Confessions of a Bad Chaperone

Leo may be the world’s cutest puppy.

He’s a 7-week-old German Shepherd who is utterly and madly in love with Belle.

Here’s 6 am video proof during a sunrise walk on our roof:

Note: While Belle is casually indifferent to him, Leo is pretty much all I think about.
(and if you can’t see the video it’s also on Vimeo HERE.

Beyond sharing this charming May-December infatuation, I do have two wellness / wisdom comments.

First, in this uniquely stressful time, people are often grasping for wellness practices, only to be discouraged by how ineffective, even stress-inducing they are. 

Indeed, forcing yourself to sit still for 20 minutes and desperately trying to meditate can be a unique form of torture.

Witnessing a puppy’s exuberant frolicking always reminds me of Jack Kornfield’s famous metaphor for learning how to meditate:

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Training the mind in meditation is like training a puppy.

We put the puppy down and say, “Sit. Stay.” What does it do? It gets up and runs around. “Stay.” It runs around again. Twenty times, “Stay.”

After a while, slowly, the puppy settles down. Through practice, gently and gradually we can direct and steady our attention and learn how to be more fully where we are.

But remember, this steadying of the heart and mind builds slowly.

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Not only does this take time, I also want to remind you that there are no absolute rules for how your meditation practice should look.

Three minutes of putting down your iPhone and watching your breath totally counts as a meditation. 

Forcing yourself to sit silently for 20 minutes –– or perhaps shouting Frank Costanza’s Seinfeld mantra “Serenity Now!” –– really might mean “Insanity Later!”

This is also why I’ve varied the length and forms of all my gifted meditations HERE. 

Wellness practices are indeed extremely powerful tools for transformation, but we have to approach them (and ourselves) in the same way as we would training a puppy: with kindness and patience.

Secondly, hanging with Leo also reminds me of another tenet of the spiritual path, that’s also easy to forget.

Puppies are so delightful because they embody Beginner’s Mind. 

(In Zen Buddhism that’s known as Shoshin or 初心.)

Beginner’s mind reveals itself by openness, lack of preconceptions, and, of course, vast enthusiasm.

Every experience is new and therefore every moment is uniquely exciting.

Of course, at times, this level of puppy exuberance can be exhausting (sorry, Belle), but if we move too far away from Beginner’s Mind we’re not only stuck in old grooves and patterns, we’re missing out on 90% of the fun that the present moment offers us.

In other words, ideally, we must learn to dance between that fully-trained adult dog’s ability to sit, stay, and meditate…and the giddy puppy beginner’s mind buoyancy of a world where everything is new and everything is delightful.

Namaste for Now,