Thinking About Not Thinking
I think I’m going to use a reading from Gil Fronsdal for the Sunday Sangha discussion I’ll be leading this coming weekend. It’s from the section on “Mindfulness of Thoughts,” in his excellent little book, The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice, which is available as a free pdf here.
“Sometimes people think the point of mediation is to stop thinking–to have a silent mind. This does happen occasionally, but it is not necessarily the point of meditation. Thoughts are an important part of life, and mindfulness practice is not supposed to be a struggle against them.
“We can benefit more by being friends with our thoughts than by regarding them as unfortunate distractions. In mindfulness, we are not stopping thoughts as much as overcoming any preoccupation we have with them.
“However, mindfulness is not thinking about things, either. It is a non-discursive observation of our life in all its aspects. In those moments when thinking predominated, mindfulness is the clear and silent awareness that we are thinking.
“A piece of advice I found helpful and relaxing was when someone said, ‘For the purpose of meditation, nothing is particularly worth thinking about.’
“Thoughts can come and go as they wish, and the meditator does not need to become involved with them. We are not interested in engaging in the content of our thoughts. Mindfulness of thinking is simply recognizing that we are thinking.”
5 Ways
I listened to another excellent talk last night, this one by Akincano Marc Weber, in which he outlined five ways the Buddha offered to deal with distracting or obsessive thoughts….the ones that come either while we’re meditating or while we’re just trying to live a good and peaceful life! (Listen to the talk here)
5 Ways to Deal with Obsessive Thoughts:
#1. If it’s possible, just ignore them.
#2. “Fight fire with fire”…by replacing intrusive thoughts with more useful/helpful/wholesome thoughts.
#3. Remind yourself that you’ve “been to this movie…and know how it ends.”
4. Undermine the power of the thought (or emotion) by making fun of it or exaggerating it or giving it some kind of ridiculous persona.
#5. As a last resort, apply “brute force.” (Sometimes you just have to tell your mind to SHUT THE F@%K UP!)
It Works Even When It Doesn’t
For today, I’d like to share a bit of practice reassurance by Gil Fronsdal, from his sweet little collection of essays titled, The Issue at Hand. (Download a free copy here.)
“In practicing mindfulness, it can be helpful to remember that the practice works even when it doesn’t seem to work. Perhaps this is explained best through an analogy.
“Consider a mountain stream where the water is quite clear, and seems placid and still. But if you place a stick into the water, a small wake around the stick shows that in fact the water is flowing. The stick becomes a reference point that helps us notice the movement of the water.
“Similarly, the practice of mindfulness is a reference point for noticing aspects of our lives that we may have missed. This is especially true for mindfulness of breathing. In trying to stay present for the breath, you may become aware of the concerns and momentum of the mind that pull the attention away from the breath. If you can remain with the breath, then obviously mindfulness of breathing is working. However, if your attempt to stay with the breath results in increased awareness of what pulls you way from the breath, then the practice is also working.
“Without the reference of mindfulness practice, it is quite easy to remain unaware of the preoccupations, tensions, and momentum operating in your life. For example, if you are busily doing many things, the concern for getting things done can blind you to the tension building in the body and mind. Only stopping to be mindful may you become aware of the tensions and feelings that are present….
“Remember, if we learn from what is going on, regardless of what is happening, the practice is working, even when it seems not to be working, when we aren’t able to stay with the breath….
“And when we ARE settled on the breath, then the heart becomes clear, peaceful, and still like a mountain pool. Then we can see all the way to the bottom.”
To Drink or Not to Drink
I seldom drink wine any more. It’s expensive, for one thing. Plus, I take the Buddhist precepts seriously….which, in their basic form, are trainings to avoid killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and “the use of intoxicants that cloud the mind.”
This is not a hardship for me…usually. But there I was in Italy. With ubiquitous and delicious — and inexpensive — wine…grown locally, developed over centuries to complement perfectly the local cuisine.
