Lama Rod Owens has long been fascinated by the relationship between social liberation and ultimate freedom. As an author, activist, and authorized lama in the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, he has worked at the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice, exploring how activist work and spiritual practice can support each other. Recently, he’s been grappling with the question of what freedom looks like in our current political context and how spiritual practice can support us through our current crises.

In his new book, The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors, Owens draws from the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and Black liberation movements to put forth the notion of the New Saint. “The New Saint is a rethinking of what it means to be a bodhisattva right now, with a particular focus on relative justice and its relationship to ultimate liberation,” he told Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen. “It’s about the contemporary experience of people in a world that seems to be on the edge of catastrophe.”

Shaheen sat down with Owens on a recent episode of Tricycle Talks to discuss why he believes that the apocalypse is an opportunity for awakening, the power of connecting with our ancestors and unseen beings, why the New Saint is not necessarily a good person, and how fierceness can be a form of awakened care. Read an excerpt from their conversation, then listen to the full episode.

You refer to the New Saint’s magic, which depends on two practices: the expression of awakened care and the development of our capacity to disrupt habitual reactivity. Can you walk us through what you mean by awakened care? Awakened care is my experience of bodhicitta. We traditionally define bodhicitta as the awakened heart-mind, but I would say that it’s the magic of the bodhisattva. It’s this view of deep connectedness and deep empathy, where we’re doing the work of liberation not just for ourselves but for all beings. When I am attempting to get free, that labor is also helping others to get free.

Not only do I have to choose freedom, I have to understand that I deserve to be free.

When I began to think about this in terms of the New Saint, I began asking myself, What is my actual felt experience of bodhicitta? The first thing I felt was love, this deep acceptance, holding space for everything and wishing for everyone and everything to be free. I also experienced compassion, tuning into the suffering of both ourselves and the world and actually committing to freeing ourselves and others from suffering. The other piece of this is joy. I feel deep joy for having the capacity to choose to benefit beings through my practice. I’m overwhelmed by that, and there’s deep gratitude in that joy as well. And of course, everything is based in emptiness, so we have the capacity for all of this to happen because of the profound potential of emptiness and space.

When all of this is streamed together, it begins to awaken care, a deep, profound care, the kind of care that says, “I’m going to do everything that I can to get free because I care that much for myself and for others.” An important point here too is that I have to care for myself enough to want to get free to begin with. And a lot of us aren’t there either. Some of us don’t really believe that we deserve to be free from suffering. Not only do I have to choose freedom, I have to understand that I deserve to be free.

You write that awakened care can cause us to lose a sense of agency so that we’re swept up in the agenda of the liberation of all beings and things. So how is it that we surrender to the agenda of liberation? [The author and filmmaker] Toni Cade Bambara has this notion of wanting to make revolution irresistible so that it’s the sweetest, most important thing that we could be doing, and it just becomes what we do and who we are. In awakened care, I’m trying to dissolve the sense of self, and that’s going to bring me into a more direct relationship with the essence or with emptiness itself. In a way, we can describe it as the cultivation of virtue.

When we practice goodness, it becomes a habit, where we’re choosing how to reduce harm moment to moment. We’re just attuned to choosing what will reduce harm. For me, that’s another way that we get swept up: we’re reprogramming ourselves to choose what is conducive to liberation. I want to get lost in that so that everything I do becomes an expression of goodness and therefore an expression of virtue.

One stream of awakened care is love, which you describe as a form of radical acceptance. Can you say more about how you’ve come to understand love? It’s hard to change when you haven’t really told the truth about what’s actually happening, and so the first expression of love is actually allowing ourselves to hold space for everything that’s arising. This is how it is. I don’t have to like it; I just have to name it and notice it.

I think what keeps us from doing that profound radical work of love is heartbreak. When I start telling the truth about how things really are, then my heart is going to break because I have been so concerned with telling myself narratives about how I want things to be in order to feel good about what’s happening. When I let go of that and say, “This is it. This is what’s happening,” my heart breaks, which is the experience of having to touch into this deep disappointment.

Once I start doing that, then there’s an honesty that awakens, and that profound holding becomes love. This is what’s happening, and therefore, I can make a choice to change what needs to change now because I’m not lost in these delusions and narratives about how I think things are; I know how things are. It creates a deeper intimacy with all phenomena and all beings, because you’re with the truth now, and you know that the truth is that everything and everyone deserves to be free.

Another aspect of the work of the New Saint is reclaiming beauty while also disrupting capitalism and overconsumption. So how can beauty help us access the sublime and the transcendent? When I surrender to beauty, I’m letting go of the ways in which I’m protecting and guarding myself. I’m allowing myself to expand, and I’m letting go of the sense of who I think I am, and then beginning to experience and touch into the actual expression of spaciousness. And when I do that, things get more fluid and more inviting. The world becomes less antagonistic, less rigid, less sharp. It becomes more translucent for me when I’m surrendering and opening. And that is the experience of the sublime. That translucent fluidity really is about connecting to this ultimate experience of emptiness itself. But it’s not about materialism. And so instead of accumulating luxury goods that I can’t afford, I connect to the energetic expression of beauty, which feeds a deeper sense of self-worth. That self-worth is about me wanting not to suffer and wanting to actually experience ultimate liberation.

Let’s go a step further and talk about desire. You say that yearning is the first step in touching the divine. How have you learned to work with and channel yearning? You have to want to get free. Desire or yearning is the last thing we give up before ultimate enlightenment. That yearning for enlightenment is going to take us to the threshold, and to go beyond that threshold, we have to let go of wanting to get free, which I think will be a really hard choice to make. But I am training myself to yearn for things that lead to freedom, liberation, fluidity, and movement, not to continue yearning for the things that create rigidity and separateness. And the more I yearn and the more I practice, the more I begin to experience what freedom is, so I know that this is what I should be focusing on: not the rigidity but the experience of getting open and clear and translucent and fluid. That’s it. And so I just start yearning for it. In the same way that we yearn for our bad habits, we can start yearning for experiences of liberation.

The post The Magic of the New Saint appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In the springtime, thousands of different kinds of flowers bloom. Your heart can also bloom. You can let your heart open up to the world. Love is possible—do not be afraid of it. Love is indispensable to life, and if in the past you have suffered because of love, you can learn how to love again.

