How I Rescued My Brain (29 page)

A husband and wife tell us that there is a 90 per cent chance she has multiple sclerosis. They have desperately wanted a child but couldn't, so the likely diagnosis brings with it some bittersweet relief: no pressure to keep trying anymore. A woman with a closed expression tells us that she suffers from depression. Her brother was recently confined to a wheelchair. She has a baby and a toddler. A young man who sits at the front gives only his name: Josh. Choeying's already told me that he is one of her most committed students.

Tears have flowed in the room by the time it's my turn. ‘I've had a stroke. My marriage is difficult. We're facing financial ruin. I'm really exhausted …' I say. Soon I'm crying too, but not from despair. It's relief — relief to be in a place where it is okay to let go and to be held in the supportive silence of others who know what pain is.

‘I had lots of material things. The perfect life, perfect children, a beautiful home,' Choeying says. ‘I was always helping others. I didn't need help myself. I thought these things would bring me true happiness. But my happiness was dependent: dependent, for example, upon whether I was meeting a friend for coffee that day, and if they didn't show up I was devastated. Even the coffee being bad could make me miserable. How can you live your life like that?

‘We have to look at our minds. Our senses create desire in us. We like chocolate, but we can't just have one piece because desire takes over and then we guzzle and feel sick and wish we hadn't. But the next time we have chocolate, we have too much again. We like a particular type of music, so we listen to it over and over until it becomes dull. What we look at, feel, taste, touch, and smell is neither good nor bad. If we perceive it as good, we can't get enough. If it's bad, we can't get away fast enough. On the other hand, if we see everything as “just is”, we see a new reality.

‘I see, I like, I must have. The mind is not clear when it is driven by the senses. Meditation refines the mind, helping us to see clearly.'

She gives us the first set of meditation instructions.

DURING THE AFTERNOON
session, I feel a tap on my knee. It's Shas — she's sitting behind me. ‘I'm afraid,' she whispers in a quiet voice, bringing her face close to mine. She looks terrified.

After our talk this morning, I'm feeling protective of her. ‘What's happening?' I murmur. Choeying is talking to the group.

‘I'm not sure if I'm here.'

I reassure her that she's here and raise my arm to get Choeying's attention.

When I tell Choeying what is happening, she asks Shas to come and sit with her at the front. Shas settles on a meditation cushion beside her chair and, after a time, beams at us like a contented cat.

When the day finishes at three o'clock, I feel raw and exposed. The emotional impact of my revelations and those of the others is more than I had been expecting. I go for a long walk on the beach, where the gentle waves seem tender, and eventually I feel soothed again.

That evening, as I sit around the dining table with Shas, Queenie, Choeying, Rex, and Josh, it feels as if I'm part of a fraternity. We've all pitched in — helped to cook, set the table, and wash up — and now we're just chatting.

We're talking about what causes feelings. Choeying thinks that there is always a thought before a feeling. I say that neuroscientists cannot yet explain what a thought is, but they do say that emotions can come first, before a thought. I explain my understanding of the limbic system and how the nervous system enervates the whole body, including the organs, and these give rise to emotions. Choeying believes there must be something before an emotion and asks what is the origin of the limbic system. I suggest DNA and our parents.

‘And before this?' she asks.

‘Well, all the way to the beginning of the universe,' I reply.

But something must come first, she insists.

I have no reply. She's not convinced by my point of view.

Before bedtime, I Skype in Rex's office with Anna and the kids. Ashley tells me that she's made a video to the soundtrack of ‘Sweet Dreams' by the Eurythmics. Anna says it's very good. Emma is already in bed, but Amelia is chatty. She is amazed that there was no sand at the southern end of the beach today. ‘It was like a swimming pool, Daddy,' she says.

I am warmed and comforted by their conversation. It feels right that I take this time out to get better; I'm doing it for them as much as for me.

After we hang up, I retire to my caravan and turn in. I think I'll sleep soundly after the intensity of today. But I'm troubled by the discussion about the source of emotions. During the night, I get up and read the book I've brought with me —
Buddha's Brain: the practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom,
by Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist, and Richard Mendius, a neurologist. I look for a reference to the neurological source of emotions, but instead get stuck on reading about the self.

Hanson and Mendius suggest that the concept of the self is an aggregation of brain states. A person begins, as a baby, without a sense of self. He or she forms one over time, believing that there is continuity in brain states, rather than each existing only in infinitesimally small slices of time. In other words, the self is a concept we manufacture, an attribution we give to our brain states, they say. The Dalai Lama said something like this too, although he did not put it in neuroscientific terms. Interesting.

I'VE NOTICED SINCE
I've been here that Choeying's students pop in at any time of day. She doesn't seem flustered by it, and takes time to speak with each of them. She's clearly a valued member of the community.

The next evening, one of the younger students in the course, Alena, joins us for dinner and brings her steel-string guitar. The top string has broken: it has only five strings instead of the usual six. She sings two of her own songs in a soulful and tuneful voice. I take a turn and sing ‘Father and Son' by Cat Stevens. Alena begins to cry and says how beautiful the words are. Josh, a classical guitarist, tries playing a piece that would be challenging enough on a steel-string guitar, let alone one with only five strings. Then we switch to golden oldies and folk songs, and everyone sings along. Rex sets up saucepans of water on the table, which he bangs with a wooden spoon. Choeying taps metal spoons together energetically. Shas jiggles a rice-filled jar, and Queenie sings along in a soprano voice, surprised at how many popular songs she knows, given her Baptist upbringing.

