The Dalai Lama, Tibet and the APA

The Dalai Lama
Yesterday I watched a run of movies about the life of the Dalai Lama and his escape from Tibet to India where he remains as Tibet continues to be destroyed by the Chinese. I had heard from Paul Ekman, a famous emotion researcher, about his remarkable experience when he was in the presence of the Dalai Lama. He felt peace for the first time in his life. His proneness to anger dissippated, and when he returned to the United States, he continued to be an altered person. It was three months before his temper returned, and I think he then went into some type of Buddhist training, although I am not certain about that. I heard about a man who was cooking for the Dalai Lama when he was in San Francisco, and he too reported that being in the presence of the Dalai Lama was a remarkable, life enhancing experience. There is something in this story that brings a lesson to all of us, as the tales of global warming become more realistic every day, and we see that the effects are already upon us. I do Kundalini Yoga, but I keep lapsing in my program. The mind training involved in this simple practice is something I need, and the question I pose to myself is: Why do I turn my back on my practice for weeks at a time? When should I be doing my practice, what time of the day? Will it make a difference if I build that into my "scaffold" that a wrote about a few weeks ago? I am still constructing it, I've made great progress, but a Yoga practice is not yet in it. I think I could take some hints from Steve Pavlina who said something about getting on your running shoes as the way to get yourself running. Pulling out my yoga mat at the same time every day, then putting on my yoga pants might be the simple answer to my dilemma. There is something in the practice of monks and yogis that effects the brain as studied by fMRI. What are we all waiting for?

The American Psychological Association and Atrocities

Last week the APA convention was held in San Francisco, so it was easy for me to attend. I only went for two half days, one to present a poster describing some of my research, and the second to register and attend a few meetings. I went to hear Phil Zimbardo and as usual his session was worth discussion. Zimbardo has been campaigning for some years now, in defense of our soldiers involved in torture in Iraq and Guantanamo. Zimbardo was the scientist who carried out the famous Stanford Prison study. The study selected normal healthy, well adjusted Stanford students for participation. Some were to be "prisoners" and some were to be "prison guards." Zimbardo had thought that dispositional differences between the prisoners and guards would determine their behavior in the course of the study. What happened instead was that the prison guards got carried away, thaqnks to the conditions of the study, and began to exert such cruelty upon the prisoners that the study had to be stopped after only five days. Zimbardo and the research team concluded from this study that normal healthy, non sociopathic people will turn into perpetrators of absolute evil given the right conditions. He said "You think you know yourself, and you think you know the people near to you, but you don't. You have no way to know what you will do under certain conditions." He spoke of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo conditions, the orders from the authorities, everyone going along with it, secrecy, all producing a situation in which ordinarily kind people became evil. Could this happen in a community in which everyone engaged in a Buddhist practice? I think not. As a country became Buddhist over the past thousand years, all prior tribal warring stopped and a blanket of peace came over the land we know as Tibet. It was the migration of hundreds of thousands of Chinese that turned Tibet into a blood bath. The pictures from the news showing the atrocities committed against the monks remind me of Abu Ghraib.

I used to think "there are no private solutions" and perhaps its true, there aren't. However, why ignore a private solution when one becomes obvious, just for some old political principle. A daily yoga practice belongs on my morning scaffold. I can do a 30 day experiment. I wake up at 5:30 every morning now, automatically, what started as a 30 day experiment became a wonderful new habit. I'll report back on how it goes.

A quiet Sunday morning

This will be a short one. I've been experimenting with rising early again, as part of the bigger experiment, creating a scaffold for my day. I set my alarm for 4:30 each morning, get up when it goes off, and first deal with email. I'm going through it as fast as possible. If something requires action I'm following the GTD 2 minute rule. Meaning if I can deal with it in 2 minutes, I do. If not but I have to do something with it, it goes into the "action" folder on my desk top and I enter it into the next action list in Vitalist (www.vitalist.com). This means I am clearing out my inbox very quickly, and nothing is forgotten. When my email inbox is dealt with, and this takes about 40 minutes to an hour, I start writing. I have several projects going on, and I get to choose what I'm writing according to how I'm feeling. This goes on until 10 or 11, when I begin making phone calls on my next action list. So I think I might be developing the morning routine or scaffolding. I have my fingers crossed that I can keep this up. There's not question about it, having those early morning hours for writing is precious.

8/2/07 Wanted: Morning & Evening Scaffold on Which to Construct the Day

The scaffold might be emerging..
Last week I wrote about plans to build a "scaffold" to help structure my life as a home-office information worker. Zen Habits just wrote a rather inspiring post about the same, speaking of a morning and evening routine http://zenhabits.net/2007/08/tips-to-establish-a-morning-evening-routine-with-an-august-challenge/.

I’ve written before about how morning and evening routines can create some sense of sanity and calm in your life.These are two habits that you can start today that will make a big improvement in your day.

Now, because of different things that have come up in my life, I’ve fallen a bit out of my routines. I’ve also been changing them over the last few months as my needs have changed.

So, this month, my August Challenge (read more about the Challenge below) will be to focus on re-establishing my daily routines, refined and simplified.

This week has been unusual in that I have a family member sick in the hospital and I'm one of the family responsible for frequent visits etc., so my days are scheduled somewhat differently. Nevertheless it has seemed to me to be the perfect time to build my scaffold, meaning, to build a scaffold that I do every day and that will help me get oriented to the day of work, and then the orientation to winding down, whatever that will be. So here is what I've come to so far: I've only been developing a routine in the evening, the mornings are still full of random email checks, reading my favorite bloggers, and other disorienting activities.

Building my routine...
I have to work on the mornings, and that is my commitment to myself in August. I'll put it up here when I've figured it out. My evenings however, are taking shape. Around 9PM I do Kundalini Yoga, at least 20 minutes and often more like 40 or 50 minutes. Then I shower, or take a bubble bath. This is something I hadn't done in years, and I don't know if I'll keep it up, but it seemed like a good idea this week. In fact last night I even lit candles in the bathroom and meditated while lounging in the tub. Next comes a cold shower, and drying off, getting into sleep clothes. Finally I talk to my husband, sometimes watch a movie (the movie part is entirely out of character, just thought I would try it right now, catch up on the culture a bit since I'm on break from teaching). The biggest change is what follows, I don't fall into 4 or 5 hours of web searching, crawling. Instead I only allow myself only an hour on the computer, and then I review my next action list, my project list, loosely plan the next day. Finally I read, no more computer. I am falling asleep earlier this way, and I am quite relaxed by the time I fall asleep. This seems to me, to be the scaffold for the evening, if only I keep it up for the whole month. And now, its time to build the morning scaffold which thus far seems more difficult. Maybe writing this here will inspire me to get moving, and next week I'll be able to write about the morning routine.