appreciation

on practice, reviews

“The greatest gift you can ever give another is to see what is best and unique about them.”

This morning I stumbled downstairs, bleary-eyed, having got home late after teaching a class the night before. My six-year-old daughter gave me a running hug and a huge smile. She’s naturally affectionate, but I suspect there was an ulterior motive, because a few seconds later she came running back to me with Mishan’s Garden in her hands, asking that I read it to her. And so, I did.

Mishan is the titular heroine, a young girl who lives in The Village Above the White Clouds, where her father is the innkeeper. Misha is a special girl, whose birth was accompanied by the song of a white bird — a song so sweet it seemed to unite heaven and earth.

The power of gratitude (day 62)

June 13, 2013

Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., is the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology, and the author of Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, and so he’s written a lot about the benefits of gratitude.

Gratitude is, of course, an important aspect of joyful appreciation, or mudita, which is the practice that we’re exploring at the moment as part of our 100 Days of Lovingkindness. So here are a few ways that Dr. Emmons has shown gratitude can enhance our lives.

Gratitude enhances positive emotions. Emmons points out, as I have elsewhere, that we quickly habituate to pleasant circumstances, and that our positive emotions tend to wear off quickly. We’re wired as novelty seekers, and while we may celebrate some new development in our lives — a nice spell of weather, returning to health after an illness — the enjoyment quickly wears off, and we’re left with the existential “meh” that is so familiar to many of us. In fact we generally start seeking things to be discontented with. But when we consciously practice gratitude, we appreciate life’s benefits and are less likely to take them for granted. We find that we celebrate the many ways that goodness is woven into the fabric of life, and we feel more joyful and engaged.
“Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret — emotions that can destroy our happiness,” Emmons says, using language almost identical to Buddhist teachers of the last 2,500 years. He points to research suggesting that gratitude reduces the frequency and duration of periods of depression, and that people who are more grateful are less prone to envy and resentment. And this is exactly what we’d expect; resentment and envy are the direct emotional opposites of joyful appreciation. If you’re experiencing appreciation and gratitude, it’s impossible to feel envious or resentful at the same time.
Gratitude protects against stress. People who tend to be grateful bounce back more quickly from adverse circumstances, loss, suffering, and injury. They’re more emotionally resilient. Their ability to seek the good prevents them from focusing too much on the negative in situations. Someone who’s of a grateful disposition who suffers a disability is more likely to focus on the things they can do rather than to dwell on the things they can no longer do.
Grateful people have a higher sense of self-worth. When we lack gratitude, we’re more likely to think that the world is against us and that nothing is going right in our lives. Therefore we think that we’re not worth much. Gratitude makes those kinds of cognitive distortions less likely. When we’re grateful we value what we have rather than focusing on what we don’t have. We may feel grateful just for being, for having air to breathe. We recognize that even when some things are not going the way we want them to, the vast majority of circumstances are conspiring to support us. When we look at ourselves, we appreciate our own qualities, and see someone who is basically loved and supported by the universe.

I’d add to Dr. Emmons’ thoughts by pointing out that gratitude is a powerful reinforcer of social connections. People love to be appreciated and rejoiced in. When we expression our gratitude and appreciation of others, we cement powerful bonds, and feel connected. Those social connections are not only of practical benefit — people who like us are more likely to help us, but those people are more likely to be there for us emotionally. And feeling that we’re a part of a rich social network, which is more likely if we’re grateful to others, helps us to feel less alone with our problems. Studies have shown that feelings of isolation are actually as damaging for our health as cigarette smoking, so feeling connected to others provides valuable benefits to our physical and mental health.

Traditionally there are eleven benefits for the one who practices gratitude: “Happily he sleeps; happily he awakes; he does not see bad dreams; he is dear to humans; he is dear to non-humans; deities protect him; fire, poison, sword and stick come not near him; he concentrates his mind quickly; the colour of his face is pleasingly bright; at the time of death he is not bewildered; if he attains not the sublime state, he is reborn in the world of Brahma.”

I can’t vouch for your having a good rebirth in the next life as a result of practicing gratitude, but I do know that it will help you be healthier and happier in this life.

PS. You can see all of our 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

There’s a crack in everything (Day 55)

June 6, 2013

This morning I was heading to work and I became aware that I wasn’t letting the world in.

