "isn't it ironic that I went to Vietnam to kill the g--ks (a derogatory term for the Vietnamese) and now over 20 years later one of them is helping to heal me?"

Many of the veterans came back the next year, and this time there was an invitation to dialogue on one of the porches on the last day. I had heartfelt conversations with several men, sharing my father's trauma from WW2 and the effects of his anger on our family and listening to more of their stories. I also apologized on behalf of many protestors who were abusive to veterans when they came back to the States.

Learning to let go of my anger
Over the years I did several more retreats with Thay and I took to heart what he had said that night in Northampton, especially with respect to my bad temper which came from my father. While my resolve to let go of anger has never wavered, progress has been slow but the frequency and intensity of my outbursts have decreased substantially.

Ajahn Chah, a wonderful Thai monk, said that "being a monk is knowing about letting go, but being unable to do so for ninety percent of the time." This helped me not to beat myself up so much. I also worked on forgiving myself, realizing that letting go and forgiving are related to each other and are not simple or easy processes to develop.

My biggest progress on the anger is a direct result of my aortic dissection 15 months ago, as I have had to go very slowly both for the healing of my aorta and because I had so little energy. My anger, and related emotions like resentment and irritation, still get triggered easily, so it is a daily practice to sense when anger arises. However, going more slowly enables me to notice the anger earlier which makes it easier to make better choices about how to respond to my anger. I think of Thay daily when I am more aware of moving more slowly.

I also say a simple grace before eating many of my meals, which is my adaptation of Thay's longer blessing:
This food is a gift of the universe.
I am grateful for having an abundance of such nutritious food.
I give thanks toward all beings that made this food possible.
I vow to work toward a world where there is no hunger.

Thay's stroke
Thay had a severe stroke in 2014. He was no longer able to speak, though he came to group sittings when he felt well enough. In 2015 I ran into a friend who, with his wife, co-founded Morning Sun Mindfulness Center, inspired by the years that they lived at Thay's Center in France. Several months earlier they had flown to France to visit Thay. I asked how Thay was doing even though he was no longer able to speak. Michael smiled deeply and said "he's doing some of his best teaching!" Like me, many people who have been with him speak of how simply being in his presence was a teaching, and that when meditating at a retreat you knew when he entered the room, not because you heard him enter, but because you felt him enter.

He is the most amazing human being I have ever been in the presence of.

“She Taught Me a Different Way to Love”

These words, spoken at a Zoom celebration of life for the sister of a friend of mine, burned into my soul and have coursed through my heart, my mind, and my body for the last several months since I heard them.

Carol, the older sister of my friend Jerry recently died in Montana. She grew up in a loving family but struggled in her childhood with severe learning disabilities, social anxieties, and making and keeping friendships. Her high school guidance counselor told her that she was not college material. However, she persisted and earned a B.S. in Medical Sciences and worked in a hospital lab for many years.

Sometime in her 30's the struggles of life became too much and she quit her job and returned to her parents' home where she lived for many years. Soon after her parents died, she decided to move to Montana, a place she had fallen in love with and had visited numerous times.

Life in Montana was hard, but she found a simple place to live and did odd jobs. It was here that she met Susie who was drawn to Carol. At the Zoom ceremony Susie said that developing a friendship with Carol was challenging at first because of Carol's tough outward demeanor. Over time a close friendship developed but Susie lost her job and moved back home to the Houston area. However, they spoke on the phone pretty much on a daily basis.  Susie returned to Montana to visit after Carol was in the hospital because of a serious fall, and she returned again to help Jerry spread Carol's ashes in a remote area where she and Carol had fished and camped. Susie spoke about how much she treasured her friendship with Carol and then said those words: "she taught me a different way to love."

Reflecting on Susie’s words, I realized that I have had many friendships that have taught me a different way to love. Here are just a couple.

Charlie was a long-term hospice patient with some memory issues. He loved to talk and could not remember what stories he had told me. Over the six months that I visited him weekly, I heard some stories almost every week. He would ask, "Did I ever tell you about the time that..." and I would smile and say "No, Charlie, what happened?"

I have another long-time friend who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia, though he believes that his brain has been invaded by aliens. At this point, I cannot say that's impossible. I have been with him through thick and thin and several hospitalizations, once where he was catatonic for more than a day. In the early days of our friendship, I was sometimes patronizing, and he never called me on it, though I think he felt it. I have also learned to be comfortable with long silences when I am with him. These days he is one of my closest friends. He is a long-time meditator and one of the most gentle, kind, and considerate people I have ever met. I have told him more than once that he is my hero for how he has handled his life.

Maria Popova wrote something that I have read in similar form from both Buddhist authors and neuroscientists:  "What we see is never raw reality, pure as spacetime — what we see is our interpretation of reality, filtered through the lens of our experience and our conditioned worldview. Always, the way we look at things shapes what we see; often, the lens we mistake for a magnifying glass turns out to be a warped mirror — we see others not as they are but as we are." In this context, to truly love someone is to see and hear them with as few filters as possible.

Susie has helped me to realize that everyone I have come to love has quirks, just as I do, that can be difficult. For example, one person says “no hugs,” another can talk at length about matters that to me are trivial, another frequently interrupts me, another is chronically pessimistic, another gives advice all the time, another is occasionally unintentionally mean, another wants to keep things light, another whines a lot, and on and on.  With Susie's statement and advice from many teachers to love the whole person, I am finding that her statement is an invitation to learn a different way to love each person.

