A New Way to See Ourselves and Our Culture: Fall, and A New School Year, A New Possibility

How do we meet a new season? How do we get our children or ourselves ready for a new school year, or for any moment? Especially this moment. Our world today faces so many threats. It’s changing at a rate none of us can keep pace with. So, besides keeping informed of news and the health of our planet and democracy, what more can we do?

It’s almost the end of August. When I was working, and the end of August was upon me, and night was settling around me⎼ I’d sit on my porch and just listen to crickets and other end of summer sounds. I’d often feel that somehow the summer had passed too quickly and wonder if I was ready for the new semester. And I promised myself I would not waste these last moments. I would make sure I missed none of it. By sitting there with the crickets, letting their song settle inside me, somehow, I felt more prepared for what lay ahead. If I could sit with this moment, I could sit or race with another.

And I’m doing just that even now. It’s 11 years since I retired from teaching secondary school, and I still feel this tension in my belly every year at this time, this dread mixed with excitement. There’s an extra chill in the air today, an extra gentle movement in the leaves, trees, and bushes. Even the sound of cars passing on the road has an unusual quality to it. The colors are sharp. My face, shoulders, and belly quivers. My jaw, the back of my mouth, is tense until I notice a cardinal calling very faintly in an apple tree. Then I relax. And I so love the soft touch of the wind and how it wakes trees and leaves into speech.

We can do all we can to keep informed about the news, but even more we have to stay in touch with our own changes, our inner state, and to those closest to us. And with this powerful strength, we can do so much good.

A Basic Practice:

This is one thing we can do. We can stand or sit still, in a safe place; a place we can remain calm and attentive for a few minutes. And take a breath. We might notice if we will: Are we comfortable where we are, with the weight of our body evenly distributed? How does it feel to simply be right here? Do we want to let our eyes rest and take in what’s around us? Or close them partly or fully?

If we open our mouth or take a breath through our nose, we might notice the taste of the air, how it feels on our tongue? Maybe notice what it is we hear right now? What sounds? What stands out or calls to us? Or what is it we see? What colors? And maybe, where on our body do we respond to these sounds or sights or tastes? In our shoulders, belly, back, legs? How deep is the response? Or maybe, what is the quality of feeling, sharp, heavy, light, like a cloud or a wind? Strong or mild?

If there’s a wind, do we feel the pressure of it on our skin? On our hands? On our belly? Do we hear any bird calls or car sounds only with our ears, or also our face, our toes?

And maybe, if we want, we can notice any thoughts that arise in this moment? How do we feel right now, about a new day, or a new school year? And then we can let the thought go and return to the sound or feel of the wind. The sense of being right here, now, present. The sense that this, this moment⎼ this, I can do.

I was reading a short article in the Fall, 2023 Tricycle by Venerable Jissai Prince-Cherry, about a classic on meditation practice, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by the Japanese Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. I first read it probably 50 years ago. It is a beloved book of several friends and two of my most respected teachers. Suzuki speaks to us in a manner that makes ignored aspects and possibilities in our lives and values obvious to us. It reveals the intimate reality of our experience. And it gifts us, and our culture, with a new way to see ourselves….

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

That First Taste of Consciousness: The Family of Awareness Is Infinite

Just imagine the moment when the first human being, hominid, or whomever first became conscious. Not just when a human felt for the first time their feet on the earth; but the first time any hominid was aware they were aware of where they placed their feet and where they were going. First became aware of the beauty in the scent from a flower, or in a sunrise, or first became aware of a memory of a bad morning.

One of my closest friends was talking about this with me on a recent Zoom call. What a powerful moment to consider. Was there ever such a moment? Or has consciousness always, somehow, been part of nature?

And this image can tease us on so many levels. Think of a baby. When is it first aware of itself? In the womb? At birth? When someone takes away its toy, a parent calls its name, or leaves them alone? Or it cries when another infant or its mother cries?

Anthropologists and others speculate humans had an increase in consciousness somewhere between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, when the first art caves were created, or maybe when the first languages were developed. Or maybe before that? Art and written language are likely indicators of conscious awareness.

Human consciousness is doubly aware. Our species name is, after all, homo sapiens sapiens, humans twice wise. We know (somewhere inside us) by knowing we know. Conscious means con, or with, scio, to know, or know with. I thought about this in a recent blog. This allows us to reflect on our actions, thoughts, and feelings and learn from the subtlest levels of all of them.

It allows us, when we hold hands with someone we care about, to not only feel their hand and ours but know we feel it.

This double awareness can give us the ability to abstract and imagine, to plan or time travel, or substitute an idea for a perception. We can use words to symbolize most anything, including a self, or evoke something in us, to dream, to craft, and to understand reality.

Words enable us to leap into a story, one of our own making, or one we adopt from someone else. We prepare ourselves for a future event by telling a story of it. We can name a type of feeling as worrying, dreadful, or lovely. Or talk about something instead of experiencing it. We can distance ourselves from something or stick ourselves to it.

