Exquisite Mind: Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy and Beyond

Impermanence in Action

2008-10-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

Fall in Northern Vermont is a spectator sport. People from around the country and the world come to view our spectacular colors. These leaf peepers (or leapers as I like to call them) marvel at the fireworks display of the Green Mountains, now orange, yellow, and red. The leaves are falling now and the last display of colors is waning. This season shows what is present around us at all times. This dramatic show makes it easier to appreciate the nature of impermanence. I find this to be a poignant time. My appreciation of the beauty is tinged with a mixture of awe and sadness. Change is upon us, and winter is close on its heels. There are still leaves on the trees outside my window, but they'll soon be gone. Each day we grow older and one day closer to death. Each hour and each minute too. Each breath. This may sound morbid, but it is not meant to be. If we can appreciate this passing, perhaps we'll be more appreciative of life. Perhaps we can appreciate the gift that life is and be present to it.

The passing of the season makes my awareness of the suffering of loved ones more poignant too. A beloved friend has been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. My grandmother has been critically ill in the hospital. This, too, is impermanence in action. The difficulty appreciating change, I think, stems from our imposition of agendas onto experience. These agendas are mostly subtle and hidden, yet pervasive. We always want or expect things to be a certain way. I want my experience to be just so; I want my circumstances to be just so. When they are not dissatisfaction arises. A lack of agendas opens the way for interest to arise. If we don't have an agenda, a need for things to be just so, we can take interest in what actually is. If we can be interested we circumvent dissatisfaction. I tried to convey this sensibility to my mindfulness students at UVM last week. We did an hour long meditation and everyone was asked to resist the temptation to move. This instruction creates a crucible to examine our ceaseless agendas. We want entertainment, comfort, and the freedom to move about. How difficult is it to relinquish these agendas for one hour out of life? As we went through the practice, they were encouraged to examine the nature of concepts like restlessness, impatience, and boredom. We had the opportunity to touch the nature of discomfort, and even pain. We could see how "deconstructing" these concepts opens a space of perfection. Perfection is the place where interest makes seamless contact with what is present. There are no agendas to get in the way and no room for suffering or dissatisfaction to arise.

Things are perfect in their imperfection. This notion of perfection is not meant to encourage passive resignation to "imperfect" conditions. We can certainly work towards making things better. As Shunryu Suzuki said: "Everything is perfect, but there is much room for improvement." When we work towards change we respect the present and try to relinquish agendas that get in the way of realizing what we are trying to achieve. Many of these agendas revolve around impermanence. If we try to resist the changing of nature of things, we are caught being perfectionistic, which is anathema to perfection. The change of the season embodies perfection.

Mind FITness for Golf

2008-06-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

Americans spent $4.7 Billion on golf equipment in 2002 according to the National Golf Foundation. Drivers are bigger; balls go further. Despite these facts, scores are NOT going down. Surprisingly, the average handicap has dropped only .5 since 2000. Pro scores have risen .26 strokes over past 10 years. David Feherty writing for Golf Magazine muses, “Maybe we’re all supposed to stink at this. It’s our punishment for playing this insane game.” The best equipment in the world won’t make your game better if you don’t have the fundamentals; if you haven’t received the proper instruction, practiced, and played sufficiently. Even if you have the right equipment, instruction, and experience, if your mind is not your ally, your game will suffer. Our attitude and mental approach are crucial if we are to be successful in this game, whether that success is measured as enjoyment or as going low. We know how to buy equipment, to take lessons, to practice, and to play rounds. How, though, can we train our minds?

We tend to take attention for granted. Because attention is a faculty that originates between the ears, we think we have this mastered. Attention, like chipping and putting, requires training, and lot’s of it. Most of us just take whatever attention we have and spend most of our time engaged in an internal dialogue. When we are playing golf, this dialog may be crucial. What are we telling ourselves? Are we providing ourselves with supportive encouraging messages or are we castigating ourselves and complaining? Can we concentrate on the task at hand sufficiently to execute to the best of our current capacities?

A set of techniques and skills called mindfulness, derived from an ancient form of meditation, can help to make your game more consistent, skillful, and enjoyable. Mindfulness is a method for training and managing attention. Mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention that focuses attention on what is happening precisely now. To be mindful is to give all of our attention to whatever is happening now. The now of playing consists of feelings in the body as you walk between holes, swing the club, and notice the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of being outside on the course. More specifically, there are the feelings of the club in your hands, the sensations in your arms, torso, and entire body as you conduct a swing. The breath as it is gently forced from the body in the torque of the swing. To train mindful awareness, attention is placed on the physical process of breathing or other sensations in the body. That is, noticing the sensations in the nose, mouth, chest, and abdomen that arise during inhalation and exhalation. When attention wanders, which it will quite readily, attention is picked up and escorted back to the awareness of breathing. This process is repeated as often as necessary. Mindfulness is nothing more complicated than that.

The Exquisite Mind of Golf brings together mind, brain, and body to help you play your best. Doc Arnie’s Mind FIT clinics complement professional swing instruction with a professional instructor. These clinics can help you to get the most out your lessons and skill level while providing more enjoyment to your game. If you get angry, frustrated, or discouraged while playing, or if you want to refine your attention skills and deepen your understanding and appreciation for the psychology of the game, these clinics are for you. My Mind FIT program can help you to accomplish the following goals:

Manage mental factors that can interfere with your game:
• Develop fierce attention to facilitate your performance and enjoyment
• Become skilled at being calm in the face of the unexpected and unwanted
• Increase your enjoyment of the game no matter how you play
• Learn the basics of mindfulness meditation which will facilitate above goals

For more detailed information, please visit: http://exquisitemind.com/golf.html

Arnie Kozak, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and golf consultant. He maintains a private practice, Exquisite Mind, in downtown Burlington and teaches for the psychology department at the University of Vermont. To his recent passion for golf, he brings 25 years of clinical and meditation experience. “Doc” trains individuals from all walks of life to use mindfulness to their benefit. He is the author of the forthcoming book Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness (Wisdom Publications, spring 2009).

