Miss Manners Talks About California Weather

Growing up in California - a land of mostly immigrants tacked onto the left edge of an even more enormous land of mostly immigrants - you notice that certain migrants from the east coast are sometimes opinionated. It's hard to get affirmation from an east coast person, especially when it comes to evaluating the weather.

For example, if you say, It's cold today. They will reply, No it's not. They say these three words as if they were one syllable. So say it as fast as you can: Noitsnot. That's how they say it. Similarly, if you say, Gee, it's hot today, guess what they say? Noitsnot.

So it seems that because we lack humidity in the form of snow, and in the form of ...steam, we are not entitled to make any claims of extreme weather. Things are just too dry here, except when they're foggy, but fog, for some reason, doesn't count as snow. Mark Twain did say that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, but he was prone to hyperbole, and from the midwest.

I learned recently that when referring to trees on the east coast, you can't say trees, you have to say foliage. Which is just flashy. Sure, I remember years ago coming in for landing in Charlotte, North Carolina, looking down at the landscape and seeing that it looked really bizarre down there and asking what those things were. (I'm not making this up.) My husband took a quick peek out the airplane window, replied, "trees" and went back to sleep. He should have said foliage but perhaps thought I might not understand.

If someone put a blindfold on you for say several months, then gave you a California tree to look at, you would have no idea what the date was. California perennials are just too subtle, they're all bark, they can't say anything about the calendar. So even though you're in California, and you feel autumn in your bones, in your skin (dry), you see it in the bright thin light, you feel the crisp, cool air, just remember that it doesn't count for jack unless there's a lot of leafy east coast bling.

Miss Manners hopes you will keep all this in mind when you talk about the weather and the...plant life, in mixed company, in California.

(photo of redwood trees from Brooklyn Token's photostream on flickr)

A Very Special Pill

From ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ by Jonathan Haidt:

Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side-effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it?

The pill exists. It is meditation.

This excerpt from Haidt's interesting book is fascinating. I love it because everything it says is true - medically documented even - and yet, practically speaking, it gives an entirely wrong impression. Why? Because the actual experience of taking a pill - which is how most Americans want to deal with life's problems - takes no effort at all, and no time. No time and no effort: this is almost a secret motto for Americans. This is our approach to vacations, to preparing and eating food, and to dealing with challenges, physical and mental - we like it fast and easy, as in, swallowing a hopefully not too large or bad-tasting pill. Don't get me wrong, pills can of course solve some problems! But Haidt seems to be suggesting here, if you want all these benefits, all you need to do is meditate, which takes no effort at all, and no time, just like taking a pill! Which is just bonkers, as the English say.

Of course this isn't what he is actually saying. He is saying that the benefits of the mythical pill match the benefits of meditation. He's saying, if you want these benefits, meditate and you will have them, that simple. But it's not that simple, at all, or not for most of us. There is a major difference practically speaking between taking a pill and meditating, that is, meditating generally involves a lot of time, and more than anything, persistent effort. Meditation means engaging our energy and interest, it means working with our own mind and body through direct experience, cultivating patience...it means taking time - to be corny for a moment - for peace. Meditation is a slow (and often very enjoyable) manual reorientation of oneself.

Whereas when we take a pill, in a way, we aren't doing anything at all.

CrackBerry

"Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling?"

"...our brains are designed to more easily be stimulated than satisfied."

The articles below are fascinating. They attempt to show the effects of technology - basically the internet - on our ability to read books and generally sustain attention; on our brains, especially pleasure centers; and on quality of life from a Buddhist perspective.

I got completely 'unwired' on a three month retreat this year, and life was just unbelievably long during that time. Each day seemed endlessly spacious - even though we had a full program. But what we were doing was simple, and slow. We meditated, did rituals, cooked food, looked at the sky, talked about the Dhamma, handwashed our clothes, and all nestled in the beautiful rocky mountains near Peñarroya.

It didn't seem like we were on a retreat. It seemed like we had moved in together to a situation where we lived communally and did a lot of practice. We were 22 women doing almost everything together.

I returned to San Francisco in mid-August, and during that time I've been slowly building up and reinforcing my addiction to stimulation. The last few days I've been watching several episodes of 30Rock on my laptop at night before I go to bed. I can feel my experience of life becoming more and more superficial, a bit number, a bit more of a kind of electric buzz with no content always humming on the surface. As the first quote above notes, I look up actors on imdb. I interact with people a lot through email. It is a completely different life, often unpleasantly composed only of streams of bits and bytes, but somehow very hard to resist...

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
[the atlantic]

Seeking
How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous.
[slate]

Awareness in our Technological World
...a look at the double-edged sword of our hyper-connected world.
[wildmind]

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

[NY Times]

Why Multitasking Will Make You a Scatterbrain

[Psychology Today]

See also my other post:

Addiction to Computers and Other Screens

(image by andy goldsworthy)

Craving According to David Sedaris

This quote from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim neatly summarizes the Buddha's Four Noble Truths:

...That's the problem with wishes, they ensnare you. In Fairy Tales they're nothing but trouble, magnifying the greed and vanity of the person for whom they are granted. One's best bet - and the moral to all those stories - is to be unselfish and make your wish for the benefit of others, trusting that their happiness will make you happy as well. It's a nice idea but would definitely take some getting used to.

[photo by me, hollywood, 2008]

Time Really Long

I've been trying to find a way to write about being on retreat for four months. It's not easy, or not possible, to explain, because the conditions there are such as I have never experienced before, and may not experience agan. I remember thinking, every day feels like a year. Part of the reason was how low-tech we lived.

