Silence IS golden!

What is it about occasional or regular periods of silence that is so nourishing for so many people? Did it begin with our ancient ancestors having to be quiet during hunts or having to be quiet when a bear or lion was nearby? Or was it those spontaneous moments of silence like witnessing a beautiful sunset?

I remember moments of silence in my childhood, fishing in a lake with my father before dawn, watching a beautiful Arizona sunset with my mother. As I grew older, I felt the nourishment of moments of silence sometimes during church and then during some meditations.

I first introduced silence in my classes at Keene State during the Iraqi war in 1993. I told the students that I didn’t want to engage in conversation or debate but I couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening. I began each class with 2 minutes of silence. Students could do what they wanted as long as they were silent. In each class, after a couple of weeks, I asked the students anonymously (on blank sheets of paper) to say yes or no to continuing the silence. In all classes, the response was overwhelmingly yes.

In the following semesters, I introduced silence at the beginning of the semester. Over time, I taught simple mindfulness practices like awareness of breath, and I always made the silence optional. The result was that the overwhelming number of students found silence valuable.

Several years later, I made mindfulness integral in several interdisciplinary courses I was teaching. In those classes I taught awareness of breath, of body, of thoughts and emotions, and the loving-kindness meditation. At the end of each course, on the anonymous course evaluation, I asked students to tell me if they thought I should have more, less, or the same amount of mindfulness meditations in future classes. I did this three times and the overwhelming response was more!

Whenever I teach meditation, I occasionally open my eyes during a longer meditation to check in on how people are doing. I do this especially at the county jail where I teach meditation each week. I am always moved by people’s faces. Even though many say their mind is often busy during meditation, the faces are generally calm.

Last month I reread Silence by Christina Feldman, a book I dearly love. It is amazingly inexpensive ($11 on Amazon) given that it is printed on glossy paper and there are beautiful photographs on almost every page. I share three passages from the book.

“The moments of silence we encounter invite us to be still, to listen deeply, and to be present in this world. The glimpses of silence we meet remind us of a way of being in which we are deeply touched by the mystery and grandeur of life. In the midst of silence we remember what it feels like to be truly alive, receptive, and sensitive. Silence, we come to understand, is the language of the heart.”

“What difference would it make to our lives if we allowed ourselves as much time and attention to the cultivation of calmness and stillness as we give to producing and doing. Learning to live an intentional life.”

“Instead of fleeing from or avoiding the chaos of our psychological, emotional landscape, we learn to bring a gentle, clear attentiveness to it. The most direct way of doing this is to turn toward those inner places that are most wounded and chaotic…We begin to understand that the inner turmoil is a result of the many moments of incomplete attention we brought to the encounters of our day, the inner agitation that has compelled us to haste, and the times we have become simply lost in our expectations, wants, plans, and thoughts. All of this can be transformed as we come to understand that the life of engagement, activity, and creativity does not preordain a sentence of agitation and anxiety.”

I encourage readers to experiment with inviting moments of silence into your days.
Try this for a week or two—it might become a habit!
• When waking up
• Before beginning a meal
• In nature: listening to the wind, to the birds…
• In the city: the noises around you. This is your life now.
• At occasional moments during the day.

Fred Rogers’ Commencement Address

After deciding to move the blog to two posts a month a couple of weeks ago, I realized how tired I really was—the culmination of covid-19, the continued violence against unarmed black men, and my own daily life. I plan to resume the blog next Tuesday. Today I am passing on a story that came yesterday in my email box from The Daily Good, a free offering from Service Space, to which I subscribe: Fred Rogers’ Commencement Speech to Dartmouth in 2002.

Wow. What a privilege to be with you all. Since I’ve arrived here in Hanover, many people have greeted me by saying, “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood.” Well, indeed it is a beautiful day, but before I begin, I’d like you to know that I recognize that you, who live and work here, have had many days, particularly during these last several months, that have been far from beautiful. You’ve had a painful time, and you’ve handled it with dignity. I feel certain that the Zantop’s generous spirits inspire you. And it’s a great privilege for me to be with you all.

When I was at Dartmouth in the late 1940s, the tuition, room, and board all added up to $1,100 a year. Nobody owned a home computer, and hardly anyone had a television set. And those who did, there was a choice of three channels. I’m not sure if Jeanne Shaheen was even born yet, but very few people would have guessed that within 50 years, a woman would be governor or New Hampshire. Yes.

When I was here, the first word of the alma mater was “Men. Men of Dartmouth give a rouse.” Well, now the first word is "Dear." Some things change for the better.

