Transformation through Habit Change

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

This morning I wanted to spend some additional time talking about the kleshas, the three poisons of craving, aversion and ignorance in the context of habits.  We had a lively discussion last Tuesday night about what exactly it is that causes us to change our habits.  Isn’t that what this is all about?  We’ve been hurtling through life at warp speed, feeling the stress and struggle of suffering in all its various forms, and also having moments of great joy and pleasure and wondering how to savor life more deeply, this precious experience of life that we have been given.

In fact, that is exactly what the Buddha did 2500 years ago—he simply changed the habit of the way he interacted with the world, how he interacted with himself, how he interacted with each moment.  At the simplest level, we are trying to make mindfulness, meditation and positive visualization a habit—pure and simple.  I don’t know about your experience, but I find that I catch myself being mindful and then fall back asleep in distraction, then wake up a few moments…or a few hours later, and remember to be mindful again.  Everything that we have ever done here at the Temple Buddhist Center or will do, is about supporting each other in making Mindfulness, Meditation and Positive Visualization a habit that happens more and more often.  So, what can we do to increase the habit of these power practices?

Last Tuesday, during the discussion about recognizing that moment of craving or aversion or ignorance, Brent made a comment that stuck with me, because I now know that my answer was wrong or at least very incomplete.  He suggested (Brent, I paraphrase, forgive me!) that willpower is what enables us to transform our behavior.  I responded that willpower alone never works according to the research, and that is partially true, but I’ve spent the week reflecting and researching on the role of willpower in changing our habits.   

For anyone interested in diving deeper into this subject, I am going to recommend the book that Pam and Roz recommended to me, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  In it, he encourages us to see more clearly how cues lead to routines or habits, lead to rewards, which create cravings, which reinforce the habits in order to get the rewards.  Cues can be thoughts, or a physical experience or sensation or locations, or an action, that is now hardwired into us as a signal to respond in a certain way. 

“Most of the time what we do is what we do most of the time.

Sometimes we do something new” (Townsend & Bever, The

integration of habits and rules).

When Buddha sat down under the Bodhi Tree, trying to find an end to suffering, he had a new thought and a new experience that arose.  Now, it’s said that he was immediately enlightened and never went back and went on to teach for 45 years from this place of awakening.  I wasn’t there 2500 years ago, so I can’t be sure, but I suspect that the reality MIGHT have been just a little bit different.  I suggest that Buddha sat under the tree, and had this new thought and this new experience, then continued to reinforce it through re-thinking the thought (through motivation to end suffering) and re-experiencing the action (mindfulness, meditation and positive visualization).  So does willpower play a role in changing habits, particularly the habit of being mindful instead of being distracted?

Wendy Wood and David Neal wrote a fascinating psychology article entitled, “A New Look at Habits and the Habit–Goal Interface”.  Now, that’s a little dry but basically they found that having a goal in and of itself did not change the habit.  Having a goal is a good start--we can all create the goal of meditating for five minutes each day, but when we are then faced with the hardwired habits that we have been building and nurturing and redoing our whole lives, so it seems that having a new goal may not be enough.   

So, is it willpower?  Can we will ourselves to change? 

Back to Charles Duhiggs research, he found that two factors contribute to new habits. 

First, it turns out that we only have so much willpower to begin with. Duhigg describes a research project where people were placed in a room with radishes and cookies. Some participants were told to eat the cookies and others the radishes.  The cookies were warm and smelled so good, fresh from the oven, and the radishes were, well radishes.  The cookie eaters were savoring their cookies, and the radish eaters were forcing themselves to eat the radishes.  Some radish eaters even picked up a cookie to smell it more closely, then put it down and picked up a radish.  Imagine the willpower that took! 

After five minutes, the researcher re-entered the room and asked each group to perform a puzzle about connecting dots on a geometric shape in specific way, they said it was just something to kill time in order to wait for the next step in the process.  The puzzle they gave them was actually impossible to solve.  The cookies eaters had plenty of willpower left to persist in the solving the problem, while the radish eaters, their willpower was depleted, and they struggled mightily.  On average, the cookie eaters spent 60% more time trying to solve the puzzle!  They had lots of willpower left to persist when things were difficult!

The conclusion was that willpower is a muscle—one that we can train to use, and one that gets tired if we are required to use it too much.  AND, willpower can be built up over time.  The other example given was the significant research and training that Starbucks has done about dealing with cranky customers—I guess that goes back to our story last week about the craving for coffee, the cue of the smell and the crankiness that arises from not satisfying that craving.  Starbucks trains their employees to prepare for what they will do when faced with a cranky customer.  Prepare in advance, before the craving or aversion arises. 

