Prashant Kaul, Jason Passafiume, and two other colleagues from the Department of Biology at the University of Kentucky assessed whether meditation leads to an improvement on a psychomotor vigilance task, and whether longer bouts of meditation may alter reduce the need for sleep.

Novice meditators, who were university students, completed 40 minutes of meditation, nap, or control activities on six different days, plus one night of total sleep deprivation on a different night, followed by 40 minutes of meditation. A second study examined sleep times in long-term experienced meditators versus non-meditators. The groups continued their normal activities while monitoring their sleep and meditation times.

The research is published in the journal, Behavioral and Brain Functions.

Novice meditators were tested on the vigilance task before each activity, 10 minutes afterward, and one hour later. All ten novice meditators improved their reaction times immediately following periods of meditation, while all but one got worse immediately following naps.

Sleep deprivation, as you’d expect, slowed reaction times. But reaction times improved significantly following a period of meditation.

Sleep duration in long-term experienced meditators was lower than in the control group of non-meditators, and compared to the general population, with no apparent decrease in reaction times.

These results suggest that meditation provides at least a short-term performance improvement even in novice meditators. In long term meditators, multiple hours spent in meditation are associated with a significant decrease in total sleep time when compared with age and sex matched controls who did not meditate.

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I remember studying with my teacher Sangharakshita in a group of Triratna Buddhist centre teachers a couple of years ago. He expressed his admiration for Chogyam Trungpa and, using Gurdjieff’s distinction between the narrow saint and the broad genius, considered Trungpa to be a flawed genius of intelligence, flair and imagination. Sangharakshita went on to encourage us all to become ‘geniuses’ – to be broad and other regarding, and to develop the many diverse talents necessary to spread the Buddha’s teachings.

Title: The Heart of the Buddha
Author: Chogyam Trungpa
Publisher: Shambhala
ISBN: 978-0-87773-592-2
Available from: Shambhala and Amazon.com.

This memory returns to me on reading The Heart of the Buddha, a recently re-released collection of Chogyam Trungpa’s articles. Trungpa was certainly broad. He had the genius, the flair and talent necessary to inspire many people to take up the Buddha’s teachings and he has had an enormous impact on Buddhism in the modern world. Many of the famous Buddhists teaching today such as Pema Chodron, Sherab Chodzin Kohn, Judith Zimmer Brown and Reginald Ray owe their foundation in the Dharma to Trungpa Rinpoche.

 Trungpa has had an enormous impact on Buddhism in the modern world.  

It pays to watch some of the YouTube videos of his lectures and get a sense of the author before reading this book. On these we see him sitting calmly, holding court before hundreds of people. He is immaculately dressed in a suit and tie and is carefully emphasizing each sentence with an impeccable elocution acquired during his stay at Oxford University in England. This is not a traditional Tibetan teacher fresh out of the Himalayas with trumpets and robes but someone deeply immersing himself in Western expressions. Someone out alone in a foreign culture determined to communicate the heart of the Buddhas teachings in a language accessible to the people before him. Trungpa’s presentations combined a thorough training in traditional Tibetan Buddhism with a radical re-visioning of what it means to practice the Dharma today. He tapped into a broad range of sources from Erich Fromm and psychology to Zen flower arranging and military discipline, and was keen to avoid the distracting allure of exotic Tibetan cultural trappings.

The articles in The Heart of the Buddha were chosen to represent “as complete a range of Rinpoche’s teachings as possible,” according to the introduction. There are edited introductory talks with questions and answers as well as more scholarly essays. In the first section we have a more experiential evocation of what is involved in meditation practice, in devotion and in the integration of intellect and intuition. Here is a taster from the article on mindfulness:

‘It (mindfulness) is a worldwide approach that relates to all experience, it is tuning into life. We do not tune in as part of trying to live further [...] Rather we just see the sense of survival as it is taking place in us already. You are here, you are living: let it be that way – that is mindfulness. Your heart pulsates and you breathe. Let mindfulness work with that, let that be mindfulness, let every beat of your heart, every breath, be mindfulness itself. You do not have to breathe specially; your breath is an expression of mindfulness. If you approach meditation in this way, it becomes very personal and very direct.’

