Celebrating the Winter Solstice

(This is a pastel by my friend Wendy Goldberg, titled Twilight Tomales.)

Paying attention to the seasons and rhythms of the earth helps me to stay more present, so I enjoy celebrating the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. This year on December 21, 2008 at 4 :04 AM PST the earth is tipped on its axis to the greatest degree, so that in the northern hemisphere, the sun appears at its lowest point. (Those in the southern hemisphere are experiencing the summer solstice.)

Throughout the centuries in cultures around the world winter solstice riturals have been focused on the return of the light. I can certainly understand that, especially in times before electric lights and central heat, but I want my personal celebration to focus on what is in this present moment. And what is most present in this moment is the darkness.

So in 1992 I wrote the poem that follows. It has since been incorporated into solstice rituals around the world, including our Friday morning class at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

For yesterday’s class I was again asked to read my poem, but our dharma teacher Dana de Palma added a new twist, asking me to create a solstice altar, something we have not done before.

Here is the altar:
I happened to have a black and white patterned shawl that I set in the middle of our circle. On it I placed a small low table. I covered the top with aluminum foil to protect it and to reflect the candle light, and filled it with candles, small decorative objects, some natural items I had gathered on recent hikes, and some inspirational phrases (see below). Around the table I took some upturned circular lids from big yogurt cartons and made a ring of twelve around the table, placing a candle in each one. My sangha sisters Patti and Alice brought additional candles, and together with sangha brother Bill, we prepared the altar, making sure each candle was secure and wouldn’t burn down the building! (If it had not been wet out, I might have added some evergreens as well.)

After a delicious hour of yoga led by Janice Gates, in which she encouraged us to feel our expansive hearts radiating out in all directions, even while feeling totally present in our bodies and in the room, and a lovely meditation by Dana in which we felt our inner light growing with each breath, I read my poem and we did a candle lighting ritual.

As I introduced the poem, I told the circle about my own personal difficulty with some of the wording over the years, and how just that morning I had found a different way of seeing it. The poem tells us “Do not be afraid…” Well, I object to anyone telling me how to feel or not to feel, even a poem that I wrote! As practitioners, we are instructed to be with what is, not try to change our feelings.

But now I can see that the poem is just offering an opportunity to question some long held assumptions and beliefs about darkness, to look more closely at this culturally inherited negative story about darkness and see something more there than previously thought. Looking more closely and finding a way to reframe the story is a very Buddhist practice indeed. Phew! It’s not a bossy poem after all.

Here is the poem:

In Celebration of the Winter Solstice

Do not be afraid of the darkness.
Dark is the rich fertile earth
that cradles the seed, nourishing growth.
Dark is the soft night that cradles us to rest.
Only in darkness
can stars shine across the vastness of space.
Only in darkness
is the moon’s dance so clear.
There is mystery woven in the dark quiet hours,
There is magic in the darkness.
Do not be afraid.
We are born of this magic.
It fills our dreams
that root, unravel and reweave themselves
in the shelter of the deep dark night.
The dark has its own hue,
its own resonance, its own breath.
It fills our soul,
not with despair, but with promise.
Dark is the gestation of our deep and knowing self.
Dark is the cave where we rest and renew our soul.
We are born of the darkness,
and each night we return
to the deep moist womb of our beginnings.
Do not be afraid of the darkness,
for in the depth of that very darkness
comes a first glimpse of our own light,
the pure inner light of love and knowing.
As it glows and grows, the darkness recedes.
As we shed our light, we shed our fear,
and revel in the wonder of all that is revealed.
So, do not rush the coming of the sun.
Do not crave the lengthening of the day.
Celebrate the darkness.
Here and now. A time of richness. A time of joy.

-- Stephanie Noble copyright 1995

And here is the ritual we did:
Each person in turn lit a candle saying one of the following intentions or another intention that rose up naturally within them, with absolute permission to do so in silence:
May I be a lamp unto myself. (This was the Buddha’s last instruction to his students.)
May I be guided by my inner light.
May my practice bring awareness of my own inner light.
May I light the darkness with awareness.
May my inner light grow and glow.
May I sit and savor the darkness until I see the light.

Because we had about twice as many candles as people, I encouraged people to light a second candle to send metta to anyone they knew that was in need. Everyone did light a second candle, and that addition, though unplanned, sweetened the ceremony further. (My second candle was for my beloved sister-in-law Rose and niece Doris, mother and daughter, who are both in the (same) hospital right now. May they both be well.)

For lighting the candles, we had provided both lighters and matches. Some people had trouble with the lighter or just didn’t like it. People who used matches sometimes felt rushed in saying their intentions while the flame was headed straight for their tender fingers. For anyone wanting to create a ritual like this, I would suggest having a lit taper candle resting in a solid holder – a short glass or cup would do – that would make the lighting simply a matter of picking up that candle and lighting another. (Although I must say that each person’s way of dealing with the challenge was lovely to behold.)

At the end of Dana’s dharma talk about the solstice, after she dedicated the merits of our practice to all beings, we took turns blowing out the candles, saying ‘so be it’ or ‘may it be so.’

Later one sangha sister asked me if I thought she could get away with incorporating a ritual like this into a dinner party she was having with some people she didn’t know well enough to know how they felt about the solstice. Her question brought up such an interesting truth: That many people have resistance to acknowledging this natural annual event of the earth. There is a long history of seeing it as pagan ritual, and a long history of seeing pagans as anti-Christian, when they are just not necessarily Christians, which is quite a different (and totally non-threatening) thing. Even in our little Buddhist community, a significant number of people left before the ritual began, when usually everyone stays for the whole class.

So, with that in mind, I told my friend to celebrate the solstice with her guests by having the radiant heart of a hostess, offering a delicious meal, creating a candle-lit atmosphere, and by staying fully in the moment, allowing the conversation to grow rich and deep. And if, by chance, through that conversation she finds that her guests are interested in celebrating the solstice too, she could have extra candles to create a ceremony, or simply suggest they all bundle up and step out into her lovely garden on this cold clear night and take in the beauty of the star-studded darkness.

So however you celebrate the solstice over this weekend, whether with friends or family, or by adding a little ritual to your personal practice, or simply by giving yourself the gift of a little longer rest on these long winter nights, may you find a sense of joy and deep connection in being fully present in the darkness, present enough to sense your own inner light glowing and growing.

May it be so! Happy Solstice.

Earth: The Element of True Compassion

I have never read or heard anything about this, but it seems to me that each of the Four Brahmaviharas has an elemental quality. Metta (loving kindness) is like the radiant sun, shining on all without discrimination. Mudita (sympathetic joy) is like the sparkling water, dancing with reflective joy. Upekka (equilibrium) is like the sky, able to hold sunshine and storm clouds equally with great ease and spaciousness. And Karuna (compassion) is like the earth, receiving our tears, supporting us, nourishing us.

This earth-like quality, Karuna, gives effortlessly from its bounty. You never see the earth running around assessing needs, doling out its nourishment in fair proportions for each plant. The earth is just there, fully present and fully supportive.

So how does this translate for us? Can we be like the earth to someone in need? Can we relax and just be present. Can we be solid enough for them to lean on, receptive enough to receive their tears, and available for whatever they have in mind in any given moment?

This may be a real challenge for us if we are used to being in charge, if we like to direct the show, if we automatically make assumptions about the needs of others, if we have an agenda, or if we have to try to fix everything.

If we cling to the idea of ourselves as generous givers, assessing needs and filling them, it may be challenging to let that identity go, in order to tap in to a level of deep and effortless compassion. It helps to realize that a lot of what we do is based in our aversion to what is going on. In our discomfort we rush around trying to change it. We cannot bear for a loved one to be in pain, so we do everything in our power to make it stop. If we stop and be present with our own experience, we can recognize the aversion and simply accept it as part of what is in this moment. Recognizing it allows it a voice in the conversation but disengages its ability to run the show.

If there are people for whom we can’t be compassionate because of their behavior, then we are letting our judgments keep us at the surface, letting our personality get all tangled up with their personality, instead of accessing that universal quiet core of ourselves that recognizes that the very thing that makes them difficult is the burden of suffering with which they struggle. From our still center we connect with their still center for it is one and the same, and it is this awareness of oneness that allows the compassion to be infinite and ever present, regardless of circumstances.

Karuna, like all the Brahmaviharas is infinite in nature. When we feel that we have to solve other people’s problems or prove our love for them by taking on their burdens, we are operating from a shallow fear based place, and our energy will soon be depleted. What we have to give is finite and we will exhaust ourselves and the person we are trying so hard to help.

Karuna doesn’t try to change the experience of another person, or suggest that they look on the bright side, or distract them from what it is they are feeling by offering ways to ‘take their mind off their situation.’ Karuna simply sits, without anticipating anything more than the need for a tissue.

I remember the honor I felt as a witness to my father’s process of dying in the last weeks of his life. As his primary caregiver, of course I did a lot of behind the scenes activity to make sure that he had what he needed physically. But in our time together, I took on a more receptive mode, uncharacteristic of me. He was thus able to relax his natural defenses. I didn’t exhaust him by trying to commandeer his experience. He needed every bit of his limited energy for the huge transition he was making. My love made no demands on him. It was way too late to ask for anything more than he had ever been able to give me. To the degree that I was able, I let myself become like the earth, receptive, ever present to the point of not being noticed. This quiet way of being with him allowed him his own space for his experience.

