kindness

Publication Day! The Heart’s Awakening

Bodhipaksa
on practice
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The Heart's Awakening book cover

It’s always an interesting day when one of your books is published. It’s exciting. But you’re sending your inmost thoughts out into the world for other people to read and perhaps judge, and so sometimes it’s nerve-racking as well.

I felt rather tired for most of today, and I think it’s probably because of the emotions going on under the surface.

So far the reviews and comments have been very positive. Reading some of them made me well up. To know you’ve touched another person’s life and offered them something they’ve found helpful can open the heart.

Opening the heart is the theme of this book. It’s about the four Buddhist practices — although they’re really just human practices — called the brahma-viharas. This term is usually translated as “divine abidings” which sounds so elevated it’s almost out of sight. It could also be accurately rendered (and has been historically) as “the four best ways of living your life.”

I think that’s more down to earth and practical. Practicing the four best ways of living your life is a different kind of challenge. It’s the challenge not of transporting yourself to some exalted elsewhere, but of choosing over and over to be here in the best way you can.

And the best way we can be here is to be kind and compassionate to ourselves and others, and to see and appreciate our own and others’ goodness. These are the first three of the four best ways we can live our lives.

The fourth way is to refuse to leave any place in our hearts for hatred, contempt, or dismissal. Because our attempts to be kind, compassionate, and appreciative are always bound, at least sometimes, to fail. And so the fourth practice is to look closely at what the mind is doing that gives it permission to be unkind. It’s to see in what way we are refusing to see others’ nature as feeling beings who suffer just as we do, and who long for peace and happiness, just as we do.

The word “upekkha” — the fourth of the brahma-viharas — comes from a root that means “to look closely.” It’s usually rendered as “equanimity,” though: emotional balance. And that’s a part of it. But not all.

We try to be loving. But then other beings get under our skin and we react to them with ill will. To overcome this, we look more closely. For example, we see that all beings are impermanent. We see that they are all caught up in webs of conditioning, and are not fully responsible for their actions. We see that they all have the potential for awakening. This looking helps us to find our emotional balance again. But we don’t leave things there. From a place of equanimity we are free once again to return to being kind, compassionate, and appreciative.

Anyway, I aimed to make the book very practical. It’s in 108 short chapters, so that you can pick it up, read, reflect, and practice. And then repeat.

If any of this sounds at all interesting, the book is easy to get hold of. Here are a few links:

I hope you find it helpful!

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Self-love, self-kindness, and non-self

Bodhipaksa
on practice
3 Comments

A man's forearm and hand reach up to its reflection in a mirror. The image looks very like an oil painting.

Someone wrote to me recently and asked two questions, which boiled down to:

  1. Did the Buddha teach self-love?
  2. Is loving yourself contrary to seeing through the illusion of self?

There was a third question, but it was a little quirky, and so I’ll deal with it at the end.

First, I explained that these days I find the language of “self-love” unhelpful, mainly because the word “love” is so open to interpretation.

Self-kindness rather than self-love

I prefer to think in terms of self-kindness — that is, treating yourself with the same warmth, supportiveness, encouragement, and forgiveness you’d show to a dear friend.

The idea of “loving yourself” can be tricky. If you talk about “loving” parts of your personality that are harmful to yourself or others, this can imply that you approve of them.

But if you talk about being kind to them, that implication isn’t there. You can be kind toward someone without approving of what they do. Being kind toward harmful parts of yourself implies working patiently with them and not judging yourself harshly for having them.

The Buddha on self-kindness

The Buddha mostly talked about self-kindness implicitly, but there is one place he talks about it fairly explicitly. Talking about people who act skillfully, he said,

Even though they may say, ‘We aren’t dear to ourselves,’ still they are dear to themselves. Why is that? Of their own accord, they act toward themselves as a dear one would act toward a dear one; thus they are dear to themselves

He explains that acting toward yourself “as a dear one” means behaving ethically — that is, acting with regard to your own and others’ long-term happiness and well-being.

He contrasts this with people who say they are dear to themselves but who act unskillfully, thus heaping up future suffering for themselves. In other words they think they are being dear (kind) to themselves but they are acting like their own enemies.

So for the Buddha, the thing was to genuinely be kind to ourselves (that is, to treat ourselves as we would treat a dear one) by acting skillfully. That’s a pretty explicit acknowledgement of the principle that we should be kind to ourselves and treat ourselves as friends.

