The Path

Michael Herman

July 2010

The Dalai Lama tells a story about a Buddhist monk who was held captive by the Chinese for years, forced to live in solitary confinement in wretched prison conditions and subjected to mental and physical torture. On his release, the monk was asked about his anger towards his captors. He replied that he was not at all angry at them. He said his captors could imprison his body and cause him physical pain and suffering, but he had control over whether to become angry, bitter and resentful. As a result, he could deny his captors the satisfaction of making him suffer emotionally and psychologically.

I found this a most powerful story, especially as I heard it for the first time during a period when I was frequently frustrated and angry at how I perceived myself being treated in a work environment which, to say the least, was far less harsh than a Chinese prison. How could any person maintain equanimity in these conditions? How could any person stay so centred and balanced emotionally when confronted with such adverse circumstances? I wanted to learn more about how this monk was capable of such internal strength.

The Beginning

In the beginning, there was Dr. Zindel Segal whom I met in 2000. Zindel introduced me to the world of “mindfulness practice” and the work of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. My interest in Jon’s work and mindfulness itself started me on a path of exploration, learning and development which eventually led to Erica Ariel Fox and the Global Negotiation Insight Institute or GNII (pronounced “genie”).

Mindfulness has many different meanings and applications. While its roots are generally traced to Buddhism, the foundations of mindfulness can be found in many of the great wisdom traditions. Moreover, the essence of mindfulness is universal and need not be viewed as either religious or spiritual.

Kabat-Zinn has defined mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way. On purpose in the present moment, and non-judgementally.” Mindfulness involves learning how to stop “doing” and “practice being”, bringing awareness to what your mind and body are up to from moment to moment, watching thoughts come and go without getting caught up and driven by them, paying careful attention to what is happening right now, in this moment, rather than what happened in the past or might occur in the future.

Kabat-Zinn makes an observation which should be so obvious and yet, to me, is quite profound:

“The present moment, whenever it is recognized and honored, reveals a very special, indeed magical power: it is the only time that any of us ever has. The present is the only time that we have to know anything. It is the only time that we have to perceive, to learn, to act, to change, to heal.”[1]

Mindfulness practice involves knowing what you are doing while you are doing it. In his seminal book, Full Catastrophe Living, Kabat-Zinn describes the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program which he introduced in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre. The core of this eight week program involves training in mindfulness. The program was initially designed to help people with a variety of different ailments, whether due to illness or injury, ranging from headaches to back injuries to cancer and AIDS. Regardless of the
origin or type of pain from which participants suffer, everyone does the same program. [2]

When I met Zindel Segal, he and his colleagues were completing research on how to prevent relapse by people who have suffered a severe depressive episode. They were looking for an approach which could provide people, when they were well, with skills that might help them prevent their depression from coming back. This line of inquiry eventually lead them to Kabat- Zinn and his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program. They adapted Kabat-Zinn’s program for people with depression and developed what is now called Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.[3] I have had the great privilege of working with Zindel as my facilitator, guide and mindfulness coach for the past ten years.[4]

I do not propose to discuss mindfulness in detail in this article.[5] However, I would like to relate one small anecdote where I experienced fully, and not just conceptually, what mindfulness is all about.

Several years after beginning to practice mindfulness, I attended a five day retreat lead by Kabat-Zinn at Menlo Mountain Resort, a beautiful facility located in New York’s Hudson Valley. On the first evening of the retreat, Kabat-Zinn told the group of about 20 participants that at times we would find the next few days more difficult then we could imagine. He predicted that not all of us would last the five days (a prediction which proved correct when two participants left in the middle of day three). I remember thinking to myself “How difficult can this be?” Over the next few days, we practiced mindful sitting, mindful walking, mindful listening, mindful eating and mindful thinking. I thought I was going to go out of my mindful mind. I also did not think that there was any way I would last the five days.

Kabat-Zinn talked to us about the importance of “being”, instead of “doing”, of being in the moment, there being no past and no future, just NOW, this moment, just as it is. As much as I “tried” – trying is not a particularly effective way to practice mindfulness – I kept thinking about how bad I was at being mindful – self-judgment is also not a particularly effective way to practice mindfulness. I understood the concepts intellectually, but concepts were all I had.

On the third day of the retreat, during one of the breaks, I was standing outside the conference centre where our sessions were held. I stood on a gravel path wondering if I could last another minute at this retreat. I recall looking down at my feet where I noticed a small stone reflecting the sunlight shimmering through the leaves of the trees in the forest. And suddenly, I got it – in this moment, right now, the only moment which is, I was standing in a secluded valley, nestled within the surrounding Catskill Mountains, on a beautiful, crisp, sunny spring day, with the birds and a babbling brook providing a symphony of sound, staring at this interesting stone and there was nothing else, no past, no future, only this moment and this moment was fine just the way it was. Thoughts kicked in fairly quickly, but the experience of this moment changed my attitude towards the whole retreat dramatically. I no longer dreaded what was to come that day or the days to follow. The retreat turned into a wonderful learning experience (as it always had the opportunity to be).

Mindfulness practice sounds easy – how hard can it be to sit and do nothing but, one quickly discovers in some ways, as with anything truly rewarding, it is quite the challenge. To paraphrase Larry Rosenberg, who has worked closely with Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness practice may be described as follows:

Sit with a relaxed, yet dignified posture.
Bring attention to your breathing, noticing the in breath and the out breath and the space in between breaths.
When your mind wanders, just gently and without self judgement note it and return your attention to your breath.
Repeat step 3 several billion times.[6]

My journey into mindfulness has been powerful and perhaps even transformative. I have been introduced to people, philosophies, ideas about the mind and body, understanding self, living one’s values, and many other subjects which resonate deeply. I have started to find ways to experience the world differently, ways that are more true to who I am, more real, more honest, more authentic.

In reflecting on my experiences, certain themes have been particularly significant:

I am okay just as I am. That does not mean that I am not trying to learn, grow, improve and change; in fact, I have probably changed more in the past few years than in the prior few decades. To me, it means giving myself a break, learning to be less self-critical and judgemental, recognizing, with acceptance, that I am not just one characteristic or behaviour or another, but that I am all things at one time or another and, at times, I can even hold all of me in mind.
Everything – and I mean everything – is connected. None of us is separated from anyone or anything else. We may perceive ourselves as being separate beings; however, if we look just a bit deeper, we realize that such separation is not actually possible. Awareness of such inter-connectedness allows me to appreciate more fully that each of us has value, we are all equal and everything we do makes a difference in some way.
Just as important as inter-connectedness is impermanence; everything is always changing, even the things we perceive to be fixed and permanent. Again, we may not easily appreciate this phenomenon, but a bit of careful observation reveals its truth. Change is the one thing that we can be sure of, an integral part of life. I can either resist change, my habitual reaction, or learn how to adapt to change and become better at managing it. Mindfulness practice has made me much more aware that what is going on in my mind is also always changing, what is there one moment is gone the next.
I am responsible for myself. I may not be able to control most of what happens in my life, but I can control how I relate and respond to what happens. In fact, that is about all I can control and I can shape any experience I have through the way I respond to it.

I wish I could say I have fully integrated these concepts into my daily existence and if by chance I find myself in prison some day, I will bring the same presence of mind to my situation as did the monk in the story. Unfortunately, such is not the case. However, from time to time, I am able to view the world in a different, more balanced way, one that recognizes my wholeness with less judgement, honours others as they are, rather than as I want them to be, and opens doors in my mind that might otherwise appear locked.

Finding Community

In 2008, I came across the Global Negotiation Insight Institute’s website. It states that “GNII helps people to build advanced professional skills as well as to cultivate self-awareness, presence and balance....GNII integrates timeless wisdom, modern psychology, cutting edge findings from neuroscience and the creative arts into all dimensions of contemporary life.” The site promoted a forthcoming learning forum to be led by Erica Ariel Fox called “Beyond Yes: Deeper Wisdom and the Art of Negotiation.” I felt compelled to sign-up. The forum was held at the Omega Institute which is located in the Hudson Valley, not too far from Menlo Mountain.

Erica, a professor at Harvard law school, was a protégé of Roger Fisher and Bill Ury, the authors of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Written in the 1980s, this book remains the leading text on developing effective negotiation skills. Fisher and Ury emphasize that it is important to “separate the people from the problem”. After the publication of their book, one of the comments they heard repeatedly was “But what if people are the problem?” While Fisher, Ury and others have tried to address this question, none of the proposed solutions to date has been particularly effective at getting to the root of the “people problem”. Erica has spent the past seven or eight years contemplating and researching this issue and has developed a model or framework to help practitioners work with the people problems in conflict situations. Erica’s work starts from a fundamental premise that if people are the problem, then the best place to start addressing the problem is with ourselves. If we can find ways to be centred and balanced regardless of the situation, we can more effectively interact with others to affect positively the outcome we are seeking. We have the opportunity to “Get Beyond Yes”. Erica further realized that we need to find ways to help ourselves develop skillful means to become more centred and balanced and wisdom traditions spanning thousands of years provide many lessons and guidance on how to do so.

The Beyond Yes learning forum proved to be a defining moment for me. There were many experiences packed into a five day program, each of which opened me to new and unique ideas, relationships and learning. I would like to share just one example that made the forum so personally meaningful.

It was the second day of the forum. Erica was outlining her framework. Erica’s approach involves recognizing, exploring and embracing the different aspects of ourselves as a focal point from which we can interact more effectively with others. “But aren’t we all born with a pre-disposition to be a certain type of personality?” I asked Erica. At the time, I did not appreciate that my question was not my real concern. Erica looked at me for a moment and then said: “I’m not going to answer that question.” I was stunned but just for an instant. Almost immediately, I became aware of something extraordinary – normally I would be both devastated by someone responding to me as Erica just had and livid at the person who did so. However, I felt neither embarrassment nor anger; in fact, for some strange reason, what Erica said did not bother me at all. Moreover, somehow Erica understood her response did not upset me; when others complained about her refusal to answer my question, she said “Well, let’s check in with Michael to see how he feels. Michael, did my non-response to your question bother you?” Erica knew my response would be a definitive “No”.

I did not understand at the time why Erica had refused to answer my question. However, even though I had met her only a day earlier, I had complete faith she had good reasons for doing so. More importantly, from a place deep inside, I felt a strong connection to Erica. I knew that she had something very special to teach me if I was willing to accept her most gracious offer.

Much later, I acknowledged to myself that my real question was not the one I asked. In my habitual manner, I was trying to intellectualize a deeply ingrained fear which can be expressed as “I’m afraid I don’t have the strength or courage to explore certain parts of me, especially those powerful and painful emotions which I’ve kept buried so deep for so long. How can I possibly learn how to become centred and balanced while in the grip of those fears?” I also realized that Erica’s non-response was really an amazingly insightful answer to my true question: “Hey, buddy, I know what you’re really asking me so I’m not going to engage with your feeble attempt at intellectualizing. And, oh, by the way, I know you’re able to go inside yourself to those places that scare you even if you don’t. Trust me, you have the inner resources; you just haven’t discovered them yet.”

I left Omega and the learning forum knowing I had been provided with a gift and an opportunity. About a month later, I read a Harper’s magazine article by Simon Critchley, the Chair of Philosophy at the New School. Professor Critchley suggested that Barack Obama turned to Christianity as a means to overcome his loneliness and “yearning for connection, for something that binds human beings together, for community and commonality and for what he repeatedly calls the ‘common good’”.

As I read the article, I realized that GNII offers me an opportunity to be part of a community that believes in the common good. I have learned and experienced through GNII that shifting the nature of interactions – one interaction at a time no matter how trivial or unimportant it may seem – can open boundless opportunities for new ways to connect and work with the issues which we all confront. GNII provides a vessel within which we can connect with ourselves, as well as others, personally and professionally. It is certainly not the only organization for those seeking such a community. But for me, GNII can be a potent force for connecting those searching for the “common good”.

The GNII community shares my values, sense of purpose and fundamental respect for human dignity (even if I often fail to act consistently with those values). GNII is an antidote for my yearning for connection. It is a community of people which focuses on how we can develop the awareness, intuition and skills to improve every interaction; we start with ourselves without self-judgement or condemnation. It is a community of people which nourishes an environment in which we can begin to touch each other’s souls. It is a community of people which provides the space to free ourselves from our inner oppressors so we can discover our capacity, creativity and perhaps courage to try to make a difference in whatever way speaks to each of us.

* * * * * * * * * *

I have started a journey along a path which is both exciting and frightening. I do not know where this path may lead. But that is just fine. It is not the destination which matters; far more important is how I navigate the path.

[1] Kabat-Zinn, J., Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (1990), p. 29.

[2] John Kabat-Zinn’s personal story is quite remarkable. He earned a Ph.D in microbiology in 1979 from MIT and was a protegé of a Nobel Laureate in medicine. How he then made his way to bringing mindfulness training into the halls of traditional medicine is a tale of courage, commitment and devotion to his vocation. Interested readers can learn more about Jon and his journey in Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness (2006).

[3] In Coming to Our Senses, Kabat-Zinn devotes a chapter to the work of Zindel and his colleagues and expresses his admiration and respect for their willingness to explore the application of mindfulness practice to those who suffer from depression.

[4] Zindel Segal and his colleagues, Mark Williams and John Teasdale, discuss their ground breaking work on depression in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse (2002), intended for health professionals and, together with Jon Kabat-Zinn, in The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (2007), intended for people who suffer from depression.

[5] For those who may be interested in learning more about mindfulness, there are a myriad of books, articles, websites and other resources available. I recommend starting with Full Catastrophe Living or another book by Jon Kabat-Zinn called Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (1994).

[6] Rosenberg, Larry (with David Guy), Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation (1998).