[182] Navigating Turbulent Times with Equanimity and Compassion - with Joe Parent
10:33PM Nov 26, 2024
Speakers:
Joe Parent
Myra
Keywords:
Monday meditation
stress management
compassion practice
self-compassion
difficult situations
calm down
open awareness
tumultuous thoughts
body scan
breathing exercises
open heart
sending and taking
Guru Yoga
devotion
well-being
Greetings, everyone. Alyssa is engaged in the ER with her son, hopefully not serious, so she's monitoring, but asked me to do the intro. I don't know how many people were there last week. Patrick did, I mean, Andrew did an open practice, and discussion section is actually it was mostly discussion. He was just talking about all the different things that go on. In stressful situations. And he was rather stressed by the election. And so talking about all the practices that we can do to to work with that it was, it was open to everyone. So there were a lot more people, I think when we do this Monday meditation group, it's for people who are subscribed. So that's why we we have a this group here and Myra. Hi, Myra. Myra led a group the Monday before the election, to introduce a sense of calm for everybody. So that was, that was a nice opportunity to practice and to introduce and to introduce more people to the to the practices. So what I thought we could do today is focus a little more on the practice itself and and how is it that we work with challenging situations? The interesting thing is, there are direct teachings on this in the Buddhist tradition, and it's called taking difficult situations to the path. Now, the idea is not to let yourself get totally bent out of shape and and lose totally lose your equilibrium based on things that are happening to you, whether they're happening personally to you, whether they're happening to your community, whether they're happening in the world, whatever it is. So there, you know, there are a number of sayings that go along with this. One of my favorites is a Zen saying, if there's something you can do about the situation, there's no need to worry. If there's nothing you can do about the situation, there's no point to worry. Now, that can be a little flip. So the other thing that we can do in taking the challenging situations to the path is to apply our compassion practice. Now first, we you know how they talk about on the airlines when it says, before you start to if there's a drop in pressure and the oxygen masks come down, put yours on first, and then help others. Because if you start working with somebody else's and you pass out, you can't help them anymore. So we have to start with compassion for ourselves and say, okay,
whatever upheavals are going through. That is partly because of how attached I am to things being the way I want them to be. And now I can say, Ah, okay, things aren't necessarily the way I want them to be. What. Can I do in this situation to nurture myself so that I can be strong for others? So that's one of the ways of taking difficult situations to the path. Another way of taking difficult situations to the path, and we're going to we can do some of this when we do our compassion practice. And that is to say, You know what, I'm not the only one feeling this. So there are two aspects to that. One is, I'm not alone. So, so it's comforting, that's the self compassion. And the other is I'm going to engender the wish that others can be free of so much anxiety, so much stress, so much negativity, and and they go further and say, You know what, if I have to feel this way, I'd, I'd like everybody else's to be included in mine, and so They can be free of it. So it's a connectedness with people who are going through the same things that we're going through.
Okay, so, Hamish, I think your mute is I got you there. I got you covered. Okay, so the taking the difficulties as the path there's there's also a way of saying, Okay, look at what is pushing my buttons, and what do I need to do, to work on myself so that I don't get swept away in this way. You know, we talk about diving under the waves, if you're if you go body surfing out in the ocean and you, you and and the waves are coming in pretty strong, fighting through them is pretty challenging, and you can get pretty beat up, but as soon as you dive under, the waves are still happening up above, but it's calm underneath. So we can use that metaphor of diving under the waves and identifying with the ocean rather than getting caught up and tossed by the waves of our own, tumultuous thoughts and feelings.
