Annie Mahon | Author, Blogger, Mindfulness Teacher

Boddhisattva Self-Care

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(image from Ted.com)

I woke up one day last week feeling sick. I got up anyway, enjoyed my morning routine of tea with my husband, and walked the dogs. But as the morning advanced, I found myself back in my bed. I was scheduled to teach that evening, and in order to do that I would need to bury my headache and body aches under a thick layer of medication. Or, I could find a way out of teaching. This posed a pretty serious problem for me because I tend to compulsively follow through on all of my commitments, no matter how badly I feel, and I despise asking for help. I see myself as someone who serves others, so I don’t like feeling selfish or prioritizing myself.

My fear of self-care was imprinted in my midwestern Protestant work ethic upbringing. In my family of origin, my siblings and I were highly motivated to avoid the labels lazy and selfish and the dreaded, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself!”  As an adult, I often find it difficult to know when to throw in the towel, rest, or take care of myself. My mom’s aphorism, “You can rest when you’re dead,” is a not-so-gentle reminder to never waste a moment of our precious lives. It was a valid concept, but one maybe more positively stated as “Carpe diem!”

I teach many women and men who have high profile or high pressure jobs, and I know that I’m not alone in my fear of never doing enough. For many of us, discerning when to take a nap or a hot shower and when to pop some more Tylenol and power through the pain, isn’t easy. My first response to the doctor who told me I would need to be in a walking boot for six weeks was to politely say, “No, thank you.” Even after she showed me an X-ray in which we could both clearly see that my metatarsal joint had collapsed, I refused to take her advice to let it rest. I left her office without the boot, only to return the next day (head hanging low) after reading horror stories online of what would happen to my foot if I didn’t stay off it.

The internal voice that says, “Don’t stop!” can be an echo from childhood, society, and even, if we aren’t careful, from our spiritual and religious practices. Those of us who are doing work in helping fields can be especially prone to pushing past our own physical and mental health boundaries. If we don’t do it, we tell ourselves, than someone will suffer. This voice often blocks our ability to take good care of our bodies, hearts, and minds.

Boddhisattva or Codependent?

In Zen Buddhist practice, we aim to live like a Bodhisattva — a being who dedicates her enlightenment to helping others.  Thich Nhat Hanh describes a Bodhisattva as someone who has compassion within himself or herself and who is able to make another person smile or help someone suffer less. It’s a beautiful image, especially because Bodhisattvas are motivated by their compassion to reduce the suffering of others.

As aspiring Bodhisattvas, we may find that we are motivated to help others out of something other than pure compassion — perhaps guilt, fear or shame. We worry that if we stop and take care of ourselves, someone else will be angry or hurt. But if we try to contribute when we are unwell or emotionally unavailable, are we really helping, or are we simply generating anger and resentment? If we think are “helping” when we are really avoiding our own guilt or fear, we aren’t a Bodhisattva, we are codependent.

Feeding the Hungry Ducks

One simple rule-of-thumb that helps me differentiate Boddhisatva actions from codependent ones was put forward by Marshall Rosenberg.  He suggests that we never take any action unless we can do it with the joy of a little child feeding a hungry duck. A child feeds a hungry duck, not out of obligation, fear, or shame, but out of an authentic joy of giving and compassion for this one hungry duck. Think of all of the things you have done today or plan to do later — how many of of your actions can you honestly say you are doing with the joy of a child feeding a hungry duck?

“Love turned inward heals the scrapes and wounds you’ve accumulated through daily living. Love turned inward weaves a cocoon of protection, where you can recharge, rejuvenate, and restore. Love turned inward conjures a reservoir where you can tap into your own power and manifest the highest expression of yourself.”  –SooJin Pate, The Radical Politics of Self-Love and Self-Care

I like the clarity of the Alanon daily reader, which says, “If our motivation for being thoughtful is fear-based and of any need to fix, caretake, control, manipulate, or avoid abandonment, we’re behaving codependently. If our motivation is a sincere desire to give to another person with no fear of shame, abandonment or neglect of our needs and boundaries, then we’re being thoughtful.” [a Bodhisattva]. It goes on to say, “When we find ourselves pleasing other people and behaving in ways that can be harmful to our needs, we should ask ourselves, ‘Have I taken care of myself?’ This question can help us discern our motivation to care for others.”

