Flying Pig Books, Shelburne, Thursday August 20 at 7 PM

Burlington Book Festival, Saturday September 26 at 1 PM

Find out where I’m reading on Booktour

Find Me at Wisdom Publications

Info

Excerpt from Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness (Wisdom Publications)

In 1988, my doctoral advisor in clinical psychology introduced me to a slim volume Metaphors We Live By, by the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson. This incisive work shaped the course of my graduate education and changed the way I think about and practice psychotherapy.

Metaphors help us to understand the world: they are the workhorse of language and meaning, letting us understand one thing in terms of another and helping us to communicate our understanding to others. We understand the world by metaphor and by doing so create a sense of the familiar. Yet metaphors are far more than colorful devices of language. In fact, they cannot be separated from the way we see and even experience the world. What’s more, much of our everyday language is based metaphorically on our physical bodies–our embodiment—and many metaphors reflect, after a fashion, the way the human brain is organized. In this way, concepts are not arbitrary references but reflect how we are built, the very structure of our being.

The psychologist Julian Jaynes argued that metaphor is the very ground of language. Take for example the verb to be. This basic verb is used in sentences such as “I am” and “she is.” It is derived from the Sanskrit bhu, which means “to grow” or “to make grow.” Thus, to be has the same etymological root as another Sanskrit verb asmi, which means “to breathe.” And here, encapsulated in the language of an ancient metaphor we see that living and breathing are one. And, in poignant connection to themes in the rest of this book, we can also reflect on the fact that the process of breathing is the foundation of mindfulness meditation, and by extension mindfulness is itself a practice of being.

This book presents 108 metaphors for mindfulness, meditation practice, self, change, deep acceptance and other related concepts. I have compiled the metaphors presented here over twenty-five years of meditating, practicing yoga, studying Buddhism, and being a mental health professional.

Mindfulness is a process of self-inquiry directed at what is happening in the moment, often focused on how the body feels, on how we embody this moment. Mindfulness is an intentional directing of attention to experience as it unfolds in the present moment, one moment following the next—the very happening of experience as it is happening without inner commentary, judgment, or storytelling.

And metaphors are indispensable to understand mindfulness, and to help make it a part of everyday life. Metaphors for mindfulness can motivate us to practice, show us how to bring mindfulness into daily life, and help us to employ mindfulness to transform our life.

I often find myself thinking and speaking in metaphor, and many of these metaphors were created in the midst of my clinical work. Imagery in metaphors anchors understanding, and is often a guide to the change necessary for self-improvement. These metaphors give the people I treat and teach a bridge from the conceptual to the experiential.

Many of the metaphors in this book are original to me; others are selected from the literature on mindfulness and Buddhism. The metaphors on the following pages form the practical core of my mindfulness teaching. Each metaphor is a node in a network of interweaving concepts that attempt to enliven the experience of mindfulness. And what’s more, you’ll also find that even the process of “unfolding” and elaborating one metaphor requires the use of several more!