Noticing: Thoughts on the Beach

Walking on the ocean’s edge yesterday, I noticed huge clumps of kelp, all tangled like beached whales. This, I thought, is how thoughts are when they get tumbled in the rough storm of emotion.

The beach was so clear that even the delicate tide lines showed, even the impressions of tidal bubbles left lacey tracks. And I thought: This is like the meditative mind, so quiet that even the most subtle thoughts, emotions and sensations become clearly visible.

I looked at the interwoven smooth and salty surfaces of the maroon and ochre kelp, remembering how as a child I would take that bulbous length and run with it, whipping up the sand for the sheer joy and exuberance of such a vast expanse of space.

In some of the clumps were tangles of turquoise rope. I imagined the small boat from which it came, for this was not a shipboard purchase but the choice made in a boat shop where the color promised tropical sea sailing instead of the cold cruelty of the choppy Bay, Gate and Pacific Ocean. Nearby on the beach there was what looked to be a peach-colored oval stone, but when I picked it up it was light-weight, with four evenly spaced holes and a wedge cut the full length of both sides for line to slide, so I knew it to be nautical in nature. I suppose there are some sloppy sailors, but I noticed how images of some mid-ocean mishap arose within my mind.

There was a dark green plastic garbage can stranded on the beach, without wheels or lid. I noticed how this object launched a long involved fantasy beginning with imagining dragging it along, picking up the detritus of human life, leaving the shore devoid of all but footprints. But there seemed so much, and I thought how it’s a long way to April 22nd, so I imagined an ‘earth day every day’ party where we would don gloves and carry garbage bags to pick up the oil cans, the bottle caps and bags. And people would come to help and come for the tasty picnic part with rich conversation and camaraderie and leave feeling nourished in every way.

Together my husband Will and I imagined a lot of photos we might have taken had we remembered the camera – especially of the dune grasses thatched so decoratively against the russet cliffs in the distance. We framed potential paintings and planned to return, camera in hand, while knowing no moment can ever be recaptured, that the light would shift and the grasses would fade.

We watched, enchanted by the chubby little sanderlings racing on their tiny legs, chasing each receding wave as it exposed choice tidbits, with precious few seconds to poke, suck and swallow before rushing to escape the incoming flow that followed.

And now I share this experience with you, not in the hopes to take you there yesterday at the beach, though it would have been fun, but to offer up this example of a typical mind at work, and all the kinds of thoughts that traverse through it like the kelp through the storm, like the turquoise rope through the oval fitting, that now washed ashore whispers scary stories, like the plastic leavings and the thatched grasses calling up regrets, wishes and plans.

And the shore birds bringing attention back to this moment, as they need -- as we need -- every moment to be conscious.

So we become conscious of the thoughts that are just the tangled detritus of our nature. And if we find that we are caught in the tight tangle of thoughts, we can, through meditation and metta (loving kindness), give ourselves the spaciousness of the vast expanse of beautiful beach that is contained in our every breath, our every awareness of physical sensation.

The thoughts do not disappear. We simply see them in the context of how the brain functions, a part of the experience of being alive in human form. By broadening our spacious awareness through practice we make room for all of life. And this making room for what is arising in this moment is the key to finding joy and relieving suffering.

But how do we practice it? During meditation we practice opening into the silence, releasing tension, setting intention, and paying compassionate attention to a sensory experience – the breath, the sounds in the room, etc.

What about after we open our eyes? I would like to encourage a continuing of this kind of awareness practice even after the meditation is over. The meditation shows us what’s possible, but if we treat it as a getaway vacation instead of instruction for living our lives, we are peeling the apple, tossing away the most nutritious part.

The most nutritious part of meditation comes outside of formal practice when we continue to maintain a level of awareness. Meditation is training us to be present, but if we don’t practice being present in every moment, then what is the training for?

In our post-meditation discussion this week we did this. And it is something you can do on your own, with friends or in a meditation group.

We adjust our bodies to be relaxed but alert. We stay present with the rising and falling of the breath or other sensory focus, even as we listen to each other, even as we notice our thoughts, our judgments, or questions, our feelings. And in our discussions we actively practice using our language in a way that helps us to continue to recognize the nature of our thoughts. Instead of stating our opinions or facts, we can actually say, “I notice that when you say ________ a judging thought comes up for me, or a question comes up for me, or tension arises in my body, or a feeling of ______ comes up.” Now this is by nature a slow and maybe at times awkward structure, BUT it is a way for us to intensify our practice and bring it into the rest of our lives where it might serve us well.

This process is at once deeply personal yet universal. The thoughts we each have are not our thoughts. They are just the nature of thoughts, and we all experience them as they pass through, given a wide variety of factors, causes and conditions. Perhaps some system of thoughts gets stuck in a holding pattern, like the eddy of a stream where branches get stuck, and it easy to think of them as ours because we become so familiar with them we begin to define ourselves by their existence. But there is no thought that defines who we are. Knowing this frees us to greet thoughts with curiosity and loving kindness, neither grasping them nor pushing them away.

So try this exercise of speaking from your most conscious spacious awareness, bringing to light with loving kindness the process of your thoughts.

Enjoy the spacious beach-ocean-sky of the human mind, including all the thought forms that pass through it!

Winter Solstice: Gift of the Season

Whatever holidays we celebrate during this season, there is one underlying constant that we all share in the northern hemisphere, and that is the fact that this is the season of darkness. Tonight is the winter solstice, when the northern hemisphere of the earth is tilted the furthest away from the sun, giving us the longest night and shortest day of the year.

If we look around us we can see that the rest of nature has quieted down, slowed down, or at least taken its activity underground into its roots or burrows. Since we are a part of nature, I’ve always wondered why we take this time to become even more frenetic and busy than usual. I've talked about this in past Winter Solstice postings. But what I realize now is that to the degree that we are gathering together with family and old friends we are also focusing on nourishing our roots, on burrowing in to what feeds us. I'm often asked to share the Winter Solstice poem I wrote back in 1992 (which you can find in the past WS postings) but a few days ago I wrote this poem and read it as well at a lovely solstice party I attended, because I think there's a place for this aspect of ourselves too.

Winter Solstice Too

Dear darkness, what am I to do with you?
Burrow under the eiderdown, close my eyes and dream?
Mmm, how sweet, how soft, how succulent, and yet

I toss off the covers, wishing (on a bright star) to share
this vast indigo expanse, to gather in festivity, to hear
oft-told tales from long-loved lips, to mingle merrily.

Some nights, yes, I settle: a bear in my winter cave.
But other evenings like a dormant rose, I tend my roots
so they may deepen and hold me true for flowering.

Here, candles cast a mellow glow, melting the dark beyond.
We, the long intertwined vines of family born and family made
twinkle the night with laughter as we sip and sup and sing.

- Stephanie Noble 2010

So this is the gift of the season: a pause to appreciate and to nurture our roots, our connections that support us so well all year long.

We can find the balance between our yearning to burrow in and our yearning to gather together when we allow the darkness to fill us, as we allow the silence to fill us, with a sense of presence, compassion and spacious awareness. Sensing in to our body's wisdom, noticing the thoughts and emotions that arise in the safe space we have created. These thoughts may be sad. We may feel depressed by conditions -- the seemingly endless rain, for example -- and we may feel uncomfortable with such thoughts. But simply noticing them, allowing them to exist, not needing to push them away -- that's the art of our meditative practice, our life practice. There is no need to put on a happy face, scold ourselves for what we are feeling. These inner battles with what arises simply create suffering. But what we might notice is that by simply noticing and allowing, neither fighting nor indulging these thoughts and emotions, somehow they lighten their tense hold on us.

If we are bored or stuck in an emotional quagmire, there is another action that can also help to pull us out: generosity. I once heard tell of a jolly old elf, a chubby white-bearded fellow in a red suit and black boots whose generous spirit reminds us that when we are moved by the impulse to generosity we tap into the infinite metta energy that can spread loving kindness around the world all in one night, all in one moment. Ho, ho, ho! The secret of joy in a reindeer pulled sleigh!

May you be well, even in the darkness. May you be happy, even in the cold. May you find peace, even when your heart is troubled. May you find ease, even when life seems hard.

Happy Solstice!

Awake in the Wild, a book by Mark Coleman

I am on hiatus for a month while in Mexico. The class continues meeting to meditate together and to read and discuss a book of their choice. From several options I gave them, they chose Mark Coleman’s Awake in the Wild. Since this is a book worthy of rereading, I plan to read it too. Possibly there might be some related posting, but no definite plans to do so.

Meanwhile, you might want to take this opportunity to read or reread posts on topics of specific interest to you. There are over 120 posts, and some may be from before you began reading this blog. You can see on the right side of the blog there are several ways to find something that calls to you.

I suggest reading one post before or after meditation as a daily inspiration to self-exploration and insight.

May you be well. May you be happy. May you be at ease. May you know peace.
Hasta luego!

Stephanie

Día de los Muertos -- All Souls' Day

Dia de los Muertos
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Last week I saw the movie Hereafter where a little boy, having lost a loved one, types into Google, ‘What happens when we die?”

