President Obama spoke to the children and grieving families in Newtown, Connecticut where 20 children and 6 adults lost their lives.
He said, “We as a nation are left with some hard questions… Our first task is caring for our children… Are we doing enough to keep our children safe from harm?” President Obama answered, “No!”
He said that he would work with law enforcement officers to see what could be done to prevent more tragedies like this, the fourth during his presidency.
I’m reminded of the First Mindfulness Training, Reverence for Life offered by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. My favorite version goes like this:
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.
If our children would study, practice and observe this training, they would grow up with a reverence for life. They would understand that all sentient beings want happiness and avoid suffering.
This is what would give life meaning and begin to explain why we are here – two more hard questions President Obama asked.
I was deeply touched when he read the names of the children.
I have dedicated my last forty plus years of my life teaching my children reverence for life and keeping them safe and protected from harm and danger. You can read about it in the posting from a few days ago, The Love Of A Parent For A Child.
On of my mentors knows the father of Noah Pozner, one of the victims. They have set up a website Noah’s Ark of Hope Fund. Please go there and make a donation.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn spoke last year at Dartmouth College. The topic of his speech is “The Healing Power of Mindfulness.”
Some of the ways we use our minds includes worry about things that haven’t happened yet and planning what will happen next.
He said, “In this moment, your life is just like this!”
Recent research in neuroscience has found that the default mode of our brains is very active.
More quotes from this talk: “Mindfulness is paying attention on purpose in the present moment non-judgmentally.”
Another quote: “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you then wrong with you.”
There are many moments of practice in the video.
Mindfulness in Healing is then name of an ongoing class I teach at the Pine Street Clinic in San Anselmo, California on Wednesday nights starting at 7:00. This class has been meeting every week since the summer solstice of 2009.
If you know anyone who could benefit from Mindfulness in Healing, please share with them.
When my son had cancer in 1975, mindfulness in healing was the first thing on my mind. I scurried around for practitioners in alternative medicine and hit pay dirt. Click here or on the image below to read more.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens today. As you probably know, the movie is based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel, The Hobbit or There and Back Again.
The books was first released in 1937 to rave reviews and re-released in 1966 with illustrations by J. R. R. Tolkien (see below).
The story in the book is one of a journey taken by the hero, Bilbo Baggins, and his friends along the way to get a share of a treasure guarded by a dragon.
We should look upon Bilbo’s unexpected journey as a mystical journey. The goal of the journey is to obtain a high degree of wisdom and compassion and a deep understanding of our own true nature.
In Buddhism, this journey is uncover our Buddha nature or bodhichitta or mind of enlightenment. This is the mind of enlightenment that aims to awaken us and all sentient being through wisdom and compassion.
In the unexpected journey taken by the Hobbit, as well as our in our spiritual quest, we encounter obstacles on the path. Overcoming these obstacles is accomplished, in part, by meditation practices.
So I ask you, what obstacles are you encountering in your journey?
When I was a graduate student in physics at the University of Chicago I met Dr. Eugene Genelin who was a professor of psychology. He was well-known for his discovery of the technique known as focusing, which, in my view is very similar to vipassana meditation.
While preparing for a talk for him and his graduate students on The Strange Reality of the Quanta, I had a remarkable insight about how the brain knows it is in a transcendental state. The insight was that the altered state produces a population inversion of neurons that then, like a laser, fire simultaneously and release a wonderful perception of oneness.
Had this insight occurred when fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) was available, I might have gotten my degree in neuroscience instead of physics and computer science.
This post reports on the research from the BBC documentary on consciousness. I first reported on this video on Best Meditation Videos: The Search for Consciousness.
As I watched the video I took copious notes because I knew there would be some incredible insights.
The video was narrated by Dr. Markus Du Sautoy a professor of mathematics at Oxford University. He is also an atheist!
His search for consciousness began when he had cracked a mathematical problem he was working on while riding in a train thinking about nothing.
The Search For Consciousness
His first question was, “When do we first become aware of ourselves?”
To answer this question, he consulted with Dr. Vasu Reddy at the University of Portsmouth.
She uses the mirror self-recognition test developed by Dr. Gordon Gallup at the State University of New York, Albany. Dr. Vasu’s research has show that children between the ages of 18 to 24 months become self-aware.
Dr. Gallup’s research indicates that orangutans and chimpanzees as well as humans pass the mirror self-recognition test. He says that the price we pay for being self-aware is death awareness.
