Inner and Outer Commitments

After many years of training and many more years of personal practice, I crossed a new threshold recently by taking formal precepts and becoming a novice priest in the Five Mountain Zen Order.  This is quite a change for me, because I assiduously refrained from being affiliated with any one lineage for years. So what changed?

I don't know.  

As my practice matured, I kept feeling like I needed more depth, which ultimately ended in my entering seminary to become a priest.  The precepts ceremony was last week. Being a fairly traditional boy, I shaved my head.  Tonight I for the first time go to lead my local sangha and should wear my robes.  I'm really uncomfortable with this idea.  Why?

I don't know.

I've been a member of this sangha for 11 years and stepped up into one of the joint leadership roles several years ago.  But walking in wearing robes feels really different, as if I'm trying to signal that something important has changed. I worry about whether people will act differently, or worse, that I will. 

Yet, all that has really changed is that I've made some vows more formally than I had previously. The robes are an outward sign of a commitment made, just as my wedding ring is. What is the value of making a commitment outwardly visible?

Sometimes in Buddhism it is said that that "human consciousness is composed of three parts: emotions, intellect, and will" (Seung Sahn, The Compass of Zen, p. 25).  We can have a strong feeling about a teaching, but not follow it.  We can even examine it carefully intellectually and discover that it is accurate, but still not follow it.  To follow a path requires more than a feeling and a belief, it requires that we set an intention to follow it - it requires will.  Within a Buddhist framework, we might say that making a commitment to follow the teachings requires both correct intention and correct effort (two of the limbs of the Eightfold Path). If I make a commitment internally, then I have to remember it myself.  If I make it externally, then I have reminders of it I can see, and others can see it so that they help support my following it.  An attractive woman seeing my wedding ring will usually help me maintain my commitments.  The American Zen Association says, about wearing the robes, "During the day it should be worn as often as possible, so that the practice of the Way is always present in our minds." 

Knowing this, perhaps I can be less nervous walking into my local Mindfulness and Meditation group tonight, but I probably still will be; in which case, I'll just have to be aware of my discomfort and that alone will help make everything more comfortable.

Photo credit: Patrick Bender

The Strikingly Optimistic Agency of the Doctrine of Buddha Nature

A modern koan -- Question:  Do you have Buddha Nature?  Answer:  Well, duh.

The concept of "Buddha Nature" is often difficult to understand, but it is a radically optimistic doctrine.  It says that not only are we responsible for our lives, but that we already have everything we need to liberate ourselves from suffering.  If we compare it to many other religions, it is surprising how much agency this doctrine grants each of us individually. 

For example, consider the doctrine of original sin in Christianity – we somehow personally are separated from Grace because of something we didn’t do (eating the “apple” in the Garden of Eden).  Unfortunately we are also unable to heal this separation by ourselves.  We need an intermediary (Jesus) or two (and a priest) to bridge the gap for us.  That is, we had no agency over our own fall, nor do we have it over our salvation.  In contrast, Buddhism agrees that we fall from grace, but it’s because of something we did. In fact, we fall from grace regularly every time we do something harmful.  More importantly, however, we have the agency to fix the problems we create.  Indeed, we are really the only ones who can.

The great poet Ann Onymous once said, “A lot of growing up takes place between ‘it fell’ and ‘I broke it.’”  I personally believe that a mark of spiritual maturity is taking responsibility for one’s mind and actions.  The Buddhist project to me, therefore, is one of growing up – learning to see clearly the connected causes and conditions and to take responsibility for what we can when we can.  If “enlightenment” is some mystical state, then we are not granted agency over our own lives.  The Pali texts do not describe enlightenment as paranormal or external, but that enlightenment rises up in the individual, “as though he recognized it – had always known it” (Armstrong, 2001, p. 104).  That is, our own natures are sufficient, and we have full agency over our own salvation. 

Perhaps even more strikingly positive is the reason for the fall from grace/awakening/Nirvana/union with God.  In Christianity the reason is the inherent sinfulness of man (actually, since the Biblical texts were written by men, most of the blame is shifted to women).  In Buddhism, the reason for our bad behaviors is because of ignorance and confusion covering over our inherently good nature (Buddha Nature or Basic Goodness).  Thus we do not need an external agent or savior – we just need to see through the confusion and uncover our basic nature.  This is a powerfully optimistic doctrine.  We already have everything we need to awaken.  As noted by Thich Thien-An (p. 146), “Zen holds that reality is to be gotten hold of, not externally, but inwardly.  The truth is to be found in our own nature and nowhere else.  Every living being has within himself the Buddha nature, the principle of enlightenment.”

