by embodytrue | Nov 4, 2012 | Balance, CEB, happiness, Meditation
Throughout the emotional skills portion of the retreat, we spent most of our time in lecture , discussion and group work but got started on mindfulness of breathing which is the first method taught for shamatha meditation. When Alan finally arrived we shifted gears into more of a retreat setting. The suggested rule was to maintain some degree of silence , although there was some meaningful chat as we went on walks after the evening teachings. There was also a lot of material to cover in a short time. Our day was broken down into 2, 3 hour chunks where we would spend roughly 1.5 hours in guided meditation and 1.5 hours lecture / discussion. The rest of the day was left for us to practice on our own. I had the great opportunity to offer yoga classes each day at lunch where i would try to incorporate the meditation we were doing that day into a yoga practice.
The first week we would focus on Shamatha or focused attention meditation in the three modes that Alan teaches : Mindfulness of breathing, Settling the mind in its natural state and Awareness of awareness.
Week two would be focused on the four application of mindfulness: mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of the mind and mindfulness of phenomena.
The last week focusing on the 4 immeasurables: Loving Kindness, Compassion, Empathetic Joy, and Equanimity
Before i describe the practice ill outline the framework in which these are all used in order to cultivate emotional balance. First of all it is helpful to have an understanding of Genuine Happiness.
When we think of happiness we might be able to break it down into two categories: Hedonic Happiness and Genuine Happiness or Eudaimonia. When most of us think of happiness we are most likely focused on the hedonic form of happiness. Which is short is the happiness we get “from” the world. This includes the things out there that will make us happy: money, a nice house, nice car, the perfect job, a healthy good looking body, a partner, fame, power, the newest iphone etc … The problem with hedonic happiness is that ultimately it is unsatisfying because it doesn’t last and it is based on things that are out of your control. What ever material possessions you acquire, just as easy as you got it you can lose it. As we get older our bodies don’t work the way they used to, we have to deal with illness and decay. What ever person we thought was the source of our happiness, will most likely change and not fulfill our unrealistic expectation of being an endless source of happiness. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with enjoying the hedonic pleasures of the world but in so far as there is attachment to them and they are our only source of happiness, we put of self’s in a very vulnerable position. Because as much as we want to hold on to these things that we think are the sources of our happiness they are impermanent and its not a matter of if they will change, it is only a matter of when. All that being said there are certain forms of hedonic happiness that are critical such as , food , shelter/clothing, medical care, education etc .. having our basic needs met. A funny thing about people in the modern world is that once we have our basic needs met, we are not struggling to survive, we have a decent job , friends , family , a house , a car , some entertainment etc … we are not satisfied. When we are really doing OK and there is nothing we should be complaining about for some reason we are still not happy, we need more , we need better, always thinking there is something out there that will finally make us happy.
This is where genuine happiness can finally bring some clarity to the situation. genuine happiness or eudaimonia is a sense of well being, of being at peace, at ease, contentment. It is not a happiness that comes “from” the world , but it is a happiness that comes from what we “bring to” the world. A type of happiness that arises right from the nature of having a balanced mind that is stable, clear and sees reality as it is. A type of happiness that comes from living a life of ethics and virtue. It does not depend on any external stimulus, but comes from within. It is something no one or thing can give us and no one or thing can take away. Its source is unlimited and boundless. You can reflect on your own life and see for your self where most of your time energy and effort is spent. Towards the hunter gatherer approach of trying to seek out and hold on to hedonic happiness or towards the cultivator approach of developing genuine happiness. If you can imagine making the shift where your priorities are towards to cultivation of genuine happiness a source of well being that is always with you, then you can still enjoy hedonic happiness but without attachment because it is not your only true source of happiness. So when things changes, when hedonicly times are good and bad, your happiness does not lie out of your control.
The only way these concepts move from something that sounds good to something that actually transforms your life, is to have some taste, some direct experience that genuine happiness does exist and there is a way to cultivate it. The way to cultivate it, is Dharma. Not only buddhist dharma but jewish, hindu, christian, non religious etc.. By definition the practice of dharma is a practice that leads you closer to genuine happiness, call it by what ever name you like. These particular practices offer one such framework that i can say from my own experience has given me a taste of genuine happiness.
Where the primary focus of the training was on Emotional balance, emotional balance its self isn’t directly achieved it arises as a symptom of cultivating conative balance , attentional balance and cognitive balance. Work on these other areas and you get emotional balance for free.
Conative balance has to do with our intention and motivation, a way of life that is rooted in ethics and virtue. We cant expect to be emotionally balanced our selves if we are living a life that creates emotional imbalance for others.
Attentional balance is making our mind serviceable. Being able to direct our attention at will. To think when you want and be able to keep the mind still when there is no need to think. To some extent we all suffer from what Alan calls OCDD ( Obsessive Compulsive Delusional Disorder ). We have a constant stream of thoughts running through our minds, we tend to identify with these thoughts and we think they are the truth and nothing but the truth. To attain attentional balance is to rid our self’s of this disorder and have a mind, instead of the mind having you.
Cognitive balance allows us to see reality as it actually is. By removing our cognitive bias and distinguishing what is actually being presented to our senses and what we are super imposing on that experience. To not identify with every thought or emotion that happens to us with out our asking. To see that all phenomena are impermanent, not intrinsically satisfying and not who we are.
