Month: November 2018

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Why are we thankful?

I recently read about something that resonated with me: the idea of conscious gratitude (thank you author Danielle LaPorte).  I often speak of the benefit and power of practicing gratitude, especially in times of challenge and duress.  However, simply giving thanks for everything in a general sense runs the risk of glossing over why (and whether) we are thankful, as well as what lessons we learned and/or benefits we reaped from it.

The term ‘spiritual bypass’ was coined in the 1980s by Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist John Welwood.  Spiritual bypassing occurs when we use spiritual practices to avoid facing unresolved issues, emotions, or situations.  An example of this would be to say that because you like who you are today and where you are on your path, you must be thankful for all that has come before.  At first glance this sounds perfectly okay, and it is in line with what any number of self-help books and articles might recommend, but what happens when we dig below the surface?  What happens when we sit with our experience in mindful meditation and physical or emotional pain from a past event returns?

In our mindfulness practice we seek to rest our awareness in the present moment and experience all that arises with a sense of equanimity.  We cultivate the ability to become comfortable with the uncomfortable; we build our inner strength and resilience to weather storms that arise within, be they physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.  However, is weathering a storm the same as being grateful for it?  Do we really need to give thanks for the lightning strike that cripples us, or do we instead use the tools of our practice to simply accept the strike and its effects? We learn many lessons from the challenges in our life, and we can certainly be grateful for those lessons, but we must also acknowledge and accept where they came from – glossing over a painful experience with a blanket ‘thank-you’ does not necessarily address the havoc it may have wrought upon us physically or emotionally, and that havoc might resurface again and again in different ways if we do not acknowledge the root cause.

The example of spiritual bypass I offered above – if I am content with where my path has taken me thus far, I must give thanks for all that brought me here – is one I have used myself, and it may be a familiar refrain for you as well.  However, my practice has taught me that I do not need to be grateful for something to accept it as part of my experience.  I do not believe that a loyal employee must give thanks to the employer who lays them off, just as I would never suggest that a shooting victim must give thanks for being shot.  To me, this kind of giving thanks indiscriminately is practicing gratitude on auto-pilot, without any mindful awareness, disconnected from our intuition.  That being said, even in the midst of challenge and suffering, there will always remain things in our life for which we can give thanks, including the teachings we uncovered through our suffering.  This is conscious gratitude.  We pay attention to our experience and use the tools of our practice to discern what we have lost, what we have gained, what we have learned; we acknowledge and accept all of it, the full catastrophe, as part of our experience, and then we decide what we are truly grateful for and we give thanks.

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The unsung hero

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.” ~Joshua Graham

When we hear about mindfulness, its many virtues are extolled.  We are told that practicing mindfulness will make us more productive at work, improve our memory, help us sleep better, reduce our levels of stress and anxiety.  All of these things are true, and there are so many more benefits to bringing mindfulness into our daily life.  However, at the root of it all is one important benefit that I do not think gets enough mention: resilience.

When we come to our meditation practice, we sit with our present moment experience exactly as it unfolds.  That experience might include pain, anguish, sorrow, frustration, or anger.  Our mind might throw up defenses against these feelings, try to divert our attention, carry us away into dreams of the past or future, but despite its best efforts, we must eventually return to the present and whatever that moment holds for us.  The more time we spend sitting with experiences we label as unpleasant, the more familiar they become.  Rather than seeing them as something to fear and avoid, we recognise that they are part of us, part of our journey, part of the natural ebb and flow of our daily life and experience.

In the yogic tradition, resilience is embodied in the practice of Santosha, contentment.  Through Santosha we learn to accept whatever comes and whatever goes; we cultivate a sense of equanimity and seek to respond to challenges from that balanced place within us.  We grow stronger, building up our resources so that when storms lash at us from all sides, when the waves are so high we cannot see the shore, there is a well of strength deep within that keeps us buoyed until the weather clears.

Looking back at our life, we see grief and loss, joy and triumph, we climbed tall mountains and traversed dark valleys, and we survived through it all by drawing on the strength within us.  On the days when you feel the weather turning, when the skies are dark and the seas are churning, dive deep inside and ignite the fire within, let it burn brightly and guide your way through the storm.

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Lest we forget

Handmade ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, honouring the sacrifice of British soldiers in WWI

On November 11th each year, we remember the fallen, those who made the ultimate sacrifice, who gave their lives so that we might live in freedom.  Over the years, no matter where in the world I was living on November 11th, I always watched the Canadian Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa and honoured our many heroes with a moment of silence and reflection.  Hearing that lone bugle play The Last Post never fails to bring tears to my eyes, and I reflect with awe and deep respect on the young men and women who have left their families behind to defend against tyranny and protect our freedom.

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that signalled the end of World War I, as well as Canada’s Hundred Days, a three-month stretch of extraordinary Canadian Corps victories from August 8th to November 11th, 1918.  The last living veteran of WWI died in 2012 – Florence Green, a British woman who served in the Allied armed forces; the last living Canadian veteran of WWI was John Babcock, who died in 2010.  With no remaining voices to share firsthand stories of those harrowing years, it is left to us to honour their memory and remember their sacrifice.

