The Tao of Bowie E-Book

Mark Edwards

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

What would David Bowie do? When life gets tough, who can we turn to for help? Who will help us find happiness, meaning and purpose? The Tao of Bowie suggests that we turn to David Bowie for guidance - and use his amazing journey through life as a map to help us navigate our own. Buddhism was central to David Bowie's life, but he was a wide-ranging thinker who also drew meaning from other sources including Jungian psychology, Nietzschean philosophy and Gnosticism. The Tao of Bowie condenses these concepts - the ideas that inspired and supported Bowie throughout his life and career - into ten powerful lessons, each with a series of exercises, meditations and techniques to encourage readers to apply these learnings to their own lives. The Tao of Bowie will help readers understand who they really are, clarify their purpose in life, manage their emotions and cope with setbacks and change. This fresh approach to the search for spirituality and happiness unites the perennial human quest for answers with the extraordinary mind and unique career of one of the most important cultural figures of the past half-century.

Leseprobe

Mark Edwards has two parallel careers – as a journalist and as a trainer/life coach.

As a journalist he began his career writing on magazines, including The Face, Arena, GQ, Esquire and Blitz. For the past 25 years his work has appeared virtually every week in the Sunday Times, and for 12 of those years he was the paper’s chief pop music critic.

As a coach and trainer, he works with individuals to help them live with more purpose and meaning, and with some of the country’s most successful companies, helping them to support and develop future leaders. All his work is informed by mindfulness and the Buddhist insights that underpin it.

These two parallel careers are fused together in The Tao of Bowie.

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Allen & Unwin

Copyright © Mark Edwards, 2021

The moral right of Mark Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 91163 086 9

E-book ISBN: 978 1 76087 451 3

Designed and typeset by www.benstudios.co.uk

Printed in Great Britain

Allen & Unwin

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.allenandunwin.com/uk

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Beginnings

Chapter 2: Needs

Chapter 3: Masks

Chapter 4: Addictions

Chapter 5: Thoughts

Chapter 6: Hell

Chapter 7: Shadow

Chapter 8: Heroes

Chapter 9: Love

Chapter 10: Where Are We Now?

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?

The Tao of Bowie is partly a book about David Bowie. But it’s mainly a book about you.

It has a simple concept: that David Bowie’s lifetime journey of self-discovery can be used as a template for yours; that the powerful ideas that fascinated Bowie and helped to shape his work, his career and his life can help you towards a life of greater happiness and purpose; and that, by following the exercises in this book, you can pursue your own journey to self-discovery using Bowie as an accessible gateway to some of the world’s wisest teachings.

WHY DAVID BOWIE?

Bowie was one of the most remarkable cultural figures of the past century. But behind the confident, charismatic artist we all knew was a human being who started out as a young man feeling lost and isolated, unsure of his place in the world, unable to love or be loved. And yet he grew and developed to a point where he found happiness, let love into his life, and was even able to face his final illness with the equanimity and bravery that allowed him to create a final masterwork about his own death, the Blackstar album.

This is the Bowie we will examine in this book. Not the beautiful, charismatic, talented global superstar, but the shy young man battling life’s challenges – lonely, adrift and desperate for help, support and advice.

If you sometimes find life difficult, if you struggle to find your place in the world, to understand why you’re here or to identify your purpose, then Bowie’s story is your story. And you can learn from his example.

How did Bowie turn his life around? How did he grow and mature? How did he transcend the near-fatal challenges of his early adulthood to emerge stronger and happier?

We can answer these questions because Bowie was always very open about the ideas and philosophies that he used as the basis of his personal growth – the pick ‘n’ mix spiritual code that became his North Star, guiding him through his life.

If you would like to make more sense of your life, Bowie has, in fact, done a lot of the ‘heavy lifting’ for you already by cherry-picking an extraordinary collection of ideas from the world’s greatest spiritual leaders, philosophers, scientists, psychologists and artists. So much so that following his path can make your own journey of self-discovery that bit easier.

In The Tao of Bowie you will find these ideas condensed into ten powerful life lessons, each of which can help you move further along your own journey of self-discovery.

