Category: mindfulness

Jeanne, an old student of mine, approached me the other day about my upcoming Mindful Reflection workshop. “When does it start?” she asked. “It’s about letting go, isn’t it? I’ve got lots to let go of. So much disappointment.”

I love that I teach something practical, that helps people change. Not so long ago skeptics would have said, “Ah, but does it?” Today, criticism is muted. Thousands of scientific studies point to the effectiveness of ‘meditation.’

Still, exactly what that means is far from scientific. The word covers a broad range of practices from transcendental meditation (TM) to tantra. At base, it’s about being quiet and not giving in to distraction, at least outwardly. Beyond that, there are so many variations that you can never be sure two people are talking about the same thing. There’s walking meditation and sitting, vipassana and mantrayana, and then there are things like tai-chi, yoga and Zen archery. Are these all real forms of meditation?

You don’t want to open that can of worms.

Mindfulness: It’s all about change

The meditation that Jeanne learned in my workshops is mindfulness. It’s all over the news these days for its effectiveness in fighting depression, managing pain, reducing blood pressure, treating psoriasis and a host of other conditions. Everyone’s heard of it by now. It’s not just for navel-gazers any more.

Like ‘meditation,’ the word ‘mindfulness’ too triggers a broad spectrum of thinking. Not everyone’s on the same page. At one extreme, it’s a religious practice, just one component of a disciplined, faith-based lifestyle. At the other it’s a non-pharmaceutical approach to stress.

I’ve travelled the gamut from religion to secularism, learning something at every step of the way and adjusting not just my conception of who I am but also how I feel about being me. I would once have described this process as mystical; today I’d call it practical, but I’d also shrug. Call it what you want; it’s a way of life, not a theory.

Mindfulness is not so much
about finding truth as being truthful

It’s all about change. Religious Buddhists want to change into enlightened beings. Secular practitioners want to change their emotional reactivity, or at least their blood pressure. The main complaint of religious types isn’t that secularists have it wrong, but that they’ve watered down a beautiful tradition so much that it’s lost all taste. In return, secularists point out that Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation and magical stories dilute the immensely practicality of mindfulness and turn off many who could otherwise benefit.

Does the truth lie somewhere in between? That’s an interesting question. Mindfulness is not so much about finding truth as being truthful. There’s a difference. The close examination of your own experience is highly subjective. The mind spins truth depending on what it wants from a particular situation. For example, when your ego feels threatened and really needs to win an argument, integrity might take a teeny-weeny back seat; only temporarily; with just a little white lie.

See what I mean? The first casualty of mindfulness is the notion that we’re lucid, consistent and in control. Take note of that as it happens, and you begin the process of rewiring of the brain that scientists get so excited about. Of course, repeatedly shooting ducks and painting sunflowers also rewires your brain, so that’s hardly the point.

Jeanne learned to watch her disappointment and anger: how the emotions came and went, what triggered them and the chain of mental events they set in motion. She also learned that noticing them in real time — as they actually occurred in her daily life — gave her an opportunity to step back, not in one giant leap but incrementally. With practice and encouragement, she’s cultivating a counter-habit.

The way you describe yourself to yourself is
the arbiter of your happiness and unhappiness

Firming up this habit begins with the sort of practice that usually begins in a meditation setting. There, you learn to focus and to let go of distraction in ways that often lead to misunderstanding. Sitting quietly triggers boredom, and the inner chatter we’re trying to relinquish suddenly looks very tempting. To keep your attention in the present moment, teachers use expressions like ‘empty your mind,’ and ‘let go of your thoughts.’ Beginners often conclude from this that discursive thinking is a bad thing, which it isn’t; it’s just an obstacle to that particular practice. In other circumstances we need it very much, to think and function, to manage our careers and lives — and to reflect on our mindfulness practice.

As the mindfulness habit takes root, you also accumulate data about your experience — stuff to think about. We naturally process that data, just as I’m doing here. The way you describe yourself to yourself changes, and you learn that that description is the arbiter of your happiness and unhappiness.

For this reason I teach not just mindfulness, but mindful reflection, the practice of mindfulness in the context of a challenging, thoughtful life. It’s my middle way between the religious idea of transcending our human limitations and the coldness of a mere technique to calm you down. It’s not about transforming or curtailing your life, it’s about facing it creatively. What changes is your approach.

