I have found a simple image from one of my teachers hugely helpful: “The mind will get filled with qualities like mindfulness or lovingkindness moment by moment—just the way a bucket gets filled with water drop by drop.” As soon as that image appeared in my mind’s eye, I clearly saw two powerful tendencies. One was to stand by the bucket lost in fantasy about how utterly exciting and wonderful it would be when the bucket was filled, and while lost in the glories of my someday enlightenment, I am neglecting to add the next drop. The other tendency, equally strong, was to stand by the bucket in despair at how empty it was and how much more there was to go—once again not having the patience, humility, and good sense to add one drop exactly in that moment.

Because I’ve used this image in my teaching, I’ve heard variations on my own fantasies. Often people come to me and say “I tend to completely overlook my own bucket to peer into someone else’s to see how well they’re doing. Is theirs fuller than mine? Is it emptier? What’s going on over there?” 

Comparison is disempowering. It dissociates us from our own potential. 

Often people say “I think my bucket has a leak.” My response: “These buckets don’t leak.” 

Mindfulness and lovingkindness are not objects we can either have or not have. We can never lose them. We may lose touch with these qualities of heart, but right here and now we can recover them. It is each moment of recovery that adds a drop to the bucket. In every single moment, regardless of what is happening, we can be mindful, we can be compassionate. In an instant, the mind can touch these qualities again, come to know them again. In that sense, the bucket is completely full with every drop. 

Excerpted from Finding Your Way: Meditations, Thoughts, and Wisdom for Living an Authentic Life by Sharon Salzberg (Workman Publishing) © 2023.

The post Drop by Drop appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The second of the five hindrances is ill will (vyapada), which arises when we carelessly turn our attention to that which provokes our dislike. Although we most readily recognize ill will as hostility, it can also manifest as aversion, causing us to push against or turn away from that which we want to avoid. The result is an agitated, troubled mind.

The sutras say it’s like gazing into a pot of boiling water. As the water churns and seethes, it prevents us from seeing our reflection clearly. Not seeing, we misperceive ourselves and others. Our viewpoint becomes narrow, which leads us to constrict and defend. Therefore, the primary remedy for ill will is to allow the water to become calm by cultivating lovingkindness (metta). We can also meditate on the four immeasurables of lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, since any of these will cause the feeling of ill will to dissipate. Although we’re all capable of holding conflicting emotions, it’s actually impossible to be simultaneously hostile and loving in our thoughts. Metta is the primary antidote for ill will and the confusion that accompanies it, because it truly is like the rays of the sun, as the Buddha said. It radiates, illuminating everything in its path. 

• Tip: The first step in working with ill will is to look at it closely. The most challenging aspect of ill will—or any of the other hindrances—is that it’s intoxicating. A part of us wants to be hostile—which means we must make room for the part of us that would rather be free. Stop, look, and wait. Then watch as ill will, unheeded, fades.
• “An aspect of investigating ill will is to discover the beliefs that support it. Why do we believe it is important or pertinent to remain with these thoughts and motivations? How might we believe that aversion will benefit us? Why might we believe that ill will is justified?” –Gil Fronsdal
• “Keep in mind that the layers of conditioning on a person have made them difficult to handle, just like the layers of dirt on a cloth. Perhaps they have faced hardship unknown to us. . . . What matters is that we see that someone is suffering. We can offer them our loving-friendliness.” –Bhante Gunaratana
• Tip: If you feel yourself caught in a loop of aversion or hostility, try turning to a friend for help. Good friendship can be a powerful balm for our negativity. A noble friend can help us gain perspective or simply listen attentively as we acknowledge our struggle. They can remind us that whatever we’re going through will pass.
• “We must find a way to abandon the hindrance of ill will directly, without waiting until circumstances change and we get the justice, retribution, or redemption we’ve been craving. We have to work on ourselves.” –Domyo Burk 

♦

This is the second installment of our series on the five hindrances—sensual desire, ill will, sloth/torpor, anxiousness, and doubt—and their respective antidotes. A printable version is available here.

The post Working with the Five Hindrances: Ill Will appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Many years ago, I was listening to a talk on lovingkindness by a Buddhist teacher when someone in the audience shared their experience: no matter how much they meditated and brought mindfulness to their day, they were still their same old shitty self. Although I initially laughed at the comment, it simultaneously resonated deeply with me. At the time, I too had been striving hard in my practice, with high hopes that after enough hours of meditation and retreats, I would somehow land myself in a blissed-out state of perfection. I truly felt that if I dedicated myself fully to the practice, I’d no longer have to deal with the messiness of my imperfections and would finally be able to love and accept myself. 

How many of us have felt just like that audience member? We go to all of these workshops, read a bunch of spiritual books, meet gurus and teachers, sign up for retreats, and do hours and hours of meditation only to meet the same difficult feelings, thoughts, and habits we started out with. This feeling of failure can be very discouraging and can easily become a breeding ground for self-hatred, which is definitely not the direction our practice is supposed to go in. 

For me, during that time, it felt like I was completely covered in mud, and no matter how hard I tried to get clean, I still ended up all muddy. I wondered: How can I love myself when I keep meeting the parts of myself that I hate? How can I be loving toward myself if I’m continuously covered in mud? 

The answer to this predicament came to me one day on an afternoon jog. As I was out running, I saw a statue of Budai, the Laughing Buddha, covered in mud. Although he was very dirty, he still had a big loving smile and was bursting with joy. Seeing this offered me a new possibility. What if we all were able to stop desperately trying to clean ourselves off and instead learned how to love ourselves anyway just as we are—warts and all? Could we cultivate an unconditional friendliness—embracing rather than fighting our so-called “shitty” selves—and learn how to be joyfully covered in mud just like the Laughing Buddha? 

I believe we can and that this is the essence of our practice. And the good news is we don’t have to wait for completion or perfection before we finally begin loving ourselves. We can actually start right now. 

If we want to love our imperfect selves, it’s helpful to see ourselves through the lens of the three I’s: Impermanent, Imperfect, and Impersonal. 

The “mud” of our lives, our mistakes, flaws, and imperfections, constantly come and go and are always changing. No matter how much we try to clean ourselves off, eventually more mud arrives. Yet, if we understand impermanence—the truth that everything changes and ends—then we can see our imperfections not as permanent traits that need to be hated or removed but rather as an ever-flowing stream of life energy to be embraced and worked with. Instead of disliking ourselves for being covered in mud, we can actually love ourselves anyway and create a warm, friendly atmosphere in our own being that’s spacious enough to allow all of the “mud” to come and go. 

I remember for many years in my practice not being able to stand certain feelings, thoughts, and habits I experienced daily. I used to joke that there were two versions of myself: “Mark,” with all his imperfect ways of being, and “Monk” who wanted to live a perfect, Buddhist-inspired life. This splitting of myself into two opposing versions made my life a living hell and left no room for self-love. There were times when I wanted to go out and have some casual drinks with my friends, but I had taken vows that included not taking any intoxicants. Yet, there I was by the end of the night, completely wasted. Or other times when I would say something inappropriate or allow myself to burst out in a fit of rage, even though I had made a commitment to wise speech. I would struggle and fight the urges of “Mark” and would always end up losing against them. No matter how hard I tried, I would eventually cave in and wind up hating myself, thinking, “You’ve been meditating all these years and you’re still screwing this up?” 

