Oh, and here I am

...except I have less hair these days than in these photos.

Nonattachment from views

Here is what happens when someone seriously disagrees with me and my views, and expresses their opinion on my work in a denigrating way:

There is a very strong sense of discomfort. I feel cold. I have trouble breathing for the first few seconds - an intense energy moves through my chest and abdomen. Then there is fear and self-doubt - what if I am wrong? What do I know about this, really? There is a sense of losing ground and scrambling for it. There is aggression - my mind starts spinning, formulating the right answers to show that idiot attacking me that I am right. Or rather, to assure myself that I am right, bring me back to a comfortable resting place.

As may be obvious from the detail in this decription, I just went through all that a couple of minutes ago. The think-tank that I am part of is publishing a report on "the counter-forces of the environment", meaning people and organisations who actively work against protective environmental legislation/regulation. We are arranging a seminar on this report in a couple of days, and someone at a magazine that doesn't like us just published a very negative comment on us (based entirely on the one sentence introducing the seminar on our webpage. The report isn't even out yet). I was surprised (again!) at the force of my negative reaction. It may be that I am still rather fresh out of retreat and thus very sensitive, but also it seems my discomfort in these situations is growing from one year to the next. I aspire to relax and stay open, but honestly, I don't think I am doing very well yet.

I am practicing to join the Order of Interbeing, but some days I really do feel I am not up for it and never will be. Right now I am focusing on the The First and Second Mindfulness Training of the Order, which deal with openness and non-attachment to views. Order-members commit themselves not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones, and to learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to others' insights and experiences. That sounds nice. Friendly, relaxed. And it is, of course - but it is also (at least to this politician that is me) hard-core practice.

When I first read the trainings I didn't really feel touched by those two, it was more like yeah, sure, I am an openminded person, what is the problem? Now I see that my tendency to shut down when I am under "opinion attack" is extremely strong. In retreat recently, Thây Nhat Hanh said to us that attachment to views means that when someone expresses a view, we hold up our own view and compare what they are saying with what we already believe to be true. If they match, we say yes, OK, I hear you. If they don't, we reject what is being said. As he told us this, even illustrating with little gestures the act of bringing out one's own opinion to use for comparision, I saw that Yes, INDEED - that is what I do. Every day and twice on Sunday. Ouch.

I have been trying for quite a while now to challenge myself when it comes to opinions. I deliberately join projects where I know I will have to work with people that I disagree with. I make an effort to stay open, to just follow my breathing when people are talking, and hear what is being said without jumping to conclusions, trying just to understand. Sometimes I feel I am a little bit successful. And then all of a sudden, I look around and discover that I am at a cocktail party with a bunch of the Really Important People (whom I still do believe have a very shallow understanding of what the world's problems are about), eating canapés with a sheepish grin on my face and no idea whatsoever as to what I am doing.

And yes, my views of these people, or rather my views of their views, are just that: views. But I can't help it - in practice, my attempts at nonattachment to views feel like "critical thinking disabled". As if someone could come up to me and say "The world is flat!", and I would just go "Oh, well, if that is how you perceive things..." Or perhaps, this person would go "There is no such thing as global warming," or (less scientific, more political, more difficult) "Free trade is the solution to world poverty". And I don't want to let go of my conviction that those things are simply not in accordance with reality - not true.

Of course I know that no one has asked me to relinquish my experience, my knowledge or my critical thinking. Of course I know that the practice is not to be caught in these things - so that my heart and mind can remain open when someone disagrees with me, so that I can learn, so that I can see when I am wrong, so that there can be space for new things to arise, so that I can connect with people and with situations, so that I can understand, so that I can be of help. It is just that I don't know how to do that yet. Either I have my view and I HOLD IT, or I release it and feel like a sheep.

I learnt that in politics. Unlearning takes a while.

In a few days' time, I will be the moderator of this seminar I mentioned above. I will dress up as an Important Person and try to create a space where the Important People on our panel feel that sharing our ideas and experiences around how to counter the threat to the environment is not a competition, where the point is defeating the others, but that we are there to help each other think bigger, become aware of more than one perspective. Cross your fingers for us.

Coming from a place of love

Just back from a three-week retreat in Plum Village, France, I am an ocean of vows, convinced that this time my life has truly been transformed. I know from experience that this is most probably not the case, but still: unpacking, washing my clothes, watching the red roses outside my house, everything seems infused with the energy of mindfulness and loving-kindness. Or at least it seemed infused, until I turned on my computer and started downloading my 1000 or so emails.

I am amazed at the surge of negative energy that was brought up in me just from touching in with the stuff that I normally do - all those projects yet-to-manifest, promises unfulfilled, people who have been waiting in vain for my response on this or that, while I have been breathing in and out in a Zen monastery. I suddenly feel like a completely hopeless case again, anxiety surging through my body. Judgement day, indeed.

Now I am calmer again, after having dealt with some of the most pressing issues and having prostrated to my bedroom Buddha, resolving to become a much more reliable person in the future. The energy of the retreat is still with me, apparently, or else I would not have been able to make that subsede so easily. I am normally very wobbly when it comes to these strong emotions.

Outside everything is completely calm, which is striking bearing in mind that I am right in the centre of a 500 000-people city. Tonight is Swedish midsummer, which means everyone with a bit of sense has left for the countryside, and I can enjoy the silence and this looking at my home and my street with fresh eyes and a rare sense of appreciation.

I had a tough time during this retreat. A wonderful time also, for sure, receiving beautiful teachings from Thây Nhat Hanh and experiencing the richness of being in a community of practice, but for a while it was just really hard. A friend who was also in this retreat has a great idea for an organisation that he would like to start, and wanted to link up with various people in the Plum Village community and the Order of Interbeing who may be able to support the initiative. Intending to support him in his work, I sat through a number of meetings, which resembled the ones I normally attend in my social movement work enough for me to really feel the energy that is normally in me in those situations. Because of being in such a mindful state, I saw in great detail and in slow-motions style all the features of that energy, and I tell you, it is not beautiful.

I was really shocked at how strong my sense of resentment and negativity was. My mind lashed out at pretty much anything that was being said, judging one idea after the other as naive, simplistic, just wrong. It wasn't so much an intellectual reaction as an emotional one. I felt this strong negative energy had infused my mind completely, so that I was unable to see the difference between what was critical discernment, based on my experience, useful, and what was just this aggression that I suddenly found myself so full of. Most of the time I didn't say anything at all, I just sat there, overwhelmed by this bitterness and resentment that I didn't know was so strong in me. It was very, very painful. Where did that come from? I must have been feeding it without noticing.

I can see that I have been cultivating it to a certain extent, by keeping on doing work that I don't really believe in anymore, just because I don't know what else to do - and then judging myself and my movement colleagues.

And sitting in this monastery, this place of love, with all my aggression flooding me, I really saw that unless I can transform that energy, whatever I do in terms of social action with be misguided. I really saw it, in a much more direct, less intellectual way than before. I so want to learn how to come from a place of love in my political work.

That is all for now. A big enough aspiration, it seems.