Jeanne knows that this is a lifetime’s work. There’s no perfection, no end-point. She works continuously to keep her baggage to a minimum and to be fully awake to all experience. She wants to sit in on more workshops because mindful reflection is not just about acquiring information but about digging deeper and looking at things from continually evolving angles.

Every day brings new challenges. It’s good to see the practice through the eyes of an experienced teacher. It’s made easier in the company of like-minded people. It’s something that happens in the privacy of your own mind, and yet it transforms your relationships to yourself and to everyone else. Above all, connecting is what life is all about.

 

The title of this post may sound like a pretentious philosophical treatise, and you may think, ‘Oh just get on with it!’ but this is not theory. It’s a niggling incertitude that drives me through each and every day. I know I’m not alone. After sifting though the suggestions and requests from our recent call to readers for feedback, I saw that I write this blog — and you read it — with a common purpose: we’re all trying to respond to this inner drive ‘to be’ with more reflection, less automaticity.

The modern world is geared towards how to get. It’s not a preoccupation we can avoid, but it’s not enough for us. You and I want more — or is it less? Something else, anyway. We are a minority, often regarded as odd even by ourselves. That draws us together even more than shared ideas. My fondest monastic memories are of the glorious eccentrics who paraded through our temple doors. Some days it was like a Fellini movie. For the first time in my life, I belonged.

In the heart of every recluse lies pain,
and in that pain, opportunity

The need to belong is visceral. Logic hardly penetrates. Until we find a real place, we may make halfhearted friends, settle for people we neither love nor respect. We may even join cults. I suspect the fear of loneliness causes more suffering than loneliness itself. It did for me.

To find a real home — to ‘be yourself’ as the new age exhorts — is not so simple. We must first abandon all make-believe homes of compromise and clinging. So hard is it to admit how vulnerable we are that usually, we don’t. Rather than examining our instincts, we blindly follow them, hoping for the best. Things may work out for a while, but left untended they eventually crash. That’s when we turn our great intelligence to the dirty work of denial and blame.

Old habits pose as instincts — even as the True Self

This is not the best version of how to be, but it is the starting point. If we rise above the impulse to brush aside disappointment, it can motivate us towards full consciousness. It exposes our illusions for what they are. In the heart of every recluse lies pain, and in that pain, opportunity.

‘How to be’ while grasping that opportunity is with integrity. Remove the word’s moralistic crust and it simply means, ‘whole’ or ‘sound.’ There are no pre-mapped pathways to integrity, only guidelines. Do no harm. Look into things. Find yourself — not elsewhere but here and now, inside this skin.

Then the tricky part: when you find it let it go, lest it fall under its own spell. Old habits pose as instincts — even as the True Self; they’re treacherous. They tell you that you’re great, or you’re awful. They know nothing, yet because of them we inflict incalculable damage on ourselves and others, all on auto-pilot.

The challenge is not to find security but to sail on without it

Ignorance is not bliss. These mechanisms are the product of a make-believe past. In the suffocating familiarity of routine moments we won’t be found; we barely exist. The place to seek ourselves is where we’re renewed — in each circumstance, as it happens.

Seeing that we’re capable of infinite nuance is one step towards integrity. Only one though; it’s just an idea.

Process that idea and in time we learn that nothing we conceive of is fixed. We’re not autonomous individuals but entwined currents in a torrential life. There is no cease. There is no dry ground that might not crumble along with all we’ve built. The challenge is not to find security but to sail on without it.

The truth in this description is not profound. We see and read about it every day, in our life and in the news. All history bears witness to it.

Still, it’s a problem — and a big one. For some reason we keep preparing ourselves for a world in which things are steady, in which satisfaction is around the next corner and happiness can be arranged. Convinced that somewhere there’s an ultimate answer to the question of how to be, we latch on to someone like the Buddha, or Socrates or Saint Augustine, expecting life’s formula on a silver platter. Then we reverentially hand down our wishful thinking to the next unsuspecting generation.

I can’t sit around waiting for the world to change. I’m driven to become as fluid and unexpectant as I can. Why I set off on this path I really can’t say, but any other is now out of the question. I’ve seen too much. The only way I know of to make sense of life is to honor my streak of oddness, and to reflect it in these pages.

