Category: Mindfulness of feelings

Leaving the Door Open

March 30, 2020

Equanimity, Feelings, Mindfulness of feelings, suffering, Uncategorized

Daisy. photo by Celia

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh

“Feel the feelings and drop the story.” ~Pema Chodron

“This is one of the peculiar problems of our culture: we are terrified of our feelings. We think that if we give them any scope and if we don’t immediately beat them down, they will lead us down into all kinds of chaotic and destructive actions.

But if, for a change, we would allow our feelings and look upon their comings and goings as something as beautiful and necessary as changes in the weather, the going of night and day and the four seasons, we would be at peace with ourselves.”

~ Alan Watts

“Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.” ~Pema Chodron

Dear friends,

I am wondering, as I write this lying in bed, how many of you are feeling a little blah or low energy amid all this uncertainty? Or maybe you are feeling a lot blah, and understandably exhausted because of the new technology you are being asked to learn and implement in a flash? Or maybe you’re feeling relieved that things are slower, or really scared, or guilty that you aren’t feeling gratitude for your health at this moment and instead are frustrated by the lack of sports or availability of lentils at the market? I offer us all a great big, “yes,” to it all. The changes we are all encountering are enormous, even if our lives are relatively unaffected if we already work from home and live a solitary, sanitized life, we are all connected to this tremendous chain of reactions, worries, and feelings that are spilling into our homes via television, internet, and social media.

Some of us are finding it difficult to hold all this information and the reverberations of global suffering, worry, and anger. We may find we spiritualize and attempt to dismiss our worry and overwhelm as just thoughts we don’t have to believe—or to get entangled with the suffering and find it hard to focus. We can’t read or do anything but watch the news and get some satisfaction that we know all the current infection rates and death statistics. Like it or not, as embodies being who share space on this planet, we have a response to this collective upheaval. When we are able to acknowledge that we are affected, without suppressing, denying, or become swallowed by our feelings—we can begin to calm our nervous system and to allow our feelings to come and go—the way feelings do.

People I have spoken to are impacted by learning new technology and being challenged by working at home, trying to stay at a distance, feeling scared of contamination and despite the lack of doing, there’s a tangible feeling of anxiety and unrest in the world. This morning, I listened for about half an hour to the news. Afterward, I noticed that even that much exposure created a response in my limbic system. I was afraid, angry, blaming, there were flashes of despair and wondering. It was like an electrical storm. When I stopped and sat and left the door open to all these flashes of information, my feelings manifested, fed by the conditions of listening to collective fear and suffering—and then, when they were no longer fed—they left.

I’ve noticed that recognizing and allowing what is can feel like we are doing the opposite of what we should be doing. We would like to be patient and positive, the people who are unflustered by the empty shelves at grocery stores and respond with equanimity when our children ask us for the fifth time if they can go visit their friends and we say no. But sometimes we aren’t equanimous. Sometimes we are hurting because everyone around us is hurting. Being honest about what’s manifesting in us is one way stop the struggle and be able to relax into what is. My dog Daisy has offered me a very apt analogy.

Daisy is one of my rescue dogs. I didn’t meet Daisy before she came to my house. My daughter picked her out from a website because she was fluffy and had pretty eyes. Daisy was one of two dogs who were suspected of having Parvo, a highly contagious disease for dogs. Daisy and her littermate were kept confined indoors in a small area and saw one woman who took care of them. Daisy spent three days being trucked to us from South Carolina. When she arrived in my life, at three months old, she didn’t know what grass was and was terrified of noises. She barked at men, distrusted shopping carts, trash cans, ladders, and anything that moved quickly. Three years later, Daisy is reasonably well adjusted. She is a highly effective watchdog, bred to guard sheep. She has decided that I am her sheep. She may look like she’s sleeping, but she tracks if I make a move towards the door or put on my shoes; she’s ready. She is on guard to protect me from the cats who want attention and intervene if any humans dare to get close to me—including my spouse.

When I sit and meditate, have a Zoom meeting, or want a quiet phone call, if I think closing the door to the anxious Daisy will give me peace, I am mistaken. After a few minutes, there’s whining, scratching and it doesn’t stop. She lies down and waits; she makes more inventive noises. She becomes very distracting. When I open the door, she is excited and circles, checks me with her nose repeatedly—she is once again, distracting—her anxiety is reignited. She doesn’t let me out of her sight, and I can sense she’s on alert, knowing she might be banished.

What I have learned, is that when I leave the door open, Daisy comes in quietly. She lies down; she gets up and leaves. She comes back. She’s quiet. She isn’t frenzied about being in the room because she can come and go. She has permission to be there. She doesn’t touch me repeatedly with her wet nose or look at me with that wounded dog look. She is so quiet that sometimes I notice her, sometimes, I don’t. It’s the same with our emotional states. When we create these boundaries and set up conditions of shame and aversion, we increase the tension and anxiety we are trying to mitigate. When we open the door to what is there, we can learn to notice its coming and going without making it wrong, forbidden, or even something special. Feelings come and go. That’s the nature of feelings.

