Be The Change - How Meditation Can Transform You and The World
Be The Change - How Meditation Can Transform You and The World
THE
CHANGE
BE THE
CHANGE
How Meditation Can Transform
You and the World
New York / London
www.sterlingpublishing.com
To Deb’s mother, Anne, and to our teachers.
May all beings be happy!
STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered
trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shapiro, Eddie, 1942-
Be the change : how meditation can transform you and the
world/Ed and Deb Shapiro.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4027-6001-3
1. Meditation. I. Shapiro, Debbie, 1953-II. Title.
BF637.M4S515 2009
158.1’2—dc22
2009013194
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Foreword by Robert Thurman PART I |
THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL
1. Changing Me, Changing Us
2. So What Is Meditation?
3. How We Got Here
4. The Only Way Out Is Within
15. Doing It
16. Sitting Meditation
17. Sounding Meditation
18. Moving Meditation
Contributor Bios
Acknowledgments
The very purpose of our life is to be happy. There are two kinds of happiness—
one that mainly comes from physical comfort and another that involves the
mind. Obviously, of the two, mental comfort is superior and more influential.
We can see this in our own lives because when our mental state is calm and
happy, we can easily put up with small physical discomfort or pain. On the other
hand, when our minds are restless and upset, the most comfortable physical
facilities don’t make us happy.
Since our state of mind is so important, the question arises whether we can
train or improve it. Over a very long time, human beings have developed ways to
shape the mind; we usually call these methods meditation. Generally speaking,
there are two types of meditation. Analytical meditation mainly employs reason.
Another kind of meditation simply involves placing your mind at a certain point,
without changing it or undertaking any investigation, letting it rest on that single
point.
Meditation is an important instrument for shaping or transforming our minds.
As a simple Buddhist monk, I have meditated for a long time. As I have gotten
older, I have noticed that, even though many problems I have to deal have
become more serious and my responsibility for them has become greater, my
mind is nevertheless calmer. But don’t get the impression that meditation needs
to be a religious subject; simply training the mind is a kind of meditation and,
while simple single-pointed meditation doesn’t necessarily lead to firm
convictions, analytical meditation is much more effective in achieving this.
By and large, the mind always looks out critically and deals with external
events, but rarely bothers about itself. Therefore, we have to give it new
instructions. Up to now, you have dealt with what’s going on outside; that’s well
and good, but now the time has come to explore within and find out more about
the mind itself. In doing so, we also have to make an effort to restrain the way
our thoughts follow memories of the past and speculations about the future. We
need to find the space between such thoughts, which, like the water deep in the
ocean, remains clear and undisturbed even though there may be waves on the
surface. This is one way to look at the mind itself; it’s not easy, but I think it is
worthwhile to try.
In this book, Ed and Deb Shapiro have gathered together the thoughts and
reflections of a wide range of people with a variety of experiences in meditation.
Anyone interested in meditation should not only read what these people have to
say, but also try it out. If you like their suggestions and they are helpful to you,
use them; if they aren’t, disregard them. Treat this book as you would a cookery
book. You wouldn’t merely read recipes with approval; you’d try them out.
Some you’d like and would use again. Like cookery, meditation only makes
sense if you put it into practice.
July 17, 2009
HH the Dalai Lama
Nobel Peace Prize recipient
Foreword by
Robert Thurman
Thank goodness Ed and Deb have so beautifully enfolded the fits of all the
fascinating individuals in this book within the moving stories of their own lives
and transforming experiences! In this living book, Ed and Deb have masterfully
woven the many voices into a symphony; the insights and stories harmonize and
contrast with each other in a marvelous rich flow that is both calming and
energizing, creating a single collective yet selfless voice.
Reading this book is itself a powerful meditation. Without even trying, you
effortlessly go deeper into the best places of your mind and heart, by flowing
along page-by-page, teacher-by-teacher, insight-by-insight. You will find you
are naturally developing mindfulness as you read the words written here and
share in the thoughts and lives of these beautiful people, who are honestly and
vividly reaching out to you by telling their stories and revealing their insights,
their practices, and their performances regarding meditation.
The great mystics of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all
blown away when they found nirvana or the kingdom of God within. We need
not think they are so far beyond us. All of them patiently told us we could find
our true purpose, discover our real meaningfulness, and actually enjoy
happiness. And all of them provided us with methods to move us toward these
goals. We can, must, and will be the change we long to see the world enjoy! We
can recover from helpless addiction to externalities, impermanent possessions,
distracting entertainments, and disappointing preoccupations by turning on our
freely intuitive intelligence, tuning in to our deepest hearts through mindful
meditation, and dropping out of despairing self-centeredness into the embrace of
the lovingness of creation!
In saying this, I make no pretense of having realized more than a hint of all
that is possible for us, the wonders we were born to enjoy; I do not claim to have
won the super prize of enlightenment yet in this life! But I know by sound
inference that each one of us will, sooner or later, experience the bliss of
awakening to our authentic selves. When we do, it will be like “coming home,” a
realization that we always already knew this place.
After all, we know from the highly credible testimony of Buddha and Jesus
and the other great teachers that nirvana (the kingdom of God) is the real reality
of the world, right here and now! And so we can enjoy this moment, reading the
words in this book while experiencing the gentle but ecstatic, consciously
mindful and inconceivably blissful nature of nirvana!
What an honor to join His Holiness the Dalai Lama with a foreword: He is the
sun and I am a firefly in his rays. What a privilege to strike a key chord at the
opening of this treasury of heartfelt advice by many of the greatest people you
would ever hope to meet, all seasoned and realized meditators, way beyond me!
And what a challenge to partner with Ed and Deb to move this magical mystery
meditation train along toward the meaningful life that is the destination for every
single one of you dear readers!
I only dare proceed because I find a job for myself here with this miracle train,
where the engine is the great heart of all spiritual teachers, visionaries, and poets
throughout the world from all times, the kind and skillful engineers are Ed and
Deb, and the cars you ride in so comfortably are the spacious realizations of all
the great meditators who carry you along.
I am just the conductor who sees you up the steps, shouts out “Aaaalll
abooooaaaard!” and then swings up alongside you all! Congratulations for
embarking on this very special and magical journey.
“Tenzin”
Bob Thurman Jey Tsong Kappa Professor of Indo-Tebetan Buddhist Studies,
Columbia University President, Tibet House, United States
Part I
THE GREATEST
ADVENTURE OF ALL
I
Changing Me, Changing Us
If you do not change direction, you may end
up where you are heading.
LAO TSU
When we look at the world from the moon, as astronaut Edgar Mitchell
explained to us, it is just a small round ball. As Apollo14 moved closer and the
earth became larger, Mitchell’s life changed forever. From exploring the far
reaches of outer space, he began to seek a deeper meaning for his experience and
turned to explore his inner world, which came to include meditation.
In a similar way, we both realized the importance of meditation early in our
own lives in response to the need to find meaning in the midst of chaos. Ed was
in his twenties; Deb was just fifteen. But even at that young age, we had already
realized that some place of understanding and insight was missing.
More recently, when we first thought of this book, it was in response to a
comparable need to make sense of what was happening all around us. At a time
of economic downturn, with corruption on the rise and countries at war, we
wondered what could bring greater awareness, kindness, and compassion to a
world in so much chaos. Could something as subtle and understated as
meditation possibly have any affect on business, the environment, conflict, or
even politics? Could meditation make a big enough change in consciousness to
transform the way we see ourselves, each other, and our world? And what
change could happen if something so simple were to become a global
movement?
Although we have personally had many years of meditation experience, in this
book we wanted to paint a more colorful and varied picture by including other
viewpoints and voices. So we spoke to more than one hundred meditation
practitioners in various walks of life. They included teachers, activists, scientists,
religious leaders, professors, businesspeople, film actors, artists, musicians,
environmentalists, yogis, therapists, doctors, authors, and others. Our questions
focused on how meditation had changed them, how it can change us, and how as
a result we can then transform the world. Talking with so many remarkable
people was truly mind-blowing! Everyone was deeply passionate about this
subject and had something different to say, each experience of meditation was
unique, and the understanding of how we can make a difference in this world
was inspiring and expansive. Their valuable insights and answers are
interspersed throughout the text, and you can read their biographies at the back
of the book. In particular, what we learned from these multidimensional voices is
that meditation is a very cool thing to do.
And we are not alone in thinking this. Cross-legged yogis and Buddhist monks
can be seen in advertisements for everything from computers and credit cards to
herbal teas, major newspapers and magazines carry stories on the benefits of
meditation with tips from famous film stars, and no self-respecting bookshop is
without a how-to-meditate section. In our local post office, on the wall behind
the counter, fliers advertising meditation and yoga classes hang next to overseas
postal prices.
Meditation has been the main focus of spiritual practice for thousands of years,
but it is only in the last few decades that the general population has begun to
realize how important and valuable this practice really is, regardless of spiritual
or religious interests. We do not have to be a hippie or on a spiritual quest to
meditate. We have taught everyone from housewives to athletes and musicians,
and therapists to CEOs, in yoga centers and town halls, high school
gymnasiums, corporate boardrooms, and on television.
However, this poses a conundrum. If meditation is so available and as well
known as it seems to be, why is it not already an integral part of everyone’s
lives? If health reports are saying how good it is as a way to cope with stress,
why do we ignore it or find excuses not to do it? And why do we think of
something as a waste of time when all the research tells us it is of such immense
value?
Embracing Change
Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “You must be the change you want to see in the
world.” In other words, change has to start within ourselves; we cannot expect
the world to change if we do not. If we want to have more love in our lives, we
must become more loving; if we genuinely want to end terrorism and to bring
real and peaceful change to the world, then we must start by ending the war
within ourselves.
Emerging from three years in the Auschwitz concentration camp, psychiatrist
Victor Frankl said that after his imprisonment and the destruction of his family,
he had been left with only “the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s
attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” That is the
choice that each one of us has—a choice in how we live our lives, how we care
for each other, and how we treat our planet. When we open to transformation
within ourselves, so society also transforms—every change that each individual
makes creates a chain reaction that is beneficial to all. Then, instead of focusing
on the problems, we can start to live the solutions.
This brings us to the importance of contemplation and meditation. Without
such a practice of self-reflection, we are subject to the ego’s every whim and
have no way of putting a brake on its demands. Meditation, on the other hand,
gives us the space to see ourselves clearly and objectively, a place from which
we can witness our own behavior and reduce the ego’s influence.
| MARSHALL ROSENBERG |
“Meditation is staying conscious of one of the most important things to stay
conscious of, and that is my internal programming in this moment.
There are four things that tell me it is time to meditate—depression, anger,
guilt, and shame. They tell me my thinking is not where I choose it to be. When I
stop, I can see what I am telling myself and I can translate this life-alienated,
violence-provocative thinking into a life-serving consciousness and
communication.”
Instead of thinking that we have to somehow eradicate or annihilate the ego,
through the practice of meditation we find that the more positive aspects are
enhanced while the more self-centered aspects begin to fade in importance. As
the need to be constantly engaged in the details of our own story loses its
relevance, so the ego releases its grip and becomes less demanding. This does
not mean that we become just like a doormat and let people walk all over us.
Rather, we are able to communicate more openly and honestly, and to love more
unconditionally. Where the ego makes us believe we are immutable and
unchangeable, in truth our true nature is completely free, unbound and
unfettered.
Peace in Action
Meditation changes us. From being self-centered, we become other-centered,
concerned about the welfare of all equally, rather than being focused on just
ourselves and our families. We become more acutely aware of how we affect the
planet, how we treat each other and our world, and seek to become a positive
presence rather than a negative one. As we find our own peace, we want to
actively help others to also be at peace.
We were in India in 1986 when we first met HH the Dalai Lama, the spiritual
and political leader of Tibet, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and probably the
world’s most famous meditator.
| DEB |
“We were waiting for our meeting in a room that led off a balcony at his
residence, beyond which rose the Himalayas resplendent in the morning
sunshine. Ed wandered outside to enjoy the view. At that moment, he saw a
monk further along the balcony waving for us to come. We presumed this monk
would bring us to our meeting. But as we came closer, we realized that this
simple and unpretentious man was HH the Dalai Lama himself. Ed and I
immediately began to prostrate on the floor, as this is the respected way of
greeting such a revered teacher. But HH the Dalai Lama took our hands and
made us stand, saying, ‘No, no. We are all equal here.’ At first, I thought, Oh
sure! You are the great Dalai Lama, spiritual leader to millions, and I am just a
student. How can we possibly be equal? But over the following months, I felt his
words in the core of my being and experienced the true equality he was referring
to—the equality of our shared humanness and, simultaneously, our shared
heart.”
In our ensuing conversation, we asked HH the Dalai Lama what we could do
to encourage greater peace. He urged us to talk with people, to communicate
with those from other religions, and to enjoy the richness of different cultures by
bringing diverse viewpoints together. In this way, he believed, peace through
understanding could become a reality. We can apply this same approach to our
everyday experiences as, through meditation, we become more acutely aware of
our own limitations and prejudices.
| CYNDI LEE |
“The effect of meditation can show up in real-life situations where maybe
somebody is pushing our buttons and we would normally respond in an
aggressive way, with a habitual response. When we have trained our mind, we
can recognize what is arising in time to let it go, we can rest in spaciousness. In
that gap, we can make a choice of the action we want to take, instead of
thoughtlessly reacting. Without that awareness, we have no options.”
Just as science propelled Edgar Mitchell to be able to walk on the moon, so
science is now proving that meditation is a genuine way to generate peace by
reducing potentially harmful emotions, such as fear and anger. We usually think
of such mind states as a fixed part of life, but they do not need to be. Many
negative emotions arise from the emphasis we place on success and
achievement, which is a left-brain activity. During meditation, we engage the
right side of the brain, which encourages us to communicate in a more positive
and caring way.
| MINGYUR RINPOCHE |
“Over the past three years, I have been in discussion with professors from
different universities and I have found out three things. Firstly, neuroplasticity
shows that even if you are born with unhappiness, change is possible. Secondly,
the best way to change the behavior of the brain’s neurons from negative to
positive is through daily meditation. Studies have shown tremendous changes in
the left side of the brain of long-term meditation practitioners. And thirdly, the
change in the brain from negative to positive is also very good for the physical
body, such as the immune system or high blood pressure. All of this leads us to a
deeper sense of peace within ourselves.”
Integrating Change
To bring peace to those around us and to our world, we have to change from
being concerned with our own needs to reaching out and helping each other. But
for kindness and compassion to become a natural expression of who we are, we
need tools—help, guidance, and support. Meditation in its many forms is the one
tool we have found that does all of this. By getting to know ourselves,
discovering that we are more than we thought we were, and by connecting more
deeply with our essential self, we find that we have the resources, strength, and
wisdom to not only make changes, but to become the change we so long for.
| MARIANNE WILLIAMSON |
“Einstein said that we cannot solve the problems of the world from the level of
thinking that we were at when we created them. I think a lot of people embrace
this concept, while underestimating what it really means. A different level of
thinking means a different level of thinking. It does not even mean just a
different kind of thinking. It does not mean a different emphasis in our thinking.
It does not mean a more loving kind of thinking. It means what he said, a
different level of thinking, and to me, that is what meditation brings.
“Meditation can change the world because meditation changes us. That is the
point. The world will not change until we change. The state of the world is a
reflection of who we are. The state of the world is the effect; the state of
consciousness of human beings is the cause. Mahatma Gandhi said the problem
with the world is that humanity is not in its right mind and that is what
meditation addresses. It returns us to our right mind, and until there is this
evolution in consciousness, we will stay locked in a fear-based perspective in
which we continue to see ourselves as separate from each other, and in which we
continue to think that we can do something to someone else and not reap the
result ourselves.”
In the following chapters, we explore the sanity and brilliance of meditation,
how it affects the many aspects of our personal lives, and how it can change the
world for the better. From reducing stress and illness, taming anger, and
encouraging kindness and forgiveness, to confronting environmental issues and
problems at work, to diffusing violence worldwide, meditation brings greater
understanding and compassion wherever the meditator goes. It is a journey,
sometimes a roller coaster, sometimes a walk in a gentle glade, but always an
adventure to be enjoyed!
2
So What Is Meditation?
To go out of your mind at least once a day is
tremendously important. By going out of your
mind, you come to your senses.
ALAN WATTS
| DEB |
“When I was fifteen years old, my mother took me to a meditation retreat. I have
to admit I was a pretty wild teenager, my siblings were all elsewhere, and my
mother had no intention of leaving me in London on my own. As I knew some
of the people who would be there, and as she was only going for three days, I
agreed. I had no idea what would happen or that it would change my life. I really
didn’t understand the teachings, the practices, or what I was meant to be doing,
but the experience of sitting in silence was one of coming home, of feeling that I
was exactly where I was meant to be. I sat for hours. My mother stayed for three
days, but I stayed for ten. I did not want to leave; I did not want to be parted
from this place of belonging. I was home again, and it was as if I had never left.”
As it has gained popularity, so a huge amount has been written about
meditation—what it is and what it is not, how to do it and how not to. Meditation
has been associated with everything from affirming ourselves as thin/rich/in love
to visualizing ourselves bathed in white light to sitting cross-legged with closed
eyes and doing nothing but contemplating our own navel. Yet meditation is none
of these. Rather, it covers a vast arena of experiences and activities, including
opening our heart to all beings, realizing the truth and becoming free, counting
our breaths, gazing at the flame of a candle, intoning different sounds, or moving
rhythmically. It enables us to see our own limitations and self-centered nature
more clearly, and to discover the depth and beauty that lies within us. In other
words, it is both an experience and a practice—an experience of oneness, of
being with who we really are, as well as the practice that enables us to be in this
state.
| JOEL LEVEY |
“Meditation as a general term refers to practices developed in all the world’s
wisdom traditions that encompass many different forms. It is also about
recognizing and being liberated from delusion, confusion, and an unrealistic
view of reality, which helps free us from the forces of habit and addiction so we
can awaken to our highest potential. The practice allows us to abide in harmony
and congruence, with a sense of reverence for the mystery and majesty of the
world in which we live.”
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3
How We Got Here
As the philosopher Socrates once said, the unexamined
life is not worth living. But the opposite is also true. The
unlived life is not worth examining.
SWAMI BEYONDANANDA
We all have a story to tell, a unique and very personal history. Some are sad,
others happy, some contain something we overcame that made us a better
person: a difficult childhood, an alcoholic father, a mother who raised us on her
own. But what is the difference that makes one person a hero and another a
threat to society; what brings someone to meditation and takes another to war?
What is the motivation or circumstance that impels us to do something like
meditation, something that appears so inactive or even self-centered? Why
would anyone want to sit on a cushion, close their eyes, and count their breaths
or beads, or stare at a wall? When Ed was living at the ashram in India, a young
monk would often tease him, saying, “You are always sitting in meditation; why
don’t you get up and do something constructive!”
And why would someone travel as far as India, Thailand, or Japan to train?
What is the impulse that draws us to search out places to sit still and contemplate
the endless chatter in our own mind—a mind that can, at different times, feel
equally depressed, anxious, frustrated, and meaningless? It seems like it would
be much easier to ignore all this in the hope that it will just go away. Why is it
that we go in search of something that often appears inane and unexplainable?
And how can sitting on a cushion with our eyes closed be beneficial to us or to
anyone else?
Many of the people we spoke with for this book have a personal history of
emotional dysfunction, drug abuse, illness, or depression; some were suicidal or
spent time in jail. When such a background is used as fuel for personal
transformation, then it is known as spiritual boot camp, as despite, or perhaps
because of, the inner torment, it becomes the impetus for real and meaningful
change. Meditation can be integral to that change as a catalyst that enables us to
move from a place of suffering to one of awareness, healing, and clarity.
This does not mean, however, that a conflicting childhood or extensive drug
use is necessary in order to be motivated to discover meditation or to become
more self-reflective. It is an incentive, yet so also is the quest for a deeper
understanding of life. There are many who have had perfectly uneventful lives,
yet who have a yearning to find a more significant purpose, or to look more
closely into the eternal question: Why am I here?
| ED |
“From an early age, I always questioned the absurdity of life being so
capitalistic, the materialistic dream of acquiring more and more things. It always
appeared so inane. No matter how much people had, they still didn’t seem happy
or content. There had to be something more.”
Conflicting Childhood
Growing up with an abusive or absent parent, in poverty, or without any
emotional stability are just some of the ways emotional dysfunction manifests.
When this happens, in general we have three choices: to perpetuate the same
type of behavior in our own life, to ignore or deny our feelings so that we live
without really knowing ourselves, or to use the experience as a means for
transformation.
Both of us fall into this latter category. At times, we have needed help to
understand and open to forgiveness, but we have both come to realize that by
experiencing what love is not, we were able to discover what love is.
Ed grew up in a small, one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx in New York
City. He recalls:
“My mother died five days after I was born, so then, according to an old Jewish
custom, my father married her older single sister, my aunt Mildred. It was
primarily to look after his children. I only found out that my mother had died
when I was about nine or ten and we were at our neighborhood synagogue. We
went to an orthodox temple where the men sat in the main area and the women
sat on the side, separated by a curtain. I was sitting with the men when an elderly
man approached me and insistently asked, ‘Why are you here? Now is the time
to say a prayer for the dead. Is your mother alive? Is your father alive?’ I said
‘Yes.’ So he shouted at me to get out. But as I walked past my aunt Rose, she
yelled at me, ‘Where are you going?’ When I repeated what the man had said,
she again shouted, ‘Go sit down; you don’t have a mother!’ I was totally blown
away, shocked and confused. Who was the person I was calling mom? I can still
see the scene today.
“There were five of us living in this very small Bronx apartment. I don’t know
how we did it. There was no apparent love between my father Harry and
stepmother-aunt Mildred, so I did not know that love existed in a family setting.
Mildred was known as the neighborhood screamer; you could hear her shouting
at us from down the block. I would always pray no one could hear. My father
worked nights at the post office, leaving for work when I came home from
school. It was probably so he could avoid being with Mildred, but it also meant I
rarely saw him and even more rarely had a conversation with him. At the dinner
table, we always fought to be heard; it felt like constant chaos. I never had a toy.
One day, I was given a gun and holster set, and Mildred returned it for a school
briefcase. All I wanted to do was play outside in the street, but I would be
punished for anything a neighbor said I did, even if it wasn’t true. One of my
greatest embarrassments was that Mildred seemed so old with gray hair and, at
that time in the 1940s and early 1950s, woman dressed like older ladies. People
would always say to me, ‘Little boy, is that your grandmother?’ I would cringe
and say no; she is my mother. I didn’t know that she was not.
“By the time I was in my early twenties, LSD and flower power had come on
the scene, with Tim Leary telling us to tune in and drop out and spreading the
word of the League of Spiritual Discovery. I innocently and happily found
myself a part of the hippie generation as it was in such contrast to my childhood.
I would hang out at Studio 54 or go to be-ins with Allen Ginsburg. Acid trips
were awakening my consciousness, and I was having spiritual experiences but
did not have a clue what they meant. It was not until teachers from the East
arrived in the United States that I was able to get some understanding. The
Maharishi was brought by the Beatles after they met him in India at the same
time that Sri Swami Satchidananda was brought to New York from Sri Lanka by
the artist Peter Max. Swami Satchidananda told the hippies to clean up and do
yoga and meditate, to find joy naturally without drugs. He questioned our LSD
tripping and told Tim Leary, ‘If a pill can make you a saint, then a pill could
make you a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, or schoolteacher, because it is much
more difficult to be a saint.’
“I lived in a commune in upstate New York, and we would meditate together. I
began to understand that there is an inner self that is free, uncontaminated by the
chaos and confusion of past conditioning. Then I met Swami Satyananda, a yogi
from India, and he invited me to train with him at his ashram, the Bihar School
of Yoga. It seemed like the only way I could resolve my past and find any real
meaning to life.
“So from the ‘flowers-in-your-hair’ hippie life in New York, I went to the
yoga ashram in India. To my surprise, when I got there, no one was particularly
loving or even very nice. In fact, they were very hard to be with—they were
quite cold, bossy, rude, and unfriendly, and I was confronted on every level with
discomfort. I really wondered what I was doing there, but I knew that if I could
pass this test, if my meditation practice could stabilize my mind so these people
could not adversely affect me, then I would be free. It is one thing to sit and be
quiet in a cave, but can we be peaceful in the midst of chaos, difficulty, and
confusion? The ashram was one of my most important teachers, the training,
discipline, and hours of meditation the greatest of gifts.
“It was many years later that I crashed. I had been chasing the light, believing
we were the beautiful ones, that everything was wonderful. But I had not yet
faced my shadow, where the remnants of my past lay. I was living in England,
which was a bigger challenge than I had anticipated and gave rise to an even
bigger shift in my mental state. I had to be with just me and, as much as I had
years of spiritual training behind me, this was a different level of confrontation. I
lost the plot and spiraled into a black hole. There were three things that helped
me through this part of my life: my tireless wife, my friend and therapist Maura,
and meditation. I retreated into the quietness within and, slowly, slowly, I found
myself again.”
Growing up in the English countryside might sound idyllic, but for Deb it was
an emotional roller coaster. Having an angry, sometimes violent father led to a
disjointed existence, both at home and away at boarding school:
“We had no traditional family home as we moved constantly, living in numerous
places, both before and after my parents’ divorce when I was six years old. My
father was an irate, emotionally volatile, and absent parent, and there was little
affection between us. When I was about five, he had bought a new car, so we
went for a ride to get milkshakes to celebrate. On the way back, about a mile or
so from home, I threw up all over the backseat. He was so angry he stopped the
car and made me get out before driving away and leaving me there on my own.
It was a while before my mother was able to come and get me.
“When I was eight, I went to boarding school. By then, my mother was a
single parent so it was probably the best place for me to be, but I did not enjoy
school or the split life that boarding school imposed. Dormitories are loveless
places. There was no stability, no consistency. And I always felt different, like I
was the odd one out, preferring to read or write poetry than go partying. It felt
like no one really knew or understood me, as if I was locked in this solitary
world inside while the real world went on around me. My grandparents provided
some sense of steadiness as I would often stay with them during vacations. My
grandfather was a lover of words; he wrote the Charles Dickens encyclopedia,
and was the editor for Winston Churchill at Cassell’s publishing house. He
seemed to understand my inner torment, and we would write poetry together, but
he died when I was thirteen. I left school at fifteen as education seemed
irrelevant. I was looking for something that could not be found in a classroom.
At that time, my mother took me to the meditation retreat I mentioned in the
previous chapter. It was the only thing that made sense, that put everything in its
right place, and that finally gave me a sense of belonging.”
Extreme poverty can be a major cause of dysfunction, resulting in a lack of
education, anger and violence, hopelessness and worthlessness. But it can also
be a spur to finding a deeper meaning to life, as Deepesh Faucheux explains:
“I had a very chaotic and insecure childhood because my family was so poor.
We lived in a Mexican-American ghetto in Houston, where you could not walk
down the street safely. I sought refuge in the Catholic Church. There, I found
spectacle, ritual, and this window into history so colorful and substantial that it
was like a lighthouse in the storm. It was so completely different from
everything else I knew that I spent all my time there. One of the most destructive
elements of poverty is the lack of hope; when you are that down, you do not
know that there is an up. The church gave me an up; it gave me hope,
motivation, the possibility that there was more than just pure survival. Compared
to the chaos of my home and my neighborhood, the church was a sanctuary
where I could seek refuge. It gave me a whole different way to look at the world,
much bigger, more profound. None of the rest of my family was involved, but I
loved it. The whole atmosphere of the church, especially going there as an altar
boy at 6:30 each morning to serve mass, was very contemplative; there would be
all these old people doing their beads. I learned Latin; I learned the Bible inside
and out. I went to Catholic school, and after my first year of college, I joined the
Order of Priests at the university.
“That first year was beautiful. It was all contemplation and silence. The next
year, when they sent us back to the university, I lived in a cloistered house but I
did classes with all the other students. It was a very tumultuous time during the
second Vatican counsel with Pope John the 23rd, the whole reform of the
church, and it was very difficult to be in the seminary. The younger and older
priests sitting in the dining room were kicking each other under the table. They
were literally fighting over doctrinal matters, the old ones competing for the
hearts and minds of all the young seminarians, of which I was one. We felt
caught in the middle between the old conservative church and the new upheaval.
The civil rights movement was distracting us and eventually we left en masse.
“In retrospect, I now realize that what I was attracted to in those early days of
the church was the meditative state induced by the incense, the chanting, the
ritual, and the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius practiced in the monastery. This
altered state gave me the courage I needed to go beyond the limitations imposed
by my childhood world.”
Experiencing parental violence and emotional turmoil can either make us
equally angry, or it can turn us inward, asking why and constantly searching for
answers. For some, at the moment they needed it, the right person was there to
answer their seeking. Jack Kornfield recalls:
“I had a lot of family pain. My father was violent and abusive, and we were all
frightened of his unpredictable rage and beatings. I also had a deep sense, as
most young people do, that there was something more to the world than
materialism and the superficial level of success in our culture. When I was a
college student, I encountered a wonderful old Chinese professor who would
sometimes sit cross-legged on the desk and lecture on Lao-Tzu and the Buddha
and Eastern wisdom. His teachings touched my heart and gave me a sense that
although there is suffering, there could also be an end to suffering. What a
revelation!
“He taught how there is a way to work with the difficulties of life, that we can
transform both our inner life and our relationships in the world. That inspired me
to go to Asia to find a monastery. I joined the Peace Corps in the 1960s and
asked them to send me to a Buddhist country because I knew I wanted to go into
a monastery, perhaps in Nepal or Thailand. I was fortunate enough to end up in
northeast Thailand, near the border of Laos, in an area that had some of the great
old forest monasteries still operating deep in the jungles along the Mekong River
Valley. There, I found extraordinary meditation masters and communities of
practitioners.”
The blatant insincerity of many adults can lead some people to great
disillusionment and, therefore, to seek for meaning elsewhere. When the right
role model does appear, they will do whatever it takes to emulate them. For
example, James Gimian remembers:
“As a teenager, I felt there was this huge shortcoming as people seemed to be
taking the movie on the screen as reality, whereas I saw that there was an empty
quality to it all. I tried everything from intellectual inquiry to drugs to find out
what was behind this veil of appearance that I was both intrigued and confused
by. I spent most of the time tearing down the authority figures in my life because
they didn’t carry with them that kind of experiential emptiness about the world,
or to put it another way, they didn’t walk their talk. The appearance that they
presented, the words they spoke, did not hold up to their behavior when they
were offstage, so all their words became meaningless and could not convey
anything very profound, yet they seemed to believe in them and expected
everyone around them to also believe in them.
“When I finally met somebody, who happened to be a meditation teacher, for
whom there was no difference between the person I saw in front of me and the
person they were offstage, I figured, well, if meditation was the way to be able to
be like that, then it was what I had to do in my life.”
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Overwhelming Experience
Apart from the harrowing experience of a traumatic childhood, drug addiction,
or illness, we can gain the ability to connect to our inner self through unexpected
and unlooked-for experiences of awakening, moments that take us out of our
normal, rational selves and offer us a glimpse into another dimension of reality.
