Today, his daughter, Heidi, brought a copy of his article Children of War published in Adolescent Psychiatry, Vol III, No. 4, pg 374.
This peer reviewed Journal, the voice of the Society of Adolescent Psychiatry, published a special group of articles, attempting to consider "How Can the Children of World War II German National Socialist Sympathizers and Jewish Survivors Talk to Each Other?" Introductory article Pp. 350-353. by David W. Cline.
Dr. Cline opened his Introduction with a quoted section from the poem, Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tenneyson.
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world,
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulps will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Children and War: A Personal Perspective on Childhood in World War II and Post-war Germany Pp. 374-378. Guenther P. Pohlmann
Abstract: War is a major cause of traumatic stress for children and adolescents. German children who were born just before WWII experienced multiple stresses during and after the war. In addition to the losses and deprivations associated with the war, they had to face the shame of their country's defeat and responsibility for the war, and many lived with the knowledge of their families' complicity in the Nazi atrocities -- something that was largely unacknowledged and never discussed. While in some cases, war trauma results in an ever repeating cycle of violence; in others, the children who experience war are remarkably open to reconciliation and peace. While genocidal violence has recurred -- in Camboida, in Bosnia, in Rwanda, for example, there is hope that the children who live through these experiences can help to bring an end to these horrific events. The author offers his views on how the unique perspective of these children can inform us. He describes his experiences and his observations of his contemporaries and peers who were children in Germany during World War II, and adolescents in the post-war era. Some of these children have led the way in the ultimate acknowledgement of individual and collective responsibility and in taking steps to ensure that the horrors of the genocide would not be repeated.
If you would like to purchase copies of any of these articles in this special section of the Journal of Adolescent Psychiatry, go to this link.
http://www.benthamscience.com/contents-JCode-APS-Vol-00000002-Iss-00000004.htm
Dr. Gunther Pohlmann and Dr. David Kline had become friends when both were sent to Iraq in the first Gulf War. Gunther was involved in setting up a MASH type hospital during that war. Both doctors worked on dealing with psychiatric issues that later affect the young men who are in battle. They developed the use of meditation, mostly in the form of TM to help and other techniques during debriefing that helped prevent or as an initial treatment for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Many forms developed then are still used today in our wars.
Interestingly, currently TM has been used prior to sending men to war to try for primary prevention of PTSD and similar disabilities. As an aside, in a recent newspaper issue, there was also an article about using meditation to treat arthritis. Inflammatory markers have been measured in the blood of study subjects and they are significantly reduced, showing objectively that meditation helps not just reduce the pain of arthritis but actually reduces the inflammatory cause of arthritis.
Discussion at the end of this meeting reminded us of several sources that our group has particularly enjoyed during the past year and even before. They include:
Dr. Weil's article: Why We Are All Addicted?
Pema Chodran: Shenpa. We have discussed this article before. There was some discussion of the definition of shenpa. Todd has kindly provided us with a copy of this article. Hit Read More down at the bottom to see this article again.
Recommendation for a new book by Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis, in which the author examines ten "great ideas" dating from antiquity and their continued relevance to the happy life.
His new book is entitled: The Righteous Mind. This book is about the difference in thinking between conservatives and liberals.
On the light side, apparently a poll was taken asking whether people thought this country was currently divided. The results of the poll were 50% to 50%, Yes and No. The pundits are still arguing about that.
Shenpa: How We Get Hooked
and How We Get Unhooked
By
Pema Chödrön
You're
trying to make a point with a coworker or your partner. At one moment her face
is open and she's listening, and at the next, her eyes cloud over or her jaw
tenses. What is it that you're seeing?
Someone criticizes you. They
criticize your work or your appearance or your child. At moments like that,
what is it you feel? It has a familiar taste in your mouth, it has a familiar
smell. Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been
happening forever.
