Category: Compassion

Making Our Practice Personal

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“No one can ever explain to us how to have an experience. If they could, we would all be enlightened by now. Our task as practitioners is to bring the teachings to life in a personal way. No one can tell us how to do it.” – Elizabeth Mattis-Namoveil

Over the years of my meditation and Dharma practice, I’ve witnessed certain trends and themes emerge. The exact same thing has occurred with my teaching and writing, patterns and tendencies surface and then they begin to reveal themselves to me. One key and yet quite simple thread that keeps making itself known is my sense that no one can truly teach us how to practice, that we have to discover this on our own. Another consistently emerging strand that goes along with this is the ever increasing necessity for each of us to cultivate an intimate relationship with the unique inner landscape of our own hearts and minds. This relationship, in a nutshell, is the key to us softening the habitual cycles of our suffering and to awakening to new levels of freedom, wisdom and care.

My particular journey down the many paths of the practice has been filled with stops and starts, illuminations and disengagement, clarity and delusion, a closed and then an open heart. My journey’s been informed by so many serene elements of the Buddhist tradition, by so many deeply inspiring teachers, but it really started to gain momentum, and truly unfold, once I gave myself permission to let go of “the rules” and start making my practice personal. At the most basic level, I’ve begun to discover that we’re not here to perfect our understanding of the four foundations of mindfulness – as beautiful and resourceful as this teaching can be – we’re here to open our hearts to our own experience of the human condition. We’re here to find a way to navigate this life with as much grace, acceptance and love as is available. And, in my experience, no one can truly teach us how to do this. We have to walk our own unique path down the many roads that are presented to us. To find a home within the Dharma, we have to make the practice personal, unburdened of expectations, and intimately our own.

Matthew Brensilver, a core teacher of mine, once expressed that “The basic question of what it’s like to be human sounds so pedestrian as to be useless. But it’s actually an important question that I don’t think we can adequately answer until we get still and quiet. So we ask: what is it actually like to be human? How does it actually feel at the level of our awareness to be alive? And how can we relate to that in such a way that we’re making peace with the imperfection of our human condition?” Continuing on this same theme, Pema Chodron writes, “If you ask how in the world can we do this, the answer is simple. Make the dharma personal, explore it wholeheartedly, and relax.”

Over the past few years or so, I’ve kind of broken the practice down into three primary domains:

1.) Being a human animal is a wild and mysterious ride.

2.) The teachings of the Dharma are vast and sublime.

3.) You have to find your own path to your heart.

Suzuki Roshi, in his seminal book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, shares that “It is almost impossible to talk about Buddhism. So not to say anything, just to practice it, is the best way.” Some part of me feels a true kinship with this line of thinking. Yet, at the same time, I’ve encountered a deep and profound experience of the heart of the Dharma through hearing it articulated by others. One of the core tenets of this path is that things are not dualistic (this or that, either/or) but fluid, unfolding, expansive and beyond the defined boundaries of language. So, in the end, you really just need to get in there and play around! See what works for you. See what touches your heart. The teachings are a road map full of treasures but they are not the destination, or the end point, in and of themselves. What we’re cultivating is our own sense of humanity and wellbeing. The Dharma is universal but our relationship with it is deeply personal. And, in my perspective, improvisational; a call and response with the intimate moments of our lives.

One of the core principles of improvisational performance, that has also been adopted in organizational settings, is the concept known as “Yes, and…” A way to approach this guideline on the stage is that one improviser should accept what another improviser has stated (this is the “Yes”) and then expand upon what is being offered (this is the “and…”). In a business or other organizational setting, saying “Yes” encourages people to listen and be receptive to the ideas of others. In our experience of our own practice, saying “Yes” to the present moment, accepting the truth of what is being presented, provides us with a wide range of intimate possibilities.

Rachel Denyer, a co-founder of People Storming with a background in organizational improv and behavioral psychology, shares that “In improv we have to pay attention to what is going on inside the exercise or the scene. It is only by paying attention that we can truly understand what is happening and identify places to add value or support.” She further explains that in improv they are always looking for opportunities to start anywhere. “Starting anywhere essentially means jumping in or starting in the middle. Through improv, we are encouraging creativity and spontaneity. If you have an idea in the present, you don’t need to spend time refining it or evaluating it. You can just jump in with the offer and see where the scene or discussion takes you.”