Are you a Buddhist? (part four)

2008-05-20T03:17:00.000-07:00

Returning now to the topic of of Are You a Buddhist with the fourth installment of this consideration. See posts from March for parts one through three.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist provides four criteria to consider. To be a Buddhist, one must believe in all four of these tenets or seals. These are: 1) all compounded things are impermanent, 2) all emotions are pain, 3) all things have no inherent existence, and 4) nirvana is beyond all concepts.

In this last installment, we'll discuss the proposition that "nirvana is beyond all concepts." Nirvana has been discussed for thousands of years but what does it mean for it to be beyond concepts. Does it mean it is an experience that can't be described in language or is it beyond the conceptual apparatus of the brain. William James in the class Varieties of Religious Experience notes the four qualities of the mystical experience: 1) ineffability, 2) noetic quality, 3) transiency, and 4) passivity.

If we are supposed to regard nirvana as beyond concepts and language it would accord with William James's definition as ineffable and noetic. However, concept suggests something more than language. Without getting into the discussion of whether we can have concepts independent of language, to be beyond concepts is a higher standard to achieve. Can the brain transcend itself in this way? 95% of mental life is conducted unconsciously. This is not a Freudian dynamic unconscious, but a cognitive processing one. For example, the brain reduces information from the eye by a factor of 100: 1 (100 million light sensing cells reduce to 1 million going to the brain). Categories help us to lessen information density via filters that constrain what we actually see. If we attempt to consciously inhibit or override these categories, we can enhance our access to sensory and perceptual information (to the extent that these can be consciously accessed). Lakoff and Johnson in their book Philosophy in the Flesh caution against the hope to overhaul the category system: “A small percentage of our categories have been formed by conscious acts of categorization, but most are formed automatically and unconsciously as a result of functioning in the world. Though we learn new categories regularly, we cannot make massive changes in our category systems through conscious acts of recategorization” (1999, p. 18). However, by deliberately inhibiting the formation of categories to the extent that we can, we avoid making premature judgments about others, increase the opportunity for novelty, and allow the ordinary to become the extraordinary. Mindfulness meditation practice provides a set of tools to facilitate this category inhibition. What’s the big deal, you might ask. Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying, “If you’ve seen one redwood tree you’ve seen them all.” Siegel in his book Mindful Brain depicts the cost of invariance: “In many ways such learning oppresses our raw sensory experience by muddying the waters of clear perceptions with prior expectation. As we grow into adulthood, it is very likely that these accumulated layers of perceptual models and conceptual categories constrict subjective time and deaden our feelings of being alive. Without the intention effort to awaken, life speeds by. We habituate to experience perceiving through the filter of the past and not orienting ourselves to novel distinctions of the present.”

But these consideration fall short of the consideration of nirvana. Lakoff and Johnson are not sanguine about our neurological chances for achieving nirvana as a place beyond all categories. "We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, “get beyond” our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that.” If this argument is valid, I may have to depart company with Rinpoche on meeting this Buddhist criteria. In review, I can endorse at least 3 out of 4 of the criteria and I'm still trying to understand the fourth. Now, when people ask me, "Are you a Buddhist," I say "yes." Was that so hard?!

April Moon

2008-05-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

To say it is orange is not right. Red-orange, perhaps. Blood-orange. The sun moved out of sight in the west just beyond the shoulder of the 18th tee box. As I turned my back to the burning star, I beheld the view from 18. The Green Mountains in their purple-mountain majesty. Still himals in April, snow covered and littered with people earlier in the day carving lines through its snowy depths. I love the view from 18. Classic Vermont. Yet tonight there was something else. The moon in its full flower was rising just to the north of Bolton Mountain. This was certainly worth the walk around the course; certainly worth working through the fatigue and the soreness to continue playing. As I hit my approach shot, it soared into the sky towards that fat moon. The moon blessed it and the shot rolled inside the edge of the green. We were able to finish in the waning light of the day. A summer day in spring and the close to a long winter, six months long.

Why do people (the uninformed) think that golf is not athletic? I can barely stand after walking 18 short holes and I'm in pretty good shape. This game involves walking with a heavy bag, bending, swinging, and concentrating. The swing is a full body movement. My shoulders are strained and tender. I'm ready to collapse. I don't think I could do what Tiger Woods and Trevor Immelman do -- play four rounds in four days. Admittedly, they don't have to carry their own bag, but golf is a sport, and a fitness requiring and fitness promoting one at that (provided you walk and don't drink too much beer along the way).

Click here to see my home course, the Links at Lang Farm.

Integrating Mindfulness-Based Interventions into Medicine, Health Care, and the Larger Society 6 th Annual Conference for Clinicians, Researchers,

2008-04-26T03:52:00.000-07:00

I presented a paper at the annual mindfulness conference in Worcester, Massachusetts. This conference has grown to more than 475 participants from 15 countries. I conducted a presentation-dialog entitled: "Challenges and Triumphs of Teaching Mindfulness in the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum." I presented the format of semester-long mindfulness meditation course that I teach at the University of Vermont. This year, I met a researcher from Australia and mindfulness and yoga instructor from New Brunswick Canada and many others. I attended sessions on treating chronic pain, teaching mindfulness in the workplace and in the medical school, and the relationship between meditation and spirituality (the topic of a course that I teach: The Psychology of Transcendence). See the conference brochure here. Next year I will propose to do two presentations. First will be a 3-hour workshop on mindfulness for sports, in particular golf; the other will be another presentation dialog on my book, which should be just about to come out at that time. Mindfulness is a hot topic with a burgeoning of research, books, and programs. One interesting encounter was Dr. Kathleen Hall, founder of the Stress Institute and mindfulness-based TV network. She has taken mindfulness mainstream: Oprah, Cosmo, and more. Her approach is provocative. Does it dilute the message of mindfulness to take it mainstream and to deconstruct it into sound bites that have mass market appeal? Is the traditional approach too inaccessible to the average person, and by extension arrogant and presumptuous? What is lost and gained in this approach. I'm sure the debate will continue.

