Will COVID-9 Lead Us to a Better, more Sustainable World?

Following prompting by a friend, I wrote the following article on MEDIUM a couple of days ago:

<go to the original article here>

Today, I added my two-bits to an email list discussion by tourism studies scholars on what tourism will be like in a post-COVID-19 world. A a couple of interesting points from the discussion, so far...

My point was that (1) it is too early to tell what and when a post-COVID-19 world will emerge, and (2) what it is like will depend on how deep the impacts are, and then how people respond to that depth, when it arrives. While I hate to be a doomsayer, I think the deeper the impacts, the bigger the more the world will be changed by it.

Some people think nothing will change, and that like other crises in the past, people will soon forget and travel and tourism will be back to the way it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Other see things getting worse, even violent, as greed comes to the foreground during the pandemic, leaving lasting divisions and scars. Still others are like me, hoping that it will be a time of self-reflection and re-connection to our planet, leading to more Earth-friendly values and behaviors -- and thus greater Sustainability.

It is hard to find positive perspectives on the pandemic, as the popular news media are dishing up the scariest stories for their shock and advertisement value. Still, there are both opinion pieces and actual cases of places that are seeing remarkable changes in a very short period of time since the tourists have stopped coming. The best place that I have found for this is the Science and Nonduality (SAND) Conference page in Facebook.

My personal view is that there are multiple timelines that our consciousness, individually and collectively, can follow in the moment of global crisis for humankind (it is not a crisis for other beings on the planet). The timeline path that we end up experiencing, both individually and collectively. will be the one that we put our focus and attention on. So do what you can to ground your consciousness in love for the planet and for your fellow humans, so that the more positive world that we all really want can be made a reality.

The Life You Give Yourself

...you give yourself the life that is being lived through you.
You make your own reality.
There is no other rule.
Knowing this is the secret of creativity.

from The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, by Jane Roberts (1974, page 14)

I just finished reading The Nature of Personal Reality. When I was about 20 years old, I read a Seth book (not sure which one) that had a great influence on my perceptions of reality and views toward life. Now, some 40 years later, I have read this one, and again I find that it comes closest to my beliefs and experience of the world.

The top photo taken by me on 3 January 2017 along the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon.
The bottom photo take by my wife in front of our house at sunrise on 24 January 2017 in Flagstaff, Arizona. 

Close your eyes and look with your ears

Close your eyes and look with your ears.

See and touch the world through the sounds that you hear.

(This idea came to me as I was laying on my bed and resting after my morning meditation today)

Enlightenment, Karma and Mindfulness

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. 

                           After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. 

This is one of my current favorite zen sayings, attributed to the Xin Xin Ming, one of the earliest Chan (Zen) Buddhism texts in China.

To me, this is about karma and life. We come into this world with a karmic past that plays itself out throughout our life. We cannot change that past, and the karmic energy must be played out in some way.  

Buddha teaches us in the 8 Fold Path how to live the life we have without creating more karma on top of it, which will require additional lives to be worked through. An enlightened one has learned the lessons of the Buddha (or perhaps discovered them in some other way), and is able to live out the karma of this life (chop wood, carry water) with adding more karma to it.

If This, Then That

... If This, Then That...

Mantra-like sayings can be useful to summarize complex ideas and apply them in a quick, mindfulness way.

One that I have been using a lot in my daily life lately is "if this, then that" -- which, yes, is like the web service, IFTTT.

I use "if this, then that" to remind myself of the ultimate union of all phenomenon - that I am not separate from all that I experience. Specifically, I use it to mean 'if this is my experience now, then that (the other) is also my experience'.

Most often, I use it when I encounter some uneasiness in my relationship with another person or with things around me.

For example, if I find that I am annoyed by some unknown person's loud voice or aggressive driving, I will think "if this, then that". Similarly, if I become frustrated that my computer is not working the way I think it should be working, I will stop and think "if this, then that" -- or at least I do that some of the time.

"If this, then that", or sometimes "when this, then that", has two effects:

(1) It making me remember that there is no duality -- that I could be that other person in another time and space, just as easily as that person could be me. It reminds me that everything in my awareness around me is a mirror of myself, with a lesson for me to learn.

