Posts from — September 2011

From a participant in The Open Heart Project:

Q: “How can I increase my mindfulness when all the stressors of my life come into play at once?”

A: I really appreciate your question about becoming more mindful when you are experiencing moments of particular stress. This is totally doable. However–if by becoming more mindful, you mean ceasing to feel stress, it’s not going to work. When you are stressed (or happy or sad or bored or frustrated, and so on) the way to become more mindful is by simply placing your attention on your experience.
[Read more →]

Sometimes it can seem impossible to find even 10 minutes to meditate. We are all so busy. I understand. The first video contains some thoughts and suggestions for realistically establishing your practice.

The second video, you guessed it, is today’s 10-minute practice.

Please forgive my rumpled appearance in both videos. It was one of those days. But still: we practice!

Questions? Comments? Post them in comments!

As I study the dharma more and more, I see without doubt that it is the key to loving relationships and that loving relationships are the key to a peaceful world. It doesn’t matter how great our intentions or strategies are for creating peace–if we don’t know how to relate one to one with our fellow humans with respect and openness, they won’t actually work.

By teaching you to manage your relationship to your thoughts, meditation also teaches you how to manage your reactions to other people. It’s that simple.

This is a really important aspect of practice to consider. It gives you the skills for becoming a force for good in this world. So if you ever harbored the notion that your practice was for you alone or felt guilty for taking time for yourself, please, please know that your practice will benefit all you encounter and is as much about loving them as it is about cultivating your own strength of mind.

The first video contains some additional thoughts on this topic.

The second video is our daily meditation practice.

Enjoy!

Love, Susan

Here is the audio version of the first video.
Here is the audio version of the second video.

Questions? Comments? Bring. Them. On. It make take me a little bit, but I answer all emails.

(photo credit: Katie Day Weisberger)

And I got to write a poem for my beloved Ming and Kate.

Say Yes
First, contemplate the Great Eastern Sun.
Say yes.

Then establish the palace of touch.
With delight, unbind the yes of that sweetness again and again,
And may that delight produce future warriors.
Say yes. [Read more →]

I was emailing with a friend today who worried that she couldn’t meditate, perhaps because she worried she was supposed to be able to empty her mind of thought or feel some sort of calmness through her practice. As you know by now, neither ceasing thought nor feeling peaceful are required before deeming your meditation practice an expression of wisdom.

Rather than changing anything about yourself, meditation begins with the opportunity to sit with yourself exactly as you are within that maelstrom of craziness we call everyday life, and relax with all your insane brilliance and ridiculous confusion. Rather than trying to slam shut the wild flow of thought or *poof* yourself into some kind of Dalai Lama – Martha Stewart hybrid, you could just let go of trying to change anything at all and allow, allow, allow everything to be completely OK just the way it is. Including yourself. Especially yourself.

Confession: Allowing shmallowing. Secretly, I used to believe that no matter what anyone said, if I just tried hard enough, meditation would indeed make me into an impassively perfect being. The first video above is a story about how I learned that would never happen.

The second video is our daily meditation practice.

Enjoy!

Love, Susan

Here is the audio version of the first video.

Here is the audio version of the second video.

Questions? Comments? Bring. Them. On. It make take me a little bit, but I answer all emails.

I wrote this in response to a friend who was feeling bad because one of her possessions was stolen–something that she had cared for, paid for in full, and would be expensive to replace. She wrote me feeling that her practice had failed her because she felt so violated and angry that she was questioning the goodness of her fellow humans. Her dilemma really touched me because I have struggled with the same exact feelings. Aren’t spiritual practitioners supposed to feel generous all the time or, when things go wrong, at least recover quickly and be restored to equanimity?

The answer, as you may have guessed, is no. Here is what I said to her:

“…the situation you describe sounds just awful; I would feel exactly as you do: devastated, angry, scared, violated, suspicious, and so on.

The thing about practice is that it does not mean you will feel perpetually non-plussed, nor that you will always feel kind and gentle towards people. (Personally, I was quite chagrined to find this out.)