During my first year here, I lived right over there at 101 Middle Mass. And I had two roommates. I had a professor, over there, who did his best to scare everyone in his class, and he gave me the lowest grade that I ever had in any school anywhere. But I also had an astronomy professor, George Dimitrov, who looked for and found what was best in each of his students. When I look at the night sky, I still think of that extra special, kind man.

Dartmouth is many things to each of us, and I'm grateful to Jim and Susan Wright for all that they have done for this school. And I’m grateful to my old friend, Chick Koop, for all that he has done for all of us. And I congratulate every one of you who is being honored in any way during this Commencement weekend.

Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. May we never even pretend that we are not.

Have you heard my favorite story that came from the Seattle Special Olympics? Well, for the 100-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line, and at the sound of the gun, they took off. But not long afterward, one little boy stumbled and fell, and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard him crying. They slowed down, turned around, and ran back to him. Every one of them ran back to him. One little girl with Down Syndrome bent down and kissed the boy, and said, “This'll make it better.” The little boy got up, and he and the rest of the runners linked their arms together, and joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in that stadium stood up, and clapped, and whistled, and cheered for a long, long time. People who were there are still telling this story with great delight. And you know why. Because deep down, we know that what matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. Even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius—what a name—was the last of the great Roman philosophers, and the first of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. Fifteen hundred years ago, Boethius wrote this sentence, “O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as is the universe, by Love.”

I was once invited to sit in on a master class of six young cellists from the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra. The master teacher was Yo-Yo Ma. Now, Yo-Yo is the most other-oriented genius I’ve every known. His music comes from a very deep place within his being. And during that master class, Yo-Yo gently led those young cellists into understandings about their instruments, their music, and their selves, which some of them told me later, they’d carry with them forever.

I can still see the face of one young man who had just finished playing a movement of Brahms’ Cello Sonata, when Yo-Yo said, “Nobody else can make the sound you make.” Of course, he meant that as a compliment to the young man. Nevertheless, he meant that also for everyone in the class. Nobody else can make the sound you make. Nobody else can choose to make that particular sound in that particular way.

I’m very much interested in choices, and what it is, and who it is, that enable us human beings to make the choices we make all through our lives. What choices lead to ethnic cleansing? What choices lead to healing? What choices lead to the destruction of the environment, the erosion of the Sabbath, suicide bombings, or teenagers shooting teachers. What choices encourage heroism in the midst of chaos?

I have a lot of framed things in my office, which people have given to me through the years. And on my walls are Greek, and Hebrew, and Russian, and Chinese. And beside my chair, is a French sentence from Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince. It reads, “L’essential est invisible pour les yeux.” What is essential is invisible to the eye. Well, what is essential about you? And who are those who have helped you become the person you are? Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person, and often many, who have believed in him or her. We just don’t get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.

I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some, like my astronomy professor, may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside your self. And I feel that you deserve quiet time, on this special occasion, to devote some thought to them. So, let’s just take a minute, in honor of those that have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.

Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be, that during your silent times, you remember how important they are to you. It’s not the honors and the prizes, and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted. That we never have to fear the truth. That the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff.

There’s a neighborhood song that is meant for the child in each of us, and I’d like to give you the words of that song right now. “It’s you I like, it’s not the things you wear. It’s not the way you do your hair, but it’s you I like. The way you are right now, the way down deep inside you. Not the things that hide you. Not your caps and gowns, they’re just beside you. But it’s you I like. Every part of you. Your skin, your eyes, your feelings. Whether old or new, I hope that you remember, even when you're feeling blue, that it’s you I like. It’s you, yourself, it’s you. It’s you I like.”

And what that ultimately means, of course, is that you don't ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see, or hear, or touch. That deep part of you, that allows you to stand for those things, without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate. Peace that rises triumphant over war. And justice that proves more powerful than greed.

So, in all that you do in all of your life, I wish you the strength and the grace to make those choices which will allow you and your neighbor to become the best of whoever you are.

Congratulations to you all.

Why meditate?

"I like this, I want this, I must have this, I need this, I worry that I won’t get it…"
"I don’t like this, I hate this, this shouldn’t be happening..."

So much of our internal dialogue is about what we like and want and what we don't like and don't want. We call these thoughts ruminating, worrying, fantasizing, etc.

Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral
One of the more powerful concepts that I learned from Buddhist psychology is Buddha's statement that we are constantly, mostly unconsciously, labeling the information coming to our senses as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We tend to be drawn to the pleasant, turn away from the unpleasant, and ignore the neutral. Interestingly, neuroscientist have said basically the same thing in their language: our brain assigns a valence (+, -, or 0) to every input. This is true not only of humans, but all living beings. It's hard-wired and essential to survival.

