Reflections on dying and new beginnings

The 18th slogan of Lojong is about death, and it says "On how to die, the Mahayana teaches these five strengths. It matters how you act." On the one hand many things can be said about death, on the other hand, basically the idea is that you also need the five strengths, just like you need them during life. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche mentions that although five strengths apply equally, the order in which they are applied differs. For example, he says we should start with "seeds of virtue" when coming closer to death, because filling our mind with actions that benefit others may help us to have a peaceful death. And for Buddhists, having a peaceful death is one of the most important things.

Yet, here I want to focus more on death itself, which showed up quite distinctly in my life in the past weeks. First, a good friend's wife, who was maybe just about my age, passed away, just after their honeymoon. I cannot imagine how cruel life is! This also hit home because it shows how death can come at any moment, even when you are relatively young like myself. This feeling of the closeness of death became more acute during my journey to India, because there always death is relatively close. Especially when you are on a crazy taxi journey through the Himalaya, as I did...

This closeness of death is considered to be quite a good thing, because it reminds you of what is really important in life. I noticed how I started to get very wrapped up in my work, and did not have time to think about anything else. Now seeing a person so close to me very suddenly pass away made me think about what I really want to do with my life. Am I really meeting every person in my life as if it is our last encounter? Am I really trying to cultivate awareness in my mind knowing in the back of my mind that this is my last chance to train my mind? Probably not. So it is good to take this really seriously.

A few days after this devastating news, death came around once again. This time, my Buddhist teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche suddenly passed away. He had been in the hospital and undergoing chemo, but still the news was very sudden. Because of the recently uncovered evidence of abuse at the hands of Sogyal Rinpoche, I felt quite conflicted. Despite the fact that these abuses cannot be denied, at the same time he was really able to communicate the dharma (Buddhist teachings) very effectively in a way that at least I could very much understand. He was also able to motivate people (myself included) to do amazing things such as building temples, doing 3-4 hours of practice every day and more. Whenever I think about Sogyal Rinpoche, I feel sadness that this is over, and that there will never be any more new teachings. On the other hand, in the mind, he is still very much there, and closer than ever before. Now is the time to really make use of all these thousands of teachings he gave and actually put them into practice. Now is also an opening to start anew--to learn from the mistakes made in the past that allowed the abuse to happen, and develop a form of Buddhism in which there is no place for such abuses. That would be such a wonderful legacy! While sudden bouts of sadness and crying still strike, I let those be, and console myself in the knowledge that in every death there is a new beginning...

Little happy seeds during a crazy journey

The next slogan in Lojong is another very comprehensive one that pretty much subsumes the whole Buddhist path: "Practice the five strengths, The condensed heart instructions." What are the five strengths? They are determination, familiarization, seeds of virtue, reproach and aspiration. Determination refers to being very steadfast in your vow to practise training your mind. Sometimes we can be a bit cowardly and say: "well, I'll work with my mind tomorrow, when I am not so tired." But that does not work--then it will never happen. I notice how this excuse has started to creep in my practice recently: to feel like waiting with practising more until I am less busy. That will probably take many years so better start practising now.

The second strength is familiarization: nothing is easy until you get used to it. Now we are so used to worrying about all our hopes and fears--hoping for fame, fear of insignificance, hoping for praise, fear of blame, and so on, that that is very easy for us. And it makes us often very tense. I did not notice this, until a few days ago I started my vacation by taking a road trip from Manali to Leh. This is a pretty "bone-shaking" journey, so once we finally arrived in Leh at 22:30 after being in the car from 5 am, and having crossed passes with heights of 5300m, I noticed my jaw was completely clenched. This was probably especially due to the last few hours where I was seriously worried about whether we were even going to make it to Leh! In the last few days I have been working on consciously unclenching my jaw, and I notice the difference it makes to my meditation!

