Timeless truths for modern mindfulness a practical guide to a more focused and quiet mind by arnie kozak

Copyright © 2018 by Arnie Kozak
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For all my students, past, present, and future.


Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Section I: Appreciating Mindfulness
Chapter 1. A Brief History of Mindfulness
Meditation: Starting Wherever You Are
Axiom: Separate efforts from results.
Chapter 2. Why I Practice Mindfulness
Meditation: Getting into Your Meditation Seat
Axiom: Problems don’t have to be problems.
Chapter 3. Buddha 2.0: The Buddha Wasn’t a Buddhist
Meditation: Following Sounds
Axiom: Thank you; No thank you.
Chapter 4. Mindfulness and Your Religion
Meditation: Get Curious about Your Mind
Axiom: There is no goal for mindfulness meditation practice.

Section II: How to Practice
Chapter 5. How to Pay Attention
Meditation: Breathing 101
Axiom: Every burden is also a teacher.
Chapter 6. Demythologizing Practice
Meditation: Getting Intimate with Your Body (Body Scan)
Axiom: Investigate the energy underlying the story.


Chapter 7. The Buddha’s Top Five Obstacles to Practice
Meditation: Walking
Axiom: Unwanted visitations don’t have to be proliferated.
Chapter 8. Meditation and Daily Life
Meditation: Informal Practice
Axiom: You are permitted to drive the speed limit.

Chapter 9. What You Can Expect from Practice
Meditation: Intentional Breathing
Axiom: Not every problem can/should be fixed.

Section III: Mindfulness in Action
Chapter 10. Operating Instructions for Your Brain
Meditation: The Breathing Body
Axiom: Your rational brain has a different agenda than your emotional
brain: know the difference.
Chapter 11. Evolution
Meditation: Working with Your Stress Cues
Axiom: What’s the best way to take care of myself in this moment?
Chapter 12. Overcoming FEAR
Meditation: AIR—Appreciate, Inquire, and Revise
Axiom: Calibrate your GPS: Get some rest, put things in context, start
again in the next moment.
Chapter 13. Embracing Adversity
Meditation: Embracing Adversity
Axiom: Actions are preferable to interpretations.
Chapter 14. Undoing Trauma and Pain
Meditation: Metabolizing Trauma
Axiom: Mindlessness never takes a vacation.
Chapter 15. Dealing with Equanimity Lapses


Meditation: Forgiveness
Axiom: Grief is the admission price to the present moment.

Section IV: Going Deeper
Chapter 16. Changing the Way You See the World

Meditation: Open Presence without Agenda
Axiom: Hope is not the same thing as confidence.
Chapter 17. The Buddha’s Revolutionary Project
Meditation: Finding Joy, Rest, and Peace
Axiom: Vulnerability is simply what happens to embodied beings who live
in a world subject to the laws of physics and evolution.
Chapter 18. The Buddha’s First Teaching
Meditation: What Does the Mind Want?
Axiom: Don’t believe anything you think.
Chapter 19. Who’s Running the Show?
Meditation: Mind Scan
Axiom: Two words that make all the difference: “This is happening”
versus “This is happening to me.”

Section V: Going Even Deeper
Chapter 20. Mindfulness with a Capital “M”
Meditation: Breathing through Resistance
Axiom: We are human becomings who take form through an impetus
toward interest, joy, and care.
Chapter 21. A Value-Driven Life
Meditation: Opening the Heart
Axiom: We are not to blame AND we are responsible.
Chapter 22. Making the World a Better Place
Meditation: Working with Chronic Pain
Axiom: The “point” of life is to negotiate the laws of physics in ways that


are sustaining, and where possible, graceful, joyful, and significant.
Chapter 23. Inching toward Awakening
Meditation: Sitting Still

Axiom: Perfectionism is a cheat against impermanence.
Chapter 24. Moving from FEAR into the Vast
Meditation: Mindfulness of Music
Axiom: Sovereignty is nothing other than telling shame and death to go
f*%# themselves.
Chapter 25. Unconditional Happiness
Meditation: Emptiness
Axiom: Take care of meaning and happiness takes care of itself.
Core Principles
Epilogue


