So, What IS "Mindfulness?"

Last night I had the pleasure of sharing an evening of discussion with psychoanalyst, Jeffrey Rubin at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Tucson. My “piece” was a summary of “mindfulness” as understood within the buddhist tradition and in particular how, with the mainstreaming of “mindfulness” in all sorts of psychological contexts, much of the subtlety of the concept is being lost. As several friends from the community there asked if I could provide copies of my notes, I thought I’d do one better and work them up into an essay. (My notes are – at best – little phrases and lists to jog my memory, written in a pocket-sized notepad!) So, here it is:

Research into “mindfulness” dates back at least 30 years or so, but it’s been only in the last decade or so that there has been a tremendous growth in interest, deeper research, application in various contexts (including therapies directed toward anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, eating disorders) and in marketing! It seems that many folk feel that if you can just slip the word “mindfulness” into whatever your packaging, you will guarantee greater acceptance of whatever it is you’re selling!

However, there’s a discrepancy between how mindfulness is described in the buddhist texts and how it is described by many contemporary buddhist teachers as well as in the psychological mainstreaming of mindfulness. Again and again, I read passages that describe mindfulness as “bare attention.” For instance, here’s how Sara Weber defines mindfulness in her essay, “An Analyst’s Surrender” from Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: “a cultivation of a moment-to-moment awareness of changing perceptions in a neutral, impartial way.” Carey Wong offers this succinct definition at the about.com website: “Mindfulness is a type of meditation that essentially involves focusing on your mind on the present. To be mindful is to be aware of your thoughts and actions in the present, without judging yourself.”

Note the common understanding that mindfulness embodies “present moment awareness,” and holding a “neutral, non-judging, impartial” attitude or perspective toward experience. Yet, this is not quite how mindfulness is taught in the earliest buddhist texts! In fact, this description more accurately fits the definition of another term, manasikara, which simply means “attention” or “mental engagement.” This would be the initial moments of bare cognizing before recognition, perception and conceptualization. This “bare attention” is actually considered a “neutral” mental factor, neither inherently wholesome or unwholesome.

The word that we generally translate as mindfulness in Pali is sati, which is a form of “recollection” and “non-forgetfulness” which includes: retrospective memory of the past; prospectively remembering to do something in the future; and a present-centered recollection as the unwavering attention to a present reality.  This kind of mindfulness may be used to sustain bare attention, but nowhere in the basic texts do we find mindfulness (sati) equated with bare attention (manasikara).

Indeed, for “right mindfulness” to be present, sati requires the concomitant presence of “clear comprehension” (sampajanna) which is a form of introspective awareness that includes: precise knowing (a knowing of discrete moments of experiencing); complete knowing (seeing impermanence, the not-self nature of phenomena; the ultimately unsatisfactory nature of phenomena; liberation); and balanced knowing (the observation of all phenomena with sati). In the Satipatthana Sutta (a key text on the practice of sati), the three factors of recollection (sati), clear comprehension (sampajanna) and ardency (atappa) together make up “appropriate attention” or “wise reflection” (yoniso manasikara).

Sati is understood as a wholesome mental factor that clearly distinguishes between wholesome and unwholesome mental states and behaviors, and is used to then cultivate and support wholesome states and behaviors and to counteract and diminish unwholesome states and behaviors. Nothing “impartial” or “neutral” about that!

When buddhist meditation is reduced to “bare attention” – as it so often is by many contemporary teachers and by almost all in the psychological community – what often gets neglected are ethics (sila), and practices such as the immeasurables. While “bare attention” as a calm, non-reactive awareness plays a crucial part in samatha (calming or tranquility meditation), it can also lead to profoundly liberating insights – but generally only for those with a fairly developed practice and understanding. An often-repeated story from the sutras is when the buddha tells a student “In the hearing, let there just be the hearing; in the seeing, let there just be the seeing.” What is overlooked is that this particular student was already highly advanced. Such an instruction for a beginner would be meaningless and not at all helpful! As it is often said of meditation in general: simple but not easy. Nothing could be “simpler” than “just hearing” or “just seeing,” but the difficulty of doing so is tremendous!

The potential danger of “bare attention” is that by itself, while it can suppress unwholesome mental factors, it can also prevent wholesome factors from arising. Remember that sati includes remembering the pain that a past action caused (for yourself or another), and prospectively remembering that you do not want to repeat such an action in the future. Such recollection would be impossible with “bare attention!”

Also, the four immeasurables: friendliness (metta); compassion (karuna); joy (mudita) and equanimity (uppekha) which are seen as wholesome mental factors to cultivate (bhavana, the word most used to refer to “meditation” in the early texts) can only be practices with mindfulness, not “bare attention!”

So, in an integrated practice of buddhist meditation that would include samatha (calming) and vipassana (insight), samatha would be the primary method of developing sati (mindfulness); then one would move on to vipassana, applying sati and its discerning intelligence to each of the four foundations of mindfulness (body; feelings; mental formations; dharma).

Briefly, the recollection of the body begins with the breath; and goes on to include the whole body; the postures of the body; the activities of the body (and nothing gets left out including shitting and pissing); the parts of the body; the elements of the body; and finally, the ultimate reality of the body: it will be a corpse!