There was water, too, of course. Excellent Italian mineral water. (San Pelligrino, usually, but other brands as well.) Which I love. Especially the frizzante!
But water, alone, with all those great Italian meals!?!
I couldn’t do it.
Of course I could have. But I didn’t. At most meals, I drank the wine. (And the water.)
I told myself that I was still keeping the precept because I wasn’t drinking more than a glass or two, and always with food…surely that was not enough to cloud my mind…and besides, the precepts are not hard-and-fast rules, especially not the one about “avoiding intoxicants,”….and there are plenty of Dharma teachers (some of whom I’ve witnessed personally) who drink wine (and maybe indulge in other intoxicants, too, who knows!)…but the truth is, I could feel the difference, my mind was a little cloudy after a glass or two…it was nothing major, of course, not enough to cloud my judgment about not killing or stealing or lying or having unprotected sex with inappropriate partners!!!…but still.
I’m not saying that it was wrong for me to drink the wine. I’m not even saying that I won’t do it again. Because in certain situations, under certain circumstances, I will.
But I am aware of the risks of a mind that is clouded.
And I will take care.
(The above is one of the drawings I did while I was in Castiglion Fiornetino. I had intended to do one every day…but, as is clear, I do not always do the things that I intend.)
Tell the Truth
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Buddhist training in Wise Speech, which basically is the practice of telling the truth, in words that are kind and useful, and with the intention of bringing people together rather than driving them apart.
So for today:
Why tell the truth?
“…the commitment to truth has a significance transcending the domain of ethics and even mental purification, taking us to the domains of knowledge and being. Truthful speech provides, in the sphere of interpersonal communication, a parallel to wisdom in the sphere of private understanding. The two are respectively the outward and the inward modalities of the same commitment to what is real.
“Wisdom consists in the realization of truth, and truth is not just a verbal proposition but the nature of things as they are. To realize truth our whole being has to be brought into accord with actuality, with things as they are, which requires that in communications with others we respect things as they are by speaking the truth.
“Truthful speech establishes a correspondence between our own inner being and the real nature of phenomena, allowing wisdom to rise up and fathom their real nature.
“Thus, much more than an ethical principle, devotion to truthful speech is a matter of taking our stand on reality rather than illusion, on the truth grasped by wisdom rather than the fantasies woven by desire.”
— from The Noble Eightfold Path, by Bhikkhu Bodhi
Greed is Like This
I’m leaving next Saturday for 3 weeks in Italy. I plan to write while I’m there and I’ve decided that writing in Italy means writing in long-hand (much more romantic that way). So of course I needed the “perfect” notebook to write in.
It has to have good quality paper with a nice smooth finish, so it takes ink smoothly and doesn’t bleed or show through; it has to be ruled, but the lines can’t be too far apart or too close together; it has to lie flat when it’s opened; it has to fit easily into my walking-around-the-streets-of-Italy shoulder bag; it has to have a back cover that’s stiff enough to act like a desktop for writing in trains and parks and museums and churches, but it can’t be too heavy; and it has to look distinctively stylish in a retro, classic, or hipster kind of way (I’ll be in Italy after all).
So I went to my favorite shop for all things notebook-y. And I found one! A medium-ruled, spiral-bound notebook, with a rose-colored, “recycled, raw, organic” felt-ed cover! It was almost perfect, but not quite, because it didn’t have a hard back cover.
But then I found another one! It had 32 custom-color fly sheets in the front and back, and deckled edges, and a special exposed-perfect-binding system so it lies completely flat when it’s open, even though it’s about an inch thick! But the back cover isn’t hard. And it’s kind of heavy — probably too bulky for my shoulder bag. And the paper is gorgeous….but not ruled.
So then I found another one! A Moleskine this time — my favorite. With a gorgeous, pinkish-lavender, faux leather cover and acid-free paper….with ruled “lines” that are dots! In a full grid pattern! The dots are a lovely, under-stated, silvery grey color. But there’s no hard cover. And, sadly, like all Moleskines, it doesn’t lie flat.
