A New Name

I am happy to announce that Monday Mindfulness has a new name: On Purpose: Stories & Insights from Mindfulness, Dharma and Waking Up Each Day. The blog is now hosted on my website, www.heidibourne.com and is linked to its own Facebook page of the same name, On Purpose...

You will continue to receive an automatic email whenever a new piece is posted as the email address you provided when you subscribed has already been transferred to the new site. If you feel like you're not getting the post, please go to www.heidibourne.com and re-subscribe, though this is very unlikely. Also, all of the archives from Monday Mindfulness are on the new site and available any time. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me anytime at heidi@heidibourne.com.

Be well,

Heidi

Showing Up

Today I want to pick up where I left off earlier this month when I wrote that true mindfulness does not afford us the luxury of camping out within the gated privacy of our own hearts and minds. Mindfulness invites and requires us bit-by-bit, to take in the full range of our experiences from the beautiful to the painful. All of it, every little bit. Joanna Macy says we’re not required to be hopeful or hopeless; we’re just required to show up.

A lot of people showed up this weekend in New York City for the People’s Climate March, more than 300,000. I imagine some were hopeful and some were not. But they were there, there demanding action on climate change, willing to see things as they are. Most of us who weren’t there also know how things are. In California, we’re in a horrendous drought and fires are burning throughout the state. The rivers are drying up which means the fish will die. Hopeful or hopeless? Just show up? I have to choose hope and show up. It’s just much too frightening to be hopeless and hide.

The Buddha taught that Right or Wise Action is action rooted in non-harming of ourselves and others, and this includes our environment. If you’d like the five specific guidelines that support non-harming, check out the post from August 30th, Ferguson. Lately, I’ve especially been thinking about the last guideline; maintaining a clear mind by not using substances that cause heedlessness. Does this include fossil fuels? Or the way we use water? Does it include the media? How about the food we eat? How does what we take in and what we use affect our thinking, decisions and actions?

I don’t know how to stop using fossil fuels. Everything needs to change in order to do that; our entire orientation to our lives, our habits and understanding about the consequences and impact of our actions. That will require a seismic shift. But I can try. And I can stop letting the water run down the drain while I brush my teeth. I’ve done that for years. I can also stop watching the news, checking Facebook or reading the New York Times first thing in the morning. All three cloud my mind with tragedy, violence and greed leaving me scared and sometimes numb. They do not support my well-being which certainly affects the well-being of those around me.

A guideline from the Buddha that does support my well-being is “What when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?” I love this question because it lets me access my innate wisdom and take wise action. I choose to believe that given a choice, most of us will not make decisions that intentionally cause harm. It takes a lot of mindfulness to keep this question alive, and it makes me hopeful.

The Fond Good-Bye

Last week when I ran into a friend at the Farmer’s Market, she said “Wow, I haven’t seen you in such a long time. Where’ve you been? Some other country?” I said I had just returned from visiting family in Wisconsin. We spent 10 days in a small town along Lake Michigan rated in June by Business Insider the most conservative town in the state. If you know anything about Arcata or Humboldt County, Calif., then you just might think Wisconsin is, indeed, another country.

It’s a lovely setting; the cottage at the end of the wooded gravel road sitting just a few steps from the beach, the lake’s vast horizon, the endless color changes and the perpetual gentle shushing of the water on the shore.  Summertime family dinners on the screen porch are the norm, often with at least ten of us at most meals from grandchildren to grandparents along with any neighbor wandering by. 

The conversation commonly includes the latest news of friends, the varying health ailments at the table, the on-going efforts to maintain some semblance of a beachfront in the face of unstoppable natural forces, and always and eventually circling around to politics, tenderly avoiding the galaxy-sized black holes between our views.

                                 

During dinner on the day of our arrival, my mother-in-law, sitting at the head of the table, made a very matter-of-fact comment about “Skin-Heads” in Idaho. And I, in-turn, said I thought there were also a lot of Libertarians in Idaho. And without skipping a beat, my father-in-law reared back from the opposite end of the table and said “Hey! Wait a minute! I’m a Libertarian. So you think I’m a Skin-Head?” Oops. “That’s it!” said my mother-in-law in her incisive let’s-keep-the-peace voice, instantly putting a stop to the conversation. And that really was the end of it, until about five days later.

It was a perfectly lovely morning walk along the paved cattail-lined path, ponds on either side, and in the distance the biggest American flag imaginable waving high above everything; each stripe alone was 13 feet wide. I’d never seen anything like it. 

My father-in-law was talking with my husband about the growing Muslim population around the community, Islamic laws and customs, and the general culture of fear spreading far and wide. I decided to keep my mouth shut, enjoy the scenery and just listen. I saw it as an opportunity for a little walking meditation. Just walk and listen, I thought, walk and listen.

After a while, and I will admit feeling proud of myself for keeping quiet, my father-in-law turned to me and said “And you called me a Skin-Head the other day.” In a heartbeat, I felt myself take a breath, feel my feet on the ground, and step into the morass. 