Mud Season

2008-04-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

Mud season in Northern Vermont makes impermanence comprehensible. It shows us impermanence in action. Today the sun is shining and the mercury has climbed over 50. The trails through the woods and up the hill are alternatively snow, ice, frozen ground, mud, dry, and deep puddles. The earth changes with every step. Water is in all of its forms: frozen, water, and spring vapor that fills my running lungs. Everything is in flux. The earth reveals itself bashfully like a reluctant stripper; showing the brown decay and the perennial green of moss and lichen. And then covering herself over again with deep corn snow and submerging in cool puddles filled with the past like the streams starting to roar. These changes remind me of the changes within myself. From moment-to-moment the body changes. It is hungry, thirsty, and moving in and out of comfort and pain. This, too, is impermanence in action. The sense of the permanence is sustained by the repetition of stories of identity. Such stories are a favorite activity of the Storytelling Mind. I've reflected recently on the nature of identity and the multiplicity of stories that I am engaged with. At any given time, I can identify with being an author (currently writing 5 books), clinical health psychologist and psychotherapist, professor, academic (currently writing 6 articles), athlete (runner, golfer), yogi, consultant and motivational speaker (not to mention homeowner, friend and family member). Not enough time to do them all and choices have to be made. How many different identities do you have? How we relate to these identities is crucial. If they are seen as fixed we can become stuck. If they are seen as fluid and flexible we can engage in a dialog that knows possibilities. Can we allow self-identity to be like mud season? A collection of contradictions and different states of being. Can we make room for everything that is happening without judgment; allowing it all to be there? If so, then we can taste impermanence in action.

Heart of a Dog

2008-03-30T03:24:00.000-07:00

This blog entry is dedicated to the memory of Tanner.

Tanner lived intensely and loved intensely. In four and a half years he summited all of the mountains within an hours drive of Burlington and was known to go on epic mountain bike rides 5+ hours with Caleb and his friends. Tanner always ran behind the lead biker's back tire and Sweety our other little dog was the caboose. His speed was phenomenal and he loved to chase squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits. We are almost certain that he left this world in hot pursuit of a great scent. We miss him dearly. Our friends and family knew what a special dog he was and we will cherish the love he shared with us during his all too brief time on earth -- Caroline.

Maurice is my neighbor's black dog. A mix of black lab and some other big dog. He spent a recent weekend with us, showing the purity of his heart. When left alone he was quiet and slept sprawled out on the floor wherever he lay. When approached, he wriggled with excitement. On one of our walks around Colchester Pond, we encountered some people who had two grown German Shepard puppies. They quickly established dominance over Maurice and had him quivering on his back, receiving their playful nips. With much growling and action, a casual onlooker might have seen this as an aggressive scene. Yet on closer inspection, I could see the attacks were just nips, and that the scene was one of play. The play helps the dogs to establish their social hierarchy. Maurice in his good nature submits to the more dominant energy of the other dogs. A social contract is formed with no blood spilled and no egos bruised. Maurice will not be going to his psychotherapist complaining of how two other dogs "beat him up" and the trauma of it all. Animals have play to, among others things, avoid violence. Humans sometimes confuse the two such as in the recent soccer violence in Italy. Perhaps we'd be better off if we were playing instead of just watching. The dog also lacks ego (self-importance), probably because they don't have enough of a frontal lobe in their brains to support it. This helps them to avoid the painful self-reflections that we are prone to. Dogs seem to be mostly limbic -- that is, ruled by the emotional center of the brain. They live on instinct and affection. My Rhodesian Ridgeback often appears to be pensive, even lugubrious, but dangle a milk bone in front of him or announce that there are squirrels in the vicinity and he becomes pure emotion -- attention ready for action. He goes from middle-age to puppyhood in a flash. I believe the dog's heart is pure, which is to say unentangled by abstract desires. If dogs can think about the future or the past, they certainly don't hold onto it. They return to the present with an ease that we should take note of, and to ask if we could live the same way.

I always get annoyed when I hear something on the news about innocent victims. What human is innocent? And what does this mean exactly? Whatever innocence is dogs embody it. Dogs can show some of the afflictions that we are prone to: desire and aversion in particular. Yet they seem to touch these briefly and return to the present. It's the rare dog that displays afflictive or negative emotions such as jealousy and aggression. They are innocent because they lack painful self-reflection and are oriented to attach. They are unabashedly hungry for both food and love. They retain a youthful view of the world even when they are aging. We can learn from their way of being in the world. For instance: never let an opportunity for a nap pass. As Wislawa Symborska, the Polish Nobel Laureate, says in her poem "In Praise of Feeling Bad for Yourself" the animals heart is light and conscience clear. There are no vexing thoughts or stories to get in the way of this moment; nothing to obstruct the bliss of sleep. We could learn something from this.

Are You A Buddhist? (part three)

2008-03-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist provides four criteria to consider. To be a Buddhist, one must believe in all four of these tenets or seals. These are: 1) all compounded things are impermanent, 2) all emotions are pain, 3) all things have no inherent existence, and 4) nirvana is beyond all concepts.

