Mindfulness in one moment

So much of mindfulness writing reads so breathy. I was just wondering why is that? Maybe because it is such a shock to us how this works. It’s emotional to experience the shift, to see what was right before us. Just a moment ago I was having a negative thought I noticed it, using the practice, with curious open awareness – oh there is negativity. And poof! it vanished I also noticed. Why did it happen to vanish? Not spinning the story into, oh I am so negative, this world is a mess, etc. Just (out of a long worked for habit of mindfulness) oh there is negativity, not judging in that moment that experience. And the next moment was – what the heck happened to it? It was a small thing, like a small wisp of a cloud passing over, you can hardly call it a cloud. Gone with the other 67,000 thoughts I had that day.

I imagine a physicist shining a light on an electron in order to see it. Once a photon of light hits the electron, the energy of the photon shoots the electron out of sight. It moves, it changes, it is no longer what was being looked for. That was a metaphor, still as the Quantum enigma is, we don’t know why, but observation changes not just our perception, it changes actual physical reality*. It is even creepy, it is not the culture I grew up knowing where you know just deal with it, if you don’t like it, tough that is the way it is. Well actually, no, if you don’t like it, wait 15 minutes, or shoot look at it a different way. You’re freer when you are in the habit of realizing your perception, your story is what is making you so uncomfortable most of the time. Maybe it is a physical sensation that happens so quickly in the lower back then it goes away, maybe it comes right back for another moment. An hour later you’re saying my back was hurting all day. Was it? Next, it has been hurting continuously for the past 10 years. What I noticed is the pain changes with each moment, if I look honestly I see that. Still I can see the story coming back. It is an old story with deep neuron “grooves” pathways that are repeatedly zinging that way. Well we can change it. We can learn and practice mindfulness. We can open to something new.

Recently, in a moment I slowed down, we were stressed to get to school on time and I noticed nothing really mattered more than this moment. And what was happening in this moment? It didn’t matter it was the most important thing. It happened to be helping a 5 yr. old tie a shoe, it could have been anything with anybody. The other person would feel it. Would feel the care. The care about this very moment, the only moment that is. Past doesn’t exist, the future hasn’t happened. You are the sky, not the weather (as Jack Kornfield quoted Pema Chodron in a recent dharmaseed talk). War is a failing of the imagination (Jack Kornfield). Why should we wage war on this moment? It is all that is happening.

*Quantum enigma: Physics encounters consciousness, p. 72: “The physical reality of an object depends on how you choose to look at it.”

Mindfulness, the best friend; Mindfulness authors

Mindfulness is like a best friend. It throws its arm around you and asks what is going on, I mean what is REALLY going on? and then, how can we face this together, and then this and the next moment, etc. Looking on together with mindfulness with great curiosity at each experience, awake.

There are so many excellent authors to read, I hope you are all opening up to them. For four years all I read on the topic of mindfulness was Pema Chodron. In 2007 when I started reading collections of “Best Buddhist Writing” by McLeod, I realized there are tons of great authors on the topic.

Over vacance I started a few books including The Mindfulness Revolution, edited by Barry Boyce (also a collection of works) and In the Shadow of the Buddha, and Just One Thing. I just finished Waking by Matthew Sandford (I couldn’t put it down) and am still in the middle of a few I am getting a lot out of: Eight Mindfulness Steps to Happiness (I love Gunaratana’s books); Everyday Zen; Letting Everything Become Your Teacher; Work, Sex, and Money (Choygam Trungpa); Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond; Awake at Work.

Other most helpful authors (in no particular order): Thich Nhat Hahn, Choygam Trungpa, McLeod (Wake Up to Your Life), Soygal Rinpoche, Tarthang Tulku, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrul, Sharon Salzberg, Larry Rosenberg, Joseph Goldstein, Francesca Fremantle, Sakyong Mipham, Arnaud Maitland, Stephen Levine (Gradual Awakening), Barry Boyce. I tried many others that just weren’t quite kicking it for me at the time. For me, the authors I keep coming back to are Pema, Trungpa, and Gunaratana. Favorite speakers: Pema, Ed Brown, and Jack Kornfield.

Hope this helps someone who may have been like me, only reading one author for a while and ready to open the door a little wider. There are so many helpful writings, I hope you will try some new ones. Each teacher teaches something more.

Being everything while doing nothing; Yoga and mindfulness hold hands

What is it about stopping that brings everything to you. In a yin yoga asana, you pull into a pose and stop. All the body and breath is right there, all you are is you now. Not the dreams or drearies of past and future. We aren’t stored in the future or past, yet when our brain is there, a part of us is not. So being all our is-ness, being all we are actually, it’s a very different feeling.

