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January 25, 2025

Story Time: Retelling The Story Of Our Lives

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Our narrative mind thinks in stories, for better and worse.


Each and everyday we are the subject surrounded by the objects of our lives. These in-the-moment tales occupy the mind’s foreground with the plots and scenes of our protagonist identity in everyday life. We plan and problem solve; process and retrieve all in that foreground…we pay our bills, chat with neighbors and curse a red stoplight all in our here and now story. But there is much more to our personal tale than that.


You see, stories also inhabit the vast background of our cognitive life. The background is ground indeed, with stories rooted deeply into the archetypal soils of our psyche and revealed in the quiet moments of the wandering mind. There are stories upon stories all free-associating from one to another: dialogs, monologues, images, memories. Soft daydreams, challenges big and small, even dramas and tragedies propelled by deep emotion. Our tales review many, many yesterdays and countless imagined tomorrows. This mental autobiography of our past and future selves just seems to come from nowhere…and to there it returns. Careful observation shows multiple, simultaneous stories, disconnected narratives in a cacophony of thought. When the foreground recedes, this background naturally comes up to fill that conscious mental space.


Whether foreground or background some storylines invoke jewels of love, compassion, joy or serenity while others do not. These negative ruminations afflict us all and include fears, attachments, aversions and distortions. They often occur in relation to conflict, tension, trauma or depression. What to do?


Foregrounded ruminations could be captured, analyzed for irrationalities and replaced with logical alternatives in various cognitive restructuring strategies. While helpful, these fledgling positive thoughts may be subsumed in the negative stories that undergird them. After all, it is easier and simpler to swap out a thought than a vast storyline. Somehow we must dig into the background and depths of our narrative mind to honestly retell the troublesome, false and irrational scripts that influence our everyday thoughts.


Practice
Some meditation forms relax the storytelling mind. Beginning with acceptance and just noticing the breath. Storylines pass through…and we return to the breath, again and again. There are tiny gaps and even pauses in our narrative streams. It is a good start. And, as we will later discuss, a good finish.

For remediation of these deep, negative storylines, an additional, powerful tool can be brought to bear. We can invoke the ancient Buddhist practice of sending and receiving on behalf of our past and future selves. It is called Tonglen.


This radical practice flies in the face of biologic in-out rhythms for sustenance and breath. After all our life depends upon taking in nutrients and expelling waste. Similarly, for each breath we breathe in oxygen and out carbon dioxide. But this meditation gears all that into reverse as we breathe in the bad, the hot, smoky and toxic…and breathe out the good, the clean, healing and refreshing. Typically and wonderfully this practice is directed toward the aid of others; it can also be directed at our past and future selves. What follows highlights the past, in the form of a Child Self, and the future, in the form of a Dying Self


Imagine this: you sit with a strong erect posture feeling your best Self in the present, the reality of your innate wisdom and compassion, here and now. Feel the vast life-giving Earth below upon which you rest. Then practice this counterintuitive whiff: breathe in the hot, smoky poisons of the World; breathe in our collective greed, hatred and ignorance. Go slow; be wise. It is said the poisons do not get stuck. Take them deeper. See them descending into our compassionate Mother Earth, into the cold, dark soils below where they disperse and nurture new growth. For enduring dreads and atrocities, breathe them deeper down, past the mantle to the fiery core. As if from Shiva’s third eye, let those the flames burn up the poison. Gone. Breathe back to the Earth the jewels of generosity, love and wisdom. Breathe back sunshine, a cool breeze and dogs, tails a wagging.


Pause.


To your left, you visualize a child, your younger self (to start, just at any age that feels right). Next locate a specific negative emotion, often contained in a childhood memory, a story. Lean in to the child’s darkness, heaviness of emotions, tensions and thoughts…and breathe them in, slowly and deeply. As if a loving, brave parent, take on the tears and shames and rages fully. Hold them for a moment, for the child’s pain brings forth the most intimate compassions we could ever know. Now take it deeper, into the Earth, to cold soil or hot core. Gone. And then breathe back to the child the gift of fresh air. Breathe back like a cool breeze with your vow to be mindful- to protect and to nurture that child, always. Finally, exchange smiles, happy tears and love.


