I did it! I finally finished typing up my 20-ish pages of longhand notes from mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn's keynote and workshop at the conference I went to in March! He was a great speaker and teacher: deep, intelligent, mindful of course, funny, and irreverent. Here are some of my favorite quotes/phrases/sound bites, with beautifully messy notes from the entire day following behind the jump.
“If you check your watch, you’ll notice that once again, it’s now.”
"We're running, running, running, straight into our graves. Maybe it's time to stop."
"What is happiness? Something you get when the right conditions arise? Or a way to be in wise relationship with the reality of things?"
"This is too serious to take too seriously.”
"We are drowning in the stream of our own self-centered, self-conscious narrative of how we think it should be – always striving to get elsewhere, missing where you are."
"Often when we are doing an activity, instead of just being, we are 'selfing' – a form of ignoring."
"Meditation shifts the 'default network' in the brain from mind-wandering, me, how happy I’d be if conditions were different, to HERE."
" 'I’ll have what she’s having' – no! Have what you’re having, one hundred percent."
"The experience you’re having is pretty phenomenal simply because you’re alive!"
"Have you noticed how convinced your thoughts are of their own value? They are 24/7 creating your reality! There’s a huge amount of suffering in that."
"Mindfulness is stringing moments of presence together."
"Being human is messy, it hurts, it’s very real, in some ways beyond understanding. What could be better? This is it."
"Is X actually true, or a story you tell yourself about how you relate to X?"
"A real meditation practice is not sitting in the full lotus like a statue in the British Museum. It’s about how we live our lives in relationship to whatever is happening."
"There is a whole landscape of being that we haven’t been trained to inhabit."
"Unpleasantness has showed up at the guest house [referencing the Rumi poem]. Fantastic! Put out the welcome mat...If you have a host of sorrows, that’s okay, that’s the curriculum."
"Let’s have a little less talk about compassion, and a lot more compassion. A lot less talk about mindfulness, and a lot more mindfulness."
"We need to study what mindfulness is in a lot of ways and get our ass on the cushion a lot longer than what we think is good for us."
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, March 27, 2015
KEYNOTE
“Let the Beauty We
Love Be What We Do” (from a Rumi poem)
-Explosive, exponential growth of mindfulness-related
publications in the past 10-15 years (even excluding ACT and DBT)
-By the time the conference is over, maybe you will have
arrived!
-Your body has gotten you this far – it’s trustworthy –
gratitude
-It’s not about the attention, but the attending – rest with
no other agenda than being in this moment
-What would it be like to show up to yourself in this, the
only moment any of us ever have?
-Underneath all the speech the silence is here anyway.
-Imagine if you took care of calibrating and tuning your own
instrument before you take it out into the maelstrom (i.e., what would the
world be like if everyone meditated and did yoga?)
-Working with what you have, being who you are
-When working as a team, it’s about collective engagement
-Not about being a “better” I or Me, but about my
relationship with Me/my body
-Have you noticed that you have a body? Who is the you that
has a body?
-You have a mind, right? Show me your mind, produce it…
-There is a whole landscape of being that we haven’t been
trained to inhabit
-You can’t possibly become the Buddha or the Dalai Lama. The
best you can do is be yourself, know who that is.
-In all Asian languages, “mind” and “heart” are the same
word. So, “mindfulness” = “HEARTfulness”
-Mindfulness is the radical gesture of recognition of the
fact that you don’t have to become Buddha
-Just stopping is a radical act in this day and age
-I was with Oprah and she asked me about life after death.
The question should be, “Is there life before
death?”
-A real meditation practice is not sitting in the full lotus
like a statue in the British Museum. It’s about how we live our lives in
relationship to whatever is happening.
-So, in a word, mindfulness = relationality. It’s a
recognition of how we could be if we got out of our own way.
-What is my true way (aka Tao)?
-Aware
enough to realize how we are getting in our own way
-Then, “write a tiny restraining
order,” desist, don't bum yourself out with condemnation
-Formal meditation practice is the lab. Right in your head,
it’s like you have over 500 channels of the best cable programming, and you
have this chance to be in relationship with it
-It’s not about the breath or any
other object, but the attending and
the multiverse – it’s there,
befriend it, recognize it, learn how to inhabit that domain of being (versus thinking and emoting)
THERAPY
-What do people want in therapy? To be SEEN, MET, HEARD and
FELT (not just listened to)
-You can’t
do that if your own instrument is lost in thought!
-You’ve got another human being in
front of you – people are sensitive and can pick up on every nuance
-You want to play Mozart? Better
practice. Human? Better practice.