Aren’t we all odd, every living one of us? Not everyone likes that thought, but I find it comforting. Perhaps you do too.

 

I’ve been asked how mindfulness has worked out for me. Here’s a synopsis.

It began as a meditation thing in my teens. I locked my bedroom door, put on a Ravi Shankar LP, and closed my eyes. My mind wouldn’t empty, so I tried astral travel, whizzing around the universe to the gradually accelerating sitar raga. It made sense at the time, being an Indian thing and all, and it was fun. When I finally opened my eyes though, I knew I’d made it up.

I read like crazy: occultism, shamanism, Buddhism. Mindfulness must have been in there, but it wasn’t on my radar. I wanted to silence my mind, not watch it. Magical powers were part of the deal. I was totally cool with that. I met Mahayana Tantric Buddhists, not just Tibetans but Westerners. It was a fit.

We were galvanized by the promises of meditation — bliss, omniscience, nobility. We were impatient. We wanted Enlightenment, the faster the better. Three years and three months they told us, handing out secret initiations. In their minds they were seeding us for future lifetimes, but we wanted to master them now. By contrast, anchoring our attention to the breath would take ages. Literally.

There were stories of lamas who boiled
skull cups of nectar in their bare hands

Still, the lamas didn’t mince words. You had to be in shape to tread the fast track to Enlightenment. It was for those who were ready, who’d ripened themselves in previous lives. I couldn’t remember my previous lives, but why would I have encountered Tantric Buddhism in this life if I wasn’t ready? It made sense, right? We looked at each other and nodded, as if we could rationalize it into happening.

The practices were immensely complex. Even our teachers spent hours a day reciting long texts, visualizations we were supposed to master in some future lifetime. The texts said those who were worthy could reach out and touch their thoughts transformed into enlightened matter. It made us shiver. There were stories of lamas who boiled skull cups of nectar in their bare hands.

Eventually, my inner voice spoke up. It wasn’t going to happen. My limitations were limitless. My teachers were human, my brothers were dreaming. I needed a cold shower.

I woke up. At least, I stopped dreaming. I was now in Sri Lanka, in an old-fashioned retreat, letting go of impatience. While watching the breath, I noticed the mind. How much effort I’d put into shaping it. Why? Bit by bit I let go of all the rationalizations and theoretical teaching. I stuck to what I could actually do. Much of what I’d worked so hard for fell away like a snake skin, dry and empty. I breathed. It was good. Once I dared to doubt, I wondered why I’d believed in the first place. The fear was gone. The stillness was awesome.

I was free — freer, anyway. I no longer had a place, but belonging had served me, got me back on track when I lost my way. To not belong now was hard, but I had to forge my own path. It was high time. I went freelance.

I hoped to maintain the pure values of the monk’s subsidized life, but that was impossible. Having now to earn a living, I became a consumer like everyone else. To exist you must eat. To work you must play.

What matters is where you are, not where you’re going

I fit in, or tried to. I felt like someone without a past; rather, with a past that wouldn’t connect. I knew I had a say in who I was, but few ideas about what sort of person that might be. Most people identify with their worldly skills, but I had none. I took work in places I didn’t belong. I married badly.

And yet I was doing better than others. Everyone put on a show of holding it together, but scratch at the surface and things come tumbling out. They were as scared as me. I remembered the Buddha: “The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.”⁽¹⁾

I didn’t feel wise. Ignorant more like, though not in a bad way. No one knew any more or less than I did. That wasn’t the point anyway. What matters is where you are, not where you’re going. I felt light.

I hardly noticed it turning into a habit, this letting go. To be honest, I thought I’d given it up. There were still times I sat in silence, as still as a rock. It felt fine, but returning to the cushion seemed a chore. If it was really working for me, shouldn’t I be glued to it?

There were venal periods too, mistake piled on mistake. I pleasured and suffered like everyone, but carried it less, put it down more easily. I had a sense of watching the world go by, right through me really. Hopes and dreams evaporated. People say that’s not good, but it was. With clarity came appreciation.

Seek and ye shall find. Perhaps, but what about the stuff you’re not seeking, that you brush to one side? What if it’s what you need?