Pause.


Next turn your inner gaze to the right. And see yourself in old age, perhaps in sickness. Perhaps near death. Connect to your bravery, to your kindness here and now as you imagine your elder self. Do not look away. As before, breathe in the negative, the regrets, the fear and the resistance-all the way down and into the Earth. Breathe out a basic goodness that has been there all along; what is rational and honest. Breathe in despairs and grudges directed outward and inward, and breathe out forgiveness of others and especially oneself. Breathe in self-judgments and breathe out the karmic wisdom and acceptance of your flawed, wonderful life lived as only you could live it. Breathe in dying aches and pains and breathe out thanks and comfort to this vehicle of blood and bones that carried you every step of the way. Breathe out the radical acceptance of a human life coming to its end, bittersweet, but a jewel all the same. Breathe out integrity. Let go and float. Let go and float.


Pause.


Close as you began with a simple focus on the breath. Allow stories and thoughts to come and go…back to the breath, the here and now. Calming. This simple ending allows these new Tonglen stories to repose and assimilate into our deepest mind.


Over time, our stories retold seem lighter; not so very heavy and hardwired. Poisons recede as Jewels ascend. The child we were and the dying adult we will be receive these new stories with utmost receptivity and gratitude: stories retold in our autobiographical mind.

 

November 26, 2024

A Present For This Season Of Gratitude

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The poet wrote:
Nowhere not,
Lost when sought:
This Moment.

The present moment…what a gift!

Of course, some would argue that the present moment is all any of us ever experience-it is, after all, “nowhere not”. But what about “lost when sought”-the seeking part. Could it be that we seek ourselves right out of the here and now experience? Maybe.


Sometimes we reject the present. Consider that gnawing feeling that whatever this moment holds is just not quite good enough; or the fear of missing out on other moments; or for many, the nearly constant seek-scrolling through social media.


And seeking is just one way the mind could rob us of this gift. We appreciate that there is the necessity of planning for the future and reflecting upon the past. But these worthwhile pursuits too often become future fretting and rumination over real or imagined past experiences. The present is lost.


One way to understand our dilemma is to remember why so many love trips and traveling. Most of us have experienced the satisfaction, the joy of a trip to a new place. It is educational we think to ourselves; it is cultural or historical or a window into others and their lives. All true.


But maybe there is another point. When we are in unfamiliar surroundings, something happens inside of us all. Senses are heightened. Habits of mind and body disappear to accommodate the excitement and freshness of our journey.


Simply put we are present. Sure there are moments when we become lost in thinking about schedules and tickets, but the novelty of travel alerts us again and again. We are freed from the tyranny of habitual perceptions and thoughts. We are fully, here and now…in whatever new environment we have entered. Besides the joys of new places and people, it is this experience of the present moment that delights us as we travel. So much so that some become quite obsessed with traveling and depressed at the thought of being at home.


These observations might present a slightly different way of looking at our travels and our time at home. Let us make the familiar unfamiliar again! Drop the habitual perceptions of home and see it anew. Acknowledge with gratitude that in an ever-changing universe, our home, backyard and neighbors are a little different every day.


The present, nowhere not…even from the front porch on Thanksgiving.

 

November 24, 2024

Let’s Talk About Hands

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Open them, shut them, open them shut them,
Give them a great big clap.
Open them, shut them, open them, shut them,
put them in your lap.


The classroom called special education holds labors and wonders and chants including this one with a hands-in-your-lap finale. This position can be a remarkable point of pause in the hands-busy lives of those students… and the rest of us.


