Hillary holds her seat

One of the benefits of meditation is that you become less reactive. You cultivate the ability to rest in a calm, clear space so that you can choose how to respond rather than habitually hitting back.

There may be no better illustration of that than Hillary Clinton, who was the only witness in an 11-hour highly politicized hearing having to do with the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Libya that left four Americans dead; Clinton was secretary of the state at the time.

Clinton was widely praised for her calm, somber attitude through the day of questioning by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. How did she do it?

"I tried to meditate in the breaks," an NPR reporter overheard her say.

NPR notes that there had been no formal breaks in the hearing up to that point, so Clinton was practicing what's sometimes referred to as stealth meditation -- meditating in place so that no one knows you're doing it (as opposed to going outside to sit under a tree or locking yourself in your office). It can be done by placing your attention on an object or a sensation -- your breath, the feeling of your hands holding a pen, the warmth coming off a cup of coffee, the droning sound of a politician making a statement. The trick is to stay present, not to space out. One way to do that is to become aware of all that's happening, noticing the sound, the sensation, the movement, without becoming engaged with them -- to rest in the awareness of what's happening.

Meditating in place is a skill that's helped immensely by practicing in designated meditation sessions. If your mind has practice in resting in awareness it can find that place on the spot more easily. "If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained," says one of the Lojong slogans. (Lojong is a system of Tibetan Buddhist mind-training slogans.)

If you can practice patience in the traffic jam with a sense of humor approach or whatever approach you want to use, you are training for really major difficulties in your life. So, it sounds silly, but actually, it’s true. If you’re sowing seeds of aggression in the traffic jam, then you’re actually perfecting the aggression habit. And if you’re using your sense of humor and your loving-kindness or whatever it is you do, then you’re sowing those kinds of seeds and strengthening those kinds of mental habits; you’re imprinting those kind of things in your unconscious. So, the choice is really ours every time we’re in a traffic jam. Pema Chodron

Turning inner aversion to friendship

Researchers at the University of Virginia found that two-thirds of men and one-quarter of women were so averse to sitting with only their thoughts for 15 minutes that they chose to administer an electric shock to themselves that they'd previously said they would pay to avoid after first experiencing.

In a series of 11 studies, U.Va. psychologist Timothy Wilson and colleagues at U.Va. and Harvard University found that study participants from a range of ages generally did not enjoy spending even brief periods of time alone in a room with nothing to do but think, ponder or daydream. The participants, by and large, enjoyed much more doing external activities such as listening to music or using a smartphone. Some even preferred to give themselves mild electric shocks than to think.

“Those of us who enjoy some down time to just think likely find the results of this study surprising – I certainly do – but our study participants consistently demonstrated that they would rather have something to do than to have nothing other than their thoughts for even a fairly brief period of time,” Wilson said.

Wilson notes in his paper that broad surveys have shown that people generally prefer not to disengage from the world, and, when they do, they do not particularly enjoy it. These surveys indicate Americans spent their time watching television, socializing, or reading, and spend little or no time “relaxing or thinking.”

Is watching television engaging with the world? Or is that a way to avoid knowing what's going in in your inner world?

Wilson observes that without training in meditation techniques -- "which still are difficult," he adds -- people have a hard time being alone with their thoughts.

Why don't people want to spend time alone with their thoughts? Maybe it's like that Rodney Dangerfield line: I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member. We'll sit with fictional characters, with games, with 140-character conversations.

Imagine being able to be at ease with yourself, to listen to your thoughts with open-heartedness and assurance you'd give a friend. Imagine finding ease at being with yourself rather than running away from yourself at every opportunity. That's what meditation offers.

"Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we already are." Pema Chodron

Meditation is not entertaining

Meditation is not entertaining. That's kind of the point -- our constant craving to be entertained distracts us from how things actually are. Meditation is about getting in touch with that, finding calm by seeing the ways we stir up chaos so we can be entertained.

But lack of entertainment in the practice is deterring some people from trying it, says David Romanelli. “It’s still just a very old practice, and most people can’t relate to it,” he tells Well&Good.

So Romanelli, who helped popularize yoga with his Yoga and Chocolate workshops, is out to make meditation more entertaining. He's partnered with Happier.com to create a seven-day Meditation Vacation "that will teach you to soothe your mind, embrace or enhance a meditation practice, and have a BLAST in the process," the class description says.

