Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

This ancient Russian folktale will help you through uncertain times

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It is said that Baba Yaga, an ancient Russian wise woman, lived in a hut deep in the forest. She was almost always stirring a pot and waiting to tell the truth to whoever visited.

One day, a young man knocked on her door.

“Are you here on your own or were you sent by another?” asked Baba Yaga.

“My father told me to come,” said the young man.

Baba Yaga threw him in the pot and cooked him. She kept stirring and waiting, until a young woman visited.

“Are you here on your own or were you sent by another?” Baba Yaga asked.

“I’m here on my own,” the young woman answered.

Baba Yaga threw her into the pot.

A third visitor, a young woman confused about the world, approached the hut.

“Are you here on your own or were you sent by another?” Baba Yaga asked.

The young woman said, “In large part I’m on here on my own, but in large part I also come because of others. And in large part I’ve come because you’re here, and because of the forest, and something I’ve forgotten, and in large part I don’t know why I came.”

“You’ll do,” Baba Yaga said and invited her into the hut to hear the truth.

So much is up in the air. Protests. A pandemic. The economy. A fascist president provoking his base with dog whistles about “law and order.”

Understandably, we search for certainty in the confusing muck. We want a role to play, an action to take, an escape route. We want to figure out who is good and who is evil, what is right and what is wrong. Part of us thinks that if we’re certain, we’ll be safe. If we know what’s going to happen, we’ll be okay.

Meditation teacher Tara Brach calls the part of us that wants certainty “the controller.” The controller is “the ego’s executive director, the self we believe is responsible for making decisions and directing the course of our lives. The controller obsessively plans and worries, trying to make things safe and okay, and it can give us at least a temporary sense of self-efficacy and self-trust.”

But—as it always is—the truth is in the uncertainty. It’s down there in the muck. It’s in noticing the urge to control and then letting go. It’s in the “I don’t know.”

And the hardest thing to do in life is to admit that “I don’t know” but still move forward, still do “the next right thing,” still fight for what is right.

Four cops killed George Floyd. But I don’t know if Floyd’s family will ever feel like justice has truly been served.

Policing has racist roots. It evolved out of slave patrols, squadrons of white volunteers who used vigilante tactics like lynching to enforce slavery laws. But I don’t know if we’ll be successful in dramatically changing how cops do their jobs.

Police budgets have been growing for years while public spending has been cut on things like education, social services, and public health. But I don’t know if we’ll be successful in defunding the police.

Most positive societal change (the 8-hour workday, the Civil Rights Act, etc.) would not have happened without masses of people rebelling, including violence against property. But I don’t know whether the vibrant, multiracial protests are going to lead to progress.

The real “looting” is corporate America getting a $4.5 trillion bailout while more than 40 million people are out of work. America’s billionaires have made more than a collective $434 billion during the pandemic. But I don’t know whether Congress is going to help people who need it most.

Coronavirus is still killing over 1,000 people in the U.S. every day. But I don’t know if and when a vaccine will be available.

As hard as it is, we should hang around in the messiness of “I don’t know.” Otherwise we harden and get rigid and close off and miss the truth that’s always emerging in the present moment.

At the same time, we must pick a side and engage somehow. We must protest or donate to legal funds or check in with friends or simply care for the vulnerable people in our lives. These are the types of moments that are historical inflection points. The rest of our lives will be shaped but what happens next. We must shake off the capitalist idea that we’re not in this together, that our freedom isn’t determined by the freedom of others.

I try to remember that people have been fighting for justice for a long, long time. And, like the visitors to Baba Yaga’s hut, we’ve still fought even though the future is unknown.

Get my free ebook on meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast

On Meditation for the 99%, I take mindfulness out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

Turn your guilt about being privileged into solidarity

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It feels like all I’m doing is waiting.

For enough testing and a vaccination. For another spike in cases to overwhelm hospitals. For a text saying, “I’ve got the virus.” For the Trump administration to help front-line workers. For the sun to warm the garden soil. Most of all, to get back to “normal” life.

But this morning I grew tired of waiting so I went for a walk. Wind stirred the trees. Birds spoke in all directions. My feet scraped the driveway gravel. I should do this more often, I thought, squinting at the sun.

I thought about the American Dream, how it numbs us to the discomfort of waiting. It tricks us into moving, going, building, innovating, conquering, working for someone else, heading west, faking it until we make it. Anything but waiting. Hence the (right-wing, corporate-bankrolled) protests to “reopen” the economy. Americans can’t wait.

The truth is many of us can — because we have to. The single mother working two jobs. The son using drugs under an overpass. The 40 percent who don’t have $400 for an emergency. The more than 50 percent who are unhappy with their jobs. For the vast majority, there are just dreams put on hold. “One day.”

If enough of us stopped dreaming and slowed down, stayed put, came together, this capitalist economy would crash. That’s why the rich and powerful are so afraid of unions and other ways of coming together. That’s why they keep selling the dream.

A hawk’s shadow crossed the driveway, pulling me out of my head. Dogs barked. Winter wheat swayed in the fields.

I felt the never-ending space all around me and thought about my luck. I was born into a middle-class family who supported me through college. I survived the Great Recession working for companies contracting with federal government. As a writer, I’ve been working from home just fine. I’ve even been teaching meditation to students from around the world. No one in my family has lost their job. As far as we know, no one has had the virus.

