Musings

Mindfulness: a short course

(This "musing" is adapted from emails I sent to students, faculty, and staff in the course on mindfulness I'm teaching at the USC Keck School of Medicine, through our Mindful.USC.edu initiative.)

  

 

Mindfulness is "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally."  Jon Kabat-Zinn

 

First assignment:  Get into a comfortable physical position in which you will be unlikely to fall asleep, and for 15 or more minutes daily, be mindful in particular of your body.  What bodily sensations do you experience in the moment?  What emotions are associated with these sensations? How do these emotions affect your breathing, as well?  Remember: suffering = pain times resistance.  So strive to carefully observe any physical pain you experience, stay open to it, surround it with loving attention, and gently release ideas or opinions about it.

Something that can help with this practice is "progressive muscle relaxation".  (Here is a good primer on the practice.) Progressively tighten and then relax your body's muscles, one group of muscles at a time.  You can this while being mindful of each of the sensations that result.

As part of your practice, try "urge surfing".  When you feel an urge to do something, take an action, solve a problem, etc, explore that urge by paying attention to it.  Let the urge be: delay acting on the urge long enough to fully experience it.  Where and how does the urge manifest in the body?  What emotions go with it?  What does this urge feel like?  Ride
it out for a while before acting on it.  See what happens!

Once a week, I do sitting meditation with a group.   But walking meditation is my daily practice of mindfulness.  I start by silently chanting, one word per step:  "Am I here?  I am here. What is here?" Then I do an inventory of what is here, within and around me, as I walk.  A tree.  A bird.  My urge to get home fast and make dinner.  My urge to send an email to a colleague as soon as possible. The wind on my face.  The scent of flowers.  A car zipping past.  That difficult conversation I had last week.  All of these experiences, sensations, thoughts, memories, urges are here, in the moment, as I put one step in front of the next.  I find this to be an effective but also difficult kind of mindfulness practice.  It's particularly challenging because of the barrage of sensory input, and the difficulty of staying in "observer mode".  When I lose attention, I go back to my inner chant:  "Am I here?  I am here.  What is here?", one word per step.

Second assignment:  20 minutes a day, focusing especially on emotions that may arise – and on the ways they manifest in your body and breath.  We have emotions all the time:  this discipline involves watching them.  When one arises, observe it with "high-resolution perception", as Chade-Meng Tan (Google's Chief Happiness Officer) describes it in his introduction to mindfulness practice, "Search Within Yourself".  Observe the emotion, and its effects on the body, with openness and warmth.  Let it play out naturally and then let it pass in its own time.  

A mnemonic for what we're doing in mindfulness practice:  RAIN:  Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Non-identify.  Non-identifying means moving from "I am sad" to "I feel sadness".  How long does it take for you to move from sensing an emotion to being able to observe it in a conscious way, thus separating it from your core identity?  For example, you become conscious that you are anxious.  In that moment, can you look back and recall when the emotion of anxiety actually began - and how that anxiety manifested in your body?  Very often there is a gap between the onset of an emotion and our full consciousness of it.  It is this time gap that often brings us suffering and confusion.  One of the fruits of mindfulness practice is shortening this time gap, giving us much more control over the way we respond to our emotions.

Third assignment:  20 minutes daily, in silent mindfulness meditation, turn your attention to someone you love very much, aim love toward that person, and savor and investigate the experience of it.  How does it feel?  Where does the love reside in the body, how does it affect your breathing?  What is the emotional content of it?  You can use the Center for Nonviolent Communication's site to get a "periodic table" of feelings.  This table is useful for identifying and investigating the emotions you experience in mindfulness practice, generally.  How does this love "metabolize" - how does it flow from one experience to another?  Then turn your attention to a person you don't know well at all, and direct love toward that person, and investigate the experience.  Then turn it toward the whole human race, the whole planet, and do the same.  Then turn it toward yourself, and do the same.  That's the hard part, for most of us!  We're so much easier on others than we are on ourselves.  But learning the discipline of deep self-compassion also turns the tap of of love for others all the way open.

