Insight Meditation

Training the mind is a necessity because, as I have mentioned before, the mind makes a poor master but a great servant. We are training the mind so it doesn’t wander all over the place, and so we can focus on what really matters.

Everything thrives on attention. With attention we can uncover deep, habitual patterns in the mind and body, and by bringing everything into the light of consciousness, we can examine and understand them. Without this training we get caught in our fears, delusion, and greed, an endless, repetitive loop, which is also called the wheel of suffering, or samsara.

By training the mind, we not only discover much about ourselves, but also find that we can make conscious what usually is on automatic pilot.

It is said that every human being will be given 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows during their lifetime. No amount of practice or magic pill will alter that amount. We all experience some joy and some suffering. The problem is when we create more suffering than is necessary.

Over time, our mindfulness practice creates that pause, the moment where we get to examine our reaction and choose how to proceed.

This is the promise and power of the practice.

I took to vipassana like a fish takes to water. Up until then I had been trained to focus the mind by using a mantra. And while this is a beautiful practice and I still use it at times, it didn’t work for me as a basic training. I always felt like I was covering something up by putting a nice, exotic mantra on top. The whole exercise felt more like an escape from my reality, which didn’t feel right to me. With vipassana practice, any presentation of the body/mind becomes the sacred mantra. We patiently, and with great interest, look at whatever occupies our heart and mind. I loved giving myself this kind of careful attention and respect, because I have always believed that the answer lies within.

Mindfulness is a loving and non-judging awareness. We soon realize that most of the times we react to what is happening in three different ways:

• When we like what is happening we instinctively try to get more. This is called grasping, or, in its basic form, greed.
• When we don’t like what is happening, we push it away immediately. This is called aversion.
• When our experience is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, we simply ignore it. This is called delusion.

These are the typical automatic responses of an untrained mind to experiences we have. If we look at the state of affairs in the world, we see that these three types of reactions are huge forces operating everywhere, among all peoples.

Not everything that seems unpleasant is bad for us, and not everything that is pleasant turns out to be good.

I like to use the example of ice cream. For most people eating ice cream is an intensely pleasurable experience. If we are on automatic pilot, we might eat the entire pint of ice cream. It tastes good, but later we will probably regret it. If we eat with awareness, not only do we actually enjoy each spoon, but we also get to stop before it’s too much.

Mindfulness is like a wrench thrown into the automatic response of grasping. And the benefit is that mindfulness actually turns greed and grasping into gratitude instead.

With unpleasant experiences we can use the example of "swallowing the bitter pill." We all know we have to take it sometimes in order to get well again. Even though we want to push away the bitter remedy, we take it, knowing it is for our own good.

Mindfulness is like a wrench thrown into the automatic response of aversion. The benefit is that mindfulness turns aversion into compassion.

When our experience is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, we tend to ignore it and so miss out on many beautiful moments. Many of us are addicted to drama, and if we don’t feel something intensely, we think it is not valid. When we learn to rest in the quiet moments without the intensity we can once again appreciate contentment. The benefit is that mindfulness turns delusion into contentment and spaciousness.

Summer 2008 Newsletter

Dear Sangha,

I hope you are all well and happy. The conscious cultivation of happiness is perhaps the most radical practice that we can do in such a troubled world. I am engaged in just that, as I have recently moved into a beautiful house located in a sweet neighborhood in Berkeley. For the first time in many years I am living in a neighborhood where I can bike everywhere and go for a stroll whenever I have the desire. What a pleasure it is to not have to drive — to decrease my carbon footprint on this earth. Not to mention, the welcomed absence of nightly gunshots we heard from inside our previous home in West Oakland, some of which were literally outside our door, and, the occasional driver who tried to run me over when I went outside! I don’t think I have slept so well since I left Switzerland at the age of 20.

I don’t know why it took me so long to move out of West Oakland. Perhaps it was some underlying guilt about the privileges I enjoy, along with the belief that, “I can get by and make anything work,” which my beloved friend Julia Butterfly pointed out to me.

So lately, the theme appearing in my classes has been recognizing where in our lives we hold ourselves back, where we keep from moving into something greater which we have created for ourselves, and, how when we do allow ourselves to exist in our fullest form at any moment, we expand into a new level of being, and, finally, how to maintain this new space. It is so easy to come up with reasons for why we don’t deserve something we have achieved, even when it is a goal for which we have been striving for ages. As a result, we may sabotage good things that happen to us!

Yoga gives us the tools to shed light on these unconscious patterns, in which we all engage, and offers to us a way of breaking these habits. Yoga is like the proverbial wrench thrown into the wheel of Samsara, translated as the never-ending cycle of suffering. I am learning to enjoy the benefits of my own hard work, welcoming success into my life instead of shying away from it. However, I do not forget another facet of the practice that is so vital to my every day life – the social, or spiritual activism that yoga inspires within me.

When I reflect on my life, I see that engaging with my community in the form of volunteering has been a constant for me. For example, when I was living on the outskirts of the Morro de Santa Marta Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I was deeply involved with the people and the environment around me. Daisy, the woman who lived downstairs from us, often cared for kids from the slum while their mom or dad went to work. We cooked for, and fed those children.

Today, I continue to acknowledge and serve the varied communities around me. While Berkeley is a beautiful haven supporting and nourishing me tremendously, in the surrounding environs, there is much work to be done. This commitment to living with my eyes wide open to my community has led me to the most inspiring Karma Yoga practice at San Quentin Prison. Besides having a green card, which means I’m a “legal alien” of the United States, I am now also the proud carrier of a brown card, which gives me access to San Quentin without supervision! Every other week I teach yoga to Trust participants — 15 to 20 men in San Quentin serving life sentences — to help them with physical discomfort, health issues and, of course, to offer spiritual counsel.

My incredibly talented friend and filmmaker, Tamara Perkins, is shooting a documentary about the Trust, a program at San Quentin that focuses on rehabilitation and re-integration of the men in prison. The trailer is quite moving. Please take the opportunity to see the group of men (outside, I call them affectionately “my guys”) to whom I have been teaching yoga:

http://www.trustcommunity.org/TrustCommunity/trailer.html.

May you be well and full of happiness, and may you find the fulfillment you deserve, Katchie Ananda