The only time I felt like I totally failed him was when we were watching ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and I kept blurting out solutions before he had a chance to figure them out himself. So thoughtless! Would the earth do that? I don’t think so.

But that brings me to the first most important aspect of Karuna: having a deep compassion for ourselves. How typical it is of us to beat ourselves up over our supposed failings. Would we ever speak to another person the way we speak to ourselves on a regular basis?

The truth is we can’t offer what we don’t have. By becoming aware of the way we treat ourselves, and accessing that deep quiet stillness within, we can become the very earth under our own feet. Through our regular practice of meditation, we come to a level of deep compassion that is infinite and accessible, for ourselves, those around us and the earth itself.

Karuna, Accessing Deep Rooted Compassion

Have you ever been in a situation where people were feeling sorry for you? Perhaps you had suffered a great loss, had a serious illness or experienced a big upheaval in your life. Suddenly people’s eyes seemed full of pity or sympathy. And how did you feel? Like you couldn’t get away fast enough?

Why? One possible reason is that, much as they might try, others cannot imagine exactly what we are going through with any accuracy, even if they have experienced something similar. From moment to moment our emotions are changing, so if someone claims understanding, they are projecting their own ideas of what they think we must be going through onto us. As well meant as they are, these projections just add to our challenge. They muddy up our ability to sense into our own direct experience and be present with it.

So then when someone else is going through a difficult experience, we may feel paralyzed with the fear of saying or doing something wrong ourselves. We are afraid that our heartfelt empathy will come across as pity. Yet we feel antsy in our wanting to do something. And of course anything we do is better than doing nothing, so we call or send a card or bring a casserole, but all the while we are not sure if we are truly being helpful, if we are doing enough or if our words will be misunderstood.

As discussed in previous posts, when we are operating out of the shallow hard cake of fear, the results of our efforts are distorted and fail to nourish us or those around us. And now here we are again, rooted in fear, terrified of doing the wrong thing but wanting very much to help.

Here is a moment to center in to ourselves, to focus on the breath. The fear may exist. We see it. We know it. We can feel where in our body it grips us tight. And that simple acknowledgment allows us to relax a little. Through relaxing into this present moment fully, it is possible to release our fear. We don’t push it away, overcome it, conquer it or ignore it. That is just fighting fear with fear – a battle without end.

Instead we notice the fear, notice how it feels in our body, notice all the sensations that accompany it. As we breathe into these sensations we can eventually find a quiet center within ourselves, a shift of perspective from which we can see the fear more clearly. With great tenderness, as a mother would do for her baby, we hold the fear in an open embrace until it settles down, dissapates or disappears. This open embrace is expansive – a vast and loving awareness. We become aware that we also are like a babe being lightly held in an infinite loving open embrace.

When we are able to rest in this vast and loving awareness, the compassion that arises is karuna.

The difference between mere sympathy and karuna is the difference between ‘There but for the Grace of God go I’ and ‘I am you, and you are me and we are all together’ – an awareness of the seamless oneness of being. In the first sentence there is well wishing, but there is also the relief that it is not happening to us, and the fear that it might someday. So there is a part of us that wants to run away, fearful of contamination. These added fear-based emotions communicate loud and clear to the other person.

In the second sentence above, there is no where to run away to. Karuna is rooted in the knowledge that if it is happening to anyone, it is happening to us. And instead of ‘offering sympathy’, we sit by their side or hold them in our arms, listening with our full attention when they want to talk, and resting in the deep silence when they don’t, all the while surrounding them with loving compassion in our hearts. We keep in the present moment, instead of dragging our own past experiences in to bear, or our fears for the future. In this way, we can stay along for the ride on the roller coaster of their emotions, wherever it takes them. We can let go of our desire to have an agenda or a playbook.

When needed, we may do whatever practical things we can to ease their burden, freeing them for a while to be with their own experience. We don’t pretend to know what that experience is, but we stand with them as witness to it. We ‘have their back,’ lending our strength to their present needs.

Like all the Brahmaviharas, karuna is naturally arising, most often a result of the regular practice of meditation. It is a state of being that cannot be donned like a costume and acted out. Still, it is good to be aware of it so that when it arises within us we can know it and feel gratitude for such a bountious gift in our lives.

Meditation & The Four Brahmaviharas

In the last post I talked about gratitude and how the gratitude we have for temporal things – possessions, relationships, situations – is rooted in fear. This fear I suggested is like a hard cakey soil that isn’t able to offer any nourishment. Whatever is planted there grows distorted and has a tortured look about it. Fortunately, this hard cake of fear is just a shallow crust on the surface. Just below it is a deep nourishing rich soil we can access through regular meditation. When our gratitude is more deeply rooted in that richer soil, we are able to grow strong, resilient, and authentic.

But what is this rich soil below the surface? Well, if in this analogy the shallow layer is fear, then the rich soil is love: A spacious love without boundaries. A rich soil nourishes all roots. It doesn’t favor one plant over another. And this love is the same. This love is infinite.

In Buddhism, this infinite love is called metta. We focused on metta in August, and you can read more about it in the archive.

Metta is the first among equals in the Four Brahmaviharas. Bramavihara is a Pali word meaning heavenly abode. An abode is a dwelling place, in this case a dwelling place for our consciousness, or a state of being.

The Four Bramaviharas are ‘heavenly’ because they are states of well being, in which we are able to see beyond the illusionary boundaries that seem to divide us, and we can feel ourselves held in the infinite embrace of loving awareness.

The Four Brahmaviharas are: Metta/lovingkindness, Karuna/ compassion, Mudita/sympathetic joy and Upekkha/equilibrium.

Each of these states of being are the fruits of the practice of meditation. As you practice you may begin to notice your heart softening so that it is easy to feel loving kindness towards people you previously found difficult to tolerate. You may find yourself letting down your defenses and accessing a level of compassion that you had not dreamed possible. You may surprise yourself that you feel truly happy for someone else, even when they obtain a prize you had sought. And you may find that your practice has brought more balance into your life, so that you can be more skillful in stressful situations and not be so tormented when life seems to throw you a curve.

These states are not something we can achieve through will power or determination. They are not something we can force upon ourselves or scold ourselves into. When we attempt to do so, our efforts are shallowly rooted in that hard cake soil of fear: Fear that we are not good enough as we are, fear that people won’t like us if we don’t exhibit these traits. Anything rooted in that shallow hard cake soil of fear will be distorted and won’t nourish us or anyone around us. When we let go of our striving to attain these states, and simply stay with our intention to maintain a regular practice of meditation, we are more likely to begin to experience them – at first in brief glimpses, then small but more regular doses, until we find ourselves in them more often than not, and finally, the Buddha says, our suffering ceases and we can dwell in these heavenly abodes as our normal condition.

Notice that, like deep gratitude, these states all are infinite in nature.

METTA – loving kindness
This infinite source is radiant like the sun, shining on all. When we access its infinite we are free to be generous with our loving kindness, rather than meting it out to those who we think most deserve it as if from a small precious reserve. In this sweet web of life, where would we draw the line? Why would we withhold our own capacity to nourish and heal from any being?

KARUNA – compassion
From this infinite source compassion wells up within us. Knowing that pain and suffering is a part of the human experience, we do not turn away from it but anchor ourselves in the infinite source and extend our compassion in a fearless open loving embrace.

MUDITA – sympathetic joy
From this infinite source we rejoice in the good fortune of others, for we deeply know that all is one, and joy is contagious and bountiful. From this perspective we can see more clearly that no person’s good fortune is stolen at our expense, and that no human being has a life devoid of pain, no matter how perfect their life may seem to us.

UPEKKA – equilibrium
From this infinite source we find ourselves rooted so deeply no storm can knock us down. We find our awareness is so spacious that we can hold great sorrow and great joy in the same moment. We are able to be fully present for whatever arises and see it as it is.

So as we explore these individually in the coming weeks, keep in mind that they are not goals but gifts. Let them rest lightly in your awareness as you rededicate your intention to maintain a regular meditation practice.

Meditation on Gratitude

Tomorrow we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, and for many of us it’s a very busy day filled with the three F’s: food, family and football. So filled, in fact, there doesn’t seem to be room for the G’s: gratitude, grace and giving thanks.

So here’s a chance to focus on our sense of gratitude.

What are we grateful for? It is easy to launch into our list: Our family and friends, our homes, our health, our jobs, our financial security to whatever degree we have it, etc. If things are bad -- and for many of us these are difficult times indeed -- we are grateful that they aren’t any worse.

Watching the devastation of the recent firestorms in Southern California -- how within 20 minutes hundreds of people’s homes just vanished into smoke -- we know what the survivors will say. They say what all survivors say after losing their homes: That as difficult as the loss of cherished possessions is, they are grateful: Grateful to be alive, grateful that their families survived

It is only human to view these horrific news reports with a combination of feelings: compassion for those who are going through the experience, fear of anything like that ever happening to us, and renewed gratitude for our own homes and families, still safe and sound.

