Local JewBhu Makes Good

Imagine a Jewsish man leading a Christian church service on the theme of Buddhist meditation. Such was the scene this past Sunday at the Unity Church in Essex Junction, Vermont when my friend , Dr. Steve Taubman, led the assembled in mindfulness meditation. After entertaining with a couple of magic triicks, Steve presented a succinct and inviting view. In the language that includes the discussion of God, he said instead of seeking God all over the place, go to the place where God is -- the present moment (free of any thinking activity). This, of course, is the central mesage of mindfulness. Steve is a talented magician, hypnotist, and showman. He also talked about his recent book, which was an Amazon.com bestseller: Unhypnosis. In this accessible self-help book, Steve combines his knowledge of hyponisis and his practice of vipassana.

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: death

Buddhists and existential philosophers have long recognized the value of contemplating death in a frank and straightforward manner. Larry Rosenberg wrote a wonderful book entitled Living in the Light of Death, which speaks to how awareness of mortality helps to make us more alive. Of course, we get very little training or preparation in our culture for dealing with death. Most people report feeling unprepared, and many can experience fear and terror. Yet the time of death can be a time of peace, equanimity, and enjoying the significance of life. The author and social activist, Timothy Leary, anticipating his own death arranged to have his head removed at the moment of this death and immediately frozen. To do this, he enlisted the aid of assisted suicide. His death, which was also filmed, was a celebration of life. Leary was accepting death and, at the same time, trying to cheat it. He felt that his frozen brain might, at some future point provided by science and technology, be reactivated! Read more ...

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage -- Suffering

There is a story from the time of the Buddha that speaks to suffering. A young woman lost her infant child to an illness. Distraught, she brought the body of her baby to see the Buddha. The Buddha was reputed to have healing powers. The Buddha responded to her plaintiff request by saying he would heal the child if she could bring him a mustard seed from a home that had never known death. She bowed and thanked and set off on her journey to find this mustard seed. She traveled for many months going home to home in each village she came to her. She heard story after story of loss and grief. By the time she returned to the Buddha, she had attained insight into the nature of impermanence and how attachment causes suffering. Read more ...

Mindful Triathlon

Yesterday, I participated in the Colchester Triathlon. The last time I did the race was 1996, when I was 33. This year in the context of running and swimming with the dogs, and commuting on my bike to the office several days a week, I realized I was probably ready to do another triathlon. I set as my goal to beat my time from 9 years ago. It was a beautiful Vermont summer day yesterday, and such days have been in short supply this summer. The triathlon consists of a 1⁄2 mile swim in Mallet’s Bay of Lake Champlain, followed by a 12-mile bike ride, and a 3-mile run. The bike route overlaps with some of my daily commute to work, so this was my home turf. I had a good race with the enthusiastic and faithful support of my wife, who served as my support team. I finished strong. The run was the biggest challenge, and to stay on track, I needed to be vigilant with mindfulness. By that point in the race, running was painful. I enjoy running in the woods on soft, if occasionally rocky trails. This was the first time running on pavement since the last triathlon nearly a decade ago. Ouch. I put into practice the principles I outline in my paper on mindfulness in sports, which you can read by clicking here. When the results were posted I was disappointed to learn that my time was 10 minutes slower than 1996. This was puzzling and disconcerting since I thought I had had a good race. Where did I lose 10 minutes? I sighed with the apparent recognition that a 42-year-old body is not that of a 33-year-old body, despite the loving enthusiasm of my wife and my hopeful aspirations. Today, though, I was checking the results online. To my astonishment and pleasure, the results posted hastily after the race yesterday were in error by 10 minutes! I missed my 1996 by 46 seconds, but that seems close enough. It is so interesting to see how the mind constructs a view of things based on information. When that information is unreliable as it was yesterday, the construction is faulty. We make these sorts of suppositions all the time. I am looking forward to my next triathlon, which may be in 9 years when I will be 51. I will have the same goal – beat my time from 33!

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: self/no-self

For thousands of years, philosophers have talked about the nature of the self. More recently in the last 100 years or so since the science of psychology emerged, the self has been subjected to scientific study. Even more recently, neuroscience has tried to find the self in the brain. Descartes (in the 17th Century) believed the mind and body were connected by the pineal gland in the brain, but he was wrong. Modern neuroscience can find no center of the self, no core self. What then is the self? Ultimately, the self is the concept we hold about ourselves, and this concept is supported and reinforced by thinking -- telling ourselves the stories of our lives over and over again. When people devote themselves to a deep meditation practice, they find this concept of the self is a moving and flimsy target. That sense of "me" changes and is fluid and spacious. Read more ...

