Sylvia Wetzel shows us in this book, how we can become familiar with attitudes which can support and heal us. How to let go of old sorrow and develop a new perspective of life. How to gently change old habits and stimulate deep appreciation for ourselves and everybody else. How to see and make use of the many positive conditions life offers. And lastly how we can learn to live with ease in a world full of challenges, difficult emotions and political turmoil
Sylvia Wetzel, born 1949, experiments with paths to inner and outer, political and psychological liberation since 1968 and is practicing Buddhism since 1977, mainly in the Tibetan tradition, with substantial experience in Theravada und Japanese Rinzai Zen. For fifteen years she served as board member of the German Buddhist Union and for twelve years as editor of the Buddhist Quarterly “Lotusblätter” (Lotus Leaves), now called “Buddhismus Aktuell” (Buddhism Now). She helped inaugurate the International Association of Buddhist Women Sakyadhita (Bodhgaya 1987), is founding member of the Network of Western Buddhist Teachers (Dharamsala 1993) and is founding-member and currently president of the Buddhist Academy Berlin Brandenburg (Berlin 2001). With her critical approach to and creative interpretation of European culture and gender issues the author and Buddhist meditation teacher is one of the pioneers of Buddhism in Europe since the mid-eighties.
Sylvia Wetzel. Living with Ease. A Buddhist Perspective on
Emotions. Translated from the German into English by Jane
Anhold and Jonathan Akasaraja Bruton. 234 pp.
Cover photo: © Stefan Kolliker
First English Edition 2015. www.bod.de
First Published in German 2007. Berlin: Theseus Verlag
Books by Sylvia Wetzel in English. All with www.bod.de
The Heart of the Lotus. A Buddhist Perspective on Women´s
inner and outer Liberation.
Words are Working Wonders. A Buddh. Persp. on Communication.
Living with Ease. A Buddhist Perspective on Emotions
In Spanish
Mujer y Budismo en Occidente. Barcelona: Icaria
La vida mas facil. Alicante: Ediciones Dharma
In German
Books, Brochures, and Audio-CDs and DVD. www.sylvia-wetzel.de
© Sylvia Wetzel
Produced by BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt
www.bod.de
ISBN 9783739256399
To feel more at ease und connected with others in happiness, peace and joy – is there anyone who doesn’t want this? When it comes to it, however, our attempts to achieve this quickly run up against difficulties and obstacles. If we are really honest we have to admit that most of the difficulties are of our own making. Why is this so? The Buddhist tradition tells us that our problems arise because we don’t know ourselves well enough. Buddhist practices can help us to become more clearly aware of our patterns of behaviour and emotional response, along with feelings which lie concealed within us. And we can apply ourselves with gentleness to changing what we become aware of, allowing our hearts to open and our minds to clarify. We will gradually open up more space for new patterns of behaviour to emerge. We will be able to jettison unnecessary ballast – thereby lightening our lives.
The starting point for each of us on the path of self-awareness and training of heart and mind is where we are right now. Some people just want to relax and recuperate from a hard day’s work. Others feel attracted to the positive idea of humanity revealed by Buddhism. Yet others would like to be able to concentrate better or to understand their own feelings more fully. All of these aspirations are embraced by this book. The ideas and exercises in the book are formulated in such a way as to make meditation experience or knowledge of Buddhism unnecessary. Teachings and practices are largely presented in a culturally non-specific way and formulated using the language of psychology. There can be no good life without a deep appreciation of oneself and other people. Buddhism maintains that, in the depths of our being, there is nothing fundamentally wrong, because the nature of our mind is to be open, limpid and sensitive. The stronger we can sense this, the lighter our lives will become. It is for this reason that references to the nature of mind form the central theme of the book.
In cases of serious crisis or psychiatric disorder, however, the ideas and exercises described in this book are not intended to provide a substitute for psychotherapeutic treatment. The book is basically aimed at people who are to some extent already able to manage their own lives.
For the purposes of this book I have singled out some individual ideas and practices that work particularly well from the vast depth and breadth of Buddhist thought and teachings. They have been tried out and found to be effective by participants in my practice days and weeks. However, many of these people do not consider themselves to be Buddhists. This book is explicitly aimed at people who don’t want to convert to Buddhism. It’s enough for you to be looking for a contemplative approach to the problems in your life and to be open to ideas from the Buddhist tradition.
Feel free either to work systematically through the whole book or just to start with the chapter that particularly appeals to you. In either case, once you have read a chapter I would recommend that you do at least one of the suggested exercises in order to get the flavour of what it is to practise.
