Eightfold Path - Wise Mindfulness

(For podcast, click here)  (For the ITunes version, click here)


We continue our series of talks from the book, Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das, and this morning I’ll talk about another key component of the Eightfold Path- Wise Mindfulness, or sometimes translated as Wise Meditation.  It is the primary practice in Buddhism for transforming your life.  It’s been found to be one of the most powerful tools for creating a change in both the way we respond to the world and how we experience the world.  It’s been tested by millions of people for 2600 years.  Lama Surya Das even describes it as “the escalator to enlightenment”!   So how come we all ain’t doing it every day?  How come it’s not a priority in our lives?  Let’s explore what it will take for each of us to make mindfulness a priority and a focus.  


First, what the heck is it?  To say “now be mindful” sounds a bit like my mom sending me out the door as a child “now be safe!” (I’m 55 years old, and she still says it to me every time I leave...)   What do we do with this information?  What does being mindful feel like?  What are we going to do differently because we know this fact?


Some describe it in the simplest terms:  when you eat, you just eat.  When you sleep, you just sleep.  When you walk, you just walk.  But, there is more going on than that.  Mindfulness is paying attention to three things:  

• what is going on inside of us
• what is going on outside of us and 
• aware of ourselves amidst all that is happening, moment by moment.  

For most of us, we mindLESSly react to stimulae in our lives with pre-conceived ideas about ourselves and the world and with sometimes unskillful habits.  Mindfulness creates a gap between stimulus and response, so we have time to choose more skillfully how to respond to life.  Mindfulness can sound a little harsh, so Pema Chodron prefers the term, “compassionate awarenesss” so we’re less likely to use Mindfulness as a weapon to bludgeon us over the head with one more item for our “to do” list that doesn’t get done.  We’re just doing the best that we can, moment to moment.


Sometimes it seems that one might think of mindfulness like going on a diet.  "I know it’s good for me, but it’s going to be difficult."  Anybody ever planned on having a super mindful day?  Before you go to bed, you set your alarm a little early, so you’ll have time to meditate first thing.  Then, when the alarm goes off in the morning, you feel sleepy, so you hit the snooze button a couple of times, and before you know it, you’re late and rushing out of bed and have barely enough time to get ready to get out the door, perhaps thinking, "I don’t have time to be mindful today!  I’ll try again tomorrow or next week."  If we think of it like a diet, we are doing ourselves a disservice.  We might think if we don’t meditate first thing in the morning, then the whole day is shot.  Is that true?


Each moment we get an opportunity to start fresh.  So many of you have told me that when you put your energy into being mindful, that the entire day goes more smoothly.  Mindfulness is simply focusing our energy on what we are doing in this exact moment.  We all have plenty of energy, but we often scatter it around with multi-tasking and distraction.  Energy is just being diffused all around us most of the time.  We’re distracted…We’re putting a little here and a little there, so there is no sense of what’s really going on.  
So, we rely on old habits and preconceived notions about ourselves and the world, a sort of shorthand for seeing things, because it SEEMS more efficiently, but upon reflection, these shortcuts we’re taking, THEY are what are causing our suffering!  


We have to make a conscious decision to focus our energy on mindfulness.  It’s like the power of a laser.  This practice is encouraging us to slow down, just enough, to see what is actually happening in each moment—inside yourself, in your world, and where you are in the midst of things.  We slow down by gathering up this massive amount of energy that every person has, even if you feel tired and depressed, there is energy all around and within you, waiting to be tapped into.  We gather up this energy, and become a laser on each moment.


Let’s figure out how we can think of mindfulness as something different than a diet.  Imagine that you thought about Mindfulness like some precious jewel that you were gathering up.  That there are jewels strewn throughout your life, and you are so busy hurrying past that you don’t even see them.  What if Mindfulness was an opportunity to collect all the precious jewels in our lives?


Ask yourself the question, “Fpr me, what is standing in the way of Mindfulness?”… Well, let’s be honest, sometimes, some moments aren’t very pleasant.  We are in pain, or we have a problem in our life that we can’t seem to solve or the stress of living feels overwhelming.  Being present in those moments might feel like throwing gasoline on a small fire that suddenly bursts into uncontrollable flames.  I agree that it’s probably easier to be mindful during the pleasant times—thinking I want to savor this moment—than it is during the difficult times.  So, let’s work on some tricks and tools to keep us present when the going gets tough.


