Transforming Unhelpful Mental Habits

Join Venerable Sangye Khadro in a meditation on transforming unhelpful thoughts, inspired by the book “An Open-Hearted Life.” We may have a habit of getting angry when something doesn’t go our way or feeling jealous of others’ success, but it doesn’t have to be like that.

A guided reflection on a personal example, Venerable Khadro leads meditators through recognizing negative feelings and possible influences like social conditioning, ending with an intention to bring compassion and wisdom into similar situations in the future.

Note: This meditation is from a monthly event called Sharing the Dharma Day.

Transcript

We'll start with a little bit of a motivation,

A positive motivation for what we're doing.

And then we'll do some silent meditation.

And then there'll be a guided analytical meditation.

And so the topic today for this meditation will be related to last month's talk,

Venerable Children is going through this book on compassion.

What is it called?

Living a Compassionate Life.

Open-hearted life.

Yeah,

There's different titles,

Different versions of the book.

But anyway,

It's all about how to be more compassionate.

And it's co-authored by Venerable Children and Russell Colts,

A Western psychologist whose speciality is this compassion-based kind of therapy.

And so the theme of last month's talk was a chapter of the book about friends who give bad advice.

And this isn't talking about other people,

But rather aspects of ourself,

Certain attitudes that we have in our mind that are habitual and that can get triggered off when we find ourselves in difficult situations,

Challenging situations.

And so that can include things like anger,

Maybe defensiveness,

Anxiety,

Or sadness,

Or yeah,

Just different states of mind that aren't very constructive or helpful for ourselves or anybody else.

But because of familiarity,

Because we've experienced these again and again,

And they motivate us to act in certain ways with our speech,

With our actions,

And so on.

So because of the familiarity,

The habit that we have,

They can easily get triggered off when we just find ourselves going down that road again and again.

So that's what he means by,

Because this chapter was written by Russell,

Friends who give bad advice.

They mean well,

But they just lack wisdom.

And these kinds of attitudes and ways of reacting are probably things we developed in our life,

Going back to childhood where we may have faced difficult circumstances and we just acted in this way.

And they may have given some short-term benefit,

Like just helped us feel more secure or feel like we're in control in a situation where it seems out of control,

Or just predictability.

Just because they're familiar,

You know,

We feel kind of comfortable going into those modes of being.

But when we recognize that they're not really helpful and they sometimes just make things worse rather than better,

Then we can decide to change,

To work on changing those.

And his suggestion is to find our compassionate self,

To get in touch with the qualities of kindness and compassion,

Wisdom,

Confidence.

We have those qualities as well.

They may not be as familiar,

As developed as the other ones,

But we can train ourselves to get into those states of mind more often and get more familiar with those.

And then gradually they will become more habitual and those old,

Unhelpful friends will become less habitual.

So this meditation today will involve that,

Looking at how we can start to make that kind of change in ourself.

Okay,

So to make our time here today as beneficial as possible for ourselves as well as for others,

For other beings,

For the world,

Both in a short-term sense and a long-term sense,

Let's bring into our minds a really positive,

Altruistic motivation for what we are doing here.

And we can do this by going back to the prayer of the four measurables and just spend a little bit more time contemplating those four beautiful thoughts.

So the first one is loving-kindness,

And that involves wishing all beings to have both happiness and its causes,

Which is mainly virtue,

Positive states of mind,

Positive ways of behaving.

So just feel how wonderful it would be if that could happen,

If everyone,

All beings,

Could be happy and also engage in the causes of happiness.

The second is compassion,

Which is wishing all beings to be free of suffering,

And the causes of suffering,

The main cause of suffering,

Is non-virtue,

Negative or harmful actions of body,

Speech,

And mind.

So feel how wonderful it would be if all beings could be free of those.

And the third is immeasurable joy,

Which is wishing all beings to never be separated from pure and perfect happiness that lasts,

And that's the happiness of nirvana and enlightenment,

And also having fortunate rebirths in all their future lives so they continue working towards those wonderful goals.

And the fourth is immeasurable equanimity.

So here we wish all beings,

And that includes ourselves,

We have to do this too,

To overcome feelings of attachment,

Strong clinging to certain people we like,

And then aversion,

Rejection towards other people we dislike,

And indifference towards everybody else.

So feel how wonderful it would be if all of us could stop having these biased attitudes and just have an open mind,

Open heart to all living beings with equal respect,

Consideration,

And kindness towards everyone.

So then have as your motivation for being here the wish that whatever we do here,

Whatever we learn here,

Will contribute to all these wonderful aspirations and will help all of us and all living beings get closer to enlightenment.

So let's take a few moments to make sure that we're as relaxed as possible.

So it's good to make sure that we don't have any tension in our bodies and minds.

So just do a quick check of your body and see if there's tension anywhere,

Like in your neck,

Shoulders,

Back.

And if you do find any spots of tension,

See if you can just release it,

Let it melt,

Flow away,

Disappear.

So let your whole body,

From the top of your head to the tips of your toes and fingers,

Be as relaxed as possible.

And also relax your mind.

If there's any thoughts in your mind left over from what you did earlier today or yesterday,

Last week,

Any time in the past,

Just put all those thoughts aside.

