Jo Westcombe
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Hello Lauren, It looks as if you are writing regularly. That sounds like several obstacles overcome and a worthy discipline practice to me. Tough but slowly opening up a channel (perhaps see my post…).
Hi Toni, How to get to that dreamy place of wisdom? Susan talked last week about there being three ways, involving a king or a boat person or a shepherd (I’m not sure any more which one was most relevant to Susan’s tradition). And I drew a picture of six oars. And then our reading suggested that there might be 10 Paramitas or 36 and my boat got a lot bigger! In any case, it seems that there are ways across to that shore and various beings willing to help us get there, but it will certainly involve some work and pulling together!
Hi Mary-Beth, How great to hear that you experience joy and meaning (I am extrapolating) in your life and work. That gave me a happy buzz just to read. And we all need moments of joy, so thank you!
I suppose there is the everyday NOW in terms of getting stuff done and the week whizzing by, but then there is the mindful NOW, which is all we’ve got, so perhaps we can learn to reframe the first with the second?
And I keep coming back to the Paramita of patience and not really understanding why it is called that. I suppose many of us are primed to believe we are falling short in terms of the Christian idea of patience, but this Paramita seems to be much more about acceptance and equanimity. I am a long way from understanding it fully.Hi Glenn, What you say in your first paragraph suggests that generosity is innate in you, and that you have already been of benefit to many beings in your life. It sounds as if you have been interpreting these events and stories through the last Paramita. Perhaps it would be worth looking at them from the perspective of the others, too, especially the first. I understand that the Paramitas are laid out as a list but are also approaches or ways of looking.
I heard about the Paramitas for the first time from Susan last year, and found the Mindful New Year recordings very wonderful. I am only at the very beginning of my understanding of the Paramitas.
The one I feel most drawn to is discipline. Being very aware of the pitfalls of translation, I looked up the etymology of the English word “discipline”, only to find that one origin of the word was connected to “mortification through scourging oneself”. But the word is also linked to “disciple” or learner, which certainly feels more fitting.
I found Bridget Bailey’s metaphor of the river very helpful when thinking about discipline instead as “proper conduct”. A healthy river flows naturally, but is contained within its banks. If its banks are too rigid, the river will come out of balance and the flow will be impeded. If the banks are too low, there will be flooding.
So, in thinking about the Paramitas as expansion and contraction, the latter seems not to be about tightness, but instead (visiting the dictionary again) about a “conduit” or channel, about a drawing together (contraction) and about a holding together or containment. This links well with the idea of “binding”.
Bridget Bailey quoted Pema Chodron, that discipline allows us to slow down and be present. This feels such a welcome invitation; when stuff gets thrown at me (or I throw stuff at myself), instead of reacting habitually, I can feel held, can pause and reflect before responding. And this slowing down can allow me to cultivate all the virtuous choices available on the Middle Way, especially the big C, Compassion.
And this proper conduct also involves the discipline of practising over and over the simple reminder to come back gently (but firmly) to the breath. And, as I read somewhere else, practice might involve finding a “small discipline” in daily life and cultivating it.
I can’t say that I feel less of a connection to another Paramita. I do want to investigate “Exertion” more, especially to learn if there is any relationship to “Windhorse”.
The expanding and contracting nature of the Paramitas just feels like life, and breathing, while at the same time going beyond them. I’m very grateful to have been introduced to them.
Hi Liana, Your point about the instruction and your own time being at odds is what I mentioned in the chat on Saturday. And I might have to break this gently, but …in my experience it’s not an old / new thing, but just a fact of teacher life thing. I’ve been teaching yoga for a few years and still often find myself “practising” for an upcoming lesson rather than for myself. This can even lead to some … resentment … because there isn’t the time in the week to do both. I realize now as I am writing to you that this is probably one of the great benefits of the simplicity of the practice we are learning here, that at some point the needle will drop into the groove and the words will just be right and feel completely natural, and enough.
Hello Dawa, I did an NLP Practitioner course and loved all the metaphor and reframing and scene-setting, too. It is still really useful (and creative and fun). I think there is a regular reminder in NLP (isn’t there?) that it is a toolkit based on observing best practice.
I, too, want to work on the paring-down aspects of guiding in this tradition in the OHP. It’s a challenge, but I really see the value of the simplicity of the practice. Thanks for posting!Hello Cheryl, I think the combination of “ease and concern” sounds like a healthy balance to have with many things in life!
My partner went first, and I felt in very good hands there – guided and soothed. This put me in a good mind state for my turn.
In the short meditations I have led so far, I have tended to linger on the embodied aspects – the feeling of both feet on the floor and the body in the chair, and then via the back / spine to the front body and the breath. I really enjoy this initial dynamic of settling into the posture, and also as a way of guiding attention gently but firmly out of the head.