Not many of us have the experience of seeing earth from above, as astronaut
Edgar Mitchell did. It was entering the vastness of space that led him to a deep
transformation:
“We were coming home after being on the moon. We were flying in the plane of
the ecliptic, which is the plane with the earth, the moon, and the sun, but
oriented perpendicular to it and floating through space virtually sideways while
rotating. The purpose of this was to keep general balance on the spacecraft, but
what it caused to happen was that, as we rotated, a 360-degree panorama of the
heavens appeared in the spacecraft window every two minutes. As my job had
been the landing craft on the moon, I could now sit back and enjoy the view. It
was pretty awesome, particularly since the stars and the galaxies and all the
heavenly bodies are ten times as bright in space as they are on the highest
mountain on earth.
“I became immersed in the vastness of space. Suddenly, I realized that the
molecules in my body and the molecules in the body of the spacecraft and in my
partners were prototyped and perhaps manufactured in some ancient generation
of stars. Instead of just being an intellectual thought, it was very visceral. I
realized the connectedness of everything, like the ancient mystics all said, and it
was accompanied by this feeling of ecstasy, an overwhelming experience that I
had never had before. It was totally blissful.
“When I got back to earth, I started talking with Eastern mystics and holy men,
and with spiritual people from all over the world. I studied virtually all the
meditation disciplines and techniques and practices that there are. I wanted to
know what had happened in that transcendent experience. The only answer I
came to was that I was in resonance, a deep quantum resonance with the ground
of my being. A theologian would say the ground of our being is God; I would
say it is a field of infinite energy and potential and that when we have such
experiences we are in quantum resonance with that deep reality. And when we
get in resonance with that deep reality, we have this feeling of deep peace and
the sense that everything is really okay.”
Transformation can also arise from within ourselves, dependent on nothing but
our own dreams and emerging insights. Byron Kathie recalls:
“I fell in love with myself one morning in February of 1986. I had checked
myself into a halfway house in Los Angeles after years of suicidal depression. A
week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to
sleep in a bed), a cockroach crawled over my foot and I opened my eyes. For the
first time in my life, I was seeing without concepts, without thoughts or an
internal story. All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my
whole world, the whole world, was gone. There was no me. It was as if
something else had woken up. It opened its eyes. It was looking through Katie’s
eyes. And it was crisp, it was bright, it was new, it had never been here before.
Everything was unrecognizable. And it was so delighted! Laughter welled up
from the depths and just poured out. It breathed and was ecstasy. It was
intoxicated with joy, totally greedy for everything. There was nothing separate,
nothing unacceptable to it. Everything was its very own self. For the first time I
—it—experienced the love of its own life. I—it—was amazed!
“These were the first moments after I was born as it—or it as me. There was
nothing left of Katie. There was literally not even a shred of memory of her—no
past, no future, not even a present. And in that openness, such joy. There is
nothing sweeter than this, I felt; there is nothing but this. If you loved yourself
more than anything you could imagine, you would give yourself this: a face, a
hand, breath. But that is not enough: a wall, a ceiling, a window, a bed, light
bulbs. Ooh! And this too! And this too! I felt that if my joy were told, it would
blow the roof off the halfway house—off the whole planet. I still feel that way.
“I live in constant meditation, and if a thought should ever show up as
anything less than goodness, I know that it would spill over to other people as
confusion, and those other people are me. My job is to enlighten myself to that,
and to love the spent rose, the sound of the traffic, the litter on the ground, and
the litterer who gives me my world. I pick up the litter, do the dishes, sweep the
floor, wipe the baby’s nose, and question anything that would cost me the
awareness of my true nature. There is nothing kinder than this, nothing.
“At forty-three, after ten years of deep depression and despair, my real life
began. What I came to see was that my suffering was not a result of not having
control; it was a result of arguing with reality. I discovered that when I believed
my thoughts I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them I did not suffer, and
that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. Suffering is
optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single
moment. That joy is in everyone, always. When you question your mind for the
love of truth, your life always becomes happier and kinder.”
The people in this chapter, and the many others throughout the book, found their
sanity and freedom by simply sitting in stillness, which makes meditation the
best and cheapest remedy there is for many of our most pervasive ills!
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4
The Only Way Out Is Within
For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
LILY TOMLIN
Imagine you are a caveman out with fellow tribe members on a hunt for food.
You have spotted a large bear, and adrenalin is beginning to pump through your
body in anticipation of the coming hunt. As you close in on the animal, your
heart rate begins to increase, your breaths become shorter, your stomach muscles
tighten, and your concentration deepens. The level of adrenalin in your system is
rising rapidly as you near the point of attack. The next few moments are crucial
in determining whether you fight to the kill or must run for your life.
Now imagine a day when everything suddenly seems too much to cope with.
Perhaps your child has kept you awake all night with toothache, you have to be
at a business meeting first thing in the morning but you get delayed in congested
traffic, the meeting goes on longer than planned, and you have to skip lunch in
order to write a report. An angry client arrives, demanding better service, when
your mother calls in need of help with her car. In the midst of all this, you may
not have noticed that your heart rate was increasing, your breaths were getting
shorter, your stomach muscles were tightening, and your anxiety level rising.
Adrenalin is pumping through your body, but in this case, there is no bear to
fight and nowhere to run.
Although each separate incident may appear benign, if our response to
circumstances becomes increasingly stressed to the point at which we lose our
equilibrium, then the body will translate this as life threatening and put out the
red alert. Becoming fraught with tension and physically distressed, until we are
overwhelmed and out of control, is like a steam cooker coming to full pressure.
As Simon, a participant in one of our workshops, told us, “I don’t get stressed. I
wake up stressed.” And although we are the only ones who can turn down the
heat, unfortunately we often feel powerless to do so.
| PETER RUSSELL |
“When I am working in corporations, I ask how many people get stressed by
traffic, and most people say yes, traffic jams definitely make me stressed. Yet
sitting in a traffic jam is the least stressful part of driving! We have nothing to
do, nobody is demanding anything from us, and it is a moment when we can
completely relax. So why do we make it the most stressed part? Is it because we
feel out of control? We are going to be late for the meeting, and if we are late,
we will be criticized or lose an opportunity, or we are going to be late getting
home. It is the voice that wants to be in control of things that is stressing us out,
not the traffic jam. So, instead of getting stressed, we can actually use the time to
relax and enjoy being stuck in traffic!”
Physical symptoms of the stress response include digestive disorders, such as
changes in appetite, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, stomach ulcers, and
indigestion; as well as headaches, high blood pressure, palpitations,
hyperventilation, insomnia, back ache, hives or eczema, excessive sweating, and
nervous reactions such as grinding teeth. At the same time, the hormone cortisol
is released, which suppresses the immune system, so immune-deficient illnesses
from the common cold to cancer can also be directly or indirectly caused by
stress.
If stress increases we become less able to adequately adapt, causing us to
overreact, lose a clear perspective on priorities, get muddled or disorganized,
become depressed, or rant and rage for no apparent reason. We may have more
anxiety and panic, irritability and frustration, debilitating fear and insecurity,
rapid mood changes, restlessness and nervousness, addictive behavior, memory
loss, or paranoia and confusion. And all of these are just a few of the possible
effects.
| JEFF SALZMAN |
“I was the guy who at forty-two years old had all the money I could ever spend. I
had the most beautiful husband imaginable. I was living in a beach house in
Florida. I had my library of books. I really had nothing to worry about, and so I
ended up staring out at the beach with the only thing I had left: the fact that one
day I was going to die. I started worrying about dying, and I started worrying
about my heart. This is what happens if you are basically neurotic, which I am. I
went and got a blood pressure machine. Within three or four weeks, I was taking
my blood pressure forty to fifty times a day. I had these big elaborate charts, and
I was watching my blood pressure rise. In other words, I developed an
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it continued to spiral for the next four years,
to the point where I was in a low level of panic all the time, I was always
sweating, I had super-high blood pressure and heart arrhythmias. I tried lots of
things, including Prozac, but everything I did made it worse. I was never
suicidal, but I was wondering, is this life tenable for me? I could not sleep; I
could not concentrate on anything. It was impossible to have a meaningful
conversation with anyone because I wasn’t really present. I was stressed to the
max, but it was entirely my own doing.”
Such an experience shows how easily a limited pattern of thinking can become
a full-blown neurosis. Not me, we think, I don’t get that stressed. Perhaps not,
but try this: Imagine you are squeezing some toothpaste out of a tube but you
have forgotten to take the cap off. What happens? Deb actually did this in one of
her most unaware moments (they do happen!), and the toothpaste soon found
another way out—through the bottom of the tube and onto her clothes. Now
imagine that the tube of toothpaste is you, under pressure and beginning to
experience psychological or emotional distress. But you do not take your cap off,
as it were, by recognizing what is happening and making time to relax and deal
with your inner concerns. Instead, you just keep squeezing yourself to do more.
So what happens to the mental or emotional pressure building up inside you?
Eventually it has to find a way out, and if it cannot come out through the top—
by being acknowledged, expressed, and resolved—it will find another way of
making itself known.
It will find the weakest point, whether through your digestive system, your
nerves, immune system, behavior, emotional balance, or sleep patterns.
Repressed or ignored, it can become illness, depression, addiction, or anxiety;
projected outward, it becomes hostility, aggression, prejudice, or fear. But all of
this is within our own personal domain.
| LINDSAY CROUSE |
“They are very pervasive, but we have to find a way to remove ourselves from
all those messages of unfulfilled desire coming at us or we do not have a chance
to clear our minds. The kind of constant busyness we are a part of is actually a
kind of aggression against ourselves, because we have no peace. More
importantly, we construct the world by how we think. For instance, when we are
in love, we will run out in the rain with our lover, dancing and singing and
celebrating, getting entirely wet; whereas most days when we open the door and
we see it raining, we use an expletive. It is not the rain’s fault; there is no quality
in the rain that should make us either happy or unhappy. That is coming from us.
So, if the way we are seeing the world is coming from within us, then the world
is a reflection of how we are thinking and feeling and acting and speaking. In
that case, we need to take time out to deeply consider how we want to behave.”
Causes of Stress
Stress affects us all. Research by the Center for Disease Control and the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that up to $300 billion, or
$7,500 per employee, is spent each year on stress-related absenteeism or
decreased productivity, while most conservative estimates suggest that 70 to 90
percent of illnesses are either affected or caused by stress, with a
correspondingly large proportion of visits to doctors. As such, it is a major
problem. On top of that, there is no medical cure that can alleviate stress.
Prescription drugs cannot lighten our workload or change our life conditions.
Stress is a derivation of the Latin word meaning “to be drawn tight.” Studies
show that job dissatisfaction, moving, divorce, and financial difficulties are at
the top of the list of known stressors, or places that make us tighten up. But as
we all respond differently to such circumstances, what may appear as an exciting
challenge to one person can be debilitating or overwhelming to another. For
instance, a divorce may seem to be a high stressor but for some it can be a
welcome relief! The difference lies in our response to the stressor, for although
we may have little or no control over the circumstances with which we are
dealing, we do have control over our reaction to them. If we respond negatively
to stress it can then have further repercussions.
| JOHN GRAY |
“Stress occurs if there is something challenging and we do not know how we are
going to get to where we want to go. This means we have a need that we cannot
meet so we start to compensate. Then we start creating false needs like, ‘If I
can’t get the love I need in my relationship, then what can I get? Well, I can
have ice cream.’ People are often desperately seeking money or something out
there because they have gone through the stress of not getting what they need
emotionally and they make other things important, which is called
compensation.”
In other words, the cause of stress is not so much the external circumstances,
such as having too many demands and not enough time to fill them. Rather, it is
about our perception of the circumstances as being overwhelming and our
perception of our ability to cope when we feel stretched beyond what we
perceive we are capable of. If we believe we cannot cope, then we will begin to
lose ground; if we believe we can cope, then we will be able to ride over any
obstacles.
What we believe colors our every thought, word, and action. As cell biologist
Bruce Lipton writes in his book, The Biology of Belief, “Our responses to
environmental stimuli are indeed controlled by perceptions, but not all of our
learned perceptions are accurate. Not all snakes are dangerous! Yes, perception
‘controls’ biology, but . . . these perceptions can be true or false. Therefore, we
would be more accurate to refer to these controlling perceptions as beliefs.
Beliefs control biology!”
Luckily, we can transform our beliefs and our perceptions. The idea that it is
our work, family, or lifestyle that is causing us stress, and that if we were to
change these then we would be fine, is seeing the situation from the wrong
perspective. Rather, it is the belief that something “out there” is causing us stress
that is actually causing the stress. And although changing our circumstances
certainly may help, invariably, no matter what we do, it is a change within our
belief system and our perception of our capabilities that will make the biggest
difference. In turn, this will help develop the relaxation response and begin to
normalize everything the stress response has put out of balance.
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Practice Meditation:
Reducing Stress
We expend far more energy maintaining a stressed state than we do creating a
relaxed one. This practice enables us to release the inner patterns causing
stress:
If stress is rising, become aware of reactive thinking patterns. Are your
thoughts becoming more annoyed, self-centered, fearful, or helpless?
If you normally react by getting irritated at interruptions until you are
shouting, take some deep breaths and silently repeat, “My work is flowing well.
Nothing can disturb that flow. I can easily take a few minutes to attend to other
issues.”
Most importantly, change the voice in your head from “I can’t” to “I can.”
Repeat an affirmation to shift perceptions and belief patterns and to reinforce
your strengths, such as “With every breath, I am more relaxed and flowing
through my day with ease.”
If you are feeling increasingly helpless with a growing sense of inadequacy,
turn your thoughts into ones such as: “I am absolutely capable of fulfilling
anything that is asked of me; I have all the knowledge that I need to do this
already inside me; I am fully resourceful and able to rise to this challenge.”
De-stressing
The word meditation and the word medication have the same prefix derived
from the Latin word medicus, meaning to care or to cure, indicating that
meditation is the most appropriate medicine or antidote for stress. Deep
relaxation techniques and breath awareness meditation are vital components in
enabling the relaxation response to be activated; a quiet calmness is the most
effective and efficient remedy for a busy and overworked mind.
| PONLOP RINPOCHE |
“Usually, when we feel the pressure of life—and life in general is very busy with
all kinds of commotion taking place around us—then we can become very tense
and close our heart. We go onto autopilot mode, a state of self-protection and
self-preservation. When our mind can relax a little and become calm and more
spacious, then we see there is nothing to fear. It is like a warrior. The greatest
warrior in history is the one who is calm—if he freaked out, then he would easily
lose the battle. In the same way, when our mind is stressed and tense, then we
think everyone is attacking us or taking advantage of us, and we cannot see
anyone or anything objectively or lovingly. Meditation really helps us not to
panic or freak out; it brings us back to this calm ground. When we are standing
on this calm and peaceful ground, then we can see our emotions and fears
clearly, and we can see how to work with them; there is less judgment and
labeling.”
One of our students, Helen, had a very critical, angry boss, a woman who
would walk in each day and immediately begin to find fault with everything
Helen did: the way she was dressed, the way her hair was, and so on. Helen was
becoming a nervous wreck, feeling inadequate and shameful, as well as
developing a real bitterness toward her boss. She wanted to leave, but jobs were
scarce in her area. Helen then started to practice meditation and to develop the
relaxation response. This gave her greater objectivity and awareness, which led
her to a deeper compassion. She began to perceive what an unhappy and sad
woman her boss really was beneath her very tough exterior. She watched her
boss moving and talking to people and saw the loneliness in her body, heard the
defeat in her voice. Each time her boss approached her, Helen would silently
repeat, ‘May you be happy, may you be well,’ while sending her boss thoughts
of compassion and care. This lowered her stress response and balanced her
reactive feelings. Soon she was no longer absorbing the criticisms and was able
to talk to her boss quite fearlessly.
Helen recognized how her stressful reactions were due to her perception of and
reaction to her boss, in particular her belief that she herself was at fault. She also
saw the reality of this other woman’s unhappiness and how all the criticism and
anger was due to sadness, not to anything that Helen had personally done.
Meditation had grounded her enough that she was no longer giving her power
away but was able to stay steady within herself. Where stress creates tension and
chaos, de-stressing is about finding a greater equilibrium and stability in both
our minds and our lives.
| JOAN BORYSENKO |
“A long time ago, I came across a definition of meditation that it comes from the
root meaning ‘right balance.’ That rang true for me because, personally, my
attention is often so fragmented, egocentric, narcissistic, or self-concerned that
there isn’t a whole lot of inner balance or alignment with what is. Rather, I am
stuck in a state of non-balance. Right balance is when my mind is not spinning
out endless movies and delusions, or maybe it still is but I am just not so
attached to believing them. Meditation is when I can watch stuff go by and the
part of me that usually interrupts and says, ‘That’s a good story, or that son of a
bitch, or I’m guilty and awful,’ that part sits back and sees it as just one more
story but without attachment to it. This gives me the most delicious sense of
spaciousness and peace.”
Taking time to be quiet teaches us to just be with what is when the stress
response is kicking in and adrenalin is beginning to influence our reactions,
rather than over-identifying with it or letting the stress change our behavior.
Meditation is so obviously effective for stress-based difficulties that a specific
training, known as Warrior Mind Training, is now being taught at various
military bases, according to a report on Earthlink News, October 7, 2008:
“The explosion of practice mortars sent Army Spc. Kade Williams into panic
attacks, and nightmares plagued his sleep. The ravages of post-traumatic stress
had left the veteran of the war in Afghanistan vulnerable, and he was desperate
for help. But sitting silently on the floor with his eyes closed. . . . That seemed a
bit far-out. Until he tried it. ‘I will be the first one to admit that I was wrong,’
Williams said. He now attends regular classes and practices alone three
mornings a week. He says he feels safe for the first time since he returned from
Afghanistan.”
This story demonstrates how meditation offers us the spaciousness to just
observe and witness, rather than being dominated by reactive and knee-jerk
behavior. We can step out of fear and chaos, and into awareness of the bigger
picture.
| SYLVIA BOORSTEIN |
“Mindfulness meditation, the practice of moment-to-moment awareness, is
where we can clearly assess what is happening, not only out there, but what is
my internal response to it? If I can keep my response clear of the confusion that
frequently arises when my experience is startling or frightening and I can say,
‘Whoa, I just got startled, I just got confused, let me just take a moment here and
see if I can see through this confusion,’ then I can let my mind rest for a moment
and take a quiet look at what is going on. The point of meditation is to stop the
storyline. I might be saying, ‘Oh, my life is not going the way I wanted, this or
that isn’t happening, anger is arising, and I feel uncomfortable about the anger,’
and then I say to myself, ‘It is like this, whatever it is, it is just like this,’ and
then I can relax about whatever it is. It does not mean that life is without strife or
disappointment or worry or even irritation; it means that it is without getting
fussed about. It is just what is going on; that is all; it need not be complicated.”
The ability to keep our peace and maintain an even-balanced state is one of the
great gifts of meditation that we can bring into every situation. In practice, this
means recognizing that there are many situations in which we have no control
over what happens, no ability to affect the outcome, but no matter what happens
it is possible to stay balanced. This applies to our thoughts and feelings, as well
as to our behavior and actions. As the German proverb says, “We cannot direct
the wind, but we can adjust our sails.”
Such equanimity gives us strength and a sense of being unshakable in a world
that is constantly making demands and creating challenges. We never know what
is going to happen or when—nothing is predictable, permanent, secure,
controllable, or dependable. Everything is subject to change in every moment.
We can ignore this fact and live with the delusion of permanency and
predictability, or we can embrace impermanence and unpredictability with
awareness and dignity.
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Part II
TRANSFORMING FROM
THE INSIDE OUT
5
Growing Roses Out of Compost
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but
around in awareness.
JAMES THURBER
Soon after his release, Nelson Mandela was asked by Bill Clinton if he was
feeling angry the day he walked away from twenty-seven years in jail. “Didn’t
you hate them?” asked Clinton. “You must have felt some anger?” “Sure I did,”
Mandela replied. “I felt anger and hatred and fear. But I realized that if I kept on
hating them then once I got in that car and got through the gate, I would still be
in prison. I let it go because I wanted to be free.”
Such self-acceptance as Mandela displayed is rare. Normally, we do not accept
and release our negative feelings so easily; we are more likely to repress or
disown them. But we ignore these parts of ourselves at our peril, for when
denied they cause guilt, shame, depression, relationship failure, anger, sadness,
and anxiety. When recognized, such hidden places contain great resources of
strength. Locked in the darkness of past experiences, conflicts, and traumas is a
depth of feeling and insight. “Our hang-ups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain
our wealth,” writes Pema Chödron in The Wisdom of No Escape. “Our neurosis
and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your
neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.”
The impetus that brings us to greater self-reflection and awareness is often the
result of a wounded sense of self, as seen in some of the personal stories in
chapter three. From this place, the urge comes to grow into a sufficient, strong,
and healed self, like a weed that it impelled to grow even through concrete in
order to reach the light. The obstacles that confront us as we proceed—the
dragons in our mind—represent those parts of us that have been pushed away or
ignored. To run or hide from them simply increases our resistance and makes us
a casualty of our own limitations.
| DENNIS GENPO MERZEL |
“Instead of being a victim of my humanness, I am owning it and consciously
choosing to be a human being. And, therefore, when I suffer, when I have anger,
jealousy, or self-loathing, I can accept it because these are qualities of a human
being.”
Can meditation help us to embrace our essential humanness? We have seen
how it is the appropriate remedy for stress and illness, but can the same be said
of more psychological states of conflict, such as anger or fear? And how do we
deal with shadow issues that invariably arise during such a self-reflective
practice?
| MICHELLE LEVEY |
“In the unmeditative culture that most of us grow up in, the response to suffering
is denial, take a pill, distract yourself somehow, go shopping, drink, watch TV,
all the many ways we have of numbing ourselves. Meditation asks that, instead
of distracting and avoiding and numbing, we just stop and sit with our inner
selves. The seed of healing our psychological stress and mental afflictions is
found within, in the same place that suffering is found. Eventually, we have to
stop running away from pain and simply be with it.”
When we sit in meditation we can begin to remember and reclaim those parts
of our being that had become lost in denial or repression. Meditation invites us
to openly meet those places we have previously hidden from, no matter how
unpleasant, ugly, or unlovable we may think they are. As long as they stay in the
dark recesses, they will continue to dominate our behavior. Only by exploring
the true nature of these repressed aspects and accepting that they are a part of
being alive can we bring real transformation. All this may sound somewhat
daunting, but the outcome is one of relief, release, and greater freedom.
| DAVID SHINER |
“Meditation taught me to just be present and feel everything that is there, to feel
the pain and not run from it. And it gave me the ability to laugh at it. I am a
clown, so I am constantly revealing our deepest weaknesses and pain in order to
generate laughter. A clown is, seemingly, searching for his or her place in life:
what is the meaning of all this, where do I fit in? It is the existential dilemma of
what am I doing here and who am I? That touches the audience on a very deep,
primal level, because somewhere inside each person they feel that way too.”
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Inviting Fear In
| ED |
“As we walked on the beach, we saw a tall crane at the far end attracting a large
crowd of people. Weaving our way through the rows of glistening semi-naked
bodies basking on the sand, we got closer and saw, high above us, someone
about to bungee-jump. Fascinated, we watched him jump, bounce, and fall again,
until coming to rest a few feet above the beach. Not for me, I thought, I could
never do that. Yet at the same time, I was being drawn toward the crane and I
knew I was going to have to do it, to confront myself in this way.
“The guy in front of me in the line was nervous, so I reassured him that all he
needed to do was breathe and he would be fine. He was. He went up and he
jumped. Then it was my turn and up I went. Suddenly, my knees started shaking,
I could not control them, even though inside I was determined to stay sane and
calm—I did not want to lose it! When I stood on the edge of the platform, a large
rubber band attached to my ankles, my body simply would not move. There was
no inner programming, nothing in my brain that recognized how to cope with
this situation. I knew I had to jump, had to challenge myself in this way, but my
body and my mind both said no. Every time I wanted to jump, my body stood
still. Nothing connected.
“Below me, a few hundred voices started shouting: ‘Jump! Jump! Jump!’ The
minutes ticked by, and it felt like an eternity. And then something inside simply
surrendered, let go of resistance, released the fear, and I jumped. And beneath
the fear, I discovered an enormous reservoir of sheer joy!”
Remember times you have met fear and moved through it, so many times
when fear arose but you kept going? Fear may close the heart, but fearlessness
comes out of heartfulness, out of releasing resistance. Fear will stop us from
facing our demons and participating fully in life, but fearlessness will give us the
courage to jump off a crane into the unknown.
| JOHN MILTON |
“If we think of ourselves in the context of being a flow of human beingness that
has flowed through many generations and families, then we will have seen
periods of great difficulty, such as the time of the cave bears or the saber tooth
tigers. These memories are carried through our ancestral lineage and many of
those ancient fears may arise as a primal fear of the dark, of the unknown, of not
being in control. We have to be willing to go through that fear, to embrace it and
honor the truth of it, to relax into it. When that happens, when we completely
trust what is, then the possibility for a complete surrender into the now is
possible. But we have to pass through that gate of fear to develop total trust.”
In other words, being fearless does not mean we have to stop or deny the fear;
fearlessness is not a state of being without fear. Rather, it is the experience of
fully feeling the fear, naming it, getting to know it, taking it by the hand, and
even making friends with it.
“There’s a world of love and there’s a world of fear, and it’s standing right in
front of you,” said the singer Bruce Springsteen to David Hepworth in
Springsteen: The “Q” Interview. He continued:
“And very often that fear feels a lot realer and certainly more urgent than the
feeling of love. The night my son was born, I got close to a feeling of real, pure,
unconditional love with all the walls down. All of a sudden, what was happening
was so immense that it just stomped all the fear away. But I also understood why
you are so frightened. When that world of love comes rushing in, a world of fear
comes in with it. To open yourself up to one thing, you’ve got to embrace the
other as well.”
Fear closes the heart and resists love, whereas love is an open heart that
embraces fear. So now try taking the posture of love. Watch how your body
opens and expands, your arms reaching outward, accepting and inviting. Fear
may still be there, but love can welcome fear—it can embrace any negativity.
Watch how your breathing gets deeper, fuller. Where fear shuts out love, love
holds fear tenderly. It is like the sky that contains everything. With your arms
stretched wide, try saying, “I am frightened” and really mean it.
Letting fear in and making friends with it does not necessarily come easily;
fear is a powerful feeling that demands understanding and patience. Fear comes
—we breathe and let go. Fear comes—we see how the mind needs reassurance
and tenderness. Fear comes—we replace it with love. When we do this, we are
inviting the fearful and anxious parts of ourselves to get to know each other,
even to sit down for tea together.
| PETER RUSSELL |
“Normally, we push our emotions away or we hold onto something we don’t
like. We think of letting go as getting rid of something, we think if we could
only push this right away, it won’t affect me anymore. But we need to do the
opposite, to allow it fully in. To let in what is happening, and emotionally
receive the experience. And then we can let it be. That is the meditation: just
accepting something as it is without trying to change it. Then the shift and the
healing can happen.”
As long as we deny or reject fear, anger, jealousy, or any other emotion, then
we are not accepting and embracing ourselves as we are. Whether a thought or a
feeling is either positive or negative makes no difference; it is still an integral
part of our being. To reject one part is to remain in denial of the whole.
| BYRON KATIE |
“The work is not to stop the mind, but to invite the mind—to invite every single
thought—to come forward into the light. I see all thoughts as the beloved. Why
would you want to get rid of the beloved? Why would you want to medicate the
beloved out of existence? I invite every single thought to come to me as if it
were my dearest child. The whole world is an effect of mind. Inside and outside
always match: When you are frightened, the world seems dangerous; when you
love what is, everything in the world becomes the beloved. When mind is not at
war with itself, there is no separation.”
Meditation encourages us to feel fear and get to know it so that it is no longer
the enemy. As we do that, then we begin to see the benefits of fear, the gifts that
it brings, the unexpected insights and flashes of understanding that move us into
a deeper awareness. No longer denying fear, judging it, getting angry about it, or
being frightened by it, there is a place within us that allows all these feelings to
come and go, rejoicing in their presence for they awaken us to our reality.
| DAVID SHINER |
“In our culture, we are raised with so much fear. The process of meditation is
one of slowly peeling away our resistance so we can enter that fear more deeply;
there is a greater vulnerability, as well as an acceptance of the vulnerability.
Rather than pushing that away and living within the walls of fear that the mind
has created, we can start to accept this tremendous vulnerability and realize it is
not going to hurt us, that it is actually a good thing. I can feel more deeply. I can
go more deeply into my creativity. I can trust the choices I make. There is
gratitude.”
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Practice Meditation:
Meet and Know Your Fear
Breathing steadily, staying open, name the fear.
Then go underneath or behind or into the center of it to find its source.
There may be sadness, loss, inadequacy, and tenderness there.
Keep going deeper, just watching and releasing.
As you do this, so fear will begin to move through you without stopping,
without landing.
You will be able to see it, know it, and keep going beyond it.
FINDING WHOLENESS
The healing power of meditation lies in the realization that we can no longer
avoid ourselves. When we meditate, we sit with who we are; there is nowhere to
run to and nowhere to hide. This is a different approach to anything we may
have known before, but it creates the opportunity for a far deeper healing.
Whatever is going on within us is there to be seen. But as we are simply
witnessing and not engaging, so we are free of the emotional turmoil that usually
accompanies such states.
| JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN |
“Through meditation, we can deal with deep-rooted issues, such as anger or fear,
in an extremely powerful and pragmatic way. There is a world of difference
between being lost in these deeply conditioned patterns and not identifying with
them. Fear arises, anger arises, hatred or greed or whatever it is, and normally
we become lost in that energy, we get carried away and then act it out. This is
the cause of so much pain in the world. Meditation is the middle ground between
repression and expression, where awareness is open to the emotion, to the
feeling; it is a complete honesty with no suppression at all. We allow the
emotion to arise; we see it and are with it in its totality. But because of the power
of awareness and non-identification, we are not driven to act on it. We have the
space to choose. Do I want to act on it? Is it an unwholesome state that I want to
let go of or a wholesome one that is worth acting on? Rather than suppression,
meditation creates the space for feelings and emotions to emerge so we can see
them very directly for what they are.”
Meditation also takes us beyond ourselves and allows us to see a bigger
picture, of which we are just a part. The sense of “me” as a separate entity is
replaced by an awareness of others and of our essential connectedness. No
longer is our story the most important issue, nor suffering something that only
we know; what we experience is also experienced by all others.
| NOAH LEVINE |
“When we observe ourselves, we realize that just as I am suffering and wish to
be happy, so that same suffering is also felt by other living beings; they share
those feelings. When we sit with our own suffering and go deeply into
acceptance, when we begin to disidentify from ‘my’ part of the suffering and just
see suffering, then our heart opens to suffering as a universal principle and it
reaches out in a healing response to that suffering. We go beyond ourselves to
the person next to us or across the planet to those who have the same ache in
their hearts or in their bodies.
“The more we observe the nature of mind and reality, then the more we see
that fear or anger or grief are completely natural and yet completely impersonal.
They are just the normal response of a mind to certain circumstances. They are
not Self; they are just what happen when we get into certain situations: Anger
arises, fear arises, sadness comes. Meditation enables us to both take it less
personally, and, perhaps more importantly, to respond to it more skillfully, to
just accept it as it is and to meet it with more care and compassion.”
In this way, we are no longer a victim to the desires of the mind, but have a
greater capacity for choice. Anger is no longer uncontrollable; fear has less
power; we are free to use these emotions if we need to when it is appropriate, but
they do not run our lives or determine our behavior. Such emotions may be a
part of who we are, but they are not who we are in essence.
| MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH |
“As we increasingly wake up, we become skilful in navigating the emotional
terrain of anger, fear, worry, doubt—all the ego-dominated perceptions that
cause us to think such feelings are real and justified. Emotions of all kinds arise,
but we are that which witnesses them. We become aware that we are aware. We
realize that we have a body but we are not our body. We witness the thinking
mind, but we are not the thoughts that are passing through. Our essence remains
the changeless witness to that panorama.”
