Vanity in Lefkada

My wife and I recently spent our honeymoon on Lefkada, a beautiful island in the Ionian chain off the west coast of Greece. Our good friend Kim Bennett runs a holiday company out there (specialising in holidays for solo travellers with optional meditation and mindfulness classes; www.serenityretreat.co.uk). She always takes the hot mid-season months off, so offered for us to come and stay for a couple of weeks in one of her apartments. The location was absolutely stunning, right on the beachside, and the weather was hot and sunny every day! Thank you so much Kim for inviting us!

Now I'm not used to walking around in just a pair of shorts or going out to lie on the beach in the sun. With so much of my body exposed (not all of it mind...) and much of our time spent on the beach, I felt the arising of feelings of vanity much more than usual, especially around the idea of getting a tan.

Why do we want a tan? 

In the old days only people who worked outside in the sun (like farmers or labourers) would have tanned skin, so wealthy people would want to avoid getting a tan in order to show they're rich enough not to have to be outside. This is what led Queen Elizabeth I to whiten her skin. More recently, as more people worked indoors and rich people were able to take holidays to sunny places, having a tan became a sign of affluence – of having enough money to be able to lie around doing nothing on a beach far away.

These days, the likes of EasyJet and Ryanair have made going to spend time on a faraway beach much more accessible, so is having a tan still a sign of richness? Probably yes. In equal measure, people (at least Northern Europeans) generally look more healthy with a bit of colour in their skin, so with getting a tan there's perhaps a sense of wanting to look healthy and well. It's also an obvious outward sign for others to show we've been on a sunny holiday. 

Lying in the sun

Our apartment in Lefkada was right in front of its own little beach, and Kim had very kindly left out two sun loungers and a parasol for us to use. Usually, she commented, after a couple of days her guests are "velcroed to the beach"! So what is it that velcroes us?

Lying there in the sun reminded me of our lizard ancestry – basking in the heat and soaking up the warmth. I'm not a particularly cold blooded person, but I came to really enjoy basking until I began to sweat. So when my intention was to soak up the warmth like a lizard, that was one thing, but when my intention shifted towards "I want a tan" that was another. Wanting a tan is pure vanity, wanting to bask in the warmth was simple in-the-moment pleasure.

There were times when I'd come out of the water and want to dry off and warm back up – then I'd lie in the sun. But what about the other times? Why was I not satisfied with lying in the shade under the parasol, letting my body tan as it needed from just living outside more? Because some part of me wanted to get a tan – wanted to look a certain way. 

I occasionally found myself moving different parts of my body into the sun with the intention of evening up my tan – like a rotisserie oven...! Again the intention is the key – moving because one part is hot is sensible, but moving to even up the tan is vanity. 

Vanity ultimately arises because you see yourself as having a separate self that wants to impress and be "better", nicer looking or more handsome than others. It's delusive behaviour.

Body dissatisfaction

I also noticed increased feelings of dissatisfaction with my body shape. Walking around our holiday apartment with far fewer clothes than I'd normally wear at home, I'd catch myself in the mirror or look down at my uncovered chest and notice yet again the overly forward tilt in my hips, the lifted left shoulder, the uneven tan on my arms, or that wonk in my spine.

These feelings also crept into my daily yoga practice. I've found myself focusing (more than usual) on stretching out my hip flexors and lower back to help straighten my posture, or stretching to the left side to counter my wonky spine.

My yoga was not yoga any more, just like my lounging on the beach was not lounging on the beach anymore. Both became anxiety-filled activities centred around wanting to be something I was not. 

Of course that's an exaggeration! It was a wonderful honeymoon full of amazing experiences and lovely people (including my wonderful wife). Nevertheless there were moments when that anxiety-filled self-interest arose. 

What do you do in that situation? I tried my best to acknowledge it, allow it, and see the patterns of how and when it arose. I didn't manage it every time, but that was my intention. Once it's acknowledged and seen it no longer has any power over you.

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I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Skinner Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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Why you'd want to live a long life

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a workshop I went to on the Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga where we were introduced to a book written in 1211 called Kissayojoki or "Drink Tea and Prolong Life" by Zen master Eisai. Eisai wrote it to help convince the Japanese shogun at the time to give up being an alcoholic and drink tea instead - essentially to live a better and healthier life. However, in writing the book he set out a great deal of knowledge and many practices he'd learnt in China for boosting health and vitality, and the keys to living not just an average length of life, but a very long life.

So the question is why would you want to live a long life?

Why wouldn't you...?! In the west we seem to have a preoccupation with finding the elixir of life, the secret of immortality, sometimes called the philosopher's stone - a mythical potion that supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. Just google for "secret of eternal youth"! But as far as I see it, this preoccupation or desire to live forever is really driven by fear. Fear of change, fear of getting older, fear of loss, and ultimately a fear of death. Death is one of the great unknowns that we will never know about. Just pause for a moment and think of what might happen to you when you die - it's scary!

Why is it scary? I think it all stems from that little word "you" (or actually "me"). What will happen to me? What is 'me'? Who am I? What is self?

When it comes down to it, aren't we just scared of finding out that we're not who we think we are? We have these ideas like "I have good skin", "I have a healthy body","I have a good memory", "I have many friends", then as we get older we find our skin wrinkles, our hair falls out, we lose our memory, and this is scary.

But if we can learn to let go of this precious 'self' we care so deeply about, then change, getting older, and even death suddenly seem much less terrifying. We just need to stop making those "I am..." identifications.

Of course it's not quite that easy! If you spend some concentrated time looking at that question of "who am I?" you might get a genuine direct experience of no-self - when the self dissolves and you realise that 'I' doesn't really exist in the way you thought.

But it's one thing having this realisation, and another thing altogether living fully and completely from this realisation: seeing through all those old habits driven by thinking of yourself as separate, and fully integrating this realisation into your life.

So that's why I think one might want to live a long life. Because it takes time and a lot of effort to see through the strong and habitual delusions of the self built up over the decades since you realised you had a self. And it takes time to work out how to truly live from this place. Developing wise or skilful intentions, making wholesome and compassionate actions, speaking wisely and kindly, finding the right kind of livelihood, putting your efforts and energy in the right kind of directions, paying attention skilfully, and practising the things that cultivate all these qualities. That's the Buddha's 8-fold path, that is! And it's a life-long practice.

Available here