Compassion in Daily Life - Reflections

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” 

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

 

I've been using the traditional Buddhist compassion meditation for my daily practice this month. Here are some phrases I adapted for the meditation suggested by educator and coach Carley Hauck in her article "How to be more Compassionate at Work at mindful.org.

"May I, you be free from sorrow and pain
May I, you find ease in this struggle
May I, you find peace and healing
May I, you find openness of heart"

You may remember that this meditation is one where we focus our wish for an end to suffering in widening circles beginning with ourselves and moving outward to eventually include all beings. 

One particular circle in this meditation that can be challenging for most of us is wishing for an end of suffering for people we don't like and where every encounter with them is difficult. It isn't unusual for us to react with all kinds of judgmental or aggressive strategies.  In the end though, those reactive strategies separate us from the actual experience.  As we close in around our negative feelings, we are not only blind to the part we play in constructing the story or belief about what's going on, we also can't see the suffering that is informing their reactions to life.

So, how do we find compassion in these situations? I've noticed a couple of aspects that help me. First, if I close in tightly around my own pain, it's not so easy to be kind or compassionate to others.  But, when I remember to keep my view and approach to life open and expansive, I can recall that suffering is something we share with every other being - I can remember that you know suffering too.

Another aspect I notice when my suffering is the primary focus of my mind, is that I try to get rid of the overwhelming feeling by throwing it out into the universe and making someone else responsible for my discomfort. That never works. But, again, when I can stay open and aware and remember we all suffer, I'm able to get curious about my own contributions to the suffering I feel and take responsibility for understanding it and being kind and forgiving to myself for less than skillful reactions.

"May I, you be free from sorrow and pain
May I, you find ease in this struggle
May I, you find peace and healing
May I, you find openness of heart"

Meditation and Mindfulness transforming inner experience of inner city children

Sharon Salzberg, weekly blogger for OnBeing.org, shares an experience she had as a guest on the Katie Couric show. It is well worth reading and watching the conversations with an inner city, grass roots organization and how they are using mindfulness meditation and helping to transform the inner experiences of children toward responsiveness instead of reaction.

http://www.onbeing.org/blog/everything-we-do-matters/7602

 


Compassion in Regular Life

Focus for your personal reflections this month

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”  -- Albert Einstein

In thinking about the centrality of "suffering" and the "end of suffering" in the Four Noble Truths there is an understanding that that is also the entry point or gateway to understanding and developing compassion in our lives. What might it look like to use COMPASSION as the focus of your personal reflections over the next few weeks?

Here are some questions to spark your interest, an online compassion exercise and the link to a private online Facebook discussion group I created for sharing your insights, questions and challenges.

1.  Questions for your own reflection:

  • What is compassion?  What does compassion mean to you?
  • What does it take to have compassion in your daily life?
  • What acts of compassion or kindness did you witness in the last day?  How were you involved?

2.  Shifting Toward Compassion: An online exercise from the NY Center for Nonviolent Communication.

  • Use this LINK.  I think this is a powerful tool by Thom Bond that can be used in many situations.  The purpose is to experience a "shift" in what you are thinking about and a shift in how you feel along a "connection continuum." Even though it is online, you'll want to find some uninterrupted time (20-30 minutes) and a couple sheets of paper and something to write with.  

3. Compassion in Regular Life Facebook Discussion Group.

  • I've also created a private Facebook discussion group we can all use to share our reflections and discuss questions that might arise.  You can join the discussion group HERE.

Meditation Practice Focus for August - Compassion in Regular Life

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us the "universe," a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
-- Albert Einstein

I have decided to focus my own practice this month on compassion and how it can be cultivated in our regular lives. If that interests you too, here are some things to get you started.

1.  Questions for your own reflection:

What is compassion?  What does compassion mean to you?
What does it take to have compassion in your daily life?
What acts of compassion or kindness did you witness in the last day?  How were you involved?

2.  Shifting Toward Compassion: An online exercise 

www.theexercise.org   I think this is a powerful tool by Thom Bond from the NY Center for Nonviolent Communication, that can be used in many situations.  The purpose is to experience a "shift" in what you are thinking about and a shift in how you feel along a "connection continuum." Even though it is online, you'll want to find some uninterrupted time (20-30 minutes) and a couple sheets of paper and something to write with. 

The Fourth Noble Truth - The Path to the End of Suffering

As we recognize there is suffering, dissatisfaction and unreliability in life, we can begin to accept that it is our attachment to and craving after impermanent things that causes our suffering.  We see that the things we hope will bring us stability and happiness just don’t live up to their promise.  Ultimately, we understand that the end of suffering will depend on changing our own states of mind and our views about our experience, not on relying on the impermanent things we desire.  So, how do we begin the work of changing our relationship to the suffering we find in life?

A common analogy used as a model for the Four Noble Truths is that of a physician treating illness.  We recognize the illness is present by the symptoms we experience, we see the cause of the illness and we understand the cure for the illness.  Finally we lay out a path of treatment.  That path, the Fourth Noble Truth, is called the Noble Eightfold Path.

The path, despite it’s name, is not a linear path of increased achievement, but really an interconnected collection of steps the we cultivate in the areas of conduct, mental development and wisdom.  We’ll briefly look at each of the steps:  Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood (Good Conduct); Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration (Mental Development); Right Attitude and Right View (Wisdom).

The Third Noble Truth - The End of Suffering

“If you let go a little, you’ll have a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you’ll have a lot of happiness. If you let go completely . . . you’ll be completely happy.” - Achaan Chah

The Third Noble Truth, the end of suffering, is a very positive message in Buddhism and tells us that suffering can be overcome and happiness can be found for anyone. 

The First Noble Truth reminded us that because everything is impermanent and always changing there is suffering, dissatisfaction and unreliability in life; there just is.  Accepting that truth we looked to the Second Noble Truth that told us that craving causes suffering; we get attached to and crave all kinds of impermanent things hoping they will stabilize our experience in the world and make us happy.  But, pretty soon, we realize things don’t live up to their promise, they can't, they don't last. So, we begin to put it together that suffering and the causes of suffering depend on our own states of mind and on our own views about what’s going on, not on the things we desire.  

The good news, the reassuring news from Third Noble Truth is the fact anyone can change their mind states and their views and know happiness and contentment now.  We do this by seeing through and letting go of the misperceptions and delusions we've constructed to support how we want things to be in favor of a natural alignment with how things actually are.  The extent to which we let go of our craving is the extent to which suffering will drop away. 

The Second Noble Truth - The Causes of Suffering

In our discussion of the First Noble Truth we saw clearly that suffering is part of life.  It arises in relationship to actual pain or injury and in response to unfathomable natural and man-made events that affect hundreds of millions of people.  Suffering experienced as unsatisfactoriness also arises when we feel things in life are unreliable because they are constantly changing. Finally, we can also experience suffering as a kind of existential anxiety when we encounter the big “why” questions in life.

The Second Noble Truth tells us that before we can find freedom from suffering, we also need a deep understanding of what causes it.  The Buddha found through his own experience that craving and not being able to see the world as it really is were two primary causes of suffering. We crave pleasures of the senses but become unsatisfied and disappointed when they don’t last and we can’t control them.  We also suffer when we attach our fears, hopes, facts and behaviors on the world view we’ve built ourselves that is based on insufficient information and incomplete understanding.