WHERE DO THE TRANSFORMATIVE LESSONS IN THIS BOOK COME FROM?

Bowie’s fans know that he was a cultural magpie: borrowing ideas from mime and kabuki theatre, championing little-known singers and bands, beginning concerts with surrealist films, mixing French chansons and English music hall with heavy rock. He was also a spiritual magpie, immersing himself in many different wisdom traditions from many different countries, eras and disciplines in search of the help and guidance he needed to make sense of his life.

Bowie studied Tibetan Buddhism before he became famous. Indeed, he very nearly became a Buddhist monk. And the questions that drove him to explore Buddhism also drove him to investigate other Eastern religions including Taoism and Zen, the philosophy of Nietzsche, the psychological theories of Carl Jung, the secrets of the Gnostic gospels and Kabbalah, the absurdist and existential writings of Albert Camus, the controversial yet influential theories of Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And many more. These are the primary sources for Bowie’s philosophy of life. The Tao of Bowie examines these ideas, explores how they impacted Bowie’s life and then explains how they can help you.

This isn’t a gimmick. We know that the journey of self-discovery was vital to Bowie. He was consistently clear throughout his life that his songwriting was principally a means for him to carve out his own spiritual path – to ask (and try to answer) his questions about life.

IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU?

In 2002, three decades after he nearly became a Buddhist monk, Bowie told journalist Anthony DeCurtis:

I honestly believe that my initial questions haven’t changed at all. There are fewer of them these days, but they’re really important ones. Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always.

It’s because I’m not quite an atheist – and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on. ‘Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months. I’m almost there.’ … It’s either my saving grace or a major problem that I’m going to have to confront.

‘Almost an atheist’. That’s perhaps where a lot of us find ourselves in the modern world. We reject the idea of God as a big bloke with a white beard living in the clouds, but we can’t quite ever get to the point where we absolutely, definitely don’t believe in anything at all. Like Bowie, we wrestle with the big questions:

Why am I here?

Is this all there is?

What am I supposed to do with my life?

At some points in our lives, when things are particularly tough, the big questions might become more urgent. We might phrase them slightly differently, slightly more brutally:

What’s the point?

Why is life so hard?

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I be happy like [insert name of person you know who seems to have life pretty much worked out]?

Are things ever going to go my way?

We each articulate the big questions in our own way: some of us are looking to make some sense of a life that seems to be spinning out of control; others are angry that we haven’t got what we wanted out of life; still others are confused because we have got what we wanted out of life but still don’t seem to be enjoying it. We feel there must be something more to life. Something we don’t quite get. Something we could get, if we only knew where to look for it.

If any of this resonates with you, then The Tao of Bowie is here to help.

We’re a cynical, sceptical lot – us almost atheists – and we’re suspicious of anything that sounds like superstition or mumbo-jumbo, and frankly horrified at some of the things that have been perpetrated in the name of organized religion.

So we’re going to have to set out without the reassuring certainties or explicit commandments of an omniscient deity. What shall we use instead? My suggestion – odd as it may initially sound – is that we use the ideas that Bowie chose to focus on. They are, I contend, an invaluable guide to a life well lived.

By following The Tao (or ‘path’) of Bowie, you can create your own fascinating, rewarding, and eye-opening passage through life.

THE BENEFITS OF FOLLOWING THE TAO OF BOWIE

The ideas explored in this book – and brought to life in the exercises – come from some of the greatest thinkers of the past three thousand years. They are proven over time, and they are validated by modern neuroscience. As a trainer and a coach, I have watched people work through these ideas and seen their transformative power first-hand.

Every reader will follow the path in their own way, and will experience different benefits as a result. But, broadly speaking, if you commit to working through the exercises, you might expect greater happiness and greater purpose in your life.

Let me explain exactly what I mean by those terms.

