being awake and healing

I am often asked about how to use meditation and Buddhist practice to heal old wounds. The question reflects a misunderstanding.

In Buddhism, our intention is to be present in what arises in experience. Healing is often a side-effect of that presence, or a side-effect of the practices we do in order to be present, but it's not the objective. You may think this is hair-splitting, but it's actually quite important. When we are focused on healing, we are inevitably concerned with a result, a goal, and the goal-orientation introduces an appraisal of experience that takes us out of direct experience.

Rather than working toward healing, our effort is to trust what we are. To echo Suzuki Roshi, "Our practice is about absolute confidence in our fundamental nature." I've come to appreciate the depth of this sentence more and more over the years. Absolute confidence in what we are! Then, as Uchiyama Roshi says, "we have neither a need to be swayed by someone or something we think exists outside ourselves nor do we long for things that we project as pbeing apart from ourselves."

From a practice point of view, the key is not to harden when difficult or painful experiences arise. The moment we harden, we have set "I" against "it" and are reinforcing whatever conditioning is generating the difficulty. Thus, Thich Naht Hanh's advice about holding difficult or painful feelings tenderly in attention. Sometimes, this feels like letting the feelings scream while you hold them in attention, not trying to remedy them, control them, make them go away, or change them.

Working with difficult feelings, I've found, is best done for short periods, so attention is active and awake. Too long an exposure and we inevitably fall into conditioning. Hence, the old meditation adage "Short sessions, but many of them". Touch into the feelings for a few moments, then relax, return to the breath, then touch into them again, staying with them awake and present rather than fighting with them.

None of this is easy. Simple and easy are not synonyms. We will fall down again and again, not trusting the open clear awareness that is what we are, not being able to just experience old wounds and pains. But we pick ourselves up, dust off our clothes, patch the skinned knees, and keep going. After all, this is what the word practice means. It's not a test, it's not a contest -- it's our life.

a conversation with Warren Bennis

You may recall that we started to look at whether institutions inevitably betrayed their values. I put the thesis forward that all institutions are based on a lie, namely, "We'll take care of you." The subsequent discussion brought out the point that institutions are necessary and needed if humans are to live together in the large numbers that they currently do. I proposed the analogy of the body as an institution. It''s basic unit is the cell, but it manages to grow and flourish quite well and is a very robust institution. Somehow, all the cells, and the higher level organizational units, such as the various organs, and the still higher organizational units, the various systems (nervous system, digestive system, circulatory system, etc.) seem to get along without too much conflict.

After our conversation, I continued to ruminate on why I find the emphasis on leadership so troubling.

At this point I have to beg your patience as the two of you have made leadership your chosen areas of study and expertise and my subsequent comments may seem naive or pretentious.

The conclusion that I came to was that an emphasis on leadership may divert attention away from another important question, namely, "How do each of us live and function in a healthy way in a world which is populated by institutions?"

In my limited exposure to leadership studies, one theme keeps coming up: how do leaders create healthy vibrant institutions? Implicit in this question is the fact that leaders of organizations may have to radically alter the size, structure, and direction of organizations to keep them viable, with all the human costs that such changes entail.

Now I'd like to return to the analogy of the body, for a moment. The body routinely kills off thousands, if not millions, of cells every day. This is for the well-functioning of the body. It would be presumptuous of any cell in the body to say that it knew what was needed for the well-being of the body. Indeed, it would be presumptuous of any organ, or any system in the body, to claim that they knew best what the body actually needed. Any group of cells that did so would likely create serious imbalances in the body. And if they monopolized the bodies resources to pursue their agenda, they would, in medical terms, be regarded as causing an illness, perhaps even a cancer.

I wondered, then, if, by putting emphasis on leadership, we are focusing attention (and resources) on a particular group of cells. The attention tends to create and reinforce a myth, namely, that these individuals and the organizations they lead can function in a way that is aligned with our own individual interests. This would be analogous to the body saying that it could function and take care of every cell at the same time. This possibility is, of course, counter to how the body actually functions.

I then moved to the question, "If I'm a cell in this world populated by organs and systems; how do I live my life?" Well, if I disrupt the organs too much, I kill myself. But if I follow the agenda and needs of the organ or system I'm in, then my fate is decided by the needs of the body. In a strange way, perhaps, I find this line of thinking returning to such old themes as free will, determination, responsibilty, etc.

When I look at my work with individuals, I see that much of my work is informed by this second question, "How do I live in a world populated by institutions?" This often leads to the development of leadership skills in the individuals with whom I work, not because they intend to become leaders, but because, by taking a larger and deeper view, they move into leadership positions naturally. Somewhat ironic in the end.