Acts of Kindness, Big and Small, Count

Captain Tom Moore, a decorated veteran of World War 2, raised $40,000,000 for the National Health Service in Britain by walking the length of an 82 foot walkway one hundred times. A photo of him shows Captain Moore wearing medals for combat bravery pinned on the lapels of his suit jacket. He is smiling and pushing the walker he uses for balance since he broke his hip a year ago. Captain Moore started this effort at age 99 in celebration of his April 100th birthday.

The British Health Service, dedicated to provide healthcare to all citizens as a basic right, is under particular strain due to the Coronavirus crisis. Captain Moore is being hailed as an example of “British pluck.”

I keep going back and rereading the New York Times article about Captain Moore, reflecting on why it pleases me (actually, delights me) as much as it does. Perhaps it’s because I see it as an example of how useful a person can be even at an old age. (I will be 84 years old in July and I especially enjoy thinking my teaching is useful, even if I am old.) More than that, I think it is the message that kindness—any act of benevolent action on behalf of another—arouses the heart of both the doer and the recipient of the action as well as others who hear about it. I was touched to learn of Captain Moore. You are, I hope, pleased to learn about it.

I often begin meditation sessions by asking people to think of something kind that they did, was done to then, that day and to remember how they felt at that moment. Holding the door for someone entering a building would count. Smiling and thanking the grocery clerk would count. Thanking the agent who helps you on the telephone to solve some problem. Any action that means, “I am not alone in this world and anything—large or small—that I can do to make life easier for another person makes me feel better.” Compassion, the Buddha taught, tender affection for all beings because life is inevitably challenging for everyone, is the most dependable life-supporting response. At any age. After any meditation period that has begun by bringing an example of kindness to mind, people report that their meditation was stronger, more alert, more insightful. Kindness wakes up the mind.

Happy Mother's Day

Decades ago when I was young, probably sixty-ish, I was a guest at a senior living facility to visit with a dozen residents, all at least eighty years old, who had specifically requested that I teach them mindfulness meditation. I remember thinking that, apart from speaking more loudly, what I taught was not different from what I taught to younger people. I recall that after we had been sitting quietly for several minutes, focusing on the breath, I added this instruction: For the next minute, each time you exhale, say your favorite word to yourself, silently, in your mind.

After meditating, I asked how the meditation had been for them and they all had positive responses. Then I asked, “What word did you say to yourself?” and their responses included peace and love and shalom.

Then one person said, “I said Mother,” which evoked a delighted group response, “Oh, yes! That’s the word!” 

I was touched. None of those people, including me, had had a mother for a very long time. I had never thought of recommending the word mother as a mantra but I do keep a particular photo of me as a young girl sitting with my mother on the windowsill in front of the chair where I sit to meditate every morning. Maybe that’s the same thing.

Happy Mother’s Day!

My Grandmother Was My First Buddhist Teacher

The On Being Project is an independent, nonprofit media and public life initiative. Krista Tippet interviewed me for this podcast on May 5, 2011. She often re-posts it on Mother’s Day. Wishing you and all the moms in your life a happy, healthy Mother’s Day!

Walking and Talking Meditation

Formal Mindfulness Walking instructions, on retreat or at home at dedicated practice times, encourage practitioners to walk slowly enough to be able to perceive the myriad of small separate movements that, all together, constitute taking a step forward. Watching meditators cruising very slowly back and forth in retreat center corridors, or outdoors in the paths nearby the dormitories, definitely looks peculiar to newcomers. I’ve found that paying attention to all the subtle changes in physical sensations during movement to be wonderfully evocative of insights: movement requires intention, every single things leads to another thing, once a step is initiated it continues because of every moment. “I am walking” becomes “Walking is happening.” These are important insights.

