About equanimity

Equanimity is one of the "Four Divine Abodes" or "Sublime States". I want to call your attention to a little essay I found that is simply called "Equanimity". Here is an excerpt:

From time to time, as we are passing through various experiences, we simply "fall into" states of relative equanimity. If we are alert to this whenever it happens and use it as an opportunity to explore the nature of equanimity, then it will happen more frequently and last longer.

For example, let's say that you have been working with a physical discomfort. At some point you notice that even though the discomfort level itself has not changed, it somehow seems to bother you less. Upon investigation you realize that you have spontaneously fallen into a state of gentle matter-of-factness. By being alert to this and by exploring the state, you are training your subconscious to produce the state more frequently.

Often we think of equanimity as being associated with Buddhism but take a look at the following:

Early and Medieval Christianity placed a great value on equanimity. Indeed it was considered one of the primary Christian virtues. This is because Christianity viewed itself as a path of radical spiritual cleansing (katharsis), with equanimity as the main tool for achieving this goal. The church fathers, who wrote primarily in Greek, had three words for equanimity:

Nepsis: "Sober observation"
Ataraxia: "Freedom from upset"
Apathia: "Dispassion"(N.B. Apathia does not equal apathy!)

In Christianity, the theory of purification through equanimity constituted a major branch of spiritual study known technically as "ascetical theology."

Whatever our belief system, equanimity is a quality worthy of cultivation. It contributes deeply to happiness and to the alleviation of suffering.

Friday cat blogging!

Mama cat adopts baby squirrels:



Here's a great lesson for all of us!

CNN on meditation

How interesting. I just found a CNN article on the benefits of meditation. It's called "Meditation: The key to calm" and here's part of what it says:

Says Maitreyabandhu of the London Buddhist Center, "Meditation is about being in life. People tend to think its about blanking your mind: it's not, it's about becoming more alive -- alive to your own experiences, the world and others."

How does it help?

According to many practitioners, learning meditation helps to manage daily stress, concerns and pressures. Says Maitreyabandhu, "Lots of people come to meditation because they want to relax. Some people come because they want to live more vividly. I meditate now because I want to gain some sort of transcendental awareness of the universe. It's about that experience that changes you completely - so it's not just a fluffy, relaxing, muesli eating thing."
...
As a result of our rushed lives we can also lose touch with ourselves. Meditation then becomes a way of "checking-in" and assessing how things are going.

Says Maitreyabandhu, "We can become alienated from our more subtle emotions. We are alienated from our bodies. There is a real need to get in contact with something alive. We easily get stuck on the surfaces of ourselves. In the west we forget the mind has depths. There are depths of the mind that are really satisfying and profound."

It's a good little article. Go read all of it if you have time.

Awareness meditation

Recent studies with brain scans have indicated that if we simply name our mind states they have less power over us. Here are instructions for an awareness meditation that enable us to do just that:

• Relax and focus on any meditation object.
• Make good contact with it. It is the seat from which you watch the stream.
• Every few seconds, name the most obvious thing in the mind, whether it is important or not: "sore knee ... hungry ... TV ... money ... traffic...."
• Don't lose contact with your basic meditation object. Spend at least half the time with it, and check that you're actually relaxing. In fact, go as deep into the object as you can without ignoring the peripheral thoughts and sensations.
• Notice how the scenery changes the deeper you relax.
• Notice that when you wait for thoughts, they often don't come!
• Enjoy the bland, impersonal quality of the clear mind.

By "bland" I don't think the writer means boring or unimportant but rather non-agitating and a state that does not prompt or stimulate attachments.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Another look at happiness

This is so true:

It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continuos intoxicating party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are making a difference for good in the world.

-- Ernest A. Fitzgerald

Remember that the whole purpose of meditation is to alleviate suffering and promote happiness. Your meditative practice will help create the conditions within that make it possible for you to believe that your life has meaning and that you are making a difference.