I started by apologizing for giving him the wrong impression with my own leap from Skin-Head to Libertarian and assured him that I in no way think of him as a White Supremacist hate-monger. I was relieved when he accepted my apology with a tip of his head and slight smile, and then asked me if I knew that Webster’s defines him as a heathen – as someone who does not believe in God. I said maybe he didn’t have to believe in Webster’s. Now I got a bigger smile.

As we walked and he talked more about Libertarianism, the Constitution, lobbing some challenges to other ways of thinking, it was clear that neither one of us really wanted to cross the great divide onto the other’s side of the galaxy. But this is my husband’s father, my children’s grandfather, a man I’ve known for 30 years, and I love him. 

So I stopped, looked him in the eye and said “You know, we’re so loyal to our opinions. How would it be if we suspend our loyalties long enough to ask ‘Would you be willing to tell me what you mean by that?’ Can we talk with each other with curiosity and let our knee-jerk assumptions go for the moment?” He said that of course he and I can do that, but the rest of the world can’t. Well, I said, let’s just you and I try. And in that moment, something between us shifted, leaving both of us feeling a little triumphant.

For the rest of the visit we didn’t really talk politics or about anything else too controversial. On the quiet early morning of our departure as we said good-bye, this lovely man of 82 looked at me, gave me hug and said “We did good, didn’t we?” 

Ferguson

It’s so easy to limit the definition of mindfulness to an avenue towards finding inner peace and well-being. While that’s true, it doesn’t end there.

The requirement of true mindfulness does not afford us the luxury of camping out within the gated privacy of our own hearts and minds. It requires us to include what’s happening outside of ourselves, and little-by-little, that means everything.

So today I am writing about the difficult and painful, about a different kind of climate disruption. Think of Michael Brown, James Foley and Trayvon Martin, that so many marginalized people only have access to the worst food, the dirtiest water, substandard education and healthcare, run-down homes (if they have homes at all), that our prisons are bursting with unprecedented numbers of young African American men, the militarization of our police, that racial profiling is real, and I cannot leave out the polar bears, butterflies and bees.

When I think about the myriad causes and conditions that were present for Michael Brown to have been killed in Ferguson, I can imagine the fear, pain, distrust, anger and resentment that created a big gaping wound of profound suffering. As I’ve watched the footage of the protests, the wound is obvious and palpable. No imagination is necessary. When we see this kind of pain, really take it in, we cannot unsee it. How it got there is probably ancient and not such ancient history; traceable and untraceable, knowable and unknowable.

In light of these terrifying and deeply disturbing events, I want to talk about morality from the Buddhist perspective. This perspective gives me hope and it gives me something I can do. It helps to transform my sense of helplessness and restores my balance. I’m not giving you a lecture in morality, I promise.

In Buddhist practice there are lists for everything. The Paramis, translated as the Perfections of the Heart is one such list. Generosity is the first and Morality is next. Morality is also addressed directly through Wise Action in the Eightfold Path, another foundational list. The bottom line is that we’re asked to live a life of non-harming, but how we define non-harming is different from one person to the next, from one community to the next, and from country to the next.

Here are the five guidelines the Buddha taught for lay practitioners like us that define non-harming, and set the intention for living a moral life.

1.       Protect life by not killing anything that breathes

2.     Be generous with our resources and do not taking anything that hasn’t been freely or directly given

3.     Respect our bodies by not using sexuality in a way that harms or exploits ourselves or others

4.     Take care in how we speak to others, guiding our language to be kind, truthful, useful and appropriate. Having good timing may be the most crucial of all. How many times have we said something truthful, useful and kind, but our timing was so off that what we said had nowhere to land or caused unintended consequences?

5.     Maintaining a clear mind by not using substances to the extent that it causes heedlessness

What I appreciate about these guidelines is that they’re offered as a practice. Perfection is not required. The Buddha also points out through these guidelines that by protecting myself, I protect others and by protecting others, I protect myself. This, too, is a practice that’s worth thinking about.

I am under no illusion that by trying to live a moral life that violence, racism, and poverty will end. But if I end it in me, and you end it in you, we’ll have a little more peace.

Rules of the Game

Nearly 20 years ago my nieces Zoe and Marlee came to visit us in rural northern California from their home in suburban Chicago. At the time they were little girls, ages 5 and 3, and our kids were 6 and 7, so it was a full house of fun little kids. One night as we sat down for dinner I asked everyone to put their napkins in their laps. I’ll never forget the look on Zoe’s face, age 5, when she looked me square in the eye and stated clearly and emphatically “We don’t put napkins in laps in my neighborhood!”

* * * * * * *

Last week I played a new card game with 34 other mindfulness teachers and facilitators. We split into seven groups of five. At the outset each group was given the rules of the game, which included playing in silence, though gestures and drawing pictures were allowed. After each round of five hands, those who’d won and lost the most hands moved onto other predetermined groups, and play resumed with the newly assembled groups.

