Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (3 page)

In Part IV, “Arriving Home,” we offer thoughts about what your continuing practice might be like beyond the formal weeks of the program, and about what a mindfulness-based spirituality might look like in our own cultural context.

A unique feature of this book is the sections in first person entitled

“The Experience.” In these sections we try to convey to the reader something of what it may be like to put the ideas in the book into practice based on our own experience. The gulf between understanding the concepts of this book and putting them into practice can seem wide at first. By sharing some of our experience, we hope readers will know that their experience is normal, and that their struggles with practice are normal ones. We hope these sections provide encouragement to continue the practice. For the essential thing is always just to continue. At the end of each chapter, you will find a section with an outline of the practices for that one-or two-week period.

How to Use This Book

How you can best use this book will depend on what kind of person you are. Some people will want to read straight through first and become familiar with the entire book before trying the exercises. If you want to do this, that is fine. But to get the most out of this book, we hope you will then come back and read it more slowly, following the suggestions for practice either according to the program, or at your own pace and in your own way. This is a book to work with. Allow time for the content to be absorbed and practiced. If you tend to be a little compulsive about following rules and programs, it might be best if you take a leisurely pace through the material without worrying too much about following the practices for each week exactly as they are outlined. Spend as much time on each section as feels right for you. Relax and enjoy the process.

On the other hand, if your good intentions about spiritual practice tend to evaporate—if you don’t follow through—it might be best to follow our suggestions programmatically, step-by-step and week by week. At the end of the ten weeks, you can always return to any areas that appeal to you or that you would like to strengthen. There is a lot of information in this book. We hope that you will make this book a kind of companion, a spiritual friend that you keep coming back to again and again, dipping into it frequently for inspira-00 BIEN pref.qxd 7/16/03 1:54 PM Page xix

Finding the Time

When I was so distressed I nearly dropped out of graduate school, my friend and classmate David Greenway asked me: “How much do you want to be a psychologist?” I didn’t like the question at first. But later on, I realized how apt it was. If I wanted to be a psychologist, I had to face the difficulties I was experiencing.

A similar question to ask yourself is: How much do you want to find the center within? How much do you want to find release from suffering and be the calm one in the storm? Would it be worth, say, the time you would give to a college course? Would it be worth a tithe of your time, just 10 percent? If you want this a lot, the time requirements of the program in this book are not onerous.

However, this is only one way to think about it. More important, we realize that the means must match the ends. You cannot achieve peace and joy by pushing yourself too hard into practices that are not themselves full of peace and joy. The key is to practice in a way that is delightful all along, so that the path and the ultimate destination are the same. If you do this, it will not be difficult to find the time. Language and Anonymity

Except for sections titled “The Experience,” the first person is used to refer to the first author (Tom Bien). The second author is referred to by name (Beverly Bien). We generally rotate use of “he” and “she” to refer to a nonspecific individual person. Sometimes we may use masculine pronouns in a religious context where this is traditional usage. There is no intention in this to ascribe male gender to the deity. Most of the case examples in this book, while based on our experiences in life and in therapy, are composites rather than being drawn from specific individuals. When a specific person is used, identifying characteristics are changed to preserve anonymity. 00 BIEN pref.qxd 7/16/03 1:54 PM Page xx

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The Key

If you want peace, peace is already there. If you want joy, love, harmony, understanding, wisdom, and happiness—these, too, are already present, right in the nature of things. You do not need to travel to Tibet or India. You do not need to find the perfect teacher or the perfect retreat. You do not have to do anything special whatsoever. All you need to do is open yourself gently to receive what already is, as the earth receives the rain, as a flower opens to the sun. Perhaps the most painful and damaging illusion of all is the notion that peace and happiness are to be found in the future. When we finish that degree or find the right job or the right relationship, then, we believe, we will be happy. And these may in fact be good things. But peace and happiness can only be now. If we can touch peace and happiness in this moment, future moments will also contain peace and happiness. If we cannot touch peace and happiness now, when will we?

Practically speaking, however, we are prone to lose our way. Both spiritual and psychological practice are a kind of medicine to help us find the means to recontact peace when we no longer seem to know how.

In Part I, we describe the nature of the problems we face in the modern world, and how mindfulness or holding to the center can help. Today many of us see life as a problem to be solved rather than an experience to be lived, looking everywhere but within, everywhere but at our own experiencing. We suffer from fragmentation, disconnection, 1

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negative emotions, and low self-esteem. We burden our primary relationships with impossible expectations, and live for the never-arriving future.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, centers us in our own lives, empowering us to find our own internal authority. Mindfulness is deeply connected also to the practice of no self, which we introduce in this section. Part I provides you with the essential background and understanding of mindfulness. It eases you in to the more formal practices beginning in Part II.

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Week One

—Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902)

Pushing the Stone Uphill

Judy flew home from the peaceful retreat center on the northern California coast. The day was cold and gray. Newark airport was busy as ever. Though she half expected it, the indifference and suspiciousness of the travelers and the airport workers shocked her. Reflexively, she smiled at one person as she had been doing all week on her retreat. He looked away quickly, as if to say, “What do you want?

Leave me alone.” Men touched their pockets to check for their wallets; women guarded their purses.

The airport atmosphere contrasted dramatically with the smiling, happy people at the retreat with the famous author. She felt well, whole, and calm just being there with him and all those friendly people.

