Exquisitemind's Blog

Mindfulness Matters: Tools for Living Now with Dr. Arnie Kozak on Beliefnet

exquisitemind — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:43:35 +0000

I am very happy to announce the commencement of my blog on Beliefnet: “Mindfulness Matters: Tools for Living Now with Dr. Arnie Kozak.” This blog will cover a range of mindfulness-related topics. It will present and comment on mindfulness, meditation, and Buddhist news, research, teachers, centers, books, and events. I will also comment on mindfulness and Buddhism in sport, especially golf with a particular emphasis of golf as a spiritual path. I will present metaphors for mindfulness from my book Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness and new metaphors that will be featured in forthcoming book projects.

I am a mindfulness-based psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and author in beautiful Burlington Vermont. I founded the Exquisite Mind Psychotherapy and Meditation Studio in 2002 and this is a place where people come to learn mindfulness and benefit from its healing power. In 1985 I took the Bodhisattva vows from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya India, the holy pilgrimage place where the historical reached his awakening under the pipal tree some 2500 years ago. I was not alone. Also in attendance where 250,000 Tibetans from the exile community and others who had received permission to come to this special Kalachakra Tantra Ceremony. And then there were ten thousand or so monks and about a thousand Westerners from Australia, Europe, Great Britain, and the States. Since that time 25 years ago I have endeavored to fulfill that Bodhisattva obligation of attaining enlightenment for the benefit of others, sometimes better than others. This blog is part of that Bodhisattva path of helping others and to do so through sharing the wisdom of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the central practice that I use to work towards my own enlightenment. Vipassana meditation has been my practice of choice since 1989 when I sat my first ten-day silent meditation retreat with the formidable S. N. Goenka. I also approach my Bodhisattva nature by helping people in psychotherapy, teaching them how to use mindfulness and teaching people in an array of situations: workers in corporations, undergraduate students in psychology, medical students, medical residents, fellow mental health clinicians, and anyone in the community who is interested in bringing more mindfulness into their lives. In 2009, Wisdom Publications, a small and important dharma publisher, published my first book, Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness. My second book, Swing Like You Don’t Care: 54 Golf Axioms, Maxims, and Metaphors is currently with an agent seeking a publisher. My third book will be the second edition of Everything Buddhism, part of the Everything Series.

Welcome to this journey into mindfulness. The information, commentary, and links that you will find on this blog serve as Tools for Living Now! For more information about my work, please visit my Exquisite Mind website.

Biology Casts Its Vote For Impermanence

exquisitemind — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:49:27 +0000

First, mapping the human genome, now creating synthetic life. These are some of the accomplishments of Craig Venter, founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute a nonprofit genomics research institute. He was interviewed on the NPR program, On Point. His team was able to create sequences of DNA from four bottles of chemicals according to instructions provided by a computer. This chromosome was then injected into a microplasma micoides cell and was integrated into its replicating process such that after millions of generations it fully integreated the new genetic instructions. Venters calls it a “self-replicating cell that’s parent is a computer.” This is not artificial life or life from scratch, but life modified by changes in DNA. Venter says strikingly in a statement that might have been uttered by the Buddha if he had a Ph.D. in biology, “We change second to second in our cells and we are software driven machines, and the software is DNA.”

This is a good definition of impermanence — we are always changing at the cellular level and as Venter’s research demonstrates, quite changeable. We know that most of the cells of our body die and are replaced every seven years and we also know that the atoms in our bodies change over about once a year — EVERY atom! Now, too we know, moment-by-moment our cells are changing. We are not snapshots, still life’s capturing something fixed in place. We are motion and change, fluid and malleable. We are more video than snap shot, more action painting than still life.

