Commonalities among many disciplines

Over the many years of learning meditation and mindfulness, my practice has been informed by my experiences in other fields. I have seen so many parallels between what my teachers in these other areas were telling me and what my meditation teachers were telling me.

Tai Chi
I took weekly Tai Chi classes for 3 years. Even though it has been 3 years since I stopped going. I remember so vividly the initial instructions from my teacher: The first rule in Tai Chi is to relax!

Another key instruction was not to force the postures. This was challenging for me because I generally try very hard to do it right, to succeed. This was a problem with challenging moves, for example, doing a turn in slow motion so that my right foot landed 150 degrees from where it had been when I lifted it!

The teacher repeatedly said that it was fine if your foot only turned 90 degrees, that it would come in time. But my focus was still on getting as close to 150 degrees as possible. Not surprisingly, I slightly twisted my knee in one practice.

Time to develop patience. I practiced letting go of the desired outcome. I vividly remember the first time I landed the foot close to what the teacher was showing. Ah yes, rule number 1: relax!

Yoga
When taking yoga classes, I struggled with the Downward Dog posture, partly because my shoulders have always been weak. I kept trying and the teacher, who had been my student in a meditation course, encouraged me to relax. Her words are etched in my brain: don’t try to find the posture; let your body show you the posture! Then one day, my body and mind relaxed and I found the sweet spot. Suddenly it was not a painful or frustrating posture. I could actually hold it for awhile!

Drawing
After retiring, I took an Introduction to Drawing course at Keene State College. The teacher was a friend who had also been a student of mine in meditation. I saw many parallels between her instructions and the instructions of my meditation teachers.

Rule number 1 in drawing: draw what you see as opposed to what you think you see or what you think you are supposed to see.

Another rule: pay attention to your body and mind. When they are tired and tight, take a break. Stand back and get perspective.

Pilates
When I first started taking Pilates classes, the teacher would often say things that made no sense. For example, feel your pelvic floor. Yeah, right!

She would often emphasize having only the muscles directly involved be active. While doing leg circles, she said to let the hip muscles do the work, not the thigh and leg muscles. Puzzling at first, until I sensed the difference when the rest of my leg muscles were relaxed.

Then one day, I left class and got on my bike. As I rode, I noticed that only my leg muscles that were needed were active; the rest of my leg muscles, my arms and torso were still. I suddenly understood the beauty of dance. The dancers only moved the parts of the body that they wanted to; the rest of the body was still.

Other areas
I have noticed similar principles, either first-hand or vicariously, in other areas: music, athletics, appreciating the natural world while hiking or kayaking.

My daughter is an accomplished musician. After a performance, I asked her what she was thinking when she was soloing on the mandolin. She said that she wasn’t thinking, that she let the fingers go where they wanted. I recall a similar response from a famous running back in football who was asked what he was thinking when he was running. He laughed and said that if thought at those moments, he wouldn’t be much of a running back.

Both musicians and athletes talk about muscle memory and practice so that during the performance or game, they don’t do much thinking. Same too with meditation! This brought to mind a teaching, that I previously wrote about.

The Three Intelligences
My teacher’s point in his talk is that we are receiving information from our body, our mind, and our heart all the time. The goal is to have all three working together—aligned, attuned.

The problem is that the thinking mind is generally the loudest and the fastest!

What I learned:
• Thinking: I often tell this part of my being to do what it does best and then make space for me to benefit from what the body and heart are telling me.

• Body: I let my body relax and I am receptive to the information coming from my body, e.g., muscle tension, fatigue, aching, soreness. I then relax into these feelings.

• Heart: I invite my heart to be open, letting go, letting be, willing.

Over the years, I can sense when these three systems are attuned and aligned and when they are not. When they are not, back to the first rule of Tai Chi: relax!

I am so grateful to my teachers and fellow students for what I learned, even though it took me longer than I wanted and expected.

Lake and mountain as metaphors

Nature has been a common metaphor for many meditation teachers: mountains, lakes, rivers, clouds, sky, butterflies, trees, and monkeys, to name just a few. When Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the classic 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, he included two meditations which make use of the metaphors of a lake and a mountain.

The lake metaphor
Much of the power of the lake metaphor comes from the many qualities of water.
• The quality of receptivity: it absorbs whatever enters; think of rocks and earth falling into streams and rivers.
• The quality of not forcing: when water flows down a hill and encounters resistance, it goes around.
• The quality of persistence: think of the Grand Canyon!

Imagine a lake when it is calm, its surface like a mirror, reflecting everything around. Imagine the lake when it is windy and sunny, the surface sparkling like shimmering diamonds! So many different moods.

As a meditation you might focus on the receptiveness of water, inviting your mind and heart to be open and receptive, to reflect whatever enters into your awareness. Include it all: the surface during the moments of complete stillness and during moments where it is choppy and agitated; and the bottom of the lake which is undisturbed by the winds and storms at the surface.

“[I]n your meditation practice and in your daily life, can you identify not only with the content of your thoughts and feelings but also with the vast unwavering resource of awareness itself residing below the surface of the mind? In the lake meditation, we sit with the intention to hold in awareness and acceptance all qualities of mind and body” just as the lake sits with whatever is happening.

Two additional meditations
Imagine sitting at the edge of a pond which is completely still, the surface a mirror. Now imagine throwing a large stone into the pond. Observe the effect of the stone, the ripples moving outward from the place where it entered and the ripples bouncing off the shore. Wait a few minutes. The pond become still again. When we bring a curious and non-contentious awareness to whatever is happening, we can notice those moments of stillness. We’re not doing as much as observing, witnessing the causes and effects.

Imagine being on a large boat in a large lake during a raging storm. The waves whipping across the lake, pounding against the boat. Now imagine dropping a rock from the boat. It settles at the bottom of the lake, hundreds of feet below the surface. The storm is still raging above, but here it is calm. So too it is possible to be aware of a part of us that is calm, even during a storm.

The mountain metaphor
In virtually all cultures, from time immemorial, mountains have been sacred places where people go for spiritual guidance and renewal. We can draw on the many qualities of mountains: strength, endurance, majesty, unwavering presence…

There are many ways to play with mountain as a meditation focus.

Imagine a mountain, a particular mountain that you are drawn to or an imaginary mountain. Take a few moments to become familiar with the mountain, to inhabit the mountain. Feel its massiveness, its beauty both far away and up close. Its peak, ridges, and slopes. The plants and animals that live there.

Embody the mountain. Your head becomes the peak, your shoulders and arms become the sides and ridges of the mountain, your torso and legs become the base of the mountain, rooted to the earth. Become the mountain. Feel this energy in and on your body.

You might like to imagine your mountain through the four seasons:
spring: the returning sun, pastel colors, new life bursting…
summer: full sun, deeper colors, longer days, abundant life…
fall: the slowing down, shorter, cooler days, trees shedding their leaves to prepare for winter…
winter: colder, when most life slows down, yet still vibrantly alive…

You might like to imagine spending a whole day at your mountain:
dawn: soft light, the sunrise, so many bird songs...
morning: life becomes busier…
mid afternoon; full sun…
late afternoon: the light changing again, slowing down..
night: the quietness only occasionally disturbed…

During all of these daily and seasonal changes the mountain abides it all. Storms are natural, but the mountain doesn’t take them personally.

The mountain is constantly changing through the seasons and through the years: rainfall carving new paths down the mountain, trees falling, new life emerging, plants and animals decaying, making conditions for new life to emerge.

The mountain endures all kinds of weather: storms, drought, lightning and thunder, hail, snow, blizzards, and more.

As we continually change--every day and through the seasons of our own lives--we can link with the qualities of mountains: strength, stability, and endurance… Our own moods like the weather: sometimes subtle, sometimes violent.