I’ve never found a clear overview in a Chogyam Trungpa book. He never wrote a 101 of Buddhism. I have thoroughly enjoyed my wanderings through these articles, but have been glad of my studies in my own tradition for an underlying framework to help hang it all together. For this reason I wouldn’t recommend even this broad compendium as an introduction to Buddhism. What you do get with Trungpa Rinpoche is something at least as important – vivid evocations of spiritual experience and a living sense of the scale and detail of the Buddhist perspective. He uses unexpected and surprising imagery which is often visceral and always striking. Reading his books is like making out the Buddha’s Dharma by flashes of lightning – you are left with memorable impressions and a stack of vivid quotes. Here are a few:

‘People have difficulty beginning a spiritual practice because they put a lot of energy into finding the best and easiest way to get into it. We might have to change our attitude and give up looking for the best and easiest way. Actually, there is no choice. Whatever approach we take, we will have to deal with what we are already.’

‘True admiration has clarity and bite. It is like breathing mountain air in winter which is so cold and clear that we are afraid that it may freeze our lungs. Between breaths we may want to run into the cabin and throw a blanket over our heads lest we catch cold – but in true admiration we do not do that.’

‘Spiritual shoppers are looking for entertainment from spiritual teachings. In such a project devotion is nonexistent. Of course if such shoppers visit a store where the salesman has a tremendous personality and his merchandise is also fantastically good, they might momentarily feel overwhelming trust of some kind. But their basic attitude is not desperate enough. Their desperation has been concealed or patched over, so they make no real connection with the teaching.’

The second section of the book contains three articles chosen to represent the three phases of the Tibetan Buddhist path –  taking refuge, the self transcendence of compassion, and the tantric path of ‘Sacred Outlook’.

The chapter on “Sacred Outlook” is the longest article at just under forty pages. Originally written for the catalog of an exhibition of ancient Buddhist Silk Route art, it is one of the best introductions to Tantric Buddhist practice I have come across, both in the thoroughness of its description and in its simplicity.

 I found reading these articles induced an experience not unlike that of digging out old rock music and being struck by its fresh energy and imagination…  

The final section is a bit of a mixture with articles on relationships, death, poetry, money, Buddhist/Christian dialogue and a piece on drinking alcohol. This is where Trungpa’s dangerous side comes out. He writes on the limitations of a moralistic attitude to pleasure and on the difference between alcohol being poison or medicine lying in the level of one’s awareness. A meditator undertakes ‘conscious drinking’ as a means to keep connected to others. It is difficult to read this as anything but naive in the light of his early demise at forty seven from cirrhosis of the liver and the chaos of his community after his death.

Nevertheless, I found reading these articles induced an experience not unlike that of digging out old rock music and being struck by its fresh energy and imagination in contrast to the formulaic, safe and commercial nature of so much of today’s music. These articles come from a time when Buddhism in America was more radically alive. Their vitality, originality and indeed. danger, as well as their deep rootedness in the Buddhist tradition contrast strongly with do much of what passes for Dharma today. Amidst the mountain of secular Buddhism, domestic Buddhism for couples, therapeutic Buddhism for stress management and a strange fixation on our everyday, commonplace laundry, this book stands out for its ability to inspire and stir us from our complacency. Cold, clear mountain air indeed.

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Peace and tranquillity are what we long for, but those qualities are elusive and rare in our lives. So when the opportunity presents itself to get closer to that state, many take it, which is why more than 4,000 people from across Western Canada and the United States gathered Sunday in the country, 45 kilometres north of Edmonton.

They had come to see the Jade Buddha of Universal Peace, which is supposed to bring inner peace and happiness to those who see it. How could it not, under perfectly blue prairie skies, with cheery yellow canola fields nearby and the air heavy with the sweet smell of freshly cut field grass warmed by the sun?

Excited children leaned forward in anticipation and adults held digital and video cameras at the ready as a gold cloth adorned with red Buddhist symbols was slowly pulled away, revealing a four-metre high statue of a young, slim, smiling Buddha sitting cross-legged on a mammoth alabaster throne.

Thuy Nguyen said her family has a picture of the Jade Buddha at home and her children Benjamin, 5, and Jennifer, 8, have been excited to actually see it since they were told of its impending visit.

“I thought it was going to be bigger, but I guess it’s the right size,” said Salena Wong, who came to see the Jade Buddha with her family.

But Phi Phan, accompanied by his fiancee Mystique Wendell, was suitably impressed.

