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Guided Meditation: Willing to Stay

So, last time I was with you, we spent some time discussing the five hindrances: sense desire, ill will, restlessness and worry, sloth and torpor, and doubt. And the notion was that mindfulness itself can be a remedy for each of the five hindrances.

This week, something similar. I want to explore how mindfulness itself actually calls forth love. What we've been talking about all year. And especially, mindfulness brings forth love in a form of compassion. Compassion, as we know, is the caring heart's response to suffering and stress in ourselves and in others.

And we're going to proceed through what I'm calling the five faces of compassion. Five forms of compassion that arise in response to five different levels of suffering.

And so this morning for our sitting, we'll begin where the path begins for many of us, which is our willingness to be present and to pay attention even when it's not easy. With our willingness to hang in there. Whatever is happening. This isn't a special insight. It's just, "I'm here with what's here for now." The willingness to be here. And this is a basis for all of the other forms of compassion that will unfold this week. So there's this one: the willingness to stay present. Patient enough.

So let's settle in. Just settling into the seat. Letting the eyes gently close. Whatever posture you're in. Sensing the contact with what's supporting you. Feeling the support of the earth underneath. Before we do anything else. Letting the body settle downward.

And maybe with a big breath. Big inhale, lengthening the spine. Feeling your way into balance. Balance front to back, left to right. All the way through the crown of the head. Here I'd like to take three long, deep breaths. All the way in. And all the way out.

Then allowing the breath to become natural. In and out at whatever pace and length feels natural. Sensing the breathing.

Now briefly, let's pass the attention through the parts of the body, just relaxing. Any tension that's easy to relax. Bringing attention to the head and the face. Relaxing the eyes. The jaw. Muscles around the mouth. And softening. Releasing. Whatever's easy to let go. Through the neck, through the shoulders. Briefly down one arm. Relaxing the hands. Other arm. Releasing through the chest. The belly. The ribs and the back. Just letting go. Now through the hips. The upper legs. Knees, lower legs. The ankles and feet. Present with the whole body. Sensing, relaxing. Present, sensitive.

As we sit here, still and attentive, is there any small disturbance? Some little stress that's apparent in the body or the mind. Maybe in the form of tension in the body, or a repetitive thought, or maybe something less specific—something you're holding that's present now. If that's the case, the invitation for now is to offer this little bit of stress complete permission to be here for the next few minutes. From a stable body, with a mindfulness that says, "You're welcome here." To whatever degree it's possible. This is our willingness to stay present, right here, with this for now.

Maintaining presence. Giving complete permission to some small disturbance. As best we're able, letting go of resistance, forces of habit, willing to stay. Perhaps beneath all this, little hints of some other quality are starting to arise. Little hints of a silent confidence. The confidence that knows that I've been through challenges before. I've meditated with stress and suffering, with dukkha^[1]. And I know sooner or later, it's bound to shift. That confidence.

Present. Right here. With this. Confident and willing. Present with this for now. Willing and confident, may all beings have the conditions to confidently walk the path of freedom and awakening.

Dharmette: Faces of Compassion (1 of 5): Patience and Confidence

So, good morning again. Nice to see so many of you, and the way that I can see you. So, five faces of compassion. Five ways that compassion unfolds naturally in our mindfulness practice.

I'd like to begin with a story recently told at IMC^[2]. It's the story of my birth. I was born into an ice storm in Central Texas. Maybe not such a common image for Central Texas, but it does happen. What this meant is that the conditions for travel were not so safe. Complicating factor, I was also born two months premature. Quite small.

So my mom was starting this process of labor, and it didn't take the family long to recognize that the small-town hospital we were in wasn't well-equipped to meet the needs of a two-month preemie. The story, as I understand it, is that my grandfather was the one to make the decisive decision that we needed to switch hospitals. So my family transitioned, my medical team made the transition, and we set off for a different hospital. I take this as a first form of compassion: that clear seeing that knew that something needed to change in order for care to be possible.

And that decision meant for my mom an ambulance ride in this ice storm, about 70 miles across the state. Now, this ambulance, from what I hear, was basically like an unmarked van with a stretcher in the back for her to lie down on. And my mom tells this detail of the kindness of the nurse in the back of this ambulance. Particularly, the nurse kept my mom calm by telling her stories. By telling her stories, maybe unexpectedly, about all the difficult things that the nurse had seen. So as to give my mom this impression, "Oh, this is no big deal." Speeding in an ambulance through an ice storm with a two-month premature baby on the way.

So, my mom gets to the hospital, and I spend 20 days in the neonatal ICU. And again, that form of compassion, that sort of hour-by-hour care of this team. I was in monitoring, making decisions, offering interventions in response to whatever needs were presenting. And then after it was safe enough, after I was born—little guy, just four pounds or so—when it was safe enough, my mom started to go home to get a little bit of rest while I stayed. But it turned out that I wouldn't take food from anyone but my mom. So my dear mom would come all the way back to the hospital and feed me, and then go home and get some rest, and then come back to feed me. And this was compassion in such a specific, embodied, irreplaceable way.

