Healing and the Heart of Generosity: A First Lesson

When EK, my friend and fellow TBM staff member, invited me to attend a talk on “Healing and the Heart of Generosity”, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I gladly accepted the offer.  Although I’ve studied yoga for over a decade, my knowledge of Buddhism and meditative practices is regrettably much weaker—and without a doubt in need of some substantive nourishment.  Realizing that this was the perfect opportunity to begin my education, I set out to meet Kalyana mitra (Spiritual friend) and meditation (MBSR) facilitator, Theodore Tsaousidis.

I definitely lucked out when I had the chance to sit down with Theodore after his talk for a one-on-one conversation, but I confide that I was more than a little apprehensive.  As a beginner to the subject, it’s somewhat intimidating to discuss the material with a highly learned meditation practitioner—particularly when you have to admit to him that your definition of what meditation means extends little further than beyond the stereotypical image of a robed monk or happy hippie sitting in lotus and chanting “om.” 

It’s obvious that meditation goes well beyond such popular stereotypes, but how can one describe it?  And how might we in the West begin to think about meditation in new ways?  As a long-time student and teacher within the world of post-graduate academic studies, the embodiment of a meditative practice is often at odds with the way I’ve been guided to think and function—as is the case for many students who move through our Canadian curriculum.  We are often taught to consider the reflective act of meditation as “thinking about” something; yet as Theodore remarks, our manner of reflection is really a means of figuring something out, or in other words, finding answers to something we think we already know so that we can justify the answers we have already come up with.  Since the Enlightenment, western consensus has focused on reason and rationality in questioning tradition and in establishing authority and “progress”, and it’s clear that we are taught to approve this form of reflection as the ultimate path to legitimacy and freedom.  Consider elementary lessons in the scientific method in which children are taught to come up with a hypothesis and then to set out to prove it through rationalized experiments and procedures.

What we are not taught, however, is a form of meditation in which we allow ourselves to be open to all possibilities, in a way which Theodore describes as “sitting back, hanging out, and not trying to answer anything.”  And as he continued, “hanging out” is anything but passive.  Rather, the act of opening is an active engagement with oneself in order to push beyond what one already knows or experiences.  And what’s more, it’s an act that enables healing through the opening of oneself to gratitude and generosity.

Let’s be clear.  By healing, I don’t mean recuperating from a common cold with warm noodle soup or recovering from a chronic disease with the help of prescribed medications; nor do I refer, analogously, to an illness which is purely physiological in nature.  As Theodore points out, health and healing in the Buddhist tradition does not mean the absence of pain and suffering or the lack of disease or disability, but rather it entails a concern with the whole person and of treating the body and mind.  Illness, therefore, is a condition in which the body and mind are not in agreement, and when we are imbalanced or off-centre, we become sick. In fact, it is the imbalance itself as it manifests outwardly over time that is the illness. All too often, as Theodore remarks, we mask our symptoms with everything from medicine to food, alcohol, or compulsive buying habits to numb our emotional pain or unresolved trauma. The problem with this form of self-medication is that while an aspirin may relieve one of a headache, it is not a deficiency of that aspirin that has caused the headache in the first place. It is usually only when we become extremely ill or when medication no longer has any effect that we seek out the root of our illness. To be healed, we must see clearly and beyond the problem, and get at the root cause of that which is making us ill. With the noticeable symptoms only the tip of the iceberg, we must address and investigate without blame, judgement, guilt, or shame what is beneath the symptoms. 

This perspective on holistic healing is one which has frequently been restricted in the West, with illness compartmentalized in tightly defined etiologic categories, and with healing focused on medical or surgical cures that aim to treat disease and injury.  Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with the desire to find cures and relieve people of pain and suffering; but what this convergence on clinical diagnosis has done has been to externalize illness and to assign blame to indiscriminate and extraneous or environmental bodies and processes such as bacteria, pollution, or misguided cellular functionings.  Theodore is careful to note that this is in no way to suggest that those who are ill or suffering are to be blamed for their condition or that sickness may be equated easily with personal culpability of some sort—especially as illness can attest most fundamentally to the frailty and fragility of the human body and life itself.  What externalization does enable, however, is the avoidance of responsibility for our health and well-being, both on a personal and social level. 

The concept is perhaps more easily grasped when we expand the discussion to address the themes of interdependence and generosity.  “Illness”, then, the holistic, psycho-spiritual disturbance of self, mind, and body, “is the absence of generosity.”  At first blush, Theodore’s statement is one which may seem harsh or unsubstantiated, but it is one which perfectly encapsulates the problem with relinquishing responsibility for personal well-being.  In conferring authority to externally designated arbiters of our health, we not only begin the process of commodifying health and healing, but we also surrender access to our intuitive sense of well-being and lose control of what it means to be well on a whole and interdependent level.  When we begin to live with a heart of generosity, we can learn to heal by letting go and expressing gratitude. 

Generosity goes beyond giving.  Consider this holiday season, when so many of us drop a couple of cans into boxes at the supermarket or make payments online to a local charity because it’s expected.  Sure, our hearts may be in the right place momentarily, but once the cans are out of our hands or the transaction is completed, we often lose sight of the bigger significance and of what happens after our credit card has been processed or the can gets sorted in a food bank.  As Theodore might remark, this is akin to giving “bulk without energy or a sandwich without nutritive content” in order that we might top up our “spiritual bank accounts” because society dictates that custom calls for it.

Living generously, then, implies recognizing that we are interconnected and part of a social and environmental lineage of giving and receiving.  Ask yourself how, really, you came to this life. What was given so that you came to be? When we live with a shallow perspective, where we can only see ourselves superficially and without our broader interconnection with the world, we will continue to live in fear and in illness.  In fact, much of “being ill” is tied to holding on to fear and neuroses about ourselves, the world, and others.  And when we live in fear, we remain imbalanced and unable to experience wholeness. The western concept of reflection as a means of figuring out or controlling is a hindrance in this regard simply because it justifies our erroneous views and fears, and creates a cycle in which “rigidity in the mind creates rigidity in the body, and rigidity in the body creates rigidity in the mind.” It is only when we begin to see how things came to be the way that they are that we can begin to live with gratitude and generosity. Theodore notes that it is "when we enter into the realization of interconnectedness, that we are able to embody true generosity and true receiving, and that we live automatically in reciprocity. As the veil of separation comes down so does our need to defend our things or ourselves. Moreover, we come to understand that the devastation of our planet is really our own devastation and a direct reflection of our illness."

When Theodore paraphrases the Buddha in saying that experiencing illness is not a misfortune since illness is unavoidable, but that to be defeated by illness is the misfortune, he means that we must learn to seek out the root causes of illness and be prepared to address them if we hope to heal. And when he suggests that we must consider that we each exist because so much has been given already, he means that we can see with more clarity that meditation and living generously can help us to live without fear if we seek to see that there is more to see.   “Generosity," therefore, "is a fantastic tool to help ourselves, not only to be happier for it, but to experience less fear about the world.” 

How is that for a first lesson in meditation?