-It’s not like there’s some faulty part of your brain that
you just need to reach in and scoop out (to become more mindful) – psychiatry
has already been there and done that
-Being self-centered takes energy!
-There are other networks of the brain where there is no
time, just this moment
-Everyone you’re seeing in therapy is a human with a unique
experience, even if you can categorize those experiences (e.g., depression)
-This is not your “thousand-and-first trauma patient”
-You can hold that trauma (or whatever else) in trust for
them – holding the beauty, wholeness of the human in front of you no matter
what’s wrong with them
-They may not even know there’s something under all their
scars
BUDDHISM/MINDFULNESS/CALL
-A Chinese Zen master I was meeting for the first time
learned about MBSR. He said, if there are infinite numbers of ways people
suffer, there must be infinite numbers of ways to offer them dharma
(compassion/wisdom)
-Often when we are doing an activity instead of just being,
we are “selfing” – a form of ignoring
-I’m not a Buddhist and I’m not trying to turn anyone into a
Buddhist. We are already Buddhas, that is, humans. Buddha wasn’t Buddhist.
-What’s your true calling on this planet beyond what you do?
-There’s a huge difference between Buddhism and what Buddha
taught (dharma)
-Galileo
discovered gravity, but it doesn’t just work in Italy
-Buddha discovered a lawfulness
(also dharma) about the way the mind works, and it’s not just for the people of
the Indian subcontinent 2600 years ago
-In this world you have to be patient – do the thing you’re
supposed to do over and over, and sometimes eventually the world will hear and
feel it
-neuroscience research now on
structural brain changes associated with meditation, as well as changes in
learning, memory, etc.
-“Now that’s a bad reason to want
to meditate – to make your amygdala thinner!”
HUMANS ARE AMAZING/MORE ON THERAPY
-You have the most complex arrangement of matter in the
known universe in your little head! You’re the most extraordinary emergence in
the entire universe as we know it.
-There’s more that is right with you than wrong with you, no
matter what is wrong with you.
-We’re all the teachers, reflecting each other’s beauty
-All of us could use a little fine-tuning – there’s no one
who can point the finger at anyone else
-On ethics in hospitals/therapy: “How the hell will you even
know if you’re doing harm unless you’re awake?”
-There’s no improving on perfection – you’re not “fixing”
anybody – you’re perfect with all your imperfections
INSPIRATION MOVING FORWARD
-“Let’s have a little less talk about compassion, and a lot
more compassion. A lot less talk about mindfulness, and a lot more
mindfulness.”
-“What use is mindfulness in an unjust world?” (talk with
Angela Davis)
-The world is STARVING for us to
show up in our fullness as human beings and be who we are because it’s over
really quickly
-There’s only one hero of the
moment, and that’s you, but not if you think you’re a hero.”
-There are hundreds of ways to
kneel and kiss the earth.” –Rumi
---------------------------------
AM WORKSHOP
THOUGHTS ON MEDITATION
-If it were up to you to breathe, you’d have died a long
time ago
-It’s not supposed to feel a certain way – it is the way it
is
-Surfing on the waves of the breath sensations in the mouth,
or maybe in the belly, AWAY from the head!
-The experience you’re having is pretty phenomenal simply
because you’re alive
-If you get bored, make your boredom the object of your
attention. How does it feel in the body? Cognitive aspects? Boredom could
become the most interesting thing on the planet!
-Not striving for any special state – the state you’re
already in is special enough. You’re alive, you’re breathing.
-“I’ll have what she’s having” – no! Have what you’re
having, 100%.
-There are infinite narratives/dreams you could get lost in.
When you notice that your mind is off elsewhere, notice what’s on your mind,
what galaxy you’ve drifted off to
-Then, without criticizing yourself, lovingly haul your
attention back
-You all are the atmospheric conditions in your offices.
There are an infinite number of weather patterns that torture us.
-Key to the cage: know it, don’t fix or change it, bring
attention back with the same degree of care and kindness each time
-If you notice yourself judging, don’t judge the judging
-“If you check your watch, you’ll notice that once again
it’s now.”
-You don’t have to edit your thoughts – be the knowing that
awareness is and watch all of it (greed, jealousy, whatever) dissolve to the
degree that it does
-The curriculum is you, it always unfolds in this moment
because there is no other moment
-The past is gone, the future is not here yet (though, of
course, we can be in wise relationship w/the past)
-It’s a radical act of self-love to engage in being present,
watching the self, ministering to it so it’s encouraged to find a place to
accept itself as it is
-Rest in awareness and be informed by the whole show. It’s
like looking at infinite reflections in a mirror
-Cultivating the hidden characteristics of our own awareness
-“Are we meditating or am I giving a talk? What’s going on
here? There’s no separation if we’re present, inviting our selves to be at
least a modicum open-hearted.”