And please remember that there are no wrong feelings. Leaving the door open lets them come and go, lets them relax and know they too have permission to be here. We don’t have to carry them and to be bowed down by them. They can come and go knowing they are all allowed, they all belong.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

If you have some time and would like to listen, Nishant Garg and I take a deeper look into mindfulness, self-compassion, and forgiveness. Here’s the link http://nishantgarg.me/2020/03/24/celia-landman

And an article by me in this month’s issue of EPIC Magazine on Fierce Compassion. https://epicmag.org/pdfs/tricountyct-march-april-2020/?page=12

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The Body is Always in the Present

December 18, 2019

Everyday mindfulness, Everyday practices, Mindfulness of feelings, Mindfulness of the Body, Uncategorized

Barkhamsted Reservoir, Photo by Celia

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh”

“As soon as we wish to be happier, we are no longer happy.” ~Walter Landor

“Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different than they are.” ~Allan Lokos

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Dear Friends,

As we move closer to the holiday season and the coming year, life can seem to speed up. We are already making doctor appointments for the new year and planning, planning, planning. This is an essential part of taking care of ourselves, but planning can also interfere with our ability to be present. Whenever folks ask me how to practice present moment awareness, how to stop their minds from cartwheeling into the past and the future—the answer I give is always, start with the body.

For most of us, we have fluid patterns of opening to the time continuum. We may be driving, shopping, listening to someone else, meditating, or reading these words and our thinking self is leaning into the future, planning as a way to stay safe and protected, or leaning into the past working furiously to shift the experience of the past and develop more protection and understanding to apply to similar situations in the future. All this mental activity centers around our primary goal of staying safe. We can see that this thought process comes from the basic need to care for ourselves and our loved ones. It’s rooted in the beautiful desire to save ourselves from suffering, but the price of this activity is exhaustion. All these maneuverings don’t really do the trick. In my lifetime, I’ve spent hundreds of hours preparing defenses to debates that never happened. All these hours of mental strategizing seemed crucial at the time but in retrospect, these are hours I’ve been absent from my life.

When we come back to the body, we have the opportunity to stop what Thich Nhat Hanh calls NST, or Non-Stop Thinking. If you go to a Plum Village monastery, something extraordinary happens every fifteen minutes. A bell rings and the entire community pauses and comes back to their breath. When we do this practice of consciously stopping and settling, noticing the body, the breath, and the mind, we are in the present moment. Basic practices include stopping and breathing in awareness three times before answering the phone, or before emailing or texting. I’ve made it a practice to breathe consciously three times before beginning to drive. We can build these pauses into our day and although this practice may seem simplistic, it has a profound cumulative effect upon the relationship we have to our body and to our ability to be present.

The body responds to being remembered and attended to. The mind and feelings are constantly asking to be seen and known. In only three breaths we can bring kind attention to the body and mind. In my own practice, I’ve added an element of self-care into these three breaths. When we stop and bring this warm accompaniment to ourselves, it’s like pouring out water from a full cup, releasing the buildup of stress that we unconsciously accumulate during the day. With the first inhale, I track the phenomena in the body. As I exhale, I image all tension leaving with my out-breath, flowing through the soles of my feet into the Earth which can hold everything. With the second inhale I investigate the quality of my mind and the emotions, accepting whatever is arising. As I exhale, I acknowledge this mental state silently with “of course,” or “I understand.” With the third inhale I say silently, “here,” and with the exhale, “now.” This practice encourages the body to release physical tension and lets the emotional states know they are understood without trying to change or manipulate them away. Remembering that we are here now, reconnects us with our power to be present with the vast experience of living our lives, leaving nothing out. We learn that we can trust ourselves to care for all our feelings, the pleasant, as well as the difficult. As we work with these practices that include the body, we can extend our periods of awareness and actually do that thing called “being present.”

Another way to give ourselves the gift of presence is to create a small window of time using an hour or less to give ourselves completely to the task at hand. We can even set a timer if it helps us focus. Creating this small circle of time, we give ourselves permission to wholeheartedly do one thing whether it’s washing dishes or seeing patients. We allow ourselves to fully inhabit this window of time in our bodies, attending to what’s happening in and around us.

As we work with embodied awareness and come back to this moment, we can be playful with our attention. I enjoy asking teens what the texture of the body is at this moment: is it smooth, bubbly, spiky, sharp, soft, grainy, or rigid? And what is the color: gray, aqua, red, yellow, or purple? I’ve heard some very interesting responses and each one is unique to the person experiencing it. This type of inquiry and noting can teach us to be more stable and aware of our body’s singular vocabulary.

This body is a marvel of sensory processing. Coming back to the body means we can be alive to all our senses. We can feel the texture of the sheets as we lie in bed, the weight of the body touching the mattress, the head resting on the pillow. We can rest in the awareness of the colors of the sunset, taste the food we are eating, listen to the sounds of life all around us, smell the coffee before we drink it. When we turn our attention to the body, we automatically become present since this body is incapable of holding onto the past or projecting into the future. Doing things wholeheartedly, with our body and mind in the same place creates a source of stillness and restfulness that transcends schedules and gives us refuge even in busyness. Granting permission to focus, staying with our experience, bringing warmth and compassion to all of our experience is the path to a greater and greater capacity for presence.

For the holidays, please give yourselves the gift of your own attention and care. The more we are able to listen to ourselves without running, the more we become fluent in the language of our lives. We learn to stop leaning, to straighten and find the center where we can be with the whole of our lives, just as we are right now. The gift of acceptance, of compassion, and understanding can give us the strength to inhabit our lives fully, as they are, at this very moment.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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I was so Mad…

October 28, 2019

Addiction, Anger#, Awareness, Buddhism, Changing habit patterns, Choice, compassion, Control, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, Uncategorized

Montana hayfield. Photo by Sofie Kirk

“When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, he allows it to spill all over the people around him. When you suffer, you make the people around you suffer. That’s very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won’t spread it everywhere.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“A person overwhelmed with anger destroys his wealth.

Maddened with anger, he destroys his status.

Relatives, friends, & colleagues avoid him.

Anger brings loss. Anger inflames the mind.

