[141] - End of Year Reflections and Compassion Practice– with Joe Parent
6:40PM Jan 13, 2024
Speakers:
Audience Member
joseph
Keywords:
compassion
feel
intention
heart
breathe
thoughts
year
deep
suffering
aspirations
posture
open
breath
awareness
soften
practice
mind
hand
meditations
gaze
Got it. Thank you, Alyssa. So yeah, this is my, this is my last meditation or nightclub for this year, just too many football games to watch. Sorry, No, I'm joking. We it's a, these this time of end of the year season. It's It's interesting stuff in the Tibetan tradition, the end of the year come you know, they are working on the lunar calendar, you've seen Chinese New Year, sometimes the same month, sometimes it's one month different. But it's more connected with spring approaching and the new rebirth of, of all of the flora and fauna, the natural world, we seem to be doing it. And I'm not really sure how the New Year connects necessarily with Christmas doesn't connect with Hanukkah and the Jewish tradition. So you know, everything everything's happening, but because we all have as our cultural consciousness, this being the start of a new year, when we make our New Year's resolutions that last anywhere from one to three weeks. We, we feel like it's okay, we're going to take a fresh start. So in that kind of thinking, as the year winds down, kind of the, the loose ends that we haven't dealt with kind of start, they move a little faster. It's, it's like if you had a dozen strings, and you were waving them and you're holding one, and they were they were 10 feet long, and you're holding and waving, they, you know, you'd move your hand like this, and they'd wave in a, you know, flowing pattern. And but as you pulled this, those strings shorter and moved your hand the same way, they'd start moving faster. So so as the loose ends get shorter, and the days get shorter, and you know the time well not in the southern hemisphere, so everything's relative, but as the days as as we approach the New Year, everything gets a little more chaotic. So it's really an important time to be aware of those tendencies. And they creep up on us. And we get kind of caught in neurotic little neurotic fits, and sometimes big neurotic fits. But being aware of it, we go, oh yeah, this is that time of year, and maybe I'm making a little more out of this than I need to time to breathe, calm down, settle down. So all of the practices that we've been doing, have awareness of our breathing awareness of our emotions and our feelings. And last week, we talked, we looked at awareness of how thoughts arise in our minds and how they trigger things, you know, and one of the things that I've talked about is the studies that show that a thought that triggers an emotion, the emotional energy that happens, the vibration that happens, persists for anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds. But if it's not retriggered, it dissipates. It kind of goes Oh, and then slowly dissipates. But as it's on its way down, we generate another thought and it's back up again and then back up again. And pretty soon we get stuck up in this intensity because the emotion makes us think more, think about the same thing more. And then we're we're kind of like a dog chasing its tail, around around around around around. So being aware of that this time of year I think is really really important. So that's why we do the meditation. The other thing that we know this time of year, there's a lot going on with family and with friends and the messages that are supposed to be supposed to be going out this time of year are you know peace on earth goodwill toward everyone. They used to be goodwill towards men but that's we have to be not gender gender nonspecific, but goodwill towards and not just human specific goodwill towards all beings is safer and more comprehensive and more Real. So it's a time to check and say how, you know, this past year? How's it gone without judging ourselves like good or bad? Just did we measure, you know, did we hit our marks in a certain way of what our intention was. And we do that even within a practice session, we want to set our intention to do this for the benefit, not just ourselves, but to be better for others. And then when we practice, the intention is to be present as much as we can. No one's perfect, be present as much as we can. And then afterwards, we reflect on it and said, How did I meet my intentions and set a further intention, and sandwich the practice with again, the intention that whatever benefit did come from it, may that be for others, and set my aspirations for the next day. So in a certain way, you could say, aspirations are kind of new year's resolution. Problem with resolutions is we'll say I will do this. And then if we slip, once we go out, that didn't work. And it's out. But instead, what if our aspiration is to do move in that direction, moving the direction, we want to go move in the direction as best we can. And if we apply, I, I call this the ninja system. And i n j stands for necessary intention and non judgmental awareness. So we apply the ninja system that we we set our intentions, our aspirations, resolutions, if you want to call them that. And so that's, that's an important point, if we don't really want to move in the direction of we don't have the impetus to change. We won't get over the threshold, you need that kind of catalyst to get over the threshold of inertia. And the impetus to change is what gets us over that thread. There's a psychologist. Joke, how many? How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one but the lightbulb has to want to change. So So there's our there's our necessary intention, the other part is non judgmental awareness. We will naturally move toward our intention we that is part of our nature, like, like plants turning towards the sun, we will move