What is Tonglen Practice? A brief introduction.

Tonglen isn't a very "Zen" kind of practice but I find it very useful.

I like that it can be practiced in a very simple and direct way in everyday life. Tonglen means "giving and receiving" and it's a method for connecting to our own pain in a way that gives it less of a selfish focus and helps us to develop more compassion for others.

It can be done very formally through an extended guided meditation (replete with "flashing bodhichitta") or it can be done on the run, or whenever it feels appropriate.

The way I see it, tonglen practice helps give some meaning to our pain so instead of wallowing in it and using it as an excuse to make an even bigger version of ME, we can instead use it as a tool to develop more sensitivity and compassion towards other people. So the pain that seemed so isolating and monumental at first can be transformed into something more useful that can help alleviate the pain of others. And the act of doing that ends up lessing our own suffering.

This short clip is from a dharma talk I did at a Queer Sangha meeting yesterday at the Interdependence Project.

Four Ways to Work the Four Immeasurables into Your Daily Life

Ironically, what fuels all of our misery-inducing behaviors is an underlying desire for happiness. All of us wish to be safe, to be happy, to be healthy, and to have an easeful life experience. Even those people that seem bent on making themselves and others miserable through unhealthy choices and actions are doing so because they think what they’re doing might bring about happiness. 

 No matter how many times our usual methods fail to make us happy, we keep on trying over and over again, hoping for a different result, hoping that maybe this time it will work. Incidentally, this is the very definition of insanity. Talk about samsara!

What fuels our behaviors are underlying thoughts like these: Maybe this new pair of shoes will make me happy...maybe this next drag on my cigarette will do the trick...maybe if I yell at her/him loud enough this time I’ll feel better...maybe this next beer will give me some piece of mind...maybe if I get laid tonight I won’t feel so lonely...maybe one more joint will calm me down...maybe a new boyfriend or girlfriend will make me feel loved and secure...or maybe this new spiritual teacher will help me be enlightened and therefore HAPPY.

 At some point (hopefully) we get fed up and realize it’s time for a new approach to this happiness thing.

The Buddha taught his followers to rouse within themselves four “perfect virtues” or “immeasurables” that can help cultivate internal qualities that can lead to happiness (for real this time). It’s helpful to approach these qualities as something already inherent within you rather than something “out there” you need to cram into your heart. Think of these virtues as hidden talents that just need some consistent practice so they can flow more naturally and spontaneously. You might be a natural piano player but you can’t headline a concert until you practice stroking the ivories a little bit each day. 

The Four Immeasurables are Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and Equanimity.

Here are four ways you can cultivate these qualities in your daily life:

1. LOVING-KINDNESS is a sincere desire for everyone, without exception, to be happy.  At different points during the day, keep it simple and silently say “May you be happy” to random people you see on the street, at work, on the subway. If you can’t muster up an intention for happiness towards people you don’t know, try it with first with yourself (“May I be happy”) or just repeatedly send a wish for happiness towards someone in your life you find it easy to do this for.

2. COMPASSION is a wish that other people be free from suffering. Some times this one requires an ability and willingness to read between the lines a bit. Often it is easy to notice who is in some kind of pain but usually we overlook those people who might be suffering just as much--like an irate boss or coworker or the person in the subway who's being so bloody aggressive. So throughout the day, instead of trying to judge and fix and fight back, recognize that most people are experiencing some degree of pain or discomfort in their lives, just as you are. Focus on one or more people each day that you come across and offer them an intention like “May you be free from suffering and whatever is causing it.”

3. SYMPATHETIC JOY refers to the ability to have a genuine sense of appreciation for someone else’s happiness or good fortune.  It's helpful to consider that there isn’t a finite amount of happiness in this world that some people hoard and other people miss out on. Happiness is something attainable by all of us. So practice cultivating a sense of sympathetic joy when you see someone who you normally might inspire a feeling of envy. You won’t necessarily make the envy disappear completely or all that quickly, but you can transform it into an understanding that someone else’s experience of great fortune or contentment demonstrates that you can experience those positive things as well. Don’t get caught up in the circumstances and stuff around that person’s happiness (like their money or a job or status) but instead focus on the happiness itself. It isn't stuff that we want, it's the good feeling that the stuff brings about within us.

4. EQUANIMITY is an ability to recognize and experience all things and all beings as equal. Throughout the day consider people with whom you have strong disagreements with and think of how they might have been at the moment of their birth and how they might be at the moment when they will die one day. The time in between goes by in a flash. Birth and death are the great equalizers that we are all subject to. Also, observe each emotion you experience throughout the day and practice with noticing it’s qualities in a neutral kind of way rather than judging it as good or bad. Don’t get caught up in trying to attain more pleasure or in pushing away more pain, just let the day unfold as it does and notice how things are always changing, changing, changing. The sky doesn’t bitch and moan with every passing cloud or storm--it simply hangs out and takes pleasure in being the sky.

Be like the sky.

The Hurricane in Your Brain: Why Panic is the Perfect Teacher

Instead of fixating on the news about Hurricane Irene all weekend, I decided instead to check out the natural disaster going on inside of my brain: the feelings, sensations and thoughts that go along with panic and fear, and what they could possibly teach us.

Just three days ago it seemed certain that a category 2hurricane would make it’s way up the Eastern Seaboard and unleash it’s wrath upon New York City by Sunday at high noon. The public was being bombarded  with news about evacuation and possible flooding. The mayor was advising New Yorkers to have a “go bag” ready in the event of an emergency and to fill our bathtubs with water since normal plumbing might not be possible (Eew). The subway system was shut down on Saturday, major retailers closed their doors, and there were no flashlights or D batteries to be found anywhere in Manhattan.

By late afternoon on Friday, the local highbrow grocery store was overrun with people stocking up on water and other emergency essentials (which in my neighborhood means $30/lb hand sliced Nova Salmon, organic pitted Kalamata olives with red pepper flakes, American artisan cheeses, and French truffles sprinkled with cocoa powder).

Initially the photographer in me intended to approach this whole public panic thing like a roving reporter--carefully noticing and recording the eccentricities of some foreign culture so that I might learn a few things about how “other people” dealt with such primal, mortal emotions. In fact I was quite impressed with myself and how calm and collected I was about the whole hurricane situation.

But by Friday evening I was getting swept up in the flurry of dire media reportage that repeatedly reminded everyone that Hurricane Irene could very well leave us without water, transportation, and electricity.

This hurricane business was serious.

During my second trip to the fancy grocery store, while filling my shopping cart with staple foods like bread, canned beans, and peanut butter, along with some not-so-staple foods like cookies, ice cream, tortilla chips, and beer, I once again attempted to use this unusual opportunity to carefully observe everyone around me in the hopes that I could learn a little something about fear.

 As I looked around with great curiosity at the stressed out shoppers grasping for bottled water, toilet paper, bread, peanut butter, and thinly sliced Imported Serrano Ham, I realized that all of the tension and worry and impatience I saw in their faces was nothing more than a reasonably accurate reflection of what was going on in my own mind.

 When I got real with myself I noticed that I was more nervous than I was allowing myself to feel. Once I allowed myself to experience my fear instead of pretending I was somehow immune to it, I was able to relate to it differently and relax. 

When I eased into my panic and let it be for a while, it began to dissipate and then I discovered what a great teacher fear really is.

The first thing I learned from these displays of panic and fear is how much we all truly want to stick around. The desire to live is quite strong within most of us. Even when things seem awful, even when we bitch and moan about money or our living situations or our careers, we seem to intuitively know that our lives have some inherent value and meaning. There is something downright precious about these remarkable breathing bodies of ours, and the idea that something could potentially harm them is deeply unsettling to us.  

The second thing I learned is that caring for ourselves and others comes rather naturally. While we don’t always do it easily or willingly, there is this fundamentally helpful part of ourselves that can operate quite easily when we move out of the way and let it do it’s thing. Sometimes it takes an emergency to help this side of us kick in. Over the weekend at the crowded grocery store I saw several examples of people trying to help each other in all kinds of ways. And I realized that everyone there was either loading up on supplies so they could provide for themselves or for the people they care about. Everyone at that store had at least one person that really mattered to them or they wouldn’t have been there.

The third thing panic taught me is how changeable this world is. It’s easy to be complacent, to fall into a routine, and to take every aspect of our lives for granted. But with very little or no notice at all, the conditions of our lives can change drastically. And this is good news when it comes to depression and anxiety because they, too have a life span. Everything is in a constant state of flux and nothing demonstrates this better than the weather.

The fourth thing I learned from fear and panic is how unsubstantial all of our thoughts and feelings are in the first place. A whole lot goes on in our minds between the time we initially perceive something and the thoughts and emotions we experience as a result.  While these thoughts and feelings seem so real and solid, they’re just conditioned responses created by association, habit, and reinforcement. That’s why it’s so important to learn how to work with our minds: so we don’t end up working for them.

* * * * * * 

 Every now and then, try to get your hurricane brain on by remembering the lessons that panic and fear can teach us: that your life is precious, you and other people deserve care and consideration, all things are changeable, and thoughts and feelings are fleeting and unsubstantial so there’s point in being controlled by them. Remembering these four points can help you to cultivate a genuine sense of gratitude and appreciation for your life, and then it gets easier and easier to live with sanity, happiness, and compassion.

Parting suggestion: if you have lots of extra water, food or supplies that you won’t be consuming in the next week or so, please consider donating to a local shelter or food distribution program. If you’re in New York City it won’t take a lot of effort to find someone without a home who could use some of what many of us now have too much of.

Pema Chodron on Friendship with One's Self

Ten Ways to Extend Lovingkindness to a...Difficult Person

After an intensive day of Metta practice, I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the idea of what it means to extend lovingkindess to everyone, even if I think they’re a bastard. Doing this is an essential part of Lovingkindness meditation and what I consider to be the most challenging. So I came up with this list of ways that might make this more manageable, both on and off the cushion:

1. Start with the basics: remember that all beings possess the same fundamentally good and complete nature. No matter how egregiously some people behave or how rotten they may appear to be, they have the same Buddha nature/basic goodness that you have.

2. Remind yourself that just like you, they too want to be happy. Seriously. Even when the object of your disdain is acting assholey, they’re doing it because on some level they really believe that their behavior will bring about happiness, or at least some temporary relief.

3. Brainstorm and arrive at 2 plausible reasons that could possibly explain their negative behavior, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. At the very least, doing so serves as a reminder that there are always reasons why people act the way they do, even if they’re hard to see or understand.

4. Consider that the basis for what constitutes happiness in your life could be something other than a string of pleasurable sensations. Rather, reinterpret happiness as a state where you are always learning about yourself and other people. It’s much harder to be disappointed when this is our reference point.

5. Come up with just one positive quality about the “difficult person” that you can appreciate on some level. Even if it’s something really minor and shallow. (“He’s a mean son of a bitch, but check out those shoes!”) Try to keep in mind that we’re all more than just our behavior at any given moment.

6. Sometimes we learn about what happiness is by observing what it is not. If someone is acting like a miserable %$&#^*@#!, have some gratitude that you don’t feel the same way they do at that moment and extend a silent wish that they find some peace of mind. And offer that not just for them but to all of the other people they will eventually come into contact with and have an impact on.

7. Ask yourself if everyone else in the world would share your negative opinion of them or not. Someone, somewhere might find them tolerable or even lovable, even if it’s just their mother.

8. Pay attention to the thoughts and feelings you experience every time you have contact with this difficult person and be grateful to them for offering you the opportunity to practice with challenging emotions.

9. When appropriate, pay deep attention to this person, listening and observing closely enough so that you can at least get a glimpse of what’s going on beneath the surface. More often than not, what someone is carrying on about is not the thing that they’re truly struggling with.

10. Imagine what that person might have been like just after they were born and what they might be like at the moment just before their death. The reality of birth and death has a way of shifting our perspective and reprioritizing things. These two events are the great equalizers: we’ve all been born and we’ll all eventually die and it’s up to us to try and make the most of what happens in between.

The Parable of the Saw (an excerpt):

"Monks, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever of you harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching. Monks, even in such a situation you should train yourselves thus: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love — thoughts that have grown great, exalted and measureless. We shall dwell radiating these thoughts which are void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, monks, that you should train yourselves.

"Monks, if you should keep this instruction on the Parable of the Saw constantly in mind, do you see any mode of speech, subtle or gross, that you could not endure?"

"No, Lord."

"Therefore, monks, you should keep this instruction on the Parable of the Saw constantly in mind. That will conduce to your well-being and happiness for long indeed."