What is a contemplative life?

I wrote this blog when I just attended the Mind & Life Europe Retreat and the European Summer Research Institute (ESRI), also from Mind & Life Europe. Both events took place in Pomaia, Italy. For me, these events are always very good because they make me ask what the role is of contemplation in my life, and other big questions about being human.

In fact, this time I started to ask a lot of questions about my identity. When asked who I am, I usually say something like "neuroscientist" or "computational cognitive neuroscientist". Yet, in the MLE retreat, and more frequently this past summer, my identity has become also "dancer". Of course I don't get paid to do it, but yet, there is such a strong force in me that makes me dance, and I have in recent time been able to do more and more things with professionals. Then in the MLE retreat and the European Summer Research Institute, I suddenly also became a "contemplative", when I taught the meditation and contemplative dance practices. As someone who has been trying to follow the path of a scientist-practitioner, this was a really interesting experience, which I am still feeling into.

Picture from Morlaix Ballet camp
By Michel Le Photographe

What does it mean to be a contemplative? During the retreat we talked about "continuous practice". With my busy job, I don't have the time to spend hours a day practising meditation, although I certainly practise meditation every day. But there is much more that bringing meditation into your life can mean. For example, I try to be aware of my motivation for doing things, and where possible bring this into an altruistic motivation, intending that whatever I do be for the benefit of all beings. At the end of the day, I try to dedicate my efforts also to the benefit of all beings. In addition, I try to take short moments of meditation during the "lost moments" of the day--when walking somewhere, when waiting for the traffic light, and so on.

Inspired by the MLE retreat and ESRI, one of my more recent practices is also trying to bring awareness of interdependence into my action. There is this interesting concept of "enaction", which means in my limited understanding something like that whenever you take action, you are just moving around in the sea of interdependence, you are never able to have a fully independent action.

In addition to continuous practice, another feature of a contemplative is some amount of renunciation. In the old days, contemplatives would live in monasteries. However, monasteries are not so compatible with a modern life. Nevertheless, during ESRI Martijn van Beek talked about new alternative structures such as Vaekstcenteret where he lives in Denmark. And even if you are not entering a very specific community, you can also live a monastic life at home. For example, Misha Belien talks about being a monk with a family in this very inspiring documentary. Also I myself try to live a simple life, without too many distractions. The monks of yore would say "ora et labora" (pray and work), and in some sense, that is what I try to do.

Happy new year: let's make it the year of interconnection

 In the last few days I have been reflecting on the past year. I don't really like to list my achievements of the past year because I think it encourages an unhealthy comparison mindset. In today's society it's so hard to not forget that the most important is not what you do, but how you are. In the past few days, I co-led an online winter retreat, and in my part I taught analytical meditation. During these sessions we explored the idea of interdependence. I think today's world is more interdependent than ever (a beautiful quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama about that: "In today’s highly interdependent world, individuals and nations can no longer resolve many of the problems by themselves. We need one another. We must therefore develop a sense of universal responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members, and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live." (from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Chapter 3).

interestingly, many people say they feel disconnected, while objectively speaking we are more connected than ever through the media, and through the evermore complex production chains of goods and services. So why do people feel disconnected? I think it is because we don't spend enough time being and reflecting on our situation. Another answer, offered by Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim last night was that we all consume (social) media that are so hyperpersonalized that we don't have too many common experiences anymore. And we are no longer so used to seeing things that we don't like.

Picture from Morlaix ballet camp by Michel Le Photography

Whatever may be the cause, my hope for the next year is that I will get to experience the deep interconnection of ourselves and others more in the coming year. Because I found that when I manage to experience the interconnection of myself with others, nothing can be an enemy anymore, and this reduces my stress so much. When things are overwhelming, it helps me a lot to focus on how they are all part of a web of contingent relationships that allows everything to appear and disappear. Moreover, when i experience the deep interconnection of myself and others, the competitiveness no longer exists either. The challenge is just not forgetting this...