towards our intention, if it's not interfered with, with emotional upheavals and with beating ourselves up. Because if we punish ourselves, when we when we fall short, we actually get a weird kind of reinforcement as the Punisher, and then then invites us to fall short again, so we can punish ourselves again, and it's not a pretty cycle. So we want to have non judgmental awareness, which is simply objectively taking stock. We know what our preferences, we know what our aspiration is, we don't. It's what Trump remember, she used to call negative negativity, feeling bad about the fact that we failed. And then feeling bad about the fact that we feel bad about the fact that we feel bad about the fact that we and it just goes on. So necessary intention, non judgmental awareness. Take stock of your aspirations. Look at what they're intended to do. And, you know, Alyssa was talking about the Winnie the Pooh book that my sister and I wrote, the Disney company asked us to write a book about mindfulness in nature, and which what character lives in the woods, Winnie the Pooh. So basically, at the start of the day, Winnie the Pooh sets his intentions, and there's just two, just two thing. There. The thing, I think, as the poem went, just two things to do to truly be poo. And that was to be mindful and be kind. So you set the intention for the day. I'm going to be as mindful as I can. I'm going to be as kind to others as well and myself as I can. And just going to keep aware of that as much as I can without judging myself. Because I know what the intention is. If I say something, it really wasn't coming. And then I have to tell myself again, you know, that wasn't very kind. Yes, I know. Thank you.
So
Karen's as ninja stands for necessary. Intention. And non sure judgmental awareness. There you go. Okay. So that's our intention. And when when we come to the compassion practice, I want to work with it a little more today in a couple of ways. And, you know, the the interesting thing about the compassion practice that we've been doing these sessions, it's from the tradition of training the mind. And then the Tibetan is Tong Len, which means sending and taking, I can't remember which half goes with which it could be taking in sending, it could be sending and taking. But the idea is to connect with our heart of compassion, and warmth and kindness, and send out everything that makes us happy to others, and know what makes them unhappy and take that from them. And absorb it ourselves. Now, this is a problem, if we think that we're really taking on all that stuff. And that we're really giving away all of our stuff, and we're gonna have nothing left. Because if we, if we feel like what we can give is limited, and what we can handle is limited, it will overwhelm us. So this, this compassion practice is taught to understand the insubstantiality of thoughts, the insubstantiality of mental appearances and arising like a dream. That is like a dream. And if we understand that, then we can take things with a grain of salt, we can take things with a sense of humor, and understand that we don't have to make everything quite so solid. At the same time, we have to be real. So there's this kind of ultimate level of everything's like a dream. But then there's the reality, the relative truth that people and animals suffer, just like we do. So the challenge is combining those and we have to find the balance for ourselves. If, you know if you have a deep realization of the Absolute Truth of reality, as empty of anything, any solid separation and, and really tuned into the interdependence of everything, then what you take what you what leaves, isn't a threat to your sense of self. Because there's more egolessness involved more self, less self centeredness. But for most of us, we have to recognize, okay, I have both the the aspiration to feel that way about things, and the and the realistic feeling that things do overwhelming at times. And sometimes I don't feel like I have limitless compassion. So that's where we have to be kind to ourselves. So when we do the compassion practice, they're, the teachers have presented. And that's the wonderful thing, a variety of ways of doing it. One is just the aspiration, I wish that everybody was free of suffering. I wish that everyone was happy, including myself. I wish that everyone could be free of suffering and all the causes of suffering. I wish they could all have the happiness in what in what causes them happiness, and and myself as well. So there's that level of just having that wish that intention. And then there's a another level of saying, Well, as I breathe in, I want to draw, I want to feel like I can draw that out from them. Even though I know it's my imagination. It will feel good if I feel like I am able to stop even for a moment liberate them from that suffering, a pause and that suffering. And so depending on our levels of understanding of egolessness and injured depends units, we can either just feel like we're drawing that out from them and it dissipates, like, like fog or smoke dissolving into the atmosphere. Or we can feel like we're taking it. And and we have the capacity. One Trungpa Rinpoche said, Imagine that your compassion is like a bright, bright light, like a laser in your heart. And that as soon as that negativity that's out there in the world that other people are suffering with, as soon as you breathe that in to your heart, it's it zaps. It burns it up instantly. And then that light radiates out. Wisdom, and kindness and compassion that fills the others fills others with that. So there are all sorts of different ways of working with this. But the idea is to find what works in your imagination that you can draw out, one, one image that that comes to mind is, like, if someone's bitten by a snake, a poisonous snake, that we would take the risk. If especially if it's a loved one, we would take the risk to suck that poison out. And ideally, spit it out. But there's a risk involved. And we would take that for someone that we love that much. And sometimes, just another person, it might inspire our compassion, but that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to draw out the poison. And it's not just the the symptoms of disease and anxiety and fear and worry, it's the causes of ignorance misunderstanding, it gives rise to hatred and anger and envy, and greed. So that's really what we're gonna focus on drawing that out from everybody. And understand that the people who are subject to that are like people who have been hypnotized into doing some terrible, terrible things. When they were babies, they didn't think it when they were three months old, googoo gaga, I'm gonna go kill people. It developed through these negative, deep, poisonous emotions. So the best thing that we can do for this season is send out Joy to the world. And draw from it all the poison that's causing so much pain and suffering that people cause for themselves and others. So that's, that's my pitch for today. And let's work with the meditation practice. We start by getting settled and centered. And we'll work with connecting with our body or environment. And then working with compassion. You want to, we're going to do after the settling practice, we're going to do this with our eyes open for much of the time. So you're gonna want to either arrange your seat or your device so that you're not looking straight into the screen. Not so good for your eyes. Okay, so get your seat. As the gong fades. Let your sit bones really sink into the seat. Find a balance not tilted to one side or the other, not tilted forward or back. Upright but not rigid. If you're in a chair and your legs are long, you can cross your legs at the ankles under under your knees. Otherwise, your feet can be flat on the floor, your lower legs perpendicular to the floor about hip width apart. upper arms hanging straight down hands, but elbows bent and then hands flat. Calm down on each thigh. You'll find it helps your breathing and your sense of open heartedness. If you take your sternum and feel like your breastbone, moves slightly forward and slightly up. Your shoulders will come back to be in a nice line with your ears. Your shoulder blades will come together a little bit you'll feel a firm back An open heart open front. You feel your breathing is more full and open that way as well.
If the back of your head stays straight up, then your chin comes in naturally. jaw relaxed with your lips either lightly touching or just slightly parted, will really be breathing in through our nostrils and as you breathe out mainly through your nostrils, but if some comes out through your mouth, that's okay as well.
Just briefly scan from the top of your head down and let your shoulders hang down. You have a little tension of raising your breastbone a little bit. Let your jaw relax neck and shoulders. Just let it all soften. Anyway, anything you don't need to hold your posture. Just let it soften your face muscles, jaw, neck and shoulders. Torso all around deep belly and pelvis. You may be unconsciously clenching just now consciously let it soften without losing your posture. hips, thighs, knees, calves, ankles and feet
upper arms, forearms and hands. tension out of your torso tension out of your limbs
let your awareness drop out of your head and into your body. Really feel the deep core of your torso the depth forward and back. As the diaphragm moves down and up for inhalation and exhalation, it feels like breaths going all the way down filling your whole body. Deep in your core expanding, contracting. Breathe in and expand. Breathe out and contract your mind rest down there in that feeling and let go of control of your breathing. Being an observer rather than a director or controller short breaths or long, deep or shallow, just let your body breathe by itself
where wherever that feeling of expanding and contracting wherever your posture. Now open your eyelids just a little bit about halfway without losing your posture again. Just notice the space that you're sitting in
aware of your posture aware of your body expanding and contracting, aware of the space that you're sitting in. Whatever direction your eyes are looking soften your gaze so that you're looking at the space rather than some object on the other side of the space
just rest your mind. Deep in your core feeling expanding, interacting, like the tide going in and out
If your mind wanders, the mind tends to do that into one thought than another than another when you realize it and just smile and go think well that's wandering. Relocate your awareness back to your core to reconnect with your posture be aware of the space that you're sitting in in the present moment not the past future elsewhere that your thoughts take you do that for a couple of minutes.
If you've gotten sleepy open your eyes a little more. reinvigorate your posture and focus on the feeling of the air coming in your nostrils. And going out your nostrils can include coming in your nostrils and down your throat into your chest, but the upper part of your breathing
again as an observer, not a director
If your mind has been taken away again and again by lots and lots of thoughts, keep your gaze lowered and pay more attention to the details of starting to expand expanding, and then the feeling of full and the little, tiny little gap of transition to emptying, emptying, contracting and empty more attention to the details deep in your core
another approach if your mind is all over the place is to count your breaths. A full cycle of inhalation exhalation, that's one inhalation exhalation that's two Can you count to 10 and start over?
We'll take a fresh start, move around if you need to.
And when you're ready, reconnect with your posture. Open up your heart firm back. Let your eyes rest naturally open naturally straight ahead. Whatever direction they naturally wrist which will probably be slightly below horizontal looking out, but not straight out. And really soften your gaze and open up to your peripheral vision. Again, you're looking at, you're seeing the space rather than the object at the end of the space. That space is the environment that your breath goes out into and dissolves into the atmosphere of the room. As the breath goes out and dissolves into the atmosphere of the room, let your awareness open up to your full field of vision. Breathe out, open awareness to seeing hearing feeling. The breath is included but you don't have to follow it in you just let it happen. Let your body breathe. But as it goes out, open out, out. Open rest Open connect with its spacious awareness we'll do that for a couple of minutes.
If you get caught up in thoughts. Again smile, sense of humor about wandering mind and as you breathe out imagine the thoughts go out and dissolve into the atmosphere like the breath and just rest in that spaciousness. In which thoughts thoughts dissolve
Raise your gaze even further imagine that your awareness extends out all the way to the sky. That your awareness and your heart of compassion extends out to all beings. Now we'll do the contemplation on compassion, you can do this either with your eyes open or closed. And for some people, it's helpful to put their hand on their heart, their heart center more not decide so much.
And another metaphor that you can use is that your heart of compassion is like an air purifier or an air conditioner for energy. So that the negative energy that you breathe in is purified and transformed and that that same energy the negativity has gone from it. And that pure energy can be extended out in a positive way as love, kindness and compassion So breathe in the negative energy, purify it and send it out. Traditionally start with imagining in front of you a loved one
one or more
a person who you know what makes them happy you know what makes them suffer and imagine you can take the negativity and suffering from them purified in your heart and send them out kindness like radiating cool moonlight that's calming. That brings contentment that brings ease breathe in dis ease and anxiety and fear breathe out safety, security contentment calm.
free them from their pain fill them with joy
join them by thinking of yourself. What causes you the suffering and unhappiness and struggle? And gather that in for yourself into your heart of compassion and loving kindness for yourself. radiate out fill your being with cool moonlight of soothing, calming. It's going to be okay feeling
taking your anxiety send yourself relief
Now having done that for yourself and for your loved ones include a wider and wider circle of beings. Everyone you know everyone you've ever met everyone you've ever thought of all the beings, the living beings in the world that you can imagine gradually increase that scope
there's no limit to what you can take in and purify there's no limit to the radiation of kindness and compassion
and as best you can go deeper and tune in to the negative emotions, the deepest ignorance, fear and hatred anger judging greed, envy that all comes out of that a lot of energy take that energy purify it and send out the opposite patience acceptance understanding
generosity goodwill
wanting others to be happy
feel the strength of the wish to free the world from all these negative emotions. nappy great
take away the ignorance and replace it with understanding and wisdom
take away the ignorance take away the hatred and fear and selfishness breathe out kindness, acceptance and generosity.
A tender heart of compassion comes from the sadness of seeing how unnecessary suffering is that beings inflict on themselves and others. So sad
I wish for them the happiness that love brings the kindness brings the caring brings
let's take a few breaths to settle and center ourselves
fully present in our body fully present with our breathing fully present in the space we're sitting in.
Now we can actually make an expression of these aspirations that we had and the intentions that we had for our practice. And the traditional way of I'll say, a traditional way of saying, you can put it in your own words, if you'd like. Me, the practice I've just done, be of benefit to others. Even more so than to myself.
May all beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness? May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
So thank you so much. And we have a few minutes. If you have some comments or questions, anything you'd like to share, we've got about five minutes to the top of the hour, and then we'll have a 10 minute overtime period for anybody who can stay round.