I had no computer, no phone, no washing machine, no shower (at least in the sense that we usually mean that word.) I had to write talks with my hand holding a pen, which was probably a lot harder (for me) than it sounds. When it was cold, some heat came from a wood burning stoves or the furnace; we used composting toilets outside; daily burning of toilet paper. We made (well I didn't make them, but anyway we did not buy) yogurt and bread and sprouts. I was not able to go into a store or even see a store or things for sale for the three long months. I forgot about money, and keys, which I am usually carrying every day of my life.

Another aspect of the greatly simplified surroundings were the people. We were the same people, the same faces, the same clothes, day in and day out. I got to where I could just see half a forearm in my periperal vision and be able to tell who it was. Often I didn't have to see people at all. I would think of someone, then a moment later they would come into the room.

These conditions make one's mental processes simpler, more raw, and at the same time, kinder; they make time really long. They eliminate the friction that lives on a surface we are so accustomed to we really don't have the slightest idea that it is there. Much if not most of the time on the retreat I would not have described my mental state as 'calm'. The difference between there and here is more like the difference between a primary color and a secondary color. The secondary color isn't wrong, it's just not as basic, not as elemental.

I felt so much love, so much completely natural and spontaneous love. I felt that I was with my family in the most positive sense of that word. Of course, you don't really know what's going to go down once you're somewhere else. For example, from almost the moment the retreat was over, I was assailed by craving.

More later.

[photo by and of me, taken at akashavana, june 2009]

My Spanish Donkey Friend

Here I am outside La Torre, a 1,000 year old building in Valderrobres, Spain, where a few of us stayed after a 3-month retreat. The top floor of La Torre is a modern apartment.

I became terribly fond of this donkey in the two or three days we stayed there. We would walk by in the scorching heat and give him some grass or a few chunks of bread. On the last day we gave him two apples, about which he was very enthusiastic. I was very sad to leave him. He seemed lonely in his little pen.

More about the retreat later - perhaps.

More info
Photo by Dhivajri, taken in Valderrobres, Spain, July 2009
What is an Order Member?
Akashavana
Donkey: wikipedia

Going on Retreat, Procrastination...and a Massage website

Last night instead of doing needful things, I created a "Thai Massage by Suvanna" website, which will hopefully be useful when I return:

http://sites.google.com/site/thaimassagesf


I'll be on retreat until mid-July, and back in town mid-August.

See also:
Cultivating the Inner Retreat

Be well my friends. xo Suvarnaprabha

Some Quotations

The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualization that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful
Allan Wallace

As soon as you get any success you disappear up your own arse.
Thom Yorke (Radiohead)

...human emotions are the sparks that fly when 'truth' and 'fiction' collide.
Hirokazu Korieda (film maker)

For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it’s stultifyingly boring.
Judith Warner, New York Times opinion

Leisure is a form of stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality. Only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still cannot hear. Leisure is the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion in the real.
Josef Pieper, "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" (1947)

...Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. John Keats, 1817

Thus to identify with a self is to be susceptible to the arising of hatred. If we think in terms of karma and rebirth, we have been prone to hatred for as long as we have been embodied human beings...Since our first human birth we have reacted with hatred to all those situations that threatened our continued existence. When a human being experiences this sense of being threatened, there is more at stake than territory or physical safety. We are afraid for our personal identity, our very sense of self, the sense of "I" that enables a human being to interact the form relationships...
Sangharakshita, Living with Kindness

The enlightenment experience is therefore not only one of illumination and freedom but also one of infinite and inexhaustible love, a love which has for object all sentient beings, and which manifests as uninterrupted activity in pursuit of their temporal and spiritual welfare.
Sangharakshita, The Three Jewels

Patience is bitter but the fruit is sweet.
Arabic saying

If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you what to do, then YOU DESERVE IT.
Frank Zappa

Some Visuals

A black and white acrylic painting I did in a design class during my "Crow Period." It is derived from a photograph taken at City College.








I hope you recognize this structure. It is black, white and yellow acrylic; view is from Marin toward San Francisco.

Separated (poem)

Separated from love,
I access only
Other people’s words.
Mine are locked up

Perhaps in imagined agency
As if to open, and to say
The word “opening”
Were the same.

Deepest longing
Cannot be uttered, but
Only painted
As a window shutting
Out rain.

Like others divided
I stare mutely skyward,
The wish sticks to my tongue.
Water slides over my eyes.

I would like to say
But won’t, that
It’s unbearable,
This centrifuge,
This disease.

Yet I remain.
Seeking what is essentially
Gravel.
Painting it.
Raining.

Rising and falling
From this canopy
Of fictions,

Landing
Safe and unsound
On the ground.

song 2 (my animals) (poem)

we are each a zoo
perimeter of cages
full of moving,
fur

these days my animals,
edgy,
restless,
realize where they are

rubbing
against the absence
of bars
they resound

still looks
like the same
zoo charging
the same prices,
the same morning,
still looks like
visitors, are staying
on the pathways mostly
trying to reach through,
leaving behind more or less
trash

the morning
looks the same

but here
surrounded by
blue night

without audience
my animals
sing

The Kind of Shenanigans We Get Up To

Yesterday we had our send-off for our two friends Rachel and Sharon who are heading to Spain soon for their 3 month ordination retreat. (I will be on the retreat also.)

