She does it to force her family to eat slowly. To be utterly focused on the current moment. As they carefully chew each bite, all their attention is in their mouths. They don’t rush through their meals, thinking of what next thing they want to do, living in the future. They don’t read, or watch tv, or do anything at the table other than experience the food in their mouths.

Of course, putting dangerous objects in food is a horrible thing to do, and you mustn’t do it, but this fictional, extreme behavior draws attention to an intriguing question. Namely: how present are we? When we eat, are we really eating? When we walk are we really walking? When we listen to music, are we really listening? Listening with our full attention, aware of every step, chewing as if a thumbtack were hidden somewhere in our meal?

I know I strive to be present, and I know the benefits I will reap, and yet I also know how far I commonly stray from clear awareness. I know I let my attention wander to the future. The next thing. And worse: multiple next things. Whole strings of them, stretching out into the future, further and further away from this, here, now.

I may not crack a tooth on a booby trap in my apple pie, but I miss the sound of the wind in the leaves above me, the flash of affection in my companion’s eye, and the awareness–the centeredness–that dissolves the worry that plagues and torments my future-dwelling self.

What’s to be done? It’s fairly simple. Come back. Be here now. Meditation helps. Being creative helps. Doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy exercises helps. And even GTD helps. How? Because you don’t need to store and hold the various things you must do in your mind if you know that they’re already captured in a trusted system. There is indeed a next action, but for now–chew that bite of food with all your attention, just as if Rant’s nutty mother made it.

I find it helpful to have specific times to practice this simple technique. Here’s a list of 10 great opportunities that pop up during our busy days. Enjoy!

1. Just after turning off the shower, before stepping out.
2. Just before starting the car.
3. Just after parking the car and turning off the engine.
4. While waiting for your computer to boot.
5. While washing your hands.
6. While washing the dishes.
7. Waiting for a red light to change. (Keep your eyes open!)
8. Just after waking up.
9. Just before getting into bed.
10. While waiting for your tea to steep.

— Charles Du Bois

Many years ago, a friend of mine told me that she subscribes to a daily email called the Positive Quote of the Day. She said that some of her friends gently mocked her for subscribing to such a list, but she said that she found it helpful so she didn’t cave in to their social pressure. Intrigued, I subscribed myself to the list. Every day I receive a quotation by a famous person that reinforces positive thinking. The quote by Charles Du Bois above is an example.

I find the Du Bois quote particularly interesting and thought-provoking. I believe it’s possible to change one’s thoughts and behaviors and to thereby change one’s self for the better. That’s pretty obvious, I think, considering the name of this blog!

But there’s an interesting flip-side to changing oneself for the better — and Du Bois’ quote highlights it eloquently. Namely, to become a better person, we must sacrifice what we are now. We must at any moment be ready to make that sacrifice. This can be terribly difficult. We’ve been the self we are now for a long time. What a radical, frightening notion is sacrificing the familiar self of the present. Even if we know that we must do so to become a better person. Even if we know we’re suffering more as we are than we would as we might be.

I think this is a hidden second hurdle for people who are trying to develop into a better person. The first is believing change is possible. And the second is our tendency to cling to what we are today. Our reluctance. Our fear. When the opportunity to change is at hand, we must be each be ready and able to sacrifice what we are.

Ever tried to inhabit the present moment only to have your awareness pulled away when you glance at your watch? “Oh it’s so late!” “My meeting starts in 20 minutes!” And so on… If so, Adam Rothenhaus’ clever Now Watch may be for you! As Adam describes it:

It’s a watch that tells the time like any watch but more importantly features the word NOW prominently on the face serving as a reminder that no matter what time of day it is… it is always the present moment.

Pretty great idea, eh? (Visit The Now Watch website.)

There’s a new DVD out about D.T. Suzuki. Michael Goldberg Executive Producer / Director of The DT Suzuki Documentary Project was kind enough to send me an announcement about the DVD. Here is the information they sent along:

We are pleased to announce that DVDs are now available of “A ZEN LIFE – D.T. Suzuki,” a 77-minute documentary about Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966), credited with introducing Zen Buddhism to the West. In the latter part of his life he also embraced Jodo Shin Buddhism.

