Jon Kabat-Zinn video

Google kindly and generously films and web-publishes classes it offers to Google staff, here is an excellent talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn where he even leads you in meditation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch%3fv=3nwwKbM_vJc&feature=related

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Connection Mind and Body

So funny, since my back pain that laid me out for a week and a half, I read books about back pain and its “new found” relationship to stress. Some western doctors and physical therapists and chiropractors are scratching their heads over it. I start describing the books by telling people there was this amazing discovery that the mind is connected to the body and we laugh. It seems so obvious. Still it really is not. We want either one or the other, either it is all “in your mind” or “my trouble is different, it’s physical.”

The books (Back Sense (is my favorite), Divided Mind, etc.) spend much time defending the idea saying, “this is not saying it is all in your head.” For example the stress reduces oxygen to an area of your body and voila creating illness, muscles to clinch, bones to move, etc. It is very much about breathe and body awareness and mindfulness.

The impluse seems to be, well the body is hurting the mind or the mind is hurting the body, one or the other. Why not see it is all on a spectrum?

The other day I scrapped my ankle somehow and it hurt and using my training I went right into the pain and got very curious about it, is it pulsating, warm, etc. Then I thought oh it is physical pain, wait that must mean I am stressed about something! Ha! Of course how absurd. Still my stress level met the pain and was a part of this new pain and my experience of it and the physical result from there. The mind and body are meeting. The effects of each blending together and mingling like watercolor pigments.

Just want to quickly put a shout out for a book just published in 2008 written by Tsultrim Allione, called Feeding Your Demons. She is an American ordained a Buddhist nun after living for several years in the Himalayas and has founded a retreat center in Colorado. Her name is Tsultrim Allione and the book: Feeding your Demons. VERY INTERESTING method of meditation where you find the place in your body where you issue (anger, jealousy, etc.) is manifesting then personify your demons. Personifying opens them up to you, their habits become more in your sight and I really should stop there because I just got started in the book this morning on the bus. Apparently this method (Chod) was pioneered by a woman who lived about a thousand years ago.

Unconscious Emotions

The author of Mind Over Back Pain explains unconscious emotions as being able with the mind body connection to reduce oxygen in an area and cause hundreds of problems like back pain. It does seem absurd that psychology and other medical academics can not hold hands even just a little more. Recently I was in such awful pain with my back I had to sleep for a week and could hardly get up and walk at all from the excruciating pain. After seeing so many medical professionals none of whom have a clear answer for me like oh you ate too many grapefruit, I can’t think it didn’t have anything to do with the tremendous stresses coming to a peak in my life right now. So of course I am getting in contact with my meditation teacher to restart some classes.

Last night I was reading Pema Chodron where she mentioned the “…emptiness or suchness of all experience…” Thinking of that out of context is tough, think about “this too shall pass”. See how the two ideas are similar? Why “shall” it pass? Because it has so much emptiness in it. And something in the past doesn’t even exist at all! There IS no past, simply because there is no IS-NESS in it. That is kind of interesting isn’t it? Still we take our life so seriously and the events in it so seriously it can stress us out so much our muscles tense up and throw out the back, of course. Why isn’t that an obvious possibility? Pema Chodron invites us to lighten up. I love her bodies of work, this morning I was listening to her on the bus.

Physical Therapy or Yoga

I believe what I am finding out during Physical Therapy visits and yoga training, is that it is key to stay conscious and present, for example to tilt of your head. If you are working with a bad neck problem it is important to stay as aware and open as possible to what actions you are making or sitting with. That is key to the usefulness of the teachings. With being able to stay as aware as possible to the fine details of your present anatomy situation, you are able to start training in new more ergonomically correct positions. It is just the first step. An important one and it is a habit within itself. Also where is your breath, is it shallow or is it feeding your entire body with the oxygen of your life? Your body wants oxygen to grow, to adjust and to relax.

Peaceful Warrior

Photo by Ibrahim Firaq via flickr.com
This is a thought provoking movie with a Buddhist philosophy thread to it. I love it when the main character makes his hopeless trek to the top of a tower in order to wrestle with his ego which he finally lets go of from off the top of the building. It is a bit of a boy flick and rocky flick and karate kid movie.

