If you can’t change anything, why worry?
And if you can change something, why worry?
—TIBETAN SAYING
THE EXPLANATION BY TSOKNYI RINPOCHE
When I was growing up in Nepal and northern India in the seventies and eighties, the pace of life was not too fast. Most people felt quite grounded. Our bodies were loose, and we’d sit down for tea at any time. We smiled easily. Of course we faced plenty of challenges, like poverty and lack of opportunity, but stress and speediness were not really part of the picture.
But as these places slowly developed, the pace of life sped up. There were more and more cars on the road, and more people had jobs with deadlines and expectations. Many people had caught a whiff of middle-class life and wanted a piece of it. I noticed people starting to show signs of stress, physically and mentally. They’d fidget more, their legs quivering nervously under the table.
Their gaze was less steady—eyes darting around—and they smiled less freely.
I felt it myself too when I started working on complex projects. I’d started a multiyear initiative to preserve the texts of my lineage, and the project office was across town. I’d wake up and my mind would already be in the office. My feeling world would be hammering me, Go, go, go! Just one swipe with your toothbrush and spit! Just put the whole breakfast in your mouth, chew once, and swallow! You don’t have time for this!
On my drive across town to my office, the Kathmandu traffic was almost unbearable. Just step on the gas! Don’t worry if you bump someone—doesn’t matter! Just get there now! By the time I walked into the office, I’d feel burned- out already. I’d quickly everyone, not slowing down and taking the time to really check in. I’d want to get out of there as soon as I could.
Ducking out, I’d go somewhere, anywhere—like a coffee shop. Sitting there with nothing particular to do, I’d want to calm down but still felt anxious and restless. My whole being felt like a big buzzy lump—my body, feelings, and mind were all stressed for no reason.
But one day I decided to challenge myself. I would start to respect my body’s speed limit, its natural speed, instead of listening to the stubborn, distorted speedy energy. I said to myself, I will just do everything normally, at the right pace. Whenever I reach my office, I reach my office. I won’t let the restless energy push me.
I went through my morning relaxed, moving at a pace that suited me. I stretched in bed before getting up. I brushed my teeth properly, taking enough time to do it right. When the speedy energy tried to push me—Go faster, get there now! Grab something for breakfast and eat it in the car!—I didn’t listen.
I was respecting my body’s speed limit. Sitting down for breakfast, I chewed properly, tasting my meal. I drove at the appropriate speed, without a sense of rush. I even enjoyed the drive. Whenever the speedy energy told me to go faster —Just get there—I smiled and shook my head. In the end, I reached my office almost at the same time as before.
Walking in, I felt fresh and relaxed. The office seemed calmer and more beautiful than I remembered. I sat down and drank tea with my staff, looking each of them in the eyes and really checking in. There was no urge to leave.
Finding Our Ground
I’d like to start from the ground up. In my tradition we like building things— temples, nunneries, monasteries, stupas. Maybe it’s a compensation for our nomadic roots. In any case, our metaphors often involve construction. As any builder knows, it’s important to have a solid foundation to build on. For meditation, it’s also important to have a healthy, solid foundation to begin with.
The raw material is our bodies, minds, and feelings. We’re working with our thoughts and emotions—our happiness and sadness, our challenges and struggles. In the case of meditation, a solid foundation means we’re grounded, we’re present, we’re connected. These days, for many reasons, this can be quite tough. So I like to start my own practice, and the practice of my students, with a grounding exercise: a way to find the body, land in the body, connect to the body. The busyness of our thinking minds is seemingly endless and often leaves us feeling anxious, tired, and ungrounded. So this approach is to cut through the whirling thoughts, to bring awareness back into the body, and to just be there for a while. We are reconnecting our minds and our bodies, finding our ground.
The Technique of Dropping
Dropping is not so much a meditation as a way to temporarily cut through the tension-building stream of constant thinking, worrying, and speediness. It allows us to land in the present moment, in a grounded and embodied way. It gets us ready for meditation.
In dropping you do three things at the same time:
1. Raise your arms and then let your hands drop onto your thighs.
2. Exhale a loud, big breath.
3. Drop your awareness from thinking into what your body feels.
Learning to Relax
Relaxation is a funny thing. We all want it, but actually doing it is surprisingly difficult. We often think of relaxing as the opposite of being alert. Being alert and aware is our “on mode” where we get things done, while relaxing is a way to switch off and dim our systems down.
When we think about relaxing we might see ourselves collapsing into a couch with a remote control and becoming mindless. This relaxing into dullness gives some temporary relief but doesn’t help the root cause of the stress. The stress lingers underneath, and we end up not feeling as refreshed as we’d hoped. Dropping is a different approach to relaxing. It’s a deeper, inner relaxing, connected to our bodies and feelings, not trying to escape from them and relax somewhere else. Rather than cultivating a dull state as an antidote to stress, we are learning how to relax with awareness and address the root cause of this imbalance where we live lost in our thoughts.
For many beginners in meditation, worrisome thoughts can feel like an unconquerable obstacle—we often hear from people just starting to practice some version of “My mind is out of control. I can’t do this!” Dropping targets this universal predicament: our thoughts keep going and can overwhelm our practice.
Dropping gives us a way to clear our mind, if only for moments, so we can start again from a grounded, embodied place. Dropping breaks the tension- building stream of constant thinking, worrying, and speediness and readies us for every other meditation practice, so we begin with that.
Try These Drop-It-All Mantras
It can be helpful sometimes to use a mantra—a phrase you repeat silently to yourself —while doing this dropping practice. There are two mantras I like to use; try them each to see which works best for you. Here’s the first one: Just after your hands hit your lap, say this mantra silently to yourself, or in a whisper, over and over: “So what! Who cares? No big deal.”
This sends a message to our anxious, worrying minds. It’s a reminder to the part of our minds that cares too much—that holds everything a bit too tightly. Of course caring to the right degree is good and important, but it’s too often mixed with extra anxiety and becomes neurotic over-concern. So this mantra is an antidote for all that.
You can also try this one: “Whatever happens, happens. Whatever doesn’t happen, doesn’t happen.”
You can repeat this one over and over inside your mind, or try whispering it to yourself if that’s helpful.
This message reminds us to be with the flow of experience, instead of trying to control everything. Even though we know this intellectually, we need to remind our feeling bodies. That’s where the speediness is held; that’s where the stress accumulates. These mantras have another purpose, to strengthen communication between our cognitive minds and our feeling bodies. As we’ll explore in the next technique, this relationship can often be strained—and this can cause problems.