References:

                Armstrong, K. (2001).  Buddha. New York: Penguin Group.

           Thien-An, T. (1975). Zen philosophy, Zen practice. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing.

Painting: Adam and Eve by Tintoretto; Originally published on the Interdependence Project blog

Why every experience you have is 99% wrong

I sat outside on a lovely early summer morning. The sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds, who in turn were playing chase with the breezes. The garden had turned a rich green from the recent rains, and the strawberry flowers whispered of treats to come in a couple of weeks.  I set my meditation timer for 24 minutes, and set an intention to be aware of the arising and passing of sensations.

As the sun came out, I felt my skin warm.  As the breeze played tag, I felt my skin cool. Birds of many types sang from unseen places, although sometimes they passed before my eyes. A male and female cardinal eyed me suspiciously as they considered the bird feeder nearby. Their suspicion proved well-founded once they realized there was nothing in it.  The sound of cars arose and passed. I tasted my coffee, and savored the bitterness tempered by the teaspoon of sugar I had added. I noticed the heat of the coffee through the cup, and also saw the feeling of dislike arise as the heat felt like a threat.  I quickly put the cup down, but later picked it up again just trying to feel the arising of heat without judging it as aversive. I watched my thoughts sometimes follow my experiences, and sometimes lead them.

Perhaps this sounds like a "good" meditation session. What surprised me was the thing I called "my experience."  I was aware of each of these aspects of life's flow around and within me.  How disappointing.  I was aware of each of them.  One.  At.  A.  Time.

This thing we call our experience is only a tiny slice of what we are actually experiencing.  When noticing the breeze upon my skin, I wasn't also noticing the birds or the color of the grass.  In fact, I wasn't even noticing the breeze upon my skin - I only noticed it on certain parts of my skin where I focused my attention.  I was actually feeling it on my whole body, but only attended to how it cooled my legs or chest. Once it passed, I noticed the sound of some bird, but just that one - not all the other sounds, such as the wind in the trees, the myriad birds farther away, the sound of my heart beating, or the strawberries flowering. Tasting my coffee clouded all awareness of sights, sounds, feelings. Yet, all of these experiences were occurring at once.  Why do we believe experience is singular?

Attention is like a spotlight - it can focus on only one thing at a time. Worse still, it's a very narrow beam of light.  It can pick up only about 1% of what is happening at any given moment. To put it another way, that means that our understanding of what is occurring at any moment is 99% wrong! And still we persist in the belief that we are always right and know what's going on.

How would it be if we could truly experience the emptiness and multiplicity of experience, without the constant narrowing, labeling, and solidifying?

Were you free to make a choice you didn't know you had? Where free will begins.

In a previous post, I asked you to consider the example of someone insulting or offending us, we get angry and immediately think of things we would like to say or do in response.  What would our motivation be for saying or doing any of them? Although you could spin it in several directions, such as to clarify the others’ mistake, to defend yourself, to get back at him/her, to put the other in his place, to just hit him, etc., they actually have one thing in common – they are motivated by the feeling that they will make you happier if you do it. 

Now here’s the funny thing – if you were to examine the motivation behind why the other person said or did whatever it was that he did, it’s exactly the same reason.  He thought it would make him happier.  In this respect, you two are always on the same wavelength. So one way to work with the negative feelings is to recognize that there is no fundamental difference between either of your perspectives. The problem is that our perspective usually does not include the other’s perspective. 

Humans suck at seeing another’s perspective.  There are many reasons for it, but a lot of it is just how the human brain works.  There is a cognitive bias that is so basic to all human thought that it is called the Fundamental Attribution Error.  When someone does something, especially something annoying, we tend to attribute the causes to something internal and/or essential about that person - he is just a jerk. In contrast, when we do something that could be annoying, however, we tend to attribute the causes to external situations.  We had no other choice, or we're in a hurry.

It's interesting to note that to ourselves, we always have a “good” reason for why we are doing whatever selfish thing it is we’re doing.

The corollary to the fundamental attribution error is what might be called the fundamental self error – that we relate everything to ourselves as if everything is a personal affront or benefit. The other part of a fundamental self error is that we believe there is a fundamental self – something unchanging at the core that things happen to. If we’re a stable permanent thing, then any changes that occur are from the outside happening TO us. We get to pretend constantly that we’re the victim, even of our own feelings. For example, how often have you said, “That thing you did MADE me mad,” or “I fell in love with you because you’re so sweet?" We interpret even our own feelings as something that happened to us because of external circumstances.

