Anthony Tshering
A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing

I read a wonderful piece in Tricycle magazine today about what a spiritual life looks like. The timing for me to read it was perfect. It’s something I’ve been trying to make sense of recently.

We are very much a doing world. Even the language of therapy is often about doing. Everyone seems to come in and say to me, “I need to work on myself,” or “I need to work on my relationships.” The sentiment is understandable. We are a self-improvement culture. Our lives are viewed linearly, our lives a constant striving for self-improvement with a beginning, middle, and end. There is much usefulness in seeing the world this way. It is goal-orientated and results-focused first and foremost. It has helped create the world around us, including the computer I type on now or the smartphone I use to answer my emails and check social media. A lot of us internalize this productive voice and hear it in the daily chatter of our thinking self and assume this is who we are.

A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing
Meaning, Spirituality
Anthony Tshering
Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and ...

“Do you pray?” I once asked a patient.

“No, I’ve never been able to for some reason” she paused. “Do you?”

“No,” I said. “Because I don’t know if anyone is listening.”

It has always struck me as inconceivable that someone is listening to prayer. How can people be sure of some divine force in their lives? Even such Christian luminaries such as Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa experienced their doubts about God. I am no different. God does not speak to me in tongues or voices. All I hear are silent ellipses where I sense holiness in the mundane, the awe-inspiring in the ordinary. God has always seemed like an inelegant, hollow solution to the problem of meaning and death.

Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality
Anthony Tshering
Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy: The ...

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy- Louis C.K.

“To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.” 
― Ernest Becker

A few years ago, a patient of mine wondered out loud why he was unhappy. After all he was a successful lawyer, involved in a loving relationship with a partner, lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and had a group of close friends whom he saw socially. So what was wrong? "Something just doesn't feel right. I have the gnawing feeling that something should be different," he said. 

Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy: The First Step Toward Emotional Change

Buddhism

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How the Concept of Impermanence Can Help Anxiety-Ridden Millennials

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I wrote something for Tricycle magazine! An excerpt to the beginning for you to peruse:

During a lecture, a student asked Shunryu Suzuki, the Buddhist priest who helped bring Zen to America, if he could sum up the Buddha’s teachings in a nutshell. To everyone’s surprise, Suzuki answered. “Everything changes,” he said. It was as simple as that.

On a rational level, we all know this. Seasons pass, the lush leaves of spring transform to the vibrant, dying foliage of autumn. People grow older, wither with time, and pass away. On my New York City block, a new building stretches up to the sky where an old one sat just a few years ago. All of it is a part of the flow of life. “Everything changes.” Life is impermanent.

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Reflections On Gratefulness and How To Bring It Into Your Life Daily

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Reflections On Gratefulness and How To Bring It Into Your Life Daily

Outside the French bakery, a line snakes in a whorl toward East 7th Street. I am alone in my bedroom on the 3rd floor watching the masked patrons in backpacks and hoodies, inching forward slowly like caterpillars. The sun is bright today casting long frightening shadows on the sidewalks. The cars whizz by and honk every few seconds like a metronome. From my computer, as I type this, the virtuoso violin of Paganini reverberates. I feel a sense of peace taking this all in with my senses.

I consider the idea of gratefulness as I sit here. I feel very fortunate at this moment. I feel grateful for my senses, that I can hum along with Paganini as I write, that I can feel my fingertips hitting the keyboard in a symphony of taps, that I can see the snaking line across the street and watch the Pin Oak tree in front of my window drift from side to side at the shaking of the wind. I wonder why I can’t always feel this way.

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Bodhicitta in the Time of Asian Hate

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Bodhicitta in the Time of Asian Hate

I recently published my first piece for Tricycle magazine. To be honest, it's been nerve-wracking as hell to have it out in the world! I worked at the San Jose Mercury News right out of college and wrote mostly high school sports stories for a few years, and I remember feeling lots of anxiety when those articles were published. Having this piece out there was a different level of anxiety, mostly because the piece is so naked and vulnerable. It's hard enough to have your heart open, living with a spirit of bodhicitta moment-to-moment, day-to-day. It feels even harder to have your heart this out in the open to thousands of strangers reading your piece.

It is far from a perfect piece of writing. I haven't read the piece since it was published because strangely enough when I read things I have authored, it is hard to even believe it was I who wrote it. Buddhism has a lot to say about anatta or non-self as I've written elsewhere. It's never quite been as clear to me what non-self means in practice as in writing this piece. This piece isn't "me." It speaks to dependent origination, one of the key teachings of the Pali text. The piece was written by some version of my consciousness at a particular moment when I was dealing with certain feelings and fears. And now that moment of consciousness has passed, and the piece is no longer "me."

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Why Self- Acceptance and Letting Go Are Essential for Happiness

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Why Self- Acceptance and Letting Go Are Essential for Happiness

Our brains are excellent at keeping us alive. They keep all the functions of your body going and running harmoniously. They will tell you when you’re hungry, thirsty or if you need to go to the bathroom. They will alert you to dangers real or imagined.

