Tag: happiness

  • softly, as in a morning sunrise

    softly, as in a morning sunrise

    Meditation shows me my burdens were mostly imagined. But even imaginary ones can carry real emotional weight.

    I remember this cartoon I saw perhaps 20 years ago while waiting at a doctor’s office. A woman and a man are sitting together at a coffee shop in some urban setting. The man looks over and says:

    I’m sorry. I was so busy listening to myself talk I forgot what I was saying.

    That cartoon has stayed with me all these years because it points to why I continue to meditate every day. Ok, just about every day.

    I meditate to take myself less seriously.

    Which reminds me of another cartoon that has stayed with me just as long. A Zen monk is walking along a beach carrying an enormous bag over his shoulders that’s so heavy his footsteps are like craters in the sand.

    On the bag is written one word – ME.

    This is a burden our meditation helps us set aside, the heavy bag called me. Setting the bag down, even for a few minutes when we meditate, lightens our steps and makes us more available to others.

    It helps us not take ourselves so seriously we can’t engage in a meaningful conversation without it all being about me.

    Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning (1891) by Claude Monet
    Wheat stacks, Snow Effect, Morning (1891) by Claude Monet- ah, yes, this is

    I first discovered Buddhism in 1979 at the age of 23 and attended my first 10 day vipassana retreat the following year.

    And I still take myself way too seriously sometimes.

    Some would argue that their burdens are who they are (maybe not exactly phrased this way). They are their struggles. And, if they try hard enough, they are their own victors.

    Many of the issues and problems I have faced in my life I was so used to carrying around I didn’t realize they were burdens at all. But when they drop, ah, yes, I feel much lighter now!

    Yes- meditation to take oneself less seriously is seriously important.

    Meditation has revealed my burdens were mostly imagined. But even imaginary ones can carry real emotional weight.

    The more meditation I had under my (imaginary) belt, the easier it was to see we don’t really need all that much to get along happily in this life.

    George Carlin once quipped:

    That’s all I want, that’s all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know?

    And even that might be extra.

    I love Emily Dickinson’s short poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” She nails the issue in a few verses and sticks the landing perfectly.

    I’m Nobody! Who are you?
    Are you – Nobody – too?
    Then there’s a pair of us!
    Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

    How dreary – to be – Somebody!
    How public – like a Frog –
    To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
    To an admiring Bog!

    Often I read a poem I am convinced was written just for me!

    There’s that pesky makin’-it-all-about-me again.

    The poem sings of the beauty of being a “Nobody” in a boring and crass world of “Somebodies.” And then in lines 3 and 4 the poet realizes the reader is also a “Nobody” but says, shush, don’t tell anyone–they might find out.

    Which is how I felt when I first started practicing Buddhism, that I had to keep my nobody-ness a secret because anyone I talked about “dropping the burden of self” looked at me as if I were crazy.

    Meditation to take oneself seriously

    From one nobody to another, I thank you Emily Dickinson for validating what I knew all along when I started on this path, that it’s such a relief to know how to melt the shell of me, and open to the mystery of this life- softly, as in a morning sunrise.

    (thank you Dianne Reeves for that wonderful 1994 performance of this jazz standard.)

  • a peaceful, uneasy feeling

    a peaceful, uneasy feeling


    I feel that I should be above it all, but mostly I’m not.


    I struggle with my emotions.

    Practicing mindfulness of emotions helps a lot, but sometimes I am just plain sad or overcome by all that is untenable in the world, borrowing a line from Brother Steindl-Rast.

    I feel that I should be above it all, but mostly I’m not.

    Reading lines from ancient Zen stories, ones that say meditation is about discovering “the happiness not based on conditions,” doesn’t help much. I just get more depressed!

    Some folks find happiness in the smallest acts: watching a sunset, or getting their errands done before it’s time to make dinner. Others I know struggle to find happiness in even the most ideal circumstances.

    thriving on unhappiness?

    Some folks even seem to thrive, in an odd sort of way, in their own unhappiness. I am sure you know people who find reasons to be miserable, dwelling on the past or creating problems when clearly there aren’t any.