I look at the faces around the table and see such happiness. I have that ‘in the music' feeling, where ego disappears. I'm struck acutely by the thought that making music is really about bringing joy to others; it's not about being impressive, or even about self-improvement.

The next morning, I'm mentally fatigued but happy. Choeying tells me, ‘I saw the real David. I saw someone who was really enjoying himself. When you're singing, there are bigger moments of seeing you. Your eyes twinkle and you look so young. This is why chanting is valuable, too.'

I'VE MADE A
decision not to watch or read any news while I'm here. I want to rest my mind and keep mental disturbances to a minimum. I hope that this will intensify mindfulness: I want to make the most of my time here.

We've had relatively little rain in Hervey Bay since I arrived. Rex explains that this is because Fraser Island, just off the coast, provides a buffer to the weather. But it's raining all around us, he says, and floods are causing widespread devastation throughout south-east Queensland.

That morning, Choeying has those of us at the house chant with her in the meditation hall. The chant emphasises the recognition of suffering in all living beings; it's a means of cultivating compassion in us. We focus our minds especially on the flood victims. Afterwards, I'm so knocked out that I take a longer-than-usual midday nap in the caravan.

That night, there is lots of talking and laughter among Choeying, Queenie, Shas, Josh, and Alena, who are sitting on the upstairs balcony until late. I'm trying to sleep again. The humidity, the mosquitoes, and the lack of breeze make it difficult anyway, without their noise.

As I resign myself to being awake, my thoughts begin to drift. I wonder, not for the first time, what sort of Buddhist nun Choeying is. She sees an endless stream of people during the day, stays up late, laughs lustily, cracks jokes, and starts the routine all over again the next morning. She doesn't seem to run out of energy. She always allows each person her full attention and is unsparing when giving advice — some end up in tears. She has already told me, ‘You tend to be the teacher rather than the student in every situation. Until we can be the student, the one that's not coping, we won't get better.'

I can see how she would've been a charming and savvy business-woman.

I have asked her about this capacity to be with people, to listen intently to their troubles and not be sucked dry by them. I remembered how worn out I'd be, when I was working in my practice, after only six hours a day of hearing others' stories.

She told me that she feels endless compassion for others' suffering, and that she finds this uplifting rather than draining. ‘We can't have compassion for others until we know what it feels like to be rejected, criticised, abused, and judged. If we don't, and someone shares their pain with us, we'll say: “Just get over it.”'

I also asked her how she handled the distress of inmates at the prison when she was visiting. She said that it required empathy, but you needed to move through empathy to compassion. This is ‘empathy with the view'. ‘The view' is the Buddhist way of understanding existence and human suffering. We are ultimately responsible for ending our suffering. ‘Empathy is the fertile ground to grow compassion. You had the empathy without the wisdom,' she said.

I've clearly got a long way to go before I have the type of compassion Choeying has.

SEVERAL DAYS INTO
my stay, I have a one-to-one session with Choeying in the meditation hall. I've asked if we can review my meditation practice, and I have some specific questions.

Choeying suggests that, in addition to the calm-abiding meditation, one could extend the object of meditation to every sensory experience simultaneously. This is difficult, she says, but it trains the mind.

‘I've been thinking about what you've been saying during the course about what happens with meditation,' I say. ‘I think I experienced these things when I had the stroke.'

I describe what it was like being in the waiting room at the hospital and during the investigations with the doctors: how I wasn't perturbed by anything (except for the noise of the breathing machine from the patient in the bed next to mine). How everything and everyone seemed fascinating, and I didn't have a sense of people being good or bad, inferior or superior, and wasn't troubled by thoughts of whether I liked them or not. Time became irrelevant. I felt present in each moment as it unfolded, thinking neither about the past nor about the future.

‘It's remarkable. Your experience … meditators take years to achieve these things. I've been sitting on my bum for years, looking at my crazy mind to experience something as profound as you have. Wow. A knock on the head: it's a fast track to enlightenment!' Choeying says. We both laugh.

It sounds preposterous, but I think there's some truth to it. I've only seen my stroke as something bad that has happened to me, as something gone wrong, but now I can see it as something special. I decide that while I'm here I will write an account of my experiences immediately following the
stroke.

After my session with Choeying, I go for a swim at the local pool. As I do laps, my mind hums with reflections, my body enlivened. I have experienced the intense mindfulness that long-term meditators aim for, a taste of nirvana, and it's real — it's achievable. I've done it once, and perhaps I can do it again.

17

IT'S A NEW
day. As part of my morning meditation, I've been doing a loving-kindness practice. In the hall, I sit cross-legged and begin. I visualise someone that it's easy to have an unconditional feeling of warmth for — my father — and then draw the feeling of warmth and loving-kindness into myself. It feels awkward, as if I don't deserve these emotions, but it's getting easier.

Then I move on to someone close to me (Amelia), projecting the feeling of warmth onto her. Next, I think of someone neutral (the waitress in the cafe yesterday), and, lastly, someone I find difficult (the creditor I had the barney with over the telephone), projecting feelings of loving-kindness towards them both. I have been including Anna, the children, extended family members, close friends, acquaintances, and strangers in the practice.

As I finish, I remind myself that I'm doing everything I can, and that it's okay to feel inadequate and lost at times. More and more often, I'm believing this.

Then I reflect on my progress in recent months. My brain is behaving better. Before I left, I completed the Brain Fitness course, reaching the higher levels of achievement on all six exercises. (‘Tell Us Apart' — the exercise that required me to distinguish between similar-sounding phonemes — remained the toughest, and my weakest.) Doctor Small said there would be natural improvement with time, and I'm sure I'm seeing the benefit of this, too.