[138] A Grateful Heart: Cultivating Appreciation Through Meditation – with Joe Parent

4:24PM Dec 16, 2023

Speakers:

John Dupuy

joseph

Keywords:

breathe

posture

talked

karma

thoughts

human

body

mind

open

teachings

heard

faculties

bit

feeling

compassion

suffering

grateful

practice

good

move

Got it. Okay.

Hi, everybody. I hope you had a very nice Thanksgiving weekend. And I want to talk today about something we can be grateful for. That we can give thanks for seemed, seemed kind of appropriate. So Alyssa Tim was yelling for help

in the chat.

I'll see what he needs help with two L's. That's really neat. Hello. Oh, I can do that. Yeah. Hello, Hi, Tim. Help. But why not? You know?

Um

So what can we be thankful for? And what can we have gratitude for? And what can we not take for granted? That's what I want to talk about today. Because part of gratitude is appreciation, and not taking things for granted. When someone gives us a gift, we're thankful, say thank you, and appreciate it. If we're polite, we don't say, Oh, I already have one of those. Or is that it is that you know, so, hopefully, we're not gonna, we're not gonna take that attitude. But we can be grateful for something that in a certain sense was given to us. If you take the big perspective, we earned in a certain way as well. You know, that's the interesting thing. One of the things in in, especially the Buddhist tradition, goes kind of against Western logic,

in that,

I think this actually comes from Aristotle. If A and B are mutually exclusive, whatever is a is not being whatever is B is not a, or in the Buddhist tradition, we go to a more mind, liberating place, you could say, mind bending, or confusing, but mind liberating place, where we say it's not both. It's not neither. It's not. It's not one, not the other, not both, and neither. So for the all four possibilities of ordinary logic, don't apply. In other words, we have to be able to let our mind be in a place where usually we'd say things are mutually exclusive, but actually both at the same time. And a scientific metaphor for that would be light, which has the properties, sometimes it acts, it has properties of a wave. And sometimes it has property as a particle.

Is it one? No. Is it the other? No. Is it both? Not

exactly. But it's something so it's not neither? And how so. So being able to hold

cognitively dissonant or incongruous attitudes or views, is really it's really, really important. It's something that one has to do. Is it something is, are we talking about something that's inside of us, or outside of us? Let's just take a look at the breath, our breath, we're breathing in something that's not me into our lungs, in which at what time it becomes me.

At least partly, and then

when we breathe out, that's me. That's my breath going out. And when does it stop being me and my breath and start being part of the atmosphere will partly depends on how much garlic or onions you had for lunch. But other than that, at a certain point, and you can't find the exact point in the same way as when you breathe in. You can't find that exact point

where it's no

longer outside air and it's your it's, it's what's in your lungs. You might say, well, it's a At the point where the oxygen is taken into the cell, it's just hard to find that that point. So anyway, what can we be grateful for sorry for the digression, the what we can in something that we've earned, not earned both. And that is this, what's called this precious human birth. And this is one of the four reminders. So we're going to look at that, as something that we can be thankful for, that we've been introduced to

these, it's called the fourth thoughts

that turn the mind toward the Dharma or toward the wakefulness or the, towards the teachings on wakefulness. So the first is this precious human birth. That's, that's what we can be grateful for. And what that means is that it's this this The saying is, E, difficult to find easy to lose. difficult to find. What that means is, if you look at all just on this planet alone, we don't know if there are other life forms on other planets, but just on this planet alone. Animals insects sent what are called sentient beings. What percentage of them are humans?

Is that an interesting question?

I wonder, I wonder if there's an answer that what percentage of living beings are humans?

And I think it's pretty small.

Here we go. Let's see if somebody has calculated 0.01%. I just got it. Point Zero 1%. So 100th, of 1%.

Which means there's, it's not such good odds.

Say, you know, what are your chances of being born as a human being? One, what is one plus one is one and 101, another one in 10,000. And I think that's a lowball estimate. I think it's probably more like one in 10 million.

In any case, it's, it's a long shot. So that's first,

you hit the jet, you hit the lottery,

being born as a human, now, that's just an a human.