The thing that brings the main character to his best self is his being present in the moment. It seemed odd that they never really approached one of the most difficult issues with gaining that kind of awareness or having those kinds of moments. The issue of being so judgmental that you don’t want to see what is here or be in the present moment because what is here and now is just not “ok”. That is one of the biggest hurdles.

Robina Courtin Podcast Review

http://cache.libsyn.com/amberstar/Zencast117.mp3

She talks (very quickly for a nice long time) about compassion and wisdom. Defining compassion as seeing suffering and not wanting it. Loving someone is wishing for them happiness. You may dislike someone and wish them unhappiness.

Insight Meditation enables an ability to see more clearly, lessening attachment and aversion. See the bare bones of the emotions and hear the stories grounding them.

Equanimity as a starting point. If you have a long term view you can have more patience with getting where you want to go. She mentions Buddhists may think of working towards increasing compassion over many lifetimes. That is an interesting point for me because I think sometimes I think a task feels so insurmountable that it feels hopeless.

Attachment exaggerates the deliciousness of cake, the cake doesn’t really have all that, part of it is a delusion.

Someone asked her what do Buddhists do about violence in the world and she responds, there is a saying in Buddhism that if you can change something than please change it and if you can’t then don’t go crazy with it. If you have the wisdom to go to your friends and just by giving them advice you can calm them down and get them to come around, please do it. And she says it starts with compassion wanting them to not have suffering, then wisdom having the skill and ability to create change. If that means one letter to the newspaper, etc. We do what we can one drop at a time, not in anger, and all those little drops become an ocean.

As she says, all this development is really about practicality, simply, it is not about shame on you, you should…it is just practical.

I found this podcast at Zencast http://amberstar.libsyn.com/index.php?post_category=Robina%20Courtin

When you are you, zen is zen

source
“When you are you, zen is zen, not when you get to be zen enough you will finally be cool.” This is a quote from Edward Brown quoting another zen teacher in http://www.tricycle.com/images/audio/EdwardBrown_FacetsOfSelf.mp3 (a podcast already reviewed previously in this blog). And more quotes from the talk:

“At last an authentic movement, you are not just posturing.” (from a yoga teacher) It was interesting to think of yoga as being an avenue for bringing your authentic self into the present.

“You are attempting to do you in a way that gives the right impression to the world…”

“Do you really want to be here?” “Can you welcome yourself home?”

“How will you ever become acceptable if you can never measure up to your scale or standard?” How do you get comfortable being you if you have all these other things besides you, that your are trying to be? Meanwhile knowing you grow and develop and change.
When you have a daily habit of listening to what is in there, you are don’t have to hold back in fear of what might be sitting there that might come out. The keeping yourself in check, lets go more and you find yourself freer. And people love that you are there. That gives them liberty to also be present.

When you obtain realization it might not look the way you thought it would, it seems certain it will be you there when it happens.

One gets especially hard to meet yourself is when you are suffering and think oh I have done all these right things so I can’t be suffering and yet there you are suffering something. So we are human once again.

Mindful Spending, Simple Living

From Overspent American, by Juliet B. Scher, p.148-9

On the possibility of making exclusivity uncool:

“…Indeed, it is rarely even noticed that companies advertise these commodities to a mass consumer audience, large numbers of whom cannot afford them and will go into debt, sacrfice everyday needs, or turn to crime in order to obtain them. When we stop to think about it, WHAT MESSAGE ARE WE SENDING HERE? That being middle-class isn’t good enough?

That it’s okay to wreck your personal or family finances to confirm your social accessibility?