It goes even further! This learning to love a different way can also be not just with humans, but also with animals and plants. Near the end of his life, Barry Lopez, a well-known environmental advocate, agreed to an interview. When the writer came to his house, Barry pointed to a fresh Douglas fir stump and said, “We had to put down that tree” just as many people talk about having to put down a beloved pet. Thich Nhat Hanh has spoken for many years about reverence for all beings.

Habit energy: What's not working

Today's essay starts with a wonderful story from Martin Seligman, one of the pioneers of positive psychology.

One day he was out weeding in his garden with his daughter, Nicki, who was almost six. Martin is a serious gardener and also confesses that he is not really that good with kids. While he was focused on weeding, Nicki was having fun: weeds were flying up in the air and dirt was spraying everywhere. At one point, he yelled at her.

"Nicki got a stern look on her face, and she walked right over to me. 'Daddy, from the time I was three until I was five, I whined a lot. But I decided the day I turned five, to stop whining. And I haven't whined once since the day I turned five.’ Then Nicki looked me right in the eye, and said 'Daddy, if I could stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.'"

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed
The other day I got up 'on the wrong side of the bed' and was generating a lot of negative thinking. At one point I caught myself and was able to turn the day around, and this is something that is actually quite accessible to anyone who has practiced the basics of mindfulness.

ACTION/OBSERVATION	COMMENT/THOUGHT
I woke up and realized that because of my sore hip, I had slept on my back all night.	Damn. My back aches.
I got out of bed. The bottoms of my feet were puffy again.	This has been going on for months. What's going on?
I poured some psyllium husks into a glass of water. Some of the medications I take cause constipation, so I take psyllium and use other measures to address this. Today I don't sense much movement in my colon.	I didn’t pay enough attention to fluids and fiber yesterday. Damn.
The bucket under the water filter overflowed onto the counter top.	Damned water filter wasn't made well.
I couldn’t find the pan I use to cook eggs.	Damn. This kitchen is always too cluttered.

Angeles Arrien: what's not working
Years ago I read Angeles Arrien’s description of one shadow side she called ‘focusing on what’s not working.’ I have realized that this is a long time habit of mine, learned from my father. I realized that this habit was operating strongly at this point. I acknowledged that I could continue to be negative or simply acknowledge the 'not working' thoughts and also focus on what is working.

Thich Nhat Hanh: habit energy
In a talk in 1997 in Plum Village, France, Thich Nhat Hahn (also referred to as Thay, which means 'teacher') mentioned "habit energy." He stated that we have positive energies which we can cultivate and we have negative energies which we can transform. The practice “is to recognize the energy of our habits and smile to them. And also to cultivate the new habit, the good habit, until the new habit begins to produce energy." I recommend Thay's whole talk on dealing with habit energy which you can access HERE or you can copy and paste this url into your browser: https://sites.google.com/site/tnhdhamma/Home/test-list/taking-good-care-of-our-habit-energies

Applying these ideas into my own life
For the first several months after my aortic dissection last November, I was so happy to be alive and then happy that the repair surgery was successful, that I was carried by this positive energy. However, in the last month or so I have noticed that a tendency to slip back into the 'what's not working' energy. I realized the other morning that some intention to focus on this habit energy would be wise.

I want to highlight Thay's articulation "to recognize the energy of our habits and smile to them." Thay emphasized that mindfulness practice is not about suppressing those parts of us that we don't like and want to get rid of, but rather bringing that same kind of loving attention to these parts that we would bring to a young child who is clearly upset about something.

So that morning, once I realized that I was being sucked down the rabbit hole of this energy, I just laughed used a practice that Thay had described in another talk. I smiled and said "Hello old friend, I can see you are suffering. Come sit with me." And I felt that part as I practiced loving-kindness toward it: "may you be safe and well, may you be peaceful, may you be free from suffering."

Victor Frankl comes in too
I also remembered that great quote from Victor Frankl: “[B]etween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." In that moment, I was able to change my response to my growing irritability. A half hour later when I realized that I had forgotten to pour my decaf coffee out of the coffee pot before making my wife's caffeinated coffee, I just laughed.

Internal Family Systems
It is important to emphasize that it's not just Buddhist practice to deal with negative habit energies with kindness, it is also an essential component of a psychotherapeutic framework called Internal Family Systems which I wrote about in my August 12, 2019 blog post which you can access HERE. I worked with an IFS therapist for some time many years ago to ‘unburden’ my 'I’m not good enough' part.

What isn’t working and what is working
Since that morning last week, I have recognized the "what's not working part" many times each day. Sometimes I catch it early, sometimes not until it's a full blown storm, but I have been catching it more often. One day, when it was particularly strong, I told my wife that I probably should be by myself for awhile because my "what's not working part" was throwing a fit. She thanked me.

There's a lot in my life that's not working now:

• I am dealing with the trauma from the dissection which almost killed me;

• with having so little energy: the other day I went a a small gathering of people for two hours and then spent the rest of the day in the recliner watching TV and then in bed reading;

• with the inability to lift more than 20 pounds;

• with not being able to take care of my garden;

• with having to monitor daily my blood pressure, my fiber intake (otherwise I'm constipated), my potassium intake (the medications I take lower my potassium levels), and more;

There’s also so much that is working, that is wonderful, including two friends who have volunteered to help me with gardening! When I remember and acknowledge what is working, it makes the hard stuff so much easier to deal with.

It's a full time job to be mindful. I’m not planning on retiring from that job soon!