What are the implications of this? In any given moment, I can ask myself the question, “What am I trying to protect here, and why?” Instead of protection, can we move with the changing nature of things. After all, our cells are changing moment-by-moment and so is everything else. We can celebrate this change, or at least take a keen interest in its undulations and vicissitudes. Or we can try to keep these changing tides fixed. I’m in a good mood right now, my energy bright, my body relaxed. The part of my mind that doesn’t want to understand impermanence thinks this is the way it should be, what I’m entitled too. But, of course, reality doesn’t really care about what I think things should be like or what I think I should be entitled to, it just does its thing of change. So a few moments later I feel a twinge of tension in my neck shooting down to my hip. The frame of this moment looks and feels different from the last. I can complain about this. I can bemoan my fate and put energy into trying to recapture that previous moment. This winds up getting rather tedious after a while. So, rather than putting energy into trying to keep things the same, I’ll reflect on the dynamic, changing nature of my cells, imagine them dancing their dance of life.

Auction for a Mindful Society

exquisitemind — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:02:52 +0000

I was excited when my book, Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness was included in the Auction for A Mindful Society, the first annual hosted by the Shambhala Sun foundation. The products and services offered will help you to live a mindful life and proceeds will help to benefit Shambhala Sun Foundation’s Mindful Society initiative. For more information visit Bidding for Good.

“Monk’s Enlightenment Begins With A Marathon Walk”

exquisitemind — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:27:23 +0000

11 May 2010 NPR presents an intriguing story of walking Japanese Zen monks. These monks aren’t going for a stroll. One monk completes the “Sennichi Kaihogyo, 1,000 days of walking meditation and prayer over a seven-year period around Mount Hiei. He walked 26 miles a day for periods of either 100 or 200 consecutive days.” That’s the equivalent of a trip around the earth. Japanese Zen is notorious for such feats, but the Sennichi Kaihogyo is a walk in the park compared with the “test” that occurs 700 days into the process. Here, he “prays nonstop for nine days, without eating, drinking, sleeping or even lying down. It’s a near-death experience, the monk says.” Such a test burns away all traces of story and resistance and provides the practitioner with an unencumbered look at existence. This is a existential experience of purity and one must be willing to relinquish everything to have it. The article notes, “Finally, his old self dies, at least figuratively, and he is reborn to help and lead all beings to enlightenment.” These extreme experience cuts away at the illusion of separation, helping the monk to pursue his Bodhisattva path — working for the betterment of all sentient beings. Such experiences are the equivalent of Buddhist Olympics and not the sort of thing that we might contemplate or practice on a daily basis. They are certainly not necessary for us to have a taste of that interconnectedness with everything and everyone around us. Certainly, the Buddha spent a lot of time walking around northern India with his retinue of followers and walking meditation is an important practice for mindfulness. So, we can embody this spirit each time we walk in a deliberate manner. As lay practitioners we may not have the time to spend 1000 days walking the equivalent of a marathon, but as Tich Nhat Hanh reminds us, peace can be in every step.

9 Reasons to Practice Mindfulness

exquisitemind — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:45:14 +0000

Mindfulness can bring our brains into an integrated state of harmony, balancing chaos on the one hand and rigidity on the other. This scientific wisdom is brought to us by neuroscientist, Dan Siegel, author of several important books, including the Developing Mind, The Mindful Brain, Mindsight, and his latest, The Mindful Therapist. The middle prefrontal cortex (a portion of the newest part of the brain evolution-wise, located behind your forehead) is critical to the following nine functions: 1. Bodily regulation. This is accomplished by regulating arousal and relaxation through the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system (think of the gas pedal and a brake in a car); 2. Attunement and being connected to others, or being “in tune.” Attunement sows the seeds of compassion; 3.Emotional balance refers to how we engage with experiences. It balances apathy on the one hand and feeling overwhelmed on the other. Like bodily regulation its a Goldliocks phenomenon, not too much and not too little. This is the optimal place where we find neural integration; 4. Response flexibility that refers to the pause that can develop between a stimulus and response. It really refers to the impulsive reactions that often occur in response to a stimulus. This pause comes from awareness and can help us to less impulsive and less destructive with what we say and do; 5. Downregulation of fear. This important feature is our ability to modulate the signals from the emotional brain that can often overwhelm us. This is accomplished through the development of inhibitory nerve fibers that go from the middle prefrontal cortex to structures like the amygdala in the emotional brain (limbic system); 6. Insight refers to what Siegel calls mental time travel or what we can call imagination. Mindfulness helps us to refine this capacity in the service living skillfully rather than being subjected the unregulated aspects of worry, regret, and self-criticism; 7. Empathy, or what Siegel calls “mindsight,” refers to our ability to take the perspective of the other; 8. Morality is also a function of the middle prefontal cortex and includes not just our ability to be moral in public settings but also in private; and finally 9. Intuition is the capacity to access the wisdom of the body by monitoring our bodily sensations. For example, a structure called the insula has map of the interior body and studies have found the insula gets thicker with meditation practice. Brain scientists such as Siegel and mindfulness researchers came up with this same list of functions independently. And it’s not just brain researchers, this list has been striven for in many spiritual traditions since ancient times. When we recognize the plasticity of the brain (that is, its capacity to change in response to experience) we can understand why we respond in certain situations the way that we do. Our previous conditioning will have us react in sometimes harmful ways. But it is the fault of conditioning. However, at the same time it is our responsibility (and potential) to change these conditionings through mindfulness and meditation.The middle prefrontal cortex develops optimally in an interpersonally attuned environment during infancy. Mindfulness provides the possibility of self-attunement to affect these same brain areas. So sit down and change your brain!

