the gift of attention

The people I work with are superb role models: from the one who cleans a room after a patient’s departure, to the physician who examines, explains, and prescribes, the volunteers who dash to answer a call-bell, the social worker who assists families during times of distress, nurses who provide expert care … and many others. One thing they’re all good at is listening: to each other and to patients and their loved-ones.  

Monitoring my own interactions over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed how often I jump in with clever observations, premature conclusions, and the always-suspect bits of advice. When I’m with patients, I’m quite good at listening, pausing, holding silence, and eliciting responses if that seems appropriate. But with co-workers, so my inner critic informs me, I tend to do more talking than listening.

“Every form of caregiving is a treasure of teaching,” writes Kathleen Dowling Singh. “The treasure is offered whether the caregiving occurs in the form of caring for babies and children, the lonely, the elderly, the frail and infirm, the disturbed, or the dying. … Each act of care brings us into the realm of the private, the intimacy of the interpersonal.  …

“The gift of our complete and focused attention is one of the kindest gifts we can give each other. It confers on both parties, apparent giver and apparent receiver, a sense of meaning, of value, of mattering. Why? Because in the moment of the gift of attention, we are actually present; our attention is deliberately and single-pointedly placed, our very life in that moment is meaningful.

“I have come to think that ‘being understood’ is sometimes even more of a fundamental human need than ‘being loved.’ We are nurtured in the gift of another’s attention. It provides the safest of places in which to share our vulnerabilities, fears, doubts, and triumphs. … We feel reconnected to our common humanity in the moment of being present with each other.”

source: Singh, K. D. (2003). “The gift of attention.” In: Brady, M. (ed.). The wisdom of listening. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publ., p.192. Dr. Singh is Buddhist teacher in the Tibetan tradition, a therapist, and author of The grace in dying: how we are transformed spiritually as we die. HarperPerennial (1998).

rare opportunity to learn brushwork

Brush lines are honest reflections of our body and mind. Drawing lines with awareness helps us to be fully attentive, decisive, and present. Brushwork has been an important part of meditation practice in East Asia. Brush creativity brings forth a new dimension of insight, healing, and joy.

Tools and materials will be provided. No previous experience is necessary. Saturday-Sunday, July 12-13, Centre for Peace, 1825 West 16th Avenue (at Burrard), Vancouver. $150. To register, phone Kate & Michael at 604-462-0604. Decide soon as space is limited.

Kazuaki Tanahashi is a painter, calligrapher, translator, writer, and peace worker. Born and trained in Japan and active in the United States since 1977, he’s had solo exhibitions of brushwork and painting performances worldwide. Kaz has illustrated many Buddhist books and his work is frequently seen in Shambhala Sun; his own books include Brush Mind, Penetrating Laughter: Hakuin’s Zen and Art; Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen; and Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation.

mindfulness?

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A word that’s popping up all over the place, from ads selling tea, day spas, and sound systems, to corporate mission statements, hip how-to books, and workshops for caregivers, parents, and assistant managers.  A 2500 years old concept central to the Buddhist eight-fold path, it refers to the intention of bringing awareness to thoughts and actions in the present moment. 

“Becoming mindful has to do with letting go of ambitions to control, solve problems, or achieve anything. Instead we choose to bear witness. A witness … is passive in the sense of deliberately not manufacturing anything. Rather a witness is willing to observe, be receptive to, and learn from whatever arises. … We enter into the confusion and mystery of whatever is happening with a curious, experimental attitude, not knowing what might be discovered, but welcoming, appreciating, and savoring what is. We slow down, and let go of automatic reactions that normally tell us what something is and what it means.”

source: Johanson, G. and Kurtz, R. (1991). Grace unfolding: psychotherapy in the spirit of the Tao-te ching. New York: Belltower, p.13. Ron Kurtz developed the Hakomi Method, an approach to psychotherapy grounded in the wisdom of East and West. 

 

wishing to right what isn’t wrong

Three or more years ago, when I began to volunteer in palliative care, I found it most puzzling to be asked to attend to someone lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, breathing erratically, seemingly in another place, and showing no interest in my being there. What was I supposed to be doing? How could I be of service? What could I give to this patient? They didn’t seem to hear, see, or even notice my presence in the room. Might as well leave and find someone more open to my generous offering, I probably thought. And yet … I stayed and, over time, have learned about the importance of loving presence. 

