I first met Claude AnShin Thomas at a talk that he gave, and the first thing that struck me about him was his straightforward honesty. There was something very sharp and clear about his talk, his attitude, and his vision. I am honored to have the chance to interview Claude AnShin, who has experienced so much in his life. He has been many things. A combat soldier in Vietnam, martial arts teacher, musician, political activist, peace advocate, and ascetic wondering monk.

Vlad: You have walked many miles on foot, what is the longest continuous journey you have done on foot and what inspired this journey? 

The longest continuous journey I would have to say was from the Auschwitz concentration camp inPolandtoVietnam. I was ordained in Auschwitz, a decision made by my teacher. In preparation for that ordination, I sat in the selection site between two railroad tracks in Auschwitz/Birkenau. I fasted there for four days, no food or water, and I chanted from sunup to sundown.

I then walked to Vietnam, through something like 25 or 27 countries. Most of the places I walked through were places of current or past fighting.  The experience of being a combat soldier has shaped the way my Zen Buddhist practice has developed.  It has helped me come into a more conscious relationship with the sources of conflict that are within me. It has also given me a greater insight into the reality of separation that exists amongst those who call themselves peace advocates. A lot of these people see the soldiers as the enemy. I realized through my own experience that people seldom pay attention to the suffering of the perpetrator.  However, if we observe carefully, we can see that within each victim there is a perpetrator and within each perpetrator there is a victim.

Vlad: What was it like to be walking through these countries on foot?

That was a long time ago. I can only say now in hindsight that it was incredibly important, and intensely powerful in the sense that it got me into a more intimate connection with how I was affected by my military service. It brought into a sharper focus the full spectrum of the experience of war: the war before the war, the war itself, and the war after the war. It refined my understanding that War is not a finite experience.

The pilgrimage helped me understand the experience in a more certain and clear way.  It made me realize clearly that I don’t have any enemies. The whole notion of enemy is a fabrication. The demonization of the other helped to absolve the roots of war in me. If I want to be an advocate of active non-violence, I have to be awake to the sense of war in me, to the soldier in me. I have to be able to embrace the reality of my duality, understanding that I don’t know the specific experience of anIraqor Iranian soldier, or a Chilean soldier. I don’t know their exact experience, but I do know that I am not different from them. I try not to focus on precise experience, which can create a sense of separation, but rather to see where am I connected, where it is that our experiences intersect.

Vlad: If I understand correctly, you don’t have a permanent home, is this part of your spiritual practice? How did that come about?

Somehow, from the very beginning, it just made sense to me and I did not know why. I feel the critical importance of living a very direct life. Everything that I have read and studied talks about the importance of renunciation through the maturation of spiritual practice, of not being rooted in fame or gain. I want nothing more than to wake up. I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. My life is committed to that, because of all the consequences to living in forgetfulness.

My vows – no home, no resources, no saving, no insurance, none of the trappings of security bring more sharply into focus the reality that these sorts of this do not provide security. I am often invited to teach meditation or to work with cultures of violence in support of a desired transformation out of this cycle. The invitations come from all over the world. I do not charge for my services. I do everything for free, but if people want me there, they have to get me there and I don’t fly business class or first class. You chuckle at that, but I can’t tell you how many Buddhist teachers I know who won’t travel any other way than business class or first class.

Vlad: Would you recommend this wandering lifestyle to others who may want to follow in your footsteps?

I think this way of living is the best way in the world. Now, would I recommend this to others? Not my job. People need to find their own way. People have the sense somehow that it is a glamorous life and it is not.

Let’s say somebody embarks on this path. They need to be fully committed to it, because they have no real sense of the its’ demands. I had ideas of what this might be like, but in truth there is no way that I could ever know what this lifestyle is like. That is the wonder of it. It just keeps revealing itself day by day, year by year. I suppose I will live like this until I don’t live. I hear monks and priests talking about retirement, and I go, “are you kidding me?” To be a monk is not a job, this is a life commitment. You don’t retire from this.

Vlad: For many years you have, and still do, live with post traumatic stress, how has meditation and Zen practice affected that?

Living the life of spiritual development has taught me to live in a more conscious relation with myself. That being said, the 4th noble truth tells us that the cure for suffering does not entail the elimination of suffering. It does not mean that suffering goes away. Not in my experience. In my experience it means that I learn to live in a different relationship with my suffering. As a result my suffering does not haunt me in the ways that it did when I was attempting to eliminate this suffering.

I have not slept for more than 2 hours consecutively since 1967. I still don’t. When I was wrapped up in the notion that I had to get my life to conform to certain standards, I was in a place of non-acceptance. Through spiritual practice I was catapulted into a place of awareness and acceptance of my life as it was. I am then encouraged to take responsibility, not pretend that I am someone I’m not, or that there is some fixed way to be in the world.

I think there is a false impression marketed in regards to the issue of feelings and transformation on the spiritual path. Ideas are sold that healing is the absence of suffering, that it means everything goes away and becomes like it always was or is supposed to be. When in reality, there is no supposed to be. There is no fixed place where we can stand firm except in the reality of not knowing, in the reality of impermanence.