For more information visit: http://drdansiegel.com/

“Life in an Awkward Position”

exquisitemind — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:57:10 +0000

Is the title of the Wall Street Journal article reviewing the book, The Great Oom by Robert Love (Viking) that chronicles the early history of yoga in the United States. Today there are 20 million practitioners of yoga, but at the turn of the century it was virtually unheard of in the United States until the flamboyant and enterprising Pierre Bernard met an Indian guru and started teaching and promoting the practices. Unlike its mainstream acceptance today, yoga was first viewed with suspicion, as Love describes, “Yoga was labeled a criminal fraud and an abomination against the purity of American women.” We’ve come a long way over the past 100 years. My hometown of Burlington Vermont sports a dizzying and wonderful array of Yoga Studies, and your town probably does as well. If not standalone studios then your local gym or YMCA will be offering classes. You can practice yoga that is gentle and contemplative or as athletic as any workout you’ve ever had, perhaps in a studio that is 100 degrees.

Long before the “Yoga Industrial Complex” evolved to include the vast array of teaching studios, conferences, books, magazines, clothing, and celebrity followers, I was practicing yoga. I started in Boston in 1983 and took classes with Master Bo-In Lee and studied in the Siddha Yoga tradition (where I later went to India to further my studies). Yoga is a daily part of my life and how I start my day. I engage with yoga for flexibility and to connect mind with body and all of that with the present moment. Yoga is mindfulness in motion and I teach a slowed down version of mindful yoga in my workshops. Yoga asanas support my sitting meditation practice and thousands of years ago this was the principle application of yoga — preparing the body for meditation. Of course, the Buddha was a yogi, and all of us who walk the mindful path are yogis too. “Om”

Burlington Area Yoga Opportunities:

Yoga Vermont

Vermont Center for Yoga & Therapy

Burlington Yoga

Bow Down Yoga

Evolution Physical Therapy and Yoga

Bikram Yoga Burlington

Living Yoga Studio

Burlington Yoga Conference

And Beyond:

