Tag: Loving-Kindness

The Healing Balm of Nature: Intimacy with Life

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With the seemingly constant barrage of news of political unrest, racism, violence, and climate emergency, amongst the everyday challenges and joys of our individual lives, how do we find steadiness within the midst of this life? As I’ve been exploring this question, it has brought insights and new practices into my world that I continue to experience as blessing.

As you know, our practice, as is true of all of life, is always a dance. It is fluid, not static. Some seasons we lean more fully into formal seated meditation, other seasons yoga or qigong may move to the front burner. There are times in which our practice may lean on mindfulness and times when lovingkindness practice feels most helpful. Over the past 17 years, I’ve learned what an intuitive process this practice can be, if we’re receptive to listening inwardly to what we truly need in this moment.

A couple of months ago, my son and I were out on the coast, enjoying a favorite hike to a replica of an indigenous village, a picnic in a meadow amongst the shelters, and time climbing around in fallen down trees. Between plentiful winter rains, the sun was out this day, and we could feel the warmth and much needed Vitamin D sooth our beings. But, what was truly different about this day is that we had plenty of time to hang out in this meadow as long as we wished. No rush to get home at a particular time, no “we better get going”. As they say on meditation retreat, we had “all the time in the world” to be with this. And, so, we sat on a fallen down tree in the sunshine, and just did nothing, nothing at all, except drink in the sounds, the touch of the light breeze on our skin, the trees, the bark and the sun, as long as we wished.

This “as long as we wished” probably ended up being about an hour and half, but the impact of this wide, open space of time was tremendous. I felt my nervous system, which had been experiencing low running anxiety the previous week or two, let go into gravity and re-attune to the heartbeat of tree and Earth and sun. We didn’t talk much, other than pointing out a Steller’s jay or the green moss. My son, seemingly in a dreamy state, played with a stick, running it along the bark, the sound particularly alive in our ears. I could feel his nervous system dropping in, too. This permission to “just be” with this moment in nature was a healing balm for body, mind and heart. We left that meadow warm, rested and refreshed. Clear. Present. And it was in that moment that I committed to making this a weekly practice for us, at least for a season.

How does intuition, perception of time and intimacy with the natural world play a role in your practice? What practices support you (or might support you) in staying grounded and centered within the midst of life? What daily or weekly rituals support you in avoiding heart shut-down and keeping the heart open, receptive, and kind? What practices help to soothe the nervous system, rest the body, and renew the spirit?

May the Earth and all Beings know safety, healing, joy and deep peace.

The Gift of Loving-Kindness

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There is a belief, I’ve often heard, repeated that meditation practice, and metta or loving-kindness practice in particular, is self-indulgent. That by focusing so much attention on ourselves, we are withdrawing from the problems of the world. This view, however, ignores the fact that without a sense of self-love and compassion for ourselves, our actions in the world can often end up doing more harm than good, even if our intentions are noble. As Sharon Salzberg writes “Generosity coming from self-hated becomes martyrdom. Morality born of self-hate becomes rigid repression. Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy.”

Loving-kindness and compassion are the mental states at the root of wise action. Given the state of the world today, and the immense challenges and emotional difficulties that can arise for us as we face these challenges, deepening our meditation practice by cultivating metta is one of the most effective actions we can take to help alleviate the suffering of others. Practicing metta strengthens our ability to bring greater compassion and awareness to everything — every moment, person, situation, emotion, thought, experience. The more we are able to be present, clear and non-reactive to the way things are, the greater the chance that our actions will help others, rather than bring harm.

Donald Rothberg writes in his book The Engaged Spiritual Life, that “our times call for both spiritual and social commitments. There is the irony of attempting to overcome self-centeredness, hatred, fear and confusion through meditation practice while ignoring the cries of the world.” It is the cries of the world that call us to begin the process of self-transformation. Without transforming the world reflected within us, there is no telling how our actions may unconsciously affect others. The gift of metta is that it can transform our minds so that we are able to act in ways that benefit ourselves, as wells as others. This is a gift we give to the world.

Loving Ourselves Takes Courage

Like many western practitioners of Buddhism, when I first started practicing loving-kindness meditation I found it most difficult to focus this energy towards myself. I can remember being on retreat and having no problem practicing the metta phrase for others – my friends, my mentors, people I barely know, even some of the more unpleasant people in my life – yet, when I’d try and direct that love towards myself, I’d balk. I’d often feel guilty, anxious and annoyed. The practice seemed so pointless and completely self-absorbed.