The third strength is my favorite one: "seeds of virtue." This refers to never letting go of any opportunity to do something positive, even if it is very small. Sometimes I can be very ambitious, but what I find encouraging about this strength is the focus on just keeping it small. You don't have to make it very special: even just smiling at someone can make a difference in their day. I have been following the daily compassion program from the free app from Being Bodhi, and this very much makes you familiar with that. During the crazy (but beautiful!) ride from Manali to Leh, also thinking about this and just spending some time wishing well in my mind helped me to come out at the other end.

The fourth strength is reproach: catching ourselves and acknowledging it when we do something wrong, but also not getting stuck in that. Just learning from the mistake and owning it. The fifth strength is aspiration: this is a more traditional part of the Buddhist religion, which has aspiration prayers. I personally often have trouble connecting to these prayers, but one beautiful way to consider the meaning of these prayers is that we often with our lack of wisdom do not really know what to pray for, and these prayers are help from the buddhas in what to ask for so it is really beneficial. Anyway, for now I think I will just simply stick with cultivating seeds of virtue, one little bit at a time...

Touching deeply into the suffering of the past (and the present)

The 16th slogan of Lojong is "whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation." In this slogan, we are encouraged to bring whatever we meet onto the path, instead of getting swepped away by our thoughts and emotions. This is a particularly powerful practice when strong emotions overpower us. A recent context in which I could try this was when I was visiting the House of Terror museum in Budapest. The museum describes the horrendous effects of first Nazi occupation and later communist rule in Hungary.

The museum starts with showing videos of soldiers during D-day, gunshots of people being killed in a very haunting soundscape. It continues with more haunting soundscapes, describing life during Nazi rule, experiences of the Jews being sent to concentration camps and locked up in ghettos. Then after the defeat of the Nazis, the dictatorship continued with the communists, who took over the same space for their secret police as the headquarters of the Nazis on the street in Budapest where the museum is housed. Now different people were being arrested and jailed, but the story was similar. Especially scary to me were the videos of people cheering for the rulers and little kids being expected to express their allegiance. I found this so scary because these were the masses that were groomed to cooperate with the atrocities of the regime. There were video interviews with prisoners who had sat in this very complex. Then we were taken into an elevator to the basement where the cells were. In a chilling audio story, we were told about how prisoners were hanged. By that time, my friend and I could barely bear the suffering anymore--so much suffering... And why? We rushed through the cells to the exit because it was just too much. This was the time in which I sorely needed my practice. In an attempt to make sense of all the violence, I tried to connect mentally to the victims that we saw, and to send them loving kindness--to at least mentally ease their suffering. In some sense this felt silly and senseless, but maybe in another sense, it was at least bringing some goodness to this place. Because I believe that this is the only antidote to violence and hatred: love and compassion. Sometimes i also tried to breathe in their suffering, as in the practice of Tonglen, and to breathe out my happiness and well-being in return, so it would ease the suffering. Finally, I also tried to visualize the Buddha of purification, Vajrasattva, and imagined all the suffering would purify the karma of those beings so that at least they would be spared more suffering in the future. This was a very real place where I could bring the practice in my daily life. In fact, for me it was the only way to touch my heart to the suffering that I witnessed.

While both my friend and I left the museum visibly shaken, it was also a very good experience. It was a very powerful reminder that we need to really avoid these situations in the future and our own lives. It is important to cultivate kindness and positivity so the violence has less of a soil to grow from. So the practice of lojong and compasssion is crucial! But also, we must speak out against intolerance and hatred, and campaign for good education and critical thinking to avoid people being taken over by totalitarian regimes. Because whatever flavour it is, this is where this violence can flourish and spread. May we be able to eradicate the pain and suffering of the world, because the House of Terror is only a reminder of what is going on in so many places even to this day...

Four different practices to work with challenging emotions in daily life

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is "Four practices are the best of methods". My excuse for not having blogged for such a long time is that this slogan is really very all-encompassing. But I am finally there (on vacation, so with a bit of time to write), so let's go through the four practices and see how they fit in daily life. Right now my daily life is a ballet intensive so some of it will be applied to that.