“I actually didn’t know about the Jade Buddha until I read about it coming here, so it was something I wanted to see, just to say that I’ve seen it,” he said. “The idea of it promoting universal peace, and to have this opportunity to come together as one community, in a place like this, is really something special. I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Worth $5 million

The four-tonne statue, valued at approximately $5 million, is the largest such figure in the world, carved from a 100-million-year-old gemstone boulder mined in northern B.C., near the Yukon border. It was commissioned by an Australian couple and was finished in December 2008. It took sculptors and artists in Thailand five years to complete. It has been touring the world to promote universal peace. At the end of the tour, the statue will be on permanent display in Victoria, Australia, where the couple who commissioned it live.

There are three stops on the Canadian leg of the tour. It started last month in a Vietnamese Buddhist Centre in Mississauga, outside of Toronto, and ends in August at a new temple in the Vancouver suburb of Aldergrove. The statue is available for free public viewing from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day this week at the new Westlock Meditation Centre. There will be a multi-faith candlelight vigil from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, with a closing ceremony at 11 a.m. Sunday.

“Our hope is that when people see the Buddha they take a moment to reflect on peace,” said Calvin Nguyen, an organizer of Sunday’s event. “We want, if you will, to capitalize on the theme of universal peace and internalize it, because inner peace leads to outer peace. When we have inner peace, everything we do externally reflects that.”

Ruth-Ellen Dowhan, who lives minutes from the centre, sat slightly apart from the crowds, watching the proceedings with a friend.

“We’re in a peaceful place here,” she said, smiling, “but then, I’m a Zen person normally.

“This is a world event and we’re not going to miss it when it’s so close to our backyard,” Dowhan added. Besides, “Who can’t believe in world peace? Who can’t embrace that? We should all embrace that,” she said.

[via Edmonton Journal]

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Spirituality today, less bound to religion, is part of everyday life. A person’s spirituality might be expressed in listening to Bach, walking in the countryside, doing voluntary work or comforting a friend. We talk of a spiritual dimension to athletic excellence or great art.

And a common yardstick for evaluating spirituality is not a bad one: do our spiritual values or practice make us better people? Are we more forgiving, kind, tolerant of others? We can chant Buddhist mantras but behave as selfishly as any self-confessed hedonist. We respect those who practise love and compassion rather than preach it.

Radical religious thinkers have also called for an “interior spirituality”. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian, argued for a “religion-less” Christianity. Only when the church is stripped of its pomp and prestige, he claimed, can it return to its original teaching and defend the weak or fight for justice. (Bonhoeffer was hanged when his plot to kill Hitler failed.)

Theologian Karl Rahner said the modern believer would need to be a “mystic”. Not a robed guru meditating on a mountain top – mysticism as “other-worldliness”. But a personality like French philosopher and activist Simone Weil (author of The Need for Roots) who spent herself unreservedly in the fulfilment of an authentic life working alongside factory workers and the poor. Her integrity was rooted in the inner life of faith, not the church.

Today’s search for a meaningful spirituality is not so much “spirituality lite” as a search for depth and authenticity in a culture increasingly obsessed with the trivial. Most spiritual traditions insist on daily meditation or prayer not to escape the world but to enter reality more deeply. For the fourth century Christian monks of the desert, it was an hour by hour battle to de-throne the “false” self of the ego and enter into a deeper reality within. As the Tao Te Ching puts it: “The truly great man dwells on what is real and not on what is on the surface.”

John Main, a Benedictine monk who founded the World Community for Christian Meditation, believed the loss of a contemplative tradition in modern life was responsible for much of society’s fragmentation and shallowness. Cut off from our own inner depths we remain in a state of inner division, relieved only by the distractions and “busyness” of a consumer culture.

And when religion is no longer fed by the inner, spiritual experience of its own dogma, it fails the society it serves. It lapses into a pious devotional practice designed to stir up religious feeling (the veneration of saints’ relics) or a theology based entirely in the head, leading to religious fundamentalism. My set of “beliefs” is superior to yours.

John Main believed the daily discipline of meditation could reunite us with the deeper layer of our essential being and the divine source beyond the sacred text or ritual. Only in silence can we hear “the still small voice within”. Only by moving beyond the busy ego-mind are we open to the experiential knowledge of the desert monks. The experience of not simply knowing facts but coming to know our deepest self, as we are shaped by our encounter with the deeper reality of the divine or God within.

