So last week,
Sharon offered a really beautiful teaching.
On what is known as Anukamba.
Anukampa.
And this is not an esoteric word from,
The poly.
Well,
It is,
But.
It's actually in the canon,
In the Buddhist teachings,
Anukambha is a very common term.
He refers to it quite a bit.
And so I want to.
.
.
Demystify it a little bit and bring it down to earth?
How does this Anukampa even work?
What does it mean?
How do we actually.
Cultivate it within ourselves.
And as many of you know,
My practice started in the Zen tradition.
So there is a teaching in the Zen tradition that I find really beautiful.
That says that our deepest nature,
Our most authentic capacity for care,
Is innate.
It's built in,
It's already here.
And the image that was used in the Zen tradition to describe this.
Is that imagine a person sleeping in the middle of the night.
Without waking.
Um,
And without thinking,
And the hand.
The hand reaches out and finds the pillow.
And there's.
No deliberation.
The hand doesn't think,
You know,
What would be the compassionate thing to do for this sleeping body right now?
It doesn't make a plan about it.
It simply senses what's needed and it responds.
The pillow.
Need arises,
Response comes.
And the two are inseparable.
Need arises,
Response comes.
And I think that this teaching.
.
.
Is one way to really understand this Buddhist word Anukamba.
Need arises.
Response is there to meet it.
So this word is often translated as compassion.
But I think there is something more intimate.
Than that word compassion.
It conveys something more than that.
It's a kind of care that just arises in response to what is here.
Something needs attention,
And we attend.
Something is hurting and our heart moves towards it.
And what I love about this teaching is it doesn't imply that we need to become compassionate people.
Or to manufacture compassion.
I think in the spiritual scene,
We see a lot of manufactured compassion.
But you know,
When you go,
Like you're not living with the person,
So you're just seeing how they're presenting,
Right?
How they're presenting.
So.
Anakampa is this kind of care.
That arises in response to whatever is happening here and now.
My understanding is that it's more about uncovering that innate response.
That's already a part of our nature.
It's just bringing it above the line.
It's bringing it into the forefront of our actions.
You know,
What I'm interested in is not so much about analyzing and understanding Anakampa is actually how do we connect with that fundamental capacity to care and have that be what motivates us and moves us through this world that is deeply in need of care.
How do we create the conditions in our life that allows us to emerge more naturally,
To have this naturally emergent experience?
Taking the pillow,
Holding the pillow.
We know,
I think all of us here and on Zoom know,
What happens when we're stressed out and when we're frightened.
When we are rushing around and when we are defending our positions,
When we are caught in our own story and in our own righteous understanding.
Our capacity to respond.
Becomes very small.
We are fully in reactionary,
Like we are reacting.
This is how it normally goes.
And this is not wrong.
It's part of our conditioning.
Cut yourself some slack around that.
I think I've cut myself some slack around that.
If nothing else.
I allow myself to be human and I encourage you to allow yourself to be human.
And you know,
It's pretty common that we become.
Preoccupied with ourselves.
Like,
This is where we live.
We live in this earth suit.
And our intent,
You know,
What happens is that,
You know.
We.
We lose our intentions.
When we are preoccupied with getting what we want.
We lose the ability to see clearly.
We have a harder time seeing that maybe the person in front of us who is being grumpy or irritable.
Is actually having a difficult day,
They're in pain.
They're disconnected with themselves.
We have a harder time seeing that.
When we,
Too,
Are operating from that energy of God.
Urgency.
And we also do this to ourselves.
This kind of impatience and irritation with ourselves.
My grandmother used to say,
Why am I so tired?
Like she's in her 90s.
I just don't understand you.
You're just so surprised.
Impatient with her exhaustion.
Impatient with it.
Why can't I do this?
I used to be able to do this,
This hike.
I used to do this hike every day.
Ow!
You know,
You get so upset about it.
It's inconvenient.
We feel like when there's sadness.
And I think that this group is actually getting better at that.
When there's sadness,
We don't actually go to,
Oh,
This is just something to get over.
I think that what we're learning in this community is to really be like,
Oh,
There's sadness.