When we speak of mindfulness practice, our focus is usually on connecting to the present moment.  We remind ourselves that the past is gone, the future is not yet here, and the present moment is the only moment we are guaranteed.  While dwelling on past events can cause us suffering, remembering loved ones who are no longer with us can also give us perspective, teaching us lessons that we can apply to our present moment experience.  Bringing mindful awareness to our collective past helps connect us to the wisdom of that history so that we might use that knowledge to guide us on the journey ahead. What better way to honour sacrifice than to learn from the circumstances that led to it and avoid such sacrifice in the future?

It has been 100 years since the ‘war to end all wars’ came to an end.  To look at the world around us now, it might seem that we have learned little at all from our collective history, as we continue to repeat the same mistakes and fight the same battles a century later.  We can see echoes of this in the microcosm of our meditation practice – the same thought patterns, the same judgements, the same self-criticisms coming up time and again.  We could throw up our hands in despair and give up any hope of achieving peace – within ourselves, and in the world around us – or we could continue our mindful practices in earnest, radiating lovingkindness, compassion, acceptance and equanimity.  As Mahatma Gandhi reminded us: “A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”  Our candle is lit from within and the flame grows stronger and brighter as we continually cultivate peace and love and compassion in our hearts.  At first glance, our practice might seem to strengthen only our own flame, and we might think sharing it could diminish its brightness; in fact, that strength empowers us to light a thousand more candles.  By cultivating our practice, by nourishing our own inner flame, we can help spread lovingkindness around the world – and maybe someday we can achieve the peace for which so many have fought and sacrificed.

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Relax into impermanence

“When the appearances of this life dissolve, may I with ease and great happiness, let go of all attachments to this life, like a child returning home.” ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

When we pay attention to the world around us, we begin to notice that everything is always changing – the temperature of the air, the clouds in the sky, scents wafting by on the breeze, the sounds of people and traffic and birdsong.  We walk outside our same front door each morning and yet what awaits us is different every time.  We take our same route to work and yet we see different cars, different people.  We pour coffee into our same mug and yet, if we are really paying attention, we notice that the coffee tastes and smells differently today. Why? Because we are different.  Because this moment is different. Because all of life is impermanent and although we may encounter people and places and things that seem to be the same as those we have met or seen or experienced before, those experiences have ended and what we have before us is beginning anew.

Impermanence can be challenging to truly understand and accept.  Realising that nothing remains the same and that all things must come to an end can give rise to fear and anxiety and a sense of groundlessness.  As human beings we form attachments to the people and places and things in our life; they become part of how we identify ourselves and our place in this world.  When an experience is over, when we lose a treasured object, when a beloved friendship ends, we often try to cling, to grasp, to bring it back into existence, even though deep down we know that it has reached its natural end and we must continue on.

Life is a continuous cycle of beginnings and endings, of births and deaths. Each breath has a natural beginning and ending, each moment begins and ends, and the end of one moment marks the beginning of the next.  Through our mindfulness practice, we learn to observe this natural evolution of time and experience with a sense of equanimity; we learn to release our attachment to what has passed, without fear or anxiety.  As we cultivate an attitude of acceptance and our resilience grows in the face of change, we are building the inner resources necessary to face our deepest fears, to face the ultimate example of impermanence: our own death.

On the eastern edge of the Himalayas lies the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan.  When we hear about Bhutan in the West, it is often referred to as the happiest place on earth, a country whose King declared ‘Gross National Happiness’ to be its true measure of success.  In such a place where happiness abounds, it might be a surprise to learn that they contemplate their own death five times a day.  Five times every day the Bhutanese acknowledge that this life will end; they acknowledge the impermanent nature of everything around them, and then they return to living in that moment.  I find this practice fascinating and have decided to try it myself – believe it or not, there is an app for that!  At five random times a day this app sends me a reminder that I am going to die, and it shares a quote with me about some aspect of impermanence.  At first blush this may sound morbid; however, I believe it is by confronting our fears that we relieve them of their power over us.

Fear can have profound effects upon us.  We can feel paralysed by our fears, and they can rob us of our ability to live each day in a healthy and conscious way.  When we acknowledge fear, when we observe it and name it and sit with it, we grow our awareness of its nature and its roots.  We can look upon it with compassion and lovingkindness and then feel its power diminish.  Change and the impermanent nature of all things gives rise to fear for many of us, but if we can find a way to acknowledge and accept impermanence, perhaps instead we can welcome change, relax and make peace with it.  Perhaps by accepting impermanence, by realising that all we really have is this moment, we can live our lives more fully and allow the births and deaths along the way to teach us powerful lessons.

I leave you with the wonderful wisdom of Pema Chödrön, a Tibetan Buddhist nun who has the extraordinary ability to make challenging concepts like impermanence feel much more accessible.