Steve Goodheart Essay

It was an honor to join millions around the world in giving metta, loving-kindness meditation, to my fellow beings on World Day of Metta! Although, like most Buddhists, I do “formal” metta every day, as well as “metta in the moment,” it felt good to set aside a special time to give metta with so many others—I felt there was a really “good vibe” in my work today, similar to what one often feels in meditating (or praying) with a group of people, or sangha.

While there are many “formal” forms for the steps metta in various traditions, in general there is a basic expanding progression of attention: first giving metta to oneself, then a close or dear friend, then a “neutral” person (someone we know but don’t really have a relationship with), and then, the “difficult” person, and then all of these equally, and then in expanding spheres of loving-kindness, one eventually embraces all beings everywhere and finally, the entire universe.

A very important point: If you find it hard to give metta to yourself, as many of us in the West seem to, then start with metta for a beloved pet, or plant, or even a place—anything or anyone that evokes especially warm and loving feeling in you. Ajahn Brahmavamso talks about this skillful means of getting around stuck places, like the inability to love oneself, in a great talk you can read here:

“To Light a Fire, Start with “Kindling”—Someone or Something You Love.”

In general, when doing my metta, I follow the standard steps of expanding love, but sometimes my metta work is very free form, like a good jazz improvisation, and I listen to what is calling to me from the world and to what my heart seeks to address. Today, for example, I initially worked with the metta suggestions given for World Day of Metta.   This was good work and helped me give my loving intention and well-wishes specific  focus.  But after some time, I felt a shift, and my heart was drawn to new affirmations and intentions.

For example, while contemplating “May All Beings Be Free from Suffering,” I found new metta focal points arising in my mind.  Trusting my heart, I stayed with each until I felt I had established a clear sense of loving presence and embrace of the those involved.  Here is what arose:

May those struggling to be born, be born and live.

May those struggling to give birth, give birth safely and without pain.

May those in danger, find safety and see how to find safety.

May those struggling with death, be free of fear and feel loved.

May those struggling with death, let go of life and death, and find refuge in presence and being.

And so on….During the 2 hours, many more specific focal points came to mind as I opened up my heart, and there was often a tremendous sense of flow and feeling directed to where the loving attention was need. But sometimes, there was clearly a need to stop and really zero in on some place of resistance, or pain, or sorrow, or hurt. Often, when recalling some suffering in the world, I would be led back to giving loving attention to suffering in myself. And vice versa, often working through pain and “stuck” places in my own heart, I naturally moved outward to share that metta clarity and opening up of my heart with those in the world who might be having similar struggles.

The truth is, we can’t really separate our own happiness and well-being from that of others. To be human is to live in relationship. As my heart teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, likes to say, we have “interbeing” and we “inter-are” with all things and all things with us, for even as we are individual and unique, we are also individual and unique in relationship to what is not our self! Indeed, we are literally made up of “not self” elements, for that is the very nature of what the Buddha called dependent origination or co-origination. In my own practice, I have found that loving-kindness practice, metta, is every bit as skillful a means as meditation in helping to break down the painful barriers between self and other.

So, with metta, as with all of the multifarious facets of the Buddhadharma, the big idea is to practice, to just do it, and regularly. Like a good musician, to improve we will do a lot of formal hard work—what the great jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis calls “going to the shed and “chopping wood.” There’s just no way around it!  On the other hand, in the practice of the metta, if you start with the formal sequence, be open, to some improvisation. Listen carefully to your heart and pay attention to where there is contraction and tightness, and where there is opening up and spaciousness.

Listen also to where you heart, or personal, or family, or world events may be calling you to give metta. You may want to go there—or you may not! Sometimes the monkey-mind wants to flit from object to object, with no depth, no feeling, no real heart. Giving metta is not a filibuster!  It’s not “positive thinking.” Nor is it a rote, mindless repetition of “may you be happy” or any other phrase or mantra. Metta is loving attention. It is in fact, meditation, wherein the “object” of mediation is not one’s breath, or other anchor, but the loving-kindness itself—the feeling of well-being and love being given to and embracing another.

The loving-kindness embracing its object is itself our focus of attention. And when our mind drifts off, as it surely will, countless times—no problems!—our mindfulness will eventually note that and help us bring our focus of attention back to our object of loving-kindness. And when you bring it back, bring it back with a smile to yourself, as the Buddhist teacher Bhante Vimalaramsi always says.  Smile and relax, letting go of any tightness or tension that may have arisen when we lost our attention.

See:

The Power of the Smile in Our Meditation and Lives 

This is how we  develop great metta “chops,” as musicians like to say. Practice and improvise, practice and improvise. Be creative; be disciplined.  Follow forms; allow creative play. Don’t get stuck in technique but don’t abandon what helps you unbind and open up, even if initially that discipline might seem limiting and tight.

Trust the process of learning how to love fully, freely, and without hindrances and without getting stuck.   The metta itself will transform you.  Unselfed love is the great liberator.  All we have to do is just do it.  The loving-kindness itself will transform us into agents, if not angels, of light and love in the world, and that is so very very needed!

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World Day of Metta

Today, March 20, 2013, the organizers of the World Day of Metta are asking people all around the world to open their hearts and from 12 PM to 2 PM, local time, to meditate on and offer the following metta to all beings of the world:

THE METTA

May all beings have fresh clean water to drink

May all beings have food to eat

May all beings have a home

May all beings have someone to share love with

May all beings know their true purpose

May all beings be well and happy

May all beings be free from suffering

Today, I shall do what I can to make this so.

The offering of metta, or loving-kindness, to others is a non-denominational act. You don’t have to believe in anything except the power of love to change the world! Compassionate hearts of all persuasions, or no persuasions, are invited to join others around the world in 2 hours of loving-kindness.

(If you can’t do the metta between noon and 2 PM your local time, obviously, just do it when you can to take part in the world-wide celebration. The time the metta is given is not nearly as important as taking time to give the metta!   And what may begin as a one-day mutual celebration of love and goodwill to another can become a daily part of one’s life.)

The goal of the World Day of Metta is to say this particular Metta offering at least once for each of the 7 billion plus humans on the planet, as well as all the sentient beings who share our amazing planet with us. Visit the Web site for more information about participating!

Here at Metta Refuge, those who are interested in learning more about the Buddhist practice of metta can find a wealth of information and dharma teachings on how to do loving-kindness, or metta, meditation.

A good place to start is the Basic Metta page, which gives beginning instruction explaining how to do metta, or loving-kindness meditation as taught by the Buddha:

At the Basic Metta page you can download free PDFs by experienced dharma teachers for your personal study. You will also find links to introductory articles by some outstanding Buddhist teachers:

Ajahn Brahmavamso Teaches Loving-kindness

Bringing Metta to Daily Life—A Talk by Bhante Vimalaramsi

Metta—The Healing Power of Visualizing and Radiating Love Toward Others
(Acharya Buddharakkhita)

May We All Be Happy—Beginning Metta
(Gil Fronsdal)

Here at Metta Refuge you will also find many articles about loving-kindness meditation that will help take your deeper into your metta practice. You might want to look into some of these articles:

Metta Phrases for Dealing with Self-Hatred and Self-judgment

The Karaniya Metta Sutta and Healing Through Loving-kindness (with Music)

Audio Dharma-An Introduction to Metta by Gil Fronsdal

Metta in the Moment

Goodwill—Not a Pink Cloud of Cotton Candy Covering the World

I look forward to joining my brothers and sisters in every nation in this great world-wide metta on March 20, 12 PM to 2 PM local time!  And of course, this one-day celebration of loving-kindness is just a beginning.  Giving metta, working with one’s mind and heart to open up to the world with compassion and wisdom is the way of the Buddha, and of good-hearted people everywhere.  What Buddhism offers is a way to take one’s loving-kindness all the way to awakening.

The Great Aspiration of Metta

As a mother, at the risk of her life,
Watches over her only child,
Let him cherish an unbounded mind
For all living beings.

Let him have love for the whole world
And develop an unbounded mind
Above, below and all around,
Boundless heart of goodwill, free of hatred,
Standing, walking, sitting or lying down,
So long as he be awake,
Let him cherish this thought,

This is called divine abiding here.

~ Karaniyametta (Metta) Sutta

Please enjoy listening to:

“Healing through Kindness” by Nawang Khechog from Music As Medicine (With Special Guest Artist R. Carlos Nakai)

POSTSCRIPT:

You might enjoy reading an essay I wrote after my two hours of metta for World Day of Metta.  I explain some of the ways I approached the metta and also share some insights I have learned over years of practicing loving-kindness meditation:

How Practice and Creativity Can Open Up Your Practice

♡♡♡

Ajahn Medhanandi

The Joy Hidden in Sorrow

Reflections by Ajahn Medhanandi

“When Marpa, the great Tibetan meditation master and teacher of Milarepa, lost his son he wept bitterly. One of his pupils came up to him and asked: ‘Master, why are you weeping? You teach us that death is an illusion.’And Marpa said: ‘Death is an illusion.  And the death of a child is an even greater illusion.’