The practice of mindfulness will help you to love properly, in such a way that harmony, freedom, and joy are possible. The true declaration of love is, “Dear one, I am here for you,” because the most precious gift you can give to your loved one is your true presence, with body and mind united in solidity and freedom.

You also have to learn how to speak all over again. When you speak with 100 percent of your being, your speech becomes a mantra. In Buddhism, a mantra is a sacred formula that has the power to transform reality. You don’t need to practice mantras in some foreign language like Sanskrit or Tibetan. You can practice in your own beautiful language: for if your body and mind are unified in mindfulness, then whatever you say becomes a mantra.

After you have practiced walking meditation or mindfulness of the breath for two or three minutes, you are here, really alive, truly present. You look at the person you love with a smile, and you say the first mantra: “Dear one, I am here for you.” You know that if you are here, then your beloved is here also. Life, with all its miracles, is here, and among those miracles is the person before you, the one you love.

You can say this mantra a few times a day: “Dear one, I am here for you.” And now that you have the ability to recognize the presence of this other person, you can practice a second mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are here, alive, and that makes me very happy.” This mantra enables you to recognize the presence of the other person as something very precious, a miracle. It is the mantra of deep appreciation for his or her presence.

When people feel appreciated in this way—when they feel embraced by the mindful attention of another—then they will open and blossom like a flower. There is no doubt that you can make this happen through the energy of mindfulness. You can do it right away, even today, and you will see that the transformation it brings about is instantaneous. In order to love, we must be here, and then our presence will embrace the presence of the other person. Only then will they have the feeling of being loved. So you must recognize the presence of the other person with the energy of mindfulness, with the genuine presence of your body and mind in oneness.

If the person you love is suffering, you can say a third mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are suffering. That’s why I am here for you.” You are here, and you recognize the fact that your loved one is suffering. You don’t need to make a big deal about it; you just generate your own presence and say this mantra. That’s all. “Dear one, I know that you are suffering. That’s why I am here for you.” This is the essence of love—to be there for the one you love when she is suffering.

A mantra can be expressed not only through speech but by the mind and body as a whole. The fact that you are there with the energy of your presence and understanding, and the fact that you recognize the presence of the other person and their suffering, will give them a great deal of relief. Some people suffer deeply but are completely ignored by others. They are alone and isolated, so cut off from the rest of the world that their suffering becomes overwhelming. You must go to them and open the door to their heart so they can see the love that is there.

Our bodies and minds are sustained by the cosmos. The clouds in the sky nourish us; the light of the sun nourishes us. The cosmos offers us vitality and love in every moment. Despite this fact, some people feel isolated and alienated from the world. As a bodhisattva, you can approach such a person, and with the miracle of the mantra you can open the door of his or her heart to the world and to the love that is always happening. “Dear one, I know that you are suffering a lot. I know this, and I am here for you, just as the trees are here for you and the flowers are here for you.” The suffering is there, but something else is also there: the miracle of life. With this mantra, you will help them to realize this and open the door of their closed heart.

The fourth mantra is a bit more difficult to practice, but I will transmit it to you because one day you will need it. It is: “Dear one, I am suffering. I need your help.” This fourth mantra is more difficult to practice because of the negative habit energy we call pride. When your suffering has been caused by the person you love the most in the world, the pain is very great. If someone else had said or done the same thing to you, you would suffer much less. But if the person who did it is the one who is dearest to you in the world, the suffering is really dreadful. You want to lock yourself away in a room and cry alone.

Now, when this person notices that something is wrong and tries to approach you about it, you might rebuff him or her. “Leave me alone,” you say. “I don’t need you.” The other might say, “Dear one, it seems to me that you are suffering,” but you do everything possible to prove you don’t need them.

This is exactly the opposite of what you should do. You should practice mindfulness of the breath with your body and mind in union, and with this total presence, go to the other person and say the mantra: “Dear one, I am suffering. I need your help. I need you to explain to me why you did this thing to me.”

If you are a real practitioner, please use this fourth mantra when you are in such a situation. You must not let pride come between you and your loved one. Many people suffer because of this obstacle called pride. You love someone, you need them, and so in these difficult moments, you should go and ask them for help.

In true love, there is no place for pride. I beg you to remember this. You share happiness and adversity with this person, so you must go to him or her and share the truth about your suffering. “Dear one, I am suffering too much. I want you to help me. Explain to me why you said that to me.”

When you do that, the Buddha does it at the same time with you, because the Buddha is in you. All of us practice this mantra along with you—you have the support of the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha in uttering these words. These words will quickly transform the situation, so do not let things drag on for months or years. You should act decisively; the magic formulas have been transmitted to you for this purpose. Inscribe these four mantras in your heart, and use them. This is the practice of love, and its foundation is the energy of mindfulness.

⧫

From You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh. English translation © 2009 by Shambhala Publications, Inc. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

The post Dear One, I Am Here for You appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I once fell in love with a person who interrupted our stroll in the middle of a crowded street, took my face in his hands, and told me that he never wanted to spend any time apart from me. We’d been a couple for nearly half a year and had decided to take a day trip to New Haven (where I’d gone to school) to explore the city’s art museums and my old haunts. We walked down Chapel Street on a bright spring day and ducked into a bookstore where we kissed in the nonfiction section and bought cards to write to each other. We caffeinated at a coffee shop where I used to study, and I took him to each dorm where I’d lived. We gazed up at the windows and he kissed my forehead, telling me he wished he’d known me then.

But even during our first week together, amid the fever pitch of our early relationship, a sentence arose, unbidden, in my mind: All things contain the seed of their own destruction. I was startled. The voice was kind, not dire; the words felt more like wisdom than a warning. I paid attention but ultimately dismissed them.

I had heard this lesson, expressed myriad ways, ever since I was a child. My parents, both devout Hindus, taught my brother and me that change is life’s only constant: the sky would always darken after a sunset, green leaves would always burn crimson in the autumn, and our bodies would grow feeble as the years passed. My father still reminds me that suffering ensues when we expect things to be permanent though they are not. 