Freud coined the phrase 'pleasure principle': we seek pleasure and avoid pain. When Jon Kabat-Zinn brought mindfulness to mainstream America, one of his catchphrases was that we live much of our lives on auto pilot. Buddha's point was that when we these assessments stay at the subconscious level, we are driven by them, and we suffer from this.

Primary and secondary pain
A common paraphrase of Buddha's response to this is that in life, pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional. Translating his teachings to modern language, he distinguished between primary and secondary pain. Primary pain, physical or emotional, is the initial information coming to our brain. Secondary pain is what we add, for example, "I don't like it," "I wish it would go away," or "why me?" In an 8 week course on meeting pain with mindfulness, I told participants that the secondary pain could be brought to zero, and all of the participants found some or immense reduction in the secondary pain.

Basic mindfulness
The beginning instructions for mindfulness meditation are to pick an object, for example the breath or body, and to cultivate an interested and non-judgmental awareness to what we are paying attention to. When we realize the mind has wandered, we gently return our attention to the meditation object. This alone has brought relief to many people. But it's really the beginning.

The next part is that we learn to pay attention not only to the object of our meditation, but more importantly we also bring awareness to the quality of our relationship to what is happening. The quality is: like, don't like, or neutral.

An example
I'll give a simple example from last night’s meditation. I was sitting in a chair, focusing on my breath, and I suddenly realized that the pads on my right foot were slightly swollen and my little toe ached. I didn’t like it. It was distracting. I brought curiosity to the sensations, but I still didn't like it. So I moved my attention elsewhere. A couple minutes later I checked out my feet again. Still a bit uncomfortable—the sensations hadn’t changed. However, my attitude had—it was now more neutral than disliking. More: it’s like this now. Period.

My teachers emphasize that we meditate so that we practice, in a controlled environment, with simpler stimuli (breath, body, etc.). When we do this, so often, the simple awareness that we are caught in liking or disliking causes that secondary pain to dissolve. When we are caught up in wanting the pleasant or hating the unpleasant, it's like pouring gasoline on a small campfire. When we bring mindful awareness to liking and disliking, it's like pouring water on the fire.

Why meditate?
One teacher's response to the question "why should I meditate every day" was "so you'll remember." That is, so you'll remember when you've been hooked into ruminating, fuming, worrying, etc. Hundreds of times a day. Little things like: someone pulls in front of us on the highway, or we hit three stop lights in a row, or the grocery store doesn't have what we want. Big things, like worrying about the upcoming election, or not having money to pay all our bills, or relationship problems.

I think I'm a slow learner or perhaps my childhood was more traumatic than I realize, but I know that I am remembering more often during the day when I'm getting triggered by something. And I have a variety of tools to respond to that recognition of being hooked. The simplest is to simply take a few slow breaths. I have other simple practices: S.T.O.P, 3-step Breathing Space, and R.A.I.N. on the Resources part of my website. I have more sophisticated practices that are written below the basic practices.

I also believe that meditation is not the only way that helps us to remember when we're triggered. These include making quiet time in the morning to read, to simply sit and look out the window, taking walks, practices like Tai Chi, Yoga, Qigong, among others.

Changes in this blog
I occasionally look at the numbers about activity on my website from the company I used to create the website and the blog. The numbers show that the activity has been steadily decreasing since March. It could be partially due to the pandemic. It could be partially due to my sending out the Quote, Poem, and Story each week since April. It could be that I'm often saying the same thing over and over. I have found this to be true with some of my favorite meditation authors. I've also realized that very few bloggers, who write a substantive post, do so every week.

At the same time, I enjoy the writing. It motivates me "to practice what I preach." I also find that it deepens my practice, giving me more clarity and insight. So I've decided to take a couple weeks off and then beginning in September to write a post on the first and third Tuesday of each month. If you have any feedback to offer, know that I am open to it at any time.

With appreciation,

Tom

Resting while you work

Eleven years ago, our Monday night book group was reading Sabbath by Wayne Muller. I came across some notes from that group recently.

One night a member of the group said that at the end of a meditation retreat, she complimented the cooks for such great food. The reply: “the food was good partly because we rested while we worked.”

Another person then recalled a story from a guide on how to climb a mountain: take a slight pause (rest) between each step. In doing so, and others found they found that they were less tired than they normally were after a long hike.