These days, with so much of the country being encouraged to stay at home, I am walking every day, sometimes twice a day, down the hill from my home and then around a road that circles three streets of houses. I wear my mask. Most people do, even though there aren’t many people out and about. We are mindful to keep a physical distance. My practice is paying attention to my mind as it has one impression after another. And, I find that even with masks on, people feel like communicating.  People exchange greetings, albeit muffled by their mask. I am touched that they, as I, feel like connecting. They wave. I wave back. They admire each other’s dogs. I think of my eighteen-year old dog who recently died and I miss him. I pass a woman out in her driveway watering plants and we have a long conversation—standing at a distance from each other—in  which she tells me that she has three young adult sons in school who have come home and are studying for final exams. “I love them,” she says, “But I am not used to them all being around all the time. And I am tidy and they are not.” Then she adds, “That sounds terrible. I really love them, but this is a lot.” We both laugh about how these are intense times and we could all give ourselves a little slack. We exchange names and she tells me that if I need anything to let her know and they would help me. We had never met before, and I am touched by her kindness.

This non-retreat walking meditation has insights. People being kind make me happy.  Talking through masks to greet one another is kind, admiring is kind, and sharing stories is kind.

Being alive in these difficult days and paying attention to the mind habits I have that lead to happiness is an important insight.

An Epidemic of Virus Creates a New Retreat

Back in the PV (pre-virus) days, retreats meant leaving the world behind and using the cloistered context of wherever the retreat was being held to support investigating the habits of one’s own mind in hopes of discerning those mental habits that created suffering and those that did not. I would always try, before leaving on retreat, to take care of outstanding complications in my family or with my work so that I would not have my efforts to concentrate on retreat be interrupted by getting messages from home. I recall coming to value the phrase, “tranquil and alert,” as the mind state I hoped to cultivate. It was that state of heighted awareness, steadied by concentration, that most supported the arising of liberating insight. I found that to be true, and I am grateful for that kind of retreat experience.

And, here I am sequestered at home with my husband. We don’t have the noise or bustle of living in a the middle of a big city, but there are plenty of phone calls and zoom calls and emails and Netflix and the New York Times arrives daily in our driveway before dawn. I can even take a walk around the block every day. I wear a mask and my neighbors, the few that are out, are also wearing masks. We wave at each other as we cross the street back and forth to avoid being too close. And still, the going out to walk is a higher alert circumstance that being at home. Everything is higher alert than usual.

I am discovering that my mind is behaving like it does at a retreat center, offering up surprisingly refreshing insights that I am confident are changing my mind in a wholesome way, habituating it to kindness, which is always my motivation for teaching and practicing mindfulness. My mind is not tranquil. But it is alert.

Here is an example:

I am walking along and notice a person walking across the street who, at first glance, looks like a cousin of mine. As I think of that cousin, I am surprised to notice that instead of the usual “Ugh! What an unpleasant person X is!,” I think, “X  had so many struggles in his life.” My mind, on its own, had replaced the habitual rap sheet of offenses and slights saved up in my opinion storehouse with another, more generous opinion. I noticed the pleasure I felt not to have added extra tension to an already tense life.

Here’s another example:

I am sitting at my computer writing and suddenly hear the sound of a power leaf-blower being started up in the yard of the neighbor’s house. I have a litany of well-rehearsed responses starting from, “The neighboring towns have leaf-blower ordinances! I should start a petition!” and ending with, “At least not every week, maybe every other week!” Instead, I am startled to hear my mind think, “Oh good! He still has a job. I’m glad Sherry still employs him.” And, I was pleased that once again, by itself, my mind had changed.

Here is what I think is happening:

My mind is not tranquil, but it is definitely alert. I am hoping to be able to see clearly what is happening and what response on my part will not create suffering for me or for anyone else. My watchword phrase these days is, “May I be free of negativity.” I describe my mindfulness practice as recognizing imperative in the mind and attempting, gently, to lessen it by holding things in perspective, by having a more expansive view. The expansive view moves past my concerns to everyone’s concerns.

I hope this period of worldwide awareness, wherever we are, of the radical precariousness of our lives and the preciousness of our lives will startle people all over the globe into a radical transformation of outlook from me, my story, my opinions and needs to everyone’s story and everyone needs. There are no villains or victims in this story. There is only a shared need to vanquish this virus, to heal from the loses it creates, and then to heal the planet, not just from coronavirus but from enmity.