Like with everything, not forgetting means to again and again try to remember, while the rest of life is trying to distract you. First you will forget most of the time, but the more often you remember, the more easily it comes. The trick is also to find "hooks", small reminders. I found a wonderful one recently in ballet class with Broche ballet, where Julie, the teacher said: imagine that you are massaging the floor as you are doing tendus. Thinking in this way frames ballet not as an activity that I do by myself, but rather as a cooperation with the floor, and of course the rest of the world outside it as well.

Every moment of remembering is a moment of mindfulness, and every moment of remembering also makes that moment sacred. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the notion of interbeing, where we see that the cow that brings the milk that produces the yoghurt that we eat produces the lesson we teach, and therefore the cow is in the lesson. In this way, everything is a seed for everything else. Every breath we take, we breathe in the oxygen produced by the plants, which connect us to the cosmos and to all other beings. If only I would not forget that, and if only more of us would realize that..

Don't forget to play!

 One of the most delightful things from my travels in the past year was hanging out in-person again with my Tibetan monk colleagues at Sera Jey monastery, and also at a Mind & Life meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The most important reason why I enjoy so much hanging out with them is that they have so much humor. In our interactions, you can see how they never take themselves too seriously, so they very quickly shift between intense concentration and laughter. We also see this when we study their monastic debate practice, where one moment you see them shouting angrily at each other, and the next moment their are joking. I think not taking yourself too seriously is a very helpful life skill, not only to make your life more pleasant, but also to allow for more mental flexibility. And this is the topic of the 56th slogan of Lojong: "Don’t take what you do too seriously."

Some playful movement at the conclusion
of the ballet Napoli at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In fact, I think not taking yourself too seriously is also closely related to play, and as researchers are starting to investigate play more, they are finding that play is a very efficient way to learn. For this reason, I started to follow Julie Gill's advice in the Broche ballet classroom to play whenever necessary. It is very nice that some classes in the schedule are now even dedicated to play--for example playing with balancing in the centre, where it is OK to fall, because that's how our body learns, and playing with standing on pointe in the centre, shifting weight in different ways to get more comfortable with those sensations.

Meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

This makes me think: would there be a way I can get my students to play more in my own classes? I feel it's increasingly hard, because students feel under so much pressure that they feel little space to play. Similarly, play can also be helpful on the spiritual path. Actually some visualisation practices in the Tibetan tradition could be viewed as a kind of play (I hope I am not insulting anyone here...), where you feel what it is like to embody a particular deity to try on those mental patterns. And for me one of the most helpful meditation advices is "be like an old man watching children play". Another good reminder!

Happy new year!

 Happy new year! I hope you had a good celebration (if you celebrate) with loved ones. Now the new year has started and it's time for action. Yesterday I talked about setting intentions. Today--in my discussion of the next Lojong slogan, number 54, which says "train wholeheartedly"--we will move into action. The "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living calendar) that I mentioned previously starts the year with an intriguing question: what is your mission? I think it is having a clear mission that can allow you to train wholeheartedly, because you can work to ensure that what you do and how you are is consistent with your mission. 

Ladies on a mission at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In the last few days I spent some time thinking about it, but I found it quite hard, because somehow your mission sounds like it has to be something grand like solving world peace or world hunger, and that is not something I can commit to. Today, during my morning run, I found that a better way for me to think about this is to come up with prayers, inspired by Roshi Joan Halifax's recent Facebook posts, such as "May I be able to inspire people with my combination of dancing and science", "May I be able to help my students reach their goals", or "May I be able to find some peace in myself." For the latter one, I find it very helpful to remind myself of this recent video by Mingyur Rinpoche, in which he says that in order to be of more help for people he decides to disappear for retreat for a while. I too have to think about how sometimes taking time away can actually allow you to be there more for others--it is not necessarily selfish. Coming back to your main mission can be really helpful to zoom out and make those decisions.

Finally, I want to leave you with a thought I have been playing with in the last days. Often it is easy to keep focusing on things that have to change, but interestingly this unrest is exactly what characterizes our vicious cycle of suffering. The hopeful message of the Buddhist teachings is that we all have a buddha nature right inside us, if we can only let it manifest. So here is an encouragement to trust this buddha nature and give it the space to blossom.

