InsightLA Blog

Befriending the Dragons: Beginning Meditation - Meeting My Dragons

Lisa Hills, InsightLA sangha member, writer, teacher, and parent, will post here every couple of weeks with her reflections on "the dragons in our lives."

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races – the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

When I meditate, restlessness usually predominates. My thoughts about coffee interrupt reruns of Madmen episodes, which appear after a brief awareness of my breath and my constricted chest. When the restlessness dissipates, emotions arise that often feel unbearable.  My throat tightens, a burning sensation spreads from the base of my neck, under my collarbone and throughout my chest.  I have felt this constriction as stifled screams or sobs. I want to constrain, suppress, stop these fire-breathing dragons. After seven years of meditation, these dragons have not transformed into princesses. But my attitude toward them has become friendlier. They have become well-meaning gargoyles who spread their wings to warn me that emotions that I regard as threatening are arising. 

By letting these emotions and gargoyles be, I have found out that they are not only bearable but also inspiring. As a writer, when I pay attention to the emotions that I used to push away, I discover stories that I want to tell and images that help me tell them.  As a parent, I have found that these emotions signal when an old story about their scariness is about to hijack me into the past and away from my two-and-a-half year old son, who has much more interesting stories to show me about these emotions. In this blog, I want to tell you about how I have befriended these dragons and the emotions that they defend.
   
I started meditating regularly after I stumbled into Trudy Goodman’s Thursday evening sitting group. I had been longing for some group, some activity that would provide me with a sense of purpose, of belonging. Because this longing had been so strong and unmet for so long, it felt overwhelming and insatiable. Before finding Trudy’s sitting group, I had tried meditating on my own, but my short meditations felt lonely and futile. The sitting group helped me stay still for longer, but it was not comfortable. People’s questions irritated me, my hips hurt, my thoughts were both banal and frantic. All of this, Trudy reassured me, was part of the process.  Just watch.  See what your mind does with this discomfort; see what happens when you pay attention to the breath and notice the thoughts, emotions, and stories that arise. I didn’t have to believe anything.

My first insight was not comforting: I listened to a stream of self criticism.  These critical voices fueled a haze of anxiety that covered most of my experiences.

The dragons showed up during my first retreat.  After a year of attending the Thursday evening sitting group, I decided to go on a five-day retreat, hoping that more meditation would calm this anxiety. On the third day, the teachers guided us through a loving kindness meditation.  I felt the familiar constriction around my heart loosen and then tighten up again. During the group interview, I asked a teacher how to make my heart relax.  I listened in horror as he explained that I didn’t need to change how my heart felt. I could accept my constricted heart as it was and hold it with kindness.

“I can’t do that,” I whispered.

He smiled, “It’s actually much simpler than trying to change it. You don’t have to do anything.”

I nervously returned to the cushion and received a nightmarish vision of my heart as a nest of writhing, fanged worms. I had a phobia of worms. These are my emotional needs, I thought, creatures that want to devour me and anything and anyone who comes near them.  They will destroy me.  But they didn’t. The vision faded and left me shaky. Instead of fleeing, I placed my hand over my heart. During the next two days, the vision returned each time in a different form. My heart re-appeared as a wound infested with maggots, a glowing egg protected by a fierce dragon, and, finally, as an embryo with a gargoyle defending it.  This I could love. 

My anxiety hasn’t disappeared and my emotional need for connection still frightens me. My willingness to receive this anxiety and need with kindness, however, has gradually loosened their grip on me so that I can see them more clearly.  They are not monstrous; they are the vulnerable parts of me that need my attention.  By meeting them with curiosity and kindness, I am learning to create friendlier stories about them with my son.

Next:  Discovering my desire to be a mother on a meditation retreat.

In addition to being a meditator, Lisa Hills, Ph.D. is a writer, teacher and parent.  She has been practicing meditation with the support of Trudy Goodman, InsightLA and her kalyana mitta (spiritual friendship) group for seven years. Since the birth of her son, Owen, two years ago and the completion of her English Ph.D. at UCLA, Lisa has focused on parenting and writing plays and personal essays.  She currently teaches a mindfulness and writing workshop for parents with Tandy Parks in Santa Monica.

YouTube Mindfulness

Ever find a dharma teaching hidden in something you come across while browsing the web?  Here's a short film spotted by Trudy recently.

from the Radiolab blog: "After hearing our show about moments of death, filmmaker Will Hoffman went out in search of moments of life. What follows is what he found."  Enjoy!