Dr. Stephen Gentleman at the Imperial College in London spent some time showing the anatomy of a real human brain. This was a brain that no long had consciousness. He said that there were over 100 billion nerve cells in the brain. He said, “Consciousness appears to be all about activation of the cortex.”
This doesn’t tell us how consciousness is activated or what it is!
Dr. Adrian Owen at the Medical Research Council works with people who are in a coma. What he said supports imagery as a mechanism for scientific research as well as a model for healing. He has demonstrated that a women in a coma can be directed to imagine a game of tennis and the same areas of the brain light up as in a conscious person. Pretty astounding – eh?
During a test under anesthesia, administered by Anthony Absalom at the University of Cambridge, Du Sautoy also imagined playing tennis at various levels of sedation. Eventually, he reached a point where he could no longer imagine playing tennis.
When Du Sautoy went to Sweden to work with Dr. Henrik Ehrsson, he was fitted with virtual reality goggles that gave him the experience of being three feet behind his body. This strange experience indicates that thesense of “I” is just an illusion, created by the brain processing data.
According to Ehrsson, the brain is constantly trying to figure out, “Where am I?”
The next stop on the journey was in the mountains outside of Los Angeles where Dr. Christof Koch from the California Institute of Technology studies cells deep inside the brain. Dr. Koch studies the neural correlates of consciousness. This is the minimum amount of brain activity necessary to feel something like a toothache.
They also discussed the idea of concept neurons, which is some unknown number of neurons firing together for something like the face of the Dalai Lama (the video used Jennifer Aniston). This idea emerges out of a collection of neurons working together, something like water is wet only when you have enough molecules interacting together.
At the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Marcello Massimini studies the difference in consciousness between being awake and being asleep. He uses transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to map theinterconnectivity among neurons. He finds that certain channels shut down during sleep.
This interconnectivity among neurons is a definitive insight that integration of elements is essential for consciousness. We could say that certain parts of the brain are interdependent on each other for certain experiences to take place. This is an example of where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
In Berlin, Dr. John-Dylan Haynes investigates the source and timing of decisions. He tries to answer the question, “Who is in charge – me or the neurons.” What he finds is quite amazing.
In Dr. Du Sautoy case, there is a pattern activity in the brain a whole six seconds before a decision is made! Thus the conscious mind is encoded in brain activity. Consciousness and brain activity are different aspects of the same process. Your consciousness is your brain activity.
So What Am I?
The “I” is just a threshold of the final stage of a whole complex of brain activity. We are unaware of most of it. The tiny portion of what we feel is what we are.
We also know that who we are is interdependent with integrated neuronal activity in the brain. No activity, no consciousness!
Furthermore, from the teachings of the Buddha as well as neuroscience we know that the sense of I is an illusion.
This quote is a transcription of the first part of a dharma talk by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (know as Thayby his followers). The talk took place in Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France on November 29, 2012. The title of the talk is “A New Teaching on the Twelve Nidanas.”
Mother Earth Is Inside Us
The nidanas are the 12 teachings of the Buddha on dependent arising. Dependent arising refers to the cycles of birth and death that are conditions of ordinary life. Thay presents a modern interpretations of this ancient teaching of the Buddha.
Mother Earth Is Inside Of Us
The first part of the talk is about how mother earth is inside of us. I was so touched by what he said that I spent the whole morning and much of the afternoon listening and transcribing most of this segment of the dharma talk.
Naturally, Thay expresses the nature of our interbeing with mother earth. In a later part of the talk, he expresses the nature of our interbeing with the sun. I did not transcribe the later part.
What’s even more moving to me is how we can practice meditation by honoring our connection with mother earth. With this connection, we can learn to allow healthy cells to grow all by themselves. We can be healed.
This part of the talk also provides us a guide for healing. He has expressed an idea that active visualizationis based upon. That idea is that relaxation is required for healing. Active visualization is an excellent process for achieving deep relaxation.
The Buddha has spoken about the earth, mother earth in terms of patience and equanimity. Patience and equanimity can be described as the two great virtues of planet earth.
Our society is not very healthy. Therefore, many of us are sick and we need healing and nourishment.
We intoxicated ourselves with poisons. Our body and our mind have a lot of poisons. Craving, hate, anger, despair are poisons for our mind.
And our body also has a lot of poisons because we don’t know how to consume.
But mother earth has a power to heal herself, has the capacity to heal herself and has the capacity to help us heal if we know how to take refuge in her.
While the Buddha was teaching Rahula [Buddha's son] he mentioned earth as having these virtues – patience and equanimity.