How Iceland made me lose my computer but find a way to think through movement and dance

In the past week I attended a summer school on embodied critical thinking, which is part of an Erasmus project in which I am a member. It was a remarkable experience, in which I found new ways to connect the part of myself that is a dancer with the part of myself that is an academic. Moreover, it was my first travel outside the country since Covid-19 hit. The summer school took place in the beautiful country of Iceland, a place where I had never been before. The nature and culture of Iceland were awe-inspiring, which very much complemented the power of the summer school. So what is embodied critical thinking? 

This is a method used--Thinking at the Edge--was developed by a philosopher by the name of Eugene Gendlin, who felt that thinking should not just be in the head but also make use of the wisdom of the body. This is probably something we all use to some extent--when we have a "gut feeling"--but we are never too conscious of it. In thinking at the Edge, you bring your attention to it, and you take the time and space to explore what your body has to say. By doing this, you can often find surprising things. I think the reason it's called "critical thinking" is that it does not take the meaning of concepts as a given, but instead invites you to further explore what concepts may have as hidden meanings, and to inform them with your life experiences to find new connections. An important question that is often being asked is "is there more?", and this is particularly asked when you observe a bodily reaction. As such, the practice demands a lot of tuning into the body. Thinking at the edge consists of a series of 12 steps-exercises if you will, that allow you to investigate the topic you want to think about from many different angles and in many different ways. A very important concept is the "felt sense", which is the feeling in your body of you consider the thing you are thinking about. Rather than paying attention to whether the words are intellectually "correct", one asks whether the words evoke the right feeling, or image. Because of the focus on imagery, there is a possibility to explore new meanings of the topic we are thinking about. This is further expanded on by going over your notes again and again to deepen your understanding.

In my case, I chose to focus on the topic of what embodied critical thinking is and how we can understand it from a cognitive perspective. Rather than going straight into conceptual thinking, the process allowed me to investigate the feeling dimension of this question, which was very interesting and surprising (one of the sentences I wrote, for example, is "the fabric of the spiderweb is space"). A lot of work is done with a partner, who listens to you (usually for luxurious amounts of time, such as 30-40 minutes) and helps you clarify your thinking, but also brings your attention to the bodily dimension. For example, they may say that they noticed that you really started to physically connect to and make lots of gestures when you came to a particular point. To facilitate this process, there was lots of time for silence, and an absence of judgment. The week started even with the announcement that we did not need to feel like we needed to produce something in this time. To further facilitate this, we were also encouraged to do a lot of writing on paper, journalling and carefully writing down what our partner said, and to let go of our computer (more about that in a little bit). I helped out a bit by guiding some movement exercises to help people connect their body and literally dance with their ideas. It was such a gift to be in this caring and spacious environment for a week!

watching the view at the Blue Lagoon site (the blue comes from the silica in the water). Picture by Dorothe Bach)

On top of the exercises from the twelve-step process we went through, we also had various excursions in which we connected to the magnificent nature of Iceland. During my bicycle tour on the first day, I learnt that Iceland is called the land of fire and ice, and its landscapes are largely shaped by volcanic activity. This roughness and wildness yields a very dramatic and awe-inspiring landscape, which helped me to drop the self-focus a bit and instead just be. Moreover, the rocks and volcanoes just have so much space! A further daily connection to nature was provided by the hot springs--just like the Icelandic people I went to the hot pools every day (water comes up right from the ground and is then captured in pools that are spread all across the city of Reykjavik where we stayed). I feel that as you go in the water at the various temperatures (switching between hot and cold baths) it is such a good way to connect to your body and feel what it needs.

being in awe with the volcano behind me (picture by Dorothe Bach)

