Acceptance, Love and Compassion in Meditation

This talk was given as part of an afternoon retreat on Acceptance, Love and Compassion. It explains that these qualities are an integral part of insight meditation, from the very beginning to the deepest practices. Recorded live with some background noise.

Transcript

I'd like to move into a talk about acceptance,

Love,

And compassion in meditation.

And this does apply to our meditation practice.

It also applies to our practice in everyday life.

Meditation is not something that's an end in itself.

Of course,

It's something that we do to develop,

To mature,

And become more free and more able to love and engage more authentically and with our whole being in our lives.

One of the ways I think about meditation is that in meditation we learn to take our seat within our own being.

That we come home to ourselves,

Where we're moving from a stance of being outside ourselves,

Looking at ourselves,

To actually dwelling at home within our own being,

Within our own heart.

We have this,

I began to notice as I was,

As my practice developed,

That a lot of the time in terms of where my attention was,

It wasn't resting within.

It wasn't resting in the body,

It wasn't resting in my heart,

It wasn't resting within my own being.

My attention was actually kind of looking at myself and with expectation or judgment or with kind of the gaze of an other,

Looking at myself and kind of with the implicit question,

Am I measuring up,

Am I fulfilling expectations?

And there's always this sense of anxiety.

Somebody talked about this idea of self that we have,

That we construct,

That who we are,

Who we think we are,

The person that we want to be,

The person that we want to be recognized as,

The person that we want to present ourselves as.

And then when we have this construction that we're presenting,

That we want everybody to believe that we are,

Whether it's the kind person or the funny person or the person who is always the leader or maybe a quiet person,

Doesn't really want to be noticed,

We all have these constructions that we create.

And they're created out of our upbringing,

Out of our social conditioning,

Out of our education,

Our relationship,

Our experience.

So our lives shape us,

Right?

And then we have an idea of who we are and then we want to maintain that a lot of the time.

So,

You know,

And I'm speaking in general terms,

So these are kind of broad strokes and each one of us has different ways of moving in and out of this reality,

But I'm kind of making a contrast,

You know,

In which we are kind of stranded outside ourselves and always feeling insecure about whether we're really the person that we're trying to present ourselves as and a way of coming home and being present in ourselves,

Which develops in our practice.

So it's,

You know,

And it's a process and I think that first of all,

In meditation practice,

We learn to come home in the body.

And that's why in mindfulness practice,

You know,

It's emphasized so much that we come to our senses so that we,

You know,

There's a lot of emphasis on,

You know,

Just being aware of our senses,

Hearing,

Hearing mindfully,

You know,

Which is hearing,

Listening,

Opening to sound without,

You know,

Kind of boxing it in in a perception,

You know,

Labeling it.

So we might,

When we're listening mindfully,

We might hear the sounds of traffic coming and going.

We might hear the sounds of children playing,

You know,

In a whole new way,

You know.

So coming to our senses with mindfulness is about allowing ourselves to be present to our sensory experience with a kind of freshness,

You know,

Being present in this moment to the sound,

To the sensation.

You've probably,

If you've heard about mindfulness,

And you know,

I'm kind of assuming that it's kind of culturally filtered through a lot these days,

But there's talk about eating mindfully.

So eating mindfully is,

You know,

Being present to visually,

You know,

Through the sense of smell and through the sense of taste to the whole experience of eating and being attentive to the body,

How the body is feeling when we're eating.

And when we're eating mindfully,

We tend not to stuff ourselves,

To overeat,

Because we're tuning into the body and we're feeling how,

You know,

What is it like to take in this food and how is my body,

How are the sensations in my body changing as,

You know,

As I'm filling my stomach and I'm,

You know,

Becoming,

Going from feeling hungry to feeling fed and nourished.

So coming home to the body is a very important way in which we begin to come home to ourselves.

Bringing hope to the breath,

You know,

As I described in the meditation,

To think of the practice of feeling the breath and focusing our attention on the breath as a way of letting the mind rest in the breath.

When I first started meditating,

Or not my very beginning practice,

But soon after,

I was learning in a Zen tradition,

And there are many different kinds of Zen and many different teachers,

But the person who was teaching me at the time was really,

It was a kind of an emphasis on concentration,

You know,

To concentrate the mind on the breath,

You know,

And so there was,

It was like,

It was another thing that I needed to achieve and to get perfect.

