Facing an angry colleague by turning him into a dreamlike angry colleague

This week's Seven Points of Mind Training is "regard all dharmas as dreams". Dharmas here refers to phenomena. This topic links to the Buddhist teachings on emptiness, which is a huge topic. However, very simply one aspect of it is that we take our experiences less seriously. Actually, I recently watched a very interesting TED talk by neuroscientist Anil Seth that made me think of this topic. He demonstrated how none of our perceptions are pure perceptions of reality: all perceptions are in part constructed by our predictions about the world. From a Buddhist perspective, the most important predictions we make are that things are permanent--they are not going to disappear or change, that they are singular--do not consist of multiple parts, and independent--they do not depend on other things. If we think about this, all of this makes a lot of sense, but emotionally we tend to react often as if things are permanent, independent and singular. Conversely, when we consider things are like the stuff that dreams are made of, then we can often see them with a lot more humor and we get less overwhelmed by them.

This week I had a good challenge with which I could practice this: a colleague of mine got very angry with me about some communication issues and misunderstandings. When people get angry at me, my habit is to duck away and try to avoid it. However, this of course does not solve things. So, I had to face it and go talk to the angry colleague. Here the "dreamlike" concept was really helpful. Before I walked to his room, I reminded myself of the dreamlike nature of everything. And in dreams, nothing can really go wrong--when you remember it is a dream you can change everything, and if all else fails, you just wake up. The reminder of dreams immediately gave me some space outside my thoughts, and I worried less about being hurt. And actually the meeting with the colleague turned out not to be so bad after all. If only I could remember this more often!

Ballet also allows me to enter some kind of a different reality or "dream world"

Undermining the imposter syndrome with reflecting on hopes and fears

The first slogan of the Seven Points of Mind Training is "First, train in the preliminaries". Preliminaries are in fact a whole topic in themselves. A large part of these preliminaries includes reflecting on what is called the Four Thoughts which are reflections on (1) the preciousness of our human birth, (2) the truth of impermanence, (3) the infallibility of cause and effect, and (4) the suffering nature of samsara--the cycle of birth and death. Although the last reflection on suffering sounds quite negative, this is the one I decided to focus on this week.

So much of what I do is hoping for success (picture from Young Academy Groningen)

Where does the suffering come from? One of the most clear explanations of this is given in terms of the Eight Worldly Dharmas: hope for fame, fear of infamy; hope for gain, fear of loss; hope for happiness, fear of suffering; and hope for gain, fear of loss. I notice myself getting caught up in these hopes and fears a lot, especially in relation to my job. One of the most insidious aspects of my job is the imposter syndrome, which many academics suffer from (of course many people in other professions as well). It is the feeling that you only got to your job because of a fluke, and any time they are going to find out that you are really not capable. I often get this feeling when a grant is rejected (as happened this past week), and sometimes I get it in my ballet class as well (when I am put in the back row on stage for a show).

The interesting thing about the Eight Worldly Dharmas is that they completely undermine this imposter syndrome thinking. Imposter syndrome and the feeling that you are not good enough can only exist if there is a need to succeed, to be better than other people, to not suffer. The moment I realize that actually all these hopes and fears are only leading to suffering, and kind of short-sighted, I can feel a lot of space open up. The whole question of not being good enough becomes irrelevant when you are not hoping for fame and being afraid of infamy; instead you just focus on doing your best and trying to benefit others. Of course understanding this intellectually is not fixing it straight away, and you need to go through this reasoning many times, but it is worth the effort.

Introducing the #lojongchallenge

Last weekend I was at a retreat organized by Rigpa Netherlands about the topic of Lojong. Lojong means literally training the habitual mind. The Lojong text we focused on was the Seven points of mind training. What is amazing about these teachings is that they are very practical ways to bring kindness and compassion in your life, and at the same time to give you some tools to work with your emotions. Note that these blogs are not intended to be teaching tools, so if you want to know more about these teachings, I suggest you read some of the excellent books that are around, such as Training the Mind, The Intelligent Heart or for a more contemporary application to the workplace: Awake at Work. Or you can of course take a course at your local Tibetan Buddhist centre if they offer it.

Picture taken in my hotel room in Amsterdam at the retreat

The retreat was an interesting one for me, because Rigpa has been in a lot of turmoil because the main teacher Sogyal Rinpoche has been accused of sexual abuse, physical abuse and financial mis-management, and consequently he stepped down as the director of Rigpa.* This was the first retreat without him, quite a searching process for the sangha that is very divided on what they think of the matter. In the midst of all the rampant emotions and the general happenings in the world, it was magnificent to study and practise Lojong.

While I think these teachings are amazing, my main problem is that I always forget to actually put them into practice. For this reason, I came up with the #lojongchallenge, where I challenge myself (and whoever would like to join) to write a blog/tweet/facebook/instagram post on a Lojong topic every week. In these blogs I plan to not regurgitate the teaching, but rather write a short story on how I worked with the teachings in my life as a practitioner and as an academic (or even as a dancer). I will probably start by going through the 59 Lojong slogans in order, because that gives a nice structure, but I may deviate from that as time continues.

Note also that these stories are not intended as a showcase of my realization (which I clearly don't have), nor a teaching tool, but only as a motivation to take the Lojong teachings seriously, and maybe to inspire others as in the process...

An example of a story could be like what happened to me during this retreat. In the first day I felt pretty much everything went wrong: folding bicycle that was supposed to transport me every day from hotel to venue broke down (its chain kept falling off and cannot be repaired), my watch stopped working, the balloon that is inside my meditation cushion broke, and I lost my coat (meanwhile found). As all this happened, I felt my familiar tendency to catastrophize, to feel that "everything is going wrong" started to emerge. Then the slogan "all dharmas are dreamlike" came to the rescue. When you realize that all of these things are natural properties of the world (things will disintegrate, disappear, break...--that is called impermanence), it is no longer such a surprise, and I felt suddenly a lot more relaxed.

a dreamlike image...

So, this was my first contribution to #lojongchallenge. If anyone else wants to join me, please do so, and add the hashtag #lojongchallenge.

* Please note that I will not be discussing matters related to the Sogyal Rinpoche controversy here on this blog. This is not because I want to ignore it or think it is not important. Rather, I think this blog is not the correct forum for that. I am very much working with it in more personal ways in the organization and beyond.