by Mark Epstein
“Mark.”
Its sound was so hard. In the relative quiet of the retreat, it felt like the blow from a hammer or like an industrial stamp coming down on me from above. I imagined my parents saying “Mark” when I was an infant and me rising to meet their voices, willingly but with a reluctant whiff, the name gathering around me, a little stiff, closing me in. It made me sad, that sense of being oppressed by my own name; I felt how unyielding its tireless walls had been.
Almost simultaneously, though, I felt the possibility, or the memory (I am not sure which), of my name having nothing to do with me. It was just a glimmer, a stirring, like hearing a breeze in the distance and wondering if I was imagining it. Mark was my name but I was not Mark—that seemed to be the point. All around me, stretching in every direction, humming ceaselessly, was something alive and open. With the subtlest of effort, I toggled back and forth between the two feelings: “Mark,” the feeling I knew by heart but felt aversion to, and “not-Mark,” a new (or was it old?) sensation I could not quite put my finger on. I had several epiphanies on this retreat, but this one lasted for a fairly long spell. I remember it was interrupted when I checked my cell phone to see if I had any messages.
I am in the habit of keeping my phone with me on retreat, although it is frowned upon. If my children or my wife or my patients need to get ahold of me in an emergency, they can reach me directly. I was also planning, since I was bringing my phone anyway, to ring my mother on Sunday at four thirty as I always do. She finds Sundays particularly wearisome and looks forward to hearing from me. I had just called her on my drive there and told her I was heading to the retreat.
“I don’t understand why you do those things,” she had said with a hint of exasperation.
They have a soundproof room at the meditation center for calls like this.
I planned to keep my phone in a drawer, but I ended up keeping it on my desk. I did not carry it with me. That is the main thing. I did not even wear pants with a pocket most of the time. I am in the habit of checking my phone when I go to the bathroom—I don’t know how common this is, but it is definitely something I have noticed I do. On the retreat I would find myself, at least for the first five or six days, reaching for it whenever I peed.
“Reaching, reaching,” I would say to myself, trying to bring mindfulness to every moment of the day, noting the little blip of anticipatory excitement when the thought came of checking the phone and then the calm of restraint when I realized it was not there.
It was a relief to be unplugged from my phone, even this much, although I did miss it, especially when I went to the bathroom. They say there is a burst of serotonin in the brain when one gets ready to check one’s phone, the anticipation of a reward, like M&M’s in a classic behavioral experiment or the rice crackers and peanut butter at teatime, making the neurons leak their precious fluid. Based on my own experience on the retreat, I can believe it. The urge runs very deep.
I managed to keep my phone under reasonable control throughout the ten days. I checked it only three times a day, as often as I ate, and the calls I received were minimal. But I did allow myself one indulgence. Every afternoon after lunch I would curl up on my bed with my phone and check the weather. There were three major snowstorms during my time there and the temperatures were regularly below zero. I went out walking around a frozen lake every morning dressed in six layers of clothing, and tracking the weather seemed like a vital, if harmless, activity. It was harmless, I’m sure, but my enjoyment of it made me wonder if I was cheating.
But did I need to beat myself up over this? Could I back off the judgment a little? I was in a tussle with myself around such a superficial infraction, if it was even an infraction at all.
Shortly thereafter, I was doing walking meditation in the basement gymnasium beneath the meditation hall. I was alone in the gym, or at least I thought I was, and my mind was fairly still after days of practicing mindfulness. I often resist the walking meditation; it involves little more than pacing slowly back and forth in a straight line. “Lifting, moving, placing,” one repeats to oneself as one directs the mind’s attention to the bottom of the feet. I find it difficult to keep this up for more than fifteen minutes or so; my back often starts to hurt and I stop and stretch and look for excuses to do something else. On this occasion, however, I was less restless than usual and was aware of a certain ease creeping into the exercise. The walking felt a bit like swimming laps. It was smooth and rather effortless.
