The next few weeks could be one of the most emotionally intense periods that some Reedies will have ever experienced. If you are having a hard time, don’t hesitate to check in with Health & Counseling Services, Student Services, or Community Safety. They are standing by and ready to help.

If you are looking for some quiet, a place to reflect on the swirl of thoughts and emotions that often rise up at the end of the semester, come find a spot at one of our meditation sessions. (Extra sessions are being planned for Finals Week. Stay tuned.)

I’m not saying that meditation will hold life’s pressures at bay. It might, but it might also do the opposite: open your awareness to whatever turmoil is just below the surface. Because life is unpredictable, let’s talk about what you can do when you sit in meditation and the Emotion of the Moment grabs you by the neck and starts shaking.

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This week’s Oregonian featured a multi-part series, Mindfulness in policing, on a mindfulness-based resiliency training (MBRT) program that the Hillsboro Police Department has been operating for its officers. As Hillsboro Police Lt. Richard Goerling put it, “being a cop kills you.” So he worked with fellow officers and local meditation experts to develop a program that is intended to help officers manage stress and also become better police officers. According to Goerling, “mindful cops are better listeners and make better decisions. They are more mentally healthy.”

• Hillsboro cops look inward to keep the peace (first in a series) (Apr 3)
• Hillsboro cops forge revolutionary path with meditation training (Apr 4)
• The cost of building resiliency in Hillsboro cops (Apr 4)
• Meditating Marines inspire Hillsboro Sgt. Rohn Richards to try the practice (Apr 5)
• Meditation brings ‘old-school’ Hillsboro cop, Sgt. Bruce Kelley, tranquility (Apr 5)

Where do we sit when we meditate? By this I don’t mean, do we sit on a cushion or on a chair? I don’t even mean, do we sit in our bedroom or under a tree?

What I am asking is simply this: where do our minds sit? Are the thoughts that ‘run round our heads’ the thoughts of our work, of our relationships, our dreams, our concerns? Noticing this, and seeing that these are just thoughts, just one aspect of experience that comes and goes, is the heart of sitting.

Here’s an A.A. Milne poem that talks about this (illustration by Ernest H. Shepard):

Halfway Down

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn’t any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up,
And it isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head;
“It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!”

image from http://www.thelovelys.com/poetry-milne-800.htm

I admit it, when a sentence begins with “studies show …” I get hooked every time. I read right to the end. What did the study show? Do I believe the results? Hey, who am I to judge? Why do I even care? Hmmm.

Here are links to two recent studies on the effects of meditation, one that addresses the extremely serious problem of depression, and the other, well, you make up your own mind how serious this is.

Study Suggests Meditation May Lead To Relief From Depression, Pain (posted January 7, 2014). “A new study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that mindfulness meditation can improve anxiety and depression along with reducing pain. The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, included 47 different trials involving 3,515 different people. Results showed that the meditation had small but positive effects on pain, anxiety and depression.” read more

You Are Not Your Chocolate Cravings (posted March 22, 2014). “A new study by Canadian researchers says that mindfulness can reduce chocolate cravings. Lead study author Julien Lacaille, a psychologist at McGill University in Quebec, told Reuters that practicing mindfulness meditation, which emphasizes identifying and distancing oneself from certain thoughts — without judging them — weakened chocolate cravings among people with a self-declared sweet tooth.” read more

I will be away from campus next Wednesday (March 19) so I cannot join you in the chapel. I will return on March 26. -Alan

Two views of meditation run through my mind: a practice for getting somewhere and a practice that treasures where I already am. Maybe these aren’t so different? Pearls Before Swine (Mar 13, 2014) has a very practical take on this dilemma.

You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen.
Simply wait.
Do not even wait.
Be quiet, still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
– Franz Kafka

The world is already here. Can you open your heart to it?

“I have a problem with my sitting. When I sit, I get relaxed, but when I get relaxed, I fall asleep.” “Then sleep!”

This exchange took place between me and my zen teacher a few years ago. Sleepiness and naps continue to be frequent companions during my sitting meditation. Sometimes this annoys me, but mostly I’ve accepted that sleepiness is not a problem. It’s a welcome part of life, especially as the semester escalates.

Robin and I have been discussing sleep, why it seems to come when we don’t expect or want it, e.g., during the noon meditation, and why it dodges us when we most desire it, say, at 4 AM. She also came across this lovely blog post on using meditation techniques to fall asleep.

The thought, “I must stay awake, I must not fall asleep,” is just a thought. Something to notice, but not something we have to believe in or punish ourselves for. And sleeping, like breathing or sitting, is just another part of life, and not something to punish ourselves for either.

Don’t worry about falling asleep during our weekly sessions. No one has slept through the ringing of our meditation bells yet.

What is the source of happiness? What role can meditation play? How should a meditator practice in order to increase attentiveness, understanding, and happiness?

According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu, abbot of the (Theravadan) Metta Forest Monastery, outside of San Diego, California, we need to learn that in many ways, “less is more.” For example, when practicing meditation, he writes:

…start with something immediately present and really obvious—like the breath. Just be with the breath as it comes in; be with the breath as it goes out. Part of the mind will complain that there’s not much happening, but the more space you give to the breath, the more you see what’s there. In other words, you don’t want to clutter up your mind with other thoughts. You have to realize in this case that less is more. The fewer things you’re thinking about, the more you’ll see right here, right now.

Read Thanissaro Bikkhu’s full essay, “Less is more,” over at the Tricycle blog (Feb. 15).

There is an interesting aspect of meditating on sound that everyone should look into deeply: we cannot control sounds when we meditate. All we can do is attend to them as they come and go.

Gordon Hempton has been paying close attention to sounds for the past 30 years. He calls himself an ‘auditory ecologist’ (try to figure that one out if you can) and the Sound Tracker. He is the founder of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation and has circled the globe three times in an effort to record natural sounds that have not become contaminated by ‘noise.’

Here is what he said about the importance of quiet places and listening in an interview for On Being:

Animals must listen to survive. But here in our modern world, we’ve kind of forgotten that. But if we were to go to a quiet place, sit down in the Hoh Rain Forest, for example, and simply be alone in the silence of nature, that deep ability to listen occurs.

This interview contains a number of nature sounds recordings, but you can also read the transcript here.