Happiness vs Non-Attachment

Recently, I spent 3 days at a Buddhist monastery.

No, I didn’t disguise myself as a Buddhist monk and sneak in. I was actually welcome there by the residential monks to an Introductory Retreat – the first retreat if you’ve never visited before, at the beautiful Shasta Abbey near Mt. Shasta, California.

The mostly silent retreat – mostly because we were encouraged to ask questions during “Dharma Discussions” and communicate as necessary during instruction and invited to sign up for a counseling session with a residential monk – all required the use of our voices.

I have been home for three days. There are two major things coming forward for me to share with you all:

First:

I love spending time in silence. It’s a relief for me in my overly articulated, super-verbal life. (Some might even call me bossy at times!) But I really like silence! Here’s what I wrote about it during the retreat:

“I really like the silent times where I don't talk. The thoughts that will never reach my lips somehow have a clearer, crisper -  pure bell-like quality to them. I didn't realize how the prospect of speaking thoughts (or potentially writing them) adjust them - taint them somehow. As if the intensity with which I think things that might get spoken or written created an unknown tension in my brain. It's a relief."

The fabulous monk, Reverend Mugo, to whom I talked wrote about my thoughts on silence in a kind and eloquent way on her blog with my OK and preserving my privacy. Here’s a link to her blog (url below). I highly recommend you subscribe as I find her blog to be of great spiritual insight and value, not to mention pragmatic, especially for those of us not living full time at a monastery!

http://www.jademountains.net/thoughts-unspoken/

Second:

Non-attachment is the bomb!

            (Am I attached to non-attachment?!?)

But happiness is confusing. Our constitution contains the word, stating every citizen of the United States (save slaves, indentured servants, and indigenous people at the time!) has the right to pursue “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but what exactly is happiness? Surely someone high on morphine, while at the best part of the high, feels happy, right? Some might argue that’s not really happiness, but pursuing and feeling happy can be as goal-oriented, evasive and have a chasing-the-dragon quality, I think. For example, most people would probably categorize me as a happy person; I think I’m someone who cultivates happiness on a regular basis – for me my cultivation activities include meditation, exercise, eating healthy, being myself and spending time with people who embrace me for who I am; in other words, not feeling (or believing) that I need to be other than who I am.

I’ve been having internal dialogues and researching happiness for a while now, but from my experience at the Abbey, I’m realizing that a more non-attached way of being actually leads to what most people call happiness. It may not be as manic (though true happiness really isn’t manic) or exciting, and is likely less obvious. But life’s little annoyances don’t carry much weight when practicing non-attachment. Two examples: Yesterday while in the kitchen, I accidentally spilled some water. In the past I would’ve gotten annoyed that I did this and I know the physiological symptoms of this annoyed state were heighted blood pressure and acid throughout my body (typical physiological stress responses). Yesterday, I basically shrugged, mopped up the water, and moved on. Today, I didn’t have enough toilet paper in the bathroom and realized it too late. Our extra supply is in our overflow storage (bathroom is small), which is outside and about 20 feet away from the bathroom and no one was around to fetch some for me. Being really into personal and excrement-related hygiene would be part of my excuse why I would’ve gotten annoyed in the past. Today, upon realizing I had about one-wipe worth of TP left, said “crap” aloud to no one, and once again shrugged, decided to deal with it calmly (and not beat myself up for forgetting to replenish earlier) and just did what was necessary to remedy the situation.

Non-attachment! What a revelation. And it can be so hard to do this when absorbed in the annoying moment. It’s worth noting that I’ve called myself a “recovering perfectionist,” and I think that was a factor in my annoyance about things that I judge could have been better or perfected.

Now I’m still quite attached to certain things: family, loved ones, friends, healthy food, shelter, fun, relaxation, even meditation! But, this way of being also helps me to acknowledge that losing any of the aforementioned human needs and attachments, like family, shelter and food wouldn’t be as emotionally devastating as they would be were I not practicing non-attachment.

Meditation helps. A lot. Helps me to be in a non-attached way of being. Some call it “seeing things as they are” or “seeing the truth.”

But I’m also not trying to be attached to meditation and am mindfully aware of that as well. For now, I feel it is one of the best tools for overall health and wellness… and for seeing things as they are. Truly.

And that’s the trouble with language. Often the same word means vastly different things depending on person and context.

So, how is it for you? How do you define happiness? Non-attachment? Are you cultivating anything in your life? Does it add to your daily calm contentedness? Who are you? Are you able to be you regularly?

One final thought: Shasta Abbey is one of a handful of monasteries where male and female monks live and train together at their monastery but still practice celibacy. All the monks have shaved heads and wear similar brown robes. As you can imagine, that makes it difficult to reference a monk if one doesn’t know their name. I would smile and laugh often during my 3 days at Shasta Abbey… But during meditation I was trying to stay still and silent, so I'd let the laugh just circulate instead of letting it be audible or sharing it with someone. A common reoccurring thought was that I wanted to call the female monks monkettes or monkess, or the male monks monkers. All those words struck me as funny. I haven’t asked permission yet whether any of these terms are appropriate, so to describe a monk whose name I couldn’t recall, I simply said, the gentle-lady monk or gentleman monk.

