Below is another wise reminder from Ryan Holiday who quotes Gandhi, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius on how best to handle critiscim: own our imperfection.
No one likes to be found at fault. In fact, this is what many of us walk around fearing–that we’ll be exposed as imposters, we’ll be put on the spot in front of people, we’ll have to admit error. This makes us defensive, it makes us play it safe, and in some cases, it even makes us dishonest.
It’s a cure, you could say, that’s worse than the disease.
Gandhi, once being interviewed by a reporter, dispensed with all that. “I am very imperfect,” he said. “Before you are gone you will have discovered a hundred of my faults and if you don’t, I will help you to see them.” Why would he do such a thing? Perhaps it was because he knew that as a leader, egotism and an outsized sense of one’s abilities was dangerous and destructive. Perhaps he was inoculating himself against the fear in advance–taking away the power of the reporter to control Gandhi’s fate by disclosing up front what might otherwise be investigated (or even misconstrued).
There is a line from Epictetus who, after being criticized, joked “Yes, and he doesn’t know the half of it, because he could have said more.” It’s not that Epictetus had a bunch of bodies buried somewhere, it was that he had also inoculated himself against criticism by being more aware of his flaws–and more concerned about addressing them–than even his enemies.
Why should we be afraid of criticism? As Marcus Aureliuswrites, if that criticism is correct and we are in error thenthe person criticizing us has done us a favor by correcting it. If they are wrong, what do we care? More likely, if we are doing our job right, we should already be well aware of the issue that people are raising and already be fixing it. We should have no sense of ourselves as perfect or above critique. Nor should we be so fragile and vulnerable as to not be able to bear being disliked or disagreed with.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a 93 year old Vietnamese Buddhist monk who has been one of the most influential spiritual leaders on earth for the past fifty years. Here’s how far back he goes: Martin Luther King nominated him for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the Vietnam War.
He is best known for his beautiful, simple teachings about mindfulness. In that vein, here are four quotes of his that will help you become a better, happier human being.
1. “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
That’s it. Just be there. All of you. Listening. With no agenda. Just 100% present. With your spouse. Your kids. Your coworkers. Your friends.
Thich Nhat Hanh is right on the money here. Being present is the deepest gift we can bestow on anybody.
Eckhart Tolle, another of my favorite spiritual teachers, states the very same thing.
2. “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don’t try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.”
I am the father of 12, 10 and 4 year old kids and if I had to pick the number one thing I want to teach them it would be the sentiment behind this quote. Don’t fight yourself. Be yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed it in the most positive way: “Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”
There is, however, one vital point on this subject of self-acceptance that I wish TNH, Emerson and others would emphasize, which is this: For most people, it takes courage.
Example: If your father is a macho ex-Marine, it takes courage to follow your inner compass that’s telling you to become a male ballet dancer.
Our families, our friends and society all pressure us to do what they think we should do. We have to summon the courage to say to all of them: “Sorry, but I’m the one living in here. I know what’s best for me and I need you to respect that.”
3. “The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.”
The first quote was about presence being the best thing we can do for others. This quote is about how presence is the best thing we can do for ourselves.
So much suffering in the world is caused by our worrying about the future. And what does worrying do? It takes us out of the present moment and makes us feel miserable.
We worry about the future and turn our backs on the present moment because we feel if we don’t, our future will be bleak. Well, how about this for an idea? If you’re worrying about having enough money to pay the rent, don’t spend your moments worrying about it. Place your moment to moment attention on making enough money to pay the rent.
But again, there is this insidious feeling in so many of us that worries that if we don’t worry things won’t work out. As if worrying will pay dividends for us. It’s crazy. And it’s not true.
What I’ve tried to do the past several years is live by the motto, “Be present and trust in life.” Because it does take a leap of faith to just say to yourself, “Screw it. I’m going to give everything I have to the present moments of my life and let the chips fall where they may.”
I can tell you that it’s definitely working for me and I know of nobody who truly lives life in the moment who has been ill-served by doing so. We just need the courage to toss the yoke of worrying by the wayside.
4. “Your breathing should flow gracefully, like a river, like a watersnake crossing the water, and not like a chain of rugged mountains or the gallop of a horse…Each time we find ourselves dispersed and find it difficult to gain control of ourselves by different means, the method of watching the breath should always be used.”
This one sums up the ultra-simple mindfulness technique for re-orienting ourselves after we’ve been knocked off track: We just come back to our breath.
I’m teaching a meditation and mindfulness course right now and my class is practicing this very technique this week. So simple, yet so powerful.