"Dave’s fun and thought-provoking stories will capture your attention before he guides you through a series of short, sweet audio meditations, all set to soothing musicscapes created by East Forest."

And if it reminds you of Stuart Smalley .... well, the similarities are there.

The Buddha flat-out said that sarcasm is not Wise Speech, so I'll speak plainly. Don't do it. If you're taking an entertainment break, be honest and play Angry Birds. Watch a music video. Don't confuse entertainment and meditation.

Meditation is about getting rid of the entertainment and distractions to see the truth of who you are and what the world is. It's about listening to and questioning your self talk, not new-agey piano music. Being bored is a valuable experience, most Buddhist teachers would tell you, because it teaches you to sit with discomfort and find the clear blue sky behind the cloud of distractions.

You could look for shapes in the clouds -- or you could relax into the endless clarity of the sky.

Trungpa Rinpoche used to praise boredom in sitting. He said that you have to sit to the point where you’re just bored. You’ve worn out all the entertainment value and you’re just bored. And you have to go through the restlessness of boredom. Because boredom is just another word for this fundamental restlessness--it’s hot, you want to get out of there. And he said you have to sit through with as much loving kindness towards yourself and compassion, relaxation, anything that enables you to kindly and gently and continually stay present. Learning to stay with the boredom. Until, at some point, it shifts to what he called cool boredom, which is that it doesn’t make you want to jump up anymore or fill up the space. -- Pema Chodron

Sentenced to sit

Noah Levine, the founder of the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society and one of my teachers, grew up with the dharma. His father, Stephen Levine, is a well-known teacher, and Buddhism was always available to him. But Noah often talks about how he didn't begin meditating seriously until he was in juvenile detention, facing prison time after a series of arrests.

Fleet Maull, an acharya in the Shambhala tradition and a close student of its founder, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, talks in the film "When the Iron Bird Flies" about how we found a depth of practice he had not previously known in prison, where he spent several years on a cocaine conviction.

People don't generally start meditating if everything is right in their world. They're looking for something: Calm, peace, ease, a way to sit with intense emotions, to relate to the world with less stress.

"Hitting bottom," as they call it in AA, can be a great spur to practice. It doesn't have to mean a prison sentence, though. Buddhist nun and revered teacher Pema Chodron talks about the groundlessness she felt when her marriage ended and how that led to deeper dedication to practice.

Can it have the same effect if someone else sends you to the cushion?

The Prison Dharrma Network asks: Can Court-Mandated Yoga and Meditation Keep Kids Out of Prison?

The Lineage Project is testing that out. It works to keep young people, ages 11 to 24, out of the juvenile/criminal justice system through Awareness-Based Practices, which includes yoga, meditation, and life skills training, as a positive means of intervention. "We go inside to keep them out," its website says. The practices offer tools to decrease impulsive behaviors that lead youth toward incarceration, prepare them to become functioning members of society, and enable them to act as role models for other young people in their communities.

A 60 minute Lineage class begins with an opening circle. Participants are introduced to the theme for the day. Themes for group dialogue focus on concepts that can be taken off the mat and applied to everyday challenges, such as perseverance, self-acceptance, positive thinking, courage and responsibility. A brief discussion of the theme is then followed by teaching practical breathing and meditation techniques and basic, fun yoga or Tai-Chi movements. The class ends with a closing circle. Youth are encouraged to think about how the meditation and movements they have just learned could be helpful in everyday life. Bringing consistent attention to this level of consciousness, troubled youth can begin to break habitual patterns of action and reaction, and become empowered to make positive choices for their future.

I'd questioned whether meditation can work if you're sentenced to it rather than coming to it on your own since progress requires a willingness to be there. With the Lineage Project's programs, youths decide to participate; it's part of Alternatives to Incarceration and counts as an anger-management program.

And, really, can't we all use some anger-management skills? Maybe we have enough to keep us out  of the court system, but we all get taken prisoner by our emotions from time to time.

One participant in the Lineage Project program, Miguel, 23, from a rough section of Brooklyn, describes his experience like this:

. “It changed my life,” Miguel reflected enthusiastically. After the first class he remembers, “I never thought I could feel what I felt afterwards.” The class “released a lot of tension in my body. It helped me tune into myself, changed my awareness of my surroundings. I felt as if I had finally come home.”

You don't need to facing prison to see the benefit in that.

