The One Human Journey Mobile App Is Here

Dear Friends,

A lot of you have been following this Web site, One Human Journey, since as far back as 2008. Thank you for all the kind feedback you've shared with me over the years about the writings I've posted here.

I'm excited to let you know that One Human Journey is now available as a mobile app for iPhone/iPad, Android phones and tablets, and Kindle Fire. And it's more than just blog posts....

Powered by Conduit Mobile

Get instant access in the palm of your hand to over 150 articles, guided meditations, instructional videos (it's a short list of videos for now, but more are in the works), daily inspirational quotes and photos, information on upcoming classes and workshops, and more! Plus, get occasional notifications to alert you when there's a new article or video to check out, so you don't miss out on the good stuff.

Search for "One Human Journey" in Apple's App Store or in the Apps section of Google Play. Or go to this landing page where you can find links to the different versions of the app depending on what type of device you have:

http://cbf338ab-c125-4d02-bb12-c7984d573a27.mobapp.at/

The One Human Journey mobile app is FREE, and offers resources to inspire you and help you deepen your practice of meditation, yoga and spirituality. New content will be coming each week (daily, in fact, if you check the Facebook and Twitter sections) so the experience will keep getting better. Download it today!

Want to help me spread the word about One Human Journey and reach a wider audience? Recommend the app to your friends. Also, if you feel so inclined, please submit a review and rate the app in the App Store to help it get positive sentiment and better rankings in the Wild West shoot-out that is the world of mobile apps. Thank you!

Also coming soon from One Human Journey: a new e-book! Stay tuned….

With gratitude,
Dennis

 

Check out all the One Human Journey resources:
Web Site

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Mobile App

Tao Te Ching Weekend at One Human Journey

It's "Tao Te Ching Weekend" on the One Human Journey Facebook page. A series of nine short contemplations will be posted over the course of the weekend, starting tonight. These posts will inspire you and offer deep insight and spiritual advice. Come follow the page and get all nine contemplations this weekend.

The Tao Te Ching is a classic text written (according to scholars) around the 4th century B.C. or (according to tradition) around the 6th century B.C. by Chinese spiritual master Lao Tzu. As the fundamental text of the Taoist philosophical and religious schools, it is one of the most widely translated works in world literature and strongly influenced both Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, among other traditions.

Come to the Facebook page and share your own thoughts on these nine short excerpts from the Tao Te Ching in the comments section.

Translation by Brian Walker. Images and layout of the text drawn from translator Brian Walker's Tao Te Ching app for iPhone and iPad. Download the app today!

7 Tips to Establish Your Meditation Practice

Okay, so you've received some basic meditation instruction and you want to establish a regular practice. That's great! Here are seven tips to help you get your practice going — and keep it going.

1. Just Do It
Meditation can seem difficult or even impossible at times. When we sit down to be still and quiet and look at our minds, we are suddenly, shockingly aware of how busy and distracted our minds really are. For many beginners, this can be disheartening. A lot of people give up before they even begin, thinking, "Other people may be able to meditate, but not me. I just can't do this." This is sort of like someone who takes piano lessons and gives up after the first few lessons because they cannot play a Beethoven piano concerto. It's called practice for a reason. Be patient with yourself and relax. Meditation is a process of taming and training the wild mind to stay present, and that training takes time.

2. Be Consistent
Consistency and regularity of practice are the keys to unlocking the benefits of meditation in your life. This has proven true in the experience of millions of meditators in every spiritual tradition for the past several thousand years. Think of it like brushing your teeth: it's better to do it every day, for short periods of time, rather than once a week for two hours. Practice whether you feel like it or not.
 If you only meditate when you feel like it, then your ego is subtly controlling your meditation practice — and that’s missing the point. If possible, try to practice at a consistent time each day. Many people find that meditating in the morning before going to work helps them establish a better frame of mind for their day. Others prefer to practice in the evening. Some like to "bookend" their days by doing both. Experiment and find what works best for you, and then stick with it for a while.

3. Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Practice in manageable, bite-size chunks. A typical recommendation for beginners is to start with 10 minutes a day, and then over time you can gradually increase it if you feel so inclined. If you are training for a marathon, you don't suddenly run 26 miles; you do a lot of shorter runs, and you gradually build up stamina and endurance. But don't leave it all to chance. Decide in advance how long you’re going to practice, and then stick to that amount of time. Don’t change your mind and bail out in the middle of the session just because it doesn't feel good. By the same token, get up when the session is over, even if it's feeling great.

"Learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well. Meditation is the road to enlightenment." — Sogyal Rinpoche

4. Use a Timer
However long you practice, use a timer (stop watch, alarm clock, or kitchen timer) to time your sessions. The last thing you want to be doing while you're meditating — although it's tempting! — is peeking at the clock, wondering how much time is left in your session. There are also a number of free mobile apps you can download to time your sessions, or you can use your phone's built-in timer. I recommend the free Insight Meditation Timer app, which also includes access to many guided meditations.

5. Be Brave
Don’t be discouraged when meditation seems difficult, and don't get carried away with elation when it seems pleasant or easy. Experiences come and go like the weather in meditation, and it is our conceptual minds that label them "good" and "bad." Don’t cling to pleasant experiences, and don’t reject unpleasant experiences. Just keep practicing.

6. Find Your Space
Find a conducive space in which to meditate. It should be safe, quiet, and free from phones ringing and other preventable disturbances. But total silence is not necessary. Don’t meditate in total darkness or with light that’s too bright. If possible, you may find it helpful to create a space in your home devoted exclusively to your meditation practice. It could be just a corner of your room with a chair or a meditation cushion, and maybe some items that remind you of your spiritual goals. If circumstances make your home completely and totally unworkable as a meditation space, then you could go to practice in a church or a meditation center. If you have access to a meditation center in your area, you may find it inspirational and supportive to practice together with other people in group settings.

7. Find Your Support
As you continue to work with a meditation practice, questions and obstacles are bound to arise. If you can, it's helpful to talk about these issues with a meditation instructor or someone more experienced in the practice. It helps to have the guidance of someone who has encountered the same questions and obstacles in meditation and has worked through them. If you don't have access to support in person or by phone, there are many books and online resources that can help you identify obstacles in meditation and apply antidotes and solutions. If you're struggling with something in your meditation practice, rest assured that you're not the only one, and someone out there can help you work with it.

Joining Heaven and Earth

Yesterday I went skiing for the first time in 30 years. That other time was so long ago, and so little memory remains of it, that it would probably be more telling to say that yesterday I went skiing for the first time in my life.

After taking about an hour of basic lessons with groups of children and feeling frustrated with the bunny slopes, we hit the lifts. One of the people in our group is an avid skier and a good coach, and he led us through progressively more challenging (and frankly, at times, downright terrifying) slopes.

By mid-afternoon, we found ourselves on a blue trail—an intermediate course peppered with steeper hills, narrow passages, and moguls (violent little bumps in the snow that some people use to become momentarily airborne).

A Trial by Fire (and Snow) 
The situation was choiceless; we were going down that mountain one way or another, and the best way down was to follow our friend's coaching and learn to carve sharp turns back and forth from one side of the slope to the other, slowing our descent as much as possible. Along the way, there were many falls, but we picked ourselves up, shook the powdered snow out of our pants, laughed off our embarrassment, and continued. All around us, other skiers and snowboarders zipped by, narrowly avoiding crashing into us. At one point, a snowboarder came flying out of the woods through the air and wiped out directly in front of me; I leaned into a sharp turn and navigated around him by an inch or two. Later, an inexperienced skier actually did crash directly into my partner; no one was hurt, thankfully. Gradually, we learned to hold our balance and position our bodies, keep our skis apart, navigate the turns—and the most important skill of all—how to stop (even if, now and then, our stopping sometimes looked more like wiping out).

For those of you who practice yoga but don't ski, imagine doing Utkatasana (chair pose) for six straight hours, in a walk-in freezer, during a violent earthquake, all the while having to jump from one spot in the room to another (without breaking the pose, and with long, slippery, greased sticks attached to your feet) to avoid crazy people who are wildly running through the room trying to knock you over and throwing handfuls of snow in your face.

"You're walking. And you don't always realize it,
but you're always falling.
With each step you fall forward slightly.
And then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you're falling.
And then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how you can be walking and falling
at the same time."