But what Marpa was able to show his disciple was that while he could understand the truth about the conditioned nature of everything and the emptiness of forms, he could still be a human being. He could feel what he was feeling; he could open to his grief. He could be completely present to feel that loss.And he could weep openly.

There is nothing incongruous about feeling our feelings, touching our pain, and, at the same time understanding the truth of the way things are. Pain is pain; grief is grief; loss is loss — we can accept those things. Suffering is what we add onto them when we push away, when we say, ‘No, I can’t.’

Today, while I was reading the names of my grandparents who were murdered, together with my aunts and uncles and their children, during World War II — their naked bodies thrown into giant pits — these images suddenly overwhelmed me with a grief that I didn’t know was there.

I felt a choking pressure, unable to breathe. As the tears ran down my cheeks, I began to recollect, bringing awareness to the physical experience, and to breathe into this painful memory, allowing it to be. It’s not a failure to feel these things. It’s not a punishment. It is part of life; it’s part of this human journey.

So the difference between pain and suffering is the difference between freedom and bondage. If we’re able to be with our pain, then we can accept, investigate and heal. But if it’s not okay to grieve, to be angry, or to feel frightened or lonely then it’s not okay to look at what we are feeling, and it’s not okay to hold it in our hearts and to find our peace with it.When we can’t feel what must be felt, when we resist or try to run from life, then we are enslaved.Where we cling is where we suffer, but when we simply feel the naked pain on its own, our suffering dies…That’s the death we need to die.

Through ignorance, through our inability to see Dhamma, to see things as they really are, we create so many prisons. We are unable to be awake, to feel true loving-kindness for ourselves, or even to love the person sitting next to us. If we can’t open our hearts to the deepest wounds, if we can’t cross the abyss the mind has created through its ignorance, selfishness, greed, and hatred, then we are incapable of loving, of realising our true potential.We remain unable to finish the business of this life.”

This excerpt is from:

Freeing the Heart (click to download PDF)

Nuns’ Community at Amaravati & Cittaviveka Buddhist Monasteries

♡♡♡

Ajahn Brahmavmso Teaches Loving-kindness

Metta—The Healing Power of Visualizing and Radiating Love Toward Others

Bringing Metta to Daily Life—A Talk by Bhante Vimalaramsi

To help you understand how you can “personalize” your metta practice, I thought I’d share some of the approaches I use in my own metta practice.  One thing I’ve found to be very helpful in doing self-metta is to use “customized” phrases—that is, phrases of that speak directly to areas where I need to express and feel more compassion and understanding toward myself.

As you probably know if you’ve done metta practice, traditionally one starts out with loving-kindness directed toward oneself.  But as many Western dharma teachers have pointed out, because many of us here in the West have deep issues of self-hatred and guilt that we are working out, sometimes self-loving is not the best place to begin metta.

We may need to begin where we can generate and feel some genuine good-will and affection—maybe toward a friend, or even a pet.  Then, when we can actually sense what unconditional good will feels like, we can go from that good place to more difficult objects of affection—which may mean, ourselves!

Customize Your Metta to Address Your Particular Sense of Self

Typically, one may wish, “May I be happy.  May I be free of suffering” and similar phrases that reflect our desire that we be happy and know the causes of happiness.  What I discovered as my metta practice developed was that I could make those self-metta phrases very specific and very focused on areas where I was “caught” or “hung up” in terms of loving myself or letting go of false identifications and ego traps.

Over time, I developed particular particular phrases that were “Steve metta” phrases.  They we developed  by  by my noticing the specific kinds of feelings and emotions that indicated where I was stuck—my mental hang-ups.  An important adjunct to developing these self-metta phrases was working with psychology books that were grounded in Buddhist insights and practice.  You can find a list of these here, in this post:

The Problem of Egolessness

Another study that has proved to be extremely helpful in developing a customized “Steve metta” has been working with insights and practices from the Riso and Hudson Enneagram books, such as this: Understanding the Enneagram – Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson

Create Your Own Customized 3×5 Self-metta Work Cards

Developing specific phrases of self-metta may take some time. Maybe, at first, you just work with general phrases, such as “May I live joyfully and with ease.”  There’s plenty of instruction on this in the articles I’ve listed above. But, over time, if you watch what arises in your metta, and begin to notice with more insight the harmful patterns and effects of trauma in your life, you should start seeing your sticking points.  These may well be areas you don’t want to go!  It takes real courage to love, when we feel unlovely or unloved.

When you begin to identify these painful and unskillful place in your heart and mind—and in your life—consider what the antidote to that hurt and trauma might be.  What are the specific ways you could love yourself, or change the way you look at things, that would liberate your heart?  Write down  positive, self-affirming phrases, or aspirations, and then use them in your self-metta sessions.

It’s perfectly alright to stop your metta from time to time and refer to your customized metta phrases. I’ve my  phrases on a 3×5 card, and use them in my metta sessions when I’m “on the cushion” as well as throughout the day.  (Indeed, referring to them throughout your day can be very powerful and healing. We often need to be repeatedly reminded to love ourselves, and to let go, to break old habits and conditioning.

Whatever phrases or thoughts we may use, the big thing to keep in mind is that it’s not so much the words as the spirit of love, compassion, and wisdom behind the words that is the healer. In a way, what we are doing in our self-metta is mothering and fathering ourselves—maybe in a way we never were mothered and fathered as children.  Feeling this, we can bring a powerful aspiration to be the kind of courageous mother and father that the Buddha speaks of in the metta sutta:

“As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a limitless heart with regard to all beings. So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; radiating kindness over the entire world.” The Buddha, Sutta Nipata I, 8

We should never forget that we are ourselves one of those very, very precious beings!

Some Examples of “Customized” Metta Phrases

Here are some of the self-metta phrases I have worked with and still work with regularly.  Although they are very personal, I’m sharing them to help give you an idea of what your own self-metta phrases might look or sound like.  I’ve found that the more specific the phrases are in terms of your self-love issues, the more powerful the healing, transforming effect.

Again, above it all, these cards and phrases are only skillful means.  The healing is in our use of them, in what goes on in our own thought and hearts as we say them and ponder them.  Metta is meditation. To be most effective, our metta well-wishes and aspirations need our full attention.  We need to notice and see what arises as we do the metta (whether for ourselves or for others) but not get hung-up in what arises.

Maybe even more than in breath meditation, because of the powerful emotions metta can bring up, we may find ourselves being caught-up in story lines and dramas and traumas from our past.  As in meditation, when we lose focus on the breath, just notice the story, notice the arising of feelings, and then just return to the metta phrase.  Breathe in, breathe out, and smile!  It doesn’t matter if we have to do this a thousand times, like “a mother protecting her child,” we resolutely and fearlessly return to love that “child” of loving-kindness that we are developing and cherishing in our hearts.

I hope you have found this sharing helpful.  And now, here are some of my personal phrases:

May I be free of anger and aggression against my self.

My I let go of all self-hatred and self-contempt.

May I let go of all feelings of hopelessness and despair.

My I let go of all self-sabotaging thoughts and actions.

May I let go of the feeling that I am inadequate and defective.

May I let go of the fear that I am unimportant and undesirable.

May I let go of feeling shameful and misunderstood by others.

May I let go of the feeling that people always let me down.

May I let go of all unrealistic expectations of myself and others.

May I let of all claims of needing to be treated differently.

May I let go of all self-indulgence in my emotions and behavior.

May I let go of all self-doubt and emotional vulnerability.

May I let go of wanting to protect myself by withdrawing from others.

May joy and warmth fill my heart. May I love myself!

♡♡♡

The U.S. Army reported 32 suicides and potential suicides in the month of July, the highest total since the service began publicly releasing such statistics 2 ½ years ago. And the problem is even worse than the Pentagon’s news releases would indicate

As an ex-GI who served in the Army, I often find my heart and loving-kindness practice embracing our enlisted men and women throughout the world, and especially to those in war zones.

War is hell. That’s no cliché, and only those who have been in combat can truly testify to what that phrase means.  I’m grateful I never saw combat, but I know from talking to my fellow soldiers how horrific war can be and how hard it is to deal with the memories and images of combat.  That’s why around Veterans Day I always try to post something here at Metta Refuge that can help our military personnel and their families.

For example, I highlighted the amazing book At Hell’s Gate—A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace by Zen teacher Claude Anshin Thomas.  You can read about it here:

Veterans Day Book—”At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace” by Claude Anshin Thomas

And I shared some compassionate and wise teachings from At Hell’s Gate in this post:

Listening with compassion and mindfulness

While it’s important to honor the service and sacrifices of our military, surely there is more we can do than pay tribute at Veteran’s Day and then go on about our lives as if cost to our enlisted men and women has been taken care of.

