Quest Magazine

Printed in the Winter 2014issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "Presidents Diary" Quest  102. 1 (Winter 2014): pg. 34-35

Every year July is a busy month for us. Historically it has been the month when we have our Summer National Convention (SNC). Since we hosted the Dalai Lama’s visit to Chicago in 2011, we have made it a goal to use our Olcott national center to host one or more international events each year. This year we were at it again.

Drawing on the words of Mahatma Gandhi, our SNC theme this year was “Be the Change.” We brought together a truly impressive array of presenters to go into the concepts and practices that support genuine self-transformation. Our presenters were Sister Gabrielle Uhlein, a Franciscan nun who teaches around the world about Christian mysticism; Vic Hao Chin, past president of the TS in the Philippines and founder of the Golden Link School (now Golden Link College);Fernando de Torrijos, longtime TSA member and one of the world's most respected trainers of medical professionals in the practice of mindfulness; our own Maria Parisen, director of the Krotona School; Dorothy Bel lof TS Australia, an educator and international speaker; and Cynthia Overweg, TSA member and former foreign correspondent. (Cynthia's article on Milarepa appears in this issue.) Attendance at the convention exceeded the numbers from our Dalai Lama year. The convention had a distinctly international flair this year because of the many members from overseas who were also attending the Theosophical Order of Service (TOS) event that immediately followed our convention.

On the day the SNC ended, the TOS international conference began. More than forty people from eighteen countries attended. Historically, the event was the third international planning meeting, two of which we have hosted here at Olcott. The sessions were coordinatedby TOS international secretary Diana Dunningham Chapotin and Carolyn Harrod of TOS Australia, who both came early and stayed after the meetings ended. Among those attending was TS international vice-president Mahendra Singhal and his wife, Sashi. This was the third time this year that he and I had been together first in India at the annual convention, then in July in Brazil at that section's international school, and again at Olcott. Barring something unforeseen, we will make it four when I travel to India in December for the General Council and Convention at Adyar.

The TOS conference began with a ceremonial tree planting. One of the projects of the TOS/USA has supported war veterans services by soliciting sponsors for memorial tree planting. This newest tree on the campus was planted in memory of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, American Civil War veteran and cofounder of the TS.

A week after the two conferences ended, my wife, Lily, my daughter, Angelique, and I were off to camp Indralaya. We were going to attend the Connections program, which takes place annually in August. For the second year in a row I had been asked to conduct the discussion portion of the program. Just to remind you, Indralaya is one of the Theosophical camps founded by Fritz and Dora Kunz and others. It is located on Orcas Island, Washington, in Puget Sound and has been operating for eighty-seven years.

The Connections program is a wonderful model of community. Each year it brings together participants aged eight to eighty. A number of families are now into their fourth generation attending programs at the camp. The daily rhythm for the program is like an ideal day. The day begins with meditation for those so inclined, followed by breakfast. All meals are prepared by an all volunteer kitchen staff, and at each meal some foods from the camp’s garden are featured. After breakfast, people go off to work on one of the various projects that have been planned for the session. This year one of the popular projects for the younger crowd was the demolition of one of the cabins. It was surprising just how soon it was before nothing but the foundation remained. There is always work in the garden. Another rehab project was started on one of the cabins. I helped a small crew to erect a greenhouse in the garden, which will make it possible to get an early start on the summer's crops. After work we came together under the apple trees for the morning discussion—my part. Then lunch; more work; down time; dinner; and an evening campfire, which featured music, entertainment, and on one night some old-school sweaty dancing.

Over the Labor Day weekend Lily and I headed in the opposite direction to our eastern jewel  Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center, our Theosophical camp in Craryville, New York. The Northeast Federation of the TSA does an annual program at this time. This year the program teamed me up with Michael Gomes, our foremost Theosophical historian and all-around fun guy. It was an excellent program in a truly beautiful location. It was especially good for me because I had just had surgery on my shoulder one week earlier. It was a healing experience to sit by the stream, go to sleep at night to the sound of the waterfall below my cabin, and eat meals picked hours before from the abundant garden. It also did not hurt to have Carolyn Wheeler, camp manager along with her husband, Loren, do Therapeutic Touch on me in the evening.

