The irony of willpower is that it requires willpower to develop more of the same. The most obvious case in point is that meditation is an exercise of willpower that requires willpower. Willpower is what I’m missing most and it’s the thing I have the hardest time working on.

The most damning part is that willpower is something for which you can’t get a personal trainer, and which all the inspirational words in the world won’t change.

Step one is acceptance, right?

So I’m a Buddhist. Which means I do Buddhist things like meditating and practicing loving kindness, patience, equanimity and so on. There are a million different ways to practice this Path and lots of important things to keep in mind while doing so like impermanence, suffering and not-self. But lately I’ve caught myself doing something very unlike ‘me’, something that is helping me in a tremendous way, something I never would have thought of doing if I hadn’t started studying and practicing Buddhism. I’ve been watching my mind and reminding myself not to believe everything I think.

This may n0t seem to be a big deal to some but to me it’s monumental because over the course of my life I’ve given a great deal of trust and belief to my thoughts and feelings. I’ve always believed that my feelings and ideas were very important and meant important things. I’ve relied on my mind to tell me the truth all my life and it’s only now, at the age of forty, that I understand how big a mistake that was.

It’s a mistake to put our trust in our thoughts and feelings because our minds are very good at playing tricks on us and our minds are in the habit of reinforcing what we want to believe instead of what the truth actually is. We really are deluded beings and the more we watch our minds the more that truth becomes apparent.

So lately I’ve noticed myself automatically correcting my mind. I’ll be sitting doing some needlepoint and thinking about things and notice how my mind starts to react to the thoughts I’m thinking. For example, I’ll start thinking about something in my life that’s not going as planned and I instantly start feeling angry. At first my mind will trick me into believing that whatever thoughts I’m thinking are worthy of making me angry, of making me suffer. Then I’ll catch myself. I’ll start thinking, “These thoughts that are making me angry, and the anger itself, isn’t important in the grand scheme. They’re not worth the suffering. They’re not solving the problem, they’re only making it worse. Don’t believe your mind when it tells you these thoughts are important to think. They’re not. They’re impermanent and will come and go. They hold neither importance nor solutions, just more suffering. They’re not important enough to hold on to, so let them pass.”

I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. I’ve always been a brooder to a certain degree and believed all my thoughts and emotions had great validity. This has caused me great suffering in the past. In fact, when very bad things happened in my life I had a tendency to get lost in my thoughts about them. It felt like being caught in a loop of painful thinking and I couldn’t, or thought I couldn’t, drag myself out of it.

But that never happens anymore. I don’t nurse my anger or sadness or fear anymore. I don’t sit and saturate myself in thoughts of being hard done by or injured by someone. I still find myself starting to nurse some of these thoughts but now I’m able to nip them in the bud, before I get caught in the loop and before they escalate. I’m learning how to let go. Finally.

The thing that strikes me is that I feel like a child again. As a child I was resilient and I naturally lived in the moment. It was only as I got older that I lost my way and started imprisoning myself in my negative thoughts, living in the past, nursing sadness or anger or feelings of self pity. It feels to me that I got in my own way and once I got out of my way my mind naturally went back to its healthy way of experiencing the world. I’m learning how to get over myself and get out my way so the resilience of childhood and the natural tendency to live in the moment can resurface on its own. As it does.

I’m still at the beginning of this Path and I know there’s much more work to be done. But the simple fact that I’m catching myself when I’m putting too much faith in my thoughts is a sign of progress to me and it renews my energy and encourages me to keep going, keep practicing. I know results aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be and there’s no use in getting caught up in them. But a few signs of progress here and there go a long way and I’m grateful for them. In Buddhism it’s always a new day, another opportunity to do better, to be better and to get better. My heart is full of gratitude for the Buddhadhamma.

Brigid

Yesterday I attended a conference in Phoenix at Arizona State University put on by the Arizona Coalition to end the death penalty. It was quite illuminating as they had speakers who fell on both sides of the fence, from prosecutors to Quakers. Mostly it was from the legal side of the issue - how the death penalty works in Arizona, what are the legal arguments for and against the death penalty. There was very little on the moral and ethical consequences of putting people to death, which itself was very revealing.

It turns out that even if you view the death penalty in cold economic terms it makes absolutely no sense at all. In Arizona it costs on average $31 million (yes, million) to prosecute a death penalty case to completion. It also takes on average 18-19 years from arraignment to execution. However, only about 1% of death penalty eligible cases ever lead to execution. Important factors in deciding whether to pursue the death penalty in a case are race and economic status. Someone who can afford an attorney (i.e. who can afford competent representation) almost never gets the death penalty. And yet there are those - including the county attorney from Maricopa County (Phoenix) who spoke at the conference - who vociferously claim that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. However, the death penalty in the US as it is currently carried out meets none of the requirements for deterrence, such as quick punishment, certainty of punishment, and so forth. In fact, currently in Arizona, all but a scattered few death penalty cases are in Phoenix. Other municipalities and counties rarely attempt death penalty cases due to the cost and difficulty of winning such cases. Currently in Arizona all the death penalty cases are in Maricopa county except for 3 in Yavapai and one or two in Pima counties. Note that Phoenix is not the only large city in Arizona. Tucson is also over a million, yet there are few if any death penalty cases brought there. It is also questionable if someone who kills out of rage would ever think about the consequences beforehand.  So the argument for deterrence has no basis.

Someone asked the prosecutor about why it was that in the EU (and all other civilized countries on earth) where they didn’t have the death penalty, their crime rates were so low. If the death penalty was a deterrent, one would expect these countries to have soaring murder rates while the US should be virtually free of them. However, the opposite is true. The prosecutor’s response was that these countries historically had low crime rates, so it wasn’t a valid question! I wonder what his opinion would be if he understood the law of cause and effect as taught by Lord Buddha. Could it be just the opposite, that the reason these countries have low crime rates is that they don’t practice institutionalized violence in the name of their citizens?

Several members of the American Friends Service Committee presented information they had gathered on how death row inmates are treated while awaiting execution. In Arizona they are held in administrative segregation, only allowed out of their cells for an hour or two three times a week to exercise and shower. The rest of the time they are held in their cells, including eating meals. Such isolation has been proven to cause worsening of psychological problems if already present (according to DOC data, about 16.8% of inmates have significant psychological problems) or cause them if not already present. In fact, the last execution to take place in Arizona - in 2007 - occurred after a Death Row inmate dropped all his appeals and demanded to be executed because he found life on Death Row to be so much worse than the prospect of death. In fact, there are over 1600 prisoners in Arizona who are on long-term administrative segregation, meaning over 3 months but in reality meaning at least 5 years. Last year alone 750 inmates were released from DOC directly from administrative segregation. Pleasant to contemplate, isn’t it?

Of course, there is also the problem of executing innocent people. Recently a long-time resident of Death Row was exonerated when DNA evidence showed that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted. There are numerous stories about men who were executed who were later found to be quite innocent. Ooops!

All in all, the conference showed the futility, cruelty and ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a means of punishment and deterrence. The same sort of analysis has caused other states to abandon the death penalty, states like Minnesota and New Jersey. But the bottom line is that the chances of repealing the death penalty in Arizona are virtually nil.  The good news is that executions are on hold in most states which still maintain the death penalty (36 of them) after the recent Supreme Court decision on the unconstitutionality of lethal injections.

As Buddhists we are taught not only not to take life but to do everything in our power to promote and sustain life. Yet some of us live in states where the state has the power to take life. It is a dilemma. No one is saying that the people who commit these murders are good people or that they should be just forgiven and sent on their way, but to kill them for killing another also makes no sense and should be stopped for we all share in the karma of killing when the state does it in our name.

