From Suffering to Peace

by Mark Coleman

  I hear their concerns and assumptions about meditation still repeated today. From the outside, meditation certainly seems to be self-centered or to reflect a preoccupation with oneself. But let us be honest: the number-one person in our life, most of the time, is ourself. That’s what takes up most of our mental and emotional attention anyway, whether we meditate or not. Yes, we care deeply for our family, friends, and others, but most of our default-mode thinking is about the main player in our own movie: me, myself, and I.

  I remember well when I started meditating. I was consumed with hopes and worries about my life. Like most people I knew, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what I was doing with my life and what direction I was heading. But I was also mired in self-judgment about not being good enough and in fears I wouldn’t amount to anything. As I cultivated awareness through meditation, I shone a light on these obsessive thinking patterns and began to create some space inside, becoming less wrapped up in my thoughts and mental preoccupations.

  Now, many years later, I see how much quieter my mind has become. In this way, meditation can help develop the very opposite of self-centeredness. Today, the inner critic makes few inroads, and the swirl of self-centered thoughts that used to consume so much of my attention is greatly reduced. Often people ask me what I am thinking when I am quiet, doing nothing in particular, perhaps looking out the window or sitting in the garden. They assume I must think about something. But I am often just watching the world go by with a fair amount of inner peace. This allows me to be much more aware of what is going on around me, with others, and with the world.

  How do we reduce our myopic self-absorption? The practice of mindfulness shifts us from the ruminative default-mode thinking to a clear present-moment attention. We learn to unhook from the inner critic and the background narrative that is frequently playing in our heads. When we notice a hummingbird flying outside our window, it snaps us out of our daydreams or planning mind and whips us into the present. Similarly, when we walk by a coffee shop and smell freshly roasted coffee, awareness of our senses draws us out of our head’s swirling thoughts. The same process happens when we focus on our breath, drawing us ever more in the present.

  One facet of mindfulness is the quality of deep listening, and we can bring that attuned skill to listen genuinely to others. It can help restore the lost art of conversation. We have become a society of talkers, not listeners. Discussions at the office can be reduced to the loudest person being heard, where people constantly interrupt and talk over one another. We multitask on our devices and rarely give anyone our full attention. Most communication now happens digitally, which is fraught with misunderstanding. In addition, most conversations are self-referential, seeking help for our problems and support for our perspective.

  Through practice, we develop and offer this gift of attentive presence to others. By training our attention, we learn to hone that capacity, get out of our own heads, and become more attuned to people. Instead of immediately relating what others say back to ourselves and what it means for us, we practice asking with genuine curiosity about someone else’s life, without judgment, correction, or self-concern.

  For instance, Dipa Ma was a renowned Indian Vipassana teacher who was legendary for the depth of her meditation and concentration. When she brought that honed quality of attention to listening to others, it had a powerful impact. Despite having gone through a challenging and difficult life, she talked to others as if nothing else existed for her except the conversation and the person in front of her. You became the center of her laser-focused and penetrating presence. Her decades of mind training had refined that skill. The impact of that was tremendous for the recipient, often life changing.

  Of course, like preferences, self-centeredness is almost impossible to avoid, and some argue that we shouldn’t let it go. Some question how we could succeed in business or how we would take care of our family if we didn’t focus on ourselves and our immediate concerns. Isn’t it important to practice self-care? To a degree, this is valid, but mindfulness reveals how painful it can be when we are so caught up in our own drama and focus narrowly on ourself. This is the basis for so much neurosis and anxiety in our consumer-oriented, materialist, and some may say narcissistic culture today.

  Recent research supports this. We experience greater happiness when our life is less wrapped up in self and instead is oriented to helping others, to being generous and kind. Though Darwin is renowned for popularizing the term “survival of the fittest,” he also wrote about how the success of species was also due to their ability to cooperate. In fact, some say his research is better summarized by the phrase “survival of the kindest.”

  Our well-being is interdependent with that of others. Of course, we must take care of ourselves, but if we try to do this at the expense of others, we can actually thwart our own well-being. Conversely, helping others benefits us in the long run, even though that may not be our initial intention. Just think about the most altruistic and generous people you know. They are often also the happiest.

  As I reflect on my own thirty-five-year journey in meditation practice, I see that this training has increased my ability to look beyond my own self-interest, to get out of my own way and genuinely take in the reality of others. I find this particularly true in my teaching work when I listen to the challenging plights of students. Such attunement to others inspires the desire to help.

  Meditation is not the only way to cultivate this. There are many professions and skills that hone the capacity to orient to others. For example, therapists, social workers, nurses, and teachers have to get out of their own way, to refine their ability to focus on others in order to do their work well. Parenting also supports this understanding, since parents often have to put their own needs aside on a daily basis to prioritize their children. Mindfulness simply supports developing this orientation in every area of life, and from that comes greater responsiveness. It supports the heart to engage with others in a meaningful way.

