4 posts tagged “meditation”
Only Breath
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religionor cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or upfrom the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or anyorigin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.— Rumi
[Rumi was born Jalaluddin Balkhi, September 30, 1207, in Balkh, Afghanistan which was part of the Persian empire back then. One of the most beloved and read mystical poets in America and all over the world.]
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"We live by the sheer generosity of a moment-by-moment miracle, and it is called the breath. Actually, we could say we live and die by this miracle. Every breath out is a practice of yielding the self to the universe; every breath in is a reincarnation event, the self reborn, fresh. Zen is the practice of agreeing to live with a mind and self as alive and fluid as breathing itself: accepting the offer of each moment, yielding to the passing of each moment.**
A practice is an undertaking with the self: I vow to sit once a day and do nothing, just sit and let things be completely. When we have a practice, we show up faithfully and do sincerely whatever we can to get ourselves out of the way. Hard as it often is at first, we just keep giving way to simply seeing and being what we are.**
Samuel Beckett's potent advice to someone who asked how to become a more accomplished writer was stark: "Try again. Fail better." We grow by being defeated decisively by ever-greater opponents. Resistance announces, "Here I am, your greatest opponent, always on duty: yourself!"**
In the world of time, complications always appear. Character likes slowness and desires us to wait.
Waiting is not provisional time, servant to another moment yet to come -- it is time in itself. It has its own elegance and disciplines. We wait so that we can catch up with ourselves, so that the rhythm can take shape before we start to dance; we wait because we can imagine far ahead of our ability to embody. A person arriving at a traditional Japanese monastery is turned away at first. It takes three days to get in. During that time, at best, we sit alone in a room, meditating; at worst, we stand in the snow. This is not a time to act, but to allow the world to act. During such days only inner events take place and so, invisibly, a transition occurs, as we move from outside the community to inside it. Afterwards, our actions and our appearance do not necessarily change, but everything has been shifted into the realm of the sacred.
When we are blocked, when circumstances are not ripe, we have to find some way of acknowledging that we are waiting, that we are pregnant and not merely asleep. Pausing like this is at the heart of meditation practice. When we attend closely to our lives, though it seems that nothing is happening, in the subterranean currents, reconciliation is setting off, invisible until the moment of its arrival. This waiting is not an effort at working a problem through, nor is it getting out of the way -- it is being in the way just a little, just enough to allow the universe to work the problem through.
There is a moment when Jesus shows his mastery of such timing. In the story, a crowd has caught a woman sleeping with a man not her husband. They are angry and want to stone her to death. It is not clear why they ask Jesus to speak; perhaps they want his blessing on the murder, perhaps there is some unconscious doubt in them. Jesus does intervene but not straightway -- preaching to an angry mob is a ticklish business. At first he distracts: he draws on the ground with a stick. We are not told what he draws; it is the action itself that is important. This is an inventive gesture: it offers no answer, yet keeps the question in suspension. The crowd becomes unsure whether this is his response or not: a gap opens in their certainty. Time passes, and the moment becomes less fixed. Then, when Jesus speaks, the reproof in his words is indirect and points to the quest for knowledge. "let him who is without sin cast the first stone." The men in the crowd are turned inwards and so walk away, each into his own destiny. Like other good solutions in desperate moments, this one came from nowhere, unpremeditated, given by grace.
In the inner life, readiness is one of the most important things. It is like a horse -- the whole body has to turn toward the stream before she will drink. Our animal selves have to be aligned with the change. We have to be faithful to our lives -- eat the cornflakes, write the memo, change the diapers, take the kids to the beach -- and faithful also to that one small thing, which is the know in the current of time, which brings awareness to our waiting. Our integrity is to observe these periods of waiting, the way in certain religious traditions the faithful observe fast days.
The forces of sleep and oblivion are so great that one conscious thing has to be in our lives every day: we need to touch the talisman that keeps us turned toward awareness. Meditation serves our integrity when it is with us daily. Then, when the horse lowers its head and begins to drink, everything will be changed. We can go through life ignoring the existence of that water, but once we have tasted it, we begin to orient our lives toward it.
