How I Rescued My Brain (10 page)

We had begun.

After some introductory remarks, he said, ‘We have this marvellous brain, with that special intelligence … Intelligence and education do not necessarily bring inner peace. Throughout human history, people have been trying to find different ways of obtaining inner peace, particularly in difficult situations … Hope is necessary to face helplessness or difficulties beyond our control.'

Yes, I had come for hope.

By day's end, however, it had become clear to me that this was not a course on meditation but an in-depth teaching on an ancient Tibetan Buddhist text, a translation of which we had in our booklets. I found it difficult to remain alert during the Dalai Lama's long monologues in Tibetan, followed by the translator's soporific voice. But it had been a huge effort to arrange seven days away, including accommodation and flights. I wasn't going to leave.

I was staying in cheap dormitory-style accommodation in an ex–army barracks within walking distance from the venue. Everyone at the barracks was attending the teaching. This gave the place, despite the spartan surroundings, the feeling of a retreat. My room housed twenty men. In the bunk adjacent to mine was a retired farmer with a bushman's beard and a disarming smile. He identified as Buddhist. ‘My missus is not into it; she thinks it's mumbo jumbo,' he told me. ‘But she doesn't mind. “As long as you do your business in the shed,” she says. The shed's pretty well set up.'

We laughed. I loved the vision of him retiring to his shed to chant and meditate, and I guessed that meditation wasn't the only reason he liked to spend time there. I told him that the course was not turning out the way I'd thought; I'd come to learn mindfulness meditation. He explained that what I was after was called calm-abiding meditation.

On the second day, I let go of trying to understand everything the Dalai Lama said; instead, I closed my eyes and allowed the sound of his voice to resonate through me. It was surprisingly soothing. At the end of the day he answered audience questions in English, and I perked up. He was funny, injecting humour at surprising moments. I was touched by his compassionate nature, and impressed when he spoke of his cooperation with neuroscientists who were investigating contemplative states.

The next morning before the teaching, I went in search of good coffee, entering a nearby hotel. As I sat sipping it in the foyer, I noticed that a group of people who looked to be from my course were forming a semi-circle off to one side of the reception desk. A woman or a man — I couldn't quite tell which — in maroon and yellow, with a shaved head, stood at the head of the line. Next to her was a man in a wheelchair. They seemed to be waiting for something.
This looks interesting
, I thought, so I joined them.

Soon, men in dark suits and earpieces appeared from a doorway behind reception. Then we saw the Dalai Lama materialise, following them. When he approached the group, he came up to each person, greeting them in turn. Soon he was up to me. He took my palms in his, and, looking into my eyes, said something I didn't catch. Then he moved on.

I couldn't believe it — I'd just missed what he'd said to me! Of course I was pleased with this chance meeting — how many of the other attendees would have liked it? — but I was kicking myself: had I missed something insightful, something of personal significance, or had he given me a kind of blessing that he gave to everyone? Afterwards I rolled the sounds he'd made around in my mind, hoping they'd gel into something meaningful, but they didn't. I hoped my chance to gain some understanding of the mechanics of inner peace wasn't passing me by.

EACH MORNING, MONKS
and nuns from different Buddhist traditions gave guided meditations in the auditorium. A nun from the Thai Forest Tradition instructed us to attend to the sounds around us without holding on to any particular sound and without making judgements. Another teacher asked us to count our exhalations up to ten and then repeat this cycle. If we lost our way before we got to ten, we were to start back at one. A third teacher asked us to visualise different colours on the inhale and the exhale. There was no one way to meditate, it seemed, and no one had yet spoken specifically of mindfulness. I understood that all of these techniques were connected to enhancing mindfulness, but I wasn't sure how.

During the long lunch breaks, we could line up for an interview with one of the nuns or monks. There was always a queue, but on the second-last day I joined it. I wanted to ask what I could do as a regular meditation practice at home.

Finally, I got to sit across from a middle-aged monk who said he was a youth worker. In answer to my question, he told me to focus on the image of my guru. I didn't have one, I said. He suggested Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion: an image associated with the Dalai Lama. I should begin with three prostrations: he demonstrated by joining his hands together in prayer pose, throwing himself onto the floor, and repeating this twice more, panting heavily. This was alarming; I couldn't see myself doing this at home. I looked around, feeling a little embarrassed, but no one seemed to take any notice. After doing that, he said, I was to visualise Chenrezig, and with time the image would become clearer in my mind.

So, yet another meditation technique. I felt a surge of irritation. This was so confusing. I wished there was a course that a beginner like me could do that covered all the basics. These Buddhists needed to get their act together — to agree, somehow, on what the essentials were. I sensed that the Buddhist teachers had a depth of experience from which I could learn, but I missed the clarity that the clinical psychologist had exuded in the workshop on mindfulness and meditation.

Although not quite convinced by the monk's instructions, I went to one of the stalls selling icons and bought the smallest and cheapest Chenrezig statue I could find. I would give it a go.

That night, after eating out, I came back to find most of the men hunched around the small television in our tiny living area: it was one of the big footy games of the year. They were barracking and cursing. I smiled — and here I was, wondering that I might have been getting myself into some kind of Buddhist cult, with prescribed forms of behaviour. I joined them for a while before heading into my dorm.

A young builder from New Zealand occupied the bed above me. He got up at six o'clock each morning to do prostrations on the porch; in my half-sleep, I would hear the thumps on the floorboards. A general practitioner, with three children similar in age to mine, slept in the bunk above the farmer. The next morning, he talked of the need for health professionals to use more ‘heart communication'. He taught meditation in his local community and to some of his patients.

I liked these men; they were straightforward and seemed genuine. I was the novice, but I didn't feel excluded. They didn't show any trace of trying to force their beliefs onto me.

