Peace and Joy - 2016 Year End

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. 
I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. 
My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. 
Let us work together for unity and love.

 - Mahatma Gandhi

As we reach the end of another year, we each have our own ways of reflecting on and sharing our heartfelt wishes for safety, happiness, good health and a life in balance.

Whatever your dearest traditions and however you gather with family and friends, may I also extend my kindest wishes to you for joy and peace in every present moment.

Intention and Resolution

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

Alan Watts

It is interesting to take a look at INTENTIONS and RESOLUTIONS from a Buddhist perspective.  Just as it is common at the end of the year to talk about Gratitude and Generosity, most of us at least consider, with the best of intentions, making resolutions and setting goals for a better or improved new year.

Given our understanding of the differences between our thinking selves (who we believe or think ourselves to be) and our essential selves (when we're just being without thoughts or beliefs) there are some interesting, subtle and important distinctions that can be made about intentions and resolutions. 

It is true that setting goals is a valuable skill as we imagine any kind of future activity or behavior. How else could we plan or feel we have direction in our lives? But, there’s a possible catch in the word “future” we need to notice. 

If we only project ourselves forward in time to a “better” version of ourselves or life, how much of the present moment are we missing or ignoring? What do our goals mean if they are only connected to outward projections and don’t take into account our authentic, interdependent, true selves? There is a lot to suggest that our hopeful visions of a better future are more likely to bear meaningful fruit and skillful action if they are matched with clear resolve that grows from our deepest, unconditioned values. 

And, finally, as this will be our last class, I want to say again how grateful I am for your interest and support and participation in our very special group. It has meant a lot to me being able to share my interpretation of the teachings with you. I wish you every kindness for the New Year and frequent visits with your true self - the real you that is already whole and at ease.

Generosity

"The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away."

Fred Rogers

We typically understand generosity through giving material things. Especially at this time of year, many people follow cultural, spiritual and family traditions of gift giving or donating money to the requests from those organizations and causes that we hold dear. Sometimes these gifting traditions can leave us feeling a little overwhelmed. There can be a sense that there's not enough to go around - the feeling of scarcity. 

But we can remember that without that pressure, as Sharon Salzberg reminds us, "generosity allies itself with an inner feeling of abundance — the feeling that we have enough to share.” So, how do we keep our hearts open in times when there are more competing priorities? One way the Buddhist teachings provide guidance comes from the Five Precepts. Those teachings speak to not harming others, not taking what is not given freely, avoiding sexual misconduct, not lying but being wise with our speech and not misusing mind-altering substances. Using these guiding principles, we can be open-hearted and know we are being authentically generous because we are not contributing to the fear and suffering of others or ourselves. 

True generosity is spontaneous and expects nothing in return, and in this way we can look at it as the epitome of "letting go." If we attach conditions to our generosity, our underlying motivations will reveal that we are still attached and clinging to the gift itself. But, when we can remember there is abundance and that everything comes and goes, we can let go and share with gratitude and joy.

Another important way we can give from our generous and open heart is to respond skillfully when we are the recipient of kindnesses from others. We can remember that we are being generous when we don't deny anyone the opportunity of sharing their own open heart.

Gratitude

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that, 
It lights the whole sky.”

― Hafiz

Some thoughts on the meaning of Gratitude. It is a virtue we can cultivate, but it has to be cultivated in concert with kindness. They each need the other to be authentic expressions that come from our true selves, from the heart.  Here are the thoughts of Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a prominent Buddhist monk and teacher, who states that there are "three things most likely to make gratitude heartfelt.

1. You’ve actually benefited from another person’s actions.
2. You trust the motives behind those actions.
3. You sense that the other person had to go out of his or her way to provide that benefit.

"Points one and two are lessons that gratitude teaches kindness: If you want to be genuinely kind, you have to be of actual benefit—nobody wants to be the recipient of “help” that isn’t really helpful—and you have to provide that benefit in a way that shows respect and empathy for the other person’s needs. No one likes to receive a gift given with calculating motives, or in an offhand or disdainful way.

Points two and three are lessons that kindness teaches to gratitude. Only if you’ve been kind to another person will you accept the idea that others can be kind to you. At the same time, if you’ve been kind to another person, you know the effort involved. Kind impulses often have to do battle with unkind impulses in the heart, so it’s not always easy to be helpful. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice—a sacrifice possible only when you trust the recipient to make good use of your help. So when you’re on the receiving end of a sacrifice like that, you realize you’ve incurred a debt, an obligation to repay the other person’s trust."