- Laurie Anderson

After the harrowing ordeal of the blue trail, we returned to one of the easier green trails that we had been on earlier. But something was different this time. The blue trail had almost made me soil my pants; but I had survived it. Now, suddenly, the green beginner's trail—which had previously seemed incredibly difficult, too—was, literally, a breeze. I went down it once, and gained the confidence to let myself pick up more speed and carve wide turns back and forth. This time, I didn't fall. We went up again and came down a second time, and I picked up even more speed. I had no speedometer to measure—but I think I must have hit 40 mph. I was zipping past slower people and carving half-moons around them. Although there were moments when the speed and the bumps made me fear that I might lose control, I didn't. I stayed relaxed and in the flow. And it was exhilarating. I couldn't wait to get back on the lift and do it a third time.

By now, my regular readers may be wondering what possible relevance all of this has to my usual subjects: meditation, Buddhism, yoga and spirituality. Well, let me tell you.

Joining Heaven and Earth
Skiing is a metaphor for life. Life is not always smooth going. It can be chaotic and messy and terrifying and dangerous. It can—it does—push us out of our comfort zones and takes us to places we think we shouldn't be. Sometimes we lose control; we wipe out and get snow in our pants, or we crash head-on into another person when conflict arises. The situations that challenge us push us to learn to adapt faster. The people who irritate or threaten us challenge us to develop skillful ways of responding: less reactivity and aggression, more patience, compassion, and forgiveness.

"The bad news is: you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is: there’s no ground." 

- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Certain Buddhist traditions speak of the principle of "joining heaven and earth." This is a lyrical and symbolic way of talking about synchronizing mind (heaven) and body (earth) in flowing, present-moment awareness. Through meditation, yoga—and yes, skiing—we can experience the freedom, contentment and relaxation that comes when mind and body are synchronized and we are fully awake to our experience as it unfolds. We stay right here, on the dot of the present moment, even—or especially—as we speed down the mountain and navigate more or less skillfully through whatever bumpy and chaotic situations life throws at us.

May we all become more skillful navigators and experience fewer crashes. When other, perhaps less skilled people crash into us, may we learn to forgive rather than escalate conflict. When the slopes become terrifying and seem impossible for us to ride, may we develop the confidence to stay present—and keep going. And when we fall—for we will fall, and spectacularly—may we always maintain our sense of humor about it.

With Adrian Molina

Stop Making a Big Deal

As humans we are hardwired to seek pleasure and comfort and to avoid discomfort and pain. Probably all living beings are wired this way, but we humans have developed a greater variety of ways to carry out this prime directive. We are exceptionally good at it, and extremely habituated.

As practitioners of mindfulness this is something we witness happening 'in real time' during our meditations. We experience pains arising in the body, and our immediate impulse is to fidget and shift in our seat to make the pain go away. We experience unpleasant emotional states or thoughts that we label as bad or unwanted, and we try to bludgeon them into submission with concentration. Or we are lucky enough to have a very pleasant, peaceful feeling, and we immediately glom onto it and try to sustain it.

If we practice enough, though, we begin to experience something else: we witness the constant, moment-to-moment, instant-to-instant arising and passing away of thoughts, feelings and sensations. After witnessing this enough, we simply stop investing them with so much importance. Like the weather, our experiences come and they go -- sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. We can gripe and complain about the weather of the moment, or sing its praises, but the weather doesn't change for us. It changes all by itself, in its own time.

Our normal pattern -- so deeply ingrained that 99% of the time we do it on autopilot, without even noticing we are doing it -- is to make a big deal out of whatever experience is happening to us at any given moment. Good or bad, happy or sad, pleasant or painful, we exaggerate both its significance and its duration in our imaginations. And we react -- or over-react -- accordingly. An itch arises, and we scratch it without thinking. But what happens when we simply notice what is happening in our experience, and don't react?

One of the great qualities that mindfulness training begins to awaken in us is the capacity to stop making a big deal out of every thought or feeling that arises. The itch still comes, but we pause long enough to simply pay attention to the sensation without reacting. Maybe we scratch it, maybe we don't. But we realize that we are not, in fact, going to die of discomfort if we don't scratch it. Our back hurts, and we either move or don't move to alleviate the pain -- but if we move, we do it consciously, with awareness. A feeling of sadness or joy comes over us, and we can simply be there with it -- nothing in particular has to be done with it. Like everything else, it is momentary, and it changes. We don't make it a bigger deal than it really is.

