You can’t simply dictate the heart. Lovingkindness, goodwill, and compassion naturally arise from our meditation practice, but feeling compassion is not the end of the path. The next step is love in action.

The disarming power of metta (lovingkindness) and karuna (compassion) is this onward-leading interplay of appropriate responses. This great medicine of the heart and awareness has the capacity and the power to nurture your inner life, creating belonging like nothing else, revealing more of our humanity, more of our kindness. And as we deepen into the nonself nature of interbeing, leading to the sure heart’s release, it’s that inner and outer transformation grounded in the power of our dharma practice and awareness that can lead to engagement. It’s ultimately knowing that love liberates. Maybe with this type of engagement with the world, we can effect collective change.

With our practice firmly grounded in the noble eightfold path and embodying metta and karuna, there are many ways to express love in action on a day-to-day basis: reaching out to friends and family to support them, seeking support, and voting. It’s beginning the day with the intention of noticing our projections we have of others. It’s becoming familiar with our habits and patterns and conditioning so that we can uproot them. It’s serving the community in a variety of ways, whether that’s direct frontline action, making calls, writing letters, or writing checks. It’s starting where you are with what you have.

Feeling compassion is not the end of the path. The next step is love in action.

One of my favorite childhood memories is of my grandfather, who was a deacon at a church. He would give what was called the report on the sick and the shut-in, as they called it at that time. He would start off like this: “Our brothers and sisters are shut in but will not be shut out of our hearts.” This church program that he led was called The Good Samaritan, and the Good Samaritans were those folks who served those who were sick, who were in need, without resources, food, money, who could no longer come to church because of old age or because they were living in a senior home. Some were grieving and mourning, others incarcerated. There was this team from the community attending directly to these folks, bringing food, cleaning houses, maintaining yards and property, praying for them, singing to them, talking with them, so that they always remained a part of the community and were resourced and connected.

Their names would be read, and all the hands in the church would be connected, touching in this symbolic radiating of goodwill and kindness, allowing themselves to be touched by the misfortune and the suffering of others. My grandfather always said that his role with the ministry was to know them and to embrace them heart-to-heart.

Years after my grandfather died, I received a few of his notes, and one of them said: “One day, I will surely die, and I’ll die having known a good life and having tended to my heart, yet I could still love more. And I would especially love others more. And I would let this love express itself as a concern for my neighbors, my friends, and everybody that I come in touch with over the phone and then my letters to the prisoners. I would let this love permeate me, overcome me, overwhelm me, and then direct me as we attend to the community.”

That’s love in action.

There are many ways to express love in action, and they begin with mindfulness. They begin with awareness. They begin with our ability to touch our suffering and the suffering of others. They begin with the heartfelt wish: May all beings—including us—be happy, and may all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy and peaceful. May they be safe and protected. May they live with ease and well-being. And may all beings awaken and be free.

Practice

I invite you to settle in as best you can in whatever posture you’re in. Notice your bottom on the cushion or your back against the chair, unclench your jaw, lower your shoulders, and take a couple of deep breaths. I invite you to come into stillness, closing your eyes if you’re comfortable, and when you’re ready, take a few slow, deep breaths, letting the breath ground you, arriving right here and right now.

Bring to mind someone in your life who’s having difficulty; someone that you care about. Still connected with breath and body, take a moment to sense the nature of their difficulty and what that might be like for them. See if you can look at the world from this person’s eyes, feel with their heart; see if you can get a sense of what it’s like from the inside—what it’s like to be living in their circumstances. Staying connected to breath and body, ask yourself, What’s the hardest thing for this person? What’s most disappointing? What’s hurtful or scary? What’s the most challenging situation this person is living with?

Still connected to breath and body, sense and feel underneath the words that arise from the point of view of that person. What’s the belief here—that I’ll never get what I want? That I’m failing? That I’m somehow unlovable? How does this person feel that experience in their heart? From the inside out, you might get a sense of what, in this place of vulnerability, they most need or want.

There are many ways to express love in action, and they begin with mindfulness.

Now come back to your own presence, but still sensing that you can feel this person within you as you’re breathing in and breathing out, contacting that vulnerability. With the outbreath, see if you can offer a bit of what’s needed. Perhaps that person needs to be cared for, or they wish to be understood. See if you can breathe in their pain, and as you breathe out, offer your presence and tenderness. Offer your care. “May you be held in the arms of compassion. May you be free of pain. May you be well.” Or maybe simply offer: “I’m sorry, and I love you.”

Feel in your heart this vulnerability and sense the possibility of widening your awareness to include all those who might be suffering in the same way, all those who might be experiencing the same rejection, the same feelings of disappointment or failure. Breathe in for all those who are suffering and allow yourself to be touched by their current vulnerability. Breathe out, letting the heartbeat transform their sorrow: “May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings be free of pain and sorrow. May all beings be well. May all beings be at peace.”

Feeling the heart space, recognizing awareness and whatever is moving through you right now—whether that’s tenderness or numbness or tiredness, happiness, or sadness—just let those feelings arise and pass like waves unfolding in this very tender and open heart. Then, when you’re ready, you can open your eyes.

May you be happy and peaceful. May you be safe and protected. May you live with ease and well-being. And may we all awaken and be free.

♦

Adapted from Devin Berry’s Dharma Talk, “Metta and Karuna: Two Heart Practices to Cultivate in Meditation and Daily Life”

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Over a decade ago, when I was a relatively new meditation teacher, a friend told me about a Tibetan Rinpoche who instructed his students to practice “extreme” letting go. He told them to stop whatever they were doing, let their limbs and muscles go limp, and literally fall down wherever they happened to be so they could “taste” the experience of releasing their clinging mind-states. He suggested doing this practice several times a day, and so they would crash to the floor or the earth on sidewalks, in office hallways, and in their kitchens. At the time, I thought it was a ridiculous and maybe even dangerous idea, and I wondered who would be foolish enough to follow such directions. But lately, I’ve grown to understand the usefulness of this teaching, as well as my aversion to it, because I’ve had to recognize and accept the truth about myself: I’m a control freak. And learning to let go—to relax and fall down, literally or metaphorically, into the reality of the present moment—is the only cure for it. 

In the past, I didn’t think of myself as a control freak, because I generally don’t try to control what other people do or say, I’m fairly adaptable to new situations, and I can tolerate difficulty as well as anyone else. But even though I don’t fall into the archetype of a demanding or rigid perfectionist, I’ve struggled for a long time to accept my lack of control over the future. For example, I often plan for the worst outcomes, strategize solutions to problems that aren’t happening, and fantasize about preventing unwanted or dangerous events from occurring. And because all of this worrying and planning prevents me from settling into the present moment, it’s difficult for me to fully rest or feel at ease.

This became all too clear at a meditation retreat a few years ago, during the pandemic. Because of social distancing and mandatory mask-wearing, we retreatants spent most of our time in our rooms. I’d brought along a notebook of inspiring Buddhist quotes and was contemplating Ajahn Chah’s advice: “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. And if you let go completely, you will have complete peace.” As I repeated it silently to myself, I remembered the Rinpoche’s “extreme” letting go instructions and could feel my body relax. I realized that both teachers were right—I felt open, present, and less trepidatious about life. But I didn’t like it—the stillness and quiet in my mind were unfamiliar and unsettling, and I felt unprotected without all the plans and schemes that I thought were keeping me safe. My stomach clenched, my jaw tightened, and my heart closed. Even there, in that quiet, safe, and beautiful environment, I felt too helpless and weak to stop clinging. 

A minute later, I thought to myself, “Kim, what’s wrong with feeling helpless and weak?” In response, I felt a wave of sadness and fear, followed by the profound insight that my life was not special. I was subject to aging, sickness, and death just like everyone else, and I deeply understood that being a control freak enabled me to believe that I was immune to this truth. But, of course, every human is fragile and soft, subject to changes and losses that aren’t in our control. We can’t command the weather, other people, or a pandemic. And though there’s nothing wrong with using our actions to help prevent harm and contribute to beneficial and healthy conditions for ourselves and others, the outcomes are not up to us.

I finally saw that I had a choice—I could keep holding on to my painful and traumatic fantasies and continue suffering, or I could let them go and learn to tolerate and embrace my vulnerable and impermanent life. I put my hand on my heart, felt my body breathing, and chose to let my heart open to myself. As these painful feelings arose again, I remembered a practice from Thich Nhat Hanh and said to myself, “I see you, sadness and fear and I’m not going to leave you.” As I repeated these words of kindness, I felt my face, hands, and chest relax and a sense of contentment and ease arise, because I’d finally stopped trying to protect myself from this naked and tender experience of being. Paradoxically, welcoming my sense of vulnerability didn’t mean I was weak—rather, it signified courage, and the profound wisdom of meeting the future when it arrived, and not before. It inspired in me a deep confidence that, whatever happened, I could trust myself to meet it skillfully with compassion. 

Meditation is called a practice because it takes time and training to rewire and change old conditioned patterns of behavior. That experience from the retreat doesn’t mean I will never worry or try to control things anymore. But when I do sense a tightening and unease about the future, I know that I can return to my breath, connect to my feelings, and trust in the unfolding of life. It’s possible to be more open, present, and less trepidatious about life, and it’s okay to relax, take a breath, and slowly allow my illusion of control to fade. And, though I don’t think it’s necessary to fall to the pavement in a parking lot to experience the sensation of letting go, it’s a wonderful metaphor and skillful teaching that shows us that it is truly possible to drop everything—all our desires, fears, and delusions—and surrender to the truth of the present moment. 