Looking more closely at this perfectly natural kind of gratitude, you might notice that it is rooted in fear, the fear of losing what we have. That’s why we feel it more strongly when we witness the losses of others. “There but for the grace of God go I.”

It is, therefore, a conditional gratitude, dependent on there being enough left on our list that we value. Dependent on this kind of gratitude, we may fall into patterns of clinging to the people and things on our list, terrified of losing them. Clinging, as you will recall, is the root cause of suffering identified by the Buddha in The Second Noble Truth. This clinging strains relationships and tightens us into knots. This kind of gratitude is, as I said, perfectly natural, but being so conditional, it is shallowly rooted in the hard cake soil of fear, and what grows out of it can be distorted and unnourishing.

From this shallow rooted place, we may find our gratitude list has many qualifiers. ‘I am grateful for this, but would be more grateful if it were different.’ These qualifiers may overwhelm our sense of gratitude, and we find ourselves with a shorter and shorter list. Then we ask ourselves how did we end up with such a puny little list?

The less we are able to write on our gratitude list, the more this gratitude is likely to be counter-weighted with a sense of deprivation, anger, failure, humiliation, envy or frustration. Other people have what we wanted for ourselves. We are exhausted from trying to acquire the things we want to be able to write on a gratitude list, the things that we believe will make us happy.

Frustrated, we may be compiling another list that grows longer: the list of our complaints, worries and gripes. Nothing is ever quite good enough. There seems very little, if anything, to be grateful for. In this case our gratitude is very conditional indeed.

So how do we get to unconditional gratitude?
There are many gateways. One of them, strangely, is grief. By a certain age, most of us have lost someone dear to us, some of us have lost quite a few. We have experienced our hearts imploding in grief, and the pain that rises and falls like waves, sometimes carrying us away into realms we didn’t know existed.

How does this create gratitude? Well, perhaps right away it doesn’t, but if we are able to stay present with our experience, eventually we will notice the way our hearts have been carved deeper by this loss, making room for a deeper form of gratitude, an unconditional gratitude, not dependent on our ability to hang on to everything in our lives that matters to us.

Other forms of loss can be gateways as well. Perhaps because they bring us up short, break us out of our habitual patterns, force us to really look at ourselves and the world around us with new eyes.

Fortunately, loss is not the only gateway to unconditional gratitude. Through regular meditation practice, we can access it as well. We feel gratitude for being conscious in each moment as it reveals itself. We learn the fine art of holding it lightly and savoring it. It is a gratitude for ‘the best seat in the house’ where the amazing gifts of the world, in a vast variety of forms, continually come onto the stage of our awareness. These gifts are probably not what we wrote on our wish list or our to do list, but our willingness to be present, to let go of having to dictate the outcome, allows us to be available to savor whatever arises.

This devout gratitude sheds light on the darkest despair, allowing us to discern the treasure buried deep within. It allows us to experience pain as a symphony of passing sensations. Deep unconditional gratitude can be a constant companion that opens our eyes and our hearts. And ultimately, at the moment when we breathe our last precious breath, we are grateful even for this.

Gratitude can be a practice unto itself, allowing us to savor every moment, to appreciate every being we meet. Because underneath the hard cake fear is the nourishing soil of unconditional love that supports us. We can toss the list because we would be writing forever if we tried to keep up with all that we are grateful for in this expansive unconditional way. We can simply let the gratitude breathe us, illuminating our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving – today and in every moment of your life!

Meditation, Spaciousness & Letting Go

The tight tangle of our lives becomes more spacious through the regular practice of meditation. We find that increasingly we can see our thoughts and emotions as they arise. Instead of succumbing to their seduction or going into battle with them, we can more often simply notice them. It may seem as if there is more time and space around them to evaluate the most skillful response to any given situation.

In this increasing spaciousness, we are able to be more gracious hosts to our thoughts and emotions. We are not at their mercy or here to do their bidding. We begin to learn more about them, their histories and motivations. Why does a particular thought keep recurring? Why does dealing this person always bring up this negative emotion? With a greater sense of ease than we ever thought possible, we can focus on these thoughts and emotions and begin to see patterns. We see the loving intention of all these various aspects of our personality. We see the fear behind their misguided strategies. And by giving them our attention we begin to see how some of our beliefs are at odds with each other, causing an inner sense of imbalance and strife.

I am still touched by a conversation I had many weeks ago with a young woman in Colorado whom I called as part of my volunteering for Obama. She was holding down two jobs and had two small children, so she just hadn’t had time to really look at the candidates and make up her mind. So I asked her what her issues were. “Well, I’m against abortion and gay marriage. What does Obama believe?”
“Senator Obama believes in equality for all people,” I told her.
“Oh! I believe in that!”
“Then Obama’s your man.” I went on to tell her that perhaps if she was working two jobs and had small children, she should vote for whoever was going to give her the best tax break and the best health care for her kids. But I was then and still am struck by her very human capacity to hold two opposite ideas in the same brain. That she could support equality for all people but feel okay denying gays the right to marry did not seem like a contradiction in her mind. Probably because she hadn’t had the time to really look at her various beliefs for the same reason she hadn’t had time to choose her candidate.

But for those of us who are meditating regularly over long periods of time, somehow we do have time to notice conflicting beliefs and to see which ones are aligned with the core values that arise out of being in touch with our deep sense of connection. This level of observation and awareness enables us to more easily release old beliefs that don’t serve us, that just got a free ride all these years because we never bothered to examine them.

Often these beliefs were never ours to begin with but were hand-me-downs or borrowed briefly just to try on and we kept them around, and after awhile we forgot where we got them and assumed ownership. But now they are just piles of clutter that get in the way of living fully.

If there are beliefs that we are ready to release, where do we begin to look for them? We don’t need to search them out. They are ever present. We just have to pay attention to those moments when they crop up as statements or judgments that we think or say. Chances are these will be strained moments. Since these beliefs are at odds with our core values, when we hear ourselves voicing them, they sound discordant to our ears. We may feel a sense of discomfort: guilt, embarrassment, confusion, astonishment, or maybe amusement, depending on how vested we are in believing that we are our thoughts.

A wonderful way to deal with whatever comes up is to ask a question. The teacher and author Byron Katie suggests asking, “How do I know this is true?” The inner dialog that follows begins the process of self discovery and potentially to letting go of whatever doesn’t serve us well.

The inner dialog needs to be compassionate, patient and truly curious in order to be useful. Judgment, criticism and ridicule shut the process down, but if they arise, simply switch the dialog’s focus to them. Ask “What am I afraid of in this exploration?” Because all three are rooted in fear.

This kind of inner work can be rich and satisfying. Journaling inner dialogs can be very useful as we are more likely to stay focused on writing than just thinking, and we can read the conversation later from a different vantage point and see things we might not have seen at the time.

In my book, Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living, I suggest the possibility of giving personality to these beliefs, desires and fears in order to engage in dialog exploration. I find this a very useful and enjoyable way to really notice patterns of thoughts that arise -- thoughts of self-doubt, thoughts that undermine my intentions, thoughts that keep me from living the fully engaged and grounded life I want to live. I give them names so that when I meet them again – as I certainly will – I can recognize them.

This recognition is something like the Buddha’s experience of being tempted by Mara as he sat under the bodhi tree. By recognizing Mara as the tempter in various forms, trying to seduce him away from his intention, the Buddha was able to reach enlightenment. The key part of his relationship with this tempter was that he always welcomed Mara, saying “I know you.” And in knowing Mara, in all its forms, he was able to be patient, compassionate but unseduced.

In inner dialog exploration, we can come to know these various seductive voices by name, and we can extend them the courtesy of compassion and respect. Inner civility is key! We can ask these tempters questions about what they want and what they fear. What we discover is that they always want the best for us, that their purpose is always loving. But their strategies are misguided because they are operating out of fear.
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EXAMPLE: Many of us have a voice we could call “Little Sweetie” – that sweet tooth that draws us continually to the ice cream, pastry and candy shops. Or maybe you have a “Little Salty” – so hard for me to understand since Little Sweetie rules in my panoply of characters. So what would a conversation with Little Sweetie be like? We could say, “What do you want, Little Sweetie?”
And maybe Little Sweetie would say, “I want sugar!” as if that was obvious.
“Why do you want sugar?” we might continue.
“To sweeten up this life. Everything about sugar is pretty, festive and fun. Every time we eat it we are having a party.”
“And you want to party?” we might ask.
“Yes, I love to party!”
“Could we party without the sugar?”
“What kind of party would that be?”
“It could be a party with music and dancing.”
“I’d like that. But what about a cake?”
“It could be a party with lots of interesting conversation.”
“Yes, I’d like that. I like people and connection.”
“If you were sitting in deep conversation with someone and a cake suddenly appeared on the table across the room, would you stop mid-sentence and run across the room?”
“Hmmm, well not mid-sentence. A really good conversation? Like really interesting and rich?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then no. I wouldn’t even notice the cake.”
“So when there isn’t a party or deep conversation, you are bored?”
“Kind of.”
“And sweets are interesting?”
“Very.”
“But you can’t talk to them. You can’t dance with them. You can’t interact with them.”
“No, but they are so easy to find and so forbidden!”
“Yes, they are everywhere. But what’s so good about them being forbidden?”
“It adds spice to life! Sugar and spice! ha ha!”
“So our life needs spicing up? Is it boring, plain, uninteresting?”
“Well, in a word, YES!”
“Okay, what, besides sweets, would make it more interesting for you?”
“More sweet moments!”
“Sweet moments like when?”
“Sweet moments like last night standing on Ring Mountain in the moonlight looking at the twinkling lights of San Francisco across the Bay. That was a very sweet moment.”
“Indeed it was. This is a sweet moment too.”
“This one?”
“Yes, here we are having a dialog, sitting in a comfortable spot with a beautiful view of the mountain lightening in the morning sun.”
“Yes, this is sweet.”
“Any moment can be sweet, don’t you agree? If we are really paying attention?”
“I suppose.”
“Shall we try it? Shall every time you ask for sweets, I take it as a request for noticing the sweetness of this moment?”
“No harm in trying, but if it doesn’t work, I vote for chocolate.”
----------------------