One way to happiness

Epictetus is surely my favorite philosopher from ancient times:

There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

--Epictetus

Monday meditative picture blogging

Chicago Peace rose

Photo by Bill Miller

More on brain scans and meditation

I want to call your attention to another article on the neurological benefits of meditation. It's called "Brain scans show meditation changes minds, increases attention" and it's published in The University of Wisconsin-Madison News. Here's part of what it says:

For hundreds of years, Tibetan monks and other religious people have used meditation to calm the mind and improve concentration. This week, a new study shows exactly how one common type of meditation affects the brain.

Using a scanner that reveals which parts of the brain are active at any given moment, the researchers found that meditation increased activity in the brain regions used for paying attention and making decisions.
...
Practitioners were instructed to focus attention intently on a stimulus, and when the attention wandered off, to simply bring the attention back to the object, explains [study leader Richard] Davidson.
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Davidson says scientific studies of meditation are proving traditional beliefs about the mental benefits of meditation. Yet although meditation is often associated with monks living a life of simplicity, poverty, and prayer, "There is nothing fundamentally mysterious about these practices; they can be understood in hard-nosed western scientific terms."

And, he adds, a growing body of "hard-nosed neuroscience research" is attracting attention to the profound effects of meditation.

This is not a matter of faith - although I do not want to belittle the role of faith in meditative practice. It is a matter of emperical demonstration. Meditation works. Please don't neglect it!

A new acquisition

"Light"

I just wanted to share with you all that I have recently bought the painting above and it should be delivered soon. It's going in my new living room.

If you haven't yet discovered the work of C. Robin Janning may I heartily recommend that you do so now. Here are her blog sites:

Gramercy Galleria

Gramercy Digital Diary

ECVA Sketchbook: Art in the Desert

I'm planning to save my pennies and acquire more of her work before too long!

Letting go

I decided to do a web search on the words "letting go" and see what I could find. I came across a little article on the About.com website entitled just that: Letting go. Here's part of what it says:

People who are very stressed often have increased muscle tension. This tension can result in headaches, neck and shoulder pain, joint pain (such as TMJ pain), and other problems. Various relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, biofeedback, and hypnosis all help people reduce muscle tension. Physical approaches such as massage therapy and yoga can also be very helpful. People participating in these techniques learn to let go of this tension in their body. Many find it easy to let go of cares and worries during a time when they are also letting go of muscle tension.

We are beginning to discover that there are health benefits to letting go. People who worry a lot and hold on to problems may be more vulnerable to physical problems than people who are able to let go. Anger and hostility have even been associated with heart attack risk. At least two personality types have been connected with an increased risk of heart attack. Type A and Type D personalities both involve an inability to let go. The type A person is pressured and driven, while the type D person is worried and anxious. By learning to let go of cares, worries, anger, deadline pressure, and similar concerns we may be lengthening our lives. We are certainly making them more enjoyable.

What was not mentioned in the first paragraph of the excerpt is, of course, meditation. The "how" of letting go becomes clear to us as we practice mindfulness and/or "calm abiding" meditation. One more motivation, folks!

Alzheimer's and meditation

Well, early this morning I found a VERY interesting article about meditation called "Meditation holds hope for Alzheimer's in tiny, early study". If you EVER needed a reason to jump start your motivation to meditate, this is it:

For the first time, there is evidence that daily meditation appears to improve memory loss and may strengthen parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer's disease.

That has to be welcome news to the millions of Americans facing the threat of this brain-destroying disease — expected to strike in epidemic numbers among aging baby boomers in the coming decades.

However, experts warn that the study showing that meditation improved memory function and increased blood flow to vital areas of the brain lacked scientific controls and was too small to actually prove meditation can delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer's.

Even so, the preliminary findings are provocative — suggesting that a simple, inexpensive mind-body exercise with known health benefits may fortify our brains against mental decline as we age.

The results were presented this month at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference on the Prevention of Dementia in Washington, D.C. The study was funded by a Tucson-based foundation.

Practiced for centuries in ancient cultures — and now studied for its effects on human health — meditation, in its various forms, indeed has proved good for the body and the brain.

Studies show it can reduce stress and pain, ease depression, lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, increase attention, and promote stability in handling crises.

This is the first study to indicate positive effects on memory.

