Thousands in the Western world have sought a brighter life through the practice of Eastern meditation. While many have experienced a deeper sense of calm, most have never experienced the enlightenment promised by these methods. Through witty, entertaining anecdotes, Hawk Rising shares the secret to understanding, observing, and then managing a calming approach that softens, but does not stifle the desire for achievement.John Cowan has spent his lifetime learning within the worlds of spirituality and motivational psychology and offers an innovative method derived from the Buddhist system that effectively reduces anxiety through meditation and visualization. Cowan teaches through exercises and personal stories that viewing the imagination as part of the here and now will end frustration and increase the ability to begin each day with renewed power and confidence.Anyone interested in remaining in the hustle and bustle of the world and still achieving a new level of inner-peace will benefit from his explorations of the sources of anxiety, its causes, and how to develop a method for being usefully anxious while living a free, active, and creative life.
Hawk Rising
Soaring on the Wings of Desire By John CowaniUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 John Cowan
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4401-4127-0 Contents
Why Read This Book?...............................................1The First Parable: The Heart of a Tiger...........................3Chapter One: Ruminations on a Flat Tire...........................5Chapter Two: How You Became Anxious...............................17Chapter Three: The Creative Anxiety Model.........................29The Second Parable: The Disappearing Puppet.......................41Chapter Four: Pictures............................................43Chapter Five: Observing...........................................57Chapter Six: Anxiety..............................................67The Third Parable: The Motorcycle Club............................77Chapter Seven: Feeling-Response and Intention.....................79Chapter Eight: Creative Anxiety...................................87The Last Parable: The Hawk and the Fox............................101Summary of the Creative Anxiety Process...........................103Several Exercises.................................................105My Bookshelf......................................................109About the Author..................................................113
Chapter One
Ruminations on a Flat Tire
My Experiments with Meditation Practice
This starts earlier than the flat tire. Perhaps it starts twenty years ago when a friend suggested that I attend a five-day vipassana meditation retreat. At the time I was an Episcopal priest, so the invitation to a Buddhist event might seem unlikely. However, the friend who issued the invitation was a witch, and you can see how a priest who has a witch for a friend might do unlikely things. Before being an Episcopal priest, I was a Roman Catholic priest who from the seminary on religiously read Zen texts, so it was even likely that I would be invited to a vipassana retreat. And now I am a Quaker. After three major religious changes, stability should not be expected from me. The experimental is ordinary.
Whatever the likelihood, I did go to the retreat and began the daily practice of observing with loving attention the breath and whatever else came up.
I found this an invaluable addition to my spiritual life. At last I had something that I could do regularly that made a difference in my deepest understanding of the nature of life, and the nature of myself. At the same time, I was absorbed in scholarship about what Jesus really said and did in his brief stay on earth. These two sources of wisdom became meat and potatoes for my spirit.
To refresh the meditation practice, from time to time I attended other such long retreats. I had just finished checking in to one of them at the Franciscan retreat center we frequented in those days when Sister Ellen, a Franciscan nun with whom I had chatted on other occasions, asked me how long I was staying. (In deference to the needs of people, there was a choice of attending the weekend only or continuing for nine days of complete silence.)
I told her I was there for the longer period and started down the steps to the meditation room. As I walked away, I heard her say, "Oh, I did not think you were the type."
Since in the course of the next week almost nothing else was said to me directly, those last words kept recurring in my mind. What the *#^* did she mean by "You're not the type?" I had no idea.
First thing at the end of the silence, I sought her out and asked her. Her answer was: "You are too restless to last that long."
My retort was: "Well, I did last that long!" She nodded, but skeptically.
Suspicious Behavior
I had to admit there was reason for her doubt. About day three the leaders had begun complaining that some people were not following the spirit of the retreat. I suspected that they had noted my bicycle locked to a pole outside of their bedrooms (the only safe place I could find), and they had also noted that it disappeared every afternoon around three to return about five. I was not the only person cheating a little on their plan, but probably one of the more obvious. I found the two strenuous hours on the bicycle a marvelous relief from the physical inactivity of the other twenty-two hours. Like a soaring hawk, I found relaxation in the freedom of the roads after the confinement of the meditation room.
At one point on day three, one of the leaders said that the workshop had been carefully designed and those interfering with the schedule would lose all hope of great advances in their awareness. In my twelve years of seminary life (from freshman year of high school through four years of postgraduate study), I had been guilted often enough by past masters of the trade who wanted me to live within their boundaries that this attempt washed off without effort on my part.
Indeed, I nearly giggled as I imagined the leaders designing the workshop saying to each other:
"What should we do next?"
"Let's do sitting meditation!"
"Oh, what a good idea. That will work well since just before it we have walking meditation, and before that sitting meditation."
"You know, I bet people will be surprised and stunned if after this sitting meditation, we fed them a change and did walking meditation."
