ThePracticalBuddhist.com
  • Home
  • TEACHINGS: Blog
  • Coming Home Video Series
  • The Heart Sutra | A New Translation & Commentary
  • LIFE COACHING
  • BOOKS:
  • How to Find Inner Peace
  • The Self in No Self
  • Making Your Way in Life as a Buddhist
  • Scratching the Itch: Getting to the Root of Our Suffering
  • Raising a Happy Child
  • Dear Buddha | An Advice Column
  • A Buddhist Anthem - There's Nothing Like Today
  • Who Am I?
  • Bio
  • Contact

Want to Smile

9/13/2013

0 Comments

 
Dear Hanh Niem,

I have been practicing for many years and meditate daily.  I am in general at peace and content and accept my life and the world around me as being as it is at this moment.  I experience moments of happiness and joy.  But every time I look in the mirror, I see a serious, almost frowning, tense face looking back at me.  Even when I feel at peace, I feel a tension within me.  I rarely feel truly relaxed.  Can you help?

Want to Smile


Dear Want to Smile,

You are not alone.  I myself, and I’m sure many others, have experienced what you are describing.  When I first became aware of this years ago, I purposefully brought a smile to my face and found that this in turn brought an immediate uplift to my spirits. Just releasing the facial tension made me feel lighter and filled with happiness. This is what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “mouth yoga.” But I found that the smile and its impact were fleeting because it was mechanical and I was quickly distracted.

Then one day while meditating, I realized that if I were able to be aware every moment of the wonderful things in my life right then at each moment, without attaching, I would smile mindfully and naturally every moment. Even if I was focused on some concern of mine, I would at the same time be mindful of the things that brought joy to my life.  

That was my first effort.  And this practice worked, at least as long as I worked it.  And when I didn’t, the frown and tension returned.  

Obviously, smiling mindfully was a bandaid; something deeper continued to pull me away from the path.  This experience raised a question in my mind … if I was generally in a state of peace and contentment, then why was the default status of my face a frown or tense expression? 

Generally we frown for various reasons … our culture is so focused on wanting what we don't have (not necessarily something material) and on proving ourselves through competition, and we are so attached to the past and obsessed with the future that most of us are in an almost constant state of some degree of frustration or concern, whether consciously or not. If we are frustrated, we are not happy, and that agitation shows in our facial expression. 

Was my frowning a sign of deep underlying frustrations and insecurities in my gut that my practice had not yet touched? Were the troubles of the world and especially U.S. politics so overburdening and vexing? As a Buddhist I derive joy from the happiness of others, but the corollary is also true, I derive sadness from the pain of others and we are made aware of such pain every day. 

Or was this default position merely a product of decades of negative muscle training brought about by my samsara-filled life? I know from my baby photos and family anecdotes that before I was burdened by my ego and learned experience I always had a smile on my face. My father called me his “sunshine.”

My hunch was, “all of the above.” But more recently as a result of my practice of being present in the moment free of the intervention of thought, I realized that the principal underlying reason for my facial tension is that while I may be present free of conscious thought, my subconscious is always thinking.  It is indeed in an almost constant state of some degree of frustration or concern.  And so long as my subconscious is in that state there would always be an underlying tenseness in me.

What to do?  I reflected on the fact that when I am tense or upset, by focusing on my breathing I can quickly return to a space of peace and calm.  The focus on my breathing takes me out of myself, meaning out of my thinking mind, my ego.  That is also what we do during meditation.  And that I knew was precisely what I needed to stop this background noise of subconscious thought.

And so I tried an experiment.  One day, I tried to be constantly aware of my breath, and, at the suggestion of a friend, relax my body with each breathing out.  Surprisingly I found this easier and more natural than anything I had previously tried to increase my periods of awareness.  Regardless of what I was doing, I found I was able at the same time to be conscious of my breath for much of the day.  

And by so doing, I was present free of not just conscious thought, but as the day went on, I felt that I was also free of subconscious thought because without question my facial muscles relaxed.  I was not smiling, but my face was relaxed.   And I felt deeply relaxed.

I have continued this practice for several days now and the results have been noticeable.  After a lifetime of compulsively analytical thought about my life and everything around me, which was entrenched in my subconscious, focusing on my breathing throughout the day, together with relaxing my body on breathing out, has pulled me out of my ego-mind and allowed me to reach a new stage in my practice

The question now is whether I will have the discipline to continue this practice or, like other efforts I have made in this regard, become lazy and distracted, pulled away by my old habit-energies.  Staying mindful throughout the day is always a challenge.