One of the greatest gifts meditation gives us is the realization that nothing
stays forever, but that everything is impermanent, including emotions we do not
like or want to identify with. When we can sit back from anger or fear or grief
and take a breath before emotion takes over, then we can watch it pass, often as
quickly as it came, for nothing remains the same, not even those feelings that
seem so enormous, important, or overwhelming. Given time, what is vital to us
now will soon lose its relevance. Knowing this means that we can let go of the
issue with that much more ease.
| JOAN BORYSENKO |
“We come to that paradoxical place when we realize there is no way to control
destructive emotions but we can accept them for what they are. Here it is: ‘I am
full of anger in this moment, I can feel it boiling in my gut, my skin is getting
hot, and I see images of wanting to strangle this person.’ But in five minutes,
that reality will change, so we need not mistake the passing state for who we
really are. Rather, we accept that there are going to be times when we get angry
and even that we may lose ourselves in that anger, especially if we resist it. But
we can just accept; there it is. There is sadness; there it is.”
As thoughts come and go, as we watch emotions rise and fall like waves, as
physical, emotional, or mental pain is felt and then is gone, we realize that this
applies to everything. There is a beautiful sense of rhythm that informs us if we
wait long enough even the darkest of times will also pass and that we can trust it
to pass. Only when we hold on and cling to suffering does it stay and create
more suffering. Knowing this, we can sit with whatever pain may be present,
letting it in and letting it be.
| JEFF SALZMAN |
“I think occasionally meditation is calming, but mostly it is about looking at the
volcano of energy that is arising in my body and mind. I can sit in meditation
and not be moved by the pain; I just let it arise and pass away, not engaging in it.
You see everything pass within yourself that you thought was solid and was here
to get you, and if you surrender to it, you will die, and you surrender to it
anyway and you don’t die. Instead, you become more spacious and bigger and
more capable, and that gets embodied and can be applied to every situation.
Then nothing has the same grip that it once did.”
Meditation creates a holding space where times of pain, sadness, anger, fear,
hurt, confusion, doubt, or all the other emotions can come and be seen and pass
through. Each one of them has a role to play and a reason for being, but we do
not need to feel the same way forever. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned,
there can even be a blessing in the pain. As the thirteenth-century Persian poet
Jalaluddin Rumi said so eloquently in his poem “The Guest House”*:
This being human is a guest house,
every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
—*Written by Jalaluddin Rumi and translated by Coleman Barks
If we deny anger, fear, shame, or blame, then they will follow us wherever we
go; if we hold on, then it is the ego holding onto the need for some form of
recognition. When we can witness without attachment, then pain is
acknowledged, and once acknowledged, it no longer requires attention. Making
friends with the content of our own minds in this way shows us that behind even
the darkest pain and difficulty is the happiness that our Thai monk was
constantly telling us was there. All we need is the courage to look.
| JACK KORNFIELD |
“Mindfulness meditation opens our wisdom eyes to see that gain and loss,
pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, birth and death, are all the dance of life itself.
It teaches us to be unafraid of these changes and cycles, and to trust the capacity
to rest in awareness itself, rather than in the changing experiences. When we
trust awareness, when we rest in the one who knows, we come to the place of
well-being that is beyond the changing circumstances of the world. And it is this
that makes the heart happy and free.”
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6
We Belong to Each Other
Do not seek perfection in a changing world.
Instead, perfect your love.
MASTER SENGSTAN
| WILLIAM SPEAR |
“A woman was going to Madison Square Garden to see HH the Dalai Lama, and
she needed my arm to lean on. She was very frail and she died three months later
from AIDS. But at that time, she was walking very slowly with her arm on mine.
We came out of her hotel room and into the hallway, where a maid was standing
next to her cart. The maid said, ‘Good morning,’ and the woman said, ‘Good
morning,’ and smiled as we walked to the elevator. This was a hotel where there
was an elevator operator, and as we got in the elevator, he said, ‘Good morning.’
She said, ‘Good morning’ to him. We went down to the first floor and out to the
front desk—‘Good morning,’ ‘Good morning’—and out to a car waiting for us.
The driver opened the door saying, ‘Good morning,’ and she said, ‘Good
morning.’ We went to the security door at Madison Square Garden, where a big
policeman opened the door for us: ‘Good morning,’ ‘Good morning.’ We went
back to where HH the Dalai Lama was waiting, and there was a man who let us
in: ‘Good morning,’ ‘Good morning.’ Then we met HH the Dalai Lama, and she
said, ‘Good morning’ to HH the Dalai Lama with exactly the same vibration and
purpose and openness as she had every other person. It took my breath away. I
realized that she was absolutely present every step of the way. She was going to
see HH the Dalai Lama when she came out of the door of her hotel suite, and
here he was in the maid, in the elevator operator, and in the man at the front
desk. Loving your family can be extended to the ones you exchange greetings
with, to the person at the traffic lights or in the grocery store, the dry cleaner,
everybody. How do you extend your love and joy to them? You just do it.”
We can do this because we are not alone here, each one of us—both directly
and indirectly—affect each other. Everyone and everything is dependent on
everything else, there is no defining place where we begin or end, independent
of each other. Every cell in the body exists in a relationship of co-dependency
with every other cell, just as we each exist in a relationship with one another,
with the plants, rain, sunshine, and the air we breathe. Something as simple as
the page on which these words are written involves every natural element and
hundreds of people to make it possible. As Mother Theresa reminds us, “If we
have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.”
Yet relationships create untold problems! Sitting in solitary bliss with our heart
wide open and love pouring out of us toward all beings is relatively easy, but as
soon as we come in direct contact with another person, all our good intentions
are tested. Our ability to stay open and loving, our selflessness and generosity,
all this and more are immediately confronted by someone else’s own wants and
needs, and by his or her capacity to accept and love us or not. So relationship is
not just an integral part of being alive; it is also the most vital and challenging
teacher we will ever have!
How can meditation be of any help here? Can it facilitate greater friendliness,
acceptance, and appreciation? Can it affect intimacy? Can it enable relationships
to not only survive the hard times but even to thrive?
| SAKYONG MIPHAM |
“Most of the time, we are not aware of what we do or say or how we can irritate
our partner, we are unaware of what they are feeling, we are not able to really
hear them. The mind can become tight, there is less room, and every little thing
becomes irritating. In reality, the mind is like the sky, it can hold everything, yet
we limit it and make it like a narrow body of water or a canyon. Through
meditation, the mind becomes healthier, stronger, bigger, and contains more.
The trick is to realize that meditation is not some sort of extracurricular activity,
something we do on the side, but is actually the main event.”
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Everything Is Acceptable
The relationship we have with ourselves (although that makes it sound like there
are two of us, when, of course, there is just one, just this) creates the foundation
for all of our other relationships. As such, it is essential that we make friends
with and accept ourselves as we are, to appreciate everything that we have
experienced, everything that has gone into making our unique selves. All the
physical lumps and bumps, the psychological and emotional colors, textures,
shapes, and patterns—these are testament to our history, to the journey we have
taken to reach this place, now. As we saw in the last chapter, if we push away
even just one aspect of ourselves, especially the dark corners or hidden monsters,
then wholeness is not possible.
“Nothing about ourselves should be unacceptable, every dark, unpleasant,
cunning, ugly, and pathological aspect of ourselves,” writes William Bloom in
First Steps. “If we cannot accept it, then we will never be able to transform it. If
there are aspects of ourselves that we cannot accept, then our whole process of
spiritual exploration and transformation is flawed from the very beginning.”
This is not a comfortable place to begin, as many of us believe we are
unlovable, unattractive, that we have done or said things that were unacceptable,
or that we have to prove ourselves before we can be loved. This belief may have
come from our upbringing, what we have been told or taught, or through our
own sense of inadequacy. But it is where we have to start if we are to be in an
honest relationship with ourselves and, from there, with others and our world.
| KATHLYN HENDRICKS |
“People have a place that they think is unlovable, that something about them is
unlovable. We need to bring that unlovableness into meditation, rather than
keeping it separate, rather than thinking that once we have meditated for
however long then we will get to be lovable. If we can be with our unlovableness
right now, then it will shift it. If we learn to love ourselves, then our interactions
with everyone will be different.”
One of the main obstacles to accepting that we are lovable just as we are is that
many of us were raised to think that we are fundamentally and intrinsically bad,
which can lead to a deep level of inner shame. For example, Ed was often told he
would never amount to anything. Such shame is corrosive; it eats away at our
sense of worthiness, our self-confidence, and our ability to give or receive love.
It is so important we see this and recognize we are not personally to blame, that
in essence who we are is not bad, and that there is nothing to feel shameful
about. We can be at ease with this label of badness, nurture ourselves, and begin
to come out from under its influence.
| DEBBIE FORD |
“Even when I wasn’t bad, I felt bad. And for so many years I thought that was
just me. Then I found out that 90 percent of the world feels bad. They feel bad at
something, or they were bad at some time. We can open our heart to that
collective experience and heal the shame. This gives rise to compassion. When
we are compassionate, we can hold the human self with all its shame, fear,
denial, addictions, and insecurities. Compassion for all the ways we try to get
love, keep love, get approval, or try to belong. Every day we can say to
ourselves, ‘It is okay, I understand. I love you. We allow ourselves to rise above
the insanity of our human nature.’”
Accepting our insecure or hidden places is saying, “So this is it, this is what is
here, this is where I grow from.” Loving ourselves is about being tender and
gentle when we fail, having kindness and generosity when mistakes are made. It
means picking ourselves up each time we fall and letting go of judgment.
Acknowledgment comes first—acknowledging that this is what is, that this is
who we are. Then comes self-acceptance, which means we can be ourselves
without any embarrassment. Acknowledgment and acceptance are not involved
with right or wrong, simply with being with what is.
If we are not at ease with ourselves, then we will invariably find something in
others to complain about, something other than ourselves that is to blame for
how we are. But when we know our own mind with all of its hidden fears and
insecurities, when we see the endless dramas and complexities of the ego, then
how can we judge ourselves or be surprised by what anyone else does or says?
As a psychotherapist friend once said, “I am not surprised by what anyone says
when they come into my office because I know my own mind.”
| WILLIAM SPEAR |
“Always, when I meditate, there are obstacles for me to reckon with—
judgments, distortions, attachments, my story—all the things that I have going
on in my waking hours show up in my meditation. As soon as I see them, I have
judgments, just as we all make judgments. They arise out of the chatter of our
ego selves and those things that separate us rather than bringing us together,
those things that deny access into our own hearts instead of opening the door
wider. Meditation is an opportunity for me to practice the non-judgmental
attitude I try to live by in my relationships, not only with myself and my loved
ones, with clients or people in relief camps, but with my mailman and with the
woman at the grocery store and with the next person I look at when I pull up to a
red light.”
We may have been taught that it is very self-centered, immodest, or selfish to
love ourselves, yet how can we truly love others if we cannot love ourselves?
How can an open heart discriminate and turn away from itself? This is where
meditation can bring great understanding and kindness. Getting to know, make
friends with, and appreciate ourselves need not be difficult. Rather, it can be a
journey of endless delight as we lighten ourselves of the burdens of shame,
blame, and guilt by embracing ourselves with understanding and kindness. Then
we can play and even dance with life. Perhaps this song from Ed’s early
childhood says it best:
I love myself, I think I’m grand,
I go to the movies and hold my hand.
I put my arm around my waist,
And when I get fresh, I slap my face!
Knocking Heads
Shortly after we were married, we went to India and spent our honeymoon in
ashrams and monasteries. We also had a private meeting with HH the Dalai
Lama at his residence in McCleod Ganj, in the foothills of the Himalayas. As Ed
recalls:
“After some thirty minutes of discussion, I was feeling so moved by this gentle,
simple, and loving man that I just wanted to stay there and learn from him. I did
not want to leave! I was completely in love with the compassion and wisdom
emanating from this delightful being. Finally, I said to him, ‘I don’t want to
leave; I just want to stay here with you!’ I thought he would say yes, how
wonderful, I recognize your sincerity, but instead he just smiled and said, ‘If we
were together all the time, we would quarrel!’”
So relax, if HH the Dalai Lama, someone who meditates for a few hours every
day, can quarrel, then so can we! Inevitably, there are going to be times when a
relationship is troubled, when differences collide and egos clash, when stories
and histories intrude, or needs are not met. But the holding on to such
disagreements and the ensuing shame, blame, and hostile silence is the real
problem. There will always be times of flow and times of discord. Having a
disagreement or even getting angry does not make us an angry person; it is not
the whole of us. Who we are is still basically good; we needed to make a point
and just may have done it in a rather unskillful way.
| ROBERT GASS AND JUDITH ANSARA |
“We can get lost in the story, which usually has fault or blame attached to it—
I’m feeling this because this happened or you said that—and so we have learned
to just drop the story. Even when we are not in the place that we would like to
be, we do not process about how we got there or about how we are going to get
out of it; we just stop, because otherwise we can start tearing at each other.
Usually, one of us will say, ‘Are we having a conversation that is contributing to
the greater good?’ We get connected first and then talk about what was
disconnecting us, rather than tearing at each other from a place of disconnection,
thinking that will get us connected.”
Invariably, we get upset because we want the other person to be different from
how they are. Perhaps one of the hardest things to accept in a relationship is that
we cannot change our partner into the person we want them to be. The only thing
we can change is our attitude toward them. Instead of seeing what is wrong,
focusing on the faults and weaknesses or what is needed for them to reach what
we think would be a happier place, we can hold them as they are and be there for
them as they discover their own way.
| MARY TAYLOR |
“Before I practiced meditation, I was much more likely to believe the labels I put
on things. Sure, I still label things, but I see through them more quickly. I see my
spouse for who he is rather than who I imagined him to be, or what I had labeled
him as, or my image of who I wanted in a spouse. Now I can celebrate him for
who he is rather than who he is not. No one is ever going to be who you want
him to be, not even yourself.”
Difficulties in relationship can also show us the many ways our ego-selves try
to be right, which can be a cause for great amusement. When we were in India at
an ashram—a residential yoga community—we were staying in a simple room
and practicing yoga and meditation each day. It sounds idyllic, but we had only
been married a few months and issues were accumulating. On one occasion, we
were having a big disagreement (we have no recollection what it was about—do
we ever remember the cause?) when one of the teachers walked past and heard
us. From outside our room, he called out, “So how’s the weather?” As we saw
our battling egos through his eyes, it reduced us to instant laughter. On another
occasion, we were sharing some of our marriage issues with our meditation
teacher. He looked at us quite puzzled. “Why not just laugh?” he asked. And he
was right. When we see the absurdity of two egos knocking heads and trying to
outwit each other, it is very amusing. So often a disagreement is simply about
seeing the same thing in two different ways: One sees a white ceiling, the other
sees a flat ceiling, but it is the same ceiling.
When a relationship is at its height, it is as if the two separate partners merge
into each other and become one. This works wonderfully while there is concord
and rapport. But when there is discord, when doubt, selfishness, blame, or fear
arises, then we tend to retreat back into our separate selves, communication at a
standstill. At these times of difficulty, rather than being merged, the respective
egos start to attack each other, to knock heads, in an attempt to find that place of
merging again. Shaming or blaming each other simply causes further separation
and conflict. Healing comes by recognizing the much deeper desire for unity.
In actuality, those people we have a difficult time with are really our teachers.
For without an adversary—or those who trigger strong reactions such as
annoyance and anger—we would not have the stimulus to develop loving
kindness and compassion. So we should be grateful to them for teaching us
acceptance, tolerance, and equanimity; we can actually thank our exasperating
partners, relatives, friends, or colleagues for the chance to practice patience.
What a gift!
Taking Responsibility
We had a marriage blessing at Samyé Ling, a Buddhist monastery in Scotland.
We talked to Akong Rinpoche, the abbot, and asked him what advice he had for
people in a relationship. He suggested that if two people disagree or argue, then
they should both take time out by themselves to meditate alone and consider
what they were doing that might be adding to the situation. So, rather than
complaining about what the other person is doing to us, we should look at our
own behavior and the effect it is having. In particular, we should explore our
own attitudes, motives, and hidden agendas, and how these might be affecting
our partner. How am I treating this person? What am I doing to that person to
make him behave like this? How can I treat him more kindly? This, Akong
explained, takes the emphasis off blaming and shaming, and we get to see where
we may also be responsible for the discord; we move from power struggles to
ownership.
| LINDSAY CROUCH |
“The time we take in meditation is time we are letting go of the world, of the
way we ordinarily think in the world, and just that will help us when in an
argument or time of difficulty. We have the strength to hold a little longer with
more patience and to consider before we react. Even if we hold for only a couple
of minutes more, it is worth it. If my husband and I have an argument or find
ourselves really at odds, we both know that we each have responsibility for it,
that we cannot just blame the other. We go to different rooms and sit quietly,
even if it is just for a few minutes, until we are able to say, ‘I am sorry.’ The
time of being quiet has given us the ability to detach from our bruised egos.”
Taking time out gives us the space to let go. Too often we cling to difficulties
and make them more than what they are; we replay the irritation in our minds
until we become even more bothered. The ego does not want to let go! Yet what
a relief when it does and we can return to a place of equanimity. The person on
the other side of the argument may not want to let go, but we can work with
ourselves and release whatever annoyance is going on.
| SUSAN SMALLEY |
“A fun way of letting go was once visually described to me: Bend your index
finger into a hook and think of it as a ‘thought’ that may grab or anger you, or
bother you in some way. Hook your other index finger, and see this as how you
relate to that irritating thought. If you hook the fingers together, that is you
‘holding on’ to something. But then imagine if you just straighten one finger, it
does not matter which one. Immediately, all the things or people that you are
attached to, that you hold on to, that cause you stress and discomfort can be
released, simply by straightening your finger and letting the issue or person go
from your mind.”
When difficulties or misunderstandings arise, we easily make our partner into
the enemy. This is usually due to our own longing to be seen or heard, or to be
loved. When we are in a heated quarrel, what we so often really want to say is “I
need love.” But it is far easier for the other person to be wrong than to admit that
we have unmet needs. Only by acknowledging that we are blaming them rather
than owning our own feelings can our so-called enemy become our friend again.
| JOHN GRAY |
“When we are hurt, we believe our loved one is the adversary. I see that so much
in my own marriage. My feelings would get hurt because I was thinking that my
wife was controlling or criticizing or rejecting me. I would always have some
reason for the pain, until gradually I saw that the source of my pain was actually
the belief that she was not loving me. This is the process: firstly, believing that
someone is my enemy who is not my enemy. Secondly, the pain continues to
grow the more I believe the lie, even though that pain is all self-inflicted. Then I
withhold my love. There always seems to be a good reason for doing this, but
withholding love from someone who we do love is the greatest pain of all.
Whenever we choose to stop loving, it causes a huge source of conflict as our
fulfillment in life, our joy in life, is letting that love come through us. I no longer
see my wife as my enemy as I have realized that everything she does comes
from a place of love. It may be misguided. She may not know what I need. But
her intent is to love.”
Meditation enables us to see not only how we are responsible for our own
feelings, but also that whatever we may be experiencing is a choice we are
making in that moment. It is not as a result of what someone else might be
saying or doing. When we step back from the heat of conflict and explore why
someone makes us feel a certain way, it quickly becomes obvious that it has very
little to do with the other person and much more to do with a place inside
ourselves.
| JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN |
“There is one basic understanding that helps us in every dimension of
relationship: that each one of us is totally responsible for our own emotions.
Some time ago, I was in a relationship with someone and as we were having a
little argument, she turned to me and said, ‘Stop making me feel aversion.’ I
started to laugh, which, of course, did not help the situation, but nobody makes
us feel anything. How we feel and how we relate to what we are feeling is
completely up to us. Generally, we blame others for how we feel; we think
others are responsible for our mind states. If we all took responsibility for our
own emotions, then most of our interpersonal relationships would be a lot easier.
“If we have the view that other people are responsible for how we feel, then
we are turning over all the power to them. We cannot control what other people
do—their minds, their attitudes, or their behavior. But if we understand that how
we are feeling is completely up to us, then we can reclaim that power. Then, no
matter what anybody else does, it is up to us how we react, how we relate.
Nobody can make us feel a certain way.”
| GAY HENDRICKS |
“One thing that makes couples or people quarrel is feeling like they are not in
the same space or on the same wavelength, but if we meditate together, then we
get on the same wavelength. It is like there may be storms on the surface of the
ocean and the boat is getting tossed around, but if we drop down ten or fifteen
feet, there is no storm going on, it is calm there. When we come back to the
surface, we can see that maybe nothing is really such a big deal. On a very
practical level, when we meditate together, we come to that place that is not so
critical or quick to find fault.
“If we look at all the hot spots or trouble spots in the world, or all the quarrels
between people, it is all about focusing on what is wrong or looking for what
needs to get fixed, instead of finding that place that does not need to be fixed.
We may be arguing about the concept of water, whether water is this way or that
way or two parts hydrogen and so on, when all we need to do is take a drink of
water and we will know what water is. When couples have time together, it
invariably gets used up with the business of their lives or their relationship. To
have sacred time together is really a way of creating harmony and deepening
into love.”
We do not have to go in search of love, or try to develop it, or pray for it to be
shown to us. We have no need to protect it; there need be no concern about
being taken advantage of or of being hurt, no fear of losing love or of giving
away so much that we have none left. Love could not happen if it was not
already an integral part of our being. How can we lose what we truly are? How
can we be left with nothing when love is the source of all life? The more we
love, the more we are given to love with. We can never lose it; we can only lose
sight of it; we can only think we have lost it, but it is always with us.
| DEB |
“The Indian government invited Ed and I to speak at a yoga conference in
Pondicherry. Ed was speaking about the beauty and awesome power of the
unconditional love that is made manifest in meditation when a man in the
audience raised his hand.
“ ‘Please sir,’ he said. ‘What is this love that you speak of? Where can I find
it? How do I get this love?’
“Ed replied: ‘You awake in love, you eat in love, you bathe in love, and you
walk in love. Love is your nature; it is who you really are.’
“ ‘Oh sir,’ the man said, ‘you have all the right answers!’”
| | |
7
The Pearl in the Oyster
Without forgiveness, human society and
existence are impossible.
BISHOP TUTU
We attended a conference focused on gaining insight into men’s issues. Brian
stood up to describe the abuse that he had received from his father when he was
a child. Among other things, his father had threatened him by holding a shotgun
to his head. This is serious abuse indeed, and Brian talked about it with anger
and bitterness. He said quite emphatically that he would never be able to forgive
his father. After Brian had spoken, there were a few minutes of stunned silence.
Then a man at the back of the room stood up and simply said, “If you can’t
forgive, then you can’t dance.”
What was so eloquently voiced in those few words describes exactly the
emotional holding that takes place when there is no forgiveness. Our ability to
dance—to move emotionally, to give, to love, to feel alive and free—gets stuck.
All the pain, grief, and hurt get held in this immovable or frozen emotional
place. We cannot move forward when a part of us is locked in the past, and we
cannot be in the present as memories from the past are constantly pulling us
away. We become a victim of ourselves.
All around us is the evidence of a lack of forgiveness: broken families, self-
hate, guilt and shame leading to depression, countries at war, huge amounts of
fear and anger, bitterness, prejudice, self-righteousness and closed-heartedness.
| DEB |
“For a while, I worked in a nursing home, where I saw numerous residents
clinging to incidents from the past: words said in anger, distorted memories of
how they had been wronged by children who had disagreed with them and left in
anger. So much bitterness. They could not let go, even now, so near to dying.
They could not heal their differences with their children and come together
because over the years the hurt and anger had become solid, fixed, and
immovable, as if they were surrounded by prison bars.”
When something happens that invokes either guilt and shame at our own
behavior or hurt and rage at someone else’s—it makes no difference which—
then without empathy or forgiveness, the emotion from that incident gets locked
inside, held in time, blocking our ability to be happy. We learn to live by
ignoring this dark place without realizing how deeply limiting it is, how it holds
back our joy and freedom along with the guilt or anger. When the ego is
wounded, it points the finger and sees the other person as the cause of the
suffering but it does not recognize how, by holding onto hurt feelings, we are
simply creating more grief for ourselves.
| GANGAJI |
“One of the hardest stories or definitions to give up is our definition of ourselves
as a victim. We have all experienced being hurt by someone, such as our parents
or a lover, maybe our teachers. But it is not about denying the hurt; it’s actually
about opening and meeting the hurt, and then the hurt itself becomes a deepening
of our heart. In that moment, it is natural for forgiveness to occur.”
The power of forgiveness is far reaching. In South Africa, Bishop Tutu
brought understanding, empathy, and forgiveness into action with the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, enabling war criminals to admit their crimes, and in
so doing, to be released from their guilt and shame. Nelson Mandela was able to
forgive his jailors after being incarcerated for twenty-seven years. In Cambodia,
Bhiksu Mahagoshananda strived to bring forgiveness to his country.
| JACK KORNFIELD |
“Mahagoshananda was the great peacemaker of Cambodia, nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize many times. He spent countless years walking across the war
zones of Cambodia bringing refugees back to their villages while chanting the
verses: ‘Hatred never ceases or ends by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This
is the ancient and eternal law.’ Taking Cambodian farmers and villagers, whose
lives had been devastated, step by step in a loving way through the war zone and
back to their own villages, brought reconciliation and forgiveness and healing to
an enormous part of the Cambodian country.”
Forgiveness is particularly compelling when we recognize that who we are is
intrinsically no different from the one who needs to be forgiven. Marian
Partington, an old friend of Deb, had a sister brutally murdered by serial killers
Fred and Rosemary West in England. Marian says on forgivenessproject.com: “I
began to go on Buddhist meditation retreats. It was at one of these that I made a
vow to try and forgive the Wests. When I came home, I had an overwhelming,
involuntary, and profoundly physical experience of murderous rage: it went . . .
whoosh! All the way up from my belly to my skull. I wanted to scream, pull my
hair out, claw at the ground. So for me, forgiveness began with murderous rage.
Until then, I had not thought of myself as a murderous person, but at that
moment I was capable of killing. In other words, I was not separate from the
Wests.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, a much-loved Vietnamese Buddhist monk, often receives
letters from Vietnamese people fleeing Vietnam by boat. On the high seas, these
desperate people may be taken over by pirates and robbed of what little they
have. In one incident, a twelve-year-old girl was raped by a pirate and was so
tormented she threw herself into the sea and drowned. Her distraught parents
wrote to Thich Nhat Hanh for advice. In response, after meditating on the
incident for a number of days, he said that if he had grown up in the same village
as that pirate, with the same circumstances and suffering in life, then he too may
have had such a closed heart as to be able to inflict pain on a young girl. He
wrote a poem called “Please Call Me by My True Names,” where he says:
I am the twelve-year-old girl
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea-pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
The above stories of forgiveness are deeply inspiring, yet are we able to do the
same thing in our own home? Can we bring forgiveness to our enemies, to those
who have hurt us, or even to ourselves?
Forgiving Others
Forgiving other people for the hurt or harm they have done is not easy. We are
the ones feeling the pain, however, not them, and the longer we hold on, the
more suffering we cause ourselves. How many times have we rerun the tape,
gone over the details of who said what to whom, of how it all happened, of
hidden motives, of the injustice and blame or the guilt and shame? How many
times have we done this, and did it ever help us feel healed, more joyful, or
happier? How often do we have to do this before we see that all of it is going
nowhere other than prolonging our unhappiness?
“The theory behind forgiveness is simple,” writes Ken Wilber in Grace and
Grit. “If we are going to insist on identifying with the little self in here, then
others are going to bruise it, insult it, injure it. . . . The ego’s first maneuver in
dealing with this resentment is to try to get others to confess to their faults: ‘You
hurt me; say you’re sorry.’ What the ego doesn’t try is forgiveness, because that
would undermine its very existence.”
We are not trying to be simplistic. From a rational point of view, it can seem
impossible to forgive: We are hurt and want revenge, it is the other person’s
fault, so why should we forgive; what we have done appears beyond blame. But
if we want to reach a place of healing and closure within ourselves, then we have
to confront this desire to hold on to the story—to keep reliving the details or to
get revenge—for this not only causes further suffering but also maintains our
separation from each other, limiting our capacity to trust or to love.
To forgive means to fully acknowledge our feelings: how angry, upset, abused,
betrayed, bitter, or indignant we are; how unfair life is; how let down or sad we
feel, and that it is absolutely okay to feel this way. We know and feel the pain,
but the desire to no longer continue the suffering is stronger; we care enough
about ourselves to not want to carry the anger or sadness any longer. We are
ready to reclaim our dignity.
Understanding the pain or the motivation behind an act of betrayal or violence
can help emotional turmoil to deepen into empathy, for if someone causes hurt,
it is invariably because he is hurting himself. Have you ever noticed how, if you
are feeling good, it is almost impossible for you to harm or hurt anything? You
will even take the time to get a spider out of the bath or to let a fly out of the
window. But if you are upset or feeling very stressed, then you will not think
twice about washing the spider down the drain. In other words, our inner torment
will spill out and harm anyone or anything in its way.
We were at a talk in England where we watched Jo Barry, the daughter of a
politician killed by an IRA bomb during a political conference, walk on stage
with Pat Magee, the man who planted the bomb. You could have heard a pin
drop in the audience, especially when they talked about how they had come to
understand each another. As Jo says, also on forgivenessproject.com:
“I wanted to meet Pat to put a face to the enemy, and see him as a real human
being. Over the past years of getting to know him, I feel I’ve been recovering
some of the humanity I lost when that bomb went off. To say ‘I forgive you’ is
almost condescending—it locks you into an ‘us-and-them’ scenario, keeping me
right and you wrong. That attitude won’t change anything. But I can experience
empathy, and in that moment there is no judgment. Sometimes when I’ve met
with Pat, I have had such a clear understanding of his life that there is nothing to
forgive.”
Through standing in another’s shoes, we can appreciate her pain, which gives
rise to a deeper empathy. This can enable us to accept and release layers of
anger, as well as to be nonjudgmental when confronted with injustice.
| MARSHALL ROSENBERG |
“I was working in San Francisco with eight fathers who had sexually molested
their daughters; I was working with both them and their girls. At one point, one
of the men said to his daughter, ‘Well you asked for it!’ I jumped up and said,
‘Time out!’ I ran out of the room because I wanted to hit that guy when I saw the
look in his daughter’s face, a twelve-year-old girl, and her father was saying she
asked for it. When I saw the judgment I was making toward this father, I had to
go outside and meditate in the hall before I could go back into the room.
“I really wanted him to empathize with his daughter, to see the pain that
blaming her was creating. When I went back inside, I said to him, ‘I was in a lot
of pain when I heard you say that, because I saw her face, and I would really
love some understanding on your part of how painful it must be for her to be
blamed for this.’ “When we empathize, there’s nothing to forgive. We only have
to forgive when we think what the other person has done is wrong, bad,
inappropriate, or whatever. But when we empathize, we see that the other person
is doing the same thing that all human beings do every moment, which is the
best they know how. So, when somebody has done something that I really do not
like but I empathize with what is going on in him, at that moment there is
nothing to forgive.