(2) It turns my attention away from the other and to my own experience of annoyance or frustration, helping me to detach from those aversions, or at least to not let them consume me in such a way that I might act unwisely and turn them into a karmic (stressful) situation with long-term impacts on my mind and body.

"Not Two"

I had earlier heard (on a dharma talk podcast) a similar mantra-like saying, "Not Two", which basically has the same idea. It is used to stop the mind whenever one notices it creating a duality of me and other, usually accompanied by feelings of desire/envy, hatred/dislike, or confusion/wrong thinking (the defilements). (I think "Not Two" was recommended by Joseph Goldstein, but I am not positive about that.

I tried "Not Two" for a while. It works, and I still use it at times because it is shorter to say. But I use If this, then that" more.

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”- Thích Nhat Hanh

[updated 18Jan2016]

Karma, Rebirth and Meditation

I have a lot of thoughts and notes on what is Karma. Here are some ...

Your body is old karma. [Buddha]

• You were born into this world with a set of genes and behavioral dispositions that are the karma from your past lives. Similarly, as you age, you accumulate karma from unskillful actions in this life, which are folded into your body and mind. It is all there, looking at you in the mirror.

Your mind is old karma. [this is from me, though I am surely not the first to say it]

• Karma is "our repetitive, habitual, compulsive, neurotic behavior/thinking that keeps taking us back to where we started [re-becoming]. We cannot easily stop these, they just keep going on in our mind." - quote from Stephen Batchelor in one of his many podcasts. 
• Through our repetitive and unthinking (unwise) actions, we accumulate new karma in our mind and body. 
• Overcoming these patterns of the mind (by recognizing them as impermanent winds of change and by acting wisely, in a Buddhist way) is overcoming karma and the cycle of rebirth.

Rebirth in Buddhism is actually the Pali word Punnabhava, which means “again becoming” or "rebecoming". (Buddha never used the word rebirth.)

• The karma in our body and mind drives our rebecoming. This happens over and over again in each passing moment. If we are aware and mindful, we can change that moment and change "our repetitive, habitual" behavior. We cannot change the past, but we can change the present before it becomes the past. (This is also the idea behind "Be Here Now".)
• A relevant Buddhist proverb says... Living in the past leaves a mark. Living in the future leaves a mark. The present leaves no traces. Source: Buddhism Now

Meditation calms and quiets the mind and body to enable us to be more aware and mindful of the present moment.

• In this way, meditation allows us to safely face and release the karma wound up in our mind and body. On top of this, Buddhism teaches us how to act wisely to minimize the further accumulation of new karma.
• Ultimately, this leads to freedom from the "neurotic behavior/thinking that keeps taking us back to where we started" ... this is freedom from karma and rebecoming, and is the goal of Buddha's teachings.
• Buddhism seeks ultimate freedom from both good and bad karma -- both things we like and those we do not like. Meditation brings us to a higher state of happiness and contentment, beyond likes and dislikes.
• In Buddhism, karmic influences still shape and impact awakened person, as long as they still have a physical body. But with awakening, they recognize the impermanence of these influences and are free from being consumed by them.
  
  
• On a side note, Transcendental Meditation (which I also practice) refers to the release of stress through meditation, and associates stress with negativity built up in the mind/body. I think that Buddhist karma and TM stress are essentially the same thing ... at least that works for me.

Engaging with Society while on the Buddhist Path

Buddha said that there are things that we should be concerned about on the path to freedom, and there are things that we should not be worried about on our spiritual path to awakening.

Among those things that we should not be worried about are:

• Love and romance relationships
• Caring for one’s family
• Pursuing one’s career or a passion for a good project
• Desire to enjoy life (nice home, travel experiences, good friends, good food, nice things)
• Working to make a living, including being engaged in trade and commerce
• Being involved in the legal and political affairs of our society

In general, we do not need to worry about engaging with society and meeting the basic human needs that all humans have.  While it is true that all these can involve much desire and craving, they are not in themselves obstacles on the Buddhist path to awakening (enlightenment). Doing them is not an indication that our lives are not spiritual. 

On the other hand, the Buddha said that there are some things that we should be concerned about and should seek to avoid. These are greed/attachment, hatred/aversion and delusion/ignorance (known as the defilements). These can (and will) appear at any time and with any activity that we partake in. When they arise arise and acted upon without proper awareness and mindfulness, they become major obstacles to freedom and awakening. Buddha's teachings tell us how to be mindful and to live our lives in skillful and wholesome ways. 