On September 7 we had our annual big event at Olcott TheosoFest. This is the day each year that we invite the community to come and visit. Many people around the area look forward to it. This year 1700 people came. Ninety vendors with all types of services and products set up their stalls. Throughout the day we presented meditation programs and talks on Theosophy and related subjects. Over the course of the day almost fifty talks were presented. A number of our vendors this year sold jewelry and artwork. There was Indian food, pizza, ice cream. There were Tibetan Buddhist groups, Baha’is, healers of all types, nutritional therapists, sound therapies, and children's schools sharing information. We had a variety of Tarot readers, astrologers, and psychics. Again this year we had our well-attended Kids Korner, where parents and kids had a full day of activities everything from tai chi to Therapeutic Touch, from herbal remedies to belly dancing and more.

Later in September I traveled to Houston, Texas. We have three highly functional groups in the Houston area the 102-year-old Houston Lodge, the West Houston Study Center, and the Vietnamese Study Center. All of them came together and hosted my visit in each of their locations over the three days I visited. My visit concluded with the Vietnamese group, hosted at the home of Van and Lien Ly. That meeting was the cherry on top of the sundae. Seventy people attended—all of the women in colorful traditional attire. Before the meeting we had a Vietnamese vegetarian meal, and it required a great deal of self-control to keep from overindulging. Before leaving I told them I would be happy to return any time.

The month ended with seventeen members coming to the national headquarters from around the country for the Olcott Experience (OE). Although we have not done it for the past couple of years, the OE is an opportunity for active members in groups across the country to learn about the people and resources available to them at Olcott. It is also an opportunity to meet and get to know others and to share ideas and issues. David Bruce, our national secretary and head of the education department, organized the program.

As I write, we are midway through October. This month found me in Atlanta, Georgia, for a weekend program. I also traveled back to the fair state of Texas to visit with two more groups— in New Braunfels and in San Antonio. The group in New Braunfels is less than two years old and is a fascinating mix of serious students from a variety of backgrounds.

The San Antonio group is another 102-year-old branch. Apparently back in 1911 Annie Besant made a visit to the area, and as happened everywhere she went, people joined and groups appeared. San Antonio and Houston are the two remaining.

From San Antonio I traveled to New York City. This visit had little to do with TSA work. I was there for my mother's ninety-fifth birthday. My visit was too short to stop by one of the three tai chi classes she attends each week, or follow up on her voracious reading, or help in her gardening. It was just a wonderful opportunity to join with family and friends who came from around the country to celebrate a life well-lived. I do hope the secret to her longevity and clarity is genetic.

Tim Boyd

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Gardner, Amy. "A Serpentine Path" Quest  102. 1 (Winter 2014): pg. 27-31.

By Amy Gardner

Hearing about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky for many years, I admit to envying her relationships with various masters. Despite being suspicious of those who claim to be gurus, I would welcome some higher being from a transpersonal plane to help me see beyond my limited worldview into Truth. Though I recognize that HPB's psychic and cerebral gifts far exceed mine, there is surely a wise one uniquely suited to tutor someone at my level of development. It seems completely logical that in pairing up with some more modest mentor, I could, like HPB and her adepts, contribute something relevant to life at this historical moment. 

Seeking to realize the connection with such a being, I have lately taken a moment during evening meditation to imagine meeting a spirit helper. I visualize befriending a great soul who would embrace me as an acolyte or apprentice. This saintly being would facilitate a shift in my way of experiencing reality and convey thoughts nuanced for our time. In turn, I would share these beneficial ideas with the world. 

Coincidentally, after ruminating on finding a secret teacher for several weeks, my friend Edward casually asks, "Would you like to take a meditative journey to meet your spirit guides?" 

