Mindfulness is the perfect way to tame the mind; not too hard and not too soft.

Why is it that so many musicians and artists suffer from some sort of mental illness? I believe they do because they have tapped into egolesness. I have heard so many artists say that their work doesn’t necessarily come from themselves, it just comes from nowhere. In Buddhism this would be referred to as egolesness, also the place where all creativity comes from. A state that can reached by slowly letting go of your ego through meditation and contemplation. Some people, however, are born with a natural gap in their ego’s, a gap that provides them with the same spontaneous creativity that long term practitioners often have. The big difference with practitioners (people who have worked with their minds for a long time) is that their practice has been holistic and includes their entire being; artists often have huge parts of their personality which are underdeveloped and child-like selfish. I believe that it is this discrepancy which causes them to often suffer like they do. To a lot of artists their creativity is like a hot ball which they can’t seem to handle really well, often causing them to flee into all kinds of harming forms of relaxation such as drugs. In Buddhism it is said that the wide open space in which the master relaxes, can cause the lay man to go mad. So if we experience such products of egolesness, it also forces us to work on the other aspects of our personalities, If we don’t do so, we can indeed go mad.

I am very delighted about the uprising of mindfulness into western science and culture. It has been too long thought of as a Buddhist, Eastern or even worse; New age thing. Of course, it has it’s offspring in Buddhism, but like Jon Kabat-Zinn points out; mindfulness is very much like gravity, it’s a law of nature. Therefore it does not belong to Buddhism necessarily, but can be practiced by anyone, from all kinds of culture or religion. Because whatever our view upon life is, we all suffer from ego; Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist. The secular practice of meditation is neutral of any religious content and is purely a practice so that we can get to know our minds and ourselves, so that aggression is being abdicated as the main drive in our lives. Because we all have ego’s and we if we take an honest look at the problems in this world, ego can be held responsible for most of it. So we’ll need clearly defined techniques to tame our aggression instead of suppressing it or indulging in it; we have to get to know our aggression, to be mindful of it. Not only does this clear up the aggression in our interaction with others, it also clears up the aggression in everything we do. And this will show in our arts, in the way we dress, in the way we design our cities and the way we treat each other. The celebration of humanity.

One of the things I like most about Buddhism is that it’s a science, the science of life. Now science usually has a very sec connotation, but in fact we are here talking about the most romantic science there is, where nothing is excluded. Buddha said to never take his words for truth without us discovering it for ourselves and he said so for a reason. There is a saying in Zen Buddhism which says; If you meet the Buddha, kill him. Now this sounds of course rather harsh, but it is not at all meant to provoke aggression, it means that whenever we are trying to find truth outside of ourselves, we are doing something wrong. Instead of attributing the course of our lives to external forces, and creating dogmatic believes around them, we start from the very naked point where we say; what is it exactly we’re dealing with here? Buddha said; life is suffering, but there is an antidote. Life is an enormously complex puzzle for us human beings and Buddhism is nothing less than the science dedicated to solving it, what works and what doesn’t? This way it doesn’t condemn about good and evil, but much more in term of causes and consequences, A causes B, very much like in science. On top of that, this science has been lasting for over 2500 years and has spawned many marvelous teachers who have crystalized the teachings even more. Many Western people started practicing Buddhism because religion din’t work for them, so they tend to go much more to the core of Buddhism without falling for the typical Eastern traps in which Buddhism is created into some sort of religion. It is my believe that this is the way the Buddha wanted his teachings to be practiced, so that we can become fully human with good hearts thriving on our own wisdom. When the Dalai Lama talks about compassion, it’s not because this is written somewhere and we have to follow it blindly, it’s because he knows that it works and he encourages people to find this out for themselves. We find out everything for ourselves, with great teachers along the side line the helping us, but eventually everyone travels his/her own journey.

A great advocate of this pure view on Buddhism is Ven. Robina Courtin. Although her style of teaching might be somewhat unusual (she is not exactly the typical quiet nun), what she says goes very much to the core of the teachings, without any bullshit.

In contemporary psychology a new technique has been getting a lot of amazing results in various psychiatric and personality disorders; Neurofeedback. Through EEG-scanning a person is confronted with his or her brainwave activity, getting immediate feedback from any form of mental activity. Mental disorders such as ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are characterized by certain patterns in brainwaves, deviating from the equilibrium. The person itself then has to of induce or reduce certain brainwaves by inducing or reducing certain mental activities. This way it is taught which mental activities disturb the equilibrium and therefore the balance in the brains, which are typical for the mental disorder. Although research in neurofeedback remains controversial (some attribute it to the placebo effect), it’s results are at least noteworthy. I believe it also shows some amazing parallels to the Buddhist view of the mind. It is therefore not surprising that mindfulness practice is encouraged in Neurofeedback. In Buddhism one tries to gain a similar state of mind, which is relaxed, open, yet awake. Thoughts and emotions are not discarded but rather observed without trying to judge or reach for anything. In Buddhism this is called resting in the nature of the mind, which brings out all the positive qualities we as humans posses, wisdom, compassion, insight. We slowly let go of our neurotic patterns and become more and more who we really are. In this case feedback is not provided by a computer screen showing brainwaves, but by being mindful of the movements of our mind. Trungpa compared this with letting wild bulls into a meadow, wild as they may be, giving them space will cause them to calm down and become peaceful; it goes the same for our discursive thoughts. It is quite exciting to see both Western and Eastern psychology moving closer towards a more unified view of the healthy mind. We do have to keep in mind that the Eastern insight on this subject is far more ancient and thorough. With our Western empirical techniques, however, we can put this in a scientific frame and thereby also convince the skeptical minds of this matter.