Trust me when I tell you I tried anything and everything to make these imperfections disappear. But to no avail! It wasn’t until I allowed all of it to be there—allowing both “Mark” and “Monk” to live together harmoniously—that I was finally able to find some ease. I realized that what I was running away from was not actually who I was, but rather was nothing more than temporary changing conditions—thought patterns and unpleasant body sensations. I didn’t have to hate them, nor did I have to indulge or get lost in them, and I surely wasn’t “bad” or unworthy of love for having normal human urges and feelings. Understanding impermanence, combined with the act of radical acceptance, helped me cultivate an unconditional friendliness in my heart and mind, allowing me to begin the journey of loving my imperfect self.

Because all things are impermanent, we will naturally be imperfect—the second “I.” Completion and perfection are not possible because things come together and they fall apart. This is simply the nature of this life, and even if we somehow managed to attain some level of perfection, it would be dependent upon an infinite amount of changing conditions, causing it to be uncertain and unstable. 

What does this mean for us? Our bodies, emotions, thoughts, habits, and behaviors will always be imperfect. We will never have them permanently be the way we want. The good news is this isn’t a problem, it’s just how things are.

Understanding the second “I” requires meeting our imperfections as expected guests on the path of being human, not as unexpected and unwelcome intruders. Loving ourselves involves accepting this truth that we are imperfect, and once we realize this, we can shift away from perfection and instead move toward perfecting our love toward our imperfect selves. Rather than endlessly trying to be “better” and hating ourselves along the way, we can work with the current ingredients of our lives, and moment by moment meet each imperfection with a wise heart and a warm, loving attention.

The third “I”—the impersonal nature of our imperfections—begins to reveal itself as we repeatedly observe impermanence in our own bodies and minds. Since everything is in a constant state of flux, it’s not possible for there to be some solid, unchanging entity we can call “me.” Our fleeting imperfections don’t have to turn into a permanent identity. They are not our fault, nor are they who we truly are. Sure, we are responsible for how we relate to them, but ultimately they are nothing more than impersonal changing conditions, arising and falling away. This understanding allows us to drop the heavy burden of our imperfections being who we are. 

It’s a lot easier to love ourselves when we can relate to our flaws with lightheartedness and a sense of humor. Our flaws are not personal failures, they are impermanent, imperfect, and impersonal expressions of life. When viewed through the lens of the three “I’s,” our imperfect selves become much lighter and freer, allowing more room for love and appreciation. We may still get covered in mud from time to time, but we can do so joyfully, with hearts filled with love.

May you all be free from self-hatred.

May you all be held in compassion.

May you all love yourselves completely.

May you all be joyfully covered in mud.

The post Joyfully Covered in Mud appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I’m going to quit my job,” I told my meditation teacher. We were having a check-in midway through my first Vipassana retreat. The retreat was ten days long, and I felt a little trapped inside of it, which seemed like a normal reaction. After it was over, and I had returned to real life, all of my friends and colleagues wanted me to tell them every little detail, following up with, “I don’t think I could handle being silent for that long.” But for me, the silence wasn’t even close to the hardest part. It may sound boring, but the hardest part for me was the physical agony from sitting cross-legged all day. That, and the internal conflict that would come post-retreat. 

“Don’t quit your job,”  responded my meditation teacher. “People on their first Vipassana retreat often feel compelled to make such rash decisions,” she continued. Some people, like me, want to quit their jobs, while others want to give all their money away. Still others perceive the retreat as something negative, an evil problem; they try to “roll up their mat” and leave. 

I understood what she was saying, and why she was saying it. But, of everyone else in this situation who ever wanted to quit their job, how many worked in a vocation that was as expressly irreligious as mine? I had the five precepts written down on a sheet of printer paper I kept folded into quarters and tucked inside a notebook; the fifth read, I undertake to train myself to abstain from taking substances that cause intoxication to the point of heedlessness. I read the sentence over and over, trying to find a loophole in the law. There wasn’t one, and this was a problem for me. I am a sommelier. 

Pre-retreat, back when I had first committed myself to Buddhist practice, I immediately swore off alcohol, rebranding myself as a “sober somm.” I found this period of sobriety personally nourishing but limiting professionally. There is only so much wine one can spit into a paper cup.  

My relationship with sobriety was just the tip of the iceberg. Having taken the bodhisattva vow, I had in one arena of my life committed myself to help lead all sentient beings toward the goal of perfect enlightenment, yet in another, I was dazzling said beings with the allure of wine— not just a regular old intoxicant but one that carried alongside it the promise of a certain wordly elegance. Coming up against this from a bodhisattva’s perspective, I felt a new kind of powerlessness. My teacher was wrong, I was sure of it. I had to quit my job! 

When I returned to work after the Vipassana retreat, I was disappointed to discover that things were even bleaker than I thought. Over the course of my retreat, the scrappy hole-in-the-wall wine bar where I had worked for the past year and a half had relocated to a broad, white-walled former garage in an area of town known for nightlife, thus acquiring a more party-forward clientele and nearly quadrupling in size. Though the space was impressive, it was the polar opposite of the rustic retreat center I had grown used to. The room was adrenaline-fueled, accented in flashy, hot pink neon; I called it a “vodka and cocaine lounge,” which was only sort of a joke. Working my first evening service in the new space, time moved at a pace I couldn’t keep up with, and as I doggie-paddled my way through the swampy summer night, my coworkers took shots of tequila in the back room. 

I remembered back to several years prior, when I’d spent time on a vineyard in Galicia, Spain. The winemaker spoke zero English, and I spoke even less Spanish. I asked him questions by using the Google translate feature on my phone, which was complicated and annoying, but revelatory in how it forced us to cut out all but what was completely necessary. The winemaker was unromantic, a bona fide skeptic, but farmed according to the biodynamic calendar simply because “it worked.” One tenant of biodynamic farming is that the growth cycles on vineyards and farms are directly linked to the lunar cycle and other astronomical events, and that planting, cultivation, and harvest should be accordingly timed. 

It soothed me to consider the laws of biodynamics. A bottle of wine on a table in a restaurant might be an emblem of materialism, an enabler of heedlessness, but somewhere, to somebody, it is an extension of the moon. There is a depth to wine—a series of stories stored in roots, leaves, and vines, shaped by sunlight, perfected by the human touch—that I refuse to condemn. Winemaking is a holistic process, the passing of a torch, an energy, from a plant to a person—from the vineyard to the winery to my hands, then to someone else’s. This is what I give people—how they utilize that gift, I cannot control. And I accept that. 

I have since changed restaurants, relocating to a neighborhoody French bistro that is much more my speed, and at this point, I can’t imagine leaving my profession. I never had some life-changing light bulb moment wherein I explicitly decided to stay; rather, I simply continued to practice Buddhism daily, and, over time, the benefits of my practice canvassed all aspects of my life. 

To practice amidst such chaos is the real gift, a thousand times more fulfilling than succumbing to the easy allure of that faraway hilltop.

