Why I Meditate

I first tried meditation in the late 1990s in Washington DC when I was invited to join a group the purpose of which was to foster a bringing together of all of the world’s great religions. I was asked to join this effort in ecumenism as a representative of Judaism, a role that I was not entirely comfortable with at the time. The leader of the group was a very persuasive 90 year old named Dorothy Devers, and despite my misgivings I joined anyway. For the last 20 minutes of every meeting of the group, which occurred weekly, participants meditated.

The meditation was free form, that is, everyone did what he or she wanted to do, some indulging in techniques learned as part of the participant’s formal religious practice. Meditation had never been part of my religious experience up until that time, but coincident with my joining the ecumenical group, I had gotten interested in the Kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism that originated in 13^th century France. (For a fuller explanation of the origins of the Kaballah and Jewish mysticism in general, see the website http://www.wikipedia.org/Kaballah#origins.)

Through reading the books God is a Verb by David Cooper and The Jew in the Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz, my interest had been piqued. Cooper in God is a Verb describes some meditation techniques based on visualizations, and I took these as the basis of what I did during the meditation periods of our meetings. Then came the shock of September 11, 2001, and I found my ability to muster the kind of concentration needed for meditation slipping.

I also need to point out that at the time I was an employee of a university and going through yet another highly unsettling reorganization. This unpleasantness alone might have been sufficient to destroy anyone’s ability to concentrate.

Eknath Easwaran Approach

Now, six years later, I am back at it again, only this time using the more disciplined and comprehensive approach of the Blue Mountain Center for Meditation, which was founded by Eknath Easwaran in 1961. What brought me to meditation this second time around?

Initially, I have to confess, it was to have something interesting to do with my time. My wife and I had just moved to southwest Virginia. The concerns of being someone else’s employee were behind me, and I felt that I would now have the time to give this activity more of my attention than possible before.

Control of Thought Processes

As I began studying the Blue Mountain approach and specifically the teachings of Sri Eknath Easwaran, I became intrigued with two important questions: Could the practice of meditation help me to achieve more control of my thought processes to reduce the anxieties that would often plague me? Could meditation help me to shore up the bedrock of beliefs upon which my morality rested? In this regard I felt that I had drifted into a state of doubt and indecision, and sometimes wasn’t sure what I believed.

After six months of devoted practice, I would answer “yes” to both questions, but I must be quick to add that I consider myself a beginner who still has much to master in terms of understanding, self control, and compassionate action. A lifetime of negative mental habits is not easily erased.

This is Passage Meditation

What is the Eknath Easwaran approach to meditation, and why does it work? The Easwaran approach is passage meditation. The participant memorizes excerpts from the sacred literature of the world’s religions. Every day for a period of 30 minutes he recites these to himself in the silence of his own mind. The practice requires commitment and concentration to screen out the distracting thoughts that normally flood our minds.

Included in the Easwaran approach is the recitation of a mantram or brief saying, also drawn from established religious practice, at times of high anxiety during the course of the day. In all, the program has eight points or tenets, some of the others of which are slowing down, one-pointed attention, and putting others first. A practitioner of this approach, for example, sees multitasking not as a virtue, as it has often been presented in modern life especially the business world, but as a danger to health, both mental and physical.

Immense Power of Words

For me, a long-time writer, one of the powerful appeals of the approach is the emphasis on saying our way to a better life. In other words, it acknowledges the immense power of words, a subject that I dealt with in my first posting. By stating in our minds the ideals we value—ideals drawn from sacred literature—we begin to live those ideals more effectively and consistently.

It is interesting to note the similarities of this approach with the Kabbalah, cited earlier. The founders of Kabbalah placed such emphasis on the power of the Hebrew words in sacred texts that they spent considerable time and energy in discerning secret codes in those words, codes they attributed to God.

