Category Archives: self-discovery

What’s in a Name?

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Lately I’ve been noticing how often people call themselves names: ‘stupid’ or “idiot”; or they describe themselves as ‘technologically challenged’ or ‘anal’, etc. They may start sentences with ‘I’m the kind of person who…’

What’s wrong with that? This is such a common human thing to do that it doesn’t seem problematic on the surface. Self-effacement is socially acceptable and even encouraged, unlike boasting, a sure way to lose friends. The boaster puffs up their personal identity in order to be admired, respected and safe. The person whose words are self-diminishing has a different strategy for self-protection: Perhaps to lower expectations? To put themselves down before someone else does? To gain sympathy? Not all the motivations have to do with impact on others. And probably only a small percentage of the put downs are said out loud.  Both the people who boast and the people who put themselves down may feel they are simply stating truth, seeing themselves ‘realistically’. Is that true? Or is it selective observation at best and distortion at worst?

As we practice mindfulness and become increasingly present in our experience, we can see how these autopilot statements lock us into a very limited sense of self. The words form a false construct — a painted shell — that camouflages our authentic being, disconnects us, and prohibits true engagement in life.

It is a good practice to listen for our own self-defining statements and to question them when they arise. This isn’t judging them, but seeing them clearly, questioning their veracity and motivation. In the last post, I talked about the faulty filter of fear. Can we see these ways we define ourselves as a part of that filter? If we say ‘I’m such an idiot’, there is clearly at least one if not a series of painful past experiences that bring us to this conclusion. It’s worth revisiting that past and investigating: Were we called a name by someone who was afraid in their own lives? We may doubt that the original voice of that name-calling was afraid, but what healthy happy person with no ax to grind goes around calling anyone an idiot? People who put others down are acting out their own unhappiness and insecurities.

Many of us over-manage our image like hyper-zealous stage mothers. And our running commentary gets in the way of people seeing us clearly. If this sounds at all familiar, are you ready for a little challenge?

Challenge

  1. Stop describing yourself to others! There’s no need to explain yourself. You may have your opinions, but let others draw their own. Live your life with wise loving intention and effort, and let the rest go.
  2. Pay attention to the unspoken but oft-repeated negative names you may call yourself. If you find one or more, take time to investigate, preferably after meditation, to find the source. Question the veracity with awareness and compassion. For example, you repeatedly call yourself ‘stupid’, you might think of times when you were smart.

veil-3

 

Exercise

Occasionally in class I share this exercise I created almost thirty years ago, when I was teaching meditation, but before I began studying and practicing Buddhism. It’s called ‘The Dance of the Seven Veils’. If you’ve been following along the posts in this blog, you might see a correlation between the veils this week and the filters from last week. Clarifying our view of the world and ourselves is an ongoing valuable part of our practice. And as always, we’re simply noticing how we are in relationship to all aspects of our experience, not trying to push them away or change them. Try this exercise after at least a few minutes of meditation.
‘Dance of the Seven Veils, an Exercise in Letting Go’
by Stephanie Noble
Here’s a written version, in case you can’t play it, or just want to review:

The first veil is the you that is defined by material possessions. These possessions reflect your taste, your financial status and your values. Think of your home, your furnishings, your clothes, your vehicle — all the choices you have made that tell people who you are.

To the degree that these define you, they confine you.

Let them go.

The second veil is the you that is defined by your achievements and your failures, your badges of honor and your battle scars. Woven into this veil are the titles you hold, the awards you have won, the degrees you have earned, the good deeds you have done, the pain you have caused, the guilt you bear, the struggles you have gone through. To the degree that these define you, they confine you.

Let them go.

The third veil is the you that is defined by your relationship with others. See the threads of your various roles as son or daughter, sister or brother, father or mother, husband or wife, friend, lover, student, teacher, co-worker, employee, employer and citizen. To the degree that these roles define you, they confine you.

Let them go.

The fourth veil is the you that is defined by your beliefs, how you have woven together your religion, your spiritual beliefs, your political affiliations, your judgments, the angers and resentments that shape your judgments, and your assumptions about other people. To the degree that these define you, they confine you.

Let them go.

The fifth veil is all the aspects of you that you were born with: Gender, ethnicity, ancestry, physical features, and the most fundamental aspects of your personality. To the degree that these define you, they confine you.

Let them go.

The sixth veil is the you that is defined by your perception of your body as isolated and your skin as an encapsulation and barrier. To the degree that this defines you, it confines you.

Let it go.

The seventh veil is the you that is defined by mind, consciousness. It is the you that maintains resistance in order to exist as a separate consciousness. To the degree that this defines you, it confines you. Let it go.

The seven veils drift to the floor. For this brief moment, allow yourself to shine free of them.

Now who are you? Beyond the barriers of all your veils of identity, beyond the veils that create shadow, mask and distortion, suddenly all is clear. Who are you? You are one with all that is, an expression of the joy of oneness. You are undefined thus unconfined and expansive without limits. Yet completely here and now, always in this moment. Rest in this joyous light being.

Now you can dress in the veils. Take your time to take on each one as a light sheer manifest expression of being alive in this place and time:

This separate seeming consciousness — now lighter, sheerer, a softer way of being in the world.

This separate seeming body — now lighter, sheerer, able to dance with this gift of life.

This veil of personality and traits — now lighter, sheerer, more fluid and loving.

This set of beliefs — now lighter, sheerer, more insightful and open.

This set of roles in relationships — now lighter, sheerer, more ready to see the wholeness of being as you engage with others.

This veil of personal history loosely woven life lessons — now lighter, sheerer and full of kindness.

This final veil of possessions, no longer seen as self at all, but simply objects to use, enjoy, give, receive and maintain.

Once again you are fully dressed in all your veils, but now they are diaphanous and don’t weigh you down. Never again will you mistake them for you. The authentic inseparable you that is light energy source and receptor, transmitter and receiver. You that is released from the limits of fear and knows the infinite power of love. Behold your true self. One with all that is.

                                               – Stephanie Noble

 

Why I teach a women’s group

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kwan yinWhen I guest teach elsewhere people often come up to me afterwards and ask where else I teach. When I tell them I lead a weekly women’s group, the women smile and seem to completely understand why that would be a good thing. If their schedule allows, they want come on a Thursday morning and give it a try.

But, not surprisingly, when men hear my answer they have a very different response: ‘Isn’t that sexist?’ ‘Why exclude men?’ And I agree with them, or at least I did until relatively recently.

When I began teaching insight meditation ten years ago, it was at the request of a few friends who happened to be women. There was no particular intention to create a ‘women’s meditation group’, but as the sangha grew by word of mouth, the members invited women friends, sisters and daughters. For whatever reason, they did not invite their husbands or male friends to come along. After a few years, the students started asking if we could call it a women’s group and limit it to women. I repeatedly said no, explaining that I felt strongly it should be an open group, even if no men show up. These teachings are universal, I told them, and it would be wrong to withhold them from anyone who wanted to learn them.

Then I spent a couple of weeks traveling around Morocco. It was my first exposure to a culture where women are truly hidden away. We saw men everywhere but very rarely did we see women walking about or filling any jobs in public places. It was a big deal when we saw a lone woman in the countryside carrying a bunch of firewood on her head. The tour arranged for us to be invited into people’s homes for occasional meals, which was lovely. But where were the women? The men sat at the table and engaged us in conversation, while the women were off in the kitchen cooking up dishes that they served us before disappearing again. They didn’t set a place for themselves at the table.

