Itineraries Summer 2008

Contents:

Mindfulness and Mindlessness by Ellen Langer

Inner Life and Inner Retirement by Wolfe Zucker

Extended Consciousness by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Living Mindfully Through All the Hours of Our Days by John G. Sullivan

Books of Interest: Two Books by Eckhart Tolle Reviewed by Barbara Kammerlohr

From the Guest Editor

My father, a pragmatist and a declared non-believer, loves his garden. He has loved his garden for many years. The youngest son in a family of mountaineers living at the foot of magnificent Mont-Blanc in the French Alps, he was taught early to bring in the hay and to harvest the potatoes. At 82, he no longer prepares the ground for planting or puts the garden to bed before the frost. He reluctantly delegates the task to one of his sons. But he observes from the living room window, commenting on the rain and the wind. Nothing could matter more to him than those rituals and those gestures.

Every spring since he was a boy, my father has toiled the soil. For food, not for poetry, mind you. And yet!

In his garden, the world was more beautiful and felt kinder to him. He could more easily accept a devastating late snowfall on early cherry blossoms than one of our rebellions or disobediences. Nature somehow he understood, even in her betrayal and slashing of hopes. My father did not meditate in a learned way; and if he prayed sometimes, he never told us. But the garden behind the house was his temple and his canvas. Summer after summer the earth and the gardener fed us on many levels. Now he misses attending to it, but perhaps what he really misses is himself. A happier man he was in his garden, his lighter heart in a place so precious, so cherished that he will again this spring watch his son repeat the rituals he taught him. He will approve my brother’s competent and gentle touch of the earth. And he will go to sleep reassured and content.

I am from a generation that did not have to plant crops and feed animals. I went to school. An introvert, I was able to indulge my desire to study, to contemplate, to meditate, to write, to listen to nature without the pressure of extracting a harvest. Yet, just like my father, I express my inner life and values through my work: Karma Yoga or service through work. Over time, I have settled on my own chosen and compatible practices. Looking at the beautiful Tree of Contemplative Practices from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, I see them listed: Yoga, stillness and centering prayer, journaling, deep listening, work and nature.

This Summer 2008 issue of Itineraries invites its readers to contemplate the Tree. In doing so you might recognize or discover your way to the conscious stillness and the “awakenings” within that we so much need as a balance in our lives.

For your summer reading, we offer an array of articles addressing our inner best in as many ways as we have contributors. Enjoy them and share them with others!

• Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning and On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself with Mindful Creativity, writes on Mindfulness and Mindlessness.
• With poignancy and humor, Wolfe Zucker writes of the hard-won wisdom gained by surrendering, in Inner Life, Inner Retirement.
• Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, author of From Age-ing to Sage-ing, the seminal book which inspired the conscious aging movement, shares his thoughts on Expanded Awareness and Extended Consciousness.
• Our resident philosopher, John G. Sullivan, offers his thoughts on Living Mindfully Through All the Hours of Our Days.
• And, finally, book page editor Barbara Kammerlohr immerses herself in of two Eckhart Tolle’s books: The Power of Now and The New Earth. Thousands followed Tolle and Oprah’s online course where the power of technology, the charisma of a television Diva, and the clarity of a convincing teacher combined to deliver the strong, simple, ancient message which is the theme of this issue: Be here now.

Happy conscious reading!

Françoise Ducroz

Mindfulness and Mindlessness by Ellen Langer

Ellen Langer, a full professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University, is the author of Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, 6 other academic books and over 200 research articles that explore her interest in the illusion of control, aging, decision-making, and mindfulness theory.. In her recently published book, On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity (2005), she brings together her two lives, artist and psychologist.

Before the airport in Provincetown, MA. was renovated, a large glass wall looked out over the runway. Waiting for a friend to arrive, I asked the person behind the counter when the flight from Boston was expected. She said it should be on time. There was no one else either in the airport or the surrounding area. I was less than two feet from her when the plane in full view arrived. Rather than lean over and just tell me that was it, she announced the arrival over the public address system filling the empty room with the information.

I frequently found myself frustrated. People did not seem to be acting in a way that I thought was sensible. When I moved from New York City to Cambridge I’d notice things like lines at the bank. In one line there would be two people and in others there would be five or more. Why didn’t they join the shorter line? Why were smart people not making use of the information available to them? Was I at times acting this way as well? Indeed I was. What I realized, though, was that in a different context our behavior made sense. Here it appeared mindless.