The irony is that we take no responsibility for our own actions and reactions, but we call this freedom.

Wouldn’t true freedom be the ability to not feel controlled by the situations and our emotional reactions? Wouldn’t true freedom be the ability to see all the perspectives?  If we believe that free will is the ability to make our own choices, when our perspective is so narrow that we can’t even understand the choices available to us, how can we have any free will? Were you free to make a choice that you didn’t even know you had?

Psychologist Roy Baumeister said, “Self-control counts as a kind of freedom because it begins with not acting on every impulse. The simple brain acts whenever something triggers a response: A hungry creature sees food and eats it. The most recently evolved parts of the human brain have an extensive mechanism for overriding those impulses, which enables us to reject food when we’re hungry, whether it’s because we’re dieting, vegetarian, keeping kosher, or mistrustful of the food.” 

So freedom begins when we STOP acting, or at least slow down the reacting. This is also the first step to being open to seeing other perspectives.  As long as we continue to act in our habitual ways, getting into the same arguments over and over again, continuing to believe that we're right, we will never be free.

This is where meditation can be such valuable training. One technique that can help us begin to slow the automatic processes of reacting down is called Urge Surfing, which can be read about here and there is a nice short guided example available here.

Image sources: Here and here.

The Wisdom of Anger and the Illusion of Freedom

Anger is a funny emotion, because although it often causes us and those around us suffering, we deep down kind of like it.  We like the feeling of power it gives, the sense of righteousness that sometimes accompanies it, and the feeling of control we can get through it. So although we know we suffer because of it, we often don't really want to change our relationship with it.

Although we believe that our experience of reality is like a camera recording perfectly what it sees, our experience of reality is in fact an active creation of our minds.  If we can watch the cause and effect nature of our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, we can become more accurate and more competent creators of our experiences.

Emotions affect thoughts, thoughts affect emotions, both affect behavior, and each thought or feeling helps to give rise to the next one.  Thoughts beget like thoughts, which is why positive or negative self-talk is important, and also part of why the meditative techniques can have powerful effects.

Let’s talk for a bit about the cycle of what normally happens with anger.  You may be going along, minding your own business doing your job, when your boss comes up and says something that really irks you.  This gets an immediate emotional reaction, which begins a cascade of thoughts, which often intensify the emotion, which continue the thoughts, etc.  As noted by neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, any emotional reaction will run its full course physiologically in 90 seconds unless we continue to feed it.  Our attention gets focused, by which I really mean limited. We perseverate on the issue, and even when we try to stop thinking about it and to get some work done, we often find ourselves distracted by rehearsing some aspect of it again which just keeps the feeling going.  How many of you have had this experience?

The Tibetan word for this stuckness of our emotional reactions is shenpa.  It’s not the emotion itself, but the way that our experience of emotion narrows our vision, enhances the feeling of self and other, and captures our attention.  It is related to our past conditioning, in that we tend to have much the same reactions over and over, even to new insults.  

Recall the classic psychological study of conditioned emotions on Little Albert. Although he initially was not scared of small animals, by pairing the sight of a white rat with a loud sound, he learned to fear not only the rat, but other small animals like white and brown rabbits.  It is likely that for the rest of his life he would have had a habitual reaction to any new white rat or small animal.  He will think that his anxiety is "his."  He won’t remember why he has these feelings, just will accept them as if they are truth and that he's always felt this way.  We do this all the time – we have a reaction that is largely controlled by our past conditioning. The funny thing about it is that we believe it is freedom.

One way karma can be defined is it is an acquired loss of free will (thanks to Ethan Nichtern for this definition).  When we are stuck within the cascade of emotional and cognitive reactions, we are almost always thinking and feeling in ways that have we have practiced many times before.  This is why we have the same arguments over and over with our spouses, parents, children.  We are sick of the argument, and yet we don’t seem to ever find a way out.  If someone tells you that you need to stop reacting the same way, you feel outraged that they’re taking away your freedom.  But are you really free?  The only way to truly exercise freedom is to refrain from doing what you want to do long enough to be able to choose thoughtfully, not based on an emotional reaction or on habit energy.

I do not mean, however, to suggest that we shouldn’t be guided by emotions, nor do I mean to suggest that emotions are somehow bad or that we should learn to reduce or eliminate them. Instead, the Vajrayana view of emotions is particularly useful here - we need to see that emotions have co-emergent properties of wisdom and confusion.  These two properties co-emerge almost at once when you feel an emotion.  The trick is to learn to separate them and to act only from the wisdom side.

