Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

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The Buddha almost died from working too hard. So did I.

February 23, 2021 by Jeremy Mohler

I don’t consider myself a Buddhist. But I often find myself digging stories about Siddhartha Gautama, the ancient spiritual master known as the Buddha.

One lesser-known story is when Siddhartha almost died from starvation. He’d been wandering the jungle practicing intense forms of meditation and austere living. He tortured his body to try to overcome its desires and needs, eventually limiting his daily diet to a few grains of rice.

“When I touched my belly, I would feel my backbone, and when I went to urinate, I would fall over,” he would later say.

Collapsed near a river at the edge of death, he realized that starving himself was only causing more suffering.

With the help of a peasant woman who nursed him back to full strength, he soon started a spiritual community and developed the practices and teachings that would become known as Buddhism.

I like this story for three reasons.

One, it reminds me that there’s a limit to the hustle.

Capitalism tells us otherwise. Relaxation is shamed in our society. Unless you’re rich, which means you deserve that vacation on your yacht. Otherwise, work harder, start a side hustle, be more productive, wake up earlier, do these ten things in your daily routine, blame poor people if you’re still unsatisfied with your life.

I’ve internalized these messages like a sponge. If I’m not careful, I’ll forget to take breaks, work on the weekends, start new projects before I’ve finished others. Eventually, I’ll burn out and collapse in my bed.

Once, in my mid 20s, I ended up in the hospital after half my body went numb. I probably wasn’t at the edge of death. But I got the message that if I continued working hard and partying harder, I might get there.

Two, it reminds me that I can’t do it alone. It being, live the life I so desperately want to live. A life lived fully.

Part of the reason Siddhartha almost died is because he was alone. He was fortunate a peasant just so happened to be walking by when he collapsed.

Eventually, his cousin Ananda would say to him, “Lord, I’ve been thinking. Spiritual friendship is at least half of the spiritual life.”

Siddhartha replied, “Ananda, that’s wrong. Such a view is not correct. Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life!”

As the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, “Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”

Capitalism, on the other hand, says lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. Do it yourself. Maybe start a family and buy a house in the suburbs. But when it comes down to it, you’re on your own. Have some personal responsibility!

Whiteness, which infects all of us, says so too. Being “white” has robbed me of my ancestors’ traditions, rituals, and ways of relating. It’s tricked me into thinking that I came from nowhere. That I didn’t come from English settler-colonialists who stole this land and German indentured servants who were all but forced to come here. That I’m not part of a community. That I’m self-made.

The third thing I like about the story is that it highlights the danger of toxic masculinity.

During his hustling phase, Siddhartha had no time for nourishing food, women, or anything considered soft. “All of these were temptations and a potential cause for [his] downfall,” writes the Buddhist nun Thanissara.

But “through the humble presence of a loving and caring woman,” Thanissara writes, “he saw the beauty of the river, of the sun shimmering on the tress and grasses, and of the graciousness of life in its abundance. The problem was not the world; the problem was his aversion to it.”

The peasant woman represents feeling emotions rather than stuffing them down. Embracing rather than rejecting and even hating anything that appears feminine. Collaborating with, rather than dominating over.

She also represents the belittlement of so-called “woman’s work.”

As socialist feminist Nancy Fraser says, with the rise of capitalism, “[The creation and maintenance of social bonds] was left behind, relegated to a new private domestic sphere, where it was sentimentalized and naturalized, performed for the sake of ‘love’ and ‘virtue,’ as opposed to money.”

We should always remember that the peasant woman is a crucial figure in Siddhartha’s awakening and the formation of Buddhism, a world religion now with over 535 million followers.

All of this is to say: Rest is a worthy thing to do, community matters, and patriarchy must go.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. My weekly email newsletter helps you bring mindfulness to work, relationships, and politics. Subscribe here.

Download my free ebook on how meditation transformed my life.

I used to cringe when a meditation teacher mentioned compassion

January 26, 2021 by Jeremy Mohler

Living the good life is simple but extremely difficult.

Simple, as in all it takes — beyond food, water, and shelter— is one thing: self-compassion.

Difficult, because so much is stacked against us being nice to ourselves.

What I mean by “the good life” is what the poet Mary Oliver must’ve meant when she asked, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

The adjectives wild and precious about sum it up. The good life is realizing the seriousness of this present moment. How it never, ever will happen again. Yet being okay with that. Not making anything too precious. Celebrating the wildness.

It’s like that old Oscar Wilde line: “Life is too serious to be taken seriously.” (Though, apparently, that’s not exactly what Wilde wrote.)

Or like what the ancient Indian mystic known as the Buddha meant by “the middle way” when he said, “There is a middle way between the extremes of indulgence and self-denial, free from sorrow and suffering.”

Let me bring all this abstract stuff down to Earth.

When I first got into meditation, I would cringe whenever a meditation teacher mentioned compassion. What is this hippie, bougie shit? I’d think. When they recommended self-compassion, my mind would go blank.

It made no sense. I was meditating to be like a Buddhist monk, you know, cool, calm, and collected.

But in hindsight, I was just trying to feel better. And it wasn’t until I practiced self-compassion that I actually started to on a regular basis.

A few years ago, I dated someone I was incredibly attracted to. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. Yet, when we slept together, I had trouble — let’s say — performing.

She was understanding and gentle with me about it. But I was a wreck. I thought I was broken physically or — worse — emotionally.

