The mindful teacher

Photo by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash Life has a way of knocking us  flat at times -  but for some, that's not just metaphor.  Recently my friend Michele told me a story about just that: being knocked flat in a violent encounter during a broom ball match. As she was scrambling after the ball, a member of the opposing team crashed into her hockey style, tripping her  and knocking her flat on the ice. She was  left with  with painful bruises on her side. She experienced a wave of intense anger flow through her. She "saw red",  and  noticed an impulse to strike back at her aggressor, whom she was sure made the hit intentionally. Her natural  impulse  to fight or flee was fully online, "completely out of the ordinary", as she says.  But what really made her story memorable was what she did - and didn't do- next. After the hit,  she paused and said out loud, "I am experiencing rage right now!" She watched her rage- and though...

I met Tom Odland my freshman year at St. Olaf college in 1977. He was a typical college kid, full of life and had a great sense of humor. He was a talented trumpet player too, and was always after  me to sit and listen to his latest jazz hero. (He was part of  a small band that played Mexican and traditional rock music which I remember dancing to and having a ball.) Tom eventually left St. Olaf, to continue his studies at the University of Minnesota, eventually becoming a successful research scientist for St. Jude's Medical for ten years. After that, he worked for a German medical company and later, went on his own as a consultant.  He was happily married, with a wife and four  daughters, when tragedy struck.  While fixing a toilet one day,  he realized something was going terribly wrong. When he tried to grasp a plunger with his right arm, he couldn't hold it. With his knowledge of biology, he figured he was having a stroke.  By some miracle, he...

Enlightenment comes in many shapes and sizes. The classic story of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, or  Sir Isaac Newton getting hit  on the head with an apple, come to mind as examples of  insights that changed the course of history.  Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash      But for most of us, insights come in more modest packaging. And  like the previous examples, they can come after months or years of preparation.  Suddenly, one day, we see something differently that changes our lives.  I recall a moment  many years ago,  when something I knew intellectually, abstractly, I suddenly knew with my whole being.   One of my own breakthroughs came as I was sitting on a noisy bus.  I had been struggling with anxiety, and here I was again, feeling jittery.  And then, it hit me:  I don't have to do anything. I can just let these feelings be there.  Bam...

I f you ask most kids to clean up their room, they're going to say, "No way", or be out  the door before you can finish your sentence. But when I was little, my older sister had an ingenious way of getting us to pick up the house.  We'd be hanging out in the living room, and suddenly Sherry (my older sister) would announce, "Would you guys like to play "king and queen' ?" We would leap to our feet, all excited, and ready to go.  She would then exclaim  in solemn tones, "King, I command you to go over and pick up that stuffed teddy bear"- or whatever the thing lying around was- and I would reply,  "Yes, your majesty", and run off to pick up the aforementioned item. Then it would be my little sister's turn. She would take her order and  run to pick up the next thing- and in a few minutes, the whole living room  would be clean, and my sister had achieved her goal of a tidy living space.    In her creative way, my sister had ...

Photo by Steven Kamenar on Unsplash I've taken hundreds of walks through the woods near my home but yesterday was  different. About an hour in to my hike, I looked up and saw a tall young man with red hair coming at me. He reached up with one hand, as if he wanted to "high five" me. OK , I thought, and I reached up with my own hand to give it back to him.  Suddenly, he grabbed my hand, and started to pull me toward him. He began entwining his fingers in mine, tugging on me to come close to him. I couldn't read his facial expression, or what his intent was. Before I knew it, we were chest to chest, as he grabbed my other hand too. I felt confusion and concern kick in, but also the thought, stay present here . And I did.  I felt his shirt press against mine, and noticed the slight smell emanating from his chest. I was determined to stay in touch with what I was experiencing- a sudden and bizarre dance in the woods.  Within seconds, a smiling young woman with bro...

When people introduce mindfulness, it's common to use a definition  credited to Jon Kabat-Zinn:  "Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally."  But lately, I've been exploring the historical roots of the word Sati , which is the ancient Pali word  translated as mindfulness. Experts tell us  that the true definition of this term is more like "remembering", or "recollection."   T here seems to be an obvious and intimate connection between awareness and remembering. We probably won't remember  what we aren't aware of in the first place. And we often need to remember what we are doing, where we are, or what we're supposed to be paying attention to.  It could be argued that mindfulness  is the practice of remembering . We sit down, select an anchor, (like the breath or the whole body), and remember our anchor, over and over. The mind wanders off somewhere, there is a momen...

Recently I visited my older sister and her family in Indiana for a visit over the 4th of July. We enjoyed the usual family dinners and conversation. All in all, a great time.  While we were getting ourselves settled in, she made an interesting request. She asked us to close the doors very quietly- demonstrating as she spoke. Members of her household slept at different times, and she didn't want us waking anyone with doors being slammed carelessly.  "Sure", I said. That was no problem.  Suddenly I remembered that opening and closing doors is  a mindfulness practice with a long tradition. In his essay,  "Closing doors", Ben Howard relates the story of when Thomas Merton, the famous Catholic monk first met Zen teacher  Thich Nhat Hanh in 1996. When Merton observed how Hanh  opened and closed doors, he could tell that he was the real deal, an "authentic monk."  We often forget that the true  purpose of mindfulness is to bring attention to o...