Anxiety - Who can help you out of this mess?

Modern life is anxiety-ridden.  A surprising number of my students have diagnosed anxiety disorders.  Things don’t always go our way, and often it feels like they never do.  We spend inordinate amounts of time planning and strategizing to try to get things just as we want them, only to have the balance upset easily.  I have a friend who has caring parents, went to a good private school through high school, went to a good college, got good grades, got into graduate school, successfully received masters and Ph.D. degrees, and now has a job teaching college, which is what she always said she wanted.  Yet daily she complains bitterly about how she has it so much tougher than everyone else and never gets a break.  If you try to point out that things are really pretty good, her response is how you “just don’t understand.”  I wish I could say that this view of the world was unique to her, but I hear it from both of my equally privileged teenage daughters, I hear it on reality TV shows, and I hear it from presidential candidates. I believe I even heard it come out of my mouth during my miserable divorce.  So this seems to be “the Human Condition.”

But does it have to be?

If we examine what is underneath the complaining, self-pity, blaming, and anxiety, it’s the truth of dukkha.  We don’t get what we want.  We get what we don’t want.  We get what we want only to lose it.  We don’t feel the way we want to.  Want want want.  Get, don’t get – it doesn’t matter.  We are discontent soon, no matter what the external circumstances.  This is good news. 

If we are discontent no matter what the external circumstances, why do we keep believing that the solution is something external? Pema Chödrön says you can always ask yourself “Have I felt this before?  Have I done this before?”  If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” then it’s a clue that it’s time to try something different.

This is not new.  In 1930, Bertrand Russell wrote:

We are all familiar with the type of person, man or woman, who, according to his own account, is perpetually the victim of ingratitude, unkindness, and treachery.  People of this kind are often extraordinarily plausible, and secure warm sympathy from those who have not known them long. There is, as a rule, nothing inherently improbable about each separate story that they relate. The kind of ill-treatment of which they complain does undoubtedly occur.  What in the end rouses the hearer’s suspicions is the multiplicity of villains it has been the sufferer’s ill fortune to meet with.  In accordance with the doctrine of probability, different people living in a given society are likely in the course of their lives to meet with about the same amount of bad treatment.  If one person in a given set receives, according to his own account, universal ill-treatment, the likelihood is that the cause lies in himself, and that he either imagines injuries from which in fact he has not suffered, or unconsciously behaves in such a way as to arouse uncontrollable irritation. (The Conquest of Happiness, pp. 89-90)

From a Buddhist point of view, this conclusion is much too harsh.  The perpetual victim is not particularly different from anyone else – he just makes the same mistake we do more often.  What is the mistake?  It is ignorance of at least six types.  First, we don’t see the multiple causes and conditions of our situation, so it looks like things just “happen to” us.  Second, we see ourselves as separate from the situation, rather than an integral part of the situation.  Third, we see the situation as a series of endpoints, rather than an ongoing organic process. Fourth, we maintain the illusion that we should have more control over our experiences than is actually possible. Fifth, we try to hold ourselves apart from our experiences, as if we need to constantly be defensive, perhaps because we secretly know we can’t control life. Finally, we prefer to blame the situation and others so that we have an overly simplistic story to tell ourselves and others.

There isn’t anything terribly wrong with this pattern, other than that it will continually repeat.  Some people seem so enamored of their stories of suffering that they actively resist doing anything that might truly make themselves happier.  That would be much scarier than continuing to fail and be able to blame others for the failures.

Does this resonate for you?  You aren't actually stuck.  There is tremendous freedom available to you in this next moment.

The Brahmaviharas: Loving-Kindness

The idea of cultivating loving-kindness through meditation is one of the ideas that people generally like. Despite its positive connotations, however, it may be useful to consider the darker side that it combats.

The original Pali word metta can be translated into English in many ways, such as loving-kindness, friendliness, good will, benevolence, fellowship, amity, inoffensiveness, and non-violence. It is a wish for the welfare and happiness of others, without the self-interest that is often subtly underneath our friendly behaviors.

As ideal as this sounds, Buddhist practices are not meant to be theoretical - they are meant to be practical. They are designed to achieve specific goals. The Brahmavihara practices are designed to help us alleviate our suffering, which coincidentally alleviates others' suffering. Metta practice is designed (in part) as an antidote to anger. Why, however, should we care about lessening anger? Culturally, we're told that anger is good (at least for men) - it makes us strong.

The Buddha stated that when you are angry, there are seven things that are gratifying and helpful to your enemy.  The seven, in abbreviated form, are:

1. An enemy wishes for his enemy, Let him be ugly.  Anger makes us ugly.
2. An enemy also wishes, Let him lie in pain.  No enemy relishes your lying in comfort.
3. An enemy wishes, Let him have no prosperity.  When you are ruled by and prey to anger, you mistake good for bad and bad for good.  Thus, mistakes are made that harm you.
4. An enemy wishes, Let him not be rich.  When angry, though you may have built up riches by the strength of your arm, earned by sweat, lawfully gained, yet the king’s treasure gains through fines due to your being prey to anger.
5. An enemy wishes, Let him not be famous.  Yet, when ruled by anger, what fame you may have acquired by diligence is lost through being prey to anger.
6. An enemy wishes, Let him have no friends.  When ruled by anger, the friends you do have, companions, and even relatives will keep away  from (or even be harmed by) your anger
7. An enemy wishes, Let him suffer death and hell afterwards.  When angry, prey to anger, ruled by anger, a person misconducts himself in body, speech, and mind, and by this misconduct, reappears in a state of deprivation, in a bad destination, in perdition, even in hell, through his being prey to anger.

