Dharma Leadership - Quieting the Inner Critic

Confession times: I didn't make up the heading on this post. A few weeks ago there was a daylong retreat up at Spirit Rock with that name. I couldn't make it to the retreat, and then of course the next day I felt bad about it and told myself I should have gone. I told that story to my dharma group and they all laughed. So if it's good enough for them, it's a good enough story for you, gentle reader.

Another quick story, courtesy of Vinny at Dharma Punx: many years ago, the Dalai Lama was visiting the United States for the first time in a while. One of the local (American) teachers had a question for him about the metta bhavana practice. For those who don't know, metta bhavana is a meditation exercise centered around extending loving kindness to the whole world. (If you don't like the phrase "loving kindness", just think about "wishing people well"). Because it's kind of hard to just wish everybody well all at once, the practice happens in stages. In the East (like Tibet), the practice goes as follows: first, you wish yourself well, then someone you care about, then a stranger, then, finally, someone you don't like. Easy to hard. Well, the American teacher asked the Dalai Lama about this. The teacher had been trying this practice with his students and found that they were stuck at the beginning - wishing themselves well. He asked the Lama why they had chosen to start with the most difficult part. His Holiness was confused at first. His translators struggled. Then he struggled. Finally, he came to understand, and a bewildered look crossed his face. "Are you saying," he said, "that your students are having more difficulty wishing themselves well, than wishing well to someone they barely know?"

"Well, yes," the teacher replied somewhat sheepishly.

"Then that," said the Lama, "is where you must begin."

Last week, my dharma circle discussed the topic of enlightenment. The leader that night, Tom, asked us all to briefly describe what we felt was holding us back from enlightenment. Out of 15-20 young adults, I would estimate only 2 or 3 did *not* explicitly mention self-criticism or dislike of the self as the main impediment to enlightenment or peace. That's astounding, really. There are so many things that can stop us from being at peace: desire, for one. Hunger. Hatred. Envy, Jealousy, Apathy, Greed. And out of all of these powerful forces, almost all of us chose self-criticism.

As I write this, I am on a diet. A "nutrition plan", if you will. I am also currently at a Japanese seafood buffet. The buffet is most emphatically not on my diet. This simple set of events would be enough, at times, to set me off on a series of self-hating angst. But this time, I did it on purpose. To celebrate a successful week on the diet.

It turns out, the food tastes better when you don't hate yourself as you eat it.

We - and by we I mean people our age, people in San Francisco, people in our income bracket, people in our country - have a lot of difficulty being at peace. And an inordinate amount of it seems to come from not being at peace with who we are. Im not going to talk about why - brighter minds that I have filled the internet with answers to that question: culture, the media, nutrition, ethics, history. I'm more concerned with practical matters - how do we stop? Maybe even more important: what do we do in the meantime? I don't know about you, but I'm not going to stop beating myself up overnight, so how do I enjoy things while still staying on the path towards self-acceptance? After all, any dieter will tell you that shooting for the moon all at once is a sure way to get disappointed and quit. So, okay, I just have to love myself *a little bit*. Maybe eat one less dumpling. Ruminate just a minute less about a meaningless decision. Reward myself a bit more for who I am.

It's a start.

--Adam

Story Time - Avoiding Expectations

Experiences - Finishing the Marathon

One of the teachings of Buddhism and the Dharma that I have been particularly trying to take to heart lately is to do things because they are the right thing to do, not because you are expecting specific results. Avoiding attachment to results is a key element in staying centered. Recently I had an experience which provided a teaching moment for this principle that I wanted to share. I ran the SF Marathon last weekend, a full marathon known as being the "marathon that marathoners are afraid of." It was tough! My knee still hurts as a reminder. It was also extremely rewarding, in more ways than one, and one of those ways was as a reminder of the importance of avoiding expectation of outcome. Truly, a marathon reminds us of the importance of the journey over the destination. This course, in particular, is a circle, which is a great metaphor for life as well as a concrete depiction of avoiding results. All I accomplished with my stress and effort was to end up back where I started! It would have been easier to just stay put!

