Changing Your Heart Towards Pain - Pema Chodron #Buddhism

[Music] so our subject this afternoon up after we say the chant well of course this chat is our subject this afternoon may all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness may they be free from suffering and the root of suffering may they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering may they dwell in the great equanimity free from passion aggression and prejudice so this afternoon we're moving on to the second line of this aspiration chant may they or may we be free from suffering and the root of suffering and i'm sure i don't have to tell you what suffering is uh but the root of suffering i went through this morning uh gave a very simple definition that it's struggle struggling with your with things as they are struggling with your self as you are struggling with other people as they are circumstances as they are this morning we did the uh practice of loving kindness starting with receiving love then beginning to expand it uh sending the expressing the aspiration for our own happiness may we and may i enjoy happiness and the root of happiness and then expanding it to a loved one or loved ones then neutral person or a stranger and i suggested that you might just choose one person where their face could come to mind and do it for them and then finally uh someone that you find very challenging irritating and uh i should to say again that the person in this category it's best not to use uh people that uh that thinking of them or uh being in relationship with them is traumatizing in other words the real hum dingers just work with just work with uh the uh irritations the short-term dislikes or that kind of thing and that's good enough because if you work with that uh then your capacity to stay open to the discomfort of of remaining in the visualized presence of someone that's challenging to you even though it's just a minor thing perhaps that you are training to be able to stay open in the even the most challenging situations with people that actually have been cruel and hurt you in the past or in the present this is uh one of the very hardest things for us to do as human beings and i never underestimate how challenging it is to remain present to uh feelings whether they're physical or emotional that are painful we are just definitely not in any way familiar with that experience it's something that we train in uh staying present with our self uh when we feel uh pain when we feel um again that we're getting worked up in one way or another so much of the spiritual path is allowing those feelings to be there just changing your attitude towards pain and changing your attitude really means changing your heart towards pain and realizing that uh you can stay present with those feelings even if it's just a second longer than you could do previously and those seconds kind of add up until it's uh a minute longer than you used to be able to and then those minutes add up so it's uh progressive that way my experience and an experience has been shared with me by a lot of people is that once you sort of get the hang of it what did what these words are pointing to to stay present with something that is painful it doesn't matter if it's a little distress or a large one once you get the hang of it then then you have confidence that it's something that you can do usually in small increments inch by inch bit by bit small step by small step getting used to allowing that part of our experience to be here becoming familiar with the part of our experience which we categories categorize as unwanted or unpleasant or frightening anything in that that column of i don't want it so this is a good segue into our topic for the afternoon which is pain which is compassion which is about pain as i mentioned last night when ken mcleod teaches about doing the practice of compassion con awakening the heart of compassion for oneself and other people he says that it's uh it brings you very close to your fear of pain because compassion um again as i mentioned last night is a lot more challenging than the practice of meta or my tree or loving kindness and it's challenging because it means willing to feel the pain that you feel again starting with oneself and then based on that foundation of being willing to feel your own pain you're willing to feel the pain of other people or at least you're willing to feel the pain that thinking about that person's predicament or being in the present of that person who is afraid or suffering in some way you're willing to stay present with what that triggers in you what that provokes in you what that activates in you so compassion is uh associated with um being starting where you are with the little or with whatever limited amount of compassion you already have whatever limited amount of empathy you already have a little whatever amount of being able to stand in someone else's shoes being able to be in the presence of someone whose situation is bringing up fear for you bringing up pain for you being able to do that um becomes the um the doorway into being able to do it for uh uh larger and larger numbers of people including all the categories which are traditionally uh used that we did this morning of doing it for oneself doing it for loved ones doing it for the neutral person doing it for a difficult person doing it for all sentient beings wishing them to be free of suffering but it's it is uh it does up the ante uh beginning to do compassion practice so the reason that we have difficulty with compassion i'm saying repeating myself here but the reason we have difficulty with it uh is because we fear the pain so much and so part of the practice becomes uh noting our fear allowing our fear to be there and noting acknowledging that we're afraid and not trying to change it but by becoming very familiar with the feeling of fear so this morning when we were doing the loving kindness practice