Jonathan Dunnemann
"Every one of us is a mystic. We may or may not realize it, we may not even like it. But whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, mystical experience is always there, inviting us on a journey of ultimate discovery. We have been given the gift of life in this perplexing world to become who we ultimately are: creatures of boundless love, caring compassion, and wisdom. Existence is a summons to the eternal journey of the sage - the sage we all are, if only we could see." ~ Brother Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart In this season of my life, I am very interested in enhancing my level of cognitive, emotional and behavioral skills, along with deepening my daily spiritual practices, and broadening my understanding of how to best contribute to the sustainability of this world and reduce suffering for our children and their children as well. According to the late Brother Wayne Teasdale, Christian monk, author, and lecturer, the factors that are an important part of this process consist of the following seven elements: 1. a capacity to live morally; 2. deep nonviolence; 3. a sense of spiritual solidarity with others, including other species and the Earth; 4. a spiritual practice and comprehensive self-knowledge; 5. simplicity of lifestyle; 6. selfless service; and 7. prophetic action. "Emphasis from most traditional [sacred] texts has... been on ethical conduct (Pali: Sila) and ethical dimensions of mindfulness so that actions along the path of reduced suffering continually remain "wholesome" (Thera, 1962; Buddhaghosa, 1991; Bodhi, 1999). Ethical conduct is based on the conception of universal love and compassion for all living beings. This quality is reflected in self-transcendence and the quality with which one brings awareness to oneself and those around us. Furthermore, the ethical emphasis suggests the practitioner call to mind the various beneficial and detrimental mental states in existence so that one does not forget how particular patterns of behavior make one feel. Thus one has further motivation to show sympathy and compassion for those around us who are experiencing negative mental states (Gethin, 2011). The ethical dimension is part of a constellation of positive qualities that is evidently also necessary for the advancement of the practitioner (Thera, 1962; Buddhaghosa, 1991)."1 One of the top social issues that plague our modern society is that of global suicide rates among young people aged 15-19. It is here, that I find my body, mind and heart being drawn. In response, it is the dimensions of 'mindful awareness' that I seek to explore in an effort to have my actions contribute the reduction of suffering for this age group. I would like to learn to effectively support youths development of cognitive flexibility which is an executive function that can help in "cultivating [a general sense of] well-being and virtue along with a level of deep familiarity with one's inner mental landscape, and one's patterns of behavior (i.e., nature of mind) (Rahula, 1974; Bodhi, 1999; Wallace, 2011)."2 "Suicidal behaviour is a major health concern in many countries, developed and developing alike. At least a million people are estimated to die annually from suicide worldwide (1). Many more people, especially the young and middle-aged, attempt suicide (2). Over the last few decades, while suicide rates have been reported as stable or falling in many developed countries, a rising trend of youth suicide has been observed. In 21 of the 30 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) European region, suicide rates in males aged 15-19 rose between 1979 and 1996. For females, suicide rates rose less markedly in 18 of the 30 countries studied (3). Various possible explanations for these rising suicide trends - loss of social cohesion, breakdown of traditional family structure, growing economic instability and unemployment and rising prevalence of depressive disorders - have been presented."3 Increasingly, "[a] growing body of evidence suggests that experiential avoidance, that is, the tendency to escape or avoid unwanted thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations, even when doing so is futile or causes harm (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996), may be one such core common process. Experiential avoidance overlaps with closely related concepts that have been associated with suicidal behavior, including lack of distress tolerance (Linehan, 1993), cognitive and emotional suppression (Najmi, Wegner, & Nock, 2007), and emotion/avoidance-focused coping (Edwards & Holden, 2001). A recent meta-analysis (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006) showed that experiential avoidance accounts for as much as 16% to 25% of the variance in behavioral health problems generally, including those identified as pathways to suicidality."4 As a healthcare professional working in a hospital emergency department setting, I regularly come face-to-face with youth aged 15-19 whose chief complaint is that they wish to harm themselves or are having suicidal thoughts. Upon asking myself, what great thing would I do if I knew that I could not fail, the answer is to 1) guide teenagers towards accepting themselves, 2) instruct them on how to identify when a threat is detected, 3) introduce them to helpful thinking styles, 4) provide traning that improves attention, self-report assessment and self-regulation. 