Change Your Mind

 The Gospels were written in Greek, the lingua franca of the day. But Jesus, as far as we know, spoke Aramaic. If you’re reading the Bible in English, you’re receiving Jesus third-hand – Aramaic to Greek to English. The Gospel writers have Jesus using a Greek word: metanoia. There’s no way of knowing if Jesus used this word himself – such is the unbridgeable chasm between us and the things Jesus actually said. Maybe Jesus knew a little Greek. Maybe he didn’t. Who knows?

It was the King James Bible of 1611 that first rendered metanoia as redemption. But that’s misleading. “Redemption” sounds too much like salvation, which suggests damnation, which paints humans as wretches incapable of self-repair. Originally, metanoia had a far simpler meaning, one less charged with, shall we say, religiosity. To experience metanoia in the purest sense was to simply change one’s mind – to let go of old ways of thinking, and adopting new paradigms and priorities. With new thought comes a new world. As the Jewish book of wisdom the Talmud put it: “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

Perhaps deeper still, metanoia aligns with the Buddhist concept of enlightenment or awaking. In metanoia it isn’t new knowledge we’ve received, but a new way of knowing. This higher consciousness – prajna in Sanskrit – isn’t just the attainment of more or more accurate information. It’s an entirely different mode of awareness, beyond the realm of words and concepts.

In the gospels, the first use of metanoia appears in the oldest gospel, Mark. Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent…” (Mark 1:15 NRSV) If we read this passage not with repentance, but metanoia in mind, what is Jesus suggesting? One thing’s certain – the kingdom of God is neither a place nor a future event. It is here and now, available only to those who have undergone a deep-tissue shift in consciousness. Whenever you read the word “repent,” swap it for the word “shift” and you’ve got it.

In the Buddhist tradition, the running metaphor is sleep vs. wakefulness. Budh means “to awaken,” and Buddha means “the awakened one.” In the Gospels the running metaphor is blindness vs. sight. “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” Jesus asks. (Matt. 7:3 NRSV) And in his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes: “For now we see as through a glass, darkly.” (1 Cor. 13:12 KJV) No matter the image – awakening or envisioning – the shift is the same. These master teachers reached for every tool in the kit to lift us out of the darkness of our habitual slumber. If, as Buddha claimed, our life is a product of our thoughts, then we not only need new thoughts, but an entirely new way of thinking.

Another facet worth noting about metanoia is this – that in this more fully realized state of consciousness we don’t just think different – we are different. Destructive behaviors fall away, old obsessions fade, and things that used to matter don’t matter anymore. Now we’ve arrived at the most empowering aspect of metanoia – as all of the flotsam and jetsam of life slips through our grasp, our feet touch down to the ground of being. There, firmly planted, we root deep into the real, finally finding an inexhaustible strength to love and serve the needs of others. 

[A version of this piece first appeared in my A to Zen column in the September/October 2021 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Becoming What We Do

[This piece first appeared in my "A to Zen" column in the July/August 2015 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced her with permission.]

They lived thousands of miles apart on different continents, in different centuries – two men that would go on to become the most influential philosophers in history. They never met, but they shared a common question. What are the mechanics of moral transformation?

In 6^th century B.C.E. China, Confucius taught that action precedes internal transformation. We become what we do. Confucius believed that human nature was essentially good, but our innate goodness existed only as potential. In order to actualize our potential, we need to cultivate three primary virtues: shu, ren, and li.

Shu is the consciousness of empathy; the imaginative understanding of how our actions impact others. For Confucius it came down to one simple rule: “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.”

On this empathetic foundation one then cultivates ren or kindness, the willful decision to work for the good of others with no thought of what we might receive in return. Moving from quid pro quo toward altruism, Confucian morality favors duty over self-interest.

Still, the seeds of shu and ren bear no fruit until they are embodied in the actions of our everyday lives.

Li means proper behavior or decorum – all of the little rituals of life that demonstrate our care and respect for one another. For Confucius, human excellence, like any other art form, is realized through conscious choice and willful practice, in the same way one masters the violin. You don’t get good at violin by thinking about it, or admiring it from afar. You have to pick it up and play. After a lifetime of practice, virtuous behavior becomes internalized and unconscious. What began as rote repetition attains graceful naturalness in time. Our innate goodness is externalized through action. We become good. And everyone benefits.

A century after Confucius and half a world away, a young student at the Platonic Academy in Athens began to formulate his own ethical theories, eventually emerging from the shadow of his famous teacher Plato. Like his mentor, and in a curious alignment with Confucius, Aristotle taught that humans were by nature good, but our goodness was a seed that would flourish only with proper cultivation. For a human being to reach their full moral potential, four things would have to happen: education, reason, habit, and character.

Education is essential because it trains our faculty of reason, and reason is required to discern the good. Then the good must be practiced repeatedly until it becomes habit. And habit constructs character. As Confucius argued a century earlier, we become what we do.

For example courage.

For the ancient Greeks, courage was the most important virtue because without it none of the other virtues are possible. One must be brave to be compassionate. But how do we zero in on courage? How can we tell if we’ve stopped short in cowardice, or overshot into rashness? For Aristotle only reason can make this determination. Critical thinking and rational deliberation are requirements for moral action because they correctly identify the Golden Mean, the virtuous middle point between the vices of excess and deficit. On this Aristotle and Confucius agree – we cannot become good without first developing keen discernment and an iron will.

From the Confucian and Aristotelian perspective, the mechanics of moral transformation are fairly straightforward. Correctly identify the good. Practice it until you embody it – act courageous until you embody courage, choose compassion until you embody compassion. Watch old habits fall away, replaced by new habits that give full expression to your innate goodness. Thus is the good, both individually and communally, realized.

We aren’t talking about mere conformity to arbitrary norms or obedience to whatever fleeting laws currently hold sway – we’re talking about becoming who we really are.

In the end, by embracing transformation and embodying virtue we become integrated, no longer in conflict with ourselves. Our thoughts and actions align with our innate higher nature resulting in serenity, freedom, and happiness. For Confucius and Aristotle, the fully realized life is natural, joyful, and deeply rewarding. Who doesn’t want that? And it begins with action.  

A Year of Living Gratefully

It began as an experiment and ended as a conviction. I wanted to know if a simple daily ritual could create real and lasting transformation. I wanted to know if willfully choosing and shaping my thoughts could change my attitude. I wanted to know if emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being was simply a matter of pointing my attention in the right direction. The answers? Yes, yes, and yes.

             Last January I began keeping a gratitude journal. 

            The idea is not new. In ancient times wise people understood the unbreakable link between thought and action. It’s obvious that every action begins as a thought, but what is less clear is how actions shape consciousness. Buddha taught that we become what we think about. The Bhagavad Gita says that we become what we love. Aristotle taught that repeated actions become habits and habits construct character. We become what we do.

            I wanted to test these ancient claims in as simple a fashion as possible. I wanted to know if a simple daily ritual could really make a difference. I wanted to know if gratitude was the key that would unlock the door to a happier, more joyful, more positive, more compassionate, and more creative life. All I needed was willingness, a pencil, a blank book, and a little discipline. 

            At first I was skeptical. Like most people, my default, baseline state of mind was restless anxiety, worry, craving, and dissatisfaction. No matter how hard I slaved on my to-do lists, they were never completed. There was always something broken that needed fixing, a problem unsolved or a need unmet. Like a constant, steady background hum, dissatisfaction was a continual presence, punctuated briefly by fleeting moments of joy and well-being.

            This was no way to live. I was ready to try something different, even if it sounded a little weird.

            Last January 1^st I began. I wrote two sentences in my blank book that began with the words, “I’m grateful for…” The pattern was set. Every morning this year without fail, I dutifully performed my ritual. 

