Tag: mindfulness

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The selfie trap

Selfie culture and mindfulness

Fresno Bee, January 8, 2016

  • Examining the tyranny of the selfie
  • Selfies are signs of narcissism, exhibitionism
  • Mindful absorption is a key to happiness

Selfies are everywhere. Celebrities snap them. Popes and presidents have taken them. And dumb criminals record their own crimes.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, at left on screen, shoots a selfie with supporters after a town hall meeting on Jan. 4, 2016, at NewBo City Market in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Hillary Clinton recently lamented what she called the “tyranny of the selfie.” Voters want selfies with candidates – and don’t really care much about the issues. Somehow we think that if we get an awkward picture of ourselves, we’ve accomplished something.

Selfies are not without risk. Dozens of people have been killed or injured trying to get the perfect selfie. A student fell to her death recently in the Philippines while attempting a dramatic selfie from a rooftop.

In order to take a selfie, you have to turn your back on the action. This is obviously dangerous. It is also symbolic. The selfie combines narcissism, voyeurism and exhibitionism with disengagement and distraction.

Our narcissism is obvious. We want badly composed close-ups taken at arm’s length. And we send them out to the world.

Our culture encourages us to believe that if it is not recorded, it is not valuable. We are voyeurs, obsessively watching other people do things – on TV and online. We are also exhibitionists, shamelessly displaying ourselves to the world.

Very little remains private in the age of voyeurism and exhibitionism. Sexting has democratized pornography. It is quite common for people – including teenagers and an occasional politician – to exchange naked photos.

Even apart from the naughty stuff, there is something awry in a culture where everything is done with and for the camera. One problem is that we often think that if we’ve taken a picture, we’ve done our part.

Students in my classes no longer take notes. Instead they take pictures of what is projected on the overhead. But taking a picture is no substitute for taking notes – or for thinking.

Here is a New Year’s resolution: to remain thoughtfully focused on the moment without fumbling with our phones.

Human beings are happiest when we are immersed in activity. A happy life involves mindful engagement with the world. Folks who are fully engrossed in the world often forget to take a picture of it.

Sure, the moment will pass. If you don’t take a picture, you might forget it. But the recipe for happiness it to let this moment blaze in all its glory, then move on and find joy in the next. The happiest people lead busy lives, which rarely leaves time to look back at their own selfies.

Happiness is not captured in a selfie and exhibited online. Happiness is an ongoing activity. Happiness is not something we are; it is something we do. Happiness does not come from watching others or ourselves; it comes from doing things.

Happiness, like love and learning, requires engaged activity. If you want to be happy, get busy doing good things. If you want to learn something or love someone, be focused, engrossed and aware.

Some traditions advise that enlightenment comes from learning to do nothing. The world’s contemplative traditions maintain that serenity is found in silent stillness. Meditation calms the mind and helps us focus.

Attentive absorption in the present is a cure for the distracted frenzy of our selfie-snapping world. To be mindfully engaged with what we do and those we do it with, we need to look at them directly instead of mugging for the camera.

Meditation and other contemplative practices aim to cure us of our obsessive focus on ourselves. It is difficult to image a Zen master picking up a phone in order to record nirvana. It is also difficult to imagine Jesus posing for a selfie with his disciples.

Enlightenment, love and ethics are antithetical to the narcissism and disengagement of our age. Ethical engagement is not undertaken with an eye to the camera. And a picture is often worth much less than careful attention to the moment and those we love.

We take pictures of ourselves doing things in order to prove to others (and to ourselves, I suppose) that we are having fun. But turning your back on the action to prove that it’s fun breaks the spell of the moment.

Here is some advice from the sages: Be mindful in your deeds. Learn from stillness. Love without reserve. And if you must take a selfie, watch your step.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/living/religion/article53799895.html#storylink=cpy
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Living in Accord with Nature

Technology is amazing, but happiness comes from accepting life as it is

Fresno Bee, May 15, 2015

  • Technology promises infinite possibilities for improvement, while creating a challenge for happiness
  • Stoic wisdom encourages us to take the time to love and accept the world
  • Philosophical reflection on infertility, gender transition, and other technological innovations points toward deep questions about human life

Sunflower-and-Butterfly-VectorWe do not live in accord with nature. Never content to leave things alone, we tinker and experiment, invent and explore. Growth and innovation are the driving forces of the free world and the free market.

Technology has created previously unimagined possibilities. Bruce Jenner’s gender transition and Sofia Vergara’s frozen embryos are reminders of a new array of options, which create new ethical challenges. Gender and infertility were once viewed as fixed points of nature. Now they can be modified according to our own desires.

Hurray for freedom and ingenuity. But choice breeds discontent. When there is always room for modification it is difficult to accept the status quo.

Our technological prowess encourages us to dream of who we want to become. Our political liberty allows us to actualize our dreams. So we avoid reconciling ourselves to the flaws and faults of the world. Why accept our limitations, when we can overcome them through science?

Technology promises solutions for all of our problems. There is even an app called “Happify,” whose website claims that happiness is “winnable” with just a few clicks per day. So much for the long, slow struggle up the mountain to find enlightenment. We are too busy for that.

Each consummation of happiness is fleeting. So we jump back on the treadmill, looking for other satisfactions, expecting something new, exciting, and different.

A sign of this is the experience of phantom phone vibration, an imagined pocket vibration, which feels like your phone is buzzing when it is not. Apparently, this is common. Ask a teenager for confirmation. We are so primed for diversion, so eager for new stimulus that we conjure it up for ourselves.

I worry that with each bit of instant technological gratification and each new choice, we forget that life includes boredom, sadness and grief—as well as joy and inspiration. In the end, our freedom will come to naught: there is no app for immortality. In a technologically mediated world, it is easy to ignore the natural, human processes of living, learning, loving and losing.

Of course, our lives are easier today. Technology is useful, in moderation. But the urge to improve must be supplemented with the wisdom that comes from being reconciled with the inherent imperfection of things.

Tranquility comes from learning to love the world as it is and accepting things as they are. This is a common refrain in the world’s wisdom traditions.

The ancient Stoics encouraged a life in accord with nature. A central lesson of Stoicism is the need to embrace life as it is—along with its fragility. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do.”

Wouldn’t it be great to love the world as it is, without qualification? Perhaps the best model is a mother’s love. A loving mother completely affirms the goodness of her child. She wants the child to grow and develop. But an adoring mother does not dream of a different child: she loves this one, with all of its beautiful blemishes.

Mindful acceptance of the world is the path to peace. This world exists here and now—as it is. We can tinker around the edges, but reality can’t be fundamentally changed. This body is what it is. It will continually age and degenerate. The people I share the world with are finite and flawed, like myself. I’m stuck with them, as I am stuck with myself. Mindful acceptance embraces flaws and faults along with beauty and charm, acknowledging that this is reality—messy, broken, and incomplete.

In our free and creative country there is ample opportunity for innovation. But there is a pressing need for unqualified love and serene acceptance. This is the only life we are privileged to live, the only world we will ever know.

Acceptance is difficult in a world of faultfinding pundits and dreamy advertisement. Our culture thrives on the idea that things could always be better. The hope for the better gives us a reason to roll up our sleeves and get to work. But work makes no sense without a Sabbath that consummates our efforts with an affirmation that loves the world.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/living/religion/article21117348.html#storylink=cpy
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Can mindfulness influence our moral character?

Can mindfulness influence our moral character?

Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Originally published 2013-01-12

Take a breath and slowly exhale. Unclench your jaw. Clear your mind. Be present now. Feel better?

A growing body of evidence suggests that there are mental, physical and emotional benefits to yoga and meditation. Some recent studies suggest that mindfulness can lead us to be more ethical.

A recent paper by Marc Lampe, a professor at the University of San Diego, argues thatmindfulness helps improve cognitive awareness and emotional regulation. This can contribute to ethical decision making. A study by Nicole Ruedy and Maurice Schweitzer, at the University of Pennsylvania, links mindfulness to “moral attentiveness.” They claim that mindfulnesshelps us avoid making excuses for immoral behavior.

This is not too surprising. Common sense tells us that we think more clearly when we calm our emotions by taking a few deep breaths. But perhaps there is more to mindfulness than deep breathing and attentive awareness.

The practice of mindfulness comes from non-Western religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. When Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that mindfulness helps us touch the peace that is here now in the present moment, it is easy to forget that there is a complicated metaphysical and psychological theory underlying this idea.

Despite these exotic roots, Americans have embraced mindfulness. A congressman from Ohio, Tim Ryan, published a book last year, “A Mindful Nation,” which suggests thatmindfulness can help us work better, reduce health-care costs and improve the performance of the military. Ryan even secured a million-dollar federal earmark for mindfulness training in schools in Youngstown, Ohio, with the goal of using mindfulness to improve student performance.

I wonder, however, whether mindfulness should be employed as a tool for achieving the American Dream. There is something odd about using yoga to enhance military performance or meditating in order to improve profit margins. The core of mindful meditation seems to point in another more peaceful and less materialistic direction.

Critics of mindfulness worry that Eastern meditation practices cannot be easily grafted onto Western roots. Consider the controversy that erupted recently in Encinitas, a yoga-friendly beach town north of San Diego. When the Encinitas schools introduced yoga as part of the school day, Christian parents threatened to sue the school district. They view yoga as a pagan practice and demanded that their children be exempted from the program.

