Sunday, April 24, 2016

Idiot Compassion

This is a tough one for me. I've been working on compassion for a few weeks, and it seems to be working, but recently an obsession, a recurring pattern that has me on social media arguing for more compassion towards somebody than what the popular opinion supports.

Is this really compassion, or is this just my ego wanting to feel good about my compassion?  I suspect the later. My opinion has very little effect on this person's life, and very little effect on other people's opinion. So this week I really want to work on idiot compassion, the tendency to confuse compassion with ego gratification, overindulgence, pity and self-pity.

Where is the line, really, between gentleness and overindulgence, compassion and self-pity.  And how do I actively break this bad pattern?

I could start small.  And start with idiot compassion towards self. For instance, I'm trying to lose weight in the next few months, so that I can enjoy my running more. I am overweight because I use food to feed and distract myself from painful feelings. Maybe the task this week is to be on the watch for bad habits that I justify as self-comfort and nurturing. Overindulgence is not nurturing, it's simply another form of abuse.  

I can also look at how I practice idiot compassion towards my son, letting him off the hook for behaviours that are abusive because I feel sad or guilty about the life he's missing out on as a the only child of a single mother.

Wise compassion is honesty. It strengthens us. It doesn't weaken us.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Compassion for self

I'm in an angry and muddled place right now. Confusion. Caught in the middle of a teenage angst situation where I want to feel compassion for my son, but at the same time, I need to let him live the consequences of his decision. I'm never sure if I've prepared him well for life.  Often it doesn't feel like it. But my job now is to take care of myself. And my mind is all over the place.

Time, perhaps, to get back to basics. Open awareness.  Rest in it and listen to sound. Remember my basic goodness and Ben's basic goodness.

Begin again

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Gentleness

Mingyur Rinpoche write of three stages of meditatve experience: the waterfall, the river and the lake. I'm starting to understand the river.

This is a stage where thoughts don't get stuck. My sense of self is not entirely determined by the rush of memories and painful images and feelings. Because I can watch them slowly move through my nervous system, a natural gentleness and tenderness begins to emerge. Lovinkindness, not as an exercise or a concept but as a natural quailty of mind; the first of what in Buddhism is called The Four Immeasurable Qualities.

The challenge this week is to develop the skill of resting in this state of being without becoming over attached to it. I don't want to turn lovingkindness back into a concept.

I would love to turn this gentleness into a habit.  A habit that steps in when the other habits I'm trying to let go of--anger, envy, fear, pride--begin to overwhelm me.

The trick I discovered last week is to locate that part of me that still wants to be overwhelmed, that part of me that doesn't want to see what life could be, or could have been like if I'd lived with more gentleness. But if I can feel and live the gentleness, then I'm more likely to remember the gentleness of people who were more often than not harsh with me.  I can see how their harshness came out of fear, and misery and had very little to do with me. I can forgive fully, not for them, but for myself.  And maybe in doing so I can help them find the gentleness in their own hearts.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Wake up!

There is a place in my heart that wants suffering. That actually craves it.  I've buried under a lot of numbness, but the truth is I want to be hurt. I want to fail at relationships, at my dreams, even at my aspirations for happiness. I want the transgression. And I want the harsh cost of the transgression. This may be in large part why I'm a writer. Because I love the suffering.

But I also want to be free of this. I certainly don't want Ben to live like this.  And I wouldn't wish this endless cycle of dissatisfaction, shame and heartache on any one.

So how do I step out of this cycle. Maybe tonglen. Maybe think of all the people who crave misery, and choose habits and behaviours that loop them into it again and again. Love those people and feel the frustration of loving them and then realize that I am one of those people as well.

But don't just pray. Really feel the desire to be free. Know that it's in me to want more.  Be awake to that desire.

If I really want to awaken the world, I really have to want to be awake. I really have to be awake.