Then, out of nowhere, came a loud slap. I jumped, turned around, and saw that a wooden or bamboo Chinese screen had clattered to the ground behind me. The screen had been walling off a small area set aside for the practice of tai chi. I had never noticed it, nor had I ever entered the space behind it; the screen was simply, for me, part of the immovable furniture of the rather drab room. But now it was lying flat upon the ground; someone must have brushed past and knocked it over. The interesting moment came next. Because my mindfulness was strong, my immediate mental reaction was very apparent.
“Who did that?”
This was not an incidental and curious thought. It was a vengeful one, my mind immediately wanting to reproach someone. Right away, I needed someone to blame. The thought shot up like a rocket but stopped short. It actually froze in midair. I saw it visually. It was like a firework that took off very quickly but could find no traction. It did not take hold—it just died there in inner space. I do not usually see my thoughts as pictures, but in this case I did. I saw the spaciousness of my mind and the incidental nature of the thought. It was like seeing a match being struck but then fizzling out. I laughed to myself. It was absurd to be casting about for someone to blame. What did it matter? What was I trying to prove?
There was a severity in me, I realized, a severity I had not completely owned. It showed itself vividly when the screen toppled over, but it was there when I felt the oppression of my name and when I judged the checking of my cell phone. With respect to my name, I wanted to hold someone responsible in much the same way as when the screen fell. Who did this to me? I did not like it. It must be someone’s fault.
This need to blame is of course a very common one. I come up against it all the time in my work as a therapist—in myself and in my patients—and I am often aware both of how alluring it can be and of how people are better off without it. But this moment on retreat had a special power. I actually saw the impulse to blame come into being and then saw it cease. Right Mindfulness allowed me to see it in the same way that it allowed my attorney friend to forgive his mother. In seeing how instinctive the need to blame was for me, I was chastened. But in seeing that it did not need to take hold, I was released. Events like the clattering of the fallen screen happen all the time in my life. Someone drops something, spills something, bumps into me. I wait on the phone to speak to a representative and then get cut off. My credit card bill is incorrect; someone has charged things on my account. My friend says to meet him at six thirty for dinner and shows up forty-five minutes late. Someone leaves garbage in front of my building and we get a ticket from the sanitation department. There is always something.
This single experience in the gymnasium beneath the meditation hall changed things for me. I relaxed about my cell phone. I stopped chafing at my name. I called my mother the following Sunday from the soundproof room. I still had three days left in my stay. We had a good conversation, for maybe ten minutes or so. She seemed to have forgotten that I was at the retreat; maybe I hadn’t made it totally clear to her that I was going for ten whole days. As our talk was winding down, though, she suddenly asked me where I was.
“Are you in the country?” she said.
I often called her from our house in the Hudson Valley, so her question was not unusual.
But she quickly added, “I don’t know why I’m asking; it doesn’t really matter.”
I prevaricated. I did not want to remind her that I was still at the retreat, and I
quickly told myself that since the retreat was in the countryside, I could say yes without feeling too guilty.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m in the country.”
I felt bad for not telling my mother the whole truth, but I forgave myself quickly. I understood why I said what I said. While I was protecting myself from her judgment, I also did not want to make her worry. The important thing was that I’d called when I said I would. My inner critic did not have to use this against me. As I realized when the screen fell in the empty room, my need to find fault did not always have to have precedence.
Revelations on retreat come incidentally and poke holes indiscriminately. As in therapy, progress cannot always be predicted. My name, my speech, my phone, my bed, my moments of reaching in the bathroom for what was not there, my instant of clarity in the walking room. Each one of these situations let me see myself in more relief and brought the threads of my identity more into focus. The practice of Right Mindfulness helped direct my attention to these little bits of experience. I might well have overlooked them were it not for the Buddha’s insistence that the mind was worth watching, even when doing nothing. There was an unexpected dividend to all of this heightened attention. Maybe, in the future, I would not have to let my severity drive me so much. Maybe I could stop looking for someone to blame, let my flaws settle and meld with the rest of me, stop taking my name—and my self—so seriously.