Some Christians have embraced alternative contemplative practices without seeing a contradiction with their own spiritual commitments. But other Christians remain opposed. In 2011, an Italian priest, Gabriele Amorth, denounced yoga as Satanic. The president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, Albert Mohler, described Eastern meditation as an “empty promise,” since it focuses on emptying the mind instead of connecting with God. Christian pastor Mark Driscoll argues that Eastern spirituality blurs the distinction between good and evil, “promoting cultural pluralism and the denial of truth.”

The claim that meditation results in relativism and the denial of truth is a significant accusation. Traditional Western approaches to ethics and religion focus on rule-following behavior and orthodoxy of belief. This requires clear judgment and an effort to distinguish between right and wrong. But mindfulness in Eastern traditions appears to have a different focus, as nonjudgmental awareness.

Jon Kabbat-Zinn — an influential proponent of meditation — connects mindfulness with nonjudging acceptance and letting go. The idea is to let experience occur without attempting to categorize, manage and direct it. A kind of serenity and peacefulness develops when letting things be, without judgment or control.

Proponents of mindfulness connect this with values such as nonviolence and compassion. But the serene equanimity of mindfulness can seem to its critics like relativism and indifference to God and the good.

There are obvious benefits to taking a mindful breath. We do make better judgments when we are able to step aside from emotional tumult and the reactive pressures of the world. But critics will argue that this is not enough — that the empty mind must be filled with principles, truths and moral judgments. There is a fundamental difference of opinion here about what counts in terms of ethical discipline and spiritual practice.

There may be no way to resolve this dispute. But it might help us to think better about these deep questions, if we took a few mindful breaths.

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Reflecting on Sept 11

Silence will offer space to reflect on 9/11

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee 2011-09-10

Memorial activities dedicated to 9/11 have continued to create controversy. Critics on the right complained that when President Obama called for national service in honor of 9/11, he was slipping “socialism” into Patriot Day. And on the left, critics worry that the name “Patriot Day” is itself too nationalistic and militaristic.

This year the dispute is over the place of prayer in the dedication of the 9/11 memorial in New York City. The plans for the event do not include public prayer. In response, the Family Research Council has circulated a petition that concludes: “This nation needs prayer more than politics.” But public prayer is political. Public prayers would inevitably include some and exclude others.

All public speech is political. Perhaps what we need is more silence and less squabbling. The 9/11 ceremony in New York will, in fact, include several moments of silence. This is the best way to proceed in a diverse society in which religion is politicized. Indeed, silent reflection is welcome, in a culture that is filled with speech. In silence, we can sort out our own thoughts — apart from the incessant bickering and chattering of public life.

Our desire to give speeches and offer public words of prayer is connected with our need to make sense of things. We want a story in which events have some meaning. But our stories are tendentious. We always reconstruct the past based upon our present concerns. Over time, as our memories fade, we establish memorial rituals, as an attempt to preserve the past against the corrosive power of time. But these ritual memorials are partial and biased. They skate on the surface, while lacking the complexity of serious history.

For several years, the images and emotion of 9/11 were seared into our memories. Those who were directly involved in the horrors of that day may never be able to forget. But for many, the memories fade. And events that were once so vivid, now become episodes in a story that is being told to the next generation, which has no living memory of the event.

Ralph Waldo Emerson explored the problem of memory in his essay, “Experience.” Emerson was troubled by the fact that he could no longer feel the same grief for his dead son as he did in the days and months immediately after his son had died. Emerson worried that forgetting was disloyal to the past. He concluded: “The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is.”

But forgetting is natural and normal. It is healthy to turn the page and allow the past to become a story. And we should admit that these stories cannot touch the reality of what is past. Even atrocities are forgotten and we are left with stone memorials and ritualized ceremonies. Emerson said that things “slip through our fingers when we clutch hardest.” The more we try to hold on to the fading past, the less we grasp it.

As we pause to remember 9/11, it is important to recognize the complexity of the process of remembrance. It is easy to be swept away by maudlin spectacles and sentimental speeches. There is pleasure in the emotional excess of public ceremony. It is comforting to belong to a community that remembers and grieves together. We need these ceremonies to reassure us and to express solidarity with those who are still suffering from trauma.

We want to belong, to share a common story, to celebrate a common past, and mourn a common loss. But somehow public speeches don’t go deep enough. The staged emotion of public ceremony is too shallow to reach the reality of a past that is slowly fading away. And oratory offered in commemoration is always colored by present purposes. The controversy about prayer at the 9/11 event is, after all, as much about the politics of the present as it is about the past.

There is a time for speeches and for prayer. But silence is also useful. And we don’t have nearly enough of it. As Thoreau — Emerson’s disciple — put it, “silence is the universal refuge.” Silence allows us to think on our own terms, outside of the din of public life. And silence offers a common refuge for each of us, whatever our religious or political inclination.