As a palliative care doctor, I encounter the most marked manifestation of impermanence every day: that of bodily illness and death. There is the young man with end-stage stomach cancer that had shrunk with chemotherapy only to invade his liver and lungs quite suddenly; the older woman with Parkinson’s whose tremors were manageable until one day they grew so severe that she couldn’t walk anymore; the gentleman with heart failure who gasped when he spoke, his breathlessness worsening each day. My patients often share photos of who they used to be, their bodies fuller, their smiles wide. Sometimes memory is their sharpest pain: I felt so good a few months ago when the chemotherapy was still working. Why did it stop working? I’m taking all of my medications, so why is my breathing getting worse? 

Dying is a series of incremental losses: We become newly dependent on others to walk or change our clothes. Our appetites fade. Pain forces us to part ways with activities that once brought us joy. My patients and I often talk about living amid the chilling uncertainty that accompanies illness, and they tell me how they have coped with intense change in the past. Most haven’t deeply considered the philosophy of impermanence, but those who embrace it tell me about the freedom it confers. A body that grows weaker is slightly less shocking. Shifts in relationships are normalized. When receptivity to change supplants resistance, grief can feel like a gentler presence.

Yet everyday life is also a series of losses. And outside the hospital I couldn’t easily translate the philosophy I discussed with my patients into my daily life. My partner and I read each other poetry in each of our native languages and laughed when my dog gave him endless kisses. He didn’t want to disclose our relationship to an ex-girlfriend; I wondered whether I could trust him. We cooked elaborate meals for each other and sent the other home with leftovers. We talked seriously about how we’d combine our families’ traditions on our wedding day and discussed when we might have a child. When we fought about our differing communication styles, I grew distant and unable to express my concern for fear of seeming needy.

What made the relationship real was also what made it unbearable: the constant presence of change. 

While I could accept the idea of impermanence when helping my patients contend with dying and suffering, I couldn’t do the same when living my life.

Much of what I do as a doctor and a writer depends on observation: How do people behave when everything is on the line? What do they do when they think that nobody is looking? Who do they try to be, and why? Both practices demand control, the opposite of surrender. I’d told myself a story about my partner and our relationship, clinging unintentionally to a static image of each. Yet I’d forgotten that every story is ultimately about change. And while I could accept the idea of impermanence when helping my patients contend with dying and suffering, I couldn’t do the same when living my life.

A few months later I flew to New York to attend a friend’s wedding. I sent my partner photos of the newlyweds and the cake; he sent back pictures of himself cuddling my dog. The day I returned, his texts were distant. When he stopped by that night, he gave me a brief hug and spoke to me in a detached voice, as though I were a stranger. 

“I don’t think we should be together anymore,” he said.

I couldn’t find my words. I could barely feel the couch beneath me. I made sure that I was awake, that this was actually happening, that the person who couldn’t meet my eyes was the same person whose voicemail yesterday had said he couldn’t wait to see me. Shock rendered me silent: I couldn’t think to ask what went wrong, or whether he thought our relationship was worth at least a conversation about what happened. And though we agreed to take some time to consider the best path forward, he texted me a few days later, his tone formal, professional. Though he respected and cared for me, ending our relationship was the rational and logical thing to do, he said. I didn’t know what to say. I never wrote him back.

We don’t know when the diagnosis will come. We don’t know when the disease will worsen. We don’t know when love will arrive. We don’t know when it will fade. We can only know that the unexpected will happen, that certainty is a falsity, and that things will be impermanent regardless of how tightly we clench our fists around them. We mourn the brief lives of solitary moments, hoping that running reels through our minds might resuscitate them. And no matter how often my own life has shown me this truth, I relearn it in new ways each time loss arrives.

The loss of a relationship is not the same as the loss of a life. Suffering a sudden betrayal is not the same as dying from heart failure. Yet both can teach us how to cultivate a new relationship to surrender and acceptance. This doesn’t require forgetting or denying the past. It requires only that we examine it like a series of photographic stills, impressions we can retain and learn from with compassion instead of judgment.

In the days after our conversation, I lost my appetite and lay awake at night alternately crying and devoid of emotion. As I drove to work each morning, I tried to corral my emotions by remembering what I knew intellectually but couldn’t yet feel: Surrender is the path to salvation. Experiencing equanimity requires welcoming change. Embracing the ubiquity of transformation can offer transcendence. Yet I still searched for the reasons why the relationship had ended so abruptly, though this effort was nothing more than submission to an undertow: I found myself floundering in the depths, the search for an anchor perpetually elusive.

Not long thereafter, I sat with an elderly woman who hadn’t seen a doctor for fifty years. She felt her back snap one afternoon while gardening. Lung cancer had spread to her spine. She was too frail for chemotherapy. “I was fine until I suddenly wasn’t,” she said, looking out of the window at the gray sky that blanketed the city. I thought of Joan Didion’s famous lines: “Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” 

As I left her room, I realized that in between the moment he’d left me a longing voicemail and the moment he knocked on my door, the only certainty was change. The way I’d felt in our first month together could never last, because it was the way we felt together in that first month. The second month existed only because the first had passed. And as time marched on, so did every sweet and hard moment of our relationship. The times when we saw in each other an unvarnished goodness coexisted with the times when the pain between us made it hard to look at one another. 

All things contain the seed of their own destruction—including the confusion and shock I initially felt. For even finitude offers gifts: though we will lose the things we can’t release, we will also lose the things we can’t wait to let go of. As I loosened my grip on the relationship I’d lost, as accepting its mystery became more important than understanding its demise, I began to feel how surrender begets both freedom and forgiveness. 

He would always be the person who bought me a beautiful card he’d never write, the one who said he’d never told anyone besides me about his depression, the one who accused me of holding him at a distance when I didn’t share my every feeling, the one whose mother had never met any of his other girlfriends, the one who gave me books I still reread, the one I’d see around afterward, both of us knowing I’d chosen to say nothing about something that had once meant everything. 

In the months that followed, when I thought of him, new lines came to mind, these from Mary Oliver: 

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. 

The post A Gift appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

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”

The post Love in Action appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

To love, in the context of Buddhism, is above all to be there. But being there is not an easy thing. Some training is necessary, some practice. If you are not there, how can you love? Being there is very much an art, the art of meditation, because meditating is bringing your true presence to the here and now. The question that arises is: Do you have time to love?

