Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Mindfulness: Unbundling it from religion

There's a generational divide.  Geezers like Leonard Cohen and the Beatles went to get their training in being present in the now from religious folks.  Today, successful professionals get the secular version.  Hold the religion.  Mindfulness training, without all the religious trappings, is taking place at Raytheon, McKinsey, Ford Motor, Unilever, and General Mills. 

Although a geezer, I have also decided to unbundle mindfulness, or meditating, from its religious platform.  I had to.  In my search for inner peace and clarity, I had trudged off to Buddhist centers. Actually three of them.  That was enough of a sampling to convince me that religion seemed to attract to leadership those needing to control.  The experiences were brutal.  "Bullying" would not be too strong a word.  Acquaintances tell me that there is one Buddhist center in the New Haven, Connecticut Metro area which seems to be bully-free.  I plan to check that out soon. After all, given how mirror neurons operate, we affect each other cell by cell.  By being in a group of meditators I could pick up on their good vibes.

But for now, I remain in the Happy Valley of pure mindfulness.  Several times a day I stop my day.  I sit on the couch.  Next to Jason my feline companion.  We get quiet.  We find our way into the now.

In all three Buddhist centers there were few Millennials.  Will Buddhism die out in the West, if it can't provide consumers with mindfulness without all the dogma?  I might run into different demographics when I sample the fourth Buddhist center in my area.  If I do, I will keep you posted.

Don't Know, Do We: Six-hour retreat, New Haven, CT Zen Center, June 15th

The Kwan Um School of Zen celebrates that we humans just don't know.  Once I got a hang of that, my communications business surged.  I realized I only had to make the client look good.  There was no need to display all I knew.

On Saturday, June 15th, the New Haven Zen Center will explore Not-Knowing in a six-hour retreat.  It will be hosted by guiding teacher Paul Majchrzyk, JDPSN. There is a sliding scale fee.  You can find more about that on the website under "Update Page."  The address is 193 Mansfield Street.  Fine to park right on the street.

For more information contact the New Haven Zen Center at info@newhavenzen.org or call 203-787-0912.

In a less structured way, you can be introduced to Not-Knowing at the Center every Wednesday at 6:30 P.M.  That's free. If you want to hang around afterward for chanting and meditation, that's also free.  Every Sunday, from 9:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M. there is sitting and walking mediation. That's free too.

Mirror Neurons: Why man the social animal is returning from virtual

In the presence of each other, a number of species, including us human kind, affect each other cell by cell. Some of us always knew this.  For example, our moms told us to stay clear of "bad companions." The transmission process happens across the species. My dog Molly Mittens could pick up that I was depressed before I did. The vet, part Dr. Phil, told me she had been hanging on despite her bad heart trying to keep me together.  

But how we resonate off each other was confirmed by researchers such as Marco Iacoboni on mirror neurons in Italy. He made all that science user-friendly in his book "Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others.  Last night at the New Haven Zen Center in Connecticut we discussed why meditating together in-person can center us so quickly.  As a guiding teacher noted, we feed off each other's strength.  The same principle operates in 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

No surprise, we are returning to in-person speeches, meetups, chats by the water cooler, author presentations at bookstores, and church services. Virtual social networks were fun but they left us, well, unconnected.

For the past four months, although I was doing my time virtually on Facebook and LinkedIn, I would get attacks of extreme alienation. They were brutal enough to dry up the creative processes as I tried to write.  When I packed up the laptop and went to the public library in North Haven, CT, the juices started flowing again.  Clients raved about what I had created there.  Blog posts done there went viral. The help-wanted I answered there brought in good assignments.

We need other human beings around us. They don't have to even actively interact with us. For this very reason, we speechwriters have been busy preparing what speakers are delivering in the flesh, not on webinars. Social networks have proved to be unable to transmit from mirror neurons.

Book Contract: Do I owe it all to Buddha?

That a famous brandname chose me to ghostwrite a book was not entirely a surprise.  After all, I went into the "audition" with the advantage of having recently written two major speeches and nine articles on the subject matter to be covered.  Also, since I had stopped comparing myself (unfavorably) with the high flyers I was not intimidated by the penthouse in which I gave my pitch.

That said, I really can't believe my good fortune in beating out the competition.  So, I have to wonder if I owe some or even all of this to Buddha.  Several months ago I began meditating and studying the Kwan Um School of Zen at the New Haven Zen Center near Yale in Connecticut.  Although there are no fees (donations welcome) guiding teachers like Ken Kessel and Paul Bloom provide us with individual sessions about twice a month.  Their "core competence," if we want to apply that phrase from business, is to move us from regretting the past and having angst about the future to being present in the now. 

It was in the now that I snagged the contract to ghostwrite the book.  Before zen I would have been back pitching to some ghost of an executive who I had loved or hated five years ago.  In the isolation of the writing profession, many of us get stuck in that kind of time travel. In the now I also didn't drag around a sack of rotting resentments.  When the potential client told me, after I made the first cut, that a proposal was due within three hours, it was there in three hours, hold the grousing about what I considered a reasonable deadline.  And being present I could put together the proposal from our conversation, not from what I thought I should be focusing on since I had been trained in buttoned-down conservative corporate writing.

