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Guided Meditation: Stability

Hello everyone, and welcome.

There's a classic image or metaphor that's used for meditation, and that is to sit like a mountain. It may be a little bit easier to feel that when you're sitting cross-legged, when you have this triangular shape. But I bring it up now today because learning to be firmly grounded in the place that you're standing, sitting, for your being, kind of be there solid like a mountain, implies that you're not leaning forward, you're not pulling back, you're not contracting. You're just there in a very stable way, that the mountain winds, the stormy winds, doesn't move the mountain. The mountain just stays.

So to learn this ability to have this kind of stability is really helpful when we are in the world of anger, whether in the world of other people's anger or our own anger. To not give in to any of it, not to be caught by it, not be unduly influenced by it. To have developed a capacity to be stable in meditation can translate into finding that stability in times of great difficulty. In times it may be when there is anger directed at us, or that we direct at some other place. So with that in mind, maybe in this meditation we can take some care to feel like a mountain.

Whether you're meditating in a chair, or sitting cross-legged, or maybe some of you are standing, or if you are lying down, maybe there's some way of feeling stability, strength, unwaveringness in the face of whatever is happening. And to have the body, your physical body, support you in this groundedness.

So to begin, giving some care to your posture, maybe adjusting things so that there is more stability. If you're sitting in a chair, make sure there's a feeling of firmness underneath the soles of your feet. If you're sitting with the feet on the floor, like they're there firmly, some of that stability comes from the feet. If you're sitting cross-legged on the floor, that it feels balanced to you. That the way the lower part of your body is against the floor and your cushion is a firm support. Feel the firm support or whatever underlies your body's weight.

And take time to feel the support. Feel the way your weight comes down and rests against your chair, your cushion, the floor, your bed. And to really feel that grounding, you might sway back and forth a little bit, forward and back. And to really feel the contact of your body against what holds up the body's weight. And then as you exhale, to exhale into that contact point, like you're releasing yourself into that support.

And then to feel your torso arising out of that support. It works a little better if you're sitting upright, to imagine you're sitting here like a mountain with a wide firm base. If you're sitting using a backrest, if it's possible to sit up a little straighter, maybe even not using the backrest even for a little while. And taking a few long deep breaths into your rib cage, deepening, stretching, opening on the inhale. Almost like you're becoming more full or substantial or strong as you breathe in a little more deeply than usual. And exhaling and settling into the stability of this body of yours.

An uplifting movement as you breathe in, and a rooted feeling as you exhale, let go, and become rooted in this body.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And allow yourself to feel whatever global stability there is in your body, global steadiness. And as the torso breathes, perhaps you can feel that steady stability. The breathing arising out of that stability, returning to it, being part of it.

Entrust yourself to your body. Trust the stability, the steadiness, the weight of your body, as it's rooted like a mountain here.

In the thinking mind, thoughts are like clouds or winds at the top of the mountain. Releasing any tension or holding associated with thinking. Letting those thoughts begin to evaporate. The energetic wind of thinking begins to quiet down and calm. The mind trusts resting in the stability of the body. Mindful of breathing, as if breathing is intimately connected to the stability of the body here and now.

Maybe gently saying to yourself the word "stability," "stable," as if that word is being said out of the stability of the body. Becoming grounded in the stability of the body. Stable.

With the reference of being stable, maybe you can notice the movements away from that stability, and then noticing them return to the stability.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, consider how being stable can be a support for being present for others, maybe when others are not stable. Maybe as a way of letting our friendliness be more evident and present. Perhaps from a base of stability, wishing well on others has a very different feeling than doing it without stability.

Trusting the stability of being, trusting the stability of the bones, your weight, the contact against the ground. The stability of gravity as you sit here. And opening your heart wide to offer your good will, your well-wishing, your compassion, and care out into the world. You as a champion for the welfare and happiness of others.

May others be happy. May others be safe. May others be peaceful. May others be free.

And may we contribute to that without losing our balance, our stability, and our wisdom.

Dharmette: Respecting Anger (4 of 5) Wise Speech When Angry.

So here we are at the fourth talk on anger, and today I want to talk a bit about speaking when we are angry.

