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How to Survive the Winter Doldrums
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal

Here in Sonoma County, California on the eve of January 1 st, I heard my neighbor shuffling about at 3am and wondered what the ruckus was. The rain was beating down pretty hard, but I was completely bushed and fell back asleep. When I walked by at 9, he had just finished clearing a blocked drainage ditch, diverting water from his house. His New Year’s welcome was a lake rising right up to his bedroom window and about to crash in. But he saved his house by vigorous action, clearing and sandbagging. He is happy, not sad, and is confident the twelve months to come will reveal other jewels to save.

When we sing Auld Lang Syne and tip our champagne glasses to welcome it in, January seems the exciting month when we get back to the office or classroom, share stories about the holidays, and excitedly put in place our New Year’s resolutions. But even if January doesn’t hit you as hard as it hit my neighbor (and many still left homeless in northern California by the damaging floods), most feel a certain letdown. For during the holidays, our lives are filled with doing things for others and family. While hectic, it is a wonderful time filled with purpose and meaning. We move into January and February and all that meaning comes to a screeching halt. We feel a loneliness as everyone gets back into their own lives; nothing will be special again for a long, long time. But, like my neighbor, we can find in our own spirit a way to keep the magic going even amidst obstacles. Here are three ways to do it:

Do fun and rewarding things with family and friends: The holidays were a time to celebrate in very close quarters with those with whom we feel a kinship of spirit. When we feel the letdown of a grand spectacle being over, why not create new communion and connection to spirit? Take time in January and February to do special things with those you love. Find that extra half hour at the coffee shop to meet a friend and just hang out. Or try an experiment like my wife and have been doing: we took five cold winter evenings to read the whole of “Pride and Prejudice” out loud by the fire, right after we saw the movie. Choose the thing to do that will most rekindle that warm fire that vivified Christmas. The more you can slow down and do simple things together, the better.

At school or work: For most of us, returning to the grind has some good and some bad. Good, because we missed colleagues and are back in the exciting world of accomplishment; and bad, because all the special time of celebrating is gone, and routines and deadlines are back. But don’t that feeling of depression get you down. Make a resolution to do something at work that you have never given yourself time for: maybe it’s just bringing flowers and placing them on the desk of the person you haven’t been able to relate to very much, and asking about their family. Smile and tell all your friends at work how much you are looking forward to a year when all will find new springs of motivation that will give meaning to the task at hand and magic to every moment.

Renew your faith in yourself: So if the New Year hasn’t brought the warmth and meaning the holidays did, it may seem we are in a loud, empty world and want the comfort of our families back again. In that case I would say, kindle that fire in yourself. Reach deep down and find within yourself those springs of new life that sometimes only come when we feel all is lost, that nothing can be good again. I would highly recommend starting a practice that enables you to go deep within yourself to mine that imprisoned wealth. Say to yourself every day, “I have in myself everything I could ever need.” Or even better, try meditating on the words of those whose lives have been lit ablaze by the fervor of a larger purpose guiding their every action. One could do worse than contemplate the life and words of Martin Luther King. I was transfixed and energized by them as I heard them on the radio growing up; I knew something very special was happening in the world. Today, I imprint such lofty words on my own mind. Try it, and watch the magic of Christmas happen in its own way in your life, throughout the whole year.

Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com.

How to Deal with the Hidden Bully
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal

The holidays are upon us. Joy fills the air in close communion with family and friends around the fire or at the dinner table. But there is a dark side, unfortunately, to most human experience, hard trials to be gone through however we can manage them. In this case, that darkness is personified by the presence of someone in the gathering who, knowingly or unconsciously, lobs verbal missiles causing pain and hurt. If this sounds familiar, you may have a ”hidden bully” in your family or wider circle, or maybe just someone skilled in wounding others. You will know that the question isn’t whether they will attack, but when. Here are four tips on what to do.

Avoid the person if you can
I often wish I were Jesus or the Buddha, but I’m not. Particularly where kids and other family members are concerned, it is best to shield ourselves and them from confrontations that will not yield much positive result.

