[ 148 ] Compassion and Self-Healing Through Breathwork and Visualization Meditation – with Joe Parent

1:05AM Feb 20, 2024

Speakers:

joseph

laura

Theo Koffler

Keywords:

practice

compassion

breathe

feel

suffering

eyes

mother

slogans

breath

imagine

sentient beings

purify

meditation

negativity

closed

space

unmute

work

rhythm

radiate

A companion is on. So they're going to take everything that I say and sell it to the highest bidder. Is that how it works? Is that how No it's something like that anyway? We'll we want to have some fun. Sometimes we can take things a little too seriously. I was talking with a woman who is has a program called I love to listen day. And I think I read her poem a couple of sessions ago, and we work on listening, compassion practice. We were talking about, about compassion. And I said, the interesting thing is to have empathy and compassion to have kindness. The ground of compassion is sense of humor. And you can look a little funnier that she said also, so your compassion is, you know, you don't take it too seriously. So you add some humor to it. I said, No, no, actually, the compassion comes out of the sense of humor. Because if you take yourself too seriously, you can't really connect with other and in the compassion practice that's done in the Buddhist tradition. It really starts now not as pity like I'm up here and poor you suffering down there, or even sympathy of I'm not suffering but you are. It's more towards empathy, but before empathy, it's actually based on equality. And that is wearing down our habitual tendency to see ourselves in what we need as the most important thing. Now, the traditional example, and I don't have personal experience of at least in this lifetime, is of a mother and child that it's most common. I don't like to use the word always words always. I never use the word always or never. I mean, I always let you know what I mean. I'd rather not use always and never. So it's, you know, elicits a shame that the, the the transcript can't see a smiling so it doesn't know when we're joking. But just in case you're reading the transcript, that was a joke. Okay, so in most cases, it is not uncommon for a mother to instinctively Oh, and I instinctively put the child first that if there's a limited amount of food, the child comes first. If there's something that that's there's danger, put myself in the way. So that's why it's used as the metaphor for the sort of compassion practice, like a mother and child to get everybody on the same page, this equality thing. There there's a couple of different aspects to that. One is we all have very similar qualities, at least let's talk about human beings. We have living beings that all have we're more similar to other living beings than we are to rocks. So I think we can all agree on and we're more similar to human beings than we are to most other species, at least most of us are. And then because we all have that those similar qualities, we have a similar aversion to pain and attraction to pleasure. They're all very, they're all very similar. We have a lot of similarities. And so, too often we focus on our differences. This is a focus on our similarities.

One of the ways that we Buddhists in the Buddhist tradition of rebirth to make everybody similar, they do a little mathematical trick and that is to use infinity. Now, how far into the past does infinity go? It's infinity, so forever, okay. So if it goes the past goes back to infinity. And we have all taken an infinite number. of rebirths. Since what they call beginningless time, they don't even say since they don't they don't go in. We don't have in the beginning in Buddhism we have since beginningless time. Then mathematically every one of us at some point, because it's infinite, has been everybody else's mother. And at some point, everybody else has been your mother. So they even use the expression. Those who have been my mother's all sentient beings. Sometimes they even shorten it to Oh Mother sentient beings, how have compassion for you? So basically, and if you personally had a difficult time with your mother, by definition since the it goes back infinitely, you had a good time with one of your mothers. One of one of your mothers was completely unconditionally loving and caring. And you at some point, were an unconditionally loving and caring mother. So we all have that capacity. And we've all encountered it. We know. We wouldn't know what we were looking for if we hadn't had some glimpse of that. So that's what we use as the basis for the equality with others.

And so out of that is where the compassion practice comes. In if we look at and then you know, with modern media, we learn so much about so many things going on. In some so many parts of the world. There's an seemingly endless opportunity to have compassion for people going through suffering. where there aren't enough hours in the day to put it on the the newscasts. I was listening to the BBC on the radio, and they were talking about the horrific things going on in Sudan. And I was trying to remember, have I in the last few days have I heard on any of the newscasts, anything other than the Middle East in Ukraine and shootings in America? Not really. So we don't even we have plenty to work with and we don't have all of it. It's It's horrific. Now, sometimes we can feel very overwhelmed by it all. And so what we end up doing is distancing ourselves. It's kind of numbing agent distances is a numbing quality. The farther you are from it, the less you can feel it. So like a campfire. Further you are, the less you feel the warmth and in this case, the further you are the less you feel the pain

so one of the suggestions is in there, there are these slogans for practicing compassion. There are 59 slogans. You can look them up. They're called the LO Jiang slogans l o Jong.