Let's continue with number three: "All things have no inherent existence." What could this possibly mean? Things certainly feel real, don't they? Isn't this just some kind of Buddhist double-talk? Physics may provide a clue. The objects we interact with every moment of our lives, including the bodies we have are mostly made of space. Each atom is mostly space. The appearance of solidity is provided by the energy of the circulating electrons and other particles of each atom. At the quantum, sub-atomic, level things get really weird and unpredictable, yet the world of objects we inhabit follows the laws of physics. Richard Dawkins calls the world we inhabit "middle world." Middle world, however, is not the absolute nature of things but only its relative nature. A physicist at the University of Buffalo once told me that if all the space was taken out of atoms the universe would be the size of a bowling ball. The entire universe! Perhaps this is what the Buddha meant by "all things have no inherent existence" even though he did not have the scientific knowledge to prove it. What are the implications of this lack of inherent existence? For one, I think it means we should not take ourselves or our situations so seriously. The universe is simply made of space! It's all empty. Another implication is this emptiness that I just mentioned. What is emptiness? Beyond the layers and textures of desire lies bare existence. This emptiness is considered to be luminous but lacking any solidity. The implication stemming from the Buddha's teachings is thus generosity. Generosity? When we no longer cling to things as me and mine, we are free to be more generous. When we no longer put vast amounts of energy into protecting things with no inherent existence we are lighter (that is, less self-important as noted above), and more generous. To read further:

To learn more about Dongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, please visit his website Siddhartha's Intent.

Are You A Buddhist? (part two)

2008-03-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist provides four criteria to consider. To be a Buddhist, one must believe in all four of these tenets or seals. These are: 1) all compounded things are impermanent, 2) all emotions are pain, 3) all things have no inherent existence, and 4) nirvana is beyond all concepts.

2) All emotions are pain. Certainly pleasure would not be included. But Rinpoche says "all." But how could pleasure be pain? Every experience contains its own end, especially pleasurable experiences. We may want to hold onto pleasure; to not let it go. Trying to hold on contains the seeds of dissatisfaction or dukkha. Dukkha (often translated as "suffering") pervades everything that we have a vested interest in. Whenever we are awake to what is happening this arising and passing away becomes apparent, painfully apparent. Once again this is impermanence, the first of Rinpoche's criteria. I am inclined to agree that desire, if I can rephrase slightly, is tinged with pain. This principle leads to a misconception about the Buddhist approach. Is Rinpoche advocating an emotionless and desireless way of being? I don't think this is exactly accurate. It would be more accurate to say that we can become more flexible with our emotions and desires. It would be less painful if we could have fewer expectations. Another misconception claims that having fewer expectations results in having fewer goals. Not necessarily so. We still aim towards goals; we still act in the world. When things don't go as expected we respond to reality proactively. What becomes absent is the self-referencing drama about how we didn't get what we wanted, how the world is cruel and capricious, and how the future is irrevocably tarnished.

Another way to interpret this seal is to look at the meaning of "emotion." In a chapter written with my late mentor, Terrance Brown, M.D., a distinction is made between emotions and feelings. Emotions are highly charged and disruptive experiences, both positive and negative. They arise when our capacities to cope are overwhelmed. The emotions restore equilibrium albeit in a primitive and expensive way. As we develop through infancy into adulthood, we become less emotional; emotions arise less often because we have more sophisticated ways of coping with situations (namely intelligence). Feelings in contrast to emotions are ubiquitous and serve the function of helping us to navigate in an uncertain world. Confusion arises because all emotions contain intense feelings but not all feelings rise to level of emotions. By making this distinction between emotions and feelings, we can now revisit the seal "all emotions are pain." This certainly would be the case. Emotions by their very nature are painful because they arise when we can't cope with reality in that moment. They are primitive, disruptive, and expensive. The goal of emotional development is to get rid of emotions altogether and to refine our capacity to use feelings and intelligence to problem solve.

(Brown, Terrance A., and Arnold Kozak. 1998. Emotion and the possibility of psychologists entering into heaven. In What develops in emotional development?, ed. Michael F. Mascolo and Sharon Griffin, 135-155. New York: Plenum Press. )

Are you a Buddhist?

2008-03-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

I often get asked this question, and I usually go through a song and dance with caveats and qualifications. I am reminded of Larry Rosenberg in this way. Once after giving a long preamble, his wife said to him, "why not just say yes?" In 1985, I took the Bodhisattva vows from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. By doing so, I vowed to attained enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. This sounds fairly Buddhist. But my rational, empirical, and skeptical self brings up objections. What about rebirth? I don't believe in that. As a skeptic, I would need to see evidence. What about karma? Again, show me the evidence. There is much in Buddhism that is prescientific, as one would expect about a set of teachings that are 2500 years old. His Holiness recently gave the keynote address at the annual neuroscience meeting . See the Washington Post article here.

""What relation could there be between Buddhism, an ancient Indian philosophical and spiritual tradition, and modern science?" he said. His answer was that the scientific empirical approach and the Buddhist exploration of the mind and world have many similarities."

When asked what he would do if science contradicted Buddhist belief, he said he would alter his Buddhist beliefs. This is a striking statement for a religious leader to make, and I can think of no other who would dare to make such a statement. In his case, it is not just a statement; he walks to the talk. For more on the relationship between Buddhism and science see his memoir on science:

But I digress. From his Holiness's example, we see a compatibility between science and Buddhism, and this makes me feel more comfortable. At a practical level, I endeavor to live my life in accordance with Buddhist ideals and principles such as do no harm (trying, but not always successful) and cultivating the mind through meditation. From the outside perspective, it certainly looks as though I am a Buddhist.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist provides four criteria to consider. To be a Buddhist, one must believe in all four of these tenets or seals. These are: 1) all compounded things are impermanent, 2) all emotions are pain, 3) all things have no inherent existence, and 4) nirvana is beyond all concepts.