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: impermanence

The fleeting changing days of summer in Vermont are a good reminder of the lesson of impermanence. It might be sunny in the morning and storming in the afternoon. Hazy and humd yeilds to high pressure and clouds that reveal the purple majesty of the green mountains on the horizon. Today's featured page is impermanence.

Impermanence reflects the deep nature of experience. From moment to moment there is change. Whatever lens of a time frame we look through we can observe change -- from moment-to-moment, to the near and far terms of our life. Ultimately, we are aging, and there are constant changes associated with that. Illnesses, aches, and pains arise and visit with us for a time and leave. When they do not leave, our chronic conditions change over time too. A pain may seem solid and unchanging, but it is a pulsing of energy through time, and when observed as it is occurring, it can be seen to change. Changes may be subtle, and are not always obvious or dramatic. There may be subtle changes in our mood throughout the day, the pattern of our thoughts is constantly changing, the fullness of the belly, the temperature outside. Our fortunes change, we lose and gain things. People and animals we love become ill and die. Our tendency to attribute or desire permanence where there is impermanence leads to suffering. Read more ...

The Karma of Intention

I got an unexpected phone call recently from Shinzen Young. Shinzen is a renown meditation teacher that I happen to have the pleasure and honor of knowing. He is a lovable and down-to-earth man, with whom I have had the fortune to sit with on a number of occasions. He was in Los Angeles attending to a family matter, and he asked if I might cover his meditation program that he was to teach that Saturday. For some time, Shinzen has been offering free meditation programs to the employees of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation, and interested people from the community. Among his many audio publications, Shinzen is the author of an excellent introduction to meditation CD, and he recently published a book with a CD entitled Break Through Pain: A Step-by-Step Mindfulness Meditation Program for Transforming Chronic and Acute Pain. Shinzen has a website devoted to the dissemination of Vipassana meditation. Visit it at shinzen.org. As it turned out, one of Shinzen's main students led the retreat that day. I was honored to be asked, and as Shinzen said, I got the good karma for my intention. He teaches at Green Mountain on a regular basis. For more information contact them Anne at 802-244-5621 ext. 1333 or visit the website by clicking here.

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: principles

25 July 2005 --

I continue with the project of updating selected web pages. I will present a segment from the page, and encourage you to delve into the heart of the website to explore these pages on your own. I am starting with the explore mindfulness section. The themes reflected in these pages are a daily preoccupation. Impermanence, for instance, is in our face all of the time. I was doing some meditation/psychotherapy training recently on Saturday. There was a band playing in the beautiful afternoon sun in City Hall Park, just across the street from the Studio. The bass-line and the drums were a very present part of the experience. Initial this was met as a distraction, "how can I meditate with that noise?" But we can encourage ourselves to grow in the moment to make ourselves more spacious -- to expand the definition of ourselves to include the music coming from outside. If we can relinquish the agenda, we sidestep resistance.

According to the Buddha, there are three main principles that get us into trouble. The first is annicca or impermanence. When we don't understand impermanence we get suffering or dukkha. One way to think about the suffering arising around impermanence is that we have an attachment to things remaining as they are. The ultimate such attachment is our self-identity. Annata or no-self speaks to the idea that the self as we know it and experience it is something of an illusion. In other words, there is no solid and permanent self. I like to think of the self as a collection of stories and our apparent solidity comes from the repetition of these stories thousands of times each day. Read more ...