Many experimental investigations followed to assess how mindlessness comes about and how pervasive it may be. Mindlessness comes about in two ways. Either through repetition or on a single exposure to information. The first case is the more familiar. Most of us have had the experience, for example, of driving and then realizing, only because of the distance we have come, that we made part of the trip on “automatic pilot,” as we sometimes call mindless behavior. Another example of mindlessness through repetition is when we learn something by practicing it so that it becomes like “second nature” to us. We try to learn the new skill so well that we don’t have to think about it. The problem is that if we’ve been successful, it won’t occur to us to think about it even when it would be to our advantage to do so.

Context and Perspective versus Rule and Routine

We also become mindless when we hear or read something and accept it without questioning it. Most of what we know about the world or ourselves we have mindlessly learned in this way. An example I’m particularly fond of is of my own mindlessness that I wrote about in The Power of Mindful Learning. I was at a friend’s house for dinner and the table was set with the fork on the right side of the plate. I felt like some natural law had been violated. The fork “goes” on the left side! I knew this was ridiculous. Who cares where the fork is placed. Yet it felt wrong to me, in spite of the fact that I could generate many ways it was better for it to be placed on the right. I thought about how I had learned this. I didn’t memorize information about how to set a table. One day as a child, my mother simply said to me that the fork goes on the left. Forever after that is where I am destined to put it, no matter what circumstances might suggest doing otherwise. I became trapped without any awareness that the way I learned the information would stay in place in the future. Whether we become mindless over time or on initial exposure to information, we unwittingly lock ourselves into a single understanding of that information.

When we are mindless, we are trapped in rigid mindsets, oblivious to context or perspective. When we are mindful we are actively drawing novel distinctions, rather than relying on distinctions drawn in the past. This makes us sensitive to context and perspective. When we are mindless, our behavior is rule and routine governed. Essentially we freeze our understanding and become oblivious to subtle changes that would have led us to act differently, if only we were aware of them. In contrast, when mindful, our behavior may be guided rather than governed by rules and routines, but we are sensitive to the ways the situation changes.

For those of us who learned to drive many years ago, we were taught that if we needed to stop the car on a slippery surface, the safest way was to slowly, gently, pump the brake. Today most new cars have anti-lock brakes. To stop on a slippery surface, now the safest thing to do is to step on the brake firmly and hold it down. Most of us caught on ice will still gently pump the brakes. What was once safe is now dangerous. The context has changed but our behavior remains the same.

I learned that horses don’t eat meat. I was at an equestrian event and someone asked me to watch his horse while he went to get him a hot dog. I shared my fact with him. I learned the information in a context-free, absolute way and never thought to question when it might or might not be true. This is the way we learn most things. It is why we are frequently in error but rarely in doubt. He brought the hot dog back. The horse ate it.

Absolute versus Conditional Language

When information is given by an authority, appears relevant, or is presented in absolute language, it typically does not occur to us to question it. We accept it and become trapped in the mindset, oblivious to how it could be otherwise. Authorities are sometimes wrong or overstate their case, and what is irrelevant today may be relevant tomorrow. When do we want to close the future? Moreover, virtually all of the information we are given is given to us in absolute language. A child, for example, may be told, “A family consists of a mommy, a daddy and a child.” All is fine until daddy leaves home. Then, just like where the fork goes, it won’t feel right to the child when told, “We are still a family.” Instead of absolute language, if told that one understanding of a family is a mother, father, and a child, the problem would not arise if the circumstances change.

Language too often binds us to a single perspective with mindlessness as a result. As students of general semantics tell us, the map is not the territory. In one of our studies, Alison Piper and I introduced people to a novel object in either an absolute or conditional way. They were told that the object “is” or “could be” a dog’s chew toy. We then created a need for an eraser. The question we considered was who would think to use the object as an eraser? The answer was only those subjects who were told, “It could be a dog’s chew toy.” The name of something is only one way an object can be understood. If we learn about it as if “the map and the territory” are the same thing, creative uses of the information will not occur to us.

Much of the time we are mindless. Of course we are unaware when we are in that state of mind because we are “not there” to notice. To notice, we would have had to be mindful. Yet over thirty years of research reveals that mindlessness may be very costly to us. In these studies we have found that an increase in mindfulness results in an increase in competence, memory, health, positive affect, creativity, charisma, and reduced burnout, to name a few of the findings.