D.T. Suzuki was highly successful at getting Westerners to appreciate the Japanese mentality, and Japanese to understand Western logic. The effect he had on Western psychoanalysis, philosophy, religious thinking, and the arts was profound. His numerous writings in English and Japanese serve as an inspiration even today. Daisetz Suzuki’s message is all the more important now, in light of contemporary conflicts stemming from divergent ways of thinking.

Gary Snyder calls D.T. Suzuki “probably the most culturally significant Japanese person in international terms, in all of history.”

Along with Gary Snyder, there are exclusive interviews of many people, respected in their own right, who knew D.T. Suzuki in person, including Huston Smith, Mihoko Okamura, Dr. Albert Stunkard, Elsie Mitchell, Robert Aitken, Donald Richie, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and rare footage of Thomas Merton, John Cage, Erich Fromm, and Suzuki himself.

The DVD contains an additional 10-minutes from a hitherto unknown interview of Daisetz Suzuki by Huston Smith. There is also a printed “Supplementary Text” inserted in the case, with quotes from Dr. Suzuki’s talks in English never before published.

“A ZEN LIFE – D.T. Suzuki” can be ordered at:
www.martygrossfilms.com.
Individual price (for personal use): US$40.00.
Institutional price (for internal use only): US$150.
Plus shipping & handling.
Delivery in February 2008.

The other day, I overheard a conversation in a coffee shop that made me think. Two women were sitting at a table near mine, and said, “I’ve been trying to meditate but I can’t do it. I hear people tell me all the time how great it is to clear one’s mind for 10 minutes every day, but I just can’t do it. When I try to meditate, my head is full of so many thoughts, and I can’t make them stop.”

I think this is a fairly common experience. After all, our minds are pretty unruly and don’t just stop thinking when we tell them to.

What I wanted to tell her was this: Just as an experiment, don’t try to stop your thoughts. Let them arise. Notice them. Let them pass. Don’t try to stop them. Don’t cling to them when they appear.

The idea here is that meditation isn’t an act of sanitizing your mind, forcing it to be sparkling clean when it’s not. Rather it’s an act of familiarizing yourself with how your mind works. Familiarizing. Not sanitizing.

Rather than be discouraged by the unruly nature of her mind, this beginner meditator would do better not worrying about all those thoughts (after all, those worries are thoughts too) and just let them arise and pass. Worrying about her uncontrollable thoughts can only lead to one result: she stops trying. Rather, being tolerant of them — learning to let go of them while gently bringing her attention repeatedly back to some of single thing to focus on such as her breath is more likely to allow her to strengthen her meditation practice. And a stronger, more balanced practice, is more likely to bestow the benefits she seeks.

All my adult life, I’ve kept a messy desk. There were always piles of papers spilling over one another, books, pens, and other random clutter. Ever since getting serious about GTD though, I’ve become a “neat desk” person without even meaning to. That is, I didn’t have to try to develop this new habit of keeping a neat, uncluttered desk; it just happened naturally. Take a look at the picture above. That’s a picture of my desk last night. I was walking by it, and ultra-tidiness of it struck me, so I snapped a picture of it. And, actually, the double laptop thing is unusual for me. Ordinarily, I only have three objects on the desk: one laptop, one lamp, and the little Buddha statue at the base of the lamp.

How did GTD lead to this bizarre but welcome neatness, you ask? Well, one of the great things about GTD is you only work on one thing at a time. And when you’re working on that one thing, you’re fully focused on it. That’s a great way to work, and it dovetails nicely with other philosophies about life and productivity I hold, so it works out nicely on several different planes. As Shunryu Suzuki said: “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.” Multi-tasking is incompatible with such a goal.

So, while I’m working, instead of having dozens and dozens of things cluttering my desk, I have only the things that concern that one task on my desk. For example, if I’m paying my bills, I extract one bill from my inbox, and place that bill and only that bill on my desk. If I’m working on a programming project and need a reference book, that one book is on my desk. If what I’m working on requires no physical objects other than my laptop, then there’s nothing else on my desk. The side effect? One very neat desk!

