Five Insights and Then Some About Living an Inside-Out Life

“What part of the brain was it exactly that had made Ruth want to give me her time and attention and love?

I couldn’t see any of these things in a brain floating in formaldehyde, and I couldn’t see them through a microscope while performing brain surgery. I spent many late nights during medical school using my brain to think about the brain and then using my mind to ponder the irony of it.

How exactly do we separate and distinguish the mind from the brain? I can operate on the brain but not the mind, but operating on the brain can forever alter the mind. It’s a dilemma of causality - a circular reference problem like the perennial question of what came first, the chicken or the egg.

One day I asked Ruth this very question.

“Jim,” she said, “if you’re hungry, it really doesn’t matter whether the chicken or the egg comes first, does it?” I had at times been very hungry, and I would have happily eaten a chicken or an egg.

She always had a way of breaking things down and putting them in perspective. And day after day, she was teaching me how to get a new perspective on my own feelings and thoughts. And this thinking about thinking - this ability of the brain to observe itself - is one of its great mysteries.”

- James R. Doty, “Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart”

Here are my five insights from reading and diving deep into the magic shop.

Insight 1: Meditation practice is about integrating the mind-body-heart.

I want my practice to be rooted in my body while I learn to keep my heart open and train my mind. All three aspects are important, and I want to balance them instead of just orienting my practice towards training my mind.

The book structures this integration as Ruth’s Magic Tricks, which is helpful because it gives me an actionable step-by-step guide to integrating my mind, body, and heart.

Insight 2:  When I sit down to practice, how I live my life shows up on the cushion.

Rather than trying to break my mind or tame it into submission, I can see that the macrocosm of my life is the microcosm of my practice.

When I have slowed down the pace of my life, I am more patient and stable in my practice. The slowing of my pace has been intentional and a result of many years of living a hectic life and seeing how racy my mind is on the cushion. When I slow my pace, my mind is able to settle.

Insight 3: The difference in our quality of inner and outer lives is significant when we don’t practice.

Jim sees that his practice allows him to direct his life in the way he wants, and when his practice stops, he finds things spiralling out of control. When I take a break from my practice, I see that I react more often than I respond. I lose my agency to respond, leaving me with a sense of not being in control.

Insight 4: Practice is incomplete if it is not integrated from the inside out and outside in.

In the initial years of my practice, it was challenging to integrate the wisdom gained from the practice into my everyday life. Slowly, as I began working with my teacher and cultivated the practice of reflection, I have been bridging the gap inch by inch. This has made my life more enriching, as my inner and outer lives are in sync with each other, and I am able to be fully unapologetic myself more than I used to be.

Insight 5: Practice to keep the heart open

An open heart is where the mind can anchor itself. The root word in  Indian languages (Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and so on) for the mind is “manas” - which means both the heart and mind. There is no single word for mind; it is both the mind and heart.

Our actions and life benefit ourselves, others and the planet when our intentions align with our actions. The challenge for most of us happens in the areas of our lives where our actions don’t match our intentions.

Keeping the heart open is key to anchoring the mind. Having gratitude, compassion for oneself, empathy for others and all the beings we share this Universe with can help us move away from internal and external conflicts and live in harmony.

I wish the book had touched on emotions and how they are crucial to keeping the heart open. I also wish the author had touched on gratitude as a way of keeping the heart open.

What’s Next

This concludes the deep dive series of the book “Into the Magic Shop”, summarising my reflections and insights.

Let me know your insights from reading this series and the book.

We will start exploring one of my favourite books that helped me to establish a regular meditation practice, “How to Meditate” by Pema Chodron, starting on 17th May 2024, in our 28th Edition of this newsletter.

As a parting thought, I will finish this edition with a story.

Time to Die

Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing his teacher’s footsteps, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked, “Why do people have to die?”

“This is natural,” explained the older man. “Everything has to die and has just so long to live.”

Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: “It was time for your cup to die.”