"I am like a tree in a forest. Birds come to the tree, they sit on its branches and eat its fruits. To the birds, the fruit may be sweet or sour or whatever. The birds say sweet or they say sour, but from the tree's point of view, this is just the chattering of birds." - Ajahn Chah

"I am like a tree in a forest. Birds come to the tree, they sit on its branches and eat its fruits. To the birds, the fruit may be sweet or sour or whatever. The birds say sweet or they say sour, but from the tree's point of view, this is just the chattering of birds."

Practicing this way during meditation is, of course, only a form of training. The real point is to apply the training in everyday life, when situations arise that either give us great pleasure or cause us pain or stress. With practice, we can catch ourselves in the very moment of glomming onto our experience and starting to make a big deal out of it. We can observe the patterns of attachment and aversion that arise within us, and we can decide how much energy we really want to invest in them. And, in that pause, we can choose to react in ways that serve the greater good, rather than flying on autopilot.

August: Osage County

For years I've been hearing my friends sing the praises of a certain Tony award-winning play that I missed during its Broadway theatrical run. I was encouraged to go see it, not just because it was such a wonderful play, but because it takes place in my home state of Oklahoma. Now the play has been made into a film with a dreamlike cast of powerhouse actors, and I finally had the chance to see it last night.

August: Osage County was a masterfully written and beautifully acted story of despair, addiction, self-delusion, alienation, competitiveness, greed, cruelty, perversion, desperation, resentment, lies, secrets, shame, anger, manipulation, betrayal, vengeance, rage, hatred, disease, decrepitude, psychological breakdown, and suicide.

A perfect Saturday night date movie.

Meryl Streep was nominated for yet another Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in this film, and I can't argue with that. She is a force of nature who never fails to impress, and in this film she delivers the goods. The rest of the cast, too, was amazing. The story was well-told, and as someone who grew up in Oklahoma I felt they got the atmosphere right. And the story's inherent bitterness was leavened with just enough skillful black humor to make it possible to swallow the whole pill.

But afterwards I found myself asking: why is it that we are so drawn to such miserable, discouraging, demoralizing stories? Why do we bestow the highest accolades on tales of such utter hopelessness and emotional violence? What is it about them that attracts us so much?

When I was younger, I felt a stronger pull towards these kinds of stories. In high school and college I went through a phase of complete obsession with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a film of comparable emotional violence and hopelessness about the human condition. It was a story that, at that time in my life -- full of youthful anger and rebellion -- resonated for me on a very deep level. It was appropriate to my life stage.

But the older I get -- or maybe it has less to do with my age than with my spiritual practice -- I find myself yearning for stories that demonstrate humans being basically decent and kind to themselves and to each other. I don't long for sugar-coated, Hollywood narratives that look away from conflict or from the darkness within us — for we cannot pretend it isn't there — but I do long for more stories that at least point towards our capacity for stepping into the light and helping others to do so. I'm increasingly turned off by stories that show people dragging everyone around them down into their personal pits of darkness and stabbing them with verbal knives and kicking them when they're down and bleeding.

Rob Brezsny's essay, "Evil Is Boring," very accurately describes "the perspective of many modern storytellers, especially the journalists and novelists and filmmakers and producers of TV dramas…"

"They devoutly believe that tales of affliction and mayhem and corruption and tragedy are inherently more interesting than tales of triumph and liberation and pleasure and ingenuity.

"Using the juggernaut of the media and entertainment industries, they relentlessly propagate this covert dogma. It's not sufficiently profound or well thought out to be called nihilism. Pop nihilism is a more accurate term. The mass audience is the victim of this inane ugliness, brainwashed by a multibillion-dollar propaganda machine that in comparison makes Himmler's vaunted soul-stealing apparatus look like a child's backyard puppet show. This is the engine of the phenomena I call the global genocide of the imagination.

"At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we believe that stories about the rot are not inherently more captivating than stories about the splendor. On the contrary, given how predictable and ubiquitous they are, stories about the rot are actually quite dull. Obsessing on evil is boring. Rousing fear is a hackneyed shtick. Wallowing in despair is a bad habit. Indulging in cynicism is akin to committing a copycat crime.