Now I think it is more profound to work mindfully as a sommelier than it is to work carelessly at a profession that’s more pious on paper. Being immersed in an industry known for fussy customers, whose behaviors run the gamut from kooky dietary restrictions to straight-up rudeness, provides me with an opportunity to practice lovingkindness every day. In the past, I would react to rude comments with coldness, sass, or even condescension (“Oh my God, can you believe table four called the Pinot Noir full-bodied? I honestly can’t with them…”), then spend the rest of the night dwelling on the negative interaction, repeating the details of the irritating event to my coworkers. I might have even continued to cycle through it, getting angrier and angrier, over drinks after my shift. Today, I find it much easier to slow down—a direct benefit of daily meditation practice—and take care to actually listen to the guest, rather than reacting impulsively or placing immediate blame. This almost always results in a positive outcome! It seems so obvious, yet still took me decades to put into practice. 

Of course, there’s no excuse for the borderline cruelty hospitality employees deal with so regularly, but I do find that approaching such situations with patience and empathy tends to mollify the painful responses more effectively than fighting fire with fire. And, if nothing else, it always helps to remember that everything is impermanent—even snarky customers.

Gone are the days when what I loved most about working in restaurants was the nervousness and buzz of it all, the escape of existing in a wholly reactive state. When I relished the drawn-out panic attack of a busy service, and believed that upholding a similarly frantic temperament was paramount to my professional success. When I responded to work emails on nights off, answered phone calls from floor managers in the middle of family dinners, and woke up in the middle of the night wondering if I’d remembered to lock the restaurant’s front door. When I was never not stressed. 

I’ve also moved past the days when I first found Buddhism and boomeranged in the complete opposite direction. I couldn’t believe I had been living my life bogged down by such pointless stress, and all I wanted to do was run away and escape the trivial material world to go meditate on top of a hill somewhere, ideally forever. What spiritual progress could I ever accomplish while wearing eyeliner in a devastatingly chic wine bar? 

In the end, the answer is: “A lot?” Over time, the lines between practicing and not-practicing have dissolved. Yes, I exist in an erratic and bizarre little world of dirty martinis and bad decisions, but to practice amidst such chaos is the real gift, a thousand times more fulfilling than succumbing to the easy allure of that faraway hilltop. Not that I want to rule out the possibility of the hilltop entirely—it does sound like my best-case-scenario retirement plan—but until that day comes, I practice Buddhism so I can share the benefits of my practice with the people who surround me, and not just keep them all to myself. 

The post Notes from a Buddhist Sommelier  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Thirteen years ago, inspired by his own practice, David Kearney, a gastroenterologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Seattle, Washington began offering classes in mindfulness and meditation to veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The vets found the sessions using Sharon Salzberg’s lovingkindness meditation particularly helpful. So helpful, in fact, that Kearney organized a clinical study to test just how well lovingkindness meditation could relieve symptoms of PTSD. In April, he published the results online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. His conclusion: a 12-week course of lovingkindness meditation was just as effective as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), the gold standard treatment for PTSD.  For Kearney, who recently retired after 25 years at the VA, the study was confirmation that meditation and mindfulness can be valuable resources for mental health professionals and patients alike. 

I reached Kearney at home in Seattle. We talked about how his study of lovingkindness meditation for PTSD came about and what it may mean for the way mental illness is treated in the future. 

How was your study of lovingkindness meditation conducted? We divided about 190 VA patients with PTSD into two groups: a lovingkindness group and a CPT group. The groups met once a week for 12 weeks. After that, we used a standard test measuring the severity of PTSD symptoms to evaluate the participants. When we compared the results from the lovingkindness group to the CPT group, there was no difference in the scores. 

What would the participants do in the lovingkindness sessions? The lovingkindness groups were led by experienced meditation teachers. We followed Sharon Salzberg’s practice of silently repeating phrases of good will for ourselves and others. Classically, four phrases are used, beginning with yourself: “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May my life unfold with ease.” As you practice, you begin to extend the phrases to others, from those who have helped you to the difficult people in your life. Participants would practice in class for 30—35 minutes, and follow with a discussion. They were also asked to practice at home. 

How have combat vets related to meditation? Veterans are very open to learning meditation practices—it’s actually popular. They don’t see it as spiritual practice, but more in terms of I’m just looking for something that helps me live with suffering. 

How did it go when the vets started doing lovingkindness practice? It was challenging for them at first. In classic lovingkindness practice, self is placed first, because that should be the easiest. But for people with PTSD, allowing yourself to receive kindness can be very difficult. They feel they’re not deserving of kindness or it’s selfish. They also found it difficult to extend lovingkindness to others, because they would commonly say they just didn’t think that other people had good will toward them. They even struggled when we asked them to think of a neutral person, someone you might see at the bus stop, or a cashier at the grocery store. People with PTSD don’t regard people as being neutral. They’re either a threat or not a threat. 

How did you handle those kinds of obstacles? We’d remind them that it was fine if they didn’t have feelings of kindness or compassion while practicing—they weren’t doing the practice wrong. We simply wanted them to notice whatever came to mind, including feelings of shame or anger, with an attitude of friendliness, kindness, and curiosity. 

How common is PTSD among vets? Very common. It’s estimated that as many as 25 percent of veterans who were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. When I started mindfulness sessions at the VA, the majority of the veterans in our groups had PTSD, and many of them said that the practice was helpful. That was surprising. When I trained to be a mindfulness facilitator, we were told not to include people with PTSD in our groups.

You weren’t supposed to teach mindfulness to people with PTSD. Why not? I was trained in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction techniques developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I spoke to him about this. I think for him it was simply a matter of being cautious, given how little was known at the time about applying mindfulness practice to mental illness. But we certainly weren’t going to turn vets away because they had PTSD. 

Are you a meditator? Yes, for many years. 

Do you have a Buddhist practice? I’ve learned from a lot of Buddhist teachers. The Spirit Rock tradition of Jack Kornfield, Sylvia Boorstein, and Sharon Salzberg has been particularly important to me personally. 

Is that how you learned about lovingkindness meditation? I read Sharon Salzberg’s book Lovingkindness and went on a seven-day lovingkindness meditation retreat at Spirit Rock. It had a real impact. 

How so?  In the days following the retreat, I was aware of being more open and interested in others, of appreciating the humanity and basic goodness of people, even those I didn’t necessarily like. There’s a line in the Metta Sutta that invokes the aspiration of “omitting none” from our openheartedness, and I felt like the retreat helped me to take a step in that direction. To quote Sylvia Boorstein, one of the teachers on the retreat:  “We’re not asking you to like other people, we’re just asking you to love them.”  I think the retreat helped me better understand the possibilities involved in those words.  

What made you think that lovingkindness meditation could be particularly helpful for PTSD? PTSD is characterized by distressing emotions, images, and memories, often accompanied by what psychologists call hindsight bias, the belief that you could have done something differently to avoid the traumatic event. I thought lovingkindness practice might be able to help people with PTSD relearn self-compassion in the face of negative emotions like guilt and self-blame. 