Now the disconnection from my usual "heady" state in which I am on my computer all the time was further facilitated by an event on the first day, when I was guiding a movement exercise on the beach. We found a beautiful place with lots of rocks to stand on and some grassy patches, and move to the sounds of the wind and the water. I had found a lovely grassy patch to put my laptop bag on while I was guiding the exercise. At the end of the exercise I returned to my back, only to find it standing in a puddle of water, as the tide had been rising while I was--happily unaware--guiding the exercise, standing on a nearby rock. Obviously there was no way I could have any chance at using my computer, since i had to let it dry for at least two days (as I found out from a computer store where I went the next day). And I am writing this on a new computer since sadly my computer never woke up again. The whole episode was a beautiful lesson though, because it made me realize I could actually function without a computer for a little while (especially since a colleague kindly allowed me to use hers for some meetings I needed to do). I was also stunned at my own reaction, which never was one of fear or panic, but simply just ready to go with whatever was. The environment was that spacious! (especially after a few days of vacation that I took in Iceland before the summer school, and especially realizing that an injury is so mch worse).

the place on the coast where I held my movement exercise and my laptop drowned

The last, and very important, lesson from the summer school was that there is a way to bring movement more explicitly into my academic life, and that I have something to offer there. As we went through the twelve-step Thinking at the Edge process, my partner made me realize that expressing through movement and dance, and at the same time being in the academy, is a unique gift I have, which may be of benefit to enrich people's thinking but also strengthen their resilience. So while I started with a project on the cognitive effect of thinking at the edge, I ended up with important realizations about my life and ideas for how to redirect it to bring my dancing and my academic work closer together--a process I started many years ago with Edan Gorlicki in his Unblocked Project.

Why is it so difficult to turn off? Investigating competitiveness

Logan slogan 35 is "don't be so competitive" (the next iteration in the #lojongchallenge). There is hardly a slogan that is more apt in today's competitive world. In the academic world I am part of, competition is part and parcel, because we constantly have to compete with colleagues to win grants and get our research published in the top journals. Of course there is also a lot of collaboration within science, especially in my department, in the end the evaluation and reward system is highly skewed towards recognising only individuals. A particularly powerful example of this are the Nobel prizes, which were awarded last week. These almost assume that science is done by individuals, rather than by a team, as it is in reality. Pretty much all universities require you to be in the top-whatever to survive as an academic (which obviously is impossible, because by definition not everyone can be the top). This is slightly problematic because science really thrives when you combine many different viewpoints and ideas.

Somehow I internalized the competition to such an extent that I find it difficult to turn off: there is always something more to do, and I find it very hard to give myself permission to rest. Of course it's easy to blame that only on the external world. Probably I myself am at fault at least just as much. But nevertheless, the external world really facilitates that. I think taking the time to be still and rest is almost a revolutionary act.

For me, working against this innate and external competitiveness is a constant struggle that requires a lot of vigilance to recognize these patterns creeping up, and to drop them. I found two things really helpful here: first, practising joy when someone else gets ahead or does something good. When you look at it, seeing someone else succeed and seeing them happy is actually really nice and pleasant, and it improves your relationship with them as well. In one of the ballet schools I take class at the students tend to applaud for each other when they do something well. A very nice gesture, I think. I also try to remember to tell other people what I like about them, and especially to appreciate my students. A little positivity goes a long way!

The other trick I use is to investigate again and again the effects of suspending competitiveness for a moment and just letting be. When I take a few minutes to just rest, I find that actually my performance improves, because I often recognize things that I had overlooked until that moment, and thereby make fewer mistakes. Moreover, it also really feels good. But somehow it's still so hard to do--to overcome the ingrained 'doing' habit. With this blog, I try to commit again to taking more moments of silence and being. Just another reminder...

How are you doing? Do you notice these kinds of tendencies as well? How do you work with competitiveness?

Seeing the buddha in your chance encounters

Today my retreat finished and I am easing back into daily life. I already had my first interaction with a friend I randomly ran into in the marketplace. But in the end, the whole purpose of retreat is not to run from life, but rather to prepare to engage in life in a more productive way. This is why I felt it was quite a good idea to write these blogs while I was on retreat so I could think about how to interact with the world once I got back into it.

The 31st slogan of Lojong is "don't malign others." This is quite an obvious slogan: don't speak ill of people. As I mentioned quite a few times before on this blog, sometimes it feels good to take others down, so we can feel better about ourselves. But apart from the fact that this feeling good is only short-lived, in the end, it also does your relationship with the person you are talking with no good. After all, who likes to talk to someone who only complains about others?