In my experience, these same concepts are essential elements in the path of our practice and are available to us at any time. Whether in formal meditation or in the flow of our daily lives, we can always wake up to the present moment, choose to say “Yes” to the truth of our experience, “and” then jump in and explore what’s being offered. An initial “Yes…and” starting point may simply be to pause, to take a breath, and then lean into our hearts. Over time, the invitation can unfold and we can trust in our capacity to meet this moment with an open, wise and compassionate response. But it’s not an all or nothing engagement, a this happens and then that response is needed; the path is about developing an intimate relationship with our inner life and being attuned with its reverberations. The path of our practice is at once universal and deeply personal. It’s yours to be lived, felt and brought to life in an intimate way.

Aligning With Resilience: The Web of Life That We Are

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I once read a quote somewhere about how nature’s pace is always slow to medium, in stark contrast with the ever-quickening multi-tasking of modern human life.

Having recently returned from drinking in the majestic redwoods, riverways, and rocky coastal shores of southern Oregon and northern California with my family, I’ve been reflecting upon the power of the healing resonance of nature’s groundedness and serene beauty. And how, when we humans are able to consciously attune to this, the qualities of awe, wonder, simplicity and appreciation can naturally arise. Patience can show up like a close friend. Quiet spaciousness and birdsong can birth a quality of hope that is rooted in the truth of the life-affirming resilience of the web of life that we are.

Throughout the pandemic years and today’s difficult and challenging times, I am acutely aware that my practice has become more nature-based than ever. The data is in: when I am among the trees, whether on vacation or driving and walking my everyday life, and I practice seeing and sensing their groundedness and serenity (the big picture beyond our human-centered drama), I know in my bones that I am made up of the same elements as those trees and I, too, contain those capacities. From my experience, this clear-seeing is often the building block from which my capacity for kindness, caring, and compassionate action rises. And, conversely, when I hold the intention to align with kindness, caring, and compassionate action, this helps me to remember to sense the trees and experience the full picture. In slowing down and tuning in to nature’s beauty, pace, and changing seasons, we can feel supported:

  • in aligning with a visceral sense of deep rootedness
  • in remembering our capacity for steadiness, flexibility and resilience
  • in touching the peace that is present in the natural world in this very moment
  • in remembering our interconnection with all of life and what really matters

These life-giving practices that encourage clear-seeing and care feel so practical and essential at this time on Earth and, as often shared by Ayya Santacitta, we are not alone in wanting to be a part of the healing. The whole web of life is this resilience. We do this together: A fallen redwood log blooms a dense forest of bright green clovers. Winter opens into Spring, warms into Summer, lets go into Fall, and begins again. Baby ferns unfurl from the ash-filled wildfire ground.

May tuning in to nature, and our daily intentions and actions, support us in walking, step-by-step, through these difficult times, together. May we take refuge in what steadies and supports us on our path. May we remember our connection with all of life and our own sense of agency. May we know that we can, and will, play our part in the healing of ourselves, our communities, and our world.

Who’s Keeping Score?

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“Falling down is what we humans do. If we can acknowledge that fact, judgment softens and we allow the world to be as it is, forgiving ourselves and others for our humanity. The Buddha’s First Noble Truth – that suffering exists – is, in itself, a permission to be human and not demand more of ourselves than we’re capable of. Our compassion arises from our very fallibility, and love takes root in the soils of human error.” – Lin Jenson, founding teacher of Chico Zen Center

This is the time of year in our American culture when many students (young and sometimes old!) have just recently graduated from one educational institution or another. It’s a time of ritual and ceremony as one chapter of a person’s life comes to an end and another chapter begins. It’s a time when we gather to celebrate accomplishments, hard work, and the overcoming of obstacles; a time when we set our sites on the hopefully bright future ahead.

Once upon a time in our American story, these events took place primarily on high school and college campuses, but nowadays we frequently find ourselves at middle, elementary, and even preschool graduations! And while I find these rites of passage to be deeply meaningful, I sometimes question if they’re feeding our individual and cultural need to be “good,” to be “successful?” If they’re supporting a cycle where we measure our internal self worth through external accomplishment? It’s a layered inquiry, with many possible answers and interpretations, but it guides me in the direction of something I would invite us all to explore: our relationship with our “failures.”