In your study, you compared lovingkindness meditation to Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which you describe as a “trauma-focused” treatment. What do you mean by that? Trauma-focused treatments like CPT work directly with memories or beliefs that arise from trauma. CPT is an intervention that uses techniques called cognitive restructuring and emotional reprocessing to help people examine the impact of trauma on their life and the fixed or overgeneralized beliefs that might have resulted from the trauma.

What kinds of fixed or overgeneralized beliefs? That the world is unsafe or that I can’t be close to people because other people can’t be trusted.  

In contrast, you describe lovingkindness meditation as a “non-trauma focused” treatment. How so? With lovingkindness meditation, there’s no intentional uncovering of trauma-related memories. Instead, the goal is to teach people skills they can use in daily life to disengage from cycles of rumination and self-criticism about their past or worry about the future. Both approaches are valuable, but trauma-focused treatment can be very difficult for some people. We need alternatives.

The symptom severity scores for people in the lovingkindness and CPT groups both improved by about 8 to 10 points. What does that mean? It means that both approaches resulted in a clinically measurable improvement, but the effects were often modest—about 40 percent of people in each group had a reduction of symptoms. That’s what we typically see with veterans because they’ve usually been through so much trauma. In our study, half the cases of PTSD were war-related and the average veteran in our group had been through at least 10 different categories of potentially PTSD-causing trauma. 

Yet, for many of them, their symptoms improved. Why do you think lovingkindness meditation worked as well as it did? Lovingkindness practice holds a mirror up to the mind so that these fixed beliefs of being unworthy of love, or that the world is unkind, or that people can’t be trusted are brought to the surface. Lovingkindness meditation is a tool they can use to be in contact with difficult emotions without judgement. It can be a gentle antidote to many aspects of PTSD. For example, instead of avoidance and suppression, which are hallmarks of PTSD, a person is taught to “stay with” whatever arises in practice with an attitude of curiosity, openness, kindness, and acceptance. 

In the future, do you think lovingkindness meditation could become a treatment for forms of mental illness other than PTSD? That’s possible. The VA has been very open to funding research projects like ours and, within the VA system, it’s very common for veterans with PTSD to participate in mindfulness programs as part of their routine care. Apart from PTSD, there have been studies showing that mindfulness practice can have benefits for depression. Another study showed that lovingkindness meditation could help certain manifestations of schizophrenia. But, until there are more studies, we just don’t know. We’re in the early phases of a new set of interventions based on kindness and compassion for people with mental illness. It would be wonderful if our study became a jumping off point for more research.

♦

Read Kearney’s full study in the Journal of the American Medical Association here.

The post Treating PTSD with Lovingkindness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“Zuisei, you just have to love them,” Hogen said, looking at me pointedly from under those Bodhidharma eyebrows of his. Caught off guard, I didn’t immediately reply. Love them? What was that supposed to mean? Hogen smiled at me and walked away before I could say anything. After a moment, I returned to my office grumbling under my breath. What did love have to do with anything?

It was the middle of the afternoon and I’d been heading to the kitchen for a snack when I overheard the tail end of a conversation between Hogen (now Hogen Sensei) and another monastery resident. As a senior monastic at Zen Mountain Monastery and the director of Dharma Communications (the monastery’s outreach arm), Hogen often gave advice to the mostly young and earnest residents, and his approach was like a football coach’s—gruff, practical, and caring: This is how you get into trouble. This is how you avoid it. I don’t remember what exactly he was telling that resident, but I knew I’d heard it before—many times before. So with more than a tinge of impatience, I’d asked him if he wasn’t tired of repeating himself. Love them, he’d said in response.

“Are you all right?” my officemate asked. I’d been staring out the window, trying to determine why I was so annoyed at Hogen’s comment. Love was too soft, too vague a teaching, it seemed to me—not to mention too impractical to actually address the suffering in the world.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I answered, though my annoyance hadn’t diminished one bit. I wasn’t about to lose sleep over it, though. I did a quick mental shrug and with it dismissed Hogen’s teaching. But his words must have remained tucked away in some deep recess of my mind, because about a decade later, they resurfaced exactly when I needed them.

Sun streamed through the window of the Buddha Hall, making my right eye water where it caught the glare off the oak floor. I thought of getting up to close the curtains but decided against it. My friend and I had offered incense at the altar before settling down on our cushions, and we now sat a few feet apart, facing each other, both of us solemn. She was about to tell me all the ways I’d hurt her over the last few months. My job was to sit quietly and listen.

A year earlier I’d taken on Hogen’s old job as director of operations, but because the monastery was short-staffed at the time, for a while I doubled as the creative director—a role I’d had for a few years. At first I was excited by the challenge. I didn’t have any business experience but was eager to learn, and I’ve always thought there’s no better way to learn than by doing. But I hadn’t counted on the challenge of having to run a business on roughly 20 hours of work a week with an all-volunteer staff who also had little or no business experience. And while in the past a mistake on my part had meant little more than a missed deadline, now each of my gaffes showed clearly in the quarterly reports. In the days before and after each board meeting I walked around with a knot in my stomach.

It wasn’t long before I felt completely overworked and undertrained, and although I could have responded to the stress in any number of ways, despite my years of practice I resorted to the oldest cover-up for insecurity: domination.

“You’re imperious,” the web director said to me one day after a particularly tense exchange between us. But I was too unsure about my ability to do the work to actually take in what she was saying, too afraid to stop and reflect on whether there might be a better way of working and leading.

My friend and I sat facing each other, both of us solemn. She was about to tell me all the ways I’d hurt her over the last few months.

I’ll be damned if I let this ship go down under my watch, I thought, as I put my head down and pushed even harder. Running on stubborn, manic energy, I worked through meals, breaks, and weekends. I even worked during zazen, plotting marketing campaigns and running cost and benefit scenarios in my head. After a few weeks of this, I got sick, and then I got sick again. But I just ignored the signs and kept going, truly believing that the only solution was to work harder. Yet the more overworked I felt, the more I unconsciously took out my distress on anyone who dared to cross me. So it wasn’t surprising that I’d finally been called out on my harshness and impatience.

The graphic designer, whom I considered a good friend, had complained to the abbot about our interactions, which had culminated in a disagreement about the store catalog. My friend, who was meticulous to a fault and very hardworking, simply didn’t share my need to work herself to the ground to meet an arbitrary deadline. In other words, she had her priorities straight. She knew she’d gone to the monastery to do Zen training, and she understood that work was only one aspect of it.

“I’ll have the catalog ready in a day, two at most,” she said to me. “It’s not a problem.”

She was right, of course. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a problem at all. But I was too caught up in my own agenda to see the larger picture. All I could think of was the lost revenue those extra days would translate into. So I yelled at her, and now the two of us were sitting in the Buddha Hall.

Abashed, I waited quietly as she pulled out two legal-sized sheets of paper covered with tiny lettering. “I took some notes,” she said, and started reading from a list of grievances. At one point, as she flipped a page to look for a particular point, I noticed that she’d run out of room but had kept on writing in a loop in even smaller letters along the margin.

It was that cramped visual catalog of my wrongdoings that finally jolted me out of my daze. You have to do better, I thought. Then I remembered Hogen’s advice to me.