And I was,

And so it was a kind of a,

I felt it as a kind of,

You know,

Like the stick and it was a,

You know,

Really pushing myself.

And I have to say that Zen is not always taught this way and the person who taught me really,

You know,

Probably shouldn't have been teaching,

But he wasn't really mandated to teach,

I'll just say that,

He hadn't been mandated by his teacher to teach.

It was the 70s,

What can I say.

And so,

But what I did in my own mind was,

You know,

That the focus on the breath became this pushing away thought,

Pushing away thought,

You know,

And so it was really done with a spirit of unkindness toward myself.

You know,

I didn't really experience this quality of coming home and resting and being present in myself in those beginning practices.

And in fact,

You know,

It became a practice in which there's an expression called spiritual bypassing in which,

You know,

We can develop a kind of a lot of clarity and a lot of,

You know,

Concentration and,

You know,

We feel like,

Oh yeah,

You know,

My mind is very clear and,

You know,

There are no thoughts.

But we're totally out of touch with ourselves and with,

You know,

What's happening on an emotional level and what are the things,

What are the old habits and hurts and wounds that we're carrying.

And really,

Our meditation practice needs to be,

If we're going to be free,

If we're going to become more free and authentic in our capacity to love and to connect in our lives and to be who we truly are,

It needs to be an opening to and accepting of and a releasing,

A gradual releasing of all of that woundedness.

There's a healing that happens in meditation and an integration which happens in an authentic practice.

So what I had begun doing was a kind of a spiritual bypassing and bringing this,

The quality of love and kindness and openness into our practice is the way not to fall into that pitfall.

So breathing,

Coming home to our breath,

Coming home to our body,

Coming home to feeling sensations,

Opening to sensations which are pleasant,

Which are unpleasant,

Which are neutral.

A lot of sensations are neutral when we begin to just be present in the body.

We notice,

Well,

There's some that are pleasant,

You know,

So maybe,

You know,

Feeling rested after a nap or eating something pleasant or there's some that are unpleasant like feeling extremely hungry or thirsty or tired.

But a lot of the times what we're feeling is neutral,

Right?

And we're not really even noticing that.

So bringing attention to just what are the,

What's the flow of sensation that we're not noticing in the body which is not particularly painful or not particularly,

You know,

Pleasant.

So our body becomes our home,

Our home base and we learn to be present in the body.

And so in this way,

First of all,

I mean in so many ways the body is our ally in practice.

The body is a great friend,

A true friend in our practice.

And first of all in this way by being a home,

A place to rest,

A place to come home to.

So you know our minds get caught up in stories.

Our minds get caught up in stories of the past,

Of what happened to me and what was done to me and what was,

What didn't,

What I didn't have as a child and what was,

You know,

What I was deprived of.

All of these stories that we,

And we are,

You know,

We create a sense of self,

You know,

Which is not sufficient,

Which is lacking,

Which is,

You know,

Or which needs to be perfected,

You know,

Which in the future will,

You know,

Will be perfect,

Perfect body,

A perfect mind,

However we conceive that.

And all of that takes us away from being at home in ourselves,

Being at home in our heart,

Being at home in who we are.

So by learning to rest in the body,

It's a way of letting go of the constant stories,

The stories about what I have to be,

The stories about what I'm not,

What I'm not enough of,

Or what happened to me.

So I'm not saying that if there are,

You know,

If there are things that happened in the past that they,

That it's not important to come to some kind of resolution about that and forgiveness and,

You know,

Maybe it's a time of grieving a loss and then being able to move through that to more freedom.

So I'm not saying that that's not important.

We can do that in the body.

Like we can be present with grief in the body.

We can be present with fear in the body.

We can be present with wanting in the body.

And no,

What is that?

You know,

We can bring our curious,

Mindful investigation to understanding what that is in the body.

And it's very direct.

It's a way of becoming intimate with all of those experiences in a very direct,

Immediate way,

Which is not connected to a story,

Which the story never ends.

The story is never resolved.

The story is never completed.

So stories have their place.

It's okay to have a story.

The thing about stories is that we have to know that they're not true.

They're only a little picture.

They're only a little snapshot.

They're only what we picked up on at the moment,

What we experienced,

How we interpreted it.

When we can learn to be at home in the body,

We can be at home in this moment and be present within ourselves in this moment.

And so in this way,

Our body becomes,

Is our great ally,

Our friend in practice.