Fourth assignment:  20 minutes daily of mindfulness practice focused on your thoughts.  What are the colors, textures, tones, and qualities of your thoughts?  Which ones are "sticky" and which ones pass quickly?  What form do they take:  are they voices? images?  What emotions are associated with them?  Where do these emotions reside in your body?   

 

Some thoughts spin around problems we are anxious to solve.  This can pose a challenge in mindfulness practice, as we lose our attention to the problem by becoming totally absorbed in problem-solving, which often leads to the experience of getting "stuck".  I cherish an old, wise book:  HOW TO SOLVE IT by George Polya (1944).  Polya was a celebrated mathematician who wrote the book to help improve math education.  But it generalizes as a source of wisdom about problem-solving in many situations.  It's a contemplative approach to the study of mathematics.  In his book, he repeated this phrase:  "Look at the unknown!"  This concentration on the problem itself, rather than on problem-solving, has the paradoxical effect of opening up a fresh awareness of the peripheral realm around the problem, in which solutions may be found.  (For further reading: "Contemplation in Mathematics", by Luke Wolcott)  When you get stuck in your thoughts, go back to Polya's mantra and "look at the unknown".  Contemplate the problem with loving, patient attention, while trusting that the solution will emerge in its own time.

At least in the context of mindfulness, wanting = having.  To pay mindful attention to our desire for progress in mindfulness is to have a taste of that progress, if only for a fleeting  moment.  Savor your desire for this progress, as its own experience in the moment.  Let it be a "seed" that you can trust to grow, in it own time and on its own terms.  Mindfulness practice trains us to trust that our awareness of a problem or of a need for growth will activate our inner creativity and capacity for change.  We don't need to solve problems, fix things, in the moment as we practice: we learn to trust that solutions will bubble up from within, when the time is right.   

Final assignment:  Mindfully attend to all that arises in your daily practice: bodily sensations, the rhythm of your breath, your emotions, your thoughts; directing love toward each of these experiences... staying open and accepting toward them, releasing them as they pass in their own time and on their own terms.

 

JIM BURKLO
Website: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See a video interview about my new novel, SOULJOURN
See the GUIDE to my articles and books
Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California

How I'm Voting 3/3 in Los Angeles

Dear friends and family:

 

Will you join me in voting on March 3 in the LA primary election?  Email me back with your commitment! 

 

It's a way of voting on the "buddy system".  By promising our friends that we'll vote (no need to tell how we're voting), we increase the likelihood that we'll actually do it!  

 

Showing up to vote, or mailing in our absentee ballots, shows that we care about what happens in our community and that we are paying attention to what our politicians do.  If lots of people vote, politicians feel the necessity to be more accountable for their actions.  Each and every vote thus makes a difference.

 

Some folks, like myself, are election nerds.  Others are not, and for them, it's totally legit to follow the voting advice of people they respect and whose values mirror their own.  It's another form of full participation in the democratic process.  The more people vote, the more responsive our elected officials must be - and that benefits everyone.

 

Here are my picks for March 3:

 

Charter Amendments 1 and 2:  YES.  This will consolidate LA's City Council and School Board elections with state/federal ballots.  The hope is that this will raise the number of voters in local elections substantially, up from the current abysmal level (less than 25% in the most recent mayoral election in LA).  The challenge will be to get voters informed about local contests at the same time they are bombarded with state and federal ballot choices.  So it is not a perfect solution, but it should move us in the right direction.

 

City Council, LA, District 4:  Carolyn Ramsay.  She was the chief of staff of our current Council member, Tom LaBonge.  She is very familiar with city issues and city politics; she is a pragmatist; she supports the $15 minimum wage for the city, she wants to strike a good balance between residential needs and economic development.  It took me a long time to make up my mind in this race, because of the 14 candidates, many are excellent, including Tomas O'Grady, Steve Veres, Sheila Irani, and Wally Knox.  I particularly like Ramsay because she could hit the ground running, due to her extensive experience at City Hall.