 

A Message from Thanissarra

During the first weekend of October, InsightLA welcomed former nun and celebrated teacher Thanissara for a special weekend of programs. Thanissara helped us inaugurate our new Sunday morning sitting group on Oct 3, and as a sangha that morning we raised over $1000 for the Khuphuka Project, an HIV/Aids response initiative of Dharmagiri Outreach, an organization directed by Thanissara.  Here is Thanissara's message of thanks, and some additional information about her work:

Dear Insight LA Dharma Friends,

Here is a link to a short DVD, made in August this year, about some of the Khuphuka team & their work, and the current E-Bulletin. Can you pass it onto the group and again thank everyone for their support this year, we deeply appreciate it. You have all made a valubale difference. May the blessings of your generosity come back many fold in support of InsightLA.

Wishing you many blessings,
Love Thanissara

 

dharmablog: Finding Sangha

Every couple of weeks we'll feature a new post by Michael Sigman, sangha member and blogger extraordinaire.  This is Michael's third  "dharmablog" entry.  Click here to read posts 1 and 2.

I met Trudy Goodman in early 2005 after attending my first Spirit Rock retreat (read all about it in my last dharmablog post.) A Spirit Rock teacher had recommended Trudy -- a leading Buddhist meditation teacher who’d recently moved to Santa Monica after years of successful practice in the Cambridge area -- as the go-to person in L.A. to help me learn more about Vipassana and deepen my practice.

I was 55, with no job, no girlfriend and no clue. (Yes, I’d gotten fixed up a million times and tried Internet dating, but while that produced much hilarity, a relationship had not been forthcoming.)

Trudy was confident that the dharma was the way to go, countering my skepticism by noting that Buddhist meditation had worked pretty well for billions of folks for over 2500 years.

Then I moved to Atlanta for nine days.

Out of nowhere, I’d been offered a job as publisher of Creative Loafing, Atlanta’s alternative newsweekly, and I acceptance on the spot in a moment of delusional euphoria. I’d been publisher of LA Weekly for many years, and was sure I could handle the job. And since I’d dated just about every single single woman in L.A. at least once, I figured I’d resume my search for the perfect companion in an untapped city.

I flew to Atlanta two days after agreeing to take the job, and showed up for work the following morning. On my first day I rammed into the first Noble Truth -- that there is suffering -- when it turned out that being the boss didn’t come with sufficient clout to garner me a key to my new office. Three days and many more absurdities later -- e.g. an all-staff meeting to debate how many beers employees could drink on any given shift (zero was not an option), it began to dawn on me to that I might have to replace my newly-adopted narrative, “Successful Publisher Wows Atlanta, Girls flock to Eligible Bacheltor!” with something closer to, “Erstwhile Publisher, Still Girlfriendless, Flees Job From Hell.” 

On my fourth day, craving for career satisfaction was replaced by aversion to disaster when I discovered that Creative Loafing was living up to its name by taking on so much debt that its future was all but hopeless.
 
I somehow endured until my eighth day, when, with a clarity I never would have possessed without my meditation practice, I grokked that the first Noble Truth doesn’t mean we’re meant to inflict suffering on ourselves.

I quit the job and beelined back to L.A., appreciating the town, and my house, more than ever. I resumed working with Trudy, whose psychological background and insights separate her from other Buddhist teachers I’ve known.

She encouraged me to experience each meditation session not as “good” or “bad,” but rather as a chance to experience whatever was happening in each moment -- torture or joy, anger or regret, grasping or calmness. And sure enough my view of myself as a terrible meditator softened. (Don’t get me wrong: I never stopped believing I was terrible at meditation -- still do -- but I did develop a healthier relationship to my terribleness.)

Over the next couple of months, it became clear that though I’d meditated faithfully for several years and gone to a few retreats, I needed sangha, a Pali word often translated as "community with common goal, vision or purpose.” Trudy’s nascent InsightLA organization turned out to be a great place to find sangha. I had the opportunity to help out a bit on the business/marketing end and to attend a number of InsightLA classes and one-day retreats.

The short retreats were daunting at first. One time I sat all day next to a former LA Weekly colleague who I don’t think liked me because I’d fired her supervisor some ten years before. I watched my emotions careen from fear to guilt to self-righteous anger, and alternately craved and dreaded the end of the retreat, when my former co-worker and I would have to talk -- or not. In the event, we exchanged friendly words, and I saw for the umpteenth time how much energy we expend spinning out painful fantasies. Another time, I sat between two friends -- we’d saved seats, like in high school. Though we barely spoke, there’s no question our mutual connections deepened.

Before long, I was part of a community of like-minded seekers who shared the challenges and rewards of the dharma. Part of our bond, of course, was that we all remained attached to our belief that we were terrible meditators.

