Hey everyone,
It's Judy Cohen.
This is WakeUpCall497.
So I've been thinking about this question and I'm almost thinking of it as maybe like it's a koan,
Which is a zen riddle that a teacher offers a student and then the student can work with it for a long time or sometimes students work with them for a whole life.
And I hope I'm not offending anyone by calling it a koan since it's definitely not an actual koan and I'm not a zen student.
But this question,
This riddle of how to have positive regard,
Even for people who seem completely undeserving of positive regard.
And when I say positive regard,
I'm thinking of that as a form of meta.
So staying with the theme of meta or loving kindness or unconditional friendliness or positive regard.
And there are people,
I certainly find it difficult to say the metaphrases for,
May you be safe,
May you be happy,
May you be healthy,
May you live with ease,
You know.
And it might be somebody who's done something to me or to someone else or maybe someone who isn't a good steward of the planet or they're using money or power or both to cause harm,
Right?
So and I feel like in this moment we have our pick.
And then I also feel like maybe that's always been the case throughout time.
And the first thing that I always have to remind myself and I think it's good for everybody to remember is that meta isn't magic.
You know,
We're not saying the phrases so that person will be happy or safe or free.
We're saying them to condition our own heart or mind,
Which are the same.
And the conditioning is a kind of non-exclusion conditioning.
I'm working on not excluding anyone from my heart,
Even the person taking the worst action in the world,
Right?
I'm working on softening my heart without regard to who's in the room or who's on the planet at the moment.
And maybe this sounds like a terrible idea,
Right?
Maybe it sounds ridiculous to you and I feel like it's a legitimate question.
Why would anyone want to soften their heart to someone who's causing harm to other people?
But the thing that I can tell you from a little bit of practice so far in this direction,
Right,
Is that my heart feels too brittle when I'm excluding people.
It feels too brittle or too breakable or too fragile.
So when there are people who are inside my heart and people who are outside,
It feels surprisingly harder than if there's no distinction.
And this has been a really strange thing to discover.
So the first moment I realized it,
I really knew it in my bones rather than reading about it or hearing another teacher say that it was true,
Which had happened for a long time,
Was at the Metta retreat that I just sat.
We spent several days practicing for ourselves and for our easy or beloved person and then a friend and then a stranger and finally we got to the difficult person on maybe day seven of the nine days.
And the instruction was to work with someone slightly difficult,
Not incredibly difficult.
So no politicians.
And so I thought I'd pick someone fairly close to home and I picked my ex,
My daughter's father.
And this ex is only sort of difficult because my daughter is an adult so we don't have much contact but there are plenty of difficulties to remember.
So he seemed like a good choice.
But as I was saying Metta for him and wishing him safety and happiness and good health and ease,
This really weird thing happened.
I suddenly knew,
Kind of without any doubt at all,
That saying the phrases for him and wishing him well-being was no different from saying them for anyone else.
You know,
No different than saying them for a stranger or a friend or even for my most beloved person.
And when I say no different,
It's not no different in the sense that the phrases were the same or that I experienced similar obstacles or similar ease with the process.
It was different than that.
It was no different,
No different in the sense that there was no difference in my heart between him and my most beloved person.
There was no difference at all.
And I really can't explain any better than that how it felt,
But I will say that I was so surprised that my first impulse was to ask one of the teachers if it was a trick.
And I had a moment of adverse reaction of,
Wait a minute,
You know,
This man belongs over here and now he's over here.
But then I realized,
Yeah,
It is a trick.
It's a trick of the heart,
Or maybe more accurately,
A better way to say it,
It's a conditioning of the heart.
And it's not a conditioning of the heart to have well wishes for each category of people,
Which is what I always thought Metta was about.
And I'm sure,
I'm sure that all of my teachers have told me that that's not what it's about a million times,
But I never heard that until this retreat.
It's not a conditioning to have well wishes for each category of people.
It's a conditioning to abandon the categories.