I remember specifically mile 23. I was in pretty intense pain. My feet hurt, my knees hurt. I wanted to finish so badly. I was attached to the finish line. I envisioned it as this beatific paradise where finally I would get to stop running. I begrudgingly put one foot in front of the other as fast as my body would bear.

And then, something clicked, some teaching or experience of dharma, the little voice in my head said "Wait". And I suddenly realized, in that moment, the power of the *now*, and the power of the journey. For the rest of my life, I will be a person who finished the SF Marathon, but only in that moment was I someone about to finish the SF Marathon. And that is a powerful moment, bursting with promise. I ran 23 miles to experience what it was like to be about to finish a marathon, and I may not have that moment again for quite a while; the savoring of the finish, the joy of completion, the pain of my physical body. I was alive, and I chose in that moment to take a snapshot of my experience. The world slowed down around me, and I remember looking up and seeing the HiDive, a dive bar on the Embarcadero which I've jogged past many times, but never like this. It looked like the halls of Olympus. And we were jogging on the road, which was uniquely closed for the event. I remember stepping off the curb near At&T Park onto the Embarcadero itself, symbolic of breaking the normal barriers between runners and traffic. I remember the shoes I was wearing, the shirt, the smells, the sounds. I did not run past the moment, instead I chose to be in the moment, and because I did, I will have those memories for the rest of my life!

And that is a powerful lesson indeed.

Dharma Leadership - Helping Others

A few weeks ago, I ran a sangha session for a small group of young adults that I participate in, called Young Dharma SF.  The topic was "Helping Others", and I'd like to share some of what we discussed in the helps that it might help you, either alone or in running your own sangha.

Most of us are good people.  Real psychopaths are few and far between.  Although all of us come from different situations and different cultures, different religious backgrounds, most of us have the idea that we want to help.  Inherent in this idea is two hidden assumptions: first, that we have some measure of control over the happiness of others.  Second, that it's incumbent on us to help others when we see that they need it.  There's other assumptions hiding here even deeper: that there is a good and a bad, that other people know what they need to be happy, etc., etc. - but let's just start with those two.  They get drummed into our head from an early age.   They take different forms; christians have the "good samaritan".  In many Middle Eastern cultures there is the "guest first" mentality.  Jewish culture revolves around giving to the community (to overgeneralize).

This is fine, as far as it goes.  It seems unassailable to suggest that others deserve our help, and that we can and should help them.  A world without charity seems terrible, and a world where we can't touch those around us seems sterile and hardly worth living in.  Connections between people are what build color and make the world go 'round.

But these principles, of charity and connection, are like a power saw without a guard on the blade - incredibly useful and powerful in motion but deadly in the wrong hands.  For, like a saw, they will cut whatever they are held against, without regard for integrity or measure.  They will eat whatever is in front of them, turning it to mulch.  At the right place and time, they help us build a house for our soul.  Left to run out of control they can ruin us.  And the problem is, most people are only given the saw, not the guards.  If we are supposed to help those in need, well, which ones?  There are something like 6 billion people on this planet, and I think it's fair to say they *all* have needs, and they all could be happier.  Are we supposed to help them all?  And what about this notion that we can make other people happy?  Is it true?  All the time?  How do we tell the difference?  What are we supposed to do if and when we can't make them happy?  Give up?  Hate ourselves?  Hate them?

So let's go back to the group exercise and see how running a sangha on this topic might work.  To set the stage, in the group there were approximately 10 adults ranging in age from about 25-35.  The session lasted 2 hours.  We began, as we begin every session, by socializing for about 15 minutes.  Then, I introduced the topic but didn't go into much detail.  I believe I said something along the lines of "tonight we're going to talk about how to help others in our lives while still staying centered ourselves."  The group had been prepped for that topic over email as well, so it was on everyone's minds (hopefully!) but in a non-specific way.  We then meditated, for about 20 minutes, doing standard but unguided Vipassana (insight/breathing) meditation.  I noticed as I looked around the room that there were some pretty contented and peaceful faces.

