|
Serving a community of private individuals and professionals
who have the desire to cultivate a life of clarity, compassion,
and creativity. Your feedback is encouraged. Please
contact us at seishindo@seishindo.org.
1. Starting Line
There is a story told by the Zen master Seung Sahn. Many years
ago there was a young man living in Korea, and the young man
felt that his life was quite empty. So he shaved his head
and went up into the mountains to live the life of a monk.
He studied diligently for a number of years, but still felt
that he did not really understand how to be free.
The young man had heard of certain Zen masters living in
China so he gathered his meager belongings and started a long
and arduous journey across arid plains.
Every day he would walk for many hours, and would stop only
after finding a patch of land that had a source of water.
Finding water was not at all a simple task in such dry lands,
but a task necessary for preserving his life. There were many
times he had to walk until quite late in the evening before
finding a suitable location in which to rest and be refreshed.
One day was particularly hot, and the monk walked on endlessly,
unable to find an oasis. As day turned into a moonless night,
the pace of his walking slowed considerably so that we would
not fall and hurt or kill himself. When he did finally find
a shaded area he collapsed on the ground and slept for several
hours. He woke up some time after midnight and he was tremendously
thirsty. He crawled around on his hands and knees in the darkness,
and ran across a roughly made cup that must have been left
by a previous traveler. The custom of leaving a cup with some
water in it, for the next traveler to drink from was quite
common. He drank the meager amount of water in the cup and
he felt very blessed and very at peace with the world. He
laid down again and slept quite comfortably until awaking
to the light of the early morning sun.
Upon sitting up he saw what the night before, he had taken
to be the roughly made cup. It was a shattered skull of a
baby wolf. Ths skull was caked with dried blood, and numerous
insects were floating on the surface of the small quantity
of filthy rain water still left in the bottom portion of the
skull.
The monk saw all of this and immediately started to vomit.
He had a great wave of nausea, and as the fluid poured forth
from his mouth, it was as if his mind was being cleansed.
He immediately felt a deep sense of understanding. Last night,
since he couldn't see he assumed that he had found a cup which
had been left by a fellow traveler. The water tasted delicious.
This morning, upon seeing the skull, the thought of what he
had done the night before made him sick to his stomach. He
understood that it was his thinking, and not the water, that
made him feel ill. It was his thinking that created good and
bad, right and wrong, delicious and foul tasting. With no
thinking there was no suffering.
Having realized this, his journey was complete, as he no
longer needed to find a Zen master.
2. Main Course
Thinking is a major factor in the creation of suffering. The rational
mind tends to understand life through the filter of "opposites"
and by separating one thing from another. Right and wrong,
good and bad, you and me, easy and difficult, are all created
by thinking. When we are not thinking we are not attached
to winning or losing, succeeding or failing. When we are not
attached to the results we achieve, our body stays relaxed,
adaptive, and flexible. People desire many things. Fame, fortune,
sex, power. All of this desire comes from thinking. When we
are thinking, we are not understanding our core self. When
we do not understand our core self, we do not understand the
truth. When we do not understand the truth we misrepresent
and distort the world, and thus we suffer. Not thinking leads
to intuitive action. Intuitive action leads to living calmness.
When we don't think we don't know. When we don't know, we
learn from everything.
Thinking can also be quite OK, and even necessary and fantastic.
Without thinking nothing would run on schedule, there would
be nothing to run on schedule, and I could not write this
newsletter. If you are not upset by your thinking, and if
you are not convinced by your thinking, than thinking is very
helpful. It is important though to keep a "not worrying"
mind when you think. When you worry your thoughts draw your
emotions and your body into a non-productive state, and you
lessen your overall health and vitality.
Beyond the negative affect worrying has on your health and
well-being, worrying or "negative mantras" (as I
spoke about in my last newsletter) also have an obvious negative
affect on what you are able to accomplish. Peak performance
or poor performance; both depend on what you say to yourself.
