The secret and science of compassion

I've been meditating for a long time, but there were many years, when I kind of kept this a secret  Mostly because I dreaded the question, why? Even if I was asked with genuine open curiosity what my motivation was for putting time aside every day for sitting quietly doing nothing,  I didn't really know how to explain why. This was especially true of compassion meditation. I felt very shy about volunteering the fact that I trained in becoming a  a more loving, and concerned person. Would people think I wasn't loving enough, or would they think I was being boastful about my goodness? 

Then I read Mingyur Rinpoche's book Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness. And I came across a line that really helped me have a better understanding and explanation for what I was doing.  He wrote that calm abiding meditation (the kind of meditation we do when we are meditating on breath, on a stable object, or in a natural, open awareness,  is like charging your mental and emotional batteries.  Compassion meditation (focussing on our innate desire to be free of suffering)  is the mental and emotional "technology" that uses the recharged batteries in a proper way. 

There was something so practical about this explanation. The reason why I meditated was simple. It made my brain stronger and it gave me the emotional tools to use that stronger brain to have an impact on my life and on other lives. 

Science supports this

Over the last twenty years there is an increasing amount of science to explain the mechanics behind the "technology" of compassion. For one, brain scans of advanced meditators show that compassion meditation, more than any other type of meditation activates and strengthens the part of the brain that produces dopamine, a chemical that manages motivation, learning, and motor control. 

Dopamine is involved when we act, but also when we don't act. People with addictive or obsessive personalies often have very high levels of dopamine and suffer alot when those levels start to drop.  People who suffer from Parkinson's disease have crititically low levels of dopamine, and so are unable to control their motor movements. 

Dopamine is very powerful. We can leverage it for learning, or we can leverage it to stay on a hedonistic treadmill. But we can also leverage it to motivate ourselves to more pro social and constructive behaviour, that creates well being for ourselves and people around us.  That's where compassion meditation comes in. 

Compassion meditation is really about recognizing this desire to be free from suffering, which is arguably our natural regulation system.  In doing this we train in harnessing and strengtheing our motivation and directing it to the right objectives and behaviours.

The power of compassion meditation 

Compassion is very powerful, so a couple of caveats before you start bingeing on it.

First, it's important to distinguish between compassion, the desire to be free from suffering, and empathy, the tendency to feel other people's pain. Empathy actually engages a different neural network, and if we spend too much of our time feeling other people's pain we can develop something called empathy fatigue.  When we spend too much time feeling other peoples stress and suffering, our bodies can actually take on this stress and the suffering and become increasingly depleted and demotivated. Compassion is not about feeling others suffering as much as it is feeling the desire to relieve the suffering. 

Though it's less likely to cause burnout, like all dopamine activitating behaviours, it needs to be balanced, with time to re-charge you batteries with practices like open awareness, or meditating on the breath. 

So feel free to explore its motivation charging qualities, but also feel free to take it slow.  

I would also recommend exploring the ways that compassion motivation and its dopamine management powers can also motivates us to not act. To not say and do things that cause suffering. 

In training in not doing, we're re-charging those dopamine levels. This is not about being passive, but about training in letting go of our tendency to act impulsively. By balancing calm abiding with compassion, what we're aspiring to is more effective behaviours that in the long run increase our drive because the rewards are ultimately more meaningful, more skilled and more rewarding. 

An interesting that that science is revealing is that compassion will change your brain more quickly and more significantly than any other practice. 

So compassion really is the great secret of meditation. 

But don't feel like you have to keep it a secret.

Compassion as technology

Krista Tipett TED talk on the launch of the Charter of Compassion.  Calling compassion "the technology we need." 

Post retreat

Slept well last night. First deep sleep in a while. Listening to YMR every night is a 2 minute habit I want to develop. 

I feel re-committed to the foundational practices. In particular I've found a new curiosity and interest about the third thought, the consequences of karma. 

I feel so clearly the positive results of extended mediation. Less action, less thought feels better. I feel like I have a wisdom body to rest in. 

