Innehållsförteckning för Wisdom for Well-Being från Wisdom for Well-Being

MOST EURO-AMERICANS assume I’ve transcended the traumas of slavery. I hold several academic degrees, my son graduated from college, and my Euro-American spouse is also middle-class. But I am a darkskinned Black woman, and at the end of the day I am still an “American Untouchable,” the term used by Isabel Wilkerson to describe those at the bottom of America’s racialized caste system. At seventy-two, I have experienced many of the difficult events that occur in any human life. I have lost my parents and experienced the deaths of many people I loved. I have survived life-threatening illnesses, live with several disabilities, and have watched my abilities diminish with age. I am also privileged. I have health care, housing, food security, and ready access to clean water and sanitation. For…

AT THE END OF JANUARY, one of my close spiritual friends died. A queer Black man, a Sufi imam “scholartivist” (scholar–artist– activist) and professor of ministry students, Baba Ibrahim Farajajé died of a massive heart attack. He was sixty-three, and I’m guessing he had been carrying too much. It was only six months earlier that Baba and I had sat together on a stage in downtown Oakland, California, under a large hand-painted banner that read #BlackLivesMatter. A brilliant, transgressive bodhisattva, Baba had been targeted for multiple forms of oppression throughout his life and had not been silent about it. When he died, I was sad and angry. I took to staying up all night, chanting and meditating; during my daytime work, I was exhausted. How many of us who have…

Watch your thoughts; they become habits.Watch your habits; they become stories.Watch your stories; they become excuses.Watch your excuses; they become relapses.Watch your relapses; they become dis-eases.Watch your dis-eases; they become vicious cycles.Watch your vicious cycles; they become yourwheel of life. WE MEDITATE to uproot what the Buddhist teachings call samskaras. These are the mental impressions and recollections that have been psychologically imprinted in our minds by early childhood trauma. We also meditate to loosen what the Buddha called the seven anusayas, which are obsessions or underlying habitual tendencies. If we really want to break deep-rooted habits, every one of us needs to become aware of the obsessions of sensual passion, resistance, views, uncertainty, conceit, ignorance, and the passion of becoming. Maybe you’ve made a New Year’s resolution again this year,…

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the dharma gate of ease and joy… the manifestation of ultimate reality.—MASTER DOGEN A FEW YEARS AGO I came across an unusual description of shikantaza, the objectless meditation at the heart of Soto Zen Buddhism that is sometimes called “just sitting.” “Shikantaza,” said Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, “is like sitting in the center of a clearing in the forest, knowing that ultimate danger is about to strike but not knowing what form it will take or from what direction it will come.” I’d found this quote in an essay by Flora Courtois, a long-time Zen practitioner who’d studied with Yasutani Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. Her account of her spiritual unfolding was so striking that I…

WHEN I FIRST came to Buddhism, I heard “Attachment is the cause of suffering” and thought I knew what it meant. I was in recovery, I’d given up alcohol, and my life had gotten better. So it seemed simple enough: figure out what you’re attached to that’s causing you pain, stop wanting it, and be happy. I thought this was how I would achieve enlightenment, and this became my goal. It was a big mistake. When freedom from suffering turned out to be more elusive than I’d hoped, I doubled down by moving to Tassajara, the Zen monastery in Northern California. But I was still unhappy. It was summer. The job I’d been assigned was bathhouse attendant, and I thought I should be doing something more important. It was hot,…

THE WORLD IS BURNING BECAUSE OF US. Not only wild ecosystems, but human social systems around the world teeter at the brink of collapse or have already fallen over the edge. Refugees press against borders, driven by climate change, war, demographic oppression, and economic disaster, often all at once. Established democracies quake as millions of dissatisfied citizens are drawn to toxic nationalist and authoritarian fantasies. Against what might seem like our common interest in survival, humans burn through forests, arable land, nonrenewable energy sources, animals, and each other. The word “anthropogenic” is commonly used to refer to the human-caused aspect of the climate crisis, but it is accurate for all our large-scale crises: social, economic, political, and ecological. The scale and speed of humanity’s impact is compounding with technology and…

