Ornoth

Since 2009, I’ve oriented my meditation practice around the brahmaviharas, the Buddhist virtues of lovingkindness (metta) and compassion (karuna). I’ve just completed a year of intensive karuna practice and thought I’d do a quick debrief, much as I did last October after twelve months of metta practice.

I certainly found compassion a more productive practice than metta. I think part of that is because metta’s basic friendliness is my default mode to begin with, whereas compassion isn’t quite as natural and intuitive to me. After all, I’ve always been more prone to blame someone for causing their own problems than to empathize with them.

Compassion also has a proximate cause: it is a response to obvious suffering. So when someone is under mental or physical stress, that provides a prompt that reminds one: this is a situation that calls for a compassionate response. For me, that makes it easier to evoke than metta, which is just a vague kindness with no immediate intent behind it, rather than a response to an obvious need.

I used the Buddhist concept of the two arrows to structure my compassion practice. The first arrow is the painful event or situation: the basic discomfort that cannot be avoided, like the pain of a stubbed toe. The second arrow is the additional, unnecessary discomfort that we inflict upon ourselves: “Why am I always stubbing my toe? I’m such a klutz! I’m worthless and no one loves me and it’s always going to be this way until I die…” The second arrow is the self-generated fear and anger that proliferate as a result of how we relate to an event.

A couple of my insights this year had to do with the nature of these two kinds of suffering.

It’s odd to me that when people think about that first arrow—physical or emotional pain—they usually think of it as applying to humans. But it’s equally true that many animals experience pain in a very similar way. And a sensitive person might even leave open the question of whether plants experience some kind of analogue to the pain we feel. When we wish for everyone to be free from pain, I think it wise to extend that to all forms of life.

But the second arrow—the proliferation of painful mental states that we add to simple pain—that is indeed the exclusive birthright of sentient beings.

As my meditation practice grew, I came to see how we allow our mental states to compound this indirect suffering on top of simple, direct suffering. I also discovered that we actually choose to do this. The second arrow isn’t required; it’s completely optional, and if we are truly free, we can choose not to harm ourselves with it.

Ironically, this is how I discovered the primary thing blocking my compassion for others. While I find it easy to feel for someone who is experiencing a simple, unavoidable pain, I find it extremely difficult to empathize with someone who is allowing their own mental state to create additional, unnecessary suffering. It’s hard to feel compassion for someone when you know that the pain they are feeling is entirely within their control (or would be, if they were only self-aware enough to realize it). Again, I find myself falling back on blaming people for their misfortune, because I see their ignorance as something they have chosen, a shortcoming they have neglected to address.

Getting past that view will be one of my ongoing challenges.

Those are some of the insights I’ve experienced through my karuna practice, but they are more of a small side-effect of the practice, which was primarily oriented toward nurturing the experiential, felt sense of compassion, which doesn’t translate as well to a simple blog post.

As for what’s next, I can’t say. After two years of structured brahmavihara practice, I think I could use something a little less directed. And the two remaining brahmaviharas—equanimity (upekkha) and taking joy in the happiness of others (mudita)—I feel I already have a good handle on.

The only two things that stick out right now are being a little more relaxed in terms of letting more thoughts and emotions arise during meditation, and continuing to look more carefully at the body and the breath for any indication of physical manifestations of emotion.

But I think the main change will be giving up both such a structured, approach to meditation and such a strongly directed technique. After two years of focused practice, I think I’ll let things be a little more relaxed and free-form for a while.

I want to share a brief summary of the year-long intensive metta practice that I just completed. Metta is the Pali term for “loving-kindness”. If you need more of a refresher than that, you should go back and read the post I made last year when I kicked off my metta practice.

So yes, I did a whole year of metta. What did I get out of it?

One of the things I was looking for when I began was to change my default reaction to people. I described my habitual way of relating to others as obstacles or semi-animate objects to be manipulated, and my usual response of irritation toward them.

