Happier classrooms - some ideas from the Dalai Lama (and others)

Today His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the Netherlands to give some talks and lectures. I was fortunate enough to attend one of these, a Buddhist teaching on the Eight Verses for Training the Mind, which is actually a Lojong text as well! In conjunction with this event, Mind and Life Europe also organized a workshop entitled Education of the Heart. In this blog I share some of what I learnt at these meetings.

First the Dalai Lama gave a good tip relevant to those following the #lojongchallenge: if you have a flight delay, read the Eight Verses of Training the Mind text to yourself. Presumably another Lojong text would also do, but the main thing is to use the time for something useful, instead of getting frustrated about the delayed flights. The Dalai Lama also mentioned that you can also acquire a glimpse of the understanding of how phenomena are empty by looking at present-day quantum physics. However, in quantum physics they then go on to state that there is no objective reality at all, which is not in accord with Buddhism, which does assert an objective reality--things do appear--but just not in the way we usually perceive it. He ended by mentioning that the teachings on emptiness can really help to free the mind, because they reduce the self-centredness that causes anxiety and anger and ruin our health.

So how can we train in these skills? For this we need education. Sander Tideman mentioned that in a previous Education of the Heart meeting, one important point was that compassion is not just empathy but involves critical thinking as well. Just like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he mentioned how compassion and warm-heartedness can overcome stress and anxiety. Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi from Emory University talked about the Social Emotional and Ethical Learning program they have developed at Emory University tries to implement the vision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from his books on secular ethics (e.g., Ethics for the New Millenium) into a curriculum, which so far focuses on K-12. The curriculum includes attention training, compassion and care, systems awareness (becoming aware of the larger context of which you are a part), and ethical engagement. Crucial in this is that teachers embody these skills themselves. The program includes a lot of scientific perspectives as well as reflective practices such as journaling. Early findings suggest the program results in more self-compassion, a calmer classroom and better prosocial skills.

Also in higher education there are some initiatives. Rob van Tulder described his work in bringing the heart into the business school of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. He shared an inspiring quote of how rare it is to find people with a cool head, even rarer those with a warm heart, and the rarest of all are those who use the warmth of their heart to keep their head cool. Quite an inspiring quote! He mentioned how more of these ideas are worked out in his book Skill sheets which I have not had the chance to check out. Nevertheless, one important challenge they are facing is distraction by too much information, social media, etc. I agree that this is a challenge. I think this is where structural teaching of mindfulness practices could be useful, because they could help people to acquire a sense of meta-awareness of where their attention is.

Finally, Katherine Weare presented the new initiative of the Contemplative Education hub of Mind & Life Europe, because there are many initiatives on contemplative education, but little coordination. Such coordination could allow the different initiatives to learn from each other, but also in advocacy on a societal level, and to deal with challenges such as "how to incorporate the wisdom traditions in an authentic way, yet remain open to people of all religious and non-religious backgrounds?" She ended on a happy note, reminding us that true mindfulness is not only a path to happiness, but happiness is this moment. Maybe contemplative education can help us to build happier schools, and universities. Wouldn't that be marvellous?

Remembering to remember this trick to make your mind bigger

Next installment in the #lojongchallenge. The next slogan is more general: "in all activities, train with the slogans." I think this refers to how in general, it is important to not just think about the slogans in your meditation, but try to remember to apply them in your daily life. Of course that is nothing new for us on this blog, because that is what the blog is all about. The general idea of Lojong is to train an attitude in which we give all gain to others, and take all loss upon ourselves, as the sage Geshe Chekawa said. This is about the most counterintuitive that you can think of, so it is crucial to try to remember again and again. Writing this blog is one way in which I remind myself. Other people have cards with the different slogans in a visible place, or they put some of the slogans on their fridge.

So how have I been working with these slogans? Currently I am on retreat in the beautiful dharma centre of Lerab Ling in southern France, which obviously makes it easier to remember these slogans. In the previous blog I write about how I used the Lojong teachings to generate compassion for the pain of others while running. Another example is that when some judgment about people arises, you can immediately use that as a source of compassion. Instead of judging them, you can see people's suffering, and you can pray or aspire that it may be relieved.

I also had some spectacular failure of applying these teachings. Today right after finishing my retreat rota of cleaning toilets and showers, I was sitting at lunch and noticed I had lost my water bottle. That really sucks when on retreat! So I set out to look for it, first in the temple, and then back at the place where I clean the washrooms. Now it turns out that the person who had locked the cleaningroom after we were done had misplaced the key, so I could not look for my water bottle there. I spent my whole lunch break looking for this person frantically, and not a single moment did any thought of compassion for others arise. In fact, my mind was dramatically narrowed to just looking for this one self-related thing. It was not a very pleasant feeling. Thankfully, I found the person at the end of the lunch break, and he had in fact misplaced the key and I found my water bottle back. What a different space did I feel in my mind. Next time I should remember the Lojong teachings. It would have probably made my lunch break quite a bit more enjoyable.

Finally, to further inspire serious engagement with Lojong, I recently read an article that hypothesized that the Tibetans' resilience in the face of the torture, being forced to flee their country, poverty, and so on, comes from an ingrained mentality of Lojong. They themselves called it "broad thinking" in which you take off the focus from yourself and expand it to all the others that are suffering. Definitely worth a read, and worth doing more research into!

Everything is workable -- turning failure into compassion

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is "three objects, three poisons, three sources of virtue." This sounds quite cryptical, but it's actually a really powerful idea. The three poisons according to Buddhism are the three principal negative emotions of attachment, aversion and ignorance or greed, hatred and delusion. These emotions are thought to be negative because they lead to suffering for both the person and those around him or her. But the good news is that each of these can be turned into a source of virtue. So this means everything is workable!

The secret is taht whenever we experience a negative emotion, we can realize that we are not the only ones experiencing these emotions, and we can develop a sense of compassion to those others: may our experience of this negative emotion be enough. This immediately creates a sense of space, and a sense that the suffering of the negative emotion is not useless. For example, I am currently on a Buddhist retreat, and every morning I go for a run. Now it is quite hilly here, which means every run involves some painful ascent. This time, instead of being intimidated by the climb, I tried to use it to take upon me all the pain and exhaustion of all the countless runners. A that time, the climb became much less painful. What a relief!

cows I met during my daily run

up the hill (not during my running route but still up the hill)

Since I am curently on retreat, I am not working. However, I think it would also work really well in dealing with failure. For example, when your paper gets rejected, you may mentally feel: "may I take upon myself all the other paper rejections of all my colleagues as well." The paper rejection still sucks, but you are no longer alone. You then focus less on feelings of worthlessness that may also come up, but on the universality of the suffering (welcome to the world of academia!). I will definitely try this next time, if I manage to think of it ;-)