An arabesque in Budapest, where I am for the ballet intensive with a friend

The first of the practices is the accumulation of merit. When I first became a Buddhist, I always found that quite a mysterious term. But Khandro Rinpoche explains it quite simply as being about working with yourself to display your qualities. For example, if you take a shower and comb your hair, you display your quality of beauty. This is the opposite of wailing in a poverty mentality of thinking you do not have enough and you are not good enough. Your body and mind are sufficient to be kind and generous, and this is the most beautiful. This is helpful for me as a reminder during my ballet summer intensive, because I sometimes get quite frustrated with my legs and feet which don't allow me to stand on pointe in a beautiful way. But I can still work with what I have, and just do my best to stretch my legs as much as possible so my legs are as beautiful they can be, but then take courage from the fact that I have other qualities such as remembering combinations quickly or displaying joy while dancing. I found the first day, especially when one teacher was berating us about not stretching our legs on pointe that I really got stuck in this mentality that I am incapable of dancing, but when during the second day I changed my mind and focused more on working with what I have, then I felt much better.

The second practice is that of purification. These are practices in which we remember the actions and thoughts that are not so wholesome, we purify them through visualization (for example), and then we vow not to commit those actions again. It is a great way of working with pride, because we acknowledge we have some negative sides, but also that they can be transformed. It's not intended to be the case that we get completely discouraged and feel worthless, but rather that we feel our negative sides can be purified. For me the visualisation practices are quite helpful, because they allow me not only to work with my own negative aspects, and face them, but also to work for healing of all beings who are suffering or are in pain. Right now in the situation surrounding Rigpa, I use this practice to apologize in my mind for all the harm done in the context of this organization and to bring well-being and happiness to all those who are suffering (on all sides of the equation). And that whatever my role in that has been, for example to not speak up or check in with people who may have been suffering, will be purified, so that in the future I will be able to take more action. Alternatively, I sometimes practise for specific people I know who are sick or suffering, and it is so wonderful to be able to do something and keep them in mind.

The third practice is the practice of offering torma, which according to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche relates to thanking the trouble makers on our path. Working with the challenges they provide helps us to repay the karmic debts for all the things we have received from others. In the context of this ballet intensive, that is very much working with challenging teachers. One teacher really likes to berate us for not paying attention, for not listening to the music, and for disappointing her, whereas I feel I cannot do much more than I am doing. So then instead of enjoying the work of dance I start to feel nervous and insecure. Now I think here is my chance to work with the challenging circumstance, to work with the demon in more traditional terms, and just face it: just face the feelings but also enjoy the lesson on my own terms. I am sure the person is trying to help, but has a somewhat odd way of communicating, probably heavily influenced by the way they were taught. And in the end, it is a good exercise in diminishing arrogance: just giving what I have to give without expecting praise or anything in return.

This shows very nicely a moment where I am enjoying the dancing  (from a performance at Zhembrovskyy Ballet Dance Fitness https://www.zhembrovskyy.com )

The fourth and final practice is that of offering to the protectors. This is a very traditional practice clouded in mysticism, but I found Khandro Rinpoche brought a very helpful explanation to it: the most important protector is our awareness, because when we are aware of our thoughts and emotions, this prevents us from doing stupid things that bring harm to others. So it is a reminder to cultivate awareness of our thoughts and emotions, which is done in the context of meditation, but should obviously be extended to the context of everyday life.

In short, this slogan captures really the whole Buddhist path, so we are really never done, but nevertheless these are some helpful reminders.