Thus, our double awareness can confuse us. It can provide our greatest gifts as well as the source for our greatest suffering. Language and the ability to distance ourselves mentally and emotionally from aspects of the world can create a false sense of separation between the one who knows and what is known. By telling ourselves stories we can create anxiety as well as excitement over what might never be. Since words are abstractions masquerading as objects and other beings, they can deceive us. They create illusions as well as revelations. Because they can help us, they can hurt us….

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Renewing Your Love for Teaching: The Moment That Is Summer

Did you grow up with a longing for summer? Summer can remind us what it was like to be a child ⎼celebrating the end of the school year, of warm weather, and vacations. And if we don’t teach summer school or don’t have to work a second job (or maybe even if we do), we can have free time once again.

The longing for summer is, for me, a longing for renewal. This morning, I woke up early and went outside. Our home is in a small clearing surrounded by trees, flowering bushes and flowers. Two crows were screaming as they flew past. The shade from the trees was vibrant, cool and fresh, the colors sharp and clear. The light was so alive it wrapped the moment in a mysterious intensity. Time slowed so deeply that once the crows quieted, the songs of the other birds and the sounds of the breeze just added to the silence.

This is what I look forward to. Even now that I’m retired, I so enjoy summer. It doesn’t matter to me if it gets too hot and humid or if it rains (or if it doesn’t rain). This is it. I can actually hear my own life speaking to me.

Techniques for Renewal and Re-energizing

When I was teaching, summer was a time not only to relax but to challenge myself in new ways. I would:

*Visit beautiful places ⎼to see an ocean, a mountain, or forest.

*Practice mindfulness every day.

*Take a class and read books about whatever interested me, or whatever would reveal something new about the world that my students and I faced, whether it was politics, quantum physics, writing, mindfulness, neuroscience, philosophy, history, or the martial arts. I wantedto learn something meaningful and feel like a kid again, and a student—open, fresh, playful.

We all need this, so we can renew our abilitytosee beauty even in winter; so even when there is too much to door the world feels too dark to face, we know moments of freshness and quiet exist. Not just as memories but reminders that renewal can happen at any time. You can let go. Time can dissolve into silence. Change happens all the time.

To read the whole piece, please go to MindfulTeachers.org.

The Moment That Is Summer

Did you grow up with a longing for summer? Even if you have no connection, as an adult, to the education system, summer can remind you what it was like to be a child, the celebration of the end of the school year, warm weather, and vacations. And if you’re a teacher and don’t teach summer school or don’t have to work a second job (or maybe even if you do), or you’re a student, you can have free time once again.

The longing for summer is, for me, a longing for renewal. This morning, I woke up early and went outside. Our home is in a small clearing surrounded by trees, flowering bushes and flowers. Two crows were screaming as they flew past. The shade from the trees was vibrant, cool and fresh, the colors sharp and clear. The light so alive it wrapped the moment in a mysterious intensity. Time slowed so deeply that once the crows quieted, the songs of the other birds and the sounds of the breeze just added to the silence.

This is what I look forward to. Even now that I’m retired, I so enjoy summer. It doesn’t matter to me if it gets too hot and humid or if it rains (or if it doesn’t rain). This is it. I actually hear my own life speaking to me.

When I was teaching, summer was a time to fill up with life outside my classroom. A big desire was to visit beautiful places, to see an ocean, a mountain, or forest. I meditated every day. I also took classes or read books about whatever interested me, or whatever would reveal something new about the world that my students and I faced, whether it was politics, quantum physics, writing, mindfulness, neuroscience, philosophy, history, or the martial arts. I wanted to learn something meaningful and feel like a child again, and a student—open, fresh, playful. We all need this, so we can renew our ability to see beauty even in winter; so even when there is too much to door the world feels too dark to face, we can know moments of freshness and quiet exist. Not just as memories but reminders. Renewal can happen at any time. You can let go. Time can dissolve into silence. …

To read the whole blog, go to The Good Men Project.

Mindfulness Reveals Your Values and Improves Your Quality of Mind

The values you hold show up in the subtlest ways. Values can include the conscious principles or standards you hold as well as what you unconsciously hold dear and deem worthy of your attention and awareness. What is valuable to you is what activates your energy and attention. It motivates your goals, intentions and actions and is a basic part of how you feel each moment. If you feel off in some way, dissatisfied, in pain, studying what you value can be crucial in understanding how to not suffer and how to act effectively to end the dissatisfaction.

To understand what you value, it helps to be mindful not only of thoughts, but sensations and feelings. Notice not only what you like, dislike, or don’t care about, but what you approach or avoid. What do you open to, find difficult or confusing? Feelings give life to values.

Meditation is the science of studying mind and heart, thoughts and feelings. It develops not only depth of concentration and focus, but the ability to discern and examine both conscious and even some of what is usually unconscious components of experience. This ability can allow you to change your values and change your life.

But to do that, when you meditate, you need to value inner knowing, and value meditating itself, not what you might get from it. It might seem paradoxical, but if you meditate in order to reduce stress, what happens when you have a stressful thought or image? If you meditate in order to derive great insights, then as soon as you have an insight, you will want to stop and write it down. You will lose the meditation. Which do you want more—the written record of the insight or the mental state which produced it? Which is more important—telling others your deep realizations or living a depth of experience?

