Buddhism
- When a conversation quietens down, or you can afford to be more of a listener than a participator, anchor yourself to your breath. Become aware of the breath at the nose or the rise and fall of your belly. By drawing your focus down to the the belly you will also ground yourself. Instead of living in the anxiety of the mind that wants to get away and have a rest, you drop your attention. This will better root you to where you are, creating a more stable feeling within yourself.
- If you are walking, become aware that you are walking. Use the footsteps on the ground as your anchor. If are distracted by thoughts in the mind, come back to the footsteps. Again, drawing the focus down more deeply anchors you to place.
- If you are engaging in some activity, just be aware of what you are doing. If you are eating, just be aware of eating - of cutting your food, of taking a bite, the process of chewing and finally swallowing the food. If the situation allows, don’t busy yourself with chatter or reading, just focus on the activity at hand.
- If you driving and the radio is on, turn it off. It is amazing how much that can distract you and turn up the volume on an already agitated mind. While driving, use the brake lights of the car in front of you, or a traffic signal as a reminder to return to your breath.
- You can go back and fight your corner, but now there are two of you angry and a two person fight will just serve to increase the wedge between you, and probably the misunderstanding with it.
- You can contact the person and try and explain your way out of the accusations. That might work, but then again it might not. Indeed it might make the situation worse. Anger, as we have all experienced at some time or another sadly blinds us of wanting to hear, understand or take a step down from the position that we are standing in. If the other person is consumed by anger, you showing up to tell your version of the story might be like throwing another coal on the fire…just your presence.
- You can develop broad shoulders and just learn to ignore the situations as they arise. In my opinion this is better than the pervious two in that you are not continuing the conflict, and in the best case scenario you are holding the door open for reconciliation further down the line when the time feels right. However, I believe that there is a fourth option which holds the door further open. I think that there is a danger with this third option that the broad shoulders become a stance of toughness, “I can put up with that.” “I don’t have to stand for their nonsense and will ignore it.” The fourth option I will expand on for the rest of this post.
What the Tibetans Taught Me About Quiet Time
I am writing this on a flight back to the US from England. I have spent the last two weeks in the UK, where I was born, visiting with family and friends. The UK is home and so visits back there become a run around of trying to see and do as much as I want to in the time available. The truth is though there is never enough time. For those who need their quiet time, the phrase “run around” can get the alarm bells ringing, and indeed my first week back was exhausting - seeing friends, meetings, coping with jet lag - read, “little sleep”.
If you want to do one - see a lot of people in a short time - and are effected by the other - get tired easily and need recharge time - you need a plan B to keep yourself going…even if it is only a temporary fix.
Tibetan Monasteries
To start, let me take us on a side trip from England to Southern India and the Tibetan refugee settlements where the monastic universities of Tibet have been reestablished. These particular monasteries are not quiet, reclusive places of contemplation. They are peaceful, yes, but they are far from quiet. The monasteries are centers of learning, in this case the study of Buddhist philosophy. Those who successfully complete the program of study are given the title of Geshe, the equivalent of a PhD in Buddhist philosophy. The monasteries are as busy as any university in the West. From early in the morning you hear the shouting of young monks as they memorize the Buddhist texts. They recite groups of lines out loud, over and over again, slowly committing books to memory. An accomplished memorizer can retain many volumes of text, which is an extremely useful asset when they are pitted against other learned monks in the centuries old form of debate that they engage in each evening…and more often than not, late into the night. During these very animated and sometimes intimidating encounters, which are designed to sharpen understanding, the monks defend their position by quickly referencing a line of text drawn from the libraries in their mind.
Added to all of the study, there are the jobs that monks have to do just for the smooth running of the monastery. Younger monks will attend to more senior monks, food needs to be cooked for a population that can reach into the thousands. All of these responsibilities along with their studies means that the only true quiet time is in the early hours of the morning. Some monks have little alone time for their own meditation practice. If they can get up in the early hours, that gives them some opportunity, otherwise they are forced to find another way to practice - not another place, but another way.
Meditation and Quiet
The ideal for meditation practice is a quiet place. Indeed within Tibetan texts much time is devoted to describing the ideal conditions for meditation. However, meditation is not about running away to find quiet time. Indeed my own teacher would sometimes disturb me when I was meditating and take me off to do some more mundane task. There is a place for quietening the mind, for allowing the mind to rest and let the agitation that is disturbing your peace, fall away. When things get too much, we just need to come up for air. However, searching for results in meditation practice can be dangerous. Meditation is about doing the practice, not about looking for results. Just show up, sit down and engage in the instruction that you have been given. The results will come if you stay with the practice as you are instructed. Looking for results will draw you further from them. Meditation will not remove the storms that you encounter in life, but it will give you the tools and ability to be present with those storms and ultimately transform how you react to them. The peace comes through acceptance, letting go and transformation.