“When I know I am going to be working with a certain group that I have some
rage or prejudice toward, then I know I have got to do some real meditation
before I go. I meditate on what is causing me to be angry and have judgmental
images of these people, then I try to be conscious of how the kind of thinking
that judges people is a tragic distortion of what is alive in me, and that it occurs
when needs are not being fulfilled. I translate those messages into a language of
life, as when I am connected with life I can’t be angry, depressed, blaming, or
ashamed. Then I am better able to deal with the situation.”
We all contain a measure of dark and light, of good and bad; we all have the
potential to hurt each other as much as we have the potential to love. The greed,
hatred, and ignorance in another person can cause great damage, but within each
being is also the potential for kindness, generosity, and selflessness. It may not
have manifested yet, but it is there. In the quiet of meditation, we connect more
deeply with this latent potential and can touch on our fundamental equality and
basic goodness. The forgiveness meditation in chapter fifteen is a practice that
enables us to see the story, let it go, and then go beyond it.
Recognizing Ignorance
| DEB |
“I worked on my relationship with my father for a long time. I was in therapy by
the time I was eighteen, went through layer upon layer of rejection issues, need
issues, confronting him, talking to him, not talking to him, forgiving him, then
not forgiving him. I maintained my relationship with him in the vague hope that
one day he would change, that he would actually be able to say something nice,
something affirming or loving. I didn’t expect him to be able to say I love you,
but just something positive, some form of acknowledgement. I was waiting for
this day to come, but in the process, I was still being emotionally abused.
“Finally, in my mid-thirties, I came to a point where I no longer needed that
affirmation from him. I had touched into a deeper acceptance of myself. And, as
the need was released, so I was able to see the hurt and confused man that he
really was, someone who had no idea how to give or how to love. I saw that his
pain was far greater than mine, even though he was not aware of it. As I
separated his pain from my own, I was finally able to see his limitations and
ignorance for what they were and to let go. As a result, we have been able to
rebuild our relationship.”
Forgiveness is not about denying the suffering or ignoring the depth of our
feelings. It is not the same as forgetting, which simply puts our feelings in some
distant recess from where they usually reemerge and cause further pain at a later
date. Nor does forgiveness take away from the gravity of what occurred—a
heinous or grievous act is just that; it is not acceptable in itself. It does not justify
or make right what happened.
Rather, what we are forgiving is the ignorance that led to such behavior, the
ignorance of our essential interconnected-ness—that what I do to you I am also
doing to myself. Such ignorance means that greed and hatred can dominate our
actions. As a Jew, Ed was dumbstruck when his teacher, Swami Satchidananda
said, “You even have to forgive Adolph Hitler.” But then Satchidananda added,
“You don’t forgive the act, but you forgive the ignorance that perpetrated it. You
forgive the being inside and hope they will learn and change.”
When we can bring such understanding to the ignorance and inner pain that
perpetuates further pain, while hoping the other person will realize the damage
his lack of awareness has caused, then forgiveness and compassion genuinely
arise.
| JAMES TWYMAN |
“Two and a half years ago, my wife was murdered by two men in Chicago. We
were naturally overwhelmed by the sadness and anger that come from such a
tremendous loss. To this day, no one has been caught or arrested for this crime,
and so the anger hasn’t really had a target. There is no one I can be angry at. Yet
very quickly my anger moved to compassion. Not that I don’t want justice to be
served, not that I don’t want these people to be found so that they can face up to
what they did, but I began to feel a sense of compassion for what it must have
taken for these two men to commit such a violent act. What must they have gone
through in order to do it? What sorts of traumas did they have to endure to be so
injured, to be so sick, that they could do something like they did to Linda?
“There is still a great deal of anger that I feel and a great deal of healing that I
need to do, just in a human way, to move past what happened. But in a larger
sense is the realization that allows me to enter into a deep forgiveness for these
people and their ignorance. So even though I need to continue to work through
my human emotions, I have been able to experience forgiveness on a very real
level.
“Violence and prejudice are always caused by the belief that we are separate
from one another; the more separate and different we seem, whether it be
countries or races or sexes or sexual preferences, the more fertile the ground is
for such behavior. When I embrace that part of me that can just as easily be a
rapist or murderer, and I accept and love that part of me, then it makes it easier
to forgive others. When we realize that we are not different, but that in essence
we are the same, then the ground is fertile for respect and inclusion. Ultimately,
we realize that the violence I am committing against another is really a violence
against myself.”
If we think we are separate, independent, and not connected to anyone or
anything else, then our actions will be self-centered and self-motivating and the
more we will be hurt or will hurt another. By recognizing this truth, we are able
to release the boundaries that keep us apart, to honor our shared humanness and
make connectedness a reality.
| RAMA VERNON |
“Meditation is one of the few things that enables us to forgive, for without it we
cannot see the nature of what it is that needs to be forgiven. When there is true
forgiveness, it is healed inside of our being. It is forgiving ourselves for having
believed in separation. No matter what that person has projected onto us, no
matter what that person has done, when we can see them as ourselves everything
drops away that has caused the separation.”
| | |
Forgiving Ourselves
| RABBI ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI |
“Every night before I go to sleep, I say, ‘I forgive everyone, including myself.’ I
do not want to have a slate full of unforgiven things before I go to sleep. It is like
doing your dishes before you go to bed. And then on Sabbath I go over the
whole week and forgive everything that has happened, whether I did it or
someone else did it.”
We usually focus on forgiving someone else: This other person has done this
wrong thing to me, and I am hurt, angry, and upset. It is the strongest position to
be in as we are the abused or victimized one and the other person is the abuser
who has done the dirty deed. However, in a recent workshop, we asked how
many people were carrying some personal guilt or shame for something they had
done in the past that they could not forgive themselves for. At least three-
quarters of the people put up their hands. We want healing, and forgiveness, but
we can find it very hard to give this to ourselves.
“Forgiving means accepting myself. Gulp! This means giving up an old friend
of mine—self-criticism,” writes Treya Wilber in Grace and Grit. She
continues:
“When I visualize all the things that prevent me from feeling right about myself
then, up there higher than the rest, as a kind of backdrop to all my other
problems, is a figure of a scorpion with its tail arched over its back. On the verge
of stinging itself. This is my self-criticism, cutting myself down relentlessly,
feeling unlovable, the grievances against myself that keep me from seeing the
light and the miracles that can only be seen in that light. Hmmm. The big one.”
We try to avoid looking inside our dark corners, but accumulated guilt, shame,
or self-dislike can become familiar crutches for the ego, affecting our activities
and behavior. Guilt for what we have done stays with us long after the event: I
am such a bad, hopeless, useless, awful, uncaring, hurtful, unlovable person who
never gets it right. We even believe guilt is our atonement, that through it we are
somehow redeeming our wrong doing, when in reality all it does is create more
suffering. Blame follows guilt: How could I have done such a thing? How can I
ever trust myself? How can I ever be trusted by anyone else?
But this is actually like a smokescreen clouding our mind and stopping us from
seeing that we are more than the event, that whatever we did is not the whole of
us. Without forgetting or repressing what happened, we can put the story down.
We can say: “I made a mistake, but I am not the guilt, I am not the mistake, I am
not the failure, it happened, but that is not who I am now, and it is not the whole
of me.”
Forgiving ourselves is an ongoing process: every time we criticize or blame
ourselves for being hopeless, useless, wrong, stupid, for all the self-dislike and
self-denial, for believing we deserve the bad things that happen, that we must
have done something wrong to be so abused, for thinking we should have known
better, that it was all our own fault, that we were asking for it, for rejecting
ourselves, for abandoning ourselves, for ignoring or denying our own needs and
feelings. Whenever we get caught up in such self-negating thinking, we can
simply say, “I forgive you.” We do not need to create more guilt, shame, or
blame—the world has enough already.
| MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH |
“Forgiveness is really for yourself, because you are releasing toxins, animosity,
and hate out of your own system. I call forgiveness meditation a daily detox,
where at the end of the day, you review yourself to see if you are holding onto
anything—something someone said to you, someone said about you, something
you did that you are not very proud of—and you work with yourself to eliminate
that, you detox those particular thought forms so they do not impinge on your
connectivity, your creativity, or health.
“Ultimately, forgiveness must be a way of living. It enables us to grow
spiritually because we have to go to the depths of our being to forgive when
someone has done something terrible to us or to a loved one, or when we have
hurt another. We have to go to a place within that is untouched by the world.
When we get to that place, it changes our life forever.”
The story goes that, at the time of the Buddha, a group of monks wanted to do a
quiet retreat away from the crowds of followers, so the Buddha told them there
was a lovely glade in the forest where they could go and he would make sure
they would be left undisturbed. The monks found their way to the glade and
settled down to meditate. But what they did not know was that the glade was
inhabited by a gang of tree spirits who were really upset that these monks should
come and make themselves at home in their glade. When tree spirits want to,
they can be extremely scary, ugly, very smelly, and unbelievably noisy,
ferociously shrieking all over the place. They did everything they could to spook
the hermits and make them leave. And it worked. As there was no peace, the
monks could not possibly meditate, so they hurriedly went back to the Buddha,
begging him to let them go somewhere else. But no. Instead, he taught them a
meditation practice of loving kindness, or metta in Sanskrit, which develops
loving kindness toward everyone, including ourselves and our enemies. And
then he sent the monks back to the forest. His famous last words were “This is
the only protection you will need.”
Thinking the Buddha must be mad, the monks, very reluctantly, went back to
the glade, sat down, and began practicing what he had taught them. And it
worked! The tree spirits, who at first were not at all pleased to see the monks
return, no longer had any effect on them. For all their antics, the meditators just
kept sitting there and beaming out loving kindness. Long story short, eventually
the spirits were won over by the waves of compassion emanating from the robed
ones and, far from than chasing them away, the same nasties that had once been
so ferocious now became disciples.
The question is, who are the tree spirits? The story says that they are
everything that goes on in our own minds—all the doubts, insecurities, fears,
anger, negative thoughts; the list is endless—that keep distracting us. And the
point the Buddha was making is that loving kindness has the capacity to
overcome all manner of monsters and ghouls and lead us to a true heart opening,
proving that love is more powerful than any opposing force. Rather than trying
to eliminate negativity, we cultivate the opposite; seeing and knowing pain, we
bring kindness.
BEING KIND
Doesn’t this sound so nice? Just be kind and loving—how great, what a cool
idea, let’s make kindness hip. But in practice, it is not always so simple, such as
when someone says or does something that is hurtful to us. Can kindness still
flow when the ego is upset? There is a story of a monk who meditated for many
years on the quality of patience. He was immersed in everything to do with
serenity and tolerance. One day, someone walked past him and said, “Eat shit!”
The meditating monk immediately replied, “You eat shit!” This only goes to
show just how hard it can be to maintain our equilibrium and that even monks
can lose it as easily as we can.
Focusing on loving kindness shows us all those places that are bound in the
ego and selfishness; it brings us up against our limitations and confronts our
boundaries. Where do we meet our edge? Where is our capacity to step over the
edge into greater consideration? How genuine is our ability to bring
kindheartedness to a difficult situation?
| MARC IAN BARASCH |
“Writing a book about kindness and compassion really helped me to focus
myself on others, especially as I am a very selfish person in a lot of ways. I had
an interview with a meditation teacher, and I said, ‘All I really know is to try to
be kind.’ And he said, ‘I think you’ve got it!’ And I thought, great, I got the gold
star. But then he said, ‘And now you have to get used to it.’ And that made the
hair on my neck stand on end. Meaning, it is fine to have this understanding, but
how does it saturate your life? That is the core for me: How can I remember to
be kind and compassionate, which is essentially how can I have empathy for
someone on the spot, even if they are mad at me, even if they are thwarting me,
or they are in my way? We have to create a gap between action and reaction, and
that is what meditation allows us to do.”
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AWAKENING COMPASSION
We have a newspaper photograph at home of Bishop Tutu, his hands held in
prayer position. Underneath it are his words, “Please make it fashionable to be
compassionate.” That photograph is many years old, but his words are even
more relevant today. We can make compassion fashionable, kindness cool,
consideration and care hot topics. We have already proven that war does not
work, that fighting and killing in the name of religion, to gain domination, or to
claim control never has a happy ending. Acceptance, kindness, generosity, and
compassion are really the only choices we have in order to transform both
ourselves and society.
| MARC IAN BARASCH |
“If you have a culture that has as its tenet what Bishop Tutu always refers to as
ubuntu, which means, ‘I only exist because you exist, my existence is dependent
on your existence, my wellbeing is dependent on your wellbeing,’ then that
culture is infinitely different from American culture, which says that ‘Obviously,
God must love me, because he would not help a sinner to prosper, and if you are
not doing well, then there must be something wrong with you.’
“There is a tribe that has a coming of age ritual for seven or eight year olds
where they throw a big feast in the tepee. The child will be just about to eat
when they hear a whimpering outside and a voice saying ‘I am hungry.’ The
adults will say, ‘Somebody is crying’ and the child has to give some of his food
to the person outside the tepee before they take a bite for themselves.”
We do not get such heart-centered qualities as kindness or compassion from
outside of ourselves; we cannot find something inside us that is not already there
as a part of our true nature. But the ego’s need for grasping, gaining, and
selfishness easily buries our innate altruism. Each of us are capable of losing our
cool, losing perspective, getting caught up in hot emotions and causing harm.
Some may manifest their madness in a more overt or destructive way, but we all
share the same potential. By knowing our own tendencies, we can more
genuinely offer empathy and compassion to others.
| PETER RUSSELL |
“What manifests for each of us personally is different—our history, phobias,
anxieties, tension—but deep down, we all work the same way. I can see that
what is happening in me is also what is happening to everybody else. This gives
me great empathy for other people’s stuff, for their struggles, their fears, for the
way they behave. Deep down, we are all the same. None of us want to suffer, to
be criticized or rejected. We all want to be free from pain; we want to be loved;
we just have different ways of going about it. The natural state of mind is that
we care, but self-centeredness and self-protection easily overshadow that. When
I am not so preoccupied with myself, then compassion arises, spontaneously; I
don’t have to do anything.”
Focusing on our own concerns and problems limits our capacity to be with
others; we are too self-engrossed to really acknowledge anyone else’s issues. But
when we can step beyond ourselves, then the ability to care about another’s
suffering genuinely and freely arises. This is not just in the big picture of war or
poverty, but in all the small stuff in our lives, in our communication and
relationships.
| JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN |
“A few years ago, I was working with someone who had a very abrasive
personality. It was very hard to be with this person. I found it so difficult that I
would just sit there emotionally closed off and defended. When I realized how
reactive I was being to this person’s energy, something shifted inside me. Instead
of instinctively reacting to his behavior, I dropped down a level and saw what
was so apparent and obvious: the suffering that was underlying all the
unpleasantness. Simply from being willing to see the suffering that was there, in
that moment my heart went from being contracted and defensive to feeling real
caring. By actually opening to the suffering, instead of protecting myself against
it, kindness and compassion became the natural outcome. This is how meditation
works. It helps us see that pleasure is not where our deepest happiness lies; it is
not in the accumulation of pleasant feelings. It is in the quality of openness
itself.”
Perhaps no one says it better than HH the Dalai Lama when he recounts how a
monk, imprisoned by the Chinese for eighteen years, told him that during his
imprisonment there were many moments when he was in great danger. When
HH the Dalai Lama asked what he was in danger from, the monk replied that he
was in danger of losing his compassion for the Chinese, his captors. This shows
how deeply Buddhists regard compassion. For them, it is central to their
understanding of the meaning of existence.
| GREGG BRADEN |
“We have taken a number of journeys to the monasteries in the highlands of
central China and Tibet. In one monastery, we had the opportunity to have an
afternoon audience with the abbot and I asked him, ‘In your experience, in your
teachings, and in your world view, what is the stuff that holds the universe
together? What is it that connects us all?’ I asked the translator, and he asked the
abbot, and they had this banter going back and forth about how to answer this
question. Finally, the translator turned to me and he said one word. That was his
answer, one word. I thought it was a mistranslation, that I had heard him wrong,
so I asked again. And he came back with the same word.
“He said that the force that holds the stuff in the universe together is
compassion. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me that compassion is a
force of nature that exists everywhere in the universe, or are you telling me that
it is an experience that we create in our bodies?’ The abbot and the translator
went back and forth again, and then the translator just said, ‘Yes.’ He was telling
us that we have the capability to create within our own being the very experience
that aligns and attunes us with our world. It opens the doors to the truly
miraculous experiences of healing and peace, because they are all linked through
this field of compassion.”
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Compassion Meditation
Normally, we prefer to focus on as much good and to let go of as much bad as
possible. However, there is another way that is actually the exact opposite. This
is the Tibetan meditation practice known as tonglen, or “the practice of receiving
and giving.” It transforms any notions of selfishness or personal desire and
develops true altruism and mercy by bringing compassion into our daily lives.
Tonglen is an expression of great generosity. As we breathe in, we inhale the
suffering of others, followed by the immediate transformation of that suffering
into compassion and love, which we then exhale or breathe back into the world.
This is the art of transforming dirt into gold. We can do this because we can be
with suffering, we do not need to hide from it; just as we know suffering, so we
also know the power of kindness.
| PEGGY DYLAN |
“We inhale the external pain, the resistance and fear, the great fear at this time in
the world. We inhale it and take it in to our heart, where we turn it to joy, to
tenderness, to delight, to ease, to healing, to whatever is needed. When it is
transformed in our heart, then we just exhale it into the world. We are using the
body as a filter for those negative things.”
This practice has the remarkable effect of making us stronger. It sounds like it
would weaken us to take in pain and suffering, but it does the opposite. It gives
us the power to transform any difficult situation or feeling and to respond with
love and compassion. Rather than turning away from suffering—feeling too
sensitive to be exposed to it, or too weak or fearful to withstand it—we invite it
all to come in. We are willing to experience it, taste it, touch it, for the suffering
does not land, it does not stay in us, there is no holding. It is instantly
transformed. Then what we share, what we give to others, is loving, kind, tender,
and uplifting.
| MARC IAN BARASCH |
“How do we go from the discovery that we are basically trapped in this ego state
to universal compassion? There is a natural tendency to look after ourselves first,
to react against things that seem to threaten us. To get from that sort of automatic
response to compassionate action takes something extra and that extra is
meditation. It gets us from the insatiable feeling that we are the ego and self to a
broader understanding that maybe the ego is not as solid or important as we
think it is. It is a deliberate shift from awareness of self to awareness of others.”
Every time we see or feel suffering, whether in ourselves or in another, every
time we make a mistake or say something stupid and are just about to put
ourselves down, every time we think of someone we are having a hard time with,
every time we encounter the confusion and difficulty of being human, every time
we see someone else struggling, upset, or irritated, we can breathe it all in and
breathe out acceptance and tenderheartedness and loving friendship. We can
offer this to whoever needs it, including ourselves. Just a few breaths of tonglen
will bring armfuls of compassion into any situation. Compassion is the natural
response that arises, unbidden, taking us into the hearts of others.
| JON KABAT-ZINN |
“In all of the Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart is the
same word. If you see the mind and heart are the same, then compassion is built
right into it. Mindful attention is itself affectionate. It’s open, spacious, curious,
and in the seeing of the interconnectedness, then compassion arises naturally as
there is no separation. Wisdom is the knowing of no separation, and compassion
is the feeling of no separation.”
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Part III
TRANSFORMING US
TRANSFORMS
THE WORLD
9
Off the Cushion and into Life
There are many things we cannot take responsibility for in
this world, but the one thing we can be responsible for is a
quality of presence in this moment.
CHRISTINA FELDMAN
| CHLOE GOODCHILD |
“I was in Northern Ireland because I had been asked to create a musical bridge
between the opposing forces of Protestants and Catholics in order to create an
atmosphere of listening. We were part of an extensive peace program, and this
was the moment when HH the Dalai Lama was going to walk the peace walk,
which basically divides the Protestant and Catholic communities. It was
drizzling with rain as we stood in a car park by this enormous peace wall. The
paramilitary had agreed to a ceasefire and were standing within about fifteen
yards of us with raised guns, backing off the crowds, while letting the victims of
war in wheelchairs come to the front. We were there to chant the mantra to Tara,
the sacred and beneficent hill that was the ancient seat of the high kings of
Ireland and that protects the land and the people. Tara is also the great Goddess
of Compassion in Buddhism.
“The plan was to open the peace gate in the peace wall, but one of the security
guards had told me that what often happens when they open the gate is that the
children from the opposing sides start throwing stones at each other. He said to
me, ‘And they may start throwing stones at you, but we’ve got a whole security
system that will get you out of here in about twenty minutes. Is that okay?’
“HH the Dalai Lama had started walking down the street lined with a hundred
thousand people. I was told it would be about twenty minutes before he reached
us, as he kept stopping to talk to people, so we just kept singing. The wonderful
thing about the delay was that it gave both the paramilitary and the people
waiting a chance to really listen to the chant, to the recurring melody line that
was praising their sacred hill. I will never forget the look of joyful listening on
their faces. As they joined in the chant, the sky cleared, the sun came out, the
peace gate was opened and HH the Dalai Lama walked through. The children
who normally throw stones at each other were just standing there singing; both
sides were singing the Tara mantra. It was totally awesome.”
Such a moment of harmony in a war-torn county is a wonderful example of
how meditation, in this case a shared chant, takes us beyond differences to a
place of unity. In Parts One and Two, we looked at the many ways meditation
affects us individually, from dealing with stress, illness, and the more repressed
aspects of the mind, to generating qualities of kindness, compassion, and
forgiveness. However, the bigger question is, if this is how meditation affects us,
then what happens when we take meditation “off the cushion” and bring it into
other aspects of our lives? Can we apply it to our environment, politics, or work?
Is it true meditation if we do not use the benefits of the practice to extend
ourselves outward to others?
| MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH |
“It becomes impossible to live for yourself, to live life on the ‘me plan.’ That is
the point of meditation—to get out of the narrow confines of self. It becomes
impossible to close your eyes to a world filled with your brothers and sisters on
the planet who are suffering. We cannot ignore world hunger and AIDS, wars,
hate crimes, bigotry, racism, sexism—we cannot pretend they are not there; we
cannot remain aloof to the suffering of others. The point is what we do when we
leave our meditation cushion, our church pew, our synagogue, mosque, or
temple. Where are we sharing our time, energy and financial resources to make a
difference? Meditation sensitizes the heart and tenderizes the mind so that, as
you recognize the suffering in the world, you become the compassion that has
arisen within you.”
Putting meditation into action does not necessarily mean we have to become
world movers and shakers, for it is equally important in the smaller details of our
lives, such as smiling or holding a door for someone. What is most important is
the nature of the action as well as the motivation of the one doing the action.
| MARIANNE WILLIAMSON |
“We are heir to a thought system that says that ‘we do what we do, and it is the
action itself that determines the result.’ However, Gandhi’s principle that ‘the
end is inherent in the means’ implies that who we are when we take an action is
what determines the result. In other words, I know that the issue is not just what
I say; it is who I am when I say it. It is not just what I do; it is who I am as I am
doing it. When we come from meditation, then all of our activity is different
because we are a different person taking the action. We have just burned off our
craziness, hysteria, and layers of anger, nervousness, defensiveness, and fear.
The more we meditate, the more we live in a space of our truer self and relate to
other people in the space of their truer self, whether we are talking to a president
of the United States or some battered woman living in her car.”
We put meditation into action simply because we have no choice. When we
see beyond our own ego-needs and become aware of our connectedness with all
beings, reaching out beyond ourselves becomes a natural and spontaneous
expression of who we are. Rather than grasping at what we can get for ourselves,
our first response is the care of others. This is not the same as being a martyr or
ignoring our own needs. We care for ourselves equally, but we are not obsessed
with putting ourselves first.
| JUDITH ANSARA |
“My meditation practice has evolved over the years so that it is not separate from
any other part of my life. It is not separate from my reaching out to touch
another, from getting my guests some tea, from working with a client, from
being kind to someone in a grocery line. It is the fabric of my life rather than
something I do. It is the awareness of breath, of sensation, and the intention to
leave a trail of beauty behind me. When I go to the grocery store, how can I
leave a trail of beauty behind me? When I am working with a client, how can I
do that? It is taking meditation off the cushion so that everywhere we go we
leave a trail of beauty.”
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Being Present
There are several qualities that can be developed to enhance and deepen our
expression of meditation in the world, but the most immediate and important is
that of simply being present. The ability to be fully present and engaged enables
us to receive every situation exactly as it is, without preconceptions or
judgments—to embrace difficulties, deep sadness, upset feelings, or injustice
while staying aware, present, and available.
| MAURA SILLS |
“A monk who used to come to the institute was asked how we can measure
spiritual progress, and he said it was by our capacity to be effective, which he
saw as listening and being present. When the capacity to be effective is
diminished or lost, then I think we have lost our humanity. For me, the intention
of meditation is to be here, to really just be here with whatever is happening, as
opposed to being someplace else where there is no problem.”
Meditation is being present: watching the breath, chanting the scriptures or a
mantra, walking mindfully—all are ways of bringing the distracted mind into
just this moment. And we can bring that same presence into our daily lives. It
may not be possible to maintain it all the time; there are endless external
distractions, let alone the demands of the ego and on-going internal chatter. But
we do not have to let such distractions rule. As we cultivate mindfulness, we
naturally see the on-going movie in our minds and are less likely to be caught up
in the storyline. Each time we are pulled into dramas and self-centeredness, we
can stop, bring our attention back to the present, and rest in that awareness.
| SYLVIA BOORSTEIN |
“I don’t make a difference between meditating and having my life. People ask
me what percentage of the day do you practice mindfulness meditation, or what
percentage do you practice loving kindness meditation, and I like to say 100
percent of the day I am doing both of them. But that is actually not true because I
get distracted; I am not checking on myself every second. I would like to have it
as an aspiration—that all day every day I am paying attention to whether my
mind has slid off into self-serving confusion and suffering, or that I am
connected to the world in some healthy way that keeps me lively and happy. I
think of meditation as a full-time practice so that it is not separate from my daily
life: If I drive my car and go to the market and teach a class and I pay attention
and I know what is going on, then mindfulness is happening. I am mindful of the
presence or absence of my capacity to care. In this moment, am I bringing
attention to whatever I am doing? Is my mind generating good thoughts about
other people? Formal periods of mediation simply point me in the direction of
how I want to live during the whole day.”
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Skillful Action
From this place of awareness, we are able to discern between actions that are
skillful or unskillful, of where we are being either a help or a hindrance. Skillful
action brings out the best in each situation and encourages generosity and
kindness, while unskillful actions maintain and reinforce separation; they are
basically harmful and self-centered. Wise compassion is skillful, whereas idiot
compassion is unskillful, for even though we may be giving and wanting to help,
our actions are actually unhelpful in the long run.
| JAMES GIMIAN |
“The key to working skillfully in the world is, first of all, to see things clearly, to
see things as they are. But the obscurations, confusions, distortions, and
projections of the mind that prevent us from seeing clearly are very tricky. They
are also very entertaining, and seductive. It takes an extraordinary set of skills to
disarm that whole mechanism, which is what the practice of meditation is all
about. Meditation is not some external, learned technique, even though we
practice it in that way, but it is a state of mind that arises very naturally, allowing
us to see and act clearly.”
The opportunities for skillful behavior are present in every moment, from
dealing with someone complaining to making sure your kids get an equal
amount of attention, from running a business meeting to having to negotiate a
peace treaty. Discerning what action is most skillful is usually fairly obvious.
For instance, it is generally more helpful to give food to someone who is
begging than to give money that may then be spent on something less
nourishing, such as drugs; likewise, helping someone in need is fine until he is
on his feet, but not if he then becomes dependent and unwilling to help himself.
Skillful action encourages us to take responsibility for ourselves, rather than
pointing fingers and creating shame or guilt.
| TARA GUBER |
“In the old days, if we did something naughty, we used to get sent to sit in the
corner with a dunce cap or we would get whacked by a paddle or sent to the
principal’s office, all of which created shame and guilt and made us feel we were
not good enough. So when we are teaching yoga to kids in school, we have what
we call time in. When someone gets out of hand in a classroom, we say, ‘Take
time in, take time in to take time out, and when you are ready, open your eyes
and come back into the group.’ This helps the kids take responsibility for
themselves.”
But there are also times when finding the most appropriate and skillful action
is not so easy, particularly if it involves engaging with different cultures or
traditions, which can make us confront our own basic assumptions. This is
exemplified by the experience Thanissara had in South Africa. She told us her
story in our book, Voices from the Heart. It is an experience that we can also
apply to those times when our doubts, prejudices, and places of resistance defy
our good intentions:
“Many of the black population in rural South Africa have no means of easy
transport, so it is common to pass people trying to flag down a ride,” explained
Thanissara. “This has been made more difficult for this poor rural population as
there is an alarming increase in hijackings, so car owners rarely stop. However,
on our local dirt road, we are known to pick up those trying to get into town.
“Early on I would open the front door of the car and invite the person to sit
next to me and, with limited Zulu, try to engage in simple conversation. But this
created a high level of tension due to eroding a boundary, which would normally
dictate that a black person sit in the back and that you, as a white, were not
expected to interact. So I was left wondering if I should avoid the whole
discomfort zone and open the back door, thereby keeping us somewhat
unthreatened in our separateness, or try to change these profoundly conditioned
relationships by engaging with the discomfort.
“In essence, the challenge is to consider, as an economically more empowered
person, how does my life affect those around me, what can I do to help, and
perhaps most importantly, where and when does my heart close in
defensiveness? There is no way of always getting it right, but it is important to
meet the discomfort in a way that allows a balanced responsiveness to emerge
from behind the judgments and fear.”
Harmlessness
Out of skillful action arises harmlessness. This sounds so simple, but
harmlessness, or ahimsa in Sanskrit, actually requires a complete shift in
attitude. In a world where selfishness and self-interest are the norm, it takes great
courage not to react with greed or anger, which can and do cause harm. As
Mahatma Gandhi said, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good,
the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Two wrongs do not
make a right; to meet anger with more anger does not bring peace.
Gandhi changed the course of history in India by showing how non-violence is
more powerful than violence, bringing an end to British domination as he
inspired millions of others to follow his lead. Both Nobel Peace Prize winners,
HH the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi, are long-term meditation
practitioners and activists devoted to peacefully reclaiming the freedom of their
countries. While HH the Dalai Lama is known for bringing attention to the plight
of the Tibetan people and his pacifist attitude toward the Chinese, it is less well
known that he rises at four a.m. each day to meditate for at least two hours. Suu
Kyi has been held under house arrest for many years for her non-violent
approach to the plight of the Burmese people, and she also meditates for a
number of hours each day. On-going protests by the monks in Miramar
(previously called Burma) are an example of this non-violent desire for peace.
Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu, and Martin Luther King, Jr., have all stood out
as being fearlessly dedicated to non-violence, often in the face of tremendous
opposition, as have numerous other lesser-known figures who, motivated by
their meditation, faith, and belief in ahimsa, have added their voices and
sometimes even their lives. Quakers, for instance, who have contemplation at the
core of their religious practice, have a deeply held belief in non-violence, which
determines their main tenant: “To walk across the earth meeting that of God in
every man.”
| DEB |
“I remember being carried on my father’s shoulders during the first Aldermaston
March, the ban-the-bomb march that started in 1958 in England and took place
each year thereafter. We lived in a Quaker village, and many of the villagers
were walking with us. It was the beginning of a life-long involvement with anti-
war rallies. I felt I had a duty to do this, to raise my voice in protest over future
violence. One year in the early eighties, a group of us traveled about three
hundred miles to join the annual march in London. We drove all night and were
exhausted the next day when we had to stand or walk for the many hours it took
for the thousands of protesters to cross London. In front of us was a group of
quite elderly people who had also traveled that far overnight. Like myself, they
were Quakers, but their dedication to the cause outshone my own as, despite
their age and weariness, they joyfully sang peace songs the length of the city.”