So there’s a sample inner dialog. Let’s review what just happened:
- I recognized a chronic tempter in my life: the urge to eat sweets.
- I recognized it as a problem, something that thwarts me in maintaining my health and weight.
- I gave it a name. This name captures something about the tempter’s character and has an endearing quality so that I am more likely to speak to it with love and affection.
- The conversation begins with a simple question: “What do you want?”
- The conversation follows, speaking as honestly and openly as possible from the point of view of this aspect of our personality.
- The questions are created from open curiosity and deep compassion.
At first the questions are more open ended, just trying to discover the root fear, concern, lack, etc. of the aspect.
- When that is discerned – in the example, the aspect Little Sweetie was bored – then the questions can switch to ‘what if’ scenarios in a ‘negotiation’ stage.
- Whatever is negotiated must be something that addresses the deep need, that is in line with core values, not the surface desires of the tempter aspect, whether the ones originally stated or replacement ones.
- In this sample conversation, I didn’t offer to provide a continuous set of exotic locales, more parties or any other surface distraction. What I offered was to be more fully present in every moment so that Little Sweetie could find the sweetness in life, just as it is.

This kind of exercise may or may not appeal to you, but inner dialoging in whatever form suits you can be very valuable in identifying and examining beliefs that cause suffering in your life.

Letting Go: Beyond the Labels in Relationship

After reading through the Dance of the Seven Veils in the previous post, it may seem as if we are being asked to give up possessions, relationships, our very skins! But of course that is not the case. Instead we are looking at what it might be like to let go of our habit of defining ourselves by what we own, how we look, what we do for a living, or who we know. We are exposing the lie that all these things are the sum total of who we are. Abandoning the things themselves would serve little purpose, but abandoning our misperceptions about them as our identity could serve us very well.

Let’s look more closely at the third veil: ‘the you that is defined by your relationships with others…. To the degree that these roles define you, they confine you. Let them go.’ We are not giving up our relationships. To the contrary. We are finding a more spacious way to be in them so that the relationships are enhanced and vibrant. By releasing labels of ‘sister’ ‘father’ ‘wife’ or ‘friend’ to the degree that these terms confine us in these relationships.

The first clue to a problem with these labels is that we always use them with that dangerous word ‘my’ in front. My sister, my husband, my child. The word ‘my’ confers a clear sense of ownership. If something is mine, I have a say about it. If something is mine, I think of it as an extension of me, that it represents me in some way.

That sense of entitlement to have a say creates toxicity in relationships. We feel not only entitled but somehow obligated to remake those we own in order that they can live up to our expectations.

We have all felt the pain of being ‘owned’ by some well-intentioned but delusional person who was unable to see us as ourselves. And as painful as it is, we often turn around and hurt others close to us in the same exact way.

So how do we expunge the idea of ownership from a relationship? It would be an interesting challenge to spend a week without using the word ‘my’ or ‘our.’ Would we find a new way to talk about our relatives? Or would we stop talking about them? That would be a very positive outcome indeed!

But even if we don’t speak in the possessive, we still have our lifelong habit of thinking that way. How do we rephrase it to ourselves? Awkwardly, no doubt, but that’s alright. When something is awkward it brings our attention to it, and that breaks us out of habitual patterns and lets us see things anew with fresh eyes.

How would it be to see the person you married with fresh eyes? What if the veils dropped away and you saw the wondrous luminous being with whom you chose to spend your life. (I assure you there is a wondrous luminous being in there! Keep looking!)

If you are not an only child, imagine a person you have known your whole life, who is close to your age and was raised in the same household, who shares a rich wealth of memories from a different vantage point, who in personal traits is unique and yet incredibly perhaps endearingly familiar. Might there be some fresh and wondrous delight in seeing them without the veils of expectation, duty or obligation?

The labels we put on ourselves burden our relationships. The roles we play become who we perceive ourselves to be, and all our accumulated ideas about what it is to be a good wife, mother, sister, husband, father, brother, etc. come into play. We struggle and suffer in the vast field between our imagined ideals and our uneven ability to fulfill them.

For example, I lived with Will for the year before we married. After the wedding I found myself suddenly saddled with a lifetime of images and expectations of what it is to be a wife or a husband, culled from observing my parents’ marriage, from reading novels and watching movies. Of course, Will too had his ideas and expectations, and suddenly a simple loving relationship was floundering in a sea of misunderstandings. It took nearly a decade for us to find a way to be together that didn’t rely so heavily on fulfilling these mostly misguided expectations.

Friendships too can get complicated by our ideas of what it is to be a friend. Our expectations set us up for disappointment. We may say, “A real friend wouldn’t" say or do this or that. What would it be like to let these concepts go? To simply be with someone with whom we share so much and have no expectations and no sense of obligation. How much deeper could the true connection be?

Certain relationships come with contracts. Marriage and parenthood, for example. These contracts are taken on joyfully, and are best kept if that joyfulness is renewed in each moment from our most authentic selves.

Letting go of our identity around these relationships is not necessarily easy because these are ingrained habits of being and perception. But doing so, to the degree we are able, frees us to be fully ourselves, just as we are, with every person we are with. We can allow them to be fully themselves as well, without the drag of our expectations around the role they play in our lives.

Letting go is a gentle process. It is the result of continued compassionate attention. Force has no role here. Judgment is counter productive. Coming into awareness of our thoughts, emotions and sensations is sufficient for the task. The trees let go their leaves when the time is right, and so will we.

The Dance of the Seven Veils

We have looked at the first and second Noble Truths: that there is suffering and that the cause of suffering is grasping, clinging and pushing away. The Third Noble Truth is that this suffering can end.

The following is something I wrote many years ago, before studying Buddhism, but it speaks to the same possibility.

The Dance of the Seven Veils, An Exercise in Letting Go

The first veil is the you that is defined by material possessions. These possessions reflect your taste, your financial status and your values. To the degree that these define you, they confine you.
Let them go.

The second veil is the you that is defined by your achievements, your failures, your badges of honor and your battle scars. The title you hold, the awards you have won, the degrees you have earned, the good deeds you have done, the guilt you bear, the pain you have suffered. To the degree that these define you, they confine you.
Let them go.

The third veil is the you that is defined by your relationships with others. Your roles as son or daughter, sister or brother, father or mother, husband or wife, friend, lover, student, employee, employer, citizen. To the degree that these roles define you, they confine you.
Let them go.

The fourth veil is the you that is defined by your beliefs. Your religion, your political affiliations, your judgments, the angers and resentments that shape your judgments, your assumptions about other people. To the degree that these define you, they confine you. Let them go.

The fifth veil is the you that is defined by your physical, emotional and psychological traits. These are what you were born with: your gender, your race, the fundamental aspects of your personality. To the degree that these define you, they confine you.
Let them go.

The sixth veil is the you that is defined by your body's very existence. It is your perception of your skin as an encapsulation and barrier. To the degree that this defines you, it confines you.
Let it go.

The seventh veil is the you that is defined by mind. It is the you that maintains resistance, through fear, in order to exist as a separate consciousness. To the degree that this defines you, it confines you. Let it go.

Now who are you? Beyond the barriers of all your veils of identity, beyond the veils that create shadow, mask and distortion, suddenly all is clear. Who are you? You are One. One with all that is, a manifest expression of the joy of oneness, undefined thus unconfined, free, expansive, beyond the beyond. Yet completely here and now, always in this moment.

Now as you dress in your veils, lovingly drape yourself with these manifest expressions of self, full of richness, full of clues. But never again will you mistake them for you. The authentic you, merged with the all that is, with God beyond personification, you that is light energy source and receptor, transmitter and receiver. You that is released from the limits of fear and knows the infinite power of love. Behold your true self. One with all that is.


© 1992 Stephanie Noble

In this post election moment

Globally shared euphoria. This is a new emotion for me! As I sit with it, I marvel. I watch how just the thought of ‘President Obama’ sends a warm bath of relaxation through me, how my lips of their own accord turn up at the corners. How my eyes tear up for joy.

I also feel incredible relief. So much so that I am aware in retrospect of all the fear and tension I was holding. And how much I had denied myself the right to hope for this outcome. I allowed myself to want it, to work for it, but not to hope for it. Strange.