Do I qualify on these grounds? Let's take a look at these criteria one by one. "All compounded things are impermanent." Show me something that is permanent? All things seem to be changing; what stays the same? Things are constantly changing; much of life is comprised of rhythms such as breathing, eating, digesting, sleeping and waking. We're never done. Things never stay clean or organized. Everything moves towards disorganization and decay unless we leverage energy against it. Even in the big picture, the universe is not static. It's expanding at at some future time will cease to exist. This sounds pretty impermanent, so I'd have to agree with Rinpoche on this point. Next: "all emotions are pain." I'll take this up in a future blog entry. Stay tuned!

To learn more about Dongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, please visit his website Siddhartha's Intent.

Cold Buddha Shivers ... and Smiles!

2008-03-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

14 degrees in Burlington and it feels colder with a stiff breeze scaling the hill from the lake. The wind bites like a teething puppy. It's easy to mistake this attention as personal. "How dare you get in my face like this," the mind muses. The next morning the mercury stumbles out of bed, still half asleep at 12 degrees below zero. It was once thought that cold was a substance added to things like air and water. If cold is a substance it could slap us in the face. But, of course, cold isn't a substance. The air and water are the same as on a sunny summer day. It's all a matter of motion. Cold is slow, and if it gets really slow, like absolute zero slow (minus 273 degrees centigrade), some bizarre things start to happen (Bose-Einstein condensates). But I digress. Short of situations with a risk for hypothermia, we are free to approach cold in a more playful way. We can quiet the complaining mind and investigate how the cold actually feels. Not the concept of the cold, but the actual phenomenon of cold happening in the present. It was said that the hot Buddha sweats and the cold Buddha shivers. I would add that we can shiver with a smile. By making contact with the actual cold instead of the concept of cold, we can transform the experience from a difficult one into a pleasant or a neutral one. Equanimity from the Pali "upekkha" can also be translated as "interest." When we can bring a genuine and abiding interest to something we can also be even minded and alleviate suffering. The body is shivering and cold, and the mind is unaffected by this state of the body. With this sort of interest we relinquish expectations, agendas, and petty desires for comfort and ease. Today the mercury is soaring and the snow is melting. Hot Buddha sweats. The changing weather reminds us of impermanence, but that is a story for another day.

Polly Young-Eisendrath

2008-03-01T09:21:00.001-08:00

I have the pleasure of teaching from one of Polly Young-Eisendrath's texts this semester (The Psychology of Mature Spirituality). Polly is a colleague and friend, who is an authority on feminism, Jungian analysis, and the interface between Zen and psychotherapy. She is a sought after speaker, and her next public conference will be at Harvard this spring: Click here for conference information ... Polly will also be presenting at the Omega Institue in Rhinebeck New York this summer at a conference entitled Love & Relationships: What the Buddhists Teach along with Silvia Boorstein, John Tarrant, and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Click here for workshop information ...

Polly's latest book, forthcoming in the next few months is entitled "The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance" which chronicles the difficulties of the current young generation and seeks to undertand this dissatisfaction from a psychological and cultural perspective. You can learn more about the Self-Esteem Trap and Polly at Polly's website ...

Below is a selected list of Polly's published books with descriptions and links to purchase on Amazon.

Awakening and Insight: "The intersection of East and West is a vital one on many levels. The efforts to integrate Buddhism and its therapeutic ancestors to the Western ideas of Jungian Psychology have been particularly fruitful. Taking Japanese Zen-Buddhism as its starting point, Awakening and Insight is a collection of critiques and histories of Buddhism from a psychological perspective. Based on accounts of the Buddhism and Depth Psychology conference that took place in Kyoto in 1999, this volume serves to unite the cousins of Eastern religion and Western thought. Featuring a new translation of the historic conversation between Schinichi Hisamatsu and Carl Jung which took place in 1958, Awakening and Insight will be of great interest to anyone interested in Psychology and Buddhism."

Women and Desire: "In providing some answers to Freud's famous question about what women really want, Young-Eisendrath draws on her experience as a psychotherapist and on ideas gleaned from Buddhism, Jung and feminist writings. She argues that most women don't have a clue about what they want because society has programmed them simply to want to present a desirable image. Illustrating her thesis with mythic tales and case studies of her own patients, the author shows how our culture recognizes two female stereotypes: the beautiful muse and the ugly hag-bitch who wields power to fulfill her own desires. Women should not be objects of desire, but subjects of desire, she writes, not only in personal relationships but in the workplace. While women may believe that competence leads to success at work, she contends that "what leads to power is self-promotion, making the right connections and being self-confident." According to Young-Eisendrath, women's rampant consumerism, shoplifting and binge eating are simply manifestations of unconscious desires. Although she contends that established religions have subordinated women, the author advocates learning to distinguish pathological desires from authentic ones through traditional spiritual practices or New Age feminist communities. She treads on familiar ground, but Young-Eisendrath writes with authority, offering women a valuable perspective on understanding and changing self-defeating behaviors."

Psychology of Mature Spirituality: "Split into three sections - integrity, wisdom and transcendence the book describes and analyses a mature form of "skeptical spiritually" that will be a hallmark of future years. Analytical psychology text addressing the question of how to reconcile spiritual and religious practices with intelligence and rationality, two hallmarks of the secular age. Combines developmental and depth psychology with religious studies to create a concept of 'skeptical spirituality."

You're Not What I Expected: "Along with reciprocal trust and shared power, dialogue between equals "on a personal and public level" is essential to the experience of full intimacy in heterosexual relationships. So argues Jungian therapist and feminist Young-Eisendrath ( Hags and Heroes ) in this persuasive guide. In accessible language, she demonstrates that culture, not biology, promotes the gender-based stereotypes that, along with shattered dreams, often prevent couples from establishing true intimacy. The reader sits in on intensive sessions of "dialogue therapy" as practiced by the author and her social worker husband, Ed Epstein, with four composite couples. In addition to aiding the husbands and wives in facing their own and each other's limitations and negative feelings, these dialogues are intended to foster "mature dependence" and to lead the couples to the recognition that attachment and suffering go together."