Ordinary Mind

I had the opportunity to sit with Barry Magid, founder and teacher of the Ordinary Mind Zendo in New Jork City. In an understated manner, uncharacteristic for a New Yorker, Barry talked about the nature of Zen practice, as he sees it. He likened it to looking in the mirror and sitting with the image reflected back. Our tendency is to turn away, to deny or to want to change what we see. He was emphatic in his gentle manner to say that Zen practice is not about self-improvement. Self-improvement or transformation, as was his preferred term, is an involuntary by-product of Zen practice. I like the image of looking in the mirror. The mirror does the work and reflects back what is. However, it is an image of subtle movement. Often, I think, what we contend with, is not only a mirror, but a bucking bronco or bull. By practicing, we try to stay on the bull, riding out what is happening without falling off into denial, avoidance, or old unhelpful habit patterns. Barry was in Vermont for the annual meeting of American ZEn teachers, which was held this year at the Vermont Zen Center in Shelburne. Barry is a teacher in the Soto Zen lineage of Charlotte Joko Beck, and he is the author of the book Ordinary Mind

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: mind

Mind, in the sense that it is used here, means the totality of our experience of awareness and includes both the intellect (thinking) and the heart (feeling). Becoming familiar with the various aspects of the mind is an important part of developing the Exquisite Mind. This section is organized in six sections, each with a number of pages providing an overview of the different aspects of experience that come into play with practice. Most of what we know as mind is storytelling, and this important facet is discussed in the layers section. There was a funny Matt Groenig cartoon that I saw in graduate school. Bart Simpson asks Homer, "Hey, Dad, what is mind?" Homer replies, "no matter." Bart queries again, "What is matter?" Homer waxes philosophic, "never mind." Read more ...

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: practices

Mindfulness meditation is a method for training attention to increase the capacity to live in the present. It does so by promoting concentration and a more accurate perception and acceptance of what is occurring at any given moment. The variety of mindfulness practices are psychological methods of self-inquiry. Mindfulness meditation practices themselves are not religion. These practice were developed in the East (India, Thailand, Burma, etc.) and are credited to the teacher known as the Buddha (approximately 2500 years ago). However, these practices do not make you a Buddhist. They requires no religious beliefs or affiliations. Religions such as Zen or Tibetan Buddhism incorporate mindfulness meditation into their religious practice. However, the practice by itself is a psychological technique for training awareness. It requires no religious rituals or rites, and can be practiced by people of any faith. We may naturally be in a state of mindfulness at times, but few of us have received any formal training (that is, we were not taught this in school; we were all expected to pay attention, but I have yet to meet someone who was actually taught how to do this). Another question that is often asked is if mindfulness is a form of hypnosis. In fact, mindfulness may be thought of as means to wake up from the trance that often characterizes existence. In this way, mindfulness is the opposite of hypnosis. Read more ...

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: explore mindfulness

Mindfulness an intentional and curious directing of attention to our experience as it unfolds in the present moment, one moment following the next -- the very happening of our experience as it is happening without commentary, judgment, or storytelling. When we try to bring mindfulness into life, we also relinquish our agenda for wanting things to be a certain way. We grow more accepting of what is in any given moment, whether this moment in pleasurable or uncomfortable. By doing so, we can become adaptive, durable, and flexible -- even courageous in the face of unchangeable circumstances. We learn to regulate ourselves independent of external conditions and the ability to do this brings freedom. Acceptance is not passive resignation. When we can act to change something we act to change it. However, sometimes we cannot act, if we are stuck in traffic, sitting in an airplane on a runway, and in a hundred different life situations. Read more ...

The Mind is a Comfort Seeking Missile

I had the opportunity to sit with Zen teacher Grace Schireson, who founded the Empty Nest Zendo in North Fork, California. She gave a wonderful talk, sharing the story of her journey to Vermont. Her plane was stuck on the runway in Dulles for hours, and the toilet was overflowing. This situation is a suitable metaphor for life on how we can either resist or accept what is happening. She discussed the 8 winds of Buddhism that deal with attachment in one form or another. These are: 1) wanting pleasurable sensations, 2) not wanting unpleasurable sensations, 3) not wanting pleasurable sensations to end, 4) wanting unpleasurable sensations to end, 5) wanting praise and admiration, 6) not wanting criticism, 7) wanting reputation and accomplishments, and 8) wanting to avoid failure. She made a wonderful point about traffic jams. We tend to go into these seeing them as an obstacle in our path. This self-centered perspective omits the fact that we, too, are part of the traffic jam. It is not just happening to us, we contribute to it. She also discussed the notion of active friendliness in regard to, for example, the aging body. She shared how she is much more compassionate, patient, and understanding of other people’s aches and pain than her own. The notion of active friendliness can help us to take care of ourselves without getting into judgment, impatience, and, importantly, passivity. As with all teachers, she emphasizes the purpose of formal practice is to prepare us for life. We practice swimming in the shallows so that we may be prepared to swim in open choppy waters. She is writing a book on the treatment of women in Buddhism (Wisdom Publications). Grace is a bright, witty, and warm teacher and I would encourage you to visit her Zendo if you are in the region of Fresno and Yosemite California. Visit the website: Empty Nest Zendo.