He doesn’t realize that his danger is born from within.” ~Excerpt from

“Kodhana Sutta: An Angry Person” (AN 7.60), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

“Anger is a zone of energy in us. It is part of us. It is a suffering baby we have to take care of. The best way to do this is to generate another zone of energy that can embrace and take care of our anger. The second zone of energy is the energy of mindfulness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Dear Friends,

Two weeks ago, I got mad. Not regular mad, but extra-mad, boiling. Getting mad is not extraordinary, nor is it worth mentioning except for the fact that I have been practicing with my anger for the past 14 years. I had enough experience with anger to believe I knew how to handle this strong emotion, but given the right conditions, anger can be like a riptide and drag us under.

Anger is a secondary emotion. This means that although we attribute the cause of our anger to external conditions—anger is a response to emotions that may be so fleeting or shadowed by the powerful quality of anger, we aren’t aware of them. The “Anger Iceberg” from the Gottman Institute shows some of the feelings below the surface of anger. As practitioners, we understand we are responsible for our creations of body, speech, and mind. This includes how we handle our anger.

Anger serves an important function for the biological survival of our species. Anger arises as a response to the signal of threat and lets us know something is wrong and lets us know when a situation is not ok for us. Anger, with its accompanying adrenalin and norepinephrine, moves us from passivity to action and can propel us to leave an abusive situation, to make changes, to stand up for injustice. We do not want to suppress, ignore, or get rid of anger. It is a crucial part of our ability to take care of ourselves.

Unfortunately, when we are in anger, our nervous system is flooded with stress hormones and the part of our brain that understands about consequence, kindness, and wisdom doesn’t get the oxygen and glucose it needs to function properly. We are operating from the emotional center, the limbic region of the brain. You may notice that in anger, we are very limited and focused—on what is going wrong. We lose the ability to see a bigger picture and to see we have choices. We become reactive and depending upon our conditioning we may yell, fight, both physically or verbally, or escape without understanding the consequences of our actions. In anger as the Dalai Lama says, “we lose the best part of our brain.”

Another aspect of anger I can speak to is the addictive quality of anger. The opioid receptors in the neuropeptide system link the behavior—the action of anger with the reward of pleasure and relief. We get a spike of dopamine when we act or speak in anger, the same high that accompanies narcotics, sugar, or sex. In anger, we are flooded with adrenalin which gives us purpose and provokes action. We can enjoy this feeling of importance and derive pleasure from the righteousness of being wronged. We can get swept out to sea by our anger and the resulting pleasure from the neurochemical cascade and wonder how our mindfulness evaporated so quickly.

I’ve learned over the past years that anger gives plenty of warnings, so I have the opportunity to stop and attend to the feelings that are present before it gets to boiling. As Tara Brach tells us, “everything belongs,” even our emotional responses. We don’t have to shame ourselves or get rid of our angry reactions but recognize that we are called to witness our anger with the same compassion and curiosity we bring to all other aspects of our experience. We can acknowledge that we are fully responsible for the creation of our emotions and what we choose to do with them. This is karma, the literal consequences that result from our actions.

So how do we engage with anger skillfully? When I was so angry, I found myself struggling with the energy of the anger itself—which brought me into the forever humbling experience of being a human being who is subject to stress and overwhelm. I have learned that despite years of practice, anger is one of the strongest biological and habitual snares I’ve encountered. Although I didn’t discharge my anger at anyone—it certainly made my life a hell realm for a while. I found myself shaking my head at how small I had let my world become. When I looked at the situation from a cooler perspective, I saw that my feelings of being trapped, overwhelmed, and helpless could have been resolved with two phone calls and the magic word, “no.”

Dharma teacher Joanne Friday asks us to consider if we are a victim or a student in this lifetime. When I acted from a place where I forgot I had a choice, I was a victim and my anger reflected the injustice and powerlessness of that perception. When I looked at my response as a student—I saw that old habits made me consider other’s needs and happiness above my own. When I agreed to do more than I could, I sacrificed my ease and physical wellbeing. My anger was the cry of my own body and mind that wanted to be considered and to matter.

What I forget and learn over and over, is that I need to matter to myself. When I matter to myself, I understand the limits of my abilities. I don’t overload my schedule. I get support for the heavy lifting—both physically and metaphorically in my life. This takes real mindfulness of the body and mind and recognition of our moment by moment experience. Mattering to myself isn’t narcissistic flattery or propping up my ego with importance. It means that I extend the same care and concern for myself as I do for the other people in my life.

This week I invite you to take some time out to see how you are mattering to yourself. Are you responding from habit and doing what you always do—feelings of irritation, frustration, and wanting things to be different are a hint that we are not considering our own wellbeing. What are some actions we can take to let ourselves know we matter? Time for play and relaxation, getting help, adequate sleep, time to eat without rushing, respecting ourselves enough to arrange travel time so we arrive refreshed and calm—all these strategies can help undo the conditioning that tells us to hurry and to abandon ourselves. When we value the quality of our own consciousness and we demonstrate it with our words, deeds, and thoughts, we are learning to entrust ourselves into our own care. Looking with wisdom at how we support our practice and our own capacity for peace and resilience creates the framework that strengthens our commitment to living in awareness with compassion for all beings—including ourselves.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Mindfulness Lab:101

August 26, 2019

Awakening where we are, Awareness, habit patterns, Listening to Ourselves, Mindfulness of feelings, Mindfulness of the Body, present moment, Sangha, The Eight Worldly Winds, Uncategorized, understanding Negativity Bias, Understanding Reactivity

Blue Cliff Monastery, Photo by Celia

“Spiritual practice is not just sitting and meditating. Practice is looking, thinking, touching, drinking, eating, and talking. Every act, every breath, and every step can be practice and can help us to become more ourselves.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“Mindfulness is not difficult; we just need to remember to do it.” ~ Sharon Salzberg