With mindfulness and compassion, all of us can learn to meet our precious lives without aversion or ignorance and instead attend to our sadness and anxiety with love, kindness, and wisdom. If you suspect you’re a control freak like me—and frankly, I think you are because we all are—I hope you’ll practice this lovingkindness meditation that will remind you to relax, let go, and fall into the present moment again, and again, and again. 

Lovingkindness for Control Freaks 

• Find a quiet place, get still, and take a few deep inhales and exhales. Then put your hand on your heart. 

• Establish a connection with yourself. You can visualize yourself—as you look in the mirror or maybe in a moment of your childhood—or just have a sense of your loving presence. Then say these sentences silently to yourself: “May I be easy with the way life unfolds. May I be open-hearted and free.” Repeat each sentence as though you’re giving it as a gift to yourself.

• After a few minutes, include someone else who is struggling. You might imagine this person is sitting with you, or you can just have a sense of them and you together. Then say this silently to you both: “May we be easy with the way life unfolds. May we be open-hearted and free.”

• Finally, you can share your good heart and wisdom by imagining all the people all over the world struggling right now with a crisis, disaster, or unexpected calamity, and say to all: “May we be easy with the way life unfolds. May everyone be open-hearted and free.”

• After a few minutes, you can stop repeating the phrases. Just let yourself stay still, with your eyes closed, and rest here for a few minutes before you get up. Be sure to say “thank you” to yourself for your wisdom and skillful efforts.

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I’m going to try to convince you not to be a jerk. I mean, you’re probably already not a jerk. I’m sure you’re usually basically a very nice human. But if you’re anything like me, you’re usually a nice human who flips out sometimes, says things he doesn’t mean, or maybe even says things he does mean and then encounters the rippling layers of consequences of those things down the line. My goal is to persuade you to do less of the jerk-like stuff you might be doing in your everyday life, and more of the prosocial, happy-making stuff you’re probably also already doing.

Please take a minute and think of a real jerk. This could be a stupid terrible jerk from your present life. It could be an awful disgusting jerk from your past. Maybe even a historical jerk or a bigtime political jerk. Whoever this jerk is, just make sure they really embody jerkiness for you.  

Got your jerk? Good. Now, I’d like you to start to catalog this person’s badness. In other words, what makes them such a jerk? Please think of all the qualities that make this individual particularly unbearable. What makes them terrible? What is it about them that makes you want to ring their neck or flee the building?

Let’s look together at that compendium of jerkdom you just assembled. What exactly was on that list of unforgivable attributes this particular jerk personifies? My guess is there are all kinds of things. This person talks behind your back. Or they threw sand in your eyes when you were ten. Or they’re racist. Or just plain damned ignorant. Or a horrible bore who won’t let you get a word in at parties. Or they’ve done something truly terrible to you or someone you love.

A jerk, put simply, is someone who causes harm. They cut you off in traffic or talk on the phone really loud in coffee shops or threaten the democratic norms you’ve always believed were intrinsic to the functioning of a civilized society. That’s why we don’t like jerks. Because they trigger avalanches of chaos everywhere they go.

But here’s the kicker, a time-honored semi-Buddhist insight: all of us have a little jerk living inside us. The part of us that wants what it wants, that doesn’t care about others’ feelings, that’s totally going to snag that parking spot outside the grocery store even though the mom with two kids so obviously got there first. If we want to be happy long term, with flourishing friendships and a more-or-less stable sense of purpose, we’ll need to stay alert to that self-sabotaging part of ourselves, and choose something different.

I lived in a Zen monastery for six years. When I tell people I lived in a Zen monastery in the remote mountains of Colorado—when I show them pictures of the Japanese tea house and the black meditation cushions all in a row—they usually say something like “That must have been so peaceful.”

Yeah, no. It wasn’t. A monastery is a training ground. You’re up at 3:30 in the morning. You’re meditating for hours every day. There’s no personal space. You don’t get days off. All of you are stuck together in your black robes and your weird habits for months at a time. 

Enter Anthony. Anthony owned a bookstore in the Mission in San Francisco. He was a longtime Zen student, in his fifties, with a crew cut, a bag full of government conspiracy theories, and an excessively short fuse.

When Anthony came to the monastery, he had the misfortune of being under my auspices. I was the work leader—a position that entailed me, at twenty-five, telling everyone else what to do. Not that I was particularly dictatorial. But busy, for sure. And a little visionary sometimes. There was stuff to get done and I had a plan and I wanted people to step to the vision.

So I ran my meetings like clockwork. I admit it, there were spreadsheets. There were timelines. There was building frustration on my part, since the actual world was, very often, not conforming to my spreadsheets and my timelines.

It all came to a head on a crystalline February day. Thirty strapping volunteers from a local college were on their way to campus. We were going to do fire mitigation—a pressing concern for the monastery, since our surrounding desert mountains were a tinderbox of brush and low branches, just waiting to go up in flames.

I’d arranged for three professionals to arrive with their chainsaws and for each available member of the monastic community to lead a work group of five college kids. I was in the middle of downloading the vision, psyching up the troops, clarifying the details, when Anthony raised his hand.

“Yes, Anthony,” I said.

“What time is lunch?” he said.

I was flummoxed. Lunch? We were about to move mountains! 

“Who cares?” I said.

Then I went back to explicating the hauling routes and assigning the responsibilities.

After the meeting, I was walking into the kitchen when Anthony came from behind, spun me around by the shoulder, and threw me up against the wall.

Suddenly, everything went very slowly. I noticed that his face was a startling shade of red, almost purple. There was a single bead of sweat on his forehead. And his breath smelled like coffee and milk.

Anthony shook me and slammed me, saying things like “If you ever talk to me that way again, I will cut your throat.” 

Already my mind was tracking back over the last several minutes. Clearly, I had done something that really pissed Anthony off. At first I was a little too dumb to know what it was. I soon realized it was that moment I’d blown off his question about lunch.

Simultaneously, I saw there existed a whole range of options before me, almost like radio stations. Except instead of choosing between NPR and classic rock, my mind started flipping through disparate cultural scripts, little memes that might be appropriate for just such an occasion. I’m from New York, and the New York radio station was enticing me to throw a punch. Thankfully, the Buddhist radio station also clicked on even stronger. I saw how I had come into the meeting all jazzed up, a little manic. I saw how my empathy in the meeting was low. I saw how I had needlessly insulted Anthony, made him feel small. I saw my low empathy and subsequent belittling as the cause of the present death threat.

So I relaxed. “Anthony,” I said. “I messed up. Sorry. Just one of those days.”

He looked confused for a moment. Then I watched his face cycle through its own range of emotions—watched him try to remain angry, then confused again, then sad, then just tired. He dropped my shirt and walked away.

I wish I could say I always have that level of insight. The truth, though, is that spiritual progress is a bumpy road. Not so much an ever-upward line of transcendent growth. More like a series of peaks and valleys. In which you fall flat on your face in the valley. In a swamp. With mosquitoes. And no bug spray. Then dust yourself off and keep working at it.

Kindness Meditation

You can do this meditation in five minutes, if you’d like. I definitely recommend this meditation to anybody who could use a little more kindness in their life. And that’s pretty much all of us.

Let’s start by finding a comfortable posture, either sitting or lying down. Obviously if you’re reading this on a computer or your phone it’ll be hard to close your eyes. So you can keep them open. Or read a few sentences and then close your eyes. Don’t worry too much about whether you’re doing it right. Don’t worry too much about being a great meditator. In fact, just don’t worry too much.

Now let’s bring a warm awareness to your body. Just feel your body. With a sense of friendliness, a sort of grassroots kindness. Feel your hands. Feel your feet.

Bring that warm awareness to the area of your heart. Notice any sensations in the heart area—throbbing, humming, tingling, numb, whatever. Start to notice any emotions that might be here, in the heart. Just kind of take the temperature. Get a sense of things. 

You don’t need to get rid of anything, don’t need to feel differently or better. If you’re numb, you’re numb. No problem. If you’re sad, that’s how it is. Angry? That’s okay, too. Often we’re a whole bunch of things all at once. Which is also not a problem.

Now from this sense of the heart—of just being with your heart—let’s call up an image of a good friend. Someone you like. They’ve got your back. Sure, they tick you off every once in a while. But essentially it’s a good relationship—all in all, you want them to be happy.

Now let’s lean a little into this sense that your friend wants to be happy. Just like you, just like everybody, he or she or they really want to be happy. They want to be safe. They want to be healthy. They’d like some peace. 

And now let’s just begin to wish them well, using some traditional phrases.

May you be safe.

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be peaceful and at ease.

Just continue thinking about your friend, repeating these phrases silently to yourself. Maybe after some time, you can imagine your friend filling up with happiness. Imagine your friend getting lighter. Imagine your friend getting happier. Imagine them smiling. Filled with joy.

It’s great to start with a friend when you do this at first, somebody who’s pretty easy for you. Once you get the hang of that, though, it can be really helpful to bring this same kindness, this wishing well, to yourself. May I be safe, may I be happy, etc. Then you can extend that general caring out to people you don’t know so well, and even to people you don’t like so much, and then to everyone, everywhere, without exception. 

♦

This article was originally published online in April 2020. Check out Devon and Nico Hase’s newly released paperback version of How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Survival Guide for Modern Life here. 