…If there’s something you really want but don’t actually need, there’s a good chance that a recurring symbolic fantasy is attached to it…Americans will not gain control over their spending habits until they begin to confront that symbolism head on.”

p.4
“Today a person is more likely to be making comparisons with, or choose as a ‘reference group,’ people whose incomes are three, four or five times his or her own.”

p.80-82
“…the more TV a person watches, the more he or she spends…what is seen on TV inflates our sense of what is normal…viewing results in an upscaling of desire…”

On “the Diderot effect”: you buy one thing and it makes you want to buy the next thing. Inspired by Denis Diderot’s essay Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown.” Diderot received a new evening robe and then felt the chair he regularly sits in should be upgraded and on and on until he regrets the first spark. A spark the “downshifters” or “simple livers” avoid by not going to expensive stores and not receiving mail order catalogs that bring the temptations right into the living room.

Part of the idea is that one buys in order to attain a sense of confidence and social acceptance. I have the book in front of me although haven’t found the part yet where I was told it quotes a study showing the average american spends 6 hours a week shopping and 45 minutes a week playing with their children. Wow.

For a long while I kept a personal electronic journal on my own spending habits and more so on the thinking behind the spending, that was much more interesting to look at and I think looking at your own specifics with a compassionate and kind heart is empowering ultimately.

Exploring wanting mind is fruitful.

It becomes pretty easy to trick ourselves into believing extra spending means extra happiness when really filling the void may lie elsewhere. A real sense of social acceptance may be found by getting together with a particular friend or some other activity that has yet to be thought of and is particular to you. Painting, writing, reading, biking, gardening, playing music, taking a class, volunteering, blogging, etc.

Thinking about shopping wants can be as addictive and take over your life, pushing out important things, just as well as alcoholism, overeating or any other habit of thinking. It is the same at its core in that it is about how much time your mind spends thinking about a thing. That is what we can get curious about and see how it changes through out the day, moment to moment just noticing.

Will Consuming Less Wreck the Economy?
In the books epilogue p.170
“Among the fifth of the population that downshifted in the first half of the 1990s, 30% cut their spending by 1/4, and 30% by 1/2 or more. Meanwhile, the economy is roaring along.” Then she talks about how it isn’t a simple question to answer, involving questions of how much less people work and spend and employment and on and on…

Listen to an interview with the author on NPR on her new book Born to Buy.

And another interview can be listened to here. I had an easier time accessing this one than the NPR one.

If we are all basically good people…

I am beginning to wonder if a very basic difference between some versions of philosophies which may be associated with a religion or not is the assumption made about our innate goodness or lack thereof.

If the assumption is that we are all at our core good people, than you don’t need all these threats, shaming, and blaming to convince people to be good because ultimately they are all already wishing for the good (however effectively we may have defined that notion of the good). The idea is that we have a tendency towards wishing for happiness, wishing not to suffer. So a person by their very nature would tend towards these things without having to be yelled at about them and threatened and judged.

In fact judging and not trusting closes up someone’s natural tendencies to be open and kind and do good and puts them in a defensive secretive combative state.

Rules can be set up that you have to be this or that to be happy or good. Someone told me about a Rabbi saying to a class if you want to be Jewish you can’t have a Christmas tree. That seems true doesn’t it, like it you want to dance the Cha Cha you can’t put on a karate outfit and tap shoes and go dance the Cha Cha. It is just not the Cha Cha anymore than it is something else.

What I want to ask is isn’t happiness hard enough to attain without feeling forced to add rules to the point where you are miserable? If it really makes you miserable to try to follow a large group of “live up to’s”, than how is that setting you free? How is that filling your heart with love?

Ed Brown comes along and says how can we find and grow ourselves when we won’t let ourselves sit at the table? When the only one we want to see there is that one we want/ought/should be. That is the one, that person is not allowed. Get out of here! Well how is that going to work? How do we get it so that on the one hand we say that person isn’t allowed to be and on the other we say be the best person you can be?

There is a guy yelling at a street corner nearby to anyone passing by that they are all sinners and going to hell and that we should be ashamed of ourselves and we are proud and selfish, etc. just yelling and yelling these things at the top of his lungs holding upright a huge sign with similar threats in writing. As I listened I thought he is right we have problems. I think one of the biggest ones is our lack of love and compassion and kindness. It has not worked for me to be yelled at by myself or by anyone else to develop those things. And yet I think if you really develop love and compassion for yourself and others then when you go to volunteer it will be truly out of love and not out of fear of being judged. You would then have love to offer instead of anger, resentment and fear.