It’s a question none of us can answer for sure. We may have beliefs and beliefs can be powerful, but even those who have had brief experiences of dying and coming back to life cannot be sure that what they experienced was death itself or just a passage to another experience. A brush with death can instill a powerful sense of knowing, but it’s a knowing that transcends retelling, and in many cases eventually fades.

Yet even though we can’t know, it’s still such an interesting topic. What is more universal than death? We all will experience it sooner or later whether we are curious, fearful or blasé about the subject.

When I have a question about such things, I don’t go to Google. I go to nature. I take a slow walk with lots of pauses and ask my question of the trees, the river, the rocks, the lizards, the ocean, the breeze, the clouds, the birds, the mountain and the sky.

Nature knows all about death. In nature death is simply a transitive state. Every living thing is, in any given moment, transitioning through life, death and decay that gives birth to new life. The cycles of nature are so strong and so apparent that the question of death, which for us may be frightening or awe-inspiring, seems almost superfluous. Death is just one moment in the cycle of life. Gardeners know this from tending closely the cycles of plants. While they are enchanted by the bursting forth of a beautiful blossom, they learn to value all the seasons in the garden, including the winter where all the rich activity goes underground. An in-tuned gardener might begin to get a sense of the plants own view of the world, how disease is not a bad thing, just another life-form– bacteria, virus, fungus -- gaining energy. Only the gardener has the goal for the garden to look perfect and in bloom at all times. The plants, animals and the earth itself seem to have a very different sense of what matters.

Living close to the earth and the cycles of nature, it makes perfect sense to think that we too cycle again and again through life. So it is not surprising that one strong belief held by a large portion of the human population is reincarnation.

There’s something appealing about the idea of having another chance at life. But nature doesn’t turn a dead tree into another tree specifically. The tree dies, falls, decays and feeds the forest floor from which rise up all matter of plants, depending on factors like sunlight, rainfall and what seeds or other means of propagation fell in that area of the forest.

Yes, yes, you might say, but we are not talking about our physical bodies but our souls. It is the soul that is reincarnated. I used to like to imagine a river of soul that at death our soul-portion for this life is poured into and at birth our new soul-portion is scooped out of. So once in a while a scoop might pick up an intact scoop that had been just poured, but most of the time our reincarnation is a soul formed out of the whole soul river in a combination never before scooped. So that we are each unique, and yet hold the microcosmic memory of the macrocosmic soul river in our very beings. I still like that image, but I don't pretend to know if it is so. There is an odd comfort that comes with truly not knowing.

It seems that the Buddha wasn’t all that interested in what happens after we die. Perhaps in his world 2500 years ago reincarnation was so universally accepted, he didn’t need to question it. He was however interested in using awareness of the inevitability of death to enhance awareness of life and to alleviate the constricting fear of death. One Buddhist practice is to spend time meditating in the charnel grounds contemplating the decaying remains of the dead. This was not a morbid fascination with death but a way to bring about awareness of the truth of impermanence. Coming to a deep understanding of the nature of impermanence helps us to value each moment as we live it, knowing it is a precious and fleeting gift. The Buddha’s interest in death was primarily about how to live with the fact of death and still find joy in life, how to live with the pain of grief without compounding our suffering, and how to be sufficiently present in our lives so that we will be present for the great transition to whatever it is that happens after we die.

If you are interested in this preparation aspect for yourself or someone close to you, you might read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. He also discusses reincarnation and other aspect of Tibetan Buddhist practice and beliefs.

Most of us are curious, as the little boy in the movie I mentioned was curious, as to what follows this life. Is it because it is unknown and therefore a mystery we want to solve? Is it a way of finding some control of something we have no way of controlling? Is it the fear of non-existence? Or is it concern for the happiness of loved ones who have passed?

For those whose beliefs include heaven and hell, it’s not the fear of non-existence, but concern over making sure they get to the right place. These two ‘destinations’ have been used as reward and punishment by the powerful to hold the masses at bay very effectively. Great reward or eternal damnation: you choose. It’s easy to pooh-pooh the existence of heaven and hell when put in such simplistic terms. For many people it’s almost as easy to put away the images of the angel and the harp and the red horned devil as it is to let go of the Easter bunny.

Yet when we take away the idea that heaven and hell are places to go, they begin to take on richer significance and deeper understanding of original insight.

Jesus is quoted as saying, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” That means that life is not a waiting room where we pass time, trying to be good and apologizing deeply when we mess up, so that the big man in the sky will admit us to the pearly gates some day.

It means that in this very moment, you can accept the presence of God in your heart. And what does that mean in terms that those who aren’t comfortable with ‘God talk’ can understand? It means that at this very moment awareness of the infinite nature of being and the interconnected vibrating pulsing energy of all existence is available to all who take the time to quiet down and listen in. Listen in to the body with all its senses ready to anchor us into the moment, listen in to the energy that vibrates within and vibrates in the air that touches our skin, and vibrates in the furniture upon which we sit, the buildings, the trees and all beings, all life, on and on beyond our little planet into the vastness of infinite space. ‘World without end.’ Amen!

The test of any concept is in the here and now. When we bring the concepts of heaven and hell into this moment, we can see how we create our own heaven and hell here and now by the way we relate to what arises in our own current experience. We can see how the hellish suffering in this moment is brought on by our own reactions to situations.

If this moment is peaceful, joyous, beautiful and precious, then how is it not heaven? Would you really prefer trying to walk on clouds eternally? Walking on this rich earth, smelling the autumnal air, seeing the fall foliage in all its brilliant coloration, feeling the warmth of a sweater or jacket allowing us to fully enjoy the cool crisp air or the misty rain – does it really get better than this? Or is this in fact the heaven, the treat, the opportunity that all souls crave and so few are blessed to experience?

There is a Buddhist saying that it is as rare to be blessed with living a human existence as it is for a sea turtle to poke its head up in the one circle of a lifesaver tossed on the vast oceans of the earth. Value this life, this precious fleeting life! Then you will be ready for whatever follows and be able to value it too. That’s the Buddhist message.

We are consciousness caught up in patterns of being. Our bodies die away and are buried or cremated, but if our consciousness does live on, certainly we want it to live on unconstricted by tight patterns of fear.

If there is a conscious afterlife, it might be reasonable to think that it will be heavenly if we have found heaven in each moment and that is our way of being in the world, and hellish if we have spent our lives caught up in hellish suffering, unable to connect with the joy of simply being alive.

You can see how this could be interpreted as reward and punishment for behavior. People who find joy in every moment spread joy to others, behave honorably and value all life. They go to heaven because they are already ‘heavenly’ creatures. And conversely those whose every waking (and maybe dreaming) moment is a struggle with inner ‘demons’ have no doubt made poor choices, have perhaps lashed out in anger, and undoubtedly have made the lives of those around them difficult or even dangerous. For them, so constricted in fear, so tight-fisted and self-protective, so unwilling to open to the universal love available to them in any moment if only they would choose to unclench their fists, jaws and minds, one can only imagine they will continue that struggle with their demons in whatever afterlife there may be. In other words, hell.

Now as I recall, Jesus promised that any sinner could redeem himself in an instant. Would this not be the instant that we make the shift from the tight fear-based view of the world and open to the universal nature of loving-kindness? But we might say, 'Hey wait a minute, that’s not fair that they can live a whole life of sin and then get off scot-free at the end just by saying they accept Jesus in their hearts.' But when we get caught up in the tightness of judging it is we who are living in a hell of our own making, seeing a limited view of the nature of things.

In truth, it’s not all that easy to give up a life-time of rigid tight fear-based thought patterns, but it is possible. The shift from fear to love is possible in any moment for anyone.

Of course very few of us in this life are living either in heaven or hell all the time. We have our heavenly and our hellish moments, and if there is a hereafter, we can only hope that there will be some enhanced illumination that allows us to understand more fully the unitive nature of being.

But while we’re here, living this life in this moment, let’s do the practices we can to develop our ability to create spaciousness, awareness and loving-kindness to whatever arises in our experience. Let's do the practices that bring joy into this moment, each moment we are alive.

May our practice of living fully in this moment prepare us for the moment of our death and whatever lies beyond. May our practice be for the benefit of all beings that all beings may know peace.

----
In our class today, we lit candles and shared stories about loved ones who have died. The experience was deep, and tears hovered close, but it was also incredibly sweet. Because quite clearly no one gets through life without grief. Whether the loss of a child, a parent, a spouse, a friend, or someone else close to us. We have this in common. And that commonality is the greatest gift to ease our suffering. We are not alone in grief. Loss is universal to the human condition. We send metta, ease and peace to all beings everywhere, living and dead.

The Red Balloon

In a recent speech to a group of mostly non-mediators, I shared the story of an illness I went through in 1990, the intensive meditative ‘retreat’ I had during the nine months of my recovery, and how my book Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living was written from that meditative expanded state.

As a prop for the speech, I used a red helium balloon to demonstrate the situation leading up to my illness. I had been overwhelmed with the responsibilities of trying to be all things to all people in my sphere: a good mom to my teenage children, a good daughter to my aging ill parents, a good wife to my husband, a good executive vice president for our company’s clients and employees. I was trying so hard to understand what it was that all of these people wanted me to be that I lost any sense of who I was. I only knew I was overwhelmed and exhausted.

