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I recently presented a workshop at a conference on Buddhism and Psychology in San Diego. One of the keynote speakers was the well-known Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg. I hadn't heard her speak before, though I was certainly familiar with many of her writings. As a speaker, Sharon Salzberg was clear, warm, and funny. She used a lot of examples from her own life and meditation experience. I appreciated her candor and her precision.
For example, she talked about the stories that she quickly makes up about what is happening on the basis of the smallest incident. In one story she told, she was waiting to use an airplane bathroom. She managed to expand an unexpectedly long wait for the person ahead of her to finish and come out into a long story about how he must have the avian flu and how she had probably caught it from him and what that would mean for getting to the conference to present. I had to laugh. We are all very gifted at this kind of story-making. It is, of course, one of the aspects of our minds that meditation reveals to us.
One thing she talked about was certainly not new to me, yet I felt as though I were hearing it for the first time. It is often that way with talks about the "dharma," the teachings of the Buddha. I can re-read dharma books and find that the authors keep getting smarter-or so it seems. It is, of course, far more likely that as I continue my own meditation practice, I can understand things in a new or deeper way because of my own changing and deepening experience "on the cushion."
What Sharon spoke about was the moment in our meditation practice when we realize that we have been distracted. She pointed out that this is the most important moment in our practice. What we do next trains our minds in significant ways. We have a choice at that point. We can judge ourselves negatively for becoming distracted: "You idiot, can't you pay attention for one whole minute?!" Or, "I can't believe I've been practicing meditation for so long, and I still get caught up in stories. I bet no one else does that. I bet Sharon doesn't get distracted like this. I'm the world's worst meditator; I'm hopeless."
Another thing we might do is to notice we were distracted and to keep going with the distraction. Maybe we were thinking about our hopes about a new relationship. We have been plotting how we would get in touch with this attractive person. We think about the text message we could write. "Maybe I should say this. Or that. . . ." BING-we are suddenly sitting in our living room on our meditation cushion. Choice point. "Maybe, though, I should send an email. What if I actually phoned and he answered? Then, what would I say? What if I sounded stupid?" BING-"Oh yeah, I'm meditating."
"But what if he really isn't interested in me, and thinks I'm being pushy by calling him? I should just send an email. Or maybe his friend Josh could feel it out and let me know if Sam even wants me to get in touch. What if I've completely read this wrong and he's not even interested in me? How utterly embarrassing!" BING- And so it goes. Everyone who has ever meditated, I suspect, has had days like this on the cushion.
At the other extreme, we could become overly proud of our practice. When we discover that we are staying present more often, we might judge ourselves in an overly positive way, "That's great. I'm getting really good at this. I bet I'm present a good 50% more than anyone else in my group."
The issue isn't whether we get distracted. What matters is what we do when we notice. In the Buddhist understanding, we are always "planting the seeds" of the recurrence of the patterns we run. If we are aggressive with ourselves, we plant the seeds of further aggression. It actually doesn't help us to stop doing whatever it was we thought was a bad thing. If we plant the seeds of further distraction, we just stay distracted more and more. Instead, we can plant different sorts of seeds.
Getting back to what Sharon Salzberg said: she suggested that if we can bring gentleness to that moment, we are training our minds in loving-kindness and compassion. Every time we greet our return to the present moment with a quiet recognition that we were gone and now we're back, we train ourselves in being nonaggressive. We don't have to add anything extra: no judgments, no evaluations, no praise, no blame. As we have seen in some earlier blog postings, bringing friendliness, "maitri," to our own experience cultivates our ability to bring that same loving-kindness or warmth to our relationships with others, too. By treating ourselves with gentleness and compassion, we plant seeds of further gentleness and compassion.
As current brain research is showing us, as reported in the work of people like Richie Davidson, Rick Hanson, and Dan Siegel, our meditation practice actually changes our brains, too.
In my psychotherapy work, I am always interested in how people treat themselves in the moments when they realize they've become caught up in an old pattern or even a simple moment of distraction. Roger can easily creates narratives about how things are going to turn out. He calls these stories "movies," and he is can get lost in worrying about the consequences of things that haven't even happened yet, especially at the beginning of potentially romantic relationships. He can keep a story going quite awhile, but he is increasingly noticing when he does so. When we began our work together, he was likely to become quite self-critical and try harder not to create stories in the first place. Needless to say, this extra vigilance didn't work. If anything, it tended to make things worse.
Together we have been working to change his relationship to the story-making/movie-making process itself. Instead of trying to get rid of the movies, he has begun to pay more attention to his experience of his body in the moment when he "comes back." In fact, he has realized that if he is willing to feel the constriction in his chest that often accompanies his stories, he can just rest where he is. Then, quite naturally, a softening may happen. Sadness may arise or even gentle appreciation for his own longing for a partner. The more he does this, the more he trains his own mind to be gentle and kind.
It doesn't take a seismic shift in our behavior to become more kindly, compassionate, and present people. It takes just a little gentleness, one moment at a time, to re-direct our minds and brains to cultivate our inherent capacities for loving-kindness and compassion.