Hmm. There was something both sad and familiar in this. My mother-in-law often did the same, saying she had already ‘eaten’ while she was cooking and tasting. And I recognized that many women everywhere have some degree of this feeling of exclusion, an ingrained sense that we don’t have a seat at the table of life, that we are meant to remain in the background.

What does it take for us to awaken to the realization that we do have seats at the table, just by virtue of having been born? Our seat has always been there for us. We just didn’t know it was ours. We’ve been waiting around for an invitation or for someone to pull out a chair. Well, hello, we don’t need an invitation! It’s our table, too! We can sit down and enjoy the fruits of our own labors, whatever they may be. Why is this so difficult for so many of us to do?

When I returned from Morocco, I finally understood in a deep way how important it was that in our meditation group we are always actively addressing these issues, applying the Buddha’s teachings to the specific challenges we face as women. And yes, okay, let’s call it a women’s group and acknowledge the importance of creating a safe haven for directed exploration of our own experience. That is, after all, what we had been doing all along, but finally I could see the  value in naming and claiming it, something I had not understood until that journey to a land of invisible women.

It’s important to create a safe space to question these long-held assumptions of who we are in the world. This is not a gripe session or a victims’ support group. But it is an opportunity to look at the whole of our experience, and not just the subset where it overlaps the experiences of men.

But why do we still need this? Sure, women have made great strides, but look around! The challenges are ever-present. And even if the world were a perfect place where girls and women were no longer objectified, belittled and dis-empowered in a myriad of ways, gross and subtle, we would still be living with the cultural ripples, the patterns of thought and emotion that have been embedded in our psyches, handed down from generation to generation for millennia. Acknowledging this is empowering and crucial right now because we can see that our passive acceptance of male domination has put not just us but all life on this planet in jeopardy. Not only do we have a seat at the table if we feel like it, we need to take our seats and speak our truth out of love for all beings. Now more than ever!

Speaking our truth can be scary. I am fortified again and again by the insight I had on one silent retreat. I realized that “I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to fear. I have something to give.” This helps me counter the shy little girl inside who doesn’t want to make a fuss. Forget that! Let’s make that ‘fuss’! We can let go of our fear of being seen and judged.  (I also need to give a shout out and a recommendation to check out Toastmasters if you are afraid to speak your truth in public. Participating in a local club can change your life! It did mine.)

It’s a huge awakening to realize that we are not objects. We are the subjects of our own lives, and co-creators of life on this earth at this time. (In general men do not need to be told they are the subjects of their lives. Of course they are. They look completely baffled when confronted with this idea. What else would they be?) But we women have historically been taught to be completely focused on the needs of others before even wondering what our needs, interests and desires might be. To that end we continually reshape ourselves to suit each role, to be the best daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, employee, co-worker, employer, etc. that we can be so we will be loved, needed, appreciated, respected — safely held in the reflection of other people whose opinions we deeply care about. We can arrive at a point, as I certainly did years ago, where we totally lose sight of whoever it is we are outside of the roles we play.

In the Buddha’s teachings there is a strong focus on letting go of shoring up identity. Yes! It’s very important to recognize that we are not some isolated being encased in a bag of skin. But often for women there needs to be a period of discovery of who that person is even in the most common sense of the word — to develop a healthy ego — before we can soften our attachment to it. Could you give a moment here, guys?

In the previous post we looked at why I practice and teach insight meditation instead of some other form of Buddhism. A big reason is the post-meditative explorations that are part of the practice. That focus of interior investigation plays a big role in why we have a women’s group. If all we did was to sit together, then went out into the world refreshed, there would be no particular reason to have a gender-specific group. But there’s much more to an insight meditation class than that, isn’t there? We go deep! And in that depth are discoveries that are personal in nature, and we may, at least at times, feel safer to explore them in the company of people who understand from their own experience what we are talking about. It is about vulnerability. This is not about making men — or anyone — the enemy. Quite the opposite! Instead it is to allow for hidden truths to arise within us, and to support each other in that investigation. Perhaps later we can share our findings with the men in our lives so that they can understand us better. But in the investigation itself, in that vulnerable place, the shared experience and understanding is vital.

If you look at a Spirit Rock Meditation Center schedule, you’ll see that there are a number of classes and retreats specifically for certain groups: People of Color, LGBTQ, women, men, parents, teens, families, elders and more. At first glance it looks like segregation and my initial response to it was feeling confused and even fearful: Why am I being excluded? Am I perceived as a threat by that community? I don’t feel like I’m a threat. Aren’t we all made of the same stuff? What are they talking about in there? Are they making me the enemy? So, believe me, I understand when men pose the same question to me about teaching a women-only group.

To calm my sense of feeling excluded, I remind myself that when I first started going on retreats, I chose women-only retreats because I felt I could let go and be completely myself. After a few retreats, I no longer felt that having men around — all in silence and with no eye contact — was a problem. We were all there being very interior, dealing with our own thoughts and emotions, not interacting with others. One day sitting in the meditation hall, I heard a man weeping. It cracked open my heart to realize how much alike we all are at the core. I was grateful to be sitting in a sweet sangha of brothers and sisters, all vulnerable together.

But at first and still at times, I need to be with just my sangha sisters.

Of course, we all hope for a world in which everyone feels equally empowered, and that is part of what we are learning through meditation and investigation. But we don’t get there by denying what is true in this moment. We look at whatever is arising — the good, the bad and the ugly — and then, in a respectful and friendly way, question it. Is this true? How do I know this is true? How am I in relationship to whatever is arising? What am I afraid of here? And then we patiently listen in.

This is a universal investigation. We all have incorporated the harsh messages of our culture into the ongoing unquestioned messages we tell ourselves. But women, simply by virtue of being women, have different messages that keep coming up, and different ways of dealing with them.  Whether our brains are fundamentally different from men’s is a matter of scientific research, and some findings indicate that there are over 100 ways brains have physical, hormonal and chemical differences between the ‘average’ male and ‘average’ female. None of us are average, of course! We each fall somewhere on a spectrum between what have traditionally been considered masculine and feminine traits. And anywhere we fall on the spectrum is just fine. But what we can see clearly is that we have been and continue to be treated differently, creating within us some special challenges when it comes to awakening to our true natures. So we come together as ‘just us girls’ to ‘let our hair down.’ And we encourage the men to create community together, to explore through compassionate self-inquiry how personal and cultural messages have shaped previously unquestioned beliefs that may be causing them suffering.

In this way, we can all come together with greater understanding of ourselves and the nature of being alive in this moment, and recognize in a deep and meaningful way that we really are all made of the same stuff.

‘You Don’t Have to Be Good’

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“You don’t have to be good.’ This is the first line from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese. It is such a touchstone for so many of us who find we are always working so hard to be good. We may be surprised to find these words are such a release for us, such permission — not to run out and be bad, but to stop striving so hard to be good.

