Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (15 page)

Visualize Slowing Down

Sit comfortably on your meditation cushion or chair. Close your eyes and breathe in and out for a few minutes. After getting centered, bring a gentle awareness to one of the aspects of your life that has seemed a bit too harried. Perhaps it is your morning routine. Perhaps it is dinnertime. Or maybe it is the early part of your workday. Pick the part of your life that you would most like to slow down a notch, and visualize what this might look like. Sense what it feels like. Open your eyes and take out a notebook and pen. Write down both what you visualized and what it felt like. See if you can identify three minor changes in this aspect of your life that will bring you greater calmness. Write them down.

Radical Medicine

If you have difficulty slowing down or letting go of some of the things you tell yourself must be done each day, ask yourself this bracing question:
“What will happen with these matters when I am no longer alive?”
Let this question sink in. The truth is, all of the things that we rush around doing, that we imagine are so essential, will have to fend for themselves when we are gone. It is doubtful that the world will fall apart because we are not there to do them.

Learn the Art of
Wu-Wei

In Chinese Zen, there is a practice called
wu-wei
. Although it means

“not doing,” it does not mean doing nothing. It is about a certain kind of awareness, a certain attitude toward the doing. Often, when we do something, our mind is elsewhere. Brushing our teeth in the morning, we are thinking of the next thing we have to do, and the next thing, and maybe even the next thing after that. Brushing teeth in the spirit of
wu-wei
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brushing our teeth, instead of rushing through it just to get it done. It means doing it for its own sake, not for the sake of accomplishing the task. It is letting the doing happen on its own, as though we are doing nothing at all. The more we do things in the spirit of
wu-wei,
the more empowered we become to enjoy every moment of our lives. The ancient Chinese sage Chuang-tzu described the spirit of
wu-wei
in the now famous ox-cutting passage. The emperor Wen-hui was amazed at the skill and grace of his cook in carving an ox. The cook explained:

[Text not available in this electronic edition.]

“Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!”

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Where do you experience flow? How can you arrange to do more of those kinds of things?

Begin and End the Day Intentionally

The beginning and ending of the day are times when we are sensitive to external influences. At the start of the day, the mind is fresh and impressionable. What we think about at the beginning of the day sets a tone for all that follows. You can take advantage of this fact by allowing yourself a little time for meditation and inspirational reading. This can make a distinct difference in how your day unfolds. If you do not start the day with mindfulness, with a clear intention to cultivate joy and peace, just how will this happen? Right at the beginning of the day, consider how you will cultivate joy. As the Psalmist wrote, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Similarly, if we are to be peaceful and happy people, it is important that we get a good night’s rest. At the end of the day, we are more affected by things because we are tired and our mental and emotional resistance is at low ebb. So what we put into our minds in the period just before sleep is very important if we want to have a restful night. Again, a little meditation, quiet reading, or listening to peaceful music will help set up a good night’s rest more than a stimulating movie or a scary novel.

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Harry’s Dilemma

A client named Harry phoned one day. He’d been having difficulty sleeping and wanted to know what he could do about it. He had already tried some nonprescription sleep aids, and they did not help. I went through my standard list of things to help with sleep problems, making sure he was not napping during the day, consuming a lot of caffeine, watching television in bed, or lying in bed tossing and turning—all of which can contribute to sleep disorders. Harry had not been doing any of these things. Then I asked what he had been doing in the hours before bed. It turned out, there was a big push on at Harry’s work. He was going all out from seven in the morning till eleven at night, when he would fall asleep exhausted, only to wake up two hours later, unable to get back to sleep for the rest of the night. I told him the obvious: He needed to slow down for at least a few hours before he went to bed. He seemed reluctant. I explained: As long as you are doing the same thing, you cannot expect a different result.

Find Bells of Mindfulness

One very useful technology of change comes from Buddhist monastic tradition. Periodically through the day, a monk strikes a large, resonant bell or gong. At the sound of the bell, people in the monastery stop what they are doing or saying, come back to their breathing, and return to themselves. On a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh at a California university, we experienced an interesting variation on this. The university clock struck bells at fifteen-minute intervals throughout the day. We were instructed to take advantage of this by using the clock as a bell of mindfulness. We must have looked a sight to people on campus as we all suddenly came to a halt!

You do not, of course, need to make a spectacle of yourself to practice this way. Whenever you encounter a bell of mindfulness, you can unobtrusively return to yourself and your breath. You don’t need to act like you are playing freeze-tag. Practice intelligently. Don’t stop in the middle of crossing a busy street. If you are alone and it is safe to do so, you can close your eyes and give yourself a refreshing pause in your activity. Otherwise, you can practice this in such a way that you are the only one who knows what you are doing.