By ‘happiness’ I mean a combination of the following:

Contentment: a greater ability to be ‘happy for no reason’ rather than pinning your hopes of happiness on external factors that may be outside your control. An ability to feel OK even when things aren’t going your way

Equanimity: an ability to cope better with life’s problems and challenges, without being thrown off balance

Resilience: an ability to flow with the natural change and uncertainty of life

Peace of mind: a healthier relationship with your thoughts (especially the anxious, negative ones) and feelings (especially the uncomfortable ones)

By ‘purpose’ I mean:

Self-awareness: a truer understanding of who you really are – the real you

Belonging: a stronger sense of how you fit into the world

Values: a clearer articulation of what truly matters to you, and a plan for living aligned to those ideas

Meaning: knowing why you are here and how you can benefit those around you

Those readers who already know something about Buddhism or Taoism will appreciate the irony here; both those wisdom traditions would advise against having any expectations of this book – or indeed any expectations of anything.

This is, indeed, wise advice, and we will examine this idea of living with ‘no expectations’ in some detail later in the book. But I know that in our goal-driven, time-starved world, you will want to know what you can expect to get out of The Tao of Bowie. So I offer the list of benefits above, suggesting that you take them as hints to the general direction we’ll be heading in, rather than a precise checklist to be ticked off.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

The Tao of Bowie is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter contains one clear life lesson. Each chapter is sub-divided into three sections.

• Bowie’s path

• The life lesson

• Your path

Bowie’s path focuses on an incident or key theme from David Bowie’s life.

The life lesson explains the wise life lesson that we can learn from this moment.

Your path shows you exactly how to apply this lesson to your own life, through a series of exercises, meditations and techniques.

CHAPTER 1: BEGINNINGS

The life lesson: Start your journey of self-discovery now

One day I walked into the Buddhist Society. I went down the stairs and saw a man in saffron robes. He said, in very broken English, ‘You are looking for me?’ I realized years later that it was a question, but as an eighteen-year-old, I took it as a statement:

‘You are looking for me!’

(David Bowie, 2001)

Who are you?

Where are you?

Where are you going?

(Chime YongDong Rinpoche – the man in the saffron robes)

I teach only the cessation of suffering

(Buddha)

BOWIE’S PATH

Four years before his first hit single, David Bowie began an earnest study of Buddhism that would resonate powerfully throughout his work and life.

The young David Robert Jones, an aspiring but, as yet, completely unsuccessful singer-songwriter arrived on the steps of the Buddhist Society in London in 1965. This was a year before he would change his last name to Bowie, four years before his first hit, ‘Space Oddity’, and seven years before he truly broke through into the national consciousness with his dazzling creation, Ziggy Stardust.

Crucially, it was two years before The Beatles attended Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation seminar in Wales, suddenly and dramatically bringing previously obscure Eastern religions into the spotlight of mainstream popular culture.

When the young David Jones arrived at the Buddhist Society, he was not a wannabe. He was not following some fad that would shine brightly for a few months and then quickly fade. He was carving out his own unique path, one that he would adhere to (in his own way) for the rest of his life.

He had already been interested in Buddhism for some years. His older half-brother, Terry, a huge influence on Bowie in many ways, had introduced him to the work of Jack Kerouac, and the Beats – a literary group who were early Western advocates of Buddhism. Already a voracious reader, David had followed up this initial interest by reading books like Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet and Lobsang Rampa’s The Rampa Story.

The first was informative. Harrer, an Austrian who had escaped from a British POW camp in India, had made his way into Tibet, and the book recounted his life as a tutor to the young Dalai Lama. It offered genuine insight into both Tibet and Buddhism.

The Rampa Story was a bit different. While Lobsang Rampa claimed to be a Tibetan holy man, he was, in fact, an unemployed surgical fitter from Devon called Cyril Hoskin. Of course, there’s no reason why a surgical fitter from Devon cannot impart great wisdom, but Hoskin’s book was a work of fiction.

However, when Bowie entered The Buddhist Society headquarters in 1965, he encountered the real deal. The man with the saffron robes and broken English was Chime YongDong Rinpoche. Born in the remote eastern Tibet region of Kham, and identified at the age of two as a reincarnated lama, he was educated at Benchen monastery from this early age. He was one of a select group of monks who went to China with the Dalai Lama for a fateful visit during which Mao Tse-tung informed them that ‘religion is poison’. Shortly afterwards China began a brutal persecution that saw Buddhist monks and nuns murdered and monasteries (including Benchen) destroyed. In 1959, Chime made his escape via Bhutan to India, eventually making his way to the UK – one of just three Buddhist lamas to do so.