My thanks go first of all to those Buddhist teachers who initiated me into the living traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Rinzai Zen and the Theravada. I would equally like to thank all those who have taken part in my courses. Their positive experiences have strengthened yet further my resolve to find a distinctively Western way to tread the Buddhist path. It is together that all of us – men and women – can find ways to live out the timeless teachings of the Buddha in our cultural context.
Heartfelt thanks go out to Susanne Billig who edited the manuscript for this book with such style and sensitivity and who used her strong sense of dramatic structure and pedagogical effect to reorganise it. It was her experience as an author and journalist which made such a great contribution to the clarity and relevance to everyday life of the final version. My conversations with Susanne Billig, whom I have known since 1990, inspired me in particular to allow more space for the elaboration of the “difficult experiences” issue and to consider the question of types of fear in greater detail than is customary in the Buddhist context. Our conversations about the use - and uselessness - of spiritual practice in dealing with more serious existential crises made it yet clearer to me just how important stable social structures are for the healing of emotional wounds and the development of a healthy and robust sense of self-confidence. Spiritual practice alone isn’t really enough.
Good titles make books more approachable – so I would like to extend particular thanks to Andrea Krug for coming up with the original German title, Leichter leben, which could be easily translated into English and Spanisch, La vida mas facil.
At this point I want to thank Ursula Richard, good friend and long-term chief editor of the main Buddhist publisher in Germany, Theseus Verlag, and now director of the Buddhist publisher edition steinrich, for her encouragement to write this book. Her commitment to finding contemporary interpretations of Buddhism by Western authors has made a significant contribution in making accessible for Westerners the concepts and methods of Buddhism drawn from real life. I would also like to thank her for our many inspiring discussions on central issues in this book.
May you live with ease – or more ligthly
Jütchendorf, Germany, May 2002
Sylvia Wetzel
I am delighted that this book is now available in English and thus accessible for a wider audience. May you find it as useful as many readers in the German- and Spanish-speaking world. Many have written to me to tell me how their lives have been changed for the better by the ideas and practices to be found in this book.
Jütchendorf, Germany, Spring 2015
Sylvia Wetzel
Mindfulness
The key concept of Buddhist meditation is that of mindfulness. The English word “mindfulness” is a translation of a particular Buddhist term, rendered in Sanskrit as smrti and in Pali as sati. This term smrti or sati has the twin meanings of “to be aware” and “to recollect”.
The first of these can be understood as follows: To be mindful or to practise mindfulness simply means to be aware of what we are doing, saying or thinking at any given time. From a particular age, all people are capable of more than just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, sensing and thinking. They can also be aware of doing all the above. We are usually so strongly caught up in what we are doing, saying and thinking that we forget to bring awareness to our perceptions. We instead assume that what we are doing and thinking at any given moment is all that can be experienced. So what, I hear you say. Why do we have to be aware of what we are doing and thinking? What’s the point?
Becoming aware of what is happening
If we are unaware that we are tired we will spend too much time at work. If we are unaware that we are full we will eat too much. If we are unaware that we are always trying to persuade ourselves that we have no time, we will end up believing it. We will then feel under pressure, even if nobody is actually trying to dictate to us what we have to do and by when. If we are not aware that we are in a bad mood, we will believe that everyone else at work got out of bed on the wrong side. If we are not aware that our neighbour is having a bad day, we will take her unfriendliness personally and feel hurt. However, if we can become aware of what is going on with us and other people, we will experience greater spaciousness. We will be able to check whether a situation really is as it appears to us, both internally and externally, or whether thoughts, emotional patterns or physical aches and pains are distorting our view of ourselves and the world.
Mindfulness creates space. It is in this space that courage, trust and perseverance can unfold. These characteristics are important if we are to adapt our attitudes and patterns of behaviour to the many situations we are confronted with every day. And if we can direct our behaviour in an appropriate way, these situations will be more pleasant and productive for everyone involved.
One aspect of mindfulness is becoming aware of what is happening. We don’t need to change everything on the spot – and we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Nor will we be immediately capable of noticing everything that is going on.
As always when we are learning something new
we have to begin with small steps.
Remembering what we want
The second meaning of sati is “to recollect”, to remember. What are we supposed to recollect? If one minute we are on the way to the lounge and the next we find ourselves sitting at the table without any idea of what it was we wanted to accomplish, it will then be of benefit to remember that we wanted to get the newspaper. If we are trying to meditate but get caught up in plans, thoughts or worries, then it will be of benefit to become aware of this and to return to our practice. We need mindfulness just to cope with our normal daily activities. We need mindfulness for our meditation, for the conversations that we have and for the work that we want to get done. The more mindful we are – the more frequently we notice what we are doing, saying and thinking and the more frequently we recollect what it is we actually want - the simpler our lives will become. If we can do this we will be present and awake and in a position to act and react in an appropriate way.