Astounded, I wonder to myself, "Am I that transparent? How does he know about my private despair and longing?" Within a moment I reply, "How about Friday night?" 

Edward is an incredibly grounded seventy-two-year-old doctor of metaphysics who looks like a healthy fifty-something. Happily retired, he now makes a little extra income as a qigong instructor, history enactor, and lecturer. He listens more than he talks. When he speaks, his deep, resonant voice transports his audiences to distant realms. 

I completely trust him to prepare the somewhat elaborate conjuring ceremony, recite the proper mantras and invocation, take me to the meeting place, gently hand me over to my spirit guides, and bring me back whole. 

So when we meet in my living room without as much as a candle or a black tablecloth, I am a little disappointed. But I settle into my wooden chair across from Edward and close my eyes. In his low, soothing voice, Edward begins a guided meditation that starts with emptying my mind and body of thought and tension. From my feet through my scalp, he uses his voice to lull me into relaxation. Breathing fresh air into every vessel of my being, I become calm and alert. After a quiet pause, Edward invites me to take an inner journey.  

We go to the foyer out the front door, where I see his spotless white Cadillac. We get into the car, back out the driveway and into the street, and proceed north. A couple of miles up the road, Edward turns down an old road overgrown with grasses. The grass opens up to sand, and soon we see the ocean. We park at a turnaround and get out of the car. The sky is blue and filled with white gulls cawing above our heads. The shoreline waves ebb and flow rhythmically. We leave our shoes at the car and walk north into the salty damp breeze. My feet leave depressions in the cold, wet sand as we progress along the water's edge. 

Soon we encounter a hidden path into the trees. Edward beckons me deeper into the shady forest. The forest becomes dense with long vines and ancient trees. Dew clings to the leaves, and the place smells fecund as we trample fallen leaves into the earth. After a few moments the darkness lifts as we come upon a glade that opens to an ancient stone temple. The building is round, with seven colored steps that lead up to a door to an upper chamber. 

The first step is red. When I step onto this platform red light rises up my body from my feet through my crown. Waiting here, fully imbued with red, I experience the unique energetic vibration of this color. After a few moments, I step up onto the orange step. Again, orange light beams up my entire being and out through my head. I take it in until Edward tells me to go to the third step and feel the yellow surge as it permeates my body from my feet through my scalp. I go to the fourth step, and green light seeps up my feet through my head into the ether beyond. At the fifth step, I stand in an upsurge of blue light. At the sixth, indigo light blasts through my feet and up beyond my head. Finally, I reach the top, violet platform, and violet light rushes through me. Feeling a strange, luminous clarity, I approach the stone door, and it opens with a groan.  

My eyes grow accustomed to the purple glow inside the sanctuary. The room shines with the glow of a violet ring of fire. Edward stands outside the violet fire and turns away so as not to disturb my encounter. "You will step through the fire into the ring. Once you are there, take a moment to make your request. You probably came with an intention but you can ask for anything. Then wait. Something will happen." 

Alone now and a little uncertain what to do next without Edward's guidance, I step through the violet flame into the ring at the center of the temple. "Thank you for listening," I say silently. "I am here to meet my spirit guide." 

Immediately a large variegated snake appears in the ring. I am speechless. I want to evolve, commune with the ethereal planes, but instead I conjure this evolutionary throwback. Snake, sensing my disappointment, seems to try to impress me by slithering into a figure eight, a great ouroboros, then a coiling spiral. Seeing that the shape-shifting does nothing for me, Snake draws me into its mind, and as one creature we squeeze through a tiny gap in the marble floor. 

Caught unaware, I gasp as we descend into the bowels of the temple. Here the dark cells and small plank beds conjure up some dismal past reeking of mortification of the flesh. I can sense the disenchantment of interred acolytes who lost touch with life in the glade. Like an eerie medieval novel, the chambers and religious relics thrill and repulse me. I want to investigate, but Snake undulates onward. 