Acknowledgments

any minds (and hands) touch a book in the process of its writing. My agent Grace Freedson got
the attention of Susan Randol who acquired the book for Skyhorse Publishing. Michele Rubin
took over from Susan and helped to bring the book to completion. I am particularly grateful for her
interest in mindfulness and her helping to make this work more accessible to the reader. She has
breathed air into this manuscript, much like we do in mindfulness meditation.
My friends and readers, Erik Sween and Richard Pinckney, contributed insightful edits to the
final draft. Dr. Pinckney was one of my first mindfulness students many years ago and his edits were
particularly helpful.
Practicing mindfulness for almost three decades, I’ve indebted myself to many teachers,
colleagues, and, of course, students.
My dogs, Harley and Sumi are not only constant companions but great teachers on the potential
of mindful (and mindless!) living.

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The most divine consolation is without a doubt contained within the human itself. We would not
know very well what to do with the consolations of a god. All that is necessary is for our eye to be
a trace more seeing, for our ear to be more receptive, for the flavor of a fruit to enter us more
completely, for us to be able to tolerate more scent, and, in touching and being touched, to be
more present-minded and less oblivious—in order to receive from our most immediate experiences
consolations that would be more convincing, more significant and truer than any suffering that
can ever unsettle us.
—Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters on Life


Introduction

here is a mindfulness craze happening now. It’s everywhere you look—on magazine covers,
your local hospital, and in the news. By reading this book, you may have jumped on this
bandwagon. While I am happy that you have selected Timeless Truths for Modern Mindfulness , I’d
like your experience of mindfulness to be much more than a passing fad. This book presents a
practical, portable, and even profound way of integrating the practices and principles of mindfulness
into your life. If you read this book, learn the principles, and do the practices, your life will probably
change in dramatic ways. It could rework the way you relate to yourself, others, and the world. It
could fundamentally alter the way you deal with adversity, pain, and disappointment. In short,
mindfulness can transform the way you live. I regard these changes as positive. I also know that these
re-shapings can be a radical departure from the status quo. If you want to keep your life as it is—
don’t read this book!
If you have jumped on the mindfulness bandwagon, I want you to now jump off! Mindfulness is
more than just “present moment” attention. It is more than just “being in the now.” It’s being here now
with love in your heart and peace in your body. Mindfulness is not just about being less stressed and
more relaxed. It is not just about being able to concentrate more. Mindfulness is integral to becoming
a wise and ethical person. If you perhaps already consider yourself to be both wise and ethical, then
mindfulness will help you to become wiser and more ethical. Since you’ve picked up this book,
you’ve likely heard of mindfulness already. You may have opinions about it, and may have even given

it a try.
My concern with the current enthusiasm for mindfulness is that it is presented as something of a
panacea—all things for all people. Mindfulness does embody a suite of generic mind capabilities and
does have broad applicability. However, it is not a magic pill. There is no silver bullet, and serious
mindfulness practice requires serious commitment. Often, mindfulness is presented without reference
to its Buddhist origins. I’d like to re-introduce that context, but do so with Buddha at the center of
mindfulness practice rather than the Buddhist religions.
You can use mindfulness to be a better version of yourself. That’s fine, effective, and within
reach. You can reduce stress, be more present to your children, and be less reactive. You can even
have better sex. It can be much more, too. You can also use mindfulness as part of a radical selftransformation process. By transformation, I mean changing the fundamental way you relate to
yourself, others, and the world. By radical I mean an abrupt departure from the “business as usual”

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sense of self. Gone will be a materialistic, self-centered existence—not that you actually have to
jettison material possessions, success, or wealth. The end-point of this revolutionary process is the
capacity to experience happiness in your life regardless of circumstances—internal and external.
This is a radical idea, and one that the historical Buddha advocated about twenty-five hundred years
ago. It represents freedom from conditions—an unconditional happiness. Beyond advocating for such
a transformation, the Buddha also developed technologies, such as mindfulness meditations, to
accomplish it. These methods are part intellectual as well as part ethical. Intellectually, it requires
having a deep understanding and appreciation for the way things work, including and especially your
mind. Ethically, it underscores that the actions we take have consequences. Thus, it makes sense to
aim thoughts, emotions, and behaviors toward outcomes that are beneficial, wholesome, and even
beautiful for yourself, the people in your life, and the planet. The final piece is meditation—training
the mind so that it can work on your behalf to bring happiness, peace, and goodness. The science of
psychology also has something to contribute to the realization of the Buddha’s project of liberation.
I’ll share insights from my work in psychology from over the past thirty years, along with insights
from my personal meditation practice over the same period of time.