5) increase distress tolerance and competency in confronting and confidently coping with alcohol and drugs, anger and violence, bullying and gangs, self-harm and suicidal thoughts, and smoking and avoiding the persona risks associated with having unprotected sex. "Experiential avoidance is not merely a predictor of psychological problems related to suicidality; suicide can be thought of as its most extreme expression (Chiles & Strosahl, 2005). When all other coping strategies fail, those who suffer may look for the ultimate escape from seemingly intolerable pain. A number of sources of theorizing and evidence lead to the conclusion that suicidal behavior serves as an attempt to escape or avoid intolerable psychological experiences, including psychological pain (“psychache”; Shneidman, 1993), awareness of aversive self-evaluations (Baumeister, 1990), and a psychological perspective wherein the current situation appears hopeless and solutions to problems appear to be remote or absent (Beck, Brown, Berchick, Stewart, & Steer, 1990; M. Williams, 2001). A study by Baumeister (1990) found that the majority of suicide notes describe escape from emotional pain as the desired function of suicide attempts. Nonlethal forms of deliberate self-harm also frequently serve the function of escaping or avoiding painful emotional experience (Chapman, Gratz, & Brown, 2006). In addition, college students who engage in deliberate self-harm use emotionally avoidant coping styles more often than students who do not self-injure (Andover, Pepper, & Gibb, 2006)."5 In his keynote speech, "Meeting Pain with Awareness given at the 2011 Creating a Mindful Society conference, Jon Kabat-Zinn explains to us how; "Awareness is immanent, and infinitely available, but it is camouflaged, like a shy animal. It usually requires some degree of effort and stillness, if not stealth, even to catch a glimpse of it, no less get a sustained look, even though it may be entirely out in the open. You have to be alert, curious, motivated to see it. With awareness, you have to be willing to let the knowing of it come to you, to invite it in, silently and skillfully in the midst of whatever you are thinking or experiencing. After all, you are already seeing; you are already hearing. There is awareness in all of that, coming through all the sense doors, including your mind, right here, right now. If you move into pure awareness in the midst of pain, even for the tiniest moment, your relationship with your pain is going to shift right in that very moment. It is impossible for it not to change because the gesture of holding it, even if not sustained for long, even for a second or two, already reveals its larger dimensionality. And that shift in your relationship with the experience gives you more degrees of freedom in your attitude and in your actions in a given situation, whatever it is…even if you don’t know what to do. The not knowing is its own kind of knowing, when the not knowing is itself embraced in awareness. Sounds strange, I know, but with ongoing practice it may start making very real sense to you, viscerally, at a gut level, way deeper than thought. Awareness transforms emotional pain just as it transforms the pain that we attribute more to the domain of body sensations. When we are immersed in emotional pain, if we pay close attention, we will notice that there is always an overlay of thoughts and a plethora of different feelings about the pain we are in, so here too the entire constellation of what we think of as emotional pain can be welcomed in and held in awareness, crazy as that may sound at first blush. It is amazing how unused we are to doing such a thing, and how profoundly revealing and liberating it can be to engage our emotions and feelings in this way, even when they are raging or despairing—especially when they are raging or despairing. None of us need to inflict pain on ourselves just so we can have an occasion to test out this unique property of awareness to be bigger than and of a different nature altogether from our pain. All we need to do is be alert to the arrival of pain when it shows up, whatever its form. Our alertness gives rise to awareness at the moment of contact with the initiating event, whether it be a sensation or a thought, a look or a glance, what someone says, or what happens in any moment. The application of wisdom happens right here, at the point of contact, in the moment of contact, whether you have just hit your thumb with a hammer or the world suddenly takes an unexpected turn and you are faced with one aspect or another of the full catastrophe, and all of a sudden grief and sorrow, anger and fear seem to have taken up what feels like permanent residency in your world. It is at that moment, and in its aftermath, that we might bring awareness to the state in which we find ourselves, the state of the body and of the mind and heart. And then we take one more leap, bringing awareness to the awareness itself, noticing whether your awareness itself is in pain, or angry, or frightened, or sad. It won’t be. It can’t be. But you have to check for yourself. There is no freedom in the thought of it. The thought is only useful in getting us to remember to look, to embrace that particular moment in awareness, and then to bring awareness to our awareness. That’s when we check. You could even say that is the checking, because the awareness knows instantly. It may only last a moment, but in that moment lies the experience of freedom. The door to wisdom and heartfulness, the natural qualities of our being when we experience freedom, opens right in that moment. There is nothing else to do. Awareness opens it and invites you to peek in, if just for a second, and see for yourself. This is not to suggest that awareness is a cold and unfeeling strategy for turning away from the depths of our pain in moments of anguish and loss or in their lingering aftermath. Loss and anguish, bereavement and grief, anxiety and despair, as well as all the joy available to us, lie at the very core of our humanity and beckon us to meet them face-on when they arise, and know them and accept them as they are. It is precisely a turning toward and an embracing, rather than a turning away or a denying or suppressing of feeling that is most called for and that awareness embodies. Awareness may not diminish the enormity of our pain in all circumstances. It does provide a greater basket for tenderly holding and intimately knowing our suffering in any and all circumstances, and that, it turns out, is transformative and can make all the difference between endless imprisonment in pain and suffering and freedom from suffering, even though we have no immunity to the various forms of pain that, as human beings, we are invariably subject to. Of course, opportunities large and small abound for bringing awareness to whatever is happening in our everyday lives, and so our whole life can become one seamless cultivation of mindfulness in this regard. Taking up the challenge of waking up to our lives and being transmuted by wakefulness itself is its own form of yoga, the yoga of everyday life, applicable in any and every moment: at work, in our relationships, in raising children if we are parents, in our relationships