I originally approached metta practice with the idea that it would help me cultivate the empathy and kindness that I felt I lacked. While I didn’t experience any big transformative revelations, as the months of practice wore on, did find it easier to let go of my own need for people to be a certain way, which in turn eased my habitual reaction of anger. So I actually have to admit that yes, my outlook and behavior have definitely changed, even though I can’t point at when or how or why it happened.

As I practiced, I realized that in addition to cultivating a base level of loving-kindness toward everyone, I also needed to develop a greater sense of compassion and caring for people whose suffering is immediate and acute. After all, having put time into cultivating basic friendliness toward people, shouldn’t I be able to invoke stronger feelings for those whose lives are overflowing with suffering?

That was a fitting realization, because compassion (Pali “karuna”) is (like metta) another of the “brahmaviharas”, the four sublime virtues that are actively cultivated in Buddhist practice. So having completed a year of metta practice, I am now committing myself to a year of intensive karuna (compassion) practice.

The phrases I plan to use for compassion practice are “I care about your pain,” and “I care about your angst”. I feel those get to the heart of people’s suffering, whether it is physical or mental/emotional. I have not yet decided how to structure it in terms of progressive categories the way one does with metta (e.g. benefactor, friend, neutral, enemy), but I’m sure it’ll evolve of its own accord.

In a recent teacher interview with Michael, he suggested practicing karuna on the street, directing it toward the people one encounters in daily life, not unlike the way some people work with metta. I think that actually is better, because it’s less intellectual and more immediate, and has a lot more potential to influence my reactions and actions in daily life. He also emphasized the importance of making eye contact as an important way to connect with people’s innate humanity.

I’ll no doubt have more to say about the compassion practice in the future, after I’ve been working with it for a while.

But returning to metta practice, this was really my first attempt at a form of meditation that actively encouraged inner dialog, rather than discouraged it. As such, my perception was that meditation sessions felt much shorter and easier than when I was trying to simply quiesce discursive thought. However, it also felt like it wasn’t “real” meditation, because I still cling to the idea that the only “real” way to make progress in meditation is through quiescing the mind’s incessant inner talk.

So my final evaluation of metta practice is kind of contradictory. On one hand, I can’t point at anything specific that it “did” for me, and it didn’t even feel like meditation to me. At the same time, I do think my habitual judgments and irritation with other people have moderated, and it has inspired me to devote a chunk of time to actively cultivating compassion. So in that sense I think it was worth the investment of time. But I’m also looking forward to the karuna practice, because I think it might prove to be a lot more transformative for me.

Another year, another CIMC “sandwich retreat”. Here’s a report from my third annual nine-day urban “integration retreat”. If you’re absolutely bored out of your skull, here are links to the 2008 and 2007 retreats.

Saturday I arrived early and was offered my choice of yogi jobs. Hooray! I picked the same thing as last year: end-of-day cleanup, which gives me 90 minutes of free time to myself during the lunch break, while other participants have yogi jobs they have to attend to after eating. This year my partner was my friend Bonnie, when last year it had been Shea.

I knew things were going right when the first sitting of the morning was punctuated by the schizo-frenetic calls of the mockingbird I’ve heard several times before at the center.

My intention for the retreat was to focus on the metta (lovingkindness) work that I’d recently begun in a five-week practice group that had only concluded two days before the retreat. More details about that here.

I guess that’s only poetic justice, since I wrote the following about a teacher interview I had on the 2007 sandwich retreat: “I talked about how judgmental I am about other people, and how I really dreaded that the prescription for that would be metta (loving-kindness) meditation.”

On Saturday I devoted each 45-minute sitting on sending metta to just one of the five people I had been working with: myself, my benefactor, a close friend, someone I felt neutral about, and a person I felt really challenged by. I also spent additional sessions on specific individuals as they arose randomly in my mind, geographic areas ranging from the room to the state of Massachusetts and out to the universe, and one final session simply sitting with open awareness.

Although it had started out chilly, the temperatures soared and it became a beautiful day, although the winds were gusting as high as 45 mph, which was quite dramatic. So I spent most of the walking periods meditating outdoors, and I actually started a collection of interesting found stuff, which grew to include acorns, a pine cone, seed pods from several other types of tree, a bike reflector, a playing card (the six of clubs), a puzzle piece, a pigeon feather, holly and Japanese maple leaves, the nameplate from a Graco product, a brown hair elastic, and I added three more keycaps to my collection of CAPS LOCK keys.