The problem is, the physical and mental trauma of war continues long after a soldier leaves the combat zone.  Many of our fathers, sons, and brothers become so overwhelmed by their mental pain and aguish that they kill themselves (the suicides are mainly men).

As explained at War News Update in 2009, when I first posted at Metta Refuge about the military suicides:

Shocking new figures show the number of soldiers who committed suicide in January could top the number of soldiers killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan last month.

In a rare move, the Army released monthly suicide data Thursday to highlight the growing problem. Last week, Army officials said its suicide rates were at their highest in nearly 30 years.

http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-soldiers-committed-suicide-in.html

Sadly, 2010 was little different, with June of 2010 being the worst month on record up to that time, with one G.I. suicide a day.   And in 2011, the tragedy of military suicides continues, as this August 16th, 2011 CNN article explains:

Army suicides at a record high last month

The article states:

So far in 2011, the Air Force has had 28 suicides, the Marines 21 and the Navy 33. Even though those three services have a combined total force equal to the Army’s, their number of suicides are about half the Army’s 163.

Clearly, we as a society and our military are not doing enough for our soldiers in terms of compassionate counseling and medical help.  Whatever actions we can take individually and as a society to help soldiers deal with the trauma of war, we must take them with a sense of urgency and with great compassion and wisdom. We can’t afford to be so naïve and uncaring about the effects of combat on our sons, fathers, and brothers, and yes, our mothers, sisters, and daughters who serve. We owe this care and help to the young men and women who have sacrifice so much, often for dubious causes.

How You Can Help Yourself  and Others with Metta—Loving-kindness Meditation

Aside from individual and political action, what else can we do?  As readers of this blog know, I advocate directed, specific metta—loving-kindness meditation.  My experience has been that this radiation of love, this light from our hearts, has the power to heal minds and bodies, and not just own own, but others as well.

Personally, I have found metta practice to be especially helpful in dealing with deep emotional trauma and wounds.  Often, when one is in great mental anguish and can’t be with oneself or bear the silence of  “regular” meditation, one can do loving-kindness meditation, working with loving phrases and images to calm and heal the mind.

Of course, many  people pray, but I feel that the metta practice taught in Buddhism offers something unique that’s worth looking into. If specific loving-kindness practice is unfamiliar to you, I recommend this post, The Power of Love to Heal our Bodies which explains how to do metta step by step.

If you already have your own loving-kindness practice, then this post is an invitation to address in earnest the problem of suicide in our armed forces, if you are not already doing so. These suffering hearts and minds, many of whom are on the brink of self-destruction, need love from every avenue, including what we can bring from the radiant love in our own hearts in metta and prayer.

If you wish to learn more about the power of metta to heal your mind and body, these posts here at Metta Refuge should also be of great help:

Metta—The Healing Power of Visualizing and Radiating Love Toward Others

Ajahn Brahmavamso Teaches Loving-kindness

Buddhist Prayer for the Well-being and Happiness of all beings

Metta Bhavana Loving-kindness Meditation – Ven. Dhammarakkhita

An Overview of Loving-kindness Meditation

Bringing Metta to Daily Life—A Talk by Bhante Vimalaramsi

The Karaniya Metta Sutta and Healing through Loving-kindness

The Power of the Smile in our Meditation and Lives

While not specifically on metta practice, the following list of articles relate directly to trauma and emotional issues like anger, fear, grief, and other powerful emotions that can led to despair and even suicide:

Skillful Ways to Deal with Your Demons

How Insight and Loving-kindness Free Us from Mental Parasites

How Not to Get Swept Away by Mindstorms

Book Review—“Freeing the angry Mind: A Book for Angry Men”

Some Skillful Ways of Dealing with Anger

A Look at the Ninth Zen Precept—I Do Not Indulge in Anger

What Actually Happens Inside Us When We Are Hurt by Another

Freedom from Fear—Is it Really Possible?

Thich Nhat Hanh on Loving Ourselves by Looking Deeply into Ourselves

May these teachings be a comfort and aid to you and those you love and care for!  May these teachings help keep you safe and show you the way to peace and lasting happiness!

Steve Goodheart

♥♥♥

Steve Goodheart Essay

Recently, on Facebook, I posted a Photo to my Wall with a comment about working with “demons.” As I said at this Photo post: “Demons are not bloodthirsty ghouls waiting for us in the dark; they are the forces we find inside ourselves that fabricate around ego-clinging and that we project “out there” on others, because we can’t look at our own fears, angers, and dark places.”

I had such a good response to this Facebook post, I thought I would also share some other skillful dharma teachings on this important subject.

Whether we call these mental knots and wounded energies “demons,” or “mind parasites,” or “neuroses,” or harmful “memes,” dealing with them is at the very heart of liberation. In a certain sense, spiritual practice is all about dealing with the “shadows”—those aspects of being we have consciously and unconsciously blocked off and denied, even as they wreak havoc with our lives.

Here are some especially helpful articles I’ve shared here at Metta Refuge before. The first two posts are a pair and use the metaphor of a raging elephant for our untamed mental denizens, our “habit energies,” as Thich Nhat Hanh calls them:

Can the Power of Love Stop an Elephant?

and

Taming Elephants-How To Transform Negative Habit Energies

Another especially helpful post is:

How Insight and Loving-kindness Free Us from Mental Parasites

In “How Insight and Loving-kindness Free Us from Mental Parasites,”  I really get into specifics of practice and share some more skillful teachings from my heart teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, as well as Zen teacher Cheri Huber. I also share some of what I’ve learned from my own practice of dealing with “habit energies” and “mental parasites.”

Another teaching that has been very helpful to me comes from the Tibetan tradition. I first came upon this skillful means in a great article in Tricyle magazine by Lama Tsultrim Allione.  In this article she said:

“In my own process of learning and applying the practice of Chöd, which was originated by the eleventh-century Tibetan yogini Machig Lapdrön , I realized that demons—or maras as they are called in Buddhism—are not exotic beings like those seen in Asian scroll paintings. They are our present fears and obsessions, the issues and emotional reactivity of our own lives. Our demons, all stemming from the root demon of ego-clinging, but manifesting in an infinite variety of ways, might come from the conflicts we have with our lover, anxiety we feel when we fly, or the discomfort we feel when we look at ourselves in the mirror. We might have a demon that makes us fear abandonment or a demon that causes us to hurt the ones we love.

Demons are ultimately generated by the mind and, as such, have no independent existence. Nonetheless, we engage with them as though they were real, and we believe in their existence—ask anyone who has fought an addiction or anxiety attacks. Demons show up in our lives whether we provoke them or not, whether we want them or not. Even common parlance refers to demons, such as a veteran who is home “battling his demons” of post-traumatic stress from the war in Iraq. I recently heard a woman say she was fighting her “jealousy demon.” Unfortunately, the habit of fighting our demons only gives them strength. By feeding, not fighting, our demons, we are integrating these energies, rather than rejecting them and attempting to distance ourselves from disowned parts of ourselves, or projecting them onto others.”

Artwork by Andrew Guenther from Tricycle “Feeding Your Demons”

If you find this idea of “feeding” your demons as intriguing as I did, then give this high skillful, imaginative practice a try.  The article explains the basics in some detail, but for a more thorough explanation, you might want to get Lama Allione’s wonderful book, “Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Dissolving Inner Conflict.”

I hope these articles I’ve shared here help you with your own personal demons—the really hard emotional and mental stuff that repeatedly defeats your efforts to express a full humanhood and be free from mental hindrances.

The fact is, we all have our “demons,” big and small, but the good news is that we also have the capacity to transform them and liberate our blocked energies for our own benefit and the benefit of all beings.  So, don’t be discouraged when things get hard—and, they will!  Sometimes it can feel like we may never break free of old mental patterns.

Don’t give up! Be compassionate and patient with yourself.  Just learning how to pay attention to what is going in our hearts and minds on is a huge step forward.  As we practice these skillful means, we will gain insight into our angers, our fears, our hurts. This compassionate, wise understanding opens up our hearts and frees us as nothing else can.

♥♥♥

Steve Goodheart Essay

The Buddha’s Second Noble Truth is that craving—desire, attachment, clinging—is the cause of suffering, unsatisfactoriness, stress. Anyone who has looked into the cause of suffering can affirm this great truth for oneself.

From this insight, one might conclude that the way to end suffering and find lasting happiness is to kill all desires. From that viewpoint, life becomes a battle to annihilate craving, a kind of war to-the-death with our very own humanity, which is certainly filled with desires, good and bad.