“What are you using that time for? Are you using your time to worry or using your time to live?” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear friends,

It’s not hard to love people when they’re silent. On silent retreats, especially those with extended periods of quiet and intensive meditation practice, I can send metta and imagine my fellow retreatants in perfect health. I can wish they have no sorrow and their lives be filled with joy. Fast forward to the end of the retreat and my dedicated practice of openhearted friendliness and wishing the best for others can come to a screeching halt when they open their mouths. Even after deep realizations about our interconnectedness, our non-self nature and how we are caught in habit patterns, all these valuable and worthy insights seem to evaporate when we are faced with folks behaving the way they sometimes do. All our insights and wisdom are put to the test in relationship, in working and living with others who may say or do the wrong thing. Showing up as a part-time Buddha in our real life is what we are practicing for.

A week ago, I was on staff at the For a Future to be Possible retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery. What is both wonderful and challenging about Blue Cliff is that it’s a place where we are embodying the Dharma in a relational way. It’s a sort of mindfulness lab where we can experience mindful living in community. We practice mindful working, eating, communicating, and even being a mindful roommate. For this retreat, I came with the expectation of encountering confusion and clarity, moments of disconnection and community, and times when folks liked what I did when they didn’t—and I wasn’t disappointed. I met all of that and more.

In life and on retreat we encounter the Eight Worldly Winds or vicissitudes that blow through life. The Buddha was the ultimate systems analysist. He saw all life as functioning in conjunction with the concert of wholeness and that our perception is a small fragmented piece of what is truly arising. In the Lokavipatti Sutta, AN 8:6, the Buddha described a way to understand our experience of being in relationship with others and ourselves using the teaching of the Eight Worldly Winds. They are a codified example of the moving and fluid nature of our perception—and a reminder that our experience is not as personal as we think. The Worldly Winds are presented as pairs, with one aspect being something desirable and pleasant, and the other—not so much: they are gain and loss, status and disgrace, praise and blame, pleasure and pain.

You may have shared this experience of encountering one email praising us for something we’ve done and another letting us know that the exact same thing did not meet another’s needs—both on the same day. Because of the ingrained negativity bias in humans, we may find the email not liking what we did, sticks in our minds. It’s easy to run past the praise, dismissing it as coming from someone who’s easy to please, or that what we’ve done isn’t really that great—and we may find it easy to focus on criticism and get caught analyzing how we have missed the mark for the other person.

The negativity bias is part of our biological evolutionary strategy and was a useful tool for our ancestors who needed to be aware of the poison berries, the snake that bites, the warlike tribe or person who threatens our lives. We humans got very adept as distinguishing threat and avoiding it to protect our gene line and this biological evolutionary adaptation is still in play today. Although most of us don’t have to focus on which roots are edible and which will kill us, we, as a species, still give priority attention to what harms us and makes life dangerous.

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D. tells us that in relationship we store up the bad and skip over the good—so much so, that it takes five positive interactions to diminish the sting of one negative encounter. We are so sensitized to criticism that we as a species tend to overestimate threat and interpret another person’s disapproval as dangerous and threatening. We can get very tight and defended when we encounter the downside of the Worldly Winds. What can help to keep us in an open relational state are two things. The first is to recognize that in moments when we are not hearing the acknowledgment or acceptance we are longing, that this is our turn at experiencing disapproval. We can remind ourselves that we also experience praise and that both these shifting winds are temporary, inconsistent, and depend upon conditions. The second way to practice is to bring our own care and compassion into this experience and to let ourselves be fully present without pushing away this feeling of sadness, disappointment, or hurt. We can look deeply at our instrument of emotion—our body—noting where this experience directly in the body. What does it feel like to be blamed? Where does it live in the body—in the flushed cheeks, the constricted throat, the burning of adrenalin in the hands? Can we stay with the sensations as they too shift and live out the life of this impermanent emotion?

A young nun on the retreat shared her experience with anger with me and a group of teens. She said she was aware when she was hurt and angry there was the desire to hurt the other person as much as they had hurt her. When we look at the range of experience we have in life, the hurt can take on a different meaning. It can be the portal to the way we practice with this condition in the world—the condition of blame or bad reputation. Doing our best to live in accordance with the Dharma involves actively working to reconcile and address these hurts and miscommunications as they occur. It takes bravery and vulnerability to stop continuing in the same pattern of aversion and distancing. Seeing these moments as part of this greater system of life can allow us to see these painful experiences not as torture and grounds for war, but as practice opportunities.

When I find myself tossed about by the changing winds, I remind myself, oh, this is what blame feels like. It doesn’t feel good—and I can be present for this too. I care about this feeling. The simple joy of fearlessly feeling what we feel can be a surprising balm for the painful side of the Worldly Winds. And moment after moment, we learn to trust that we can befriend ourselves through both gentle breezes and the wildest storms.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

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Beyond hope lies wisdom and love

July 23, 2019

Appreciative Joy, Brahamaviharas, Equanimity, joy, Letting Be, love, Metta, Mindfulness, Mindfulness of feelings, Moving beyond hope, Non-attachment, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized, Wisdom

View from tea house, Lan Su Chinese Garden, Portland, OR. Photo by Celia

“If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us – to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Dear Friends,

Some of you may have noticed that while the characteristics of faith, trust, and impermanence all have a starring role in the Buddhist lexicon, the word hope is conspicuously absent. What is it about hope that makes it an outlier attribute? Why didn’t the Buddha prescribe a practice of hope for his followers?