"Most modern storytellers go even further in their devotion to the rot, implying that breakdown is not only more interesting but far more common than breakthrough, that painful twists outnumber vigorous transformations by a wide margin." — Rob Brezsny

The thing is, I've watched movies about vampires and demonic possession that demonstrated more interest in basic goodness and human decency than August: Osage County. And I'm not saying that makes it a bad film, because it isn't. It's extraordinarily well-crafted and emotionally compelling, and it will probably win at least one Academy Award.

But I guess, like Brezsny, I'm growing bored with narratives that express what he calls a "devotion to the rot" — stories that do nothing but revel in the darkest shadow material and emotional violence that they can possibly dig up (unless, like 12 Years a Slave, they are historical narratives, which have a pedagogic purpose).

I walked away from August: Osage County thinking how important the shadow is in the human psyche, and how we ignore it at our peril — but for God's sake, it's not the sum total of who we are.

Jukebox Karma

Music is profoundly human. Making music and listening to music are two of the most uniquely human activities. There are species of birds whose songs approach the level of what we would define as music, and there are even exotic birds who hold twigs in their feet and use them to tap out a drumbeat on a tree branch as part of an elaborate mating display. But no other species invests quite as much emotional content in music and takes it as far as humans do. Music is one of our most essential ways of articulating and expressing meaning in our lives. It can also be one of our most neurotic forms of self-indulgence. It has the power to stir up and perpetuate emotional states of mind, both positive and negative.

Music has a way of getting inside your mind and planting seeds there, leaving behind a kind of echo of itself, a psychic residue that can linger even for years, in some cases for a lifetime. Musical memories are stored in a different part of the brain than other memories. Studies of Alzheimer's patients show that even when most other memory and cognitive functions are compromised, songs and lyrics from decades ago can often be easily recalled.

A Buddhist teacher I once studied with, Bill McKeever, called this phenomenon "jukebox karma" — the accumulated karmic seeds planted in our minds by the thousands and thousands of songs we have listened to, over and over and over, throughout the course of our lives.

Many contemporary meditation practitioners, myself included, often find jukebox karma to be one of the most irritating obstacles we encounter within our own minds. There we are on the cushion, trying diligently to meditate and keep our minds centered on some object of meditation, and instead we find that our mind stubbornly wants to keep replaying the chorus from some godforsaken pop song we heard on the radio. Gack! We try to let it go and come back to our meditation, but a moment later we are back at it. Our jukebox karma is just too strong.

"Jukebox karma" — the accumulated karmic seeds planted in our minds by the thousands and thousands of songs we have listened to, over and over and over, throughout the course of our lives.

When I lived in a Buddhist monastery, I spent the first year largely free from any musical input — no radio, no CDs, no MP3 player. I was shocked to discover that it wasn't until about six months into that year that my jukebox karma really began to fizzle out and lose its grip on my mind. During those first six months, anything at all could trigger the memory of a lyric or a refrain, and send me spinning off into musical distraction.

So if you find yourself struggling with jukebox karma in your meditation practice, cut yourself some slack. You're seeing (or hearing) karmic grooves that are very deeply embedded in your psyche, and no doubt in your neural pathways. If you're like me, music is one of your favorite ways to keep your mind entertained, and now you're experiencing the inevitable repercussions (pun intended) of all that conditioning and grasping at entertainment. Like everything else that comes up in meditation, it's just a thought, a pattern, an echo. It doesn't have any real substance, and with time and patience it will dissipate and leave the mind to settle into its own natural clarity and stillness. As the Beatles sang, just "Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be."

Oops, I did it again.

The Voice That Doesn't Use Words

For better or worse, people have always remarked upon my quiet, calm demeanor. Some people complain that they can't hear me because I speak so quietly, or because I communicate with a poker face that betrays little emotion. Some people are unnerved by my — or anyone else's — propensity towards silence, and they ask me, with visible discomfort, "Why are you so quiet?" They seem to need to have every moment filled up with speech of some kind, even if it's the noise of a television set in the background or the earbuds pumping a constant stream of music into their ears. Still others are thrown off by what they describe as the intensity of my gaze, which appears to be communicating a great deal without uttering a single word. It's the rare person who finds comfort or solace in my quietude.

What few people (except my closest friends, who know me well) seem to realize — for I've become very good at hiding it — is that beneath my quiet, calm demeanor lies the same incessantly chattering "monkey mind" from which every other human being suffers. When I sit down to meditate, the mind that I encounter is usually not a calm, still lake; it's a roiling sea of thoughts, hopes, fears, judgments, fantasies, memories, plans and dreams. It is what Bhante Henepola Gunaratana called a "screeching, gibbering madhouse on wheels, barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless."