I know a boy of 12 whose father asked him one day: “Son, what would you like for your birthday present?” The boy did not know how to answer his father, who was a very rich man, able to buy anything for his son. But the boy did not want anything except his father’s presence. Because the role the father played kept him very busy, he did not have time to devote to his wife and children. Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy in your daily life, to staying rich. If this father were to understand what true love is, he would do whatever is necessary to find time for his son and his wife.

The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence. What must we do to really be there? Those who have practiced Buddhist meditation know that meditating is above all being present: to yourself, to those you love, to life.

So I would propose a very simple practice to you, the practice of mindful breathing: “Breathing—I know that I am breathing in; breathing—I know that I am breathing out.” If you do that with a little concentration, then you will be able to really be there, because in our daily life our mind and our body are rarely together. Our body might be there, but our mind is somewhere else. Maybe you are lost in regrets about the past, maybe in worries about the future, or else you are preoccupied with your plans, with anger or with jealousy. And so your mind is not really there with your body.

The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence.

Between the mind and the body, there is something that can serve as a bridge. The moment you begin to practice mindful breathing, your body and your mind begin to come together with one another. It takes only ten to twenty seconds to accomplish this miracle called oneness of body and mind. With mindful breathing, you can bring body and mind together in the present moment, and every one of us can do it, even a child.

The Buddha left us an absolutely essential text, the Anapanasati Sutta, or Discourse on the Practice of Mindful Breathing. If you really want to practice Buddhist meditation, you must study this text.

If the father I was talking about had known that, he would have begun to breathe in and breathe out mindfully, and then one or two minutes later, he would have approached his son, he would have looked at him with a smile, and he would have said this: “My dear, I am here for you.” This is the greatest gift you can give to someone you love.

In Buddhism we talk about mantras. A mantra is a magic formula that, once it is uttered, can entirely change a situation, our mind, our body, or a person. But this magic formula must be spoken in a state of concentration, that is to say, a state in which body and mind are absolutely in a state of unity. What you say then, in this state of being, becomes a mantra.

So I am going to present to you a very effective mantra, not in Sanskrit or Tibetan, but in English: “Dear one, I am here for you.” Perhaps this evening you will try for a few minutes to practice mindful breathing in order to bring your body and mind together. You will approach the person you love and with this mindfulness, with this concentration, you will look into his or her eyes, and you will begin to utter this formula: “Dear one, I am really here for you.” You must say that with your body and with your mind at the same time, and then you will see the transformation. 

Do you have enough time to love? Can you make sure that in your everyday life you have a little time to love? We do not have much time together; we are too busy. In the morning while eating breakfast, we do not look at the person we love, we do not have enough time for it. We eat very quickly while thinking about other things, and sometimes we even hold a newspaper that hides the face of the person we love. In the evening when we come home, we are too tired to be able to look at the person we love.

We must bring about a revolution in our way of living our everyday lives, because our happiness, our lives, are within ourselves. 

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From True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh © 1997 by Éditions Terre du Ciel and Unified Buddhist Church, Inc. Translation © 2004 by Shambhala Publications. This edition published in 2023. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

The post Love Is Being There appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Martine Batchelor: Something that is important to explore, look at, and be careful with in terms of the dharma of relationships is ending a relationship intentionally. In the dharma, we talk a lot about patience, generosity, compassion, and forgiveness. But, as the Buddha says, we need to have as much compassion for ourselves as for others. So in a relationship, we need to care for and protect ourselves. 

Long ago, I was teaching about compassion, and this young woman came to me and said, “I’m not sure if I am compassionate enough.” She explained that she had a husband who was a drug addict, which was not really the problem, but his dealer was coming to threaten the family. After three years of this, she finally left him. When she asked me, “Do you think I was compassionate enough?” I nearly said, “You were too compassionate.” I told her, “You were really compassionate enough, and it was a good idea to leave him for your own safety.” 

We’ve talked about the parami of courage, the parami of courage of saying no, the parami of courage of saying “Yes, I love you, but from afar.” If we are harmed in a relationship, then we have to save ourselves. We have to be able to end a relationship knowing that life is complex, life is rich, and it does not depend on having that harmful person in my life. There are other people out there who will be supportive and beneficial to me. We have to have the courage to protect ourselves, to take care of ourselves in relationships.

Laura Bridgman: That’s true. And even if a relationship or situation isn’t overtly harmful, it could be that the relationship isn’t really serving our growth and development, whether that’s in our life or our practice. That can be a more subtle, nuanced sense that I need to separate, I need to go in another direction here. I found it helpful to discern what’s driving my desire to move away or to stay. I liked what you were saying about the parami, for instance. We may sometimes feel that we should be generous or compassionate. We may assume that compassion or generosity is one thing, and saying no and having a boundary is another. They can actually go together. There can be a compassionate way of saying no. Saying no can actually be a generous gesture in the sense of not continuing with an unworkable relationship or situation. 

When we look at our relationship with these qualities, we don’t need to take a fixed position on them. “I should be compassionate, I should be open,” I don’t think that’s what the Buddha meant. It’s more like a process of balance. If my heart is closed, how come? What’s keeping it closed? That’s a generous attitude. And if my heart is stuck open and I’m not able to hold my boundaries, what do I need here? What would support me to feel where my line is in this relationship?

Martine Batchelor: I have observed that when a relationship is very good, you don’t question it. If the relationship is very bad, then hopefully, you get out of it. But the most difficult thing about ending a relationship is when you are in the middle: one day is good, I stay; one day is bad, I go. Up and down. That is a difficult place to be, and so one needs to bring wisdom and protection to that. 

There was another story that struck me. I once had a lady come and again ask, “Am I compassionate enough?” She explains, “We have many children in this family, but I am the only one who still sees my father. But I only see him once a year.” Your first reaction may be, “Wait a minute, once a year? That’s not very compassionate.” But she was the only one who was able to even do that. And why? Because what he wanted once a year, at least, was to be taken to a restaurant and he would be so cantankerous, shouting at everybody. The experience was a disaster. That’s why nobody else wanted to meet him. I told her, “That’s very courageous of you and compassionate to do it once a year. Because that’s what you’re able to do. But you cannot do more. And that’s wisdom: to know what my limits are in that situation.”

