Giving Monkey Mind a Break

I'm going back to fundamentals in my meditation practice by redoing Tergar's Joy of Living 1.

Since starting, I've had a number of insights, but this morning I am excited about this one. That when I meditate I am simply giving the monkey mind a break.

 Most of the day, despite so many years of meditating my jumpy problem solving, problem creating mind is still in control.  When I meditate, I relax, much in the same way I relax after a job, or a challenging task.  Monkey mind is exercising hard all day, meditation whether formal or informal at its simplest, and most effective level is a way of saying, okay Monkey here's a nice spot on the grass, for the next ten, twenty, thirty minutes, lets be a little more like lions and just hang out, feeling as we are, safe enough.

Reconnecting with my mission

It's January, so a good time to re-visit my mission and put it somewhere where I can make it part of my daily planning.

My mission is to cultivate emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical and financial wellbeing every day--for myself, for the people around me, and for the world I live in.

I do this first and foremost by grounding myself in awareness and  recognizing and appreciating the basic goodness that exists in myself and everyone. 

My first responsibility is towards nurturing and maintaining the joyful wisdom that emanates from simply being.  In bringing this energy into the world I am best equipped to help liberate myself and others from useless suffering.  I work to stay aware of and spread the fruits of absolute well-being. 

My second responsibility is towards my son and supporting him in whatever way I can to cultivate his own well-being. 

My final responsibility is my friends and colleagues, the country and the society that I have been born into.

Word of the year, gratitude.

Read a very interesting article in the New York Times about the impact of gratitude on self-control.
More important than grit, gratitude helps us to avoid temptation.  It's easier to say no when you feel full.

I decided yesterday to make gratitude my word of the year.  It's tough because my monkey mind prefers to believe that the only way I can have love, respect and connection is if I have those things that will make people love me. I can only have them if I want them, and if I stop wanting, where will my drive come from?

Well it could come from motivation, and it could come commitment. 

Today I read these wonderful words from Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He is candid about tulkus. They are susceptible to temptation and delusion as well. But they have an advantage.

"We're trained from a very early age to do the best we can to help others break through whatever ideas they learn and lead them to discover the spark with which they are born.  We're trained to love every living creature until he or she can love themselves.  Until every person on earth ceases to view one another as a threat or an enemy; until every person, in every job, every relationship, every encounter, can see the wonder, the beauty, and the potential in everyone with whom they come in contact. Until we show people how to let go of their stores, then fill within themselves the sense of disconnectedness, our job is not done."

That's plenty to want right there.

What I've learned from a decade of writing about stillness...

So, I've learned some things.

First that if you stand or sit still regularly for, on average, an hour or so a day--in one session, in shorter sessions, in a park or in a messy, cluttered room--you will change. Or maybe more accurately you will change back. You will recover a deep calm, and pleasurable sense of well being that is our birthright. For whatever reason, we unlearn it, but it is always there to re-connect with.

It has been my experience that this power transfers into other parts of my life, that it has given me the energy and cognitive tools to be a better parent, a better writer, a better activist, a better educator, and develop abilities I never realized I could have. It has slowly and surely lifted me out of poverty, and into a good, solid income. (To be frank, this journey has not been a cruise, but more of a white water kayak trip, often without a guide.  So I would never recommend meditation as the quick path to money.)

It is also my experience that calm, used well, is a motivating force, not a driving force.  I experience it, but I'm not addicted to it. Calm does not make me apathetic. It gives me the courage to feel more and do more. It protects me from the drives that would lead us to harm.

From the reliable and sustainable supply of calm and pleasure has come compassion, the desire to help others manage their displeasure and agitation and the build-up of suffering that comes from my desperation to escape the natural ebb and flow of sensation.


From this experience I've started to develop some beliefs.  But I recognize these as beliefs, not facts.

I believe...

That this is true for everyone, that it would be impossible for anyone taking the time to be still, every day, to not eventually recover the power and joy that arises out of stillness.  I may have beaten down a wider neurological path to it. But I have nothing that is not innate in anyone.

That compassion is our greatest tool. It is the fundamental technology that allows us to increase this well being for ourselves, for those around us, and if we get it right, to make this increase exponential.  The more and deeper calm we are capable of, the more it spreads to those we love, the more it comes back to us.

That the calm cultivated through meditation connects us to a palpable energy in the world. Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's the Tao, or Buddha nature, or the Holy Spirit or some other human attempt to describe it. This I don't know and I don't know if anyone will ever know. But I believe this deep and powerful calm gives us access to a kind of substance that has impact on our lives and on the world around us. And even if it doesn't exist, faith in this energy transforms us in powerful ways too important to discount as magical thinking.

And in this place of calm, we can cultivate perhaps the greatest and most liberating emotion of all, gratitude. If compassion is our best technology, then gratitude is our best magic.  Something happens in the grateful heart, a spark, a nudge, that over time becomes like compound interest.  Gratitude makes us wealthy because gratitude tells us we are wealthy.  Even in those moments when objectively we have nothing.

