Sunday, August 23, 2009

Former Buddhist Nun Helps Stressed-Out Find Inner Peace


By Cynthia Lee, UCLA Today, Aug 21, 2009


Diana Winston spent more than a decade pursuing inner peace and serenity within the walls of Buddhist monasteries in Southeast Asia, immersed in periods of mindful meditation that lasted from just a few hours to a year.

But that's not the journey she imagines most people would take.

"My life story is not a good example of what I expect people to follow," she said, smiling, as she sat in her office in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

In fact, Winston rarely talks about the spiritual evolution that brought her here, to a large university where researchers are discovering that the practice of mindfulness meditation has many physical and psychological benefits, including slowing the progression of HIV in patients suffering from stress and helping ADHD teens focus.

While it was this kind of research that brought her to UCLA, Winston, as director of mindfulness education, primarily teaches mentally healthy — yet stressed-out — people. She also shares what she has learned from her years of practicing mindful meditation as a Buddhist with those dealing with difficulties such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders.

Going beyond religion

“To me, Buddhism is really secondary because the questions people are dealing with are all the same: How do we live happier, healthier and saner lives and have more peace? It doesn't matter whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist. These techniques are tremendously valuable, and so I've learned to teach them in a way that makes them accessible to all."

Through the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center (MARC), Winston has taught the practice to hundreds of teens and adults, including Bruin football players, medical students, interns and residents, and entire UCLA departments seeking to de-stress. All her classes are open to the general public.

"Most people are not going to go live in a monastery," she said. "So I'm interested in how we can bring mindfulness into our lives in the midst of family, job and other responsibilities. It's not necessarily about being mindful every second. It's about what you can do when you're caught in traffic or getting ready to meet your boss. How can I stop, take a breath and manage my anxiety? How can I live life more fully?

"We teach people how to be more present in the midst of daily life, how to be more self-aware of physical sensations, emotions and thoughts. We teach people how to deal with difficult emotions — like anxiety and depression — to help us be less reactive and more in the present moment."

Happiness from the inside out

Winston first became exposed to Buddhism during her junior year abroad in Thailand as a Brown University student. But it wasn't until after graduation when she worked for the Free Tibet movement in Dharamsala, India, headquarters for the Dalai Lama's government in exile, that she became "really hooked on Buddhist teachings because they seemed to explain a lot of things in my life,” she said. “I saw the way I was endlessly pursuing praise and success, and trying to make something of myself outside of myself." Buddhists, she found, presented her with an alternative, "that happiness wasn't about something outside of myself, but can come through inner peace."

Over the ensuing years, she deepened her study of Buddhism and Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation techniques. Going on meditation retreats in Thailand and on the East Coast transformed her life, she found. "It was like going to a spiritual bootcamp. I was learning to find peace within myself, despite life's ups and downs, cultivating more compassion, self-acceptance and kindness for myself and others."

Combining social activism with Buddhism, Winston started a volunteer program within the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in the San Francisco Bay Area that offered training, study and meditation to volunteers who worked in homeless shelters, soup kitchens and environmentalist organizations.

In 1997, she felt the need to fully immerse herself in a spiritual life so she traveled to a monastery in Burma to spend a year living as a Buddhist nun, "which meant I had to shave my head, put all my possessions in storage and live by certain precepts." There was to be no reading or writing; no eating after 12 noon; no sex, drugs or alcohol; and, oddly enough, no sleeping on high and luxurious beds. "It was easy to give up those things because I was so interested in what I was doing. It was so powerful to me," she recalled.

Mindful meditation consumed all her waking hours — sleeping was limited. This austere lifestyle, spent mostly in silence, left her feeling lonely at times and sometimes sick because of the diet and heat. "But it becomes your life. You just live it. Over time, it made me learn to trust myself and know I had a capacity to handle whatever life brought me," she said.

"Parts of it, I hated; and parts of it, I loved," she said. "When you spend that much time with yourself, your mind gets very, very subtle. You become very aware, and all sorts of insights and self-understanding arise. It's pretty amazing." The experience wasn't just self-absorbing, but helped her develop "an open heart," heightening her sense of compassion for others.

Giving back

After a year, she said, "I was done. I felt I could sit here in a monastery for 20 years, but what about the rest of the world where there was so much suffering?"

Feeling the need to give back, Winston began training to teach mindfulness. She first taught it to children in India and later to teens and adults at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Calif. "The teens would primarily come because their parents forced them," she said. "One of my philosophies is that you can't force anybody to do it." But by helping them connect on a deeper level with other teens, Winston found a way to engage them. The program she built — she subsequently wrote a book about mindfulness for teens — was very successful and now replicated by other organizations.