The recollection of feeling investigates the felt sense of experience, seeing how all experience is either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, arising physically or psychologically and that such feelings lead to reaction if sati is not present.

The recollection of mental formations includes emotions, discursive thinking, perceptions, etc. And the recollections of dharma investigates and categorizes experience according to aspects of the teachings of the buddha, including the five hindrances, the seven factors of awakening and the four noble truths. Alternatively, this can take the form of investigating the impermanent nature of all experience until the insight into not-self leads to “letting go” or “awakening.”

Again, its important to contemplate the fact that a sniper is practicing “bare attention” as he prepares for his kill. From the buddhist perspective, when mind is engaged in an act of harming, it is not even capable of sati (mindfulness). As the sniper waits and prepares, there will be heightened attention, vigilance, concentration and energy, but with an intention to cause harm, these factors are all under the sway of unwholesomeness. Free from its ethical matrix, mindfulness becomes “bare attention.”

For mindfulness to become “right mindfulness,” it requires the ethical and wisdom aspects, along with the meditation aspects of the eight-fold path. The eight limbs, divided into these three trainings (ethics, meditation, wisdom) are the yoga taught by the buddha.

Finally, I’d like to briefly touch upon the process behind the cultivation of mindfulness. It all begins with the arising of consciousness based upon the contact between a sense organ and a sense object. In buddhist thought (generally, there has been deviation from this understanding in some forms of buddhism such as much of vajrayana and zen) there is no “pure consciousness” that exists outside of causality. It always arises interdependently! And, there are six consciousness: one for each of the five senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, tasting) and then mind consciousness.

This consciousness is understood as the mere cognizing of sense object by the sense organ. Then, supporting mental factors help to create meaning from this raw cognizing. For example, my tongue makes contact with chocolate and a feeling arises. I find it pleasant because of many factors, not least of which is my conditioned response to chocolate based upon previous experience.

Contact, feeling, perception, intention, attention are “universal mental factors” that arise in every moment of consciousness. Meditation doesn’t begin until we apply the initial application and sustained attention, supported by energy to keep us “focused.” Three ethically variable or neutral factors also are generally present while meditating: conviction or confidence; joy; the impulse to act. There are said to be “variable” because as you might imagine, these three factors can equally arise when doing something unwholesome!

But, with all these mental factors present, I may be meditating, but it won’t be “mindfulness meditation.” Sati is a wholesome mental factor which only arises under special conditions. It cannot arise in the presence of any unwholesome factors. If envy is present, for instance, there is no mindfulness. BUT, in the very next moment, there can be recollection (mindfulness/sati) of the previous moment that we can investigate. But only if we are well-trained and have developed this skill.

With mindfulness, the arising of eighteen other wholesome mental factors is said to arise including among them: equanimity; non-greed; non-hatred; self-respect; respect for others; tranquility; lightness; and malleability.

Finally, to the surprise of many when they hear this, mindfulness alone does not inevitably lead to liberating wisdom (panna). If mindfulness is not linked to the mental factor of insight, it will not in and of itself lead to any significant change in your understanding and behavior! This helps explain why so many long-term practitioners seem not to have the ‘breakthroughs’ that others may speak about. It’s also why even great teachers can so often fail to live up to their own teachings!

Real transformation comes from exposing and uprooting the deeply embedded tendency to project ownership onto experience; to take any phenomena as being “I,” “me” or “mine.” A key contribution to the larger yoga tradition is the buddha’s insight that meditative stabilization must be combined with the liberating discernment of the not-self nature of phenomena.

An old analogy has mindfulness being like the hand that takes a sheaf of grain in it’s grip and wisdom the hand that holds the scythe that cuts it down.

May all beings be free!

The Shadow of Anusara?

Whew!  The following post has certainly caused a stir -- not just here but on Facebook! Considering that most of my posts garner no comments, and the most any ever did get were something like six, I got to kind of assuming no one was reading!

After reading through some comments on Christina Folosono Sell's Facebook page, I thought I would do a bit of a re-edit, both because I can see some further clarification may help, AND because I do agree that I used some terms that do not reflect "Right Speech." Worse, those terms seem to have derailed the more important point that I still heartily endorse: contemporary hatha-yoga, and Anusara in particular tend to foster a denial of duhkha and at times an almost aggressively "feel good" Pollyanna-like myopia.

For the record: I acknowledge John Friend as one of my teachers publicly, even mentioning him in the Acknowledgement section of my book, and indeed he has been an inspiring and influential teacher for me. I was a participant of one of his first Teacher Trainings as well as one of his first Yoga Therapy trainings. I attended workshops with him for several years after that and I've taken Immersions with Amy Ippolliti in New York, and with Darren Rhodes at Yoga Oasis in Tucson (where I also teach meditation).

Oh, and perhaps it is relevant to know that I am not a Buddhist.

Recently, the "exodus" of several senior Anusara Yoga teachers (including the two above-mentioned) has caused a bit of a ruffle among the wider yoga "community" (if one can even be said to exist). I am not interested in speculation nor in what it may or may not mean for John Friend or the "Anusara Kula."