DESPITE OUR LONGING for connection with others, our self-centered mind interferes and keeps us separated. In order to break down the walls of fear and alienation, we can practice what are called the seven cause-and-effect instructions to develop bodhichitta, the aspiration to attain buddhahood in order to benefit others. This meditation practice helps us see we’ve always been connected to others and that we can open our hearts with love, compassion, and altruism. Before undertaking the first of the seven instructions, we must generate equanimity, freeing ourselves as much as we can from attachment to dear ones, antipathy toward enemies (people we don’t feel comfortable around), and apathy for strangers. One way to do this is to see that people change roles in our lives constantly—no one is fixed as…

Trigger warning: The abuse Rosalie suffered is described graphically in this story. AS A CHILD, Rosalie had been severely abused by her father. When he was drunk he’d climb into her bed at night and rub his body against hers until he climaxed. If she resisted him, he’d hit her and threaten her with worse. If she tried to run away and hide, he would become enraged, chase after her and mercilessly beat her. On two occasions during the year before he and her mother divorced, Rosalie’s father had forced her to have intercourse with him. When Rosalie came to see me, she was thirtyfive years old, single, and mildly anorexic. She’d already been through several forms of therapy, but was still going on and off starvation diets and suffering…

HERE’S my spiritual practice these days: moment-to-moment I try to be mindful of the arising of ill will in my mind and try to meet it with clear, compassionate response. This reflects the Buddha’s basic instruction on how to work with our negative patterns: “Recognizing unwholesome states in the mind and replacing them with wholesome states.” Wholesome states, such as generosity, gratitude, and patience, are soothing and gladdening to the mind. They support clear understanding and wise choices. Unwholesome states, such as lust, anger, and revenge, are doubly painful: they are painful feelings in themselves and they confuse the mind so we choose maladaptive responses to situations that only make things worse. That’s why they are called “hindrances” in classical Buddhism. They hinder clear thinking. Entirely avoiding afflictive states (another…

“BAD HABITS” and compulsive tendencies, such as procrastination, perfectionism, and addictive distractions, are formidable roadblocks to our long-term well-being, happiness, and self-esteem. To address our “bad habits” we need to understand how they operate. First, they’re not a sign of “laziness” or “negligence,” as they’re initiated with little if any conscious choice. Compulsions are essentially defense mechanisms, behaviors that distract our attention from unnecessary unpleasant thoughts, feelings, or memories. Imagine arriving home to an empty apartment after a stressful day of work, confronted with loneliness or melancholy, then finding yourself binge eating or mesmerized by countless hours of Netflix. Such fixations briefly raise our dopamine levels, providing a false sense of uplift and reward, and pull our attention away from painful emotional states lurking in the background. If we put…

UNCOVER YOUR NATURAL AWARENESS DIANA WINSTON on 3 ways to go above and beyond your breathing practice to bring natural awareness into your mindfulness routine—and your life. HAVING TAUGHT mindfulness for twenty years, I’ve observed that a specific type of meditation practice has dominated the field for decades—classical mindfulness. Pay attention to your breathing, and when your attention wanders, bring it back to your breath. It’s great to practice this narrow, object-focused, and effort-based mindfulness, but there is also a mindfulness that is wide-open, objectless, and effortless. I call it natural awareness. Natural awareness is a way of practicing in which your focus is on awareness itself, rather than on the things you are aware of. It is generally relaxed, effortless, and spacious, and it can elicit a profound sense…

WE ARE ALL citizens of the Information Age, when attention-consuming data is abundant and human attention itself is regarded as a scarce commodity. In the noise and chaos of this flood of information, how often do you notice where your mind is and what it’s doing? Your attention can be so absorbed in the outside world that, in a sense, your mind isn’t really your own. There’s no “me” at that time, because when you lose your awareness you lose yourself. A good way to redirect your attention and reclaim your awareness is the practice of meditation, where the first thing you meet is your thoughts. If you didn’t know it before, once you sit on a meditation cushion and look at your mind, you immediately recognize that you are…