This preparation enables us to respond differently when the going gets tough.  Let’s apply this to meditation.   Maybe there was a Sunday some time ago that you wanted to get here on Sunday morning at 9 am to meditate.  The alarm sounded and you hit the off button and went back to sleep.  When you awoke, maybe you were glad you slept in rather than meditate, OR maybe you were disappointed in yourself for not getting up.  What the Buddha did with his disciples was create a supportive environment in order to change their habits little by little.  There were rituals that the monks and nuns were taught to change their habits. For example, each night as they went to bed, the put their begging bowls by the side of the bed, upside down, which is done when a monk or nun dies.  When they would awake, they were instructed to use that moment of realization that they were still alive and to recognize the preciousness of this life that we have been given.  So, what preparation might we do to create that visual cue when we awaken, or during the day or at night, whenever you find your willpower waning and challenging your mindfulness and your goals?

The second important component of successful habit change is taking things in bite-size pieces.  Starting a diet by radically changing everything you do in your life is well-researched to be very likely NOT to work.  BUT, changing something small, can start a chain reaction of positive habits.  For example, simply keeping a food journal one day a week, has been proven to create a series of changes in the way you respond to food. 

So, what bite-size pieces of mindfulness, meditation or positive visualization could we make in our lives this week to get the new habit being formed?  I can tell you all the wonderful things that the Buddha taught, but if it doesn’t result in you creating healthier  habits, then it really is a waste of time. 

Brent, I apologize!  Willpower is a component in habit change, as long as we build it slowly, with preparation and recognition of our limitations.  AND, combine it with new goals and motivations that are available at our fingertips when the going gets tough.  This is what the Buddha realized, and what we can now practice. 

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

  

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” – Buddha

  

“Simplicity is the key to brilliance.” – Bruce Lee

Basics of Buddhism – 6 - Addictions and Afflictions

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism by exploring how we cause our own suffering.  We all do it at some time or another—we think, speak or act unskillfully.   Buddhism offers some practical ways to untangle the power that we give to unskillful thoughts, unskillful emotions and unskillful actions.

As we explore these practices to change our thinking, there is some helpful research that is being done in the field of addiction recovery.   First, Roz and Pam shared with me a new book entitled, The Power of Habit  by Charles Duhigg.  In it, he encourages us to see more clearly how cues lead to routines, lead to rewards, which create cravings out of the cues.  When you start having a cup of coffee in the morning, and you get that little jolt of caffeine, you create a routine of wanting the reward of the coffee high.  Over time, just smelling coffee gives you a little jolt, BEFORE YOU EVEN HAVE A SIP.  If you don’t drink any coffee after smelling it, you may start to experience the discomfort of craving.  We have bodily sensations that are unpleasant because of the habit that we have formed around coffee.  This can be true of any routine that we establish that includes some kind of reward.  There are the habits of drinking and drugs and smoking, and the other habits of anxiety, depression and fear—in fact both sets of habits can reinforce and support the other.

Finding the cue, the routine, the reward and the craving is exactly what The Buddha was teaching.  In Sanskrit the word for this craving, aversion or ignorance (the three poisons) is Klesha or affliction.  The Buddha noted that craving, aversion and ignorance were at the root of our suffering.  We can now see through the lens of the scientific research, that he was right. 

Another excellent psychiatric study, entitled “Craving to Quit” by Brewer, Elwafi and Davis, details the positive impact that mindfulness training can have on eliminating unskillful habit loop.  They outline three contributors to addictive behaviors:

• Over-ruminations (cyclical mind-states) 
• Internal sensations (emotions, bodily sensations) when we try to run away from or wallow in some uncomfortable feeling.
• External cues: past experiences that were pleasurable, neutral or painful that now drive our present response.

In Buddhism, we practice uncoupling thoughts/emotions of craving and aversion from reaction by no longer ignoring them.  We can in fact develop a tolerance for craving and aversion.  We can be mindful of thoughts, emotions and automatic behaviors and objectively observe them rather than being sucked into responding in our old habitual unskillful ways.

Every day, we have many opportunities to practice! First, we can practice in a controlled environment, like our focused meditation time, and secondly and equally powerful, we can practice in the moment of an afflictive thought or emotion arising.  It is powerful to practice in the eye of the storm.  With time, these practices become a new default mode of simply being present to whatever is arising.

