Gratitude

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that, 
It lights the whole sky.”

― Hafiz

Some thoughts on the meaning of Gratitude. It is a virtue we can cultivate, but it has to be cultivated in concert with kindness. They each need the other to be authentic expressions that come from our true selves, from the heart.  Here are the thoughts of Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a prominent Buddhist monk and teacher, who states that there are "three things most likely to make gratitude heartfelt.

  1. You’ve actually benefited from another person’s actions.
  2. You trust the motives behind those actions.
  3. You sense that the other person had to go out of his or her way to provide that benefit.

"Points one and two are lessons that gratitude teaches kindness: If you want to be genuinely kind, you have to be of actual benefit—nobody wants to be the recipient of “help” that isn’t really helpful—and you have to provide that benefit in a way that shows respect and empathy for the other person’s needs. No one likes to receive a gift given with calculating motives, or in an offhand or disdainful way.

Points two and three are lessons that kindness teaches to gratitude. Only if you’ve been kind to another person will you accept the idea that others can be kind to you. At the same time, if you’ve been kind to another person, you know the effort involved. Kind impulses often have to do battle with unkind impulses in the heart, so it’s not always easy to be helpful. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice—a sacrifice possible only when you trust the recipient to make good use of your help. So when you’re on the receiving end of a sacrifice like that, you realize you’ve incurred a debt, an obligation to repay the other person’s trust."

Tuning into our Better Nature - Equanimity

Equanimity is the final of the Buddhist Brahma Viharas, or divine states. So far we have looked at Loving-Kindness, Compassion and Sympathetic Joy.

Equanimity is really about finding balance in life. We all have probably had moments of this feeling especially when things are going our way. But, in the Buddhist context, Equanimity speaks to finding balance with any and every experience that appears in life. It is being with life as it really is as opposed to how we want, expect or demand it to be. A familiar analogy I often use is that in our boat on the sea of life, our ability to be in balance can keep us from being tossed and shattered against the rocky shore or being lost and adrift at sea.

Equanimity is a little like an internal GPS system that allows us to know where we are in dealing with the ups and downs of life. Thoughts and feelings will always be appearing and disappearing, but developing this balancing, navigational system alerts us to when we're veering off course, away from being more at ease and peaceful. An important point of clarification, however, is that equanimity does not mean we become indifferent to or detached from what's really happening. When we can be with life as it is, fully aware and present, equanimity is a great gift.

Marcus Aurelius wrote a couple of things that are helpful. "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." And, he reminds us that "You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone." 

Between Going and Staying - Octavio Paz

Between Going and Staying

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause

By Octavio Paz

Mindfulness in Daily Life

This week we wrap up our exploration of mindfulness and look at how we can take it from the cushion into regular daily life.  

Staying with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness as being "awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally” we see nothing is excluded from mindful awareness.  So, we just have to turn everyday activities and experiences into moments of mindfulness.

  • We can notice we’re caught up in things and remember to come back to ourselves – take a breath, take a moment, find that space where we can see more fully and clearly and see where we have options and choice.
  • We can notice our body is sharing important feedback and turn our full attention there.
  • We can notice emotions arising and see if they’re a response to direct experience or a reaction to a story or judgments we’ve created around the experience.
  • We can notice our mind has wandered or we’ve become lost in thought and remember that we don’t have to get mired in the content of thoughts if they take us away from direct experience in this moment. 
  • And we can notice how our general state of mind is influencing everything with which we interact and find skillful ways to open to a broader, more inclusive viewpoint. 

Mindfulness is an important strategy that helps create the environment we need to be kinder, more compassionate and generous with ourselves and others.

FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS - THE MIND

The mind in its natural state can be compared to the sky, covered by layers of cloud which hide its true nature.  – Kalu Rinpoche

We looking at the foundational elements of mindfulness and explore the breath, the body, our emotions and our thoughts and thinking. These different objects of meditation give us the sensory entry points we can use to find a deeper understanding of the mind.

Then we move on and take a mindful look at the mind and mind states. We consider these each time we look at what mind state or mood we bring to the meditation cushion. And, of course, our state of mind has a great deal of influence over how we approach life both on and off of the cushion.

Traditionally, the teachings around mind begin with the examination of three root mind states that interfere with being fully aware and "clearly knowing." Is our mind state rooted in greed or desire; is our mind state rooted in hatred or anger; or, is our mind state rooted in delusion or ignorance or confusion?

The teachings let us know the importance of learning both when the three mind states are present and when they aren't. If greed or desire is not present, do we know generosity; if anger is not present, do we know kindness; and, if delusion is not present, do we know wisdom?

Clear knowing of both aspects of these root states is how we tell the difference between skillful and unskillful actions in our lives.  It deepens our understanding of what leads to happiness and freedom and what leads to suffering and dissatisfaction.

 

Doubt

Doubt is a large and unavoidable part of modern life.  It comes and goes depending on changing conditions and our experience of it slides along a scale between certainty and uncertainty.  Doubt can be useful when it is a constructive and truth-seeking skepticism. Or, it can shut us down completely when it becomes a self-identity of indecision, powerlessness, and distrust.  We can use mindfulness as an investigative strategy to realize increasing freedom from doubt, when we remember to expand our awareness, broaden our views and challenge the doubtful stories we’ve created.  Phillip Moffit, founder of the Life Balance Institute and co-guiding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, stresses that our experience of doubt is “the absence of feeling grounded in something greater than your own ego structure. It is for this reason that doubt is both an existential challenge and a spiritual hindrance.”

Rudyard Kipling - a view of equanimity

Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)
first published in 1895

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

"It is thought that has emotional complications, not love." Krishnamurti

The process of thought ever denies love. It is thought that has emotional complications, not love. Thought is the greatest hindrance to love. Thought creates a division between what is and what should be, and on this division morality is based; but neither the moral nor the immoral know love. This moral structure, created by the mind to hold social relationships together, is not love, but a hardening process like that of cement. Thought does not lead to love, thought does not cultivate love, for love cannot be cultivated as a plant in the garden. The very desire to cultivate love is the action of thought. – Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, Series I”,16,Choiceless Awareness