What I’ve learned over the past ten years is that without self-love, much of the energy I put into helping others is completely co-dependent. I felt pain and loneliness inside and was trying to heal these wounds by playing the saint. As I’ve worked with the metta phrases over time, directing them towards myself as well as other, I have felt a shift in consciousness and a greater sense of acceptance. I fee l like I’m less likely to hurt others out of a desire to have my “needs” meet. I still slip up, but that’s why they call it a practice. We move forward slowly, learning to love ourselves more, bringing greater awareness to the layers of pain and sadness that may surround our hearts, and then allowing our light to radiate out into the world.

Metta and Wise Intention

Metta practice can help us cultivated wise intention, part of the eight fold path leading to the liberation of suffering. It does this by helping us overcome negative and unwholesome thought patterns by bringing awareness to our intention to foster greater goodwill, compassion and kindness towards ourselves and others. Silently directing phrases or “well-wishes” to ourselves, a benefactor, a dear one, a neutral person, a difficult person, and all beings helps us to “water” the seeds of joy, peace, mindfulness, understanding, and love that already exist in our minds. This in turn strengthens those thought patterns that lead us to take wholesome actions in the world.

Neuroscience tells us that setting an intention ‘primes’ our nervous system to be on the lookout for whatever will support our intentions.  In his book “The Mindful Brain”, Daniel Siegel talks about the effect paying “attention to intention” has on our brain and how this affects our experience of our surroundings. He writes, “Intentions create an integrated state of priming, a gearing up of our neural system to be in the mode of that specific intention: we can be readying to receive, to sense, to focus, to behave in a certain manner.” In other words, when we pay attention to our intentions, we are more likely to notice and connect with the relevant actions, opportunities and people that will make our intentions come to fruition.

As we pay attention to our intention to cultivate greater goodwill and compassion by practicing metta, we are training our brains to connect with the wholesome thoughts that can bring us greater happiness. We are also creating the conditions that allow us to let go of unwholesome thoughts grounded in greed, hate and delusion that bring greater suffering. That is a gift to the world. That is the power of metta.

Instructions for Practicing Metta Meditation

For those new to metta, below is a guided loving-kindness (metta) meditation by Sharron Salzberg. May you be happy and peaceful.

Cultivating Joy in Daily Life

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The Buddha taught that joy and happiness already reside within us. To cultivate these qualities, we just need to develop wholesome states of mind that allow us to experience our true nature. Such change, however, requires effort. It’s no different than the effort required to develop a wholesome life style aimed at keeping our bodies in shape. If we focus on eating right, exercising and doing yoga, we find that we feel healthier, our muscles can get stronger and we become more limber. The ability of bodies to get healthier and stronger is endemic to all bodies. Similarly, the ability of the mind to experience inner peace and well-being is endemic to all minds. In fact according to neuroscience, the default state of the mind is a sense of ease. When the mind is calm and clear it returns to its default state. Thus, happiness is not something you need to pursue, you just have to learn how to access it.

But accessing “it” is not so easy for most of us because we’ve developed mental habits based on a misunderstanding that our happiness and joy are dependent on external conditions – conditions that are unceasingly changing on an unreliable bias. As neuroscientist Sam Harris says, “The problem of finding happiness in the world arrives with our first breath – and our needs and desires seem to multiply by the hour.” And so, from day one, we are developing habits that seek out pleasurable experiences and avoid unpleasurable experiences in the hopes that our needs and desires will be met – that we ‘find’ happiness. What we find instead is that all of our pleasures – however refined or easily acquired- are fleeting. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal and you keep eating until the next moment you are so stuffed you feel sick, and yet by some miracle of science you still have room for desert, then seconds after the taste no longer lingers you feel regret, so you download a new app that’s guaranteed to help you lose weight, and so it goes.

The habits of ego are hard to change, but the good news is that like all habits change is possible with the right “exercise.” Bad habits can be replaced by good habits. The exercises themselves are fairly simple in concept, but not so easy to keep up. Our tendency is to get lazy and fall back into familiar and comfortable patterns. So effort is required by us to sustain our practice. In Buddhism, wise effort refers to the energy we need to abandon unwholesome states of minds (bad habits) and to cultivate wholesome states of mind (good habits). The good news is that all habits can be changed over time; it just takes practice and patience.