Waiting in the dark allows us to rest until a solution comes out of the empty world. When we are impeded, we don't despair utterly, our waiting has a dynamic quality. Developing character can be odd work, since it often goes against our normal thoughts of advantage. A strange and successful example involves a friend who had a brilliant but capricious Zen teacher. Suddenly, after many years of training, he had had enough; furious with his teacher, he could no longer bear even to be in the same room with him. Some marriages are like this.
So the man went away and became a leader in his field, all the while working quietly on his spiritual life. Once a year he would go and, in the Asian fashion, bow to his old teacher. He was still angry and disappointed, and this action was the only thing he could find to do with the problem. Year after year he would bow and the teacher would be polite and the matter would rest there. This went on for seven years. Then the student came as before, but this time, inexplicably, his heart was light. It was as if a debt had been paid. It was like that for the teacher too. They laughed and embraced. Their relationship became simple.
This story has an elegant sparseness. Sometimes we can work at a relationship too hard or in the wrong way. Sometimes we have to be patient, to trust the universe to sort out what is beyond our power. But the student did not just leave the matter to fate. He saw that this issue was not an incidental thing, not just a flaw in the road, but the road itself. It contained the problem of the flaws we always find in our mentors, the problem of the self-centered rage in the student that wants acknowledgment more than it wants life or truth, the problem of where to stand in relation to tradition, the problem of love between the generations, and the problem of how wisdom gets passed down. He saw that whatever his teacher's role, he had a task too. In the eventuality, he was true to both sides of the situation. He didn't betray his anger, which had its own kind of integrity, and he didn't ignore the claim of the relationship, which was deep. He found an action, a spontaneous ritual that indicated to everyone involved -- the universe, the teacher, and the student himself -- that the issue was still in play, struggling to find its true form and to give off light.
This kind of ceremonial waiting both requires and develops strength of character. It is different from the pauses of earlier stages of the journey because it includes an awareness that holds even anger in a larger context of connection.
The Knot in the current of Time
-- From
The Light Inside the Dark
Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life
by John Tarrant
**
cross posted to Alive on All Channels
Lotus Therapy
The patient sat with his eyes closed, submerged in the rhythm of his own breathing, and after a while noticed that he was thinking about his troubled relationship with his father.
“I was able to be there, present for the pain,” he said, when the meditation session ended. “To just let it be what it was, without thinking it through.”
The therapist nodded.
“Acceptance is what it was,” he continued. “Just letting it be. Not trying to change anything.”
“That’s it,” the therapist said. “That’s it, and that’s big.”
This exercise in focused awareness and mental catch-and-release of emotions has become perhaps the most popular new psychotherapy technique of the past decade. Mindfulness meditation, as it is called, is rooted in the teachings of a fifth-century B.C. Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha. It is catching the attention of talk therapists of all stripes, including academic researchers, Freudian analysts in private practice and skeptics who see all the hallmarks of another fad.
For years, psychotherapists have worked to relieve suffering by reframing the content of patients’ thoughts, directly altering behavior or helping people gain insight into the subconscious sources of their despair and anxiety. The promise of mindfulness meditation is that it can help patients endure flash floods of emotion during the therapeutic process — and ultimately alter reactions to daily experience at a level that words cannot reach. “The interest in this has just taken off,” said Zindel Segal, a psychologist at the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where the above group therapy session was taped. “And I think a big part of it is that more and more therapists are practicing some form of contemplation themselves and want to bring that into therapy.”
At workshops and conferences across the country, students, counselors and psychologists in private practice throng lectures on mindfulness. The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness techniques, up from 3 in 2000, to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, lift despair and reduce hot flashes.
Some proponents say Buddha’s arrival in psychotherapy signals a broader opening in the culture at large — a way to access deeper healing, a hidden path revealed.
Yet so far, the evidence that mindfulness meditation helps relieve psychiatric symptoms is thin, and in some cases, it may make people worse, some studies suggest. Many researchers now worry that the enthusiasm for Buddhist practice will run so far ahead of the science that this promising psychological tool could turn into another fad.
“I’m very open to the possibility that this approach could be effective, and it certainly should be studied,” said Scott Lilienfeld, a psychology professor at Emory. “What concerns me is the hype, the talk about changing the world, this allure of the guru that the field of psychotherapy has a tendency to cultivate.”