There you go and put in the chat. And many, many teachers have taught about these just

there's just a small selection think you can see that yeah, there. There you go. That's just a small selection and and each one has a slightly different perspective. But one of those slogans says if it's overwhelming, the thought of having compassion for all those people. And in the practice, we actually practice taking it on and saying, May I, as I breathe in, absorb and take away all the all the suffering of other beings. And as I breathe out, send out to them all relief from suffering all happiness. Now part of this is a big part of this practice is to undo the habitual, the habit of putting oneself as more important than others. That's why the equality thing we've all been there mothers, they've been our mothers, we're all even

that can be challenging, and it's important to work within our capacities. So one of the slogans is, begin the practice of exchanging oneself or others with oneself. Begin the sequence with oneself of taking other honor their suffering, and sending out happiness and in the ultimate sense, you actually feel like you're breathing in and taking actually taking in all that suffering, into your heart of compassion. And in somehow it is purified from that. The power of your your heart of compassion purifies it, when you breathe out, you send out and fill all beings with peace, happiness, well being health but the notion of taking all that in and in sending all of yours out to them, giving it all away, which is based on non attachment to one's own ego. Not so easy. It's it's a nice thought. It's nice to say it. But I think it's helpful to give people training wheels to give people away into it. So that it can develop rather than here's the chasm just go leap over it. Let's let's get a little let's let's get a little training and a friend of mine was doing a presentation this morning and, and she said it's like you start with yourself because it's like being a host and a guest. You have you Clint, you have to clean your place up before you invite others. So we clean up our act at least a little bit before inviting others. Now. The practice in that way is as you if you want to work with your breath, you can work with your breath. And and it sets up a rhythm. But you don't have to do every in and out for each breath. It's just a sense of gathering because the in breath gathers the out breath let's go in our actual experience. So the ultimate practice is to as you breathe in to gather all the suffering in the universe. Breathe it all in and then as you breathe out, send out all of the potential peace, happiness and health enough to fill the universe. So kind of a big job so we can start with ourselves and say okay, what negativity Am I holding toward myself? What feelings do I have that I would like to be relieved of what unhappiness would I like to be be relieved of so we can actually breathe it in? And what I'd like to do is I'm going to read a little passage here. Okay. This is from a teacher named Ringo Tilka. And so I'm going to read a little passage it's not too long on how to work with this. Begin the sequence with yourself, bro, I want to preface we're not just working on ourselves for our own sake. We're working on transforming our own suffering. into happiness, so that we can do it better for others. So whenever we do practice, traditionally, we want to say it's good in the beginning, good in the middle and good at the end. So you're getting the beginning means we have pure intention, that our motivation is not self centered. But that whatever we're doing, even if it includes doing things for ourselves, that ultimately the reason we're doing it is so that we can better benefit others. Then good in the middle. Is that we dive wholeheartedly into the practice in good at the end is that we remind ourselves what it was for by dedicating at that moment. Whatever benefit came from the practice to others and have the aspiration to continue in that way and ideally do even better tomorrow. So before we actually do the sequences of meditations, I want you to read this. People have different capabilities, and this is a advices about working with our limbs within our limitations and making progress from where we actually are. If we feel apprehensive or reluctant to take on suffering, even in our imagination, it may be best to do Tong Lin and that's the Tibetan compound word that means sending and taking to do sending and taking with oneself first, because of this insecurity