Stay in the driver’s seat
If you can’t avoid being with the bully, I would say it is better to engage them positively in non-threatening subjects than to let them start out. Ask after their kids, or find out how things are at work. Be the initiator. When you are in the lead, any snide or hurtful remark will be a reaction, and as such won’t have the power of full on aggression. Your active role will also make your inside less vulnerable.

Make a Choice
When the attack comes you can leave, fight back, or try to ignore the whole thing and act like it doesn’t affect you. This is particularly difficult when kids are involved. A friend of mine recently dealt with a cruise missile-type sister-in-law at a pizza parlor. She noticed my friend’s daughter refusing too eat. When my friend said the child was a picky eater the sister-in-law said, “Just look at her—she’s hardly skinny.” She proceeded to attack my friend in regard to what horrible foods she feeds her daughter. It is hard to remember that such a person really isn’t talking to the kid, but to themselves. They are worried about something inside that never goes away, and they take it out on those who can’t defend themselves. If you haven’t got it in you to leave or fight back, another choice is to lob the “gift” back to the giver. This would mean saying something like, “Yes, we are all looking at Jeannie and doesn’t she just look great (which in fact was the case in this instance—the girl wasn’t the least bit fat)! And by the way, would everyone congratulate me on finding a pizza place so healthy that we can eat all we want?”

Have compassion for the bully
No one likes being hated and behaving despicably and hurtfully. Some time way back in their childhood, the bully of today was either abused or ignored, at a time when they desperately needed to be heard and understood by those who were supposed to love them. They learned the negative way of getting attention, by causing trouble and hurting those they could get to; if they didn’t, their parents and teachers just didn’t have time for them. So they are still stuck in the pattern, a hard one to change or even be aware of; so beyond even our prayers and good thoughts for them, the very best outcome would be to help the person go to therapy. There they would be able to open their childhood wounds and get treatment for them as the hospital staff treats the victim of a serious car wreck. All of us thus strive, in the words of Freud, to become “loving and working members of society,” a happy result bringing the acceptance and love that the bully craves the very most.

Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com.

Teaching Kids to Pray
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal
www.directawakenings.com

In these times of uncertainty and tragedy, children can really get upset. Whether it is trouble at school, fallouts with their friends, or whether a terrorist has just killed hundreds or a hurricane flooded thousands out of their homes, kids have nowhere to go. They can’t just tune it all out like adults sometimes can, and the power of their feelings overwhelms them. But if kids learn to pray, they can channel these powerful feelings into a greater universe of hope, easing their tensions and enabling them feel a greater presence that comforts them and watches over them. If your kids do not know how to pray, here are some suggestions on how to teach them.

1. Validate Your Child’s Intuition:
Every child—even the most rebellious teen—has an innate sense of some greater presence unseen by the human eye. All you have to do is to validate this intuition. It’s not some faraway God up in the sky patrolling the Milky Way, but a warm and a comforting presence that lives very near them, maybe even inside them. To begin, encourage them in the privacy of their own heart just to let go and pour out their pent up feelings and thoughts to this unseen, healing presence. Encourage them to communicate in this way to the Supreme just a little every day, regularly. It doesn’t have to be more than a few sentences, like, “Hi, I’m Stephen. Things aren’t going well. I’m very sad. Please hold me and help me fall asleep.” This way, they know they don’t have to be in a formal setting in a church, mosque or temple to pray. They can pray in their room, outside, as they walk or take a break in their homework—in fact, anywhere at all.

