The cultural context for our Western way of dealing (or not dealing) with aging parents was expressed in a nutshell by the comment “The difficult part was moving a person to a care facility when all they want to do is go home.” I remember when I myself was in a rehab hospital for three months, and from beginning to end that is all I wanted, to go home (never mind that for most of my time there I was in absolutely no condition to be at home, nor could anyone have taken care of me there).

We all want to go home and be home, wherever that is, and historically it is our parents who first bring us into the world and make a home for us there.  We as adult children of our aging or dying parents want to be home too as much as they do, and maybe the difficult lesson from the Buddhist tradition to be had from this deep desire to be home is that in the end the only true home is this present moment, wherever we happen to be.  Any other home is one that we  will eventually lose.

Last post I suggested a modification of the Metta prayer (“In caring for my parents, may I be filled with loving kindness.”).  Here I would like to begin speaking about a different kind of practice, one inspired by the tonglun or “sending and receiving” compassion practice of Tibetan Buddhism.

If we are caring for aging parents, this practice begins by looking in the mirror.  We see the adult that we are, but if we look more closely we can also see the child we once were, in all the stages of our life.  That is what our parent sees; they see the child in us, even though we are now the adult that has to now take care of the aging parent as though they were the child—a difficult and complex role reversal.

Keep looking in the mirror; the child we once were is still there, and that child is now grieving for the strong parent that once protected us and now needs our protection.  Where is Mom or Dad now, that child is asking? And how is that child feeling?

Next post I will talk about how to practice “sending and receiving” meditation as an offering of compassion to the child who is still within us, and who needs our care inwardly as much as our aging parent needs our care outwardly.

I look forward as always to your comments!

In the Buddhist teachings on Metta, or loving kindness practice, it is advised that we avoid, at least at first, trying to practice Metta on people who are difficult for us, particularly people who are close to us, such as family.  This advice recognizes that Metta is most difficult with people whom we know well, or with whom we have a long and complex relationship.  Spouses, partners, and parents definitely fall into this category.

And yet the difficult work that we do to care for our aging parents comes from love, even though we may have a complicated history with our parents that includes many other emotions besides love.  This is a perennial human dilemma, made more complicated by the fact that, unlike in traditional societies where caring for the aging and infirm is shared by the whole community, we are often alone in this work—or if not alone, having to contend with other siblings or family members who may have different ideas about what to do.

It is important to recognize, in these situations, that the person who may need Metta the most is not our parents, but ourselves.  We can practice in this way:

In caring for my parents, may I be filling with loving kindness;

In caring for my parents, may I be free from suffering;

In caring for my parents, may I have happy and at peace.

That can be our aspiration, and if in some measure by doing this we find some space for equanimity and peace within ourselves, that can radiate out  to our parents, siblings, caregivers and caregiving and institutions, and help us cope.

May it be so.

I’d be interested in hearing from blog readers about these issues, and perhaps my next post can follow up on your comments.

I have a thumbnail summary of Buddhism that I have mentioned here before and that goes like this: “Everything is connected, nothing lasts, and we are not alone.”  So the losses of our friends and loved ones tells us, like nothing else can, that “nothing lasts”—especially those things that we most care about.  This is the first big lesson of Buddhism and whether you are a Buddhist or not, the lesson comes home as we age.

So what do I mean when I say, especially to those grieving or lonely, “We are not alone?”

I certainly do not mean that Buddhism teaches we can escape loneliness.  Loneliness is part of the human condition, and even adepts and realized teachers of Buddhism can suffer from it—though they may understand and accept it better.  Even the Buddha grieved for lost family and companions, I’m sure.  My own teacher certainly did.  No, I am distinguishing between “loneliness” and “aloneness.”

We may feel grief and loneliness, but we are actually never alone.  Yes, I am Lew, and I am the only one who is this Lew.  My life story and memories and losses are unique.  Nobody else feels them as I do.  But in that discreteness is also connection.  We are all discrete, but we are also joined—both are so. We are unique individuals, but each of us has the same fundamental nature—Buddha nature.  Touching that fundamental nature—for example in meditation—is paradoxically the way we connect with everyone and everything.    I like to say that when we sit we resume our status as a universal human being.

“Yes, I can feel lonely, but we all experience our humanness  in the same way.  We are all in this together.”  From this realization can come an abiding joy.  How wonderful that I and everything are here.  What a miracle!

So in that sense “everything is connected” and “we are not alone” are two ways of describing the same condition.  Touching that connection means that our all-too-human loneliness has some context.  We grieve for those we have lost, but we rejoice in the connections which have, have always had, and will always have.

We are not alone.

So much for conventional wisdom of any kind.  Once, during an illness, one of my doctors gave me a 500 page book on “Psychopharmocology”—a technical text on the effects of drugs on the brain.  I read it as best I could—it was quite technical—and returned it to my doctor.

“Interesting!” I said, “what I could understand of it.  Why did you have me read it?”

My doctor replied, “So you could see how little we know.”