But then, there are moments, fleeting glimpses, of what lies behind or beneath all that. The simple ground of awareness, uncontrived and unburdened from the baggage of concepts and language and commentary and ideas. And a glimpse — whether it's five seconds or five minutes — is all it takes to remind me that there is an eye of calmness within the center of my storm, a calmness that is accessible to me anytime I choose to drop down through the layers of clouds and the blowing winds and rain and make contact with the empty space and the stillness and silence that lies at the heart of it all.

"Zen practice is always about returning to that place where there are no words. Early on, I realized that to use words, you have to live life beyond words, before words, without words. Only then do you have the right to speak." - Seido Ray Ronci

Lately in my meditations I've been trying to observe the difference between still mind and moving mind — which is another way of saying between quiet mind and chattering mind. What happens when you release the mind's habitual tendency towards saying something — anything — about anything at all? What is left over when you stop conversing with yourself, remembering, fantasizing, planning, or even commenting upon what's happening in the present moment? What happens when you stop worrying about whether you're meditating correctly and just experience what is actually happening without talking to yourself about it? Who are you when you finally shut up and — for ten seconds of your life — stop talking about yourself and your experience, and just experience it?

What does the voice of your naked awareness sound like when you're not trying to make it say what you want it to say?

"There is a voice that doesn't use words," said Rumi. "Listen."

Meditation 101

As people begin preparing their resolutions for the New Year, many will have "learning to meditate" near the top of their lists. In my observation, the best way to learn to meditate is through face-to-face instruction from someone experienced in the practice, who can answer questions and help you work with obstacles that may arise. If you can do it that way, I recommend it. But that's not always possible; and, in any case, it's also helpful to read written instructions.

The following basic instructions in meditation practice were first published on this blog five years ago. I'm reposting them now because — whether we are brand new to meditation or have been practicing for years — we can never hear them too many times. And each time we hear them, we may hear something new.

The first time I heard meditation instruction, it was presented in terms of three simple building blocks — a mnemonic device that I’ve always found it helpful to recall. The three basic building blocks of sitting meditation are: Body, Breath, and Mind.

Even within Buddhism, there are many types of meditation that utilize different techniques designed to accomplish different things (not to speak of all the meditations found in other spiritual traditions). The type of meditation described here is called shamatha, translated as Tranquility or Calm Abiding or Peaceful Abiding. As those labels suggest, its main purpose is to calm the mind, and to help us train in the ability to “abide” or stay present with what is happening right here, right now.

Training in this kind of Tranquility meditation is the first step in really getting to know our own minds, and creates a foundation for everything we do on the spiritual path.

"The method that the Buddha discovered is meditation. He discovered that struggling to find answers did not work. It was only when there were gaps in his struggle that insights came to him. He began to realize that there was a sane, awake quality within him that manifested itself only in the absence of struggle. So the practice of meditation involves letting be."

-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

A: Body

The first part of the practice involves how we work with our body during meditation. Taking the right posture is essential, because the state of the body reflects and affects the state of the mind: the mind-body continuum. A slouching posture leads to a slouching, dull state of mind — and vice versa. A proper, upright posture embodies the qualities of strength, dignity, and bravery, and sets the stage for engaging with your mind in the practice of meditation.

• Sit up straight, allowing the spine to lengthen naturally — as if an invisible string attached to the crown of your head were lightly pulling you upward. If you're in a chair, you might try sitting forward rather than leaning against the back of the chair; your feet should be flat on the floor. If you're on a cushion, cross your legs comfortably in front of you.
• Let your arms drop to your sides, then gently lift only your forearms — keeping your upper arms parallel to the torso — and bring your palms to rest lightly on your knees or your thighs. The placement of the hands should not be so far forward that it causes your shoulders to slouch, and not so far back that it pinches the shoulder blades. Find the right spot to allow your back and shoulders and neck to rest upright, without straining.
• Keeping the eyes open, direct your gaze down at a point three to six feet in front of you, not looking at anything in particular but allowing the gaze to rest in one spot rather than roaming or following distractions. Allow your eyelids to relax, and soften the gaze so that you're "looking without staring." If you've practiced other meditation techniques that involved closing the eyes, it may seem awkward at first to practice with eyes open, but give it a try and see what happens. Keeping the eyes open is a step towards integrating the practice of mindfulness into everyday life, rather than making mindfulness something separate from your life that can only be practiced under restricted conditions.
• Relax the stomach muscles, the torso, the throat, the jaw. Bring the tip of the tongue to rest lightly on the spot where your upper teeth meet the roof of your mouth, allowing the lips to part slightly if it feels comfortable.