2. Utilize Established Prayers:
To begin to develop to this precious skill, it helps to learn passages like the Lord’s Prayer, the 23 rd Psalm, or the Native American “Let Me Walk in Beauty.” Kids don’t always feel they have the right to address their little concerns to the greatest power in the universe, and they need to warm up to it. Such passages can show the child how other very sweet people, like Jesus, King David, and the mother Mary, opened their feelings up to God. So choose a passage that pulsates with feelings directed toward the Supreme. Or, help your child choose a mantram like “Om” or “Jesus,” and tell them to repeat it when they feel scared or overwhelmed. It’s just one, power-packed word, no problem to remember. Some mantrams come complete with tunes and can be sung as lullabies. My boy chose one when he was very young, and he used it when he was anxious. At one of those times, when he was batting cleanup in the Little League city championships, he said it silently before his at bat. When he came to the plate, he smashed a double and drove in the winning run!

3. Provide Direction on Subjects to Pray About:
Your kids may still feel they need help communicating their feelings to the Supreme. Tell them that, whenever they feel hurt, sad, alone, or helpless, whenever life seems mean and cruel, they can just plead, “Oh God, everything is so awful, just help me!” Then, show them how to turn the feelings around into a request, a plea. They can pray not just for new things or for happy events, but even more important, they can ask that the needy people and animals of the world, whom kids care so deeply for, can have good homes and plenty to eat. Prayer reaches into and energizes the deeper reaches of your child’s being and plugs them into a greater power at work in the universe—a power which, with their tender concern for life, they may be intrinsically closer to than we are.

4. Help Them See and Feel the Benefits of Their Prayers:
Often a friend, classmate, or relative may have a crisis, possibly an illness or injury. Encourage your child to pray for them. Often as not, the person will get well and life may again smile on them. Join your kids in their happiness when they see their prayers may actually have helped, that their small voice raised up to the Supreme made a difference in the outcome. It goes without saying, though, that things can go the other direction; or your kids may pray for a larger good, like world peace, that cannot easily happen. Here I would echo the words of my meditation teacher, whose own teacher was his grandmother. When he was despairing about whether his prayers might actually help the poor people and the animals he wanted better things for, she said, “I don’t know if your prayers will help them, but they will certainly help you.” Help your kids to see that the very act of prayer itself is healing to their feelings, emotions, heart, and soul. Prayer will make them stronger and more secure people. So much the better, then, if in addition to such large benefits, it also helps those they pray for.

5. Talk About Prayer in Your Home:
Remember that anything as different from daily life as prayer—a plea for something barely possible addressed to someone your kids can’t see—might make them feel self conscious. The solution to this problem is to take the secrecy and mumbo-jumbo out of it. Start talking about prayer with animated enthusiasm like you talk about other keen interests. This is not to say you should push or over promote it; sure as anything that will send them in the opposite direction. But there is nothing wrong with saying, for example, that you are praying for Grandma who is in the hospital with cancer, or for the people who lost their homes in the tsunami and in Hurricane Katrina, and how much better that makes you feel. Tell your child that prayer can reconfigure the forces in the universe and cause events to happen more favorably than anyone thinks they will. The more you talk about prayer, the more you will inculcate in them a reservoir of hope, in situations about which they may otherwise feel helpless and despairing about.

6. Include Other People in Your Lives Who Pray:
I once met a Buddhist monk who headed a monastery in Washington DC. He told me with the sweetness of a child, “Even a tiny bit of prayer can make you feel so good!” He had a simple happiness, and his smile was infectious. I really liked to be around him. Since then, I have found being with other people who pray make my own practice flow better. So seek out those friends who practice prayer and invite them to your place. Let your kids see how wonderfully normal they are, in the very best sense. Let them also see how happy it can make them to ask not so much from others, but from the spiritual universe on which everything we see and experience is based. Tell them that if they pray, their own voice can make such a difference that finally Jesus’ words can come true: “Knock, and it shall be opened”. For surely prayer will open for your child a new capacity for seeing that their own feelings matter greatly and they are never, never alone.

Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com.

Honoring Your Child's Unique Gifts:
Keeping Your Dreams for Your Child in Check
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal

Sometimes parents are sure about the path that their kids must take, and they let the kids know it. When we do this, we often set our kids up for failure. Trying to help those we love most in the world to succeed, we actually ferment rebellion in them or doom them to failure. Take a look at your household and see if any of the following situations apply.