Over the next two years, Chime would become Bowie’s main teacher, during which time Bowie would come to the Buddhist Society to study up to four times a week. The other two escapees who made it to the UK, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Akong Rinpoche, moved to Eskdalemuir in Scotland to set up Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Europe, where Bowie would also study.

Indeed, in 1967 Bowie travelled up to Samye Ling with a clear intention. As he later said, ‘I was within a month of having my head shaved, taking my vows, and becoming a monk.’

Was this a slight exaggeration by Bowie? We can’t be absolutely sure. Certainly there were some points in his career when he was happy to give a provocative quote to journalists in search of a headline; however, when he talked about his spiritual life in interviews he was usually serious and measured. Exactly how determined Bowie was to become a monk we’ll never know. But contemporary friends like Mary Finnigan (Bowie’s landlady for a time) and associates like journalist George Tremlett (who wrote the first biography of Bowie) note that he was extremely earnest in his studies. Indeed, when Bowie was first introduced to rising young producer Tony Visconti – a man who could potentially help his career (and went on to do so) – the pair didn’t talk about studios or demos; they bonded over Buddhism.

Visconti, who has himself retained a lifelong interest in Buddhism, confirms that Bowie’s study of the subject was genuine and deep: ‘David was definitely a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. He knew it all. He was a very curious person, a fast reader and rarely forgot information once it was stored in his head.’

WHAT BOWIE LEARNED FROM BUDDHISM

Eventually, it was Chime who talked Bowie out of becoming a monk. But this should not be taken as an indication that Bowie’s teacher thought the young man was not serious in his studies. Rather it reflected changing times. Chime often discouraged devoted students of Buddhism from becoming monks or nuns – and both he and Chögyam Trungpa later disrobed – reflecting a belief that, in the West, in the modern world, the idea of isolating yourself in a monastery was outdated and inappropriate.

And even though Bowie chose music over the monastery, there can be no doubting the impact that his studies had on the rest of his life. As he said in 1997, they left him with:

a sense of transience and change which actually became fundamental to my life and my approach to it. Not holding on to anything – not considering that there is anything that will last through one’s entire eternal life – living or dead. And it makes letting go very easy – material things or physical things.

And looking for the source of one’s own being becomes much more important. And I guess that’s been my own personal journey – trying to sort out where my spiritual bounty lies, where my thread to a universal order lies. That can become a life’s search.

The two most important ideas that Bowie took from his Buddhist studies are:

Change: that everything is transient

Looking for the source of one’s own being: that investigating your self – the journey of self-discovery – is supremely important

Of these two, the importance of change to Bowie is the most immediately obvious. He wrote one of his most famous songs about it, ‘Changes’. And his career was a dazzling succession of changes of style and character. But in The Tao of Bowie we will focus on the latter idea, looking at how Bowie undertook his journey of self-discovery and how you can pursue your own journey.

This is by no means an exclusively Buddhist idea. Quite the opposite. The importance of self-investigation is an idea that unites many of the world’s great wisdom traditions, even some of those that often find themselves in conflict with each other. Bowie went on to study many of these other wisdom traditions to refine his own personal spiritual code, which guided him through his struggles to eventual happiness.

Bowie retold the story of his meeting with Chime on several occasions. On one of these, he emphasized that he simply couldn’t have allowed himself to hear Chime’s gentle enquiry ‘You are looking for me?’ as a question. ‘I needed it to be a statement,’ he said. But why was Bowie looking for a guru? Why did he need a guru? Because at the tender age of eighteen, he’d already begun what he would later describe as his ‘daunting spiritual search’. He was already looking for the source of his own being. He knew from his reading that the Buddhist journey of self-discovery could lead him to a place where his life would make more sense, where he would understand more about who he really was and how he fitted into the world. In Chime, he saw a man who might provide him with some answers.

Yet, instead of providing Bowie with answers, in fact, Chime offered him three questions:

Who are you?

