How to Transform Suffering

Great dharma talk online with David Nichtern last night the six paramitas, which are teachings of Mahayana Buddhism.  David offers these every Tuesday at 7 pm, ET.  He was my first and is my foremost buddhist teacher.

Paramita means perfection or perfect relationship.   I also read that the Chinese character for this word means "crossing over to the other shore," which according to Thich Nhat Hanh means the shore of peace, non-fear, and liberation.

There are six:
1) Generosity (dana)
2) Discipline, precepts, mindfulness training (shila)
3) Patience, inclusiveness, capacity to receive, bear, transform pain inflicted on you (kshanti)
4) Exertion, energy, perseverance (virya)
5) Meditation (dhyana)
6) Discernment, wisdom, insight, understanding (prajna)

I was reading up on these concepts in Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching (p. 195-196) regarding generosity, what can we give?, he asks.  He answers - our stability (or solidity), our freedom (freedom from craving, anger, jealousy, despair, fair, and wrong perceptions), our freshness, peace (and lucidity), space.

The person we love needs space in order to be happy.  In a flower arrangement, each flower needs space around it in oder to radiate its true beauty.  A person is like a flower.  Without space within and around her, she cannot be happy....And the more we offer, the more we have.  When the person we love is happy, happiness comes back to use right away.  We give to her, but we are giving to ourselves at the same time. 

Giving is a wonderful practice.  The Buddha said what when you are angry at someone, if you have tried everything and still feel angry, practice dana paramita.  When we are angry our tendency is to punish the other person.  But when we do, there is only an escalation of the suffering.  The Buddha proposed that instead, you send her a gift.  When you feel angry, you won't want to go out and buy a gift, so take the opportunity now to prepare the gift when you are not angry.   Then, when all else fails, go and mail that gift to her, and amazingly, you'll feel better right away...You get what you offer.  Instead of trying to punish the other person, offer him exactly what he needs.  The practice of giving can bring you to the shore of well-being very quickly. 

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That is the message he is sending.  If you are able to see that, offer him what he needs - relief.  Happiness and safety are not an individual matter.  His happiness and safety are crucial for your happiness and safety.  Wholeheartedly wish him happiness and safety, and you will be happy and safe also.   

What else can we offer?  Understanding.  Understanding is the flower of practice...when you offer others your understanding they will stop suffering right away.   

The first petal of the flower of the paramitas is dana paramita, the practice of giving.  What you give is what you receive, more quickly than the signals sent by satellite.  Whether you give your presence, your stability, your freshness, your solidity, your freedom, or your understanding, your gift can work a miracle.  Dana paramita is the practice of love.
When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That is the message he is sending  if you are able to see that, offer him what he needs - relief.  Happiness and safety are not an individual matter.  His happiness and safety are crucial for your happiness and safety.  Wholeheartedly wish him happiness and safety, and you will be happy and safe also.  

I also really loved what Thich Nhat Hanh says about patience.  He notes,

Kshanti is often translated as patience or forbearance, but I believe "inclusiveness" better conveys the Buddha's teaching.  When we practice inclusiveness, we don't have to suffer or forebear, even when we have to embrace suffering and injustice.  The other person says or does something that makes us angry.  he inflicts on us some kind of injustice.  But if our heart is large enough, we don't suffer. 

The Buddha offered this wonderful image.  If you take a handful of salt and pour it into a small bowl of water, the water in the bowl will be too salty to drink.  But if you pour the same amount of salt into a large river, people will still be able to drink the river's water.  (Remember, this teaching was offered 2,600 years ago, when it was still possible to drink from rivers!)  Because of its immensity, the river has the capacity to receive and transform.  The river doesn't suffer at all because of a handful of salt.  If your heart is small, one unjust word or act will make you suffer.  But if your heart is large, if you have understanding and compassion, that word or deed will not have the power to make you suffer.  You will be able to receive, embrace, and transform it in an instant.  What counts is your capacity.  To transform your suffering, your heart has to be as big as the ocean. 

I just love that.

Kim Kardashian "Lost the Plot"

When I showed this to my yoga teacher this morning her response was - "My gosh, they've lost the plot!"  