That led to a discussion about the possibility of resting while we work. So we decided to explore this idea.

Following are some of the gems from that exploration!
Relishing snacks of rest
When cleaning the house, one member found herself dancing through the house while dusting, and then dancing from one chore to another.

Being restful in work
“I used to do a lot of thinking while washing dishes but I felt tired afterwards. Then I tried paying attention to sensations while washing dishes. Now I don’t feel tired afterwards.”

Work as rest
“I used to hate to do the dishes. Then I tried paying attention to what I noticed while doing the dishes. Now I love to do them and I feel rested afterwards.”

The dance of restful work
This person explored the notion of resting while raking the leaves. Her initial thought: “This is a big job. I’ll rest when I get to a certain spot.” Then she decided to taking to time to rest whenever she felt it. She found a feeling of so much joy in looking around at the beauty in the scenery. She was surprised to find herself finished before it was time to pick up her daughter.

Putting work to rest
“I put all my ‘to dos’ in one room. This enabled me to do only what I could do. Such a relief! I went back to the other room and found that many of the 'to dos' didn’t need to get done after all.”

Advice from meditation teachers and a music teacher
I recall several of my meditation teachers talking about ‘resting in the breath.’ Another teacher advised me to "rest in the not knowing."

Work and rest are like notes and the silence between notes in music. The silence (rest) between the notes is essential for the song to form. Otherwise it’s just noise.

Several quotes about busyness and rest
"A successful life has become a violent enterprise.
We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits;
war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt and afraid, and need our company;
war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us;
war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous;
war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give us thanks." Wayne Muller, Sabbath

"To commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of modern time." Thomas Merton

"We have developed an inner psychology of speed, of saving time and maximizing efficiency, which is getting stronger by the day. " Guy Claxton, British psychologist, 2002

"We are called human beings, but we have become human doings." Anonymous

Some gems from Sabbath by Wayne Muller
Muller makes the point that we often don’t realize how tired we are. When you meditate, listen to your body, mind, and spirit. After the meditation, explore relevant thoughts that come up. For example, do you push away the signs of fatigue for fear that if you really pay attention, you will realize how tired you are?

Reflect on the word ‘rest.’
• What does that word mean to you, really?
• What rests (refreshes) you?
• What intentional activities or rituals do you have in your life that give you rest?
• What keeps you from resting more?

Make a choice to find rest and quiet each day, using the metaphor of putting a fence around the flowers to protect them.

For at least 5 minutes each day, focus on paying attention to the breath, including the rhythm of the breath. Ask these two questions and listen for what comes up:
What do you notice about the rhythm of rest in your breathing?
What do you notice about the rhythm of breath in your body?

Some other explorations to try on your own
• Try resting for moments during the day.
• Rest in an activity. For example, eat a snack mindfully.
• Give yourself rest from interruptions. For example, don’t answer the phone during dinner.
• Do something in a leisurely manner: make a meal slowly, take a walk with someone, eat an ice cream cone and savor each sensation!
• When you get to work, rest for a couple minutes before getting out of the car. Do the same when getting home from work.

Begin to habituate rest as your personal sanctuary. Enjoy each moment!

Commonalities among many disciplines

Over the many years of learning meditation and mindfulness, my practice has been informed by my experiences in other fields. I have seen so many parallels between what my teachers in these other areas were telling me and what my meditation teachers were telling me.

Tai Chi
I took weekly Tai Chi classes for 3 years. Even though it has been 3 years since I stopped going. I remember so vividly the initial instructions from my teacher: The first rule in Tai Chi is to relax!

Another key instruction was not to force the postures. This was challenging for me because I generally try very hard to do it right, to succeed. This was a problem with challenging moves, for example, doing a turn in slow motion so that my right foot landed 150 degrees from where it had been when I lifted it!

The teacher repeatedly said that it was fine if your foot only turned 90 degrees, that it would come in time. But my focus was still on getting as close to 150 degrees as possible. Not surprisingly, I slightly twisted my knee in one practice.

Time to develop patience. I practiced letting go of the desired outcome. I vividly remember the first time I landed the foot close to what the teacher was showing. Ah yes, rule number 1: relax!

Yoga
When taking yoga classes, I struggled with the Downward Dog posture, partly because my shoulders have always been weak. I kept trying and the teacher, who had been my student in a meditation course, encouraged me to relax. Her words are etched in my brain: don’t try to find the posture; let your body show you the posture! Then one day, my body and mind relaxed and I found the sweet spot. Suddenly it was not a painful or frustrating posture. I could actually hold it for awhile!