Let me just come and meet that sadness.
We're learning this response.
Sometimes we see fear as failure,
Like that has been an early schooling for a lot of people.
Do not be afraid.
Be courageous.
Like somehow,
If you are afraid.
That it's not okay.
And who doesn't experience this aging body as a problem?
I swear,
I think that we really sort of see the aging body as like we are a Just a.
.
.
Self-improvement project,
This whole thing.
It's just,
Let me see how I can improve it as it diminishes.
So this Anukampa practice is not about compassion and caring.
Of love.
It's an attitude.
It's an attitude towards life.
That's why it's spoken of so much in the polycanon.
It's an attitude.
That means it's something that we can practice anywhere all the time.
And in a way,
It's really close all the time.
It's how we open and close a door.
It's how we water plants in our homes.
It's how we fold laundry.
How we wash dishes.
How we pick something up and how we put something down.
And it's more than mindfulness,
Because.
.
.
Mindfulness,
You know,
We're paying attention in the moment with some interest.
Maybe some curiosity.
On a compass actually.
Bringing care to it.
When I water my plants,
I sometimes,
You know,
I attend.
Like,
I'm giving you this.
I love you.
I love you.
Adds a little bit more.
Of Anukampa,
This caring.
So it's ridiculously ordinary.
And I think that that's what is so important about the teaching and the cultivation of this.
Because it's so ordinary,
We don't even think about it.
But it is a direction and it's a habit pattern.
We don't have to wait in our life for a great moment of compassion.
You know,
Some grand gesture.
There are 10,
000 opportunities every day to care.
And I guess the question is,
Are we present enough to notice them?
And that's what we're doing here.
We're cultivating the presence of mind.
To bring care to every activity.
So I think this is where we've been focusing in our Zoom group primarily all month long,
All of September,
We focused on the Metta practice,
Metta loving kindness practice.
And I think that Anikampa meets Metta.
Pretty obviously.
But metta is,
Again,
Not a warm feeling either.
It's not just a warm feeling.
It's an orientation of the head and the heart.
We're orientating our head and heart towards kindness,
Towards care,
Towards well-being.
May you be happy.
May you be at peace.
Be free from suffering and may I be free from suffering.
I care about my suffering.
Anacapa says,
I care about my suffering.
I do.
So.
Both practices,
The metta practice and the anekampa practice,
It's sort of like they're pointing the direction.
Is towards what's beneficial.
What's beneficial?
Sometimes loving kindness.
Practice,
Meta-practice,
It means staying when we'd rather withdraw?
Have you noticed that sometimes you're You don't want to,
You want to just go and hide out.
You don't want to get more involved.
And sometimes loving kindness practice can be setting boundaries.
It can be kind of fierce.
And saying no.
And sometimes loving kindness practice can mean saying the truth,
Even though the truth can hurt another person.
Sometimes it's allowing consequences.
Especially with other people.
Like letting somebody fall.
And not rescuing them.
As a parent of a 16-year-old,
I'm learning this one.
So caring,
And a camper.
It's not always soft.
It's not always soft.
It takes courage sometimes.
But even when care is fierce,
The question can remain.
What is the response that serves life right now?
What is the response?
Not how do I make myself better,
Feel better.
With this horrible situation.
Or how do I get this person to change their behavior so that I'm more comfortable?
Now,
What is the response that serves life right now.
What is needed right now.
That's it.
That's hard to get to at times.
To ask that in the moment.
In this body and mind it often shows up as just There's a little bit of a freeze response,
Like the mammalian brain just kind of.
Stops and doesn't know what to do.
That's the first response when I I'm confronted.
And when that happens.
It's like,
Oh,
OK,
This is an opportunity.
What is most beneficial?
What can I,
In this moment,
What can I do that will bring the most benefit?
And sometimes it's bringing the benefit to myself.
And sometimes it's to myself and another,
And sometimes it's.
.
.
To another entirely.
It just depends.
So kind of look,
And if we can get to that pause,
If we could get to that pause,
It makes things a little easier.
And that takes some practice.
Presence and staying with yourself.