The balloon, like me, was held up by a finite amount of energy, energy that was leaking. I held up another balloon I had purchased the day before. It was already flagging on the floor, having lost most of its helium overnight. I too was operating from a depleting source of energy. I was depending on will power, effort and determination to be the best I could be.

Just like the balloon, I was heading down, leaking energy. Like the balloon I was susceptible to sudden events that might hasten my deflation. For the balloon that sudden event was the existence of a pin. Pop! In my case it was the death of my mother, who was my dearest friend and the foundation of my life as I knew it. It was as if my world had lost its axis. And like that popped balloon in pieces on the floor, down I went, succumbing to chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome, and under doctor’s orders to quit my job.

The balloon seemed an effective prop to demonstrate how vulnerable I was. The pop was perhaps over the top, and could have caused heart attacks, but it certainly got the crowd’s attention! After the speech I received many enthusiastic responses, and it seemed that I was able to persuade many of them that they need to take quiet time for themselves to listen in to their own inner wisdom.

But several times people mentioned that they needed to re-inflate their balloons. While I am glad if that means they will be nourishing themselves, my analogy of the balloon was not to say we are balloons and we need to stop for a helium fill up every so often!

I was trying to convey that I had been functioning as if I were a balloon, reliant on a rapidly depleting source of energy. I had been unaware that I could access an infinite source of energy, that I wasn’t a balloon at all, wasn't separate and vulnerable, but an expression of energy that is infinite and boundless. As are we all.

We can make a subtle shift of awareness to access this sense of being connected, not like Legos, separate but interlocking, but as energy – the buzzing life force -- briefly communing in the form of a flower or a bird or me or you! The way an ocean wave rises and falls, all life forms rise and fall. Yet we are all one, all ‘water’ – even when being a cloud or a raindrop or an avalanche of snow -- still inextricably one with life.

Though the balloon analogy wasn’t totally effective, it did what it needed to do by getting people’s attention. I wish some red balloon popping had gotten my attention back when I was feeling so overwhelmed trying so hard to be all things to all people. I wish I had been listening to myself when one day I said to a coworker, “I feel totally separate from myself.” I wish I had taken that as an invitation to question in about what was going on with me, instead of just laughing it off.

Perhaps reading this will remind you to listen for any messages that rise up from within you. The quiet wise whisper within always ready to guide you is patient, not pushy. It doesn’t tell you what you ‘should do’ or ‘must do’ or ‘have to do.’ It doesn’t insist on anything or set a deadline. It has no urgency. It’s never strident. That’s why it’s so important to provide a quiet solitary environment for it to be heard! It’s just a quiet patient voice that when asked what you need to know will most likely tell you, among other things: “I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you.”

And really, when the infinite being-ness of life tells us that we are loved no matter what, then all sense of struggle to be something other than we are falls away. In its place an open-hearted peaceful love of life rises up to fully support us in whatever we do.

That’s what I wish for all beings. That’s what I wish for you.

Mo’ metta, mo’ betta

Metta: A truly portable practice
Sending metta (loving kindness) is something we can do all day every day without needing any special preparation. It is perhaps the most portable of portable practices. We can practice it in the grocery store line, on the phone and in traffic. We don’t shut our eyes; we don’t shut down in any way. We simply generate a warm sense of kindness for ourselves and others with whom we are interacting.

Road Metta instead of road rage
My first experience of sending metta while driving was back when I had to go past the hospital to get to and from my home. It seemed as if I was always encountering dangerous drivers on that stretch of road, and it upset me. Those drivers were risking my life along with their own. (Again we can notice that we are always most upset by people who have some control over us. Another driver’s unskillfulness (or ‘idiocy’ as we may be more inclined to see it) is threatening to our physical well being. So we get afraid and feel angry.)

Then one day I saw someone turn in front of oncoming traffic instead of waiting until he had sufficient space to make the turn safely. I realized he must be rushing to get to the hospital that he wasn’t thinking of his own safety or anything else but whatever thought or emotion engulfed him at that moment. Perhaps he had someone in the car that was bleeding or about to deliver a baby. Maybe he had just received a phone call that a loved one was dying and he was rushing to be with them in their last moments. Then it dawned on me – more of a ‘duh!’ moment than an ‘aha!’ one I admit -- that people drove more erratically on that stretch because of their situations and their resulting emotional distress. They or someone they loved was ill, hurt or dying.

For a long while after that realization I began to send some form of loving-kindness and well-wishing (not yet called metta because I wasn’t studying Buddhism then) every time I drove past the hospital, not just to the patients inside but to the drivers coming and going.

Then I began to realize that even people who weren’t driving to or from the hospital might be in a challenging situation – maybe they just had an argument with a someone, got some bad news, had a sleepless night, worked too many hours, were feeling ill, were excited, angry, and they were behaving unskillfully because their minds were elsewhere.

It didn’t make me feel very safe to realize this. Nor did it make me feel very safe to realize that at times I have driven mindlessly too. This recognition made me less quick to judge. I always felt justified in my judgments. After all these are huge machines capable of great harm! But I realized that getting caught up in my judgments could compound the problem. How often do angry drivers, reacting to the mindlessness of others, actually cause accident? You see drivers yelling, giving the finger, tailgating and antagonizing other drivers, putting everyone in great jeopardy just to vent their views of who was right and who was wrong. This kind of behavior puts everyone on the road around them, including themselves, in much greater danger.

Road rage is epidemic and the cure is metta. First metta to ourselves, noticing the fear that arises, then metta to others, understanding that whatever they are caught up in that makes them mindless in their driving is rooted in fear. When we feel frustration rising up within us in traffic, we can use the opportunity to respond by driving more mindfully. By setting the intention to be more fully present in this moment, noticing whatever feelings arise and using metta to soften them, we do a great service to ourselves and all around us.

Age and experience carve room for more metta
Realizing that others are suffering and that their ‘jerky’ behavior arises out of mindlessness instead of intention helps us to access an ability to send metta more freely. Aging also helps us develop more compassion, as we discover through our own experiences of loss and pain that life isn’t easy for anyone. When I was young I sometimes wondered why old people walk so slowly. Was it because they didn’t have anything to do or anywhere to be? Well, of course, that could be a part of it in some cases, but I came to another understanding when I was in my thirties and my back went out for a week. I looked as if I'd aged fifty years over night as I hobbled around hunched and aching. Suddenly I understood! Old people move slowly because they hurt! This was a horrible realization, but one that carved my heart open to hold more kindness.

If we haven’t experienced real pain, it’s hard to imagine it. I just received news that my titanium hip, implanted two years ago, has been recalled! Not surprisingly this freaked me out because even though Johnson & Johnson will cover the cost of replacing the hip should it need replacing, they can’t live through the experience of having it replaced. They can’t do the hospital stay or the physical therapy before and after. They can’t take my place as I relearn to walk, or spend the weeks my husband spent helping me in every way imaginable. As I was dealing with this news, a younger person who is very dear to me said, ‘Well, maybe that’s when you decide to just live with a bum hip.’

‘Living with a bum hip’ sounds pretty benign for someone who has never experienced ongoing physical pain and all its ramifications on one’s life. And it’s not our fault if we don’t understand, but it is something we can become more aware of. If we are around someone who is in pain, or who has gone through a major loss, we can notice how the idea of such pain or loss scares us. We can sense how our muscles tighten up and our mind shuts down, not wanting to allow for the possibility of such pain in our own lives ever. But if we simply notice this tightening and this fear, we can send compassion to ourselves. We can understand how we might feel that way. As we soften within ourselves, we are better able to soften toward others.

Metta practice can cause a shift
By sending metta we shift the energy of any moment. When we are giving ourselves a hard time about something, pausing to send a message of loving-kindness really helps to create some space around the harshness of our judgments. This is not a way of letting ourselves off the hook of responsibilities and commitments. It is bringing much needed spaciousness and softening around the way we see them.

Metta reminds us we are not alone
At its most basic, sending metta helps us to notice that others suffer just as we do. This makes us realize that we are not the only one in the world with problems. By sending metta to ourselves and others, we connect on a deeper level, one that is not vested in isolation and self-protection from a world we perceive to be frightening.

If we have social anxiety or a general sense of discomfort around other people, sending metta is a valuable practice. If we are afraid to speak, afraid of being judged, then sending metta to ourselves and others brings us into a more open and accepting sense of the way things are. It helps us discern when a situation is actually threatening and if so what is the best way to respond.

An ongoing fear-based interpretation of the events in our life puts us in constant danger. Danger first to our own health from being saturated in the neuro-chemicals produced by our fear and from the tension we hold in our muscles. Sending metta can help to diffuse a potentially threatening situation. The pheromones that we put out when we are fearful can attract predatory response from even benign sources. We all know someone in our lives who seems to be victimized at every turn. We think of how predatory animals are able to sense fear. Fear attracts fear-based predatory behavior, even in people who aren’t usually prone to violence. Some chemical interplay occurs. Does this excuse violence? Did the victim deserve it? No, and no! But it does give hope that we can, by empowering ourselves with the ability to be conduits of loving kindness, soften our fear and change the message we are putting out into the world. And from that connected sense of loving kindness, the world responds in kind.

