From Suffering to Peace

When I first started to meditate back in 1984, I was teased about it constantly. In the 1980s, none of my friends and family had much experience with meditation, never mind practiced it. They had all kinds of quirky ideas and faulty assumptions about what it actually meant. They asked me why I would want to do such a selfish activity. Wasn’t meditation just self-indulgent navel-gazing? Those same people thought nothing of going on holiday to a beach resort in Spain and getting absolutely drunk for two weeks straight. Yet they considered my attempts to cultivate awareness and compassion self-absorbed! I couldn’t help laugh at the irony of it all.

I hear their concerns and assumptions about meditation still repeated today. From the outside, meditation certainly seems to be self-centered or to reflect a preoccupation with oneself. But let us be honest: the number-one person in our life, most of the time, is ourself. That’s what takes up most of our mental and emotional attention anyway, whether we meditate or not. Yes, we care deeply for our family, friends, and others, but most of our default-mode thinking is about the main player in our own movie: me, myself, and I.

I remember well when I started meditating. I was consumed with hopes and worries about my life. Like most people I knew, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what I was doing with my life and what direction I was heading. But I was also mired in self-judgment about not being good enough and in fears I wouldn’t amount to anything. As I cultivated awareness through meditation, I shone a light on these obsessive thinking patterns and began to create some space inside, becoming less wrapped up in my thoughts and mental preoccupations.

Now, many years later, I see how much quieter my mind has become. In this way, meditation can help develop the very opposite of self-centeredness. Today, the inner critic makes few inroads, and the swirl of self-centered thoughts that used to consume so much of my attention is greatly reduced. Often people ask me what I am thinking when I am quiet, doing nothing in particular, perhaps looking out the window or sitting in the garden. They assume I must think about something. But I am often just watching the world go by with a fair amount of inner peace. This allows me to be much more aware of what is going on around me, with others, and with the world.

How do we reduce our myopic self-absorption? The practice of mindfulness shifts us from the ruminative default-mode thinking to a clear present-moment attention. We learn to unhook from the inner critic and the background narrative that is frequently playing in our heads. When we notice a hummingbird flying outside our window, it snaps us out of our daydreams or planning mind and whips us into the present. Similarly, when we walk by a coffee shop and smell freshly roasted coffee, awareness of our senses draws us out of our head’s swirling thoughts. The same process happens when we focus on our breath, drawing us ever more in the present.

One facet of mindfulness is the quality of deep listening, and we can bring that attuned skill to listen genuinely to others. It can help restore the lost art of conversation. We have become a society of talkers, not listeners. Discussions at the office can be reduced to the loudest person being heard, where people constantly interrupt and talk over one another. We multitask on our devices and rarely give anyone our full attention. Most communication now happens digitally, which is fraught with misunderstanding. In addition, most conversations are self-referential, seeking help for our problems and support for our perspective.

Through practice, we develop and offer this gift of attentive presence to others. By training our attention, we learn to hone that capacity, get out of our own heads, and become more attuned to people. Instead of immediately relating what others say back to ourselves and what it means for us, we practice asking with genuine curiosity about someone else’s life, without judgment, correction, or self-concern.

For instance, Dipa Ma was a renowned Indian Vipassana teacher who was legendary for the depth of her meditation and concentration. When she brought that honed quality of attention to listening to others, it had a powerful impact. Despite having gone through a challenging and difficult life, she talked to others as if nothing else existed for her except the conversation and the person in front of her. You became the center of her laser-focused and penetrating presence. Her decades of mind training had refined that skill. The impact of that was tremendous for the recipient, often life changing.

Of course, like preferences, self-centeredness is almost impossible to avoid, and some argue that we shouldn’t let it go. Some question how we could succeed in business or how we would take care of our family if we didn’t focus on ourselves and our immediate concerns. Isn’t it important to practice self-care? To a degree, this is valid, but mindfulness reveals how painful it can be when we are so caught up in our own drama and focus narrowly on ourself. This is the basis for so much neurosis and anxiety in our consumer-oriented, materialist, and some may say narcissistic culture today.

Recent research supports this. We experience greater happiness when our life is less wrapped up in self and instead is oriented to helping others, to being generous and kind. Though Darwin is renowned for popularizing the term “survival of the fittest,” he also wrote about how the success of species was also due to their ability to cooperate. In fact, some say his research is better summarized by the phrase “survival of the kindest.”