You see, students in class learn life skills that most of the rest of us take for granted, as they pour a cup of juice or tie shoelaces. Hands dedicated to careful and slow pouring or tying is a thing of beauty to watch. To succeed, students like Dolores and Charlie and all of their peers paid rapt attention! And after awhile some teachers began to wonder: who is teaching whom?


What if we all sat still for a moment with our hands in the “pupil mudra”, simply in the lap? Or we could experiment with the symbolic hand gestures associated with various religious traditions like the meditative dhyana mudra: palm up right hand atop palm up left hand, thumbs touching. One could sneak the right hand from the lap to touch the ground even as the left hand remains in the lap. That’s the “earth witness mudra”–see the grand legend for that background story!


Pausing with hands in our lap invites a contemplative state. It sets the stage for the movements that follow. In fact, an interesting mindfulness practice is to simply watch our hands. After all, so many of our daily activities involve mindless hand-based movements, as we day-dream our way through pouring or tying or typing a sentence. We call it “muscle memory”, a kind of motor memory that joins the motor cortex with a part of the brain responsible for behaviors of habit. This efficiency, while essential, can lead to a lost-in-thought lifestyle.


Watching hands deliver these automatic actions now and then is to notice the miracle that we are. Next we could observe the thousands of similar automatic movements dedicated to eating a meal or driving a car or scrolling on a phone. Extraordinary!


No wonder that, in the classroom called special education, Dolores would exclaim in utter joy, “lets talk about hands!”

 

November 19, 2024

Noticing Stuff

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Much has been written on judgment in contrast with discernment and this short essay may add little to that literature. But here goes:


We notice stuff. Our senses are constantly filled with input from the physical world around us and within us. So much so that we automatically select certain inputs, and habituate to the rest, all to minimize the overwhelm from our dynamic surroundings.


Sensory input becomes perception as we organize and interpret these data. One aspect of that process might be called discernment and one expression of discernment could be called judgment. Discernment is a function of mindfulness. It is fluid noticing from moment to moment. Judgment notes and solidifies; it takes a stand. Each has a place.


Judgment has numerous contexts and meanings from religion to law to medicine to the childhood admonition to “show good judgment”. Many of us failed that one!


Some religions have a final or last judgment as well as cautions about judging others; to stand in judgment. Clinical judgment relates to professionals in medicine, nursing and psychology, and a call for rational evaluation and healing. Law presents the archetypal deliverer of judgment, a judge. At best justice emerges from the rigor of good and fair judgments, and at worst, injustice ruins lives by fine or incarceration with financial and reputational harms done. Lastly there are the everyday, ubiquitous judgments of daily decisions to cross the street against a red light or wait for the green; to take an umbrella when storm clouds appear…or not.


Now consider the judgment of others. All around us we notice similarities and differences in appearance, opinion and behavior. And sometimes extreme and harmful behavior requires strong judgment and a hard NO. But in a world fueled by social media, cancel culture and our imperfect perceptions, too many judgments promote misunderstanding, a lot of ill-will and a big mess.


What if we paused instead and looked carefully, with discernment. It does not disappear the mess but invites us to engage and take a deep look. That judgment off-ramp is at hand, but we could hold off for a moment. It can be uncomfortable as we discern similarities and especially differences between people, places, things and situations. Resisting snap judgments allows us to fully engage with that experience.


The steadfast observer might persevere. Discernment after all is about noticing differences, suspending judgment and experiencing. It brings our wisdom and compassion to the forefront and gives a chance for our irrationalities and ill-will to recede.


We could wake up to our capacity to discern the world clearly and take a stand now and then. With practice, judging takes its proper place in moment-to-moment discernment.

 

November 9, 2024

Bad Story. Good Story. No Story

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Tell me a story!

It’s a child’s plea whispered or even demanded (so often at the twilight of bedtime). These stories might be ancient or hot off the presses or made up by parents on the spot. But it is undeniable that kids need to hear those tales, featuring the irresistible protagonist who is none other than themselves.