For those who say ‘I’m no victim!’ it’s important to recognize that a fear-based view of the world can also create a tough stance, a shell that no one can pierce, or a prickly way of being that can create misunderstandings and negative reactions. Sending metta to ourselves, we begin to dissolve the fear that calcified into a shell. Sending metta to others, we recognize that they are also often acting out of fear. We recognize we are not alone in our inner struggles, that these struggles are universal in nature. We don’t have to defend our separate shell. We don’t have to make others wrong to be okay with ourselves.

As we continue to make sending metta part of our practice or even the core of our practice, it activates the shift from being caught up in the relative truth of our personality-driven lives to recognizing our intrinsic connection to all beings, to all life, to all that is.

When we bath ourselves in metta, we shift from a state of blaming ourselves or others for causes and conditions, to a much more powerful connected way of being. It gives us perspective to see more clearly what is happening.

We don’t give ourselves metta because we deserve it, or withhold it because we think we don’t. It’s not a reward for good behavior. It’s not a pat on the back. Jesus was an excellent example of this universal quality of loving-kindness. The worst sinners were worthy of his loving-kindness and compassion. He didn’t fear contamination. He didn’t hold his nose while doling out food baskets. He truly recognized the oneness of life.

Metta-schmetta
It’s perfectly alright to feel resistance when presented with this idea of metta. I had a dharma teacher who really struggled with the concept of metta. She reluctantly taught it when asked, but the idea of loving-kindness was just too gooey and treacle-sweet for her. We students appreciated her honesty, her willingness to see her own resistance and to explore it a bit with us, in order to help us explore what resistance we might have.

I might have felt the same as she did if I had been introduced to the concept before I had my own experiences of it, without the label of ‘metta.’ I used to send my version of metta to my loved ones whenever any of them left the house in order to protect them out in the world and bring them safely back to me. The sound of the garage door opening or the car engine being turned on would spark an automatic response in me of seeing them wrapped in light.

But my understanding of metta was very limited. I thought it was a finite resource to be hoarded. Until one rainy day we were driving across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and I wrapped our car in light. Suddenly that felt a little stingy, so I extended my enveloping light to include other cars around us. I wondered, "Why can’t I extend this to all people on the road today?" My mind answered, “Because statistically someone’s going to have an accident, so not everyone can be safe.” But then I realized that if we were all being mindful, staying present, we could shift those statistics. We could all get where we are going safely. It felt like awakening from a zombie state! Suddenly it was clear that this energy was infinite and for all, not finite to be hoarded.

I wrote a poem about my realization titled “Metta Cake,” which I have shared with you before. But here it is again.

Metta Cake

A careful baker, I measured metta,
leveling each cup with the back of a butter knife.
Yet the cake would fall or simply lack sweetness for no reason I could figure.
My frustration mounted. I raged at the miller, the leavening, the oven.
But cake after cake was politely nibbled or set aside
by my carefully culled guests at my perfectly laid table.

I suffered deeply the humiliation of failure,
not to mention the waste of expensive ingredients.
But relentless, I kept trying, needing so badly to be seen,
if not as a baker extraordinaire, at least as a
really hard-working good-hearted person.

One particularly painstaking night,
exhausted from my futile labor,
I fell asleep in tears of self-recrimination.
To awaken in a dream world of metta beyond measure:
Of infinite love boundlessly flowing,
of hearts open to give without depletion,
to receive without questioning their worthiness,
in an endless circuit of loving light.

I woke to sense the warmth of sunlight upon my salty cheek.
I rose and threw open the windows to the boundless morning light.
I waved at a neighbor passing by, and was met with a radiant smile.
Then I took a stroll in the garden, plucking a peach off the tree.
Biting into its juicy flesh, my tongue delighted in its sweetness.

Maybe I would not bake today, I thought,
but if I did, it would be a kind of boundless baking.
Like the generosity of a peach tree whose fruit ripens
without concern for whether it will be eaten. Could I bake like that?
As if my cakes grew from an infinite source where I am deeply rooted?

I breathed in the fragrant air of all life intermingling in a rich chaos,
and felt an infinite and indiscriminant tenderness.
Why not? I thought. Yes, why not?

- Stephanie Noble

Metta and the Inner Critic
I wasn’t a natural born metta sender. I was raised by loving but highly critical parents. They judged others quite harshly and talked about them to each other, unaware that I was listening and learning what was acceptable and what was not in order to avoid being judged harshly by them. There seemed to be so many ways to go wrong in their intellectual and sophisticated world. Once I heard them discussing a friend who was writing a novel, scoffing at her for thinking she could accomplish such a feat. Years later, when I was 33 and writing a novel, you can imagine with what trepidation I approached the project, how fearful I was for all the harsh judgments that lurked behind the smiling faces of friends and family. You will not be surprised to know that that completed novel has sat safely in a drawer for the past thirty years!

A friend invited me to the symphony the other night and while anticipating attending the event, I realized I had some residual fears of being judged as gauche. I used to go the symphony with my father who could be very harsh about people who applauded at the wrong times. As my friend and I drove to the concert, I heard my mind plotting to sit on my hands and not clap until she did.

We hold these experiences tight within us, and may not even realize it until we give ourselves the spaciousness of mind to notice and discover, to unravel the tight knots of our thoughts and emotions and reveal the fear that binds them.

But noticing and discovering are only part of the practice. The other part is metta. We bring this kindness and compassion into our awareness. We treat ourselves with respect and caring. Whatever our religious or cultural tradition or our own intrinsic nature, we can do this. If we are to feel safe in our exploration, if we are to gain real insight, metta needs to be part of the mix.

And if we yearn for that shift to an awareness of our deep interconnection, there is no better practice than sending metta to open our hearts to understanding.

Metta Moves the Energy Effortlessly

Yesterday in class we had more discussion of metta (loving-kindness.) One student talked about how she had a difficult family member whom she had started silently sending metta, and how over time that family member had started opening up, blossoming into someone less complaining, less prickly and less difficult. Now they are closer, and her relative is actively engaging with her in a way she never did before. She did not send metta to change this person, yet somehow the sending metta seems to have created a space for her loved one to grow and soften in her dealings with others. If she had sent the metta in order to make a change happen, it would not have happened.

A blog follower wrote to say that she realized that she had been sending metta to those she perceived to be in need – a friend in the hospital, someone going through a rough time – but what she hadn’t been doing was sending metta to her husband. She recognized her relationship with him in a sentence of the last post about being paved over with concrete and calcified with fear. She recognized that their relationship had calcified, and that she needed to send metta to him on an ongoing basis. Metta arises out of such recognitions. She’s not sending metta because she wants to change her husband but because she recognizes an absence of metta-sending warmth in herself in this relationship.

Metta is powerful! All the more so because it is such a quiet practice, not announcing itself, not arriving at the doorsteps of friends or family saying ‘I’ve got the answer, YOU need to change.’ This is a stealth practice! It is such a generalized sense of well wishing that it can be totally unnoticed. These are internal wishes, though they might ride on the words we say every day to each other, like “Have a good day.” It’s just the difference between tossing it off by rote as a way of saying goodbye to the grocery clerk, or really feeling that well wishing for them in that moment. Even if they said ‘have a good day’ first, our ‘You too!’ can be heart-felt.


I shared with the class a little about the Gratitude Sit out at Spirit Rock that I was invited to attend. It was a lovely warm day and so sweet to be at Spirit Rock in the upper retreat grounds, my spiritual home. Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain, a book we have explored together in this class, was leading the meditation and giving a dharma talk with visual aids about the human brain and altruism. It was a very rich talk that I wouldn’t do justice to here. He says it will be available on dharmaseed.org. The date of the talk was 10/10/10.

I have a prepared dharma talk for next week and look forward to sharing it.

Meta-Metta

Immense compassion springs forth spontaneously toward all sentient beings who suffer as prisoners of their illusions.
- Kalu Rinpoche

This political season is such an opportunity to actively send metta! When my students were talking about an upcoming debate last week, I challenged them to see if they could send metta (loving-kindness) to the candidate from the party they weren’t supporting.

I knew how challenging this assignment might be. When I was young and watching the Nixon-Kennedy debates on black and white television in my best friend’s living room, we threw ice at Nixon whenever he said something that drove us crazy. I’d like to say it was an act of kindness to cool his sweaty brow, but it was an act of violence plain and simple. We were lucky the TV screen didn’t break! So I understand how challenging this assignment might be. Many times over the course of the recent Bush presidency our class at Spirit Rock imagined him and his cabinet members in the center of our circle and sent them metta. What a challenge! But what an amazing practice. We’ll never know if our loving-kindness was felt by Bush, but sending it out certainly had an effect on us.

Naturally I was curious to see what my students experienced if they attempted to send metta during the debates.