Oh, and I feel pride! I am so proud of our nation! I am proud of how this albeit imperfect system of government actually does work well at times. My faith in the fine tradition of transition of power has been restored. (But we still need to make sure every vote really does count in all future elections!)

I am proud of Senator McCain. As he gave his concession speech, he displayed the best of himself, the person that seemed to have gotten lost in campaigning.

I am proud of all the donors and volunteers for the Obama campaign, some of whom I know personally. We all did things for this campaign we have never done in our lives. My friends Michael Rosenthal and Marleen Roggow traveled from California to Michigan to knock on doors and canvas college campuses. Most of my friends made phone calls to swing states, but my friend Patti Breitman made calls every weekend for many weeks. I’m sure other friends were doing whatever they could as well. I am proud of Barbara Gately and Stephanie LeGras who early on in the campaign asked me to design a website called Women Over 50 for Obama, which I did as part of my volunteer work for Obama. I am proud of myself as well. I joined Toastmasters in order to get up the nerve to pick up the phone for Obama!

I am proud of all the people who stood in line for hours to cast their votes, who did so with great spirit.

I am proud of the way campaign was run. It was incredibly efficient, clean, collaborative, inventive and just plain brilliant. Bravo!

I am proud of all those in public life who stood up for Obama early on.

I am proud of Michelle Obama whom I would like to nominate right now for president in 2016.

And most of all I am proud of our President-elect Barrack Obama. He has a deep awareness that keeps him clear, steady, genuinely caring for all people and the planet. He holds the world in an open embrace, with love and lightness. He sees through the mudslinging mess and brings the conversation to a new level. His natural born leadership skills and his ability to bring out the best in people so that we may all work together to solve the many challenges we face, are exactly what we need right now.

So yes, I am proud. And excited! And grateful!

Undoubtedly other feelings, thoughts, concerns will arise in the coming months and years, but in this moment right here and now, I am – and I am not at all alone in this – deliriously delighted! Elated! Euphoric! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meditation on the Skeleton

In meditation we often do a body scan, bringing awareness of sensation and opening to the possibility of relaxing and letting go of tension.
This meditation has the same thing, but the attention goes to the bones.
Starting with the skull, just being aware of the smooth surface, appreciating the protective nature of the skull as it encases the brains.
Then the jawbone or mandible, moving it around, letting it relax and loosen.
Then the top vertebrae, that point where the neck supports the head – so crucial in meditation to keep the head upright.
Then the clavicle extending out to the shoulder joints. The shoulder blades or scapula, making subtle movements around to loosen and free any tension held there.
Then bring awareness to the bones in the arms, the humerus, the ulna, sensing how relaxed they are hanging from the shoulder joints. Then bring awareness to all the bones in the hands, the carpals, and down into the phalanges of the fingers –the network of bones that make it possible for us to do the most intricate task.
The ribs, protective, supportive, flexible. And in the back following the vertebrae down, making subtle movements to remind ourselves of the amazing complexity and flexibility of the spine. Coming low down to the sacrum and that last vestige of tailbone the coccyx, a little reminder of our deep connection to the rest of our mammal family.
Then bring awareness to the pelvis, the hipbone. The pubic bone. Checking to see that the whole area is relaxed and balanced.
Then bringing awareness to the leg bones: the femur in the thigh, the patella that protects the joint, the tibia in the front of the calf and the fibula behind, working in concert to support us. On down to the ankle, the metatarsal, and on to all the tiny bones in our feet that enable us to walk and run and balance.
Then expanding our awareness to take in the whole skeleton, imagining it solid, strong but spacious and open.
How rich an experience to spend some time getting to know our own bones, the longest lasting part of our very temporal physical being.
What feelings arise out of this close attention? Do you feel gratitude for these bones that support you? Concern for their well being if they are no longer as solid as they once were? Stay with whatever arises. Send metta/loving kindness to your skeleton.
In the rest of the meditation, keep bringing awareness back to the breath, of course, but the breath as it rises from the pelvis up through the rib cage, following the course of the spine, up into the skull and out the nasal cavity and back again.
Let each inhale be as precious and awe inspiring as if it were your very first. And each exhale savored as if it were your very last.
Happy Halloween!

POEM: Clinging

Sometimes life feels like
sitting in an over-air-conditioned theater
on a sweltering summer day
having forgotten to bring a sweater
watching a horror movie
that raises my hairs on end
and my shoulders, neck and jaw
are whipped to a frigid froth of tension
more caffeinated than a frozen frappe,
but remaining seated
caught up in the plot
and dreading the heat outside,
even though the warmth
would soften the tight chill
and the trees would give
a sweet dappled light
above me as I would lie on the grass
and let myself melt into the earth
and listen to the birds, the creek,
people talking as they stroll by,
settling into the lull
until the cool of the evening
would wake me.
- Stephanie Noble

The Second Noble Truth & Coming into Skillful Relationship with Desire

In previous posts we explored the First Noble Truth: That there is suffering in life. The Second Noble Truth says there is a cause of this suffering, and that cause is our grasping, clinging and pushing away of the objects, ideas, experiences and people that we either want or don’t want in our lives.

Wanting. We all know about wanting! Given a blank page we could each sit down and write a comprehensive list of desires, those things we want more of, those ways we want to change ourselves, our situation and the world.

Desire is a naturally arising phenomenon. Getting rid of it is not the goal. That would just be a desire to be free of desire. Instead we want to develop a skillful relationship with our desires. For many of us our current relationship is that our desires control us, dictating our behavior. That’s suffering!

The first step to come into skillful relationship with our desires is to notice a desire as it arises. And then, before we rush to fulfill the desire, we pause. We pause and just experience the desire fully. (See the exercise below.)

Pausing to just be with a desire can be challenging when instant gratification is so easy. With credit cards, stores open around the clock and overnight shipping from anywhere in the world, if our desire is for a particular taste or a particular possession, we can almost skip over the whole experience of wanting and go right to fulfillment.

Do you remember wanting something as a child? The waiting, the longing? We became intimate with our desire. We lived with it for long periods (that seemed even longer!) We could describe the experience of desire as a bodily burden that was almost insupportable. Many of these desires passed. Some didn’t. Some were fulfilled. Some weren’t. Some were given as gifts, treats or rewards. Some we were told to save for. Some we were told weren’t good for us and we wouldn’t be allowed to have ever. Some were for things that couldn’t be purchased.

While none of us want to return the power to our parents to decide whether our desires will be fulfilled, we can recreate a bit of that state of delayed gratification. Not as torture but as a way to come into relationship with our desires and to be more skillful in our response to them.
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Exercise
Stop for a moment now and see what comes up when you say, “I want…..” Whatever desire arises is fine. It doesn’t have to be anything special for you to work with it.

Now, close your eyes and sense in to your body, saying the statement again. Does the statement bring on any physical sensation? Does it bring up any emotion? Does it bring up any images beyond the visualization of the desire itself, perhaps a memory?

This is an interesting self-exploration that you can do with many different desire statements (both “I want….” and “I don’t want…”). For it to be most useful, write down the statements and any accompanying sensations, emotions or images.
When the desire arises of its own accord (not from the prompting in this exercise) you can also notice what, if any, thoughts preceded it and see if there is a causal relationship. You can notice what thoughts accompany the desire that energize or enable the wanting. And you can notice what thoughts follow the desire -- judging yourself for the desire perhaps?

It is also interesting to notice any external causes and conditions that may have brought on the desire. For example, you’re walking down the street, perfectly content, when you see a luxury car driving down the street or something in a shop window and suddenly you feel wanting.
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Look at the last sentense of that exercise: “…and suddenly you feel wanting.” Wanting as in lacking in something. As if you are somehow incomplete. Suddenly you are not enough because you don’t have (fill in the blank). Amazing, isn’t it? What an opportunity to notice how we so readily attach our identity to objects of desire, and often even to the desire itself.

By pausing before fulfilling our desire, we give ourselves the opportunity to be fully present with it, to recognize it as a recurring pattern, and to come into awareness – through bodily sensation and evoked emotions and memories that flit through like faint traces of dream.

We may notice that many of our desires, if not instantly fulfilled, simply pass away. An itch that doesn’t get scratched often subsides.

By paying attention to what else arises with the desire, we may recognize that the thing we think we desire is just a mask for some deeper desire that we were not willing to look at, but can now.

These unmasked desires may be for things that can never be fulfilled, like a return to a seemingly safer time, the return of a loved one who has died, or a chance to undo past mistakes. But by allowing ourselves to be fully present with them in a compassionate and spacious way, these desires benefit by being given a voice. Once acknowledged they may shift, but even if they don’t, they enrich our understanding, thus reducing our sense of suffering.

In this compassionate non-judgmental spaciousness, we can also allow ourselves to acknowledge an addictive desire, when we realize that the desire is controlling our behavior and that no matter how often we rush to fulfill it, it never satisfies the gnawing desire that fills us. And if through this process we are not able to skillfully explore this addiction, we can finally seek the help we need to do so.

Desire is not a dictate that we must mindlessly obey, but simply a natural phenomenon coming into our experience of this moment. By pausing before rushing to fulfill desires that arise, we have a rich opportunity to fully experience this utterly human trait as something in and of itself. We can be in a spacious relationship with our desires, neither clinging, grasping or pushing them away. We simply hold them in an open embrace.