You quite literally cannot run as fast, throw as far, or accomplish
a complicated task, if you start out by telling yourself that
you will not do all that well.
When we do not think, all of our energy settles into one
point in our body. When our energy gathers in this one point
it is fully available to be directed to other points, other
activities, as we desire. When our energy is settled we enter
into a state of living calmness. This is a state in which
we are most likely to manifest our full power. In Oriental
culture one is advised to empty one's cup if one desires more
tea. In the same way, emptying our system of thoughts prepares
us to receive new ideas, and take on new challenges.
When we think, our mind appears to be inside our head. This
is a small mind. This mind is separate from others. When you
are not thinking, your mind has no boundaries, no fixed location.
This is a big mind. Everything is inside your mind and your
mind is inside everything. There is no inside and outside,
no audience and performer. There is no opponent and no winning
or losing. This is the state to attain for peak performance.
This is also the state to attain for at least a few moments
everyday, in order to live an emotionally balanced life. When
we are emotionally balanced we become more physically balanced.
The opposite of this is also true. In Aikido we say that thinking
raises the center of gravity of the body and thus makes us
somewhat unbalanced emotionally as well as physically. When
we are unbalanced physically we are not fully able to respond
smoothly and effectively. When we intuitively feel that we
are unable to respond smoothly and effectively we become emotionally
agitated, and actually elicit attack. When we empty our mind,
we lower our center of gravity, our ability to adapt and change
is heightened, and we feel more at ease. At such times we
tend to elicit friendly relationships.
We are much more masters of our own fate than we realize.
We are the director, producer, and leading actor, in the movie
of our life that we film on a daily basis. We can make our
movie a comedy, a drama, a horror story, or anything in between.
We can make ourselves heros, victims, "bad men"
or angels. Recently my colleague Molly Gordon told a story
about helping a business client realize how she was clearly
sabotaging her career with negative thoughts, beliefs, and
actions. This perhaps was the easy part of the job Convincing
the client she was doing something that was not in her best
self interest. Next Molly earned her money. She helped her
client to feel EMPOWERED by this newly discovered truth. This
is where the arts of positive thinking and high quality coaching
come in. Molly helped her client to realize that indeed her
thoughts, beliefs, and actions, were ALREADY having a MAJOR
impact on what she was and wasn't accomplishing, and how she
perceived the world. Her less than positive thoughts, beliefs,
and actions, led to big time poor quality results on many
fronts. The correlation seemed quite obvious once it was discovered.
Negative thoughts lead to negative results. The client understood
that what she thought and believed was already having a major
impact on her business. This led the client to further understand
that if she majorly revamped the way she thought and what
she believed in, her new way of thinking would have at least
as powerful a positive impact on her career as her previous
way of thinking had led to a negative impact. This to a large
extent is the same lesson learned by my ex-client who I talked
about in the last newsletter. He found out that constantly
worrying about bad things happening, left him helpless to
do much more than wait for his imagined tragedies to actually
occur. When Jim had his nervous breakdown, he finally stopped
thinking, and thus he finally stopped worrying.
And please remember our monk friend as well. Upon seeing
the skull he literally made himself sick with his thinking.
But he did so in such a powerfully cleansing manner that at
the same time, he did away with his thinking and thus his
sickness. He understood that it was his thinking, and not
the water, that made him feel ill. With no thinking there
was no suffering.
How about you? Is there some situation in your life where
you can now understand that your thinking is what makes for
the suffering and not the actual circumstances that you are
embroiled in? If this is so, it is a great opportunity for
you to cleanse your mind and be free.
3. Prelude to Practicing
The Difference between Practices and Exercises: I want to explain
the terms "Practice" and "Exercise" as
they are used in Seishindo. In Seishindo we believe that living
an emotionally balanced life is an ongoing work of art that
takes place over the course of one's entire life. We believe
that it is important to perform various "activities"
that help you to slow down, recharge your batteries, and feel
into a different perspective on life. The kind of activities
we are talking about here are called "Practices"
in Seishindo. Practices are activities you are meant to perform
over and over again during the course of your life. For the
most part, Seishindo Practices are meant to be meditative
or contemplative in nature and are designed to help rejuvenate
your core self.