That afternoon, as the rows of seats were being vacated at the end of the course, I turned and saw an older man with a stringy frame and silver hair. He was looking vacantly but calmly at the stage. I caught his eye. ‘Hello. How's the week been for you?'

‘I've got a few things I can take home,' he said, nodding.

‘Where are you from?' I asked.

He named a town out west — an area that I knew to be affected by drought. He said he was a farmer.

‘Things have been hard lately,' he told me. I saw pain flash across his face. ‘I've got to handle stress better. I'm glad I came.'

I smiled. I wasn't the only one looking for an insurance policy.

UPON MY RETURN
home, I felt renewed, despite not yet having a definite idea of how to undertake mindfulness meditation. With a new commitment, I took the Chenrezig statue, a black metal Buddha we'd bought on holiday in Thailand, an incense burner, a blanket, and some cushions, and set myself up in the girls' cubby house.

The cubby had been an afterthought to the house. Once we moved in, Anna said we needed one. Ashley and I had sat down with a book of cubby-house designs and agreed on one we liked. It was classic, a colonial farmhouse with a gabled roof and a long verandah. I imagined the girls sitting on the verandah in their yellow and pink chairs, looking out over the garden and having tea parties with their friends. Anna was happy with the design but, being practical and farsighted, wanted it to be large enough for a double bed so that guests could stay, while still leaving room for the kids to install their toy kitchen and to play school. And so the cubby was expanded into a pint-sized garden studio tall enough for an adult to stand in. We'd painted it the same colours as the main house and attached the same grey tin roof.

I made the cubby house my place of refuge, away from the commotion and demands of the family. I tried different ways of meditating. I visualised the Chenrezig image as best I could, peeking at the statue every now and then to remind myself of its particulars. I tried attending to the surrounding sounds, not placing emphasis on any individual one. I tried counting my exhalations. I tried visualising a dark colour while breathing out and white light while breathing in.

Gradually, over several weeks, I increased the length of time I was able to sit in meditation. And gradually, something changed in me. I began to feel motivated. I weeded the garden and stopped reading the newspaper from cover to cover.

The next time I met with Wayne, I reported my renewed vigour. I was sleeping better and exercising again. And I had made a friend.

I had met Nick, who was around the same age as me, at a barbecue. He'd played classical guitar in his youth, like me, and wanted to do so again. He was eager, with a grin that reminded me of a cocker spaniel. We agreed to meet up and play some duets. The day after we met, I pulled out my old sheet music, warmed up my fingers with scales and arpeggios, and went through the short pieces I used to play.

Before long, Nick and I were playing together regularly. Nick was a hustler, prodding me into action with his enthusiasm. Soon we started a series of fundraising concerts, held at a local community hall, inviting other musicians to perform. The duets with him and the contact with other amateur musicians brought me pleasure.

I began to have the energy for other new projects too. For years, I had been mulling over an idea for a book on risk-taking: why people did or didn't take risks, such as embarking on a new relationship, or ditching an unfulfilling job. Now I picked up books on the subject, started making notes, and worked out a rough chapter outline. I came across a book,
The Artist's Way
by Julia Cameron, that recommended stream-of-consciousness writing: ‘morning pages'. So I added this exercise to the end of my meditation session, as a way of generating ideas for the risk-taking book. I hadn't written about Anna for a while, but my thoughts and feelings about whatever was happening with us also began to slip into the jottings in my journal.

It seemed that life had finally turned around, and I dared to hope that my ‘insurance policy' was working. To reward myself, I decided to go on a seven-day group trek along a desert mountain range. I hadn't walked in wilderness with a backpack since my twenties. During that week, I exhilarated in the sense of freedom: the momentum of walking without children tagging along, and the splendour of camping under big desert skies without a building in sight. Life had taken on a new sheen at last.

I returned to civilisation in September, to hear news of the Lehman Brothers collapse. Global stock markets were plummeting. It was being referred to as the global financial crisis. At the same time, I noticed how low our bank balance had become.

7

OVER THE LAST
year, ever since Dad's death, I'd hankered for someone to look up to — a parent to listen to my miseries, give me an accepting hug, and tell me something wise. Dad wouldn't have been able to do anything practical for me, but he could've provided these things. After his death, I realised what a vacuum there was; as the eldest of my siblings, I was now at the end of the family line.

Being the executor of Dad's will, I'd had to deal with his accountant, his solicitor, and my extended family. The Department of Veterans' Affairs had also contacted me: they'd made Dad a payment before becoming aware of his death, and it needed to be refunded. I had to make sense of his pharmaceutical and nursing-home accounts. A final tax return was required; Dad continued to pay tax long after he was gone. I debated dollars and cents with clerks on the phone as if Dad were still alive. The people I dealt with were only doing their jobs, but each conversation, each occasion I went through his documents, re-ignited my sense of loss, and the ache in my chest would restart. Every time, it took several days for the veil of grief to part.

As the first anniversary of his death approached, I got an anxious feeling, as if something awful was about to happen. I called my sister and spoke to her about it. She said she didn't feel apprehensive and that it was okay. She was right, of course. Following the anniversary, the feeling eased, and I could finally stop thinking about him so intensely.

When I had first stopped work, it meant that I could help out more with the children, relieve the domestic pressure on Anna, restore my health, visit Dad when he was ill, and look after his financial affairs. It also meant I had time to extend our property portfolio.

I enjoyed dealing with numbers, and with property managers, builders, and tradesmen. With men in work shorts and boots, there was no need to step around sensitive feelings. And I liked talking about things I could see and touch, things that would last — a contrast to psychology, in which most of the people whose lives I'd helped I would never see again.