Trying To Stay Mindful With Trump

I admit it. I’m no longer mindful. I stopped trying last January, 2016, at my doctor’s office.

After taking the usual vital signs, the nurse asked me if I’d been experiencing any unusual stress lately. I immediately said no…then I changed my answer.

“You know, just lately,” I began, “I’ve been really worried that Donald Trump just might become our next President. I know it sounds crazy, but it just might happen. It. could. happen.”

Then we both laughed at my silly anxiety.

HA! HA! HA!

That was over a year ago, and only the braindead are laughing now. The rest of us remain anxious, worried, and downright terrified about The Donald’s nonstop fascist antics. Needless to say, he always did sound scary, overbearing, and decidedly UN-Presidential. But now, he’s in the White House. He’s no longer a candidate on the campaign trail. He’s actually the President of The United States — and I can’t keep up with him.

One minute he’s in a twitter war about Alec Baldwin’s dead-on impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live. The next minute he’s actually blasting the Prime Minister of Australia on the phone, refusing to take in all those refugees Obama had agreed to accept — and then denouncing Obama for making such a dumb deal with Australia. But then The Donald keeps praising Putin, ever careful not say anything bad about him — oh, wait. The list is endless!

Even if you watch only a little television or read only a few sections of the newspaper, you know exactly I’m talking about. The minute we try to process anything President Trump has said or done, he immediately moves into another realm of contradiction and hypocrisy.

As though he’s trying to give America a big birthday surprise with the same rotting-dead turtle — and there’s no birthday party going on and the decaying turtle no longer surprises us. But he’s going to keep giving us more and more dead turtles — whether we expect them or not.

Now that’s something worth worrying about: too many nonstop dead turtles.

Pardon me for getting too zen with my analogy here. I’ve reached the breaking point. I can either pull out my hair and move to Canada, or start waxing philosophical about our current political situation. I’ve decided to choose the latter, with the help of Lion’s Roar.

FYI, Lion’s Roar is the magazine that connects readers to the “Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time.” (It used to be called Shambhala.) The March issue of this bi-monthly not only addresses America’s current angst but offers suggestions on how to cope.

Susan Piver, author of Start Here Now and founder of online meditation community Open Heart Project, gives sage advice in her article for the magazine’s Heart & Mind section.

In Piver’s analogy, she uses a fish and a hook (not a turtle) to illustrate her point. Get ready for “5 Ways Not to Bite The Trump Hook.”

“Getting hooked by your habitual reaction isn’t going to help anyone, says SUSAN PIVER. She suggests five ways you can respond more skillfully.”

She begins by echoing the wisdom of famous Buddhist nun/teacher Pema Chodron:

“PEMA CHODRON FAMOUSLY introduced us to the notion of shenpa, which she defines as “biting the hook” of our habitual reactions.
When someone leaves us, we may bite the hook of grasping. When something unfair happens, we may bite the hook of rage. When we are disappointed, we may bite the hook of numbness.
What would it look like in your life not to bite the hook? What is non-shenpa?

If you ever had an interest in exploring this answer, now would be a great time to begin. A giant hook with a massive comb-over has been lowered into our political lives from bizarro-world. Now what?”

Then Piver outlines five ways to help readers not to take the bite.

Do yourself a big favor and read her article. If you can’t find Lion’s Roar on your newsstand because your local Barnes&Noble has closed, go to the library. If the library doesn’t carry it, try to read a friend’s copy. Better yet, subscribe to Lion’s Roar.

Whatever you decide, dear reader, know that you are not alone. Know that you CAN make a difference. Know that others are with you, and we can all get through this together. I leave you with Piver’s last way to respond more skillfully:

“5. Finally: feel what you feel.
As best you can, don’t pretend you aren’t scared, sad, angry, and shocked. There’s no problem having those feelings, as painful as they are. What is a problem is to avoid what you feel and then, as humans tend to, work it out on someone else by vilifying them. This is very dangerous. We stand at the intersection of tolerance and hatred. I’m not saying there aren’t terrible people who shouldn’t be held accountable for things they have done. But biting the hook of grasping, aggression, or numbness prevents us from seeing clearly the best course of action to take our country back.”