It’s said that one day, when the Buddha was staying at Savatthi, five hundred monks came to see him and asked for instruction. With great skill, the Buddha offered each of them meditation techniques suited to their particular temperament and capacity, and afterward the monks set off toward the Himalayan foothills in search of a place where they could do an intensive retreat. After wandering for some time, they found a beautiful hill bordered by a forest grove with a clear spring running through it and nearby, a town with a large marketplace. Delighted at having found such a perfect spot, the monks decided to spend the night in the forest.

The next morning they headed into town to beg for their food, and the villagers, happy to have such devoted practitioners among them, fed the monks generously and asked them to stay in the grove. Over the following weeks, the villagers built a small hut for each monk and furnished it with a cot, a stool, and a couple of pots. The monks settled in, and everyone was very pleased with the arrangement. But neither group knew that in that forest lived a band of tree-dwelling devas who, out of respect for the five hundred mendicants, didn’t want to remain in the trees while the group practiced meditation below them. So the divine beings left their homes and retired to the edge of the forest, where they waited patiently for the monks to finish their retreat. But as the weeks went by and it became clear that the wanderers were not leaving, the devas got together and decided that the only thing to do was to scare them away. Using their supernatural powers, they transformed themselves into wrathful demons and went around the grove shrieking and moaning, while all around them wafted a stench so awful that even the trees began to wither.

Scared out of their wits and utterly disgusted by the smell, the monks rushed from the grove and traveled en masse to Jetta’s Grove to plead with the Buddha to find a new place for them to practice. But the Buddha said, “Monks, go back to the same spot! Only by striving there will you attain the liberation you’re seeking. Don’t be afraid,” he added. “Take this sutra with you. Use it as the object of your meditation and also as a tool for protection.” Then he taught them the Karaniya Metta Sutta, “The Discourse on Loving-kindness” (quoted here from the Amavati Sangha translation). It begins:

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace.

Only 42 lines long, the sutra paints a portrait of someone for whom loving-kindness is a beacon. It describes a person who has chosen to be free rather than to be right—one of the most difficult and most profound shifts any of us will ever make. It was precisely the shift I needed, I finally realized, if I was going to fulfill the vows I’d made as a monastic. I hadn’t gone to the monastery to run a business, after all. I’d gone there to train because I wanted to wake up, and I’d made a vow to help others wake up too. But reading the sutra, I could very clearly see the gap between reality and my aspiration.

Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways. Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.

Since taking on my new job, I’d most definitely been proud, demanding, and easily dissatisfied. I hadn’t felt peaceful or calm, and I certainly hadn’t been wise or skillful. I could be frugal, yes, but I couldn’t in all honesty call myself contented—especially since most of the time I did feel burdened. As for humility, well, let’s just say I had a long way to go. So even though I now had a way to understand and put into practice Hogen’s teaching, I wasn’t sure I was actually up to the task.

One evening I was walking up to my cabin and turning all this over in my mind when I passed an old sprawling oak at the top of the hill that led to the monastery’s cemetery. I remember stopping to stare at the oak’s thick, gnarled branches and saying under my breath, like an invocation, Let me love them. And immediately I felt in my body the response: fear. That’s when I realized I wasn’t actually skeptical of Hogen’s advice; I was afraid of it. I was afraid to get that close. Yet I also knew that choosing my boundaries was not an option. The same fear that kept me separate from others kept me separate from myself. So if I was going to love anyone, I had to begin with me. I had to be kind to the many beings in my mind: the perfectionist, the bully, the critic, and the cynic. The dictator, the judge, and the executioner. The fearful one, the vulnerable one, the insecure, and the ill at ease. I had to love all the many beings I knew well and the many others that I kept hidden. The ones I shunned or felt embarrassed by, those I tried to control, and those I pushed away.

Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none, The great or the mighty, medium,
short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born—
May all beings be at ease!

I had to gently look at the mighty criticisms I slung my way when things weren’t working the way I wanted, the middling arguments I constantly had with myself, the tiny but frequent putdowns that filled my ongoing monologue. These were the unacknowledged thoughts and feelings that spilled over as anger, judgment, and impatience toward others. I had practiced long enough to know that the way I was treating others was the way I was treating myself—that one couldn’t change without the other.

Standing under the oak silhouetted against the darkening sky, I heard in my mind the Buddha’s response to the frightened monks: “Go back to your place of practice! It is only there that you’ll find liberation.” There, in the places that scare you. There, in the midst of your suffering, your aversion, your discomfort. There, in your fear, your anxiety, your confusion. There, in your frailty and your humanity.

“Zuisei, you just have to love yourself,” Hogen could have said to me. “That, too, is how you love them.”

The Buddha once said that those who truly love themselves will never hurt others. He said that if we were to wander through the whole world, we wouldn’t find anyone dearer to us than ourselves. But since others feel the same way, we should love the most loveable “other.” Then again, we could love them knowing that ultimately there’s no self and no other—there’s simply interbeing.

If ignorance keeps the wheel of samsara turning, wisdom shows us that love is the true fuel of creation, the universe’s prime mover.

It was the fourth day of sesshin, and I’d gone through my usual gamut of emotions. As the days went by, I swung from excitement to annoyance to calm to exhaustion in a pattern I’d come to recognize over years spent doing monthly silent retreats.

Now, just past the halfway point, I felt crushingly tired. The bell had just rung to start the second nightly period of zazen, the lowest of low points for me. My body usually went on strike around eight o’clock, protesting the fact that it had been up since three in the morning. And my mind, helpless to engage in anything even remotely resembling concentration, floated in a gray haze which no amount of yoga, green tea, or fasting had helped to dissipate over the years. So at a certain point I’d given in and decided that in the evenings I’d just sit as still and silent as I could, letting the waves of fatigue wash over me. At least I could rely on the fact that soon I’d be able to go to bed and get a blessed five or six hours of sleep.

Almost dizzy with exhaustion, I sat unmoving on my cushion, willing myself to stay upright. But then, about halfway through the period, something shifted. One moment I was so deep in the fog I barely knew where I was; the next thing I knew, my mind was bright, clear, and as far as I could tell, completely empty of thought. Instead, what filled me to the brim was a slow-spreading feeling of love. Like a drop of ink released into a bowl of water, the feeling started in my chest and gradually extended outward until it completely suffused my body and mind. Then it kept growing. It filled the zendo, enveloping the hundred or so sitters around me doing zazen in neat rows, quiet as trees. It encompassed the building, the snow-covered field that surrounded it, and the mountain rising in the distance. It grew and grew until I felt myself to be a dot in an ocean of love so vast, and at once so gentle and so fierce, that it was overwhelming. It did overwhelm me. It overwhelmed me until I couldn’t find myself anymore.

The bell rang to mark the end of the period, and I felt everyone stir around me. A woman cleared her throat and a few others echoed her. My neighbor sat with his knees drawn up to his chin and carefully massaged his legs while rotating one foot in circles. I stood up slowly, and as the instrumentalist began to ring the bell for the bows, I realized with a start that we were done for the day. I’d sat through walking meditation and the last zazen period without noticing. I didn’t even feel tired anymore.