Palzang

I’ve been practicing Kung Fu since October. My sifu is a bit rare, as I understand it, in that he absolutely insists that meditation be part of our practice, holds 5-minute meditations before every class, and has weekly 20-minute meditations on Thursday nights following a talk.

Out of my six months of practicing Kung Fu, I’d say I’ve actually done four months. Twice I allowed myself to become tied up with life and excuses and didn’t make it to the dojo for almost a month. This sort of behaviour is one of my stated reasons for starting to practice in the first place - I get ginned up for things and taper off; rinse and repeat.

Last week at meditation class, the topic was regularity and loyalty to practice. I felt the talk was directed at me specifically (30 or more people attend every week, so this is unlikely) and it started to dig at the root of my problem, I think.

This week I was thinking about how to start mediating on my own successfully. I’ve been a regular at the meditation class (when I’ve been active), but I’ve been wholly unsuccessful at meditating on my own. I’ve made half-hearted gambits, trying 3-minute meditations and such, but I could never continue with them. I’d do it once, then forget for several days or “not have time”, then take another stab, and then give up. I was preparing to go in this weekend and ask one of Sifu’s assistants for a really low-ball target that I could hit for meditation. Something just enough to get me started without giving up.

Then, last night, I once again felt like he had prepared a talk to address directly at me. The topic was meditation itself, which, oddly, isn’t much discussed during meditation class. He spent the duration talking about what a meditation schedule should consist of: short (3-5 min.), medium (20-30 min), and long (45+ min) meditations. Medium, he said, are the “bread and butter”: at least once a day EVERY DAY, preferably two; morning is the best time if you can only do one. The short ones are for interspersing throughout your day, maybe three times, at moments when you need it: closing your eyes while waiting in line, sitting in a back room at work, or even locking yourself in a restroom stall. The long meditations are for once a quarter, once a month, or once a week; whatever you can do.

And he was absolutely serious. Dead serious. A “I better not ask for a low-ball from anyone this weekend because holy crap he just told me what’s up” serious. And he drove home the idea of the long meditations being an endurance test for your will power. Of course, I knew that just a “medium” meditation would be such a test for me.

I was up too late last night; I had put off a trip to the grocery store and went to the 24-hour store around 11:30pm, when I should’ve been heading for bed. I knew I would have trouble getting up, but I got it in my head I was going to meditate in the morning. This morning, I sat up with the first noise of my alarm clock and was ready. As someone who typically hits the snooze 5 times, that was a novelty.

I reset the alarm for 20 minutes, and sat.

And sat.

Then I was too warm.

My sleeves were uncomfortable.

I was too warm again.

My legs were in a bad position.

Back wasn’t straight.

Back started getting really tired.

Then I wanted to jump up and run from the room. I wanted to stop SO BADLY. I had things to do. I WANTED TO YELL and jump up and say “good enough”. I was positively bursting to get up. BURSTING. My mind was screaming to let it go. Screaming. This never happens during a group meditation, but I’m surprised it took even this long to happen on my own - usually I can’t make 5 minutes!

But this time I sat some more. I refused to get up.

Then my legs started to go to sleep so I moved them.

Then I could barely keep my back straight it was so tired, so I quietly scooted back a few inches to the wall.

My mind calmed a little.

And then the alarm went off. I opened my eyes and wanted to hit the snooze alarm so I could meditate longer, but I had to get ready for work!

I find this to be a pattern: if I can stick with it long enough, suddenly it becomes a positive thing. I found myself wishing on Thursday night that I hadn’t missed my opportunity to go to class on Wednesday because now I just plain missed it. Sifu said that’s when you know you’re doing something right: you stop having to meditate and start wanting to meditate. I’m almost there for Kung Fu, but I’m nowhere near it for meditation. I hope I can make it there, though.

When I decided to meditate in the morning, I knew it I needed to do it the next day too. And the next. And keep going… forever. Forever is a long time, but I think that’s the decision I need to keep in mind. I’m not doing it “tomorrow”. I’m doing it. Maybe that’s where I’ve been falling short.