Scientific Ink

Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

meditation

Place of Refuge – Pu’uhonua o Honaunau

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On the Big Island in Hawaii is a national park called Pu’uhonua o Honaunau, or the Place of Refuge. The place is special, white sand, black lava stone walls, ki’i figures bearing their teeth at the wind and the water, tall palms swishing their fronds in the wind. There are usually a few sea turtles bobbing around in the waves and happily grazing algae. Sometimes one pulls itself out of the lapping waves for some warming sunshine.

In the park, there are some lava stone walls and platforms, some buildings and figures, but mostly it contains peace and beauty.

What’s important to know is that inside these walls was safety. Historically, the place of refuge provided an escape valve of sorts out of the strict rules of Hawaiian society. To my superficial understanding, that traditional culture had strong kapu – or what we might call taboos – protocol for who is allowed to do what where. Some sound social-caste-driven – commoners couldn’t touch the shadow of nobleman – others seem much more about alignment with ecological forces – letting land or fishing areas lie fallow to recover from harvesting pressure. There were also political struggles. Those who had transgressed the rules or been on the wrong side of a battle could reach one of these zones of…is it forgiveness? or maybe absolution?…and enter a process to be reincorporated into society.

A hut near the entrance holds the bones of priests, and it is their power, in my language perhaps the power of their intention, that gives this place its power of peace. The place is magical. Maybe it is the warm sun, the closeness of sea turtles, the graceful swaying of the palm fronds. Or maybe the years of peace and renewal in this spot has left an aura of deep calm.

While there are moments of transcendence and sublime beauty, life also contains moments of annoyance, small-minded prejudice, mistakes of inattention, bad luck, and bad intentions. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place where we can go and be forgiven?

Of course, the spell breaks when envisioning larger transgressions, or repeat offenders. And, while I cannot imagine setting this up for a larger society, this place does inspire me to create openness and forgiveness for myself, for the day to day departures from intention, misfires, and missed opportunities, for the ways in which I find myself lacking and lecture myself on doing ____ better, more often, or never again.

As I near my 40th Birthday, my goal is to carry that safe place around for myself and for those close to me. My meditation practice is the practice of building that space, and my meditation room is its physical manifestation.When I am calm and at peace, I create peace around me. When I let myself become disturbed, I disturb.

What is your place of refuge? How can it be extended to increase your own well-being and that of those around you? How do you nurture your hope?

My cat, chanting, purring, and my experience at my meditation center

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I shared this story about my cat and my own experience chanting and becoming more joyful through chanting and meditation when I hosted a program earlier this month at the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor.

My cat’s name is Floyd, and the reason I want to tell you about him is that my experience with him parallels a little bit my experience in Siddha Yoga. It’s a story of purring to share increasing comfort and joy.

Close to 15 years ago, we adopted a stray cat. We were walking into the door of my apartment building, and a cat started calling to us. He came to us from across the little street, meowing the whole time. He was scrawny and bald in places where he plucked out his fur in response to flea bites. He looked ragged, and he was really hungry. He seemed sweet, not feral at all, and I brought him inside. He seemed to understand living with humans. He was hungry. He fattened up and his hair grew in and he remained a talker. He also had a very soft, very subtle purr. I recall being surprised by a cat with such a loud and demanding voice had such a tiny purr.

Well, the other day I realized in an affectionate moment, that he has a much louder purr than I remembered when we first met. His purr is more fervent now. I think that over time, as his comfort level and his trust have deepened, and so has his purr. When he purrs, he draws me in. His purr expresses happiness and prompts me to give him more affection so that he’ll continue to purr.

I did a little research on why cats purr. It was interesting. Cats purr as kittens when nursing, when receiving affection from us humans, and they purr sometimes when they are sick or scared. So, cats purr for communication, and depending how you interpret why ill cats purr, it is either for self-soothing or maybe healing. According to an article in Scientific American, the frequency of the vibration of the purring actually may help bone density and healing.

Well, you might wonder where I’m going with this. As I thought about all of this, I thought about my own experience with Siddha Yoga and how I have opened up like he has, how tuning into his purring and the practices and has helped me enjoy life so much more.

I showed up the doorstep of the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center just like that stray kitty, hungry for knowledge, hungry for peace of mind. I was restless, looking for something. I had always known I wanted to meditate. I tried a local class, and I ended up frustrated and sore from the sitting positions or asanas and no closer to the peace of mind I was seeking.

At one point, I shared this urge with my scientific mentor. It turned out she also had a meditation practice and a community, this one, and she invited me to accompany her to a satsang one Thursday night.

I arrived at the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor in late spring in 1998, right after the death of my father. That night, like most Thursday night satsangs, we chanted and sat for meditation.

It was the chanting that caught me. I was struck by how the chant started solemnly. In those slow early verses, I experienced a lot of the sadness I was carrying around. But then, something magical happened, the chant sped up, and I found myself carried along with its momentum, and the end was fast and joyful and fun. And I had the experience of going along that entire arc. And I had the sense that by giving myself to the chant that I would be soothed, met in sadness and brought to joy. And I had the sense that when I was singing solemnly, I felt solemn. When I was singing joyfully, I experienced joy. I had thought it was the other way around, but acting in those ways drew forth that experience, drew forth that same energy from the world around me.

I also found, as I still do, that the chants continued to give to me, sticking with me as melodies or words or just that lovely well being that I experience in the chant. The words or melody would popping back up in quiet moments, reminding me, reconnecting me to the experience, to joy.

So, chanting was like my purring. It was and still is a form of self soothing, but it is also a practice of expressing and of cultivating joy, and drawing it to me and sharing it with others.