One meditator said that she just couldn’t bring herself to send metta to someone who represented policies she abhorred. She didn’t want them to achieve their goals or be effective, so why would she wish them well? If she was supporting the other candidate’s success, then obviously she wanted the opposition to fail. So why would she send them good wishes?

What a great question! And it made for a very rich class. I so appreciated the opportunity to clarify what metta is and what it is not. I realize that if she, a very wise woman, was unclear about the nature of this loving-kindness we are sending then many others probably are as well. So I would like to explore the concept of metta more thoroughly, and hopefully make the purpose of sending metta to difficult people understandable and the practice more accessible.

First, sending metta is not wishing for everyone to succeed at getting everything they want. The human condition is to want. We want all manner of things all the time. Our desires are boundless. But, as we have discovered in our exploration of the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth and the causes of suffering, fulfilling our desires does not bring us the deep sense of joy we long to experience in life.

So when we wish someone happiness, we are not wishing for the fulfillment of a current desire. We are wishing them a much deeper sense of happiness, one that comes from a sense of completion, of being a valued expression of a vitally interconnected whole. We have been discussing this energetic interconnection over the past few weeks as we explored the Buddha’s Third Noble Truth. (Of course, if they are lacking in the basic needs of life, if they are going to bed hungry or have no bed to go to, for example, then out of a sense of caring connection we include that in our well wishing, and hopefully follow up with some material aid to whatever degree is possible, practicing generosity.)

But generally, we are sending a kind of meta-metta, an infinite permeable all encompassing blessing. If you missed the last few posts, please go back and read them. This sense of interconnection -- the physical (subatomic particle – energy vibration) as well as spiritual truth of our being -- is ever present but often overlooked in the busyness of our lives. It may be paved over with calcified constricting fear. So when we send metta to someone, we are sending this sense of a flow of loving energy to help soften that calcification and remind them that they are an intrinsic part of a complex whole, not an isolated disconnected soul struggling for survival, any more than a drop of water leaping above the rapids is alone.

Is there any person, regardless of their beliefs, behavior or desires, that we would not wish this kind of awakening? How does our withholding metta from anyone serve ourselves and our awakening? Withholding keeps us tight and constricted and feeling disconnected and at odds as well. So when we send metta to that most difficult person it is a deep awakening practice for us.

We are not sending metta to change people. We are not seeking results. We are sending metta because we are sensing in to the universal nature of loving kindness, we are accessing the boundless flow of metta, and that level of access is like being a conduit of energy. The conduit does not determine where the energy will go. When we send metta we feel the powerful flow filling us and overflowing. We allow ourselves to sense the boundless energy of being, the powerful love that can be talked about in so many ways but is fully present and accessible in every moment for those who pause and open to it.

Another meditator says that she sends metta at the end of her daily meditation practice, and she hoped that sending it out to ‘all beings’ was sufficient, because she’d really rather avoid having to think about any difficult people in the middle of a pleasant meditative experience.

I appreciate the practice of simply sending metta out to all beings, and we end our class by dedicating the merit of our practice to the benefit of all beings. I sometimes remind my students that there are probably people at this very moment sending metta out to all beings, and to remember that this includes us. We can take comfort in actively receiving that interconnected sense of well wishing.

But this one step ‘all beings’ well wishing doesn’t take the place of a full metta practice.
Traditional metta practice starts with sending loving-kindness to ourselves. Then we bring to mind an ‘easy’ person for whom we hold nothing but loving thoughts and send metta to them: May you be well, May you be at ease, and other such phrases of general well-wishing. Then we think of a ‘neutral’ person, someone we see in the course of our day but don’t really know like the bank teller or grocery clerk and send them metta. And then we think of a person for whom it may be very difficult to muster up kind thoughts at the moment. This could be someone in our personal life that is driving us crazy, but it could also be a public figure with whom we disagree about policy. And then finally we send metta to all beings.

When do we do full metta practice? For some people it is a regular part of their day, for others a more occasional group experience. But certainly, whenever we notice we are avoiding sending metta to certain people, then there’s a perfect opportunity for practice. Recognizing avoidance is a gift of awareness and an invitation to deepen our practice.

We noticed in class that a key thing about a ‘difficult person’ is the level of control they seem to have over things that affect our lives. This is a really valuable aspect to explore. I noticed that once Bush was no longer president, the challenge to send metta to him was absent. His power to harm me and those I love was gone. He was no longer ‘the difficult person’ of my metta practice. Whatever errors in judgment he might make once he was no longer in power would probably not gravely impact me the way they did when he was in the White House.

This power issue holds true also with people in our personal life, and is a valuable thing to look at. But when we send metta to them we are not wishing them success at driving us crazy! We are dropping to a deeper level than our personality-based interactions into a state of deep interconnection, where there is no distinction between us. By dropping to this level – the namaste level where ‘the god in me honors the god in you’ – we allow for the possibility of a softening of the constriction that keeps us at odds.

We ended our class by doing a metta practice to a difficult person we each brought to mind, and perhaps you might like to give it a try, imagining a person to whom it would be challenging for you to send loving kindness.

We wish them ease. We wish them healing. We wish them a release from the tight constriction of fear that holds them, that shuts them down, that shuts all of us down. We wish them the same in-depth understanding of the nature of our inter-connection that we wish for ourselves and all beings.

Since being constricted in fear is the major cause of all dis-ease and discomfort in the world, feeling threatened and reactive instead of loved and responsive, it only makes sense that we want loving release for anyone who is knotted up in fear and reactivity, anyone who sees themselves as isolated and the world as a threatening dangerous place that must be fought with violence.

Is there any person, no matter how wrong-headed or evil we believe them to be, from whom we would withhold that sense of deep connection? If everyone felt this opening and easing into the flow of the infinite energetic is-ness of being, would this not affect them in a way that would be beneficial to themselves and to all beings, including ourselves?

I leave you with a little treat: Sylvia Boorstein leading a brief metta meditation. Sylvia was my first Buddhist teacher who read my book and called it 'jargon-free dharma.' She is a treasure of compassionate wisdom to both Spirit Rock Meditation Center students and to the Jewish community in Santa Rosa.

What keeps us from knowing our Buddha Nature?

Central to Buddhism is the understanding that there is no place to get to, that enlightenment is not some distant place, but lives ever present within us. This sense of presence is called our Buddha Nature. It is our inherent loving-kindness, our spacious mind that knows we are each expressions of a whole rather than the separate individuals we habitually believe ourselves to be.

This Buddha Nature may be a treasure we have yet to recognize, hidden in plain sight but camouflaged by our habitual patterns of seeing. But have no doubt! It is there, shining within us, a light of incredible brilliance that, when discovered, illuminates our experience, clarifying our understanding and dissolving the tangle of fear-based roots that has kept us feeling tethered, weighed down and out of kilter.

We have been studying the Third Noble Truth that promises that we can know and even live fully from this Buddha Nature. Our practice is to make ourselves available to this Buddha Nature by being as present in this moment as we can. We relax into the moment, for it is in this ‘here, now and fully-relaxed’ state that the inherent Buddha Nature makes itself known.

It seems simple enough to do this. The instructions are clear. Yet often, sitting after sitting we come away feeling as if we have waded through a bog of mental mud! We begin to doubt if we are capable of finding clear spacious open-heartedness or even a little precious peacefulness where we can momentarily rest our weary minds. We begin to worry that we are the only person in the world who doesn’t actually have Buddha Nature.

This is absolutely normal. There are so many ways our habitual mind sabotages our intention to access our Buddha Nature. We know that habits die hard. I remember when my mother finally quit smoking after her doctor told her she had emphysema. She told me that it wasn’t the addiction that was so difficult; it was her inability to imagine who she would be without a cigarette in her hand. In her mind, smoking made her more sophisticated, intelligent and glamorous. Without that little burning stick in hand, who would she be? After she quit, she was still just as vital, beautiful and exciting as she had ever been. And once the smoke cleared, she could see that that cigarette did not define her and had instead been hindering her from full enjoyment of life. But for so many years she had been too afraid to let go, to find that out; and that fear fostered the self-destructive behavior that killed her.

My mother’s experience illustrates how we cling more tightly than ever to our habits if they are entwined with our self-image. So if, for example, we like to think we are practical and not susceptible to any woo-woo nonsense, then we create a strong resistance even to something that offers us the possibility of a happier life.

This is not to say we should abandon good judgment and fall for every feel-good scheme that gets marketed to us! Quite the opposite! Instead, we need to become aware of our OWN inner wisdom. When we are disconnected from it, if we are honest we can feel that disconnect. During a period many years ago when I was ‘too busy’ to meditate or even to give myself much-needed alone time, I remember saying to a co-worker, “I feel totally separate from myself.”

This was a potentially pivotal moments in my life. Had I heeded the words coming out of my mouth instead of just finding them amusing, I might have saved myself and those I love a lot of subsequent suffering. (Often the wisest words are words we say ourselves, and just as often we don’t listen to them. It really pays to notice what advice we are giving others. It’s often for us as well.)

But I didn’t pay attention to my words of caution. Instead I continued my grueling schedule and ended up getting a serious chronic illness that incapacitated me, forcing me to leave my career, cutting our family income in half. Had I heeded my own words, I might have been able to make a milder and less painful course correction.

