Friday, July 29, 2005

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 ...

Thursday, July 28, 2005

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 ...

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

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.

Monday, July 25, 2005

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 ...

Sunday, July 24, 2005

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

Friday, July 22, 2005

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 ...

Thursday, July 21, 2005

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 ...

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

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 ...

Sunday, July 17, 2005

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.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

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)

Monday, July 04, 2005

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.