What I would like to respond to is the following comments made by Elena Brower, one of those who have recently left the Anusara fold, the "defectors," as it points to something I have long felt to be a "shadow" of the contemporary hatha-yoga world, and in particular of Anusara culture -- and perhaps one that merely reflects John Friend's own shadow. Elena writes:

"What I found is that I wanted more, I wanted to know how to feel as amazing in my house as I’d felt on my mat. As expansive, as calm, as beautiful, as connected, as real. I couldn’t link my behavior at home to my composure in my practice, and I needed other ways to learn how to be more remarkable as a Mama, an ex-wife, a girlfriend, and most importantly these days, a daughter. My practice was giving me feelings of fulfillment but they didn’t last, and I was still going home and acting out of alignment with my yoga, which was getting painful."

I recognize this pattern! That disconnect between "practice" and "daily life;"  the lack of integration of practice and the rest of life. Here is what I wrote in my book, Mindfulness Yoga almost ten years ago, about something I experienced back in 1976:

"I began to notice that while I left the yoga class feeling the divine bliss of heaven, by the time I got off the train in Flushing, I was back in my own private hell. In fact, the bliss I was feeling in yoga class seemed ever more remote and alien to the rest of my life. Even after I had started to practice the postures and breathing exercises at home, I continued to find that whenever I wasn't "doing yoga," the peacefulness I felt while practicing continued to elude me."

What brought me to a deeper understanding was the following passage where the Buddha himself describes a similar experience he had with his yoga teachers:

"Though one may momentarily be secluded from the cycle of suffering, the watcher remains as a seed of rebirth. As soon as the situation changes, rebirth easily takes place again. This is just what happens now when I get up from meditating. No matter how profound my absorption, after a short time I get caught up again in the world of the senses. The basic causes and conditions for rebirth have not been extinguished. Complete liberation has not been achieved."

When I first read about the Buddha's dissatisfaction with the failure of his practice to fundamentally change his experience of daily life, I instantly recognized the similarity to my own experience -- how wonderfully calm and peaceful I felt after yoga practice, and yet how all too soon I fell back into the suffering of craving and aversion. And when I became a yoga teacher, I saw how many students seemed to have similar experiences. They would leave class blissed out, but as soon as they got "caught up in the world of their senses" they found themselves back amid their anxious lives -- from blissed out to stressed out. This is the "rebirth" the Buddha was talking about. The question became how do we stop this apparently ceaseless cycle, this endless emotional and psychological roller coaster? In our very lives generally, and in our own practice of yoga specifically, we can see the process of samsara, the cyclic process of "birth and death" over and over, moment by moment!

In my experience, contemporary hatha-yoga in general, and Anusara Yoga in particular, are permeated by a willful denial and ignor-ance of the reality of duhkha. I've had this "argument" with John Friend twice. Once, after I had lectured a group of Moksha-Yoga Teacher Trainees for over a week on mindfulness, buddhist meditation, and the philosophy and history of the Yoga Tradition, John Friend came to give a talk, and the very first thing he said was, "I know you've just had a Buddhist scholar here, and they are always talking about duhkha. But I come from a place of bliss." His talk degenerated from there! I was happy to hear one of the students respond to him, saying: "Frank spoke a lot about joy, but also made the point that the way to joy was through nobly facing and engaging with duhkha, not denying it or turning away from it."

Afterward, John actually did acknowledge to me that he had overstated his case, had gotten carried away, and had reduced Buddhism into a caricature. This did not stop him from, only a few years later, in my presence at one of his workshops, stooping to the same caricature.

And this is the shadow I have long seen in Anusara. Everyone is exhorted to aggressively "shine out with Shri" and it's all about bliss -- poorly understood as a super "feeling good" when the Tantric understanding of bliss is so much more subtle than that, and ultimately not reliant on feeling good at all! The bliss of the tantrika transcends the polarities of pleasure and pain. The Rainbow Body of Peace needn't be pain free. By definition, if it needs to be pain free, it is bound by those conditions and is therefore NOT freedom!

The "culture" of Anusara (echoing the culture of contemporary mainstream hatha-yoga) is fearful of the "noble truth of duhkha." A kind of hiding one's head in the sand is encouraged with lots of feel-good, empowerment/motivational speaker kind of new agey pablum designed to soothe and pamper egos so often desperate for validation. I've heard more applause at some Anusara workshops than I might hear at a concert! I've been invited to teach at ashrams where the brittleness of forced happiness, the plastered on smiles and the shying away of any discord is truly suffocating. 

So, I am glad that Elena seems to have broken free from the forced glee-club of Stepford Wife yogis from a culture that seems to have demanded of her this kind of consensus myopia, and found a way to integrate the freedom and peace found in yoga into her life, learning, as she says, "that I can finally look at my behaviors head-on, and not flinch, but instead, HANDLE them. Talk about them. Apologize for them instead of being too proud to address them. And then – most importantly – SHIFT THEM."

It is noble and ennobling to face duhkha, to awaken from avidya (ignore-ance) and denial. A greater ease with life, the "full catastrophe," arises when one no longer HAS to feel all "shri" and happy-faced! The radical acceptance and unconditional regard we seek cannot come from denying such a fundamental aspect of life as duhkha! This is not to say that that is all there is to life! What I am saying is that in turning away from duhkha, one turns away from the path leading out of duhkha. To deny duhkha IS duhkha!