A precious human birth has the qualities of being free and well favored. So free of the obstacles to practicing meditation, for example, and studying these teachings.

And think of all the people in the world,

and how many are under duress,

for survival, fighting illness, trying

to feed themselves or their families.

They don't have time for this. They don't have the leisure. Others

don't have all their faculties or have had such trauma in their lives, that they're psychologically incapable of hearing these things. That doesn't mean they don't have an enlightened or awakened nature,

Buddha nature.

It doesn't mean they don't have the capacity of a human being for wisdom and compassion, but they don't have all the faculties or they have the they're not free of these extreme emotions.

It's pretty easy to think of.

And there are some other categories. The well favored means that you had good fortune, not just to be born as a human being, but to be born as a human being in a time when these teachings are available. And in a place where they can be heard and digested.

And we're so fortunate, you know, in this age,

couple 100 years ago, we'd have to travel to Asia, to connect with any of these. And here you you can just Google meditation And then you get all sorts of teachings, you can go online and you get all these great teachers.

So

the good fortune, all these good fortune, things makes the chances of being in not just be born a human being, which is a very small chance, but being born a human being in a time and in the circumstances, where you have

the ability to connect with these things, and the time to practice them. That's something to be grateful for.

And do we take it for granted? Sure, we say, hey, I'll do it tomorrow. But that's the second reminder. And that is death comes without warning. And part of the human condition that they talked about is difficult to gain. That's the odds against being born in the situation,

easy to lose.

It's such a paradox to me, you hear about people who fell overboard, and, and lived, you know, fighting off sharks, and, you know, and live till they somehow were miraculously rescued four days later, or, or buried under some rubble in an earthquake, and survive for

two weeks without any food or water.

That's an incredible strength. And the guy who, you know, walked along, tripped on a curb, hit his head on the streets on bunk God.

If it hits, you're just exactly

in the right spot.

We're very fragile. So comes with that warning.

Just when you cross the street looked both ways.

And so

the other aspect of how long you know, how long will we have these, the these conditions, even if we don't die, we could get sick, or something else could happen with our family, or we suddenly find ourselves thrown into a challenging situation. So the third part is

karma.

So we have a precious human birth and we have impermanence. That we don't know how long we'll have the opportunities that we have. Both the actual physical span of our lives and, and situations in our lives. And the reason is because karma, the law of cause and effect. So we don't know when our good karma is gonna run out. And our bad karma is gonna kick in.

They say, if you want to know what you did, look at what you are.

If you want to know what you'll become, look at what you do. I think that's a pithy understanding of karma. And I like to think of it as a bank account, you know, so when we have these precious situations, where we have the opportunity to study and communicate with each other and share our insights, and have all these great resources, every, every day, that we have these good things happening? Well, we used up some of that good karma. And the bank account once the good karma bank account runs out, and then the when the, I guess it's when the acids run out, the debits come due. And so it's good to practice and it's good to be kind to others and be compassionate. To keep keep that good karma bank account filled up.

Why? Well, we

know that we've been talking about that a lot, not for our own benefit.

But so that we can better help others.

Because as soon as you start saying, Well, I'm going to accumulate this good karma so I can be happier and that it kind of taints the karma. It could stains that good calm. Benefit, doing it as benefit for others, you get multipliers.

So

it's like matching funds. The world matches you Are deposits of good karma when you're doing it for the benefit of others. And the last is they say the last thought is to look at the unsatisfactoriness of the talking about samsara, which is the cycle of

it's basically the, the cycle of chasing our own tail, not getting anywhere. And the basis of that is the wrong end of the stick is seeking happiness in ways that only make things worse. And I've talked before about the eight,

called worldly or conventional concerns, gain and loss, praise and blame. Gain and loss, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. And we've talked about different definitions of these. But each of them because we get preoccupied with them, we're going in the wrong direction, we think that's what's gonna make us happy. And there might be some temporary happiness. But it only leads to more frustration when that's taken away from us. And I came up with this metaphor, I don't know if I heard it someplace, I won't take credit for it. I'm sure I've heard it someplace. It's like trying to go somewhere. And someone said, and say, you've got a map, and you're holding it upside down, and you don't know it. When you're holding that map upside down, you Oh, okay. So here's where we are, we want to get over there. So we better head east, when

actually where you want to go as West,

we better head north, when actually where you want to go south, because you got to turn it upside down and backwards, upside down and backwards, let's not just go upside down.