That was the first time I thought of love as the ground of being, the first time I clearly felt that emptiness is not empty at all, but is filled with love. You just have to love them was the simplest, most direct instruction Hogen could have given me. It was also the truest. If ignorance keeps the wheel of samsara turning, wisdom shows us that love is the true fuel of creation, the universe’s prime mover.

Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.

When the monks had learned the Karaniya Metta Sutta from the Buddha, they returned to their grove and did as their teacher had instructed. Day and night they chanted its words and reflected on their meaning, and when the tree-dwelling devas heard the sutra, their hearts were suffused with love. They asked the monks to sit at the base of the trees and assured them that from that moment on, the devas themselves would protect them.

“No harm can ever befall a person who follows the path of metta,” says Acharya Buddharakkhita in his commentary to the sutra. This is love as protection.

Don’t worry, the Buddha said. Love the weak or strong. Love the great or the small, the seen and the unseen, those living near and far away. Love them as you love yourself. Love them unconditionally, whether you think you’re capable of it or not. This kind of love has nothing to do with ability. It has nothing to do with anything other than itself.

To me, this teaching said: Forget about things done or left to do. Forget about deadlines and milestones, profits and quotas. Those will be taken care of—they always are. So don’t worry. Whenever a being appears in front of you, just love them. That is your focus. That’s where the real work lies.

The post Just Love Them appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When we start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, we often think that somehow we’re going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are. It’s a bit like saying, “If I jog, I’ll be a much better person.” “If I had a nicer house, I’d be a better person.” “If I could meditate and calm down, I’d be a better person.” Or the scenario may be that we find fault with others. We might say, “If it weren’t for my husband, I’d have a perfect marriage.” “If it weren’t for the fact that my boss and I can’t get on, my job would be just great.” And, “If it weren’t for my mind, my meditation would be excellent.”

But lovingkindness—maitri (Pali, metta)—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open—actually being able to let go and open. Gentleness is a sense of good-heartedness toward ourselves. Precision is being able to see clearly, not being afraid to see what’s really there. Openness is being able to let go and to open. When you come to have this kind of honesty, gentleness, and good-heartedness, combined with clarity about yourself, there’s no obstacle to feeling lovingkindness for others as well.

Why Meditate?

As a species, we should never underestimate our low tolerance for discomfort. To be encouraged to stay with our vulnerability is news that we can use. Sitting meditation is our support for learning how to do this. Sitting meditation, also known as mindfulness-awareness practice, is the foundation of bodhicitta training. [Bodhicitta is the wish to attain enlightenment and to bring all beings to the same awakened state]. It is the home ground of the warrior bodhisattva.

Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies. It is a method of cultivating unconditional friendliness toward ourselves and for parting the curtain of indifference that distances us from the suffering of others. It is our vehicle for learning to be a truly loving person.

Gradually, through meditation, we begin to notice that there are gaps in our internal dialogue. In the midst of continually talking to ourselves, we experience a pause, as if awakening from a dream. We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the open-ended awareness that already exists in our minds. We experience moments of being right here that feel simple, direct, and uncluttered.

This coming back to the immediacy of our experience is training in unconditional, or absolute, bodhicitta. By simply staying here, we relax more and more into the open dimension of our being. It feels like stepping out of a fantasy and discovering simple truth.

The Six Points of Posture:

Sitting meditation begins with good posture. Awareness of the six points of posture is a way to be really relaxed and settled in our body. Here are the instructions:

• Seat: Whether you’re sitting on a cushion on the floor or in a chair, the seat should be flat, not tilting to the right or left, or to the back or front.

• Legs: The legs are crossed comfortably in front of you—or, if you’re sitting in a chair, the feet are flat on the floor, with the knees a few inches apart.

• Torso: The torso (from the head to the seat) is upright, with a strong back and an open front. If sitting in a chair, it’s best not to lean back. If you start to slouch, simply sit upright again.

• Hands: The hands are open, with palms down, resting on the thighs.

• Eyes: The eyes are open, indicating the attitude of remaining awake and relaxed with all that occurs. The eye gaze is slightly downward and directed about 4 to 6 feet in front of you.

• Mouth: The mouth is very slightly open so that the jaw is relaxed and air can move easily through both the mouth and nose. The tip of the tongue can be placed on the roof of the mouth.

Each time you sit down to meditate, check your posture by running through these six points. Anytime you feel distracted, bring your attention back to your body and these six points of posture.

⧫

From Comfortable with Uncertainty © 2002 by Pema Chödrön and Emily Hilburn Sell. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

This article was originally published on March 21, 2018

The post Nothing to (Im)prove appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Many people try to practice meditation these days. Their biggest problem is that they cannot keep their mind still. No matter how hard they try, they are unable to stop thinking. Why? Let me tell you a story that may illuminate this.

A woman received a call one afternoon, “Hi, this is C.F. Are you free this afternoon for a cup of coffee?”

“Sure,” the woman replied.

“Good,” continued C.F. “We will go to that coffee shop that I like, not the one that you prefer. You will have a short black coffee, not one of those high-cholesterol lattes that I know you like. You will have a blueberry muffin, just like me, not one of those silly pastries that I have seen you eat so often. We will sit in a quiet corner because that is where I want to sit, not out on the street where you always go. Then we will discuss politics, which is what I like to talk about, not that spiritual mumbo jumbo that you always twitter on about. Lastly, we will stay for 60 minutes, not 50 minutes or 70 minutes, just exactly one hour, because that is how long I want to stay.”

“Umm . . . ” replied the woman, thinking quickly, “I just remembered that I have to see my dentist this afternoon. Sorry, C.F., I can’t make it.”

Would you like to go out for a cup of coffee with someone who tells you where to go, what to eat and drink, where to sit, and what to discuss? No way!

And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, C.F. stands for Control Freak.

Compare this to someone meditating. “Mind, listen up! We are going to meditate now. You are going to watch the breath, which is what I want to do, not wander off wherever you want. You are going to place your awareness on the tip of the nose, which is what I like to do, not outside on the street. And you are going to sit there for exactly 60 minutes, not a minute more or less.”

When you are the control freak who treats your mind like a slave, no wonder your mind always tries to escape from you. It will think of useless memories, plan something that will never happen, fantasize, or fall asleep—anything to not get away from you. That is why you can’t keep still!

You are a control freak—that is why you can’t keep still!

Related: Are You Practicing Stupid Meditation? 

The same woman receives a call: “Hi! K.F. here. Would you like to come for a cup of coffee this afternoon? Where would you like to go? What would you like to drink and eat? We’ll sit where you like, talk about your favorite topics, and stay as long as you like.”

“Actually, I have a dentist appointment this afternoon,” replies the woman. “Heck! Never mind the dentist. I’m coming to have coffee with you.” Then they have such a relaxed and enjoyable time together that they stay much longer than anyone expected. K.F. stands of course for Kindfulness Freak.

What if you meditated by treating your mind like a best friend?

Treating your mind like a best friend involves approaching it with a warm, engaging attitude: “Hey buddy! Do you want to meditate now? What do you want to watch? How do you want to sit? You tell me how long.” When you treat your mind with kindfulness, your mind does not want to wander off anywhere. It likes your company. You hang out together, chilling out, for far longer than you ever expected.