Drawing
After retiring, I took an Introduction to Drawing course at Keene State College. The teacher was a friend who had also been a student of mine in meditation. I saw many parallels between her instructions and the instructions of my meditation teachers.

Rule number 1 in drawing: draw what you see as opposed to what you think you see or what you think you are supposed to see.

Another rule: pay attention to your body and mind. When they are tired and tight, take a break. Stand back and get perspective.

Pilates
When I first started taking Pilates classes, the teacher would often say things that made no sense. For example, feel your pelvic floor. Yeah, right!

She would often emphasize having only the muscles directly involved be active. While doing leg circles, she said to let the hip muscles do the work, not the thigh and leg muscles. Puzzling at first, until I sensed the difference when the rest of my leg muscles were relaxed.

Then one day, I left class and got on my bike. As I rode, I noticed that only my leg muscles that were needed were active; the rest of my leg muscles, my arms and torso were still. I suddenly understood the beauty of dance. The dancers only moved the parts of the body that they wanted to; the rest of the body was still.

Other areas
I have noticed similar principles, either first-hand or vicariously, in other areas: music, athletics, appreciating the natural world while hiking or kayaking.

My daughter is an accomplished musician. After a performance, I asked her what she was thinking when she was soloing on the mandolin. She said that she wasn’t thinking, that she let the fingers go where they wanted. I recall a similar response from a famous running back in football who was asked what he was thinking when he was running. He laughed and said that if thought at those moments, he wouldn’t be much of a running back.

Both musicians and athletes talk about muscle memory and practice so that during the performance or game, they don’t do much thinking. Same too with meditation! This brought to mind a teaching, that I previously wrote about.

The Three Intelligences
My teacher’s point in his talk is that we are receiving information from our body, our mind, and our heart all the time. The goal is to have all three working together—aligned, attuned.

The problem is that the thinking mind is generally the loudest and the fastest!

What I learned:
• Thinking: I often tell this part of my being to do what it does best and then make space for me to benefit from what the body and heart are telling me.

• Body: I let my body relax and I am receptive to the information coming from my body, e.g., muscle tension, fatigue, aching, soreness. I then relax into these feelings.

• Heart: I invite my heart to be open, letting go, letting be, willing.

Over the years, I can sense when these three systems are attuned and aligned and when they are not. When they are not, back to the first rule of Tai Chi: relax!

I am so grateful to my teachers and fellow students for what I learned, even though it took me longer than I wanted and expected.

Lake and mountain as metaphors

Nature has been a common metaphor for many meditation teachers: mountains, lakes, rivers, clouds, sky, butterflies, trees, and monkeys, to name just a few. When Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the classic 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, he included two meditations which make use of the metaphors of a lake and a mountain.

The lake metaphor
Much of the power of the lake metaphor comes from the many qualities of water.
• The quality of receptivity: it absorbs whatever enters; think of rocks and earth falling into streams and rivers.
• The quality of not forcing: when water flows down a hill and encounters resistance, it goes around.
• The quality of persistence: think of the Grand Canyon!

Imagine a lake when it is calm, its surface like a mirror, reflecting everything around. Imagine the lake when it is windy and sunny, the surface sparkling like shimmering diamonds! So many different moods.

As a meditation you might focus on the receptiveness of water, inviting your mind and heart to be open and receptive, to reflect whatever enters into your awareness. Include it all: the surface during the moments of complete stillness and during moments where it is choppy and agitated; and the bottom of the lake which is undisturbed by the winds and storms at the surface.

“[I]n your meditation practice and in your daily life, can you identify not only with the content of your thoughts and feelings but also with the vast unwavering resource of awareness itself residing below the surface of the mind? In the lake meditation, we sit with the intention to hold in awareness and acceptance all qualities of mind and body” just as the lake sits with whatever is happening.

Two additional meditations
Imagine sitting at the edge of a pond which is completely still, the surface a mirror. Now imagine throwing a large stone into the pond. Observe the effect of the stone, the ripples moving outward from the place where it entered and the ripples bouncing off the shore. Wait a few minutes. The pond become still again. When we bring a curious and non-contentious awareness to whatever is happening, we can notice those moments of stillness. We’re not doing as much as observing, witnessing the causes and effects.

Imagine being on a large boat in a large lake during a raging storm. The waves whipping across the lake, pounding against the boat. Now imagine dropping a rock from the boat. It settles at the bottom of the lake, hundreds of feet below the surface. The storm is still raging above, but here it is calm. So too it is possible to be aware of a part of us that is calm, even during a storm.