Trusting the power of our own wisdom and daring to question

A few weeks ago I attended a teaching by Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel. I think she is a wonderful Western Buddhist teacher in a Tibetan tradition. It was very refreshing to hear her perspective on the Dharma. While she teaches traditional teachings, she also gives it a distinct modern flavour. What I really liked was that she very much encouraged people to question everything. Because according to the Buddhist teachings, the main problem is that we think we know how things are, but we hold onto our image of things instead of seeing how they are changeable and interdependent. So it is important to never be completely convinced that you are accurate, because there is no solid thing out there to be accurate about. This is interesting because as scientists we know more than anyone that science is only true until proven wrong by the next study. And that is fine (in some way, that is part of the fun...). The challenge is the willingness to remain curious and to bear witness to the complexity of life.

Another important topic that she discussed was the concept of agency: we are more powerful than we think we are. The problem is that we get stuck in relationships with others in which we act as if we aren't. For example, we often end up trying to do what we think makes other people like us--then we are not really free (I'm guilty as charged on this one!).

A particularly challenging relationship she taught about was the relationship with the teacher. Here we sometimes create a dynamic by acting like a child in relationship with a parent, instead of claiming our own agency. She said we should never just do what the teacher says but always question what works for us. The role of the teacher is to challenge us, and the role of the student is to seriously engage with these challenges (and actually not bypass them). Then we have the tendency to deify the teacher, which sets us up for disappointment, after which there is a tendency to demonize the teacher. These tendencies show up especially in situations where abuse occurs (which sadly is not that uncommon). When mistreated (or even just disappointed) it becomes very attractive to victimize ourselves. This is particularly attractive because it feels good to be right and point out that someone else is wrong.

While victimizing is attractive, it is also dangerous, because as a victim, you lose agency and you get stuck in the situation. If instead you can work to view the complexity of the situation, where you are almost always also somewhat involved, then you can learn from it and work with it. This of course is not a permission for anyone (and especially any teacher) to mistreat people, but things happen. And if we work together as a group of people to understand the situation, we can also work to create circumstances that make abuses less likely to happen in the future. And definitely asking questions, listening to each other and remaining curious are very important there. Because very often it is not that clear what is right and what is wrong in a situation when you are in the middle of it. Then the challenge to us is, as Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel phrased it, to try to make our mind big enough to be able to hold a horse race inside.

Plunging in the deep of consciousness at the European Neurophenomenology, Contemplative, and Embodied Cognition Network meeting

Last week I attended the European Neurophenomenology, Contemplative, and Embodied Cognition Network meeting at Schloss Buchenau in Germany. This year we explored similarities and differences between the practices of meditation, hypnosis, trance and psychedelics. I must confess that up to that point I had always been quite skeptical of hypnosis, trance and psychedelics, feeling that they are kind of "out there" and I did not quite want to touch them. At the meeting, we got to explore some of these methods (trance and hypnosis) ourselves, and my ideas changed quite a bit. In fact these methods are not as strange as they sometimes appear, and certain forms of meditation also share some features with these other practices. And importantly, they can really benefit people!

Picture by Ute Brandes. Some of the results of the trance

In general, in many forms of meditation you bring your attention to an object of interest, and you monitor metacognitively where your attention goes, and whether it is still on the object. In some forms of meditation, you drop the object, and instead just monitor with kind attention where your awareness is. In some other forms of meditation, the object is more dynamic, for example it is a thread of philosophical thinking. In yet other forms of meditation, you visualize an entire environment and you incorporate all sensory impressions in this visualisation. For example, you may visualize a buddha, and then whatever sounds you are hearing may be reinterpreted as a mantra. This kind of practice actually shares quite some similarities with hypnosis in which you also construct a different narrative about the environment, and reinterpret thoughts and sense stimuli in this sense. Quite a powerful example of this was a video by Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville who showed how suggestion was used to alleviate pain during an operation. A patient who received large blows on their nose as part of nose surgery was led to interpret this as the shocks involved in skiing a mountain. And amazingly, this allowed them to undergo the operation with only local aneasthetics and substantial comfort.