While we may want to remove suffering from our life, the apparent cost of losing our humanity may make us think that the Buddha’s path is only for those who are ready to renounce the whole world and become a recluse sitting in the jungle or some remote monastery someplace.

But I think this view is a misunderstanding of the Second Noble Truth and of the skillful means that bring about the end of suffering through a noble, happy path. If one investigates the skillful means that the Buddha gives for bringing about an end to suffering and the unsatisfactoriness of life, one will find that the Buddha actually uses desire—the desire to be happy—as a stepping-stone to freedom.

Far from calling all desire evil, the Buddha show us how to work with our desires in skillful ways that begin to remove the egotism, selfishness, and insatiable craving that cause suffering. As we gain intelligent insight into what we call desire, we can begin to free this life energy from what hinders its flow.

Suffering arises from our identifying with what arises in our experience as being “I” or “me” or “mine.” The ego grasps as the flow of life energy and crimps the flow into an “I” knot, a “me” obstruction, a “mine” hindrance, and this blockage causes inevitable suffering.

As we gain freedom from “I”-dentification through the insights that arise in meditation and metta, we become freer and freer. We begin to see that we don’t really exist the way we thought we did. We are so much more, and less, than what we identify with, as “self”—as “I” and “me” and “mine.”

We begin to see that if we don’t grasp, nothing can catch us, hold us, trap us, hinder us, snag us, limit us—we are not that which can be caught. We are not that which can be defined, or limited in any way. This is not annihilation, but freedom from all fabrications and limitations. And it not nihilism, but great, great joy—joy that passes all present understanding, because it is not contingent on anything.

Here’s a wonderful passage from J. Krishnamurti that I think speaks to these issues and that puts desire into a whole new light:

“Now desire, contrary to general belief, is the most precious possession of man. It is the eternal flame of life; it is life itself. When its nature and functions are not understood, however, it becomes cruel, tyrannical, bestial, stupid. Therefore your business is not to kill desire as most spiritual people in the world are trying to do, but to understand it.

If you kill your desire, you are like the withered branch of a lovely tree. Desire must keep growing and find out its true meaning through conflict and friction. Only by the continuance of the conflict can understanding come. This is what most people do not see. As soon as the conflict comes, and the sorrow born of conflict, they at once seek comfort. Comfort, in its turn, breeds fear. Fear leads to imitation and the sheltering behind established tradition.

From this come rigid systems of morality, laying down what is spiritual and what is not spiritual, what is the religious life and what is not the religious life. It is the fear of life which produces guides, teachers, gurus, churches, religions. Please, I know. None of these things are going to satisfy a mind which is really enquiring, which is really in revolt. As soon as you fear, you have the desire to conform, to listen to everybody, to become a machine, a type. And all this is but contraction, and contraction is slow death. It is not in this way that desire can ever fulfill itself.

Growth can only come by the liberation of desire, and liberation here means freeing it from all fear, and so from the cruelty and exploitation which results from the quest of comfort, which is the refuge of fear. And this, in its turn, can only come about through the wearing down of the egotism in desire by contact with life itself.

Only in this way can the reality be reached which is the true consummation of desire. And so, truly to grow is to learn to love more and more, to think more and more impersonally, through experience.”  ~ J. Krishnamurti

“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more
complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment”
  ~ T.S. Eliot “Four Quartets”

♥♥♥

Steve Goodheart Essay

Each meditation is so different. Today, as I settled into my breath, I was immediately aware of a great deal of mental pain. The pain didn’t seem to be tied to anything in particular, but was more an existential kind of pain—just “being” felt painful.

One I got mentally quiet enough to feel its full intensity, this background pain wanted all of my attention. I knew that if I just ignored it, or tried to push it away, it would only get worse, making concentration and insight impossible.  Also, I’ve come to understand more clearly that ignoring pain is not only unskillful but is itself a sign of emotional damage. So, what to do?

When existential or emotional pain is crying out for attention, I’ve found that it’s both wise and compassionate to just stop trying to “meditate” and to turn one’s whole attention to the pain. In other words, the pain itself becomes the object of meditation.  Sometimes this means just exploring the mental pain—seeing what its nature is and, especially, what it feels like in the body. The goal is to look into the mental pain or stress with a non-judgmental curiosity and openness. You just want to see what’s going on, so to speak, and you want to do it with as much compassion and loving-kindness as you can.  If you’d like to learn more about what involved with this kind of mediative investigation of pain—any kind of pain—this post should be a big help:

Using Meditation to Get Acquainted with Pain-Are You Serious?

When Mental Pain is Extreme, Consider Doing Metta

If the pain really roars when you look into it with gentle curiosity and interest, and if you don’t seem to be getting a handle on its causes, then it may be well wise to step back and begin doing metta, loving-kindness, meditation for oneself.  Just stop and give your attention to some specific loving and kind phrase, like this: “May I be free of this pain, and the causes of this pain. May I have peace of mind and know the causes of peace of mind.”

Or, you may want to address the pain directly, as if dealing with a crying baby—a skillful way of dealing with pain and other emotions that my heart teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, often talks about.  You might work something like this:

“My dear pain, I hear you crying! I do not reject you! I will not lock you away in some room of my mind and let you wail! (I would hear you anyway!) I am here for you, dear pain. I will hold you tenderly in my heart, even though it hurts.  I want to know what you are all about, and set this painful energy free.  For you and I, dear pain, are not different, but the same. The pain is me, and I am the pain. I will not reject myself, but look deeply into myself, with love and compassion, so that I may be free.”

Giving some mental pain all one’s attention, like this, can be very skillful—or very unskillful! It all depends on whether we can hold the pain in thought and in our heart without getting sucked into the pains’ story line or getting so overwhelmed by the emotions and images that may arise as we pay attention that we just re-traumatize ourselves.

Give Yourself Mental Space When You Need It—Take a Break from the Work

If one feels overwhelmed, by the “crying baby,” then it’s usually skillful to just stop, mentally take a step back, and give oneself and the pain some space.  Getting in touch with one’s breath is always a skillful thing to do, and after working with the breath for a while, one may well be able to return addressing the big pain with loving-kindness work.  But if not, it just might be wise to just turn one’s thought entirely away from the pain and go do something else—take a walk, do some housework, listen to some music you love, or mabye talk to a friend.

Is this “abandoning” the baby? Not really. It’s not like you probably won’t notice the mental pain wailing in the background! But the fact is, if you are utterly overwhelmed by some mental pain or emotion, grimly trying to push on will probably only increase your stress and anxiety and just make matters worse!  There are, however, times to really hang in there, and only you will know what’s skillful.  And yes, you will make mistakes as you learn, so don’t judge or condemn! At every step along the way, have the willingness to stop and listen to see what the best course of action, or non-action, might be.

After giving yourself some mental space, you may find that you can return to giving yourself metta—loving and embracing yourself in heartfelt well-wishes and the aspiration that you be free of mental entanglements and emotional knots—the kilesas of Buddhism. If you find you can return to mindfulness of the pain, and begin to investigate again with fearless, non-judgmental curiosity, that’s great. But if not, then my experience has generally been that working with the metta—with the loving-kindness work—is the most skillful thing you can do.  Again, only you can know.  This skillful path of self-examination and boundless love is as much an art of the heart as a kind of science of the mind.

The Power of Working with the “Not Self” Teaching to Deal with Big Mental Pain

My experience is that loving-kindness meditation can heal the mind and heart as effectively as deep meditative insight.  Indeed, I’ve found that cultivating a deep, unconditional, unselfed love for oneself and others always brings liberating insight, unbinding of the mind and heart.  There are times, however, when working with the “not self” teaching of the Buddha seems to be the most effective way to deal with powerful pain and mental trauma.  Again, there’s no general rule about what is “best” to use. What is “best” is what works!  Sometimes that might be loving-kindness meditation.  Another time it might be insight meditation that helps us see how suffering arises, the impermanence of something we think is so real, and how what we identify with as “self” causes suffering.

Meditative insight into “not self”—the “not me,” “not my”, “not mine,” “not I” nature of the mental things that plague us—is powerfully healing.  It develops equanimity.  What we don’t identify with as “my, “me,” or “mine” cannot cause us pain.  This non-identification isn’t dissociation, spiritual by-passing, psychological denial, or numbing ourselves out!  Looking into “not self” actually helps unbinds our hearts from limited views of self and the self-imposed limitations that deny the our essential freedom, clarity, goodness, and luminosity.

As we unbind by letting go of our painful clinging to an fabricated, dependent, illusory “self,” we at the same time gain the wisdom and compassion that come from deeply understanding the true nature of things. Deep understandin often leads to forgiveness of ourselves and of others.   But when there is great pain and trauma, full healing usually takes plumbing the depths of our hurt and seeing through the pain and various self-identifications that bind us to the past and to a suffering, fabricated sense of self.

What About Dealing with “Ordinary” Mental Pain and the Relentless Monkey Mind?