Seriously!  


It's astonishing and such a shame because to associate yoga - which has so much real and necessary benefits - to such malarky is criminal.  


Nearly as shocking as the naked teacher is her thong attire.   


I just was astonished.  I suppose it's the downside to the popularity of yoga.  It's bound to happen, but still it might be a sign of the yoga apocalypse or at least some tipping point.   

Political Yoga

Hmmm, another sign of the yoga into the mainstream - check out this paragraph from the The Week in Review - sorry Sunday Review today.   In Frank Bruni's Craven Political Crudités, he writes:

Buckle up, folks. This presidential race is shaping up to be an especially mean and mendacious ride, and not just because the two Republicans currently in the lead, Romney and Newt Gingrich, have demonstrated a formidable talent for improvisation, starting with thorough revisions of their own positions on health care, climate change and such. They’re a limber duo, primed to teach classes on political yoga. Gingrich’s wife probably gave him a Tiffany-bejeweled mat.

Okay - I had absolutely NO idea there was even such a thing as at Tiffany-bejeweled mat.  Note: There isn't such a thing.  The link leads to a story about their revolving credit account there.  


Phew!  I meant if there really were such a thing....!

Mixing Yoga With Other Activities

This essay, Yoga Addict's New Mantra: "Mix It Up" from the New York Times is cute.  I also like it because it doesn't make out yoga to be the end all and be all of everything.  

Plus she describes astanga yoga this way -

It is widely believed to have been created for adolescent boys and tends to attract former drug addicts and Type A personalities;

which made me laugh out loud.  


I will never forget the time I brought a girlfriend in Chicago to an astanga yoga class.  The workshop was being held over a weekend and the first class was held Friday night.   We met at a wine bar and as she slogged down not one but two classes of wine, I suggested gently she might now want to do that.  


And at about the 20th jump through she sat in danasana and looked at me with a look that asked - "what did you get me into"   We still laugh about that.  I don't think mixing it up is a recommendation for mixing astanga yoga with a cocktail!    


This author, Deborah Schoeneman, after a decade of astanga yoga and a better practice than most, then added a private trainer.  This is her story of what she discovered.  

What??? Is Lululemon Thinking???

 Holy cow.

Lululemon - just in time for the holiday season - has alienated it's base.  

In case you've been living under a rock - Lululemon makes and sells very expensive yoga clothes.   They are actually brilliant - well design (with button holes for iPod ears, pockets folds for an id), great colors and are able to be worn on the street without being obscene.   Up until now I was amazed at how well they knew their market.   They also had a funky web site where you could set up and tend to your goals (called a goaltender).

So then they put on their canvas, recyclable bags - "Who is John Galt"   In case you don't know - he is the a character in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."  The character embodies selfishness.   Not exactly how yogi's and yogini's like to think of themselves.

(And no, Sen. Rand Paul, the son of GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul, was not named after the author, though he is reputed to be and Sen. Paul is a big fan of hers.)

As NPR reports -

That question is on shopping bags that Lululemon recently started to give out and it's got some of the company's core customers up in arms, vowing never to shop there again.

Yes, that would be me.  I even called the company up and asked them to close my goaltender account.   Guy Raz of All Things Considered asks:

RAZ: You mean, they don't get into yoga after reading "Atlas Shrugged"?HOUPT: I have yet to find a yogi who has done so. 

The NPR interview is just a view minutes long and worth a listen.  The company would not comment on the record about why they decided to do this.  If it was to get business, it seems to be backfiring.  

Ayurvedic Skin Care in the Cold Season

Or Vata season.  Dr. Pratima Raichur is the author of Absolute Beauty, to me the bible of Ayurvedic health.  I discovered her nearly 10 years ago and gave her book to all my friends who came and celebrated my birthday with me in 2003.   And I had the honor of meeting her finally this past June when I was in NYC.   Her clinic in Soho is amazing and I enjoyed some health promoting treatments there.

Here is a short piece on how to care for your skin during the Vata season, which is now, called "Why fall is skin-freak out season?"  And Dr. Raichur says in part because....