And, to rectify mis-understandings, duhkha is NOT "suffering" and the Buddha did not say "Life is suffering." He said "there is duhkha." Face it! Though mental anguish is duhkha, that is not all it is! Duhkha is the fact that sometimes you lose what you like; you get what you don't like. Duhkha is the simply fact that happiness is not to be found in circumstances!

Now, some Buddhists seem to forget that there are Four Realities for the Noble, and that acknowledging and facing duhkha is only the first. Kind of like the first step of the 12 Step Programs, it's merely the beginning! Joy and Happiness are two of the Seven Factors of Awakening. Make no mistake: the Buddha was no kill-joy! He just wanted us to understand where happiness was truly to be found.

metta
frank jude

"As Good As It Gets"

The following is an adaptation of an essay I wrote in 1998 after seeing the film, As Good As It Gets the night before. It was written for the newsletter of the Community of Mindfulness/NY Metro.

What if this – this life, as it is – is as good as it gets? Does this thought, which can be understood to be a central insight, teaching and practice of (zen) buddhism, scare you? Depress you? Do you celebrate the idea with a hearty cheer? Or does it jolt you into sobriety?

There is an old story about a farmer who travels many miles to consult with the Buddha. Upon sitting at the Buddha’s feet, he tells the Buddha that he has 83 problems. The Buddha asks him about his problems. The farmer begins, “Well, I’m a farmer, and I love to farm. But last year we had a drought and we almost starved to death because of the meager harvest. This year, there was too much rain, and many of the crops were destroyed.”

            The Buddha sat and sympathetically nodded his head. “Yes, go on.”

            “Well, I love my wife very dearly, but I find myself growing bored and looking after other women.”

            The Buddha continued to nod his head and encouraged the farmer to share his troubles.

            “I have a son and a daughter. They’ve made me very proud. But they’re stubborn, and don’t take my advice,” the farmer continued.

            After delivering his long litany of problems to the Buddha, he asked, “So can you help me? I hear you are a great teacher.”

            The Buddha responds, “Well, it’s true you have 83 problems, and you haven’t even mentioned others like the fact that you are growing old and that you will die, and that everyone you know and love will also grow old and die.”

            The farmer was aghast. Why wasn’t the Buddha helping him? Why was he loading on even more problems?

            Then the Buddha said, “I cannot help you with any of those problems. But perhaps I can help you with the 84^th problem.”

            Exasperated, the farmer asks, “What is the 84^th problem?”

            “You want a life with no problems,” replied the Buddha.

            We would like a life with no problems. Ideally, we would not grow old, infirm and die. We would not have to deal with such unpleasantness as losing our teeth, our eyesight growing dim, bad breath, wrinkles, graying and balding hair, let alone tumors, miscarriages, and the fact that, as the Golden Archies sing, “the number of ways to die is infinite.” We’d always be surrounded by the pleasant and beautiful. This is a true vision of heaven, and it is one traded on by religions, political ideologies, and advertisers. And because it’s not how our life actually is, we are led to feel discontentment and shame. We actually feel shame when our body does something innocuously natural like fart, or when our bellies make gurgling noises, let alone when our skin wrinkles or becomes diseased! And because of this conditioned shame, we spend huge amounts of money, time and energy trying to deny the fact that we are not “perfect,” distracting ourselves in myriad ways. Whole industries, anti-aging products and body enhancing surgery, are devoted to this vain pursuit. We put on a front for the world and attempt to hide from ourselves our “imperfections” and infirmities because we have been made to feel shame. The Buddha tells us that “imperfection” is real and we do not need to feel ashamed. It is “perfection” that is purely conceptual and unreal. And because we’ve fallen for this deluded conceptualization of “perfection,” we then conceptualize the real world we live in as “imperfect!”  In fact, facing duhkha is noble and ennobling. Not turning away, and not exacerbating it, is the noble response taught by the Buddha. This noble response to existential reality is enlightenment itself. It is transcending the conceptual duality of “perfection” and “imperfection” and embracing just this, life as it is, perfectly imperfect!

            Sitting on a cold stone wall on a cold grey afternoon in January, waiting for a dharma sister with whom I have planned to take a contemplative walk through Prospect Park. A dharma sister whom never arrives, so I sit and contemplate the film I saw last night, As Good As It Gets, as a kind of koan or hwadu.

            There are many parents out with their children, walking through the park today as it is a legal holiday – Martin Luther King Day. They are pushing carriages of sleeping or crying children, many carrying bags filled with the myriad supplies required when on an outing with little diaper-wearing children. Many of these parents have older children tagging along or running ahead. There is a lot of chaos and mayhem.

            Looking at all these universal and particular family street dramas, I see all the sheer effort that goes into being a parent. All the work, planning, and worry that goes into the seemingly simplest thing like a walk in the park with your kid(s). The stress that goes into bundling a squirming irritated little boy or girl to protect them from the winter cold. And many of these moms and dads will face several flights of stairs in their brownstone walkups when they get home, balancing children, supplies, and groceries, and the carriage up to their apartment. And, before they have a moment to catch their breath, the kids will be crying or pleading for something warm to eat or drink or they’ll need some other attending to. And on it goes.