I began to meditate again, and since there was little else I could do, I meditated as if I were on what turned out to be a nine month retreat. I had been so out of balance and then so ill that that level of intensity felt necessary. In this way, I came home to my own inner wisdom, my own Buddha Nature, not just in rare moments, but as a steady guiding light in my life. Eventually that inner wisdom diffused in such a way that I understood it was not some separate inner guru replete with personality, but simply a shift of perception, from a sense of separation to a sense of connection.

These habits of mind we all have are deeply rooted in this disorienting belief that we are separate and isolated beings encased in envelopes of skin. I say ‘disorienting’ because at some level we know it is not true, so we have angst and restlessness, as we look all over for the things in the world that will make us feel connected. When everything fails to satisfy this deep longing, we feel steeped in fear that expresses itself in all manner of negative emotions and results in suffering, for ourselves and those around us.

As we meditate, we practice developing the mental muscles of setting clear intention to be present with whatever arises in our experience. We practice relaxing our muscles and letting our bones support our bodies. And we develop a sense of compassion so that we can meet our distracted minds with kindness rather than our habitual harangue. With steady practice we begin to find more spaciousness, and more clarity to notice habitual mental and emotional patterns. With compassionate curious attention, these patterns soften and may even dissolve.

The briefest glimpse into this spaciousness can be sufficient to begin the unraveling of these old fear-based habits. Buddha Nature is timeless, and therefore, once known, once perceived, is always available. Years ago there was a popular activity of staring at a visual puzzle, where an image was hidden within a complex pattern. People would stare and stare at this puzzle. Some would become frustrated and give up. Some would see it quickly. With others it took time, but by relaxing and keeping their vision refreshed, they finally saw it. But everyone who saw it couldn’t later un-see it. The image would always be there. This is also true of Buddha Nature. Once you know it, you can never un-know it. You may ignore it, but you will never again be unable to sense it if you open to it.

Since we are creatures of habit, we can set the intention to develop new healthy mental habits – habits of noticing, habits of being aware of sensation, habits of compassionately observing our mind at work. This is a very effective way to prepare ourselves for whatever shift in consciousness that might arise out of repeatedly making ourselves available.

Allowing for the possibility, making ourselves available – these are good ways of thinking about how this shift of awareness happens. They remind us that this is an opening to what already is, rather than a search for something hidden elsewhere. It’s more like tuning our instrument to play harmoniously. Perhaps we are currently strung too tight and so are playing a sharp instead of a natural. Or perhaps we’re strung too loose, sluggish in our energy, foggy in our thinking, sleepy in our meditation, so we need to focus on refining, clarifying and brightening our concentration. This is not done by hunkering down, gritting our teeth or bracing ourselves, but through opening to the energy that is ever-present. We can draw it into our being, feel its strength and healing power, and let it rise up to express itself through us.

As we open, allowing for the natural shift to a more fluid connected state that is always available, we can see that in this state the old habits of fear that we thought were serving to protect us serve no purpose. Their efforts only exacerbated negative situations, escalated arguments and confrontations, and cut us off from healthy interaction.

The idea of retiring our emotional weaponry sounds nice, but what if we are feeling stuck in fear? What if we are fearful of the ideas presented here? First, let’s remember that none of this is new news but draws from the well of universal wisdom that is at the core of all world religions and spiritual traditions. And, if religion scares us, we can find the same wisdom in the latest scientific findings.

Secondly, it’s valuable to recognize that all of these habits of mind are striving for our survival as best they can. They are trying to protect us from a perceived harm. So it is just another fear-based habit of mind to feel threatened by the habits themselves. It is more useful to see them as misguided allies.

I have occasionally referred to working with the various aspects or voices we discover as we really listen to our thinking mind. I have found in my own experience the value of inquiring into the specific desires and concerns of these aspects, and then compassionately negotiating a way for the aspects needs to be met without undermining my well being.

You may recall the story of my inner aspect ‘Slug’ and his resistance to exercise. He loved bed. Bed was for him a big mommy hug, and he missed his mommy. Well, of course, I missed my mommy too as she had died a few years before this encounter. But I knew my mother wouldn’t want me lollygagging in bed anymore than my own inner wisdom did, so I found a yoga class with a teacher about my mother’s age and who, at the end of class, as we students were lying on the floor in shivasana pose, would come to each of us with a blanket and tuck us in. Well, of course Slug LOVED this yoga class. And that’s how I was able to negotiate getting some much-needed exercise.

But as useful as it can be to work with aspects of self in this inter-personal way, giving them cute nicknames and personalities to encourage compassion in our dealings, there are many other ways to view these complex inter-workings of our mind.

These habits of mind are caught up in a view that is totally relative. Through the lens of these habits steeped in fear, we see things from an embedded perspective, like a journalist embedded in a military operation. We see a very intense, very personal, but very one-sided view of things. And it is so intense -- this living a life -- that we completely buy into it being the whole truth. But all the while we are stuck in this perspective that is vested in maintaining this singular point of view, as if we have pledged allegiance to it and must defend it, or are employed as its public relations representative.

We are not! We are free agents! We are free to walk about and observe with fresh eyes and see for ourselves what is true and what is not. How much of what we hold to be true have we really questioned or examined?

I was so taken years ago when I heard about a listening project in the Southern US, where trained volunteers visited homes and simply listened to the inhabitants express their views of the world. They were trained to notice when they made statements that seemed rote, as if accepted long ago and not examined since. And they knew how to probe, encouraging deeper self-reflection, so that on their own the interviewees began to see the flaws in their own arguments, and through further exploration, using their own good sense, they found they didn’t buy into the pre-packaged hateful things they had so readily spouted just an hour before. In this way the listening project did not promote another view; it just provided the space for exploration.

And this is what we do. We provide space and a willingness to notice and question our standing operating procedures, our pre-packaged beliefs, our previously unquestioned inheritance of values and ideas. We see where we may be holding two opposing beliefs at the same time and have never stopped to question them. No one else can do this inner work for us. We may be inspired by what others say, but the experience of questioning is an ongoing inside job.

For some this idea might at first feel very threatening. Our inherited beliefs may seem comforting, something to hang onto in a dangerous world. They may seem like the one way we do feel connected to something. And it may be true that at core they do offer that entrance to a sense of connection, but unexamined, accepted as truth without exploration, they are about as powerful as a baby’s security blanket.

Opening to the possibility that these habits of mind -- these negative emotions, judgments and discomforting thoughts -- are not personal but universal, helps us to feel safe in our exploration. Understanding that most of us look at the world from a particular mindset -- not from our deepest and truest nature -- helps us to let go of the need to defend our position.

How refreshing and relaxing it is to realize that these habits of mind are not traits that define us, but common patterns that course through us, shaping our thoughts and our behavior. These patterns are like the readily visible patterns in that visual puzzle mentioned earlier, before we see the image that is hidden in plain sight.

Insight meditation is the practice of noticing these patterns of mind, actively observing in a spacious way. If we notice when we are getting caught up in them and pause to breathe more spaciousness into our noticing, and then look with fresh eyes in a more relaxed way, we can begin to see something else emerging.

These relative mindsets we have believed to be our true selves all these many years, do not define us any more than my mother’s cigarette defined her. As we make that distinction and begin to see that we are not these habits of mind, then we can open ourselves more easily to the possibility of allowing them to pass through our current experience without feeling we have to rise up and do battle with them. In time we see that bringing spaciousness into our relationship with them gives us the ability to see them more clearly, to see all the thoughts, emotions and image associations that give us deeper understanding. Eventually, with that shift into seeing from our inherent Buddha Nature perspective, these habits lose their sense of purpose. With their need to protect us gone, they can dissolve quite naturally.

So what keeps us from knowing our Buddha Nature? Believing that our habits of mind --our endless thought stream, and our ocean of emotion -- define us. As we let go of our clinging to this sense of separate self we become available for the revelation of the absolute reality of oneness with all that is that patiently waits within us. This is our Buddha Nature.

Autumnal Equinox

This week instead of my usual dharma talk after meditation we were treated to a preview of a speech one of our meditators. Dr. Lonnie Barbach, is giving at the AARP Convention coming up in Orlando, Florida.

But within the meditation, I was able to bring in the concept of balance to honor this moment of the equinox, when the day and night are equal -- such an opportunity to notice how we find balance in our lives, and how easily we get out of kilter.

So happy Equinox to all of you! May the crisp air bring more spaciousness in your mind and heart, so that you can hold all of life in an open embrace, finding equanimity, upekkha.

Black-eyed Dharma

I recently taught a day long retreat with a black eye, the result of a fall I had while hiking in the mountains. My hands and knees were also bruised but not so on display as this amazingly dramatic black eye and bruised chin.

‘Well, meditation clearly doesn’t save you from pain,” my students might well have thought.

True! But it did help to illuminate in the moment of impact and those that followed as I sat on that granite cliff, gasping for breath, sobbing, as my forehead gushed blood down my face, my hair and all over my clothes and the rock below, and my dear husband dug frantically around in the backpack to find our first aid kit.