We sang some silly songs which have now been immortalized on youtube:

Across the Universe for Sharon

Hallelujah for Rachel

ode to jacques cousteau (poem)

it's hard to imagine

how we survived the dark days

before the internet.

but we had jacques cousteau

who brought us, just children,

with him on his adventures

who spoke english to us

though it clearly tortured his throat.

jacques cousteau was my pied piper.

i am sinking with him

down & down & down

into a dark world

where we will shine our lights.

Song (poem)

I marked the moments of being lost
and being lost was a longing
a song

left on my lips traces of rind
as one hears train sounds
but no train

I marked the moments of the song
by being lost
my compass

as if, before entering a lake
I took the clothes off my clothes
marked the moments on trees

I followed until I couldn’t see
not even rabbits,

not even loss,

there was no trail,
only longing and a song

I marked the moments

being lost was my
song

Me and other people: Love

There is a path from me to you that I am constantly looking for, so I try to keep clear & still as water does with the moon. -Rumi.

My relationship of the last 7 years ended in October, and my life has changed drastically since then. Not how it looks or operates on the outside so much, but how it feels, how it looks, how it tastes. The main area that has changed is my experience of myself in relation to other people.

Of course I felt sad at the ending of the relationship. But I think in general, I feel more loving & open. More vulnerable even. It feels really good. I feel a lot of love for people. I wish it were more; I wish it were all the time. (Being loving all the time toward everyone including myself is the essence of my interest in Buddhist practice.)

Recently when my friend Mike left for a long trip we said "I love you" to each other many times. It was very sweet. I've become very attached to Padmatara (who I live with) as my advisor and person to hash things out with and emerge with greater clarity. Also very recently I resolved to let go of resentment from the distant past with a few different people in the sangha. I would experience a disharmony with someone, ask myself where it was coming from, realize it was coming from me, and resolve to stop creating it (around things that are presently irrelevent). Letting go in this way also feels great.

But with men, it's different now...I experience them as men. Before they were people first, and they were men somewhere in the second or third degree of observation. Now through the emergence of some dark and dusky neediness, they're men and in an entirely non-willed kind of way, I somehow want their love. The only requirement is that the man is single. I do not even have to be attracted to him, though the dynamic will be very subtle if I'm not. So this is the new and most salient expression of thirst, in the Buddhist sense, in my life.

A further irony is that along with this thirst is the conviction - yes I think I can call it a conviction - that the nature of sexual relationships (in fact probably any relationship, but much more for the romantic ones), at least for me, is dukkha, suffering. This means that even if I feel very happy, this way of relating to men, to whatever degree it is happening gives a corresponding sense that I am embarking upon a path of pain. So there's this slight movement inside me toward the thing I harbor the deepest suspicion of. I can do nothing about all the ironies really but watch and be amused.

For years I've sometimes thought about taking the anagarika precept (more info about what that is in the notes below.) But then there's the question, if I did, would it be simply because I have such ultimately incompetent taste in men and figure, what is the point of carrying on? (Not that all my partners haven’t been lovely, just that I could not be happy with them for long.) Obviously I will need to resolve this question to some degree, regardless of whether or not I decide to become an anagarika.

I am determined not to keep doing the same thing, falling into a situation not knowing what it is, really, or who it is with, guided by unknown samskaric trash. A book I read recently (The Brain that Changes Itself) said research has revealed that 'falling in love' and cocaine effect the brain in very similar ways. Also in certain ways the ending of love is neurally indistinguishable from drug withdrawal. So I know all this, and I think I'm going to be sensible about it all but then the hormones or whatever they are (endorphins?) kick in, and I wake up at some point having dug another hole for myself that I'm trying to claw my way out of. The conviction not to do this again seems stronger now than it has in the past. But one never knows. In the face of some things I am quite helpless.

All of which might sound bleak. I am enjoying these realizations. I know that pain cannot be avoided, and that much of the time our attempts to avoid pain simply cause more of it. I am just noticing what's going on, which is to a large degree about my own tangled-upness in regards to sexual relationships, and noticing my subtle (I hope) neediness around some men.

I am noticing how much notions of self-view and self-worth are tied up with sexual relationships. I am noticing that these aren't things I'm deciding to do. Seems more like they are being done on me. They are just happening, and I am trying to be aware and loving as they twirl around and inside me.

More info

What is an anagarika? (another post on this blog)
Breaking Up - 3 Acts (also on this blog, from October 2008)
Image is Hockney's "A Bigger Splash" from Mark Harden's Artchive.

What is an anagarika? (in the FWBO)

From Wikipedia:

Unlike some Buddhist sangha, the FWBO does not propagate a monastic lineage. Sangharakshita devised a non-monastic ordination system, whilst also allowing the undertaking of the "anagarika" precept which enjoins celibacy.


From Marriage in the Western Buddhist Order by Subhuti:

We...have a ceremony for those who wish to undertake life-long celibacy as Anagarikas, in recognition of the prime importance of celibacy for spiritual life. Anyone who is seriously pursuing the path will be working to overcome craving and attachment, and perhaps our strongest and most abiding longing is the sexual. Indeed, the Buddha says:

I know of no other single form, sound, scent, savour, and touch by which a man’s heart is so enslaved as it is by the form, voice, scent, savour, and touch of a woman. A man’s heart is obsessed by these things. And so is a woman’s heart enslaved and obsessed by those of a man. (Condensed from Anguttara Nikaya, 1, i.) [Please replace "men" and "woman" with "object of your desire."]