I have just finished a month of abstinence from alcohol. Eventhough I only drink during weekends, I think it’s good to now and then refrain from any mind-altering substance for a while. First of because it’s damaging to the body and secondly because it affects the mind as well. During my month of abstinence I have given a lot of thought about this. I remembered my time when I was straightedge for 6 years. Straightedge is a movement originated in the hardcore punk movement during the 80’s and comprises refraining from alcohol, tobacco and recreational drugs. To me this was always a way to keep my mind clear so that I could focus on my own path and grow as an entity, thus a very positive thing. This was until I actually became involved into the straightedge scene because I was in a hardcore punkband. I was struck by the fact that many straightedge youngsters there who were straightedge were basically just assholes, always complaining about people and matters instead of taking positive action. Although they did not take any intoxicating substances, I believe that still their minds were intoxicated with negativity. Not surprisingly, many straightedge kids, upon giving up on straightedge, made a 180 degree turn and even started using harddrugs. I believe that during periods of abstinence, if you do not work with your mind, it’s not really worth it. Because when we give up on such things, our neuroses are enlarged and if we don’t work with them, they can come out disguised through sublimation (preaching, converting, violent activism etc.). So during this month i did not only try to cleanse my body, I also really tried to cleanse my mind, by contemplating and observing it. I always encourage abstinence, but if we don’t work with our minds simultaneously, it does not work.

I was having a firy discussion with friends yesterday, who claimed that everything we do is selfish and that there’s no such thing as altruism. To me there’s not really much difference, since when you help other people it often really helps yourself as well. On the other side when you’re a complete asshole, it might give some shortlasting satisfaction but you will always end up feeling miserable. So this is some sort of mean unmature selfishness. People who tend to live in a more sociable way, do this not only because others will benefit from it, but also they themselves. So in a way this is selfish, but a more mature version of selfishness. I think that this realisation in people can grow without limits, with the boundaries of selfishness and altruism fading more and more. I think ego is a healthy part of human beings, it keeps you alert, and usually has some sense of truth in it. But she needs to be tamed, because if she gets too much attention, she becomes spoiled like a difficult child. Chogyam Trungpa always referred to ego as a cocoon, we might feel as if it were comfortable, but deep inside we want to break out. I think we never really get rid of the cocoon, but instead will start wearing it as a beautiful suit, we still wear it, but it does not limit us in any way.

Humans suffer from aggression. We all have it, it’s an evolutionary leftover meant to protect ourselves and our peers from harm. In modern societies we have managed to tame aggression through laws and cultural morality. We have set up our societies in such ways that outer aggression is channeled and any outburst of aggression is punished by law and order. This all by itself is good and quite necessary, if not, chaos would rule the streets and the law of survival of the fittest would count. But there’s an inherent problem to all of this; namely that often our aggression is not tamed at all. Though it might seem from the outside that a society is very non-aggressive, aggression might take place inside the people in heavy forms. This aggression can result in extreme harshship towards ourselves, often expressed through extremely high standards we have set up for ourselves. So the problem is, now that we have tamed the outer aggression, it has now turned towards ourselves, resulting in totally new problems we as a society are still very inexperienced in dealing with. Au contraire, in modern societies being hard on yourself is often seen as a virtue, leading you to obtaining your goals and achievements. The problems that come along with this (burnout, depression etc.) are highly prevalent and many people suffer from this in silence. The aggression we aim towards ourselves then eventually comes out again, but then through catharsis (think of the high school shootings) or in subliminal ways (i.e. religious extremism). Now there is also some sort of quality on sometimes being disciplinate on ourselves, just like it is sometimes good to be disciplinate on someone else (like the Zenmaster to it’s student). It gets the most out of us and we can pour the very best out of ourselves. But there’s a very thin line between striving and harshship. So now that have spend centuries in designing our societies to keep outer aggression stabilized, we now need to focus more on our inner worlds and find ways to deal with our inner aggression. Then there’s no aggression towards others as well as ourselves.

A notion I have been thinking a lot of lately is karma. Originated from Hinduism and Buddhism it is literaly translated as ‘action’ or ‘deed’ and describes how everything we do, say and think (body, speech and mind) results in similar consequences. Therefore negative action, speech or thought results in similar negative consequences. Obviously our lives are full of both negative and positive experiences, all blended up which eventually forms the shape of our lives. Usually we have a strong tendency towards the “positive” fruition in our lives and neglecting the negative parts of our lives. I think the only way to actually reflect upon our body, speech and mind is to also accept the negative aspects in our lives. Painful as they may be, they can work as a mirror in how we ourselves contributed to what is happening in our lives. Instead of complaining; “Why me?” we can look straight at the heart of the problem and see it as a teacher instead of an enemy. This is one of the hardest things to do because it requires us to be naked, and let go of our defensive walls against life. Can we look in the mirror and accept our bodies with all it’s little unevenness? It can be painful to accept the way we are perceived by others, let alone by ourselves. Our love lifes, our jobs, our financial status. Sure enough the problems that we face many times need positive action, but in doing so, acceptance is always the first step. Without it it becomes a fight instead of working with it and we never get to see the root cause of the problems. When we can accept our karma as it is we can rest more with the insecurity of life and begin to see clearly how we ourselves can contribute to the content of our lives.

We can spend our whole lives practicing yoga,meditating, singing mantra’s, improve ourselves in many ways, all of which are really helpful methods. But often the very core of our problem, our pain, is being avoided. It’s very hard to get to that core, to actually become conscious of it. It’s usually created in the very beginning of our youth and is entangled in everything we do. We can be spiritually very wise, very scholared, but still have the core belief “I am worthless”. No matter what we do, as long as we don’t deal with this, it won’t go away. It’s tough becoming conscious of those hardcore patterns, usually because there’s so much other stuff piled on top of it.