chapter 7: metta loving kindness

Chapter 7: Soothing the Body, Mind, & Heart

Gee. I'm tired of being sick so coming back to this blogging series right about now is surely a good thing. Chapter 7 starts, "Metta, Loving-Kindness, is the act of well-wishing toward yourself and others. You settle on a set of phrases and then recite them silently over and over." I think my "I am healthy, wealthy, and wise" is in the path of metta practice, but perhaps I should word it as, "May I be healthy, May I be wealthy, May I be wise." "Ease of well-being" is a beautiful, peaceful phrase in this chapter. "May I have ease of well-being as I awaken for the day and discover what my body has for me." "May I have ease of well-being upon awakening." "May I have ease of well-being." Waking up has been a tough time for me lately; did you notice?
Her metta practice as a forgiveness practice also sounds like something i do, though something I learned from her. "Thank you, body, for being brave and waking up on today," or her example, "Be peaceful, sweet body, working so hard to support me." I think of them as gratitude statements, instead of forgiveness, but I do suppose it is speaking kindness when it would be natural to be angry at our bodies for the ways in which it is disappointing us.

With metta kindness practice, you start with yourself then work out to someone with whom you are not pleased:
1. Self
2. Someone to whom you feel gratitude
3.Someone you're conflicted about
4. Someone for whom u feel nothing or have neutral feelings (nothing) e.g., store cashier
5. Someone that causes anger or other negative emotions when you think about them


Okay. Let's practice.

May I have good health
May my Spirit sustain
May my body be strong
May my wisdom grow
May I have ease of well-being
And be free


2. Someone to whom you feel gratitude- Co-worker
3.Someone you're conflicted about- Friend that I miss
4. Someone for whom u feel nothing or have neutral feelings (nothing) e.g., store cashier- Cashier at Scott's BBQ
5. Someone that causes anger or other negative emotions when you think about them- Distant Co-worker

*

*

Okay, done. Praying for co-worker felt really good. Try it. Friend that I miss didn't work as well. I'm not conflicted about her. I'm only conflicted about our (lack of a) relationship and what I should do about that (if anything. I figure she just doesn't want to be friends. I miss her.) And yes, #5 was the hardest but in it (stmt 2), I had a little empathy. This metta thing is working the magic it's supposed to work. Love. Agape.

getting over your shit (4-6)

Chapter 4: The Universal Law of Impermanence

The chapter opens with a beautiful quote from The Buddha:
"Better a single day of life seeing the reality of arising and passing away than a hundred years of existence remaining blind to it."

Toni Bernhard has a practice she calls "Weather Practice" Basically, it acknowledges that thoughts come and thoughts go, just like the weather. You might feel that a certain type of day (or weather) is probable and maybe that's what you get. But storms, they head our way but a wind can cause it to totally miss or hit our city. She talks about not being able to force your mind to think a certain thought and that trying to not think about something is a guaranteed way to think about it. That all sounds logical to me, but where do mantras fit into that thought? Mine lately has been, "I am safe in my house and my mind is at peace." That intentional thought is how I am learning to think about the snake that was outside of my house less and how I am convincing myself to stop searching for it everywhere, inside and outside.

Next, she talks about "Broken Glass Practice". This one, I like. Your glass breaks; you're pissed. Why be pissed? It's glass. It's breaking is inevitable. It was broken from the very beginning, that's just not the form in which you were seeing it. ["Can you prevent something that's breakable from breaking? It will break sooner or later. If you don't break it, someone else will. If someone else doesn't break it, one of the chickens will!" ~ Ajahn Chah as quoted in How to be Sick] Water is ice, ice is water. It's always both. It just appears differently and is in one form or the other when you see it.

I miss my Superman mug. I love that mug. But it was already broken; that was its essence. The man came to the clinic. He was peeved because his daughters spilled tea in his van. But the tea was already spilled; he accepts that.


Chapter 5: Who Is Sick?

"Munindra-ji said, "There is heat here, but I am not hot. There is hunger here, but I am not hungry. There is irritation here, but I am not irritated." Bernhard translate that, "There is sickness here, but I am not sick." That is sometimes a difficult thing to realize-- I am not sickness. I am not fibromyalgia. I am not she who is too tired to do anything that requires substantial energy output. I am weather practice. I guess a life-long question, healthy or not, is "who am I?" How often do you hear or read that question? This is another way of asking that question-- I am not sick, so who am I?

Chapter 6: Finding Joy in this Life You can no Longer Lead
The title of this chapter brings on a spontaneous, "Yes, and I f_cking hate it!" from my insides. Hating, not the finding joy, but the parts of life I can no longer lead. I miss revealing in the idea of hiking and just waiting on the opportunity. I miss so many pieces of my former life....

