In or around 2010 I went to attend a Mind-and-Life workshop for contemplatives (monks and nuns who devote their lives to meditation) as well as scientists doing research in meditation. In my capacity as a faculty member at the University of British Columbia I had been advising students in a fMRI lab who were interested in using meditators as subjects for their study of the Default Mode Network’s (DMN) role in generating spontaneous thoughts. The whole idea of using meditators as subjects was my idea, and I had convinced the head of that lab to give it a try. I had come up with the idea for the design of the experiment while in a month-long retreat: have the subjects perform mindfulness of thoughts meditation in a fMRI scanner and push a button every time they detected a spontaneous thought. That line of study eventually was the basis for two students’ Ph.D. theses.
In the months leading up to the 2010 workshop I was quite distressed by the suffering of the world. How can one be happy all the while knowing about all the horrors being perpetuated around the world, the disasters, global warming, the illnesses, the abject lives of most farm animals, etc.? I asked a couple of meditation teachers present at the workshop for some guidance but only received generic answers such as “try to keep compassion balanced with wisdom” with no hint on how to do that exactly. Then someone asked that very question to a panel of contemplatives. Most of the answers were along the same line, but the one given by Phakyab Rinpoche really resonated with me. Phakyab Rinpoche sure had first-hand experience of the suffering of the world. He had been imprisoned in Tibet and tortured by his Chinese jailors but managed to keep expressing compassion for his jailors. To the question of how not to be dragged down emotionally by the suffering of the world, he answered that since there is already so much suffering in the world, he does not want to add to it by being miserable himself, since he is very much part of the world. So, he tries to remain cheerful, and that way the world experiences at least that much more happiness. He also said that whenever something bad happens, his reaction is “of course something bad happens, this is samsara9! What else do you expect?” But if something good happens his reaction is: “oh, what a nice surprise, something good happened in samsara!” The key is to keep very low expectations. I tend to be very optimistic and of course get disappointed a lot, so I thought I would give that approach a try. I found that it helped me, along with the injunction to “have the courage to change what I can change, the humility to accept what I cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.”
This view of being a small but precious corner of the universe that is consciously joyful has led me to modify my living will to insist keeping my body going in case of debilitating illness (e.g. a stroke causing a vegetative state), just in case it happens to be one of those cases where consciousness continues at an undetectable level. I would not want to snuff it out prematurely.