Worry makes the world go "Owww!"

Everyone experiences worry to some extent. For some, worry can seem vast and all-encompassing. It seems to envelop the entire mind, tying it up in tightly binding knots. In the body, worry can turn up as sweating, shaking, headaches, dry mouth, irritable bowels, restlessness, tiredness and insomnia. The list seems endless. Now science has provided a look into exactly what is going on inside the brain during these events, and it is a lot less daunting than we usually think.
 

Studies using MRI scans show worry is really only taking place in two small areas of the brain. These areas, (the medial pre-frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex), are known to be involved in mentalisation and introspection.

A lot of thinking about thinking goes on in these regions. Under stress, these areas light up, not only because there may be something to worry about, but also because we think about and dwell on the worry, using those two areas of the brain to process what it means to us now, what it could mean in the future, or to make comparisons with what something like it has meant in the past.

It is important to notice that the studies show that those who worry a little, and those who worry a lot, have essentially the same kind of activity going on inside the brain. Worry lights up the same areas in everyone. The difference is that, for some, the lights stay on long after the stimulus for the worry has passed.

This extra activity – worrying about worry - is exactly like turning a light switch on and off a thousand times when once would do. For those who worry, the real world scenarios are all too familiar, such as patting your pocket to make sure if you still have your keys or phone, or checking and rechecking phone messages for that call that never seems to come. Even more worrisome is repeated mental revising and rehearsal of scenarios long gone, or that will never come.

In the terms of the researchers, over-persistent activity in these two small areas of the brain involved with worry is called “dysregulation,” meaning there is a kind of free-for-all of repetitive and speculative activity going on in these areas, overloading the circuitry and leading to other effects elsewhere in the mind and body.

This is how a perfectly routine action, such as being concerned about something, can turn into a set of feelings and sensations that seem so vast and enveloping they become a smothering blanket of tension and stress, often turning up as physical symptoms.

What is happening is that all that extra mental activity makes us restless, we become exhausted, and often experience an acute sense of doubt and disillusion. Every slight twinge or pain then becomes a proof of why we were worried in the first place, so a kind of feed-back loop takes over and the physical burden becomes an extra reason to continue worrying.

As overwhelming as these effects may be, the new research shows that the worry we may have experienced is actually rather small and limited in its origin. Knowledge of where its painful effects originate, means we can potentially target those areas, rather than trying to deal with “the mind” as a whole.

None of this is new to those who practice with dhamma. It says something about the penetrative aspects of meditation and the efficacy of the techniques taught by the Buddha that all of the states of mind revealed by the latest medical technologies are exactly as described in the texts on the mind that are at least two thousand years old.

This doesn't mean that the debilitating effects are exaggerated or should be dismissed as unimportant. Quite the opposite. However, it is possible to accept that small victories can win a larger battle. A good suggestion may be to introduce some skilful means and helpful controls to these mind areas that would help lessen the debilitating effect of worry.

What is essential is to understand the transient nature of events:

“Nothing caused can be permanent, for there are no permanent causes. Any happiness [or unhappiness] based on impermanent causes will have to be impermanent as well. When a cause passes away, its effect will—either immediately or over time—pass away, too.

Suffering is not caused primarily by unpleasant sensory contact; it is caused by the attitudes and views that are brought to any sensory contact, pleasant or not. This further means that the crucial causes for stress and suffering are internal, and thus not dependent on outside circumstances. They are subject to one’s knowledge and will. In this way, the quest for the end of suffering is primarily an internal matter of training the mind.”- Thanissaro

I hope most can agree that when worry strikes it often takes the form of little flutters of regret and feeling sorry for ourselves. Self-pity is such a common human illness. It must be abandoned!

Here is the prescription for curing the worry of self-pity.

First, repeat these statements aloud until feeling better:

1. The past I feel sorry about was not actually like that.
2. The past cannot be dug up and resurrected. (We cannot wake the dead moments, only disturb their graves.)
3. The person I feel sorry for is not what I think he/she is.
4. The future will be what I make it NOW!

Second, let go and trust!