B: Breath

The second part of the practice involves where we place our minds during meditation. We could choose almost any object — an image, a sound, a particular word or series of words — but most people find that the simplest and most convenient object to use in shamatha meditation is the breath. It's free, you carry it with you everywhere you go, and it's already happening — it requires no particular effort. In one sense, sitting and resting our attention on the breath is the simplest thing we could possibly do; yet the cumulative effects and implications of this practice are profound. Breathing is an expression of the present moment; each breath is slightly different from every other breath, and it is only happening right now. Tuning in to the breath is tuning in to the present moment.

• Breathe naturally, however you find yourself breathing in this moment: fast, slow, shallow, deep, whatever. Don't make any particular effort to breathe in a certain way, or to control the process. Just be with whatever kind of breath you have right now. If you can, breathe through the nose.
• Bring your attention to rest lightly on the full cycle of breathing, both in and out. Allow yourself to identify with the soothing quality of the breath.
• Notice where you feel the physical sensations of breathing most acutely. Maybe it's in the rising and falling of the abdomen, or in the slight warm and cool tickling sensation at the ends of your nostrils as the breath goes out and comes in. Wherever it is for you, rest your attention on that physical sensation.
• If you can, place a slight emphasis of attention on the out-breath. Feel yourself going out with your breath and dissolving into space, letting go of conceptual mind. Allow the in-breath to happen naturally, and again go out with the out-breath and dissolve.
• Notice the quality of the moment after one breath has gone out, before the next breath has started to come in. What is your mind like in that moment?

C: Mind

The third part of the practice involves how we work with our minds. Having attempted to sit and rest our attention on the breath for a few moments, we have probably discovered — perhaps to our dismay — that our mind is restless and prone to wander away. We find ourselves thinking about lunch, reliving an argument with our ex-boyfriend, reveling in a sexual fantasy, fretting over our job, stewing in old feelings of shame or resentment, worrying about our loved ones, or desperately seeking entertainment by looking for shapes and patterns in the carpet in front of us: the possibilities are literally endless. Our minds seem to hop from one distraction to another with total disregard for our noble intention to stay with the breath. Welcome to your "monkey-mind." Through regular shamatha practice, we can begin to train the monkey to stay in one place for longer periods of time, and we can even learn to regard its antics with humor and compassion.

Usually, when we have a thought or a feeling, we run with it: our minds seem to control us, rather than us controlling our minds. By practicing shamatha, we train in the ability to recognize our thoughts without being driven by them. But the goal of shamatha is not to "get rid of" thoughts — this is a common misconception. The goal is to see ourselves clearly, and with compassion, by touching in with whatever we're experiencing, and then coming back to the present moment and the object of meditation. Precision and gentleness are the keys.

• When you become aware that your mind has wandered off into a thought, feeling, or fantasy, gently touch on it and return your attention to the breath. Whatever kind of thought or feeling it was, try to see it without judgment or criticism: in the practice of shamatha, there are no good thoughts or bad thoughts. No thought is to be condemned or praised — that's just more thinking.
• You may find it helpful to mark the moment of transition between thinking and returning to the breath by "labeling" your thoughts. When you recognize you've been thinking, say to yourself mentally: "Thinking." Apply this labeling technique with a light touch -- like touching your thoughts with a feather. Don't try to shoot down your thoughts or squash them, but simply recognize them, let them go, and come back to the breath.
• Above all, be gentle with yourself, and relax.

The Hammer of Insight

We all have those days sometimes when nothing seems to go the way we want it to, and everything gets under our skin. They seem to happen disproportionately on Mondays, when most people are returning to their jobs from the relaxation of a weekend.