    I am sure you know of at least one person in your life who struggles to put things behind them, or who seems to relish in playing the victim.

    Or for whom dissatisfaction seems to be second nature.

    emotions

    In these cases, as well as in my own, emotions emerge from sensory inputs that last but a fraction of a second. They seem to well up out of nowhere. But we grab on to them as defining a part of who we are in this world.

    And we propagate them, creating a story-line explaining or justifying our feelings to ourselves. I notice this in my own meditation practice. It’s at the crux as how I experience meditation as a life-saving activity.

    yeah, I’m depressed

    I struggle with depression at times. Not feeling a little blue every now and then. I mean full-on clinical depression. And that’s how I mean meditation saves my life.

    What exactly does meditation do for me that other interventions cannot?

    mindfulness of emotions
    Butterflies and Moths of America series

    It enables me to experience a sometimes strange yet simultaneously very familiar happiness in the midst of feeling unhappy.

    a real happiness

    Not the happiness of the victim or the secondary gain of the neurotically unhappy. A real happiness, which, well, is not based on conditions at all, I’ll admit.

    Let’s call this a peaceful, uneasy feeling.

    Or perhaps, being happy with feeling unhappy.

    I know, I know; this doesn’t make sense. But little does when you get deep with this stuff.

    we can’t stitch moments together and call it happiness

    I’ve discovered the hard way that real, deep happiness is not a series of fleeting states we try to stitch together into a happy life.

    Hedonic adaptation dampens even the best of them.

    Meditation has shown me this happiness is with me when my boss publicly shames me at work, when my kid is sick, when the rent check bounces, and when my partner gets on my case for leaving the freezer door open for the fifth time this month.

    acceptance

    We talk a lot in these mindfulness circles about accepting your emotions rather than pushing them away. In this practice, you feel what you feel, and you let go of the urge to make everything okay. You’re not pretending that everything will be alright.

    Because, maybe, it won’t, and that’s the bottom line sometimes.

    This is at the heart and soul of our mindfulness practice: seeing what is, being with it, and not trying to change it into something else.

    right now, it’s like this

    The US-born Buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho, who trained for decades in Thailand and is now 84 years old, has a very simple saying that sums up the whole point of meditation:

    Right now, it’s like this.

    Let’s say I am having a challenging night at work. Maybe I started my night shift a little sleep deprived and not really wanting to be there. Then a patient who always seems to know which of my buttons to push finds just that right button. I take a breath and remember “Right now, it’s like this.”

    I’m not saying it’s okay, or that I’m suddenly cool with what’s happening. No, it really sucks, and I feel I don’t have the energy to deal with him.

    The phrase re-directs me to feel what this feels like, and realize I can be with it without freaking out.

    I like what the phrase doesn’t say. Sure, dealing with this patient right now is a drag, but the phrase discourages me from creating another story-line, like–he needs to calm down, this always happens when I’m on, I should just quit this ridiculous job.

    No, the phrase simply points out it’s like this, end of story.

    impermanence

    The phrase works well also because it has the central Buddhist notion of impermanence built right in. Sure, this job is nuts (I work in a psych hospital), but it pays the bills; but more importantly it isn’t always this crazy of a place to work.

    I realize that most nights I actually enjoy this job!

    One of my favorite meditation teachers, Cheri Huber, reminds us that

    It’s not so much what happens as it is how we are with ourselves regardless of what happens –that makes the difference in our lives.

    How are we with ourselves throughout our day? It helps to check in and see.

    Emotions well up, yes; we can’t stop this from happening. But meditation reveals how we keep the emotion going through our thoughts. And meditation gives us that blessed pause between stimulus and response that Viktor Frankl famously described:

    Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

    This is the profound blessing of our simple mindfulness practice.

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  • letting go of wanting happiness

    letting go of wanting happiness

    Folks who meditate in order to feel better often find the opposite. Eventfully they see that it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it!

    I can begin to answer by sharing a haiku I recently found:

    Since my house burned down
    I now have a better view
    of the rising moon.

