Susan Piver's Blog, page 14

The Four Immeasurables: Sympathetic Joy

Audio-only version is here.
Meditation practice begins at 9:28

Dear Open Heart Project,

Hello, my friends. I hope you are staying strong and feeling well.

This week, we review the third of the four immeasurable qualities: sympathetic joy. We’ve already spoken about the first two: Loving kindness and Compassion. Next week, we’ll look at the fourth, equanimity. I know we could all use some of that. <3

Who or what brings you joy?

Love, Susan

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The Four Immeasurables: Compassion

Audio-only version is here.
Meditation practice begins at 6:30

Hello you wonderful person,

This week we continue our exploration of the Four Immeasurables, those four qualities we each possess without end. Last week, we discussed the first, loving kindness. Please click on this video for thoughts on the second immeasurable quality, compassion.

Where do you see compassion in your meditation practice?

Love, Susan

P.S. I have a new 4-week course starting in September focusing on The Heart Sutra and The Power of the Feminine. You can find the details here.

 

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The Four Immeasurables: Lovingkindness

Audio-only version is here.
Meditation practice begins at 13:00

Hello there,

I hope you are well. This week begins a four-part series to examine the Four Immeasurables, those four qualities that can help us right the balance of our inner, outer, and secret worlds. Please have a listen to this week’s talk on the first, Lovingkindness.

As you know, these meditations are free. Please forward to anyone you know who may benefit.

Do you practice Lovingkindness meditation? I’d love to know why you do or do not.

Love, Susan

P.S. Loving Kindness Meditation link here.

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On attention

Hello Open Heart Project,

Seth Godin, the marketing genius, writer, teacher, and all-around awesome person is one of my idols. I receive his blog posts every day and, although our topics are different, in many ways I model my work on his for its clarity, usefulness, and soulfulness.

He wrote a wonderful post about how empathy is the most important component of strategic marketing. If we can’t see the world through our customer’s eyes, understand what motivates them to act, have insight into why they make the decisions they do, our efforts to connect with them may be clumsy and dense.

What he writes about easily applies to the world of relationships altogether, whether they take place on the sales floor or around your kitchen table.

In both cases, the ability to connect genuinely is paramount.

The way to connect genuinely is to let your preconceptions and judgments about a person go, open your mind and heart to them, and see them.

Meditation teaches us how to let go of concept and open again and again to the present moment.

By the way, his most recent book, Song of Significance, is truly wonderful.

It’s as if we are all walking around with a movie playing inside our heads—an endless repeating loop that runs the story of who we are and what life is like, what we expect and what we fear. Imagine a lens stuck right in the middle of your forehead and everywhere you turn, your movie is projected onto the environment. Whoever walks through your set is cast in a role. Some people are extras, some are supporting characters, others may take on leading roles. Occasionally we fire the director or hire a new screenwriter, but basically there is this sense of narrative, based on—what? Well, who knows. Probably some combination of personal history, cultural bias, soap operas and eons of karma.

People can tell when they’ve lost dimension in your eyes and are seen mainly as characters in your drama, no matter how beautifully cast. I tell you, they do not care for it. And we all know exactly what it feels like to be in their shoes—to be seen as a label or category. Awful.

It might even be said that this—the inability to open our eyes to see others without an overlay of concept—is not only at the heart of inelegant marketing but also of everything from bad first dates to failed peace negotiations. I am totally not exaggerating.

It is certainly at the heart of our difficulties in love. If we can only see our ideas about a person rather than the person himself, what do we mean when we say, “I love you?”

There are two tools that have helped me in a very profound way to open my eyes and heart to others.

The first, of course, is meditation. It’s amazing that this very, very simple technique of placing attention on breath, noticing thought, and letting it go has revolutionized my relationships.

When we practice letting thoughts go to return to breath, we are practicing letting go of concept to come back to the present moment. After all, our breath can only be in the present. There is no such thing as connecting with a breath in the past or future. This comes in so handy with other people, when we can let go of our ideas, hopes, and fears about them to instead place our attention on them. (People tend to love this, btw.)

The Zen priest and poet John Tarrant Roshi said, “Attention is the most basic form of love. Through it we bless and are blessed.” I try to work this into every conversation because it is just that meaningful and true. If attention is the basic form of love and meditation practice is working with attention, well, there you have it. When we practice meditation, we practice love.