The wisdom of anger is seeing clearly that something is wrong.  There has been some injustice, or some goal has been frustrated.   Notice that this wisdom doesn’t necessarily say what one should do.  Finding the skillful action to take is entirely dependent on the exact situation at that moment, which is why our habitual reactions are almost never skillful. It may be that the skillful action to take is no action.

If we act on the wisdom component, it should usually help the situation.  If we act on the confusion component, it will often harm the situation or the other person.

How can we tell the difference?  First, we have to learn to refrain from following our usual patterns.  Until we do that, we cannot even begin to see how our actions contribute to the problems. People don’t like talking about refraining, because they incorrectly believe it is taking away their free will when in fact it is the first step on restoring it to them.

Second, we can begin to watch the course of cause and effect.  Why do we feel what we do?  What exactly do we feel? It’s not usually as simple as simple anger – there’s usually hurt, disappointment, a feeling of loss of control, old resentments, etc. that jostle with it.  We can try to trace where some of these feelings and thoughts come from. We can also watch what happens once we think something – how does it affect our feelings and future thoughts.  Finally, we can watch what happens once we do or say something – how does it change the situation for better or for worse?

Third, we need to begin to understand our motivations for taking action.  Unfortunately, most of our motivations are actually hidden to conscious thought.

For example, Wayne Warburton and his colleagues have done a series of interesting studies about why people behave aggressively when made upset. Here's the general (over-simplified) setup:  First I insult you in some way, so that you are angered.  Then you are put in a room alone and told that you will have to endure a really loud and unpleasant noise for about 30 seconds.  Participants are randomized into a no-control or a having-control condition. In the no-control condition, the noise just comes on at some point. In the having-control condition, you have a button you can press to start the noise when you are ready for it.  In both cases everyone hears the same unpleasant noise.  After hearing it, people are given an opportunity to be mean to someone else (such as the person who insulted them). If they were in the no-control condition, they are much more aggressive than if they had been given a small sense of control from getting to push the button to start the noise.  This (among other experiments they conducted) shows that we will behave aggressively partly to regain a sense of control.  

Given that these motivations to restore a sense of control are unconscious, it takes a lot of work and time to begin to notice what is truly motivating our actions. The story we tell about why we do something is almost never accurate, because it’s designed to show you off in the most positive light possible (both to others and to self).

So if this the steps above will take a lot of training, what can we do right away? We can try to notice the feeling tone that goes with our action, because that’s a little more observable to conscious awareness.   If we are acting with an angry feeling, then whatever action we have chosen is almost certainly coming from the confusion side.  Buddha said that hatred is never solved by hatred.  If instead we act out of a feeling of compassion, then the action has much higher likelihood to work from the wisdom side.

Within the Buddhist framework, we build our karma primarily from intentions. So the same action could build positive outcomes and habits or negative outcomes and habits, depending on the intention behind it.

Going back to the example of someone insulting or offending us, we get angry and immediately think of things we would like to say or do in response.  What is our motivation for saying or doing any of them? Although you could spin it in several directions, such as to clarify the others’ mistake, to defend yourself, to get back at him/her, to put the other in his place, to just hit him, etc., they actually have one thing in common – they are motivated by the feeling that they will make you happier if you do it.  So your motivation is driven by a self motivation. This will almost ensure continued or enhanced division.  This is the confusion aspect of the emotion.

What if, instead, we acted from a motivation of compassion?  This is the wisdom aspect of anger – something is wrong, and we have an opportunity to try to help the situation. So consider the anger that might be built up if one lived with an alcoholic. Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance, 2003, pp. 296-297) relates the story of a family setting up an intervention to send a loved one to a treatment program.  

"I worried about how the participants - his wife, two sons and elderly father - were going to manage being 'loving and nonjudgmental' when each one was so furious with him. They were filled with grievances: the sons who couldn't bring friends home from school because their father was such a loose cannon; the wife who had lost a partner she could count on and who treated her with care; the father who never saw his only son. I feared they'd just curse him out, rather than communicate their caring. 

"I was wrong. Harry came into that room and, he later told me, looked around at the faces of those he loved best in the whole world. They were all looking at him, all there for him. Something happened to the air in the room, he said, it seemed to beat like a pulse. After he sank down in a chair, I suggested that Marge, his wife, begin the confrontation. But, instead of reciting his absences, his missed commitments, she just got up and kissed him. 'Thank you for coming, Harry,' she said. Then, to my surprise, each of the others, even the boys, got up and hugged him....When his family did go on to say what needed saying, Harry was listening. Afterward, he took the [space in the treatment facility] that had been saved for him."

