January 29 – The path we’ve travelled
Dear Friends, So now that we’ve zipped through four weeks of material, and we’re nearing the end of January, I thought we could take a step back and have a big picture of what we’ve been cultivating this month. 1 – What’s your why – setting an intention can help us stay oriented in our practice and life 2 – Mindfulness is… – I presented my definition of mindfulness – in the course of this month, how have you refined your understanding of mindfulness? 3 – How did the rose ever open its heart? – kindness is an essential part of our mindfulness practice, allowing us to open to our inner goodness, and to meet experience with less resistance 4 – Taking your seat – some posture pointers for meditation 5 – Exhale and inhale – mindfulness of breathing 6 – Embodied awareness – bringing mindfulness to the body in…
January 17 – Give back your heart to itself
Dear Friends, We’re over halfway through this month of reflection and practice! And maybe you notice times you are discouraged that your practice isn’t going “better,” or you are sure you’re just not getting it, or other stories of self-judgment or shame. The RAIN practice discussed yesterday is one way to work with these kind of thoughts. Jeanne has another acronym that we can use, based on the self-compassion work pioneered by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. The simple form of Jeanne’s acronym is MUK. When we notice we are experiencing self-judgment, self-criticism, or difficult emotions we can try these three steps: Mindfulness: We recognize this is a moment of suffering. Kristin Neff also uses phrases like, “Ouch” or “This hurts”. Universal: This is universal human condition, experienced by people everywhere. We can remind ourselves that I’m not alone in feeling this way. Kindness: We can offer ourselves a kind…
January 30 – A family of qualities
Dear Friends, As this month of reflection draws to a close, I’m going to circle back to the beginning of the book, where Christina Feldman presented how these practices work together to support one another: Kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are a family of qualities that support, strengthen, nourish, and balance one another. Immeasurable kindness teaches us a way of being in this world that is no longer defined by ideas of friends and enemies, by likes and dislikes, preferences and demands for reciprocation. Boundless friendliness is the root of compassion and protects it from despair and partiality. Kindness guards equanimity from falling into indifference. Compassion protects kindness from falling into sentimentality or becoming only a state of elation, always recollecting the reality of the immensity of sorrow in the world. Compassion, rooted in kindness, becomes selfless and protects joy from forgetfulness. Compassion extends the remit of kindness and turns…
January 18 – Self-compassion
Dear Friends, Like many of you, I wake up in the morning and read the email that was sent out… I have a little friend who reads it with me, and it tells me lots of things… “That email sucked. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a terrible writer. You forgot to add this in. You should just quit.” And on, and on, … I know I’m not the only one to have a self-critic that hangs around! It’s painful and difficult. Diana Winston talks about dealing with self-criticism with self-compassion: The opposite of self-criticism is self-compassion. … self-compassion combines mindfulness, loving-kindness, and a sense of shared humanity. Cultivating loving-kindness provides an antidote to these voices of self-criticism. Your mindfulness practice, together with the loving-kindness you cultivate, can help to create more self-compassion. These practices are a healing balm for the contemporary epidemic of self-hatred. In my view,…
January 17 – The path of compassion
Dear Friends, We can cultivate compassion in many ways. One way is with the use of phrases to express our intention. When practicing this way, we find a set of phrases that work for us. Some of the phrases that Christina Feldman suggests include: May you find peace.May you be safe.May you be touched with kindness.May you find healing.May you be free from sorrow. pages 77 and 79 We can start the practice by bringing to mind someone who is suffering through no fault of their own. Christina calls this class of person “the blameless”. Human tragedy surrounds us, and we are asked to bear witness, to listen deeply, to know this could be us, and to tremble in the face of suffering. It make no sense any longer to talk about your pain or my pain but to stand in the midst of pain and sorrow. This is an…
January 16 – The courage of compassion
Dear Friends, Yesterday, we tuned into the first aspect of compassion – empathy, the quivering of the heart in response to suffering. Today, we look translating that empathy into responsiveness. Christina Feldman starts this section: Empathy teaches us to listen to and understand suffering and its causes. Embodiment is concerned with what we do with that understanding. Embodiment asks for courage. page 69 Joseph Goldstein echoes this: Being willing to come close to suffering takes empathy a step further. Compassion is not only feeling what others are going through, but also being motivated to act on that feeling. As compassion grows in us, we begin to actively engage with the suffering in the world, responding to the various needs of beings in whatever way is appropriate and possible. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, page 364 Later, he adds, There is no particular prescription for what we should do. There’s…
January 15 – Empathy
Dear Friends, When the Sunday Morning Insight Meditation Group listened to a recorded talk by Christina Feldman about compassion last year, I was interested to hear Christina bring in some nuances about compassion. I was familiar with the Pāli word karuna for compassion, but Christina mentions another word – anukhampa – what she calls “a profound empathy, the trembling, quivering of the heart in the face of suffering or pain wherever its met, inwardly or outwardly.” Christina describes karuna as “the engaged dynamic of responsiveness; the translating of empathy and understanding into our thoughts, words, and acts.” (page 64) I have heard other teachers talk about compassion as a quivering or trembling of the heart in response to suffering, but I hadn’t really broken it down into these two parts – empathy and responsiveness. Christina emphasizes that empathy is a necessary part of this equation for compassion, because without allowing…