Adapted from How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Survival Guide for Modern Life by Nico Hase and Devon Hase © 2020 by Nico Hase and Devon Hase. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

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In Tibetan, tong means sending or giving, and len means taking. What are we giving and taking? This is such a wonderful practice that we sometimes call self-antidote, self-transformation. We will do taking first, and then we’ll do sending. 

Let’s say you have kleshas, like maybe aversion, hatred, craving, jealousy, ignorance, confusion, or what we normally call suffering, meaning maybe you might feel stressed or depressed, or you might have agitation. When I was young, I had panic attacks, so I used my panic as the subject of my tonglen. Nowadays, we’re having a pandemic around the world, maybe losing loved ones also or getting pain or disease or losing jobs. What we’re going to do here is understand our own problem and be aware of that, and at the same time, we understand others also have suffering. When they have these problems, when they have these kleshas, like hatred, we will never be in peace. Not happy with the panic, of course, not happy with the stress, of course, not happy. You understand about others: whoever is having these kleshas and suffering, they’re not happy. 

So now what are you going to do? Today, this is imaginative labor, of course, and it doesn’t look realistic, but in the imagination, you can do anything. But in a way, it really helps us to develop strength of love and compassion, and it really helps us to build our will to help others. It will develop skills and talents to help others. In a way, it’s helping others. A lot of scientists now say that if we imagine that we are doing physical exercise, we actually grow muscle. Here, we are transforming these kleshas and suffering. Let’s say we’ll do hatred as an example. If we do taking and sending practice with the hatred, then the hatred actually transforms into love and compassion. Without suppressing it, without getting rid of the hatred, poison becomes medicine. Problem becomes solution. It really helps to free your hatred. You will be full of love and compassion. 

We will do this practice together now. First, please keep your spine loosely straight, and please relax the body and the muscles. Be your mind and body together. And as I mentioned in the past again and again, it doesn’t matter whether you are relaxed or not relaxed, peaceful or not peaceful. It doesn’t matter. Just be with whatever is there in your body. Now pause. The feeling of wanting to practice is love. Being with whatever is coming, being with your body is awareness. Accepting whatever good or bad, not rejecting, not controlling, accepting them and being as it is is wisdom. So you have love, you have awareness, you have compassion now in your body. Now, maybe you might have some confusion, hatred, jealousy, panic, depression, whatever you have, some problems that you’re facing. Now, be aware of that problem. First, bring awareness to the kleshas, or the problems in your life now. When you have these kleshas and problems, you’re not in peace, so think about others who are having this problem. They are also not in peace, so develop love and compassion to others. 

Now, when you breathe in slowly, at the same time, take others’ problems into your own kleshas or problems. Let’s say you have hatred. Take others’ hatred or problem into your own hatred. When you breathe in, slowly breathe now and take all the others’ hatred as dark smoke and dissolve it into your own hatred. Now, slowly breathing in, wish that they may be free from hatred. You can do that now according to your own speech. Take others’ hatred in your own hatred and wish that they may be from hatred and the suffering from hatred. 

Not only can you practice this with hatred, but you can practice with any other kleshas: craving, doubt, pride, jealousy, panic, depression, stress. All of this becomes love and compassion. Hatred becomes love and compassion. Panic becomes love and compassion. Stress becomes love and compassion. How nice. When you do that, all of this becomes love and compassion, and in that moment we accumulate virtue. We accumulate merit. We accumulate wisdom. This is wonderful. 

Now, we’re going to focus more on sending. We will send this virtue, the virtue by taking others kleshas and suffering, and we send this virtue to others. So now slowly breathe out, and while you’re breathing out, send this virtue as bright light and dissolve to other beings and wish that they may have happiness and the causes of happiness. Now you can do as your own speech. 

When you send your breath together with your happiness to others, when you breathe in, wish that they may be free from suffering, and when you’re breathing out, send your happiness to others. When you breathe in, wish them to be happy or wish them to be free from suffering. Breathing out, send your happiness, your virtue. Breathing in, wish that they have happiness and are free from suffering. Now, please feel your body and relax your mind and body together. 

This is the practice of taking and sending. The tonglen practice is finished. Can you really take others’ problems and kleshas to you? Actually, this is what we call impossible, and as the Buddha said, “Everybody has their own karma. We cannot change others’ karma.” But if we practice in that way, what happens? We can develop the strength of our love and compassion and, at the same time, accumulate good karma or virtue. That may become causes to help others. So, in a way, we are helping others indirectly. 

♦

Excerpted from a guided meditation for Meditation Month 2022

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After forty-nine days of retreat in complete darkness, I let in the nighttime by carefully removing the light-block- ing panels on a couple of windows. We usually don’t experience total darkness in our everyday lives, and I quickly noticed A the pouring in of the 3 a.m. light. With that change, the visions remaining from my dark retreat began to fade. The floating spheres of rainbow light with buddhas, dakinis, lineage gurus, and bardo deities grew faint, as did the firmament of interior starlight illuminating my mind’s eye. As they faded, I realized how easily this world of light would get in the way of my new awareness of our awakened essence. Not really “in the way,” I reminded myself, but a potential distraction from who we are.As the sun began to rise, the greenery of New York State, the morning birds, and the pale blue sky revealed themselves to what felt like my newborn eyes. The palpable sense of being reborn back into the world of light and busyness felt imminent. I knew I couldn’t relate to this emerging world in the same way I had in the past. Something had shifted. I would be returning to my family, my work on Rikers Island, dharma teaching, and the rest of my life—all real and apparent—and yet, all of it would be experienced more differently than I could have anticipated.

Dark meditation (Tib. mun mtshams), or yangti yoga, is an advanced Vajrayana Buddhist technique practiced in the Nyingma school’s Dzogchen (Great Perfection) tradition. It is often described as a leap-over (thod rgal), or breakthrough, practice done after extensive open-awareness meditation practice known as cutting-through-hardness (khregs chod). This practice utilizes the elaborate visions—mental experiences of light and form—that occur to confirm the natural, spontaneous purity of existence as nothing but self-perfected awakening. Recently, dark meditation retreats have been gaining mainstream popularity: Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (now with the New York Jets) planned to enter a dark retreat after the 2023 Super Bowl to “do a little self-reflection in some isolation.” Not a trendy, simple sensory deprivation experience in which to dabble, the rigorous Tibetan practice of dark meditation retreat is reserved for senior practitioners.

I first learned of dark meditation in Sikkim during a retreat with Pathing Rinpoche (b. ?-2007), a disciple of Shukseb Jetsun Choying Zangmo (1853/1865–1951), one of several important female Dzogchen lineage holders of her time. During another journey to Sikkim, Rinpoche gave my dharma brother an illustrated text describing dark meditation practices and visions. He offered to teach me if I stayed in Sikkim, but I had recently become a father and needed to be with my partner of the time and my young son. Unfortunately, Rinpoche died before I could learn this from him.Over the next twenty years, I showed the text to several prominent Tibetan teachers, but they either didn’t know about it or didn’t find themselves skilled enough to teach it. All agreed that I should share the sacred text only with accomplished masters. I was fortunate to finally meet the traditional Tibetan doctor and yogi Nida Chenagtsang, who decided to teach me. My journey to find a teacher of yangti yoga has been part of the practice in some respects. One can never separate from the twists and turns of the path; all we can do is show up and see where the karmic journey takes us.

Preparing the proper place for a dark meditation retreat, with all the conducive conditions, is part of the practice. Dark meditation has traditionally been practiced in caves and in specially prepared rooms where a complete lack of light is guaranteed. One eats, sleeps, uses the bathroom, and practices in total darkness. Others prepare your meals and deliver them through a light-proof door, and the space must have adequate ventilation. The typical length of a retreat can last from seven to forty-nine days. The great Tibetan practitioner and yogini Ayu Khandro (1839–1953) is said to have spent years in a dark meditation retreat, but a few hours is a safe place to start for most beginners.

The tradition has detailed instructions on which meditation practices and yogic postures to maintain during the retreat. Prospective practitioners must first learn these instructions from an experienced teacher. The practitioner must be adequately trained, be healthy, and be able to practice in a relaxed, gentle way. This practice can mentally destabilize an unprepared practitioner, and the teachings contain many warnings to this effect. The practitioner should avoid extremes: food should be nutritious and supportive, and one should be conscientious about self-care as the retreat unfolds. If the practice becomes too difficult, knowing when to quit and being prepared to stop without shame or remorse is vital. Regardless of when one stops, the eyes must gradually acclimate to light. Preparing for a post-retreat time to decompress and be with the experience after such an intense practice is more important than many realize—especially in our busy, modern lives.

Trungpa Rinpoche equated the practice of dark meditation with going through the bardo. The bardo process, within the context of the Vajrayana tradition, describes a series of intervals during the dying process. These intervals include the period leading up to physical death, specifically the dissolution of the elements leading up to physical death, the moment of physical death, the dissolution of the eighty different kinds of consciousness after physical death, and the arising of the visionary experience of the peaceful, semi-wrathful, and wrathful bardo deities. The practice of dark meditation cultivates vivid and intense visions to guide one through this same process. Experiencing a bardo-like state through dark meditation before we die has benefits. One is the recognition and processing of fear and anxiety associated with death and the need to let go of all that we hold dear. More importantly, dark meditation leads to a deep sense of relaxed trust in the death process and the subsequent opportunities to experience awakening.

Discerning the separation between waking and dreaming can become difficult at various times during practice. Trying to determine the difference may not even produce any benefits. Everything begins to blend into a nonspecific, nonreferential, nonlinear-time-based experience. An unfabricated experience emerges, characterized by an utterly unstructured relationship to what is unfolding. This experience is an essential characteristic of the practice. Acting as an accelerant or a propellant to help one break through, it’s like playing the children’s game Chutes and Ladders, shooting multiple steps forward into our original state of wakefulness. There is no race to completion because one transcends time during the practice. No development. No gradual or sudden awakening. There’s only pure being. Dark meditation helps bring that fresh, spontaneous being into hyper-focus. For some people, it will bring them to that state of pure being for the first time. For others, it may return them to childhood experiences or profound past moments that allowed them to see and experience with clarity—allowing this spacious, nondual state to arise with clearness and ease.

Eventually, the mind transcends space and time and rests in our original nature—the vast, limitless expanse of awareness. The potential to directly discern the relationship between the conceptual mind (sem) and spontaneous awareness (rig pa) arises. In other words, the difference between an organized, conceptual, rational mind and the vast timelessness that is the essence of our being is brought into focus. We can begin to understand how unfabricated things really are. We begin to know how unfabricated we are. We begin to perceive the constructs that inform, shape, and ground our everyday experiences—how we organize ourselves, how we relate to one another, how we define love and hate, and how we experience aggression, jealousy, loss, joy, and tenderness. In perceiving all this, a spaciousness endowed with energy, potentiality, and creativity emerges.

As a result of seeing and recognizing our original state, a sense of heartbreak emerges. This heartbreak is not constant, but it periodically arises when we begin to see how we all suffer through loss, attachment, and clinging. We don’t need to push anything away. We don’t need to react. We’re just here, and the suffering doesn’t need to be transformed. We experience and allow everything to release into its fundamental nature, this vast spaciousness. This bittersweet glimpse of our liberation and the ease of backsliding into suffering is a profound experience. And this powerful brokenheartedness can stimulate a tenderhearted compassion for our fellow beings. It’s love. It’s an eros for being, and even an eros for suffering and liberation.

Dark meditation retreats shouldn’t be regarded as simply sensory deprivation. On a material level, there is a relationship. Some have speculated that the brain produces endogenous DMT during extended sensory deprivation total darkness. However, rigorous research still needs to be done. But reducing dark meditation to biochemical processes may undercut the importance of specific training and techniques, which have been crafted and perfected over many centuries and cause the practitioner to have a somewhat curated internal visionary experience. In one way, this practice feels very shamanic. As we travel on this transhuman journey, many moments that feel like timeless human experiences arise, as if this practice goes back into prehistory and is a very seminal human experience.

Understanding the bardo process is one thing, but experiencing it is entirely different. I’ve worked as a chaplain in hospitals, hospices, and correctional settings. I have been with hundreds of people during death and have blessed the bodies of thousands of people buried at New York City’s public cemetery on Hart Island. Being able to experience the bardo process through the practice of dark meditation has been transformative. In our youth-
obsessed culture that shuns illness, aging, and death, dark meditation has many practical applications, particularly for those at the end of life.

In our intensely dualistic existence of hard and heavy thinking that causes so much violence and harm, the benefits of dark retreat are multifaceted and possibly hard to grasp fully. The timeless wisdom of dark meditation may help liberate us from such a heavily structured existence. So many of our relational limitations—even how we imagine our interconnected reality on this beautiful planet—may be healed through such a practice. At the same time, we need to guard the ancestral thread, the core heart essence of dark meditation. We must maintain an energetic connection to those who practiced and transmitted it. This lineage practice of making use of darkness, of embracing and traversing its womb-like quality, has transformed many great Vajrayana masters. They have guarded and transmitted the teaching out of respect for its transformational power to help guide us toward the vast potential of a whole mind and body integration. Embracing darkness has the potential to be spiritually, emotionally, and perhaps even biologically therapeutic.

The post Embracing the Darkness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I’m always a bit skeptical when people talk about the increasing interest in Buddhism and the numbers of people appreciating the dharma and turning to meditation. It’s like the first week of a romance. When you first fall in love with someone—even if that person has purple hair and all kinds of what we call “extraordinary embellishments”—there’s just the feeling of love. You don’t see the blemishes; you see only the good things.

Yes, meditation and being calm and peaceful and loving, and generating compassion and doing good for others, and being more aware—these are all very good! But in the initial romantic stage, you may be looking through rose-tinted glasses. After that, you will see the hard work involved, hard work that will be done by nobody but you. This is why interest in Buddhism increases at first and then dips—and this dip is steep, because hard work will never make Buddhism very popular.

Moreover, Buddhism is the only philosophy that doesn’t have anyone to ascribe blame to but oneself for what’s wrong. Nor is there anyone but oneself responsible for producing what is good. To be put on the spot like this is not always seen as favorable by the human mind. Our cultures, social upbringing, and the design of our world condition us to hold some person or people or circumstance responsible for our situation. We have politicians to blame; we have God and the prophets, religious masters, and original sin to blame. We have many things to blame, including karma. It is very difficult to come to the point at which you see that blame is not actually logical—that everything depends on you, yourself.

When we speak about this, it doesn’t sound difficult. But when you’re put on that spot, it is. When you come to that crucial point of individual responsibility, it becomes very difficult to begin to walk on the path. The only way to counteract this is to take time, prior to walking on the path, to really think about whether or not what you are trying to cultivate is worth it. Is it beneficial? Do you really understand the value and meaning of what you are undertaking?

Questioning the Four Immeasurables 

I would like to ask you these questions: Do you think it’s worth developing the four immeasurable qualities?

Do you feel a strong intrinsic affinity for the quality of lovingkindness in your own mind—not as a Buddhist, or a religious person, or as anyone in particular but as a thinking human being? Is lovingkindness a quality that you would want to receive from others? Is it an expression of something you’d like to give to others?

Likewise, how do you feel about compassion? Do you see it as just a theory, an object of curiosity, or some kind of experiment? Or do you feel an intrinsic closeness and affection for the quality of compassion as something you’d like to receive and give—if to no one else other than your loved ones?

Similarly, do you feel it’s worth cultivating the quality called joyfulness? There is nothing deep or mysterious here; it’s just about being joyful. Do you appreciate being happy? Do you appreciate having a good laugh? Is this something you would enjoy and like others to enjoy or share?

Then ask yourself about the fourth quality, equanimity. Would you like to be peaceful? Would you like to get a good night’s sleep, or just stay out of trouble? Would you like to just be quiet and still and intrinsically harmonious—and to experience that harmony outside of yourself?

Ask yourself about your own relationship to these words: lovingkindness, compassion, joyfulness, and equanimity. Are they worth exploring, worth listening to and contemplating? Is it worth learning about the benefits of producing these qualities within yourself? Your answers to these questions will determine the journey you will take. If this is not a destination you are really interested in, that will always impact your actual movement on the path of practice.

It is essential to spend time looking into yourself and trying to understand the benefits and worthiness of the qualities called the four immeasurables. This also applies to meditation, and to diving into the cultivation of mindfulness. It is very popular today to say, “Oh, it is good to meditate and develop mindfulness.” Well, it is good—but it may not necessarily be something you’ve thought out very well.

Cultivating the Four Immeasurables 

You cannot just impose lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity on yourself or others when you wish. You cannot just wake up and say, “Today’s a nice day. I’m going to be fully loving and kind to others.” Or, “I’m going to go out and see who needs my joyfulness and compassion.” Or, “I’m going to be one with equanimity.” That is not the approach.

Instead of seeing the four immeasurables as expressed emotions, you could see them as the source of your own basic sanity and awareness.

As the Buddha himself said in the sutra teachings:

 Anyone who is unable to join one’s mind with these four causes, or sources, of human sanity will be constantly bound by the confusion of cyclic existence.

Here, the Buddha talks about cultivating lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity as four “causes, or sources, of human sanity.” Without these qualities the human mind is constantly trapped in the cyclic existence called samsara—one simple definition of which is “an unending game of hope and fear.” Cultivating the four immeasurables works to keep the mind sane. 

Five Necessary Qualities of Mind 

The great masters of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly Longchenpa, describe how the four immeasurables originate in five qualities of your own mind. In fact, you cannot even talk about kindness, compassion, joyfulness, or equanimity without cultivating these five characteristics as their source:

1.  A fundamental attitude as vast as space
2.  A mind as constant as the depths of the ocean
3.  Seeing all occurrences, inner and outer, as mist floating in the sky
4.  A compassionate attitude as even as the rays of the sun
5.  Sensing negativities to be like specks of dust in your eye

In other words, it is simplistic to speak about being lovingly kind and compassionate to others without developing within oneself the basic foundation of these five qualities.

To support this understanding of “simplistic,” here’s an image to hold on to. There is a huge enemy army with thousands of forces, well-equipped with all the modern gadgets, guns, missiles, and so on. And I send you into war against this army, by yourself, armed with only a potato peeler. Oh, it’s a very good potato peeler, effective for peeling many potatoes—but there you stand, in front of an army of thousands equipped with modern weapons.

This is the image I’d ask you to hold when you think you have a good weapon against the powerful forces of hope and fear and neurotic habits. What you have is a potato peeler, with the best potato peeler characteristics. You cannot be very confident about winning this battle because your weapon, while good in itself, cannot withstand the forces against you.

Holding on to naive interpretations of any kind is like holding on to that potato peeler. It may be a good thought: lovingkindness is a very good thought, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks about compassion, so let’s all go and be compassionate. But the life span of these nice ideas is, at most, a week. After that, we face that powerful enemy of the self’s neurotic patterns and habits, hopes and fears.