AND we can use this process to develop skillful habits as well.   In the book, the author gives the example of toothpaste.  In the early 1900’s, only 6% of people brushed their teeth.  Through advertising, people were encouraged to create a routine in order to look more beautiful and have greater health.  The advertising connected the activity, toothbrushing with a positive reward, beauty and health, and made it a routine to do every morning.  Toothbrushing went from 6% to 65% in just two years.

There are no ads for mindfulness and meditation, at least none that are as powerful as toothbrushing, because these practices don’t always have an immediate reward, the issue that we have with working out or eating right.  So, we can overtly build in a short-term reward to encourage the routine leading to a habit of mindfulness and meditation.  Our February Love Challenge of meditating at least five minutes a day can be this opportunity.  In the Buddhist teachings, we are encouraged to meditate like our hair is on fire, having that great of a sense of urgency.  But, perhaps, meditation could be rewarded in some subtler way—it’s even been proven that if we who love our to-do lists, put meditation on the list, then check it off each day, that feeling of reward that we get when we accomplish something good for ourselves, that can create the habit. 

In the article on addiction, the psychiatrist emphasizes that realizing our thoughts and emotions only have power because we give it to them is also a powerful step towards changing our habits.  If we try to merely distract ourselves from them, or ignore them, we might find temporary relief, but we are not getting to the core, to the source of the suffering—this is why many addiction recovery processes fail.   Instead, we can learn to become disenchanted with these afflictive thoughts and emotions, to realize that we have the power to see through them and beyond them, then practice taking away that power through creating a replacement habit of mindfulness. 

Techniques to create the gap and become disenchanted

Recognize shenpa:  Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun who has studied the Buddhist teachings for over 50 years.  She has written many incredible books and given talks on how we get hooked-when we know what we are thinking or feeling is irrational, but we can’t shake it. The Tibetan word is Shenpa.  She also calls it that “sticky feeling”, the feeling like we can’t shake something off, like having an itch that you feel like you must scratch or you’re going to die.  Addiction can be seen as getting hooked, when we feel like we must take that drink or smoke that cigarette or eat that food, or we feel like we’re going to die.

We can also get hooked in smaller moments, when we get hooked into old habits and emotions triggered simply by a situation or something someone says.  Someone says something to you that makes you tighten inside.  Pema calls it pre-verbal, a yucky feeling at the pit of our stomach perhaps.  Then, the thoughts come and the intense desire arises to respond in a unskillful habitual way.  Think of a time when you’ve been criticized by someone.  Recall the exact moment when they said something negative about you.  What did that feel like?

Rise above:  To broaden our perspective, the monk Matthieu Ricard encourages us to use a visualization of the ocean, imagining soaring above the ocean of afflictive thoughts and emotions, instead of being caught in a boat on the surface, in the midst of the storm.  Meditation, mindfulness and visualization can be key practices in overcoming addictions and afflictions.  Hooray for this possibility of transformation, without any special equipment needed! Just our minds!

Serve others:  Another method of dissolving the power of unskillful thoughts is finding ways to serve others, instead of myopically focusing on ourselves.  One practice that works well in AA is when a newly sober person is given a job to make the coffee or set out the chairs, a simple job that serves others.  How might you serve others to get beyond your limited ways of thinking?  With this new understanding, we then practice again and again.  Through consistent practice, we strengthen the mental muscle of choosing the more skillful path.  We actually are re-wiring our brain.

In her book, Taking the Leap, Pema Chodron related a story that was circulating after 9/11.  It was said that a Native American grandfather was speaking to his grandson about the violence and rage in the world, and he likened it to having two wolves in your heart.  One wanting to be vengeful and angry and the other wanting to be understanding and kind.  The grandson asked him which of the two wolves would win….and the grandfather said, “The one you choose to feed.”

Today and every day forward, we can make the commitment to feed the right wolf, to be aware when we have that tightening in our gut, and sense negative thoughts and emotions arising, AND we can pull the plug, not feed them.  We can forego that short term sense of pleasure, trade it in for a longer term sense of well-being and happiness:

Matthieu Ricard in his book, Happiness, recommends three specific practices that correlate to these techniques mentioned above, for getting beyond unskillful actions and moving towards a deeper sense of happiness and well-being, regardless of our external circumstances or our habitual thoughts and emotions:

