Whether or not
the latest wave of self-helping meditators or corporate practitioners
of ‘mindfulness’ know it, the spiritual enlightenment sweeping America
has strong ties to Buddhism, thanks in part to one huggable ex-monk in
California.
Over the last decade,
without much fanfare, the core tenets of Buddhism have migrated from the
spiritual fringe to become widely accepted techniques for dealing with
the challenges of daily life. Feeling overwhelmed? “Watch your breath,”
“stay present” and focus on “mindful action.” Grappling with difficult
emotions? “Seek awareness” and “acceptance.” Dissatisfied with life?
Surely you’ve heard the idea that dissatisfaction is endemic to the
human condition. While not always labeled as such, these are, in fact,
the key principles of Buddhist teachings. And they couldn’t have come at
a better time, when so many Americans are overscheduled, overstimulated
and generally in need of anything that might cultivate a sense of
internal calm.
Beyond the beliefs,
the practice of Buddhist mindfulness-centered meditation is also
undeniably having a moment. Corporate mindfulness programs, such as
General Mills’s pioneering at-work meditation program, in which
participating employees begin the day listening to the sound of bells
ringing, are increasingly popular. Google’s seven-week course for
employees, “Search Inside Yourself,” is oversubscribed. Similar programs
have begun to crop up in universities and public schools, as well as in
the United States Marine Corps, to help deal with stress. The
explicitly nonreligious nature of mindfulness meditation makes it an
easier sell for those who are allergic to all things New Age; Buddhism
has succeeded in part because it does not directly challenge the
nation’s dominant Christian faith but still gives nonbelievers a
spiritual centering. Someone like Al Gore can call himself both a
Christian and a meditator. More cynically, meditation might just be this
decade’s fad, one of many throwbacks to the 1960s and 1970s, like the
renewed popularity of muscle cars. Whatever the reason, the guiding
ideas and practices of Buddhism are currently sweeping the culture.
Much of the credit for
this inward awakening should go to a small group of men and women who
spent years in the 1960s in the remote monasteries of Burma, Thailand
and India, and who brought their findings back to North America. Among
their numbers, Jack Kornfield, the 69-year-old co-founder of the Spirit
Rock Meditation Center in Northern California, has emerged as one of the
leading ambassadors of Buddhism in America. On a beautiful summer day I
met him at Spirit Rock, located about 20 miles north of San Francisco,
in the grassy hills typical of California wine country. Kornfield, who
has a bushy mustache and large ears, is a quick thinker with a warm,
fatherly presence. While strolling around the monastery, I asked if we
needed to be silent among the students. “Let that be their problem,” he
answered, chuckling.
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Kornfield grew up in
the 1950s in a Jewish family with a father he has described as brilliant
but violent and abusive — an upbringing he admits might have
unconsciously driven him to spiritual practice. At Dartmouth College,
dropping out of the pre-med program to pursue Asian studies, he became
entranced by the classical stories of adepts who sought out Buddhist
masters in the hinterlands. After graduating, he traveled to Southeast
Asia to see if he might find a living master for himself. Amazingly, he
did: His Holiness Ajahn Chah, the master of a small monastery in
northern Thailand, who was dedicated to preserving, in pure form, the
mindfulness practices the Buddha himself pioneered. “He was probably the
wisest person I’d ever met,” says Kornfield, who decided to take vows,
put on the robes and become an ordained monk. He remembers Master Chah
looking him over and saying, “I hope you’re not afraid to suffer.” By
monastery rules, Kornfield was limited to one meal a day, to be obtained
by begging. Among other trials, he spent an entire year in absolute
silence, learning the skills of deep-concentration meditation. When he
emerged after four years of training, he was changed. “It was just the
medicine I needed,” he recalls.
Having returned to the
United States, Kornfield, together with two other Americans who had
monastic experience, Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, co-founded
the Insight Meditation Society in 1975, in a former Catholic seminary in
Western Massachusetts. There, they began to pioneer a native
mindfulness practice that they felt was both loyal to its Buddhist roots
and adapted to American ways in terms of duration and openness to
women. Then, in the 1980s, he fell in love, moved to the West Coast, had
a daughter and opened a new and even larger meditation center, Spirit
Rock.
The mindfulness
retreats at Spirit Rock are modeled on monastic practice. Students
typically come for five to seven days, during which time they take a vow
of total silence and meditate for as many as 14 hours a day, pausing
only for simple meals and one daily talk given by a retreat leader. The
accommodations are comfortable if not luxurious. The approach is less
rigorous than at some Asian monasteries but, as Kornfield notes, “the
silence alone is a formidable thing.” If all goes according to plan,
spending days here leads to time slowing down, creating a real awareness
of what is happening, moment by moment. His settings forge, in other
words, the experience of mindfulness.
Some of the ways in
which Buddhist mindfulness practice had to be adapted for America were
as simple as introducing chairs to the meditation hall. Others reached
deeper. In the West, Kornfield says, “we encounter a lot of intense,
striving ambition, and a lot of self-criticism, self-judgment and
self-hatred.” Concerned, he initially turned to the Dalai Lama for
advice, but self-hatred was such a foreign concept to the Tibetan
Buddhist that he wasn’t able to offer any real insight. Over time,
Kornfield and his colleagues began to believe that Americans needed a
particular meditation practice closely linked to the concepts of
self-forgiveness and “loving-kindness” — a training in the unconditional
acceptance of imperfection. Without such a foundation, says Kornfield,
meditation can easily become yet another form of striving — “another
thing you do to make yourself better,” instead of a path to true
contentment.
Unlike Kornfield and
his fellow practitioners, more recent popularizers of mindfulness have
sought to minimize or disavow Buddhist origins in the hope of reaching a
broader audience. Consider Dan Harris, the co-anchor of ABC’s
“Nightline” and the author of the bestselling “10% Happier: How I Tamed
the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found
Self-Help That Actually Works.” A former student at Spirit Rock, Harris
hopes to divorce mindfulness from what he calls its “cultural baggage.”
“Meditation,” as he puts it, “suffers from a towering PR problem,” being
associated with “bearded swamis, unwashed hippies and fans of John Tesh
music.”
“So that’s what worked
for him,” Kornfield says neutrally. He views the spread of mindfulness
techniques as a “great success,” comparing the movement to the
“mainstreamification” of yoga, which benefits many, even if its Eastern
roots are minimized. “There’s a yoga studio next to every Starbucks,” he
points out. He also celebrates corporate programs and mindfulness in
the military. “You put heavy weapons in [young men's] hands, and you
don’t want them to have emotional regulation, some inner sense of how to
still themselves?”
Ultimately, for
Kornfield, the techniques matter more than the packaging. “I really
trust the integrity of these practices and teachings themselves,” he
says. “They are self-corrective, in a way.” Given adequate dedication,
he insists, they will work. A true spiritual awakening or the experience
of Nirvana is, he believes, “within the reach of anyone.”
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