Not that I consider myself in their circles but the Beatles and Leonard Cohen also did their time on the cushion, studying zen.  A fascinating research project would be to deconstruct the quality and freshness of their work before and after.  

 

 

 

Zen and the Art of Basement Waterproofing - New Haven Zen Center, May 19

In the Kwam Um School of Zen life is seamless, therefore what we traditionally call "work" is just part of everything else. 

Framed that way, I found out at a retreat at the New Haven, Connecticut Zen Center last month, the drudgery, resentment, and angst usually associated with work just don't pop up.  The zen master gave me and another retreat-goer a bottle of Windex and paper towels to make all the window on the second floor sparkle.  We were to do it in silence. Intuitively, we knew how to operate as a team.  Since the two of us approached the task as part of the spiritual experience, that's exactly what it was.

On Sunday, May 19th, the New Haven Zen Center will conduct another work detail.  This time it will take place after the normal meditation period, from 9:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M.  That period is divided into a number of 20-minute sitting and 10-minute walking meditations.  Those attending participate in some or all of them.  Usually, I swing by the Center for two sitting (since I'm a Baby Boomer I do the sitting on a chair, not a cushion) and one walking mediation each Sunday.  At around 11:00, there will be a light lunch, then down to the basement to prepare it to be waterproofed. 

Again, this is an opportunity for spiritual enlightenment about our relationship to ourselves and to what is classified in capitalism as work.  Maybe Karl Marx was dead wrong about the alienation of human beings from what is necessary to do to earn a living. Isn't it rather all in the framing or mindset?  Interestingly, one guiding teacher views what happens along the continuum as beyond likes and dislikes.

There is never a fee for the Sunday meditation sessions.  Donations are welcome, though.  To take advantage of zen and the art of basement proofing, just show up sometime between the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M. at 193 Mansfield Street, in New Haven, on May 18th.  Although there are signs about complex parking regulations, it's fine just to park on that street near the Center.  

For those who live near the New Haven green or attend Yale, a walk to the Center is doable. The resident monastic Seon Joon Sunim rides her bike to the conferences she gives and participates in at the university.  She is leaving for a 100-day retreat in South Korea and will be back in August.

For more information, please contact info@newhavenzen.org or 203-787-0921.

Northeast Corridor: Call my psychic and let's push for insurance to reimburse

When friends are really in trouble, here along the Northeast Corridor we bring up the "p" word - that is, "psychic."  NEW YORK Magazine even provides reviews of the best psychics in the Metro Area.

When it comes to selecting a psychic, you better know what you're doing. For more than two years I have been referring them to Andre, a clairvoyant at Psychic Interative, 702-216-9900, extension 827. The cost, for the relief of angst, is peanuts: $19 for 15 minutes.

Belief can create the placebo effect, of course, and since I believe in Andre's magical powers they have had a profound influence on me.  My business, for example, is back to earning monthly what it used to pre-economic meltdown and I have raised my social intelligence (SI) to near-genius level. 

My only beef is that, unlike the cost of therapy, this isn't reimbursable by insurance and the bill-back-to-patient not tax deductible.  That needs to be changed.  I will put Andre on it.

 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Buddha gives us permission to feel compassion

Those who haven't screwed up - and badly - are a shrinking minority. With so much economic, social, and political turbulence, most of us have wound up on the wrong side of whatever. 

But, unlike alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, our misdeeds didn't get us labeled as an enemy of the people who some hope will wind up with the death penalty.  Therefore, we might have felt that very politically incorrect emotion: compassion.  This is a teenager who had a lot going for him before he somehow seemed to lose his way. That lot included attending college, doe-eyed good looks which the girls chase after, and American citizenship, after immigrating to the U.S.

This morning a presentation by Seon Joon, an ordained nun in the Kuan Um School of Buddhism, gave those at the New Haven Zen Center in Connecticut "permission" to empathize with the struggle Tsarnaev is facing.  Part of that might be eventually recognizing that his alleged radical ideology was misguided and regretting where it had led him. 

The theme of Seon Joon's talk was seeing the world as the seamless mass of humanity we are, not in terms of "I" and "you" and "we" and "them."  According to that way of framing reality, there is no "other."  Yet, the media have designated Tsarnaev as an entity beyond the bounds of human.

That world view is one Seon Joon was just acquiring six months before 9/11.  She had begun to study Buddhism.  Like the poetry of Renaissance writer John Donne - "no man is an island" - the Kwan Um philosophy is committed to the oneness of mankind.  Donne's oft-quoted line is, "Don't ask for whom the bell tolls (in death and other disasters), it tolls for thee."  The events of 9/11 put an urgency to Seon Joon's spiritual search. 

