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Happy Hour: Lovingkindness Free from the Frame of Self-Reference

Okay, great. So, hello and a warm welcome. For this edition of Happy Hour, I'd like to invite us to explore metta^[1]—loving-kindness, love, friendliness—so many different nuances of this quality of the heart. To explore this from a selfless perspective. I just finished teaching a retreat on emptiness, and part of that was exploring the self: how self is the reference point of everything in our lives, in our thoughts, and in our senses. What if we notice that, and what if we play around with shifting perspectives? I see many of you who are on retreat, so this will be a continuation of our exploration. And for those who weren't on the retreat, no problem, whatever you need will be shared with you. So, coming into it with beginner's mind.

Let's just get into practice. I won't say much more; let's just explore with an open mind, with beginner's mind, and see what arises.

Reflections

Thank you. Thank you for your practice. With the invitations today, I admit for this session they may have been a little more on the subtle side, needing a little more settling of the mind, stability of the mind, more quiet in the mind for an opening for this exploration to give fruit. So I'd love to hear your reflections. If even for a split second this letting go of the frame of reference of the self opened up for you, there was an "aha," and then opening up to a space that was more spacious, more easy, more filled with metta and friendliness. If that were the case for you, even for a split second, I would love to hear from you if you would be so kind to share. Don, please.

Don: Thank you so much, Nikki. It was a challenging practice, and yeah, subtle. For me, I tried to just physically change my point of reference and sort of look at myself maybe from the perspective of a friend of mine, or somebody else, and to sort of observe the pain or the thoughts or whatever is going on. And whatever was inside me was sort of floating up, the pain and whatever, and was sort of this self-contained thing that people could see. Anyway, that image was helpful.

Nikki Mirghafori: Okay, thank you, Don. I really appreciate how you're explaining that. That's a beautiful way to explore the shifting of perspective. Wonderful, this is lovely. That's one way to try this shifting of perspective as you were saying, like, "Wow, what if consciousness wasn't localized here? It was from the perspective of my friend outside or a compassionate being." And then you said it was helpful. Is it okay to say a couple more words? What was the nature of it being helpful? What happened?

Don: Yeah, so I often have a lot of doubt about many things during meditation. I have doubt about, "Hey, am I doing this right?" And I get a tension, right around my belly button. Anyway, that was released a little bit, and it sort of floated up.

Nikki Mirghafori: Nice, nice. So what I'm hearing is that it was the sense of doubt—"Am I doing this right?"—which is habitual self-doubt. And with this shifting in perspective, there was a release. It released both physically and the doubt itself. There was just a release into more ease, into what I would call more freedom.

Don: Yeah, exactly.

Nikki Mirghafori: Lovely, beautiful. Yay. Thank you for sharing it. This is exactly what I was pointing to, which is exactly that shift of reference. It's like, oh, something releases physically as well as in the mind to more ease, into more spaciousness. And what I would invite you is, notice if in that ease there is more kindness, there's more love. If you notice that, or next time to check it out. Thank you, Don. Violet, please.

Violet: Hey, I had a few interesting experiences and a question. I had this moment at some point, your invitation was something along the lines of, "Your body doesn't need you to breathe, like breathing is going to happen." And it felt like all of a sudden, my conscious self was a CEO who thought they were in charge of the show, and then all of a sudden it was like being at a boardroom table looking at all the people who were actually doing the work for you the whole time. It's like, I thought I was in charge of everything, and then all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, my foot does work without me! It's doing its own thing." And what I realized recently, I've noticed when I have awareness of parts of my body, it's not actually awareness through the sensation. I actually, even when I'm sitting, it's like I'm looking at it from where my eyes are. Like my knee, I'm looking at it from where my eyes are. I'm not actually going through my body to the sensation of the knee. And that's something it's hard when I do walking meditation now, I try and wear a really big scarf so I can't see my legs at all, so that way I'm not looking at them, I'm feeling them.

So the question I have is: I have a lot of back pain. And what was helpful with this was taking the self out in terms of sensation. Like, these are sensations without a "me" that they're damaging or hurting me. This isn't an injustice to me that I'm feeling this pain. But then I've also been using a lot of self-compassion and equanimity to help manage the pain. And then at the end when it got really strong, I tried to shift to that, but then that felt like they were not aligning. Like, experiencing the back through "no-self" and then trying to do self-compassion, they didn't seem compatible. So I was wondering about that.

Nikki Mirghafori: Excellent, thank you, Violet. Really appreciate your observations and insights, and the question too. Beautiful. So, a couple of things. One is about what you shared about the CEO that notices there are other people in the room that are doing the work. So I trust you might have heard of this teaching of anattā^[3], not-self, that self is not what we take it to be. And there are ways that we can have insight into this self being a little actually different from this standard way we take it. And there's so many different ways to have insight into this nature of this not-self or self being different. And what you just described is one way. So beautiful, this can be a very powerful way of seeing that can continue to open up for you. So continue to sit with it, let it flourish, including what you're talking about with the back pain. "Oh, sensations. It's just sensations being sensed." Unpleasant feeling tone is being sensate of itself, which can be very powerful, again along the lines of anattā, not-self.