 

Los Angeles Community College District:

 

Seat 1:  Francesca Vega - Works as government relations officer at Cal State Northridge - her qualifications and endorsements seem good to me, and getting a Latina on the board seemed like a bonus.

 

Seat 3:  Sydney Kamlager - good qual's and endorsements -

 

Seat 5:  Scott Svonkin - effective incumbent

 

Seat 7:  Mike Fong - good qual's and endorsements

 

 

For other races in LA outside my area, see the endorsements of the LA Times (which I always consider seriously):  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/endorsements/

Waking to the Light

"... remain here, and stay awake with me."  Jesus, Matthew 26: 38

One night of our dog's life lasted for just a few minutes.

 

Our yellow Labrador, Kai, was playing in our front yard on a sunny afternoon, years ago.  He was a frisky puppy, curious about everything, willing to try anything.  He found an empty plastic container with a wide opening at the top.  It fit perfectly around his head, he discovered, as he nuzzled himself inside the container.  For a moment he stood with the jug over his head all the way down his neck.  He didn't move as he considered the implications of this new situation.  Then he calmly laid down on the ground and curled up.  He had concluded that night had fallen and it was time to sleep.  I came along and pulled the jug off his head.  Good morning, Kai!  He stood up, wagged his tail, and started playing like it was a new day.

I’ve spent a certain amount of my life with my head stuck in a jug, convinced that the whole world is dark.  For me, mindfulness meditation practice has been the means by which the jug gets pulled off and I'm able to wake to the light.

My mindfulness practice began in 1976.  When I arrived at San Francisco Theological Seminary in Marin County, CA, I was assigned a roommate by the name of Ken Meece.  I think the seminary administration perceived correctly that neither of us were conventional students, and paired us on this basis.  Ken had spent a long time in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal.  He told his lama that he wanted to become an official Buddhist, but the lama told him to go home to his native country and practice the religion of his origin, and become the most enlightened Christian possible.  Ken followed this order and arrived at the seminary with a shaved head and a habit of doing yogic handstands in our dorm room in the middle of the night.  Once I stumbled into the apartment, and, groping for what I thought was the floor lamp, screamed when I found it was covered with hair!

I asked Ken to teach me everything he'd learned from the Buddhists.  So, at 6 am every morning, we'd climb the hill to the Presbyterian chapel and sit on the floor, bathed in light stained by the windows, and practice mindfulness meditation.  Then we'd take a six-mile run through the forest on the flanks of Mount Tamalpais.  

Ken died a few years ago, after an impressive career of very innovative hospital and prison chaplaincy in northern California.  He was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and wove the insights of mindfulness practice into everything he did.  His life richly fulfilled the intentions of Lama Yeshe, his spiritual teacher.

Mindfulness is a particular kind of meditation focused on being aware and accepting of all forms of experience,in the moment, without judgment, and with an attitude of compassion.  It's doing for ourselves what we do best when we spend time with our friends and family, being present without giving advice, trying to change things, or giving value-judgments.  Wherever I have gone in my career, I've started mindfulness practice groups.  I have done so both out of altruism and because of my need for a group of other people to join in maintaining the discipline.  I started such a group at the University of Southern California, for students and staff.  I also teach a course in basic mindfulness practice at our medical school for students and staff.  These programs are part of a new campus-wide initiative my boss, Varun Soni, and I started this academic year:  Mindful USC - Mindfulness at the University of Southern California .  It's been gratifying to watch this initiative take hold with great enthusiasm from faculty, staff, and students.  We are not so much leading it as tending it!