I looked up hope and Miriam Webster’s describes it as “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment,” ahh—there’s the rub—the expectation of fulfillment. As Thich Nhat Hanh points out, hope can be an obstacle when it prevents us from accepting what is. Hope can have us leaning into the future where we believe things will be better, we, or our loved ones, will be healed, or different. The reason that this word hope is so tricky is held in our motivation to act. What happens if this is as good as it gets—or if things get worse? What happens to our willingness to try when we see our dreams smashed against the rocks of reality again and again? Maybe there is something that has the power to motivate, the way hope does but without pinning our wellbeing on the accomplishment of our goal?

In the common usage of hope, we link hope with optimism and agency. Agency is the belief that our actions are meaningful and have an impact on our lives. In the Psychology of Hope Theory, “Hope is defined as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways” (Snyder, 2012). This definition is synonymous with taking action to create desired change, not contingent upon the success of those actions. In everyday speech when someone is without hope, we think of a pessimistic, depressed person, too despairing to make any effort to change a situation.

In Buddhism, there is the inherent understanding that all actions (kamma/karma) have unescapable meaning and consequence. Thoughts leading to action or inaction have meaning as well. We also understand that because of impermanence, we have the opportunity to create constant change. There is also the support of an ethical framework (sila) that gives us the foundation to take action with kindness and concern for the wellbeing of ourselves and others. Through the wisdom of mindful awareness, we learn what thoughts, words, and deeds lead to our happiness and which do not.

Forest monk and translator, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (2010) describes the unfolding events in our lives as “[T]ools for Awakening. With every moment we’re supplied with raw materials — some of them attractive, some of them not. Instead of embracing them in delight or throwing them away in disgust, we can learn how to use them to produce the keys that will unlock our prison doors.” The ability to see that all events as opportunities supplies us with an unending source of hope for our happiness and the happiness of others. This understanding embraces the everyday view of hope with the wisdom and guidance of the highest qualities of the mind, the Brahmaviharas.

We cultivate these heart qualities first in our own being. As they mature, they pervade our life and spread to each situation and life we encounter. They include the desire to bring universal friendliness (metta/maître), compassion, (karuna), the wish to relieve the suffering of all beings including ourselves, and the willingness to be happy at the good fortune of others (mudita) without jealousy or envy. The special sauce in the assemblage of the brahmaviharas is equanimity (upekkha), the wisdom which understands that it is possible to love and care without making it contingent upon success and having things change the way we would like them to. Equanimity gives us the ability to extend our compassion despite our intention of kindness being misinterpreted, unwelcomed, or discounted, despite the illness which does not improve, or the diagnosis staying the same.

When we come from this openhearted intention to bring about change to benefit all beings, we do not tether our motivation on success. True compassion and love know that in disappointment, these qualities are more necessary than ever. We can understand that disappointment and discouragement are critical arenas for engaging unflagging love, patience, equanimity, and above all compassion for the very feelings of failure or discouragement. If these feelings are not met with this response, they can become the ballast that destroys all our agency and willingness to try. When we can meet disappointment with wisdom and love, we transcend hope. This is the motivation that goes beyond beginnings and endings, beyond life and death. With love and wisdom, there is no question that there is the willingness to try, to try, and to try again.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

References:

Thanissaro, B. (2010, June 5). All about change. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition) Webpage. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/change.html.

Snyder, C. R. (2002) Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249-275. DOI: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1304_01

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Stuck in the Mud

March 4, 2019

Aversion#, compassion, Hindrances, Mindfulness of feelings, Non-attachment, Not taking ourselves so seriously, suffering, Uncategorized

“‘But what, friends, is the reason, what the cause, why unarisen aversion arises, or arisen aversion tends to growth & abundance?’ ‘The theme of irritation,’ it should be said. ‘For one who attends inappropriately to the theme of irritation, unarisen aversion arises and arisen aversion tends to growth & abundance.…’” ~ Sectarians
Titthiya Sutta (AN 3:69)

“Aversion, my friend, makes you blind, makes you sightless, makes you ignorant. It brings about the cessation of discernment, is conducive to trouble, and does not lead to Unbinding.” ~Channa Sutta (AN 3:72)

“They, superlative people, put out the fire of aversion
with good will.” ~Iti 93

all translations by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Marsh in winter. Photo by Celia

Dear Friends,

There’s a phenomenon that plagues all practitioners from time to time—it lessens as we progress along the path, but it’s a sticky thing and can catch us unaware. I am going to call it getting stuck in the mud. I had one of those muddy days last week where even before I opened my eyes my thoughts were brimming with the injustice of how others were making my life hard. The wrongness of this ate at me and as I opened emails, I saw brusqueness and blame and fights to be fought. Everything was irritating: My spouse was impatient and vexatious. The cats were quarreling. My son moped like a dejected prophet and wouldn’t accept vegetables in his lunch. The news was particularly distressing, hate crimes were up and the British labor party had split over overt anti-Semitism and bullying in the party. The world was going to hell and I was ticked off.

The only one who wasn’t irritating me was the dog sleeping on the floor. Even my meditation seemed pointless to help with these big problems of the world. And—I was supposed to be peaceful and happy, which made another thing wrong. But I didn’t want to feel better; I wanted to be miserable. I was right to be miserable because things were miserable. In short, I had jumped into the mud pit of vexation and aversion and was stomping around in it.

It was still morning and already I was tired of myself and this mood, but I was in it, victimized and defended. Aversion sat victoriously upon my chest, like a pugnacious toddler in a dirty diaper, stinking and drooling. I felt irritable and knew that this mind-state would lead to even more suffering as the day wore on.