But there are still emotional challenges. I'm going through a very stressful family situation. 

I feel the stress as empty lucidity vibrating through my body. I want to remember to add compassion to it.

Otherwise it's just old stale karmic imprints 

Self directed retreat

Alongside the empliness and clarity I tap into when I feel my self hatred, I have to recognize my innate compassion.

When I do this, I see how wise action can be triggered. 

Today I did a self-directed retreat in the foundational practices, the four thoughts, the three jewels, some guru yoga. I am supposed to do this before I do my next level of path of liberation. But I also need it because I'm facing a stressful situation with my family. 

Or maybe I'm facing the stressful situation because it's been such a long time since I did a full day of meditation.  My retreats recently have been mosty dharma talks with a few hours of meditation. 

At the end of the day today, I feel the impact. There were some times during the day when I felt the suffering. Particularly when I was contemplating karma. I felt deeply the results of bad actions and poor decisions, patterns of addiction I've had since childhood.  There was a full hour today when I felt like the embodiment of a hungry ghost. 

But this evening my belly feels full of strong magnetic vitality. 

I came across a concept today "joyful remorse." That seems like such a contradiction, but there is joy in seeing reality clearly, seeing where we are creating suffering with our automatic habits. 

There is also joy in seeing the wisest action we can take, preparing for rest. 

Compassion

 

Compassion means letting go of your self-identity, letting go of proving that identity all the time. Compassion means you work in the way the wind works, the sun works, or the air works. Take, for example, how the air assumes the shape of the room. The air does not say, “I will give you this breathing space provided you breathe the way I want.” Everyone enjoys the benefit of being able to breathe in the air. It is the same way with the sun: the sun does not stop shining when there are clouds in the sky. – Khandro Rinpoche

Pity and Compassion

The last couple of weeks, I've continued my work with emotions.

I've had a particularly difficult week, where I've had to really assess the difference between pity and compassion.  I have to let go of an employee at my non-profit, and I have to balance my pity for the situation she will be in, with my compassion for my fellow employees who have to deal with the destructive emotions she introduces to the workplace.

My practice has really helped. And staying close to the mechanisms that Mingyur Rinpoche teaches has helped especially. First I rest in basic awareness, free of all objects, like the image and imaginary conversations I continue to have with this person and my peers. Then I allow whatever I'm feeling to come up, let's say pity.  And then rather than focus on the object of the pity, I focus on the pity itself.  Slowly the pity and my emotional pattern of pity start to naturally deconstruct.

I've felt a few things. How pity is a substitute for genuine grief and sadness. And also how pity is a stumbling block on gratitude.  If I'm focused on what other people don't have, e.g. job skills, emotional control, insight, good judgment, I'm not able to be grateful for having these qualities or to be grateful and respectful to the people who have them.

Still, it's tough. I'm putting someone in the same place I was five years ago. Without work, without money, experiencing the consequences of work that isn't stable. I was able to pull myself together, and then some. I'm so much better off financially than I was back then. That job was a rut for me, and this job is a rut for this person. I know she will never advance here.

Encouraging her to leave, and giving her the opportunity to assess the consequences of her behaviour, is the path to compassion.  I have to have faith that she has it in her to turn her life around. I did, and she has the same essential qualities as I do.

Word of the year, gratitude.

Read a very interesting article in the New York Times about the impact of gratitude on self-control.
More important than grit, gratitude helps us to avoid temptation.  It's easier to say no when you feel full.

I decided yesterday to make gratitude my word of the year.  It's tough because my monkey mind prefers to believe that the only way I can have love, respect and connection is if I have those things that will make people love me. I can only have them if I want them, and if I stop wanting, where will my drive come from?

Well it could come from motivation, and it could come commitment. 

Today I read these wonderful words from Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He is candid about tulkus. They are susceptible to temptation and delusion as well. But they have an advantage.