There are a lot of books out there that make a lot of promises. You’ve probably read some of
these. Here is my promise. What follows in this book is what I like to think of as a no-nonsense, nongimmicky, yet accessible way to make real change. These changes won’t be instantaneous and won’t
last unless you put in the effort. I’ve field tested these ideas with myself, my patients, and the people I
have had the privilege to teach. Dip in a little, dip in a lot. To whatever extent you let mindfulness
into your life, you will benefit. If you’d like to take it all the way to unconditional happiness, keep
reading.
In order to get the most benefit from mindfulness, there are a few issues I want to clarify. First,
we need to get beyond the caricature of mindfulness as an ever-serene, gentle countenance of being.
Living mindfully can sometimes look like that, but not always. Instead, living mindfully will still be
your life—in all its strengths and imperfection—only with less reactivity. The popular perception of
mindfulness as a kind of peaceful ideal is not always helpful, because it is just another stumbling
block. Living mindfully is challenging enough without putting extra pressure on yourself. Second, we
need to reclaim the Buddha from the Buddhist religions that coopted him twenty-five hundred years
ago. The Buddha was a revolutionary, and he had a radical vision for himself and the rest of
humanity. This was not a religious perspective but a secular, psychological, and existential one. The
Buddha wanted to find the best way to live. This was a way that maximized happiness or what
philosophers call eudemonia—a state that goes beyond mere momentary happiness to a pervasive
sense of well-being. History, however, has painted the Buddha as the embodiment of supreme
imperturbability. He evolved into a vision of a luminous deity; a clairvoyant, performing miracles.
He became a deathless god, rather than being born again as animal, human, or god. The actual person
of Siddhartha Gotama (Gotama is the historical Buddha’s family name; Siddhartha was a designation


that came long after he was dead) is more recognizable in you and me. He had aches and pains,
frustrations, and an edge to his personality when needed. He was not always the supreme and
invariable face of peace, gentleness, and light. Instead, the Buddha was pragmatic and only interested
in helping people. He rejected intellectual speculation, ideologies, and metaphysics of all kinds. He
focused on mindfulness as the key to his teaching. Third, one of the challenges of integrating
mindfulness, or any change process, is the expectations that are brought to that process. It’s easy to get
caught up in perfectionistic standards, and mindfulness is not immune to this. This book is designed to

help you integrate mindfulness into your life in an authentic way. By authentic I mean something that
resonates with you, something that you can actually use to live in the world differently, and something
that makes your life more meaningful. This integration doesn’t need to be perfect. In fact, it cannot
possibly be. Throughout the book we will address the pitfalls that can prevent this genuine integration
from happening.
Timeless Truths for Modern Mindfulness contains everything you need to know about
mindfulness and the Buddha’s teachings on living an awakened life to get your practice off the ground.
In addition to mindfulness principles and guided practices, I will share with you a set of axioms—
practical and likely true propositions—that I have taught over the years. These axioms and practices
give you a blueprint for a deep, durable, and sustainable form of happiness. Blueprint isn’t the exact
metaphor here, since a blueprint is exact. Think of these, instead, as guideposts that you can make
your own as you see fit. The book progresses from basic mindfulness to more advanced topics, with
an invitation to go deeper, and then even deeper. You may find it helpful to practice the meditations in
each section of the book for a while (let’s say, for weeks or even months) before moving on to the
next section. By moving through the book in this way, you’ll be able to integrate the practices and
insights in a fruitful way.


