The Trauma of Everyday Life

bear to hear it anymore. But in this group, someone else had the same tone, the one I had saved for my father. And when it went off while we were sitting, it was like my father calling to me again—it brought him back. I felt so lucky to be hearing it now, for the first time after his death, in this room, with all of you. I was afraid to face it, but I felt as if everyone was supporting me while I listened. I was scared of what I would feel, but it was good.”
    I have never seen this woman again but her response, or the spirit behind her response, has stayed with me. It was much more moving than I am capable of conveying on the page. Her love for her father came shining through for everyone to see. The meditation, in inadvertently summoning him, had reached deep inside her heart and released its sweetness. By chance, it had brought her father back, opening her once again to the sound of him.
    I was struck by how readily our meditation had plucked a relational chord. I had wanted, by focusing on sound as the object of meditation, to help people see that meditation was not just about seeking inner peace, it was about being present with everything. To witness the release of a dissociative defense in the midst of the sound meditation was a very powerful experience. We could literally feel the young woman’s self open up as she brought back her love for her father. The flow of feeling, like the rivulets of water thatsaw as she washed her feet after meeting the Buddha, ran through the entire group of people in the room.
    This was not an anomaly. There is support for it going all the way back to the Pali Canon. The collection of verses in which the Buddha tells the story of his mother’s death is called
Udana
, which means “cries” or “sighs” of the heart. The reference is to the throat chakra, or center, of classical Indian spiritual anatomy, which, when a person is overwhelmed with joy or rapture, fills to overflow and erupts with song. It is intriguing that the only classical reference to the Buddha’s early loss comes in this particular volume.
    “Shortlived are the mothers of Bodhisattvas,” the Buddha is heard to remark, referring to himself as a Bodhisattva, or awakened being.
    “When the Bodhisattvas are seven days born, their mothers make an end and are reborn in the company of the Tusita devas.” 17 *
    The Buddha then goes on to give a little inspiration. Everyone faces impermanence, he says. All that comes into being shall eventually depart. There is no absolute safety. Seeing this fact, wise people seek liberation. This is what we would expect him to say. But there is another layer of meaning in his verse as well, one that the young woman’s response to the cell-phone meditation also conveyed. When the dissociative reaction to trauma is relaxed and the self can open to what has previously seemed unbearable, a cry or sigh of release comes forth. By placing his only acknowledgment of his mother’s death in the chapter called
Udana
, the Buddha pointed to an important psychological truth. While dissociation offers immediate protection from the traumas of life, its relaxation connects us to ourselves in a way that brings forth relief from the heart. While the random ringing of the cell phone unexpectedly performed this function in my workshop, the Buddha would not have been surprised. The method he cultivated, of listening unapologetically to the sound of all things, was precisely calibrated to render the defense of dissociation mute. When this happens, the thrill of bliss that so paralyzed his mother can once again be felt.

6
    Curiosity

    T he Buddha was very smart about the mind. Psychiatrists and brain scientists today are just catching up to him. He knew that the mind is not a monolithic entity, that it is not one thing, and that it is capable of incredible plasticity. He could see that it is adept at multiple perspectives, that it can think and be aware of its thinking at the same time. He also understood that the mind’s capacity for self-reflection is the key to finding its way out of trauma. Despite his reputed, but only occasionally manifested, psychic powers, he was not a faith healer and he could not free anyone through the laying on of his hands. But he
was
a teacher, and once he figured out his method he gave it away freely, adapting it to suit the needs of the individuals he came in contact with. When I taught the meditation on sound to the participants at my weekend workshop and