04/28 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go

Lean Out

Dear Friends,

Last month I read the book Lean In by Facebook and Google executive, Sheryl Sandberg. Just after I finished the book, I happened to have dinner with my college age daughter, quite a feminist herself, and I shared the basic premise of the book.

One of Sandberg’s key stories is about a time when she hosted a meeting at Facebook for a Treasury secretary. The secretary brought a team of four women with him, and many of the other invited guests were men. The men all took seats at the main table, and the women sat in chairs off to the back. Even when Sandberg invited them up, the women stayed in their seats behind the main table.

Sandberg sees this as an analogy for women in the workplace, and she invites women reading her book to lean in to the business world, rather than take the seats off to the back. When I read this, I thought, “Yeah, that’s right! Why do we women so often sit in the back? We should take the seats at the front just like the men.”

So I shared all of this with my daughter, and to my great surprise, she said, “Why should we follow the men by leaning in? Why don’t men practicing leaning out?”

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying, but when I did I realized that she had an interesting point. What would it be like if everyone leaned out? What if all the men and women in Sandberg’s meeting humbly took the back row? Would the Dalai Lama take the front row or the back row? What about Thich Nhat Hanh? Or Mother Theresa? And I am sure you can think of other strong, courageous people who would sit in the back row because they don’t think they are the only ones with the answers.

What would the world look like if we all took the back row? If we leaned out, rather than leaning in? It wouldn’t mean not promoting agendas for positive change in the world. It may mean we offer our own insights and at the same time recognize that other people, and even other species, might have something to offer us.

“Giving up always being right doesn’t mean you forsake your opinions or your right to seek social justice, but you are not defensive, judgmental, or self-righteous in your approach to life. You mindfully live with the fact that even when you’re wrong it’s okay because you are coming from your deepest intention. Also, you learn from being wrong (or right), therefore you become a more effective person.” — Phillip Moffitt

Phillip Moffitt teaches the profound and, for me, very challenging practice of letting go of our need to be right. When we look mindfully at our behavior, we see all the places where we literally or figuratively take the front seat because we are sure we are right. We think we know best. Taking the seat in the back simply means that we aren’t convinced that our way is the right or only way. And in so doing we offer others the gift of being heard, and ourselves the gift of hearing others. The view from the back is definitely more inclusive.

Science and the Buddha both teach that it is wise not to accept anything without trying it out for ourselves. So why not try taking the back seat? Try leaning out, listening more, and saying less. Try letting go of your attachment to being right. And observe– does it lead to less suffering for yourself and those in your life? Sheryl Sandberg may not agree, but I will take a lesson from my feminist daughter and many wise spiritual teachers, and try leaning out for a while.

with love, annie
04/22 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Meditation, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go, Thoughts From Annie

The Elixir in the Box

Dear Friends,

I have been on a lot of different spiritual paths over these last 50 years. I was baptized Methodist, and raised going to a politically progressive Presbyterian church. I discovered meditation as a teenager, sometimes considered myself an atheist, dabbled in wicca, and became a yogi. I attended Divinity school at Howard University, founded a yoga and mindfulness studio, and was ordained in a Buddhist tradition.

Wandering through each of these traditions, I discovered a lot of differences in the practices and yet all were leading to the same ineffable state known as enlightenment, nirvana, rapture, oneness, or simply contentment. Listening to the Buddhist nun Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, I heard a useful metaphor for my experience: she said that we are all seeking the same spiritual elixir, but it resides in a multitude of boxes, each decorated with specific rituals and cultural practices.

Each box is both fascinating and familiar to us. We are most comfortable with the boxes we were raised with, but we can also be intrigued by exploring boxes from other cultures. Yoga, Buddhism and the African-American church may have been less familiar boxes, but I was always looking for the same elixir.

As Palmo also mentions, the elixir itself doesn’t appear to be very interesting, especially compared to the box itself. Contentment isn’t very exciting, so we often forget that it’s the real prize. But because we aren’t able to access the elixir any other way, we must go through one of the boxes. The Buddha described this same concept with a different metaphor.  He said that the only way to get from the shore of suffering to the shore of non-suffering is to build a raft and sail across.