Parker J. Palmer–Quaker, educator, and activist–speaks to this all-too-human desire to want to fix or certainly ameliorate another’s dilemma:

“‘When we sit sit with a dying person, we gain two critical insights into what it means to ‘be alone together.’ First, we realize that we must abandon the arrogance that often distorts our relationships–the arrogance of believing that we have the answer to the other person’s problems. When we sit with a dying person, we understand that what is before us is not a ‘problem to be solved’ but a mystery to be honored. As we find a way to stand respectfully on the edge of that mystery, we start to see that all our relationships would be deepened if we could play the fixer role less frequently.

“Second, when we sit with a dying person, we realize that we must overcome the fear that often distorts our relationships–the fear that causes us to turn away when the other reveals something too vexing, painful, or ugly to bear. Death may be all of this and more. And yet we hold the dying person in our gaze, our hearts, our prayers, knowing that it would be disrespectful to avert our eyes, that the only gift we have to offer in this moment is our undivided attention.”

source: Palmer, P.J. (2004). A hidden wholeness: the journey toward an undivided life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p.61. 

listening as worship

Walking down the hallway this morning, I caught a glimpse of someone lying in bed reading the paper. The room looked dim, blinds lowered almost to the windowsill. I took a few more steps and, without further thinking, turned around, knocked and entered. The patient, call him Mr. Grant, lowered the paper and with a smile of surprise coached me to raise the blinds just do. What made you stop by? he wanted to know, oxygen mask askew, bright eyes piercing out from under bushy white brows. It looked a bit dark for reading, I explained.

Seemingly without segue, he spoke of three sons who are looking after him, cutting the grass at the house while he’s away, one fixing the shower, the other arranging for daily visits from a home care worker to make his breakfast and peel a few spuds for supper. And how he’d tavelled to Hawaii with his wife of 52 years and how doctors had told her to get back home because she had skin cancer. And how his hearing aid stopped working and had been sent for repairs and how his hearing was gone in one and below 40% in the other ear. And why had I stopped by? And would I come and visit him at home, ring the bell (best come around the back), seven blocks from the shopping centre, in a house bought back in ‘62 for less than three thousand, and guess show much it’s worth today!

Where’s this going, asked a tiny voice in my head; not important, said the other: just listen. This man is telling you a story. It matters little whether you understand the details. Listen to the sound, the music, the emphasis in his telling. “True listening brings us in touch even with that which is unsaid and unsayable,” writes John O’Donohue.

Close to dying, his wife long gone, sons nearby or imagined, hearing shot, breathing a pain. What was important at that moment? Martin Heidegger says that true listening is worship. Here was Mr. Grant (pro)claiming fragments of his life and I was his witness. Nothing else mattered.

Today was the third day in the new role as interim Coordinator of Spiritual Care at Victoria Hospice. 

your lover is in here

Zen master Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) said, “To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things.” The air we breathe, the water we drink, neighbours, loved ones, and strangers all with their peculiarities, the myriad crevices of our bodies and hearts, the places where we walk, work, pray, weep, eat, defecate, sleep, and awake: everywhere, everything.

“Love is mysterious,” writes Jack Kornfield. “We don’t know what it is, but we know when it is present. If we seek love, we must ask where it is to be found. It is here only this moment. To love in the past is simply a memory. To love in the future is a fantasy. There is only one place where love can be found., where intimacy and awakening can be found, and that is in the present. … The only place we can genuinely love a tree, the sky, a child, or our lover is in the here and now.”

source: Kornfield, J. (1993). A path with heart: a guide through the perils and promises of spiritual life. Bantam, p.333.

bag of bones department

During sitting meditation yesterday I had a sense, briefly, of not being my body. I felt as if I was witnessing a mechanism (for lack of better word) that gurgled, pumped, creaked, and functioned all on its own. For that moment it wasn’t me or mine at all! My teachers often speak of us not being our bodies, that it’s a construct of the ego, the small-self, which claims to control and know everything. They encourage—such is my limited understanding of all this—to not separate from the body, but to see it for what it is. They urge us to become aware of the body as body in everyday activities.

As a key Buddhist texts points out, ”When the practitioner walks, he knows he is walking. When he stands, he knows he is standing. When he sits, he knows he is sitting. When he lies down, he knows he is lying down. When he wakes up, he knows he is waking up. Awake or asleep, he knows he is awake or asleep. This is how the practitioner is aware of body as body, both inside the body and outside the body, and establishes mindfulness in the body with understanding, insight, clarity, and realization. This is called being aware of body as body.”