The relationship between conscious and unconscious, explored by psychoanalysis, may speak more meaningfully to us of this journey in depth. But Main insisted meditation is a path open to everyone. And the health benefits of mindfulness as a therapeutic technique may be its greatest appeal. Regular meditation has been shown to lower blood pressure and reduce stress; doctors prescribe it to alleviate depression.

Turning inward to uncover a less fragmented self seems good for us. Spiritual traditions say the journey is intimately connected with realising our authentic selves and full potential. Meditation demands dedication and perseverance said Main: but a hunger for depth is where we start.

Shirley Lancaster, The Guardian

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Fadel Zeidan has proven that minimal training in meditation can lessen the perception of pain in research subjects.

He also has shown that similarly brief sessions of meditation can increase cognitive function – the ability to multitask, recall items in a series and complete tests on a deadline.

Now, he wants to find out why even short stints of meditation affect the brain that way.

As a post-doctoral fellow at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, Zeidan is building on research he started at UNC Charlotte. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to capture images of the brain, he is examining how mindfulness meditation affects pain perception.

The research is ongoing, but the preliminary results look promising.

“Meditation doesn’t take the sensation of pain away,” Zeidan said. “It teaches people to cope with the pain. The emotional reaction to pain makes the feeling of pain worse.”

If the MRI can show Zeidan and his colleagues how meditation helps us cope when we hurt, doctors and patients can find a better way to treat pain, especially in chronic suffers for whom medication does not work.

“We can start to pinpoint how, using our minds, we can self-regulate,” he said. “If it has to do with reducing your anticipation, regulating your emotions, or increasing relaxation – if you know why, you can figure out the best method to teach people to deal with pain.”

Zeidan and his colleagues will present initial findings from the MRI study at the 13th World Pain Conference in Montreal in August.

Just a little meditation

Zeidan’s is the first line of research to examine how much a very brief course of meditation can change the way humans react to stimuli. Previous research, though prolific, has looked at Buddhist monks or people who have spent dozens of hours and, in many cases, hundreds of dollars studying meditation at retreats in far-flung locations.

The impracticality of that bothered Zeidan. So he set out to determine the benefits of meditation for people living in a go-go culture.

“I felt that, especially as an American, we want things quick and easy,” he said.

Mindfulness meditation is an often nonreligious practice based on developing a discipline of the mind and body. Typically, practitioners sit comfortably in a quiet room and focus on the changing sensations of breath and body. When a thought or a disturbance in the room distracts them, they learn to acknowledge the distraction and then let it go by returning focus to the breath.

“You can do this a million times in your practice,” Zeidan said. “Your brain becomes not only aware of its body and mind, it becomes more aware of your environment in a less stressful way.”

He first learned about meditation during a high school philosophy class, when a teacher showed his students the basics. He has practiced mindfulness meditation ever since. So the results of his research into how meditation affected people who had never practiced it (and, in some cases, knew nothing about it) did not completely shock him.

But the extent of the results did.

In his first study, on pain perception, research volunteers were asked to rate their reaction to small but painful electric shocks. Each volunteer was tested before and after the shocks, but between baseline and subsequent testing, they were instructed to do one of several things: practice mindfulness meditation; relax and read; relax and breathe deeply; or complete a “math distraction” exercise, counting backward from 1,000, subtracting seven each time.

Feeling less pain

The meditation group, which received about seven minutes of instruction on each of three days and then practiced for a little more than 10 minutes, reported a much lower perception of pain across the board. Those research volunteers showed less sensitivity to both low and high pain, even though they did not meditate during pain stimulation.

The only other group to show significant decreases in pain perception was the math distraction group, in which volunteers did the counting exercise during pain stimulation. They reported less sensitivity to pain at the high end but not the low end of the spectrum.

Zeidan suspects mindfulness meditation curbs pain because the practice teaches the brain to prioritize what’s important at the moment. It’s the breath, not the pain.

That focus becomes even more vital in Zeidan’s second study, the results of which suggest that studying mindfulness meditation for a few days can help you power through your to-do list more quickly, perform better at work or juggle a hectic schedule with grace.

Research volunteers practiced mindfulness meditation for 20 minutes on each of four days or listened to an audio recording of a book, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” Both groups scored better on cognitive tests compared with baseline results. But only the meditation group showed notable improvement.

The meditation group soared on a timed, computerized “n-back test,” a new technique that measures working memory and the ability to focus. The test asks the subject to learn the next item in a series while remembering the previous item. It gets faster with each correct answer.

