The small emotions

This week I am meditating on emotion. It's been a while since I've listened to Mingyur Rinpoche's teaching on this. I'm struck by how much I've forgotten. Particularly the teaching on starting with the smaller emotions.

I was struck by the wisdom of this yesterday when a fight erupted with Ben.  A big enough fight that I found myself retreating to my room, trying to sit with anger and follow the instruction on how to make the destructive emotion the object of the meditation, not the object of the emotion.  In other words, feel the anger itself and watch it de-iterate, rather than focussing on the object, which will only cause the loop of anger to grow stronger.

Later in the evening I watched the teaching on small emotions and I realized that if I'd been working with smaller emotions, I might have caught the irritation, the spark that started the fight, and I might have seen a better solution towards negotiating what it was that was irritating me.

This fits interestingly in with the computational thinking principle we've been teaching recently, decomposition.  Take big problems, like a lifetime of chronic and intense anger and break them down into smaller parts, irritation.  See if you can catch things in the irritation moment, and slowly, I hope, I can find myself caught less and less in the bigger more draining situations that my anger takes me to so often

Sound and Thought

I seem to be writing less and less.  That's what a full time job can do to your writing and meditation practice.

But I have been sitting.  I've been following Tergar and exploring once again the practices of visual objects, sound and thought as support for meditation.

Sound is always a revelation because of course sound has been the source of a lot of trauma in my life. I was the victim of a lot of screaming and bickering when I was a kid, and I have struggled to spare my son that, but I know I haven't always succeeded. Slowing down and listening to my own words and thoughts has a very strong impact on my growing feeling of well-being.

Then there is thought meditation, the meditation that I''m the worst at.  Or at least that feel is the most challenging for me.

So far my favourite meditation is still "non-meditation."  Don't meditate, don't get lost. Just be aware of what the present feels like, and keep going there.

body awareness

Today I'm struggling with frustration, anger, disappointment with someone close to me.  Someone who seems to have lost the will to take care of his body and mind.

It's a challenge to meditate because I haven't slept well.  This week in JOYL1 we are focussing on the body, feeling present, noticing sensations, and as we always do, alternating with objectless meditation.  For most of it, I was in the raw, rigid anger and despair I feel, and being with the belief that my happiness is dependent on whether or not he is happy.

And then for a moment, I was able to pull back and really feel as close to pure awareness. That silky, calm joy.  I felt for a moment that I could be happy even when I was unhappy.  I can be sad that he is making poor choices, but I can know that at the core of my being is a happiness that can not be wrecked by anything or anyone.

The closer I am to that realization, the closer I am to the insight that happiness is and will always be available to him too. The best I may be able to do is hope that he is able to find it. 

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.