Right now in New Hampshire, where I live, it’s late spring or early summer, and the trees, of which there are many on my route to work, are resplendent. Last night’s rains have left the greens and purples of the leaves rich and saturated, and the world is alive and vibrant. And yet for a few minutes it was as if I was seeing this through a filter that stripped out all the beauty. And in a way I was; the filter was my mind, clouded by preoccupations. With this filter of self in place, I saw the world, but didn’t allow myself to resonate with its aliveness and beauty.

Some part of me recognized that I was impoverishing my experience, and my thinking dropped away and the world’s beauty came flooding in. It was a deeply enriching and satisfying experience, just noticing and appreciating all this beauty as I moved through it. Everything was beautiful. Everything.

I’ve been noticing, since starting to practice the mudita bhavana (the meditation in cultivating joyful appreciation) that I’m becoming much more appreciative.

Yesterday I was walking to my local cafe, and saw Larry sitting on a doorstep, having a cigarette. And I was struck by how much I liked the style of his baseball boots. They were attractive in themselves, but the shape and color of them perfectly complemented the rest of his clothing. So I commented on this, and we got into a conversation about them; he said they’re cheap shoes, but that he really loves them. It seemed like he was pleased to have permission to like his shoes.

In the cafe, there was a new display of five paintings by a local artist. They were all good, but three in particular were really excellent. And the way that the paintings had been displayed was beautiful, and I couldn’t help thinking that those particular artworks belonged in that space. So I shared that with Michelle, the cafe’s owner. It’s good to share what we appreciate.

And Michelle herself is a lovely person, and I noticed that there was a touching vulnerability about her, like she was perhaps feeling a bit down, but was dealing with it in her usual patient and kind way, staying calm and graceful while under pressure.

The filter of “selfing” seems to be dropping away, and beauty is being allowed in. “Unselfing” allows esthetic appreciation to take place. It allows the heart to resonate.

So I’d suggest, from time to time, just dropping your “selfing” activities; drop those filters of self-preoccupation and let the world’s beauty in.

I wonder if beauty is simply the meeting of the world and an appreciative mind? There can’t really be an experience of beauty without a complementary experience of appreciative awareness. I didn’t experience the trees as beautiful until I dropped my filters and appreciated them. And in some sense there seems to be no such thing as “objective” beauty. When we have an appreciative mind, it can seem as if everything is beautiful. It’s not just the obviously beautiful things (trees, flowers) that you can resonate with. Even cracks in concrete, a crumpled Coke can that a car’s run over, a pair of cheap baseball boots, a pile of dirty dishes can be received with appreciation and so have their own beauty. True, there are some things it’s easier to appreciate, and therefore to see as beautiful; for example we’ve evolved to have positive responses to nature. And there are some things it’s hard to appreciate; it’s hard to see a facial deformity without wincing. But it seems anything can be seen as beautiful if we look the right way.

Even brokenness can be beautiful. A few weeks ago I dropped my iPad mini and the screen cracked right across, diagonally. Perhaps because I’d been doing lots of lovingkindness meditation, this didn’t bother me at all. When I look at the screen I find I like my iPad more, not less. Mine is the only iPad that’s cracked in that particular way. It’s unique, and lovely. Interestingly, when other people see the crack they’re aghast. They react as if I have broken every limb in my body. But to me, there’s something lovely about this crack.

The Japanese have an art called kintsugi. When some ceramic household object, like a favorite teapot, breaks, it’s repaired with gold resin, so that the cracks are highlighted. Objects repaired in this way are seen as more precious and beautiful than undamaged items.

This makes me think that everything is cracked. As Leonard Cohen said, “There’s a crack in everything.” And appreciation seems to have the ability to make things whole again, to fill the cracks with gold.

The conscious evolution of appreciation (Day 53)

June 4, 2013

Click here to see all the posts from our 100 Days of Lovingkindness.

The neuropsychologist (and Wildmind contributor) Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is very good at pointing out that our brains have a negativity bias. Our brains, as he puts it, are like velcro for painful experiences and teflon for pleasant experiences. And this bias has arisen because of our evolutionary history: hominins and early humans who ignored potential threats didn’t leave many ancestors, and so we’re descended from rather “twitchy” forebears who were good at thinking about things that might go wrong.

But now that, for most of us reading this article, our basic needs are largely covered, and so we find ourselves in the situation not of struggling to live, but of trying to live happily and meaningfully. And our inherited negativity bias — in the forms of anxiety, criticism, pessimism, envy, etc. — doesn’t generally help us to live well. We find ourselves the richest and safest people who have ever lived, and finding life to be unpleasant much of the time. As the comedian Louis C.K. put it, “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.”