Much of the early research I conducted on the topic was with elderly populations. In many studies we found that simply providing opportunities for these adults to experience novelty resulted in dramatic improvements in well being. In fact we found that increasing mindfulness by providing choice or simply instructing people to think in novel ways about familiar things had the effect of increasing longevity.

One way to break out of our rigid mindsets is to meditate. Meditation, regardless of the particular form, can lead to a post-meditative mindfulness. Meditation can be found in all cultures. In Eastern meditation such as Zen Buddhism or Transcendental Meditation, typically the individual is to sit still and meditate for twenty minutes twice a day. If done successfully over time, the categories we mindlessly committed to start to break down. Many Westerners have trouble sitting still for ten minutes once a day, no less twenty minutes twice a day. The path to mindfulness that we have studied may be more congenial to those in the West. The two are by no means mutually exclusive. In our work we provoke mindfulness by active distinction-drawing. Noticing new things about the target, no matter how small or trivial the distinctions may be, reveals that it looks different from different perspectives. When we learn our facts in a conditional way, we are more likely to draw novel distinctions and thus stay attentive to context and perspective.

Most aspects of our culture currently lead us to try to reduce uncertainty: we learn so that we will know what things are. Instead, we should consider exploiting the power of uncertainty so that we can learn what things can become. Mindfulness that is characterized by novel distinction-drawing or meditation that results in post-meditative mindfulness will lead us in this direction.

Inner Life and Inner Retirement by Wolfe Zucker

Wolfe Zucker, MSW, is retired from psychiatric hospital work, most ambitions, and his shoe collection. He’s perfecting gardening, napping, and friendships. After time at the Findhorn Community, he’s now “focalizing” spirituality workshops for elders. He remains acutely aware that not everything can be learned from writing, reading, or thinking. He’s “nowing” along as best he can.

Even after reading Eckhart Tolle, when it comes to surrendering, I am more of a bandit than a Buddha. My editor, who is also my wife, tosses back my first draft and says: “Go deeper. Describe the inner life. Describe freedom. Describe surrender.

Talk from the place of awakening… You can still be funny”. She adds happily.

Inner life is joy, it’s not funny. I stay there for a few moments at a time, and I’m too happy to joke or observe humans. I experience “foiblelessness,” though I see you the same.

Over the years, I have been in a state of “heavenly elopement” a few times. Actually, each time I visited the Findhorn Community in Scotland.

Happiness is when I am nowhere physically, but present where I am standing.

After studying with a teacher in Florida, I now know how to get there quicker and without traveling. Yet, I left the teacher. I wasn’t staying in the soul experience. And when I faded out, I was blamed. Not healthy by my standards.

Teachers are wonderful. They hold out the promise and expectation of fulfillment. But other people’s promises are like sending a package in the Mexican mail—it doesn’t arrive or it arrives with pieces missing. I now face the fact that I need to spend my whole life teaching myself.

I know it’s up to me.

Here’s what I found worked to enter a place of inner “retirement.”

I accept that I create my own life. I accept tjat all I can change is myself. I accept that my inner place is peaceful. I obtain those few moments by telling myself, “I am now in the place of my inner/higher self.” I experience a “click”, a few deep breaths, and a real connection to “oneness” and breathing and experiencing and a floating in a place where my mind isn’t working.

Then, plop, gone.

So I start over.

Click, float, think, plop.

The rewards from being in my higher world, however short, stay in my life and memory. That’s the good part. Those moments are more precious than all my time living; they remain. The times at Findhorn where I woke up glowed, waiting to meet people each day with a feeling of awe. What would happen today? What would I learn or teach or experience? I felt sure, complete, and present.

Wisdom, I believe is not “wiseness” but an unconditional state of non-attachment. In my best learning, I surrender a great deal of control. I find that when I go through a crisis, psychologically and/or spiritually, my mental fingernails, which held on to “beliefs,” slip off. I am actually tranquil and happier. I am in inner life.

I teach a senior’s class in ultimate values. Sometimes, after we’ve all spoken and meditated, we have slipped into the inner life. How do I know? We sit around smiling at each other at the end of class…and nobody leaves.

My task is identifying this state to the class. Once experienced and replicated, group function changes from “how-to” to “blissful being” in each other’s presence.

For me, the big clicks/shifts I’ve experienced in the last few months have happened because I gave up the lifelong beliefs that ruled me.