Continuing on through the basement, we brush against occasional tree roots that reach down and slowly break apart the dank, dripping stone foundation. Eventually we find a long tunnel that leads to a mossy stream. We enter the water at the bank, and it carries us into the sea. 

Rolling with the waves, we reach a drop-off into dark blue water. We swim along the rocky ocean shoreline into deep-sea lava sculptures and underwater caves. Light streams down from above as we swim up along the underwater cliffs, higher and higher until we break through the surface of the water and fly. 

As we soar upward, I take in the view. The sky above and sea below are pristine blue. The azure waters grow lighter toward the beach. Beyond the shore I see the forest and the roof of the temple in the dale. Higher we fly until, off in the distance, island formations enter the scene. Out of curiosity, we detour back to the island to explore this world in miniature. Before slithering into the cove, we rest and warm up in the sun along with hundreds of other colorful flowers, birds, and sea creatures. We all inhale the humid air and drink in the sun's bright rays through our peculiar bodies. 

Then I hear Edward: "And now it is time to say goodbye. Thank your guide and . . . " 

Of course Snake and I are still out on some tropical island in the ocean. Quickly we fly across the sea, dive through the waves, swim down into the lava caves, through the tunnel, past the subterranean cells, and up through the floor into the violet circle of fire. 

"Step through the fire and the temple door will open for you," instructs Edward. I jump through the flame and look back, but Snake is gone. 

Edward continues, "Now stand on the violet step, feel the color drain from you back into the temple step." Slowly I walk down each temple step as the violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red drain from my body into their respective steps.  

We walk away from the temple into the dark and clammy forest until the sky breaks through and the ocean appears once again. We walk along the beach, back to the white Cadillac. Looking out for one more breathtaking view, we get back into the car, spin around the cul-de-sac and drive back along the dirt road. We get back on the main drive and return to my house, where we park and walk back through the front door into the foyer. 

Back in my living room, Edward asks if anyone showed up at the temple. I feel a little apprehensive about telling him that my spirit guide is of the earthly realm. The guide that is crawling into my consciousness has remained relatively unchanged since before the dinosaurs. 

"Yes," I say looking at the floor. "My spirit guide is a giant snake, a serpent, a terrestrial, aquatic, and flying creature with geometric markings like a magic carpet." As I speak, I feel like I am just about as far from progressing along the evolutionary continuum as a human can get. 

Edward senses my confusion and nods while he looks at me silently. Soon he says, "You have to explore what snakes mean to you." Considering the common associations with the Bible's Satan and Freud's sexually repressed Victorian dreamers, I am a little embarrassed to talk about anything.  

Wanting to change the subject and regroup, I move into host mode. "Would you like to stay for dinner?" 

"I have to get home," he says. We smile and say goodbye. He gets into his white Cadillac"this time on the earthly plane"and drives away. 

Alone with my memories of the trip, I realize that I have a lot of preconceived ideas about snakes that tilt toward the negative: Satan, temptation, seduction, venomous strikes, knowledge of good and evil. I have trained myself to consider associations such as transformation, rebirth, and eternity, but these are not my first ones.  

Less than a hundred miles away from my house, Hopi people secretly revive the sacred Snake Dance. Certainly the spirit of Theosophy demands that I investigate my prejudice and explore the complexity of the symbol that animates so many religions. No true Theosophist would ignorantly reject a being that appeared during meditation. 

Over the next few days, I start to remember my actual experiences with snakes. As a child, I enjoyed shocking my friends by catching striped garden snakes in my suburban neighborhood in Minnesota. In school, some of the more annoying kids would play off my last name, calling me "Gardner Snake." Out in eastern Arizona, I went into an abandoned farmhouse and met a rattlesnake blocking the threshold as I tried to get out. Some time ago, my family realized we share our property with a stealthy seven-foot-long gopher snake that appears on cool autumn days. Despite their unfortunate reputation, I have never had a negative encounter with a snake. 

I have seen snakes sidewinding across the land, coiling in a spiral, and raising their upper bodies to get a better view. My mouse, rabbit, and gopher populations are in check because of these carnivores. Despite their obvious benefit to the ecosystem and their reclusive ways, people in my village seem to go out of their way to squash the creatures as they quietly warm themselves on the road at dawn. What is it that my people are afraid of? 

I decide to consult HPB's Secret Doctrine to better understand the multivalent reality of Snake. Within her vast exploration of the symbol, I am especially alert for those references that intersect with my experiences and the intuitive insights that arose through my meditation. 

The idea that strikes me first is the Serpent's role in navigating dualism. I have struggled to find some metaphorical truth in the idea that my human ancestors ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge and thereby discovered good and evil or duality in general. Certainly attaining knowledge of the world requires one to observe reality from afar to understand causes and effects. Through observation, I have come to know that the beneficial aspects of snakes come with fangs. When I notice something slithering near my feet or hear the warning rattle, I instinctively jump away, then investigate the facts. 

Yet the gifts of analysis, scientific discovery, judgment, and so forth lead to alienation from the whole. We learned to think scientifically through dissociating. Snake continues to receive blame for the human ability to act as "separator of the ONE into various contrasted aspects" (Blavatsky, 2:246).  

But I am beginning to learn that differentiation is a tool, not the whole truth. Snake as the dark and the light coexisting is a wisdom teaching that I am noticing in my daily observations and interactions with the world. Are cheap abundant foods, freeways, and automatic tellers all "good?" Are fossil fuel depletion, global warming, and mortality all "bad?" Positive and negative aspects come as two ends of the same stick. HPB says as much when she focuses her gaze upon the entwined snakes of the staff carried by gods who travel between death and life. Such domains may not be as differentiated as they seem. 

That the Serpents were ever the emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the god of wisdom, with Hermes, and so on . . . The Serpent has ever been the symbol of the adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding with the caduceus the souls of the dead to Hades and even raising the dead to life with it, is simply a very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: the black and the white magic. (Blavatsky, 2:327) 

Snake reminds me to perceive the connection between opposites: earthly and heavenly, material and ethereal, positive and negative. The cure for what ails a person or society is also a poison. Wealth and poverty writhe together. High-tech labor reducers and complexity coevolve.

Navigating the truth of the one in the many requires the ability to discern the whole of a conundrum. It is a delusion to imagine life with only one aspect of a duality. Neither good nor bad, the Serpent connects what humans pull apart.

In human nature, evil denotes only the polarity of matter and Spirit, a struggle for life between the two manifested Principles in Space and Time, which principles are one per se, inasmuch as they are rooted in the Absolute. In Kosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved. The operations of the two contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are necessary to each other "mutually interdependent" "in order that both should live."  If one is arrested, the action of the other will become immediately self-destructive. (Blavatsky, 1:366) 

In my pursuit of perfection, of being "good" or successful, how often have I unwittingly sent my world out of balance? Despite my apparently inconsequential life, I know that my anxious pursuit of knowledge, justice, and making a contribution continually disturb some cosmic equilibrium. Struggling to conceal my dark side"my ordinary humanness and creaturely condition"I become self-destructive. The process is so apparent now.

As the days unfold, I realize that this mysterious visitor has inspired me to burrow into and deeply experience the formerly mundane world around me. Instead of wanting a particular outcome, I am rediscovering the astonishing quality of life in its raw revelation. The occult secrets that I aspire to know crawl around naked in the garden and the grocery store. Toads, dragonflies, hawks, trees, and even traffic jams pulsate with shocking vitality.

Weeks later, I notice that my need to meet a tutor, guru, or adept has thoroughly passed. The longing for a relationship with someone smarter than me is gone. I no longer bemoan my limited worldview or seeming irrelevance in an age of disposables, drones, and iPhones. The obsession with making some worthy contribution or changing the outward reality does not grip me. The world around me has become strangely fascinating. I am alive and aware.