Laura Bridgman: This makes me think of practicing with doubt. For instance: Should I stay? Should I go? We get pulled between these different viewpoints of all the things that justify staying and all the things that justify going. We get caught up in the swing back and forth between the two, which can make us feel helpless and caught in doubt. We think, I want to have a clearer sense of what’s needed, but I’m not clear. So I get pulled back and forth. We can be so driven to be absolutely sure and get it right, to make the right decision. We may choose one way and then really regret it and punish ourselves for getting it wrong. It can be compassionate to recognize how much pressure we put on ourselves to find our direction in a relationship. I’ve found that when I actually take that pressure off, that supports a bit more clarity and wisdom in discerning what’s needed. 

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It seems to me that all those who enter a spiritual path have very similar goals, though these goals may not always be articulated. These might be described, in the broadest strokes, as love, as peace, as freedom from suffering—that is, as a happiness that is fulfilling in the most complete sense. This is, I think, a universal aspiration.

The question, then, that follows from this is: What are those forces that keep us from experiencing this kind of happiness? In Buddhism, these forces are called the defilements of mind, the afflictive emotions such as fear, greed, jealousy, and hatred, which are all rooted in ignorance and delusion. Although various paths speak of the afflictive emotions in their own distinct ways, all share the understanding that we need some means to purify the heart and free the mind. While it may be addressed differently in different traditions, on the spiritual path there is really only one issue: extricating ourselves from those forces in the mind by which we are bound. This is not esoteric; it’s not mysterious. It’s simply the challenge of our everyday experience.

In Buddhism, our particular way of addressing these matters is to say that the root of the problem is the delusion of selfhood. Because we are living in this delusion, this prison of self, we identify with the afflictive emotions, thereby feeding and encouraging them. And whether we practice as householders engaged with family and work or as monks in the forest, the question is the same: Does what we do strengthen the sense of self through those habits of mind—fixation, contraction, identification—that prevent our aspiration for the highest happiness from being fulfilled, or does it work to purify the heart and free the mind from those qualities? This is the only question that really matters.

Debates about the relative merits of different approaches to the spiritual life are often framed in a way that is misleading. To speak, for example, of one approach as being life-affirming and another as life-denying misses the point, because the path is not about affirming life or denying it—it’s about emerging from delusion. If one’s practice as a householder comes from a place of self, a place of attachment, desire, and identification, then that is not a path of liberation. Similarly, if one’s monastic practice is done from a place of fear or aversion, then that also is not the way. The reference point for examining our lives and the choices we make is the quality of heart and mind out of which they come. Skillful choices about the best circumstances and styles of practice will naturally vary according to the needs and the situation at particular times in people’s lives.

For example, one traditional Buddhist practice that Westerners sometimes find troubling is the contemplation of the non-beautiful aspects of the body. The problem is partly one of translation. The Pali word asuba is generally translated as “loathsome,” “repulsive,” or “disgusting.” But the actual meaning of the word is simply “not beautiful,” a term with far fewer negative associations. But even when the language is cleaned up, for many the problem remains. Meditating on decaying corpses or on the “non-beautiful” aspects of our living bodies seems weird or out of balance. It seems to go against the belief that we should be learning to respect and honor the beauty of the body. It is crucial to understand that such objections miss the point of these practices, which is to release the mind from identification with the body. This is one of our most deeply rooted attachments and the cause of tremendous suffering.

So asuba practice has nothing to do with denying life or hating the body. It is simply one means to free ourselves from the delusion that takes the body to be the self. For some, these techniques will work well; perhaps for others contemplating the impermanent, insubstantial nature of beauty will be the path of freedom. How well any technique works depends on how it is taught and the particular conditioning of the individual who undertakes it. But we err when we extrapolate from a particular method a general characterization of an entire tradition. In all methods, we must understand that which is essential about the transformative process of liberation.

Of course, it is not only the body with which we identify. We are continually ensnared by the workings of the mind—its moods, emotions, concepts, opinions, judgments, and so forth. Caught up as we are in the mind’s busyness, it is only in rare moments that we touch that space of open, free awareness that is its true nature. One of the things I love about being on retreat is that it reveals so clearly that so much of the time the mind is in some state—sometimes obvious, sometimes extremely subtle—of attachment or aversion. Trungpa Rinpoche spoke of the meditative path as being one insult after another. This is important to understand because it points to the level of attentiveness we need to cultivate in our lives if we want to fulfill that aspiration for peace, for love, for freedom.

One of the dangers I see among Western practitioners is the enticement to say, “Well, everything I do is my practice,” as if no special effort is required. Theoretically this is a valid point, but is it really true in how we actually live? Staying awake does not come easily. It requires tremendous energy, commitment, and courage. Just look to the examples of the great figures in any spiritual tradition—to the intensity, exertion, and renunciation manifest in their practice. Meditation is very humbling in that it reflects back to us the depth of our attachments and the inspiration and commitment needed to get free of them. Sustained meditation practice makes it more difficult to fool ourselves.

Although renunciation may express itself in outward forms, its essence is the letting go of the mind’s habits of delusion. Even just a moment of such release is powerful, because it provides a reference point, an alternative to the false sense of self we ordinarily experience. The more we taste of this experience of emptiness, the more we can truly make our life our practice, rather than simply holding “life as practice” as a nice idea.

The profound stillness in which the mind’s intrinsic, radiant emptiness is realized is not something apart from spiritual activity in the world. It is its foundation. Each of us acts and abides within a unique set of karmic conditions, which localize us in the specifics of place, social and familial relationships, and all the other circumstances that make up our unfolding life. But these very circumstances are themselves empty. Emptiness and specificity are not in contradiction; they constitute a union. While we accept, open to, and even honor the specifics of our lives, without the recognition of their essential emptiness, we will easily fall into attachment. The fullness of the spiritual path is the understanding that love, that compassion, is the expression of emptiness. These are not two separate things; one is an attribute of the other.

