Turning The Mind Into An Ally - 3 – Peaceful Abiding

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This morning we continue a series of talks based on the book,  Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham.  In the third chapter, he expands on this powerful practice of peaceful abiding, (shamatha in Sanskrit) practice that we began talking about a few weeks ago.  We start by simply concentrating on the breath.  This is the very first step in taming our mind. 

Just as an athlete prepares for his sport with practice, we prepare for living by finding time to practice meditation.  The concentration tool enables us to tame our mind and be more fully aware of what is arising moment by moment.  Often, when people first start meditating, they do so to relieve stress, and that is often a good side effect.  BUT, it is also important to know that meditation brings a quieter environment externally which sometimes brings more awareness of our internal frenetic thoughts, emotions and sensations.  We have been having all these thoughts, emotions and sensations before, but perhaps we didn’t realize them consciously.  Sometimes like a storm that has been brewing outside a window, meditation is like opening the window for the first time and experiencing the storm firsthand. 

This place of presence is where we incorporate the practice of peaceful abiding to weather the storm of our varying thoughts, emotions and sensations.   You might think that you have to artificially create a peaceful abiding, but the Buddhist teachings encourage us that human beings are at their core peaceful.  If that’s true, why have we fought ourselves and each other so much for so many years, decades, millennia?  I could jokingly blame it on too much testosterone, but I’m sure too much estrogen can be blamed as well.  It seems that all that conflict may have been part of our evolutionary process.  We fight when we are afraid.  We fight when we are not even aware of the possibility of peaceful responses.  It also seems we fight out of habit sometimes.  Now, right here, we can challenge this old notion that we are inherently angry, inherently at odds with the world.  Perhaps that is just what we have learned. If you are holding on to an assumption that human beings are inherently fighters, imagine if that were not true.  What if we could realize and tap into an innate ability to find peaceful solutions to whatever conflict arises? 

I want to stop and add a caveat.  I understand that there are times when aggressive tactics must be taken.  I often tell the Buddhist story that if you are able to save the lives of 200 people by killing one person, then you should do so, even going against the Buddhist guidelines of not killing.  However, I also offer that we often rush to judgment that the aggressive solution is always the best solution. 

If natural peacefulness is our birthright, how might we reclaim the experience, and find a way to respond in kinder, more skillful, ways?  Sakyong encourages us that there are several practices to rediscover our innate ability to peacefully abide in each moment.

First, we can decide to have a larger motivation than simply the comfort of our own mind.  Our selfish desires and distractions often lead to unskillful words and actions.  We can become more intentional in our motivation.  Ask yourself this question:  “Do I want to be a better person?”  “Do I want to be stronger, kinder, wiser and more focused?” "Am I willing to give up some old unskillful habits to see the bigger picture, to be of greater service to myself and to the world?"  We all need to be clear about our motivation and intentions in order to get through the dark night of the spirit when difficult times arise.  Are you willing to no longer put the simple comfort of your own mind as your first priority? 

We all know the feeling of giving in to our discursive thoughts and emotions, those fleeting desires and aversions that we all have. Sakyong describes this process as if we have an allergy to a certain food and eat it anyway, wanting so desperately that initial sense of pleasure that comes from the taste and the texture, but later experiencing the allergic reaction that causes us great suffering.  I really relate to this analogy!  I am allergic to dairy—I get terrible migraines after ingesting it, but I absolutely LOVE cheese.  There are times when I just want to smell, to savor, and to taste a glorious piece of cheese, and I succeed sometimes in ignoring the fact that I will have a severe migraine that will last for hours, if not days.  Ahhhh, but that desire for the taste and experience of cheese sometimes overwhelms me…..

We can choose to be aware of the desire for those things that are unskillful, and learn instead to tolerate the craving, then refocus all our energies on the feeling of peaceful abiding that can ultimately dissolve the unskillful thinking and emotions.  I learn to tolerate the desire for cheese, but not give in to the action (most of the time :-).

Second and third, there are two forms of thinking and emotions that often increase the likelihood of an allergic reaction:  expectations and preferences.

Our culture often encourages everyone to have lots of expectations.  Thinking we must decide in advance exactly what we want, we then feel disappointed, unhappy and discouraged when we don't get exactly what we want.  What caused the expectation in the first place?  Is it necessary to have expectations? You might find it valuable to reflect on these questions.  We can explore the possibility of practicing being so present in the moment that we don’t need to know exactly how things are going to turn out.  We learn through peaceful abiding, we show up fully and with kindness, and see what happens.  Imagine life unfolding through awareness and kindness—what might that look like?

