Annie Mahon | Author, Health Coach, Mindfulness Teacher

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.

Love, Compersion and Buddha Nature

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adorable goat faceDear Friends,

So here’s something surprising I learned recently– one of our daughters is polyamorous. In case you’re like me and aren’t sure exactly what polyamory is, it’s having multiple partners without nuptials and not, as I first thought, having sex in multiples. The way it manifests with our daughter is that she has one “main” partner to whom she is most committed, and with him she shares everything about all of her relationships, in real time. Polyamory seems to be growing in popularity, at least in the Western hemisphere.

One of the most important tenants of and reasons for polyamory, according to several online and in person sources, is something called compersion. From Polyamoryonline: “Compersion is the opposite of jealousy– it’s the love we feel when others feel love. It is the pleasure we feel when others feel pleasure… It is the emotional expression that what we want for our loved ones more than anything is their happiness and fulfillment.” Although the word compersion is new (you can find it in the urban dictionary here), the same idea shows up in the ancient Buddhist texts where it is termed mudita, or sympathetic joy.

“Love creates a communion with life…In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.” ― Jack Kornfield, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace

Somewhere between half a million and 12 million people are in polyamorous relationships in the U.S. according to The Atlantic, all of whom are trying to expand their ability to love. Mudita, aka compersion, benefits not only the object of mudita, but the mudita giver as well.  So, I decided to experiment with loving lots of people, minus the partnering. I call this polyMudita and this is how I practice it: When I walk down the street or encounter people in various work and play situations, I look at each one while imagining I am in a loving relationship with him or her — their partner, best friend, parent, or child. Sometimes this comes easily, and sometimes not.

When I am able to imagine the person as my loved one, I feel a physiological and emotional warmth, exactly as if I am meeting someone I adore. As you can guess, this feels great, sometimes radiant. The oxytocin released when we are in love or parenting intoxicates us, even when we are only imagining it. When I pass by someone scowling or I simply have a negative reaction, it is a bit more challenging but also significant. I become aware of the habitual conditioning that leads me to reject people for superficial reasons. Seeing this conditioning, I can often transform it so I don’t keep limiting potential moments of falling in love in the future.

“Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, ‘Love me.’ Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops. Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?” –Hafiz, With That Moon Language

Oxytocin has been found to be good for both our physical and mental health. And, in my highly unscientific experiments, it’s something we can generate ourselves. So why not try polyMudita and fall in love with a dozen or more people today?

One of the greatest benefits I have discovered practicing polyMudita is an ability to see people’s innate goodness — their Buddha Nature — more easily. When I imagine someone to be my beloved, I think “Oh, how cute, he’s sporting a bow tie today”, or “She must just love that book since she is reading it while she crosses the street”, or “Look how he is speeding to get home to his loved ones.” Because most of us are under constant sabotage by our brain’s negativity habits, we forget how to see the natural goodness in other people, and usually in ourselves as well. We are more likely to judge others’ actions as negative or selfish, rather than see them for what they are — an attempt to be seen and loved by others.

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.” –John Lennon

Practicing polyMudita has given me so much joy. As you are also one of my beloveds, I hope it will give you joy as well.

The Art of Suffering… or Let your Love Shine

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love est toutDear Friends,

I had a conversation with friends recently about our childhoods and especially our mothers. Both of the women I was talking to had serious difficulties with their moms, and each expressed the feeling that they thought that their mother didn’t really like them much.

Both of these women are beautiful, as they say, inside and out. Both are dedicated to finding happiness for themselves and to creating more happiness in the world. They are both kind, capable and courageous women. So as they told their stories, it was hard for me to conceive that anyone, their mothers most of all, could actually dislike them or treat them in the cruel ways that they described.

Looking at these two women, I could not imagine anything in their child selves that could have warranted the loss of their mother’s love. What could any baby or child ever do that would be so terrible? Practicing mindfulness has led me to believe that only the deep suffering of someone can lead her to communicate a sense of hatred toward another person, especially her own child.

But I know the feeling. There have been countless times when my own unhappiness led me to lash out at someone or disconnect. I have been told by several people that when they first met me, the thought I didn’t like them, even though I thought I did. When my mind is caught up in worrying or ruminating about my perceived problems and hurts, I’m just not able to authentically connect.

Communicating love isn’t something we can fake. I remember a young friend once told me about a time his mother said that she loved him. He told her, “I know you think you love me, but I don’t feel it.” His mother may not have taken care of her own suffering, and so she wasn’t able to take care of him in the way that made him feel loved. Even though she herself felt deep love for him.

So I wonder if my two women friends suffer, not because their mothers’ didn’t love them, but because they don’t feel the love. Their mothers didn’t know how to take care of their own pain, so they weren’t able to communicate their love to their daughters. I’d guess many of us have been on the giving and receiving end of that situation. A few years ago, in a state of panic about whether I was effectively communicating my love, I emailed each of my four teenagers and asked them if they really truly knew that I loved them. Let’s just say that only half of them even replied.

