Read Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. Online
Authors: Thomas Bien
Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (18 page)
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agreed to get therapy to deal with her part of these difficulties. Sam wanted me to see his partner for psychotherapy. I felt a conflict of interest in seeing both Sam and his partner individually. I knew that even if I succeeded in being present to each of them without siding more with one or the other, they would always wonder whether I wasn’t taking the other one’s side. When I offered referrals to other therapists I have confidence in, Sam insisted that I alone could be helpful to his partner. If Sam could have been less attached, he could perhaps have come to the point of view that if indeed therapy was important for his partner, then what was important was finding her a good therapist. From this point of view, there would be many ways to get what he needed. But Sam was locked into what felt like the
only
way to meet this need. And for that reason, his partner would miss a helpful experience. Psychology provides a helpful trick in this regard. The trick is to substitute the word
prefer
in your thinking in place of
must
or
have to
. I
prefer
to get the job offer, win the baseball game, or have good weather for the picnic. But when I feel these things
must
go the way I want them to, I lock myself in. My own desperation may then even work against me. For example, the thought “I have to get this job!” creates feelings of pressure and anxiety. A much more useful thought is something like “I strongly prefer to get this job, but I know that if I don’t, I can find something else.” Then you can relax a little. And if you are relaxed, you will probably do better on the interview and other application procedures. Desperation breeds more of the same.
Change
Must
to
Prefer
Take out paper and pen. Draw a line down the middle of the paper. Breathe quietly in and out for a few moments. Then review things in your life that you feel have to be a certain way for you to be happy. In the left-hand column, list these things. Your list should include both small, day-to-day concerns like “I must get the garden planted this weekend” and more serious matters like “I must get that job I interviewed for” or “I have to find a good relationship.”
When you have completed your list, spend a few moments looking it over. Feel the tension in your body and in your consciousness as you 05 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:51 AM Page 108
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take in all these musts. Now in the right-hand column, write a rebuttal to each of these, beginning with the phrase “I would prefer . . .” For example, “I would prefer to get this job, but if I don’t perhaps something better will come along.” Or: “I would prefer to have a partner, but if that doesn’t happen, my life can still be worthwhile and happy.” Be sure the statements you write are true and not unreasonably optimistic. Now quietly read your list of preferences as you breathe. Notice the difference between giving yourself the little space created by the word
prefer
. Note how this affects your body and consciousness. Just Ease Your Grasp
Nonattachment is not a matter of fooling yourself. You are not pretending you don’t have any wants or needs. You are not pretending to be a saint or a guru, above it all and unconcerned. You acknowledge the outcome you wish. But you leave the door ajar. You give yourself a little space. You ease your anxious grasp on life. When we lose perspective, we develop a black-and-white attitude. There seems to be only one way to go about things. There seems to be only one way to take care of our needs. When we view things with more detachment, with an awareness that this, too, will pass, we can adapt to what is. Then we find many ways to get what we need. When you know that good health is temporary, you appreciate it when you are healthy. When you know that life is not forever, this can inspire you to enjoy every moment. Problems seem smaller, and you become fearless and patient. The highway construction that makes you late, the phone call that comes at an inopportune moment, or the breakdown of your refrigerator are not the major crises they pretend to be when you are caught up in them.
Follow the Eightfold Path
The basis of the Buddha’s teaching is an acknowledgment of suffering and a way out of suffering. Suffering is important to recognize, because the process of looking deeply into suffering teaches us the way out of 05 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:51 AM Page 109
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it. In itself, the fact of suffering is not news. The news is that there is a way out of it. At the heart of this teaching is a pragmatic attitude. There are no unnecessary adornments or speculations or moralisms—just a matter-of-fact teaching that if you do these things in this way, you will get this result. If you cling to a desperate hope that someday suffering will end, but you go on living, thinking, and perceiving in the same old way, this is obvious nonsense. It’s like the man who complained to his doctor that whenever he banged his head against the wall, it hurt. The doctor’s obvious advice: Stop doing that! To end suffering, you must do things differently.
Recall that the fourth noble truth in Buddhism is the eightfold path: right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right mindfulness, right diligence, and right concentration. The Pali word
samyak,
here translated as “right,” does not mean right in the moralistic sense so much as in the sense of complete or effective. In other words, this is how to live effectively if you wish to become enlightened. Three of these (view, thinking, and concentration) concern mental and perceptual habits and orientations and are directly connected with mindfulness. Clearly if your view of life is erroneous, if your thinking is distorted, and if your concentration is weak, it will be difficult to practice mindfulness. At the same time, by living more mindfully, you are already beginning to improve these aspects of the path. The other four (speech, action, diligence, and livelihood) concern what we do in daily life. If you speak in a harmful, unskillful way, if you act in a way that brings harm to yourself or others, if you earn a living in a way that creates suffering, or if you do not put enough diligence, or energy, into your practice, you will not be able to live mindfully. Mindfulness does not mix with wrong speech, wrong action, or wrong diligence.
To give one example, say you are an advertising executive responsible for a campaign to encourage teenage smoking. You have a problem in the area of right livelihood. Only those heavily invested in tobacco companies can still maintain that smoking is harmless. So it is clear that if this is your job, you are doing harm. If you are living mindfully, it is inevitable that you become aware of this. Mindfulness makes it difficult to maintain your rationalizations. If you are mindful, you are concerned about the consequences of what you do. Since you are causing suffering, this will weigh on you and prevent you from being peaceful and happy. Eventually, one of two things will happen: Either you will get 05 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:51 AM Page 110
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another job, or you will become less mindful. Such work and mindfulness are incompatible. If you do such a job mindfully, the stress in you will build until you either deny or rationalize the situation, or find another job.