The mountain metaphor
In virtually all cultures, from time immemorial, mountains have been sacred places where people go for spiritual guidance and renewal. We can draw on the many qualities of mountains: strength, endurance, majesty, unwavering presence…

There are many ways to play with mountain as a meditation focus.

Imagine a mountain, a particular mountain that you are drawn to or an imaginary mountain. Take a few moments to become familiar with the mountain, to inhabit the mountain. Feel its massiveness, its beauty both far away and up close. Its peak, ridges, and slopes. The plants and animals that live there.

Embody the mountain. Your head becomes the peak, your shoulders and arms become the sides and ridges of the mountain, your torso and legs become the base of the mountain, rooted to the earth. Become the mountain. Feel this energy in and on your body.

You might like to imagine your mountain through the four seasons:
spring: the returning sun, pastel colors, new life bursting…
summer: full sun, deeper colors, longer days, abundant life…
fall: the slowing down, shorter, cooler days, trees shedding their leaves to prepare for winter…
winter: colder, when most life slows down, yet still vibrantly alive…

You might like to imagine spending a whole day at your mountain:
dawn: soft light, the sunrise, so many bird songs...
morning: life becomes busier…
mid afternoon; full sun…
late afternoon: the light changing again, slowing down..
night: the quietness only occasionally disturbed…

During all of these daily and seasonal changes the mountain abides it all. Storms are natural, but the mountain doesn’t take them personally.

The mountain is constantly changing through the seasons and through the years: rainfall carving new paths down the mountain, trees falling, new life emerging, plants and animals decaying, making conditions for new life to emerge.

The mountain endures all kinds of weather: storms, drought, lightning and thunder, hail, snow, blizzards, and more.

As we continually change--every day and through the seasons of our own lives--we can link with the qualities of mountains: strength, stability, and endurance… Our own moods like the weather: sometimes subtle, sometimes violent.

You might choose to play with any of these possibilities during a meditation period or to recall qualities of water, lakes, and mountains during the day.

The first arrow and the second arrow

There are many versions of this powerful story that the Buddha told to illustrate the power of practicing mindfulness:

If a person is struck by an arrow, it is painful. If the person is struck by a second arrow, it is even more painful. The first arrow represents the unavoidable pains that come with life. The second arrow represents our reaction to the first, for example, I hate this, this isn’t fair, I didn’t deserve this…

I encountered a powerful illustration of this when I was taking the training to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.

After the meditation, one participant said she noticed that she was sad.
The teacher asked “then what”?
The participant responded “then I noticed that I didn’t want to be sad.”
The teacher asked “then what?”
The participant said, “Then I felt even worse.”

The teacher then held up her fist and said her fist represented the initial feeling of sadness. She then made a circle with her arms to represent how much bigger the sadness became by wanting it to go away.

We do this all the time. For example, we feel a toothache and it can quickly turn into a trip to the dentist, to a root canal and then a crown and $3000.

I recall getting really frustrated at a colleague when I was teaching. I’d put off scheduling my office hours until he got back to me about when our committee meetings would be held. I was irritated and fuming: “he’s so inconsiderate,” “he’s also arrogant; why don’t I just resign from the committee?”

While those stories may be true, the effect of going round and round in our heads is that those stories affect our state of mind. We have a rough day at work, the frustrations build up then we yell at our child or spouse for something minor, like accidentally spilling something.

Treatment
What I’ve learned from the first and second arrow story is not to suppress or fight those stories but rather [when I remember!] to first bring mindfulness to the physical effects of my reactivity. This is called “embodied mindfulness.”

When I do this with anger or irritation, I often notice the tension in my neck, my facial muscles, my shoulders. If my reactivity is anxiety, I notice the shortness of my breath, the pit in my stomach. This short period of mindfulness is almost always calming. Sometimes, the anger or irritation or anxiety goes away completely.

If you fully feel the effects of your irritation or frustration, you drop it just like you would drop a hot pan that you accidentally picked up.

Sometimes, when it is a recurring or a much bigger situation, a few moments of mindfulness does not result in the anger or anxiety going away completely. However, it still makes a difference.

In these bigger situations, the mindfulness can move us from being caught in the story to being able to witness the story. This is literally standing back, which gives us some perspective. With this perspective we gain some clarity and can then bring other tools. For example: Is this story serving me? Is it helping? How else might I deal with my emotions?

The trouble is that most of us are conditioned to other responses like wallowing in the story, I’m right, I don’t deserve this, this isn’t fair, I’ll show him, etc.