Right Mindfulness, and the self-scrutiny it engenders, builds a mental muscle. It is a muscle of nonjudgmental self-observation, but it can become much more than that. It is also a precursor of insight. The form such insight takes is different for everyone, but the flavor is similar. Mindfulness makes use of all of those throwaway thoughts that harken back to our childhoods, the ones we adopted to cope with the pressures of growing up. In asking us to pay attention to their repetitive nature, mindfulness also encourages us to recognize their childish quality. My moment in the walking room, in which I saw my need to blame, was another version of the voice in the lawyer’s head that showed him how unforgiving he had been. In both cases, we were stopped in our tracks and made aware of how unnecessary such self-protective responses could be. Given the freedom to act differently, we both made a similar choice. Mindfulness showed us how.
Eight
RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Concentration is the secret ingredient of meditation, the backbone of the entire endeavor. It is the simplest, most elementary, most concrete, most practical, and most ancient therapeutic technique in the Buddhist repertoire. It is a means of temporarily dispelling the repetitive thoughts of the everyday mind, a way of opening the psyche to new and unscripted experiences. Although it follows mindfulness on the Eightfold Path, it is generally taught before mindfulness when learning to meditate. It is such an essential introduction to Buddhist practice that its closing place on the Eightfold Path does not make sense at first glance. But concentration needs to be understood in the context of the entire path if it is not to become a distraction in itself. Concentration is “Right” when it connects with the other branches of the whole. It is “Right” when it demonstrates the feasibility of training the mind, when it supports the investigation of impermanence, when it erodes selfish preoccupation, and when it reveals the benefits of surrender. It is not “Right” when it is seen as an end in itself and when it is used to avoid painful truths. One can hide out in the peaceful states that meditative concentration makes possible, but in the context of the Eightfold Path, this is considered a mistake.
Concentration, from a Buddhist perspective, means keeping one’s attention steady on a single object such as the breath or a sound for extended periods of time. This is not something that we do ordinarily and it is not something that comes easily. Those who try to fix their attention in this way for even five minutes will see this for themselves. Try to follow your breath and see what happens. Note the sensation of the in breath and repeat the word “in” to yourself. Do the same with the out breath and repeat the word “out.” Keep the mental label in the background and the bulk of your awareness on the direct physical sensation of the breath. If you are like most people, after successfully noting a breath or two, your usual subconscious inner world will reassert itself. Thinking, planning, fantasizing, and worrying will rush to fill the void, noises from the outside world will pull you in, and five minutes will be over before you know it. The mind does not become concentrated just because we tell it to.
But Right Concentration asks us to persevere. Beginning meditators struggle with this very simple task. Whenever they notice that their attention has strayed, they return it to the central object. Lapses in attention happen not once or twice but over and over and over again. Sometimes people notice right away, and sometimes not for a long while, but Right Concentration suggests that we do not judge ourselves for our failings. Ancient texts compare the process of concentration to the taming of a wild animal. It is a difficult endeavor, full of ups and downs, but one that yields reliable results if practiced diligently and with patience.
As concentration increases, the mind and body relax. Thoughts diminish, emotional pressures weaken, and a kind of calm takes over. The mind gradually comes under some degree of control and settles down. The Buddha compared this process to the smelting of gold. When its superficial contaminants are removed, gold becomes light, soft, malleable, and bright. Its brilliance comes forth and it begins to shine. Western scientists who brought experienced meditators into the laboratory have documented a physiological version of this. When one-pointed attention is strong, the nervous system kicks into a relaxed mode. Heart rate slows, metabolic rate declines, digestion picks up, and brain activity associated with worry and agitation goes into neutral. It was a major surprise for Western scientists to find that something as simple as concentration could have such profound effects on the body. Few researchers thought the so-called involuntary nervous system could be brought under conscious control. Buddhism, for thousands of years, has made the case that concentration brings calm and tranquility to both mind and body. Western science has documented this in terms of the body’s physiology, even if the mind’s golden nature has proven more elusive to direct confirmation.