Okay, folks. Even if the results aren't conclusive, they are, as the article says, provocative. And even if there's a CHANCE that meditation might help prevent or delay Alzheimer's, it's worth giving it a go.

The rest of the article is fascinating, by the way, so click through and read it all if you have the time to do so.

UPDATE: I just found an article entitled "Alzheimer's: Prevention, Treatment, and Slowing Down". It is excellent. I suggest we all study it and take it to heart.

Friday cat blogging!

Henry in my lap

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

An observation

I heard Writer's Almanac on NPR as I was driving to Oklahoma City for a meeting and was very struck with today's poem:

Thistles
for Persia

Under ledge, under tar, under fill
under curved blue stone of doorsteps,
under the aggregate of lakebed rock,
under loss and under hard words,
under steamrollers
under your heart,
it doesn't matter. They can live forever.
The seeds of thistles
push from nowhere, forming a rose of spikes
that spreads all summer until it
stands in a glory of
needles, blossoms, blazing
purple clubs and fists.

-- Louise Erdrich

There is something to be said for perseverance, tenacity.

Solstice

Well I don't want to be remiss about reminding you that today is the Summer Solstice. Actually it literally took place at exactly 18:06 UT (Universal Time) - what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT.

You might find it interesting to read the Relgious Tolerance article entitled "Summer solstice celebrations: ancient and modern".

Everyone, please do enjoy this, the longest day of the year!

Let's not be fools!

We will all do well to ponder the following:

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Pure silence

For some reason today I decided to do a search on the word "silence". I found an interesting site with which I do not entirely agree but which offers this gem:

Pure Silence is within you. It is not just the absence of sound, or lack of noise. It is the ground, the basis of your very being. There is nothing to find out, nothing to prove. Just listen with your whole being to what is here, now. It is the most amazing thing you can ever discover.

It is with you now. It is you. The only way to find this is to stop everything else. Everything! Just be.

What would happen if we gave ourselves permission to "just be"? I don't think that would mean we would turn passive and useless. I think it would mean that we would become free.

Tuesday meditation picture blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

The value of compassion

I've called a number of articles to your attention recently about the effects of meditation on the brain. Here's another one from the Wall Street Journal called "Scans of Monks' Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning". Here's an excerpt:

"We tried to generate a mental state in which compassion permeates the whole mind with no other thoughts," says Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk at Shechen Monastery in Katmandu, Nepal, who holds a Ph.D. in genetics.

In a striking difference between novices and monks, the latter showed a dramatic increase in high-frequency brain activity called gamma waves during compassion meditation. Thought to be the signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung brain circuits, gamma waves underlie higher mental activity such as consciousness. The novice meditators "showed a slight increase in gamma activity, but most monks showed extremely large increases of a sort that has never been reported before in the neuroscience literature," says Prof. Davidson, suggesting that mental training can bring the brain to a greater level of consciousness.

Using the brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists pinpointed regions that were active during compassion meditation. In almost every case, the enhanced activity was greater in the monks' brains than the novices'. Activity in the left prefrontal cortex (the seat of positive emotions such as happiness) swamped activity in the right prefrontal (site of negative emotions and anxiety), something never before seen from purely mental activity. A sprawling circuit that switches on at the sight of suffering also showed greater activity in the monks. So did regions responsible for planned movement, as if the monks' brains were itching to go to the aid of those in distress.

"It feels like a total readiness to act, to help," recalled Mr. Ricard.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to cultivate that total readiness? The good news is that we can.

A truly healing practice

The purpose of meditation is to alleviate suffering and to promote happiness. Here's the first paragraph of a little article that explains this:

In the West, the word ‘meditation’ means a concentrated state of mind in serious reflection. The Latin root of the word meditation, mederi, means ‘to heal’. It is an effort to heal afflictions of the mind, the hurt ego, by trying to understand the cause of the problem and finding a way to solve it, that is, by knowing what counter-measures to take. To meditate thus, is to deepen a state of understanding.

We can heal ourselves if we truly want to. It takes time and it takes perseverance. But it really isn't very difficult.