Let me give you some examples:

• My lifetime fear is abandonment. But Recently, I “got” that I am sufficient. I see myself living in that altered state of “satisfaction,” and I am fine. I don’t need anyone. I appreciate my wife, and I like being with her. I’m not going to suffer if I’m not with her. It would just be a different experience. The clinging ugliness dropped away.
• I experience disappointment with everything. So I am completely disappointed before I start something. In my place of higher awareness I am self-sufficient and nothing in the outside is that powerful to take all hope away (which recalling past disappointments did for me). Something shifted and I knew that all my life was exactly as it had to be so far. Asking to change it was stupid. Going over my pain in therapy was repetitive complaining. I don’t feel that big emotional wham anymore when people don’t meet my past’s unrealistic expectations.
• I am afraid of aloneness. Yet, I moved from Findhorn and rapidly created a whole new community. I did the work of getting out of the house and calling people. That is the reality — not my childhood. I saw now as now. Somehow I didn’t find the past and my stories so interesting.
• Another big magical change: I love dogs. The rescue dogs of my childhood were memories of love, which I blindly pursued a little bit like an addiction. (I was rabid pro-dog and had to protect the underdog). My condo association said no dogs. For months I planned going to an association meeting determined to change their position. Then my teacher said, “Grow up,” and I decided I should. I skipped the meeting. I let the dog issue go.

What helps me slip into the inner world? I realize that all I have is the now. I accept that I allowed my now to be shoved around by my past.

I decided, no more. The inner world is better. There I don’t need needs.

Now my mind asks, “What are you going to do with yourself?”

My goal is living in that inner place I enjoyed so much at Findhorn: gentle awareness and lit-up anticipation.

My life is now practicing living in the present. I jerk myself back with a reminder. I tell my “I” that my “soul” is in charge. We wrestle, I win. Am I beaming, glowing, and completely healthy?

No. But I am retiring into the light. It’s my goal for the second half of my life. And I mean going all the way.

Come walk with me.

Barbara Dondero, a former nun, is a life long seeker of quiet, spiritual and artistic expression who uses art to teach others how to access — and trust — their inner wisdom. For over 30 years Barbara has taught art to youngsters of all ages and, in the 1990’s, began to work with persons with dementia at the Alzheimer Resource Center of Connecticut. She helped pioneer an approach to drawing, based on the work of Dr. Lucia Cappachione, which focuses on using the non-dominant hand.
“Here is what you do,” Barbara who is left-handed writes: “First. the conscious mind writes a question or problem with the dominant hand in its habitual linear mode. After a pause in quiet meditation, an answer will emerge through the non dominant hand bringing forth intuitive and deep responses to the situation. This tool can be easily integrated with any journaling techniques.”

Extended Consciousness by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

When my daughter, Shel, was 8 years old, she asked me, “Abba, when you’re asleep, you can wake up, right? When you are awake, can you wake up even more?”

Awakening is what made the Buddha become the Buddha — the word Buddha meaning: “the awakened one.” Prince Siddhartha became the Enlightened One. Every spiritual
tradition has addressed this issue and in my own writing I’ve often pointed to the opportunities for extended awareness that are one dividend of our extended lifespan. I often said during my seminars, “If we don’t have extended consciousness to match our lifespan, we are dying longer instead of living longer.”

Here are several helpful activities to practice in expanding your consciousness.