What is the Purpose of Your Self-Care?

Another way to check our motivation for resting or taking care of ourselves is to ask ourselves the question, posed by Yashna Padamsee of the National Domestic Workers Alliance: “What is the purpose of your self-care? Is it to do this for all of our lives, not just yours?” (This quote comes from New York Times article here.)

Padamsee’s question points to our ability to act out of avoidance and requires us to face the long-term consequences of our codependency. If I decide to drug myself up and go ahead and teach my class, it might benefit me by making me appear to be strong and resilient. It would also benefit me because I wouldn’t have to feel the habitual shame that arises in me when I ask for help. But does it benefit the group I am teaching? Not really. The best thing for the group is to have a teacher who can be authentically present and healthy to support the group. And for me to be well enough and inspired to teach another time.

And so, from my bed I texted a friend and asked her if she could cover for me. I paid attention to my feelings of shame at being lazy and unproductive, and I understood that those feelings were and are part of being embodied in this particular human form. And I reminded myself that if I want to practice like a Bodhisattva, inspired by compassion to make another person smile or help someone suffer less, I also must be willing to feel compassion for myself, too.

I stayed in bed for the rest of the day.

Another Dog’s Poop

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Dear Friends,

Last week, while scooping my terrier’s poop in the park, I saw another pile of poo, just next to his, and I thought, “Might as well grab this, too.”  I added the unknown dog’s poop to our little green baggie, but I noticed I felt a little squeamish.  As the mother of four, and the human friend to countless dogs and cats, I don’t normally feel uneasy about cleaning up waste. But as I carried the bag, now filled with co-mingled doggie doo, I was grossed out.

I began to wonder what it was about the contents of that bag that made me feel so icky. It had something to do with the fact that the dog who produced it wasn’t “my” dog. But unlike my children, Roger isn’t biologically related to me, and so my comfort with his waste couldn’t be attributed to a parenting gene. Over the four years since we rescued Roger and his brother, Woody, we have grown very attached to them. So much so that I am completely unfazed by scooping for them, but am made viscerally uneasy when I do the same for another dog. I’m sure this non-biological attachment comes as no surprise to any of the adoptive parents reading this, but the degree of my attachment made me pause.

Interbeing

Some years ago, I was at a retreat with the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, where he answered questions from the audience. One question in particular was very touching. It was from a woman whose young adult daughter had recently died of leukemia and she was trying to understand how she could live while never being able to be with her again. Thich Nhat Hanh’s response surprised me.  He said that if the mother was mindful and concentrated, she could find her daughter right here and now in a new form.

Just as the cloud can later be found in the rain, he said, her daughter can now be found in other people. In our universe, “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything transforms” (Antoine Lavoisier.) Knowing this, we see there is nowhere for us to go, our energy and our matter must continue on in new forms.  This is what the Buddha called interdependence, and Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing — the insight that we are always in process and sharing the same matter and energy back and forth between each other, like a cold virus in preschool.  In the light of this insight, discrimination between people, or dogs, seems silly. And yet we do it.  If my neighbor has a raucous party that lasts into the wee hours, I would be more annoyed at her than I would be at my son having the same party in my house.

Non-discrimination

Many spiritual and mystical teachers have suggested that we are capable of non-discrimination (though I’ve not yet seen a spiritual text referring to dog waste discrimination.) The Bible suggests we “Love thy neighbor as thyself” which would require a serious feat of non-discrimination, and the Buddha similarly suggested that, “Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, even so let one cultivate a boundless love toward all beings.” Impossible? Definitely. Worth practicing? I think so.

“To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.” — Dogen Zenji

Even the smallest bit of non-discrimination could quite possibly lower the levels of violence and suffering in our world. Mindfulness practices, like this one, are impossible to put into practice 100% of the time — at least for we non-monastic practitioners. It’s hard to be attentive to every breath in every moment. But that’s ok, because if it were possible, it would simply become one more thing on our bucket list. Enlightenment? Check. Non-discrimination? Check. Because non-discrimination is impossible, we can continue to learn and transform by practicing it from now until the day we die.

