peace

Democracy and spiritual practice

July 1, 2025

Because of the alarming political situation in the US, which has parallels with events in other countries, I’ve been writing about how we, as spiritual practitioners, might skillfully face the troubling emotions politics can give rise to.

The two emotions that stand out for me are fear (where is this all going? how bad will things get?) and despair (mourning the loss of democratic norms).

To help me to deal with these potent emotions, I’ve adopted three slogans: Feet on the ground. Heart wide open. Eyes upward (or keep looking up). These provide a framework for my practice.

Feet on the ground means finding ways to keep ourselves emotionally balanced, so we can avoid panic and despair. We might want to be mindful in our news consumption. We might choose not to follow those who build followings on social media by generating, outrage, and follow instead people who are informed, compassionate, and balanced. Keeping up a daily meditation practice helps us be calmer. Keeping up our friendships (especially with those who are wise and balanced) helps us with emotional regulation. We might also understand that what’s happening today is part of a long historical pattern of swings between more democratic and autocratic styles of government.
Heart wide open reminds me that it’s important not to shut down and disengage, no matter how overwhelming the news might be. We need to create an inner space of compassion — staying in touch with our own suffering — and live from that space. We need to stay in touch with the reality of others’ suffering, and do what we can to help.
Eyes upward reminds me that we mustn’t ever let what’s happening now seem acceptable. We must remember, at a time of viciousness and chaos, what’s good and normal, and how things should be. But a return to normal, difficult as it is to imagine the path that takes us there, wouldn’t be enough. “Eyes upward” means aspiring to create a better, fairer society than we had before. Above all, it means developing a deeper appreciation of democracy and wanting a better, more inclusive, less corrupt democracy.

Democracy Is Under Threat

In fact, one of the things we are losing, or might be losing — and this is a source both of grief and fear — is democracy itself. The grief comes because of the freedoms and security we have lost. The fear comes for many reasons, but chief amongst them is that when leaders are no longer subject to democratic accountability, very bad things start to happen, from political persecution up to torture, murder, and genocide.

Democracy goes through periods of expansion and contraction. There were very few democracies before World War I, but an explosion of them afterwards. Democracies in that period also became more truly democratic, extending the franchise to working class men and to women.

Before WWII there was rise of authoritarianism and a decline in democracy. But after that war, the former colonies shed their European overlords, former dictatorships became democracies, and democracy expanded again. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many former communist dictatorships adopted democratic forms of government. The number of people living in democracies peaked around 2006, after which democracy there was a rise once again of authoritarianism. Sometimes this authoritarianism took the guise of “illiberal democracy” where elections take place, but the ruling party has rigged things so that they’re almost certain to stay in power. Orbán’s Hungary is a prime example of this.

Right now we’re seeing a stark decline in democracy in the United States. Danger signs include:

the president taking control of governmental spending (a function reserved for congress)
threats to media outlets and law firms that the president regards as enemies
threats against judges (and actual arrests)
the executive branch defying court orders
the government attempting to take over the running of universities, etc.

These are all classic moves in establishing a Hungary-type authoritarian pseudo-democracy.

Recognizing the long-term ups and downs of democracy reminds us that it’s not “game over” when a country becomes authoritarian or even an outright dictatorship. Authoritarian regimes tend to implode, and people’s hunger for freedom and self-determination can never be entirely suppressed.

Reasons to Have Faith In Democracy

I have faith in democracy as the best form of government for complex modern states. It is our best hope for a dignified human existence. And it is the best political system for facilitating spiritual practice.

I say this knowing that there is no such thing as a perfect democracy. Human beings are themselves not perfect, and we are emerging from a history soaked in blood. We cannot slough off the past, and have to learn from it, sometimes painfully, in order to move on.

I offer four grounds to support my claim that liberal democracy is the best form of government.

1. Liberal Democracies Are More Peaceful

It is exceedingly rare for democracies to go to war with each other. The establishment of democracy in virtually all of Europe and South America has drastically reduced the incidence of war in those areas of the world. The more democracies there are, the more peaceful the world is likely to become.

Autocracies are inevitably violent. Their leaders are themselves belligerent and intolerant. They see wars as a good way of distracting a population from the poor standard of living that results from their inept leadership. Their populations are often unable to protest against wars. This is the case in Russia, for example. People may be so misled by propaganda that they don’t understand what’s going on. Many people in Russia think their soldiers are fighting Nazis in Ukraine. The more freedom there is, and the more the media is able to report what’s going on, the more opposition there is to war.

When autocratic leaders don’t direct violence against other countries, they often do so against less-favored citizens of their own countries. Liberal democracies tend to be peaceful places to live. Citizens do not generally have to fear that they will be dragged off for holding dissenting views. As Orwell wrote, “No system except democracy can be trusted to save us from unspeakable horrors.”

2. Liberal Democracy Allows for Material Flourishing

Liberal democracies tend to provide a far higher standard of living than autocratic regimes. The 10 countries with the highest standard of living are all liberal democracies, and yet liberal democracies count for only a third of the world’s governments.

Liberal democracies tend to be stable, predictable, and durable. No democracy is perfect, but in the main they have strong political institutions and legal systems, and democracies usually choose people with demonstrated competence to staff its agencies. Authoritarian regimes, offer government posts as rewards to those who demonstrate loyalty to the leader. Corruption flourishes, and as a result, the country and its economy become inefficient. The more dysfunctional and corrupt a democracy is, the more likely it is that it’s in the process of becoming authoritarian.

The more flawed a democracy is, the worse the standard of living tends to me. Neither the UK and US is anywhere near the top of the standard of living chart (the US is 15th, while the UK is 22nd), and both countries have been downgraded by the Economist Intelligence Unit from “full” to “flawed” democracies.

