The Path Of Giving And Receiving

This is a reflection on this path of practice that we do. A path means that it's a practice that leads you somewhere, that takes you somewhere. The metaphor of walking on a path is something that you bring your whole body to. It's something you engage in with all of yourself.

And this path is not meant to be a hobby. Like something you do just on Sunday. But it's something that you engage with all of your life. On this path, we hear the phrases, being here, being present, being mindful, and yet in our own experience, the experience of being present can have a wide range.

Transcript

So today I want to offer some reflection on this, This practice that we do. This path, This path of practice. And a path, You know, When you think about a path, It generally leads somewhere. It generally leads somewhere, Right? It takes you on a journey. Sometimes it's an out-and-back, Sometimes it's a loop, But it takes you on a journey. So the metaphor that is often described in this practice is the the practice is a path. It's something that we bring our whole body to, Just like if you were walking in the woods. I know that some of you are planning a hike, And so it's like, Okay, You're gonna get on a path, And you're gonna walk a path. And there's things that happen on the path. Sometimes you're on the path, And sometimes you're not, But your body's with you always. It's something when you're doing, When you're walking a path, You're pretty much engaged with the path. Because if you don't, You can fall. There can be rocks, Or sticks, Or things in the path, And you can hurt yourself. So you're attending to the path. You're engaged with the path. And this particular path, It's not meant to be a hobby, Like something that you only do on Sunday. It's something that you engage with your whole life. The journey of this path is the journey of your life. We're just learning to bring mindfulness to every area of our life. And also, You know, Oftentimes you can hear from teachers, Including myself, That the practice is about being here. It's about being here. It's about being present. It's about being mindful. And yet, In my own experience, Presence, Being present, Can have a really wide range. You know, When we sit, The experience of being mindful, It's like, Okay, Here I am. There's the breath. Okay. Sitting upright. Okay. It's almost like a checklist. Oh, There's sound. There's sound happening. Up, I'm noticing temperature. It's like we have all these little pops of mindfulness. Pop. Breath. Pop. Body. Pop. Sound. Pop, Pop, Pop. One object after another, Just kind of popping into awareness. And then we're sort of like, Oh, Look what entered the field of awareness. And then the to-do list comes in, Right? Because it always does. And then you're like, Pop, And then you're lost. Lost for a while in that list or that situation in your life or that story that's happening. Or maybe a television show that you're interested in. Lost. And then pop, You come back. And then off again, Planning, Thinking. And what we're doing is we're coming back to here, You know. Eventually we come back here. But in the beginning, Mindfulness is kind of spotty. It's kind of like our cell reception, You know. Sometimes we go through different areas and our cell reception is kind of spotty. Our mindfulness practice is kind of spotty like that. Like pop, I'm here. And then poof, I'm off. Lost again. And as we dedicate ourselves to mindfulness practice, Committing again, And again, And again, And again to coming back to here, To now, We notice this more and more, The way that our mindfulness is spotty. And what happens is, As we start to get these spotty experiences, Up breath, Up body, Up sound, Up thought, Up, Back, Back, Back. What happens is that momentary mindfulness, The spottiness of it, We start to experience it as a flow. The flow of mindfulness begins to happen in our life. And it takes some time. But then there's this own, Mindfulness then has its own momentum. Because we're not, Mindfulness doesn't, It doesn't matter what we're aware of. It doesn't matter. It's just that we're aware. It's like, Oh, Something's happening. Oh, Look at that sensation in my body. Oh, Hot flash right now happening. Wow. Like that's happening. Wow. Okay, Here I am. Just like that, Aware. And we, We begin to live our life more in the flow of this mindfulness. And we're less lost. So the continuity of mindfulness, It can have a feeling where life starts to come to us. We're not going out and seeking anything, It just sort of our mindfulness practice, It starts to it feels like it's coming to us. Like life is happening. The breath is known. The body is known. The sensation is no like, Oh, Look at that happening. Now. The sound is known. We become more and more rooted in the present. And we're not going anywhere. We're here for it. Like we're really here for it. We're more grounded here. More steady in every area of our life. So in this way, Instead of going out, We can just rest with whatever's happening and we're receptive to whatever's happening. And this process of cultivating and creating this flow of mindfulness. Oh, It takes a little bit of trust, And that this practice works in that way. And it takes some patience, A willingness to come back again, And again and again. And you can try this. You know, This deepening of presence coming back again and again, In all of our activities. You're washing the dishes, You're feeling the suds of the soap with the warm water. And then you're thinking about tomorrow or later on or the weather or the news. And then you come back to the dishes. Every area of our life, We can start practicing, Extending our spotty mindfulness and creating more of a flow. Every area of our life. And this is, You know, Our life, Our breath is actually the other tool to get ourselves into this continuity of practice. I offered in the past couple