Our well-being is interdependent with that of others. Of course, we must take care of ourselves, but if we try to do this at the expense of others, we can actually thwart our own well-being. Conversely, helping others benefits us in the long run, even though that may not be our initial intention. Just think about the most altruistic and generous people you know. They are often also the happiest.

As I reflect on my own thirty-five-year journey in meditation practice, I see that this training has increased my ability to look beyond my own self-interest, to get out of my own way and genuinely take in the reality of others. I find this particularly true in my teaching work when I listen to the challenging plights of students. Such attunement to others inspires the desire to help.

Meditation is not the only way to cultivate this. There are many professions and skills that hone the capacity to orient to others. For example, therapists, social workers, nurses, and teachers have to get out of their own way, to refine their ability to focus on others in order to do their work well. Parenting also supports this understanding, since parents often have to put their own needs aside on a daily basis to prioritize their children. Mindfulness simply supports developing this orientation in every area of life, and from that comes greater responsiveness. It supports the heart to engage with others in a meaningful way.

I once heard a story that beautifully illustrates what can happen when we put aside self-absorption and become responsive to others. Jenny, a single mother from Illinois, had been out of work for some time and was running out of money. Despite that, she understood the importance of generosity and helping others around her.

One cold autumnal evening in Chicago, Jenny was standing and waiting at the bus stop. Along came a small older man, barely dressed, wearing a hospital gown, and with no shoes and few possessions. He shivered with cold. Jenny asked him where he was going and why he didn’t have any warm clothing. The man told her he had gotten really sick with AIDS and lost his job and the lease on his apartment. He had been in the hospital recovering from his illness and was just discharged, but had no money. Because he was not from Chicago, he did not know anyone in the area. He was heading downtown to find a shelter for the night.

As her bus pulled up, Jenny spontaneously took off her jacket and gave it to the man. Looking down at his feet, almost blue with cold, she noticed they had similar size feet and took off her tennis shoes and gave them to him. He protested, asking what she was going to do without her shoes. She replied that she was not far from her apartment, and she would feel much better knowing he had a warm coat and shoes to get him through the cold night. She also gave him what little money she had in her purse so he could get some warm food.

As Jenny boarded the bus, the bus driver said with a wink and a twinkle in his eye that in general he didn’t let people onto the bus who weren’t wearing shoes. Then a well-dressed man in a business suit called her over and asked her to sit down. The gentleman asked Jenny: “I want to know who this person is that just did the most generous thing I have ever seen to a stranger.”

Jenny recounted the man’s story and shared about her own struggle to find work. As it turned out, the man was a human resources director in a large health care company. He suggested Jenny come to see him the following week, as he might just have a position open for her. And so the gift of generosity continued, as it often does when our attention is attuned to others, rather than being caught up in our self-absorbed world.

• PRACTICE •

Examining Self-Centeredness

The purpose of this practice is to observe how much of your mental machinations are taken up with thoughts, plans, and rumination about yourself. Don’t judge these thoughts; simply observe how deeply ingrained self-absorption can be. Find a comfortable sitting posture that you can maintain for at least ten to fifteen minutes. Attune to the sensations of your breath to focus your attention.

You will probably find that your attention wanders from the breath many times during meditation, perhaps hundreds of times in a single sitting. That is normal. However, in this meditation, rather than noticing thoughts and returning attention to the breath, observe the content of each thought and note how often the focus is yourself: your worries, concerns, plans, memories, dramas, and so on. Don’t be surprised if such thoughts comprise more than 90 percent of all mental content. If thoughts are not directly about you, they often are by inference, like about your work, family, or relationships.

In the same way, during everyday life, be attentive to self-centered thoughts when you talk to others. How often are the topics of conversation about you? Do you direct discussions to focus on yourself, or do you guide discussions toward the other person or a different subject? Who does most of the talking? Is it an equal back and forth, or do you tend to dominate? Do you love to have an audience, particularly to share extensively about yourself? Do you tend to inquire about other people, focusing on their experience, or do you prefer to be the principal object of the conversation?

As in the meditation, observe this without judgment. Everyone is self-focused to one degree or another; this is a universal phenomenon. The point is to reveal what supports genuine happiness and well-being for everyone. With self-awareness we can wake up to our own patterns of self-centeredness and free ourselves from that onerous habit. In this way, we develop an orientation to others that is both fulfilling and genuinely more satisfactory for all.

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