We talked a little about striving last week when we discussed the bodhisattva. It is so easy to get stringent and determined around recreating ourselves in the mold of a bodhisattva or any other form — a good Buddhist, a good person, a worthy person. Or perhaps we don’t care about good, but strive to be admired for beauty, talent or brilliance.

But the striving itself keeps us from ever finding joy in any accomplishment. Instead it causes us to strengthen and tighten the pattern of striving. We can’t appreciate the achievement because we are stuck in looking forward to the next goal. That is the pattern we create with our striving. We are attached to the tight tangle of trying hard and are blinded to who we truly are. So when we think about letting go, it seems threatening to who we believe ourselves to be.

We may be proud of the very things that ultimately cause us and those around us misery. We are usually conditioned to be proud of will power. We have seen how well it works to achieve things. Culturally we embrace will power as one of the highest virtues. And we see it as trying really hard, putting blinders on to any distractions and pushing through. There may be times where life depends on such determination. But it is a sprint mentality, not sustenance to feed us for the whole journey of life.

Imagine if will power were music. It would sound forced, strident and sharp. Playing that tune would be all about conquering the notes, racing to the finish. It would care nothing about savoring the rhythm, melody or harmony of the music itself.

We have explored in the past the concept of Right or Wise Effort. Wise Effort is one of the eight aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path to enlightenment.There are certain qualities of Wise Effort that are missing when we get caught up in striving, pushing through with will power. Wise Effort is first about being present, anchored in sensation, noticing what is true in this moment. It stems from the awareness that arises, an awareness that is compassionate and insightful, seeing the world fresh in every moment.

When we recognize we are not using Wise Effort, we simply refocus our intention. In class, when we begin meditating, I offer up the prompt to set the paired intentions of being present and being compassionate. We don’t need to get caught up in judging our failure to have Wise Effort. We just come back to it again and again.

Wise effort, anchored in these two intentions, rises up from the truth of the present moment — what’s going on in our body, our mind, our heart; what’s going on around us — all the causes and conditions that whirl about us at any given moment that may infuse our thoughts and emotions. With compassion we temper our effort to accomplish something. If we are focused on a goal to get something done, we might not be present to do what needs doing in the fullest and most authentic way possible.

Authenticity is a naturally arising expression of being fully present in the moment and being compassionate with ourselves and others. Wise Effort is attuning our actions to the natural rhythm of this authentic expression. Striving feels quite inauthentic because it comes from some external focus, a desire to be seen in a certain way by those around us.

The opposite of striving — giving up, not bothering, daydreaming — comes from a sense of powerlessness. The only place of power is in the present moment. The past and future are just ideas we have in our thoughts in the form of memories, regrets, hopes, plans or worries. If we get stuck in these in past or future thought patterns, unable to be fully present in the here and now of life, we lose touch with our own access to infinite power. Only in this moment right here and now can we, with compassion, transform a sour situation into something vital, lively and joyful — whether in the world or within ourselves. This is Wise Effort.

Exercise:
After meditation, take a moment to look at the current situations of your life and notice where you are perhaps living in the future, hopeful and striving, or fearful and losing ground.

Perhaps what comes up is an area in your life that seems particularly dysfunctional — an inability to get a handle on something. These are the areas where we go dead, where we fall out of awareness of the moment, even if we are practiced meditators who are usually able to be fully in the moment much of the time.

Is there some area where you go dead, where you get caught up in the future or the past?

For me it is around eating, especially around sweets. I can at times get caught up in a tight little pattern of circling back to the kitchen for one more of whatever treat is in the cupboard or fridge. It’s a circular journey where I get lost, even though, or maybe exactly because, I’ve done it so many times. If there is something sweet in the house, my mind can not leave it alone. I cannot rest until it is gone. Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to pace myself, to have a little bit today, and, if I feel like it, a little bit tomorrow? I purchase or bake a treat with that very idea in mind. And then something else kicks in. There have been times in my life where I have been able to muster up the will power to steer clear of sweets all together. At these times I am very proud of myself, redefine myself as a person with a strong will, an admirable person. But that pride, pleasant as it seems, is in the end just an extra load, an extra label, and it doesn’t get to the core of the problem.

It’s rare to find a person who doesn’t have some place where they go mindless and get caught up in tight patterns. Going mindless so that we do something self-destructive and then beating ourselves up about it is a pretty toxic combination. It is the exact opposite of our paired intentions to be present and compassionate. We see the results of this mindlessness and lack of compassion all around us in the world, where people are living out tight patterns of destructive behavior, bringing misery to themselves, to those around them, to society as a whole, and to the earth.

Mindfulness meditation is a training to help us be fully present in all areas of our lives. Wise Effort encourages us to set the intention to be present, even in difficult moments so that we can see what’s going on, what sparks the mindless pattern, the words we use to make it okay, the way we might scold ourselves afterwards, perhaps the way we take it out on others, etc.

With Wise Effort, I can notice the actual sensations of my desire rather than act upon the cues I am conditioned to believe must be followed. With Wise Effort I can do this. But because of the life-long pattern of either riding the steam roller of will power or wallowing in the swamp of lethargy, finding that authentic expression of Wise Effort in this area is more challenging.

With meditation practice we are developing the ability to be conscious. We can sit with our thoughts and notice the things we tell ourselves, seeing them as threads of thoughts passing through our awareness. Since they do not define us, we can notice them without the reactivity of harsh judgment or despair. We can pay particular attention to when we find we are justifying a choice. For example, I have several sentences that repeat on a regular basis, the latest ones I’ve noticed are, ‘Grandmas should be plump,’ and ‘The fat is filling out my wrinkles and I would look older if I were thinner.’

When we find ourselves justifying our choices, that’s a clue to a challenging set of self-destructive patterns. After all, we don’t bother justifying going for a walk, eating a healthy meal or washing up.

So if you found an area in your life where Wise Effort seems to be lacking, you might want to take the time to really notice what is going on, adding spacious awareness where there is a deadening dread or a powerful drive.

Here are a few guidelines for this exercise: Try it out right after meditation or any time when you are quiet and the wise inner voice (the one that accesses our connection to all that is) can be heard. Set the intention to be present and compassionate each time you find that your mind has wandered or you are being rude to yourself.

Notice how much of what comes up is directed from outside sources, bringing up comparing mind, the inner scold and a sense of personal failure. Question the truth of everything, but do so in a respectful way.

Consider journaling as a way of noticing the way you talk to yourself and a way of making note of any insights. Let it be an interesting ongoing journey of discovery, not one more chore on your to do list.

You’ll find Wise Effort supports and sustains you in a way will power or striving never could. And remember, you don’t have to be good!

Insight Meditation, how ‘Dharma can heal our wounds’

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The short lessons we read from The Pocket Pema Chodron before my dharma talk and discussion, is often in sync with what I had planned to talk about or whatever came up before in our meeting. This week we read #87 ‘Our Predicament is Workable,” that starts with the sentence “The dharma can heal our wounds, our very ancient wounds that come not from original sin but from a misunderstanding so old that we can no longer see it.”

‘…a misunderstanding so old that we can no longer see it.” What does that mean?

We talked about how on a personal level there are many patterns that we operate with in our lives — patterns of thinking and behavior — that we see as our way of being, part of who take ourselves to be. We let these patterns define us even though we don’t know where they come from or how they were woven.

On a collective cultural level, we have been weaving certain traits as well, reacting to events such as climate, landscape, famine, drought, war and other threats to our well being. These culturally inherited or co-created traits also become part of our personal pattern. International travel is useful to help us see beyond what we believe to be ‘human nature’ when it’s really just our own localized set of patterns at work. We can see other nation’s collective patterns more clearly, without needing to judge them or prove one is better than another. Viva la difference! When we see how much variation there is between cultures and between individuals within cultures, we are less inclined to believe that there is one way of seeing the world or any given situation. This frees us from having to defend the particular thought patterns we are most familiar with, nor do we need to disparage them. We can simply begin to see them as a little more free-floating, a little less intrinsic to our very being.

Through mindfulness meditation we make the space to begin seeing these patterns more clearly as they arise and act out as passing thoughts or emotions. We can compassionately look at them, and at the defensiveness, shame or judgment that may arise with them. They are just patterns. As we give our minds the quiet to settle down and become spacious, we may wonder about some of the things we notice.We can perhaps focus our thinking mind, struggle to analyze these patterns and come to some conclusions. But what is this analysis and what are these conclusions but more judgment, blame and assumption? More of the same patterns?

In the space we create through our meditation practice, we can wonder in a more open creative way. For example, we can simply put out the question, “Is this true?” and then allow for our quiet attention to let the ‘answers’ arise in our awareness.

I shared with the sangha an experience I had soon after starting to meditate 30+ years ago. I was questioning an ongoing troublesome pattern I recognized, a place in my life where I tended to go dead. I asked “Why am I like this?” Then I let the question go (probably because I had asked it more in despair than in any expectation of finding an answer!) and I relaxed, resting a little longer before getting up to go about my day.

Because I was relaxed but noticing, three different vivid images of events from my past floated one by one through my awareness. I remember thinking how odd it was that these long forgotten memories would just show up like that, yet here they were. Because they came in a series, I looked for a common thread, and realized that each one offered a memory of getting shut down around this very area of concern, making me turn inward and go dead.

‘Oh!’ The answer was there as clear as if a spotlight and a close up lens had been offered up for purposes of self-exploration and discovery. This is what creating a meditative relaxed open attention to the present moment can offer up, if we are willing to stay present to notice.

A sangha member shared her own exploration of a particular knot of fear-based pattern that troubled her. She could see that the reaction that became her pattern was learned at an early age. Like most of our patterns, she saw how it made sense at the time but now, as an adult with other means and with the power of autonomy, she could respond with more skill to challenging situations.

This is part of the insight process. We notice, we question, we gain insight. And then what? Well, if we just stop there we can either develop a pattern of judging our patterns, or we can stay open and allow awareness to soften the patterns, releasing us from them. But there is something else we can do if we are wanting to continue the process a little further within a meditative self-exploration.

If we have our younger self in mind, we can compassionately reparent the child within. What does this mean? Well, especially if we are parents or have taken care of children, it is fairly easy to see our young self with a great deal of tenderness and compassion. (Whatever harsh views we hold about ourselves, certainly we can allow that as small children, no matter how we behaved, we were worthy of being loved, being held with compassion. Even the person we were in our early twenties, before the finishing touches were put on our brain’s judgment functions scientists have now discovered, can be reparented, forgiven for failures of judgment, etc.)

Whatever it was that we didn’t receive from our parents or guardians — love, kindness or permission to be ourselves — we can give ourselves now. We may find within us the voice of the parent that may have withheld love, been overbearing, forgot to praise or was constantly scolding or abusing us. Whatever our relationship with those who had power over us, we can fairly say they did the best they could at the time, because that’s true for us all. We each of us hold within us a set of patterns that, if we are not able to get conscious, dictate our behavior. If there is no room for forgiveness, then let that be a known knot within us, a knot that we can hold with compassion for now.

We can recognize that the still-active voice within us that replicates the parent’s voice can also be held with tenderness. It is what we have to deal with now — not the actual parent, but the internal parent voice. (So often we feel we need to have a conversation with our elderly parent, or feel we have lost the opportunity after they die, when really it’s this inner parent that is in charge now, and it’s an inner conversation that needs to happen!)

We can hold this inner parent voice with compassion, treat it with respect, listen to its concerns, and work with it in the same way we have worked with other voices or aspects of self, all of which are knotted fear-based patterns of thought-emotion that can be seen now that we are creating an open spaciousness within our minds.

In our meditation practice we have the paired intentions to be fully present and to be compassionate with ourselves and others. With these two intentions we have the very tools we need for skillful inner exploration and insight,

Making Note
When we have insights, it is often useful to make note of them. Caveat: This can turn into a compulsion to write down everything, which turns it into something different and sometimes short circuits the process. But if some words stay with us and make a profound difference in our lives, then writing those words down and keeping them close might be useful.

I have this note to self that I wrote on a retreat pinned to my bulletin board:

I have nothing to fear
I have nothing to hide
I have nothing to prove
I have something to give.

This was a realization I had on a retreat. At the moment I wrote it, it was not a hope of a way to be but my actual experience of being. Up on the board, glanced at on occasion, it refreshes me, strengthens me, puts me back in touch with myself.

Of course what I wrote down is not always true for me. I don’t use it as an ‘affirmation’ but a way to find the truth of the current moment. I can say those words and question. Is that true?

At a recent reading an accurate statement was:

I have nothing to fear, yet I’m afraid.
I have nothing to hide yet I feel the weight of the effort to keep something buried inside me.
I have nothing to prove yet I feel myself striving to be something other than what I am.
I have something to give, yet I withhold it for fear it is not good enough.

That was the truth in the moment I wrote that statement. To work with it at the time I asked questions:

What am I afraid of? (Always a great question whatever the situation!)
What am I hiding?
What am I trying to prove?
What do I have to give?

At any given moment the answers will arise differently, so I will not record them here. This is just a reminder, a suggestion, of how to work with an insight that has captured the crux of a knotty pattern within. We each have areas that are particularly knotty, patterns however created. When we have an insight that shines a light on the knot, that makes more space between the knotted threads, that makes it easier to see the threads from more angles so we can see where the threads come from and how the tangle got so tight, then we have the opportunity to sit with it and allow it to inform us.

Can we take the time to allow the process to unfold? Can we let it arise without forcing it, without jumping too quickly to grab an easy answer and claim it as proof of our enlightenment?

May we be relaxed but alert, open in mind and heart, awakened to the moment, filled with a sense of universal kindness, able to hold whatever arises in an open embrace.

Buddha’s River Analogy continued: Why We Crave the Shores

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In a previous talk, I shared the Buddha’s analogy of a river to explore The Middle Way. We have looked ar various aspects of it, and today you will have the opportunity to explore for yourself what is on the shores of your own river and why it draws you.

Both the banks of the river, though they look so different — one a lush jungle of opulence and indulgence, the other an arid desert of strict self-denial — are really quite similar. They both lure us deeper and deeper inland with promises that if we just go a little further, we will find ultimate happiness. Whether it’s through acquisition or austerity, the message is still the same: Wherever we are right now is not okay. Change is necessary. The here and now is flawed. We are flawed and in need of changing.

Perhaps you say that message is not a bad one because none of us is perfect. We are each flawed, and therefore in need of changing. And then you add that the world we live in is not perfect and in need of fixing. Maybe yes, maybe no, as the farmer in the Taoist teaching story says. If you are not familiar with this story, it goes something like this:

A farmer had a plough horse to help him tend his fields. One day the horse ran away. His neighbors told him how sorry they were for him. How would he till his field? What a terrible misfortune had been laid upon him, and he didn’t deserve it, he was such a good man, such a hard worker. But the farmer surprised them when he said, ‘Maybe it’s a misfortune, maybe it’s not. Who knows?’

The next day the horse returned, and along with him came some other horses. Now the neighbors exclaimed, “What great fortune for you! You are the luckiest man! You deserve this good luck.” But the farmer surprised them again when he said, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows?”

The next day the farmer’s son rode one of the new horses and fell off, breaking his leg. The neighbors said, “Oh my, this is a terrible stroke of bad luck!” And the farmer surprised them again when he said, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows?”

The next day conscription officers came to the area to draft all able-bodied young men into the army. Since the farmer’s son’s leg was broken, he was allowed to stay home with his family. The neighbors, some of whom had tearfully seen their sons trudge off to war, exclaimed at the uncanny good fortune of the farmer. And this time they were not surprised when the farmer said, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows?”

As you can see this story could go on and on. It’s useful to think of this story the next time we notice ourselves reacting as the neighbors did. We can pause and question the truth of our assumptions about a situation. We could withhold judgment and open to possibilities within any situation.


Nostalgic amnesia
It seems to be in our nature to see the world as it is right now as more flawed than it was in the past. People ask, ‘What period would you go back to if you could time travel?” as if there was some idyllic time when all was right in the world. This nostalgic amnesia really gets in our way of being present with what is. I just saw an interview on The Colbert Report with the author Stephen Pinker about his book, ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: A History of Violence.’ In it, he points out the statistical fact that we are living in the most peaceful time in history. Now of course this is per capita and there are way more people now, but even so this may seem contrary to our own sense of the way things are. This is nostalgic amnesia.

In class I brought up a decade that many people wax poetic about, a decade remembered as all soda fountains, felt poodle skirts, bobby socks, etc. But they choose to forget that the 1950’s and early 60’s was a time of ongoing degradation based on skin color, gender and sexual orientation. I remember children with downs syndrome either being hidden away in secret back rooms of homes or institutionalized, held in huge rooms naked. I saw this room with my own eyes when our school choir went to sing up at ‘Napa,’ the mental hospital for the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a decade full of fear of nuclear war. Many of us never expected to make it to adulthood, envisioned being evaporated en masse or dying slow painful radiation deaths. Some built fall out shelters to save themselves and their families and to keep out the hoards of neighbors who would want food. It was a time of paranoia, people seeing ‘a red under every bed.’ I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It’s a both/and situation. Yes, there were wonderful things about that decade too, but no era has ever been or will ever be perfect.

One student pointed out after class that things may seem worse now because we are more informed about everything that is going on around the world. She said that her experience of the 1950’s was very protected, not exposed to the things I mentioned above, but now she feels bombarded with a 24 hour a day influx of information. It’s challenging to know at what level to adjust our filters for all this input!

The technological advances of our age are a wonderful example of the ‘maybe yes/maybe no’ quality. On the one hand these technologies bring amazing abilities to stay connected over distances with family and friends. On the other, we can easily manage to never know our neighbors, as we come and go in cars, pushing a button to open our garage doors and closing ourselves into our contained spaces. Thus, we feel isolated and disconnected, even though we are carrying on text, twitter, email and phone conversations all day long. Of course we can easily remedy that situation by making a concerted effort to know our neighbors, to create real community, to participate in local government and organizations instead of only focusing on national and international situations. These technologies bring the ability to co-create a leaderless revolution. They bring the possibility of identity theft, of governmental invasion of privacy, of those with fear-based motives reaching our children with messages they are not able to defend against, of fear-based advertisements invading our homes and our minds before we realize we have been seduced or inducted.

This could well be the reason meditation has become so sought after now. It is needed so we can each find a way to be skillful in dealing with these challenges.

So the wise person doesn’t put on blinders but is able to hold all of what is occurring, recognizing the yin/yang quality of being, finding a state of equilibrium, understanding that these are and always will be ‘the best of times and the worst of times.’ Dickens claimed that in his opening line of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ about the French revolution.

‘May you live in interesting times.’ Is that a Chinese blessing or curse? Both! And we certainly do live in interesting times. How grateful I am to be alive to witness and participate in this fascinating period.

The recognition that nothing is perfect and was never meant to be perfect is very liberating. The astro-physicist Stephen Hawking says the universe was created from two forces: gravity and imperfection. Watch the first few minutes of this program to see his explanation.

With only gravity there would be a static unchanging uniformity, but imperfection provokes gravity into a dance so that the planets orbit and cycles occur that would not otherwise have been necessary. So imperfection has been getting an awfully bad rap, considering its importance in the creation of life itself!

I belong to Toastmasters, an international club to help people overcome their fear of public speaking and develop leadership skills. For the past few years I have been able to see incredible transformations in people in the club. Almost every member joined in order to change, in order to improve ourselves and our skills. Our motivations were anchored in this discomfort with who we felt ourselves to be in relation to the world.

But the transformations that have occurred are not from the elimination of imperfections but from the release of the fear of letting those imperfections show. The speakers who are most enjoyable to watch, most able to convey their message and connect with the audience, have learned how to relax into their shared humanity. They are completely themselves at the podium. And because they are relaxed and sharing openly of their own experience and knowledge, their audience can relax and take in what the speakers are saying.

The more we hold back, the more we protect who we hold ourselves to be, the harder we try to be perfect, the less successful we are. True transformation is a process of relaxing, noticing and releasing tension (which when in front of an audience exhibits itself in a variety of distracting ways,) making eye contact with others that reminds of of our connection, realizing that this is a practice and failure is simply a way we learn, and then staying in the present moment as much as possible with what we have to share.

If this sounds a little bit like how we begin meditation, then that really isn’t very surprising.  Coming home to ourselves, our true selves, is the key to letting go of the discomfort with who we feel ourselves to be in the world.

In Toastmasters, the most engaging and enjoyable speakers have in a way polished up their imperfections. The other day a club member talked about how unhandy he is in such an engaging and entertaining way that he won the spontaneous speaking award (Table Topics ribbon) that day. If he were to become handy around the house, maybe his wife would be happier because she wouldn’t have to hire someone to do those tasks my fellow Toastmaster cannot do, but the world would be poorer in a way I can’t explain, but I think you understand.

Think of someone you love who died. Isn’t it often the very quirks that drove you most crazy that you miss about them after a while? Isn’t it those very imperfections that make you smile?

There are Toastmasters who get caught up in a state of paralysis, afraid to get up and speak because they have not reached their goal of being perfect speakers and don’t want to embarrass themselves. Sometimes this paralysis keeps them from coming to meetings, even though they keep paying their dues because the intention is still there. But if they just keep showing up for meetings and taking roles that require them to speak in very non-threatening way (explaining their role at the beginning of the meeting and following up with a little report at the end of the meeting), and occasionally getting up for two minutes to answer a posed question, slowly but surely their confidence grows.