            It wasn’t always easy. In fact, there were many mornings when I struggled to come up with something new. Did I always feel grateful? No. But that didn’t matter. I was determined to earnestly complete my daily task. Often I would write the words, “I’m grateful for…”, then sit back and wait for something to occur to me, casting the searchlight of awareness across the furthest reaches of my life. But it was usually something right in front of me that caught my mind’s eye and made it to the page – the soft breathing of my thirteen year old dog Boone asleep at my feet, or the half moon descending through the pines in the pale morning sky. 

            Already in my second month I began to notice a shift. Having to come up with new gratitude material every morning changed the way I looked at my day. Knowing that every dawn brought a writing assignment, I paid more attention to the bounty of my life. I began to awaken to the abundance – the generosity of my colleagues, the warmth of my marriage, the joy of my work, the love of my family, the acceptance of my friends, the fleeting beauty of the world.

            I should have known this would happen. The same thing happens when I keep a travel journal – I begin to look at the journey through the eyes of a writer, selecting, storing and framing the events of the day and getting them ready for the next morning’s writing session. And when I travel with a camera around my neck, I’m constantly checking the angle of the light and scanning for the next shot. A gratitude journal is no different.

            Then the second shift happened. What you think about expands. By simply looking for gratitude, I found it. And the more I found, the more I felt – the consciousness of gratitude began to be a state of mind, a starting point that had little to do with what was going on around me. Gratitude became the lens through which I saw the world.

            This was a surprise. I had always thought gratitude was an end-point, a sense of well-being experienced at the end of a process of acquisition. What if the consciousness of gratitude is a starting point, a freely chosen state of mind unhinged from the ego’s incessant demands and default dissatisfaction?

            More research was required. I kept journaling.

            As the months rolled on I began to look forward to my morning ritual. It was getting easier. I began to notice that instead of skittering across the surface of my mind the daily ritual of gratitude had worn a groove, a groove I found myself falling into more often than not. Being grateful began to feel normal. I was constructing a new default baseline one journal entry at a time. Aristotle was right. We become what we do.

            The more time I spent in gratitude, the more I realized how little I understood about gratitude. There was still more to discover. But I was willing to learn.

            It turns out that gratitude is not just one thing, it’s many things. It’s a doorway to a whole new a way of being in the world. Maybe the simplest way to say it is this: gratitude is freedom. When you train yourself into the consciousness of gratitude, you are set free from the relentless craving and fear of the ego mind. Most unexamined consciousness, what Buddha called conditioned thinking, is simply the endless repetition of two fundamental energies, craving and aversion. There’s one list of all the things we want, and another list of all the things we don’t want. Life as it is normally lived is little more than the laborious maintenance of these two lists. But when we shift into gratitude, we realize that we have everything we need and there is nothing to fear.

            Then comes an even deeper shift. 

            By reducing our anxiety about what we have not yet received or achieved, we tap into a richer and more vibrant creativity, a state of being that anxiety and fear cuts out. When you experientially know that you live in an infinitely abundant universe, and that you receive everything you need, you soften, you open, you see, you hear, and you feel more. And because your hands are no longer clenched in a death-grip on the things you mistakenly call “yours,” you are open and available to receive the next gifts the universe is trying to give you. Your intentions will more readily become your creations as you move out of the consciousness of scarcity and into the consciousness of gratitude and allowance. You will struggle less and co-create more.

            Who knew that just a few minutes of writing in the morning could have such a profound impact? And if I fall out of the groove of gratitude, I have in my hand a whole book, a year’s worth of tangible evidence that I really am awash in abundance. But the real proof is within me.

            As the New Year begins, we have an opportunity. It isn’t hard to change. All it takes is willingness, a pencil, a blank book, and a little discipline. What will you be doing in the early morning hours of January 1^st?  Will 2013 be a year of craving and fear or a year of living gratefully?