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Guided Meditation: Space Enough;

So, welcome. Good day. It's morning here in Santa Cruz. Watching the greetings come in from different places. San Francisco, of course, Santa Cruz, Redwood City, BC, Toronto. This is lovely. Good to be with you.

Welcome back. Yesterday we started this series on the five faces of compassion. And it's a compassion that arises in response to suffering in a way that's quite natural as the mindfulness practice unfolds.

As we talked about yesterday, this first level of suffering, the first level of dukkha^[1], is characterized by identification, being enmeshed like we're totally in it. There's no room to see around the suffering. And then we talked about a form of compassion that meets this level, a face of compassion. That's the simple patience and willingness to hang in there. And then the trust that this will shift.

So today we'll start with a sitting. We'll talk a little bit about a second level of suffering and stress and the compassion that arises in response. In short, what happens when there's just a little bit of space, a little bit of room.

So, we'll start the sitting moving into a physical sense of space and then maybe bring in something that's a little challenging for us. Just a little, nothing too big.

So, why don't we settle in, already starting to align the body. However you're positioned, seated, reclining. Settling into your support. Now the body is held up from what's underneath? Maybe in the chair.

Now sensing our way into an upright posture. Lengthening the spine. Slight lift in the sternum. The torso long from the base all the way through the crown of the head. And you might invite some long slow breaths deeply and fully out. Sensing your way to balance as you breathe.

Now sensing if there's any extra tension or obvious holding in the body, letting go of anything that's easy to relax. As you do this, you may find the posture slightly readjusting. Upright, balanced. Let the breathing be natural. Willing to be present for whatever arises.

Now to bring in a physical sense of space. I would invite you to first bring the attention to any sensations in the area of the head. Maybe tingling along the scalp. Some firmness in the face, the moisture in the mouth. Anything?

And now bringing the focus of your attention, taking a long journey all the way down to the feet. Sensing whatever sensations are there. If nothing is clear in the feet, just whatever is closest, lower leg, maybe the knee.

And now with some slight relaxation of the attention, letting it register how there is a physical distance of space between the head and the feet. Sensing into that distance, the space that it creates. For the next minute or two. Letting that any hint of spaciousness be our focus.

It may become apparent that this felt sense of space is not limited to the body. It reaches beyond it. That the sensations that arise can seem to arise within space.

Now to sense perhaps there's some small suffering that we're bringing in with us today. Some, maybe even tiny, dis-ease. Maybe there's something more significant too. If there's something evident that's just a little disturbance, to welcome this to be known within this sense of space^[2].

If anything comes to mind to have mindfulness tracking closely what's changing, what's shifting. Continuing to be present with whatever arises within this sense of space.

There's some measure of space around whatever challenge. Willing to be present with this for now. Present here with this for now with space enough. May there be space enough for ease, space enough for contentment. Space enough for compassion. May all beings benefit from our practice together.

Dharmette, Faces of Compassion (2 of 5): Capacity

So hello again. Thank you for practicing together. The topic of this week is the five faces of compassion. And yesterday we discussed a way in which compassion unfolds naturally in response to whatever experience of dukkha is present. Borrowing this idea of five levels of dukkha. The first level as we said was you're totally identified. You're enmeshed. There's no space around. At least that's how it seems. And we find that compassion meets this maybe in a surprising way with patience, with willingness to stay, and a sense maybe of some faith or confidence that this too is going to change. So that level of compassion, maybe we could say it's modest. And as a patient attention, that patient compassion is sustained, something starts to shift and a different relationship to dukkha arises and a new form of compassion.

So the way that Gil talks about the move from the first level of dukkha to the second is he phrased it this way. It's the movement from "I am suffering" to "there is suffering here." It sounds like such a small change but it really can make such a difference. Of course, in the first formulation, we are the dukkha. We are the suffering, the stress, the dis-ease. There's no space between me and what I'm holding. In the second, there is dukkha here. There's the possibility of some space, some breathing room, even a little. The suffering is still there. But I'm not identified with it.

Now, we don't force the change. We don't do the shift. It just happens naturally when the practice is sustained. So mindfulness deepens. It broadens and our willingness to stay softens us.

So in the early discourses in the Anguttara Nikaya^[3] in the Book of Fives there's this lovely image of Venerable Sariputta^[4] instructing the other monastics. And to paraphrase what he has to say, he describes that there's a traveler on the road. Traveler walking the road. You can imagine in ancient India far from the next village the traveler is sick, unable to get the food that they need, unable to get the medicine that they need. Precarious situation, traveler going this way, sick. And then there's a second person comes along other direction, sees the sick person and how natural it is for the impulse to arise. "I want to do what I can for this person. May this person have the food that they need, the medicine they need, the shelter that they need, the care that they need." It's so natural for this second traveler to have this compassionate wish. "May this person be cared for. May they be nourished."