Where are you?

Where are you going?

THE LIFE LESSON: START YOUR JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY NOW

Like Neo in the film The Matrix, our ‘reality’ is not as real as we think. Crucially, our normal sense of ‘self’ – of who we are – is flawed. The journey to discover our true self is at the heart of our ability to live life to the full.

Bowie had encountered an extraordinary human being. As a reincarnate lama, Chime is a venerated Buddhist master who has received transmissions (teachings) that have been handed down personally from teacher to student over many centuries. But, while he may be intricately linked to an ancient tradition, Chime was also pragmatic about his situation in the mid-1960s. Having arrived in a foreign land where his venerated status back in Tibet was utterly irrelevant to 99.9 per cent of the population, he ended up working in a cafe to make ends meet.

He once recalled a conversation with a co-worker in the cafe (who either misheard, misunderstood or deliberately mispronounced his name):

‘So, Jimmy, what is this Buddhism?’

‘Buddhism is the end of suffering.’

‘Oh, Jimmy, I need that Buddhism.’

Well, yes. We could all use a little less suffering.

Buddhism – certainly in its Westernized form – is not a religion in the sense that we commonly understand the word. There is no God to worship, and there are no commandments to follow. It’s much closer to a form of psychology, a method of working with the mind.

In essence, Buddha noted that people tend to suffer, to be unhappy, dissatisfied and disappointed. And he suggested a method for relieving these symptoms. He said it worked for him, and suggested others tried it too.

There are many forms of Buddhism but, because we know his teachers, we can be clear on which version of Buddhism Bowie studied. He was educated in the Kagyu tradition and the absolute heart of this method is meditation. Indeed, the Kagyu lineage is often referred to as ‘the practising lineage’ (‘practice’ being a common term for meditation).

How does meditation help to reduce suffering? By offering a means to self-investigation and self-discovery: a way to form a more accurate understanding of your self and the world around you.

We know from other students that Chime liked to offer people new to the discipline those three questions:

Who are you?

Where are you?

Where are you going?

They may not, at first glance, seem that powerful. But whether you’re interested in Buddhism or not, these are three of the most important questions we can ask ourselves.

As a coach, I encourage my clients to step back from their day-to-day problems, issues and challenges to address these three fundamental questions. The more clearly you can answer them, the more skilfully you will be able to navigate all aspects of your life.

And yet most people hardly spend any time thinking about them at all. As Jim Rohn, the motivational author and speaker known as ‘the godfather of personal development’, once wrote: ‘most people spend more time planning their vacations than they do planning their lives’.

Is that true for you? It quite possibly is.

Now that you think about it, does it seem ever so slightly odd? I think it does. Especially as, down the centuries, a succession of very wise people have advised us of the benefits of self-examination and self-discovery.

As well as in his Buddhist studies, Bowie will have encountered the same idea in his reading of the philosopher Nietzsche and the psychiatrist Carl Jung, and his voracious examination of the Gnostic gospels. And beyond the wisdom traditions that we know Bowie explored, the injunction to ‘know thyself’ is a central idea in many others too, from Socratic philosophy to Confucianism, from Hinduism to the I-Ching, from Christianity (‘The kingdom of Heaven is within you’ – Jesus) to Islam (‘Those who know themselves know their Lord’ – Mohammad).

Whether these traditions are based on the idea of a God – or of many Gods or of no God at all – they all agree that the best thing we can do is to examine our selves. The fact that philosophies and religions that disagree so violently over so many issues all find a place of agreement here must surely mean there is something very special indeed about self-examination.

So why do most of us avoid looking deeply into who we are and tackling the big questions about our lives? Perhaps because we’re all too busy these days to take the time to contemplate such weighty matters, too busy with the short term to think about the bigger picture; or perhaps because we don’t know how to answer them – so we avoid even thinking about them.

But if you’ve read this far in the book, then you have at least a nagging suspicion that you deserve to carve out the time it takes to tackle these questions. This book will help you do so.

We will answer them on a straightforward level, working through some simple exercises to get a clearer picture of who you are, how you became the person you are today, what really matters to you, and how you can live a life aligned with your values and filled with meaning and purpose.