•Concentration (strengthening our ability to stay present) Identify the positive result you’re getting from the unskillful behavior.   Part of this mindful awareness is discovering how our fear and unskillful behavior is actually serving us.  If we overeat, we might do so because we remember the short term relief that comes from doing so.  If we get angry, we want that sense of relief when we first strike back.  A major part of mindful awareness is looking for the short term payoff.  Right now, take a specific example of a bad habit you are trying to stop, and bring to mind a recent situation where the desire to respond in that unskillful way was so strong AND when you did actually follow through with the unskillful action.  What did that desire initially feel like right before responding?  Then, what was the payoff that you imagined and received?  Psychologically, it is often described as some sense of relief.  I can’t stop thinking about that drink or that cigarette, until I give in, and in that action, we do feel some relief from the sense of suffering.  Mindful awareness enables us to catch ourselves in that moment of fantasizing about the good feeling we will get from doing the unskillful thing, AND TO REINFORCE THE LONG-TERM NEGATIVE RESULTS—THIS IS A CRITICAL STEP TO STOPPING THE HABIT.  Replace the thought and emotion about the short-term payoff with a different thought about the long term good of a skillful response.   

•Loving-kindness (cultivating positive mind-states) We can trust in our innate goodness.  Find the strength that is within you to change—it’s there within every single person.  If you are constantly telling yourself how bad you are for having these reactions and responding unskillfully, you are feeding the wrong wolf.  Trust in the fact that you are innately good, that there is good within each and every one of us, that we each have an enormous amount of energy and power that we can focus with laser-like precision to change the way we respond.  I work in a spiritual center that has the largest Alcoholics Anonymous group in the city.  I personally know dozens of recovering alcoholics and addicts who had been abandoned by their family and friends as completely unsalvageable, and many have found the power within themselves (and through the strength of the group support and process of AA) to transform their lives into good, even into joyful living!  It is possible!

•H.A.L.T.  Choiceless awareness (not taking things personally)   There’s an easy acronym that some of you may have heard, H.A.L.T.  Halt.  I learned this many years ago when I was reacting in very irresponsible ways, and I’m amazed at how helpful it has been.  HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  Whenever these kinds of emotions arise in us, we can begin to see them as signposts, reminders to HALT, to pause, TO CREATE A GAP, to consider carefully whether we want to act upon our urges in that moment.   

RECOGNIZE—RISE ABOVE—SERVE OTHERS

Basics of Buddhism – 5 - Imagination

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism by discussing the power of our imagination.  As the third key component of Buddhist practice, along with mindfulness and meditation, visualization through imagination helps us transform the way we experience ourselves and our world. 

If we want to transform the way we experience ourselves and the world, imagination is an important skill to cultivate. Normally, we might think of imagination as making things up, NOT being fully in the present. The definition of imagination is the power of forming a mental image of something not present—isn’t that the opposite of this whole idea of Buddhist practice? The answer might seems to be Yes, BUT it turns out these two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Let’s look more deeply at how we can direct the use of imagination in a positive way. Imagination can be a powerful stepping stone that stretches us beyond our current conditioned responses and old ways of seeing the world, into a new world of new perspectives. It’s like a bridge leading us to a greater understanding about what it means to be truly present.  Imagination can actually re-wire our brain for happiness.

Why would we need imagination to awaken? Let’s start with where you are in this exact moment. What is your main motivation for wanting to learn something new? To relax? To de-stress? To experience peace? To find answers? There are many different motivations that encourage us to practice, all excellent reasons in their own way.  I offer that all of these motivations are grounded in our imagination. We imagine that life could be different. We imagine that having this experience of Buddhism might change our lives in some positive way. The first step in learning anything new is imagining that things could be different. Imagination brings forth the full potential of each moment in our lives, allowing us to see alternative ways of living.

When people get depressed, one of the most debilitating aspects is that they cannot imagine living without depression. When we are in pain, we sometimes lose our ability to imagine life without pain. We all get caught up in the experience we’re having, clinging to it with the unconscious assumption that things will never be different. And yet, it is possible, in the midst of any difficult experience, in the middle of reacting in our old unskillful ways, we can realize that all things changes. Nothing stays the same forever.  All things are impermanent.  This is an important principle in Buddhism, and one in which imagination can play a key role.

When we awaken to the possibility that things are ever-changing, we are able to direct our experience of the present beyond our current limited thoughts and feelings. The teachings of the Buddha are all about waking up to the fullness of each moment, and imagination is teaching us how to be fully open to all possible experiences. Stephen Batchelor is a well-respected Buddhist practitioner, scholar and teacher, and he has a whole chapter on imagination in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. In it, he describes that there are three important factors in Buddhist practice: First, commitment, Second, practicing the technique, and Third is imagination. It’s noteworthy that he puts imagination in such an important place. When we look at the first two steps of the eightfold path, we find Wise View and Wise Intention, and at the core of these two steps is practicing imagining how things might be in a broader context.

