Sitting, doing nothing but changing the world In this talk, I would like to discuss few subjects that

link mindfulness to social change, namely interconnectedness, awareness, consciousness expansion, compassion and responsibility, and how mindfulness can offer a ground on which these qualities manifest and experienced. but mainly about how mindfulness leads to getting better cookies. [Not sure about this paragraph] Having laura here, ido and keren and raz, and many other friends and fellow practitioners feels warm and familiar, and makes it significantly easier for me to face this talk. The interconnectedness between us is very tangible, almost visible. But although the Buddhist teachings tell us that it is so all the time and everywhere, sometimes it doesn't feel as such, and thus we fall into a sense of separation and alienation. Opening our eyes to seeing interconnectedness is an example of one of the important transformations mindfulness offers us. One of the more famous stories from the sutras, about the Buddha's therapeutic interventions, is the story about Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed. In brief Gotami lost her young and beloved child. Devastated, she came upon the Buddha, hoping for a miracle that will revive her son. The Buddha, in his wisdom and great compassion, does not argue with her or teaches her anything, but send her to the village, to bring him a mustard seed, from a house where nobody had died. After wondering through the houses, going door to door, everyone was willing to give her a mustard seed, but every household she encountered had seen at least one death. Finding by her own experience, the universality of loss and death, she calms down, and manages to continue her life. The story is normally told as an illustration of the importance of personal experience in healing, about the universality of suffering Dukkha, and the need to find creative means Upaya, in the therapeutic intervention. I would like to draw our attention to another aspect of this. From the transformation Gotami went through to the transformation that her community experienced by this act. Gotami, guided by the Buddha, carries a present for her community because she really meets them bringing her pain and resonating with theirs. It's was an opportunity to face impermanence, to witness the transformation that Gotami was going through and changing with her. The people she meets are invited to raise their eyes and open them to reality and towards the other and away from attachments and ignorance. The village's community was involved in compassion in action, and was transformed by it, just as much as Gotami, basically by being with what is. The Buddha in this case was acting not only to alleviate Gotami's personal pain, but also as a catalyst to community change towards more concerned, compassionate, and aware society. The recently late Margaret Thatcher said: "there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." P.A. Payutto a Thai Buddhist monk and scholar had a bit different take on it. He wrote: "The personal, social, spiritual and environmental dimensions are not separated from each other. They are closely related and integrated in an inseparable way. Our Ignorance in seeing it, leads us to behave and act in destructive ways to the environment, Earth, and therefore ourselves, as individuals and as a society." The base of social change is a transformation in the thought process in humans. Our call as therapists must be towards unveiling this ignorance. What we can do, and should do, is to support the state of mind and provide a framework to experience a widening of consciousness and interconnectedness. This is exactly what mindfulness does.

Working with patients suffering from chronic pain, modern mindfulness research, led by the pioneering work of Kabat zinn, demonstrated what was taught in the Buddhist tradition many years ago that developing qualities such as moment to moment awareness, compassion, dignity, presence, acceptance and holding the experience within wider context of this moment in its fullness, alleviates and transforms the suffering. Taking it a step farther, still within the framework of the individual, it was shown to have significant effect on various kinds of mental suffering from anxiety, stress and depression to the more severe mental disordres. It is now the time to implement this wisdom into wider perspective into the society with it's illness and suffering. From body to wholeness and from one person to the community and from community to what the Dalai Lama calls universal responsibility. He explains that this term, he coined, is a translation from what in Tibetan literally means universal consciousness. I truly believe that change in any level, these days can stem mainly from consciousness expension: In this new millennium, we face many challenges: from food, education, environmental global warming, financial, humanitarian, and violence in various scales. Although tremendous beneficial efforts are made in finding remedies to those, by technology and science, I believe that the way, to solve the most urging problems, must stem from a paradigm shift in consciousness. Deeply understanding our innate nature as interconnected, and cutting through the ignorance of seeing ourselves as separate beings, needing to take care only of our psychological stories, possessions, and immediate safety of ourselves and few relatives, might be crucial to maintain this planet. Mindfulness offers a platform in which we can actually board on a journey to a much wider perspective than we could ever see by holding to the fears, that keep our separate, permanent and fearful sense of self. Practicing mindfulness, with the right intention, can give us, as a society, and as parts in it, an opportunity to really experience unity, responsibility, intimacy with the world, and practicing compassion, loving kindness and non-judgmental, accepting approach towards self and others. Dalai lama If you want to be good to others practice compassion. If you want to be good to yourself practice compassion. How does it meet practice? In the Beer shave MHC, one of the biggest governmental MHC in Israel, we have our desert mindfulness clinic, we set our goals widely as possible, to work with both clients from many backgrounds and wide variety of diagnoses from retired persons, to young students, from university professors, to very simple unemployed population, from people dealing with normal life stress and are curious about the field, to severe mental illnesses , all sitting together on the floor in our meditation hall, and hospital staff not only mental health professionals, but also secretaries, laboratory workers, administrative workers and others , in hope to deal with stress, burnout, and to provide a platform to experience another way of being, by allowing themselves to have few conscious breaths, mindfully on a regular basis. It aims as the level of organizational change, and has impact on the municipality as well as the entire area surrounding the hospital through giving space for integrative thought, meditation practice and mindful moments, spread with the desert wind. I believe that the mere existence of a weekly sangha a sitting meditation group, for the staff makes an organizational change and is felt, even though only few participate in it actively, in the atmosphere of the entire hospital. In mindfulness courses for patients and workshops for professionals in the healing professions, I often offer this exercise: I hand each one a cookie, and ask them to hold it and observe it, while thinking how many