Principle 1: Be Present Be Still

Mindfulness is an intentional and curious directing of attention to our experience as it unfolds in the present moment, one moment following the next -- the very happening of our experience as it is happening without commentary, judgment, or storytelling. This is my rendition of a definition for mindfulness.

I asked the group: "What happens when we get quiet? To what extent do we bring stillness and silence into our lives? How much of our time is devoted towards incessant doing? How much of our awareness is accompanied by an active and nettlesome internal dialogue?" This workshop time is an opportunity to experience stillness and silence in our being, to reacquaint ourselves or to delve in for the first time to explore what we find residing behind all the talk and storytelling.
William Butler Yeats said on this point “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clear, perhaps even with a fiercer, life because of our quiet.”

I asked the group at Brattleboro if anyone knew something of T.S. Eliot's biography, and whether he had had any meditation experience. One participant noted that he had and mentioned the closing line of the "The Wasteland" which are "Shantih shantih shantih." Shantih translates from Sanskrit as peace. I asked this question because of an excerpt from the Four Quartets that I shared that suggests Eliot understood mindfulness if not explicitly, then implicitly. He said:

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without
love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the
dancing.
...
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(costing not less than everything)

7 Principles of Applied Mindfulness

On 9 & 10 June 2005, I conducted a 2-day workshop for a group of 85 mental health professionals and nurses at the Brattleboro Retreat (now called Retreat Healthcare). The theme of the workshop was applying mindfulness in healthcare and I taught the 7 principles of applied mindfulness. Over the next 7 blog entries, I will present each of the 7 principles along with a poem that reflects the theme. I was heartened to see the number of people registered for this workshop – the biggest group I’ve trained thus far. I was also encouraged to see most everyone show up for the second day of training! The feedback for the training was very positive. There was a vocal minority that complained we spent too much time meditating. In fact, just more than 2 of the 12 training hours were spent in actual meditation. On the second day, I guided the group through an hour-long meditation on what I call the “obstacles to perfection.” Amazingly, the group was very still during this practice. After this mediation we went into role-playing mindfulness applications in clinical encounters. I shared with the group the primary underlying principle for applying mindfulness in psychotherapy and healthcare – be mindful yourself! Our own meditation practice is the primary intervention.

Namdev Chases a Dog

“There goes crazy Namdev,” said one shopkeeper to another. “Look at him, singing and dancing like a drunken man. And he is so absurdly thin. I hear that he never eats.” And thus begins the brief tale of Namdev, as presented in Wisdom's Blossoms: Tales of the Saints of India by Doug Glener and Sarat Komaragiri. Namdev, in the Indian tradition, would be called a god-intoxicant (someone who is “so intoxicated with the love of God that he would forget the needs of his body”). Namdev is an example of being in the world without attachment and petty self-concern. This is a tale of gentleness and generosity, of letting go of selfish needs and opening to the world with a spirit of unconditional giving. One day Namdev remembered that he had not eaten for days, so busy was he in prayer and devotion. A woman offered him chapatis (Indian flatbread) and ghee (clarified butter). He took the offering home and put it on his stove. While it was heating up, he went back into prayer. Meanwhile, a hungry stray and mangy dog from the neighborhood snuck into his home and took off with the chapatis. Namdev alarmed, took off after the dog, taking the ghee as he ran. He chased the dog throughout town and finally caught him in alley. Namdev asked the dog why he fled, and gently said “you cannot eat chapatis; without ghee. They will be tasteless and dry and stick in your throat. Here, let me put some ghee on them for you.”

The God Gene

I picked up the fascinating slim volume the God Gene. The author makes a case for a genetic basis of spiritual belief, citing twin studies showing that personality qualities such as self-transcendence have genetic concordance. He also discusses research into identifying the genes potentially responsible for this, and identifies one gene involved in monoamine metabolism. This is significant because the monoamines are involved in a number of processes from mood regulation to hallucinations during psychedelic drug experiences. The author, Dean Hamer, presents a number of fascinating research findings that I will share in an upcoming blog entry. For starters, I will share an interesting experience that happened to me while reading this book.