In my own practice, this understanding has been greatly enriched by some of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. For many years, the bodhisattva vow of Mahayana Buddhism—to practice in order to save all beings—made little sense to me. How in the world would I, or anyone, be able to enlighten all beings? It seemed like a beautiful idea, but an impossibility. What gave the vow meaning to me was the teaching of absolute and relative bodhicitta, or “awakened mind.” Relative bodhicitta is compassion; absolute bodhicitta is emptiness. The compassionate activity expressed by the vow is the manifestation of the realization of emptiness. The energy to save all beings arises in precisely that consciousness that knows that there is no one to save and no one to do the saving. It is here that the spiritual path finds its completeness.

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From the Fall 1997 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 14, No. 1) Text © 1997-2020 by Joseph Goldstein and Inquiring Mind

Related Inquiring Mind articles:

• “The Incredible Exploding Self: An Interview with Joanna Macy”
  
• “Who’s Asking the Questions Here? A Non-Interview with Hari Lal Poonja”
• “The Flavors of Anatta: Reflections from a Theravada Perspective”

The post Love as the Expression of Emptiness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Adele Tomlin, author, scholar, translator, Vajrayana practitioner, and founder of Dakini Translations and Publications, discusses Buddhist love and bliss in this short excerpt from Olivia Clementine’s podcast Love & Liberation, which hosts in-depth conversations on spirituality, ecology, and relationships. Listen to the full episode, “Adele Tomlin: The Inner Level of Tantric Union, Celibacy, Bliss & Love,” here.

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Olivia Clementine: I’d love to get into the topic of love. What is love from a Buddhist or tantric perspective? 

Adele Tomlin: Everyone wants to be loved, right? From the Buddhist perspective, there’s not one sentient being who does not want to feel loved in some way. Maybe the word bliss might be more suitable, but we all want some kind of satisfaction. A lot of that satisfaction, particularly in human relationships, but also with animals, comes from feeling loved, or from loving as well.

What is the difference between ordinary love and Buddhist or tantric love? First, what is love? This is a question that musicians and artists have long grappled with. In the Buddhist view, it’s simple. It’s wanting other people to be genuinely happy. Often when we talk about the word “happy,” we feel like it is doing nice things and feeling good. It is connected to that, but happiness in the Buddhist context is not a worldly kind of pleasure or feeling good. Getting a massage feels good, but it’s not what is going to make us happy, in the long term. It feels great, but that feeling wears off, right? It’s the same with our relationships and everything that we do for those sorts of happy feelings. We all know it doesn’t last.  

In a Buddhist context, love is wanting other people to be happy, wishing them that kind of love. But it’s also understanding that what we normally might think of as happiness is not what most people associate with happiness. So, if I’m trying to be a Buddhist practitioner and develop love, what I want to do is think, “I really wish that person, or those people, or those beings will attain real, long-lasting happiness.” What you are wishing them, from the Buddhist perspective, is liberation from samsara, liberation from suffering.

However, love from a Buddhist perspective, or a practitioner’s even, might sometimes seem like it’s not love. From a worldly perspective, people might see a Buddhist doing or saying things that look like aversion or anger, but those actions can be loving if done for beneficial purposes. Sometimes, immature beings, just like children, don’t listen. They put themselves in all sorts of dangerous and risky situations. At those times, there comes a point where, out of love, the method of instruction has to be a bit rougher or harsher. To unknowing eyes, they might look at that and think, “well that doesn’t look very loving.”  

Our worldly notion of love is often self-centered. We look at love from the perspective of what we can get from a person. How do they make me feel? Do they make me feel happy or not? We all habitually do this, including me. This is why we suffer in relationships. When we only selfishly want someone to make us feel good, and then suddenly they don’t, we feel like we don’t love them anymore, right? That is the difficulty. From the Buddhist view, that is why relationships and our romantic relationships generally don’t last.

When our relationships with our family, children, or whoever, become difficult, it is often because–and people don’t want to hear this–we don’t actually love. We don’t love people as much as we think we do. That can be painful to acknowledge, because we often believe, especially with close family and friends, that we truly do love them. In some ways we do. We do want them to be happy, and we do rejoice when good things happen to them.  Yet, those mental states can also be very fragile.  

We’ve all thought we had this love for someone before, romantic relationships being the prime example. Then, all of a sudden, something happened, or a friend said or did something that offended us, and all of a sudden, our love for them has completely gone. What that situation showed us was that we didn’t really love them.

Sometimes we underestimate what it takes to love, to be someone that genuinely loves. We think it’s such a light word, thrown around for everything. And yet it’s a journey to learn how to be here for the benefit of somebody else. Were things ever different? Do you think people understood love differently at other times? That’s a good question. I think there is a kind of nostalgia, maybe, for romantic love and that things were better in the past. We can look at the Buddha’s life, look at why he left his family, his wife, and all that wealth and luxury. That was 2,500 years ago. What we learn from the stories of the Buddha is that, no, things were not necessarily better. The issues regarding attachment, suffering, and conditional love connected to relationships, are very much present in the past as well. They’re kind of fundamental to the human condition. What the Buddha showed us is that, unfortunately, all beings, and not just humans, lack a genuine understanding or application of love. 

But then he did give the example of the mother. Of course, this is an archetype, and not everyone has a great loving mother, but the archetype is this loving mother. Why? Because she does represent, as close as possible in the human realm, I think, this unconditional love. Someone who wants the best for another being. Someone who does not want them to suffer. So, in answer to your question, I don’t think it necessarily was better in the past. Even though some people might think it is or was.

Bringing it back to the topic of bliss and love, how are bliss and love different? I think they are closely connected. Particularly when we are truly in a place of love and sincerely rejoicing. Love and rejoicing are also closely connected. When you love other beings, you rejoice when they are happy, when good things happen to them, when they move closer to liberation, and so on. 

That kind of rejoicing, that kind of joy, that kind of loving state, is in itself a way to connect with the ultimate nature, which is referred to as bliss or being in union with emptiness. Bliss contains those qualities of love, joy, and compassion—all of those beautiful mental qualities of buddhanature—but without any dualistic egoism. In a way, maybe that’s how it’s different from love: rather than a dualistic notion of love, it’s more about just being love.

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In this 5-minute video, “What Is Love?”, Tomlin further explains the Buddhist view of love, attachment, and equanimity in relationships.