"Exercises" on the other hand are meant to be entertaining
and educational explorations that one performs from time to
time in order to learn something new, and gain new insights.
I usually tend to think of Seishindo Exercises as "thought
experiments" where one might wind up saying "Ah,
I didn't know that I thought like that." Or "Wow,
when I use my body differently it is very interesting to see
how my thoughts change."
So, Exercises give us new insights, and Practices help us
to integrate our new insights into our daily life.
Today, we will explore an Exercise together.
4. Exercise: "YES AND NO, at the same time"
This exercise has proven to be one of the more popular one's in
the Seishindo repertoire for students attending workshops.
When you take a look at the exercise it starts out saying
three people are needed, as this is the way we do it in workshops,
but it can be also done on your own. Really do check this
one out. I think that there is something quite interesting
to be learned here.
And please do write in and tell me about your experience
with this exercise. You can write to me at: seishin@seishindo.org.
Yes
AND No, at the same time
5. Links
Judith
DeLozier has been a trainer, co-developer, and designer
of training programs in the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
since 1975. Along with John Grinder, she explored the interrelationships
between NLP and the threads of culture, community, art, aesthetics
and epistemology. The result of this work was the creation
of NLP New Coding, which stimulated a movement toward a more
systemic and relational approach to NLP, and a resurgence
of interest in the work of Gregory Bateson. We are happy to
let you know that we have added Judith
DeLozier's article "Mastery, New Coding and Systemic
NLP" to our Articles section. Judy was also kind
enough to write appreciatively of my work in our Kudos section.
Thanks Judy!
Judith DeLozier's
kudos for Charlie
6. Endnote
A friend who is a subscriber writes and asks: "In your newsletter
you write about 'mushin' that "your thinking mind is
fully present but not engaged in any form of internal dialogue"
then later you say that when in this state "nothing comes
between your thoughts and your actions, and nothing is left
over". Can you please explain the difference between
thoughts and internal dialogue?"
This is a good question! I know it is a good question because
I quickly realize that it is not an easy question for me to
answer.
One of the ways I think about internal dialogue is: Internal
dialogue is a reflexive commentary about what is going on
and what needs to be different. One part of myself is talking
to and usually instructing, another part of myself.
In regard to the "thinking" done in a mushin state,
this is a much more slippery beast to describe so I will resort
to metaphor: When I am entering into a mushin state I feel
like I become an "organic computer." I am very much
sampling the environment and noticing incoming information,
and I am also fairly closely monitoring my internal state.
It is as if the rational mind and the feeling/somatic mind
are so in touch with each other that they intimately inform
each other, but without the need to "talk" or openly
instruct. At such times I guess I would say that I am rationally
feeling, and I am emotionally rational. I can feel joy and
sadness as part of the same whole. I can adjust what I am
doing but the "order" to adjust does not come from
command central in my skull. The system just understands what
to do I hope this makes sense, because this is the best I
can do at the moment in describing my experience.
Next, my friend writes: "Also, I am wondering what is
the difference between mushin and meditation? They seem almost
the same."
Yes, in many ways mushin and meditation can be the same.
Mushin involves a state in which we are open eyed and fully
present in the world. We might be sitting still, but usually
I think of mushin more of a state in which we are active.
In mushin and when meditating, there is "Only One".
7. Copyright
Unless otherwise attributed, all material for the newsletter
"Pure Heart, Simple Mind"(tm) is written and edited by
Charlie Badenhop ©. All rights reserved.
You may reprint, copy, or distribute "Pure Heart, Simple
Mind” (tm) provided you: a. Receive our written permission
(which is likely). b. Attach the above copyright notice
to our material. c. Do not sell our material to others.
d. Keep the content of our material intact without any
editing whatsoever.
|