From my partner’s feedback on Saturday I understood that some of this focus and the wording around it might have been unfamiliar. I think I might have got a bit more stuck into this physical focus on the way to the awareness of the breath than I have experienced so far when listening to teachers in the OHP.
More prosaically, in future practice sessions I need to remember to clear away the clutter from my “gaze space” beforehand. I also need to learn how to use the timer on my phone so that it stays open. I also had to laugh inwardly at being slightly surprised that someone close to me on the screen had their eyes open, too!
I suppose the bigger question that I would like to explore is to what extent leading a meditation can actually “count” as my own meditation, especially in a short session where there is less space for the special shared silence around the spoken guidance. Perhaps that is why I appreciate the embodied introduction as described above, where I can be talking but also still really feeling into my feet on the rug/floor/mat.
Hi Joe,
You divide these lineages up so neatly, and still they cannot be contained. This is a major takeaway from reading these essays: this is what it means to be human – everyone a rich tapestry and unique with they and people around them all somewhere on the “quirky” and the “awesome” spectrum. How life affirming. You really couldn’t make you, or anyone else here up!I first heard Susan talk about lineage, offerings and blessings sometime last year in her podcast / Monday morning meditations, and I’m glad I now actually have to write down some reflections on my own lineage.
As a Brit, I have some understanding of my/my family’s position in the class system. But I don‘t know much about my actual family lineage. I don’t know if my ancestors were writing letters to the Times about e.g. the horrors of the sugar plantations in the West Indies or the Victorian narcotics trade in China, whether they were involved or profiting from either of these or perhaps just ignorant of them. There are a lot of big question marks there for me.
As far as the last couple of generation goes, though, I come from a family of teachers and other good humans who were active in their local churches, communities and regions. It feels good and very grounding to have been brought up in that environment.
So it is interesting to me that a lineage focus can be selective, (as in: I’ll just pick the good ones) but also that it has to be, as there is so much we cannot know about where we come from. I have a particular fear of two types of injury – one that might happen by accident but another that could only be inflicted deliberately. I’ll never know if these hark back to previous lives of mine or of others, but they feel deeply rooted.
In educational and vocational terms, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to learn from expert teacher trainers in institutions that have their own lineage and heritage.
As for the Buddhist path I’d been hovering around for years, it was the “10% Happier” book and app that led me to Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein and many other remarkable teachers – it was during the pandemic that I encountered Susan for the first time in the daily meditations.
So I’ve got quite a line-up of teachers to be grateful for and to be inspired by.
And what I have learned and am learning from my teachers I hope I can sometimes pay forward to my own students. The teacher-pupil-teacher-pupil lineage continuum gives my work and my wider life meaning.
Hello Ana,
Thank you for mentioning a “personal” middle way. I think I’ve so far thought of it as “The” Middle Way. But your approach is very reassuring and gently liberating.
Hello Elizabeth, That little chapel with candles and friends (and singing) sounds like a very special, safe place – as if you had arrived home?
Eternalism: I can relate to this in terms of spending lots of time with my very favourite people in a church (-adjacent) community of a choir I’ve been singing in for years. I’m not confirmed, don’t take Communion or say the Creed but am just now wondering what motivates others to do so. I’m sure they find magic and mystery and continuity in the liturgy and sacraments, and I know that many genuinely want Christ in their lives on earth, but perhaps they also believe that God keeps an eye on their “streak”, and that this will be important in the hereafter.
From what I hear in the readings and from discussions in our rather boisterous Bible (Torah) Study group, despite at least ten very clear rules, there is a great deal of ambiguity, knottedness and potential for nihilism (selective versions of reality/belief) in this belief system. It all seems quite hard work, stressful and not always self-compassionate.But then there is the music… I would like sacred choral music with me in/on the Middle Way, and appreciate that Bach, Byrd, Pärt, Tallis, Taverner and co. were inspired and infused by the eternal to create magic and mystery, and I am in turn “eternally” grateful for that.
Nihilism: For me this feels much more mundane. If eternalism is for Sundays, then this is the rest of the week. I eat chocolate in the evening and my sleep score reading is bad, and the next day I get annoyed with the dog and go to work grumpy, and these ephemeral circumstances and events get turned in my mind into some coherent narrative about my failings and bad deal in life. The “and”s get turned into “so’s”.
Are dogs nihilistic, because they are simply reactive? They see their owner and react with a wag, another dog walks past the gate so they bark, and when their dinner is put in front of them they have a singular focus on its substance?
When trying to get my head around the concept of nihilism, I kept landing on another word, “denialism” instead. This “lie first” strategy is very evident in politics today, where the truth seems mostly inconvenient, and some very distorted versions of reality seem very far away from wisdom’s influence.
I thought we would be writing this week about the Middle Way and was grappling with what that might be, but having had to become a bit more familiar with eternalism and nihilism, the Middle Way seems a very appealing place/path of (dappled) light and shade to rest and move through.