“…a guy on an airplane was pissed off because the plane’s internet wasn’t working – how quickly the world owes him something he didn’t even know existed 10 seconds earlier….”

We’re flying around the world in metal tubes, six miles above the ground, entertaining ourselves with electronic devices that seemed like science fiction when I was a child, and we’re not very happy.

Well, we can still evolve, although in saying those words I’m not referring to our genes but to our minds. Sangharakshita points out that biological evolution has brought us to the point were we can start wondering about the point, and that from here on it’s up to us.

If you view our mental states as a population, you can see mindfulness and wisdom as a selection pressure. When we start to see that anxiety, criticism, pessimism, envy, etc. impoverish our lives, there’s an incentive for us to drop those habits. It’s just like a selection pressure in biology acting to weed out certain maladaptive genes. We can consciously encourage the development of more skillful states of mind — that is, states that lead to the emotional and spiritual enrichment of our lives.

One practice I encourage is to rejoice in what’s going right in our lives, and to say “Thank you.” At this point some people will be thinking “There’s nothing going right in my life.” We’ve all had thoughts like that. But those thoughts are never true.

Are you alive? If so, say, “Thank you.”

(Say the words “Thank you” in your mind at least, clearly articulated and consciously generated.)

Do you have air to breathe? It took countless billions of beings to manufacture the atmosphere that sustains you. Say, “Thank you.”

A few thousand years ago, your chances of dying violently were about one in three. You’re currently living in one of the safest periods in our species’ history. Say, “Thank you.”

The chances are that you’re living in a relatively democratic country. Say, “Thank you.”

You’re probably inside a building, sheltered from the elements. Say, “Thank you.”

You’re reading this online, so you have internet service. Say, “Thank you.”

And electricity. Say, “Thank you.”

Probably clean water as well. Say, “Thank you.”

The building you’re in is probably covered by all kinds of building codes designed to keep you safe. Countless thousands of people have labored to make this a safe world for you to live in. Say, “Thank you.”

Outside, there are roads and bridges. Say, “Thank you.”

(When I’m driving and I’m a bit bored or frustrated I remind myself that there is actually a road to drive on and suddenly driving changes from being stressful to being a miracle.

Almost all of us have access to grocery stores containing a bewildering variety of foods. Say, “Thank you.”

This isn’t to deny that there are things wrong with the world, or that things couldn’t be better. But often we’ll focus on the negative (there’s a pothole at the end of my street) rather than the positive (I live on a paved street). And it’s not to deny that life is genuinely hard for many people. But count your blessings.

So this is a practice I encourage. Focus more on what’s going right, and less on what’s less than ideal. Consciously say “Thank you.” Even if this seems a little weird or artificial, it can have an amazing effect on our lives. This is an excellent way to get into mudita, or joyous appreciation.

Everything’s amazing. And if you keep reminding yourself of that, you won’t be unhappy.

“To believe in the heroic makes heroes” Benjamin Disraeli

June 3, 2013

quote of the month

In the Path of Freedom, a 1st century meditation manual that I’ve mentioned a few times because it’s the earliest source I know of for cultivating lovingkindness and compassions in stages, we’re asked first of all to connect with mudita (appreciation) in the following way:

When one sees or hears that some person’s qualities are esteemed by others, and that he is at peace and is joyful, one thinks thus: “Sadhu! Sadhu! May he continue joyful for a long time!”

So this brings up the question of who we know (or know of) who is like that. And it also brings up the question of whether we actually want there to be people like that. But let’s deal with those one at a time…

Upatissa, the author of the Path to Freedom, doesn’t say that we have to personally know this exemplary person. In fact it’s clear that we might only know them from reputation. But it may also be someone we are fortunate enough to know personally. So who do we know (personally or at a remove) who has qualities that are esteemed by others, and who is at peace and joyful?

I’m fortunate to have personal experience of a number of people who fit the bill, some of whom I have lived with and who I therefore know quite well. These are people who are scrupulously ethical, and very careful in how they talk about others. I would often find myself complaining about someone, and one of my more skillful friends would respond by saying something that, for example, put the other person’s actions into a broader context and made those actions seem more forgivable. I can think of a couple of people who I have never known to do or say anything unkind. Whenever they have problems they always approach them from the perspective of the Buddhist teachings. And these are people who are often joyful, dignified, and at peace.

Perhaps I’m fortunate in this — I just don’t know. Or perhaps you know many such people.