Simply through the intent to cause less pain, and by recognizing the
fundamental equality of all beings, each of us can bring greater dignity to our
world, so that harm is replaced with harmlessness and disrespect with respect.
But the journey to manifesting such an ideal is not always a smooth one, as HH
the Dalai Lama has experienced in Tibet with many outbursts of violence against
the Chinese, and as Patch Adams experienced as he was growing up:
“My father died from war wounds when I was sixteen. We moved back to the
United States in 1961, and I went to an all-white school in the south. I was
beaten up every day for my last two years in high school because I took a stand
against prejudice, and then I had three hospitalizations because I wanted to kill
myself—I did not want to live in a world of violence and injustice. In the last
hospitalization, I decided instead to live intentionally. I chose to serve humanity,
which I have done every second since the age of eighteen. I chose to never have
another bad day, to put joy in the public space. I chose to operate from a formula
based on the intention to be joy, to work for peace and justice, and I have lived
that every second for the last forty-five years.”
Ahimsa asserts that causing harm never creates peace, whether between people
and countries or within our own lives, but that an attitude of harmlessness will.
Yet none of us can get through life without causing harm, whether by ignoring
someone’s feelings, by using more of the earth’s resources than we need, or by
buying products made by underage and underpaid workers. What do we do when
ants or cockroaches invade the kitchen or slugs eat away at the vegetable garden,
yet we do not want to harm them? And how often do we do things that are
hurtful or harmful to ourselves?
How many times a day, consciously or otherwise, do we put ourselves down,
reaffirm our hopelessness, dislike our appearance, or see ourselves as
incompetent or unworthy? How much resentment, guilt, or shame are we
holding on to, thus perpetuating negativity?
Sitting in quiet reflection, meditation, or prayer has an immediately calming
and peaceful effect. When we get off the cushion, that peace stays with us,
highlighting any tendency to act with violence or aggression and making such
behavior far less likely. It becomes even more improbable as we deepen in
awareness of our fundamental interconnectedness, for then violence toward
another would be the same as causing harm to ourselves. “By developing a sense
of respect for others and a concern for their welfare,” says HH the Dalai Lama,
“we reduce our own selfishness, which is the source of all problems, and
enhance our sense of kindness, which is a natural source of goodness.”
TAKING MEDITATION
INTO THE WORLD
Meditation in action arises as a natural expression of our inner wakefulness and
can take many different forms. We see it in the way we deal with demanding
relationships, such as with teenage children, a needy parent, or a sick partner.
We see it as our capacity to let go of conflicts or forgive mistakes. We see it in
how we treat the physical world around us. And we see it in our desire to reach
out to others—perhaps through feeding the hungry, clearing polluted waterways,
or working for political change—as we genuinely respond to the needs of the
people and the world around us.
| JACK KORNFIELD |
“Meditation has two sides. You sit to quiet the mind and open the heart and to
remember who you really are in this great mystery. Having reconnected with the
great heart of wisdom and compassion, which is the in-breath, then you get up
and you sweep the garden of the world, which is the out-breath. You naturally
express the energy of care and compassion, of wisdom and tending, because the
world is no longer separate from you. When I ask a class of 400 to 500
meditators how many are involved in direct service work, such as teaching
English to immigrants, working in the emergency room at the hospital, being a
voluntary preschool teacher, or working in the San Quentin prison garden
project, more than half the hands go up.”
The following examples show some of the ways meditation can be taken off
the cushion and into the world. Each was born through the desire to make a
difference.
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10
We Are Not Alone Here
A monk asks, “Is there anything more miraculous than
the wonders of nature?” The master replies, “Yes, your
awareness of the wonders of nature.”
ANGELUS SILESIUS
In the Buddhist teachings, there is a description of a huge net reaching in all
directions with a multifaceted mirror-like jewel at each of the many knots, every
jewel reflecting all the others. It is called the Jeweled Net of Indra and represents
our interconnectedness: See one and you see all within it. No one can be
separated from or is independent of any other; take one away and the net
becomes unusable. In other words, we are interrelated, interdependent,
inseparable, and interconnected all at the same time, part of an integrated whole,
not separate from the trees, elephants, owls, our neighbors, the people in South
Africa or a river in India.
| JACK KORNFIELD |
“I think of the statement by General Omar Bradley, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in the 1950s, when he said we are a nation of nuclear giants and
ethical infants. Our inner development has not caught up to our technological
and scientific development. It is very clear that we are all interconnected—in
modern ecology, physics, and neuroscience with mirror neurons—there is no
doubt of that. We mistreat one another because we think of ourselves as separate
beings; feeling separated from others gives rise to fear, confusion, self-
protection, grasping, anger, and aggression. These are all born out of ignorance
and out of forgetting our interdependence in the web of life.”
If a butterfly becomes extinct in Australia, it affects the ecosystem of the
whole world, because a third of our food supply depends on insect pollination. If
we pull on a single thread in nature, we will find that it is attached to the rest of
the world. Caring for each other and the planet is, therefore, inseparable from
caring for ourselves; we are both dependent on and a part of the earth and the
woods and the children playing in the street, and they are a part of us. But living
with this awareness takes some consideration, for our consensus reality is one of
separation and isolation.
| JANE FONDA |
“There are practical reasons for dividing everything up. It makes things easier to
manage and to solve, especially technical matters: the us and them, the either-or,
the man versus nature, mine and yours. Life is simpler to deal with. But we have
applied this fragmenting mindset to all of life so that it has become our reality,
which has led to further fragmentation and chaos and planetary destruction. The
challenge is to figure out how to deal with our day-to-day life, while at the same
time changing our mindset so that we see reality as the unbroken wholeness of
the totality of existence, an undivided, flowing movement without borders.”
The belief that we are separate and unconnected from one another or from the
world around us is the root cause of many of the problems we face, whether
environmental or social, personal or global. When we put ourselves and our own
needs over and above the needs of others, we do so at a tremendous cost, for it
not only isolates us from each other, but also from our connectedness, which is
fundamental to our happiness. Until we see this delusion for what it is and awake
to an awareness of otherness, we will continue to self-destruct.
| BERNIE GLASSMAN |
“Imagine that each of my two hands has the notion that it is an individual object
and not connected to anything else. Left hand calls itself Sally, and right hand
calls itself Harry. Then Sally gets cut. Harry has read many things about the
oneness of life, but he believes that Sally is separate and thinks, I cannot do
anything about Sally being cut, I am not a doctor, and I don’t have a first-aid kit.
And anyway, I do not want to get my new clothes stained. Harry walks away,
and Sally bleeds to death. But that means Harry also bleeds to death, as Harry
and Sally happen to be very attached to each other. This is what happens when
the experience of oneness is not there.
“Now imagine Sally and Harry both meditate and, while recognizing the
separateness of Sally and Harry, they also recognize their oneness with Bernie.
When Sally gets cut, Harry does the best thing possible to help her because he
knows that to help her is also helping both him and Bernie. This is not a thinking
process; it is the direct experience of the oneness of life. The appreciation of this
is huge.”
The illusion of separateness has so influenced our behavior and attitudes
toward each other that it is only when we become more self-reflective that our
awareness grows beyond such a limited view to encompass the whole. We
become very conscious of the interconnected relationship of our jewel to all the
other jewels, as well as of the intrinsic inclusivity of the net that contains them
all.
| AJAHN SUMEDHO |
“We are not isolated entities; we do affect each other. The more we experience
this in meditation, the more we recognize how our own relationship to society
need not be one of just being critical or putting up with or ignoring it, but of
using our abilities, intelligence, and talents to serve each other. If I feel a sense
of ‘me’ as a self-centered isolated being, then I will just think of my own
immediate pleasure or needs and I have no relationship or sensitivity to anything
else. But as I open to the truth of our connectedness, then I have a respect for all
life; I no longer see others as just there for my own selfish exploitation.”
On a relative level, of course, we have our own thoughts and feelings, but they
cannot be separated from what we were taught by our parents and teachers or
from our experiences of pain and joy in our relationships—just as it is
impossible to separate our body from the food we eat or the farmer who grew the
food or the earth and the rain. There is actually no part of our being that is a
separate or independent entity from everyone we have met and everything we
have done or from every part of the world around us.
| TIM FREKE |
“We think that we are separate from each other and we are not. We think we are
separate from the whole of life, and we are not. This belief makes us act as
though we are only one part. But when we are awake to the fact that we are not
just the part but really the whole, then we act to benefit the whole. Tim is an
integral part of the whole, and everyone and everything are also an integral part
of the whole and, therefore, one with Tim. Separateness is the conceptual story
we tell to make sense of life, the story of who we are, and when we get sucked
into it we are not conscious of our deeper being. This is when we cause suffering
to each other and our world. Waking up is the recognition that there is no other,
that every person or situation is not separate from our essential nature.”
Where separation divides and causes conflict, awareness of our
interconnectedness means we see the other as ourselves. The jewels in Indra’s
net are independent jewels and each reflects a different aspect of the whole, yet
they are so interrelated that they cannot exist without each other or the entire net.
At the same time, every jewel within the net is found reflected within each one.
| BERNIE GLASSMAN |
“Take care of the person next to you. It might be your spouse, your child, your
parents, or it might be a stranger. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t matter who
it is, and it doesn’t matter if they have nothing to give you; you just do it because
it is there to be done. Meditation leads us to the experience of oneness. In that
state, we automatically take care of everything we see because it is ourselves; it
is not separate from us. We are walking down the street, and we see a person
slip; it is not somebody else—we slipped. That is the bottom line for me: Once
you take care of the delusion of separateness, then everything else is taken care
of.”
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Experiencing Our World
To know that we are all interconnected and a part of each other is not always
enough; we also need to experience this in a living, vibrant way. One way to do
this is by being outside. So many of us have lost touch with nature, yet just
taking time to sit in a city park can reconnect us to the life with which we share
our world. If we meditate on our shared connectedness, and we do this outside,
we will move from the confines of the ego-self into the wholeness that surrounds
us. And when we let nature communicate with us, we discover there is much we
can learn.
| JOHN MILTON |
“The process of meditating in nature allows us to become very quiet and still.
We begin to actually have the experience of not being defined just as an
individual being, separate from the rest of life, but as a being that is totally
interwoven and interconnected with all life. Such meditation is appropriate for
these times as we are so out of touch with the rest of life, which has led us to the
point where our relationship with the planet itself is threatened. I think it is more
that we are in peril, rather than nature. Our own capacity to really experience the
deep joy that comes from being a part of all life is the most endangered thing
that we face.
“If we only do our meditation practice in buildings, in human-constructed
places, then we do not have that primordial connection to nature that is so
needed. The vision quest that is found in many different traditions is probably
one of the oldest spiritual practices on the planet. This is the process of going
alone into nature for a period of time to embrace the great mystery in solitude, to
have a deeper experience of the truth beyond our built-up world. When we do
vision quests or sacred path solos, we focus on meditating with each perception,
with sight, smell, taste, and touch: We see what is all around us, we smell the
richness of the earth, we reach out to touch our world. By meditating with these
perceptual fields, we have an experience of communion with the great mystery,
with the sky and the trees and the earth beneath our feet.”
In this same way, the Native American people, as with many other native
peoples around the world, live in harmony with and are intimately connected to
the earth. Because their lives are so much a part of their environment, they have
a natural reverence for it and have integrated a deep awareness of how nature
works into the way in which they live.
| JOSEPH MARSHALL |
“Interestingly enough, in my native language of Lakota, there is no word for
wilderness; Native Americans do not separate themselves from the world the
way many English speakers do. We are all a part of the entire system, of the
whole environment. There are words to indicate ‘where man is not,’ but that is
not the same as wilderness words. We speak from that sense of connectivity, and
it is one of the things that we always acknowledge when we go into a sweat
lodge or to some kind of a healing ceremony. We are also realists. An
environment behaves in certain ways in order to successfully survive, and we
have to know and deeply respect this as much as possible so we can work with
rather than against it. It is not apart from us, and we are not apart from it.”
The awareness of nature is also an awareness of the sacred and of the necessity
of bringing the sacred into every part of our lives. We rarely talk about things
being sacred—our daily life seems far too mundane in comparison, and so the
subject is normally relegated to the more unreachable aspects of religion. Yet the
sacred can be found in every moment; it simply needs our awareness and
recognition.
| SARASVATI BURHMAN |
“Clearly our history of political and economic support for capitalism has played
a major role in our present environmental problems. But there is individual
responsibility too, and here I do not just mean our failure as individuals to
recycle, carpool, or monitor our water consumption. We live in these bodies that
are expressions of nature, yet we fail to comprehend the sacredness of all life.
We treat other living beings as little more than commodities for our
consumption. Once I asked a Hindu villager why the cow was sacred in Indian
culture. He replied that the bull plows the fields and the dung is used as fuel for
fires. The cow gives milk, yogurt, and butter for food and medicines. How could
something that gives so much not be sacred? Then he asked me, ‘How can we
return such generosity by killing?’
“In ancient Celtic spirituality, trees were regarded as sacred beings. They are
like the cows of the plant world, providing so much that is necessary for other
life forms on our planet, not the least of which is the oxygen we breathe. Their
fruits and nuts provide food without requiring any violence on our part. Is it right
to so mindlessly destroy them as we do? A person who meditates for a period of
time in a forest begins to feel the same universal consciousness emanating from
all living beings. Such an experience of the sacred changes the way we relate to
each other and to other species.”
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Shaping Motivation
We watched as an eager young television reporter from CNN asked HH the
Dalai Lama what was the first thing he thought of when he awoke in the
morning. We thought that this most revered teacher would say something deeply
profound or insightful, something along the lines of vowing to save the world
from its own ignorance. Instead, he simply replied, “Shaping motivation.” He
said that we all, including himself, have to be vigilant so that our intentions are
focused in the right direction. He said that shaping his motivation constantly
reminds him to extend loving kindness and compassion to all others. Such
motivation extends us beyond ourselves so that we are not limited by a lack of
confidence or self-esteem.
| MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH |
“As we clarify and deepen in awareness, then the contents of our emotions, and
the beliefs and actions they engender, have less effect on our life. We begin to
pause before we take action. We ask ourselves about our motivation, our
intention, and if what we are about to do is in the highest service of ourselves or
another. As spiritual beings having a human incarnation, we have the capacity to
think independently of circumstance and experience. We can be aware of our
emotional content and not allow it to dictate our actions. We can actually
observe fear, doubt, worry, or anger, and not act on them.”
It is easy to underestimate ourselves or to think that one person really does not
make a difference. But even small gestures or acts can have a very big impact—
consider how much of an effect a single mosquito can have! Each one of us has
something special and unique to offer, and even more so when we are in touch
with our essential interrelatedness. We can each act to leave the world a better
place than we found it.
| JON KABAT-ZINN |
“The world needs all its flowers. Sometimes we may think, Well, I am not a
flower, I am not beautiful, and I don’t have any qualities that might be useful.
What a hubris that is, to think the world has singled you out to be useless and
unbeautiful! It is very important to ask, ‘What can I do that would contribute
even in the tiniest way to greater levels of well-being and sanity and kindness on
the planet?’ Even the act of taking your seat for meditation is a radical act of
love that extends way beyond your small self.
“Individually and collectively, we are not paying appropriate attention to our
experience as human beings. The consequences of this are potentially disastrous
for the world. We are ignoring certain aspects of reality in favor of others, and it
creates huge amounts of suffering. The cause of that is really a certain kind of
conditioning that is driven by small-mindedness or an identification with who
we think we are, as opposed to a much bigger direct experience of the
unboundedness of human nature.”
Motivation guides our behavior and determines whether our intent is arising
out of selfishness or selflessness. Is our motivation one of kindness, forgiveness,
or letting go? Or is it one of judgment, blame, or grasping? Are we making
someone else seem wrong in order for us to appear right? Are we ignoring or
dismissing someone? Or are we genuinely concerned, genuinely feeling
consideration, respect, and care? If we take each situation into our meditation,
then we can ask, ‘What is the deeper intention of my behavior? What is my real
motivation?’ We need to question our actions, words, and thoughts in this way
so that we can answer the call of the world.
| ANDREW HARVEY |
“Meditation is an essential part of the solution to the really immense crisis that
we are in, because this crisis demands of us that we are able to see the extent of
the damage that we have done to ourselves and to the earth and start working
with fully motivated wills and hearts in the world. None of that can be done
without meditation. But meditation must also have a vision of action with a
passionate commitment to service, to really do something about the issues that
are now afflicting our future. Meditation without vision would be absolutely
empty, while action without the knowledge, wisdom, passion, and love gained
from meditation is useless. We need the clarity of meditation to awake our
motivation.”
Letting go of insecurities and self-doubt so that we can be available and open
to what is needed in the moment is a quality that we can bring not only to our
meditation but to our communication with the world. The only limits to what we
can do are the ones we impose on ourselves.
| JEAN HOUSTON |
“Meditation gives us access to the vastness of the universe. Our challenge is to
take this understanding and reinvent our civilization, including agriculture,
education, and economics, with an intelligent self-organizing living universe.
Instead of degrading the universe’s life systems, we must now learn to join all
beings together in a mutually enhancing manner. Meditation gives us the
awareness to do this as consciousness becoming self-conscious.”
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Practice Meditation:
Communing with Nature
| FROM JOHN MILTON |
“Amazing and powerful experiences can arise by simply sitting, open and
receptive, with your back against a tree. Better yet, stand firmly rooted and
embrace the tree, like an old friend not seen for a long time. As you sense into
the tree, you may experience the impression of being held by a loving embrace.
Once you have established your relationship with this tree, you may begin to feel
a deep communion together that makes it easy for you to trust and to let go of
the contractions and tensions you have been holding.
“A tree is extremely centered in its being and is well grounded and rooted. It
is at one with the sky above and the earth below. Just as the tree crown lifts to
the heavens, feel your spirit opening into the vastness and spaciousness of the
sky. At the same time, feel yourself completely rooted and deeply connected with
the earth.
“A tree is totally centered in its place. You can find that same kind of center in
yourself, wherever you are, if you simply remember what it feels like when you
lean into a tree.
“Trust the process of completely letting go and surrendering to what other
plants, animals, and rocks have to give you. This may sound like something
special, but in truth, anyone can experience this. All you need to do is sit quietly
and open yourself and be present for what is given, with no expectations. Relax
into the experience.
“In the Native American way, Great Spirit is seen flowing through all the
beings of Nature, including you. Birds, plants, stones, mammals, mountains—all
are seen as your relatives. For this reason, most Native American prayers
include giving thanks to all Creation in this profoundly ecological phrase: “I
give thanks to all my relations.”
11
Silence in the Boardroom
“The most powerful force in business isn’t greed, fear, or
even the raw energy of unbridled competition. The most
powerful force in business is love. It is what will help your
company grow and become stronger. It is what will propel
your career forward. It is what will give you a sense of
meaning and satisfaction in your work.”
TIM SANDERS, SENIOR MANAGEMENT, YAHOO!
FAST COMPANY MAGAZINE.
We received a phone call, and the voice on the other end simply asked, “Do you
teach meditation?” Ed answered that we did. The voice then said, “We would
like to have you come to Thailand to teach our CEOs.” The year before, it had
been golf; this year, the VP wanted to try meditation. So we went to teach these
highly stressed top-management bosses the simple art of being silent. By the end
of the week, we had no idea if they had understood what we were teaching, but
on the last day, when they were free to do whatever they wanted, one of them
requested a meditation session. To our amazement, they all showed up. After
that, the VP signed us to work with management for a year and we became his
personal coach.
As stress levels increase, stress-reduction programs are becoming more
common throughout the business world. Although they tend to focus on time
management and simple relaxation practices, more and more we see yoga and
meditation classes being offered in the workplace. Google has offered both, as
have Yahoo!, Rodale Publishers, Morgan Stanley, and Pricewaterhouse Coopers,
to name but a few. As Oliver Ryan wrote in Fortune magazine, on July 20, 2008:
“The crowd of Harvard Business School alums who gathered at their reunion to
hear networking-expert Keith Ferrazzi speak . . . might have expected to pick up
strategies on how to work a room, remember people’s names, or identify
mentors. . . . Instead, Ferrazzi let his fellow alums in on a little secret . . .
meditation. Exercise and prayer work too,” he said, “but meditation has been so
effective that he now spends ten days every year at a silent meditation retreat. In
other words, the man whose latest book is Never Eat Alone credits much of his
success to alone time.”
It is easy to see why meditation is having such an impact. Stress creates
workplace fatigue, absenteeism, mistakes, a lack of productivity, burnout and
breakdown, while meditation has the opposite effect. It helps decrease the
amount of stress experienced while clearing the mind, increasing concentration
and confidence, and helping to achieve greater perspective to solve problems. It
promotes thoughtfulness, which leads to better, more careful decisions. It
improves listening skills, which develops enhanced interpersonal
communication, and it clarifies purpose and vision.
| JOEL AND MICHELLE LEVEY |
“It might be about getting good business results, but what people also find is
that, as they start to become more mindful, their health improves and the quality
of their relationship with their significant others or their kids or their coworkers
improves. We have seen relationship building between people with better
learning skills to deal with difficult conversations or situations, such as conflict
resolution. Leaders become more mindful and able to listen, to hear different
ideas. Their people feel heard and valued. We have seen absentee levels go way
down around stress-related illnesses.”
With results like these, corporations now see classes in stress release as both
beneficial to the employee’s health and as a way to inspire and stimulate
creativity. In a stressed state, it is natural to only focus on self-survival and
competitiveness; in a relaxed state, we are connecting with a deeper sense of
purpose and innate altruism.
| BONNIE REISS |
“I think that whether we are in high-stress work, in politics or business, the
discipline of meditation is vital. I served as senior advisor to Governor
Schwarzenegger, and it was eighteen-to-nineteen-hour days, seven days a week,
working on every kind of imaginable issue needed for running a state that is the
sixth-largest economy in the world. Whenever I felt a particularly stressful
moment in the office, I would stop and just take a breath or I would take some
time to walk outside to Capitol Park. I’d go by a tree or sit on a bench and do a
five-minute meditation. In those circumstances, even starting or ending the day
with meditation was not enough because I would find myself getting off balance
and needing to have a quiet moment in the midst of it all, to take that five-or-ten-
minute break in order to come back to myself. When I can be silent and away
from people, and I can connect to that inner space, then I get a greater sense of
equilibrium and calm. I can think more clearly and make clearer decisions.
“There is no shortage of really intelligent people running a state or a country,
working in the senate, or working in government offices. And yet just bringing
intelligence to bear on decision making does not, as evidenced by what we see
with so much poverty, prejudice, and environmental degradation, necessarily
ensure that our state or our country go in the right direction. It is equally as
important to bring the sensitive heart of compassion to decision making.
Ultimately, more world changes would be achieved by every individual bringing
a more loving and forgiving heart to whatever they do.”
Yet, the opportunity to just be quiet or self-reflective is, without doubt, the
main ingredient lacking in the lives of many businesspeople, normally so filled
with activity and demands that stillness or agenda-free time simply does not
occur. As a result, the first-time experience of simply being quiet and present
can be overwhelming.
| JON KABAT-ZINN |
“I was once teaching a business workshop in Chicago in a big hotel. It was billed
as a two-hour workshop on practical applications of mindfulness in business. As
I entered the room, people were sitting around dressed in suits, reading the Wall
Street Journal, cups of coffee in hand. I casually said, by way of an opening:
‘Why don’t we just take a moment and sit quietly with no agenda?’ I didn’t give
them any instructions; we just sat quietly for about ten or fifteen minutes. I
noticed that during this time, a few people began crying. When it was over, I
asked them about it. One of the executives said, ‘You know—we never do
anything without an agenda.’ The others agreed. It was a real eye-opener for
them, just to sit and be still. It is a reclaiming of what I call the domain of being.
Usually, we are so driven by all the doing that, after a while, we forget who is
doing the doing and why, and even what the doing actually is.”
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Disconnection
Ninety-five percent of the executives we have worked with are very talented at
what they do in business, but are not nearly as emotionally adept, so their
relationships are often in turmoil. In the process of climbing the corporate
ladder, it is easy to lose touch with this part of ourselves. And it is not just
emotional integrity, but a deeper spiritual connection that is missing as well.
This split between our professional and personal selves can lead to the creation
of masks and role playing, along with a profound lack of fulfillment. More
importantly, it limits the amount of inner resources being brought to the job. It is
a high price to pay for corporate accomplishment.
| MICHAEL CARROLL |
“Business leaders are tremendously confident, they are brilliant men and women,
the brightest of the brightest, they are competent, studying strategy planning,
execution, and have all kinds of knowledge. At work, we spend a tremendous
amount of time trying to achieve things, we are always trying to hit the number,
do the project, plan the deal, get our MBA, get promoted, build a business,
acquire a business. But the problem is, in all this effort to try to get somewhere
we overlook how to be somewhere. And in the process of trying to become
someone else, someone richer, more successful, more admired, or more
powerful, we overlook how to be who we are already. This speeding past the
experience of who we are and where we are creates a tremendous blind spot. It
makes us unskillful; we neglect ourselves and our health, as well as many of the
relationships that are actually needed in order to be successful.
“I spoke with a doctor who was part of a medical affairs team at a
pharmaceutical company. He said, ‘You know, leadership to me is very simple.
My job is to get my team from point A to point B as quickly, efficiently,
successfully, and profitably as possible. That is my job.’ I replied: ‘There is only
one small but actually critical difference between us. I also want to get from
point A to point B as efficiently, quickly, and as profitably as possible. However,
when I arrive at point B, I want our collective sanity to be intact. What happens
when you rush to point B is that you neglect your world in the process.’ In the
rushing, be it personal or business, we are actually creating the very toxicity that
we are trying to avoid. Meditation is the key ingredient to this as it trains our
minds to appreciate both ourselves and our world.
“Fear affects organizations because people are afraid to be themselves.
Uncertainty is seen as an enemy; nobody at work can appear to be doubtful or
uncertain, especially if they are in charge. When you ask the average person
what their life is like, they will tell you that they are more depressed, more
anxious, and more hesitant about their lives than they were ten years ago.
Depression is on the rise. Anxiety disorders are on the rise. Suicide rates are on
the rise. We are trying to secure our lives rather than live them. If we can
embrace our lives and stop being afraid of them, then we can take our seats with
a level of confidence and ease.”
In any business environment, there is an ingrained push to succeed, and to
succeed quickly. The corporate ego is a big one. There is a strong sense of “me
first” and of the compulsion to be territorial. It causes a sense of isolation and
loneliness—no one is sure who they can trust or who will try to beat them on the
race to the top of the ladder. Many of the problems we see arising out of the
corporate world are due to the speed at which decisions are made or actions
taken, which often leaves important parts of our psyche out of the picture.
| MICHAEL CARROLL |
“We have to reconcile the two worlds of compassion and kindness with
business. I have fired more than 3,000 people, I have orchestrated large lay-offs,
acquisitions, and all that kind of stuff, and every single time I have done this, I
made sure that management saw how to treat people with respect, preserving
their dignity, communicating in ways that made them feel they were not being
taken for granted, by trying to look after the health and well-being for them and
their family. These are things that, if management does not think about properly,
if they are not guided to take the notion of well-being seriously, then they will
speed past it and create harm.
“At one sales meeting I led, there were maybe two hundred people. The theme
of the meeting was being a warrior, so I spoke about how we think warriors are
about punching and kicking, but actually warriors have this ability to be at ease
and comfortable with their own physical and emotional presence, which comes
from a sense of vulnerability. And in order to train the mind that way, you have
to be able to still the mind through meditation.”
We are not suggesting that it is necessary to get everyone in a business to
meditate; that would be wonderful, but it would also be both arrogant and
impossible. However, when we personally meditate, then we can connect with
our deeper emotional and spiritual selves so that they are brought together in
such a way that each can be appreciated and nourished. We become who we
really are—our authentic self—and this is the person we take to work.
Meditation means we become more balanced in our approach to difficulties and
able to inspire others.
| CONSTANCE KELLOUGH |
“We think we cannot make a living and make a life at the same time, so most
people go to work grudgingly to make a living and feel that the only time they
can really let loose and be themselves is when they are away from the
workplace. When I was a management consultant, I saw this all the time and
thought how sad it was that we could not bring our ‘beingness’ and our presence
into the workplace. Maybe one day soon, the importance of stillness will be so
evident to employers that they will happily sanction stillness breaks during the
workday to encourage their employees in cultivating this practice. It is from
inner stillness that all new and creative ideas flow and that we make clear,
conscious decisions. It is from inner stillness that we become more efficient in
what we do because we are in the present moment and we are not impeded by
the fears and frustrations of ego. It does not mean we are not in the real world
and are not making real decisions based on solid business acumen; it is just that
our decisions are coming from presence, from awareness. There are times when
we have to be very firm, but it is not fear-based. It perplexes me that people say,
‘How can you carry on business if you come from the consciousness of unity,
which is love based?’ And I say, ‘How can you carry on business without it?’”
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Ethical Questions
Teaching meditation to corporate employees is a rewarding and dynamic arena
in which to work. However, as meditation opens us to the interconnectedness of
all life, there are times when we are confronted with ethical choices. Do we
discriminate against those companies whose products we morally disagree with?
Do we limit our services only to those acting with ethics we do approve? Or are
all companies and employees equally in need?
| MIRABAI BUSH |
“We had an opportunity to work in Monsanto as a friend had just become the
CEO. He did not know much about meditation at the time, but he had read about
Zen and thought it might add an interesting dimension to leadership
development. He really wanted to provide ways for his staff to think big and to
think differently. We started with a three-day silent meditation retreat for the top
seventeen Monsanto executives at the Fetzer Institute, and then for four years,
we taught meditation in the workplace and at off-site retreats in Chicago and St.
Louis. The response was incredibly positive—people reported profound changes
in both their personal and professional lives. But we were constantly challenged
by our own community and colleagues.
“Just a few years earlier, I had worked with the SEVA Foundation in the
mountains of Guatemala, helping the Mayan people recover their soil and their
sustainable agricultural processes. They had suffered terribly because of the
chemicals that had been introduced into their soils by companies like Monsanto.
I still carried great pain about that. So I understood the negative responses to
Monsanto as they were introducing genetically modified foods. Some thought
we should not teach there at all, that we would just be teaching people to ‘do bad
things better’ by reducing their stress and increasing their ability to pay
attention. I had huge questions myself.
“But inside Monsanto we discovered that they had studied population statistics
and believed they could help feed the world for the twenty-first century, that it
was ‘good science.’ We decided that it was not our job to challenge their
products but to give them a method to see more clearly, to be more willing to
look again at their justifications, and to enter into dialog with counter opinions.
“We created an environment of no judgment. As they learned basic
mindfulness meditation practices, they began to look more carefully at what was
going on inside themselves, at both their thoughts and emotions, and to be able
to let go of the story that they had been told or that they were telling themselves.
We always included a loving kindness meditation, and we would direct it from
ourselves toward all species with the understanding that unless you have that
love and care for yourself, then it is difficult to love and care for others. At the
first retreat, I opened my eyes during this practice and saw tears running down
almost every person’s face. I realized, in a stunning moment of awareness of my
own judgments that, of course, corporations are made up of people who, like all
of us, have feelings and want to think they are doing the right thing.