Maybe Everyman should embrace that same spiritual quest when it comes to a response to Tsarnaev.  As the New Haven Zen Center's Guiding Teacher Ken Kessel made clear in the discussion following Seon Joon's talk, Tsarnaev had to be apprehended.  The public safety had to be protected.  We might also experience anger about what he allegedly did.  But, to hate him is to deny our own myopic condition as human beings. 

We are enjoying a sunny spring day in New Englans and not fighting for our life in a hospital bed because the universe, grace, or responsibilities prevented us from crossing that line which Tsarnaev did.

Every Sunday, on 193 Mansfield Street, there is meditation from 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M. at the Center.  No fee, donations accepted. Every Wednesday, at 6:30 P.M. newcomers can learn about the Kwan Um approach to meditation. At 7:00 P.M. there is chanting.  At 7:30 P.M. there is meditation. No fee, donations accepted.  There is ample and free street parking, a rare treat in the area around Yale University. Every few months there are retreats in New Haven and in Providence, Rhode Island.  Please contact info@newhavenzen.org to get on the free mailing list.

Matthew Warren: Mental illness as chronic disease

If Rick Warren's son Matthew Warren died of diabetes in a diabetic coma there would be a rush of donations to diabetic foundations and research facilities and that would be that. 

But instead Rick died of another chronic disease - mental illness - and now there is, as THE WASHINGTON POST points out, a national discussion about all sorts of issues. Those range from the role of religion in addressing mental illness to why the Warren family kept the severity of their child's condition confidential.

The unintended side effect of this death is that the door has opened a little wider on mental illness as a chronic disease.  Like other chronic diseases such as, yes, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, this one sometimes kills.  There is no guarantee that one or multiple methods of treatment will prevent death.  Candid professionals in the mental-health field tell us that it's our number-one job to monitor our condition for signs that we are not centered. Those of us who can manage to stay centered most of the time can live fairly normal lives.  We hold jobs or run businesses.  We marry.  We volunteer at the Food Bank.  We buy houses and new cars.

If there weren't a stigma associated with mental illness we would have one less matter to deal with.  Also, without that shame we, perhaps including Matthew, would receive more help from those around us such as the deli clerk, neighborhood pharmacist, zen master, and even clients.  Since age 11, when I entered puberty, I have been in this pickle.  My only regret is that no one in the so-called "helping professions" told me from the get-go that this was something I had to pay attention to, in fact, a lot of attention. 

Zen Master Has Sweet Tooth at the New Haven Center

Toll House Chocolate Chips.  They were not supposed to be on the altar of Buddha at the New Haven Zen Center.  But there they were tonight.  I couldn't help peeking at them out of the corner of my eye as I sat on my cushion and tried to meditate on the mantra: Clear Thinking - Don't Know. 

What added complexity to this mystery was that on the altar there were also strawberries, pears, bananas, and apples.  What was the connecting link, I pondered. 

After the meditation session ended I asked the guiding teacher Paul what was the symbolism of, well, the fruit. I wanted to slide into the matter of real concern.  He explained that in Korea that was how they celebrated the new moon.  Nice, I thought.  Then I brought up the chocolate chips.  Oh, he explained, the zen master in charge of the altar has a sweet tooth.

Since I don't follow the moon, I framed what was on Buddha's altar as a rite of spring.  During the fall and winter there had been Sandy and Nemo.  Just before Christmas not far from the New Haven Center had been the killing of children at Newtown.  We needed every strawberry we could find to get on the other side of all that.

For those in the Connecticut area wanting to be introduced to zen, every Wednesday at 6:30 P.M., at 193 Mansfield Street, New Haven, a guiding teacher explains the basics.  If you want to try it out, then there is chanting, followed by meditation.  No cost, although donations are welcome.  On Sundays, from 9:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M. there is also meditation. No cost, donations welcome.

You can get on the email list and receive regular information about what's going on, inspirational videos, and nuggets of thought by contacting the Center at info@newhavenzen.org.

Jane Fonda: Sweet Jesus, save us from any more apologies

Perhaps with no more reinventions up her sleeve, Jane Fonda has sunk to the common attention-getter of providing an apology.  In this case it's for posing in 1972 with North Vietnamese soldiers aboard a tank in Hanoi.

We wish Jane would have spared us the apology.  After all, we are burdened with so many of them these days, the worst of the batches accompanied by tears.

Sweet Jesus, apologies have always been attention-getting nuisances.  Those making them are usually so self-centered that they don't realize that society just wants them to go away and stay away.

Since the 1930s when Alcoholics Anonymous had been founded there is a non-stop group of folks making their amends, usually to those who, as expected, don't want to even hear from them.  There's a rush of some kind that goes with amend-making and, I have a hunch, it's an addictive process in itself.  Therefore, like Jane, members of 12-step programs will reach deep into their past to find situations to apologize for.

In the public interest, the best and brightest in public relations can create a campaign to call a moratorium on apologies for 10 years.  In itself it could prevent some disturbed people from screwing up just so that they have a platform for an apology.

Anyone intending apologizing to me will have to encounter a moat stocked with alligators and the drawbridge drawn down.