02/20 2013 Posted In Mindful, Perceptions & Thoughts, Thoughts From Annie

Whose Questions are You trying to Answer?

Dear Friends,

The story of how the Buddha got started on his path to enlightenment goes something like this: He was born around 500 BC, a wealthy prince in India with all the associated trappings.  His parents wanted to protect him from seeing the pain of living, mostly because they wanted him to focus on his role as a prince, and not get distracted by those larger questions about life.  He lived in relative happiness as a prince until he was nearly 30.  In the meantime, he got married and fathered one son.

The story goes that one day the future Buddha, then known as Prince Siddartha, left the palace by chariot on some sort of errand. They passed by a man who was quite old and frail, and the prince asked his Charioteer Channa what was wrong with the man.  Channa replied that the man was simply old and that everyone will get old.  This surprised the prince.  They then passed a man who was quite ill and in agony.  Again the prince asked what this was, and Channa replied that this man was sick, and that everyone will get sick during their lives.  Finally, they passed a corpse, and the prince asked what this was, and Channa told him that the corpse was a dead person, and that everyone eventually dies.

Seeing all of this, the prince began to wonder about old age, sickness, and death, and he was inspired to find out how he could help people overcome the suffering that these states create.  Not long after this, he left his family and set out to try to answer those questions for himself. His journey to enlightenment was driven by his intention to answer his questions.  And this unique journey is what lead to his final enlightenment, or waking up to what really is.

When I was young, I sometimes lay awake nights asking myself questions about the universe.  What are the billions of other people in the world doing right now – are they really there when I don’t see them?  How can we not repress our emotions and also not spew them out in ways that alienate others?  Can my dog really understand what I am saying? Are the people I see in my dreams really with me then or is it just in my mind? Not all of my questions were profound, but they were my questions and they were guideposts for my own journey into adulthood.

Recently I have begun to wonder whether I am still focused on my own questions, or whether I am instead trying to answer the questions of others. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed his own questions, which he articulated in many of his speeches, including:  Can this country really operate as if all men were created equal? And can former slaves, and the sons of former slave owners sit down together in brotherhood?  American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron asked whether her depression could really be a doorway into understanding.  Her question led her into a surprising and authentic life of living and teaching mindfulness. I think if we look at the people we see living authentic lives, we will find that they are following their own questions.

We each have a particular way of shaping ourselves in the world. To take on someone else’s conversational style and to keep repeating other people’s questions as if they were our own is to exhaust ourselves.  It doesn’t matter if it is the thoughts of Socrates or Susan Sontag.  Read and admire, but then go back to first principles and ask the question yourself in your own way.  Dare to disagree. — David Whyte

We are not Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha, Martin Luther King, or Pema Chodron.  And we may look to these or other guides to help us formulate our questions.  But if we really want to wake up, we need to find our own questions. What is it that we want to know in this short lifetime? And we need more than the mere minutes between events to find our deepest questions, we need to take the time to sit still and see what is calling us today.  What are the questions that call to us to be answered?  Can we let our lives be guided by those questions?  As the poet Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

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
02/05 2013 Posted In Environment, Mindful, Perceptions & Thoughts

Poem about Atoms

Dear Friends,

I found this poem in my files, written one recent fall day, thought you might enjoy it: 

 

Who am I?

1.33*1050 atoms in this world
always shifting
which atoms are Me now?

During our conversation,
I give you the gift of a few thousand of My atoms,
And you return the favor.

While sitting on the couch, some of me rubs off,
And some of the former inhabitants of this couch
Are what I now call Me.

While writing this, my computer and I have had atom sex,
And the fan is depositing this beautiful fall day onto my skin,
And into my face
through my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth
I taste falling leaves.

When I scratch, Myself goes everywhere,
a little landing on the coffee table,
where it will wait for the fan to blow it out to the world
filling it with so much of Me.

with love, annie
01/22 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Meditation, Perceptions & Thoughts, Thoughts From Annie

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment.

Dear Friends,

Listening to a dharma talk this morning, I heard a term that I hadn’t heard before, yoniso manasikara.  It’s a Pali phrase from the Buddha’s teachings which usually translates as wise or appropriate attention and refers to what we choose to pay attention to in any moment.

Hearing about appropriate attention reminded me of something I read in Buddha’s Brain.  In that book, author Rick Hanson says that our brain learns mainly from what we attend to.  Hanson goes on to explain that our human brains preferentially pay attention to unpleasant, scary and difficult experiences.  If we don’t put any effort into our attention, we end up with a lot of anxiety and fear.  So what is appropriate to pay attention to?  What will help us reduce our suffering?

In the Buddha’s teachings, there are many references to yoniso manasikara. From my limited study on this, it appears that what he meant by appropriate attention was attending to the impermanence of everything that we encounter.  While that sounds like it would be really depressing, in practice when we pay attention to the impermanence of everything around us, we can find ourselves feeling more alive and grateful for the moments that we do have.  It’s like the teacher Ajahn Chah said about his favorite drinking glass:

“Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.”

So the Buddha was teaching us how to counteract the human brain’s tendency to always be dwelling in anxiety about the future or ruminating on unhappy memories.  In essence it seems yoniso manasikara means to be always teaching ourselves this truth:  ”This moment is all I have and isn’t it amazing.”  Or, as Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, “Present Moment, Wonderful Moment.”
with love, annie
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