Wise words on meditation

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I was trying to explain meditation to a friend the other day, and I found myself struggling. She asked how I quiet my mind in meditation, and I said, well, I am not always successful, but that meditation gives me a set time to practice. She asked what it was like, I said it varied. But I said that I knew that whatever happened when I sat down for meditation, no matter what it felt like, was meditation. That was hard to get across, and I’m not sure I did.

It had taken me a while to get to this understanding, and I think it came through watching the effect of the meditation on myself and on my day to realize that even if the meditation felt choppy or even not like meditation at all, sitting down for it always benefitted me.

So, I was thrilled to see this passage in The Heart of Meditation, confirming this experience.

Much of the work of meditation takes place underground, and much of it is imperceptible. That is one reason why we measure our progress in meditation not so much by what happens during a particular session of meditation, as by the subtle ways in which a regular meditation practice changes our feelings about ourselves and the world. p. 273. The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience.

The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience

The Happiness Hypothesis

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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient WisdomI first heard about The Happiness Hypothesis from twitter, from @zappos tweet on having finished it, to be exact. I was especially interested in the premise of this book–a look at ancient wisdom and modern psychological research. Jonathan Haidt carefully reviews 10 ideas that have been threads in ancient wisdom and have been addressed in psychological research. Specifically, he looks at

  1. The divided self. The notion of a divided self (mind vs. body, left vs. right brained, new vs. old, controlled vs. automatic responses).
  2. Changing your mind. Our experience of the world comes from our perception of it. He goes on to explain that some people just “win the cortical lottery” and have a higher happiness set point (S) than others.
    • How to change S. Meditation, cognitive therapy, Prozac.
  3. Reciprocity with a vengeance. How reciprocity binds us together as a society. Why gossip is actually not as bad as the sages said (it provides a feedback loop on who can be trusted and is a form of bonding).
  4. The faults of others. How we’re so good at seeing others’ faults, and so blind to our own shortcomings. He details research on the four main causes of violence and cruelty (the obvious – greed/ambition, and sadism, and two less obvious and seemingly good – high self esteem and moral idealism). He then reiterates how meditation and self-examination can be used to reset the storytelling and encourage cooperation.
  5. The pursuit of happiness. How both lottery winners and paraplegics return to their set happiness point after the initial adjustment period ends. How we adapt to the conditions of our lives and take them for granted soon after they arrive. That happiness (H) is determined by the biological set point (S), the conditions of your life (C), and the voluntary activities (V) you do.
    • How to change C. It’s not money or prestige or fame. The external conditions that really seem to matter are noise, commuting, lack of control, shame, and relationships.
    • What Vs matter? Haidt draws a distinction between pleasures (eating ice cream…) and gratifications (moments of flow – experienced when using your strengths on a challenging problem). Gratifications last. According to Haidt, “activities connect us with others; objects often separate us….As a first step, work less, earn less, accumulate less, and ‘consume’ more family time, vacations, and other enjoyable vacations”. (pp. 100-101)
  6. Love and attachments. The stages of attachment to parents, caregiving to infants, and how it relates to our attachment to romantic partners. The differences between passionate and companionate love, and which is true love.
  7. The uses of adversity. Is it true that we need obstacles to fully realize ourselves? When is an obstacle a hindrance? It appears that family and social integration help people weather crises. So, for the isolated, adversity is more damaging. Youth confers a benefit of resilience as well.
  8. The felicity of virtue. The differences between character and actions. The 24 principle character strengths (test at authentichappiness.com).
  9. Divinity with or without God. The relationship between Flatland and the Bhagavad Gita. The effect of witnessing someone do a good deed: elevation.
  10. Happiness comes from between. The meaning of life, the meaning within life we create. Altruism, competition, and cooperation.

The final message: it isn’t all about retreating to a mountaintop and meditating. We have to work on the internal (S) and on the external (C and V) to increase our happiness/well being. More on the book at happinesshypothesis.com

How I learned when to meditate

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I have had a meditation practice for several years now. I’ve been daily on weekdays for some time, long enough now that I think I might be addicted to it. This isn’t a bad addiction, a compulsion I need to shake, but it is interesting to notice my dependence, especially on something that has sometimes been a struggle for me.

I have sometimes treated meditation like exercise, something that I will schedule and put myself through, because I know it is good for me. Like exercise, it hasn’t always been something I’ve loved for itself. During meditation, I sometimes clock-watch (like I might at the gym on a machine). I know it is good for me because of how I feel afterwards. I feel gentle, open, soft, and supported. I feel whole. But sometimes, during a meditation, the stress of just sitting there can be hard for me to bear. 

A few weeks ago, I went up north with my family for a week. I made sure I meditated every day, but I was up there with kids, and wasn’t the earliest riser, and there is a lot of pressure to all be together for a big breakfast. So I felt rushed in the mornings and I did not take the time to meditate, Instead, I’d come downstairs to join the family for breakfast, my rhythm thrown off. I would then try to slip in a meditation during the late afternoon. While I still meditated each day, I noticed myself being grumpy, ill-tempered, and downright cranky until I had my meditation. The stuff I thought, the stuff I said. Yikes.

I finally noticed the pattern. I noticed I didn’t like what was coming into my thoughts, and what was coming out of my mouth. So, I decided to change. I switched up my schedule, I resolved that no matter how late I slept, I would not come downstairs until I was finished. After my morning meditation, I felt more resilient and friendly towards everyone. It sounds obvious, now that I write it, but I had to learn through experimentation that I needed to meditate in the morning.

Next I will experiment with duration.