And the tale so often invokes an antagonist and antagonisms aplenty. There are conflicts conquered, with lessons and morals and life instructions toward “living happily ever after”. Now that’s a good story!


With children, we do not need to explain how the mechanism of storytelling puts them at the center of every plot. They just know! Perhaps that is because our brains are story-attracted brains from the start. Stories promote life lessons, socialization and the assimilation of values. Such a brain has evolutionary advantages for groups, individuals and their progeny.


Story-attracted brains actually think in stories; we become the story. From early on we think in narratives that consist of thoughts and images often propelled by emotion. We remember in stories and we plan in them too. These capacities are an advantage to survival, and maybe sometimes, our happiness.


The story-oriented mind can bring people together with common cause narrations and shared advantage for all. Good stories. Of course, some stories pull groups apart. And competing narratives can and do pit tribes against one another with spats and rumbles and wars. Within individuals, negative thoughts can unleash stories of war upon the self. These can degrade to self-contempt and self-destruction. Lesser outcomes might include a bad day, un-satisfactoriness and deflation. Those are the bad stories.


Perhaps one of the most insidious, if not altogether bad, functions of stories is to inflate a compensatory, false self: “me, Me, ME”. Sometimes called our “storyline”, these ubiquitous narratives address deflation with an armor of conceit or worse: an over zealous selfishness and sense of entitlement.


Such a problem has led some to consider the alternative of inner quiet and no story at all. We could drop our self-serving storylines and engage fully with life on life’s terms. No agenda. No scheming. The trouble is most find it hard if not impossible to go from bad stories to no story at all. Those bad stories seem to grip us…and if we are honest, many of us hold on tightly to them too.


How might we proceed?


While difficult at first, we could start attending to good stories that reduce narratives imbued with automatic negative thoughts, and rest in our blessings. We nudge forward stories that promote themes of loving kindness, compassion, generosity and serenity. With imperfect but consistent effort those personal narratives slowly change.


What else? We could unplug from compulsions with social media and be inspired by the myths, parables, koans and chronicles that highlight our basic goodness and wisdom. These perennial philosophies abound across time and space, so we should pause and listen.


While bad stories anchor us to egotisms within and between human beings, good stories seem to calm us, even liberate us. We could be delivered, moments at a time into the serenity of no story at all:


that wonderful pause and silence at the end of every outbreath.

 

October 2, 2024

Varieties Of Hope

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Hope is good, right? Wait a minute, I heard that hope is actually bad. Well, maybe not exactly.


Let’s just say that hope is tricky.


We could imagine that hope occupies a continuum stretching from no hope to high hopes. No hope, the absence of hope, is hopelessness, a state that social scientists have rightly associated with depressed states, even suicide. Surprisingly, some very wise teachers have suggested that we cultivate a mindset of hopelessness. But why?


To understand that as anything but utter madness, consider the other end of the continuum, high hopes. That is, through the ceiling, ultra-optimistic hope. As a temporary or lingering state, that kind of hope feels pretty good, even ecstatic. Such a mindset deserves a deeper look.


Most will admit that high hopes occasionally rendezvous with big realities and that great aspirations might be the very path to realizing those big dreams. It happens. But what about lofty hopes so extreme that our leaps become hard landings, half-steps and stumbles? We land disoriented and empty handed. There is disappointment…and discouragement and depression and giving up. Our hopes and expectations can become, not uplifting, but an anchor taking us down. That is the nature of false hope.


Perhaps, we have this continuum all wrong. The extremes of high hopes and no hope have their moments of course. But a better guide might be to start with honest hope. That kind of aspiration is basic and true. For honest hope we must summon our courage and rationality as well as our fundamental truthfulness as we abandon self-deception. It is unsettling to imagine that this approach messes with the continuum of hope we started off with. After all, the answer to hope may not be quite as easy as to keep it high or keep it low, and then go on auto-pilot.


Instead, hope seems more of a moving a target. We could abandon the delusion that there is some static bulls-eye and all the trembling that goes with the pressure to hit it.