We’re kind to others if we’re kind to ourselves

We should treat ourselves as we would treat a friend, and treat all others as we would treat ourselves. And so we should think and act as follows:

I want to live and don’t want to die; I want to be happy and recoil from pain. Since this is so, if someone were to take my life, I wouldn’t like that. But others also want to live and don’t want to die; they want to be happy and recoil from pain. So if I were to take the life of someone else, they wouldn’t like that either. The thing that is disliked by me is also disliked by others. Since I dislike this thing, how can I inflict it on someone else?

The general principle is both clear and beautiful: “The thing that is disliked by me is also disliked by others. Since I dislike this thing, how can I inflict it on someone else?” It applies to all actions. And so, the Buddha applies this principle to other forms of behavior, such as stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and so on.

We could call this “self-love,” but I don’t, as I said, find that term very helpful. I think it’s better to say that we should be kind to ourselves — that is, we should treat ourselves in the same way as we would treat someone dear to us.

But no form of words, whether it be “self-kindness” or “self-love” is immune from misinterpretation. We have to understand that whatever we call it, “treating ourselves as dear” means acting skillfully, which means treating others as dear.

Dharma teachings work together

This mutuality of kindness for self and other is something the Buddha talked about in the Sedaka Sutta:

Looking after yourself, you look after others; and looking after others, you look after yourself. And how do you look after others by looking after yourself? By development, cultivation, and practice of meditation. And how do you look after yourself by looking after others? By acceptance, harmlessness, love, and sympathy.

One of the things about Dharma teachings is you can’t take just one of them and expect it to “work.” They’re designed to work together, synergistically. So “self-kindness” and “other-kindness” are mutually supportive. When I’m kind to myself that helps me be kinder to others. When I’m kind to others I’m helping myself, too.

Being kind is not being “nice”

One thing I think needs clarified, though, is that being kind to others is not the same as being “nice” to them, which is what people often do.

Being “nice” involves seeking approval from others. The assumption is: “If I act in the right way, others will like me and show me kindness.” It’s insincere, flawed, and ultimately selfish.

Niceness is what happens when we don’t have self-kindness, and so we try try to manipulate others into being kind to us in order to fill the void inside us. That void arises because we haven’t learned to be kind to ourselves. We don’t regard ourselves warmly, talk to ourselves encouragingly, and forgive ourselves when we’re not perfect. Because we don’t relate to ourselves kindly, we crave the kindness of others. Hence the manipulation.

Genuine self-kindness is when we respect ourselves, treat ourselves as we would a dear one, and have kindness and empathy for ourselves.  This naturally extends to others when we empathetically know that they are just the same as us: they want to be happy and they don’t want to suffer; their feelings are as real to them as ours are to us.

Self-kindness and non-self

My correspondent asked a third question:

The Buddha said to send metta/goodwill to all directions, but is towards oneself a direction? That would seem to be stationary, since you ARE yourself.

I replied that I thought this was an overly abstract way of seeing things that overlooks our actual experience.

My actual experience is, I perceive myself. Or at least I perceive various sensations, thoughts, feelings, and impulses that I collectively label “myself.”

This “myself” includes both perceiving and things that are perceived.

There is always an emotional tone to that perceiving. Someone can hate themselves — that is, they perceive themselves with disapproval. Someone can be kind to themselves, which means that they perceive themselves with gentleness, patience, supportiveness, and encouragement (as they would a dear friend).

So yes, I can have goodwill for myself. I can be kind to myself. When, in the final stage of lovingkindness practice, I “send” kindness in all directions, I’m simply letting my awareness be permeated by an attitude of empathy and kindness. I let my awareness permeate the world, which means I’m “sending” kindness everywhere. But I’m also permeating my own being with a kindly awareness, and so I’m “sending” kindness to myself. (Actually, there is no “sending” of anything. That’s just an imperfect metaphor.)

To say “you ARE yourself” is to treat yourself as a unified phenomenon — that is, as if you were a self. A true self (something completely unified) could not be in relation to itself. Rather, each of us is an amalgamation of various activities, processes, etc. That includes parts that can relate kindly, and parts that need to be related to kindly.

It’s because there is no unified self that we’re able to be kind to ourselves.