What do you want?

This is a question I've asked myself and I've asked friends. I'm surprised at my own and others relative inability to really answer it.

So I'm asking you now. What do you want? 

Not for lunch. Not for your birthday. Not for your next job or paycheck, but holistically, in your life, as your life...

What do you want?

This answer for me, and probably for most people, has changed throughout my life. One of the things I love actually, about getting older, is that I feel less...uncertain, insecure, and wishy-washy about such things.

You see, I realized something the other night and it feels as though my life has shifted.

It was Monday. Just a seemingly normal Monday night. Though I have had experience with Mondays disguised as normal. A few years back I used to have what I called a songwriters circle Monday nights, though it really was a gathering of friends, and a few of us were musicians and a few were musically inclined. I was one of the musician/songwriters, as was my friend James and a few others who happened by from time to time. Some of the other regulars could carry a tune, so they'd sing back up or improvise lead, and a few others could play a song or two on guitar, or hold a beat on a random bucket we found in the back room. Since this took place at a restaurant, we had some accouterments at our fingertips. Anyway, it was always Monday nights. We'd start around 10pm and sometimes go until 2am. Just hanging, playing music, talking, sharing new songs, sharing whatever. The guys had already dubbed the night "Magic Mondays" and I was lucky enough to be included in the magic. For the 5 months it was without a doubt, my favorite night of the week. We had to stop because of venue issues. One of the first things I'll do when I have a bigger, more conducive place is reinstate (music) Magic Mondays.

Well, two nights ago for me was my own, semi-private, epiphany-charged Magic Monday.

I was in hypnotherapy class with this guy Joe Leeway. Nice guy. Pretty good teacher/speaker. Also, he's an NLP practitioner and hypnotherapist, which are all right up my alley. (NLP= Neuro-Linguistic Programming. More on NLP in Joe's link below and in future blogs. Here's wikipedia on NLP.) Earlier that day I had also finished the Agassi book Open (that I blogged about in Monday's blog Andre Agassi is now Open), and as you all know I was inspired by the book and especially the school he opened. Also, I've been recording music at home and this week working on an original song called Over You, working out regularly, and writing this blog. The perfect storm of taking care of myself, self-expression, music creating, and inspiration from other people's stories. What happens next? In walks Joe Leeway and his line, which seems from out of no where, but is perfect for what I needed to hear in that moment.

Ask your clients what they want. Nine of out ten people walking around out there don't know what they want. Those people, the one out of ten, rule the world because they know what they want. (Joe Leway's hypnotherapy page)

And it hits me. What I want. It was like the proverbial light bulb.

I want wealth and fame so that I may do what I want and create a happier, more beautiful, peaceful, spiritual world.

In other words, I want to help myself and other people to be happier and more fulfilled, and I want the proper leverage to do so in a big way. Simultaneously I had a vision of standing in front of a big room of people while they break into small groups and work this question out with each other.

For years I've been doing this dance around being a professional musician. Thinking I wanted success and notoriety as a musician, or more than I already have, but I didn't have clarity on why even though I had a sense that I wanted to help people. I perceived becoming a famous rock star as a largely self-centered goal. No wonder it hasn't come to fruition yet. I also had moments in the past of, who are you to think you can help people. Yow! Not very friendly thinking to myself. Also, not very helpful or encouraging.

Maybe it's the hypnotherapy training or my spiritual psychology degree; maybe it's the music playing at home or the daily writing to all of you out there (who are you, anyway?!?); maybe it's years of meditating and kundalini yoga, or maybe it's simply growing up a bit; maybe it was just a surprise Magic Monday. Likely it was all of those things combined. Suddenly, all that negative stuff just fell away in that moment. I was filled with clarity, relief and gratitude.

I'm enjoying my home life more than ever. I vacuumed the next day and I usually don't like to vacuum. It was kind of enjoyable. I recorded Monday night and again yesterday (Tuesday). Usually Marcus prompts me to record, but yesterday I was the one urging us to get the vocal tracks down.

I'm curious to see how it will all unfold. Marcus likes to tell his students, and I suppose I'm one of them if only during our martial arts classes, "maintain your practices." What he means by this is that as people become more successful, healthy and happy; logically their life shifts, and they sometimes eliminate the very things, usually personal things, that supported them becoming more healthy, successful, and happy. Like eating healthy, meditating, hypnosis, affirmations, doing a good deed every day, spending time with loved ones, creating time for writing or exercise or creative expression. Those kinds of things - whatever they are for you. They are the foundation of your life. Take them away, and the whole structure collapses - the structure you built. Whether or not we're aware of it, we're always practicing something. Might as well practice the good stuff. So that's what I'm up to, I'm maintaining my practices.

You'll hear how it goes. Trust me.

So...

What do you want?

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