The Friction of Asking a Separate Consciousness for Help – Ben M.

Okay. All right, I'm Ben, and I am an adult child of a family with alcoholism, and I also myself practice with living with alcohol ism. I think it's the first time I've said it that way so let's see I'm going to talk about compassion and let's say can I ask how much when when do we end the compassion and when do we begin the loving-kindness? At 4.50. 4. 50, okay. We do the switch. I know about it now. Okay, I'll... A lot louder. I'll do it a lot louder, okay? So, compassion. I brought a bunch of stuff and I probably won't use it all. But let's see. To begin with, I'm going to read what the Dalai Lama said about, or one time he said something about compassion. So what is compassion? Compassion is the wish that others be free from suffering. It is by means of compassion that we aspire to attain enlightenment. It is compassion that inspires us to engage in the virtuous practice that leads to Buddhahood. We must therefore devote ourselves to developing compassion. He is also pretty famous for saying that kindness is my religion. A couple of really beautiful things. and I think, I don't know, maybe there are people here who have heard that story about the Dalai Lama first encountering the phrase self-hatred and he looks to his translator and they do a little back and forth and then he asks the person again, say that again and then He talks to the translator again and does a little black and white back and forth. And he says, He just doesn't understand. What do you mean self-hatred? And I think it might have been an American asking the question. And so the Dalai Lama said, Americans need to practice loving kindness. And so I guess in that Tibetan understanding, They just didn't have a conception of what it means to hate oneself. So I think being addicts of various natures, we feel this dissatisfaction with how we live our lives or how we have lived our lives or what we're currently frustrated or dealing with how we live our lives. So compassion is a super important thing to have in our lives I don't know how many of us would be here I probably wouldn't be here if I didn't have some kind of compassion. So it's been, I don't know, saving my life to have compassion. um so um this this uh supposes a compassion is the wish that others be free from suffering so that's compassion thinking about others but then we also work with compassion for ourselves and that you know we've talked about dualism today too so what is it to be compassion outwardly or what does it mean to be compassionate inwardly and is there a difference yes there's a difference is there no there's really you know it's like that that that lovingness that care, that wish to be free from suffering? Is it the same? Does it come from the same heart when we feel it for ourselves as when we feels it for others? I don't know if this is something that others may understand But often I don't understand or feel compassion for myself until I start to feel compassion for others. I don' t know if this is part of my twisted thinking or how I grew up or whatever, but but I think I connect better with my understanding and my experience of engaging my heart when I first notice it when I feel something for somebody else. And then after, it's like, oh, that's really beautiful. Why don't I have this relationship with myself? So, I don't know. That's something I work on. So there's a number of things that I've come across dealing with compassion. And actually, I think I want to kind of go the way of wish. the Dalai Lama said that it's a wish and that kind of makes me feel like it's like an engagement of your desires and one way of doing that is through prayer and I was reading Okamura Roshi's book Living by Vow he said that we don't have prayer in Buddhism but vow holds the same importance so when he said that when he was talking with a group of nuns and then he talked about the four bodhisattva vows that beings are numberless I vow to free them so delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them and the Buddha way is insurpassable unsurpassed I vow to realize it so these are uh what we call at clouds great vows and um it's that's that fertile ground for for um uh growing compassion so we've talked today about watering seeds and you know when we recite these vows, when we speak these vrows, take these vowers we're watering seeds of compassion for engaging our life in this direction and you know where we are included in that that hole you know um saving all beings yeah let's work on let's work on compassion for ourselves too i think we need to begin with that there's uh i don't have it with me but there's this um this part in Katagiri Roshi's book Returning to Silence called the chapter starts All Beings are Buddha and there's a segment that says the entrance to the Buddha way can be signified by three main points first by the profound realization that all beings are Buddha. And when I use that word Buddha, I find it helpful to say that, break down the word Buddha. It's like, that was a name given to the historic Buddha, awakened one. So all beings are awakened nature, are awakened. And second, by the profound aspiration to live our lives in peace and harmony with all beings in the light of awakening. Actually, in the quote, it's in the way, in the Light of the Buddha. And then third, to free all beings. So those three things, I mean, that's engagement of compassion. And it's pretty amazing that it takes this format of first we understand. First, we settle ourselves and realize that all beings are this awakened nature. All beings arise together, this total dynamic working. And then second, there's an aspiration to live together in peace and