And in this investigation of our relationship with our “failures,” in the spending of some quality time simply acknowledging our own humanity, I invite you to reflect upon this question: Who’s keeping score?

There’s a teaching in Buddhism known as the Eight Worldly Winds, pairs of opposites that we can all get swept away in. The Buddha, in an ancient Pali text known as the Lokavipatti Sutta, named these opposite winds as follows: gain and loss; fame and disrepute; praise and blame; pleasure and pain. In this teaching, the Buddha shares that these winds are “inconsistent, impermanent, subject to change,” but that we often spend a majority of our time welcoming the pleasant and rebelling against the unpleasant. We spend a great amount of energy inflating and/or deflating our ego’s sense of itself.

Sound familiar? Again: Who’s keeping score?

When we’re swept up in these winds, what is it we’re after?

In a 2014 commencement address that Pema Chodron gave to the graduating students at Naropa University, Chodron turned the concepts of “success” and “failure” inside-out by stating that failure is actually an underutilized skill. That failure can be “the portal to creativity, to learning something new, to having a fresh perspective.”

So, when we’re caught up in the often habitual response of labeling ourselves as “good” or “bad,” when the worldly winds of “success” and “failure” are blowing strong, it may be of benefit to simply widen the lens, soften our hearts, and get a little curious about what’s going on? It may be of benefit to gently meet our strong emotions and great expectations with kindness, compassion, and a small (or large!) dose of Who’s keeping score?

Cultivating Our Capacity for Kindness is Key to Our Liberation

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I began my meditation practice in earnest about 11 years ago. I was originally motivated to practice because of a desire to overcome anxiety and depression, feelings that had followed me around for most of my life. For the first couple of years, I focused on trying to “perfect” my practice in order to become happy. I had a “goal” and that goal was to rid myself of the unpleasant feelings that had caused me so much suffering. While all of my efforts helped improve my ability to sit for long periods of time, it did little to alter my temperament.

I was beginning to feel frustrated with meditation and even considered quitting, when I made the fortunate decision to attend a residential retreat at Sprit Rock led by Arinna Weisman. During the retreat she led several guided meditations on lovingkindness (metta) that opened my heart in ways I had never experienced before. While I was familiar with metta practice, I hadn’t until then taken it very seriously. What I learned from Arinna was that even when I don’t feel particularly lovable, I can still plant seeds of friendliness and care towards myself and others, knowing that in time they will bear fruit.

If you practice meditation for any time, you’ll quickly see that cultivating a spirit of kindness towards yourself is key to staying on the path towards liberation. Having the capacity to touch this feeling of metta – this innate sense of genuine love and kindness – allows us to open our heart and let the world in without expectations. We can see this when we are around people that radiate this sense of genuine kindness. They can make us feel important and at ease, not because of anything we’ve done, but because we are a fellow human being. Great spiritual leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King, Jr. exude this quality, as well as many ordinary people who somehow have this great gift and capacity.

This quality of metta manifests as a generous and openness of heart that simply wishes happiness for all beings. Metta is unconditional. It does not seek self-benefit, but is offered without expectations. Because this feeling is not dependent on external conditions, on people or events behaving a certain way, it is not easily disappointed or dissatisfied. As metta grows within us we become more open to ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Like all qualities of the mind, metta can be strengthened with practice. We can begin in our meditation practice by silently repeating simple phrases that are meant to evoke metta within ourselves, for example some typical phrases suggested by Sharon Salzberg are:

May I be happy

May I be peaceful

May I be healthy

May I live with ease

The exact phrases we use do not particularly matter, it is the underlying feeling that they are intended to evoke where we want to focus our awareness. As we continue to repeat the phrases, we can begin sending metta to our friends by wishing that they may be happy, peaceful, healthy and at ease. Finally, we can expand our practice further to include people we don’t know very well, difficult people and eventually to all beings.

When practicing metta for ourselves or others, it is not unusual to feel that we are not loving enough, or that the practice is not working. Maybe we have an idea of what metta should feel like, an ecstatic feeling, waves of bliss, etc., and end up feeling discourage when these states don’t arise. All of these emotions are simply part of the practice and objects for mindfulness. They are a chance for us to open our hearts to whatever arises and allow the world in.

