Interview with Ianna Hondros-McCarthy

Ianna Hondros-McCarthy is one of the newest and most distinctive voices in the mindfulness field. Her debut book (Stickier Rice, Clearer Purpose), part travelogue, part introduction to mindfulness practice, is already being hailed as a modern classic.

Ianna was interviewed for Everyday Mindfulness by Jon Wilde in June 2014.

EVERYDAY MINDFULNESS: Did you have strong spiritual leanings when you were growing up?

IANNA HONDROS-MCCARTHY: Not really. I grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, to parents who wanted their children to be exposed to religion for the sake of knowing what it was, but religion was never really something that was a topic at home. So I went to a Greek Orthodox Church and Sunday school every week, but can’t really say I remember much about it other than trying not to fall asleep during the two-hour masses, mostly delivered in Greek. My strongest memory from that time is asking questions and not getting answers that I felt were valid, such as, “Why can’t girls be altar boys?” and being told, “That’s just the way it is.” Although I now know that there are legitimate answers to many of the questions I had, I wasn’t able to find anything in Greek Orthodoxy to feel faithful about.

As a teenager, I was no longer required to attend Church, so religion fell off of my radar. I instead focused on school, was an active athlete and involved in extra-curricular activities (rowing, soccer, skiing, mock-trial team, and Honor student society). I made some great friends, figured out I was bisexual and had my first girlfriend when I was 16, and was generally a very happy, inquisitive person.

Although religion wasn’t one of my nagging life questions as a teenager, the reasons behind people wanting to spend time in nature was. I was fascinated with the idea that people would do things like sit on a porch and just stare out at a mountain view; I couldn’t understand the purpose but I was very intrigued.

Back to the topic at hand, if you were asking if I had been reading about Zen from an early age, the answer is no. My knowledge of Buddhism was confined to what I’d studied in terms of world religions during history class. Not that I think of Buddhism as a religion. To me, it’s more like a philosophy.

EM: When did you first meditate?

IHM: At nineteen, I made one visit to a meditation group. I’m not sure if it was a Zen practice or not. Basically, we sat and stared at a wall with our eyes open. I found it difficult and confusing. It really didn’t work for me. I sat there, not knowing what I was supposed to be doing and thinking that maybe this wasn’t a constructive use of my time. What I ended up doing was finding images in the brush strokes of the paint on the wall for 30 minutes.

On a whim, at 21, I decided to go and study at a temple in Thailand for a month. My sister was teaching English there, and I had gone to visit her during a winter break from college. I was at a stage where I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and was trying to put myself in as many different environments as I could in the hopes that I’d figure it out.

That month in Thailand was life-changing in that it helped direct my life towards a more mindful direction. For ten days I stayed at a Theravada Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai province where we started with ten minutes meditation and worked up to ninety minutes. Sometimes the meditation was amazing. Sometimes it involved making games up in my head in order to pass the time. I started to realise just how challenging meditation is. What I’ve come to realise is that everybody has an idea what it’s like to meditate in one context or another. Sports people, for example, have their own way of getting in the zone before an event. Also, I was starting to understand that, when one experiences boredom or physical pain during meditation, it’s a reminder that all sensations are temporary and that it’s OK just be sit and be with whatever arises.

EM: After that first visit to Thailand, did you quickly establish a meditation practice for yourself?

IHM: At that stage, I hadn’t figured out what my practice would be. Based 45 minutes outside of Boston, I didn’t have easy access to meditation groups. At that stage I wasn’t going on retreats. But I knew I’d found something that was worth pursuing in the sense that it could answer the questions that had been on my mind for years. Namely, what was going to lead me to a fulfilling life that wasn’t driven by ego?

In discovering mindfulness I’d found something that gave everything in my life a context. I’d begun to realise that being ego-driven and needing to control everything in my life was an exhausting way to be. It was only when I discovered Buddhism and mindfulness that I realised, “Here’s the rubric I have been looking for all along.” I don’t even think of these as spiritual pursuits. I consider spirituality to be more like blind faith. I think of mindfulness more as a practice that helps me make sense of myself and the world I live in. Unlike religion, where I might follow this deity I’ll never see and which I’ll never be able to prove, I can prove that mindfulness works because of my direct experience. Of course, I recognize that people of many other religions may say the same thing, and they have every right to, as that is their personal experience; this is just mine.

EM: How did the people around you react to this new-found interest in meditation?

IHM: Out in Thailand, I slept on a board with a thin mat on it. Returning home I was sleeping in a dormitory with six other girls. I decided I preferred a wooden board rather than a normal bed, so tried rearranging my bed but ended up breaking some dorm furniture—we all got a good laugh out of that. Also, waking up my room-mates to meditate at 5am didn’t go down too well. But my closest friends weren’t judgmental about the fact that I had an interest in meditation, even if they didn’t understand it. Nonetheless, it was sometimes difficult to be trying to live a lifestyle that felt so different from theirs.