Bodhipaksa

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12 Ways to respond to unkindness with kindness

Bodhipaksa
on practice
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infographic: 12 WAYS TO RESPOND TO UNKINDNESS WITH KINDNESS UNDERSTAND THE SOURCE Unkind behavior often stems from the other person's struggles or insecurities. This can help you respond with empathy. RESPOND WITH EMPATHY show understanding and compassion, even if you disagree with the other person. MAINTAIN COMPOSURE Stay calm and do not to take unkind behavior personally. This allows you to respond thoughtfully rather than react emotionally. USE POSITIVE LANGUAGE Avoidneratis words constructive, positive communication. TAKE A DEEP BREATH Before responding, take a moment to breathe deeply, which can help regain composure. PRACTICE ACTIVE LISTENING Try to understand the other person's point of view without immediately jumping to conclusions. SET BOUNDARIES Kindness does not mean tolerating abuse or disrespect. Set clear boundaries when necessary. SEEK COMMON GROUND Find areas of agreement or shared interests as a foundation for positive interaction. OFFER HELP Sometimes, unkind behavior is a cry for help. Helping can be a powerful response. DO NOT RETALIATE Avoid the temptation to respond in kind. Retaliation only perpetuates the cycle of unkindness. PRACTICE FORGIVENESS Holding onto anger or resentment harms you more than it affects the other person. Forgiveness can be liberating. REFLECT AND LEARN After the interaction, reflect on what happened and consider ways to improve future responses.

I came across this on Mastodon (the BEST social media platform), shared by user Vee, and thought it was really useful. I haven’t been able to find out for sure where it’s from, but it seems to be from a company called HackingHR.

Here’s what it says:

UNDERSTAND THE SOURCE

Unkind behavior often stems from the other person’s struggles or insecurities. This can help you respond with empathy.

RESPOND WITH EMPATHY

Show understanding and compassion, even if you disagree with the other person.

MAINTAIN COMPOSURE

Stay calm and do not to take unkind behavior personally. This allows you to respond thoughtfully rather than react emotionally.

USE POSITIVE LANGUAGE

Avoid negative words and focus on constructive, positive communication.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH

Before responding, take a moment to breathe deeply, which can help regain composure.

PRACTICE ACTIVE LISTENING

Try to understand the other person’s point of view without immediately jumping to conclusions.

SET BOUNDARIES

Kindness does not mean tolerating abuse or disrespect. Set clear boundaries when necessary.

SEEK COMMON GROUND

Find areas of agreement or shared interests as a foundation for positive interaction.

OFFER HELP

Sometimes, unkind behavior is a cry for help. Helping can be a powerful response.

DO NOT RETALIATE

Avoid the temptation to respond in kind. Retaliation only perpetuates the cycle of unkindness.

PRACTICE FORGIVENESS

Holding onto anger or resentment harms you more than it affects the other person. Forgiveness can be liberating.

REFLECT AND LEARN

After the interaction, reflect on what happened and consider ways to improve future responses.

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A meditation for accepting aging

Bodhipaksa
on practice
2 Comments

A man's hand reaching out to touch its reflection in a mirror.

An elderly friend of mine once said to me, “Aging isn’t for sissies.” She was talking mainly about the physical difficulties of getting older, and especially the aches, pains, and difficulty in doing things that were formerly easy.

To add insult to injury, though, we often feel critical about our appearance as we age, as if it were a sign of weakness instead of an inevitable part of living. Getting older is not a personality defect; it’s an inherent part of being human.

The Buddha talked about aging a lot. He listed it as one of the descriptions of dukkha, which means suffering or unsatisfactoriness.

See also:

He also talked about youth as something we get intoxicated with. We become convinced when we’re young that we’re of a different nature from those who are old, forgetting that we’re all on a continuum. But because of this intoxication, which becomes a kind of addiction, we have difficulty accepting the fact of aging.

Today I led a meditation from in front of my bathroom mirror. I’m going to explain what i did, so that you can practice it as well.

To do this meditation you’ll have to be in a place where you can see yourself in a mirror. You should be able to see at least your face, but preferably your whole upper body. My bathroom mirror was ideal.

One thing that’s important but not obvious is that the place where you do this should be brightly illuminated. You don’t want to do this meditation in dim light, because looking for a prolonged period of time at your own face in a dark place can confuse your brain’s visual circuitry, leading to odd illusions. Let’s avoid that.

You could be sitting or standing depending on what’s convenient for you.

We’ll be meditating with the eyes open. And let the eyes be a little soft, by allowing the muscles supporting the eyes to be at rest.

You also shouldn’t stare, but should let there be a gentleness in your focus.

Also, don’t keep your eyes fixed on one spot. The image is your object of mindfulness, so let your eyes gently explore it.

