Anthony Tshering
A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing

I read a wonderful piece in Tricycle magazine today about what a spiritual life looks like. The timing for me to read it was perfect. It’s something I’ve been trying to make sense of recently.

We are very much a doing world. Even the language of therapy is often about doing. Everyone seems to come in and say to me, “I need to work on myself,” or “I need to work on my relationships.” The sentiment is understandable. We are a self-improvement culture. Our lives are viewed linearly, our lives a constant striving for self-improvement with a beginning, middle, and end. There is much usefulness in seeing the world this way. It is goal-orientated and results-focused first and foremost. It has helped create the world around us, including the computer I type on now or the smartphone I use to answer my emails and check social media. A lot of us internalize this productive voice and hear it in the daily chatter of our thinking self and assume this is who we are.

A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing
Meaning, Spirituality
Anthony Tshering
Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and ...

“Do you pray?” I once asked a patient.

“No, I’ve never been able to for some reason” she paused. “Do you?”

“No,” I said. “Because I don’t know if anyone is listening.”

It has always struck me as inconceivable that someone is listening to prayer. How can people be sure of some divine force in their lives? Even such Christian luminaries such as Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa experienced their doubts about God. I am no different. God does not speak to me in tongues or voices. All I hear are silent ellipses where I sense holiness in the mundane, the awe-inspiring in the ordinary. God has always seemed like an inelegant, hollow solution to the problem of meaning and death.

Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality
Anthony Tshering
Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy: The ...

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy- Louis C.K.

“To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.” 
― Ernest Becker

A few years ago, a patient of mine wondered out loud why he was unhappy. After all he was a successful lawyer, involved in a loving relationship with a partner, lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and had a group of close friends whom he saw socially. So what was wrong? "Something just doesn't feel right. I have the gnawing feeling that something should be different," he said. 

Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy: The First Step Toward Emotional Change
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Bodhicitta in the Time of Asian Hate

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Bodhicitta in the Time of Asian Hate

I recently published my first piece for Tricycle magazine. To be honest, it's been nerve-wracking as hell to have it out in the world! I worked at the San Jose Mercury News right out of college and wrote mostly high school sports stories for a few years, and I remember feeling lots of anxiety when those articles were published. Having this piece out there was a different level of anxiety, mostly because the piece is so naked and vulnerable. It's hard enough to have your heart open, living with a spirit of bodhicitta moment-to-moment, day-to-day. It feels even harder to have your heart this out in the open to thousands of strangers reading your piece.

It is far from a perfect piece of writing. I haven't read the piece since it was published because strangely enough when I read things I have authored, it is hard to even believe it was I who wrote it. Buddhism has a lot to say about anatta or non-self as I've written elsewhere. It's never quite been as clear to me what non-self means in practice as in writing this piece. This piece isn't "me." It speaks to dependent origination, one of the key teachings of the Pali text. The piece was written by some version of my consciousness at a particular moment when I was dealing with certain feelings and fears. And now that moment of consciousness has passed, and the piece is no longer "me."

A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing

A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing

I read a wonderful piece in Tricycle magazine today about what a spiritual life looks like. The timing for me to read it was perfect. It’s something I’ve been trying to make sense of recently.

We are very much a doing world. Even the language of therapy is often about doing. Everyone seems to come in and say to me, “I need to work on myself,” or “I need to work on my relationships.” The sentiment is understandable. We are a self-improvement culture. Our lives are viewed linearly, our lives a constant striving for self-improvement with a beginning, middle, and end. There is much usefulness in seeing the world this way. It is goal-orientated and results-focused first and foremost. It has helped create the world around us, including the computer I type on now or the smartphone I use to answer my emails and check social media. A lot of us internalize this productive voice and hear it in the daily chatter of our thinking self and assume this is who we are.

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Why Social Media Will Make You Feel Empty: Identity and Social Hierarchies In The Internet Age

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Why Social Media Will Make You Feel Empty: Identity and Social Hierarchies In The Internet Age

I loved social media. I loved that I was never bored, that any time I felt empty or alone, I could dawdle on my couch and feel connected to millions of people throughout the world. On Twitter, I could read an inexhaustible stream of opinions and articles about politics and sports. On Instagram, I could discover new worlds through others’ travel, see my friend’s new children or houses, and best of all, I could show off my fabulous young adult Brooklyn life filled with cocktail bars, restaurants, and parties. On Snapchat, I could send pictures with weird filters and get laughs from acquaintances. The likes I got were intoxicating. I could feel the serotonin boosts in my brain with each like, a stream of dopamine injection that maybe me feel popular, something I have never been in my life.