To meditate, you value whatever is there for you. You value presence. Otherwise, you are looking into an image, concept or abstraction, not what is actually there, now. You divide mind into a now and an idea of a then and lose the sense of present experience. Another definition for being distracted is thinking of another time or activity as more valuable than where you are, or what you’re doing, now.

The Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, said: “When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.” The quality of mind that you have determines the life you experience.

For example, if you teach and value the very act of teaching, teaching will be all you need in that moment. You will be committed to it. Whatever arises, whatever happens, you will greet as something to learn from and incorporate into the lesson, not as a distraction, not as something to repress or hate. If you’re a student and you value learning, you focus on developing an open, clear, discerning mind, and you will learn a great deal. You might learn even more, or maybe something different, than anyone expected. You will feel more spontaneous, free, and engaged.

If you feel an injustice has been committed, and you respond with empathy and energy to better understand the situation, you will think more clearly about the situation than if you take the situation as another burden, as something life shouldn’t ask of you.

To concentrate on the quality of your mind is to value your life in a very authentic manner. It means you value all who you meet or whatever you encounter. Other people are not on the other side of an unbreakable wall, but are essential to your being. You observe others more closely and deeply. You observe even the constantly shifting stories your unconscious creates to explain and integrate the various elements of your life, and you create a life that goes way beyond any story.

Especially nowadays, with this President, I think it is important for you to value your own experience for itself, value its depth, which is the same as valuing life. Valuing life not for any reason, not for what it can get you, but for itself.

In this country, everything is consumerised. People are too often valued in terms of what they can do for you, or how much they make, not for who they are. Education is monetized in terms of how much “value [is] added” to a student by a teacher. This leads to thinking of your own mind in “value added” terms, or what a thought or an emotion can get you. The problems with such a way of thinking have been discussed by many people, Buddha, Karl Marx, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr.—just for a small sample. What is new in this time of history is that more people have access to more information on how a value system influences your life experience.

From one perspective, the election of this President has brought to the forefront the battle in our society about what it means to be a human being, or successful as a human being. Is success measured by how much money or power you accumulate? Or how you relate to others? Are you valuable because you are a living being? Or valuable only if you can earn more than others? Is power about controlling others and forcing them to agree with you? Or about controlling your own mind and behavior? Our nation in the past was too quick to monetize everything. This must be reconsidered if we are to continue as a democracy.

**If you’d like to do a short mindfulness meditation, here is one way to begin: Maybe set an alarm clock for two or five minutes. Set an intention that, until the alarm clocks rings, you will put your attention on the mindfulness exercise. Give yourself the freedom to explore and find practices that foster clarity, calm and develop in you a sense of autonomy.

If you’d like, sit cross-legged on the floor or near the front end of a chair, and sit comfortably straight up, so you don’t get tempted to slump. Close your eyes partly or fully. If you want to leave them open, pick a spot on the floor about three feet in front of you, and let your eyes rest on that spot. Or chose a photo or natural object you find comfortable or beautiful. Then turn your attention inwards to your breath or outwards to the beauty. Exhale through your nose, and then notice how you inhale. You do it naturally, spontaneously, don’t you? Just notice the sensations of breathing. If you’re observing an object, let your eyes roam over the surface, studying it, noticing shades of light and color.

Notice what it feels like to take in a breath or to let your eyes rest on the object. Notice if you your body expands slightly with the breath. You don’t have to do anything except be aware of the sensations as you inhale. As you exhale, notice the sense of exhaling. Notice how your body might let go, settle down, relax a bit. It’s like a momentary holiday.

You might feel your attention drawn toward or away from a thought or memory. This is simply the natural flow of mind. Just notice the response. If you find yourself drifting away, just notice that your attention drifted and has now returned. Feel free to be glad you noticed. Gently focus your awareness on the breath or the beautiful object.

Sit for a moment with a sense of your mind being quiet, at ease with whatever arises.

With your mind quiet, you can ask yourself: What is it I most value? What is most important to me? And then notice the thoughts and the feelings that arise when you think of valuing what you do.

**The more I meditate, the more I recognize how often my thoughts go to others, the more I recognize how interdependent I am with others. So speaking out against the racism, anti-democratic speech and actions of this administration is one result of mindfulness⎼and one way to remember and honor the work of people like Martin Luther King Jr., who called for a “true revolution of values” in his speech “Beyond Vietnam–A time To Break Silence.”

When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.

Shunryu Suzuki

Concentrate on the Quality of Mind

When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity. Shunryu Suzuki

We need to teach ourselves and our students that if our quality of mind is good, what we do will be good. We feel more at ease with learning, more focused than confused, more peaceful than agitated, more energetic than lethargic, more open than resistant. The ultimate result I think most teachers look for is not the essay or test score or work of art our students produce: it is the emergence of a young adult. But, can we teach in this mindful manner and keep our teaching jobs? Yes. Students will be able to concentrate, score better on tests and learn more when they find the work meaningful, enjoyable, and connected to their lives. To enjoy learning students need to feel heard and be seen as people, not as test scores.