When I was in rehabilitation for a brain infection, my doctor there told me about the latest research concerning mice and learning.  If you make a mouse run a maze to get some cheese, they will over time learn to run it faster.  However, if you make a mouse swim in water too deep for it to stand to get the cheese, it will learn three to four times faster.  According to my doctor, these results had had revolutionized the way her profession treated people with brain injury.  Putting the patient under some stress made their recovery faster.

We now know that the brain retains the ability to regenerate and grow new neural circuits throughout life, and even into old age.  This has implications for the spiritual life.  While it is true that intense spiritual practices designed for youth (primarily young men) — long retreats, monastic practice, asceticism, and so on – are not so practical as we grow older, there are other kinds of practices that are more suitable for maturity than youth.  Among these are meditations on impermanence, loving kindness, and gratitude.  In some basic sense it takes a whole life to appreciate a whole life.

Here is another story about the plasticity of the brain.  I have a good friend, a psychiatrist, who is 79.  He took up studying the piano in his 70s.  He loves to play—especially to improvise—and though it is hard for him to learn the theory and technique of the piano, he keeps at it.

“It makes me tired,” he said, “all the music theory and technical details.”  He gestured to me, knowing that I have been playing piano all my life.  “It must be so easy to start when you’re young.”

I acknowledged that that was so, but also suggested that perhaps he was tired because his brain was busy growing neurons to accommodate his new art.  “That’s a good thing,” I said.  “It’ll make you live longer.”

He liked hearing that.

So pretty much everyone worries about money, but what is spiritual about it? The Buddhist teaching of Right Livelihood is part of the eight-fold path, so clearly the issue has spiritual resonance.  Right Livelihood is usually interpreted as meaning occupations that do not involve harm or killing, such as tanners or butchers.  But more deeply right livelihood signifies a relationship to money and sustenance that is balanced, that is relatively free from grasping, that does not needlessly disturb the mind.

One of the losses of aging is the reduced capacity to make money, whether through retirement, job loss, career change, or other circumstance.  Obviously this whole issue has been greatly exacerbated by our current economic climate, which has substantially reduced their retirement savings for many older people.

It is helpful to know that the ancient Buddhists—even the monastics—included this kind of circumstance as part of the spiritual path.  In other words, they are universal experiences that all practitioners face.

But how do we face them? What should be the spiritual attitude toward fear of loss of livelihood—of worries about money?  First of all, these worries can be transformed into a positive examination of the dividing line between basic needs and ego desires.  As Suzuki Roshi said, when we have lots of food around it makes us more hungry, not less.  When we have lots of money, our desire for things—and perhaps our anxiety about money—tends to increase.

So there can be something positive in the  seemingly pedestrian task of cutting costs, living more frugally, and doing without certain things that we like.  It can also make us more sensitive and generous with people who are struggling even more than we—who may be losing their jobs or even homes.  Times of scarcity can be an opportunity for compassion and kindness; cutting back can sometimes make us appreciate all that we do have.

Buddhist practice is not just meditation.  The original map of the path had eight leaves, eight spokes.  Right livelihood—perhaps better translated as appropriate livelihood—is one of them.  We can all practice it, every day.

We are also so fragile emotionally.  We are complex beings, with complex needs—most importantly, the need to love and be loved, and the need not to be alone.  It is easy for us to be wounded emotionally, and some of those wounds never fully heal.  And yet we abide, as William Faulkner liked to say.  We are fragile but we abide.

We all seem to have some kind of equipment, some neural circuit or switch, that keeps us from recognizing how fragile we really are.  This switch is called “denial,” and recent research has discerned that it really is a neural circuit, or structure in the brain that censors or blocks painful memories.  Denial actually makes painful memory neurologically inaccessible.  As a psychiatrist friend of mine likes to say, “Never underestimate the power of denial.”

Denial is a kind of gift, too.  Otherwise the level of pain that human beings sometimes have to endure would be truly unbearable and we could not continue to be.

I like to think of meditation practice as an intentional willingness to reach past the blocks of denial, and to open everything up—to face the actual suffering of ourselves and others.  This was Siddhartha Gautama’s first insight and path; everything suffers, he saw that, and he wanted to actually face it and understand it.

Whether or not we are meditators, whether or not we are Buddhists, the process of aging does this too.  When we are children or teenagers especially, the denial circuit blocking the fact how fragile we are seems at its strongest.  That is one reason young men can be trained to be soldiers.  They’re able to block out what it is they have to do.  As we get older, and we have a lifetime of experience to hold and reflect on, denial becomes more difficult to sustain; the truth of our individual and common fragility becomes more evident.

And then there is the last truth, the final fragility, which we deny as long as we can, but eventually cannot—the truth of our inevitable end.

As with most things, fragility can be seen two ways—either as a burden, or as a gift.  It is actually both.  Fragility causes fear, but fragile things are also beautiful and precious, precisely because they are fragile and may not last.  Fragility can open us to the treasure of mutual care and universal compassion.

We are all so fragile.