What sometimes happens is that we get so caught up in the box’s beauty and ornamentation that we forget what we are really after — the elixir, the contentment, the joy. We can get caught up in meditating, doing yoga, going to services, or studying religious texts and miss the enlightenment in front of us in this moment. Or to use the Buddha’s metaphor: when we reach the shore of non-suffering instead of letting go of the raft, we mistakenly pick it up and carry it with us.

The practices, rituals, and cultural aspects of a spiritual path are the raft or the beautiful box from which we can arrive at the shore of non-suffering and find the contentment that we have been longing for. We need the box to get to the elixir and we need the raft to get to the other shore. And at the same time we need to remember that the box is not the elixir, and the raft is not the shore.

“It is often said that the Buddha’s teaching is only a raft to help you cross the river, a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t mistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore. If we cling to the raft, if we cling to the finger, we miss everything.” — Thich Nhat Hanh (Being Peace)

When I find myself caught up in the activity or ritual of practice, such as practicing yoga just to be able to say I did, or trying to look perfect while sitting in meditation, I remind myself of what I really want — the core of all spiritual paths, the shore of non-suffering. And now and then, when I am able to let go of my attachment to the practice without letting go of the practice itself, I get a taste of that sweet elixir.  Ahhh.

with love, annie
02/12 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Love & Compassion, Mindful, Thoughts From Annie

Being Less Annoyed by Others – Is this Love?

Dear Friends,

I have been thinking about love lately, and not just because Valentine’s Day is near.  But also because there were many times in my life I felt unloved and unloving.  Starting in my teenage years, people I didn’t know usually annoyed me.  People close to me often annoyed me.  And I usually annoyed myself too.  But over the years I have noticed a slow shifting of the plates of my heart so that now, at age 50, I am very much less often annoyed by anyone, myself included.  I even find myself falling in love with people, plants, and animals many times each day.

I am curious about this shift.  It could have to do with practicing meditation and mindfulness, which allows me to see just how similar we all really are, and how our stories and conditioning don’t have to rule our lives.  I think a lot of it comes from being in a long term committed relationship with a partner who, beyond reason, seems to love me no matter how insane I am.  (I remember, with some embarrassment, a day 15 years ago, when I was so annoyed with him that I threw a dinner plate at his head.  And yet he continued to love me.)  It may have a lot to do with becoming a mom of four, or the 5 years I spent in therapy working through layers of anger and hurt.  Or maybe it’s just old age.

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
– Billy Collins, from Aimless Love

Whatever the reason, feeling metta, or loving kindness for others feels a heck of a lot better than being annoyed by them.  I wish I had discovered this secret earlier.  The Buddha describes the four brahma viharas, or heavenly abodes, which are the places where it is most pleasant to dwell.  The four dwelling places are loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity or inclusiveness (upekkha). Practicing so that we can dwell more often in these places can bring a lot of ease and happiness to our lives, but it can take time to rewire our brains to stay in these places, rather than run screaming back into the comfort of our irritation.

Loving-kindness is a feeling of warmth toward others, which we can cultivate in meditation practice by silently repeating phrases wishing well to ourselves and others.  Compassion is the ability to be present with others who are suffering without trying to change or run away from their pain.  We can expand our ability to be compassionate by not turning away from suffering when we encounter it, yet also not expecting that we can always do something concrete to alleviate it.

Sympathetic joy is my favorite brahma vihara.  It’s amazing that we don’t take advantage of sympathetic joy more often.  Feeling happy for someone else’s happiness seems so obvious, but so often we feel annoyed by others’ happiness instead.  It’s easy to feel mudita when we see our young nephew thrilled by his new legos, but it’s harder to find that sympathetic joy when someone gets the one thing that we wanted but couldn’t get, like good health, a vacation, or even a child.  The practice of mudita, like the other brahma viharas, directly benefits our own happiness.  As they say in the 12-step program, “Resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” No one benefits more from sympathetic joy than we do ourselves.

And lastly equanimity, which may be the most challenging of the four, is the practice of including everything and everyone in our embrace, leaving nothing out.  It means being open to the possibility that we could include everyone and everything in our love– the person who takes our armrest on the plane, the woman who breaks our heart, the tree that falls on our house, the dog that poops on our rug, or even the man that fires us from our job.  It doesn’t mean that we are always able to treat someone who hurt us with the same kindness that we might treat our elderly grandmother.  But it does mean that we can leave the door of our heart ajar for the possibility that they are worthy of our love as well.

“Please call me by my true names, so that I can wake up…  And the door of my heart can be left open.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

So I guess I’ll never know exactly why I am less annoyed by others than I used to be. But I feel sure it has something to do with engaging others at the heart level. Hearing about someone’s deepest longings gives me a window into their beautiful intentions, or who they really are, rather than getting caught by the unskillful and annoying strategies they might be employing.  When my partner chose to view my plate throwing as an intense passion to connect with him rather than a crazy woman’s homicidal tendencies, he was seeing the “real” me in spite of my unskillful action.  And seeing into the heart may well be the secret doorway into compassionate, joyful, and inclusive love.

with love, annie
02/07 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Friends & Community, Mindful, Perceptions & Thoughts, Thoughts From Annie

Taking a Hit of Superiority


“There is no house like the house of belonging.”  – David Whyte

Dear Friends,

One morning this week I arrived a few minutes late for a meditation group. I did my best to be quiet as I slipped in, blew my nose, opened the blanket under my cushion, and then sat down to meditate. All good. Some time later, another latecomer arrived. I heard him coming up the stairs, taking off his coat, and slowly creak open the door. He put down his bags, found a cushion, and sat down.

During his entry, my mind was taking careful notes.  And when he finally sat down, my mind reached it’s conclusion: I had been much quieter entering than he had.  When this thought arose, I had a jolt of pleasant feelings, a physiological high based on knowing that I was “better than.” It didn’t matter what or whom I was better than, just that I was better. It was very similar to the feeling I have had when a drug or drink first hit my brain. ”Ahhhh.”

Using “better than” to get high is a very familiar process for me. I might call it a habit.  Or even an addiction. The sweet feeling that arises when I think I am better than someone is addictive. And like other addictive substances, its effects are fleeting and always lead to a sober let down sometime in the future. But in that moment, I don’t care. I just want the high.

In the reverse situation, for example if someone comes in more quietly and mindfully that I do, I will tell myself that I am not as good as they are so I’d better try harder if I want that hit of superiority.  In any case, whether I find myself feeling better than, worse than, or even equal to, my mind is engaged in the game of “Who’s better?”  And while it appears that sometimes I can win this game, in fact, it’s always a losing game.

Let’s say I do get the hit of superiority, feeling smugly better than someone else.  The high generally only lasts until the next opportunity for comparision. So what to do? At the end of the movie I Heart Huckabees, one of the men loses everything in a house fire, and when his enemy sees this, he suddenly understands the meaning of life. He feels compassion for his enemy and realizes that every one of us are suffering and every one of us just wants happiness and ease.

Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that we can look to our shared suffering in order to see our innate oneness with other beings and to help us let go of our addictions to feeling superior, inferior, or equal.

“When we see the other person, we should recognize that in him or her there is suffering also.  There is suffering in us for sure, but there is suffering in him and in her too, so you have something in common – both of you suffer.  And you forget about that you are equal to him or better than him or are worth less than him. That person may look very fancy, but there is one thing that is certain; there is suffering in him or in her, and if you can touch that compassion in you it will arise and it will protect you from afflictions such as jealously, superiority, and inferiority.” –Thich Nhat Hanh

When we begin to grasp our inter-relatedness to all of life, we truly feel that we belong to our life. We are no longer trying to compete with others, because we realize that our actions and our happiness depend directly on the actions and happiness of others.

Underneath my addiction to feeling “better than,” what I am really longing for is  this feeling of belonging. The experience of belonging to this world is a satisfying, sustained-release kind of high, with no crash and no hangover.  When I experience belonging, I don’t need to feel superior, inferior, or equal.

And when someone is noisy coming late to meditation, instead of using that experience to perpetuate my feelings of separateness, I can say hello to my craving for “better than” and make a choice.  Do I put my attention on remembering how much quieter I was, or on how both of us were clumsily trying our best not to disturb others?  Do I  want to give in to the short-lived high of feeling superior, or go for the bliss of belonging?

with love, annie
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