But the stone that the builder refuseShall be the head cornerstone,And no matter what game they play,Eh, we got something they could never take away;We got something they could never take away—Bob Marley, “Natty Dread Rides Again” You already are what you want to become. —Master Lin Chi ALL OF US GO THROUGH TIMES of transition, challenges, and difficulties. We may have faced or will face times of loss, confusion, or heartbreak, when we realize we cannot control the way our life is unfolding, whether in our personal lives or in the world around us. With mindfulness, we can learn to move through these intense, challenging times in ways that don’t add to the suffering and difficulty that are already there. We can even learn to open our hearts to…

INTRODUCTION I THINK WHAT MAKES BUDDHISM unique—what makes it Buddhism—is its diagnosis of what causes suffering, which is called the second noble truth. Looking at the other noble truths, most religions acknowledge the pervasive reality of suffering, that it can end (if not in this life, then after), and that wisdom, compassion, and ethical living are a path to less suffering. But why do we suffer at all? This is where Buddhism stands alone, offering a real-world explanation that is simple, testable, and, to my mind, irrefutable. According to Buddhism, the fundamental cause of suffering is ignorance, our mistaken view of reality. The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent. That’s another way of saying that everything dies. But we hold on to the belief, or at least the hope, that…

MY ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD has had trouble sleeping since the pandemic started. When I sit with her to help her fall asleep, I drift off, and she repeatedly wakes me to comfort her. Although I wish I were a perfect mommy, this is a recipe for me to get angry and for her to feel terrible—unless I can intervene with mindfulness. PART 1: BEDTIME Wind down. Brush teeth. Pajamas. Water. I lie on the bed next to her as we both read. I start to fall asleep. Silence. Ticking clock. HER: Mommy! Are you awake? I can’t sleep. ME (mumbling from exhaustion-land): Yes, you can. HER: No, I’ve been trying for a while. It’s not working. ME: You can fall asleep. HER: I can’t! ME: Please try to fall asleep. HER: It’s…

MY MOTHER LOVED PURPLE. She wore purple, and we had purple rugs and purple flowers on our drapes. Remembering this brings a smile to my face and warmth to my heart, as I recall the warm, loving, vibrant person she was. When I was ten years old, she died of cancer. The oasis of purple love and warmth in which she held me simply vanished, and I felt like I became the sole inhabitant of a barren, frozen tundra of disconnection and loneliness. For years, I lived in denial of that experience. I tried to meditate my way into a state of no attachment and no needs. That didn’t work. I feel so glad that I gave up that effort. Now, I get to watch my six-year-old son call out…

THE WORK OF HEALING trauma makes us tender and vulnerable as we touch our history of wounds, sometimes from childhood and sometimes from our ancestors. But those who do Buddhist practice come from a tradition that does not shy away from our pain, anxiety, and despair. The Buddha, in his first noble truth, acknowledges the pervasive reality of suffering in this realm. This suffering can show up as small hurts or large, life-changing wounds, which we sometimes call trauma. For wounds small and large, the Buddha’s advice is the same: to be present to them and release them, so we can fully live our birthright of being in the moment, happy and free. Even 2,600 years ago, he did not pathologize our woundedness, but rather normalized it. In this way,…

THE HABITUAL PATTERNS that arise in us seem to have a life of their own, shaping our behavior into contours of isolation, anxiety, self-criticism, addiction, or other self-destructive habits. These patterns make us unhappy. They are obstacles to what we long for in our lives and might even cause us to give up our goals and dreams in despair. The good news is that we can become aware of how we get caught in these patterns and learn to move through experience with more love and wisdom. The process of getting stuck in patterned thoughts and feelings happens quite mechanically. The gateway to freedom is to understand this compassionately. In this, meditation is our best friend, allowing us space to relax and receive other dimensions of our being. The most…

WHEN WE THINK about making and breaking habits, how often do we consider our feelings? The fact is that perhaps the most important habits we can make (or break) are those relating to how we are with our emotions. You might have thought that the way to work with your feelings is to meditate around or away from them, and it seems as if many people seek out meditation hoping it will pacify their feelings. But as meditators, we must develop conscious habits of relating to our feeling life with grace and mindfulness, or our meditation will ultimately not be effective. Our feelings—if we know how to practice with them—are our best friends on the spiritual path. They have wisdom to offer. One effective way to work with feelings is…