The self has tremendous momentum and power gained through constant usage. And its familiarity is so strong that—even with your wish to be loving, kind, and compassionate—you can’t always withstand the forces of habitual neuroses.

How does one come out of the naiveness of just imagining these good qualities? As the great master Longchenpa says, it becomes necessary to not see lovingkindness, compassion, joy, or equanimity as four distinct qualities separate from you, which you then impose upon yourself. Instead—if your attitude is as vast as space—you can see that lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are what you are.

First—A Fundamental Attitude as Vast as Space

The analogy of space stands for an attitude that is vast, as opposed to a linear perspective, where everything begins and ends with you—and is all about you in the middle. When your perspective becomes as vast as space, it can accommodate everything: the pure and the impure, the right and not right, things of your own doing and not of your own doing.

Space accommodates all perfections and imperfections. Likewise, the basis of lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and joy arises when you can rest within an attitude that accommodates others as they are. Your cultivation of kindness is without demands and expectations; it is especially without strategies or plans for applying that lovingkindness and compassion.

So to cultivate the four immeasurable qualities, first work on your own attitude. With a vaster perspective, the mind resembles space. And just as space is able to hold everything gently, freely, and without demands, your attitude toward others—your friends, family, community, or the whole world itself—is accommodating and without demands based on your own expectations.

What is that attitude, other than lovingkindness? What is it, other than compassion? There is no need to go out and be compassionate; you are compassion. There is no need to remember to apply lovingkindness; lovingkindness is who you are. You are naturally a loving person because your attitude is much more accepting and accommodating of others.

Second—A Mind as Constant as the Depths of the Ocean

Now think about cultivating the second quality, constancy. The nature of your mind is as constant as the depths of the ocean. The ocean depths are never deterred by the waves on the surface. In the same way, your good moods and bad moods, good experiences and bad experiences, your nice days and bad days do not influence the potential for patience and kindness held in the vast perspective of your mind.

Having understood the first quality, an attitude as vast as space, to be a good thing, you now strengthen it. With strengthened awareness and the determination to be gentle in your approach to others, you do not allow that all-accommodating attitude to be overwhelmed by the occurrences of everyday life. This cultivates constancy like the depths of the ocean, and a sense of dependability. You can trust yourself to be a source of love and kindness that others can depend on.

A common problem for many of us is that this constancy doesn’t develop. I think Mahayana Buddhist students, especially, try very hard to develop compassion, lovingkindness, and so on. Your intention is excellent—but your constancy is not always excellent. When your various moods or life experiences occur, self-absorption may overpower the determination to practice lovingkindness and compassion. And at a crucial point, forgetfulness allows habitual patterns to overwhelm your intention.

It is essential, therefore, to cultivate and then strengthen this depths-of-the-ocean constancy within yourself. Then—because it’s one thing to say the mind must be constant as the ocean—the way to make it so is by cultivating the third quality.

Third—Seeing All Occurrences as Mist

The third quality is the insight that sees all phenomena—your inner thoughts, feelings, and emotions, as well as external phenomena in the world—as mists that arise, manifest, and dissolve. This is the insight, or wisdom, aspect that knows the nature of things as they occur.

Keep thoroughly in mind that one of the most powerful characteristics of all phenomena is transformation, or change. It is the impermanent nature of things to arise, manifest, and cease. Where there is something good, it changes; where there is something bad, that also changes. With this clear understanding, know that whatever occurs in the field of your mind’s thoughts and emotions will also change. Problems may not dramatically disappear. But this definitely loosens the tightness with which you hold them to be unchanging and permanent—which is what makes moods, emotions, and external experiences so overwhelmingly powerful.

Instead, the mind can view them as mist. Yes, they do momentarily appear, but they change—just as thousands of experiences and feelings have changed. Knowing this enhances one’s abiding in constancy, which enhances the vastness of one’s attitude.

Having developed a vast attitude as constant as the depths of the ocean, with the ability to see the mind’s various inner emotions and external experiences as transitory as mist, then cultivate the fourth quality.

Fourth—Compassion as Even as Rays of the Sun

The fourth quality is an approach toward others that is genuinely gentle and as even as the rays of the sun. The sun—whether or not it is recognized, appreciated, or even seen—is accessible to whomever might benefit from it. In the same way, determine to be constantly gentle and giving to others, without a strategy, without a plan, and without ambition. Your approach is based simply on how to best benefit others. Then you’re beginning to embark on the path of cultivating the four immeasurables—supported by the most important quality, the fifth.

Fifth—Sensing Negativities as Specks of Dust in the Eye

One can never become a kind, compassionate person while ignoring the negativities in one’s own attitude and personality. Anger, confusion, self-absorption, strong desire and attachments, self-clinging, and particularly jealousy and pride—these should be treated like specks of dust or dirt in your eye. When something gets in your eye, you can’t tolerate it; you do everything you can to remove it. Be just as consciously aware that negativity destroys your relationship with your intrinsic absolute goodness, which is the basis of your sane relationships with others.Khandro Rinpoche

These five fundamental attitudes support and complement one another. To work with the Buddhist concept of compassion, begin by strengthening them. This lays the foundation for the four immeasurable qualities of lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

Two Approaches to the Four Immeasurables

The four immeasurables are not called immeasurable because of their size but because their one fundamental quality is unconditional. Unconditional lovingkindness is what makes lovingkindness immeasurable. Unconditional compassion makes compassion immeasurable. Unconditional joy makes joy immeasurable. And unconditional equanimity makes equanimity immeasurable. In the classical texts, the cultivation of these immeasurable qualities is classified in mainly two ways.

The first approach cultivates the four immeasurables with sentient beings as their object. Your objective for practicing lovingkindness, for example, is to benefit all sentient beings. Likewise, you have compassion for sentient beings. You take joy in their happiness. And you rest in equanimity without sentient beings serving as your basis for discrimination and bias.

When the four immeasurables are cultivated with sentient beings as their object, they are called “limited” four immeasurables. The methods for developing these qualities are relative, provisional, or conventional. In simple words, they are for ordinary practitioners.

The second approach—which is much more suited to their unconditional nature—is to cultivate the four immeasurables just because. Now this is not just some puzzled state of mind. For Buddhists, it means cultivating the four immeasurables with dharmata as the objective. If you’re not used to Buddhist terminology, it means you have no particular reason to develop the four immeasurables. You do it simply because you can and you should—because these are your intrinsic qualities.

Take the quality of joyfulness. Do you need some profound reason to be joyful? Do you need to be told that if you are joyful, the Buddha will take you to the Buddha-fields? No. But the stubborn human mind—which stupidly takes great pride in calling itself wise—is conditioned to not let it be simple. Simple in the good way means just as it is.

Likewise, the quality of lovingkindness is simply who you are. You don’t need a reason to manifest your natural state. You can develop lovingkindness just because. You can be compassionate just because—not for some profound reason or because the Buddha or the dharma pushes you into it. You do it because you are able to do it. Why not be joyful just because?

You can remain in equanimity just because—or would you rather run around being biased and partial, clumsily making judgments and having opinions, when there’s no need for you to interfere in others’ lives? It’s your choice.

From the perspective of the Buddhist teachings, the reason you can actually generate unconditional lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity is that these are your natural qualities.

This is the authentic approach to the four immeasurables. The confidence that recognizes this and allows you to bravely be this—for no other reason than it’s your basic nature—is the absolute, or ultimate, approach to the four immeasurables, as correctly understood.

But as much as you may like this idea, you’re not going to do it. You will not be easily persuaded to be nothing but kind without something to obtain at the end of the line—even something as elusive as nirvana, or enlightenment. Because someone on a high seat says the goal of generating lovingkindness, compassion, joyfulness, and equanimity is enlightenment, for that reason alone, most of us have become Buddhists.

I, myself, became a nun and a Buddhist practitioner in search of what we call enlightenment. But the fact is, I have no idea what that is. Somebody, somewhere told me it’s a good thing, and that seemed sufficient—and so far, the wisdom and kindness of the great masters have been playing along. 

Adapted from a talk given by Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche at a weekend seminar in Boston, MA, August 2013.

The post Charting the Four Immeasureables appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Buddha woke up sitting at the base of the Bodhi tree, his hand touching the earth as his witness and support. As he began to teach, he instructed his monastics to go find a place “in the wilderness” or “at the foot of a tree” to pursue their practice. The Vassa retreats of Theravada practitioners align with the rainy season, and the poems of the early Buddhist nuns and monks are resplendent in their relationship with and delight in the natural world. Wherever we look in the dharma, it’s clear that the teachings of the Buddha are innately connected to nature as a resource for our own awakening. But how can we bring this connection with the natural world into our practice today, especially when so many of us lack access to wild nature?

For many, our introduction to the path happened indoors at classes or sitting groups held in larger urban centers, divorced from the green spaces we tend to think of as nature. Our daily practice might include the cacophony of car alarms, noisy neighbors, garbage trucks, or ambulances. As the pandemic took root, countless people also discovered the dharma online, connecting to sanghas through their computers or phone screens. These dharma doors are beautiful and life-changing. I have a particular respect today for the online offerings that have become a respite for those who are sick, disabled, or immunocompromised and find themselves all but excluded from many in-person dharma gatherings. These spaces are essential to a vibrant and inclusive dharma. But as the format and locations of our practice evolves, how can we retain the connection to nature that is an essential part of Buddhist practice?

