Author: Payton Swick

Ram Das said:  “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.”   

Family of origin or close household family members have an outsized ability to touch our deepest triggers.  In a flash, our deepest insights and understandings can seem to vanish, to be replaced by reactivity that can heap suffering onto pain.  What can we expect of our practice of Buddhist principles in the face of intense relational triggers?  What insights from Buddhism can help us work with strong reactivity in close relationships?  How should we approach, and cultivate practices that can help us remain grounded at perhaps the toughest times?  

Lorilee shared reflections this week on her experience with applying various spiritual teachings to family-generated triggers, and share a talk by Jake Dartington and some of Pema Chodron’s reflections which offer some practical wisdom on the topic: https://tricycle.org/dharmatalks/wise-effort-and-the-window-of-tolerance/

Life can feel so demanding. At times, we may feel we don’t have enough energy, time, resources, or clarity to meet life’s demands. 

Our heart can feel under a “constant squeeze”- the pressure to make things better or fix them, driven by a sense of lack that seems to touch everything. 

How can we discover or cultivate a sense of “enoughness”—the felt sense that nothing more is needed? 

How might this moment already be enough? 

Sonia framed our conversation as we explored these questions with our Sangha.

Sonia played a talk by Gil Fronsdal which you can listen to here: https://sati.audiodharma.org/talks/4064

How do we keep our practice alive and applicable to life just as it is?  Sometimes, practice can feel effortless.  But at other times, being mindful or sending metta can be the last thing we want to do in a situation.  When this happens, and practice takes the back seat, what are some ways we can re-center it in our lives?  This can be especially difficult for lay practitioners, as we live in the midst of circumstances that seemingly pull us away from practice and towards destructive habits.

This Sunday Max guided our exploration of ways to recognize that our practice is always right here, right underneath us, even when it feels far away.

Amongst the wisdom of his talk, Max read a quote from a Q&A with Thich Nhat Hanh,

Q: Why do people have to suffer?

To grow lotus flowers, you need mud. Suffering is the mud and the lotus is happiness. The mud does not smell good, but the lotus flower smells very good. If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow a beautiful lotus. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can create happiness. We need some suffering in order to create happiness, but we already have enough suffering. We don’t need to create more.

If we know the art of suffering, we will suffer much less; we will suffer only a little, and we will use our mud to grow our lotus flowers

You can read the rest here: which you can read here: https://www.parallax.org/mindfulnessbell/article/dharma-talk-the-art-of-suffering/

He also referred to part of a story told by Joseph Goldstein,

Once when I was on retreat in Nepal with my Burmese teacher, Sayadaw U Pandita, I had an experience of the difference between more-or-less mindful and fully mindful. The conditions on this retreat were really bad: poor food and just a cement floor and whatever kind of pad we had brought with us to sleep on. My room was right next to the latrine. A lot of smells. I found myself grumbling a lot inwardly—the inner grumble, the inner complaining. 

One day I went for a meditation interview with my teacher, and I told him what I was experiencing, expecting a little sympathy, or at least empathy, about what I was going through. But all he said was, “Be more mindful.”

My first thought was, “Thanks a lot! I’m suffering with all these bad conditions, and you’re just telling me, ‘Be more mindful’?” But I left the exchange, went outside, and started walking meditation. I thought, “Well, he’s a great meditation master. He said to be more mindful. Let me try it.”

In that period of walking meditation, I intentionally brought my attention in closer. My habit of attention had been halfway there, halfway not. But when he said to be more mindful, I realized: “Oh, I can change this habit of attention.”

You can read the whole thing here: https://www.lionsroar.com/the-doorway-to-wisdom/

Our mind loves to feel safe, and in order to feel safe it wants to have control. If I think about my problems enough, will they go away? If I am careful enough, can I prevent pain? If I practice hard enough, will I stop feeling afraid? Most people would say no, of course not. But a real part of each of us truly believes that we might have that level of control, if we just try a little harder. Our meditation practice can be a tool to pick apart our struggles and examine the views that lie beneath them. Can we meet them with care? Along with the Sangha this Sunday morning, Payton tried to find out.

Payton played a talk by Diana Clark, which you can listen to here: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/25617

Continuing with our explorations of The Middle Way and personal agency/responsibility, this week we considered and discussed a talk by Kamala Masters. She has been practicing in the Theravada tradition since the 70’s. Anagarika Munindra (Munindraji) and Sayadaw U Pandita (trained under Mahasi Sayadaw) have been her primary teachers.

Darryl led our Sangha this week. She writes:

I have been through several weeks of generalized discontent rising, staying for a while and slowly passing away. My response was to simultaneously turn towards suffering and also explore ways to counter suffering. And I remained mired in discontent and struggled with “countering” suffering by seeking joy. The Ayya Dhammadipa talk and our discussion last week jostled my thinking. I realized I was stuck in a curative approach, driven by aversion, striving and a sprinkling of unhealthy doubt, and needed to respond to myself in a different way. This wondering brought me to this talk by Kamala Masters, a talk about Sila – ethics, or being and acting  in harmony with one’s innermost values. I think you will hear themes of The Middle Way, letting go of oppositional thinking, and examining agency in the excerpts I have chosen.

You can listen to Kamala’s talk here: https://vashoninsight.org/sila/

This week, Matt continued our exploration of the Middle Way focusing on a few points about choice from the Yuka Nakamura dharma talk played last week by Ellen. We heard an excerpt from another talk by Dhammadipa.

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/80514/

The middle way is often taught generally as  neither seeking or holding on to pleasure, nor seeking to avoid what is unpleasant. When this generalization is applied to particular situations, it can help us to negotiate our lives more consciously.  

This week after we sat together, Ellen gave a few introductory remarks and then shared a recorded talk by Yuka Nakamura which explores a more complex and nuanced understanding of the middle way.

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/97456/

Having been reintroduced to the term “Choiceless Awareness” on a recent retreat with Carol Wilson, Sam guided our reflections this Sunday.

     The choiceless practice of being with whatever arises is used with differing shades of meaning by many teachers, such as Krishnamurti, Ken Wilber, Osho, Chogyam Trungpa, and Mahasi Sayadaw).  

     In preparation for our discussion, we will listen to meditation instructions by Carol Wilson, and later to a talk by Devon Hase.

Carol Wilson’s talk is here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/97337.html

Devon’s talk is here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/86620.html

Sam also read a quote by the Third Patriarch of Zen, which you can read a translation of here: https://kwanumzen.org/teaching-library/1998/12/01/trusting-in-mind

Steve guided our sangha’s reflections this Sunday in the topic of Hope. Buddhists often have diverging attitudes about Hope, some finding it a wishful undercutting of the clear-eyed perspective that grounds practice, others finding in it the energy to take on almost impossible tasks. We heard a talk by Gil Fronsdal which you listen to here: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/24781

Here’s Steve’s notes from the talk:

This past week we were again inundated with wave after wave of information that invites fear, anger, confusion, disillusionment, and despair. And then, toward the end of the week, with the opening of the Obama Center in Chicago and the celebration of Juneteenth, we were again invited to hope.

We often search for hope in times of uncertainty, floundering in the hope of finding a life ring to keep us afloat. But the life ring is elusive. We don’t know where to look for it, and when we do
catch a glimpse of it, or maybe even get a hand on it, it immediately slips away as though it was never there at all. And we lose hope. We wonder whether we are indulging in wishful thinking
rather than confronting things as they are.

But in the Buddha’s teaching, hope is not the fragile, elusive, grasping thing we sometimes imagine. It is not wishful thinking. It is not pretending things are better than they are.

The Buddha did not teach hope as a wish. He taught hope as a path. A hope grounded in understanding of:

• impermanence
• cessation of suffering
• mindfulness
• sangha
• letting go
  This is the hope that steadies us in difficult times. This is the hope that carries us toward
  liberation.
  The steadiness at the core of the Buddha’s teaching is not the fragile, future-oriented hope of
  “may things turn out the way I want.” It is the deeper, wiser hope that arises from understanding
  the dharma itself.
  Hope in Impermanence
  The Buddha taught: “All conditioned things are impermanent.” Sabbe sankhāră aniccã. –
  Dhammapada 277
  This is not a statement of despair. It is a statement of possibility.
  The Buddha does not ask us to deny suffering. He encourages us to look at it directly. When we
  see clearly:
• that everything is impermanent
• that everything is interconnected
• that everything is conditioned
  …then hope arises naturally, not as a fantasy but as a law of nature. There is suffering, but
  there is also the end of suffering, the cause of suffering, and the path to the cessation of
  suffering.
  Because all things are impermanent, then this pain is impermanent.
  Because all things are interconnected, we are not alone.
  Because all things are conditioned, new conditions can be created.
  This is not blind optimism.
  This is wisdom.
  Hope in the Cessation of Suffering
  In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha declares: “There is the cessation of
  suffering.” Dukkha-nirodho ariyasaccam.
  This is the second foundation of hope.
  Hope in the Path
  The Buddha did not teach the Four Noble Truths as philosophy. He taught them as a path of
  transformation.
  This is not naïve hope. It is right view.
  When times are difficult, the mind whispers:
• “This will never change.”
• “I can’t handle this.”
• “Something is wrong with me.”
  And when we catch ourselves enjoying a moment of peace or beauty, or entertaining a glimmer
  of optimism, we immediately shift to self-doubt. We chastise ourselves for experiencing pleasure
  while others suffer, for feeling optimistic in the face of seemingly ascendant and insurmountable
  forces of darkness and destruction.
  But these are nothing but objects of the mind. They are not real. Every time we sit down,
  breathe, and return to the present moment, we are quietly contradicting those thoughts.
  Meditation is an act of hope. Every moment of mindfulness says:
  “I know the mind can be more stable.”
  “I know the heart can be softer.”
  “I know liberation is attainable.”
  Hope in Practice
  Even when we don’t feel hopeful, the practice itself carries hope for us.
  The Buddha often spoke of the mind as something that can be trained:
  This teaching is profoundly hopeful.
  Every moment of mindfulness (sati) is an act of hope.
  Every moment of compassion (karunã) is an act of hope.
  Every moment of letting go (vossagga) is an act of hope.
  Even when we feel discouraged, the practice continues to work quietly within us.
  Hope in Sangha
  The Buddha said: “Noble friendship is the whole of the holy life.”
  In difficult times, the sangha becomes a refuge.
  We sit together.
  We breathe together.
  We encounter the Dharma together.
  Not because we need others to save us, but because we awaken together.
  Hope in Letting Go
  The Buddha described four right efforts, and the final one is:
  “The effort to maintain and perfect wholesome states.”
  There is a kind of hope that tightens the heart— the hope that demands a specific outcome.
  And there is a kind of hope that opens the heart— the hope that trusts in the unfolding of the
  path.
  The first kind says: “I will be okay only if things turn out the way I want.”
  The second kind says: “I will meet whatever comes with wisdom and compassion.”
  This is the hope that liberates.
  It is not the hope that clings.
  It is the hope that releases.
  Hope is Real
  Hope is not something we manufacture. It is something we cultivate. The seeds are already
  planted. It grows, blossoms, and ripens when we remember:
• that everything is impermanent
• that everything is interconnected
• that everything is conditioned
  This means:
• that the heart is resilient
• that the mind is trainable
• that suffering is workable
• that compassion is renewable
• that awakening is possible
  May we carry this kind of hope gently.
  May it steady us through difficulty.
  May it guide us toward liberation.
  May it lead you toward the end of suffering.

The Four Right Efforts (Cattaro Sammappadhānă)
Preventing the arising of unwholesome states — Samvara-padhāna
Abandoning unwholesome states already arisen — Pahăna-padhăna •
Cultivating wholesome states not yet arisen — Bhāvanã-padhāna
Maintaining and perfecting wholesome states already arisen — Anurakkhana-padhāna

There is a widespread feeling that we in this country are under constant assault, from the media and politicians, from faith and educational constituencies, from neighbors and strangers as well.

This can raise an array of responses from us: we act and think more from old fears, we may feel ‘triggered,’ and we resonate more with old identities which may no longer serve us (or others) well.

This week, Jackie guided our reflections on ways to move beyond reactivity, drawing on a talk by Tara Brach, as well as guided and free style meditation.

You can listen to Tara’s talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/87657.html