One recent Monday I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. My mind was foggy, and I felt psychologically oppressed by the pressures of work that were looming ahead of me. A complex matter in my personal life was also weighing heavily on my mind. And my foot was hurting. On the subway, someone had vomited. I sat on the bench across from it, at the far end, to distance myself. Everyone who entered the subway car saw the pool of vomit and turned in another direction, except for one oblivious woman who stepped right in it and then realized her mistake. She came across and sat right next to me, tracking the vomit on her shoe. I felt a wave of irritation and revulsion, but breathed through it. Then the person on the other side of me sneezed without covering his mouth. My irritation surged again, and I started holding my breath.

Once off the subway, the streets were barricaded and filled with jeeps, police cars, and uniformed infantry. I suddenly remembered it was Veterans Day, and the epicenter of the Veterans Day parade is directly beneath my office window. I zig-zagged my way through the barricades, negotiating with police officers to reach my office building and weaving through squadrons of soldiers, firemen and former PoWs on Harley Davidsons. All morning long, the noise of drums and bagpipes filled my ears, distracting me from my work. Despite my English and Scottish ancestry, the sound of bagpipes has always been to me like nails on a chalkboard.

A Toolbox for Coping with What Life Throws at You
So what do you do when you're having a seriously bad hair day? A day filled with stressful pressures, vomit on the subway, people sneezing at you, and bagpipes grating on your nerves? What tools do you draw upon to keep yourself from completely losing it?

One good place to start is to remember to breathe. When stress gets the upper hand on us, our heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, and breathing becomes shallow. The sympathetic nervous system becomes over-stimulated. Just pausing for a moment and breathing slowly and deeply into the belly can help us insert space into a cramped situation. It also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which counters the physiological effects of stress and promotes relaxation.

Another useful tool is to laugh at yourself. Take a step back and look at how seriously you take everything, and see the humor in it. Laugh at yourself. Are you saving babies or performing brain surgery? If not, ask yourself: do I really need to be taking all of this so seriously?

Big Teachings Come in Small Packages
I remember meeting with my spiritual teacher once when I was having a day like this. He was only in town for a weekend program, and I went to see him with a small group of people on a Friday night, coming straight from work. My mind was buzzing like a beehive of stresses and irritations. He looked at me and asked me how I was doing. I beat around the bush, not really wanting to bother him with what I knew were mostly petty, mundane concerns. I said I was okay.

"Why just okay?" he asked.

Again, I beat around the bush, not really forming a clear answer. I mumbled something about life in New York City being like a roller coaster.

Suddenly, in the middle of my mumbling, he grabbed me by the shoulder, looked directly into my eyes, and said quietly, so only I could hear him: "You died two months ago."

I was stunned into silence, not sure at first what to make of this bizarre and ominous-sounding statement. "Just imagine," he repeated: "You died two months ago."

In that moment, the hammer of insight struck me upside the head. I saw that it wasn't the external circumstances that were putting me in that stressed-out state of mind: it was me. I saw how silly and unnecessary it was to do that to myself. What a waste of time and energy. I was putting myself at the center of a huge emotional drama, and making such a fuss over it all — and for what purpose? Soon enough, death will come for me, as it comes for everyone. What if I had died two months ago, and I hadn't even been there to experience all this drama? Would it still carry the same importance to me?

Even more importantly, what if death comes for me two months from now? Is *this* how I will want to have spent those months? Life is short for us humans even in the luckiest of circumstances. Do I want to fritter away whatever precious time I have left wallowing in emotional dramas and stressing out over external circumstances that I cannot control? If I were on my deathbed right now, how much would I really and truly care about the pressures at work, the vomit on the subway, the bagpipes in the street? All the plans and ambitions, the hopes and fears, the unfinished projects, the worries and concerns, the grudges and attachments — do they really amount to a hill of beans in the end?

Sometimes the most profound teachings come in the smallest packages.

Whenever I have one of those days now — and I do still have them, more often than I care to admit — I try to remember that teaching. I look at whatever it is that I'm getting so worked up over, and I ask myself: would this really matter to me in the end? How would the situation be different if I had died two months ago? How would it look different to me if I knew I was going to die two months from now?

That's what a good spiritual teacher does. It's not about the books they write, or the talks and workshops they give. It's about the tools they give you for cutting through your own trip and getting a better view of reality. It might be five simple words whispered in your ear, but those five words might contain the one message that pops your bubble and brings you back down to earth, and reminds you of what's really important.

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