think of all the harsh or unhelpful influences of our past and adversity, which may await us in the future and substitute for that. Mercy and goodwill. In other words, as you breathe in, you think that you're gathering into your heart of compassion, all the negative feelings you have and negative the Karma The the the residue of all the negative actions you've done in the past and also the the fears you have for the difficulties you might have for the future. You breathe that in and send out forgiveness and courage or confidence. Peace of mind to yourself. We can also give and take between the negative and positive tendencies of our personality, replacing our disagreeable characteristics or faults with virtue, forgiveness and patience. So actually transforming our personalities in this way. Because our personalities are just habitual ways of reacting to things. A more traditional Buddhist approach is to imagine our spiritual teacher at our heart center and give all our negativity to him or her. Well, he or she radiates wisdom and compassion back to us. This is even less personal so it might be even easier. And I've written actually put this in the the Winnie the Pooh book for people who don't have a spiritual teacher. They can imagine a brilliant crystal made of light in the heart center that represents infinite wisdom and compassion and that it's a transformative crystal so it takes the negative energy and purifies it, like an air purifier or a magic crystal and instead radiates out energy as positive energy taking in the negative energy and radiating out positive energy. Then to conclude Ringu Tulku says we absorb and purify the negativity without becoming too attached to it. As we breathe it in on the breath. We're comfortable and happy that we have taken away the suffering. It feels positive because we're undoing so much suffering. And then we extend after we've done it for ourselves. We extend it out to the we take the same practice to the rest of the world. And then he says when we do that, then when there is no pain left anyone there in the world. We want to feel like we've taken ons, we've been able to relieve all that suffering. And when there's no suffering left anywhere in the world, because our healing joy is sent back. And that's what we're trying to accomplish. So we start with ourselves, and then we're better able to extend others. So that's the practice we'll work with a little bit today and you can use any of those variations. And as I said, you can it doesn't have to be on each breath. You can say okay, I'm going to work on gathering in the suffering and do that over the course of two or three breaths emphasizing the in breath. And then as you send out, radiate out to yourself, goodness and forgiveness and patience and acceptance. You can again do that on more than one breath but again on that emphasizing the outbreath Okay, so let's get started on as the basis we have to first develop some stability of mind and so we're going to do basic taming the mind practice working with our breath. And then we'll move into these contemplative practices of exchanging of sending and taking of negative and positive energy. So to take a good posture to make it easier to work with the breath. And because we're going to do some of this with our eyes open, set up so that you're not looking directly into your screen and move your chair or your screen or both. To begin with. your eyes gently close

as you heard the gong said, Just settle into your body. Just sink into your seat. Get good and grounded. Not perching on the seat. Just really sit down. Don't worry about your posture at first just really your let your weight sink down. Then from that solid ground, extend your back and the back of your neck on the back of your head. upward slightly so that it straightens it out. And you'll feel like a straight line from the back of your head, the top of the back of your head all the way down to your tailbone. When it feels like that straight line your chin kind of tucks in naturally without you pulling it in. It's fun if you feel like your neck elongates just the slightest bit your chin comes in naturally. If you feel like your breastbone extends up and forward just a tiny bit, your shoulders come back naturally.

Just notice within the energy that you're using to hold that posture, that everything relaxed around that uprightness like Canvas hanging loosely from a tent pole before it's pulled out to make the tent regios relaxed but not slack open. Soften your neck, your shoulders hang down

a little tension in the back of your neck for your uprightness. A little tension in your breastbone, your chest to open up

the uplifted

your arms or just upper arms how hanging from the shoulders, forearms along your thighs. Palms down on each thigh. You have your hands overlapped in your lap. That's another meditation posture you can take that's fun

deep belly and pelvic area. unclench. If they're clenched at all, we tend to clench those without even realizing it. Just let it soften without losing your posture

your legs all the way down. Only enough tension to hold your posture

move your awareness deep in your core just below your navel. Feel the thickness the front to back thickness of your body. With your awareness rests there at a spot a little below the navel just in front of your spine where the diaphragm is going down and pulling in air coming up and pushing air out. So there's a gentle rhythm of movement down in your deep core. Just rest and enjoy that rhythm. Let the body breathe itself. Just be an observer and notice the rhythm

notice how when you're relaxed it gets very quiet. Just a very gentle with hardly any movement at all.

Know let your eyes open about halfway looking down just a couple of feet in front of you under your eyelids so that you're aware of your body sitting in space as you're feeling that gentle rhythm deep in your core

Eyes Open normally

with your posture we haven't done so your eyes naturally. Look out in a particular direction not too far up not too far down. Soften your gaze. You're looking at direction but you're seeing the space in front and all around you. So it's expanding the space

the same rhythm is happening with let it happen out into the space going out worry phasing out with Ian

awesome Are you in practice is to focus primarily on the out breath and open up and go out today just go out this one out breath. Then on the next one go out farther. Open up to the space all the way to the horizon

and then your next out breath go even farther and open up to the sky in all directions in the world view. Just imagine your awareness is as big as the sky

within that vast space all sentient beings of this world exist all of them have been our mothers. We've been all of their mothers. There are children, other sentient beings.

mind as big as the sky lovingly overlooking all sentient beings

breathing in and out you're breathing in the Earth's atmosphere. All the other beings that breathe are breathing in that same atmosphere. Breathing out your breathing out into that atmosphere all the other beings threes are sharing the same Earth's atmosphere with you sharing the same planet UNDER THE SAME SKY

imagine that as you breathe in. All beings are breathing in as you breathe out all beings are breathing out.

Feeling free quality of all deems using do the rest of this practice with your eyes open or closed as you choose. Tune into your experience

to whatever pain, suffering negativity, in particular regret the thoughts words or actions of the past

imagine as you breathe in that all that can be gathered into your heart of compassion, self compassion, and purified. We all have a pure heart. Sometimes it's covered over in case more than others that access the purity of your heart

and reach out to yourself forgiveness acceptance, peace of mind healing repair

feel the pain of regret it's going to be okay

forgiveness

purifying whatever negative karma you created

this indestructible diamond with goodness and compassion that's in your heart always.

Breathe in fears apprehension for the future. Breathe out courage pre acceptance.

Patients

breathing the tension and stress of needing things to be a particular way for you to feel okay

breathe out yourself accommodation unconditional love patience forgiveness. Acceptance.

anything positive that comes to mind breathe out and feel your being with that positive sock

and feeling

any negative thought or feeling we experience absorb it in purifier and feel relief from it. Breathe out relief to yourself you can do

it you feel like you can't do it. Breathe that in and radiate out to yourself. You're doing fine.

Is best you can know that. There are so many billions of other beings full of regret

experiencing painful circumstances. We wishing they were anywhere else. relieve them of that suffering. Take that from them in the same way you took it from yourself. Absorb it purify it and send out what all of those beings want relief. Peace, health, well being. Send all the positive things you've showed yourself with radiate those out all beings

it's fine if you feel like all you can radiate ours the wish that you could absorb that and then it's the same. radiate out the wish. I wish I could fill you all with peace and happiness. I wish I could remove the world shuffling.

Is the gong fades let go of what you're imagining. Come back to simply being in your body with your breathing and the space around you.

Mind resting in the gentle rhythm of the breath going in and out. Settling in empty keeping your core

now we can clear the practice because I said before, we're working on purifying our own negativity in order to better able to benefit others. And that was our intention at the beginning. We practiced in the middle and now at the end let's dedicate the benefit and you can repeat after me or put it in your own words. Made the practice I have just done even more benefit to others than to myself

you can even add in May I be of even more benefit tomorrow than I was today.

So thank you and we have about 10 minutes if you have questions about the practice or you want to share your experience please feel free to unmute yourself and we can talk about and clarify what needs to be clarified.

Thank you for your comments in the chat sweet.

You having trouble unmuting yourself just raise your hand or wave or jump up and down whatever.

Hi, Laura.

Thought I was unmuted. Yeah, I just want to comment briefly. I just I'm so grateful for the way that you take the practice of the tongue kind of slowly, deeper and deeper understanding particularly the guidance of bringing ourselves into it. I first remember hearing that a while back and I get so much out of that. I think it's really valuable. Really nice. Well thank you.

You're welcome. Got a thumbs up from Tim. Thank you

Tim's invisible and can't unmute.