You might choose to play with any of these possibilities during a meditation period or to recall qualities of water, lakes, and mountains during the day.

The first arrow and the second arrow

There are many versions of this powerful story that the Buddha told to illustrate the power of practicing mindfulness:

If a person is struck by an arrow, it is painful. If the person is struck by a second arrow, it is even more painful. The first arrow represents the unavoidable pains that come with life. The second arrow represents our reaction to the first, for example, I hate this, this isn’t fair, I didn’t deserve this…

I encountered a powerful illustration of this when I was taking the training to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.

After the meditation, one participant said she noticed that she was sad.
The teacher asked “then what”?
The participant responded “then I noticed that I didn’t want to be sad.”
The teacher asked “then what?”
The participant said, “Then I felt even worse.”

The teacher then held up her fist and said her fist represented the initial feeling of sadness. She then made a circle with her arms to represent how much bigger the sadness became by wanting it to go away.

We do this all the time. For example, we feel a toothache and it can quickly turn into a trip to the dentist, to a root canal and then a crown and $3000.

I recall getting really frustrated at a colleague when I was teaching. I’d put off scheduling my office hours until he got back to me about when our committee meetings would be held. I was irritated and fuming: “he’s so inconsiderate,” “he’s also arrogant; why don’t I just resign from the committee?”

While those stories may be true, the effect of going round and round in our heads is that those stories affect our state of mind. We have a rough day at work, the frustrations build up then we yell at our child or spouse for something minor, like accidentally spilling something.

Treatment
What I’ve learned from the first and second arrow story is not to suppress or fight those stories but rather [when I remember!] to first bring mindfulness to the physical effects of my reactivity. This is called “embodied mindfulness.”

When I do this with anger or irritation, I often notice the tension in my neck, my facial muscles, my shoulders. If my reactivity is anxiety, I notice the shortness of my breath, the pit in my stomach. This short period of mindfulness is almost always calming. Sometimes, the anger or irritation or anxiety goes away completely.

If you fully feel the effects of your irritation or frustration, you drop it just like you would drop a hot pan that you accidentally picked up.

Sometimes, when it is a recurring or a much bigger situation, a few moments of mindfulness does not result in the anger or anxiety going away completely. However, it still makes a difference.

In these bigger situations, the mindfulness can move us from being caught in the story to being able to witness the story. This is literally standing back, which gives us some perspective. With this perspective we gain some clarity and can then bring other tools. For example: Is this story serving me? Is it helping? How else might I deal with my emotions?

The trouble is that most of us are conditioned to other responses like wallowing in the story, I’m right, I don’t deserve this, this isn’t fair, I’ll show him, etc.

And that is why one translation of mindfulness is to remember!

Useful metaphors for mindfulness

The basic attitudes that guide mindfulness are to cultivate a curious and non-judgmental awareness toward what we are noticing. In doing this, we see more clearly, and this results in wiser actions.

There are many metaphors to assist us in this endeavor, which is both simple and complex. I share a few that I have collected or developed over the years.

Curious mind
In The Meditative Mind, Daniel Goleman quotes Indian philosopher Krishnamurti's advice to children: “You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall, seeing all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall…As you watch, you see all the movements, the delicacy of its movements. So in the same way, watch your thinking, do not correct it, do not suppress it—do not say it is too hard—just watch it, now, this morning.”

Accepting what is happening
Many teachers use the terms non-judgment and accepting when characterizing mindful attention. And many people have struggled with these two terms. I could write an entire blog post on the unpacking of these terms by various teachers. Here are two alternative terms I have found helpful:
• non-attacking attention
• non-contentious attention
Both of these terms remind us to notice when our attention feels like attacking or has a contentiousness relationship to those thoughts.

Seeing clearly
As I was on a morning walk in a forest I noticed birds disturbed by my presence often flying away. I stopped for a few minutes and many birds returned. I watched two downy woodpeckers walking up two adjacent trees as they ate their breakfast of insects. I listened to a bird singing on a branch just above my head.