S ECTION I

Appreciating Mindfulness

t seems that many of the books on mindfulness and Buddhism that I read, disparage our culture with
its materialism, self-centeredness, and violence. I’ve even done this myself, and at the urging of
one of my editors, was asked to tone it down. There are certainly problems in the world, and there
are no doubt problems with the way we conduct our lives, particularly in the West. Yet our minds
tend to over-focus on negative things. The news rarely reveals what is going right in the world. One
day years ago, I was in a big city marveling at the architecture, and I realized that there was a lot
more going right than going wrong. I was recently in New York City and had a similar insight.
Millions of people living together in relative harmony. It was not chaos, mayhem, or anarchy.

I think that a balanced approach might be best. Humanity is capable of such beauty and such
horror. Both individual and group psychology determine which outcome we create. Increased selfawareness at the individual level can make the world a better place. Meanwhile, we should try not
view the world in an overly negative way. Relative to our ancestors, this is a great time to be alive.
We no longer die of common infections. Technology has brought ease to our lives in ways that would
have been unfathomable even at the turn of the twentieth century. Science continues to make advances.
Despite isolated pockets of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and civil war, the world is less violent today
than it has been in its bloody past.
Mindfulness can help us to celebrate life’s wonderment and ameliorate life’s woes. People can
and do use these practices to insulate themselves from the pain of the world. But I would like to offer
mindfulness as a way to engage with the world, rather than as a shield against its darkness. I want to
offer mindfulness as a path to maintaining a sense of peace, balance, and stability. The world needs
us to not turn away, but rather to turn toward it with a courageous heart. By reading, understanding,
practicing, and experimenting with the principles and exercises in this book, you can develop the
bravery needed to be an agent of change in the world. You can start right here and right now with your
own self. Your well-being is the foundation for everything else.

I


Mindlessness is the opposite of mindfulness, but we don’t have a similar conjunction for self.
Selfless is opposite of selfish. When we transform the self through mindfulness, it doesn’t become
selfless. That isn’t quite right. Instead, the mindful self is full of virtuous qualities such as
compassion, friendliness, appreciation, and inimitable peacefulness. We can be selfless for selfish
reasons—trumpeting our identity as caring, sacrificing, and ego-less. We can be self-serving in how
we identify ourselves. The real goal is to get rid of all identifications, to not own any of the attributes
that can be attributed to self. This self is motivated internally by a wish to live with values that are
not self-serving; to be self-aware, and to take responsibility for one’s life.


C HAPTER 1

A Brief History of Mindfulness

indfulness could just have well been called something else. It is the translation of a Pali
language word sati. It wasn’t until the middle of the last century that it become the prevailing
English translation. Before then it was translated as remembering or even self-discipline.
There are a number of factors that have contributed to the explosion in the popularity of
mindfulness. In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic and started teaching
mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Here
he taught a secularized version of Buddhist meditation. The success of that program and his popular
books on mindfulness—Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are— put
mindfulness on the map. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without MBSR, the professional career
that I have had as a mindfulness-based psychotherapist, teacher, and author would not have been
possible. Other early influences from the 1970s include American teachers, such as Joseph Goldstein,
Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Larry Rosenberg, who traveled to Asia and brought mindfulness
(insight) meditation back to America and founded residential meditation centers, such as the Insight
Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Other influences were the prolific writings of the influential
Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama who were making
Buddhism a household world. Our culture was also responsive to mindfulness, as many people
hungered for another way of being that was not based on constant busyness, stress, and pressure. In
many ways, the problems we confront today are similar to those of the Buddha’s time—materialism,
rapid change, uncertainty—but the Buddha’s followers didn’t have to deal with smart phones, the
Internet, and driverless cars. The more inundated with information we get, the more we may long for
the quiet that mindfulness can bring.
Mindfulness was also the term that Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer used to describe
her research into the opposite of mindlessness. For her, mindfulness is the ability to be flexible with
thinking and to avoid jumping to premature conclusions. Her mindfulness does not involve meditation.

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Researchers have also identified mindfulness as a personality trait, something that we each have more
or less of. The Buddha’s mindfulness overlaps with these ideas, yet is also different than these
concepts. Just as we all have some mindfulness as a personality trait, we all have the potential to be
mindful—Buddha style. We can reach that potential and grow our capacity for mindfulness through
intellect, conscientiousness, and meditation practice.