Similarities of Religions

And while we are on the subject of sacred texts, I want to point out still another immense benefit of the Easwaran approach. By reviewing, then memorizing and then reciting to ourselves excerpts drawn from many religions every day, we begin to appreciate the similarities of these religions, rather than their differences. It is remarkable how alike the mystical points of view are with respect to conceptualization, practice and even vocabulary from one religion to the other. That said, one often made distinction needs to be acknowledged, and that is the idea of God as an all powerful force, “the king of the universe,” that is, external to men and women and the idea that God is in each and every one of us, the concept of the individual soul.

The writer strongly urges the reader to visit the web site of the Sri Easwaran organization, http://www.easwaran.org, to find out more about this highly effective approach to improving one’s life and with it the world. In the next posting, I will begin to explore some of the concepts that are not the focus of the Easwaran and other idealistic approaches, but which I believe are essential to grasp for a fuller understanding of our minds and why we continually violate our own moral code. I am speaking of the concept of evil and the concept of intended and unintended consequences.

ABOUT MIND CHECK

Thank you for tuning into Mind Check, a biweekly effort to prove the propositions that we are what we think and that clear thinking leads to effective action and to a better world. Mind Check is intended to serve as a bridge between the realm of the human spirit, that center of our energy, mental and physical, and our rationality, of which the scientific method is an excellent example. Mind Check is also intended to prove that the ideas of right and wrong are innate, not exclusively inherent in the situation or the whim of the moment.

To communicate with the author of Mind Check, please write to stephen.saft@gmail.com. For examples of the writer’s other writings, see the website http://www.iwillmeanpoetry.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

The Pleaser Pleases Everyone But Himself

The pleaser is always looking at your face hoping to detect every subtle mood change. He is obsessed with knowing how you are feeling about him at every moment the two of you are together and specifically whether he is pleasing you or not. If he is not pleasing you he is disheartened. He sees himself as a failure because at that moment nothing is more important to him than that he pleases you.

You, as the person viewed by him in the relationship as somehow superior, are the master. He is slave. If to please you, he must say what he does not believe, no matter. If to please you, he must act in a manner that otherwise he would consider degrading or dishonest or immoral and just plain wrong, no matter. Pleasing you is everything to him. Saying what he thinks you want to hear is everything.

Very Shy, The Introvert

The fact is that “disheartened” is the way the pleaser normally feels around people, especially those he considers in some way more important than he is, since the assumption that dominates his psyche is that only with great difficulty is he ever going to be able to please anyone. Thus he is often seen as very shy, as the introvert. And he often sees himself as operating at great disadvantage with others. He is always ever so close to losing all his friends, to not having anyone in his life who understands him, who cares for him, who loves him.

Why? Because his self image is that of the unlikable, the unlovable. Low self esteem is a term that describes him perfectly.

May Seem Perfect

Thus the pleaser may seem the perfect lover or spouse, the perfect employee, the perfect military man. He is the perfect son of the overbearing autocratic parents. He is the perfect yes man. Where is honesty with the pleaser? Where is forthrightness? Where is an articulation of what is important to him and what he believes and what is right? He is the perfect lover or employee or the perfect son unless, that is, what you need from him is an honest appraisal of what is going on and how he’s feeling about it. He is the perfect person, that is, unless what you are expecting is strength of character—principled compassionate behavior, behavior based on self confidence and a belief in self worth.

Some of the pleaser’s character traits might seem highly commendable. For example, he is sometimes the first to assume responsibility in a crisis. Yes, highly commendable, but what if assuming responsibility is a preconditioned response whenever anything is perceived as going wrong? What if he is preconditioned to feel that anything that goes wrong is his fault? What if that is the reason he is so quick to assume responsibility? Not so highly commendable in that case, yes?

Necessary for Survival

How did he get that way? Maybe he is the son of a pleaser. Perhaps, but more likely he grew up in a home where being a pleaser was necessary for survival, at least mental survival. Let’s say his mother was prone to fits of temper and easily launched into accusatory harangues, but that expressing and demonstrating love for him and her other children was a far rarer occurrence. Meanwhile the father was not present nor was any other adult who could bring some balance to the highly charged situation.