Sangharakshita teaches that brahmacharya or chastity is an aspect of going for Refuge, and all who are committed to the Three Jewels should be developing brahmacharya to some extent, whether or not they are sexually active, by diligently deepening their sources of fulfillment and cultivating contentment. Anagarikas have reached the point of being able to maintain physical chastity quite happily, and are working to further diminish their reliance on the senses as means of emotional satisfaction. Whilst Anagarikas have no superior status in the Order and movement, we have marked out the importance of celibacy by instituting a ceremony for those who are able to take on the precept of brahmacharya, and aspire to do so for the remainder of their lives.


From Sexual Evolution by Dhammadinna:

...He [Sangharakshita] also expressed pleasure that more people were taking the Anagarika precept, which enjoins chastity. He never urges anyone to take this precept and Order members need not be celibate. 'One is only asked to keep one’s sex life at the periphery, or towards the periphery. But if one can be celibate in a positive and healthy way, I’m sure that will enable one - other factors being equal - to develop spiritually more rapidly.'

During the late 1980s and early ′90s more men and women Order members took the Anagarika precept. Becoming an Anagarika does not constitute a higher ordination but it involves the precept of abstention from sexual activity (abrahmacarya). Some Anagarikas have maintained this precept while others have ceased to be chaste and reverted to their previous status. It seems that being celibate is not easy in the West, as the culture that surrounds us is so concerned with sex.

Sangharakshita maintains, however, that the extent to which we are caught up in sexual activity and craving is a matter of degree. In this sense we are all celibate or non-celibate to some extent..."


Notes

Image is Thiebaud's "Girl with Ice Cream Cone" from Mark Harden's Artchive.

FWBO stands for Fickle World Boxing Organization. Also, Friends of the Western Buddhist Order at fwbo.org.

Does Facebook Help?

Introduction

More and more invitations to join political causes (Groups) appear in my Facebook inbox. I wonder: Does joining a political cause on Facebook do anything? And if not, why do we join them?

I decided to look into three of the Groups friends have joined and invited me to join, and see if any change might happen because of them.

Three Groups

Let's collect 500,000 signatures to support the Palestinians in Gaza currently has under 500,000 members. This site promises "In the upcoming days, we will provide more information about how YOU can make a real difference."So I don't have a lot to go on here but it seems a valid site with officers from all over the (mostly Arab) world, for example, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Indonesia.

I read the most recently posted 3 bulletin board posts: The first one was a guy called John pointing out what pussies the people are who care about this war, and then people calling him names. One response began, "Actually you worthless little piece of shit..."

The second one was a very long post by an Israeli claiming many things including that the Palestinians joining Hamas is what caused the war.

The third one is called I AM WILLING TO GO AND FIGHT FOR MY MUSLIM BROTHER IN GAZA....ARE YOU READY// and is an interesting conversation between Muslims all over the world for and against violence.

Support the Monks' protest in Burma currently has around 400,000 members. They have a "Five Things you can do to help free Burma" list, a way to donate, sign up, get the latest articles, post links and photos, look at a BBC video, and get more information.

On the discussion board, the usual cocktail of intelligent questions, answers, discussion, obnoxious name-calling, and random unrelated or tangentially related posts.

Wow, My Middle Name is Hussein, also! currently has under 200 members. I imagine memberships in this group has dropped off considerably since Obama won. On the other hand you could change your Facebook middle name without joining the group. I don't know of a way to tell whether this group was useful...perhaps it is the reason Obama got elected...

Conclusion (not really)

An obvious benefit of inviting friends to Groups and joining them, even if there is no other, is educational. Assuming that knowing about things, even if you're doing nothing about them, is better than not knowing.

But my main conclusion is that Facebook Groups are helpful as long as you do more than just click "Join." You have to go back to the Group and see what's what, and do something. They hopefully send out calls to action to their members, at least some of whom act on them. Otherwise, being a member of a Group is a hollow gesture (unless just a Group's size somehow affects things, which is unlikely.)

Is clicking "Join" the new "I care, but not so much"?

If you have any thoughts on this, please comment on this post.

More on This Subject

2008 Facebook Statistics on American Politics (InsideFacebook.com, January 2009)

Party Crashing: How the Facebook Generation Does Politics(Alternet.org, June 2008)

Will Facebook Change Politics? (PickledPolitics.com, July 2007)

'Open-Source Politics' Taps Facebook for Myanmar Protests (Wired Magazine, June 2007)

Mushrooms and Meditation

Not an obvious connection you might say. But being on a nine day meditation retreat in a rainy redwood and madrone forest with some sunny weather for venturing outside, these became a few of my favorite things.

I think I paid more attention and saw more things--on the ground anyway--because I was looking for mushrooms. It was really fun. There weren't many animals about but saw a couple of salamanders and a banana slug.

I really wanted to cook and eat some of the mushrooms--some of which look like baked bread, waffles, or just the kind of mushroom you buy in the grocery store--but of course I refrained. Because like most Americans the first thing I think of when I think of wild mushrooms is dead people. The story we hear is of Sam or Sally from Mexico or Vietnam who ate something that seemed identical to an edible mushroom where they came from - and died.

So I'm not going to go around popping every attractive mushroom into my mouth, even I think it may be a chanterelle. I did order a guide, listed below, and want to go out with people who know. My friend Trebor said Germans go out in droves looking for mushrooms, it's practically a national past time.