Another Slice of Pie Blog

Photo by shimmertje via flickr.com
Just found a really neat blog from one of my favorite bloggers, check it out – http://anothersliceofthepie.blogspot.com/

In one of her posts Valerie talks about the fact that we and everyone we see and know and love will all be dead in 150 years. I am reading this post and just going wow, wow, wow,

It really points us to the impermanence of everything in our lives. She goes on to point out that the future beyond us just may not be the way we envision it. Parts of it just made me want to look around me and embrace everyone and everything and look at it like I was seeing it for the first and possibly last time. That is the way it really is, whether we see it or not. Life is simply an amazing gorgeous luscious vanishing thing.

Unfortunately so far she doesn’t let us leave comments on her blog, so I have begged her for that since writing is a way I learn and better understand ideas. And leaving comments here about a post there is just out of context, I hope you will read her blog.

Naming Emotions

photo by prburzynski via flickr.com.
I used a mindfulness meditation tool recently to get me through some stress. I woke up at about 3 am unable to sleep, digesting events in life in a whirling swarm of emotions. I decided to name each emotion in a universal way as it came up. So it was with curious and open mind, non-judging, “oh, irritation”, “ok now, that is sadness”, “there is anger”, “oh, now hope”. And in between would come the story line which I would drop and look at the emotion, name it, the next storyline would immediately arise an emotion would become apparent, and on and on like that. And I became very curious about the fact that there were so many coming so fast and that they were so different. Looking at them consciously I had living testimony to the fact of their impermanence which took all the weight off of them. Ultimately the whole experience pretty quickly vanished and I fell back into a deep sleep until morning. I was so glad to have had the training, I can’t tell you.

The inspiration to find the help inside myself came because in the week before I had missed a lot of sleep from worrying about a house purchase until I realized, my own personal happiness and the happiness of those around me are far more important than any four walls. So I just kept repeating that and trying to recall that idea whenever I got stressed out and focusing on what is lost when sleep doesn’t happen. From that place I was more motivated to find a strategy.

Cultivating Fearlessness

Part of that is coming to know your own fear, getting comfortable with that awareness. Gaining the habit of listening in…

You get used to the thoughts in your head after sitting quietly and listening to them. Since you aren’t left to wonder what might be there, that makes them less fearsome, we become fearless even just for a moment. Hey, I know what is in there…it would be like going around with your pockets full and you have no idea what is in them!

Trust that you can open to the present moment begins to build. From mindfulness comes inner strength and the development of trust. You get sure that the nature of things is for them to change, so you get less likely to hang on something, on some idea of how it should be or how it was or how it is even.

When you wish upon a star makes no difference who you are

Whether water drops are separate or part of a lake or river, water is still water, at the top of the waterfall a drop becomes separate then rejoins. That droplet is still water no matter how separate and different it feels.

My college astronomy textbook told us we are made of dead star stuff, stars create elements, when stars die their matter mingles. That is a pretty big responsibility for a star, still we have no evidence of a star worriedly planning its every move, it isn’t expected to…imagine each element in a star’s core bursting forth in a particular “right” direction for each one of the billions of reactions and molecules. And after all that you ask the star how it is doing and it says fine. The point is it can be absurd what we expect from ourselves. Stars, even with this huge responsibility, get off scott-free, willy-nilly creating elements, doing their work without judgment. I suppose I can more easily accept the possibility of existing like that in other natures. How do we get there? What sorts of things take us there, where we experience water is still water?

When “our” star, the sun, begins to die it will have burnt up all of its current fuel and start burning a fuel that will make it become so large the sun’s diameter will nearly be the same diameter of the earths ellipse around the sun, ensuring the earth’s gravitating into its burning self and we will all become part of that star! Think about that and how seriously we take things in our life.

We are all going to be mashed together.

Think about who you would most like to not be mashed together with, isn’t it funny? Oh gosh just don’t mash me together with “those [fill in the blank]“…Yet here we are all mashed together unavoidably. And are there people you might like to get closer to? In some way it is kind of lovely and for me it definitely takes a load off. Like my gosh what do you do in the event that you and everyone and the planet will be mashed together? Well, let me think about that…what shall I wear? I hope I will have the right bag and the right shoes and say the right thing. How can I plan my day around that?

The sun needs an intervention, its being a little too inclusive.

The future involving being mashed together in a star is also irrelevant in some way. It seems like a really big thing on the surface, unlike this next moment, which seems like a really little thing. That is where I would like to think the song in the title comes in except I am not sure how I think I just love the song, “…makes no difference who you are…” When we ask someone who are you we don’t mean in this moment, we mean who were you, who have you been, what have you done and maybe where are you going? We almost never mean who you really are in this moment. And that is really all there is, that is all that is in existence, this moment. There is no future and there is no past. Those things aren’t “are” they don’t exist as a part of “areness”.

The water droplets that for a moment went out of the rapids and into the air above the falls we may feel very separate, very different because of their own past or future, may get hooked on those stories…the nice thing is when we realize we all have these experiences, that breeds the compassion. When we notice a feeling and call it that feeling: this is happiness, this is irritation, this is, etc rather than I am happy, I am irritated which personalizes isolates and permanitizes and absolutes. It is just a habit of inner conversation that misrepresents the way things are and doesn’t increase the realization that we all get this, so when you see it in others you can say oh yes I know that one, I noticed it this morning. All the sudden you are right there in their boots.

Gradual Progress

If we try to hurry our progress in any direction we can have a discouragement big enough to make you quit trying all together. So it is important to give the change we aspire to, space to grow in the way it will. Not having so much weight and seriousness can actually be helpful in the long run for progress to take place. Things will happen when they are ready. By putting a lot of focus on where you want to be you get to trip over the smallest crack in the sidewalk.

Self as Good

Buddhism claims this simple assertion that we are all at our core good.

That we can afford to be mindful and be who we are, without critical mind without replacing who we really are with a religious figure. The goal isn’t to be like Buddha it is to be you and for you to let you be you.

Then you ask well what if me is terrible and needs constant chastisement? Well, I suppose that is you then in this moment, still at the core the assertion is everyone is good.

How are we good? Then it makes the obvious case that we all want what is good, no one wants pain and suffering, everyone wants happiness. It reminds me of Plato’s case that a person might say, yes I know, for example, smoking is bad for me, but if the person really knew in a meaningful way that smoking is injurious they would not smoke. There are different levels of knowing. Think of knowing on a spectrum. On some level we might know we are good and to some degree we might say yes all but this part that part needs constant attention, hiding, judgment, stuffing, [fill in the blank].

Does it strike anyone else that this idea feels a little foreign somehow? If it is true then why all this struggle for perfecting? Then is there a perfect?

Edward Brown

My favorite podcast so far, Ed’s “Facets of Self”. Ed is just who he is and invites you into that experience…his is the most engaging and even humorous…many times I am tempted to surf or do something else while I listen, I just couldn’t with Ed, I felt so me afterwards…hard to explain…he gets at the fakeness and the absurdity of it…

About Edward Brown:
“Edward Espe Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965 (and yoga since 1980), and has been head resident teacher at each of the San Francisco Zen Centers: Tassajara, Green Gulch, and City Center. He has led meditation retreats and cooking classes throughout the United States, as well as Austria, Germany, Spain, and England. He is the author of several cookbooks including The Tassajara Bread Book and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, and is the editor of Not Always So, a newly published book of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He has also done extensive Vipassana practice.” See more description by clicking on “comments” for this post.

Once again this was found through Tricycle.com, I am still pouring through their podcast archive.

Blanche Hartman

“Freedom” podcast on impermanence and death. She quotes poet Kay Ryan, “We set up our table and chairs right in the river…” and poet Mary Oliver, “…Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” and Socrates about fearing death as assuming you know what that is…it could be the greatest thing…knowing you don’t know…

Getting curious about death…hoping she can be this curious about death even in the face of hers.