Love it? Hate it? Meh. Why that matters

Most people take their thoughts for granted. I think, therefore I am, and I don’t think about where the thoughts come from, whether they are accurate, what biases they contain. We believe our thoughts tell us what is happening, and we follow them. We’re addicted to thoughts. If we aren’t having thoughts, if we’re bored, we panic.

To break that addiction, the Buddha prescribed the Foundations of Mindfulness. The first is Mindfulness of Body. We become aware of our bodies and rest our attention there. Typically we use the breath to practice. We pay attention to the breath, and when we notice that we’re lost in thought, we find our way back. Over and over.

By staying with the breath – or coming back to it – we cultivate an ability to pay attention to one thing, to stay in the present moment. The breath tethers us to now.

The Pali word for the second Foundation is “vedana.” It’s sometimes translated as Mindfulness of Emotions, but it’s more basic, more foundational than that. It’s about the feeling tone that comes before full-blown emotions. It’s an unconscious assessment we make thousands of times a day about every sensation or phenomena we experience.

We hear a noise, we respond – we like it, we dislike it – even before we give it a name: “motorcycle.” Lawnmower. Ice cream truck.

The Buddha identifies those feeling tones as pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.

The automatic responses are the building blocks of judgment. They’re also described as the seeds of what the Buddha called the three poisons – passion/aggression/ignorance, or greed/hatred/delusion. That feeling tone – pleasant/unpleasant/neutral – determines whether we take a protective or open attitude toward the situation.

You can practice Mindfulness of Feeling Tones with each of the senses: what do I smell? Taste? See? Hear? Is it pleasant – do I want more? Unpleasant – take it away? Huh?

The idea here is just to feel in a direct way, without any commentary, and to see the reactions of immediately judging any experience as agreeable or disagreeable, to become aware of these judgments, which are constantly happening. To become aware of them gives us the opportunity to stop the chain, says Lama Lhundrop, a Kagyu teacher (Kagyu is the lineage of HHDL).

Sharon Salzberg relates the second foundation to the classic teaching of the hindrances that prevent us from moving forward in meditation: desire for sense pleasures, anger, laziness or boredom, restlessness, and doubt. These states are said to weaken wisdom.

By becoming aware of the feeling tones that precede these states, we can progress toward achieving equanimity, the ability to be with whatever happens without being pulled into it.

Lama Lhundrop: “Our feelings will be accompanied by awareness, and as we are aware of them and the connected judging process, we can find ways to let go of them, one after the other. Due to mindfulness we can avoid further chain reactions with all the connected emotional trouble.

“Mindfulness of feelings also has the effect that we get to know ourselves better and do not run away from our feelings anymore. They become familiar experiences of great variety but without any special importance. In spite of their great variety they are all the same in one respect: they come and go without leaving traces.
“This meditation gradually leads to non-identification with feelings or sensations. Feelings will then arise without secondary thoughts that create a connection to an imaginary I or self. They are simply what they are: feelings, a flow of experiences, ever-changing.”

In the beginning, Mindfulness of Feelings is an awareness of how every feeling triggers a chain of chain of reactions. As you become more adept, you can simply feel feelings, without reactions or judgments.

The Buddha said: “His mindfulness is established with the thought, ‘Feeling exists’ to the extent necessary just for knowledge and mindfulness, and he lives detached and clings to nothing.”

This is a dramatic departure from the way we normally operate. When something is pleasant, we want to hang on to it, to have more. That clinging causes suffering. Everything is impermanent and fluid – trying to hold onto it is futile. Similarly, trying to escape from painful or unpleasant feelings leads to suffering and addiction to our means of escape. And detachment or delusion or ignorance keeps us from fully experiencing what’s there in the present moment.

Because Buddhists aren’t zombies. The idea is not to stop feeling but to feel what is here in the present moment without piling on reactive thoughts or history or projections. By clearing those away, getting to the foundational feeling tones, we can relate to emotions rather than be controlled by them.

Pema Chodron writes:

Emotional reactivity starts as a tightening. There’s the familiar tug and before we know it, we’re pulled along. In just a few seconds, we go from being slightly miffed to completely out of control.

Nevertheless, we have the inherent wisdom and ability to halt this chain reaction early on. To the degree that we’re attentive, we can nip the addictive urge while it’s still manageable. Just as we’re about to step into the trap, we can at least pause and take some deep breaths before proceeding.