Then I found another one! This one was made in Nepal! With a fabulous hand-made paper cover with a cord tie that has a cool leather fob and a little brass bell! Inside it’s full of all kinds of different hand-made papers….different sizes and textures and colors! Even black! It’s the coolest journal EVER! But all those textured hand-made papers are hell to write on. Inks get fuzzy. And everything bleeds through. And what about that black paper? It would be a great journal for pasting things into. Or maybe drawing on with colored pencils. Or water colors! But for writing…not so much.
What to do!?!
I’m a greed type.
I bought them all.
None of them are perfect.
But I had to have them.
All.
Everybody’s Got One
In our KM discussion Monday night, we talked about ways to practice “contemplating the body externally” (which is part of the instructions in the Satipatthana Sutta). The phrase is usually understood to mean: reflecting on the nature of bodies other than one’s own.
Thomas said he has tried imaging everyone he sees as just their skeleton…which sounded kind of crazy, but also really interesting. So I’ve been trying it. And it’s quite powerful!
For example: the distinctions that seem so important just disappear. Everyone’s bones are bone-color, so immediately the perception of race disappears. And both fat and skinny people have “skinny” skeletons, so that distinction disappears too. Old, young, male, female….when you see everyone as a skeleton (which, of course, everybody has….we’re all pretty much the same. Animals, too! Cats and dogs, moms and dads, cops and kids….we’re all a bunch of bones!
Out Loud, Four Times
Part of the CDL homework for this month is to read the Satipatthana Sutta (text on the Foundations of Mindfulness) — OUT LOUD, FOUR TIMES — including all the repetitive parts, which are usually only written out fully the first time they occur, then indicated by ellipses on the MANY occasions when they occur after that. The sutta in book form (with ellipses) is only about 10 pages long, but it is QUITE repetitive, so the actual out-loud reading takes about 20 minutes or more. (When it’s chanted in Pali, it can take about an hour.) The language of the text is somewhat archaic and the style is highly formulaic, so while the study of the practices outlined in the text can be fascinating (and profoundly transformative) the actual READING of the text can be….well…boring.
Here’s a sample: In this way, in regard to the body he abides contemplating the body internally, or he abides contemplating the body externally, or he abides contemplating the body both internally and externally. He abides contemplating the nature of arising in the body, or he abides contemplating the nature of passing away in the body, or he abides contemplating the nature of both arising and passing away in the body.
(See what I mean?)
But anyway, I did it. All four time.
And I loved it!
The first reading was kind of a slog. And the second wasn’t much better. But then I got into a groove on the third reading, and by the fourth, there was an aliveness to it that I definitely had not expected. Partly it was the rhythm of the repetition. Partly it was the chant-like quality of the phrasing. But mostly, I think, it was something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. Something to do with simultaneously saying and hearing the words….the combination of the physical sensation of reading the syllables aloud and the mental experience of understanding the words but not quite “getting” them (because of the archaic usage and phrasing)…that triggered a way of saying and hearing the words that was closer to feeling them than to either speaking or listening.
Very interesting.
What Really Makes Us Stupid
Here’s the paragraph I underlined for tonight’s KM Book Group discussion:
“Sometimes people think that if we have too much lovingkindness, always focusing on the good in others, it will make us stupid in some way, that we’ll no longer see the truth of what is going on or be able to take appropriate action. But it is precisely the mind not cloud by anger or hatred that allows us to see situations clearly and to chart the right course of action, even in very difficult situations.”
(from Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, by Joseph Goldstein.)
Everything is Temporary
I had a couple of ideas for thoughtful and perhaps inspiring — or at least useful — posts for today, but all kinds of distracting things have happened (including a surprise phone call from a former-suitor-now-dear-though-seldom-heard-from-friend!) and now all my creative energy seems to have swung in another direction.
So instead, I’ll just post a photo. This is the current altar/shrine I’ve set up in my bedroom….since my former meditation room has been commandeered (temporarily?) by the two cats I recently adopted.