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!