I was just talking with a good friend, and we were reflecting on when we get all worked up. We miss things, and we take things we we take things to be the way they're they're not, and we take the things to not be the way that they actually are, which is confused, and it's talking about getting all worked up over a bill that I got that had a mistake in it. I i And because I was so focused on being irritated at that person for the mistake they made because they'd done it before, I missed the fact that they'd made another mistake that actually benefited me. Said, You left this out? And they said, Oh, okay, I'll rework it. Oh, yeah. Actually, it turns out you owe me money, and I don't know, you money. And I thought, you know, if I had just calmed the F down and looked at everything a little more dispassionately and said, What's this? What's this? What's this? Instead of just focusing on one piece and ignoring the rest, would have worked out better. So that's the latest mantra, and you can use whatever word you want as the third word, calm the blank down. I use the F word for emphasis, but you can calm the heck down if you want to be a little more polite, but just calm the blank down. And my friend said about every. Thing. And I said, Yeah, that's the extra two words about everything. So when you feel yourself getting worked up, you go, Hey, wait a minute. I need to calm the blank down about everything. And there's a at least a micro second of relaxation of the whole thing that gives you a way in to work with it, to not get so identified with it. Trungpa, Rinpoche, my root teacher said, Don't let your mind take the shape of your thoughts. So identify with mind itself, which is awareness open as big as the sky to whatever arises, and then whatever arises within it. You have some perspective.
You know, I had, I had a student one time who was having some difficulties and was really denigrating his own abilities. And I said, do me a favor. I want you to go because he was in a particular He's an athlete in a particular slump, and he was, he was, but he was competing at the highest level in the sport. And I said, do me a favor. Is there a wall that you can stand there with nothing on it right where you're looking? I said. He said, Yeah. He said, way to go to that wall and want to put your you to put your toes face the wall with your toes against the wall. He said, Okay. I said, How much can you see? And he said, not a heck of a lot. I said, That's right. Now, I want you to look behind you don't trip take one step back. Now, how much can you see? Said, more almost the whole wall. Said, Good. Take two more steps back. Make sure you don't trip over anything. I said, now how much can you see? Oh, the whole room. And I said, since you've since, for the last 10 years, you've been playing at the elite level of your sport, and you're only focusing on the last couple of months where you've been struggling. And he said, Oh, I am good. I am good at this, aren't I? I said, yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you. So that's really what we're talking about, taking that bigger perspective. So how do we do that practice? So let's go. Let's start practicing. Okay, now we're going to start getting settled and centered and grounded, because that's something that we need to do when we're so tumultuous. And we're going to do that with our eyes closed. But then we're going to, we don't walk around with our eyes closed, and we want to be able to take this into our everyday lives. So after we do that part of the session, I'm going to ask you to open your eyes. And so you're going to want to, you can set it up now or do it later, but you're going to want to not be looking directly into your screen. Okay, so set your your seat that way, but for now, gently close your eyes, and let's get kind of out of our demo tumultuous thoughts and into our body. Now those tumultuous thoughts can be about the past. Why didn't I do this? Why did I do that? Or about the future? What if this, and what if that? And what if the past is already done. It's a memory, and it's probably not accurate. Well, it's guaranteed, not totally accurate, and the future hasn't happened. It's imaginary. We see probabilities and possibilities, but we don't know for sure. So let's calm the blank down by getting into our body. Feel your sit bones pressing into your seat, inhabit your body, feel your legs. Ideally you want your knees a little bit below your hips. It takes some of the pressure off your your hips and lower back so you can. Cross your legs gently in front of you, if your knees are higher, or if you're in a chair and your knees are and your legs are shorter, feet flat on the floor is fine. Your arms, the upper arms hang straight down from your shoulders and let your forearms go along your thighs and your hands are palmed down without reaching forward or pulling back, so your upper arms are hanging perpendicular to the floor. Now you want to have your back upright, but not rigid. So picture that there's a straight line going from the top of the back of your head, straight down to your tailbone. Now it isn't actually straight. There's curvature in your spine, but if you feel that your your neck straightens as well, and your chin comes in slightly to make a very uh, traditionally, in the yoga poses, this is called a hook the line from your chin to your jaw line then to your neck and straight down and breathing in through your nose. This allows the air to come in and flow straight down without going through a lot of curves. You
Yes. Now, if it's comfortable, you can raise your sternum the tiny bit up and forward just a quarter of an inch, and you'll see that opens your chest, your shoulders come back naturally. You might even feel a little pinch in your shoulder blades, and now you have a firm straight back, open heart, open chest.
Your jaw is relaxed, but not hanging slack, open so your lips are just barely parted or lightly touching your tongue can just rest naturally or float and rest gently the tip of your tongue against the upper palate, just behind your front teeth. You
now, when we have tumultuous thoughts and feelings, the tension can generate all the way through our body. So let's, let's do a little scan, and wherever your awareness rests, just imagine that the tension is melting out of that part of your body. My shoulders just dropped without me even realizing they were up there so your scalp, your face, your jaw and your neck, breathe out. Let it all soften. Shoulders, upper back, you're using a little tension to hold your chest open, but everything else, just breathe out. Let it soften. Upper arms, rib cage, all around stomach, breathe out, let it all soften. Lower back, deep belly, pelvic region we might be clenching there and not even realize it. Breathe out, let it soften,
hips, thighs, forearms and hands. Breathe out, let them all melt and soften. Knees, calves, ankles and feet. Breathe out. Let it soften. Take one nice full breath in and all the way from the top of your head to your toes, breathe out. Let it all soften and let your mind rest deep in your core. Feel the rhythm of your breathing, observing, not controlling, shorter, long, deeper, shallow doesn't matter. Let your body breathe by itself. Just relax with the. Rhythm, like being at the shore on a calm day and the surf's gently coming up, gently going back down into the ocean. Breathe in, breathe out, calm down, breathe in, breathe out, calm down. And
no one ever says, calm up, breathe out, calm down. And
so just rest in that rhythm, enjoy it.
And if a thought grabs your mind and takes it away and you find yourself back in tumultuous thoughts, but what if this, and what if that? And why didn't smile. Take a nice full breath. Breathe out, calm down and do that for a Few Minutes. And
refresh yourself, move if you need to. We'll take a fresh start, and when you're ready, re engage your posture as you did before.
Do a couple of out breaths to settle yourself, you know, leave your eyes open naturally, soften your gaze, open up to your peripheral vision, side to side, above and below, like you were looking at a landscape out in the Distance. Open up your peripheral hearing, so that you're listening in all directions sounds near and far. Open yourself up to whatever you're feeling physically in your body. You
so you're seeing, without looking for something you're hearing, without listening for something you're feeling, without trying to feel a particular way you
aware of your breathing. Let the focus be more on out than down in your core. Now, breath going out into the environment.
Instead of breathing out and settling down, we're breathing out and opening up, breathing out an opening, breathing out an opening and
for this practice, breathe out open and rest in that open awareness, letting perceptions come and go, thoughts come and go and you
are your awareness, appearances of sound, feeling, visual, thoughts, all are happening within that awareness and.
If a thought captures your mind and takes You away into a series of thoughts. When you realize it, notice that when that was happening, you weren't seeing, you weren't hearing and you weren't feeling.
Notice what thought does to your other sense perceptions,
and when you're seeing, hearing, feeling, notice, if it gives rise to particular thoughts, just notice, include those in your awareness. We'll do this practice For a Few Minutes And
up again as you need, if You need to refresh your posture and
and having experienced open awareness with perceptions and thoughts arising within that and
and how thoughts can sweep us away and we lose touch with what's going on and how our perceptions can trigger those thoughts. It helps us understand what the relationship is between thoughts and awareness
when we understand that and see that we don't need To be subject to the anxiety and stress of continually churning in tumultuous thoughts and feelings, it's a natural response to say, Oh, I wish everybody could be free of that.
Sometimes Andrew does this practice with hand over the heart, and you're welcome to do that. It's not over your heart Exactly. It's over the center of your chest at heart level, so our heart center, and you can do this with your eyes closed or open, but it's based on that open awareness in which you're we are not so fixated on ourselves, and don't feel so separate from our environment or the other beings that share that environment. So again, eyes open or closed, it's up to you. Just think I'm on this earth, and I share that with so many other beings.
I'm breathing this atmosphere. I share that with all the other beings on this earth, different places, same atmosphere, different places, same earth, different places, same Water. Beings in the water beings who drink water, air, water, earth, the warmth of the sun. The sun doesn't choose and say, I want to shine on these people and not those people. We all share the warmth of the sun, the nurturing rain and.
Rousing your heart the wish that ourselves, that I and all beings, be freed from all the suffering that comes with the physical and mental struggles
just rose that wish in your heart and
wish that all beings are myself and others I
can enjoy well Being, the well being of peace, health and happiness and
we know that there won't be permanent relief from suffering, permanent well being and happiness as we struggle with the causes and conditions of our lives, we
until we attain enlightenment in some way. But all beings, you don't need to try to make it permanent for them. Just experience moments of freedom from suffering, moments of well being, health and peace in body and mind.
If you'd like, you can mix that with your breath, so that as you breathe in, you feel like you're drawing out the suffering, especially the poisonous emotions that cause so much pain, and as you breathe that's as you breathe in, you're drawing that out from them, and as you breathe out, you're sending them the energy of well being, and replacing those poisonous emotions with love, compassion, acceptance, generosity, kindness, we'll do that for A couple of Minutes. You
I notice if you had more trouble wishing for happiness and wishing for freedom from suffering of people you disagree with, people you dislike, people who didn't vote the way you Did, people who favor policies that you strongly disagree with, even people you might think are dangerous. They need to be free of those poisonous emotions, maybe even more than we do.
But unless we have the higher perceptions, how can we judge so we include everyone, all beings to be free of the poisonous emotions that cause so much suffering to be filled with wisdom, love and compassion and
as The going fades, let go of what you're imagining, come back to your body, the rhythm of your breathing simply present with your experience you
and we always conclude our sessions to match our intention at the beginning, it's kind of like a sandwich. So we start saying, I want to work with myself, my own mind, so that I can be of more benefit to others, as well as myself. And so we conclude by dedicating whatever benefit came from our session. And and you can repeat after me or put in your own words. May the practice I've just done. I. I be of even more benefit to others than to myself. That's great generosity. If that's hard for you, can always say to benefit others as well as myself. Just be kind to yourself. Don't force anything. So now we can have some discussion. If you have anything you'd like to say, I think you can just unmute yourself. I think everybody's allowed to do that. You can do that. Just jump in. I
I'm going to start with sharing. You know, as we were finishing the session, I heard a siren go off, and I thought, is that a fire engine or an ambulance? And then I said, well, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is someone's suffering. And so you go, Oh, whoever, whoever this, this siren is for, may it, may their suffering be reduced or removed. May they have happiness, so you can apply that sending and taking practice and use, use the siren that way. I had, I had a student who said, when they're when there's a traffic jam, and they, they come up to an accident, they they use that as the opportunity to practice sending and taking. And if they're chasing a speeder, then you can say what that's really good news that that speeder got a message from the world that they were dangerous.
So we can use all sorts of signals in our world.
Hey, Joe, I think you had a question there in the chat. Yeah, Patrick, also about your session on Thursday, the time and place, because Alyssa put her away.
Okay, thank you. Yes, I You're everyone's invited. It's open to all free. I do meditation session every other Thursday and occasional Tuesdays. And it's 9am Pacific Time, so 10 mountain, that was skip Central, 11 Central and noon Eastern, and I have a friend in Canada said, and and one Atlantic, that's right. And if you're in Europe, it's a little later, so you're all welcome that if you go to the link that'll take you to the page on my website, the link that Alyssa put up, and you'll see the Zoom link there. I was told not to put zoom links into zooms, so that's why, that's why we're doing it that way. Patrick wrote, oh at 5:34pm in the middle of our meditation, I guess the thought came up about Guru Yoga. Guru Yoga is a practice particularly, I don't know how much it is in other traditions. I know in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it's an important practice. And people wonder if they say Guru Yoga, all devotion to the guru. And am I, you know, am I supposed to? Is this a cult following what? How does this work? Okay, so I want to be clear on this. Guru is a Sanskrit word, and I believe it means heavy, right? Myra, so it's a it's a heavy the guys, the guy or the woman, they're a real heavy when it comes to their their area of expertise. Lama in Tibetan law is usually high, so someone high up. But the idea the word yoga means it's, it's this the root of the English word yoke to join together, right? Myra, Union. In Union. So what are what are you? What are you becoming in union with, not a not the physical person, particularly not the personality, but the Guru is the one who introduces you to the true nature of mind, to this awareness that is your true nature, rather than the contents of the awareness. And so that is what you're joining with. You. You know, in the Tibetan tradition, one of the things when they talk about devotion, it's it. It's kind of simple. You just go, I want to be like that. I want to be like that, and it's not the behaviors, particularly or the personality I want to have that kind of mind, that's what I want mine to be like. And when we do the practice, what we're saying is, I already have that awakened mind, that awakened heart. I want to join with. And May my mind, you know, and one of my teachers wrote to his his guru, may our minds be inseparable like water poured into water. You as a whole, we did a whole book of poetry around that, may our minds be inseparable like water poured into water. So I want mind like that. That's what your devotion is to the awakened state of mind and and the reason we do the Guru Yoga is because there's somebody who's actualized it, and I want to actualize that state of mind the way they did. It's going to come out a different way, because it's in a different container as far as the body and karma goes. But that's what we're that's what we want to you join with. That's what we want to have yoga with. I hope that's clear. That's clear.