This is true in so many aspects of our lives, isn’t it? We don’t have to be Toastmasters to recognize the pattern we get into when we get inspired to improve ourselves in some area. Perhaps we join a gym to give ourselves the opportunity to get in better shape. The same pattern happens. If we go, we realize it’s a supportive atmosphere (hopefully!) and that we feel better for having done it, but if we don’t attend, we get stuck in that place where we feel disappointed in ourselves and stuck. We want that perfect muscle tone, that slimmer body now! We don’t want to have to see ourselves in the gym mirrors or compare ourselves to others who seem perfect. They’re not, of course. But some part of ourselves plays that game in our heads and we stay away, defeated and uncomfortable with how we perceive ourselves to appear in the world.
In the grueling ongoing effort to become more beings, are we hoping to trade in under-valued traits and attributes for ones that are more in demand? Or do we really just want to be more at home in our own skin?

It’s also true in developing a regular meditation practice. I honor my students for taking time out of their busy lives to come to class with such dedicated regularity. If they are in town, they are here. They carve this space out of their week and arrange their lives around it. Many of them have also managed to carve a half hour out of their day for a daily practice of meditation, as I hope all readers of this blog do. And just like the speech club and the gym, meditation practice is primarily a matter of showing up. What happens after we have set that intention to practice, that intention to be present and compassionate with ourselves, arises naturally. We don’t have to worry about the outcome. It is enough to be here.

For real transformation to occur, we need to be fully present and fully aware of what is occurring in this moment. Only then, anchored into sensation, can we recognize the mindlessness of habitual patterns that drag us ashore into jungles of desire or deserts of self-negation. Only then can we see that it is not our lack of uniformity that is causing us misery, but habit of striving for some distant vision of happiness where we or the world are different.

The river analogy applies to all of us, but each of us sees the banks differently. At times my indulgence bank is lined with hot fudge sundaes. Knowing this helps me to recognize it as the seductive jungle that it is. I am not clear what the sweet treat promises, what the allure is. That’s something I could explore and it would be very beneficial in order to be able to return the Middle Way river and not sink the boat with my over-indulgence! But would I only be comfortable in my skin if there was less of it? That’s another area for me to explore.

What line your shores? What inner aspects are jumping up and down, waving signs and calling out to you? Notice the expressions they use, how disrespectful they are, how they call you names to demean you.

What is so alluring on the banks of the river for you.  What is the promised goal as you trudge through the jungle of over-indulgence or the desert of self-denial? There will be a tangible fear that draws you to each shore. Can you name the fear? At core all our fears are the fear of separation, the fear of isolation, of encapsulation, of rejection. But on the surface they have many different names and appearances.

In class we did an exercise of exploring our own experience of being on the river, first looking at one shore, then making notes or drawing what was there; then looking at the other bank and doing the same. We also made any notations or sketches about the boat, the river and what we saw ahead of us. This might be a self-exploration exercise you would like to do for yourself after meditation practice, when you are feeling calm and spacious.

You might picture the images that draw you as cardboard cutouts set up as a lure with nothing of substance behind them. See if that helps to remind you that there is no fulfillment possible on either shore.

When we are fully present on the river, this river that runs through the center of our being, this river of presence and compassion, we feel fully enlivened and at one with the universe, this universe formed by imperfection.

Spacious Action – ‘It’s not the load that breaks you down’

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When we look at our cooking pot analogy of the Eightfold Path, we can see how Right Action or, as we are experimenting with it, spacious action arises as steam out of mindfulness. So, theoretically, if we tend the pot, i.e. hold our consciousness in spacious view, fueled by spacious effort, sparked by spacious intention and stirred by spacious concentration, then spacious action will arise quite naturally. Theoretically. In reality that doesn’t always happen. Why not?

Many of us compartmentalize our lives, so that once we are done with our meditation or our silent retreat, we re-enter our ‘real life’ as if it is something quite separate from what we have just been doing. Thus we quickly fall right back into unconsciousness, back into that murky soup of habituated patterns of thought, behavior and speech. We forget that the practice of meditation is to develop skillful means to stay aware, to stay conscious, and to stay clear and compassionate throughout our lives, not just during meditation. Not just on retreat!

Action, how we conduct ourselves in all areas, is not some separate function but an intertwined co-arising aspect of the Eightfold Path. It can be an entry point to the path if we become aware of how our behavior is impacting our well being and the well being of others. This observation may come upon us at any time with or without the benefit of meditation. The difference is that with a strong meditation practice we have skillful means to see the whole of what is happening. Without the practice, the recognition of unskillful action may be used as just another way to beat ourselves up, another way to blame someone else or some cause or condition for our behavior, another binge, and another sinking into deeper and deeper murkiness. But, sometimes the recognition comes with an insight that leads us to begin meditating, and thus it can be an entry point to the Noble Eightfold Path. Perhaps it was yours.

If so, the next step is still and always to return to our skillful intention to be present in every moment and our intention to be compassionate. Thus we are able to see our actions more clearly and we can look at them without running away.

Through this skillful process, this Eightfold Path of developing more clarity and compassion in our minds, our hearts and our lives, we begin to understand that even though we are fully responsible for our actions, they do not define us. Absolutely we need to rectify any suffering we have caused to whatever degree is possible, but we do not need to defend our behavior. There is no excuse possible. Coming up with one is just another self-protective device, based on the erroneous assumption that we are a unique isolated fortress rather than an intrinsic and beloved part of the rich and wondrous flow of life. Excuses keep us churning in the miasma of misery and foster more and more unskillful action. So when we are unskillful, we own up to it. We recognize the error. We understand that error is part of the human experience, arising mostly out of fear and unconsciousness. Think of anything you have done that you wish you had not done and see if you weren’t afraid of something. It might have been a little something but the ramifications were great, like you were afraid of being late so you were speeding in your car and had an accident. But that little fear of being late might be seated in a larger fear of losing love or respect, of being separate. (Being on time is a show of respect to others, of course, and is skillful behavior that starts well before we get into the car, but once we are in that heavy vehicle with all its capacity for harm, with the responsibility for the well being of ourselves, our passengers and everyone else on the road, then driving mindfully is our highest priority.)

Most of us don’t like to own up to how very afraid we are. It helps to see that it is a common part of the human experience to lose our awareness of our interconnection with all of life.

Through meditation practice, renewing again and again our intention to be present (conscious) and compassionate (sensing our deep connection), we begin to be more skillful in our behavior. We become more even in our behavior, not treating some people one way and others another. We behave as if everyone matters. Everyone does! We relate to people from that deeper more connected source of being, and we respond to that deeper more connected source in them. (Think about the phrase ‘namaste’ — the God in me bows to the God in you.)

We stop worrying about what others think about us, and we find we care more about them as an integral part of life. We lose any desire to impress them and instead gain the joy of seeing them happy, finding that when we stop needing to defend ourselves, to prove ourselves then we can focus on what we can share with others, with the world that brings more joy and awakening.

This is a huge and wondrous shift! And it comes through awareness practice. Not just during meditation, but continuing throughout our day, day after day. The ongoing support of our practice enables us take responsibility for our actions, to correct our errors, to loosen the stranglehold of destructive habits and to feel our actions as a dance of interconnectivity rather than a battle that saps us of our will to live.

So, actions are not automatically wise, skillful or spacious because we see meditation as separate from the rest of our lives. But there may be other reasons as well. Old patterns of behavior, deep seated fears as yet unexplored erupt in ways that create unskillful actions. When they do we may be disappointed and feel that our practice isn’t working. But it is! Because now we are able to see the unskillful action, and begin to see the patterns of fear that are still operative because still unconscious, still stuck in the sludge at the bottom of the pot!

Remember that at first, before we started having a regular meditation practice, we couldn’t see these patterns. We justified the behavior they caused and pooh-poohed that the matter could have been handled any other way.

Once we begin to see our unskillfulness we might feel ashamed and guilty. We might stop meditating because we don’t like what we see. This is a challenging stage because we are still defining ourselves by our thoughts and actions and now we see ourselves as ‘a person who does bad things.’ We are still unaware of but firmly attached to the fear-based patterns that caused the unskillfulness. But at some point, if we can just hang in there and give ourselves as much loving-kindness as possible, we begin to see more clearly and the patterns are much more noticeable because they don’t fit anymore. They stand out against the more spacious experience of our life as the tight and toxic sludge that can still be stirred up by certain events and conditions.

I remember finding myself almost twenty years ago in a shouting match with my then teenage daughter. That had been our pattern for a while, but on that day I saw myself more clearly. I saw my out of control and shouting behavior and I started to laugh. It was so absurd to be once again in this pattern of behavior that in no way expressed my true feelings for this child I loved so much. Needless to say she was a little surprised. I’m pretty sure that was the last shouting match we ever had. We found other ways to communicate, ways that were more accurate expressions of my concerns for her well being and her desires for the freedom to live her own life. This is not to say that we never had misunderstandings, but it was a great breakthrough for me to see a leftover destructive pattern arise in my growing awareness. These kinds of breakthroughs remind us that the practice is working! If they feel few and far between, just keep resetting your intention to be present and compassionate.

At times this kind of exploration and self-discovery is painful. We may simply want to get rid of or bury patterns, but this just fuels them. We might be over-efforting, digging too deep too fast. Insights arise out of awareness. If you have to put on an oxygen mask and dive into the depths, you may be forcing the exploration beyond what is skillful in this moment.

We are simply noticing patterns of behavior as they arise in this moment through awareness, compassion and inquiry. In the light of our growing mindfulness, we can see them for what they are, acknowledge them, learn from them and let them go. (Remember our image of holding the world in an open embrace, neither clutching nor pushing away.) Then our actions will be more spacious, arising from compassionate mindfulness. Until then we use the unskillful actions we notice as information for our inquiry to discover what we are afraid of and what old patterns of fear are still holding such power over our behavior.

Where do we begin this exploration? We start from where we are and work with what we have. Discovering what that is takes spaciousness as well. Chances are we have readymade long-held assumptions about who we are and how we are, but spaciousness allows us to take the time to inquire into the veracity of our assumptions. Many of our assumptions were made when we were quite young, when we were sponges for any information about ourselves and were ready to accept other people’s opinions without questioning the source. Conversely we may have been overwhelmed by other peoples’ opinions and in an effort to protect ourselves we shut out even useful insightful perception.

Either way, we have cobbled together the vehicle of our beliefs about ourselves into a reasonably functional means of getting around in the world. So what if the wheels are square and the ride is painful?

We suffer because we keep relying on this cobbled together transport instead of taking the time to investigate what it is that’s creating the rough ride. For some of us, this investigation might be therapy because what is coming up is too difficult to deal with alone, or because a more formal relationship is useful to keep us on track with our investigation. But even then, meditation is a great aid to the process. Learning how to meditate every day and set the intention to be present and compassionate with whatever arises can be the process or can aid the process. In either case the Eightfold Path supports us by offering the means to discover the source or sources of our misery through spacious inquiry and noticing our patterns of thinking, our patterns of behavior and our beliefs about ourselves and the world as expressed through our thoughts, emotions and sensations.

Lena Horne is quoted as saying, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” This is exactly what the dharma tells us. It is not our mother-in-law or spouse or child or job that is the problem. It is the vehicle of our beliefs, this cobbled together contraption of dispirit malfunctioning parts that causes pain every time we carry our load along. And when we hit a bump or a pothole in the road, an especially challenging time in life, then it makes the load feel even more difficult to carry.

So do we need a mechanic? Maybe! Like a good mechanic we need a keen ability to listen and notice where there is discord in the functioning of these patterns of thinking and behavior.
The literal translation of the word dukkha (suffering) is ‘ill-fitting axle hole,’ so this vehicle analogy has deep roots in the dharma.

In Jack Kornfield’s book called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry he reminds us that meditation is not an escape from life, that it is not about going off and having mind-altering experiences, the ultimate legal high. Yes, in meditation we lay our load down, but after meditation, or after our silent retreat, we pick it up again. If we are grumpy that we still have a load to bear, if we are sad to have our meditative experience over and ‘real life’ back to deal with, if we are thinking ahead to the next time we can get away to the cushion, the retreat center, the walk in the woods or the tropical beach, then we are missing a crucial aspect of the dharma: “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”

I am not a backpacker, mainly because I backpacked across Europe when I was nineteen and it was painful in every possible way so I have had no inclination to replicate any portion of that experience. But I see how backpacks today are designed of lighter materials and designed to carry the load differently, taking into account laws of physics and human anatomy, so that even if carrying the same amount of stuff, the load is lighter. So that’s what we are doing with our spaciously imbued Eightfold Path. We are giving ourselves the means to investigate how we are carrying our load so that we can pick it up again and carry it more joyfully.

Spacious Action

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As we continue on our second exploration of the Eightfold Path together (see early 2009 posts for first exploration,) we are experimenting with inserting the word ‘spacious’ instead of ‘right’ or ‘wise’ before each of the eight aspects to see how it affects our understanding, fully understanding that this is just an exploration, not a rewriting of the traditional teachings.

What does spaciousness affect our understanding of right action? Is there a difference between right or wise action and spacious action?

For me ‘spacious action’ feels like there is time to act skillfully and from the source. There’s no need to hurry when we have the time to act in a way that honors our intention to be present and compassionate in all we do.

Spacious action arises out of the sense of interconnection with all that is, fully aware of the supportive nature of the web of being, giving us time to consider the rightness of our action, to be sure that it is kind, conscious, caring, timely and true.

Have you had the experience of walking fully embodied, fully sensing in to the sensation of foot meeting ground, arms swinging through air, the texture of clothes shifting on thighs, the sights, sounds and smells that we encounter as we walk? Our first instruction in meditation is to sense in to the body, to become aware of the breath and other sensations in order to be fully present in this moment. So likewise our first action would follow the same course, sensing in to the body and all its sensations, grounding ourselves in the full awareness of this present moment.

I remember having dinner one night at Il Fornaio and on the way back to the table from the restroom, I practiced being fully present, walking at a normal pace – not slowed down as I usually am in a walking meditation – and feeling fully ensconced in life in that moment. The destination existed in my consciousness as a slender thread of thought rather than a dominating goal. I was able to fully savor all aspects of that rich experience – walking in the soft light of a restaurant filled with people dining and talking and enjoying themselves, and feeling very much at one with the whole of the experience, with the whole of life.