In another case, let’s say the pleaser grew up in a house where the mother was an alcoholic of the nasty variety and that normally her outbursts would occur around the dinner table. Everyone in the family would cringe, would feel like turning turtle and disappearing inside a shell, as the mother gave vent to one more slurred angry recitation of how put upon she felt because no one ever helped her around the house. Meanwhile the pleaser would watch his father resort to what seemed rather feeble attempts at placation when mother was having one of these many tantrums.

What was lacking was the firm authoritative voice asserting, “Mother, you have to do something about your drinking.”

Watch Out for Backlash

For the friend, spouse or lover of the pleaser, look out for the backlash. You and the pleaser are engaged in what seems like a rather innocuous conversation, let’s say on the subject of rearing the new dog in your lives, when suddenly he’s yelling at you, perhaps evening throwing a plate against a wall. The fact is that while he’s talking to you he’s really thinking about the session he had earlier in the day with his overbearing, browbeater of a boss. In a review of his new budget, she’d made him do even more groveling than even he was used to.

Even for the veteran pleaser, limits can be reached and exceeded. In such cases, the lid is blown off the kettle in an explosion of steam.

Next installment of Mind Check, why I meditate. To communicate with the writer of Mind Check, write to this e-mail address: Stephen.saft@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Yes, what could be so bad about passive aggressive behavior? The passive aggressive is not usually violent. By his very nature he is afraid of direct conflict, either physical or verbal, and will avoid it at all costs. Thus the passive aggressive is probably not going to punch you or shoot you or stab you in the back with a real knife. And only rarely will he attack you with words to your face, perhaps when he has been drinking or using drugs and his inhibitions aren’t fully functional. No, the best he can normally do by way of verbal attack is to employ the weapon of sarcasm and veiled ridicule. He might, for example, speak ill of you to his friends at a party even when he knows that you are in earshot, but never directly to your face.

Distinctions Called For

Some distinctions are called for. Living under a harsh political system, such as the byproducts of communism and fascism, the individual citizen will find it necessary to assume a passive public face for his own and his family’s protection while he inwardly longs for freedom. So too in the work situation in even a democratic country, many examples of repression of the human spirit are in evidence. The employee may decide to tolerate what is a thoroughly stultifying situation for sake of his own and his family’s survival. The adoption of passive behavior in these cases are decisions based on choice and not automatic responses triggered by psychological preconditioning.

In cases of psychological preconditioning, the degree of passivity and the degree of aggressive insistence on passivity may vary widely. On one extreme is the person who becomes near catatonic in the presence of an aggressively hostile and abusive other, say an alcoholic parent or spouse—a mean drunk. This person is frozen. He cannot act, even to protect himself. On the other extreme is the person who seethes with hostility when dealing with others, hostility that is just below the surface and barely concealed.

Ruins Marriages

It is important for the writer to point out that he has himself succumbed to passive aggressive behavior in his own life and also has been on the receiving end of such behavior. Thus he has seen its destructive effects first hand. Passive aggressive behavior ruins marriages. Passive aggressive behavior prevents parents and children from sustaining a healthy supportive relationship throughout life, and it has the same destructive effect on other relationships. Passive aggressive behavior squeezes out healthy emotions. Passive aggressive behavior is dishonest. The pain for the person interacting with the passive aggressive is the unsettling sense that the other is concealing something important, that something is going on below the surface, that “that something” is hostile, but he will not tell you what it is.

For the truly aggressive passive aggressive, the primary weapon is his passivity, and he is as aggressive as he can be in using that passivity to exact his revenge. And it often is revenge that is very important to him. Though the self he presents to the world is controlled and nonviolent, inside he may be quite violent. The restrained exterior is the mask for the turmoil within. And he may be the arch plotter. His mind is fixated on that time when he will in fact execute his great moment of punishment.