Spiritual practice is not an intellectual matter. I can’t think myself into a new way of living. I have to live myself into a new way of thinking.

Vlad: What advice, if any, do you have for vets?

First let me say that I am not in the advice giving business. What I pass along to Veterans is what I have learned and experienced through my own life. That healing is not the

absence of suffering, it is learning to live in a more conscious  relationship with how we have been affected. How we react and respond to the world makes absolute sense based on the nature of our experiences. We can’t ever go back to who we were before our military service, and the very nature of our experiences in war can’t be changed. I pass along the message that healing is possible, if one is willing to give up ideas of what that means. The very heart of healing rests with the acceptance that this is like this because that was like that. I think acceptance grows  out of the desire to accept.  But it must be supported by disciplined spiritual practice.

What I talk about often is the roots of war that are within us. I think the majority of people never consider this reality. It is something foreign to them. I think it is incredibly important to understand that the non-veteran is more responsible for war than the veteran. Because they think they are not responsible. People look to the violence that is external to them, and never reflect on the roots of that violence within them. We must pick up the roots of war within us and commit our lives to the transformation of this violence.

The world is constantly communicating to me, but if I am so set on the answer that I want to hear or what I think I should be hearing, then I loose my capacity to hear. Understanding is not the accumulation of information, but rather how that information manifests itself in real life terms in my life. It is a two-fold process, of asking the question, and being able to listen to the answer.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation and Yoga in Public Schools – Part 1

Imagine a classroom in a public inner- city elementary school. Perhaps images of loud screaming kids comes to mind. Nope, this is not the classroom we are talking about. In this mindfulness classroom the kids are quiet and contemplative. They are learning to noticing their feelings and observe their thoughts. This is happening in every classroom, spreading like wildfire across many schools, with teachers and staff learning along side the kids. Welcome to the world of Mindful Schools. A non-profit that is integrating mindfulness into education.

Vlad: How did Mindful Schools start, and what was your involvement?

In 2007, at the first Mindfulness in Education Conferences I met Laurie Grossman and Richard Shaknman who had just started a pilot program teaching mindfulness at Emerson Elementary School in Oakland. My whole background is in mindfulness meditation and kids and I have been teaching kids mindfulness in a variety of context for a while and was looking to get more into the public arena. So I went and saw Richard teach at that first school and I think the three of us knew right away, “Oh yeah, a perfect fit”. At the time teaching mindfulness in schools was new and for us it was just an experiment, but it was very evident that the impact was powerful. I taught the second school that we piloted and things just flowed from there. My involvement was from the beginning, but it evolved from us doing a program to us really starting to learn something that was going to become an organization. Since then, there has been a strong surge in the field. In a way, we caught the wave.

Vlad: What inspires you to continue going into schools?

The classroom is why I do this work. If I haven’t been in the classroom in a while then I start to get depressed. I feel like I get more from the kids then they get from me. For me it is such an honor and such a gift to be able to work with them. We work primarily with elementary schools, and I think that age group feels very healing to me. I get a tremendous amount of joy from being able to connect with them, and teach them a skill that I find valuable and see them embrace it and take in on in a way that is improving the way they relate to their life. There is a magic of seeing how they apply mindfulness on their own.

Vlad: Is there an underlying assumption underneath the work that Mindful Schools does – an ideology?

I think it is a fundamental assumption that self awareness does improve the quality of your life. I guess we could say it all comes down to a preventative mental health tool that gives young people the capacity to notice and navigate their experiences and emotions. If you teach that to them while they are young, you are giving them a much stronger foundation from which to approach challenges and difficulties and recognize and appreciate the things that are good and going well in life.

Part of what happens when you are self aware is that you don’t take yourself or your thoughts as personally or as seriously so you can rebound more quickly from being depressed or being caught in an obsessive thought pattern. You can catch it sooner, and you can see it more objectively, and are much more empowered to make choice around those thoughts and emotions.

Vlad: How do you imagine mindfulness will help and change this generation of kids?

I don’t feel like I am operating in this work with an idealized vision of how we are going to change the world. If we are building one interactions to the next then I feel like we are connecting with kids. We are embowering them, giving them a tools that help them navigate through life maybe in a way they did not have before. There is this ripple effect in how they relate to their classmates, their teacher, their families, and the challenges in their life and the decisions that they make. When you follow it out step by step, I guess theoretically we could be looking at a more peaceful world. But you know, it is a big world and there are a lot of people and it is a big jump.

Vlad: How is mindfulness being regarded in the public school system? Do teachers, staff, and principals get it?

We have been, as of this Fall, in just over 50 schools and work with about 14,000 kids all in the Bay Area. I think that I have encountered every single reaction, from incredibly supporting and engaged in the work to not interested or even objecting to the work, but the large majority are really interested and responsive. My general sense is that there is something intuitive that people recognize about the potential benefits of teaching kids mindfulness.