The Ayurvedic calendar says October through February is a time when our bodies—and skin—are plagued by imbalances and change, says Dr. Raichur, who has made skin health her specialty.

Here is her clinic Pratima Spa.  And here is her online store Pratima Skin Care (I love so many of the therapeutic oils but this one Healing Neem Oil with Rose, Lavender and Sandalwood is my favorite).

If you're lucky enough to live in NYC you can see her at Pratima Spa, 110 Green St, Suite 101, Soho

Elisabeth Lesser on Spirituality, Grief and Loss

I am a fan of Oprah's.  And I am even a bigger fan of Elizabeth Lesser because her book Broken Open really helped me deal with the emotional turmoil in dealing with a painful and chronic untreatable illness.

They sat down and talked about the nature of spirituality, how to make pain useful, how to deal with grief and loss -  on Sunday morning, November 13th for Oprah's Super Soul Sunday on Oprah's OWN channel.   I took some notes:

Lesser - When you say a spiritual path what you're talking about it - it's already there inside us, this instinct that we are more than our mind and our body.  The path is just getting the obstacles out of the way so we can wake up and fully know our full aliveness, and know that's who we are.  

Oprah -  Most times people think that spirituality is, well, people have their own definitions of it but a lot of people think it's a lot of woo-woo talk.  When it is really quite the opposite.  It's the most grounding awakening path you can ever pursue in your life. 

Lesser - I'm not a very woo-woo person.  

Oprah -  Yeah, it's not out there, its always right here (gestures towards herself)

Lesser - I came to the title - Broken Open - through an image - the image of a rose tightly wound around itself, the bud, like we all feel so much every day tightly wound, anxious, shut down.  And in order for that bud to open and blossom into the flower we love so much, it has to break its shell, it has to break open.  And it's an irony of this human life, strangely enough it is our most difficult,  broken times - loss of a job, loss of a marriage, illness, loss of a child - those are the times when we are brought to our knees and we open.  Our hearts can open during those times.  And if we fight those times and fight the bud opening, we sort of a half of a life.  But when we open into our brokenness, that's when we blossom....And fighting life, as I'm sure we can all relate to that feeling of life is happening to us, we are in this stream of life and instead of relaxing into it, we are swimming as hard as we can against the current.  That's sort of the opposite of the spiritual instinct.  The spiritual instinct is to relax into the mystery of life as it's happening.  

Oprah - And the spiritual instinct allows you to move through life no matter what is going on in your life, when you are on the spiritual path - it means no matter what happens to you and difficulties will come and challenges will come because that's all part of the human experience.  But the spiritual connection allows you to know that no matter what - you are going to be all right

Lesser - Everything that is happening in our life is a spiritual moment

Oprah - I like what you said on page 105 - "Nothing has awakened my heart as much as the pain of a broken family; nothing has given me as much strength as the time I spent alone in the ruined aftermath of a marriage."   How is that a spiritual path?  I think when you have the most devastating things happen to you, that those are your holiest moments.  That's when you get to see who you really are.

Lesser - Yes, because we spend so much of our life trying to be what we think we are supposed to be...what society wants us to be, what our parents thinks we should be, our husband, our wife, our image....just our image of what a spiritual or a good person should look like....so through that experience of divorce and becoming a single mother, I lost everything - my financial security, my self-image, my home, my support.  I was really a single mom and everything changed for me.  And in the depths of that loss, I found out who I really was.  I began to trust who I was.  I began to find a genuine me who could withstand anything.  

Oprah - how do you do that

Lesser - Well, you can either break down, stay broken down and shut down or you can break open.  It's a decision you make.  A commitment.  I am going through a very hard time, I'm not going to waste this precious experience, this opportunity to become the best me.  

Oprah - I also ask the experience, the crisis, the experience in the moment, what are you here to teach me?  What did your divorce teach you?