…I tell you, if you can love a woman the way you love blackberries, strawberries in the sun, the small red onions you plant, or a hawk riding the sway of wind over ocean, if you can make her know it even for a moment, you are as real as earth itself. No one confirms another unless he himself rays forth from a center. — Denise Levertov, Holiday

The kindest thing we can do for our loved ones is to take care of our own suffering. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “suffering is an art” and we can learn to do it well. There are many ways to take care of our pain, including yoga and meditation, Nonviolent Communication, Focusing, creative expression, and therapy, to name just a few. All of these practices can help us learn to be with our suffering with tenderness and self-compassion. And each time we are able to transform our inner pain, we release another piece of our self-generated story. And that lets our love shine out just a little brighter.

Sore Toes

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PV 06 feetDear Friends,

Last week I had an argument with my partner, to whom I’ve been married for 26 years. I was showing him around my new office space, and he made a joke about it. Something to the effect that he was going to use it when he needed to get away from his office. You wouldn’t think that would be a big problem, but by the time we got home, I could feel the anger rising in me.

When he made another comment about one of my co-workers taking a nap in my new space, I lost it. I told him that I was really angry, and I stomped around for a bit before gathering myself together and asking him if we could have a calm discussion about this. I asked him to mirror me, which basically is a request for active listening, in which the other person listens well enough to be able to repeat back what he or she has heard. Although he did an excellent job listening to me, he didn’t seem to be really getting the magnitude of my upset, and I felt myself getting tight in the chest and an explosive anger building up in me.

I knew that it wasn’t going to end well, so I shouted something like, “You just don’t understand what I’m saying!” and dashed off to hide in the laundry room to do some clothes-folding meditation. Kneeling on the floor, pulling clothes out of the dryer, I allowed myself to feel the depth of my inner turmoil and I cried. I remembered, as a child, feeling like I always had to fiercely defend whatever small mental or physical privacy I could find. This being my first real private office space, I felt like I had to defend it in the same way.

The observer in me was seeing this all play out, and I noticed that the reaction I was having was too big for the seemingly minor comments by my husband. When that awareness opened, I knew that I was reacting to something that wasn’t really happening in that moment. I was feeling very small and powerless, which I recognized was based on childhood conditioning rather than what was really happening in the laundry room.

This was a surprise to me. I wanted so badly to blame my husband for my suffering. But once I had seen that it wasn’t what he had done that caused my reaction, it was too late to pretend it was. It was difficult to admit to myself, and even more difficult to admit to him that he hadn’t caused my anger and sadness. Through my tears and behind a closed door, I yelled, “This isn’t about you!” This may have been the hardest thing I have ever admitted to myself and to my partner. And it may have been the most honest and helpful thing I have ever done for our relationship.

Once, in a conversation with my young adult son, I wondered out loud whether my mindfulness practice, which I began when my kids were all in elementary school, was overall a benefit to our family. I wondered whether having an anti-establishment personal practice created difficulties that wouldn’t have been there if I had continued along a more traditional path. There were definitely some things– like being dragged on retreats with a Zen teacher, mom doing slow walking meditation around the neighborhood, and ringing a bell at the dinner table– that were awkward and made the kids feel like our family wasn’t the norm. But when I thought about how I would have behaved without this practice, I realized that I wouldn’t have been able to take as much responsibility for my own baggage if I hadn’t found this practice. I would have continued to blame everyone around me for my unhappiness (of which I had plenty to go around.) Just like I had been trying to do with my husband last week.

A wonderful therapist once described these personal trigger points as our “sore toes.” It’s not our fault that we have these particular sore toes, they are passed down to us from our ancestors, families, and culture. Our sore toes are our conditioning, the painful spots that we may or may not even know are there, but cause us to howl in pain when they are stepped on. When a loved ones steps on our sore toe, as my husband did by making jokes about my new space, we think that our pain is coming from what they did. While they may have triggered our pain by watering a seed of anger or sadness in us, they did not create the sore toe and so can hardly be blamed for the magnitude of our response.

Knowing our sore toes well is part of the practice of mindfulness. Seeing our conditioning allows us to quickly recognize it as ancient history and not carry it into the present moment where it can continue to wreck havoc in our lives. We might still feel the pain of the sore toe, but if we know what it is and where it comes from, we are less likely to blame the person closest to us and so stop transmitting old suffering into new relationships.

“Darling, if you really care for me, please water the good seeds in me every day. I am capable of loving, understanding, and forgiving and I need your help to practice these in my daily life. I promise to recognize the positive seeds in you, as well, and to do my best to water them every day.” This is true love. –Thich Nhat Hanh

Once I saw that my sore toe was about feeling I had to defend myself all the time, like some tough little street urchin, I could empathize with that feeling rather than continuing to act it out. My sore toe is still there, of course. If my personal space feels threatened again, it could flare up. But each time that I see what it really is and take care of it with compassion, it will loose its power to spoil my life the present moment.

When I came out of the laundry room, rather than being angry at my husband, I felt very tender. I asked him if I could have a hug, and I cried in his arms, letting the feeling-memory of needing to be tough and independent be held by the two of us. I then told him about my sore toe, and how it got triggered, and he made a mental note of how he might avoid that trigger next time. What in the past would have ended with an angry silence had transformed into a compassionate connection, thanks to a moment of awareness and a willingness to take responsibility for my own toes.