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Where do you find bells of mindfulness in everyday life? If you are alert and a little inventive, you can find bells of mindfulness everywhere. Thich Nhat Hanh recommends two in particular: red traffic lights and telephones. This is a fun way to practice, and it turns something that is otherwise stressful into a source of peace and calm. Whenever you come to a red light, see it as an opportunity to rest, to breathe in and out and practice a moment or two of meditation. Likewise, when the phone rings, let it ring for a little bit. Take the time to enjoy two or three slow breaths in and out, telling yourself, “in, out, in, out, calming, smiling.” Then slowly, without hurry, move toward the phone to answer it. Never pick it up before the third ring. If the answering machine comes on before you get there, so be it. This is not rude to the people who call. In fact, they will appreciate that you are answering the phone mindfully, ready to be calm and clear and understanding. THE EXPERIENCE (TOM)

I had been working with the practice of red traffic light meditation for some time. One day, I pulled up to a red light, and prepared with anticipation for a few moments of calm, conscious breathing. Before I could do so, however, the light changed to green. I actually felt disappointed. I smiled. I knew my practice had grown a little deeper.

The simple practice of converting red lights and ringing phones to bells of mindfulness takes a little getting used to. For a while, you may feel some of the old resentment come up at the red light, and some of the old feelings of anxiety at the phone call. “Why do I always get the red lights?” “Who is calling me? Is something wrong?” But changing this does not take a long time. By deconditioning yourself from those old reactions of annoyance, you have already made a substantial change. It is a way of reminding yourself that this is your life, that it is happening right now, that your peace and happiness in the present moment matter more than whatever future goal you imagine yourself to be rushing toward. You actually come to enjoy red lights and ringing phones.

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mindfulness everywhere. When your alarm clock goes off in the morning, don’t move right away. Take three breaths in and out. Remind yourself of your intention to make this a happy, peaceful, wonderful day.
This day is not disposable.
It will never come again. So start it off with deep breaths and clear intentions. Throughout the day, anything that slows you down (and might otherwise be experienced as an annoyance) can become an opportunity to practice mindful breathing: waiting for the tea kettle to boil or the microwave bell to ring; waiting for your computer to boot up; the sound of the buzzer for the laundry; the ring of your pager. Whenever you shift tasks during your daily work, consider that a bell of mindfulness, too. And instead of rushing to the next thing, breathe a few conscious breaths. The seconds this requires are well worth it. Get creative about this and find your own best way to integrate the bell of mindfulness practice into your own life and situation. Ask: “Where Am I?” “What Am I Doing?”

These are wonderful questions to pose to yourself from time to time throughout the day, in order to bring yourself back from the fog of worry and regret into the clarity and peace of the present moment. You can ask yourself these questions whenever you encounter one of your bells of mindfulness, or whenever you feel you have lost contact with the present moment. The answer should be simple and clear: “I am sitting here, breathing in, and breathing out, placing a stamp on this envelope . . . writing this check . . . talking to this person . . . driving my car.” Or better still, don’t answer at all: Just let the question pull you into the present moment.

Allocate Attention to Centering

For many of the things we do during the day, it is possible to operate on two levels simultaneously. In fact, we do this all the time. While we are driving to work, for example, we worry about what will happen that day. Doing our exercise, another part of our mind is off worrying about what we will do when we finish.

Cognitive psychology provides models to help us understand what happens when we operate on two or more levels. Imagine that you have 04 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:50 AM Page 91

We can use this quality of multiple attention in a helpful way. While you are driving, you can be interiorly working with a favorite mantra or gatha. Some of the best of these may be ones that you invent. How about, “Breathing in, I am here. Breathing out, I know I am driving my car.” Or if you have a more religious bent, you may be reciting a mantra like, “Driving in the presence of God.” In other words, you are using this capacity for divided attention in a new way—one more to your advantage. Why should some of your attention always be on things that worry you? You might as well use some of that attentional capacity for thoughts that are nourishing and healing.

Of course, driving is an important task, and we do not want you to be off in the clouds somewhere as you drive. But generally, if you do it correctly, you will be more calm and aware—not less. It is more dangerous to be distracted by all the worry and anxiety that normally has you in its grip than to be calming yourself in this way.

Some tasks do not permit attention on two levels. When you find yourself in heavy traffic, you may need to bring all of your attention to your driving. Likewise if you are reading, depending on the difficulty of the material, you may need to concentrate, bringing all of your attentional capacity to the text. If you are doing something potentially dangerous, like putting food into a hot oven, you need all of your attention on what you are doing. Sometimes the best way to practice is simply to be fully concentrated on the task at hand. But you may enjoy, when it is possible, having a background of mantras, gathas, or prayers going on with part of your mind as you are doing routine things. 04 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:50 AM Page 92

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