By Illaria Dana, Education Major

I’ll never forget the night when I was seventeen, and two of my female friends, entirely whimsical creatures they seemed to me then, looked at each other and said, “Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.” The quote is by the writer, William S. Burroughs.

My friends wanted to get this quote tattooed to commemorate that feeling of adolescence, that contradictory state of being trapped in the home of their parents and feeling as if the whole world was opening up to them. Not to mention all the hormones! Eventually, the focus shifts, the hormonal changes of puberty level, and it is no longer important to question everything that is established as much as it is important to find a set of principles to live by.

Throughout the maturation process, it is usually old ideas that keep us from taking the steps forward that bring us to new possibilities. Fear of change inhibits our ability to try new things. This is pretty much common knowledge. However, fear also keeps us from experiencing reality as it is, from being in our bodies, and this fear is a product of illusions that have been generated outside of us that we internalize and become part of how we operate. Our physical responses occur to the world in our heads rather than the world in front of us.

Stress is a physiological response to real or imagined events that one does not have control over. The National Institute of Mental Health defines stress as, “the brain’s response to any demand.” However, stress is not just a mental phenomenon, but a physical one. Chronic stress interrupts sleep and digestion and it shortens telomeres, the protective coverings over chromosomes which store our DNA. The only way to reduce existing stress is to do something physical, such as deep breathing, dancing, walking, and other forms of exercise. You cannot think away your stress.

As important as it is to define reasons to live, such as the inherent worth of human life, it is equally important to let go of things that cause stress for no reason, or reasons that do not serve your greater sense of self. This is a process of compromise. While putting yourself through the test of abandoning all values may be brutal and inconvenient, there is some truth in being able to question old ideas and let go of the ones that are irrelevant or are sources of stress.

It is also a process, of both thoughts and actions, of finding a framework that gives your life meaning. This past fall, a Tibetan Buddhist named Tulku Damcho Rinpoche spoke at the Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland. His talk was called, “Meditation in Everyday Life.” He very simply described the ease with which one could practice meditation in the modern world.

He said it was important to sit, either cross-legged or in a chair. If one sat in a chair, in his or her office, perhaps, the feet should be planted firmly on the floor. The hands should be at rest on the legs. The spine should be straight, and the head should be tilted slightly forward, too forward and one would become drowsy, too far back and one would feel pain in the neck. The eyes should be slightly open, unless this was distracting, in which case novices could close their eyes. One could then focus on the breath.

Tulku Damcho Rinpoche did not speak in length about the benefits of meditation, saying only that it was an ancient practice that made everyday life more tolerable, more rich, for it separated out the illusions that we live with on a daily basis. As students, instructors, and faculty members, it can often seem that the immediate work before us is of the utmost importance. Is it more important than being present? Is it worth living in chronic stress, with physical harm to the body and mind, lunging after some unattainable goal?