At that time I was usually meditating twice a week but there were times when I’d fall off the wagon. But even during times when I wasn’t meditating, I never lost sight of the positives that meditation brought to my life.

I was working up in Maine for a summer when I was 23 and came across a meditation class where I met other people and discussed how Buddhist/mindfulness concepts could be applied to daily life and how those principles could be cultivated; I had again found a community to practice in.

Then I was doing an internship in India last autumn (at the age of 24) and signed up for a ten-day Introduction to Buddhism course with the intention of deepening my understanding of mindfulness. It was a silent retreat, and a wonderful experience that did indeed help me deepen my practice, and allowed me to meet some incredible people.

EM: Were there any particular books that had an impact on you?

IHM: Vicki MacKenzie’s Cave In The Snow definitely had an impact. It’s the story of Tenzin Palmo, an Englishwoman, the daughter of a fishmonger from London’s East End, who spent twelve years alone in a cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas and became a world-renowned spiritual leader. She was the first western woman to become a Tibetan Buddhist lama and played a big role in the enfranchising of Buddhist nuns. As I was reading it I found myself thinking, “Maybe I should become a nun?” I figured that, if I opted for that road, I could practice all the time, without having to deal with everyday distractions that make it challenging to cultivate a strong sense of mindfulness. But I imagine that the life of a nun would be as challenging in its own way as being out in the wider world, dealing with work, relationships etc.

Another area of reading I found both fascinating and helpful was that of science, particularly quantum physics. The idea that, on a fundamental level, we’re all made out of stardust was a real eye-opener for me, especially as it relates to our bodies and our thoughts. I had a few epiphanies where I’d be looking at a mountain and realise that I was essentially made out of the same stuff as those mountains. There was the idea that, if I wasn’t here right now, neither would the mountains be here. I was very taken by the idea that everything is interconnected. When I came to a mindfulness concept such as, “you are not your thoughts,” my understanding of that was helped by the knowledge that my thoughts are one tiny part of everything else that comprises my being along with everything else that depends on my being. In turn, that leads to questions such as “Who am I?”

The truth about thoughts is that they are impermanent. They come and go very quickly. You can be sitting and meditating. A thought comes by. You say to yourself, “No, I’m not going to entertain that thought.” And there it goes. But there’s no underestimating the effect that thoughts have on us. Also, thoughts have a tangible effect on the neural pathways in our brains, therefore affecting our actions. So, while you can say that you are not your thoughts, those thoughts do have an effect on you as a person.

The way I like to think about it is that you are not your thoughts but your thoughts are an integral part of who you are. But thoughts are only as powerful as we allow them to be or believe them to be. Whether you look at thoughts as powerful or powerless depends on your state of mind at the time you’re having the thought and what kind of environment you’re in.

I might be walking down the road and I see someone I know walking on the other side. I wave to them and they don’t see me. If I’m feeling positive that morning, I’ll probably shrug and assume they haven’t seen me and give them the benefit of the doubt. If you’re not having the best of days, it’s highly possible that you’ll draw other conclusions and find your thoughts in a negative spiral, such as “they must no longer like me,” so you write that person off as a friend.

EM: How would you describe your meditation practice at present?

IHM: I’d say I meditate on 95% of my days. Usually I’ll wake up at 4am and meditate for up to thirty minutes. I tend to meditate the same way every time, focusing on my breathing, having been advised by someone that it’s a good idea to stick with one specific practice for a significant period of time.

Outside of meditation, I’ll practice everyday mindfulness as much as possible, whether it’s eating, walking, etc. My job is building hiking trails so I spent most of my days outside walking and using my hands.

EM: What would constitute mindful walking?

IHM: I’ve been given formal teachings in mindful walking in Thailand, and have found that it really comes down to walking with awareness, noticing your breathing and your toes and heels touching the ground, paying attention to the sounds around you—being in that moment and experiencing it just as it is.

EM: Some people seem to have difficulty in understanding that mindfulness is not goal-orientated, that it’s largely about being OK with where you are, rather than striving to get somewhere. What’s your take on that?

IHM: I can understand why some people would find that a little confusing. I imagine a lot of people will be drawn to mindfulness because there’s something lacking in their life or they have something that needs fixing. Coming to the practice they might see that mindfulness can be cultivated by having a freedom from goals. If mindfulness has a goal it might be to recognise that having a goal is often pointless, or at least that goal is one factor among many others, so it may not come to fruition. Meditating helps in coming to terms with that reality.

EM: It would seem that a lot of people struggle to live in the moment.

IHM: Maybe because we are conditioned to think in such a way that we spend most of our lives ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. If you’re mindful about what is going on in the present moment, it’s unlikely that there’s anything to feel bad about. But evolution predisposes us to keep in mind the threats to our lives. Even though those threats might be remote or even non-existent, the mind is constantly looking for safeguards. We’re biologically wired to use what we know about the past to create a safer future and create stronger progeny. If our minds are constantly checking into the past and speculating about the future, then we’re always missing out on the present moment.