Maybe picking up another dog’s poop is one way to begin to practice. Or treating a stranger on the bus the way you would treat your own mother. When someone annoys you, you might give him more leeway if you imagine him as your best friend. If the man on the street wearing a shabby winter coat and asking for change were your own son, would you give him something?

To practice non-discrimination, we can notice and investigate habit energies that naturally create attachment to those we spend the most time with, especially those we consider to be in our “tribe” (whether human or otherwise.) Instead of diminishing the relationships we have with our special people, non-discrimination extends the love and nurturing we have to include those outside of our immediate circle.

Love

Since that day in the park, I’ve been practicing paying attention when I feel aversion to someone or something, like to a stranger or her dog’s poop. I see my mind creating discrimination and distance by telling me that my dog — or my family — is in some way better than, safer than, less smelly then this stranger. This story may serve me in certain circumstances, like when I need protect myself or someone else. So, I’m not rejecting the mind’s discrimination suggestions without considering whether they are true. However, most of the time discrimination is just a habitual way of thinking that I can notice it, check out, and usually abandon.

“You climb the mountain to be able to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other. If your love has attachment, discrimination, prejudice, or clinging in it, it is not true love.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love

My brain has been training itself for four years to think that Roger and Woody’s poops are better than all others. There’s nothing innately wrong with my mind for discriminating this way — it’s an effective tool for making sure I take good care of my loved ones. Once we see that discrimination is a story that may or may not be true and may or may not serve our deepest intentions, we have the freedom to choose how we respond to our thoughts. We all benefit when we expand our circle of love. So next time I notice discrimination arising, whether it’s aversion to dog poop or another human being, I hope to have the freedom to set my discrimination aside and invite other dogs, and people, into my heart.

What Side Are You Not On?

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Dear Friends,

I remember one of the first times I heard Thich Nhat Hanh speak. He shared thoughts about his work and life during the Vietnam War. Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay (a title of respect, which means teacher,) often spoke about how difficult that time was for him, particularly because he refused to line up with one side or the other. Although he was against the horrors caused by the war, he didn’t side with either the communists or the anti-communists or make one side a friend and the other an enemy. He was eventually expelled from Vietnam because each side assumed he must be supporting the other side.

When I first heard about his experiences during the war, I thought it was nothing more than an interesting history lesson. I was a young child during the time of the Vietnam War, and while I remember the anti-war movement here, of which my family was a part — we had the yellow “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things” poster on the wall directly across from our front door — but I was too young to know that there were other people out there who supported the war. Hearing Thay’s words, I thought, “Yeah, that makes sense not to take sides.” I didn’t consider this to be a mindfulness teaching because I didn’t think about why one might not take sides, though I generally supported not taking sides by preventing politics from creeping into our yoga and mindfulness community as much as possible.

November 2016

Fast forward to November 2016, when we experienced the most polarizing election in my lifetime. The day after the election, I received several texts from family and friends in various states of panic, asking me what I thought was going to happen to us. Conversations were filled with judgments about the “others” and fear about what the perceived enemy might do to “us.”

In addition to feeling righteous, I was suffering.  And when I suffer, I look to mindfulness practice to help me transform my suffering. As I searched my mental files for a relevant teaching, I remembered Thay’s suggestion about not taking sides. I began reading more about how he stayed neutral during the Vietnam War, even as bombs were killing his loved ones, and more than one of his students immolated themselves. But I also worried whether not taking sides was just an easy excuse for non-action.

As I dug deeper into this practice, I discovered the many ways in which Thay and his students worked for peace and justice, rebuilding cities after bombs destroyed them and speaking out, both in Vietnam and in the West, against the pain the war was causing civilians. It became clear that the practice of not taking sides doesn’t prevent anyone from voting, speaking and acting out, or working for justice. What it means is that I choose not to personally condemn anyone I disagree with or tell myself that one side is all good and the other all bad. As the Dalai Lama likes to remind us, “From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering.” We all want the same things in life — things like food, shelter, love, connection, freedom from fear, and safety for our loved ones —  but we don’t always agree on the strategies to get them.