If needed then mother earth can spend one million years or ten million years in order to heal herself. She’s not in a hurry and she has the power to renew herself.
We have to see that. If we study the history of the earth we know that she has had a lot of patience. so that now today she has become a very beautiful star – a green star!
And when we walk, we are aware that the earth is holding our steps.
But mother earth is not just below, under our feet. Mother earth is inside of us. To think that mother earth is the environment outside of us, around us is wrong.
Mother earth is inside of us and we don’t need to die in order to go back to mother earth! We are back. We are already in mother earth and that is why we have to learn how to take refuge in mother earth. And that is the best way to heal and to nourish ourselves.
So walking meditation is one of the ways to heal. And walking meditation will be successful if we know how to allow the earth to be in us and around us – just to be aware of that.
We are the earth and we don’t have to do much. We don’t have to do anything at all in order to get the healing and nourishment.
Like when we go in our mother’s womb, we didn’t have to breathe. We didn’t have to eat. Because our mother breathed for us and ate for us. We did not have to worry about anything.
It is possible to behave like that now! When you sit, allow mother earth to sit for you. When you breathe, allow mother earth to breathe for you. When you walk, allow mother earth to walk for you. Don’t make any effort. Allow her to do – she knows how to do it!
Suppose you are sitting like this. Don’t try to do anything. Don’t try to fight in order to sit. Don’t try to breathe in and breathe out. Don’t try to be peaceful. Allow mother earth to do everything for you.
Allow the air to enter our lungs. Allow the air to go out of our lungs. We don’t need to try to breathe in. We don’t need to try to breathe out. Just allow nature – allow the earth to breathe in and out for us.
We just sit there and enjoy the breathing in and the breathing out. There is the breathing – there is no you who are breathing in and you are breathing out. We don’t need a “you” or “I” in order to breathe in and out. The breathing in and the breathing out happen by itself alone. Try!
Do you have to do anything? No! Allow the breathing in to take place. Allow the breathing out to take place. And enjoy the in breath and the out breath.
And if you do like that – allow our body to relax totally – you don’t have to strive, you don’t have to make an effort. Behave like the embryo and the fetus in the womb of the mother. Allow your mother to do everything for you – to breathe, to eat, to drink.
And this is possible now if you know how to take refuge in mother earth. She’s a greatbodhisattva [a great being who serves all sentient beings]! She is the mother of all the buddhas – of all boddhisattvas, of all saints. Shakyamuni [the Buddha] is her son. Jesus Christ is also her son.
We are also her sons and daughters. And we have to learn how to take refuge in her and allow her to continue to do everything for us. We don’t need to do anything at all. We don’t have to fight in order to sit. Allow yourself to sit. Allow yourself to be yourself. Don’t do anything.
Let the sitting take place. Don’t strive in order to sit. And then relaxation will come. And you know something? When there is relaxation, the healing begins – will take place. There is no healing without relaxation. And the relaxation means doing nothing! Try nothing!
So while it is breathing in, it is not you who are breathing in. While it is breathing in you just enjoy – you say, “Healing is taking place. Healing, healing is taking place.” When it is breathing out you say, “Healing is taking place.”
Allow your body to renew herself, to heal herself, to be nourished.
This is the practice of non-practice – practicing with non-practice.
And if you observe, we see that mother earth has the power, has the capacity to heal herself and heal us. And you believe in that power of healing of mother earth. And that belief comes from your own observation – your own experience and not something people tell you and ask you to believe in.
Mother earth can renew herself and transform herself and heal herself and can heal us. And that is the fact. And if we recognize that fact faith is there. We have faith. We take refuge. We allow our self to be healed by mother earth.
And while sitting, we get the healing. While walking, we get the healing. While breathing, we get the healing. We do not have to do anything at all. Just surrender our self to mother earth and she will do everything.
Relaxation Is The Way We Can Heal
What can we take away from Thay’s talk?
First of all, mother earth is inside of us. This is very clear from what he said.
We can just sit back, do nothing and allow mother earth to take care of us, like she takes care of herself.
We also learn that relaxation is an important component of healing.
When I visited Thich Nhat Hanh in 2006, we talked about how healthy cells grow all by themselves.
This was the insight I had when I had cancer in 1997. I wrote,
Lying still,
Breathing in, breathing out,
Healthy cells grow all by themselves.
I am free of cancer.
Now, you too can learn how healthy cells grow all by themselves through the letting go in deep relaxation. Now you can learn how the power of your mind can heal you. Click here to learn more.
