A friend offered me this book a while ago and although very interesting, it took me a while to finish reading it. The book is extremely insightful and reminded me of some not far away experiences, notably during the Vipassana session in 2017.
Here are some quotes I appreciated, with a few added links to online resources when possible:
page 17:
When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal. But when we instead experience the raw quality of the itch or pain of the wound an do not scratch it, we actually allow the wound to heal. So not giving in to our addictions is about healing at a very basic level.
—Pema Chödrön
page 27:
So I started sitting, without moving, for two hours at a time. Correction: I started trying to sit in meditation posture for that length of time. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the physical pain of not shifting for a long time that got me. It was the restlessness. My brain urged me to “just shift a little, no biggie.” Those cravings shouted, “Get up!” Now I knew (or at least had a much better sense of) what my patients were going through. I knew what it was like to feel as if my head would explode.
pages 30 to 31:
After our smokers started to get the hang of being okay with having cravings, and even turning toward them, I taught them how to surf. I used an acronym that a senior meditation teacher named Michelle McDonald had developed (and had been widely taught by Tara Brach), and that I had found helpful during my own mindfulness training. In particular, it helped when I got up in some obsessive thought pattern or was stuck yelling at somebody in my head: RAIN.
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RECOGNIZE/RELAX into what is arising (for example, your craving)
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ACCEPT/ALLOW it to be there
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INVESTIGATE bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts (for example, ask, “What is happening in my body or mind right now?”)
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NOTE what is happening from moment to moment
page 42:
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb
page 64:
And what happens when we as individuals, or as large groups of people, start to form a worldview about those who have the power to affect societies, such as politicians? Historically, this process was seen in the rise of charismatic world leaders such as Adolf Hitler. Modern politicians can become our personal Lance Armstrong—a great American success story that blinds us to reality.
page 89:
The psychologist Roy Baumeister refers to this stress reaction, perhaps ironically, as “ego depletion.” Recent work has supported the idea that just like a car with only enough gas in the tank to keep going, we may have only enough gas in our self‑control tank for any one day. Specifically, his group has found that across a number of different types of behavior, “resource depletion” (that is, running out of gas in the tank) directly affected the likelihood of someone being able to resist a desire.
pages 91 to 92:
That retreat was rough. I would sweat through T‑shirts during the meditation periods and take naps every chance I got. I felt like the mayor in Chocolat, wrestling with my personal devil. No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get my thoughts under control. When I look back at my highlight reel of the retreat, one scene always gives me a chuckle. I had an individual interview with the Vietnamese monk who was leading the retreat. Through a translator, I told him how I would try this or that technique to knock my thoughts out. I even told him how my body got really hot during meditation. He nodded and smiled and, through the translator, said, “Ah good, burning all the fetters!”
page 99:
This might sound strange to anyone who is not depressed. But to those with depression, it might sound or even feel familiar. They may simply be more accustomed to feeling this way. This is a sweater that fits, perhaps one that has become molded to their body because they have worn it so much. As part of this, rumination may be a mode of thinking that depressed people have reinforced to the point it, in some way, authenticates who they are. Yes, this is me: I am that depressed guy. As Millgram and colleagues put it, “They may be motivated to experience sadness to verify their emotional selves.”
pages 121 to 122:
In her TED Talk, the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher read a poem by an anonymous Kwakiutl Indian of southern Alaska to a missionary in 1896: “Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you, consumed by fire with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain—where are you going with my love?”2
page 125:
The ancient Greeks had at least four words for love: eros, intimate or passionate love; storge, the affection between parents and children; philia, friendship; and agape, selfless love that is extended to all people.
pages 139 to 141:
The fourteenth‑century Persian mystic and poet, Hafiz (Hafez) captured this truth in a poem entitled “And Applaud”:
Once a young man came to me and said,
“Dear Master,
I am feeling strong and brave today,
And I would like to know the truth
About all of my—attachments.”
And I replied
“Attachments?
Attachments!
Sweet Heart,
Do you really want me to speak to you
Aobut all your attachments,
When I can see so clearly
You have built, with so much care,
Such a great brothel
To house all of your pleasures.
You have even surrounded the whole damn place
With armed guards and vicious dogs
To protect your desires
So that you can sneak away
From time to time
And try to squeeze light
Into your parched being
From a source as fruitful
As a dried date pit
That even a bird
Is wise enough to spit out.”
pages 149 to 150:
You know, I think these things are toxic, especially for kids. It’s this thing. It’s bad. They don’t look at people when they talk to them. They don’t build the empathy. Kids are mean, and it’s because they’re trying it out. They look at a kid and they go, you’re fat. Then they see the kid’s face scrunch up and say ooh, that doesn’t feel good. But when they write [in a text message on their phone] they’re fat, they go, hmm, that was fun.
page 153:
This was perhaps the first time that I really saw that getting caught up in self‑righteous, self‑referential thinking served as its own reward. Like my smokers who realized that smoking really didn’t taste good, I finally saw that my contraction “buzz” from getting all high and mighty anger was just perpetuating itself. I needed to heed Confucius’s advice: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
The book states Confucius is at the origin of this saying, but it looks like this is debatable:
page 166:
Although researchers have debated for decades about what it takes to get into a flow experience and stay there, there is no consensus on how to reliably reproduce this state in controlled environments, or on what brain activation (or deactivation) and neurotransmitters are involved in it. Near‑Death experiences are not conditions that we want to test in labs.