• Learn a new language or a new skill, if possible, not only with your mind, but also with your body. If you learn a new language, for instance, learn to write in that language and in that script. If you learn a new skill, practice it for about 40 days until you find that your body has integrated it into its habit pattern. That will result in more of the synapses of the brain being connected and accessed and a consequent extension of consciousness.
• Exercise your imagination. When you read something stimulating in a book or magazine or see something on the tube, set the source of your information aside and — relaxing and closing your eyes — imagine what happened before, what is likely to happen afterwards. Picture the setting and characters in your mind’s eye so vividly so that you almost feel it. The more you are able to do this, the larger your awareness will have expanded.
• Create an inventory of the pleasurable experiences you have had that enhanced your sense of self-satisfaction. Order them from the mildest to the strongest. In your mind, construct a rosary that you can tell at will so that whenever you wish to change your attitude and mood you can consult that album of peak experiences. This will refresh your mind and your body as it works a subtle physiological change, increasing your T-cells (your immune-related cells) and augmenting the vigor with which you face even your diminishments.
• Study the contemplative teachings of world wisdom traditions. Many a time you have had moments of inspiration and ecstasy that, alas, disappeared from your memory. While they are difficult to access, often because you don’t have good concepts for them, studying one form of inner teachings — as can be found in the Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Sufism, the Vedanta and Buddhism — will give you a grid to better recall those experiences. Then, using your imagination, paint on the inner canvas of thought and feeling a scene that captures that ecstatic moment, that revelation, that theophany. Then, make for yourself a marker, a motto, or a gate which allows you to re-enter that experience at will.
• Before you go to sleep, recall some of these ecstatic moments and fall asleep as you hug them, expecting to have good dreams. If you remember your dreams upon waking, record them in your journal.
• Mentor and tell oral history to the people in your family or among your friends who would be interested in some of your reminiscences. If they are younger and have a different map of reality than you, then communicating with them is bound to expand your mind in their direction. Consider how the young ones can handle things of complexity like the Rubik’s cube and the esoteric parts of computer use with ease. Communicating with them will also help you expand in that direction.
• Find a piece of music you are fond of and then, when no one else is in the room, as you play it, dance to it in free-form. Visualize yourself, on the inside, as a great ballet dancer so even it you cannot fully execute the movements that you imagine, your imagination and what you can do will provide you with a way of expanding your consciousness — not only in your head and your heart, but also in your thighs and toes, so that they too will become awakened.
• When you enter the December period of your life, it pays to recall loved ones who have passed on in the most vivid way you can. This will open entrance for you into the regions you are destined to inhabit after you drop your body.

These activities will be more delightful if you do them with a trusted friend in spiritual intimacy. Designate a day or a weekend for the two of you to pamper your souls. I don’t want to call this a “retreat” or a “spiritual practice” because these words tend to tighten us up as if we had to produce something rather than nourish our spirit. Such days will be a matrix for the expansion of awareness.

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Throughout most of history, elders occupied honored roles in society as sages and seers, leaders and judges, guardians of the traditions, and instructors of the young. They were revered as gurus, shamans, wise old men and women who helped guide the social order and who initiated spiritual seekers into the mysteries of inner space. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, with its emphasis on technological knowledge that often was beyond their ken, elders lost their esteemed place in society and fell into the disempowered state that we now ascribe to a “normal” old age. Today, as the Age Wave crests all about us and we confront existential questions about the purpose of our extended longevity, we are searching for new myths and models to ennoble the experience of old age.

The model I’m proposing envisions the elder as an agent of evolution, attracted as much by the future of humanity’s expanded brain-mind potential as by the wisdom of the past. With an increased life span and the psycho-technologies to expand the mind’s frontiers, the spiritual elder heralds the next phase of human and global development.

— From Age-ing to Sage-ing.

Living Mindfully Through All the Hours of Our Days by John G. Sullivan

Once upon a time, in a time that is never and always, a young prince in India learned of a pearl of great price – a pearl that would bring all good things. He wandered far and wide over the world — through kingdoms and cities, over mountains and across seas. And, though many had heard tales of such a jewel, no one could say where it could be found. After many years seeking, the prince returned home, exhausted and disappointed. Before entering the palace of his father and mother, he stopped in the courtyard to wash away the dust of his journeying. As he gazed into the mirror-like water, he caught sight of the pearl. The pearl he sought shone forth from this forehead.

Was the pearl there all along? Did the seeking serve to make it manifest? Was it only evident after the striving ceased and the prince returned to himself, to his place, to elemental realities such as the water in the crystal-clear pool?

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.1

The story I have told has many variants. All lead back to this: Where is the mystery to be found? In us. In the ordinary. In what lies before us and around us. In the here and in the now. Present moment, wonderful moment. There is paradox here as well. As one Zen saying has it, “No one will find it by seeking yet only the seekers will find it.”

Perhaps our progress lies in going from noun to adjective to adverb. Are we seeking mindfulness (a noun)? Are we seeking a quality such as mindful living (where “mindful” is now an adjective)? Or are we seeking a way of living where we focus as much on how we act as on what we do? In other words, are we seeking to live mindfully (an adverb)? I believe that the humble adverb points the way.

//

Living Mindfully in the Morning of our Life2

Our principal guide to living mindfully will be the gentle Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He is affectionately called by the many who have learned from him “Thây” (pronounced “tie” and meaning “teacher” in Vietnamese). During the Vietnamese War, he stood for peace, and thus both sides came to suspect and oppose him. At the war’s end, he was forced to go into exile in France. There he set up a monastic community called Plum Village. He took as his work to care for the children of war. For his engaged peace work, Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. In October of 2008, on what he would call his Continuation Day (rather than Birthday), he will be 82. He is one of the truly great-souled figures among us.3

Because Thây loves to work with children, his teaching bears the mark of a great simplicity. How might we start, as beginners? Start with breathing. Start with smiling.

Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I am aware I am breathing out.
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.

Simple mantras. Simple practices. Conscious breathing is entry point. With conscious breathing, mind and body come together much as, in the Buddhist tradition, a person brings palms together before making a bow. As one Plum Village song has it: “I have arrived. I am home. In the here and in the now.” To live mindfully is to bring awareness into the present moment.

Beginners at meditation might be taught in this way: When you are meditating, you may notice thinking arising. Say to yourself “thinking” and return to the breathing. When you notice sensations arising, name the sensation and return to the breathing. When you notice emotions such as irritation or anger or loneliness arising, name the emotion and return to the breathing. In this way, you are aware of stories and emotions arising. You note them. You do not identify with them. The thoughts and emotions are like geese flying over the still waters of your mind. As the Zen proverb puts it: “The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection. The water has no mind to receive their image.”4

This attentive mind that is not caught by the inner or outer weather is called in some traditions “the observing self” or “the witness mind.” We might also call it the “listening mind.” Cultivating this capacity to observe with discernment but not judgment, to observe with compassion, to listen with loving kindness is a part of mindfulness training. Our aim is to bring awareness to whatever is happening and also notice the stories we are generating and the emotions we are calling forth. The instructions are neither to act out the stories and emotions nor to repress the stories and emotions. Allow them to come and go without your becoming caught up in them. This form of meditative mind can be brought to whatever we do. We can walk mindfully, eat mindfully, converse mindfully, prepare supper mindfully, wash the clothes mindfully and on and on.

Will we remain steady? Most likely not. We may find ourselves seduced by personal and cultural stories that lead away from the here and the now. We may find ourselves buffeted by likes and dislikes. Attracted to this and repelled by that. Then it is so wonderful to realize that we have simply to begin again. Return to our bodies and our breathing. Return to the present moment, wonderful moment. Calming and smiling. As we return deliberately to beginner’s mind, we begin again each morning of each day.5 At the dawning of the day, we commit again to live mindfully for the sake of all beings, for what is before us and for the community that surrounds us. So it is in the morning of our life.

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Living Mindfully in the Daytime of our Life

AT MIDDAY, WE ARE HOUSEHOLDERS BUSY ABOUT MANY THINGS — concerned with work and family, sensitive to praise and blame, seeking to be admired, rewarded, striving to be “somebody” that has a place in the social world. Can we resolve conflicts mindfully? Meet deadlines mindfully? Engage in intimacy mindfully? Care for children mindfully?

In the morning of a day or life, we set an intention: to live mindfully. This may indeed remain our practice. Yet by midday, it is often life’s issues that prompt our practice. The bell of mindfulness rings in the very distractions that beset us. Some may be outward events. The car breaks down. The raise did not come. A sickness in the family. Not as we want it to be.

Yet how we choose to relate to what is before us makes all the difference. And this leads us to notice that there is always more than one way to relate to anything. In fact, there are usually multiple ways. Some are larger-minded ways and some are smaller-minded ways. When we have an observing self, we have a choice and we see that it is much more helpful to all when we choose large mind.6

Yes, the trigger often seems to come from without. Yet one person in the face of such disappointing news is devastated; another can proceed quite differently, with less unnecessary suffering and more possibility for all. So we notice that even when the prompting event arises outside us, we are the ones who interpret the event and tell stories we tell about it (and us). Even when the prompting event is outside us, we are the ones who generate the added emotional charge to it. So living mindfully is noticing what is happening and also noticing how I am labeling and telling stories about what is happening. Noticing what is happening and also noticing how I am producing emotions around what is happening.