For more details, read The Practice of Loving Kindness  

The underlying psychology behind the Brahmavihara practices are that if we can change our minds, then we can have more peace both for ourselves and for others. Metta is the antidote for anger, annoyance, and hatred. The Buddha himself listed 11 benefits of cultivating metta:

"Monks, for one whose awareness-release through good will is cultivated, developed, pursued, handed the reins and taken as a basis, given a grounding, steadied, consolidated, and well-undertaken, eleven benefits can be expected. Which eleven?

"One sleeps easily, wakes easily, dreams no evil dreams. One is dear to human beings, dear to non-human beings. The devas protect one. Neither fire, poison, nor weapons can touch one. One's mind gains concentration quickly. One's complexion is bright. One dies unconfused and — if penetrating no higher — is headed for the Brahma worlds."

 It is worth examining the sutra where the Buddha taught metta practice in some detail. There is, of course, a mythological story that goes along with it (adapted from here):

500 monks received individual instructions from the Buddha, and went to the Himalayan foothills to spend a four-month rainy season retreat living in intensive meditation.  According to the commentary by Buddhaghosa, it “appeared like a glittering blue quartz crystal: it was embellished with a cool, dense, green forest grove and a stretch of ground strewn with sand, resembling a pearl net or a silver sheet, and was furnished with a clean spring of cool water.”  The monks were captivated.  There were also some towns and markets nearby, where they could beg for alms. 

The residents apparently were pleased the monks were here, and offered to build each a hut near the grove so that they could spend their days under the ancient boughs of the majestic trees.  After settling down contentedly into these huts, each monk selected a tree to meditate under by day and night.  It was said that these great trees were inhabited by tree-deities who had celestial mansions with the trees as the base.  The deities did not like to remain above them, so stayed away, assuming the monks wouldn’t stay long.  But after several days, the deities decided to try to scare the monks away by showing them terrifying visions, making dreadful noises, and creating a sickening stench.  The monks soon could no longer concentrate on their meditations.  So they traveled back to the Buddha to ask what should be done. 

He recited the Karaniya Metta Sutta, which they learned by rote in his presence.  Then they went back, meditating on the underlying meaning, and projecting metta toward the wrathful deities.  As they returned, the hearts of the deities became so charged with warm feelings of good will that they invited the monks to occupy the bases of the trees, and helped to maintain them for their retreat. 

The practice of metta is therefore not simply to change our hearts, but it also has the power to change those of others.  It is sometimes likened to cultivating a great tree, that starts as a small seed, but makes it grow into a useful, generous, and noble tree, heavily laden with luscious fruits sending their sweet odor far and wide, attracting others to enjoy it.  These three aspects are included in the Karaniya Metta Sutta (sprouting of seed and growth are verses 1-6, fruition are verses 8-10).

Many Buddhist practices, including the metta practice, are designed to liberate us from suffering through two primary processes: Renunciation and Cultivation.

The Pali commentaries explain:

One loves all beings:  (a) by the non-harassment of all beings and thus avoids harassment;
(b) by being inoffensive (to all beings) and thus avoids offensiveness;  (c) by not torturing (all beings) and thus avoids torturing;  (d) by the non-destruction (of all life) and thus avoids destructiveness;  (e) by being non-vexing (to all beings) and thus avoids vexing;  (f) by projecting the thought, "May all beings be friendly and not hostile";  (g) by projecting the thought," May all beings be happy and not suffer";  (h) by projecting the thought, "May all beings enjoy well-being and not be distressed."In these eight ways one loves all beings; therefore, it is called universal love. And since one conceives (within) this quality (of love), it is of the mind. And since this mind is free from all thoughts of ill-will, the aggregate of love, mind and freedom is defined as universal love leading to freedom of mind.

From the passage above, it can be seen that metta implies both the "outgrowing" of negative traits - renunciation of offensive actions toward others (a through e above) - and the cultivation of positive traits (f through h above).

The traditional approach is to meditate on several phrases in seven phases.  The phrases are "May I be safe. May I have happiness and the causes of happiness. May I be healthy. May I live with ease." There are other phrases that can be used, and you should use the ones that feel best to you.  The seven phases are to start with offering these feelings to your self, then to a loved one, then to friends, then to a neutral person, then a disliked person, then all of the above as a group, and then all beings in all directions.

A few clarifications may be useful. 

Metta is not the same as love, which in Pali is pema.  Metta is instead related to mitta, or friend.  It is universal friendliness to all.  It is good will to all, but it doesn’t mean you become a door mat, sublimating your needs to those of others.

In the Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta, Buddha says the following phrase can be used: 'May these beings be free from animosity, free from oppression, free from trouble, and may they look after themselves with ease!' 

Note the last part, that they look after themselves with ease.  You are not saying you will do it for them.  You are not saying you will have to be there all the time, or be responsible for their happiness.  This is why it’s important to pair metta with equanimity.  It’s too easy to become overwhelmed if we believe that by changing our habits of mind and behavior to be more loving that we accept responsibility for others’ happiness.  As Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, actually, “most beings would be happier knowing that they could depend on themselves rather than having to depend on you.”

For people to be happy, we need to understand the causes of happiness and then act upon them.  If it harms someone, then it won’t lead to true happiness.

Regarding the mother-child part of the Metta Sutta, it’s often misunderstood to mean that we should be willing to give our lives for others.  But this is incorrect.  Buddha is saying that just as the mother works hard with dogged effort to protect her child, so should we work with just as much clarity to protect our good will, our metta. 

Good will is an attitude you can express for everyone without being hypocritical.  It recognizes that people will become truly happy not as a result of your caring for them, but as a result of their own skillful actions, and that the happiness of self-reliance is greater than any happiness that comes from dependency.

Furthermore, it’s more skillful than trying to be loving.  Not everyone is ready or wants your love.  It could actually make things worse to try to be loving toward everyone.  My ex doesn’t want me expressing my love for her.  But she’s totally content when I wish that she find her own happiness.

It’s difficult to generate metta toward a disliked person, and I’m not sure you should try for very long (at least not when just beginning this practice). It's better to pick someone who is only somewhat difficult, rather than the most difficult person in your life. If it's difficult to wish him/her happiness, it may help to start with somewhat different phrases, such as: May I have no hostility toward him/her, may he/she also not have any hostility toward me.  May he/she have happiness and the causes of happiness.

What can Mindfulness Meditation do for you?

One of the arms of the Buddhist Eightfold Path is "Right View."  There are many meanings to this, but one that I find under-utilized is the idea that when we set out on the path, it is useful to have a "view" to where we are going.  It's like looking at the map before we set out.  It's also useful once you've been on the path for a while, because then you can take stock of where you've been.  In this context, I want to consider some ways of thinking about what the goals of Mindfulness Meditation are.

Broadly speaking, there are two styles of meditation practice - Familiarizing and Cultivating.  Mindfulness meditation focuses primarily on the first of these.

It is important to start the journey by familiarizing yourself with your mind and emotions.  How can you change or improve something until you understand how it works?  If my car isn't running smoothly, just wishing for it to work won't help. Buying new seat covers or putting an inspirational CD in the CD player won't make it run more smoothly.  By knowing how the car works, we can focus our efforts to the place that can actually make a difference.  Similarly, we need clarity about our circumstances and ourselves to be able to make a difference, but often when things aren't going the way we want, we get caught up in blaming and feeling that it "shouldn't be this way," and then we make a bigger mess.

Mindfulness meditation starts us on the path to understanding how our minds work.  As we gain familiarity, it also begins to cultivate three properties: Tranquility, Stability, and Clarity.

Tranquility is often one of the goals people explicitly have when they begin meditating - they want to slow the mind down and have some sense of peacefulness or stress reduction.  It is worth noting that people often also have the belief that the goal is to stop thinking.  This is not correct.  The mind will always think - that's what it does.   The goal is to not be so hooked by the thoughts.

As we slow the thoughts down, we begin to be better at focusing our attention intentionally rather than being so easily distracted by the next thought.  This increased stability is sometimes called one-pointed focus.

As we gain stability and tranquility, we also begin to gain some clarity by seeing deeper into our true natures.

The classic analogy in Buddhism is if you scoop a glass of water out of a muddy river, it is undrinkable at first. There is too much sediment floating around in it, and no amount of effort will change that. You can't get the mud to settle out by shaking it hard or trying to force it to the bottom. Instead, if you let it sit quietly, the impurities will slowly settle to the bottom of the glass, leaving the water tranquil and clear.

The goal of meditation, therefore, is not to get rid of thoughts, but instead (1) to understand how our thoughts are constantly changing, impermanent, and empty, (2) to stop believing them as if they are "true," and (3) to stop believing that your thoughts are you.  These realizations lessen the control that your thoughts have over you, and opens up the way that you can begin to change.

Another way we can think about Mindfulness Meditation is that the focus is always on being present.  But what do we mean by that?

There are at least three different aspects of "being present" in Buddhist practice.  The most basic and stereotypical is a heightened state of focus.  You can test this by staring at an object or space on the wall. You may notice as you focus on it that the rest of the room may darken, blur, or get wiggly.  This one-pointed focus is ironically equally a rejection of all other things that are also present.  You can, however, learn to focus on the target yet also notice all of the things in the periphery, noticing the full environment. Therefore, heightened focus doesn't necessarily have to just be about one object (such as the breath), although it's often beneficial to start here.

The second way of being present is noticing a heightened vividness, vibrancy, clarity, and specificity of your experience.  I notice this most clearly doing walking meditations, where I am astounded by the colors, the vividness, and the detail that exists in the world.  Each leaf and blade of grass is distinct and clear and interesting.

The third way of being present is focusing on the Karmic momentum of each moment and being present in the "gap."  Ethan Nichtern describes this as "where the past is creating a tremendous momentum of feeling and impulse, but we haven't yet figured out how we're going to react to it....it's the awkward vulnerability between impulse and action."  That is, based on all of our past conditioning and all of the present causes and provocations and emotions, we experience some feeling.  We usually react to these feelings with habitual responses, but what if we didn't?  What if we instead were present with feeling the momentum of the moment?  (This is the gap between steps 7 and 8, or between 8 and 9 of the 12 Nidanas for those of you who want to be Buddhist geeks.)

So these are three more aspects we gain from Mindfulness Meditation.

What takes our mindfulness away?  Strong emotions and habits -- the momentum of the past and all of our conditioning and the present causes.  As discussed in a previous post, we tend to react to each new stimulus with either grasping, pushing it away, or ignoring it.  These are the Three Poisons of greed, aggression, and ignorance.  Every time we act based on one of these feelings, we strengthen our habitual responses, so we can no longer see the gap between feeling and our habitual reaction to the feeling.

Once triggered, emotions have strong energy.  One technique that Buddhism teaches to help us deal with these emotions is that of antidotes.  For each of the afflictive emotions, there is a series of things one can meditate on to counter them (see here, for example). Note that the core assumption underlying this approach is one of change.  We are trying to break the powerful link of our habits.

Once we have achieved some level of tranquility, stability, and clarity, we can begin to work with our minds and our habit energies, but Mindfulness Meditation isn't really designed to change them.

We usually enter a spiritual pathway and practice in order to change something about ourselves.  We want to reduce our suffering, to find ease in the midst of turmoil, to be of more benefit to others, etc.  Yet, Mindfulness Meditation doesn't get us too far down that path, but it's the first step on the path. Other meditation techniques focus specifically on changing our habitual responses.