This new conception of hope is as fluid as the blood in our veins. As light as the air we breathe. Our ever-changing life demands that hope be ever-changing too. Mindfully, we could begin to notice that there is a natural, dynamic relationship of hope to circumstance. Ever-changing hope is hard but genuine. As precious ideas about hopes high and low disappear, we might discover, moment to moment, honest hope for ourselves.

 

September 11, 2024

TRISOMY XXI AND THE HAND OF GOD

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This chance world of unfolding spectacle:
Exploding stars, eroding canyons,
Inclement weather
And that extra chromosome and unmistakable phenotype
Of supple limbs, protruding tongue
And those sweet almond eyes…


An accident that touches every cell
Of the body host.


Once like unfit runts, suffering, dying.
And now aborted or persevering into the
Caustic womb of institutions or into a world indifferent:
Save that special – olympic –weekend,
And us.


And we that live with them, and counsel them, and teach them,
Have a little time for the dark side and the Mystery.
Our passion is in helping. And so we help and help too much.
We hope for them, fear for them, idealize or dismiss them,
Become frustrated or intolerant,
Learn compassion and letting go…


And slowly come to know
That by their sacrifice and imperfection they teach us,
Move us,
Mold us.


A transverse crease upon the hand of God.

 

June 19, 2024

Write. Right. Rite

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We scribble in our first efforts to express the basic need to lay pencil or crayon to surfaces of all kinds. We mark on paper and coloring books as well as on floors and walls and sometimes across the pages of hardcover classics (sorry, mom).


These child-arts foreshadow drawing and painting and symbol making and alphabet. We write.
And for some of us, writing may become more than a requirement of school or the workplace. For some of us, it channels an expressive need innate to our character. Some with exceptional talent create and publish poems and works of non-fiction and fiction. For others, less talented, but wholly committed, the journal beckons.


There is in the Buddhist Tradition a Path, with 8 overlapping divisions (no claims of expertise here). These are sometimes called “Right” as in “Right Understanding”. Not right in the sense of right-wrong so much as right in the sense of wise. To write is right in the latter sense; it is wise to make this effort (Another of the Eight, “Right Effort”). Sometimes words flow in the journaling process and sometimes they are painfully stuck, yet we stay with it.


These words, flowing or stuck, reflect and express our Thought (another of the Eight, “Right Thought”). And so it goes in this thought-to-word written process. Akin to effort, there is a discipline to it all beginning with the intention (“Right Intention”) to write, a vow to write. In a very real sense, writing could then become a ritual, a Rite. This is a practice that supports and is supported by concentration and mindfulness (two others of the Eight).


Write. Right. Rite.


Perhaps for the talented few mentioned earlier, it all could become “Right Livelihood” and a vocation. For the rest of us, a practice like journaling is its own magic. Digging deep, thought transformed by reframing negativities and underscoring our basic goodness brings a more honest and accurate quality to our never-ending storylines. We face and write down those oh so automatic negative thoughts… thoughts that feature our flaws, shames and traumas could be bravely confronted and released instead of repeated over and over again. And as we write, all the forgotten gifts, large or small, the hugs and winks and even the tiniest acts of kindness, given or received, could move to the foreground.

Thought slowly transformed has effects. It informs what we say and choose not to say (“Right Speech”). It informs what we do and choose not to do (“Right Action”). Unending, this practice is revelatory and timeless, unearthing joys and challenges in the ever-changing story of our past, present and future: The deep blessing of our one and only life.


Write. Right. Rite

 

May 6, 2024

When No Comes Before Yes

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Following a nine-month (or so) gestation, birth is our first big “yes” to the lifespan. Many more moments of yes will follow. The body says yes and the mind says yes to our newborn human life. Our cerebellum doubles in volume by three months. The number and density of brain synapses (connections between neurons) grows in dramatic affirmation of our mental potentials.

