I don’t tend to be a stressed out person, but like anyone else I’ve had moments of apprehension, anxiety and all out panic.  During a particularly difficult few months of my life I was not offered the job on which I’d been counting, the baby, who had been sleeping through the night, began waking and screaming for hours at 2am and a few weeks later, while still sleepless, I got a phone call and learned that the spouse of a friend had died.  Although I wasn’t close to my friend’s spouse, I’d attended their wedding, met her at countless gatherings and was thrown by her death at a young age with a young child. In the moment, I wanted to give up, fix something I couldn’t change, or simply refuse to deal with it.  None of it was fair.

Feelings of anger and sadness turn to fury, depression and misery when we refuse to accept the painful events that have caused them.  When we cling to getting what we want, instead of accepting what we have, we turn our pain into suffering

But we don’t have to remain stuck in our suffering and misery.  Here are a few tips that will help us accept reality and, as a result, solve the real problems that are causing us pain.

Practice Awareness

To cultivate a more accepting state of mind, increase awareness of your body, mind and the reality around you. Start by simply bringing your awareness to the position of your body.  This can be done any time and any place.  Whether you are walking, standing or sitting, notice your position.  Become aware of the purpose of your position.  For example, are you folding your arms across your chest in a defensive stance or are you tapping your foot in anxiety.

Next become aware of your thoughts.  Sit quietly and calm yourself by taking notice of the natural flow of breath.  Become aware of thoughts as they enter your mind.  Who or what are you thinking about?  Try to notice thoughts quickly, before they become a train of thought and you’re swept off elaborating and associating.  As you become proficient at noticing your thoughts, try checking in on them throughout the day.  Notice judgmental thoughts like “I can’t stand it” or “this is a catastrophe” or in Kathy’s case “I’m inadequate if I can’t fix this.”  Allow the thoughts to come and go like waves in the ocean.

Practice breathing exercises, such as counting each breath or saying “in” with each inhale and “out” with each exhale.

Turn Your Mind

Acceptance requires a choice.  You have to turn your mind towards accepting reality, rather than rejecting and judging reality.  You must commit to accepting the current situation and reality over and over.  Each time your mind tells you it’s unfair or shouldn’t be as it is, you must turn your mind towards acceptance.

Be Willing

When the world seems unfair and we’re feeling stuck, depressed or frantic it’s natural to want to give up, try to fix what can’t be fixed, or simply refuse to tolerate the situation.  But no amount of whining or railing against the fairness of the universe will change the reality of painful situations.  Instead of trying to impose your will on reality, focus on doing what works.  Do just what is needed in each situation.  Your job is to simply do your best, whatever the world throws at you.

The current crisis will pass.  Although it may take time and things will never return to how they once were, it is possible to learn to live with and adjust to change, loss and death.  Accepting reality can become a habit. If there is an area of your life in which you are fighting reality, focus on accepting the situation as it is.  Try to let go of how things ‘should be’ or how you want them to be and accept, from deep down, how they are.

For more tips and strategies on mindfulness and stress management visit my blog at www.christymatta.wordpress.com

In his book ‘Touching Enlightenment’, the Buddhist teacher Reggie Ray makes the point that many western meditation students spend a lot of time in their heads and very little in their body. Meditation practice is all too often seen as a mind practice with very little to do with somatic sensations. He goes on to say that unless we fully embody our practice, and allow it to include our physical nature as well as our mind, we will end up as a set of disembodied heads, further away from enlightenment than when we started. I tend to agree.

To me it seems strange that we have come such a long way from an embodied practice since it seems to have been part of the intention of the Buddha to learn mindfulness of the body as a base before adding anything else. However, I guess now there are far more sensory distractions and intellectual pursuits to be had than there were in India two and half thousand years ago and perhaps we need to emphasise the physicality of practice more now than ever before.

Getting the correct posture for meditation seems to me to be the starting block for an embodied practice, just as a relaxed mind is the best point from which to begin meditation. Spending a few minutes to feel the body on the cushion is a good way of settling the body and mind before practice but yet how many of us go straight from everyday activities into mental meditation without this preparatory step? I am certainly guilty of it! Yet the mind cannot be relaxed unless the body is. This preparatory stage pays dividends in our practice.

The mindfulness of the body is addressed by the Buddha in both the sutra on the mindfulness of breathing (Anapanasati Sutta) and the sutra on the four foundations of mindfulness (Satipatthana Sutta). In both of these key Pali texts, mindfulness of the body is the first step and it seems implicit, if not explicit, that this has to be firmly grasped and worked with before proceeding on to the three later stages – mindfulness of feelings, emotions and thoughts. When the meditation is lost, the practice begins again with the mindfulness of the body and works onwards once this is re-established.

In the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha instructs us to ‘breathe with the whole body’. The breath itself is a key part of most meditation practice and can also be the gateway to the sensations of our whole physical body. The quality and frequency of the breath is an indication to how much tension we are holding onto and by breathing into each part of the body in turn we can become completely awake to our whole self.

The two aforementioned sutras seem strangely ignored in both Tibetan and Zen Buddhist traditions (although Thich Nhat Hanh grasps their importance) but surely must form a basis of any attempt to embody practice? And embodiment has to continue away from the mat – being aware of the movement of the body and the sensations from moment to moment, especially at times of stress and aversion – when negative emotions arise and threaten our equilibrium. Being aware of emotions at their somatic level takes away much of their power. This can be observed with emotions such as jealousy and anger that we all experience in our lives. Instead of focussing on the thoughts which arise at this time as we tend to want to do, check in with your body and see how the emotion feels. Where do you feel jealousy in the body? What does it feel like? Without the thoughts that accompany it, isn’t an emotion just another set of sensations?

The truth is that being aware of somatic sensations brings you into the present moment, while conceptual thoughts take you away from that. Mindfulness of the body should be the first step of any practice, and key throughout the whole spiritual path. Enlightenment can only be reached through the physical body we are in. There is no other way.

Books on embodied practice
Johnson, Will. 1996.  The Posture of Meditation. Shambhala.
Johnson, Will. 2005.  Yoga of the Mahamudra. Inner Traditions.
Ray, Reginald. 2008.  Touching Enlightenment. Sounds True.

Books on the mindfulness suttas
Buddhadasa. 1998.  Mindfulness With Breathing. Wisdom.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. 1992.  Breathe, You Are Alive! Rider.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. 1993.  Transformation and Healing. Rider.
Rosenberg, Larry. 2004.  Breath by Breath. Shambhala.

For Saturday’s  webinar we were asked to reflect on the question,  “Is the body great or small?”. I noticed the frustration I felt with the way the question was formulated and my internal resistance toward setting a label, defining the body in terms of it’s size. As soon as I said something about the size, it became reduced to that – size, something relative, a concept. The body itself did not seem to matter that much any more. It held no mystery.

Still, in our lives we do have to measure, to compare. “Is the practice  great or small?”. If I don’t measure it, how do I even know if I’ve moved at all or am still stuck on the same spot? How could I measure my practice? Not in hours spent on the cushion, or the number of Dharma books I read or retreats I attended. I guess ultimately it was about the question, What is it that I want from my practice?

The measurement I came up with for the moment is not quantitative and is about if and for how long I can stay intimate with life without contracting and shutting the world out. How long can I stay in direct experience (painful or frustrating as it can be) without resorting to my habitual ways to protect the self (by leaning on the familiar negative states for support)?  To see if I “progressed” I can compare how I handle the situation at hand with the way I habitually behave in similar circumstances. For the time being this measurement is good enough for me.

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,

they’re given wings.

- Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

About a week ago I had a very emotional experience when I found myself in the bathroom of my friend’s apartment during a Halloween party, having a face-to-face conversation with the person I had come to the party with. A nightmare situation indeed! Not much was said but the few words he told me went straight into the heart. I felt the warmth spreading in the body, gathering into a nauseating lump somewhere in the stomach area and heard how the mind immediately started producing a story. There was this moment when I could both feel the sensations in the body, hear the beginning of the story – “How could be do that to me?” -  and watch it as if from the position of the observer. The observer asked the story-teller, “What has been done to me“? and that question brought my attention from the inside to the outside, to the person’s face and the texture of his voice, to the reddish lights of the bathroom.

At this point something interesting happened. The pain was still there, but did not feel as unbearable, the story stopped and now I could see that the person was suffering. As I was feeling that raw energy inside, it was transforming into  compassion for that other human being who was aching just as I was. In the middle of it all I somehow managed to not get consumed by the strong emotions by bringing the attention to what was real – the experience of my only feelings of hurt and anger and the perception of another person (the expression of his face, the sound of his voice). This was one of the most powerful and liberating moments I’ve shared with another person. I saw that it was possible to interrupt the story-line and stay with the experience of hurt and anger while remaining open and connected with another human being. By choosing to fall, I got the strength to engage the wings I did not know I have.

I received a few comments to my previous post, some of them not on this page. What they had in common was the idea that we need others because we love them and needing people was in fact not so bad. In short: we need to need people.  I believe that the idea that some degree of dependency in a relationship is OK aside from the cultural underpinning is also backed up by another strong belief: if we don’t need others we will end up being cold-hearted and detached people and that is not an attractive picture. Likewise, if others don’t need us, we will end up lonely and unappreciated.

Really?

What about the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or other individuals who have shown enormous compassion to their fellow humans and do not strike me as cold, detached and non-caring? Nor do they appear(ed) to be lonley and unappreciated. It is easy to think that once we take away our dependency on others, there will be nothing left.

I don’t believe we can actually be independent from others. Quantum physics demonstrates how everything is interconnected and therefore interdependent. The problem is we don’t understand that. I know it on the cognitive level but as soon as somebody does something to me, I forget all that and suddenly there is me, you and others. The idea of a solid self and separation it creates between us and the rest of the world is at the root of our suffering. Yet it seems that having a healthy self is necessary for survival and I am interested in how we can combine those two, strike the balance. I am searching for a tool, a metaphor that would help me work with discovering the impermanence and fluidity of self so that I could apply it in everyday life. On the very down-to-earth level it would simply made it easier to not take things so personally. I might find it skillful to protect myself from the consequences of your actions or mood but I would not have to shut myself down from you as a way to protect myself or punish you. Actually I think I might have found one tool that rubs very well with me but am leaving it aside for now.

If I believe there a solid self I will be upset every time someone else leaves me; I will not really believe in change in myself or others and might even not notice it, walking around with the labels I gave myself and others; I will find it hard to change when I see this is what is needed and will be struggling, exercising violence against the self I think I am; I will find it impossible to love without hurting the relationships by trying to control the people I am in a relationship with. My life will be a constant struggle.