"We're trained from a very early age to do the best we can to help others break through whatever ideas they learn and lead them to discover the spark with which they are born.  We're trained to love every living creature until he or she can love themselves.  Until every person on earth ceases to view one another as a threat or an enemy; until every person, in every job, every relationship, every encounter, can see the wonder, the beauty, and the potential in everyone with whom they come in contact. Until we show people how to let go of their stores, then fill within themselves the sense of disconnectedness, our job is not done."

That's plenty to want right there.

What I've learned from a decade of writing about stillness...

So, I've learned some things.

First that if you stand or sit still regularly for, on average, an hour or so a day--in one session, in shorter sessions, in a park or in a messy, cluttered room--you will change. Or maybe more accurately you will change back. You will recover a deep calm, and pleasurable sense of well being that is our birthright. For whatever reason, we unlearn it, but it is always there to re-connect with.

It has been my experience that this power transfers into other parts of my life, that it has given me the energy and cognitive tools to be a better parent, a better writer, a better activist, a better educator, and develop abilities I never realized I could have. It has slowly and surely lifted me out of poverty, and into a good, solid income. (To be frank, this journey has not been a cruise, but more of a white water kayak trip, often without a guide.  So I would never recommend meditation as the quick path to money.)

It is also my experience that calm, used well, is a motivating force, not a driving force.  I experience it, but I'm not addicted to it. Calm does not make me apathetic. It gives me the courage to feel more and do more. It protects me from the drives that would lead us to harm.

From the reliable and sustainable supply of calm and pleasure has come compassion, the desire to help others manage their displeasure and agitation and the build-up of suffering that comes from my desperation to escape the natural ebb and flow of sensation.


From this experience I've started to develop some beliefs.  But I recognize these as beliefs, not facts.

I believe...

That this is true for everyone, that it would be impossible for anyone taking the time to be still, every day, to not eventually recover the power and joy that arises out of stillness.  I may have beaten down a wider neurological path to it. But I have nothing that is not innate in anyone.

That compassion is our greatest tool. It is the fundamental technology that allows us to increase this well being for ourselves, for those around us, and if we get it right, to make this increase exponential.  The more and deeper calm we are capable of, the more it spreads to those we love, the more it comes back to us.

That the calm cultivated through meditation connects us to a palpable energy in the world. Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's the Tao, or Buddha nature, or the Holy Spirit or some other human attempt to describe it. This I don't know and I don't know if anyone will ever know. But I believe this deep and powerful calm gives us access to a kind of substance that has impact on our lives and on the world around us. And even if it doesn't exist, faith in this energy transforms us in powerful ways too important to discount as magical thinking.

And in this place of calm, we can cultivate perhaps the greatest and most liberating emotion of all, gratitude. If compassion is our best technology, then gratitude is our best magic.  Something happens in the grateful heart, a spark, a nudge, that over time becomes like compound interest.  Gratitude makes us wealthy because gratitude tells us we are wealthy.  Even in those moments when objectively we have nothing.

So at the end of this wonderful and ultimately lucky decade,  I feel tremendous gratitude.

I feel gratitude for gratitude, and above all for the fruits of stillness.

10 years

It's been ten years since I started this blog.

My life is different. Much better in some ways, much more challenging in others.  For the first time in my life, money is not an issue. I'm making ten times what I made when I wrote my first post. I have a great job as a director of a thriving non-profit. Meditation has helped me build the confidence and clarity it takes for this role.

I'm settling down from a whirlwind month, traveling across British Columbia, staying in hotels and eating airport food.  My lifestyle is not as healthy as it's been.  Trying to circle back to more sustained exercise, healthier food, earlier sleep.

This weekend I decided to do a self-directed retreat. Much sitting, some standing, and some napping. My spiritual energy is taking its proper place again. Awareness of awareness. The more I'm with that, the stronger my mind.

It's snowing out.  My son, now seventeen, is snoring away.  I could conceivably go out every morning at dawn. For six months.  And change.

What would I want to change?

I could still become more diligent with housework.  I could still be a more responsible parent.  It would be nice to finally finish a book.  I could become more values driven and goal-directed.  I could find a life partner.