One evening, I was dining at the local culinary institute’s casual tavern. I was sitting at the bar, enjoying a meal by myself, reading the God Gene. This book has a bright yellow cover with the “God” emblazoned on it. I thought to myself about leaving the dust jacket in the car, and then dismissed the idea as irrelevant. While eating and reading, a thoughtful patron struck up a conversation with me regarding the book. While I was talking with him and sharing that it deals with the genetic basis of spiritual beliefs and the genetic and brain structures involved with spirituality, another man walked by and asked me a question. He said “I heard that since God is a man, and all men masturbate, then God must masturbate; is that true?” Astonished and perplexed by his question, I said “I wouldn’t presume to know.” This man had been drinking with a group of middle-aged folks who appeared to be part of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle club (perhaps a Vermont version of the Hell’s Angels at retirement age!). He repeated the question, and now it was obvious he was trying to get a reaction out of me. It was clear he was approaching me in response to what he read on the dust jacket of the book I had with me. The thoughtful man I had been talking with, started a conversation with this man. They talked for a while, and I returned to my dinner. Whatever they spoke about served to agitate the motorcycle man. He asked me what the book was about. I told him it was scientific research into the genetic basis of spirituality. I think all that he heard was I was some sort of religious freak. He started on a tirade, making sweeping generalizations about people like me, and my audacity to come into a public place and to provoke people with my book. At one point, he attempted to grab the book out of my hand. He was seething with anger. He was standing behind me, and had that combination of a measure of psychological suffering, alcohol, and a target for release. I feared if I got out of my seat to face him, he would resort to violence. Instead, I stayed put, watched my breath, and contained my own angry impulses over the indignation of being falsely accused like this, and patently misunderstood. As I learned later, this man’s daughter had been involved with a Christian cult in Island Pond Vermont, and he had been hurt by what he understood as religious freaks. In that moment of intoxication and opportunity, he misperceived my book as representing that which he feared and reviled. The irony is that he acted from the same psychological world of black and white generalizations that cults depend upon. It was not possible to reason with him, so I chose avoidance instead. This experience shook me up quite a bit. The nature of belief systems fascinates me, and I will certainly write future blog entries about this topic.

The Hidden Messages in Water

The film What the Bleep Do We Know!? presents research on water crystals that leaves the viewer saying “Wow!” The premise of the research is that thoughts and intentions (even those in writing) can affect the structure of water and that this structure can be revealed by taking photographs of the water while it is thawing after having been frozen. I showed this film recently in my Health Psychology Course, and one the students had a copy of the book The Hidden Messages in Water. After reading this book, I felt compelled to debrief my students and to encourage them to keep an open yet skeptical mind about the findings of the book. This book is not a scientific treatise. His methodology is spelled out in only the most general terms; a quick search on the Internet has not yielded any information on replication studies. Towards the end of this short book, he provides some important information about his methodology. He says “when water samples are put into Petri dishes – we usually make 50 samples – the resulting crystals differ, depending on how the water is handled and on the thoughts of the researcher. And the condition of the fifty samples of water changes moment by moment … For each of the fifty dishes, we make graphs showing the number of crystals in each dish that are considered beautiful, hexagon, incomplete, and so on. For each pattern, we establish a coefficient, and given number values to the crystals. This gives us a clear picture of the characteristics of the crystals in each individual sample, and we then can classify the samples into categories of beautiful, hexagon, and so forth. Then we choose one crystal to photograph that best represent the characteristics of that particular sample” Emoto assumes the truth that thoughts can influence the crystals, and was describing these methods in the context of the experiments where written words were taped to bottles of water and the effects observed. Revealing in this description is the apparent selection process that occurs. It is not clear that the selector of the most representative crystal is blind to the condition the water was exposed to. Not being blinded in this way, the observer can be biased on what is selected in a direction that confirms the working theory. This is a well-established principle in research methodology.

What you will find in the book are the ramblings of what sound like a sweet Japanese man who is trying to foster a spiritual approach to life. Since he believes thoughts can affect water and since human bodies are 70% water, it therefore supports the notion that our thoughts can be efficacious. He says “I believe I am also starting to see the way that people should live their lives.” His recommendation is to embrace love and gratitude because these form the most beautiful ice crystals. Such an approach to life does have scientific support, as studies in neuroscience have shown the brain function underlying positive and destructive emotions (stay tuned for future blog entries on the brain effects of mindfulness meditation). But this support does not refer to hidden effects on water. Unfortunately, by presenting his work as scientific, he takes potential advantage of the general population’s lack of scientific understanding. Without more emphasis on methodology (as any scientist would), he resorts to pseudoscience.

