Mindfulness Matters

Around this time and around the world, the Buddha’s birthday is celebrated. I’ll take this occasion to reflect on the Buddha and what he means to me.

Archeological evidence suggests he was an actual person. The year’s of his existence are approximately 2500 years ago. The traditional time frame was adjusted  forward 8o-some years after Professor Richard Gombrich discovered an error in the historical record. Regardless, it was a long time ago. Little is known about the actual life of the Buddha. Most of the information comes from self-references made during his discourses, and these were few and far between.

The legend of the Buddha appears to be more myth rather than actual. It astounds me that many Buddhist writers take the story literarily rather than as a parable. It is preposterous to assume that he had somehow been shielded from sickness, old age, and death until he was twenty-nine years old. Yet, this is the linch-pin of the story–when he first encountered these sufferings, he was motivated to find a path to end suffering. I rarely see this assumption questioned. It’s fatuous at best. He had relatives and servants who no doubt aged, got sick, and died. Gautama likely lived in the world and probably went away to college in Taxila along with other members of the ruling class.

Another feature of the myth was his princely status. Apparently, his father was more of a magistrate than a king. Still, Siddhartha did hang out with royalty like Prince and later King Pasenadi. He did refer to multiples palaces in the discourses and this is where his royal heritage is linked. I think it’s safe to assume that he lived a life of privilege.

As a parable, his life is instructive–he found a path between the extremes of indulgence and denial. After leaving the palace, he become a forest ascetic for a period of years. Nearly starving himself to death with severe practices, he abandoned that path to practice mindfulness under a pipal tree (now known as the Bodhi tree).

When we strip away the prophecy, embellishments, and preposterisms, the Buddha’s story is a story of renunciation and redemption. The Buddha was an exceptional man who showed us our potential as human beings. He was an exceptional, yet natural human. He was not superhuman. At least this is the image represented in the sutras. Centuries later he was portrayed as supernatural and worshipped as a god-like figure.

I find the Buddha’s secularity, the most appealing. I can investigate my buddhanature without beliefs, without doctrine, and without elevating the Buddha to a god. Buddhanature is psychological and empirical–testable in your own experience.

The image of the Buddha is a reminder of our potential to be in the world as happy human beings free from suffering, anguish, and pervasive dissatisfaction. I find that the methods that he taught–conscious living and meditation–work. If you try them, you just mind find that they work too.

Jaimal Yogis is the author of the compelling, endearing, and enlightening memoir–Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea. If you haven’t read this already, you should. It’s one of my favorite books.

For the last few years, I’ve been researching how our most primal emotion works: how we can better overcome, deal with, and even use fear. I’ve been talking to some of the world’s top scientists, doctors, athletes, artists, and spiritual teachers, as well as investigating my own fears and anxieties (they seem sort of endless). It’s a journey I recount in detail in The Fear Project book (out this winter from Rodale). But fear — like love — is so vast a topic, I couldn’t even attempt to put all my research into one manuscript. Hence, The Fear Project blog.  Here you’ll find extensive interviews with athletes like world champion MMA fighter Urijah Faber and ultra-swimmer Jamie Patrick. You’ll also find discussions with neuroscientists, psychologists, business leaders, artists, and spiritual thinkers, as well as incredible real life stories, tips for dealing with fear/stress/anxiety, and a lot more.

It is interesting that the Buddha does not mention fear as a mental factor worthy of independent consideration (there are 52 mental factors that he did specify). Did he miss something? I don’t think so. Fear is so basic that it colors many of the mental factors. Let’s take a quick look at the three fires (or poisons): greed, hatred, and delusion.

Greed (passion, desire) is based upon the fear of not having enough or of losing what we have. Hatred (aversion) is based upon the fear that we cannot tolerate what is present. Delusion (ignorance, confusion) is thoroughly grounded in fear.

Ignorance is present when we don’t understand the three marks of existence–suffering, impermanence, and no-self.

Life is permeated by suffering, anguish, or dissatisfaction.That’s life. Fear makes it hard for us to accept what is present and, instead, put energy into resisting, fixing, or ignoring what is happening.

Everything is always changing and this can freak us out. There are things we don’t want to change and we may put a lot of energy obsessing over how we are losing the good things we have and feel right now and staving off the arrival of the feelings and things that we don’t want.

At the centerpiece of delusion is the belief in a self independent of the processes that comprise our existence. If there is this solid, independent self then it must be protected. If the self, however, is a fluid process, what is there to protect? What is there to be afraid of?

If have noticed two of our biggest fears are death and shame. Freedom from fear, then, is telling shame and death to go you know what to themselves.

If we weren’t so afraid all the time, we’d be free to play, love, and create without hesitation, limitation, or inhibition.

27 April 2012: I enter the Davis Center at the University of Vermont. I’m heading for the meditation flash mob scheduled for noon. I enter on the second floor and pass by throngs of students getting their lunch in the cafeteria. I think to myself, “Don’t they know the flashmob is underway?” Across the hall, a study room is packed with students.”Don’t they want to take a study break with meditation and a little chanting?” I walk downstairs and join about 100 or so intrepid souls to meditate for 30 minutes followed by an eleven minute “Om” sound bath.

I am sitting in the thruway of the grand atrium of the student center. As I meditate, I can feel the cool breeze coming in from the front doors (it happens to be snowing lightly today). I can hear the shuffle of people walking by. People are talking, laughing, and carrying on with life as usual.

I have a perma-smile plastered on my face. The energy is buoyant, I feel my mind fill the space of the atrium. Blissful.

I spend my life in the center of a mindfulness circle. I am writing about it, reading about it, teaching it, practicing it–everyday. This constancy gives me a skewed view. Most people are not interested in meditation as evidenced by the fraction of students at the Davis Center who came to the Mob. When this event occurred in November a lot of people joined the meditation as it progressed. This time, few extras sat down. Last time, there was an audience that cheered. Perhaps this invisibility was due to the proximity to the end of the semester.

I’m not cynical, however. The more we do these public meditations, the more people will become interested. The mindfulness revolution is underway, if slowly. From the opposite side, it’s remarkable how many people actually showed up to investigate their inner life. This event highlights what is perhaps a cultural divide–the inner versus the outer life. Today, we put the inner in the middle of the outer!

MedMob is part of a worldwide movement. Look for one near you.