I think the notion that we are “supposed” to be calm is a common misunderstanding, and a cause for discouragement, among meditators.  “I’ve been meditating for X years, and I still can’t calm my mind!”  This may be a particular problem for those of us who are older, because we know, in the way the young can’t, that “the things that happened to happen” can’t ever un-happen.  Our irrevocable losses pile up, year after year.  It is hard to be calm in the face of those kinds of losses.

Actually, there are three stages, or levels, to mindful awareness. In the first level, we become aware of how busy and distracted our mind is.  In the second level, through attention and concentration we are able to calm our mind and actually enjoy that calm as a fruit of meditation.  In the third level, the distraction of the third level seems to come back, but with even more force.  The disturbances of the third level are actually more real, and more difficult to face because they are so deeply true.

However, there is actually a deep calm in the foundation stones of the third level, one that we may not realize if we just look at the superficial activity of our thinking.  Actually, the disturbance we experience as we face our deep and universal problems (like growing old and losing what we love) is only there because of deep acceptance and the power of our meditation effort.  The deep acceptance invites those deep problems in, and holds and contains them.  It gives us the strength to face them.

It is like the difference between the misbehavior of a stranger, and the misbehavior of our child.  The misbehavior of a stranger is like the first level.  It irrirates us: Why are they like that? The misbehavior of our child is like the third level.  At first it seems to be even more disturbing.  “I raised you and loved you and still you are like that!”  But actually, our attitude is held and contained by our love.  Whatever our children do, we will never abandon them.

According to my teacher, deep meditation practice evolves from the third level.  So here’s to being real!  (Imaginary cup raised in tribute).

There are three parts to transforming mindfulness:  clarity, insight, and re-centering.

Clarity means to know what is actually going on.  In practice it means to drill down beneath the superficial thought that our mindfulness has made us aware of (such as the thought, “I guess I’ll never go to Africa…”) to the underlying emotion—in this case, probably a queasy and anxious sadness.  Feel that feeling, don’t avert from it.  It is who you actually are right now.  To feel the feeling is the first step in liberating and resolving it.  When you actually feel the feeling, you are not owned by the feeling any longer; instead, you are the owner, the boss of the feeling.

Insight means to understand where the deep feeling comes from, and why we are feeling it.  That feeling of sadness is actually not some problem requiring a solution; it is the basic human condition.  From the moment we are born we and everything we love are fleeting and fragile.  That is our only existence, there is no other.  You are not the only one who feels this; everyone feels this (or would feel this if they were actually tuned in to their deep feeling).

Re-centering means to set aside our unpleasant feeling, and return to something more solid.  It could be a thought: “But right now I am alive!”  It could be a deep breath, which proves (in case you doubted it) that you indeed are alive.  It could be a thought of gratitude; “I’m so happy I have a new grandchild.”

Mindfulness, clarity, Insight, Re-centering.  This is the basic transforming meditation of being awake.

Mindfulness, in common parlance, is “noticing what is going on,” particularly about an internal mental, emotional or physical state.  It is basic awareness, or wakefulness, as opposed to unconscious, or automatic, or (as we would say in Buddhism) karmic activity.  It is a higher order awareness than our ordinary sensory perceptions; it seems to be a function of our higher, or more developed  faculty of awareness.

“Aging” thoughts or feelings are a common experience of those of us who are growing older, and they typically sneak up on us when we are trying to do something we used to be able to do when we were younger, like touch our toes or remember a recipe.  They often (though not always) have a somewhat unpleasant emotional tone of regret or frustration.  An anxiety-ridden aging thought can occur around momentary memory lapses; this is a private fear that we often joke about with our friends.

Here are some common verbalizations of aging thoughts (you can fill in the blanks from your own experience):

“I guess I’m getting too old to…”

“I used to be able to…”

“I wish I could still…”

“I guess I’ll never…”

All these thoughts have two qualities in common: comparison and regret.  So the first mission of Mindfulness of Aging is to bring these underlying processes into view.  So when you find yourself saying “I used to be able to…” you can note to yourself, “I’m comparing again.”  When you notice yourself thinking “I guess I’ll never…” you can note to yourself, “Another regret.”

Comparison and regret: two patterns that take us away from our present situation, and that cause us unnecessary suffering.

More on Mindfulness of Aging in the next post!

There is a part of us that ages-our body, primarily-and a part that doesn’t.  The part that doesn’t age has something to do with the mind, but it isn’t the mind as we usually think of it; our mental faculties of memory and concentration begin to slowly subside with age just as the body does.  But our primary or innate awareness, our feeling of being alive, of just being here, doesn’t age.

It is as bright as always, like a candle flame that puts out steady light, whether the candle is new, half gone, or almost out. Woman especially, but men too, encounter those awkward and depressing moments when we realize that we are no longer attractive, that younger people of both sexes look at us differently than we look at ourselves.

The trick is to pay attention to the flame, and not the candle.  The flame of a candle half gone may burn just as it did at the beginning, but by now it has burned longer, and it knows something about burning.  Innate awareness never ages, though the body does, and maturity and wisdom is the compensation for what time eases from our grasp.