Author: Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community

I found that the more I started practising mindfulness regularly, I began to have strong emotional reactions more often during my sitting practice. At the time, I thought (and perhaps this is an assumption of many) that I was doing something wrong, or I wasn’t practising mindfulness “right.” I assumed that meditation was supposed to make me calmer and more peaceful, and I wasn’t supposed to be having these strong emotions come up.

It seemed like I was having emotional reactions more often, but now I think rather the emotions were always there, but it was just that they now had a chance to be expressed. Before practising mindfulness, certain emotions that I had decided were “bad” or “wrong,” or even simply inconvenient or inappropriate in a certain context, and so these emotions were suppressed and kept hidden. Certain emotions like fear or hurt or sadness I had decided were weak or pathetic and I was immature to have them. I was also scared that I didn’t know how to handle them, I thought they would be too painful to experience.

The practice of formal mindfulness meditation, where I set aside a time and place during my daily activities to just be aware and be with myself, allows these emotions to express themselves. I think there are a few qualities of mindfulness that allow this to happen.

Mindfulness has the qualities of interest and curiosity, when I ask the question, “What’s really here right now?” or “What is this?” I open my mind to any possibilities of what can happen in any given moment.

Mindfulness has the quality of openness, where I try to make enough space in awareness to allow anything to happen. Any aspect of my experience (body sensations, thinking, emotions, hearing, seeing, pleasant or unpleasant, etc.) is invited into awareness and validated and included as my present moment experience: “This is happening now.”

Similarly, the quality of non-judgmental awareness is present when I am not immediately labelling my experience as “good” or “bad,” “wanted” or “unwanted.” Instead, I try to withhold these judgments and just accept what is here without deciding to make it last and get more of it, or to push it away and get rid of it.

Mindfulness has the quality of awareness and single-minded attention, where I am not distracted by the many other preoccupations that otherwise feature centre-stage in my mind. Therefore, an emotion that might be too subtle to notice while I am distracted has the chance to be given full attention while practising mindfulness.

When mindfulness has the qualities of compassion and kindness, these emotions have a chance to be expressed and integrated into my whole being. In that way, mindfulness is a truly powerful healing force, in the sense of “healing” means “to make whole.” I become whole when I am not cut off from aspects of my experience of parts of myself.

“It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri [lovingkindnes], renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.”

– Pema Chodron

It is my wish that you, too,may experience the healing qualities of mindfulness!

With metta,
Andrea

Pema Chodrin  tells a story of herself as a six year old walking past an old woman sitting in the sun. Kicking stones or whatever was there, Pema tells us that she was feeling lonely, unloved and mad. The woman said, “Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.” That seems to be the essence of loving kindness and compassion. The practice is there to help us stay open, to have an attitude of good will, of love and forgiveness.

We all feel hard hearted at times. I know when my heart is hard. I can feel it. For me it is an attitude of ‘don’t give a damn.” I attend to this attitude in my body, locate it in my torso just behind my spine, imagine what colour it is or what shape, a wall of gunmetal grey, or find any other way I can bring my imagination to adequately represent what I’m feeling. Then I just try to stay with this feeling/shape/colour or words. I say, “So this is what ‘don’t give a damn’ feels like.” Offering my presence and paying attention to this feeling is an act of compassion towards myself and a way to help my hard heart to soften. I just keep watching. Soon it’s impact lessens and eventually passes. Sometimes, though, I don’t want to alleviate my hard heart. I just want to keep feeling that way. So I try to look at that, still without judgement and with kindness.

This time of the hard heart is also a perfect time to offer formal Metta practice for myself. I use the classic phrases: “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease and in peace.” Each phrase packs in so much meaning. Sometimes I/we add a few words to flesh it out a bit, like, “May I be safe from inner and outer harm.” Or, we can find our own meaningful phrases if the classic ones are not speaking to us, but when I reflected on the classic phrases, they encompassed all that I thought important for myself and others.

How wonderful to have a practice that can open our hearts, keep us soft in attitude, be a balm against judgement of ourselves or others, against hurt and ‘the arrows and slings of outrageous fortune,’ and a balm against despair in the face our world’s problems.

With metta,

Carol Kavanagh

We spoke in our weekly sangha gathering of mindfulness and difficult emotions. While we shared experiences on how to address feelings we remember – it left me wondering how and what can we do about emotions we cannot feel, see, or know.

Mark Epstein, in The Trauma of Everyday Life, references a psychologist’s work that describes “primitive agony” – essentially traumas that are pre-verbal.

While Epstein presents an analysis of the Buddha’s “primitive agony” (“developmental trauma”) caused by his mother’s death when he was seven days old, much of the book examines how we are affected by suppressed preverbal trauma. He describes this “dissociation” as a “survival mechanism” – “the personality withdrawing or suppressing what it cannot bear.”

Epstein notes that many people are mistakenly drawn to meditation…

…as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. They see meditation as a way of becoming calm and clear, of removing themselves from the tumult of everyday life. They are not interested in awakening their primitive agonies or being reminded of their buried losses.

His recommendations to use mindfulness to address these unseeable trauma are forthright:

It is not as important to find the cause of our traumatized feelings as it is to learn how to relate to them.

…the instructions are not to cling to what is pleasant and not to reject what is unpleasant—to simply be with things as they are.

And, referring to the Buddha’s own approach:

He did not have to transform himself in the way he imagined: He just had to learn to be kind to himself.

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The freedom the Buddha envisioned does not come from jettisoning imprisoning thoughts and feelings or from abandoning the suffering self; it comes from learning how to hold it all differently, juggling them rather than cleaving to their ultimate realities.

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Trauma is the way into the self, and the way out.

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I came to this exploration from conversations this past year with my mother who now recounts what must have been psychologically traumatic events in her childhood – events I never knew of until these primitive agonies were able to find a way out as she paradoxically becomes aware – or at least more verbal – with the onset of dementia.

Epstein references work by another doctor (D.W. Winnicott) who wrote about a mother’s quality of attunement (much as our teacher recounted this week during our sangha discussion). He described “good enough” mothers who, by their mindful presence, instinctively “develop a capacity for identification with the baby that makes them able to meet the basic needs of the infant in a way that no machine can imitate, and no teaching can reach…”

My challenge now is to be a good-enough son.

With mettā.

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Mark Epstein: The Trauma of Everyday Life <http://markepsteinmd.com/?p=56>

Cartoon by Neal Crosbie <https://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/009lettersCrosbie.jpg>

The loving kindness practice normally starts by directing kind phrases towards ourselves, then branching out to a benefactor, neutral person, difficult person, and then all beings.

Like many people, I find directing phrases of kindness towards myself to be difficult. Like Carol, I have a vocal self-critic who likes remind me of my many failings, weaknesses, and *gasp* humanness. 🙂

On a few occasions, our teacher has led a loving kindness meditation with a bit of a twist. Instead of diving in and sending kind phrases to ourselves, we first visualize some being who loves us unconditionally, and imagine ourselves receiving the phrases from them.

That’s easy…

Those soft brown eyes that look at me so lovingly. The wagging tails that greet me any time I walk in the door. My furry friends who cuddle close when I read a book, and who sit with me when I meditate. They regularly show me the everyday joys in the simple things, like fresh snow, finding sticks, and meeting friends old and new.

When I feel that love radiating to me, I find that it’s easier to accept the loving kindness phrases for myself.

Then I find, as Jane Siberry sings,

Everything reminds me of my dog

It’s even easier to direct the phrases to others, with meaning.

If you remind me of my dog
We’ll probably git along little doggie git along
Git along little doggie…

The kindness I get from my dogs extends further.

Beautiful things remind me, too
Sunsets remind me of my dog

And so my loving kindness practice extends beyond my little self and into the universe, as inspired by my dogs.

May all beings be safe.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be healthy.
May all beings live with ease.
— Andrea G (and Savanna and Reece too!)

This week our sangha is practicing with the theme of Mindfulness of Emotions. I wanted to share my experience of mindfulness of emotions, particularly the practice of handling strong or painful emotions. When I first started practicing mindfulness meditation, I came across the instructions for how to handle painful emotions, mainly to remain focused on the experience in the body and not to get carried away by thinking. I would read these instructions in dharma books over and over again, and while I was reading, I would think, “Oh, of course, it sounds so easy and straightforward. Its common sense.”

However, my experience of painful emotions in the moment they were present was anything but easy and straightforward. Over and over again, I found it so difficult to practice dwelling in the body. Instead, I would continue thinking and feeding the emotions. The thinking mind would continue with the story or interpretation: “What is this? Where did it come from? What’s going to happen? What’s the cause of this? Maybe I’m feeling this way because…” and so on. If I could use an excuse, I would say that these habits of thinking were perhaps due to my training in formal education that encouraged my critical thinking and analyzing skills to solve problems. Needless to say, this thinking and continuing with the story would only aggravate the experience of the emotion.

It took quite a long time to learn how to stay grounded in the body in the present moment, not carried away by beliefs and interpretations about the past, or storylines or expectations about what’s going to happen in the future. When I finally did learn this skill to dwell in the body and let go of the story, I found it was an incredibly useful lesson. I distinctly remember thinking, “Wow! That sure took me a long time to learn that lesson. I must have read those instructions an emberassingly large number of times before I finally learned what it was telling me to do.” I hope by writing this I can encourage others to learn from my mistakes and take up the practice of skillfully handling painful emotions.

I would like to end with a metaphor from Thich Nhat Hanh of a tree during a storm:

 We are like a tree during a storm. If you look at the top of a tree, you may have the impression that the tree can be blown away or that the branches can be broken anytime, but if you direct your attention to the trunk of the tree and become aware that the tree is deeply rooted in the soil, then you see the solidity of the tree. The mind is the top of the tree, so don’t dwell there; bring your mind down to the trunk. The abdomen is the trunk, so stick to it, practice mindful, deep breathing, and after that the emotion will pass. When you have survived one emotion, you know that next time a strong emotion arises, you will survive again. But don’t wait for the next strong emotion to practice. It is important that you practice deep, mindful breathing every day.

– Thich Nhat Hanh, Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children

With metta,

Andrea D

A while back I was feeling particularly guilty and worthless because I wasn’t doing anything for the ‘poorest of the poor.’ I wasn’t doing enough for others.

When these feelings arise I know I’m in an old pattern that goes something like this. I want to do something big. (Some fame attached to this) Just picking up garbage or smiling at a cashier isn’t good enough. I have to do something big to fill up the big hole of unworthiness that I feel. My belief is that if I just accomplish something, dosomething, like Mother Theresa, then I will have earned my right to be here, to be a citizen, to be a human being. Then, I will be loveable. I have named this persona “Worthless Wanda.” Of course, no matter what I do, more will always be required. The hole is an endless pit and trying to fill it up is unhelpful.

The hole needs to heal over. It requires the balm of kindness and compassion. So, I recently spent all my meditation time doing Loving Kindness practice for myself. At first nothing was happening. Day after day, week, after week, I sent loving kindness to myself.

Then, one day I added up everything I am doing, especially in light of taking care of my mom who is 93 year old, (I’m an only child) and my support of our meditation teacher, and work in the Sangha, and taking a leadership role in another group to read and discuss a timely and inspiring book. Anyway, the loving kindness helped me to value what I am doing, instead of dismissing it as unimportant or insignificant. I feel differently now about myself and about what I am doing.

This doesn’t mean that Worthless Wanda is gone for good. No, she will knock on my door again with pamphlets from the church of self-sacrifice containing ‘shoulds’ and expectations. I will tell her, “I see you Wanda, but I’m sorry, I can’t stay for tea. I must run.”  Then, I’ll head straight to my meditation chair for metta practice.

l think this practice will lead to more compassion for myself and others. Who knows what effect that will have.

With metta,

Carol Kavanagh

This is jade…

Wednesday around 2 a.m. the moonlight through jade’s window was brilliant – even though it was only a quarter moon.

Passing by in the dark, what I first noticed was her shadow. At first it didn’t make sense – how could that be I wondered – it’s not a full moon tonight.

The moon was high enough in the sky that I had to get right up to the window next to jade and look upward. I looked back over my shoulder to be sure it really was jade’s shadow that I’d seen. Despite the proof, I still wasn’t sure.

Finished with trying to be logical, smiling, I asked jade if her shadow in the moon also brought her joy.

“Why else would I have wanted to show you this?” Ehipassiko had been her call to me from her secret place.*

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“…ehipassiko, which is an adjective formed from “come” and “see.”

… Some caution is, however, in order lest one think this means that we should trust our own experience above all. In fact, for the Buddha the typical “uninstructed worldling” is actually astonishingly deluded and the Dharma quite “against the stream” from his perspective. We get hopelessly confused in trying to see or interpret our own experience. For this reason the Buddha in the famous but often misquoted Kalama Sutta warns us not to base one’s understanding on one’s own thinking:

“… don’t go … by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability …”
http://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/growing-the-dharma-refuge-in-dharma-and-sangha/

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With mettā, and thanks to Jeanne for your inspiration.

* http://garthstevenson.com/music

With today being Valentine’s Day, it seemed appropriate to delve into the Real Happiness chapter on Mindfulness and Emotions.

In the section “Just Non-Do It”, Sharon recounts a story told by Chuang Tzu, about a man who didn’t like his shadow or footsteps, and tried to outrun them, until he finally dropped dead of exhaustion. The story says had he stopped in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared and the footsteps would cease as well.

Then Sharon reminds us:

Practicing mindfulness meditation is making the choice to be still – to step into the quiet shade instead of running away from difficult thoughts and feelings.

Running away from difficult thoughts and feelings is definitely something I do. (That’s why I went into engineering and work in IT – math and science seems much “cleaner” than these messy, sticky emotions.)

I remember one of the first times I tried meditation. A couple of years ago, I went to an introductory session a local teacher offered one evening. The teacher gave a little talk and then took us through a short body scan exercise. Feel my feet, hands, head, … Okay. Focus on breathing, … Okay. After some gentle instruction, the teacher stopped talking and let us sit in silence. I’m sure it was only a couple of minutes, but I remember being completely overwhelmed by the noise and activity that was going on in my head. I was definitely caught off guard. My expectation was for something relaxing, and the conflict between my expectations and my experience was anything but. Finally, the bell rang, and the teacher asked for feedback. Most people commented on how they felt peaceful and calm. That certainly wasn’t my experience…

It took me almost a year (and a change in jobs, and a relationship breakup), before I was willing to try meditation again.

I can’t say whether it was the changes in my life, or a different teacher, or the feeling that “I paid good money for this MBSR course, so I’m going to stick it out”, or the having the support of the group, but with time, I have been better able to find stillness in non-doing.

I learned the “RAIN” acronym in MBSR, and Sharon reiterates it in this chapter as well. It has helped me with these messy, sticky emotions and feelings. As a matter of fact, I practiced RAIN during my sit this morning. After I got started, I noticed my mind had jumped to reviewing an email I had received this morning…

• Recognize – what is happening right now?
  Well, I’m feeling confused. Conflicted. Torn.
• Accept (or Allow) – letting this feeling be
  Rather than jumping with my default of “let’s just think about something else”, I said to myself, “Okay, I’m feeling torn.”
• Investigate – how am I feeling this in my body
  Well, there’s a tug in my heart, a ball in my stomach. Maybe a flush in my face.
  Oh wait, that feeling of warmth in my face brings me to another layer – some shame. Investigate that…
• Non-identification – who I am is not what I am feeling/thinking

Having taken these steps, I had some space to deal with the conflicted emotions. I could make a better decision about how to respond.

Sharon also quotes from the poem “Keeping quiet” by Pablo Neruda. This passage really resonated with me today:

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves …
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

With warm wishes for your practice,
Andrea G

The more I practice mindfulness of the body, the more I realize that relaxing my body can be a pleasant and enjoyable experience. In fact, having a completely relaxed body can be a source of happiness for me. It sounds so simple, but it really is a difficult concept to put into practice daily!

I am so grateful that my mindfulness practice focuses on relaxing my body, or allowing my body to relax itself. When I am practicing formal meditation, or throughout my daily activities, I send the intention to let the tense muscles relax and release their tension. Relaxing my body has become part of my “sacred pause” practice, or stopping during my daily activities to take three mindful breaths, and relaxing my body on the out breath. I am trying to be more mindful during routine activities, like brushing my teeth, and relaxing my body is part of that practice. I also enjoy trying to relax while walking, so that instead of accumulating tension while I am walking somewhere I can actually arrive with a little bit less tension and tightness.

When I bring my mindfulness to my body, I allow my body to relax, and it feels really good! I often feel a sense of ease, and sometimes when I’m really relaxed I feel really happy.

This happiness might be a form of happiness as relief, that is, I am happy because I am relieved of something unpleasant. I am happy when my body relaxes because I am relieved of the discomfort of a tense body. The more I do these practices, the more I notice how much tension I carry throughout the day. This tension is there so much of the time, but below my level of awareness. As I write this, I stop to think, “Is it possible to not have that tension there in the first place? Wouldn’t that be more skillful and enjoyable? Or is this even possible to be completely free from tension all the time?”

Mindfulness can be a source of happiness when I can take delight in having a relaxed body. This is so important for me when I see how mindfulness is a source of happiness, and this source of happiness comes from within myself. What a radical concept! I don’t have to go anywhere to get it, I have it with me all the time, I just have to decide to use it. I don’t have to go anywhere to buy something to give me this happiness, but instead I can produce happiness on my own.

A meditation I have begun to take as my primary practice is relaxing my body. In the style of Thich Nhat Hanh’s guided meditations, it goes:

“Breathing in, I am aware of my entire body. Breathing out I release all the tension in my body.
Breathing in, aware of body. Breathing out, relaxing body.
Body…relax.”

With metta,

Andrea D

I get out of bed. I’m awake. I can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, so I’m conscious. But I’m not mindful. Mindfulness begins when I take my first drink of water for the day and know that I am drinking the water. I say “Ah.” I’m aware that I’m drinking water. To be mindful I have to be present to what’s going on. I have to have the intention of paying attention.

So, after my drink of water I step into the shower and before long I’m thinking and then I realize I’m thinking and then I say, “Ah, all this lovely water going to waste on just getting clean.” And I turn my mind to soap, washcloth, suds and water.

Finally I’m dressed and my husband and I sit for our meditation. Now things are a little more challenging. Somehow the body moving and the actions taken prior to sitting make being present off the cushion easier than on the cushion for me. But mindfulness on the cushion is just fine when I remember what I realized one day.

What I realized was that meditation was about thinking and coming back from thinking to anchor again with the breath, then watch or follow it, and then keep doing this over and over. I said, “Oh, so this is meditation! It’s not this blissful state of peace and light where I’m all zoned out and floating in a lovely white space.” Perhaps that happens sometimes for some people. For me, some days are more settled and peaceful than others, and yet, whatever happens is just fine.

After our meditation sit there is a ‘meditation hug’ my husband and I do. We hold each other for three breaths, with his arms around me and my arms around him.

Then there’s breakfast and that first sip of coffee which is so, well, ‘coffeeee.’ Mmmm!

After breakfast, in the bathroom, I’m thinking of my body parts and thanking them for their great functioning. “Thank you ureters. Thank you bladder and kidneys.”  “Thank you stomach for receiving and processing. Thank you intestines for processing and distributing. Thank you heart for beating so faithfully.”

This morning mindfulness lays the foundation for my day.

With metta,

Carol Kavanagh