References

My mushroom slideshow

I just ordered: All That the Rain Promises, and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms

Edible California Mushrooms from mykoweb.com

Mycological Society of San Francisco

Addiction to Computers and Other Screens

A quotation from The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge:

"To say that a cultural medium, such as television, radio, or the internet, alters the balance of senses does not prove it is harmful. Much of the harm from television and other electronic media, such as music videos and computer games, comes from their effect on attention. Children and teenagers who sit in front of fighting games are engaged in massed practice and are incrementally rewarded. Video games, like Internet porm, meet all the conditions for plastic brain map changes. A team at the Hammersmith Hospital in London designed a typical video game in which a tank commander shoots the enemy and dodges enemy fire. The experiment showed that dopamine--the reward neurotransmitter, also triggered by addictive drugs--is released in the brain during these games. People who are addicted to computer games show all the signs of other addictions: cravings when they stop, neglect of other activities, euphoria when on the computer, and a tendency to deny or minimize their actual involvement.

"Television, music videos, and video games, all of which use television techniques, unfold at a much faster pace than real life, and they are getting faster, which causes people to develop an increased appetite for high-speed transitions in those media. It is the form of the television medium--cuts, edits, zoons, pans, and sudden noises--that alters the brain, by activating what Pavlov called the "orienting response," which occurs whenever we sense a sudden change in the world around us, especially a sudden movement. We instinctively interrupt whatever we are doing to turn, pay attention, and get our bearings. The orientation response evolved, no doubt, because our forebears were both predators and prey and needed to react to situations that could be dangerous or could provide sudden opportunities for such things as food or sex, or simply to novel situations. The response is physiological: the heart rate decreases for four to six seconds. Television triggers this response at a far more rapid rate than we experience it in life, which is why we can't keep our eyes off the TV screen, even in the middle of an intimate conversation, and why people watch TV a lot longer than they intend. Because typical music videos, action sequences, and commercials trigger orientation responses at a rate of one per second, watching them puts us into continuous orienting response with no recovery. No wonder people report feeling drained from watching TV. Yet we acquire a taste for it and find slower changes boring. The cost is that such activities as reading, complex conversation, and listening to lectures become more difficult."

See Also

Crackberry [on this blog]

How the City Hurts Your Brain [Boston.com]

Boob Smashers

Talking about getting older, of course, is not so interesting, especially for those who don't feel they are doing it. In our American culture, in our time, old people and their knowledge aren't exactly irresistible. Old people tend to be slow, conservative, unproductive, grumpy, even. At any rate they are likely to circuit in reference to memories rather than foment around plans. In this culture we seem to "feel old" at all ages, and it never feels good.

The result is that some things about getting older can come as a complete shock. Or maybe some specific things about aging are just different for everyone. Or, more likely, we do hear specifics about getting older, but for whatever reason it just doesn't sink in, it's too abstract, it seems impossible. As a random example, there is the subject of boobs and what they are eventually subjected to. This is something I am certain I didn't get any warning about.

One thing that you may know is that after forty you're supposed to get a mammogram every year or two. What you won't realize is that when someone says (but no one ever actually says this for some reason), "I'm getting a mammogram today," what they really mean is, "Today I will stand beside a mean Russian technician who will squash each of my breasts between two shelves."

This poem from someone's blog further illustrates this point:

She stepped upon a pedal,
I could not believe my eyes!
A plastic plate came slamming down,
My hooters in a vise!...

Excruciating pain I felt,
Within it’s viselike grip.
A prisoner in this vicious thing,
My poor defenseless tit!...

“There, that’s good,” I heard her say,
(The room was slowly swaying.)
“Now, let’s have a go at the other one.”
Have mercy, I was praying. (whole poem)

So that pretty much explains it. In my head, I know that breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women, and that thousands of years of medical wisdom have crystallized into this hooter-crushing yet benevolent wonder of modern science. Truly, it is a privilege to be subjected to it. I just wish I could appreciate it more.

I was going to write about getting older

I wrote a blog about being 45 and getting older in general, but it was sort of depressed, so I am instead posting this odd picture of me and my mom.

"I feel like a pig shat in my head."

This image is from the Mayo Clinic website. It's a microscopic creature that's related to spiders, the common dust mite, magnified several thousand times.

And what is the nature of human interaction with this creature? Well, each of us sheds hundreds of thousands of particles of dead skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year - and these creatures gain sustenance by eating it. Then, they do what all creatures do: shit occasionally, and die eventually.

So if you're allergic to dust like I am, you are actually allergic to the shit and dead bodies of dust mites, which we call "dust." We are surrounded by and permeated with forms of life too small for us to see.

I seem to be on a roll in terms of writing about health. This time it's because I accomplished the dreaded task the other night of sorting through my books, organizing them, and getting rid of 3 big boxes of them. But they were very dusty, and by the time I finished the job I had been feeling ill for some time. When I woke up, I suddenly heard in my pressurized head a voice from the movie Withnail and I, saying, "I feel like a pig shat in my head."

Strangely, feeling this way reminds me of my 7-week ordination retreat in 2001. The retreat was in an old monastery in Tuscany, Italy. I felt this way much of that time, but worse. It's not really the runny nosed type of thing that most people associate with allergies, but more like environmental illness. Thankfully it doesn't happen very often (7 years since last time), and it's not like I'm in a lot of pain or anything, just somewhat nonfunctional. But it does seem kind of crazy, because dust is pretty much everywhere, it's almost like being allergic to air...

References

• Withnail and I on Wikipedia
• Il Convento di Santa Croce in Batignano, Tuscany, where I was ordained.
• More ominous pictures

Happiness & Its Causes

Today through the generosity of its hosts, I attended part of the super swank, professional and impressive conference, Happiness & Its Causes. The sessions I attended were made up of several short talks and then a panel discussion with a moderator. These notes are a bit more sketchy than I thought they were, but hopefully they will be of some use.

