Compassion means letting go of self-identity

Fear makes you self-absorbed. If you are self-absorbed you get brittle and mean. If you are mad or fearful you can’t be compassionate. Compassion will come naturally when you feel completely safe. Just noticing the fear invites it to leave. Being compassionate means the war in your head is over.

Compassion is present when you let go of your self-identity. Let go of making yourself the center if the world by thinking, “what I want is not more important than the benefit of the whole community.” With true compassion everyone enjoys the same benefits. Applying wisdom to the compassion means not holding on to the way things “should” be.

Kindness and caring will help us overcome all obstacles. The transformation starts with ourselves. We need to give ourselves the love, kindness, forgiveness and the space to transform.

Boston Dharma Punx meets weekly at the Lutheran Church, 66 Winthorp St, Cambridge, MA on Sundays from 4:00-5:30. Check our web site for updates.

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

Orienting Towards Love and Compassion

Marco lead DPX last Sunday with a meditation based on fear, anxiety and the Coronavirus. Describing our emotions as a tornado swirling around us that is not related to the truth. In the meditation we imagined that tornado of fear and anxiety outside of ourselves, not interacting with us. Leading the discussion, Marco shared a reading by the Dali Lama on how to fight the Coronavirus by triumphing over our minds to increase compassion and defeat anger and greed. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/202004/the-dalai-lama-covid-19-compassion-the-best-weapon The Dali Lama said, angry doesn’t generate a plan. We need to transition from outrage to problem solving. Panic creates a need to dissociate or flee. We need to stay present and cope. We can’t let our emotions get the better of us.  For this reason, we need emotional disarmament. We build happiness by serving others. What happens to one person effects every other being. Try to live and act from a higher principal, which overrides individual rights, sharing the responsibility and working together to save the greatest number of people from Covid 19 and to save the planet from global warming. In this way compassion and love are necessity not luxuries.

 Our group talked about the difficulties people were having “opening back up” after Covid 19 and trying to switch from an overwhelming fear of Covid, to living with reduced fear but still remaining reasonably cautious of Covid 19. We create a bias when we get wrapped up in our feelings. Mike suggested we need to “Orient Towards Something.” Like a boat slowly turning it’s bow towards a different destination. Try orienting towards happiness, and move the attitude to point your mind that way. Marco reminded us that if you are going up wind, you have to tack back and forth. You might not know exactly when to tack. Maybe your destination has to change at some unplanned point and you need to switch course. All of us are feeling this confusion with Covid 19. The Buddhist teachings remind us to orient towards love and compassion at the very least.

 It’s hard to make a long-term commitment during these times of Covid 19. We talked about doubt and wanting to look before you leap into a situation, be it a new job, a life goal or a partner. But at a certain point you need to jump in to feel and experience.  New paths will open that will again give you more choices. If you don’t try it you might have regrets. It might be better to have disappointments than regrets. If it doesn’t work out for you, you might still learn. There is a potential growth from taking a risk. Although there could be just as much self-growth, by slowing down in order to carefully and compassionately look at your previous conditioning before making a move to re-orient the boat.

 We all agreed that one of the great things about meditation is its portability. Wherever you are, you can orient towards your breath. You build security with familiarizing yourself with your breath. Meditation is building a comfortable home inside yourself. Oskar Wilde said “Home is where you go and they have to take you in.”  With meditation, this quote always brings us back to self-acceptance and self-love.

Accepting Not Knowing

Thanks to Mike for leading DPX this past Sunday with a meditation using the words , calm, soothe, settle to focus on. It was simple and powerful for our group. Then he presented a reading from Pema Chodron. Members of our group talked about other helpful Zoom groups they are attending such as Bill and Susan’s daily meditation through Barre Center for Contemplative Studies https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/online-programs/  and Kathy Cherry’s DPX-NYC morning meditation group https://www.dharmapunxnyc.com/#home-section.

I our group discussion some people talked about injustice in light of the killing by police of George Flyod. Saying “things in the world are so unsettling and it’s important to take action. The pandemic may be impacting people becoming more aware and their ability to act. We struggle with the part we cannot change.”  We recognize that there are a lot of micro movements we can join within the bigger movement to change our broken society. As white people, we acknowledge that we, we have bias. Reading and listening can help. With meditation and mindfulness we realize, “here is where I am, and here is where I can make a difference. This is not a sprint. It’s an ongoing struggle and you need to take care of yourself so you can effectively do the work.” 

Others talked on a more personal level about their recovery and feeling an unformed sense of self. Commenting that “what people call recovery, I call life”, and that “things are always getting better and worse at the same time. That’s why it’s important to remember impermanence.”  Thanks to Mike for sharing with us Pema Chodron’s quote in her book When Things Fall Apart, which sums it up beautifully:

 "Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don't know what's really going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don't know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. We try to do what we think is going to help. But we don't know. We never know if we're going to fall flat or sit up tall. When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure”. 

Equanimity

    Thanks to Melissa for leading DPX last Sunday. We meditated on and discussed Buddhist equanimity. She read us a passage on equanimity from “Loving–Kindness, The Revolutionary Art of Happiness” by Sharon Salzberg.  Salzberg states that equanimity is accepting the cycle of the natural world, being balanced and being fully present with all life’s changing experiences. People often confuse equanimity with disinterest or indifference, which are both mild forms of aversion. Equanimity is neither aversion nor craving. It’s being with what is, accepting and letting go which allows us to respond and act skillfully.

     In our group discussion, one member of our group expressed a deep feeling of being out of balance, being angry and trying to change the outcome of situations, which is the opposite of acceptance. With meditation we get a true sense if ourselves.

     Barbara mentioned that during meditation, acceptance can seem like it letting your thoughts run amuck. She like the quote from Melissa’s reading on equanimity “Arrest the mind before it falls into extremes” and talked about realizing that the mind has volition over thoughts. It doesn’t need to run amuck. Ray commented that during meditation, instead of labeling her thoughts “thinking” and returning to the breath, she labels her thoughts “let it go” and then returns to the breath. This gives you a bit more awareness of your own volition during meditation in a nonjudgmental, subtle way, and can gently cut the endless flow of thoughts that distract you from being in the present moment.