With the eyes soft, notice the sensations of the breathing. And perhaps also seeing the rise and fall of the breath in the mirror.

And let your eyes be kind as well, remembering what it’s like to look with kindness, and reconnecting with that experience. And you might be able to see that kindness in your own eyes as you’re regarding your reflection.

Now, most of us judge our own appearance more harshly than we do the appearance of others. So we focus on blemishes, wrinkles, gray hair, and flesh that’s no longer as firm as it used to be. And we tend to judge those things.

When you see them in another person, they’re just part of that person’s appearance. They could have exactly the same blemishes and wrinkles and gray hairs and saggy parts as we have and we think they’re a beautiful person. We might love those features that they have.

So just see if you can appreciate the texture and the detail of your own appearance, without judgment, in the same kind and appreciative way that you would if this was another person you were seeing.

You can even drop in some words of appreciation. So seeing a wrinkle, a grey hair, or some other feature of the face, you can say to yourself:

“How beautiful that is! How beautiful is this sign of humanness!”

Repeat this a few times.

And you can say to yourself, to yourself as a whole now, not just talking to a feature as you did a little while ago:

“Aging is inherent in human life. May I meet aging with grace and dignity.”

Repeat this a few times.

“Aging is inherent in human life. May I meet aging with grace and dignity.

“Aging is inherent in human life. May I meet aging with grace and dignity.”

And there’s one more phrase I’d like to suggest, that we can say to ourselves. It’s

“May I support myself with kindness as I age.”

So repeat that a few times as well:

“May I support myself with kindness as I age. May I support myself with kindness as I age.”

And so you can just continue in this way for the rest of this period of practice, however long you’ve chosen to meditate for. Just keep regarding yourself with kind eyes, and be accepting and appreciative of signs of aging and other imperfections.

Guided Meditation

The following meditation is “Sitting With Bodhi”-style. This means that although the recording is ten minutes in length, you’re invited to continue for longer. I’d suggest that before you begin you set a timer for at least 15 minutes.

This recording is one of those I’ve recorded for Wildmind’s sponsors. If you’d like to find out more about what that means, click here.

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In lovingkindness practice, don’t look for love; look with love

Bodhipaksa
on practice
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mother looking lovingly at her baby

I remember one time, not long after I’d first learned to meditate, I was being guided through the lovingkindness (metta bhavana) meditation practice. And the instructor asked us to turn our attention to our hearts, to find the love there, and then to radiate that love to all beings.

Uh, oh! There was no love to be found in my heart! “Why is there no love in my heart?” I wondered “Is there something wrong with me? Maybe I’m a horrible person. I guess I must be,” I concluded!

Thus began a 20-minute spiral into despair and self-loathing. Probably not what the meditation instructor had in mind.

A few weeks later a friend described exactly the same thing happening to him. I’ve since heard the same story from others.

The central problem here is that we’re looking for the wrong thing, or at least we’re looking for it in the wrong place. We’re looking for some kind of feeling down there, in the body — in the heart, often, where we tend to experience feelings connected with love.

But we should be looking with love, not for love.

Kindness (Love) Is About How We Relate

In lovingkindness practice we’re trying to develop kindness. (You can call it “love” if you want. I’ll sometimes use “love” and sometimes say “kindness.”)

Kindness is an attitude. It’s a way of relating in which we value others’ well-being. You could say it’s a way of regarding or looking — looking with respect, cherishing, and support.

When we relate, regard, or look with kindness, pleasant, warm feelings arise. But those feelings are not themselves kindness. They’re physiological sensations. They’re feelings. They’re nice feelings, but they’re just feelings. They can be important because they help us to value kindness but they’re not kindness.

See also:

But they arise because we’re looking or relating with kindness. If we try to look for those feelings without first relating or looking with kindness (again, call it love if you want) we’re putting the cart before the horse. It’s possible we’ll find those pleasant feelings, but only if we’re relating with kindness already. Or if we’re on the verge of doing so.

Kindness or love (in the sense I’m using those words) are not simply feelings. They’re active desires (or volitions): we desire the well-being of another, for example. We want them to feel happy and at ease, which is why we treat them with kindness and respect, and don’t say hurtful things to them.

Recall Looking With Loving Eyes

When we’re cultivating lovingkindness, what’s much more effective is to connect with the experience of looking with love: of having kind eyes. We can do this by remembering what it’s like to look with love or kindness.