So in this practice of tranquility,

This feeling the breath,

Coming home to the breath,

We simply reconnect with the breath whenever the mind or emotional states draw our attention away.

And so we're giving the mind a rest,

And the breath is simple.

The breath is present.

The breath is soft,

And we can rest in it.

And the mind may feel exhausted.

So we can just invite the mind to come home and rest without zoning out,

Without becoming kind of torpid,

Slothful,

Dull,

But just resting,

Awake,

Aware,

Refreshed,

Wholesome.

So it's not rejecting any manifestation of the mind,

But it's inviting the mind to just,

Again,

Refresh.

And to do this,

This simple act of allowing the mind to come home and rest in the breath is an act of kindness to ourselves.

And it's an act of kindness to the world.

Because in training the mind to do that,

In inviting the mind to do that,

In teaching the mind that it can always do that in any moment,

Rather than getting caught into the trigger pattern,

Reactivity,

That it can just take a moment and rest,

We're creating that space,

That space to choose,

That space not to react,

That space for an alternative.

And it also,

It gives us the opportunity to release the drivenness of the mind and to release that energetic holding in the heart that we do that holds onto these patterns.

So we're holding on out of fear.

We're holding on to these patterns out of fear.

Because we want to,

Even if it's something painful,

We want to know what we are.

We want to have some idea.

Even if we're holding on to a sense of being not good enough or a victim,

That feels safer than not knowing who we are.

And so gradually in meditation,

We become familiar with a space,

A space of silence,

A space of openness,

A space of presence,

And we discover that as we let go and as we notice that whatever,

And I just want to point out that I've moved now from talking about a tranquility practice to talking about the insight practice,

Vipassana practice.

The insight is into seeing the nature of our experience,

Seeing that it moves through us,

Seeing that it comes from different causes and conditions.

It's not who we are.

And seeing also that holding on to these patterns is painful.

And the transition between the tranquility or it's called samatha practice in Pali and the vipassana practice is one that's very organic and natural.

It's gradual.

It happens as the mind becomes steady,

More stable,

And able to rest in the breath.

We begin to see these patterns.

We begin to see,

As somebody said,

The judging mind,

The critical mind,

The fearful mind,

The wanting mind.

So these things come up.

There's a teacher in the Thai forest tradition,

Ajahn Chah,

Who talked about it's like sitting by a still forest pond.

And if you sit very quietly and you don't move very quietly,

The animals start to come out of the woods.

And first maybe some of the bolder ones come out,

Maybe the more aggressive ones,

Then the more timid ones,

And then the magical ones may come out.

And so we begin to see everything that emerges in the mind as we sit in stillness and quiet.

And so we begin to see these things and we open to them.

Instead of getting caught up in the reactivity,

When there's this stability of mindfulness,

We can be present with them.

And we can see how they come and they go.

So for me,

A very powerful pattern that I encountered pretty early on in my practice was jealousy.

There was this pattern that came from all kinds of conditioning factors,

That other people had more,

Better than me,

And I was left out,

And all of this.

And so jealousy.

And it was at one point,

There was this moment at one point when I just saw it.

And I thought,

Oh my God,

That's so much suffering.

I was able to have enough space to see it rather than being driven by it and totally identified with it,

Like really thinking,

Yeah,

That's not fair.

I should have that and da da da da da da.

It's like,

Oh,

Look what the mind is doing.

Jealousy.

And so naming it can be helpful,

But we don't want to just name it and then let it go.

We recognize it,

But then we also open to it and we accept it and we see it.

And then we ask ourselves,

What is this?

What is this pattern?

Jealousy,

Grasping,

Wanting,

Judgment,

Anger.

And we feel it,

How it moves in the body.

There's an energy to jealousy.

It's kind of both grasping and anger at the same time.

And there's an energy to anger.

It feels like,

To me,

It feels like a fire.

And there's an energy to wanting.

It's like,

Oh,

This is kind of wanting,

Reaching out,

Out wanting something,

Feeling not enough,

Like I need something.

And so all of these different forces have their own energy and we become intimate with them.

We come to know them in our inner space.

And we realize that when they move through us and they leave an openness,

That that openness is not empty.

It's not a kind of vacuity.

I mean,

It may be empty in the Buddhist sense of emptiness,

Which is an aliveness,

An openness,

A spaciousness,

An indefinability.

But in that openness,

There is presence.

There is presence.