Many people, however, find it hard going and tedious to think too much about themselves and others. They prefer to be spontaneous, to “go by gut feelings”. This desire is understandable. And yet, if we are not aware of what we are doing, we can all too easily fall back into fixed and habitual ways of doing things. What we consider to be spontaneous might actually just be a habitual and automatic way of being. So how can we tell the difference between spontaneous and habitual actions? Well, if we only see one possible way of behaving and experience other approaches as objectionable and bothersome, then in all likelihood we are behaving automatically and without spontaneity. Spontaneity can respond well to unpredicted events and tends to be associated with feelings of openness and spaciousness, with vitality, lightness and joy. Spontaneous people are, on the whole, cheerful. But spontaneity will not arise if we avoid being mindful – the reverse is true:
We can react spontaneously if we respond
with mindful respect
for the many possibilities that life brings.
Mindfulness is already here
Buddhism assumes the presence in all people from the outset of a certain measure of mindfulness. Mindfulness is one of the “five faculties” which are available to all people above a certain age. So it isn’t that we have to invest blood, sweat and tears into inventing mindfulness – it is already present within us. However, if we really want to be more mindful and more awake, we have to do something about it – it won’t happen by itself. If we want to be more frequently aware of what we are doing and what is going on within us, there is no getting round the fact that we have to practise. Many people find practice hard. They prefer thinking to acting and doing things. Others want to do everything right from the word go and have enormous expectations of themselves. The aim of this book is to show you an easy way to develop more mindfulness. It’s not about getting everything right straight away; nor are you expected to succeed very quickly. Becoming mindful is about observing and accepting the multitude of processes within us with patience and kindliness.
There are four areas to which we can pay attention: Bodily sensations, feelings, underlying moods and thoughts. In the following chapters I will attempt to describe how we can become ever more familiar with these four areas.
Because all learning starts at home, let's begin with
some simple mindfulness practices in everyday life.
“How are you?”
Do you ever pay attention to the way you are breathing? Is your breathing quick and shallow, or is it deep and slow? Do you ever notice how you walk? Are you often in a hurry? Do you run up and down the stairs? Do you like to get those little jobs done fast? Or are you one of those easy-going people who prefer to move in a leisurely fashion and even take their time to raise their heads from the newspaper when addressed? We can take the time now and again to attend to how we are feeling physically and how we are moving. Whenever we are walking, talking, sitting or lying down we can get a sense of our physical state.
Every day people ask us how we are feeling. What do we look for before answering this question? Do we pay attention to anything at all? Or do we just say, “Fine, thanks”? We can now ask ourselves: “How am I? Right now?” We can close our eyes for a moment and ask the question again: “How am I right now?” What’s the first thing we notice? Do we feel the tension in our back? Or that pressure on the knee? Do we recall with a heavy heart an exchange from earlier that hurt our feelings? Do we have the feeling that we got off on the wrong foot today? Do we become aware that we just haven’t got going at all today: that we are tired and listless? Do we notice that our heads are buzzing with thousands of ideas and plans?
What do we notice when we ask the universal question:
“How are you?”
Feeling and labelling
We don’t have to be experts in psychology to know that there is a connection between physical sensations and emotional processes. If we are angry or wound up our breathing will come more quickly and be more agitated. If we are sad we will tend to exhale deeply. This kind of association is familiar to everyone from his or her own experience.
Many meditative traditions take advantage of the close association between the breath and emotional states. When we meditate on the breath we start by using the breath to hone our mindfulness. We notice the physical movements set in train by breathing. We attend to the rise and fall of the abdomen as it moves with the rhythm of the breath. We attend to the out- and in-breaths at the nostrils and feel the bodily sensations that become discernable as the out-breath passes the end of the nasal septum. We follow the natural rhythm of the breath and feel the body as it moves to this rhythm. What usually happens is, once we have sat still for a while and followed the breath as it comes and goes in its own good time, the breathing slows and deepens.