with our own parents, whether they are living or dead, in our relationship with our own thoughts about the past and the future, in our relationship to our own bodies. We can bring awareness to whatever is happening, to moments of conflict and to moments of harmony, and to moments so neutral we might not notice them at all. In each moment, you can test out for yourself whether in bringing awareness to that moment, the world does or does not open in response to your gesture of mindfulness, does or does not “offer itself,” in the poet Mary Oliver’s lovely phrase, “to your imagination,” whether or not it affords new and larger ways of seeing and being with what is, and thereby perhaps might liberate you from the dangers of partial seeing and the usually strong attachment you may have to any partial view simply because it is yours and you are therefore partial to it. Enthralled once again, even when in great pain, with the story of me that I am busy creating unwittingly, merely out of habit, I have an opportunity, countless opportunities, to see its unfolding and to cease and desist from feeding it, to issue a restraining order if necessary, to turn the key which has been sitting in the lock all along, to step out of jail, and therefore meet the world in new and more expansive and appropriate ways by embracing it fully rather than contracting, recoiling, or turning away. This willingness to embrace what is and then work with it takes great courage and presence of mind. So, in any moment, whatever is happening, we can always check and see for ourselves. Does awareness worry? Does awareness get lost in anger or greed or pain? Or does awareness brought to any moment, even the tiniest moment, simply know, and in knowing, free us? Check it out. It is my experience that awareness gives us back to ourselves. It is the only force I know that can do so. It is the quintessence of intelligence, physical, emotional, and moral. It seems as if it needs to be conjured up but in actuality, it is here all the time, only to be discovered, recovered, embraced, settled into. This is where the refining comes in, in remembering. And then, in the letting go and the letting be, resting in, in the words of the great Japanese poet Ryokan, “just this, just this.” This is what is meant by the practice of mindfulness."6 Jon Dunnemann, author
Presencing Institute. Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. Self-compassion - A Healthier Way of Relating to Yourself. Self_Compassion_Scale_for_researchers. Test how self-compassionate you are. Activity stream. The Integrated Person Project Management. The Integrated Person Planning Meetings. The Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths. Buddhism - The Four Noble Truths, The Eightfold Path, Karma and Meditation Practice. Buddhist Symbols and Mudras (Gestures of the Buddha)
Karma and Rebirth - Reincarnation in the Buddhist View. Meditation Instructions in the Thai Theravada Tradition. Life of Buddha (Buddhas' Resume) Emptiness Is Form. Jonathan Dunnemann / Dashboard. Word Up! / My Notes / Collaborators / Summary. Start Now: Accept Personal Responsibility / My Notes / Collaborators / Summary. Letting Go of Your Angst Leads to Personal Freedom: Flexing your will power / My Notes / Collaborators / Summary. Jonathan Dunnemann’s Newsfeed. A Goal-Oriented Life Coaching Framework. The Dhammapada. Worldwide Buddhist Information and Education Network. Professional Education and Training - Mindfulness - UMass Medical School. Oasis Institute began in 2001 as a school for a new generation of health care and other professionals interested in learning, from the inside out, how to integrate mindfulness, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and other mindfulness-based approaches into disciplines and communities all over the world.
While this is our primary focus, Oasis Institute has a more fundamental objective, which is to foster a direct, experiential understanding that inner experience, intuition, imagination, and non-conceptual awareness are as crucial and valid as objective, evidence-based knowledge to an understanding of the world. Oasis Institute is a rigorous forum for the development and integration of these mutually effective, interdependent approaches to knowing, caring, and serving. BECOMING AN MBSR TEACHER“Cultivating wisdom is the teacher’s path.
It is an unfolding odyssey – a way of living into what is deepest and truest in our lives. Phase 1: First Steps Program at a glance Program in depth. Home. Home. The Integrated Person. The Tree of Contemplative Practices. The Tree illustrates some of the contemplative practices currently in use in secular organizational and academic settings.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Below the Tree you will find links to descriptions of many of these practices as well as a more in-depth description of the Tree and image files for downloading. Some of the practices on the tree link to further information–either on our website, or on Wikipedia. © The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Concept & design by Maia Duerr; illustration by Carrie Bergman Understanding the Tree On the Tree of Contemplative Practices, the roots symbolize the two intentions that are the foundation of all contemplative practices. The branches represent different groupings of practices. Because this illustration cannot possibly include all contemplative practices, we offer a free download of a blank Tree that you can customize to include your own practices.
Downloading and Reprinting the Tree For printing: Featured - What Meditation Really Is. Awake to Wisdom Home. Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom - 'Essential Education' Meditation and Mindfulness. Mindfulness is not thinking, interpreting, or evaluating; it is an awareness of perception.
It is a nonjudgmental quality of mind which does not anticipate the future or reflect back on the past. Any activity can be done with mindfulness. Talking on the telephone, cleaning your home, driving, working, and exercising can all be incorporated into a mindfulness practice. Throughout the day, inwardly pause and become very aware of where you are, what you are doing, and how you are feeling. Try to do this in a way that doesn’t cast value judgments on your experience.
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