people were involved in the process that brought this cookie to their hands right now, and afterwards where they come from. After few minutes, participants normally reach a list of few dozens of people from all over the world. From farmers growing wheat to the people holding the tradition of baking. From the patients who paid me last week, enabling me to buy this box of cookies, to the Japanese constructing my loyal car. people in the industry of gasoline, agriculture, baking, packing, Doron, from the shop where I live, and so and so forth. It is quite a remarkable experience to hold such a cookie. You might want to try it once. Well, actually, if you pay attention you do it all the time. It is even more interesting to hear inquiry of the experience. Participants come up with feeling of connectedness, responsibility, care for the workers involved, and being conscious of the environmental aspects of the product. One of my students was drawn to the suffering of the chickens laying the eggs used, and how, in order for us to have as cheap as possible products, others pay. Going home after such experience, looking into other objects in such way, might be a significant shift towards actual change between people, the earth, ethnic groups and countries. It is a living manifestation of this illusive and powerful concept of emptiness by just looking mindfully at a cookie. You can imagine what such an experience might change in people's way of being seeing clearly how deeply our interbeing is, and thus encouraging honesty, responsibility, compassion and gratitude. People report that they managed to see many other things in this light. I can tell you a bit of what it did to me as a facilitator: While in the first times I ran this experiment, I grabbed chocolate wafers, (they were in a sale 3 for 10 NIS), afterwards, I felt it's not right to use these anymore, and changed to healthier, fare trade, locally made cookies. It wasn't an ordered realm of thought it just felt right. It is the third year already, that I'm teaching mindfulness and the foundations of Buddhist psychology, in an IDF military camp, to mental health officers, treating soldiers. This is quite a unique experience for me, very different from my earlier days in the army as a combat officer, sitting on the floor, meditating, talking about dependant origination, interconnectedness and compassion, within such an organization. What is the impact of such experiences on it? What might be the effect of such mindful experiences on soldiers in the field, after they met with those therapists, carrying with them seeds of mindfulness? What does "getting better cookies" mean to them? In the Jewish tradition we have a similar idea - Tikun Olam - is a Hebrew phrase that means "repairing the world" (or "healing the world") which suggests humanity's shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world. When you look into the linguistic root of the word "therapy" you find it comes from"therapia" which the Greek word for "healing" which is simply making whole, or "moving toward wholeness", and wholeness always is beyond the individual. I believe that as therapist and practically as human beings, familiar with the concept of interconnectedness/ emptiness, and practicing mindful meditation, we should view our mandate, naturally, as treating the whole which means the fabric of society, and to understand, that we are doing it, whether we do individual therapy, Group therapy or organizational interventions we always touch the entire network. The seeds of mindfulness are spreading. It starts with our own recognition of our purpose, being honest with ourselves and with our practice and widening our perspectives. As therapists we must see ourselves as agents of change in the world, and as Ghandi inspired us: be the change we want to see in the world. It calls us to embrace into each therapeutic intervention (which is everything we do in a radical sense) the psychological dimensions as well as the spiritual and the body dimensions. So, by inviting people to experience mindful momemts, breathing with attention, and holding their own life experiences as they unfold, moment after moment, with acceptance, wisdom and compassion, we take part in changing the world. And we do so, starting with sitting quietly, doing nothing but changing the world.

Constancy (Shunriyu Suzuki) : People who know, even if only intuitively, the state of emptiness always have open the possibility of accepting things as they are. They can appreciate everything. In everything they do, even though it may be very difficult, they will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy."