10% Happier-ish Meditation as Rx with no Enlightened Side Effects

When I think of Budisim, I am immediately reminded of two scenes, one from TV and one from a movie. First,  in the AbFab tv show, when Eddie franticly enters a little buddist shrine and starts chanting in gibberish to make the universe go her way. It does not. Secondly is a movie scene from Little Buddah where monks search the world for their temple elder's reincarnation by interviewing prospective children who might be the one. The father of one child says he does not believe in reincarnation. The Monk doing the interview chuckles and says, "why would you? You are not a Buddhist." Movie Link I also love the movie because they filmed it in my Seattle neighborhood.

My post today is about meditation as a practice.

When I started to meditate during my illness over the last six years, I did have some previous life practice from my time in a monastery. Like Eddie, my attempts to meditate back then were the gibberish style. The world did not go my way when I meditated. When I parted ways with the monestary I felt like a failure but came to understand that I was not a believer like the father in my film reference. Not a believer and not monk material. But I still liked to meditate.

Now meditation for me is medicinal. I am by no means a buddist or spiritual. My crohn's has hobbled my stress response. A little bit of stress makes my body cramp up and exhausts me. To keep my self even and calm I use a couple different guided meditation from Youtube. The best series for me is by Michael Sealy which you can see a list of in the link. His voice is confident and he speaks in proper English. I select one of his options depending on the time of day and how much time I have to commit to the practice. I find doing my meditation in the morning works best for me when the house is quite and the phone is not going to ring. I normally go for about 20 to 40 minutes. When I am in a bind for time I have a few guided meditations that are 10 minutes and even one for walking so I can double up meditation practice with walking our dog which also takes 20 minutes.

What I love about my practice is that it works for me. Dispite sucking at meditation the value is in the practice. My mind wanders, I get distracted easily, and I will never be any good at it. That does not stop it from working. I do my best with practice on a daily basis. Confident that I will never be a master or enlightened. The only thing that matters to me is that I keep up the habit.

The book I cover this week tells a similar story of someone who is not spiritual, or a buddist, and has no expectation of becoming enlightened. He is happy with being 10% happier in exchange for his effort. I am onboard with that result.

What am I reading this week?

10% Happier | Dan Harris

Nutshell, I want to share

Buddhism is advanced common sense; all the best nonreligious life coaching is based on Buddhism. So go to the source and make it your practice.

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It was a quick read. There is a guide to meditating at the end of the book. I give it two snaps for the humor and writing style. Dan has been a newscaster on the national scene for many years; since writing the book, he has written more on the same subject matter and retired from network news. During his career, he covered wars, both mechanized and cultural. He was introduced to the new age-style self-awareness market through his work. He found the Gurus a bit too much and learned that all the best courses were based on Budisim. As a result, he began his meditation practice and rejected all the nonsense he could do without. However, he does say that the people in the meditation game, who he judged harshly for being too hippy, turned out to be his best teachers and friends.

Once you get past the chanting, eastern philosophy, and other cultural misunderstandings about Budisim, it is advanced common sense.

Dan lays out some insights. First, when people ask him about his meditation practice, he says it makes him 10% happier. He is not enlightened, nor are the people who he counts on as his mentors. Few people become enlightened with the practice. What is important is participation. He says he finds meditation remarkably rewarding.

Next, after years of learning to meditate and applying the lessons his teachers shared with him to his relationships and career, he has ten thoughts on Buddism to share:

1. First, don't be a jerk.
2. When necessary, hide your zen mentality.
3. Meditate
4. The price of  security is insecurity
5. Equinimity is not the enemy of creativity
6. Don't force it
7. Humility prevents humiliation
8. Go easy with the internal cattle prod
9. Remain detached from results
10. Compare choices by asking what matters most

My take away, it's kind of silly; the chubby happy Buddha is not the deep thought skinny Siddartha Buddha. That corpulent Buddha was a monk by the same name. The two have been tossed together as the same person.