And that is why one translation of mindfulness is to remember!

Useful metaphors for mindfulness

The basic attitudes that guide mindfulness are to cultivate a curious and non-judgmental awareness toward what we are noticing. In doing this, we see more clearly, and this results in wiser actions.

There are many metaphors to assist us in this endeavor, which is both simple and complex. I share a few that I have collected or developed over the years.

Curious mind
In The Meditative Mind, Daniel Goleman quotes Indian philosopher Krishnamurti's advice to children: “You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall, seeing all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall…As you watch, you see all the movements, the delicacy of its movements. So in the same way, watch your thinking, do not correct it, do not suppress it—do not say it is too hard—just watch it, now, this morning.”

Accepting what is happening
Many teachers use the terms non-judgment and accepting when characterizing mindful attention. And many people have struggled with these two terms. I could write an entire blog post on the unpacking of these terms by various teachers. Here are two alternative terms I have found helpful:
• non-attacking attention
• non-contentious attention
Both of these terms remind us to notice when our attention feels like attacking or has a contentiousness relationship to those thoughts.

Seeing clearly
As I was on a morning walk in a forest I noticed birds disturbed by my presence often flying away. I stopped for a few minutes and many birds returned. I watched two downy woodpeckers walking up two adjacent trees as they ate their breakfast of insects. I listened to a bird singing on a branch just above my head.

This reminds me of a cartoon of two dogs sitting on meditation mats and one dog saying: “the key to meditation is learning to stay.”

Walking Down the Street
Imagine taking a walk with a friend in town where you know many people. As you are walking, someone shouts hello to you from across the street. Rather than ignoring them, you wave back and then continue your conversation. Now imagine someone interrupting you, for example, “I’ve been meaning to call you about…” You listen for a few seconds and then politely tell them that you will call them back later. And you return to your conversation.

So too with meditation. We can meet each interruption—a thought, a noise—with hospitality. If some persist, we can acknowledge being pulled away from the meditation, maintain an attitude of hospitality and then go back to the meditation. In this way, our meditation time need not be a stressful experience with expectations and shoulds, but a rather a time to simply pay attention to what is happening moment to moment.

We are not in control of our minds
Many terms have been used to describe the restless of our minds, monkey mind and puppy mind being just two.
• From Huston Smith in The World’s Religions: “I tell my hand to rise and it obeys. I tell my mind to be still and it mocks my command.”
• Another teacher likened meditation to thinking we are flying the plane and suddenly realizing that plane often does not go where we direct it to go. So who is flying the plane?
• A friend in talking about thoughts that can arise during meditation: “Hey, I didn’t order that thought!”

Mindfulness of thoughts during meditation
Many metaphors have been suggested for the attitude when we are observing thoughts. These all have the sense of witnessing.
• Imagine thoughts as clouds floating by, and noticing how they dissolve.
• Imagine thoughts as autumn leaves floating through the air, carried by the wind, but eventually landing.
• Likening the process to sitting on a train looking out the window, and not jumping out every time you see something interesting.

Molehills to mountains to molehills
When we are facing something unpleasant—a physical pain, an emotional pain, a task that we really don’t want to do—we watch the molehill start to grow and grow, and we realize that we are the ones that are making the mountain. The miracle of mindfulness is that when we stay with mindful attention, we watch the mountain begin to shrink back to a molehill and sometimes even disappear altogether.

Bend not break

Several weeks ago my wife and I were walking on one of Keene’s walking/bike paths. We paused for a few moments on a bridge. She noticed a tree that, in some storm, had been bent over and now its top was in the river. A powerful image of ‘bend not break.’ Click here to see the picture.

There are two other messages in that picture. If you look closely, you can see, in the background, another smaller tree that is also bent! The other message is that I have been on this path on my bicycle probably hundreds of time, but never noticed the tree!

I have long enjoyed the writings John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and others bout learning from the Nature: bamboo is one of the strongest woods and is often referred to when talking about ‘bend but not break.’ From Bruce Lee: “Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending in the wind.”

So what helps us to bend instead of breaking during these storms?

Presence and not turning away
Terry Tempest Williams in an interview with Krista Tippett about her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World: “You know, a good friend of mine said, ‘You are married to sorrow.’ And I looked to him and I said, ‘I am not married to sorrow. I just choose not to look away.’ And I think there is deep beauty in not averting our gaze, no matter how hard it is, no matter how heartbreaking it can be. You know, watching prairie dogs shot, standing before the mass grave of 30,000 human beings [from the Rwanda genocide]…I think it is about presence, bearing witness. I used to think bearing witness was a passive act. I don't believe that anymore. I think that when we are present, when we bear witness, when we do not divert our gaze, something is revealed. The very marrow of life. We change. A transformation occurs. A consciousness shift.”

