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October 29 - November 5, 2024
“Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.” —THICH NHAT HANH
If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time.
Mindfulness is the best way to be with our suffering without being overwhelmed by it. Mindfulness is the capacity to dwell in the present moment, to know what’s happening in the here and now.
To be mindful means to be aware. It’s the energy that knows what is happening in the present moment.
The Buddha said that nothing can survive without food. This is true, not just for the physical existence of living beings, but also for states of mind. Love needs to be nurtured and fed to survive; and our suffering also survives because we enable and feed it.
When suffering arises, the first thing to do is to stop, follow our breathing, and acknowledge it. Don’t try to deny uncomfortable emotions or push them down.
The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgment.
If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already.
There is no birth and death; everything dies and renews itself all the time.
The most effective way to show compassion to another is to listen, rather than talk. You have an opportunity to practice deep, compassionate listening. If you can listen to the other person with compassion, your listening is like a salve for her wound. In the practice of compassionate listening, you listen with only one purpose, which is to give the other person the chance to speak out and to suffer less.
Part of the art of suffering well is learning not to magnify our pain by getting carried away in fear, anger, and despair. We build and maintain our energy reserves to handle the big sufferings; the little sufferings we can let go.
Happiness is impermanent, like everything else. In order for happiness to be extended and renewed, you have to learn how to feed your happiness.
We can condition our bodies and minds to happiness with the five practices of letting go, inviting positive seeds, mindfulness, concentration, and insight.
One way of taking care of our suffering is to invite a seed of the opposite nature to come up. As nothing exists without its opposite, if you have a seed of arrogance, you have also a seed of compassion. Every one of us has a seed of compassion.
We can selectively water the good seeds and refrain from watering the negative seeds. This doesn’t mean we ignore our suffering; it just means that we allow the positive seeds that are naturally there to get attention and nourishment.
Waking up this morning I smile. I have twenty-four hours to live. I vow to live them deeply and learn to look at the beings around me with the eyes of compassion.
In the past we probably did suffer from one thing or another. It may even have felt like a kind of hell. If we remember that suffering, not letting ourselves get carried away by it, we can use it to remind ourselves, “How lucky I am right now. I’m not in that situation. I can be happy.”—that is insight; and in that moment, our joy, and our happiness can grow very quickly.
When a young person tells his parents, “This is my body; this is my life. I can do what I want with it” he is only partly right. He doesn’t see that he is the continuation of his parents and of his ancestors before that. This body is not yours alone. It is also the body of your ancestors. Your body is a collective product of your nation, of your people, of your culture, of your ancestors. So you are not strictly an individual. You are partly collective.
When you suffer and your beloved one ignores your suffering, then you suffer even more. But if the other person is aware of your suffering and offers his presence to you during these difficult moments, you suffer less right away. It doesn’t take much time to bring some relief.
“I suffer, and I want you to know it. I’m doing my best. Please help.”
When we see something beautiful in the other person, we tend to ignore the things that aren’t so beautiful. As human beings we have both positive and negative qualities.
When you look at a tree in a storm, if you focus your attention on the top of the tree, you’ll see the leaves and branches blowing wildly in the wind, and the tree will look so vulnerable, as though it could be broken at any time. But when you direct your attention down to the trunk of the tree, there’s not so much movement. You see the stability of the tree, and you see that the tree is deeply rooted in the soil and can withstand the storm. When we experience a strong emotion, the mind is agitated like the top of the tree. We have to bring our mind down to the trunk, to the abdomen, and focus
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“The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous.”
The Buddha taught that when anger arises, close your eyes and ears, return to yourself, and tend to the source of anger within. Transforming your anger is not just for your personal liberation. Everyone around you and even those more distant will benefit.
Look deeply at your anger, as you would look at your own child. Don’t reject it or hate it. The point of meditation is not to turn yourself into a battlefield, one side opposing the other. Conscious breathing soothes and calms the anger, and mindfulness penetrates it. Anger is just an energy, and all energies can be transformed. Meditation is the art of using one kind of energy to transform another.
The notions we entertain about what will bring us happiness are just a trap. We forget that they are only ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from being happy.
Happiness is not an individual matter; it has the nature of interbeing. When you are able to make one friend smile, her happiness will nourish you also. When you find ways to foster peace, joy, and happiness, you do it for everyone. Begin by nourishing yourself with joyful feelings. Practice walking meditation outside, enjoying the fresh air, the trees, and the stars in the night sky.
Through the practice of deep looking, the seeds of suffering and attachment will shrink and the positive seeds will grow. We can transform attachment and aversion and arrive at a love that is spacious and all-encompassing.
The Buddha said that freedom and solidity are the two characteristics of nirvana. Imagine someone who has no solidity and no freedom. That person can never be happy.
