Month: August 2011

Prolonging the gap

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It does not really get explained any more simply than this:

One day when our master Jamyang Khyentse was watching a lama dance in front of the Palace Temple in Gangtok…he was chuckling at the antics of the … clown who provides light entertainment between dances. [A Student] Ana Pant kept pestering him, asking him again and again how to meditate, so this time when my master replied, it was in such a way as to let him know that he was telling him once and for all: “Look, it’s like this: When the past thought has ceased, and the future thought has not yet risen, isn’t there a gap?” “Yes” said Ana Pant. “Well,  prolong it. That is meditation”.

Sogyal Rinpoche, Glimpse after Glimpse.

Then – stopping the stories comparisons provoke

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Do you notice a tendency to measure or compare yourself with others or with the easy happiness which is portrayed in the media?

We hear, imagine and watch so many stories! Our life is becoming more and more inundated with TV shows, movies, magazines, and newspaper articles that seem to show us what life is like. And then the inevitable comparisons arise: “My life isn?t like that” or “I wish it were” or “It is exactly like that”. The moment we notice painful or sad feelings arising from thoughts like “I’m unloved. I feel separate and isolated” can we immediately stop, look and listen,  instead of going on weaving fancy narratives about ourselves? Can we stop and ask “Where is this feeling coming from?” Right now. Asking right this moment. Becoming more transparent to thoughts and images that evoke these feelings and then deepen,  embellish, and propagate them.

Toni Parker, The Silent Question

First – notice the “Comparing Mind”….

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No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.

John O Donoghue, Anam Chara

Walking exercises the brain as well

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This post is related to the one a few days back which reported on the beneficial effect of meditation on the development and aging of the brain. As a person ages, the part of the brain knows as the hippocampus shrinks, especially in late adulthood.  Since the hippocampus has functions which are related to memory, this shrinkage can lead to impaired memory and increased risk for dementia. So it is interesting to read the results of a study which shows that the simple act of walking may improve memory in old age.

In this study, the research subjects exercised by taking three, 40-minute walks each week over the period of a year, and were compared with a control group  in a number of ways including memory, levels of ‘brain derived neurotropic factor’ (a substance that stimulates new brain cell development and brain cell communication), as well as the size of  the hippocampus. It was found that the “walking” groups – as compared to the ‘control’ group –  experienced an increase in volume of the hippocampus (the control group saw a small reduction in volume of this brain structure), as well as higher levels of brain derived neurotropic factor and improved memory.

This study provides good evidence that even a quite low-intensity exercise can lead to improved brain function, and reverse hippocampal volume loss in late adulthood, and backs up earlier research from the University of Pittsburgh which tracked the physical activity of 299 healthy men and women who had different walking habits. When brain scans were taken after nine years on the programme, it was revealed that those who had walked more had greater brain volume than those who walked less. Four years later, the same tests revealed that those who had walked the most — about 7 miles each week — were half as likely to have cognitive problems as those who walked the least.

Erickson KI, et al. “Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory”. PNAS 31 January 2011

How to get peace of mind

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A lot of the time much of our sense of inner worth is based on feelings related to others’ perceptions of us  or their achievements.  However, it is a basic tenet of mindfulness that happiness and peace of mind do not comes from things outside of us – when certain conditions are right – such as from a relationship, or what we possess or from our status in society –  but rather comes from working with our mind and heart. It is ironically from not seeking some things that they are found:

Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache:

You won’t be able to find it.

But when your heart is ready,

peace will come looking for you.

Ajahn Chah

The search within us

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There are different ways in which writers describe the inherent restlessness deep within us, with which we are often uneasy and consequently work to cover over by activity or the things we do to seek recognition and success. As I have written before, mindfulness practice encourages us to come to a working understanding that there will always be a deep restlessness at the heart of life, and that is just the way things are. It does not mean there is anything wrong with our life, or with us, despite what we may feel from time to time. Another way of looking at this restlessness is seen in this quotation from the influential Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan. He sees it as a positive drive to know, an impulse to keep going beyond immediate experience, the root of all searching, which may never be completely satisfied:

Deep within us all, emergent when the noise of other appetites is stilled, there is a drive to know, to understand, to see why, to discover the reason, to find the cause, to explain. Just what is wanted has many names. In what precisely it consists is a matter of dispute. But the fact of inquiry is beyond all doubt. It can absorb a man. It can keep him for hours, day after day, year after year, in the narrow prison of his study or his laboratory. It can send him on dangerous voyages of exploration. It can withdraw him from other interests, other pursuits, other pleasures, other achievements. It can fill his waking thoughts, hide from him the world of ordinary affairs, invade the very fabric of his dreams. It can demand endless sacrifices that are made without regret though there is only the hope, never a certain promise, of success.

Bernard Lonergan, sj, Insight