In that moment, I noticed the physical sensation of having fallen, and there was pain, of course, but the pain was not as severe as pain I’ve known in my life. The tears came from the thoughts that were coursing through my head. ‘Oh my God! Why didn’t I pick up my foot a little higher?’ and ‘Oh please, don’t let anything be broken!’ and ‘Oh no, how will we get ourselves back down the mountain? Can I possibly hike three miles in this state?’ and ‘Oh no, I’ve ruined our perfect camping trip!’ and ‘Thank goodness I fell here, not twenty feet earlier where I might have tumbled down a cliff.’ But my over-riding concern in that moment, as Will tore open the little packets of alcohol, anti-bacterial unguent and bandages was for the way the strong mountain wind was whipping those little white pieces of paper up. I kept grabbing them and collecting them, determined not to leave litter on the mountain. Will assured me he would pick everything up after we got the blood staunched and my wounds tended, but I knew the wind was going to blow them off our little outcropping to places he would not be able to reach and I simply could not bear to litter this pristine wilderness with the detritus of my mishap. That was the pain that focused my attention.

Noticing. That was the gift of meditation in that moment. And later, safely back down the mountain, assured there was no permanent damage, and comforted by a chocolate ice cream cone and an ice pack on my swollen brow and lip, I was able to see that the cause of my fall was my lack of mindfulness in previous moments. I had stubbornly resisted my body’s cues that clearly warned me I had hiked high enough, even if I hadn’t reached our goal: a picnic spot at a pair of mountain lakes. I had multiple opportunities to heed what my body was saying: When I noticed I was too tired to go on; when I noticed that even though we were trying to conserve water, I really needed to be drinking more of it; and when I let a whole series of future and past thoughts override my awareness of the moment.

What tripped me up was not just a little tree stump, but the thought that for the past few years, every time we are in the mountains and we decide to hike to a certain spot, we never get there! We always turn back! So it seemed to me that to give in again, to ‘not get there’ this time, was to acknowledge something much larger than merely the tiredness I was feeling in my body. It was acknowledging aging, change, a lack of control over what I could or couldn’t do. Or it was acknowledging that I was out of shape and needed to spend the rest of the year being more active, taking much longer more rigorous walks. All of this thinking was weighing on me as I hiked up that rocky trail that required intense concentration for each step.

And so, I refused to turn back each time Will suggested I seemed tired and maybe we should. The heat was oppressive, especially as I covered myself thoroughly, not trusting my sunscreen to be enough to protect my skin, and not sure how many hours we had been hiking.

Youthful hikers bounced by us and I felt ancient in a way I’ve never felt ancient before. Their ease made my discomfort all the more unacceptable. Oh comparing mind! Also I occasionally chide myself for being comfort-loving and soft, and I wanted to challenge that image, I wanted to show that inner voice that I was made of tougher stuff.

But in the last portion of the trail to the lakes, there was suddenly a very steep, much narrower dirt section that I had to look at with the eyes of the surgeon who replaced my hip two years before. It looked very slippery and precarious. Maybe I could get up it, but how would I ever get back down? Maybe I could do it if I was fresh, but I could never do it in this state.

So we turned around. Once again! Defeated and exhausted, I followed my long shadow back down the gravel trail that demanded even greater concentration going downhill. My shadow was hypnotic, an elongated version of my three-year old self who, according to family lore, was dragged up the Smokey Mountains against her will. Now the shadow of my straw hat pulled in at the sides by the shirt I tied to keep it anchored from the strong wind, made the shape of the little bonnet I wore on that journey sixty years before.

So we walked together this small grumpy child and I, following my beloved husband down the mountain. Our descent was slow but buoyed by our plan to return to a shady view spot we remembered from our climb that seemed a good place to rest and have our picnic. Somewhere along the way, I took the lead, and when we arrived at the spot and I stepped off the trail, relaxing into my tiredness, thirst and hunger. And in that moment of release, of letting down my intense concentration on each step that had been necessary for survival on this challenging trail, I missed seeing the little stump in the shadow of a rock, and I tripped and fell.

Will says that for him it happened in slow motion, watching me fall and feeling helpless from his position to save me. For me, there was a moment lost somewhere. There was the arriving at the rest spot with a sense of relief, and there was being flat on the granite, my sunglasses flying off to the left, my face smashed against the jagged rock, blood erupting, and me saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

During the week that followed, I found the most challenging part was dealing with the dirty looks my sweet husband was getting when we were together as strangers assumed he did the damage.
One male friend joked that Will should point to my black eye and say, “She wouldn’t listen.” I was horrified by his suggestion because of the serious nature of spousal abuse. I couldn’t find the humor in it. But you know what? He was right. I got a black eye because I wouldn’t listen! I didn’t listen to Will when he expressed his concerns about my well-being on the climb, and I didn’t listen to my own body when it said enough already. So let that be a lesson to me!

So no, meditation doesn’t always save us from pain, though in this case it could have, had I stayed more present with my experience. We’ll discuss that aspect more when we get into the Eightfold Path and Wise Action.

But, just as that black eye has healed so quickly, showing a wonderful resilience, my meditation practice provides me with more mental and emotional resilience than I would have had otherwise. It provides a more expansive view of things so that I don’t keep kicking myself for my misstep, don’t keep knocking myself down over and over again. And, although I admit I did give that little stump a good kick and a piece of my mind as we left that now-bloodied rest stop, it was in jest, and I haven’t indulged in railing against it, or the trail or the heat or my body or any other condition that could easily become the tarbaby dukkha delivery system. How many events in our lives are still holding us hostage, still delivering dukkha as if we have a standing order?

My meditation practice gave me the patience to give myself a lot of down time to rest and heal, even though it’s been a busy time. It gave me the ability to process a painful experience with compassion and more clarity than I would have had otherwise.

It gave me gratitude for being alive, an awareness of impermanence and a new appreciation for my face without bruises. I look prettier to me now! During the period my face was so shocking to see that people gasped or averted their eyes, I appreciated this gift of insight into how it might be to have some permanent disfigurement in such a prominent place as the face; how it must be to constantly deal with the responses of others, when one feels perfectly normal inside. This experience carved a deeper sense of compassion in me, as I felt my desire to just stay home, to just avoid going out all together.

I have made use of the black eye, working it, making ‘lemonade’ out of this lemon experience. This dharma talk, a poem brewing somewhere within me, and even a two minute speech at the Civic Center. I was scheduled to give a ‘Tip of the Day’ at my Toastmasters meeting there, and had planned to talk about our camping trip with a suggestion people visit that area. I did that, but I choreographed it to keep my ‘dark side’ covered with my Veronica Lake locks until the dramatic reveal of my black eye and the suggestion that people should watch their step when hiking. The gasp of the audience was priceless!

It’s a traditional Buddhist practice to sit with such examples of impermanence, so I was providing a service to you, my dear students as you watched me giving my dharma talk in class and on retreat. What a devoted teacher!

So I open this up to explore that quality of noticing, of heeding our inner wisdom and what happens when we don’t. What recent experiences in your own life have given you this same lesson, or this same sense of gratitude for the practice? What past events are still holding you hostage? When you have some time and want to explore, meditate and then ask these questions of yourself. The answers will arise and may even surprise you.

The Flow of the Four Brahmaviharas

As we explore the Third Noble Truth and begin to understand the nature of the promise it offers, we can look at the Four Brahmaviharas, the Heavenly Abodes that are the gift of the practice, and understand them in a deeper way.

To review, the Four Brahmaviharas are:
Metta -- Loving kindness to all beings
Karuna – Compassion for all beings
Mudita -- Sympathetic Joy, the ability to feel happy for the happiness of others
Upekka – Equilibrium, the ability to balance our lives even when challenged

(If the Four Brahmaviharas are new to you, please read more about them before proceeding, as this post is an additional layer to our understanding, not a detailed explanation of them.)

To continue from the last post, when we shift our perspective from seeing ourselves as individuated, solid and separate to a more scientifically-aligned understanding of the vibrant interconnectivity of all being, we look at these four states of being, these Four Brahmaviharas, with enriched understanding and deeper insight.

From a solid, individuated perspective, metta is most likely a feeling we try to create by remembering our feeling of love for someone specific, then trying to imagine feeling that same sense of love for others, even those for whom we feel just the opposite. This is a fine attempt, and the best we can do when we are operating from a sense of separateness and isolation. From this perspective we try hard to be kind, loving and generous to all beings, but it isn’t easy. In fact it is full of pitfalls. Can we understand the nature of infinite loving-kindness from the feelings we have toward one individual with whom we have a strong bond arising out of chemical attachment, similar world views, physical attraction, shared interests, shared personal history, etc.? I certainly struggled with that for years, imagining metta to be some finite resource that I reserved only for my closest loved ones, not wanting to squander my well-wishing and not have it when I most needed it. I just didn’t get it! And it’s now easy to understand why I didn’t. I was stuck in a sense of solid separateness, where even emotions are commodities that must be conserved to have real value.