3. Liberal Democracy Allows for Emotional and Spiritual Flourishing

There is a reason why so many great spiritual and philosophical teachers—including the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Plato—arose in the so-called Axial Age. The invention of iron meant that society was no longer living at a subsistence level. People could use iron axes to clear forests for agriculture use, and plow fields with iron-tipped plows. The agricultural surplus they generated, they could transport long distances in carts with iron-rimmed wheels. This created cities, where minds could more easily meet and talk.

With a higher standard of living, and with more free time, people could now ask questions like, “What is my life’s purpose? What does it mean to live a good life?” To focus here on material flourishing is not to be materialistic. It’s to recognize that freedom from material want allows for spiritual flourishing.

Many of the qualities necessary in the political culture of a democracy — a democracy’s “personality,” so to speak — are skillful traits of trust, ethics, and empathy. These qualities give rise to well-being in those that bear them and open them up to spiritual growth.

By contrast, authoritarian regimes produce unhappy people. Authoritarian governments engender feelings of powerlessness and cynicism. People may believe a regime’s propaganda for a while, but eventually they realize that they are surrounded by lies. Everyone is corrupt, and nothing is done well, but changing things is almost impossible.

Authoritarian regimes have to distract their populations from their problems. One way to do this is to generate hatred. Leaders will often target a despised group that they blame for society’s problems. In this way, authoritarianism encourages unskillful emotions of hatred and intolerance. For the same reason it encourages simplistic black and white thinking, rather than more nuanced thinking that encourages truth-seeking.

4. Liberal Democracies are Tolerant of Spiritual Exploration

One of the “personality traits” of democracies being their tolerance of diversity, democracies tend to allow for spiritual experimentation. Mature democracies officially recognize, minority religions such as Buddhism, and often give them access to special benefits, such as tax-exemptions. Although in some ways the US is a religiously intolerant nation, people who are Buddhists or members of other minority languages have been elected to high office.

The American experiment took as axiomatic the idea that people should be free to follow their own conscience in seeking a life that’s meaningful. For that reason, the founders of the US avoided having a state religion. In contrast, autocratic nations often have a favored state religion, and minority religions may be disadvantaged, discriminated against, or even persecuted.

Because of these positive conditions, Buddhist sanghas tend to flourish in democratic nations.

So for these four reasons — democracies being more peaceful, prosperous, emotionally skillful, and supportive of spiritual exploration — I describe democracy as the most desirable form of political organization.

We Are the Majority

As democratic norms are eroded, we need to avoid panic (feet on the ground), yet we need to care deeply (heart wide open) and channel our love anger into opposing harmful changes. And as we do these things we need to keep reminding ourselves and others of democratic ideals, and of the material, emotional, and spiritual benefits of democracy (eyes upward). We need to keep democracy in people’s minds and on people’s tongues, and resist their tendency to see what’s happening as inevitable and unstoppable.

It’s the desire for freedom that’s unstoppable. Yes, sometimes people take democracy for granted. Sometimes they’ll vote for authoritarian leaders because they’re struggling economically or afraid of demographic change. And for some people the cruelty is the point.

But as I’ve written before, “[it’s] important to remember that there are many people in the US (and elsewhere, of course) who believe in kindness, generosity, tolerance, compassion, democracy, standing up to autocrats, and protecting the world that sustains us. That’s much more than half of the population. We are the majority.

We are the majority. And we will prevail.

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Mythbusting the Buddha’s “four sights”

February 5, 2025

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Just as virtually any book about the Buddha and his teachings tells us that he was a prince (the first myth I tackled), we’re also told that he renounced his kingdom because he saw “four sights.”

This is the myth I want to tackle here.

The story of the four sights

The traditional story goes something like this:

A prophet had told the Buddha’s father, King Suddhodana, that his son would either become a king who ruled the world, or a great spiritual teacher. And so the king kept his son secluded from the world in three palaces, surrounded by every luxury, so that he wouldn’t ask questions about spiritual matters.
The Buddha-to-be was intensely curious, however, and he persuaded his charioteer, Chanda, to take him for a series of rides in and around the capital.
On the first of these journeys, the young Gotama saw a gray-haired old man, stooped, with skin covered in deep wrinkles. Being sheltered, he had never seen such a thing before.
“What is that?” he asked Chanda.
“Sire, that’s an old man!”
“How did he get that way?”
“It happens to everyone, sire. We all get old.”
“Even me?”
“Yes, sire. Even you.”
The Buddha-to-be was deeply shocked.
On a subsequent trip he saw a sick man, asked the same questions, and was shocked to the core to realize that he too was subject to sickness.
On a third trip this pattern was repeated with a dead man. Young Gotama had realized for the first time that he was destined to die.
This left him feeling very unsettled. What was the point of all this luxury, what was the point of becoming a king, if it all ended in death?
The next day he went out on another excursion, and this time he saw a holy man walking through the town. On the man’s face was a gentle smile, and he seemed unshakably calm. Although he had never been exposed to religion before, he intuitively knew that he wanted to become a spiritual seeker.
And so, late one night he sneaked out of the palace, leaving his wife and child behind. He cut off his hair and beard, gave his jewelry to his charioteer, donned humble robes, and set off on his quest.

Again, I made up the wording, but you’re probably familiar with the story from books, articles, or videos.

The four sights never happened

Here’s the thing: this never happened. The Buddha does tell a story about four sights, but it’s not about him. It’s a story about someone else: a legendary Buddha, called Vipassī, who had lived eons before. It’s Vipassī’s father, King Bandhumā, who confined the prince to three palaces. It’s Vipassī who sees the four sights. The Buddha never does.