So here you go.

And that when you realize that, that says, Maybe I should be approaching this in a different way, like these teachings on developing wisdom and compassion. So we can be grateful, having heard these teachings, and particularly grateful that we have this circumstance of this precious human birth, in order to that allows us to hear them. And because we don't want to waste any time, let's get started with our meditation practice. As the sequence that we'll do is close placement or focusing, and then mixing mind and space, opening awareness and letting go. And then we'll do the compassion practice of sending and taking of exchanging self for others. There's a few different varieties of that, but I'll lead you through at least one of the versions of that.

Okay, so, again,

it's good not to be staring into a screen, we're going to start with our eyes closed, but then we're going to move to eyes open. So you'll want to have your screen you can either move your device so that you're sideways.

Move your chair, a little bit of both.

As the gong fades, you can let your eyes gently close and just tune into your physical perception, your feeling of your body and take your posture. We want to have an upright posture where we're sitting because lying down, we tend to fall asleep standing up we get antsy and want to move. So we're anchored, sitting down on a chair or cushion on the floor. Either way, you want your knees a little bit below your hips. So if you're in a chair, if your legs are short, where your chair is high, you can put your feet flat on the floor about hip width apart. Otherwise cross your legs at your ankles so that your knees are a little bit below your hips. And you know ship move your weight so that you feel like you're sitting equally on each sit bone right and left.

Imagine

that There's a straight line from your tailbone all the way to the top of the back of your head where the top and the back of your head meet.

That little point there where we have that

Cal lick that comes up if we still have hair.

And if that's a straight line, you want to be upright. So this sense of energy moving up, but not rigid.

That's your back

to the front, your breastbone, your sternum. Feel like you're raising it up and forward, just a quarter of an inch just as like a centimeter. And that opens your chest, your shoulders come back a little bit. Your upper arms then are hanging straight down from your shoulders. And you swivel your hands up and put them palm down on top of each thigh respectively. If you're used to sitting with your hands, palms palm up on top of the other

in your lap, that's okay, too.

We wondered shin. If you if the back of your head is straight up, your chin comes in a little bit. So we want to level rather than tilted down or tilted up. Breathing mainly through our nose. If some comes out through your mouth, it's okay so your lips can be very slightly parted. Or just lightly touching. whatever is more comfortable for you. Your tongue can drift up and rest behind your front teeth and your upper palate or just be wherever it falls naturally

in your mouth. Either one is fine.

You can do a body scan

just to let go of any tension that you don't need to hold your posture. We've only talked about a couple of places of tension. And that's the back being upright and straight. And the sternum the breastbone lifted a tiny bit. Everything else can relax around it. Your scalp, your face,

your jaw.

IV tension in there that you don't realize. Just let it melt and slow down and out of you. Shoulders. Sometimes we're holding them up a little bit and don't even realize it. Just let them hang. Shoulders hanging from your spine like the canvas of a tent from a tent pole before it's pulled out into a tent.

Chest, upper back, upper arms. ribcage all around. Lower back.

deep belly, pelvic region. Sometimes you're clenching down there and don't even realize it. And then when we relax, it's like oh we slump. So hold the posture.

Let go and your deep belly

size forearms and hands. Knees, calves, ankles and feet

having swept the tension out fully inhabit your body. Be aware of your feet,

your sit bones, your posture.

Let your awareness rest. Deep in your core. Just below your navel just in front of your spine. Feel the depth front to back.