Though I’ve mainly focused in this essay on what to do when one is overwhelmed by big mental pain or some overwhelming emotion, much of the time, the minor discomforts and pains that arise in meditation don’t need a tour de force to be skillfully handled. Thank goodness! Many times one can simply note some lesser pain, some uncomfortable thought  or feeling or memory that would snag us, and then just smile at it and gently return to the “anchor” of our concentration, whether that’s the breath, a koan, a mantra, or some metta phrase.

You’ll have to see for yourself what works best, and each meditation session is different. There are times to diligently resist the tug of some thought or emotion by noting it, letting it go, smiling to the universe, and resolutely returning to the breath or the object of concentration. If we have to do that a thousand times in a sitting, that’s OK! What’s important is the process itself, the development of skills through own through mindful practice and loving-kindness.

Of course, the infamous “monkey” or “wild ox” mind feels that everything that arises in our thought is important and that everything we can think or feel should be pursued and chased after!  But I can happily report that as I have stuck with meditation practice, and as I’ve gained a better understanding of how my mind works, I’m far less likely to chase after some tempting “banana” of the “monkey mind”  But, it’s still work, I’ll be the first to admit.  Meditation is indeed a discipline.  Biologically speaking, it takes time and repetition for the brain to be create new pathways through the process called neuroplasticity.  Liberation takes “right effort,” one of the skills of the Eightfold Path, and the Buddha spoke highly of  the need to cultivate an ardent desire to be free from the monkey mind’s endless need to feed, its endless entanglements, and ceaseless illusions and delusions.

If we investigate mental pain with the tools of insight and loving-kindness, each time we do meditative work, we will find fresh, new ways to heal ourselves and to gain our freedom.  We will begin to see, not theoretically, but experientially, how the ceaseless chasing after thoughts and feelings creates a “self” from moment to moment.  The stopping and staying with the breath, or object of concentration, are how we begin to break down the wheel of fabricated becoming and its attendant suffering.

With each day’s practice of mindfulness, whether on or off “the cushion,” we will learn how to live life more freely and more skillfully.  We break down our habitual clinging to self-views and tired old story lines about ourselves.  It’s all a matter of learning how to pay attention, even when our “monkey mind” wants to swing from thought to thought and chase after some tempting “banana!”

Everything is Practice, Everything Can Teach Us, Healing is Possible

Meditation is truly an adventure!  As I said in the beginning, one never knows what will show up when one sits down to meditate. A big part of the practice is learning how to deal skillfully with what arises.  If meditation ever seems boring, it’s probably a sign one is not really paying attention!  Even boredom and dullness are something to look into, because they reveal something about the state of our minds.  In meditation everything—everything—is grist for the mill of mindfulness.  Indeed, everything we experience in life has something to teach us—when we give life our our full attention and open-minded curiosity—Zen’s wonderful “what is this?”

I hope what I’ve shared here from my own practice about dealing with pain and trauma has been helpful to you. Learning how to embrace our pain and our traumas with great compassion and loving-kindness does take practice and patience. But my friend, I can testify from my own struggles and efforts that this skill is something one can learn how to do it!  No matter how big our mental pains or how long we’ve had our traumas, we can always apply the medicine of the Buddha—mindfulness, attention, insight, wisdom, and loving-kindness—with great healing effect.

♡♡♡

This excerpt, explaining how to begin sitting meditation, is still one of favorite introductions to meditation, and it is with great joy that I share this skillful teaching.  I think that even if you are a long-time meditator, you will find this loving, gentle teaching inspires and illuminates the precious time we spend “on the cushion.”  (At the end of this excerpt, I’ve put a link you can click on to download the entire book as a Microsoft Word document.  The subheads in the text below are mine, added to help with readability and to highlight the key points.)

May this skillful teaching open your heart and mind to the limitless possibilities of liberation that unfold through meditation—with a smile!

Sitting Meditation

Excerpt from “Buddha Smile” by Roberto Vicente
BIONA Books

Good Physical Posture for Sitting Meditation

After finding a quiet room in the house, you’re ready to try meditation. You deserve this moment of quiet to regenerate yourself. You can sit on a cushion with your legs crossed, sit in a chair, or even lay on the floor on your back, a pillow under your knees to relieve lower back stress. Whatever position you choose, using the right body language and posture as well as bringing good intentions or attitude is important to meditation. Should you be cross-legged or sitting, try not to sit up with your back too erect, forced or ridge. Be careful not to be lazy or leaning off to one side.

Think of yourself as a cat, stretching and fluffing up, and ease yourself into a relaxed and comfortable posture. With your eyes closed, try dropping your chin down a bit, lessening the tension and pressure on your neck. Hold your hands, crossing the left hand cupped over the right hand, and have them rest near your belly or abdomen. Or you can have your hands resting supported, on your knees. Just be comfortable. You may feel some initial awkwardness as you relax into the position and formal sitting.

Start Meditation with the Breath

Now, that you are finally sitting, what is next? Our whole lives are about breathing. How far would you get without taking a breath? This is one of the most overlooked activities of the body. You take it for granted that you’re always going to breathe. You may even find it boring but imagine if you suddenly couldn’t breathe. That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? Everything we do starts with the breath. We breathe all night long while sleeping. Our breath is our anchor and a good focal point.

Take three deep centering breaths to help get you grounded and “feel” the sitting. Take a moment to just feel yourself and sense your attitude as you breathe. Touch base with your breath, thoughts and body. Breathe, feel how you’ve arrived. Have you been busy or worried?

Note the high volume of mental activity you normally carry with you during the day; the business of thought patterns, whether you’ve been frustrated about something, angry, impatient or happy and having a good day. Breathe and get a feel for your surroundings in the here and now. Where are you? What can you hear around you? Can you smell anything? Do you feel your body sitting, the pressure of certain areas more than others–buttocks, knees, back or legs?

Here, at the start of each meditation, you are easing into the moment. Try to gradually leave the business of the day and your activities behind. Meditation is not about flipping a switch and falling into a trance. It is an awareness of our breaths, thoughts and body; a deep understanding and joining in the present moment. Sense your state of mind and your body language. Take the time to connect with yourself in the here and now. Meditation is about being present and mindful, awake to the moment as it is.

Breathe, sensing and feeling your mind. Don’t deny your thoughts. Feel how you have arrived. What is your attitude? Breathe and feel as you sit. Notice the business of your thought activity, that high volume of inner dialogue we carry around with us chattering throughout the day. Go ahead and allow yourself to relax. Get away from all those habits and impulses. Take a break from having “to be” and “do.”

Scanning the Body

A moment of body scanning will help you ease into the sitting. This moment will reveal any troubled (or “hot spots”) in your body. Start with your forehead and feel if it’s wrinkled or knotted. Try and relax and let loose in this area. Now, are your eyebrows arched or standing up like questions marks, or furrowed and meeting in the middle? Just let go and relax. Feel your eyelids. The surface skin is very, very sensitive and delicate. Have you been squinting or are your eyes wrinkled with tension? Just release a bit, not holding on so tightly.

And what about your teeth and jaw muscles? Do you have the habit of grinding your teeth? Is your jaw locked or tightly clenched? Just let your lower jaw drop a bit and feel the pressure and tension drop and fade away. Are your lips tightly pinched? Are you frowning? Just smile gently, softly to yourself, and feel the easing of body and thoughts.

Is your throat tight like a harp chord or like a clothes’ line? Swallow three times and consciously feel the muscles loosen and tension dissolve and fade away.  A hot spot of pressure and tension are the shoulders. Feel them. Most times, our shoulders are pushed and squeezed up toward our necks and heads like the Hunch Back of Notre Dame. We, quite literally, carry our problems and upset on our backs. Just drop your shoulders down a bit, relaxing at your sides. Feel the weight of the world lift. How much lighter and younger do you feel?

Feel your chest fill and diaphragm expand with each rhythmic breath. Smile as you breathe. Meditation is not a labor or a torture. There is an accordion-like hollowness and filling with each breath. Sense the natural flow of air entering through your nose, flowing down coolly, tickling past your throat. Feel the freshness of air circulating into your lungs. As you breathe, sense your heart beating, its delicate drumming pulse. Have you been clenching and squeezing in your heart and chest area? Feel what a difference it makes to relax and breathe gently. If you are quiet and still enough you can even feel your blood circulating throughout your veins in your body.

Our stomachs and abdominal areas are often churning vats of acid, volcano-like with lava (anger, tension, doubts and worry are the culprits). The stomach flip-flops with nervousness, while our abdominal walls are tight and hard, causing our breathing to be labored. All this happens without our being aware of it. Just breathe naturally, smiling, aware. Relax and release. Feel how you’ve been emotionally charged and clinging, or maybe angry, and how this has translated to nervous energy and heavy breathing. Our system recoils and becomes rigid with upset.