Living in our culture that is moving full speed ahead constantly, people don’t allow themselves any down time to stop and deliberately let their body become still and bring awareness into their physical experience to start to notice the content of their mind. There is a relief in that, just the stopping. We teach the program to the kids and the teachers. And then, over the course of the two months, or however long we are at a school we are preparing the kids to take ownership over leading mindfulness in the classroom.

Vlad: I’ve been seeing a lot of articles about meditation and the brain. Is mindfulness gaining popularity-recognition?

It is hard to say when you are in it, I think it is everywhere! Every time I’m at a staff meeting in a school I ask, “Raise your had if you’ve never heard of mindfulness and usually plenty of hands go up”. You look in any arena, mindfulness based things are popping up everywhere. Most notably in medicine and psychology.

Vlad: Is mindfulness a set of skills or can it also be part of a spiritual path? In other words, what is the relationship between learning mindfulness and spirituality?

I think that ultimately mindfulness still holds a place in both of those worlds. That mindfulness is used as a spiritual practice in deepening ones own understanding and wisdom in a spiritual context, and it will continue to be utilized as a life skills or a mental health tool. When you pull it apart, mindfulness is a universal human capacity to pay attention. It just so happens that certain contemplative traditions have utilized that capacity with spiritual means. And it is found most obviously in Buddhism, but looking at oneself in a contemplative way is found within all contemplative traditions. I think we are really fortunate that it got such a methodical laid out structure in Buddhism. That is what makes it really accessible.

Vlad: Do you think anything is lost in taking it out of the Buddhist or spiritual context?

I think it depends on what your intention is. I think there is this concern that Buddhists are co-opting education, they are trying to sneak in the back door or something. For Mindful Schools, our intention is to give kids tools that help them navigate their world more easily and that is really sincere. And in that way, I absolute do not think anything is lost. You don’t need a religious context for that at all.

And then I can say for people, for myself, that learning mindfulness when I was young as a life skills would not have been enough for me. I wanted something more out of it and I like that there is a place to pursue that.

For more info and to get involved check out: http://mindfulschools.org/

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation and Yoga in Public Schools – Part 1
2. Happiness in Old Age
3. Mindfulness Meditation Being Used In Hospitals & Schools

At this West Oakland School, every youth is taught mindfulness meditation, yoga, and mindful listening. This under-funded inner city school is taking a radical step towards preventing further violence in it’s community by teaching  students to seek more peaceful and harmonious ways to live.  Growing Up Mindful, is a program designed to teach students mindfulness, open and honest communication, yoga, and other consciousness raising activities. Knowing that this class is now integrated into the school curriculum with the approval and encouragement of the staff and principal is a dream come true.

This program is no singularity, similar programs are sprouting in many elementary, middle, and high schools all over the country. Yoga and Mindfulness are also being taken into jails, juvenile halls, and hospitals. With so much research to back up the claims that Mindfulness meditation and yoga improve concentration, memory, attention, reduce stress, and improve overall health, its no wonder that these ancient practices are finally making their way to public schools.

In addition to the benefits already mentioned, in a school setting students experience a radical boost to their self esteem and improved self image and confidence. By practicing yoga students are able to gain confidence in their own abilities to overcome physically and mentally challenging poses with a peaceful mind. The curriculum also focuses on establish mutual respect, kindness, and understanding- crucial to students facing inner city violence and oppression in their own communities.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation Being Used In Hospitals & Schools
2. Yoga and Meditation for Youth
3. Meditation Techniques: Mindfulness Joy of Being Present

This article just barely touches on all the research that has been done in the last 30 years to prove that meditation and mindfulness can create huge psychological and even physiological changes. In fact prayer and meditation are very similar but the main difference is that one the former is intricately associated with a religion practice while the latter is a technique. Meditation is a skill, just like riding a bicycle or learning to drive a car. One does not have to be spiritual or religious in any way shape or form to practice meditation or mindfulness. In fact, the same can be said for prayer. People frequently get confused by this because these techniques come from religious traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, but they can be separated out. I personally practice meditation daily and love yoga but do not have any interest in Buddhism or Hinduism. Is this wrong? Would any Buddhist hold this against me? I doubt it.

Despite a growing pile of Western and Eastern scientific research about these practices, there is still a lot of misconception and narrow minded thinking, especially among scientists. The Dali Lama recently spoke at a neuroscience conference about conducting more research on meditation to help people deal with stress and better control their moods and as a response to his invitation, over 500 scientist signed a petition to try and stop him from speaking there. Their reason; don’t want religion mixed in with science. What rubbish! Like helping people deal with stress and gain greater emotional control is such a terrible thing. If there is one thing that we can all learn from the great religions of the world it is to have more compassion, kindness, and love. I think that everyone could use a bit more of these qualities, no matter what religion or belief system they ascribe to.

Related posts:

1. Meditation Techniques: Mindfulness Joy of Being Present