"I began to think: How do we take this out of the insular world of Buddhism into the wider world in a way that makes real change possible?"

An invitation from Dr. Susan Smalley to join a research project at the Semel Institute and ultimately teach mindfulness at the new MARC center gave her what she was looking for — a shared vision that mindfulness could be applied in a secular, mainstream way to life.

Now Winston, who is about to give birth to her first baby, is ready to conquer the next frontier – "practicing mindfulness with a screaming infant," she said, laughing.

For information on upcoming classes and meditations that can be downloaded free, visit the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at www.marc.ucla.edu.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Buddhism is fastest-growing religion in English jails over past decade

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Telegraph.co.uk 05 Aug 2009

Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in England's jails, with the number of followers rising eightfold over the past decade.

Although adherents to the Eastern faith believe in peace and the sanctity of life, almost all of the Buddhists behind bars in this country are serving lengthy sentences for serious crimes such as violence and sex offences.

Some jails and secure hospitals including Broadmoor have opened shrines known as Buddha Groves in their grounds, and there is a nationwide network of chaplains to cater for the growing population.

It is claimed that most of the Buddhists in jail converted after their conviction, and chose it over other religions because its emphasis on meditation helps them cope with being locked up.

Supporters of Buddhist criminals say they also believe the spiritual development they gain in prison will help them once they are released, and prevent them from re-offending.

Lord Avebury, a Liberal Democrat peer who is the patron of Angulimala, the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Organisation, told The Daily Telegraph: "The numbers are quite remarkable. I think one of the reasons is that they convert to Buddhism in prison – it's a reasonable hypothesis that they become interested when inside.

"I think it does enable people to come to terms with their situation. Buddhism gets people away from the idea of material ambitions, and if people are in prison they can't go for those goals anyway.

"You do have more time to reflect and meditate in jail, and get away from the idea of self."

He went on: "My inclination would be to say it must help people after they leave jail. The whole idea of Buddhism is not to cause harm to anybody, and the person who persists in their faith is likely to be totally recast in their life and must be less likely to re-offend."

Lord Avebury said the care offered by the network of Buddhist prison chaplains, who are supported by the Prison Service, would also have encouraged many prisoners to convert, in addition to the existence of shrines in the jail grounds.

"We have an annual celebration at Spring Hill [an open prison in Buckinghamshire where the first Buddha Grove was built]. That's a remarkable place, it's extremely peaceful. Staff go there to meditate as well as prisoners."

Official figures show Britain's 149,157 Buddhists – who believe in gaining spiritual knowledge about the true nature of life and do not worship gods – make up just 0.26 of the general population .

In 1997 there were only 226 Buddhists in prisons in England and Wales, but by the end of June 2008 that figure had risen by 669 per cent to reach 1,737 – 2 per cent of the 79,734 prison population.

The vast majority, 1,194, were white and most were over 30. Only 78 were female.

Detailed statistics published by the Ministry of Justice show that almost all were serving long sentences. In total, 621 were serving terms of four years or more, while a further 521 had been given indeterminate sentences.

The rate of growth in the Buddhist jail population outstrips that of Muslims, whose numbers have more than doubled from 3,681 to 9,795 over the past 11 years.

Christians remain the best represented group behind bars, with 41,839 worshippers, while those declaring themselves to have no religion, or atheist or agnostic views, now stand at 27,710.

Atheists make up 1 per cent of the prison population for the first time this year, with 570 declared adherents to the view that there is definitely no God.

Just 220 prisoners said they were Jewish – fewer than the 366 recorded Pagans, 340 Rastafarians and 230 Jehovah's Witnesses. There are also 37 members of the Salvation Army in jail.

A Prison Service spokesman said: "The Prison Service recognises the positive role faith can play in the lives and rehabilitation of prisoners, and is committed to enabling prisoners of all faiths to practise their religion.

"Each prison has a multi-faith chaplaincy team to meet the religious and pastoral needs of prisoners and staff. Teams include chaplains and volunteers from a wide range of religions and denominations."

Population in English and Welsh prisons by religion in June 2008

No religion 26,626

Church of England 23,039

Roman Catholic 14,296

Muslim 9,795

Buddhist 1,737

Sikh 648

Atheist 570

Agnostic 514

Hindu 434

Pagan 366

Rastafarian 340

Jehovah's Witness 230

Jewish 220

Scientology 3

Source: Ministry of Justice