            This is as good as it gets.

            This effort, all this drudgery, is absolutely inseparable from the incomparable joy of being a parent. Of being alive! It is all of a piece and all one. The “suffering” and the joy inter-are. The quality of mind you bring to one determines the depth of the other.

            The problem is that we all too often remain blind to this truth, and thus add greatly to our suffering and discontent through our thinking that it can and should be otherwise. All these thoughts, expectations, and hopes; all these preconceptions we bring to our life as to how it should go, keep us from fully experiencing the luminosity of the present moment. Because we tend to think that if only we could “get it all together” things would be fine. And then what? We wouldn’t have to struggle to balance the carriage and the kid and the diaper bag as we make our way up the stairs? While not dropping the groceries?

            In the movie, As Good As It Gets, Melvin (Jack Nicholson), fears and suspects that this life is indeed as good as it gets. So, Melvin spends much of his time and energy attempting to keep himself as separated from reality as he can. He locks each of the several locks on his door five times. He brings his own disposable plastic utensils to the same restaurant where he sits at the same table to be served by the same waitress everyday. He uses several bars of soap to wash his hands of the outside world, using each bar for only a few seconds before disposing of it in the garbage bin.

            Melvin suffers from obsessive-compulsion disorder. But, except for degree, how different is he from many – if not all of us? Do we not all, to some degree or other, attempt to set up a world we can control, attempting to put as much distance as we can between us and change? Between us and the every-changing contingency of reality?

            Impermanence is one of the deepest teachings of the buddha. And when we look deeply into impermanence, we see another of the deepest teachings: that of selflessness. Most of us, most of the time, are conditioned to view both change and selflessness with either fear or sadness or anxiety. But when Melvin is forced through circumstances to become the caretaker of his neighbor’s dog, the process that will lead to his opening of his fortress of solitude and his heart begins.

            And here, I wish to point out a key tenet of zen buddhism (and verified by recent cognitive science research) that we needn’t have to change our thinking in order to change our behavior. In fact, we needn’t wait to change our mind, but by changing our behavior, we do indeed change our mind. Thus the phrase often heard in the zendo: “You don’t have to like it.” Melvin most certainly does not like the situation, and yet it brings about transformative, healing change!

            Carol (Helen Hunt) lives, as a frustrated date tells her on his way out, “with too much reality.” Her son, Spencer, suffers from a severe respiratory and immune system malady, placing great demands on her, yet her love for him remains strong and bright.

            Yet she too has her hopes, and dreams of the “normal boyfriend,” to come to her and it is up to her mother to interrupt her fantasy and tell her, “We all want that but it doesn’t exist.” This, she is telling us, is as good as it gets.

            Simon (Gregg Kinnear), at the nadir of his life, ends up traveling with Melvin, the bane of his life! His quest is to return back home to Baltimore and his estranged parents in order to ask from money. When he calls from the hotel, and speaks to his mother, it is the day after an evening of re-connection to his art, inspired by Carol, and from a place of new-found strength, rethinking his situation, he refrains from asking his parents for the money. Instead, he forgives his parents, asks for forgiveness himself and just lets go. Holed up in a hotel with Melvin and Carol, it’s as good as it gets.

            Early in the film, after Melvin is rebuffed by his psychiatrist, he spits out the line which gives the film its title, to a startled and bewildered waiting room filled with patients. I suspect that for Melvin, this vocalization of his deepest fear is a kind of turning point. Later, we discover that he has begun to take the pills that may help him, despite the fact, as he says to Carol, that he hates pills. “You don’t have to like it.”

            When Melvin leaves his apartment to go to Carol’s house for the final sequence, he discovers (along with the audience) that he had forgotten to lock the front door. This strikes us all as powerfully meaningful. The Fortress is open and vulnerable. He is not defending himself from reality. He is about to step our into the “full catastrophe.”

            When he tells Carol why he is there – because he alone can see how perfect she is in her mere being (dark circles around her eyes and all); in the way she loves and cares for her son; in the way she brings Melvin his eggs at the restaurant; how he is amazed that no one else can see this truth that shines so luminously to him, we hear the voice of prajna. This life, as it is lived in the mundane moment-to-moment flow is good. It is as good as it gets if we can only open our eyes and our hearts to this reality.

            When Melvin suggests to Carol that they go out for a walk, it is Carol who fears that to go out walking at 4:30 in the morning is “insane.” She certainly doesn’t want to appear crazy! Melvin shows her how fluid reality and perception truly is – how indeed they are actually the same thing – and is we who give meaning to experience by suggesting a “legitimate” reason a couple might be out walking at 4:30 AM.

            There is a bakery on the corner. By stopping off there as they open, they go from being a “crazy” couple walking at 4:30 AM to just a couple who appreciate “really fresh warm rolls” for breakfast!

            Still, both have further lessons to learn this morning. Another insight needs to develop. As they walk, Carol becomes aware of Melvin’s avoidance of the cracks in the sidewalk. She stops abruptly and pulls away from him, declaring “this, whatever it is. It’s not going to work.” This is beyond her ability to accept. She is uncomfortable with the situation as it is. After another avowal of love from Melvin, he moves in for a kiss. But neither of them can completely let go into the moment. They are not fully present to the embrace. Melvin insists he knows he can do better, and then abandoning himself to the moment, surrenders to a truly passionate, fully embracing kiss that Carol herself melts into.

            When they take each others hand and start walking again, the camera’s set-up leads us to believe there’s been a typical Hollywood “magic of romance” movement, because we see that they are walking along a cross-hatched sidewalk, side by side! But, as the camera pulls back, we see that while Carol is walking along the tiles, Melvin is walking on the inside of the sidewalk, where the cracks are more widely spaced! But, they are holding hands across the gulf. Is this a compromise? Or acceptance? Or is it both? Perhaps these two options are not in fact two different things. Perhaps they are one and the same, their love bridging all distinctions?

            Yet, in the very last shot of the film, the bakery lights go on. As the door opens outward, and Melvin steps aside to let Carol in, he loses his balance and the toes of his left foot land on the cracks of the tiled part of the sidewalk. We see – and feel along with him – his surprise… and relief! Nothing happens. Nothing changes. And of course, everything changes! It’s okay. In the very moment that he has let go and allowed himself to be thrown off balance by thinking of someone else other than himself first, he most fully comes alive. He becomes himself, free of self-defensive compulsion and obsession.

            When we are finally able to awaken to the present, with all its messiness, we can see how those things we may fear most – “things” like change and selflessness, uncertainty, and insubstantiality – are not only negative, but the very grist and foundation upon which life is lived. Change is the constant process of transformation without which there is no life. Selflessness is the fact of interdependence, of the contingent nature of reality. No-thing, and no-one, exists in isolation, no matter how much we may try to delude ourselves into believing otherwise.

            In one way or another, each of the three main characters learns aspects of these lessons. Melvin’s transformation begins with his letting down his isolating tendencies – first with Verdell the dog, then with Simon and Carol. He learns interdependence as does Carol, when he offers her assistance and she overcomes her resistance to accepting his aid. In Simon and Melvin’s opening to each other, as well, the lessons of selflessness and interdependence allows change and transformation to happen; life flows and they discover deeper truths about themselves and their capacities to love.

            This is how we all become more fully alive. And, it’s as good as it gets!

Some notes on "After.Life"

This past weekend, Cinema Nirvana, an on-going film series I've been programming for close to two years, held at Tucson Yoga, presented After.life directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo. If you've not seen it, you may want to check out the trailer.  

As you might expect, the common dialogue around this film has run the "Is she or isn't she" thread to -- pardon the pun -- death! Those who are firmly convinced one way or the other seem to like the film, while those who are caught with not knowing, seem to hate it!

For a dharma talk, you'd be right to expect that some mention of the 'moral' of the tale -- which is stated baldly at least several times throughout the film -- that most of us live our lives as already dead. And dharma practice is there to help us "Wake Up!"

However, when I first saw this film, the comment made by the mortician (played to creepily fine perfection by Liam Neeson) that Anna is a corpse ("no one cares about your opinions anymore") reminded me of the famous hwadu: Who carries this corpse?

Hsu Yun was a renowned Chinese Chan (Zen) master, and extremely influential. He lived from 1840 to 1959, dying at the age of 119. Here's a "poem" written by him, from which the famous hwadu comes:

Years Months Days Hours

One year and then another.


Appearances gradually change.


Bone marrow shrivels.

Eyebrows thin away.

This time-limited body is like a mound of slurry.

In the Triple World, earth, air, fire and water mingle and change.


This is all our emotions allow us to notice.


And their sight obstructs our view of Heaven.

One month and then another.


The light and dark pass like melting snow.


No part can be kept for long.


Only the Dharma does not come or go.

The lacquer bowl suddenly breaks.


You are like the Dragon of Heaven - born to be lively and free.


A roc can't live in a crane's nest.


A little jiaoliao bird needs to stay near mosquito ponds.

One day and then another.


They never wear themselves out.


Give up your judgments about everything.


It's all insubstantial in the end.

All things under the sun come to an end and dissolve.


Spend what time you have in honest simplicity.


Just one breath of the Eternal


Admits you to the Great Chamber.

One hour and then another.


Inexorably march, step by step.


Whenever I meet you, we each smile.


But who is it who drags your corpse around?

Steadfast and unchangeable.


Always mindful of this or that.


You're young and strong. Exert yourself!


Don't wait... oh please don't wait


Until you're much too old and weak.

“Who drags this corpse around?" The hwadu (Korean; hua tou: Chinese) takes us right to the essence of Chan. Generally, most folk are more familiar with the koan, an apparently irrational or paradoxical story used in Zen Buddhism as a meditation technique. The hwadu is considered the true 'turning word' from the koan. For instance: "Does a dog have buddha-nature?" asks the student of Master Joshu, who replies, "Mu!" is the complete koan. Mu is the hwadu.

For many, practicing with a hwadu  may seem too abstruse, difficult and bizarre. The very way to approach working with one seems alien or insurmountable. I mean, counting the breaths, working with a mantra or visualization can be challenging enough, but to struggle with "What am I?" or "What is it?" can be truly mind-boggling!

One issue is the belief that certain circumstances are necessary to practice such a demanding practice. Hsu Yun warned us about this point:

"There are cases of the enjoyable state of purity and cleanness realizable in stillness but not realizable in disturbance. For this reason many meditators avoid disturbing conditions and look for quiet places. They do not realize that they have already agreed to become servants of the demon of both stillness and disturbance."

Note how often we find ourselves struggling to find the right conditions for meditation and the cultivation of a "spiritual" mind amidst the chaos of our lives. We may feel that we need stillness and isolation to practice, withdrawal from the round of daily life. But a central teaching of the Zen tradition is that anyone can awaken to intimacy with life, and nobody can start from anywhere other than where they are at the moment. As Hsu Yun emphasized, to separate conditions of "stillness" from "disturbance" in order to find the ideal condition for meditation is to have already succumbed to error. 

When working with a hwadu, it is like being told to open our eyes in a totally dark room and being told to look . In working with a hwadu (or koan) we use the same mind we use to explore the world of the senses; but we turn that faculty inwards instead of outwards, as the Korean Master Chinul said, "tracing the radiance back." And truly, at first all we see may be murky darkness, but before long that darkness becomes illuminated from within by a most brilliant light.

A hwadu is designed to take us beyond where our conditioned minds alone can take us. By forcing the mind to its very limits, we enter into a whole new way of perception – a more direct perception independent of the mind's more gross filtering machinery. The traditional Zen teachings is that we can go beyond all conditioning, but I believe that as neural beings, such unmediated "perception" is a fantasy. What we go beyond is the identification and attachment to social, cultural and some biological conditioning, but as all this 'going beyond' occurs in the body/brain, there is no going beyond all 'filters.' For instance, we can only see the colors and forms we see as conditioned by our optic systems, including the brain. What Zen practice can do for us is to allow us to see the colors free of conditioned association, and that's a lot!

The fact that work on the hwadu is expected to continue during times not set aside specifically for meditation provides us with the implication that the examination of a  is not intended to be a merely rational, discursive part of the thinking process; it is rather about developing a "feeling" of  doubt -- or as I prefer, questioning -- and slowly acquiring the skill to carry it with us at all times. We can argue with our spouse, change soiled diapers, be mindful of doing the washing-up after dinner, showering and shaving… all while being aware of the doubt, questioning just "who is performing this action?" There is nothing that can happen in our lives that we cannot use to give rise to this enquiring, doubting, mind. We can always ask ourselves "Who feels?," "Who thinks?", "Who is in pain?" "Who feels defensive?" "Who hears the train whistle?"

And as we practice, the easier it becomes to give rise to this feeling. When we least expect it, the breakthrough happens revealing the perfectly clear unambiguous answer to our hwadu. When that happens a blissful flowing energy -- what the early Buddhists called nibanna-dhatu -- is felt throughout the bodymind.

The hwadu "who drags the corpse" is a sword designed for cutting through to the heart of "who". The "corpse" referred to in the question does not simply refer to the physical body. In Buddhist teachings -- common to the wider Yoga Tradition, mind is also a part of this body, a part of this corpse. As all the six senses come together on this hwadu, a curious thing happens: we "see" the who and the corpse as the same thing - the duality vanished. The sense of an individual self vanished. It's this realization of anatta (not-self) that we are led to find by this practice.

An integral aspect of the essential reality of "not-self" is realizing that our form is not a unified and permanent whole, but a collection of interacting attributes that come together and move apart; a fluid but impermanent relationship of conditions. In Buddhism, these conditions are referred to as the five skandhas -- "heaps" or "aggregates". The "corpse" that we carry is the totality of these temporarily-bonded skandhas. Think of a pile of laundry: we call it "the laundry" as if it were a unified 'thing,' when in fact it is a heap of undies, socks, shirts, etc.

The five skandhas are physical form (rupa), which is the "meat body." Secondly, there are our feelings (vedana), the actual felt-sense of the body, including whether it is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Thirdly, there are our perceptions (samjna), our tendency to notice, to label, to describe, and to perceive. Fourthly, there are our mental formations (samskaras) which are more difficult to describe, but might be recognized as ideas, beliefs and emotions which are formations based on feelings and perceptions, which create attitudes and perspectives unique to us. Finally, there is consciousness itself (vijnana). It enlivens and animates the other four skandhas.

Together, these skandhas change, interact, coalesce and create the personal sense of "I." It is this manufactured "I," identifying with the corpse, that the evasive "who" of the hwadu hides behind.

Looked at this way, the skandhas are this corpse. There is no duality between body and mind in this hwadu. The deepening examination of "who" it is that enlivens this corpse reveals a nexus of awareness that seemingly both transcends and "indwells" this body, this mind, these perceptions and feelings, this limited personal consciousness. The duality is, like all dualities, apparent: a product of our perception (one of the skandhas). This "who" is not a part of the personal self. It is not anything. We use the word "who" as we look within, but we know we will not find anyone. How could we? Anything found would simply be another entity, another being limited by its own point of reference, its own beginning and end. But we ask "who" in order to pierce deeper into that emptiness that is at the core of our own personal self.

Another example here: we say, "It is raining," and forget that there is no "it" separate from the rain. In a similar way, we talk of "our feelings," or "our ideas" as if there is some entity behind, beyond, below or above the changing phenomena of feelings and ideas. But try to find it and "it" cannot be found!

Every moment of every day, and not simply in seated meditation, reality itself asks this hwadu. Who are we? Who is it that responds to each thought, each perception, each feeling? The answer cannot be any of the skandhas for we are not our bodies, ideas, perceptions, forms or changing energies. So what is this who?

As we ask "who drags this corpse" and as we look deeper into this space of unknowing, we find that as our focus deepens, our words, and the corpse, falls away. Finally we are left with just who? And what then?!

Putting aside our self-images, our hopes, fears (aren't they two sides of the same thing?) and memories (at least just for the purposes of pursuing the "not-knowing" necessary for working with the hwadu, ask, as full-heartedly as possible, as intimately as possible:

Who?

September 11th, 2001

Like you, I'm sure, I've heard talk about 9/11 memorials for weeks, and this week a real ratcheting up of reminiscences -- some deeply moving and personal, and some typical so-called patriotic blathering.

I wish to mark the day by re-posting the following from my old blog: Karuna Notes, that I posted the day after September 11th. Sadly, the US took the reactive low road, and we are indeed a poorer nation for it. But for those of us living in NYC in those first few weeks after 9/11, we know -- we remember -- there was a shining luminosity of the heart shared by all of us. We had, however fleeting, a vision of the pure land.

in metta-karuna,

poep sa frank jude

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

September 11, 2001

Yesterday, very much more than the Manhattan skyline was altered. America's psyche itself was utterly changed by the horror we (no matter where we live) experienced. What could hardly be thought, actually happened. With no TV, my wife and I listened to the shock in the voice of a local NYC reporter describing the fire pluming from Tower 1. We heard the horror in  his voice as it reached a shrieking peak as he witnessed the second plane bearing in on Tower 2 and hittng it in a fire ball that was felt over a mile away.

Other reports, later, spoke of the "strange" calm and orderliness of the crowds as they walked through the streets and across the Brooklyn Bridge. I suspected it was evidence of shock. And of course, there was shock, but when I finally saw pictures, I saw, along with the grief and anguish, a palpable strength, determination and resolve. I felt I was witnessing the deep source of what is best in humankind -- here in the midst of the consequences of the worst of that which we are capable. I was moved to tears by the reports of aid given to each other by "victims," by the quick response of "average" New Yorkers, along with the valiant efforts of the City's fire, police and rescue operations. And of the death of so many of them -- true bodhisattvas. 

But I was also dismayed at some of the "news" commentators and politicians and their quick talk of war and retribution. Mayor Guilliani, in a news briefing, told New Yorkers not to lash out at New York's Arabic/Muslim community, for that would be coming from the same hatred and prejudice that was at the root of the terror itself. I am pretty sure he was unaware of it, but he was paraphrasing the Buddha who counseled, "Not by hatred is hatred dispersed, but by non-hatred." Those who call impulsively for retaliation suffer from both fear and a stunted imagination. Yes, I can understand the fear, but after millenia of trying to do away with violence and aggression with violence and aggression, haven't we yet learned that it just does not work?!

To give in to our most base instinct is to betray what makes us truly human. If we capitulate to our own anger and hatred, we lose the possibility of transforming this tragedy into what it could become -- a watershed in the evolution of the world and of society. If we give in to blind rage and fear, we learn and change nothing, but if we respond with awareness, compassion and understanding, we give meaning to what otherwise is the senseless death of too many.

"Look how he abused me and mistreated me.... Live with such thoughts and you live in hate," says the Buddha. And look how quick we are to point fingers and try to assign blame. We sure do want to pinpoint the blame, and yet we fail to even look at, let alone pinpoint the causes and conditions. For this would require some real thought and some deep "soul-searching." To point to "the other" as evil is to objectify and diminish in denial the inter-connectedness we live within. "How is it that we can be the object of such hatred?" might be a question that could spur some real creative thinking. What is our responsibility for the existence of such hatred in the world?

Please, I AM NOT saying that justice should not be served. Those who are "directly responsible" must not be allowed to get away with this heinous crime. But blindly acting out of rage and some mixture of righteousness and victimization will only fan the flames of hatred in the world -- and not serve to bring peace or safety to anyone. We can only have peace when we live from peace and when we have done all we can to insure that all beings can live in peace. 

Recommendation

Promise me,

promise me this day,

promise me now,

while the sun is overhead

exactly at the zenith,

promise me:

Even as they 

strike you down

with a mountain of hatred and violence;

even as they step on you and crush you

like a worm,

even as they dismember and disembowel you,

remember, brother,

remember:

man is not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion --

invincible, limitless, unconditional.

Hatred will never let you face

the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone,

with your courage intact, your eyes kind,

untroubled

(even as no one sees them),

out of your smile

will bloom a flower.

And those who love you will behold you

across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,

I will go on with bent head,

knowing that love has become eternal.

On the long, rough road,

the sun and the moon

will continue to shine. 

_--- Thich Nhat Hanh