Mindfulness as a Means for Happiness

Our guest blogger this week is David Weinberg, founder and president of StressCare, a non-profit organization in the East Bay. We hosted a benefit dinner for a non-profit called Stress-Care.  They offer low income care for those that need it with a focus on healing through mindfulness.  Having spoken with so many people who have shared that they are experiencing personal angst with the world today, I realize how pertinent this is. Self-care is the basis for health and ultimately happiness. Read his thoughts and tips about stress below. -JenniferPerspectives on StressWe all want to be happy and avoid suffering, says the Dalai Lama, and that’s what makes us the same. Of course, visions of happiness are as variable as people are. A very common wish expressed by many people these days is to be less burdened by stress.

Stress as a response

Stress is a response to pressure—any kind of pressure—an unfamiliar demand, time contraints, crowding, inner or interpersonal conflict, judgment, physical pain and so much more.Stress may be welcome: the excitement of concentrating on an interesting activity, and the energy boost that comes with it. Unwelcome stress: anxiety, helplessness, exhaustion, despondency,  causes distress.  Distress is suffering; it’s what we try to avoid, eliminate, control, surmount…somehow. None of us could survive, let alone flourish, without the capacity to respond to pressure. But the response is what drives our emotions. (Read more about stress.)

The Paradox of Happiness

The paradox of happiness is that striving for it usually precludes it. Desperate striving, driven by intense unhappiness, defeats its purpose. It’s as though happiness is a prerequisite for itself! So, what kind of happiness can we actually hope to accomplish? Can happiness be ‘accomplished’?The bad news about stress, if it is a response, is that we are responsible. That can be mistaken to mean that we are at fault, faulty, and reinforce our suffering with guilt. The good news is the same as the bad news: if stress is a response, then we are response-able, we can actually do something about our lives, though the doing may be quite different from what we first imagine.

“Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.”  ― Jane Hirshfield

Everything is Changing

Constant change is our basic condition.  We experience changes in our bodies, feelings, other people, cultures. The only constant is that we are all born and we all die. Nothing stands still. We can’t get a lasting fix on things, let alone control them. Sure, in the outer world we can sometimes grasp physical objects and processes long enough to actually accomplish stuff, sometimes with amazing results. Just look at your phone.But the inner world of feelings, sensations, thoughts, impulses, etc.—we cannot stop that flow. There are no switches or dials for selecting the desired emotion and setting a comfort level, like your house thermostat. With enormous concentration one can stop the inner flow for a moment or two, but the effort and training required is life-consuming, just to subdue ordinary mental functioning! Who would want to live like that?

Everything is Connected

We often experience our lives, as well as the people and things and ideas and feelings that comprise our lives, as existing quite separately and independently from one another. Hirschfield declares quite simply that, actually, nothing exists separately at all, but only in relation to everything else! This is a little hard to take in, but the statement reflects ancient wisdom and cutting edge science.As humans, the nice part of being related is that we are not alone. We exist with others in a web of inter-connectedness—a source of comfort, belonging, and meaning that is life giving. Of course, being related also can be troublesome. We may not like the ‘others’ that we are so comprehensively related with: people, things, physical events, organizations, obligations, global phenomena, and the like. These others are not easily controlled in the ways we would like to control them. They’re unpredictable—they don’t stand still, and they’re incredibly complicated!

It’s Not Personal

If we look at ourselves, our inner experience, and the world around us carefully enough, we will see for ourselves that everything is changing, moment to moment, and that we really are intimately connected. It’s just the way things are. It’s not your fault; it’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s not personal.And if you look really deeply—with a mind of insight and intuition and careful logic—you will see that you yourself, and others, and everything around you, and maybe everything there is, really exist only as their relationships with everything else. There just may be more relatedness than we can conceive of. Again, it’s not personal.At the same time, we humans also have our measure of autonomy and independence. Within continuous change and relatedness, we are independent beings. To a remarkable degree, we can choose when and how to act; that is, we are response-able beings.Shunryu Suzuki, a famous Zen master, described our state as “independency”

First Student:Roshi, when you say “independency,” I’m confused as to whether you mean “independence” or “interdependency.” Suzuki Roshi: “Independency.” Excuse me. “Interdependency” is more like “dependency.” read more here.