After the Body Scan, Return to the Breath

Now feel, too, the difference after this body scan, how relaxed and how much more at ease your body and thoughts have become. Allow yourself to truly relax, perhaps for the first time in years if not the first time in your life. Know that not everything in your life is problem filled or an upset. Nor do we have to be on the go every moment, filled with activity and bustle. Genuinely feel what it’s like to unwind. Let go and have this moment of pause. Be at peace in your life. Now your body and your thoughts feel lighter and at ease. Even if only just a little bit, you’ve touched base with tranquility.

In this quiet environment of sitting, continue breathing mindfully. Think and repeat softly, “here…now”. Breathe in “here”–breathe out “now”. Here…now. Here…now. Here…now. Feel what it’s like to be truly in the present, in the moment and with your surroundings in the here and now. So often we are caught up in reliving the past: I shouldn’t have done this or why did that have to happen? If only things were different. Or we race off into the future: I’ll need to get or do such and such or give so and so a call. We’re rehashing or reliving the past, or searching the future like gypsies with crystal balls.

Sense as you breathe in the here and now. What is it like to let those busy thoughts just drift away, slip away? It’s all habit energy flurrying about. Smile at it, aware. Be steady in the present moment. There’s nothing to do, to be or become. Sense how much lighter you feel without the worrying, the plotting and the looking back. Because of all our fearful or hateful carrying on, we use an exhaustive amount of energy. Feel how all your mental activity translates to your body and agitated nervous system and notice now what it’s like to be calm for once in your life.

Now Relax and Settle into the Quiet

Having connected with the present, the here and now, focus on the simple activity of breathing. Breathe in and breathe out. In…out. In…out. In…out. Sense and feel how no two breaths are the same. Some are deep and heavy, others are short and gentle. Feel the rhythms of the breath and how they flow through your body.
Entering a deeper meditation, we can truly begin to understand that not all is suffering, problems or pain. With each breath feel spaciousness and an opening. Sense how you get consumed and target a thought or emotion and want to clench and squeeze on to it or push away.

Here in meditation, and in a gradual and sustained practice, sense and know that you don’t have to be dominated, run over or ruled by your habits and impulses. Calming your breathing in and out, focusing, you touch base and are actually welcoming and accepting. You’re open and not knotted up; flowing, not restricted; receiving, not reserved. Feel what it’s like for your mind to expand and rest in spaciousness. Feel that all too high volume of mental activity drop. Feel calm, feel free, feel at ease.

Now breathe in settled, breathe out quiet. Breathe in settled breathe out quiet. Settled…quiet. Settled…quiet. Settled…quiet. Feel what it’s like to reside in this moment of actual settling and quiet. There might be fear of the unknown, the strangeness and the newness of meditation. Allow yourself to make contact with the settling and quiet of the moment. What you are feeling is peace and settling that you may have never experienced before in your life. Make contact with the ease and calm of the moment. Know the “nothingness” of just being at ease and at peace, and feel how you’ve opened up and let go. Settled…quiet. Settled…quiet. Settled…quiet.

You’ve been caught in a race fueled by your own wants, fears, habits and impulses, likes and dislikes. With this settling and quiet break, we touch base with the Middle Way of not always having to act and react to everything that comes our way. We can dwell in acceptance, without having to wage war, become unnerved, or give in to any situation or person, just the moment as the moment is. Settled…quiet. Settled…quiet. Settled…quiet.

Breathe in Awake, Breathe Out Aware

Breathe in awake and breathe out aware. In awake and out aware. Awake…aware. Awake…aware. Awake…aware. Allow yourself to know well-being. Feel patience within yourself. Smile gently. Feel kindness and well-being. Know the happiness of your body and thoughts, peace of body and mind. Sense the difference from when you first sat down to where you are now. Here you are awake and aware, in the present. Feel the spaciousness and openness that surrounds you.

Note what it’s like to be “without being”, to rest and let all those habit energies run off on their own. Sense peace within yourself and smile. Go ahead and smile softly, a smile of awareness. You deserve this. Truly. Gentleness, understanding–how beneficial. Be awake and aware of what it’s like not to struggle or be in conflict.

You deserve peace. You can be at peace. This is really you and not a miracle. This is not happening to someone else. Be awake…aware. You can be free of turmoil and the continual surge, bordering on rage, to fall into or try to escape from things. Find the Middle Way, within yourself, of acceptance and equanimity; joy and serenity in the midst of torment and difficulties. You have touched base with a larger and perhaps new aspect of yourself. You are also aware of the serenity as well as the turmoil in your life. Awake…aware. Awake….aware. Awake…aware.

Now you are able to offer yourself a moment of kindness and good-will: May I know well-being in my life. I can be happy. Why shouldn’t I be? May I have patience for myself as well as for others. I understand that I can get busy and caught up in work. I will try harder to catch myself and come back to the present moment. I will smile to myself. As long as I can smile, I know where I am and what I am doing. May I be kinder, more generous and open with myself and with others?

Finish Your Meditation—and Smile!

Finishing up your meditation, return slowly to your original breathing and your surroundings in the here and now, the present moment. Smile and feel your body; be in touch with your surroundings. When you smile, you’re aware and in the present. Note the difference between the beginning and the end of your meditation. What anxiety and doubts have you? Where did that anger go?  Don’t just snap out of your meditation only to automatically to resume your hectic life. Bring that mindfulness and awareness of thought and body with you to everything you do; to all of your life. Don’t leave all of your awareness, good intentions and mindfulness sitting on the cushion!

In the future, as you meditate, thoughts and feelings will come and go, habit energies will drift in and out. Impatience as well as doubts and frustration may certainly arise. Perhaps even anger or fear may come into play. But this sitting practice, this pause of peace, isn’t about engaging in a war with yourself, or belittling and whipping yourself. Neither is it about passing verdicts. Meditation depends upon opening and letting go to whatever degree you can. Release your struggles and impatience.

Meditation will enlighten your life. Know that you are more than just long-standing habits and impulses to blindly act and react to situations, people or events. You are more than the proverbial dog chasing its tail. A deeper and gradual understanding and awakening does emerge. The Middle Way exists between liking and disliking, joy and anger, wanting and needing, peace and fear. It is a settling option.

Meditation is not just about time on a cushion by oneself. It is about translating this stillness and peace to every aspect of your life. Begin to gradually bring more and more awareness into your everyday life. Feel the urges and all the liking and disliking that take place. Try to touch base with the calm that is in each and every moment. With practice and honest intention, you will find improvement and balance and understanding in your life. Compassion will come, as well. Soon you will find yourself more conscious of your breathing. This will naturally bring calm to your body and thoughts. This is the Middle Way. This is awakening. Smile the Buddha’s smile.

Excerpt from BIONA Books Buddha Smile by Roberto Vicente

BIONA (Buddhist Information of North America) is the largest collection of free online books and articles of Buddhism from both the Theravada and Mahayana perspectives.

Click to download:  Buddha Smile

♥♥♥

A Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh

Since the moon is full tonight,
let us call upon the stars in prayer.
The power of concentration,
seen through the bright, one-pointed mind,
is shaking the universe.

All living beings are present tonight
to witness the ocean of fear
flooding the Earth.

Upon the sound of the midnight bell,
everyone in the ten directions joins hands
and enters the meditation on Mahakaruna.

Compassion springs from the heart,
as pure, refreshing water,
healing the wounds of life.

From the highest peak of the Mind Mountain,
the blessed water streams down,
penetrating rice fields and orange groves.

The poisonous snake drinks
a drop of this nectar
from the tip of a blade of grass,
and the poison on its tongue vanishes.

Mara‘s arrow’s
are transformed
into fragrant flowers.

The wondrous action of the healing water–
a mysterious transformation!
A child now holds the snake in her innocent arms.

Leaves are still green in the ancient garden.
The shimmering sunlight smiles on the snow,
and the sacred spring still flows toward the East.

On Avalokita‘s willow branch,
or in my heart,
the healing water is the same.

Tonight all weapons
fall at our feet
and turn to dust.

One flower,
two flowers,
millions of little flowers
appear in the green fields.

The gate of deliverance opens
with a smile on the lips
of my innocent child.

♡♡♡

The gorgeous “Elegy for Cello and Orchestra” as played by Yo-Yo Ma seemed like a perfect accompaniment for this poem.  Click the arrow to listen:

You can purchase it from iTunes by clikcing here: “Elegy for Cello and Orchestra”

Notes on the poem:

Mahakaruna means great (maha) compassion (karuna.)

In Buddhist cosmology, Mara personifies unskillfulness, the “death” of the spiritual life. He is a tempter, distracting humans from practicing the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive.