Notice that this approach does not try to eradicate anger, but is about learning to use its wisdom and energy in a way that benefits others rather than satisfies the self.

Above I noted that Buddha said that anger and hatred are never solved by hatred. That is only the first part of what he said – he also said what can solve it:

Animosity does not eradicate animosity. Only by loving kindness is animosity dissolved. This law is ancient and eternal.

- The Dhammapada (translation by Ananda Maitreya, 1995, Parallax Press)

So loving kindness is the direct antidote to anger, and it can help to solve the problems that are fostered and nourished by anger. This approach, however, doesn't come naturally to everyone, but it IS something that can be trained in anyone (although it again takes time).  The technique is called metta or loving-kindness meditation (for more details, see HERE or HERE). Practicing this can begin to train us to be guided by and act from the wisdom side of anger, rather than the confusion side. Gaining relief from our habitual feelings and response patterns truly gives us freedom, rather than the illusion of freedom that we usually have.


Image sources: Here, here, and here. This was first published at www.theidproject.org

The Two Arrows

I've been thinking about how relationships, mindfulness, and meditation work.  All of them seem to share a striking characteristic.  When everyone is happy, they all seem to flow easily.  But when someone is feeling a strong emotion (e.g., anger, fear, jealousy, sadness), they all seem to get harder. This is perhaps one of the real benefits of working on mindfulness in a supportive group - it's not like we're leaving the world behind.  We bring it with us all the time.  Meditation offers us an opportunity to practice the hard things in a little simpler and safer way, so that then we can practice them in the "real" world more easily later.

So, this is one of the goals of mindfulness: to allow us to go through the ups and downs of daily life with a sense of ease, to gain clarity into what is actually happening so that we can act skillfully and thereby make problems better rather than adding fuel to the fire.  In this spirit, the next several posts will examine aspects of dealing with relationships skillfully, even when we're in the middle of a difficult emotion.

To start, consider this question: How often do we say “You did this to me!” when what we really mean is “I didn’t get what I wanted?"

There is a classic Buddhist parable of the two arrows. In brief, the idea is that most people, when hurt, add to the hurt. If shot with an arrow, we spend a lot of effort focused on wondering why we got shot, how we didn't deserve that, how the person who shot the arrow is a  jerk, what we are going to say when we get in front of him/her, etc.  It's like being struck by a second arrow - the first one is physical and the second is mental.  In contrast, if we are able to maintain our mindfulness and not spin off into a story about our pain, we only get struck by one arrow. (For the geeks, here is the original Sallatha Sutra).

I might even go further than this - once we start down the story road, we not only make ourselves feel worse (the second arrow), but then we are more likely to do something that makes the situation worse.  This is a third arrow!

We need to take responsibility for our emotions. We need to stop thinking that something outside us will make everything better. All you can work with is yourself, and this is true even for recurring situations. If you have a difficult boss who makes your life difficult, it is unlikely that you can change your boss. You can, however, change your reactions, your work habits, or even your job.

If we look a little deeper into any interaction, we will notice that whenever someone does something to you, you are at the same time perceiving it.  To quote Ethan Nichtern's riff on the classic Zen koan, "If a person is an ass and there's no one around to see it, is he still an ass?"

We expect that our perception and our point of view is accurate and that any other observer would agree with our perception. This is called the False Consensus Bias, where we assume that whatever we think/feel, most people would agree with.  The classic study (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977) had people read stories that included a conflict and asked them which solution most people would pick, which one they themselves would pick, and what people who pick each of the two sides would be like.  In general, people estimate that most people would pick the same choice they themselves would, and rated them more positively than people who would pick the other choice.

Attention is a narrow spotlight - look at something in your room right now.  As you focus on that 5% of the room, you can't pay attention to the other 95% of what is actually happening now. Your perception is therefore always 95% wrong, and your memory is even worse (especially once you start telling yourself a story about what just happened). So although we can’t overcome the false consensus bias, we can start to recognize that we never have all the information, and that from the other person’s point of view, maybe you’re the ass. 

In truth, usually no one is the ass. We actually just have different perspectives, attention to different aspects, different goals, different motivations, and different approaches.  But because we assume that everyone else must have the same perspective, goals and approaches, we then decide that anyone not following our script must be being difficult.