The Gift of Suffering: "Psychotherapist Young-Eisendrath (The Cambridge Companion to Jung, Morrow, 1993) combines insights of Jungian psychology and Buddhist meditation to fashion a reflection on the creativity of suffering and loss. Through the stories of several individuals who gained new perspectives on self and the world through a creative use of their suffering, Young-Eisendrath constructs a journey of resilience and renewal that involves compassion, Jungian alchemy, and selflessness."

Reslient Spirit

Hags and Heroes

Cambridge Companion to Jung

Gender and Desire

Virginia Tech

2007-04-23T10:48:00.001-07:00

Today marked the one-week anniversary of the shooting in Blacksburg, Virginia. Those times were commemorated this morning with silence and a release of balloons. This past week on NPR I heard that New Orleans is currently experiencing 2 murders per day, which is a lot for a city with only 200,000 or so people. These murders have been making headlines. The commentator noted that 2 murders in Chicago might not make the news. How we react to a situation has a much to do with the kind of categories we put the incident within. The shootings at Virginia Tech, like those at Columbine High School in Colorado, or the Essex Middle School in Vermont get put into a certain category -- tragic shootings in a school where such things should not happen. The kidnapping and murder of just one student at the University of Vermont made national news last fall. Other incidents such as murders in cities that occur on a daily basis and the deaths of armed service members in Iraq, and the deaths of countless people every day around the world as a result of bombings, genocide, or starvation are put into other categories. As far I as I know, there are no memorial services every 16 days for the 32 murder victims in New Orleans. Yet, the same amount of people have died as died in Blacksburg. These people are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and neighbors. Smalll groups may be mourning, but the nation or world of concerned strangers are not. The President of the Unversity of Vermont has circulated emails about the Virginia Tech tragedy, as is appropriate and expected. Yet he does not circulate emails about all the other tragedies around the world. Why? It is because we put things in different categories. I am not criticizing the President of UVM, for whom I have a great deal of respect. The problem I address is ubiquitous.

Mindfulness helps us to see our categories, and one way to think about mindlessness is to be bound by our categories that cut us off from reality. It makes sense to mourn and honor the death of those that died in Virginia. It does NOT make sense to ignore the deaths of others that do not fit the category of "things that should not happen."

Featured Book: The Sanity We Are Born With

2007-01-07T07:48:00.001-08:00

The late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a prolific writer and speaker. He viewed Buddhism for the West as a psychological affair, and I am reading his collection of essays on psychology and for psychologists. It is interesting that he choose this explicit secular approach to disseminate his "religion" in the West. Perhaps because of the intellectual atmosphere of Boulder Colorado, or perhaps due to an understanding of Americans at this time in the 1970s, he led with psychology. As one of the preeminent teachers of Buddhism in the West, he may have guessed right. To purchase this book on Amazon, click on the link below.

The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology

Cleomi

2007-01-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

Today, 4 January 2006 is the 2nd anniverssary of Cleomi's death. I am including the text from the acknowledgements page from the website, written shortly after her passing. The busyness of my days often interferes with my ongoing grief around this loss. In quiet moments, I will catch a glimpse of a photograph and I'll feel her presence. I'll remember her passing, how she shuddered as her heart gave way and the flaccid weight of her body as I draped her across her my shoulder.
"My beloved dog Cleomi inspired the vision of this site, and hence the its orginal launch name of cleomi.com. Cleomi's beauty and grace seemed a fitting symbol for the content I wish to represent on this site. In a very direct sense, my relationship with this animal, who is "3 genes away from being human" (according to one dog expert who knows her well), has taught me much about compassion, patience, and love - all key ingredients for being a human being and a psychotherapist. At around 7 pm on the evening of 4 January 2004 my beloved Cleomi left the world. She developed lymphoma 18 months before this and had her spleen removed. She had a rich and robust life since that diagnosis, climbing mountains, circumambulating Indian Brook Reservoir and Colchester Pond, and going on secret daylong adventures with her brother Ruki. About a month ago, she started growing weak and losing weight. She was severely anemic, due to the development of leukemia. She went quickly and at home. She was 10 years young this past May. She has enjoyed lounging at home with Ruki, her tireless and faithful companion, who seems lost in her absence. I am heartened to know she lived an exceptional life, spending her first few years on the track as Speedo Gena, and then spending most of the rest of her hours off-leash, running and loving life. She swam in the ocean, Lake Champlain, Colchester Pond, and Indian Brook Reservoir; she climbed Camel’s Hump, Mt. Hunger, Mt. Mansfield, and Mt. Laraway. She was a social leader among her peers, and a general goofball. She was gentle, loving, and intelligent."

Cleomi received Exquisite Care over the years from the wonderful people at the See Spot Run Kennel in Jeffersonville, Vermont. You may contact Tracie for more information at dogkeep@sover.net. For more information about adopting a greyhound you may visit the National Greyhound Adoption Program, or The Adopt-A-Greyhound Project.

No Excuses

2007-01-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

If I were to pick a motto for the New Year, I elect “no excuses.” This is the year I write my book, no excuses. My second cousin, Michael Chorost wrote his memoir “Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human” in 2005. This heartfelt and compelling story, chronicles his journey from a person with a hearing disability to total deafness to the world of cochlear implants. He discusses with great candor and cogency the implications of cochlear implantation that include the fact that he is now a cyborg, and the effect that cochlear implants will have on the signing community. On a personal note, I read the book with great alacrity waiting to see if I was referenced in any of his childhood memories. No luck. In fact, he barely mentioned his sister and brother. From his website, I delight in the fact that his book has been very successful. It has already come out in a paperback edition and it has been translated in into several languages, including Japanese. Just recently, the book received the PEN award in the creative nonfiction category. Enjoying his success is known as mudita – sympathetic joy, or rejoicing in the happiness of others. At the same time, it is challenging that he has soared ahead with this book project and I have managed to let mine languish for over 4 years. My book that incorporates mindfulness with our tendency to be hard on ourselves, has been mostly written since May of 2002. Yikes! It has gone through a number of revisions in my head. And I made one serious attempt to put these revisions on paper the summer before last. The demands of practice and my new teaching responsibilities at the University of Vermont have served as “excuses” to completing the book. No longer. There are many things that have lied just out of reach. Not actually out of reach, but out of the willingness of my grasp. So, stay tuned for excerpts from the book, coming soon.

