During a pandemic it is natural to worry about your defense systems. Will my immune system fight off the disease? Will my financial savings and food stocks last long enough? Will my government adequately protect me from hardship? In all of this, it can be easy to neglect one of your most important defense systems: your ego. Your ego acts as the immune system of your personality, reacting defensively to the information you receive and filtering it through various emotional and intellectual processes until it aligns with the way you conceptualize the world. The biggest worry during a time of crisis is not that your ego will fail to protect you, however, but that it will protect you too well. The quarantine has put my ego on high alert, and I have often found myself stressed, irritable, and defensive because of it. In a class such as ours that deals with controversial topics, this could make it difficult for me engage with challenging information, but contemplative practices have been crucial in allowing me to openly and honestly engage with ideas that challenge my worldview.

These practices work by altering my learning environment and physiological state. During a contemplative practice I am in a safe, comfortable, and quiet environment which allows me to relax. In this state of peace, my ego is able to let its guard down and I can abandon the defensiveness I feel towards challenging ideas. For example, while learning about fossil fuels, my mind is usually coming up with excuses for why I am not personally responsible for environmental damage, or why the information I am learning does not apply to me. A contemplative practice, however, lowers those defenses and forces me to engage with the material more honestly. I was not just hearing statistics, but I was feeling the information on a visceral level and applying it directly to my own life without making excuses. I also find that my ego encourages me to think linearly so I can ignore the wide range of effects my lifestyle has on a global scale; thus, contemplative practices have made it easier to think systemically which is crucial when analyzing our complex food system.

Note: I’m not sure this really came from the Buddha but I’m sure he would agree!

Overall, I have found the contemplative practices extremely helpful at improving mindfulness and self-honesty, and I now see them as a necessary step towards internalizing the things I learn. I believe that exercises like these will be critical for us as a society to be open and honest about our most significant problems, which will be necessary if we ever wish to solve them.