After an a.m. yoga class, it can profoundly change how I experience many hours of the day. Each moment I am more open and more present for others and myself. It is very interesting. A few hours after such an amazing a.m. class I saw a seagull soaring over the lake. Often I have admired the superficial beauty. This time I felt that was the moment in that yin asana this morning. That moment I was soaring. What was it, I asked myself? It was doing nothing and being everything.

We are all braver than we often know. We are moving in a world we essentially are not seeing at all. Where does the seat you are sitting on stop and the floor start? There are no clear boundaries, on a molecular level this “border” is a blur (and mostly of empty space). Everything is a part of everything else (Etienne Gilson‘s work helped me see that). We have great expectations given we are so blind. That is just the start of course. Dark matter is believed to constitute 83% of the matter in the universe and 23% of the mass-energy (Wikipedia on Dark Matter). Physicists call it Dark because they mostly have no idea what it is! That is a lot of matter to not get. It is a bizarre world. Quantum physics just makes my head spin. Still we walk on like oh well, its all the same.

We say, of course the grass is still green again today. Really its a strange miracle. Just because the laws of physics always did exist doesn’t mean they will always continue to do so (as my Greek prof. John Wyatt liked to say). And just now we seem to learn that light is no longer the fastest traveling entity. On some level we are just flesh and blood temporarily walking on an amazing planet. On some level, we are this amazing eternal part of the world. Our energy will continue to intertwine into it, our consciousness can go on forever. After reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying I realize I have no good reason to be so fixed in my thoughts about what happens, what consciousness is.

So we bravely walk on and knowing all we see is what is, as best as we can know, and being satisfied with this. What we sense, see and feel is what is. What we are dreaming about is a dream. It may have once been real or may become real. Still it is not what is, it has no is-ness. So it isn’t. Mindfulness is about getting in touch with what we can know. And that is very much what is real in this moment. And is less about what we dreamed the next moment would be. Although that dream is so important to note. Because our is-ness involves so much time spent in the thinking, the worrying, the storylines, the dreams. Mindfulness techniques allow you to be with that experience kindly and find moments of groundedness.

My first great yoga teacher told me when you first started here your head wasn’t even on your body! That is so funny, I know I was so full of dreams one time I simply fell right out of a standing pose onto my mat in her class. Our astonishment was funny. It was as though I woke up being splashed onto my mat. After completing over 300 classes in the past 2+ years, I can say, yoga first blew the door open to body sensation awareness I had been trying to learn by sitting meditation for many years. Next, more posture awareness came into my daily life and now more and more breath awareness. Yoga is a great place to practice mindfulness techniques. It is a great place to get grounded in your body. It takes you from that place where you are thinking so much you become a floating head.

Some moments in yoga can feel like diving off a cliff. Another moment in yin yoga can be like touching your deepest most comforting self. Like holding yourself, your real self, so deeply and lovingly, just as it is in that moment, with all its pains and aches and joys and blissful moments. Caressing and being with what actually is. Sans the dream of what should, would or could, just what is. With the yoga teacher reminding now: Stay. Breathe.

Apps and a free database of resources

The past couple days I have been having fun discovering mindfulness mediation apps with my ipod. Then I found (ATI) Access to Insight : readings in Theravada Buddhism. This app is an amazing resource of suttas, readings and resources listed for ebooks, dharma talks; content downloads as well as lists of websites with resources (ebooks, articles, talks to inspire you to meditate, etc). I am frankly a bit blown away at the moment by the quantity of resources. Still exploring it myself I wanted to make a quick note of it here.

Anyone with a computer can access all this simply through the webpage: www,accesstoinsight.org

Technology is also a gift to our mindfulness practice

Teachings are accessible via Dharmaseed, YouTube, teachers’ websites, eBooks; online journals and databases provide research in the area.
Teachings are often free and portable. I carry dharma ebooks and talks with me every where my tiny ipod goes and listen to talks on cd in the car. This allows me to get little droplets here and there.

It helps place the teachings into the everyday.

Teachers I will likely never meet, I can see giving a talk, I may be able to email them or iChat.
Technology opened up access. Students around the globe can access helpful teachings that can help them help themselves. Providing insights and skills for creating more love and happiness and ways of working with suffering. I am really grateful to technology. It truly is a gift. We are freer to ask all our questions, with a hope that we can get answers.

I try to stay awake to the addictive and unskillful uses and abuses of technology. I went camping recently with some friends and I was shocked at how deeply relaxed I was after having had time away from screens. It was almost as relaxing as my last mindfulness retreat happened to be.

So why not see our time as valuable during and away from screen-time? How do we ensure our screen time does not take away from filling other important needs? Our technology requires maintenance like a car does, which can be time consuming and stressful. We have to carefully maintain how much time we spend using it. It’s an issue if blogging to communicate with people around the world keeps you from communicating mindfully, clearly and carefully with people in front of you.