On average, those who meditated got 10 correct answers in a row. They ranged from tripling their improvement in performance to demonstrating a statistically significant difference when compared with the control group.

“Both groups did about the same on non-timed tests, but the mindfulness meditation group did significantly better with all the timed tests, which suggests they were better able to sustain their attention more efficiently,” Zeidan said. “Being in control of your emotions will probably help you do better on an attention task.”

He said the results suggest that everyone should try a little mindfulness meditation.

Leslie Rawls, who teaches meditation at the Charlotte Community of Mindfulness (www.charlottemindfulness.org), has practiced mindfulness meditation for 17 years as part of her study of Buddhism. Many benefits she has experienced mirror those that Zeidan reports.

“Stronger focus and concentration, the ability to let go of stories that my mind tells me about what’s going on,” she said. “A great sense of peace most of the time. The ability to better listen to others and be present for other people.”

Zeidan’s current research will use the MRI to determine how the brain reacts to that practice.

“We’re starting to see how meditation, after brief training, alters the conscious experience, how the mechanisms relieve pain,” he said.

Pain is intrusive; it takes over your consciousness and attention.

Zeidan is using MRIs in hopes of understanding the brain mechanisms involved in the self-regulation of pain with techniques such as meditation. For instance, focus and attention are regulated by one area of the brain, while emotional response to physical pain is regulated by another.

If he can pinpoint those mechanisms, he and his colleagues are on the path to a better treatment for pain sufferers.

[Alicia W. Roberts, Charlotte Observer]

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Thailand’s Chapchai Nirat, who holds the world’s 72-hole scoring record, and compatriot Thaworn Wiratchant, an 11-time winner in Asia, will spearhead the elite field in the tournament at the Seri Selangor Golf Club from Aug 4-7.

The Thai duo will be joined in the RM1.2mil event by a pack of talented players, including youngsters Gaganjeet Bhullar and Anirban Lahiri of India, Singaporean Quincy Quek and Malaysia’s Akhmal Tarmizee.

Chapchai has been one of Asia’s most exciting players to emerge in recent years and he cemented his place in history by winning the SAIL Open in India last year with a stunning four-round total of 32-under 256.

The big-hitting 27-year-old Thai, nicknamed King Kong, is eager to challenge for a fourth career victory at the Selangor Masters.

“My season started slowly earlier in the year but my form has improved,” said Chapchai.

“I tried to make some swing changes after my victory at the SAIL Open but I couldn’t get used to it. My swing is feeling more comfortable now and I’m confident of doing well.”

While he has yet to miss a cut this season, Chapchai’s best performance was tied 13th at the Queens Cup on home soil in June.

He is also relying on his constant meditation to keep an even keel in his hopes for more glory at the Selangor Masters.

“Meditation helps me to keep my focus and that helps in my overall game. I hope to do my best,” said Chapchai, who finished second on the Asian Tour Order of Merit in 2007.

Bhullar is highly regarded as one of the future stars to emerge from India. He lived up to expectations by claiming a second Asian Tour victory at the season-opening Asian Tour International in Thailand.

His best finish in the Selangor Masters was a tied-32nd place last season and he will be looking forward to better his results.

Thaworn, who has won two Asian Tour titles in Malaysia, is in fine form.

He has missed only one cut this season and will be determined to make amends for not getting to play four rounds at the Selangor Masters last year.

Australia’s Marcus Both, winner of the Johnnie Walker Cambodian Open last year, is hoping to turn his season around. The two-time Asian Tour winner has missed four cuts thus far.

[via The Star]

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Student veterinary nurse Sian Barr carried out the research on cats being treated at a vet’s surgery.

She found that those who were played yoga meditation music and “Om Shanti” tunes calmed down and began to breathe more slowly while in cages at the practice in Powys, Wales, reports the Telegraph.

Barr, who has just graduated from veterinary school with a first class honours degree, said: “Stress in small doses can be a good thing, such as if a cat is under stress to eat, then it can perform better.”

“But otherwise, it will have a negative effect, such as in a veterinary practice,” Barr said.

“This is because a cat is in a cage and isn’t able to do what it will like to do, so stress levels will increase and it will become angry,” she said.

“This is bad for not only its behaviour, becoming difficult for staff to handle, but also for its immune system and ability to heal,” Barr said.