From Zen Mind Beginners Mind: Niagra falls…whether a single drop of water or a river, water is water, our life and death are the same thing, how very glad the water must be to rejoin the river…

About Blanche:
ZENZEI BLANCHE HARTMAN began sitting in 1969 with Mel Weitsman and Suzuki-roshi. She was ordained a priest in 1977 by Zentatsu Baker and received dharma transmission with Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1988. She became Abbess of San Francisco Zen Center in 1996. She is married to Shuun Lou Hartman; they have four children and five grandchildren.

“Finding Joy in the Heart of Pain”

I invite you to listen to Darlene Cohen’s podcast on “Finding Joy in the Heart of Pain”, she suffered from terrible arthritis and talks about living with pain in a casual light hearted way. She earned a graduate degree in Physiological Psychology in 1966. She says some nice (even fun) ideas and insights for people living with others who are in pain. I discovered her podcast via http://www.tricycle.com/podcast/archive.html.

Topics covered:
Living with pain
How to live with someone in long term pain
Attachment to the outcome as a source of pain
The value in sometimes distracting yourself intentionally

Difference and interconnectedness between pleasure and pain, the difference is they produce different emotions, the interconnectedness is that they exist almost simultaneously.

The “Disinterested Pursuit of pleasure” as key to survival in living with long term pain, where you have to do more than let pleasure be happen chance, you have to plan for it and this pursuit of pleasure will be key in producing compassion! Very interesting.

Within the pursuit of pleasure there are three ideas:
engagement, engage a situation/person/problem rather than ignore it and your energy goes up
relaxation
ecstasy, where you let go of your critical mind.

Enjoy the podcast.

Naming Emotions

by Marlon & Daniëlle via flickr.com

In order to keep the awareness flowing, my meditation instructor is offering an excercise to the class where we name the emotion we are experiencing and then take it a step further and add an intention of loving or experiencing with a welcoming and open heart our having that emotion.

I had a funny experience with it recently where I said hey I am irritated, then I said yeh that is me, irritated, for a moment I loved the idea of me as a irritated person. Now that language is not the goal (and I do believe there is an element of learn the language, speak it, then you begin to experience where we want to go), so the language of I am this or I am that is problematic. First of all the one thing we know you are is constantly changing! So we may say “here is irritation” (drop the “I am…”), in the next moment if we watch not only the degree of that irritation will change, the irritation will completely vanish! It will, watch. It is weird. You are watching and then poof, hey did I just laugh? Or oh now I am crying, this is sadness, so now you say “this is sadness” not I am sad, I am a sad person, then I have ALWAYS been a sad person! Been there? Thought so.

Learning the language is tricky. It is important too. I have heard to use this language many times over the past few years and still it is tricky.

What is amazing about it is how it disaccosiates yourself from the emotion. Suddenly that is an outside passing experience, like a cloud. Do we attach ourselves to the clouds?

So the language is vital. My Ancient Greek professor once said, if you want to read Sappho you have to read it ancient Greek, the meaning is missed, is untranslatable for this text. He didn’t say that about Homer, Plato, Tolstoy, anyone else and he knew 15 languages. He said it about Sappho’s work (most of which is no longer with us). What little we have needs you to read it in the Greek. It is like this, we are not changing everything in our language, just the way we speak to ourselves about our experiencing an emotion. It is a habit.

This is boredom, this is anger, this is happiness, this is…what…tell yourself right in this moment what are you experiencing? Now the next, listen to how you tell it to yourself, notice it passing onto the next one…notice that? Experiencing the world in this way takes all the power away from the emotions, and it makes you less afraid of them when you see they pass.

First Post

That is necessarily what it is, the first one, the beginning, this moment. And what are we feeling in this moment? What are you feeling? Dread? I hope not, this might turn out to be a pretty neat blog. I will be scrambling now researching and building the site…for now I invite you to welcome mindfulness, notice how you are in this moment with a kind and curious and open heart. If you feel like writing, let me know what you have found that helps you pay attention and aware with an open heart in this moment, take a deep breath and feel your body relax. Check out my other blog, myrawfoodblog.com.