So on Tuesday we started what I'm calling a two-week series on giving and receiving and the practices of generosity and gratitude.
And I started this series with a Native American address which is said to be an invocation of gratitude.
That gratitude is the highest priority.
So I'll read a few sections again for us to remember.
And see how this lands for you in your body.
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue.
We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.
So now we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
We are all thankful to our mother the earth for she gives us all that we need for life.
She supports our feet as we walk upon her.
It gives us joy that she continues to care for us and has from the beginning of time.
To our mother we send greetings and thanks.
And now our minds are one.
I feel compelled to read these passages as a way of setting up the container of our inquiry into these teachings of gratitude and giving and receiving.
The Thanksgiving address puts gratitude as our highest priority and it also illustrates reciprocity.
Every being is bound to every other being in a reciprocal relationship.
If I receive the gift of pure water from the rivers that I live around then I'm responsible for protecting those rivers from damming and pollution.
Receiving and giving.
It seems like it's really an integral part of our education as humans.
Earth walking on earth.
Not always taught in school.
But an important teaching.
And just like the Thanksgiving address is designed in a sense to remind us that we have everything that we need.
The taking in and sending out practice that we're exploring known as Tonglen is designed to help us connect with the soft openness of the heart.
So instead of shielding ourselves and protecting our softness which is what we've been conditioned and trained to do many of us.
We're opening and letting ourselves feel what it's like to be human.
Tonglen is a method for overcoming our fear of suffering.
You know we don't like to meet suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our hearts.
And the way that this practice is often taught is that we begin by taking on the suffering of a person whom we know to be hurting and we wish to help.
So if we know that a child is being hurt we breathe in with the wish to take away all of the child's pain and fear.
And then we breathe out.
So we send out happiness and joy or whatever else would relieve that child.
That's the core practice breathing in others pain so that they can be well and have more space and breathing out or sending them relaxation or whatever else would bring them relief.
But in my experience of this practice it is more authentic in a way when we start with that child being ourselves.
Going face to face with our own fear with our own resistance or the personal pain that we have that's happening in our life on some level large or small.
So we change the focus and take in our own stuckness our own difficulty.
And here's the important part.
We're also breathing in the stuckness and difficulty of all the millions of people just like us who are at this very moment also experiencing the same stuckness and difficulty.
Maybe they don't have these practices.
So we breathe in for all the people who are caught in the same emotions that we have that we're experiencing and we send out relief or whatever opens in the space for ourselves to all those countless others.
And maybe we can name our experience you know as we build our emotional vocabulary the anger or the irritation the bitterness or contempt and maybe we can't name what we're feeling but we can feel it as like a tightness or restriction in the chest or the stomach.
Maybe it's a visual like a heavy darkness.
So we simply contact what we're feeling and we breathe in taking in for all of us and sending out relief to all of us.
You know the practice goes against the grain of what we normally do.
You know we normally avoid suffering and seek pleasure.
This is our way.
And in this process of turning towards it we begin to become liberated from our patterns of selfishness because remember we're doing this for all beings.
We begin to feel love both for ourselves and these afflictive emotions that live in us and others.
And what happens what I've noticed what happens when we do this practice is we're more capable of taking care of ourselves and others.
We can use our personal hardships our difficulties as a way of understanding what people are up against all over the world.
So we breathe in for all of us and we breathe out goodness for all of us.
Kamei Chodron talks about it as you know using what seems like a poison as our life you know as medicine.
The stickiness the heaviness as medicine.
We use our personal suffering as the path to compassion.
So I'd like to practice this again together with a bit more intention.
So as you allow your self to collect back into the body.
Feel the stillness and the weight of the body sitting here.
Let the mind rest and collect around the breath.
Maybe even taking a few spacious breaths opening to the expansive nature of the mind opening to the great stillness that resides in all of us.
And breathing in feel the quality of the breath noticing how the breath is without changing or controlling it.
Is it heavy or hot tight or relaxed.
And as you breathe out let the out breath be relaxed and easy light.
As you breathe in breathe in with all the pores of your body and breathing out radiating out completely through the pores and do this until there's some synchronicity with your in and your out breath.
Now bring to mind a personal situation any painful situation that's real for you.
For example if you're maybe you're feeling inadequate you breathe that in for yourself and all people in the same boat experiencing the same feelings sending out breathing out confidence and capability or relief in any form that you wish.
Maybe taking in and sending out a bit bigger including someone you love who may be experiencing difficulty and extending it out to those who are in the same situation as your loved one.
Make it bigger than just one person millions of others.
You could do the taking in and sending out for people you consider to be your enemy for those who hurt you or for those who hurt others.
Do tongue line for them thinking of them as having the same confusion the same stickiness that you have when we cause harm.
Breathe in their pain.
Breathe out relief.
As you come back here as you do this practice you may gradually find that you are more and more able to be there for others to be there for your own experience.