I decided if I was in this hell-realm, I was going to really do it right and jump in with both feet. I would make a list of all the things that were the source of my irritation starting with the dent in my car, the cat’s mysterious dandruff, the medication my health insurance wouldn’t cover, the neighbor who thinks I am odd, the meeting that didn’t get rescheduled because of snow, the never-ending winter, this wind that’s threatening to bash in the door. The list went on and by the time I got to the oligarchy in America—my aversion had changed. I could see that I was hating the whole kitchen sink of events, and they were stupendously uncontrollable. As the weight of the list got heavier and more unwieldy, I began to see my aversion as just plain aversion. In fact, I was smiling as I contemplated me complaining loudly against the litany of wrong in the world.

deer footprint in snow

Ajahn Sumedho (2014), a senior Thai Forest monk writes about falling into this pit of aversion and becoming very righteous and indignant. He suggests we “bring it up into conscious form, where you can see it, make it absurd, and when you have a perspective on it, and it gets quite amusing. You can see what comedy is about!” (pp. 44-45). My list of irritations was not going away, or trivial, like climate change, they were difficult and challenging conditions created from ignorance, fear, and delusion, but when I saw them all heaped up on the scale—the enormity of my judgment was what was causing the pain and coloring my view of everything.

Instead of suppressing aversion, the permission to let it be, allowed it to flower into a mass of ridiculousness. It does become funny when we can stop pushing back against the aversion and believing it—stop taking our likes and dislikes so seriously that they pull us into reactivity and stop us from being able to see clearly—and they rob us of all the enjoyment and potential to act with wisdom and discernment at this moment.

Being able to look at aversion separates it from the unconscious belief that we are the aversion and gives us the necessary space to observe our choices. Caring for our irritation means we stop fighting against it—we stop the internal conflict that judges the judgment and creates more suffering. This is an act of loving kindness—of metta. Not accepting ourselves in this less than ideal state and always wanting to be loving and cheery is what Ajahn Sumedho calls “impractical idealism” (p. 34) that leads us to the punishing judgment of being a “good Buddhist” (p. 33). We can use our caring attention to contact the aversion and as Sumedho advises, “Have metta for the aversion you feel, for the pettiness of mind, the jealousy, envy, meaning peaceful coexisting, not creating problems out of the difficulties that arise in life, within our minds and bodies” (p. 35). The difficulties don’t stop—but we stop going to war with what is difficult. Sometimes things are painful and feel bad and knowing it, making peace, and laughing at our seriousness and the sticky righteousness of our unpleasant and grumpy thoughts is as good as it gets right now.

Maybe you have never visited the aversion pit, or maybe you can always get out easily—maybe painful feelings and judging don’t catch you up—lucky you! But if you find yourself stuck in the mud, please remember sometimes letting ourselves roll around in it is enough to get us free.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Reference

Sumedho, A. (2014). The seeds of understanding: The ajahn Sumedho anthology. Hertfordshire, UK: Amaravati Publications.

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Home to Ourselves for the Holidays

December 23, 2018

Listening to Ourselves, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, present moment, Renunciation, Self-care, Uncategorized

Paperwhites, photo by Celia

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” ~David Whyte

“I have gone forth,

but not in search of sensual pleasures.

Seeing the danger in sensual pleasures

— and renunciation as rest —

I go to strive.

That’s where my heart delights.”

~ The Buddha, “Pabbaja Sutta: The Going Forth”, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (trans.)

“The more difficulties you have, in fact, the greater opportunity there is to let them transform you. The difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into the lousy habitual patterns you already have, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you, on the spot.” ~ Pema Chödrön

Dear Friends,

It’s busy out there. We are shopping, hosting, checking Amazon Wishlists, buying Secret Santa gifts for the office, traveling to be with relatives, making New Year’s plans, and let us not forget there’s always some last minute shopping. There’s overwhelm and preparations for the hosts and tremendous longing for those who are unable to be with their families. There’s also isolation and sadness for those who are not part of the dominant Christian culture or are alone on holidays. December is both the busiest and loneliest time of the year.

More than a dozen years ago, I read about a simple holiday practice of making gifts for the wild animals. The author made peanut butter pinecone bird feeders for the chickadees and the squirrels and scattered dried corn for the deer in his yard on Christmas day. These simple gifts for those whose opinions won’t get us a promotion or be able to reciprocate in kind really touched me. This man was able to detach from the loud voices of the commercial world, to listen to the quieter voice of his own deepest intentions and honor his own kindness, inclusivity, and unrequited giving. That is my message today, a heartfelt encouragement for us all to take some time to stop and listen deeply to what our lives are calling out for.

This was the choice the Buddha made. Born into a life of privilege and power, he recognized that pleasures and comfort were not enough. His life needed to become simpler to find the truth. So he left. The Buddha must have been deeply discontent and unable to participate in a life that was so unsatisfactory. Instead of burying his heartsickness and living out his life comfortably as the pampered son of a tribal leader, he listened deeply to his own sense of responsibility for his own salvation and wellbeing. We know his journey ended with enlightenment and his teachings on the end of suffering have set free countless numbers of humans. For most of us, taking off from our lives, leaving our children and spouses to begin our spiritual quest raises issues about honoring our agreements and our compassion for others, not to mention our financial responsibilities and subsistence. As lay people with families and jobs, we can remember that there are many ways to come back to ourselves, to our true intentions and stay in our role as parent, partner, and householder.