All states of minds are contingent. Clarity’s no exception, and craving returned cyclically. It appeared mostly as a sense of seeking, though for what I couldn’t exactly say. It wasn’t fully conscious. The more I watched though, the less it possessed me.

These were insights and I knew it, but something was still missing. I’d pursued freedom from material life, from the bonds of family and social constraints. Now I saw how the pursuit itself could be a reflex. My version of the noble quest had in some ways bound me. People provoked feelings, and feelings were complicated. My preference for quiet, systematic mindful practice was conveniently heroic, but also an escape. Speaking of his own teachings the Buddha said about ‘worthless men’ that, “Their wrong grasp of those Dhammas will lead to their long-term harm & suffering.”⁽²⁾

For decades I denied I was human, built to connect. To some it’s self-evident, but others are shy and introverted. For them, society is painful. I was like that. At great cost I found solitude. Imagine my shock when, settling down to savor it at last in a mountain retreat, I experienced a deep and ancient loneliness.

Which fear was I to face — seclusion or society?

I’m not a religious man. I don’t believe in grace, and yet I have no other word to describe my change of heart. I’d been in a vicious circle, craving the love I denied myself. That day I woke up to love, not just as something to feel but something to do. Henceforth, I would no longer wait to be let in. I would open doors.

From this vantage point I saw my friends in a new light. I stepped back from them. In my efforts to be eclectic, I’d become indiscriminate. Now I learned anew to discern right from wrong, good from bad. Back to basics.

I found mindful practice in life’s mundanity

I listened to others, watched myself listening and felt connected. I saw that empathy and compassion were not about pity and sorrow. Seeing unsentimentally from others’ point of view taught me to commiserate, and that touching someone with understanding is a happy thing, no matter the pain.

Empathy just extends mindfulness. I don’t believe in True Love, or in The One. I don’t believe in destiny. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that God is a person, or is nice. I now met someone, however, who enabled me to gaze beyond myself. We became a family.

Romance is a bonus, not the point. Opening the door to what I’d long avoided was just the first step. It was followed by a return to teaching, to caring for those I taught and even caring for business clients. I shared myself, and it gave me courage. I grew vulnerable, raw, ready to fail. My cravings to be alone came into focus. I had used them to rationalize timidity and the false perfection of taking no risks.

I found mindful practice in life’s mundanity. For the first time I accepted the limitations I’d always had. I did what everyone does. I was no longer spiritually special. To work a job, pay a mortgage and raise a child is to extend your boundaries, to face things you’d never choose, to willingly accept imbalance in your life. After knowing mindfulness, it’s irrational.

Mindfulness brings insight. Love brings
heart. The two bring balance.

Active love tests mindfulness and extends it. To include others is to relinquish control, to forego the rhythmic pleasures of the breath and the acute taste of silence. It is forged in chaos. It is profoundly imperfect. The failures of love are abject.

When I raise my voice unfairly I am stricken by guilt, rightly, and then I move on. One step at a time: the cliché that encapsulates everything. The destination that’s never reached. Mindfulness brings insight. Love brings heart. The two bring balance.

Has mindful reflection brought me magical powers, victory over life and death, an end to suffering? No, something more real. It’s shown me what to let go of and what to reach out for. By accepting my human limitations I’ve inherited my human blessings. It’s taught me that I can rediscover my mind every day, that it’s a faulty, discerning, immeasurable gift. Is enlightenment next? I don’t trifle with impossible questions. Mindfulness is a tool. I’m still learning to adapt, to count every moment, to let go of everything and to never give up. Where we’re headed we’ll never know, but by knowing where we are, we leave ourselves open to wonder.

---

(1) Salla Sutta: The Arrow Sn 3.8 PTS: Sn 574-593 trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu
(2) Alagaddupama Sutta: The Water-Snake M. 22, i 134, p. 227 trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

Do you consider yourself a rational person? Your intelligence gives you an edge when it comes to some decisions, but what about emotional decision-making? What about automaticity?

It’s easy to know how we’d like to be. With a bit of thought we can even figure out what we need to do. So how is it that when we get stuck, all the logic in the world doesn’t help?

Listen to this three-minute streaming audio download from the latest Quiet Mind workshops.