But there's a paradox present here.  We know that we're really just a quivering mess.  We don't want to be a quivering mess.  But to be the kind of person we wish we were, we have to stop being a quivering mess.  But since we are such a mess, we're not the kind of person we want to be.  So how can we break out of this conundrum?  The way out is to practice capacities that you already have, such as compassion, joy, and love.

This moves us into the next style of meditation technique - those that focus on cultivating rather than familiarizing.  We use these techniques to help grow something that already exists in us.  The next post will begin to examine meditation techniques on what are called the Brahma-viharas, or the four heavenly abodes.


These thoughts adapted from talks given by Ethan Nichtern and Alan Watts, among others.  Image sources: Here, here, here, and here.

The Biggest Easy - The Flip-Side of Suffering

For the past few posts, we've been discussing the Four Noble Truths, which (in an overly simplistic manner) are that suffering exists in our lives, that we cause much of it ourselves through our attachments, aversions, and ignorance, that we don't have to suffer, and that there is a path to freedom from suffering.  This is often perceived as being somewhat dismal.  I'd like to suggest a different way to frame it, however (based on a talk given by Gil Fronsdal).

Although the goal of the Buddhist path is liberation from suffering, we don't usually talk about what happens after we achieve that goal.  What does Nirvana look like?  There are good reasons why there is very little written about what the goal should look or feel like.  First, there is not necessarily only one way to experience it, so anything I could describe would not be accurate for many people.  Second, once described, it creates an ideal that people would cling to, and this clinging would prevent them from achieving it.  Nonetheless, it is possible to give a better sense of what the goal is if we reframe the Four Noble Truths from the positive side.

Nothing exists without its opposite, and the flip side of suffering is ease.  As we've noted before (here and here), happiness isn't actually the opposite - the way most Americans think about happiness is actually a form of suffering!  We really want to be able to experience the richness of our lives (the joys, the sorrows, the frustrations, the challenges) with a sense of ease, slipping through each experience with a sense of ease.  We could, therefore, repackage the Four Noble Truths from this perspective.

First Noble Truth:  The possibility of ease exists.
Second Noble Truth:  It is possible to lose the ease.
Third Noble Truth: It is possible to regain the ease.
Fourth Noble Truth: There is a path by which we can regain and maintain the ease.

Personally, I find this to be a really motivating approach, partly because it fits with where I am in my practice.    This wasn't always the case, however.  There have been times when my suffering was so intense that I needed to do something about it, and that was the total focus of my motivation.  Whether we are motivated to practice because of a focus on the suffering or a focus on the lightness and ease doesn't really matter much.  The focus on suffering may be a more realistic spiritual path, because it's grounded in what's actually happened in your experience, rather than a focus on an ideal of peace in the future.

Nonetheless, there often comes a time when people have an experience of ease that is personal, direct, and visceral, and then the ease no longer functions as some idealized state, but one that you have some experience with.  Ease now can become the teacher, as Gil Fronsdal says, particularly when you argue with it.

The argument question is, for what is it worth sacrificing my ease?

We often cling to our suffering, as if it were important.  Some people even seem to base their sense of self on worrying or complaining.

I know several people who always complain about everything, as if somehow that makes them feel better - yet, they never stop complaining, so it clearly isn't working. All that practicing has made us expert at complaining, so it becomes automatic.  Sometimes we believe it is important to worry or to plan, and sometimes it is.  So this is the question - is now one of those times?  Will I really perform some task better if I sacrifice feeling comfortable and at peace and instead worry, plan, and complain?

Once we find this sense of ease, we can practice it until it becomes automatic too.  It can become the default.  It is important to realize that this is not the same as indifference, which is a state of being closed off to the world.  On the contrary, it is becoming open to every possibility, able to work with whatever arises in each situation.  It becomes a stable platform from which we can see clearly in all directions, and therefore be of much greater help to everyone around you (as well as yourself).

I should probably end this post here, but in the interest of providing the whole truth it is worth noting an obstacle on this journey.  We began this series of posts looking at why people may be afraid to meditate, and there is at least one more reason that is relevant here.  Buddhist meditation forces us to confront how we have acted unskillfully, harming ourselves and others in the process.  This honest appraisal allows us to have the motivation necessary to change the patterns.  Nevertheless, some people stop meditating precisely because it makes us confront these uncomfortable feelings of how we have been injured and how we have contributed to the injuries.  If you believed that meditation was just a stress reliever, then facing this will be disheartening, and many people stop here.  Yet, if we can go through this, learning from the insights that arise, we can get to a place of ease that is profoundly different from where we normally live.

Nirvana is Not Just a Band - The Third Noble Truth

In the last post, we discussed how we have conditioned emotional reactions to things that make us want them, want to avoid them, or not care about them (the Three Poisons).  These reactions are natural, but when we begin to believe that our reaction is Truth, or that we must react based on them without reflection, they usually cause us (and others) more suffering.  Yet, they can be overcome.  This is known as the Third Noble Truth - that we don't have to suffer.  In Buddha's words, "The extinction of greed, the extinction of hate, the extinction of delusion; this, indeed, is called Nirvana." (Translation by Nyanatiloka).

In the Titthiya Sutta mentioned last time, Buddha discussed how passion/grasping/wanting arises through the "theme of the attractive," how aggression/aversion arises by the "theme of irritation," and how ignorance/delusion arises due to "inappropriate attention."  He then goes further in this sutra to say that the three poisons can be kept from arising or abandoned once they have arisen.