Barr, of Waterlooville, Hants, studied cats when they were first admitted by assessing their ear and eye activity, how they were communicating and respiration levels.

The 21-year-old then split them into two groups, only one of which was played the relaxation CDs.

She added: “I then repeated the test after 40 minutes and was able to assign each cat a cat stress score.”

“By comparing the scores, I found the music had a dramatic effect on respiration rates, with those exposed to the music decreasing to a relaxed rate much quicker than those not exposed.”

[via South East Asia Mail]

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Researchers at the University of California, Davis, asked study participants to periodically take a demanding 30-minute computer test of how well they could make fine visual distinctions and sustain visual attention in which they intently watched a screen of lines to find and respond with a mouse click to the occasional shorter line.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, finds the participants got better at discriminating short lines as the meditation training progressed.

This improvement persisted five months after the retreat, particularly for people who continued to meditate every day.

“Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s a kind of a perfect index of meditation training,” study co-author Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student, said in a statement.

MacLean and colleagues selected 60 out of 140 people wanting to participate in a meditation retreat. A group of 30 people went on a meditation retreat while the second group waited their turn and served as a control group.

[via The International News]

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Now he’s trying to get beyond talk, into action, by producing a New Age concert featuring two gurus who have touched his life.

Why now? Because he can.

“I’m mending and mending,” Rudder said. “There’s still some ongoing stuff. Emotional stuff that comes up and physical stuff that’s hanging around. (A bullet remains embedded in his abdomen.) But I’m feeling so much better, stronger.”

Strong enough to finally bring to fruition a project that was in the planning stages before his life and the lives of so many others were forever altered when a group of Pakistan-based terrorists went on a deadly rampage in Mumbai between Nov. 26 and 29, 2008.

Rudder was one of the 308 who were wounded during the attacks, but two friends were killed as they sat beside him at dinner in the Oberoi Trident Hotel. (The total death toll of 172 included two people from Westmount, Michael Moss and Elizabeth Russell.)

Rudder was travelling in India with a group of 25 people led by meditation master Charles Cannon of the Virginia-based Synchronicity Foundation.

Cannon himself was not at the table (he was trapped upstairs in his room for 48 hours), but the vice-president of his organization, Alan Scherr, and his daughter, Naomi, died beside Rudder.

Now he’s bringing Cannon to Montreal to appear next week on-stage with Quebec New Age recording artist Patrick Bernard at the KoSA Centre in N.D.G.

Both people have been key inspirations to Rudder. Bernard will perform his chants inspired by sacred Sanskrit, Hebrew and Latin texts, self-accompanied on guitar and synthesizers. Cannon, who will be travelling without his musical instruments, will restrict himself to reciting 14th-century Persian poetry by Hafiz.

Cannon, a former actor, also will give meditational seminars while he’s here. But the concert performance will be something of a departure for Cannon, Rudder said. “I thought it would be great to have the two of them on stage together. They both have the gift of taking you deep into yourself.”

That’s the thing about peace. Rudder believes you get it from the people who have it. Will he be participating in the concert himself ? “Not to my knowledge,” he replied, “unless I trip and make a noise.”

But Rudder sees this venture, which he is bankrolling himself, as a possible move into a new career as a producer. Since the attack, he has done a few roles in French film and television and some dubbing, but, unsure of his strength, he hasn’t yet returned to the stage.

Whatever he does, from here on in, is going to be about peace. “I’m promoting it as an experience,” he said. “If you have an experience of peace in your life that is beyond your normal understanding, then you want to find out what that was and go there. If you have no experience of peace, only hate, then that’s what you’re going to create.”

Meditation for Peace takes place Friday at 8 p.m. at the KoSA Centre, 5325 Crowley Ave., in N.D.G. Tickets, $40. Call 514-656-5672 or go to www.kosacentre.org.

Charles Cannon will give a free information session with demonstration on Thursday, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. He also will give a full-day seminar called High-Tech Meditation and Holistic Living, on July 25 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the KoSA Centre. Tickets, $125, include a book and CD set. Call 514-656-5672 or Ticketpro at 514-790-1111.

[via Montreal Gazette]

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Dear Auntie,

I have been practicing Buddhism for several years. However, I keep getting caught in the Shempa with this particular man. I am 60 years old and divorced for 8 years. I met this man 3 years ago when I started dancing. He was attentive and pursued me for a short time (I won’t go into details) and then dumped me in pursuit of a 31 year old (30 years his junior) who had emotional problems and confided in him. He told me at first that she was only a friend who saw him as a father figure, but I later found out that they had a sexual encounter. I did not speak to him for about a year but did see him all the time at the dances. But, it goes on.