It wasn’t until I talked to a therapist that I felt better.

My friends had been kind. They’d recommended this or that supplement, this or that move in bed, this or that perfect thing to say.

But the therapist made me feel normal. Like nothing was wrong with me. Sure, what happened wasn’t ideal. But it happened. It was the truth.

The therapist’s non-shaming attitude allowed me to see that, despite being upset, I was also curious. What happened was evidence that my needs weren’t being met. Not evidence that I’m broken or weak or not a “real man,” whatever that means.

So, I decided to experiment. What is it that I really want? What really turns me on? What if I slowed down? What if I went at a pace that felt comfortable to me, instead of barreling forward because that’s just what a man does?

See, what gets in the way of self-compassion are thoughts. Spiraling, ruminating, critical thoughts. Stories about how we should or shouldn’t be.

angel Kyodo williams, the Zen Buddhist priest, says these stories fill our mind as if it were “that drawer that collects everything in your house.” She goes on:

They’re moving at an incredible rate of speed. And, for the most part, we almost never get the opportunity to observe them and sort through them. You say, ‘Oh, but wait a minute, someone lived in this house before me. And some of that stuff is not mine. Actually, this is not mine. That’s my mom’s. This is not mine; that’s the inheritance of white supremacy.’ And we have no real way of being able to discern what is mine, what is yours, what we’re holding collectively, what I have inherited, what I have taken on as a measure of protection, of a way to cope at some point in my life.

I was putting pressure on myself because… that’s just what men do. Men take control, do the exact right thing at the exact right time, and perform perfectly, no matter what. Those are the messages I inherited from our patriarchal culture.

But when I slowed down and got curious — when I observed and sorted through my thoughts— I also got confident, creative, and the rest of “the 8 C’s,” as they’re known as in the form of therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS). I got courageous, compassionate, calm, and clearer about what I actually wanted.

I saw that I wasn’t emotionally connected with the woman I was dating. I was so caught up in her physical beauty that I’d lost connection with myself.

In other words, self-compassion is acceptance. Celebrating the wildness. Embracing our humanness. Dancing in the messiness. Learning from it all.

“Life is an incredible curriculum,” said the late spiritual teacher and psychologist Ram Dass. “In which we live it [sic] richly and passionately as a way of awakening to the deepest truths of our being.”

I’m happy to report that I haven’t experienced “performance issues” since. In fact, some 20 percent of erectile dysfunction cases are caused by anxiety, stress, or some other psychological issue.

But who knows if I will again? Life is unpredictable. Why would I want it not to be?

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. My weekly email newsletter helps you bring mindfulness to work, relationships, and politics. Subscribe here.

Download my free ebook on how meditation transformed my life.

Almost every man I know is falling apart because of social distancing

December 9, 2020 by Jeremy Mohler

There’s no getting around it. This winter is already horrible, and it’s going to get worse.

Not sure how much more I can take. The constant death, the social isolation, the widespread unemployment, the closing of my favorite small businesses.

What’s hardest, though, is watching people I love struggle. Seeing them cope in unhealthy ways. Worrying about their increased drinking and drugging, their fake “I’m fine’s”, their unraveling relationships, their closing off and going inward.

Sometimes it’s like I’m all that’s keeping them from jumping into a black hole.

Sometimes I just want to shake them, yelling “Wake the fuck up!”

Sometimes I’m annoyed that it seems like no one’s helping me help them.

Sometimes I’m pissed at the government for leaving so many of my friends and neighbors hanging.

Sometimes I beg the Universe for mercy. I’ve got a regular meditation practice, a therapist, a good job, a stable family, and plenty of close friends. And I’m barely staying halfway sane.

Sometimes I want someone to hold me and pet my hair and tell me everything’s going to be alright.

What I’ve come to notice is that my friends who are struggling the most are men.

Which is not to say that others aren’t struggling too. It’s just that men tend to experience depression in ways tailor made to leave us hanging in a pandemic.

We often hide our vulnerability in fear of being less “manly.” We tend to have more “shoulder-to-shoulder” interactions — like playing or watching sports — than deep, connected, face-to-face friendships. We tend to avoid doing anything that would make us seem “needy.”

This causes all the toxic shit that gives so many men a bad rap: isolation, emotional numbness, angry outbursts, binge drinking.

No wonder some 80 percent of people who die of suicide in the U.S. are men.

This isn’t to say that men deserve attention more than anyone else. Women have been taking care of men’s emotional needs — without acknowledgement, without reciprocity, without pay — for way too long.

I’m just saying most of the men in my life are depressed right now. And I don’t know what to do.

Mostly, I’m exhausted. We’re in the middle of this thing, and who knows when it ends?

I also wanted you to know that if it feels like you’re holding everyone else up right now, you’re not alone. I see you.

Maybe the Serenity Prayer will resonate with you like it does with me?

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

If the word “God” turns you off, just take it out.

The point is, I can’t save my friends. What I can do is make sure they know that I’m here for them, that I’m curious how they’re doing, and that they aren’t “weak” for struggling during the biggest crisis of our lifetimes.

Everything else, I just have to let go of. There’s no way around it. Maybe letting go just isn’t supposed to feel good.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. My weekly emails will help you bring mindfulness to work, relationships, and politics. Subscribe here.

Download my free ebook on how meditation transformed my life.

Photo by Jerónimo Roure

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