But our brains are awful at making us happy. Let’s take the act of thinking. As a species, we tend to believe in the validity of our thoughts. After all, you’ve never been given any reason to think otherwise.

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3 Ways to Face Impermanence, Loss and Death

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3 Ways to Face Impermanence, Loss and Death

You will die. That much is certain. It is only a question of when. And between your death and now, you will suffer much loss as well. It may be the end of a relationship or the death of a pet. It may be the loss of a job or something internal and more abstract like the loss of innocence. But it will happen to you just like it happens to everyone. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.

In Buddhism, loss is understood as a part of existence. Impermanence, one of the three marks of Buddhist teaching, is simple enough to understand: everything changes. This presents a problem psychologically for human beings. Human beings crave permanence and security but life is in constant flux. How are we expected to find peace when everything feels precarious and unstable? There are no easy answers here. If there were, people would generally be a lot happier and less anxious. In my experience as a psychotherapist, however, people are a lot more unhappy.

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When You Stop Meditating Consistently...

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There is an old Zen saying: You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour. That saying always resonated with me because it speaks to the importance of meditation not only for relieving anxiety and being productive but for seeing the true nature of your mind and reality.  

But I haven't been meditating consistently. I could give you a lot of excuses or reasons. There has been lots of travel and change in my life recently for instance. Those are perfectly valid reasons... 

The odd thing about not meditating consistently is that you stop remembering what you are missing. Your mind turns into slush like most people's. Your attention span is much shorter. Your emotions pop around like a pinball. You're more susceptible to mood swings or giving into unproductive habits. But the thing is you're mostly unaware that you're doing it. 

And that is the real benefit of meditation: awareness. Awareness of your smallest movements or your breath. Awareness of what spikes your anxiety or what your temptations are. Awareness is key. Without awareness, we can become mindless, following our every urge or instinct with reflection. Without awareness, we can easily become the worst versions of ourselves. And it is that thought that always gets me to put meditation back on the calendar every morning even if I don't always do it. 

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In Praise of Pantheism

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In Praise of Pantheism

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”- Albert Einstein

Just a quick blog post before I get back to real work...

I've been mulling over my religious views more lately as I've contemplated what a spiritual life looks like. Despite admiring some of its thought, I've found atheism or agnosticism lacking as a worldview, but the monotheistic ideas of a personal God are far worse and repellent to me at least as it can often promote the worst in human nature (i.e. see all of human history from the crusades to 9/11). 

I've found myself drawn to Buddhism as an adult because there are no creator gods. The goal is to end suffering. There are no strict dogmas, but useful list of guidelines to get there known as the four noble truths and the eightfold path. 

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Deepak Chopra Is Selling $350 Meditation Glasses. Deepak Chopra Is A Fraud

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Deepak Chopra Is Selling $350 Meditation Glasses. Deepak Chopra Is A Fraud

I've always had an uneasy relationship with commerce and spirituality. (I even feel weird putting ads on this website, even though it's really just to try and pay for the costs of hosting this website). But I do think there is much value in mindfulness meditation and the spread of meditation centers and apps; these things probably help many in our age of anxiety and late capitalism. 

But when I see an article about  "Luxury Meditation Class" in the Flatiron District, or how everyone in Google meditates to essentially be more productive,  my first reaction is to throw up a little in my mouth and then get angry. (From that article, "Johanna Sistek, a trademark lawyer, says the emotional skills she refined in the class help her focus on her many tasks, despite a fire hose of professional demands. Like most of her colleagues, she still faces “instant deadlines” but says they no longer freak her out." This might be the worst thing I've ever read). 

Why does this upset me so? Well, Buddhism is first and foremost about ending suffering. Not just your own suffering but the suffering of all sentient beings. And a Buddhist accomplishes this by following the Eightfold Path.  Meditation is a part of the Eightfold Path, but it is only a small part of it. So much of the Eightfold Path is about morality, including Right Livelihood, which tells us that we cannot choose careers that exploit, and Right Action, which tells we must abstain from killing, sexual misconduct and creating suffering in other people directly. 

And meditating to become productive or lessen your anxiety has so little to do with any morality or ending suffering. It's about lessening your anxiety so you can continue to be productive and a good consumer. An $18 dollar meditation class or Google's meditation centers does little to address any real morality or change in the world. In fact, it's just the opposite: It just reinforces neoliberalism through and through. 

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Want to Stay Married? Embrace Change

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Want to Stay Married? Embrace Change

This morning I was rereading a wonderful New York Times piece from April called, "To Stay Married, Embrace Change." As a Buddhist, It's a particularly resonate read for me. It reminds me of something Roshi Shunryu Suzuki said when asked to reduce Buddhism down to one phrase, 

"Everything Changes."

As the article points out, to have a successful marriage, we need to realize that we will change but so will our partner.