The Ultimate Punishment

He is administering small punishments through his passivity now, but the time may come when he will administer the ultimate punishment, he tells himself. He will tell you off and leave you if you are a spouse. He will finally quit instead of just thinking about it if you are a boss. If he has some other relationship with you, he will be content to blow you off or ignore you or keep you at arm’s length, perhaps for an entire lifetime —anything to hurt you—but for heaven's sake, he is not going to tell you off. Not now!

Violence

If underlying his mental fabric is deep seated disease, then the great break may in fact be accompanied by the kind of violence that hitherto seemed so out of character and which we will hear about on the TV news or read about in the local news section of the local newspaper, the article accompanied by the large sensational headline. In these reports, at least someone, perhaps a neighbor, will be quoted as saying, “He seemed like such a nice person—quiet, respectful, considerate, kind. You never would have guessed that he would ever do anything like this.”

Where does this behavior come from? Perhaps he learned it as a child dealing with an alcoholic or otherwise abusive parent. As a powerless child, he learned to cope with the all powerful abusive parent by masking his feelings. He learned it was better not to express what he was thinking, not to defend himself, but always to appear conciliatory, accommodating, even happy and always in control.

Acting Out

Then quite unexpectedly the inner turmoil that was really going on inside him would come out. He would suddenly act out. He would set a fire in his best friend’s house or he would inflict pain on a defenseless pet. Later as he became an adult and faced the stresses of daily life he would fall back into the pattern learned as a child. Distressed by his wife’s frigidity and alcoholism, he would begin to plan his exit from the relationship, but he would never deal with the issues that bothered him head on then and there. Not now. He couldn’t confront. He couldn’t express his anger. Such emotions were too dangerous. They were too threatening to the child inside of him. Express them, and he might be hurt--physically hurt.

Next time: Meet the passive aggressive’s kissing cousin, the pleaser. Have a very healthy, productive, and satisfying new year, everyone.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

Mind Check

Mind Check,

Clear Thinking to Effective Action to a Better World

This is the first essay in the blog of S.A. Saft called Mind Check, Clear Thinking to Effective Action to a Better World. In this blog the writer looks at the principles that all of us may use to shape the way we think to make our individual lives and the lives of those around us better, that is, to do our part to make the world a better place.

The assumption is that we are what we think and that the willful agent of the mind may control what we think. The assumption is that an untroubled mind—a clear mind—leads to a better life for the individual which in the aggregate produces a better world for all. The assumption is that all people of good will will want to act in a manner that is moral, to act in a manner that recognizes the obligation of the individual person to act in a manner that is in the best interest of all.

And who are people of good will? They are those who have freed themselves of self-defeating assumptions, thought-numbing beliefs, obsessions, or the need to control and manipulate others.

People of Good Will

People of good will are able to face and bring clarity to the process of analyzing the issues affecting themselves and their neighbors. People of good will are able to reach their own conclusions and act accordingly. People of good will are committed to pursuing the commonly agreed upon principles of the good. People of good will are committed to avoiding or withstanding or working against the thoughts, habits and actions of evil.

Yes, another assumption is that we may choose to be good or to be bad. These choices are the actions of our willful agent.

As a poet, novelist and playwright, the writer has been pursuing the subjects contained in this blog for many years. For a look at the writer’s creative work, see the website htpp://www.iwillmeanpoetry.com. The writer came to these ideas as a student of the holocaust who found in this tragedy a lesson for everyone, not just a particular ethnic group. Are holocausts and other forms of persecutions, wars and other examples of man’s inhumanity to man to remain a method by which human affairs are conducted in the future, or are we finally going to repudiate them through our words and through our actions for all time?