Of course it’s important that we take care of ourselves and make some plans for the future but we need to be careful that fear doesn’t drive our lives. If you think about every moment that you’ve spent worrying, each of those moments is a painful experience. But how many of those worries have actually come to pass? Furthermore, is worrying about a situation actually going to solve anything? Rather than get caught up in the worry, life becomes easier when we simply notice the worry and don’t feed into it. When the time comes to deal with the problem, that’s the time to do so—not beforehand. One of the great things about mindfulness is that it empowers us to realise that we have a choice as to how we relate to our own thoughts.

Also, so many of our experiences are made worse than they are, simply by the way we look at them. As time goes on, we might relive that experience in our memory and the mind makes those experiences even more painful than they were at the time.

EM: During your time in India, did you notice that people in general lived their lives more mindfully than people back home in the US?

IHM: I lived with a wonderful Hindi family out there for three months and I wouldn’t say they lived their lives more mindfully than, say, an average family in Boston. Like many Americans, they woke up in the morning, made Chappati bread for breakfast, went to work, and worried about making enough money to sustain their way of life. They worried about how their adorable little girl was doing in school and what kind of future she would have. I think that the Hindu faith does promote mindfulness practices like meditation more than many Western religions, but from my perspective, the average Hindi family is just as mindful as Americans in most aspects of their lives.

EM: How did your book come about?

IHM: As a pre-med student, I completed a directed study with the American novelist Andre Dubus III. As part of that, I worked on a series of memoirs that I’d begun in 2009. When I went to Thailand for the first time, I started to think that it could be more than a series of journals and that it could take the form of a book that might be useful and interesting to people. So it turned into an introduction to Buddhism, mindfulness and scientific philosophy. In it, I draw connections between myself and the world at large through experiences of being mindful while on the varsity rowing team at UMass Lowell, running a marathon in Vermont, hiking the Appalachian Trail from West Virginia to Gettysburg for a week, and hitch-hiking in California. It has been an incredible learning experience to write and self-publish the book, and I deeply hope that it is able to help people on their own paths of self-discovery.

EM: How has mindfulness affected your thoughts on modern technology: social media, smart phones, iPads etc.?

IHM: Like most people, I catch myself using technology when it’s not strictly necessary. Like I’ll be on a hike and find myself returning text messages. But other times I’ll deliberately leave my phone and my watch behind. All this technology means that we’re able to communicate with each other so much more quickly in lots of new ways, using different parts of the brain. Does this mean that we have simply found new ways to make ourselves unhappy? Maybe. What seems clear is that all this technology is getting in the way of actually seeing and relating directly to the world. So I would encourage everyone to try to live a day, or even a couple hours without it every now and then, to remind themselves that our lives are not completely dependent on technology.

EM: With practice, it seems that every moment becomes an invitation to be mindful.

IHM: That’s very true. The other day I was driving to work and I spotted a turtle that was trying to cross the road. I realized I was going to be late for work if I stopped to try and save this turtle. I also knew that I would feel dreadful if I drove on and left the poor turtle to its fate. When I got out of the car I realized it was a snapping turtle. These turtles are big and very aggressive. They’re like little dinosaurs inside a shell. I didn’t know what to do. If I tried to pick it up, it might well bite my fingers off. I tried poking it with a stick, attempting to divert it from oncoming traffic. I flagged a car down and the very nice man knew to pick it up by the tail. That way he managed to get it off the side of the road.

As I drove away I started thinking. Who knows why this turtle needed to cross the road? Maybe its babies were on the other side. Maybe it was looking for food. When I left it, maybe the first thing it did was start crossing the road again. Then it struck me that I had no control whatsoever in what that turtle decided to do.
I had a good intention to save this turtle from dying. Hopefully it would make it across the road without getting hit next time. But, if this turtle decides to go on a suicide mission, I have no influence over that. I guess the moral of the story is that, even when you do something with the best of intentions, there’s no guarantee that it will lead to something good.

EM: Are there any downsides to mindfulness?

IHM: Sometimes it leads me into getting tangled up in rights and wrongs. When I’m driving I become aware that I’ve got this gasoline in my car that is not good for the environment and probably not good for international relations. But here I am driving from A to B. The only answer I’ve got to those questions is that I’ll carry on doing it until I find a better way. Until then I’ll keep reminding myself that I see the flaws in the choices I make and I should continue being mindful of them.

EM: Finally, what’s the biggest difference that mindfulness has made to your life?

IHM: Maybe that I take everything less seriously, less personally. I was always the straight-A student type. I was brought up to do my best at all times. Mindfulness practice has removed a lot of the stress in my life. I’ve come to see that being at ease with reality rather than trying to control it makes for an easier, much more contented life. Of course, being mindful doesn’t mean that you’re never going to face difficult moments. But the great thing about a moment is that, however difficult it might seem, there’s a whole new moment coming along right behind it.