Buddhist meditation came to psychotherapy from mainstream academic medicine. In the 1970s, a graduate student in molecular biology, Jon Kabat-Zinn, intrigued by Buddhist ideas, adapted a version of its meditative practice that could be easily learned and studied. It was by design a secular version, extracted like a gemstone from the many-layered foundation of Buddhist teaching, which has sprouted a wide variety of sects and spiritual practices and attracted 350 million adherents worldwide.
In transcendental meditation and other types of meditation, practitioners seek to transcend or “lose” themselves. The goal of mindfulness meditation was different, to foster an awareness of every sensation as it unfolds in the moment.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn taught the practice to people suffering from chronic pain at the University of Massachusetts medical school. In the 1980s he published a series of studies demonstrating that two-hour courses, given once a week for eight weeks, reduced chronic pain more effectively than treatment as usual.
Word spread, discreetly at first. “I think that back then, other researchers had to be very careful when they talked about this, because they didn’t want to be seen as New Age weirdos,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn, now a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, said in an interview. “So they didn’t call it mindfulness or meditation. “After a while, we put enough studies out there that people became more comfortable with it.”
One person who noticed early on was Marsha Linehan, a psychologist at the University of Washington who was trying to treat deeply troubled patients with histories of suicidal behavior. “Trying to treat these patients with some change-based behavior therapy just made them worse, not better,” Dr. Linehan said in an interview. “With the really hard stuff, you need something else, something that allows people to tolerate these very strong emotions.”
In the 1990s, Dr. Linehan published a series of studies finding that a therapy that incorporated Zen Buddhist mindfulness, “radical acceptance,” practiced by therapist and patient significantly cut the risk of hospitalization and suicide attempts in the high-risk patients.
Finally, in 2000, a group of researchers including Dr. Segal in Toronto, J. Mark G. Williams at the University of Wales and John D. Teasdale at the Medical Research Council in England published a study that found that eight weekly sessions of mindfulness halved the rate of relapse in people with three or more episodes of depression.
With Dr. Kabat-Zinn, they wrote a popular book, “The Mindful Way Through Depression.” Psychotherapists’ curiosity about mindfulness, once tentative, turned into “this feeding frenzy, of sorts, that we have going on now,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn said.
Mindfulness meditation is easy to describe. Sit in a comfortable position, eyes closed, preferably with the back upright and unsupported. Relax and take note of body sensations, sounds and moods. Notice them without judgment. Let the mind settle into the rhythm of breathing. If it wanders (and it will), gently redirect attention to the breath. Stay with it for at least 10 minutes.
After mastering control of attention, some therapists say, a person can turn, mentally, to face a threatening or troubling thought — about, say, a strained relationship with a parent — and learn simply to endure the anger or sadness and let it pass, without lapsing into rumination or trying to change the feeling, a move that often backfires.
One woman, a doctor who had been in therapy for years to manage bouts of disabling anxiety, recently began seeing Gaea Logan, a therapist in Austin, Tex., who incorporates mindfulness meditation into her practice. This patient had plenty to worry about, including a mentally ill child, a divorce and what she described as a “harsh internal voice,” Ms. Logan said.
After practicing mindfulness meditation, she continued to feel anxious at times but told Ms. Logan, “I can stop and observe my feelings and thoughts and have compassion for myself.”
Steven Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada at Reno, has developed a talk therapy called Acceptance Commitment Therapy, or ACT, based on a similar, Buddha-like effort to move beyond language to change fundamental psychological processes.
“It’s a shift from having our mental health defined by the content of our thoughts,” Dr. Hayes said, “to having it defined by our relationship to that content — and changing that relationship by sitting with, noticing and becoming disentangled from our definition of ourselves.”
For all these hopeful signs, the science behind mindfulness is in its infancy. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which researches health practices, last year published a comprehensive review of meditation studies, including T.M., Zen and mindfulness practice, for a wide variety of physical and mental problems. The study found that over all, the research was too sketchy to draw conclusions.
A recent review by Canadian researchers, focusing specifically on mindfulness meditation, concluded that it did “not have a reliable effect on depression and anxiety.”
Therapists who incorporate mindfulness practices do not agree when the meditation is most useful, either. Some say Buddhist meditation is most useful for patients with moderate emotional problems. Others, like Dr. Linehan, insist that patients in severe mental distress are the best candidates for mindfulness.
