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My father had a two-by-four that was reserved for “disciplining” my brother and me. This disciplining was called a “spanking,” but its frequency and level of intensity could have earned it another label. However, as any woman who has given birth can attest, physical pain is temporal and usually fades into the far reaches of memories lost. As a child, I had no knowledge of my father’s mental illness. As a young adult, my experience of his abusiveness, violence, and threatening behavior was that they erupted so quickly and ferociously that they needed to be addressed without delay. There was no time to consider my feelings; immediate action was necessary, often crucial. More than once I accompanied the police as they carted my resistant dad to a psychiatric hospital. I believe my emotions and feelings related to my father were deeply buried by a protective psyche, but, as I was to learn, to be buried is not necessarily to be extinguished.

A few years after my father died, a friend’s father also passed away. I visited him as he observed the Jewish tradition of shivah, a seven-day period of mourning. In the presence of his grief and sorrow, I felt envious for the sadness he was feeling. He loved his father and would miss him. When my father died, I experienced no loss or grief, and now, years later, I felt the emptiness of that absence of feeling.

Well, perhaps “absence of feeling” is not entirely correct. Relationships don’t necessarily end because one party is no longer physically present, and the emotional part of my relationship with my father was, at that point, one of discomfort and confusion. I felt I could do better, and I decided that exploring that relationship would be worth the effort. Therapy and meditation, already significant in my life, took on a new focus, and the journey was not easy. I saw that I had suppressed for decades an array of conflicting feelings, including anger, resentment, and fear. There were times when the work was wrenching and debilitating, but I was determined and often buoyed by a glimmer of light that seemed to confirm that this was the right action for me.

One day in meditation I envisioned him as a boy of fifteen, pulled out of school to manage the growing family business, devastated because all he wanted was to be a doctor. He never spoke about it, but every book in our house was about some aspect of medical practice. He was not able to deal with my mother’s death; she was forty-four, he was forty-seven, and I was sixteen. His bipolar condition worsened. He did fairly well while on medication but could be harmful to himself and others when he decided he didn’t need it. One day I went to visit him, and as I drove up to his house I saw him holding a young woman on the ground and wielding an ax over her head. I was able to grab him and pull him off her. He was arrested and spent the final ten days of his life in a forensic ward. I visited him only once, and he was alone when he died. Later, I regretted that. I wish I had been wise enough to have wanted to hold his hand as he died.

It took time, but with gentle yet firm determination, I came to love the man whose final words to me were, “You’re no damn good. You never were, and you never will be.” I knew he was ill and off his medication. I knew he was not a perfect father, but neither am I. Mostly I had come to understand that he had done the best he could. I could have quit on my father—it would have been a lot easier—but I’m so grateful that I stayed the course. I appreciate myself for having the courage, and I appreciate what my friend Wayne Muller refers to as the spiritual advantages of a painful childhood. I am, today, deeply grateful for those advantages.

from Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living

Starting Monday, April 19th Tricycle magazine will feature Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living in its online book club. Anyone can join the discussion and there is no fee. Go to Tricycle.com and click on Community to join. Then go to book club. I’ll be facilitating so I’ll see you there. Here is an excerpt from the book.

More than two thousand five hundred years ago, no less a sage than the Buddha taught how important it is to develop an open heart and a generous spirit. In naming the virtuous practices that lead the way to enlightenment, a listing that includes morality, wisdom, truthfulness, and lovingkindness, he placed generosity at the very top of the list. From this we might conclude that one cannot begin to lead a moral life with a heart that is closed to the needs of others.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, generosity is considered mandatory. There is a story about a yeshiva student who asked a rabbi, if on a given day, he didn’t feel generous in his heart, did he have to act against his feelings and give anyway? The rabbi said, “The hungry must be fed today, not just when we’re in the mood.” Then he added, “Acts of generosity open a constricted heart.”

The Buddha saw that all beings want to be happy and that even the simplest act of generosity could free us from the fear of not having enough; it also loosens the shackles of endless greed and obsessiveness. “If beings knew, as I know, the results of giving and sharing,” said the Buddha, “they would not eat without having given. . . . Even if it were their last bite, they would not eat without having shared.” –Itivuttaka 18
(From Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living, Tarcher/Penguin, 2010)

Here is a short excerpt from my new book Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living published by Tarcher/Penguin in February, 2010. It addresses the concept of spiritual practice as a daily activity that can have great meaning in our lives.