Because we both love dancing and there is no other place to go, we see each other almost every week. After some time, and given the fact that the girl has moved to California, my rapport with him has been better. Recently, I have seen him a few times under the guise of him wanting to “practice” dance. This has led to a few for lack of better words (since he is now 65) sexual encounters, after which he is very pleasant and then goes his merry way. He calls me his “friend” and best dancing partner he has ever had, and then of course, goes on to take another woman to the dance the next week. I have not been with anyone else, although there have been a few opportunities.

I am ashamed that I can’t keep away from him and always seem pleasant and friendly towards him. I know it has to do with not feeling loved by my father and there are thoughts in my head that if I just am…pretty enough, good enough…then…all of this I know intellectually…I have sent myself Loving Kindness, but, still I am left with this shame that I can let myself be treated so poorly. Because he edges himself into my life as my friend…and because I feel I have no rights since he makes no commitment and I go along with it, I am trapped by my feelings. He is now pursuing someone else at the dance and I see the same MO taking place. I feel that he really wants her and a relationship with her. This of course only makes me feel like chopped liver. I do not want to give up dancing, but seeing them together breaks my heart. I need practices to help me with this. Please!

Seeking love in the wrong place

Dear Seeking Love:

Several years ago Auntie had the idea to write a humorous Buddhist advice column. Since then, the sad relationship questions have been pouring in…well, trickling. So, again, duty calls, and humor will have to wait!

Anyway thanks for all the detail – that is helpful.

Unfortunately the answer for anything that we want to run away from seems to always be to go more into it. There are several angles we could choose. One is how the man feels about other women. Another is how he feels about you. Another is how you feel about him. And finally, how you feel about yourself. Maybe you can guess which one Auntie is going to pursue.

You described how you feel about yourself in terms of shame, I have no rights, I am not pretty enough, and I am chopped liver. What is shameful about loving someone or being fond of someone who does not give you what you want? We are addicted and we chase after sources of suffering. This is being human. There is the idea in Buddhism that the cup is already broken. This applies to the heart as well. Your father maybe helped break it. It was maybe half broken when you were born. Other people probably chipped in. Seeing this and being creative with this is our work. Some level of satisfaction may be achieved when we can lean this far into craving and despair.

You know yourself pretty well and perhaps already know this. This man is not the cause but the occasion of your pain. Yes, many men your age like younger women. And many women much younger than you like older men. But beyond all that, beyond all conceptions of who is a victim and who is not, and who has the power and who does not – seeing for a moment through the veil of craving – it looks like this man is helping you see the vulnerability and tenderness of your own heart. And you don’t want to see that, and none of us do, and yet it is part of our life.

To the degree that you’re acting like you’re ok with the situation, you are participating in it, you are helping create it. Perhaps he doesn’t want what you want. He thinks of you as an FWB (Friend With Benefits). There’s nothing wrong with what he wants, and there’s nothing wrong with what you want – on the other hand he doesn’t know what you want. You are withholding information, trying to protect yourself, but this only makes it more lonely and painful. You cannot protect yourself from the truth, from how you feel, from desire. If you feel bad about yourself, the best thing you can do is be honest.

In terms of more formal practices…Are you familiar with tonglen? Especially what Pema Chodron calls ‘Tonglen on the spot’ — for chopped liver-ness and shame. Just don’t count on it getting rid of the pain. Don’t use getting rid of the pain as the motivation. Let your motivation be that you want to more deeply understand and appreciate your life.

I also suggest not just practicing formal loving kindness meditation, but actively putting more work into deepening friendships and expressing more love in your life. Really being kinder to yourself and to others. For some of us, this might mean going into therapy and/or talking about issues with good friends.

Auntie’s friend Paramananda suggests chanting the Green Tara mantra.

It also could be useful to reflect on the third precept:

I undertake to abstain from harming [even myself] because of sexuality.
With stillness, simplicity and contentment [and straightforwardness], I purify my body.

I haven’t actually read either of these books but perhaps they could help: Mark Epstein’s Open to Desire and Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance.

I hope this has been of some use. If you feel like giving an update later, please do! Love Auntie

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