The question we started with

  • Has anything changed in your relationship to conflict since last week?
  • How does it feel to exchange your thoughts of yourself with thoughts of someone else?
  • Are you having any resistance to these practices?
  • What is helping?
  • How is it working for you?
  • How are you adding these practices into your day to day life?

Teaching notes

Verse 18: When destitute and ill

  • Suffering is a friend of practice. When we suffer, we are motivated to seek a solution, and so we practice. Not so with comfort.
  • Great masters have been driven by great suffering. Milarepa, Gelongma Palmo.
  • In suffering it can be easy to get caught up in our suffering, the pain and difficulty. Expanding your view to include all of existence helps you to see you are not alone. Not in a shaming way, but in a compassionate way.
  • Realizing that we are not the only ones who shoulder this burden can be freeing.
  • Expansion of perspective: like teenagers discovering others also have alcoholic parents, extending the label “me” to everyone suffering your problem dissolves isolation. “If we expand that beyond just this one individual person, ‘me,’ to everybody… we will not be discouraged.” Voidness prevents the inflated-ego version.
  • The expansion of perspective allows for an opening of the heart. “This is suffering, and all beings suffer.”
  • Spirits are just projections of fear. Practice projections of love (the yidam) and all will be well.

Verse 19: When prosperous and praised

  • Wealth, fame, etc. can often bring distance from what matters most. Never are they truly fulfilling in and of themselves.
  • Karma and pride lead us to think “I deserve this because I am so great,” which is precisely the god realm. Leads to complacency and a decline in practice, increase in jealousy and possessiveness.
  • Advice to use wealth and position to benefit others while you have it.
  • Wealth, etc. is impermanent.

Verse 20: The real enemy: your own anger

  • Shantideva: you can’t cover the earth in leather; cover your feet.
  • Think about it. If you don’t get over a particular hang-up, you’ll be constantly bothered by it. Outer enemies do not disappear through external means.
  • Love and compassion are the weapons. Love cannot exist where there is hate and vice versa. Only those weapons destroy hatred, inside and out.

Verse 21: Sense pleasures: salt water

  • Great desire brings great suffering. The thoughts around desire and clinging do not feel good, though their satisfaction seems like it might.
  • Proportional to our capability. The attachment and desire are the true problem as opposed to the object of pleasure. Abandon attachment if you can.
  • Abandoning the object can be its own source of attachment. The object is gone, but the clinging remains. However, it may be a necessary step to relieve temporary karmas.
  • It doesn’t matter how much you have; if your habit is greed, you will never feel satisfaction.
  • Allow mindfulness to show you the pattern. See if you can observe sensation without attaching to it or following it.

Analytical meditation

Settling

Find a way to sit that you can stay with for a while. Eyes closed, or lowered toward the floor. Really whatever is comfortable for you and engenders a calm stillness in your mind. Take a few slow, deliberate breaths. Then let the breath go back to whatever it does on its own.

We explored four verses today. For our analytical meditation, I’ll explore verses 18 and 19, walk through them briefly, and leave you with a question. Let’s try to check each step against our own experience and see whether it matches. We’ll make sure to return to 20 and 21 at a later time.

Verses 18 and 19

Verse 18 says that when you are poor, disparaged, sick or tormented, you keep your courage and take on the pain of all beings. Verse 19 says that when you are famous, honored and rich, you see that worldly fortune has no substance and do not grow proud.

One of these is about things going badly and the other is about things going well. I thought we could look at what our attention does in each case, since it’s common to experience both as life progresses through its cycles.

Let a hard stretch come to mind first. It doesn’t have to be the worst thing ever. Perhaps a time money was tight, a stretch where we or a loved one was unwell, a season of loneliness, or a time of great stress where everything was out of control.

See if you can step back into that time for a moment, just enough to remember what it felt like. Whatever comes up, let it be there.

And see if you can notice how you responded during that time, what you did in response and what you had to stop doing. Let’s try to be gentle about this exploration since we were just trying our best. But let’s stay open to any insights or memories that emerge.

pause

Now let’s try the other direction. Let a time come to mind when you were praised. Someone told you that you’d done something well, or that you mattered to them. It could be recent or a more distant memory. It can be big or small. Let’s just trust whatever emerges for us.

See if you can step into that one, and let yourself be there for a while. There’s no hurry to get anywhere.

pause

See what the body remembers about it. Maybe there’s a warmth somewhere, or a lightness, or a kind of energy moving through you. Whatever’s there, let it be as big as it wants to be.

pause

And notice the thoughts that were running at the time. What you were telling yourself about the day, about your life, about what was possible. Let those come back too, if they want to.

pause

If any of this is pleasant, you’re welcome to stay with it and let it spread on its own, through the chest, the face, the hands, out past the skin. We don’t often give ourselves permission to linger in a good feeling, so let’s give ourselves a little time here.

longer pause

Now let’s hold the two next to each other for a moment, the hard stretch and the time you were praised. There’s no need to compare them or figure anything out. Just let them sit side by side and see what you notice.

pause

The verses ask us to try something with both. When things are hard, they ask us not to lose heart, and to let our care reach toward others who are struggling too. When we’re praised, they ask us to enjoy it without becoming proud, since good fortune doesn’t have much substance to hold onto.

So as an experiment, see if you can bring to mind other people in those same places tonight. Others are having a hard month. Others hear something kind about themselves. As many as you like, and see if you can wish them well, whichever side they’re on.

And if tonight you’re the one who needs some care right now, that’s a completely fine place to sit. You can let the rest of us in the room hold it with you for a while. That’s what friends are for.

pause

Turning outward

Let’s turn these verses outward for a moment.

Bring to mind someone who’s having a hard time right now. Maybe money is tight for them, or they’re unwell, or people aren’t treating them kindly. It could be someone you know, or someone you’ve only heard about. Or perhaps just the imaginary outline of someone struggling. Whatever arises for you.

pause

See if you can let your care reach toward them. If it feels right, imagine you could take a little of what they’re carrying and transform it with the power of your love, just enough to make their day a bit lighter.

Now bring to mind someone who’s doing well right now, someone being praised or celebrated. Maybe a friend, a coworker, someone you admire.

pause

See if you can be glad for them. Let their good fortune feel a little like your own, and notice what that’s like.

pause

Closing

Before we stop, one small thing to take with you.

The verses tonight used enormous examples to inspire us and fill us with courage. Destitution, torment by spirits, the wealth of a god, armies, the sea. The practice also happens in seemingly small moments. A bad day where you don’t want to talk to anyone. Taking on a role we don’t resonate with to get some praise. Small frustrating moments in traffic. The constant small battles with impulses that take us away from what we love.

Let’s explore this over the next week. Somewhere in there, something is going to make the heat rise, or something is going to pull at you. You may already know what it is. Picture it for a second. When it comes, see if you can remember this very moment of meditative absorption, and ask yourself: what do I really want right now?

pause

And we can let the analytical meditation drop now. Notice the weight of your body in the chair, the sounds in the room, the humming energy of the other people sitting here with you. When you’re ready, open your eyes.

Questions for the week

Choose one or more of these questions to take into the week ahead:

  • In times of great despair in your life, what has helped you?
  • What does great personal and material good fortune look like and feel like for you?
  • How does it feel to switch your perspective from looking at outward problems and solutions to an inward focus?
  • What experiences keep you coming back, willingly or unwillingly, because of their pleasure?