More on meditation to come …
by embodytrue | Oct 31, 2012 | Balance, CEB, happiness, Uncategorized
First up in this year long series of retreats was the Cultivating Emotional Balance Teacher Training Led by Eve Ekman ( The Daughter of Paul Ekman ) and Alan Wallace. The original reason i wanted to do this training was mostly to spend some time with Alan Wallace personally. For those of you who are not familiar with him , i highly recommend you check him out. He has written many books on practical meditation practice with a deep appreciation of modern science, as well as criticizing views in modern science that are not based on fact and harmful to society. Such as the stand point of scientific materialism, which claims the only things that are real and important are physical and quantifiable, reducing the enormous capacity and mystery of the mind to complex configurations of brain activity. I’ll be writing much of his framework here, but if i could recommend one book that was the basis of this training it would be “Genuine Happiness”. In addition to Alan, I was interested in receiving a credible training and certification to teach a complex framework of meditation in a secular fashion, that would be beneficial across many areas. What i actually experienced from this training was far more than i would have anticipated and I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of it.
From the CEB Web site:
“Cultivating Emotional Balance is a research project, which arose from a dialogue between biobehavioral scientists studying emotion and the Dalai Lama, Buddhist monks, and scholars at the Mind and Life Institute in Dharamsala, India in March of 2000. This meeting was one in a series sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute to foster an interchange between Buddhist tradition and Western science.
At this meeting, the Dalai Lama asked scientists if they could conduct research to determine whether or not secularized Buddhist practices would be helpful to Westerners dealing with “destructive” emotional experiences. In response to this request, Dr. Paul Ekman and Dr. B. Alan Wallace, developed a training program that integrated Buddhist contemplative practices with Western techniques for dealing with negative emotional experiences. The training’s purpose is to reduce emotional responses that are destructive to self and others and enhance compassion and empathy. This research project, “Cultivating Emotional Balance In Challenging Times” (CEB), is the result of that interchange.”
The training was broken down into two parts. For the first two weeks we would spend time with Eve Ekman Learning emotional skills based on the framework of her father Paul Ekman. The last 3 weeks would be a retreat led by Alan focusing on attentional balance (shamatha meditation), cognitive balance (the four applications of mindfulness) and conative / emotional balance (the four immeasurables).
I’ll start with a summary of the emotional skills which is the western psychological portion of the training. If your interested in learning more most of the material can be found in the book “Emotions Revealed” by Paul Ekman.
The idea of emotional balance is not to get rid of our emotions. Emotions are necessary aspects of our conscious experience. Not only is it not possible to turn them off I’m not sure anyone would really want to. There are obviously the emotions that we enjoy, and then ones we don’t and sometimes wish they would go away. There isn’t a problem with the constructive ones, but its the destructive ones we would like to have better control over. Among the seven major families of emotions ( Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust, Contempt, Surprise Happiness) any one of them can be experienced in a constructive or destructive way. Constructive emotions furthers cooperation/collaboration between you and the other person(s) in a way that will benefit humanity, or at least not be harmful to the other person or to others who are not present. Destructive emotions create conflict and separation and may led to regrettable episodes.
Cultivating Emotional Balance means creating choice:
• Whether to engage emotionally
• If you do engage, to have a choice over how to engage
• Have your emotions work for you not against you
• Have your experience of emotions be constructive not destructive
One of the most surprising things i learned about emotions is what the they actually are ! They are short (ones that tend to linger are actually re triggering of the same emotion or may turn into a mood), they have a quick onset, they are unbidden and happen to us not by us, they involve a quick automatic appraisal, they have universal triggers, they produce a refractory period that filters and focuses what information is available to us, they contain physical and psychological components. Emotions are so complex it difficult to really define them , but easier to list characteristics of them, this list above is not the whole picture but some of the more interesting aspects. The take away for me is that for the most part the onset of emotions are mostly out of our control, they happen to us quickly in response to triggers from the environment, once they arise they filter our experience such that we only see the world through the lens of that emotion. From a psychological perspective we cant really do much about the arising of emotions, what we can do is notice that we have been caught in their grip as quickly as possible and then choose if we wish to act in response to them. That is where the meditative component can make a big difference (more on that later).
To briefly give an overview of emotions ill describe whats called the emotional episode timeline. As we experience the world around us we are automatically appraising the appearances to our senses. Information from our environment is being checked against our emotional alert database, which is the stored collection of our triggered experiences from the past as well as universal triggers for emotions. Triggers are those things that set us off emotionally, some of them are biologically ingrained and universal while others are learned. When something we experience matches a trigger in our database the process has begun. The affect program takes effect and we begin to experience preset and learned changes in our physiology. Shortly after that begins the refractory period where we are caught in the grip of the emotion and our cognitive frame of reference filters our experience in a way that reinforces the emotion. We then act either physically or mentally, in a reactive way if we are unaware of the emotion or in a mindful way if we can bring in some awareness.
This process happens very quickly, and may happen again and again as we spin in emotion. Once we understand that this is going on what can we do about it ? The most important is to see if we can be aware of the spark before the flame, increase the gap between impulse and action. If we can, through self reflection, become aware of what our triggers are ? What sets us off ? What are the common themes to our emotional reactions. We can prepare for situations that we know have a high likely hood to cause an emotional response. At the time we are triggered, when the very first signs of an emotion arises, if through developing our awareness skills we can recognize that an emotion has arisen we can stop the onset of the refractory period and have greater freedom in our choice of action.
In the training we went through each of the 7 emotional families to understand, what are our own triggers, what are the universal facial and physical responses to these emotions. Through various exercises of recalling memories, role playing, creating facial expressions we would gain greater awareness of each emotion to be able to recognize it as soon as it is present.
Understanding this much alone is a great basis for beginning to develop some freedom from your destructive emotions. Although coupled with the contemplative components of developing greater awareness, attentional control, seeing what reality is presenting and what you are superimposing on reality and cultivating qualities of the heart some real changes can occur.
More on the contemplative part coming soon.