0 Comments

How to Stop Striving

9/3/2013

0 Comments

 
Dear Hanh Niem,

I am someone who has always been driven to accomplish something, whether it’s in my work, my hobbies, or within my family.  And it both frustrates me, because I rarely am able to accomplish what I set out to, and it tires me.  Whenever I try to tell myself that I don’t “need” to do these things, my mind shoots back at me, “So, you just want to be a failure and do nothing?”  I am so tired.

How to Stop Striving?


Dear How to Stop Striving,

The bottom line to freeing yourself from the compulsion to succeed at something is to understand that you’ve nothing to prove ... to yourself or anyone else.  This of course, as with most lessons in the Buddha dharma, runs counter to all of our learned experience, the messages we get from our family, peers, and the culture we live in.  So freeing yourself from this compulsion is no easy matter.  But it can be done, and in an incremental way.

The first step is to believe, as the Buddha taught, that you were born with the true Buddha nature inside you, essentially perfect, and that it is now and will always be there.  It may not be apparent or visible to you because it has gotten buried under the weight of years of learned experience, but it is still there, waiting and available to support you.  Your learned experience is like the clouds that hide the blue sky that is always there, your true Buddha nature.

The second step is to understand, at first intellectually, that your desire to succeed is in fact a function of your learned experience.  And that as such it has no intrinsic existence, it is not inherent within you ... it is learned, it is dependent.  It is your ego-mind, your thinking mind, talking; it is not you.  This provides the key to start breaking through the clouds.

The third step is, armed with this understanding, to begin to accept yourself as you are.  Knowing that the your compulsions are learned and have no inherent value should make it easier for you to gain some distance between yourself and these compulsions.  As the saying goes, “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.  If I am disturbed it is because something out there is not the way I want it to be and I will find no peace until I am able to accept that things are the way they are because it’s just the way they are.”

The fourth step, now that you’ve begun to discriminate between the what your ego-mind, your thinking mind is telling you and what your true Buddha nature is telling you, is to start the practice of being present free of the intervention of thought and not engaging your thoughts when they arise.

As you meditate on these steps, you will feel progress in an incremental way.  Do not expect that you will all of a sudden feel free of your compulsions.  But you will start to get glimpses of your true Buddha nature in your acts of kindness and in other ways.  Your understanding that these “needs” are not inherent within you will deepen.  You will find it easier to accept yourself and love yourself unconditionally as you are.  And you will find it easier to to be present, to not be pulled this way and that by your thinking mind.  

This process, which is so central to walking the Buddhist path,  is elaborated on in many of my blog and advice posts as well as my books.  I encourage you to read more deeply about the process in order to support your efforts to free yourself from your ego-mind.  Do not underestimate its power.

Finally, one day after you’ve been working this practice ... it may be months or years ... you will come to know directly, from your gut or your heart, that you have nothing to prove.  That indeed you have never had anything to prove.  Then you will be free of the compulsion to succeed.  You will still work and do the things that you find real value in, but it will be because of their intrinsic value, not because of some end-point that you are trying to reach.

0 Comments

    Dear Buddha |  An Advice Column by Hanh Niêm

    Archives

    November 2020
    January 2017
    August 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013

    Categories

    All
    Acceptance Isn't Working
    Bored In The Country
    Compassion For Some Not All
    Confused
    Consumed By Fear
    Controlled By Cravings
    Feel Like A Failure
    Frustrated!
    Have No Peace
    Heart Or Ego?
    How To Know What To Do
    How To Stop Striving
    Longing For Good Sex
    Meditation Isn't Working
    Mind Won't Stop
    Obsessed About The Future
    Overwhelmed By Desire
    Questioning The Meaning Of It All
    Restless And Unmoving
    Show Me The Way
    Thinking Of Divorce
    Tired Of Anger
    Torn Between God And Buddhism
    Trapped In Disappointment
    Trying To Be Present
    Trying To Live The Purpose Driven Life
    Unhappy With The Human Condition
    Wanting To Fight The Good Fight
    Want To Smile
    What Am I To Do?
    Why Am I Here?
    Why Am I Not Free?
    Why Do We Suffer?

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.