It doesn’t matter what the memory is of, as long as it’s a loving memory. It can be a memory of looking at a child, or a pet, or a lover. Take your pick,

When you recall something like that, you’ll notice that your eyes become permeated with the qualities of love: cherishing, valuing, warmth, softness, openness, gentleness, caring, and so on.

Actually it’s not just your eyes that become filled with those qualities, but your mind. And when you turn your mind toward an awareness of your own being, those qualities become directed toward yourself. You find you’re regarding yourself with warmth, care, cherishing, and so on. Turn your mind toward another person, and those qualities (which are permeating your mind) become directed toward that person.

Looking With Love Rather Than For Love

When we’re doing lovingkindness practice in this way we don’t need to look for love “down there” in the heart. We’re already looking with love from “up here.”

And now, if we bring our awareness to the heart, we may well find that there are warm feelings there too. And that’s great.

Skip the whole part about connecting with kindness, and you’re liable to find little or nothing going on, heart-wise.

If you find that the “loving eyes” thing isn’t working for you, it may well be because you’re unconsciously doing something that’s blocking kindness from arising.

Unblocking Our Love

So you can gently inquire: What could I do, right now, to show a little more kindness?

Maybe that means relaxing physically. Maybe it means smiling. Maybe it means relaxing mentally, so that we’re not trying too hard, not judging ourselves for “not being good enough.” Maybe it means allowing ourselves to be at ease and to be playful.

Let go of those barriers to love, and you’ll naturally become kinder.

Summing Up

In lovingkindness practice, it’s often not a very good idea to go looking for feelings of love in the heart. Start by recalling what it feels like in and around the eyes when you look with love. Then when you turn your attention elsewhere, those feelings are likely to follow, because it’s your attention itself that’s permeated with kindness.

If those feelings in and around the eyes don’t arise, or if they do but they vanish when you turn your attention toward yourself, gently ask yourself what you can do, right here, in this moment to be kinder. Let your attitude soften, and you’ll find you’ve become kinder. And that’s what the practice is about.

Love is not what we look for. It’s what we look with.

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Keeping the mind on track

Bodhipaksa
on practice
4 Comments

If you’re familiar with the way I teach meditation you’ll know that for many years one of the key things I’ve emphasized is having soft eyes.

“Soft eyes” means three things: letting the muscles around the eyes be relaxed; letting the focus within the eyes be soft; and being effortlessly receptive to whatever is arising in the entire visual field.

If we do those three things then the mind tends to become much quieter than usual, the body starts to relax, and the breathing starts to slow and deepen, so that it moves more into the belly.

And when we then turn our attention inward, to what’s arising in the body, then we’ll find that we can be aware of sensations arising from all over the body. The movements and ever-changing sensations of the breathing can be experienced all over the body. And the breathing then becomes a rich experience, so that the mind becomes calmer and remains that way for much longer than usual.

So this is a very easy way for us to take our meditation practice deeper. Rather than struggling, day after day, trying to fight through our distractedness in order to find a few moments of calm and concentration, we find that we can become calmer anytime, almost instantly.

And this usually works for me.

But sometimes it doesn’t! This is especially the case when I’m chronically tired, which has been happening over the last month or two. (Short version of the story: a new puppy we’ve adopted needs to go out to pee more than once during the night, and this is eating into the time I’d normally be asleep.)

So what to do?

What I’ve found helpful is to use a few phrases to help keep my mind on track.

  • “Soft eyes.” This is my reminder to let the eyes be soft. I say it just before I exhale.
  • “Body alive.” At the start of the next out-breath I’ll say this to myself, and as I breathe out I’ll notice the movements and sensations of the breathing, and particularly the warm, tingling sensations of my muscles as they relax. After saying the phrase I might simply observe the body for two to three breaths. Then I’ll say:
  • “Kind eyes.” This is my reminder to keep a sense of kindness and tenderness in the eyes. I say it just before I breathe out again. (If this practice of loving eyes isn’t something you’ve come across before, you might want to practice recalling what it’s like to look — at a beloved child, a pet, a lover, a friend, and so on — with love. Just notice the qualities of warmth and tenderness that arise in and around the eyes.)
  • “Meeting everything with tenderness.” As I exhale, I follow the sensations and movements of the breathing through the whole body, regarding everything that arises with kindness. Again I might continue to observe the body with kindness for two or three breaths, before once more starting the cycle of the phrases once again.

Distracted thinking directs our attention away from our immediate experience of the body, and into the world of imagination. The kind of thinking I’ve described in the list above instead directs our attention away from the would of the imagination and toward our immediate experience.