It's a conditioning of the heart to make no distinctions among humans or among other beings or among humans and other beings.
You know,
No distinctions,
Meaning seeing that all the supposed differences are insubstantial,
And they're empty of any meaning,
Any fire,
Any content at all.
So there's this ancient story about this that I put a brief explanation of in today's note if you saw it.
And it's that you're traveling through the forest with a beloved,
A friend,
A stranger,
And a wicked person,
So the categories,
Right?
And your group is set upon by bandits and the bandits demand the sacrifice of one person to let the rest of the group go,
Right?
And the question is,
Who do you sacrifice?
And you could say the wicked person,
Of course,
Right?
Why not sacrifice the most wicked person of the group,
The person who's caused harm to others makes sense.
Why not sacrifice that person in our lives?
Sacrifice them in the sense of,
I can't say meta for that person,
Right?
Or you could say,
I should be altruistic and sacrifice myself,
Because our culture kind of suggests that,
It kind of invites that,
Doesn't it?
Right?
But the answer is,
No one can be sacrificed.
If we sacrifice anyone,
We're making distinctions that don't really exist and that are only going to encrust our hearts and make them more brittle and more breakable.
And that was the trick at the meta-retreat.
So fast forward to the Mindfulness in Law Society conference the week later,
And I was listening to James Fox speak,
And James runs,
He founded,
And he runs Prison Yoga,
Which is in a bunch of U.
S.
States and in other nations,
Highly recommend checking out their work.
And during his talk,
Someone asked him,
How do you sit and practice with someone who has committed a heinous crime?
Because,
I mean,
He's in prison,
He's in the prisons.
And this is the same question the story asks,
Right?
And the same invitation of meta-practice,
Which is to wonder whether we're allowing some people into our hearts and excluding others,
And why?
And James Fox was who gave me the words for today's wake-up call title.
His answer was positive personal regard.
He generates positive personal regard for every single human in every prison he visits.
And another way of saying that is he generates meta for everyone,
And he sacrifices no one.
So,
You know,
We could each ask ourselves right now,
Who is it that we feel doesn't deserve our positive regard?
Who is it?
And maybe it's the other side,
Right?
It's the DA if you're a PD or vice versa,
Or it's ICE if you're in immigration,
Or it's someone in power,
Or it's your least favorite family member,
Right?
Could be anyone.
And is it too big of a leap to soften your heart and turn towards them with positive personal regard?
And realize that they're only causing the harm they're causing because they misunderstand the very thing that you don't misunderstand,
Which is that we're not separate.
We're not fundamentally different.
We're all right here.
So,
Race,
Ipsa,
We all belong here.
We're here.
We belong here.
And no one can be sacrificed because when we sacrifice someone,
Anyone,
It breaks everyone's heart.
Is it too big of a leap?
Or is it a smaller step than we realize?
So that's the question.
And let's sit and let's play around with metta again.
So finding some stillness for yourself in this moment.
Taking a few breaths.
Seeing if part of that stillness can be some relaxation.
Maybe a little more relaxation that you have.
Right in this moment,
Relaxing the eyes,
The jaws,
Neck and shoulders,
Arms and legs.
And if you were here last week,
Maybe calling to mind the being who was your easy being.
Or if not,
Calling to mind someone or some being who's really easy for you to love,
Really easy for you to have well wishes for.
And then that sense of well-being that you have,
That it's easy to wish for that being,
That other person.
Just turn it around towards yourself.
And you can say the full phrases,
May I be safe?
May I be happy?
May I be healthy?
May I live with ease?
You can say those phrases,
Continue those phrases.
Or if the mind is a little busier,
You can just use one word.
You can just say safe,
Happy,
Healthy,
Ease.
Really and truly wishing safety for yourself.
And happiness for yourself.
And good health for yourself.
And a life that is full of ease.
May I be safe?
May I be happy?
May I be healthy?
May I live with ease?
And then no bell today,
Just flutter the eyes open and keep practicing.
Thanks,
Everybody.
Good to see you.