What about those we know only by reputation? I think of people like the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, and Maya Angelou. These people are giants in their own ways, and demonstrated personality traits that are highly “esteemed.” The Dalai Lama is the most obviously joyful, while the others seem to exhibit more of a sense of peace and dignity. I feel ennobled simply by calling them to mind.

Psychologists call this feeling of emotional uplift “elevation.” Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, studies elevation, which stimulates the vagus nerve (also involved in compassion) and leads to “a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat.”

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, has written, “Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental ‘reset button,’ wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.”

Feelings of inspiration also lead to the release of the hormone oxytocin, which is associated with love and bonding.

Now there’s the second question. Do you want there to be heroes? Some people don’t. What’s your reaction when you hear that someone is admired and is joyful and at peace? Does your cynicism kick in and start doubting? Do you imagine the Dalai Lama’s smile leaving his face as soon as he leaves the stage, and him yelling at his attendants? Do you cast around for some negative fact from the life of Eleanor Roosevelt that “balances” or negates the inspiring role she played in the civil rights movement?

If you do this kind of thing, you’re not alone. We’ve got used to heroes being exposed as having feet of clay. It’s still common to hear Mother Theresa held up as a paragon of compassion, but it’s also more common to hear that she was actually a very unkind person who seemed to take joy in watching people suffer.

I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t investigate such things and write honest biographies. If the truth is that Mother Theresa was a monster, then let that come out. But I do suggest that you don’t immediately jump to the conclusion that there must be some dark undercurrent to the lives of heroic people. Because I think one of the reasons we sometimes don’t want there to be heroes is pride. One of the ways we seek a sense of security and wellbeing is through the “worldly wind” of status, which often involves thinking that we’re better than others, or at least thinking that others are not better than us. And so it can be tempting to find fault in order to drag others down to our level.

However, I suggest that it’s unwise to expect perfection in anyone. Everyone makes mistakes, and causes others harm. It’s always possible to find fault. I can know that Nelson Mandela had an affair and hurt his family, but still regard him as someone to admire. I can know that Maya Angelou worked as a prostitute and pimp, and still have immense respect for the person she evolved into. These flaws and mistakes actually help me to have greater respect for my heroes, not less. Their humanness, as shown by their difficulties and vulnerability, makes them easier to relate to — if I respond with compassion rather than judgement.

And they don’t have to be perfect examples of joy or peace. I’m sure Roosevelt’s life was troubled. I don’t have personal insight into Nelson Mandela or Maya Angelou’s day-to-day states of mind, but I doubt that they’re happy or at peace all the time. But they’re still admirable.

So let’s think about heroes. Let’s allow ourself to have heroes, without either being cynical or denying their flaws. It’ll help make us better people, and will help us help others. As Disraeli said, “To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

PS. You can see all of the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Cultivating appreciative joy (Day 51)

June 2, 2013

The third of the Brahmaviharas, or “immeasurables,” after lovingkindness and compassion, is muditā. Muditā is sometimes translated as sympathetic joy, or empathetic joy, or as appreciative joy.

Our old friend, the first century text, the Path to Freedom, describes it like this:

As parents, who, on seeing the happiness of their dear and only child are glad, and say, “sadhu!” so, one develops appreciative joy for all beings. Thus should appreciative joy be known. The undisturbed dwelling of the mind in appreciative joy — this is called the practising of it. Gladness is its salient characteristic. Non-fear is its function. Destruction of dislike is its manifestation. Its benefits are equal to those of loving-kindness.

So again, this quality of appreciation, like lovingkindness and compassion, is something intrinsic to us that needs to be developed and extended, and not some amazing mystical experience that we’re striving to attain some day. We already have experience of muditā! (Sādhu, by the way, means something like “yay” or “alright!” or “great!”)

But this description of seeing happiness and being glad sounds rather like metta, or lovingkindness. Compassion is the desire that beings be free from suffering — so that, at least, is quite clearly different from appreciative joy. Mettā is the desire that beings be happy. But what’s the difference between mettā and muditā?

Upatissa, the author of the Path to Freedom, actually is a bit more specific when he explains how to cultivate appreciative joy:

When one sees or hears that some person’s qualities are esteemed by others, and that he is at peace and is joyful, one thinks thus: “sadhu! sadhu! may he continue joyful for a long time!”

