[39] The Importance of Setting Intention – with Joe Parent
1:05AM Dec 28, +0000
Speakers:
Joe Parent
Alyssa Alvarado
Keywords:
breathe
practice
posture
breathing
mind
andrew
breath
negativity
kindness
dissolve
radiate
filling
attention
daydream
alertness
mindful
aware
space
awareness
planet
I'm careful not to say old friends because we're just longtime friends. Even though we all are ah, Can you unmute people who if they have a question? Oh, you're, you're gonna introduce everything so go ahead.
Alright, so I just lost it. Here we go. So tonight we have with us, Dr. Joe and I'm going to go ahead and read a little brief introduction really quick for those of you who aren't familiar with him, but looks like most of you probably are. I see lots of familiar names but Dr. Joe parent has been a student and meditation instructor in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for over 40 years. He and Andrew excuse me, he and Andrew have studied with many of the same teachers, and both did the three year retreat at Gampo Abbey. They met in the class on analytic meditation and debate that Joe taught in 1997. Goodness gracious, excuse me, Joe and Andrew taught together for the first time in 2019 at the Sedona Dream Yoga Retreat. So I think we are actually going to start with a the questions tonight that right Dr. Parent?
Yeah, I think what, what we what I've noticed is after I go through and do the meditation practice, we're all kind of in a more peaceful state and, and we actually don't want to bring all the questions up and all the stuff and I don't want you to have to think about when if you if you're doing the practice and something comes up, say Oh, I gotta remember to ask that later. Because, you know, it's really more about letting it go. And I liked what Andrew said one time, invite invite those thoughts into the front door, but then I show them to continue going on through the back door. Go out. So if you have any comments or practice, Karen, thank you doing the meditations. That's my joy as well. I and I have some an interesting one. We're going to work with a little bit today as well. Let me find my notes here. There we go. Okay. So any questions about the practice from previous times that we have have done them? We usually start with the grounding practice using some body scan and lowering our sense of where our mind is kind of deeper into our core and then sinking down and merging with the earth. Those are the three parts of the grounding practice. So I see Jerry has a comment or question.
Hello, Joseph. Hi, Jerry. You know, I listened to an interview with Charlie Morley, you know, Andrew had that. I think it was the second for the last interview. And what Charlie Morley strongly encouraged and Andrew seem to agree very strongly with it. Is that before you become the meditation practice, you should do breathing practices. You know, purposeful breathing practices, like breathe out for six seconds. Breathe in for six seconds, so that you're breathing five times you know, per minute, and do that for 10 or 20 minutes before you begin your formal meditation practice. Mm hmm. Do you Do you agree with that, or is that a good idea or
you know, when we're doing the grounding practice you can incorporate that in as part of the grounding, practice and settling practice. And I think that in general, I don't like to prescribe a strict, you know, do it this way. kind of approach. I like people to find their way within the discipline and experiment with what works best for them. But I don't see any problem at all. Taking a couple of minutes and doing a little breathing regulation, because that's part of the settling and centering and working with that. I actually adopted it. For going to bed, Andrew talked about that. Laying down and getting settled and then counting and I kind of go 1-234-512-3451 And then 12345 or 61234562. Now I find what's natural for me is that the outbreath is a little bit longer. It's just a natural feeling. And in general if we're trying to go with the settling and centering the exhalation is connected more with the relaxation and the inhalation more with energizing Yeah, and a lot of this is talked about in the book breath by James Nester as well. And we've talked about that in previous sessions. So if it's something that feels good to you, that's good to get yourself started that way. The other thing in some of the adrionna traditions, you start by invoking an image of your teacher and making a relationship with your teacher and saying you know, may mind mind be like yours. And people talk in the Vajrayana tradition a lot about devotion, but devotion in in the sense of relating with the practice is you see your teacher as an expression of enlightened mind. And you say, I want to be like that. And in the adrionna tradition, you say, well, I acknowledged that in my nature. I am like that. And I just want to in a certain way, I want to believe that about myself, I want to really embody that not just think it. So we have that and in the mind honor tradition, which is part of the budget honor as well. You always want to start your sessions. With proper intention. And I'm glad you mentioned how to start a session because I was going to talk about this as well. Starting the session with the intention that this practice is not just going to be to benefit myself but to benefit all beings, others and as bigger as big a scope as you can make it. What I want to talk about today, at the end of the practice when we do our compassion practice. I'm going to I was invited by Erin I saw her on the I see her picture there who has a podcast about the about the Earth and saving the Earth. I think it's called Earth rising. I think that's right. You can correct me Aaron if it isn't. Put your thumb from Yeah, that's it. Okay. And and we're talking about doing compassion practice and Tong Lin for the planet as a living being in certain way. That is currently rather ill and and poisoned. So in the same way that we might have, you know, letter asbestos poisoning from lifelong exposure it that our planet has human poisoning from a lifelong from aeons long exposure to human beings. So we can do a little bit of healing practice for that. So