The second tool is called the Enneagram. Anyone who has known me for longer than, say, 10 seconds, knows that after Tarrant Roshi’s quote on attention, this is the topic I am next most likely to work into conversation. It’s for your own good, people!! The Enneagram is called a system of personality typing, but saying so is like saying that John Coltrane was a sax player. It just goes way beyond that.

The Enneagram describes nine personality types and, yes, you are one of them. So am I. But it is not about ghettoizing people and being all, “oh you’re a two, you hate your own needs,” or “you’re an eight, you’re going to try to boss me around,” it’s about being able to see the world from another’s point of view.

The Enneagram describes 9 patterns of placement of attention. When the 9 types walk into a room, 9 different things will get their attention. In conversation, 9 different things will matter to them. This is very useful information to know. In fact, it is beyond useful because when you know your own type, you can see how you are different than others and stop faulting them (and yourself) for seeing the world in a different way. When you know another’s type, you can stop holding them to your particular standards.

So, for me, meditation practice is absolutely the foundation. Without it, I would have no idea how to pay attention to anything but my own internal chatter, which, though sometimes amusing, is often quite irrelevant. But the Enneagram has been my primary tool for taking the fruits of meditation—the ability to pay attention—out into my world of relationships, work, creative pursuits, and so on. I use the Enneagram every single day of my life and have for the 15 or so years I’ve studied it. I use it to communicate more clearly by improving my timing, choosing the right words, and then being able to let go of my expectations of what a proper response should look like and actually listen instead. People tend to love this, too. Plus it’s just way more efficacious and cuts out a lot of useless drama. (Which I tend to love.)

How has understanding another person’s point of view changed your relationship with that person? I’d love to hear from you.

Warmly, Susan

PS: To go deeper into practicing with both meditation and the enneagram, I’m teaching an in-person retreat in Austin, Texas from 11-15 October 2023. You’ll find the details here. I’d love to practice with you.

PPS: T0 learn meditation and receive ongoing support, join the Open Heart Project sangha.

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What is True Confidence?

It often happens that I wake up completely devoid of self-confidence. I have no idea when or why this is going to happen. It drives me mad. I sit down to write and some inner Miss Thing tells me I have nothing of interest to say. I want to call a friend but Miss Things says, oh she has no interest in talking to you. I want to ask a colleague to collaborate with me on something and she pops up with Ha! He is busy with way more interesting people and would have to find a nice way to blow you off. Uncomfortable. Better go back to playing Wordle. Trolling Instagram for the perfect whatever. Rechecking email for the 11ty thousandth time.

I procrastinate. I fight with myself. I develop many theories for why I lack confidence and which strategy to employ to combat it.

Then I remember something very important. I’m a Buddhist. I know exactly what to do, and it has nothing to do with self-analysis or strategizing, although at the right time (meaning a time I feel confident), such things can be enormously fruitful.  But my practice has taught me to do something else instead, and that something is quite radical.

Relax.

Yes, relax. Don’t fight or give in, just slow down with it all. Relaxing here doesn’t mean spacing out or even finding some way to rid yourself of the offending negativity. Instead, it means to allow it. Invite it, even.

When you relax with your lack of confidence, something funny happens. You develop confidence. Not because you manage to convince Miss Thing that hey I really AM OK, shut up you, but because you see beyond a shadow of a doubt that no matter what is going on, you can open to it, feel it, allow it—and remain complete.

Instead of sitting down to tea with Miss Thing and arguing about your merits (and PS, Miss Thing will always win, even when she loses—it’s the engagement that signifies loss), you see that this particular table is one of many in an enormous restaurant. Some tables are empty, others host raucous parties, lonely gentlemen, bored colleagues, sobbing sisters, laughing lovers, and so on. Instead of identifying with any particular patron, you see yourself as the Head Chef, who delights in cooking something nourishing for each one.

OK, I’m not going to belabor this silly metaphor any longer. I’ll go to a more traditionally dharmic metaphor. Dharma teachers often suggest considering your thoughts to be like clouds in the sky. Some are dark and stormy, some are beautiful and fat, while others are wispy and ethereal. Sometimes there are no clouds at all. No matter. Just like clouds in the sky, thoughts pass through your mind. And just like the sky, your mind can contain it all.