Three Poisons

exquisitemind — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:23:32 +0000

Tiger Woods, the man, the image, and the scandal, demonstrate the three poisons the Buddha cautioned us about: Greed, delusion, and hatred. Woods returned from a 5 month competitive golf hiatus to the Masters and placed in a tie for 4th. Not bad considering, right? You wouldn’t know it from his post-round interview. No acknowledgement of that accomplishment on deriding himself for not having played better. His response seemed to defy gravity — the way we expect objects to behave — when we drop them they fall to the ground. This man will not fall to the ground, will not be humbled, will not come to ground in humility (think humus). This seems to be a continuation of pride, a form of delusion. Once about 1/2 billion dollars into his earning career he talked about needing to earn more money to secure the financial future for his family. Really? Woods apparently started to believe in his image, the image that earned him $100 million dollars a year in endorsement revenue. This image had a reality of its own and operated by its own set of rules. Greed or desire is plain enough to see in his sexual seeking with the backdrop of ever mounting endorsement revenue. Delusion or ignorance is plain enough to see in his misapprehension of the consequences of his actions and his belief that TW was a real entity and not a process engaged in an inter-connected world with others, with everyone: his family, his friends, his sponsors, the PGA Tour and the golfing public and everyone else interested in prurient scandal (I think that pretty much covers everyone). Hatred or aversion is plain enough to see in his contempt for being a normal human being. He created his own set of rules and designed his life to support these rules. Even in his public apology this contempt was evident. He chose to make his plea in the midst of the tournament sponsored by his former endorser, Accenture. Many players and the press considered his timing inappropriate and calculated as a message to Accenture. He then exerted control over who was in attendance and no questions were allowed. He needs to become a human being but he has yet to do so. A recent Golf Magazine article captures the tragic irony that appears to be Tiger Woods, “Here he was apologizing for playing by his own rules while playing by his own rules; then telling us, in painstakingly enunciated words, that his words don’t really matter.” Woods has re-avowed his Buddhist roots and he have to start with looking at these three poisons and how they still rule his life. I was struck by the condescending, petulant, and solipsistic response to placing 4th at the Masters. Where was the, “Wow, it was great to be out here” … “I feel so thankful to have had the opportunity to play this great event, to receive the support of the fans” … “Well I didn’t win as I set out to do, but I made a good showing.” After all, the world was watching and we’re not idiots.

The Heart of the Universe

exquisitemind — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:22:20 +0000

The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra, by Mu Soeng. This thin volume from fellow Wisdom author and resident scholar at the Barre Institute for Buddhist Studies is thick in wisdom. As the title suggests it explores the Heart Sutra, placing it in context and then line-by-line commentary. It also uses the Heart Sutra as the platform for a clear and compelling account of Buddhist psychology, philosophy, and wisdom. Fans of the Heart Sutra will find the commentary fascinating and provocative. People unfamiliar to the Heart Sutra will be amazed at the parallels between the Buddha’s insights 2500 years ago and the findings of 20th century quantum physics. While not offered as self-help, this scholarly treatise offers such help to the astute reader. It goes to the core of the Buddha’s teaching, his fundamental insight regarding the nature of self and reality. Mu Soeng says, “To see oneself truly and authentically, as an event — an ever changing process — rather than a thing-in-itself, is the greatest act of re-imaging.” The metaphor we use to understand what it means to be a self makes all the difference. If the metaphor is a solid thing than we are vulnerable to dukkha (suffering, dissatisfaction). If the metaphor is a process there are no edges in which to create dukkha and therefore no suffering or pervasive dissatisfaction in life.

When we relate to self as a solid entity, we understand this moment or a segment of our lives in terms of a past moment. This past moment, or more accurately, our memory of this past moment has been selected and is therefore incomplete, it is also biased by beliefs, rules, and preconceptions. In this way, the previous moment serves as a metaphor for the future moment. The past distortion gets propagated into the future thereby interfering with our ability to experience this moment with more clarity as a “new” experience. We miss the opportunity to experience this moment unladen with the burden of past experience and its concepts, beliefs, and rules.

Purchase Heart of the Universe from Wisdom Publications

Purchase from your Independent Bookseller

Purchase from Amazon

Idealization, Scandal, and Buddhist Redemption

exquisitemind — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:18:42 +0000

Tiger Wood has announced his return to golf for the 2010 Masters. Few stories have garnered as much attention and jaw dropping voyeurism as this sexual scandal. Indeed, Tiger’s return to golf in the Master’s will be “will be the biggest media event, other than the Obama inauguration, in the past 10 or 15 years.” says CBS boss, Sean McManus.The most recent episode of South Park in its typical brilliant fashion highlights many of the issues at hand. How did they choose to represent the Tiger Woods Scandal? The episode begins with a scene between Tiger and Elin wherein she is chasing him with a golf club. The scene plays into the rumors that she assaulted him and that led to his fleeing the home and crashing his Escalade. The creative turn here and incisive social commentary is that the scene we are seeing comes from a video game being played by Cartmann and Stan. The episode then turns to the issue of sexual addiction and Kyle and Kenny are identified by the CDC as showing risk factors for developing sexual addiction. The tongue-in-cheek joke is to suggest that some degree of sexual preoccupation is abnormal, when of course it is not. Tiger’s fall from grace was more poignant because he led such a private life and gave little of himself to the media or, indeed, to his fellow players on the Tour.