Lesser - The first thing that it taught me is that i couldn't blame anyone for what had gone wrong in the marriage.  I had spent a lot of time blaming my ex-husband.  But I had to take responsibility myself.  I had to say - what does this have to teach me about me, not about him, not about how unfair life is.  It wasn't about that.  It was what did I do to make this happen.  And if I could really sit in the pain of that.  The pain is really looking at yourself and what you did to create the mess you're in and if you can look at it head on fearlessly and say teach me.  Teach me about myself so I can grow.  

Oprah - Most people search for closure after the loss of a loved one, but Elizabeth says its one of her least favorite words.  Why?

Lesser - Because if you don't take the time to grieve and to let yourself feel what happens, you just put a scar over it and it doesn't go away.  In fact, it festers.  And it becomes something else.  Perhaps it turns into bitterness or anger or blame and you never get over it.  So letting yourself descend into grief...and letting it do what it will with you for as long as it takes, it a much more intelligent response to loss than cleaning up real fast, going back to work, you get your three days of grief days and then you go back to work. That's not a very wise way to handle it.  

Glenn (another guest discussing the grief of losing his young adult son) - And you never get over it.  It's always there.  You always live with it.  

Lesser -  You wear it as a badge of how well you loved.  Grief is an expression that you loved well.  

Marianne Williamson Defines Spirituality

Also part of the November 13th Super Soul Sunday, Marianne Williamson defined spirituality, which I like very much:

the practice of spirituality is when you get very still and very humble.  There are forces inside you, forces of fear and limitation and chaos and they live inside us saying you can't do that.  Spirituality is where you lay claim to a ground of being within yourself, where you say I want to be that, I really do. I want to be that person that I am capable of being.  We think we are not happy because of what we are not getting but really we are not happy because of what we are not giving.  The most important thing is that we learn how to forgive each other, that we learn how to love each other, how to live in the spirit of blessing and not blame.  What matters is when you are standing in front of a person, is your heart open or is your heart closed?  Are you thinking a judgmental thought or are you trying to see the best in them?  Are you showing the mercy towards other people that you would wish that they would show toward you?  The spiritual path doesn't mean always an easier path.  But it means a choice, a choice that we are making to try our best to be as loving as we can be.

Alpha Males Doing Yoga

This seems to be a theme, though my last post on this subject was based on an essay written in 2010.   This one this time appeared just the other day in the British newspaper The Telegraph.  And this news so excites me because I feel this is a demographic that would very much benefit from yoga.   The piece opens first with how a yoga practice kept one master of the universe from investing in the subprime market.  Then,

Yoga, once the preserve of scrawny men in drawstring trousers meditating on top of a mountain, has, since the Nineties, turned itself into a spirit-lite way for women with Gucci mats and Sweaty Betty vest tops to keep fit and tone their bums, tums and thighs. In the past three or four years, however, an increasing number of people from the top echelons of business, finance and politics, looking to get an edge over their rivals or manage their stress levels, have been following Gross’s lead and adding a yoga instructor to their retinue of chefs, nannies and personal trainers.Suddenly, it’s not only acceptable for alpha males to do yoga; it’s considered by many to be a badge of honour.

Then the piece lists several yogis in business, including Steve Jobs.   But this is my favorite quote:

“Very ambitious, high-achieving people realise that there’s something in yoga that is useful to them,” says instructor Tara Fraser, who, with her partner, Nigel Jones, runs the Yoga Junction studio in north London. “It’s not weird, not hippy. If you’re a man, the fact that you do yoga shows that you’re in touch with your intuitive side and you’re flexible as well as strong.“If you said, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to do any of that stuff, I just want to work out at the gym and build muscle’, I think, nowadays, people would think, ‘Hmm. What are you trying to prove?’“Yoga shows that you’re a well-rounded individual. You know how to choose the wine, you know which restaurants to go to. Adding yoga to your portfolio of skills impresses people.”

Read the whole thing here - Power yoga: how money has changed a spiritual pursuit (the title is misleading - it's more about how yoga is changing the money industry, plus yoga is far more than a spiritual pursuit!)  Worth the click.

I sure hope it's true that more alpha males are seeing the benefits and value of yoga, and not just in London.  They would be happier, and the world a better place.  I know one or two, myself!