"Oh, Charlie, you are so brilliant. And then we could break for lunch."
"Smooth move, Lydia. They would never expect that at noon, especially if we call it eating meditation."
At one of those retreats, late October, it was frigid in the building. The meditation room and the cafeteria were comfortable, but everywhere else it was about sixty degrees. This would be fine if I were moving around with some vigor, but walking meditation does not get the blood running and sitting in my room gave me the chills. At night when the temperature dropped further, I piled on every blanket I could find. So I wrote a note to the managers (those assigned to keep the logistics working), complaining of the cold. The next morning one of them rose to say that there had been one complaint about the cold. Sixty-five people and one complaint. Me!
They went on to say that they had taken that complaint to the nuns, and the nuns had informed them that they do not turn on the heat for another week. Case settled!
I had been noticing this. While most of the teachers seemed vigorous enough, there was a definite tendency for students to begin to wimp out. Many of them when talking, for instance during question periods, sounded as if they had laryngitis. I had paid a lot of money to the nuns to stay in that place, and I thought they damn well should have turned on the heat. But I carried the argument no further. One against sixty-five was daunting, even for me, and I had come to meditate (and bicycle a little) but certainly not to engage in battle.
I once listened to a Zen abbot from the east coast speaking at the local zendo in St. Paul. He told of hiring a backhoe to do some excavating around the monastery. The job went on for an extensive time, so he and the operator in their many conferences about which rock was to go where became quite friendly. The abbot found the operator quite a Zen-like guy, with a great sense of the appropriateness of placement and respect for the nature of the phenomena he was pushing from here to there. After a month, possibly emboldened by their previous exchanges, the operator asked the abbot why it was that all of the monks walked around slowly with folded hands and downcast eyes, as if they were sneaking through life.
The abbot answered, "I have no idea! I never told them to do that."
This is not typical of everybody who engages in meditation. I have a sensei for a personal friend, and challenging his manhood might get me hurt. At the same time, there appears to me to be something suspicious going on here-a sapping of the vigor required for life. My friend the witch gave up her practice for a while because it was interfering with the flow of blood in her body. (Don't ask me how one feels the flow of blood. I accept much that I do not understand.) I know others who felt they could not do this meditation and succeed at their jobs, so they dropped the practice in favor of more vigorous pursuits.
What Is Up?
As the kids say: "Whazzup?" Not enough to stop my meditating or my living. I even wrote a book on meditation of which I am quite proud; and on the living side, I ride ten thousand miles on a midsize motorcycle every summer, camping half the nights. Meditation has not shut off the flow of my blood. Still and all, I do ask, "Whazzup?"
Why should this practice bring deadness when its purported author, the Buddha himself, said that he was waking up? How can waking up create sleepy people?
As a young man, I was interested in the stories of the Zen monks and hermits of the early days, wandering the hills searching for enlightenment. A friend of mine refers to them as "the Zen crazies." These are the guys who, when asked the meaning of life, belched. Died upside down in a corner to prove they could. When asked where to find Bosho, waved the questioner down the road, although the person asked was Bosho. Just a Bosho who had deliberately forgotten he was Bosho and did not want to be reminded.
What did these nuts have to do with sixty people sitting solemnly in a room observing the breath? As a matter of fact, the sixty were often the butt of the joke. The student rises from the crowd, goes to the teacher's platform, bows solemnly, knocks the teacher off the platform, and seats himself on the teacher's pillow. The teacher rises, dusts himself off , bows to the student, and then hammers him off the pillow. They look at each other, bow, begin to laugh, and arm in arm leave the hall. The rest of the students remain sitting.
Meditation seems to be based on restriction, and the old boys that I admired seemed to be living out of some free-flowing fountain that ignored what most of us thought of as necessary and real.
Which brings us to the flat tire.
The Flat Tire
I am in Michigan on the loaded-for-camping motorcycle, about to start the eight-hundred-mile trip home after a weekend with biker friends. It is four in the afternoon, and I am pulling out of the check-in lot for Ludington State Park, intending to spend the first night there before taking off.
As I accelerate through the gears, I notice a little drag every time I pull in the clutch; and then at fifty miles an hour, just before shifting to fifth, the front end begins to wobble rapidly. I pull in the clutch (never touch the brake when things like this happen), the bike loses speed too rapidly, and the back end is now oscillating like a bronco trying to throw its rider. I wobble to the side of the road, leaning it to the shoulder. I notice that there is a roaring noise and then realize that while I have squeezed the clutch. I am still holding the throttle jammed open. I let it go. Kill the engine. Get off the bike.
I have a flat tire. The hawk that rode the highway thermals squats crippled on the shoulder. The rear tire, nearly new, is squished. I say many foul things. Slam the seat. Kick a few rocks. Get out my phone. Call AAA. Get the promise of a tow truck. And then stand there, sick with fear.