Seemingly Small Defects

The task of repudiating evil begins with the exposure and the correction of seemingly small defects, not just obviously large ones, in the way we think and what we think about and in how we act. Just as a seemingly small error in one’s genetic makeup earlier in life may develop into the life threatening cancer later so too a seemingly small error in thinking now may lead to gross injustices later. A small error in judgment now, for example, could lead to more Abu Ghraibs in the future. A small error in judgment now could lead to an even more widespread world of renditions and thus the even more widespread practice of torture.

Recently the writer began studying the sacred literature of the world’s religions as a student of the Blue Mountain School of Meditation and its founder Eknath Easwaran, and there is no doubt that this blog will owe a debt of gratitude to Sri Easwaran and the Blue Mountain School of Meditation. The writer also acknowledges his upbringing as a Jew and the lessons learned from an early age of this religion and its practices, but mainly he needs to call attention to his lifelong desire to speak to all people about our common failings and our common needs.

So Much Work to Do

We have so much work to do to make ourselves and our world better, both with respect to its moral and to its literal climates. In the months and years ahead, we need to be working on these goals, not squandering our energies, our moral capital, and our dollars and cents—and the lives of our fellow citizens and ten of thousands of innocent civilians—on ill conceived wars and other negative actions.

And so we begin….

COMIC RELIEF BRINGS NO RELIEF

The recent television show on HBO called Comic Relief was not the enjoyable evening of entertainment on behalf of a very good cause that it was intended to be. Why not? Why did the show so offend this writer that when he turned it off he was disinclined to contribute anything to Comic Relief? Is not the cause of rebuilding New Orleans and other parts of our Gulf coast, vast areas of which have still not been rebuilt well over a year after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, not a worthy one? Was not the lineup of stars who made appearances on the show—Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bill Maher, to name but a small number—an extremely impressive one? What was the trouble?

The Issue is Language

The answer to these questions has to do with language. In the choices we make about the language we use, we communicate our attitudes and our beliefs. We also say a great deal about our judgment and inevitably the cause we are speaking for. When the language is inappropriate to the subject, say because the F word and other profanity and too graphic depiction of certain body parts, normally considered private—are used repeatedly, as in this case, a tension is created. There is nothing positive about this tension, and it works entirely against the cause that is being described. Listeners are made to feel ill at ease. They then turn the program off without taking the desired action.

No to Censorship

These assertions can be made without resorting to any call for censorship, and this writer certainly does not do that. The need to use profane language in public discourse, in literature, and on the media where the intent is to enhance the emotion of the message is a cause worth fighting for. However, because profane language is extreme language it needs to be used sparingly. Repeated indiscriminate use of such language, such as occurred on Comic Relief, is akin to pollution, sound pollution, like being forced to spend time without ear protection on the busy runway of a busy airport. Sound pollution is also mind pollution because it cannot be escaped. Our minds are dampened. We cannot think. We are made stupid by it.

The Lesson to be Learned

What is the lesson to be learned?? In other words, what is the morality of the issue? The language we choose in asking someone to do something like contribute to a worthy charity has everything to do with the effectiveness of our message. The leap from this kind of misuse of language and using language to express ethnic slurs is not that great. Sloppy use of language betrays sloppy thinking. Sloppy thinking in turn leads all too easily to the kind of gross insensitivity reflected in the use of ethnic slurs such as exhibited in public recently by the likes of Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and George Allen.

Yes, language is an extremely powerful tool, one of the most powerful we as humans have at our disposal. The words we use, the words we hear have everything to do with how we feel and how we act. Just as the words we use can save us so too the words we use can wound us, even kill us. That is one of the many lessons to be learned from the history of the Twentieth Century. Let us all try to exercise the best possible judgment in the words we use in the weeks, months and years ahead.

Enough said. Shortly the writer will be back with another contribution to Mind Check, Clear Thinking to Effective Action to a Better World. The title of the next essay is What Is Wrong With Passive Aggressive Behavior?

Copyright (c) 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft