Turning your mind inwards

Q: Is contemplation necessary?

Kinnari’s Dialogue

FIRST - Precious human life 
SECOND - Death is real 
THIRD - Law of Karma 
FOURTH - Futility of Samsara

In a Conscious Business leadership program I’m taking, I heard Tami Simon (founder of Sounds True - a media company focused on disseminating spiritual wisdom), talk about the four thoughts from Buddhism that turn the mind towards deeper inner work. Padmasambhava who brought Indian Buddhism to Tibet is credited with writing and teaching these. These contemplations are simple but deep and were really helpful in uplifting my inner state of mind this week.

FIRST - Precious human life

How did I get so lucky to have this beautiful life blessed with such good circumstances? As Mary Oliver says in her poem - “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one precious life?”. Can I do something meaningful with my life and help reduce the suffering of others? As I think about the next phase of my life, I want to be consciously thinking about the responsibility I have towards others. 

SECOND - Death is real. 

Death is real and often comes without warning. We hear this all the time and yet it doesn’t sink in until someone close to us passes. We unconsciously think that it won’t happen to anyone we love. Or we fear it and wonder how we would survive if it were to happen to someone we loved. I started thinking of death a lot more after my daughter was born. After going back to work from maternity leave, on the first work trip away from home, I found myself in tears while my flight was taking off. What if something were to happen to me? Who would look after her? Who would mother her? I messaged my mom friends and asked if this was ridiculous and they confirmed it was normal - they had faced similar thoughts after becoming mothers themselves. 

My close friends were found deceased last summer after they went for a hike. That really came out of nowhere. It was my first experience with the suddenness of death. My last interaction with them was to cancel plans to visit them and their baby for the weekend because there was too much going on in my life. I will forever regret that. The truth is that death comes for all of us, at any time. Everyone dies. For me this is a good reminder to give my husband a kiss even when we’ve fought, or to make a trip to see my parents even though it feels so far away or to smile more at strangers. 

THIRD - Law of Karma 

Our actions have consequences for ourselves and others. If I make an effort every day to do the right thing, am thoughtful about my decisions, act with honor, and persevere when things are tough, I trust that I will see the effects of my karma. It may perhaps take a long time, years even but I will see the results. This is a great thing. On the flip side, it hopefully prevents me from being a jerk to someone. Given that we are all connected to each other, I believe our goal should be to improve upon our collective karma. 

FOURTH - Futility of Samsara

def. (as per Wikipedia) Saṃsāra in Buddhism and Hinduism is the beginningless cycle of repeated birth, mundane existence and dying again. Samsara is considered to be dukkha, suffering, and in general unsatisfactory and painful, perpetuated by desire and avidya (ignorance), and the resulting karma.

“We can think of samsara as anything that we believe is solid, like the solidity of my bank account…It's not-- it goes up, it goes down. It's futile to invest in a solid identity and a solid materialistic vision of any kind. We need to let that inform our work. When it does, we'll see that it's futile to believe in some resting place of success. And instead, we're always swimming in this river, part of a river of impermanence. And it's the choices we make that's creating the karma that is flowing from us in that river.”

- Tami Simon

This last reminder is very timely for me. With the markets going down, inflation rising etc. etc. I’ve had a bit of an internal struggle around money. That feeling of security I had in my stock portfolio actually turned out to be false. “...it’s futile to believe in some resting place of success”. I thought I had always prioritized happiness over material wealth. However, these last few months have shown me that perhaps I have been unknowingly attached to financial security. The fluctuations in the market are an opportunity to detach myself from the suffering caused by samsara.

Mitali’s Dialogue

The world has started to open up and this past week I noticed that I suddenly had a busy social calendar. At these events, conversations with friends and strangers inevitably led to questions about what I am doing next. This is a question that I have been grappling with since before I started writing this newsletter. And I don't yet have a pithy answer to the question. 

I began to get caught up in the thoughts swirling in my head. Spending too much time with my thoughts can lead to self-doubt and inaction. So this week I reminded myself about a word that I had put on my vision board last year - equanimity. 

“Equanimity is the ability to meet all experiences with a balanced mind. This doesn't mean indifference or not caring. It means living with a deep understanding of the passing nature of all things…Because life has both pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame. The question we face is how are we going to respond to this? There are two ways - with fear, reactivity and contraction or with clarity and wisdom.” 

- Jack Kornfield (from Mindfulness Daily by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield)

I wrote this word down last year as a reflection on my behavior. I noticed that I was easily triggered by the actions and words of my family and was struggling to respond with calmness. Reacting to the ever-changing experiences in my daily life with an inner peace and balance is hard. Now I wondered how I could apply equanimity to the questions about my future.

So when Kinnari shared some of her inner dialogue this week around the four contemplations of Buddhism, it felt like a good topic for us to wrestle with. These spiritual practices are hard because it is so easy to get caught up in our day to day tribulations. The challenge for me every day is to remain calm and centered when things around me are not going well. To have faith that because nothing is permanent, things will shift eventually. It has been one of the big learnings from my depression episodes - to not get bogged down in worrying why I am depressed but knowing that I will eventually get out of it. What goes down will eventually go up. 

As Kinnari describes in the first contemplation - we have been given the gift of this human life. One of the ways I appreciate my life is by noticing and admiring the beauty around me. Experiencing moments of awe when I notice the patterns of the clouds in the sky as I drive my kid to a class. Noticing the various shades of green in the trees around me when I look up from my computer and glance out of the window. These moments cost me nothing to experience but require an awareness and an acknowledgement of this precious human life I have been blessed with.