We can start small and take a five-minute break to listen. Listening to ourselves is a way to remember who we are and what is going to set us free. We can begin with mindfulness of the body/mind. How are we feeling today? What’s the territory of my mind—what emotions are visiting and how am I really? We can ask if we are aligned with our heart’s intentions. How are we living our deepest desires today? Have we dropped our aspirations to spend today in the present moment and unconsciously consented to exchange our peace and ease for irritation and exhaustion in the form of a completed shopping list and a clean house? We can ask the poet David Whyte’s question, “What brings me alive right now?” What do we want our lives to be made of?

At this time of year, we can remember that all moments contain choice. We can pause and consider what we consenting to in each encounter and each moment. Remembering that returning to our inner wisdom and stillness is available for us even in this season of doing and getting. That’s my wish for us all as we turn towards a new year, that we may deepen our trust in our own goodness and learn to listen to our truest desires.

Wishing you joy and happiness for the new year.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Simplicity, Renunciation, and Lessons From the Toad at the Front Door

August 6, 2018

Busyness, Diligence, Mindfulness of feelings, Renunciation, Simplicity, Uncategorized

My teacher of simplicity, the humble toad

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” ~ Will Rogers

“Order your soul. Reduce your wants.” ~Saint Augustine

“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” ~ Isaac Newton

“We can travel a long way and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. It is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.” ~ Sharon Salzberg

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” Lin Yutang

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”~ William Morris

Dear Friends,

August brings “Back to School” signs and the reminder that for some of us, life will change dramatically in a few weeks. August can signal the bittersweet end of leisure and the beginning of back to school, work, and the serious task of preparing for the winter. My family is moving house this month and we are working diligently to reduce our possessions and pack them up. I am filled with the desire for the simplicity of the monastic life where one’s possessions amount to three robes and a begging bowl. I’ve had to face the reality that the dozens of single socks I’ve held onto for the last six years, hoping to one day reunite with their long lost mates will forever remain unpaired. I was astonished at the number of writing implements we own and dismayed by the tangled skeins of electrical chargers and adapters that belong to defunct technology or broken toys, a result of planned obsolesce.

Life is feeling complicated with mortgage applications, escrow, and all the legal stuff of home selling and buying. A few weeks ago, I participated in a group meditation where we were asked to find what felt complex and what felt simple, right this moment. The complex was a cracked boiler expansion tank and the simple was being here, present in this breathing body that feels contact with the cushions beneath me, and the sounds that come to my ear. This awareness of simplicity in the midst of complexity requires renunciation. The renunciation of the planning, worrying mind. The world offers complexity everywhere we turn, on the news, in our political structure, and our economics. It’s easy to live in complexity. It’s much harder and takes intentional action to live simplicity.

My best teacher of simplicity this summer has been a toad who lives behind the pile of chair cushion on my front stoop. Shifting the cushions I heard a soft chirp and saw a palm-sized toad situated between two cushions. This shaded nook was the toad’s home during the day. I came back days later and peeked. The toad was still there… and nothing else. There was no bedding, no straw, or bits of food, nothing, but the toad resting in the coolness. This image stayed with me for days, the toad that needed nothing, except to stay cool during the heat of the day. This being that trusted that each night there would be adequate food, enough insects to feed on and during the day there would be a space to find safety and shade. This toad had no pockets for possessions and lived in absolute trust and accord with the natural order.

We humans manipulate so much in our environments we forget that we too must live in accord with the natural order. We cannot escape from our biological and environmental realities. We all must reckon with how we live on this earth and the true price of complexity. This week you may like to explore mindfulness of simplicity and complexity and ask, how much do I really need to be ok? What can I let go of? Maybe it’s the growing stash of takeout soy sauce packets or striving for a job with a bigger paycheck and lots more responsibility and hours. What does living simply on the earth look like for you?

This inquiry can deepen to include the perception of the body and emotions. We can ask, what feels complex right now? Where does complexity live in the body and how does it feel emotionally? And then, what is simple right now? What is the body/mind experience of finding simplicity? What would it feel like to live a day in simplicity? For simplicity requires diligent renunciation of the habits of proliferation, greed, acquisition, and the habit of fear. All of which our culture tells us will keep us safe and well, but what is our lived experience of complexity? Does it really make us happier and more peaceful? At each moment we do have the ability to choose where to place our mind and whether we want to live simply or not.

I know my life will include complexity. It is inescapable, but my teacher, that modest toad on the front stoop, reminds me that life can look different. Even when the tasks at hand are complex, touching into the always available presence of body and mind awareness is simple, but not easy.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Not Abandoning Ourselves

July 30, 2018

compassion, Dharma, Friendship, Healing Ourselves, inclusiveness, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, Relationship, Self-care, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized, Zen

James’ feet. X-ray by Dr. McHugh.

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion–and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.”

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

~ All quotes by Ram Dass

Dear Friends,

What if right now, reading this, wherever you are, life is as good as it will ever be? And it is. That moment is already past and whatever level of satisfaction or discomfort was there is already flowing into the next moment and the next. We live in a culture devoted to half of life’s experiences and we strategize to keep our sadness and loneliness away with events and achievements. We design campaigns and create boundaries of responsibility so we will never know how it feels to be ashamed, afraid, or helpless. We make room in our hearts for what is welcome and flattering, while edging out the unwanted, believing if we just try a little harder, we can have this life a little sweeter, a little less stressful and lots easier. There was an advertising slogan a few years back that declared, “You can have it all.” The publicists were talking about light beer, but in life, we don’t want it all. We want only what we want.

Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, “This is it.” Life is not a dress rehearsal that we repeat until we get it just right; it’s happening now. And what if we are never kinder, wiser, healthier, smarter, or wealthier than we are in this moment? Are we enough as we are right now to make this moment count and meet it as we want to be? Can we stop trying to manipulate this moment and rest in our own capacity to meet the edges of what is unpleasant and unwanted? The more we can get comfortable with the range of our mind, the more we can make space to include everything and allow it to be.