Thich Nhat Hanh worked for peace, without making either side into an enemy. And his practice has been my inspiration, my North Star, since November 9. I know it is not possible to be completely free from judgment or enemy-making, but it’s an important practice for me right now because it supports my deepest intention of generating understanding and love in order to transform suffering. It’s not easy, though. Taking sides in a conflict gives us a team, and without a team it can be lonely. And there are many benefits to being on a team, including the feeling of belonging and strength in numbers. The more we create an enemy “out there”, the more our team solidifies “in here.” We all need a team, but the team I am looking to join now is the one on the side of understanding and compassion.

So what’s wrong with taking sides against an enemy?

There are three main difficulties that arise for me when I take sides against an enemy. First, I am limited in what I can do. For example, if I judge everyone who voted for the other candidate as bad or all wrong, I can’t contribute to our government working together or help people who voted for one candidate understand why some of us voted for the other. As Marshall Rosenburg, creator of Nonviolent Communication, has said, “It’s through connection that solutions materialize – empathy before education.”

Second, taking sides and creating enemies often leads to conflict and eventually to war. The more one side digs in, the more the other side digs in. We are more likely to continue seeing someone’s faults after we have judged them an enemy. We can look at the history of every conflict from the death of Jesus to the civil war in Syria, to see how division and side-taking leads to more division and side-taking. I believe that none of us really wants this outcome, but once we have created an “us” and a “them” it’s difficult to undo. Every adult I know still aligns strongly with their hometown sports teams, and it’s the same way with our political teams.

And thirdly, although we feel safer when we are part of a crew, having a common enemy increases our overall suffering. Once we have created enemies, we live in fear about when and where our enemies will strike us. There’s no rest for us when we are a divided people.

“This does not mean that we must be silent about injustice. It just means we should do it with awareness and not take sides. We should speak the truth and not just weigh the political consequences. If we take sides, we will lose our power to help mediate the conflict.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace.

Like Thich Nhat Hanh, not taking sides doesn’t mean we can’t say or do things to help change a difficult situation. We can still speak out against injustice, oppression, and hate. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his sermon at the Dexter Ave Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1957:

“Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. … And that [way] is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love…We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way. Jesus discovered that…So this morning, as I look into your eyes, and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’ And I’m foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed.”

Practicing Side-less-ness

This practice is not easy. Taking the side of understanding and compassion without explicitly taking a side as for- or against- Hillary Clinton or for- or against-Donald Trump doesn’t make us very popular. Like Thay, we may be exiled from our own communities.  But perhaps our overall impact on the situation is more important than our popularity. Now that I understand a little better what it means to practice not taking sides, I have so much respect for those, like Thay, who choose not to take sides during war and other violent conflicts. When we choose to take only the side of understanding and compassion, we have the chance to really transform divisive situations through wise action which no longer needs to make our side look good and their side look bad.

Give it a try, or let me know why you don’t think it will work. I’m want to learn how others are using yoga and/or mindfulness to help inspire and heal our country and the world these days. Please consider sharing something here or in another forum so we can create a community firmly rooted on one side — the side of understanding, compassion and love.

Who Is Responsible for Our Thoughts or Why Can’t I Make My Orchids Bloom?

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buddha-orchid

Dear Friends,

For some reason, I get a lot of orchids as gifts. I find orchid blooms to be delicately beautiful and they remind me of Plum Village, where the altars are always filled with blooming orchids. Unfortunately, once my orchid plants finish blooming, they go dormant, and I have yet to make any of them bloom a second time. I spoke with an orchid expert last week at the farmer’s market, and she gave me some tips for watering and feeding the plants, and I’m hopeful that it will give me better luck in the future.

I was listening to a podcast recently, when I heard the mindfulness teacher Rodney Smith say that we are not responsible for our thoughts, and most of the suffering we create for ourselves comes from thinking that we are. That surprised me. He goes on to say that the suffering we create is a result of believing that our thoughts and feelings are entirely true, which causes us to have a strong reaction to them and need to either cling to the “good” thoughts or run away from the “bad” ones.  We can decide where to put our attention, but not what comes out of our mind.