Tonight, while I am reviewing my story, the summer monsoons hit my home. Great torrents of rain destroy the gardens, flood the subterranean shade structures, and return my orderly paradise to chaos. I write now by candlelight, listening to the hail pound the skylights. In my mind, I hear Snake hiss, then mock with forked tongue at the notion that I could create a landscape that could defy the reality of creation and destruction.

The rain eases up as the darkness descends. In the distance, bright jagged lightning continues to strike at the Sandia Mountains. Electricity has gone untethered. I put on my rain gear and walk into the deep water out my front door. Yes, I am wary, because her den has flooded too. Snake could be anywhere.

Sources

Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. Two volumes. N.p.: Theosophy Trust, 2006; http://turtlegang.org/history/ metaphysical/The_Secret_Doctrine_Vol_1.pdf;
http://turtlegang.org/history/metaphysical/The_Secret_Doctrine_Vol_2.pdf; accessed July 31, 2013.

Amy Gardner has a passion for exploring world religions, mythologies, and symbols. When she is not building, sculpting, and gardening, Amy makes her living as a writer. She lives with her partner in Corrales, New Mexico.

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Levine, Arlene Gay. "Make A Joyful Noise: How I Learned to Meditate amidst the Mayhem" Quest  102. 1 (Winter 2014): pg. 24-25.

By Arlene Gay Levine

Do you imagine the universe is agitated?

Go into the desert at night and look out at the stars.

This practice should answer the question.

—Lao-Tzu

From childhood on, noise had been a problem for me. Actually,"problem" seemed an inadequate word to describe my inability to deal with unpleasant sounds. Because I needed to live in a very loud (and getting louder all the time) world, I learned to fake it.

When I was a beginning teacher, the deafening screams of the students in the schoolyard at recess became a stretching on the rack for the nerve endings in my ears, so acute and sensitive is my hearing. Because I loved those kids, their joyous exuberance was something I simply learned to tolerate, often with the dubious aid of a daily dose of aspirin.

I could go on with countless and often bizarre instances of my trials and tribulations with unruly sounds, or even natural ones, like the crunch of someone chewing, which tested my abilities at patience and decorum beyond all reason. Often, despite my best efforts, I literally had to leave a room or use earplugs or any number of schemes and devices to manage my unfortunate sensitivity to sound.

However, in one area of my life I ran into an insurmountable roadblock: when I first became a student of yoga and began meditation practice. All the right steps were taken. I slowed my breath, counted the exhalations, finally descending into the Silence in which I was so grateful to swim, and then any clamor, no matter how insignificant, would send me crashing back to the world in a furious wave of anger.

The precious minutes that had been set aside for meditation were wasted on calming myself down, all the while decrying my inability to ignore the din, with an equal vehemence aimed at its source. I tried to let the sounds pass like birds or clouds against the backdrop of a big blue-sky mind, but it simply would not work.

That is, until I realized that, in fact, I was meditating very successfully on one thing: the noise! It also came to my attention that the increasingly rowdy world we were now all forced to tolerate had become a dilemma for many more people. This discovery inspired me to write a poem:

Where Will It End?

I read and reread my poem, feeling I had captured the beginnings of a burgeoning cultural crisis, particularly for tightly packed urban dwellers like myself. More importantly, during this editing process, the light of a great paradox became clear to me: the very things that cause us pain are the paving stones on the road to our liberation. The cacophony keeping me from the bliss of a tranquil mind provided both the motivation and focus necessary to learn how to meditate and thus get in touch with my Higher Self.

It was around that time I read about a particular meditation technique called "Developing the Witness,"  whereby one is present in the moment to everything that is going on. It did not matter whether it was a bodily ache, an annoying thought, or, of course, the symphony of a garbage truck rumbling by on the street below, replete with squeaking brakes and crashing cans. As I began to note and name what was occurring the  cramping of my leg, a tickle at the end of my nose,the roar of a jet overhead, some strident chatter wafting in the window from a passerby on a cell phone—I could actually sit more benevolently with these discomforts by observing them in a neutral way.

