The Lotus Still Blooms (10 page)

THE SIMPLEST DEFINITION of mindfulness for me is awakened attention. It is to be awake, aware, and to live as a conscious being. It also refers to deep meditation practice. When we embody mindfulness, our views are Right View, our thoughts are Right Thought, our speech is Right Speech, our action is Right Action, our livelihood is Right Livelihood, our effort is Right Effort, our concentration is Right Concentration.

We must be mindful in order to live the Eight-fold Path, to live a noble life as a noble being. To be attentive to mindfulness is to be attentive to the Christ within us, the Buddha within us, the Holy Spirit within us.

Right Mindfulness puts to the test the question: Is this helpful? This question I resonated toward upon first hearing it. It is like a reality barometer.

Once at a workshop where my role was as a support person, rather than a leader, a very unpleasant situation erupted.

The participants were instructed to form a large circle around the room and to hold hands. One man refused to take the offered hand outstretched to him. When asked by the leader what was going on, the man’s bold response in front of about fifty people was that he would not touch the hand of a homosexual. There was an audible gasp in the room. I felt shivers run over me as the leader exclaimed, “What? What are you talking about?”

The man, Oskar, raised in an Eastern European country, puffed himself up to defend his prejudice. “Bill said he is a homosexual, and I do not know where his hand has been, what it has touched.” The tension in the room was palpable.

Bill quickly and consciously responded, “I’ll move.” And he did, but not because of the man’s prejudice, upside-down thinking or unskilled behavior. Bill did not take the event personally. I was very proud of Bill and the attitude he displayed. Oskar needed help to look at a long-held belief system that did not serve him. It was not helpful.

A break soon followed in which I found Oskar, a former counselee of mine, pacing like a caged animal outside the workshop room. I asked if he wanted to talk about what had just happened inside. He immediately began to defend his position, and I tried to steer the conversation in a more “helpful” direction. I asked him to tell me about his experiences with gay men, and he replied that he had never known a gay man before. His comment made me stifle my laughter at its absurdity. “How is that possible?” I asked.

Oskar replied, “There are no gay men in my country. Homosexuals are dirty, and I have always been taught that if I ever met one, I should have nothing to do with him.” I responded that, whether he knew it or not, he had met dozens if not hundreds of homosexual men in his life. They are not inherently dirty. And, yes, they do live in his country, most certainly closeted, but there nonetheless. Bill’s hand had not touched anything his own hand hadn’t touched. AIDS does not leap off the body of a homosexual, and Bill doesn’t have AIDS. I asked where his terribly misguided belief had arisen. He again defended his belief system, saying it was what he had always been taught.

I recalled the song from the musical
South Pacific
that includes the line “We have to be taught to hate, carefully, carefully taught.” Throughout his life Oskar had been carefully, carefully taught to hate gays. Knowing his response in advance, I asked him if he had ever examined his belief system and explored if his rigid attitudes were beneficial to his life. “No,” he said. “Why should I? They are true. They are what I have been taught.”

However, after a lengthy conversation, Oskar became willing to look at his programmed beliefs and to begin questioning their validity. I asked him to keep exploring the question “Is this helpful?” In a private appointment several days later Oskar began to admit that, no, this attitude was not helpful, kind, loving or who he wanted to be.

Mindfulness is awakened attention. When we are mindful we notice everything. A very humorous personal story occurred at the Pilates studio I frequent three or four times a week. This is not a sangha where one goes to meditate and discuss philosophy with no regard for the body. It is a small space with its whole emphasis and reason for being focused on the physical.

Before joining this studio I had gained a great deal of weight during a time of burning grief. From my normal size eight I had ballooned to a full twelve. So I began attending several times a week working with several personal trainers. All my sessions were private.

After a year of gaining strength and muscle tone, I was ready to shed the excess baggage. And almost no one noticed when I did! Ten pounds. Okay. Not much difference, except to me. Twenty pounds. Nary a comment.Thirty, forty, fifty pounds. No comments. One coach did notice, and she and I made a game of wondering when one of the other trainers would notice. It took eight months! This was eight months of seeing me at least three times a week. If I had gone from 400 pounds to 350 pounds, I could understand. But I looked much, much smaller.

Right Mindfulness is noticing what is going on right in front of our eyes and ears. We notice the presence, energy and essence of a loved one. How is she doing? How does she look—content, happy, sullen, blue? How does his voice sound? How is his speech—excited, flat, engaging, distant? When we are mindful, we not only notice, we care. A mindful person is an aware, caring, kind, loving person. They give conscious attention to others.

I admire best-selling author Wayne Dyer and his mindfulness. My church has brought him to Cleveland a number of times. After each of his speaking engagements, he will stand for hours warmly greeting every one of his supporters. I have long noticed how he gives each person his total, undivided attention. Very impressive! Most mindful!

We can all live mindfully as we make the effort to become more aware and awake to ourselves and others. Then it truly can be said that we are living a noble life. The first meditative practice I was taught was Mindfulness Meditation. When I look back at those thirty years, it is so amazing that I was given the teaching, since I didn’t know at the time its significance and life-altering effect on my future and continued relevance to this day.

My initiation into meditation came with being taught how to relax the body, sit in a stable position and bring the fullness of attention upon the breath. One monitors the breath, being fully aware of the rising and falling of the chest with each breath.

Begin breathing in mindfully.

Breathing out mindfully. Silently say,
I am aware of my breath.

Say silently with each inhalation and exhalation:
Breathing in. Breathing out.

Do this very slowly and most mindfully, bringing your total awareness into what you are doing, observing each breath as it rises and falls. Silently say,
Rising, falling,
as you go deeper and deeper into the meditation with each passing minute.

The Vietnamese Zen master teacher Thich Nhat Hanh uses the endearing term “mouth yoga” to help describe this mindfulness practice that brings one into the present moment.

It is most precious to consider this technique as yoga for our mouths and lungs.

Mindfulness meditation is just that—becoming fully mindful during one’s meditation. This technique is so simple and yet so powerful. Faithful, daily practice of it can change your life. I’ve done it for three decades and still simply love it and its effects on my mind, body and soul.

Practicing Mindfulness Meditation brings our whole life and the other seven aspects of the wheel into balance. It supports Right View. It clarifies our thinking into Right Thinking. Right Action follows a time of sitting meditation. It leads us into our correct career, Right Livelihood. It makes all of our efforts rewarding through Right Effort. Right Mindfulness goes hand in hand with Right Concentration and deepens all of our spiritual practices.

Don’t wait to begin to practice until you have the feeling it is time to do so. It may be too late. Sadly I have often witnessed this happen. Many people only turn to a spiritual practice and prayer when they are facing desperate circumstances. When the fifteen-year-old daughter is pregnant; when the husband is having affairs; when you are sick, tired, stressed, feeling empty inside; when you feel life has lost not only its luster but any meaning, and you feel overwhelmed. It may be too late.

I believe the greater truth is that it is
never
too late for any of us. But the longer we remain disconnected in consciousness from our spiritual core, the more overwhelming the circumstances of our lives seem to us. They push upon us from all directions, and we can feel helpless, hopeless, void of any resources.

But the good—no, great—news is that at any moment we can begin to live mindfully. We can wake up and take a life-affirming step in a positive direction. We can begin to utilize these extraordinary tools. These eight principles are unparalleled in the annals of spiritual philosophy and teaching.

If we are mindful, we will never wait. And when a challenge arises, we are already prepared. We are not adrift upon a sea of discontent and discord. We are anchored to our spiritual core.

There is an antidrug campaign slogan, “Parents, the antidrug.” I add to that, “Mindfulness, the antidrug.” If parents were truly mindful of their children’s spiritual well-being, activities, friends, school and teachers, transportation and just where they were, how could there be a drug problem?

To varying degrees I have been part of hundreds of families’ lives. With the possible exception of an emotionally disturbed child or a child carrying an enormous load of negative karma, spiritually centered, emotionally healthy, loving and compassionate parents raise spiritually whole and healthy children. What children need is love and attention—not more techno toys, computers and TV time. To have healthy children, they must be the priority. The family must be the priority.

Sara, a top stockbroker in Cleveland, is a neighbor of ours. She and her husband have five children, and they have miraculously managed to raise amazing kids. They are the type of children who love one another and seem to do everything they do in an exceptional fashion. I am in awe of this family.

The children attend parochial schools and have all the usual extracurricular activities: music lessons, basketball, aerobics, baseball, chess, etc., etc. But the number one priority for this family remains the family.

When Sara is asked by top clients to have an evening meeting, a dinner meeting, a Saturday meeting, she always graciously declines by saying, “I’m so sorry, but that’s my family time.”

Sara often gets an astonished inquiry from a client. “Well, how often does your family have dinner together, given your busy lifestyle with so many varying schedules?”

Her somewhat incredulous response, a favorite of mine, “Oh, we have dinner together every night.”

Parents are the antidrug, the anchors of light and love for their children.

Living mindfully is always beneficial to the entire household. When we are mindful we notice if our cat or dog is suffering, if our car needs attention, if the roof needs repair. Mindfulness is a very deep practice, but it is also a very practical practice.

Mindfulness allows us to look deeply into our conscious and subconscious minds. The Buddhist term for “subconscious mind” is “store consciousness.” We must look deeply into store consciousness, where all the seeds of our beliefs are stored.

It took much coaching to get Oskar to be willing to look into his “store consciousness.” The store consciousness of Sara, her husband and children is that of love, deep familial connections, genuine caring for one another. For the children these beautiful seeds in their store consciousness must serve them in ways yet to be realized as they and their seeds mature and blossom.

As you become a more mindful being, always remember the beautiful seeds you are planting in your store consciousness. If there remains within old decaying seeds that would never serve your growing awareness, be willing to incorporate all the techniques and exercises to cleanse yourself, so your mind can be purified in order for you to begin to live a future far more rewarding than the past. The Buddha’s glorious teachings only point the way. All the effort must be done by you.

Tonglen, a remarkable meditation practice, literally means giving and receiving. Tonglen opens our hearts in a way unlike any other practice. It opens us to others in a way that allows us to be truly present to them and their suffering. We no longer fear another’s pain, but rather we reach out to them in their time of deepest need.

Tonglen is multifaceted, for as it teaches us to be compassionate and assist in alleviating another’s suffering, it is also unparalleled in working on our egos—at the root of all of our own suffering. The practice of Tonglen can transform us into masters of compassion. For those so dedicated, this takes many years and much practice.

For me the practice of Tonglen is a very deep mindfulness practice, for it engages our whole awareness and entire being. We practice Tonglen truly caring for others as we would desire to be cared for.

The practice of Tonglen should only be undertaken by those with some degree of spiritual maturity and some mastery of meditation. The reason for this is that it is such a selfless practice that for the uninitiated the ego could definitely rise during this highly focused meditation and cause all manner of soul mischievousness as we fully open ourselves to the suffering of others.