The New Year at Shao Shan

2007-01-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

If you read my blog entry from last year, you saw my mild contempt for the New Year Holiday. Why? If we endeavor to be mindful and live in the now, then everyday is both special and the same. This year, however, I have embraced the New Year celebration. I celebrated in Japanese Zen style at the Shao Shan Temple with Roshi Taihaku presiding. A small group gathered for a meditation and reflection ceremony. Think about the past year, what went right, what didn’t, and try to connect to the affect of when things were going right. Right down what you want to let go of and what you want to move towards. So, we all wrote and then took our slips of paper to the alter and offered them while the group chanted “gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhisvhaha” After everyone had offered the intentions at the alter, we took them outside and placed them in the fire. This was followed by a new year feast. For a few adventurous souls, meditation continued until 10:13 p.m. at which time a meditation on time commenced. With the 108 minutes remaining until midnight we sat in a circle, each with a different bell. At the top of each minute the time keeper rang his or her bell, and everyone followed suit. At midnight all the bells rang, and we stood around the fire breathing in the new year. This was followed by more feasting on the traditional soba noodles and tempura.

The evening revolved around ritual and ceremony. What Taihaku explained so eloquently is how the ritual heps us to relate to our own experience. So it is not about the external happenings, but how these happenings open us to ourselves and help us to remember the moment and the intentions we create in it. For me, this new year is a reaffirmation of the value and place of meditation in my life. I told Taihaku that I’ve been a beginner now for over 23 years. In this time of transition for me, I placing formal practice at the top of my priorities. Everything else will flow from this.

Where is the snow?

2006-12-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

It’s the end of the year. Some years, the mountains are covered in feet of snow accommodating happy skiers and snowboarders sliding down their glossy slopes. This year, the flatlands are bare and the mountains are thin. Today on the next to the penultimate day of the year, it was seasonably cold – low 20s. Yet it felt biting cold. We are out of shape for winter in northern Vermont and it is easy to complain of the cold, the lack of the snow, and anything else you might care to complain about at the end of another calendar year. We like to complain. There are industries devoted to our complaints. Name a complaint and there is a product available to assuage your feelings of inadequacy. Could your life be complete without any of this? That question is an invitation. Try to live life without feeling that some product will complete you. Try to live your life separating your well-being from everything that you do.

At the end of the day, what happened today is what happened today. Some of the things that happened today we had a hand in, shaped its course and path. Other things, occurred outside of our sphere of influence. Whatever occurred it is in the past. Done. Fini. Yet, we act as if it is not the case. Reliving the past, projecting ourselves into the future, endless commentary about what is supposedly happening now (supposedly because we relate more to the idea of what is happening now than what is actually happening now). We tend to hold on to the past try to rework it as if the artist’s hand could revise time. Fat chance. Time, according to some quirk of physics only moves in one direction. Go figure. Our minds, however, can move in three directions – past, present and future. As we look towards the future of the New Year, see if the mind can notice this present.

Featured exquisite mind webpage: mental factors

2006-02-16T16:30:00.000-08:00

Meditation practice requires work, effort, and persistence. This work can be joyful or arduous depending on the attitudes we bring to practice. Traditionally, there are five mental factors that tip the scale towards more joyous practice. These are faith, wisdom, energy, insight, and concentration. These factors will be explored in this section. These mental factors contribute to the psychological seat we bring to practice. Exquisite Self-Care can also help to provide a solid foundation in which to realize these mental factors. Humans have the unique capacity to consider their own minds. To practice mindfulness meditation is to consider the mind in a deliberate and pointed way. This way, however, is not what we are typically involved with. It is not problem solving, creativity, worrying, regretting, planning, rehearsing, or any of the other possible facets of cognitive activity that we might typically be engaged with. As such, it takes some getting used to, and it takes some time to reorient our brains to be comfortable with what is essentially doing nothing – nothing other than experiencing our experience in the moment. Doing nothing? “That’s downright un-American!” And so, our minds may thusly protest. Faith, wisdom, energy, insight, and concentration will help us to retrain our minds to this unusual and rare activity of considering our own minds as objects of our own minds. Read more ...

Dies Irae

2006-02-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

I am returning to D. H. Lawrence today, with an excerpt from his pansie “Dies Irae”

and we know not how to live wordless
we live an a vast house
full of activities,
and the noise, and the stench, and the dreariness,
and lack of meaning
madden us, but we don’t know what to do.”

Lawrence might have enjoyed an MBSR course or a vipassana retreat. In 1929, these were scarcely available in the West. He would have needed to travel to India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, or Ceylon to find such teachings. In fact, Lawrence did travel to Ceylon and spent six weeks there in 1922. Curiously this trip to one of the repositories of Theravadan Buddhism turned him off to Buddhism. He eschewed the opportunity to study and go within himself while there, deciding that it was a bogus inwardness. The Buddha frustrated him and he was known to say upon seeing a seated Buddha statue “Oh I wish he would stand up!” While Buddhism was not his cup of tea, the tantric practices of Hinduism apparently were. I think Lawrence might have enjoyed and connected with vipassana, if he had gotten past his biases. Of course, this is a presumption on my part. Reading the Path to Mindfulness, by Bhante Gunaratana (or Bhante G), reveals the day-to-day monastic life of Buddhists in Ceylon. As is the case currently in Japan with Zen, institutional Buddhism looks very different from the contemplative practice of vipassana. Buddhists in Ceylon go to temple to ask for blessings and to perform rituals. The monks were often engaged in small-mindedness, harsh treatments, and petty power struggles. They do not go to meditate. In fact, Bhante G. had very little meditation practice early in his monastic training. So, the Buddhism D. H. Lawrence was exposed to, was likely this exterior form, which bears little resemblance to what the Buddha actually did himself.