I did not need to cling to the noise or whatever interference I became aware of, did not need to develop it in my mind. Feelings would arise, and I could simply be with them in the now, without attachment. I became the witness. As I once heard it said, I could "leave the risings in the risings." The objective nature of the practice did wonders for me, bestowing a new and welcome inner repose, but I still had a long way to go. It was one thing to achieve a detached state in the privacy of my cross-legged posture at home during practice and quite another to do it out in the workaday world. 

I had begun to tame my mind and along with it accommodate myself more easily to intrusive noise; somehow my heart lagged behind. Still, synchronicities now started arriving more frequently in my life. While introducing me to Self, my ongoing meditation practice also made me less preoccupied with disruptive ego driven thoughts and more aware of intuitive feelings. These pointed me toward the unknown, toward opportunities for growth I might have missed before. 

On vacation in a small lake community in Connecticut, I urged my husband to stop our car to browse through a book sale at a lovely old church. As I perused the rows of books, my eye was caught by an unassuming pamphlet describing various ways to develop a joyful heart."OK," I thought,"this one's for me." During the rest of our stay, the booklet remained packed away with other mementos of our trip. I got around to picking up my little treasure about a week later. Back in the city and annoyed by some inconsiderate new neighbors, I randomly opened to a page.

It described a practice called metta, or loving-kindness meditation. I have learned various versions of it since then, but this simple one began by visualizing, in your heart center, an image of yourself and tenderly holding it in your heart while repeating,"May I be well, may I be happy, may I be filled with loving-kindness."You can then, in turn, place your loved ones in your heart, do the same for each, progressing eventually to someone with whom there is conflict, and expand your compassionate heart even to them. In go my noisy neighbors!

I wish I could tell you that I was miraculously able to spread the love that had been radiating through me at the beginning of my metta practice to these boisterous folks immediately, showering the Godseed within their hearts with loving-kindness blessings. Alas, that day and very many to follow, I had no luck. However, I am persistent, like seed that grows in the womb of the earth, thrusting its way through frozen ground to one day bloom in spring.

The desire to make peace with my intense noise sensitivity gave me a goal: to have a tranquil center no matter how intrusive the world, no matter how loud. Out of this particular darkness, I welcomed the light of loving-kindness and compassion into my life, invited it to purify my intolerance to noise and those that made it. As the grain of sand irritates the oyster to create a pearl, so my practice transformed my noise sensitivity.

Arlene Gay Levine , author of Thirty-Nine Ways to Open Your Heart: An Illuminated Meditation (Conari Press) and Movie Life (Finishing Line Press), has had poetry and prose appear in many venues, including The New York Times, an off-Broadway show, and on radio. She lives in New York City, where she tends a garden of words, roses, and herbs. Her article"Make A Joyful Noise: How I Learned to Meditate amidst the Mayhem"appeared in Quest, Spring 2013. Visit her Web site at www.arlenegaylevine.com/.

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Desteno, David. "The Morality" Quest  102. 1 (Winter 2014): pg. 22-23.

By David Desteno

Meditation is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory, and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of "mindfulness" training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership, and productivity. 

This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there's a bit of a disconnect between the  perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren't of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, "I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering." For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another. 

But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect"”the reduction of suffering"”empirically demonstrable? 

To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited thirty-nine people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned twenty of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining nineteen were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course. 

After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention, and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants' behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.

When a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room"”who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us"”ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight? 

The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats"”an  admittedly disheartening fact"”the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress"”what psychologists call the bystander effect"”reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.

Although we don't yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation's documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost inone's own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation's ability to dissolve the artificial social  istinctions"”ethnicity, religion, ideology, and the like"”that divide us. 

Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson, and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others' distress"”areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person's degree of felt associations with others. 

 David Desteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Truth about Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.