So in both examples — “seeing the happiness of their dear and only child” and “seeing and hearing that some person’s qualities are esteemed by others” — we have two things going on:

The person is already happy. Mettā wishes that beings be happy. Muditā is our response to knowing that beings actually are experiencing happiness.
Appreciative joy is not just about happiness — it’s about valuing and appreciating the good qualities people have that bring them happiness. So appreciative joy is appreciation. In fact I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t just translate muditā as “appreciation,” and I’ll probably use that term a lot. “Gladness” is a good Anglo-Saxon alternative, but perhaps a bit less precise, since there isn’t much in the word “gladness” that suggests it’s a response to the happiness or meritorious qualities of others.

So there’s more here than just recognizing happiness and being glad that people are happy. We’re recognizing ethically skillful behaviors and character traits, and the peace and joy they bring.

PS. You can see all of the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

The pursuit of happiness (Day 64)

June 1, 2013

We all want happiness, but much joy do you experience in your life? And I mean real “heart welling up,” “spring in the step,” “full of the joys of spring joy,” “happy for no reason” joy, rather than the dull sense of pleasure that we often experience.

Most people, when they’re asked this question, will say “not much.” Many may go entire days, or even weeks, without any significant joy. Life can often seem like an endless round of chasing deadlines and striving to stay on top of an ever-growing to-do list, and so be imbued with a sense of stress.

Do we even expect to be happy? It strikes me that many of us have low expectations for how happy we will be. We don’t expect our lives to produce much joy.

How do we look for happiness? By vegging out in front of the TV, or by eating, or shopping, or Facebook, or through alcohol? But these pursuits often lead, at best, to that sense of dull pleasure I mentioned earlier, rather than genuine joy.

Maybe we think that happiness is just around the corner, but we haven’t got there yet. Or maybe it’s a ways off; perhaps we’ll be happy after we get a new job, or more pay, or once we lose some weight, or when we’re on vacation, or after we get past this busy spell.

The trouble is, that we create unhappiness for ourselves through our thoughts and attitudes, and then expect to consume our way out of unhappiness. And that just doesn’t work.

There’s a piece of “cowboy wisdom” I heard many years ago that goes, “When you find you’re in a hole, the first thing you gotta do is stop diggin’.” And I think that’s absolutely true. To live happily, we have to drop the mental habits that make us unhappy. Often that’s all we have to do — stop making ourselves unhappy, since joy is something we actively suppress. Joy is our natural way of being, but most of our “doing” cuts us off from our natural happiness.

So what are those mental habits that suppress our happiness? Basically, they are anything we do that resists the present moment. The “usual suspects” are things like responding with clinging rather than letting go, resisting rather than accepting, anger rather than kindness, complaining rather than celebrating, worrying rather than being optimistic, and trying to escape our experience rather than being mindful.

Being joyful is a skill, and most people lack skill in creating joy. Just look at people driving or walking past you; what percentage of people are actually smiling? The things we do that suppress our joy are called “unskillful” activities in Buddhism. Conversely, when we act in ways that allow joy to emerge, we’re acting skillfully.

As soon as we drop any of these unskillful, joy-suppressing activities, we feel happier. We may not go straight to a deep sense of joy the moment we drop an angry thought, but at least when we do that we’re heading in the right direction. If we keep letting go of unskillful thoughts, and refrain from unskillful words and actions, we are creating a space for joy to emerge. And if we cultivate skillful habits of thought, speech, and action, joy will emerge. It’s guaranteed.

So just watch your mind. Notice your thoughts, and notice whether they’re contributing to a sense of joy, or a sense of disharmony. And if you’re creating suffering for yourself, let go of or change those thoughts or replace them with more skillful ones. And you can do the same with your speech, as well.

You can see all the posts from 100 Days of Lovingkindness here.

When you feel like you’re “not enough”

December 15, 2012

Rick Hanson PhD

One slice of the pie of life feels relaxed and contented. And then there is that other slice, in which we feel driven and stressed. Trying to get pleasures, avoid pains, pile up accomplishments and recognitions, be loved by more people. Lose more weight, try to fill the hole in the heart. Slake the thirst, satisfy the hunger. Strive, strain, press.

This other slice is the conventional strategy for happiness. We pursue it for four reasons.

