Welcome.
My name is Doug,
And this is the What Doesn't Kill You meditation.
It includes several readings from the Radiant Sutras,
Translated by my teacher Lauren Roche,
And a reading of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.
For now,
Take a few moments to release what you can to the world about you.
You can pick it back up when we're through.
Find a space in this moment for yourself.
Find a few soothing breaths,
And we'll begin in 30 seconds.
This is Insight verse 136 from the Radiant Sutras.
Consider all the pain and all the pleasure you have ever experienced as waves on a very deep ocean which you are.
In the depths,
Witness these waves,
Rolling along so bravely,
Always changing,
Beautiful in their self-sustaining power.
Marvel that once you identified with only the surface of this ocean.
Now embrace waves,
Depths,
Undersea mountains,
Out through the farthest shore.
Whether through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
The slings and arrows of structural inequality and prejudice,
What others do to us are what we do to ourselves.
We all meet with suffering in our lives.
We all meet with pain,
Physical,
Emotional,
Pain of all sorts.
We all feel at times like a cart that has lost a wheel,
Bumping along the pavement.
This is Sutra 70 from the Radiant Sutras.
Sting of a wasp,
Rip of a nail,
A razor's slice,
The needle's plunge.
A piercing word,
A stab of betrayal,
The boundary crossed,
A trust broken.
In this lacerating moment,
Pain is all you know.
Life is tattooing scripture into your flesh,
Scribing incandescence in your nerves.
Right here,
In this single searing point of intolerable concentration,
Wound becomes portal.
Brokenness surrenders to crystalline brilliance of being.
We bring our pain into meditation,
Or perhaps our pain brings us into meditation.
When the sharp point of pain pierces us,
A table of contents of all our suffering is written into our flesh.
When we are hurt,
We call out to the forces of life for comfort and healing.
If Aum is the primal song of creation joyously expanding,
Then Ouch is the beginning of our reconnection with that joy.
We say Ouch as we experience pain,
And that recognition is the first step on the path of healing.
We may find that in meditation we are able to slip beneath the surface of the ocean that is us.
We might become able,
Perhaps with long practice,
To see pain and pleasure as waves on our surface.
We might be able to slip below those waves when we need,
And see them for what they truly are.
Meditation offers us many paths to healing our own suffering.
We often hear in our culture that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
The bulk of research done with this question shows that what doesn't kill us usually does not make us stronger.
It shows that people do not usually experience positive personality change as a result of adversity.
In some cases,
People experience declines in certain areas,
Such as their self-esteem or their spirituality.
While this expression is a nice story,
It is one that gives us permission to accept trauma and pain because they are somehow helping us to become stronger and more resilient.
This fosters the belief that pain and trauma are good for you and are acceptable.
We tend to narrate our lives by listing the challenges we have confronted,
The setbacks we have overcome,
Rather than listing our successes and good times.
We might believe that good things come from bad events because this reflects the stories we tell about our lives,
Stories we have been conditioned to tell,
That good things come from trauma.
In a way,
This gives us permission to inflict pain on others,
Or to allow it to be inflicted upon us.
When we say this phrase,
We are giving our power to those things that hurt us.
We are valorizing pain and the things that cause it.
In truth,
It is not the slings and arrows that make us stronger.
What makes us stronger is the work we do ourselves in the face of pain.
What makes us stronger is the healing we find for ourselves when we are hurt.
New strength comes from our ability to find healing.
Our newfound strength comes from our healing,
From our ability to ask for help when we need it,
And not from the things that hurt us.
We are the ones holding power in this dynamic,
Not the things that injure us and cause us pain.
We are the agents of change.
We are the ones who create new strength through our own work.
Sometimes it can seem as if we are living in the future.
We may not have flying cars,
But we have so much futuristic stuff.
Stuff we could never imagine 10 or even 5 years ago.
You can each sit in a comfortable space and share in this experience from halfway around the world or halfway down the block.
We have treatments for many of the diseases that took those who came before us.
We have nourishing food,
Often just down the street.
But the catch,
Of course,
Is that this future is not shared.
Even worse,
The capacity of the planet may not be sufficient for all its citizens to ever have the future we already live in.
Disease,
Hunger,
And wars that never seem to end generate profits that fund the creation of our world.
Beyond the angst of simply being human,
Beyond the day-to-day trials,
Beyond the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Even beyond that,
There is suffering from our intolerance for each other.
Intolerance across political perspectives,
Across color,
Across imaginary lines drawn on pieces of paper.
If you have no capacity left to take on any of anyone else's pain,
It's all right to tend solely to yourself if that is what you need.
It's all right to seek out another who has some capacity to give,
Who has some comfort to offer.
It's all right to share your pain with them.
Other times you will be doing well and have the capacity to reach out to someone who is in pain,
To accept their entreaties when they reach out to you.
In meditation we learn to gauge how much pain we are in and how much capacity we have to bear pain.
We come to this practice to better know ourselves in this way.
We come in part to release what we can of the pain we bear and in part to find more capacity to aid others as they struggle with their own pain.
Even a tiny bit of your capacity to bear pain and suffering,
A tiny quantity of compassion given freely,
Can begin to change the world.
Sometimes it will seem as if the pain you see in the world is too much for you,
Regardless of your capacity.
You are willing but the volume of suffering is too much.
That's all right.
There will always be too much pain for individuals to consider,
But there is never too much pain for all of us to take on,
For all of us to share in.
Take what you can and trust in others to take what they can,
And we will all get through it.
This is Mary Oliver's poem,
Wild Geese.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair,
Yours,
And I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
High in the clean blue air,
Are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
No matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese,
Harsh and exciting,
Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
You do not have to accept that pain and suffering are the only paths to growth.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert.
Some pain and suffering will always fall upon you.
You can share that pain with others as they share their pains with you.
Through that sharing and your own work you can find healing.
And your ability to heal is what makes you stronger,
Not the things that hurt you.
Use the next minute or so to close your meditation in a way that serves you.
You might realize that you have untapped capacity,
Or you might be full up with your own personal experience of pain right now.
You might realize though that you do not have to accept pain and suffering because they are somehow making you stronger.
You might realize that it's alright to say that you are in pain.
You might realize that you are the one with the power to strengthen yourself.
Take a little time for yourself and I'll let you know when our time is up.
And now to close you might take a long and slow inhale and then just as slowly release the air you have borrowed back into the benevolent atmosphere of Earth.
Welcome back.