Then, there are all the preferences we have about most everything.  I like sushi, but I hate creamed corn.  I like funnel cakes but don't like Mexican food.  We meet someone and often think "I like", "I don't like" or "I ignore".  On and on and on, we form these preferences and begin to dissect the world, the people around us, and ourselves into three categories:  like, dislike or irrelevant.  These preferences can strongly color our experience of each moment.   In Buddhism, we are encouraged to replace the need for preferences with the practice of curiosity.  We learn to get comfortable with not needing everything to be a certain way.

I am very much a neat-freak (I like to think of it as being very "zen").  I find myself liking my outer environment to be a very certain way.  (I especially love the smell of Windex.) When my daughter comes to visit, she has a VERY different perspective of "clean enough", and finds my "zen" habits very annoying.  So, we both practice compromising.  Every time I start to feel unhappy when my surroundings aren’t spic and span, I try exploring not needing things to be exactly the way I want them to be.  What am I feeling right now?  Is it really that important to clean everything in the house?  Sometimes the answer might be yes!  Other times, not so much. 

To sum up this beautiful chapter on Peaceful Abiding, we can look beyond our desire to simply make the mind comfortable and instead expand our motivation to a greater good.  We can use concentration to bring awareness to the presence of thoughts, emotions and sensations and begin to disentangle ourselves from our storylines, our expectations and our preferences.

Little by little, sitting in calm abiding, a little more joy arises for "no external reason".  There is joy within you right now, just waiting to be unleashed.  Through cultivating curiosity and non-preference, we give greater joy and happiness room to expand.   Let that joy and happiness come out and be.

Turning The Mind Into An Ally - 1 - The Rock and the Flower

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This morning we begin our new book series, entitled, Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham, who is the oldest son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.  Trungpa was the wild man of Tibetan Buddhism here in the west—he was profoundly instrumental in creating a groundswell of interest in Buddhism starting in the 1960’s, including the first Buddhist University, Naropa, in Boulder, Colorado and many monasteries throughout the West.  His teaching style was iconoclastic, see say the least.  Pema Chodron was Trungpa’s student and even writes the foreword to this book—she was Sakyong’s meditation teacher when he was a young boy, but humbly says that she is now his student.  Pema is a rock star teacher in her own right, but always defers to others as her teacher—I admit that I bristled a bit when she talks so deferentially about someone younger than her as being her teacher, but therein lies a lesson as well.  We can humbly understand that everyone is our teacher.   Even in this small act of looking for the pecking order of who is a better teacher than someone else—this is the mind causing us suffering.    The very first sentence of the very first chapter is,

“Many of us are slaves to our minds. Our own mind is our worst enemy.”

How true.  We discussed last week in the Tuesday night group that most of us weren’t told growing up that we had the ability to train the mind so that we could choose how to respond to thoughts and emotions.  For me, I was told what was right and what was wrong.  “Do the right stuff and don’t do the wrong stuff.”  But, then, thoughts arose, and I felt the desire to do some of the wrong stuff—that which I was told was “wrong”, but that which my mind told me was desirable.  I’m thinking generally about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, but hopefully you can relate to this tug-of-war that we often have with our minds.  We know doing something won’t make us happy in the long term, but in the short term, we really really really want to do it.  And so the battle is waged.  We wear ourselves down, then sometimes give in to those desires that cause us or others suffering.

It was a surprise to me when I began studying Buddhism to find that there is this ancient, well-tested system for training the mind to respond to everything in more skillful ways.  It doesn’t have to be woowoo or through belief alone.  In fact, this process of mind training that is central to the Buddhist way of life, is only possible by trying it out, working with it yourself, trying it particularly when things get tough.  You can live in a cave and practice these teachings, and make great progress, but the real success comes from integrating the teachings into as many moments of each day as we possibly can, particularly those when the going gets tough.

So, where to begin?  In the first chapter, Sakyong compares the mind to a rock and a flower.  For most of us, we think of our mind as a rock—solid and unchangeable.  The flower represents the potential for our mind to generate wisdom and compassion.  So, instead of being knuckleheads and beating our head up against the same wall again and again, we instead can decide to create some fertile ground for planting our flowers of wisdom and compassion.  The analogy of preparing the ground for planting is a good one.

