wildmind.org

In the midst of a workload full of opiate crisis, a porn addiction crisis, stinking thinking crisis, work life is full. Although, I remind myself that since I was an adolescent I was aware of one crisis after another. Rather than stating we are in a crisis, we could begin to think that addiction is a part of life, an adaptation to our trauma in life, a protection from a world that let some of us down in childhood. I’m about to go on the road – and wanted to share an interview with me about Mindfulness, because more and more we are hearing that Mindfulness can be the cure for Everything, from increasing production values at work, to repairing a relationship to helping with addictions.

The book’s title describes a daunting challenge. No matter how much we hope and imagine our aging will be graceful and will be touched by the hand of wisdom, we all, when we find our attention unable to be distracted from the reality of our old age, disease, and death, wonder with trepidation what truly lies in wait. The people we meet, their stories, the experiences described, all have a richly personal intimacy. A book whose focus is on old age, disease and death goes right against the three things, as is written in Buddhist teachings, “the whole world wishes to avoid”.

We’re simply observing the body’s sensations, paying attention to them in a relaxed way. We can notice the sensations of air flowing in and out of the body, the rise and fall of the chest and the belly, and even the ever-changing contact our skin makes with our clothing. The mind will still create thoughts, and from time to time some of those thoughts will be compelling enough that we shift our attention fully or partly from our direct sensory experience, and back into the world of mental experience. One way we can be unkind to ourselves is to hold the body in a tense and rigid way, or in a posture that we’re not able to sustain without discomfort arising.

But I wasn’t hiding from my pain, and I wasn’t doing anything that was going to negatively affect my wellbeing in the long-term. Wise self-care is any course of action that contributes to our long-term happiness and wellbeing and that helps us to cope better with our painful feelings. Third arrow activity involves pursuing pleasure in an attempt to escape painful feelings; wise self-care starts with accepting those feelings. Third arrow actions have short-term pleasure as their aim; wise self-care takes into account our long-term happiness and wellbeing Third arrow actions are reactive and unwise; wise self-care, as the name suggests, comes from a deeper, more mature perspective.