In the first session, The Psychology of Happiness, Professor David Feldman talked about hope. Years of research have apparently identified the conditions for feeling hope:

• goals
• pathways (and alternate pathways when first choice or idea is blocked)
• agency, meaning energy and motivation

Dr. Feldman also said something like, Whenever people have a sense of what is important in life and feel that they are working toward this, hope thrives.

Neurosurgeon James Doty, who started the Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford. talked about compassion. He was interesting but there was too much to write down. He said that happiness without compassion is not happiness - it is just pleasure. He referred to "gamma synchrony," whatever that might be (but I really liked the phrase for some reason), and in general to the dramatic and permanent changes that can occur in the brain, called neural plasticity.

Scientists and researchers have lots of lists, especially perhaps when they've got PowerPoint and only about 15 minutes to present findings from decades of research. These lists, at least the ones at this conference, can serve us as reminders of what's important. There is a lot of crossover with what Buddhism says. For example, the conditions for hope listed above could correspond to nirvana, the Dharma, and viriya (energy or enthusiasm, of the 6 Perfections or paramitas.)

I was thinking of what my list would be, of things I would like to remember every day, things I am grateful to be reminded of. My precepts...in no particular order...

• not resisting
• being of service
• awareness of thoughts and the trajectory of thoughts
  
• orienting toward meaning/the goal
• slowing down/meditation
• kindly, engaged communication
• self/bodily care
• "When the environment and its inhabitants are enslaved by evil, turn unfavorable circumstances into the path of awakening."

This is a preliminary list but at some point I would like to concretize as it were a list of personal precepts.

Beginning the second morning session, How to Make Relationships Work, Wiveka Ramel spoke about relationships and depression. She named four factors strongly predictive of major depression:

1. Negative feedback seeking - seeking external views that match his or her own negative self view. Preferentially solicit, recall, and believe negative feedback.
2. Excessive reassurance seeking - about self worth, lovability.
3. Conflict avoidance - less assertiveness and many other behaviors in order to avoid conflict.
4. Blame maintenance - partner or friend has fixed, negative view of depressed person.
   

Some antidotes to depression (I didn't get them all down but here are a few.)

• Distancing self (though whatever methods) from rigidly held conceptions.
• Inducing spaciousness
• Not believing thoughts and interpretations as truth.

She also mentioned a new kind of therapy called Acceptance and Committment Therapy (ACT) whose goal is to induce psychological flexibility.

Eponymous Margaret Cullen talked about Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. She used the phrase 'gentle or even affectionate mindfulness,' which I appreciated very much.

Dan Bryant talked about expectations and said, 'our rules for other people are universally unenforceable." He recommended these books and authors:

• Forgive for Good by Frederic Luskin
• If the Buddha Dated by Charlotte Kasl (I do find the title of this book a bit silly!)
• Ellen Langer
• Carol Dweck
• Grateful Thinking by Robert Emmons
• James Pennebaker
• Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. Also see AuthenticHappiness.org
• Forgiveness by Robin Casarjian

References

• Here is an article about the conference in the New York Times, which sniffed out and amplified all that qualified as California cheese-ball, referring to San Francisco as "dopamine-laden" (you need to have/create an NYT account to read it.)
• Another NYT article about happiness (and t.v. watching.)

Patience

Here's a link to a talk I gave about Patience.
Here are my notes:

Clarification of a few terms and names: Sangharakshita, Mahayana Buddhism and the Bodhisattva.

Sangharakshita – founder of Western Buddhist Order, into which I was ordained in 2001. Our Order is neither monastic nor lay, ordination based on commitment rather than lifestyle. The Order was started in 1968 in London and emphasizes creativity/imagination, friendship, study, meditation and right livelihood.

Mahayana Buddhism developed after the historical Buddha. It is more colorful and explicitly other-regarding, emphasizing compassion especially in the form of something called the Bodhisattva Ideal.

I got this off a book cover actually but it explains the spirit of the bodhisattva well:

“In Mahayana Buddhism the bodhisattva’s life exemplifies the resolution of the conflict between our own desires and the needs of others…The development of inner calm and positivity that leads to true wisdom is balanced by a genuine and active concern for others which flowers into great compassion.”

Wisdom is willingness to acknowledge how things are, how things work, how we work. Part of this is interacting with forms of life who don’t want to acknowledge how things are and also being one of those forms of life to some degree.

This is how things are: there is suffering. Most of us cannot accept life on its own terms. We prefer our terms. We stubbornly cling to our terms, even if on some level we know they are unrealistic. The Bodhisattva is willing to acknowledge things and beings and ourselves as we are.

This requires an enormous patience, or in Sanskrit, kshanti, which is usually translated as patience. Can also be translated as forbearance, endurance, tolerance.

Sangharakshita says:

"It is difficult to translate kshanti by any one English word because it means a number of things. It means patience: patience with people, patience when things don't go your way. It means tolerance: allowing other people to have their own thoughts, their own ideas, their own beliefs, even their own prejudices. It means love and kindliness. And it also means openness, willingness to take things in, and, especially, receptivity to higher spiritual truths."

So kshanti means not only patience, but a constellation of other positive, life-affirming mental states that we can cultivate: tolerance, love, kindliness, openness and receptivity. It DOES NOT mean gritting your teeth, harming yourself, silence, bottled up rage, or being a passive victim. When we are patient but we are taking care of ourselves. Sometimes we take care of ourselves by being patient. I think we can all agree that if not all the time, most of the time impatience causes suffering, or at best, it does not help.