In Tiger’s mea culpa he cited his Buddhist faith as a means to his salvation. He said, “People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years … Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security … “It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.” The Dalai Lama, previously clueless to the phenomenon known as Tiger Woods, commentated that Tiger’s Buddhist faith would provide, ”Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.” Well said, Your Holiness, and Tiger too. Now what? I wonder how he will play now that he is not looking outside of himself for security. How will his golf game be now that he will be, presumably, less identified with his identity as “Tiger Woods” and less invested in propping up this image. In principle, he could play better! That’s a scary prospect for every player on the PGA Tour. What if all these fornicating actually detracted from his game? What if his obsessive preoccupation with sex impaired his ability to concentrate and play his best game. How many major championships would he have now? Again, it will be interesting to see what unfolds as he moves forward. While I hope that he can restrain his behavior, without a dedication to meditation he won’t have the inner discipline to accomplish his goals. He may still chase every mental impulse and pursue unrestrained fantasies. His outer disciplines if accompanied by the inner discipline of Mind FITness will certainly help him to realize his maximum potential as a golfer and as a human being.

Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health: “Your Brain on Yoga”

exquisitemind — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:32:09 +0000

The Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox Massachusetts is a unique institution and community. If you don’t already know about, please allow me to introduce you to it. I just returned from directing a course there over the weekend based on my book entitled: “Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: Metaphors for Mindful Living.” Kripalu is a wonderful place situated in a landscape of soothing physical beauty in the Berkshire Mountains, it throbs with an energy of people seeking their truth through yoga, meditation, healing arts, among many other disciplines. A weekend workshop at Kripalu is a time to learn and to relax; to enjoy wholesome food and the company of dynamic and friendly people. Around the workshop times, yoga classes at different levels are offered including a yoga dance hour. I did this on Saturday. It was a fabulous workout and great fun, led by renown yoga dance teacher Toni Bergins, creator of Journey Dance. If you don’t want the structure of a workshop, you can go to Kripalu for Retreat and Renewal. Here you can partake in yoga classes and other classes, hike the grounds, sit in the sauna and enjoy the healing atmosphere of this magical place. I am pleased and proud to be a new member of the teaching faculty of this singular organization.

Kripalu offers training throughout the year for Yoga Teacher Training, Massage Therapy, and Ayurvedic Medicine. The Institute for Extraordinary Living (IEL) Directed by Stephen Cope is conducting research on the brain effects of yoga using neuroimaging. Sarah Lazar who has conducted ground breaking research on the brain effects of mindfulness meditation is leading the research. Yoga has penetrated our culture with 6.9% or 15.8 million people in the United States practicing yoga. Another 8% of population are interested in trying yoga. Kripalu Yoga emphasizes compassion and witness consciousness, representing a more contemplative form of yoga than the many varieties available to the interested seeker. The yoga efficacy study conducted by Sarah Lazar tested 16 yoga practitioners, 18 meditation practitioners, and 16 control subjects. All subjects underwent brain imaging via functional MRI (fMRI). Cortical thickness was measured for each group. Meditators meditated while in the MRI tube while yoga practitioners imagined going through a yoga routine (since the claustrophobic like confines of the MRI tube do not permit actual yoga asanas). Results will be published soon. The IEL is also conducting research on the beneficial effects of yoga on musical performance (in conjunction with the famed Tanglewood Music Center) and the effects of yoga for veterans with posttruamatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Kripalu is a non-profit organization and thrives through the generosity of its donors and program participants. Visit them at http://kripalu.org/

I am currently in the process of planning my next teaching engagement at Kripalu, so stay tuned for more details.