Practice Mindfulness of Livelihood
All work contains a mixture of positive and negative effects. The Vedas, ancient scriptures of India, teach that evil clings to action like smoke to fire. There is no such thing as work that has no negative consequences. Breathe quietly in and out, and consider:
•
What are the positive effects of my work?
•
What are the negative effects of my work?
•
What effects of my work are mixed?
Stretch yourself a little. If you are a therapist, you might think you only do helpful work. But the money it costs to see you affects people’s lives, even if you do your work perfectly. And most likely, you do not always do it perfectly. If you are a teacher, you may think you do only good. But the grades you give out can have negative effects on students. Even an overly positive grade can have negative effects if it puts the student in a false position. Continue these reflections as you move through your work day, just noting compassionately what you observe, without judging or reacting. It is troubling to become aware that the work we do is harmful to others. Because we have family and financial commitments, it is not always possible to just walk away from our employment, even if we would like to. The situation is complicated, too, because we know that if we leave our job, someone else will do it—perhaps someone with less conscience. What is more, there is no job that is perfect and that could not be said to bring some harm to someone in some way. It is always a matter of
relatively
right livelihood and of doing
relatively
little harm. Since there is no perfect job, it is always a matter of moving your work life a little in the right direction, changing how you do things where you work, changing your job if you must.
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Practice Right Action
Right action isn’t just about large decisions and important actions, but is also about behavior that might normally be considered minor. One dharma teacher taught that right action is about how you use toilet paper. This may shock our Western sensibilities, but the Buddhist attitude does not divide the world into areas that are considered holy and important versus those considered worldly or trivial. In light of Joko Beck’s teaching that “chop wood, carry water” needs to become “make love, drive freeway,” consider the topic of running a red light. If you are in a great hurry, if you feel great urgency about getting where you are going, it is easy to rationalize running a red light—
especially if it is only a matter of a second or two. You tell yourself that you know there is a pause before the signal for the other traffic changes to green. You glance around and are confident that there are no police to give you a ticket. And you just can’t afford that extra minute or two the waiting might cost you.
If you look at this situation more deeply, it is not hard to find the potential for harm. At a minimum level, there may have been a police car that you did not see. And if you get ticketed, this will cause you suffering (a fine, points on your license, increased auto insurance rates). This is the level of traditional, authority-based morality: Anything is right that does not bring me into conflict with authority. If I get away with it, it must be okay. But the consequences at this level are minor compared to those at other levels, such as those that can follow from having an accident. At the least, an accident involves harm to a major piece of property. At the most, it may involve the loss of health or even life. If you are living mindfully, you cannot rationalize this away. There is more to gain from this simple example. If you look still a little more closely, you may ask, What is the cause of this situation? How did I get myself to the point where I was in such a hurry that running the light seemed worth the risk? Such a line of inquiry may lead you back to getting up in the morning and hitting the snooze button a few too many times. You calculated just enough time to get to work, leaving none to spare. So you were rushing desperately from the moment you sprang out of bed. A feeling of rushing while driving is always dangerous. By looking deeply into the problem of running a red light, you see a need to allow yourself more time, so that you will not have a feeling of rushing while you drive, so that you will not be tempted 05 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:51 AM Page 112
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to run the light, so that you will not take such a risk. You come to see that allowing yourself time to get ready for work at a more leisurely pace is not trivial, and is not just about being more relaxed for your own well-being, but also affects all the other drivers who are on the road with you.
If you live mindfully, you experience the incompatibility between certain actions and mindfulness. In fact, if you are mindful—if you are cultivating calmness and joy in the present moment—you probably will not even have the impulse to run the light in the first place. But if you are living in an unmindful or forgetful way, is it any wonder that you do not feel peaceful when you sit on your meditation cushion?
Right speech is obviously an important aspect of living mindfully. We will deal with this in chapter 8, where we discuss interpersonal aspects of mindfulness. Be Aware of What You Take In
Right consumption is part of right action. This is of great importance in a consumer-driven society. Every day we are bombarded with media messages. The very air about us is replete with radio and television waves. It is all but impossible to get away from them.
You cannot find greater peace and joy in life if you continue to expose your-
self to things that are harmful, agitating, and disturbing.
As the Buddhists say, “Because this is, that is.” If you eat things that are not good for you, this will affect your physical health. If you consume television and radio, books, magazines, newspapers, and movies with negative content, this will affect your emotional and spiritual health. Action based on this awareness need not be heavy-handed, moralistic, or joyless. You
certainly
do not have to feel it is your duty to impose your view of these things on other people. Mindful consumption is simply self-defense. Some psychological research confirms the commonsense point of view that exposure to negative media has negative effects. If you watch a film depicting violence, you become more prone to aggressive behavior afterward. On the other hand, if you watch a film about caring and empathy, this has a positive effect. In one study, a film about Mother Teresa caring for the sick elicited elevated immune functioning in those who saw it. Compassion is good for you. When you become mindful, you notice how what you take in to 05 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:51 AM Page 113