If we can begin to see that we are very changeable based on what we pay attention to, it may give us the space to pause before we shoot ourselves with the second arrow.

The Brahmaviharas: Equanimity

Meditation sometimes gets discussed as if it can fix everything.  One reason this is inappropriate is because each meditation technique focuses on specific goals.  If we desire full enlightenment (which I define as being able to live in one's life fully), most of us need to use multiple techniques.  As described previously, Mindfulness Meditation focuses primarily on familiarizing ourselves with our minds.  Once we've achieved some measure of stability, tranquility, and clarity through Mindfulness Meditation, we can be more effective using meditation techniques that focus on cultivating some positive aspects of ourselves.  In this post, we begin discussing Brahmaviharas, or the Four Heavenly Abodes, the Four Immeasurables, or any of about a dozen other translations into English, all of which basically mean that these are four qualities that help us live with a sense of peace, well-being, and joy.

These are four qualities we already have, at least some of the time.  The goal is to cultivate them through a number of meditation practices, and they help to change our habitual reactions to be more open and caring, as well as providing antidotes to difficult emotions.  Specifically, the four are:

• Metta: Loving-kindness - the antidote for selfishness, anger, fear, and negativity.
• Karuna: Compassion - the antidote for frustration and hatred.
• Mudita: Empathetic joy - the antidote for envy, jealousy, and resentment.
• Upeksha: Equanimity - the antidote for both clinging attachment and aversion.

Traditionally these are taught in approximately this order, but I like to start with equanimity, because (1) it is the hardest, and (2) it is necessary for the other three.

By Equanimity, I mean the sense of freedom and balance when we're not reacting to things and wishing they were different.  There are several common questions and misunderstandings about it, however, that should be addressed:

1. Is this the same as being resigned or indifferent?  There is real social injustice in the world, and I don't feel like I should just accept that.
• No, it is not resigning yourself or withdrawing.  There is indeed real injustice, and equanimity means first accepting that it exists.  Then the goal is to be alert for it, being mindful.  This will allow you to see when there is an opportunity to take some action to help.  But once you've taken the action you can do at the moment, then you have to let go of needing a particular outcome.  If you hold on too tightly to your desire for one outcome, then you'll likely miss the next opportunity to take action.
2. Once I achieve equanimity, does that mean that everything is smooth and easy?
• Bad news - No it doesn't.  We'll still have troubles and traumas in our lives.The difference is that we can be fully engaged with them, being completely alive, rather than trying not to experience what we're really experiencing.  This ironically allows us to not be overwhelmed by them.
3. What about when people do harmful things to me?  How can I have equanimity about that?
• A common misunderstanding of equanimity is that it means that we're supposed to adopt an attitude that "It's all good."  No, it bloody well is not!  People do terrible things sometimes.  Evil actions happen.  It is definitely not all good.  When someone is harmful to you, equanimity means that you get angry, you feel your hurt, and then you take some action to try to help the situation.  That might mean you get away from that person.  It means you don't spend your time blaming the perpetrator, nor do you blame yourself.  You understand that bad things happen all the time to all people, and that you can use this opportunity to connect with the pain that all beings feel.  But don't just keep being a doormat. As Thanissaro Bhikku notes, "There's a passage in which the Buddha taught the monks a chant for spreading goodwill to all snakes and other things....Strikingly, the chant concludes with the sentence, 'May the beings depart.'  This reflects the truth that living together is often difficult.

We usually get too caught up in our stories about things, or by wanting to control things, or by wanting only one specific outcome, that we fail to realize that things are really ok most of the time, even when we’re not getting what we want. 

Pema Chodron relates the story about the Zen master who, whenever asked by his students how he was, would respond, “I’m okay.”  Finally one student said, “Roshi, how can you always be okay?  Don’t you ever have a bad day?”  The Zen master answered, “Sure I do.  On bad days, I’m okay.  On good days, I’m also okay.”  We usually get so caught by the detail of whatever specific good feeling or bad feeling that we miss this broader truth that we’re actually basically okay right now.

There’s a Pali term, papañca, that means complication, proliferation, objectification (See the Madhupindika Sutta for details).  It is the tendency of the mind to proliferate thought after thought, to spin out the story.  This takes away our equanimity.  What should we do instead? In the moment that we notice that we’re caught, we can start by naming what’s going on.  Then after loosening the hold the thoughts have on us by recognizing them as thoughts, notice how it feels in the body.  This sounds simple, but what often happens when we try?  We get pulled away by papanca, because we are stuck in the trance of wanting to control experiences rather than just feeling them.  We feel that thinking about something gives us control.  We have practiced this so much that we believe it.  