Popularity:
A friend once told me of an encounter with the man who was screaming at his 14-year old, unaware that she was just five feet away and heard everything. My friend was too polite to tell him that, if we teach our children over and over again that they are substandard, we will get results the very opposite from those we want. Indeed, we will sap our child’s will, and it’ll be tough for them ever to escape the screaming voice inside their head.

In this situation, it turned out this gentleman himself had been a big shot in high school. Though his son was kind, respectful, and a very good student, he was not in the super popular in-crowd, and the dad was afraid he would miss out on the fun he himself had had.

Athletic:
I don’t know any pressure that is so overwhelming in school. If you aren’t good at football or basketball or soccer, you can be the subject of teasing, even harassment. Naturally, parents and coaches want the child to succeed in sports. Sports can even be the door that opens to scholarships and a bright career future.

I remember the day when the soccer scouts, seeing my son in the city tryouts, tried to get him on a professional team. He was 12 and very tall. Being on this team meant large crowds and glory; but it also meant practicing every afternoon for three hours and traveling to matches three weekends a month. More than that, it meant playing aggressively, even sometimes violently—in other words, it meant giving up the rest of childhood. A lot of pressure was applied to get this boy who was still wandering in the hills searching for finches and orioles to go for broke in sports; but he loved soccer only for enjoyment, not for competition. Unwilling to give up fun for glory, he told the coaches and scouts to look somewhere else for the next Pele.

Talent:
If the parent spies an area where their boy or girl shows great promise, sometimes they won’t let them forget about it. An extreme example of this takes place in the movie “The Red Violin,” where the boy Kaspar, who has a heart ailment, is recognized as a child violin prodigy and forced to perform by his foster father—whose own fame will be made if the boy succeeds. When his chance to perform before the king finally comes, Kaspar begins his outstanding violin playing and promptly falls over, dead from a heart attack. This merely dramatizes what we all know: talented children, endlessly pressured by their parents, may seem quite strong and self-assured; but within them, the natural urge to have fun and play is being squashed. They substitute praise from the outside for their deepest feelings and needs, and something quintessentially human in them is snuffed out.

Intelligence:
What about when mom or dad didn’t get the grades to get into a good school? Well, darned if their kids are going to fail to do so. They will get where the parents didn’t even if they have to force them there! To give an example, when I was growing up, my friend Bill was a slow moving, very likable guy who did not much care about sports. His dad very much regretted he had not gone to the right college. I couldn’t count the times I was over and heard his dad screaming, “Bill, you have to get good grades and get into Stanford,” which was where he himself had been rejected. In other words, Bill was supposed to take care of his father’s unfulfilled need, rather than the other way around. He was going to make up for the lack and make his father feel good again.

As he grew up, Bill got pretty sick of hearing about Stanford. But some kids operate from a sense of independence and security and miraculously are able to act on it. Turning his deep sensitivity to the deaths of so many in Vietnam, Bill dropped out of school in 1968 and joined the famous antiwar demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Chicago, which some say was what turned the tide in America against that war. Bill, who today tends an orchard in eastern Washington, found his own path through his deep convictions to fulfillment and inner peace. His dad, however, died believing his son was a failure. It all makes me think how much richer a life all of us parents can have if we see our boy or girl not for what we hope they will achieve, but for the person they truly are at any given time.

Relationships:
Sometimes parents are sure just who they want their girl or boy to date and their own preferences limit their kid to their own predilections. Let me once again give an extreme example of what could be lost if the kid doesn’t ask her own questions. There was a day when I was growing up that my teenaged sister came home and dropped a bombshell. She announced she was marrying her hippie boyfriend. “Not on your life,” my dad the business professor said. “That bearded, lazy so-and-so will never amount to a thing.” Only that lazy so-and-so was not so lazy when he jammed with his guitar. I could listen to the skillful finger picking and the soulful bard’s voice for hours. However, Dad wanted someone who could make it in the financial world; this “nobody” didn’t seem to care a fig about money.