  I once heard a story that beautifully illustrates what can happen when we put aside self-absorption and become responsive to others. Jenny, a single mother from Illinois, had been out of work for some time and was running out of money. Despite that, she understood the importance of generosity and helping others around her.

  One cold autumnal evening in Chicago, Jenny was standing and waiting at the bus stop. Along came a small older man, barely dressed, wearing a hospital gown, and with no shoes and few possessions. He shivered with cold. Jenny asked him where he was going and why he didn’t have any warm clothing. The man told her he had gotten really sick with AIDS and lost his job and the lease on his apartment. He had been in the hospital recovering from his illness and was just discharged, but had no money. Because he was not from Chicago, he did not know anyone in the area. He was heading downtown to find a shelter for the night.

  As her bus pulled up, Jenny spontaneously took off her jacket and gave it to the man. Looking down at his feet, almost blue with cold, she noticed they had similar size feet and took off her tennis shoes and gave them to him. He protested, asking what she was going to do without her shoes. She replied that she was not far from her apartment, and she would feel much better knowing he had a warm coat and shoes to get him through the cold night. She also gave him what little money she had in her purse so he could get some warm food.

  As Jenny boarded the bus, the bus driver said with a wink and a twinkle in his eye that in general he didn’t let people onto the bus who weren’t wearing shoes. Then a well-dressed man in a business suit called her over and asked her to sit down. The gentleman asked Jenny: “I want to know who this person is that just did the most generous thing I have ever seen to a stranger.”

  Jenny recounted the man’s story and shared about her own struggle to find work. As it turned out, the man was a human resources director in a large health care company. He suggested Jenny come to see him the following week, as he might just have a position open for her. And so the gift of generosity continu
ed, as it often does when our attention is attuned to others, rather than being caught up in our self-absorbed world.

  • PRACTICE •

  Examining Self-Centeredness

  The purpose of this practice is to observe how much of your mental machinations are taken up with thoughts, plans, and rumination about yourself. Don’t judge these thoughts; simply observe how deeply ingrained self-absorption can be. Find a comfortable sitting posture that you can maintain for at least ten to fifteen minutes. Attune to the sensations of your breath to focus your attention.

  You will probably find that your attention wanders from the breath many times during meditation, perhaps hundreds of times in a single sitting. That is normal. However, in this meditation, rather than noticing thoughts and returning attention to the breath, observe the content of each thought and note how often the focus is yourself: your worries, concerns, plans, memories, dramas, and so on. Don’t be surprised if such thoughts comprise more than 90 percent of all mental content. If thoughts are not directly about you, they often are by inference, like about your work, family, or relationships.

  In the same way, during everyday life, be attentive to self-centered thoughts when you talk to others. How often are the topics of conversation about you? Do you direct discussions to focus on yourself, or do you guide discussions toward the other person or a different subject? Who does most of the talking? Is it an equal back and forth, or do you tend to dominate? Do you love to have an audience, particularly to share extensively about yourself? Do you tend to inquire about other people, focusing on their experience, or do you prefer to be the principal object of the conversation?

  As in the meditation, observe this without judgment. Everyone is self-focused to one degree or another; this is a universal phenomenon. The point is to reveal what supports genuine happiness and well-being for everyone. With self-awareness we can wake up to our own patterns of self-centeredness and free ourselves from that onerous habit. In this way, we develop an orientation to others that is both fulfilling and genuinely more satisfactory for all.

  • • •

  Chapter 32

  We’re All in This Together

  In a real sense all life is interrelated. All are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly…. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

  — DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  During the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke eloquently about how, when one segment of society is downtrodden, the whole of society is impoverished. This radical notion asks us to step outside of the limited perspective of our tribal loyalties — which can limit our empathy and concern to only a narrow sector of people like us — and instead feel our shared humanity. It asks us to see ourselves not just as separate individuals, families, and nations but as interconnected, interdependent communities sharing one world. When we do that, compassion and care are more likely natural outcomes.

  With that said, it is natural and healthy for marginalized communities who experience discrimination to identify with those who share their identity (however it’s defined) and to seek safety and refuge within that community. The challenge for all people, as Dr. King expressed, is to do both: to care for one’s own “tribe” while acknowledging our shared humanity.

  To stretch one’s capacity for inclusivity to include all of humanity, as Dr. King encouraged, is not an easy thing to do, either for individuals or for communities or nations. For instance, in recent years, many countries have struggled to cope with surges in immigration, especially by those fleeing war in their home countries. Across Europe, refugees of wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have sought protection, acceptance, and help establishing a new life on foreign soil. National debates over whether to allow immigrants and how to treat them reflect how people characterize our common humanity. Some open their homes to refugees, providing food and shelter, and so exemplify Dr. King’s expression of mutuality. Others would keep immigrants out and characterize these people as different, problematic, and even a dangerous threat to the fabric of their nation.