We can easily fool ourselves. Take for instance, his suggested experiment to intend thoughts towards clouds so that they will break up when we concentrate on them. I would encourage trying this experiment as well. Here is why this might appear to work – there is variation in the way the clouds move. As he suggests, it will take some time to hone your concentration so that the clouds appear to move from your intention. Therefore, we discard the failed attempts and pay attention to the apparent success. Let’s say it takes twenty trials to get one success. That is, after nineteen times of concentrating and the cloud not moving as intended, on the 20th time, it moves as we intended. Wow! Right? Not so fast. We are looking at a ratio of 1 in 20 or 5%. In science, it is recognized that sometimes an observed outcome will happen by chance. Therefore, in statistical analysis this randomness is taken into account, and something must demonstrate that the likelihood of it having occurred by chance is low. One standard is to say that the probability of chance occurrence should be less than 5%. This tells us that we should expect 1 observation out of 20 to look like it is a legitimate phenomenon when it is not (a chance occurrence). In order to do the cloud experiment properly, we would have to demonstrate that the clouds appear to move more often than would be predicted by chance. To do this, we must take into account all the times it does not work. This, by the way, is one way to explain other amazing-seeming coincidences. For example, you were just thinking about this friend and she calls, or you were just thinking about something and it is mentioned on the radio. We’ve all had these experiences. Maybe there is a disturbance in the morphic field that explains these phenomenon, or maybe we overlook the fact that each moment holds the possibility for such a revelation, and the vast majority of these moments yield no such coincidence. To read the occasional correspondence as significant, then, seems like a form of potential self-deception, similar to the clouds. Looked at statistically, asuccessful outcome one out of every tens of thousands of possibilities is just not that impressive. Our minds tend to collapse all the misses and dismiss them when the hit occur, striking in its prescience. I will try the cloud experiment, the next mild day when I can lay in the grass and apprehend the sky. I don’t want to be closed minded, and I will keep diligent track of my failures and try not to get too taken in with my triumphs.

He also presents a number of rather fantastic ideas such as the water on the earth arrived from an extraterrestrial source, and that “The human body requires the circulation of water, and we can conclude that this is what the universe also requires. If large volumes of water flow in only one direction, toward the earth, the circulation of water in the universe will ultimately come to a standstill.” Should we be worried about this? In fairness, Dr. Emoto has another book soon to be released, The True Power of Water, and I'll take a look at that when it is available

Bloviated Rhetoric

In his magnum opus, Coming to Our Senses, Jon Kabat-Zinn cautions against “bloviated rhetoric” and offers an approach to living based in mindfulness. I hold a great deal of respect and affection for Jon Kabat-Zinn. I am part of a movement he founded, or perhaps it was the Buddha who founded this movement, some 2500 years ago. And it is not a movement at all. At least not in the typical sense we understand a movement to be. I first met Jon Kabat-Zinn in Boston during the summer of 1993. He spoke at a Harvard conference on mind-body medicine. What he said made perfect sense to me. I’d been meditating Vipassana for several years by then. Mindfulness-based stress reduction. Of course. Eight years later, I bumped into him again. Not him specifically, more accurately what he had set in motion – the Center For Mindfulness. By 2001, Jon had retired to work on Coming to Our Senses and continue to speak, write, and research about mindfulness. I did the Professional Internship Program at the Center For Mindfulness, and after this experience decided to take Exquisite Mind into the community, instead of just corporate environments. The following year, I attended the first annual Mindfulness in Healthcare, Medicine, and Society conference. While there, I had the chance to meditate and do yoga with Jon, and to speak with him briefly. I told him how I appreciated all that he has done, as did, I am sure, the hundreds of others in attendance at the conference. At some level, I understand him intuitively (after all we are fellow Jewbhus), and at another level, he is an enigma – solid and transparent at the very same time. He is that rare person who can eschew notoriety and maintain an impeccable presence. Very curious. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) started as a demystified and stripped down, Worcester, Massachusetts version of the Buddha’s teachings. In the ensuing years since 1979, the sense that MBSR teaches dharma has become more accessible.