"Hello" can be a game-changer...

I was late getting my boarding pass and therefore obligated to choose a middle seat on my Southwest Air flight to San Diego. I chose the nearest to the front of the plane. As I squeezed by the woman in the aisle seat I realized that the man in the window seat looked like a former linebacker, tall and broad across the chest. A big man. He was holding his Kindle tidily in front of his chest, but even so, his arm lapped over into my space. The woman on the aisle opened her tray as soon as we took off and began working on her laptop.

My mind started grumbling to itself about every possible grumble-able aspect of my situation: my tardiness in getting my boarding pass, my having forgotten that my ear buds were in the pocket of my jacket now stowed in the overhead rack, the "ridiculous" size of economy seats, my travel companions taking up "too much" of our shared space.

The grumbling in my mind went on picking up speed until I remembered that the title of the talk I was scheduled to give that evening was "Befriending Our Lives: Healing the Divisiveness in Ourselves, Our Relationship, Our Communities and Our World." I almost laughed out loud. Instead, I turned to the man on my left and said the magic word, "Hello!"

In less than a minute the conversation we started caught the interest of the woman on my right who shut her laptop and joined in. We talked about families and politics and books we were reading and I don't know how it was for them but for me, I was a bit disappointed when we got to our gate and needed to go our separate ways because I was interested in all their ideas.

I think I'll use that title for everything I teach this year. I’ll be teaching for two days at Spirit Rock in April and I hope that you'll join me. Find information at calendar.spiritrock.org/events/befriending-your-life.

New Year's Resolution

I remember resolutions I made on the January 1sts of times earlier in my life that involved not doing something anymore, like not eating sugary desserts or not drinking coffee. This year I decided that I was going to try to limit the amount of cable news I watch every day. Not giving it up entirely, even though when I am away traveling and without easy access to a TV I notice that my mood seems lighter and I sleep more soundly. I’m very interested in what is happening politically these days—it seems more volatile and amazing than I ever remember—and seeing and hearing events transpiring at a distance in real time is exciting. Because it is also often frightening and therefore confusing, I am adding the resolve to find a way every day to express gratitude.

I once had a gratitude practice for over a year with a friend who lived in Massachusetts. We resolved to email each other, daily, saying something we were feeling grateful about. We did not comment about each other’s messages. The emails were reports, not conversations. Some days it was easy: The rains have finally arrived. My grandson took his first step and I was there to see it. The course I proposed to the program committee was accepted so I’ll be able to teach it.

There were also days when gratitude was more difficult: The Board meeting was contentious and lasted too long. The highway was crowded because it was raining and also rush hour. I was feeling sorry for myself being stuck in my car. Then I was feeling annoyed at myself for feeling grumpy when at least I have a job and a place to go home to and many people don’t.

Then I thought about how grateful I am now to have you at the end of this email who I know loves me and will not stop doing that even though I was so deluded for so long.

The hard days were the best practice. Over and over, compelled to feel gratitude, I get to have a moment of clear thinking.

These days, in moments of grump, I say to myself: Stop. Get a grip. What’s the bigger truth? The chance to be alive in a world is amazing.

Waking Up With a Sense of Awe

I’ve been talking with friends, since the turn into 2019, about daily morning  exercises for the new year. Someone mentioned a Buddhist reflection meant to be recited aloud in the first moment you know you are no longer asleep.

A paraphrase of that prayer is: “I am a mortal and therefore in the nature of being temporal. Today might be the day I die. Realizing that that might be so, what can I do this day to make a difference in the world for the good?”

I added that a traditional Jewish reflection, on arising, is, “I am grateful for having consciousness returned to me. The beginning of Wisdom is knowing that I am part of the unfolding of creation, but not in charge of it. May whatever I do be for the collective good. May no beings suffer.”

My friend Sr. Mary Neill, a Roman Catholic nun, told me her favorite morning prayer: “May I be filled with that sense of awe that opens my capacity for loving.”