The Buddha suggested that we can also strengthen this feeling of metta by focusing on the good qualities of others in our daily lives. Finding fault and criticizing others is really a seductive habit that can be hard to break. Focusing on the positive qualities of others doesn’t mean we ignore their faults. Instead it helps us see the whole person for who they are without becoming sentimental about it. When we cultivate metta in this way, it helps us foster a greater sense of well-being towards ourselves and a greater appreciation of the joy and sorrows experienced by all beings.

Mindful Communication: The Gift of Wise Speech

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The Buddha singled out wise speech as one of the important factors for awakening. It is part of the eight fold path, leading to the cessation of suffering and the realization of self-awakening. Like other parts of the path, wise speech requires effort, mindfulness and spiritual wisdom on our part to avoid harming others as well as ourselves. It is one of the most profound practices we can undertake off the meditation cushion and one of the greatest gifts we can give others. As Joseph Goldstein writes, “The care it takes to avoid harmful speech creates a vast playing field of mindfulness in our daily lives.”

Wise speech is rooted in learning to avoid four unwholesome verbal actions that cause harm to others and ourselves. These are lying (false speech), using harsh or aggressive language, divisive speech (backbiting and gossiping) and frivolous (or useless) conversation. Or put in positive terms, wise speech means speaking in ways that are trustworthy, comforting, harmonious, and worth taking to heart. When we practice these positive forms of speech, our words become a gift to others. The benefit of this practice is that people are more likely to listen to you and respond in kind.

One way to practice wise speech is to listen to our internal monologue. What is the tone of voice we use within our mind? Do we have a tendency to build ourselves up or put ourselves down? How often do we complain, compare, and judge ourselves? It is likely that your internal and external talk run in parallel tracks, so if we can hear and improve our internal monologue, it will help us hear and improve the way that we speak with others.

The more we practice wise speech, the more we see that the way we act shapes our experience and the world around us. If we can take some time to investigate the feelings behind our words, we may begin to uncover hidden or confused motives behind our speech. Self-righteous words may be a cover for anger. Angry words may be a cover for fear. Gossiping may be an attempt to try and reaffirm and strengthen our feelings of self-worth. Sometimes we engage in frivolous banter to cover up a feeling of unworthiness or a need for approval.

The point of practicing wise speech, however, is not to beat ourselves up. As meditation instructor Dr. Shahara Godfrey states in an interview published on Spirit Rock’s website, “the whole point is that the practice gives us the opportunity to try again and again. And we will make mistakes. Yet, how can we be kind to ourselves in a moment when we know we have made a mistake? I think the beauty of the practice is that we get an opportunity to practice Wise Speech over and over again with so many different people and in so many different situations.”

Exercises for Practicing Wise Speech

Here are two exercises that you might find useful for cultivating wise speech in your daily life.

Say Only What It True and Helpful: A succinct summary of wise speech in the Buddha’s words could be paraphrased as “say only what is true and helpful.”  With this in mind, see if you’d like to pick one day a week (or month) to focus on speaking only words that to the best of your knowledge are truthful and beneficial to those on the receiving end of your words. This requires mindfulness to see what is really true for us in the moment. Unless we are aware of our true experience, it is hard to be truthful in our speech.

Give Up Gossip: Choose a time period of perhaps a day or a week.  Then commit to not saying anything about other people unless they are in your presence. Whenever you find yourself tempted to gossip, try to recognize the underlying motive.

For each of these exercises take some time at the end of the day to reflect on your experience.  Notice the sense of integrity and strength that comes from holding to the truth, treating people with respect, and refusing to succumb to hurtful talk. Also notice when you have temptations to stretch the truth or gossip. See if you can discern some of the hidden agendas behind these impulses. The point of these exercises isn’t to criticize ourselves, but to simply notice what words arise out of our mouths and investigate the subtle motives behind them. This is an opportunity to attend to the habitual emotions or thoughts that may block us from using our words in a more truthful and harmonious manner.

With practice, our speech can grow wiser and our hearts become lighter. We begin to see the suffering that unmindful speech causes ourselves and those around us. We see how unmindful listening creates a feeling of separation between us and others, and constricts our heart. As our speech becomes more mindful, compassionate and kind, we will sense greater harmony in our lives and promote greater peace among all beings in this world.

