Month: January 2010

Ring the Bells

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Watched the Hope for Haiti Concert last night. It was, on the whole, a dignified restrained affair. I found that the songs most suited to the tragedy were the older ones – John Legend’s rendition of the Gospel song Motherless Child and Mary J Blige’s gospel version of the incredible Hard Times Come Again no More. Justin Timberlake sang a nice version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. These simple, sparse, songs spoke powerfully to the human condition when faced with difficulty. Let us hope that the Concert prompted people to give.

While listening I was reminded of Cohen’s other song Anthem which anticipates his period spent as a Buddhist monk, and which, he says, contains the fundamental belief behind a lot of his songs. I feel it expresses a fundamental truth about all our lives. It reminds us that when we should not wait till we think we are perfect before we start to give. Each one of us are broken in many ways, and make mistakes. We all search for the cure that will bring us wholeness. But this brokenness is what ultimately allows real compassion for others in their weakness and pain. The greatest gift we can offer another is an acceptance of their real selves, not some ideal version of them.

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen, Anthem

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in some ways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed – is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them.

Alice Walker, Letter to President Clinton

Gratitude

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We are born helpless infants, creatures of pure need with little resource to give, yet we are fed, we are protected, we are clothed and held and soothed, without having done anything to deserve it, without offering anything in exchange. This experience, common to everyone who has made it past childhood, informs our deepest spiritual intuitions. Our default state is gratitude: it is the truth of our existence.

Charles Eisenstein

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

Meister Eckhart

Sitting

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The birds have vanished
into the sky,
and now the last cloud
passes away.

We sit together,
the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Li Po

Mindfulness and attachment

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There are interesting possible links between the practice of meditation and the healing of attachment patterns which are at the basis of all our relationships. Our early relationships with our primary caregivers laid down a pattern or paradigm which can be activated in later relationships. This paradigm can be very deeply ingrained in our unconscious and in the neural patterns of the brain. Luckily, like all neural patterns they can be changed, even if this takes a lot of time. One possible effect of meditation is that it allows the healing of excessive needs in relation to others by developing a greater contentment and balance with ourselves. This seems to be supported by the following quotation from Daniel Siegel on the brain and how it functions. Although it comes from a neurological point of view it seems to me to agree with the more Buddhist view of the mind’s natural wakefulness which I referred to in the previous post.

Each of us needs periods in which our minds can focus inwardly. Solitude is an essential experience for the mind to organize its own processes and create an internal state of resonance. In such a state, the self is able to alter its constraints by directly reducing the input from interactions with others. As the mind goes through alternating phases of needing connection and needing solitude, the states of mind are cyclically influenced by combinations of external and internal processes. We can propose that such a shifting of focus allows the mind to achieve a balanced self-organizational flow in the states of mind across time. Respecting the need for solitude allows the mind to “heal” itself – which in essence can be seen as releasing the natural self-organizational tendencies of the mind to create a balanced flow of states. Solitude permits the self to reflect on engrained patterns and intentionally alter reflexive responses to external events that have been maintaining the dyadic dysfunction.

Daniel J. Siegal, The Developing Mind p., 235

On greeting the sun this morning

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Today started cloudy and foggy. Low clouds over the mountains. However, one way of seeing our natural inner self is like the expansiveness of a clear blue sky. The troubles that cross our path each day can be seen as clouds crossing this clear sky. Just as the clouds can only temporarily block the sun but are not of the same strength as the sun, our problems are only temporary and what causes them to become suffering can be removed from the mind. So even with low fog this morning we can greet the sun which is always there. Even when troubles cross our path today we can drop into the natural calm which lies beneath.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver, Why I wake early

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The effect of mindfulness on the Brain

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From Dan Siegal, the author of The Mindful Brain:

Studies show that the ways we intentionally shape our internal focus of attention in mindfulness practice induces a state of brain activation during the practice. With repetition, an intentionally created state can become an enduring trait of the individual as reflected in long-term changes in brain function and structure. This is a fundamental property of neuroplasticity—how the brain changes in response to experience. Here, the experience is the focus of attention in a particular manner.

First, a “left-shift” has been noted in which the left frontal activity of the brain is enhanced following MBSR training. This electrical change in brain function is thought to reflect the cultivation of an “approach state,” in which we move toward, rather than away from, a challenging external situation or internal mental function such as a thought, feeling, or memory. Naturally, such an approach state can be seen as the neural basis for resilience.

Second, the degree of this left-shift is proportional to the improvement seen in immune function. Our mind not only finds resilience, but our body’s ability to fight infection is improved. At the University of California, Los Angeles, David Cresswell and his colleagues have found that MBSR improves immune function even in those with HIV.