We usually feel like we're two dimensional like the the image we see in a mirror. We have depth side to side front to back. You can you can feel it when you raise your breastbone a little bit. You can feel it when you Often your deep belly

your diaphragm is moving down there and it feel what it feels like as your belly expanding and filling as you breathe in. And

emptying, contracting as you breathe out

let your awareness rest there, it's quiet down there out of your head in your body

it's a really feeling of being there rather than looking down there from behind your eyebrows

put your weight sink into that seat

everything focus down there. Blow your ribcage

gently open your eyes about halfway. So you're looking down just a couple of feet in front of you.

Not looking at anything particular whatever direction your eyes whatever your eyes rest on. Let the let the object go and just soften your gaze as if you're looking at the space your body is sitting in

let your body breathe itself you can let go of control for a minute

just be an observer. Notice whether your body is taking a deep breath a shallow breath

coming and going like the wind

coming going like water running up the shore and then back down into the ocean

itself and that gives you your mind is not gripping onto something just generally aware of what's happening in the present moment.

body breathing posture space that you're sitting in

an internal sensation of filling and emptying, expanding and contracting

we'll do this for a few minutes.

The mind does like to wander. So have a sense of humor. If your mind wanders off into thought after thought after thought and suddenly you're not noticing the breathing. As soon as you realize you're not noticing the breathing, you're already back.

So just go up often thoughts and smile and reconnect with your posture. Chill feeling a feeling in a team space that you're sitting in

Is it going shades reinvigorate your posture, move around a little bit if you feel stiff

once you've reestablished your posture, firm back, open front,

uplifted heart,

giving you a good head and shoulders posture.

When you lift your breastbone, there's a tendency for the chin to come up. Keep before you lifted, hold the chin level and then keeping the chin level, raise your breastbone.

You'll feel the difference. And open your eyes all the way to just normal up fully open.

Just relax your vision. Your eyes will drift to a particular level. Not looking down not looking straight out slightly below horizontal. Soften your gaze open up your peripheral vision side to side top to bottom

without moving your eyes.

Again, rather than looking at something, you're seeing the space that you're sitting in the bigger space around you, in front of you above you.

As the breath goes out, it mixes with the atmosphere in the room. Let's cheat with each out breath. Let your As open further open and mixed with the space in the room rest in that spaciousness as the body breathes in by itself that's included in your awareness but not the main focus

out open let go and rest in spaciousness

within that spacious awareness

your sights sounds physical sensations possibly smells and thoughts coming by coming up and going by little bit like a parade

you know it's Thanksgiving Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the floats the balloons are going by these big balloons that's what your thoughts are like they go by there's a little space and then the next one comes through

you can let them come and go it sounds come and go physical sensations colors or shapes that take your attention visually let them appear and then disappear.

Now with each breath with each out breath.

Just imagine that your awareness extends bit further To

breathe in imagine that your awareness

is open to the whole room behind you above you

all around

breathe out and imagine your awareness extends out to the whole area that you're in as far in all directions as you can hear

airplanes above traffic in the distance

breathe out and imagine your awareness extends out all the way to the horizon

as far as you can see big area

breathe out and imagine your awareness extends out as far as the sky

above and all around

within that mind as big as the sky

notice thoughts as they come up

see how small they are compared to the sky

might seem wispy clouds

thin wispy clouds just barely appearing

and disappear

you may get an occasional Dark Cloud arising

just a cloud gathering and then disappearing and then disappears you're left with the sky

sometimes they say thoughts are like using your finger to write on water and

writing with disappearing ink

is short lived as

the tracks of a bird flying across the sky?

Spacious mind Bring up thoughts knowing that they're just appearances think of one or two things that make you feel happy to give you a sense of well being

safety calm

within that spacious mind, think of one or two things that cause you anxiety

unhappiness fear and disappointment

anxiety or sadness

as you breathe out, imagine that you're sending the feeling that goes with those thoughts

of what makes you happy, safe, secure.

Send that feeling out, wishing that all beings could have that feeling

radiate that feeling of basic healthiness.

Breathe out, radiate

it to all beings breathe out and radiate it to all beings

as you breathe in, know that all beings have similar feelings to how you felt when you brought up thoughts of what makes you unhappy, sad.

In pain distressed imagine as you breathe in.

You're taking that and freeing all beings from those feelings.

Breathe in and take them away.