“The real work of meditation in the workplace is not just to reduce stress; it is
to challenge our firmly held beliefs and to look at the true nature of things. Our
work is based on the belief that the potential for positive change comes from
within us. If we give people tools to heighten awareness of their inner states,
then they are more apt to come up with new ways of creating a better world.”
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Right Livelihood
Steve Demos borrowed $500 and started making tofu in his kitchen and selling it
to local whole-food stores. Thirty years later, he sold White Wave for $295
million. Throughout those years, he never wavered from his belief that he could
make money without harming anyone or anything he encountered in the process.
| STEVE DEMOS |
“I come from a family where my father was a very hardworking, honest
entrepreneur who initiated profit sharing way back when the words were not
even known. So I was a product of the era, but I had this great inner conflict. I
flunked my draft physical and immediately headed for India, where I ended up
disillusioned and in even greater conflict. I had business DNA in my body, but
everything around me was telling me that business was bad, unethical, that it
took advantage of others and of the environment. We were in India for the same
reasons that everyone else was: We were seeking. We hung out at the ashrams,
meditating with teachers. I found meditation really resonated with me, and I
became very compelled and committed to it.
“And then I heard of the concept of right livelihood: right living, right effort,
right everything. Bells and lights started going off inside me. The epiphany or
insight was that capitalism itself was neutral and did not have to be the pariah of
society; it could actually be a positive force for social change. It became very
clear that if I was going to be at rest with my own DNA, then I was going to
have to embark on a mission to prove to myself that right livelihood could work
in business. It was a complete coming together of both business and spiritual
ideals.
“I see right livelihood as nothing more than a working philosophy for the
moral boundaries of living. My goal is to take the teachings and insights that I
get from sitting on the cushion and basically apply them to a business model in a
very narrow interpretation of what the term right livelihood actually means. The
basis that I live by is ‘Good for me, good for you, good for everybody who
touches it.’ I do not sell bombs or exploitive stuff. I do not sell harmful things, or
frivolous things. I do not supply people with harmful services or anything that
would go contrary to their well-being. I do not exploit the planet. I give back
because ‘good for anybody who touches it’ does not mean that they have to
purchase the product but is anybody who is in contact with the actual business:
the community I live in, the customers I supply, the vendors I use, my
employees, my investors. Any sentient being who touches the product and the
stream of commerce coming from it has to be positively benefited from that
contact.
“I came back from my time meditating in India with a very specific mission: I
was going to prove that you could create enormous quantities of wealth within
the context of right livelihood without putting any negative impact on the
society, the product, or the people. Investment in White Wave was initially
returned somewhere around seventy-five times or more. We made twenty-one
millionaires; we retired fifteen or more people. We gave back to the employees
$15 to $18 million in after-sale bonuses. I was the largest individual stockholder,
and the company sold for about $300 million, and they gave us another $30
million to stay on. In other words, I proved you can make money and live by
right livelihood at the same time.
“Meditation is my foundation. That is all it is. If you strip away the dirt, you
get to the roots. I would say that meditation has had a life-altering effect on me.
It did not make the road smooth. We were faced with the same choices that
every other small business is faced with: cutting corners, doing things the right
way, or just trying to outrun the devil and make a living. But we were not there
just to make a living; we were there to demonstrate that right livelihood makes a
very big difference. Meditation was an entry gate for me, and then it was a re-
enforcer. It sets the stage that permits me to demonstrate the value system.”
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Practice Meditation:
Meditating at Work
| FROM TAMI SIMON |
“Meditating in the workplace requires that we learn to meditate ‘on the spot,’ in
the midst of challenging circumstances and difficult conversations. Three
techniques I have found useful for interrupting discursive thinking and
introducing a quality of spaciousness at work—or in any situation—are
attending to physical sensations, bringing attention to the back of the body, and
beginning meetings with silence. When we use these and other practices to bring
meditative awareness to the workplace, what we are doing is creating space for
our own feelings, space for other people, and space for brilliance and originality
to shine through. Of course, the more we practice meditating in a formal setting,
or create space for ourselves in a relaxed way outside of the work setting, the
more depth and precision we can bring to meditating on the spot in the pressure-
filled environment of the workplace.”
Attending to Sensations
“If your mind is agitated, your body is tense; if your body is tense, your mind is
agitated. By letting go of physical tension in the body, you create space in your
mind to listen to others and act creatively.
“In the midst of a meeting, a phone conversation, or any interaction in which
you feel yourself becoming impatient or agitated, bring your attention to the part
of your body that is holding the tension. You can do this on the spot by internally
scanning your body from your toes to the top of your head, zeroing in on any
part that seems tight, clenched, or contracted. Perhaps you will discover that
your lower belly is in a knot or your shoulders are up by your ears. Maybe your
hands feel like they are gripping something or the bottoms of your feet are
recoiling from the ground. When you discover an area of physical tension, use
your in-breath to connect with that sensation. Then, on the out-breath, simply
release, relax, and let go. You can actually ‘ride the out-breath’ and let it carry
your physical and mental holding out into space.”
Bringing Attention to the Back of the Body
“Different physical and energetic postures carry different modes of being. If you
want to exert and express yourself and move forward into action, you can bring
your energy into the front of your body. If you want to make space for other
people, listen deeply, and avail yourself of new creative ideas, just lean back
slightly and bring your attention to the back of the body. Have you ever been in
a meeting in which everyone was interrupting one another and it felt as if no one
was really being heard? If even one person in the group brings their attention to
the back of their body, a quality of space and receptivity is introduced that can
change the tone and course of the meeting.”
Begin Meetings with Silence
“Often a busy day can feel like being on a non-stop train with one action item
following the next without a break. Creating moments of silence, moments of
getting off the train, interrupts the tendency for habitual reactivity and drops you
into the depth of your being.
“A simple way to introduce silence into the workplace is to begin meetings
with a few moments of being quiet together, what I like to call ‘taking a good
minute.’ People use this shared silence in different ways—to breathe and relax,
to appreciate a few moments during the day that are calm and spacious, to let go
of previous work concerns, or to connect in a silent, energetic way with everyone
else at the meeting. When ‘a good minute’ is introduced at the beginning of a
meeting, it is a way of saying that you value each person’s renewal and want
people to bring their full presence to the task at hand.”
12
Contemplative Activism
We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal
we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.
We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
| RUSSELL BISHOP |
“The year is 1971. I am at UC Berkeley, the protest is going on at the People’s
Park, and the context is to go on strike, shut it down, power to the people. I get
hit in the chest with a tear-gas canister that I pick up to throw back at the cops.
As I do this, I find myself outside my body looking back at myself, and I see this
long-haired, bearded hippie screaming, ‘Why don’t you blank idiots love us?’
And then I am right back in my body, suddenly realizing how the purpose was
love but the strategy was yell, scream, and throw things. I walked off the strike
line as this wave of awareness washed over me. How could I make a difference
in the world with peace and acceptance as the means?”
Activism is dedicated to fighting injustice and bringing about social change,
but is angry activism really effective? Is activism different if it arises out of a
contemplative and compassionate response rather than an angry reaction? How
is our motivation and behavior influenced when there is the awareness that we
are not separate but that each is a reflection of the other? Does meditation make
any real difference when we are faced with such extremes as acute poverty or
machine guns?
Transforming Anger
| SEANE CORN |
“Back in the eighties, I was an activist for a bunch of different organizations, but
I was a horrible activist because all I did was project my rage. I was the one with
a soapbox and megaphone telling everyone how to live their lives. But it didn’t
serve anything. What I realize now is how the world changes by embracing, not
by pushing away. Rage pushes away; it is a threatening energy that alienates. So,
as an activist today, I invite by stepping in and being as honest as I possibly
can.”
Anger may be an initial motivation for protest, but it does not often bring
about the changes that are desired. Rather, it invariably creates more negativity.
Anger is exclusive and calls for further exclusivity, rather than being inclusive
and, therefore, working toward wholeness. Meditation is essential, for it not only
brings us to the awareness of our interconnectedness, but also to the realization
of the fruitlessness of anger and the benefit of working compassionately. Then
activism informs us of when and how best to use it, rather than being used by it.
| RAMA VERNON |
“We can create change through anger, but we cannot create transformation
through anger. The change will always revert back to something else. Meditation
creates clarity of mind, and when we have clear thinking, our actions are more
focused and we have greater power. If our minds are scattered, then whatever
actions we take will only cause confusion. There may be moments when we
need to use anger, but it is not the same thing as being angry. I have used anger
with the KGB, as it was the right thing to do at the time, but I was responding
with anger, not reacting. If we react with anger, it can actually fuel a situation
and we become part of the problem instead of the solution.”
Pacifism or harmlessness does not mean that we are weak and helpless or that
we can easily be taken advantage of. It means that the same issues that cause
anger can, instead, generate compassion. And although anger may sometimes be
used for specific reasons, compassion can be used without hesitation in every
situation. This is especially important for those people actively engaged in
working for social change.
| ROBERT GASS AND JUDITH ANSARA |
“Social activists are people committed to making a better world. When you can
demonstrate to them that there are certain attitudes and behaviors that will
actually create more results for justice and are more collaborative, less angry,
more partnership oriented, and you show that this works quite dramatically, then
they are already there. Meditation is an integral part of this process as it loosens
the boundaries. People get to clarify what they serve, to increase their self-
awareness so that they can see what works and what is an obstacle. This means
loosening the grip of the small sense of me-ness. For some, it becomes a sense of
we-ness with their brothers and sisters; they extend it that way. To others, it is to
a larger sense of purpose with the communities that they serve, rather than just
serving themselves.”
The fire of fury may stimulate our motivation, but it cannot keep us going for
long; when we are ruled by anger, we are soon depleted. Exhaustion is the
inevitable downside. Compassion, on the other hand, is a constant source of
energy and sustenance. The more we give, the more we get to give with. There is
no time where we run out of compassion.
| JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN |
“I taught retreats for environmental and social activists. One of the major issues
for people who are engaged in such action, often in the front lines of conflict, is
energy burn-out. This is because the work is often fueled by anger at conditions
of inequity and injustice, but anger is unsustainable. It is a motivation that
literally burns us up. Compassion is a much more sustainable energy. It can
motivate a lifetime of active social engagement.”
We usually think of activism as being against something, whether it be war,
torture, or dictatorial government, whereas activism based on contemplation is
being for something, such as fairness, freedom, and peace. This gives us a whole
new perspective, not just of activism, but also of the deeper causes of injustice
and violence and, more specifically, of our normally angry or even aggressive
response to such behavior. Being for something shifts us from maintaining the
negative to supporting the positive.
| RABIA ROBERTS |
“In my youth, I was fueled by anger. Then I worked with Martin Luther King in
the civil rights movement for three years. What I learned from King was the
beginning of nonviolent activism, and that we are not here to defeat or hurt
anyone, but to reveal the injustice that exists in the situation and see if we can
come to a greater healing. The anger abates, and the sense of having to be
against something instead of for something changes dramatically. Without guns,
our most effective tool is to be willing to stand up collectively in the face of
violence and to call forth the witness of the larger world to the injustice that is
happening.
“Meditation practice turns the telescope around so you can see how you invent
a self and a story. You become familiar with how thoughts and emotions drive
you. Once that happens, the ego-self loosens its grasp. You are not so
compulsive any more or so reactive. You respond to what is going on, but you
no longer react against anything. You also begin to understand equanimity, how
to keep your balance when emotions or disturbing thoughts arise. It is meeting
the angry person with a sense of ‘I am listening to what you are saying, but I do
not understand it with all that anger.’ That is what made both Gandhi and King
brilliant, as well as respected even by those who hated them.
“Like activism, meditation wants to reveal the reality behind the illusion. You
see through the stories. You begin to realize soldiers are not necessarily heroes
but are victims. In the nonviolent worldview, there is no blame; you can hold
someone accountable but there is no blame for what is happening. If you are full
of aggression and agitation, all you are doing is adding that negativity to the mix.
That is why war cannot bring peace.”
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No Choice
The impulse to help others, to stand up against injustice, to make a difference in
the lives of those who are unable to help themselves, and to do this in such a way
that it does not create further harm, is an integral part of the contemplative life.
For Ed, going from the world of drugs and discos in New York City to India,
where he became a swami, a yoga adept living in an ashram, and where he
watched his teacher giving whatever was needed to the poorest of the poor,
connected him to the heart of service. For Deb, being raised as a Quaker deeply
influenced her desire to participate in nonviolent activities. For Kirsten, it was
due to her Buddhist childhood, where she was taught to meditate when she was
just a child and to always think of others first.
| KIRSTEN WESTBY |
“I was six when I received my first formal meditation instruction. At school, we
meditated every day for fifteen minutes both before class started and at the end
of the day. When I was young, my mother would read the obituaries to us from
the newspaper. She would say, ‘These people died today, Kirsten. We could die
at any point. So let us do something great with our day. Let’s help somebody
today.’ When you are raised in this way, it is natural that you then want to create
a life in which you are doing whatever you can for other people.
“I wanted to do something that would not negatively affect anyone else. The
summer I left school, a friend and I took off traveling, and eight months later, we
were in Cambodia. For seven or eight hours, we rode in the back of a pickup
truck with seventeen other Cambodians, bags of rice, and chickens right through
the middle of the whole bombed-out area where the Khmer Rouge were still
very active, and then we took this slow boat for another twelve hours up the
Mekong river. I saw my first refugee camp and my first Red Cross camp, and I
knew this was for me. I had no problem being there; there was no fear. I just
knew that helping in this way was my path; the impulse to be of be of assistance
gave me no choice.
“I went to Nepal where I helped to run a shelter for trafficked girls on the
border with India. The girls had either escaped, or there might have been a police
raid in the brothels in Delhi or Bombay and we would go and get them. Some
were eight years old or younger. Some were twenty years old and had been in
the brothel for years, forced to live in cages. Ninety-seven percent of them were
HIV positive. The most intense suffering you can imagine is an eight-year-old
girl who has been raped continuously for longer than she can remember and who
jumped out of a two-story building and broke her leg in order to get to the
shelter, only to learn that it was her family who sold her to the brothel and so she
has nowhere to go. And yet we could still find moments of happiness and
laughter together.
“I needed to meditate before I could even leave my room in the morning. It
gave me the strength to recognize that suffering is the human experience that we
all have in one form or another, and not to feel overwhelmed by it, not to lose
my balance. Without that meditation, without that space each morning, I would
have been too filled with the suffering; I would have been paralyzed by it. My
mom once told me that once you have learned to meditate, it is like an invisible
tool that you always have with you on your belt. It was without doubt the most
useful tool I had.
“I worked with Urgent Action Fund for five years, traveling into war zones
and listening to stories of what was happening to women and girls. Every
morning I would sit in meditation as it enabled me not to react to all the
aggression I was surrounded by. In the Congo, I had to cross the border that was
just a tree log with fifteen-year-old boys sitting on it holding semiautomatic
weapons. I would very calmly say, ‘I am just here to speak with some of the
girls.’ Often I would have money duct-taped to my stomach or in a pouch—cash
for the women so that they could start an orphanage or take care of the kids—
and I would have to convince these boy-soldiers that I did not have anything on
me. I could not meet them with even an ounce of aggression or they would shoot
me without hesitation. I got very good at dealing with boys with guns!
“More than anything else, meditation released me from anger. I could feel
anger come up, but I knew that my way of surviving and working in this context
was to let it go, to know that these boys were not the enemy but were just as
much a victim of this whole machine of war, forced into the army at such a
young age. Really there was no enemy; it was just a whole environment of
people who had been used and abused. I would constantly remind myself of their
human qualities so I could start the day without any aggression.”
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Political Activism
Political action is deeply affected by our principles and beliefs. The plight of
China invading and ruling Tibet is a situation that has aroused many people’s
anger, a great deal of violence, and innumerable deaths. It has always been close
to Kirsten’s heart, so when the opportunity arose to participate in a peaceful
demonstration, she could not resist. Chinese authorities were at base camp in
Nepal rehearsing to take the Olympic flame through Tibet. The whole world was
going to be watching, and so this was a perfect opportunity to steal the spotlight.
| KIRSTEN WESTBY |
“We were going to Mount Everest base camp. I was to meet up with Tenzin
Dorjee, the first Tibetan in exile to return to Tibet and do a high-profile protest.
My job was to get him in, no matter what. So a few days later, I am on a flight to
China. I am looking for a Tibetan guy holding a bunch of flowers, and he is
supposed to be looking for a girl wearing an orange scarf. Our story is that we
are boyfriend and girlfriend on a vacation for ten days. There were others in the
group, but we did not meet them until later.
“The morning of the protest, we did a lot of meditation. I needed it for what
we were about to do. As we walked the hour-and-a-half hike to base camp from
where we had stayed, Tenzin was chanting the Tara mantra. We were protesting
the Chinese plan to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest and then
run it to Lhasa and past the Potala Palace. We were trying to show that Tibet is
not a part of China. We had a banner, which we had carried in pieces and put
together at different times in different hotel rooms. One part of the banner said
FREE TIBET and was written in both Tibetan and Chinese. Just to say that inside
Tibet is punishable by ten years in prison. I carried that piece in my bra.
“When we got there, the mountain was all covered in mist. We started praying
and doing mantras and whatever people believed in to honor the mountain gods.
And then suddenly the clouds parted and the wind stopped and the cameras
could work. The sun came up over the ridge and shone down on us. We unfurled
the banner, which said ONE WORLD ONE DREAM FREE TIBET 2008, and we sang
the Tibetan national anthem. It was transmitted live to New York and Radio Free
Asia, which most Tibetans listen to all over the world, and apparently people
stood up and took their hats off and started crying. Their anthem had not been
sung publicly inside Tibet since the Chinese invasion more than fifty years ago.
“Despite such a well-organized protest, however, we were caught and held in
prison in China for five days. They moved us at night in separate vehicles. A
female guard kept whispering in my ear, ‘You are never going to see your family
again. You are going to spend the rest of your life in prison.’ That broke me like
a stick of butter in less than twenty minutes. They would make us watch as they
pulled one of our friends into a separate room, and then we would hear people
screaming. We were terrified of being tortured. At one point, I saw everybody
getting pulled out of the cars except for me and I heard my friend Shannon
scream, ‘Stop it—you’re hurting me!’ That did it. I climbed over somebody,
jumped out of the car, and started running around this police courtyard in the
middle of nowhere at 3 a.m. like a chicken with my head cut off, screaming their
names. I was using all my basketball moves to avoid at least ten police officers
who were trying to corner me. I really lost it! But then I connected with another
of the protesters, and he just said, ‘Think of the ripples that are going out around
the world right now. People are hearing about us and saying prayers for us.
Think of all the people who are going to hear about Tibet tomorrow morning
who may never have heard about Tibet before. Just hold onto the ripples. Don’t
let this even phase you.’
“From that moment on, I pulled it all back in. I got my head back together. I
got reconnected. There followed about fifty-five hours of interrogation. They did
not let us sleep, they did not feed us, they kept us in a very hot room and would
not let us take off our layers of clothing from base camp, so we were really hot
and sweating and I had this horrible rash on my ass after twelve hours of being
bumped in vehicles, but during that time, I held it together. I did not break again.
I did not cry. During that time, each one of the other people at some point broke,
the guards having scared them enough. But I had gone deeper into that quiet
place inside, and I did not break again.”
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13
Can Meditation Change the World?
If we divide reality into two camps—the violent and the
nonviolent—and stand in one camp while attacking the
other, the world will never have peace.
THICH NHAT HANH
In order to ascertain if meditation can actually influence and even change the
world, we need to see what is seemingly not right in our world and what, if
anything, needs changing. There are some who believe that the world is exactly
as it is meant to be and that we are learning important lessons by having
challenging difficulties to contend with or that there is a preordained plan bigger
than anything any one of us could know. Perhaps all of the above is true, perhaps
not.
Whatever the situation, life on our planet does not always seem so divinely
planned. Obviously, we experience times of great joy, wonder, laughter, and
beauty. We are social creatures and many, if not all, of these good times are due
to our relationships and especially to shared love. But there are also many times
when we are not so nice, when we treat each other in ways that belie our
sociability. We are attacked for being of a different race or color, women and
children are raped and abused, we turn away from helping a stranger for fear of
those around us, and huge numbers are starving and homeless.
| ED |
“I am a Jew and you are not, meaning that as children, we were only allowed to
relate to people who were like us. I wasn’t allowed to bring a friend home or to
eat in his home if he was not Jewish. I was taught to fear anyone who was
different.”
Despite such disregard for each other and ingrained prejudice, and even with
the injurious capacity of modern warfare methods, if we look back in time we
may be surprised to find that we are actually better behaved and nicer to each
other now than we ever were in the past, when we were far more barbaric and
disrespectful of life.
| ANDREW COHEN |
“Throughout history, the human experience has been extremely brutal. For
instance, if we were living at the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe and
someone broke the law, then their genitals may be cut off or they would be
disemboweled. At the time Shakespeare was writing his plays, people’s heads
were being stuffed on pikes in order to keep the populace in line. In Roman
times, a common entertainment was to watch people be eaten alive by lions. So,
despite unspeakable and horrible atrocities in our current era, we are actually
becoming more civilized.”
As reassuring as it may be that we are kinder to each other now than we used
to be, it would seem that some further evolution is needed in order for us to
overcome our aversion so we can appreciate and care for each other on a regular
basis.
So what is the continuing cause of our disrespect for each other? What is it that
creates so much isolation, loneliness, and separation, where we see others who
are different from us as the enemy? Why do we treat each other with such
disregard and dislike? Is it because we project our hidden fears onto others,
thereby making them the problem that needs to be annihilated, rather than seeing
that the phobia and intolerance actually lie within ourselves?
| JON KABAT-ZINN |
“We have to learn how to put out the welcome mat for our own shadow side
because when we suppress it, we project it onto others and we get the us-and-
them syndrome: We are right and they are not, so let’s kill them before they kill
us.”
As much as we have fought the “other” in order to eliminate the enemy or to
ensure our own survival, we are now moving into a time where such fighting is
actually becoming detrimental to the continued existence of our entire species
and is adding to our demise. For us to successfully overcome many of the issues
we are facing, whether social, environmental, or global, we urgently need to
resolve our own prejudices and to work together, rather than against each other.
| GANGAJI |
“It seems to me that we are on the brink of an evolutionary leap and that what
we are calling the human condition is something that has become outmoded. It
seemed quite useful at an earlier time, when we really did have to struggle with
each other for a piece of food or territory or some shelter. Maybe it is just wired
in us, this me-first attitude, or my tribe first, or my nation first, and the idea of
attacking others out of fear that something will be taken from us. But we can
actually have a cooperative world where we look to each other, because we all
need each other for our survival. Before, we needed to overcome each other in
order to guarantee our survival; now we need to discover an entirely new way of
relating, and we actually need each other to do this.”
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14
We Are the Change We
Are Looking For
Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
THE BUDDHA
A revolution is a re-evolution, where we take a higher step in the evolution of
consciousness; it is also a revolving, a turning around of ourselves in response to
an inner calling. To be the change and make a real difference in the world means
we need a revolution—a compassionate revolution. This is the turning of our
energy from being focused on self-centeredness, self-survival, and closed-
heartedness to concern for others, generosity, and open-heartedness. If we
genuinely want to end war, inequality, and abuse, then we have to practice
ahimsa and kindness toward ourselves and all others equally, for there will never
be peace in the world if we are not at peace within ourselves.
| SAKYONG MIPHAM |
“All of the pain and pleasure that we experience stems fundamentally from the
mind. So when we say we want peace on earth, what we are really talking about
is reducing the conflict in our own minds.”
To consciously activate this change, we need to be honest about our own
behavior. If we need more love, then we have to ask how much love are we
bringing to the world? If we think there needs to be more compassion, are we the
ones who need to be more compassionate? If we are looking for more respect
and kindness, than are we showing respect and kindness toward others? If we
want a friend, are we being a friend? Some time ago, Ed belonged to a
meditation community. At a group meeting, Sarah stood up and announced, “I
have no friends here.” The teacher replied, “Then be a friend.” In other words,
are we a part of the problem or the solution?
| SEANE CORN |
“If what is happening on a global level is representative of what is happening on
the individual level and if I want to transform what is happening globally, then I
have to look within myself and see where I am separating myself from other
human beings and from the earth. Where am I living in blame, in hate, in
terrorism, in war, in any negative capacity toward another being? For if I am not
willing to clean up the fear or the disconnect that is within myself, then I am
responsible for what is happening on a planetary level.”
Many people believe that they cannot be peaceful or happy while others are
suffering or feel guilty if they experience abundance while others are going
without. We were teaching a workshop in England. Claire told us, “I cannot be
peaceful until my children are peaceful; I cannot be happy unless they are
happy.” But suffering ourselves because others are suffering does not help those
who are already in pain; if we cannot help ourselves, then we will be unable to
help anyone. When we find our own peace, then there is one less person
suffering. If we look for happiness outside of ourselves, or look for it some time
in the future when things have changed, then we will never find it, for it is not
dependent on anything or anyone. Rather, happiness is within each one of us; it
is always within us, and it can never be found because it was never lost.
| JOHN GRAY |
“The influence we have on others does not come by trying to change them; it
comes from focusing on change within ourselves. It looks like this: If I say I
want the world to be a healthier, happier, more loving place, then my body has to
become a healthier, happier, more loving place. And if I do not have a healthier,
happier, more loving body, heart, mind, and soul, then I will have no influence
in the world. I can say it, but if I do not literally embody it, then I cannot inspire
it in others.”
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Coming Next
Due to the many years of meditation our contributors have all experienced, the
practice chapters that follow in Part Four are invaluable. There is a depth of
insight that even a seasoned practitioner will benefit from and enjoy. Do not
hesitate to dive into this ocean of wisdom! The meditations are transformative
and have the potential to awaken compassion in every part of our lives.
Part IV
PRACTICE
MAKES PERFECT
IN THE FOLLOWING PRACTICE CHAPTERS, THERE IS A
WEALTH OF UNDERSTANDING AND KNOWLEDGE FROM
OUR VARIED CONTRIBUTORS TO INSPIRE NEW AND
EXPERIENCED PRACTITIONERS ALIKE.
15
Doing It
Meditation is not a war. It is a way of making
friends with ourselves.
RICK FIELDS
The story goes that there was once a famous Buddhist layman named
Busol. He was deeply enlightened, as were his wife, his son, and his
daughter. A man came to visit him one day and asked him, “Is
meditation difficult or not?”
Busol replied, “Oh, it is very difficult—it is like taking a stick and
trying to hit the moon!”
The man was puzzled and thought, “If meditation is so difficult, how
did Busol’s wife gain enlightenment?” So he went and asked her the
same question.
“Meditation is the easiest thing in the world,” she replied. “It is just
like touching your nose when you wash your face in the morning!”
By now, the man was thoroughly confused. So he asked their son: “I
don’t understand. Is meditation difficult or is it easy? Who is right?”
“Meditation is not difficult and not easy,” the son replied. “On the tips
of a hundred blades of grass is the meaning.”
“Not difficult? Not easy? What is it then?” So the man went to the
daughter and asked her: “Your father, your mother, and your brother all
gave me different answers. Who is right?”
The daughter replied, “If you make it difficult, it is difficult. If you
make it easy, it is easy. Where are difficult and easy? Only in the mind.
Meditation is just as it is.”
Yes, meditation is simple: just calming the mind and being still, paying
attention and being present. But it is also not always easy! The mind is
notoriously resistant to being quiet, and as soon as we try to be still, it seems to
do everything it can to distract us. Within a few minutes, our thoughts are
wandering, our body starts to itch, ache, or want to move, we remember things
we need to do that suddenly seem vitally important, and because we are so
distracted, we feel inadequate and think that meditation is not for us.
“Meditation can be intimidating. Sitting there, doing nothing, just breathing
can be trickier than it sounds. It may feel strange, uncomfortable, or even put
you to sleep. Distractions try their best to pester you. Thoughts of the weekend,
family, work, finances, politics, what’s for dinner, all invade your aspiring-to-
be-still mind. You start to fidget, adjusting your seat, clothes, and hair, anything
to have something to do,” writes Tara Stiles on HuffingtonPost.com.
“Meditation can be like a battle with yourself, your thoughts, your body. But if
you stick with the uncomfortable moments, they will start to fade away and cool
things will happen.”
Learning how to be quiet and calm the body takes patience and perseverance.
As we continue, it will begin to feel more natural and ordinary. Remember,
music needs to be played for hours to get the notes right, while in Japan it can
take twelve years to learn how to arrange flowers. Being still happens in a
moment, but it may take some time before that moment comes—hence the need
for practice.
| DAVID SHINER |
“There is a point in meditation where it becomes sweet. The beginning may
appear hard, it takes discipline, but it is like learning anything: You get up, you
get on the horse, you fall off, and you get on the horse again. Swimming is the
same thing: You start in shallow water, and then you get into deeper water. If
that scares you, then you go back to the shallow water until you get more
confident. Practice, practice, practice! Slowly, the joy of being in this quiet space
becomes addictive, you are just there, observing. And it transforms itself into so
much more, into deeper love for other human beings, deeper respect for life,
deeper compassion, and deeper humility. It is like the cream on milk that rises to
the top. The real beauty of what we are, the essence of what we are, very slowly
starts to bubble to the surface.”
Almost everything we do in life is to achieve something: If we do this, then we
will get that; if we do that, then this will happen. We are not used to doing
anything without an agenda. But in meditation we do it just to do it. There is no
ulterior purpose to practicing meditation other than to be here, in the present,
without a goal of succeeding, of trying to get anywhere or achieve anything. If
our purpose is to try to achieve a quiet mind, then the trying itself will create
tension and failure. Instead, we are just with whatever is happening in the
moment, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. No judgment, no right or wrong.
Watching whatever arises and letting it go is all that is required. It is more of an
undoing than a doing.
| PETER RUSSELL |
“One thing I think is really important is the complete and utter effortlessness of
meditation. This is something that is often misunderstood, but if we put any
effort into the meditative process, we actually create more tension. We have to
completely let go of any wanting, intention, or hoping. I see meditation as
coming to a complete and utter acceptance of what is in each moment, as a
chance to go into a real ‘no-agenda’ space. And that can be very hard because
we are so conditioned into doing something with a purpose and that the harder
we try the better we are going to be at it, which is true in almost every other area
of life, but it is the one thing that gets in the way of meditation.”
The important point is that we make friends with our practice. It will be of no
help at all if we feel we have to meditate, for instance, and then feel guilty if we
miss the allotted time or only do ten minutes when we had promised to do thirty.
It is much better to practice for a just a few minutes and to enjoy what we are
doing than to make ourselves sit there, teeth gritted, because we have been told
that only thirty or even forty minutes will have any affect. Meditation is a
companion for us to have throughout our life, like an old friend we turn to when
in need of direction, inspiration, and clarity. It is to be enjoyed!
| KRISHNA DAS |
“Meditation gives us a taste of what it feels like to feel good for no reason at all,
and the more we do it, the less our happiness depends on external things and the
more our happiness deepens inside us. It is just so cool because it works.”
Stillness is actually a natural state of being; it is what is there when we stop
trying, when we release the story. We practice so that we can let go of the busy
mind and the stresses and worries that hold us in anxiety and stop us
experiencing quiet. Practice is a gathering of our dispersed selves into one place;
it brings the mind and heart together in the present moment and acts like an
anchor to hold us in presence. It provides a structure for the mind to become
focused and clear.
| GANGAJI |
“I invite people to just stop and be still. And in that you discover who you are,
because once you discover who you are, you can stop fragmenting into pieces. I
know that in any one day there are moments where there is nothing going on, but
we link up what is happening from thought to thought without any space. We
overlook the spaciousness that it is all happening in.”