Besides meditating with the group on campus, I practice mindfulness on my daily walk after work.  To get started, I chant to myself, one word per step, "What - is - here" - inside and out?  What is here in my inner world of emotions, urges, sensations, thoughts, memories, plans, scenario re-enactments?  What is here in the outer world I experience: birds, telephone poles, vistas, mountains, clouds, trash cans?  I strive to walk with an awareness of what is present, without judgment, without being "sucked into" any particular experience and lose the perspective of the compassionate observer.  I find walking meditation to be much harder than sitting meditation, because there are so many inviting distractions.  But I find it hard to do sitting meditation on my own, without being in a group.  

Looking back, I am grateful for the benefits of this practice.  It has helped me be present, moment by moment.  It has slowed time down for me, lengthening my life substantially by enabling me to savor more of the here and the now.  It has trained me to smell the flowers, notice patterns, savor beauty, listen more deeply to others, see and feel so much more.  But by far the greatest benefit has been in improving my relationships with other people.  I have further to go in being a good listener, letting go of judgments toward others.  But I am certain that the degree to which I have been a caring and supportive presence has had everything to do with my mindfulness practice. 

Just before being arrested by the Romans and executed for rabble-rousing against the Empire, Jesus sat in the garden of Gethsemane.  He asked one thing of his disciples:  remain with me, and stay awake with me.  Be with me, simply present, quietly listening, carefully appreciating.  Be here now, because now is all we ever had, and will ever have.  But they couldn't do it.  So they missed out on the eternal life in the eternal now that they could have had with their beloved teacher in his final moments.  The season of Lent, which we now enter, is the time on the Christian calendar for practicing what Jesus asked of his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane.  If we find that our heads are stuck in jugs, we should take consolation, knowing that this consciousness was as hard for Jesus' disciples to maintain as it is for us.  The difficulty of this practice is just another occasion for patient loving-kindness.

I'm nearly 40 years into this mindfulness discipline.  But every time I return to it, day after day, I'm a beginner.  Every time I do the practice, I start like Kai, with my head stuck in a jug.  Slowly, as I meditate, the jug is gently lifted off my head, and I wake to the light of a heightened awareness once more.

 

JIM BURKLO
Website: JIMBURKLO.COM    Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See a video interview about my new novel, SOULJOURN
See the GUIDE to my articles and books
Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California

More on God

Thank you, dear "Musings" readers, for your many responses to last week's post!  It appears that many of you share my need for more clarity about the fuzziness of God.  

 

There is one "Musings" reader whose perspective matters particularly to me.  Her name is Roberta Maran, and she happens to be my wife.  She read my post last week and when I asked her what she thought, she told me she was disappointed.

 

After 21 years living with a Christian minister, hoping the whole time that I might be able to help her get some clarity about the subject, she still was frustrated.  When she was a child, growing up in a devout Catholic family, going to Catholic schools, attending mass faithfully, she wanted to believe in God.  She would lie in bed at night, looking out the window at a sky bathed in moonlight, asking God:  "If you really exist, can you flutter the curtain right now?"  Every time she asked, the curtain stayed still.  She gave up. 

 

Roberta had nothing to do with organized religion until I came into her life decades later.  She kept hoping that I'd give a sermon or write a "Musing" that would explain it all to her in comprehensible, coherent terms.  Over and over again, the curtain stayed still.  She felt like my last post might finally give her the answer, but it didn't quite do it.  Hearing and seeing her disappointment this time, my heart went out to her.  

 

"We've got to solve this problem," I said.  "Twenty-one years is too long."  She agreed.  We talked it through in a way we'd never done before.

 

She emerged with a two-sentence description of God that made sense to her.  I am enchanted with it, especially with the fact that it takes the indeterminate form of questions:

 

"Is it possible that God is the feeling you are left with when there are no words to describe the essence of an experience?  Or is it also possible that God is the feeling of awe that comes when a moment occurs unexpectedly, making surprising connections?"

 

I should have asked my wife who God is a long time ago!

 

 

JIM BURKLO
Website: JIMBURKLO.COM    Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See a video interview about my new novel, SOULJOURN
See the GUIDE to my articles and books
Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California