January 14 – Compassion is essential for a bumpy ride
Dear Friends, There’s a Pāli word, dukkha, that Christina Feldman discusses in the context of compassion. Dukkha has many different translations. Some of the original translators used the word “suffering”, but more recent translators use words like unsatisfactoriness, stress, dis-ease. (An article by Glenn Wallis lists several alternative translations:https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-dukkha/ ) Joseph Goldstein has described the origins of the word as being related to the hole in a wheel into which the axle fits. If the fit isn’t quite right, you have a bumpy ride. If you’ve ever ridden a bicycle with a wobbly wheel, you know the feeling! Christina Feldman further expands on different dimensions of dukkha. There’s the pain of pain – whether a stubbed toe or chronic illness or many variations – “to live in a body is an open doorway to all the pain that can afflict a body.” (page 59) There’s a dissatisfaction that comes from…
January 13 – The seeds of compassion
Dear Friends, We now move into the next chapter of Christina Feldman’s Boundless Heart. The focus is on the heart quality of compassion. At the heart of compassion is the invitation to turn toward suffering. Just as the longing for love, safety, and respect is a universal longing and story, so too is pain a universal and inescapable story. page 57 That’s a deceptively simple statement, but it’s a useful truth to remember – a helpful counterbalance to the messages we often get in society that life would be better if only… we got the new car, promotion, perfect diet, etc. A little later on that same page Christina adds: This awareness is not meant to depress us or deny the many moments of joy, happiness, and delight that are part of our lives. It is meant to sober us and encourage us to reflect upon what truly matters in this…
January 14 – Heart of compassion
Dear Friends, Over the past two weeks, we’ve built up our muscle of mindfulness, and in the process, we have turned to see the way things are. Things change. We are interconnected. We are not helpless victims, but we are also not fully in control. And we have these beautiful hearts than can hold all this. So let’s strengthen that kindness muscle as we respond to the difficulties in life with compassion. Christina Feldman describes two-fold approach this in her book Boundless Heart: The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity. Mindfulness inclines toward, turns toward, our present moment experience, reversing the pattern of aversion; the world is illuminated through mindfulness, free of judgment and preference. Metta [kindness] is learning to stand near to all moments, people, and experiences, befriending all that has been illuminated. Metta is a process of sensitizing ourselves to the world we live in with all its…
January 31 – Month end recap
Dear Friends, Today is the last day of the 5 day retreat with Adrianne Ross, so I’ll be back to the land of technology later this afternoon. I thank you for your patience! Meanwhile, here’s a reflection for today! I look forward to catching up with your responses. It’s hard to believe we’re at the end of January! It’s been a busy month, with lots of opportunities for exploration. I hope you’ve found some practices that resonate with you. Today, I’ll briefly recap some of the key points and practices that we’ve covered. Start with intention – we started (and ended) the month by exploring intention; it’s a great thing to reflect on – at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of a meditation, whenever. Complete the day/meditation/whatever with a review or dedication. It’s a way to affirm the skillful things you did, and to reconnect with our…
January 22 – Awakening the heart of compassion
Dear Friends, I was inspired and grateful to the people here in Saskatoon and all around the globe that assembled yesterday for events supporting the Women’s March on Washington. (I regret that I wasn’t in attendance.) I have a set of “Compassion Cards” from Pema Chödrön, which have a set of slogans on one side and brief commentary on each slogan on the other side. One that I came across fit the reflections from yesterday’s email on why we practice, and speaks to the efforts that are needed in this world: When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi. Whatever problems occur in your life, instead of reacting to them in the usual habitual way, you could transform them into the path of the bodhi heart. That is, you could awaken your compassionate and open heart. Use the tonglen approach and breathe in the pain of the…
January 10 – compassionate acceptance
Dear Friends, Here we are, already into the second week of January. Maybe, like me, you’ve hit a few bumps on your path based on the intention you’ve set for the month/day/year. When that happens, my default behavior is to get down on myself. And then I get down on myself for getting down on myself… In her book Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach tells a story from Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest. He said he was neurotic, depressed, and selfish. His friends told him to change, and while he agreed with them, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. Then one day, a friend said to him, “Don’t change. I love you just as you are.” De Mello writes: “Those words were music to my ears: Don’t change, Don’t change. Don’t change… I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!” One…
January 8 – “thank me”
Dear Friends, Here’s a quick exercise from my set of “Cards for Mindfulness“. It’s called “Thank Me”. We really can give ourselves a hard time sometimes. Self-criticism and feelings of unworthiness are so common that it is really important to balance that out by remembering that fundamentally we are actually on our side. A good way to do this is to develop gratitude for ourselves, recognizing that so much of what we do, we do for our own good — even if it doesn’t always work out. So if it’s something in particular or just in general, take some time to thank yourself, because you’re doing the best you can. Along the same lines, as part of an email series on self-compassion, I read this advice: The Buddha once remarked, “Even though they may say, “We aren’t dear to ourselves,” still they are dear to themselves. Why is that? Of…