Real but not True

I was reminded today of a concept and a contemplation tool that I have found very useful and wanted to share.

Here is a brief article by Tsoknyi Rinpoche about this strategy who describes it an invitation to sit with the reality of a strong emotion and ask yourself if your reaction is based on current circumstances or on remembered past experiences. With clarity about that we can know that our reaction is real but not true. It feels real in every way, but it isn't necessarily true because it is based on past experience and not current circumstances.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Tsoknyi-rinpoche/emotions_b_1398325.html

Can training our brains help make the world a better place?

I found this presentation by Tania Singer from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences of new neuroscientific research quite interesting.  It speaks to some of the conversations I had with some of you about the possibilities of meditation making global changes to our default negative reactivity and ideas about the role of compassion and empathy in individual and collective experience.

Over work, over busy. Violence against ourselves?

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” -- Thomas Morton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”  

-- Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living