Day #55

Today’s favourite poses: DAWG, TREE (A Mother Fuckin’ Redwood Baby!)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10 or 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom – The Essential Teachings)

Since compassion is the wish that others should be free of suffering, it requires above all, the ability to feel connected to other beings. We know from experience that the closer we feel towards a particular person or animal, the greater our capacity to emphasize that that being. It follows, then, that an important element in the spiritual practice of developing compassion is the ability to feel empathetic and connected, and to have a sense of closeness with others. Buddhism describes this as a sense of intimacy with the object of compassion; it is also called loving kindness. The closer you feel towards another being, the more powerfully you will feel that the sight of his or her suffering is unbearable.

There are two main methods in Buddhism for cultivating this sense of closeness or intimacy. One is the method known as ‘exchanging and equalizing oneself with others’,. Although it stems from Nagarjuna, it was more fully developed by Shantideva in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (Bodhicaryavatara). The other technique is known as the ‘seven-point cause and effect method’. This emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude that enables us to relate to all other beings as we would to someone very dear. The traditional example given is that we should consider all sentient beings as our mother, but some scriptures also include considering beings as our father, or as our dear friends, or as close relatives, and so on. Our mother is simply taken as an example, but the point is that we should learn to view all other sentient beings as very dear and close to our hearts.

The Seven Point Cause and Effect Method:
The seven points are: recognizing that all sentient beings have been our mother in a past life; reflecting on the kindness of all beings, meditating on repaying their kindness; meditating on love; meditating on compassion; generating the extraordinary attitude of universal responsibility; and the actual development of bodhichitta.

Before we can apply the seven-point cause and effect method to ourselves, we need to cultivate a sense of equanimity towards all sentient beings, which is expressed through the ability to relate to all others equally. To do this, we need to address the problem of having thoughts and emotions that fluctuate. Not only should we try to overcome extreme negative emotions like anger or hatred, but also, in this particular spiritual practice, we should try to work with the attachment we feel to our loved ones.

Now of course, in this attachment to loved ones there is a sense of closeness and intimacy, as well as an element of love, compassion and affection, but often these emotions are also tinged with a strong feeling of desire. The reason for that is rather obvious, because when we relate to people toward whom we feel deeply attached, our feelings are highly susceptible to emotional extremes. When such a person does something that is contrary to our expectations, for instance, it has a much greater potential to hurt us than if the same thing were done by someone to whom we do not feel that close. This indicates that in the affection we feel there is a high degree of attachment. So, in this particular spiritual practice, we try to level out the attachment we have to certain people, so that our sense of closeness to them is genuine and not tinged with desire.
The key point in this preliminary practice of equanimity is to overcome the feelings of partiality and discrimination that we normally feel towards others, based on the fluctuating emotions and thoughts associated with closeness and distance. It really seems to be true that attachment constrains our vision, so that we are not able to see things from a wider perspective.