We are accustomed to identifying with every large or small thought that comes along. But you can train in identifying as the sky instead. When you do, tremendous confidence arises. You see beyond doubt that you can accommodate it all—sunshine, storms, mist, fog, hail—and never give up.

What could be a better definition of confidence than this?

Confidence doesn’t mean feeling you can handle any situation without flinching, or speaking your mind at all times without giving it a second thought. It doesn’t mean thinking well of yourself or feeling certain that your way is the best way. In fact, as your confidence goes up, so do your tenderness and receptivity. Without vulnerability, confidence is mere arrogance. Without confidence, vulnerability has no intelligence.

Meditation trains you in exactly this way, to be with everything that arises, not to avoid experiencing it, but to accept it all fully and without fear. Through it, you see that confidence and vulnerability are synonymous. Who knew.

Someone once said: “Confidence is the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”

Oh, crap. I said that. In a book. I still forget it all the time.

Time to get back to the cushion.

When have you experienced true confidence?

Warmly,

Susan

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Is it even possible to let go of my ego?

 

Hello Open Heart Project,

As a Buddhist teacher and someone with a lifelong interest in spirituality, I have attended my share of, well, interesting gatherings. From months-long meditation retreats where the vast and profound dharma is practiced, to sweaty evenings of devotional chanting, to workshops on using Sacred Geometry to attract love, to cocktail parties where sage is burned to prevent hangovers, to business meetings about marketing spirituality…I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a lot of what we in the west do to connect with our inner lives.

One concept that seems to come up in every setting is that of “ego.” At meditation retreats, we’re taught that clinging to ego prevents liberation from suffering. Devotional chanting is said to dissolve ego. Ego stands between us and love, causes health problems, and if only we could get past our egos in business, we could sell the crap out of whatever we want. (BTW, I’ve been in more than one business meeting where “let go of your ego” was used to mean, “I think what you just said is stupid and I don’t want to do it.” But I digress.)

Ego, then, is very powerful indeed.

What is it??

As a meditation teacher, I have heard many questions and ideas about ego. As a meditation student, I have my own share of questions and ideas. However, what I notice in both my students and myself is that we wield the notion of ego as a weapon of shame and unworthiness.

If we didn’t have such a big ego, our feelings wouldn’t be hurt by rejection.

We wouldn’t crumble in despair when our plans don’t work out.

We wouldn’t wish to be treated thoughtfully, as important beings who matter; in fact, whether or not we mattered to anyone wouldn’t matter at all if we didn’t have an ego.

When we are yelled at, we would not yell back, we could live without love, and when someone dies, we might suffer, but only reasonably and for a short time.

The truth is, I don’t quite know what ego means. Great sages and adepts have written profound texts and offered powerful practices on the topic and I urge you to explore them. I just know it doesn’t mean anything about you being too full of yourself and undeserving of care. When we use “ego” as a way of making ourselves or others feel bad, a red flag should go up.

Rather than a reminder of our un-deservingness, we could see our ego as that part of ourselves that is most deeply wounded and confused. Ego arises, perhaps, from doubt in our basic goodness rather than misplaced certainty in it.

When we are convinced of our worthiness, there is nothing to prove. When we can rest in our true nature, there is no unrest. When we know that all beings are similarly good at the core, we construct our lives to invite rather than defend.

In this sense, ego is evidence of our fragility. Rather than trying to root it out to become “good people” who have no desires or preferences, we could hold it in the cradle of loving kindness. Rather than a reason to abandon ourselves, it could be cause to care even more deeply about ourselves and this precious experience of being alive.

What would it look like to not see your “ego” as a reason to belittle or criticize yourself? I’d love to hear what you think.

Warmly,

Susan

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Protected: Rain of Blessings (How to Practice if You Received the Lung Live)

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Meditation and Fearlessness

In the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, we say that meditation trains us to be warriors in our lives—fearless, open hearted, and genuine. Today I want to talk about fearlessness and its connection to meditation practice and I’ll start out by relating a story I heard Pema Chödrön tell in one of her books. It is about her teacher, the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, which is the lineage I practice in: the Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Trungpa Rinpoche and some attendants were approaching a monastery on foot and for some reason no one was there to greet them. A large guard dog, a mastiff, protected the entrance to the monastery and apparently he was snapping and fierce, frothing at the mouth, straining to get at them. At some point, the dog actually broke free and began to run toward them. Understandably, the attendants began to run the other way. Chögyam Trungpa started to run, too—right at the dog. At this point, the dog became afraid. He stopped. He looked at Trungpa Rinpoche. He turned and went the other direction.