These insights were derived from: 2015-12-19 Deborah Ratner Helzer: Cultivating A Wise Heart

Mindfulness Eating and Weight Management

[UPDATED on 20 January 2016 -- The updated section is at the bottom of this post.]


In May, 2011, I wrote a blog post about how I used calorie counting and vegetable to lose 50 pounds (http://aalew.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-i-lost-50-pounds.html).

Since that time, my weight has gone up and down. I travel a lot for my work, mostly to Asia, and when I travel I cannot count calories. In addition, I want to eat the local foods when I am overseas, so I pay less attention to limiting my calories. I usually gain between 5 and 10 pounds when I go to Asia, and I usually lose it in a couple of weeks (sometimes more) after I get back to calorie counting when I get home.

For the past year, however, even my lowest weight has been somewhat higher than I would like it to be - in the range of 165-169. In part, this is because I have been traveling so much. But also because there were limits to how much I was willing to cut my calories ... until now.

More recently, I wrote about my three months in Taiwan and how I "discovered" Buddhism. After getting back to the US from my most recent overseas trip (two months in Japan), I decided to apply Buddhist mindfulness meditation practice to eating. I called in Mindfulness Eating. Soon after I started doing this, I learned that my daughter learned mindfulness eating in a mindfulness meditation class that she had taken a year or so ago. So I did not invent this, and an online search on "mindful eating" will bring forth a lot of articles and books on the topic.

Mindfulness, or mindful, eating with intention -- only doing one thing at a time -- only eating and not doing anything else. It is focusing on your food as you eat it, and not multitasking with other things (like reading a newspaper). It can help to turn off the TV and radio, and even to close your eyes if you are alone. It is preferable to not talk to other while you are chewing the food, though that can be hard, so I am careful not to go too far. Chewing is complete, as you savor and enjoy the changing taste and texture of the food as you consume it.

All I can say is that it works for me!  This past week, by using mindful eating, my daily calorie count has been under 1400 a day, and my weight has quickly plummeted to levels that I have not been at in about a year.  Today, I ate less than 1000 calories (including a granola bar), and I feel fine. It takes me a lot longer to eat my food than anyone else in my family, but I am eating only about half as much as most others. I am still counting calories, although I plan to stop doing that and just do the mindfulness eating once I reach my goal weight of 159 (very close to it now).

So, the lesson here is that Calorie Counting combined with Mindful Eating is an incredibly powerful way to lose weight. 

I have another trip in a month or so, and I will update this blog with a report on how it goes with mindfulness eating on the road....

=======
[UPDATE: 20 January 2016]

It has been a month and a half since I wrote the post above. During that time I have made a couple of week-long out-of-state trips, which have challenged my mindfulness eating and weight management -- as I totally expected.  Here is what I have experienced...

I gained weight. No surprise. The reasons are also very well known to me, and include:

• I was not counting calories (I never do when I travel)
• My will power to resist new and interesting foods was quite weak (which also always happens when I travel)
• I ate out a lot, which usually means foods that are tasty, but high in calories and salt

The one new thing was that I was trying to remember to eat mindfully. Again, my will power and memory to do that was not as steadfast as when I was at home. But at least I was doing it some of the time. I am now clearly the slowest eater in my family!

The result of mindfulness eating while traveling was that I did not gain as much weight as I might have if I were not being mindful. I can't say for sure, but I think that is true.

I have now been home for a couple of weeks from my last trip. When I first got home, I tried to see if I could lose weight using mindfulness eating alone. Well, mindfulness alone was not very successful for me. I managed to lose 1.5 pounds after a week being home, which could easily have been due to eating less salt. 

I came the conclusion that mindfulness is able to keep me stable (not gaining weight), but it was not enough to get me to lose weight at the rate that I am used to after I get back from a weight-gaining trip. 

So after more than a week of that, I decided to go back to the combination of calorie counting and mindfulness.  This accelerated my weight loss, as I expected, though I did get stuck at a plateau for 4 days -- those things happen.


I am now back to my goal weight, which for me means that I can stop counting calories and just rely on mindfulness eating to maintain that weight. Although I am just starting that, I feel confident that it will work -- until my next travel food adventure, at least!