We can prepare the ground of the mind, first by taking away this false notion that the mind is unchangeable.  We know now from the neurological research being done that the mind is very malleable.  Once we realize and incorporate this truth into our reality, we can move away the “rock”, and begin to prepare the soil of the mind.

Perhaps we can take the analogy further by thinking about tilling the soil and fertilizing it as the preliminary meditation practice.  In Sanskrit, this initial practice is called, “Shamatha” or peaceful abiding.   We can calm the mind by concentrating on a specific object, like the breath, or a mantra, or word or candle flame—whatever tool works best for you.  This is the very first step in almost all meditation processes.

Buddhist concentration is not in the manner of intense stressful focus, but rather concentrating with calm or peaceful abiding.  We are calmly compassionately aware of our point of concentration, gently noticing when we stray away with distracting thoughts or emotions.  Then, like a puppy on a lease, we gently pull the mind back to the point of focus.  Again and again, just as we do at the beginning of each meditation session.

Another part of this planting process is cultivating more curiosity about exactly what is happening in each moment.  Cultivating the experience of curiosity is also the fertilizer that enriches the soil of the mind, preparing it for greater wisdom and compassion.  What am I really thinking?  Why am I reacting in this way?   We can focus less on judging our thoughts and emotions and more on examining and understanding. 

I also note that it is with great distinction that mind is referred to as “THE” mind, not “YOUR” mind.  Most of us, we feel a sense of ownership of the thoughts and emotions that arise within.  So much so, that we self-identify as OUR mind, as our thoughts, emotions and sensations.  This process of training THE mind is about dis-identify with whatever passing thought the mind might have.  We are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are not our sensations.  WE are so much more.  YOU are so much more.  By looking at the mind and loosening its stranglehold on our identity, we can begin to see what is happening in a more open and honest way. 

There is no one to protect or defend, just the mind to be tamed and trained. 

The chapter ends with three ideas for encouragement:

• Love and belief in yourself; encourage and inspire yourself and others
• Don’t give up; none of us will do this perfectly; keep trying
• Leverage the spirit of those who came before us and were so kind to leave us these teachings

How to get the most out of meditation

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We are continuing our series of talks from the book, Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das.  Let’s dive into the chapter on Wise Mindfulness, one of the steps on the Eightfold Path.  Mindfulness and meditation are the primary practices of the Buddhist teachings.  It gives us a clear road map for transforming our lives.  This morning, we'll focus on meditation.

The list of three’s: 

Why meditate?  What is meditation?  How does one meditate?

What are the three stages of meditation?

What are the top three questions about meditation?

To begin, ask yourself why would you want to meditate in the first place?  Why do you care about meditating?  It’s important to be very clear about why you are interested in meditation.   Often, people are vague about their motivation, then consequently fail to make significant changes in their behavior.   We can think about this problem in terms of our present self and our future self (given that Buddhists think that “self” as just a combination of conditioned phenomena).   In the present moment, our present self may dream about losing ten pounds, or quitting smoking or some other improvement.  Our future self is what we will become in the future.  However, we are creating our future self in this very moment.  Our responses in this moment are what lay the foundation for our future self.

And yet, in this moment, we are being bombarded by our thoughts and emotions that are often looking for an immediate payoff.  The doughnut that shows up in this moment may seem too yummy to resist.  However, if we are motivated to grow into the future self of our dreams, we must find the motivation to resist an unskillful response in the present moment. 

So, why meditate?  When the going gets tough, you will need to be clear on why you want to sit down and be still.  Meditation can be a powerful transformer, but it doesn’t work to just read about it or hear about it.  It requires actual practice.  Therefore, it is helpful to be very clear and precise about your motivation and intention. 

Second, what is meditation?  Meditation in all its various forms has one objective, to train the mind.  The mind is the most powerful tool that we have.  We are constantly thinking and processing the world around us.  Think about a stranger you saw recently.  Now recognize some judgment you may have had about them.  What opinion did you form about them, just based on their appearance?  It seems so real, these opinions and perspectives that we have, yet they are built on our conditioned habits of relating everything we see, feel, experience with something we previously saw, felt or experienced.  Mostly, they are just stories.  Sometimes, these pre-conceived ideas are helpful, but oftentimes, they cause us to not “see” what is really happening in the moment. 