The timing of the phrases is crucial, and it’s something you’ll have to work out for yourself. If you repeat a phrase before every breath you’ll probably feel stifled, and your mind will feel too busy. You need to allow time for actually connecting with your experience, which means simply observing the sensations of the breathing rippling though the body — without you saying anything to yourself. So after saying the phrases “body alive” and “meeting everything with tenderness” you’ll find it helps to just stay with your experience of the breathing for something like two to three breaths, and maybe more.

How long is a matter of practicality. If you start to get distracted again, you need to tighten up the spacing of the phrases, leaving fewer breaths between them. If you feel things are going well, and you aren’t getting distracted, you might want to space the phrases out a bit more.

If things seem to be going really well, and you’re staying with the body without getting distracted, you might want to experiment with dropping the phrases “body alive” and “meeting everything with tenderness.” Just say “eyes soft” and “eyes kind” with a few “silent” breaths in between. How many is a practical matter—what works for you?

If you fall into a pattern of just repeating the phrases regularly in a mechanical way, you’ll find that it doesn’t work for long. Anything you do mechanically, you do unmindfully, and you’ll become distracted. So changing the frequency of the phrases and seeing what effect they have will help keep you alert, focused, and calm.

As part of this process of shaking things up, you can even change the order of the phrases. Sometimes I’ll say:

  • Soft eyes
  • Kind eyes
  • Body alive
  • Meeting everything with kindness

Again, I’ll play around with the number of “silent” breaths between these phrases to see what works best in keeping the mind quiet.

This practice is something I’ve integrating into my jhana teaching and practice. (See the “Letting Go Into Joy” course if you’re not familiar with what jhana is. But briefly, it’s the experience of meditative absorption.) In the first level of jhana there can be thinking present, and this seems to be one of the forms of thinking that is compatible with first jhana — thinking that directs us toward a deeper experience of the body.

Please do play around with these tools and let me know how it works for you.

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Four steps to self-empathy and self-kindness

Bodhipaksa
on practice
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Karina Vorozheeva on Unsplash

One thing that’s changed my life more than any other is the practice of self-empathy. Simply hearing the term for the first time was a revelation for me, since I immediately recognized that I wasn’t in fact empathetic toward myself. It had never even occurred to me to have empathy for myself. And this was despite the fact that I’d been, at that point, practicing lovingkindness meditation for more than two decades.

My lack of self-empathy showed itself in the way I could be down on myself when I was struggling. I took being unhappy as a sign of failure, as if I was meant to be happy all the time. At one point my not-very-conscious habit of self-blame led to me being overwhelmed by depression, since I was responding to feeling unhappy by making myself feel even more unhappy.

See also:

Over the years, I got better at being understanding toward and supportive of myself. In fact I now see the cultivation of self-empathy as an indispensable prerequisite for cultivating self-metta—kindness toward oneself. And since kindness for oneself is the basis of kindness for others, self-empathy is therefore the foundation of the entire practice of lovingkindness.

Probably the best way to explain self-empathy is to say how you can cultivate it. It’s easier to understand when you see it in action.

1. Recognize Yourself as a Feeling Being

So first, recognize that you’re a feeling being. You are wired to feel. You feelings are important to you. You can override them for a while, maybe even for a long time, but there will be a cost in terms of a diminished capacity to enjoy life, a sense of emotional brittleness, and difficulty in connecting with others in meaningful ways. It’s quite common for us to suppress an awareness of ourselves as feeling beings in the service of pursuing goals like work. Having self-empathy involves accepting that it’s OK to feel.

2. Sense Your Deepest Needs

Next, recognize that, deep down, you want to be happy and want to avoid suffering. This is an instinct that all sentient beings have, and it’s among our most primal instincts. Feelings have evolved as a way of helping us to survive by moving toward potential benefits and away from potential threats. We’re wired to do this, although again we can suppress or ignore those drives, and can see feelings as a source of weakness. Having self-empathy involves having a sensitivity to our emotional needs.

3. Understand That Life Is Challenging

It’s difficult to have our desires for wellbeing and to be free from suffering in a world where wellbeing is frequently elusive, and where various forms of suffering visit us all too commonly. Empathy can involve recognizing that we’re doing a difficult thing in being human. You’re not failing when you’re having a hard time, you’re just being human. You’ve been set up by your evolutionary past.

4. Offer Yourself Kindness and Support

Putting this all together, we start to think of it as natural for us to give ourselves support and encouragement as we encounter life’s inevitable difficulties. As the Rev. John Watson said in the 19th century, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” And who, out of this “everyone,” do you encounter most often?