But Dad had to eat his words, though, after the first album sold out and the band became wildly popular. My new brother-in-law’s name was Jerry Garcia. It took Dad decades to admit my sister had married one of the great rock legends of the 20 th century, and that if she had bowed to his demands, she might have missed out on history.

Thus, if we can stop trying to use our children as surrogate selves, who will be what we should or could have been, or spoiling them so that they can enjoy what we couldn’t have-- and if we can instead nourish and respect them as the people they really are, the results can be miraculous.

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Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com.

© 2005 Stephen Ruppenthal & DirectAwakings.com

Craziness on the Road: How to Stay Calm Under Pressure
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal

Author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation

A friend of mine recently said that drivers on the road today make a simple trip to the grocery store a frightening experience.  Just a few days ago, I myself was traveling on the two lane highway near my home and noticed a large truck hurtling toward me in my lane, evidently passing someone else. Only a slim, rocky shoulder on my side stood between me and the next world.

My experience, unhappily, is not unique.  More and more, drivers act out of passion and impatience, not out of what is safe and considerate.  For most of us, the roads are not optional; we have to drive to get where we need to go, and we really feel we are stuck with the mess with no way out. But there is a saying in Chinese called “dangerous opportunity.”  This means that the true peace is not gotten in tranquil times, but in great tumult and agitation. Nothing could better describe our roadways and their daily craziness. So here are six ways I have found to use this craziness for greater peace:

Setting our intent - The quality of attention is paramount; it can convert each trip in the car into a sacrament that is holy. I find that, before I drive out for any trip, it helps to hold in mind the purpose for the journey. If, for example, I am heading out to pick up groceries for a party my family will be having, I think, this is not just me; I am part of that greater circle whom this trip is for, and that circle will protect me. It is more than just me, and I must show this journey the respect it deserves by allowing ample time for it. If I get into my car with this resolve, then when someone passes me over the double line, they disturb my attention, not me. The way to a higher, more civilized interrelation on the roads doesn’t begin with others, but right with us.

Keeping a cell phone - There are situations that will shatter any peace. Once when my wife was driving home from her evening French class, a driver cut her off on the highway onramp, crashed into the ramp ahead of her, then swerved back onto the roadway, evidently speeding from the police. She immediately called highway patrol, and when she got home, the feeling that she had helped remove a true menace from the road and saved others was what gave her the most comfort. Dangerous situations, such as someone driving this recklessly, or an accident, or a dangerous object in the roadway, should be reported to the authorities. They are less likely to shatter our peace if we reach help and protect others from them.

Empathy with other drivers - Say you are turning right out of a shopping center and no one will let you into the roadway. There is a green light up about a block, and everyone is racing to catch it. Even when it turns red, no one lets you in. We want to yell or honk or flip them off, we are so angry. But here is where, fully in our feelings of anger, we can actually find an island of peace. If, for example, I have set my intent and allowed ample time for my trip, I can sense the frustration each driver is in, the feverish hope they will get ahead, running to overtake time itself, and hope deeply for them that they will turn instead toward slowness and peace.

Reaffirming our intent - If we drive in speeded up roadways sick with hurry, then in a very real way, our own mind-stream has helped to create them, or assented to the ever more out-of-control fastness. But if we remember in our hearts the desperation of these inconsiderate drivers, it will enable us to remember, I went on this trip to buy groceries for our party. Not just I, but all who are coming send our thoughts of peace and consideration into the greater mind. Every unpleasant situation on the road is a chance to slow down the feverish pace of our own thinking, because it offers greater challenge and make us draw deeper in ourselves to get peace that will stay very long with us.

