So on Tuesday we explored a little bit about understanding emptiness and emptiness in a definition can be described as being empty of a permanent and abiding self.
Empty of a permanent and abiding self.
So in my understanding and experience with emptiness,
It's like the identities that I have and the views that I hold and the stories that I make up about me become very very thinned out.
They become empty.
Some areas where I've had a lot of self-righteous anger or worry or anxiety,
Shame,
They're actually thinned out so completely that they're gone.
But one area that I can't imagine a life without that I'd like to explore with you today is grief.
Grief is a hugely important area of our humanity and sooner or later most people will go through a period of grieving and people might think they know what grief is but I don't really think there's a real solid definition for it.
You know one way of understanding grief is it involves the loss of something.
The absence of something or someone.
Something is not here anymore that was important and that absence,
That absence is a feeling.
It's something that we feel.
It's a pain and it comes when something important is no longer here and because it involves loss,
The loss means there's now an emptiness.
Not in the same way that we're understanding emptiness in the Buddha Dharma.
Empty as being thinned out and emptiness is fullness in a way.
Empty of self.
The absence is kind of an emptiness that can feel huge.
For some people the emptiness is so huge that nothing will ever fill it again.
It's like a great vacuum of loss and loneliness and meaning.
Loss of meaning.
And the bigger the emptiness,
The bigger the loss,
The bigger the absence,
The more it actually gets filled with many other things.
Part of mindfulness practice is beginning to you know enter this world of emptiness but when we look and work with grief to be able to see what we're filling the emptiness with.
What's the characteristic or the characteristics of the pain and the discomfort that comes with loss?
You know I've been taught that rather than just getting attached to or viewing grief as this singular thing like this is my grief,
The way that I've been schooled in the Dharma is to sort of add a question mark.
You know add a question mark at the end of it like what is this grief?
Or if it's not grief that you're working with then it's like well what is this?
You know add a question mark.
Maybe we don't really know.
Maybe we don't really know what grief is so we sit with it and we be with it.
Not so much to investigate it or to like think about it or get through it but kind of as its own temple.
You know I feel like grief is like a temple.
It's sacred in a way.
A place where we enter that's quiet and we're not and we're being peaceful with it without demands or needs.
In a way it's like we're being really present in the middle of emptiness and to make space and room for whatever we see there.
When it comes to grief I find it's helpful not to give a lot of I guess attention,
Preferential treatment in a way,
To our thinking.
Thoughts and stories and memories and meaning that we assign to situations that we're grieving will come.
You know they'll come.
But rather than feeding this world of thinking and remembering and ruminating,
Just entering the emptiness,
The loss within the raw sensation of it.
You know seeing that there are stories and meanings and thoughts and those are part of the picture which also include the sensations,
The emotions,
The feelings.
When we allow for the rawness of loss it's sort of like we make room for all of its component parts and grief,
Like many of our emotions,
Is a composite of many different pieces.
So to begin to understand the composite parts of grief I want to talk about what these parts might be.
You know what the the source of the grief.
So we generally assign you know relational grief as sort of the that's how we relate to grief generally.
We say that you know it's relational it has to do with a relationship that has been severed or lost.
Death of a parent,
A child,
A spouse,
A sibling,
A friend.
This is something that we can say that like this this source grief we really understand as sort of primary.
But there might be relationships that end like a divorce and that ending of relationship comes with grief or an ending of a friendship that has grief in it.
And then there's grief that that's more functional not so much in relationship with other people like losing our abilities.
I think many of us have experienced the grief of aging even if you just touch on it lightly and kind of power through or there's grief from maybe you've had an accident an injury where we've lost some abilities or function and we'll never be able to do those things we once did because our body doesn't function in the same way.
And that loss of functioning abilities there's there's grief in that.
And then there's the loss of our roles.
You know sometimes when people retire they've lost the role that was so important to who they were and there's grief in that.
Or when our children leave home and there's that role of being a parent it's no longer predominant you know the grief of not being able to take care of someone or have breakfast ready or make lunches.
And then as we are aging and people around us are aging and our loved ones then there's the role of the caregiver that some of you have right now.
The role of caregiver you know can be so valuable to us because it's such a contribution and it becomes an important part of our identity.
And so we we start to see that all the loss of this identity or the loss of many of our identities.
The loss of who we thought we were and who we thought we were going to become.
There's grief there.
You know your spouse dies and you expect you know your expectation was that you would be living this retired life together and traveling the world or playing bridge you know.
But now your spouse is gone and this anticipated future is no longer there.
Some people are grieving lost futures,
Lost anticipations of what was going to come or who we were going to be.
And then we lose material goods you know.
We might lose all our money in a stock market crash and our identity as someone with financial stability and security or even wealth is gone.
Our identity as someone who can do certain things that requires money goes away.
And so then there's that grief.
So these are the ways in which grief is a composite you know made up of different things.
It's not singular and it's not specifically only.
It can happen on many areas of our life and it's to be respected,
To be honored.
If we enter into the world of our grief maybe in meditation which is a wonderful spot to sort of enter into it and kind of let the mind get quiet.
We can enter into what's difficult and really just be present for it and not let the thinking mind get the upper hand,
The ruminating mind,
The regretful mind.
But just be with the raw sensations and and let ourselves feel,
Be seasoned in a way by the grief.
Let the grief teach us how to move forward.
Some very different things can happen with grief when we're not turning them up with our thinking and our spinning and living in our thoughts and our ideas and our histories and our memories.
They become quiet.
The stories are important.
I'm not saying that they're not but there's another way of just sitting quietly in the middle of it where it teaches us how to be or it teaches us how to be.
So I hope this has given you something to consider.
Please care for yourself.
If this has evoked any historical grief,
Think of mindfulness as a powerful way to protect yourself and care for yourself and love yourself.
Thank you for your kind attention.