In order to help us become aware of the fact that we are breathing in and out, we can also name the process and say the words "out" and "in" to ourselves. After a few breaths we will notice that more is going on: We may hear sounds, pick up feelings of pressure or tension in our back or legs, and find ourselves thinking about this and that. Noticing that this is going on is the second half of the practice. Sense impressions and thoughts are not to be seen as disturbances. That they occur doesn’t mean we’re doing something wrong. This is just how perception functions – we’re not dead, after all! What we can do, however, is to notice that these processes are going on. This will be easier if we develop the habit of labelling what is happening internally. If we feel tension in our left shoulder we can just say "feeling". If we hear a dog bark we can say “hearing”. If we find ourselves thinking about a conversation we have had that evening we can say “thinking” or “the past”. If our mind turns to what we want to do after meditating we can say “thinking” or “the future”. For many meditators these labels offer a first means of finding their way in the jungle of thoughts, feelings, images and sense perceptions: “hearing” and “feeling”, “future” and “past”, “pleasant” and “unpleasant”. The point isn’t to use labels such as “pleasant” or “unpleasant” to evaluate our experience: they are there to help us become aware of the emotional tone of our thoughts.
If we practise in this way we will not only become calmer and more collected, but we will also very quickly gain an initial insight into the patterns in which our inner processes are organised. If we do this when practising we will never be wasting our time. If we follow the natural rhythm of the breath we will be providing supportive conditions for calmness and collectedness to arise. If we find ourselves thinking of other things and notice that we are doing it, we will make it easier for insight into our inner makeup to emerge. Meditating on the breath doesn’t just make us more aware and awake – it also calms us down. Even if we only manage to stay with the breathing with part of our attention for two or three minutes at a time, the exercise will refresh us and arouse feelings of pleasure.
Mindfulness is both calm and joy.
Getting to know what is healing
Meditation is much broader in scope than any kind of breathing exercise. The Tibetan word for meditation practice is “goms”. The verb “gom” means “to become familiar”. A suffix is attached to this common or garden verb to indicate that it has to do with activity. “goms” therefore means “to make oneself familiar”. What is it that we are supposed to be familiarising ourselves with when we meditate? The answer, according to Buddhism, is “that which heals us”. This formulation makes it clear that meditation has something to do with us – with our healing, with the time we need to be healed. We can’t expect to become familiar with that which heals us in the space of ten minutes. We have to know what is missing, what the causes of our suffering are, whether healing is possible and what form such healing might take. If you look at it in this way then many things can become meditation, can become practice: Sitting still and walking, reflecting and reciting mantras, creating images in our mind’s eye, allowing words and phrases to reverberate within our hearts.
Meditation is not in the first instance concerned with cultivating calmness and clarity, stilling our thoughts or gaining deep insights into the laws that govern our lives. Given time, we may well achieve such lofty and far-off objectives. To start with, however, it is simply a matter of practising mindfulness.
To meditate means to become familiar
with what is healing and helping
About the practices
You can sit on the floor or in a comfortable chair, read through an exercise and allow the questions which relate to it to have whatever effect they will. If you enjoy writing you might want to start a diary or just make the occasional note about the exercises. Many people find it helpful to work with one exercise regularly, if possible on a daily basis, for a period of one or two months. Any one of the exercises in this book can fruitfully be tried out when you are alone. However, you will only feel their full effect if you meet people who have integrated them into their daily lives.
If you are really serious about pursuing the path further then please refer to the appendix. There you will find out where and with whom you can practise with expert guidance. If you are sitting down for practice, trying to walk, eat or wash up mindfully for the first time, you shouldn’t let yourself be put off if you feel restless or become sleepy. Such experiences are often indicative of the fact that you are trying to cram too much into your everyday life. If you continue to practise you will develop the resolve and the strength to make changes to the way you are leading your life. Go to bed earlier or allow yourself a bit of breathing space every now and again.
If you tend to be restless during the practice then watch out for those things you do during the day that encourage restlessness. Perhaps you don’t actually need to do three or four things all the time, listen to music throughout the day or listen to the news every hour. It isn’t meditation that makes us tired or restless. We can use meditation to notice that we are restless or tired. If we can maintain a more thoroughgoing awareness of this over a period of several weeks we will be prepared to make small changes.
You can try out the following exercises and work out what helps and heals you. Once you have found one or two exercises that appeal to you, try to practise them for two or three months as regularly as you can. If you can practise five or six times a week for periods of five to ten minutes, that will be a good start which will not overtax you. If sitting in meditation is too difficult, you can start with walking exercises. Or you can lie down and do the exercise of “feeling the body”. Some people like to recite mantras.