Throughout the week I also scoured the neighborhood for outdoor cats, especially the extremely friendly one I’d met last year on Cleveland Street. While looking for the latter, her owner (a cute redhead) came by and told me the cat’s name was Pushkin when I asked.

Saturday’s most memorable event took place while I and others were mindfully eating our tea/dinner on the center’s front stairway. Sitting behind/above me was a young man I’d already noted as not the most mindful yogi. As he got up, he allowed his knife to slide off his plate, and it fell down and hit me in the back. He then compounded his issue by verbally apologizing, breaking our usual noble silence. I just handed his knife back to him; I’d like to think he learned something from the incident, but further evidence suggests otherwise.

The final irony on Saturday was the ride home. It was a major shock to go from twelve hours of silent meditation to going to Central Square and picking up one of the MBTA’s most busy bus lines to go home. Now, normally that’s not too bad, but it was also 9:30pm on Halloween night. The mental image of that scene is left as an exercise for the reader.

Sunday started off all wrong. During the retreat, yogis use a signup sheet to schedule one-on-one interviews with the center’s teachers. That morning, there had been an announcement stating that they weren’t going to be enough slots to give everyone a weekend interview, but that anyone who didn’t get an interview over the weekend would have one on Monday night. When the first walking period began, I knew there’d be a mob scene at the signup sheet, so I went straight outside and began my 30-minute walking meditation. That way I’d avoid the scrum, and I’d actually have more to report if I waited until Monday, having another day of the retreat under my belt by that time.

Well, that was a big mistake. When I checked in the day before, I’d given a note to the staff, asking them to ensure that I had an interview with Narayan. She’s the most popular (and busy) teacher at CIMC, and although one usually gets an interview with each of the three main teachers, I had never been scheduled for an interview with her in my previous two sandwich retreats, so I wanted to be sure I got one this year.

Well, you know where this is going: they had written my name in the very first slot in the morning! Not knowing that, I’d gone off and was walking around the neighborhood. Fortunately, they snagged me as I returned, and Narayan was kind enough to speak with me at that time. I’m glad, because it was a very encouraging interview.

Just as I’d been interested in speaking with her, she wanted to follow up with me, because she had been the instructor for that five-week metta workshop that I had just concluded. We talked about that, and she approved of my plans to spend the whole retreat doing metta. She really impressed me by showing genuine respect for my six years of dedicated practice and my ability to progress in the dharma fairly independently, without much direction from the teachers.

Teacher contact was actually the crux of what I wanted to talk to her about. At the 2008 retreat, I’d spoken to another teacher (Michael) about establishing a teacher/student relationship with him, with check-ins every 2-3 months. However, various factors intervened, and I never got around to following up on that. I wanted Narayan’s advice on how important it was to have a teacher’s time, especially since I was reluctant to schedule appointments when teachers have so little time and so many other students who seem to need their direction much more. Naturally, she encouraged me to work with Michael, and even sneak in an occasional interview with her by leaving her a note during her Thursday and Sunday sittings.

I also told her some of my history, specifically about my meditative response to insomnia as a teenager, and the time I’d counseled the roommates of a friend who had attempted suicide.

I also told her about a recent conversation with a friend where I’d challenged her perception that one facet of her personality was fixed and unchangeable. I’d found myself explaining how absolutely everything is subject to change, and that belief in the possibility of change is absolutely necessary for human development. Denying that change is possible is completely disempowering, and a denial of responsibility for one’s own growth and maturation. I’d been shocked when my friend replied with one of the more advanced Buddhist truths, “So you are telling me that there’s no permanent part inside that is me?” It had been a very interesting discussion.