Why In Times of Crisis Meditators are Especially Grateful for the Practice

As meditators, we are grateful for our practice that helps us more skillfully navigate this current financial crisis and all situations in our lives -- not as observers untouched by the experience, but as conscious participants, fully engaged but clear seeing.

Here are some examples of the kinds of differences in our daily lives that we meditators often find between having a regular meditation practice and not having one:

Say you have a headache or stomach upset after looking at the value of your retirement fund or the daily news. As a non-meditator you might take a drug or try to distract yourself in various unskillful ways, and if it persists call the doctor in hopes of more heavy duty drugs.

As a practiced meditator you will more likely sit with the sensation of the pain, notice the emotional component and breathe into the experience. You may recognize the tension in the body and understand the cause and condition from which it arose. You may give yourself more spaciousness, be gentle with yourself right now, not take on too much during this period, and perhaps take walks in nature or meditate more frequently.

As a non-meditator you may not connect the fear you are feeling with the anger you are expressing to family or fellow drivers on the road. You may not see the connection between your anxiety and your difficulty doing your work, so you give yourself a hard time for being so stupid. And you may give coworkers, also affected by the crisis, a hard time for their suddenly less than stellar performances as well.

As a practiced meditator you will be more likely to see the connection between your emotions, thoughts and behaviors, and sense your connection to all other beings. So you will be more likely to take the fear experience, sit with it, and allow it to inform your interactions with your coworkers, family and everyone else, in the form of compassionate understanding for any unskillful displays they show in response to their own anxiety.

As a non-meditator you may compound your fear by getting caught up in incessantly imagining a dark future, rerunning images of the 1930’s in your head, thinking back over what you might have done differently in the past that would have changed this outcome or cursing the past actions of others in an endless loop of blame. This leaves you unable to be attentive to the current moment that requires your full attention.

As a practiced meditator you have trained your mind to notice when your thoughts get caught up in the future or the past and you can skillfully and gently bring your attention back to this moment, knowing that this is the only moment that is real, the one you can experience with all your senses and the only one in which you can take action. The future and the past are just plans, fantasies and memories, in other words, just thoughts.

As a non-meditator you may have your identity firmly invested in your material wealth or your position. As a practiced meditator you have a greater opportunity to begin to recognize that you are not your stuff, that your value is not composed of material wealth, prestige or how you make that wealth, that you – and all of us – are uniquely and universally valuable just the way we are.

These are some of the reasons why at times of crisis meditators turn to each other and say, “I am so grateful for the practice. I can’t imagine going through this without the practice.”

Of course there are people who don’t have a regular sitting practice who have found the same spaciousness of mind. Perhaps they do Qi Gong or some other form, or perhaps they have a naturally spacious mind. But for most of us, without a meditative practice of some kind, we fall into the habitual and unskillful patterns of mind that bring us ongoing suffering.

At a time of crisis those who don’t have a regular practice might say to themselves, “I really should start to meditate.” or “I need to meditate more regularly.” It’s never too late to start!

If you would like to learn more about getting started meditating, click on the link (right side of this page) to my website -- Stephanienoble.com. In the meditation section you will find several downloadable pages that offer ways to begin. If you need more help, contact me, or find a meditation center in your area.

The First Noble Truth, as Told by Uncle Remus

Let’s imagine there is universal energy all around that in its natural unaltered state is spacious, loving and supportive of life and a sense of joyousness.
Then lets imagine that, through our lack of attention and habitual patterns, it is possible to compress this energy so that we experience it as something dark, dense and gooey like tar.

In this compressed state the energy drags us down. We get stuck in it as we struggle against it, like Brer Rabbit in his meeting with the tar baby. This is suffering, what Buddhists call dukkha.

How did we create the sticky tar of our suffering? That certainly wasn’t our intention. Or was it? It’s hard to know what our true intentions are without really paying attention to our experience. When we really are paying attention we might see that we hold some pretty dukkha-prone intentions.

Like the idea that we have to be perfect. Perfection as an intention is laden with dukkha. The tar is very thick when we get caught up in comparing ourselves to some ideal that is unattainable, not just by us, but by anyone.

Another dukkha-prone intention is our desire to receive approval from others. This intention throws us completely off-balance as we try to imagine what someone else wants from us, then from that flawed imagining, trying to modify ourselves to suit.

Another would be the intention to achieve great wealth, fame or success, in whatever form that takes for us. Goal setting where the goal post is a bigger presence in our lives than what is happening in this moment creates dukkha -- a sticky place of disappointment, guilt over unskillful actions done in pursuit of our goal, and perpetual fantasizing.

Or the intention to prove something to the world or to someone who once told us we could not achieve something. Perhaps that person is long gone but we still are stuck in the dukkha of reactivity.

There are many more unexamined intentions that could be marketed as Deluxe Dukkha Delivery Systems because they are so effective at transporting us directly into deep sticky dense suffering.

Remember the story of Brer Rabbit, when Brer Fox tried to catch him by creating an alluring trap in the form of a tar baby? This tar baby was just some sticks covered in pitch and studded with gewgaws, all gussied up to appeal to Brer Rabbit’s sociable nature. And sure enough when Brer Rabbit came upon the tar baby, he tried to make civil conversation with her, and the tar baby didn’t say anything, which Brer Rabbit thought was very rude indeed. But he was captivated by this alluring creature, so he tried a different line. Still no response. Well, clearly this gal was stuck up and needed a little lesson. With one paw and then the other, Brer Rabbit found himself all entangled with the tar baby. The more he reacted, using first one foot and then the other, the more entangled he got, until he was truly stuck.

And this is how we are in our lives with our dukkha. Perhaps there’s a person in our lives who brings out a lot of reactivity in us, and becomes our tar baby. We react, then we struggle to get free of all the dukkha that comes up around our reaction. But it doesn’t have to be a person, this tar baby. It’s any situation, cause or condition to which we automatically respond with a set pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that drag us deep into the tar of our dukkha.

How did Brer Rabbit get free of the tar baby? He tricked old Brer Fox. Because Brer Fox was not quite so clever a fellow as Brer Rabbit. After all, Brer Fox had Brer Rabbit, he had him good! And he planned to cook him up and eat him.

But Brer Rabbit begged and begged him. “Please Brer Fox, you can boil me in oil, hang me or drown me, but please don’t throw me in that there briar patch.”

Brer Fox had some dukkha issues too. Even though he had his meal in hand, his desire to make Brer Rabbit suffer was greater than his hunger. So he pulled the rabbit off the tar baby and flung him into the briar patch. Once there, Brer Rabbit laughed and called out, 'Born 'n' bred in a briar-patch, Brer Fox-- born 'n' bred in a briar-patch!' as he used some handy briars to pick off the remaining pitch from his fur and went on his merry way.

Born and bred in the briar patch. Brer Rabbit freed himself from his tar baby dukkha dilemma by returning to his source, the place where he felt most comfortable in all the world.

So what is our briar patch? It’s the place in ourselves where we feel most at home. Where we don’t have to defend ourselves or struggle. It’s ourselves fully relaxed in this moment, accepting ourselves as we are and this situation as it is in this moment, even if it is painful or challenging. This is the place where we are grounded, where the energy is spacious, joyous and supportive. It is a place of conscious awareness, of clear seeing and deep pure intention.

This is the place we come to know through sitting in meditation, through walking in nature in silence, through noticing moments of simple contentment in our lives – watching a small child at play, sitting at a dinner table with dear friends and good conversation – being fully present for the experience.

For most of us these moments are fleeting. We enjoy them but then can’t help but wish they would stay longer, or that we would make ourselves available to them more often, and suddenly we’ve created a little tar baby to tangle with.

At these times maybe we can remember Brer Rabbit and get ourselves back to our briar patch – back to noticing the rising and falling of our breath, the sensations in our body, and the light in our surroundings. Because we were born if not bred for this. We’re breeding ourselves for it now!

Exploring the First Noble Truth: Delving into Dukkha

In learning meditation, we focus heavily on direct experience. It really doesn’t matter what Buddhism is or if you’ve studied the Buddha’s teaching extensively. You can still benefit from simply sitting and paying attention to your breath.
But we would be foolish not to draw from the teachings that give us guidance through the fog of our own experience.

The core of the Buddha’s teachings are the Four Noble Truths. If you are not familiar with these, they are, first: that there is suffering; second, that there is a cause of our suffering; third, that we can end our suffering; and fourth, that the way to do this is through the Eightfold Path that helps us be more skillful in how we perceive the world and ourselves, in how we mentally process our experience, how we impact the world with our words, how to be more present with our experience, how to behave in a skillful way that does no harm to others or ourselves, how to tune ourselves like guitars -- neither too loose nor too tight, and how to make a living in a way that doesn’t cause suffering to ourselves or others.

The Friday morning class at Spirit Rock has been working with Phillip Moffitt’s book on the Four Noble Truths, called Dancing with Life, and he has made what can seem a very dry and elusive topic very juicy and insightful. Since I have been recovering from my surgery, I haven’t been able to attend class, but have been enjoying reading the book and making my own explorations into the topic.

