Speaking and writing inspired by the thermal baths

I was reflecting on the next #lojongchallenge slogan while relaxing in the thermal baths. This slogan is number 33, "don't bring things to a painful point." It's kind of an interesting thing to reflect on in an environment dedicated to promoting wellness and the absence of pain and suffering!

So what is meant by this slogan? It is about avoiding blaming others for your pain and suffering. Maybe it is especially easy to understand in a wellness centre, because the owners have thought for a long time on how to create an environment in which it is pleasant to hang out. This slogan asks us to create such an environment for the people around us. One way you can do this is to think before you speak or write something about the following:

Is it truthful? 

Is it helpful? 

Is it inspiring? 

Is it necessary?  

Is it kind?

The slogan is asking us to speak in a way so that we don't harm others. More importantly, it is asking us to see whether we can avoid blaming our own misery on others. This is typically a bit more challenging because it is so attractive to blame others for things. For example, in COVID-19, to complain about others' reckless behaviour, or alternatively, their fearful behaviour which makes us uncomfortable. But of course that is not really going to help much if you think about it--in fact, it probably only creates feelings of unrest and annoyance. Khandro Rinpoche also says that many obstacles are created because of our own stupidity or ambitions. And then we try to cover that up by blaming others for it. Of course that eventually creates painful situations. If on the other hand you are able to just be honestly who you are, with all your defects, not blaming anyone else for it, then there is less to protect and eventually also less to worry about.

Image from the wellness centre (captured by Stefani Nellen)

Amazing food at the thermal baths

Hotelfie at the thermal baths

It all seems so logical and simple. Then why is this so difficult? I think it is due to the heavy emphasis of our society on success, and the constant feeling that we do not measure up. Counteracting that takes a lot of reflection--again and again--until it becomes natural. That's why I do the #lojongchallenge!

Reconsidering "I told you so"

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge series is "don't wait in ambush". This slogan talks about how we can brood on "getting someone back" if they've said or done something nasty to us. A more noble response would be to instead return their unkindness with kindness.

Now of course being kind to someone who has treated you poorly is not always that easy. My personal response is usually to simply avoid this person. Then at least you know you won't cause them harm, and they also cannot cause you harm. For example, today I was on the train to Amsterdam, and when I see people who do not wear masks, one response is to be nasty to them, but another response is to simply go outside their way (which may either way be a smart thing to do in either case...).

A more subtle tendency that this can refer to is put forward by Khandro Rinpoche. She says that it also refers to cases in which we may allow situations to worsen so we can say in the end: "I told you so", rather than preventing the mistakes to happen. I personally don't think this always works, because sometimes you just need to give people the space to make their own mistakes. Nevertheless, at that time it is still not very compassionate to respond with "I told you so", rather than helping that person to clean up the mess, which would be a bit more supportive. There is sometimes quite some satisfaction in the smugness of saying "I told you so", but it's a good reminder to self that it is pretty much never helpful when you think about it.

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

On the whole I must confess that i am lucky that I never enjoy seeing people suffer, not even when they have hurt me. What I am trying to cultivate more of is to enjoy it when people do well. This morning I was in a ballet class in Amsterdam and I was able to really enjoy some of the beautiful dancing of the other dancers in my class, instead of being jealous of them, which can also happen sometimes. That was my little win of the day. And in the end, it makes your own life so much better as well (but of course it requires changing of habits, which is always a challenge...).

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.

Dropping the self from the meditation

We're moving along quite nicely in the #LojongChallenge! Today I want to discuss slogan 29: "give up poisoned food." Of course it is never good to eat food with poison, but obviously here this is meant more metaphorically. The idea here is that when you practice, you do it not so that other people think you are an amazing person, but rather, for the benefit of others. This is not surprising, since the whole Lojong is pretty much about that. Nevertheless, it is important to keep examining your motivation in whatever you do.