A case in point is mindfulness-based therapy to prevent a relapse into depression. The treatment significantly reduced the risk of relapse in people who have had three or more episodes of depression. But it may have had the opposite effect on people who had one or two previous episodes, two studies suggest.
The mindfulness treatment “may be contraindicated for this group of patients,” S. Helen Ma and Dr. Teasdale of the Medical Research Council concluded in a 2004 study of the therapy.
Since mindfulness meditation may have different effects on different mental struggles, the challenge for its proponents will be to specify where it is most effective — and soon, given how popular the practice is becoming.
The question, said Linda Barnes, an associate professor of family medicine and pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, is not whether mindfulness meditation will become a sophisticated therapeutic technique or lapse into self-help cliché.
“The answer to that question is yes to both,” Dr. Barnes said.
The real issue, most researchers agree, is whether the science will keep pace and help people distinguish the mindful variety from the mindless.
A variety of meditative practices have been studied by Western researchers for their effects on mental and physical health.
Tai Chi
An active exercise, sometimes called moving meditation, involving extremely slow, continuous movement and extreme concentration. The movements are to balance the vital energy of the body but have no religious significance.
Studies are mixed, some finding it can reduce blood pressure in patients, and others finding no effect. There is some evidence that it can help elderly people improve balance.
Transcendental Meditation
Meditators sit comfortably, eyes closed, and breathe naturally. They repeat and concentrate on the mantra, a word or sound chosen by the instructor to achieve state of deep, transcendent absorption. Practitioners “lose” themselves, untouched by day-to-day concerns. Studies suggest it can reduce blood pressure in some patients.
Mindfulness Meditation
Practitioners find a comfortable position, close the eyes and focus first on breathing, passively observing it. If a stray thought or emotion enters the mind, they allow it to pass and return attention to the breath. The aim is to achieve focused awareness on what is happening moment to moment.
Studies find that it can help manage chronic pain. The findings are mixed on substance abuse. Two trials suggest that it can cut the rate of relapse in people who have had three or more bouts of depression.
Yoga
Enhanced awareness through breathing techniques and specific postures. Schools vary widely, aiming to achieve total absorption in the present and a release from ordinary thoughts. Studies are mixed, but evidence shows it can reduce stress.
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Well, a couple of points. #1, the practices on which these techniques are based are ancient, so, like TCM and Ayurveda and other forms of Traditional medical practice, there is sufficient empirical evidence as to the workability of these forms.
That
they haven't been validated by Western scientific methods is beside the
point. I understand that western science demands certain protocols,
however, it goes back to a point made decades ago by Ken Wilber, which
is, that people without experience in meditation are not really
qualified to judge/teach it, because the experience of the meditator is
crucial to it's transmission to another.
Part of the trouble that psychotherapy has in the west is that it can't figure out what part of it is science and what part of it is art.
Still, we need all the help that we can get, in 'this modern world.' In many ways, we are loathe to admit that the ancients may have had an edge on modern people, as far as wisdom goes -- an an understanding of the cost of a troubled heart. Perhaps we also suffer a lack of a real community to help people to mend from the rigors of life.
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I am interested in what and how the eye sees and the ear hears. How can we use our physical senses to reach towards that which is invisible. Usually my imagination works by feeling and kinesthetic sensation rather than by visual or audio. But the idea that Fincher has of letting the hand move to still the mind and engage the other senses in a meditation of focus and intention is appealing. It's not so much about making something, in sort of an arts and crafts kind of way but an idea of "keeping the hand moving" that we find in Natalie Goldberg's writing exercises. (Writing Down the Bones)
DaAnna Stringer introduced the Friday Mothers' group to the idea of art and mandala as prayer and meditation this a.m. What an enchanting way both to learn a little bit about this subject and to be introduced to her a new person in our circle, and have a small sampling of her considerable talents and wisdom.
Sacred Geometry
Geometric shapes actually represent the
manifest stages of 'becoming'. To see and work with
unity and wholeness in geometry can help abolish our false notion of
separateness from nature and from each other. Through Sacred Geometry we can discover the inherent proportion, balance
and harmony that exists in any situation, all manifest reality and even the
circumstances of our day-to-day life.
It was Marcel Proust who said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes."
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