However, you can begin to recover your softness by offering some kindness and gentleness toward yourself–beginning with cutting yourself a break for your feelings, for being human. Being well-practiced doesn’t mean you won’t get upset at anything, it means that when you do get upset, you are able to turn your attention toward it immediately, on the spot, and open your arms to it, not to condone (or reject) it, but simply to feel it. The more readily you can embrace and inhabit your experience as it is, the more you can deem your practice a “success.” It has nothing to do with never getting upset but is about having the courage and tenderness to own your experience. There is no need to shut out anything, even the so-called “bad” things such as lack of charity and anger–instead, you could open up, allow your humanity, and forego both judging and acting on your feelings. This is where kindness begins. First, as mentioned, toward yourself. From here, such kindness naturally expands to others. It all begins with feeling it toward yourself. This step is so, so important. In fact, it is critical. [Read more →]

Me. Albert King. Another planet.

About 25 years ago, I was driving cross country for the reasons you might expect of a 20-year old who was utterly lost. Where the hell was my life? It had to be somewhere. It was not in the big city suburb I grew up in. Not in the rows of desks at that sheep factory called High School from which I barely graduated and not in any of the sheep factories of higher learning, none of which I bothered to apply to in favor of a succession of waitress and waitress-like jobs and hanging out in bars, and not in the telenovelas of the lives of those I met but had no way to connect with because no one spoke my language. Where was my life? Where were my people? Some hints could be found in books, yes. In music, certainly.

But what did art and music have to do with me? How could I find a life to relate to when I didn’t even know my own location? I could find no discernible roads, no apparent steps to climb, no conceivable destination to maneuver toward. Lost. So I figured, what the hell, I might as well drive around. At least that way my body would be doing what my mind already was, and there’s something oddly satisfying about matching those two up. I got behind the wheel and headed in the only viable direction for a music lover in Boston (or anywhere, really): South. And West. [Read more →]

Hello everyone! A special hello to all the new subscribers who joined up in the past week. I look forward to getting to know you and helping you enter the practice of meditation. The Open Heart Project is growing by leaps and bounds and I’m thrilled to know how many people wish to learn meditation–which is synonymous with the wish to learn who you really are. Which is synonymous with awesome.

Today’s video (the one below on the left) is a little riff on why we meditate to begin with. Is it to become all spiritual? Unflappable? Is it to become more human? More genuine? Hmmm…. Check the video for the answer…

The second video (on the right) is today’s 10 minute guided meditation practice. Please give it a try.

Here is the audio version of video #1.

Here is the audio version of video #2.

Questions? Comments? Bring. Them. On. It make take me a little bit, but I answer all emails.

If you’d like to send a link this post and/or wish to comment on it, it lives on my blog here.

I love me some Jen Louden. She is devoted, generous, smart, funny, and has a fantastic haircut. What’s not to love? Oh yes, she also wants to help everyone in the world become who they’re really meant to be and thereby save the planet. A mission I wholly admire.

She interviewed me for her Savor & Serve project and you can read it here:

Together with Patti Digh, we’re teaching a writing and creativity workshop in Boston Sept 23-24, Walking Into Fire: Sidestepping Fear, Writing Your Heart Out, and Letting Your Story Tell Itself.

September 12, 2011

There is a Buddhist meditation practice called Tonglen. In Tibetan, tong means “sending out” and len means “receiving.” So Tonglen is known as the practice of sending and taking, or of exchanging self for other. Instead of inhaling what makes us feel good and exhaling what makes us feel bad, this practice asks that we do the opposite. We breathe in the suffering of others by visualizing it as dark, hot, sticky, soot and smoke coming into our lungs. We breathe out what is positive in the form of air that is light, bright, clean, and cool. In this way, we volunteer to take in some portion of the world’s suffering and offer up to it whatever good we possess.

On this day ten years ago, I decided to drive into Manhattan. [Read more →]