What works to help you in the practice? If you are in a place where sitting in meditation is as frightening as sitting in the middle of the road, then take more time for the teachings! Of course in person whenever it works (joining a weekly sangha, meeting a teacher, meditation classes, yoga classes, etc).

How much screen time is a question I have to ask myself often. Is it interrupting a conversation? How does that leave space for open, clear communication? Are some times and places better than others? How much time is too much time? It is a moving target as technology changes. Try to see what is useful in this moment. Try to be honest. Ask those around you for their experience.

Maybe we can ask: is this screen getting in between us right now? or are these screens getting in between us right now in a negative way? We are in the middle of a revolution, we can’t expect ourselves to know all the answers.

Smile, enjoy the flinging electrons; and use the power button skillfully. LOL

Noah Levine talks at Dharmaseed

Noah Levine is giving some amazing talks, you can hear them at DharmaSeed.org for free (and on youtube).
The talks are confident, honest and motivating. After listening you want to meditate.

His talks are especially helpful for people living with pain. His insights on being with pain compassionately are very helpful. Thank you NOAH! I will be listening to those talks again and again I am sure.
I read his father’s book Gradual Awakening (Stephen Levine). In my opinion it is one of the best books there is, being so beautifully written – it is profound; I can’t describe it sorry, you just have to read it.
It is heartbreaking for me to know his son had so much trouble in life before discovering so much that changed his life. There is a documentary about this, I haven’t seen it though.

An aside, right now I am reading Choygam Trungpa’s book: Work, Sex, Money. It’s been very helpful for me in working out, more beautifully and skillfully, a difficult work situation that arose. It is also helping me realize something important about my career experience.

Pema Chodron: What Is Bodhicitta?

Thank you thank you thank you Pema, how can we all thank you enough for all your teachings. This talk was posted by greatpathtapes to Youtube today.

Practice for driving a car

Doing the metta practice while driving can transform the experience. It invites the driver to look out for everyone you can find in order to give them metta. It lends itself to more patient, peaceful and mindful driving. It is much more relaxing when you look at it as an opportunity to practice. One study called the problem of multi-tasking while driving: inattention blindness.

The car is a place where mindfulness practice can even save lives. It also brings peace to the driver and people around the driver. A driving instructor once told me, you don’t want to scare the people around you. Why not take that a next step and wish them: may you be safe and protected. And wish it for yourself also: may I be safe and protected, sometimes adding: may I be patient. May all drivers and those they encounter, may all be safe and protected.

Mindfulness reduces pain – Journal of Neuroscience April, 2011

Fadel Zeidan, Katherine T. Martucci, Robert A. Kraft, Nakia S. Gordon, John G. McHaffie, and Robert C. Coghill
Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation
The Journal of Neuroscience, 6 April 2011, 31(14):5540-5548; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5791-10.2011
Abstract

The subjective experience of one’s environment is constructed by interactions among sensory, cognitive, and affective processes. For centuries, meditation has been thought to influence such processes by enabling a nonevaluative representation of sensory events. To better understand how meditation influences the sensory experience, we used arterial spin labeling functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the neural mechanisms by which mindfulness meditation influences pain in healthy human participants. After 4 d of mindfulness meditation training, meditating in the presence of noxious stimulation significantly reduced pain unpleasantness by 57% and pain intensity ratings by 40% when compared to rest. A two-factor repeated-measures ANOVA was used to identify interactions between meditation and pain-related brain activation. Meditation reduced pain-related activation of the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify brain regions associated with individual differences in the magnitude of meditation-related pain reductions. Meditation-induced reductions in pain intensity ratings were associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, areas involved in the cognitive regulation of nociceptive processing. Reductions in pain unpleasantness ratings were associated with orbitofrontal cortex activation, an area implicated in reframing the contextual evaluation of sensory events. Moreover, reductions in pain unpleasantness also were associated with thalamic deactivation, which may reflect a limbic gating mechanism involved in modifying interactions between afferent input and executive-order brain areas. Together, these data indicate that meditation engages multiple brain mechanisms that alter the construction of the subjectively available pain experience from afferent information.

Being Present in Relationships – Eckhart Tolle

Timely video as we visit people we have known for years over the holidays. He reminds us about staying grounded in the here with the body sensations instead of spinning into the story lines and the habitual. Enjoy and thank you Eckhart!:

The atom and you

I just finished one of the most powerful books I have ever read in my life: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Now I am reading a second commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by an author who worked with Choygam Trungpa to translate the Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1975. Her name is Francesca Fremantle. Her commentary on the book is titled Luminous Emptiness. WOW. I don’t know want to talk too much about her fantastic book yet since I haven’t finished it yet, however I wanted to mention the concepts it is bringing up in me. These two books seem to be blurring the line for me between what is living and what is dying. There seems to be living in dying and dying in living. One concept is that if consciousness (FYI: Fremantle includes writing about 8 kinds of consciousness) is included in Einstein’s concept where matter and energy can not be destroyed only transformed (e=mc2), you could at least start to see how different things could happen than maybe nothing.