So, how might we use imagination as the rocket fuel for a passionate, joyful life? Here’s some ideas:

First, we can recognize and remember our ability to access imagination exists in each and every moment. Each moment is sacred—not just the ones spent in church or at home meditating. Each and every moment is sacred. We are creating our life moment by moment. When we feel stuck in a certain situation or overwhelmed by the circumstances in our lives, we can remind ourselves to leverage the power of imagination to see clearly the breadth and depth of the possibilities beyond our limited way of thinking. WE TRULY ARE JUST MAKING ALL THIS UP. We are deciding moment by moment, how to live and how to respond to all that life creates. Most of the time, we fall back on the easy answers, like what our parents did or what our friends are doing or what we think we should do or what we did in the past. We might unfortunately think of life as just getting by, doing what we have to do…but the Buddhist practice is about life being so much more.

Imagination is a powerful tool that we have available to us in each moment to stretch beyond our mental limitations. Imagination is a process of seeing ourselves, all others and the world in all its glory.

Practicing imagination strengthens our capacity to think outside the box!   One of my favorite quotes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

 “Alice laughed. ‘There's no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can't believe impossible things.’ 

‘I daresay you haven't had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’”

Our ability to think beyond our limitations is a learnable skill. The visualizations that are part of the Buddhist practices, like loving-kindness, the point of peace and the offering practice, these efforts strength our imagination muscle—in fact the practices re-wire our brains into a new way of seeing the world.   Visualizations might seem corny or artificial, but they still work! Buddhist teachers encourage their students that even if you feel like you’re faking it, we are still planting seeds, the seed of loving-kindness, planting the seed of awakening to our innate goodness, just by the mere practice of imagining. Stephen Batchelor likens Visualization more to artistic creation than technical problem solving. We can think of living as an artistic endeavor. Each of us is creating this life that we are experiencing. Each of us is making choices about how to live, moment by moment. The limitations that we think exist are in most cases, self-imposed. Imagine all the possible ways you could live your life!  Imagine how long that list could be!

AND, we can never run out of imagination. Everyone feels down at times, we get sick, and get old, we feel scared and angry and frustrated. But, the truth of our being is that there is a never ending source of light and imagination within us. We may feel angry, but we are not anger. WE may feel afraid, but we are not fear. Thoughts and emotions are NOT who we are. We can imagine that we are pure awareness, we can imagine that we are love and compassion and wisdom and goodness. We can imagine being fully awake, fully present. This powerful process of imagination opens us up to the amazing possibilities of how to live our life.

This innate goodness within everyone, in Buddhism it’s referred to as Buddha Nature, can be liken to the SUN, which is always shining. It never stops. It doesn't need something outside of itself to shine. It just keeps shining. no matter what. There may be clouds in the way, it might be night time on Earth, so we don’t see the Sun, but the Sun is still shining. The light of our being is the same way. It might be covered up or out of view, but it’s still there . This unique point of open awareness is always present in each moment.

Who or what is having this experience of living anyway? Who or what is having these thoughts or feeling these feelings right now? Who or what are you? Loosen any certainty that you are a certain way, loosen the clinging to any misconception that life must unfold in a certain direction, that living is limited to a limited set of emotions and thoughts. Imagine that you are not a thing but rather pure awareness manifesting anew in each moment.

Life is more an unwritten book to be explored rather than a finished product to be defended. The Buddha’s enlightenment is an exercise in seeing life in a whole new way. Because first, he imagined that there was a whole new way to be discovered. If he didn’t imagine another possibility, he would have never started looking in the first place!

We each have this incredible tool of imagination within us:

1. Each of us can know that it is always available in every moment.
2. Exercise it, strengthen your use of it, and
3. Rest in knowing that imagination is limitless.
4. We can imagine our lives as a clean sheet of paper, waiting for the living to be written down, to be lived, moment by moment. In this moment, imagine your life as that clean piece of paper. What would you write? How would you live? What would you create anew?

Strengthening our imagination muscle enables us to benefit from the practice of visualization.   Buddha found that there are certain qualities that we can cultivate through visualizing and imagining experiencing them.  Here is the “fake it till you make it” part that has been scientifically proven to be true.  An athlete can mentally imagine performing his physical activity and by doing so, does a better job when he begins to actually play.  So too, we, as spiritual athletes, can practice feeling a certain way, and we slowly begin to experience the world in this new way of being.