1. Passion/clinging/grasping can be overcome through the "theme of the unattractive....For one who attends appropriately to the theme of the unattractive, unarisen passion does not arise and arisen passion is abandoned."
• When we are feeling that we want something, we tend to focus only on the positive aspects of it.  We then become unbalanced and are ultimately disappointed because it can't live up to our expectations, thus continuing the cycle of stress.  If instead, once we notice that we are attracted to something, we also pay attention to the potential negative aspects, then we can still want it but we won't become so unbalanced or disappointed.  
2. Aversion/aggression can be overcome through loving-kindness or good will.
• When we are irritated or angry, we similarly tend to focus only on the negative aspects of the situation or person.  We rehearse all the negative aspects and how we would like to respond harshly.  If we do act aggressively, the cycle continues.  If instead, once we notice that we are feeling irritated, we also pay attention to how the other people involved are also suffering, we can feel some compassion for their point of view.  We can even wish them well rather than harm, knowing that if they started feeling better, they would likely be less irritating to us, or at least the situation wouldn't escalate and get worse.
3. Ignorance/delusion can be overcome with appropriate attention.
• When we don't know or don't care about something, we don't pay it any attention.  Once we think we understand something, we stop paying good attention.  This ensures that we continue to delude ourselves into thinking that we understand it or that it's not worth our time.  If, instead, we approach the things we don't know or care about with a sense of curiosity, we are likely to find something interesting.

There is a general theme in Buddhism (as seen above) that for every affliction, there is an antidote.  Once the antidote has been applied effectively, then what?  [Cue the Seattle grunge sound]

Nirvana!

There isn't only one way to understand Nirvana, and I can only speak from my experience.  Some people think of it similarly to the typical Christian idea of heaven, as a wonderful place your spirit can go once you die and escape from the cycle of samsaric death and rebirth.  As an American Buddhist, I have a hard time with this approach.  It strikes me that there is a more literal way to understand it.

The word nirvana means to blow out or extinguish, as one blows out a candle.  Alan Watts describes nirvana as a very literal blowing out, such as when we say "Phew!" to demonstrate our relief.  I think this is the secret to understanding Nirvana.

It's not a special place you go, it's not even a special state you achieve (like after achieving a college degree you have it forever).  It's actually a very ordinary state...it's the state of being present and not being ruled by the three poisons.  Remember Buddha's quote above, "The extinction of greed, the extinction of hate, the extinction of delusion; this, indeed, is called Nirvana."  When you are completely present and aware of what you're doing, not attached to any future outcome, not worried about what happened before, this is Nirvana.  This is indeed liberating.  This is "phew" contentment.  This is living with ease. This is productivity at work. This is where your loved ones feel loved by your presence. This is where great art is created.

But what does it mean to be liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth?  As an American Buddhist, I have difficulty thinking of this in the sense of reincarnation over countless lifetimes.  I think a more basic way is to realize that this is speaking about karma.  The concept of karma also has gathered lots of mystical meaning over the centuries, but at its root, it just means "action," as in action and reaction.  For any action you take, there will be a reaction.  If you act in a damaging way, you will reap the consequences of it in the future.  As long as we are ruled by the Three Poisons, we will continue to act in ways that have difficult consequences for ourselves and those around us.

We could also think about death and rebirth in this framework of our actions.  Consider, for example, if I am feeling aggressive and I spread a rumor about you, this action has consequences that ripple outwards into the future.  You become hurt by this.  Perhaps a year later you find out that I was the person who started the rumor.  At that point, although my original action is dead, it is reborn by you.  You are now thinking about it and harmed by it anew.  If you act out of aggression now, I become hurt.  This is my karma in the broader sense...my actions have returned to me as consequences.  My being hurt by you just reinforces the anger I had a year ago, and it is reborn...and the cycle continues.

If I had to guess, I'd say that 95% of the time (+/-5%, since I'm a scientist) that we are feeling a difficult emotion (sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt, etc.), it is not because the difficult situation is happening then.  We ruminate over past and future imagined hurts and threats.  This keeps us locked into the karmic cycle of death and rebirth - we keep giving birth anew to these feelings.  This is samsara, the wheel of dukkha (discontent).  If we were able to apply the antidote, let it go, and refocus on what we're actually doing, we would achieve Nirvana in that moment.  Let me give a personal example.

Many years ago, I went through a terrible divorce that caused me serious damage.  In fact, from my perspective, the ruthless way in which it was done was designed to cause as much damage as possible.  As can be imagined, I spent many months in despair, anger, self-pity, blaming, rage, etc.  One "enlightenment" moment came one evening as I was washing the dishes.  I was crucifying myself with my strong emotions, thinking about what I should have said, what I'd like to do in my rage, etc.  On this evening, however, I stopped myself and said, "What am I doing right now?  I'm washing the dishes.  Does washing the dishes hurt me?  No."  I realized that all the suffering I was going through was being caused entirely by me at that time.  My ex wasn't there saying the things I was imagining.  Perhaps she had said them in the past, but she wasn't saying them at that moment.  Recognizing this, I let it go and paid my full attention to the dishes.  That is Nirvana.  My suffering ceased and I stopped thinking about doing things that would only increase my future suffering.

Nirvana is not a place we go.  It's not a special state that once we achieve we are always there (at least most humans can't).  Instead, it's a special state we can have at any time.  In fact, it's a state that we have all experienced any time you are so engrossed in a task that you are completely focused on all the details.  Learning how to get to Nirvana and stay there for longer and longer periods takes work and time.  And maybe...just maybe...once we're there, it will smell like teen spirit.

Our Endless Cycle of Hope and Fear - The Second Noble Truth

In the last post, we discussed how we tend to have a pervasive feeling that things are unsatisfactory, stressful, or just not quite enough, and that even getting what we want often ironically increases this feeling.  Why do we have this feeling (dukkha)?

The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta states that the origin of stress and suffering is "craving."  The Pali word used here is tanha, which can be also defined as a demanding desire or thirst.  This is distinct from chanda, a desire to do, which can be beneficial.  This statement that craving/thirst/desire is the root of suffering is known in Buddhism as the Second Noble Truth.