Avalokita is a short name for the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, also known as Kwan-Yin. In Chinese, Kwan-Yin literally means “she who observes sound.” In Vietnamese, she is Quan The Am, which means “the one who listens and hears the cries of the world”—the one who listens and hears in order to come and help. The love of this bodhisattva is like the limitless love of a mother for her own children, like an ocean of mercy without end.

♡♡♡

Steve Goodheart Essay

According to the Pali canon, not long after the Buddha attained enlightenment, he mused to himself:

“This Dhamma that I have realized is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced only by the wise.”

The Buddha then apparently seriously questioned whether he could teach others what he had seen. Better than anyone, he knew the supreme effort and perseverance it took to Awaken and to totally let go of self and the clinging that causes suffering. Understanding how unaware human beings are about the true nature of things, he reasoned to himself:

“But this generation delights in worldliness (âlaya), takes delight in worldliness, rejoices in worldliness. It is hard for such a generation to see this truth, namely, specific conditionality (idapaccayatâ), dependent origination (paticca-samuppâda). And it is hard to see this truth, namely, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments (upadhi), the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbâna. If I were to teach the Dhamma, others would not understand me, and that would be wearying and troublesome for me.”
~MV1.5,S6.1,M26.19

This passage always makes me laugh! So often, the Buddha is made into a veritable god or some superhuman being (he wasn’t, as he himself said) and yet here, Shakyamuni sounds so very human! (“Teach this worldly generation about stilling cravings and attachments? You’ve got to be kidding!)

And yet, he is a Buddha! He’s realized the Deathless. He’s attained Nibbâna and is mentally free in a way that is virtually indescribable. But, when he thinks of trying to teach “this generation” the dhamma, the way to Awakening, it really gives him (a Buddha!) pause! He knows that, by and large, he will not be understood; he knows people will not want to give up their attachment to the causes of their suffering, and so he knows that trying to teach the dhamma will be “wearying and troublesome” for him.  Dear Buddha!

Again, isn’t it interesting that an enlightened being talks about some effort or goal as being “wearying and troublesome?” We like to think of the Buddha as somehow beyond such things, but in fact, we know from the the Pali canon writings that he got tired, hungry, weary, even sick, and often he needed to retire from his teaching efforts to refresh and renew himself.

Nibbâna, the “end of suffering,” even for a Buddha, is not, it would seem, the end of the pains and difficulties of being human! Rather, a Buddha feels and encounters these very human conditions and feelings but does not get caught by them, does not fall into mental suffering over what arises, does not lose inner peace and equanimity.  He is free and unshakeable, his victory complete.

As a Budhda who understand fully the nature of dhukka (stress and suffering), anicca (the impermanence of all conditional things) and anatta ( the not- self nature of all things) Shakyamuni is anchored in the happiness and bliss that is not created by any cause or any condition. He is an island unto himself, a lamp unto himself; he may experience pains and pleasures, but he is not caught by them. He is free in a way almost impossible to conceive of. Only by self-liberation can we know such freedom, and the Buddha taught that there is a Path to the Deathless.

Happily for us, Shakyamuni listened to his great compassionate hear, to his “better angels,” so to speak. The story is that the head Hindu god, Brahma himself, comes to earth and pleads with the Buddha to teach the dhamma to those with only “a little dust” in their eyes.

And so, out of limitless love and compassion for the suffering of all beings, the Buddha takes on the great task and burden of setting the Wheel of the Dhamma in motion, as his teaching ministry is often called. For the rest of his life, this remarkable, supremely unselfish man shared with the world the dhamma—his profound insight into how one can completely unbind oneself from the causes of suffering and come to know the end of suffering.

Like millions before me, my gratitude to the Buddha has no end, and I sure am glad he didn’t give up on teaching us!

How can we ever repay those all those wonderful men and women who have faithfully learned, practiced, and transmitted the Buddha’s teachings for over 2500 years?  Surely the only way is to live and practice this path, becoming ourselves living dhamma!

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Everyone is Just Trying to Get Born Before They Die

I found these passages very helpful in understanding how we identify with our pain and suffering and how letting go liberates our hearts.

“Turning Toward the Mystery” by Stephen Levine

“Shut away alone in an upstairs in those early years and feeling sorry for myself tend to make one rather narcissistic. The whole world shrinks to the size of your pain, a very tight fit. Only you alone are left to protect yourself and the world from catching fire…

With the theology of ego-as-center-of-the-universe numbing my pain, I became indifferent to the pain of others. With my heart so often like a stone, I acted in such a hurtful manner that considerable apology is due.

When I came to see from a place other than the pained consciousness, I knew that somehow I had to heal this narcissistic pain and complete my birth. I had to find out who I was beneath all the fear and confusion, to heal the mind into the heart, to find peace.

At times in meditation that confused child that I was would crawl into my arms and tremble with feelings of abandonment, until meditation floated away the fear that no one could love him.

Indeed, that child might have stayed submerged in a kind of emaciated self-pity if I had not cared so much for him, nurtured him, and begun slowly to unwrap his cocoon.

Releasing a child’d grief from its binding is a work of self-mercy so tender and subtle it purifies the air you and your loved ones breathe. But we need to be very mindful, because we are so attached to our suffering. It makes up a large part of our identity. Narcissus often uses pain to define, even outline, the image he find reflected on the murky surface of the mind…”

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“There are ten thousand stepping-stones on the path of healing. They gloat like galaxies in the mind. Each takes us one step farther into the mystery. None tell what’s next. We honor the mystery with trust in the process.

We are mesmerized by our wounds and unfulfilled desires. We find it difficult to define ourselves without them. They are among the first often-repeated confidences we share.

We will not let go of fear and hatred, no matter how badly they make us feel, because we just don’t believe we could ‘be ourselves’ without them. We identify so with our suffering that it is difficult for us to imagine who we would be without it.

Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do, and among the most fruitful and gratifying….The heart become restored when we surrender our pain and begin to release the grasping that turns the open palm to a closed fist.

When the heart peels back those once supple fingers that have gradually become frozen into a fist around its fears and attachments, it is at first surprisingly painful to open that cramped closeness. But it is, as the teachers say, ‘the pain that ends pain.’

When the mind sinks into the heart, the common ordinary grief that misdirects and limits us daily beings to let go of its holding, and lifelong tension in the belly is noticed to be softening. The armoring melts to plowshares, and peace at last becomes possible.

These are Herculean labors of love to be accomplished in order to break free of the ordinarily lost, small, and grieving mind.

As our personal pain eventually gets our attention, we awaken to the universal pain as well and gradually begin to participate in the hurt and healing of all sentient beings.

Slowly we begin sending compassion into our frightened Narcissus. How long will it take to bring our Narcissus off the cross?”

Stephen Levine

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Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “Renunciation is realizing that nostalgia for samsara is full of shit.” Renunciation is realizing that our nostalgia for wanting to stay in a protected, limited petty world is insane. One you begin to get the feeling of how big the world is and how vast our potential for realizing life is, then you really begin to understand renunciation.” Pema Chodron – The Wisdom of No Escape.

Pema Chodron on “Renunciation” from The Wisdom of No Escape

“When we sit in meditation, we feel our breath as it goes out, and we have some sense of willingness just to be open to the present moment. Then our mind wanders off into all kinds of stories and fabrications and manufactured realities, and we say to ourselves, ‘It’s thinking.’ We say that with a lot of gentleness and a lot of precision. Every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that’s fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back.

The river flows rapidly down the mountain, and then all of a sudden it gets blocked with big boulders and lots of trees. The water can’t go any farther, even though it has tremendous force and forward energy. It just gets block there. That’s what happens with us too; we get blocked like that. Letting go at the end of the out-breath, letting the thoughts go, is like moving one of those boulders away so that the water can keep flowing, so that our energy and our life force can keep evolving and moving forward. We don’t, out of fear of the unknown, have to put up these blocks, these dams, that basically say no to life and to feeling life…

When we meditate, we’re creating a situation where there’s a lot of space. That sounds good, but actually it can be unnerving, because when there’s a lot of space you can see clearly: you’ve removed your veils, your shields, your armor, you dark glasses, your earplugs, your layer and layers of mittens, your heavy boots. Finally, you’re standing, touching the earth, feeling the sun on you body, feeling its brightness, hearing all the noises without anything to dull the sound. You take off your nose plug, and maybe your going to smell lovely fresh air or maybe you’re in the middle of a garbage dump or a cesspool.

Since meditation has this quality of bringing you very close to yourself and your experience, you tend to come up against your edge faster. It’s not an edge that wasn’t there before, but because things are so simplified and clear, you see it, and you see it vividly and clearly.

How do we renounce? How do we work with this tendency to block and to freeze and to refuse to take another step toward the unknown? If our edge is like a huge stone wall with a door in it, how do we learn to open that door and step through it again and again, so that life becomes a process of growing up, becoming more and more fearless and flexible, more and more able to play like a raven in the wind?