Particularly popular among Tibetan Buddhists is the mantra “Om mani padme hum”, the mantra of love and compassion. This is Sanskrit and literally means “Om Jewel in the Lotus Hum”. To look at this poetically, by reciting this mantra we activate the “jewel of love in the lotus of our heart”. The syllable “om” represents the highest ideal, referred to by Buddhists as “Enlightenment”. Christians might prefer to talk in terms of “redemption”. The syllable “hum” stands for stability: The idea of the recitation is to firmly anchor love within the heart. You can recite mantras either out loud to a traditional melody or quietly to yourself at a quicker tempo. Mantras can be recited in the course of everyday activities that don’t require our entire attention, such as driving or chopping vegetables, tidying or washing up. If you find that none of these initial exercises works for you, you can start by looking at the thematic exercises instead. If we are allowed to reflect on ourselves in meditation this may motivate us more than the somewhat monotonous task of following the breath.
Exercise: Feeling your breath
We breathe in a natural rhythm, with long or short breaths, with deep or shallow breaths. We don’t need to make a conscious effort to control the rhythm. We just let the breath flow as it will. In order to help us maintain our awareness as we breathe in and out we can try out various techniques and see what helps us. It will be easier to relax if we start each cycle with the out-breath.
Out-in: When breathing out we say to ourselves “out”; when breathing in, we say “in”.
In: If we are bit tired we can just attend to the in-breath, saying “in” as we breathe in. We can let go a little when breathing out. This will keep us alert.
Out: If, on the other hand, we are wound-up and on edge, we can attend just to the out-breath, saying “out” as we breathe out. We can let go a little when breathing in. This will calm us down.
Counting: If we are very restless we can count the out-breaths from one to ten and then in reverse from ten to one. We can repeat this for the duration of the sit.
Wave: Those who like working with images can imagine that they are sitting by the sea and watching as the waves break on the shore and recede again to the rhythm of the breath.
Cloud: Anyone who is physically tense can imagine sitting in a soft, white cloud. The cloud gets bigger as we breathe out and smaller as we breathe in.
Space – Trust: When we breathe out we sense the space around us, both in the room and outside, above and below the clouds, saying “space” to ourselves as we do so. As we breathe in we can sense our confidence in our abilities, in our own innate wisdom, in our Buddha nature, saying to ourselves the word “trust” or “confidence”.
Yes – Thanks: The “yes” thought: When breathing out we see “yes to life” or just “yes”; when breathing in we say “thanks for my life” or just “thanks”.
Exercise: Feeling your body
This is an exercise of fundamental importance which you can fruitfully do on a regular basis for years. Allowing twenty-five to forty minutes for the exercise we take our awareness slowly through our body, noting the bodily sensations we encounter and labelling them using key words: “warm, cold, pressure, tingling, hot, pulsating, don’t know, vague, nothing at all”. In the first few months in particular we won’t feel much at all in many areas. This doesn’t matter. This exercise has a healing effect on the body and calms down the heart and the mind.
Depending on how we approach it, the exercise will either wake us up (when done from the crown of the head to the toes) or calm us physically (when done from the toes to the crown of the head). We can do the exercise sitting or lying down. If you choose to lie down you should place a fat cushion under your knees. This will relax your lower back.
To calm ourselves down we take our awareness down from our head to our feet. The traditional sequence is as follows: From the top of the head to the pelvis, from the finger tips to the shoulder, from the pelvis to the soles of the feet and the toes. If we want to energise ourselves we start at the bottom and work our way up. The traditional sequence is as follows: From the toes and the soles of the feet to the pelvis, from the fingertips to the shoulders, from the pelvis to the base of the throat and then up to the top of the head.
Exercise: walking
The point of walking meditation is to remain awake and aware of one’s experience also when one is moving. Awareness is generally directed at the feet. We can try out several methods and see what appeals to us most. Don’t try initially to coordinate the walking with the rhythm of your breathing. This will be too much of an effort. You can leave that until later. We can select a part of our house or garden where we can take twenty or twenty-five steps and walk up and down at different speeds for a period of between ten and thirty minutes. Alternatively we can go for a walk and do the same. A long hallway at home is ideal. If we walk up and down at the same place we will be less easily distracted. However, if we want to combine walking meditation with going for a walk it is best to walk at normal speed without walking up and down. Walking around in slow motion in public places can have a peculiar effect on other people.
Labelling: If we are walking slowly we can choose one part of the process to label. We can say to ourselves “raise – up – lower” or “raise – lower” or, if we are walking more quickly, “left – right”.
Images: We imagine that a lotus flower is opening under our feet at each step, placing each foot gently on a blossoming lotus as we walk.
Words: As we walk we say “yes to life - thanks for my life” in time with our movements If we are walking quickly we can just say “yes – thanks”.
Enjoyment: We just enjoy walking, whether fast or slow.
The three basic feelings