This reminds me of a cartoon of two dogs sitting on meditation mats and one dog saying: “the key to meditation is learning to stay.”

Walking Down the Street
Imagine taking a walk with a friend in town where you know many people. As you are walking, someone shouts hello to you from across the street. Rather than ignoring them, you wave back and then continue your conversation. Now imagine someone interrupting you, for example, “I’ve been meaning to call you about…” You listen for a few seconds and then politely tell them that you will call them back later. And you return to your conversation.

So too with meditation. We can meet each interruption—a thought, a noise—with hospitality. If some persist, we can acknowledge being pulled away from the meditation, maintain an attitude of hospitality and then go back to the meditation. In this way, our meditation time need not be a stressful experience with expectations and shoulds, but a rather a time to simply pay attention to what is happening moment to moment.

We are not in control of our minds
Many terms have been used to describe the restless of our minds, monkey mind and puppy mind being just two.
• From Huston Smith in The World’s Religions: “I tell my hand to rise and it obeys. I tell my mind to be still and it mocks my command.”
• Another teacher likened meditation to thinking we are flying the plane and suddenly realizing that plane often does not go where we direct it to go. So who is flying the plane?
• A friend in talking about thoughts that can arise during meditation: “Hey, I didn’t order that thought!”

Mindfulness of thoughts during meditation
Many metaphors have been suggested for the attitude when we are observing thoughts. These all have the sense of witnessing.
• Imagine thoughts as clouds floating by, and noticing how they dissolve.
• Imagine thoughts as autumn leaves floating through the air, carried by the wind, but eventually landing.
• Likening the process to sitting on a train looking out the window, and not jumping out every time you see something interesting.

Molehills to mountains to molehills
When we are facing something unpleasant—a physical pain, an emotional pain, a task that we really don’t want to do—we watch the molehill start to grow and grow, and we realize that we are the ones that are making the mountain. The miracle of mindfulness is that when we stay with mindful attention, we watch the mountain begin to shrink back to a molehill and sometimes even disappear altogether.

Bend not break

Several weeks ago my wife and I were walking on one of Keene’s walking/bike paths. We paused for a few moments on a bridge. She noticed a tree that, in some storm, had been bent over and now its top was in the river. A powerful image of ‘bend not break.’ Click here to see the picture.

There are two other messages in that picture. If you look closely, you can see, in the background, another smaller tree that is also bent! The other message is that I have been on this path on my bicycle probably hundreds of time, but never noticed the tree!

I have long enjoyed the writings John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and others bout learning from the Nature: bamboo is one of the strongest woods and is often referred to when talking about ‘bend but not break.’ From Bruce Lee: “Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending in the wind.”

So what helps us to bend instead of breaking during these storms?

Presence and not turning away
Terry Tempest Williams in an interview with Krista Tippett about her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World: “You know, a good friend of mine said, ‘You are married to sorrow.’ And I looked to him and I said, ‘I am not married to sorrow. I just choose not to look away.’ And I think there is deep beauty in not averting our gaze, no matter how hard it is, no matter how heartbreaking it can be. You know, watching prairie dogs shot, standing before the mass grave of 30,000 human beings [from the Rwanda genocide]…I think it is about presence, bearing witness. I used to think bearing witness was a passive act. I don't believe that anymore. I think that when we are present, when we bear witness, when we do not divert our gaze, something is revealed. The very marrow of life. We change. A transformation occurs. A consciousness shift.”

Powerful words. Worth reading again and pausing to notice inside…

Not turning away is a theme I have encountered in so many places.

Last month I referred to the legend of Krishna and how the key to his survival was not turning away from the demons.