Awe, I think, is one of the things that keeps the mind open and eager to see and learn more about this extraordinary life and our magical time in it. Appreciation and curiosity are two others. Let’s see how this works! (Among other things, there is a red moon expected later this month and I am looking forward to it.)

More tomorrow!

Let’s start doing AWE reflections every morning. I’ll try to steadily keep them coming. Let me know that you’ve joined me in this practice.

Happy New 2019

I remember when, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” emerged as a popular logo, on stationary and cups and sweatshirts, as if it had not always been true. I recall also thinking it was inspiring to realize that a moment dedicated as special, as if it were setting the course for a long journey, gives that moment energy.  

I also remember hearing a Tibetan Buddhist Rimpoche saying, “Everything hangs on the point of intention.” The more I recall for myself, daily, that my life is, by its very nature, temporal, and that I have a limited number of days in which I can dedicate myself to caring for others and caring for the world, the more my actions stay close to “for the benefit of myself and for the benefit of others.”

Special days, like the first of a new calendar year when everyone is celebrating together, are perfect times to speak that vow to yourself and to your family and to your friends.

May 2019 start its journey in the direction of caring and kindness.

Happy New 2019

My 1440 Multiversity Talk

I was delighted to spend the weekend at 1440 Multiversity. Here is my discussion “Everyday Life Is Spiritual Practice:”

https://www.facebook.com/1440multiversity/videos/1569413383159050/

Love Everyone and Make Phone Calls

The news is thick and fast these days and people are asking, “How are you managing these days?” I recall the time, when I was very young and the United States was fighting in WW2, that I awoke every morning to my parents worriedly listing to the radio for the latest news. We had air raid drills in school that were practice alerts for the possible eventuality a real raid. I did not understand the scope of what was going on, and it was certainly far away—I knew that—but still, I felt nervous in response to the tension around me. I have a sense that these days of unsettled government must feel that way to young children now. People get up and turn on the TV to see what happened during the night. No matter what voting choice people made, I think everyone feels upset by a sense of vulnerability, of not being safe.

Mostly, in teaching situations I respond to questions like, “What is the Dharma response to what’s going on?” by saying, “I try to stay balanced. I try to remember that the startle I am feeling from the news I am just hearing will not help me figure out my best response. If I can say to myself, “This is what is happening now. Let’s see what happens next,” I am calmed by remembering that there will be a “next” and I can prepare for it best by steadying my mind. Then I actively respond. I phone my senators and my local congressman. I exercise my right as a citizen to be heard. Even when I am most disturbed about what is happening, I feel good to be engaged and active. I leave messages, mostly electronically but sometimes to a real person. When I am finished with those calls and the requests to forward or write or sign resistance documents that come by email, I phone my friends.

I phone like-minded friends, people who are concerned, as I am, about the future of the world for generations to come. In many cases they are people I’ve known for years, people with whom I marched for civil rights and an end to the arms race and an end to war and a woman’s right to choose and an end to the death penalty. Sometimes we say things to amuse each other like, “Didn’t we already do this?” and, “Honestly, I have the same zeal as ever but not the same strength!”

 I do not feel discouraged when I surround myself, in person or on Skype or on the phone with noble friends, the people the Buddha called “the whole of the holy life!”

When I was a young mother I think I thought about protecting my closest kin, especially my children. As I have gotten old, I see my view has widened, by itself, to the world of everyone’s children. Mine, of course, but everyone else’s too, because otherwise it would not be a real world.

Good Ideas Are Worth Repeating

The Buddha taught that “whatever the mind ponders and dwells on, by that is it shaped.” In these difficult times, it’s uplifting to see kind messaging like some of the commercials presented before and during yesterday’s Super Bowl.

Coca Cola brought back their 2014 commercial that proclaims “America Is Beautiful.”

Airbnb, a company that has helped various groups, said “We Accept.”