Jean-Paul Sartre viewed the human body as “an assembly of sense organs,“ as “flesh.” Reminds me of sitting in the medical clinic, watching the nurse placing a stethoscope against my skin, listening to organs, muscles, blood vessels, etc.  And of times when something is not working properly and I might say that “I have a bad back,” “my teeth hurt,” or “my skin broke out in a rash.” That sort of language suggests that we’re reporting from a separate place, looking at something. Kay Toombs: “My body, like the world in which I live, has its own nature, structure, and biological conditions …”.

I’m not arguing a separation of body and mind (and heart and soul, for that matter). I find myself looking for words to describe what seems a Self (capital S) that is larger than the small-self of this skin and bones object I call “my body.” By experimenting with this “larger” view I begin to see my ageing body as just that, a “bag of bones” (as the ancient teachers called it). In short, I inhabit a body, but I am not my body.

source: S. Kay Toombs. (1992). The meaning of illness. Springer, p.60; Nian Chu Jing. The Sutra on the Four Grounds of Mindfulness at www.purifymind.com/FourGroundsSutra.htm.

sa vou ring

Here’s a meditation on seeing and holding and tasting food by the Vietnam-born Zen monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. For many, eating is such a routine and essentially mind-less activity … making it an ideal reminder to slow down and be present with what’s in front of us. 

“After breathing, we smile. Sitting at the table with other people, we have a chance to offer an authentic smile of friendship and understanding. It is very easy, but not many people do it. To me, this is the most important practice. We look at each person and smile at him or her. Breathing and smiling together are very important practices. If the people in a family cannot smile at each other, the situation is a very dangerous one.

“After breathing and smiling, we look down at the food in a way that allows the food to become real. This food reveals our connection with the earth. Each bite contains the life of the sun and the earth. The extent to which our food reveals itself depends on us. We can see and taste the whole universe in a piece of bread! Contemplating our food for a few seconds before eating, and eating in mindfulness, can bring us much happiness.

“Having the opportunity to sit with our family and friends and enjoy wonderful food is something precious, something not everyone has. Many people in the world are hungry. When I hold a bowl of rice or a piece of bread, I know that I am fortunate, and I feel compassion for all those who have no food to eat and are without friends or family.

“This is a very deep practice. We do not need to go to a temple or a church in order to practise this. We can practise it right at our dinner table. Mindful eating can cultivate seeds of compassion and understanding that will strengthen us to do something to help hungry and lonely people be nourished.”

source: Hanh, Thich Nhat. (1990). Present moment, wonderful moment: mindfulness verses for daily living. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.

silence

This is the extent of today’s post. I’m going to spend the day in silence.

Perhaps you can do the same–even if just for a little while.

May you be happy.

there goes monkey mind (i think)

As reported yesterday from Berlin:

Several seconds before we consciously make a decision, its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. This is shown by a recent study where researchers used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. “Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings,” said Prof. John-Dylan Haynes, the lead researcher.

Makes me wonder about the practice of noting (and letting go of) thoughts during meditation. Japanese Zen master Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (1912-1999) writes that

“When we think, we think of something. Thinking of something means grasping that something with thought. However, during zazen (meditation) we open the hand of thought that is trying to grasp something, and simply refrain from grasping. This is letting go of thoughts.”

So, does an experienced meditator “see a thought coming” even before the conscious mind can make out the specifics? Can one, in other words, let go of a thought before it occurs? Is that what Ken Wilber calls “pure awareness”? Can someone tell me? Or am I asking the wrong questions? Or does it matter?

source: Kosho Uchiyama. (2004). Opening the hand of thought. Tom Wright, et al. (trans.). Boston: Wisdom Publ., p.50.

surprise!

  

For many years I dug the ground looking for blue sky,

accumulating layers and layers of mediocrity.

One night in the darkness, the roof tiles were blown away.

The bones of emptiness dissolved of themselves.

 

–Zen master Muso Soseki 夢窓疎石 (1275–1351)

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mindfulness task #9

Here we resume the posting of tasks to focus on living mindfully. The instructions are sent by Jogen, one of the novices at Great Vow Zen Monastery.

This week’s task is related to the Preparing for Death classes by our teacher Chozen Bays. The first part of the task is to recite the Five Remembrances [which are essential Buddhist teachings] once a day, preferably before bedtime. We recite these to help us reflect and stay in touch with what is most essential in our lives.

The Five Remembrances are:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everything I love are of the nature of change. There is no escape from being separated from them.
My deeds are my closet companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.