Here I would like to focus a little more on the case of meditation, since I am currently doing a meditation retreat. In meditation too, it is attractive to want it to be a kind of quiet and peaceful state in which we feel good and feel like we are a great meditator. But of course, meditation isn't always like that! Often meditation is just like a big mess of turbulent thoughts that go all over the place. And many of these thoughts--in fact--are self-related. We know this from neuroscientific research: whenever people are left to their own devices, a brain network known as the default mode network turns on, which consists of a set of mostly midline areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex that are thought to be strongly involved in self-referential processes. And in my lab I have demonstrated that the moment people are prompted to think about themselves, they get distracted and do worse on cognitive tasks such as a memory task.

So what to do? One strategy I am playing around with right now is to focus on the process rather than the result. Just the fact that you sit down to practise is awesome. Sometimes the practice will feel good, sometimes it won't, but slowly you will make progress anyway. It is also said that it is better to leave your analysis and judgment of how the meditation went until afterwards, and to during the practice mostly focus on being relaxed and spacious. One quote of Sogyal Rinpoche that illustrates this well is "meditation is becoming naturally assimilated in it." It says that instead of working hard to do something, it is more about un-doing, and trusting that you will land in your buddha nature. What a beautiful and soothing idea in this stressful world!

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).

Looking for focus: a case for just being

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is number 27: "Work with the greatest defilements first." Of course the whole Lojong programme is about working with our emotions. A wonderful thing of this programme is that is has a fantastic array of methods. This is at the same time a challenge, because we can get lost in it and not end up making substantial progress in any of them. I notice this tendency most strongly in ballet classes I take: when I strongly focus on fixing one bad habit (such as forgetting to suck in my tummy or not stretching my legs fully) then I make much more progress than when I focus on whatever is that day's teacher's particular focus. The same applies of course to working with your negative emotions.

Just being happy with flowers. Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/ 

How do you know what is your most insistent emotion or habit? One clue is to look at what you tend to put off, because that is often where the strongest obstacle is located. The good news, according to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, is also that all the different emotions are in some way related to self-cherishing. If you deal with one of them, then the others will automatically be improved as well.

For myself, I definitely recognize this tendency to try out many different things and not persist on one path until the end. It is just too easy to get lost in doing, instead of spending time in being--doing nothing in particular but just being with what is and seeing what emerges. Sometimes just being can be the most productive because, as Khandro Rinpoche says, it allows the natural compassion to shine out. It is also where we can drop our competitiveness and instead just connect.

Maybe this is for me the greatest obstacle or habit: to get lost in the doing. Getting lost in doing is an easy way to avoid facing things, and at the same time it is also often driven by the need for recognition--recognition by others for all the amazing things you are doing. This is just one manifestation of what Buddhists call "attachment"--in this case attachment to praise. But when you think about it from the Dzogchen perspective: you are already totally fine. Your nature is the Buddha, and if you only let it out, it will shine all by itself with brilliant wisdom and compassion. If only it weren't so hard to trust that... 

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.

Exploring together-apart mind and reality in times of COVID-19

Last week I attended the European Mind and Life Summer Research Institute. I have been lucky enough to attend many such events over the course of my career, and it is safe to say they have shaped my career as a contemplative scientist. During these Summer Research Institutes, scientists and contemplatives get together to discuss about issues in the field of contemplative science, but also do a lot of contemplation themselves. Unsurprisingly, this year's edition took place online.

