Richard A. Frank, MD
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Where am I? Giving Meditation a Second Chance

7/21/2013

2 Comments

 
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(Note: there is an important investment advisory hidden deep within this post)

Everyone I know seems to be learning about Buddhism, and most of them are reading Thich Nhat Hanh, a celebrated monk, teacher, author and peace activist. His voluminous works have struck a cord with Western audiences. A recent book, You Are Here, seemed like a good place to start.  What stuck in my mind after the first chapter was what stuckin my mind at the end of the book:

“Breath In: I know I am breathing in

Breathe Out: I know I am breathing out”


It’s all about the beginning of awareness. Me first, the rest of the world later. That’s something I can sink my teeth into.  (It doesn’t matter what you do with your bite as long as, according to Nhat Hanh, you are breathing through your nose and rejoicing that you don’t have asthma).

I tried it on a walk around Pelican Cove, a beautifully landscaped condominium development in Sarasota, and it worked.  Perhaps it is no more than a way of blocking out thoughts so one can focus on the here and now.  Was my enjoyment of the foliage increased, as he promised, 100 times? 1000 times?  10 times?  I’m a skeptic, but I’d have to say it was at least 3 times, maybe 4. 

But the more you read the more complicated it gets. There are teachings, glosses, a certain way of looking at life, experience, the cosmos.  There are four Dharma Seals, five Elements, fifty one Mental Formations and fourteen Mindfulness Trainings.   You can’t just do it yourself, you have to join a sangha, a community of Buddhist meditators). So I’m looking up my local Thich Nat Hanh related sangha on the internet, reprising my technological imprisonment.

You are not allowed to have any concepts in the Buddhist world of non-being and non- birth/death. Non-being and non-birth/death are not concepts—except when they are—when you think about them too much. Which you shouldn’t.  So I have to practice not thinking about them, which for my mind, is hard to do without thinking about them.

I do like the idea that I needn’t be afraid of death because my life is only the current manifestation of me.  When I die—or not-die—it’s just a change in my manifestation.  Or what is manifesting as me.  But will I enjoy manifesting as something else—say, dirt, sunshine, worms or roses—as much as I enjoy my current manifestation?

It’s all made me think so much that I have to try to meditate more just to alleviate my overstimulated thinking while I still have a mind. 

Fortunately I have an opportunity to compare meditation to another practice of mental relaxation, self-hypnosis. I’m not in a position to do a double-blind placebo-controlled study that would satisfy the scientist in me, but I am accumulating experience with both techniques.  I embarked on self-hypnosis in a desperate effort to alleviate intense physical pain brought on by an obscure neurological malady. My hypnosis mentor is a psychologist whose professional home is a clinic, not a sangha. During my first visit he had me draw a picture of my wished for state of mind. As my artistic skills have never progressed beyond stick figures with funny round heads, I produced a drawing of a stick figure with a funny round head walking on a beach under a bright yellow sun skipping stones over the water.

My mentor made a recording about a person without a care in the world walking along a beach skipping stones. I don’t know whether it was my own magical image or his marvelously soothing voice telling me over and over that there is nothing I need to do, but I found listening to it marvelously relaxing. So much so that it put me to sleep. Which is exactly what meditation does. He was kind when I reported this soporific effect, but I think he expected something else. I suppose my meditation guru, if I had one, would be kind about it, too. Yet I can’t help thinking that both he and my imaginary guru have something other than sleep in mind. They are using their training in forbearance and compassion, patiently waiting till I get it. In the meantime I found a way to take a daytime nap or get back to sleep in the middle of the night, which are no mean feats for a tightly wired individual. When other people find out, it could be all over for Ambien. (Warning: sell pharmaceutical stocks now.)

But I digress. Back to meditation. My current efforts are really my second meditating manifestation. Many years ago I took a “class” in TM (Transcendental Meditation). It was the latter part of the hippie era and it seemed like something slightly anti-establishment an establishment medical student could do without recreational drugs. Learning meditation was so much simpler then. I didn’t read any books and “sangha” was Greek to me. I attended a large introductory lecture during which our instructors extolled the individual and societal benefits of TM, which, if not taken too seriously, lulled us into a quite relaxed state. After a few of these weekly sessions I was pronounced ready for initiation. On the appointed day I was led into a small side room where instructors gave me my personal mantra in a little candle lighting ceremony. I can’t tell you what it is. I don’t remember why, but I’m terrified that if I tell you it won’t work anymore.

The only thing I recall from the lectures is that, according to the Maharishi, when the number of people in the world meditating reaches some magical number, say 1,908,604,732, world peace will come.  That was in 1972. Not only are there still lots of wars in the world; our most recent wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, look remarkably like Vietnam in 1968. Either we didn’t reach the magic number, or the scheme didn’t work.

So it goes…
2 Comments
Emily M Frank
6/7/2015 08:54:44 am

One thought on “Where am I? Giving Meditation a Second Chance”



Awesome! I think your writing could not only help traditional western academics see the benefits buddhist culture offers, but it could also encourage people to think/navigate for themselves.
It is fascinating to see what happens when an intelligent, open-minded western physician grapples with Buddhist ideals and mindfulness. I see a reconciliation happening, but maybe it’s more of a discovery in yourself of something that was always there. It’s both. I like how you go back to your experience as a young medical student–a skeptical reader would respect you, because you’re clearly a skeptic yourself. I wonder how you reconcile this with the concepts you’re learning now?
Living on the hippie-esque East Side of Madison, but having been raised on academic-caliber science, I find myself existing somewhere between the Holistic Yogi All-Natural way of life, and the thrill of i-phones and medicated face creams. I’ve realized that I can’t fully embody either ideal, though, and I wouldn’t want to. But, this means I’m constantly re-negotiating my space among, for example, “granolas” and dermatologists. Hot yoga, for example, isn’t my thing. But, I did it for MONTHS before I realized that I was spending almost as much on electrolyte beverages as I was on gas, and that the objective of all of this was not to cook myself.
It turns out that I can limber up and sweat enough to cleanse my pores in a 70 degree room, though I miss some of the hippie aspects of the hot studios. Institutionalized sadomasochism isn’t for me.
Okay, that’s harsh. I actually love and respect a lot of people who love and respect hot yoga. But, I think to keep re-negotiating one’s space among subcultures, one has to maintain a sense of humor about it. This means sometimes laughing at the ladies wearing 90-dollar yoga pants and asking when the next Nepalese Monk Retreat will take place. (I hear it’s basically a deluxe asceticism vacation! There are so many things you DON’T get to eat and do.)
Nahhh. It’s okay. Those ladies are negotiating their place, too.
Anyway, I got carried away, but I enjoyed your blog post very much. Finding one’s place in this global community with an open heart and mind is a noble journey. Something else Thich Nat Hanh said that I saw years ago and have always remembered: We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. So, the whole journey is the awakening. So maybe when you die, you’re not dying at all. You’re waking up.
But I wasn’t supposed to consider that ;)

Reply
Richard Frank
6/7/2015 08:56:03 am

Very thoughtful, and funny, too

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