The second aspect of this week’s task is to spend a period of meditation doing what Chozen calls “last breath, first breath.” The practice is to exhale as if it were our last breath before death, rest in the space before the turning of the breath, and allow for the natural inhalation with gratitude for another moment of life. Over and over.

image: www.mydigitallife.co.za

recipe for a good life

Suggestions from a blog by Carla Blazek: “Light candles. Unplug the phone after 6 pm. Practice saying no. Take a walk alone. Limit your news intake. Pray. Swing on a swingset! Listen to mellow music. Meditate. Take a mini-retreat. Color in a coloring book. Mimic your cat. Read brainfluff novels. Read Rumi. Read in a library. Read in a café. Read in bed. Ask for help. Nap in a sunbeam. Snuggle. Soak your feet. Doodle. Indulge in pleasure TV. Get a massage. Stroll through a garden you don’t have to weed. Burn your shoulds. Lower your standards. Accept help. Write a gratitude list. Breathe.”

My additions: “Exhale. Read more Rumi. Eat the best chocolate possible. Bake bread. Read a children’s books (to yourself, slowly, aloud). Play with paint as if you were five years old. Snap photos by wandering around your neighbourhood. Admire yourself in the mirror. Make a collage from magazine cutouts, text and images. Sit quietly in a room. Write a card to someone you love. Mail the card. Soak in a tub. Take a nap. Walk around your home naked. Get a pedicure. $10 will buy you an outrageously-coloured hat or scarf. Do nothing and enjoy it. Make a list of what you’re good at. Have breakfast in bed. Dance. Say ‘yes’ to something you usually resist.”

What would you add to the list? You send, I post!

birds singing

The other day I mused about waking up to the sound of birds (see March 2). This led me to paying closer attention to what happens around me. Being cocooned in a world of my own making—comprised of thoughts, schemes, reminiscences, fears, expectations, aversions, projection, etc.—keeps me from seeing and hearing what occurs right in front of me. Or behind and above. Each moment is fresh, each sound occurs just once. It comes and it goes. Each repetitions is in fact a new occurrence. My friend Martha is a birder: she showed me a book in which someone describes the song-life of just thirty birds on 484 pages and a CD. The author is a retired professor of ornithology; he has studied bird-songs for 30 years. His eloquent writing and obvious love of subject engaged me instantly.

Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction*. May it lead you to seeing the world around you with fresh ears and eyes—even for a minute, today. 

“Somewhere, always, the sun is rising, and somewhere, always, the birds are singing. … Ten thousand species strong, their voices and styles are as diverse as they are delightful. Some species learn their songs, just as we humans learn to speak, but others seem to leave nothing to chance, encoding the details of songs in nucleotide sequences in the DNA. Of those that learn, some do so only early in life, some throughout life; some from fathers, some from eventual neigbors after they leave home; some only from their own kind, some mimicking other species as well. Some species sing in dialects, others not. It is mostly he who sings, but she does sometimes, too. Some songs are proclaimed from the treetops, others whispered in the bushes; some ramble for minutes on end, others are offered in just a split-second. Some birds have thousands of different songs, some only one, and some even none. Some sing all day, some all night. Some are pleasing to the ear, and some are not. It is this diversity that I celebrate.” 

* Donald Krootsma. (2005). The singing life of birds—an intimate guide to the private life of birds: how, when, why, and where birds sing. Houghton Mifflin, p.IX.  image:www.cs.sfu.ca

mindfulness revisited

From Zoketsu Norman Fischer’s Abbot’s Journal where he reflects on mindfulness in the context of a retreat with international managers last August.

“With mindfulness there are three points:

“First the difference between mindfulness and self-consciousness. Mindfulness is exactly not self-consciousness, it’s establishing a wide field of awareness (wider than “self” would allow) in which inner experiences and outer experiences (and there is no important difference between these) can both be contextualized into a larger sphere. When we can do this, through careful, subtle [meditation] training … and extending that to the whole of life, we can be quite aware of what goes on within us–more aware, with fewer constraints–without being limited by it; and we can connect more warmly with others through the recognition that our feelings are simply human feelings, what everyone feels, that they don’t belong exclusively to us.

“Second, that Dogen’s meditation instruction* “think not thinking” is a kind of thinking. An open, creative, intuitive sort of thinking, without goal or purpose, and therefore more likely to get us outside the pattern of our usual thought, more likely to be creative. (The group’s CEO saw this point immediately: he said that he always got his best ideas and best solutions to problems when he was jogging or bicycling or trimming the hedges).

“Third, that with mindfulness comes eventually connection to life’s deepest suffering, and deepest truths, and therefore profound sympathy with others, and compassion.”

* Dogen is revered as the founder of the Soto branch of Zen Buddhism and for bringing Zen (ch’an) from China to Japan in the 1200’s.