Then I reminded everyone of the topic.  I asked each person to come up with one person in their lives that they were, at that moment, feeling guilty about because they either couldn't help them, weren't helping them, or were trying to help them but felt like they weren't doing enough or it wasn't working.  This was pretty easy for most people to do, and we got a range of response ranging from the coworker who was too gossipy for her own good, to the daughter with a mother with a very bad psychological disorder who needed constant care.  This last one was an excellent case for group discussion later on; there's nothing more debilitating than someone we care about deeply or who is so needy that they can be a bottomless well, soaking up all our ability to care and help.  We allowed each person to just describe their feelings about this person without interruption.  Before this exercise, I specifically asked each person to make a point to remember the story of the person who was sitting across from them (luckily, there was an even number; if there weren't, I would have remembered two).  I also asked them to remember at least one or two specific details from the story.

I then brought up a few helpful teaching examples.  First I talked about the Baghavad Gita, which tells us that it is "Much better to do one's own work even if you have to do it imperfectly than it is to do somebody else's work perfectly".  I read and reviewed a handout on equanimity by Tom Moon, a great Sangha teacher here in the Bay.  We talked about equanimity as one of the four brahma vihara, or immeasurables.  The near enemy of equanimity is apathy, and so we discussed how it was important to care about those around us and not retreat, but to do so in a sustainable way.  I focused on that word - sustainable - because it's hot right now in discussions about the environment and natural resources, but I think it also applies to our own mental resources in a parallel way.  After all, it we exhaust ourselves, not only are we then of no help to anyone, but we might end up needing help ourselves.  We repeated a number of prayers from the Moon handout, such "I love you, but I cannot stop you from suffering," and "each being chooses their own path."  Repeating these phrases helps to remind us that while we can touch others, we can't really change them.  And the repetition itself helps to calm the mind.

We then went into the subject of Childhood Omnipotence, which is a phrase from western psychology that describes the tendency of children to attribute themselves as the cause of everything that happens around them.  "Mommy and Daddy got a divorce because I'm a bad kid."  "My sister has cancer because I didn't love her enough."  "We're poor because I'm stupid."  Etc., etc.  In many people, this tendency lessens as we get older, but in those who were unfortunate enough to experience abuse, it may not, and we may grow up thinking that we're still the cause of the suffering of those around us.  In fact all of us retain some portion of this childhood philosophy, and at times it can be quite debilitating.  In the cold light of day (or the sangha circle), though, it is exposed for what it is: egotism, and silliness besides.

(Note: this is where I made a big mistake and misspoke; I said that those who endured abuse often had a surplus of this feeling, while "normal people" had less.  One of the members got quite upset at this, thinking that I meant that people who had undergone "abuse" weren't normal.  That's not what I meant, but it is what I said, and I apologized profusely.  So don't make my mistake!)

Then, we went around the circle again, but this time, each person was asked to make direct eye contact with the person across from them and say "It's not your fault."  Then, they described a potential scenario involving that person's story of help where the situation or individual improved or resolved itself without any help from us at all!  For example, one person was trying to get their coworker to stop gossiping.  So, their circle partner told them "Maybe one day, that person will have an experience on their own that makes them realize it's better to use wise speech, and you'll find they've stopped gossiping without any help from you at all!"  Giving these concrete examples helps remind us that we're not in charge of the universe.

We closed with a few more minutes of meditation, and the giving of merit.  All in all, I felt it was a very productive night and several members thanked me for making them think about how they were spending their energy.  I recommend it for your Sangha as a topic of interest to everyone, but especially young adults, who often feel that we need to "save the world".