One approach to helping to overcome this is a useful phrase:  Real, but not True.

You can work with this phrase both in meditation and in your daily life as soon as you start having a reaction to something.  What you are feeling is real.  The story that you are proliferating about it ("I don't deserve this! I can't believe you would say something like that! That person is a jerk!" etc...) is not True.  We have such a limited view on the world, that nothing we think about it can accurately represent what was really happening. Our perspective is real, but not true.  In meditation, you can bring to mind a difficult situation, focusing on the feeling you had, the series of thoughts you have about it, the story that you like to tell yourself about it. Focus on this until you can actually feel in your body the emotional reaction you have to it.  Then notice that the feelings you are having right now are real, but none of the story is accurate at this moment.  None of it is happening now.  The minute that we begin to create a story and make judgments, we solidify what is in reality a constantly shifting and changing set of feelings, thoughts, circumstances, causes, conditions, etc. What is happening to you now is caused by the vast set of interconnected causes and conditions, what Buddhists refer to as Dependent Arising. 

As noted in this post about how we view our "self," we have a very limited idea of what our self is.  We usually only consider voluntary actions of which we're conscious to be our selves.  Therefore, almost everything in our experience "happens to us," rather than the more accurate description that we are happening.  We don't even feel our body is ourself, that we are beating our hearts.  We see our lives as if we are rushing around, bumping into various semi-random experiences, having conflict with some of them, going along with others.  Alan Watts noted that if we looked into our bodies with a microscope, what would we see?  We would see lots of individual cells and proteins, rushing around, bumping into each other, fighting with each other, etc.  But at our normal level of perception, our body is working as a remarkably harmonious whole.  So, which level of magnification is right?

This is another way to cultivate equanimity.  Our normal level of perception of our lives is similar to that of our cells under a microscope.  We perceive our lives to be full of difficulty and conflict and stress.  At a broader level of perception, however, we're getting along remarkably harmoniously with each other and the world.

Consciousness evolved like a radar system, constantly looking out for trouble.  It therefore pays little attention to the things that are constant or that are generally going well.  We scan the environment, but only pay attention to what we think is likely to be trouble.  Constants are generally safe.  We therefore focus on the negatives, and in fact, we make so much of it that we come to identify our selves with the radar system.

But you are more than this scanning system.  You are in constantly shifting relationships with the external world that are, on the whole, extremely harmonious.  Our happiness is not dependent on things being just one certain way.  Once we cultivate this view, then we are free to be happy with all of our life.

One classical way to train in equanimity is to meditate on the phrase, "All beings are inheritors of their own karma.  Their happiness or suffering depend on their actions, not on my wishes for them" or any of several other similar phrases. Traditionally it would go through seven steps, first focusing on a neutral person, then a benefactor (someone who has helped you in the past), then a loved one, then someone with whom you have difficulty, then yourself, then all five of you together (neutral, benefactor, friend, enemy, self), then all sentient beings.

The goal of these types of practices is to learn to be able to sit in balance, being able to participate in all aspects of your life without being overwhelmed, and therefore able to take appropriate action when there is a chance. Sound like something you want? It just takes years of practice, that's all.  

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.

How should I wrap my presence?

Many platitudes about the holidays focus on the joy of giving.  Of course, ideas become platitudes by being generally true or at least by being generally accepted as true.  As a parent, I gain a great deal of joy from watching my children receiving gifts.  Yet, there is sometimes a dark side to giving.

Part of this dark side is the norm of reciprocity.  This is defined succinctly by the clip above from the TV show, Big Bang Theory, but basically when someone gives you something, we feel a need to reciprocate.  This is a powerful social norm which can change a joyous giving into a burdensome obligation.  One of the classic studies was conducted in 1974  by Phillip Kunz.  That year, he randomly selected 600 families he didn't know and sent them Christmas cards.

To these 600 strangers, Kunz sent his Christmas greetings: handwritten notes or a card with a photo of him and his family. And then Kunz waited to see what would happen.

"It was just, you know, a shot in the dark," he says. "I didn't know what would happen."

But about five days later, responses started filtering back — slowly at first and then more, until eventually they were coming 12, 15 at a time. Eventually Kunz got more than 200 replies. "I was really surprised by how many responses there were," he says. "And I was surprised by the number of letters that were written, some of them three, four pages long." (See article describing this study in more detail here)

This is the norm of reciprocity at work, and is especially surprising when you remember that these 3-page letters he received were not typed on computers and mass-produced -- they all were handwritten in 1974.