Kshanti is one of what are known as the 6 or the 10 perfections in Buddhism depending on which list you’ve got. The 6 perfections of Mahayana Buddhism are 3 sets of paired qualities: generosity and morality, patience and energy, meditation and wisdom. The various pairs balance each other. So patience is balanced with energy or vigor, and energy is balanced with patience. In the end they merge. We might notice that we have a tendency toward one more often than the other. I’m more of an energy type, enthusiastic, which for many of us probably means easily frustrated and prone to anger. It’s important for us to be aware of our tendencies and work with our habits. This is probably one of the main things we’re doing in Buddhist practice, bringing our habits into consciousness.

It’s easy to think of patience as being something very passive but this shows that that is not what is meant by kshanti. Kshanti is an expression of wisdom infused with energy, with loving energy.

Sangharakshita: “Kshanti is a form of awareness, an awareness of suffering in which one does not react with anger. “

Awareness of suffering is like a prerequisite for patience. If we can see someone who annoys us as a suffering being, and acknowledge our responsibility in that dynamic – well in a way that’s all we need to do. So tuning into suffering is important. Not to say that a suffering person is not responsible for their actions, but it’s not about that really. If you can look without self reference at someone who is shouting at you, you will see their pain. It’s not about excusing them. It’s about awareness of suffering.

Patience features prominently in pre-Mahayana texts as well. The Dhammapada says: “Patience is the highest austerity.” At the time of the Buddha and today people practice all kinds of austerities, basically self-mutilation, starvation etc. in order to be purified and achieve wisdom.
But the Buddha said, don’t need to physically harm yourself. In other words you do not need to go out looking for trouble, trouble will find you. The world is full of opps for patience. “Patience is the highest austerity.” The Buddha was a genius.

Before we go more into what we mean by patience, how about we get some agreement on what is not patience? What are some examples?

I was thinking of diff between patience and impatience and thought of the Taoist saying, soft overcomes hard. This is used in martial arts. Or we could say that Soft wisdom overcomes hard wisdom. By hardness, resistance, being brittle, rigid, these are not wholesome states. I find that my response to stress is to create a sort of psychological wall around myself. Toughness. This is what I often notice and work with.

Need to keep the energy flowing between us and the world, even if we momentarily hate the world. We cannot completely separate ourselves from the world. We have to learn to live in it in a way that’s healthy for us and for the world.

Mahayana literature takes a rather uncompromising stance about anger. For example, I believe this is from Shantideva: “One moment of anger destroys all merit one has accumulated through practice.”

Are we meant to take this literally? Always important to see the spirit of a teaching rather than getting caught up in ideas we’ll probably just use to make ourselves feel bad about ourselves. The spirit is that as aspiring bodhisattvas we want to acknowledge our connectedness with other beings. Anger can cut us off from other beings.

Heard a talk once where the distinction was made between patience with animate vs inanimate objects. Some people are patient with people but get super pissed off at inanimate objects, like the toothpaste tube, things breaking down, or the lost keys. Some people have a lot of patience for animals or children, but none for adults. But here I think we’re pretty much talking about other people and about ourselves. We may want to start with the easy stuff – that way we can get some practice for when the more challenging things come around…

So I wanted to get into something a bit more practical here. I thought of 4 areas we can be mindful of that may help us cultivate patience.

I ended up with an acronym, which is RED with 2 D's. R.E.D.D.

RATIONALIZATION...of anger or other unskillful mental states. For example, righteous indignation. This is us telling ourselves that our anger is good. Justifying our feelings.
Why do we always need to tell ourselves we’re right, or that we’re wrong, that we’re good, or bad? Doing this just puts another veil between us and what’s happening. This is suffering.

So, we have anger, nothing wrong with anger. Anger is energy bursting forth.
It’s more to do with expression that I think we need to be really careful or at least mindful.
In working with anger, we need to not harm ourselves or other people. Very tricky. We don’t want to repress, and we don’t want to cause harm.

This is why awareness of thoughts and emotions is so important. Awareness especially when they’re strong. That’s the test. What do we do with strong emotions? Do we pin it on someone as blame?

This doesn’t mean we’re wrong if we’re angry. It doesn’t mean we’re right either. If means that as aspiring bodhisattvas, we are more interested in connecting and in understanding than in being right. Understanding ourselves, someone else, the situation we find ourselves in.

EXPECTATIONS
I read a fascinating book a few months ago called Deep Survival which studied why in certain extreme situations, some people die and some people live. Mostly psychological reasons.
One of the points it made was that there aren’t any accidents. Systems aren’t perfect – they are guaranteed to break down. The people who can cope with changes in plans and actively work with them are the ones who survive. I think this principle applies just as well to our daily lives.
For example, we can be killed by stress, much of which is self-induced.

One thing that isn’t an accident is sickness. Sickness is an intrinsic part of the human form. No one on earth has ever escaped it. Yet, our expectations are such that we expect not to get sick. We expect not to age. Expectations are mostly unconscious.

Pema Chodron had a story where she told her teacher that one of his students had relapsed and that she was really disappointed in him. He told her that her disappointment was a form of aggression, and that what he needed was kindness, not her judgments about him. So relapse is part of the system, should be pretty obvious, people go back on things we say we’re going to do all the time. Why be surprised?

Not being attached to results. Engaging. Doing what you can do, and letting it go.

