Kindfulness

I was fortunate enough to get away recently for a 3 day silent meditation retreat at the Margaret Austin Center near Houston, Texas.  A few words about meditation retreats for my non-meditating friends:  In the Vipassana tradition, practitioners come together and follow a schedule of alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation interspersed with meals.  Sitting meditation is done in the Zendo (meditation hall) with one’s attention focused on the breath.  Walking meditation is done on the grounds and one focuses on the sensation of moving and placing the feet.  The retreat is led by a teacher who guides the meditations and gives a Dharma talk in the evening.  Most Vipassana retreats are spent in silence with the exception of the occasional question and answer session and a personal interview with the teacher.

Our teacher for this retreat was Howard Cohn. (See bottom of page for links to Mr. Cohn’s talks.)  The theme of the retreat was Loving the House that Ego Built and Mr. Cohn presented some thought-provoking messages.  Below is my interpretation and application of his teachings.

What is the house that ego built?

From the moment we are born, we start to build an identity, a sense of “I am”.  I am a girl.  I am smart.  Throughout our life, we add to and modify this sense of identity.  We add layers of cultural and economic identity, religious, vocational, and political identity.  A large part of our self view is based on the body – height, weight, hair, skin color, concepts of beauty.  The circumstances of our life also shape our self view.  I am a special needs parent.

Our self-identity seems very real.  We come to define ourselves by certain traits which we believe to be unchanging, concrete.  Often, this comes with a feeling of inadequacy, a sense that I am not okay or I am flawed.  We get the idea that, if we were different, then we could be truly happy.  If I were skinnier…    If I were bolder…    If I were less quick to anger…

The truth is that we are much more complex than we realize.  As an interesting exercise, Mr. Cohn asked the question, “When did you begin?”  When you reached adulthood?  Your adult self was shaped by your childhood.  At birth?  This supposes that we are only defined by our life circumstances.  What about genetics?  You are a combination of your parents.  And their parents.  And their parents.  Think about everything that had to happen in order for you to be born.  Circumstances had to be just right for two people to meet and come together to make a baby.  If any one thing had been different – if your grandfather had died in World War II, if the stock market hadn’t crashed in 1929, if a particular African tribesman hadn’t been captured and sold into slavery, if the potato famine had never occurred in Ireland – you would never have been born.  You are the result of a million things happening just the way they did, when they did.  Everything about you – the family you come from, your race, culture, religious upbringing, propensity towards obesity, IQ, cancer risk, and food preferences – is predicated on everything that came before.

The real question is, How could you be any different than you are?  You are an expression of life living itself.  You are exactly the way the universe wants you to be at this moment.  And, the most astonishing part?  There’s nothing wrong with you.  Say that to yourself a few times.  There is nothing wrong with me.

I learned a new word while on retreat.  Mr. Cohn used the word kindfulness several times.  Kindfulness is a marriage of kindness and mindfulness and represents a new way to approach yourself and your daily life.

Take a moment to reflect on the last few days.  Think about the choices you made, the way you reacted to stressful situations at work or home.  Did you do or say anything that you now regret?  Do you blame yourself for not making a better choice?  Now, think of the same event, but do so with kindfulness.  Recall all of the circumstances leading up to that moment.  What was your state of mind?  Were you harried or tired?  Under pressure?  Overly excited or distracted?  Be kind to yourself.  Forgive yourself.  Your action at that moment was based upon everything that led up to it.  I don’t mean to say that we are not responsible for our actions.  It’s just that the motivation behind our choices is more complex than we usually imagine.

This teaching is applicable to everyone, but I naturally seek to apply it to the special circumstance of raising a child with a complex medical condition.  It so often happens that I am faced with making difficult choices based on sparse medical literature.  Sarah’s condition is rare and very little research specifically directed to Dravet syndrome has been done.  For example, we’re debating the merits of having a vagus nerve stimulator, which is a bit like a pacemaker for the brain, implanted.  This can be very effective for some people with epilepsy, but there aren’t any studies published on how well it helps children like Sarah.  Other families I know have had mixed experiences, from significant reductions in seizure activity to no change at all.  A few said that their child had either an increase in seizures or surgical complications.  How do I decide?  Is the trauma of a surgical procedure worth the 50/50 chance that her seizures will improve?

My usual tendency is to beat myself up mentally about these types of decisions.  What if it turns out to be one more treatment that doesn’t help?  What if she’s one of the few who experiences complications?  What if there’s a complication from the anesthesia and she dies?  It’s my fault.  I made the choice.  On the other hand, what if it helps?  She could have had this years ago, preventing hundreds of seizures, but I waited and prolonged her suffering.  Again, my fault.

Mr. Cohn prompts me to bring kindfulness to the situation.  I can slow down and breathe; pay attention to how I am feeling in my body and bring kind attention to where the stress is manifesting.  In reality, all I can do is gather whatever facts may be available, consult the experts, and talk with others who have been in a similar situation before making the best choice I can at this moment.  Being caught up in self-blaming and anxiety only makes the decision harder by obscuring the truth of the situation.  In the future, I may wish that I had chosen differently.  But, I will remember that I did the best I could with the information I had.

“It’s of no use to look back and say, “I should have been different.” At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we’re able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.”
Charlotte Joko Beck ~ Nothing Special

A million things happened just the way they did to get you to this moment. Cultivating an attitude of kindfulness makes it more likely that you will make the best choice. But if you end up looking back with regret, kindfulness facilitates the process of self-forgiveness. You already love yourself, even if you don’t always realize it. That’s why life is so painful at times.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

Metta.

Links for Howard Cohn:

• San Francisco Mission Dharma Talks
• Howard Cohn’s Dharma Seed page
• Howard Cohn on YouTube

Also, watch David Whyte on Rilke and Walcott.

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