Tag: Eckhart Tolle

Be Here Now

Some lessons take take a long time to learn.

I took Induction to Non-Western Religions during my first semester of college in 1988. Here’s the description from the course catalog:

An introduction to the study of non-Western religious traditions in south and east Asia (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto). Open to everyone but especially appropriate for first and second year students. Fall semester.1

James W. Laine, Ph.D., was our professor.

First edition of “Be Here Now,” the perennial bestseller by Ram Dass. Image: Burnside Rare Books

I have three memories of the course. First, our classroom was in Old Main, a gorgeous stone building dating back to 1889. It looked and felt like college in the movies.

Second, one of my classmates was a Theravada Buddhist monk — shaved head, orange robe, sandals — from Sri Lanka. Dr. Laine would banter with him in another language (Sinhala? Pali?) during class.

The third and most important memory is a lesson that took decades for me to internalize. This is part of an e-mail that I sent to Dr. Laine in June 2020:

I remember bits and pieces [of the course] including a parable that you shared during class. The details are probably distorted by time, but it involved someone escaping a tiger and a cliff. The person, despite great personal peril, was able to pause to enjoy some succulent berries growing on the side of the cliff.

Dr. Laine helpfully replied:

The story you allude to has many versions and interpretations. Tolstoy learned of it from the Tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, a medieval Christian tale whose origins are in fact Buddhist (Josaphat being a garbled version of bodhisattva). Gandhi, I believe, learned the tale from Tolstoy. So a Buddhist tale went west, turned north and came back east.  Who knows, maybe Gandhi passed it on to Martin Luther King or Mandela or Cesar Chavez, all of whom he influenced.

With that lead, I was able to track down this version of the parable:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!2

This parable wound up being the most important thing that I learned in college, although I didn’t know it at the time. It took years of subsequent seeking and suffering for it to become lived experience.

There is just the eternal now. The tigers of the past and future are memories and imagination:

Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now.

Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace—and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind.3

Be here now. ✸

  1. 1988/90 Catalog. St. Paul, MN: Macalester College, 1988, p. 159
  2. Paul Reps. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957, pp. 28–29
  3. Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now. Vancouver: Namaste Publishing, 1997, pp. 41–42

Endnote. Be Here Now, which was published in 1971, consolidated these earlier materials into a single volume.

Image: Burnside Rare Books

Some Thoughts About Thinking

I recently did a corporate “lunch and learn” on metacognition, which is our singular ability to think about our thoughts (as far as I can tell, my dog has no such capacity). This would appear abstract and likely impractical but it is actually the key to mental health.

I’m happy to work at the level of things and thoughts. The former generally involves practical solutions (problem solving) while the latter consists of philosophical solutions (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy). But I’m much more interested in the thinker—that’s where the ultimate solution lies.

The “thinker” in this context is consciousness or awareness, which is always present but seldom appreciated. As Rupert Spira counsels, “Allow the experience of being aware to come into the foreground of experience, and let thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions recede into the background. Simply notice the experience of being aware. The peace and happiness for which all people long reside there.” Elsewhere, he advises, “Be knowingly the presence of awareness.”

You can find my PowerPoint here or by clicking on the image above. ✸

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P.S. If this sounds like mindfulness, it might be. Mindfulness has become one of those everyday words that now lacks meaning, or at least a shared understanding. For an interesting perspective, please see Stephan Bodian’s Beyond Mindfulness:

“For all its wonderful benefits, the practice of mindfulness has another downside: it tends to maintain the subject–object split, the gap between the one who’s being mindful, the act of being mindful, and the object of mindful attention. In other words, no matter how mindful you become, there’s always a you that has to practice being mindful of an object separate from you. As a result, mindfulness perpetuates the very sense of separation it’s designed to overcome.”

Who Am I?

I’m finally getting around to memorializing some of the “self-help” books that have helped me over the years. The thread that runs through this grouping is the difference between “I” and “me” (or “true self” vs. “false self” or “observing self” vs. “observed self”—this has been described in various ways).

David A. Frenz, M.D.

“Me,” the conceptual self, can suffer; “I,” which is pure awareness or consciousness, never can. The end of suffering involves withdrawing your attention from “me” and resting in “I.”

This can be a little difficult to understand, let alone practice, which is why I seldom use it psychotherapeutically. But for those who are ready, it can be liberating.

Anthony de Mello’s Stripping Down to the “I” (starts on Page 46) is a great place to start. If it seems like nonsense, don’t be troubled and simply ignore this post. If, however, you’re intrigued, consider reading on.

Self-Care During a Pandemic

Update [10/12/2020]: Here’s the recording of the session. Enjoy!

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Remember airplanes? In the event of an emergency, flight attendants advise us to adjust our own oxygen masks before helping others. I’ve always found that an apt metaphor for anyone in the healing arts.

Delta Air Lines, Inc.

Tomorrow I’m presenting on self-care during a pandemic (but it could be any personal or shared crisis really). Not self-care for our patients and clients—but self-care for ourselves. The main message concerns the relationship that we have toward time and the present, although there will some other stuff sprinkled in as well.

Many thanks to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Practice Transformation for hosting the event. It’s not too late to sign up and the price is right (free)! ✸

Acceptance Is the Answer

Linda Picone, the editor of Minnesota Medicine, tapped me for its “Joy of Medicine” feature. The extended interview appears in the September–October issue.

Minnesota Medicine

I’ll let Linda’s work speak for itself—it’s an absolute gem—but offer the following references for those who might want to go deeper:

Be Here Now

[ Updated with links to the resulting on-air segment / and here ]

WCCO Television

I’m scheduled to appear on WCCO 4 News This Morning on Monday, June 22nd, at 5:45 a.m. The subject will be happiness. I’ll be representing Allina Health

We’ll be discussing a recent NORC at the University of Chicago study that found a historic decrease in happiness. NORC has been surveying Americans since 1972 with the following question:

Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?

Only 14% of people reported feeling “very happy,” which was a sharp drop from the usual run rate. In contrast, 23% of respondents indicated that they are “not too happy.” Both findings are unprecedented (red oval)

Norc at the University of Chicago

Correlation does not imply causation, however, the investigators pursued some provocative Covid-19-related explanations dealing with viral hotspots, loneliness and income. And while George Floyd was not mentioned in NORC’s report, his senseless death on May 25th occurred right in the middle of the survey period. I’d speculate that tragedy and the national reckoning which has followed was also on respondents’ minds

Regardless of the causes, what are some ways to improve happiness?

I generally recommend making peace with the present. This perennial wisdom that has strong, contemporary scientific support. For example, a seminal study by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert tracked happiness in real time using iPhone surveys. They found that people were happiest when their minds weren’t wandering—that is, when they were totally present in the now

In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost

Science 2010;330:932

You can prove this to yourself by enrolling in the study, which is still running

Present moment awareness is sometimes called mindfulness, a trendy, frequently misunderstood word that I’ve avoided up until now. If you’re intrigued, I suggest snagging a copy of The Power of Now, the classic book by Eckhart Tolle. I often point people to “Wherever You Are, Be There Totally” (section), which starts on Page 82 in Google Books

I’ll try to mention other tips and tricks on the air, and hope to add them to my profile page at Allina Health later this week. ✸