pages 167 to 168:
Phil Jackson was Jordan’s coach when the Bulls won three consecutive championships. He was well known for encouraging his athletes to meditate, bringing in George Mumford, a sports psychologist and meditation teacher, to Chicago to train his players. A few years later, Jackson had Mumford train Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. Soon thereafter, the Lakers also won three championships in a row. Pregame meditation sessions were aimed at helping the players relax and let go of hopes of winning, or fears of losing, and to instead focus on the conditions of the moment. Jackson wrote in his book Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success: “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”
pages 169 to 170:
In other words, “I” am riding “my” bike. I can’t describe some self‑transcendent experience unfolding in the now because I am not in it. In other words, the more work to achieve flow, the more contraction of excitement may be holding us back from reaching it. Our “me” is in the way.
[…]
Yoda is pointing out that self‑defeating attitudes such as worry or doubt can get in the way‑they are still self‑referential, after all. If we stop wondering or worrying whether we can do a task, as long as it is within our skill set, it gets done. The self is optional
pages 171 to 172:
As T.S. Eliot wrote in his magnum opus poem, Four Quartets:
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
pages 172 to 173:
Learning the skills—in this case, practicing music to the point of proficiency—is important for flow to arise. You have to learn the piece. And how we practice may be critical to learning. To give an extreme example: if I lackadaisically practice scales on my violin, even playing some notes out of tune, doing so will be worse than not practicing at all. Why? Because I will be learning to play out of tune.
page 175:
Ironically, instead of getting lulled into mindless habits that leave us disengaged from the world, such as watching television, drinking alcohol, or getting high, we can tap into the same reward‑based‑learning brain pathways to become more engaged with the world.
pages 176 to 177:
There is a well‑known parable of two monks. A wise old monk quietly hikes along a path with a young novice. They come to a river, which has a strong, swift current. As the monks prepare to cross, a young beautiful woman approaches the river and looks at the rushing water. Fearing that she might get carried away by the current, she asks whether they can help her get across. The two monks look at each other; they have taken vows not to touch women. Then, without a word, the old monk picks up the woman, carries her across, and continues his journey. The young novice can’t believe his eyes. How could he break monastic code like this? After crossing the river, the young monk catches up with his companion. He is speechless. His mind races for hours. Finally, he can’t contain himself any longer. He blurts out, “As monks, we have taken vows not to touch women! How could you carry that woman on your shoulders?” The wise monk replies, “I set her down on the other side of the river. Why are you still carrying her?”
The elder monk practiced situation‑based ethical decision making. His young counterpart could see only that he broke a vow, not that he decreased suffering by coming to the aid of the young woman. The wiser monk attempts to impart the distinction between a helpful guideline and dogma that is too rigid for every circumstance. It is also a beautiful example of what happens when we get in our own way as we continue to hold tight to our views.
pages 179 to 180:
The Tao Te Ching states it thus:
The mark of a moderate man
is freedom from his own ideas.
Tolerant like the sky,
all‑pervading like sunlight,
firm like a mountain,
supple like a tree in the wind,
he has no destination in view
and makes use of anything
life happens to bring his way.
Nothing is impossible for him
because he has let go.
page 182:
What might be missing from the standard definition of empathy is the motivation behind the action. Doctors go into medicine to help people decrease their suffering. Taking this into account, how do we learn to stay connected with our patients without being burnt out by that connection? The idea of compassion comes into play here. The word “compassion” comes from the Latin root compati, meaning to “suffer with.” (The word “patient” likewise derives from pati, “to suffer”) Does practicing compassion help us suffer with someone (that is, “feeling their pain”) without being sucked into it? The answer may be yes.
page 185:
When we run into resistance of some sort, it can be a signal that we are stuck in a rut or a hole—ironically, the one that we have been grooving. As we become entrenched in a view or a behavior, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper. We have all experienced this sensation during an argument. At some point, we realize that we are just dogmatically duking it out and that our arguments are becoming more and more ridiculous. Yet for some reason, our egos won’t let us back down. We have forgotten the “law of holes”: when in a hole, stop digging.
page 189:
In any type of addictive behavior, reactivity builds its strength through repetition—resistance training. Each time we look for our “likes” on Facebook, we lift the barbell of “I am.” Each time we smoke a cigarette in reaction to a trigger, we do a push‑up of “I smoke.” Each time we excitedly run off to a colleague to tell her about our latest and greatest idea, we do a sit‑up of “I’m smart.” That is a lot of work.
pages 196 to 197:
Social scientists have found that positive and negative emotions can be transferred from one person to others nearby (this phenomenon is known as emotional contagion). If someone in an obviously happy mood walks into a room, others are more likely to likewise feel happy, as if the emotion were contagious. In a collaboration with Cornell University, Facebook’s Adam Kramer wanted to see whether this phenomenon could be true in digital interactions—in a social network. The newsfeed data from 700,000 Facebook users was manipulated to change the amount of emotional content that users would see (positive and negative separately). When the researchers reduced the number of posts with positive expressions, users followed suit: they produced fewer positive posts. A mixed effect occurred with negative expressions: as they were reduced, users posted less negative and more positive content. This type of “behavioral engineering” was exactly what Skinner had predicted—seventy years ago!
This study became controversial, partly because of concerns about the ethics of (not) obtaining participants’ consent. […]