Am I reacting to the terror of nearly being thrown from the bike? Not at all. If the tire could be fixed by magic, I would become calm and ride her off over the horizon. Near death or at least near severe road rash has not bothered me.
What is bothering me is that my plans have been disrupted. My picture of the future is in jeopardy. I may not get home five days from now for my regular oncology appointment. Seven days from now, I am scheduled to be the preacher at a St. Paul church. I might have to reschedule. I have reserved three campgrounds for the nights of my return trip. I have no chance of getting to them.
The task of getting the bike to a shop and getting the tire repaired moved on, but not with certainty. I was told that the odds of getting it repaired the next day were low, and I might lose as much as two days from my plans, or more if something really mechanically bad had gone wrong during the wobble to a stop. Given this information, my imagination was cooking up a storm of other disrupting possibilities. I slept badly and woke up sick to my stomach.
I was then, and still am, a student of meditation. I regularly meditate twice a day for half an hour. This meditation is a contemplation of my body, my feelings, my thoughts, and the phenomena around me. (Perhaps you recognize the four foundations of mindfulness as taught by the Buddha?) I not only do that on schedule, but also shift into that mode whenever an opportunity arrives or the situation seems to demand or even allow it.
Anxiety
At the same time, I am a very anxious guy. Casual acquaintances would not say so since I act calm under almost all circumstances. (Losing my temper at the flat tire was a rare indulgence.) However, I am always early, I always create negative scenarios, everything is always done much better than it needs to be done-and for all my personal appearance of sloppiness, all "i"s are dotted and all "t"s crossed. That is because I am a very anxious guy.
Now after the flat tire, with my anxiety filling me from groin to head. I really paid attention. I argued with myself about how stupid my feelings were and how likely it was that a huge motorcycle shop in the middle of an area filled with two-wheeling people would fix my flat quickly. This did not help at all. As rapidly as I created favorable scenarios, my imagination created negative scenarios. More rapidly actually. About a one positive to ten negative ratio.
Pictures
I focused on the bodily feeling, experiencing where the anxiety was functioning down there in groin and gut, and that helped the anxiety drop. But what really helped was to focus on my picture of the future, that which was being violated, and see if I could see that future as unnecessary. Indeed, could I devise alternative futures, such as renting a car and visiting friends in Kalamazoo, as worthy possibilities? This helped a lot. Not enough to make the feelings go away, but enough to make them livable. And enough to make me realize that my problem was that I was trapped by the pictures in my imagination. Instead of these pictures being alternate possibilities, one of them or two or three of them had become necessary for my well-being.
At two in the afternoon, my cell phone rang; it was the service manager at the shop telling me the bike was ready to roll. I picked it up and the next morning checked out of my emergency motel two days late heading for the Upper Peninsula. All bright and cheerful.
A few hours later, I was at a rest stop feeling anxious again. Not nearly as bad as with the flat, but still on the tense side. I was about to cross the Mackinac Bridge, and I had heard that some find the height unbearable. I was wondering if that might be me. I pictured myself frozen on the bridge, workmen gathering to help me over, fourteen women on Harleys laughing at me from the sidelines, my picture of myself as a competent rider destroyed.
Since the day before I had been playing with the "this bike will never be repaired" scenario, almost automatically I observed the picture of me being frightened on the bridge and accepted it as an interesting possibility, a new experience, one I might write about some day, or at least tell at late-night parties.
I had been gazing out on Lake Michigan, and suddenly everything became abnormally quiet and beautiful. I could count, I thought, the leaves on the shoreline trees. All I needed was the time. A guy was riding in on a motorcycle, and the shirt he was wearing was impossibly red and his jeans, although well worn, were impossibly blue. The green of the fir trees had just become iridescent. I realized that I loved this world in front of me, not passionately, but gently, and I realized that I was not at all anxious about anything. And it seemed unlikely that it was a coincidence that at this moment I had no picture in my imagination that demanded fulfillment.
That is when I decided to write this book.
Meditation for Motorcycle Drivers and Others Seeking Freedom
Something is up. There is a glorious way of being that is accessible to guys and gals who ride motorcycles, but it is not accessible in exactly the same way as it is to monks sitting in a garden in India denying themselves not only the motorcycle but also square meals, cell phones, sex, and violence. This way of being starts with the lessening of anxiety, but in so doing it does not deny imagination or its products and pleasures.
I think this is what the Buddha promised when he said that he could end suffering, and what Jesus offered when he recommended turning everything over to the Father and accepting the empire of God, which is right in front of us but we don't see it. Later followers of these two epochal figures have promised more and delivered less. I cannot offer you reincarnation at a higher level or a life of freedom from the wheel of samsara (the state of discontent) or resurrection after death in a heavenly kingdom. These might be available through the practices taught in the churches and the sanghas. Some say so.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hawk Risingby John Cowan Copyright © 2009 by John Cowan. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