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As she stepped into the dark emptiness of her house, everything she’d left behind engulfed her: the loneliness, the half-completed plans and projects, all the unfulfilled good intentions. Even her cat’s gaze induced guilt for leaving him. As cats sometimes do, he punished her for her absence by pointedly ignoring her. Six messages from work nagged at her, and her heart sank when she heard them. They were like a strong undertow pulling her down with great force. She reminded herself quickly that her next retreat was only two months away. For although this had been her fourth retreat this year, she always had the next one planned. Her friend Mark said it was
the
workshop, and though she did not recognize the name of the famous leader, she nodded knowingly when he mentioned it. Yes, of course she’d heard of her from the
Oprah
show.

Seekers like Judy deserve credit. They have taken a crucial step. They have paid attention to their sense that something is missing and are trying to do something about it. At least they are looking in places that actually contain help, instead of the more indulgent, destructive paths some follow. The difficulty is in connecting these insights to their lives.

Judy tried to bridge the gap between the mountaintop experience of her retreats and workshops with the valley experience of everyday life by staying one step ahead of herself—always having the next retreat or workshop planned before returning from the present one. Her real life was overwhelmingly complicated. It was easier to live with vague fantasies of self-improvement than to face the complexities. Someday she would get it all together. Someday she would have the right job, the right relationship, enough money, live in the right place, and have all the right thoughts and feelings. Someday she would know peace and wholeness. It all seemed to depend on finding the right workshop, getting the right prepackaged answers. Judy had been a retreat and workshop junkie for years. Her strategy of always having the next workshop planned succeeded just enough at staving off anxiety that she never saw its futility. She kept pushing that stone up the hill and ignoring that it always rolled back down. The retreats and the workshops that she attended were wonderful, and she found wisdom and supportive people at them. The problem was not with the retreats. The problem lay with something deeper, with the way Judy kept the focus off of herself and her own life, the way she kept looking outside herself for the answers. Judy could not resist the urge 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 5

Connect Where You Are

The essential thing people want to know from teachers and therapists comes down to this: How can I be happy? How can I find peace?

The essential answer is always the same: Begin where you are. If the 1970s were the “Me Decade,” and the 1980s were the decade of greed, today we look back on a century of growing self-preoccupation. Freud published his first major work,
The Interpretation of Dreams,
right at the birth of the twentieth century. And from that point on, we have been increasingly fascinated with ourselves. Yet at the same time, our anxiety and uncertainty have only increased. For all this fascination and preoccupation, we are more estranged than ever from ourselves and our world.

The reasons we have failed to find peace through all this astonishing effort are doubtless complex. But part of the answer is that we are looking in the wrong place. Part of the answer is that all of our searching leads nowhere if it is rooted in a fundamental distrust of ourselves and our nature. Psychology can help and spirituality can help. But as long as our searching is rooted in self-distrust, we will always be trying on someone else’s answer. Workshops and retreats and other tools can only be helpful if you use them to help you connect with
where you are
. There are many different complications, roles, and roadblocks in our lives that contribute to pushing the stone uphill. There are also many attitudes and beliefs that contribute to our incessant motion that leads us nowhere and in fact keeps us stuck in the same place. But before trying to understand the way out, we need to take a look at how we got into this mess in the first place.

Look at Life’s Curveballs

Sometimes life throws a major curveball at us. Times of major change, for good or ill, are obvious challenges to our capacity to remain centered. At such times, even the most spiritually advanced and psychologically whole among us will be thrown off. 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 6

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Among the negative changes, there are the obvious traumatic events, such as the death of a spouse, parent, child, or other loved one; the unexpected and undesired divorce; the major health problem. These are difficult passages, requiring time, patience, and a lot of support from others. We are thrown out of rhythm and balance. And indeed it would be strange and unnatural if death or major loss did not affect us deeply. For a time, life is empty and pointless. But as time passes, we resume our lives and go on. As we move through our grief, we begin to heal and gradually we are able to return to center. Eventually we integrate the loss and function again, though we remain changed by the experience. Less generally acknowledged is that positive changes, such as promotions, marriage, career changes, graduations, significant success, and the birth of children, are also difficult curveballs. While we may feel incredibly happy, the earth is shifting beneath our feet, and it can be difficult to stay centered and peaceful. And so even in the face of good fortune, we may lose our center. Life’s curveballs, while difficult, are nonetheless opportunities for learning and growth to take place. Life is a school and the universe is constantly sending us lessons. But we need a way to come back to the center so that we can look at the havoc that these events can wreak on our psychospiritual well-being, understand them, and continue on our path.

But perhaps even more important are the background tensions, the chronic conditions of modern life that make it difficult to stay centered during times of major change.

Open to Abundance

So why do we lose our way even when there are no major losses or changes? What knocks us off course and prevents us from holding onto that balanced, peaceful place: the center within?

In Buddhist cosmology there is a strange and peculiar realm called the land of hungry ghosts. The land of hungry ghosts overflows, as the Bible would put it, with milk and honey. It is a land of abundance. The beings that dwell there, however, are a little strange. They have huge, empty, distended bellies and tiny, pin-size openings for mouths. This is a picture, in other words, of a huge appetite, but an inability to satisfy it no matter how abundant the surrounding world. In fact, the hellish as-01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 7