-Be awake – no. Just be.
-Sometimes the phones run our lives, we need the phone to
know where we’re supposed to be – you’re supposed to be HERE!
-Imagine if we let the doing come out of our being – the
choice and the how
-your awareness can be fluid – telephoto or panoramic,
breath or whole body
-there are four classical meditation approaches: lying,
sitting, standing, walking (Renée’s thought – what else is there? You can be
meditating all the time!)
-Why did you really come to this workshop? Is it because
mindfulness is hot? That SUCKS as a reason. It’s about DISidentifying.
-If you really excavate why you’re here – maybe it’s longing
and maybe it’s love.
-If you don’t know why, that’s a higher state of
consciousness bringing you here – honor that intuition.
-We are drowning in the stream of our own self-centered,
self-conscious narrative of how we think it should be – always striving to get
elsewhere, missing where you are
-Discussion of Thoreau
-Sherry Turkey at MIT’s book, “Reclaiming Conversation” (her
last book, “Alone Together,” is about technology and our relationships)
-Pretty soon you’ll have to call yourself up on a
mindfulness app – “Hello, John, are you present?”
-We’re running, running, running straight into our graves –
maybe it’s time to stop!
-Meditation for therapists – “You’re listening to everybody
else, why not listen to yourself?”
-The occupational hazard of being a therapist is everyone
else thinks you know what you’re doing. Not-knowing is much more powerful,
allows you to drop it and be available (versus running your secret agenda in
your head)
-Corpse pose – die now, get it over with – die to the
small-minded personal pronouns (me, my, etc.). Anything beyond this is gravy.
Got this idea from Buckminster Fuller, who was suicidal after a series of
failed personal and professional failures:
-He asked himself, what if I threw
myself off this bridge right now? Death is beyond success and failure.
-What is the world starving for
that I can do, being me? If it fails, it doesn’t matter, because I’m dead.
-He coined “Spaceship Earth” – and
what do we do most of the time? Try to kill each other and destroy our home
like there’s another one we can conveniently move to.
-This is mindfulness applied to the
body politic.
AM Q+A:
-Question from a woman living w/chronic pain.
-“It’s not a thing, it’s a process”
-Do you live in a world of nouns or verbs?
-The silence is never not here
-How are we to be in relationship to an unwanted sensory
experience (e.g., pain)?
-How to work with it, paradoxical. Coping = awareness-ing.
-MBSR is about rehabilitation (French habiter, to live) –
how to live inside/inhabit the pain
-“See if you can stay with the breath and just let the pain
do whatever it does”
-healing (coming to terms with things as they are) vs.
curing (make it go away, make me the way I was)
-wisdom would ask, “how am I to be in relationship with
this?”
-“this pain
is killing me” – treat it as a lab. Is it true? Now? Is it really?
-“It’s not killing me in this
moment but it’s continuing, how can I live with this?”
-Radical, flying
under convention – put the welcome mat out for the pain
-“Can you
befriend the sensations in this moment if they’re unwanted?”
-Embracing
w/o wishing it were different
-Does my
awareness of the pain = suffering? Do I need something else?
-Turning toward what we most want to turn away from, resting
in awareness, not forcing, letting it teach us
-Rumi’s “Guest House” poem
-Investigate the unwanted – who is it that doesn't want it?
(R: I forget the question that brought about this next bit,
but here it is)
-We’re not writing a script, we’re interacting with the
unfolding. It’s not all understandable. We need a relationship with it that
allows us to move forward.
-how to align ourselves with the way it is?
-asking yourself – “is this an elaborate way of avoiding?”
Anything can be meditation if you show up and simply observe. It’s good to
question. Sense of being part of a larger whole, interconnectedness. Even if
you’re missing body parts, you’re still all of a human being.
-To anxious lady asking a question: “If you’re incomplete,
say more.”
-We’re all miraculous beings. We’re all connected. How can
we make use of that? Conventional modes of thought are often very limiting.
-“My place is placeless” – from a Rumi poem
-Transforming/transcending the essence of the suffering
-I’ve never encountered anything more profound/amazing in
human life. Can’t pretend I understand it all.
***”We need to study what mindfulness is in a lot of ways
and get our ass on the cushion a lot longer than what we think is good for
us.”***
-To another anxious question-asker: “You’re asking ME like I
am the authority on YOU.”