Meditation helps us recognize these stories for what they are--just stories.  We have the power to transform our lives by identifying our stories, seeing things and ourselves more clearly, then responding differently in the future.  

One of the most common questions people have about meditation is:  How do I stop my thoughts?  The good news is that we are NOT trying to stop our thoughts.  Thank goodness!  Anyone who has tried to meditate even once knows the frustration of trying to stop thinking.  The more we try to stop, the more it seems we think.  Our mind is like a little puppy running around with too much energy, running from one thought to another, sometime with very little connection.  We spend most of our time either rehashing the past or fantasizing about the future, either can be pleasant or painful, but both the past and the future take us away from being fully present in this moment.  Meditation is training the mind to see ourselves and the world more clearly.  So, we begin by making friends with our mind, with our thoughts and emotions, not pushing them away, not cling to them, not ignoring them.  Let them rise and fall of their own natural process.   

So, we know why we meditate, and what is meditation.  How do we do it? Lama Surya Das breaks down the meditation process into three stages:  

First, arriving and centering.  We leave behind the busyness of life and come to a place of stillness.  We can give ourselves cues that it is time to settle down.  Playing soft music, sitting in a certain position, reducing external distractions—these are all physical cues that encourage our mind to calm down.   This is why it’s helpful to have a place in your house or apartment that is just for meditation, even if it’s just a corner of a room.  It helps to put together a chair or cushion, an altar or whatever helps you get centered.  Taking a few slow, deep breaths is also a good signal to our body that it is time to relax. 

Stage two is Intensifying and Focusing:  We use the breath as a tool for bringing our awareness to a single point.  We also use chanting to give our brain something to focus on to help still the mind.  Chanting naturally brings you into the present moment. This focusing process is called Shamatha in Sanskrit, calm abiding.  We’re paying attention.  Another great tool for intensifying and focusing is visualization.  We imagine in great detail having qualities like a Buddha.  The loving-kindness practice, the point of peace, forgiveness practice, offering practice—these are all visualization tools to focus the mind on a greater level of being.     

Stage three is Releasing and Allowing:  The main point of the meditation is to release even the object of meditation and just be.  We open ourselves to whatever is happening within us and around us.  Just sitting--not doing, not fabricating, not distracted.    

Leave it as it is and rest your weary mind.

                  -LONGCHENPA Tibetan Buddhist Teacher 

No place to go, nothing to do, resting in the natural perfection of just living.  We make things a whole lot harder than they need to be. In Dzogchen, a particular Buddhist tradition, it’s call the Natural Great Perfection.  Seeing the innate perfection in things left just as they are.  Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist teacher, says that 50% of meditation is simply self-acceptance.  Carl Rogers, a noted psychologist, says we must first accept ourselves, before we can truly change.

A second question I get quite often is:  How am I supposed to find time to meditate?  I don’t have time!”  I completely understand.  Our days seem filled with so much busyness and activity, and our minds have been trained to stay busy.  Here are some baby steps to creating a more mindful life:  First, find the missing moments. We all have them.  We’re standing in line at the grocery store.  We’re waiting for a red light.  We’ve arrived early for a doctor’s appointment.  Imagine that instead of being irritated when you had to wait, you thought, Yippee!  I now have time to meditate!  It might be as simple as taking three deep breaths, or just focus on your breathing for a few moments.  Over time, these moments become minutes, and minutes become a daily meditation practice. 

The third most often asked question I get is that people think they’re not doing it right.  Many people think that everyone else is getting it right EXCEPT for them.  I have certainly had this experience as well.  Early in my meditation practice, I read a book by Herbert Benson, entitled The Relaxation Response. And in it, he studied people before during and after a meditation exercise.  He took cortisol levels and blood pressure and interviewed them about their experience.  What he found was that often the subject didn’t think they did the meditation correctly, but even if they just tried, that was enough to lower their stress levels. Just trying to meditate had a positive impact on their physical condition.   This simple research gives me great hope when I sit down to meditate and feel like it isn’t going well.  There is no litmus test for a single meditation session—merely that you showed up, sat down and tried. 

Meditation works on the body and the brain in subtle ways.  Over time, it works its magic and enables us to live a peaceful and joyful meditative life.