Moffitt says that a person could just study the First Noble Truth for their whole lives and have a very rich and rewarding practice. I’ll just spend a few minutes on it here, because he also says that many of us want to skip over it. An inconvenient truth, this first one! Ugh! Suffering, who wants to think about that! But apparently if we skip over it, like missing the first vital minutes of a mystery movie, we never really understand anything else! So, let’s face it head on!

The First Noble Truth: There is suffering. Okay, we know that! We see the images of starving children in Africa with their big bellies, people stricken with horrid diseases, homeless people begging on the streets, or victims of violence.

But the Buddha said we all suffer, that it’s the human condition. Well, okay, yes, we’ve all had periods in our lives where we had great loss or physical pain or went through a tough time in our relationships, careers, etc. Sure. But in general we reserve the word ‘suffer’ for those who really have it bad. We can hardly claim it for ourselves, and don’t have any interest in doing so! Thank you very much!

But apparently, according to the Buddha, if we don’t acknowledge the truth of our own suffering, the reality of its existence in our daily lives, we cannot come into relationship with it and deal with it skillfully.

The fact that we who feel blessed in the world have a hard time acknowledging our own suffering made me wonder if that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Maybe he didn’t mean that a rich man doesn’t deserve to get into the kingdom, but that the gate to the kingdom is through awareness of the suffering we experience in the present moment, and he doesn’t allow himself to think he could be plagued with anything so plebian as suffering.

I’m also reminded of the song lyrics, “So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it, you’ve got to go in through the door.” What is the door? To Buddhist ears, the door is ‘this moment’. Whatever our current experience is, suffering and all, that is the door to a richer life than that proverbial rich man could even imagine.

And then I realized that the Buddha’s father must have known this to be true. If you don’t know the story of the Buddha’s childhood, briefly: When he was born a soothsayer told his father that his son would either be a great warrior or a great spiritual leader. Well, the father, a wealthy man with a great palatial estate, most certainly didn’t want his son following a spiritual path. He didn’t want him following the ascetics of the day, walking on fire, lying on nails, begging for food. Not for his son! So what did he do? He created a paradise within the palace walls where there was no visible signs of suffering! No death, no illness, no aging. All this to protect his son from any awareness of suffering, instinctively knowing it to be the door to the spiritual path he didn’t want his son to pursue. Aha!

The Buddhist term for this suffering or unsatisfactoriness is dukkha. Such a great word! Great because it really sounds like what it is: An amalgam of doo-doo and ca-ca. Dukkha. How totally appropriate! Because when we are aware of our suffering we’re very likely to name what we are experiencing with some more adult version of those baby words for bowel movements. Sorry for any crudeness, but it’s a great mnemonic device. If we think, “This is doo doo, ca, ca,” or words to that effect, we might remember, “Ah, dukkha! suffering, the human condition. Yes, here it is. Let me sit with it.”

According to Moffitt, the Buddha taught that there are three kinds of suffering: The first is physical and mental pain. The second is the dukkha of constant change – we paint our house, knowing that in time we will need to do it again; the end of summer comes too soon for us; our body ages; our loved ones die; our children grow up and move out; every day we are assaulted with news of the world in constant flux. And the third kind of suffering is the feeling that life itself is a little overwhelming, a little too much to bear. Even in the best of times, it’s exhausting.

These three kinds of suffering are part of our very nature. It is the human experience to have pain, to wish for some stability in our lives, and to feel at times overwhelmed by the experience of living. There is nothing we can do to avoid them. And that is not what the Buddha advocated.

Instead we are told to accept our suffering. When a pain arises, we accept that pain is part of our human experience in this moment. “This is how this feels,” we might tell ourselves. “This is how things are in this moment.”

This level of deep acceptance may sound defeatist. It’s part of our make up that we want to rush in and make things better. We want to avoid pain at all costs. We want to limit the damages. We don’t want to wallow. We are not victims. We are not losers. This is not us.

But through this habitual pattern of struggling to avoid the stinking dukkha, we just dig ourselves deeper into it, adding more suffering to the unavoidable pain we are experiencing.

Seven weeks ago during my hospital stay, there was a patient in the next bed who was deep in the dukkha of physical pain. But she was compounding her suffering immeasurably by struggling against it. She made up stories in her head about the doctors and nurses and how they were in league to keep her in pain. She tried to distract herself by watching television long into the night. She dragged the past pain into the present moment by constantly noting how many hours she had been experiencing it. She piled on a load more suffering by imagining this pain going on far into the future. She did everything BUT stay present with the actual sensations she was experiencing.

And we all do this! We make up stories to fix, explain or work around the pain. Our stories may be different: We may tell ourselves to bucker up, to put on a happy face. We may tell ourselves if we were better people we’d know how to get ourselves out of this. We distract ourselves with all manner of busyness and addictive patterns of behavior. We drag in the past and the future to compound the pain. This is our habitual way of dealing with suffering.

Amazingly, by being fully present with the dukkha, accepting it as our experience in the present moment, we and the moment are transformed. Slowly, and with full mindfulness, we begin to soften into our experience. Because we are no longer struggling against it, we are no longer adding more suffering to it. We aren’t projecting it into the future or dragging old suffering in from the past. We are simply being present with our experience.

Last Friday I finally was able to return to my beloved class at Spirit Rock. That day our teacher was Wendy Palmer who took this concept one step further. She says that by being full present and opening to the dukkha experience, the dukkha itself will support us, will be as nourishing as compost.

So I have this image now, of the doo-doo ca-ca of dukkha as manure, becoming a rich nourishing compost that – if I can stay present and aware – can deeply inform my experience so that I am not just surviving the experience but growing in my experiential understanding of myself and life.

And I realized that this poem that I wrote several years ago illustrates dealing with dukkha.

A Hole is to Fall Into

It’s so hard to remember that
every hole I fall into holds a buried treasure

because I am too busy clawing my way out
and cursing my fate to remember to:

let go!

fall deep!

and, upon reaching bottom : sit still!

Here in this quiet darkness of non-doing,
the steady rising and falling of the breath
slowly unearths the buried treasure.

-- Stephanie Noble

Two Poems on Thoughts During Meditation

Prodigal Mind

When my mind
returns to the breath
there is such a sense
of homecoming
such a celebration of
this most perfect union

that I would not be surprised
if the invitations were sent out
the band hired
and the cake decorated

were there only enough time
before my wayward mind
sets off to wandering again.

- Stephanie Noble

---------------

In the River of Thought

In the river of thought
may I rest like a rock
in the riverbed
cleansing the water so that
downstream it will be clearer.

If I’m not ready to be a rock
unchanged by thought-stream,
if I feel more akin to the flotsam
tossed about by the rapids
of thoughts, then at least

May I keep my head above water
and see the wide world around me
beyond the thoughts in which I swim.

May I find my weary way to the shore
and rest on the banks of the river.

May I discover that I am not the river
and bear no shame for its stench.

May I look upstream and downstream
and see that its course is endless,
that it neither starts or ends with me.

May I know not to dip my bucket
in the river and offer the foul broth to others.

And then someday may I feel awake enough
to re-enter the river for periods of time
and sink deep into the rocky riverbed, fully aware,
able to breathe in the vilest thoughts
with cleansing compassion.

May some day the river itself be so pure
that swimming in it will cause awakening.

- Stephanie Noble

Meditation: Coming into Relationship with our Thoughts

There are various ways to be in relationship with our thoughts that can be helpful in meditation. One many people use is to imagine the mind as clear blue sky and thoughts as clouds floating through. Another, is to think of thoughts as a river or sea. As beginner meditators most likely we are submerged so deeply in our sea of thoughts that we don’t know which way is up. But if we relax a little we will naturally rise to the surface, to air. A practiced long distance swimmer comes up for air on a regular basis. And as meditators we learn to do the same, coming back to our breath over and over again as we swim in a sea of thoughts.

Sometimes we can have our head above water for long periods of time, perhaps floating on our back, enjoying the spacious air and vast sky. We are still with our thoughts. They sparkle on the surface of the sea or are the waves that we body surf. And if we submerge into them, we know which way is up, and come up for air on a regular basis.

Both these analogies remind us that thoughts are naturally arising phenomena. We train ourselves to be in relationship with them, not to push them away or scold ourselves for having them. We can even let go of the idea that these are ‘our’ thoughts, freeing us from judging them, feeling ashamed of them or intoxicated by their brilliance. There are other swimmers in this sea of thoughts! Other minds through which these thoughts, or ones very much like them, flow.

If visualizations like these don’t interest you, perhaps you can embrace the physical manufacture of thoughts – all those electrical impulses in the brain. How much of your identity is attached to the specialness of the way your heart beats or other inner workings of your body? The brain makes thoughts. That’s what it does. Of course, the thoughts are affected by a certain set of causes and conditions, and are filtered through your inherent and acquired set of habitual patterns and perceptions, but still and all, they are just thoughts. Understanding that this is part of the brain’s function, that this is what the mind does, releases our need to control our thoughts, and frees us to simply notice them as they arise into our awareness and pass away.