1. Breathe out slowly. Think "softening." Hold for a count of five to let the energy gather.
2. Breathe in calmly. Think "brightening." See how far the energy travels inside. A little way? A little bright? Hold for a count of five to let the energy spread throughout the body.
3. Fill the body with the breath. Picture the breath as one of those big sausage balloons. Breathing in, think: “beginning of the breath, middle of the breath, end of the breath.” Breathing out, think:“beginning of the breath, middle of the breath, end of the breath.”
4. Breathe and smile. Enjoy the calm and peaceful rhythm of the breath. Repeat steps 1 to 4 for at least ten minutes. This can be done anywhere. When worry arises, try it, even if only for a few breaths. It will help.

Giving careful attention to the breath in this way is classed as a feeling among other feelings. The mind can only maintain one feeling at a time! Feeling the breath trumps feelings of worry or self-pity.

Of course you may find yourself struggling in the mind with newly arisen feelings of worrying and feeling sorry for yourself. Maybe you start feeling that you don't have time to do this, or worrying that you are not doing it correctly.

First, this is kind of absurd, as we breath around 26,500 times per day, so you have had plenty of practice already. Second, noticing that you are worrying and doubting is mindfulness in action.

Noticing that these feelings are caused – that they are arising and passing away – gives us a clue about the transient nature of events. This begins to be the basis for a new attitude and view of the way things are in the mind. We are not stuck with old habits. They can change in just one breath. With this small exercise we win a major victory in training the mind.

Finally, if you who worry are good at doing things repetitively, you may quickly become very good at taking up and continuing this new habit of paying attention to the breath.

You can never overdo attentive mindfulness!

Breathe and smile. Repeat until your last breath. (Hopefully not soon.)

Stirring leaves

Suffering flows from unsatisfactory conditions. Just as leaves respond to the stirring wind, so mind bends to the unsatisfactory turbulence of its condition. What does the world look like if all unsatisfactory conditions are removed? From moment to moment the untrained mind busily runs back to reinvent the past, or forward to anticipate the future. It never seems to fix on the moment it leaves behind. Yet it is only in the present moment that thought can be caught and trained to consider itself as a thought; as a fleeting, transient event, one among many, rising and passing in a continuous stream of anicca - impermanence. This is the heart of dhamma - the reality of the universe. This is the impermanent always. This is where the mind is brought to with the enduring and effective technique of anapana and vipassana meditation. The technique is not in any way an end in itself. The intention, the goal and the means is to simply look at the breath rising and falling in order to focus the mind until it is steady, straight, strong and settled. From the calm mind rises equanimity. Faced with the equanimous mind, suffering flees. Craving, aversion and ignorance fade. Dhamma prevails. This is not an intellectual or a philosophical pursuit, nor is it spiritual in the sense of being derived from any religious experience. Awareness in the mind is entirely derived from the  experiential understanding of the elemental, physical nature of the universe: namely that water floods, fire burns, air flows, earth smothers. In the body, moisture rises in tears, drool, sweat; the body burns; cooled by air, its heat dissipates; dusty earth dries on the skin, ready to be washed clean. The leaves on the trees experience this same elemental interaction. However, humans alone are the only beings fortunate enough to be able to deploy the particular consciousness needed to truly articulate this understanding of dhamma.This is our kamma, our debt, our inheritence, it is also our opportunity. Why be troubled by suffering? If, as the Buddha demonstrated, it is simply a matter of taking right action, then these elemental factors that bind us to suffering can be dissected, dissolved, put in their place and finally removed as obstacles to happiness.

The dawning of dhamma - 1

Before Vipassana - departure from helplessness.

I awoke on 7 October 2007 full of familiar despair and suffering, but also fully aware of the selfish contradiction of this condition. After all, my suffering was relative and hardly anything substantial when compared to the suffering of others. Yet the suffering was real. I could feel its presence. It was physical, persistent, ephemeral. I decided to read a book on Tibetan Buddhism and meditation, The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche. This book had found its way into my book collection by chance and like a geological feature, a diamond, or a fossil, it had worked its way through the strata of my collection to finally sit on the surface, to be noticed and dug out, dusted off and put to use. I found it very moving in its description of the fragility of life and the need to prepare for death. I also found it partly obscure and tentative in its analysis of what it was to explore these things. However, it did make clear this was not an intellectual exercise. Action was needed if anything at all was to be gained from its pages. I decided at once to follow the description given in the book of a method for open-eyed meditation. At one o’clock in the afternoon I sat down on a cushion on a mat on the floor of the spare bedroom of my flat and lit a stick of incense, ready and resolved to sit as long as it took for the incense to burn away. There it was. With such a simple gesture my meditation practice had begun, or so it seemed.