Raindrops in a puddle. Photo by Celia

This allowing can stop the push and pull of wanting the half of the whole and surprisingly lessen the power of the unwanted. When we don’t push back we can give the unwanted the freedom it needs to rise and fall without the struggle of dislike that makes it so painful. Another way to frame this is, “it’s ok to not be ok.” Pain is part of each life. Even at the best times, we may find a shading of sadness or fear. It’s ok to see the darkness or unwanted in ourselves and let it come and go without feeding it with opposition.

Including everything with the knowledge that our purpose is to meet ourselves where we stand just as we are is what I call the practice of non-abandoning, or inclusivity, leaving nothing out. When we set our intention to stay connected and present to all of our emotional life, we can meet each interaction with kindness and understanding. This week, you may like to try setting an intention of non-abandoning and put your acceptance of whatever is arising in you, as your first priority. This diligence to stand beside ourselves creates a framework of care for ourselves. When we can hold ourselves with this kind attention, we naturally bring our capacity for care to the world. When we stay present and do not abandon ourselves we can make this moment count. Developing the capacity to show up for ourselves means we don’t have to wait for a perfect future to be here now, fully present, engaged, and grounded in unshakeable love.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Irritation is a pain in the heart

July 9, 2018

Buddhism, compassion, Dharma, Irritation, Loving Kindness, Mindfulness, Mindfulness of feelings, non-violence, Relationship, Self-care, stopping, suffering, Thich Nhat Hanh, Transforming emotions, Uncategorized

Butterfly resting on Judith’s daisy. Photo by Celia

“If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and the violence in you, then you will not be able to take care of others. You must have love and patience before you can truly listen to your partner or child. If you are irritated you cannot listen. You have to know how to breathe mindfully, embrace your irritation and transform it.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.” ~Pema Chodron

“Others may be harmful, but I shall be harmless, thus should I train myself.” ~ The Buddha, Kakacupama Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 21

Dear Friends,

This past week was one of those weeks where it felt like everyone was making life more complicated than it needed to be. I could tell my frustration level was rising and my equanimity sagging. I thought about escaping to a spiritual retreat, taking a week in silence where no one would speak to me or complain. That sounded like heaven, but a retreat is temporary and there’s always something in our lives we can find that’s irritating, some relative who lets us down, a political figure who speaks without thinking, emails asking for clarifications about clarifications. Irritation is inversely correlated to the amount of self-compassion, love, and understanding available in ourselves. If we haven’t been sending ourselves loving kindness, if we haven’t practiced stopping, breathing and calming our body, showing care for our own situation and capacity, then we will exhaust our fund of equanimity, compassion, and care and quickly fall into illbeing [dukkha].

Although irritation can seem like small potatoes in the realm of unwholesome thoughts, it is also called ill-will and categorized as one of the five lower fetters and is a direct forerunner to aversion or hatred, one of the three root poisons that creates the conditions for suffering in ourselves and the world. When we feel irritation, we don’t need to wait months, or even seconds to experience illbeing; we have an immediate mind and body sensation of discomfort. Just the state of experiencing irritation is already suffering.

The Buddha stated that he taught only the knowledge of suffering and the release from suffering. In a comprehensive talk to his son Rahula, the Buddha instructed him in a variety of methods to guard the mind against irritation, “Develop the meditation of good will. For when you are developing the meditation of good will, ill-will will be abandoned. Develop the meditation of compassion. For when you are developing the meditation of compassion, cruelty will be abandoned. Develop the meditation of appreciation. For when you are developing the meditation of appreciation, resentment will be abandoned. Develop the meditation of equanimity. For when you are developing the meditation of equanimity, irritation will be abandoned,” from the Maha-Rahulovada Sutta (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Trans.).

To develop this mind of good will, consider in the moment of irritation, how much good will is present towards ourselves or another? Usually, in irritation, all thoughts are projected outward to the other person or condition. We believe that’s where the change needs to happen—out there. That person needs to stop being annoying and then I’ll be fine. But when we engage in the habit of irritation, we no longer offer our support and friendship to ourselves. Falling into irritation we abandon ourselves. Sending ourselves loving kindness is the way to transform our aversion, hatred, and anger. Accepting what is without fear or distrusting ourselves is the remedy for irritation. That sort of acceptance requires a base of goodwill, or kindness, and self-care. Appreciating others dislodges resentment and the urge towards cruelty is abandoned when we cultivate the desire to protect others.

On a spiritual path, sometimes, we have smooth and easy progress, then we hit some turbulence and the going gets a bit rougher. We may act in ways we know are not helpful, and even though we know better, we find ourselves doing it anyway. We may observe ourselves chewing on thoughts of dislike and revenge and end up disappointed in ourselves.

The good news is that we have immeasurable opportunities to begin again in mindful awareness. Beginning with being present for ourselves, we may want to comfort ourselves the way we would a friend, to tell ourselves, “I understand. It’s ok, I am here for you,” or use Thich Nhat Hanh’s mantras of, “Darling, I am here for you” and “I know you suffer.” We can promise to care for ourselves in our discomfort and recognize external irritation as a cry from the heart for our own help. Reminding ourselves that “this is how it is right now,” or “may I be at ease with the changing conditions,” or simply, “I care,” can give us confidence in our ability to meet all the conditions we encounter. Although the world keeps sending stormy weather, we have the potential to keep a calm, still place of shelter within us at all times. In the coming weeks, I am planning on carving out more time to fill up my treasure store of self-compassion, and when I have saturated my own heart with care, to be that understanding presence for another who may have no resources left in their heart.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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