And this is where our practice is,
It's so important learning to pause.
I feel like it's the work of a lifetime,
Really.
It doesn't really,
It's not like all of a sudden you've got it.
You're a pauser.
Yeah,
Because situations happen.
And it's a remembering.
It's like exercising the muscle.
That's what we're doing here.
We're exercising the paws muscle.
Yeah,
The habitual response.
Is strong in all of us.
And I think that our culture,
We're all kind of disconnected to our bodies.
And body practice is something that we're also training ourself in,
To stay in this body.
As soon as we enter into silence together,
We're often traveling off into the mind,
Into some future that is much more pleasant than being in this room,
Right?
We've got this idea about what we're going to do later.
How that vacation is planning out.
We want to be somewhere else than other,
And this body is not home.
This body is not home for so many of us.
And we're learning to.
To become embodied,
To listen to the body.
And when we can do that,
That's the moment of pause.
It's what Viktor Frankl talked about,
The space between stimulus and response.
It's in here.
It's not out there to get.
It's in here.
So let's.
How do we make this Earth suit home?
I think that's a really important inquiry.
It's the hand reaching for the pillow.
And not because we have everything figured out.
I don't think that.
.
.
I don't know that we're going to get everything figured out in this lifetime.
I don't think that that's what we're doing here.
We're not trying to figure anything out.
So if you are trying to figure,
You know,
Grab a cookie and take off,
It's fine.
I can't give you any of that.
It's this learning to respond.
I think our habitual.
.
.
Our habit patterns,
They're just so strong and to be able to see the habit pattern arising and to not respond to it is a It's like lifting weights.
Sharon pointed out last week a little bit about how Anacompa is really caring for ourselves.
And I think she was illustrating about caring for her parents,
And then how she realized that in caring for them,
She could actually also offer that to herself.
That same level of care when they were dying,
She could actually give the give that care to herself.
And I think that that's really an important discovery.
It's an important discovery to know that we can care for ourselves in the same way that we would care for somebody that is sick,
That we love.
Do we ever think that we can turn that love to ourselves?
It's almost like an afterthought.
It's not the first thing.
It's always later,
It seems,
Or again,
In this body and mind.
You know,
We kind of end up holding ourselves like,
Oh,
It's great to cultivate compassion for others.
You know,
This is like the ultimate.
And,
You know,
And a lot of the Mahayana teachings,
The teachings,
The Tibetan teachings,
Like the teachings in China,
The teachings in,
You know,
Even Zen teachings.
Cultivating compassion is the key.
Of the utmost importance,
And it is.
I'm not saying that it's not.
But we don't hold ourselves,
Like we hold ourselves to an entirely different standard.
Oh,
We can be compassionate to others,
But then,
You know.
We just don't know how to give that compassion to ourselves.
We don't know how to be patient with ourselves,
To accept aspects of ourselves,
To care for ourselves.
It's really interesting to see that.
The way we shortchange ourselves.
So the fundamental orientation of this practice of Anukampa this caring practice is towards.
Our life.
Remember,
It's entirely ordinary,
And we are also included in that life.
So it might look like.
Taking care of ourselves.
Taking care of our health.
I don't know if any of you in the room are this way,
But I have a husband that does not go to the doctor and take care of himself.
It is just entirely absurd.
Obnoxious really.
It's kind of like And I tell them all about how,
You know,
If you get early,
Like finding out early and managing whatever you learn,
This is the way,
This is helpful.
So caring for your health.
If you are of the mind that we're just gonna let things ride,
Okay.
Is that really beneficial?
So always turning towards what is beneficial.
Most of the polycanon talks about.
Benefit?
What is beneficial?
What is onward leading?
Looking at this language over and over and over again throughout these early teachings,
It's like,
Okay,
Start asking yourself,
What is the most beneficial thing I can do right now?
For some of you,
It might be getting enough sleep.
I know that as the body ages,
Insomnia for some reason happens.
Wake up!
Three o'clock in the morning.
You're awake.
I'm going to suggest that this is a wonderful time to put your hands on your belly.
Or one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and Practice breathing.