And we’ll also answer them on a deeper level, using meditation as our primary method of enquiry to dig further into who you really are, to clear our way through the delusions that inflict human beings, and to understand the true nature of self, so that you can live with less suffering and increased happiness.

WHAT’S REALLY REAL?

Buddhism starts with a core idea that our current view of the world is flawed. If we wanted to draw an analogy from popular culture, we would look to The Matrix. In this film Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) reveals to Neo (Keanu Reeves) that the reality in which he has lived his entire life isn’t reality at all, but a completely constructed delusion.

Our situation on encountering the Buddhist view of the world is much like Neo encountering the Matrix – with one crucial difference. Neo only had to discover that his view of the world outside him was completely wrong; Buddhism tells us that our view of the world inside us is flawed too.

‘Who are you?’ is a much deeper question than it might at first appear. When a Buddhist master asks ‘who are you?’ they’re inviting a more profound answer than ‘an accountant from Leeds’ or ‘a self-starter who loves animals’. They want you to address the fundamental questions of what exactly it is that has been born into your body; how you form your sense of ‘self’; where exactly this ‘self’ resides; and how this ‘self’ (whatever it is) relates to everyone and everything else.

Buddhism questions our conventional sense of the self in three crucial ways. It suggests that:

1. there is no fixed or permanent self: like everything else in the universe, you are in constant flux.

2. there is no boss in there: no one who is fully in control of things, as we would like to believe we are.

3. there is no separate self: you are inextricably linked with the rest of the universe.

The first of these ideas is the easiest to assimilate – we know, for example, that we’re ‘a different person’ when we’re hungry, tired, stressed or drunk.

The second is disquieting. And the third one just seems plain wrong: of course we’re separate; we can see that. But, as we will examine in Chapter 8, allowing that all these three claims may be true will further reduce your anxiety and suffering and further increase your happiness. So it’s worth at least attempting the thought experiment that they might be correct.

This will be our attitude throughout The Tao of Bowie. We’re not pursuing any grand truth. We’re simply trying out ideas and methods to find some that work for you. This is true to the spirit of the Buddha. Once, in a debate with other religious leaders about exactly what doctrine was right or wrong (documented in The Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters), Buddha explained that he really wasn’t interested in such arguments: ‘I look upon the judgement of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of dragons.’

He was interested only in what worked – in what relieved suffering. He had identified the causes of human suffering and a method to alleviate it. He wanted to communicate it on a simple basis: it works for me, try it and see if it works for you. Over the centuries a complex religion has been built up around this simple idea, but in recent years, Western Buddhists – including those within the Kagyu lineage – have dismantled some of this complexity. Western Buddhists are encouraged, as Bowie was, to dip in, try it and take what they think works for them. No need to believe in God or demons; no need to light candles, recite prayers and perform prostrations.

Just take the method that has been shown over the centuries to make people happier, and see if it works for you.

So let’s start that process now. Because, while The Tao of Bowie is in part a book about Bowie and in part a book about the collection of ideas that he used to shape his life, it is primarily a book about how these ideas can help you on your path through life.

YOUR PATH

As you work your way through the exercises in this book, meditation will be a core element of your toolbox, so let’s start by getting acquainted with how (and why) we meditate.

The form of Buddhism that Bowie studied – the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism – is also, as we have noted, known as ‘the practising lineage’, underlining the vital role that practising (another term for meditating) plays in it. So this is a natural place for us to start.

Exercise: Breathing meditation

We’re going to do this for about five minutes. You can set a timer if you want, or just choose to stop after what seems like five minutes to you. The exact time doesn’t matter.

Sit comfortably. The state you’re aiming for is often termed ‘relaxed alertness’. What does that mean? Well, you want to be comfortable, but not so comfortable that you fall asleep. And you want to be alert, but not so alert that you’re stressed or rigid.

Try this: sit up straight and imagine you are a puppet with a string coming out of the top of your head, and that someone is gently pulling the string up so that your head is held aloft but your shoulders don’t go up with it. Keep your shoulders relaxed. If that visualization helps, use it. If it doesn’t, forget it immediately and just sit comfortably.

