Tag: mindfulness

Rolling with the Waves

I love being in the ocean and particularly when there are decent enough waves that mean you have to either jump over them or dive through them in order to avoid a pummelling. When I get the timing right it’s such a great feeling to jump and be lifted onto the top of the wave. The waves carry you over without effort and you just go with it.

A lot of my recent learnings in practice have seemed to have this flavour and revolve around rolling with the waves or the punches in one way or another.

I’m very familiar with the opposite to this: a sense of ‘self-digging-in’ like an inner putting my foot down because there’s something happening that I don’t like or don’t understand and am resisting. I’ve practised over and again becoming aware of what resistance feels like in the body and mind.

And what I’m noticing recently is that experience arising less frequently.

I’ve been travelling a lot in the past couple of months and travelling is a great way to not have things go the way you want them or expect them to go. Less than 24 hours before I flew to Singapore en route to Australia my flight was cancelled hiking my travel anxiety higher than it already was on my first long haul flight in almost 10 years. Despite the anxiety I found myself rolling with it and 3 hours later I was rebooked via Istanbul instead of Frankfurt but still arriving within 30 minutes of the original flight.

Travelling also meant I was in unfamiliar territory – literally – I didn’t know how to get to the main road from where I was staying, or how to use the tram (not train or bus!), or where I could buy postcards and stamps. Travelling meant I had to remember to take suncream and a hat whenever I went out instead of gloves and thermal underwear. Or more strangely once I got into the Australian bush – a snake ‘kit’ containing a tourniquet and a phone. A certain amount of discombobulation meshed in me alongside the freedom that comes from relaxing into the unknown.

The most emotive reminder of how far I was from home and familiar territory came on the first full day of the second retreat I led. The weather was hot with the promise of a storm. The day was labelled a ‘total fire ban’ day and the danger level described as ‘catastrophic’. Catastrophic is a strong word especially when coupled with the next word I heard – evacuation. Not a choice but a requirement in the terms of our rental agreement. These were more familiar concepts to the retreatants all from different states of Australia but new – and unexpected – to me.

We ended up evacuating without fuss to the Melbourne Buddhist Centre for a day retreat. Though somewhat unnerving I felt calm and just able to do what needed doing. My friend had organized the retreat making sure there were enough car spaces to take us all (though not our luggage) away from any danger. I remember deciding to pack all my teaching notes, not just ones for the day retreat, having to take seriously that although we expected to be back by nightfall we might not be. If a lightening strike from the expected storms coupled with high winds took hold of the dry bush, we might never return. Sitting in meditation together before heading for the city this was a sobering thought.

There is another aspect to this ‘rolling with the punches’ which is more difficult to describe. This is the desire to have what I want or the insecurity I’m used to arising from the fear of not getting what I want – especially in relation to my partner – is diminishing. This is especially visible around time. Time spent together is precious, and even more so now we both have work that takes us away from home a lot. So, something might come up where it looks like he will need to go away just as I arrive back from leading a retreat meaning another stretch of several weeks apart.

 And what I’m finding is that although I may well get a spike of the old ‘what about me’ reaction and feel resistance to more separation, again, it doesn’t have a lot of juice. That reaction doesn’t dominate and the stronger feeling is more likely to be a generous one – I want him to benefit from the opportunities his new job brings despite the initial reaction of what it means to me.

This is such a relief and a delight for the mind! Self-referencing and self-interest are tight and contracting for the mind and heart. They are viscerally painful and to see them arise and roll on through is to experience my mind in a new way. Trust and confidence are more familiar guests in my psyche these days as a result.

These feel like welcome benefits to the practice over many years of allowing and accepting whatever arises in experience. Relaxing and opening to what life (or the mind) throws up and having a felt understanding that whatever is happening is enough.

One final story; this week I had to travel to Birmingham for a medical appointment. Because of a landslip on the route, we were in a rail replacement coach rather than on the train. It became clear on the return journey the driver really didn’t know where he was going. I found the thought ‘has he never heard of Google Maps?’ running through my mind. We circled one small village for what seemed like an age before inexplicably heading back towards Birmingham. At one point, at traffic lights, he decided to turn the 12-ton coach around in the narrow road performing a dangerous (multi) 3-point turn, hitting various curbs at regular intervals. He was a terrible driver, and the journey took more than double the time it should have.

 And yet rather than the desire to just get home taking over I simply enjoyed the countryside around and the sense of bonding with other passengers over our strange journey. I was OK to be with what was happening despite it being at odds with what ‘should’ be happening.

I’m enjoying the pleasure of the mind that is making fewer demands on the world that it be as I want it to be. And as a result, suffering less – because the mind has begun to understand in a deeper way that the world and everyone in it is never going to be just as I want it.

Believing the Impossible

Something that has been a defining part of my psyche and that I have worked with quite a bit in my practice is doubt. Particularly self-doubt. I know I’m not alone as most of us, at some point, if not many points in our lives, experience self-doubt. It’s not for nothing that the Buddha named doubt as one of the first three ‘fetters’ which when seen through and ‘broken’ mean significant progress on the spiritual path. Doubt is a powerful and deep force in the mind and can be painful to experience.

Self-doubt can make us feel uncertain about our choices or lacking in confidence. It can make me doubt the words I put on these pages, question whether I’m saying anything of relevance or even if my words make sense. Whatever evidence there is to the contrary, doubt is that little undermining voice, that squirmy unsettling feeling. It might just appear once in a while or seem to be ever present. It can hold us back from action in an endless round of second guessing ourselves.

A few months ago, I came across a podcast series from the BBC called ‘How They Made Us Doubt’. Maybe some of you listened to the dozen or so episodes? I listened while I cooked lunch, so the recordings didn’t have my fullest attention, but enough get a clear sense of the damage done through the deliberate introduction of doubt into public discourse.

There were two main targets: firstly, from the 1950’s onwards around the effects of smoking on our health, and in more recent decades, focusing on human made climate change. The podcasts showed evidence of a documented and deliberate policy of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries to seed enough doubt to sew confusion about the harms done despite overwhelming scientific research to the contrary.

I find this manipulation of information in the world we live in mirrored by the way doubt or self-doubt works in our minds and affects our views, opinions, and choices. Doubt is insidious, it promotes an alternate and distorted perspective. It plays on ‘what if?’, and ‘how can I be absolutely sure?’ Doubt plays a game of smokes and mirrors leaving confusion and paralysis in its wake. It creates an equal playing field by giving a platform to the almost impossible – and in the process making it seem entirely possible.

We can see doubt working in our own minds like any other mental ‘object’; it needs observing, feeling into, and to be seen for what it is. But this is easier said than done as it is such a slippery, amorphous mind state. I find a number of things help once doubt has been identified in our experience.

  1. Check if you’re identified with it. Are we believing what doubt is saying about us, or about a situation? Recognising the identification and the belief that it is true will help release its grip, enabling us to see it more clearly.
  2. Seeing through the view that we have to take doubt’s perspective into account. (We all know now that smoking is bad for us!)
  3. Treating it like ’Mara’, a mischief making, undermining voice that we can safely ignore. (I’ll keep writing despite its whisperings!)
  4. Remembering that the Buddha experienced doubt right until on the point of Enlightenment. It’s not a mistake or failure to experience it.

We can remember too that in Buddhism doubt is not all bad, with sayings such as ‘the bigger the doubt the bigger the Buddha,’ or ‘great doubt, great awakening’. These aphorisms are talking about the potential of doubt; that searching questioning quality of mind that doesn’t close down options prematurely.

Our job is to feel into and distinguish between doubt that is helpful to the path, and doubt that leads to more suffering.