Next time: Starting my Tuesday night meditation group

Michael Sigman, who hosts the InsightLA Tuesday night sitting group, is a writer, editor, publisher, media consultant and president of Major Songs, a music publishing company.  He was publisher of both the OC and LA Weekly, a music journalist and editor-in-chief of Record World, and he supervised LA Weekly Books, a St. Martin’s Press imprint.  He is the author of the biography of his father, songwriter, Carl Sigman, and is currently working on a biopic about music legend, John Hammond.  Michael writes a weekly blog on the Huffington Post. Michael Sigman graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude, with a BA in Philosophy, from Bucknell University in 1971.

InsightLA elsewhere on the web

Current InsightLA student Kristen Stancik, is blogging about her experience in Beth's "Five Hindrances" class over at her "Tiny Truths" blog.  Check out her two posts on doubt and attention.

My 18-Year Retreat: Blogging While the Baby Sleeps

"My 18-Year Retreat" is a series of posts by sangha member, and teacher trainee, Paloma Cain, on the topic of "Mindful Parenting."  This is the first post in the series.

I've been awake since 4am when Luca woke up restless with teething pain and shouting, "Mama!" He would settle down and sleep when I lay next to him, rocking him, so that's what I did for the next 3.5 hours. Until he opened his eyes, patted my face, and beamed a playful smile at me, letting me know that it was time to get up and start the day.

Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn, in their book, Everyday Blessings, liken parenting to an 18-year, or longer, retreat and that idea intrigues me. I'm interested in the experience that bridges so that my parenting is not "other" from my practice life. I've been asked to write about mindful parenting here, and hopefully it will be a place where we can explore this a bit together.

Appropriately enough, it was my mother who introduced me to meditation. She started practicing when I was three years old, so the sight of meditating adults was familiar to me, and annoying. For us kids, meditation sessions were tedious exercises in trying to behave while feeling ignored.

Now Luca is napping and I would be too -- really, I have actually learned to do that -- but there is someone here working on the house and he needs intermittent input, so I am blogging while the baby sleeps instead. In my previous (pre-parenting) life, if I had been up since 4am, it would have been because I was on retreat meditating, greeting the day in deep silence or surrounded by clouds of incense and chanting. Today, I was just tired and wishing that I had gone to bed before midnight so that I would have gotten a little more sleep.

My relationship to practice shifted when I was 19 and mom took my brother and me on a trip to India. For the first time, I met meditators my own age who were following an inner urging to seek something that their upbringing had been lacking. A notion of my own good fortune at having grown up with meditators began to dawn. Tibetan monks spent all day in puja in the dim temple, emerging radiant and joking at mealtimes. Western monks spoke with us in the courtyard about watching thoughts cross our minds like clouds across a pure blue sky, leaving no trace.

Much like the moods of a toddler, I reflect now. Luca can be adoring and angry in the same breath as he tries to figure EVERYTHING out and looks to me to explain this world to him. And right now he is looking for simple answers. He wants to know how basic things work, like pouring water from a cup. We worked on it all morning.

Now Luca shouts in his sleep and I pause, listening, wondering whether it's a full wake-up. He is cutting some molars right now and has frequent bouts of restless peevishness. Silence. I draw a deep breath. So far, the hardest part about parenting has been not being able to take away his pain. The traditional teachings of meditation say much about suffering and how to work with it, but I find it more challenging in this context. How do we apply what we have learned in our practice to parenting? How does the solo adventure of sitting on a cushion translate into the ceaseless activity of parenting?

My interest in meditation continued to grow as I attended UCSB  where I studied with renowned scholar and former monk, Alan Wallace. Then, after college, when I found myself ungrounded during a breakup, my mother invited me to join her on retreat and, for the first time, I accepted.

The retreat had a profound effect. It showed me the relevance of practice to my journey. Meditation became a refuge from the stormy and unmanageable waters of my emotional life. The teachings on the inevitability of suffering that I had formerly found so depressing became inspiring as I applied them to my own circumstances. The cherished relationship, the feelings I clung to… the impermanence of these things was unavoidable.

I look at Luca now with admiration as his emotions flow through and leave without a trace. My little teacher. He holds nothing at this stage. My heart aches and I want to tell him to hold this purity. But, alas, impermanence. He holds nothing, not this state of being, not anything.
My work is to rest with him through it all, not abandoning him in his anger or praising his sweetness, but letting it all in. I can hear him talking now, softly naming the animals in bed with him, almost whispering as he wakes up gentle and rested. I have been playing with the idea of his voice as my meditation bell, my call to practice. I get up now, remembering that this is my 18-year - or longer - retreat.

Next:  My journey continues and I find my way to Insight L.A.

Paloma Cain was raised in an American Buddhist family in Northern California. She claims that she didn't like meditation until circumstances drove her to it, but now she can't imagine living without it. An artist at heart, she holds degrees in art and psychology and has interned as a hospital chaplain. She is a former director of Tara Mandala Retreat Center in Colorado, and is currently in Insight L.A.'s teacher training program. She and her husband live in Los Angeles with their young son, Luca.

photo credit: Margie Woods Brown

dharmablog: Too Much of Nothing?