How will I even know I love someone? In my experience my likes and dislikes of someone can change dramatically within a short period of time. Think of  someone you loved and then fell out of love with. What happened? Did that person change? Or did your idea of that person change? I share the view that we are in love not with the people but with our representations of the people. When my mental image of that person changes we fall out of love with them. One illusion is being replaced by another. The person is still the same but our idea of the person changed based on how we experienced and interpreted them and their behaviour. It is much easier on my ego to blame the other person for them being this or that way than acknowledging I had the wrong idea about the person. (No idea about that other person can be right or wrong.)

Going back to the idea I-need-him-because-I-like-him.  This is a very convenient and well-spread view because it can be used as a justification for our actions.  “I love you and therefore I want you close to me”. One woman was telling me she didn’t want her son to leave home because she loved him and wanted him close to her. (At that point the son was 28 and was living with his parents. He didn’t know how to do laundy with a washing machine or make lunch and was terrified of making decisions outside the scope of his comfort zone. He was also one of the most gentlest men I met). The mother didn’t seem to grasp the idea that her son was not her property, a project for giving meaning to her life. She raised him in total dependency, making sure he would be needing her and feeling insecure when faced with life’s reality. Her son had difficulty saying no to her and other people and often would suffered from it consoling himself that he was doing that because he was a “nice guy”. It took us a couple of why-questions to get to the source of him being that “nice”: fear and dependency on others for their approval, very low self-esteem. I was tempted to ask the woman in question what her definition of love was. What I saw was “codependent helping”, as Jack Kornfield calls it in his book “A Path With Heart” and it didn’t do good to any of them since both were living in fear,  holding on to something impermanent.

At first I felt I was straying away from the topic of compassion with the last couple of posts but now see that they are all very related: the idea of self, needs, codependence, and compassion. Jack Kornfield  beautifully ties them all together in one of the chapters of “A Path with Heart”.

So what would a healthy relationship look like? One of my favourite stories is the one of the Buddha’s dialogue with the family of acrobats in which the acrobats discussed with the Buddha the best way to safeguard and care for each other.   It “points out, when we leave ourselves out of the sphere of compassion, a false security or unwise compassion is the result. All unhealthy or overly idealistic generosity arises from this error, when a deep respect for ourselves is left out of the equation. When our sense of self-worth is still low, we cannot set limits, make boundaries, or respect our needs. Our seemingly compassionate assistance becomes mixed with dependence, fear, and insecurity. Mature love and healthy compassion are not dependent but interdependent, born out of deep respect for ourselves and others. They can say yes and they can say no. Like a parent who raised a child wisely, they know when to set limits, when to say no.

… Setting boundaries and limits, shifting from a dependent and entangling love to one based on mutual respect, learning to give while honoring our own needs, all of these can entail a profound growth in self-esteem and self-awareness that parallels the healthy development of self.”

-Jack Kornfield, “A Path With Heart”

So how do I know when I run my own agenda of “codependent helping” and when my actions are driven by compassion?

Actually, Jack Kornfield addresses this issue in his book. One piece of advice comes from Buddha, the cool dude who never took things for granted and recommended that we looked for the motives behind our actions. “It’s too idealistic to expect that we will always just want to be good; we must listen to know when the heart is attached, to know when the heart is afraid, to know when the heart is dependent. By listening deeply we can begin to sort out our dependence from love.

Listening to distinguish wisdom from dependence can be aided by understanding our early history.We can reflect on how needs were met in our family, how limits were set, how insecurity was treated.”

-Jack Kornfield, “A Path With Heart”

I know it will keep me busy for a while, and I’ve already learnt a lot about my own reactive patterns looking back at how those issues were dealt with in the family. Also, becoming aware of my own reactivity made me see my family and each member in a new light. This is where compassion starts for me: I can relate to another person’s suffering because I’ve been there and all of us essentially are driven by the same desire – to be happy, however we define happiness.

This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was a grief.

But there is a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconsicous

done in the illusion of the presnt world,

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays,

and must be interpereted.

All the mean laughing,

all the quick, sexual wanting,

those torn coats of Joseph,

they change into powerful wolves

that you must face. …

….

From “The dream that must be interpreted”,  Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

How much is this moment worth to me? To get a sense of worth of something I need to compare it to something else, something on the same scale. I would probably value the moment I take a step into the emptiness of the open sky with a parachute on my back more than a quiet morning in the kitchen when I am waiting for my espresso to be ready. At least today when I feel I could use more action .

Most of our awake time I spend comparing stuff,  assigning value to things, events and experiences based on how I feel about them at a particular time. It is easy to forget that all of those also have absolute value, outside myself and my story. Every single experience, event or thing is unique and therefore comparing it to the next one does not make sense.

If  we remembered about the absolute value of everything, lots of anxiety in our lives would dissipate because at its root lies comparison, preferences and discrimination of one thing over another. When we take relative value of things for their absolute value, we end up chasing those things or experiences we value higher than others. This is not bad in itself, it just doesn’t work in the end.

How can I remind myself of the absolute value of things then? The idea of the impermanence and death in particular works as a good reminder for me, troubling as it may sound to some people. I haven’t done any contemplation practice on death which is one of the practices in Tibetan Buddhism but find that simply reminding myself of death is helpful for taking a larger perspective on my life.

Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm’s length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he’s about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, I haven’t touched you yet.’

- Carlos Castaneda, from Journey to Ixtlan

From Radiolab: Moments by Will Hoffman. The film celebrates life ans is inspired by David Eagleman’s book Sum.

Posted in Response Tagged: absolute value, death, life, moment, relative value ]]> http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/on-comparison-life-death-and-moments/feed/ 0 understandingcat http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/talking-about-compassion/ http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/talking-about-compassion/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:06:35 +0000 understandingcat http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/talking-about-compassion/ ]]>

I thought this month I would focus on exploring the notion of compassion: how do I define it, why bother with it, my own hang ups around it, the techniques for cultivating compassion (what works for me). This seems like a good place to start:

Returning to the earlier post on reactivity and pants. For starters, I believe it is never  really about them pants or whatever becomes a trigger for our reactivity, although in the situation when it actually occurs it can be very hard to see it.  We so much want to believe that the root of our discomfort lies outside ourselves that we start believing it and acting on it. For me the question is not whether to pick up the pants or not but rather what I can learn from my reactivity around it:  why and how matter more than what.  This is not to give myself yet another reason to beat myself up over something but to see what underlying beliefs run the weather of my emotional and mental landscape.

If you don’t realize the source,

you stumble in confusion and sorrow

Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

For starters I look at the questions like:

• What happened here?
• Why was it so important to me?
• Why did I get so angry?
• What is the belief I am holding on to?

And finally I want to know:

• What would my life look like without that belief?

NVC is not the only model that holds that expressing our needs and having them met is important for us. In one of the podcasts on Just for Women the guest was advocating direct communication and advised already on the first date  be open about one’s needs,  “These are my needs. What are yours?”.  I scratch your back if you scratch mine. Nothing wrong with the business-like exchange of this kind if both parties are aware that the relationship is based on this sort of transaction rather than on emotional connection where you like the person and not what they can do for you.

This is where I started wondering: how often do we actually like the person and not what they can do for us? How reasonable is it for me to assume that others will volunteer to help me satisfy my needs or will do it long enough to keep me happy? How does this belief influence my relationships?

Looking at the history of my own relationships (romantic as well as friendships) I realised that time after another I expected people to be a certain way (so my needs would be met?)  Needless to say it never was as I expected.  People did not want to, didn’t have capacity or didn’t know how to make me happy (and isn’t that the implication of having one’s needs met?) and I often would end up feeling let down and abandoned.  There was no understanding on my part that knowing and respecting my needs and making others responsible for meeting them would never make a ground for a healthy and sustainable relationship not to mention it had nothing to do with the unconditional love.

Do I know better now? I hope so! Still I can notice the contraction when a friend says no or when a lover asks for more space. I feel my ego cringe. What am I attached to here?  The whole issue of needs leads me – again! – to the subject of self and no self (or true self) and those masks (personas) we wear and identify with when we hold on to a particular belief. It all seems to be evolving around the same topic – identification, the me-ing.

Photo: Josef Verbok

It was one of the tough days that call for a treat. On that particular evening it was the bar of  rather expensive dark chocolate with cherry and chilli pepper that had the task of saving my evening. I had a gnawing headache that was so subtle it was hard to notice. When it was my turn to pay at the grocery store, I realised I didn’t have enough money on my bank account and Swiss chocolate had to go. (I have to explain here that I do not owe or use a credit card.) It was not such a big deal: I needed to get home to my PC and transfer some money from the electronic saving account to the one that was connected to my Visa card.

Wondering over how the money ended so soon and what caused the wretched headache, I picked up my stuff and started walking away from the grocery store. Suddenly I head someone calling for me and when I turned, there was a middle-aged man standing behind me with the chocolate bar in his hand and a grin over his face, “Here, this is yours”.  I sighed and prepared to explain to the enthusiastic stranger that in fact, he mistook himself and I haven’t paid for the chocolate, noticing how with every word the throbbing pain inside the skull was rolling from said to side. “I know”, he said smiling, “I have. Take it!”. Still wondering if there was some mistake, I glanced towards the counter and saw a 12-year-old girl watching me and her dad, a huge smile across her face, waiting for her dad to return. The headache was intense and I could hardly make an effort of smiling. All of a sudden I felt like crying.

Not that a similar act of kindness would be unheard of in this part of the world. Swedish people give to charities now, in the times of crises, more than ever. What moved me most was that those two paid enough attention to someone else to notice the person’s concerns and state of mind. (I must have looked miserable over there at the counter with that chocolate that I could not afford. They could not know the headache was killing me and I just wanted to get home. And it did not matter!)  I thanked them both, took the chocolate and walked out of the store with an attempt to a smile on my face, the chocolate bar pressed against my chest and a warm feeling inside: my evening was saved, chocolate or not, and the headache could go hang itself. The chocolate I was about to buy was supposed to console me, make me feel special (what else are we buying when we shop for luxury products, something we don’t really need?) and I got all that from a couple of total strangers who reached out and let me known I was not all by myself. Who could set a price tag on that?

I really appreciated the not so typical for the Swedish society act of reaching out to a stranger just like that, in the daylight, with no strings attached. I imagine quite a few people could think of acting the same way towards a person in line but most could be stopped by the fear of making a full of themselves,  attracting attention, or being suspected of having some agenda. Just doing something without consideration for oneself is a true act of generosity. In fact, we are offering ourselves, not the thing we do or give.

Now, what’s your chocolate story? How did you feel receiving somebody else’s offering?