Hi, my

name is Theo, and thank you so much for the practice. I actually came in late because of work obligations, but I enjoyed all that I received. For me, my practice has always been with my eyes closed. And much of Andrews meditations vacillate between eyes open, her eyes closed. And I'm wondering whether you can comment on perhaps why or what? What the intention is discerning between eyes closed and eyes open. Personally my experience even when you asked us to, you know, envision or embrace or embody the larger universe or whatever your language was. I tried with my eyes open and when i My eyes were closed, that was far easier for me

to understand two things one, if you were late, this was recorded. Yes, I think so. You can always go on because I did a bit of a preface at the beginning to introduce the so aspects of the practice. Thank you. And the, the the idea of eyes open. Are is to connect with our sense perceptions and the sense of spaciousness, which you can also imagine. So, one of the aspects is the fact that we don't want to make this separate from our everyday lives. And we do walk around mostly with our eyes open. So it's a transition in that way. To include environment. And, and the other thing is there's actually a visual spaciousness that if your eyes are closed, you're imagining spaciousness. But it's conceptual. Because you're imagining when you're looking out there, there are colors, shapes and shades of light and dark coming in. There are sounds. I have a question for you. What do you do with sounds when your eyes are closed?

I pay attention that they're in my space and I certainly follow the sound to frown as it arises lingers and falls away.

Interesting. So if you do a correlation with the visual, visual perceptions as they arise, well, I'm following they don't seem to change but they do. If you want to go fully internal then you go into the sensory deprivation tank with the earplugs and and the saltwater and then then all you get are your is mental. So I think that there's value that there is value because we also do some visualizations and people do visualization practice with their eyes closed as well. So I think it's worthwhile to explore both. Thank you. I think I think it's worthwhile and when you do walking meditation, kind of hard with your eyes closed. Do you ever do walking meditation?

Yes. All the time. And yes, you're right. All the time. I do. I have a walking path around my house that I curated after specific Rinpoche and my teacher in my life was here, so

Yeah, wonderful. So here's what I'd like you to try. Do a little bit of sitting meditation as breathing meditation, as if you were doing the same way you would do walking meditation.

Thank you. I definitely will. And I have been enjoying the difference. I just feel the entry with my eyes closed into settling into my body is easier than when my eyes are open, but I'm really open to letting that go as well. When you're when you're giving the instruction I will go back this is my first time under your instruction. Do you share that our eyes should be gazed downward or is there any instruction around how the eye should rest okay,

when I started, you had your eyes half open so you're looking down under the space around you. You know what's interesting is I've always I've been I've done from the start for many years see that many, many years? Gray hair, white hair for many years with my eyes open i It's easier than with my eyes. Closed. Okay, it's really what we get used to. Thank you. You do both. We welcome thank you for your question.

Tim wrote thank you for DEP so that he can continue to retain this piece longer and longer. Well I hope so too. But don't get discouraged. Because the coming and going is really what it's about. You know, I'd like you to enjoy the dance. Rather than just retaining the steady state because then that's what everybody else's experience and then you can work with them

thank you all so much, you know, I used to be when I've been teaching for a long time and in the early days, I would get a little freaked out if nobody had any questions or anything to say I go oh, did I say too much did I do to that now? Now? It's like, oh, this is so nice. Everybody's just enjoying the space. So thank you all so much. I'm just going to stay here for a couple more minutes. You're welcome to to just enjoy the space if something arises that you want to say, Fine, but let's just let's just do a couple of minutes and see what happens. Meditation.

Wonderful, thank you all, Alicia. Thank you. See you next week, I hope and we'll we'll see you in and if you can please come join me on Thursday morning. If you're available Thursday night. I don't know what if it's morning your time but Thursday 9am Pacific Time, wherever you are. So stay healthy and safe.

it is Thursday morning Joseph. Joe. Is that another meditation class? Oh,

you came in late. Okay. Recording sorry Hang on. Can you where it is how far back do you see the chat?

From when she came in? Oh, yes.

Right. Okay, I'm gonna grab it and post it down. Again,

thank you.

There's the link. Okay. Listen, beat me to it. She's quick on the drummer.

Thank you have a good night. Thank you both.

Karen. Thank you for your your chat. A peaceful easy feeling that reminds me the song. I gotta pee. Peaceful, easy feeling. So anyway, nice to see you. As always. Hi, Jerry. And thank you, Alyssa. No

problem. I'll see you next week.