The Tibetan word for this is shenpa. It is usually
translated "attachment," but a more descriptive translation might be
"hooked." When shenpa hooks us, we're
likely to get stuck. We could call shenpa "that sticky
feeling." It's an everyday experience. Even a spot on your new sweater can
take you there. At the subtlest level, we feel a tightening, a tensing, a sense
of closing down. Then we feel a sense of withdrawing, not wanting to be where
we are. That's the hooked quality. That tight feeling has the power to hook us
into self-denigration, blame, anger, jealousy and other emotions which lead to
words and actions that end up poisoning us. Remember the fairy tale in which
toads hop out of the princess's mouth whenever she starts to say mean words?
That's how being hooked can feel. Yet we don't stop, we can't stop because
we're in the habit of associating whatever we're doing with relief from our own
discomfort. This is the shenpa syndrome. The word
"attachment" doesn't quite translate what's happening. It's a quality
of experience that's not easy to describe but which everyone knows well. Shenpa is usually
involuntary and it gets right to the root of why we suffer.
Someone
looks at us in a certain way, or we hear a certain song, we smell a certain
smell, we walk into a certain room and boom. The feeling has
nothing to do with the present, and nevertheless, there it is. When we were
practicing recognizing shenpa at Gampo Abbey, we
discovered that some of us could feel it even when a particular person simply
sat down next to us at the dining table.
Shenpa thrives on the
underlying insecurity of living in a world that is always changing. We
experience this insecurity as a background of slight unease or restlessness. We
all want some kind of relief from that unease, so we turn to what we enjoy food,
alcohol, drugs, sex, work or shopping. In moderation what we enjoy might be
very delightful. We can appreciate its taste and its presence in our life. But
when we empower it with the idea that it will bring us comfort, that it will
remove our unease, we get hooked. So we could also call shenpa "the urge"
the urge to smoke that cigarette, to overeat, to have another drink, to indulge
our addiction whatever it is. Sometimes shenpa is so strong that
we're willing to die getting this short-term symptomatic relief. The momentum
behind the urge is so strong that we never pull out of the habitual pattern of
turning to poison for comfort. It doesn't necessarily have to involve a
substance; it can be saying mean things, or approaching everything with a
critical mind. That's a major hook. Something triggers an old pattern we'd
rather not feel, and we tighten up and hook into criticizing or complaining. It
gives us a puffed-up satisfaction and a feeling of control that provides
short-term relief from uneasiness.
Those of us with strong addictions
know that working with habitual patterns begins with the willingness to fully
acknowledge our urge, and then the willingness not to act on it. This business
of not acting out is called refraining. Traditionally it's
called renunciation. What we renounce or
refrain from isn't food, sex, work or relationships per se. We renounce and
refrain from the shenpa. When we talk about
refraining from the shenpa, we're not talking
about trying to cast it out; we're talking about trying to see the shenpa clearly and
experiencing it. If we can see shenpa just as we're
starting to close down, when we feel the tightening, there's the possibility of
catching the urge to do the habitual thing, and not doing it. Without
meditation practice, this is almost impossible to do. Generally speaking, we
don't catch the tightening until we've indulged the urge to scratch our itch in
some habitual way. And unless we equate refraining with loving-kindness and
friendliness towards ourselves, refraining feels like putting on a
straitjacket. We struggle against it. The Tibetan word for renunciation is shenlok, which means turning
shenpa upside-down, shaking
it up. When we feel the tightening, somehow we have to know how to open up the
space without getting hooked into our habitual pattern. In practicing with shenpa, first we try to
recognize it. The best place to do this is on the meditation cushion. Sitting practice teaches us how to open and
relax to whatever arises, without picking and choosing. It teaches us to
experience the uneasiness and the urge fully, and to interrupt the momentum that
usually follows. We do this by not following after the thoughts and learning to
come back to the present moment. We learn to stay with the uneasiness, the
tightening, the itch of shenpa. We train in sitting
still with our desire to scratch. This is how we learn to stop the chain
reaction of habitual patterns that otherwise will rule our lives. This is how
we weaken the patterns that keep us hooked into discomfort that we mistake as
comfort. We label the spinoff "thinking" and return to the present
moment. Yet even in meditation, we experience shenpa. Let's say, for example, that in meditation
you felt settled and open. Thoughts came and went, but they didn't hook you.