Meditation: Starting Wherever You Are
It’s important to remember that you don’t need any special props to meditate. You don’t need any
“just right” conditions. You can practice wherever and however you are in any moment. This
flexibility, portability, and durability is the power of mindfulness practice. The point of mindfulness
practice is not to create some special state. Rather, the goal is to appreciate what is happening in your
experience now. That’s the starting place. When you start to really appreciate what is going on, you’ll
also start to see how you are adding things to your experience, such as expectations. These add-ons
actually get in the way of your experience of the moment because they cover reality with imagination.
Here are some considerations:
•

No props required: no special clothes, cushions, bells, incense, statues. These things
won’t do the practice for you! However, there is nothing wrong with having them, you just
don’t need them.

•

No special conditions necessary: You can practice in an environment that is noisy, too
warm or too cold, or that has other distractions. Of course, if you have a protected, quiet,
and conducive space that is great, and even helpful at the beginning stages.

•

Don’t add anything to the practice. Check to see if you have assumptions for how
practice should go. Perhaps these ideas come from images you’ve seen about meditation or
things you’ve heard from friends or other people. Also check to see if you have any desires
about what should or should not be happening. These are never helpful. The only
assumption that helps is to assume that your purpose here is to get to know yourself better
and to have confidence that you can do that. You are trying to make contact with what is
happening in this moment without adding anything—that is how you get to know yourself
better.

Axiom: Separate efforts from results.


We live in a culture that is very results oriented. We can lose sight of the fact that sometimes, despite
our best efforts, things don’t work out as planned. Often, this is because we can’t really manage the
outcomes because they depend on people or things that we can’t control. Sometimes we give it a
noble try, and we fail. That’s it. It makes sense to invest energy in the things that we can control (like
effort) and divest energy from the things we cannot control (results).
The Buddha valued effort as being one of eight critical ways of being-in-the-world. The others
were mindfulness, concentration, intelligence, resolve, and the ethics of actions, speech, and work.
The Buddha thought that intentions were important—perhaps even more important than actions
themselves, or the outcomes of those actions. Of course, to know your intentions, you must know the
mind. It’s no good to be lazy about it. That’s no excuse. “I didn’t mean to” is not an intention. From
first becoming aware of intentions and understanding what is happening in the moment, the next step is
not becoming attached to the results. My friend Jaimal Yogis writes in his latest book, All Our Waves
are Water , about seeing a sign that said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” That
captures this axiom nicely. It doesn’t matter if you miss that shot; it matters if you take it. There is
also a saying in golf, “never up, never in” which refers to the difficulty of making putts. Timidity can
prevent the golfer from hitting the putt with enough force. The ball then stops short underneath the
hole. While this putt will not go screaming past the hole, it never has a chance to go in.
It’s easy to castigate yourself when things don’t go according to plan. However, you can inquire

with yourself about your efforts. When we let go of the fear of failure, a space opens up where efforts
can be made. Sometimes with good results.


C HAPTER 2

Why I Practice Mindfulness

am often asked in interviews about how I got started with meditation. I have some stock answers
that include my paradoxical orthodox Hebrew education. I wasn’t sent to this kind of school
because my family was observant, but because that temple did not require membership. I also share
that I had grown up in the 1970s knowing that my mom was doing TM (Transcendental Meditation). I
had “discovered” meditation on my own without being taught. During my senior year in high school
before the state championship track and field meet, I sat by myself on the bus and stared out the
window, concentrating on the pattern of the road markings as they moved through my field of vision. I
entered into trance state and later performed my personal best. This spontaneous meditation was
somewhat analogous to the Buddha’s meditation under the rose apple tree. I was seventeen and the
Buddha was only eight, but it was similar in the sense that it was neither planned nor premeditated. It
happened at and in the moment.
I have been practicing meditation in one form or another since 1983, and specifically
mindfulness meditation since 1989. In college, when I was exposed to Sanskrit chanting, it just made
sense to me, although I didn’t know why at the time. Long before I had the vocabulary to understand
my introversion and long before I could fully occupy that identity, meditation served as my solace,
restoration, and foothold to sanity. In fact, I turned away from my first spiritual practice of Siddha
Yoga because it was too extroverted. I didn’t realize that at the time. On many occasions, the required
sadhana (spiritual practice) was working all night on some big project rather than spending time in
meditation. I also flirted with Tibetan Buddhism and received teachings from His Holiness the Dalai
Lama in Bodhgaya, India. This included taking the bodhisattva vows. Tibetan Buddhism requires
extensive visualization, which I wasn’t particularly skilled at, and the practice never stuck. After
beginning graduate school, I went to my first vipassana retreat. This is also known as insight