One possible answer lies in the Satipatthana Sutta. In his instructions for establishing mindfulness in this sutta, the Buddha offers a practice of meditation on the elements—earth, water, air, fire—that can be explored and discovered in our own bodies just as they can be known in a forest, ocean, or desert. Establishing a meditation practice where we become intimate with the elements offers us a way to connect to the presence of nature within ourselves, seeing over time that we are nature, not something separate from it. This can offer many benefits, from a deeper sense of embodiment and presence to an understanding of impermanence, interconnectedness, and how vital it is to care for our planet in the midst of climate change.  

An Elements Practice 

An elements practice can be done anywhere—whether you are in a densely populated city or camping in a national forest. To begin, find a comfortable posture sitting, standing, or lying down, where you can remain alert and access a felt sense of your own body. From here, begin to connect to the elements one by one. This can be a creative, imaginative practice and you are encouraged to make it your own.

Earth: Begin by connecting with the earth element. Just like an ancient mountain, the earth element in the body is that which is solid, heavy, hard, stable, structured, or grounded. Our bones, teeth, and nails are all easy places to access the earth element in the body. You may wish to begin by envisioning a tall mountain or a large, sturdy tree. Notice the qualities that it has—its strength, connection to the earth, its solidity. Then turn toward your body. Begin at your feet, and work your way up all the way to the top of your head, scanning for the ways you experience the earth element in your own body. Feel the weight of gravity in your limbs. Notice the structure and form that your bones provide. Run your tongue over your teeth and feel their hardness. The bones in our body are composed of many of the same minerals and elements found in the skull of a buffalo, the shell of a crab, the stone we find walking in the forest. The earth element within us isn’t separate from the earth element outside of us. 

Water: Beginning with the top of your head and working your way down to your feet, start to explore the water element present in the body. Water is fluid and wet, like the moisture in your eyes, the saliva in your mouth, or the liquid in your digestive organs. But it also creates a type of cohesion or wholeness in the body. Our skin, organs, and every cell is made up of a majority of water. Even the marrow of our bones holds water. Notice as you scan the body where you can connect with the water element in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. You might call to mind the fact that all the water in your body today at some point has been inside a cloud, an ocean, a blade of grass, or the belly of an animal. Allow yourself to feel the water element in the body and remember that while this water is with you today, it will continue to travel and move throughout the earth beyond your lifetime. This water that makes up 60 percent of your being is simply a visitor.

Fire: As we continue in the elements meditation, we begin to be able to access more and more subtlety and nuance. Arriving at the fire element, start at your feet and work your way up as you notice temperature—warm or cool—present in the body. The fire element is present in the heat of the sun, and is received by the earth, plants, and animals, including you. Our metabolic processes, our ability to regulate temperature, and the nourishment we take into our body through food is all touched by the fire element. As you scan the body, allow yourself to notice heat and cold. In our climate-controlled lives we don’t experience as much variation in temperature and almost automatically associate temperature changes with a sense of vulnerability or discomfort that needs to be fixed. You might notice, particularly if you are feeling too warm or too cold, that aversion or desire begins to flare up, along with stories, planning, and more. What would it be like to momentarily drop your preferences and simply feel the fluctuation of temperature in the body? This is one of the teachings of the fire element.

Air: As we reach the air element, we find ourselves returning to familiar territory for many meditators. Allowing yourself to scan the body from the top of your head down to your feet, you will notice old friends: air touching the nostrils and moving into the throat, the rise and fall of the chest and belly, the subtle movement of the whole body breathing. The air element is present whenever we meditate with the breath, but it is also present in the rustle of leaves in the wind, the displacement of air as a deer darts across a field, and the sound of birdsong coming from the robin in the yard. As we begin to sense the air element in our bodies, we can tend to the places where the breath is felt, as well as the places where we sense any kind of internal motion or movement. You may find that it is particularly supportive to envision the air element entering your body through each inhalation, and leaving through each exhalation. As you do this, can you tell where the air element outside of you ends and the air element inside of you begins? You may notice that when you pay attention, it is very hard to discern which part of this air belongs to you, and what belongs to the trees and grasses you share it with. 

Closing your practice: As you reach the end of this practice, simply allow yourself some time to rest in what you have experienced, taking in the sensations, insights, or emotions that may have come up. Remembering your own connection to nature, you may also want to dedicate the merits of your practice to the many plants, animals, and beings who need our care and protection. 

The elements practice is simply one entry point into deepening our relationship to nature and dharma. Whether you’re a seasoned hiker or your idea of getting outdoors is a patio table at the local cafe, this practice can be yours. Nature is everywhere, and you are a part of it. As you explore new ways to bring the natural world into your meditation, you may also want to do this with the support of a community, especially if nature-based practice feels new and unfamiliar to you. There are many incredible resources available if you would like to go deeper in your exploration of dharma and nature— from wilderness meditation retreats at places like Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center and Rocky Mountain EcoDharma, to groups offering both online and in-person practice like Awake in the Wild, One Earth Sangha, and many more.

The post A Practice for Connecting with the Four Elements That Can Be Done Anywhere appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“I watch the news, but I don’t really ‘see’ it. I hear about a mudslide, or a fire that destroys a town and I shake my head, and the suffering feels too great to bear, so I turn away. It isn’t that I don’t care, so I feel helpless to do anything. Or I did, until the people you will meet in this book helped me see that I am actually connected to all of it, that there are already people doing something about it and I can join them,” says Susan Bauer-Wu, author of the new book, A Future We Can Love. Those people are the Dalai Lama and climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose first meeting, hosted by the Mind & Life Institute, Bauer-Wu introduced to the almost one million people who watched it. They are also Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer Lyla June; British writer and environmental activist George Monbiot; meditation teacher Willa Blythe Baker; and so many more experts whose work offers an empowering approach to the climate crisis, instead of one of despair, paralysis, or avoidance. By seeking the wisdom of these activists, scientists, and meditation teachers, Bauer-Wu presents a case for hope, grounded in science, and actionable advice to make change. 

The book is an invitation, Bauer-Wu says, to join the conversation, and with contemplative practices woven throughout, it’s an active read. One of those practices comes from Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Loka Initiative at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who offers a tonglen-inspired meditation to help with eco-anxiety and despair. Confronting the climate crisis shouldn’t require choosing between facts and emotions, but embracing both. “There’s relief,” Bauer-Wu says, “in giving up the charade that everything’s okay and strength to be found in this deeper communion.”

A Meditation for Eco-Anxiety and Climate Despair 

By Dekila Chungyalpa

In this meditation, we will cultivate our interconnectedness with the earth through a variation of tonglen, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of giving and receiving.

Please start by grounding yourself with the earth beneath you. Pay attention to how your feet or any other part of your body that is touching the floor is placed. Notice how you are rooted, through a chair or floor, to the earth and how she literally holds you up—unconditionally, effortlessly, compassionately.

This practice requires that you access the emotions of eco-anxiety or climate distress—grief, anger, vulnerability, sadness, fear—and open yourself up to experiencing them. I ask that you observe how these emotions arise, in what manner and intensity. Pay attention to the shape, color, size, any aspects that give an emotion form. Where does it arise in your body? What are its characteristics? If an emotion overtakes you and washes you away, that is all right. Simply bring yourself back to your purpose of observing, as many times as you need to.

When you have a good hold of the characteristics of your emotions, acknowledge them with respect. Your emotions are a completely valid response to an existential threat to you and your loved ones. It means your inner warning system is working and that is a good thing. So, whatever losses you have witnessed or anticipate, whatever emotions you have suppressed or reacted to, take time to let them all flow out of you and into the earth. Acknowledge and let go.

Notice your incoming breath—the air entering your nostrils, your mouth, filling up your belly. That oxygen that keeps you alive is coming from forests and oceans, from plants and phytoplankton, from all over the world and from outside your window. Rest in the awareness of this physical manifestation of the earth’s compassion for you.

Every aspect of you right now, the air that fills your lungs, the clothes that you wear, the food you ate today, all of that comes from outside of you. This ever-present, life-encompassing, compassionate earth sustains you. You are part of this effortless cycle of give and take. You are participating in an exchange with the elements, with other living beings, with the earth herself. With each inhale, breathe in the earth’s compassion, and with each exhale, breathe out gratitude.

Relax here in this indivisible connection with all that surrounds you; breathe in compassion, and breathe out gratitude.

Now comes the hard part. Visualize a place or being or community you love that is suffering from climate and environmental harm. It could be a river, a species, the community you belong to, or even the earth herself rotating in space.

Resting in and rooted by the compassion and gratitude you hold, I want you to access your intention, your motivation to alleviate the suffering of your beloved. Now, when you inhale, breathe in their suffering; and when you exhale, breathe out your compassion.

This can sometimes bring up fear, or you may be swept away by grief. If that happens, simply go back to grounding yourself in the earth’s support. When you’re ready, come back to inhale the pain and suffering, exhale your compassion and healing.

You can practice this for as long as you feel comfortable and at ease. Do not force yourself; you can always come back to this stage another time.

When you are ready, I would like you to return to the earlier exchange of compassion and gratitude. However, this time you will reverse the direction. Let yourself inhale the

earth’s gratitude for your existence; and when you exhale, offer the compassion and love you have for her. You are inextricably connected with her in every moment and there is no division here.

Wonderful. As you emerge from this practice, please set the intention to try it again the next time climate distress or eco-anxiety arises. You can also compress the practice and simply rest in the give-and-take of compassion and gratitude for short moments throughout your day. The work you do is critically important for safeguarding the earth and all the life she carries. I hope this practice strengthens your inner resilience as you go forward.