• In the midst of our busyness, the advice at railroad crossings becomes a mindfulness bell, saying: Stop, Look, and Listen. Returning to our breathing aids us to stop. Looking with compassion at what is happening and how I am adding meaning and emotion to what is happening opens the heart. Listening to our deeper nature places surface disturbances in fuller context.
• In the midst of our busyness, we may find ourselves replaying the past or rehearsing the future. Then we may find the antidote in the poison, letting the upset lead the way to a gentle noticing. “There I go again. Doing that. Not very helpful. Yet quite human.” A compassionate smile and a return to the breathing.
• In the midst of our busyness, we may find ourselves justifying and defending ourselves, blaming others and complaining about situations. Again, find the antidote in the poison. Let the upset lead the way to a gentle noticing. Return, as the Sufis say, to the root of the root of yourself.7

Stop, Look, and Listen. Here from Thich Nhat Hanh is a song to remind us:

Happiness is here and now
I have dropped my worries
Nowhere to go, nothing to do
No longer in a hurry.
Happiness is here and now
I have dropped my worries
Somewhere to go, something to do
But I don’t need to hurry.8

//

Living Mindfully in the Evening of our Life

We are frightened of decline. Even in our final years, we turn away. So here is a story to give us courage.

Another prince from India, Gautama Siddhartha was destined to become the Buddha (literally, the one who awakened). His father had marked him for kingship and provided him with all pleasures. The one thing forbidden was to leave the vast precincts of the palace. One day, the young prince left the palace precincts and he noticed a sick person, an old person, a dead person and a monk. He learned that in the world there was not only health, but sickness, not only youth but age, not only life but death. How could he live his life, aware of both realities? The monk provided a glimpse of another way to be. Gautama, who had followed the path of self-fulfillment, would now experiment with the path of self-denial. Yet neither gave the answer. So he determined to meditate until he broke through to a middle way. And so he did. After his enlightenment, the Buddha taught the Five Remembrances:

• There is sickness and no way to escape this.
• There is aging and no way to escape this.
• There is death and no way to escape this.
• All we know and love will change and there is no way to escape this.
• All we do will persist and there is no way to escape this.9

We might say: Can we face sickness and aging and death mindfully? Can we be with change mindfully? Can we enact all our thinking and speaking and doing mindfully and peacefully and gratefully, realizing that all we do endures?

The grandfather of western philosophy, Socrates, once said that philosophy — in its root sense of love of wisdom (philo=love; sophia=wisdom) — is the art of dying. Dying to expectations, we return to life as it is – in its surface and depth manifestation. In a certain sense, we let life be as it is and realize that the mystery is much more vast than we can imagine. Call it the Great Unfolding of the Cosmos. Call it the will of the Holy One. Call it the Tao – the Way of the Universe. When we align to these deeper currents, we realize more fully the words of another song dear to Thây’s followers:

I have arrived. I am home.
In the here and in the now.
I have arrived. I am home.
In the here and in the now.
I am solid. I am free.
I am solid. I am free.
In the Ultimate I dwell.
In the Ultimate I dwell.

So in the end what we are seeking is always with us, before us everywhere we go. As close to us as a pearl embedded in our forehead. Present before us in the here and in the now, seen deeply and loved ever so tenderly. I see the Chinese poet Wu-men Hui-k’ai (1183-1260) revealing the pearl of great price when he writes:

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
THIS is the best season of your life.10

//

Notes

1 See T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958), p. 145.

2 I structure this essay using the metaphor of morning, daytime, and evening of a life. In writing, I was reminded of a song by Barry Gibb (1966) titled “In the Morning” and made famous by the great Nina Simone.

3 Thich Nhat Hanh has written more than one hundred books, sixty in English. I would suggest beginning with his Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1992) and his Being Peace (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1987).

4 From the Zenrin Kushu, quoted in Nancy Wilson Ross, The World of Zen (New York: Random House, 1960), p. 258.

5 The notion of returning to Beginner’s Mind is prized in Zen teaching. See Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (New York: Weatherhill, 1970).

6 For more on this way of speaking about practice, see my book Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality (Laurel, MD: Tai Sophia Press, 2004), especially chapters 1-4.

7 Here I am alluding to a poem of Rumi, titled “The Root of the Root of Yourself.” See Love is a Stranger, translations of Rumi by Kabir Helminski (Brattleboro, VT: Threshold Books, 1993), pp. 16-17.

8 Many of the chants used at Plum Village are published. See Plum Village Chanting and Recitation Book, compiled by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Monks and Nuns of Plum Village (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2000). However, this “Happiness is here and now” song and the “I have Arrived” song that I quote later are songs I learned either from seasoned practitioners of Thây’s teachings or at a retreat with Thây at Stonehill College in Easton Massachusetts, August 12-17, 2007.

9 The wording here is mine, based on Thich Nhat Hanh’s rendering in his more advanced treatise, Understanding Our Mind (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2006), p. 218 and following.

10 See The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, ed. by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 47.

