Are You A Buddhist? (part 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.

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)

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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”

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

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

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

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

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage: death

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

Featured Exquisite Mind webpage -- Suffering

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