Never Again

Liane Rief was a classmate of mine at Barnard College for Women from 1952 until 1956. We were Chemistry majors and although there were not many of us, I did not get to know her personally. I remember her as being quiet and industrious. It was not until decades after graduation, sitting next to her at dinner at an alumnae weekend, that I learned that she had been a passenger on the St. Louis, the ship full of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler in 1939 that had been refused entry into the United States. I was surprised not to have known before, but have come since to understand that survivors of the Holocaust were often reticent to talk about their experience, both because it was so terrible to remember and also because remembering brought with it memories of those who did not survive.

In recent years, reading more about the politics of those terrible years, I discovered that President Franklin Roosevelt was persuaded by his aides not to allow the ship to dock because it would “label him as a Jew-lover and cost him the next election.” That was another moment of rude and sad political awakening for me.

Today I phoned the offices of my senators and congressman to register my opposition to the sudden and unwarranted closing of borders to refugees from particular countries. If the voice mail is full, you can email your comments. And, I signed this petition from T’ruah.

 I hope you make your voice heard too.

Teach Your Children...

I thought of my mother often, yesterday, as I marched in the Oakland Women’s March. Her politics, when I was a child in the 1940s, were informed and very progressive. She supported labor unions, did not cross picket lines, and took me into the voting booth to show me how she pulled levers to support the candidates she favored. She wore dangling earrings that read FDR during one election campaign, in a neighborhood where our voting did not match most other people’s.  She went to work as a typist at a county hospital right out of high school to help support her family. I’ve always felt her confidence and courage and resolve in me. I was a very young mother when she died, but I have felt her spirit in me as I marched, with my children, in protest marches in the 1960s, as I lobbied for and taught the first Women’s Studies Course at College of Marin in 1972, as I got arrested for civil disobedience for protesting the United States invasion of Afghanistan. I was among the older people at yesterday’s march but a friend and teaching colleague of mine was marching with his five year old son riding on his shoulders. People sometimes ask, “How can I teach mindfulness to my children?” I think what they means is, “How can I teach thoughtfulness and kindness?” I think we do it by taking our children with us to see how we move in the world.

My blogs are often illustrated by my daughter Elizabeth. Here is an Instagram post by her daughter Honor. Also about the march yesterday.

Awakening to Hope, Together

The signs said it all: Women’s Rights are Human Rights. The Best Quality is E-quality. An End to Racism. Replacing Hate with Real Love. Sisters United. Men in Support of Women. And, of course, the signs that I won’t repeat (my age and my sense of modesty prevails) but that I nevertheless laughed at. And the crowds of women flooding the streets with pink pussy-cat hats. Women of all colors and all ages and all abilities. I cried a little each time I saw a woman leading an obviously disabled child by the hand, steering carefully through the surging crowds or women pushing other women in wheel chairs. I felt as if all the individual signs added up to saying, “Everyone who has felt frightened and demeaned is here to say, together, ‘NO!’ We will resist.” The streets of Oakland were so jammed full of people that it took an hour after the march officially started for me to take the first steps forward on the route. I felt, for myself, that I needed to be there because I represent old. Riding on the BART train to the starting place, people tried to stand up to give me their seat which didn’t happen because the train was so packed that no one could move until it pulled into the station and we all poured out into the street. It was a long day and/but I feel buoyed up by the positive air of peaceful protest that has begun today and promises to continue.

Ananda, the Buddha’s trusted disciple, asked, “Is it true that noble friends are half of the holy life?” The Buddha replied, “No, Ananda, that is not true. Noble friends are the whole of the holy life.”

(I love these photos from marches across the country and around the world!)