YOU are already perfect. You are already a buddha. In fact, there’s no difference between your true nature, right now as you sit reading this, and the true nature of the buddha, or any enlightened being for that matter. That’s the view of Dzogchen, a Tibetan word that means “Great Perfection.” Dzogchen is treasured above all other practices in the Nyingma school of Vajrayana Buddhism because it helps us connect directly with our own enlightened nature. Your essence, and the essence of every living creature, is pure, whole, and complete. There’s nothing missing, and that’s why we call it the Great Perfection. YOU are the Great Perfection. Don’t forget that. Dzogchen is talking about you. This Great Perfection is you right now, right here in this moment, not some fully…

BEFORE EVERYBODY STARTED talking about self-care, they talked about detoxing. Cleanses were the trend and many (if not most foods) were vilified. Daily emails arrived letting me know the many ways that I was toxic—food, air, relationships, inner dialogue. The programming director for a huge yoga conference told me that if I wanted my classes to sell out, I just had to put the word “detox” in the title. This consumeristic approach to ancient yogic practices was accurate in some ways: a need had been identified and a solution proposed. We feel incomplete, unloved, inadequate, and definitely not fit enough. Being toxic might be our own making, but fortunately, we could easily purify ourselves by purchasing a juice cleanse. We could even purify ourselves this way daily, which was really…

1. MINDFULNESS NARAYAN HELEN LIEBENSON calls the three poisons “torments of the heart.” Mindfulness eases their pain. THE PALI WORD for the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion is kilesas. This is translated in a number of ways: as poisons, toxins, defilements, stains, vexations, or afflictions. But I lean toward an alternative translation: torments of the heart. Instead of bringing connectedness and ease, the three poisons torment us. They reinforce patterns of disconnection and separation. We need to attend to them seriously because of the inner and outer harm they cause, and the lack of inner freedom that occurs when we are unconscious of them. We don’t have to take the kilesas personally and identify with them, as in “I am an angry, greedy, deluded person.” The kilesas are…

A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO, I was talking to a fruit fly that was hovering around the kitchen while I was preparing to heat up dinner. “It’s a good thing that I believe in the sanctity of life,” I said to the fly, opening the microwave door. Then I laughed at myself. How does a belief in the sanctity of life live in the context of all it takes to own and use a microwave? The story I was telling myself about myself suddenly took on a different tone. It was no longer about me and the fly, but about me and how I deceive myself. Telling myself stories about myself is the root of my ignorance. But telling myself stories about myself is choicelessly unavoidable, and struggling against that…

While people have believed for thousands of years that meditation works, the search for scientific proof is just beginning. The team at Greater Good Science Center assesses the current state of the evidence—what we do, don’t, and might know. DURING THE PAST TWO decades, we’ve discovered a lot about mindfulness. Specifically, there have been many studies of meditation, which is one of the best ways to cultivate moment-to-moment awareness of ourselves and our environment. But sometimes, journalists and even scientists (who should know better) overstate the benefits. Indeed, the science behind mindfulness meditation has often suffered from poor study designs, lack of funding, and small effect sizes. As a result, there is still a lot we don’t understand about mindfulness and meditation. Here’s a rundown of questions that seem fairly…

EVOLUTION HAS RIGGED all of us with a negativity bias—a survival-driven habit to scan for what’s wrong and fixate on it. In contemporary society, a pervasive target is our own sense of unworthiness. We habitually fixate on how we’re falling short—in our relationships, work, appearance, mood, and behaviors. And while self-aversion is our primary reflex, we also fixate on the faults of others—how they’re letting us down and how they should be different. Whether we’re focusing inwardly or outwardly, we’re creating an enemy and imprisoning ourselves in the sense of a separate, threatened self. While negativity bias is a key part of our survival apparatus, when it dominates our daily life we lose access to the more recently evolved parts of our brain, which contribute to feelings of connection, empathy,…