That person is, of course, yourself.

We’re already offering ourselves a considerable amount of support just by empathizing with ourselves in this way, but there are many ways we can show ourselves kindness. For example I make a practice of talking o myself (usually internally) when I’m having a hard time. The standard lovingkindness phrases—things like “May I be well, may I be happy”—can be useful, but using natural language is even more so. So I might say something like “I know you’re anxious right now, but I’m here for you. We’ve been through this before and we’ve always come out the other side.”

Another way of showing kindness is to have a kindly inner gaze. Think of how you might look at a beloved sleeping child, or a dear pet, or at a lover (not when you’re sexually aroused, but when you’re feeling particularly loving toward them). Sense the qualities that arise in your gaze as you do these things. And then turn that same quality of attention inwards as you observe your own body and feelings. To look at ourselves with this kind of fondness, tenderness, and appreciation communicates a sense of being supported. And when we feel supported we’re better able to weather difficult times.

A third way to show ourselves kindness is through touch. Your first instinct when a loved one is experiencing grief or some other form of suffering may well be to hug them or place a hand on their arm or shoulder. I’ll often just place a hand on my heart. I might do this at the same time as I talk to myself and regard myself with kindness. This is all very sustaining.

Some people assume that developing self-compassion will make you soft. The opposite is the case. Research shows that individuals who have the best developed self-compassion skills are the most emotionally resilient. And learning to turn toward and accept painful feelings is challenging, to say the least.

What I’ve found over the years is that the more I’m able to be empathetic and kind with myself, the stronger is my empathy and kindness for others. Just as I want to be happy, so do others. Just as I want to be free from suffering, so do they. Just as I often need support as I go through life’s challenges, so also do they. And so this sense of empathy for others communicates itself as kindness, which may be expressed simply in the way we look at them, or in words, or touch, or in helpful actions.

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Sitting With Bodhi II

Bodhipaksa
on practice
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I invite you to join a new format of course that I pioneered a few weeks ago. It’s a different kind of meditation course with a new format.

It’s called Sitting With Bodhi.

The second series starts tomorrow, and the focus is on lovingkindness — although I prefer to call it simply “kindness.” It’s all about being more accepting and less harsh toward yourself and others.

It consists of 28 guided meditations which are 10 minutes long but open-ended; they get you started and then invite you to continue with the practice for as long as you want.

And you can work through these entirely at your own pace. Thanks to some kind of internet magic that I don’t pretend to understand, the next email isn’t sent out until the day after you’ve played the meditation in the previous one. So you don’t end up in that situation where you miss a couple of days and then despair because you realize you can’t catch up. Here the material is delivered completely at your pace.

And there are no readings at all! It’s just pure meditation.

I did a survey during the first course and 92% of respondents said they’d want to continue. And they offered comments like these:

  • “I learned more in the first 10 meditations than in the last 6 months. So many new ways to explore. My sitting is now so much interesting, with focus…i am excited about each sitting….i have one comment….Thank you Bodhi!”
  • “Starting with an intention of at least 10mins a day makes it easy to sit, and then sit for longer.”
  • “The meditations have helped my practice become more consistent, thank you.”
  • “I’m really enjoying the meditations. Thank you Bodhi for all your gentle guidance.”
  • “Thank you!! For all the work you’ve put into this. This course and knowing a new meditation will arrive each day has got me to my cushion again daily, which is such a relief and a joy.”

There’s an online discussion group for support, and I’ll also be doing two live online meditation sessions. If you can’t make it to those they’ll be recorded and archived for you.

Click here to find out a bit more or enroll.

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This simple tweak to the way you write emails might change your entire day

Bodhipaksa
on practice
5 Comments

How many emails do you write in the average day? I just did a quick count and yesterday alone it was 64! Many of the messages I write are business emails and don’t have a salutation or valediction, plunging straight into the message. But some of them start with “Dear (whoever)” or “Hi!” and end with a sign-off.

I usually end those kinds of emails with “Metta, Bodhipaksa.” Metta is the Buddhist word for kindness. It’s often translated as “lovingkindness,” although I think the word kindness works much better, mainly because it’s familiar and experiential.

So I was responding to someone who said he couldn’t attend a gathering today because of work, and I was signing off with “Metta, Bodhipaksa” when it occurred to me that I could actually connect with warmth and kindness toward the person I was writing with.