The story doesn’t make sense of course. How did the young Gotama get from one palace to another without seeing the outside world? Was he never sick as a child? Did no one around him ever get ill? His mother was dead. Did no one ever talk about that? Had he never seen anyone getting older in his thirty-odd years of life? Pretending for a moment that Suddhodana was a king, did he have no older advisers?

A little further on I’ll write about what the Buddha’s “going forth” into the homeless life was more likely to have been like. But first, I’d like to talk about some of the parts of the scriptures that do somewhat resemble this story.

The three non-palaces

There’s a scripture in which the Buddha talks about his father having had three houses. Bhikkhu Sujato translates the word for these — pāsāda — as “stilt longhouse,” which fits the archaeological record. These “palaces” would have been two-story wooden affairs with the family livestock living beneath. The Pali dictionary gives “a lofty platform” and “a building on high foundations” as the first two meanings of pāsāda, and adds “palace” as a possible translation, but that’s not appropriate here. “Mansion” might be a reasonable term, conveying something larger and grander than an ordinary person’s house, but which isn’t an actual royal dwelling.

The non-sights

According to this scripture, the houses had lotus ponds and many servants. The Buddha-to-be had nice clothes, lovely incense, and was entertained by musicians. So he had a nice life.

But this all seemed vain in the face of life’s transience:

Amid such prosperity and such a delicate lifestyle, I thought:
‘When an unlearned ordinary person—who is liable to grow old, not being exempt from old age—sees someone else who is old, they’re horrified, repelled, and disgusted, overlooking the fact that they themselves are in the same situation.
But since I, too, am liable to grow old, it would not be appropriate for me to be horrified, embarrassed, and disgusted, when I see someone else who is old.’
Reflecting like this, I entirely gave up the vanity of youth.

This “vanity of youth” is no doubt familiar to you. When we’re young, we tend to think of the old people around us as being a bit inferior, as if they could somehow have avoided old age if they’d been more careful. The young Gotama realized that youth is on a continuum with old age, and so he ceased feeling any kind of pride at not yet being old.

He went through the same realization with respect to sickness and death.

So this is similar to the “four sights,” except that there are no “sights” in the literal sense, and there’s nothing corresponding to the fourth sight: the holy man.

He also doesn’t say that these realizations prompted him to leave home. Instead they simply prompted him to let go of the intoxications he’d had with youth, health, and life.

There’s a sense in which the four sights happened to the Buddha as psychological truths. The Buddha may well have seen an old person (or sick, or dead person) and, as if he was seeing these things for the first time, realized that these were inescapable realities that applied to him. But they certainly weren’t literal truths.

The “going forth”

The Buddha is supposed to have sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night. And yet we have this passage:

Later, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness.

Here, the Buddha’s parents were very aware that he was leaving home, and may have been present at the event. The Buddha’s mother is supposed to have died seven days after his birth. Either that’s not true or, more likely, he was referring to his step-mother, who was also his aunt, as being his mother, which she functionally was.

I find this account moving. The Buddha didn’t avoid communicating with his parents. He talked to them about his decision. With sadness, they watched him prepare to leave, and watched him go. This version of the story highlights his courage in a very human, personal way. He didn’t sneak off, unwilling to face his parents’ disappointment. Instead, he was responsible and showed his parents compassion.

The “Extensive Play”

The Lalitavistara is a well-known Mahayana Sutra that tells the story of the early life of the Buddha. It’s highly mythologized, and even includes a passage when Gotama is in heaven before taking his final rebirth — the one in which he becomes enlightened.

The title, “The Extensive Play,” communicates the idea that the Buddha’s life was a kind of act that he put on for our benefit.

This scripture has been widely influential, but it’s a relatively late addition to the body of Buddhist scriptures — probably from seven or eight hundred years after the Buddha’s death. It is however based on earlier scriptures, one of which would have been the Buddhavaṁsa, which is in the Pali canon, but again as a late addition, composed well after the Buddha’s death. It is not one of the discourses narrated by the Buddha.

So it seems that some centuries after the Buddha’s death, he became mythologized. Writers turned him into a prince. They had him live a life of improbable seclusion. They had him seeing the four sights. They portrayed him slipping quietly away from the palace in the middle of the night.

The Attadanda

But why did he go forth? One of my favorite discourses is the Attadanda Sutta — the “Discourse on Taking Up Arms.” Here the Buddha says something about the disillusionment that might have caused him to leave home.

The Attadanda is from a very old collection of texts known as the Atthakavagga, which means the “Collection of the Eights.” Some scholars believe that it may contain some of the earliest scriptures we have. I’m inclined to agree.

The Attadanda begins:

When embraced, the rod of violence
breeds danger and fear:
Look at people quarreling.
I will tell of how I experienced dismay.
Seeing people floundering
like fish in small puddles,
competing with one another
— as I saw this, fear came into me.
The world was entirely without substance.
All the directions were knocked out of line.
Wanting a haven for myself,
I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to.
Seeing nothing in the end but competition,
I felt discontent.
And then I saw an arrow here,
so very hard to see,
embedded in the heart.
Overcome by this arrow you run in all directions.
But simply on pulling it out
you don’t run, you don’t sink.

The Buddha doesn’t overtly say here that he decided to go forth from the household life, but it’s implied, and he does talk about a profound disillusionment with the violent society in which he found himself.