the idea very much is to start with the intention that the we're doing this to benefit others as as well as ourselves. Andrew talks about the four immeasurables as reciting that at the beginning. Whatever you want to do, that is an expression of that. One of the practices is to say, May I be not be separated from the the two aspects of awakened heart absolute and relative awakened heart? Whatever connection you can make with other beings and say, Okay, I'm sitting down and my intention is to do this practice so that I am better able to be there for others. That's called good at the beginning. Then you do the practice. With as much mindfulness and alertness as you can. And I want to be clear that these two aspects of mindfulness, sometimes it's called mindfulness and awareness, but mindfulness is is paying attention to what you are choosing to pay attention to. But it's also whatever it is that you're paying attention to. That's what you're mindful of what your attention is directed towards. Now, alertness is the background. You could say watcher or the background awareness, that's monitoring and able to tell you, are you doing that or not, you know, and usually, if we're off in a daydream, what that really means is, you realize it when the Daydream pops. And so it's a little more accurate to say, Where was I? And when you're being mindful, you can say, Where am I? And when the Daydream goes and you wake up from it. You're Oh, where was I? Okay, and you you know, this is the knowing aspect of this of alertness aspect of mind. That you know, whether you were paying attention to your breathing or your sense perceptions or whatever it was, your tongue led practice. That you were there, or you were distracted, and what on your mind was wandering. But the alertness is what does the monitoring mindfulness is simply the function of paying attention. Okay, I hope so. That's, that's the those two operating are what we call good in the middle. That's during the practice session. And the mind does wander so it's a process of being with the object of attention, the mind wandering alertness, becoming aware that the mind has wandered and returning the attention, your attention to the object of attention that you intended to pay attention to. And and then at the end, good at the end means whatever practice I have done may be of benefit to others. And so you can also create that atmosphere for your whole day. At the start of the day, setting your intention. I want to be as mindful and kind as I can be. I actually put that in my Winnie the Pooh book, just two things to do, to truly be poor. And that is to be mindful and to be kind. And so you set that as your intention, say, Okay, I'm in every situation as best I can. I'm going to be as mindful as I can. And as kind as I can. Now, when I'm not being mindful, I want to be wake up from that daydream and return to it, but return to it with kindness toward myself. You got to be kind to yourself and give yourself a break. Okay. My mind wandered, got it. Caught it. Let's go back to what we were doing. And so, you know, that process of being kind to yourself when you return, then can also generate to kindness to others. So mindful and kind now at the end, that's during the day that the end of the day, you spent a little time and you reflect, say, How do I do? Again with a kind attitude, and say, okay, in these situations, oh, I was pretty mindful. I like that. Okay, in these I got taken, I got carried away.
And I'm going to pay attention to that and say, Oh, these are the kinds of situations that tend to carry me away. I'm going to be a little more watchful tomorrow. And I was kind and you know, on the other hand, that person kind of irritated me. Oh, okay. These are the things that poke me. These are my buttons. I'm going to be aware of that and alert to that tomorrow. And do better to catch myself before I react with my buttons having been pushed I love this. I love this cartoon. I saw one time it was a guy sitting in an office and the woman behind the desk at said HR which is you know, human resources and and he was sitting in this guy sitting there in the red buttons all over his body. And she said, Well, maybe people wouldn't push your buttons as much if you didn't have so many buttons. So we can we can try to reduce our the number of buttons that we have as well. But at the end of the day, that's what we want. To do is set that intention that, you know, to feel good and congratulate ourselves for how well we did as being mindful, unkind, to acknowledge could have done better, but that's what we'll set out to do tomorrow. And that way that's what we mean the Buddhist tradition by good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end. So for us doing our practice, we'll set our intention now. Good at the beginning of set, set our intention to be as mindful as we can to do this practice for the benefit of others. And when we're, we lose our attention when we get distracted to be kind to ourselves, and simply return to the object of attention. Okay. Any other comments or questions? You can hit the raise hand button. Otherwise, we'll just get started. Great. Okay. And I do need to end pretty much on time. At six o'clock. So if you would like before we start, as Jerry was saying, tune into your breathing and do a little self regulation. And sometimes we start by being aware of our body so we can do that in this situation. of, you know, taking your good posture which is upright, but at ease, not rigid. And if it's helpful, because we're looking at a screen very often you can, you can turn sideways and move your seat and get yourself arranged so that you have some space that you're looking out to.
We don't want our chin floating up where we tend to get spaced out or tucked down we tend to get sleepy. I usually use the metaphor of just when you were in school, and the teacher said sit up and pay attention there you go. So we sit up and pay attention. But let your eyes gently close and really feel your body inhabit your body. Be aware of your from your toes, your feet, your legs, hips. torso, arms, shoulders, neck and head. Just be in your body and tune into your breathing. If it's quick notice, let yourself take a little slower, deeper breath. Five or six seconds. Slowly let the breath out five or six seconds and I know Andrew has introduced this sometimes in the tradition we do a cleansing breath. We're the first one. Just breathe and let it go all the way out. The next one breathe out and pull your stomach which really is your diaphragm up and push a little more of the air out at the end. And the last one, freeze all the way out. Pull your diaphragm up. Push the air out and keep pushing until it feels like all the air is out and sit up in your good posture. Slowly that the air fill you entirely that's called Clean cleansing or cleaning out the stale air.
Start at the top of your head. Again I still closed and do a body scan. Just aware of any tension that you're having that you don't need. To hold your posture for her forehead, eyes years back of your scalp, your jaw. You want to soften your jaw but not so much that your mouth hangs open. We want our lips either just barely touching or just barely partnered. neck, shoulders all the way out to the points of your shoulders. Not working on computer so much. Sometimes just one side tightens right up. Just let your shoulders hang naturally. upper arms, chest and upper back. ribcage all around. Lower back. Stomach and deep belly more tension or deep belly and pelvis than we usually are aware of. And then when we try to relax it we lose our posture. So it's it's a little challenging to find that balance point where you hold your posture and soften that deep belly and pelvis
hips size forearms and hands. Knees calves ankles and feet
often we do that, as if we're operating our body from up in our head behind our forehead. Let your awareness drop back and down. back and down the back of your throat behind your chest like a leaf gently settling to the bottom of a clear pond behind your solar plexus and stomach. past your navel, resting a few inches below your navel and the deep core of your torso just in front of your spine. Let your breathing be natural and not controlled. Notice you can feel your lower torso gently expanding and contracting like like subtle Eddie's at the bottom of that pond. It's quiet down there. Let your mind rest there with each out breath without losing your posture. Sink down we're so ready to get into action. Sometimes we're perching on our seat just let our your seat support you. Trust it. Sink down and let your seat support. Sink down and imagine that you're sinking down and merging with the earth and let the earth support you. Merge and become part of the earth that's as grounded as you can be. You're part of the earth but extending upward in your good posture. A regal posture like you're sitting on a throne part of the earth extending upward like a mountain
rest there in your body. Just noticing the breath coming in and out as an observer rather than a director. Don't try to make it any particular length or depth let it come and go like the wind. Let your mind relax and be open to whatever you'll experience by clouds that are floating across big open sky. That your mind be that sky. body like a mountain press like the wind. Mind like the sky
the sound of the gong fades let your eyes open slightly about halfway
we're going to stabilize the mind I matching it with breathing in this case holding it close to us. Placing our attention on the internal sensation of filling as the breath comes in. Emptying as the breath goes out. filling and emptying. If your mind wanders off into a daydream, be kind to yourself just smile and make the acknowledgement that you were someplace else and now you're back to attending to the sensations of filling and emptying. As the breath comes in and out we'll do that for a couple of minutes.
If you find you got very distracted or you got sleepy either in either case just reinvigorate your posture reconnect with the breathing and pay a little more attention to the details of starting to fill, filling and the moment you're full and that tiny gap of transition starting to empty emptying empty, the tiny transition starting to fill again, noticing those little tiny moments of gap of transition and the texture of the feeling of filling and emptying all the way through the process. We'll do that for another minute. Or two
Now. Hoping open your eyes a little wider raise your gaze almost to horizontal. Be aware of the space in the room you're sitting. Move your attention to the breath going out. Be aware of yourself, your mind your self consciousness. As the breath goes out. Let your mind mix with the breath. Ride the breath out. And as the breath dissolves naturally into the atmosphere of the space you're in. Let your self consciousness dissolve into the atmosphere of the space. We do D centralizing the breath comes in by itself. You don't have to particularly attend to it or do anything with it. Just breathe out. Go out and rest in the space while the breath comes back in by itself. Join the breath going out open and rest out dissolve risk
dissolve rest again, if you get caught up in thoughts and lose track of the breathing, just smile. Know that that was wandering and wait for the next out breath. Join it. Write it out and dissolve and rest we'll do that for a couple of minutes.