This seems to make intuitive sense.  If we truly don't worry about something, it doesn't cause much suffering.  But what does craving mean?  The Buddha said there are three types of craving.

1. Craving for sense pleasures
• Have you noticed how easily you can become bored with something, even something you really like?  Each of our six senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, and thinking) seems to like novelty.  We are attracted to things we haven't seen before, or are different from what is currently happening.
• Consider the sense of anxiety that many of us have that makes us check our email or text messages constantly, needing something new to see, hear, etc.
• The funny thing about this is that we believe that by following this desire for the next sense pleasure we will attain happiness, but it never works for long and the pattern never ends (this is one defining characteristic of samsara, the wheel of suffering).  But if you aren't grateful for and content with what you already have, what makes you think that having more will somehow change that?
2. Craving for existence - craving to be
• We have a desire to be stable, solid, permanent, and ongoing - we want to feel like we matter
• We want to believe that we have a past and a future
• We have a desire to compete, prevail, and ultimately dominate
3. Craving for non-existence
• We often spend a lot of time wishing (craving) for bad feelings, annoying people, and difficult situations to go away
• We want to be separate from painful experiences
• We don't want to experience the world in all of its rawness

Summing these up, it seems to me that we basically get stuck in an endless cycle of hope and fear.

One way of considering this cycle of hope and fear is the idea of the Eight Worldly Concerns, also called the Eight Worldly Dharmas or Eight Worldy Winds (Yes, Buddhists LOVE to make numbered lists of things!).  The idea is that we are constantly engaged in seeking something and avoiding something in this group of four pairs:

• Pleasure or pain
  
• Loss or gain
• Disgrace or fame
• Praise or blame

We clearly prefer one of these and not the other on our treadmill of hope and fear, constantly running from one of each pair and toward the other.  The problem is that no matter which of these 8 concerns arises, it is temporary and usually not particularly important in the course of our lives, so why do we make such a big deal to ourselves about them?  (To read what Buddha said about these and the difference between ordinary and enlightened approaches to them, read the Lokavipatti Sutta.)

But this is only part of the issue.  Although it is fairly easy to notice in ourselves how most of our planning and rumination about what just happened to us is linked to one of these eight concerns, these only focus on our personal motivations:  What we believe is happening to ME.  But we are actually concerned about far more than ourselves.  We care about what happens to others.  We care about what happens to our things.  We care about what happens to the planet.  We are not solely focused on these 8 worldly concerns - these are an outgrowth of a more basic human tendency called the Three Poisons (I told you Buddhists love lists).

The Three Poisons are how we almost automatically and immediately have one of three possible reactions to any and everything that arises in our experience - we are either attracted to it, repelled by it, or don't care about it.  This is true about people, situations, our sensations, and even our own feelings and thoughts.  In the Titthiya Sutta, Buddha describes the reasons why these occur.  The three are translated into different English words by different translators, so I have given a couple below to give a more complete sense of their flavor.

The Three Poisons

1. Attachment or passion
• Buddha notes that the cause of attachment/passion is the "theme of the attractive," and that it "carries little blame and is slow to fade."  That is, when we are attracted to something or someone, when we want it, we see only its good qualities.  We become unbalanced. The object of our passion carries little blame - we can't see the bad qualities.  We also believe ourselves to be be blameless in the pursuit of our beloved object, believing that the ends of getting our goal justify our means.  Because it is slow to fade, we will work very hard to achieve our goal of getting what we want.
2. Aversion or aggression
   
• Buddha notes that the cause of aversion/aggression is the "theme of irritation," and that it "carries great blame and is quick to fade."  That is, when we get irritated or annoyed by something or someone, we see only the bad qualities.  We again become unbalanced.  The person we are annoyed with carries great blame - we only see the bad qualities and the damage that they allegedly did.  We do not see how we were part of the problem, and we strike out in anger or frustration.  Once we have decided that the other is to blame, or once we have retaliated, we often feel somewhat satisfied, and the aggression fades until it is prompted again.
3. Ignorance or delusion
• Buddha notes that the cause of ignorance/delusion is "inappropriate attention," and that it "carries great blame and is slow to fade."  That is, when we think something is uninteresting, boring, or we honestly just don't know or care about it, it is because we really haven't yet tried to understand it.  The Greek roots of "ignorance" mean very literally "to not know."  We ignore the people and objects that don't seem immediately important to us, which can cause us to fail to act appropriately to get the most benefit out of the situation.  We ourselves are solely to blame for not paying sufficient attention, and we are slow to realize that we should take more care.

It is a good exercise when meditating to notice that almost every arising thought and feeling has one of the three poisons attached to it.  When planning something, we're grasping after trying to control something in the future - we are attached to the idea of trying to achieve some outcome.  When remembering some annoyance, we bring up feelings of aggression or we think about how we can work to avoid the person/situation in the future, or what unkind thing we "should" have said.  When we think of something that we don't really have a feeling about, we could approach it with a feeling of curiosity to try to understand it better, but we usually don't.  We even attach these feelings to our emotions, trying to avoid emotions we dislike and seek ones we like better.

Ultimately, in the Buddhist perspective, this grasping after certain outcomes, wishing to avoid others, and ignoring other possibilities is what causes our suffering and stress.  This is good news.  Knowing why we feel such discomfort in our own lives gives us something to work with to reduce it.  And we can reduce it - we can break out of this endless cycle of hope and fear (knowing this is the Third Noble Truth, which we'll discuss next).