Judgment vs. Discernment: Moving From Preferences to Wisdom

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When I first began practicing mindfulness meditation, I was surprised by the constant chatter of thoughts running through my head. What I found most disturbing about all this noise was that the majority of my thoughts were full of self-judgment, criticism and doubt. My first inclination was to try and stop these voices, or at least to ignore them. But the more I tried to do suppress them, the louder they became and the worse I felt when they inevitably reappeared.

Feeling discomfort with the judging mind is not uncommon. We come to meditation hoping to get relief from our distress and end up feeling more distress when we actually start to become aware of our thoughts. We’re taught that mindfulness involves cultivating non-judgmental awareness of what’s happening in the present moment, and yet here we sit full of judgment. I believe that part of our confusion around working with judgments comes from our western tendency to see the world in terms of duality – to judge our thoughts and experiences as right or wrong, good or bad, smart or dumb, etc. By seeing our judging minds as something negative, we take our judgments personally and see them as a reflection of ourselves.

It is not that all judgments are bad.  There are general agreements about what’s right and wrong, such as not harming others and not stealing. Such agreements are important for us as social beings to function as a society.  So there is a place for judgment. Often, however, we artificially make up these categories of good vs bad on the basis of our own likes and dislikes, as a way to navigate through the world. We divide things up politically, religiously, socially, racially, etc. and conclude that those in my camp are right and those in the other are wrong. When something falls outside what we deem acceptable, we judge it harshly. When it falls within that shifting structure of acceptability, we judge it positively. This goes for our critiques of the outside world as well as our thoughts about ourselves.

Our judgments about how things should be often exacerbates our suffering. For example in considering our relationship with our parents, if you still feel anger towards them that you haven’t worked out, you may have a lot of judgment around that anger. You may feel that having anger at your parents is clearly wrong. The judgment you have around this anger will itself cause you to suffer, perhaps dearly, because you feel so strongly that anger shouldn’t be here. But the truth is, it is here.

There is a Buddhist teaching attributed to the Chinese Zen patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan call Faith – Mind that opens with the lines “The great way [towards liberation] is not difficult for those who have no preferences. Like not, dislike not. Be illuminated.”  You could say, this is true of judgment. When we can suspend good and bad, high and low, all we’re left with are arbitrary divisions of life.  When we can just see these division as the way things are, we begin to develop true wisdom. This is the realm of discernment.

When we move from judgment to discernment our view changes. With discernment we begin to investigate and know what thoughts, feeling, or actions lead to happiness and what leads to suffering. The point is to try and wake up to what is suffering, what does it feel like, and to begin to see what leads to suffering. Also, what is real happiness (not what we think is happiness) and what leads to happiness. It is through discernment that we begin to know these things on a felt, experiential level.  Judgment does not have this ability to do this.

To see the difference, consider the following example.  You’ve just eaten a nice meal. Maybe you’re a little full, and you see there’s cake for dessert. Judgment goes cake – “good.” Then judgment goes, no I shouldn’t eat that cake, I’m already full, it will break my diet. Eating that cake is “bad.”

Discernment goes, cake, hum, mindfulness – I think I’d like that cake. Desire that’s the mind. Let’s now check in with the body. How’s the body feeling? How’s the stomach feeling? Ugh, kind of full and uncomfortable. What’s it going to be like if I eat that cake? More likely my stomach will be much more uncomfortable, very unpleasant.

The difference is that it’s not right or wrong. Discernment just knows that eating this cake is going to lead to suffering. This is much different than thinking I am a bad person if I eat that cake.

As our mindfulness practice deepens, we want to come more and more from discernment and less and less from judgment. Discernment starts with the suffering we find ourselves in, allowing us to see how our attachments are its fundamental cause, and then provides us the space to let go. Overtime, we learn to let go of our attachments through insight, by seeing into their impermanent nature and their inability to provide any kind of lasting satisfaction.

As our discernment grows, we gain the ability to grasp, comprehend, and evaluate clearly the true nature of ourselves. We begin to wake up to what is suffering and what leads to suffering in our lives. We gain insight into what is real happiness and what leads to happiness. Judgement does not have this ability to know this because it is concerned with protecting, supporting, or compensating for the ego. With discernment, we are no longer so concerned about protecting the ego. Instead we turn towards the difficulties in our lives with curiosity and compassion. Overtime, this honest turning towards the way things are provides us with the insights that propel us toward greater wisdom.