of weeks, We've been practicing with the three breath journey. Let's just do that right now together. And then I want to hear a little bit about how that is. You don't have to change your posture, But just take three deep breaths and feel how it is in your body. To breathe in and to breathe out. And how is that for you? Just kind of in a popcorn way. Just how is that? To connect to your breath and three breaths just like that. Centers you. Okay. Yeah. Soothing. Soothing. Calming. Calming. Emotional. Emotional. Yeah. Because we connect with ourselves. It's intimate. Yeah. Yeah. Grateful. Grateful. Yeah. Cause we're still alive. We're still alive. That's it. Yes. Thank you. Cause it's our energy and it's our life force. It's our vitality. The breath is. It is. We're both participating in this life and we're observing it at the same time. And that's what the three breath journey offers. It's a moment of calm. It's a moment to see what else is there. Oh, There's emotion there. What's that? It's a moment to check in with ourselves. How am I right now? How am I right now? That's another question that helps facilitate the flow of mindfulness. The continuity of practice to check in either with the three breaths journey. I'm like, Okay, How am I right now? Well, I'm really resentful. Okay. Got that. You know, You can see, Oh, I'm really grateful. I'm really sad. You don't have to add anything to that. You could just kind of touch in. I'm really sad because of, You can drop the because of, Just drop that and just be with the raw experience of sadness. Because the story just feeds a story. It doesn't matter the story. What matters is the momentary experience. And what we're doing here in practice is we're moving against the stream of the ordinary ways people do things when confronted with difficulty or unpleasantness. So instead of denying the difficulty or avoiding it, When difficulty arises in our practice, We turn towards it rather than away from it. In this way, Mindfulness practice is like exposure therapy. We're exposing ourselves to what is difficult. Exposure therapy involves exposing ourselves to the source of our anxiety without the intention to cause harm or to be harmed by it. And we do this over and over again, Turning towards it rather than away from it. And it makes it easier for us to not only overcome the anxiety associated with the difficult, But we actually derive some benefit from turning towards the difficult over and over again. There's a capacity to meet our life that starts to really, Just like the flow of mindfulness, There's a continuity that starts to happen. When we embrace what is hard, Instead of trying to get rid of it, We are walking the path of growth and of resilience. And that path, It doesn't matter how old you are on that path, It doesn't matter how old you are on that path, Or even how functional you are. When we can meet something hard and see it for what it is, We grow. I mentioned this because my experience with turning toward over and over again, What's challenging in my body, What's challenging in my heart, In my mind, It has just lessened so significantly. It's allowed for me to care about my suffering and be there and care about other people's suffering too. That's what the practice allows, Because if we can care for our own suffering, Then when somebody that we love is suffering, We will have the tools to meet it. We won't try to change their suffering. We will just be able to be steady with it, Steady with it. And being able to sort of hold and embrace the suffering of others, That is a form of liberation. It is a freedom. Not many people can do that. So another practice that I was thinking about that I'd like to offer this week in really meeting the suffering of the world comes from a text. It's called the Seven Points of Mind Training or of Training the Mind. And it's in the Tibetan tradition, Which I don't have a lot of experience in. But these mind trainings were adapted by my first Zen teacher, Norman Fischer, In a book that is called Training in Compassion. And if you don't have this book, I highly recommend it. I use it so often that it sits on my desk and it's just, You know, It's just so good. One of those books that is so almost tattered because it's been opened and closed so often. Training in Compassion by Norman Fischer. And it's these seven points of training the mind. And the mind training, Again, In the Tibetan tradition, It's called Lojong training. And the training is broken down into 59 slogans. So slogans are kind of like bumper stickers. They're easy to remember. And then we can work with them in our meditation practice and in our life. And you can just work one slogan for like a year if you wanted to. Or you can buddy up and you can work the book together and work on a slogan like, Okay, Let's work on this slogan. And it's really a wonderful way to keep the Dharma close. And so the slogan that I'd like to focus on today is the slogan of empathy and compassion. The practice in the Tibetan is called Tonglen. Some of you know this practice. It means sending and receiving or giving and receiving. And what we're sending is compassion. And what we're receiving is also compassion. If you break the word down, Compassion literally means to feel with passion. And passion means pain. Passion means pain. So compassion is a willingness to feel pain with another, To feel your own pain and another's pain. So the practice of sending and receiving has two main purposes. The first is to train our hearts to do what it usually doesn't want to do, Which is to go towards what is painful. That's where our practice comes in. And the second purpose is to realize that your own suffering and the suffering of another person is not that different. It's not that different. It's not that different. We really start to see this as our practice deepens. Your suffering is my suffering. The content may be