So at the end of this wonderful and ultimately lucky decade,  I feel tremendous gratitude.

I feel gratitude for gratitude, and above all for the fruits of stillness.

10 years

It's been ten years since I started this blog.

My life is different. Much better in some ways, much more challenging in others.  For the first time in my life, money is not an issue. I'm making ten times what I made when I wrote my first post. I have a great job as a director of a thriving non-profit. Meditation has helped me build the confidence and clarity it takes for this role.

I'm settling down from a whirlwind month, traveling across British Columbia, staying in hotels and eating airport food.  My lifestyle is not as healthy as it's been.  Trying to circle back to more sustained exercise, healthier food, earlier sleep.

This weekend I decided to do a self-directed retreat. Much sitting, some standing, and some napping. My spiritual energy is taking its proper place again. Awareness of awareness. The more I'm with that, the stronger my mind.

It's snowing out.  My son, now seventeen, is snoring away.  I could conceivably go out every morning at dawn. For six months.  And change.

What would I want to change?

I could still become more diligent with housework.  I could still be a more responsible parent.  It would be nice to finally finish a book.  I could become more values driven and goal-directed.  I could find a life partner.

But there is much that I wouldn't change.  Much that I am grateful for and want to build on. My meditation practice. Mingyur Rinpoche is coming to Montreal in June. I would love to meet him.  And maybe I will.

I am reading his brother Tsoknyi' Rinpoche's book Open Heart, Open Mind during this retreat.  If I take away one insight, it is this:  It is not the job of others to earn my trust. It is my job to maintain my faith in them.  People need to keep believing in themselves, and if I can help them discover that spark, I've had an impact.

My greatest power is faith, the ability to get up, despite all the indignities and faults and broken commitments, and keep at it.  Keep at something.  This is how I keep my life an adventure, not a trap.

This is how I open the door every morning and step out.

The Blink

This month I've been reading the new book by Daniel Coleman and Richie Davidson, Altered Traits. Their research supports the idea that in mature meditators many of the altered states they experience in meditation, over time, become emotional traits. The fidgety default mode seen enough times in meditation gives way to calm and clarity. 

I consider myself a mature meditator, and I can certainly say that I have felt neurological changes over time.  I am able to invoke certain states of calm and detachment far more easily now than I was able to ten years ago when I started this blog. 

This does not mean that I live in a constant state of joyful calm, however much I would like to.  Sometimes it means that I'm able to get down to deeper states of suffering.  And so it begins again. And of course the progress of life brings deeper states of suffering.  My parents are entering the last years of their lives, and experience all the grief that goes with that.  My son is going through those intense anxious states that I experienced at his age. 

Along with this I also have to ready myself for the challenges of success.  This month I sign a generous contract, not for the book I hoped to write, but for a job that I never expected to have.  I have spent all month travelling  through one of the beautiful places in the world, British Columbia, and I'll be making a great salary, at least for the foreseeable future. 

But I know from these journals that success is sometimes tough for me to assimilate.  Making sure I put aside the time for meditation, writing and reflection, will probably be hard, and if I can't do that I won't be able to enjoy what I've gained. 

One of the studies that I find most interesting in Altered Traits, is one in which subjects are asked to search for an object within chaos.  Once the moment of recognition happens, the brain usually takes some time to process its dopamine reward, and during that time the brain is not usually in a state to notice anything else that is happening. This is refered to as "The Blink," the time when the brain has a blind spot.  Mature meditators, recognize the object, but don't get distracted by the feeling of accomplishment. Their brains stay open and they are able to go back to a state of alert awareness with more ease. Their blink is shorter. 

One of the distinguishing features of the aging brain is that it takes more time to "recover" from insight.  The blink is longer. 

Meditation can correct for this.  And I hope it does, because my middle aged brain has a lot of learning to do in the next ten years!

Breaking up with bliss

I have often in my years of meditation fallen into the trap of mistaking the lovely effects of meditation as the goal of meditation.  This is doomed loop because simply the act of aspiration loses sight of the fact that we are already what we seek.  Beneath and in and around this suffering is the true clear self.  The more we grasp at this absolute self, the more we lose it.

This week I am experimenting with what Mingyur Rinpoche calls breaking up with bliss before it breaks up with you. My meditation practice is mature enough that I have frequent moments of clarity, non-conceptuality. Though less frequent, I also have moments of bliss.

I have a tendency when I feel bliss to do my utmost to extend it, as though I am going to increase it, like a lung span.  But perhaps what I need to do is the opposite.  See bliss as a cue to resting in suffering.  When I'm aware of suffering, I don't increase the suffering, I create space around it.  I'm not sure exactly of the dynamics of bliss. But I do know that if I'm courageous enough to feel my suffering, the lessening of it makes the experience calm and pleasure more frequent and more durable.