How do you do it? Example: You’re driving home after a tough day at work when the car behind you leans on the horn for five seconds because you didn’t signal when you changed into their lane; a minute later your teenage daughter calls and yells at you for not being home on time.
What do you do? At the next red light you stop. Close your eyes. Find your breath. Then start following it. Long, slow breaths. Just for a minute or so. When you open your eyes you’ll feel better and back on track.
If you don’t do this? There’s a good chance you’ll let these two irritating incidents affect your mood for the rest of the evening.
Finally, do yourself a favor and watch this interview with Oprah and Thich Nhat Hanh. The man just exudes goodness.
Mentioned earlier this week, I’m looking forward to my new helping professional role as an Animal Chaplain. Below is another article which explains how this role is serving people today. (See https://broadview.org/animal-chaplains/)
Animal chaplains like Rev. Sarah Bowen help clients prepare for and deal with the loss of their pets By Andrea Cooper, Religion Unplugged
| January 9, 2023
Karen Walsh Gillingham might have felt lonely when she moved to a new home in Mendham, New Jersey. She was single then, with one son soon headed for college and another already there.
But she also had Baxter, a mini golden doodle who loved feeling the breeze out the car window during their rides in the countryside. “It was me and Baxter,” she recalled.
Baxter was by her side for 12 years, through the joy of her remarriage, the births of grandchildren and the pandemic. She was shocked when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died in October 2022. A retired nurse, Gillingham had faced many other losses, including the deaths of her best friend and both parents. But losing Baxter still hit hard.
“It was so comforting to hear somebody who has experience say, ‘It’s OK; it’s normal, and all that grief is just love that has nowhere to go,’” Gillingham said.
Chaplains provide spiritual support in hospitals, hospices, universities, the military and other settings outside of congregations. Animal chaplains focus on relationships or concerns involving animals, from a family struggling with a pet’s illness to a veterinary tech overwhelmed with seeing animals die at work to an activist struggling over the loss of a species or habitat. “Animal chaplaincy for me means that I support all beings regardless of their belief system or species,” Bowen said.
Animal chaplains can help clients prepare for a pet’s passing and run animal loss support groups. They partner with clients to develop rituals, from memorial events to a welcome for a new animal companion. They may also lead “blessing of the animals” services at houses of worship, or comfort families who have lost an animal following a natural disaster.
Never heard of this emerging discipline? You’ve got company.
According to a recent Gallup survey commissioned by Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, one in four Americans have received support from a chaplain. Yet few respondents mentioned animal chaplaincy. The field “is still in its very early days,” said Michael Skaggs, director of programs for the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab.
The specialty is not the same as therapy. Animal chaplains typically describe their work as “companioning” rather than “counselling.” They listen and help make meaning from a loss or challenging event. Their work addresses the human spirit instead of mental health.
You don’t have to be religious to seek out an animal chaplain. They serve people of any or no religious background, including atheist, agnostic, spiritual but not religious, and pluralistic. In general, “chaplains have to be deeply grounded in their own tradition, whatever it is. They have to know where they stand, who they are,” Skaggs said. “But then, when they come into the encounter with the person, that grounding has to be invisible.”
An animal ministry
Animal chaplaincy began about 30 years ago, coinciding with new research about the human-animal bond and animal cognition, Bowen said. “However, the connection and the questions about animals and humans, and what those relationships look like, go back in every religion and wisdom tradition to the beginning.”
Some denominations address animal concerns in a structured way today. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has established prayers for animals who are adopted, missing, ill or dead. There is a specific prayer during euthanasia and even one for the suffering of animals during war.
Unitarian Universalism maintains an animal ministry designed to “empower individuals, chapters, and congregations to build justice and compassion for animals.”
It starts from the premise that “when we look into an animal’s eyes and really see that animal, there’s someone else on the other side who is looking back at us — that animals are our companions in creation,” said the Rev. John Gibb Millspaugh, the ministry’s executive director. UUAM encourages congregants “along their own path of compassion and respect for animals.”
Of the 30 UUAM chapters in the U.S., eight have animal chaplains to provide support. Chapters choose their activities based on local interest. Some lead book and film discussions to engage their congregations. They may focus on diet, educating about plant-based meals and encouraging a vegan option at events. Some collect blankets for animals in local shelters or build fences for dogs previously on chains. Others care for wildlife through river cleanups and planting butterfly gardens.