Send out feelings of happiness to all beings.

Breathe in, take away their feelings of sadness and pain and fear.

If you haven't thought of it, include yourself.

As you breathe out to all beings breathe out to yourself.

That feeling of happiness and comfort, contentment

breathe in and take away from yourself and others.

This feelings of suffering, anxiety, distress

your heart of compassion can put its arms around yours and all beings

suffering your heart of kindness

has unlimited friendliness to radiate out

those positive feelings

Thank you very much. I just saw in the chat, I'm sorry, if my voice got soft.

And you had trouble hearing, I think

I turned my computer off, so the microphone was a little further away. So I'll try to pay attention to that next time. Let's dedicate the merit, which means we didn't just do this, as I said, for earlier for ourselves. But we did all this practice to be better able to benefit others, to shift our reference point from self cherishing to caring for others. So you can repeat after me or put in your own words,

may the practice we have just done

be of benefit to others, even more so than to ourselves. So thank you so much. We'll have a few minutes if there are comments or questions particularly about the practices. And then I'll answer Jerry's question which he sent sent in here. Sorry, Reese. Sorry about the volume. I'll try to remember that next time. Sometimes I get kind of Intuit and relaxed, and so Speak softly. precious human birth, Tim wrote. It said, We need a physical human birth to be fully enlightened because our personality is most fully projected in this state.

Yes,

that's an interesting question. Again, there are different levels. But you know, some people say, I know my dog is really with it. I am pretty sure. The thing is, it's gonna be a limited amount of comprehension

that the dogs can pick up.

At the same time, it can be you know, people say there's an indication Oh, they're almost human. And you think next time around, I think they got a, they got a, they got a lot of tickets to that jackpot. So, so I don't really know, on that one, but I do know that it's the

it's the

you it's the faculties that we have as a human being to be able to understand these teachings. And that the contrast in the human experience is very vivid between pleasure and pain. And it's that contrast that turns that we we can recognize, maybe I'm not going about this the right way. And therefore it's an opening to the to the teachings. And before it gets to the top of the hour, Jerry asked about a particular professor who died. And it was a guy who did research on psilocybin and psychedelic drugs for the treatment of multiple disorders. He was a long time meditator Roland Griffiths from Baltimore mill Maryland. Did I did she asked me Do you know him are familiar with his work? No one A and no one B. I'm sorry, Jerry. I don't know him. I don't know of him and I'm not familiar with his work. Maybe you can talk about it sometime. I'll try to leave a little more time next time. A dog with Hamish wrote. Yeah. What are dogs have mangy mangy dogs. Right? Mange in this country suffer a lot. It stimulate your compassion. There you go. It's a living being who's suffering. That's exactly right.

That's good. That's right.

Every being who's suffering is our teacher.

A reminder, that, that

that's the, that's the pain of conditioned existence. And there's impermanence.

Ciera, as Trumper Rinpoche say, cheer up things are as bad as they seem. Which means turn your mind to the Dharma, you're on the right track. And I just want to emphasize again, when we're taking on the suffering of others, wishing that they don't have that suffering and sending out our positive feelings to others, it's really helpful to go deeper. And to say, I want to send my good fortune, and, and, and share that with others. And I want to be able to take away not just their symptoms of suffering, but the causes of suffering, the misinformation, the brainwashing. I've talked about this before. It's like the hypnotism of the of the powerful negative emotions. jealousy, greed, jealousy and envy, greed, and lust for power. anger, fear, hatred, ignorance, we want to send them out, understanding and patience and acceptance that they would have more of that so that they're not so subject to these negative emotions and take those away. Take those away and dissolve them into our heart of compassion because they're just energy, but energy marked by ignorance creates all this pain. We can absorb all that energy, it can turn into positive energy, if it's marked by intelligence rather than ignorance. So that's my pitch for the holiday season.

Thank you, everybody. Take care. I'm not sure when I'm on next couple of weeks in this way, at least once in December. And until then, you're welcome to come to my program Thursday morning, every other Thursday. And if I don't see you soon, think of others and also take care of yourselves. Bye bye.