Do the same with any thoughts of the future,

What you're going to do later today,

Tonight,

Tomorrow,

Next week,

And so on.

You don't have to think about those things now.

You can give yourself a break from them.

So just let your mind be fully here and now,

In this present place,

In this present moment.

And a good way to do that is by being aware of the breathing,

Coming in and going out.

So you can do that in whatever way works for you.

Some people do it at the nostrils,

Where the breath is coming in and going out,

Or in the abdomen,

Which is moving in and out with each breath.

Or you can find your own way of watching your breath,

Wherever it's most easy to be aware of.

And then just do the best you can to stay with the breath,

Being aware of each inhalation and exhalation of each breath,

One after the other.

Also any pauses in between breaths,

Or in the middle of a breath.

Just stay focused on the breath,

The process of breathing,

And anytime your mind gets distracted by something else,

A sound,

A thought,

A memory,

Just be aware of that,

Let go of that other object,

And come back to the breathing.

So start by bringing to mind an incident where one of your unskillful friends appeared in your mind.

And again,

This could be anger,

Or defensiveness,

Or anxiety,

Or sadness,

Some kind of unhelpful state of mind,

Way of thinking,

Way of feeling,

When you found yourself in a difficult situation.

So something happened,

Maybe with relation to another person,

Or maybe you're just working on your own and something went wrong,

There may have been a whole group of people involved,

And things weren't going very well as you wished,

And one of those reactions came up in your mind.

So try to think of such a situation,

Preferably something recent so it's still fresh in your mind.

And then once you've thought of this incident,

Review it and try to recognize what that state of mind advised you to do,

What kind of advice did it give you.

Not literally,

But just what kind of reaction you felt impelled to make in that situation.

Look to see if it was helpful or not.

Helpful to yourself,

Helpful to others,

Helpful to the situation.

And it's also helpful to check if you feel any negative attitudes towards yourself for the way you reacted in that situation.

Maybe you feel angry at yourself,

Beating yourself up,

Shame,

Guilt,

And so on.

And if you do have any of those reactions,

Either immediately or even now,

Then recognize that's not helpful.

Not helpful to beat ourselves up or feel just guilty about things that we did.

So that's just exacerbating the problem even more.

See if you can generate a sense of compassion for yourself,

Forgiveness,

Understanding that we can't help but make mistakes as we go through life.

But the good thing is we can learn from our mistakes and try to do better next time.

It's also helpful and important to understand that these unskillful attitudes and ways of reacting that we habitually fall into are not things that we consciously,

Deliberately choose,

But they are the result of many different factors,

Causes,

And conditions that,

Again,

We don't have complete control over.

And some of these may have started early in our life when we were little kids or even infants in our family situation with our parents,

Siblings,

Other family members,

With our culture,

Conditioning,

And so on.

So as this little being just trying to survive,

Trying to be happy,

We may have learned or developed these particular attitudes and ways of behaving just to protect ourselves,

To keep ourselves happy,

To keep ourselves comfortable,

Have a sense of safety in situations where we may not have felt safe,

And so on.

So it might be helpful to just spend a bit of time thinking about that.

What kind of circumstances may have influenced me to develop these habitual attitudes and ways of reacting?

So these ways of thinking and feeling and acting have their causes and conditions,

And they may have served us in the past,

But they may no longer be so helpful and just get in the way of our attempts to be more wise and compassionate now.

And we may have doubt about that.

We may have doubt or lack of confidence in our ability to be different,

But I'm sure we can all find cases where we did respond to difficult circumstances in better ways.

So see if you can dig into your memories and find a time,

A situation,

Where it may have been somewhat stressful,

Difficult,

Challenging,

But you rose to the challenge.

You were able to stay calm and clear,

Compassionate,

Kind,

And respond in a skillful way in that situation.

So having responded that way before,

Probably not just once,

But a number of times,

We can definitely do it again.

So something that is helpful is when we do find ourselves in a situation where these old,

Unhelpful states of mind are being triggered,

To notice that,

To notice them starting to arise in our mind,

And then pause and take a few deep breaths,

Bring our awareness into our body and our breathing,

Calm ourselves down,

And then bring to mind thoughts of kindness and compassion for ourselves and others,

Remembering that everyone's just trying to be happy,

Nobody wants to suffer,

And it goes for ourself and it goes for the other person or people involved in this situation.

And then,

With that in our mind,

Look again at this situation and the people involved,

And see if you can get into that role of being your compassionate self,

With kindness,

With wisdom,

A skill in knowing how to deal with situations that will be helpful to yourself and others,

Rather than making things worse.

So just for the last couple of minutes of this session,

Go back to that first situation that you thought of,

And try to imagine how you could do it differently,

If you had the chance to do it over,

How could you do it in a more compassionate and wise way?

And then,

To bring the meditation to a close,

See if you can make the determination that from now on you will try to bring more compassion and wisdom into situations which are challenging,

So that you can become more familiar with that way of being,

And that becomes more of your habit,

Your go-to way of responding.

And then the old,

Unhelpful ways will become weaker and weaker,

Less likely to arise.

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Thank you 🙏🏻

Thank you for sharing this. I found it very helpful 🌟

Thank you for your gentle wisdom.