I’ve always been challenged by the retreat requirement of eating vegetarian. Although the food is extremely well done, I’m just not used to many of the ingredients, and now it’s even worse, because I suspect that I’ve become very allergic to onions and garlic, which were in nearly every dish provided by the center. So Sunday noon I threw in the towel and went to Four Burger in Central Square, where I got a hamburger on wheat with gouda, jalapeno, and BBQ sauce. It was delightful, as was the sunny afternoon I spent on the steps of the Cambridge City Hall, watching the cyclists pass by on Mass Ave. The weather on the two weekends was just delightful.

A sign on the refrigerator at the center reminds people that no meat is allowed on the premises, although I took amusement from the thought that over the course of history, just about everything in the center was probably a form of meat at some point in time.

As I returned to the center at the end one walking period, I saw my friend Amy fast-walking down the street. As I crossed the street and fell in ahead of her, she changed to a jog, and then I went to a trot, and without speaking we wound up sprinting down the street to see who would be first to the center’s gate. Maybe not 100 percent mindful, but it was fun nonetheless.

And even the teachers have a humorous bent, as evinced by Larry’s showing up right after the evening chanting, Michael’s daily changes to his crazy mathematical schemes for dividing the retreatants into groups, and Michael’s reminder that we should not just practice wisdom on the cushion, but also until we die, and even beyond!

Sunday evening we were given the homework that we’d practice with throughout our weekdays, which was to notice each time that resistance came up for us, specifically resistance to reality as it played out, rather than as we thought it should be. This wound up being a very challenging topic, but also pretty rich.

So I practiced with that, and by Monday evening’s sitting I had some ideas. I was a little surprised that I’d only noticed twelve instances of resistance, but I wasn’t surprised by where they had come from. Three-quarters were caused by my cat Grady or technology or other people. The remainder included myself, corporations, and concerns about the future.

The most important chunk of wisdom that came out of it was that nearly all my times of resistance were due to a mismatch between my expectations and what the world provided. But I realized that the expectations weren’t the problem at all, but my attachment to them was.

For example, I was irritated when I repeatedly saw cyclists riding illegally on the sidewalk, because their behavior violated my expectations. But if I said to myself that they were just humans, and one really should expect such behavior from mere humans, the irritation went away. If you let go of your attachment to the expectation and realize that life often doesn’t work that way, it makes living in the real world much easier.

Tuesday and Wednesday were much the same. I must admit that I didn’t do as well focusing on the homework during the day, and my end-of-day debriefs started getting repetitive.

However, things changed a lot for me when I came home from Wednesday night’s sitting. Checking my online news feeds, I learned something that completely floored me: the Thai forest monks from Ajahn Chah’s Wat Pah Pong monastery had excommunicated Ajahn Brahm of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia for participating in the ordination of women priests (bhikkuni). The ordination of women has been an issue of great debate in Theravadan Buddhism for the past few years, and it is more complex than a simple question of sexism. It is a question that has divided the sangha, and remains a point of conflict to this day.

Now, the late Ajahn Chah and the forest tradition have legendary status in the US as one of the founts where all Western Buddhism comes from. And Ajahn Brahm, a student of Ajahn Chah, is someone I respect tremendously, having listened to hundreds of his dharma talks online during my initial period of study, and having met the man during his US book tour. So I was flabbergasted to learn that the disagreement between these two was so dire that he had been excommunicated, and it became quite an international row.

Aside from everything else, this evoked a tremendous emotional response in me that included resistance, so I tried to work with it as such. The ironic part is that there our retreat had no group discussion period scheduled for Thursday evening—just sitting and walking—so I had to sit with it for another day before bringing it up, although I did talk to a couple friends about it after the formal program ended Thursday night.

Both Thursday and Friday, I spent the formal meditation period directing metta toward Ajahn Brahm and the Thai forest monks, and also for my ex-wife’s mother, who was having heart surgery.

Unlike the rest of the week, Friday we broke up into small groups and talked about our experiences without the supervision of the teachers. My group had an excellent exchange, and I had the opportunity to lead the group and also empathize with each of the members. It was a very moving discussion. And as we left at the end of the evening, I noticed Michael posting the sign-up sheet for teacher interviews on Saturday, so I hovered and made sure I was signed up for an interview with Michael.