different, But it's the same in that way. Bless you. And when we discover this for ourselves, That our suffering is so similar, That our pain is so similar, It really can change how we relate to other people in such a positive way. It opens our hearts. So this Tonglen is a method of overcoming our fear of suffering, Our fear of pain. And for dissolving the tightness that sort of lives in our heart, In particular with our, You know, When we read the news, A tightness just can be, It can overcome us. And the core practice of this is breathing in the suffering, The suffering of the world. The suffering of the world. So when you're reading the paper, You may have the first initial response is not liking, Not liking. And the next response is breathing in the suffering. And then breathing out care, Love, Kindness, Hope, Faith. You know, And this can be done with even not reading the news. This is, This is very personal. Breathing in the suffering of another in our life, Who's having a hard time. Breathing in the suffering of ourselves. And breathing out care. So you breathe in the pain and you breathe out love. Sending that love, That energy of care, That energy of relaxation, Even just relaxation. Just relaxation. May you suffer less to whatever would possibly bring relief. And it's helpful to start with our own pain. You know, It's like putting on the oxygen mask before you put it onto another. And coming face to face with our own fear and our own pain can be challenging. It can bring tears. But it also helps not, It helps to unstick us from the pain that we're experiencing. You know, If we feel stuck in our life, Or stuck in the culture that is, Has so many problems, We simply contact it. The in-breath is a way of connecting to ourselves, Contacting what's here. And the out-breath is to relax with it. I mean, That's the instructions that I offer in meditation. Breathing in, Connect with what's here. Breathing out, Relax. It's for all of us. And, As I said before, This practice is really against the way of our culture. It doesn't go in the same stream as the culture. What we normally want to do is avoid suffering of any kind, And get pleasure going on immediately. So it's a process, Just like the mindfulness is spotty at first, And then we create a continuity of practice. When we practice tonglen, This giving and receiving, Just notice how it is. I remember just this, I've practiced this this last weekend. I was kind of just, I had read the newspaper, Which I only do once a week. I'm very, I'm really committed to only dropping the newspaper once a week. So I read the paper, And I was troubled, As one becomes when they read the paper. So I went outside, And I took my dogs for a walk, And the whole walk, Breathing in suffering, My suffering, The suffering of the world, Breathing out care. Care, Just care. It doesn't even have to be love. It could just be care. Breathing in, Breathing out, And by the time the walk was over, 30 minutes later, There had been a shift. I was more in my body, More present with my experience, More grateful. There was more emotion. There was calm, And this is just another way of practicing. So I'd like to try it together, If you'd be willing. We'll do a short meditation, And then I'll open it up for questions. So again, We're going to do a short meditation, And then I'll open it up for questions. So again, We're going to do a short meditation, And then I'll open it up for questions. So again, We're going to do a short meditation, And then I'll open it up for questions. So again, We're going to do a short meditation, And then I'll open it up for questions. So again, We're going to do a short meditation, And then I'll open it up for questions. So again, Finding yourself relaxed, And just collecting your attention back to your body. So again, Finding yourself relaxed, And just collecting your attention back to your body. So again, Finding yourself relaxed, And just collecting your attention back to your body. Feel the stillness and the weight, Whatever's here. Feel the stillness and the weight, Whatever's here. And if helpful, Take a three-breath journey. And if helpful, Take a three-breath journey. Letting the out-breath be relaxed, And easy, And light. Letting the out-breath be relaxed, And easy, And light. Letting the out-breath be relaxed, And easy, And light. And just let your breath come so that it enters all of your pores. And just let your breath come so that it enters all of your pores. See if you can experience breathing from the whole body. See if you can experience breathing from the whole body. Until your body feels in synchronicity with your breath. Until your body feels in synchronicity with your breath. Like you're your own wave. Like you're your own wave. And now we'll practice sending and receiving. And now we'll practice sending and receiving. So the next time you breathe in, Breathe in your difficulties. Breathe in that which is hard. A personal situation. Something that's real for you. Breathing out. Relaxing with it. Just to start to feel it. And the next time you breathe in, Include all the other people in the same boat as you. Experiencing the same feelings. So many of us feel the same way. So many of us feel the same way. And as you breathe out, Send out some relief to yourself. In any form you wish. So you breathe in the challenge, The difficulty. And you breathe out some ease. Like a soothing balm. A mist of sweetness. We breathe in that which is hard. And we breathe out care. Extending this out to all those who are in the same situation as you or your loved one. Make it bigger than just you. You can even consider your enemies. Those people that hurt others. Maybe they share the same confusion, The same stuckness as you do. Breathe in their pain. And breathe out some relief.

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So wonderful for this point in time 🙏🏼🌻❤️

Simply beautiful ❤️