There comes a point in a child’s development when he or she will learn the concept of “object permanence.” This is the point when the game peek-a-boo is not as much fun, because the child understands that the world does not disappear when he or she closes her eyes. Buddhism can return people to that “perceptual simplicity” of childhood, according to Andrew Olendzki in Tricycle, by encouraging them to attend to merely what appears. He quotes the Bahiya, saying “in the seen there will be just the seen, in the heard just the heard, in the felt just the felt, and in the thought just the thought.”

Source: Tricycle (subscription required)

Image by  Yogi , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The Buddhist magazine Tricycle (a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award nominee) has unearthed something quite precious from their archives: a 1991 interview with the Dalai Lama conducted by the late writer and monologue master Spalding Gray. The conversation is colored by the kind of blunt truths Gray was famous for. It's a great exploration of the fundamental tenets of Tibeten Buddhism, and it's also hilarious:

Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. And I don’t have the centering habits you do. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. I have a feeling that you have other methods for adjusting. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?

The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up.

Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.

And then there is this gem:

The Dalai Lama: As a Buddhist monk, I usually have no solid meal after lunch, no dinner. So that is also a benefit.

Spalding Gray:  When I passed your room last night, I saw six empty ice-cream sundae dishes outside your door.

Translator (after much laughter): It was members of the entourage.

Source: Tricycle 

Like a 1,600 year-old Cosmo quiz, Buddhism has a tradition of separating people into distinct personality types. Knowing your personality type “can help you release your habitual reactions and bring about greater awareness and balance,” according to Tricycle magazine. There are three basic personality types, each with a positive and a negative temperament associated with them: greed/faith, aversive/discerning wisdom, and deluded/speculative. Tricycle gives a vague, 13-question quiz to help people understand, and hopefully improve upon their temperaments.

In the Fall 2008 issue of Tricycle—an independent magazine that excels at illuminating Buddhist thought for Western readers—Noelle Oxenhandler has a hopeful essay about dementia and the benefits of meditation.

“Already there is compelling evidence that the regular practice of meditation can ease the early symptoms of dementia,” Oxenhandler writes. But keeping your gray matter limber—tapping into the recent craze for brain fitness—is only one of the compelling reasons to practice mindfulness. Meditation also awakens the mind.

“If, as they say in Zen, the rain falls equally on all things,” Oxenhandler writes, “then doesn’t it follow that the bodhi mind—the awakened mind—is bright and vast enough to encompass the fog, despair, and disruption of dementia? … What is mindfulness if not the practice of brining the mind to those places it goes missing?”

A simple example of how mindfulness might benefit those with dementia is kindness practice. Paranoia is dementia’s common, understandable companion. It’s also a frustrating wedge between caregivers and the people they wish to help—injecting that relationship with suspicion, anxiety, even fear. Kindness practice, however, could “make us more resistant to paranoia,” in effect training the mind to open “the door to the unknown with a trusting and welcoming heart.”

“In a dharma talk, I once heard a meditation teacher recount a story about a longtime family friend who was suffering from dementia,” Oxenhandler writes. “Before his illness, this friend had been a highly intelligent and successful man, and he had always been very kind. When the teacher and her husband arrived for a visit, he threw open the door and exclaimed: ‘I have no idea who you are, but do come in and make yourselves at home!’ ”

Image by Gio JL, licensed under Creative Commons.

It’s often easy to agree with spiritual ideals in theory but struggle to achieve them in practice, especially when it comes to sex and drugs. In an essay for the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, Hannah Tennant-Moore writes about her difficulties following the five precepts of the Dhammika Sutta: “do not injure others, lie, steal, consume intoxicants, or ‘go with another man’s wife’ (nowadays understood to mean ‘engage in sexual misconduct’).” When confined to a Buddhist monastery, Tennant-Moore writes that she was able to achieve all five ideals. Once faced with the temptations of the outside world, however, she found herself unable to avoid “sexual misconduct.” 

The Buddhist faith actually has a complex relationship with sex. Tennant-Moore writes that it can sometimes help and sometimes distract from achieving awareness. The Dalai Lama once said that sex between a guru and a student is sometimes (though rarely) acceptable, according to Tennant-Moore. She quotes Zen teacher Ezra Bayda who wrote: “The difference between experiencing our sexuality as heaven or hell is rooted in one thing only, and this is the clarity of our awareness.”

Waiting for the subway, an appointment, or a boyfriend or girlfriend can be a frustrating experience. It can also be an opportunity for meditation and reflection. Writing for Tricycle, Martha Henry writes about her experience trying to find some inner quiet among the inevitable delays in life. The technique doesn’t always work, and Henry admits that she sometimes loses her cool, but it does help her find a little relaxation among daily stresses. “I’m clearly not meditating for the benefit of all beings,” Henry writes. “Rather, I’m mediating so that I won’t be bitchy when my boyfriend arrives.”

—Bennett Gordon

Image by The B's, licensed under Creative Commons.