They were like clouds in the sky that dissolved when you acknowledged them. You
were able to return to the moment without a sense of struggle. Afterwards,
you're hooked on that very pleasant experience: "I did it right, I got it
right. That's how it should always be, that's the model." Getting caught
like that builds arrogance, and conversely it builds poverty, because your next
session is nothing like that. In fact, your "bad" session is even
worse now because you're hooked on the "good" one. You sat there and
you were discursive: you were obsessing about something at home, at work. You
worried and you fretted; you got caught up in fear or anger. At the end of the
session, you feel discouraged it was "bad," and there's only you to
blame.
Is there something inherently wrong or right with either
meditation experience? Only the shenpa. The shenpa we feel toward
"good" meditation hooks us into how it's "supposed" to be,
and that sets us up for shenpa towards how it's not
"supposed" to be. Yet the meditation is just what it is. We get
caught in our idea of it: that's the shenpa. That stickiness is
the root shenpa. We call it
ego-clinging or self-absorption. When we're hooked on the idea of good
experience, self-absorption gets stronger; when we're hooked on the idea of bad
experience, self-absorption gets stronger. This is why we, as practitioners,
are taught not to judge ourselves, not to get caught in good or bad.
What
we really need to do is address things just as they are. Learning to recognize shenpa teaches us the
meaning of not being attached to this world. Not being attached has nothing to
do with this world. It has to do with shenpa being hooked by what
we associate with comfort. All we're trying to do is not to feel our
uneasiness. But when we do this we never get to the root of practice. The root
is experiencing the itch as well as the urge to scratch, and then not acting it
out.
If we're willing to practice this way over time, prajna begins to kick in.
Prajna is clear seeing. It's our innate intelligence, our wisdom. With prajna,
we begin to see the whole chain reaction clearly. As we practice, this wisdom
becomes a stronger force than shenpa. That in itself has
the power to stop the chain reaction.
Prajna isn't ego-involved. It's
wisdom found in basic goodness, openness, equanimity which cuts through
self-absorption. With prajna we can see what will open up space. Habituation,
which is ego-based, is just the opposite a compulsion to fill up space in our
own particular style. Some of us close space by hammering our point through;
others do it by trying to smooth the waters. We're taught that whatever arises
is fresh, the essence of realization. That's the basic view. But how do we see
whatever arises as the essence of realization when the fact of the matter is,
we have work to do?
The key is to look into shenpa. The work we have to
do is about coming to know that we're tensing or hooked or "all worked
up." That's the essence of realization. The earlier we catch it, the
easier shenpa is to work with, but
even catching it when we're already all worked up is good. Sometimes we have to
go through the whole cycle even though we see what we're doing. The urge is so
strong, the hook so sharp, the habitual pattern so sticky, that there are times
when we can't do anything about it.
There is something we can do after
the fact, however. We can go sit on the meditation cushion and re-run the
story. Maybe we start with remembering the all-worked-up feeling and get in
touch with that. We look clearly at the shenpa in retrospect; this
is very helpful. It's also helpful to see shenpa arising in little
ways, where the hook is not so sharp.
Buddhists are talking about shenpa when they say,
"Don't get caught in the content: observe the underlying quality the
clinging, the desire, the attachment." Sitting meditation teaches us how
to see that tangent before we go off on it. It basically comes down to the
instruction, "label it thinking." To train in this on the cushion,
where it's relatively easy and pleasant to do, is how we can prepare ourselves
to stay when we get all worked up.