♦

© 2016 Buddhist Society of Western Australia, Kindfulness by Ajahn Brahm. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., wisdompubs.org.

[This story was first published in 2016]

The post You Are a Control Freak appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

On a scorching day in July 2019, sweating and shaking with nerves, I knocked on the door of an immaculate house in Staten Island, New York. A sweet-faced young woman opened it, eyeing me curiously. I took a deep breath and launched into my script.

“If you had two minutes to tell President Trump about the job he’s doing, what would you say?” I asked. She had voted for Trump, she told me, but didn’t like the callous way he treated people. On a scale from zero to ten—where zero meant she would definitely vote Republican and ten meant definitely Democrat—she put herself at a three.

“When I vote,” I said, “it’s a political act, but it’s also personal, a gift to someone I love.” I told a story about a teenager I had mentored in a writing program. I loved her for her brilliance and talent, and also for her willingness to resolve the initial conflicts between us. “I’m curious,” I went on. “Does this make you think of someone you love?” She wouldn’t discuss a particular person but said she wanted her gay friends to be free to live as they chose. When I pointed out that she and I shared a value of caring about others—a value that the president’s behavior rarely displays—she moved from a 3 to a 5.

This exchange was my first experience of “deep canvassing,” a method of voter outreach that aims to bypass political speech by connecting with people emotionally and engaging with their sense of ethics. It’s based on the principle that facts and opinions don’t change people’s minds, values do.

I’d finally found a form of political action that matched my own convictions. For the past twenty years, I’ve practiced vipassana, or Insight Meditation. Since the 1960s, I have also participated in political action—marches against the Vietnam War, demonstrations toward a more sustainable climate future, and protests against the war in Iraq. But by the time of the Iraq War, I’d become uncomfortable with angry chanting and strident rhetoric demonizing political enemies, which felt at odds with the shift in thinking about dealing with conflict brought about by my Buddhist practice. I’m absolutely anti-Trump, but I don’t want to hate Trump voters. I want to understand them. And it was now clear to me that not only did anger feel wrong, it was also an ineffective strategy in a country so divided.

While texting for Democratic candidates before the 2018 midterms, I had an exchange with a woman in Michigan that made me wish I could dialogue with Trump supporters and learn how they thought. So when I heard about deep canvassing in spring 2019, I jumped at it. Once I began knocking on doors and talking to voters, I began to realize how similar it was to some of the mental training I was doing in meditation. 

Developed in 2008 by Dave Fleischer, director of the Leadership Lab of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, to advocate for marriage equality, the technique has since been used to address prejudice toward immigrants and transgender people. A 2020 study of three canvassing operations targeting this issue concluded that the “nonjudgmental exchange of narratives durably reduced exclusionary attitudes for at least four months.” In other words, approaching people in an open, nonjudgmental way and telling a story can shift their attitudes more effectively than arguing a particular position.

“Everyone likes to think of himself or herself as a good person,” cognitive linguist George Lakoff wrote after the 2016 election. “Your moral system is a major part of your identity—who you most deeply are. Voting against your moral identity would be a rejection of self.”  

Deep canvassing requires that the canvasser show up at someone’s door with empathy and real curiosity. I learned how to tell the voter a story about someone I love that reveals my own vulnerability, and ask the voter if this makes them think about someone in their life. My expression of vulnerability usually helps the voter feel safe sharing a personal story. Some refuse, but others describe a loving parent, an autistic child, or a devoted friend. I then compare the compassion or kindness that their stories always express to the president’s track record of divisive, selfish behavior. My hope as a deep canvasser is for them to begin to see that voting for Trump means voting against their own values. As Jordyn Sun, a field organizer and canvasser for the Leadership Lab, put it, “The person’s mind is changed not by the canvasser’s story but by their own, which makes them reconsider the implications of the values they say they believe in.”

In many ways, deep canvassing resembles Insight Dialogue, a form of interpersonal meditation that emphasizes deep listening “to open ourselves up as fully as we can to the worldview of someone else,” Gary Singer, who teaches this practice, explained in an interview with Tricycle. “When we meet each other on common ground, we can begin to thaw and listen more deeply.”

Oren Jay Sofer, an Insight Meditation teacher who explored meditation’s relationship with communication in his book Say What You Mean (and in a Tricycle Dharma Talk), agrees. Deep canvassers’ ability “to connect at the level of feelings, needs, or values, not getting into an argument about ideas or views,” is “a skill of shifting your attention from the content of what someone says to the deeper meaning in their heart,” he told Tricycle.  

It’s also significant, Sofer said, that “the connection [in deep canvassing] is happening across stories. We’re polarized by our fixation on ideologies and views. Talking about people we love, why something matters to us, circumvents some of that fixation in the heart, leaving space to develop a connection based on what we have in common.”

In 2017 community organizer Adam Barbanel-Fried created Changing the Conversation Together (CTC), the Brooklyn-based organization I work with, to apply deep canvassing to the 2018 congressional race in conservative Staten Island. Over 300 canvassers had 1,900 conversations with voters there, helping flip the district to a Democrat. CTC’s post-election survey showed that canvassed voters “were 14 percent more likely to vote and 20 percent more likely to vote Democratic than their non-canvassed neighbors.” Since last November, I’ve been deep canvassing with CTC in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, targeting swing and infrequent voters. (During the initial coronavirus lockdown we switched to the phone; now some have returned to door-knocking, with strict safety precautions.)

It’s no exaggeration to say that approaching Trump supporters as I approach the thoughts and feelings that arise in my practice—with empathy and curiosity—completely changed my mindstate. Listening intently to how people think and what motivates them opened my heart to their points of view. It was like working with a difficult person in metta practice (in which you direct lovingkindness toward a series of people, including someone you find hard to deal with)—only instead of doing it as a visualization, I did it live.

Throughout my time as a deep canvasser, I’ve found myself calling on skills I had begun to develop in meditation: non-judgment, compassion, empathy, and especially deep listening—since making the case to vote Democratic depends on reflecting back the values that voters themselves express. When a welder with custody of his small daughter described how he worked constantly, but could barely pay rent and child care, I listened quietly and attentively, sympathizing with his resentment.

Whatever the outcome of November’s election, our country will remain dangerously polarized. But deep canvassing makes it possible to see someone you disagree with as not the enemy. My fellow canvasser Ellen Chapnick, retired Dean for Social Justice Initiatives at Columbia Law School, spoke to a Doylestown, Pennsylvania, man who intended to vote for Trump because he believed the Democrats would take his guns away. Nothing she said moved him. But as she turned to leave, the man asked Ellen if she would take a moment to speak to his seven-year-old-daughter. “We don’t have women like you in our lives, who are informed, have opinions, and stand up for what they believe in,” he explained. “I don’t agree with you on most of it, but I want my daughter to know she can grow up to be like that.” Chapnick had a “lovely conversation” with the girl, she told me. “I was incredibly moved.”