Guilt bubbled up inside. But solidarity did too, and it was stronger. I felt connected to everyone feeling impatient — to those waiting for the virus to leave their body, to those waiting for their nursing shift to end, to those standing in the food bank line. I noted in my mind to donate more money to restaurant workers, rent strikers, sex workers, immigrant families, indigenous people — the most vulnerable.

“Birds are in the garden eating bugs,” my dad said as we passed. He walked to the garden and started the purple tractor, which knocked until it warmed to a steady purr.

I remembered one of my favorite stories about the Buddha. As a young boy, he visited a farm and caught a glimpse of mindfulness, being fully in the present moment, connected, free, in awe of the world. He sat under a tree and watched laborers till the land. He saw a bird peck at a worm in the fresh dirt and then an eagle swoop down on the bird. Compassion overwhelmed him.

“How can be it right that the laborer should toil and the master should live on the fruits of his labor?” he thought. He also realized that had the laborers not been tilling, the bird wouldn’t have seen the worm, and the eagle wouldn’t have seen the bird. Everything is connected and all actions have consequences, he thought.

What am I waiting for? This is it — it always is.

As Dogen, the 13th century Zen Buddhist master wrote:

The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available; how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust; why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away?

Get my free ebook on meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast

On Meditation for the 99%, I take mindfulness out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

How to wake up before your life is over

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Why should you give a damn about mindfulness? Because life sucks without it.

Think of the last time you talked to a friend who really listened. Or explored a new city. Or had great sex. There was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. You were present, vulnerable, and connected, and you felt fully, deeply alive. You paid attention without judging your experience, comparing what it was to what it should be like. You were mindful.

Contrary to the hype about mindfulness, you don’t need to buy it, read about it, or go out and get it. You can be mindful right now, as you can be at any moment. Meditation isn’t practicing how to be mindful. It’s practicing how to let mindfulness happen on its own.

Now think about pretty much every other moment of your life. Something felt off. Your body was tense, and you didn’t even know it. You wanted to be somewhere else. You had the sense that if only you had more money, lived in a different place, had a different job, then you’d finally be happy.

Let’s call that mindlessness.

You know when you copy and paste something, but you get sidetracked by a Facebook notification, forget about what you had copied, and then think, wait, what was I doing?

You know when you have 150 unread emails, six texts, 10+ Facebook notifications, and two missed calls?

You know when a friend is telling you how much their hurting after losing their job or getting dumped, but you’re thinking of what to say and miss what they said?

That’s mindlessness.

The mindless mind thinks about one thing, then thinks about another, then thinks about another, then thinks about another… Like a teenager on YouTube, it flips through related videos without spending much time on any particular one.

When you’re mindless, you plan what to make for dinner and the thought of roasted chicken reminds you of what you ate at Brittany’s birthday last weekend, which reminds you of that awkward conversation with Brittany’s new boyfriend, which makes you think you’re a socially awkward person, which…

If you’re like me, that should sound familiar. I’m almost constantly planning the rest of the week, worrying what someone thinks of me, ruminating about how screwed up our society is, rehashing old conversations, rehearsing future conversations, evaluating whether I’m having a good day, and on and on. I wake up and fall asleep scatterbrained every single day.

Unless I meditate. If I spend 20 minutes sitting in silence, noticing the movement of my breath, feeling bodily sensations, listening to sounds, most of the time calms my mind.

Not because I stop thinking. It’s a misperception that meditation “clears” the mind. Because I’m more aware that my thoughts are just thoughts. They’re not reality — they’re not as real as the breeze on my skin, the smell of coffee, the welling up of love in my chest.

That’s mindfulness. That’s, as scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” That’s what it feels like to be alive in the body, not living inside the boundaries of limiting thoughts about how life should or shouldn’t be.

I remember the first time I got a whiff of pure, unadulterated mindfulness. A young Nepalese Buddhist monk named Tsoknyi Rinpoche guided about 200 of us through meditation and then talked about how mindfulness helps calm overwhelming emotions. Right around the first sentence, when he said something about “essence-love,” I tuned out. Looking around the airy sanctuary of a Unitarian Universalist church in fancy Bethesda, Maryland, I thought — I’m better than these people. I don’t need this hipster, rich people stuff. I’m normal.

But then Rinpoche joked about the poor quality of Indian hotels: “By the way, if you go to India, either stay in the cheapest hotel or a five-star hotel. Because the cheapest hotel is also no good.”

The muscles around my eyes loosened and my mind refocused. This monk, sporting metal-rimmed glasses and a fresh buzzcut, was normal, too. The judgmental thoughts I’d been absorbed in were now sounding at a distance, like the voice of a younger me. Mindfulness was giving me a choice whether to follow my mind’s every whim.

Instead of following those thoughts or checking Facebook or walking to the bathroom — my usual tactics of escape — I decided to re-engage and listen, which paid off. Rinpoche would go on to tell a story that’s been helpful to me at numerous times in my life, which I’ve written about.

Simply put, it feels good to be mindful. Sights are more vivid, smells more vibrant, sounds more spacious, tastes livelier, feelings deeper. In other words, mindfulness gets you out of your head and into the present moment, the only place that real life is happening.

Get my free ebook on meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast

On Meditation for the 99%, I take mindfulness out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.