Khandro Rinpoche also says that it's very easy to judge--it doesn't give the other space to make mistakes, to work with themselves. it may sound naive, but giving others the benefit of the doubt usually improves the quality of your interactions. If you assume others have good intentions then I find that often people feel that and proceed to interact with you in a more positive way than when you assume others' bad intentions. I find this relatively easy now but when I was bullied as a little kid, I always had the feeling that other kids were speaking bad about me, and this made me very anxious. So this habit is definitely shaped a lot by your experiences with other people. Now most people approach me positively I find it quite easy to do.

Saying hello to the door. Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

Yet, I don't think this means you can never criticize people. I actually sometimes have that tendency because I don't want to make other people angry. But that in itself doesn't help either because tensions are built and never spoken off. Or even worse, people who behave poorly and harm others get never any headwind and therefore step by step make their behaviour even worse because they think they can get away with it. So, just like all these slogans, I think they should be applied with care. Nevertheless, seeing things from the perspective that all people are inherently buddhas-to-be, and therefore inherently good, definitely makes the world a better place.

Playing the unpredictable in an uncertain post-COVID world

We are halfway in the #lojongchallenge! The 30th slogan is "don't be so predictable." This refers to our tendency to respond very habitually whenever we are challenged, mostly by feeling sorry for ourselves. Do you recognize this? I certainly do! In these days of COVID-19, this tends to happen for example when the internet breaks down just at a moment that an important meeting or teaching is happening (like yesterday). My natural reaction is to make a big drama out of that, which obviously won't make anyone feel better, not even myself.

More specifically it also refers to the case where someone causes you trouble. Our natural reaction is to respond nastily in response. In a way, this is also what society expects from us. But what if we don't follow that pattern? In a way, when someone causes you trouble, they hope you get annoyed, and if you don't, that not only surprises you but them as well, thereby breaking the chains of action and reaction that we call karma.

Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

Breaking this chain of karma is very significant because it helps us to break our habitual patterns of reactions. If you are able to do so, it feels so good because you have gained freedom! However, it is not so easy, so you have to start with small actions. Khandro Rinpoche for example suggests surprising yourself by being generous, or maybe try being patient. For example, right now it is quite hot. A natural reaction is to feel very sorry for myself it is so hot, and then to slump down in tiredness. But maybe I can also just feel the heat and enjoy it while it lasts (I mean, next week I am going to a sauna: even more heat, and then voluntarily ;-) ). 

The practice of meditation is also very much about not being predictable. Our predictable patterns are to indulge in thoughts, especially self-related thoughts, and forget about everything else. Meditation is instead an invitation to be curious: to watch your mind, to see where your awareness comes from, to explore just being, and just doing nothing, taking space. In our busy society that is almost a revolutionary act.

And maybe, when we are less predictable in how we respond to things, we can also respond better to an unpredictable world, which very much characterizes this COVID-19 situation, and which is probably one of the biggest challenges of it for most people. Maybe the attitude of playfulness towards our own reactions can also translate into a playfulness towards the daily surprises that COVID throws at us.

Can we be without a goal?

An intriguing slogan in the Lojong text is number 28: "abandon any hope of fruition." Here in the West, we are strongly conditioned in being very goal-directed, having specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound goals. This contributes to getting things done. So why are we to let go of a hope of fruition, or in other words, "achievement"?

Sometimes the tendency to try to achieve things can be in the way of accomplishment. This is particularly true with these Lojong teachings, because achieving something tends to often be associated with a feeling of self-cherishing. It's not bad to feel good a bout yourself, but feeling superior is a problem.

Moreover, the tendency to always be goal-directed also gets in the way of taking time to just rest and being present with what is. A large part of Buddhist practice is about sitting there and doing nothing--and through that, through observing what happens, becoming familiar with the nature of reality that is to be found within, rather than in busy activity.