Books of Interest: Two Books by Eckhart Tolle Reviewed by Barbara Kammerlohr

A New Earth:  Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
by Eckhart Tolle
Plume Books, 2005

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
by Eckhart Tolle
Namaste Publishing and New World Library, 1999

In this issue, we review two of Eckhart Tolle’s books, A New Earth and The Power of Now; both related to our theme of inner work and both veterans of The New York Times bestseller list. Tolle is a contemporary spiritual teacher whose recent web-based class with Oprah Winfrey made his name a household word and, therefore, a perfect choice for this issue’s book review section. Understanding inner work and how to do it becomes more important the further we move into our second journey. Tolle’s teachings are one example of how to proceed with this important task.

Aging consciously demands that we not only attend to our own inner impulses and goals, but that we make important decisions based on information we collect from that inner self. To say that this task demands clarity is an understatement. Yet, clarity can come from a purposeful inner listening to our own wisdom. What is our purpose in living now that society no longer defines it for us? What legacy do we want to leave for our children and grandchildren? Which of our skills and talents will we develop in order to continue contributing to the welfare of our society? Where do we want to live now that the decision is no longer determined by the morning commute? Answers do not come easy to those of us steeped in a tradition of denying old age and confused by society’s stereotypes of aging.

“How do I find answers to those questions?” is a question I frequently get from readers of this column and from my classes on conscious aging. The answer is awareness. Experienced meditators and veterans of other systems of inner exploration such as journaling, yoga, dream work, contemplation, prayer, tai chi, vision quests, etc. understand that answer immediately. Others, who might have avoided looking within themselves for answers and accepted the roles and expectations assigned by society, need an explanation of the terms: “inner work, consciousness, awareness”. Tolle’s teachings are one way to approach the process. There are many others, specifically those mentioned throughout this issue and illustrated by the Tree of Contemplative Practices, but Tolle seems to be emerging as one of the most widely accepted contemporary spiritual teachers. Tolle’s message is simple and ancient: ” Be here and now” which is both the practice of mindfulness and its greatest gift.

Tolle’s teachings are similar to the core insights of most of humanity’s spiritual traditions, especially mystical Christian thought and paths with roots in the East. All agree on the following two points:

• The need for a transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening. “The normal state of mind of most human beings contains a strong element of what we might call dysfunction or even madness…” “This collective manifestation of the insanity that lies at the heart of the human condition constitutes the greater part of human history—wars, slavery, torture and widespread violence inflicted for religions and ideological reasons.”
• The good news of the possibility of a radical transformation of the human condition. “In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering.” Liberation from the ego and awakening to and acceptance of what is here and now are other terms used to describe this transformation.

Tolle believes that simply being in the present moment is the key to awakening—ending personal suffering and transcending this ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite, not only for personal happiness, but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet. The following quotation hints at just how important he considers this focus on the now:

“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity…became possessed by thought. A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness, and the greatest miracle is the experiencing your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels and images.”

Tolle’s philosophy comes from his own unique experience of awakening. That experience convinced him that focusing on the present moment is the way to awaken.

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry—all forms of fear—are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence…”

“The most important relationship in your life is the relationship with the now—the present moment.”

Tolle’s instruction about how to achieve more focus on the now differs from the instruction given by most Buddhist and Yoga teachers who teach that meditation is the key to awakening, To Tolle, it is all about finding ways to stay centered in the now. Meditate, if you find it helpful, but “formal meditation is no substitute for bringing space consciousness into every day life” The key is to stay centered in the present moment—now. The past is gone. The future is yet to be. All we have is now. To Tolle, the most important factor in awakening is the ability to stay centered in the present. One technique for maintaining that focus is the awareness that all things pass: He said:

“Live in the awareness of the fleetingness of every situation. This too shall pass. When you are detached, you gain a higher vantage point from which to view events in your life instead of being trapped inside them. With detachment, another dimension comes into your life—inner space.”

A New Earth (2005) and The Power of Now (1999) both reflect the same philosophy of awakening. In A New Earth, however, the ideas seem to be more mature, more carefully explained. It also amplifies an idea only introduced in The Power of Now, Tolle’s belief that humanity is now ready for a major shift in consciousness, an awakening, “an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection.

Tolle, the author of these two and Stillness Speaks, was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At age 29, a powerful inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. Since 1995, he has lived in Vancouver, Canada. His website is www.eckharttolle.com.