It's one thing to be able to be by oneself and to meditate and process the anger that way. It's another thing to manage our anger wisely when we're in relationship to other people and you need to talk and work and do things with others. And certainly, I hope that the whole mindfulness approach with emotions, with anger, and this kind of deeper looking at it, is supportive for how we engage that in the world when we are angry.

So the mindfulness approach to anger is an alternative to expressing the anger, acting it out, venting it. Catharsis, venting anger, is usually not very helpful. It's helpful for people who have very deep repressed anger and never get a chance to have it come to the surface. Then maybe going to a safe location like in the forest and express the anger to a tree or something where there's no one, or alone in your room, and just to kind of finally get it up to the surface so you can address it. But generally, venting anger and cathartic expression of anger, more often than not, tends to strengthen the anger, make more of it, and make it grow. And that's why venting anger to other people that you might feel is usually counterproductive, because it tends to put fuel in itself.

The classic Buddhist teaching around anger is that anger is a fire that burns the person who has it. And so with venting, the externality of the venting sometimes doesn't allow the venter to feel the cost, the burning. But in fact, it's tremendously costly for the person who's venting anger. It's not really a release of pressure.

And then, so on one end, expressing the anger or venting the anger is usually not suggested. Repressing the anger is also not healthy. This can create a tremendous amount of problems and usually it's counterproductive, and sooner or later there may be an explosion, or the anger and resentment kind of seeps out in unseen ways.

So the alternative I'd like to suggest for today, between expressing anger and repressing it, is managing the anger. Knowing that we're angry and finding the tools on how to be with the anger that we have so that it doesn't need to be expressed and it doesn't need to be repressed. And what we can do is we can learn to interact with other people, having the anger somehow helpfully managed.

So one of the ways to manage the anger is not to automatically give in to it, but have an alternative place, a way of being with anger other than giving in to it. And one of those ways is to be rooted, grounded, stable in ourselves. To have cultivated a habit, a strong skillset in being connected to the physical body. To be able to be grounded in the physical body, to take a stable posture in the physical body, to learn how to manage the agitation of the body, the restlessness of the body. The emotional pressures that arise in the body, to be able to hold them in the body.

And this is phenomenally useful. That we are learning through mindfulness practice to expand our capacity to experience difficult emotions. If the capacity is small, then the difficult emotions spill over or explode or become detrimental. But we're learning steadily in this practice to expand our capacity to hold more and more difficult emotions, including anger. And one of the ways to hold it, to be with it, is to really drop into the body. Feel the body, feel the stability of the body, and let the anger be felt as part of the body, as opposed to we becoming the anger, identifying with the anger, which is a very difficult state to be in. If anything, we identify with the body and the anger is a subset of it.

And then as we manage this anger, if we have a little bit of ability to investigate, to look inside, to understand the characteristics of the anger. Is it something that's really unique to a current incident, or is there a long history of resentment, of complaining, of indignation, of stress connected to how we're feeling now? This is just a continuation of a long pattern. In fact, there might even be a kind of a continuous chronic feeling of irritation, that weak annoyance that's there regardless if we're with others or not. It's just that chronic annoyance, irritation, resentment has it. Sometimes now it's getting kind of a big wave is being formed of it, though the little wave is always moving across the ocean. And maybe it's going across a shoal and now it's being raised up and really big.

If it's chronic, we might relate to it very differently than if it's just in the incident in the moment. Because incidents in the moment is where maybe there's real danger. So if anger is a symptom of a danger, of some problem going on, then if you recognize what the problem is, then maybe there's less need to be angry. Then we can maybe find ways to address the problem.

And this is where mindful speech is phenomenally useful: to learn how to speak mindfully. And one of the ways to speak mindfully is, again, to be rooted in the body, to have the stability of body as we speak, so that we can track what we're saying. We might even be able to track what we're about to say. It's because we're managing all this, not to repress anything, but so the best parts of ourselves come out. It's really managing ourselves so we can stay free, not managing ourselves so we bottle ourselves up. It might feel like you're free if we just vent our anger and just spew out what we're feeling, but that's not really freedom. That's really a loss of freedom, even though there's a release and kind of an ease in which things are spilling out of us. Managing is to stay close to that place where there's a deeper wisdom that's free, deeper connectivity, deeper choice is possible. And so, to learn to speak connected to the body is being aware of what's happening here.