I was not sure how an online version of this event would work out, but I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of connection that I felt with the other attendees. This was achieved by some quite inventive meeting formats. Before the meeting itself, the faculty had recorded brief (20-30 min) lectures that you could watch and ask questions about. These questions were collected on a board that allowed for upvoting of your favorite questions. Participants who presented posters had submitted PDFs and 2-minute video presentations of their posters and all gotten a Slack channel to discuss these posters during the meeting. Every day of the meeting started with contemplative practices: a choice of meditation, and a choice between chi gong, yoga and juggling. I ended up mostly not following those but taking a ballet class instead. After that, the first session was a plenary meeting with the faculty in which they briefly recapped the essence of their talks, followed by a panel discussion, partly driven by the submitted questions. There was also a brief period in which we were put in breakout rooms to discuss possible questions to ask. I must confess that during most of these sessions I ended up instead just talking to the others about their fascinating work! In the afternoons, we then had breakout groups with the day's speakers in which we discussed a bit more deeply. Before that, we would often have a fun activity, for example answering a question with one word on mentimeter that then transformed into a word cloud. The afternoon ended by bringing everyone back together with reports from the breakout groups and more general discussion. As the week progressed, there were also more and more self-organized zoom meetings for discussions and chats. As usual, there was a much-needed silent meditation day in the middle of the week which also featured a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche, who talked about his wandering retreat and meditation in general.

Now the contents of the meeting. We started the first day by talking about perception: how do we derive knowledge from the world? This questions was approached from neuroscientific, philosophical and contemplative directions. Michel Bitbol for example argued that our experience of the world is just the part we need, which is an optimal way to perceive the world, but we should remember that that is not reality. There were many discussions about how we continuously make up stories about the world, and then confuse them for reality. Yet even if science is just another story, Michel Bitbol argued that it is a very efficient way towards knowledge, for example in the case of a search for a COVID-19 vaccine.

The second day was dedicated to interoception and emotions. Holger Yeshe talked about how the Buddhist teachings give us tools to investigate where our suffering, and our negative emotions (which are the source of this suffering) come from. Micah Allen talked about interoception--the feeling of our body from the inside, and argued that many psychiatric disorders are accompanied by problems in interoception. There have been claims that meditation improves interoception, but the evidence for this is not unequivocal. He also argued that we need more replication in the field of meditation reserarch and called for a Many Labs experiment in this field. I fully agree, and I am working on a project to work towards that! On a more poetic note, Giovanna Colombetti argued that emotions are not a feeling of the body but a feeling through the body. A lot to think about!

Thursday was dedicated to embodying knowledge. All too often, we think that knowledge is just in our heads, but dancers will know that you can also know and investigate through the body--a perspective that was also shown by Asaf Bachrach and Hsuan-Hsiu Hung. Asaf Bachrach showed an intriguing experiment in which people were moving in virtual reality, where he found that people felt very calm, and he noticed that when people moved slowly, they felt more together than when moving quickly. Despite the wisdom there is to be found in movement, Guiseppe Pagnoni argued that by keeping body and mind still during meditation practice, you can detect changes in the body-mind complex with much greater precision, which affords you to be less enslaved in your habits.

The last day was dedicated to artificial intelligence. Luisa Damiano argued that in addition to the empirical cycle of scientific research, we need the synthetic cycle in which we simulate the world and explore the world in-silico. Father Tiso discussed how artificial intelligence allows us to appreciate the sphere of interconnected minds through the internet (as was indeed happening there and then during the summer research institute!). Venerable Aileen Barry summed up the Ai day very beautifully by arguing that behind every AI there is a human, and a motivation, and we should watch this motivation.

Altogether, the ESRI was a very rich and beautiful exploration of what it means to know, and what it means to connect as humans--through technology. My head was spinning by the end, and there was as always too little time to explore this richness in ideas, but it was definitely a beautiful experience. And now it is time to take that wonder into my own retreat.

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.

Transforming criticism into a gift

I find criticism one of the most challenging things in life (I know, I am pretty lucky) and also during COVID-19. For example, I find it difficult to deal with people who go into a self-righteous mode of criticizing other's over-reaction or under-reaction to the pandemic. The Lojong teachings say "Don't speak of the downfalls of others". But of course criticising the criticising is also speaking of other's downfalls. In the end, we can only change what we do and how we react to what others do.