The Dalai Lama has a phrase that, well, they asked him whether a guru was indispensable, or do I need to have a girl? And I heard him saying, and well, it's it is not, but it will save you a lot of time. And it's because that merchant and I was thinking about devotion. And I think devotion, in a way, is not like just blindly not thinking, but the fact that devotion brings an opening, and the opening brings that merch, because you don't have all the defenses and you don't have to have the house and the doubts. So the devotion brings that faith of certainty, and if you have screened that person, and you if they're really high, and then there's a lot more to say about that. I think it brings that opening for it to be, that symbiotic relationship, in a way, in that merge of the minds that brings the pointing or the realization. That's the way I just think about it. I do not know if that helps, but every time that I question a little bit, it will save you a lot of time.
Thank you. Myra. You know the the Tibetan for devotion is a combination of two words, mupa and gupa, so they combine it to mo goo, but the two words are translated as admiration or respect and humbleness. So when you combine those two, that's, it's a little, you know, it's not very gooey, it's not very schmoozy. Oh, it's, I want to be like that. I have admiration, and I have the humbleness that I have work to do. Boom, that's all you need. So, Patrick, I guess you you don't have access to audio. Does the guru have to be your teacher, or can be someone you don't know, like the Dalai Lama? It's more helpful if you have a personal connection, but if you. You have this relationship and you feel like you got a teaching that pointed out to you the nature of mind, then I don't see a problem with that. And you know some sometimes they've talked about some Tibetan teachers who met their teacher in a dream. I can't speak personally to that. When you talk about a deity like Amitabha, that's the Buddha of the western direction, that's deity yoga, which is different. It's different. But at the same time, we often visualize our teacher in the idealized form like vajradhara or Amitabha or a Bucha of some kind, because we're not saying that that that's that human being is that we're saying their nature is that the nature of Bucha, which Buddha seemed simply, it's a, it's a, it's a title that means one who has awakened. I don't know if you know the story that the Siddhartha, Gautama, after he attained enlightenment, was walking down the road and and a person came the other way, and he looked he was glowing and happy and beatific, rather than downtrodden like most of the people were in that age and the and the person said, What are you? They didn't say, who are you? They said, What are you? Are you a god that's come down to earth, or a tree spirit or a rock spirit, or, you know, what are you? And and got Thomas answer was, I am awake. That's what I am. And so the one who is awake, and in the Pali language, was Bucha, so that's how he got the name. So we all can be Bucha, and in our nature, that's why they call it Buddha nature, because that's our true nature. Is awake. The rest is all crap, covering it up. Okay, go. We're running a little past the top of the hour, but I can continue for a little bit. Let's see reactivity. This is Laura, if you can read in her chat. And angry with your brother who yes, dangerous brainwashing. Wake up, you idiot. Then he copied from some AI description of Buddhism. Sarcastically, that's funny. I should be detached and not have strong views or opposing views. That's pretty funny. Thank now see that's taking difficulty as the path. He's your he became your teacher. So the people we get very irritated with, if we approach it properly, they become our teacher. It's, it's, it's not that complicated. It's called a wake up. Call, wake up. It's waking up. It's the same thing. It's, it's not that's what it's ordinary. It's the language we already use. Nobody says, ever says, calm up, calm down. Nobody says I was really down tight yesterday. No, you were uptight. It's ordinary language that we all use and we're all familiar with, so calm the F down about everything you
it so thank you, everybody. This was it was fun for me. I hope that it was a good experience for you and and take these practices and work with them. Do everything that you as much as you can for your benefit and for the benefit of others. Thank you. And Alyssa, I hope that your son is doing better.