Politics and violence

The references to violence and to people floundering like fish in small puddles may be a reference to the conflicts that the Buddha’s tribe, the Sakyans, had with their neighbors, the Koliyans, over access to the waters of the Rohini river. This conflict is well-attested in the scriptures. Both tribes needed access to the waters of the Rohini irrigating their crops. The Rohini river, during times of drought, would dry up. This caused the two tribes to threaten violence over this precious and diminishing resource. This paralleled the way in which the fish in the river struggled in panic as they found themselves confined to ever-shrinking puddles.

The Buddha, as the son of the Sakyan chief, was in line to become a political leader. As a young man, he saw the futility and horror of violence, and also that it was inherent in political leadership.

But even worse than the threat of the neighboring Koliyans was the threat of the more powerful kingdoms of Magadha and Kosala, which were subjugating their republican neighbors. The Buddha’s Sakyan republic was tiny and weak in comparison to these kingdoms. The Buddha was surely far-sighted enough to see that Sakya had no future as an independent state. In fact, Sakya was brutally invaded by Kosala shortly after the Buddha’s death, with massive loss of life. And shortly afterward, Kosala itself was invaded by Maghada. it was a violent time.

Nowhere to go

The Buddha-to-be must have wondered, what is the point of becoming leader of a doomed country?

Thanissaro’s translation above has the Buddha saying, “The world was entirely without substance. / All the directions were knocked out of line.” Sujato’s translation makes more sense, I think: “The world around was volatile / all directions were in turmoil.”

Wherever he looked, there was violence or the threat of violence.

There was no place where he could do what he had been trained to do, which was to be a political leader. And even if he went off and lived as a farmer or trader, as the son of a former chief he would always be suspected of disloyalty by those in power. Leaders (especially kings) were paranoid and violent. He would probably be assassinated.

And so, “Wanting a haven for myself / I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to.”

There was no place he could be safe, secure.

Finding peace within

And then he realized that, rather than look outward for a sense of security, he could look inward, in a spiritual search. It was the painful arrow or dart of selfish craving, of a desire to “be something” that caused violence in others. The wars and threats of wars in the world around him were clashes of self-important egos competing to see who was superior. It was that same arrow of egoistic attachment to his role as future political leader that causes him to suffer too.

This arrow caused people to “run around,” competing, or to give up and “sink” into complacent obedience. He realized that his task in life would be to pull that arrow out. Which is why he “went forth” from the home life into the life of a wanderer.

(It’s perhaps not a coincidence that the external situation — conflict with the Koliyans — would have involved external arrows, and that the Buddha used the arrow as a metaphor for internal pain.)

It’s quite possible he realized that a life as a spiritual wanderer might be physically safe as well. Kings were paranoid and violent, and inclined to send their assassins after the sons of rival leaders. But there were limits. They probably wouldn’t kill someone who had explicitly renounced all worldly ties. I don’t want to make too much of this, though. I suspect the Buddha’s going forth was primarily existential, and perhaps only a little to do with personal safety, if at all. The young Gotama doesn’t sound to me like someone who did things for mixed motives. Then again, he was human. And a spiritual life would provide both physical safety and the opportunity to find and inner, spiritual security rooted in egolessness.

A going-forth rooted in reality

This version of Buddha’s going forth, then, is speculative. Like the traditional account, it’s a story. But it’s one that’s rooted in historical reality, tied to the shifting political landscape of the north-east of the Indian subcontinent, rather than in a fable about his having been locked away in palaces for his entire life.

I resonate with this more historical version of events. I can empathize with a young man being groomed for leadership and realizing that it’s all pointless. This is much more relatable to me than the conventional story of a cosseted prince seeing four sights.

And as someone who sports many gray hairs, and who has witnessed the deaths of friends and family, I can empathize too with his realization that death comes for us all.

Of course we still have those stories, which we can read and enjoy, suspending disbelief, and enjoying them as inspiring fiction.

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The Joy of Missing Out

March 27, 2019

Bodhipaksa

on practice

At the moment I’m teaching an online course called Calm In the Storm, which is about finding peace in the midst of our turbulent and contentious times. I often benefit from teaching because it focuses my attention on particular aspects of practice, and as Seneca the Younger noted, “Men learn while they teach.”

This course has forced me to become more conscious of my relationship to the news, to social media, and the technology that delivers those things to me. And it’s this, more than anything I’ve said about mindfulness or equanimity, that’s had the most powerful effect on my sense of wellbeing over the last few weeks. In fact, the result of changing my relationship with technology, the news, and social media has been astonishing. I feel much calmer and more at peace than I did even just two weeks ago. I’m less anxious. I have more of a sense of clarity and purpose. I’m getting more done and consequently I’m feeling more of a sense of confidence and accomplishment.

Social Media Addiction

I had been finding myself spending too much time on Twitter. And it didn’t have a good effect on my emotional life. Much of the content there is fueled by outrage. The short format does not exactly encourage deep thought, and tends to promote sloganizing, blaming, shaming, and arguing.

My mind kept turning to Twitter over and over again during the day. I spent a lot of time reading discussions, and following links to articles that people had shared. I experienced FOMO—the Fear of Missing Out. If I’d been away from Twitter for any length of time, I’d feel a sense of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. Even while I was on the app or the website, I’d see those notifications of new tweets, and feel the need to what they were about. Click. Twitter is designed to be compulsive: you “like” and “share” counts on popular posts tick upwards as you watch, and notifications keep appearing to announce the arrival of new tweets. There are always new tweets.

News Addiction

My Twitter addiction overlapped with a news addiction. There’s a sense of crisis unfolding around us, both in my native Britain and in my adopted home, the US. It felt important on the one hand to stay informed, but also I was aware that the news can create anxiety, and anxiety can create a compulsion to stay in touch with the news. This is an unhealthy vicious circle.