So back to Dosho’s question inspired by the passage from Genjōkoan on firewod and ashes:

When doing one thing, is there anything else? (i.e., is today just today?)

My answer to the question is:  No.

When I sit today I just sit.  Now is the only reality that exists.

My answer to the question is: Yes.

I sit with me and the results of my actions and choices I made in the past and all my potential for the future. They are all on the same scale of time that is non-linear. Today, yesterday and tomorrow are  based on the human concept of time.  We break time in manageable units but it is a human concept just like star constellations  is not something that exists, it is a bunch of stars that we gathered together under the same name for convenience.

I feel something opening up in my chest and expanding when I think of this. My actions in the past were “necessary” to bring me into this moment and this moment is “necessary” for me to have done those actions in the past so I could “pull myself” to this moment, sort of like an acorn and the oak tree.

A few passages from Uchiyama’s book  “Opening the hand of thought” and my experience during the sesshin when time existed for me (and moved extremely slowly) only when I chose to stay with the thoughts of pain, helped me better understand the idea of time that is all inclusive: “All that there really is, is now.  As the scenery of the present, however, there is a past, present, and future. Let me say this again: within the present, there is a past, a present, and a future. The past and future are real and alive only in the present. This concept of time in Buddhist thought is very important. It is different from the notion in Western philosophy that time flows from the past, into the present, and onto the future in a linear way. According to Buddhist teachings it doesn’t quite work that way. The past, present, and future are all contained within the present. 

…What is most important is right now.

But again, within “now” we have past experiences. Within the present, we have past experiences and directions toward the future that we face. W have to vivify our past experiences and face toward the future – all within the present. Only f we master the realities of the past can they function vividly and smoothly in the present. Only if we have learned to  drive a car can we effectively use one to go somewhere. Doing exactly that is called genjō kōan, the koan of life becoming life. Genjō is the present becoming the present.“

“When we transcend time, or forget time, we actually meet the fresh reality of life. Time exists for us because we compare one moment with another, and in the welter of perception we feel time flowing swiftly. When we no longer compare, and just be that self which is nothing but self, then we are able to transcend this swiftness or comparison that we call time. “

Photo: Johan Bencker

Listened to the show with Alissa Kriteman on Just for Women, on which she shared about using the NVC model in daily communication because she now could make sure her meets were met. As an example Alissa gave a not entirely unusual situation in which the partner leaves his pants lying on the floor. She approaches him saying something in the line of , “Honey, would you be willing to put your pants in the laundry basket?”. As I understand, in the NVC model we are to express our feelings, voice a request but also say what need this request would meet and why it is so important to us. In the example above Alissa did not do those steps so in fact the request was formulated in the usual way, not following the NVC model. In the partner’s place I might simply ask her “Why would I want to do that?” and carry on.

Say I were in the same situation and actually used NVC. What kind of need would I expect to be met in this case? Possibly the need for the house to be tidy. For starters, can we really see that as a need? Secondly, what if I before turning to the parner with my obsession about keeping the place tidy, looked at this so called need of mine and asked myself, “Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?”  I’d encourage myself to not accept any fluffy answers but really look into the “why” behind.  After all, I am interested in the truth. This is how the inquiry could go (easy to imagine as I used to obsess about things being “in the right places”):

- Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?

- Hmmm… Because I feel very uneasy when I see things lying on the floor.

- What is about it that you experience as uneasy? (The reformulated why).

- Hmmm… I feel guilty about not looking after the place.

- Why? (Where does the guilt come from?)

- Because my mother used to tell me how that “nice girls” always had their homes tidy.

- Anything else?

- Because if one of my friends pops in, they might think I am sloppy! I don’t want my friends to think I am sloppy while it is T. who is creating the mess around here.

(Getting somewhere with but still there is some digging to do).

- Why is it important for you that your friends don’t think you are sloppy?

- Because I want them to like me and think of me as someone who can take care of their home!

This is really hard work, challenging myself to go deeper and see what I am really asking for: it is about me trying to live up to my mother’s expectations of me being a “nice girl” and about my own ego. Are these my values? Do I really believe my friends will stop liking me if they see a pair of pants on the floor? What if they do (stop liking me)?  For me the valuable piece of information in this internal inquiry is how my emotional well-being and a sense of self-worth is dependent on other people’s approval and actions: my friends’, my mother’s, my partner’s. I need to ask myself at this point if I really believe other people can give me self-worth and make me happy?

Also, can we really call this a need? To me it sounds more like a wish rather something that I need. If I do decide this is a need, is it really something I should push for being met? Maybe I can take this as an opportunity to instead of asking someone fix the situation for me,  look at my own reactivity and choose otherwise? Whatever the result of this investigation, it allows me to be more honest with myself and others. Even if I still find that these pants on the floor are bothering me, I can voice the request with more understanding about where it comes from,  “I have this neurosis about your pants lying on the floor in their place and I am working on it. Would you be willing to help me by picking them up and hanging them in the closet?” At the same time, I can see that just like I am acting out my habituated patterns so can my partner be acing out his and this is where I can feel more compassion for him, instead of simply being irritated and eager for him to take on my values (my mother’s values!). So the problem is not my partner being sloppy (they might as well be), but that these pants push my buttons and it’s helpful to know why.

Ok, enough with the pants. While I really appreciate the part of the model where we are to identify and express how we feel about things, I am ambivalent about the motives behind the whole structure: why do we want to become better at communicating in the first place? People often talk about having those needs met and how wonderful it is.  That is I want to communicate better in order that you get to know what it is I need and satisfy my need.  It is all about me and my needs. Is this truly a better communication? For whom?  How non-violent is it? Of course, the model itself is not violent, but I anticipate that in many situations it can result in a subtle form of verbal and emotional manipulation: by telling people why this need is important to me (“It is important that the place is tidy”) I make it more difficult for them to say no to my request and lift something that can be a result of a habituated pattern to the level of a need.

My point here is we should try to become aware of the motives behind our requests before turning to others to fix our problems. One of the greatest needs of all – us feeling fulfilled and happy – cannot be met by others changing their habits or liking us.

What are our experiences of NVC? In what situations using NVC really helped you to resolve the situation?

Natasha Mitchell of ABC Radio National and Radio Australia had another interesting guest on All in the mind show – German philosopher of mind Thomas Metzinge spoke about his research of the self as well as the first hand accounts of out of body experiences and lucid dreaming. Metzinge published his conclusions in the book “The Ego tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self” and needless to say I am quite eager to engage my brain cells with it. As I understood from the interview,  not only it brings the light on the mechanics of the process of selfing (right, Metzinger views the self as not a thing, something solid that exists somewhere – where? – but the ongoing process, the construct) but also discusses how and why it evolved. Why do I so badly need to believe into my self ?

Glad to hear more scientists are catching up on what Buddhism saw already two thousand years ago – there is no self, but rather a set of experiences and our memory that connects them. (Metzinger is actually a long time meditator himself).

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket science to see how hard it could be for us to survive if we didn’t think the self existed. When it’ s getting colder outside it might be a good idea to listen to this voice in my head saying I probably need a warmer jacket and get one. Yet when I am in the store facing those jackets, how will I be choosing? As a believer in the self, I’d probably make a choice taking into account my self-image and what I want to communicate to people by wearing this or that brand.  (Of course, people have different ways of conforming to a particular self-image.) If I don’t believe in the self, the brand (status) will not matter as the only consideration I have in mind now is that of protecting the integrity of the body, shielding it form cold, or?  On the other hand, I can also appreciate how at some point this information we tried to communicate to the others by wearing certain attributes of power was important as well. Only we seem to associate our selves very quickly with those attributes – clothes, jobs, careers and even ideas – and this is where our brilliant mind gets us into trouble. Emphasising the self shields us from the world (and the true self that is no-self or non-self! )  and leads to the idea of the other; it makes us all into strangers, it makes it easier to be indifferent to the suffering of others , to gossip, to steal, to kill… It makes it possible to have bad self-esteem – what is it if not a belief into the existance of a self that also is not enough something – and get depressed!

Also, if I believe into a self, I make my every day choices based on this assumption; I believe to what that perceived self is telling me at the moment.  Right now it is telling me to skip that extra sitting I planned on doing today and go get some sleep instead: after all sleep is very important for how we function and I deserve those extra 30 min after the crazy week I had. Very tempting! This self of mine certainly has a different take on the sitting commitment from the one it had yesterday night! Can it be that it is not the same self I am receiving right now?

I can see how the concept of the solid self plays into the hands of politicians and marketers: they want me to believe that “I are worth it” because it will sell more. In many cases we are not looking for ways to meet our needs, we are buying the self-image. Questioning the existence of  the self makes the whole notion of “worthiness” obsolete. Now, that is a tempting thought to explore but guess what… I am going to take my precious self that is no-self onto the cushion and sit an extra 30 min as planned. Zazen gives a wonderful opportunity to observe how the idea of the self is being created from moment to moment as well as the whole process of experiencing the world and relating to it through the process of selfing.

Was planning on going to the Zen Mountain Monastery for a month of art and meditation with John Daido Loori next summer when I got a Tweet that he was retiring.  A selfish thought popped up at once, “Could he not wait for another year? He cannot be that old!”. Then I read that he had a few days left to live and now an email (very glad I did not get that news as a Tweet!) from Dosho saying Daido Loori passed away.

I never knew him but in my heart of hearts he’s been one my teachers. I read “The Zen of Creativity” when I knew little of Zen and had a very solid idea of what art was about and that I was never in it.  Daido Loori showed me that art could be a doorway to serious and transformative spiritual practice, no matter whether we call ourselves an artist or not. It is not a level of technical skill or originality that matters but how intimate we become with the subject, like in his work The Tao of Water . In order to do that we have to learn to develop a new, dynamic seeing (with the whole body and mind) and become unhindered by our own ideas and attitudes.

I never knew Daido Loori personally but I am grateful I have come to know about him and his life. That alone had an impact on my seeing and perceiving.  Another thought that came was, “Well, what do I do now?”. I guess I will just keep practicing dynamic seeing and relaxing into the creative process moment after moment, day after day.

My heart goes to all those who knew John Daido Loori and whose lives he touched.

During the last Webinar we were looking into the following passage from Genjokoan:

Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot turn back into firewood again. However, we should not view ash as after and firewood as before. We should know that firewood dwells in the dharma position of firewood and it has its own before and after. Although there is before and after, past and future are cut off.

As part of the homework we are to read the passage before zazen and reflect on the question:

When doing one thing, is there anything else? (i.e., is today just today?)

For starters, I came to appreciate reading the text before the sitting even though at first the words did not make much sense to me.  Soon I started noticing how doing that opened up my mind to the passage and to Dosho’s question in the activities of everyday life (living practice).  Now I did not have to remember the question itself;  it was following me everywhere. All of a sudden I would come up with the answer after I have dealt with the situation at hand.

Observing how my mind was dealing with the question turned out to be as fascinating and insightful as the question itself. I noticed that when a question was asked (any question for that matter) I immediately experienced a certain excitement in the system charging for coming up with the answer. However, in this case the question was too confusing for the mind and there were no answer at the moment.  Excitement gave way to some unnerving feeling as if the system perceived that something was off, some problem remained unsolved.  I chose to allow myself walking with the question in the midst of everything and seeing the question as something already carrying the answer. Now it was not necessary to verbalise that answer which removed some of the original pressure: I did not have to answer the question, I just had to keep asking it again and again. After a couple of days the question started sinking through the layers of the conditioned thinking and habitual patterns of problem solving.

What more have I learnt from actually dealing with a rather concrete question that I could not answer using the habitual ways of addressing a question?

First, accepting the state of not-knowing as part of the journey. I was under the illusion that once one knew the path everything became clear. Apparently, not always so and moreover, often quite on the contrary: wondering around with the question is part of the path itself.  So no shortcuts here! I was reminded once again that none of the masters knew all the answers at each moment:  Christ, Buddha, Mohammed. All of them had to do their share of wondering around and living with the tension of not-knowing.

Secondly, I noticed the tendency of both interpreting the question and wanting to answer it using the either/or dualistic approach. In this case I had the urge to choose between yes and no. Yet none of them rang true with me. It might be that I was favouring one or the other in my life,  but it doesn’t make it so.  So, once again

When doing one thing, is there anything else? (i.e., is today just today?)

It is a challenge to be working on Genjokoan and it’s inspiring to do that with the teacher that taggs on our sleeves to remind us to avoid the Zen snare of dry, conceptual understanding and encourages us to “have a keen and sensitive busshit detector to do this work “.

Once again – the koan in the Genjo Koan, with Mayu fanning himself and the bowing monk.

Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?”

“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Mayu replied,” you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”

“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk again.

Mayu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply.

Dosho tosses us the question again and again:

What did the monk see that he expressed by bowing?

In one of the posts on his blog he writes:

“Now you might find yourself wanting to dismiss the question. “Bowing is just bowing.” This is one-sided, emphasizing not thinking, and so doesn’t have the power to cause a lineage to bloom (or to ripen the great earth’s goldenness). Watch out for the snare using Zen talk to not deal with this issue (or any other)!

What Dogen saw in the monks bow, and what the Genjokoan unpacks in rolling hopping along vividness, had such an enormous power that it caused our lineage to bloom for some hundreds of years with all the freedom that goes with it.

If we today dismiss the needle point of this question or are satisfied with thin explanations, we won’t have the strength of love to bring it forth in our daily life.“

Here’s my humble take on it. We have the preconditions for life: a body and oxygen we find in the air. Yet to realise life itself, to manifest the living, we have to bring oxygen into the body by inhaling the air and exhaling it, inhaling and exhaling… For as long as we live.

The same goes for practice. Practice equals the verb just like breathing is. We cannot breath just by simply understanding the mechanics of it, cognitively knowing how it works. Knowledge of what makes a practice is useless if it is separate from the activities of everyday life.  If we stop breathing our organs will not get enough oxygen and will stop functioning. Practice is dead without the realisation of it, the actual doing it. We cannot know the practice, we have to live it.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

-  Rumi

SU-EN Butoh Company had a world premier of their performance Luscious at Dansenshus in Stockholm last Thursday. They devoted the project to the 50th anniversary of Tatsumi Hijikata’s scandalous performance Kinjiki – forbidden colours in Tokyo.

It was the first time I saw a butoh performance. From the little I read about this moderm dance form with the roots in Japanese avantgarde I was intrigued by how the butoh performers worked with the body in space and in nature by deconstructing and challenging it in search for movement.

Nothing I knew about dance prepared me for this performance where I was taken out of  the busy reality and separation from the body and nature and ended up in a don’t-know-where land.  Like any other performance it is better experienced than described so I won’t even try.

Susanna Åkerlund (SU-EN) and her group have the priviledge and the burden of bringing butoh to the Swedish public. Not an altogether easy business in a country with Jantalagen -the unspoken law of not standing out from the crowd, trying to make oneself invisible and not special in any way. I am curious about the techniques used to work with the body and would love to meet the enthusiasts that all have to hold jobs outside to be able to do what they love but maybe got too optimistic signing up for their autumn camp in Almunge, here outside Uppsala. Tempting… Either way, I will look out for more of the group performances.

All photoes are reproduced with the permission of  Su-En Butoh Company. Photography: Gunnar Stening.

As my commuter train arrived to the Stockholm Central Station yesterday I got off the train and for a short moment did not exactly knew where I was. I thought we arrived to a different platform and I’d have to take a different way out. Turning my head around to get oriented I noticed that people were going in two directions: to the left, towards the station, the way I used to go and to the right, towards the stairs I never paid attention to before.

I was not in a hurry so I followed the people who went to the right wondering where I would end up. When I climbed the stairs to the street level I recognised the spot and understood that just taking a few steps in the opposite direction and a flight of stairs saved me at least five minutes of walking: I discovered a shortcut! Besides, I didn’t have to go through the building full of stressed people and did not have to rush myself. All because for a short moment I got disoriented and had to take in as much information as possible to make a decision about the route.  I was no longer operating on autopilot. This allowed me to look at the same situation with new eyes and notice more options.

Having a routine for something, creating mental maps is a survival strategy but it can also be an obstacle, something that holds us back as we no longer feel the need to see the world but deal with our interpretations of it (some very old).  Waking up to the situation at hand (even unintentionally as it happened to me in this case) gives us a unique opportunity to become active participants in our own lives.

This little happening reminded me of my precarious job situation.  One of the managers at my dayjob has set her mind on getting rid of me and there is little I can (or want to do) to change that. Instead of thinking of how unfair she is or going through her flaws as a manager that operates out of fear and therefore herself uses the fear strategy dealing with the employees I made a conscious decision to  stay in that place of uncertainty and see what I could find there.

I looked at the situation and asked myself

• What happened really?
• How do I feel right now?

Staying connected with my body, I noticed that there was a certain level of anxiety associated with financial insecurity but also that some of the reaction was an automated responses to the situation that in our society is perceived as negative – my strong emotional reaction was socially and culturally conditioned. I allowed myself not to feel something only because it could be considered by others as something terrible but to experience what I really felt.  This is when I discovered a strong feeling of relief and an expansion.  Deep inside I was glad and relieved! How could that be?

That I have been unhappy at that job was no surprise to me so what happened really? I am about to lose something I did not really care about but gave a lot of time and energy to. Was I satisfied with how I was selling my time, energy and creativity? Was that money buying me the life I wanted for myself? I knew what the answer was!  After all,  I started Creative Response about a year ago because I was suffocating without the opportunity for creative self-expression at my dayjob and wanted to be helping people by being who I am, not surpressing it.

• What opportunities does the situation allow for?

This last question energised me incredibly.   There was not much going with CR lately as I  got in the wait-and-see phase where I was trying to figure out in which direction I would like to go. So why not use this opportunity to start a new project that will both benefit people and that would allow me to creatively express myself? As it happens, I was sitting on a good idea that I felt passionate about so why not start with it right away? Not that I have a lot to lose much right now!

Not going with the emotions, just experiencing them and staying in the exploratory phase for some time allowed me to see the situation in a different light. I talked to the manager in a matter-of-fact way.  In the end nothing changed in the circumstances and… everything changed. Instead of choosing a disempowering role of a victim of a vicious boss I allowed myself to get disoriented and listen to how I really felt about it and see where it came from. I knew the answers once I stepped outside the mental box I convinced myself I was locked in.

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is

thirsty:

You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all

is inside your own house;

and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a

confused look!

* * *

Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to

Calcutta or Tibet;

if you can’t f ind where your soul is hidden,

for you the world will never be real!

* * *

- Rumi (translated by Robert Bly)

Before I start working my edge it would be helpful to find it first. What is my edge then? What is an edge in the context of a spiritual practice?  The idea of looking for one at the edge of the known resonates with me. The edge is where I no longer have a script or for a moment forget about it. Or – is it?

Dosho brought to my attention during our very first talk that:

• one probably has to go over the edge to find it;
• the edge moves with time;

One of my edges is being awake in relationships. At least sometimes. A hard task, one for the people who want to grow muscle of awakening by exercising it and not just thinking of it.

Relationships are hard or rather it is hard to be in relationships because this is where our buttons are pushed to the extremes and because we actually care. Maybe we care too much and maybe not so much about the relationship and not for the person we are in a relationship with as much as for ourselves and how they treat us?  One can be all peaceful and loving on the cushion but flies off the handle whenever the current partner or ex partner does or says something that doesn’t fit the script we drafted for how things would develop. Old reactivity patterns are triggered and take over the show. And we are always, always right! Shouldn’t that alone be a signal for us to start suspecting that not everything is as certain as we thought???

I believe it is a comforting lie that we can work on one thing and THEN have a look at how we relate with others, especially the ones we are emotionally involved with.  (“I have to focus on myself for now”, as if anything else is not about oneself.) This a psychology of a coward who wants a comfy enlightenment and wishes not hear of the work that has to be done, the aching and the breaking of the muscles as they get stronger (we never take that kind of pain personally, do we?) In the end, the underlying issue is the same in all our struggles (the delusion of separation).

All achy right now but feel very alive… This is how it feels to be human and alive.

I don’t know either.  Sometimes I get curious though and wonder what he is doing right now.

Picking up where I left talking on wine in the daily entry on my 100-day Ango page, a few words on bitter sweetness of not getting what we want. Abstaining for some time from what I used to enjoy surprisingly brought some… pleasure.

Exploring the phenomenon of pleasure as a biological process, Alexander Lowen holds that  “…a concept of pleasure that limits it to the discharge of tension or the satisfaction of needs, though obviously valid, is too narrow to comprehend human behaviour. People actually enjoy a certain amount and kind of tension. They find pleasure in challenging situations, such as competitive sports, because the tension increases the amount of excitation. The buildup of excitation is in itself a pleasurable sensation when it is associated with the prospect of its release… When however the prospect of release is missing or the satisfaction is unduly postponed, desire and need become painful states. Thus, both need and fulfillment are aspects of the experience of pleasure in the absence of conflict and disturbances.” (Alexander Lowen, “Pleasure:  A Creative Approach to Life”)

In other words, not getting what we want right away is a healthy thing (probably not the kind of information that would make marketers jump with enthusiasm).  Creating a gap between the desire and its fulfillment also creates some space for reflection on what it is I actually desire and ask for. It brings to the surface all the stories I construct about why I want or need something (do I?) and the underlying inner believes.

Right now I look forward to uncorking a bottle of delicious red after the 100-days are over.

Psychology of Wine: Truth and Beauty by the Glass

This job that I wanted so badly and did not get or the relationship that went into pieces, will these happenings have the lasting effect on my happiness? Not according to the research Dan Gilbert and his team have been conducting. It is known that thanks to the prefrontal cortex humans have a fantastic ability to imagine the effects of something that did not happen, sort of a built -in simulator. This simulator makes us believe that different outcomes yield different degree of satisfaction.  Dan Gilbert’s research shows that this simulator is not such a reliable tool after all: whether we imagine having our heart broken, winning a lottery or losing a limb, we tend to overestimate the results of the imagined events and often fail at foreseeing the effects on how we would experience our situation once there.

Our simulator fails us because when things don’t go as planned another internal mechanism gets activated and takes over  -  the “psychological immune system” that insures that we actually change our views of the world so that we feel better about our circumstances (some seem to be better at it than others). Although all of us have this system at our disposal and it is actually working, most of us are unaware of it and it is to our great disadvantage.  Why?

One of the implications of Gilbert’s research is that we keep chasing shadows: while we think that happiness is to be found (for example by fulfilling our desires and getting what we want) and sometimes make considerable financial and emotional investments in finding it, all of us have the inherent mechanism of synthesizing happiness that allows us to actually be as happy without whatever we have been pursuing.

Gilbert provides a number of examples from their research, both entertaining and insightful but probably bad news for the marketers who are trying to convince us that we can achieve happiness by getting yet another gadget, service or experience.

In this talk Dan Gilbert also claims our “psychological immune system” works best when we are stuck and have no choice. In fact, freedom (the ability to choose) is the friend of the so called natural happiness (when we get what we want) but is the enemy of the synthesized happiness.

Just a thought: as I understand  both concepts of happiness used by Dan Gilbert imply wanting. While in natural happiness we get what we want, in synthesized happiness we start wanting what we get. Yet for some people happiness is neither but rather the absence of wanting or craving.

Stephen Batchelor on the Art of imagining (from his talk in Amsterdam in 2008). How can we use artistic means to explore and express our understanding of Dharma?

“The world is immigrating into a global village, the question is how much do you want to belong.”

Vusi Mahlasel

Marc Jonson spent years travelling around the world, recording street musicians as part of what started as a project and then grew into a movement.  An amazing intitiative, “Playing for Change” unites people through music and inspiration, giving musicians that never met before opportunity to collaborate and create together. These videos made my morning and reminded me once again we are different but ultimately we all want the same thing.

One of my other favourites – “One Love”, featuring Bob Marley, Manu Chao, Bono and many musicians from the places around the world.

Marc talks about the project as a guest blogger on Bill Moyers Journal

What song(s) bring up in YOU the feeling of being part of the global community?

In the time of the Buddha many people came to seek his advice for mundane matters as well as spiritual. One of the stories of a lay person who sought out the Buddha that has survived over the centuries is the tale of Kisa Gotami.

Thus I have heard. One day a woman carrying a child came to the place where the Buddha was staying with his sangha (spiritual community) of monks, lay seekers and attendants. She was granted an audience with the Buddha and, clearly in considerable distress, told him how she needed medicine for her baby son who had fallen into a deep sleep and would not wake up.

The Buddha asked the woman, named Kisa Gotami, to pass the child to him so that he could see what he could do. The Buddha was no physician but was willing to do anything he could to relieve suffering in anyone, be they his friend, enemy or a complete stranger. Upon receiving the child into his arms, though, it was obvious to him that the child was dead and had been so for some days. It was also obvious that to break this news to Kisa Gotami would have a devastating effect on her mind.

The Buddha told Kisa that he could help to cure her child but that he would need for her to leave her son with him while she got a special ingredient which he needed to prepare medicine. Close followers of the Buddha were surprised at this, as they could see that the child was long beyond the help of even the most skilled medical men. However, the Buddha went on to explain to Kisa that she would need to get some mustard seed from one of the nearby houses and bring it to him. Kisa was expecting to be asked to find something very rare to use as medicine so was surprised and delighted that the Buddha had only requested that she obtain something as commonly used as mustard seeds which were part of everyone’s store cupboard.

This was, however, not all. The Buddha said that the mustard seeds must come from a very particular house, one that had never experienced death. Still, Kisa thought that this would not be such a hard task. Although many houses would have suffered the loss of a family member, surely many had been untouched by this. So, with a lighter heart, she set off to begin her quest for mustard seeds.

Kisa approached the first house in the town and knocked at the door – a woman answered. Kisa explained that she needed some mustard seed to help her sick son and, since mustard seeds were commonly used in home remedies in India at that time, the woman simply nodded and went into the kitchen to fetch some. Coming back with a small jar containing the seeds, Kisa suddenly remembered the second part of the Buddha’s request and asked the woman if anyone had died in her house. If this was a strange thing to ask the woman of the house did not let on but told Kisa that her elderly father had died upstairs over the last winter. Kisa was sad but took the seed anyway. Surely she would have better luck at the next house.

As you may have guessed, this was not to be the case. She went to every single house in the town but at each door was told the same story. No house had escaped the touch of death. Sometimes it was a child who had died, more often an elderly parent or aunt, occasionally a husband or wife taken unexpectedly in the night. Kisa grew more and more despondent as she continued her search and finally made her way back to the Buddha after the sun had set. The moon, however, was full, and reflected light allowed her to see the way to where the Buddha’s sangha were staying.

The Buddha was seated in meditation, still holding Kisa’s child and Kisa waited for him to finish, not wanting to interrupt his contemplation. He soon opened his eyes and looked at her.

“My son is dead, isn’t he?”, Kisa asked. “Yes”, the Buddha replied.

“Will you help me to bury him?”.

The Buddha assented and the two of them found a peaceful spot under the tree in which to inter Kisa’s child. She was upset but the knowledge that her son was dead and not merely sleeping but now at least could face the reality of her grief on her own terms. In the morning she asked the Buddha if she could become one of his followers and he agreed.

——————————————————————————————————–

This story can barely be described as a happy one, yet it amply demonstrates the compassion and wisdom of the Buddha. Rather than telling Kisa what she needed to hear straight out, he skillfully devises a way for her to come to her own realisation that death was commonplace and she was not alone in experiencing it. It seems that she already knew that her son was dead but was clutching at straws rather than face the reality. The death of one’s own chuld is never going to be an easy burden to bear but by gently bringing her to realise the truth, the Buddha reduced the length of her suffering.

In our own lives we do not see reality more often than we would care to admit. Many of us have issues which we need to face, but instead of doing the wise (and brave) thing by addressing them, instead we often engage in distracting activities such as shopping, drinking, eating high calorie foods or watching television. Like Kisa’s hopeless quest for a cure, this merely prolongs our suffering, although at the time it feels like an escape from the pain of the truth.

Buddhism teaches us that freedom is found through facing the uncomfortable parts of life and dealing with them head on rather than hiding from reality. Dharma teachings (the teachings of the Buddha and later Buddhist gurus) also explain how reality really is, rather than how we usually see it. Our own self-interest can often distort our objective view of how things are to our own disadvantage. I am sure we can all recall situations of how we thought that someone had badly wronged us only to realise later that we had over-reacted through anger or self-interest. This is what happened to Kisa Gotami – she would very likely have seen that the child of another woman was not alive, but her very normal attachment to her own child did not allow her to see this.

Facing up to uncomfortable truths about ourselves and the way the world is can be a painful journey but leads to a greater quality of life, as no experience is off limits and suffering can be seen as an inevitable part of life rather than something to be feared. Seeing things as they really are does not have to happen all at once (although there are cases of sudden awakening) and is more like a gradual opening to what is. Many modern day pain clinics advise gently exploring painful areas of the body with our mind to increase blood flow to those areas and decrease tension. In a world filled with so much mental stress and tension this is also very wise advise to do with the painful parts of our mind, and something that the Buddha realised 2 500 years ago.

Further Reading
Chödrön, Pema. 2004. The Places That Scare You.
Chödrön, Pema. 2008. Comfortable With Uncertainty.
Vessantara. 2000. Tales of Freedom.

Mindfulness meditation is an excellent Buddhist practice but is only the first step to dealing with the negative states of mind which we all have.  How can we use this awareness to reduce the suffering we experience in life?

When we first start practising the cultivation of awareness it may appear that we are becoming more rather than less affected by our delusions such as desire (attachment) and anger(aversion).  What is usually happening is that we are actually noticing these emotions more rather than unconsciously acting and reacting to everything our mind puts out.  Just as we are unable to treat an illness until we are aware of its presence, though, so we cannot tackle the negative aspects of our mind until we have seen them with our own inner eye.

The Tibetan lorig teachings list 11 wholesome and 20 unwholesome mental factors and the state our mind is in will affect our actions and how we behave in the future.  As Nagarjuna put it:

“All actions of body speech and mind created with an attitude of greed, hatred and ignorance lead to suffering.  From all actions created with the opposite attitudes of love, compassion and wisdom, only happiness comes.”

A similar message can be found in the first two verses of the Pali Dhammapada:

“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of mind.  If a man speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows him as the wheels of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of mind.  If a man speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows him as his own shadow.”

By being mindful of our state of mind and aware of our reaction to strong emotions, we can greatly increase our ability to respond appropriately.  This will reduce the future suffering of both ourselves and those whom we come into contact with.  Anger and hatred can be averted and we can instead seek to act with a wholesome mental attitude.  Further, acting appropriately provides a model for others in how to handle human interaction and teaching by example rather than lecturing others can be a very powerful way to change behaviours.

I find that since I have begun meditating I am more aware both of my unwholesome mental states, and also of their consequences.  When I am with my children and they are misbehaving, acting out of anger or frustration rarely produces a good outcome.  Even if they do curb their behaviour, it is usually done resentfully.  With an attitude of compassion and love, I can often manage to get around them using humour (and occasional bribes of chocolate!) which both changes their behaviour and leaves us all happy with the situation.

The cultivation of mindfulness, and appropriate response based on that awareness, can enable us to treat both good and bad situations without attachment and aversion respectively, much as is alluded to in the Rudyard Kipling poem ‘If’ and advised by Geshe Potowa in his lojong teaching ‘Seven Verses for Thought Transformation‘:

“Endure whichever situation arises, good or bad“

If we are able to do this through practice, we can greatly reduce the degree of feeling generated through contact with sensory objects which will lead to reduced levels of attachment to worldly things.  In human existence it is an error to expect to always encounter favourable conditions and we would be wise to prepare for inevitable setbacks to our plans and personal loss of both possessions and people close to us.

Despite the many benefits which arise from being more mindful in our daily life, the downside of using mindfulness meditation to reduce our unwholesome mental factors is that we must always maintain our level of mental alertness to avoid falling prey to negative emotions.  This is hard even for the most committed Buddhist.  Even monks have off-days.

Dealing with each mental factor as it arises is akin to treating the symptoms of a disease without tending to its causes.  We can maintain our mindfulness throughout our life and thus reduce our negative reactions to a great degree but we will still remain in the cyclic existence which causes so much suffering.  Fortunately, Buddhism teaches a more permanent method to achieve lasting happiness.

The root of suffering is ignorance and unless we put an end to our ignorance of how things exist we are going to continue to experience suffering.  Primary to destroying ignorance is developing the understanding that the mind that grasps at the inherent existence of our own self is the cause of all that is unsatisfactory in our lives.  Once we have the firm and unmistaken view that our self is purely a label we place upon an ever-changing body and mind, events can be allowed to arise and fall away without attachment to them.  As anyone who has looked at this may know, however, destroying the attachment to self and ego is not an easy process.  Few worthwhile things in life are.

Meditation on emptiness is the means of destroying the demon of self-grasping and the Tibetan Lam Rim teachings set out exactly how this can be achieved.  Similar techniques for seeing reality are also found in instructions for zazen, insight meditation (vipassana) and mahamudra.  This is a central practice in all Buddhist paths, and with good reason.  By repeatedly contemplating the lack of inherent existence of all phenomena, in whatever way we choose, we can gradually become aware of the true nature of mind and the world around us.  This frees us from seeing what happens as anything other than clouds which move across the sky; they obscure the sun for a short while but soon pass by.  We can remain as still and impartial as a mountain as the winds of worldly concerns blow about us.  Notions of separation between our ’self’ and others are removed and everything is seen as it really is – the impermanent ebb and flow of energy and matter.

At a personal level I practice meditation on emptiness daily during the practice of Guru Yoga (a type of Tibetan puja which cultivates reverence for the guru as the transmitter of authentic dharma teachings).  This is slowly bringing the realisation that my body, speech and mind all have no inherent existence but are fundamentally dependent on numerous other people and things.  This enables me not to take so much offence when people insult or criticise me and to realise that my possessions, reputation, health and even existence is subject to impermanence as are all things.  That said I am clearly not enlightened yet, as anyone who knows me can readily testify!

Realisation of emptiness and the generation of a compassionate mind are the two parts of the path to enlightenment in Tibetan Buddhism.  Mindfulness and equanimity are very good methods to transform our negative mental factors into more positive states of mind, but the true goal is to achieve the body, speech and mind of a Buddha.  This is what we need to work towards on the Buddhist path while not neglecting our present state of being and ensuring that our current, unenlightened, actions are working for the benefit of all.

Andy

In Asia there is a very clever trap for catching monkeys. People hollow out a coconut, put something sweet in it, and make a hole at the bottom of the coconut just big enough for the monkey to slide its open hand in, but not big enough for the monkey to withdraw its hand as a fist. They attach the coconut to the tree, and the monkey comes along and gets trapped. What keeps the monkey trapped? Only the force of desire, of clinging, of attachment. All the monkey has to do is let go of the sweet, open its hand, slip it out, and be free. But only a very rare monkey will do that.

~  Joseph Goldstein, Transforming the Mind, Healing the World

It is the attachment to the ideas about what that coconut can bring to us that keeps us trapped. My coconut can take a shape of an idea I have of what my life should be like that prevents me from seeing other opportunities, an image what my body should look like, what others should treat me like, that I should manage all the stuff on my to-do list no matter what… It takes a good amount of self-observation to catch oneself clinging to that coconut and some courage to let it go. But then – the sweetness of the liberation is all mine! Also, I cannot receive anything if I have my hands full all the time!

Today I practice the art of letting go of the coconuts and saying to myself “Släpp!” (SW: let go!).

I always thought of myself  as a dog person till a cat with eyes the color of cinnamon moved in with me.

I would not hear of other places till I met him and we built home in a far land.

I spelled together as happy but felt lonely.

I was in love with Italian till I heard the German Zuckerschnecke.

…

The “I” I have known was a fantasy, a lie.  It is time to get to know me.

We are becoming more productive and more effecient, yet have never felt as lonely as some studies show.

What if is the answer is in slowing down and doing less?  Marc Lesser,  Zen teacher and CEO of ZBA Associates LLC, must be onto something if he can accomplish this by doing…less? He is also teaching the Google folks to search inside.

Just when I thought I started noticing a soft glow of a halo forming around my head, toying with the idea that I was actually becoming a more balanced person – bang! – a major revelation:  this is all B.S, I am full of B. S.

As it happens, I now notice more of the “bad” stuff than before:  I see the reactivity of the mind even in between major reactions (before empathizing with someone I can notice a sensation of inner satisfaction showing its ugly head even for just a split second);  I notice how enormously self-interested I am and how I keep getting stuck in the same places whenever my precious ego feels threatened or hurt no matter how decisive I am about getting unstuck.  In a way, there are more opportunities now to get stuck in some of those emotions as more of them are brought onto the surface by increasing self-awareness.  It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing more of the self than I noticed before and boy it is not a pretty sight! The challenge is to not identify with this new old stuff, see it as what it is and not judge. Somewhat surprisingly, it is easier for me to accept others do it than see myself in this sutuation which I interpret as a sign of arrogance: I should be perfect while the others don’t have to be. This time the ego feels hurt also because it sort of did not succeed in overriding itself!

I heard of this part of the process; still it was somewhat of a shock to see how little I sometimes  need to fly off the handle and how hard it is to notice it, label it and and put behind.

The aftertaste of this particular conversation when the person just in a matter of a few seconds pressed all the right buttons made me realise just how wrong I was believing I did not expect any gains from the practice yet hoping it would help me become a better person. Yet I cannot imagine not having any intention or any expectations whatsoever.  Something does drive us to practice, for example is not the willingness to get rid of suffering not a motive in itself?

Today I am 26 (some would say 38 but who listens to them? ). This is the first time I don’t feel like saying my age out loud.  It might seem like an accute case of midlife crises but I choose to see it as a crises of meaning. Meaning, I came to believe, is something I actively create and choose to align my life with and therefore there is always hope.

Ideas that I earlier saw as separate projects are now gathering into constallations almost without my conscious participation and tied up around one particular destination which is more about a way to be than a place to go to.  In other words, lots of work and I have no idea where I will end up. I started drafting it and will tell more about it here and on Creative Response of course.

I never particularly liked pictures of myself but it can be fun to look back at that frozen in time and space image of now a stranger.

Apparently, I picked up Find-out-for-yourself principle at the tender age of hm… something. Haven’t stopped since then. Sometimes it costs me teeth but it’s entirely worth it.

She seems lika someone who knows exactly what she wants. Calm confidence. We will overcome!

Self-portrait is a journey inside.  What side of me do I choose to explore? To commit myself to actually set aside some time for painting and to increase self-awareness I challenged myself to make not one but seven self-portaits in the medium of my choice.  I got started on the first one…

I might need to learn to bend and stretch time first to squeeze it all into 24 hours.

In the last year thanks to the insights from the meditation practice I came to revise what matters to me and what I actually believe in. Believes that pretty much shape my choices these days:

• I believe each one of us has a unique journey we have to take in the course of our lives
• I believe it is my task to actually discover and realise my true nature, who I am and why I have come here
• I believe this kind of realisation is not possible on the intellectual level, outside the context but rather through living and direct experience of life and that we can attain that level of intimacy with life through meditation. In other words – more practice!

FINALLY

I have to say something about fish. My zodiac sign is Pieces and although I don’t really believe in that it matters much, I will celebrate yet another day on this planet by watching some of my favourite video bits and pieces that remind me of how precious this place and my time on it is. This one is about the fish.

Sunfish (Mola Mola) is an amazing creature that I first say in a Marine Zoo in Lissabon. It moved in an awkward way and radiated benevolence. I loved this TED video and TierneyThys’ enthusiasm in studying sunfish.

I got another one of those knitting fits that strike me now and then. In the last few years I noticed that I experienced the knitting itch not only when I had pleanty of free time but surprisingly also when I felt I had no free time at all. For example this last one came when the boarder line between work and free time was getting so blurred that I was practically working nonstop. At some point when I was in the city area running some errands my feet brought me into a knitting supply store. I had no plans for and did not think I had the time to knit anything but as I entered the store and my eyes took in the colors and textures of yarn from different corners of the world I knew this was what I had to do and that it was about something more than an enjoyable way of spending time.

And for the last few evenings knitting I did for at least 20 minutes no matter how busy I thought I was.  I would remind myself that the to-do list can never really be exhausted, then I would shut down the laptop, pick up the started knitting project and let my hands do the work, my mind go blank. This was a survival mechanism at work, it appears.

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert offers a well-grounded in scientific research explanation to why crafts are important for our mental health in her book  “Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist’s Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain’s Healing Power”. (An interview with her can be heard on “To the best of our knowledge” in the 2008 December show “Re-considering crafts” and devoted to this particular issue).

Kelly Lambert’s conclusions draw on the findings in the fields of anthropology, neuroscience and psychology. Her theory is that physical effort directed toward  producing something with our hands and seeing the end result “activates particular regions of the brain and builds resilience against the emotional emptiness and negative thinking associated with depression”.

In other words,  using both hands on projects like knitting or pottery is as good to the body as taking anti-depressants! Intuitively I found the way to retain or regain mental balance by resorting to knitting as a natural anti-depressant.

From the Product description on the Amazon: “Whereas most therapies emphasize the importance of mental activity, Lambert reminds us of the importance of physical activity in establishing control in a fast-paced culture that is focused more on the prospect of immediate gratification than savoring the fruits of our labor.”

It took me a couple of hours to knit this winter hat by one of the Swedish designers. My knitting style is loose and the final product always looks more “relaxed” than the one featured on the picture of the project description but what do I care? I have developed my own style even in knitting,  I now have a trendy winter hat, my head is well-protected against the cold Swedish winter and I feel great

I believe that it is most of the time in our power and that it is our responsability to learn to recognise the signs of mental imbalance and signals of depression by observing our reactions to the daily situations (by keeping in touch with the body) and taking both preventive and restorative measures before turning for quick fixes.  “Happiness is an inside job” becomes more than a catchy phrase. We’ve got to figure out what drives us and makes us feel better. Nobody else will. (With this in mind I make the mental note of keeping the promise to myself to sleep at least 6 hours every night.)

I now consider taking a course in welding but that has to wait till summer. 

Posted in Books and Ideas, brain, Handmade, Mind, Response Tagged: brain, copying, crafts, Kelly Lambert, knitting ]]> http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/copying-by-way-of-crafts/feed/ 0 understandingcat tools knitted-hat knitted-hat_1 http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/night-empty-street-lamp-posts-fish/ http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/night-empty-street-lamp-posts-fish/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:56:30 +0000 understandingcat http://appropriateresponse.wordpress.com/?p=1143 ]]>

Not that I was interested in that particular TV-show. Even so with no special plans for Friday night it seemed like a good idea to visit a friend who invited me to watch the show I liked. Somewhat unwillingly, I stepped out into the cold night and immediately loved the sensation of crispy air against the cheeks, the dark sky, the silence hanging over the neighbourhood and the prospect of walking alone with my thoughts for at least a quarter of an hour. The street was empty – on Friday night not much happens in our neighbourhood.

Not much happens in Sweden in general. There is little place for contact outside one’s social circle. Talking to strangers is restricted to a brief exchange of remarks at the train station when the train is running late or polite smiles when strangers’ eyes meet. I have not been outside the country for a year and started missing the spontaneity of encounters that often comes when people find themselves in between countries and social norms of their cultures. Surprising encounters happen somewhere else, and most definitely not in our quiet area where on a Friday night you are more likely to run into a hurrying on some urgent business rabbit than another human being.

Right before entering the dark alley behind the housing area, I was stopped by the fish lying in the middle of the sidewalk as if it nothing better to do on a Friday night. The first thing that I noticed was how its grey silky body was nicely contrasting against the covered in frost surface of the sidewalk, icy crystals on it reflecting the light from the street lamps and making it look like a bed of dimonds. I also noticed how perfectly aligned it was with the border of the sidewalk. For a few moments there my mind went blank, just as the expression of the single eye that was staring upward. I looked at the fish, the fish was making eye contact with nothingness, the moon was observing the silent scene from a safe distance.

And I have felt

The presence that disturbes me with the joy…

Wordsworth, Tinturn Abbey (1798)

When I just started working with coaching an acquaintance of mine, who’s been sitting zazen for quite a while, asked me how I was going to combine the practice and working as a coach.  The way he put it I had to actually bury my integrity in order to get into coaching. Whatever his perceptions of coaching might be, I had looked into it before I started working with coaching professionally.  What is it about? How does it help people? It also made me realise I had been doing it for quite a while for my friends as a hobby!

Then I looked inside. What is it that drives me? What do I have to offer people? Why should they come to me? (Those are really good questions for any professional to ask. Really, get it down on paper, just like that.)

Helping at least someone to connect to their authentic self and to learn to appreciate life as it is along with achieving the desired results as part of my work – it is just too good to be true! I see coaching as an expression of my bodhisattva vow in my every day life. It is a unique opportunity to work with people who actually are interested to get engaged in their lives and make  a change. It is never only about the results because in the process we inevitably have to look at our own perspectives and ideas of our selves and what we thought was possible, face our monsters and befriend them instead of sticking our heads in the sand.  I actually get to see people lighten up at the insight that it is possible to get a grip of the mind and choose a different path, get into new modes of thinking and allow themselves to live more authentic lives.

So no, I do not have to sell myself short in coaching just like in anything else in life. If  I don’t believe some technique would be useful for the client, I will never use it but that has nothing to do with spiritual practice and can be expected from any professional, I believe.

One aspect that I was not aware of when I started but that I begin noticing now is beautifully expressed in one of the books that gave my ideas world about art a good shaking – Peter London’s “No more secondhand art”:

“Engaging with others… not only enables our companions to move more assuredly towards their particular goals, but also enables us to get on with our own evolution. As we employ our recources to futher the growth of someone else, we become more beneficient, more epxressive and expansive. In the act of helping others we are transformed in the like manner.”

No doubt about it, this whole thing of starting an independent business is a huge learning experience, all of it. This part, thoguh, the one Peter writes about, when we touch others and become transformed “in the like manner”, how is this not Zen?

How do you touch people in your line of work? I’d love to know!

I actually had the honor of teaching abstruct art to the kids in a Nigerian school (a touch and fun challenge I had to swallow). Here I am preparing a lession with my colleague. Btw, posing for the pictures is a very Nigerian style so I had to be flexible with it.

Meriam-Webster has three senses listed for its entry on integrity:

1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility

2 : an unimpaired condition : soundness

3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : completeness

The first sense of upholding and living by a code of standards is what the word brought to my mind in the past. In that sense, I see that failure is already set up because I have defined and given it being as a possibility. Failure is on the sidelines waiting to be invoked when I perceive myself as slipping or wavering. And. so with the second sense of “soundness”, “unimpaired”, “flawed” arises in my world. The third sense “completeness”, isn’t “lacking” intrinsic?  Perhaps, it is when I decide the terms of what it is to be complete.

The English word “integrity” itself is derived from the Latin word integer meaning “entire”.  As entirety, integrity is my world as it is. It is not dependant on my standards or values or anyone else’s. It is just “there” as I find it. In its entirety, it is just present; nothing lacking, nothing superfluous.

This integrity is shattered within my mind. My “self” is locked into division and confusion.  Its ultimate concern being its own preservation. Fear, want, dread, pleasure and pain taint everything causing distances to appear. Integrity is lost in the gaps and gulfs that separate “me” from “the others”.

If my self is the cause of this turmoil, then integrity has to be reclaimed in the self. Gaps and gulfs are perceived when my self is predisposed by fear and doubt into seeing threats and conflicts out there in the world. A fearful, uncertain self is something that the universe lacks. It is an ongoing ebbing and waning of motion. Without a divided self, there is nothing to discern beginnings and endings, desirable and undesirable, this and that.  The universe is filled, whole, and  lacks nothing in each moment.

So, integrity is not something that is missing in the world or my life. It is there waiting to be cleared of the clutter my doubting and fearful self has thrown on to it.  The work to be done lies in me to first clean myself of the defensive barriers against the enemies and threats that I myself have created. Then live in and move along with the freedom that integrity brings.

Joko Beck in her book Everyday Zen” quotes a verse from the Bible “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (the “heart” referring not to some emotional aspect, but to “the heart of the matter, the truth of the problem…”. ) She makes a clear distinction between decisions and problems and asserts that although our life consists of nothing but decisions from morning to night, we see it in terms of problems.

Decisions have never been easy for me. For years I have been living with the idea of myself as a person who struggles with choices (Pieces, you know, looking in the opposite directions). How do I know what the right choice is in any given situation? I had one of those decisions to make just the other day when I felt I got stuck  – it turned into a problem that was eating up a lot of energy. Sorry, I started seeing the situation as the problem.

“We feel we just can’t make a decision – and so we have a problem. And this is where human life can snarl itself up… When we have a major issue in our life we are baffled about what to do. And that’s where the quotation applies: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”. What really decides any problem is the way we think in our hearts. How we see what our life is. Out of what we make our decision.”

Recently I started noticing subtle, almost imperceptible changes in the whole decision-making area and discovered that making choices is not as hard as it seems  (not just when it comes to choosing  between pizza or pasta dish). I am talking some pretty heavy personal life and career decisions here. Although I can still feel cannot see what the best choice would be, the minute I get back to myself and check in what my life is about, I know exactly what to do. It doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do it but a huge load of decision making is lifted off my shoulders and I can simply move forward, focusing on actually doing it. It feels liberating and … different!

“Serious practice changes the way we see our life, and so what we do with our life begins to shift. People want a mechanism for making decisions… There can be no such mechanism. But if we know more and more who we are, out of that we will make our decision… The more we know who we are, the more our problems shift into, “I am this therefore I will do that, or I am to some degree willing to do that “.

When I looked into the heart of the “problem”, I saw no problem. I knew what my choice would be and saw that the uneasiness came from the fear of facing the reactions of others, in fact not very close to me people. Well, then the real question was if I was willing to make my choice based on what others might or might not think. I could do that, too, but that was a different question altogether.

“And we will sometimes choose things that look to other people very trying, very unpleasant… But if for me in my heart that’s what I feel I am and the way my life wants to express itself, then there is no problem.”

Well, yes, the very discovery that somehow what a few people would think about my choice was standing in the way of me letting my life expressing itself helped me see that inside I had made up my mind. I was just afraid of living with the consequences.

“So when something in your lives looks insoluble, it means that we think that there’s a problem out there that we look at as an object, like a grapefruit. We have not viewed that problem as ourselves… When I know who I am I will have no problem in knowing what to do”.

As in the above mentioned story my own experience, too, unfolded on a road and in a somewhat chaotic and exotic for an outsider environment. The unusual situation made it easier for me to no longer be clinging to the old image of me and what I possibly could or could not do.

Master Dogen’s words start making more sense: “…to study yourself is to forget yourself; to forget yourself is to be awakened and realize your intimacy with all things.”

Can we become intimate with all things through conceptualising and analysing? My Dharma sister Sara (the cat that lives with me) never analyses anything and seems to be having a good life. I suspect that animals and kids do not go around rationalising the world and settle for simply living in it.

It is not easy to see myself with the new eyes when the surroundings are the same. Or are they? Through yoga and zazen I have learned that one way to not get trapped in the endless stories is to stay connected with the body and to follow it.  It is more than just about the “gut” feeling.  Our bodies are wired to collect and process the information so we can quickly respond to the situation but we believe the best decisions come from the head. Yet – applying the rational approach to this all-pervasive belief – can we really know that this is true? My own experience of overanalysing and overplanning has proved me wrong on more occasions that I would like to admit to myself and to Sara (the cat).

The society conditions us to not trust our bodies and override whatever they have to say to us. One example that comes to mind now is the diet pills that dampen the feeling of hunger. What they actually say is that hunger is something negative and is to be avoided. Yet how would we know when to start eating and when to stop if we don’t feel hunger to begin with?

Our bodies receive and store our emotions and by being curious about the ways we react by checking in with the body we can learn tons about ourselves. Yet again the society encourages us being “in control” of our emotions which takes the expression of stifling them.