Powerful words. Worth reading again and pausing to notice inside…

Not turning away is a theme I have encountered in so many places.

Last month I referred to the legend of Krishna and how the key to his survival was not turning away from the demons.

Many years ago I was leading a body scan meditation at Keene State College. When I got to the back, I said “this is a place where some people feel discomfort or even pain. If this is happening, see if you can not hate the pain.” At the end of the class, one participant said that she had gone to the gym the day before. She was out of shape, so she did a rigorous workout, and now she ached all over. Just before I made the comment about not hating the pain, she was miserable. However, with those words she was able to let go of hating the pain. All of a sudden it was just sensations. She was no longer miserable. And she was amazed. Such amazing things can happen when we don’t turn away.

Back to learning from Nature
I remember seeing eggs in a cactus wren bird nest when we lived in the desert. I visited the nest regularly, noticing the baby birds when they hatched and as they grew. One day I saw one of the babies making possibly its first flight back to the nest. Afterwards I realized that the bird doesn’t get a second chance. If it doesn’t do it right, it dies. And that was terrible…and it is how the natural world works. A friend told me of a similar experience but not with the same happy ending. She was watching two birds finding food for their young and feeding them. Once when both birds went away, a hawk swooped down and plucked the babies from the nest.

This is how the natural world works. Can you accept it? Can you not turn away?

Can you accept yourself? Can you not turn away from the parts of yourself that you don’t like?

Back to finding beauty in a broken world
When Tami Simon (from Sounds True) was interviewing Terry Tempest William, she talked about not turning away and asked Terry “how do you do that?”

Terry ‘s response was “How do you not turn away?”

Then she elaborated: “The word that comes back to my mind again and again is being present. If you are present, then there is no past, as you well know. And there is no future. You are there. And whether it is being with a family member who is dying, you are present with them. You are breathing. And in that breathing there is this commitment and communion to that breath. Presence. And you don't look away. It is this shared gaze.”

Three Methods for Working with Chaos by Pema Chodron
This article appears in the latest issue of Lion’s Roar and is excerpted from her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Pema writes that in her tradition they do not exorcise demons, but rather they treat them with compassion. The advice she passes on is: “Approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you think you cannot help, and go to places that scare you.”

Again, not turning away. This is true for what we find repulsive in the ‘outer’ world and in the ‘inner’ world: those parts of us that we don’t like, that we fear, that we turn away from.

A reminder that this is not an absolute maxim. Toward this end and going from the sacred to the sublime, I offer a quote from Kenny Rogers: “Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.”

Explore in the moment now
This notion of bend but not break can easily become just words, so I invite you to pause for a few moments. Where do you feel broken or possibly breaking right now? Breathe with those images and feelings…..See if you can allow yourself to be with the pain by witnessing the pain. What do you notice?………….

The Upside of Sadness
Steve Hickman writes about not turning away from sadness in this article which you can read by Googling the title. “It’s never fun, but over the course of a lifetime, sadness visits us all. What if instead of resisting, you could welcome it in and listen to what it has to say?... Locating the arising of sadness in the body (it is different in everyone) gives us a kind of steady place to direct our kind attention and begin to alter our relationship with sadness. The practice of mindfulness is about being present to every moment, not just the ones that are pleasant or neutral. In fact, going into the darker, more uncomfortable places—the ones we usually try to avoid—may yield powerful insights, and may sharpen our mindfulness and deepen our compassion, both toward ourselves and others.”

Two other metaphors
Both metaphors haven been helpful when I realize I am resisting, turning away, and suppressing.

The first metaphor is balance. However, its not like the balance point, which is static balance, but rather dynamic balance which is “the ability of an object to balance whilst in motion or when switching between positions.” When we lose our balance and fall down, we smile and get up. When I am working with this metaphor, I find a question from one of my teachers to be helpful: What is needed now in this moment? And I listen though my breath to what might come up.

The second metaphor is pretty self-explanatory: that of a pressure cooker and releasing the pressure before it blows up! There are many ways we can release steam, for example, laughing at ourselves, screaming into a pillow, going outside for a walk…

These are difficult times indeed. I hope that some of the ideas from this article provides more ability to meet that which we might habitually turn away from

May all beings be safe and well. May all beings find moments of happiness and peace each day. May all beings be free from suffering.