Simple Daily Exercises for Developing Greater Joy

Our meditation practice begins with sitting on a cushion or chair, and it is here where we first begin to cultivate joy and loving-kindness. Eventually, however, we must move our practice off the cushion and out into daily life. Learning to cultivate and experience joy in the work place, at home, in our relationships, etc. is an important part of our spiritual journey. Of course we’ll make mistakes — we’ll lose our tempers, harbor resentments, express dislikes, fail to be compassionate even when our friends are suffering — but making mistakes is just a part of the process of learning any skill.

The important point to remember is that if we are trying to cultivate joy in meditation, but always act in ways that undermines our joy in daily life, then we’re obviously going to get “stuck” in our development. Part of the trick is just remembering to practice when we’re in the world. For myself, I have found three simple practices that help me remember to stay conscious in daily life. They are calming the mind, attending to joy and evoking kindness. Below, I describe each of these practices and offer some simple exercises you can try for yourself.

Calming the mind

Calming the mind helps to bring us back to our default set point, which is a sense of ease or abiding in peace. While it is difficult to maintain this inner peace very long, given our mind’s tendency to wander, we can, with exercise, experience inner peace on a moment by moment basis. The more we practice the longer these moments become.

There are many methods for calming the mind, but three that I have found useful are “Anchoring”, “Imaging” and “Using a Mantra.” Anchoring refers to focusing your mental awareness on a single object and trying to keep it there. Generally, this is the breath, but it could also be a particular body sensation, like the feelings in your hands, or the warmth in your belly. If you use the breath, it is best to focus on where you notice it the strongest, in your nostrils, chest, abdomen, or even surrounding your whole body. The idea is that when your mind is active or agitated, triggered by the ongoing conditions of the world, you can bring it back to a state of calm by refocusing your attention on your anchor. You anchor becomes a refuge in the storm – a safe harbor when there is turbulence in the mind.

Imaging refers to using a mental image that you associate with a calm meditative state of mind. One possibility is the image of a butterfly landing on a flower. The idea is that as we calm our mind, we are able to slowly make the butterfly become still enough to stay on the flower for a short period of time.

A mantra is any sound, word or short phrase that you find attractive, easy to remember and conducive to relaxation. It can have meaning or no meaning. Some people do better with a meaningful word or phrase while others experience the meaning as a distraction and hence prefer a simple sound. One mantra I have found helpful to me is “No one to be, Nothing to do.” Or you might try the word “Calm” on the in breath and “Peace” on the out breath. Often connecting your breath with your mantra can help maintain a calm mind for longer periods of time.

Daily Exercise

Experiment with each of these methods during your day. See which one works best for inducing and maintaining a clam state of mind. You might start by committing to your “calming the mind” practice for one minute every day for the next week. Try it at work, at home, or wherever feels right. Gradually increase the time if it feels right for you. See if when you practice you notice a shift in you state of mind. When your mind is calm do you notice a greater sense of inner peace? What does this inner peace feel like in the moment? Does it change from moment to moment of stay the same?

Attending to Joy

Experiencing the inner peace that comes from a calm mind is the first step towards cultivating loving-kindness. The second step is to begin attending to the moments of joy in our lives. Every time you have a joyful experience, simply give it your full attention. It only takes one moment, this moment, to bring full attention to the joy that you are feeling at any one time – walking with a loved one, seeing a sunset, holding a baby, taking a bite of a delicious meal.

Joy is everywhere if we set our intention to look for it. It’s like setting an intention to look for blue cars. When we do, we quickly notice they are everywhere. The fact that we are not in pain, are healthy, are safe, are able to get water and food when we need it, live in a beautiful area, have the resources that allow us to practice mediation, are miracles that we often take for granted. Like blue cars, momentary joy is all around us, even in the midst of struggle, and the more we set our intention to look for it, the more were realize that many moments in our day are filled with joy. Attending to joy trains our minds to more readily access the joy that is already here.

Noticing the good in our life strengthens our inner sense of peace, which helps calm the mind. For most of us, our habitual tendency is to focus on the negative aspects of our life. What scientists call our brain’s built-in “negativity bias.” Instead of focusing on the fifty things that went right for us at the end of the day, we ruminant on the one that went wrong. By focusing on the good, however, we can overcome this habit. This makes it easier for us over time to return to our minds default state of ease and friendliness towards ourselves.