So here are some steps I’ve taken to find some sanity and calmness in the midst of the current state of crisis.

Step 1: Reducing Access to the News

I get my news online. And again this can be compulsive, so I needed to reduce my access to that form of stimulation. (I don’t have cable or an antenna, so I already don’t watch the news on TV. When I’ve seen the TV news while visiting family, I’ve been shocked by how visceral, urgent, and unpleasant the experience is.) The Chrome browser on my iPhone had been creating a custom list of news articles that appeared every time I opened a new tab. I’d often spend too much time browsing those, so I switched off that feature. My phone came with the Apple News app installed, and headlines from that would appear in the notifications center. So I deleted that app. Both those changes have saved me a lot of time.

I still glance at the news. Often just reading the headlines and a brief description of a news story tells me what I need to know. The rest is needless detail. I do delve into some articles when they really interest me. Usually those are about science or psychology.

Step 2: Limiting Access to My Phone

I no longer sleep with my phone by my bed. It used to function as my bedside clock, and so it would be the first thing I’d touch in the morning. And as soon as I’d picked my phone up I’d be aware of emails, text messages, and app notifications that had come in overnight, so I’d get sucked into work and social media as soon as I woke up.

Now I charge my phone overnight in the living room, and leave my Apple Watch charging by my bedside overnight so that I can tell the time or set an alarm. If I didn’t have that I’d go buy myself a simple alarm clock, which would work just as well.

Step 3: Improving My Following Habits

I’ve often been astonished by the grace with which Chelsea Clinton and Cory Booker in particular deal with critics. They’re invariably kind. If there are more people like that, please let me know. I want to drink in and fill myself with their positivity. I’ve unfollowed or blocked people who I find are simply interested in attacking others, or who post nothing but insults. I deliberately choose to follow some people I disagree with, but not with the purpose of arguing with them; I just like to be exposed to a different way of thinking. I don’t want to exist in a bubble.

Step 4: Deleting the Twitter App

I wanted to cut down on my Twitter use, but it was remarkably hard to do so. I deleted the app from my iPhone, but I could still access it on my computer, or on my phone’s browser (I use Chrome and sometimes Safari). In fact Chrome on my iPhone had conveniently created an icon for accessing Twitter, because it was a site I visited often. Merely deleting the Twitter app didn’t make much difference in my usage. But it was an important thing to do in combination with the following two steps

Step 5: Blocking the Twitter Website On My iPhone

I wanted to make it even harder to access Twitter on my phone and I wondered if it might be possible to block an individual site. I discovered that it was. By going to Settings > Screen Time > Content and Privacy Options, I could toggle on the “Content and Privacy Restrictions” at the top of the screen. I could then, on the same screen, go to Content Restrictions > Web Content and tap on “Limit Adult Websites.” And then under “Never Allow” I could enter the URL for Twitter. Yes, I’m treating Twitter as if it were a porn site!

Now I can’t access Twitter on my phone at all, unless I undo those changes. But I don’t need it to be impossible for me to access Twitter. I just need there to be some friction in the process so that it’s easier to avoid it. If you’re on an Android device, I imagine there are similar settings.

This left my computer as the only way to access Twitter. Of course I’m on my computer a lot, so that had to be dealt with.

Step 6: Limiting Twitter On My Computer

Enter, Stayfocusd. This is a browser plugin for Chrome that allows you to limit the amount of time you spend on certain sites. It will even let you block them altogether. I decided to go with a 20 minute daily limit for Twitter. Once the 20 minutes has expired, I can’t visit the site at all, and just see a screen that says “Shouldn’t you be working?” You can’t extend the time limit once it’s expired. No cheating! (There’s an equivalent for Firefox and no doubt for other browsers too.)

This has led to me being much more selective in what I pay attention to on Twitter. I visit two to three times a day, and knowing that I don’t have much time I focus my attention on what seems particularly meaningful. I find that my mind now skips over snark and outrage, and tends to focus on more substantive contributions. I’ll open a couple of articles in new tabs, and then close Twitter.

Step 7: Reducing Other Notifications

Your brain is a hot commodity. Marketers spend billions of dollars to try to attract your attention, because attention is time, and time, as we know, is money. So in an effort to reclaim my attention, I’ve turned off notifications where possible. Essentially I’m down to silent email notifications (I don’t want to be disrupted while I’m working) and audible alerts for calendar events (since those are things I need to be interrupted by), text messages, and phone calls. When I really want to focus my phone goes on Do Not Disturb mode. Life on my phone is pretty quiet. It’s now 3:00 in the afternoon, and my phone tells me I’ve used it for a total of 16 minutes so far today.

From FOMO to JOMO

There have been some withdrawal symptoms. I’ve sometimes restlessly picked up my phone and stared at it, feeling the emptiness that comes when you expect to see something but find nothing. And for a while I felt drawn to check Twitter, over and over. But that is passing. This morning I found myself looking at my phone and thinking, You can’t bring me happiness. You’re a tool for me to use. My mind is not a tool for you to use.

The benefits have vastly outweighed the discomfort of these minor withdrawal symptoms. The results of these changes, as I’ve said, have been powerful. I’m much calmer, happier, and more focused. I’m getting more work done, which pleases me. I’ve also been reading more. I’m now almost finished a novel that I started about a week ago. That is satisfying. I feel that my mind is my own again. I feel free.

One of the participants in the course wrote, “Anything that stimulates my solar plexus when I read it, I am going to notice, breathe, then make a decision regarding whether this enhances or detracts from my quality of life. It feels good and empowering to be making these decisions.” Simple practice; deep results.