meditation and is what we colloquially call mindfulness meditation. Vipassana felt natural, like
coming home. I first learned of vipassana or mindfulness meditation in Bodhghaya. I walked by the

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vipassana practice center, and the meditation schedule for a retreat was posted on the wrought iron
gate. The itinerary consisted of continuous meditation throughout the day, from four o’clock in the
morning until nine o’clock at night—periods of sitting and walking meditation with breaks for meals.
An arduous undertaking. My schedule didn’t permit staying for this retreat, but I said to myself, “I’ve
got to try that someday.” Fast-forward three years. I have just finished my first year of graduate
school in clinical psychology, and a friend says that he and his wife are going to a vipassana retreat.
“Want to come?” Without hesitating, I said, “Yes!” That decision to dive in began my meditation
career in earnest. My path started with a retreat. However, there are many ways to invite mindfulness
into your life and not all of them require a silent retreat.
I have often described that retreat as the single most difficult and beneficial experience of my
life. I didn’t know that sitting in silence for ten days would be so hard, physically, mentally, and
emotionally. It was an unprecedented experience. Where else can we be supported to do nothing other
than meditation all day long? Meals were cooked and served, and I was divested from any of my
usual responsibilities. Back then, we didn’t have mobile phones, but we vowed to renounce reading,
writing, and talking for those ten days. These renunciations are known as “noble silence,” and they
create a crucible in which to practice. Intensity increases as the hours pass with no distractions or
diversions. My mind tried to distract itself by remembering episodes from television shows, but that
inner noise finally left me, and I was in the unadulterated experience of the present moment. That
retreat felt cleansing. My concentration improved, and I felt more confident in school. Reluctantly, I
started a “daily” meditation practice. Given the profound benefit that I experienced, it was surprising
that I struggled to sit on a regular basis. A few years later, I went to my second silent ten-day retreat.
This was the second-most difficult experience of my life, yet no less valuable. I often go “kicking and
screaming” to my meditation seat. I have learned, over the years, that this is due to my unique way of
being-in-the-world. My own being-in-the-world comes from my inborn temperament, learning

history, and current circumstances. At the second retreat I had some insight into why I was feeling
such resistance to meditation. It was as if I were being watched and critically judged by a group of
unknown figures. The message: It was not okay to be there on retreat. I should have been somewhere
doing something else—like writing my dissertation. These were the voices of my super-ego, the voice
and image of my critical father, and my own tendency to place harsh expectations on myself—what I
call my strident self. In the silence of the retreat, I studied this sense of disquiet under the microscope
of yogic analysis. I could see that these thoughts of not okayness were not just about being on the
retreat, it applied to everything—every thought, feeling, and movement I made in the world. I didn’t
know it at the time, but I was having insight into dukkha—the Buddha’s most basic observation about
the nature of experience. It is tinged with suffering, anguish, and dissatisfaction. I always had the
sense that something was off, wrong, and needed to be fixed without having any sense of how that
might be done. If I turned to the right, I felt like I should have turned to the left. If I turned to the left, I
was pushed back the other way. This pervasive “dis-ease” followed me everywhere, and as I