The post Everyone Wants to Be Loved appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Funerals have always frightened me as grim and formidable events. They remind us of injustice and mortality, and they reveal the inevitability of death. Death is simultaneously so simple and so complicated, and while we cannot romanticize grief as a mere celebration of life, it’s a crucial time for our deepest expressions. Those of us who continue to live must take our time to send sacred spirits to their afterlife. For years, I treated grief as if it were an unimaginable taboo. I raced toward mythical sunny utopias where sadness does not exist. I tried to escape the grief that required me to facilitate many funerals in my head. I have spent so much time running away from my looming grief, sprinting toward a purely joyful existence with intrepid speed. When I looked back at the tiny speck of me, I saw with widened eyes my deep neglected grief and my flowing sadness: the only thing I distanced myself from was me.

The Western world is obsessed with binaries, splitting joy and sadness into enemies. Life and death are classified as direct opposites too. Human beings have long understood the ecstasies of happiness and the heaviness of sorrow. Joy never ceases to be beautiful, while grief never seems to get easier. Binaries create fragmentations and opposing forces, and do not regard joy, sadness, life, and death as intrinsic to the wholeness and balance of being. While sorrow and death are difficult and scary experiences, instead of being taught how to feel and navigate them, we fear them so much that we strive to completely avoid them. It is not surprising that in the Anthropocene, human beings are obsessed with inventing technologies to achieve immunity to both sadness and death.

In his debut novel On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong wrote, “Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.” If we befriend only what feels good, we alienate our hurt. When we are judged by others and ourselves for weeping about separation, heartbreak, trauma, tragedies, accidents, and death, we push vital parts of ourselves away. The binaries of good and evil categorize our difficult feelings as evil, and our happy feelings as good. When sorrow is seen with self-judgment, it can generate a great sense of fragmentation within. Suppressing our sadness can grow into a cruel cynicism, making us scared of our own feelings and doubtful of the fullness of life.

We are taught that grief is dysfunctional and unproductive and that it gets in the way of our work. Or we are encouraged to milk our grief and capitalize on our experiences, generating trauma porn for the masses to consume. Either way, we are dissociating from grief and isolating ourselves in the process. When I was presented with the urgency of my mourning [following the end of an abusive relationship], I did not know what to do with my feelings. Instead, I dedicated myself tirelessly to work, to production, to proving myself immune to suffering. Even though death is inevitable, and loss occurs every day, it seems that we are less equipped to deal with it than ever.

The Western world is obsessed with binaries, splitting joy and sadness into enemies.

When our grief is neglected and unfamiliar, we begin to isolate ourselves in confusion. We cannot see that there are whole and multidimensional beings around us who have experienced heartache, and we become ignorant to the fact that we can be supportive to one another during these painful times. In a world dominated by performances that encourage us to portray ourselves as our most joyful, we begin to assume that everyone is free of grief. Perhaps we just want to cry with one another without judgment, or weep by ourselves and know that we can process our grief with somebody we trust. What happens when I am no longer embarrassed of my grief, and I am surrounded by humans, plants, and animals who hold me while I cry?

Amid our tumultuous global circumstances, we are experiencing much collective premature and unnecessary loss. Ironically, we are losing so much because of greed. We are in collective mourning, and we need to acknowledge our grief without exploiting it. Right now, collective grief is just as important as collective joy. Grief is an ancestor who teaches us to exercise constant and immense gratitude. Funerals are opportunities for us to express unconditional love. There is much to learn from swimming in the deep shades of our grief, and we will emerge from it basking in the sun. If we cannot honor our endings, then how are we supposed to usher in new beginnings?

When I was a teenager, I attended my po po’s (grandmother’s) funeral in Hong Kong. It was a traditional Buddhist ceremony held in a temple, and my extended maternal family had all come to pay their respects. As part of the sacred ritual, we prayed and chanted for nine hours to usher my po po’s spirit to the afterlife. Several monks guided our chants while we were kneeling, standing still, or walking in circles. It was pivotal to chant out loud so that her spirit could hear us, and the louder and more repetitive we were, the better. We had to commit to the melodies of the chant so that our message of grievance was clear. Her spirit needed to hear our grief so she could travel safely.

I noticed that with repetition, the chants began to envelop my body. They allowed a vital energy to be released from my soul, an energy that had long been constricted in my chest. During the lengthy ceremony, some of us wept in between chants, some of us chanted loudly then softly, and some of us needed moments of silence. There was no judgment, no hushing, and there was always immense respect. It dawned on me while I was chanting that this was the first major death I had experienced. I realized that the purpose of chanting was not only to usher my grandmother peacefully into the afterlife, but also to release our grief into the ether. It gave us a safe space to express how much we missed her and loved her.

The next day, our family shared a meal together. I remember sitting at a round table opposite my gong gong, my po po’s husband, with at least fifteen of my relatives. We were sharing food and conversation and eating our favorite dim sum dishes. I looked up from my bowl and noticed that there were tears streaming down gong gong’s face. He did not say a word, but he also did not stop his tears from flowing. He just sat there eating, sitting with the foods that he’d shared so many times with his wife and his children, and cried. His tears did not make anybody at the table uncomfortable, and I do not think they made him uncomfortable either. After a while, I gave him a hug and began to cry as well. We did not say anything to each other and just allowed this moment to unfold. Our grief was connected as we held each other through it. I learned so much about grief that day.

How do we mourn the relationships that we have lost with people who are living? I have heard many friends describe breakups as a kind of death. X [my ex-partner, who was also my abuser] had not died, but our relationship was long deceased despite our toxic efforts to revive it. Our relationship had a soul of its own. 

Sometime after the rekindled relationship ended, I performed a long overdue funeral for the soul of our lost love. On small pieces of paper, I wrote every slur he had ever called me that was etched into my mind. This was an extremely painful practice, because I had to recall so many of the vulgarities that still lived within me. Each time I wrote something down, it felt like an extraction of poison. Looking at these slurs on paper allowed me to see that they were not inherent parts of me but lived outside of me. They were projections used to invoke fear in my spirit, and at the same time were reflections of the fear that lived in X’s heart. Twenty scattered pieces of paper surrounded me in a circle, and I read each of them out loud, burning them one by one. I cried as I read them, and I felt myself missing him too. This was a ritual of release. I watched them turn into ashes and realized that I was initiating a long overdue funeral service of my own. I allowed myself to weep as loudly as I needed to. I wept about the pain, the violence, the abuse, and for the first time in a long time, I wept for me.