So at the first level of dukkha, we're the sick traveler. We are in the suffering. At the second level of dukkha, we take the position of the other traveler, the one who sees. The suffering is still nearby, but we're not identified with it. There's room. It's a little bit of space. The dukkha doesn't disappear exactly. The first traveler is still sick, but now there's room enough to be seen and acknowledged and regarded compassionately. There's space enough, in the language of our meditation.

So I might describe this second face of compassion as engaged but not overtaken. In a word, it's capacity. It's the compassion that can be present with suffering without being submerged by it. And in the everyday, it might look something like the kind of compassion that can sit with a friend who is grieving without needing to fix it. Or maybe it's the compassion that can read the news without collapsing. Or the compassion that can stay near our own pain without being washed away, without losing our footing in the stream of suffering. All of these are the second face of compassion. They're engaged. The friend's grief still matters. The news still moves us. But there's enough space. There's enough space to wish well, to not be identified, maybe room enough to incline ever so slightly toward ease.

So in meditation this can happen pretty quietly. Say there's some challenge or some dis-ease that comes to our attention. We sit with it mindful with the body, the sensations of the body, the heart, breath. And at some point, sometimes within just one sit, the relationship to the dukkha can change from "I am suffering" to "there is suffering here." And sometimes I notice this in a physical way like there's a relaxation. There's a physical reordering of the muscles, posture changes or sometimes it's a mental shift. It actually can feel like the center of gravity of attention changes where it's abiding. Like maybe it was right up here in a contraction in the forehead and over the course of a sitting the center of gravity of attention comes down somewhere maybe into the chest maybe into the belly and mindful recognition itself can be the catalyst for this shift.

I was discussing this teaching recently and a practitioner put it this way, that just to name "I am suffering" in the meditation, they said, is like a magic phrase. It's like a magic word that makes a little bit of space arise. I thought that was apt. Sometimes just naming "I am suffering" is what moves us into "there is suffering here." It's such a direct and clear acknowledgement.

Then similarly, last week Andrea Fella^[5] was here at the retreat center offering a teaching and she described how sometimes when suffering is present it can be really helpful to zoom out to register the entirety of the experience. To let the awareness grow wide and take in the whole scene of what's happening here right now. And there's wisdom in this. For one, it's sometimes exactly what's unacknowledged that keeps us stuck. The hurt or the desire under the anger maybe, or the unseen sadness that's underneath the withdrawal, or maybe the craving that's under the insistence. Something unacknowledged, something not seen. So, zooming out gives us a chance to recognize what's being left out. What's being left out of awareness. Or as Gil sometimes will put it, what am I not willing to pay attention to? So broadening our view can help us see what's unseen and can help us open up a little bit of space.

Sometimes this happens on our own, of course. And we don't have to do it alone. Thankfully the power of Sangha^[6].

There's an example of this again from the early discourses. Some years ago I became especially interested in these stories in the Pali canon when the monks were ill, sometimes gravely ill. And in many of the stories the Buddha was invited to visit them. And he does. And I like to think of the Buddha as the ultimate chaplain that you can imagine, sensitive and attuned, wise and clear, loving, unencumbered by mental disturbance. Really present. And I wondered, how does the Buddha offer care to folks who are ill or folks who are dying? And these are monks who may well be totally enmeshed in their suffering. So how does he support them?

And one of the phrases, it sounds like a wise old friend. Maybe you can imagine you have a slight illness or something and you're in your bed at home and in comes the Buddha to offer you a visit. And he sits down with you and he says this, I'll play it as put in the text. He sat down and he's talking to this monk called Phagguna^[7]. So the Buddha sits down with you and he says, "I hope you're bearing up. I hope you're getting better. I hope that your painful feelings are subsiding, that they're not increasing, and that their subsiding, not their increase, is to be seen."

I feel like there's so much kindness in this phrase. "I hope you're bearing up." You're being encouraged. It can be this compassionate encouraging attention of a friend that helps move the mind into some little bit of spaciousness around the suffering to move us from this enmeshment to this "Oh, there's suffering here, but there's a little room." This second face of compassion, this capacity. So after this with Phagguna, the Buddha gave a dharma teaching. It doesn't say exactly what that was and during that teaching Venerable Phagguna's mind was able to be freed in some liberating way.

So I want to generalize the importance of Sangha, this compassionate encouragement that we can offer each other that can help us move from one form of dukkha to another. Of course, we can do this in our meditation, but we don't have to practice alone. We don't have to do this alone.

So maybe to sum up as the capacity, this second face of compassion is sustained, we continue to meet dukkha, dis-ease, and we meet our own, we meet the dukkha of others. As the second face of compassion is sustained, something else starts to surface. And the hint for tomorrow is what happens next maybe we'll say is a little humbling. But we'll pick it up tomorrow with the third face of compassion.

For today, the encouragement maybe is the practice of clear seeing with a little bit of space around whatever is challenging. A kind of space we don't have to force but one that arises from our sustained willingness to be present. So may we move from "I am suffering" to "there is suffering here." May we move from the place of the first sick traveler to the second.

So take care everyone. May our practice be a source of care and encouragement for each other and for all beings. Be well.