Still from the video which is my image of a gift in ballet language: taking a bow to dedicate your dancing to the audience

Criticism is tricky, because as a was reminded of in a recent instagram post by The Whole Pointe, criticism is ballet is pretty important: it allows you to improve. In fact, traditionally often criticism by a ballet teacher is coveted because it indicates that you are seen and worthy enough to be criticised. And in science too, criticism is so important because it keeps the discussion going and allows for sharpening of arguments and the improvement of experiments, data and interpretation, as was eloquently discussed in this podcast. Yet, what I think makes the difference is the motivation underlying the criticism: is it a motivation to help, or is it instead a puritanical motivation arising out of insecurity and fear. I notice myself that often when I am in my head criticising others, I do so to feel better than them. And since the Lojong teachings are all about reducing our self-importance and increasing our altruism, this is probably the reason that criticism of others is discouraged.

I feel there is another angle to it as well. I notice in my self that those times that I criticise others more, I also tend to criticise myself more, as if I build some maladaptive mental habits. Also self-criticism is not necessarily bad, because I believe it is important to work with yourself to become a better person (in whatever you want to cultivate). The moment it becomes problematic I think is when it gets rooted in hope and fear: the hope to be this amazing person, better than everyone else, or the fear of not being good enough. What I decided to work on in the coming weeks is to watch my motivation, especially when I dance, and to shift it to giving whatever I have without hoping for any praise in return. For me such a motivation creates a tremendous sense of freedom and allows me to receive whatever reaction comes my way without being unnecessarily pained by it or elated by it.

Motivation during COVID-19

Today I want to share some thoughts on motivation in the current COVID-19 situation. Working from home is the new reality for many of us, and I find that motivation is a big topic for both myself and my students. This situation really leads us to question what our motivation really is, which I think is a good thing. At the same time, it is not easy. Normally we are often motivated simply by being in a context that expects a certain work from us, and it happens more or less automatically. Now in this situation the motivation has to come from within, and it has to withstand countless sources of distraction that varies from the news to kids (depending on your situation) and everything in-between.

picture taken on the Manali-Leh highway in India

I find the current Lojong slogan I am working with quite helpful in this respect: slogan 24 says: "Change your attitude but remain natural." Changing your attitude refers traditionally to working with your mind so it is not so much focused on hope and fear for yourself, and instead more occupied with care for others. This care for others is not so much primarily about what you do, but rather about the motivation with which you do things. For example, when you sweep the floor, you can do this with the motivation that it makes a cleaner world for all living beings, and even maybe that it clears away all the infections that beings are currently suffering from. In this way, every single thing you do can become something inspiring and meaningful. In a recent podcast, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also expressed this idea very well when she talked about how we can relate to COVID-19 not so much in terms of our hopes and fears, but rather in terms of what we can learn from it. "remain natural" refers to not displaying these efforts in an attempt to appear like the most amazingly compassionate person--because then it becomes again a self-aggrandizing effort. And besides the fact that the point of the Buddhist path is to reduce this tendency of ours to want to increase our ego, a more important reason to not want that is that whenever we engage in self-aggrandization it is also causes a lot of fear. It is more helpful to ask "how can I serve?" than to ask "how can this serve me to get ahead or to get appreciated."

I have been reflecting on these ideas in the last few days, and I found that what helps me to stay motivated (while I live and work pretty much by myself and spend about 10 hours a day in front of my computer screen) is to go back to the question "what is my motivation?" again and again. I am striving to cultivating this memory more and more, because if I reach for a new binge (my weak spot currently) and I ask "what is my motivation?" then it is just to get entertainment. If I instead work on a paper and I inquire about my motivation, then it is to help my students, or even bigger, science, ahead. If I dance, then I can do this with a motivation to nurture my body and mind, and maybe even to make others happy who see my dancing. If I post on social media, I can do this to get the likes, or instead I can just do it to benefit others without hoping for anything in return. In all these cases, the latter motivation is the bigger one and the more sustainable one.

The main thing is to keep investigating your motivation instead of just going on autopilot.It is not easy to stay with the bigger motivation to benefit the world--or to be the best person I can be, as someone put it beautifully today--but it is a beautiful aspiration!