Every couple of weeks we'll feature a new post by Michael Sigman, sangha member and blogger extraordinaire.  Read on for Michael's second  "dharmablog" entry about his first residential retreat experience.  Click here to read his first post, about his initial introduction to meditation practice.

"Oh, when there's too much of nothing,
No one has control"
--Bob Dylan

Twas the night before retreat/And all through my head/Drops of excitement/Met oceans of dread
--Michael Sigman

As I packed comfortable sweats, running shoes and anti-anxiety meds on the eve of my first extended meditation retreat, I checked voice- and email more than once, holding on to the slim hope the whole thing would be cancelled so I could enjoy a real vacation with a clear conscience. No such luck.

I’d been practicing meditation on my own for several years, but was terrified about the prospect of sitting eight to 10 hours per day for five consecutive days. Worse, for the duration of what the folks in charge dubbed, without irony, a “short” retreat, there would be no reading, writing, TV, cell phones or music. The kicker? No talking. They called it “silence,” but to me it loomed more like high school detention.

Arriving to the awesome beauty of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA -- the majestic woods, gentle deer, preening wild turkeys and sunbathing lizards -- only made things more tortuous. I figured if I couldn’t appreciate it, surely (a) it was my fault and therefore (b) I was a terrible candidate for spiritual growth. I’m a mechanical moron, so when I was assigned a “yogi job” operating a dishwashing machine I had visions of losing a digit or two. The urge to grab my car keys and beeline it back home was thwarted only because admitting defeat would have been too humiliating.

The rundown of our schedule posted at the entrance to Sprit Rock’s magnificent meditation hall was similar to that for summer camp minus the swimming, softball and DDT anti-mosquito attacks.  Sitting still and doing nothing was the main activity. Going nowhere -- walking back and forth across a room -- was also prominently featured. Sleeping, at least for me, would make only a cameo appearance, leaving that much more time for doing nothing.

The simple but far from easy instruction from the three smart, generous teachers -- watch my mind, and when it wandered, go back and watch it some more -- was awful, harrowing and thrilling. Awful because it seemed that every negative thought and gut-wrenching emotion I’d ever had returned for long visits before yielding to another parcel of misery. Harrowing because five days of silence felt as daunting as scaling mountains, camping in remote deserts, rafting down rapids or plumbing the depths of the sea.  And thrilling because, with the help of dharma talks and other advice from the teachers and the silent solidarity of 75 or so other retreatants, I experienced a cumulative sense of accomplishment, nourishment and, yes, small “e” enlightenment.

For a while, I thought I was going nuts. I spent a whole day obsessing over a nasty thing a former boss had said years before. But eventually, I came to understood that my sanity-challenged thoughts arose unbidden and needn’t represent anything more than ambient noise.

And who gets to decide who’s nuts, anyway? As the great and hilarious Spirit Rock teacher Wes Nisker points out, what we’d call schizophrenia today was normal an evolutionary blink of an eye ago, when it was a given that people’s thoughts weren’t their own but arrived via special delivery directly from the gods.

Getting into the car with a couple of other retreatants for the ride back to the SF airport, I felt a surge of joy. I’d completed my first marathon, learned more about myself than I ever thought possible sans psychedelics and felt so stoned I was awestruck by the selection of apples in the mammoth supermarket where we stopped for a snack. My sense of satisfaction grew when my carmates shared that they had bent the rules: One snuck in a block of chocolate, another read a mystery novel. When I admitted I’d checked messages -- but only twice! -- I thought Nirvana might be within reach.

Returning home to life’s inevitable setbacks, of course, was far from exhilarating. It took several years before I grokked that exhilaration is the near enemy of true joy.

At the end of the retreat, I asked a teacher how I might pursue the Spirit Rock teachings in L.A. She recommended “this amazing person in Santa Monica, Trudy Goodman,” and Trudy’s fledgling InsightLA organization.

Next time: Finding sangha with Trudy and InsightLA. The power of the group: neurons -- and people -- that fire together, wire together.

Michael Sigman, who hosts the InsightLA Tuesday night sitting group, is a writer, editor, publisher, media consultant and president of Major Songs, a music publishing company.  He was publisher of both the OC and LA Weekly, a music journalist and editor-in-chief of Record World, and he supervised LA Weekly Books, a St. Martin’s Press imprint.  He is the author of the biography of his father, songwriter, Carl Sigman, and is currently working on a biopic about music legend, John Hammond.  Michael writes a weekly blog on the Huffington Post. Michael Sigman graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude, with a BA in Philosophy, from Bucknell University in 1971.