As the mind settles, insight arises. We see how everything is in constant
change and movement, how nothing remains the same; we watch how thoughts
and feelings come and go with no permanence. Yet there is also stillness. In this
way, we see both change and stillness as reflections of each other. Within that is
an infinite spaciousness. We may only touch this spaciousness occasionally or
know it fleetingly, or we may find ourselves hanging out there, resting in the
quiet moment. As everything changes, so too will this experience. Sometimes it
will seem very familiar; other times we will be seeing the same thing only with
new eyes.
| DEAN ORNISH |
“There is an old Zen proverb that says, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry
water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ In other words, you may
still do the same activities but the intention behind them can be profoundly
different, not simply to get what you think is going to make you happy, but
rather to have direct experiences of transcendence.”
Below, we offer directions on how to create a daily practice: how to deal with
distractions, such as endless thinking, how to sit, and finding the right time.
Monkey Mind
I can’t relax. I can’t meditate. I just can’t! My mind will not get quiet; it flies all
over the place! My thoughts are driving me mad! Sound familiar?
| CYNDI LEE |
“It is really easy to think that we cannot meditate. People say, ‘My mind is so
active. . . I’m not getting it. . . I can’t do it. . . .’ If we went to an exercise class,
we would expect to first feel kind of uncoordinated and to not really understand
the movement vocabulary, feel tired or maybe stiff, and we would have to push
ourselves to go back. But that is natural; we understand that with our body. Well,
it is the same with meditation. It takes a while to get it. It takes a while to
understand what it is all about, to deal with the mind, and to feel some of the
benefits.”
In the Eastern teachings, the mind is described as being like a monkey bitten
by a scorpion, and, just as a monkey leaps from branch to branch, so the mind
leaps from one thing to another, constantly distracted and engaged in discursive
activity. Then, when we come to sit still and begin to pay attention, we find all
this manic activity going on and it seems insanely noisy. It is actually nothing
new, just that now we are becoming aware of it, whereas before we were
immersed in it, unaware that such chatter was so constant.
| ELLEN BURSTYN |
“Meditation helps us get behind the ego. It helps us get quiet enough so that we
can actually hear the ego at work. All the chatter is the ego’s chatter; it is not the
essence of our inner being. It is only when we settle down and get quiet that we
can hear this voice of the ego and how it clamors for attention. For instance, if
we have a moment of absolute peace with no thought at all and we are really
focused on the breath and we have achieved that quiet state that we want to
achieve, immediately the ego will take credit for it: ‘Look how good I can
meditate!’ To me, meditation is stopping all the associations and chatter in the
mind. That takes practice, and I am better at it on some days than others.
Sometimes I sit down to meditate and the chatter just goes on and on and my
whole meditation gets to be about going back to the beginning where I started.
The meditation becomes the attempt to meditate.”
The experience of the mind being so busy is actually very normal. Someone
once estimated that in any one thirty-minute session of meditation we may have
upward of three hundred thoughts. This illustrates the reality of thinking. Years
of busy mind, years of creating and maintaining dramas, years of stresses and
confusion and self-centeredness, and the mind is not always so ready to be still;
it craves entertainment. So it is not as if we can suddenly turn our mind off when
we sit down to meditate; that would be like trying to catch the wind: impossible.
But having a busy mind does not mean we cannot meditate; it just means we are
like everyone else.
It is not possible to fail at meditation. Even if we sit for twenty minutes and
our mind is thinking non-stop meaningless thoughts, then that is fine. We just
allow thoughts to be thoughts. This will change, as the mind is constantly
unpredictable: A busy mind now may be a quiet mind later. All we need to do is
keep coming back to the breath or practice, be willing to keep going, and give it
time. Our intent is more important than what happens.
| ROBERT THURMAN |
“The first step is to try to focus our mind on something, like counting the breath.
When we do, we see all these runaway thoughts that race through the mind, like
I wonder if my car will be ready, is my parking meter overdue, will I get a ticket,
should I get a new car, is my girlfriend happy? Whatever. Our minds are filled
with these preoccupations, and we do not even realize it. But then we see that we
can just let them go and bring the mind back to something we want to focus on.
That is the first step. It is a beginning, calming, waking-up step. But more
important than that is to choose positive thoughts to focus on, such as I want to
be more loving to that person who annoys me, I want to be more content, I want
to be more friendly, peaceful, happy, and clear, and I no longer need to suffer.”
Practicing meditation means slowly and gently training the mind to do
something it may not have done before: to be still. The technique gives the mind
an activity, such as counting breaths or reciting a mantra, and every time it
wanders off on a thinking spree, we simply notice this and bring it back to the
practice. The experience of stillness is accumulative: The more we sit, then
slowly, slowly, the mind becomes quieter, despite whatever distraction there
may be. Achaan Sumedho, a Buddhist abbot, recounted how he was once
teaching meditation in Bombay and right outside the window was a construction
site. He had just started the meditation when a pneumatic drill began digging up
the road. He could not stop the program, so, “Quite simply, we became the
sound.”
| PETER RUSSELL |
“I do not think the mind gets in the way of meditation at all; it is simply that this
is how the mind is right now. We do not have to start battling the mind or trying
to control it. It is the same with sound; we think we cannot be quiet because of
the sound of the refrigerator or the sound of the traffic. But actually it is our
attitude toward it, because the sound is just a part of being in the present
moment, and is, therefore, a part of meditation. It is our resistance to sound that
is the barrier to meditation. If we do not resist it, then the mind can be quiet in
the middle of all sorts of noise.”
In other words, meditation is not a process of trying or forcing the mind to be
still. Rather, it is a letting go of resistance, of whatever may arise: doubt, worry,
uncertainty and feeling inadequate, the endless dramas, fear and desire. Every
time we find our mind is drifting, daydreaming, remembering the past or
planning ahead, we just come back to now, come back to this moment. In
meditation, paying attention is the point of the practice. To see and let go. To be
with what is. Just witnessing. Nothing else is going on.
| DENNIS GENPO MERZEL |
“If trying to grasp at something arises, just notice it, just be aware and mindful
that the seeking mind is trying to come back into play and re-identify with the
non-seeking. The whole point is to be identified with the process of witnessing,
of just being or non-seeking, versus that of seeking or being caught up in the
seeking.”
The endless chatter is a great distraction, and not just from being quiet but also
from being able to really connect with our inner feelings; it is like a wall of noise
blocking out the heart. As the mind begins to settle, so deeper feelings can arise.
As we embrace these then we have the spaciousness to develop more altruistic
qualities, such as kindness and compassion.
| MAX SIMON |
“The primary reason why I meditate is to quiet down the mind chatter.
Developing love and kindness is really difficult if the whole time the mind is
saying ‘That’s not true; that’s not real.’ The technique allows me to get
underneath the conversation. Everybody feels good when they are quiet, relaxed,
and open, so the more that we quiet the mind chatter, the more good we feel, and
then we take it from mediation into life.”
Thoughts come and go, but they will settle; the mind does become quiet, even
if only for a moment. Those quiet moments are like the gaps between the
thoughts, and although they may be brief, they connect us deeply with a great
love and openness within.
| RAM DASS |
“Going inward, going into awareness, not getting caught identifying with
thoughts, you can just be aware of thoughts. I call this being loving awareness.”
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Labeling Thoughts
One of the ways to become more objective about thinking is to label the
thoughts. Whenever we catch ourselves drifting off into dramas or daydreams,
we can silently repeat: thinking, thinking, and then come back to the practice. In
the same way, if we are getting distracted, we simply label it distraction,
distraction. It is very possible to go to all sorts of places in the mind while we
sit, create all sorts of images and fantasies, but each time we label it thinking or
distraction, we can let it all go, including the accompanying emotions, and just
be in the present again. There is no need to struggle.
“Notice what pops into your head—like what you want for dinner, whether
Benicio is sexier than Brad, if you should ask for a raise. . . . No matter what it
is, label it as a thought, and then redirect your attention to your breath,” writes
Nicole Beland on WomansHealthmag.com. “When you catch yourself
daydreaming, planning, analyzing, or worrying (which will happen constantly),
just let the thoughts drift by and refocus on the air flowing through your body.”
We can see thoughts like clouds in the sky, just moving through the sky
without stopping and without affecting the clarity or brilliance of the sky, or see
them like birds—beautiful, but here one minute and then gone. Watch them fly
away. Applying this to feelings as well as thoughts, and we see how everything
comes and goes, nothing stays, and nothing is permanent, no matter how strong
or insistent the thought or feeling may be.
Witnessing Mind
| ANDREW COHEN |
“It is very difficult without a mirror to see our own nose. In the same way, we
are usually so identified with the subjective nature of our experience that it is
very difficult to be objective. The basis of meditation is that we assume the
position of the witness, we witness our own relationship to ourselves as an
objective experience: what was subject, what was felt or experienced as the self,
becomes object. In other words, we become aware of many different dimensions
of ourselves that we were so identified with that we were totally unable to see
them objectively. As we develop our capacity to be aware of our own
experience, subject becomes object.”
The observer that sees without being engaged is the witness. This is the core of
mindfulness meditation. As we develop the witness, we realize that we are not
our thoughts, we are not our emotions. We have them, we appreciate them, we
honor them, but we are not them. We are that which observes them and
witnesses what is, just as it is.
| MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH |
“Through the practice of meditation, we become aware that we are aware. We
realize that we have a body, but are not the body. We witness the thinking mind,
but realize that we are not the thoughts that are passing through. Emotions of all
kinds arise, but we realize we are that which witnesses them; our essence
remains the witness to the whole panorama of emotions. The more we witness
this, the more we see through the ego and actually make it an entertaining ally.
We become nonattached to its influence or needs, and as a result, it loses its
power.”
There is simply the state of being present, of relative freedom from
identification with the ego-self. We see how our own selfishness, aversion, or
ignorance perpetuates the dramas and maintains the fears, for beneath them is a
quiet stillness. In the spaciousness that silence creates, we meet and get to know
ourselves; this is a wondrous and beautiful experience. Whether we practice for
just ten minutes a day or go into a long period of retreat does not matter. We are
removing the barriers that limit us, while opening our doors of perception and
awareness.
| PONLOP RINPOCHE |
“Ever since we were born, we have been living in the world of concepts that
people have given to us, so we may have never really stepped back and just
observed things as they are. When I meditate, it is a process of getting to know
myself, witnessing my mind, discovering my true nature, and seeing the nature
of the world. When we see something, we just see it; when we hear something,
we just hear it. In that state of awakening, we are totally relaxed, but at the same
time we have a clear awareness.”
We may dip in and out of such spaciousness, but it is always there. Remember,
in essence the mind is the clear, transparent sky. Everything in the sky just
comes and goes but it does not affect our basic skyness. There is just mind, and
as that dissolves into stillness, finally there is no mind!
| DEVA PREMAL AND MITEN |
“Meditation is not just sitting cross-legged in the lotus position for an hour; it is
every breath we take and every move we make. And in that, something pure can
arise. It is a practice to watch the unknown and to watch the mind and a practice
of dedication and nonattachment. We realize that we are not the body and are not
our thoughts. They are just two things we get very attached to in this life. In
meditation, we can constantly watch this so that it becomes a knowing rather
than just an intellectual understanding. We become aware of every sound around
us, and, in that awareness, we become the center of the symphony. In the center
is emptiness, is presence, an inner vastness. There is nothing going on.”
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Sitting Right
To sit comfortably, it is best to wear loose, relaxed clothing. Remove glasses or
watch, undo any belts, turn off the telephone, and maybe leave a note on the
door saying “Do not disturb.” In other words, remove anything that might cause
a distraction.
For meditation, it is helpful to have a straight back so that the breath can flow
in and out unimpeded. Also, an upright back is indicative of an alert and
dignified mind, whereas a slumped or rounded back gives rise to feelings of
sadness, depression, and hopelessness—not qualities we want to bring to
meditation. Traditionally, the posture is sitting cross-legged on the floor, which
some people manage to do comfortably. But for many, their bodies are not used
to sitting in this way and it can cause discomfort. In which case, an upright chair
is just as good.
If sitting on a chair, then use a small cushion to support an upright spine; feet
are flat on the floor, and hands are resting in the lap or on the thighs. If sitting
cross-legged on the floor, then use one or two quite firm cushions to sit on, as
this will lift the spine and buttocks so that the knees fall forward. In this position,
the back is naturally upright.
When you first sit down, spend a few moments checking your posture and
releasing any tension. Move your body backward and forward a little to get a
sense of balance and what a straight back feels like. Head is neither tilted up or
down, but just resting comfortably. Eyes are either closed or slightly open but
not focused. Despite a perfect posture, aches and pains do occur. If that happens,
then move slightly to release the tension, or simply let the discomfort relax by
surrendering to it.
| PETER RUSSELL |
“Many people say the thing that disturbs their meditation is they have some
discomfort in their body, maybe a pain in the knees or in the shoulder. The
normal reaction is to try to push it away, to get rid of it, to ignore it, or wish it
was not there. But if you allow it in, you can start to explore it. Okay, there’s a
sharp bit here, a numb bit here, see how far has it spread. The sensations may get
stronger, but the actual hurt comes from the resistance of pushing it away. When
we stop resisting, we stop pushing. We are just sitting with it as it is, and then
the pain starts releasing, muscles begin to let go. We do not have to get rid of
something, rather let it in and let it be. And then the release happens of its own
accord.”
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Alone or Together
Whether to practice alone or in a group is a personal decision. We know people
who much prefer to sit alone, as they feel able to enter into their own space more
easily. But we also lead meditation group retreats and discover that most
participants find it very supportive and inspiring to meditate together. The group
energy seems to hold the space and allow the participants to go deeper into
silence. Those who do like to meditate in a group do not necessarily want to be
with any one particular teacher and so often sit with a group of friends at home.
| MARK MATOUSEK |
“One of the best things I have done in my life was to start a weekly sitting group
at my house. It is a refuge and sanctuary for friends and deepens my
relationships with these kindred souls. It serves as a kind of Sabbath in an
otherwise hectic, secular life, an ongoing source of strength and joy from the
simplest of practices.”
Sitting with others offers a chance for us to grow individually while also
sharing that experience in a silent, unspoken way with our companions.
| SUSAN SMALLEY |
“The acronym SIT (Synchronized Individual Transformation) is perfect for
describing what often arises when we sit together in meditation or
contemplation. Three years ago, my friends and I began a ‘Friday morning SIT’
at my house. A group of us meet each Friday to sit together in meditation. No
one leads the group; no ones teaches. We merely come together, someone reads
an inspirational quote from a glass jar full of quotes we have each submitted, we
sit together for thirty minutes with a timer to keep track of time, and then go our
separate ways. In this weekly ritual, we experience synchronized individual
transformations and deepen our friendships as well.”
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16
Sitting Meditation
It is in the silence I find my life worth living; I find
it interesting. The rest of it is noise.
RUBY WAX
| WAVY GRAVY |
“I do this thing with the children where I say, ‘Breathing in, I calm my body;
breathing out, I smile. Breathing in, I know this supreme moment; breathing out,
I know it is a wonderful moment.’ When I do that with the children, they all
jump for joy. It is very cool.”
If children can do it, so can we! But in our busy and chaotic lives, we easily
miss this treasure that lies within us. All we need to do is sit still, close our eyes,
and become aware of the quiet stillness beneath the endless chatter in our minds.
Others may laugh and say we are just contemplating our own navel, but they
don’t realize that this is actually a very precious gift.
There are various techniques that can help us to be still, but these techniques
are not about trying to achieve anything or to develop special powers, and no
technique is necessarily any better than any other. Although the techniques may
differ, they all point to the same place, which is the cultivation of awareness.
| LAMA SURYA DAS |
“Just sitting cross-legged does not help us to become enlightened. Statues sit
cross-legged, frogs sit like meditators; I don’t think they are becoming
enlightened waiting to catch a fly. Rocks just sit there, but I don’t think they are
enlightened. Awareness is the main component in meditation, a discipline of
refining, energizing, animating, and awakening the consciousness.”
There are many ways we can bring the mind into a quiet place. Those that
gather or focus our attention are the ones traditionally used, the most direct form
of which is just watching the natural in-and-out flow of the breath. This
internalizes our awareness; it focuses our attention on the inner world rather than
the outer one. It also develops mindfulness of our body, thoughts, and feelings.
| TIM FREKE |
“I settle into my body and become aware of all the different parts and what they
are doing, like the internal organs and the breath. What is the actual experience
of feeling or listening? It becomes an investigation of the moment. I look at the
seeing or the hearing or the feeling or the weight of my body or the tension or
the relaxation or the breath coming in and going out. Then I sink into the mind
and watch the flow of thoughts. What is it to experience thought? What is a
thought? What is an idea? Memories come, but what is that? What is the
experience of a memory or a fear or a hope? It is endlessly fascinating.”
Then there are meditations that develop specific aspects of our being, such as
kindness, love, compassion, and forgiveness. These are based on opening the
heart. Rather than trying to find these qualities outside of ourselves, they are
already within us and we simply need to connect more deeply with them. Each
spiritual tradition also has its own meditation techniques, perhaps using sacred
teachings as an inspiration or intoning sacred sounds.
| MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH |
“There are different meditation techniques that suit different temperaments.
There is contemplative meditation where a practitioner takes something from one
of the scriptures of the world’s wisdom traditions, or a poem by Rumi, Hafiz, or
Kabir, for example, and contemplates it in silence, until the silence becomes
stillness out of which insights begin to be perceived about the piece’s inner
meaning, to receiving its gift of beauty. Then there is existential meditation, like
Ramana Maharshi’s question, Who am I? A person may be a plumber or a
doctor or a schoolteacher, but encoded within them is the desire to discover their
original face, their pure essence before the influence of their socialization took
place and labels became attached to their simplicity of being. The third
meditation practice is what I call spiritual meditation, where the practitioner’s
specific purpose is to enter a state of pure awareness, a consciousness of oneness
with God.”
Self-inquiry is a time-honored technique used to break through the conceptual
limitations of the thinking mind. We do this by asking unanswerable questions
that make us step beyond the logical mind to a deeper level of awareness.
| GANGAJI |
“I use inquiry as a way of getting the mind to turn inward to the silence. It could
be the question, ‘Who am I?’ Or it could be ‘What am I avoiding in this
moment?’ Or, ‘Where is silence?’ ‘What is needed in this moment, right in this
very moment, what is needed for true peace?’ ‘What is needed if this was my
last moment on earth?’ Rather than sending the mind outward to gather
information or experiences, it is really sending the mind inward to question our
basic assumptions of who we think we are.”
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Practice Meditation:
Breath Awareness
Sitting with a straight back is especially important for this meditation, as you
need to be able to breathe easily and freely. Hands are resting in the lap. Eyes
are closed or lowered. Establish your posture and take a deep breath and let it
go.
Now bring your attention to the rhythm of the breath and simply watch your
natural breathing without trying to change it in any way. Let your breathing be
normal and relaxed, your attention still and focused.
Let yourself rest in the rhythm of the breath. If you find you are getting
distracted or caught up in thinking, simply label your thoughts as distraction or
thinking and let them go, or see them as birds in the sky and let them fly away.
Do this for at least ten minutes. Just breathing and being.
When you are ready, take a deep breath. Gently open your eyes.
Here are further instructions for this practice to enable you to focus more fully
on the breath, rather than getting distracted or restless:
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Insight Meditation
From breath awareness, insight (or vipassana) meditation arises naturally. We
rest in stillness, letting the mind be as it is, without any judgment or
discrimination. All kinds of thoughts may arise, or feelings, sensations, and
images. We watch, without pushing away or holding on. We are simply aware.
In between the thoughts or sensations, natural wisdom or insight arises into the
nature of our world and ourselves. In particular, we are able to see how all things
arise through desire and dissatisfaction, how all things are impermanent and in a
state of constant change, and how there is no fixed or solid separate self, simply
a state of emptiness that contains all form.
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Loving Kindness
As we saw in chapter eight, loving kindness is a powerful and transformative
practice. It awakens our awareness of and care for others while also recognizing
there is no essential separation between us. The meditation practice leads us
through different stages, from developing this quality toward ourselves and our
loved ones, to people we may be having a hard time with, and finally to all
beings. This follows the opening and expansion of our awareness from self-
centeredness to other-centeredness.
Practice Meditation:
Loving Kindness
Spend at least five minutes on each stage of this practice. Settle your body and
relax. Then spend a few minutes focusing on the rhythm of your breath, while
also bringing your attention to the heart space in the center of your chest.
Loving Ourselves
There are variations to this practice that can be used to address specific issues.
Below is a practice, offered by psychotherapist Deepesh Faucheux, to heal our
more negative issues, such as anger, failure, or self-dislike, as discussed in
chapter five.
Practice Meditation:
Loving All Parts of Yourself
| FROM DEEPESH FAUCHEUX |
I invite you to get very comfortable, close or defocus your eyes, and let your
awareness come to rest in your body . . . feel your feet on the floor . . . feel your
weight in the chair or on the cushion . . . you are neither in the past nor in the
future . . . you are simply right here and now . . . there is no place else you have
to go, nowhere else to be but simply right here.
And from this place of being completely in the present, take a look at whatever
thoughts, feelings, or sensations are present for you. . . .
Simply observe . . . no need to analyze or judge . . . just look . . . just feel. . . .
And gently welcome all of the parts of you . . .
the “good” parts you like . . . the parts you call “me” . . .
the parts you reject . . . the angry part . . . the ugly part . . .
the scared part . . . the bored part . . . the sad part . . .
the hard heart . . . the broken heart. . . .
All of them are welcome here.
And as you look at whatever is present for you, see it as a big house full of
guests . . .
some rowdy . . . some peaceful . . . some ridiculous. . . .
Just look . . . simply inquisitive. . . .
From this place, see if you can invoke a loving attitude . . .
so you are not only accepting all the parts but are also in loving presence with
them . . .
feel your heart . . . allow your heart to stay open.
And from this place, offer yourself a simple prayer:
May all of the parts of me be one,
may I be well, in body, mind, and spirit,
may I be at peace.
(Repeat the prayer three times.)
And from this place of loving presence for the self, notice what comes up when
you say, “It is okay to be happy . . . to love myself . . . to forgive myself.”
Sit with whatever arises for you and simply notice it.
Embrace the “yeses” as well as the “nos.”
When you feel ready, notice the weight of your body, sensations in your feet
and hands, and slowly open your eyes.
Forgiveness Meditation
In chapter seven, we discussed the vital role of forgiveness in a world that
encourages revenge. This is a powerful meditation that releases feelings of
separation, guilt, blame, and shame. It takes us through three vital stages, from
forgiving another, to asking for forgiveness, and then to forgiving ourselves. We
invite you to move into it gently, perhaps just doing one step in each session, to
avoid repressing any feelings. It is important to acknowledge whatever arises.
Forgiveness can take time, so be patient; your experience will deepen the more
you practice this meditation.
Practice Meditation:
Forgiveness
Spend five to ten minutes on each stage of this practice. Find a comfortable
place to sit, and settle your attention on your breathing. Feel your heart opening
and softening.
Gently become aware of any resistance to forgiveness. Do not shy away from
this, but see the effect this resistance may be having in you, and how it limits and
restricts your feelings. Keep breathing, letting the breath open and soften your
heart.
Practice Meditation:
As a Last Resort!
Anytime you feel stress rising, heart closing, mind going into overwhelm, just
find a place to be quiet, focus on your breathing for ten breaths or until you feel
at ease again. As you do this, you can practice one of the following:
Practice Meditation:
Daily Check-In
| FROM MARSHALL ROSENBERG |
We can build into our lives two forms of meditation.
First, at the beginning of the day, is remembering how we choose to live this
day, how we want to be, bringing us back to the preciousness of compassionate
giving and receiving.
Then, toward the end of the day, we can evaluate that day, seeing whether our
behavior nurtured life or not. We do that without self-blame.
Then we can mourn what was not nurturing, or when we have not engaged in
compassionate giving and receiving, so we can learn from it, and we can
celebrate when we are living in harmony with the life we choose to live.
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17
Sounding Meditation
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And
leaving behind the mind is meditation. Meditation returns
you to the source. And the source of all is sound.
KABIR
| ED |
“I would sit cross-legged in the ashram in central India and chant the names of
Rama and Krishna. This is called the mahamantra, or great sacred sound, known
in the West as the Hare Krishna mantra. Intoning and repeating the names of the
different deities in this way is meant to awaken the divine within and free us
from the world of delusion. Chanting in India is very emotional and people are
often moved to dance in wild ecstasy. I loved this moment, such a surrendering
of the ego-me into the vastness of divinity.”
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Making Sound
To benefit from the meditative quality of sound does not mean we have to have a
perfect voice or even be able to sing in tune, for often the singing or chanting
itself will release a purer tone.
| DEB |
“I was thirteen and in singing class at school. Suddenly, the music teacher told
us to stop; he looked around the room and then pointed at me. ‘You,’ he said,
‘will never sing in tune!’ That moment inhibited me for years; I was terrified of
singing in earshot of anyone else. Until I started to chant, when I found a voice
that was hidden inside, which was my heart singing.”
There are many ways of making sound and using the voice to discover our
inner world. Through the voice and the breath together we can enter into a
spontaneous experience of resonance as we release sound from a deeper part of
our being.
| CHLOE GOOD CHILD |
“The human voice itself, the naked human voice, is a way of accessing inner
spaciousness. If we take just one big breath in and let out an almighty
unobstructed cry, and keep crying out until we get to the very end of that breath,
then at the moment we are literally empty of breath, we will find ourselves in a
place where we are on the edge between living and dying. The human voice is a
fantastic bridge into a deep state of meditation because it harnesses the emotions
and allows a release in a very simple way. It takes us out of the mind and opens
the heart, and then we are laughing, crying, and breathing in again, we are
coming home again more deeply, falling more and more deeply inside ourselves,
letting go and breathing again. Imagine this is the very first or very last breath of
our life. In that imagining, we are suddenly at a kind of turning point, on the
threshold of a new cycle, we are in unknown territory.
“We have practiced this with people who are dying, with those who are
terminally ill, or with ordinary neurotics like ourselves who just want to find a
simple, effortless, and accessible way to empty out. It immediately takes us out
of the mind and into the emotions, and then it opens the heart, and then before
we know where we are we are falling deeply into our own being, surrendering
and releasing. We encourage people to do this over a period of time, maybe half
an hour, but it could just be five minutes or even just one minute. It brings us up
against ourselves in a way that can be both startling and delightful.”
Sounding not only enables us to meet and greet ourselves, but it does this by
creating an outlet for any distracting inner noise to be released: All our fears and
neuroses, excuses and doubts. Making spontaneous free-flowing sound is,
therefore, a wonderful precursor to silent meditation as we can sound out any
resistance or tension before sinking into the silence.
| VICKIE DODD |
“I use sound to quiet my mind, to quiet the chatter, so that I can go deep enough
to listen. I use it with people who have never meditated or who thought they
could not. When we sound, then oxygen starts moving and changing the
biological system to relieve stress and emotional burdens. Sounding makes the
body become more liquid and dissolves thoughts like I can’t do this; I’ll never
know how to do this; I’m tired; what time is it? I’m hungry; I need to go; and
I’m uncomfortable. We can sound those thoughts; we can sound unpredictable,
chaotic, politically incorrect thoughts. All the different characters inside of us
need a voice. Then they can settle down—they have been heard. Anything that is
hungry keeps gnawing at us; it is going to get our attention one way or another,
so we give it some air. We do all kinds of spontaneous and unpredictable
random, chaotic sounding; then we lie down and start breathing. This way, a lot
of baggage is released and there might be a moment of nectar that makes it all
worthwhile.”
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Listening to Silence
Making a sound or creating music is not all we can do to deepen our meditation;
we can also listen. This is not the same as hearing, but is more receptive, as we
are receiving the sound into our being. Through listening, we are able to
experience the sound of silence itself.
| DON CAMPBELL |
“Meditation occurs in a place of listening after a sound discovery, where the
sound and the listening to the sound become a bridge into openness. Whether we
are in a hospital bed or a church or a synagogue, whether we are alone or under
stress, whether we are in a city or in nature, we can listen. Listening is not to
hear. Hearing is just a vessel, whereas listening has a focus to it. The big news is
what is going on after the sound has finished. Give yourself a meditation
exercise over a month: Each week, go to a different sound experience, like folk
singing, a symphony, a jazz bar, a choir, or some place where there is music.
Only spend an hour; don’t overwhelm. And listen. When you come out of that
event, find a place to sit and meditate and notice what is going on. It is the extra
value after the experience.”
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18
Moving Meditation
Each step we take creates a cool breeze, refreshing our body
and mind. Every step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
THICH NHAT HANH
Alistair was having a hard time sitting. We were leading a meditation retreat in
Ireland, and Alistair’s posture was askew; he would start out sitting upright but
within five minutes would be bent over. Every so often, we would quietly say,
“Straighten your back,” and he would try, but it did not last long. However,
when we interspersed sitting with walking meditation, he was in his element. At
the end of the five days, we asked how everyone had done and if there was
anything they would like to share. Alistair simply said, “Thank you for
introducing me to my feet.”
Although meditation may be an experience of conscious oneness, of merging
into a greater whole and dissolving boundaries, it is not a matter of either
ignoring or forgetting the body. There are many stories of ascetics denying their
physical needs in an attempt to purify their bodies and minds, and the Buddha
himself also practiced such austerity before he realized that spiritual awakening
was not separate from his physical self. Rather, within the body, is everything
we have ever experienced, like an airplane’s black box, and we can use that
knowledge to inform our present reality. By bringing greater awareness to the
body as the ground of our being that connects us to all life, we discover an
infinite source of information and insight. We sit, sing, or walk our meditation
practice in the body; through it, we experience every sensation and feeling and
embody our awareness in the relative world.
| REGGIE RAY |
“Meditation is a way to become a full human being, a mature human being, a
person who is in possession of themselves and experiences this world in a
complete way. When you bring awareness into your body, you enter into a realm
of mystery and openness around feeling and sensation. In effect, you turn off the
thinking function, and the body itself begins to guide you in your life. Insights
arise, but also new ways of feeling and experiencing the world, and that is really
what it means to grow as a human being.”
Mindfulness is more than just being aware of our thoughts and feelings or how
we relate to others; it also applies to the body and our movements, such as
walking or even how we pick up a cup of tea. Do we reach out and grab the cup,
or do we pick it up with respect? Eating is a physical action that we are usually
unaware of as we are so often distracted by conversation or watching television.
Eating silently and with awareness, as practiced on meditation retreats, extends
our mindfulness into our everyday world. In the same way, different moving
meditations awaken awareness of our physical presence so that we inhabit our
body and actions with greater consciousness.
| LINDSAY WAGNER |
“To me, meditation is surrendering myself—or the self that I think I am—to the
inherent connectedness to the source of all of creation. It isn’t restricted to just
the quiet times. It is my goal to be very still when I am still, and not to lose touch
with that connectedness when I am moving. It constantly reminds me and
strengthens my awareness of that connectedness.”