The other is, again, if there is an opportunity to pay a little bit of attention—and this becomes second nature the more we are mindful of speech in ourselves—is to be careful why you're speaking. What's the motivation? What are you accomplishing with the speech? Some speech is only a dagger that we're throwing at other people to hurt them. Some speech is to try to solve the problem. Some speech is to try to give a message to someone that what they're doing is not acceptable, but it's very different letting them know in strong terms "you can't do this" versus some kind of statement that says "you're a terrible person," using some horrible language to say that, kind of attacking them and throwing swear words at them perhaps. So what's the purpose of the language? Is it to hurt the person? Is it to problem solve? Is it to be able to let the person know what we're feeling?

And then the content of what we say is important, and one thing that's very helpful at times is to learn the art of "I" statements. I was once, many years ago, I was a TA in college for the chair of the department, and he was treating me in some kind of way that was not appropriate, maybe as a servant, and asking me to do all kinds of things and putting pressure on me, and demands that were unreasonable. And I got furious at him, but I had enough sense to know this is not a person to yell at or be angry at. So, but I didn't want to repress it. I felt this needs to be addressed. So I went to him and I stood there, and I was kind of shaking because I was so angry, and I made "I" statements. I said things like, "What I'm experiencing now, given what you said and what you're asking me to do, is I feel really hurt. I feel really upset." And it was obvious that I wasn't saying anything about him and what he did. I was just saying the impact it had on me, and that was all I needed to do. He backed out, he understood the impact, he understood what he had done, and then the whole thing became a lot better.

And so, to sometimes sharing the impact—sometimes it's powerful to tell people, "When you did X, I know I feel afraid now." Some people, kind of when they realize the impact they had like that, they switch and change, as opposed to yelling at them and then they yell back and then the whole thing escalates.

And the idea is to learn how to speak in ways where the speaking de-escalates our own anger, whether it diffuses it. There are wonderful, like maybe slightly pronounced differently, but the two meanings: to diffuse is to kind of settle out, spread out so it's weaker, thinner, less concentrated; and to take the fuse out of a bomb, to defuse. We're defusing our anger. We're tracking ourselves so we know, we get the feedback that we're actually maybe speaking in a way that's increasing the level of the anger rather than decreasing it.

I've been angry at someone once some years ago, and I asked to meet with the person privately, so we did. And we talked for a while, and then I said after a while, I could feel myself getting even more upset, and so I asked if we could have a time out: "Can we just sit here quietly for a few minutes?" And the person was a practitioner, so that was apparently easy enough to agree to. And then when, after a few minutes of breathing and being present, then I was ready to continue the conversation. I was not in a good place to have the conversation until I had had a couple of minutes of silence.

So to track ourselves, to manage ourselves, to be able to manage the conversation and find the balance, and find how to speak and what to speak. How not to attack people when we speak, which is so easy to do when we're angry. But to speak in ways that try to get the job done that needs to be done that's appropriate. To be careful that we're not spilling over things that have nothing to do with them. Chronic resentments, chronic hurt that we're carrying with us can bring a lot of pressure along that way. We're not really taking care of the situation at hand as we're somehow giving expression to age-old resentment that we're carrying, that we're frustrated with, and is coming out.

So in these few minutes I have, those are the ideas that I'm offering. So here the primary one I want to leave you with is two ideas. One is manage your anger, and manage it with discovering some stability within. Always look for the stability if you can. And the other is, start exploring and being wise about how you speak. Because sometimes we have to speak when we're angry.

And maybe today if you have an occasion to be angry or irritated or annoyed, or you want to complain, don't complain. Don't express annoyance. Don't send barbs to people. Rather, consider what you can say that's maybe an "I" statement, that may be supportive in the situation, that's appropriate for the situation, that takes care of something that takes care of you and the other person. If the person hasn't done the dishes one more time, don't kind of yell at them, just kind of say, "Wow, here we are again, the dishes aren't being done. What's happening?" Or, "It's very discouraging. I feel so discouraged to see this sink full of dishes again," and leave it at that. See what happens.

Mainly the point being, find ways to speak when you're angry. Develop the skill and the wisdom to be able to do that so that your speech is healthy and wise in circumstances when you're angry. So thank you.

And we'll have one more talk on anger tomorrow, I think.