Getting What You Want Isn't What You Want - The First Noble Truth

Gautama Buddha, the historical Buddha, lived between about 563 and 483 BC in India on the border of present-day Nepal. He was a son of the King Sudhodana, ruler of  the tribe called the Sakyas (from where Buddha derived the title Sakyamuni, meaning "Sage of the Sakyas"). The young prince also received the name of Siddhartha. He maintained a privileged life behind the palace walls until one day he decided to visit the nearby town. The king called for everything to be swept and decorated, and any disturbing, unpleasant, or sad sight to be removed. But while Gautama was travelling through the streets, an old wrinkled man appeared before him. In astonishment the young prince learned that decrepitude is the fate of those who live long enough. Later he saw someone seriously ill, and then a funeral procession with a corpse, both of which opened his eyes to suffering and death. Finally he met an ascetic, a beggar, who told Gautama that he had left the world to pass beyond suffering and joy, to attain peace at heart.

Gautama left his palace, wife, and child, and became an ascetic for about 6 years, desiring to understand and eliminate suffering.  Although he achieved deep meditation states, his body suffered and he did not achieve peace.  Finally, he achieved the realization that there is a middle way between selfish indulgence and asceticism.  He became aware of what are now known as the Four Noble Truths – that suffering (dukkha) is universal, the cause of suffering, that suffering can be overcome, and the path by which it can be overcome.  With this insight, he became the Buddha, which simply means one who is awake.

About seven weeks after the Buddha’s awakening, he met five former ascetic companions, and the Four Noble Truths are seen as the first teaching he gave.  The four truths are not as such things to “believe,” but to open to, contemplate, see for yourself, and respond to.  In this post, we focus on the first of the Noble Truths - that dukkha exists. (If you want to read some of the details, see HERE)

Dukkha: Although this is usually translated into English as suffering, dis-ease, unsatisfactoriness, discomfort, anxiety, and stress may be somewhat better. There are several types of dukkha.  Gompopa (in the “Jewel Ornament of Liberation”) organizes them into these three types:

1. Dukkha - Dukkha (Suffering of suffering):  Ordinary suffering or pain, which can be physical, emotional, or mental

2. Viparinama Dukkha (Suffering of Change):  Suffering brought on by the truth of impermanence, and our desire to keep things from changing. 

3. Samkhara Dukkha (Suffering of Conditioned States; All-Pervasive suffering):  This is the trickiest to define.  It's basically suffering brought on by our neurotic habits, by being a self with the Five Skandhas (the five aggregates that we mistake for “self”), which are constantly changing.  In brief, we have bodies and things have forms, we have sensations and feelings, we have perceptions and cognitions, we have thoughts, opinions, prejudices, and attitudes, and we have consciousness.  One way of thinking about it is that these five Skandhas maintain a reference to "self," which causes us to separate the world into self and other, which can cause suffering.

As you might have noticed from this list, suffering is much more complicated than it at first appears.  In fact, the Buddha defined eight types: 

"Now this, monks, is the Noble Truth of dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In brief, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha." — SN 56.11 

I tend to think that  there is a ninth type of suffering - getting what we want.

Think about it.  As soon as you get that thing you really desired, you start worrying about it.  You get the fancy car and then begin stressing about it getting door dings, or breaking down, or stolen.   Getting what you want begets dukkha when it gets boring (aging), when it breaks (death), when we worry about it getting stolen or harmed (distress), or after we've lost it (separation from the loved).

Basically, there is a dependent co-arising of both happiness and stress when we get what we want.  

One place one can often see this clearly is in our romantic relationships.  The very thing that attracts you so much to a person is usually the exact thing that is particularly annoying later on.  For example, you are attracted to someone because of how flirty he is?  He won't stop being flirty after he's with you, and then you might not like it as much.  You are attracted to how free-spirited she is?  It will be annoying when she doesn't fit neatly into the little box you would like to keep her in once you're together (c.f., the home for manic pixie dream girls video).  You are attracted to how smart someone is, and what a great probing intellect he/she has?  You might not like it later when he/she turns that probing critical mind on you!

The point is that we continually believe that getting what we want will make us happy, but that's clearly not true.  Most of the time, getting what we think we want just maintains our suffering.

The good news is that the next three Noble Truths help us to understand why we suffer and how to stop.

Working with Anger (and other Strong Emotions)

On the American Buddhists group on the Insight Timer app, a question came up about dealing with strong emotions.  In particular, this colleague asked,  "How do I apply the peace of mind I feel while meditating when I finish my session?  I have anger issues."

There's obviously not one single answer nor is there a simple answer (well, there is - it's practice and time, but that's not a very satisfactory answer at the moment you're feeling the anger). 

In the Buddhist view, emotions have two properties that are co-emergent - wisdom and confusion. That is, when you are feeling an emotion, there is an aspect of wisdom behind it. With anger, it's usually the recognition that something isn't right. The problem is that co-emerging with the wisdom is also ignorance/confusion/clinging - we feel the anger and then (1) believe we have to DO something because of it, (2) believe that our story about it is somehow "real," and (3) our clarity of thinking often gets impaired, so we act unskillfully. So when you are seized by anger, can you separate the wisdom part out from the ignorance part? Can you allow yourself to feel it but not feel the need to act, at least until you've considered what would be a skillful action?

Another way of thinking about using what you find in meditation in the moment may be to focus on the gaps. This is kind of hard to explain in words, especially if you haven't really noticed it in your practice yet, but one thing many people notice in their mindfulness meditation is that there are actually spaces between thoughts, feelings, and impulses to act. In our normal lives we usually just let them run together so that they not only feel continuous, but they feel causal - you said that which caused me to feel this which caused me to say that. But in truth, there can be a gap between all of these parts. Can you find it in the moment? Focusing on that gap can greatly lessen the intensity with which you feel the anger, or can lessen the intensity with which you feel you must react to the feeling or the other person.