Consider your reaction to the last U.S. election. Whatever you think about it, you probably believe your thoughts are true and right. Other times, you likely have thoughts that you don’t like or don’t believe. For example, “I should spend all my earnings this month on lottery tickets” or “I could jump off this mountain and fly.” Right away, you judge those kinds of thought as not right. So, who’s really calling the shots in there?

Rodney goes on to say in his talk (accessible here), “Whatever the mind brings forth is not your fault. In fact, it’s not even your responsibility. This is just coming out of you, it’s neurons firing, it’s just cells doing their thing, communicating.”

In March 2014, Scientific American said something similar: “Although thoughts appear to ‘pop’ into awareness before bedtime, their cognitive precursors have probably been simmering for a while. Once those preconscious thoughts gather sufficient strength, the full spotlight of consciousness beams down on them.”

If you have ever sat down to meditate, lay awake with racing thoughts, or even if you’ve ever just noticed what you were thinking, you may have been surprised and even shocked at the huge volume of thoughts that arise and the variety of their content. In a short period of time I catch myself thinking about upcoming teaching plans, the huge amount of cat and dog hair I just brushed off the sofa, baked sweet potatoes, and what that last text from my daughter really meant. In between those more typical thoughts, many other thoughts arise including judgments about the previous thought (e.g., “I need to stop worrying about this!”)

Thoughts Aren’t Our Fault

If I try on what Rodney suggests —  that my thoughts are not my fault — my life feels very different. First, my judgments about my thoughts no longer apply. If it’s not my fault that I’m worried about something, then there’s no point to judging myself for worrying. Letting go of this judging leaves me more at ease. Second, I get curious about what’s arising in my mind. Sometimes I find myself giggling, rather than fuming or ruminating, when something completely unexpected or wacky pops into my mind. Turns out, I have a better chance of not acting on a rogue thought if I’m not caught up in judging and believing them.

Thoughts and emotions do come from somewhere, though. As Scientific American describes it, the cognitive precursors to those thoughts have been simmering, but where? Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the seeds of thoughts and emotions that live in our “store consciousness.” Each seed — anger, joy, peace, jealousy — comes to us from our ancestors in the form of genes and behaviors. But until a particular seed is fed and watered, by us or someone else, it’s not likely to arise and become a full-fledged thought or feeling.

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One of the Buddha’s teachings, known as wise diligence or wise effort, suggests that we pay close attention to our seeds and how they are being watered. If we let the toxic ones get watered, we will get thoughts that upset us and may lead to saying and doing things that make us and others suffer. If we water the beneficial ones, positive thoughts and feelings will eventually show up and give rise to actions that benefit others and ourselves. Just like a garden, we can’t control what grows or doesn’t grow, but we can provide the right conditions, fertilizing the soil and making sure the seeds that we want to sprout get enough light and water.

“We are reluctant to let our minds just be what it is.” — Rodney Smith, Seattle Insight Meditation Society

This Is Because That Is

Trying to control our thoughts is like continually mopping up water rather than fixing a leaky roof. If we fixed the roof, we might still spring another leak, but if we just keep mopping up the mess without fixing the leak we’ll always be frustrated. Rather than getting triggered and acting on the thoughts and feelings we are having right now, we can learn to let them go and focus instead on watering the seeds of happiness, peace, love, gratitude, hope, confidence and engagement, and trying our best not to water (or let others water) our seeds of confusion, despair, anger, fear, tension, craving, pain, and exhaustion.

Of course, even when we do our very best to water wholesome seeds in others and ourselves, we still can’t completely control unexpected and noxious thoughts, just as we can’t control the orchid’s bloom. There may be leaks in our roof that have been there for generations that are challenging to patch in one lifetime. But by letting go of believing our thoughts, focusing our efforts on creating the conditions for beneficial thoughts and feelings to arise in our minds, and using our mindfulness practice to embrace unpleasant thoughts and feelings, we can at least reduce further harms and encourage more helpful thoughts and feelings to grow in the future.

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It’s simple: This is because that is. When the conditions are sufficient for a thought or feeling to arise, it does. When conditions are sufficient for the orchid to bloom in my kitchen, it will. We have about the same amount of control over each. The best thing we can do is take good care of our seeds by learning what nourishes and supports each kind of seed’s growth and then feeding the ones that bring the most benefit to ourselves and the world.