Tag: heart

Book Review: Beyond Happiness

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Will do some book reviews over the next few weeks. I always like Ezra Bayda’s writing, especially At Home in the Muddy Water. He is from the Zen tradition,  having trained with Charlotte Joko Beck, at the Ordinary Mind Zen School. He is a student of meditation since 1970 and currently teaches at the  Zen Center in San Diego. His latest book is entitled Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment. It was nominated as “one of the best books of the year” by the magazine Spirituality and Health.

This book bases itself on the most recent research on happiness, such as that found in The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, where we learn that external circumstances, such as our career, relationships and prosperity are not as important in our overall happiness as we may think. Rather,  we are born with a certain predisposition to happiness and then can work on our happiness by the way we deal with our everyday circumstances. In other words, our  “intentional activities”are largely responsible for how happy we are –  mindful actions that we do every day to achieve a happier life. Eric Bayda develops this concept by asking three key questions:  Am I truly happy right now? If not, what blocks it? And, can I surrender to what is? At the end of the day he comes up with two key ways that we can work at developing our sense of contentment and removing the things that block and poison our heart, namely, cultivating gratitude and  actively forgiving.

This is a nice book in the current trend of applying Buddhist principles to the psychological areas of growth in our lives and practical ways of developing contentment.

Perhaps one of the commonest places we get stuck and consequently one of the places that most prevents happiness is holding onto resentments. If there is even one person we cannot forgive, it closes our hearts in bitterness and will prevent us from experiencing the equanimity of genuine happiness….It may be easy for us to be kind, and also forgiving, when life is going well. But it is only when life gets difficult that the depth of our spiritual practice is revealed. For our kindness to be real it cannot depend on how others treat us, or how we feel at any given moment.

Trusting in your own goodness

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We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. Suzuki

Was out walking this afternoon in the lovely mild sunshine. Saw the beginnings of growth after this strange short winter, and a farmer working at ploughing her field. Got me reflecting on the conditions that are needed for us to feel safe and grow. There is no such thing as a typical winter; just the winter we have had. We cannot oblige the seasons to start and end exactly when we want. And as Winnicott said, when we were young,  the conditions did not have to be perfect, just “good enough”. There just had to be enough security to allow us to be, before rushing us into doing. Parents just have to do their best  and then the basic good conditions that allow love to grow take over. We just have to trust that this is the case.

If we do not trust,  then we  doubt our fundamental goodness and begin to push too hard or not do enough.  The seeds may get laid down in infancy if a parent does not have an  interior space or is confused in his or her signals. This can leave the young psyches having to do too much, too early, leading to us being “caught up in a false self and a compulsive cycle of “doing” to conceal the absence of “being”. In the adult ironically this  lack of trust in being can manifest as the tendency to try to do more, to be perfect, to always give more.  I see that I can get caught in this believed thought, seeking my security there. Then if something goes wrong I feel that is due to the fact that I did not do enough. A lot of energy goes into this self-judgment because it is dealing with material that is laid down very early in life.

The best way to work with this is to sit in silence, to nourish “fundamental trust”.   There we return to just being and find contentment with that, no matter what the inner critical voice says. We do this in meditation. But we also  have to do it in our relationships with others. One does not have to be perfect in relationships, no matter how others may expect us to be.  There too, being is more important than doing : one just has to be present.  We should not wait for the moment to be “perfect” to reach out and do something for others. This moment is good enough. What is needed is trust in the present moment, in reality, which becomes the most important “holding environment” for us. Trust means that we accept  that things just happen in certain ways and are not due to personal failings on our side.  And then we work with the moment as it is. It can be imperfect, but it is where we grow, even if we would prefer it to be otherwise.

In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting“in”something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others.

Dr. Jeremy Hayward

A rule of life

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Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight:

always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.

J.M. Barrie

What are you going through?

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Mindfulness practice strengthens our capacity to be present for all that is happening in our lives. It also creates a space within so that we can be present to others. It is easy to be there when people are in good space, or when they make us feel good about ourselves. However, as the French Philosopher Simone Weil says in this beautiful quote,  friendship is truly shown when one is able to ask the other  “What are you going through?”. This requires courage and inner strength. To stick with another person when they are confused or frightened requires that we are able to put aside our own concerns for a moment and attend to them. Full attention is the most precious gift we can give another. It is not always easy because of our own needs and the believed story that goes on in our head when we encounter another person. Furthermore, when another person is afraid, it often raises fears in us and our first tendency is to withdraw. Paying attention means we are able to step back from our own stories and be there.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not have it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. In the first legend of the Grail it is said that the Grail belongs to the first comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king paralysed by the most painful wound, “What is wrong with you? What are you going through?” Only the person who is capable of attention can do this.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God

The goodness in life

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It is a beautiful morning here, and as I said, being Irish, the Spring season has already started for me.  This Mary Oliver poem captures the day perfectly. It shows how attention to what is present in any moment, especially in the beauty of nature, and having the space to taste and hear it, leads to a deep joy in life. It is not always possible with the troubles and hassles of work, so we should take her advice: Go outside and just look, listen. Life is good.


It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float, to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed, so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there, you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Mary Oliver, Such Singing in the Wild Branches

Working with our emotions 2: Stay open and look within

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We may never find ourselves in situations of such danger that our lives are endangered; yet anguish and pain are undeniable aspects of our lives. None of us can build walls around our hearts that are invulnerable to being breached by life. Facing the sorrow we meet in this life, we have a choice: Our hearts can close, our minds recoil, our bodies contract, and we can experience the heart that lives in a state of painful refusal. We can also dive deeply within ourselves to nurture the courage, balance, patience, and wisdom that enable us to care.

Christina Feldman