wherever you are. Making your living looking out toward the horizon. Expand your awareness breathe out and imagine that your awareness your mind extends out all the way to the horizon all the way around. Breathe out and imagine that your mind extends out to the sky. Uranus is as big as the sky above you all the way around in all directions. Mind as big as the sky. Breathe out. Imagine that your awareness extends out beyond the sky out into space. In all directions above below all around, out to the stars. Breathe out and imagine that your awareness extends out in all directions beyond for the star rest for a moment in that infinite openness
and it's from that infinite openness without center or fringe just mind and space as one that we can begin the tonglen practice so with your mind his biggest space the nature of your mind is like a beautiful crystal made a light in your heart center inside you and if you can you can imagine your body made of light as well. The insubstantiality of awareness is bigger space. And then a crystal is the nature of your mind. The in infinite capacity for knowing and loving
and that brilliant nature of mind can absorb any negativity and instantly transform it. radiate out goodness, wisdom, warmth and light you can either leave your eyes open or close them and think of all the negativity you have toward yourself. Any struggle you're having any suffering you're having. anxiety, fear. Whatever you're feeling in your being, as you breathe in, absorb it, gather it into the crystal in your heart center. It transforms and radiate out a cool moonlight of kindness to yourself. Breathe in anxiety breathe out calm. Breathe in frustration. breather contentment breathe in fear really fearlessness to your whole being the most important quality is to absorb the negativity and know that that energy simply transforms into the positive quality of kindness
kindness to yourself and others
all of the negativity we feel has to do with the artificial boundaries. We create between ourselves and our image of ourselves, between ourselves and our image of others. They're just images. They're not substantially real. Breathe in that negativity and the boundaries dissolve and the light radiates out filling yourself with kindness, happiness and peace
all the obscurations and negativities absorb them as you breathe in. They're gone and fill your being with kindness peace and happiness
that's your natural state. Breathe in and dissolve all the overlays of negativity. Breathe out the clarity of recognizing your natural state. Basic Goodness kindness peace and happiness
and when we do that a natural sympathy arises. Say others are struggling in that same way and don't realize they don't have to imagine your loved ones in front of you friends and family. If there's a particular person, you can do it that way. If there's a group they all struggle with this negativity, suffering, struggle. Dis ease. You can absorb all that in from all of them. relieve them of that suffering. Take it in to the crystal in your heart center that instantly transforms them the negativity is based in illusion, it has no substance. There's nothing that lands on you. The Crystal reveals the illusion and by revealing it, it disappears and the natural warmth, compassion and wisdom radiates out. You gather in the negativity it transforms dissolves and what radiates out is limitless light and warmth. Limitless wisdom and compassion filling their beings with kindness peace and happiness. gathering their struggle and suffering, transform it and radiate out to them. The cool moonlight of kindness towards themselves and others. Gather radiate fills them with kindness, peace and happiness
as best you can expand that to all beings. They all have the same experience. As you and your loved ones. They all struggle and have suffering and don't realize the illusion the illusory boundaries they create towards themselves and towards others. Gather that in as you breathe in from all beings into your heart center and radiate out. The illusion disappears and instead you radiate out the light of wisdom that fills their beings with kindness, peace and happiness. All beings present and gather. Breathe out and ready.
Breathe in all the anger and hatred in the world based on illusory boundaries radiate kindness, peace and love, compassion
now beyond the beings think of the planet or on it's like a being we call it Mother Earth.
Think of all the harm that's been done
her Mother Earth has been taken for granted. abused, used without regard for consequences
breathe in all the pollution
it doesn't stick to you. It's transformed instantly. In your heart center and fresh air. Clean Water
warmth and sunlight breathe in harm. Breathe out kindness to the planet.
Breathe in the battle that we've set up against nature breathes out acceptance and kindness. Joining harmony with nature breathe in any battle. transformer and radiate out harmony
Mr. Gong phase like go the visualization. Come back. Re inhabit your body feel your breathing just for a few breaths.
And again close the session. We want to dedicate whatever benefit came from the practice so you can repeat after me or use your own words. Made the practice I've just done. be of benefit to others and the world as well as to myself. And as I always like to say if you're feeling generous or want to cultivate generosity, may the practice I've just done be of even more benefit to others and the world and to myself. So thank you all and we can unmute and all say thank you if you have questions. Let's do it next time. If you have one, particularly for me, I'll be back in a couple of weeks. If they're General Andrew next week and it's always wonderful to be with all of you happy new year and happy new year here. I think here I think of that old commercial from for it was actually for a kind of margarine. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. So be kind to yourself on the planet in the coming year and to each other and to each other. Thank you so much. You just stay safe. Thank you Thank you nice bye everybody. Bye bye. You