Then we can train in seeing shenpa wherever we are. Say
something to another person and maybe you'll feel that tensing. Rather than get
caught in a story line about how right you are or how wrong you are, take it as
an opportunity to be present with the hooked quality. Use it as an opportunity
to stay with the tightness without acting upon it. Let that training be your
base.
You can also practice recognizing shenpa out in nature.
Practice sitting still and catching the moment when you close down. Or practice
in a crowd, watching one person at a time. When you're silent, what hooks you
is mental dialogue. You talk to yourself about badness or goodness: me-bad or
they-bad, this-right or that-wrong. Just to see this is a practice. You'll be
intrigued by how you'll involuntarily shut down and get hooked, one way or
another. Just keep labeling those thoughts and come back to the immediacy of
the feeling. That's how not to follow the chain reaction.
Once we're
aware of shenpa, we begin to notice
it in other people. We see them shutting down. We see that they've been hooked
and that nothing is going to get through to them now. At that moment we have
prajna. That basic intelligence comes through when we're not caught up in
escaping from our own unease. With prajna we can see what's happening with
others; we can see when they've been hooked. Then we can give the situation
some space. One way to do that is by opening up the space on the spot, through meditation.
Be quiet and place your mind on your breath. Hold your mind in place with great
openness and curiosity toward the other person. Asking a question is another
way of creating space around that sticky feeling. So is postponing your
discussion to another time.
At the Abbey, we're very fortunate that everybody
is excited about working with shenpa. So many words I've
tried using become ammunition that people use against themselves. But we feel
some kind of gladness about working with shenpa, perhaps because the
word is unfamiliar. We can acknowledge what's happening with clear seeing,
without aiming it at ourselves. Since no one particularly likes to have his shenpa pointed out, people
at the Abbey make deals like, "When you see me getting hooked, just pull
your earlobe, and if I see you getting hooked, I'll do the same. Or if you see
it in yourself, and I'm not picking up on it, at least give some little sign
that maybe this isn't the time to continue this discussion." This is how
we help each other cultivate prajna, clear seeing.
We could think of
this whole process in terms of four R - s: recognizing the shenpa, refraining from scratching, relaxing into the underlying
urge to scratch and then resolving to continue to
interrupt our habitual patterns like this for the rest of our lives. What do
you do when you don't do the habitual thing? You're left with your urge. That's
how you become more in touch with the craving and the wanting to move away. You
learn to relax with it. Then you resolve to keep practicing this way. Working
with shenpa softens us up. Once
we see how we get hooked and how we get swept along by the momentum, there's no
way to be arrogant. The trick is to keep
seeing. Don't let the softening and humility turn into self-denigration. That's
just another hook. Because we've been strengthening the whole habituated
situation for a long, long time, we can't expect to undo it overnight. It's not
a one-shot deal. It takes loving-kindness to recognize; it takes practice to
refrain; it takes willingness to relax; it takes determination to keep training
this way. It helps to remember that we may experience two billion kinds of
itches and seven quadrillion types of scratching, but there is really only one
root shenpa ego-clinging. We
experience it as tightening and self-absorption. It has degrees of intensity.
The branch shenpas are all our
different styles of scratching that itch.
I recently saw a cartoon of
three fish swimming around a hook. One fish is saying to the other, "The
secret is non-attachment." That's a shenpa cartoon: the secret
is don't bite that hook. If we can catch ourselves at that place where the urge
to bite is strong, we can at least get a bigger perspective on what's
happening. As we practice this way, we gain confidence in our own wisdom. It
begins to guide us toward the fundamental aspect of our being spaciousness,
warmth and spontaneity.
Pema Chödrön is a
fully-ordained Buddhist nun and the resident teacher at
Gampo Abbey in Cape
Breton, Nova Scotia. She is the author of The Wisdom
of No
Escape, Start Where You Are, When Things Fall Apart and The
Places That Scare You. Her most recent book is
Comfortable
With Uncertainty,
published by Shambhala Publications.
.
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