The denomination is currently updating its core documents, which don’t specifically include animals. The most recent draft identifies “all beings” as subjects for concern, care and respect. While not yet approved, the potential change is “a big damn deal,” the Rev. Russell Elleven, who serves as chaplain to UUAM, happily exclaimed.
Interfaith, interspecies
UUAM animal chaplains train with the Association for Veterinary Pastoral Education in Raleigh, North Carolina — one of a few organizations devoted to educating in this niche area. Robert Gierka founded the program after years as a chaplain, first for a hospital and later for North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The virtual program has attracted students from a variety of religious and professional backgrounds in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and South Africa.
People bring different and sometimes contrasting perspectives to the training. One cohort included a large animal veterinarian whose priority was animal welfare to lessen the pain and fear of animals slaughtered for food. Another student was an animal rights rescue worker opposed to the killing of animals for any reason. In those sessions, Gierka “did some pastoral magic with someone who did get kind of offended,” said Karen Duke, the association’s vice president.
Compassion Consortium, an “interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies” nonprofit based in New York, offers animal chaplaincy training programs from three to nine months. Bowen serves as program director. Learners are diverse, from current and retired pastors and Master of Divinity students to people who practice reiki or other healing arts and want to add to their skills.
Some develop their passion for animals later in life. Bowen, whose degrees include a master’s in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary, recognized her calling early. Her dad, a Presbyterian minister, often stopped by a local funeral home with her before taking her to swim lessons. At age six, she used her metal lunchbox to transport “little dead critters to bury them in our backyard and give them funerals.”
She continues that impulse with her “roadkill ministry,” removing dead animals from streets for a proper burial and taking injured ones to wildlife rehabilitation. Her eclectic services also include teaching clients how to meditate with their hyperactive puppies and how to help a grieving pet when another pet in the household has died.
Fees for animal chaplaincy services vary, in part based on the time required. It’s common for practitioners to offer reduced rates for clients of limited means. Some support groups are free or ask for small donations.
The field is poised for growth, advocates believe. While the profession is still novel, “we don’t have nearly as many people doing this work as we’re asked for,” Bowen said.
Skaggs from the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab agrees, given how many people bring their pets to veterinary clinics each day to say goodbye for the last time. Most veterinarians are very sympathetic but don’t have the training to comfort people through their loss, he said. “How wonderful would it be if you schedule an appointment and the vet clinic says, ‘Would you like this person to be present during this process or available to you after?’” Ideally, he said, every clinic would have a chaplain.
Karen Walsh Gillingham would vouch for the profession. Through her conversation with Bowen, she realized her dog Baxter’s death had brought up grief from her previous losses. While Gillingham will always miss Baxter, she has room in her life for more love. She’s planning for a new mini golden doodle to join her family.
***
Andrea Cooper has written for The New York Times, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Tablet and other national publications. Her honours include the Simon Rockower Award from the American Jewish Press Association for coverage of North American Jewish history.
Love takes work from both parties in a relationship. Making dreams come true for the two of you keeps passion alive. Be – Do – Have.
Today’s senryu: Keep Putting Things into Your Future
making memories
creating joy together
keep the dream alive
“Everybody wants to have great relationships. But unfortunately, when it comes to relationships, we spend so much time rooted in the past that we hardly notice that joy is possible in the present moment. Many of us are addicted to courtship, because when you’re in the courtship phase, you’re all lit up about the future. We’re going to be together, we’re going to have a great relationship, it’s going to be awesome. That sense of what’s “going to be” fuels your joy and excitement in the present moment. So you’re making plans, you’re doing all kinds of fun things, you’re all pumped up. Then you get married, and it all stops.
What stopped? The idea that your future could be more exciting than your present. The future is the fuel for the joy in the present moment, and once you’ve “arrived” – you’ve got the wedding ring on your finger, you’ve got the money in the bank, or whatever other future you were shooting for – all of a sudden the air goes out of the balloon. Why? Because you’re no longer creating from the future. You’ve achieved your goal and you start to coast. I hate to say it, but you can only coast one way – downhill.
In a relationship, if the future is the fuel because you’re so excited about what you’re going to do, then keep on putting things into your future that light both of you up.” Raise Your HDL: Healthy Deserve Level by Gary Kadi, (c) 2009, p.35
So what? Well, here are the consequences of loneliness according to a recent advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy :
“you can feel lonely even if you have a lot of people around you, because loneliness is about the quality of your connections.”
the physical consequences of poor connection can be devastating, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults
many young people now use social media as a replacement for in-person relationships, and this often meant lower-quality connections.
U.S. participation in community organizations — from faith groups to recreational leagues — has declined in recent decades.