At the moment I want to describe a concept it keeps bringing to my mind: the emptiness. The atom is mostly empty space (think ~99%). And what is there is constantly spinning and moving with energy. Everything is changing and mostly empty. Yet when we look around it looks solid and unchanging. It is temporary and really kind of impersonal and yet I see my computer my favorite chair, it all looks pretty solid and unchanging to me!

One thing I adore about the Dalai Lama is his embracing of science. The idea is life is an experiment lets see what works. If you can measure an ancient technique for gaining compassion – Lets do it! Science and spirituality can be incredibly helpful to each other in developing ways that work. Brilliant. It is an exciting world we are living in. For now I will leave you with a vid I chanced across: Atom : The Illusion Of Reality – BBC Documentary

Rigpa website

Check out this amazing site, called Rigpa with brilliant video teachings.

Here is one where E. Tolle explains: There is no past. There is no future. WOW, how did he do that in ~2 minutes? WOW

Wake up to your life by Ken McLeod

This is the most difficult book I have found after years of reading mindfulness books. It is making me work the hardest, is what I am saying. It is training that goes straight to the most difficult issues, for example awareness about death, etc. I was happy to just now find Ken is doing online retreats via Tricycle.com and one is going on right now. It just started on May 3, 2010. I wanted to put this out there in a timely fashion. Blessings.

Mindful, conscious eating – eating with awareness

In the book The World We Have, Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of couple traveling with their small boy across a vast desert to seek asylum in another land. They ran out of food. “Realizing all three of them would them would die in the desert, the parents made a horrifying decision: they decided to kill and eat their child. Every day they ate a morsel of his flesh, just enough for the energy to walk a little further, all the while, crying ‘Where is our son?’”(p.17, The World We Have) and they are in terrible mourning. Was it easy for the couple to eat their son? Of course not. Thich Nhat Hanh wants us to think about the impact our choices have on the resources available on the planet. Each time we take something away and use it up, we can think about that.

Many people eat twice the calories they need a day; eating enough for two adults or one adult and a child. I remember seeing a great talk by a doctor giving a talk on google video about the value of being vegan and apparently the average american eats a very large number cows (15), chickens (900), hogs (24), sheep (12), etc. throughout the course of their lifetime.

Animal fat is solid at room temperature. It sticks to our blood vessels and clogs them. Whatever organ was at the other end of the clog is what is damaged when the blood can no longer get through the opening. In multiple ways, we actually increase human suffering and starvation by supporting the meat industry. The amount of land and soil and water being used to grow the mono-crops to feed these animals could feed exponentially more people if the land was devoted to growing crops edible for humans.

We were just watching an excellent movie called “Dirt” on Independent Lens. It is about the health of the life in dirt. Healthy dirt produces healthy vegetables. The movie says we are destroying our dirt. For example, when pests find a way to unlock the mechanism for by-passing a pesticide and eating a mono-crop like wheat or corn it then has an unlimited food supply. This problem is currently solved by creating new pesticides. The diversity of plant life is vital to the health of the soil. Also, when one type of plant can not handle one type of weather disaster another can survive and visa versa.

I just ate a couple dates and I thought of how many strong hands may have touched each one. You are eating the sun that shown on it and the water that fed it and the soil that became its body as well. If you go to the date company’s website you can see photos of some of the workers. The site says their dates are picked by hand.

Speaking of Thich Nhat Hanh, he has just written a book all about mindful eating and food choices, called Savor. I just ordered it, hopefully he will inspire another post here! Thank you Thich Nhat Hanh!

DharmaSeed.org – free, excellent online talks

Dharma Seed

I am sending out a HUGE THANKS FOR THIS EXCELLENT RESOURCE. Listen for free to hundreds of Buddhist talks. THANK YOU DHARMA SEED!

Yoga, a great tool for mindfulness

If you can keep from getting competitive and keep from having it turn into an aggression against your body, yoga can be a very powerful tool for mindfulness. During, for example, an hour long hot yoga class your mind is busy trying to connect to your body. Also, I found yoga helps me connect with body sensations through out the rest of the day. Also, it helps one sit with discomfort in the body.

Most importantly, I found after the class, if I can remain in the classroom (the room is not in use), I found my mind is especially ready at that time to apply mindfulness meditation techniques. After yoga my mind can sit in meditation more skillfully and for a longer time. The mind is more awake and ready and the body more able to sit still.

For six years now I have continued to take mindfulness meditation classes once a week. This is a great tool, having a space, with a teacher, where students can share stories, successes, etc. and meditate together.

Best wishes to everyone.

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.