The changes that I’ve described have in fact had more effect on my wellbeing than my daily meditation practice. My daily life has more of the simplicity and joy of a meditation retreat.

Am I missing out? Yes. I’m missing out on stress, anxiety, and overstimulation. “Missing out” is wonderful. I invite you to join me, perhaps in some of the ways I’ve suggested, and perhaps in ways of your own, in moving from the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO).

If you find this article helpful, perhaps you’ll be interested in making a one-time or recurring donation to Wildmind to help support our work.
And it’s still possible to enroll in my online course, Calm In the Storm. One couple who are participating wrote this morning, “Our mood and productivity is way up, as is emotional resiliency … We both thought that we would experience more withdrawal than we actually are, and are feeling more relief and release from the firehoses of negativity than expected.”

Peace is right here, right now

November 14, 2018

Bodhipaksa

on practice

For the past month I’ve been recording a series of daily guided meditations, taking as my basis the teachings in a Buddhist discourse called the Honeyball Sutta. This teaching (also sometimes called the “Honeycake Sutta” outlines a feedback loop whereby we end up causing ourselves suffering.

It describes how the basic situation is that consciousness, through sense organs, perceives objects (which can be internal, like thoughts, or external, like the words you’re reading now). This is called “contact.” The word “contact” contains the assumption that there is a self “contacting” a world that is separate from it. The Buddha is not saying this is how things actually are — just that that’s how we assume things are.

Within this field of contact we then have feeling responses to certain perceptions. The sutta doesn’t spell this out, but when the mind detects something as a potential threat it generates unpleasant sensations (feelings) in the body. When it detects a potential benefit it generates pleasant feelings. When something appears to have no bearing on our wellbeing no feeling (a “neutral feeling”) is produced.

What we have pleasant or unpleasant feelings about, we turn our attention to.

What we turn our attention to, we think about.

What we think about we (sometimes) obsess about.

What we obsess about assails us (i.e. causes us suffering) and reinforces our sense of having (or being) a separate self.

So we have a vicious circle, starting with the assumption of a separate self, and reinforcing that sense of separateness. Assuming we are separate, and feeling assailed, we continue to search among those things we have pleasant and unpleasant feelings about, trying to find peace by obsessing about them. This goes on and on and on.

A friend of mine recently gave a talk about this sutta, and he did the usual thing of talking about how mindfulness helps us to damp down the reactivity of this vicious cycle. If we find ourselves thinking obsessively then we can let go of them. With practice we can find ourselves experiencing our feelings and not have that turn into “storytelling” at all. This is of course perfectly valid as an explanation—but it’s also incomplete, because the discourse goes much further than this.

The sutta points out that were there is “no eye (or other sense organs), nothing seen (or perceived through the other senses) and no consciousness, then there is no feeling, no turning of our attention, no thinking, no obsessing, no being assailed, and no construction of a sense of self.

Now this might sound very odd, and might come off as nihilistic. What does it mean that there’s no eye (etc), nothing sensed, and no consciousness? Is it pointing to some state of blankness? To non-existence?

No, it’s simply talking, in very stripped-down language, about how we can drop the notions of a consciousness that is “me, mine, or myself” and a world out there that is “not me, not mine, not myself.” The alternative to this is just being. We just drop the whole process of reactivity all at once: not just letting go of our reactive thoughts, but coming to rest in an awareness of “self-and-world” without conceptualizing in terms of there being a self and a world. (We don’t even conceptualize that self and world are one, because that’s still a conceptualization in terms of self and world.)

Of course this isn’t something we can do in a “one and done” fashion. It’s something we need to do repeatedly, so that as we practice “just being” this starts to become the way we operate. But it is something you can do right now. It’s probably best to stop reading these words for a while and then spend a few minutes doing the following:

Just settle into an awareness of “self-and-world” (not taking those terms too literally).
Be aware of perceptions of sight and sound, perceptions arising in the body, and so on.
Be aware of any thinking that’s arising.
If there are any thoughts or impulses that have the character of trying to grasp or push away any aspect of your experience, let them go.
Notice how you are happier when you’re just resting with your experience, rather than trying to resist or grasp.
More thinking (resisting, grasping) will arise. Over and over again, let go of it.

Now that isn’t difficult. Sure, lots of thinking probably came up. And maybe you saw that as a threat to your wellbeing, and if felt unpleasant, and you had the desire to push that away, to make it stop. And that was you back into reactivity again. But you can notice that, and let it go. It’s natural that resistance and craving arise. You’ve spent a lifetime practicing those!

But for moments, perhaps quite a few moments, there is no conception of our having (or being) a self that perceives a separate world through our sense organs. Consciousness is not perceived as self, and that which is perceived by consciousness is not perceived as other. The whole self/other thing is simply set aside. And we don’t see our feelings as being threats to our wellbeing; instead they just are, and there is simply an awareness of them. And so (in those moments of pure being) the mind doesn’t obsess, and we’re not assailed, and we’re at peace.

This is something, as I’ve said, that we can practice. Now sometimes when people hear that word “practice” they think “Oh, that means there are lots and lots of things I have to do and then I can experience a sense of peace and calm. But practice doesn’t just mean “doing preparation” (like practicing scales on a piano so that you can play Bach). It also has to mean “getting better by actually doing something.” Letting go of your sense of having or being a separate self is something that you can do right now. The peace, contentment, and wellbeing that come from letting go is something that you can experience right now.

Peace is available right here, right now. Don’t try to grasp it. Don’t resist anything you think might be keeping it from you. Just be peace.