The key to the value of the pocket practices is understanding them as practices. They are not something to believe in, as a religion or a spiritual tradition, nor are they a panacea, a cure-all to eliminate personal issues or the ills of the world. A practice is something we do. It’s not about codes, philosophies, or dogmas. A practice can never be assumed to be learned. We may get better at it, but we must always practice the practice if it is to be useful, just as we must walk the talk if it is to be meaningful.

An advanced spiritual practitioner can still become sad, angry, ill, and disappointed. We cannot change much of what comes at us in life, and we don’t try to eliminate feelings and emotions, but we can change our responses to, and experience of, life’s situations. The importance of this type of practice is understood when we realize that the very quality of our lives is determined by how we experience the events, situations, and conditions within and around us.

Hello. I am Allan Lokos, guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center in New York City, author, and former Broadway performer (original companies of Oliver!, Pickwick, and others).

I have been traveling quite a bit introducing my new book Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living published by Tarcher/Penguin in February, 2010. How wonderful that I can now offer some of it from the coziness of my computer to the peacefulness of yours. At least I hope you are reading this while at peace. If not, then sharing some practices intended to bring a sense of inner peace would seem particularly appropriate.

We live in a turbulent world struggling to find peace. Even when all the pieces seem to be in place––good health, good relationships, good career––it can still feel like something is missing, unsettled, not quite right. We struggle to find meaning in a life that, at times, feels empty, fearful, and uncertain. Within this setting, each of us is looking for what all sentient beings want, and have always wanted. To put it most simply, we want to be happy. We yearn for there to be meaning to our lives, balanced with a sense of inner peace and joy.

When life is coming at us like a freight train it can be enormously helpful to have short, concise practices and pithy thoughts that can help us think, speak, and act wisely under pressure. I call these pocket practices––small, but effective practices that we develop slowly so that we can call upon them quickly, instinctively. They are light, responsive, and powerful; great spiritual teachings distilled to concentrated dosages––wisdom of the ages practiced, ready, and honed for use in the modern world. I based these practices on a Buddhist teaching called the Parami, or Perfection Practices. They are generosity, morality, relinquishing, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, determination, lovingkindness, and equanimity.

Here is a practice I created at the Community Meditation Center. It then became the first practice in Pocket Peace. For one week carry at least five one-dollar bills wherever you go. Do not walk past anyone asking for help. Make eye contact with them and engage in a short conversation. “How are you doing?” is a good starter. Then really listen to their response. It is unbearably sad to realize how many people go through life without ever having been heard. A moment of your time can be an invaluable act of generosity. Give them a dollar and wish them well. The specific amount can vary in accordance with your resources but not by judging the recipient’s worthiness. This exercise needs to be done in a completely non-judgmental way. It’s easy to rationalize that the downtrodden might use your gift for drink or drugs, or that anyone who really wants to can find a job, but leave out the suppositions. After all, we don’t know. We can never really know someone else’s story. Try it for a week. Be more generous than you have ever been. Give for the sake of giving; be totally indiscriminate; get intoxicated with the joy of generosity.

To be completely honest, the practice can be addictive. People have reported that once they had done it for a week they found themselves unwilling to give up the joy of sharing. Yes, you may occasionally run into a person who responds to your gift by expressing dissatisfaction with the amount you gave, or by not responding at all. That’s okay, give with no expectations. How your gift is received is up to the recipient.

Of course, all locales have their unique attributes and you may live where you don’t often encounter street people, homeless folks, or beggars. To work with this pocket practice simply use your imagination and expand the parameters. Go to places that could benefit from your generosity and make a contribution regularly. See if you can spend a few minutes with one or two of the needy folk. If that isn’t possible, adopt a generous and involved attitude toward an appeal that comes in the mail or on line. There are web sites set up in which the click of a mouse makes a contribution. Some of them don’t even require that you give money, just a click and advertisers contribute. Perhaps for a year, make a five dollar contribution each month to one of the causes that you may have previously ignored. Again, bypass judgment and simply give. A five dollar donation once a month adds up to sixty dollars for the entire year. Whatever the amount, the object is to practice giving; it is a practice whose value is priceless.

One more important point: if you find you are too busy to spend a moment with someone down on his luck, perhaps you’re too busy.