-If you make the space of your heart big enough, you’re
never not alone.
-I’ve been meditating for an infinite number of moments, and
no time at all.
-I’m not having your experience, you’re having your
experience.
-Are you imposing some ideal on this?
-You’ve already demonstrated to yourself that there is some
part of you outside of the anxiety.
-Awareness does not equal thought. You can inhabit your
experience – the good, the bad, the ugly
AFTERNOON SESSION
-“How is it in the heart right now? Are you at home in this
moment?”
-resting in that open, choiceless field of awareness –
boundless, spacious, knowing field of awareness – bigger than mere conceptual
knowing
-taking up residency in this moment and in your own life
-Throw the guesthouse doors open and let it all come and go
– be met, be known, be welcomed
-There are many doors into the room of your own heart
-“Unpleasantness has showed up at the guest house.
Fnatastic! Put out the welcome mat.”
-if you
have a host of sorrows, that’s ok, that’s the curriculum.
-If we know why we’re here, this is not beyond us
-an intention to be here 100% does reshape us – and not just
the real estate of the brain (e.g., epigenetics)
-and what about happiness, what about this moment? Are we
waiting for it in another moment?
-flourishing that could be recognized. It/you don’t need one
more moment to be recognized, whole
-could it be that it doesn’t get any better than this?
-we don’t need a lot of bells and whistles and entertainment
-imagine you were sitting like this in your own home – how
long would it take you to stop being and move into doing?
-***intention to be fully present without filling up the
moment with anything extra
-generosity and kindness toward self, air we breathe, world
we inhabit
-being human – it’s messy, it hurts, it’s very real, in some
ways beyond understanding. What could be better? This is it.
-there can be a seamless quality to our time together, your
time in the world.
-Is X actually true, or a story you tell yourself about how
you relate to X?
-Re. cognitive therapists – “What’s your specialty?
–Disembodied cognition.” Lol!
-Wait – just because we’re cognitive therapists doesn’t mean
we can’t include the body! How much do we compartmentalize?!
-Have you noticed how convinced your thoughts are of their
own value? 24/7 creating your reality! There’s a huge amount of suffering in
that.
-What is happiness? Something you GET when the right
conditions arise? Or a way to be in wise relationship with the reality of
things?
-Contentment – need nothing else to make the moment happy,
complete
-“If now isn’t your happiest moment, something is wrong”
-obviously not when the shit hits
the fan, but on the whole, what are we waiting for?
-Feasting on your life
-What if we’re always at home? The door is portable? That’s
a practice, you can exercise that muscle
-Mindfulness as a discipline = hardest work in the world for
human beings, stringing moments of presence together
-If we
don’t do it, what are we losing?
-Blaming circumstances, causes, conditions…something’s
wrong, something’s missing, someone’s being annoying
-Never has
to do with MY relationship with any of it
-Once you see what you’re seeing, it maps onto every moment
-fMRI – “narrative network” in the brain about your favorite
subject, yourself
-As soon as you see it, you’re free
-Meditation shifts the “default network” from
mind-wandering/me/how happy I’d be if conditions were different, to HERE.
-empathy vs. compassion (selfless, can hold suffering of
other without it bleeding into you)
-there are many wisdom traditions, not privileging Buddhism
here
-psychology is the study of the self. “Ok, who’s that?”
-anatta = non-self
-self = always the same but never the same.
-not excluding yourself from the field of love
-audience person Q/A: finding energy and life in uncertainty
– we are forced to choose every day to find everything good in life to counter
bad situations (in this case, this was a mom whose young teen was
self-harming). She pointed out that mindfulness helped her with acceptance.
-JKZ’s response – as parents there is “no way we can solve
some of the labyrinths our children get lost in.”
-epidemic of self-harm in our
society (cutting, starving) – think this is diagnostic, this is now a very hard
world to grow up into.
-every age has its own dukkha,
unique suffering
-put oxygen mask on yourself first
-we’re not writing the whole
script, can’t fully control everything, but we can control how we are in
relationship, stretching into the full dimensionality of our OWN being
*Remember to use all of this “with a light touch.” Don’t
take it all too seriously – “this is too serious to take too seriously.”
-There’s no rescuing anybody in this world.
-The beauty of being human – we know each other and we
don’t. We know ourselves and we don’t.
-We need to be able to hold the mystery of something that’s
much larger than our conceptualization.
-maximize compassion, minimize
suffering – perfection? No, what does that even mean?
-Mindfulness is not the answer to all life’s problems
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