So this is a great lesson in how we train in fearlessness. We all have such giant mastiffs in our lives—whether they take the shape of financial fears, relationship woes, basic survival concerns, or simpler things like being afraid to ask for a raise or worrying that we will fail a test or just have too many emails to answer and people might be mad at us. (OK, I’ll claim that last one, but I’m sure I’m not alone.) What would our version of running at the dog look like?

It’s tempting to think that this means we need to DO something and, well, perhaps we do. But this is not necessarily the warrior’s approach. The way we face our fears is by first and foremost feeling them without trying to banish them or crank them up. Allow them. Open to them. Not to embrace or coddle them, but because we are not afraid to be afraid. A warrior is one who is not afraid of himself. We don’t hide from ourselves and there is a continuous commitment to giving up all our hiding places, even—especially—spirituality. Chögyam Trungpa writes in his wonderful book, Smile at Fear:

If you are afraid of seeing yourself, you may use spirituality or religion as way of looking at yourself without seeing anything about yourself at all. When people are embarrassed by themselves, there is no fearlessness involved. However, if someone is willing to look at the self, to explore and practice wakefulness on the spot, they are a warrior.

Of course our meditation practice IS exactly this practice—of seeing ourselves. So don’t think it has to involve grand gestures or the breaking down of barriers or any kind of giant leap. It is simply what we are about to do: sit, turn toward our experience, and allow ourselves to be exactly who we are. We don’t know what we’re going to see. We may be delighted. We may be terrified. Most likely, we will simply be bored. It’s all OK. It’s the willingness to face ourselves that is the ultra-important starting point.

When we are not afraid of our capacity to love, we discover the depth of our compassion. When we are not afraid of our fear, we discover our unending capacity for warriorship. You can do this. If you’ve meditated, in fact, you already have. As we go forward in our practice today, know that on one hand we are simply sitting on the earth and breathing. But on the other, we are cultivating a kind of bravery that has no end.

If you’re seeking a supportive community for your meditation practice, I invite you to join the Open Heart Project sangha. We’d love to sit with you and discover warriorship together.

Warmly,

Susan

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The Spiritual Path: Part Three

Audio-only version is here.
Meditation practice begins at 17:44.

Dear Open Heart Project,

Hello and welcome to video #3 in this series on the three steps, or yanas, of the spiritual path. Today we discuss the third step. (If you missed the first two or would like a refresher, the first video is here and the second video is here.

While the first step focused on stabilizing your personal situation (and practice), the second step is about the heart opening that ensues organically. The third step is about realizing that the world you live in is sacred.

What moments in your life have been clearly sacred to you?

Love, Susan

PS: This video mentions the fascinating work into the sacred through the 5 Buddha Families as interpreted through works of art by Kevin Townley in his book Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again: Buddhist Wisdom Reflected in 26 Artists.

PPS: If you would like a supportive community with whom you can deepen your practice, you’re always welcome to join the Open Heart Project sangha. We’d love to practice together with you.

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Info Session Video on Buddhism & The Enneagram October Retreat

Thanks to all who joined for the info session on the interconnectedness of Buddhism and the enneagram. It was wonderful speaking with you.

During our talk, we discussed an upcoming in-person retreat I’m teaching in Austin, TX from October 11-15, 2023 on Buddhism & The Enneagram. In this small, in-person retreat, we will explore what it means to live fearlessly in a world of beauty, sorrow, possibility, and constant uncertainty. Through sitting meditation practice and studying the nine heart-opening paths of enneagram, we will learn more about who we are and how to love more deeply.

Retreat attendance is by application. Because space is limited and these retreats tend to fill quickly, a deposit is required. We will let you know within a day or so if you’re accepted and if, for any reason, you’re not, your deposit will be returned in full, immediately. Note: One full scholarship is offered.

All the details are here.

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