Wise Mindfulness, A Tall Order

I want to say I’m ok with the news, the polls, the weather, my friends, my family.  I want to say that, but plenty of times I’m just not. 
I’m anxious or impatient or fearful or just flat out exhausted. 
 
Mindfulness invites me to step back, observe what I’m feeling, and not flinch.
And not only not flinch, but welcome whatever I see. 
Welcome, and then love.

And then also do better: be a little kinder and wiser the next time.

It’s a tall order, and it gets taller. 
Because mindfulness also invites me to notice (or realize?)
that whatever I see in myself is pretty much true for everyone.
Which I take as an invitation to not flinch from anyone else either, 
to welcome whatever everyone else is bringing as well, 
and to love everyone else, too.

And then, to do better for the world:

to keep working as hard as I can for change.

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen, and this is Wake Up Call 458. Over the last month or two I’ve been talking about the Eightfold Path to freedom, which is a path to happiness, essentially. Which isn’t the same as saying it’s a path to never having another unpleasant thought or sensation or emotion. It’s not. But, it is the path to relating very differently to unavoidable, unpleasant parts of life: relating to them with ease, and even with joy. 

The path steps we’ve explored so far are wise view and wise intention, which are the wisdom elements of the path; wise communication, action, and livelihood, the ethical elements of the path; and wise effort, the first of the three elements that are about samadhi, or calming and focusing the mind. Along with wise effort, there are two more samadhi elements: wise mindfulness, which I’ll talk about now, and wise concentration, which I’ll say something about next time.

Samadhi is generally defined as calming and focusing the mind: wise effort – how much effort to put in (remember from last time, not too tight, not too lose?); wise mindfulness, and wise concentration, which is primarily about what the concentrated mind can understand differently than the scattered mind, about this being human. 

So samadhi is about calming and focusing the mind. And, it’s important to remember that the mind isn’t only the brain. The mind is also the body.

Meaning, half the time or maybe more than half the time, when I experience or “know” something – when something feels right, or feels wrong – that experience isn’t happening, or registering, in my brain, or at least not at first. At first, it’s registering in my body. I experience fear in my stomach clenching and in the flood of hormones that puts me into a physical sensation of flight or fight. I know anger by the way my throat or my chest contracts and my voice gets higher. When my toes are wiggling, it’s a sign of anxiety. And so on. 

So if samadhi is about calming and focusing the mind, for me that includes the body – and often starts with the body. For example – and let’s dive into the seventh step on the path, mindfulness – there are times for me when wise effort and wise mindfulness are about letting the brain settle. My thoughts or emotions are going full tilt and I’ve lost the present moment, so I need to sit down – on a cushion or chair or even on the ground, is wonderful if I’m in nature, and breathe. And watch the brain part of the mind – the thoughts and emotions – as they either settle or don’t. But take a settled approach to the observation – which I’ll say more about in a minute.

But there are just as many times, or maybe more times, when I need to let my body settle. I’m not like my six-year-old granddaughter, who’s in perpetual motion, although I was like that when I was young: I ran everywhere - I don’t think I walked until I was in my 30’s. But in a way it is kind of like that. It’s rare that I walk into the house and fall onto the couch and maybe grab a magazine. It’s more like, here are some dishes I could do. Here’s a bed that needs making. Here are some emails that need answering, some texts, what’s happening on WhatsApp. What’s up with dinner? I could make something more complicated since I’m home a little early. So I guess I’d say my body is in perpetual motion in a different way from when I was six, but not necessarily in a better way. Which means, for me anyway, that there are just as many times when I need to let my body settle by laying down, or sitting upright and being still – letting the body settle. For me, it’s fully half, or maybe more than half, of my mindful sitting practice: the sitting down in stillness. 

Our working definition at Warrior One is that mindfulness is present moment attention, with courage and grace, and without wishing things were other than they are. Present moment attention is intentionally settling the mind/body in the present moment. And when the mind wanders or worries or ruminates, bringing it back to the present moment. And when the body fidgets, bringing it back to stillness. And doing these two things with kindness towards the wandering, worrying, ruminating mind, and towards the fidgety body.

Courage is about seeing that distraction, anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, whatever, and not turning away; and seeing the fidgetiness and not turning away. So seeing, and being with. Which for me can be hard. My tendency, and my desire if I’m being honest, is to turn away. I don’t want to look at the wandering or anxious mind or the body that can’t settle because it’s uncomfortable to see. It blows up my sense of being a chill meditator. It reminds me that I’m just another human, doing their best, like everyone, and that in this moment, my best is “anxious” or “angry.” 

And then grace, because it does me no good to see, and then disapprove. The only wise relationship to whatever is happening in the present moment is grace. And then action, whenever that’s possible and appropriate – don’t get me wrong – but the “then” is important: in the actual moment of noticing my own anxiety or fear, the only wise relationship to it is grace. Later (maybe just ten minutes later, at the end of my sit), I’ll start taking action. 

So present moment attention, with courage, with grace, and without wishing things were other than they are. For me that’s mindfulness’s biggest invitation: to let go of any wish, whether it’s a whisper or a roar, that things were other than they are? That I were more mindful, or more patient, or more fit, or more anything. 

So maybe you can see that it’s a loop, really. We begin to pay attention. We notice the wandering mind, the fidgety body. We make a commitment to stay with it, to explore it, to imagine the mind/body as a laboratory where we can observe what is, not judge it. It takes some courage to do that since the laboratory turns out to be ourselves and we have all these notions of what, or who, we “should” be. But we stick with it and we do that gracefully, not being unkind to ourselves but staying curious and really, being loving towards ourselves, whatever we discover. 

And the bigger picture is, we don’t do all of that, or any of that, wishing things were other than they are, or in other words, with the goal of becoming better. Or even of wishing we were better. We just observe, with love. That’s the invitation of the seventh step on the path, wise mindfulness.  

Let’s sit.