These are not the only approaches one could take (e.g., you could try to find compassion for the person annoying you, but I think that's really not realistic for someone struggling with anger issues). You also might want to stop trying to achieve peacefulness in your meditations, and instead begin to do mindfulness of feelings, seeing where anger comes from and where it goes. If you're only using meditation to try to achieve a special state (i.e., peace of mind), then you're not getting everything out of it that you could.  In a sense, meditation doesn't really get "rid" of anything we feel, but it can help us to not be so caught by the feelings that we feel trapped into a habitual pattern.

There's a Lojong slogan that is sometimes translated as "Don't be so trustworthy."  I like this because it encapsulates very simply how we are such creatures of habit.  Something triggers our anger, and we already know how we're going to feel, how we're going to react, and what will come of that - it has a feeling of destiny like a rushing freight train.  This is especially true in our relationships, where we've often spent many years practicing the patterns.  That may be where the real fight is with your anger issues -- there is a habitual trigger and a habitual response.  These conditioned states are the hardest to break, and yet they're so central to our peace (or lack of it).  So the slogan is meant to help us realize that there is a gap between trigger and response, and we don't have to be so trustworthy - don't do what you and everyone else expects you to do.  Do something different.  Maybe it will turn out badly, but maybe it will just be surprising enough to derail the rushing train of habitual events, or at least push it onto a new track to see where that goes.

Ultimately, this isn't the path just for anger issues, but for all of our habitual emotional reactions that keep us stuck in bad patterns (the kleshas).

Why Be Afraid of Meditation?

I sometimes help to lead a mindfulness and meditation group, although I am not a formally trained meditation instructor.  We are currently going through a six-week introductory session about Buddhist basics, and it seemed like it might be of benefit to a broader audience to post some of the issues here.

Why are you interested in meditating?  What made you start?  People in our group had answers such as wishing to connect the mind and body, to gain peace and calm, to connect with the subconscious, to lessen the hold that thoughts have on us, and to cope with suffering.  It interests me that each of these answers has an aspect of noticing that the "normal" state of being can be unsatisfactory, and that there is an aspiration to work with that (as well as a belief that Buddhist meditation may provide a helpful path).  With such noble goals, why do we often fear meditation?

One of my teachers, Ethan Nichtern, says that in his experience, people are really glad that he meditates.  We want to have meditated, but we often feel discomfort about actually sitting down to do it.

I certainly felt this at one point in my practice about seven years ago.  I had just gone through a difficult divorce, and although I knew that participating in the local sangha that was just beginning would help me, I also was terrified.  I went to one of the leaders (a Unitarian minister) to try to understand.  There wasn't a good way to explain in words the terror I felt, but I knew that meditation would bring me into contact with what might be an endless pit of pain.  He assured me that it would, but that it wouldn't be anything I couldn't withstand and ultimately work with.  He was right. Nonetheless, for that first year or so, most sessions I sat there with tears streaming quietly down my face for reasons I couldn't explain.  So I certainly understand that although we may want to have meditated, there is often resistance to doing it.

Some of this resistance can come from our own misperceptions.  Some common ones include:

1. The belief that there is a "right" way to meditate.  There are many postures and many styles of meditation, each of which has a function.  We're often (especially as beginners) too worried about getting it wrong. 
2. The belief that the goal of meditation is to empty your mind.  It is clear when one first sits in meditation trying to count breaths that we can hardly stop our minds for even four breaths.  But in fact, the goal is not to stop thinking.  There are different methods of meditation, only one of which focuses on trying to settle the mind.  Other methods actually use the mind actively.  The ultimate goal is not to stop thinking, but to stop believing that our thoughts are the same as reality.  They are thoughts about reality, not reality itself.
3. The belief that the goal is to get rid of something we dislike, such as our temper, our sadness, our addictions, or our ex-partners (I suppose moving to a monastery might actually be successful at that last one...).  In fact, the goal is to learn to become skillful with all parts of our lives - to become skillful with what is, and not with the story we tell ourselves about it.

These misconceptions can hamper our enthusiasm to meditate, because if we expect them to be accurate, we can't help but be disappointed when we try to achieve them.

Beyond misconceptions, however, meditating is difficult.  Why?  It should be simple.  There are really only three steps to a basic breathing meditation.  (1) Sit.  Easy enough for most of us.  (2) Breathe.  Good, you're already doing that.  Two-thirds of the way there!  (3) Now, do nothing else.

...That third one is always the tricky bit.   

Meditation goes against our conditioning in many ways.  

• First, we tend to spend most of the day in our heads, telling ourselves stories about what just happened, what we want to happen, how we should feel about something, and planning for how to make it happen.  Meditation tries to get us to step back from the story, because the story is not really what's right there in front of us.  
• Second, we spend the day feeling like we should multi-task, and we often get rewarded for doing it.  Meditation tries to get us to focus on only one one thing for an extended period of time, without constant distractions.  
• Third, we generally seek excitement and stimulation and avoid discomfort, which is like closing off part of who we are.  Meditation tries to get us to see all of who we are and learn to be comfortable with it. 
•  Finally, many of us spend a lot of the day trying not to really feel our emotions.  Meditation tries to get us to be in touch with what is really happening in our lives, including our feelings about it.

Stephen Batchelor is quoted as saying: 

The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.

We routinely practice dissatisfaction and distraction, all day long (really, how much do you think negative thoughts and complain about your job, partner, body aches, friends, co-workers, and other annoyances in a day?).  Basic meditation can help to begin to break these habits, and some types of meditations actually work to give practice with joy, comfort, compassion, and ease.

Live in joy, 

In love, 

Even among those who hate. 

Live in joy,

In health,

Even among the afflicted. 

Live in joy,

In peace,

Even among the troubled. 

Look within.

Be still.

Free from fear and attachment,

Know the sweet joy of the way.

from the Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byrom