♦

From A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis with the Power of Our Hearts and Minds by Susan Bauer-Wu © 2023 by the Mind & Life Institute. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

The post Your Despair Over the Environment Is Valid. Embrace It. appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

This well-known story is from one of the first widely read works on Zen published in English, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, compiled and published by Paul Reps in 1957. It incorporates stories from several sources, including a book published in 1919 called 101 Zen Stories, which in turn drew mostly from a 13th-century Japanese collection, the Shasekishū, and a koan collection, The Gateless Gate (Jpn: Mumonkan).

Ask anyone today the meaning of the story and they will likely give the same answer: carpe diem; Seize the day! Enjoy life while it lasts; live life to the fullest; savor the simple pleasures of life while you can; or, in the words of the title of a book by Maezumi Roshi, Appreciate Your Life. Many philosophers and religious thinkers have emphasized that profound awareness of one’s mortality changes the way one lives and feels life. Anyone who has had a serious illness or accident knows something about this. So this story presents an illustration of being able to appreciate the sweetness of whatever the moment brings in the face of the situation we are all inevitably in—hanging on for life while the white and black mice of passing days and nights nibble away at our remaining time. The Zen attitude, the story suggests, is to fully appreciate and savor each moment in unblinking awareness of our precarious circumstances. Meditation, we might further infer, fosters this appreciation.

There exist, however, other iterations of the story that imply an altogether different message, including versions in ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts. The Buddhist one is in the Lalitavistara, a fourth-century account of the life of the Buddha. In this text, the man is chased by an elephant instead of a tiger, he falls into a well instead of off a cliff, and rats, rather than mice, nibble the vine. Below him is a great serpent, and four snakes come from the sides of the well attempting to bite him. Instead of the strawberry, there is a beehive from which drops of honey fall into his mouth while bees swarm and sting him. And brush fires burn the tree branch to which he clings. The Buddha, who is relating this story, details what the various elements represent (the elephant is impermanence, the fire is old age, the serpent below, death). The five drops of honey represent desires for food and drink, sleep, sex, wealth, and fame. He leaves no ambiguity about the moral of the story: “That is why, great king, you should know that birth, old age, illness, and death are quite terrible. You should always remember them, and not become a slave to your desires.” In a version found in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, the story is put into the mouth of a Jain monk, who explains that the drops of honey are trivial pleasures that people become attached to and consume insatiably, distracting them from the spiritual life. He mocks the doomed man for craving the superficial pleasure of the honey in the face of his precarious situation.

The story of how this tale migrates from the world-weary ethos of ancient ascetic communities in India to the back pockets of world-affirming, strawberry-eating seekers in the 1960s is long, complicated, and fascinating. The story of the Buddha’s life told in the Lalitavistara, containing within it our story of the unfortunate falling man, was picked up by the Manicheans and transformed into the tale of Barlaam and Josaphat (the latter’s name is likely derived from the term “bodhisattva”). An Arabic version circulated in eighth-century Persia, and from there it was adapted to Christianity and attributed to St. John Chrysorrhoas of Damascus (675–749). In this version the man is transfixed with tasting the honey and, failing to notice a ladder his friend extends to him, falls and is devoured by the dragon below, now representing Satan.  

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat circulated throughout Europe and the Middle East for centuries and was translated into many languages. In the nineteenth century, Leo Tolstoy used the story of the man in the well as the centerpiece of his autobiographical work, A Confession, where he saw it as an expression of the futility of his life up to the point of his radical personal transformation and embracing of a liberal, pacifist understanding of the teachings of Jesus. Tolstoy’s autobiography, in turn, had a profound influence on a young Indian lawyer in the nineteenth century—Mohandas Gandhi—who would incorporate it into his own revolutionary teachings. So the story made its way back to India after becoming a part of most of the major religious traditions of the world and attaining new meanings and significance in each one. Meanwhile, around the same time Gandhi encountered it, a Zen monk named Nyogen Senzaki (1876–1958), one of the first Zen monks to teach in the United States, compiled and helped translate a version of the story of the man in the well—which had all the while been circulating in Asia, both independently and as a part of the Lalitavistara and other texts—into the version we have now in English in the book 101 Zen Stories, which became a part of Reps’ slim, pocket-sized volume, which is still in print and part of essential Zen reading in America.  

The journey of this story illustrates how texts, works of art, poems, rituals are never fixed in their meaning. They yield up new interpretations in new contexts, as novel meanings are coaxed out of them by new cultural contexts, and people tweak them to resonate with prevailing ideals and assumptions. All of this is a rather roundabout way of illustrating that the ethic of renunciation so pervasive in early Buddhist literature often fades into invisibility in modernized Buddhisms and is largely displaced by what I would call the ethic of appreciation. This ethic entails an affirmation of the implicit value of the physical world, the senses, and the ordinary experience of ordinary people. The ethic of appreciation contrasts strikingly with the ethic of world-renunciation that dominates the early Buddhist literature. It is part of a broader Indian ascetic literature that attempts to train the mind to see things in particular ways, develop particular virtues, sensibilities, aesthetic responses, and affective habits. According to the suttas and the Vinaya, monastics must train themselves in detachment from the world. They are to cultivate indifference, for example, to the eight worldly concerns: hope for gain and fear of loss; hope for fame and fear of disgrace; hope for praise and fear of blame; hope for pleasure and fear of pain (AN 8.5). They are to see the world as something that cannot possibly bring about satisfaction, as something fleeting and unreliable, deceptive and beguiling. They should become disenchanted with it and withdraw emotional investment in seeking satisfaction from it. They are to imagine the interior of bodies to counter attraction to physical beauty, cultivate revulsion at physiological processes like digestion and sex, and take opportunities to view corpses to ameliorate illusions of permanence and vivify the inevitability of death. They are to shun attachment to family and avoid seeking solace in the inevitably fragile and unstable human relationships. The world is often called a “mass of suffering.”  

There is another side to this, however. These attitudes exist in counterpoint to advice in the suttas on good family relations and the need to cultivate particular social emotions like love, compassion, and taking joy in others’ happiness. In some literature, readers are advised to cultivate the kind of love toward all living beings that a mother has for her only son. The Buddha gives advice to kings on worldly affairs and is clearly invested in the wellbeing of people, animals, and society. So throughout the Buddhist traditions a tension exists between an ethic of detachment and renunciation and a more this-worldly ethic of compassion and engagement. Also, we should remember the wide array of this-worldly practices Buddhists have developed that were oriented toward physical health, worldly prosperity, and a fortunate rebirth this side of nirvana. We have to be careful, therefore, not to overstate the anti-worldliness of early Buddhism or suggest that it has an unrelentingly negative view on embodied life. Rather, a great deal of Buddhist literature attempts to navigate this tension between ascetic detachment and compassionate engagement.  

The message of the early version of the story of the man in the well—as well as the meditations on corpses and contemplations of the repugnance of the body—is not that one should appreciate one’s life, with its delicious honey drops, beautiful scenery, exquisite scents and tastes, and other physical delights. It is, rather, that such sensual engagement merely entraps one further in the cycle of samsara. Granted, Buddhist traditions are not univocal in this. Tantric literature sometimes starkly reverses the devaluation of the physical, valorizing the body and physiological processes, seeing them as essential to liberation. A passage from the Candamaharosana Tantra, for example, declares:

One should not torment oneself with austerities,

Abandoning the five sense-objects.

One should notice beauty as it comes along,

And listen to the sound.

One should smell the odor

And savor the supreme taste.

One should experience the sensation of touch,

Pursuing the five types of sense-objects.

One will quickly become awakened….

East Asian Buddhist literature, drawing from the broader strains of the Daoist reverence of mountains, rivers, and trees, expresses a similar admiration of the physical and natural world, some seeing even rocks and grasses as infused with buddha-nature.  

The ethic of appreciation that has more recently become intertwined with Buddhist and Buddhist-derived meditative practices, however, may be something new. It is part of the modern valorization of worldly life, what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “affirmation of ordinary life.” The idea is that the value and dignity of human life does not reside beyond it but in the manner of living it. The ordinary person, rather than the noble warrior or king, becomes the center of artistic attention in modern art and literature, where ordinary experience is valorized and, in some cases, even sacralized. Much of the world of global, cosmopolitan late-modernity flows from the European Enlightenment, and one of its distinctive characteristics was this broad sense of world-affirmation. Most inheritors of this tradition have a general sense that the world and worldly activity are good in and of themselves. Marriage, reproduction, and work attain an esteem absent in medieval times, when the world was often considered a place of brief, temporary residence prior to occupying one’s true home in the afterlife. Pleasure was positively reevaluated, as was material well being. A positive view of the prospects of worldly satisfaction is not, of course, exclusive to the modern West, but it has been a prominent and enduring feature of the modern and late-modern eras.

Contemporary meditation and mindfulness practices have embedded themselves in this world-affirming ethos, absorbing it so thoroughly as to transform the significance of the practice itself. Consider a standard exercise in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction courses. One of the first things students do is eat a raisin. They first look at the raisin, notice its folds and contours, then eat it excruciatingly slowly, with complete focus on the flavors, sensations, textures—all the nuances of the experience of this simple, everyday activity. The exercise is designed to bring increased attention to something familiar in order to uncover hidden dimensions of ordinary experience. The clear implication is that all experiences are like this. They all contain hidden aspects, secret delights, normally occluded subtleties to which we, in our mindless routines, have become blind. To increase attention to the fine-grained qualities of our ordinary experiences is to truly live our life rather than miss it in a haze of daydreams, distractions, and mental chatter. The underlying message is: the raisin is good; your sense-experience is good; your life as an embodied being who eats and digests and has sex and enjoys the sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, and smells of the natural world is good.    