When considering our holiday gift-giving, do we feel it as an obligation or as a joy?  If it's stressful and obligatory, then is it really giving?  The first of the Paramitas (the perfections of the heart that we are cultivating through practice) is dana, or generosity.  The Buddha said (in the Dana Sutta), that there are three conditions that should be met:

1. Before giving, the mind should be glad
2. While giving, the mind should feel inspired (bright and clear)
3. After giving, the mind should feel gratified

Can we practice these three as we shop, as we give, and as we receive?

Perhaps part of what makes the giving difficult for many of us is that the focus becomes the gift itself, which as Nancy Thompson noted in a recent post, is empty.  Another practice is to recognize that we have much more to give than stuff.  Perhaps the greatest gift we can give is our presence. 

As we join with friends and family and others with whom we often have complicated feelings, can we drop the past feelings and be present with them as they are now?  Can we drop our judgments about them while we are with them?  Can we reduce the effect of our past conditioning and respond in a fresh way?  The person in front of you is NOT the same person he or she was last year (or even yesterday).  Can we see who they are at this moment alone?  Can we listen without needing to say our "side?"  Can we understand their point of view, without deciding if it's better or worse than ours?  This is really what most people want - to be truly listened to.  Presence is a present we don't need to wrap.

Photo credits: Here and here.

Peace on Earth and Good Will (Metta) to All

As we enter the holiday season, we will hear the traditional words from Luke 2:14, in which the shepherds abiding in the fields heard the heavenly host of angels saying, "Peace on Earth, and good will to all men." Regardless of whether one comes from this Christian tradition or not, or whether you find it easier to believe in miracles such as virgin birth or that such stories were grafted on to the historical Jesus to make it more palatable for Greek culture that has a long tradition of gods, er, "collaborating" with humans, there are some remarkable aspects of this story. 

First, in the same Gospel that discusses lofty individuals such as Caesar Augustus and Governor Cyrenius, it is remarkable that the message of good will came to shepherds.  Shepherds were not considered to be of high social standing, yet this message was given directly to them, and not to more "important" people, to CNN, or to government officials who could spread it more easily.  Perhaps this demonstrates that peace is something that can only be found and supported by individuals.  I cannot grant you peace, but I can try to maintain good will toward you which may help support your attainment of peace.  It is a grass-roots message, rather than top-down.

Second, I am struck by the discussion of good will to all mankind.  This is similar to Thanissaro Bhikku's definition of metta. I quote (from this excellent article):

"Metta" is usually translated as loving-kindness, but often it is more helpful to think of it as goodwill....Goodwill is often a more skillful attitude than overt expressions of love, and for three reasons.  The first is that goodwill is an attitude you can express for everyone without fear of being hypocritical or unrealistic.  If the people around you haven't been acting lovably, it's good to remind yourself that although you don't condone your behavior --you don't even have to like them--you still wish them well.

The second reason is that goodwill is a more skillful feeling to have toward those who would react unskillfully to your love.  There are probably people you've harmed in the past who would rather not have anything to do with you ever again, so the intimacy of love would actually be a source of pain for them, rather than joy. There are also people who, when they see that you want to express love, would be quick to take advantage of it.  In these cases, a more distant sense of goodwill--that you promise yourself never to harm those people or those beings--would be better for everyone involved.

The third reason is that goodwill acts as a check on your behavior toward those you love to keep it from becoming oppressive.  It reminds you that people ultimately 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 coming from dependency.  If you truly feel goodwill for yourself and others, you won't let your desire for intimacy render you insensitive to what would actually be the most skillful way to promote true happiness for all.

Many of us will come together this season with friends and family members with whom we have complicated feelings.  Neither we nor they may be ready to enter into full intimate and vulnerable lovingkindness.  Cultivating good will toward all, however, may be easier on both us and them, allowing space for all the complicated feelings.

As Thanissaro Bhikku notes, "there's a passage in which the Buddha taught the monks a chant for spreading goodwill to all snakes and other things...Strikingly, the chant concludes with the sentence, 'May the beings depart.'  This reflects the truth that living together is often difficult..."  

Good will can offer the space that we may find lacking when we come back together and are confronted with old patterns and difficult feelings.  Perhaps Luke wrote them backwards: Good will to all is what can create peace on Earth.

Image sources: Here and here