I went to Barnes & Noble one evening to purchase Coming to Our Senses. I didn’t expect it to be a tome – some 656 pages! I got intimidated and left the store empty handed (after all, look how many other books I already have cracked open). I just read the cliff notes version in an excellent article appearing in the Shambhala Sun.

Principle 5 of my 7 Principles of Applied Mindfulness comes directly from Jon and his example – teach what you can own. Jon taught by learning. He makes it very clear that in order to teach MBSR one should have a daily sitting practice and have sat at least two 10-day retreats. I have two such retreats under my belt (ignoring the fact that I kicked and screamed throughout each of the 20 days!). The Center For Mindfulness has not trademarked MBSR. I teach a version of it, as do hundreds of other professionals worldwide. And I suspect we each teach it with our own imprimatur. My imprimatur is the Strident Self (and future blog entries will be devoted to this important topic).

Allow Me to Forgive You

My good friend and colleague, Dr. Sam Standard, lectured in both my Health Psychology course and Introduction to Clinical Psychology course at UVM yesterday. We heard about his dissertation research conducted while obtaining his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Stanford. Forgiveness has been an underappreciated yet critical variable in health and self-perception. His research has shown the detrimental effects of not forgiving, or of being in a state of unforgivingness.

Forgiveness is not excusing, condoning, or letting the offender or situation off the hook. As Huston Smith said “it is not letting the past dictate the present.” This reminds me of the story of 2 Vietnam War POWs (recounted by Thich Nhat Hanh, I believe). At a reunion many years later, one veteran who had worked through a forgiveness process asked his POW companion, “have you forgiven our captors?” The other veteran said something to the effect of “I’ll never forgive them.” To which the forgiving veteran said, “then they still have you in prison.”

This imprisonment is more than psychological; it has measurable physiological effects. During one research protocol, subjects were asked to think about an event for which they had not forgiven. They did so for 5 minutes. For this mere 5 minutes worth of negative focus, they experienced an 8 to 12 hour climb in the stress hormone cortisol. Chronic cortisol activation leads to a host of health problems, as much research has identified. These effects include increased blood pressure, cholesterol, atherosclerosis, blood clotting, heart attack, suppression of the immune system, insulin resistance, loss of bone minerals, loss of muscle protein, and atrophy of brain cells. When we are focused on the unforgiveness narrative our heart variability resembles that of a person with advanced heart disease. However, a 5-minute heart-focused meditation (focusing a warm feeling in the region of the heart) creates a heart pattern that is markedly different (smooth as opposed to jagged).

The Stanford Forgiveness Project had subjects undergo a forgiveness intervention. The Stanford Forgiveness Project used a 3-step approach to creating and resolving grievances, which involved moving away from 1) taking events personally, 2) blaming others for our feeling overwhelmed (our rules being broken), and 3) creating the grievance narrative or story. This group-based mutltiweek intervention helps people to work through the process of being unforgiving to forgiving, drawing on cognitive behavioral principles. The steps involved in transforming a grievance included enhancing the ability to cope, which included working with physiological activation via relaxation, shifting rule-bound thoughts to preferences, and rewriting or retelling the grievance narrative. Measurable changes in stress physiology and negative affect were found for these subjects. Another forgiveness processs model (Worthington) involves recalling the original hurt, empathizing with the perspective of the transgressor, giving the altruistic gift of forgiveness (even if they don’t deserve it), making a public commitment to forgiveness, and then working to hold on to forgiveness.

While the forgiveness research does not explicitly refer to Buddhist philosophy, there exists a natural fit between forgiveness and mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation is a tool for managing physiological reactivity and automatic forms of narrative thinking, which are the two main components of the forgiveness intervention. Mindfulness helps us to become intimate with our thought patterns. This intimacy can help rules such as“people need to do what I expect ... or else!” yield to preferences, such as “I would prefer if people did what I expected, but I am not going to get bent out of shape about it if they don't.” To move into forgiveness we must let go of our suffering-inducing narratives of how we were hurt or wronged. One forgiveness researcher (Enright) defined forgiveness as “a willingness to abandon one’s right to resentment, negative judgment, and indifferent behavior toward one who unjustly hurt us, while fostering undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity and even love toward him or her.” This sounds like lovingkindness meditation! Sam notes that "mindfulness is a skillful means through which we can lay the foundation for cognitive restructuring. It provides the natural contrast medium so that we can better see the stridency of our rules for others. Plus, mindfulness of body allows one to literally feel unfogiveness, and to open to positive alternatives."