Using a mantram to keep our calm - Our world is the collective sum of all mental energies of six billion people. So long as the speed of the mind is not under control, destructive thoughts will gain momentum, and out of control speed will make our roadways a living nightmare. We may think the power of one person who stands up and says no to speed is insignificant. But the example of a slowed-down mind is such that one clear thinking, compassionate individual, appealing just with who they are to all that is best in human nature, can help turn back the destructive course in which things have been moving. That is why I recommend the choice of a mantram, a time-honored spiritual syllable like Om or Jesus, which calls not just upon our own powers of mind, but on the peace in the collective consciousness of centuries. If in our deepest consciousness we say the mantram and affirm, I will live in a speed-free world, where roadways are again safe and people treat each other with kindness, then that is the world we can achieve.

Co-creating peace - When my wife and I moved to our small California town five years ago, the roads were quiet and slow.  But it became a tourist destination, and traffic grew so great that walking out in a crosswalk became no longer a legal right, but a prayer to the oncoming drivers who really did look like they would mow you down.  We tried two things: first, we redoubled our efforts at meditation, which is the basic tool for calming and slowing the furious thoughts in the mind.  Then we said with the full powers of awareness, we will live in a place where drivers show courtesy. This is the world we co-create for ourselves.

Just after the first of the year, added patrolmen began to appear on the roadways.  Not only that, two articles appeared on the front page of the Living section, both announcing the new crackdown on speeders and the resolve of the citizens to have safe roads again.  From a crazy speed that would scare any pedestrian from attempting to cross the driving abruptly changed; people now drive below the speed limit and watch carefully.  I do not think it is coincidence that our meditative thoughts and strong resolve to live in such a place helped bring these events about.  No one of us is insignificant; our thoughts and intent, made stronger through meditation, assuredly affect this planet.

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Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com.

© 2005 Stephen Ruppenthal & DirectAwakings.com

The Art of Relaxation
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal

When we are children, we jump about in play, frolic in lakes and streams, and notice the bright sunlight in the grass. We are in touch with our bodies. This relaxed state is our home. But as we grow up, the mind begins its enslavement of our freedom and joy. In school and at home, we are regimented into routines that stifle creativity and originality. We lose the connection “glad animal movements” gave us to the child within us, and with it, the capacity to be fed and nourished by the universe around us.

Before the struggle to learn and achieve, all of us had moments when we could lie down and watch the clouds passing over the blue sky. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go; we had only to be. I would like to show five ways to remember how to relax and see life not as time to work or make money, but as food for our inmost soul.

Finding flexibility - When I was growing up, muscle was considered strength. Weightlifting gyms were opening up all over, and guys went for big, heavy muscles. The biggest musclemen exhibited their exploits on beaches or got on TV. In track, I was told to run fast as I could and override any pain in the body. People were supposed to always be strong and never give into feelings or ever, ever break. Try hard. Do good. Be successful: that was the path to follow. Then I read the Chinese sage Lao Tsu for the first time, and he said:

Bend, and become straight.

Empty yourself of self, and become full,

Then even in tatters, you will be fully renewed.

I began to see that people society called weak turned out to be the ones who magically got ahead. In school, a boy who was awkward and covered with acne, whom we teased relentlessly, turned in a lottery ticket a couple of decades later and won $22 million. Today a delightful and very giving gentleman, he sure did not seem like a winner.

Turning off the judge - Our mental life is teeming with incessant thoughts, moving quickly and automatically. Particularly when we make a bad mistake, or when a broken relationship shakes our foundations, thoughts tell us we are ineffective, worthless, or bad. Most of us can find they quiet down if we work very hard and gain approval from people outside. These thought voices are not us, but our minds, ready to sabotage and control us so that we never can lay back and feel the joy of who we really are. That is why it is important not to escape through work. Instead, listen to and witness them to deflate their power. Note down the nature of these compulsive thoughts, and tell a good friend or therapist about how they lie to you and hold you down.