Now, with this subtle but profound shift, we can see that metta is infinite and vast. It is the very sea we swim in, the air we breathe, and the fabric of all being. How sweet it is to break free of the bondage of fear that contracts us into a sense of separation! How rich and bounteous is this sense of metta now! There is no way to hoard it even if there was a reason to try. Instead we allow ourselves to be loving conduits of this infinite life energy that expresses itself through us and through all beings.

Opening to this spacious loving kindness is often our first real glimpse and understanding of the infinite nature of being. We can test it out for ourselves and see how when we send metta to those beyond our little circle, even to those we judge harshly, whose world view is so different from our own, whose behavior causes us discomfort or even harm. Challenging our limited view of the nature of loving kindness seeds the possibility of awareness of the spacious nature of being.

Karuna, the second of the Brahmaviharas, means compassion. Even locked in to our perspective of being solid and separate, we understand from our practice and the teachings that feeling sorry for someone else is not compassion, though it is certainly better than scorning them. We recognize the importance of developing compassion in ourselves, compassion both for ourselves and others. Our ability to do so varies to a great degree on the circumstances and the particular person. Often we find our true feelings to be more pity than compassion, and, if we are honest, a sense of relief that we are not in their situation.

From this separate perspective, our sympathy is an expression of our fear of such a situation some day happening to us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we tell ourselves in order to encourage the behavior in ourselves that we think we would appreciate from others were we in that situation. And this is the best we can do from our separate solid sense of life. In fact, most of us aren’t even that gracious! We may find when we look closely at our thoughts that we need for each person’s situation to be his or her own fault because for us to think their situation could be beyond personal control means it could as easily happen to us. We are terrified of not feeling in control of our lives. Fear keeps us separate, judging and blaming. (As we discover these thoughts, of course it helps a great deal if we have compassion for ourselves, and understand that we are not our thoughts.)

We may admire compassionate people like Mother Theresa and use her example as a gauge. Perhaps we see Hitler on the other end. She was good, perhaps in our view ‘too good’ and he was bad, the very definition of evil.

(For some of my students hearing the name Hitler in the middle of a dharma talk was very jarring. So we paused and sensed in to our bodies and noticed the jarring sensation at the sound of that name. We noticed the physical constriction that arises out of a complex network of fear-based emotions being suddenly activated. In our practice we are not creating a space separate from life where we can get away from it all. We are finding spaciousness in ourselves to be able to open to it all in a fearless and compassionate way.)

With a shift of perspective to a fluid interconnected state, where loving kindness is the air we breath and the fabric of life, we can see clearly that Mother Theresa was not just a person bent on being ‘good.’ Goodness arose from her like a sweet scent arises from ripe fruit, effortlessly. She was simply aware of her connection to all beings, and was therefore fearless in easing the pain she sensed around her. It was not always easy. At times she was undoubtedly locked into a separate sense of things and questioned everything she was doing. But some deeper perspective was sufficiently available to her to keep her clear of her path in life. Since she was religious, she saw this connection as the infinite nature of God’s love in all being. But whether we define it that way is not important. What is important is opening to this shift of perspective, however we define it.

Now Hitler saw separation everywhere. He was so afraid, so isolated, that he had to exterminate millions of beings he perceived as ‘other’ and therefore threatening to his safety. The very possibility of there being another perspective, a fluid open expansiveness, would probably frighten him, threaten him with extinction. Thus he was held in a prison of his own making, in solitary confinement, without possibility of parole.

In class we discussed guns. It is my strong belief that a gun is an emblem of fear. That the person who needs a gun to feel safe is locked into a prison of separation and fear, one that has to be defended at all costs. Now I’ve never held a gun in my hand, and one student who has shot a gun said that there is a sense of power, a physical adrenaline rush to shooting at a target. I can certainly imagine this, and for purposes of thrill-seeking in a controlled target range, my only concern would be developing an addiction to that rush. But we are talking about needing a gun to feel safe in the world, even though those that carry guns are statistically more likely to be shot or have a loved one shot by those very guns, than they are to be protected by them. But that doesn’t matter because the gun satisfies some sense of defense from the ‘other’ that is ‘out there.’ Carrying a gun may instill a feeling of control over our situation, and we’ve seen how needing to have a sense of control can control us!

When we think about Hitler or any other person so rooted in separation, it often knocks us back into a sense of separation too. We want to be separate from the Hitlers of the world. We want to connect only with the pleasant parts and set the destructive parts aside, but the destructive parts are of being are the tight knots, the eddies in the flow of life. We need to be aware of them, but the moment we refuse to acknowledge connection with any aspect of life, we create separation and fear.

While we choose to resonate with joy, creativity, vibrancy and ease, it is not skillful to deny the existence of fear and fear-based emotions as they arise in ourselves and others. We may choose not to focus on them, as whatever we align ourselves with, we amplify, but we do not have to hide or suppress any aspect, any thought or emotion. We simply bring ourselves fully into the moment, sense into our bodies, expand into spaciousness and see if we can access a sense of compassion, karuna, for that tightness and fear wherever we find it.


Now let’s see how this shift of perspective from solid and separate to fluid and connected affects our ability to feel Mudita, or sympathetic joy. What a challenge Mudita is when we feel separate! Trying to be happy for another’s happiness when we don’t get what they have seems a hopeless task. It cannot be done from a solid, separate state. As separate beings we can only be happy when things benefit us or someone so close to us that we have an established chemical bond. Being happy for your grandchild when he or she wins a prize, is not mudita. That grandchild is perceived as an extensive of your solid self, part of your solid inner circle. Mudita is feeling joy for the happiness of a stranger, someone with whom you have not bonded, feeling their joy in their grandchildren, even when you have none and wish you did. It is feeling joy for the soaring bird, even though you on the ground cannot know what it is to have wings. It is feeling joy at the sight of the youthful grace of a young body, sensing the ease, even when yours is tight, aging and painful. In other words, mudita is a seemingly impossible task.

Shifting into fluidity, we are astonished to discover that the joy arises naturally. His joy, her joy: it’s all joy. It’s like an infinite flow of joy completely accessible to us at any moment. In this shift to interconnection, letting go of fear, craving for acknowledgment, possession and all else that arises from fear, the ‘prizes’ we had perceived become superfluous. Recognition is nice, but it’s only important if you feel separate, if your are a package that has just gotten a magic added ingredient, another star on its chart, an impressive addition to a resume or simply bragging rights over others. Feeling separate, there’s so much to defend, protect and promote! How exhausting!

Aware of our fluid nature, recognition is just the universe smiling at itself. It’s joyful acknowledgment that we are aligned with a sense of purpose, a good use of our skills and talents, etc. All nice, but not the goal, not the purpose of having done whatever it is that caused us to receive recognition.

If everything is fluid, then we release the idea that accumulating stuff protects us or defines us. If someone drives by in a shiny red car, it is simply eye candy that adds to our pleasure in the day. In this interconnected state, it is not a reminder that we are failures because we don’t have that shiny car.

So the seeming impossibility of mudita, being happy for the happiness of others, becomes a naturally arising phenomenon from a state of fluidity.

Finally, Upekka, equilibrium, is another challenge for us when we are in a state of feeling solid and separate. In this state, all causes and conditions of our life are battering us from some external place, usually put into motion by some ‘other’ individual against whom we spend massive amounts of time railing. If only they were different! If only we were different! If only, if only… When really the only ‘difference’ required is a subtle shift of perspective into focusing not on individuals but on the interactive energy connecting us, and more specifically on the energy we are generating, and whether it is fueled by loving-kindness, infinite metta; or by sharp constricted fear so that we are always embattled, always causing them to put up their defenses.

The wonderful Hindu greeting phrase ‘Namaste’ means basically that the God in me honors the God in you. When we can relate to each other in this way, it is acknowledging this deep connection, and setting the intention to interact in this fluid connected state rather than in the divisive other-making way that seems to create more and more problems and less and less happiness or sense of equilibrium.

Upekka, equilibrium, naturally arises out of a fluid state. How can we become overwhelmed if we are infinite? If we can simply expand beyond our sense of limited separation and fear to take in what is occurring in this moment, whatever it is, how will we get out of balance?
This ability to hold great sorrow and joy at the same time is one of the more amazing moments of our lives, offering true portals to insight. The next time you are faced with such a situation of sorrow paired with happiness – perhaps a son is getting married while a daughter is seriously ill, or a grandchild is being born while a close friend or relative is dying – sit with it for a while in silence and allow for the possibility that you are spacious enough, infinite enough to hold it all in an open embrace. We each have the capacity to be present with all the thoughts, emotions and senses that arise in our experience around any situation. And that willingness to be present with it, rather than try to change anything, is key to this sense of equilibrium.

So that is our little review of the Four Brahmaviharas and how accessible they are from this fluid perspective. That’s why they are the fruits of the practice. No matter how hard we ‘try’ to be loving, compassionate, happy for others, and able to hold our lives in balance, we get caught up in the constriction of the trying, the seeing ourselves as separate objects in need of improvement and change.

So we meditate. We walk slowly in nature. We have insights about the nature of life, and we let go of any sense of striving to ‘get to’ this shift of perspective. We open to whatever arises in this moment, making as much room as we can with as much loving-kindness as we can create, and we trust that this is enough. And it truly is.