Vajra Blue

Mindfulness and Compassion. Understanding trauma in young people.

Category Archives: Buddhism


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Mindfulness: Using beginner’s mind to stay open to new ideas.

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There are known knowns. These are things that we know we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things that we don’t know we don’t know. Donald Rumsfeld.

This quote is a wonderful example of using words to hide meaning. At the height of the first Gulf War it was made as part of an explanation for some error on behalf of the coalition forces.

On the surface it sounds like so much spin-doctor nonsense, however, it is in fact a very profound remark and goes beyond the usual level of awareness that many of us have about the workings of our own minds.

Donald Rumsfeld should perhaps have also gone on to mention unknown knowns. This may sound daft, but there are many things that we know at a non-conscious level, and of which we are not consciously aware, that have a significant influence on both our behaviour and well being.

These are the things we have programmed our brains to do without always allowing them into awareness. They are the subroutines that help us to react rapidly, but not always wisely, to events that occur in both in our internal and external worlds.

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Mindfulness: creating space for thought.

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Mindfulness helps us to become aware of our feelings and thoughts, and how they influence both our behaviour and our perception of the world.

The practice can help us to uncover the thinking errors and traps that our minds can fall into, unless we are alert.

It is important to be aware of these thinking traps in order to allow mindfulness to fully develop.

Mindfulness meditation also help us to become more aware of these thinking errors.

When we are able to identify them, it means that they become less frequent, this then enables our level of mindfulness to increase.

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Mindfulness: Three steps to better communication.

Wise men speak because they have something to say;

Fools because they have to say something.

Plato.

As humans we use speech to communicate with each other on a daily basis. While these situations usually lead to a harmonious outcome, many end confusion and ill will. This is down to misunderstanding and a breakdown in communication.  This is usually accidental, although there are times when obfuscation through language seems to be the main aim of any communication. Donald Rumsfeld seemed to be an expert at this.

This breakdown in two-way communication is much more common when the conversation is negative, or when it involves real or perceived criticism. Under these circumstances, excessive emotional responses to neutral information are quite common. We find it hard to tell other people that we are not happy with some aspect of their behaviour, or to hear them say the same kind of thing to us. This uncomfortable experience makes it all too easy to lose sight of our good intentions, and to fall back on what might be our  habitual, unhelpful, and inappropriate ways of behaving, with the inevitable poor outcome.

When we feel attacked and make an emotional response the main drawback is that we stop listening to the conversation and instead we become reactive. This means that we either do not hear, or find ourselves ignoring any other information that might be available. Real communication is no longer possible in this situation and all ends in acrimony and recrimination.

For accurate communication we need to be able to develop a mutual understanding of the issues at hand. We need to understand what we each mean by our words, what the other person understands us to mean, what we feel about the conversation, and what we need to get out of it. Without this we are unable to accurately communicate. As Wittgenstein put it, we need to be playing the same language game as the other person with whom we are talking.

Fortunately it is possible to handle our interactions with others sensitively and confidently on a much more regular basis. Continue reading →


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Mindfulness and the brain.

Freedom is about having choice.  If I am aware of my automatic reactions to experience as they arise, then I can take a breath, creating a space for something new.  I can choose a response in that moment, one that reflects the version of me that I aspire to be.

Stacie Smith

The brain is a highly complex organ that makes a contribution to nearly every aspect of the body’s functioning; from awareness of where we are in space, to highly complex thought, to consciousness itself.

It contains about seventy-five billion nerve cells, each of which can make roughly a thousand connections with other neurons. There are about the same number of support cells as well.

Because it is so vital to human functioning the brain is well protected inside the skull.

The evolution of the brain that has occurred over the last several million years has enabled the human species to go from being prey animals to the top predator on the planet.
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How to start the move from depression to happiness.

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I’m sure many of us care about how we will look back on our lives on our deathbed, but the value of our lives comes from the experiences of pleasure and purpose over our lifetimes and not from a judgement we might make at an arbitrarily chosen moment in time.

Paul Dolan.

Most of us want to avoid depression and to be happy. Happiness is something that we pursue with varying degrees of intensity. There are even greater variations in the success that we have in pursuing this Holy Grail of the emotional world. Much of the time we do not even seem to be aware of what we mean by happiness, and seem to have even less idea of how we might possess it. Continue reading →


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Thinking: the fault lies in our logic – not in our stars

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Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.

Alan Alda

Thinking is a three-step process.
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Mindfulness: Speaking clearly, communication in a modern world.

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What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.

If a man speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows him as his own shadow.

Dhammapada 1:2

Man is not worried about real problems so much as his imagined anxieties about real problems.

Epictetus.

Our thoughts and speech reflect the emotional tone of our lives.

Our speech reflects our thoughts, which are often present as an internal, private dialogue. Our thoughts do not become clear until we give them substance by putting them into words, either as private self talk in our mind, or more publicly when we start to speak, or send a message over social media.
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Mountains of mindfulness.

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Do you need to convert to Buddhism?  Do you need to abandon the tradition in which you were raised or the ideals to which you have a deep commitment?  Do you need to cast aside anything that your intellect or understanding of the world tells you is true?

Absolutely not. You can retain your current frame of reference and accept only what you are prepared to accept, a piece at a time, and only what you in fact find helpful.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. Beyond Mindfulness – in plain English.

When I was a teenager the space race was in full swing.

Neil Armstrong was making a complete hash of his line about one small step, and the world was looking outward into the depths of interstellar space.
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Mindfulness for all

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The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

Mindfulness has gone mainstream. No longer the preserve of ancient and inscrutable oriental monks or bearded hippie weirdos, it is now being taught in schools.  Several leading US companies are providing training to their workers and it is touted as the cure for many of the ills that affect modern man.  Even the United States military are training their soldiers in mindfulness techniques.

Adapted from Buddhist teaching and increasingly applied to psychology and then to the mundane world, mindfulness is advertised as helping all psychological disorders from depression, where it is described as being as effective as antidepressant medication, through eating disorders and drug addiction to ADHD.  Although it is less helpful for physical disorders, if you believe the newspapers and the internet, it is said to help with heart disease, cancer, lowering blood pressure, chronic pain, sleep and a myriad of other conditions.  It leads to a longer life, better health and  a much greater sense of wellbeing.  Mindfulness boosts the immune system, leads to sporting prowess and better parenting, reduces anger and sets free creativity. The scientific evidence suggests that it is a key element in happiness.

Has mindfulness become a twenty first century panacea?

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Self compassion: put your own oxygen mask on first.

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Compassion is not just an emotion one might feel after reading something sad or heartbreaking. Our compassion is a source of energy and strength. It is the basis for our actions in the world.

From Zooburbia: Meditations on the Wild Animals Among Us, by Tai Moses

As a young child, I flew the Atlantic several times to spend school holidays with my parents in Quebec.

It always seemed odd to me that the air stewardesses (as they were called in those days) gave this instruction.

A diet of British films, featuring the incomparable British stiff upper lip, had always given me the idea that it should be “Women and children first”, not everyone look out for themselves. so it took a while to work it out.

I suspect that many of us feel uncomfortable putting ourselves first, thinking that this makes us selfish, bad people.

But this is not the case.

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