Reflections on the covid-19 situation and Lojong

I figured the times make it almost imperative to take into account the covid-19 situation in my #lojongchallenge blog series. Thankfully, the Lojong slogans pretty much all are suitable to work with whatever situation. I found that slogan 23, "always abide by the three basic principles" also gives some useful advice to deal with the current situation.

My last trip abroad before the lockdown started in the Duomo of Milan (notice gloves!)

So let's start by breaking down this slogan: what are the three principles? Those are first to stay committed to working against self-importance, second, to not act outrageously or show off, and third, to be impartial and equanimous. Before we go into this, let me talk a bit about how I am coping with the situation. I count myself lucky because I do have a secure job, a nice place to live, and all the things that I find important can be done online in some way. It is strange to not leave the house apart from for errands and running once a week, but I am not thinking about that so much. Every day I start the working day by doing a few dances that get my blood flowing and my brain going. Then I sit down behind my computer and do the usual--meetings, e-mail, writing, except that all meetings take place in front of a computer screen rather than in real life. And then my normal past-times, ballet and Buddhist gatherings, also happen from behind the same screen. My calendar is the tool that I use to distinguish between all of those. I make sure to plan in the Buddhist gatherings and ballet classes such that they surely happen. I feel sad to not really meet people in real life, but I feel excited about learning so many new things and seeing all the creative things that people have developed.

Now back to the principles. The first principle, reducing self-importance is basically what we are all doing right now: while we may not be at too much risk for the virus, we have to give up a social life for a little while so others can stay healthy. If I work from home then the person in the hospital will better be able to manage the tremendous workload of patients. I also notice that everyone seems more aware of each other as we move around each other in the streets to maintain our 1.5m distance. While it may seem that letting go of self-importance is all about the other, it is important to realize that dropping self-importance does not mean letting go of self-care. Self-care is especially important to ensure you can be there for others. This is why I try to prioritize sleep and ballet, so I am happy and healthy.

Life at home: dancing with the vacuum cleaner

The second principle, not to act outrageously refers primarily to showing off one's spiritual practice. In a wonderful advice for these times, Khandro Rinpoche emphasises the importance of simply coming back to being kind to one another. Don't try to impress others with what a good practiioner you are. Simpler is better. What I also find helpful in this slogan is that by reducing our tendency to show off, we are reducing our own anxiety because any time we show off, we are anxious about others' responses. Good reminder to self in this age of social media, that make it so easy to get trapped in the tendency to seek for others' approval..

The last principle, maintaining equanimity is also helpful. For me it brings a lot of peace to realize that not all is in our own hands. I am currently trying to practice this by not thinking too much about what will happen in the future, and just stay with what happens day by day. Because every day things will change. I was supposed to go to India right when the lockdown happened, and most of the other things that were supposed to happen this summer--summer schools, conferences, ... have been cancelled. But who knows what the world will look like even a few weeks from now. It is surreal to think about what has happened. Never has the truth of impermanence and interdependence be so clear!

Your brain on ballet

A few months ago I attended the lecture-performance "Dancing and the Brain" at Nationale Opera and Ballet in Amsterdam. I thought it was really cool to discuss how dancing affects our brain, and join lecture with dance demonstrations. Inspired by the lecture, here is my version of dancing and the brain, with an emphasis on ballet, the form of dance with which I have most personal experience.

Cortical representations of hand and foot in Meier et al (2016)

To understand how dancing affects the brain, we need to start with discussing what dancing really is in general, and then how ballet differs from that. In general, dancing can be defined as a combination of movement, often with music, often in the service of artistic expression and conveying a certain aesthetic experience (but sometimes also a social action). As such, dancing inevitably is a training of motor coordination, which is requires coordination between many brain areas, including the parietal and premotor cortex (Cross et al., 2009). Each type of dance has a specific movement vocabulary, and when dancers watch their "own" type of dance, their ventral premotor cortex gets more active than when they watch other forms of dance (Pilgramm et al., 2010). This suggests that dancing helps to set up specific motor programs (for example, in ballet dancers it has been shown that the area of motor cortex associated with the foot has increased; Meier et al., 2016). Dance has also been shown to be associated with more sensitivity in the recognition of other's movements (Sevdalis & Keller, 2009).