And whatever story is running,
Remember it's a story.
It's not real.
I mean,
Sure,
You might be ruminating on a diagnosis.
Something that is happening in your body.
But the rumination is not what's happening in your body.
That's just the mind making up and.
.
.
Trying to figure it out.
We're not gonna figure it out,
Remember?
We're not here to figure it out.
We're here to be with.
With care.
And maybe the next time you're up in the middle of the night,
You'll grab that pillow and you'll pop it up.
And you'll be like,
Oh,
This is the Anacapa practice.
This is the caring practice she was talking about.
Got it.
Okay,
It's really simple,
Almost mundane.
Another thing that I think that a lot of us are getting in this room is to make space in the day for what matters.
Like you're here practicing meditation in the middle of the afternoon.
I'm so on.
I'm always happy to come.
I mean,
Many of you know that I'm doing a lot of juggling,
But you know what?
I am always so delighted to be here,
Always.
It's never like,
God,
I wish I didn't do that,
Never.
Never in the 10 years that I've been here offering meditation every time.
Always glad I stopped.
Every time.
And I think in some way.
You are too,
Because you keep showing up.
It might be that you.
Speaking a voice that is helpful.
I know that sometimes we talk to ourselves in ways that are not beneficial.
Why did I do that?
That's so stupid.
I've heard people in this practice say things like they talk to themselves with this kind of like intolerant,
Angry,
Aggro voice.
That's in June,
It's like.
.
.
It just feeds dissatisfaction,
Right?
So I think that.
What feels like one of the deepest forms of Anakampa.
For me is to remain in relationship with myself.
Always.
I think that's what I'm learning.
Even when there is disappointment,
To stay with myself.
You know,
Just to really like underneath all of the conditioning,
Underneath all of the fear,
The preferences,
The story.
The doubt,
The grief,
The regret.
There's something that's really simple and it's that.
I'm a human being surrounded by other human beings.
And we're constantly in response to each other.
And so I can just relax and understand that.
We're not so different.
And the one thing that may make us,
That may appear as different,
Is that I've been cultivating awareness.
And so if I can remember that you are just like me and I am just like you and we are doing the best we can.
Just in this moment.
And everything can change and then I can meet it with care.
Compassion is automatically built in when I can remember that you and I may have different circumstances,
But we are the same.
We are the same.
Not forgetting that.
So all of our actions during the day,
Like watering the plants and folding the laundry and washing the dishes,
Like we do,
How many times a day do we do these things?
Like maybe the plants are once a week,
But the dishes,
That's ongoing.
Laundry in my house.
Always laundry.
Always.
It's nice to see the basket empty for like the like maybe the 30 minutes that it is.
And then it's just like.
Garnet sucks.
It's like,
There they are,
More.
But all of these things are really ordinary.
It's just.
.
.
Can I bring care to all of my ordinary acts?
Can I pay attention?
Can I even bring.
.
.
It doesn't have to be overflowing love,
But what I'm doing,
It's the practice of one thing at a time.
It's really the practice that for me was the early Zen teaching.
You know,
Just sweeping the courtyard.
And something that Sharon actually often says,
Which I really appreciate,
It's not really about trying to become someone who cares.
It's about removing the obstacles.
From the heart.
You know,
What is preventing this heart from caring?
Removing the obstacles.
From caring.
And we have all kinds of obstacles.
We can say.
.
.
That we just don't have enough time.
Those plants just have to get watered.
The laundry just needs to get folded,
Because I have,
Like,
Things to do.
But really just this one.
One thing at a time.
And it's happening all the time,
Like the sleeping hand reaching for the pillow.
We don't have to think about it too much.
When we just get quiet and we're more present.
That response of care arises,
It's so natural.
So.
That is my reflection on Anakampa.
Sharon will be able to either confirm it or deny it,
Because she has a meeting tomorrow with Gil.
But that's what I took from this training of Anakampa.
It's really simple.
And.
.
.
Yeah,
I.
.
.
I invite your comments and questions.
Even if you refute what I'm saying,
I welcome that too.
Or even if there's anything else that's arising in this.
Thank you.