Tuning into our Better Nature - Equanimity

Equanimity is the final of the Buddhist Brahma Viharas, or divine states. So far we have looked at Loving-Kindness, Compassion and Sympathetic Joy.

Equanimity is really about finding balance in life. We all have probably had moments of this feeling especially when things are going our way. But, in the Buddhist context, Equanimity speaks to finding balance with any and every experience that appears in life. It is being with life as it really is as opposed to how we want, expect or demand it to be. A familiar analogy I often use is that in our boat on the sea of life, our ability to be in balance can keep us from being tossed and shattered against the rocky shore or being lost and adrift at sea.

Equanimity is a little like an internal GPS system that allows us to know where we are in dealing with the ups and downs of life. Thoughts and feelings will always be appearing and disappearing, but developing this balancing, navigational system alerts us to when we're veering off course, away from being more at ease and peaceful. An important point of clarification, however, is that equanimity does not mean we become indifferent to or detached from what's really happening. When we can be with life as it is, fully aware and present, equanimity is a great gift.

Marcus Aurelius wrote a couple of things that are helpful. "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." And, he reminds us that "You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone." 

Between Going and Staying - Octavio Paz

Between Going and Staying

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause

By Octavio Paz

Fear and Excitement

Breathe Past Fear

“Fear is excitement without the breath.”

Fritz Perls, M.D.

Mindfulness in Daily Life

This week we wrap up our exploration of mindfulness and look at how we can take it from the cushion into regular daily life.  

Staying with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness as being "awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally” we see nothing is excluded from mindful awareness.  So, we just have to turn everyday activities and experiences into moments of mindfulness.

• We can notice we’re caught up in things and remember to come back to ourselves – take a breath, take a moment, find that space where we can see more fully and clearly and see where we have options and choice.
• We can notice our body is sharing important feedback and turn our full attention there.
• We can notice emotions arising and see if they’re a response to direct experience or a reaction to a story or judgments we’ve created around the experience.
• We can notice our mind has wandered or we’ve become lost in thought and remember that we don’t have to get mired in the content of thoughts if they take us away from direct experience in this moment. 
• And we can notice how our general state of mind is influencing everything with which we interact and find skillful ways to open to a broader, more inclusive viewpoint. 

Mindfulness is an important strategy that helps create the environment we need to be kinder, more compassionate and generous with ourselves and others.

FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS - THE MIND

The mind in its natural state can be compared to the sky, covered by layers of cloud which hide its true nature.  – Kalu Rinpoche

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We looking at the foundational elements of mindfulness and explore the breath, the body, our emotions and our thoughts and thinking. These different objects of meditation give us the sensory entry points we can use to find a deeper understanding of the mind.

Then we move on and take a mindful look at the mind and mind states. We consider these each time we look at what mind state or mood we bring to the meditation cushion. And, of course, our state of mind has a great deal of influence over how we approach life both on and off of the cushion.

Traditionally, the teachings around mind begin with the examination of three root mind states that interfere with being fully aware and "clearly knowing." Is our mind state rooted in greed or desire; is our mind state rooted in hatred or anger; or, is our mind state rooted in delusion or ignorance or confusion?

The teachings let us know the importance of learning both when the three mind states are present and when they aren't. If greed or desire is not present, do we know generosity; if anger is not present, do we know kindness; and, if delusion is not present, do we know wisdom?

Clear knowing of both aspects of these root states is how we tell the difference between skillful and unskillful actions in our lives.  It deepens our understanding of what leads to happiness and freedom and what leads to suffering and dissatisfaction.

Doubt

Doubt is a large and unavoidable part of modern life.  It comes and goes depending on changing conditions and our experience of it slides along a scale between certainty and uncertainty.  Doubt can be useful when it is a constructive and truth-seeking skepticism. Or, it can shut us down completely when it becomes a self-identity of indecision, powerlessness, and distrust.  We can use mindfulness as an investigative strategy to realize increasing freedom from doubt, when we remember to expand our awareness, broaden our views and challenge the doubtful stories we’ve created.  Phillip Moffit, founder of the Life Balance Institute and co-guiding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, stresses that our experience of doubt is “the absence of feeling grounded in something greater than your own ego structure. It is for this reason that doubt is both an existential challenge and a spiritual hindrance.”