But then negation comes in the form of synaptic pruning, a cutting away of less used connections in favor of making fewer stronger ones. Yes, no, yes…

We could notice the ebb and flow of yes and no through the years, and even in the moments of our lives from the very start. Babies are a symphony of yeses and nos. A cacophony sometimes.

Think of it, consciousness placed in our tiny selves (the first yes?) as we womb float and then crunch through a canal into a human life, crying “No” all the way! We learn to move, then move to learn. And we start thinking, not in words at first, but in sensory and motor intelligences or schema. Words are learned as we go and added to the mix.

At the center of thought (and actually created by it) is “me”. The infant’s myriad of experiences begins to have a constancy and predictability in a world that truly does seem to revolve around “me”. We are called by a name. My name.

So perhaps there is a second gestation of say 1-24 months. After all, it is said that a sense of “me” is formed over those first couple of years. An ego. And it begins not with a yes but with a resounding NO! No I am not you, I am me! That is not yours, it is mine! For the toddler, no truly comes before yes.

This brand new “me” is glorious and seems to include you and, well, everything. As marvelous as that sounds, it is also pretty scary and feels massively out of control.

Toddlers are big on control.

That brand new me needs external limits set consistently and with love. Thus, the ego is protected, contained and at least partly stabilized toward autonomy. Children need those external boundaries that model the internal ones they will erect. Boundaries, inside and out, hold the “me” and prevent the “you” from swallowing me. Children could learn to trust trustworthy others and begin to feel safe in their world.

What then? Growing up, we all start to believe in “me”; in its solidity and reality. Each sensation and perception and thought is mine. And it is all “me”, an illusion increasingly understood as a function of brain regions dedicated to the theme of my mind; my body.

There is little doubt as to the survival value of higher cortical functions like planning, tool making and language in its various forms. And we should put the individual, the ego, in that same category of evolutionary advantage. The illusion of a “me”, separate from everything else, is an adaptation that gains momentum over our lives.

But maybe, at this juncture of human history, the advantage is disappearing.

It seems that after several hundred thousand years, more or less, our individualism has developed to the extreme. One could argue that besides reason, love and empathy, we have all become masters of poisons like greed, hatred and ignorance in ten thousand forms and ways. Modern economic systems, armies and media all seem to double-down on those poisons.

What to do?

Maybe recognize what we forgot long ago or never fully understood. That my thoughts do not come from me, but rather, a me-illusion develops from all my thinking (and emoting and perceiving). But I am not my thoughts. Illusions and opinions should not be taken too seriously. With that a fluidity emerges…a flow. Like a river that is always the same and never the same and where egos evaporate. The river sound holds our collective experience, every yes and every no of everyone.

Listen: Flow.

 

April 15, 2024

Some Concerns

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Buddhist psychology describes the so-called Eight Worldly Dharmas. Sometimes expressed as the Eight Worldly Concerns, they are: Pleasure and pain; fame and disgrace; praise and blame; gain and loss. We want the former and eschew the latter. Of course!


But maybe there is a little more to it.


Chasing a desired outcome seems logical enough except when the chase intensifies into preoccupation, greed and even obsession. And eschewing undesired conditions is likewise reasonable, except when the push becomes frantic, aggressive and harmful. The worldly concerns are potent elixirs that hook us into rapacity for more or desperation for less. We become insatiable for one. And we hate the other.


Attachment to outcomes wanted or unwanted is worth investigating. Circumstances forever come our way and with circumstance comes concern. Just noticing conditions might better suit us rather than concerned clinging (or averting) in relation to them. Imagine noticing pleasure, fame, praise and gain without attaching to those experiences. Further imagine a mindfulness over pain, disgrace, blame, and loss without frenetic pushing away.


We could feel the essence of these qualities as they pass. No holding on; no pushing way. No apathy either. Fully engaged. Fully letting go. As in the Prayer: to dwell in the great equanimity, free from grasping, averting and indifference.

 

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