For each of you, bring to mind a situation or emotion in your own life that you are struggling with right now.   It could be a job or family situation, it could be an addiction or stress, it could be depression, fear, anxiety, anger, resentment.  Let’s talk about the times when these situations and these emotions arise, and what we might do to stay present and see things and ourselves more clearly.


First, let’s find a way to recognize that the struggle is happening in the first place. This sense of struggling with life is so integrated into our culture and even into our reptilian brain, it’s not surprising that we focus on the negative.  When we were cave people, not being mindful of something positive, like your cave partner made you a nice dinner of dinosaur or something, did not have a huge impact to your survival.  Maybe you got the cold shoulder or had to sleep in the other part of the cave that night, that’s not too dangerous.  But, if you hear something in the middle of the night, and it might be a saber-toothed tiger coming to devour you, underestimating that sound could mean death.  That’s how we are wired.  But, there aren’t too many saber-toothed tigers running around these days, and in fact violent crime has declined dramatically over the last 50 years.  The FBI reports that violent crime is one third of what it was in 1994.  Our average lifespan has doubled in the last 100 years, but, watching the news, you’d think we were on the verge of an apocalypse.  Who knows?  May we are….but you yourself are safer than any human being has ever been in the history of mankind. 


So, researchers have found that we can counter this tendency of our reptilian brain to be negative, but balancing it with the positive.  Pro-actively being mindful of the blessings in your life.  When the going gets tough, look for the lessons learn, the positive outcomes that might arise out of the difficult times.  Look for the good.  This isn’t about walking out into traffic and assuming we will not get run over.  It is about BALANCING our need for safety with the mindfulness of all the goodness that is all around us.  We have within us everything we need to be free.  So, first we can stay present with negative situations and feelings, then look for the good, we can count our blessings. 


The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.-  Viktor E. Frankl


Second, there’s a wonderful technique called worst case scenario.  What’s the worst that can happen?  This might seem counter to what I just said, but sometimes naming what we are most afraid of, enables us to deal with it in a forthright manner.  If you are afraid of something right now, what’s the worst that can happen?  Then, put a probability on that worst case scenario.  There’s a wonderful book called The Resilience Factor, by Karen Reivich, who has a great exercise about putting things into perspective, using this worst case scenario practice.  We see it, we name it, we prepare for it, we no longer fear it, and we move on.    


What is it that you are afraid of that you can’t stay present for? Name it, acknowledge it.  If you can do nothing to stop it, come to peace with it.  Mindfulness brings peace amidst the pain.


Third, Mindfulness can be a way to lighten up, to add some humor and lightness to our lives.  Pema Chodron says that when she realizes that she is distracted from her breath, she imagines this funny looking bird, like one of those that would sit on a pirate’s shoulder, sitting on her own shoulder and squawking, oops! Thinking!  The picture and the funny voice inside her head is enough to make her smile and return to the present.  How can we enfuse more laughter and lightheartedness into our live?


Lastly, Mindfulness doesn’t have to be perfect.  Just like thinking the diet is ruined when we fall off and eat a doughnut, we don’t have to give up mindfulness for the entire day or the entire week, just because we become distracted.  Each moment is the perfect moment to start fresh.  And in Buddhism, this middle way, this going easy on ourselves is an integral part of the practice.  There are five precepts/guidelines that we are to follow like don’t lie and don’t kill.  Have respect for human life.  Perhaps we not quite there yet where we can bless the mosquito that is biting us, but what small step could we take toward honoring life?   Jack Kornfied says, that if we only didn’t kill human beings that would make a big difference in the world.  


Here’s a recap of our tools and techniques:
1. Count your blessings
2. Face the worst case scenario
3. Add some laughter and humor to each day
4. It doesn’t have to be perfect.


Wise Mindfulness and Meditation are the cornerstones of the Buddhist practice.  If you don’t sit and meditate every single day, that doesn’t mean you’re a Bad Buddhist.  It means you are human.  This is a lifelong project.  We look for a moment here and a moment there, stringing together as many as we can.  And moment by moment, we will become enlightened.  So, join me on the escalator to enlightenment.  


Krishnamurti says, “Meditation and Mindfulness are not means to an end.  They are both the means and the end."