And then when you try to bring in self-compassion, it's like, "Wait a minute, these frames of reference aren't quite working." Exactly. So the way self-compassion can work with this paradigm is that actually compassion—it's what I was leading in the meditation—this different shift in perspective actually has love and compassion in it. There's no giving of it to ourselves. So I invite this for you to sit with. And it may not be obvious right now, but in the awareness of this sensation itself, there can be a sense of care and love in it without the reference of self. It's a different way of practicing. Does that kind of make sense a little bit?

Violet: So the awareness itself is the metta and compassion?

Nikki Mirghafori: Yes, it's in there. It's infused. Awareness infused with metta. Yes. No self needed. Thank you, Violet, lovely. Nicholas, please.

Nicholas: I've been playfully exploring that when thinking arises, that contraction of "Oh, you shouldn't be there, why are you there? Why is that thought there? Why am I thinking those?" It's a very fast contraction. And your invitation... something playful came up, which is meeting that contraction with the question, "Who says you shouldn't be there?" And it's fun. It's a nice little space there in that question.

Nikki Mirghafori: Nice. So what I'm hearing is, with the contraction of "Oh, you shouldn't be thinking," then it's kind of like, "Oh, who says? Who is the judgmental mind? Like, who is this?" It's kind of questioning this frame of reference, bringing some humor, some gentleness. And that question for you releases the frame of reference a little bit and brings more freedom and ease. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Nicholas: Yeah, exactly.

Nikki Mirghafori: Lovely. And in that, there is compassion, there is love. Because when self-judgment drops away, in that ease, there is more metta inherently, even if we don't call it out. So I want to point that out to you to notice that the next time. Lovely. I'm loving, Nicholas, you sharing this as well as others sharing their ways, like Don sharing the physical way he found the shifting of the perspective. So each of you finding your own way working with this. Lovely.

So the time has come for us to practice in sangha^[4]. Such an important way to practice in small groups and share our reflections, share of ourselves, share our insights and share our confusion, whatever it might be. And benefit from the wisdom of sangha and be held witness, and give and receive. Because we don't wake up on our own, and things become even more clarified in this friendly way that we come together. So I will create the breakout rooms, and the invitation is let's start with 30 seconds of silent metta for each other. Just 30 seconds of holding the people who are in your room with care, with eyes of friendliness. And then you can share anything you like, as little or as much as you wish about your practice. And I'm going to open the rooms now. Here we go.

[Laughter]

Okay, welcome back everyone. It's good to see you. And I see some smiling faces, some smiles on your faces. So we have a couple minutes for any reflections that came up, what you noticed in your practice with sangha, please. Especially if you haven't spoken yet or recently, I invite you to speak from your own experience. Please don't be shy. You can type in chat or raise your hand. Yes, Erica, please, and then Neil.

Erica: I can just share a quick thing. I shared this in my group as well. But as we were meditating, this group walked by and you could hear them laughing. And usually when I hear people laughing, you know, I think like, "Oh, their joy, that's distinct from my joy." And maybe I feel a little left out or I feel like, "Oh, why is the joy... why don't I ever have joy?" or whatever, you know? But because of the invitations in this meditation, I could feel their joy, kind of like what Don was saying. It was like a kind of loose particles of joy, you know, that were not theirs but were just available. And I felt like, "Oh, I like that joy is available to me." And participating in that joy, that was really nice.

Nikki Mirghafori: Thank you for sharing that. Wow, I feel goosebumps as you share that. It's just... what beautiful practice. The power of this... when the self is in there, "my joy," "your joy." Oh, it's joy! There's joy. And the mind-heart, the citta^[5], awareness, consciousness, can participate instead of this self-reference. Thank you, Erica, that's lovely. Beautiful. Makes me happy, gives me joy. Neil, please.

Neil: So it's more than a 30-second answer, I fear. You know, I find myself thinking a lot about free will and self-determinism and such. And you know, the more I think about lack of self, and things are based on causes and conditions, you know, the more I feel, you know, yeah, I don't know... yet I still find myself motivated to do things, yeah, you know? And I'm kind of stuck there. I don't know.

Nikki Mirghafori: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm going to give a 30-second answer to be continued. So the idea here is not that there is no self, that's not the teaching at all. And in fact, Nāgārjuna^[6] said if you take the emptiness teachings from the wrong end, it's like grabbing a poisonous snake on the wrong end. So it leads to nihilism and confusion. So that's where we'll head. So it's not not-self that there is no self, it's more complicated. There is a self, you exist, of course you exist. And yet it's much more open, much more complicated, much more free. It's both; it's neither real nor non-real. Anyway, that's getting more than 30 seconds, but what can I say that could be helpful besides that? Yes, there is a self, the teaching is not a negation of self. And with the idea of free will... yeah, Buddhism has a lot to... it kind of obviates the whole free will idea through... I mean, there's a lot I've thought about this a lot, and there's a lot of writing that you can also find on the web. But the idea is... oh, this is going to be so much longer than 30 seconds. To be continued, Neil, to be continued. So let's continue this another time.

This is 7:02, I do want to bring it to a close. I have so much to say about this, but we'll give a good Dharma talk about this sometime. Anyway, thank you all. Thank you so much for your questions, for your curiosity, for your practice, for your heart. May all beings be free, happy, joyous, including ourselves. Thank you for your practice.