Pay Attention!

How can we humans navigate worlds of change, relatedness and autonomy—with tolerable stress—and be happy? The ways are simple, practical, subtle and profound. Hirschfield says: Pay attention! Pay attention how? And to what?For 20 years my colleagues and I at StressCare have been leading 8-week stress reduction courses based on the model developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center’s Center for Mindfulness. The course is a very effective way of introducing ordinary stressed out Americans (and other people all over the world) to meditative practices that help them deal with anguish, stress and pain of all kinds. It’s simple, non-invasive, and inexpensive.The method used is called mindfulness or mindfulness meditation. It includes guided and silent meditation as well as mindfulness in everyday life. Apart from the language used to present it in class, it is essentially the same as meditative practices taught in traditional settings for two thousand years or more.

Meditation is a way of realizing the fundamental truth… that we can discover ourselves, we can work on ourselves. The goal is the path and the path is the goal… when we talk about meditation, we are talking about a way of being. — Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Path is the Goal

Mindfulness relieves the burden of struggling and straining for happiness. It involves a shift of perspective from the past—ideas, expectations, regrets, habits, favorite storylines—and also from an imagined future—anticipations, worries, projections—toward what is actually happening in ourselves and around us, now, as we relate with people, events and things.

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation starts by learning how to voluntarily direct attention to chosen objects for a few moments or longer. ‘Objects’ include bodily sensations, sounds, the breath, one’s own thoughts and feelings, impulses, images, and so on.People who say they can’t meditate generally are confused about what meditation is and what “should” be happening when they’re meditating. For example, they think that thinking and feeling should stop and, if they don’t stop, then they’re not meditating, they’re failing. But thinking and feeling, while they may pause occasionally, generally don’t stop for long. Trying to make them stop is fruitless—usually resulting in the opposite.Subject ‘I’ pays attention to ‘object’ breath, say. Once a basic level of proficiency is achieved, the meditator can relax the focus of attention so that whatever appears in the field of awareness is the ‘object’; or you could say, there is no chosen object. One is simply relaxed and aware. Over time, the relationship of subject to object becomes more refined and, in a sense, disappears. Ordinary duality morphs into a kind of oneness of subject, object, action.

Meditative State

This meditative state is both wonderful to experience, and it is ordinary—actually it is our most natural condition! We begin to function as a more balanced, loving, relaxed and joyous human—relating to the storms and stresses of life from a profoundly different perspective within the flow of events. Happiness is within reach!Even so, mindfulness has to be practiced steadily in meditation, and it has to be practiced steadily in the midst of ordinary life. Without meditation, mindfulness fades; without application it becomes isolated and sterile. This does require some discipline, but most people are disciplined enough already. A light touch is enough. (Read more about mindfulness.)

Meditation is Perspective

Actually, meditation is about 5% technique and 95% attitude or perspective. The technique is pretty easy. Lots of refinements are possible, but not necessary. Paying attention is something most of us can do pretty well already.But attitude and perspective—beliefs, assumptions, expectations, opinions, perceptual patterns, preconceptions, biases—are another matter. Just to get started, the would-be meditator must be disabused of expectations about the absence or prevalence of thoughts and feelings in the mind during meditation and what should be done about them (nothing!).Similarly, the novice meditator has to get clear that while a certain amount of effort is required, too much effort—straining—is counter-productive. Being fixated on this or that desired outcome also is not helpful. It’s better to think of practicing meditation for its own sake. Let the results—mostly very positive—appear in their own time. This suspension of common goal-driven behavior is tricky. It does not mean one should seek to get rid of (or pretend not to have) aspirations and desires. That’s like thinking of not having thoughts!So, the attitude portion, the perspective, the 95%, is a lifetime’s practice of observation, acceptance, insight and beneficial behavior. Trungpa says “The goal is the path and the path is the goal”—truly the work of a lifetime—beautiful, meaningful, rich with benefit and challenge.To walk this road gives the satisfaction of living fully, sanely, beneficially. It brings meaning, whether life circumstances are easy or hard. Positive results—the happiness we long for—appear in their own time. Engaging mindfully with so-called others—not as “other” as they first seemed—brings us to life. (Read more about well-being.) Share examples of mindfulness from your life.