Grief is an ancestor who teaches us to exercise constant and immense gratitude.

The funeral for our relationship helped me to express all my complicated emotions in an alleviating synthesis. In that moment, I no longer compartmentalized my feelings in binaries of good or bad. I stopped chasing utopias and allowed myself to steep in the depths of my grief. I let all the nuanced feelings that were held in both/and to come together and coexist. I finally gave myself permission to miss him as all the joyful, loving, painful, and violent memories played out before me. I wept and sobbed and lamented out loud, sending the lost soul of our love affair to the afterlife. Grieving my life without him meant that I had to usher in a new life. The ceremony simultaneously honored the death of our relationship and celebrated a new mysterious beginning that awaited me.

I do not believe that grief ever disappears. Grief morphs and shape-shifts as we honor it, as it begins to entwine with the contours of love. At times, it can tug at your heart and break it, especially on days when you feel vulnerable and tender. On other days, it can fill your spirit with immense gratitude for a life that was shared and a life that continues. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I learned that death is not an ending but a transfer of energy. As our tears send spirits to the afterlife, their energy is transmuted to new life. Our grief transforms, too, into an energy of love.

When I finally grieved my relationship with X, I was able to acknowledge that my capacity for tenderness did not die along with our union; I just needed to be redirected toward myself. I grieved our relationship to make space for new possibilities of true love. When I grieved my po po, I deeply appreciated her life and my own, and I watched the seeds she planted blossom into illuminating seedlings of her legacy. Each time I have explored the murky waters of grief, I have become profoundly closer to myself. To this day, grief has shown me that love does not die at the face of death; it is transformed. Our funerals are commemorations of life, and they honor what needs to be released. When you grieve deeply, you are shown your abounding capacity to love. Love does not die. Love sprouts from the ground that we have nourished with our tears.

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Adapted from Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection by Mimi Zhu (Penguin Random House 2022) 

The post Grief Is an Ancestor  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When we make friends with ourselves—when we spend time doing the things that bring us well-being and pleasure and delight, when we tell ourselves that whoever and however we are is not only OK but also totally lovely—we become the kind of people others want to be around too. Our radical friendship is like a magnet. Changing ourselves doesn’t automatically change the world, but it’s an excellent place to start.

***

A Practice for Making Friends with Yourself

If you want to try this practice, start by finding a position for your body that is as comfortable as possible—it could be sitting in a chair or on a meditation cushion, lying down, or even standing up. Set a timer for an amount of time that works for you—it is totally OK to start with a few minutes and build up over time.

Close your eyes or lower them to the space in front of you. Softening the eyes can awaken your other senses, especially those of hearing and bodily sensation.

Begin with a gentle check-in. How is your mind doing right now? How’s your heart? Your body? As you pause and feel into these different domains of your being, take the attitude that there is absolutely no part of you that needs to be pushed away. In truth, you’re not actually fixing anything with meditation. You’re just allowing some time and space for mind, heart, and body to catch up with each other, creating conditions that promote wholeness and healing.

As long as we are alive, thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations will occur—often, all at the same time. In this meditation practice, we’ll be using bodily sensations as a home base for our awareness, as a resting place for our attention to land. It’s not that thoughts and emotions are unwelcome in any way—it’s just that it’s easier for the mind, heart, and body to synchronize when we bring our focus to one place at a time, and the body is for many of us an accessible, tangible place to rest our attention. Emotions and thoughts will come up, and when they do, you can just allow them to be there, dancing in the background, as you bring the experience of bodily sensation into the foreground of your attention.

We naturally pay attention to what we love. So, as you turn your awareness from your general check-in to paying closer attention to your body, try to do so with a sense of appreciation. Maybe you can even regard your body as your oldest, closest friend. It’s been with you since the day you were born and will not ever leave you as long as you are alive. Whether you pay attention or not, it stays with you through all your waking and dreaming hours. And, when you do pay attention, your body receives that attention as a very basic form of love.

The language of the body is sensation. It speaks to us through pressure, relaxation, pulses, vibration, heat, coolness, tingles, prickles, and so on. As you survey the landscape of your body from within, see if you can find a place to rest your awareness—a place that feels neutral or pleasant. Some people love to pay attention to a place where they can feel the breath moving in the body—the nostrils, the chest, the belly—and let the changing sensations of breath be a soothing rhythm that lulls them into calm. Others prefer to focus on the feeling of lightness in the space behind their ears, or the grounding sensation of their hands or feet resting on something solid. Take the time you need to find a space in your body that works for you, and zoom in there slightly with your awareness; invite your attention to relax in that place, receiving the sensations of your body there and noticing when sensations change.

Allow the feeling and movement of each breath or other bodily sensation to be lit up by your awareness. No need to struggle with other aspects of your experience that will inevitably call your attention away. Your task is to periodically call your attention back to feeling the sensations that are arising in the location you’ve committed to for this brief period. Allow your awareness to stabilize and rest on the felt experience of your body in a way that feels pleasant or at least neutral.

From time to time, in the flow of thoughts, emotions, and other bodily sensations, you may suddenly realize that you’ve lost track of the sense of your body. It can even make you feel a little disoriented or panicky, like that feeling of losing your friends in a crowd—one moment, you think you’re right there with them, and the next moment, they’re nowhere to be found.

In this practice, you have only to return your awareness to your home base in your body again and—bam! In that instant, you’re reunited. Every time you find yourself at home in your body again, let it be a moment of appreciation and celebration.

When your timer goes off or you decide to close the practice, take a few moments to reflect on the benefits of making friends with yourself and allowing your body to be a platform for establishing that relationship.

If you like, you may connect with the wish that everyone, everywhere, will truly make friends with their minds, hearts, and bodies in this lifetime.

Imagine what a world that would be.

♦

From Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World by Kate Johnson © 2021 Kate Johnson. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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