Meditation on the Move
And so back to the Tibetan monastics. As you watch those monks who have woken up to early morning chores after a night of debate, you will probably see their lips moving. Listen carefully and you might hear some sounds coming from their mouthes. A lot of Tibetan meditation practice is made up of chanting sadhanas, prayers, and reciting mantras, while engaging in visualizations and reflecting on the meaning of what it is that you are saying. This can obviously be done in solitude without distraction, allowing more time for focus and reflection, but if that is not an option the Tibetans do these practices while on the move. They could be preparing breakfast for others, but they will be saying their prayers at the same time. They don’t wait for the outer conditions to be perfect, they might never be, they just get on and do it wherever they are. In time this becomes a habit and lays the foundation for those times when undisturbed practice is possible. It also means that you do not get lost in arguments in your mind over “how inappropriate this situation is”, or “I wish so-and-so would be quiet." The outer conditions are as they are, you accept that and get on with your meditation practice, laying the foundation for a transformation of your mind.
Strategies
But what if you do not have a Tibetan practice? How does this cultural observation translate in to dealing with busy times such as I experienced while in the UK? What might you do when finding a quiet space is not possible? How might you bring a meditative practice or what strategy can you develop to help find quiet in the busyness of your life? Here are some suggestions:
In Conclusion
In essence, find a process that draws your mind away from the anxiety that is forming through your tiredness. Or as Elaine Aron says in her book The Highly Sensitive Person, “Think in terms of containers - who or what quiet, familiar presence could hold you right now?”
How to Approach Difficult Situations ... and Manage Those Holiday Blues
A lot of good advice has been offered online on how introverts and HSPs can manage the social demands that might come their way over the holiday period. I was not intending to add to this well informed conversation, until I came across this short video (below) by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who is based in Seattle. The advice that he gives stretches beyond the Buddhist world and applies to any time and place in our lives, not just the this holiday time.
He speaks of how by reaching into core principles such as love and compassion, principles that speak for the well being of the other and not of self, we find more peace of mind by not dwelling on that which is causing us pain. In doing so we lessen our own load and make the difficult more bearable. We transform the situation by not dwelling on the negative. Continued practice of acting in this way creates a new habit for ourselves, our heart and mind are more at peace and we are able to weather more challenges in our lives.
If and where the Buddhist terminology does not work for you, I invite you to replace Rinpoche’s words with words or phrases that help give his advice meaning to you.
Have a happy and safe holiday time whether with family and friends or by yourself, and wishing you all the best for 2015.
Broad Shoulders Aren't Always Necessary
How do you deal with those situations where someone dishes out an attack on you, offering accusatory remarks that are untrue? Their words are spoken before reaching out and trying to understand where you are coming from. You know that an image of you is now out in the world, however small a corner of the world, which is unfounded and not a true representation of who you are. What do you do?
From my observation…and experience, a few common ways of dealing with this sort of situation are:
Non-Violence
This fourth way might be called a way of compassion, a way of non-violence. Within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, compassion is defined as the wish for beings to be free from their suffering or their problems. When we are angry, regardless of the how right or wrong we are, we are not happy. Our blood is boiling, our mind is mass of churning thoughts, our heart is beating fast, we’ve probably lost our appetite and it is hard for us to find any peace of mind in that moment. Within this fourth way the issue is not about what you have been accused of, rather it is about the other person who is accusing you and what they are going through as a result of their disagreement with you. It is about a relationship that has been wounded and holding the door open for reconciliation. It is not about you claiming that you don’t make mistakes or get angry, rather in this moment where we have been wrongfully accused it is about seeing if we can lay the foundations for building bridges and if that is not possible to move forward in our lives without holding a grudge.
Of course this is all easier said than done. It is easy to read these words, but when we are feeling wronged the voices inside us start shouting loudly in defense and we soon fall back into accusatory ways. The trick is to have a commitment to something that can act like a trigger to catch yourself before you react.
Presence
The commitment that I would like to suggest of you is to being present, to being aware of now. By coming back to this moment, we are moving towards the root of our own suffering. That root is not concerned about whether we have been wronged or not, but how we are reacting to the situation. Is our response going to protract the suffering or work to remove it?
This commitment of being present speaks to our mindfulness practice. It is taking our meditation practice off the cushion and into our daily life. By committing to be present, we are more likely to catch ourselves when we feel that we have been criticized unfairly. Through that catch, there is a pause. In that moment we have a choice - we can fall back into old ways, or choose another path, a path that does not exacerbate conflict but looks to build bridges.
Motivation's Role In Your Adventures
This article first appeared on Arthur Coddington’s Peak Performance website.
Call to adventure…
The vision is set. The goals are in place. You are positioned in front of your computer, note book, or on your way to your office (even if that it is 30 second walk from bed to another room in the house), and nothing is going to stop you. Today is not only the first day of the rest of your life, but also the day that your life vision is to take birth – business, sport, learn a new musical instrument, walk round the world – the “what” does not matter. {{more}} What does matter is that today is that day, finally, that you and the world (though they don’t know it yet) have been waiting for. You are about to launch yourself. Watch out everyone…
…and then
Fast forward to five o’clock in the evening. The fist pumping enthusiasm of earlier that day is still there, though perhaps not knocking the punch that it did that morning. You’ve read a few more blog posts than you intended, got to know your social media timelines more intimately, and got up to make yourself a few more hot drinks than you usually do. Hhmmm, what has happened to that “watch out world” enthusiasm of 8 hours ago? You are feeling deflated and struggling to find a kick, and on top of that there’s a hollow pit in your stomach due to the lack of accomplishment. All that reading that you had been doing had ratchet up your sense of untouchability. This was your year, month, day. Now was the time that you had been waiting for and you were now going to head out and live your dream…..but you feel it faltering before it reaches the first hurdle. Or perhaps to be more accurate, the hurdle was already sitting there, you just did not see it.
Finding your resources
Wishing to live your dream, to make real that which you feel as though you were put on the earth to do requires of you resolution and strength that has to be fed from somewhere. That somewhere can in part come from close family, friends, a significant other, but there also needs to be an inner resource from which you can draw. This becomes even more relevant when there isn’t someone in the wings offering that support.
Any endeavor that is seeking to take us out of the norm that our everyday lives currently inhabit is like a call to adventure. Within that call are voices that are sitting there waiting to give us every good reason not to set off. If all that we rely on is an adrenaline fueled pump of energy to keep us going, we better have a good supply of Red Bull sitting in the refrigerator as sooner or later that initial surge is going to wane. As the initial enthusiasm dies off, the doubting voices will start to emerge out of the shadows telling us what a dodo we were to even think that we could embark on this journey in the first place. All best laid plans will in some way be rendered useless by the voices and slowly we’ll find ourselves dragged away from that which we believed in.
What we need to do is create a stronger base on which to build our vision. The foundation needs to be stronger. So what are the ingredients that can help to build that stronger foundation?
Building a solid base
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition before we start a meditation session we are instructed to set ourselves a motivation for engaging in the practice. This can be anything, but the one that is suggested within the Tibetan tradition is to familiarize ourselves better with our mind, so that we can develop it to be better able to help others. At the end of the session we dedicate any benefits, any insights gained from the practice to the accomplishment of the goal that we set ourselves at the outset. The reason behind this short ritual is to first set a direction and then cement within us what we have learnt from our meditation.
It is very easy to just plump ourselves down on the cushion to meditate and then jump up afterwards and get on with our day without reflecting on what we have just done. I’m not going to suggest that you will get no benefit from ‘just’ sitting but by engaging in the ritual of setting intention, the reason for which you are engaging in the meditation practice will become more firmly embedded within you. Even when you don’t feel like sitting, you’ll have your off days, the motivation can help bring you to the cushion. The distracting voices are kept at bay by your continual resolution to accomplish a goal, in this case developing a mind more infused with patience, love and compassion.
Renewed resolve
As we set ourselves our goals for that grand plan that we want to embark on, it is useful to stop for a moment (perhaps a day, a few quiet hours away when things are less hectic) and reflect and embed within in us what deep down inside is driving us. In our vision for our future were values. Our vision was built upon standards that we hold as very important and dear in our lives. However, in the enthusiasm and adrenaline high of wishing to succeed, we didn’t take time to cement within us what the dream was being birthed from.
To quiet the doubting voices we need to become deeply familiar and intimate with these values that drive us. Take a moment each day to remind yourself of what is driving you and use that as a resolution to drive yourself towards your goals.