Many years ago I was leading a body scan meditation at Keene State College. When I got to the back, I said “this is a place where some people feel discomfort or even pain. If this is happening, see if you can not hate the pain.” At the end of the class, one participant said that she had gone to the gym the day before. She was out of shape, so she did a rigorous workout, and now she ached all over. Just before I made the comment about not hating the pain, she was miserable. However, with those words she was able to let go of hating the pain. All of a sudden it was just sensations. She was no longer miserable. And she was amazed. Such amazing things can happen when we don’t turn away.

Back to learning from Nature
I remember seeing eggs in a cactus wren bird nest when we lived in the desert. I visited the nest regularly, noticing the baby birds when they hatched and as they grew. One day I saw one of the babies making possibly its first flight back to the nest. Afterwards I realized that the bird doesn’t get a second chance. If it doesn’t do it right, it dies. And that was terrible…and it is how the natural world works. A friend told me of a similar experience but not with the same happy ending. She was watching two birds finding food for their young and feeding them. Once when both birds went away, a hawk swooped down and plucked the babies from the nest.

This is how the natural world works. Can you accept it? Can you not turn away?

Can you accept yourself? Can you not turn away from the parts of yourself that you don’t like?

Back to finding beauty in a broken world
When Tami Simon (from Sounds True) was interviewing Terry Tempest William, she talked about not turning away and asked Terry “how do you do that?”

Terry ‘s response was “How do you not turn away?”

Then she elaborated: “The word that comes back to my mind again and again is being present. If you are present, then there is no past, as you well know. And there is no future. You are there. And whether it is being with a family member who is dying, you are present with them. You are breathing. And in that breathing there is this commitment and communion to that breath. Presence. And you don't look away. It is this shared gaze.”

Three Methods for Working with Chaos by Pema Chodron
This article appears in the latest issue of Lion’s Roar and is excerpted from her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Pema writes that in her tradition they do not exorcise demons, but rather they treat them with compassion. The advice she passes on is: “Approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you think you cannot help, and go to places that scare you.”

Again, not turning away. This is true for what we find repulsive in the ‘outer’ world and in the ‘inner’ world: those parts of us that we don’t like, that we fear, that we turn away from.

A reminder that this is not an absolute maxim. Toward this end and going from the sacred to the sublime, I offer a quote from Kenny Rogers: “Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.”

Explore in the moment now
This notion of bend but not break can easily become just words, so I invite you to pause for a few moments. Where do you feel broken or possibly breaking right now? Breathe with those images and feelings…..See if you can allow yourself to be with the pain by witnessing the pain. What do you notice?………….

The Upside of Sadness
Steve Hickman writes about not turning away from sadness in this article which you can read by Googling the title. “It’s never fun, but over the course of a lifetime, sadness visits us all. What if instead of resisting, you could welcome it in and listen to what it has to say?... Locating the arising of sadness in the body (it is different in everyone) gives us a kind of steady place to direct our kind attention and begin to alter our relationship with sadness. The practice of mindfulness is about being present to every moment, not just the ones that are pleasant or neutral. In fact, going into the darker, more uncomfortable places—the ones we usually try to avoid—may yield powerful insights, and may sharpen our mindfulness and deepen our compassion, both toward ourselves and others.”

Two other metaphors
Both metaphors haven been helpful when I realize I am resisting, turning away, and suppressing.

The first metaphor is balance. However, its not like the balance point, which is static balance, but rather dynamic balance which is “the ability of an object to balance whilst in motion or when switching between positions.” When we lose our balance and fall down, we smile and get up. When I am working with this metaphor, I find a question from one of my teachers to be helpful: What is needed now in this moment? And I listen though my breath to what might come up.

The second metaphor is pretty self-explanatory: that of a pressure cooker and releasing the pressure before it blows up! There are many ways we can release steam, for example, laughing at ourselves, screaming into a pillow, going outside for a walk…

These are difficult times indeed. I hope that some of the ideas from this article provides more ability to meet that which we might habitually turn away from

May all beings be safe and well. May all beings find moments of happiness and peace each day. May all beings be free from suffering.