  Interestingly, when one looks at history, most nations were formed, at least in part, by migrations of people no different than the ones occurring today. However, these complex social issues are rooted in a core dilemma that each of us faces: the sense of separateness or connectedness that defines our individual lives, our worldview, our political persuasions, and our social actions.

  Such issues are also impacted by our evolutionary heritage, which has hardwired us to look for difference rather than perceive similarity. We are programmed to orient to our “in group”: our family, tribe, and people. With awareness, we can become aware of how this perspective can fuel bias and unconscious prejudice. In addition, our brain creates a perceptual illusion of separation, which we tend to believe most of the time. We see ourselves as separate individuals, and we carve up reality into dualities: this and that, self and other, us and them. This misperception feeds a sense of disconnection. We can look out across a sea of people in a busy city street or at a party and feel alone, isolated, as if we existed separately from others and even from life. A tree seems to have nothing to do with us, but it helps create the oxygen we inhale. The clouds above seem remote and unrelated, but the water they release helps sustain us.

  So when we look deeply, we can see through that cognitive illusion and discover just how deeply intertwined everything is. We can move beyond our limited perception, as Einstein wrote: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” The Vietnamese mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has described speaking in a similar way when he asks students what they see as he holds a piece of paper in the air. They, of course, say they see paper. He replies that they are also seeing rain, forests, sunlight, oxygen, and the cycles of the moon. Everything is interconnected.

  Through words and actions, Dr. King asked us to see through this illusion of separation. When we believe we are separate, we are more likely to suffer because we feel lonely, isolated, and overwhelmed by the scale of the world’s problems. When we understand our connection with all life, we sense how embedded we are into the fabric of the world. From that perspective, nothing we do is insignificant. We realize we are part of a whole, something much greater than our small, separate ego self. Our lives are inherently intertwined with everyone else’s lives, and so tackling societal and global problems is part of how we take care of our own lives, and vice versa. Our actions can affect much more than our own lives because we are all in this together.

  In 1955, when Rosa Parks engaged in civil disobedience by sitting in the white section of a segregated bus, she sat alone, but she acted as part of the broader civil rights movement, which demanded inclusion, acceptance, and equal rights, not separation. In 1930, when Gandhi undertook his famous Salt March to the Indian Ocean, he wasn’t just reclaiming the right of Indian people to make salt. His act was a symbolic protest against British colonialism in general and all the ways Indian people were being oppressed. Social justice movements are rooted in interconnection. They propose that it’s not enough for some to succeed at the expense of others; all of society must flourish as one. This was particularly true for the Occupy movement that rose up in 2011 to demonstrate against social and economic inequality. When Dr. King was assassinated, some think it was because he was organizing and connecting the civil rights movement with America’s labor movement, which was too much of a threat to the established order.

  Another vivid example of how separation is an illusion is when we look at ecology. Climate change and the planet’s mounting environmental catastrophes threaten all people and all species alike. These issues reveal our intimate connectedness on a daily basis. Fossil fuels burned in the Northern Hemisphere create atmospheric conditions that melt
ice sheets in Antarctica, raise sea levels in the Mediterranean, and threaten Pacific Ocean islands. The world’s economies are similarly linked: a meltdown in the Japanese economy can affect the lives of Chilean soybean farmers and Icelandic fishing communities.

  Homo sapiens were once wholly tribal. In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari describes how, as a species, we evolved in small roaming bands of hunter-gatherers with a maximum size of 150 people. We survived by responding to immediate threats and opportunities, moving with the seasons. Today, you could say all people live in a global village, one connected by technology, transportation, and communication. We are profoundly interdependent: local problems reflect global problems, and local solutions can radiate out, with far-reaching consequences. In essence, global circumstances now ask us to wake up to a reality that we were not evolutionarily designed for. People worldwide are being asked to see beyond the immediate concern of themselves and their country and beyond the limited timescale of their own life span to include countless future generations. The question for our species is whether we can adapt in time to respond quickly enough to the looming crisis that now faces everyone.

  Humanity has proven that it can come together to respond effectively to global problems. For example, in 1987, the growing hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs (and other chemicals) was effectively thwarted by passage of the pioneering Montreal Protocol, which banned these chemicals worldwide. Such collective vision and action is necessary again to solve the even greater challenge of climate change. This requires radical action by all nations, whether or not they currently feel the full brunt of the consequences of global warming. The 2016 UN-sponsored Paris Agreement was one attempt to take collective action, but so far this isn’t enough to make any significant impact on the heating of the atmosphere. In essence, the technological know-how is there; the political will and urgency and the ability to see beyond our immediate concerns are not. At least not yet.