We The People

“The only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world”….is what President Obama said at his last press conference before leaving the presidency. It reminded me of the famous Franklin Delano Roosevelt inauguration speech in which he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In both statements I hear the wisdom of the Buddha explaining that the ability of the mind to stay reasonably balanced in the face of an potentially alarming challenge allows for the possibility of a thoughtful, effective response rather than a frenzied, impulse driven reaction. I am very concerned about what seems to me to be a new government prepared to reverse the socially progressive democracy that has been in the process of being built over the last 70 years. As the child of immigrants who arrived in America impoverished and uneducated, I rejoice at having been part of my parent’s dream for me and my children. As I have watched the millennial generation erase boundaries of race, sexuality, and gender, I have delighted in thinking of the world my great-grandchildren will be part of. Now, on the eve of a new government, fear arises in me as I hear signals that forward progress will reverse. I am trying to avoid imagining the worst possible scenarios, those that evoke fear that clouds my mind and makes clear planning impossible. I will go out and march on Saturday. I will continue to sign petitions and vote for officials who support my view. I will stand up and be counted. I will try to do it in the company of friends. Knowing I am not alone is the counteractive to fear. Now is not the time to be invisible.

Images generously shared by artist Shepard Fairey

Love, Respect, and Forgiveness

NYPD Detective Steven McDonald died last week. His story is a gift and inspiration. Although this account of wisdom manifesting as forgiveness does not need anything extra to make its point, I'll add a line that a man named Tom, in a class I taught many, many years ago, said to me after I'd spoken about the futility of anger: "Well Sylvia, I'm sure you know that forgiveness is the price you have to pay for freedom."

Here's Steven McDonald's story. May it encourage your heart, as it did mine.

Spreading a Good Word

Yesterday, I was explaining the way the Buddha’s message about the possibility of being engaged in the world, challenging as it inevitably is, without being overwhelmed by it. I was specifically quoting the Buddha’s message to monks he had trained who were venturing into the larger world to spread those teaching of liberation.  What he said, in contemporary language is, “Go forth and teach this important understanding in the idiom of the people.” That message, “Teach so that you can be understood so that what you say is helpful,” is endlessly inspiring to me. I used the image we find in the back of airline in-flight magazines where all the routes of that particular carrier are arcs branching out from a central hub. I was saying that, in the time of the Buddha, teaching monks traveled by foot so that it took centuries for the Buddha’s philosophy to spread from India across China and Tibet to the China Sea. In my mind’s eye, I see images of little monks walking those arcs across Asia and then rowing across to Japan in little boats.

These days, I see these same arcs in my mind as I write this blog, or sign a petition that someone has offered up for support. I’m thrilled by the idea that a good cause, a good new idea, can spread over the whole world in a day. Late last night I decided to start a petition on Change.org and I realized, as I wrote it, that the very decision to start to do something that I believed would be helpful, one particular way to reduce suffering in the world, made me feel better even before I was done with the writing.  I felt empowered. Here is the link to the petition I wrote. I hope you’ll open it right now and sign it and send it to everyone on your list. It is about our political system, but it is not partisan. You can send it to everyone.  I hope you will feel engaged, part of an arc of a good idea being spread out along lanes of friends.

Thank you!

Don't Be Silent. Don't Be invisible.

“Public pressure has a very real impact on political power. Don’t be silent. Don’t be invisible.” –Charles M. Blow, NY Times

Here comes inauguration day.  As many of you know, I am a progressive voter and this past election season and the November election dismayed me. I’ve been thinking about what I could I do or say that could make a difference.

This morning I read the New York Times opinion piece by Charles M. Blow and was heartened and encouraged to take action.  I am not going to turn on the TV coverage of the inauguration on January 20th. On January 21st, I’m planning to participate in one of the many women’s marches that are happening across the country in solidarity with that day's Women’s March on Washington to highlight support for women’s issues. Perhaps if enough people take enough positive steps, our collective voices will be heard!

Happy New Year

I just heard on the news that around the world today an extra second is being added to the universal clock time (used to be called Greenwich Mean, now it’s something else) because the earth wobbles just enough in its orbit that it comes up one second short in matching cumulative time and orbital time.  Apparently, it does that periodically and needs to be corrected. The last correction was seven years ago. I had the thought, as I heard that, that ten seconds put aside for a correction, with instructions that the whole world tune into some shared frequency and listen to the ten second message, could change the world. Here is the Pablo Neruda poem, Keeping Quiet, that I had carried with me every place I teach for many years waiting for the chance to read it.

Happy New Year
Sylvia

“Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about...
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.”

— Pablo Neruda