Do the opposite of a compulsive drive - If you can put the judge in his place, then it is time to learn the deeper mystery of relaxation. Sometimes it means backing away from what you are just set on getting. When you want happiness, tell yourself you would be equally content with its opposite and just wait. Strangely enough, happiness may choose you, just like the $22 million chose my classmate. If someone is judging you for not getting everything just right, take a few deep breaths. Remember you can bend and sway. If you have a mantram, say it a few times and know that at your depths, the energy of the Om or Krishna or Buddha is you. You may just settle into a comfortable place where the richest, most potent power in the universe fills you with power and wonder.

M aking time to do nothing - The greatest enemy of our inner dictator is free relaxation. Have you ever thought of why in traditional cultures a whole day is given over to rest, with no work? When we relax, we can absorb the joy of nature around us and relate in the fullness of love to our friends and family. In the modern world, we have been encouraged to drive ourselves relentlessly. We become a human doing and not a human being, who can relax, laugh, and just be. I recommend putting aside half an hour to just sit, lie down, and do absolutely nothing. You will find blocks fall away from your vision. You are fed and nourished just by the universe around you, especially in nature.

Healthful exercise - The body was meant for motion. Vigorous exercise renews the body and invigorates our life and feelings. When we swim avidly in the lake or walk freely in the hills, our bodies move with the natural rhythm they crave. Pulsating with that rhythm, we come closer to life lived in the body, not enslaved by the mind. As our body gently moves, we can relax in a vastness deeper than ourselves—than our job at home, than all our associations, appointments and obligations. Whether we swing our arms in the bracing wind or feel the harmony of our breathing with our footstep, we perceive an opening through which we can speak to our original self, beneath all conditioning and habits.

Lastly, I would invite all those who, like myself, aren’t yet wise enough to imitate the action of nature to meditate on the words of those who are. Passages which do so help seed the truth and the capacities in consciousness. Meditate on passages that speak of suppleness, flexibility, and gentleness—and bring these positive, enduring qualities into your life. Then let Nature do the rest!!

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Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal is the author of The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. He is also the co-author of Eknath Easwaran’s edition of The Dhammapada and the author of Keats and Zen. He has taught meditation and courses on Han Shan at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Dr. Ruppenthal is an international workshop leader in passage meditation and in courses for those looking for end of life spiritual care and for the spiritual step component of twelve step programs. Visit Stephen’s work at www.directawakenings.com.

© 2005 Stephen Ruppenthal & DirectAwakings.com

The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation
By Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal

Words can be both sacred and potent vehicles of inner peace. The Path of Direct Awakening comprises passages chosen and tested especially for memorization and meditation. Taught in all the major world religions, passage meditation engages the highest human faculties and links our inner being with the serene beauty of a calm lake or the highest mountain top. This book is unique in that it references the seed of the divine not in any personalized God, but in the mind, or nature. It includes new and original translations of seventy poems and thirty-three prose pieces from the oldest and most respected Eastern Traditions.

Part I is devoted to meditation passages that purport to assist us in reclaiming “our original nature before our mother and father were born.” Lao Tsu and Confucius, from whom most of these pieces derive, call this path to self-discovery the Tao.

The passages in Part II, drawn mostly form the Buddha and his Zen followers, focus on gaining enlightenment by suspending the inertial stream of conscious thought—thereby gaining entry to the Buddha nature that lurks behind it.

Part III consists mainly of poems by the Chinese Buddhist mystic Han Shan, written during the Chinese T’ang dynasty (AD 689-906). An attempt to wed Buddhism with the love of the environment, they use the image of the ascent up Cold Mountain to represent the path of spiritual illumination by means of communion with unspoiled nature or simple village life.

Stephen Ruppenthal, author, editor, and translator, gives the historical context to the selections in his introduction, as well as providing easy-to-practice guidelines on how to use them to meditate. Essays on the Tao and the Zen concept of Emptiness facilitate understanding of Eastern mysteries difficult for Westerners to grasp. This one-of-a-kind collection enables the reader to practice a type of time-honored spirituality based on the natural world around us, or the divine spark within us, without recourse to a sectarian divinity such as God, Krishna, or Yahweh.