Approaching the goal. Picture by Anna van der Meijden, https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

But yet, how can we then still motivate ourselves if we shouldn't hope for fruition? Maybe it is the case that we will never reach fruition, but we will still make some progress along the way, and we can still celebrate those little moments in which we were able to transform an emotion or approach a situation in a different way. And at the same time realize that that is only a tiny step along the way. Then it is key to go back to your motivation and use that as your major impetus: whatever you do, be it action or inaction, can be with a motivation to help beings and eventually to becoming a truly healthy and happy person (something which Buddhists call enlightenment).

More thoughts on self-criticism and other-criticism in life and ballet

The next slogan in Lojong is number 26: "Don’t ponder others’ flaws." This is quite similar to the previous slogan, but whereas the previous one is about acting out your criticism in terms of speech, this one is about merely thinking about the flaws of others. For me that is a much stronger temptation than speaking of other's flaws. You may think "thoughts don't harm, right?" And indeed, they don't do so directly. But they are not particularly pleasant either.

The moment you start criticising others, first of all, doesn't really feel that good in the long term. In the short term, it may make you feel better about yourself, but to maintain this feeling better, you have to keep comparing yourself to others and that is pretty exhausting. One domain in which I am quite prone to mentally comparing myself to others is ballet. This is completely unnecessary because I am way too old for a career, so I am just doing it for fun. And yet, this is my mental habit. A few weeks ago I did a kind of home-made ballet intensive during which I stayed in Amsterdam for a few days and took many classes. This was my chance to play with these feelings! I found out that when I was doing a tough conditioning class, one strategy is to handle the challenge by comparing myself to others. As I just indicated, this is a quite a stressful strategy. Alternatively, I could just try to stay with the moment--with the unpleasant feelings of a tough exercise but not thinking about how long it's still going to last (long!) and not thinking about how well it's going--just staying there non-judgmentally. When I was able to do that, the whole experience became like a meditation, and quite relaxed (at least from a mental perspective). Moreover, practising in such a mind state feels so much more satisfying.

Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

I will end with one more tip that I found in Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche's book "Intelligent heart", which I found quite helpful. He said that if you are dealing with a very difficult person for whom criticism almost naturally arises, then try to realize that it's just your perception. Everyone perceives people differently, and there may well be people who see this person as amazing. The same is true about yourself by the way: the way you see yourself is probably quite different from the way others see you.

What does it mean to do retreat in times of COVID-19?

As I am writing this, I am entering into a retreat. A retreat not at the Buddhist centre of  Lerab Ling where I usually go to, but at my own home. In one of the first sessions, it was mentioned that the moment you leave your home, the retreat is half accomplished. Of course that makes a lot of sense, because you have already physically retreated from ordinary life. This made me reflect on the question of what is means to retreat, when you do not leave your home. 

For me, retreat is about taking the space and time to reflect on the Buddhist teachings--something I nornally only have little time to do. When you are in a Buddhist retreat centre, the whole environment is conducive to thinking about this, and the place is usually so beautiful that meditation almost arises naturally. The aim of this is of course to transform our minds so that it works a little bit differently, with a little more sanity, in everyday life. So how can I create that in my own home?

The meaning of retreat is "boundary", so the first thing to do of course is to reflect on every single thing I do: is this necessary for my retreat, or can I drop it? Of course work has to go, for sure. Social media, also pretty clear. News? I noticed I am quite addicted to news since COVID-19, so ideally this should go as well. At the same time, it is important to know when something changes in the world situation that may affect the way I live my life. So I decided to have a short "news" moment every morning. I will still keep up my ballet practice because it is important for me to have a flexible and strong body, but I will do so with youtube teachings, rather than interacting with other individuals. The wonderful thing of a retreat is to momentarily drop social interactions (not so difficult when you live alone like me) so you can devote yourself with less distractions to the study and reflection.

I must confess that doing retreat at home is challenging because I can feel the pull of the habits that like to fill my mind and provide entertainment. So this is a time to work with this attachment--after all, retreat is about reducing attachment and aversion, according to the Richö teaching. At the same time it is also wonderful to have the space and time to do something as meaningful as study and practice. And here it is important to not go into overdrive either but make sure that while you adhere to a retreat schedule, you also take enough time to relax. This is particularly important because this is not only my retreat but also my vacation. As it says in the Richö: "Generally, refrain from any noise and busy-ness, whether outside or within the mind, and simply remain perfectly at ease, effortlessly. This is the true, essential solitude or hermitage."