The deep practice of just being peace

May 28, 2018

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Recently I’ve been reading The Buddha Before Buddhism, by Gil Fronsdal, which is a translation of what is believed to be one of the oldest Buddhist teachings. It’s had a powerful effect on the way I practice.

It’s interesting how simple this text is. There are no lists: no elaborate eightfold path, no detailed exposition of four noble truths. Rebirth comes up mainly when discussing the beliefs of other teachers; the effects of our actions are mainly discussed in terms of this life, here and now.

There’s nothing about Nirvana, or some future state of spiritual breakthrough. Bliss or happiness are not the main goals; peace is.

And that is the part I find most interesting. Peace, or being at peace, is the goal. There’s not a great deal of emphasis on how to get there in the future. Instead it seems that we’re just to be there now.

And that’s where the effect of reading The Buddha Before Buddhism comes in. I’ve found myself simply noticing whether “unpeace” has arisen, and simply pausing. Sometimes the thought, “What do I need to do or let go of in order to be at peace” arises.

Also see:

That thought triggers spontaneous action. I ask, “How do I move my body in such a way that peace manifests?” Well, I move slowly and gracefully. “How do I eat in such a way that I feel at peace?” I eat slowly and mindfully, and without trying to do anything else at the same time.

If I’m feeling a bit tired and over-stimulated the question, “What do I need to do or let go of in order to be at peace” triggers the desire to rest. I put down whatever I’m doing, and just become aware of my surroundings, my body, my breathing, and so on. It’s not necessary to be happy; just to be at peace.

If I find myself anxious, the question is not “How do I get rid of this anxiety,” but how do I be at peace with this anxiety?” And my mind seems to already know to stop striving to be free of anxiety, and instead to accept it with mindfulness and kindness. There’s no need to get rid of anxiety in order to be at peace. Peace and anxious states can co-exist.

These “questions” that I’ve mentioned don’t necessarily appear as words. It’s more of a wordless realization that there is a state of peace that’s accessible, and that a way can be found to allow it to arise. It’s just like when I’m going to the local post office: I don’t need to talk myself through the journey. I don’t need to say, “OK, now I go up these stairs, then I turn left onto Main Street, then I cross the road at the lights…” Just as it’s enough to know that the post office is my destination for my feet to be able to find their own way there, it’s enough for me to remember that peace is what I want, and then my body and mind will take me there.

And there’s no intellectual process I have to work through in order to figure out how to respond. I don’t need to think anything through. The movement toward peace just happens spontaneously.

I suspect that for most people the greatest barrier would be the belief that they have to do something in order to get themselves to a state of peace. But really you don’t need to do anything. You just need to get out of the way and to let peace happen. You don’t need to learn what to do: your mind and body already know what needs to be let go of.

Another barrier might be the habit we have of constantly thinking that we have to defer wellbeing for sometime — specified or unspecified — in the future. “I just have to get out of debt,” of “I can be happy once I’ve lost 20 pounds,” or “I can relax once this busy spell is over.” This really is a habit of unconsciously deferring wellbeing — often to a time that never arrives, since we keep thinking of new things that have to be done before we can feel happy.

But the practice I’ve been doing is very simple and immediate. It’s also radically simple. And in my experience so far it’s been surprisingly effective.

A third barrier might well be that of expectations. We might have the expectation that peace is something extraordinary. And so when peace is present, and seems quite ordinary, we might think “This can’t be it” and return to craving some kind of ideal state, rejecting the peace that’s already present.

The “solution” to these barriers — grasping, deferring, rejecting — is incredibly simple. It’s just what I’ve said, which is asking, “What do I need to do or let go of in order to be at peace.” Let go of grasping, right now, and experience peace. Let go of deferring happiness right now, and just be at peace. Let go of your resistance to peace, and just experience it.

Peace is right here, right now. Stop ignoring it, and let it be your experience. Just be peace.

An ode to solitude: the beauty of just sitting

October 6, 2015

Wildmind Meditation News

news

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Gabriela Maya Bernadett, Tiny Buddha: “I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Meditation makes you realize it’s not so much the silence as it is the not being around people that’s so profound. No human interaction, a human break if you will, is its own simple kind of joy.

Who knew that as a species who can’t function without the social ties of community, it is solitude that re-charges us and gives us the strength to go out into the big, bad world and interact with that lovely mess I like to call humanity?

In our hyper …

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Shamatha or mindfulness

August 11, 2015

Wildmind Meditation News

news

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Free Press Journal: Shamatha, or mindfulness, is how we make this mind more stable, more useful. The word “shamatha” in Sanskrit means “peacefully abiding”. Peacefully abiding describes the mind as it naturally is. The word “peace” tells the whole story. The human mind is by nature joyous, calm and very clear. In shamatha meditation we aren’t creating a peaceful state—we’re letting our mind be as it is to begin with. This doesn’t mean that we’re peacefully ignoring things. It means that the mind is able to be with itself without constantly leaving.

In meditation we learn how to calmly abide: we learn how …

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Meditation earning a place in health care

May 19, 2015

Wildmind Meditation News

news

David Stroud, Las Vegas Review-Journal: Tina Encheva is sitting in a chair in front of five women, all of them lying on their backs on top of spongy yoga mats. The women’s eyes are closed and their hands rest palms down just above their hearts.

The hypnotic sounds of lilting flutes and humming Tibetan singing bowls are playing over a meditation tape, and Encheva’s delicate voice floats in and out like wind chimes tousled by a soft breeze.

Encheva guides them through the relaxation of their …

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Forgive Yourself

April 23, 2015

Rick Hanson PhD

on practice

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Everyone messes up. Me, you, the neighbors, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, King David, the Buddha, everybody.