Deep canvassing should continue past the election, Chapnick believes, since it enables “people who wouldn’t ordinarily talk to each other to reach across unbridgeable chasms.” I agree: talking to those we disagree with may not be easy, but we’d do well to pay attention to what we have in common.

The post Canvassing Like a Buddha appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When we are held prisoner by our own past actions, or the actions of others, our present life cannot be fully lived. The resentment, the partially experienced pain, the unwelcome inheritance we carry from the past, all function to close our hearts and thereby narrow our worlds. 

The intention of forgiveness meditation is not to force anything, or to pretend to anything, or to forget about ourselves in utter deference to the needs of others. In fact, it is out of the greatest compassion for ourselves that we create the conditions for an unobstructed love, which can dissolve separation and relieve us of the twin burdens of lacerating guilt and perpetually unresolved outrage.

It is not so easy to access that place inside of us which can forgive, which can love. To be able to forgive is so deep a letting go that it is a type of dying. We must be able to say, “I am not that person anymore, and you are not that person anymore.”

Forgiveness does not mean condoning a harmful action, or denying injustice or suffering. It should never be confused with being passive toward violation or abuse. Forgiveness is an inner relinquishment of guilt or resentment, both of which are devastating to us in the end. As forgiveness grows within us, it may take any outward form: we may seek to make amends, demand justice, resolve to be treated better, or simply leave a situation behind us.

The sense of psychological and spiritual well-being that comes from practicing forgiveness comes directly because this practice takes us to the edge of what we can accept. As you do the reflections, many conflicted emotions may arise: shame, anger, a sense of betrayal, confusion, or doubt. Try to allow such states to arise without judging them. Recognize them as natural occurrences, and then gently return your attention to the forgiveness reflection.

Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and let your breath be natural and uncontrolled. Begin with the recitation (silent or not, as you prefer): “If I have hurt or harmed anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask their forgiveness.” If different people, images, or scenarios come up, release the burden of guilt and ask for forgiveness: “I ask your forgiveness.”

After some time, you can offer forgiveness to those who have harmed you. Don’t worry if there is not a great rush of loving feeling; this is not meant to be an artificial exercise, but rather a way of honoring the powerful force of intention in our minds. We are paying respects to our ultimate ability to let go and begin again. We are asserting the human heart’s capacity to change and grow and love. “If anyone has hurt or harmed me, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive them.” As different thoughts or images come to mind, continue the recitation, “I forgive you.”

In the end, we turn our attention to forgiveness of ourselves. If there are ways you have harmed yourself, or not loved yourself, or not lived up to your own expectations, this is the time to let go of unkindness toward yourself because of what you have done. You can include any inability to forgive others that you may have discovered on your part in the reflection immediately preceding—that is not a reason to be unkind to yourself. “For all of the ways I have hurt or harmed myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness.”

Seeing Goodness

Since the proximate cause, or most powerful conditioning force, for metta to arise is seeing the good in someone, we make an effort to turn our attention to any good we can find in a difficult person. 

The first time I was given the instruction to look for one good quality in a person I found difficult, I rebelled. I thought, “That’s what superficial, gullible people do—they just look for the good in someone. I don’t want to do that!” As I actually did the practice, however, I discovered that it had an important and powerful effect. In fact, it was doing just what it was supposed to do: looking for the good in someone did not cover up any of the genuine difficulties I found with that person, but allowed me to relate to them without my habituated defensiveness and withdrawal.

There may be people who absolutely defy our ability to think of even one good thing about them. In that case, focus on the universal wish to be happy, which this difficult person also shares. All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others. 

The Difficult Person

As we come to sending metta to a person with whom we experience conflict, fear, or anger, we can reflect on this line from Rainer Maria Rilke: “Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something that needs our love.”

It is useful to begin with someone with whom the difficulty is relatively mild—not starting right away with the one person who has hurt us the most in this lifetime. When I was first practicing metta in Burma, I received the instruction to send metta to a benefactor repeatedly, for about three weeks. The whole time I was frustrated, thinking, “Why am I spending all this time sending metta to someone I already love? That’s easy—I should be sending metta to my worst enemy. That’s the only kind of love that really counts.” I expressed some of this to U Pandita, who laughed and said, “Why do you want to do things in the hardest way possible?” This practice is not meant to induce suffering, though it may reveal it. If a particular person has harmed us so grievously that it is very difficult to include them in the field of our loving care, then we approach sending them metta slowly, with a lot of care and compassion for ourselves.

In order to begin to develop metta toward a person with whom we have problems, we must first separate our vision of the person from the actions they commit that may upset or harm us. In developing metta, we put aside the unpleasant traits of such a being and try instead to get in touch with the part of them that deserves to be loved.

Perhaps you can most easily feel metta for the person if you imagine them as a vulnerable infant, or on their deathbed (but not with eager anticipation—be careful). You should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person. As the strength of our metta grows, we can eventually reach a place where we sincerely extend wishes of well-being to the difficult people in our lives, even while we work to counter their actions and activities of which we disapprove.

Sit comfortably, and start with directing the metta phrases toward yourself, enveloping yourself with your own loving care. After some time, direct the phrases toward a benefactor, then a friend. If you have found a neutral person, you can then include them. You should turn your attention to the difficult person only after spending some time sending metta toward yourself and to those you find it relatively easy to feel metta for. If you can, contemplate one good thing about them. If you can’t, remember that this person, just like ourselves, wishes to be happy, and makes mistakes out of ignorance. If saying, “May you be free from danger, may you be happy,” brings up too much fear or sense of isolation for you, you can include yourself in the recitation: “May we be free from danger. May we be happy.”

Gently continue to direct metta toward the difficult person, and accept the different feelings that may come and go. There may be sorrow, grief, anger—allow them to pass through you. If they become overwhelming, go back to sending metta to yourself or a good friend. You can also try to hold those feelings in a different perspective. A classic one is to ask yourself, “Who is the one suffering from this anger? The person who has harmed me has gone on to live their life, while I am the one sitting here feeling the persecution, burning, and constriction of anger. Out of compassion for myself, to ease my own heart, may I let go.”

Another reflection is done by turning your mind to the suffering of the difficult person, rather than viewing their actions only as bad or wrong. When we feel anger, fear, or jealousy, if we feel open to the pain of these states rather than feeling disgraced by their arising, then we will have compassion for ourselves. When we see others lost in states of anger and fear, and we remember how painful those states are, we can have compassion for those people as well.

When you can, return to directing the metta phrases toward the difficult person. You can go back and forth between yourself, a friend, the reflections, and the difficult person.

You may find yourself expressing greater lovingkindness in actual life situations before you experience a greater depth of loving feeling in your formal meditation practice. Sometimes in difficult encounters there is more patience than before, more willingness to listen than before, and more clarity than before. 

Be patient with yourself in this practice, and try not to hold rigid expectations of what you should be experiencing. When we have rigid expectations, we can feel a great sense of helplessness if those expectations are not quickly met. We see our actions as being fruitless, not going anywhere, and we get lost in contempt or self-condemnation. We can always return to the intention to care for ourselves and for all beings. 

Beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to be overcome so that one day we can come to the “real” meditation.

♦

From Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg © 1995 by Sharon Salzberg. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

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