Thomas J. Leonard writes about this: “What happens when immediate responses are stifled is that people lose track of the full measure of their feelings, along with many things they might have learned from the tendencies revealed by those responses. In order to appear competent and in control, they end up cultivating internal numbness, a widening distance between their minds and their bodies. Trying to preventing getting stuck in an overly reactive mode, they end up stuck in a response-containment mode, which blocks self-knowledge. And self-knowledge is the key to evolving”.* Leonard’s point is that being in tune with our feelings – positive as upsetting – allows us to pick up on all possible environmental clues and use this valuable information to create a more fulfilling life.

Being aware of one’s responses is not the same as flying off the handle and “losing it”. It is allowing myself to experience the feeling as it is – raw energy – and putting the story aside. Again – “Feel the feeling, drop the story”. However, it is exactly what we often have resistance to. I feel nervous about giving a call to the friend I had falling out with and not liking the feeling decide to not make this call and just let this opportunity go.  Another way to approach the situation would be to feel the feeling, see where it comes from (some sort of expectation) and take the step anyway.  I know a Zen teacher who would say that not making this call is alright, too, and I get it, I really do but honestly which of the two choices would I want to be a metaphor for my life?

…If you don’t break you ropes while you’re alive,

do you think

ghosts will do it after?…

Kabir, Ecstatic Poems (Translated by Robert Bly)

* Thomas J. Leonard, “The Portable Coach”

Earlier I thought of an appropriate response as some esoteric act that only cats, lamas and other enlightened beings were capable of. This notion has been evolving with time and I see it now as showing up for a situation, seeing what it asks for and acting from that place. There is no separation between the self and the situation. Then I simply know what to do, how to react and leave the rational mind out of it. Most of the time the appropriate response is not what I think it should be (surprise!) and I can end up doing what seems like the right thing but still something doesn’t feel right. Possibly because trying to figure out appropriate response outside the context of the situation is as meaningful as trying to bottle the air. In many Zen stories a teacher gives different advice to different students in the same situation.

Can someone but me know what my appropriate response is? Above all, how do I know?

I stopped eating meat a few years ago and when I did it seemed the most natural thing to do, at least to me. I sort of promised myself to not make a religion out of it and so far it never has been an issue. Even when on one particular occasion I actually did eat meat.

In autumn of 2005 my friend and I were working on a project in Nigeria. Our time at school where we were teaching was running out and to thank us for our work there its proprietress Mrs. Lawson organised a trip to the nature preserve with waterfalls.  She generously let us invite our friends most of whom were university students and  who we had stayed with during the first few weeks in the country. Mrs Lawson chartered an equipped with AC bus and loaded it with food and soft drinks enough to feed a street.

Our friends were not spoiled by this kind of outings and at first felt stiff in Mrs Lawson’s presence. After a while they loosened up, started cracking jokes and before we knew it everyone on the bus was doing what people do when feeling overwhelmed with joy -  singing. The Iron Lady of the Ogun state herself relaxed, looking more like a caring mother with a bunch of noisy kids than someone   used to socialising with the kings and the President.  I was convinced that her strong and clear voice was reaching all the way to the tops of the covered with the trees mountains we were passing by. The two of us were unfamiliar with the Christian praise songs and songs in Yoruba so we could only smile back at our friends and laugh with them to this unexpected luxurious opportunity to get together in this way, bouncing on our sits as the bus made its way deeper between the mountains.

After a whole day at school we were getting hungry and Mrs Lawson opened up the bags with snacks. When it was clear that all mini pies contained meat I took one without much thinking and only by the surprised reaction of my friend realised how unusual it actually was. True, I don’t normally do this kind of thing and yet I did without feeling guilty. I did not go on a guilt trip then but later on wondered if the episode meant I could not live by my principles and was short of integrity.

I remembered the bumpy and joyful ride to the waterfalls as I was reading one particular chapter in Byron Katie’s “Loving what is” where she tells a story of another ride. After quitting smoking (cold turkey, as a result of her awakening), eleven years later she took a cab in Turkey,  with the loudly playing music and the constantly honking driver. When the driver offered her a cigarette, she took it without thinking twice: “The music was going full blast, the horns were going full blast, and I sat in the backseat, smoking and loving each moment. It’s okay if I do smoke, I noticed, and it’s okay if I don’t, and I notice that I haven’t smoked since that one wonderful taxi ride.”

(To be continued…)

Footprint of Buddha with Dharmacakra and Triratna, 1st century, Gandhāra.

Before he died, the Buddha instructed the sangha not to make images of him. In the Maha-parinibbana Sutta, he wanted each of his disciples to be “an island unto his or herself, as a refuge unto his or herself seeking no other refuges”. There were no portrayals of the Buddha in a human form in early Buddhism. But his presence was represented symbolical in pictures and sculptures by an empty throne, dharma wheels and footprints.

The stone-relief footprint motif, originating in India, spread throughout eastern Asia with Buddhism as stamps on the earth of the Buddha’s existence, his comings and goings, his path. Was the original message in these is that what is to be venerated is not the Buddha’s person, but the path that he had walked and marked for others to walk? Are they a form of invitation for ones to follow the same course and discover their own awakenings from within themselves?

Truth is what I had in the beginning. Growing up in the US Bible Belt, Truth was written and revealed by the prophets and apostles.  How the world began, why it seemed imperfect, why I was in it and what role I played; these questions were all provided with answers. Actually the answers were already provided before questions were even raised.  The world and everything it contained was set up and controlled by a God that was outside of the world and its imperfections looking on.

But with the coming of age, the questions arose. The answers from the Book then seemed quaint and simple. The world became slipery, hard to grasp. The world was activated by forces and drives coming from within and working through myriad, compounded things. In all this profusion, there didn’t seem a need for a creator; for the world was creation, destruction, birth , death all in an intertwined dance with its own music without a conductor. Within this confusion, there was no rock to cling to. Truth became provisional at best.

I explored other belief systems and ways of thinking under the assumption that there was a framework that imposed order in the world and more importantly in my life. I felt a growing separation between me and others even with family and close friends. We were living in the same world, but seeing it with different eyes. Truth was becoming truths. Words of others, even my own words, failed to seize reality just as the Word of God had earlier.

I came upon Buddhism during this search. My first impression of it was that it was saying that the world is suffering and, to escape it, we have to kill all attachments to it which I read as essentially killing our souls. Breaking from all emotions, positive and negative, and extinguishing ourselves in Nibbana. The Buddha became superhuman by killing the human within him and being enshrined in gold. He was the standard to live up to. A state of perfection to emulate and attain. Luckily, you had countless lifetimes to attain this perfection.  This had no appeal to me because, as with God, this was another figure to follow that was outside the world and all of its bewildering, unfathomable complexity.  Since it was outside, it could be ignored except as somthing to be excaped or saved from, just as before.

I had come to sense that the world (really life) and its confusion was the truth itself. It could not be tamed and it could not be escaped. It could only be lived.

When I revisited Buddhism in its Zen form, what I found was a path laid out by Guatama Buddha that was inside the world/life. A way to live it, not to escape or to tame it. The Answers to the Questions are that there are no Questions. We practice to accept (to be) our place in this unpredictable, unrepeatable dance of being/non-being. To be home with it following the meandering path that winds through it. Actualizing the Truth that is us.

That’s why, to me, the Buddha left empty footprints in the earth. They are there to guide each of us on the path that he took to his awakening to our own awakenings.

They certainly got my attention there: what IS the modern Zen perspective anyway? The other day I listened to the first episode of  Life Zero – a new podcast that discusses Lifestyle Design and aspires to “follow the modern Zen perspective”. The more I listened to it the clearer it became that the word Zen was used rather freely with little if any anchoring in Zen practice and teachings. Still listening to this show triggered some personal response and made me think of how the practice reflects on my lifestyle design.

In this first episode the host John Flowers – who according to him studied Theravada Zen Buddhism in Thailand (???) – invites a couple of friends to talk around what he calls rules of thumb of Zero Life. One of the topics evolves around getting rid of the things one doesn’t need. There is quite a bit of experience sharing, some practical information on ways to get rid of stuff and details as to the number of pairs of shoes each of them currently owns (who did not sin in the shoe department) but very little philosohpy behind the whole less-is-better idea and with no grounding in any Buddhist tradition one can really get an idea that this is what Zen perspective is about – getting rid of the (material) stuff one doesn’t need.

Some of John’s rules contradict the concepts of Life Zero itself. For example according to one of them we should get rid of anything we have acquired with the ex-lover as this is the reminder of the old times and is a potential emotional baggage. The couch you purchased with your now ex-partner has to go, according to John. Only if it brings up bad memoroies, say the other two. Besides, how sustainable is that, getting rid of stuff and possibly buying new for this reason? In other words, it is the pleasant vs the unpleasant memories and associations that decide the fortune of the couch. (I wonder what John would say of such “joint acquisitions” as pets or better yet children).

Someone less environmentally conscious has gotten separated recently?  

From the Buddhist perspective, not wanting (pushing away) is just another side of wanting – we want to NOT WANT. I went through the cleaning stage myself and the process still continues. Yet it seems to me there is no point in throwing or giving away stuff from the closet if I am unable to clean up the space in my own head, if day after day I buy into everyhting my mind offers, take it in and make it my “own”. It is not the couch in itself or the extra pair of shoes that make us unhappy but how we relate to them. I like the way Thich Nhat Hahn writes about it: “The Buddha of our time can use a telephone, even a cell phone, but he is free from that cell phone.”

What we have to drop is not the furniture or clothes to begin with but the ideas of self that create the illusion of separation from others, all sentient beings. All Buddhist practices see it as a purpose to decentralise and drop this idea of an independent self.  

No Buddist tradition ever encourages us to run away from one’s emotions and feelings no matter how unpleasant they can feel to us. On the contrary, in zazen we choose to show up for life as it is, face whatever comes up, taking the attitude off the cushion into the everyday life and letting in anger or compassion, without discrimintating. It does require a few tons of courage and compassion and this is where zazen is helpful: here we learn to ride on the wave of emotions, not beign afraid to take an occasional plunge and get wet. I think of it as surrending to the wave in order to get to know it more intimately and to learn to use its energy effectively. To begin with I have to face the wave instead of turning my back on it and trying to run away: it will catch up with me anyway but then the surprise factor can increase the impact and hit me much harder, pulling me into the whirlpool of emotions.

Master Dogen lived close to the water and probably had more to say about it than about furniture. For him water never looked the same, as John Daido Loori points out in one of his recent articles, quating Dogen Zenji: “What different types of beings see is different. We should reflect on this. Is it that there are different ways of seeing a single object? Or is it that we have mistaken a variety of images for a single image? We should examine this question in detail, concentrate every effort on understanding it, and then concentrate even more….”

*****

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