In the end, while I miss the beautiful surroundings of the Buddhist centre, I think it is also lovely to create new habits that may more easily transpire to life after the retreat. I am planning to keep writing blogs, so I will keep you posted on how it goes.

Finding your own vision for yourself

I like this image because it shows one quality that I find very important  to cultivate: caring for others. (this was  holding a little baby goat on the way to Ladakh)

In this blog I will discuss my facorite Lojong slogan, which is "of all witnesses, rely on the principal one." This refers to not going by other's judgments of you, but sticking to your own compass. It is obviously critical to do this, because otherwise it is the recipe for unhappiness. People will never always like you, especially when you are trying to go against some societal conventions or have some controversial ideas.



One reason I like this slogan a lot is that I really have to work a lot on this one. I tend to be a people-pleaser, and find it challenging to ignore what people think of me. One example is a class I have been teaching, which consists of very critical and quite negative and judgmental students. I noticed I started to worry more and more about what they were thinking and get really scared of doing something wrong. (I read the student evaluations last week, and while they were commenting that the course was not well organized, and that the book was crap, they also wrote that I was knowledgeable and sweet).

Mountains always remind me to keep an overarching vision

Interestingly, this past week I read an amazing alternative perspective of one person nominated as a Teacher of the Year at my university, who said: I really appreciate it when students take the time to tell me I am doing something wrong. Because when you know you do something wrong, you can learn, otherwise you can never change. And as long as you know you have done your best, that is all you can do.

A last point to keep in mind in relying on the principal witness is that it is very important to define your own vision for yourself, and your own goals. Alessia Lugoboni did a very nice video on this, in which she talked about how we often get stuck in life because we don't think enough about why we do what we do. It is important to not just go with everything that happens and get lost in the crazy rat race of daily nitty gritty, but always have an overarching vision about where you want to go. I wrote down several goals at the start of this year, and it is very inspiring to keep reviewing these every few weeks to see how I am doing. Only then can you be slowly change and develop according to whatever vision you have for yourself--not when you are relying on the small-mindedness of what other people think of you. With Tibetan new year around the corner, this is another chance for me to go back to my goals. Do you want to join me?

Reflections on the new year and self-importance

Sometimes it is good to go back to the essence, and interestingly, the next slogan in the #lojongchallenge does just that: slogan 19 says that "All Dharma agrees at one point, and that one point is to reduce self-importance." Dharma refers to the Buddhist teachings. In other words: the whole point of the Buddhist teachings is to reduce our sense of self-importance.

I think this is such an important slogan because it helps us to keep checking whether we are still on the path, or whether instead we have succumbed to spiritual materialism, in which we use the spiritual path only to be more successful and more praised. I think that many cases where spiritual masters go off may be linked to forgetting this slogan. Of course it also is really difficult to keep reducing your self-importance if people constantly treat you as being very important, very wise and very amazing. It is all the more amazing that there are still some spiritual teachers keep a very low sense of self-importance, in which they treat even the most simple people with the utmost respect. I find that particularly inspiring because I know for myself how attractive it is to feel yourself better than others.

One particular way in which we tend to assert our self-importance is through social media. While I do not think social media are unequivocally bad, one thing they tend to be very effective at is creating groups that amplify there extremeness, and thereby become more and more polarized. If we don't feel better than others ourselves, we may still feel our group is better than the others--whether it be a political, religious, social or some other group. My aim for 2020 is to refrain from feeling myself better than others and instead to cultivate enough self-confidence that I do not need to be better than others.

Finally, this slogan also has an environmental interpretation. I think 2019 has been the year in which the world woke up to the reality of climate change and the need to do something to deal with that. If you consider yourself a bit less important, and the world and environment a bit more important, then it may be easier to undergo the minor discomforts of eating less meat, using more bicycles and public transportation, buying less, using less water and electricity... A good blog with practical advice is this one. Happy new year!

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.

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!

"Don't run too fast"--self-compassion in the rat race that can be work

Another Lojong slogan is "Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself." This slogan reminds me of what we often tend to overlook: caring for ourselves. While caring for others can create a "broad mind" as I suggested in my previous blog, this does not mean you should completely neglect yourself. I think that many of us in the West do not have a sense that we are basically good, and as a result, we are continually trying to prove ourselves and try to get "better." Tsoknyi Rinpoche is one of the Tibetan lamas who has very good teachings on this topic. interestingly, when we try to benefit others and only focus on others to be a "good human" but we don't feel fundamentally good ourselves, then the whole thing becomes quite neurotic.

So what should we do? We can apply all the compassion practices to ourselves! And we should. If you find yourself thinking "I don't need this", "I don't want to waste time on this", this probably means that you really need it! So, instead of taking others suffering and giving away your happiness, as is suggested in the practice of tonglen, you can take away the suffering of your future self, and give happiness to your future self. Or, as is suggested in the Tibetan book of living and dying Chapter 12, you can take on the suffering of the part of you that was hurt, and give it your happiness. In this way you can heal yourself, so that you are in fact ready to give. These ideas are backed up by a lot of research suggesting that self-compassion is crucial for human well-being and can help people deal much better with a lot of stress and emotional turmoil.

Picture by Floris van Vugt

This week, I tried to practise self-compassion when I went back into the thick of work: the academic year is starting. One mantra that I learnt during the retreat is "you don't have to run so fast." My main habit is that I tend to want to do too many things and go too fast when I am insecure. During my runs during the retreat, I would time and time again repeat to myself "you don't have to run so fast." During running, this is important to ensure that you reach the end of the run. But during work, it is important to ensure that you don't overlook things or make (too many) errors. So for me, self-compassion involves mostly giving myself space and permission to not run too fast (both literally and metaphorically).

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!

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"

Minding and finding the gap

I recently went on a retreat in Lerab Ling, a Tibetan style Retreat Center with an authentic Buddhist temple in the south of France. A retreat is a period that you step away from your ordinary life and focus intensely on spiritual practice, instead of the mundane concerns of ordinary life. For me one of the most important themes of this particular retreat was "the gap." While the gap has a very specific connotation in the teachings, metaphorically it is a very important concept.

First of all, a retreat in itself is a gap--a gap between our ordinary ways of thinking, completely reactive and preoccupied with whatever is at hand. Because a retreat is a place where you are in a completely different context, it allows you to take a step away from your ordinary thinking patterns and take a more bird's eye perspective. Sometimes you need a full retreat to remind you that there is actually the possibility of a gap, but of course the gap is always there. There is always a space to take a step away from your ordinary thinking. Just take a breath, and drop all your concepts and preoccupations, and there is a gap. It is so easy to forget that! In fact, I think it takes a lot of courage to break through our ordinary thinking and take the space to just be for a moment. And even if you try, sometimes you may feel as if it just doesn't work to drop your preoccupation. That is fine too. You can even let go of the concept of letting go. This may seem paradoxical, but sometimes when trying it out, this can just work. Why is engaging with a gap so important? Very often we keep ourselves busy from early morning to late at night (at least I do!), and there is no space to think about why and what we are doing. We are just following our mental habits. Making a little gap allows you to step outside these habits for a moment, which may provide you with a new perspective. Moreover, I find that I feel less stressed when I make a moment to stop and observe the gap. Another thing a "gap" can do is to consolidate our knowledge and understanding. A traditional Buddhist method for contemplation is to alternate periods of analytical thinking about a philosophical issue with periods of just resting. The idea is that when you rest, the knowledge becomes more embodied. Wouldn't it be an interesting experiment to try that out with things that we are analyzing and thinking about in our work? It may lead to interesting new insights, or maybe to a stronger memory of the material you are thinking about. I am definitely going to try this. So: it may be worth it to not forget the gaps, but to try to cultivate them. This blog is also posted on http://radicallyhappy.org/blogpage