I also got a couple book pointers during the week, which included Ken Wilber, author of “Integral Life Practice” and “A Brief History of Everything”, and Ajahn Brahm’s “Mindfulness, Bliss & Beyond” as a guidebook for jhana practice.

By Saturday it was evident people were getting worn out. During one walking period, I stopped by the second floor landing, only to see nearly a dozen yogis all lying on the floor, sleeping! And nearly a quarter of the cushions were empty during the sitting sessions. I had been apprehensive about another 12-hour day, myself, but I had learned a critical lesson: don’t put too much effort (physical or mental) into meditating. You’ll produce a lot less mental and physical exhaustion if you relax and sit simply, rather than striving and forcing a lot of effort.

My interview with Michael went surprisingly well. I explained to him why I had dropped the ball on starting a relationship with him last year and he agreed that I should touch base with him after the holidays. I asked him about the persistent tingle in my neck that I had started getting when I start meditating, and he explained that concentration practice can bring up odd sensations like that, but to just let them be. And he was pleased to hear of my plan to dedicate myself toward metta work, and suggested I try doing metta during the walking periods, which I had purposely not done so far.

Because I had the whole lunch period free, I always made sure I was near the end of the line for lunch, so that others could get their food first. As I did so, I repeatedly wondered what it must feel like to be first in the lunch line, why a yogi would literally put himself before others. I was amused to note that my knife-dropping friend was one of the first people out the door for lunch. Interesting.

Finally Sunday arrived, and the finish line was in sight. Per Michael’s advice, I tried doing metta while walking, which was surprisingly easy. The only item I could eat from the lunch board was one burnt scone, so I made another (not unwelcome) pilgrimage to Four Burger, which provided a tasty interlude.

At one point, teacher Larry instructed us to go outside on that beautiful day and find an object to meditate upon, as he had once had a profound experience reflecting on a leaf. I almost chose my own shadow, but continued on to a nearby park with a paved path through it.

I actually came to appreciate how our self-centeredness and the disposable consumer culture teaches us to treat the world we experience as if it is only there temporarily for our benefit. We never stop and think about the epic history that a bike path has seen, the multitude of lives both before and after us that it has touched and will touch. As if to underscore the point, nearby a woman was teaching her child how to ride a bike without training wheels. Even the simple paved path I regarded: it held important meaning for some people. How many? How far back, and how far into the future? The same was true of the ballfield, the street, the trees, and the buildings around us. I felt a new sense of respect for the world around me.

Finally, the day came to a close, and we passed the microphone around so that everyone had a chance to say thank yous and describe their experience. When my turn came, I led off with, “I guess I really have to question the wisdom… of giving me a microphone,” which got the chuckles that I hoped it would.

Then I talked about how impressed I was with the wisdom I’d heard from the other yogis throughout the week, but especially from the number of people who described their practice as a struggle or a challenge. I went on to explicitly challenge those people on holding that as a story, and that their struggles were evidence that they were engaged in the difficult task of putting the practice to use in their daily lives. Echoing another participant’s comment, I said they should view themselves not as passive victims of difficulties or as people whose lives are full of struggle, but as heroes and warriors, and that it was an honor to sit with them.

After the retreat ended and people were socializing, I think five or six people came up to me and thanked me for my comments, which was nice. I enjoy speaking in public and especially enjoy giving motivational talks, so that pleased me a great deal.

At the same time, I have a very difficult time accepting praise, so it gave me a chance to practice with that. I think I did pretty well, deflecting the comment by describing how frustrated I felt when someone said they were struggling but then spoke of the hard-won wisdom they’d gained. Then I mentioned my hope that my observation would help them gain respect for themselves and how far they’ve come in their practice.

Since I was still on end-of-day cleanup, I remained after everyone but the hardcore folks had left. We wound up talking dharma through an entire 72-minute dishwasher cycle, then four of us (Mark, Shea, Philippe, and I) went to Picante Mexican Grill in Central Square for a late meal, then I made my way home, concluding another very successful retreat with a well-earned and long-anticipated sleep.