The Form of Meditation

Easter weekend I sat a 1-day Zen sesshin at the Shao Shan meditation center in East Calais, Vermont. Taihaku Gretchen Priest, who is an ordained Roshi in the Soto Zen tradition, founded the center and led the retreat. Shao Shan is a cozy practice center, built in the Japanese style. One interesting feature is that it does not have electricity. This appears to facilitate a very peaceful atmosphere. Most of my sitting practice has been in the Vipassana, Theravada Buddhist tradition, and I have done little in the Zen tradition. In Zen, the custom is to sit facing the wall with the eyes open gently and gazing at the wall. There is emphasis on the sitting posture -- erect with the fingers of the left hand resting over the right hand with palms facing the upwards, and the tips of the thumbs touching forming a bridge. There is a dignity and discipline to sitting in this way. We sat in cycles of 40 minutes sitting meditation followed by 10 minutes of walking. This is an atypical schedule. Most sesshins have 2.5 hour sitting intervals. The strict emphasis on form brings a different flavor to practice. I noticed that my seat -- the physical and psychological posture of sitting was more prominent. I recently read about a Zen practitioner named Tenkai (in the book, The God Gene). When asked what he does when he meditates, he said, “I sit.” When pressed for details, he again stated, “I sit.” Having sat in Zen, and experiencing the emphasis on form, I can understand this comment. Sitting and the seat (see “seat” in the explore mindfulness section) have an added meaning. Indeed, Taihaku provided little in the way of instructions or guidance throughout the day, with the exception of items of protocol and etiquette. I found this emphasis on form refreshing, and I have noticed a renewed emphasis on form in my daily sitting since the retreat. I always deemphasize the physical posture when teaching meditation to my patients and participants in mindfulness-based stress reduction classes. I have found that too rigid of an emphasis on external forms can make approaching initial practice forbidding. With experience though, putting energy into form can be facilitative. One evening after clinical practice, I was sitting in the studio alone. I usually sit in a half-lotus posture. This evening, I slipped into a full lotus and sat this way for nearly the entire 40 minutes I meditated. It was unusual to be so relaxed for so long in the full lotus.

Zen has two main branches: Soto and Rinzai. To simplify, Soto aims for a gradual awakening and Rinzai a more abrupt and sudden awakening. Rinzai more heavily relies on Koan practice and strict discipline such as being struck by a stick to remain awake and sitting erect through extended practice. There are close to 1 million pages on Zen to be found on the Internet, and any google search can keep you entertained for hours. To reach the Shao Shan Spiritual Practice Center, please call 802.456.7091. Taihaku will be in Japan during April and May, and there will be no programs. There is also a Zen Center in Shelburne Vermont.

Greetings and Beginnings

Where to begin? At the beginning I suppose! And that beginning takes its start in the present moment. It is, perhaps, a wonderful thing that what I've been involved with for the past 22 years now has some cultural cache and even cliché connotation -- wherever you go, there you are ... I'd rather be here now ... ! I know very little about web logs or blogging. Despite my naivety, there is an intuitive appeal to this as a form of public journal keeping to disseminate the benefits of mindfulness, and as a motivation towards a writing commitment. I see the blog as an extension of the newsletter. The newsletter will continue with the blog serving as the source material. It is an exciting time for Exquisite Mind, and it seems like the right moment to venture out into the world to communicate in this way. I feel a certain gravity and responsibility for this project. I invite you to come to this space on a regular basis to read, reflect, and link in ways that will deepen your understanding of mindfulness and inspire action. I beg your patience with this venture, as it may take a while to find the rhythm of this medium, and for those inevitable days when a posting does not appear. I am excited for this to be a journey into mindfulness for myself and for everyone who honors me with their eyeballs and their attention for a few minutes each day.

What will you find on this blog? As with the newsletter, entries may have a themes related to incorporating mindfulness into daily life. There may be a poem, I've read or written that reflects this theme. I will present research articles I am reading on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, and I will present excerpts from the books I am writing, and from books I am reading. The Blog library will be an expanding compendium of lists, links, and resources regarding this journey. Click below to see the blog library.