But there is much that I wouldn't change.  Much that I am grateful for and want to build on. My meditation practice. Mingyur Rinpoche is coming to Montreal in June. I would love to meet him.  And maybe I will.

I am reading his brother Tsoknyi' Rinpoche's book Open Heart, Open Mind during this retreat.  If I take away one insight, it is this:  It is not the job of others to earn my trust. It is my job to maintain my faith in them.  People need to keep believing in themselves, and if I can help them discover that spark, I've had an impact.

My greatest power is faith, the ability to get up, despite all the indignities and faults and broken commitments, and keep at it.  Keep at something.  This is how I keep my life an adventure, not a trap.

This is how I open the door every morning and step out.

How To Be Comfortable With Everyone

Didn't get around to writing anything this week, but came across this inspiring post by Shinzen Young. So I'm reposting to keep it in the archives. 

How To Be Comfortable With Everyone

It’s very common for people on a meditative or spiritual path to develop a kind of sensitivity to the poison and pain of others. Sometimes it’s formulated with the phrase “I pick up all this negativity.” Sometimes it’s formulated with the phrase“People drain my energy.” A closely related perception runs something like this: “Now that I've developed some spiritual maturity, I find it difficult to relate to old friends/family/ordinary people; they so cluelessly cause themselves unneeded suffering; I no longer have much in common with them.”

Regarding such sentiments, there are several things to keep in mind. First: They represent a temporary stage that the practitioner eventually grows out of. Second: When you do grow out of it, it’s replaced by its exact opposite: the more clueless and messed up people are, the more you enjoy being around them. You can make the transition from that temporary stage to its opposite by realizing this:

When we’re around other people, we pick up on where they’re at. If they’re in a bad place, we pick up on that. One might refer to that as exogenous discomfort. It's discomfort whose origin (genesis) is from the outside (exo), i.e., you’re feeling uncomfortable because of what is going on in someone else. The term exogenous contrasts with the term endogenous. Endogenous discomfort is discomfort due to our own stuff. The main point to remember is that the discomfort, endogenous or exogenous, typically comes up as some combination of mental image, mental talk, and emotional body sensation. To the extent that one can experience that sensory arising completely, to that extent it does not cause suffering. It doesn't matter one wit whether the source of suffering is exogenous or endogenous or some combination of both. By “experience it completely” I simply mean experience it mindfully, i.e., experience it in a state of concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity.

When the discomfort is endogenous and you experience it very mindfully, it doesn’t cause much suffering, it “tastes” like you’re being purified. When the discomfort is exogenous and you experience it very mindfully, not only does it not cause suffering, but it tastes like you and the other person both are being purified. In other words, how your consciousness processes another’s pain subtly teaches that person’s consciousness to do the same. The other person may not be aware that’s happening, but you’re aware of it. You’re aware that you are nourishing that person, and that subtly nurtures you. That’s why you eventually come to enjoy being around clueless messed up people. Paraphrasing the Blues Brothers, you’re “on a secret mission from God.” You walk through life like a giant air filter picking up the psychospheric pollution and automatically processing it, extracting from it energy and then radiating that energy as positivity. You know your job and you love it: recycling the karmic trash.

By Kevin B

Needless to say, it may take a while to work up to this, but everyone on a path should aspire to this perspective.

This situation contrasts in an interesting way with the goals of psychology. In certain therapeutic approaches, the goal is to get the client to the point where they can distinguish “what’s me” from “what’s them.” In contemplative-based spirituality, the goal is to get to the point where you no longer care about that distinction!

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.

unlocked

Tibetan Buddhism believes that the main cause of suffering is "grasping." It's a word that brings up a lot of associations, desire, tension, desperation. As I become more senstive to the inner workings of my mind and my body, I notice more the subtle pervasive grasping in my body, and part of my brain that feel like white knuckle. This feeling of deep and ingrained tension has become over the course of my life a normal way of being.