deepened my appreciation for the Buddha’s teachings and meditation practices, I knew that I was not
alone. When I sat down to meditate, this sense of not okayness barreled into my spirit. When I was
younger, and less spiritually mature, I was frightened by the intensity of this critical judgment. Now, I
can sit with it and put it in context as the normal functioning of the mind. Its power can be diminished
when touched with serious mindfulness practice.
If you think about, it’s strange that it would be so difficult for us to do the things that we know
are good for us and, yet, this is often the case. For example, only half of patients take their medicine
as prescribed. Exercise resolutions start out strong in the New Year and then fade. Studies show that
most people put weight back on again after losing it. We have something in our minds that is similar
to the immune system that will attack anything that it perceives as a threat. The question then is what
makes meditation (and other beneficial things) a threat. Perhaps the part of our mind that wants to feel
in control is threatened by the freedom meditation represents. That’s one hypothesis. If meditation is
successful, then that protecting self would be out of a job. It would rather rule by anxiety, coercion,
and restriction than to relinquish itself into the inexorable, uncontrollable, and impermanent flow of
life. Therefore, if we are not careful, we can undermine our own efforts to awaken. We don’t have

enough time; we don’t feel like practicing, and when we do practice, our efforts aren’t good enough. I
will address the obstacles to practice in much greater detail in the section “How to Practice.” For
now, I think it is important we don’t set up unreasonable expectations for ourselves. The fact that we
don’t just become perfect yogis at the outset is not a failing. I have had to deal with my strident self
for decades. These shaming, blaming, and controlling internal stories seek to sabotage my practice. At
the same time, I have learned how to work with them to diminish their influence.
I am committed to meditation, and my aim is to sit daily. In reality, daily is most days, if I am
lucky. Days get missed, and for a variety of reasons. I have sat many retreats over the years, but I
have tended to avoid the lengthier ones in favor of weekend and daylong retreats. Yet, when I do sit
for an extended period of time, I always find the experience profoundly beneficial. As I write, I am
acutely aware that I am overdue for a long retreat, and I see how the busyness of my life conspires
against this. By the time I am finished writing this book, perhaps I’ll be ready for the next retreat.

Meditation: Getting into Your Meditation Seat
There are two considerations for your meditation seat. The first is the physical posture you’ll be
striking. Often this will be sitting, but it can also be walking, standing, or lying down. We’ll call these
possibilities your physical seat. The second is your intentional seat. This is the attitude that you bring
to practice—the willingness to set aside the mind’s “business as usual” to investigate your experience
with mindfulness. The intentional seat requires commitment, energy, and even vulnerability—who
knows what you’ll find when you practice. Holding your physical seat also requires dedication and


effort, and when you sit in an upright and dignified way that posture can open you to a richer
emotional presence. How you sit is not as important as the attitude you bring. For the physical
posture, the major guideline is to keep the back straight—neither rigid like a pole nor slouching. This
upright stance will help to keep your breath moving without restriction. With your shoulders back,
you’ll feel less protective, less defensive. You will open yourself more to whatever will happen as
well. Likewise, the mind shouldn’t be rigid either. The Buddha used the metaphor of a musical string
to guide the best kind of effort. You don’t want it to be so tight that it snaps, but neither do you want it
to be so loose that it can’t produce a pleasing sound. In each of the meditation practices that follow

throughout this book, the first instruction will be to “take your seat.”

Axiom: Problems don’t have to be problems.
It occurs to me that there is a tendency to think of problems as “problems.” That is, problems are
something bad, something to be avoided. “Problems are for losers” might be the motto. Yet, in reality
problems don’t have to be problems unless we make them so. As human beings, we evolved and
succeeded as a species precisely because we were such expert problem solvers. In fact, in order for
us to feel connected to a purposeful life, we must do meaningful work (see Axiom: Take care of
meaning and happiness takes care of itself). I think that as a culture, we have lost sight of this.
Problems don’t have to diminish. They can ennoble, engage, and enliven. It all depends on your mindset.
One big reason problems become problems is because their presence sets off reactivity. In these
moments, you might get anxious about dealing with the problem and not know how to proceed. In that
moment, it’s as if you’ve forgotten your long history of overcoming obstacles. After all, you probably
wouldn’t be here reading this book if you didn’t have a successful resume of problem solving. There
is no need to freak out. In addition, sometimes problems don’t even need to be solved. You just need
to breathe through the uncertainty until the situation passes. Many problems only exist as anxious
anticipations, as they never come to pass. Still, when there is a problem, you can tap into your deep
reservoir of resourcefulness to find the knowledge, strength, or resolve to get through it.
Recently, I took my motorcycle out on its first spring ride. The Harley had been plugged in all
winter and started right up. At the bottom of my hill (a three-mile-long dirt road), the engine died. I
couldn’t restart it. What was I going to do? My mind raced around a bit, got frustrated, and started to
make this dilemma into a problem. Recognizing that I was doing this to myself, I decided to take
action. The situation did not need to be a source of anguish. Rather, I would deal with it as a series of
tasks. I rolled the bike down to the post office just off the corner and parked it. I decided that I would
walk home, get my key, and drive back down in my truck and lock it up. Then I’d figure it out from
there. As I was walking up the hill, I realized that I might be able to bring it to the vintage motorcycle


shop not a hundred yards down the road from the post office. In my feeling-sorry-for-myself state, I
was not mindful enough to remember this possibility. Once I had stopped allowing the situation to be

a problem, the solution emerged. Indeed, they were open and fixed my battery, and I was on my way.
When we make problems into problems we are like the character David Balfour in Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Kidnapped. He was so preoccupied with feeling sorry for himself that he could not
discover the way off the island. It was only when he stopped making his predicament into a problem
that his way became clear.
The sense of diminishment we feel when problems arise is a big issue. Technology has given us
amazing conveniences. It no longer takes an entire day and hard labor to do a load of laundry, but if
we think that all of life should be utter ease, then we are bound to feel frustrated when things don’t go
according to plan. Underlying the fear of being a “loser” is a sense of perfectionism (see Axiom:
Perfectionism is a cheat against impermanence). These go hand in hand—life should be perfect and
convenient.
Problems ask you to focus. What needs to be taken care of here? What’s the next step? These
questions are invitations to meditate on the present moment and to engage in action. When an active
approach is required, any action is probably better than inaction. However, sometimes the key to
solving a problem is patience. Because of the basic human tendency of wanting to “fix” everything,
you can engage in action for the sake of action and lose sight of the value of forbearance (see Axiom:
Not every problem can/should be fixed). Exquisite attention to the present moment is required to
determine whether action is likely to be beneficial.


C HAPTER 3

Buddha 2.0: The Buddha Wasn’t a Buddhist

efore we go any further, I want to put Buddha and Buddhism in context. In fact, there is not one
“Buddhism” but many Buddhist religions. While Buddhism is considered to be a nontheistic
religion, in some Asian contexts the Buddha is revered, worshipped, and seen as a transcendent
being. This is not how the Buddha saw himself, nor did he want his students to see him in this way.
The Buddha “preached” a gospel of self-sufficiency; whatever he had attained was available to
anyone with sufficient commitment, dedication, and openness. The Buddha’s approach was secular—

even psychological—before there was a term for psychology. The closest professional model was the
physician. This is how the Buddha viewed himself—as a doctor with healing medicine for humanity.
Instead of pills, the prescription was understanding (wisdom), personal responsibility (ethics), and
discipline (meditation).
Following the convention set by the popular Wisdom 2.0 conference, the secular Buddhist
Stephen Batchelor has argued that Buddhism needs to be updated for our times, and he has proposed a
Buddhism 2.0. Since I feel that any “-ism” can be problematic, I propose Buddha 2.0. I feel we
should go back as far as we can to the original Buddha and then catapult him into the present (and
skipping over the Buddhist religions). The movement from 1.0 to 2.0 is more than just a software
upgrade. It represents something more akin to a paradigm shift. Buddha 2.0 might be just as
momentous a reimagining—a more human, accessible, and realistic version of this great teacher.
The Buddha was radical because he went against the prevailing beliefs of his time. People of his
day engaged in rituals administered by priests. They believed in reincarnation and in an immortal soul
that was separate from the body—an essential unchanging self. Bronze Age India had (and still has) a
caste system. The caste system predetermined one’s place in society, and it was believed that you
were born into your caste based on your past deeds and misdeeds (that is, karma). Therefore, people
were born into different roles in society and were valued differently based on their karma (good and
bad deeds) in previous lives. The Buddha rejected these ideas. His awakening was democratic—

B