All That We Have is Life

2006-01-27T12:36:00.000-08:00

All that we have , while we live is life;
and if you don’t live during your life, you are a piece of
dung.
And work is life, and life is lived in work
unless you’re a wage slave.
While a wage-slave works, he leaves life aside
and stands there a piece of dung.
Men should refuse to be lifelessly at work.
Men should refuse to be heaps of wage-earning dung.
Men should refuse to work at all. As wage-slaves.
Men should demand to work for themselves, of themselves,
and put their life in it.
For if a man has no life in his work, he is mostly a heap
of dung.

Writing in 1929, D. H. Lawrence speaks blatantly to the notion that we must embody ourselves through our life, including our life at work. Lawrence issues a strident call of caution – be awake or be dung! He also makes a political statement in this poem about the working conditions of wage-slaves. This sentiment is echoed in the work of the poet David Whyte, who reminds us that most of our waking day is spent in the service of work, so it behooves us to be fully present to that experience and to make sure our soul is included. Even with work that is mechanical or repetitive, such as factory assembly work, we have the opportunity to embody our experience. In today’s world of union negotiated workplaces, wage-slaves are a thing of the past, except perhaps for the conditions of unfortunate workers in sweat shops.

“And in the dark unscientific, I feel the drum-winds of his wings”

2006-01-22T12:35:00.000-08:00

So said, D. H. Lawrence in on of his Pansies, “Give Us Gods.” I think Lawrence is speaking to an experience of the nonconceptual, the sense that can arise when we move out of thought and into the expanse of our experience. Such states can arise during meditation and these states may, in part, be explained by changes in specific regions of the brain – activating of some and inhibition of others. This line of poetry seems to speak to the sense of depersonalization that can occur in meditation. This is not a pathological form of depersonalization, but rather a momentary deactivation of the storytelling mind and the incessant self-talk we usually engage in. We become less self-preoccupied and when that happens, spacious feelings arise, and we become closer to the sense of the divine as we move away from the sense of our own storyline. Such considerations raise the question of whether the experience of god is anything more than a brain state. I have an abiding interest in this question. There is much scientific research being conducted on this question. One set of findings suggests that spirituality and religiosity may be genetically endowed (The God Gene). Other findings suggest that stimulation of particular brain regions can evoke spiritual feelings. The fact that spirituality may have a genetic and brain basis does not, however, rule out there is more to the spiritual than one or another brain state. Meditation can provide a taste of this experience in a reliable fashion.

Coming to Our Senses

2006-01-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

I am 100 pages through Jon Kabat-Zinn’s 600 page magnum opus, Coming to Our Senses. I am reading it in advance of the Psychology of Mindfulness Course that I will be teaching at the University of Vermont later this year (end of May through June). I am reviewing it as a potential text for this course. As always, Jon writes lucidly and convincingly. The words flow in a poetic, even flowering, prose. He is no longer teaching mindfulness for better coping, as he did in Full Catastrophe Living. Rather he is aiming for the whole enchilada – enlightenment itself. He has not used this word yet, but he is talking about nothing short of the radical transformation of experience that mindfulness and mindfulness meditation can effect. There are some caveats, however. If we pick up the mantle of mindfulness meditation with the goal of transforming ourselves, the self that wants to be transformed will get in the way of that transformation. He is laying down a lot of foundation to get people to calibrate and orient their expectations in a way that won’t lead to a furthering of attachment. And he is not just talking about personal transformation, but transformation of the entire world, and he articulates how these are not actual separate ventures. Given the short summer session that I will be teaching the mindfulness course, there may not be time for students to consume such a weighty volume. It is likely that I will offer this as a suggested reading.

Emptiness according to D. H. Lawrence

2006-01-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

I wish that whatever props up the walls of light
would fall, and darkness would come hurling heavily down,
and it would be thick black dark forever.
Not sleep, which is grey with dreams,
nor death, which quivers with birth,
but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.

At first glance this verse from the poem “And Oh – That The Man I Am Might Cease To Be –“ sounds like sinking into depression. Yet, the title gives a clue that Lawrence is speaking more about emptiness – not the emptiness of psychiatry, but the emptiness of dharma, which is the emptiness of desire and attachment. It is not sleep, nor is it death. It is a place where each moment carries gravity and a solid meaning without referring to any particular experience or stories. Being in such a place is a positive experience, and is made available when we stop telling ourselves the same stories over and over again – especially the one that tells us who we are. This sentiment is reflected again in his poem Nonentity:

The stars that open and shut
Fall on my shallow breast
Like stars on a pool.
The soft wind, blowing cool,
Laps little crest after crest
Of ripples across my breast.
And dark grass under my feet
Seems to dabble in me
Like grass in a brook.
Oh, and it is sweet
To be all these things, not to be
Any more myself.
For look,
I am weary of myself!

This seems a fitting image for the start of the new year. One of the teachings of mindfulness is the uniqueness and opportunity in every moment. Such an approach to life makes the designation of one day, such as New Year’s Day, as special. I think this approach to life with holidays takes something away from the spectacular ordinary. Of course, it would be easy to disagree with my approach, as almost everyone I meet does! Of course, there is no harm in celebrating a holiday and enjoying what it has to offer. The New Year can be a time of fruitful reflection of where we have been and where we are going.

Local JewBhu Makes Good

2005-09-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

“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

2005-05-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

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.