Last week the solution to this problem seemed so simple.  Lock in to those parts of my brain that bring relaxation, the pitutary gland that may be the "third eye," that place in my heart that wants freedom from suffering that may be the pump to a well of oxitocin, the place in my gut that keeps the serotonin dripping.

But this morning I began to feel in my meditation that this might just be another form of grasping. If I were going to put this in the language of programming, there needs to be a base case. We can't just live in an infinte loop of feel good. Can we? And would we want to, if we could.  Isn't that just the other side of the suffering habit. It's just habit.

it's so important to develop the skill of unlocking. Of just being with whatever shows up, the joy, the peace, the suffering, the tension. The fear of the worst that may or may not happen.

So this week, as I continue to practice compassion for a loved one, I will also practice unlocking everything, along with my heart.

The Pond

This week I have the most perfect meditation spot I may ever have in my life. Peter Pond is outside my bedroom deck, where I have a view of the sunrise over both the ocean and a placid, mirror still pond.

I need it.  My family situation is as always unstable, drinking, fighting, the usual.  But I've made progress since last year. The fights are more like sudden storms, than bitter weeks of winter. This may be because I've given up the evening cocktails and wine with dinner. I'm running more, eating better, physical energy translates into emotional energy.  It may also be because my meditation is longer.  And I suspect it's been because I've been rooting myself in compassion meditation.

What would it be like to have lived my life with no insight into my emotional suffering? Or into the suffering that I cause others? I still spend much of my life blindly chasing after distractions that I think will bring me happiness, but at best bring me temporary relief from suffering.  But at least I know this. So many people go through their lives with no idea. Just following the recipe society gives them with no questions. And then at the end of their lives, they are physically and emotionally tired and confused, unable to communicate with the people whose love they desperately need. Unable to feel real compassion for themselves and others.

I don't just have this pond.  I have the capacity to see the astonishing gift that this pond is.  I have the ability to find joy in this pond. I have all I need to be happy, no matter whatever happens in my life. I'm good.

Suffering and the Causes of Suffering

Yesterday I did a mini-retreat at Tergar.

We did more talking than meditating. But we flirted with the possibility of doing a silent retreat, a Friday overnight and all day Saturday until dinnertime.

In our last meditation session, we recited the compassion and loving kindness mantras:

May I be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. 

May I have happiness and the causes of happiness. 

I realized that while I was feeling the desire to be free of suffering, I was feeling a certain numbness when I thought of the causes of suffering. When I brought this up Minjur leapt on it. Breaking through to a clear understanding of the causes of suffering is a tipping point. Though she clearly stressed the mental causes, over the external causes.

Earlier in the day Johann gave us each a gift. A prayer Mala.

This week I will use it often, praying to be free of the causes of suffering. Praying to be conscious of them and free of them.

Self Compassion

One of the blocks to my mission to cultivate wellbeing, is that I doubt myself.  I am still, too often, plagued by the certainty that I can't take care of myself and my son. That one day reality will catch up with me and I will have to face the truth, that I'm a fraud and a fool.  All will be revealed.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Tergar mini-retreat and we explored the practice of self-compassion. I've been listening to a guided meditation that prompts me to aspire to safety, peace, kindness towards myself and acceptance of myself.

But one thing that I read in Joy of Living struck me as very true.  Compassion is a powerful practice.  And as a powerful practice, it can spark a powerful reaction.  Rinpoche recommends that when practicing compassion, it's always best to start small, a minute of two of compassion, alternated with a minute of open, effortless awareness.  This helps smooth the path, and dampen any tendency to reactivity.

This morning in my practice I reached a different perspective on my mission.  Yes "I" want to cultivate well-being.  But really the mission is also to let go and allow well-being to cultivate me.  Not comfort, but the energy that arises from a life well lived. The more of this energy in my life, the less "I" there is to doubt.  Self compassion is often compassion for the delusion that there is this isolated, vulnerable "I".

That's why it's very important that self-compassion isn't self pity. And important that self-compassion is layered with open awareness, so that we get that little break from self-cultivation.  So that the energy that we do believe in washes aways the doubt that keeps us in the self-looping cage.