We inhabit that,

Not as an ego,

Not as an individual,

But there's an inhabiting of that space with the knowing quality.

And realizing that more and more gradually,

We can be present.

We come to be at home in ourselves.

So as we notice,

As we become more able to notice these thoughts,

These painful thoughts,

Emotions coming up,

Manifesting,

When we stop slamming the door on them,

We stop sniping at them and we begin to let them in.

And we know that we can be with it.

We have the capacity,

The courage,

The compassion to be with each of these patterns of mind.

We're opening to the shadow.

We're opening to our shadow.

Each of us has a shadow.

And so for most people,

Our shadow is,

I'm a nice person,

And so I'm not that judgmental person.

So the judgment is the shadow.

I'm a kind person.

I'm not that cruel person.

The act of cruelty,

The ill will is the shadow.

For some people,

Brought up in different conditions,

It could be,

I'm a tough person.

I'm a mean person.

And the love,

The tenderness,

The gentleness can be the shadow that we don't want to show,

That we're afraid to show,

That we're afraid to open to.

So our shadow is that which we have put the lid on.

And so it doesn't mean that as we open to our shadow,

We start getting angry at people and expressing anger and acting out all our desires.

There's a discernment that happens,

And it's part of our ethical training,

Which is intrinsic to Buddhist training.

And we discern what's skillful and what's not skillful.

What's skillful leads to happiness for ourselves and others.

What's skillful comes out of kindness and love and is a manifestation of kindness and love.

And what's unskillful leads to more sense of separation and resentment and feeling,

You know,

I've got to look out for number one and feeling threatened by others.

So that in that space of opening to everything that comes up through our being,

It doesn't mean that we're acting it all out.

But we are receiving it.

And as we receive it,

In a kind of mysterious way,

It opens us to the universal nature of all of those expressions of the mind.

So it's not just my jealousy.

I begin to understand that this is a human experience.

I can be compassionate for myself and for others.

It's not just my anger.

Anger has a certain,

It's a human expression.

And it's an energy.

It's not just my wanting,

And so on.

Suffering is suffering.

Anger,

Hatred,

Jealousy,

These are human experience.

And so when I receive them in a space of compassion in myself,

I become more able to receive them compassionately with others rather than reacting and building more walls and blaming and judging and pushing away because I don't want to see those reactivities.

What we are at peace with within ourselves,

We can so much more easily receive in our relationships with others.

So as we're less flooded with reactivity,

Less hooked by habitual behaviors,

Space opens.

And as I mentioned before,

What is the nature of that space?

It's open,

It's boundless,

It's aware.

It's space to simply be,

Not necessarily to be something,

But to simply be.

To be in awareness,

To be in love.

In love,

Not necessarily in love with someone,

But to inhabit that space of love.

So the openness,

That space of openness that we discover is a space of connection.

And so what is that connection if not love?

It's space for the whole world to arise within our being,

Within that openness.

And as we can receive ourselves as an unfolding mystery,

Not as a solid thing,

Not as a fixed thing,

A defined thing,

But as an unfolding mystery,

We're beyond any definition.

Because we can receive ourselves in that spirit of curiosity and openness to who we are becoming in this moment,

In this moment.

And we can begin to also realize that others are becoming in the same way.

We don't know who we are.

We don't know who we are.

And we really can't know who we are.

And trying to define ourselves and create a solid,

Defined self is a project in suffering.

So to have the compassion of an open heart,

Willing to feel the pain of our own and others' suffering,

And at the same time having the wisdom of emptiness,

The wisdom of knowing nothing is fixed,

Nothing is solid,

Everything is in process,

Gives us an equanimity to be with the unfolding and know it's not the ultimate reality.

So having that space of awareness and love in which each moment is arising and passing away.

Reviews

You opened mental doors for me in your talk. We are becoming, but do I hear you saying we don’t know who we are in the present moment? After years of growing through, reflecting, learning, releasing, renewing, etc, that we are still unaware of our being?

🙏🏻🌺 thanks a lot very good explanation of mindfulness Namaste

Insightful, valuable learnings

I lived in a spiritual bypass for many years. Practicing mindfulness & meditation is essential for me now. This talk is very helpful in understanding how & why it all works.

Love this so much🙏

Thank you for an inspiring talk.

Lovely teaching ✨

Mind expanding talk. So very worth listening to again. Thank you! 🙏🏻

This was probably the best meditation I've done in a long time. Really helped me look inside myself and be present.