This is spacious action, this being fully present in this moment. So fully in the moment that it is quite unlikely I would have bumped into anyone, causing a disruption or accident. It felt like a beautiful dance, as if I was awake to appreciate a particularly lovely sequence in an ongoing dream.

Let’s contrast this to my usual experience of returning from a restaurant restroom where my mind is already back at the table, and my body is hurrying to catch up, so eager am I to not miss any of the conversation. What poverty there is in an action that perceives only two points on the path – the bathroom to meet a physical need and the return to the table to meet a social need. The point of spacious action is to have a full awareness of the whole experience, not just the two end points.

Now if on the way back to the table, I got so caught up in the goings on that I lost sight of my final destination then that would be spacey action, not spacious action. Spacious action seeks a balance between our sensory ability to savor the moment and fulfilling whatever we set out to accomplish.

Any advanced practitioner of Tai Chi, Chi Gung or other ways of working with the body to align with the universal energy (called Chi or Qi in these traditions, but has many other names in other traditions,) would probably find Spacious Action to be a familiar way of being in the world. The instructor teaches the right way to do something, but until the action is aligned with that universal energy, arising out of a sense of connection, the student is only trying to replicate what he or she sees the teacher doing. At some point there may be a subtle shift into Spacious Action, and the teacher will recognize that the student ‘gets it.’ The student then tries to get it again, and may get caught in a struggle of over-efforting, but eventually is able to recognize that subtle shift, that releasing into a sense of being held and interconnected instead of an isolated bag of bones and muscles that must slog through the world on will power alone, doing battle against all comers.

Now of course it’s one thing to feel spacious while relaxed in a restaurant or engaged in doing Tai Chi, but what about in all those other more challenging situations that we find ourselves in on a daily basis? And what about when some extra challenge arrives in the form of a loss or a threat? Where’s our spacious action then?

This is why we have the practice, returning again and again to our intention to be present and compassionate. In this way our minds become spacious, our hearts become spacious and our lives, in turn, become more spacious.

In this and coming weeks we will explore what Spacious Action means in the various areas of our lives. We will share teaching stories that reveal the universal patterns of behavior that either cause suffering from a sense of isolation or joy from a sense of interconnection.

As we explore, we may begin to notice that it is always in relationship that actions take place. In relationship to our bodies, our families, our homes, our friends, our co-workers, the earth and all inhabitants of all species, our work, our play, and our way of being in the world. It is not our body, our family or anyone else that is the cause of our problems. It is how we relate to them, our habituated patterns of behavior, and often our tight fearful un-spacious action.

Spacious Action then is really Spacious Interaction, acknowledging that it is all in the relationships, the connections, and whether we feel connected, supported and supportive.

Because we begin meditation practice by sensing in to the body, it seemed appropriate to start our exploration with our relationship to our body and how we hold this aspect of our being in awareness. This is an area many of us struggle with. I do. I observe my struggle, am sometimes a bit bemused by it, but it is certainly an area where Spacious Action is often lacking in my life.

Why? Well, it shifts over time, but currently I’m noticing a dialog, sometimes an argument, between a voice that wants me to be as healthy and able-bodied as possible and a voice that waxes poetic about how grandmas get to be round, roly-poly and cozy, and certainly don’t have to deny themselves sweets or anything else wonderful. In fact they should be producing delicious baked goods for all their loved ones, even if it kills them!

Just being aware of the players in an inner dialog is enough to start a rich journey of noticing. So I won’t put on a little play here with my cast of characters. Instead I ask you to notice your own cast of characters. You can begin by identifying at least one major player in your life right now in the area of your body or your health. This might bring up issues about aging, the natural changes that happen to the body that bring up other issues perhaps. Just be noticing the voices and sort them out a bit.

Although I began doing inner dialogs on my own before I became a student of Buddhism, I was delighted to later discover that it is a time-honored Buddhist practice as well. It is a skillful way to recognize the variety of thoughts going on in our minds and to explore the sources and associative images that come forth in attitudes, beliefs and expressions that more often than not are harsh and abusive. I teach it in the way that I practice it, and that has been useful to me. I don’t know if it strays from traditional teachings, but I do know that it is a valuable and effective tool for self-discovery.

You may be saying ‘Wait a minute! What voices in my head?’ This practice is for meditators who have sufficient experience to recognize that their thoughts are not pure expressions of self, but more a river of mostly unconscious patterns that pass through our awareness, that could just as easily be anyone else’s thoughts. This is not to say that we do not have a certain amount of unique expression as these thoughts travel through the patterns of filters created by our inherited tendencies and acquired experiences. But through meditation and the development of mindfulness, we see with growing clarity that these thoughts do not define us.

This understanding liberates us to feel free to explore them and learn from them. We do not bar the doors or evict them, as that technique doesn’t work and has long term negative repercussions. Instead we bring our compassionate respectful attention to discover what it is that these inner aspects are afraid of and then we respectfully negotiate a reasonable way to address these fears without letting the aspect/voice dictate our actions.

So first we notice a thought going through our mind, some generally negative statement that we recognize as ongoing or recurring, a belief about ourselves or the world and our relationship to it. Recognizing the general tone and area of focus of this thought helps us to see it more clearly, and is further enhanced if we give it an affectionate descriptive nickname, so that we will recognize it each time it arises. I remember at one point having a full cast of characters, one named Lumpy because he was kind of a lump on a log, not wanting to do anything. Another was named Striver because he had such over-efforting exhausting ambition. And I’ve talked in the past about Slug, who hated exercise and just wanted to stay in bed because it was like a big mommy hug and he missed his mommy.

Hmmm, why are all these inner voices male? That’s something to explore for me.

Once we notice and name an aspect, we are ready to have a dialog. We can develop a set of questions to help us understand them better, and the first and foremost question to ask of any negatively charged voice within our thoughts is “What are you afraid of?” This question is not a challenge. It is not calling the aspect a scared-y-cat, which would just shut down any possibility of fruitful inner dialog. If this happens we need to pause and access our deepest most compassionate awareness to call forth and be respectful of the truth of each aspect’s fear-based view of the world.

It isn’t very helpful to have two fear-based aspects carrying on a dialog. Therefore, the dialog process is only useful once we have begun to experience Spacious Mindfulness. From that clarity, we can be skillful in our inquiry. If we are unable to access that compassionate clear inner voice, the one that has no agenda but to hold all life in an open embrace, then we will want to focus on our meditation practice and just practice noticing and simply questioning the veracity of our harsh judgments. ‘Is that true? How do I know that’s true?’

So I hope you will find time during the week, perhaps after meditation or after a walk in nature, to record an inner conversation with an aspect that has the strongest opinions about your body. Making a record in a journal or in whatever form is comfortable for you, helps to stay on track, making a distinction between a formal dialog and a meandering train of thought.

This working with our relationship to our bodies is probably one of the most personal areas we will be exploring, and we won’t be discussing our discoveries in next week’s class. This homework is for ourselves alone. Bring as much spaciousness to the inner exploration as possible.

In coming weeks we will be looking at different areas where spacious interaction would bring about joy rather than suffering.