It’s important to acknowledge mistakes, feel appropriate remorse, and learn from them so they don’t happen again. But most people keep beating themselves up way past the point of usefulness: they’re unfairly self-critical.

Inside the mind are many sub-personalities. For example, one part of me might set the alarm clock for 6 am to get up and exercise . . . and then when it goes off, another part of me could grumble: “Who set the darn clock?” More broadly, there is a kind of inner critic and inner protector inside each of us. For most people, that inner critic is continually yammering away, looking for something, anything, to find fault with. It magnifies small failings into big ones, punishes you over and over for things long past, ignores the larger context, and doesn’t credit you for your efforts to make amends.

Therefore, you really need your inner protector to stick up for you: to put your weaknesses and misdeeds in perspective, to highlight your many good qualities surrounding your lapses, to encourage you to keep getting back on the high road even if you’ve gone down the low one, and – frankly – to tell that inner critic to Shut Up.

With the support of your inner protector, you can see your faults clearly without fearing that will drag you into a pit of feeling awful, clean up whatever mess you’ve made as best you can, and move on. The only wholesome purpose of guilt, shame, or remorse is learning – not punishment! – so that you don’t mess up in that way again. Anything past the point of learning is just needless suffering. Plus excessive guilt, etc., actually gets in the way of you contributing to others and helping make this world a better place, by undermining your energy, mood, confidence, and sense of worth.

Seeing faults clearly, taking responsibility for them with remorse and making amends, and then coming to peace about them: this is what I mean by forgiving yourself.

Start by picking something relatively small that you’re still being hard on yourself about, and then try one or more of the methods below. I’ve spelled them out in detail since that’s often useful, but you could do the gist of these methods in a few minutes or less.

Then if you like, work up to more significant issues.

Here we go:

Start by getting in touch, as best you can, with the feeling of being cared about by some being: a friend or mate, spiritual being, pet, or person from your childhood. Open to the sense that aspects of this being, including the caring for you, have been taken into your own mind as parts of your inner protector.
Staying with feeling cared about, list some of your many good qualities. You could ask the protector what it knows about you. These are facts, not flattery, and you don’t need a halo to have good qualities like patience, determination, fairness, or kindness.
If you yelled at a child, lied at work, partied too hard, let a friend down, cheated on a partner, or were secretly glad about someone’s downfall – whatever it was – acknowledge the facts: what happened, what was in your mind at the time, the relevant context and history, and the results for yourself and others.

Notice any facts that are hard to face – like the look in a child’s eyes when you yelled at her – and be especially open to them; they’re the ones that are keeping you stuck. It is always the truth that sets us free.

Sort what happened into three piles: moral faults, unskillfulness, and everything else. Moral faults deserve proportionate guilt, remorse, or shame, but unskillfulness calls for correction, no more. (This point is very important.)
You could ask others what they think about this sorting (and about other points below) – include those you may have wronged – but you alone get to decide what’s right. For example, if you gossiped about someone and embellished a mistake he made, you might decide that the lie in your exaggeration is a moral fault deserving a wince of remorse, but that casual gossip (which most of us do, at one time or another) is simply unskillful and should be corrected (i.e., never done again) without self-flagellation.
In an honest way, take responsibility for your moral fault(s) and unskillfulness. Say in your mind or out loud (or write): I am responsible for ______ , _______ , and _______ . Let yourself feel it.
Then add to yourself: But I am NOT responsible for ______ , _______ , and _______ . For example, you are not responsible for the misinterpretations or over-reactions of others. Let the relief of what you are NOT responsible for sink in.
Acknowledge what you have already done to learn from this experience, and to repair things and make amends. Let this sink in. Appreciate yourself.

Next, decide what if anything remains to be done – inside your own heart or out there in the world – and then do it. Let it sink in that you’re doing it, and appreciate yourself for this, too.

Now check in with your inner protector: is there anything else you should face or do? Listen to that “still quiet voice of conscience,” so different from the pounding scorn of the critic. If you truly know that something remains, then take care of it. But otherwise, know in your heart that what needed learning has been learned, and that what needed doing has been done.
And now actively forgive yourself. Say in your mind, out loud, in writing, or perhaps to others statements like: I forgive myself for ______ , _______ , and _______ . I have taken responsibility and done what I could to make things better. You could also ask the inner protector to forgive you, or others out in the world, including maybe the person you wronged.
You may need to go through one or more the steps above again and again to truly forgive yourself, and that’s alright. Allow the experience of being forgiven to take some time to sink in. Help it sink in by opening up to it in your body and heart, and by reflecting on how it will help others for you to stop beating yourself up.

May you be at peace.

peace

Democracy Is Under Threat

Reasons to Have Faith In Democracy

1. Liberal Democracies Are More Peaceful

2. Liberal Democracy Allows for Material Flourishing

3. Liberal Democracy Allows for Emotional and Spiritual Flourishing

4. Liberal Democracies are Tolerant of Spiritual Exploration

We Are the Majority

The story of the four sights

The four sights never happened

The three non-palaces

The non-sights

The “going forth”

The “Extensive Play”

The Attadanda

Politics and violence

Nowhere to go

Finding peace within

A going-forth rooted in reality

See also:

Social Media Addiction

News Addiction

Step 1: Reducing Access to the News

Step 2: Limiting Access to My Phone

Step 3: Improving My Following Habits

Step 4: Deleting the Twitter App

Step 5: Blocking the Twitter Website On My iPhone

Step 6: Limiting Twitter On My Computer

Step 7: Reducing Other Notifications

From FOMO to JOMO

Also see: