Living Beautifully – 3 – Why stir things up?

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here) 

Today we continue our book series, based on Pema Chodron’s recently published book, entitled, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change.  It’s one of her most pithy books!  There is also a great article in this month’s Tricycle magazine that includes some of the teachings from the book.

Most of you probably came here this morning for a little more peace and calm in your life.  But, I’m going to instead encourage you to stir things up a bit.  What?  Why not let sleeping dogs lie, as they say?   Aren't we trying to settle the dirt in the glass by stopping all the shaking up we normally do?  Anyone have the experience that when you first start to meditate, it becomes painfully clear how much thought is constantly arising?  If people don’t k now me, and I tell them that I teach meditation, many will shake their head in despair and say, “Oh, I tried meditating….I can’t do it….I think too much!”    I can relate to that experience!  I remember realizing that I have this very negative, naggy voice in my head, the voice that I realized was giving me a running critique of my choices in life.  A voice that was far more critical than I would ever be with another human being.  Meditation indeed often felt less peaceful at first instead of more!

Yes, we sit and just be aware, but sometimes that really is a little too painful or too difficult a place to start.  That is why we can also use some doing, like chanting and positive visualizations, to give us time to reflect, and to better understand what that voice is saying and why it is saying it, AND TO CHANGE WHAT THE VOICE SAYS.

Several years ago, I met a guy at the Temple, a man who was a ministerial student, who I immediately took a dislike to!  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something about him that just didn’t sit right with me.  At first, I thought it was my intuition—“I’m on to you, buster!”  When others would comment how nice he was, it would irritate me even more!  It took me six months to finally figure out what it was—I suddenly realized that he looked almost exactly like my sister’s first husband—no wonder I disliked the guy!  I had to admit that I wasn’t seeing him for who he really was.  I had to be able to hear the voice in my head, then reflect on what was really going on inside me, in order to remove the veil of my past experience that was not serving me in this situation.

FORGIVE & REMEMBER:  In addition to simply sitting in the silence with awareness, we take on these additional practices to identify then take the charge out of old memories and unskillful habits.  As Lama Surya Das says, to "forgive and remember" What does that mean?  I think there is this balance to be found between wallowing in our "story" about how we been done wrong and simple brushing it under the rug and pretending that nothing ever hurt us.  Not too loose and not too tight is the Buddhist middle way.  We practice finding the balance between these two extremes of clinging to and aversion from, to find a place where we can forgive and remember.  What did I learn?  What will I do differently in the future?  Then, we can practice letting go and moving on...even if it takes a few days or weeks, or months or years to more fully be able to let certain memories arise and simply fall away without the unskillful response and resistance that so often entangles us.

As a mother, I had many times when I did not do my best.  I had to examine those times when I was unskillful and selfish.  When I began to meditate and wake up a bit, I wanted to make amends for my unskillfulness, particularly with my daughter.  I wanted to give her the best that life had to offer--as I saw it.  One decision I made was to send her to an all-girls Catholic high school, after she had gone to public school up to that point in her schooling.  The Catholic high school had an outstanding curriculum, and I knew my daughter would benefit since she didn’t really like school.  Now, looking back, I understand that girls in Catholic schools have all grown up with each other, have gone to church with each other, and all know each other’s families…often are each other’s families…and here I was a Buddhist raising my daughter in this very progressive “church” called Unity.  Needless to say, my daughter was mortified at my decision to send her there, and fought me mightily for two years, confident that she would change my mind and get to go back to public school with her friends.

But, I held my ground, thinking it was the right thing to do.  After a couple of years, she settled in and tried to make new friends, which turned out to be a lot more difficult than she expected.  Never asked to parties, never included in weekend events—she had a tough go of it.  One Saturday afternoon, the girls finally invited her to go to the mall and offered to come pick her up.  She was delighted and excited!  She ran upstairs and primped for an hour getting her hair and clothes “just right”.   She came down into the kitchen so that she would be ready early for when they arrived.  A few minutes went by, then an hour, then…they never came.  She was deeply hurt and cried all night long.  As a mother, I was devastated—I was the one who had put her in this situation that caused my daughter this horrific pain.  It was such a painful memory for me that I couldn’t bear to mention it for many years afterward.

Years later, as my daughter blossomed into this fine young confident woman, we were talking about how she had so many great friends and how proud I was of who she had become.  I brought up that terrible day, so I could apologize for having put her through that.  She said that she had always considered it the best thing that could have happened to her.  “What????” I asked.   She said, “That day, I made a commitment to myself, that I would never be the one who made anyone else feel like that.”  Here is an example of the value in stirring things up, reflecting on what happens to us in life, and deciding for ourselves how to respond to each and every situation.  What did we learn?  What will we do differently in the future?

We can practice how to bring out the best in ourselves and in others.  We can rewire our brains to more naturally respond in loving, kind and compassion ways. One of these powerful practices are positive visualizations on the Four Boundless Qualities of Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity. It is said that if we practice these boundless qualities, it is possible to find Nirvanic peace amidst the Samsara of life. The Buddhist teachings encourage us to penetrate each moment of consciousness with the purifying flames of Awareness.