harmony. to, that's so compassionate that we want to be together in a wholesome, healthy, loving way. And then third, there's action. There's save all beings. And so we don't just jump right out there and start saying, I'm going to save all beings right away. There's some progression to this. I thought that was interesting. So when I first started practicing at Clouds, the first bit of just straightforward from someone's heart to my heart advice or, I don't know, advice that somebody gave me was at the end of a class we were talking about starting a practice of meditation. And before we left, that teacher said, please be kind to yourself. so this practice isn't about trying to beat ourselves into some kind of form it's through being kind with ourselves and that we grow into a way of realizing the peace that we're looking for. So, yeah, that kind of if you want to be peaceful, go about it in a peaceful way, I think would be something there. So, I don't know what... I don' t want to hit your buttons, so I'll hit this button. Oh, goody. Okay, good. All right. So did we say that 5 o'clock was when we were going to switch? No. 4.50. 4. 50. Okay. If you want to, you can go over. Okay. And then the loving kindness ends at what time? Thank you. 5.15. But 5.15 to 5.30 is question and answer, so... Okay. All right. I can't... I have a hard time keeping things straight in my head. So let me pick out the things that I'd like to mention. Well, there's something I'd love to share. like to share um and uh the um the uh what is the call the the prayer at the end god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference um is that's a the 12-step prayer is it what is it called serenITY prayer Right. So, I don't know. That's always been a point of friction for me. It's like, I don't feel like I want to ask somebody or some separate consciousness or something to grant me something. So I broke it down and kind of wrote it some way that resonated well with me. So maybe I'll pass this around. Oh, I'll start it that way and then start this one this way. So, I kind of revamped a prayer in what I felt to be the spirit of the serenity prayer. And so I'll read it. May there be peace, acceptance of things as they are, steadfastness in watering wholesome seeds and faith in these actions so maybe I won't talk about it so much but you can consider it on your own or recycle it or something but I've kind of held on to this for a couple years and it developed out of my making sense of considering the practice of I don't know, the path of being in ACA. So I think... No, kind of a bit of a wash. I don'T know where to go from here, but maybe into loving-kindness, because I think it's time. So I'll talk about loving-kindness. And it's kind of a prayerful practice. and it can be a mantra and let's see the Dalai Lama also wrote about a little blurb about loving kindness and I'll read a little something of it and then I'll tell about my practice of loving kindness And then maybe, you know, that will go into like a kind of a guided meditation on us practicing this method. So the Dalai Lama wrote, loving kindness, just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free from, free of suffering. Loving kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness. As with compassion, when cultivating loving kindness, it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation. And we then extend the scope of our concern further and further to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings. Again, we begin by taking a neutral person A person who inspires no strong feelings in us As our object of meditation We then extend this meditation to individual friends and family members Ultimately, our particular enemies We must use a real individual as the focus of our meditation and then enhance our compassion and loving-kindness toward that person so that we can really experience compassion and living-kindiness towards others. We work on one person at a time. Otherwise, we might end up meditating on compassion toward all in very general sense with no specific focus or power to our meditation. so this is a practice of in the language that I have it would be wishing kindness and wishing care and well-being to a specific person, so In our heart, in meditation, we bring up this feeling of this person and we offer care and love to this person. the practice that I started doing was the instruction that I received was you begin with yourself and you send that love to yourself and then you progress to friends and family members and then after that you move out to neutral people in general. And then after that, I don't know if you go to difficult people or if you Go To All Beings, but maybe go to Difficult People and then after That, To All Being. So you're just widening your scope more and more one question would be what is this doing for the other person are you really sending something out and are they really being affected by this I don't know but I know that there's if you've got water in front of you and you push your hand in the water you're going to create a current so we understand this physical world we've been playing around with it since we were little so what's to say that there isn't something about our intentions It's like our feelings sending them out. So what kind of concrete proof? I don't know. But something that for sure is happening is that it's exercising our heart. it's exercising our compassion, our feelings. So if that's something concrete that you could probably measure by sticking an electrode on your head or something. And that's good enough for me. So I started this practice and I continued it for a couple years, and I did it at night. There was a period of time when I went away to study and I left family and I left support group and you know, I left friends and it's the longest I've been away from home. So and I went into a program of study that was very intense. It was very it was strict at times, it was very formal and I'd never been good at being on time and this was a place where if you were on time, you were late. So it was like you've got to be there ten minutes early. Ten minutes early is being on time. So So it was quite a demanding. And while I was in that period of study, living alone, being away from family, being away from friends, such a stressful environment. It's like my, I had been sober for off and on, like since I was in college or actually since after I graduated college, off and on for like, I'd be sober for a year and then I would get back into some social drinking. Then I'dbe sober for another year and thenI'd get back in to some social drinking. So it kind of fluctuated like that for me. And then so when before I started studying I was sober and then when I was studying it was like okay I tried to continue the sobriety but it was super difficult and um i i found myself um needing to make friends and then the friends were all in social drinking and and so i got into drinking again and um and then i i started drinking alone at night um and dann it's just it was it was hell because it was such a demanding period of study and I talked with one of my teachers and he said go find AA and I was just like what the heck of course so I went and I found an AA group and it was very helpful and so that was my first experience with AA but throughout that period of time at night I needed to kind of come back to me and take care of myself and reconnect with my feelings for others. And so I used this loving-kindness practice kind of as I would when I was little for bedtime prayers. So at night, I did loving-kindness. and very often I fell asleep right in the middle of it but it was my practice pretty much every night for about two years so we've got about 10 minutes actually it's 5.02 and we're going to 5.15 am I remembering that right? or 5.20 So what I'm thinking we can do is we can work with this loving-kindness in a Zazen posture. so to me there's something about finding centeredness and it's in our instructions for Zazen that I don't think it's any mystery that when we're doing ZazEN it's like we start with our physicalness so we find our posture and our physical center and it's kind of like loving kindness we begin with ourselves and then we can let go to this total dynamic working so we begin with being centered, and then we'll expand out. So as I'm setting my timer, find your posture find your find your breath and then once you're stable just let go and be there and no need to control your breath So the way I practice loving-kindness was I began with myself. So there are four, I think four phrases so it goes may I be happy and peaceful and then I would just hold that that phrase and breathe so I would say to myself may I be happy and peaceful And then I would breathe three times. And the next is, may I be healthy and strong? You need to talk louder. Okay. Okay. The second phrase is, May I be healthy and strong. May I be free from harm and danger. May I live with ease and well-being. Thank you. So next we'll expand this out to somebody dear to us. I'm just going to call this person a friend that this person allow this person in your heart and your intention to be somebody specific, somebody dear to you. May this friend be happy and peaceful. . . . May this friend be healthy and strong. May this friend be free from harm and danger. May this friend live with ease and well-being. Let's expand this. Our intention, our feelings for others to someone neutral. So maybe somebody that you see at the grocery store or maybe a neighbor. And I'm just going to say this person. But specifically find a neutral person. May this person be happy and peaceful. May this person be healthy and strong. Thank you. May this person be free from harm and danger. May this person live with ease and well-being. Thank you. So let's expand our heart and our intention. What we had read before was to all sentient beings. Let's send this out in a general way, an open way to all beings. So allow these intentions to just be open. Not making a distinction between living or dead or animate or inanimate. Just out to this total dynamic working that I will say all beings. May all beings be happy and peaceful. May all beings be healthy and strong. Thank you. May all beings be free from harm and danger. Thank you. May all beings live with ease and well-being. Thank you. We've sent our intentions out. Let's return to ourselves. for ourselves, bring love and kindness to ourselves. May I be happy and peaceful. May I be healthy and strong. Thank you. May I be free from harm and danger. May I live with ease and well-being. Thank you. If your eyes have been closed, take a moment to slowly open them. This is the practice of loving kindness that I practiced at night. And someday, if you practice this or take this up, you may expand this to difficult people. that might be something you try someday but for here as an introduction I think these intentions it's a good introduction I'd like to say just a couple more things about compassion, and how does this fit in with the Eightfold Path? I think that maybe compassion is a state of being, a heart gateway to practicing the Eightful Path. And It feels like maybe like a path, a gateway, something to work on with yourself, to develop, to feel, to soften ourselves and to carry with us through practicing the Eightfold Path. So please like I was told here please be kind to yourselves And thank you for practicing loving-kindness together.