Movement and emotion arise from the same Latin root: emovere. To be
emotionally moved by something is to be physically affected by it. If we are sad
or depressed, then our movements will be heavy and slow; if we are angry, they
become jerky and dramatic. Moving the body beyond its habitual limitations
loosens energy on both the physical and psycho/emotional levels. In other
words, releasing tensions in the body also releases them in the mind.
Feelings and memories get locked in the joints, muscles, and ligaments, often
from as far back as childhood. The joints enable us to move with grace and
fluidity; they also join up our thoughts and feeling with our actions. If that
connection is restricted or blocked, then the energy cannot flow freely and there
is a lack of emotional ease. So through moving the body, greater freedom comes
to the mind. In this way, the body becomes our teacher.
| TAMI SIMON |
“For me, it is easier and more effective if I work through my body—I can
unravel things pretty deep and quick. I breathe right into those tight places and
ask them to show me what they are holding; I see the images and hear the story
that comes into awareness. Our body is the smartest teacher we have, and it
wants us to reclaim our open-heartedness and connection to the earth and the
things that really matter. If we listen to our body, it is asking us to enter a natural
meditation, it tells us to lie down when we are tired, it tells us when we need to
stop, to slow down. Moving meditation is the ideal way of slowing us down
enough so our body can speak to us.”
Moving meditation is found in such practices as hatha yoga, tai chi, or qigong,
or in walking, running, dancing, and even firewalking. For instance, during long
periods of sitting meditation, such as on a retreat, the periods of sitting are
always combined with periods of walking meditation as a way to not only move
and stretch the body but also to experience extending the meditation into the rest
of life. As with using sound, through movement we are giving the mind
something to do so that it can become still. The challenge here is that our eyes
are open and there can, therefore, be greater distraction. But as we surrender to
the movement so the boundaries between stillness and movement dissolve.
Yoga
The word yoga literally means “yoke,” or “that which unites.” It is the uniting of
the body, mind, and spirit, encouraging a full experience of the intricate
relationship between the mind and body, and how to bring this relationship into
balance and harmony. Developed thousands of years ago, yoga has many
different aspects: ethics, discipline, relaxation, meditation, devotion, and
knowledge, as well as movement.
Hatha yoga, a system of physical movements, is the form of yoga practiced the
most in the West. Hatha uses different postures, or asanas, to stretch, invigorate,
balance, and tone the body. As the body finds greater equilibrium and harmony,
so does the mind. The word asana means “seat” and implies that the movement
prepares us to be able to sit for meditation.
| RICHARD FREEMAN |
“My initial impression of yoga was that I would just do a few asanas, a few
postures, to kind of un-stress all of my nerves and then I would just sit down and
go into deep meditation. If only it were so simple! My appreciation of this
practice has grown over the years. I still see it as dissolving back into meditation
and awareness, but it is also a way of taking the refined insight gained in
meditation out through my nervous system and into the things that my nervous
system connects to in the world. It helps me find and face the little knots or
misunderstandings in my own perception or the denials that happened years ago
in my childhood that stop me from experiencing things fully.”
Although some forms of hatha yoga are nowadays taught in an energetic
fashion, traditionally it was done slowly, with awareness. Ed trained in India,
where he was taught hatha as a meditative flow. The system of asanas was
developed so that each posture relates to a different attitude, which is expressed
both physically and mentally. The movement makes the spine more supple,
releases tension, and brings the mind inward. The effect develops over a period
of time, subtly changing the way we move and walk, as well as the way we
think, feel, and behave. It is ideally suited to relieving stress, and indeed it is
taught in many stress-reduction clinics. But it is especially important in helping
us to recognize our limitations and to go beyond them. Without pushing or
straining, we breathe and move through our resistance in a posture,
simultaneously watching the mind going beyond its own restrictions.
| RICHARD FREEMAN |
“Yoga is almost a way of looking for trouble. You may be feeling pretty good,
but then you start doing postures and all of a sudden you discover there is a
holding pattern that goes way deeper into your very being. You have to breathe
into it and observe it as it is. The postures and the breathing, or pranayama, are
like a fine toothcomb that take out all the buried stuff you don’t need anymore. If
you had just sat in meditation, you may not have found that pattern as it arises
through the movement.”
As each different posture stretches the mind as well as the body, we gradually
find ourselves moving into a different position where our reference points have
shifted and both mind and body have opened to a new understanding. This
becomes a meditation in movement, and also deepens our sitting meditation
experience.
| KALI RAY |
“When we begin to apply the real principles of yoga, it is a relaxation in action.
There is an ‘economy of movement’ as we only move what we need to and
every movement counts. We use the body as a tool for concentration and focus.
Being aware of the movement in every posture shows us how to be aware of
every movement or action in life. The body is like an instrument used by a
musician, a play between the breath and the posture in a steady rhythm. We start
to feel this rhythm in life as a rich, meditative flow. There are many different
principles of this flow, but they are all aiming to become more aware, and this
greater awareness is meditation. The intention is to experience the meditative
flow through the body, breath, and mind in harmony, so that in the rest of our
life we are at ease and the mind is calm. Then, when we come to sitting
meditation, we are ready to look at our mind, to see what emotions, feelings, and
thoughts are there and to discover their true nature. If we continue with our lives
without having any connection between what we do in meditation and what we
do in life, then we will not see much change.”
In this way, yoga enters into every aspect of our lives and becomes a living
meditation finding expression through the body. As the body opens, we open. As
the body flows, our own resistances release and relax into that flow.
| CYNDI LEE |
“I teach the vinyasa form of yoga, traditionally defined as ‘things going in a
logical sequence.’ There are three parts to this: rising, abiding, and dissolving.
The dissolving of one thing is the arising of the next . . . we inhale and exhale:
That is a vinyasa. Every day and night is a vinyasa; every life is a vinyasa; every
ebb and flow of the tides is a vinyasa. We can observe the same flow with any
kind of feeling—it arises, it dissolves. It’s like a Hallmark card: ‘One door
closes and another one opens.’ At the end of the day, it is not about how long we
can sit on our mat or whether we can wrap our legs around our neck; it is how
much we can open to ourselves and other people.”
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Walking
Walking meditation is usually practiced by alternating it with sitting meditation,
as it brings the mind and body into a unified whole. This is particularly the case
during longer sessions of sitting.
| DEB |
“We are on a retreat in Thailand. Watching the flow of the in-and out-breath, I
walk, lifting, moving, and placing. Breathing and walking. Breathing and
walking. From one coconut tree to the next, then back again, the ground between
is soft. Eyes downcast, I place my bare feet carefully, mindful of the black ants,
spiders, and beetles. Around me I am vaguely aware of others doing the same,
breathing and walking, each in their own spaciousness.”
Walking meditation is not the same as going for a walk through the woods or
by the beach, lovely as that may be, but is a more focused, deliberate, and
conscious walk. The eyes are open but lowered just to the ground in front so that
the mind does not drift or get distracted. Entering into the rhythmic movement of
walking meditation, of just placing one foot in front of the other, allows the mind
to find a natural stillness.
| MAURA SILLS |
“Walking meditation is probably more effective for me than most other
meditations, as the thinking mind starts to drop away when I come into body and
feeling, it slows me down. It also softens that sense of me, I, and myself. I start
to pay attention to movement in relationship, to make contact with the earth, to
feel my body in space; I pay attention to the conditions in my body, to the air. It
is about relationship. You cannot go walking with your eyes closed; you have to
have some sense of external awareness as well as inner awareness. The
relationship of the two is essential.”
Silent walking meditation has been used in many places around the world as a
means of peacefully demanding an end to violence, and also as a way of
contrasting the busyness of life, as seen in PDMs.
| MAX SIMON |
“We do something called a PDM, which is a public display of meditation. We
get groups of young people together, and we walk in single file, in silence, and
sit in silence in public places. One time we did this was in front of Louis
Vuitton, the designer clothes store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. We had
thirty-five young people walking until we were in front of the shop, standing still
shoulder to shoulder. When I said PDM, everyone dropped down on the street
and settled into mediation for fifteen minutes. Then at the signal everyone got up
and we walked to the next spot and did it again.
“We do it that precisely so that the participants can see how they show up and
how they are really able to step into a place of power when they are centered.
Afterward, we debrief. Many say how amazed they were to get quiet, sometimes
for the first time, even with cars whipping by at sixty miles an hour. Some
people say that they feel more comfortable in their own skin because to deal with
the distractions—at one point, we had paparazzi snapping photos of us, and
people walking by asking us what we were doing—we had to come into a
centered space that enabled the external distractions to melt away.”
| | |
Firewalking
We were teaching in Sweden at a large summer gathering. At the end of the
week was a firewalk, a walk over red-hot embers, led by Peggy Dylan. Although
the experience was new to us, it was immediately clear the quality of meditation
such a mind-opening experience demands, as it takes us far beyond our self-
imposed limitations and fears into a vast spaciousness that the ordinary mind can
barely comprehend.
| PEGGY DYLAN |
“In its purest form, meditation is the transcendence of our belief structures about
reality, while experiencing the underlying force of the infinite that flows through
everything. The only place to firewalk from, the only place to step onto the coals
from, is the moment of touching that infinite place. Even though we cannot
consciously comprehend what we are doing, when we step onto the fire our
bodies are in a state of connection with all that is; we are touching the same
place we go to in meditation, the place of stepping into the unknown.
“People have walked on fire for thousands of years in many different
ceremonies, and the purpose has always been to use the walk as a prayer, or as a
way of transcending whatever is ill to create greater well-being, which is also the
purpose of meditation. It is used to gather power and energy, to gather a sense of
capacity that comes when we transcend our human restrictions, as we step
through the barrier of fear before we take that first step onto the coals. We have
no idea what is going to happen when we walk on fire. But there is also no way
to know what is going to be happening in five years or even five minutes. What
we can know, and what the firewalk teaches us, is that when we step forward in
trust, faith, and courage, then there is a benevolent aspect of the universe that
steps with us. This is precisely the same thing that happens in meditation.
“In that place of trust, no matter how challenging the world looks or how
challenging our personal lives may be, we can just feel the fear. I will take a
group of four hundred and collectively we drop into that fear. We acknowledge
the fear, acknowledge the sense of failure, the sense of ‘I can’t,’ ‘I won’t,’ and
‘I’ve always failed in the past.’ And then we transcend it into hope, capacity, and
a positive form of movement.
“One of the beauties of firewalking is that you cannot pretend those are not hot
coals; you stand in front of the fire and it is real. Your delicate feet are real feet.
You are stepping through fear and knowing in your body that what you think
will happen does not have to happen. In other words, there can be exquisite
positive outcomes from events that you previously thought would have a
negative consequence. This is indelibly printed on the subconscious. ‘I can do
remarkable things, I can step through fear and manifest beauty, manifest joy,
manifest healing, and it is in the body.’”
| | |
Running
Exercise of any form has the potential to bring the mind into the body and, in so
doing, to create an inner quiet. Deb experiences this when she swims. For her, it
is a wonderful meditation; the quiet of the water, the movement of her body, her
mind is completely still. Running is another form of exercise that can be
experienced as a meditation.
| SAKYONG MIPHAM |
“The truest form of meditation is sitting, because your body is in a natural
balance between being awake and being very still. When you are doing running
or moving meditation, the mind has to become very precise in order to fully
embody the movement. When I am long-distance running, my meditation is a
combination of the movement of the legs, the feet, the breathing, the sense of
being centered, and the immediacy of the situation. Some people listen to music
while they run, but I am very focused on being present. When you are present
with the pain, or whatever is going on, then there is a fullness of the whole
experience. You are very alive in that process, as opposed to non-meditation
running, where you just put your mind somewhere else and let the body go
along.
“Meditation as a way of strengthening, focusing, and enlightening the mind is
only one of the steps. The next step after sitting is meditation in action, so that
you embody the practice. This is more challenging as you have more activity
going on at the same time as stillness. You have more chance to not be mindful
or focused. Often we are very caught in the past or the future; we are
daydreaming or planning. When you bring your mind back and draw it into the
center of your heart, you become more synchronized and awake to your
immediate environment. When running and entering ‘the zone,’ you are
completely synchronized and the mind opens. Time becomes irrelevant.
“In Tibet, we say the mind is like a rider on a horse; wherever the horse goes,
the mind has to go. In an untrained mind, they say the rider is helpless; he
doesn’t have any legs and arms and, therefore, is unable to control the horse. We
can experience this when we are sitting and our mind is just wandering
everywhere. The horse is taking us all over the place. When we are running with
awareness and our minds are focused in the present moment, then everything
becomes totally awake. We are in control of the horse! Consciousness is going
throughout our whole body. As we become more mindful, we become vital and
powerful. It is a wonderfully clear space.”
| | |
Dancing
Dance has been used throughout all the spiritual traditions as a form of losing the
self and opening the heart to merge with the divine. It is seen in the Sufi whirling
dervishes, the Tibetan dancing lamas, the ecstatic dance accompanying Hindu
devotional chanting, or in Jewish circle dancing. It brings us together as one,
releasing the boundaries that separate us from each other.
| DEB |
“We were eating dinner at a small taverna on the Greek island of Rhodes when
we heard the waitress talking about a dance to be held that night. It was midnight
before the entire village had assembled on a flat, grassy outcrop normally used
for playing football: Small children, lanky teenagers, farmers and shopkeepers,
grannies and old men clinging to walking sticks, they all came. Tables had been
spread with food and drink. A small band began to play, and over the next two
hours, we watched both the young and old take hands and dance, sometimes in
circles, sometimes in winding lines, sometimes in pairs or groups of eight. I
experienced the power of this collective dancing when one of the teenagers with
rings in his nose and tattoos coving his arms, who had at first looked completely
bored and disinterested, stepped into the middle of the circle and led a snake-like
dance around the field, his eyes alight with joy.”
To dance is to feel the gift of life in our veins, to directly experience the joy of
each breath. This is particularly true of free dance, where the body moves of its
own volition, self-consciousness dissolves, and in its place comes an awareness
of each part of the body and its relation to the whole. Dance enables our self-
imposed limitations, inhibitions, fears and self-obsessions to be released; in their
place, we find a greater sense of freedom and joy.
| GABRIELLE ROTH |
“Stillness is my rhythm. In my teens, alone in my bedroom with the radio turned
up as loud as possible, I danced my pain—all the sadness and anger that was not
allowed or expressed in my family or my culture. Much later, I would realize
that I was seeking a way to get out of my head and the fastest way to still my
mind was to move my body. Put the psyche in motion and it heals itself.
Normally, the mind is thinking one thing, the body is moving in a different
direction, and the heart is doing a third thing, so there is a huge disconnect. We
live in the chat room above our necks, but we need to find our roots and our
center.
“Dance allows me to live in meditation, for awareness to infuse every moment
of every day. When my feet are connected to the earth, they dance on the skin of
the great mother, listening to her every song. Her intelligence comes up through
the soles of my feet into the heart of my body and talks to me. When we listen to
our feet, we hear her song and it becomes a part of us. She is alive and vibrating
and moving in patterns and cycles.
“In the dance, we can go so deeply into our bodies that we bypass the concept
of a separate self and move into the big body that holds us all as one. We are not
in a body, but it is in us, in the amazing unified field of holy otherness that is
who we really are. This is my meditation and it moves my memories, my tears,
my fears, my instincts—the fragile threads that hold me and you and all of us in
a web of divine intelligence. It calls us to extend so far past an individual self
that we become everything in one deep, expansive breath.”
| | |
| | |
Practice Meditation:
Creative Writing
Have a pad of paper and pen beside you. To experience the creative power of
meditation, start by sitting quietly and watching your breath for at least five
minutes. When your mind is settled and relaxed, move gently to pick up the
paper and pen.
You can write in two ways. One way is to create a simple question, and then
let your writing flow freely in response. It may be a question about your health,
your feelings about your work, or about a particular person, or whatever is
relevant for you. Having asked the question, let your response arise
spontaneously from the meditative mind. It does not have to be word perfect; this
is just for you.
Alternatively, pick a theme or image to write about. Perhaps a bird on a
branch, a beach with waves lapping, or a forest of tall trees. Whatever image
comes to you, let the words describing it flow freely, without judgment, so that
you are creating the image completely anew for yourself.
When you are done, lay down the pad and pen and just sit quietly for another
few minutes, letting the rhythm of your breath take your deeper within yourself.
| | |
Contributor Bios
Patch Adams is a renowned medical doctor, clown, social activist, and founder of a free hospital. See
www.patchadams.org
Elias Amidon leads interfaith wilderness retreats with Rabia Roberts and directs the Spirit in Action
program. He is a lineage holder of the Sufi Way. See www.sufiway.org
Judith Ansara is a teacher of applied human consciousness, psychotherapist, coach, seminar leader, and
movement artist. See www.sacredunion.com
Anne Bancroft is the author of numerous books, including Zen: Direct Pointing to Reality; Weavers of
Wisdom; and The Buddha Speaks.
Marc Ian Barasch is the author of The Compassionate Life; Healing Dreams; and The Healing Path. He is
founder/director of the Green World Campaign. See www.greenworld.org
Coleman Barks is the renowned author of numerous Rumi translations. See colemanbarks.com
Michael Bernard Beckwith, featured in The Secret with over 4 million copies sold, is the founder of the
Agape Spiritual Center, with over 8,000 members. See www.agapelive.com
Ed Begley Jr. is an actor nominated for six Emmy’s and an environmental activist devoted to green living.
See www.edbegley.com
Russell Bishop is a coach and consultant. He is senior editor-at-large and contributor to the
HuffingtonPost.com. Contact [email protected]
Silvia Boorstein is a psychotherapist and the cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Her books
include On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist. See sylviaboorstein.com
Joan Borysenko is the cofounder of the Mind/Body Clinical Programs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center. Her many books include the bestseller Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. See
joanborysenko.com
Gregg Braden is a renowned pioneer in bridging science and spirituality. His books include the New York
Times bestsellers The God Code and The Divine Matrix. See greggbraden.com
Sarasvati Burhman is a senior faculty member at the Rocky Mountain Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda.
See www.rimya.org
Ellen Burstyn is an Academy award–winning actress and five-time nominee, and author of Lessons In
Becoming Myself. See www.ellenburstyn.net
Mirabai Bush is the cofounder and director of The Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society, and co-
author of Compassion in Action. See www.contemplativemind.org
Don Campbell is the founder of the Institute for Music, Health and Education, and author of eight books,
including the bestseller The Mozart Effect. See www.mozarteffect.com
Michael Carroll is a corporate consultant and coach and the author of Awake at Work and The Mindful
Leader. See www.awakeatwork.net
Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher and a founder of the award-winning magazine EnlightenNext. His
many books include Enlightenment: A Call for Evolution Beyond Ego. See www.andrewcohen.org
Seane Corn is the National Yoga Ambassador for YouthAIDS and co-creator of “Off the Mat and Into the
World” campaign. See www.seanesorn.com
Lindsay Crouse is an award winning actress and teaches Tibetan Buddhism and spiritual partnership. See
www.lindsaycrouse.org.
Richard Davidson is a Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, a researcher at the University of
Wisconsin, and a pioneer in mind-body medicine. See psych.wisc.edu/faculty/bio/davidson.html
Steve Demos founded White Wave, Inc., the makers of Silk Soymilk, and is cofounder and chairman of
NextFoods, the makers of GoodBelly fruit drinks.
Deva Premal & Miten have sold over 700,000 chanting CDs. See www.devapremalmiten.com
Vickie Dodd is the author of Tuning the Blues to Gold and a teacher of sound healing See
www.sacredsoundsschool.com
Peggy Dylan is the founder of SUNDOOR School of Transpersonal Education and the International
Firewalking School. See www.sundoor.com
Deepesh Faucheux is a psychotherapist and Zen practitioner and a trainer of therapists. He currently
teaches transpersonal psychology at Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado.
Peter Fenner is a pioneer in the field of non-dual psychotherapy and the author of Radiant Mind:
Awakening Unconditional Awareness. See www.radiantmind.net.
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is an author, psychotherapist, and spiritual leader of Congregation Nevei Kodesh
in Boulder, Colorado. See www.tirzahfirestone.com
Jane Fonda is an Academy award–winning actress and five-time Oscar® nominee. She is also a social and
political activist, fitness instructor, and Zen practitioner. See www.jane-fonda.net
Debbie Ford is the founder of the Ford Institute for Integrative Coaching and author of the New York Times
#1 bestseller The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. See www.debbieford.com
Matthew Fox is a member of the Dominican Order, the founder of the Friends of Creation Spirituality, and
the author of 28 books, including Original Blessing. See www.mattewfox.org
Richard Freeman is a senior student of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and the founder/director of the Yoga
Workshop in Boulder, Colorado. See www.yogaworkshop.com
Tim Freke is a respected authority on world mysticism and author of over 20 books, including The Jesus
Mysteries and Lucid Living. See www.timothyfreke.com
Gangaji is an international non-dual spiritual teacher and the author of You Are That and The Diamond in
Your Pocket. See www.gangaji.org
Robert Gass is a psychologist, leadership coach, and corporate consultant. He is also a chant master and
recorded the bestselling Om Namaha Shivaya. See www.sacredunion.com
Grover Gauntt is a sensei, a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, and head teacher of the
Hudson River Zen Center in Yonkers, New York. See www.zenpeacemakers.org.
Mark Gerzon is the author of Leading Beyond Borders and president of the Mediators Foundation for
conflict resolution. See www.mediatorsfoundation.org
James Gimian is the author of The Rules of Victory: How to Transform Chaos and Conflict, and publisher
of Shambhala Sun magazine. See www.shambhala.com
Bernie Glassman is the founder of the Zen Peacemakers, the Greyston Bakery, and the Maitri Center. He is
also the author of Infinite Circle: Studies in Zen. See www.pecemakercommunity.org.
Jonathan Goldman is the director of the Healing Sounds Association and author of The Seven Secrets of
Sound Healing. See www.healingsounds.com
Joseph Goldstein is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the author
of many books, including Insight Meditation. See www.dharma.org
Chloe Goodchild is the founder of The Naked Voice, and has performed for film and television sound
tracks, with two Grammy nominations. See www.thenakedvoice.com
John Gray is the author of the bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and is an
international teacher, seminar leader, and relationship counselor. See www.home.marsvenus.com
Ken Green is an award-winning film producer currently producing a multimedia adaptation of the Tibetan
Book of the Dead. See www.goldunsunfoundation.org
Tara Guber is the founder of Yoga Ed., dedicated to the development of health/wellness education
programs for yoga and creative play. See www.yogaed.com
John Hagelin is a quantum physicist and educator, and has pioneered Unified Field-based technologies to
reduce crime, violence, and to promote peace. See www.hagelin.org
Roshi Joan Halifax is abbot of the Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico, director of the Project on Being with
Dying, and founder of the Peacemaker Institute. See www.upaya.org
Andrew Harvey is a spiritual scholar and teacher, and author of over 30 books, including The Direct Path
and Hidden Journey. See www.andrewharvey.net
Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks are authors of many books, including Five Wishes; The Corporate Mystic;
and Conscious Living; and cofounders of The Spiritual Cinema Circle. See www.hendricks.com
Nirmala Heriza is the author of Dr. Yoga; a yoga cardiac specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center;
director of LA Integral Yoga Center; and president of the United Council on Yoga. See www.dr-
yoga.com
HH The Karmapa is the seventeenth head of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. See
www.karmapa.org
Martina Hoffman is a painter and sculptress and teaches art internationally with her partner Robert
Venosa. See www.martinahoffmann.com
Jean Houston, PhD, is the cofounder of Foundation for Mind Research, founder of the Mystery School,
and a prolific author. See www.jeanhouston.org
Jon Kabat-Zinn is the director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine,
Health Care, and Society at Massachusetts Medical School, and is the bestselling author of Full
Catastrophe Living.
Byron Katie is the founder of The Work, and bestselling author of A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in
Harmony with the Way Things Are. See www.thework.com
Father Thomas Keating is the founder of the Centering Prayer movement and of Contemplative Outreach.
He is the author of many books, including Crisis of Faith. See www.snowmass.org
Constance Kellough is a publisher, management consultant, and author of The Leap: Are You Ready to
Live a New Reality? See www.namastepublishing.com
Kitaro is a Grammy and Golden Globe–winning musician whose record sales have soared to over 10
million worldwide. See www.kitaromusic.com
Jack Kornfield is a teacher of the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. His books
include the bestselling A Path with Heart. See www.jackkornfield.org
Krishna Das is an internationally respected Indian chant master, with over 10 award-winning chanting
CDs. See www.krishnadas.com
Cyndi Lee, founder of the OM yoga center in New York City, is also the author of Yoga Body, Buddha
Mind, and the OM Yoga in a Box series. See www.omyoga.com.
Noah Levine is the author of Dharma Punx and Against the Stream. See www.noahlevine.com
Michelle and Joel Levey, cofounders of InnerWork Technologies, work with leading corporations. Their
books include Wisdom at Work. See www.wisdomatwork.com
Joseph Marshall III, from the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota, is the author of many
books, including The Wisdom of Crazy Horse. See www.thunderdreamers.com
Mark Matousek is the bestselling author of Sex Death Enlightenment and When You’re Falling, Dive. He
is the co-chair of VMen—men ending violence against women—with Eve Ensler. See
www.markmatousek.com
Fleet Maull is a sensei, author, and founder of Prison Dharma Network, the Peacemaker Institute, and
National Prison Hospice Association. See www.prisondharmanetwork.org
Mark Mawrence has worked extensively as an executive and corporate consultant in the arenas of strategy,
branding, marketing, and communications.
Dennis Genpo Merzel is a Zen master, founder of the Kanzeon Zen Center, and the author of, among
others, The Eye Never Sleeps and The Path of The Human Being. See www.bigmind.org
Dan Millman is a former world champion athlete and author of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. The
movie, The Peaceful Warrior, was based on his book. See www.danmillman.com
John Milton has pioneered The Way of Nature and its programs, Sacred Passage and Nature Quest. See
www.sacredpassage.com.
Mingyur Rinpoche is a master of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and author of the
bestseller The Joy of Living. See www.mingyur.com
Edgar Mitchell is an Apollo 14 Astronaut, the sixth man to walk on the moon, and the founder of Noetic
Sciences. See www.edgarmitchellapollo14.com
Shanida Natarja has a PhD in Neurophysiology and is the author of The Blissful Brain: Neuroscience and
Proof of the Power of Meditation. See www.blissfulbrain.com
Dean Ornish, MD, president of Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Medical Director of
HuffingtonPost.com. His books include the best seller The Spectrum. See: www.pmri.org
Ponlop Rinpoche is lineage holder of Tibetan Buddhism. His books include Mind Beyond Death. He is the
founder of Nalandabodhi International. See www.nalandabodhi.org
Jill Purce pioneered the sound healing movement and has taught internationally for nearly four decades.
See www.healingvoice.com
Ram Dass is a renowned spiritual teacher, cofounder of the Seva Foundation, and author of numerous
books, including the classic bestseller Be Here Now. See www.ramdass.org
Kali Ray is the founder of TriYoga®, now taught in over 30 countries. See www.triyoga.com
Reggie Ray is the founder of Dharma Ocean Foundation and author of Touching Enlightenment. See
www.dharmaocean.org
Bonnie Reiss served as Senior Advisor to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (2003–2007) and is
an Operating Advisor to Pegasus Capital Advisors.
Linus Roache, nominated for a Golden Globe in 2003, is now starring in NBC’s Law and Order. He is
managing director of EnlightenNext in New York City.
Rabia Roberts is a peace worker and social activist, and co-director of the Spirit in Action program. See
www.boulderinstitute.org.
Marshall B Rosenberg is director for the Center for Nonviolent Communications. His many books include
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. See www.cnvc.org
Gabrielle Roth is a theater/music director, the creator of the 5Rhythms®, and the bestselling author of
Maps to Ecstasy. See www.gabrielleroth.com.
Peter Russell is a scientist and the author of many books, including The Global Brain; Waking Up in Time;
and From Science to God. See www.peterrussell.com
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is the spiritual director of Shambhala International and author of the
bestselling Turning the Mind into an Ally and Ruling Your World. See www.mipham.com
Jeff Salzman, cofounder of CareerTrack Training, is currently Director of Boulder Integral. See
www.integrallife.com
Rabbi Zalman Schachter is the founder of the P’nai Or (Children of Light) religious fellowship and the
Alliance for Jewish Renewal. See www.rzlp.org
David Shiner is a clown, actor, playwright, and director of Cirque du Soleil. See www.cirquedusoleil.com
Franklyn Sills is the author of Being and Becoming; The Polarity Process; and Craniosacral Biodynamics.
See www.karuna-institute.co.uk
Maura Sills is the cofounder of the Karuna Institute UK, director of Psychotherapy Training, and a prime
developer of Core Process Psychotherapy. See www.karuna-institute.co.uk
Judith Simmer-Brown is on the faculty for Religious Studies at Naropa University and is the author of
Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism. See www.naropa.edu
Max Simon is a world-renowned speaker, author and coach. See www.getselfcentered.com.
Tami Simon is the founder and CEO of Sounds True Publishing, a multimedia publisher with a clear
mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. See www.soundstrue.com
Susan Smalley is a professor of Psychiatry and the director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at
the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. See www.marc.ucla.edu
William Spear is the author of Recovering Original Ability and director of the Fortunate Blessings
Foundation. See www.fortunateblessings,org
Ajahn Sumedho is the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Center and senior most Western disciple of the late
Ajahn Chah. See www.buddhanet.net
Lama Surya Das is the founder of the Dzogchen Foundation and author of Awakening the Buddha Within
and Awakening the Buddhist Heart. See www.surya.org
Mary Taylor is the author of four books on yoga as it relates to a healthy life. See
www.yogaworkshop.com
Robert Thurman is a professor of Indio-Tibetan studies at Columbia University, New York City, and
President of Tibet House US. He has been named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time
magazine. See www.bobthurman.com
James Twyman is a bestselling author, filmmaker, and musician, and author of many books, including The
Moses Code. See www.emissaryoflight.com
Robert Venosa, a visionary artist, has been exhibited worldwide and is represented in major collections.
His artwork is on Santana and Kitaro CD covers. See www.venosa.com.
Rama Vernon is a yoga teacher, past editor of the Yoga Journal, and international mediator. See
www.americanyogacollege.org
Lindsay Wagner is an Emmy award–winning actress, advocate, and humanitarian. She teaches Quiet the
Mind & Open the Heart workshops. See www.lindsaywagner.com
Alan Wallace was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1975. He is the president of the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies. See www.sbinstitute.com
Wavy Gravy, 1960’s icon and activist, is cofounder of Seva Foundation to combat blindness and of Camp
Winnarainbow. See www.wavygravy.net
Kirsten Westby has traveled the world since the age of eleven and has been working for human rights
since 2000.
Marianne Williamson is a bestselling author with four books #1 on the New York Times list, including A
Return to Love. Her latest book is the Age of Miracles. See www.marianne.com
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to David Nelson; this book would not have been possible without
him. To Editorial Director Michael Fragnito, for his support and clear vision; to
Kate Zimmermann, our caring and intuitive editor at Sterling; and Megan Perritt,
our great publicist. Our gratitude to Susan Mears, our friend and agent, who has
always been there for us. Thanks to Johanna Walker, for her diligent
transcribing; Wendy Zahler at Marianne Williamson’s; Susan McTigue, at Ellen
Burstyn’s; and the assistants of many of our contributors—you know who you
are. And a special thank you to Ponlop Rinpoche, Robert Thurman, Rabbi
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Jean Houston, Sylvia Boorstein, Joan Halifax, and
Nirmala Heriza, for their kind help.