Picture by Ute Brandes. Me giving my presentation

Similarly, in some practices of meditation you just allow your mind to accept whatever thoughts and emotions occur. When the faculty of monitoring disappears completely, and you just pursue whatever thoughts and emotions arise, then this becomes similar to the trance state (at least in my experience). During the meeting we were led into a trance state by listening to some very powerful deep drum sounds interspersed with animal sounds and more. We were encouraged to simply follow our impulses and to drop our cognitive control. To facilitate the latter and go with the flow, we were encouraged to make whatever sounds arose in our minds. In the beginning I think all of us felt a bit timid, but as we led go more, we entered this pure flow of experience. I myself felt quite compelled to move, and while I normally am a ballet dancer, now for the first time floorwork movements just manifested from my body automatically. To ensure people weren't harming themselves or others, an experienced team was watching over the trance and guided people gently as needed. After the end of one trance state, we were also invited to turn our experience into a painting. It was quite amazing to see what pieces of art came out! I wonder what the connections are between this state of effortless awareness where monitoring is almost completely abandoned and states of meditation practices that involve a nondual flow of awareness as well.

The meeting ended with trying to formulate a vision for a joint paper outlining some of these similarities and differences between the practices we discussed and experienced. While the communities of scientists studying these practices has traditionally been quite separated, I think it could really benefit from cross-talk to learn from each other's methods, roadblocks and more. For example, meditation research has a strong tradition of using pain to study the effects of the practice, but this has not been much considered in psychedelics. Hypnosis has a strong tradition of examining how people's suggestibility affects the results, and this could potentially be informative in studies of meditation as well. I could also imagine that comparative studies between the practices could be very helpful, because they engage, as I sketched above, to some extent similar mechanisms, but to some extent also different ones.

Picture by Steven Laureys. Group picture.

Picture by Ute Brandes. One of the many discussions.

Real German houses!

Trying to look into the empty nature of stress

As evidenced by the lack of blogs, I have been pretty busy in the past months. It's already Easter! Although I am still insanely busy, preparing and teaching a new course for first-year Artificial Intelligence students, I think it is time for a new blog, and a meditation retreat over Easter inspired me to write this blog.

I have had a few months to contemplate this slogan: "Seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection." That involves quite a few Buddhist technical terms! In my own very free translation, it concerns seeing wisdom in the midst of confusion and chaos. Quite appropriate for the last months...

view from the retreat in the Amsterdam Rigpa centre

So let's get going with the Buddhist terms. Shunyata is a term often translated as emptiness, but that translation is quite tricky, because it gives a nihilist connotation. During one of my recent travels I met a person who claimed to understand emptiness and explained his lack of productivity by his focusing on emptiness: if nothing exists, then why doing anything? I think this is the wrong understanding of the word. The way I have learnt it, shunyata refers to the idea that while things appear as quite solid, in fact they are impermanent, they depend on many causes and conditions, and while they appear to be completely distinct from other things, they can be decomposed into many other factors. So this means that while this delicious chocolate easter egg in front of me seems quite real and I really want it, it is actually quite impermanent (I became acutely aware of that fact this morning when my hot tea bottle was on top of a bag with Easter eggs--who ended up in a molten chocolate mess). Even our attachment to these Easter eggs is quite impermanent because if we eat too many of them, we no longer want them.

The four kayas are a term that refers to the different aspects of an enlightened being, the nirmanakaya being the physical level (the body of the Buddha), samboghakaya something like energy, dharmakaya the mind of the Buddha, and svabhavikakaya the union of all three. In other words, if confusion is the four kayas, it refers to recognizing enlightenment in confusion. One way to interpret this is that in all situations you can look at it with a confused perspective and with an enlightened perspective. For example, while anger is often harmful, it also has a quality of cutting through that is helpful.

Now how can shunyata be a protection in the confusion associated with stressful situations? Stress is tends to feel like a massive thing weighing down on you (at least, that's how it feels like to me). I often paralyzed by stress because there seems to be no place to breathe, let alone do something to regain my sanity, such as meditation. Now here there is good news, because many teachers actually say that the more confusion you have, the more chance there is to practice. So the more stress, the more you can just mediate on the stress: feel how it affects your body and mind, but crucially, try to not reject it. If you carefully think about it, while related to the massive amount of things to do, the stress is mostly a product of our minds. We can also decide to use the stress as an invitation to practise seeing how our feelings make the experience of having much to do massively worse.