we went through the stages and i'm sure there were 550 or whatever number we are personal experiences of that everything from nothing happening at all to feeling some heart connection and every and a lot of anything in between but if in doing the practice you experience shut down in some way you experience that it's not flowing freely that there's something blocking your ability to feel love or in this case this afternoon feel compassion what is the instruction then about what to do with that well first instruction is uh you haven't done anything wrong you know like there's no reason that you have to feel that uh you're ruining a perfectly good practice by being who you are what is the instruction on what to do when um the heart is frozen when the mind is closed when nothing is happening and you're saying these seemingly empty words you know may i enjoy happiness may i be free of suffering and the root of suffering or may my beloved child or my beloved grandmother or my beloved partner my beloved horse or whatever it is enjoy happiness and the root of happiness be free of suffering and the root of suffering and even though those are supposed to be the very beings that connect you with the feeling of open heart nothing is happening so what are you supposed to do or maybe you do fine with your grandchild but then when you get to neutral people sure it's very common that then maybe you just kind of go numb um and when you get to difficult people then all kinds all hell breaks list so what are we supposed to do so uh as you probably a lot of you know and i've listened to tapes and read books and things where i've talked about uh different ways of staying present with pain the the lean into the sharp points approach but but the main instruction here is just to note it with a feeling of kind heart and not necessarily shift away from the practice of extending loving kindness or extending compassion but just to note that you feel closed or you feel afraid or that there's something blocking the flow you feel numb you feel indifferent it all feels empty to you or you're becoming overwhelmed with uh particularly with compassion it's common to feel overwhelmed that you connect so much with the feeling of of someone else's pain that you it scares you and you it's hard to stay present because of the feeling of being overwhelmed by it so in that case which is almost certain to happen at some point or other even if not in one given session it might happen the next time you practice or somewhere in the practice if that happens just acknowledge that it's happened without without adding anything extra just acknowledge it with a kind heart acknowledge it with kindness with tenderness uh with uh compassion just acknowledge that you like are just an ordinary human being and uh uh you share this quality with all humanity that that these qualities sometimes do not flow freely and you might say in in your case maybe that you feel they never flow but in any case just note on that the heart is closed or that something is there's some sense of blockage just note that not as a problem but as uh something that just by noting it you begin to become more familiar with it and more intimate with it and uh you're moving closer to it it's unacknowledged habitual patterns unacknowledged fears that cause us a lot of suffering and grief but when we can acknowledge them it still hurts but there is this big difference which is that there is an open awareness of whatever is occurring so uh so the instruction is kind of just even if it feels empty that you just continue to move through the stages and i said this morning that if you just feel it that you're that it's very cold and empty and nothing is happening another thing you can do uh which is to go back to the feeling of in this morning's practice the benefactor or benefactors sending you love and just do that for a while and then um you could just continue with doing that if that's the basis that you need you could just continue with doing it but if it helps then to ignite something you can go back then to sending love to yourself sending love to uh loved ones and through the line like that so this afternoon the practice will be start with the benefactors sending you compassion and i'm going to talk a bit about that so what i'm trying to address here at the beginning of this talk is what to do when the heart is not just opening and it's not all just sailing through the whole practice and so i hope i've made that clear that in you you can return to the receiving of love or compassion uh to just return to uh some feeling of warmth and in any case even if that works or even if it doesn't work to acknowledge uh with kindness and uh compassion that there is this uh obscuration there so that goes a long way they they say that one of the foundations of spiritual practice is friendly to oneself and merciful to others and that they go together like that to be friendly to oneself and merciful to others and um usually it's uh you know neither you know neither friendly to oneself nor merciful to others so uh so these practices are to help you uh it's like an education for the heart uh a uh connecting with uh the warmth of your being the natural warmth which can be uh tapped into at any time the natural warmth which is part of the open awareness when when you uh when you acknowledge these qualities with that open awareness and just acknowledge that it's happening that is already uh a big step on uh awakening the heart or educating the heart or tapping into the soft spot or the our uh innate qualities of warmth the qualities of the heart [Music] you

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Keywords: soundstrue.com, Sounds True, mindfulness, pema chodron, the freedom to love pema chodron, freedom to love, buddhism, changing your heart towards pain, how to endure pain

Id: OB_dPW2RJ94

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022