    This moving haiku was written by Mizuta Masahide, a 17th century poet and samurai. It has spoken to me deeply many times.

    I am often asked why I meditate.

    Depending on who asks, I answer something like – To clearly see why I suffer, and with that understanding to cultivate peace of mind and a kind heart.

    I have personally found mindfulness practice does just that.

    After his own spiritual awakening, the Buddha distilled his understanding of our human situation into three insights, traditionally known, in an awkward sounding translation, as the three marks of existence.

    The three facts of life

    Let’s just call them the three facts of life:

    1. Everything is temporary;
    2. We habitually react to our world with resistance, felt as tension and suffering; and
    3. Nothing solidly happens by itself, everything is contingent on causes and conditions.

    There is a cool feeling of relief when I acknowledge these facts for myself. They help me appreciate what’s truly important in this fleeting world.

    They wake me up as I move through my life in a kind of daze, checking email on my phone, going from one task and one distraction to another.

    Because everything is changing, a flower has poignancy. When I realize this, I pause.

    And because everything is evanescent, everything is precious. Our obligation is to spend this moment well, with wisdom and compassion

    Because I suffer at times, “the sure heart’s release” is more appealing.

    And because everything is contingent on something else, I appreciate my interconnection and responsibility to everyone and everything.

    The Korean monk Haemin Sunim, in his lovely book The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, expresses the third fact in this way:

    The whole universe is contained in an apple wedge in a lunch box. Apple tree, sunlight, cloud, rain, earth, air, farmer’s sweat are all in it. Delivery truck, gas, market, money, cashier’s smile are all in it. Refrigerator, knife, cutting board, mother’s love are all in it. 

    Everything in the whole universe depends on one another. 

    The Buddha taught that deeply experiencing these three facts with mindfulness in our daily life brings about wisdom and compassion, and greatly eases our distress and anxiety. I love Sylvia Boorstein’s line:

    Life is like a continuous quiz show where the only question ever asked is:

    “How are you going to manage whatever is happening now without confusing yourself and creating suffering?

    And daily life is the best place to practice releasing needless suffering and growing in love and compassion. Our everyday lives serve up unending opportunities that catch us, triggering our habitual reactions of “liking and disliking.”

    Mindfulness allows us to catch ourselves before life does.

    The issue is we find ourselves wanting to have a different experience in other than the one we are having.

    For example, folks are often drawn to meditation out of a desire to feel better in some way. But if we meditate with this desire to feel good, we selectively internalize that meditation is all about feeling good, calm, and peaceful.

    And when we don’t feel calm or peaceful, we can get frustrated, even agitated.

    Despite repeated encouragement to relax and let go of our ideas about meditation, and our fantasies of how we should feel when it works, it can take a while for this to really sink in.

    it's the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it!
    it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it.

    letting go of the notion of self-improvement

    Crucial to the practice is learning to be radically OK with ourselves just as we are in the present moment. In doing so, we also let go of the notion of self-improvement.

    Mindfulness meditation often starts out by working with an uncooperative and rebellious mind. You know this mind-it’s the one that spaces out, goes into la-la land, feels anxious, and wants out.

    It’s the mind that opens its eyes during group meditation, looks at the clock, and says “Ugh, ten more minutes!”

    Mindfulness takes us right up to the boundaries of our physical and emotional discomfort. But it allows us to be OK there, to settle down, and lose the fear.

    Folks who meditate in order to feel better often find the opposite. Eventfully they see that it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it!

    Sayadaw U Tejaniya of Burma writes:

    Don’t practice with a mind that wants something or wants something to happen. The result will only be that you tire yourself out.

    In time you will delight in ordinary mental presence, and you forget about extraordinary anything. Extraordinary experiences are not the goal of meditation. They do come and go, as side –effects of your practice.

    This is a huge turning point in your practice – the more you let go, the happier you are. You clearly see that ultimate liberation is the ultimate letting go of everything.

    I will leave you this week with the words of the Thai forest teacher Ajahn Chah.

    Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace. 

    Hey, is that a moon I see up there?

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