Close your eyes. Focus on your breath. What does that mean? Well, simply become aware of the fact that you’re breathing. Notice each breath as it comes in. And as it goes out. Tune in to the rhythm of your breath. The in breath and the out breath. And the next in breath, and the next out breath. And so on, and so on.

That’s the whole thing. Do that for approximately five minutes, then open your eyes.

If that was the first time you’ve meditated, or even if it wasn’t, some thoughts or questions might have occurred to you.

Question: How do I know if I’m focusing on my breath properly?

Some people notice the breath at the nostrils. Some people feel it more clearly at the back of the throat. Some people focus on the breath by following the rising and falling of their belly. If you find the whole idea of focusing on your breath a bit odd, it can help to place a hand on your belly and then simply focus on the rhythmic movement of your hand.

Question: Why am I focusing on my breath anyway?

There are two ways of looking at this one:

1. No reason at all. What we’re trying to do is focus on the present moment. But that’s a bit abstract. We use the breath as an anchor, an easier thing to focus on. But really the breath doesn’t actually matter.

2. We’re focusing on the breath because the breath is vitally important to our lives and yet we routinely ignore it. This is a precious moment of checking in on a crucial bodily function. Not checking in a medical way, just in a way that involves curiosity and gratitude for the astonishing processes that keep us alive.

Choose whichever answer you like.

Question: Why is staying in the present moment so important?

Again, two reasons:

1. Because the past and the future are the home of what Chime called ‘unnecessary thoughts’. We spend a lot of our time not in the present moment. Instead, we spend it worrying about the future and thinking about the past. Psychologists have a term for this: ‘Rehearse Review Regret’. Note that this is not ‘Rehearse, Review, Have A Huge Party To Celebrate All Your Past Successes’. No, it’s ‘Rehearse Review Regret’. When we look back at the past, we tend to focus on the things that went wrong. And when we look into the future, we tend to focus on the things that might go wrong.

It’s a useful human capacity to be able to look so far into the past and the future. It means that we have the potential to learn from our past actions and plan for the future. Occasionally we do this. But often, we just feel bad about stuff that happened in the past (without learning anything from it) and worry about the future (without making any positive preparation to avert the disasters we’re imagining). It’s pretty clear that all this is the very definition of ‘unnecessary thoughts’. If we can carve out some time in the present moment, we can temporarily rid ourselves of these unnecessary and unhelpful thoughts.

2. Because the present moment is the home of self-discovery. One of our core methods of self-discovery in the exercises throughout this book is simply to stay with things as they are: to counter the normal human instinct to run away from reality into endless distractions. In order to stay with things as they are, we need to be able to stay in the present because… well, because that’s where things as they are are.

Question: What if I fall asleep?

No problem. If when you shut your eyes and focus on your breath for a few minutes, you immediately fall asleep – or want to – then you are clearly not getting enough sleep. You’ve just checked in with how you feel in the present moment, and discovered that how you feel in the present moment is exhausted. So, if you can, go and have a nap.

However, if you always fall asleep when you meditate, clearly you’re not going to get any meditating done, so try meditating at a time when you’re not so sleepy. If you can’t find a time when you don’t want to fall asleep when you’re meditating, then this is most likely a sleep problem not a meditation problem. Take a long, hard look at your sleep regime.

Exercise: Noticing thoughts

Now we’re going to meditate again. But this time we’re going to notice our thoughts.

Unless you’ve been meditating for a very long time indeed, you will have noticed your thoughts in the first meditation. Although the instruction to focus on your breath sounds simple enough, human beings find it virtually impossible to do this. We close our eyes, we focus on the first breath, we focus on the second breath. And then the next thing we know, we find ourselves thinking about what we’re going to have for dinner tonight, or worrying about a work colleague who we believe stitched us up, or trying to remember the name of a minor character in a sitcom we watched ten years ago. By the time we realize that we’re not focusing on our breath, we might be on the tenth separate thought in a long cascading chain of thoughts that’s gone on for several minutes.

This is what we do.

More correctly, this is what our minds do.