It wasn’t long before big waves of gesturing and lots of looks of confusion and annoyance filled the room. And then the muffled laughter began to ripple out as we all realized that each of the original groups had been given varying sets of rules. The collective knowledge was unnerving, confusing, frustrating, challenging, intriguing and because it was a game, comical. One person even stood up in the middle of her group, incredulous, hands on her hips and said “They changed the f*#%@^g rules!”

We all know that everything changes, that life is challenging for everyone, and on some level we understand that everything depends on everything else. But until we’re forced, we don’t really know it in our bones. A sudden or serious illness, the death of someone we love, an unexpected loss of a job, or the fires burning northern California this summer, these get our attention and we begin to get it. Hardship brings it close, much closer than when things are going well.

The card game brought us all to the edge of our comfort. Issues of fairness, equality, communication, competition and culture were right there, palpable and sticky. Who was right? Was anyone wrong? How do we proceed when there is no level playing field?

We think we know the rules, the social and emotional norms of our families, communities, and those of the wider culture.  Imagine being the only person of your skin color, heritage or gender in a crowded room with others who not only look nothing like you, but know the world from entirely different sets of guidelines. What is that like? We cannot possibly know what it’s really like for anyone else. And what about varying rules around language, money and education?

If it were only as simple as what to do with our napkins.

Five Dollar Bills

Six or seven years ago I heard a story on the radio about a woman who saved all of the $5 bills she received in tips from her waitressing job. At the end of each shift, she dutifully put the bills in a special place for safe keeping. In the beginning, her intention was to simply save enough money to buy a CD and earn some interest in a safe and predictable way. It didn’t take her too long to buy her first one, and she realized she enjoyed the self-imposed savings challenge and that it would actually pay off. So she kept it up.

When the first CD matured, instead of cashing it in and enjoying the added bonus of the interest it earned, she reinvested it all into a new one. And, she continued to buy new CD’s as her stash of $5 bills grew. She kept up this savings plan for a five years, and at the end had saved $12,000.

I was so inspired by this story that I decided to take up the challenge and start saving all of my $5 bills, too. But I’m not a waitress and don’t receive cash as part of my regular compensation, so I knew my savings would be a lot smaller. When I began this savings plan, I found a special secret place in my house to keep the bills, did not tell my husband where it was, and much sooner than I expected, I had $100. 

I will admit that over my own five years of savings, I did not invest in CD’s and turn the original $100 into $12,000. I used the money for special things like my now beloved red reading chair, airplane tickets to visit my kids, and spending money for travel.

And then I heard the story about a woman who on her way to Berkeley from the East Coast was given a fat sealed envelope by a friend just before she left. The envelope was stuffed with $20 bills. The friend asked the woman to give the money away to the homeless people she passed on the street.

I started to imagine what it must have been like to give those bills away, the look on people’s faces, the feeling in the hearts of both the giver and the receiver at the precise moment the money was given, whether or not they could look into each other’s eyes in recognition of their shared humanity.  And I started to think about my $5 bill stash and whether or not I could give it away.

The Buddha gave some very pithy instructions about generosity, instructions that have really sunk into my thinking. He said generosity brings happiness in three ways: 1^st, in the initial thought to be generous, 2^nd, in the actual giving, and 3^rd in remembering our generous acts.

As I thought about whether or not to give the $5 bills away, I decided not to think about it for too long. My initial impulse to give the money away just felt right, and over the next couple of months I gave the bills to people on the street. While some moments were a little uncomfortable, I found it one of the more directly satisfying ways of expressing generosity. 

My stash is gone now and I have not yet replenished it, but when I think about the experience of handing an unsuspecting person a five, it does make me happy.

Despite All Odds

Today, I wanted to write about peaches, mostly the unnamable pleasure and luxury of eating a melt-in-your-mouth drippy sweet peach. I wanted to write about peaches and raspberries and blueberries and strawberries and pie and sunflowers.  About the things of summer that fill my heart. I wanted to write about sweetness and joy, and the human being’s astonishing capacity to care and love, despite all odds.

Today, I read about Gaza, Israel and Palestine, that the Colorado River Basin is drying up, that tornadoes are blazing trails through the Midwest, about the refugee crisis at the Texas-Mexico border, and the unprecedented numbers of hungry children in the US. About the other things that fill my heart.

And today, I am reminded of the utterly reliable way mindfulness helps navigate this perpetual stream of joys and sorrows. Through increasing awareness, curiosity and the willingness to be with the complex, intricate and incomprehensible, the beautiful and tragic, we expand our tolerance and capacity to show up for it all.  

Sitting down, feeling my feet on the ground, the breath coming and going without my interference, being with exactly what is as it is, knowing I cannot end war, fix or change the climate or the crises of social justice. But I can be courageous enough to see it. And today, that is enough.

“The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That is what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.” 

― Joanna Macy