DEFENSIVENESS
Soft spots around elaborate cloaking mechanisms. Vulnerability, fragility. Every once in a while we’ll get defensive about something. One lovely one for me are retreat and class evaluations. I really question myself reading people’s comments, some of which aren’t perfectly clear. It's very useful though. Whenever the subject of money comes up at our Board meetings, reactivity runs high…

When we encounter defensiveness in ourselves or in others, having patience. Some things we just can’t deal with at the moment. Sometimes we’re crazy. Being real, naked, undefended, happy, takes a long time. We are all at different stages in the process.

DOORMAT
This should be called passivity but it didn’t fit with me acronym. You might think, If I am just patient and don’t ask for anything, people will walk all over me. Yes, they will. Does this mean we let people walk all over us?

Think of the dharma as the pinnacle of sanity and health. Does that sound like being abused?
I hope I have made it clear that co-dependence and patience are what are called near enemies in Buddhism. In other words, you might mistake one for the other, but they are not the same at least because of the motivation behind them. Co-dependence is motivated by fear, insecurity, confusion, or craving. Patience is motivated by an understanding of how things are, and understanding of interconnectedness that is infused with love.

So these are areas we can be aware of. Rationalization, Expectations, Defensiveness, and Doormat/passivity. But these are all somewhat after the fact. More pro-actively we can resolve to bring patience into a situation or to a person before we even see them. Engagement with challenges. When we get into our car we can resolve to bring patience.

If you’re already patient, what areas should you be more assertive in?
What are the challenges in your life? How could you benefit the world, yourself, the situation with more patience?

Mahayana Buddhism says, think of people, think of enemies, people who bug you, as your teachers. I try to do this. I try to accept situations I don’t like, and see these situations as helpful. This is counter-intuitive in the extreme. Still I often do not want to accept or acknowledge reality.

I feel I must be at least somewhat nonpartisan in this kind of a position but just to say I noticed a lot of impatience in myself around the election. I was disturbed to notice intolerance in myself around the election. For example finding myself thinking with frustration that most American voters are such selfish idiots. But even people who were mostly on the same page as me…it was just very frustrating. My own inability to openly communicate and be receptive or at least curious about someone else’s experience.

One of the verses from Tibetan Buddhism,the 7-point mind training: "When the environment and its inhabitants are enslaved by evil, turn unfavorable circumstances into the path of awakening."

"When the environment and its inhabitants are enslaved by evil, turn unfavorable circumstances into the path of awakening."

Thinking of other people as our teachers. Finding out what they are teaching us. Pointing out our hard spots, and since they are rigid, it hurts to have someone push against them, but of course that’s exactly what we really want.

The way we heal ourselves and the world, by stopping the fight. One of my favorite lines by Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

There is a crack in everything – this is part of our system. This is what we can bring our love and understanding into more and more, every moment of every day.

Ending with a few beautiful sentences about patience by Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet (trans. Stephen Mitchell). He’s talking about being an artist. Of course we’re all artists in the sense that we create our lives:

Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring…comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

References

Here are 6 essays on Patience by Ratnagosha

Some other talks by me

DeepSurvival.com

The Tyranny of Mood

I think in the past I haven't quite been aware of the degree to which biology is in charge of my life. These days it sometimes seems almost as if I am a puppet being moved by the strings of biology. A recent example: I drank two beers on the evening of November 4. Even though I hardly ever drink, I did not feel especially tipsy. The morning of November 5, I was depressed. There wasn't a reason on earth to be depressed on November 5, 2008, in fact it qualified as one of the least depressing days in history. But there it was. Things seemed sad.

Further, lately I experience an enormous amount of stress unless I exercise every day. When I say "stress" you may think you know what I mean, but allow me to clarify further. I'm talking about something almost along the lines of panic, and if I really tune into it I realize it isn't really about anything. It's just in my body. I think it is at least in part due to fluctuating levels of estrogen. On the positive side, all this means I have much more energy, and that I am really motivated to get exercise. I meditate almost every day and sometimes much more than that, and of course this helps a great deal as well. Lately I find that more than that is required. For balance, stillness needs movement.

It's amazing how my mood, caused by something drunk or eaten, by activity my body did or did not do, makes the world change tone, and yet it's pretty much the same world. This is so important to be aware of. To paraphrase Anais Nin - I have read nothing of hers by the way, but think she said something like that we see the world how we are - I am trying to see the world as I am. Rather, to know in each moment that I am seeing the world as I am.

If I don't move my body much, which happens during my daily bonding sessions with my laptop, and eat a lot, the prospect of moving around much appears to be a big chore. A good thing to do, the right thing to do, but not something I actually want to do. Rather, it becomes something that Hercules should be doing. But once the movement barrier is broken, once my body's energy is available, exercising is very natural and feels good. Now, I can't imagine doing without it.

On a less personal note, here are some of the main factors that studies have identified as reducing stress:

* Meditation/mindfulness practice
* Exercise
* Social support
* Positive but realistic mental perspective
* Enjoying outlets for frustration (hobbies, expression of feelings)
* Rejuvenating/relaxing regularly.

Wonderful Stanford primate/stress scientist Robert Sapolsky is a proponent of exercise as a stress reducer. Interestingly, he has cited studies indicating that exercise only reduces stress if you enjoy it. This is probably true of the other stress reducers as well. So get some spaciousness in your life, relax, and enjoy! Take care of your body! Unfortunately it sounds like a commercial, but for some of us, this is an important thing to remember.

References

Stress Reduction at Work Mindfulness Courses. This is a business I co-own with my friend Bill Scheinman.

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky (on googlebooks)

The evocative image at the top of this posting is from periphery.co.uk.