This chapter talks about the 4 sublime states (brahma viharas). These are the places where we wants our minds to dwell, the place of the enlightened. They are, and I can do nothing but directly quote here:
Metta- loving-kindness (others & self)
Karuna- compassion (others & self)
Mudita- sympathetic joy; joy in the joy of others
Upekkha- equanimity; a mind that is at peace in all circumstances

Mudita is her rock. It's like empathy for positive things, instead of negatives. It's like me looking through a facebook album recently posted by my friend Andrea and smiling ear to ear, having fun by looking at the pictures she took at the carnival. It's like being joyous that she can take hikes through beautiful, hilly areas. It's to feel that joy but not becoming angry or sad because you realize that you are simply watching someone else's life. Mudita happens in my life naturally, as shown by the example that immediately came to mind. Putting it into intentional practice, I'm sure, is much more challenging. "Mundita is a powerful antidote to the poison of envy." What a beautiful quote from Toni's mouth.

The other sublime states are picked up in chapter 7....

How this teaches me Buddhism? I get to learn the sublime states but more importantly, I'm challenged to practice them. I tried using metta or karuna when I was in massive pain last week but I failed miserably. More on that later. I think that Buddhism is much about mindfulness, as are the techniques discussed in these three chapters. The teachings pull one from oneself and instructs one to refocus on the rest of the world. That sure ain't man's instinct. Blessed be.

beginning (reviewing) How to be Sick (the book, not my self-pity)

Several months ago, I decided to read How to be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers after reading a clever and witty bit by its author, Toni Bernhard. I thought she would be my Buddhist Anne Lamott, using amusement and real life/real language to tell it how it is. For her. A chronically ill person living with chronic fatigue syndrome. Early in the novel, I was disappointed to see that the reality was far from that. I thought a better title would have been How to be Buddhist, but I stuck with it to see what I can learn from this serious, mostly non-humorous non-fiction work. I was still disappointed that the book was framed only from that of Buddhism. There is no "how I learned to deal with my illness," only "what Buddhist practices I use to survive this life". Sure, there is overlap between the two but.... This book is geared towards those interested in Buddhism, not so much those open to hearing what a Buddhist woman has to say (unless they're open to hearing her teach them specially about Buddhism).

Anyhow, over the next several weeks, I will share the information from the book here because reviewing it and organizing it as such will help me mentally categorize it, encourage the use of some techniques, and allow me to discard ones I don't want to invest energy into. It will also teach you my interpretation of her interpretation of Buddhism.

If you are interested in learning more about Buddism, this book would be an interesting beginner's choice. Obviously, she veils the intro behind the theme of helping one learn to deal with a life that sucks ("life is always all right") but it helped me understand major Buddhist themes, unlike talking to interested-in-Buddhism-people or reading that "Buddhism" book I have started reading every other year for the past decade.

Chapter 1: Her story of becoming sick. She remembers her beginning, whereas I only remember realizing I might be sick-- I wonder for how long. I still ponder where the illness really began.

Chapter 2 is called "Staying Sick: This Can't be Happening to Me." I'll let you guess what that chapter is about. I might be finally settling into this disbelief something like 3 years after I realized I was sick. Well, I'm not quite settling yet....

Chapter 3 makes me familiar with the term "dukkha". She says that people often translate that to "life is suffering" but that the simplicity of that statement takes away from the depth of the Buddhist word. Why so shallow? Because life is not only suffering; dukkha simply acknowledges that suffering will be part of our lives. In this chapter is a quote that I like:

"We all know each other. We've all had our hearts broken by the relentless search to avoid suffering."
~ John Travis at a Spirit Rock retreat

Toni notes that this search brings more suffering.
Dukkha is the first noble truth. (Bold like a vocabulary word, mind ya. I made "dukkha" bold after bolding "noble truth")
Throughout the book, Bernhard quotes Zen Buddhist teacher Charlotte Joko Beck: "Our life is always all right." Conceptually, I understand why that might encourage her. Intuitively, I find it saddening. The quote continues, "There's nothing wrong with it. Even if we have horrendous problems, it's just our life." I suppose that half might be a tiny bit better than the first, the idea of it truly being "all right". What an odd thing to trouble me, I know. It's also something that often comes to me while living.

In Chapter 3, Bernhard prepares you for what the rest of her book aims to teach one to do: end mental suffering. Well, she shares methods to temporarily relieve, rather than to end it in its entirely.

I love this: The second noble truth says that the reason for dukkha (mental suffering) is the truth of tanha: thirst
I love it because it's also here: James 4: 1-3:
¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
James is one of my favorite books in the Bible.
The third noble truth shares that the end of dukkha is possible (what?!). In the fourth noble truth, the Buddha teaches how to accomplish this (the Eightfold Path). Enlightenment comes once dukkha ends. That's deep, cause one would have to be pretty freakin' enlightened to end dukkha imo.