Tim has a extensive chat. Best way to retain that peace for as long as possible. Peace. I don't know if you can read the chats? If you can't, I'll read it. There's a lot of deep peace generated during your meditations, what is the best way to retain that peace for as long as possible? I would guess that establishing a regular practice would be a regular practice would be a major factor. Good guests. That is correct. And he wrote thank you for leaving in the meditations, you're very welcome. This benefits me at least as much as it benefits you. But then I want to dedicate that to you as well. The the best way to retain it as both have a practice and to set the intentions at the start of the day. And be aware Am I which direction am I going. And I last time i i I introduced a couple of On the Go meditations, which is something you can do, I'll just do the the finger hugging one that you just take a gentle grip on your thumb. And you can have your hands in your lap. And you do one in and out breath. hugging your thumb. And then in and out breath. hugging your index finger and one and you just go through your fingers that way on each hand. And this one you can you can be a little more directive and just intentionally have a little longer out breath. Because the breath is energizing the out breath is relaxing. So that's something you can do when you find yourself all caught up or kind of with gas and brake on at the same time. Rev up but you can't you know you're waiting for something Those are good times to do that. Thanks for the question Tim. Anyone else
the Christ Mass perception, the bleeding heart is the all encompassing heart. Okay, that that's you know, that's where deep faiths are connected with each other you know all encompassing heart that's what we're trying to do connect with and have that for everyone
that's Hamish is chat
and Linda, also in the chat Thank you, Linda. So thoughts on the Hamas Israel conflict, a really potent opportunity to breathe in the causes of suffering so much ignorance and misunderstanding and hatred and it's such a no win situation. When there is land that, that people one group, both groups of people think are there there. birthright and so the the there are some people who are saying, we have to find a way to live in peace. And there are others who are convinced that the only way to live in peace is if the others don't exist.
And it's a very challenging one. What do you do when someone is convinced that the only way that they'll be happy is to kill you?
I know some teachers talk about having compassion for people who are so deluded that they think that giving a Trungpa Rinpoche wrote this at 911 After 911 The sadness of people who think that they can benefit the world by destroying their own, you know, by killing others and using their body as a weapon. And I, I actually did a little research on this, I found and I found, there are websites that say, you know, the martyrdom that they talk about is a misunderstanding of the Quran. But there's equal number of people who are saying that is the understanding of that. So it does feel helpless and whatever we're feeling the instruction on the training is, feel that helplessness and connect with the others in the world who feel that helplessness. Connect your heart with them and wait and see what arises. Something may arise in mind of an action that you can do. Something may arise in mind of something of some speech, some communication you can do
and I sure wish I had an answer. But thank you for asking.
And you don't have to put it in the chat. You can actually unmute yourself and say anything you'd like
All right.
Thank you. What'd you mean the last hour is part of it. Part of the answer also, just softening and keeping our own presence That's all really tender. Sad, it doesn't help if we just bottom out, either. So
we're the bottom thing is, you know, from the bottom of your heart, you can feel that. And other people feel that caring that you just expressed, that's that sad and tender heart. It the energy can spread. That's what we're trying to do. Keep sending it out, and hope that it keeps getting picked up. You know, it's like the, the vibration from the garden goes out. So, thank you for sharing that care. Jerry
nowadays, I mean, there are so many advances that are coming faster and faster. And in every field, you could think of technology, science, medicine, you name it. And, you know, whenever that happens, take the time Galileo will take any time in history, you know, and they said, Okay, we got it. Now. We understand it. Isn't that a form of ignorance? To say, you know,
yes, it's a lack of sense of humor. On about about our own limitations. I love. I was watching a documentary about Albert Brooks, the comedian. Now, he had to have a sense of humor, because he was actually named Albert Einstein. So his parents had some kind of sense of humor, but is there actually was a comedian, but, you know, he, in one of his movies, he talked about, we use about 3% of our brain. And there we have so much more potential. And that sadness that Karen was, you know, I was thinking about that. In Ukraine. They're essentially repeating World War One in a high tech way. They're in trenches of have 110 years ago. They just have drones. So they know when so they're even more stuck in the trenches. And it's just incomprehensible that that this juxtaposition of so many seeming advances in in knowledge, but a real shortage of advances in wisdom.
Well, we better cheer up for the holidays here. Trump forever shaves as a cheer up things are as bad as they seem. And the idea, you know, I say it a lot. But it really it really is about a sense of humor. And that's not making everything a joke. It's about seeing the, as you said, Jerry, the that what we take to be the whole picture isn't ever the whole picture.
It never is.
Unless the whole thing isn't a picture of things at all, but just a deep being. And you know, that that's what we if we look at our mind, our heart mind. It's not mind up here at heart down there, but our our consciousness being all of the different colors and shapes and forms and sounds and habits that have developed into this particular these are these particular forms. The basic start the basic consciousness is pure potentiality pure potentiality the potential to feel the potential to know and that the energy behind that potentiality can take either distorted, horrible forms, or delightful, beautiful forms. itself, it's formless. So our job is to direct it with the proper intention of wisdom and compassion towards wisdom and compassion. So that's your assignment. I'll check in with you next year to see how it's going. So, and thank you all for being here and allowing me to be able to share what what little I was able to pick up from my teachers, whatever was helpful is only due to them. And I apologize for the misunderstandings which are only due to me. So thank you all so much.
Be safe and kind might be safe and mindful and kind for the new year through the New Year.