The brain evolved through its reptilian, mammalian, and primate/human stages to meet three needs: avoid harms, approach rewards, and attach to others. In terms of these three needs, animals that were nervous, driven, and clinging were more likely to survive and pass on their genes – which are woven into our DNA today. Try to feel not one bit uneasy, discontented, or disconnected for more than a few seconds, let alone a few minutes.
You’re bombarded by thousands of messages each day that tell you to want more stuff. Even if you turn off the TV, worth in our culture is based greatly on accomplishments, wealth, and appearance; you have to keep improving, and the bar keeps rising.
Past experiences, especially young ones, leave traces that are negatively biased due to the Velcro-for-pain but Teflon-for-pleasure default setting of the brain. So there’s a background sense of anxiety, resentment, loss, hurt, or inadequacy, guilt, or shame that makes us over-react today.
To have any particular perception, emotion, memory, or desire, the brain must impose order on chaos, signals on noise. In a mouthful of a term, this is “cognitive essentializing.” The brain must turn verbs – dynamic streams of neural activity – into nouns: momentarily stable sights, sounds, tastes, touches, smells, and thoughts. Naturally, we try to hold onto the ones we like. But since neural processing continually changes, all experiences are fleeting. They slip through your fingers as you reach for them, an unreliable basis for deep and lasting happiness. Yet so close, so tantalizing . . . and so we keep reaching.

For these reasons, deep down there is a sense of disturbance, not-enoughness, unease. Feeling threatened and unsafe, disappointed and thwarted, insufficiently valued and loved. Driven to get ahead, to fix oneself, to capture an experience before it evaporates. So we crave and cling, suffer and harm. As if life were a cup – with a hole in the bottom – that we keep trying to fill. A strategy that is both fruitless and stressful.

All the world’s wisdom traditions point out this truth: that the conventional strategy for happiness is both doomed and actually makes us unhappier. The theistic traditions (e.g., Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity) describe this truth as the inherently unsatisfying nature of a life that is separated from an underlying Divine reality. The agnostic traditions (e.g., Buddhism) describe it as the inherent suffering in grasping or aversion toward innately ephemeral experiences.

Call this the truth of futility. Recognizing it has been both uncomfortable and enormously helpful for me, since you gradually realize that it is pointless to “crave” – to stress and strain over fleeting experiences. But there is another truth, also taught in the wisdom traditions, though perhaps not as forthrightly. This is the truth that there is always already an underlying fullness.

When this truth sinks in emotionally, into your belly and bones, you feel already peaceful, happy, and loved. There is no need for craving, broadly defined, no need to engage an unhappy strategy for happiness. And you have more to offer others now that your cup is truly full.

How?

Recognize the lies built into the conventional strategy for happiness to wake up from their spells. Mother Nature whispers: You should feel threatened, frustrated, lonely. Culture and commerce say: You need more clothes, thinner thighs, better beer; consume more and be like the pretty people on TV. The residues of past experiences, especially young ones, mutter in the background: You’re not that smart, attractive, worthy; you need to do more and be more; if you just have X, you’ll get the life you want. The essentializing nature of cognition implies: Crave more, cling more, it will work the next time, really.

As you see through these lies, recognize the truth of fullness. In terms of your core needs to avoid harms, approach rewards, and attach to others, observe: that you are basically alright right now; that this moment of experience has an almost overwhelming abundance of stimulation, and you probably live better than the kings and queens of old; and that you are always intimately connected with all life, and almost certainly loved. Regarding our consumerist and status-seeking culture, consider what really matters to you – for example, if you were told you had one year to live – and notice that you already have most if not all of what matters most. In terms of the messages from previous experiences, look inside to see the facts of your own natural goodness, talents, and spirit. And about the impermanent nature of experience, notice what happens when you let go of this moment: another one emerges, the vanishing Now is endlessly renewed.

Abiding in fullness doesn’t mean you sit on your thumbs. It’s normal and fine to wish for more pleasure and less pain, to aspire and create, to lean into life with passion and purpose, to pursue justice and peace. But we don’t have to want for more, fight with more, drive for more, clutch at more. While the truth of futility is that it is hopeless to crave, the truth of fullness is that it’s unnecessary.

Finding this fullness, let it sink in. For survival purposes, the brain is good at learning from the bad, but bad at learning from the good. So help it by enriching an experience through making it last a 10-20 seconds or longer, fill your body and mind, and become more intense. Also absorb it by intending and sensing that it is sinking into you as you sink into it. Do this half a dozen times a day, maybe half a minute at a time. It’s less than five minutes a day. But you’ll be gradually weaving a profound sense of being already fundamentally peaceful, happy, loved, and loving into the fabric of your brain and your life.

Mindfulness of good intentions

October 15, 2012

Rick Hanson PhD