Someone called me the other day to enquire about my upcoming Quiet Mind workshop. He had some experience, and asked, “So how is your meditation different from everyone else’s? What sets it apart?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s stressful.”

“Stressful?” His voice petered out.

 

 

As the word hung in the air, I flashed back to the nineteen-sixties and the celebrities who’d learned ‘being in the moment’ from grinning Indian gurus. It wasn’t just that I wanted to fit into the Now generation. The idea really hit a nerve.

I’d been trying to live according to how things
should be, and had ignored how they actually were

I wasn’t giving the present moment its due, and I knew it. I was on auto-pilot, in flight from bad feelings. Instead of facing my sense of isolation I churned out rationalizations about why I didn’t care about other people, how I could manage without love, why no one would understand anyway. I convinced myself I was okay alone, that I preferred it that way, that I wasn’t in pain. I glossed over the past and spun the future before it even had a chance to impact me.

I’d been trying to live according to how things should be, and had ignored how they actually were. If I could learn this ‘being in the moment,’ I realized, things might change. I just had to train my mind.

So I hitchhiked to India, shaved my head and joined the ranks of the faithful. I was going to wake up and smell the roses.

Or is it the coffee? Whatever. I just knew I wanted more, much more. I was primed to believe the hype about the present moment being miraculous. The story went like this: unlike rehashed memories and future worries, the present moment isn’t inside your head — it’s real. Tied up with your thoughts, you’re oblivious to the roses. Or, without that shot of coffee, you’re asleep to the joys of life, right? It’s all about paying attention to what’s actually going on instead of to the chatter in your head. With this nifty formula I meant to leave behind all prevarication, justification, rationalization and agonizing.

I wasn’t the only one who craved peace of mind. Thousands of us then have turned into millions today practicing mindfulness, many at the prescription of their physicians. A ten day course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teaches you all you need to know — or so they say.

The trouble is, there’s more to changing your stress response than technique. It also requires context. That’s why many give up. Peace of mind may be the long-term goal, but getting down to it and creating a life-changing practice takes time, effort — and gumption.

The present moment presents us not only with roses and coffee but also excrement, the worst of it from within. Fight your demons and they fight right back, increasing stress instead of quieting it. Yet turn away and they grow into habitual thoughts that magnify the subconscious chatter. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Mindfulness requires a light touch, neither fighting nor turning away but gently lying down with your demons, understanding how they shape your outlook on life and learning what triggers them.

There’s no magic. It’s quite scientific. It’s a gathering of data in real time: being attentive to the ‘here and now’ while reading this article; while getting mad at your neighbor, while doing something you hate that has to be done anyway. And, most difficult of all, while indulging in that familiar inner dialog we call the story of ‘me.’

Are you searching for tranquility, or for a tranquillizer?

‘Spiritual’ people often think that negative states of mind are a problem, that hate must be turned into love, frustration into joy. This is valiant but misguided. Reality is sometimes so simple that we just miss it. Anger, frustration and regret are appropriate responses to many situations. Indulging in them doesn’t help and neither does flight, but taking a step back and seeing them in context does. Resist the urge to escape and you see what you’re really dealing with.

Are you searching for tranquility, or for a tranquillizer? Sharp, effective mindfulness begins with acceptance of your emotions, not judgement of them. Only then is change possible.

Those who want to feel good now miss this subtle difference. Their desire to change their feelings is the same old urge to flee, just another subconscious craving for things to be other than they are. Actually, it’s worse: believing they’re on a special path to freedom, they’re even more blinkered than the rest of us.

We can’t control our feelings but we can mold our thoughts. We do that most easily in patterns of past and future, and that’s why our heads fill up so easily with distraction.

So, mindfulness is not an isolated activity in a quiet room. It’s a fully-engaged approach to life. It deals with what we know, not what we wish; with what is presented to us in each and any moment. It’s not easy, but it is profoundly rewarding.

If you take up mindfulness in order to find peace, that’s probably what it’ll seem like — at first. However, that’s just a trick of the expectant mind. Getting past that illusion is stressful: you have to face stuff you don’t want to face. The fact that it feels bad doesn’t mean you’ve got it wrong. It means you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, bypassing your default responses and adding space for creative experience.