…Whenever you realize you have met your edge—you’re scared and you’re frozen, and your blocked—you’re able to recognize it because you open enough to see what’s happening. It’s already a sign of your aliveness and that fact that you’ve shed a lot, that you can see so clearly and vividly. Rather than think that you’ve made a mistake, you can acknowledge the present moment and its teaching, or so we are instructed. You can hear the message, which is simply that you are saying, ‘No.’ The instruction isn’t then to ‘smash ahead and karate-chop that whole thing;’ the instruction is to soften, to connect with your heart, and engender a basic attitude of generosity toward yourself, the archetypical coward.

The journey of awakening—the classical journey of the mythical hero or heroine—is one of continually coming up against big challenges and then learning how to soften and open. In other words, the paralyzed quality seems to be hardening and and refusing, and the letting go or the renunciation of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart, letting it touch your heart. You soften and feel compassion for your predicament and for the whole human condition. You soften so that you can actually sit there with those troubling feelings and let them soften you more.

The whole journey of renunciation, or starting to say yes to life, is first of all realizing that you’ve come up against your edge, that everything in you is saying no, and then at that point, softening. This is yet another opportunity to develop loving-kindness for yourself, which results in playfulness—like learning to play like a raven in the wind…”

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Steve Goodheart Essay

When I awake in the morning, the first thing I do is “check in” to myself to see what’s going on. I consciously breathe in and out, center myself, and just listen and watch to see what arises. I try not to get snagged by anything, but just be open to the whole experience that I identify as “I” or “me.”

This morning what arose, as I got quiet enough to see, was an oppressive sense of fear and unease. Looking deeper, I saw that there were nameless fears about my body, fear about the struggles of friends and loved ones, and fear about the problems of the world.

Often, my response to such feelings is to begin metta—loving-kindness meditation—for myself, for the loved ones, and for the world. Love is a powerful antidote for fear—as I recall, there’s a even Bible verse that says, “perfect love castesth out fear” (the King James version I grew up with.)

But today, instead of doing metta, I felt the need to look more deeply into the fears, individually. What did a particular fear feel like? What was it’s mental “flavor” or “color” so to speak?  And perhaps most importantly, what did the particular fear feel like in my body if I paid interested attention to that fear?

Looking into fears with mindfulness and interest

I needed to find out, so, with concentration, (called samatha in Buddhism), I just paid close attention to the sensations associated with the fears. The important thing was not the details of the fears—not the reasons and rationales for them—but just concentration on the fear itself and how it felt in the body.

If you have practiced meditation and gained some ability to concentrate quietly without your “monkey mind” swinging all over the place, you will find that you can really zero in on the feeling of fear.  Instead of following your mind’s story lines, you see the fear just as it is, without ideas, stories, and all the sticky, entrapping human details. You don’t try to “do” anything to the fear, though you may feel a part of you resisting feeling it.  Notice the resistance, but just pay interested, calm attention to it and go back to noting the sensations.

Do you feel a tightness in the stomach? Then focus there, and relax. Use your focus on the breath to mentally breathe into your stomach, as if the in-breath and out-breath were originating in the stomach and moving in and out of that area. It might sound like a kind of visualization, but actually is a lot more. It’s literally feeling the energy of the breath right there in the stomach, moving in, and moving out, moving in and moving out.  Where you feel the tension, the discomfort, focus and breathe there.

Notice the feelings in the body, then relax — and smile!

As you do this, notice any tensions and tightness of muscles, and relax. And smile to yourself. Yes, literally smile. Smile to your stomach, smile to your fear.  This is a powerful skill I learned from my heart teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, and a wonderful Theravadan teacher, Bhante Vimalaramsi.  (See also: The Power of the Smile in Our Meditation and Lives)

You might even talk to your muscles and say, “Dear muscles, you feel so tight and tense. I invite you to you relax! I invite you be at peace!” This is bringing a little bit of metta, loving-kindness, into the work.

Smiling helps you let go. Then, as you feel your body relax, go back to the sense of the breath moving in and out in the area where you feel the fear and tightness or pain.

When you feel ease, bliss, joy, calm, appearing in your stomach area (or wherever), then smile.  Smile, and shift your attention back to your whole breath as just your breath in the body.  Listen and watch. Where else do you feel fear in the body? The throat? Then shift your attention to the throat and any pain or tightness that is there. Relax. Smile. Return to the breath.   Pay attention, but not tightly, not fiercely, but loosely and lovingly. Nothing else in the world matters at that moment except being present, showing up for what’s there in your mind and body, and being with that with attention and compassion until insight arises.

As I worked this way this morning, I felt the oppressive sense of fear dissolve away.  I felt my body and mind fill with light—the light of mindfulness, presence, and awakening to what is.  For a while, I just stayed with this light and enjoyed the freedom.  After a while, I returned to my daily metta work for myself, for my beloved wife, for friends who come to mind or who I know need special help. When goodwill to them established, I then went on to metta for casual acquaintances, and then for the whole world—metta for the struggling hearts everywhere, for the plants and animals of the world, and for all beings, everywhere.

Changing your life by “checking in” on your feelings and taking care of them

If you have time, or make time, for this kind of “check in” in the morning, I think you will find it changes your whole day, and your life. Even if you don’t have time in the morning to stop and work this way, it helps to have paid attention to what is in thought when you woke up and to keep track of that during the day so you are more awake to what’s going on. Later, as you have time during the day, or if you can take meditation break, you can go back to the those feelings and work with them skillfully through attention to the breath, through mindfulness, through metta, and through relaxing, smiling, and letting go.

Always remember:  fears aren’t really “you” or “me,” since all fears are “not self” as the Buddha’s teaches.  Rather, fears are merely mental and emotional “visitors” and “vendors” that we need to take note of with attention, compassion, and wisdom.  Rather than ignoring our fears, we need to keep track of them, make them “check in” with us, so to speak, and notice when they arrive and depart.

When a fear arises strongly, we need to see just what the “vendor” is trying to sell us about ourselves, or life.  We don’t have to believe everything we think or feel!  Almost all fears have their origin in a mistaken sense of who we think we are.  Over time, and with the practice of mindfulness and meditative insight, our non-reactive attention to our thoughts and feelings begins to to dissipate our fears, release their energy, and eventually, they stop arising.  They don’t even knock on the door of our thought!

And even long-standing fears that seem to have gone from “visitor status” to uncomfortable squatters in our lives can finally be evicted.  I can attest from my own life that even the deepest, oldest fears that plague one can finally be seen as “empty” of an intrinsic self.  The “I-ness” and “Me-ness” of fears can seen through and their knotted, trapped energies released.  The daily practice of mindfulness and loving-kindness will show us how, but we need to be loving and patient with ourselves.

I hope these skills I’m sharing from my own practice are a help to your life and to your spiritual practice. Through mindfulness, attention, and meditative insight, we can unbind ourselves from fears and find freedom of mind and heart!

Steven Goodheart

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Thich Nhat Hanh

“The New Year is a great opportunity to begin anew. Because many people look at the new year, the year to come, with hope. “I will do better next year,” you promise yourself…Of course we have made mistakes. Of course we have been not very skillful. Of course we have made ourselves suffer. Of course we have made the people around us suffer. But that does not prevent us from beginning anew and to make things much better next year, or even the next moment.

We should look at our suffering in such a way that the suffering can become a positive thing. Of course you have made some mistakes. You have been unskillful. All of us are the same. We always make mistakes. We are very often unskillful. But that does not prevent us from improving, from beginning anew, from transforming.

The Buddha said that if you have not suffered, there is no way you can learn. If the Buddha has arrived at full enlightenment, that is just because he had suffered a lot. The suffering was the path that helped him to arrive at full enlightenment, at full compassion, at full understanding. If you want to go to the Buddha, you need your suffering. Because if you do not know what is suffering, then there is no way you can come to the Buddha.

You have to come to the Buddha with all your suffering. Suffering is the path. By true suffering you can see the path of enlightenment, the path of compassion, the path of love. According to the teaching of the Buddha, it is by looking deeply into the nature of your sorrow, your pain, of your suffering, that you can discover the way out. If you have not suffered, you can not go to the Buddha. You have no chance to touch peace, to touch love. It is exactly because of the fact that you have suffered, that now you have an opportunity to recognize the path leading to liberation, leading to love, leading to understanding.

Don’t be discouraged when you see that in the past you have suffered and you have made other people suffer. If we know how to handle the suffering, we will be able to profit from our suffering. It is like an organic gardener. If she knows how to handle the garbage, she will get a lot of compost for the growth of her vegetables and her flowers. It is with the compost of the suffering that we can nourish the flower of understanding, of peace, of love. That is why we have to learn how to manage our suffering, how to cherish our suffering, how to transform our suffering.”

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