Now, I’m not an absolutist about it. Sometimes there’s an extra thing or two on the desk. Right now there’s a pad of paper and an orange I’ll snack on soon. A stray item or two that doesn’t stay long doesn’t bother me. But generally speaking, the desk is in a permanent state of neatness. My desk was just the way you see it in the picture last night. I didn’t hide things to make the picture more dramatic.

The neatness of my desk has had a nice effect on my mind and stress level that I wouldn’t have guessed would happen back in my messy desk days. Since I don’t see a bunch of “to-be-done” things — “open loops” in GTD-speak — right in front of me all the time, my mind isn’t always glomming on to them at the wrong time and creating low-level stress: “Oh, man. There are those unpaid bills. I should pay those, but I can’t right now. I’ll do them later. I wonder if any are past due. Ack.” Nope. I trust my system, so I know that when I sweep my inboxes today, any unpaid bills will get paid immediately (since they’re: a) actionable and b) take less than 2 minutes to do), so they’re safely “out of sight and out of mind.”

As a long-time messy desk person, I’m not saying that a neat desk is the only way to go. I was certainly productive with a messy desk; but I strongly suspect I’m more productive with a neat one. Either way, I thought I’d share the picture and the thoughts it inspired.

In our hectic lives, where practical day-to-day concerns tend to dominate our waking thoughts, it’s refreshing and inspiring to spend a little time immersing ourselves in the words and thoughts of great thinkers and teachers. Fortunately, the Internet can be a great ally in this pursuit.

Take for example the Alan Watts podcasts. Alan Watts was, in the words of Wikipedia, “a philosopher, writer, speaker, and expert in comparative religion. He was best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Asian philosophies for a Western audience.” His eldest son, Mark launched a podcast of his father’s talks a few weeks ago, and they’re well worth a listen.

With the weekend upon us, perhaps you’ll have time to check them out. Visit http://www.alanwattspodcast.com/ and have a listen. You might also want to subscribe to the podcast feed so each new edition will be automatically delivered to your computer. If you don’t already use some other podcast-capable feed reader, you can use iTunes.

From the site:

Alan Watts is one of the most widely read philosophers of the 20th century. In addition to his 28 books, Alan Watts delivered hundreds of public lectures and seminars the recordings of which have been preserved in the archives of the Electronic University, a non-profit organization dedicated to higher education. For the past two years Alan’s eldest son, Mark Watts has reviewed and cataloged these talks to prepare them for public broadcast. The Electronic University is now pleased to present the highlights of the spoken works of Alan Watts.

For a little preview of Alan Watts, have a look at these clever animations by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Have a great weekend, and have fun listening to Watts!

So, what is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? CBT is a type of psychotherapy developed by Aaron T. Beck. The key principle of CBT is that all of our emotions arise from our thoughts. All of our emotions. So, if you’re feeling happy, angry, or sad — those feelings started with thoughts in your mind.

This is all fine and well when our thoughts are reasonable and free of distortion. But what happens when our thoughts are distorted? Distorted thoughts (or “thinking errors” or “cognitive distortions”) also give rise to emotions — usually anger or depression. For example, if you meet a stranger and think to yourself, “Oh no. This person thinks I’m stupid,” you will feel sad. (We will explore why that thought may be distorted in future articles.) Another example of a cognitive distortion is: “I’m a failure. I never do anything right.” (Actually, there are two distortions in that thought, as we’ll see later on.)

The tricky part of all this is that these cognitive distortions are so automatic and happen so reflexively and quickly that we’re not conscious of them. You may think, “Oh, I don’t say horrid things like that to myself,” but, sadly, most of us do — we’re just don’t know it. We know we get discouraged, or feel depressed, but we don’t realize that we’re creating those emotions with our thoughts. Remember: all emotions arise from our thoughts.

Fortunately, with practice, we can dismantle and avoid these cognitive distortions. And that means we can head off the suffering we cause ourselves. In future articles, I will discuss techniques to help “debug” our thinking and offer exercises you can try at home. Some of these techniques will be from the world of psychotherapy and others will be from Buddhism, which is a philosophy that harmonizes beautifully with CBT.