Contemplative psychotherapy for individuals, couples, and groups in New York City.
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Living in the Moment with Alzheimer's
In "Living in the Moment" on today's New York Times Happy Days blog, Elizabeth Kadetsky describes the ways in which she has been coping with her mother's increasing dementia after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the spring of 2008. Observing her mother's growing detachment from memory, Kadetsky discovers an aspect of the illness that is central to Buddhist practice: to live with Alzheimer's is to be continuously in the present moment. The disease has caused her mother's mind to gradually let go of the pleasure and pain of the past, eventually forcing her to exist only in the present. Kadetsky writes: Today, at 69, she has less of that charisma — she has been diagnosed with the disease in its early to middle stages. But she has at least as much of a quality that I, earlier, modeled myself on, and later came to admire in her: a quirky, rather peculiar nature that could be summarized as an insistence on living in the moment. More » -
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More on mindfulness & Buddhism
A few days back I blogged about a Washington Post article that discussed mindfulness's uses in dealing with diseases like cancer ("It's mindfulness but is it Buddhism? Does it matter?"). Given the number of comments and a few mentions on other blogs (our friend the Rev. Danny Fisher's, to name one), I invited B. Alan Wallace to comment. More » -
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It's mindfulness, but is it Buddhism? Does it matter?
In today's Washington Post, a New York clinical psychologist specializing in cancer treatment writes of her own stage II breast cancer diagnosis. A proponent of mindfulness, Mindy Greenstein remembers what she learned from another breast cancer patient before she herself was diagnosed: Every hour she spent ruminating about the pain that was awaiting her was another hour she wasn't fully engaged with her life, another hour she couldn't enjoy. She couldn't pretend she didn't know her prognosis. So she chose a different route. Quoting one of the most well-know Buddhist teachers in the West, she continues: Even the basic act of washing the dishes can be a mindful act if one is focusing only on washing the dishes and not on what activity comes next. More »
