My entry here is inserted here on the heels of listening to Warren talk about '..not adding anything to the dukkha, not adding anytihing to the anguish that exists', the anguish that comes up...which comes up all the time and which is part of life. The anguish that arises. Or as Marion reminds: holding the child when the child wants to add lamentation to the anguish and loss and worry ...
From Bursting the Bubble of Fear by Ezra Bayda (from Daily Dharma, Face Your Fears, 1/30/2011
The fourth reminder is to awaken lovingkindness. This is the ability to bring nonjudgmental awareness from the heart to the unwanted aspects of "me." This reminder can't be overemphasized. It's so natural to want to confirm what is most negative about ourselves that we don't even think about activating compassion or kindness. In fact, much of the heaviness of our distress comes from the belief that we should be different. Especially after practicing for a few years, we think we shouldn't still be so reactive. We think we should be beyond our conditioning. But practice doesn't work that way. Yet when we soften our self-judgment with lovingkindness, the sense of drama and heaviness lightens considerably.
Sometimes when emotional distress is particularly powerful, nothing we've learned about practicing with distress seems pertinent. Dense and intense emotional reactions can leave us feeling confused and overwhelmed. In these darkest moments, the practice is to bring awareness to the center of the chest, breathing the painful emotions, via the in-breath, directly into the heartspace. It's as if we're breathing the swirling physical sensations right into the heart. Then, on the out-breath, we simply exhale. We're not trying to do or change anything; we're simply allowing our heart center to become a wider container of awareness within which to experience distress.
Fear takes us to that point beyond which we think we can't go. Breathing into the center of the chest, taking that one breath directly into the heartspace, opening to the pain that feels like it's going to do us in, teaches us that it won't do us in. We begin to experience the spaciousness of the heart, where our harshest self-judgments and our darkest moods lighten up. We begin to understand that awareness heals; and to open to this healing, one more breath into the heartspace is all that is required.
To willingly reside in our distress, no longer resisting what is, is the real key to transformation. As painful as it may be to face our deepest fears, we do reach the point where it's more painful not to face them. This is a pivotal point in the practice life.
The four noble truths in poem:
Caught in the self centered dream, only suffering (this is the adding -- the blaming, the regret)
Holding to self-centered thought, exactly the dream.
Each moment, life as it is, the perfect teacher. (Awareness of the pain, the suffering; and not adding)
Being just this moment, Compassion's Way. (and this refers to having compassion for oneself, too.)