Normally those sign-offs are just a formality. I don’t really think about what I’m saying.

So instead of doing that I just paused for a few seconds and called to mind the person I was writing to. I simply remembered that he was a feeling human being, that he had joys and sorrows just as I do, and that those feelings are as important to him as mine are to me. A sense of warmth and kindness naturally arose as I did this. I still feel different, perhaps half an hour after writing doing this exercise, which literally took just a few seconds.

Incidentally, this is how I teach people the practice of cultivating metta/kindness — the meditation practice we call “metta bhavana” (bhavana just means cultivation). You don’t need to “try to be nice” (yuck!) or try to make anything happen. Kindness just arises naturally when we empathize with the facts that others feel, and that their feelings are as important to them as ours are to us.

So there’s a new practice for me; I’m going to pause every time I write, “With metta, Bodhipaksa” and empathize with the person I’m writing to.

I can’t believe it took 36 years of meditating to come up with that one…

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Be lived by love

Rick Hanson PhD
on practice
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Feeling both the world and myself these days, one phrase keeps calling: lived by love.
Explicitly, this means coming from love in a broad sense, from compassion, good intentions, self-control, warmth, finding what’s to like, caring, connecting, and kindness.

Implicitly, and more fundamentally, this practice means a relaxed opening into the love—in a very very broad sense—that is the actual nature of everything. Moment by moment, the world and the mind reliably carry you along.

This isn’t airy-fairy, it’s real. Our physical selves are woven in the tapestry of materiality, whose particles and energies never fail. The supplies—the light and air, the furniture and flowers—that are present this instant are here, available, whatever the future may hold. So too is the caring and goodwill that others have for you, and the momentum of your own accomplishments, and the healthy workings of your body. Meanwhile, your mind goes on being, while dependably weaving this thought, this sound, this moment of consciousness.

It’s hard to sustain a felt knowing of this nature of everything. The brain evolved to keep our ancestors afraid to keep them alive. But if you look, and look again, you can see directly that right now, and in every now you’re alive, you’re cradled by the world and the mind like a child carried to bed by her mother. This cradling is a kind of love, and when you trust it enough to soften and fall back into it, there’s an untangling of the knots of fear and separation. Then comes both an undoing of the craving that drives suffering and harm, and a freeing and fueling love living through you and as you out into the world.

Imagine a single day in which you were often—not continuously, not perfectly—lived by love. When I try this myself, the events of the day don’t change much—but my experience of them, and their effects, improve dramatically. Consider this as a practice for a day, a week—or the year altogether.

More widely, imagine a world in which many people, enough people—known and unknown, the low and the mighty—were lived by love. As our world teeters on the edge of a sword—and could tip either into realistic prosperity, justice, and peace, or into growing resource wars, despotism, or fundamentalism—it seems to me that it’s not just possible for a critical mass of human hearts to be lived by love. It’s necessary.

How? The essence of this practice is a yielding into all that lives you. This is a paradigm shift from the typical top-down, subtly contracted, moving-out-from-a-unified-center-of-view-and-action way of operating … to a relaxed receptive abiding, feeling supported by the ocean of causes creating each momentary wave of awareness. Then on this basis, there is an encouraging of love in all its forms to flow through you. The suggestions that follow are different ways to do this, and you can also find your own.

Soften and open in the heart. Notice that you are alright right now: listen to your body telling your brain that you are basically OK. Feel the fullness that is already here, all the perceptions and thoughts and feelings pop-pop-popping in this moment of consciousness. Feel the buoying currents of nature and life, waves of gifts from over 3 billion years of evolution on our blue and green pebble. Look around and see objects, including your own hands and body, and consider the unfailing generosity of the material realm, blossoming for over 12 billion years from a seed of light.

Be aware of the warmth and good will from others toward you. Sense your connecting to others, how you are supported by a net of relationships. They don’t have to be perfect. Some people do care about you. You are almost certainly loved.

Feel carried by consciousness, the effortless knowing of perception and thought. When stress, worry, pressure, or pain appear in the mind, see that the fabric of this suffering—the underlying operating of the mind—is itself fine, is always already fine.

Again and again making this little but profound shift, this giving over to the carrying cradling of mind and matter, you can afford to let your own love flow freely. Bring this down to earth: if you lived from love in your first encounter with another person today, how would you be, what would you do, how would you speak? What would a week, a year, be like in which you lived by love? How about trying this? Who knows, if enough people share in this practice, the world could become a much better place.

Let love’s currents glide you home.

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