And I know for a fact that however I feel, this too shall pass. Moreover, the stress is not a solid thing because it depends on so many causes and conditions: the state of my mind, the work that piles up, the reactions of other people and much more. So what and where is this thing called "stress" when you look for it? It is actually quite elusive, and realizing this creates space. It is sometimes even possible to see how the stress is just a manifestation of my cognizing mind that goes in overdrive when worring about the future. Every moment you can work with this feeling of stress is a great exercise, because anyone can be relaxed in calm situations, but can you also be calm in stressful situations? Anyone can see the empty nature of phenomena on their meditation cushion, but can you also have that humor in the midst of a stressful situation? I am working on it!

Dancing into the new year

As in several previous years, I spent the new year's eve at a moving meditation retreat, this time somehow as one of its facilitators. The latter fact also filled me with quite a bit of trepidation because I definitely did not feel ready to do this. But of course that is a great thing to dance with as well, because the idea of moving meditation is to dance with your habits. So what is moving meditation? Why move during your meditation? Let me give a try explaining a little.

image from Aarhus--on the way to the retreat venue

Moving meditation is a form of meditation in which you don't sit still while meditating, but instead you a moving. Moving can take place individually, but also in a dyad, or in a larger group. Just like sitting meditation can move through phases from being focused on an object, to simply being aware of everything, to letting go of even the idea of meditation, so can moving meditation. If you pay attention to it, you will find that there is always movement in your body, and instead of remaining silent you can just let this flow and move the body where it decides to go. And just like you have habits of thought that keep coming back, you also have habits of movement that you keep rolling back into when there is music on. When you become aware of these habits, you suddenly have the choice to not follow these habits and to instead take a different path. Then there is suddenly a lot more freedom! During the retreat I gave the participants a brief introduction to ballet movements as a way to expand their movement vocabulary. During the music, the meditators could then use these movements as well to follow the natural flow of the body.

What is interesting is that movements can be a different way to listen into our mind and our ideas and the external world. When we go into auto-pilot, we can become quite bored during moving meditation, but if instead we just flow what is, there is always inspiration, and there is always something happening. It is quite a wonderful exercise in just letting the movement and meditation arise out of itself. I found that I did not need to be scared about leading the retreat, because when I was simply there to listen, the retreat magically emerged out of itself.

In addition to the general process of moving meditation, we also went through a special new year's process, in which we first thought about what habit we wanted to dance a lovingly goodbye to, and what we wanted to welcome in the new year. We then entered into silence for a day or so (until new year's eve). During the silent period, we enacted the process of being born: from the appearance of matter out of space, to simple single-cell animals such as amoeba, to more complex animals that can crawl, all the way to elegant swans and birds, and finally to humans. While it may sound silly, this whole process of giving birth metaphorically is a wonderful way to reach a state of wonderment about life, and to give space to new ideas and new habits to arise for the new year. I mostly worked with the idea that I would like to simplify my life (I am also starting to work with the Simple Living calendar, the Simpel leven agenda in Dutch). Over time, the insight emerged that maybe I should plan more time to simply sit quietly with my project and listen to what project can dissolve to give more space to other projects.

A final remarkable thing about moving meditation is that it is a very beautiful way to be with other people, because we all practise being together in a very non-judgmental way. It was so moving to see everyone dancing together on New Year's eve: everyone with their own unique moves, no-one being ignored, everyone sharing joy and wonder with one another. These qualities are also cultivated in the moving meditation practices, for example a practice in which we listen into each other's being and use that to move together. As we listen into each other, we become more and more open to the unique texture of every individual, and their unique beauty. I hope that I will be able to keep some of that non-judgmentalness and wonder in the new year!