5 Things I’ve Learned After Twenty Years of Meditating

5 Things I’ve Learned After Twenty Years of Meditating

I started meditating when I was 21. When I was in Kathmandu, Nepal, I bought a copy of Kathleen McDonald’s How To Meditate at a bookstore in Thamel and read it. I had visited Boudha, a stunning Buddhist stupa in Kathmandu, earlier on my trip and felt a strong connection to the chanting monks and the spherical, skyward wonderment of the Buddha eyes and tower.

I read through the book, finishing it upon my return to America where I began to meditate on some folded pillows, beginning a long journey into the present day. It’s taken time but now I’m a daily meditator--somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour a day-- and I have also attended several mediation retreats in my life. This morning I was thinking about how meditation has helped me and thought it would be worthwhile to share it will you all. So without further ado…

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Why Self- Acceptance and Letting Go Are Essential for Happiness

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Why Self- Acceptance and Letting Go Are Essential for Happiness

Our brains are excellent at keeping us alive. They keep all the functions of your body going and running harmoniously. They will tell you when you’re hungry, thirsty or if you need to go to the bathroom. They will alert you to dangers real or imagined.

But our brains are awful at making us happy. Let’s take the act of thinking. As a species, we tend to believe in the validity of our thoughts. After all, you’ve never been given any reason to think otherwise.

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3 Ways to Face Impermanence, Loss and Death

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3 Ways to Face Impermanence, Loss and Death

You will die. That much is certain. It is only a question of when. And between your death and now, you will suffer much loss as well. It may be the end of a relationship or the death of a pet. It may be the loss of a job or something internal and more abstract like the loss of innocence. But it will happen to you just like it happens to everyone. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.

In Buddhism, loss is understood as a part of existence. Impermanence, one of the three marks of Buddhist teaching, is simple enough to understand: everything changes. This presents a problem psychologically for human beings. Human beings crave permanence and security but life is in constant flux. How are we expected to find peace when everything feels precarious and unstable? There are no easy answers here. If there were, people would generally be a lot happier and less anxious. In my experience as a psychotherapist, however, people are a lot more unhappy.

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Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality

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Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality

“Do you pray?” I once asked a patient.

“No, I’ve never been able to for some reason” she paused. “Do you?”

“No,” I said. “Because I don’t know if anyone is listening.”

It has always struck me as inconceivable that someone is listening to prayer. How can people be sure of some divine force in their lives? Even such Christian luminaries such as Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa experienced their doubts about God. I am no different. God does not speak to me in tongues or voices. All I hear are silent ellipses where I sense holiness in the mundane, the awe-inspiring in the ordinary. God has always seemed like an inelegant, hollow solution to the problem of meaning and death.

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Assessment Culture Is Toxic To Creativity And Mental Health

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Assessment Culture Is Toxic To Creativity And Mental Health

Some quick thoughts on assessment culture as I sit in the local coffee shop this lazy Sunday afternoon…

What is Assessment Culture? 

First, a definition. What exactly is assessment culture? In my view, it’s the continuing assessment of performance from school through your adult life. Some examples of assessment culture including grades or performance reviews at work. But it doesn’t stop there, as assessment culture has become rampant in the internet age. Think Yelp and Amazon reviews or even message boards for tv shows like Game of Thrones. In today’s world, everything is constantly assessed and judged continuously and ubiquitously. 

Who Are You? The Mystery of Existence and The Importance of A Rich, Inner Experience

Who Are You? The Mystery of Existence and The Importance of A Rich, Inner Experience

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Who Am I?” What comes up when you do ask that question? I imagine that most of us start with labels or descriptions of our life. For example, I could say, “I'm a 5’8” Asian-American therapist that weighs 155 pounds. I was born in Mountain View, California but now live in New York City.” But would that encompass who I am in any meaningful way?

I don’t think so. In fact, I think that description is mostly worthless because it says nothing about what is going on in my subjective everyday consciousness. So maybe we’re our thoughts and feelings? That would better describe our inner, subjective experience. But have you really examined your thoughts before?