In my home office

Now let's move on to the specific form of dance that is ballet. What is unique about ballet is that it consists of a very specific movement vocabulary that has changed little over the centuries. A strong emphasis is placed on the lines created by poses and movements. As such, I would expect that this is associated by a very strong sensitivity to small differences in the production and perceptions of these patterns of movement. A lot of this sensitivity is visual because ballet dancers perfect their movements largely with the help of mirrors. This is probably different in many other forms of dance that do not rely so strongly on mirrors. Moreover, because ballet involves the precise repetition of a relatively fixed movement vocabulary, this is associated with increased ability to memorize movement sequences (Smyth & Pendleton, 1994). This often happens by chunking a series of movements into bite-size pieces, which ballet dancers have been shown to be relatively good at Foley et al. 1991 . I am very curious whether this also transfer to better memory in general. I would not be surprised if ballet were a good training method for memory and cognitive control (see also van Vugt (2014) for similar ideas).

Apart from training memory and cognitive control, ballet is likely to be also excellent training for your attention. When you are in the studio, you need to focus on many pieces of information at the same time: the series of movements you are supposed to produce, the muscles you are supposed to be tensing and relaxing (while dancers have been training for years to automatize those patterns, they keep honing them every single day of their careers).

During an EEG experiment at the Night of Arts & Sciences, 2019

Apart from those technical aspects, ballet is most importantly an art, so the best part for a dancer usually comes when they can forget about the steps and totally inhabit the character or the mood that comes with the dance. They then typically forget everything around them and enter something like a flow state. I would not be surprised if ballet dancers are very good at imagination, but I have not found any studies that test that. I would predict this would lead to a strengthening of a set of brain areas called the default mode network, involving the posterior cingular cortex, medial prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe, which are all involved in creating stories in your mind, and disconnecting from outside distraction. While there have been

claims that ballet improves creative thinking, i am not so sure about that, and I think this is mostly true for those dancers who have specialized in improvisation (indeed, all the dancers in this study did, including some ballet dancers).

But ballet is not typically something you only do by yourself. In fact, one of the most beautiful things about ballet is when the corps the ballet moves in perfect synchrony, such as the entry of the shades in La Bayadere. To make this happen, dancers need to be highly aware of the dancers that are in front of them, to the side, and behind them. In fact, they are even told to breathe together. As such, I would strongly suspect that not only their bodies synchronize, but even their brains synchronize (here is a video where I talk about inter-brain synchrony in dancers.

A final unique aspect of ballet is the extreme balance expertise required, Women even balance on the tips of their toes! Recent research has shown that dancers are better at balancing than non-dancers (Burzynska et al., 2017). Such balancing expertise was associated with changes in dancers' hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus (thought to be crucial for orientation in space), insula (thought to be important for feeling sensations inside your body)Dordevic et al., 2018).

Brain areas larger in ballet dancers than in controls (from Dordevic et al., 2018)

, and cingulate motor cortex (

In summary, dance, and in particular ballet, is great for lots of things. Indeed, I found that in the last few weeks, when I was stuck at home due to the covid-19 situation, ballet was really my outlet and saving grace. The good news is that dance in general, and ballet in specific is nowadays also used in interventions for diseases such as Parkinsons (read more here). It has also been found that people who have been dancing their whole life tend to suffer less from dementia and age-related cognitive decline (Verghese et al., 2003). So, keep dancing!

A sticky virus

Just like the rest of the world, my life in the last few weeks has been turned around by the virus. What stunned me was how sticky the thoughts about the virus are (quite "viral" in fact). I do a lot of research into sticky thinking--thoughts that keep creeping into our minds that make it really difficult to focus. We have shown that when people are distracted by thoughts that they find difficult to let go of leads to substantial drops in task performance and increases in the variability of response times. More recently, we also showed that such "sticky thinking" was associated with reduced pupil responses to incoming stimuli. In essence, we think this means that your mind decouples from the environment. So, no wonder that a lot of people find it difficult to concentrate in this time of covid-19.

Another way I "unstick" myself is through dancing. Here you can see me in India.

Quite fittingly, these days I am working with the slogan from the #lojongchallenge that says: "If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained." This is the perfect time to test how we practice when being distracted. In a way, the current situation with all its uncertainty is probably not unlike what is called the "bardo" in Tibetan Buddhism. The bardo is the period between dying and the subsequent rebirth--it is a period where nothing is certain and everything can change. And such situations tend to evoke a lot of anxiety--a very "effective" sticky thought. Of course this can be quite adaptive, because in uncertain situations there can be danger, and then you need to be alert about that. However, if there is nothing you can do in such a situation, then this sticky thinking does not really help and leads to a lot of stress and anxiety. For this reason, I find that in the last weeks, practices of loving kindness and compassion are helpful. They lead me to focus not on myself, but on other people, and get me out of the stickiness. Moreover, they give me energy by making me feel that I can do something useful for the world in this uncertain situation. And such practices can be very simple: repeating silently "may you be happy, may you be safe, may you live with ease" is all that is needed for loving kindness. See this page for some nice examples and further explanation. Because if we can practice loving kindness and compassion in this situation, then we are not only well-trained, but probably a lot more resilient as well.

Contemplating sustainable happiness in Vienna

I decided to contemplate the next slogan--"always maintain only a joyful mind" during a trip to Vienna. Now you might say: that is really easy: Vienna is a gorgeous city, so it's no challenge to be happy. This is certainly true. However, it was not that trivial. I went there for work: to discuss the future of Mind and Life Europe. Mind and Life is an organization that grew out of a series of dialogues between the Dalai Lama and scientists. So how does work relate to maintaining a joyful mind?

Let's first unpack the slogan. Maintaining only a joyful mind does not mean that you always need to be smiling and ignore all the sadness and difficulty that is abound in life. It does mean that you do not completely wallow in feeling sorry for yourself. After all, as His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, when there is something to solve a problem, do it, and when there is nothing you can do, it does not help to feel sad about it either. So this attitude of maintaining a joyful mind is the mind that considers everything as workable. Usually this attitude makes even difficult things easier. I got to practise this today on my flight back from Vienna. The flight was kept on an indefinite hold because of stormy weather in Amsterdam. Thankfully enough, my mind actually was quite OK throughout it all. It's not actually that bad to hang out at the airport if you just focus on the moment (and happily plough through the infinite amount of work that is always present). And as I am writing this, I am sitting on the plane, which now has gotten a delayed departure time after all.

Nevertheless, the more important dimension of maintaining a joyful mind became clear to me over the course of the meeting. We were reflecting on what makes Mind and Life events so special. I felt that a crucial ingredient is that it connects us to a dimension of life that we find deeply meaningful. While eating a Sachertorte, which we also did during the meeting, is lovely, this pleasure is only very temporary. In contrast, when you are engaging into work that puts into practice your deepest human values (which for a Buddhist practitioner is mostly cultivating compassion for all living beings, as well as wisdom), this feels very gratifying. When my academic work aligns with these values, in which wisdom may be operationalized as simply learning more about the nature of the human mind, and compassion as doing research that matters and brings benefit to beings, or teaching that gives insight and knowledge to others, then I feel happy for a much longer time. Moreover, by breaking down the boundaries between work and spiritual practice, there is less of a feeling of stress because work becomes just another way to engage in spiritual practice, rather than a competitor for our time. In this way, I think figuring out a way to align one's work to true human values is a way to "always maintain a joyful mind", and also a recipe against burnout.

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!

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...