Daily Exercise

Try paying calm mindful attention to three activities a day (one minute each) that bring you a sense of ease and well-being. Perhaps when you first step into the shower, just notice without analyzing how your body feels. Take in the sensations. Or when you first start eating a meal, notice how the food feels in your mouth, notice its temperature, colors, and texture, focus on its aroma and taste. Or when you find yourself walking. Just notice how it feels to walk, what are the sensations like in your body in the present moment as you move through space. The possibilities are endless.

Evoking Kindness

The practice of loving-kindness is central to all schools of Buddhism and is key to finding and staying on the path. There is often a lot of confusion about what is meant by the concept of loving-kindness, or by terms like joy and happiness in the Buddhist sense of the words. What we are talking about is not some esoteric feeling that will carry us away on waves of bliss, only to crash down to the ground again when conditions change and we feel discouraged. Loving-kindness can best be understood as a friendly response to ourselves and the people around us. It is a feeling of good-will or a kind heart that we can always access in the present moment, if we are awake enough to look. This is the fertile ground from which happiness and joy can arise in our lives.

As our ability to access inner peace and inner joy grows, our natural tendency is to feel more compassion for ourselves and others. Actively evoking kindness to others helps us make this characteristic a habit. Wishing for others to be well, to be free from suffering, to have good health and success opens up our hearts and connects us with our own sense of well-being.

As we practice evoking kindness it may sometimes seem that we have more aversion than when we started. We may even become irritable. If we can stay mindful of the feelings that occur, we may notice a powerful purifying process taking place over time. Joseph Goldstein likens this purification to drops of water falling on a piece of red hot metal. As the drops of water hit the metal over and over again there is the sound of steam rising…”whoosh.” Gradually as the metal cools off the sound rising from the drops diminishes and the reactions of the metal to water drops cease. We all carry a vast storehouse of judgments, hurts, resentments and old reactions. As we begin evoking kindness to ourselves, our storehouse of negative emotions may percolate to the surface…”whoosh.” As our mind calms and are able to take in more of the good things in life, our reactions to evoking kindness, even to those we may not intrinsically like, loss strength and we find ourselves living with greater ease and joy.

Daily Exercise

At least once a day randomly choose two human beings and wish them happiness. Just sit quietly and visualize the first person in your mind and then evoke phrases like, “May you be happy, may you have peace, may you find joy and success in your life.” Do this for 10 – 15 seconds and then visualize the second person and repeat the exercise. Experiment with the phrases you use so that they have meaning to you. If you feel more ambitious you might try evoking kindness towards two people every hour at work. Simple take a break from your daily routine for 30 seconds, sit quietly calming your mind and randomly evoke kindness to two people. Do it as a free will giving – with no expectations for any benefits for yourself. See if over time you notice the sound of the steam abating and a greater sense of joy arising in your heart.

Car Alarm Lovingkindness

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As I move through my daily life, I know that one of my motivations to stay steadfast in my practice is to support my capacity to respond to the moments of everyday life with more patience, wisdom and care. I have the direct experience of how my practice lessons my suffering and, thus, the suffering of those whom I come in contact with throughout the day. I also know that I am practicing for the inevitable moments when the alarm bells will ring.

I had just one of those “alarm bell” moments recently: While at the gym, relaxed in the let-it-all-go end-of-yoga-class resting pose, I heard my name and “please come to the front desk” ring down the hall. Before I could get there, front desk staff found and informed me that my car had been broken into in the parking lot. My purse was in the trunk.

Fortunately, though my trunk was opened, somehow my purse wasn’t stolen, I was able to quickly change out my bank accounts, and everything turned out fine. What was challenging was my internal experience– a nervous system kicked into survival mode despite a false alarm.

On the day of the event and in the days following, the seeds I’d planted (over years) in my lovingkindness practice produced fruits that lessened my suffering. I had compassion for myself and, on a day following the event, in a moment when I was acknowledging the suffering of the man who broke into my car and sending him well-wishes for healing and peace, the fear running through my mind and body dropped– we were both human beings experiencing suffering, both human beings wanting healing and peace. It was all ok. This level of ease did not last, as a nervous system calms down in its own time, but that moment of no longer experiencing the man who broke into my car as “other” set my mind/heart free. This is the healing power of lovingkindness.

How might our lives change if we were to cultivate the capacity to turn unconditional friendliness, unobstructed well-wishes toward ourselves throughout our daily life? How might this lovingkindness towards our own being then ripple out towards others? Surely, we will each have multitudes of opportunities to inquire, to receive and know our direct experience, as we continue to walk our path.

May all beings be well.

May all beings know healing and peace.