The purpose of close attention to the ordinary phenomena of embodied experience in the early Buddhist meditation texts is quite different. These practices are designed to bring about disenchantment (nibbida—sometimes translated “revulsion”) with all phenomena and to develop dispassion (viraga) and detachment from them. There is still a hint of detachment in contemporary versions: one detaches from one’s ordinary habitual attitudes and mindless sleepwalking through life in order to discover the hidden treasures just below the surface. And it is not just treasures: sometimes one finds ugly emotions, hidden internal conflicts, repressed desires. But underlying it all is the idea that in order to deal with such difficulties, as well as appreciate the wonders of life, one must be mindful and increase one’s scope of awareness—and that, ultimately, even in the face of old age, sickness, and death, embodied human life is good in and of itself, whether or not there is an afterlife or nirvana.  

The point here is not to disparage recent reconfigurations of meditation as not sufficiently “traditional,” nor to laud them as having shaken off the shackles of tradition. Buddhist traditions have been adapted and transformed in different cultures long before coming to the West. In each case, the ideas and practices incorporated elements of the new culture and, in turn, contributed to changes in those cultures. In each case at least part of the value that meditative practices have offered derived not from the fact that they are being practiced exactly as a preceding historical version of the tradition practiced it but in how they became relevant in a novel cultural context.

If the ethic of appreciation is baked into contemporary culture, and meditation and mindfulness in our era are inevitably tilted toward the “this-worldly” side of the equation, the question then becomes: to what this-worldly uses are these practices best put today? Is meditation a tool for creating more productive workers to feed the system of global capital? Or does it focus the critical faculties of the mind for resistance against systems of routinization, commodification, and oppression? For critical inquiry into the social hierarchies and oppressive structures? Does it create an inner citadel that insulates one from being adversely affected by external events? Or does it create greater attunement, intimacy, and sensitivity to the world and others in the world? Is it for creating mental and physical health as understood today? Or for fostering an awareness of a transcendent dimension of experience? These are questions that, whether they are formulated explicitly or not, are being worked out among practitioners and their communities every day. They are not so much about the abstract question how does meditation work? but, rather, what work does meditation do in a novel cultural ecosystem?

♦

This piece is adapted from the forthcoming book Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds, Oxford University Press.

The post Strawberries and the Ethic of Appreciation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

A mantra is a syllable, word, or group of words that has psychological or spiritual power. The earliest mantras go back three thousand years, when they were first used on the Indian subcontinent. The resonance that arises between a sound vibration and our thoughts, feelings, and intentions happens naturally, much like two tuning forks resonating at the same frequency. Today, there are a multitude of phrases readily available throughout the world’s meditative traditions. 

The word mantra is derived from two Sanskrit words—manas, meaning “mind,” and tra, meaning “protect.” Together they translate to “protection,” and in some cases, “compassion.” Our original, still mind is always here, but our worries and fears leak all over everything, so our original self goes unnoticed. 

A mantra has the power to protect us from this leaking. And since compassion can be described as wisdom actualized, a mantra also cultivates clarity and wisdom. A mantra, then, is a tool that protects the mind, cultivates clarity and wisdom, and actualizes compassion. 

Although most prominent in Eastern traditions, mantras are also used in other traditions and religions. A popular mantra for Protestant Christians is simply the name Jesus. Catholics commonly repeat the Hail Mary prayer or Ave Maria—my Catholic grandmother used to work her prayer beads continually with the Hail Mary or Ave Maria. Many Jewish practitioners recite Baruch atah Adonai, meaning “Blessed art thou, oh Lord.” 

The very first phrase I used to mindfully focus my thoughts, feelings, and highest intention—knowing almost nothing about Buddhism—was from The Teachings of the Mystics by W. T. Stace. It was Jesus’s simple phrase, “the peace that passeth understanding.” I repeated it, over and over, during a train ride from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. This was before I began a meditation practice or even knew what meditation was. I discovered that if I repeated it continually with heartfelt effort throughout the trip, I became surrounded and permeated by a feeling of deep spaciousness and joy. Once I fell into the groove of it, the sense of spaciousness sustained itself through the remainder of the trip. 

Most of the mantras I have used since then have come from the Buddhist tradition, with one exception. During the three or four years I spent with a Lakota spiritual guide, I followed his advice to repeat Mitakuye Oyasin, which translates to “all my relatives.” Whenever I felt walled off, as if I were somehow excluded from the interbeing nature of all life, I would chant Mitakuye Oyasin. 

Mitakuye Oyasin reflects the Lakota worldview that all beings are interconnected. And time after time, I fell into the same deep spaciousness and joyful sense of interbeing I’d experienced many years before when I first heard it. If you do this yourself, you may find that the joyful stillness you aspire to is closer than you think, closer than your own breath. 

Teacher and author Sally Kempton said that a mantra is “a bit like rubbing a flint against a stone to strike fire.” She goes on to say that it’s the friction between the syllables of the mantra that ignites the fire and, over time, shifts your inner state. 

One way that the fire shifts your inner state is by burning through the turmoil and the incessant mental chatter that can get so stirred up during our meditation. As we come back to our word or phrase again and again, there is the potential to open into a great spaciousness that includes everything and is, at the same time, infused with a deep calm—even in the midst of so much seemingly insurmountable turmoil. 

Yogis have used mantras for hundreds of years to experience the profound sense of calm that mantra practice can bring about, and Western science is finally catching up. Modern brain-imaging techniques have confirmed the benefits of this ancient practice. In one study in 2017, researchers from Linköping University in Sweden measured activity in a region of the brain called the default mode network—the area that’s active when we are remembering, regretting, and rehearsing—to measure the effects of mantra practice. The researchers concluded that mantra practice induced a state of deep relaxation, and furthermore, they found that a regular practice could promote the ability to deal with life’s stresses more skillfully. 

Mantra Practice 

Find a mantra that resonates with you and try to set aside ten to twenty minutes a day to practice. Once you’ve chosen a specific mantra, it’s best to stay with it for some months, giving it a chance to do its work, before considering a switch to another one. 

Begin by sitting in a comfortable position. Repeat the mantra a few times silently, on each inhale and exhale. Don’t try to focus on the mantra too hard; simply allow your body and mind to relax into it. Just like you would in any other type of meditation, when thoughts or feelings enter your mind, simply notice them and then return to silently reciting the word or phrase. 

The most frequently recited mantra in the Zen tradition comes from the Heart Sutra: gate gate paragate parasamgate (gate is pronounced ga-tay). It translates to “gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond.” You can repeat one word or the entire series of words. 

When I was having an especially difficult time staying focused during a seven-day retreat, Suzuki Roshi suggested that I make this mantra the focus of my meditation. It was a surprising suggestion because, at that time, Suzuki had never talked about using techniques of any kind, much less mantras. All these years later, I continue to be grateful for this instruction, and I still use it whenever I’m experiencing some difficulty in my meditation. 

Gate gate paragate parasamgate is about going beyond our limiting beliefs, which cloud our ability to see clearly. And going beyond strongly held beliefs requires that we go beyond the three types of poisonous glue that hold these beliefs in place. The first type is greed: we grasp at any shiny object that promises immediate pleasure. The second poisonous glue is hatred: we push away anything that interferes with our getting what we want. And the third is ignorance: our tendency to ignore everything else. 

So far, I have mentioned several mantras from which you may choose. Here are three more that you might find to be useful: 

May I meet this moment fully.
May I meet it as a friend. 

In the first sentence you are affirming that an alert and balanced mind, which is not caught by before or after, is a possibility for you. In the second sentence, you are affirming your ability to welcome whatever comes with an open heart. 

Real, but not true 

This mantra affirms that your thoughts and emotions are real— but not necessarily true. When we believe something to be true, we naturally contract around it. If you can relax into this short but insightful mantra, new meanings and possibilities may be revealed. 

Things as it is

This expression originated with Suzuki Roshi and has since become a popular mantra. While grammatically incorrect—which I foolishly pointed out to him once—Suzuki’s odd nomenclature has a unifying effect. It acknowledges conventional reality, which is often referred to in Buddhism as “the 10,000 things”—and then, in the same breath, affirms the no-thingness of ultimate reality. 

Choosing a mantra is not complicated. Just select one that resonates with you, engages you, and burns through your mental chatter. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested “deep” on the in-breath and “peace” on the out-breath, or “present moment” on the in-breath and “only moment” on the out-breath. It really can be that simple—and at the same time quite powerful. 

The nineteenth-century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson discovered that he could calm his mind by merely sitting still and repeating his own name. Here’s how he described the experience: “My individuality itself seems to dissolve and fade away into boundless being . . . the loss of personality seeming no extinction, but the one true life.”

I’m sure it’s obvious by now that the specific mantra is not so important. What is important is consistency and engagement. When you catch yourself trying to empower the mantra yourself, just return to the actual practice of pouring your whole body and mind into the mantra and letting go of any thought of gain or loss. Your effort is to simply be present with the mantra—wherever it takes you, there you are, fully present and at one with the mantra, which, within itself, includes all beings.   

⧫

From Enlightenment Is an Accident: Ancient Wisdom and Simple Practices to Make You Accident Prone by Tim Burkett, edited by Wanda Isle © 2023 by Tim Burkett. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

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