The benefits of concentration for the management of stressful situations are now widely acknowledged. I spoke recently with a young man newly diagnosed with colon cancer who had to go through a number of tests, scans, and procedures in rapid succession. His wife was interested in meditation and had already begun to explore it, but he had other things to do when he was healthy. Upon receiving the diagnosis, however, he needed something to help him, and he quickly became proficient in using concentration to calm his anxiety. This was incredibly useful. When inside the PET scan machine, for example, where he had to lie still for long periods of time in a close space, he was able to watch his breath or scan the sensations in his body while letting the machine do its thing. It was just like a long, enforced meditation, he told me cheerfully, and it was fine. It is good to have this ability, to know from experience that it is possible; it is incredibly useful in all kinds of uncomfortable situations.
Concentration is not just a method of managing stress, however; it is also an incubator of self-esteem. This is less easily measured but just as important. I found this out for myself during one of my first extended explorations of meditation. Up until this first retreat, I had tried to watch my breath with varying degrees of success. I was taken with the challenge and interested in the underlying philosophy of Buddhism, but my immediate experience of meditation had mostly made me aware of the rather mundane nature of my own mind. The more I tried to watch my breath, the more I saw of the incessant, routine, repetitive, and self-serving thoughts running through the undercurrents of my psyche.
At this retreat, however, after about three or four days of practice, things started to shift. I remember sitting in the meditation hall and suddenly being able to focus. All the effort to locate the breath and stay steady with it no longer seeme
d necessary. It was just there. Although I was remarkably devoid of my usual litany of thoughts, I was wide awake and clearheaded. My eyes were closed in the darkened hall, but light started to pour into my consciousness. Literally. I was seeing light while resting the bulk of my attention in the breath. The light lifted me in some way and I had that feeling I sometimes get, when very moved, of the hairs of my body standing on end. A strong feeling of love came next—not love for anyone or anything in particular—just a strong sense of loving. This all lasted for a while. I could get up and walk around and then, when I sat back down, it would be there again. It was as if the curtains in my mind had parted and something more fundamental was shining through. It was tremendously reassuring. Many of my doubts about myself—as inadequate, unworthy, or insufficient—seemed, as a result, to be superfluous. I knew, from the inside, that they were stories I had been repeating to myself, but not necessarily the truth. The love pouring out of me seemed infinitely more real.
While this experience lasted for hours, it did not, of course, last forever. It was one of the more dramatic things to ever happen to me while meditating, and, in fact, I subsequently spent a fair amount of time trying to get it back. But its impact is as strong today as it was when it first happened. I know for a fact that behind my day-to-day preoccupations lies something more fundamental. While I have changed over the years, and while change (as we know from Right View) is the nature of things, this underlying, almost invisible, feeling is there in the background. Concentration revealed it to me and sometimes allows it to reemerge. At times, with my family, with my patients, when listening to music or walking in the countryside, it peeks through of its own accord.
—
A couple of years after this pivotal experience, when I was in medical school and doing one of my first monthlong rotations in psychiatry, I had an individual tutorial with an esteemed Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Nemiah, who was teaching me about a rare syndrome then called “conversion hysteria.” In this disorder, patients present with physical, often neurological, symptoms, like paralysis or shaking fits, for which no organic cause can be found. In many such cases, the theory goes, the actual problem is some kind of anxiety, but the anxiety is “converted” into physical symptoms because it is too overwhelming to experience in its raw psychological form. The diagnosis is rarely used today; it has been replaced in many instances by the term “dissociative disorder,” and some clinicians now believe that the symptoms can be traced back to episodes of sexual abuse. But the underlying theory about it remains essentially unchanged. Overwhelming feelings are somehow displaced onto, or into, the body. Physical symptoms emerge that have no direct and obvious cause. Post-traumatic stress might be thought of as a contemporary version of this. Traumatic events, never fully acknowledged, come back to haunt people in the form of seemingly inexplicable symptoms that arise as if out of the blue. Dr. Nemiah showed me some films of patients from the 1950s with conversion symptoms and then questioned me about them. He was trying to teach me not just about this particular syndrome, but about the concept of the unconscious. If a patient’s symptoms are expressions of underlying anxiety, he wanted to know, how do they get “converted” into physical form? How does this happen?