Finding a way to be in relationship with our thoughts is key, because thoughts are such a dominant part of our moment to moment experience. And because thoughts will often pull us away from simply being in this moment -- into remembering or revising the past or planning for or worrying about the future -- becoming aware of them and knowing how to gently return to the breath is central to developing a meditative practice.

Meditation: Back from the Future

I am in one of those periods in life where it is very easy to get caught up in anticipating the future. Recovering from hip replacement surgery, getting around with the aid of a crutch, having strict limitations on my mobility, it is challenging for me not to look forward to when I will be walking normally without a crutch, driving a car, bending more than 90 degrees, and experiencing the pain free benefits for which I went through the surgery in the first place.

When such leaning into the future thoughts become so obvious, it’s an excellent opportunity to really notice them as they arise and to sit with them a bit.

In doing so, I see that these anticipatory thoughts involve comparing my current experience with others. This other experience may be an imagined future one, as in this case, but it could just as easily be some remembered past experience, or the imagined experience of someone else whose life seems vastly superior in some way.

By noting that my thought process is in a comparing mode, I have brought a clear awareness to my mind activity. This awareness isn’t judging the activity, but if I am suddenly judging, then hopefully I can become aware of my mind switching into a judging mode. These modes are in constant movement throughout our days. We don’t have to switch them off, we just benefit by becoming aware of them.

Now I could at this point just note ‘comparing’ or ‘judging’ and return to the breath. But I can also choose to notice if there is any emotion attached to this thought. And in this case I was surprised to find there was. I discovered an underlying fear or anxiety that seems to ask the question, “What if?” In my case: “What if I am the unusual patient that doesn’t fully heal, that continues to need a crutch, continues to feel pain forever?”

It doesn’t matter how rational these “What if?” scenarios are. If we are to have an honest and open exploration, we need to accept what is true for us in this moment. Sometimes the mind rushes in to offer supporting evidence for the fear, fueling it. Or, conversely, our mind might argue with the fear, belittling the experience. But rational arguments hold no sway with emotion, they just add the new emotion of frustration or shame on top of it.

The challenge is to simply acknowledge an emotion in our current experience and sit with it. In our sitting with it we might then discover a physical component to the emotion -- a tightness in the chest or tension in the jaw, for example. If so, we can sit with the physical sensation and breathe into it. Which ultimately brings us back to the breath, where we focus our attention.

Why bother with all this awareness?
Well it might save us and those around us from a lot of unnecessary suffering!
In the usual course of events, a thought trips a whole series of actions and reactions. Staying with my current case, I am caught up in anticipating a few weeks down the road when I will be returning to normal activity. The emotional component is a small underlying anxiety, as noted, but more noticeably an eagerness to get the show on the road. This could quite easily lead to over-reaching my current physical boundaries in this moment out of a restless impatience, which could cause injury. It could also make all my interactions with others a little testy or grumpy, as I complain of my current fate. Instead of savoring the wonderful visits from friends and family and being incredibly touched by the tender care of my wonderful husband, I could be making both their lives and mine a living hell. I’m sure there are many other possible results as well, but you get the idea.

By paying attention and noting our thoughts, we don’t get rid of them, but they are somehow derailed from their causative roles. They exist but they have lost their powerful hold on us. We can be with them with spacious awareness, acknowledging them but not ruled by them.

And it all starts in meditation, noticing that we are thinking, then noting the mental mode of the thought (planning, remembering, comparing, judging, fantasizing, problem solving, etc.) Then we have the option to see if there is any emotional component, then any physical sensation that accompanies it. Then we simply breathe into the physical sensation.

Our attention always comes home to the simple but miraculous core of our physical existence: the rise and fall of the breath.

Precious Thoughts

Sometimes we get attached to our thoughts in meditation, and if we are reminded to come back to focusing on the rise and fall of our breath, we get grumpy. We were in the middle of a brilliant idea, a creative solution, a lovely visual feast – and the teacher wants us to come back to the breath? Boring!
If this feels familiar to your experience, remember that you have almost all day and night to think or dream anything you want. The mind runs free! But in this short period of meditation, we are training our minds to concentrate. So no matter how glorious a thought is, the breath is more important.
Why? Because this training is the means to end suffering. And what thought could be more valuable than that? By learning to bring ourselves back the the breath over and over again, we are making it possible for ourselves to find this still core within ourselves at some future time when we may desperately need it -- when our minds are careening full speed trying to cope with a crisis, and our emotions are on heightened alert and everything seems absolutely impossible. In that situation, I am guessing there is no past thought, no matter how entertaining or brilliant, that will rush in to save us. But knowing the way back to the breath will.
So that’s the biggest reason that we welcome anything that brings us back into awareness of the breath, whether it’s the teacher’s words or another sound in the room. And if what brings us back is simply our own recognition of the fact that we are lost in thought, a little inner celebration is not out of order, as long as it doesn’t send us off into another train of thought!

Thoughts During Meditation

For most of us the challenge in meditation is to find our way back from deep within a tangled thought in order to focus on the breath. At first it might seem that the goal is to get rid of thought, but this is not the case. It is not a policing that is required, but a quiet awareness. Thoughts are what our brains do. They are not bad, and trying to evict them from our experience even for a short length of time is not only unnecessary but counter productive.

Thoughts are just part of our experience, like emotions and sensations. Through meditation practice, awareness increases over time so that we are able to more clearly distinguish all of these aspects of our experience. We can see our thoughts coming and going. We can see the associational strings that link one thought to another, luring us deeper and deeper. We can see the nature of our thoughts, whether they tend to be more about planning, problem solving, remembering, remodeling the past, complaining, finding something or someone to blame, fantasizing or catastrophizing. We can see thoughts that come up again and again, as we tell ourselves the same story over and over. We can see our judgments about our thoughts.

While it is useful to know that this kind of awareness is a direct result from simply setting the intention to sit and be with our experience, it is important to understand that this awareness comes from regular practice over the course of time. To have an expectation of immediate clarity is setting yourself up for disappointment, and may cause you to give up on the practice.

Getting lost in thought is a natural part of meditation. A beginner meditator might feel that he or she was lost in thought the whole time. This is why sitting in a group with a little guidance is valuable. The teacher may occasionally remind you to come back to a focus on the breath. Practicing in this way helps us to incorporate the teacher’s voice into our own daily practice, so that we remind ourselves to return to the breath.

Every time we return to the breath is a celebration of sorts. It is not a time to scold ourselves for having been lost. It is a time to be grateful for returning. And each time we return to the breath we are paving the way there, making the path a little clearer, wider and easier to find. So that when we are in a crisis in our daily life, we can more readily find the path to our source of equilibrium. So, in a way, the more often we are lost in thought and find our way back, the better!

POEM: Metta at Midnight

Awake again
mulling over
painful events
& poor decisions,
I know that
relatively speaking
of course I am lucky
to have such paltry
problems in a week
when tornados, cyclones
and earthquakes
have killed tens
of thousands and left
five million homeless,
but I don’t want to
need the misery
of others to
make my life
seem good.
Still, the switch
with which I beat myself
temporarily loses its sting.

But I am still awake, so
I begin to send blessings
over the mountains and across the plains
to flattened towns, where suddenly
small found objects mean so much
and so little.
May you be well, may you be at ease.

I send blessings across the Pacific
to families waiting and watching
piles of shattered concrete slabs and
twisted rebar for signs of life:
May the ache in a Sichaun mother’s chest be eased.

Under the rubble, may a small pool of rainwater
be keeping a child alive until rescue comes.

May arms open to receive those
wandering aimlessly, whose homes
and worldly goods have crumpled into nothing.

May the seeds of happiness already be planted
amidst the wrenching pain.

Blessings know no boundaries,
so I am not surprised
to find I am now sending them to those
who live in war torn communities,
where fear is a constant companion:
May you find ease,
may your heart know peace.
And to those who see violence as a necessary evil:
May your hearts be softened,
May you sense your connection.

And blessing fly to lands stricken by drought
to those who sleep to forget their hunger,
and to all people everywhere who
are suffering pain in their body or mind,
to those who have recently lost the one they love best,
and those who have never had a love to lose,
and those who are sleeping in cars, under bridges,
in shelters, and those who have been abused,
and those who have lost themselves
and…oh my god, it just goes on and on, doesn’t it?

But as I breathe in the pain of the world
and breathe out loving kindness,
the hardened armor I carefully crafted to keep
the endless misery of the world at bay,
becomes porous, allowing the blessings to pour
through all the holes in a tidal exchange
until there is nothing but blessing.

So I send blessings to the leaders.
May you sense your connection to all of life
and respond with wisdom.

I send blessings to the ravaged earth.
May you heal. And to its inhabitants:
May you live in peace and know joy.

I bring my blessings home
to my own neighborhood.
On this hot night with windows and doors open,
I feel how all of us are resting together:
the birds, lizards, deer, squirrels, raccoons,
insects, and the humans behind screens
snoring or lying wakefully worrying, or
feeling a pain magnified by the night.

May we all find ease and
take comfort in knowing
that there is someone, maybe many people,
who, even though we are unknown to them,
are sending us loving kindness even now.

The threads of infinite blessings
weave a dense brilliant web,
a hammock of light.
And at last I rest.

Stephanie Noble
May 2008