And then one more form of compassion in the story of my birth. Sometime soon after the whole ICU thing, I'm out of the hospital, doing okay, but my mom and grandmother are still concerned about what's going on. They go for a medical visit and they get into an elevator, my mom and grandmother holding me in their arms. In the elevator, a big cowboy—somebody where I grew up we might say is sturdy as a fence post, big guy—looks at my mom, looks at my grandmother, sees how unsettled they are about my health, how concerned they are, and he says, "Excuse me, ma'am, I just want you to know your son's going to be okay." And he explains that he, too, was a premature baby, about the size that I was. And seeing this contrast was something that let my mom and grandmother relax. I imagine the shoulders relaxing. The breath getting a little deeper, finally. And they had confidence. They had some hope.

So, sometimes compassion in this story was clear seeing. It was a direct decision. Sometimes it was storytelling on a risky trip in the back of the ambulance. Sometimes compassion was hour-by-hour care. Sometimes it was my mother returning to feed me. And sometimes compassion was the kind words of a stranger. It takes all these different forms in response to the suffering that it meets. Whatever suffering, whatever stress is right here, compassion morphs to meet it. And that's exactly what I want to talk about this week.

A little bit of background. Gil^[3] on a recent retreat at IRC^[4] gave a retreat talk in which he talked about five forms or five levels of dukkha, of stress and suffering. And it made a really big impression on me, and I've been contemplating it ever since. Gil's framework describes how the experience of stress shifts and changes naturally through the mindfulness practice as the retreat deepens.

So for the purposes of this week, I'll bring up a little bit about each of these forms of dukkha, each of these forms of stress that he discussed. And what I want to add is that as the experience of dukkha changes, it calls for different forms of compassion. Sometimes in ways that are quite surprising. So the dukkha changes and the compassion responds, the compassion changes shape. And these are what I'm calling the five faces of compassion.

The first level of dukkha is this type of dukkha that arises when you're totally identified, you're totally enmeshed, you are the suffering. That's what it feels like. You can't see around it, it's too big. And I remember moments like this in my life. One of which was a few years ago when I was on an online retreat with Bhikkhu Anālayo^[5], and it was during the height of the pandemic and all we were holding. It's a difficult time. And I was suffering over this and I asked him, like, "How do we hold it all? How do we handle this? It's just so big, I can't see." And his response to me, of course, was quite kind and quite wise. And I'll get into later in the week about what he said, but the important observation that he gave me that I want to share with you now: he noticed that I was totally in it. I was suffering. I was the suffering. I was enmeshed. I was identified. Yeah.

So the levels of suffering language, it's not about how serious the content is. It doesn't have to be some big thing. It's just the relationship with the experience. So, in this case, it's the fact that I was merged. I was enmeshed. I was identified with the suffering. So, that's what we're looking for. But it can be something quite small and everyday like maybe my to-do list is pressing in on me, or like those times when you wake up at 3:00 a.m. and the worry is there waiting for you right when you open your eyes. Or some kind of conversation that you are replaying over and over. It can be these kinds of things. The point is the identification, that there's no space between you and the suffering.

And so, in cases like this, it almost sounds like compassion wouldn't be possible because there's no room for it. What I'd like to propose in my experience is that there's a compassion that grows in us when we are willing to stay present with the challenge. When we hang in there with the practice during these times that we're enmeshed. So, the form that compassion takes in these kinds of cases, compassion at this level, it's just patience. It's just patience and a willingness to stay.

Maybe you've practiced through some of these times before and you kind of know that we go through these cycles. We're totally stuck. We hang in there, we stay present, we stay mindful with it, and then something else starts to shift. But having had that experience, having gone through it before, plants the seeds for some confidence. A sort of confidence that knows that the fever is bound to break given enough time. It's a kind of confidence or trust or inner resource that comes over time. And I'd like to say it's a part of that first face of compassion. So there's patience and confidence. The willingness to be here, willingness to stay.

A couple of notes about this. It's a pretty modest form of compassion. You know, it's not big, it's not flashy. Just patience and willingness. A related question that often comes up when there's this form of challenging, enmeshed suffering. Sometimes people will ask the question, "How do I do equanimity? How do I do a balanced mind?" And I think this is a great question arising from a wish to wisely address our suffering. But it's important to remember with both equanimity and many of the other wholesome qualities, we don't 'do' them exactly. But as we talk about over and over in the Dharma, we nourish the conditions for these things to arise. And one of those qualities that helps us be balanced, that helps compassion to grow, is to be fully present with what's right here. Even when we're caught, even when the content is, "Okay, I'm totally caught in this." But the presence and the willingness to stay helps these qualities to grow.

So what I want to invite for the day is to consider this modest form of compassion, this patience, willingness to stay. And see, as you watch for its presence in relationship to whatever difficulty might be there, however difficult it is, just see if the patience and the willingness offers some kind of shift. Some little shift, either in the content or in the relationship to experience. If this becomes apparent to you through the day, I'll be quite interested.

And tomorrow we'll look at a second level of dukkha and a second face of compassion. One in which a little room starts to open up. But for today, just this. The willingness to be here. And that patience, that confidence that knows, we've been through these. We can do this.

So may our practice this week be in the service of wisdom, compassion, and the liberation of all beings. Take care.