A 2022 paper from Johns Hopkins University also found socially isolated older adults had a higher chance of developing dementia than their peers. “Social connections matter for our cognitive health, and the risk of social isolation is potentially modifiable for older adults,”
Today’s senryu: Lookin’ for Love in All the Wrong Places
Last week during a 5-day meditation retreat that I and 300 others attended, a special small group consultation session was offered to “anyone who has experienced trauma OR knows someone who has experienced trauma.” Duh! Crowd murmuring began immediately with the gist being: wouldn’t that include everyone here, if not everyone on the planet.
While first or second-hand trauma seem part of our times, does that mean we should “wallow in misery”?
A Healthline article, How to Identify and Deal with a Victim Mentality, written by Crystal Raypole (see http://www.healthline.com/health/victim-mentality), offers a lot of information on this malady. Here are a couple of highlights:
“The victim mentality rests on three key beliefs: Bad things happen and will keep happening. Other people or circumstances are to blame. Any efforts to create change will fail, so there’s no point in trying.
People identify with the victim role when they “veer into the belief that everyone else caused their misery and nothing they do will ever make a difference.”
A victim mentality can be distressing and create challenges, both for those living with it and the people in their lives. But it can be overcome with the help of a therapist, as well as plenty of compassion and self-kindness.”
Here’s another Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation repost (from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/). It’s a beautiful reminder, similar to a message from the Bhagavad Gita, that divine DNA is in all of us and that love and life are messy.
Purity Is Not Holiness
Pastor and public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber describes how emphasizing “purity” leads us away from holiness:
Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy. They only create insiders and outsiders. They are mechanisms for delivering our drug of choice: self-righteousness, as juice from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil runs down our chins. And these purity systems affect far more than our relationship to sex and booze: they show up in political ideology, in the way people shame each other on social media, in the way we obsess about “eating clean.” Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from….
To connect to the holy is to access the deepest, juiciest part of our spirits. Perhaps this is why we set up so many boundaries, protections, and rules around both sex and religion…. But when the boundaries, protections, and rules become more important than the sacred thing they are intended to protect, casualties ensue.
But no matter how much we strive for purity in our minds, bodies, spirits, or ideologies, purity is not the same as holiness. It’s just easier to define what is pure than what is holy, so we pretend they are interchangeable.
Bolz-Weber points to Jesus’ actions to encourage seeking holiness over purity:
Jesus seemed to want connection with those around him, not separation. He touched human bodies deemed unclean as if they were themselves holy: dead little girls, lepers, menstruating women. People of his day were disgusted that Jesus’ disciples would eat with unwashed hands, and they tried to shame him for it. But he responded, “It is not what enters the mouth that makes one unclean but what comes out of it that defiles” [Matthew 15:11]. He was loyal to the law, just not at the expense of the people.
Jesus kept violating boundaries of decency to get to the people on the other side of that boundary, those who’d been wounded by it, those who were separated from the others: the motherless, the sex workers, the victims, and the victimizers. He cared about real holiness, the connection of things human and divine, the unity of sinners, the coming together of that which was formerly set apart.
When I think of holiness, the kind that is sensual and embodied and free from shame and deeply present in the moment and comes from union with God, I think of a particular scene in the Gospels when, right in the middle of a dinner party, a woman cracks open a jar of myrrh and pours it over Jesus’ feet [Luke 7:37–38]. She then takes her unbound hair and wipes his feet, mixing her mane, her tears, and her offering on the feet of God. Her separateness, from herself and her God, is alleviated in that moment. Holiness braided the strands of her being into their original and divine integrated configuration.
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation (New York: Convergent Books, 2019), 26, 22, 26–27.
Sunday morning coming down … the last day of retreat is for final talks and final goodbyes. Some people linger as long as possible while others pack up early and are eager to return to home, family, work, and/or civilization.
The vast majority of retreatants are making promises to themselves and/or others to return again. There are many goodbye hugs and well wishes shared.
Today’s senryu: Last Day of Retreat
renewed spirits and
relief to move forward – yes
impermanence is
The six-hour drive home includes a lot of debriefing with car mates that had similar yet different experiences than you. Since retreatants are assigned living quarters by gender and meditation groups by chance, it’s very likely that each traveler has a different perspective on what was their favorite part of the retreat.
Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) born November 30, 1835, in Missouri and died April 21, 1910, in CT, at the age of 74 from a heart attack. An American author most known for his classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1885.
Known for his humorous and insightful quips, here are a few of my favorites:
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.”
“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
Life Matters 